Mr. Rowe's second assertion that he was received into the company, then in being, at first in a very mean rank, has given rise to some reports relative to the nature of his early employment at the theatre, which are equally inconsistent and degrading. It has been related that his first office was that of Call-boy, or attendant on the prompter, and that his business was to give notice to the performers when their different entries on the stage were required.[419:A] Another tradition, which places him in a still meaner occupation, is said to have been transmitted through the medium of Sir William Davenant to Mr. Betterton, who communicated it to Mr. Rowe, and this gentleman to Mr. Pope, by whom, according to Dr. Johnson, it was related in the following terms:—"In the time of Elizabeth, coaches being yet uncommon, and hired coaches not at all in use, those who were too proud, too tender, or too idle to walk, went on horseback to any distant business or diversion. Many came on horseback to the play, and when Shakspeare fled to London from the terror of a criminal prosecution, his first expedient was to wait at the door of the play-house, and hold the horses of those that had no servants, that they might be ready again after the performance. In this office he became so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that in a short time every man as he alighted called for Will. Shakspeare, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will. Shakspeare could be had. This was the first dawn of better fortune. Shakspeare, finding more horses put into his hand than he could hold, hired boys to wait under his inspection, who, when Will. Shakspeare was summoned, were immediately to present themselves, I am Shakspeare's boy, Sir. In time, Shakspeare found higher employment: but as long as the practice of riding to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakspeare's boys."[419:B]
Of this curious anecdote it should not be forgotten, that it made its first appearance in Cibber's Lives of the Poets[419:C]; and that if it
were known to Mr. Rowe, it is evident he thought it so little entitled to credit that he chose not to risque its insertion in his life of the poet. In short, if we reflect for a moment that Shakspeare, though he fled from Stratford to avoid the severity of a prosecution, could not be destitute either of money or friends, as the necessity for that flight was occasioned by an imprudent ebullition of wit, and not by any serious delinquency; that the father of his wife was a yeoman both of respectability and property; that his own parent, though impoverished, was still in business; and that he had, in all likelihood, a ready admission to the stage through the influence of persons of leading weight in its concerns; we cannot, without doing the utmost violence to probability, conceive that, under these circumstances, and in the twenty-third year of his age, he would submit to the degrading employment of either a horse-holder at the door of a theatre, or of a call-boy within its walls.
Setting aside, therefore, these idle tales, we may reasonably conclude that by the phrase a very mean rank, Mr. Rowe meant to imply, that his first engagement as an actor was in the performance of characters of the lowest class. That his fellow-comedians were ushered into the dramatic world in a similar way, and rose to higher occupancy by gradation, the history of the stage will sufficiently prove: Richard Burbadge, for instance, who began his career nearly at the same time with our author, and who subsequently became the greatest tragedian of his age, had, in the year 1589, appeared in no character more important than that of a Messenger.[420:A] If this were the case with a performer of such acknowledged merit, we may readily acquiesce in the supposition that the parts first given to Shakspeare were equally as insignificant; and as readily allow that an actor thus circumstanced might very properly be said to have been admitted into the company at first in a very mean rank.
As Shakspeare's immediate employment, therefore, on his arrival in town, appears to have been that of an actor, it cannot be deemed
irrelevant if we should here enquire into his merits and success in this department.
Two traditions, of a contradictory complexion, have reached us relative to Shakspeare's powers as an actor; one on the authority of Mr. Aubrey, and the other on that of Mr. Rowe. In the manuscript papers of the first of these gentlemen, we are told that our author, "being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London,—and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act exceedingly well[421:A];" but, in the life of the poet by the second, it is added, after mentioning his admission to the theatre in an inferior rank, that "his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. His name is printed, as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of what sort of parts he used to play; and though I have enquired, I could never meet with any further account of him this way, than that the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet."[421:B]
Of descriptions thus opposed, a preference only can be given as founded on other evidence; and it happens that subsequent enquiry has enabled us to consider Mr. Aubrey's account as approximating nearest to the truth.
Contemporary authority, it is evident, would decide the question, and happily the researches of Mr. Malone have furnished us with a testimony of this kind. In the year 1592, Henry Chettle, a dramatic writer, published a posthumous work of Robert Greene's, under the title of "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance," in which the author speaks harshly of Marlowe, and still more so of Shakspeare, who was then rising into fame. Both these poets were justly offended, and Chettle, who was of course implicated in their displeasure, printed, in the December of the same year, a pamphlet, entitled Kind Harts Dreame, to which is prefixed an
address to the Gentlemen Readers, apologizing, in the following terms, for the offence which he had given: