SHAKESPEARE 



363 



WILLIAM, the greatest of 

 born at Stratforel-on-Avon 



Copyright 1892, 1897, and 

 MOO ID the U. 8. l,r J. B. 

 Lippiocotl Company. 



Shakespeare, 



dramatic poets, w 

 towards the close of April, 1564. 

 The birthday is uncertain ; tra- 

 dition points to April 23, O.S., 

 corresponding to our 5th May; on April 26 the 

 infant was baptised. The house in Henley Street 

 which is believed to be the birthplace may still be 

 seen as restored. The child's father, John Shake- 

 speare, son of Richard Shakespeare, a Warwick- 

 shire farmer, was a fell-monger and glover, perhaps 

 also a butcher, and certainly a dealer at times in 

 corn and timber. In 1557 he married Mary Arden, 

 daughter of a wealthy farmer, who on dying had 

 left her a small estate named Asbies, with the 

 reversion to part of another property at Snitterfield. 

 John Shakespeare for a time prospered ; in 1561 he 

 became chamberlain of the borough, afterwards an 

 alderman, and in 1568 high-bailiff of Stratford. 

 The boy William was John Shakespeare's third 

 child ; two daughters born before him died in 

 infancy. The later born children were five two 

 daughters, of whom one outlived the dramatist, 

 and three sons, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund; 

 the last of these became an actor and died in 1607. 

 Although John Shakespeare was a respected 

 burgess of Stratford, his education was small ; he 

 could not write his name. In all probability his 

 eldest son was educated at the free school of Strat- 

 ford, where beside English he would learn some- 

 thing of Latin, possibly even the elements of Greek. 

 'Small Latin and less Greek' is Ben Jonson's 

 description of the scholarship of his great contem- 

 porary. The Greek, if any, must have been small 

 indeed. At a later time Shakespeare seems to 

 have acquired a little French, and possibly some- 

 thing of Italian. As a boy he may have seen 

 dramatic entertainments at Stratford, for com- 

 panies visited the town and performed there on 

 several occasions from the year of his father's bail itt- 

 ship onwards. In 1575 Leicester received Queen 

 Elizabeth at Kenilworth, and it is possible that 

 John Shakespeare may have taken his eldest son 

 to look at the masques and mummeries ; Oberon's 

 description of the 'mermaid on a dolphin's back' 

 (Midsummer Night's Dream, II. i. 148-168) has 

 been supi>osed to be a reminiscence of the occasion. 

 In 1578 the fortunes of John Shakespeare under- 

 went an unfavourable change, and for many years 

 pecuniary troubles pressed upon him ; he mort- 

 gaged the Asbies estate, and sold his wife's rever- 

 sionary interests at Snitterfield ; he ceased to 

 attend the town council ; his taxes were remitted ; 

 as late as 1592 it is reported of him that he did not 

 attend church for fear of 'processe for debt.' At 

 what date he removed his son from school we can- 

 not tell. Perhaps, as one tradition has it, the boy 

 was apprenticed to a butcher ; perhaps he was for 

 a time an attorney's clerk a conjecture founded 

 on certain supposed allusions of his dramatic con- 

 temporary Nash, and on the fact that the legal 

 references in Shakespeare's plays and poems are 

 very numerous and give evidence of information 

 which is remarkably correct. The blank in our 

 knowledge of this period of his life is thus filled 

 with guesses guesses not altogether unprofitable. 

 The worldly prudence of Shakespeare's manhood 

 may have come to him as the lesson of these early 

 years of trouble in his father's house. But the 

 lemon of prudence was not learned all at once. A 

 bond given previous to marriage between William 

 Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, dated November 

 28, 1582, was found in 1836 in the registry of 

 Worcester. The marriage was to take place after 

 the banns had been once asked. Anne Hatha- 

 way was the daughter of a substantial yeoman, 

 lately dead, of Shottery in the parish of Stratford ; 

 she was eight yaars older than the bridegroom, 



who was only in his nineteenth year ; she was 

 socially his inferior, and it is probable that she 

 was uneducated. The marriage may have been 

 pressed forward by Anne's friends in order that 

 a child Shakespeare's eldest daughter, Susanna 

 (baptised May 26, 1583) might be born in lawful 

 wedlock. Mr Halliwell-PhiUipps argues that the 

 bond was not improbably preceded by a contract, 

 which, according to the customs of the time, would 

 have given the contracting parties the mutual 

 rights of husband and wile, though as yet un- 

 sanctioned by the church. The marriage was 

 doubtless solemnised soon after the date of the 

 bond, but where and on what day is unknown. 

 Two years after the birth of Susanna twins were 

 born, Hamnet and Judith (baptised February 2, 

 1585). These three were Shakespeare's only chil- 

 dren. Hamnet (probably named after a Stratford 

 friend and neighbour, Hamnet Sadler) died in his 

 twelfth year (buried August 11, 1596) ; both daugh- 

 ters survived their father. 



Three or four years, as it is believed, after his 

 marriage Shakespeare quitted his native town. 

 ' He had,' says his first biographer, Rowe, ' by a 

 misfortune, common enough to young fellows, 

 fallen into ill company, and, amongst Inem, 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, somewhat too 

 severely ; and, in order to revenge 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 re- 

 doubled 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 I. MM. Ion. ' It seems likely that in essentials the 

 story thus reported by Rowe is true, and a vei'so 

 of the ballau whether genuine or written, as is 

 more likely, to suit the story has been given by 

 Oldys. In The Merry Wives of Windsor Justice 

 Shallow complains of Falstaff's having killed his 

 deer ; there are ' luces ' in the Shallow coat-of- 

 arms as in that of the Lucy family, which luces in 

 the Welsh parson's pronunciation become ' louses ' 

 a play on words occurring also in the allegei 1 

 stanza of Shakespeare's offensive ballad. 



A tradition, which appears to have come down 

 from Betterton and D'Avenant, relates that Shake- 

 speare's first employment in London was that of 

 holding at the playhouse door the horses of those 

 gentlemen who rode to the theatre unattended by 

 servants. ' In this office,' so Johnson received the 

 tale from Pope, ' he became so conspicuous for his 

 care and readiness that in a short time every man 

 as he alighted called for Will Shakespeare, and 

 scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse 

 while Will Shakespeare could be had ;' by-and-by 

 he hired boys to wait under his superintendence, and 

 ' Shakespeare's Boys ' continued to be their name 

 long after their master had risen to higher employ- 

 ment. Mr Halliwell-Phillipps holds that the story 

 need not l)e set aside as an absolute fiction. The 

 date of Shakespeare's flight to London can hardly 

 have been earlier than 1585, and it is not likely to 

 have been later than 1587. Mr Fleay conjectures 

 that in the last-named year he joined Lord Leices- 

 ter's players during their visit fro Stratford, or soon 

 after that visit ; but tradition lends no support to 

 the supposition that Shakespeare left his home 

 with a view to trying his fortune on the stage. 

 Except that we find his name joined with that of 

 his father in an attempt made in 1587 to assign 

 the Asbies property to the mortgagee, we know 

 nothing for certain of Shakespeare's life from the 

 date of his twin-children's birth until the year 1592, 



