Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) SHAKESPEARE'S LOST YEARS IN LONDON 1586-1592 SHAKESPEARE'S LOST YEARS IN LONDON 1586-1592 Giving new light on the pre-Sonnet period; showing the inception of relations between Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton and displaying JOHN FLORIO AS SIR JOHN FALSTAFF BY ARTHUR ACHESON AUTHOR OF "SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET" "MISTRESS DAVENANT, THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS", ETC. NEW YORK BRENTANO'S 1920 _All rights reserved_ TO MY SONS ARTHUR MURRAY ACHESON AND ALEXANDER G. ACHESON I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME "The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene ii. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 1 II. THE STRATFORD DAYS, 1564-1586 19 III. SHAKESPEARE, THE BURBAGES, AND EDWARD ALLEYN, 1586-1591 38 IV. SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE'S COMPANY, 1591-1594 72 V. SHAKESPEARE AND THE SCHOLARS, 1588-1592 90 VI. THE POLITICAL PURPOSE OF _KING JOHN_, 1591-1592 131 VII. INCEPTION OF THE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, 1591-1594 150 VIII. JOHN FLORIO AS SIR JOHN FALSTAFF'S ORIGINAL 181 APPENDIX-- 1. Dedication of Florio's _Second Fruites_, 1591 223 2. Address to the Reader from Florio's _Second Fruites_, 1591 229 3. Dedication of Florio's _Worlde of Wordes_, 1598 233 4. Address to the Reader from Florio's _Worlde of Wordes_, 1598 242 5. John Florio's Will, 1625 252 INDEX 257 SHAKESPEARE'S LOST YEARS IN LONDON 1586-1592 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The most interesting and important fifteen years in the records of English dramatic literature are undoubtedly those between 1588 and 1603, within which limit all of Shakespeare's poems and the majority of his plays were written; yet no exhaustive English history, intelligently co-ordinating the social, literary, and political life of this period, has ever been written.