It was probably about this time that the event took place which Rowe heard of through Sir William Davenant, that Southampton at one time gave the Poet a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he knew him to be desirous of making.  Rowe might well scruple, as he did, the story of so large a gift,—­equal to nearly $30,000 in our time; but the fact of his scruples being overruled shows that he had strong grounds for the statement.  The sum may indeed have been exaggerated; but all we know of the Earl assures us that he could not but wish to make a handsome return for the Venus and Adonis; and that whatever of the kind he did was bound to be something rich and rare; while it was but of a piece with his approved nobleness of character, to feel more the honour he was receiving than that he was conferring by such an act of generosity.  Might not this be what Shakespeare meant by “the warrant I have of your honourable disposition”?  That the Earl was both able and disposed to the amount alleged, need not be scrupled:  the only doubt has reference to the Poet’s occasions.  Let us see, then, what these may have been.

In December, 1593, Richard Burbadge, who, his father having died or retired, was then the leader of the Blackfriars company, signed a contract for the building of the Globe theatre, in which Shakespeare is known to have been a large owner.  The Blackfriars was not accommodation enough for the company’s uses, but was entirely covered-in, and furnished suitably for the Winter.  The Globe, made larger, and designed for Summer use, was a round wooden building, open to the sky, with the stage protected by an overhanging roof.  All things considered, then, it is not incredible that the munificent Earl may have bestowed even as large a sum as a thousand pounds, to enable the Poet to do what he wished towards the new enterprise.

The next authentic notice we have of Shakespeare is a public tribute of admiration from the highest source that could have yielded any thing of the sort at that time.  In 1594, Edmund Spenser published his Colin Clout’s Come Home again, which has these lines: 

    “And there, though last not least, is AEtion: 
    A gentler Shepherd may nowhere be found;
    Whose Muse, full of high thought’s invention,
    Doth, like himself, heroically sound.”

This was Spenser’s delicate way of suggesting the Poet’s name.  Ben Jonson has a like allusion in his lines,—­“To the Memory of my beloved Mr. William Shakespeare”: 

    “In each of which he seems to shake a lance
    As brandish’d at the eyes of ignorance.”

There can be little doubt, though we have no certain knowledge on the point, that by this time the Poet’s genius had sweetened itself into the good graces of Queen Elisabeth; as the irresistible compliment paid her in a A Midsummer-Night’s Dream could hardly have been of a later date.  It would be gratifying to know by what play he made his first conquest of the Queen.  That he did captivate her, is told us in Ben Jonson’s poem just quoted: