4 Charles William Wallace 



inquiry into the truth or falsity of what has hitherto been written 

 down as a heritage of placid acceptance. Therein good and 

 desirable ends are served, which, men will agree, more than 

 counterbalance the evil of sensationalism that clings about the 

 documents and the story they tell in any form. 



It remains now for the new information to complete its legiti- 

 mate work in the world, by appeal to the sober judgment. To 

 this end, the documentary evidence itself is the first essential, and 

 a cool, analytic, judicial brain the second. Whether every reader 

 may justify this latter requisite as a compliment to himself or 

 not, remains with him and the rest of the world to settle. That 

 the reader may have free and independent range, the records are 

 printed here in extenso, barren of all interpretative comment. 

 It is impracticable to present also the thousands of contemporary 

 records, or even extracts from them, bearing upon the life of the 

 times, and illuminating much in these thirty-nine thus isolated 

 from their surroundings. While I admit some advantage over 

 the general reader in this regard, still there is quite enough here 

 and in available print to enable the scholar to make an honest 

 judgment of the materials, and that is all sufficient for all men of 

 all times. Later, with more leisure at my disposal than I can now 

 command, I hope to join him in that same sort of effort, and to 

 derive benefit from his labors as he may from such of mine as 

 here appear. 



In deciding what documents to present in the case, it seemed 

 best, since not all could be given, to confine the list to those of 

 direct bearing. The records from the Lay Subsidy Rolls and the 

 Parish Registers show Mount joy, with whom Shakespeare lived, 

 a resident of St Olave, Silver street, from some time in 1599. 

 The suggestion of still earlier residence there, since the subsidies 

 were allowed in 39 Elizabeth (1597), is borne out by analysis of 

 the other records. The whole long series of twenty-six docu- 

 ments in the Court of Requests and the five others from the Con- 

 sistory of the French Protestant Church of London, arising 

 directly out of the marriage between Stephen Belott and Mary 

 Mount joy, arranged between them by William Shakespeare at 



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