support of
the Warwickshire home must have been few and scanty.

When Shakespeare came to town there were some half-dozen companies of
licensed actors, that is to say, companies that enjoyed and exercised
their rights under an Act of Parliament (14 Eliz. c. 2). It said that
all actors, save those who held the licence of a peer of the realm or
other person of importance, were to be treated as rogues and vagabonds.
The company to which Shakespeare was admitted derived its rights from
the Earl of Leicester, and soon after he joined, if not before, it
passed under the support of the Earl of Derby, and in later years under
the supreme patronage of King James I., whose admiration for the poet
and his works was very large and real. James Burbage was owner of "The
Theatre," and it was in his time, we may presume, that Shakespeare acted
as ostler and call-boy. But he must have risen up from the ranks at no
small pace when his gifts became well known, for not only do we find him
a regular member of the company, but a friend of the leading members,
men like Richard Burbage, son of the proprietor, and Augustus Phillips.
And at "The Theatre" in Shoreditch he won some fame as a playwright,
though it was not at "The Theatre" but at "The Rose," a new house on the
Bankside at Southwark, that the poet's genius was to "blossom and bud
and fill the face of the world with fruit."

The close of the sixteenth century was a season of considerable activity
among actors; the destruction of the "galleons of Spain" had relieved
the country of a very real danger. Some of the leading companies
amalgamated for a time when in town; new houses were springing up. In
addition to "The Rose" there was one at Newington Butts, and in 1599 the
Burbages transplanted "The Theatre" to Bankside and called it "The
Globe." Here Shakespeare did the most of his work and made the most of
his reputation, acquiring considerable wealth the while.

James Burbage built the Blackfriars Theatre, to which Shakespeare
brought his company shortly before he retired to Stratford. He
gradually acquired certain interests in the theatres, so his profits
were not only those of actor and playwright. The wealth that was to be
his was drawn from three sources.

CHAPTER V

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON

Of the landmarks that Shakespeare knew, the Great Fire of London
destroyed many, and Time, dealing in rather gentler fashion, has effaced
the most of those that the fire spared. A m