And do you want to believe it?

To several stage anecdotes of the actor as an excellent instructor of younger players, you refer slightingly.  They do not weigh with me:  still, the Stage would remember Shakspere (or Shakespeare) best in stage affairs.  In reference to a very elliptic statement that, “in Hamlet Betterton benefited by Shakespeare’s coaching,” you write, “This is astonishing, seeing that Shakspere had been in his grave nearly twenty years when Betterton was born.  The explanation is that Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, was, according to Sir William Davenant, instructed by Shakspere, and Davenant, who had seen Taylor act, according to Downes, instructed Betterton.  There is a similar story about Betterton playing King Henry VIII.  Betterton was said to have been instructed by Sir William, who was instructed by Lowen, who was instructed by Shakspere!” {200a}

Why a note of exclamation?  Who was Downes, and what were his opportunities of acquiring information?  He “was for many years book-keeper in the Duke’s Company, first under Davenant in the old house . . . " Davenant was notoriously the main link between “the first and second Temple,” the theatre of Shakespeare whom, as a boy, he knew, and the Restoration theatre.  Devoted to the traditions of the stage, he collected Shakespearean and other anecdotes; he revived the theatre, cautiously, during the last years of Puritan rule, and told his stories to the players of the early Restoration.  As his Book-keeper with the Duke of York’s Company, Downes heard what Davenant had to tell; he also, for his Roscius Anglicanus, had notes from Charles Booth, prompter at Drury Lane.  On May 28, 1663, Davenant reproduced Hamlet, with young Betterton as the Prince of Denmark.  Davenant, says Charles Booth, “had seen the part taken by Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, and Taylor had been instructed by the author, (not Bacon but) “Mr. William Shakespeare,” and Davenant “taught Mr. Betterton in every particle of it.”  Mr. Elton adds, “We cannot be sure that Taylor was taught by Shakespeare himself.  He is believed to have been a member of the King’s Company before 1613, and to have left it for a time before Shakespeare’s death.” {201a} His name is in the list in the Folio of “the principall Actors in all these plays,” but I cannot pretend to be certain that he played in them in Will’s time.

It is Mr. Pepys (December 30, 1668) who chronicles Davenant’s splendid revival of Henry VIII, in which Betterton, as the King, was instructed by Sir William Davenant, who had it from old Mr. Lowen, that had his instruction “from Mr. Shakespear himself.”  Lowin, or Lowen, joined Shakespeare’s Company in 1604, being then a man of twenty-eight.  Burbage was the natural man for Hamlet and Henry VIII; but it is not unusual for actors to have “understudies.”

The stage is notoriously tenacious of such traditions.