Next
month his father was sent to Ireland as Lord Deputy, and Sidney
lived in London with his mother.
At this time the opposition of the Mayor and Corporation of the City
of London to the acting of plays by servants of Sidney's uncle, the
Earl of Leicester, who had obtained a patent for them, obliged the
actors to cease from hiring rooms or inn yards in the City, and
build themselves a house of their own a little way outside one of
the City gates, and wholly outside the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction.
Thus the first theatre came to be built in England in the year 1576.
Shakespeare was then but twelve years old, and it was ten years
later that he came to London.
In February, 1577, Philip Sidney, not yet twenty-three years old,
was sent on a formal embassy of congratulation to Rudolph II. upon
his becoming Emperor of Germany, but under the duties of the formal
embassy was the charge of watching for opportunities of helping
forward a Protestant League among the princes of Germany. On his
way home through the Netherlands he was to convey Queen Elizabeth's
congratulations to William of Orange on the birth of his first
child, and what impression he made upon that leader of men is shown
by a message William sent afterwards through Fulke Greville to Queen
Elizabeth. He said "that if he could judge, her Majesty had one of
the ripest and greatest counsellors of State in Philip Sidney that
then lived in Europe; to the trial of which he was pleased to leave
his own credit engaged until her Majesty was pleased to employ this
gentleman, either amongst her friends or enemies.
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