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The Portrait of Mr W. H.
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terwards upon the public stage, as is becoming not uncommon in our own day. The great actors, too, had their pupils and apprentices, who were formally bound over to them by legal warrant, to whom they imparted the secrets of their craft, and who were so much valued that we read of Henslowe, one of the managers of the Rose Theatre, buying a trained boy of the name of James Bristowe for eight pieces of gold. The relations that existed between the masters and their pupils seem to have been of the most cordial and affectionate character. Robin Armin was looked upon by Tarlton as his adopted son, and in a will dated “the fourth daie of Maie, anno Domini 1605,” Augustine Phillips, Shakespeare’s dear friend and fellow-actor, bequeathed to one of his apprentices his “purple cloke, sword, and dagger,” his “base viall,” and much rich apparel, and to another a sum of money and many beautiful instruments of music, “to be delivered unto him at the expiration of his terme of yeres in his indenture of apprenticehood.” Now and then, when some daring actor kidnapped a boy for the stage, there was an outcry or an investigation. In 1600, for instance,