example; admonishing them to employ their 'rare wits in more profitable
courses;' to look repentingly on the past; to leave off profane
practices, and not 'to spend their wits in making plaies.' He
especially warns them against actors--because these, it seems, had
given him up. His rancorous spite against them he expresses in the
well-known words:--'Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart
Crow, beautified with our feathers, that _with his Tygers heart
wrapt in a Players hide_, supposes he is as well able to bumbast
out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute _Johannes
Fac-totum_, is in his owne conceit the onely 'SHAKE-SCENE in a
countrie.'

This satirical point, directed, without doubt, against Shakspere, is
the only thing reliable which, down to the year 1592, we know of his
dramatic activity. He had then been only about four years in London.
Yet he must already have wielded considerable authority, seeing that
he is publicly, though with sneering arrogance, called a complete
Johannes Fac-totum--a man who has laid himself out in every direction.

It is the divine mission of a genius to bring order out of chaos, to
regulate matters with the directing force of his superior glance.
Certainly, Shakspere, from the very beginning of his activity, sought,
with all the energy of his power, to rule out all ignoble, anarchical
elements from the stage, and thus to obtain for it the sympathies of
the best of his time. Fate so willed it, that one of the greatest
minds which Heaven ever gave to mankind, entered, on this occasion,
the modest door of a playhouse, as if Providence had intended showing
that a generous activity can effect noble results everywhere, and
that the most despised calling (such, still, was that of the actors
then) can produce most excellent fruits.