urers, opening
their oyster with a sword, entered the Church or the profession of the
law in its higher or lower grade; and as at that period there was much
more demand for lawyers and much less for clergymen than there is now,
and the Church had ceased to be a stepping-stone to political power and
patronage, while the law had become more than ever before an avenue to
fame, to fortune, and to rank, by far the greater number of these young
gentlemen aspired to the woolsack. But then, as now, the early years of
professional life were seasons of sharp trial and bitter disappointment.
Necessity pressed sorely or pleasure wooed resistlessly, and the slender
purse wasted rapidly away while the young attorney or barrister awaited
the employment that did not come. He knew then, as now he knows, "the
rich man's scorn, the proud man's contumely"; nay, he felt, as now he
sometimes feels, the tooth of hunger gnawing through the principles and
firm resolves that partition a life of honor and self-respect from one
darkened by conscious loss of rectitude, if not by open shame. Happy,--
yet, perhaps, oh, unhappy,--he who now in such a strait can wield the
pen of a ready writer!--for the press, perchance, may afford him a
support which, though temporary and precarious, will hold him up until
he can stand upon more stable ground. But in the reigns of Good Queen
Bess and Gentle Jamie there was no press. There was, however, an
incessant demand for new plays. Play-going was the chief intellectual
recreation of that day for all classes, high and low. It filled the
place of our newspapers, our books, our lectures, our concerts, our
picture-seeing, and, in a great measure, of our social gatherings and
amusements, of whatever nature. It is hardly extravagant to say, that
there were then more new plays produced in London in a month than
there are now in Great Britain and the United States in a year. To
play-writing, then, the needy young attorney or barrister possessed
of literary talent turned his eyes at that day, as he does now to
journalism; and it is almost beyond a doubt, that, of the multitudinous
plays of that period which have survived and the thousands which have
perished, a large proportion were produced by the younger sons of
country gentlemen, who, after taking their degrees at Oxford or
Cambridge, or breaking away from those classic bounds ungraduated,
entered the Inns of Court, according to the custom of their day and
their conditi