1 66 Shakspeare 



began to prosper he was intent on acquiring land 

 and houses and holding the social position denied 

 to him in London, and there, having solicited and 

 obtained the grant of a coat-of-arms, he hoped to 

 found a family.* 



(3) Of his young companion's dissolute doings 

 and their close intimacy the tender reproaches 

 and reiterated remonstrances of the Sonnets yield 

 ample proof. After elaborate praises of the un- 



are manifestly taken from Rabelais. One thing he and his. 

 Elizabethan contemporaries never missed doing, namely, to 

 take their spoil with full hands wherever they found it. On 

 his way to Stratford he used to stay at a tavern kept by John 

 d'Avenant, the father of Sir William Davenant, where he was 

 exceedingly respected. " Mrs. d'Avenant was a very beautiful 

 woman of a good wit and conversation, in which she was imi- 

 tated by none of her children, but by this William." Contem- 

 porary scandal imputed the boy's paternity to Shakspeare, 

 There is a story that one day young d'Avenant, being asked 

 whither he was hurrying, and saying that he was going to see 

 his godfather Shakspeare, was met with the retort, " Have a 

 care that you don't take God's name in vain." An allusion to 

 the scandal apparently occurs in some doggerel rhyme on Sir 

 William Davenant, where there is a play on words Avenant and 

 Avon. — Article, Davenant, Sir William, in Dictionary of 

 National Biography. 



* It is a probable surmise that in The Tempest he introduces 

 some essence of his own experience and feeling ; kept out of 

 the supreme place to which he knew his genius entitled him, 

 pursued by the rancour of his rivals, easily triumphing by his 

 magic power over their plots and enmities, finally forgiving 

 their hostility — "the rarer action" being "in virtue than in 

 vengeance" — and taking leave of his art and them in tranquil 

 assurance of his supremacy through the ages. 



