plays, few survived him long. All of them came in
personal contact with him; several of them constantly appeared with
him on the stage from early days.

The two who were longest lived, John Lowin and Joseph Taylor, came at
length to bear a great weight of years. They were both Shakespeare's
juniors, Lowin by twelve years, and Taylor by twenty; but both
established their reputation before middle age. Lowin at twenty-seven
took part with Shakespeare in the first representation of Ben Jonson's
_Sejanus_ in 1603. He was an early, if not the first, interpreter of
the character of Falstaff. Taylor as understudy to the great actor
Burbage, a very close ally of Shakespeare, seems to have achieved some
success in the part of Hamlet, and to have been applauded in the role
of Iago, while the dramatist yet lived. When the dramatist died, Lowin
was forty, and Taylor over thirty.

Subsequently, as their senior colleagues one by one passed from the
world, these two actors assumed first rank in their company, and
before the ruin in which the Civil War involved all theatrical
enterprise, they were acknowledged to stand at the head of their
profession.[12] Taylor lived through the Commonwealth, and Lowin far
into the reign of Charles the Second, ultimately reaching his
ninety-third year. Their last days were passed in indigence, and Lowin
when an octogenarian was reduced to keeping the inn of the "Three
Pigeons," at Brentford.

[Footnote 12: Like almost all their colleagues, they had much literary
taste. When public events compulsorily retired them from the stage,
they, with the aid of the dramatist Shirley and eight other actors,
two of whom were members with them of Shakespeare's old company, did
an important service to English literature. In 1647 they collected for
first publication in folio Beaumont and Fletcher's plays; only one,
_The Wild Goose Chase_, was omitted, and that piece Taylor and Lowin
brought out by their unaided efforts five years later.]

Both these men kept alive from personal knowledge some oral
Shakespearean tradition during the fifty years and more that followed
his death. Little of their gossip is extant. But some of it was put
on record, before the end of the century, by John Downes, the old
prompter and librarian of a chief London theatre. According to
Downes's testimony, Taylor repeated instructions which he had received
from Shakespeare's own lips for the playing of the part of Hamlet,
while Lowin narra