Show shakespeare IN LONDON j he was wa known by everybody he H 1 knew all the N notables i Shake london was a small city of from to evils or about the size or of providence or minneapolis at the present time says the atlantic in cities of such size everybody of the slightest eminence Is known all over town and such persons are sure to be more or less acquainted I 1 I 1 quain ted with one another it Is a very rare exception when it is not so before his thirtieth year shakespeare was well known in london as an actor a writer of plays and the manager of a prominent theater in that year spenser in his colln colin clouts clonts come rome home again alluding to shakespeare under the name of action or e paid him this com compliment t I 1 and anci there though last not least Is ae tion A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found whose rouse full of high thoughts invention ao 10 doth tb like himself heroically sound four years after this in 1598 francis meres published his book entitled palladia ls tamia a very interesting contribution to literary history the i author who had been an instructor in rhetoric in the university of oxford d was then living in london near the globe theater in this book meres tells his readers that the sweet witty soul of ovid lives in mellifluous and honey tongued shakespeare witness his bis venus and adonis his lucrece his sugared sonnets among g his private friends etc to suppose that such a man as this in a town the size of minneapolis nea polls connected with a prin principal theater theat writer of the most ost popular plays of the day EL a poet whom men were already coupling with homer and pindar to suppose that such a man was tras not known to all the educated people of th the town Is simply absurd there were probably few men women or children in london between 1595 and 1610 who did not know who Shak peare was when he passed them thein in the street and as tar such wits as drank ale and sack at as the mermaid as for raleigh and bacon and selden and the rest to suppose that shakes bearg pears did not know them well nay to suppose that he was not the leading spirit and brightest brig hest wrt of those ambrosial nights is about as sensible 03 to suppose that he never saw a maypole |