July 28, 1597, their influence was powerful enough to cause the Lords of the Privy Council to issue, and which directs the Justices of the Peace for Middlesex, among other things, to 'send for the owner of the Curtayne, Theatre, or anie other common playhouse, and injoyne them by virtue hereof forthwithe to plucke downe quite the stages, galleries and roomes that are made for people to stand in, and so to deface the same that they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use.'1

That order was the first of such orders that the Privy Council issued, and it appears to have been made in response to a petition of the same date from the Lord Mayor. The city authorities had previously tried to get such an order, but hitherto without success: in a letter to the Privy Council dated September 13, 1595, the Lord Mayor, after a catalogue of the evils resulting from the theatres, had concluded with a demand for an order to the Justices of the Peace of Surrey and Middlesex 'for the present stay and finall suppressing of the said plaies as well at the Theator and Bankside as in all other places about the Cytie.' 2 Shakespeare was employed, between 1595 and 1599, at both the Theatre and the Curtain.

The Privy Council order was not obeyed, but it would doubtless cause those connected with the theatres much anxiety: the influence of the puritans had grown, and might continue to grow until it became irresistible.

Another order of the same sort was issued by the Lords of the Privy Council three years later. On June 22, 1600, they ordered that there should be thenceforth only two

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Illustrations, p. 20.
2 Halliwell-Phillipps, Illustrations, p. 20.

playhouses in the city: one the Fortune, in Middlesex, for the Lord Admiral's men; and the other the Globe, on the Surrey side, for the Lord Chamberlain's men (Shakespeare's company). And these two companies were not to play: (1) oftener than twice a week; (2) on Sunday; (3) during Lent; (4) when infectious disease was prevalent.1 This order also was not enforced; and perhaps by this time the actors were getting callous; but the first of such orders must have caused them much anxiety, and as its date agrees perfectly with the allusion in the same sonnet to the order (July 28, 1597) as a recently-given illustration of the bent of the world and to his son's death (August 9—11, 1596) as a sorrow the first sharpness of which had worn off, we conclude that Sonnet 90 was written shortly after the date of the Privy Council order.

It is noticeable too, that, immediately after that line in Sonnet 90 alluding to the antagonism of the puritans, the fear of clothing evil in beauty in his work looms large in the Sonnets. The following are in each case the last lines of the sonnets named (which, it will be seen, form a sequence), and they summarize them. He addresses his inspirer,' the Spirit of Beauty:

SON. 92. But what's so blesséd-fair that fears no blot?

Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.'

SON. 93. How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!'

SON. 94. For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.'

Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, i. 307-8.

SON. 95. Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.'

SON. 96. How many gazers mightst thou lead away,

If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!
But do not so; I love thee in such sort,

As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.'

The same fear is shown in Sonnets 109, 110, 111, 117, and 118.

The next date we can identify is in connection with

SON. 107. Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes :
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.'

Queen Elizabeth was the 'mortal moon'-Cythera, or the moon, being the poets' name for her. She has died, and, contrary to some predictions and to many fears, her death has been followed without disturbance by the accession of James. 'This most balmy time,' notes the satisfaction and hope that were universally felt. The sonnet must have been written very shortly after March 24, 1603, since the 'balmy time' which inspired it so soon changed to one of gloom and foreboding.

Three sonnets later we are presented with the problemat what date did Shakespeare cease to act?

SON. 110. Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored my own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new;

Most true it is that I have looked on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
Now all is done, have what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind

On newer proof, to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confined.

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.'

Of course he speaks here of his occupation as actor, and states that he will act no more; and this sometime between March 24, 1603, the date of the chief event referred to in Son. 107, and the publication of the Sonnets in 1609.

Ben Jonson, in the 1616 folio edition of his works, mentions in the case of six of the plays in that volume that they were first acted by that company of which Shakespeare was a member; and before each play he gives a list of the principal actors in it. The following list shows in which of the six plays Shakespeare took part:

first acted 1598, Shakespeare acted.

'Every Man in his Humour'
'Every Man out of his Humour'

1599
1603, Shakespeare acted.

'Volpone' or 'The Fox'

1605

not.

The lists of actors in the plays of 1603 and 1605 are

It will be seen that the two lists only differ through the absence from the second of the names of Shakespeare and Philips. The absence of Philips' name is accounted for by his death between May 4 and 13, 1605. Although we cannot conclude from the evidence of Jonson's folio that Shakespeare had ceased to act before Jonson's play was produced in 1605, yet when that evidence is considered in conjunction with the statement, in the third sonnet after that referring to the death of Elizabeth, that he would act no more, and with the fact that in July, 1605, he made the largest purchase he ever made when he gave 4407according to Mr. Sidney Lee equal to more than 3,500/ of the present day-for the moiety of the unexpired lease of the tithes of Stratford, &c., the evidence is strong that the purchase of the tithes, the sale of his shares in the theatre (he had none at his death in 1616), and his retirement from acting, were simultaneous.

Shakespeare's name occurs in the list of the company of nine actors to whom King James granted on May 19, 1603, permission to act at the Globe in London (their