Chapter XLVI SHAKESPEARE--THE MAN

WHEN Shakespeare first went to London he had a hard life. He
found no better work to do than that of holding horses outside
the theater doors. In those days the plays took place in the
afternoon, and as many of the fine folk who came to watch them
rode on horseback, some one was needed to look after the horses
until the play was over. But poor though this work was,
Shakespeare seems to have done it well, and he became such a
favorite that he had several boys under him who were long known
as "Shakespeare's boys." Their master, however, soon left work
outside the theater for work inside. And now began the busiest
years of his life, for he both acted and wrote. At first it may
be he only altered and improved the plays of others. But soon he
began to write plays that were all his own. Yet Shakespeare,
like Chaucer, never invented any of his own stories. There is
only one play of his, called Love's Labor's Lost, the story of
which is not to be found in some earlier book. That, too, may
have been founded on another story which is now lost.

When you come to know Shakespeare's plays well you will find it
very interesting to follow his stories to their sources. That of
King Lear, which is one of Shakespeare's great romantic
historical plays, is, for instance, to be found in Geoffrey of
Monmouth, in Wace's Brut, and in Layamon's Brut. But it was from
none of these that Shakespeare took the story, but from the
chronicle of a man named Holinshed who lived and wrote in the
time of Queen Elizabeth, he in his turn having taken it from some
one of the earlier sources.