to the persistence and authenticity of the oral tradition of Shakespeare which was current in the middle of the seventeenth century. Sir William D'Avena

s. D'Avenant was little more than ten when Shakespeare died, and his direct intercourse with him was consequently slender; but D'Avenant was a child of the Muses, and h

London and Stratford-on-Avon was in the habit of staying at the elder D'Avenant's Oxford hostelry. The report ran that "he was exceedingly respected" in the house, and was freely admitted to the inn-keeper's domestic circle. The inn-keeper's wife was credited with a mercurial disposition which contrasted strangely with her husband's sardonic temperament; it was often said in Oxford that Shakespeare not merely found his chief attraction at the Crown Inn in the wife's witty conversation, but formed a clo

that he was on his way to ask a blessing of his godfather who had just arrived in the town, the child was warned by his interlocutor against taking the name of God in vain. It is proof of the estimation in which D'Avenant held Shakespeare that when he came to man's estate he was "content enough to have" the insinuation "thought to be true." He would talk freely with his friends over a glass of wine of Shakespeare's visits to his father's house, and

until D'Avenant's death in 1668 the unique character of Shakespeare's greatness had no stouter champion than he, and in the circle of men of wit and fashion, of which he was the centre, none kept the cult alive with greater enthusiasm. His early friend Sir John Suckling, the Cavalier poet, who was only seven years old when Shakespeare died, he infected

irst biographer, recorded this particular on the specific authority of D'Avenant, who, he pointed out, "was probably very well acquainted with the dramatist's affairs." At the same time it was often repeated that D'Avenant was owner of a complimentary letter which James the First had written to Shakespeare with his own hand.

the Eighth, in the light of the instruction which he had derived through the medium of Taylor and Lowin from Shakespeare's own lips. But more to the immediate purpose is it to note that D'Avenant's ardour as a seeker after knowledge of Shakespeare fired Betterton into making a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon to glean oral traditions of the dramatis

possible. Betterton was the efficient cause of this conjunction. All that Stratford-on-Avon revealed to him he put at the disposal of

Shakespeare's] Life, which I have here transmitted to the Publick; his veneration for the Memory of Shakespear having engag'd hi