There is a certain justification, in fact, for the fancy that the _plaudites_ were loud and long, when Shakespeare created the role of the "poor ghost" in the first production of his play of _Hamlet_ in 1602. There is no doubt at all that Shakespeare conspicuously caught the ear of the Elizabethan playgoer at a very early date in his career, and that he held it firmly for life. "These plays," wrote two of his professional associates of the reception of the whole series in the playhouse in his lifetime--"These plays have had their trial already, and stood out all appeals." Matthew Arnold, apparently quite unconsciously, echoed the precise phrase when seeking to express poetically the universality of Shakespeare's reputation in our own day. Others abide our judgment, thou art free, is the first line of Arnold's well-known sonnet, which attests the rank allotted to Shakespeare in the literary hierarchy by the professional critic, nearly two and a half centuries after the dramatist's death. There was no narrower qualification in the apostrophe of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson, a very critical contemporary:-- Soul of _the age_, The applause, delight, and wonder of _our stage_. This play of _Hamlet_, this play of his "which most kindled English hearts," received a specially enthusiastic welcome from Elizabethan playgoers. It was acted within its first year of production repeatedly ("divers times"), not merely in London "and elsewhere," but also--an unusual distinction--at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It was reprinted four times within eight years of its birth.