comparatively recent generation, John Bowman, who died over eighty
in 1739, after spending "more than half an age on the London
theatres."

V

Valuable as these actors' testimonies are, it is in another rank of
the profession that we find the most important link in the chain of
witnesses alike to the persistence and authenticity of the oral
tradition of Shakespeare which was current in the middle of the
seventeenth century. Sir William D'Avenant, the chief playwright and
promoter of theatrical enterprise of his day, enjoyed among persons of
influence and quality infinite credit and confidence. As a boy he and
his brothers had come into personal relations with the dramatist under
their father's roof, and the experience remained the proudest boast of
their lives. D'Avenant was little more than ten when Shakespeare died,
and his direct intercourse with him was consequently slender; but
D'Avenant was a child of the Muses, and his slight acquaintance with
the living Shakespeare spurred him to treasure all that he could learn
of his hero from any who had enjoyed fuller opportunities of intimacy.

To learn the manner in which the child D'Avenant and his brothers came
to know Shakespeare is to approach the dramatist through oral tradition
at very close quarters. D'Avenant's father, a melancholy person who
was never known to laugh, long kept at Oxford the Crown Inn in Carfax.
Gossip which was current in Oxford throughout the seventeenth century,
and was put on record before the end of it by more than one scholar of
the university, establishes the fact that Shakespeare on his annual
journeys between London and Stratford-on-Avon was in the habit of
staying at the elder D'Avenant's Oxford hostelry. The report ran that
"he was exceedingly respected" in the house, and was freely admitted
to the inn-keeper's domestic circle. The inn-keeper's wife was
credited with a mercurial disposition which contrasted strangely with
her husband's sardonic temperament; it was often said in Oxford that
Shakespeare not merely found his chief attraction at the Crown Inn in
the wife's witty conversation, but formed a closer intimacy with her
than moralists would approve. Oral tradition speaks in clearer tones
of his delight in the children of the family--four boys and three
girls. We have at command statements on that subject from the lips of
two of the sons. The eldest son, Robert, who was afterwards a parson
in Wiltshire, and was on familiar term