415 



SHAKSPEEE, WILLIAM. 



SHAKSPERE, WILLIAM. 



bailiff, or chief magistrate, of Stratford. This office, during the 

 period in which he held it, would confer rank upon him, in, an age 

 when the titles and degrees of men were attended to with great 

 exactness. Malone says that, from tho year 1569, the entries, either 

 iu the corporation books or the parochial registers, referring to the 

 father of the poet, bear the addition of master, and that this honour- 

 able distinction was in consequence of his having served the office oi 

 bailiff. We doubt this inference exceedingly. John Shakspere 

 would not have acquired a permanent rank by having filled an annual 

 office. But he did acquire that permanent rank in the year 1569, in 

 the only way in which it could be legally acquired. A grant of arms 

 was then made to him by Robert Cooke, Clarencieux. The grant itselJ 

 is lost, but it was- confirmed by Dethick, Garter King at Arms, and 

 Camden, in 1599. That confirmation contains the following preamble : 

 " Being solicited, and by credible report informed, that John Shak- 

 spere, now of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, gent., 

 whose parent and great-grandfather, late antecessor, for his faithful 

 and approved service to the late most prudent prince, King Henry VIL, 

 of famous memory, was advanced and rewarded with lands and terie- 

 ments, given to him in those parts of Warwicksire where they have 

 continued by some descents in good reputation and credit : and for 

 that the said John Shakspere having married the daughter and one 

 of the heirs of Robert Arden of Wellingcote, in the said county, and 

 also produced this his ancient coat-of-arms, heretofore assigned to him 

 whilst he was her majesty's officer and bailiff of that town : in con- 

 sideration of the premises," &c. Nothing, we should imagine, could 

 be clearer than this. John Shakspere produces his ancient coat-of- 

 arms, assigned to him whilst he was bailiff of Stratford ; and he 

 recites also that he married one of the heirs of Arden of Wellingcote. 

 Garter and Clarencieux, in consequence, allow him to impale the 

 arms of Shakspere with the ancient arms of Arden and Wellingcote. 

 The Shakspere arms were actually derived from the family name, 

 and the united arms were used in the seal of William Shakspere's 

 daughter. 



The free-school of Stratford was founded in the reign of Henry VI., 

 and received a charter from Edward VI. It was open to all boys, 

 natives of the borough ; and, like all the grammar-schools of that age, 

 was under the direction of men who, as graduates of the universities, 

 were qualified to diffuse that sound scholarship which was once the 

 boast of England. We have no record of Shakspere having been at 

 this school ; but there can be no rational doubt that he was educated 

 there. His father could not have procured for him a better education 

 anywhere. It is perfectly clear to those who have studied his works 

 (without being influenced by prejudices, which have been most care- 

 fully cherished, implying that he had received a very narrow education) 

 that they abound with evidences that he must have been solidly 

 grounded in the learning properly so called which was taught in 

 grammar-schools. As he did not adopt any one of the learned pro- 

 fessions, he probably, like many others who have been forced into 

 busy life, cultivated his early scholarship only so far as he found it 

 practically useful, and had little leisure for unnecessary display. His 

 mind was too large to make a display of anything. But what pro- 

 fessed scholar has ever engrafted Latin words upon our vernacular 

 English with more facility and correctness ? And what scholar has 

 ever shown a better comprehension of the spirit of antiquity than 

 Shakspere in his Roman plays ? The masters of the Stratford school, 

 from 1572 to 1587, were Thomas Hunt and Thomas Jenkins. They 

 are unknown to fame. They were no doubt humble and pious men, 

 satisfied with the duties of life that were assigned to them. Hunt 

 was the curate of a neighbouring village, Luddington. It is most 

 probable that they did their duty to Shakspere. At any rate they did 

 not spoil his marvellous intellect. 



There are local associations connected with Stratford which could 

 not be without their influence in the formation of Shakspere's mind. 

 Within the range of such a boy's curiosity were the fine old historic 

 towns of Warwick and Coventry, the sumptuous palace of Kenilworth, 

 the grand monastic ruins of Evesham. His own Avon abounded 

 with spots of singular beauty, quiet hamlets, solitary woods. Nor 

 was Stratford shut out from the general world, as many country 

 towns are ; it was a great highway, and dealers with every variety of 

 merchandise resorted to its fairs. The eyes of Shakspere must always 

 have been open for observation. When he was eleven years old 

 Elizabeth made her celebrated progress to Lord Leicester's castle of 

 Kenilworth ; and there he might even have been a witness to some of 

 the ' princely pleasures ' of masques and mummeries which were the 

 imperfect utterance of the early drama. At Coventry too tho ancient 

 mysteries and pageants were still exhibited in the streets, the last 

 sounds of those popular exhibitions which, dramatic in their form, 

 were amongst the most tasteless and revolting appeals to the senses. 

 More than all, the players sometimes even came to Stratford : what 

 they played, and with what degree of excellence, we shall presently 

 have occasion to mention. 



The first who attempted to write ' Some Account of the Life of 

 William Shakspere,' Rowe, says, " His father, who was a considerable 

 dealer in wool, had so large a family, ten children in all, that, though 

 he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his 

 own employment. He had bred him, it is true, for some time at a 

 free-school, where it is probable he acquired what Latin he was master 



of; but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his 

 assistance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and 

 unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language." This 

 statement, be it remembered, was written one hundred and thirty 

 years after tho event which it professes to record the early removal 

 of William Shakspere from the free-school to which he had been sent 

 by his father. It is manifestly based upon two assumptions, both of 

 which are incorrect : the first, that his father had a large family of 

 ten children, and was so narrowed in his circumstances that he could 

 not spare even the time of his eldest son, he being taught for nothing ; 

 and, secondly, that the son, by his early removal from the school 

 where he acquired " what Latin he was master of," was prevented 

 attaining " a proficiency in that language," his works manifesting " an 

 ignorance of the ancients." The family of John Shakspere did not 

 consist of ten children. In the year 1578, when the school education 

 of William may be reasonably supposed to have terminated, and 

 before which period his " assistance at home " would rather have been 

 embarrassing than useful to his father, the family consisted of five 

 children : William, aged fourteen ; Gilbert, twelve ; Joan, nine ; Anne, 

 seven ; and Richard, four. Anne died early in the following year ; 

 and ia 1580, Edmund, the youngest child, was born; so that the 

 family never exceeded five living at the same time. But still the 

 circumstances of John Shakspere, even with five children, might have 

 been straitened. The assertion of Rowe excited the persevering 

 diligence of Malone ; and he collected together a series of documents 

 from which he infers, or leaves the reader to infer, that John Shak- 

 spere and his family gradually sunk from their station of respecta- 

 bility at Stratford into the depths of poverty and ruin. These 

 documents, we believe, were all capable of another interpretation. 

 The rise however of the poet's father must have been as rapid as his 

 fall if he had fallen ; for there is a memorandum affixed to the 

 grant of arms in 1596, " he hath lands and tenements, of good wealth 

 and substance, 500/." Maloiie assumes that this is a fiction of the 

 Heralds' Office. 



Inquiries such as these would be worse than useless, unless 

 they had some distinct bearing on the probable career of William 

 Shakspere. Of the earlier part of that career nothing can, probably, 

 ever be known with certainty. His father added to his independent 

 means, we have no doubt, by combining several occupations in the 

 principal one of looking after a little land ; exactly in the way which 

 Harrison has described. Shakspere's youth was, in all probability, 

 one of very desultory employment, which afforded him leisure to 

 make those extraordinary acquisitions of general knowledge which 

 could scarcely have been made, or rather the foundation of which 

 could not have been established, during the active life which we 

 believe he led from about his twentieth year. It is in this man- 

 ner we are inclined to think, that we must reconcile the contra- 

 dictory traditions of his early employment. As his father, carrying 

 on various occupations connected with his little property, might, after 

 the lapse of years, have been a woolman in the imperfect recollection 

 of some, and a butcher in that of others, so his illustrious son, having 

 no very settled employment, may have been either reputed an 

 assistant to his father, a lawyer's clerk, a schoolmaster, or a wild 

 scape-grace, according to the imperfect chroniclers of a country-town, 

 who, after he returned amongst them a rich man, would rejoice in 

 gossippiug over the woudrous doings of the boy. It is thus, we 

 believe, that old Aubrey, having been amongst the parish-clerks and 

 barbers of Stratford some fifty years after Shakspere was dead, tells 

 us, from Mr. Beeston, " though, as Ben Jouson says of him, that he 

 had but little Latin, and less Greek, he understood Latin pretty well, 

 for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country." 

 His precocious gravity as a schoolmaster must have been as wonderful 

 as his poetical power ; for Aubrey also tells us, " this William, being 

 naturally inclined to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess 



about eighteen, and did act exceedingly well He began 



early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very 

 low, and his plays took well. 1 ' Here, we think, is a statement not very 

 far from the truth, a statement derived from Aubrey's London in- 

 formation. The stories of the butcher and the schoolmaster were Strat- 

 ford traditions, perhaps also with some shadow of reality about them. 

 The earliest connected narrative of Shakspere's life, that of Rowe, 

 thus briefly continues the history of the boy : " Upon his leaving 

 school he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which 

 his father proposed to him ; and in order to settle in the world after 

 a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. 

 His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a sub- 

 stantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford." The information 

 which Betterton thus collected as to Shakspere's early marriage was 

 perfectly accurate. He did marry " the daughter of one Hathaway," and 

 be was no doubt " a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Strat- 

 ford." Shakspere's marriage-bond, which was discovered in 1836, has set 

 at rest all doubt as to the name and residence of his wife. She is there 

 described as Anne Hathaway, of Stratford, in the diocese of Worcester, 

 maiden. At the hamlet of Shottery, which is in the parish of Strat- 

 ford, the Hathaways had been settled forty years before the period of 

 Shakspere's marriage ; for in the Warwickshire Surveys, in the time 

 of Philip and Mary, it is recited that John Hathaway held property at 

 Shottery, by copy of Court-Roll, dated 20th of April, 34th of Henry VIII. 



