k for Manager Burbage, and that this constant
exercise of talent upon reproductions, the most of which are absolutely
unknown to us, paved the way for the development of his gift upon
original or quasi-original work.

CHAPTER VII

SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY PLAYS

The poet is credited with the authorship of some thirty-seven plays,
though modern criticism has endeavoured to show that he took but a small
part in the making of a few of these, and of the whole thirty-seven
little more than a dozen were published during his life. It is supposed
that his first play was the comedy "Love's Labour's Lost," in which he
would appear to have gone to his own brain for the plot. Here we find a
certain broad outlook upon contemporary life, with many a passing
reference to matters of topical interest, while vivid recollections of
life in Warwickshire among slow-witted rustics account for some of the
humorous episodes. Historians can trace many of the references in the
play, which is supposed to have been written in 1591, five years after
the author left Stratford, revised in 1597, and published a year later.
Cuthbert Burbie, who, like Shakespeare's earliest London friend, Richard
Field, was a member of the Stationers' Company, was the publisher, and
the printer was one William White of "Cow Lane near Holborn Conduit."

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" came next, adapted from a Spanish source,
and not published until the author was dead.

"The Comedy of Errors" is borrowed from Plautus; and then came "Romeo
and Juliet," founded upon a _novellino_ by Masuccio, who had taken the
story from the Greek. It has served for many countries, but nowhere has
the plot found such a magical handling as Shakespeare gave it. There is
internal evidence to suggest 1591 or 1592 as the date, and Shakespeare
was still a young man then, on the sunny side of thirty, and with the
currents of his life no longer turned awry. There is here a ring of
confidence and enthusiasm that three centuries have proved powerless to
dull. After due revision, the play was printed in 1597 by John Danter, a
publisher of rather evil repute. Two years later Burbie published an
authorised edition.

Oddly enough, the success of "Romeo and Juliet" would appear to have
been eclipsed by that of "King Henry VI." The events set out in the
trilogy were sufficiently familiar to the people to give the work an
interest that is almost fictitious. Criticism has shown that the poet's
part