aintances or was
handed on by them to the next generation has been tracked to written
paper of the seventeenth century and to printed books. A portion of
these scattered memorabilia of the earliest known oral traditions
respecting Shakespeare has come to light very recently; other portions
have been long accessible. As a connected whole they have never been
narrowly scrutinised, and I believe it may serve a useful purpose to
consider with some minuteness how the mass of them came into being,
and what is the sum of information they conserve.

The more closely Shakespeare's career is studied the plainer it
becomes that his experiences and fortunes were identical with those of
all who followed in his day his profession of dramatist, and that his
conscious aims and ambitions and practices were those of every
contemporary man of letters. The difference between the results of his
endeavours and those of his fellows was due to the magical and
involuntary working of genius, which, since the birth of poetry, has
exercised "as large a charter as the wind, to blow on whom it
pleases." Speculation or debate as to why genius bestowed its fullest
inspiration on Shakespeare is no less futile than speculation or
debate as to why he was born into the world with a head on his
shoulders instead of a block of stone. It is enough for wise men to
know the obvious fact that genius endowed Shakespeare with its richest
gifts, and a very small acquaintance with the literary history of the
world and with the manner in which genius habitually plays its part
there, will show the folly of cherishing astonishment that
Shakespeare, rather than one more nobly born or more academically
trained, should have been chosen for the glorious dignity. Nowhere is
this lesson more convincingly taught than by a systematic survey of
the oral tradition. Shakespeare figures there as a supremely favoured
heir of genius, whose humility of birth and education merely serves to
intensify the respect due to his achievement.

In London, where Shakespeare's work was mainly done and his fortune
and reputation achieved, he lived with none in more intimate social
relations than with the leading members of his own prosperous company
of actors, which, under the patronage of the king, produced his
greatest plays. Like himself, most of his colleagues were men of
substance, sharers with him in the two most fashionable theatres of
the metropolis, occupiers of residences in both tow