Till he met
Mistress Fitton, about 1597, he must have been happy and well content, I
think, in spite of his deep underlying melancholy. According to my
reckoning he had been in London about ten years, and no man has ever
done so much in the time and been so successful even as the world counts
success. He had not only written the early poems and the early plays,
but in the last three or four years half-a-dozen masterpieces: "A
Midsummer's Night's Dream," "Romeo and Juliet," "Richard II.," "King
John," "The Merchant of Venice," "The Two Parts of Henry IV." At
thirty-three he was already the greatest poet and dramatist of whom Time
holds any record.
Southampton's bounty had given him ease, and allowed him to discharge
his father's debts, and place his dearly loved mother in a position of
comfort in the best house in Stratford.
He had troops of friends, we may be sure, for there was no gentler,
gayer, kindlier creature in all London, and he set store by friendship.
Ten years before he had neither money, place, nor position; now he had
all these, and was known even at Court.
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