CHAPTER IV. — Contemporary Allusions to Shackspere.
Shakspeare the Actor purchased New Place at Stratford-on-Avon in 1597 for £60 and he became a "gentleman" and an esquire when he secured a grant of arms in 1599.
How did the stage "honour" the player who had bought a coat of arms and was able to call himself a "gentleman"?
Three contemporary plays give us scenes illustrating the incident:
1st. Ben Jonson's "Every man out of his humour" which was acted in 1599 the very year of Shakspeare's grant of arms.
2nd. Shakespeare's "As you like it" which was entered at Stationers' Hall in 1600, although no copy is known to exist before the folio of 1623.
3rd. "The Return from Parnassus" which was acted at St. John's College, Cambridge in 1601, though not printed till 1606.
In addition to these three plays, there is a fourth evidence of the way in which the Clown who had purchased a coat of arms was regarded, in a pamphlet or tract of which only one copy is known to exist. This tract which can be seen in the Rylands Library, Manchester, used to be in Lord Spencer's library at Althorp, and is reprinted by Halliwell-Phillipps in "Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare," 1889, Vol. I, pages 325-6.
[Illustration: PLATE XV. Bacon's Crest from the Binding of a Presentation Copy of the Novum Organum, 1620.]
To commence with Ben Jonson's "Every man out of his humour." The clown who had purchased a coat of arms is said to be the brother of Sordido (a miser), and is described as an "essential" clown (that is an uneducated rustic), and is styled Sogliardo which is the Italian for the filthiest possible name.