447 



SHAKSPERE, WILLIAM. 



SHAKSPEKE, WILLIAM. 



448 



(1545). The Hathaway of Shakspere's time was named Richard ; and 

 the intimacy between him and John Shakspere is shown by a precept 

 in an action against Richard Hathaway, dated 1566, in which John 

 Shakepere is his bondman. The description in the marriags-bond of 

 Anne Hathaway, as of Stratford, is no proof that she was not of Shot- 

 tery ; for such a document would necessarily have regard only to the 

 parish of the persona described. Tradition, always valuable when it 

 is not opposed to evidence, has associated for many years the cottage 

 of the Hathaways of Shottery with the wife of Shakspere. Garrick 

 purchased relics out of it at the time of the Stratford Jubilee ; Samuel 

 Ireland afterwards carried off what was called Shakspere's courting- 

 chair ; and there is still in the house a very ancient carved bedstead, 

 which has been handed down from descendant to descendant as an 

 heirloom. The house was no doubt once adequate to form a comfort- 

 able residence for a substantial and even wealthy yeoman. It is still 

 a pretty cottage, embosomed by trees, and surrounded by pleasant 

 pastures; and here the young poet might have surrendered his 

 prudence to his affections. The very early marriage of the young 

 man, with one more than seven years his elder, has been supposed to 

 have been a rash and passionate proceeding. William Shakspere was 

 married to Anne Hathaway before the close of the year 1582. He 

 was then eighteen years and a half old. His wife was considerably 

 older than himself. Her tombstone states that she died " on the 6th 

 day of August 1623, being at the age of sixty-seven years." In 1623 

 Shakspere would have been fifty-nine years old. The marriage-bond 

 and licence were published, by Mr. Wheler of Stratford, in the ' Gen- 

 tleman's Magazine.' The bondsmen are, Fulk Sandels, of Stratford, 

 farmer, and John Richardson, of the same place, farmer, and they are 

 held and bound in the sum of 402., &c. This bond is dated the 28th 

 of November, in the 25th year of Elizabeth that is, in 1582. The 

 bondsmen subscribe their marks. The licence is affixed to the bond, 

 and the remarkable part of this document is, that they were to be 

 married "with once asking of the bans;" they were not to be married 

 " without the consent " of Anne's friends. There is no record where 

 they were married. In 1583 an entry of the baptism of " Susanna, 

 daughter to William Shakspere " is found in the Stratford register. 

 The entry is the fourth of the month, the word ' May ' being attached 

 to the first entry of the month. A comparison of the dates of the 

 marriage licence and the baptism of Shakspere's first child pointed to 

 the conclusion that the same fault into which the courtly Raleigh and 

 the high-born Elizabeth Throgmorton had fallen had disturbed the 

 peace of the humble family of the Hathaways, and had no doubt 

 made the mother of the imprudent boy-poet weep bitter tears. We 

 hold a different opinion. We consider that the licence for matrimony, 

 obtained from the Consistorial Court at Worcester, was a permission 

 sought for under no extraordinary circumstances ; still less that the 

 young man who was about to marry was compelled to urge on the 

 marriage as a consequence of previous imprudence. We believe, on 

 the contrary, that the course pursued was strictly in accordance with 

 the customs of the time, and of the class to which Shakspere belonged. 

 The espousals before witnesses, we have no doubt, were then consi- 

 dered as constituting a valid marriage, if followed up within a limited 

 time by the marriage of the Church. However the Reformed Church 

 might have endeavoured to abrogate this practice, it was unques- 

 tionably the ancient habit of the people. It was derived from the 

 Roman law, the foundation of many of our institutions. It prevailed 

 for a long period without offence. It still prevails in the Lutheran 

 Church. We are not to judge of the customs of those days by our 

 own, especially if our inferences have the effect of imputing criminality 

 where the most perfect innocence existed. Because Shakspere's mar- 

 riage-bond is dated in November 1582, and his daughter is born in 

 May 1583, we are not to believe that here was "haste and secresy." 

 Mr. Halliwell has brought sound documentary evidence to bear upon 

 this question ; he has shown that the two bondsmen, Sandels and 

 Richardson, were respectable neighbours of the Hathaways of Shottery, 

 although, like Anne herself, they are described as of Stratford. This 

 disposes of the " eecresy." In the same year that Shakspere was 

 married, Mr. Halliwell has shown that there were two entries in the 

 Stratford Register, recording the church rite of marriage to have 

 preceded the baptism of a child, by shorter periods than indicated by 

 Shakspere's marriage-bond ; and that in cases where the sacrednees of 

 the marriage has been kept out of view, illegitimacy is invariably noted 

 in these registers. The "haste " was evidently not required in fear of 

 the scandal at Stratford. We believe that the course pursued was 

 strictly in accordance with the custom of the time, and of the class to 

 which the Shaksperes and Hathaways belonged. 



The cause which drove Shakspere from Stratford is thus stated by 

 Howe :^ " He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, 

 fallen into ill company ; and, amongst them, some that made a frequent 

 practice of deer-stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a 

 park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. 

 For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, some- 

 what too severely; and in order to avenge that ill usage, he made a 

 ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first essay of his 

 poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it 

 redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was 

 obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, 

 and shelter himself in London." All this, amongst a great deal of 



falsehood, probably contained some tissue of the truth such as the 

 truth appeared to the good old folks of Stratford in Betterton's time, 

 who had heard stories from their grandfathers of what a wild young 

 fellow the rich man was who bought the largest house in Stratford. 

 Malone gravely undertakes to get rid of the deer-stealing tradition, by 

 telling us that there was no park, properly so called, at Charlecote. 

 It is more material that the statute of the 5th of Elizabeth, which 

 Malone also recites, shows clearly enough that the hunting, killing, 

 or driving out deer from any park, was a trespass punished at the most 

 with three months' imprisonment and treble damages. Sir Thomas 

 Lucy, who was on terms of intimacy with the respectable inhabitants 

 of Stratford, acting as arbitrator in their disputes, was not very likely 

 to have punished the son of an alderman of that town with any 

 extraordinary severity, even if his deer had been taken away. To kill 

 a buck was then an offence not quite so formidable as the shooting of 

 a partridge in our own times. But we may judge of the value of the 

 tradition from some papers, originally the manuscripts of Mr. Fulinau, 

 an antiquary of the 17th ceutury, which, with additions of his own, 

 were given to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on the decease of the 

 Rev. Richard Davies, rector of Sandford, Oxfordshire, in 17U7. The 

 gossip of Stratford had no doubt travelled to' the worthy rector's 

 locality, and rare gossip it is : " He (Shakspere) was much given to all 

 unluckiness, in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Lucy, 

 who had him OFT whipt, and SOMETIMES imprisoned, and at last made 

 him fly his native country, to his great advancement. But his revenge 

 was so great that he is his Justice Clodpate ; and calls him a great 

 man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three lowses rampant for 

 his arms.'' Is it necessary to do more than recite such legends to 

 furnish the best answer to them ? 



Although John Shakspere, at the time of his son's early marriage, 

 was not, as we think, " in distressed circumstances," his means were 

 not such probably, at any time, as to have allowed him to have borne 

 the charge of his son's family. That William Shakspere maintained 

 them by some honourable course of industry we cannot doubt. 

 Scrivener, or schoolmaster, he was employed. It is on every account 

 to be believed that the altered circumstances in which he had placed 

 himself, in connection with the natural ambition which a young man, 

 a husband and a father, would entertain, led him to London not very 

 long after his marriage. There, it is said, the author of ' Venus and 

 Adonis ' obtained a subsistence after the following ing'enious fashion : 

 "Many came on horseback to the play, and when Shakspere fled to 

 London from the terror of a criminal prosecution, his first expedient 

 was to wait at the door of the playhouse, and hold the horaes of those 

 who had no servants, that they might be ready again after the 

 performance. In this office he became so conspicuous for his care and 

 readiness, that in a short time every man as he alighted called for 

 Will Shakspeare, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a 

 horse while Will Shakspeare could be had." Steevens objects to this 

 surpassing anecdote of the horse-holding, that the practice of ' riding ' 

 to the playhouse never began, and was never continued, and that 

 Shakspere could not have held horses at the playhouse-door because 

 people went thither by water. We believe there is a stronger objec- 

 tion still : until ' Will Shakspere ' converted the English drama from 

 a rude, tasteless, semi-barbarous entertainment, into a high intellec- 

 tual feast for men of education and refinement, those who kept horses 

 did not go to the public theatres at all. There were representations 

 in the private houses of the great, which men of some wit and scholar- 

 ship wrote, with a most tiresome profusion of unmeaning words, 

 pointless incidents, and vague characterisation, and these were called 

 plays; and there were ' storial shows ' in the public theatres, to which 

 the coarsest melo-drama that was exhibited at Bartholomew Fair 

 would be as superior as Shakspere is superior to the highest among 

 his contemporaries. But from 1580 to 1585, when Shakspere and 

 Shakspere's boys are described as holding horses at the playhouse- 

 door, it may be affirmed that the English ' drama,' such as we now 

 understand by the term, had to be created. We believe that Shak- 

 spere was in the most eminent degree its creator. He had, as we 

 think, written his ' Venus and Adonis,' perhaps in a fragmentary 

 shape, before he left Stratford. It was first printed in 1593, and is 

 dedicated to Lord Southampton. The dedication is one of the few 

 examples of Shakspere mentioning a word of himself or his works : 

 " I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to 

 your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so 

 strong a prop to support so weak a burden ; only if your honour seem 

 but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advan- 

 tage of all idle hours till I have honoured you with some graver 

 labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, 1 shall 

 be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a 

 land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your 

 honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content, which I 

 wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful 

 expectation." The dedication is simple and mauly. In 1593 then 

 Shakspere had an employment a recognised one for he speaks of 

 "idle hours" to be devoted to poetry. He calls this poem too "the 

 first heir of my invention." If it " prove deformed," he will never after 

 " ear (plough) so barren a land." AVill he give up writing for the stage 

 then ? It is a remarkable proof of the low reputation of the drama 

 that even the dramatic works which Shakspere had unquestionably 



