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Shakespeare was the mirror of his time in things small as well as great. How far he drew his characters from personal acquaintances has often been discussed. The clowns, tinkers, shepherds, tapsters, and such folk, he probably knew by name. In the Duke of Manchester's "Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne" is a curious suggestion about Hamlet.

Then she looked in the hatch whether any more had been set in there, and finding none she stood at the hatch and looked out into the tavern. It was an hour of the day when there was usually little custom in the cellars. The hostess was absent from her bar and none of her tapsters was to be seen in the room. The place was empty, save for three men, who sat at the end of a long table.

"Content," said Lambourne. "Here, uncle, hold stakes, and let one of your young bleed-barrels there one of your infant tapsters trip presently up to The Place, and give this letter to Master Foster, and say that I, his ingle, Michael Lambourne, pray to speak with him at mine uncle's castle here, upon business of grave import.

But did not Sheridan make the same melancholy ending, and run the same fatal career, though in a higher and more brilliant circle? The affectation of the society of lords is as mean and low-minded as the love of that of cobblers and tapsters. It is that cobblers and tapsters may admire, that we wish to be seen in the company of their betters.

Thinkest thou that they be cobblers, tapsters, or suchlike base mechanical people, that write these bills and scrolls which are found daily in thy Prætor's chair, and not the noblest men and best citizens that do it? Thereupon he kissed Brutus, and embraced him. And so each taking leave of other, they went both to speak with the friends about it....

"It is very sad," Constance said; "but what can be done?" "Something must be done soon," Ned replied gloomily. "Things cannot go on as they are. So terrible is the state of things, so heavy the taxation, that in many towns all trade is suspended. In Brussels, I hear, Alva's own capital, the brewers have refused to brew, the bakers to bake, the tapsters to draw liquors.

Shakespeare was the mirror of his time in things small as well as great. How far he drew his characters from personal acquaintances has often been discussed. The clowns, tinkers, shepherds, tapsters, and such folk, he probably knew by name. In the Duke of Manchester's "Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne" is a curious suggestion about Hamlet.

Nor must any adventure henceforward to come in public, or present himself in company, that hath not been pretty well polished in the shop of Minerva. I see robbers, hangmen, freebooters, tapsters, ostlers, and such like, of the very rubbish of the people, more learned now than the doctors and preachers were in my time. What shall I say?

Not only the wholesale commerce oh the provinces was suspended, but the minute and indispensable traffic of daily life was entirely at a stand. The shops were all shut. "The brewers," says a contemporary, "refused to brew, the bakers to bake, the tapsters to tap." Multitudes, thrown entirely out of employment, and wholly dependent upon charity, swarmed in every city.

Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been first a sundering. Yes. Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks, from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women he won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters' wives. Fox and geese.