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It is said, our Author spent some Years before his Death, in Ease, Retirement, and the Conversation of his Friends, at his Native Stratford. I could never pick up any certain Intelligence, when he relinquish’d the Stage. I know, it has been mistakenly thought by some, that Spenser‘s Thalia, in his Tears of the Muses, where she laments the Loss of her Willy in the Comic Scene, has been apply’d to our Author’s quitting the Stage. But Spenser himself, ’tis well known, quitted the Stage of Life in the Year 1598; and, five Years after this, we find Shakespeare‘s Name among the Actors in Ben Jonson‘s Sejanus, which first made its Appearance in the Year 1603. Nor, surely, could he then have any Thoughts of retiring, since, that very Year, a Licence under the Privy-Seal was granted by K. James I. to him and Fletcher, Burbage, Phillippes, Hemings, Condel, etc. authorizing them to exercise the Art of playing Comedies, Tragedies, etc. as well at their usual House call’d the Globe on the other Side of the Water, as in any other Parts of the Kingdom, during his Majesty’s Pleasure (A Copy of which Licence is preserv’d in Rymer’s Foedera ). Again, ’tis certain that Shakespeare did not exhibit his Macbeth till after the Union was brought about, and till after King James I. had begun to touch for the Evil : for ’tis plain, he has inserted Compliments, on both those Accounts, upon his Royal Master in that Tragedy. Nor, indeed, could the Number of the Dramatic Pieces he produced admit of his retiring near so early as that Period. So that what Spenser there says, if it relate at all to Shakespeare, must hint at some occasional Recess he made for a time upon a Disgust taken: or the Willy, there mention’d, must relate to some other favourite Poet. I believe, we may safely determine that he had not quitted in the Year 1610. For in his Tempest, our Author makes mention of the Bermuda Islands, which were unknown to the English, till, in 1609, Sir John Summers made a Voyage to North-America, and discover’d them: and afterwards invited some of his Countrymen to settle a Plantation there. That he became the private Gentleman, at least three Years before his Decease, is pretty obvious from another Circumstance: I mean, from that remarkable and well-known Story, which Mr. Rowe has given us of our Author’s Intimacy with Mr. John Combe, an old Gentleman noted thereabouts for his Wealth and Usury: and upon whom Shakespeare made the following facetious Epitaph:

Ten in the hundred lies here ingrav’d,
‘Tis a hundred to ten his Soul is not sav’d;
If any Man ask who lies in this Tomb,
Oh! oh! quoth the Devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.

This sarcastical Piece of Wit was, at the Gentleman’s own Request, thrown out extemporally in his Company. And this Mr. John Combe I take to be the same, who, by Dugdale in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, is said to have dy’d in the Year 1614, and for whom, at the upper end of the Quire of the Guild of the Holy Cross at Stratford, a fair Monument is erected, having a Statue thereon cut in Alabaster, and in a Gown, with this Epitaph. “Here lyeth interr’d the Body of John Combe, Esq; who dy’d the 10th of July, 1614, who bequeathed several Annual Charities to the Parish of Stratford, and 100 l. to be lent to fifteen poor Tradesmen from three years to three years, changing the Parties every third Year, at the Rate of fifty Shillings per Annum, the Increase to be distributed to the Almes-poor there.”–The Donation has all the Air of a rich and sagacious Usurer.