* We happen on traces of the fact that William Shakespeare's particular weakness was his "noble descent" very often, in exploring the annals of these times, and that his fellow actors by no means spared his weakness. "It was then a current joke to identify Shakespeare with 'the Conqueror,' or 'Rufus,' as if his pretensions to descent from the Norman dukes were known" ("Ben Jonson's Quarrel with Shakspeare," "North British Review," July, 1870). And certain lines in the "Poetaster" are supposed to be a fling at this weakness of Shakespeare, as the whole play is believed to be a hit at Marlow (id.). We shall see how this weakness was fostered by the new set into which circumstances forced Shakespeare, later on. Before its door (for the Blackfriars will answer as well as the Globe) we may, perhaps, {257}imagine a rustic lad--fresh from Stratford, and footsore from his long tramp, attracted by the crowd and the lights, standing idle and agape. Possibly, then, riding up, some gallant threw young William his horse's bridle, and William Shakespeare had found employment in London. By attention to business, William, in time, may have, as Rowe thinks, come to control the horse-holding business, and take his predecessors into his pay; until they became known as "Shakespeare's boys," and the young speculator's name penetrated to the inside of the theater. In course of time he becomes a "_servitour_" (what we now call a "super," i. e., supernumerary) inside, and ultimately (according to Rowe, an actor himself, and the nearest in point of time to William Shakespeare to write his biography) "the reader" * of the establishment; and naturally, therefore, stage editor of whatever is offered. He has no royal road to learning at his command, nor does he want one. The "knack at speech-making," which had delighted the rustic youth of Stratford, mellowed by the new experiences which surround him, is all he needs. Not only the plays of Greene and others, which he now remodeled (and improved, no doubt), but essays of his own, became popular. The audience (we shall see more of them further on) called for "Shakespeare's plays," and his name came to possess a market value. * In this capacity he read and accepted Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," which was the beginning of the intimacy which ended with their lives. The dramas we now call "Shakespearean" surely did appear in his lifetime, and under his name. Were {258}they ever performed at his theater? Let us glance at the probabilities.