in Charles Khi. « ! THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN ill i ! i iii'iiiijp ii VARIOUS PORTRAITS OF SHAKSPERE. WILLIAM SHAKSPEEE A BIOGRAPHY. BY CHARLES KNIGHT 1 , 1 REVISED AXD AUGMENTED. " All that is known with an}' degree of certainty concerning Shakspere is— that he was born at Stratford npou-Avon — married and had children there — went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote poems and plays— returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried.''— Steevens. " Along with that tomb-stone information, perhaps even without much of it, we could have liked to gain some answer, in one way or other, to this wide question: What and how was English life in Shakspere't time; wherein has ours grown to differ therefrom? in other words: What things have we to forget, what tc fancy and remember, before we, from such distance, can put ourselves in Shakspert's place ; and so, in the fui r sense of the term, understand him, h s sayings, and his doings ?"— Carlvxe. LONDON : VIRTUE ct CO., CITY ROAD AXD IVY LANE. P E E F A C E. This is a new edition, with large alterations and additional matter, grounded upon more recent information, of a volume published in 1843. That book has been long out of print" and it is a gratification to me to reproduce it thoroughly revised. The two mottoes in the title-page express the principle upon which this Biography ' has been written. That from Steevens shows, with a self-evident exaggeration of its author, how scanty are the materials for a Life of Shakspere properly so called. Indeed, every Life of him must, to a certain extent, be conjectural; and all the Lives that have been written are in great part con- jectural. My 'Biography' is only so far more conjectural than any other, as regards the form which it assumes ; by which it has been endeavoured to associate Shakspere with the circumstances around him, in a manner which may fix them in the mind of the reader by exciting Iris interest. I fully agree with Mr. Hunter, with regard to the want of information on the life of Shakspere, that he is, in this respect, in the state in which most of his contemporary poets are — Spenser for instance — but with this difference, that we do know more concerning Shakspere than we know of most of his contemporaries of the same class. Admitting this sound reasoning, I still believe that the attempt which I ventured to make, for the first time in English Literature, to write a Biography which, in the absence of Diaries and Letters, should surround the known facts -with the local and temporary circum- stances, and with the social relations amidst which one of so defined a position must have moved, was not a freak of fancy, but an approximation to the truth, which could not have been reached by » mere documentary norrative. a 2 PREFACE. What 1 proposed thus to do is shown in the second motto, from M/. Carlyle's admirable article on Dr. Johnson, I having ventured to substitute the name of " Shakspere " for that of " Johnson." I might have accomplished the same end by writing a short notice of Shakspere, accompanied by a History of Manners and Customs, a History of the Stage, &c. &c. The form I have adopted may appear fanciful, but the narrative essentially rests upon facts. I venture, therefore, to think that I have made the course of Shakspere clear and consistent, without any extravagant theories, and with some successful resistance to long received prejudices. Since the publication of the original edition of this volume in 1843, there have been considerable accessions to the documentary materials for the Life of Shakspere. Many of these are curious and valuable; others are memorials of that diligent antiquarianism, whose results are not always proportior ate to its labour. I have availed myself of any real information which has been brought to light during the last two-and-twenty years, and I have in every case ascribed the merit of any discovery to its proper author. CHARLES KNIGHT. »8fe CONTENTS AND ILLUSTKATIONS TO THE BIOGRAPHY. From Original Drawings by W. Harvey; the Fac-similes and Autographs by F. W. Fairhol*. BOOK I. Page Half-tit.'e to Book I.— Shakspere's Youthful Visions J CHAPTER I.— ANCESTRY. Page Ornamental Head-piece 3 Arms of John Shakspere 6 Village of Wilmecote Church of Aston Cantlow , 12 CHAPTER II.— STRATFORD. C'lopton's Bridge 13 | Fac-simile of autographs to Corporation Dend 1C CHAPTER III. -THE REGISTER. Ancient Font, formerly in Stratford Church 23 Fnc-simile of baptismal register of W. Shakspere... 24 The Church Avenue 27 Stratford Church, east end, with charnel-house 28 John Shakspere's House in Henley Street 82 CHAPTER IV.— THE SCHOOL. Inner Court of the Grammar School, Stratford 34 Interior of the Grammar School 47 Chapel of the Guild, and GrammarSchool, street front 47 Note on John Shakspere's Confession of Faith Martyrdom of Thomas 4 Becket, from an ancient painting in the chapel of the Holy Cross 18 CHAPTER V.— THE SCHOOLBOY'S WORLD. Village of Aston Cantlow 51 | The Fair 57 CHAPTER VI.— HOLIDAYS. The Boundary Elm, Stratford 62 May-day at Shottery 6S Bidford Bridge 71 Clopton House 75 The Clopton Monument in Stratford Churcfc 70 CHAPTER VII.— KENILWORTH. Chimney-piece in Gatehouse at Kenilworth 77 Queen Elizabeth 79 Gascoigne S2 The Merry Marriage— Kenilworth Gate S4 Earl of Leicester .. .. 85 Ruins of Kenilworth in the 17th Century 89 Entrance to the Hall 90 CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER VIII. -PAGEANTS. Coventry Cross 93 Coventry Churches and Pageants 97 Note on the Coventry Pageants Page Ancient Gate of Coventry, 1842.. 103 101 Stratford Church— West End 116 Chimney Corner of Kitchen in Henley Street 120 CHAPTER IX.— HOME. Stratford Church and Mill. From a drawing of the beginning of the last century 105 The Fire-side. Kitchen of House in Henley Street 111 Note on the Stratford Registers 113 Note on the alleged Poverty of John Shakspere 113 Note on the School Life of William Shakspere 119 CHAPTER X.— THE PLAYERS AT STRATFORD. The Bailiff's Play 121 I Thomas Sackville Itinerant Players [It. W. Buss] 128 1 Note on Sidney's Defence of Poesy 144 145 CHAPTER XL— LIVING IN THE PAST. Guy's Cliff in the Seventeenth Century 1-10 Chapel at Guy's Cliff 147 Tomb of King John at Worcester 151 Bridge at Evesham 153 Mill at Guy's Cliff 154 Ancient Statue of Guy at Guy's Cliff 155 St. Mary's Hall, court front 157 Warwick Castle, from the Island 158 Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick 160 CHAPTER XII.— YORK AND LANCASTER. gt. Mary's Hall, Interior 101 Battle Field at Shrewsbury [G. F. Sargent] 165 Entrance to Warwick Castle 167 Warwick from Lodge Hill 168 St. Mary's Hall, street front 171 Tewkshury 172 Leicester 176 CHAPTER XIII.— RUINS, NOT OF TIME. Evesham. The Bell Tower 177 Evesham. Ancient Gateway 179 Parish Churches, Evesham 181 Old Houses, Evesham 189 Bengeworth Church, seen through the Arch of the Bell Tower 187 CHAPTER XIV.— SOCIAL HOURS. Welford Church »„. 1S8 Great Hillborough 195 Marl Cliffs, near Bidford 197 Bidford 198 Bidford Crab-tree.. ■ 201 Bidford Grange 204 Charlcote Church 205 Deer Barn, Fulbrooke 209 Charlcote House, from the Avenue 211 Note on the Shaksperian Localities Charlcote House, from the Avon 212 House in Charlcote Village 213 Charlcote House, from the Garden 219 Fulbrooke 221 Hampton Lucy Church 223 Daisy Hill 224 IngonHill 223 Snitterfield 230 Map of th i neighbourhood of Stratford 232 23] CHAPTER XV.— SOLITARY HOURS. Hampton Lucy. From Road near Alvcston 233 Meadows near Welford 237 Near Alveston 243 Old Church of Hampton Lucy 244 A Peep at Charlcote 245 Old Town, Avon 215 Spenser ■ 24t Below Charlcote 250 Near Alveston 253 Near Ludington "Ci The Mill, Welford 256 The Marl Cliff. 257 Note on tie Scenery of the Avon 254 CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER XVI.— A DAY AT WORCESTER. Page Worcester 253 Sliottery Cottage 267 Clifford Church 269 TaffO Nunnery at Salford 274 Pershore 275 Worcester Cathedral 279 Note on Christening Customs 277 Note on Shakspere's Marriage Licence < 277 CHAPTER XVII.— THE FIRST RIDE TO LONDON. Palace of Woodstock 279 Entries in Stratford Register (fac-similes) 281 Ha'.iol College in the Sixteenth Century 291 Divinity Schools ditto 292 Note on Aubrey's Life of Shakspere 206 Chtistchurch in the Sixteenth Century 293 Ancient View of St. James's and Westminster 294 London from Blackfriars, in the Sixteenth Cen'ury 295 BOOK II. Shakspere's Visions of Maturity 297 CHAPTER I.— A NEW PLAY. A Play at the Blackfriars 299 j Thomas Greene SOI Note on the date of Nash's Epistle prefixed to Menaphon 027 Note on Marlowe 323 CHAPTER II.— THE COURT AT GREENWICH. The Misfortunes of Arthur 330 I Queen Elizabeth 333 SirF. Bacon 332 I Sir Walter Raleigh 335 Note on Hentzner's Account of the Court at Greenwich 337 CHAPTER III.— THE MIGHTY HEART. Funeral of Sidney 338 Earl of Leicester 340 Sir Philip Sidney 341 Camp at Tilbury 342 Procession to St. Paul's 344 Howard of Effingham 345 Sir F. Drake 316 Spenser 352 CHAPTER IV.— HOW CHANCES IT THEY TRAVEL, Richmond Palace...., 353 St. James's 355 Lord Hunsdon 356 Somerset House 357 Note on Shakspere's occupations in 1593 , 370 Ancient View of Cambridge 359 Merry Wives of Windsor, performed before Queen Elizabeth at Windsor 368 CHAPTER V.— THE GLOBE. The Globe Theatre 371 Entry in Parish Register of Stratford of the Burial of Hamnet Shakspere 377 Seal and Autograph of Susanna Hall 37ft Autograph of Judith Shakspere 378 Richard Burbage 382 CHAPTER VI.— WIT-COMBATS. The Falcon Tavern 383 Ben Jonson 3S7 John Taylor 389 George Chapman 393 Jchn Fletcher 395 Note on Marston's ' Malecontcnt ' .... 407 John Donne 397 Michael Drayton 399 Samuel Daniel 400 John Lowin 407 CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER VII. —EVIL DAYS. Pa BOOK I. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY. On the 22nd of August, 1485, there was a battle fought for the crown of Eng- land, a short battle ending in a decisive victory. In that field a crowned king, " manfully fighting in the middle of his enemies, was slain and brought to his death;" and a politic adventurer put on the crown, which the immediate de- scendants of his house wore for nearly a century and a quarter. The battle- field was Bosworth. "When the earl had thus obtained victory and slain his mortal enemy, he kneeled down and rendered to Almighty God his hearty thanks, with devout and godly orisons. . . . Which prayer finished, he, replenished with incomparable gladness, ascended up to the top of a little moun- tain, where he not only praised and lauded his valiant soldiers, but also gave unto them his hearty thanks, with promise of condign recompense for their fide- lity and valiant facts."* Two months afterwards the Earl of Richmond was * Hall's. Chronicle B 2 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE ! more solemnly crowned and anointed at Westminster by the name of King Henry VII.; and "after this," continues the chronicler, "he began to remember his especial friends and fautors, of whom some he advanced to honour and dig- nity, and some he enriched with possessions and goods, every man according to his desert and merit."* Was there in that victorious army of the Earl of Rich- mond, — which Richard denounced as a " company of traitors, thieves, outlaws, and runagates," — an Englishman bearing the name of Chacksper, or Shakespeyre, or Schakespere, or Schakespeire, or Schakspere, or Shakespere, or Shakspere,! — a martial name, however spelt ? " Breakespear, Shakespear, and the like, have been surnames imposed upon the first bearers of them for valour and feats of arms." X Of the warlike achievements of this Shakspere there is no record: his name or his deeds would have no interest for us unless there had been born, eighty vears after this battle -day, a direct descendant from him — " Whose muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth like himself heroically sound;" §— « a Shakspere, of whom it was also said — "He seems to shrike a lance As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance." il Certainly there was a Shakspere, the paternal ancestor of William Shakspere, who, if he stood not nigh the little mountain when the Earl of Richmond promised condign recompense to his valiant soldiers, was amongst those especial friends and fautors whom Henry VII. enriched with possessions and goods. A public document bearing the date of 1596 affirms of John Shakspere of Stratford-upon Avon, the father of William Shakspere, that his "parent and late antecessors were, for their valiant and faithful services, advanced and rewarded of the most prudent prince King Henry VII. of famous memory;" and it adds, " sithence which time they have continued at those parts [Warwickshire] in good reputa- tion and credit." Another document of a similar character, bearing the date of 1599, also affirms upon "creditable report," of "John Shakspere, now of Strat- ford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, gentleman," that his "parent and great-grandfather, late antecessor, for his faithful and approved service to the late most prudent prince King Henry VII. of famous memory, was advanced and rewarded with lands and tenements, given to him in those parts of War- wickshire, where they have continued by some descents in good reputation and credit." Such are the recitals of two several grants of arms to John Shakspere, confirming a previous grant made to him in 1569; and let it not be said that these statements were the rhodomontades of heraldry, — honours bestowed, for mere mercenary considerations, upon any pretenders to gentle blood. There was strict inquiry if they were unworthily bestowed. Two centuries and a half ago * Hall's Chronicle. t A list of tho brethren and sisters of the Guild of Knowle, near Rowington, in Warwickshire, exhibits a great number of the name of Shakspere in that fraternity, from about 1480 to 1527; /led the names are spelt with the diversity here given, Shakspere being the latest. X Verstegan's ' Restitution/ Sec. § Spenser. |1 Ben Joneon. 4 A BIOGRAPHY. such honours were of grave importance ; and there is a solemnity in the tone of these very documents which, however it may provoke a smile from what we call philosophy, was connected with high and generous principles : " Know ye that in all nations and kingdoms the record and remembrance of the valiant facts and virtuous dispositions of worthy men have been made known and divulged by certain shields of arms and tokens of chivalry." In those parts of Warwickshire, then, lived and died, we may assume, the faithful and approved servant of the "unknown Welshman," as Richard called him, who won for himself the more equivocal name of " the most prudent prince." He was probably advanced in years when Henry ascended the throne ; for in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, 1 558, his great-grandson, John Shakspere, was a burgess of the corporation of Stratford, and was in all probability born about 1530. John Shakspere was of the third generation succeeding the adherent of Henry VII. The family had continued in those parts, *' by some descents ; " but how they were occupied in the business of life, what was their station in society, how they branched out into other lines of Shaksperes, we have no distinct record. They were probably cultivators of the soil, unambitious small proprietors. The name may be traced by legal documents in many parishes of Warwickshire ; but we learn from a deed of trust, executed in 1550 by Robert Arden, the maternal grandfather of William Shakspere, that Richard Shakspere was the occupier of land in Snitter- field, the property of Robert Arden. At this parish of Snitterfield lived a Henry Shakspere, who, as we learn from a declaration in the Court of Record at Stratford, was the brother of John Shakspere. It is conjectured, and very reason-* ably, that Richard Shakspere, of Snitterfield, was the paternal grandfather of William Shakspere. Snitterfield is only three miles distant from Stratford. A painter of manners, who comes near to the times of John Shakspere, has de scribed the probable condition of his immediate ancestors: "Yeomen are those which by our law are called legales homines, free men born English. . . . The truth is, that the word is derived from the Saxon term zeoman, or geoman, which signifieth (as I have read) a settled or staid man. . . . This sort of people have a certain pre- eminence and more estimation than labourers and the common sort of artificers, and these commonly live wealthily, keep good houses, and travel to get riches. They are also for the most part farmers to gentlemen, or at the leastwise arti- ficers ; and with grazing, frequenting of markets, and keeping of servants (not idle servants as the gentlemen do, but such as get both their own and part of their masters' living), do come to great wealth, insomuch that many of them are able and do buy the lands of unthrifty gentlemen, and often, setting their sons to the schools, to the universities, and to the inns of the court, or otherwise leaving them sufficient lands whereupon they may live without labour, do make them by those means to become gentlemen : these were they that in times past made all France afraid." Plain-speaking Harrison, who wrote this description in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, tells us how the yeoman and the descendants of the yeoman could be changed into gentlemen ; " Whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, whoso abideth in the university giving his mind to his book, or professeth physic and the liberal sciences, or beside his service in the room of a 5 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : captain in the wars, or good counsel given at home, whereby his commonwealth is benefited, can live without manual labour, and thereto is able and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman, he shall for money have a coat and arms bestowed upon him by heralds (who in the charter of the same do of custom pretend antiquity and service, and many gay things), and thereunto being made so good cheap, be called master, which is the title that men give to esquires and gentlemen, and reputed for a gentleman ever after." And so John Shakspere, whilst he was bailiff of Stratford in 1568 or 1569, desired to have "a coat and arms ;" and for instruction to the heralds as to the "gay things" they were to say in their charter, of "honour and service," he told them, and he no doubt told them truly, that he was great-grandson to one who had been advanced and rewarded by Henry VII. And so for ever after he was no more goodman Shak- spere, or John Shakspere, yeoman, but Master Shakspere ; and this short change in his condition was produced by virtue of a grant of arms by Robert Cook, Clarencieux King at Arms ; which shield or coat of arms was confirmed by "William Dethick, Garter, principal King of Arms, in 1596, as follows : " Gould, on a bend sable and a speare of the first, the point steeled, proper ; and his crest, or cognizance, a faulcon, his wings displayed, argent, standing on a wrethe of his coullors supporting a speare gould Steele as aforesaid, sett uppon a helmet with mantells and tassells." [Anr.a (>f John Shakapcral A BIOGRAPHY. Bul there were other arms one day to be impaled with the " speare of the first, the poynt steeled, proper." In 1599 John Shakspere again goes to the College of Arms, and, producing his own " ancient coat of arms," says that he has " married the daughter and one of the heirs of Robert Arden, of Wellingcote :" and then the heralds take the " speare of the first," and say — " We have likewise upon on other escutcheon impaled the same with the ancient arms of the said Arden of Wellingcote." They add that John Shakspere, and his children, issue, and posterity, may bear and use the same shield of arms, single or impaled. The family of Arden was one of the highest antiquity in Warwickshire. Dug- dale traces its pedigree uninterruptedly up to the time of Edward the Confessor. Under the head of Curdworth, a parish in the hundred of Hemlingford, he says — " In this place I have made choice to speak historically of that most ancient and worthy family, whose surname was first assumed from their residence in this part of the country, then and yet called Arden, by reason of its woodiness, the old Britons and Gauls using the word in that sense." At the time of the Nor- man invasion there resided at Warwick, Turchil, "a man of especial note and power" and of " great possessions." In the Domesday Book his father, Alwyne, is styled vice comes. Turchil, as well as his father, received favour at the hands of the Conqueror. He retained the possession of vast lands in the shire, and he occupied Warwick Castle as a military governor. He was thence called Turchil de Warwick by the Normans. But Dugdale goes on to say — " He was one of the first here in England that, in imitation of the Normans, assumed a surname, for so it appears that he did, and wrote himself Turchillus de Eardene, in the days of King William Rums." The history of the De Ardens, as collected with won- derful industry by Dugdale, spreads over six centuries. Such records seldom present much variety of incident, however great and wealthy be the family to which they are linked. In this instance a shrievalty or an attainder varies the register of birth and marriage, but generation after generation passes away with- out leaving any enduring traces of its sojourn on the earth. Fuller has not the name of a single De Arden amongst his "Worthies" — men illustrious for something more than birth or riches, with the exception of those who swell the lists of sheriffs for the county. The pedigree which Dugdale gives of the Arden family brings us no nearer in the direct line to the mo- ther of Shakspere than to Robert Arden, her great-grandfather : he was the third son of Walter Arden, who married Eleanor, the daughter of John Hamp- den, of Buckinghamshire ; and he was brother to Sir John Arden, squire for the body to Henry VII. Malone, with laudable industry, has continued the pedigree in the younger branch. Robert's son, also called Robert, was groom of the chamber to Henry VII. He appears to have been a favourite ; for he had a valuable lease granted him by the king of the manor of Yoxsall, in Staffordshire, and was also made keeper of the royal park of Aldercar. His uncle, Sir John Arden, probably showed him the road to these benefits. The squire for the body was a high officer of the ancient court ; and the groom of the chamber was an inferior officer, but one who had service and responsibilty. The correspondent offices of modern times, however encumbered with the wearisome- ncss of etiquette, are relieved from the old duties, which are now intrusted tc 7 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : hired servants. The squire for the body had to array the king and unarray ; no man else was to set hand on the king. The groom of the robes was to present the squire for the body "all the king's stuff, as well his shoon as his other gear;" but the squire for the body was to draw them on. If the sun of majesty was to enlighten the outer world, the squire humbly followed with the cloak ; when royalty needed refection, the squire duly presented the potage. But at night it was his duty, and much watchfulness did it require, to preside over all those jealous safeguards that once fenced round a sleeping king from a traitorous subject. In a pallet bed, in the same room with the king, rested the gentleman or lord of the bedchamber ; in the ante-room slept the groom of the bed- chamber; in the privy chamber adjoining were two gentlemen in waiting; and, lastly, in the presence-chamber reposed the squire for the body under the cloth of estate. Locks and bolts upon every door defended each of these approaches, and the sturdy yeomen mounted guard without, so that the pages, who made their pallets at the last chamber threshold, might sleep in peace.* It is not im- probable that the ancestor of John Shakspere might have guarded the door with- out, whilst Sir John Arden slept upon the liaut pas within. They had each their relative importance in their own day ; but they could little foresee that in the next century their blood would mingle, and that one would descend from them who would make the world agree not utterly to forget their own names, however indifferent that future world might be to the comparative importance of the court servitude of the Arden or the Shakspere. Robert Arden, the groom of the bedchamber to Henry VII., probably left the court upon the death of his master. He married, and he had a son, also Robert, who married Agnes Webbe. Their youngest daughter was Mary, the mother of William Shakspere. f Mary Arden ! The name breathes of poetry. It seems the personification of some Dryad of " Many a huge-grown wood, and many a shady grove," called by that generic name of Arden,— a forest with many towns, * This information is given in a long extract from a manuscript in the Herald's Office, quoted in Malone' s 'Life of Shakspeare.' t From the connection of these immediate ancestors of Shakspere's mother with the court of Henry VII., Malone has assumed that they were the " antecessors " of John Shakspere declared in the grants of arms fro have been advanced and rewarded by the conqueror of Bosworth Field. Because Robert Arden had a lease of the royal manor of Yoxsall, in Staffordshire, Malone also contends that the reward of lands and tenements stated in the grant of arms to have been be- stowed upon the ancestor of John Shakspere really means the beneficial lease to Robert Arden. He holds that popularly the grandfather of Mary Arden would have been called the grandfather of John Shakspere, and that John Shakspere himself would have so called him. The answer is very direct. The grant of arms recites that the ^reai-grandfather of John Shakspere had been advanced and rewarded by Henry VIL, and then (joes on to say that John Shakspere had mar- ried the daughter of Robert Arden of Wellingcote : He has an ancient coat-of-arms of his own derived from bis ancestor, and the arms of his wife are to be impaled with these his own arms. Can the interpretation of this document then be that Mary Arden's grandfather is the person pointed out as John Shakspere's r/rmi-grandfather ; and that, having an ancient coat-of-arms himself, his ancestry is really that of his wife, whose arms are totally different ? 8 A BIOGRAPHY. " Whose footsteps yet are found, la her rough woodlands more than any other ground, That mighty Arden held even in her height of pride, Her one hand touching Trent, the other Severn's side." * That name of Mary Arden sounds as blandly as the verse of this fine old pane- gyrist of his " native country," when he describes the songs of birds in those solitudes amongst which the house of Arden had for ages been seated : — " The softer with the shrill (some hid among the leaves, Some in the taller trees, some in the lower greaves) Thus sing away the morn, until the mounting sun Through thick exhaled fogs his golden head hath run, And through the twisted tops of our close covert creeps To kiss the gentle shade, this while that sweetly sleeps." t High as was her descent, wealthy and powerful as were the numerous branches of her family, Mary Arden, we doubt not, led a life of usefulness as well as in- nocence, within her native forest hamlet. She had three sisters, and they all, with their mother Agnes, survived their father, who died in December, 1556. His will is dated the 24th of November in the same year, and the testator styles himself "Robert Arden, of Wylmcote, in the paryche of Aston Cauntlow." [Village of Wilmccote.] The face of the country must have been greatly changed in three centuries. A canal, with lock rising upon lock, now crosses the hill upon which the village Drayton. Polyolbion, 13th Song. f- Ibid. WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : stands ; but traffic has not robbed the place of its green pastures and its shady nooks, though nothing is left of the ancient magnificence of the great forest. There is very slight appearance of antiquity about the present vil- lage, and certainly not a house in which we can conceive that Robert Arden resided. It was in the reign of Philip and Mary that Robert Arden died ; and we can- not therefore be sure that the wording of his will is any absolute proof of his religious opinions : — " First, I bequeath my soul to Almighty God and to our blessed Lady Saint Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven, and my body to be buried in the churchyard of Saint John the Baptist in Aston aforesaid.' One who had conformed to the changes of religion might even have begun his last testament with this ancient formula ; even as the will of Henry VIII. him- self is so worded. (See Rymer's ' Fcedera.') Mary, his youngest daughter, from superiority of mind, or some other cause of her father's confidence, occupies the most prominent position in the will : — " I give and bequeath to my youngest daughter Mary all my land in Wilmecote, called Asbies, and the crop upon the ground, sown and tilled as it is, and six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence of money to be paid over ere my goods be divided." To his daughter Alice he bequeaths the third part of all his goods, moveable and unmoveable, in field and town; to his wife Agnes, the step-mother of his children, six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence, under the condition that she should allow his daughter Alice to occupy half of a copyhold at Wilmecote, the widow having her "jointure inSnitterfield," near Stratford. The remainder of his goods is divided amongst his other children. Alice and Mary are made the " full executors " to his will. "We thus see that the youngest daughter has an undivided estate and a sum of money ; and, from the crop being also bequeathed to her, it is evident that she was considered able to continue the tillage. The estate thus bequeathed to her consisted of about sixty acres of arable and pasture, and a house. It was a small fortune for a descendant of the lord of forty-seven manors in the county of Warwickshire,* but it was enough for hap- piness. Luxury had scarcely ever come under her paternal roof. The house of Wilmecote would indeed be a well-timbered house, being in a woody country. It would not be a house of splints and clay, such as made the Spaniard in that very reign of Mary say, " These English have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly as well as the king." It was some twenty years after the death of Robert Arden that Harrison described the growth of domestic luxury in England, saying, "There are old men yet dwelling in the village where I remain, which have noted three things to be marvellously altered in England within their sound remembrance." One of these enormities is the multitude of chimneys lately erected, whereas formerly each one made his fire against a reredosse in the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat : the second thing is the great amendment of lodging — the pillows, the beds, the sheets, in- stead of the straw pallet, the rough mat, the good round log or the sack of chaff under the head: the third thing is the exchange of vessels, as of treen platters * See an account iu Dugdale of the possessions, recited in ' Domesday Book,' of T archil do A rden. 10 A BIOGRAPHY. into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin. He then describes the altered splendour of the substantial farmer : " A fair garnish of pewter on his cupboard, with so much more in odd vessels going about the house ; three or four feather- beds ; so many coverlids and carpets of tapestry ; a silver salt, a bowl for wine, and a dozen of spoons to furnish up the suit." Robert Arden had certainly not a mansion filled with needless articles for use or ornament. In the inventory of his goods taken after his death we find table-boards, forms, cushions, benches, and one cupboard in his hall ; there are painted cloths in the hall and in the chamber ; seven pair of sheets, five board-cloths, and three towels ; there is one feather-bed and two mattresses, with sundry coverlets, and articles called can- vasses, three bolsters, and one pillow. The kitchen boasts four pans, four pots, four candlesticks, a basin, a chafing-dish, two cauldrons, a frying-pan, and a gridiron. And yet this is the grandson of a groom of a king's bedchamber, an office filled by the noble and the rich, and who, in the somewhat elevated station of a gentleman of worship, would probably possess as many conveniences and comforts as a rude state of society could command. There was plenty outdoors — oxen, bullocks, kine, weaning calves, swine, bees, poultry, wheat in the barns, barley, oats, hay, peas, wood in the yard, horses, colts, carts, ploughs. Robert Arden had lived through unquiet times, when there was little accumulation, and men thought rather of safety than of indulgence : the days of security were at hand. Then came the luxuries that Harrison looked upon with much astonish- ment and some little heartburning. And so in the winter of 1 556 was Mary Arden left without the guidance of a father. We learn from a proceeding in Chancery some forty years later that with the land of Asbies there went a messuage. Mary Arden had therefore a roof-tree of her own. Her sister Alice was to occupy another property at Wilmecote with the widow. Mary Arden lived in a peaceful hamlet ; but there were some strange things around her, — incomprehensible things to a very young woman. When she went to the church of Aston Cantlow, she now heard the mass sung, and saw the beads bidden ; whereas a few years before there was another form of worship within those walls. She learnt, perhaps, of mutual persecutions and intolerance, of neighbour warring against neighbour, of child opposed to father, of wife to husband. She might have be- held these evils. The rich religious houses of her county and vicinity had been suppressed, their property scattered, their chapels and fair chambers desecrated, their very walls demolished. The new power was trying to restore them, but, even if it could have brought back the old riches, the old reverence was passed away. In that solitude she probably mused upon many things with an anxious heart. The wealthier Ardens of Kingsbury and Hampton, of Rotley and Rod- burne and Park Hall, were her good cousins ; but bad roads and bad times perhaps kept them separate. And so she lived a somewhat lonely life, till a young yeoman of Stratford, whose family had been her father's tenants, came to sit oftener and oftcner upon those wooden benches in the old hall — a substantial yeoman, a burgess of the corporation in 1557 or 1558 ; and then in due season, perhaps in the very year when Romanism was lighting its last fires in England, and a queen was dying with " Calais " written on her heart, Mary 11 WILLIAM SHAESPERE: Arden and John Shakspere were, in all likelihood, standing before the altar of the parish church of Aston Cantlow, and the house and lands of Asbies became administered by one who took possession " by the right of the said Mary," who thenceforward abided for half a century in the good town of Stratford. There is no register of the marriage discovered : but the date must have been about a year after the father's death ; for " Joan Shakspere, daughter to John Shakspere " was, according to the Stratford register, baptized on the 15th September, 1558. MSB [' Church of Aston Cantlow.'! A BIOGRAPHY. . k- ■C;':f$m [Clopton's llii'J'je.J CHAPTER II. STEATEOED. A pleasant place is this quiet town of Stratford — a place of ancient traffic "the name having been originally occasioned from the ford or passage orer the water upon the great street or road leading from Henley in Arden towards London. 55 * England was not always a country of bridges : rivers asserted their own natural rights, and were not bestrid by domineering man. If the people of Henley in Arden would travel towards London, the Avon might invite or oppose their passage at his own good will ; and, indeed, the river so often swelled into a rapid and dangerous stream, that the honest folk of the one bank might be content to hold somewhat less intercourse with their neighbours on the other than Englishmen now hold with the antipodes. But the days of improvement were sure to arrive. There were charters for markets, and charters for fairs, obtained from King Richard and King John ; and in process of time Stratford rejoiced in a wooden bridge, though without a causey, and exposed to constant damage by flood. And then an alderman of London, — in Dug# S3 '*: * + io * Henry VI., Fait II., Act !?. A BIOCrRAPIIY. as learned as the town-clerk ; they kept him straight. But there had been enough turmoil about learning in those days to make goodman Whetely, and goodman Cardre, and their fellows, somewhat shy of writing and Latin. They were not quite safe in reading. Some of the readers had openly looked upon Tyndalc's Bible and Coverdale's Bible twelve years before, and then the Bible was to be hidden in dark corners. It was come out again, but who could tell what might again happen. It was safer not to read. It was much less troublesome not to write. The town-clerk was a good penman ; they could nourish. We were reluctant to yield our assent to Malone's assertion that Shakspere's father had a mark to himself. The marks are not distinctly affixed to each name in this document. But subsequent discoveries establish the fact that he used two marks — one, something like an open pair of compasses — the other, the common cross. Even half a century later, to write was not held indispensable by persons of some pretension. In Decker's ' Wonder of a Kingdom,' the following dialogue takes place between Gentili and Buzardo : " Gen. What qualities are you furnished with? Buz. My education has been like a gentleman. Gen. Have you any skill in song or instrument] Buz. As a gentleman should have; I know all but play on none : I am no barber. Gen. Barber ! no, sir, I think it. Are you a linguist ? Buz. As a gentleman ought to be; one tongue serves one head ; I am no pedlar, lu travel countries. Gen. What skill ha' you in horsemanship ? Buz. As other gentlemen have ; I ha' rid some beasts in my time. Gen. Can you write and read then ? Buz. As most of your gentlemen do ; my bond has been taken with my mark at it." We must not infer that one who gave his bond with his mark at it, was neces- sarily ignorant of all literature. It was very common for an individual to adopt, in the language of Jack Cade, " a mark to himself," possessing distinctness of character, and almost heraldically alluding to his name or occupation. Many of these are like ancient merchants' marks ; and on some old deeds the mark of a landowner alienating property corresponds with the mark described in the conveyance as cut in the turf, or upon boundary stones, of unenclosed fields. Lord Campbell says, " In my own experience I have known many instances of documents bearing a mark as the signature of persons who could write well."* One of the aldermen of Stratford in 1565, John Wheler, is described in the town records as a yeoman. He must have been dwelling in Stratford, for we have seen that he was ordered to take the office of high bailiff, an office de- manding a near and constant residence. We can imagine a moderate landed proprietor cultivating his own soil, renting perhaps other land, seated as con- veniently in a house in the town of Stratford as in a solitary grange several miles away from it. Such a proprietor, cultivator, yeoman, we consider John Shakspere to have been. In 1556, the year that Robert, the father of Mary • it 'Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements,' p. 15. Lwz. G 17 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEItE : Arden, died, John Shakspere was admitted at the court-leet to two copyhold estates in Stratford. The jurors of the leet present that George Tumor had alienated to John Shakspere and his heirs one tenement, with a garden and croft, and other premises, in Grenehyll Street, held of the lord at an annual quit-rent ; and John Shakspere, who is present in court and does fealty, is admitted to the same. The same jurors present that Edward West has alien- ated to John Shakspere one tenement and a garden adjacent in Henley Street, who is in the same way admitted, upon fealty done to the lord. Here then is John Shakspere, before his marriage, the purchaser of two copyholds in Strat- ford, both with gardens, and one with a croft, or small enclosed field.* In 1570 John Shakspere is holding, as tenant under. William Clopton, a meadow of fourteen acres, with its appurtenance, called Ingon, at the annual rent of eight pounds. This rent, equivalent to at least forty pounds of our present money, would indicate that the appurtenance included a house, — and a very good house. f This meadow of Ingon forms part of a large property known by that name near Clopton-house.J When John Shakspere married, the estate of Asbies * It is marvellous that Malone, with these documents before him, which are clearly the ad- missions of John Shakspere to two copyhold estates, should say : — " At the court-leet, held in October, 1556, the lease of a house in Greenhill Street was assigned to Mr. John Shakspeare, by George Tumor, who was one of the burgesses of Stratford, and kept a tavern or victualling- house there; and another, in Henley Street, was, on the same day, assigned to him, by Edward West, a person of some consideration, who during the reign of Edward VI. had been frequently one of the wardens of the bridge of Stratford." It is equally wonderful that, Malone having printed the documents, no one who writes about Shakspere has deduced from them that Shak- spere's father was necessarily a person of some substance before his marriage, a purchaser of property. The roll says — " et ide Johes pd. in cur. fecit dno fidelitatem p r eisdem," that is, "and the said John in the aforesaid court did fealty to the lord for the same." Every one knows that this is the mode of admission to a copyhold estate in fee simple, and yet Malone writes as if these forms were gone through to enable John Shakspere to occupy two houses in two distinct streets, under lease. We subjoin the documents : — "Stratford super Avon. Vis fra Fleg. cum cur. et Session pais tenit. ibm. secundo die Octo- bris annis regnorum Philippi et Marie, Dei gratia, &c. tertio et quarto (October 2, 155G). "It. pre. quod Georgius Tumor alienavit Johe Shakespere et hered. suis unum tent, cum gardin. et croft, cum pertinent in Grenehyll stret, tent, de Df o libe p r cart. p r redd, inde dno p r annu vi d et sect. cur. et ide Johes pd. in cur. fecit_dno fidelitatem p r eisdem. " It. quod Edwardus West alienavit pd. eo Johe Shakespere unu tent, cum gardin. adjacen. in Henley street p r redd, inde dno p r ann. vi d et sect. cur. et ide Johes pd. in cur. fecit fidelitatem." We give a translation of this entry upon the court-roll : — " Stratford upon Avon. View of Frankpledge with the court and session of the peace held of the same on the second day of October in the year of the reign of Philip and Mary, by the grace of God, &c, the third and fourth. " Item, they present that George Tumor has alienated to John Shakspere and his heirs one tenement with a garden and croft, with their appurtenances, in Greenhill street, held of the lord, and delivered according to the roll, for the rent from thence to the lord of sixpence per annum, and suit of court, and the said John in the aforesaid court did fealty to the lord for the same. " Item, that Edward West has alienated to him, the aforesaid John Shakspere, one tenement, with a garden adjacent, in Henley Street, for the rent from thence to the lord of sixpence per annum, and suit of court, and the said John in the aforesaid court did fealty." t See the extracts from the ' Rot. Claus.,' 23 Eliz., given in Malono's ' Life,' p. 95. t Ingon is not, as Malone states, situated at a small distance from the estate which William BUak?pero purchased in 1002. Clopton lies between the two properties. 18 A BIOGRAPHY. within a short ride of Stratford, came also into his possession, and so did some landed property at Snitterfield. With these facts before us, scanty as they are, can we reasonably doubt that John Shakspere was living upon his own land, renting the land of others, actively engaged in the business of cultivation, in an age when tillage was becoming rapidly profitable, — so much so that men of wealth very often thought it better to take the profits direct than to share them with the tenant ? In ' A Briefe Conceipte touching the Commonweale of this Realme of Englande,' published in 1581, — a Dialogue once attributed to William Shak- spere, — the Knight says, speaking of his class, " Many of us are enforced either to keep pieces of our own lands when they fall in our own possession, or to pur- chase some farm of other men's lands, and to store it with sheep or some other cattle, to help make up the decay in our revenues, and to maintain our old estate withal, and yet all is little enough." The belief that the father of Shakspere was a small landed proprietor and cultivator, employing his labour and capital in various modes which grew out of the occupation of land, offers a better, because a more natural, ex- planation of the circumstances connected with the early life of the great poet than those stories which would make him of obscure birth and servile employ- ments. Take old Aubrey's story, the shrewd learned gossip and antiquary, who survived Shakspere some eighty years : — " Mr. William Shakespear was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade ; but when he killed a calf he would do it in high style, and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this town that was held not at all inferior to him for a natural wit, his acquaintance and coetanean, but died young." Oh, Stratford ! town prolific in heroic and poetical butchers ; was it not enough that there was one prodigy born in your bosom, who, " when he killed a calf, he would do it in a high style, and make a speech," but that there must even have been another butcher's son fed with thy intellectual milk, " that was held not at all inferior to him for a natural wit ? " Wert thou minded to rival Ipswich by a double rivalry? Was not one Shakspere-butcher enough to extinguish the light of one Wolsey, but thou must have another, "his acquaintance and coetanean?'' Aubrey, men must believe thee in all after-time ; for did not Farmer aver that, when he that killed the calf wrote — " There 's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew thern how we will," * — the poet-butcher was thinking of skewers? And did not Malone hold that he who, when a boy, exercised his father's trade, has described the process of calf-killing with an accuracy which nothing but profound experience could give ?— " And as the butcher takes away the calf, And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays, Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house ; Even so, remorseless, have they borne him hence. __L 19 ^ 2 .i Hamlet, Act v., Scene n. WlLLtAM SIIAKSPERE: And as the dam runs lowing up and down, Looking the way her harmless young one went, And can do nought but wail her darling's loss, Even so," &c* The story, however, has a variation. There was at Stratford, in the yeai 1G93, a clerk of the parish church, eighty years old, — that is, he was three years old when William Shakspere died, — and he, pointing to the monument of the poet, with, the pithy remark that he was the " best of his family," proclaimed to a member of one of the Inns of Court that "this Shakespeare was formerly in this town bound apprentice to a butcher, but that he ran from his master to London.""]" His father was a butcher, says Aubrey ; he was apprentice to a butcher, says the parish clerk. Aubrey was picking up his gossip for his friend Anthony-a-Wood in 1680, and it is not very difficult to imagine that the iden- tical parish clerk was his authority. That honest chronicler, old as he was, had forty years of tradition to deal with in this matter of the butcher's son and the butcher's apprentice ; and the result of such glimpses into the thick night of the past is sensibly enough stated by Aubrey himself: — "What uncertainty do we find in printed histories ! They either treading too near on the heels of truth, that they dare not speak plain ; or else for want of intelligence (things being antiquated) become too obscure and dark!" Obscure and dark indeed is this story of the butcher's son. If it were luminous, circumstantially true, pal- pable to all sense, as Aubrey writes it down, we should only have one more knot to cut, not to untie, in the matters which belong to William Shakspere. The son of the butcher of Ipswich was the boy bachelor of Oxford at fifteen years of age; he had an early escape from the calf-killing; there was no miracle in his case. If we receive Aubrey's story we must take it also with its contradictions, and that perhaps will get rid of the miraculous. " When he was a boy he exer- cised his father's trade" Good: — "This William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about eighteen." Good : — " He un- derstood Latin pretty well, for he had been iri his younger years a schoolmaster in the country." Killer of calves, schoolmaster, poet, actor, — all these occupations crowded into eighteen years ! Honest Aubrey, truly thine is a rope of sand wherein there are no knots to cut or to untie ! Akin to the butcher's trade is that of the dealer in wool. It is upon the au- thority of Betterton, the actor, who, in the beginning of the last century, made a journey into Warwickshire to collect anecdotes relating to Shakspere, that Rowe tells us that John Shakspere was a dealer in wool : — " His family, as ap- pears by the register and the public writings relating to that town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen. 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." We are now peeping " through the blanket of the dark.' But daylight is not as yet. Malone was a believer in Rowe's account; and he Henry VI., Part II, Act m., Scene I. f Traditionary Anecdote of Shakespeare. -0 A BIOGRAPHY. was confirmed In his belief by possessing a piece of stained glass, bearing the arms the niti'chants of the staple, which had been removed from a window of John Shakspere's house in Henley Street. But, unfortunately for the credibility of Rowe, as then held, Malone made a discovery, as it is usual to term such glimpses of the past : " I began to despair of ever being able to obtain any certain intelligence concerning his trade ; when, at length, I met with the following entry, in a very ancient manuscript, containing an account of the proceedings in the bailiff's court, which furnished me with the long-sought-for information, and ascertains that the trade of our great poet's father was that of a glover ;" " Thomas Siche de Arscotte in com. Wigorn. querit 1 versus Johm Shaky spere de Stretford, in com. Warwic. Glover, in plac. quod reddat ei oct. libras, &c." This Malone held to be decisive. We give this record above as Malone printed it, not very correctly ; and having seen the original, we maintained that the word was not Glover. Mr. Collier and Mr. Halliwell affirm that the word Glo, with the second syllable contracted, is glover ; and we accept their interpretation. But we still hold to our original belief that he was, in 1556, a landed proprietor and an occupier of land; one who, although sued as a glover on the 17th June of that year, was a suitor in the same court on the 19th November, in a plea against a neighbour for unjustly de taining eighteen quarters of barley. We still refuse to believe that John Shak- spere, when he is described as a yeoman in after years, " had relinquished his retail trade," as Mr. Halliwell judges ; or that his mark, according to the same authority, was emblematical of the glove-sticks used for stretching the cheveril for fair fingers. We have no confidence that he had stores in Henley Street of the treasures of Autolycus, — " Gloves as sweet its damask roses." We think, that butcher, dealer in wool, glover, may all be reconciled with our position, that he was a landed proprietor, occupying land. Oar proofs are not purely hypothetical. Harrison, who mingles laments at the increasing luxury of the farmer, with somewhat contradictory denouncements of the oppression of the tenant by the landlord, holds that the landlord is monopolizing the tenant's profits. His com- plaints are the natural commentary upon the social condition of England, de- scribed in ' A Briefe Conceipte touching the Commonweale :' — " Most sorrowful of all to understand, that men of great port and countenance are so far from suffering their farmers to have any gain at all, that they themselves become graziers, butchers, tanners, sheepmasters, woodmen, and denique quid non thereby to enrich themselves, and bring all the wealth of the country into their own hands, leaving the commonalty weak, or as an idol with broken or feeble arms, which may in time of peace have a plausible show, but, when necessity shall enforce, have an heavy and bitter sequel." Has not Harrison solved the mystery of the butcher ; explained the tradition of the wool-merchant ; shown how John Shakspere, the woodman, naturally sold a piece of timber to the corporation, which we find recorded ; and, what is most difficult of credence, indicated how the glover is reconcilable with all these employments ? We open an authentic 21 WILLIAM 8HAKSFEUE : record of this very period, and the solution of the difficulty is palpable: In John Strype's ' Memorials Ecclesiastical under Queen Mary I,' under the date of 1558, we find this passage: " It is certain that one Edward Home suffered at Newcnt, where this Deighton had been, and spake with one or two of the same parish that did see him there burnt, and did testify that they knew the two persons that made the fire to burn him ; they were two glovers or fellmongers." * A. fellmonger and a glover appear from this passage to have been one and the same. The fellmonger is he who prepares skins for the use of the leather-dresser, by separating the wool from the hide — the natural coadjutor of the sheep-master and the wool-man. Shakspere himself implies that the glover was a manufacturer of skins : Dame Quickly asks of Slender's man, " Does he not wear a great round beard like a glover's paring knife ? " The peltry is shaved upon a circular board, with a. great round knife, to this day. The fell monger's trade, as it now exists, and the trade in untanned leather, the glover's trade, would be so slightly different, that the generic term, glover, might be applied to each. There are few examples of the word " fellmonger" in any early writers. " Glover" is so common that it has become one of the universal English names derived from occupation, — far more common than if it merely appiied to him who made coverings for the hands. At Coventry, in the middle of the sixteenth century, (the period of which we are writing) the Glovers and Whittawers formed one craft. A whittawer is one who pre- pares tawed leather — untanned leather — leather chiefly dressed from sheep skins and lamb skins by a simple process of soaking, and scraping, and liming, and softening by alum and salt. Of such were the large and coarse gloves in use in a rural district, even amongst labourers ; and such process might be readily carried on by one engaged in agricultural operations, especially when we bear in mind that the white leather was the especial leather of " husbandly furniture," as described by old Tusser. We may reasonably persist, therefore, even in accord with " flesh and fell " tradition, in drawing the portrait of Shakspere's father, at the time of his marriage, in the free air, — on his horse, with his team, at market, at fair — and yet a dealer in carcases, or wood, or wool, or skins, his own produce. He was a proprietor of land, and an agriculturist, living in a peculiar state of society, as we shall see hereafter, in which the division of employments was imperfectly established, and the small rural capitalists strove to turn their own products to the greatest advantage. * Vol v„p. 277 -edit 1816. A BIOGRAPHY. *7 rj-^ [Ancient Font, formerly in Stratford Clmrch.^J CHAPTER III. THE REGISTER. In the eleventh century the Norman Conqueror commanded a Register to be completed of the lands of England, with the names of their possessors, and the number of their free tenants, their villains, and their slaves. In the sixteenth century Thomas Cromwell, as the vicegerent of Henry VIII. for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, issued Injunctions to the Clergy, ordaining, amongst other matters, that every officiating minister shall, for every Church, keep a Book, wherein he shall register every Marriage, Christening, or Burial. In the different character of these two Registers we read what five centuries of civilization had effected for England. Instead of being recorded in the gross as cotarii or servi, * The history of the old font represented above is somewhat curious. The parochial accounts of Stratford show that about the middle of the seventeenth century a new font was set^ up. Tha beautiful relic of an older time, from which William Shakspere had received the baptismal water, was, after many years, found in the old charnel-house. When that was pulled down, it was kicked into the churchyard ; and half a century ago was removed by the parish clerk to form the trough of a pump at his cottage. Of the parish clerk it was bought by the late Captain Saunders ; and from his possession came into that of Mr. Heritage, a builder at Stratford. 23 WILLIAM siiakspere: the meanest labourer, his wife, and his children, had become children of their country and their country's religion, as much as the highest lord and his family. Their names were to be inscribed in a book and carefully preserved. But the people doubted the intent of this wise and liberal injunction. A friend of Crom- well writes to him, " There is much secret and several communications between the King's subjects ; and [some] of them, in sundry places within the shires of Cornwall and Devonshire, be in great fear and mistrust, what the King's Highness and his Council should mean, to give in commandment to the parsons and vicars of every parish that they should make a book, and surely to be kept, wherein to be specified the names of as many as be wedded, and the names of them that be buried, and of all those that be christened."* They dreaded new " charges ; " and well they might dread. But Thomas Cromwell had not regal exactions in his mind. The Registers were at first imperfectly kept ; but the regulation of 1538 was strictly enforced in the first year of Elizabeth ; and then the Register of the Parish of Stratford-upon-Avon commences, that is, in 1558. Venerable book ! Every such record of human life is a solemn document. Birth, Marriage, Death ! — this is the whole history of the sojourn upon earth of nearly every name inscribed in these mouldy, stained, blotted pages. And after a few years what is the interest, even to their own descendants, of these brief annals ? With the most of those for whom the last entry is still to be made, the question is, Did they leave property? Is some legal verification of their pos- session of property necessary ?— • " No further seek their merits to disclose." But there are entries in this Register-book of Stratford that are interesting to us — to all Englishmen — to universal mankind. We have all received a pre- cious legacy from one whose progress from the cradle to the grave is here recorded — a bequest large enough for us all, and for all who will come after us. Pause we on the one entry of that book which most concerns the human race : — Thus far the information conveyed by the register is precise.-f- But a natural question then arises. On what day was born William, the son of John Shakspere * Cromwell's Correspondence in the Chapter-House. Quoted in Hickman's Preface to Population Returns, 1831. •f The date of the year, and the word April, occur three lines above the entry — the baptism being the fourth registered in that month. The register of Stratford is a tall narrow book, of con- siderable thickness, the leaves formed of very fine vellum. But this book is only a transcript, attested by the vicar and four churchwardens, on every page of the registers from 1558 to 1600t The above is therefore not a fac-simile of the original entry. 2i A. BIOGKAPHY. who was baptized on the 26th of April, 1564 ? The want of such information is a defect in all parish registers. In the belief that baptism very quickly followed birth in those times, when infancy was surrounded with greater dangers than in our own days of improved medical science, we have been accustomed to receive the 23rd of April as the day on which William Shakspere first saw the light. We are very unwilling to assist in disturbing the popular belief, but it is our duty to state the facts opposed to it. We have before us ' An Argument on the assumed Birthday of Shakspere: reduced to shape a.d. 1864.' This privately-printed tract by Mr. Bolton Corney, is one of the many evidences of the industry and logical acuteness with which that gentleman has approached the solution of many doubtful literary questions. It is to do injustice to the force of his argu- ment that we can here only present the briefest analysis of the points which he fully sets forth. In the original edition of this Biography, we stated that there was no direct evidence that Shakspere was born on the 23rd of April. We added that there was probably a tradition to that effect ; for some years ago the Rev. Joseph Greene, a master of the Grammar School at Stratford, in an extract which he made from the register of Shakspere's baptism, wrote in the margin " Born on the 23rd." The labours of Mr. Bolton Corney furnish the means of testing the value of this memorandum. It was first given to the world in the edition of Johnson and Steevens in 1773, of which edition Steevens was the sole editor. After giving Greene's extract from the register, he says that he was favoured with it by the Hon. James West. Up to the publication of Rowe's edition in 1709, the writers who mention Shakspere merely say, " born at Stratford-upon-Avon." Rowe says " he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, in April, 1564" — a fact never before stated. Of the date of the birth Rowe says nothing. The particulars of Rowe's life of the poet, prefixed to the edition of 1709, were furnished by Betterton, the actor, who, to follow up the information which he might have derived from the traditions of the theatre, made a journey to Stratford to glean new materials for his scanty stock of bio- graphical facts. If the day of Shakspere's birth were not a tradition in Shakspere's native place ninety-three years after his death, it is not very credible that a trustworthy tradition had survived until 1773, when Greene wrote his memo- randum which Steevens first published. In the second edition of Johnson and Steevens' Shakspere, in 1778, Malone makes this note upon Rowe's statement that Shakspere died in the fifty-third year of his age : " He died on his birthday, 1616, and had exactly completed his fifty-second year." In the edition of Shakspere by Boswell, in 1821, Malone, whose posthumous life was here first given, doubts the fact that Shakspere was born three days before April the 26th. " I have said this on the faith of Mr, Greene, who, I find, made the extract from the register which Mr. West gave Mr. Steevens ; but qusere how did Mr. Greene ascertain this fact ? " Lastly, there arises the question whether the theory that Shakspere died on his birthday is to be traced to the inscription on the tomb : — OBIIT AN. KOil. 1616. .ETATIS 53. DIE 23. AP. Mr. Collier has said, in his edition of 1844 : " The inscription on his monument supports the opinion that he was bom on the 23rd April. Without the eontrac- 25 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : tions it runs thus: ' Obiit Anno Domini 1G1G. iEtatis 53, die 23 Aprilis.' And this, in truth, is the onlv piece of evidence upon the point." Mr. Bolton Corney thus somewhat triumphantly meets this interpretation " The inscription contains no evidence in favour of the assumed birthday. It refutes the assertion sa?is replique ! As Shakspere died on the 23 April, in \m fifty -third year, lie must have been born before the 23 April, 1564." Oldys (who died in 1761), in his manuscript annotations upon Langbaine's 'Account of the English Dramatic Poets ' (a book now to be seen in the Library of the British Museum), has an interpretation upon the inscription on the monument which he finds in Langbaine. Mr. Bolton Corney thus disposes of the worthy antiquary's theory : " Oldys, in some non-lucid moment, underscores die 23 Apr. — subtracts 53 from 1616 — and writes down 1563. He assumes that the words anno atatis 53 are equivalent to visit annos 53, and that the words die 23 Aprilis refer to anno atatis, instead of being the object of Obiit. Such is the process, never before described, by which the birthday of Shakspere was discovered I" We turn back to the first year of the egistry, 1558, for other records of John Shakspere's family; and we find the baptism of Joan, daughter to John Shakspere, on the 15th of September. Again, in 1562, on the 2nd of December, Margaret, daughter to John Shakspere, is baptized. In the entry of burials in 1563 we find, under date of April 30, that Margaret closed a short life in five months. The elder daughter Joan also died young. We look forward, and in 1566 find the birth of another son registered : — Gilbert, son of John Shakspere, was baptized on the 13th of October of that year. In 1569 there is the registry of the baptism of a daughter, Joan, daughter of John Shakspere, on the 15th of April. Thus, the registry of a second Joan leaves no reasonable doubt that the first died, and that a favourite name was preserved in the family. In 1571 Anne is baptized; she died in 1579. In 1573-4 another son was baptized — Richard, son of Master {Magister) John Shakspere, on the 11th of March. The last entry, which determines the extent of John Shakspere's family, is that of Edmund, son of Master John Shakspere, baptized on the 3rd of May, 1580. Here, then, we find that two sisters of William were removed by death, probably before his birth. In two years and a half another son, Gilbert, came to be his playmate ; and when he was five years old that most precious gift to a loving boy was granted, a sister, who grew up with him. When he was ten years old he had another brother to lead by the hand into the green meadows. Then came another sis'ier, who faded untimely ; and when he was grown into youthful strength, a boy of sixteen, his youngest brother was born. William, Gilbert, Joan, Richard, Edmund, constituted the whole of the family amongst whom John Shakspere was to share his means of existence. Rowe, we have already seen, mentions the large family of John Shakspere, " ten children in all." Ma- lone has established very satisfactorily the origin of this error into which Rowe has fallen. In later years there was another John Shakspere in Stratford. In the books of the corporation the name of John Shakspere, shoemaker, can be traced in 1580 ; in the register in 1584 we find him married to Margery Roberts, 26 A BIOGRAPHY. who dies in 1587; he is, without doubt, married a second time, for in 1589, 1590, and 1591, Ursula, Humphrey, and Philip are born. It is unquestionable that these are not the children of the father of William Shakspere, for they are entered in the register as the daughter, or sons, of John Shakspere, without the style which our John Shakspere always bore after 1569 — " Magister." There can be no doubt that the mother of all the children of Master John Shakspere was Mary Arden; for in proceedings in Chancery in 1597, which we shall notice hereafter, it is set forth that John Shakspere and his wife Mary, in the [The Churuh Avenue.] 20th Elizabeth, 1577, mortgaged her inheritance of Asbies. Nor can there be a doubt that the children born before 1569, when he is styled John Shakspere, without the honourable addition of Master, were also her children; for in 1599, when William Shakspere is an opulent man, application is made to the College of Arms, that John Shakspere, and his issue and posterity, might use a " shield of arms/' impaled with the arms of Shakspere and Arden. This application (which appears also to have been made in 1596, as the grant of arms by Dethick states the fact of John Shakspere's marriage) would in all probability have been at the instance of John Shakspere's eldest 9on and heir. The history of the family up to the period of William Shakspere's manhood is as clear as can reasonably be expected. William Shakspere has been carried to the baptismal font in that fine old church of Stratford. The " thick-pleached alley " that leads through the churchyard to the porch is putting forth its buds and leaves.* The chestnut hangs Us white blossoms over the grassy mounds of that resting-place. All is joyous in th% spring sunshine. * It is supposed that such a green avenue was an old appendage to the church, tho present trees having taken the place of more ancient ones. 27 WILLIAM SHAKSPEEE: Kind neighbours are smiling upon the happy father ; maidens and matrons snatch a kiss of the sleeping boy. There is "a spirit of life in everything" on this 26th of April, 1564. Summer comes, but it brings not joy to Stratford. There is wailing in her streets and woe in her houses. The death-register tells a fearful history. From the 30th June to the 31st December, two hundred and thirty-eight inhabitants, a sixth of the population, are carried to the grave. The plague is in the fated town ; the doors are marked with the red cross, and the terrible inscription, " Lord, have mercy upon us." It is the same epidemic which ravaged Europe in that year ; which in the previous year had desolated London, and still continued there ; of which sad time Stow pithily says — " The poor citizens of London were this year plagued with a threefold plague, pesti- lence, scarcity of money, and dearth of victuals ; the misery whereof were too Jong here to write : no doubt the poor remember it ; the rich by flight into the countries made shift for themselves." Scarcity of money and dearth of victuals are the harbingers and the ministers of pestilence. Despair gathers up itself to die. Labour goes not forth to its accustomed duties. Shops are closed. The market-cross hears no hum of trade. The harvest lies almost ungathered in the fields. At last the destroying angel has gone on his way. The labourers are thinned ; there is more demand for labour; " victuals" are not more abun- dant, but there are fewer left to share the earth's bounty. Then the adult rush into marriage. A year of pestilence is followed by a year of weddings;* and such a " strange eventful history " does the Stratford register tell. The Charnel-house — a mekncholy-looking appendage to the chancel of Stratford Church, (now removed,) had then its heaps of unhonoured bones fearfully ois- turbed: but soon the old tower heard again the wedding peal. The red «lfc ■ iStretford Church : East End, with Charuol-housie.] 28 Soo ' .Malum* or. Popular in,' boci ii., cliap. 12. A BIOGRAPHY. cross was probably not on the door of John Shakspcre's dwelling. " Fortu- nately for mankind," says Malone, " it did not reach the house where the infant Shakspere lay ; for not one of that name appears on the dead list. A poetical enthusiast will find no difficulty in believing that, like Horace, he reposed secure and fearless in the midst of contagion and death, protected by the Muses to whom his future life was to be devoted : — ' sacra, Lauroque, collataque myrto, Non sine diis animosus infans.' '' There were more real dangers around Shakspere than could be averted by the sacred laurel and the myrtle — something more fearful than the serpent and the bear of the Roman poet.* He, by whom " Spirits are not finely touch' d But to fine issues," may be said, without offence, to have guarded this unconscious child. William Shakspere was to be an instrument, and a great one, in the intellectual advance- ment of mankind. The guards that He placed around that threshold of Strat- ford, as secondary ministers, were cleanliness, abundance, free air, parental watchfulness. The "won sine diis" — the "protected by the Muses," — rightly considered, must mean the same guardianship. Each is a recognition of some- thing higher than accident and mere physical laws. The parish of Stratford, then, was unquestionably the birth-place of William Shakspere. But in what part of Stratford dwelt his parents in the year 1564? It was ten years after this that his father became the purchaser of two freehold houses in Henley Street — houses which still exist—houses which the people of England have agreed to preserve as a precious relic of their greatest brother. Nine years before William Shakspere was born, his father had also purchased two copyhold tenements in Stratford — one in Greenfield Street, one in Henley Street. The copy- hold house in Henley Street, purchased in 1555, was unquestionably not one of the freehold houses in the same street, purchased in 1574: yet, from Malone's loose way of stating that in 1555 the lease of a House in Henley Street was assigned to John Shakspere, it has been conjectured that he purchased in 1574 the house he had occupied for many years. As he purchased two houses in 1555 in different parts of the town, it is not likely that he occupied both ; he might not have occupied either. Before he purchased the two houses in Henley Street, in 1574, he occupied fourteen acres of meadow-land, with appurte- nances, at a very high rent ; the property is called Ingon meadow in " the Close Rolls." Dugdale calls the place where it was situated " Inge ;" saying that it was a member of the manor of Old Stratford, and " signifyeth in oul old English a meadow or low ground, the name well agreeing with its situation." It is about a mile and a quarter from the town of Stratford, on the road to War- wick. William Shakspere, then, might have been born at either of his father's copyhold houses, in Greenhill Street, or in Henley Street ; he might have bee* born at Ingon; or his father might have occupied one of the two freehold • Hor. lib. iii., car, iv. 29 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : houses in Henley Street at the time of the birth of his eldest son. Tradition says that William Shakspere was born in one of these houses ; tradition points out the very room in which he was born. Whether Shakspere were born here, or not, there can be little doubt that this property was the home of his boyhood. It was purchased by John Shakspere, from Edmund Hall and Emma his wife, for forty pounds. In a copy of the chirograph of the fine levied on this occasion (which came into the possession of Mr. Wheler, of Stratford), the property is described as two messuages, two gardens, and two orchards, with their appurtenances. This document does not define the situation of the property, beyond its being in Stratford-upon-Avon ; but in the deed of sale of another property in 1591, that property is described as situate between the houses of Robert Johnson and John Shakspere ; and in 1597 John Shakspere himself sells a "toft, or parcel of land," in Henley Street, to the purchaser of the property in 1591. The properties can be traced, and leave no doubt of this house in Henley Street being the residence of John Shakspere. He retained the property during his life ; and it descended, as his heir-at-law, to his son William. In the last testament of the poet is this "bequest to his " sister Joan :" — " I do will and devise unto her the house, with the appurtenances, in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her natural life, under the yearly rent of twelve-pence." His sister Joan, whose name by marriage was Hart, was residing there in 1639, and she probably continued to reside there till her death in 1646. The one house in which Mrs. Hart resided was doubtless the half of the building that formed, twenty years ago, the butcher's shop and the tenement adjoining; for the other house was known as the Maidenhead Inn in 1642. In another part of Shakspere's will he bequeaths, amongst the bulk of his property, to his eldest daughter, Susanna Hall, with remainder to her male issue, " two messuages or tenements, with the appurtenances, situate, lying, and being in Henley Street, within the borough of Stratford." There were existing settlements of this very property in the family of Shakspere's eldest daughter and grand-daughter ; and this grand-daughter, Elizabeth Nash, who was married a second time to Sir John Barnard, left both houses, — namely, " the inn, called the Maidenhead, and the adjoining house and barn," — to her kinsmen Thomas and George Hart, the grandsons of her grandfather's " sister Joan." These persons left descendants, with whom this property remained until the beginning of the present century. But it was gradually diminished. The orchards and gardens were originally extensive : a century ago tenements had been built upon them, and they were alienated by the Hart then in possession. The Maidenhead Inn became the Swan Inn, and afterwards the Swan and Maidenhead. The White Lion, on the other side of the property, was extended, so as to include the remaining orchards and gardens. The house in which Mrs. Hart had lived so long became divided into two tenements ; and at the end of the last century the lower part of one was a butcher's shop. According to the Aubrey tradition, some persons believed this to have been the original shop where John Shakspere pursued his calf-killing vocation with the aid of his illustrious son. Mr. Wheler, in a very interesting account of these premises, and their mutations, published in 1824, tells us that 30 " A BIOGRAPHY. the butcher- occupant, some thirty years ago, having an eye to every gainful attraction, wrote up, " William Shakspeare was born in this House. N.B.— A Horse and Taxed Cart to Let." It ceased to be used as a butcher's shop, but there were the arrangements for a butcher's trade in the lower room — the cross beams with hooks, and the window-board for joints. In 1823, when we made our first pilgrimage to Stratford, the house had gone out of the family of the Harts, and the last alleged descendant was recently ejected. It had been a gainful trade to her for some years to show the old kitchen behind the shop, and the honoured bed-room. When the poor old woman, the last of the Harts, had to quit her vocation (she claimed to have in- herited some of the genius, if she had lost the possessions, of her great ancestor, for she had produced a marvellous poem on the Battle of Waterloo), she set up a rival show-shop on the other side of the street, filled with all sorts of trumpery relics pretended to have belonged to Shakspere. But she was in ill odour. In a fit of resentment, the day before she quitted the ancient house, she whitewashed the walls of the bed-room, po as to obliterate the pencil inscriptions with which they were covered. It was the work of her successor to remove the plaster; and manifold names, obscure or renowned, again saw the light. The house had a few ancient articles of furniture about it •, but there was nothing which could be considered as originally belonging to it as the home of William Shakspere. The engravings exhibit John Shakspere's houses in Henley Street under two aspects. The upper one is from an original drawing made by Colonel Delamotte in 1788. The houses, it will be observed, then presented one uniform front; and there were dormer windows connected with rooms in the roof. We have a plan before us, accompanying Mr. Wheler's account of these premises, which shows that they occupied a frontage of thirty-one feet. The lower is from an original drawing made by Mr. Pyne, after a sketch by Mr. Edridge in 1807. We now see that the dormer windows are removed, as also the gable at the east end of the front. The house has been shorn of much of its external importance. There is a lithograph engraving in Mr. Wheler's account, published in 1824. The pre- mises, as there shown, have been pretty equally divided. The Swan and Maiden- head half has had its windows modernized, and the continuation of the timber- frame has been obliterated by a brick casing. In 1807, we observe that the western half had been divided into two tenements ; — the fourth of the whole premises, that is the butcher's shop, the kitchen behind, and the two rooms over, being the portion commonly shown as Shakspere's House. Some years ago, upon a frontage in continuation of the tenement at the west, three small cottages were built. The whole of this portion of the property has been purchased for the nation, as well as the two tenements. Was William Shakspere, then, born in the house in Henley Street which has been purchased by the nation ? For ourselves, we frankly confess that the want of absolute certainty that Shakspere was there born, produces a state of mind that is something higher and pleasanter than the conviction that depends upon positive evidence. We are content to follow the popular faith undoubtingly. si WILLIAM shaksfere: ■jte& ■ . isi l 712 *^ "ML "=*<£: