Page:A life of William Shakespeare (IA lifeofwilliamsha02lees).pdf/30

in a tilting-match at Court on the anniversary of James I's accession. On that occasion, too, his shield was entrusted to Burbage for armorial embellishment, and the actor-artist received for his new labour the enhanced remuneration of 4l. 18s. The entry runs 'Paid given Richard Burbidg for my Lorde's shelde and for the embleance, 4l. 18s.' Shakespeare was no longer Burbage's associate, for a mournful reason. At the moment that the actor-painter earned this large reward, his lifelong associate, of whose greatest creations he was the original interpreter on the stage, lay on what proved to be his deathbed at Stratford-on-Avon.

The fifth 'new' reference to Shakespeare concerns his last year of life, and it sheds a new flicker of light on Shakespeare's experience as owner of property in Blackfriars where he bought a house two years before. Mr. C. W. Wallace, a professor of the American University of Nebraska, discovered in the autumn of 1905, at the Public Record Office in London, three previously unknown documents in a Chancery suit touching the ownership of lands and houses in Blackfriars.^[1] In two of these official papers Shakespeare's name figures as that of plaintiff, together with six