tch, and his father came from
Hertfordshire. John Heming, another of Shakespeare's actor-friends who
has also been claimed as a native of Stratford, was beyond reasonable
doubt born at Droitwich in Worcestershire. Thomas Greene, a popular
comic actor at the Red Bull Theatre early in the seventeenth century, is
conjectured to have belonged to Stratford on no grounds that deserve
attention; Shakespeare was in no way associated with him.

{32a} Blades, _Shakspere and Typography_, 1872.

{32b} Cf. Lord Campbell, _Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements_, 1859.
Legal terminology abounded in all plays and poems of the period, e.g.
Barnabe Barnes's _Sonnets_, 1593, and _Zepheria_, 1594 (see Appendix IX.)

{32c} Commonly assigned to Theophilus Cibber, but written by Robert
Shiels and other hack-writers under Cibber's editorship.

{38a} The site of the Blackfriars Theatre is now occupied by the offices
of the 'Times' newspaper in Queen Victoria Street, E.C.

{38b} Cf. _Exchequer Lay Subsidies City of London_, 146/369, Public
Record Office; _Notes and Queries_, 8th ser. viii. 418.

{38c} Shakespeare alludes to the appearance of men or boys in women's
parts when he makes Rosalind say laughingly to the men of the audience in
the epilogue to _As you like it_, '_If I were a woman_, I would kiss as
many,' etc. Similarly, Cleopatra on her downfall in _Antony and
Cleopatra_, V. ii. 220 seq., laments:

the quick comedians
Extemporally will stage us . . . and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.

Men taking women's parts seem to have worn masks. Flute is bidden by
Quince play Thisbe 'in a mask' in _Midsummer Night's Dream_ (I. ii. 53).
In French and Italian theatres of the time women seem to have acted
publicly, but until the Restoration public opinion in England deemed the
appearance of a woman on a public stage to be an act of shamelessness on
which the most disreputable of her sex would hardly venture. With a
curious inconsistency ladies of rank were encouraged at Queen Elizabeth's
Court, and still more frequently at the Courts of James I and Charles I,
to take part in private and amateur representations of masques and short
dramatic pageants. During the reign of James I scenic decoration,
usually designed by Inigo Jones, accompanied the production of masques in
the royal palaces, but until the Restoration the public stages were bare
of any scenic contrivance excep