University Studies 



Vol. X OCTOBER igio No. 4 



SHAKESPEARE AND HIS LONDON ASSOCIATES AS 



REVEALED IN RECENTLY DISCOVERED 



DOCUMENTS. 



By Charles William Wallace 



Most of the fifty-six records published in the following pages 

 belong to the Court of Requests of the reign of James I, the 

 extensive proceedings of which had lain unexplored until they 

 were prepared for examination at my request. As a result of 

 careful search by myself and my wife, I am this year publishing 

 the rest of the important theatrical evidences that these proceed- 

 ings hold. 



Not every record in such a series, mainly in suits at law or 

 equity, is, when taken alone, of high importance. There is no 

 advantage, however, in complaining that a single human act does 

 not resurrect Shakespeare in the flesh, or that a grain of sand 

 does not rehabilitate the old theatres. It is through the aggre- 

 gated whole that each part is enabled to contribute its proper use 

 and worth, though singly it reveals no potentiality. Slight as 

 some of these records are', and mutilated as some of them have 

 come to us, there is not one, now that we have them, that the 

 historian in his devotion to the true and abjuration of the fanci- 

 ful would dispense with. 



The court-pleadings, subsidy rolls, parish registers, and tran- 

 scripts of wills are written on parchment, the rest, on paper. 



Fifty-two of the records here presented are written in the 



University Studies, Vol. X, No. 4, October 1910. 



26l 



