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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

of Holland] only made a speech to the King. The rest [of whom the Earl of Rutland is mentioned by name as one] were contented with bare imprese, whereof some were so dark that their meaning is not yet understood, unless perchance that were their meaning, not to be understood. The two best to my fancy were those of the two earl brothers [i.e. the Earls of Pembroke and of Montgomery]. The first a small, exceeding white pearl, and the words solo candore valeo. The other, a sun casting a glance on the side of a pillar, and the beams reflecting with the motto Splendente refulget, in which device there seemed an agreement: the elder brother to allude to his own nature, and the other to his fortune.'[1]

Some other points of interest are suggested by the entry of Shakespeare's name in the Belvoir Household books. Shakespeare's associate, Burbage, the actor-painter, was clearly held at Belvoir in 1613 to be of inferior social rank to Shakespeare, the dramatist. The prefix 'Mr.,' the accepted mark of gentility, stands in the Earl of Rutland's account-book before the dramatist's name alone. According to Sir Thomas Smith's 'Commonwealth of England,' 1594, 'Master is the title which men give to esquires and other gentlemen.'[2] The dramatist enjoyed the

  1. ↑ Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, by Logan Pearsall-Smith, Oxford, 1907, vol. ii. p. 17.
  2. ↑ Cf. Merchant of Venice, II. ii. 45 et seq., where Launcelot Gobbo,
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