solution ran, that 'the penalty of xs. imposed [on
players heretofore] be x_li_. henceforward.' Ten years later the King's
players were bribed by the council to leave the city without playing.
(See the present writer's _Stratford-on-Avon_, p. 270.)

{269b} The lines as quoted by Aubrey (_Lives_, ed. Clark, ii. 226) run:

Ten-in-the-hundred the Devil allows,
But Combe will have twelve he sweares and he vowes;
If any man ask, who lies in this tomb?
Oh! ho! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe.

Rowe's version opens somewhat differently:

Ten-in-the-hundred lies here ingrav'd.
'Tis a hundred to ten, his soul is not sav'd.

The lines, in one form or another, seem to have been widely familiar in
Shakespeare's lifetime, but were not ascribed to him. The first two in
Rowe's version were printed in the epigrams by H[enry] P[arrot], 1608,
and again in Camden's _Remaines_, 1614. The whole first appeared in
Richard Brathwaite's _Remains_ in 1618 under the heading: 'Upon one John
Combe of Stratford upon Aven, a notable Usurer, fastened upon a Tombe
that he had Caused to be built in his Life Time.'

{271} The clumsy entry runs: 'Sept. Mr. Shakespeare tellyng J. Greene
that I was not able to beare the encloseing of Welcombe.' J. Greene is
to be distinguished from Thomas Greene, the writer of the diary. The
entry therefore implies that Shakespeare told J. Greene that the writer
of the diary, Thomas Greene, was not able to bear the enclosure. Those
who represent Shakespeare as a champion of popular rights have to read
the 'I' in 'I was not able' as 'he.' Were that the correct reading,
Shakespeare would be rightly credited with telling J. Greene that he
disliked the enclosure; but palaeographers only recognise the reading
'I.' Cf. _Shakespeare and the Enclosure of Common Fields at Welcombe_, a
facsimile of Greene's diary, now at the Birthplace, Stratford, with a
transcript by Mr. E. J. L. Scott, edited by Dr. C. M. Inglehy, 1885.

{272a} _British Magazine_, June 1762.

{272b} Cf. Malone, _Shakespeare_, 1821, ii. 500-2; Ireland,
_Confessions_, 1805, p. 34; Green, _Legend of the Crab Tree_, 1857.

{272c} The date is in the old style, and is equivalent to May 3 in the
new; Cervantes, whose death is often described as simultaneous, died at
Madrid ten days earlier--on April 13, in the old style, or April 23,
1616, in the new.

{273} Hall's letter was published as a quarto pamphlet at London