a memorial from a biographical or historical point of view. Of
Shakespeare's life of fifty-two years, twenty-four years were in all
probability spent in London. During those years the work that makes
him memorable was done. It was in London that the fame which is
universally acknowledged was won.

Some valuable details regarding Shakespeare's life in London are
accessible. The districts where he resided and where he passed his
days are known. There is evidence that during the early part of his
London career he lived in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, and
during the later part near the Bankside, Southwark. With the south
side of the Thames he was long connected, together with his youngest
brother, Edmund, who was also an actor, and who was buried in the
church of St Saviour's, Southwark.

In his early London days Shakespeare's professional work, alike as
actor and dramatist, brought him daily from St Helen's, Bishopsgate,
to The Theatre in Shoreditch. Shoreditch was then the chief
theatrical quarter in London. Later, the centre of London theatrical
life shifted to Southwark, where the far-famed Globe Theatre was
erected, in 1599, mainly out of the materials of the dismantled
Shoreditch Theatre. Ultimately Shakespeare's company of actors
performed in a theatre at Blackfriars, which was created out of a
private residence on a part of the site on which _The Times_ office
stands now. At a few hundred yards' distance from the Blackfriars
Theatre, in the direction of Cannon Street, Shakespeare, too, shortly
before his death, purchased a house.

Thus Shakespeare's life in London is well identified with four
districts--with Bishopsgate, with Shoreditch, with Southwark, and with
Blackfriars. Unhappily for students of Shakespeare's life, London has
been more than once remodelled since the dramatist sojourned in the
city. The buildings and lodgings, with which he was associated in
Shoreditch, Southwark, Bishopsgate, or Blackfriars, have long since
disappeared.

It is not practicable to follow in London the same historical scheme
of commemoration which has been adopted at Stratford-on-Avon. It is
impossible to recall to existence the edifices in which Shakespeare
pursued his London career. Archaeology could do little in this
direction that was satisfactory. There would be an awkward incongruity
in introducing into the serried ranks of Shoreditch warehouses and
Southwark wharves an archaeological restoration of Elizabetha