oby Matthew, many of which were
written very early in the seventeenth century (although first published
in 1660), the sobriquet of Sir John Falstaff seems to have been bestowed
on Shakespeare: 'As that excellent author Sir John Falstaff sayes, "what
for your businesse, news, device, foolerie, and libertie, I never dealt
better since I was a man."' {383b}

His love of the theatre.

When, after leaving Ireland, Southampton spent the autumn of 1599 in
London, it was recorded that he and his friend Lord Rutland 'come not to
Court' but 'pass away the time merely in going to plays every day.'
{383c} It seems that the fascination that the drama had for Southampton
and his friends led them to exaggerate the influence that it was capable
of exerting on the emotions of the multitude. Southampton and Essex in
February 1601 requisitioned and paid for the revival of Shakespeare's
'Richard II' at the Globe Theatre on the day preceding that fixed for
their insurrection, in the hope that the play-scene of the deposition of
a king might excite the citizens of London to countenance their
rebellious design. {383d} Imprisonment sharpened Southampton's zest for
the theatre. Within a year of his release from the Tower in 1603 he
entertained Queen Anne of Denmark at his house in the Strand, and Burbage
and his fellow players, one of whom was Shakespeare, were bidden to
present the 'old' play of 'Love's Labour's Lost,' whose 'wit and mirth'
were calculated 'to please her Majesty exceedingly.'

Poetic adulation. Barnabe Barnes's sonnet, 1593.

But these are merely accidental testimonies to Southampton's literary
predilections. It is in literature itself, not in the prosaic records of
his political or domestic life, that the amplest proofs survive of his
devotion to letters. From the hour that, as a handsome and accomplished
lad, he joined the Court and made London his chief home, authors
acknowledged his appreciation of literary effort of almost every quality
and form. He had in his Italian tutor Florio, whose circle of
acquaintance included all men of literary reputation, a mentor who
allowed no work of promise to escape his observation. Every note in the
scale of adulation was sounded in Southampton's honour in contemporary
prose and verse. Soon after the publication, in April 1593, of
Shakespeare's 'Venus and Adonis,' with its salutation of Southampton, a
more youthful apprentice to the poet's craft, Barnabe Barnes, conf