Experience has taught me to expect that the subject of my paper will be little, if anything, more than a name to my audience.

I have to introduce to you a very remarkable person, about whom there still hangs much mystery. We are told by his contemporaries that he was the best among them all for comedy, and that he was a poet of the highest order; yet not a single comedy bearing his name has come down to us; and of his poems, we have but a handful of short verses. I am going to trace to-day only a few threads in the elaborate tapestry of his life and times—his connection with the Court Revels—trusting to your familiarity with his period to supply the general background and atmosphere: and, to bring him to life as a person, I will first briefly sketch his story.