Poor Romeo never more shall tears beget
For Juliet's love and cruel Capulet:
Harry shall not be seen as king or prince,
They died with thee, dear Dick, .

And Crookback, as befits, shall cease to live.
Tyrant Macbeth, with unwash'd bloody hand,
We vainly now may hope to understand.
Brutus and Marcius henceforth must be dumb,
For ne'er thy like upon the stage shall come,
To charm the faculty of ears and eyes,
Unless we could command the dead to rise.

Heart-broke Philaster, and Aminatas too,
Are lost for ever; with the red-hair'd Jew.

Thy stature small, but every thought and mood
Might throughly from thy face be understood.
And his whole action he could change with ease,
From ancient Leare to youthful Pericles.
But let me not forget one chiefest part,
Wherein beyond the rest he moved the heart,
The grieved Moor-

All these and many more with him are dead.

England's great Roscius! for what Roscius
Was to Rome that Burbadge was to us!
How did his speech become him, and his pace
Suit with his speech, and every action grace,
Them both alike, while not a word did fall
Without just weight to ballast it withal.

Hadst thou but spoke with Death, and us'd the power
Of thy enchanting tongue at that first hour

Of his assault, he had let fall his dart

And quite been charm'd with thy all-charming art."

66

"He was a delightful Proteus," says Flecknoe, wholly transforming himself into his part, and putting off himself with his clothes, as he never (not so much as in the tyring-house) assumed himself again until the play was done. He had all the parts of an excellent actor (animating his words with speaking and speech with action), his auditors being never more delighted than when he spoke, nor more sorry than when he held his peace; yet even then he was an excellent actor still, never failing in his part when he had done speaking; but with his looks and gesture, maintaining it still unto the height." The queen of James I. died about the same time, but royalty was forgotten in grief for the stage favorite, as it was pointed out by a satiric poet of the time.

"Burbadge, the player, has vouchsafed to die! Therefore in London is not one eye dry.

Dick Burbadge was their mortal god on earth :
When he expires, lo! all lament the man,

But where's the grief should follow good Queen Anne ?”

Tarleton's immediate successor and almost equal in wit was Will Kempe; but he was a legitimate actor as well as a clown, being, it is supposed, the original Dogberry, Peter, Launce, Shallow, Launcelot Gobbo, Touchstone, and First Gravedigger. In an old pamphlet he is spoken of as "that most comical and conceited cavaleire M. de Kempe, jestmonger and vicegerent general to the ghost of Dick Tarleton." Heywood, in his "Apology for Actors," says: "To whom (Tarleton) succeeded Will Kempe, as well in the favor of her Majesty as in the opinion and good thoughts of the general audience." Nash speaks of him in 1589 as a complete and finished

actor, whose fame had extended even beyond the shores of England. But it is thought that Hamlet's diatribe against gagging was especially meant for Kempe. Like Tarleton, he did not confine his wit and vagaries to the stage, but frequently practised them out-of-doors. There is, in an old pamphlet, dated 1600, written by him, entitled "Nine Daies Wonder. Performed in a morris daunce from London to Norwich, containing the pleasures, paines and kinde entertainments of William Kempe between London and that City," etc. On the title-page there is a woodcut representing Kempe dancing with bells on his legs, wearing a brocaded jacket and scarf, attended by Thomas Sly, another noted actor, as taborer. It need scarcely be remarked that this strange expedition was undertaken for a wager. A yet more extraordinary feat performed under the same condition was walking backward to Berwick. Another time he journeyed to France and Rome, dancing all the way, it would seem, from the following verse:

"He did labour after the tabor,

For to dance; then into France
He took paines

To skip it.
In hopes of gain

He will trip it

On the toe."

He is made to say in an old comedy,* "I am somewhat hard of study, an like your honour, but if you will invent any extemporal merriment I'll put out the small

* It was a custom in the old plays to introduce the actors by name into the inductions, and even into the body of the drama, and make them talk about themselves.

sacke of wit I ha' left in venture with them." He was held in high estimation by his contemporaries, and his name was frequently coupled even with that of Burbadge. The time of his death is uncertain; according to the "Biographia Dramatica,” it occurred in 1603, of the plague.

John Heminge was another Warwickshire man-how many of the old players came from that part of the country!-Heminge was born at Shottery, not far from Stratford, about 1556. Before Elizabeth's death he was one of the principal proprietors of the Globe, and his name is joined with that of Shakespeare and Burbadge in King James's license of 1603. He is accredited with the honor of being the original Falstaff, and had even the greater honor of being, with Condell, the editor and publisher of the first edition of Shakespeare's plays (1623). According to the following passage, it would appear that he received at least a portion of the manuscript from the author direct: "His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarcely received from him a blot in his papers." The italics are my own. Payne Collier thinks that many of the old actors were engaged in business as well as professionally, and remarks that as Heminge was free of the Grocer's Company he might have been a grocer. But in his will he is styled John Heminge, gentleman, which term could scarcely in those days, when the word meant something, and was not applied indiscriminately to a coal-heaver and a prince, have been used to describe a tradesman. He died in 1630, and was buried in St. Mary's, Aldermanbury, in which parish he had resided all his life.

Condell, his collaborateur in the edition of Shake

speare, was also a resident of Aldermanbury, and the owner of property in that parish; a man of substance; who had shares in the Blackfriars Theatre, and kept his country house at Fulham. No particular Shakespearean part has been assigned to him, but he was the original Bobadil, as well as of several of Beaumont and Fletcher's and Webster's great characters. He died in 1627.

William Sly, who has been previously mentioned in conjunction with Kempe, was the original Osric. Cowley was the original Verges; Arimn succeeded Kempe in the character of Dogberry; Lowin succeeded Heminge as Falstaff, and was the original Volpone, Mammon, Bosola, Amintor; he had a share and a half in the Blackfriars, and married a wealthy wife, but, unlike the others mentioned, he lived on into the troublous times of the rebellion, and lost all in the suppression of the theatres. Nathan Field was said to be second only to Burbadge as an actor. He was one of the children of "Her Majesty's Revels," and is mentioned in the original cast of Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels." Being born in 1587, he was too young to have been, at least as an adult, an original in any of Shakespeare's plays, but he succeeded Burbadge in several of his great characters, and was especially famous in the Moor.

"Field is in sooth an actor-all men know it,
And is the true Othello of the poet,"

says an old rhymster.

Joseph Taylor has been accredited by Davies with being the original Hamlet; but, even if there was no direct evidence against this assertion, it would be absurd to suppose that Burbadge, in the height of his powers, would allow another actor to possess himself of such a