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<je I Page 
 
 I ssex House 409 Fac-simile of the Register cf the Burial of John 
 
 Robert Cecil • *13 Shakspere 418 
 
 Earl of Essex 416 I 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. -DID SHAKSPERE VISIT SCOTLAND? 
 
 Edinburgh in the Seventeenth Century 419 
 
 Perth, and Vicinity 427 
 
 Dunsinane 4S0 
 
 Glamis Castle 431 
 
 James the Sixth of Scotland, and First of England 449 
 
 Carlisle 453 
 
 Hoiyrood House 4.05 
 
 Note on the Queen of Elphen 
 
 Linlithgow 456 
 
 Stirling 457 
 
 Falkland 453 
 
 Aberdeen 4G0 
 
 Berwick 463 
 
 Alnwick Castle 464 
 
 CHAPTER IX.— LABOURS AND REWARDS. 
 
 Hall of the Middle Temple 465 
 
 Interior of the Temple Church 467 
 
 AutogTaph of 'William Combe 468 
 
 Ditto of John Combe 468 
 
 Fac-simile of Conveyance 468 
 
 Harefield 470 
 
 Tenement at Stratford 471 
 
 Funeral of Queen Elizabeth 47S 
 
 William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke 474 
 
 Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery 475 
 
 Wolsey's Hall, Hampton Court 476 
 
 Banqueting-House, Whitehall 477 
 
 Note on the Patent to the Company acting at the Globe 480 
 
 The Garden of New Place 481 
 
 Monument of Sir Thomas Lucy 400 
 
 The College 493 
 
 Ancient Hall in the College 494 
 
 New Place, from a drawing in the margin of an 
 ancient Survey, made by order of Sir George 
 Care 497 
 
 CHAPTER X.— REST. 
 
 Fac-simile of entry in Parish Register of the Mar- 
 riage of John Hall and Susanna Shakspere 498 
 
 Signature ofrDr. Hall 499 
 
 House in the High Street, Stratford 499 
 
 Bishopton Chapel 500 
 
 Foot-bridge above the Mill 501 
 
 Stratford Church 502 
 
 Note on the copy of a Letter signed H. 3., preserved at Bridgewater House 504 
 
 CHAPTER XL— GLIMPSES OF LONDON. 
 
 The Bear Garden 509 
 
 Edward Alleyn 511 
 
 William Drummond ... 513 
 
 William Alexander, Earl of Stirling 514 
 
 Thomas Dekker 517 
 
 Note on the Conveyance to Shakspere in 1613 
 
 Francis Beaumont JI'J 
 
 Philip Massinger 520 
 
 Nathaniel Field 521 
 
 Thomas Middleton 522 
 
 523 
 
 CHAPTER XII.— THE LAST BIRTHDAY. 
 
 Chancel of Stratford Church 524 
 
 Monument of John Combe 530 
 
 Leicester's Hospital, Warwick 532 
 
 Weston Church 532 
 
 Fac-simile of entry in Parish Register of the Mar- 
 riage of Thomas Quiney and Judith Shakspere... 533 
 
 Signature of Thomas Quiney 533 
 
 Monument at Stratford 539 
 
 Shakspere's Will „ 
 
 Fac-simile of entry in Parish Register of the burial 
 
 of Anne Shakspere 543 
 
 Ditto of the burial of Susanna Hall 543 
 
 Ditto of the burial of Judith Quiney 544 
 
 Autograph of Eliza Barnard 544 
 
 Autographs of Shakspere 547 
 
 Shakspere from Roubiliac's Monument 649 
 
 Shakspere's bust from the Monument at Stratford 551 
 539 
 
 Note on some Points lu Shakspere's V 111 542 
 
 Note on Autographs ,.„ 545 
 
 8tratford Registers 548 
 
 Note on the Portraits of Shakspere 549 
 
 Note on the Shakspere House and New Place „ 552
 
 
 ^^•4 
 
 '&^ '■£-'. 
 
 1m. %
 
 -^2> 
 
 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<liJc. 
 
 13
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE : 
 
 days when the very rich were not slow to do magnificent things for public 
 benefit, and did less for their own vain pride and luxury, — built a stone bridge 
 over the Avon, which has borne the name of Clopton's Bridge, even from the 
 days of Henry VII. until this day. Ecclesiastical foundations were numerous 
 at Stratford ; and such were, in every case, the centres of civilization and pros- 
 perity. The parish church was a collegiate one, with a chantry of five priests ; 
 and there was an ancient guild and chapel of the Holy Cross, partly a religious 
 and partly a civil institution. A grammar-school was connected with the 
 guild ; and the municipal government of the town was settled in a corpo- 
 ration by charter of Edward VI., and the grammar-school especially main- 
 tained. Here then was a liberal accumulation, such as belongs only to 
 an old country, to make a succession of thriving communities at Stratford ; 
 and they did thrive, according to the notion of thrift in those days. But 
 we are not to infer that when John Shakspere removed the daughter and 
 heiress of Arden from the old hall of Wilmecote he placed her in some substan- 
 tial mansion in his corporate town, ornamental as well as solid in its architec- 
 ture, spacious, convenient, fitted up with taste, if not with splendour. Stratford 
 had, in all likelihood, no such houses to offer ; it was a town of wooden houses, 
 a scattered town, — no doubt with gardens separating the low and irregular 
 tenements, sleeping ditches intersecting the properties, and stagnant pools 
 exhaling in the road. A zealous antiquarian has discovered that John Shakspere 
 inhabited a house in Henley Street as early as 1552 ; and that he, as well as two 
 other neighbours, was fined for making a dung-heap in the street.* In 1553, the 
 jurors of Stratford present certain inhabitants as violators of the municipal laws : 
 from which presentment we learn that ban-dogs were not to go about unmuzzled ; 
 nor sheep pastured in the ban- croft for more than an hour each day ; nor swine to 
 feed on the common land unringed,f It is evident that Stratford was a rural town, 
 surrounded with'common fields, and containing a mixed population of agriculturists 
 and craftsmen. The same character was retained as late as 1618, when the privy 
 council represented to the corporation of Stratford that great and lamentable loss 
 had " happened to that town by casualty of fire, which, of late years, hath been 
 very frequently occasioned by means of thatched cottages, stacks of straw, 
 furzes, and such-like combustible stuff, which are suffered to be erected and 
 made confusedly in most of the principal parts of the town without restraint." J 
 If such were the case when the family of William Shakspere occupied the best 
 house in Stratford, — a house in which Queen Henrietta Maria resided for three 
 weeks, when the royalist army held that part of the country in triumph, — it 
 is not unreasonable to suppose that sixty years earlier the greater number of 
 houses in Stratford must have been mean timber buildings, thatched cottages 
 run up of combustible stuff; and that the house in Henley Street which John 
 Shakspere occupied and purchased, and which his son inherited and bequeathed 
 to his sister for her life, must have been an important house, — a house fit 
 
 * Ilimter : 'New Illustrations,' vol. i. p. 18. 
 
 + The proceedings of the court aro given in Mr. Ilalliwell's ' Life of Shakspeare,' a book which 
 may be fairly held to contain all the documentary evidence of this life which has been dis- 
 covered. J Chalmers's 'Apology,' p. 618 
 14
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 for a man of substance, a house of some space and comfort, compared with those, 
 of the majority of the surrounding population. 
 
 That population of the corporate town of Stratford, containing within itself 
 rich endowments and all the framework of civil superiority, would appear 
 insignificant in a modern census. The average annual number of baptisms in 
 1564 was fifty-five; of burials in the same year forty - two : these numbers, 
 upon received principles of calculation, would give us a total population of 
 about one thousand four hundred. In a certificate of charities, &c, in the 
 thirty-seventh year of Henry VIII, , the number of " houselyng people" in 
 Stratford is stated to be fifteen hundred. This population was furnished with all 
 the machinery by which Englishmen, even in very early times, managed their 
 own local affairs, and thus obtained that aptitude for practical good govern- 
 ment which equally rejects the tyranny of the one or of the many. The 
 corporation in the time of John Shakspere consisted of fourteen aldermen and 
 fourteen burgesses, one of the aldermen being annually elected to the office of 
 bailiff. The bailiff held a court of record every fortnight, for the trial of all 
 causes within the jurisdiction of the borough in which the debt and damages 
 did not amount to thirty pounds. There was a court-leet also, which appointed 
 its ale-tasters, who presided over the just measure and wholesome quality of 
 beer, that necessary of life in ancient times ; and which court-leet chose also, 
 annually, four affeerors, who had the power in their hands of summary punish- 
 ment for offences for which no penalty was prescribed by statute. The con- 
 stable was the great police officer, and he was a man of importance, for the 
 burgesses of the corporation invariably served the office. John Shakspere 
 appears from the records of Stratford to have gone through the whole regular 
 course of municipal duty. In 1556 he was on the jury of the court-leet; in 
 1557, an ale-taster; in 1558, a burgess; in 1559, a constable; in 1560, an 
 affeeror ; in 1561, a chamberlain; in 1565, an alderman; and in 1568, high 
 bailiff of the borough, the chief magistrate. 
 
 There have been endless theories, old and new, affirmations, contradictions, 
 as to the worldly calling of John Shakspere. There are ancient registers in 
 Stratford, minutes of the Common Hall, proceedings of the Court-leet, pleas of 
 the Court of Record, writs, which have been hunted over with unwearied 
 diligence, and yet they tell us nothing, or next to nothing, of John Shakspere. 
 When he was elected an alderman in 1565, we can trace out the occupations of 
 his brother aldermen, and readily come to the conclusion that the municipal 
 authority of Stratford was vested, as we may naturally suppose it to have 
 been, in the hands of substantial tradesmen, brewers, bakers, butchers, grocers, 
 victuallers, mercers, woollen-drapers.* Prying into the secrets of time, we 
 are enabled to form some notion of the literary acquirements of this worshipful 
 body. On rare, very rare occasions, the aldermen and burgesses constituting 
 the town council affixed their signatures, for greater solemnity, to some order 
 of the court ; and on the 29th of September, in the seventh of Elizabeth, 
 jpon an order that John Wheler should take the office of bailiff, we have nine- 
 teen names subscribed, aldermen and burgesses. Out of the nineteen six only 
 
 * See Malone'a ' Life of Shakspeare,' Boawell's Malone, vol. ii.. p. 77. 
 
 15
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 can say, " I thank God I have been so well brought up that I can write my 
 name," * The stock of literary acquirement amongst the magnates of Stratford 
 was not very large. And why should that stock of literature have been larger? 
 There were some who had been at the grammar-school, and they perhaps were 
 
 SA*?*># 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 
 
 "=*<£: 
 
 <vn\\ .luifcnycic G auu» ..i iirmr; oUcuUj
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The traditionary belief is sanctioned by long usage and universal acceptation. 
 The merely curious look in reverent silence upon that mean room, with its 
 massive joists and plastered walls, firm with ribs of oak, where they are told the 
 poet of the human race was born. Eyes now closed on the world, but who have 
 left that behind which the world " will not willingly let die," have glistened under 
 this humble roof, and there have been thoughts unutterable — solemn, confiding, 
 grateful, humble — clustering round their hearts in that hour. The autographs of 
 Byron and Scott are amongst hundreds of perishable inscriptions. Disturb not 
 the belief that William Shakspere first saw the light in this venerated room.* 
 
 {; The victor Time has stood on Avon's side 
 To doom the fall of many a home of pride ; 
 Rapine o'er Evesham's gilded fane has strode, 
 And gorgeous Kenilworth has paved the road ; 
 But Time has gently laid his withering hands 
 On one frail House — the House of Shakspere stands ; 
 Centuries are gone — fallen ' the cloud-capped tow'rs ; ' 
 . But Shakspere' s home, his boyhood's home, is ours ! " 
 
 Prologue for the ShaJcs})ere Night, Dec, 7, 1347, kg C. Knight. 
 
 * "We shall postpone, until nearly the close of this volume, a description, not only of the most 
 recent condition of the premises in Henley Street, but of the garden of New Place, which has also 
 been acquired by public subscription. (See Book IT. chapter 10.) 
 
 Lm. I) M
 
 WILLIAM SHAXSPtfBB : 
 
 
 ;' ■;:- : " 
 
 |] Jj 1 | iff |PijTSi^fw* ,!i ^ 
 
 [Inner Court of the Grammar School.] 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SCHOOL. 
 
 The poet in his well-known ' Seven Ages ' has necessarily presented to us onty 
 the great boundary -marks of a human life : the progress from one stage to 
 another he has left to be imagined : — 
 
 " At first the infant 
 Muling and puking in the nurse's arms." 
 
 Perhaps the most influential, though the least observed, part of man's existence, 
 that in which he learns most of good or of evil, lies in the progress between this 
 first act and the second : — 
 
 " And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, 
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
 Unwillingly to school." 
 
 Between the " nurse's arms" and the " school" there is an important interval 
 
 34
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 filled up by a mother's education. Let us see what the home instruction of the 
 young Shakspere would probably have been. 
 
 There is a passage in one of Shakspere's Sonnets, the 89th, which has induced 
 a belief that he had the misfortune of a physical defect, which would render him 
 peculiarly the object of maternal solicitude : — 
 
 m " Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, 
 
 And I will comment upon that offence : 
 Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt ; 
 Against thy reasons making no defence." 
 
 Again in the 37th Sonnet : — 
 
 " As a decrepit father takes delight 
 To see his active child do deeds of youth, 
 So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite, 
 Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth." 
 
 These lines have been interpreted to mean that William Shakspere was literally 
 lame,* and that his lameness was such as to limit him, when he became an actor, 
 to the representation of the parts of old men. We should, on the contrary, have 
 no doubt whatever that the verses we have quoted may be most fitly received 
 in a metaphorical sense, were there not some subsequent lines in the 37th Son- 
 net which really appear to have a literal meaning ; and thus to render the 
 previous lame and lameness expressive of something more than the general self- 
 abasement which they would otherwise appear to imply. In the following lines 
 lame means something distinct from poor and despised : — 
 
 " For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, 
 Or any of these all, of all, or more, 
 Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit, 
 I make my love engrafted to this store : 
 Po then I am not lame, poor, nor despis'd, 
 Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give." 
 
 Of one thing, however, we may be quite sure — that, if Shakspere were lame, his 
 infirmity was not such as to disqualify him for active bodily exertion. The same 
 series of verses that have suggested this belief that he was lame also show that 
 he was a horseman. f His entire works exhibit that familiarity with external 
 nature, with rural occupations, with athletic sports, which is incompatible with 
 an inactive boyhood. It is not impossible that some natural defect, or some 
 accidental injury, may have modified the energy of such a child ; and have che- 
 
 * " Malone has most inefficiently attempted to explain away the palpable meaning of the 
 above lines ; and adds, ' If Shakspeare was in truth lame, he had it not in his power to halt occa- 
 sionally for this or any other purpose. The defect must have been fixed and permanent.' Not so. 
 Surely many an infirmity of the kind may be skilfully concealed; or only become visible in the 
 moments of hurried movement. Either Sir Walter Scott or Lord Byron might, without any im- 
 propriety, have written the verses in question. They would have been applicable to either of 
 them. Indeed the lameness of Lord Byron was exactly such as Shakspeare's might have been ; 
 and I remember, as a boy, that he selected those speeches for declamation which would not con- 
 strain him to the use of such exertions as might obtrude the defect of his person into notice." — 
 Life of William Shakspeare, by the Rev. William Harness.. M. A. 
 
 \ See Sonnets 50 and 51. 
 
 D2 35
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 fished in him that love of books, and traditionary lore, and silent contemplation, 
 without which his intellect could not have been nourished into its wondrous 
 strength. But we cannot imagine William Shakspere a petted child, chained 
 to home, not breathing the free air upon his native hills, denied the boy's pri- 
 vilege to explore every nook of his own river. We would imagine him com- 
 muning from the first with Nature, as Gray has painted him — 
 
 " The dauntless child 
 Stretch'd forth his little arms and sniil'd." 
 
 The only qualifications necessary for the admission of a boy into the Free 
 Grammar School of Stratford were, that he should be a resident in the town, of 
 seven years of age, and able to read. The Grammar School, as we shall pre- 
 sently have to show in detail, was essentially connected with the Corporation of 
 Stratford ; and it is impossible to imagine that, when the son of John Shakspere 
 became qualified by age for admission to a school where the best education of 
 the time was given, literally for nothing, his father, in that year, being chief 
 alderman, should not have sent him to the school. We assume, without any 
 hesitation, that William Shakspere did receive in every just sense of the word 
 the education of a scholar ; and as such education was to be had at his own 
 door, we also assume that he was brought up at the Free Grammar School of 
 his own town. His earlier instruction would therefore be a preparation for 
 this school, and the probability is that such instruction was given him at home. 
 The letters have been taught, syllables have grown into words, and words into 
 short sentences. There is something to be committed to memory : — 
 
 " That is question now ; 
 And then comes answer like an Absey-book." * 
 
 In the first year of Edward VI. was published by authority ' The ABC, with 
 the Pater-noster, Ave, Crede, and Ten Commandementtes in Englysshe, newly 
 translated and set forth at the kynges most gracious commandement.' But the 
 ABC soon became more immediately connected with systematic instruction in 
 religious belief. The alphabet and a few short lessons were followed by the 
 catechism, so that the book containing the catechism came to be called an A B C 
 book, or Absey-book. Towards the end of Edward's reign was put forth by au- 
 thority 'A Short Catechisme or playne instruction, conteynynge the sume of 
 christian learninge/ which all schoolmasters were called upon to teach after 
 the " little catechism" previously set forth. Such books were undoubtedly sup- 
 pressed in the reign of Mary, but upon the accession of Elizabeth they were again 
 circulated. A question then arises, Did William Shakspere receive his ele- 
 mentary instruction in Christianity from the books sanctioned by the Reformed 
 Church ? It has been maintained that his father belonged to the Roman Ca- 
 tholic persuasion. This belief rests upon the following foundation. In the 
 year 1770, Thomas Hart, who then inhabited one of the tenements in Henley 
 Street which had been bequeathed to his family by William Shakspere's grand- 
 daughter, employed a bricklayer to new tile the house ; and this bricklayer, by 
 
 * King John, Act t. Scene l 
 86
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 name Mosely, found hidden between the rafters ard the tiling a manuscript 
 consisting of six leaves stitched together, which he gave to Mr. Peyton, an alder- 
 man of Stratford, who sent it to Mr. Malone, through the Rev. Mr. Devon- 
 port, vicar of Stratford. This paper, which was first published by Malone in 
 1 790, is printed also in Reed's Shakspeare and in Drake's ' Shakspeare and his 
 Times.' It consists of fourteen articles, purporting to, be a confession of faith of 
 " John Shakspear, an unworthy member of the holy Catholic religion." We 
 have no hesitation whatever in believing this document to be altogether a fa- 
 brication. Chalmers says, " It was the performance of a clerk, the undoubted 
 work of the family priest."* Malone, when he first published the paper in his 
 edition of Shakspeare, said — " I have taken some pains to ascertain the authen- 
 ticity of this manuscript, and, after a very careful inquiry, am perfectly satis- 
 fied that it is genuine." In 1796, however, in his work on the Ireland forge- 
 ries, he asserts — " I have since obtained documents that clearly prove it could 
 not have been the composition of any of our poet's family." We not only 
 do not believe that it was " the composition of any one of our poet's family," 
 nor " the undoubted work of the family priest," but we do not believe that it is 
 the work of a Roman Catholic at all. It professes to be the writer's " last spi- 
 ritual will, testament, confession, protestation, and confession of faith." Now, 
 if the writer had been a Roman Catholic, or if it had been drawn up for his ap- 
 proval and signature by his priest, it would necessarily, professing such fulness 
 and completeness, have contained something of belief touching the then mate- 
 rial points of spiritual difference between the Roman and the Reformed Church. 
 Nothing, however, can be more vague than all this tedious protestation and con- 
 fession, with the exception that phrases, and indeed long passages, are intro- 
 duced for the purpose of marking the supposed writer's opinions in the way that 
 should be most offensive to those of a contrary opinion, as if by way of bravado 
 or seeking of persecution. Thus : " Item, I, John Shakspear, do protest that I 
 will also pass out of this life armed with the last sacrament of extreme unction." 
 Again : " Item, I, John Shakspear, do protest that I am willing, yea, I do infi- 
 nitely desire and humbly crave, that of this my last will and testament the glo- 
 rious and ever Virgin Mary, mother of God, refuge and advocate of sinners, 
 (whom I honour specially above all saints,) may be the chief executress toge- 
 ther with these other saints, my patrons, (Saint Winefride,) all whom I invoke 
 and beseech to be present at the hour of my death, that she and they comfort 
 me with their desired presence." Again : " Item, I, John Shakspear, do in like 
 manner pray and beseech my dear friends, parents, and kinsfolks, by the bowels 
 of our Saviour Jesus Christ, that, since it is uncertain what lot will befall me, 
 for fear notwithstanding lest by reason of my sins I be to pass and stay a long 
 while in purgatory, they will vouchsafe to assist and succour me with their holy 
 prayers and satisfactory works, especially with the holy sacrifice of the mass, as 
 being the most effectual means to deliver souls from their torments and pains ; 
 from the which if I shall, by God's gracious goodness, and by their virtuous 
 works, be delivered, I do promise that I will not be ungrateful unto them for so 
 
 * Apology for the Believers, page 199. 
 
 37
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 great a benefit." This last item, which is the twelfth of the paper, is de- 
 monstrative to us of its spuriousness. The thirteenth article of this pretended 
 testament runs thus : — " I, John Shakspear, do by this my last will and testa- 
 ment bequeath my soul, as soon as it shall be delivered and loosened from 
 the prison of this my body, to be entombed in the sweet and amorous coffin 
 of the side of Jesus Christ ; and that in this life-giving sepulchre it may rest 
 and live, perpetually enclosed in that eternal habitation of repose, there to 
 bless for ever and ever that direful iron of the lance, which, like a charge in 
 a censer, forms so sweet and pleasant a monument within the sacred breast 
 of my Lord and Saviour." This ambitious nonsense is certainly not the language 
 of a plain man like the supposed writer. 
 
 That John Shakspere was what we popularly call a Protestant in the year 
 1568, when his son William was four years old, may be shown by the clearest 
 of proofs. He was in that year the chief magistrate of Stratford ; he could 
 not have become so without taking the Oath of Supremacy, according to the 
 statute of the 1st of Elizabeth, 1558-9.* To refuse this oath was made 
 punishable with forfeiture and imprisonment, with the pains of praemunire 
 and high treason. " The conjecture," says Chalmers (speaking in support of 
 the authenticity of this confession of faith), " that Shakspeare's family were 
 Roman Catholics, is strengthened by the fact that his father declined to 
 attend the corporation meetings, and was at last removed from the corporate 
 body." He was removed from the corporate body in 1585, with a distinct 
 statement of the reason for this removal — his non-attendance when summoned 
 to the halls. According to this reasoning of Chalmers, John Shakspere did 
 not hesitate to take the Oath of Supremacy when he was chief magistrate 
 in 1564, but retired from the corporation in 1585, where he might have 
 remained without offence to his own conscience or to others, being, in the lan- 
 guage of that day, a Popish recusant, to be stigmatized as such, persecuted, and 
 subject to the most odious restrictions. If he left or was expelled the corporation 
 for his religious opinions, he would, of course, not attend the service of the church, 
 for which offence he would be liable, in 1585, to a fine of 20/. per month ; and 
 then, to crown the whole, in this his last confession, spiritual will, and testament, 
 he calls upon all his kinsfolks to assist and succour him after his death " with the 
 holy sacrifice of the mass," with a promise that he " will not be ungrateful unto 
 them for so great a benefit," well knowing that by the Act of 1581 the saying o\ 
 mass was punishable by a year's imprisonment and a fine of 200 marks, and 
 Ihe hearing of it by a similar imprisonment and a fine of 100 marks. The 
 fabrication appears to us as gross as can well be imagined. f But a sub- 
 sequent discovery of a document in the State Paper Office, communicated by 
 
 * "And all and every temporal judge, mayor, and other lay or temporal officer and mhiialer, 
 and every other person having your Highness's fee or wages within this realm, or any your 
 Highness's dominions, shall make, take, and receive a corporal oath upon the Evangelist, before 
 such person or persons as shall please your Highness, your heirs or successors, under the great 
 seal of England, to assign and name to accept and take the same, according to the tenor aud effect 
 hereafter following, that ia to say," &c. 
 
 f See Note at the end of this Chapter. 
 38
 
 A BIOGRAPHY.' 
 
 Mr. Lemon to Mr. Collier, shows that in 1592, Mr. John Shakspere, with 
 fourteen of his neighbours, were returned by certain Commissioners as "such 
 recusants as have been heretofore presented for not coming monthly to the church 
 according to her Majesty's laws, and yet are thought to forbear the church for 
 debt and for fear of process, or for some other worse faults, or for age, sickness, 
 or impotency of body." John Shakspere is classed amongst nine who " came not 
 to church for fear of process for debt." We shall have to notice this assigned 
 reason for the recusancy in a future Chapter. But the religious part of the question 
 is capable of another solution, than that the father of Shakspere had become 
 reconciled to the Romish religion. At that period the puritan section of the 
 English church were acquiring great strength in Stratford and the neighbourhood; 
 and in 1596, Richard Bifield, one of the most zealous of the puritan ministers, 
 became its Vicar* John Shakspere and his neighbours might not have been Popish 
 recusants, and yet have avoided the church. It must be borne in mind that the 
 parents of William Shakspere passed through the great changes of religious opinion, 
 as the greater portion of the people passed, without any violent corresponding change 
 in their habits derived from their forefathers. In the time of Henry VIII. the 
 great contest of opinion was confined to the supremacy of the Pope ; the great 
 practical state measure was the suppression of the religious houses. Under 
 Edward VI. there was a very careful compromise of all those opinions and prac- 
 tices in which the laity were participant. In the short reign of Mary the per- 
 secution of the Reformers must have been offensive even to those who clung 
 fastest to the ancient institutions and modes of belief; and even when the Re- 
 formation was fully established under Elizabeth, the habits of the people were 
 still very slightly interfered with. The astounding majority of the conforming 
 clergy is a convincing proof how little the opinions of the laity must have been 
 disturbed. They would naturally go along with their old teachers. We have 
 to imagine, then, that the father of William Shakspere, and his mother, were, at 
 the time of his birth, of the religion established by law. His father, by holding 
 a high municipal office after the accession of Elizabeth, had solemnly declared 
 his adherence to the great principle of Protestantism — the acknowledgment ot 
 the civil sovereign as head of the church. The speculative opinions in which 
 the child was brought up would naturally shape themselves to the creed which 
 his father must have professed in his capacity of magistrate ; but, according to 
 some opinions, this profession was a disguise on the part of his father. The 
 young Shakspere was brought up in the Roman persuasion, according to these 
 notions, because he intimates an acquaintance with the practices of the Roman 
 church, and mentions purgatory, shrift, confession, in his dramas. f Surely the 
 poet might exhibit this familiarity with the ancient language of all Christendom, 
 without thus speaking "from the overflow of Roman Catholic zeal. "% Was 
 it " Roman Catholic zeal " which induced him to write those strong lines io 
 King John against the " Italian Priest," and against those who 
 
 ■ Hunter : 'New Illustrations,' vol. i. p. 106. t See Chalmers's ' Apology, p. 200. 
 
 X Chalmers. See also Drake, who adopts, in great measure, Chalmers's argument. 
 
 S3
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 " Purchase corrupted pardon of a man " t '„ 
 
 Was it " Roman Catholic zeal " which made him introduce these words into the 
 famous prophecy of the glory and happiness of the reign of Elizabeth — ■ 
 
 " God shall bo truly known " ? 
 
 He was brought up, without doubt, in the opinions which his father publicly 
 professed, in holding office subject to his most solemn affirmation of those opi- 
 nions. The distinctions between the Protestant and the Popish recusant were 
 then not so numerous or speculative as they afterwards became. But, such as 
 they were, we may be sure that William Shakspere learnt his catechism from 
 his mother in all sincerity ; that he frequented the church in which he and his 
 brothers and sisters were baptized ; that he was prepared for the discipline of 
 the school in which religious instruction by a minister of the church was regu- 
 larly afforded as the end of the other knowledge there taught. He became 
 tolerant, according to the manifestation of his after-writings, through nature 
 and the habits and friendships of his early life. But that tolerance does not 
 presume insincerity in himself or his family. The ' Confession of Faith ' found 
 in the roof of his father's house two hundred years after he was born would 
 argue the extreme of religious zeal, even to the defiance of all law and au- 
 thority, on the part of a man who had by the acceptance of office professed his 
 adherence to the established national faith. If that paper were to be believed, 
 we must be driven to the conclusion that John Shakspere was an unconscien- 
 tious hypocrite for one part of his life, and a furious bigot for the other part. 
 It is much easier to believe that the Reformation fell lightly upon John Shak- 
 spere, as it did upon the bulk of the laity ; and he and his wife, without any 
 offence to their consciences, saw the Common Prayer take the place of the 
 Mass-book, and acknowledged the temporal sovereign to be head of the church ; 
 that in the education of their children they dispensed with auricular confession 
 and penance ; but that they, in common with their neighbours, tolerated, and 
 perhaps delighted in, many of the festivals and imaginative forms of the old 
 religion, and even looked up for heavenly aid through intercession, without 
 fancying that they were yielding to an idolatrous superstition, such as Puri- 
 tanism came subsequently to denounce. The transition from the old worship 
 to the new was not an ungentle one for the laity. The early reformers were 
 too wise to attempt to root up habits — those deep-sunk foundations of the past 
 which break the ploughshares of legislation when it strives to work an inch 
 yelow the earth's surface. 
 
 Pass we on to matters more congenial to the universality of William Shak- 
 spere's mind than the controversies of doctrine, or the mutual persecutions of 
 rival sects. He escaped their pernicious influences. He speaks always with 
 reverence of the teachers of the highest wisdom, by whatever name denomi- 
 nated. He has learnt, then, at his mother's knee the cardinal doctrines of 
 Christianity ; he can read. His was an age of few books. Yet, believing, as we 
 do, that his father and mother were well-educated persons, there would be 
 volumes in their house capable of exciting the interest of an inquiring boy — 
 volumes now rarely seen and very precious. Some of the first books of the 
 40
 
 A TttOGRAPHY. 
 
 English press might be there ; but the changes of language in the ninety years 
 that had passed since the introduction of printing into England would almost 
 seal them against a boy's perusal. Caxton's books were essentially of a popular 
 character ; but, as he himself complained, the language of his time was greatly 
 unsettled, showing that " we Englishmen ben born under the domination of 
 the moon, which is never steadfast."* Caxton's Catalogue was rich in ro- 
 mantic and poetical lore — the ' Confessio Amantis,' the ' Canterbury Tales,' 
 ' Troilus and Creseide,' the ' Book of Troy,' the ' Dictes of the Philosophers,' the 
 ' Mirror of the World,' the ' Siege of Jerusalem/ the ' Book of Chivalry,' the 
 ' Life of King Arthur.' Here were legends of faith and love, of knightly deeds 
 and painful perils — glimpses of history through the wildest romance — enough 
 to fill the mind of a boy-poet with visions of unutterable loveliness and splen- 
 dour. The famous successors of the first printer followed in the same career- 
 they adapted their works to the great body of purchasers ; they left the learned 
 to their manuscripts. What a present must " Dame Julyana Bernes " have be- 
 stowed upon her countrymen in her book of Hunting, printed by Wynkyn 
 de Worde, with other books of sports ! Master Skelton, laureate, would rejoice 
 the hearts of the most orthodox, by his sly hits at the luxury and domination 
 of the priesthood : Robert Copland, who translated " Kynge Appolyne of 
 Thyre,' sent perhaps the story of that^ prince's " malfortunes and perilous ad- 
 ventures " into a soil in which they were to grow into a ' Pericles : ' and 
 Stephen Hawes, in his ' Pass Tyme of Pleasure,' he being " one of the grooms 
 of the most honourable chamber of our sovereign lord King Henry the 
 Seventh," would deserve the especial favour of the descendant of Robert 
 Arden. Subsequently came the English ' Froissart ' of Lord Berners, and other 
 great books hereafter to be mentioned. But if these, and such as these, were 
 not to be read by the child undisciplined by school, there were pictures in some 
 of those old books which of themselves would open a world to him. That 
 wondrous book of ' Bartholomseus de Proprietatibus Rerum,' describing, and 
 exhibiting in appropriate wood-cuts, every animate and inanimate thing, and 
 even the most complex operations of social life, whether of cooking, ablution, 
 or the ancient and appropriate use of the comb for the destruction of beasts of 
 prey — the child Shakspere would have turned over its leaves with delight. 
 'The Chronicle of England, with the Fruit of Times,' — the edition of 1527, 
 with cuts innumerable, — how must it have taken that boy into the days of 
 " fierce wars," and have shown him the mailed knights, the archers, and the 
 billmen that fought at Poitiers for a vain empery, and afterwards turned their 
 swords and their arrows against each other at Barnet and Tewkesbury ? — What 
 dim thoughts of earthly mutations, unknown to the quiet town of Stratford, 
 must the young Shakspere have received, as he looked upon the pictures of 
 " the boke of John Bochas, describing the fall of princes, princesses, and other 
 nobles," and especially as he beheld the portrait of John Lydgate, the trans- 
 lator, kneeling in a long black cloak, admiring the vicissitude of the wheel of 
 fortune, the divinity being represented by a male figure, in a robe, with ex- 
 panded wings ! Rude and incongruous works of art, ye were yet an intelligible 
 
 * Boko of Eneydoi 
 
 41
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 language to the young and the uninstructed ; and the things ye taught through 
 the visual sense were not readily to be forgotten ! 
 
 But there were books in those days, simple and touching in their diction, 
 and sounding alike the depths of the hearts of childhood and of age, which 
 were the printed embodiments of that traditionary lore that the shepherd re- 
 peated in his loneliness when pasturing his flocks in the uplands, and the 
 maiden recited to her companions at the wheel. Were there not in every 
 house ' Christmas Carols,' — perhaps not the edition of Wynkyn de Worde in 
 1521, but reprints out of number? Did not the same great printer scatter 
 about merry England — and especially dear were such legends to the people of 
 the midland and northern counties — "A lytell Geste of Robyn Hode?" Whose 
 ear amongst the yeomen of Warwickshire did not listen when some genial 
 spirit would recite out that of " lytell Geste ?" — 
 
 " Lythe and lysteu, gentylinen, 
 That be of fre bore blode, 
 I shall you tell of a good yeman, 
 His name was llobyn Hode ; 
 llobyu was a proud outlawe 
 Whyles he walked on ground, 
 So curteyse an outlawe as he was one 
 Was never none y fouude." 
 
 The good old printer, Wynkyn, knew that there were real, because spiritual, 
 truths in these ancient songs and gestes ; and his press poured them out in 
 company with many " A full devoute and gosteley Treatise." That charming, 
 and yet withal irreverend, " mery geste of the frere and the boy," — what genial 
 mirth was there in seeing the child, ill-used by his step-mother, making a 
 whole village dance to his magic pipe, even to the reverendicity of the frere 
 leaping in profane guise as the little boy commanded, so that when he ceased 
 piping he could make the frere and the hard step-mother obedient to his inno- 
 cent will ! There was beautiful wisdom in these old tales — something that 
 seemed to grow instinctively out of the bosom of nature, as the wild blossoms 
 and the fruit of a rich intellectual soil, uncultivated, but not sterile. Of the 
 romances of chivalry might be read, in the fair types of Richard Pynson, ' Sir 
 Bevis of Southampton ; ' and in those of Robert Copland, ' Arthur of lytell 
 Brytayne;' and 'Sir Degore, a Romance,' printed by William Copland ; also 
 ' Sir Isenbrace,' and ' The Knighte of the Swanne,' a " miraculous history," 
 from the same press. Nor was the dramatic form of poetry altogether wanting 
 in those days of William Shakspere's childhood — verse, not essentially dramatic 
 in the choice of subject, but dialogue, which may sometimes pass for dramatic 
 even now. There was ' A new Interlude and a mery of the nature of the i i i i 
 elements ; ' and ' Magnyfycence ; a goodly interlude and mery ; ' and an inter- 
 lude " wherein is shewd and described as well the bewte of good propertes of 
 women as theyr vyces and euyll condicions ; " and ' An interlude entitled 
 Jack Juggeler and mistress Boundgrace ;' and, most attractive of all, ' A newe 
 playe for to be played in Maye games, very plesaunte and full of pastyme,' on 
 the subject of Robin Hood and the Friar. The merry interludes of the inde-
 
 A TSTOGIUrHY. 
 
 fatigable John Heywood were preserved in print, in the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, whilst many a noble play that was produced fifty years afterwards 
 has perished with its actors. To repeat passages out of these homely dialogue?, 
 in which, however homely they were, much solid knowledge was in some sort 
 conveyed, would be a sport for childhood. Out of books, too, and single printed 
 sheets, might the songs that gladdened the hearts of the English yeoman, and 
 solaced the dreary winter hours of the esquire in his hall, be readily learnt. 
 What countryman, at fair, or market, could resist the attractive titles of the 
 "balletts" printed by the good widow Toy, of London — a munificent widow, 
 who presented the Stationers' Company, in 1560, with a new table-cloth and a 
 dozen of napkins — titles that have melody even to us who have lost the pleasant 
 words they ushered in ? There are, — 
 
 " Who lyve so mery and make suclie sporte 
 As they that be of the poorer sorte?'' 
 and, 
 
 " God send me a wyfe that will do as I say ; 
 
 and, very charming in the rhythm of its one known line, 
 
 " The rose is from my garden gone." 
 Songs of sailors were there also in those days — England's proper songs— such as 
 ' Hold the anchor fast.' There were collections of songs, too, as those of " Tho- 
 mas Whithorne, gentleman, for three, four, or five voices," which found their 
 way into every yeoman's house when we were a musical people, and could sing 
 in parts. It was the wise policy of the early Reformers, when chantries had 
 for the most part been suppressed, to direct the musical taste of the laity to the 
 performance of the church service ; * and many were the books adapted to this 
 end, such as ' Bassus,' consisting of portions of the service to be chanted, and 
 ' The whole Psalms, in four parts, which may be sung to all musical instru- 
 ments ' (1563). The metrical version of the Psalms, by Sternhold and Hop- 
 kins, first printed in 1562, was essentially for the people; and, accustomed as we 
 have been to smile at the occasional want of refinement in this translation, its 
 manly vigour, ay, and its bold harmony, may put to shame many of the feebler 
 productions of later times. Sure we are that the child William Shakspere had 
 his memory stored with its vigorous and idiomatic English. 
 
 But there was one book which it was the especial happiness of that contem- 
 plative boy to be familiar with. When in the year 1537 the Bible in English 
 was first printed by authority, Richard Grafton, the printer, sent six copies to 
 Cranmer, beseeching the archbishop to accept them as his simple gift, adding, 
 " For your lordship, moving our most gracious prince to the allowance and 
 licensing of such a work, hath wrought such an act worthy of praise as never 
 
 * One of the pleasantest characteristics of the present day is the revival of a love for and a 
 knowledge of music amongst the people. Twenty years ago the birthplace of Shakspere presented 
 a worthy examj^le to England. The beautiful church in which our great poet is buried had beeu 
 recently repaired and newly fitted up with rare propriety; and, most appropriately in this fine old 
 collegiate church and chantry, the choir of young persons of both sexes, voluntarily formed from 
 amongst the respectable inhabitants, was equal to the performance in the most careful style of the 
 choral parts of the service, and of those anthems whose highest excellence is their solemn harmony 
 rather than the display of individual voices. 
 
 43
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 was mentioned in any chronicle in this realm." From that time, with the 
 exception of the short interval of the reign of Mary, the presses of London 
 were for the most part employed in printing Bibles. That book, to whose 
 wonderful heart-stirring narratives the child listens with awe and love, was 
 now and ever after to be the solace of the English home. With " the Great 
 Bible " open before her, the mother would read aloud to her little ones that 
 beautiful story of Joseph sold into slavery, and then advanced to honour — and 
 how his brethren knew him not when, suppressing his tears, he said, " Is your 
 father well, the old man of whom ye spake ? " — or, how, when the child Samuel 
 was laid down to sleep, the Lord called to him three times, and he grew, and 
 God was with him ; — or, how the three holy men who would not worship the 
 golden image walked about in the midst of the burning fiery furnace ; — or, how 
 the prophet that was unjustly cast into the den of lions was found unhurt, 
 because the true God had sent his angels and shut the lions' mouths. These 
 were the solemn and affecting narratives, wonderfully preserved for our in- 
 struction from a long antiquity, that in the middle of the sixteenth century 
 became unclosed to the people of England. But more especially was that other 
 Testament opened which most imported them to know ; and thus, when the child 
 repeated in lisping accents the Christian's prayer to his Father in heaven, the 
 mother could expound to him that, when the Divine Author of that prayer first 
 gave it to us, He taught us that the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the 
 pure in heart, the peacemakers, were the happy and the beloved of God ; and 
 laid down that comprehensive law of justice, " All things whatsoever ye would 
 that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." We believe that the home 
 education of William Shakspere was grounded upon this Book ; and that, if this 
 Book had been sealed to his childhood, he might have been the poet of nature, 
 of passion, — his h.umour might have been as rich as we find it, and his wit as 
 pointed, — but that he would not have been the poet of the most profound as 
 well as the most tolerant philosophy ; his insight into the nature of man, his 
 meanness and his grandeur, his weakness and his strength, would not have 
 been what it is. 
 
 As the boy advanced towards the age of seven a little preparation for the 
 grammar-school would be desirable. There would be choice of elementary 
 books. The ' Alphabetum Latino Anglicum,' issued under the special autho- 
 rity of Henry VIII., might attract by its most royal and considerate assurance 
 that " we forget not the tender babes and the youth of our realm." Learning, 
 however, was not slow then to put on its solemn aspects to the " tender babes ; " 
 and so we have some grammars with a wooden cut of an awful man sitting on a 
 high chair, pointing to a book with his right hand, but with a mighty rod in his 
 left. On the other hand, the excellent Grammar of William Lilly would open a 
 pleasant prospect of delight and recreation, in its well-known picture of a huge 
 fruit-bearing tree, with little boys mounted amongst its branches and gathering 
 in the bounteous crop — a vision not however to be interpreted too literally. 
 Lilly's Grammar, we are assured by certain grave reasoners, was the Grammar 
 used by Shakspere, because he quotes a line from that Grammar which is a modi- 
 
 44
 
 A BIOGRAPITY. 
 
 fication or a line in Terence. Be it so, as far as the Grammar goes. The mem 017 
 of his school-lessons might have been stronger than that of his later acquire- 
 ments. He might have quoted Lilly, and yet have read Terence. This, how- 
 ever, is not the place for the opening of the quccstio vexata of Shakspere's learn- 
 ing. To the grammar-school, then, with some preparation, we hold that Wil- 
 liam Shakspere goes, in the year 1571. His father is at this time, as we 
 have said, chief alderman of his town ; he is a gentleman, now, of repute and 
 authority ; he is Master John Shakspere ; and assuredly the worthy curate of 
 the neighbouring village of Luddington, Thomas Hunt, who was also the school- 
 master, would have received his new scholar with some kindness. As his 
 " shining morning face " first passed out of the main street into that old court 
 through which the upper room of learning was to be reached, a new life would 
 be opening upon him. The humble minister of religion who was his first in- 
 structor has left no memorials of his talents or his acquirements ; and in a few 
 years another master came after him, Thomas Jenkins, also unknown to fame. 
 All praise and honour be to them ; for it is impossible to imagine that the 
 teachers of William Shakspere were evil instructors — giving the boy husks in- 
 stead of wholesome aliment. They could not have been harsh and perverse in- 
 structors, for such spoil the gentlest natures, and his was always gentle : — " My 
 gentle Shakspere " is he called by a rough but noble spirit — one in whom was 
 all honesty and genial friendship under a rude exterior. His wondrous abili- 
 ties could not be spoiled even by ignorant instructors. 
 
 In the seventh year of the reign of Edward VI. a royal charter was granted 
 to Stratford for the incorporation of the inhabitants. That charter recites — 
 " ; That the borough of Stratford-upon-Avon was an ancient borough, in which a 
 certain guild was theretofore founded, and endowed with divers lands, tene- 
 ments, and possessions, out of the rents, revenues, and profits whereof a certain 
 free grammar-school for the education of boys there was made and supported."* 
 The charter further recites the other public objects to which the property of the 
 guild had been applied ; — that it was dissolved ; and that its possessions had 
 come into the hands of the king. The charter of incorporation then grants to 
 the bailiff and burgesses certain properties which were parcel of the possessions 
 of the guild, for the general charges of the borough, for the maintenance of an 
 ancient almshouse, " and that the free grammar-school for the instruction and 
 education of boys and youth there should be thereafter kept up and maintained 
 as theretofore it used to be." It may be doubted whether Stratford was bene- 
 fited by the dissolution of its guild. We see that its grammar-school was an 
 ancient establishment : it was not a creation of the charter of Edward VI., 
 although it is popularly called one of the grammar-schools of that king, and was 
 the last school established by him.f The people of Stratford had possessed the 
 advantage of a school for instruction in Greek and Latin, which is the distinct 
 object of a grammar-school, from the time of Edward IV., when Thomas Jolyffe, 
 in 1482, "granted to the guild of the Holy Cross of Stratford-upon-Avon 
 
 Report of the Commissioners for inquiring concerning Charities. \ See Strype'a ' Memoi ials.' 
 
 45
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 all his lands and tenements in Stratford and Dodwell, in the county of War- 
 wick, upon condition that the master, aldermen, and proctors of the said guild 
 should find a priest, fit and able in knowledge, to teach grammar freely to all 
 scholars coming to the school in the said town to him, taking nothing of the 
 scholars for their teaching."* Dugdale describes the origin of guilds, speaking of 
 this of Stratford: — "Such meetings were at first used by a mutual agreement 
 of friends and neighbours, and particular licenses granted to them for conferring 
 lands or rents to defray their public charges in respect that, by the statute of 
 mortmain, such gifts would otherwise have been forfeited." 
 
 In the surveys of Henry VIII., previous to the dissolution of religious houses, 
 there were four salaried priests belonging to the guild of Stratford, with a clerk, 
 who was also schoolmaster, at a salary of ten pounds per annum. f They were 
 a hospitable body these guild-folk, for there was an annual feast, to which all 
 the fraternity resorted, with their tenants and farmers ; and an inventory of 
 their goods in the 15th of Edward IV. shows that they were rich in plate for 
 the service of the table, as well as of the chapel. That chapel was partly rebuilt 
 by the great benefactor of Stratford, Sir Hugh Clopton ; and after the dissolu- 
 tion of the guild, and the establishment of the grammar-school by the charter 
 cf Edward VI., the school was in all probability kept within it. There is an 
 entry in the Corporation books, of February 18, 1594-5 — "At this hall it was 
 agreed by the bailiff and the greater number of the company now present that 
 there shall be no school kept in the chapel from this time following." In 
 associating, therefore, the schoolboy days of William Shakspere with the Free 
 
 |lu:crior of the Grammar SihooJ.] 
 Lteport of Commissioners, <&c. 
 
 f Dt:gd«lfl,
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Gram mar- School of Stratford, we cannot with any certainty imagine him en- 
 gaged in his daily tasks in the ancient room which is now the school-room. 
 And yet the use of the chapel as a school, discontinued in 1595, might only have 
 been a temporary use. A little space may be occupied in a notice of each 
 building. 
 
 The grammar-school is now an ancient room over the old town-hall of Strat- 
 ford ; — both, no doubt, offices of the ancient guild. We enter from the street 
 into a court, of which one side is formed by the chapel of the Holy Cross. 
 Opposite the chapel is a staircase, ascending which we are in a plain room, with 
 a ceiling. But it is evident that this work of plaster is modern, and that above 
 it we have the oak roof of the sixteenth century. In this room are a few forms 
 and a rude antique desk. 
 
 The Chapel of the Guild is in great part a very perfect specimen of the plainer 
 ecclesiastical architecture of the reign of Henry VII. : — a building of just pro- 
 portions and some ornament, but not running into elaborate decoration. The 
 engraving below exhibits its street-front, showing the grammar school beyond. 
 
 iy^%p| 
 
 WVtt& 
 
 ^Clapel of the Guild, and Grammar School ; Street Front. J 
 
 The interior now presents nothing very remarkable. But upon a general repair 
 of the Chapel in 1804, beneath the whitewash of successive generations was 
 discovered, a series of most remarkable paintings, some in that portion of the 
 building erected by Sir Hugh Clopton, and others in the far more ancient 
 Chancel. A very elaborate series of coloured engravings has been published 
 from these paintings, from drawings made at the time of their discovery by
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEEE '. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Fisher. There can be little doubt, from the defacement of some of 
 the paintings, that they were partially destroyed by violence, and all attempted 
 to be obliterated in the progress of the Reformation. But that outbreak of zeal 
 did not belong to the first periods of religious change ; and it is most probable 
 that these paintings were existing in the early years of Elizabeth's reign. When 
 the five priests of the guild were driven from their home and their means of 
 maintenance, the chapel no doubt ceased to be a place of worship ; and it pro- 
 bably became the school-room, after the foundation of the grammar-school, dis- 
 tinct from the guild, under the charter of Edward VI. If it was the school- 
 room of William Shakspere, those rude paintings must have produced a powerful 
 effect upon his imagination. Many of them in the ancient Chancel constituted a 
 pictorial romance — the history of the Holy Cross, from its origin as a tree at 
 the Creation of the World to its rescue from the Pagan Cosdroy, King of Persia, 
 by the Christian King, Heraclius ; — and its final Exaltation at Jerusalem, — the 
 anniversary of which event was celebrated at Stratford at its annual fair, held on 
 the 14th of September. There were other pictures of Saints, and Martyrdoms; 
 and one, especially, of the murder of Thomas a Becket, which exhibits great 
 force, without that grotesqueness which generally belongs to our early paintings. 
 
 43 
 
 [The Martyrdom of Thomas & Becket: from nn anoient Painting iu the 
 Chapel of the Holy CroBSj
 
 A BIOGEAniY. 
 
 There were fearful pictures, too, of the last Judgment ; with the Seven Deadly 
 Sins visibly portrayed, — the punishments of the evil, the rewards of the just. 
 Surrounded as he was with the memorials of the old religion — with great 
 changes on every side, but still very recent changes — how impossible was it that 
 Shakspere should not have been thoroughly imbued with a knowledge of all that 
 pertained to the faith of his ancestors ! One of the most philosophical writers 
 of our day has said that Catholicism gave us Shakspere.* Not so, entirely. 
 Shakspere belonged to the transition period, or he could not have been quite 
 what he was. His intellect was not the dwarfish and precocious growth of the 
 hot-bed of change, and still less of convulsion. His whole soul was permeated 
 with the ancient vitalities — the things which the changes of institutions could 
 not touch ; but it could bourgeon under the new influences, and blend the past 
 and the present, as the " giant oak " of five hundred winters is covered with 
 the foliage of one spring. f 
 
 * Carlrie — 'French Revolution.' 
 
 + The foundation scholars of this grammar-school at present receive a complete classical edu- 
 cation, r,r> as to fit them for the university, — (Report of Commissioners.) 
 
 Life. E 49
 
 WILLI A M SHAKSPKUE : 
 
 NOTE ON JOHN SHAKSPERE'S CONFESSION OF FAITH. 
 
 TnE thirteenth item of this strange production appears to us, in common with many other pas- 
 sages, to be conceived in that spirit of exaggeration which would mark the work of an imhator 
 of the language of the sixteenth century, rather than the production of one habitually employing 
 it : — " Item, I, John Shakspear, do by this my last will and testament bequeath my soul, as soon 
 as it shall be delivered and loosened from the prison of this my body, to be entombed in the siceel 
 and amorous coffin of the side of Jesus Christ; and that in this life-giving sepulchre it may 
 rest and live, perpetually enclosed in that eternal habitation of repose, there to bless for ever and 
 ever that direful iron of the lance, which, like a charge in a censer, forms so sweet and pleasant a 
 monument within the sacred breast of my Lord and Saviour." Surely this is not the language 
 of a plain man iu earnest. Who then, can it be imagined, would fabricate this production in 
 1770? Mosely the bricklayer finds it in the roof ot the house in which Shakspere was held to 
 be born; and to whom, according to the story, does he give it? Not to the descendant of 
 John Shakspere, the then owner of the house, but to Alderman Peyton, who transmits it to 
 Malone through the Vicar of Stratford. Garrick's Jubilee took place in 1769; but the farces 
 enacted on that occasion were not likely to set people searching after antiquities or fabricating 
 them. But previous to the publication of his edition of Shakspere, in 1790, Malone visited 
 Stratford to examine the Registers and other documents. He appeal's to have done exactly 
 what he pleased on this occasion. He carried off the Registers and the Corporation Records with 
 &im to London ; and he whitewashed the bust of Shakspere, so as utterly to destroy its value 
 as a memorial of costume. There was then a cunning fellow in the town by name Jordan, 
 who thought the commentator a fair mark for his ingenuity. He produced to him a drawing 
 of Shakspere's house, New Place, copied, as he said, from an ancient document, which Malone 
 engraved as " From a Drawing in the Margin of an Ancient Survey, made by order of Sir George 
 Carew, and found at Clopton, near Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1786." When the elder Ireland 
 visited Stratford in 1795 the original drawing was "lost or destroyed." The same edition of 
 Shakspere in which this drawing " found at Clopton " is first presented to the world also first 
 gives the Confession of Faith of John Shakspere, found in the roof of his house in Henley 
 Street. We doubt exceedingly whether Jordan fabricated the one or the other : but there was 
 a man who was quite capable of prompting both impositions, and of carrying them through ; 
 one upon whom the suspicion of fabricating Shaksperian documents strongly rested in his life- 
 time ; one who would have rejoiced with the most malignant satisfaction in hoaxing a rival 
 editor. We need not name him. It is evident to us that Malone subsequently discovered that 
 he had been imposed upon : for in his posthumous ' Life of Shakspeare ' he has not one word of 
 allusion to this Confession of Faith ; he not only omits to print it, but he suppresses all notice 
 of it. He would sink it for ever in the sea of oblivion. In 1790 he produced it triumphantly 
 with the conviction that it was genuine; in 1796 he had obtained documents to prove it could 
 not have been the composition of any one of the poet's family ; but in the posthumous edition 
 of 1821 the documents of explanation, as well as the Confession of Faith itself, are treated ae if 
 tlioy never had been. 
 
 50
 
 a BIPQRAPHY, 
 
 [_\ ill. ge ul Astun Cuullow.] 
 
 C H A P T E II V. 
 
 THE SCHOOLBOY'S WOULD. 
 
 Let us pass over for a time the young Shakspere at his school-desk, inquiring 
 not when he went from * The Short Dictionary ' forward to the use of ' Cooper's 
 Lexicon/ or whether he was most drilled in the ' Eclogues ' of Virgil, or those of 
 the " good old Mantuan." Of one thing we may be well assured, — that the instruc- 
 tion of the grammar-school was the right instruction for the most vivacious mind, 
 as for him of slower capacity. To spend a considerable portion of the years of 
 boyhood in the acquirement of Latin and Greek was not to waste them, as 
 modern illumination would instruct us. Something was to be acquired, accu- 
 rately and completely, that was of universal application, and within the boy's 
 power of acquirement. The particular knowledge that would fit him for a 
 chosen course of life would be an after acquirement ; and, having attained the 
 habit of patient study, and established in his own mind a standard to apply to 
 all branches of knowledge by knowing one branch well, he would enter upon 
 the race of life without being over-weighted with the elements of many arts and 
 sciences, which it belongs onlv to the mature intellect to bear easily and grace. 
 
 51
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 fully, and to employ to lasting profit. Our grammar-schools were wise instim- 
 tions. They opened the road to usefulness and honour to the humblest in the 
 land ; they bestowed upon the son of the peasant the same advantages of educa- 
 tion as the son of the noble could receive from the most accomplished teacher in 
 his father's halls. Long may they be preserved amongst us in their integrity ; 
 not converted by the meddlings of innovation into lecture-rooms for cramming 
 children with the nomenclature of every science ; presenting little idea even 
 of the physical world beyond that of its being a vast aggregation of objects that 
 may be classified and catalogued ; and leaving the spiritual world utterly un- 
 cared for, as a region whose products cannot be readily estimated by a money 
 value ! 
 
 Every schoolboy's dwelling-place is a microcosm ; but the little world lying 
 around William Shakspere was something larger than that in which boys of our 
 own time for the most part live. The division of employments had not so com- 
 pletely separated a town life from a country life as with us ; and even the town 
 occupations, the town amusements, and the town wonders, had more variety in 
 them than our own days of systematic arrangement can present. Much of the 
 education of William Shakspere was unquestionably in the fields. A thousand 
 incidental allusions manifest his familiarity with all the external aspects of 
 nature. He is very rarely a descriptive poet, distinctively so called ; but images 
 of mead and grove, of dale and upland, of forest depths, of quiet walks by gentle 
 rivers, — reflections of his own native scenery, — spread themselves without an 
 effort over all his writings. All the occupations of a rural life are glanced at 
 or embodied in his characters. The sports, the festivals, of the lone farm or the 
 secluded hamlet are presented by him with all the charms of an Arcadian age, 
 but with a truthfulness that is not found in Arcadia. The nicest peculiarities 
 in the habits of the lower creation are given at a touch ; we see the rook wing 
 his evening flight to the wood ; we hear the drowsy hum of the sharded beetle. 
 He wreathes all the flowers of the field in his delicate chaplets ; and even the 
 nicest mysteries of the gardener's art can be expounded by him. All this he 
 appears to do as if from an instinctive power. His poetry in this, as in all other 
 great essentials, is like the operations of nature itself; we see not its workings. 
 But we may be assured, from the very circumstance of its appearing so acci- 
 dental, so spontaneous in its relations to all external nature and to the country 
 life, that it had its foundation in very early and very accurate observation. 
 Stratford was especially fitted to have been the "green lap " in which the boy- 
 poet was " laid." The whole face of creation here wore an aspect of quiet love- 
 liness. Looking on its placid stream, its gently swelling hills, its rich pastures, 
 its sleeping woodlands, the external world would to him be full of images of 
 repose : it was in the heart of man that he was to seek for the sublime. Nature 
 has thus ever with him something genial and exhilarating. There are storms 
 in his great dramas, but they are the accompaniments of the more terrible storms 
 of human passions : they are raised by the poet's art to make the agony of Lear 
 more intense, and the murder of Duncan more awful. But his love of a smiling 
 creation seems ever present. We must image Stratford as it was, to see how the 
 young Shr.k?pere walked " ia glory and in joy " amongst his native fields. Upon
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 tue bank of the Avon, having a very slight rise, is placed a scactered town ; a town 
 whose dwellings have orchards and gardens, with lofty trees growing in its 
 pathways. Its splendid collegiate church in the time of Henry VIII., was de- 
 scribed to lie half a mile from the town. Its eastern window is reflected in the 
 river which flows beneath ; its grey tower is embowered amidst lofty elm-rows 
 At the opposite end of the town is a fine old bridge, with a causeway whose 
 " wearisome but needful length " tells of inundations in the .low pastures that 
 lie all around it. We look upon Dugdale's Map of Barichway Hundred, in 
 which Stratford is situated, published in 1656, and we see four roads issuing 
 from the town. The one to Henley in Arden, which lies through the street in 
 which Shakspere may be supposed to have passed his boyhood, continues over a 
 valley of some breadth and extent, unenclosed fields undoubtedly in the sixteenth 
 century, with the hamlets of Shottery and Bishopton amidst them. The road 
 leads into the then woody district of Arden. At a short distance from it is the 
 hamlet of Wilmecote, where Mary Arden dwelt ; and some two miles aside, more 
 in the heart of the woodland district, and hard by the river Alne, is the village 
 of Aston Cantlow. x\nother road indicated on this old map is that to War- 
 wick. The wooded hills of Welcombe overhang it, and a little aside, some mile 
 and a half from Stratford, is the meadow of Ingon which John Shakspere 
 rented in 1570. Very beautiful, even now, is this part of the neighbourhood, 
 with its rapid undulations, little dells which shut in the scattered sheep, and 
 sudden hills opening upon a wide landscape. Ancient crab-trees and hawthorns 
 tell of uncultivated downs which have rung to the call of the falconer or the 
 horn of the huntsman ; and then, having crossed the ridge, we are amongst rich 
 corn-lands, with farm-houses of no modern date scattered about ; and deep in 
 the hollow, so as to be hidden till we are upon it, the old village of Snitterfield, 
 with its ancient church and its yew-tree as ancient. Here the poet's maternal 
 grandmother had her jointure ; and here it has been conjectured his father also 
 had possessions. On the opposite side of Stratford the third road runs in the 
 direction of the Avon to the village of Bidford, with a nearer pathway along 
 the river-bank. We cross the ancient bridge by the fourth road (which also 
 diverges to Shipston), and we are on our way to the celebrated house and estate 
 of Charlcote, the ancient seat of the Lucys, the Shaksperian locality with which 
 most persons are familiar through traditions of deer-stealing, of which we have 
 not yet to speak. A pleasant ramble indeed is this to Charlcote and Hamp- 
 ton Lucy, even with glimpses of the Avon from a turnpike-road. But let the 
 road run through meadows without hedgerows, with pathways following the 
 river's bank, now diverging when the mill is close upon the stream, now cross- 
 ing a leafy elevation, and then suddenly dropping under a precipitous wooded 
 rock, and we have a walk such as poet might covet, and such as Shakspere did 
 enjoy in his boy rambles. 
 
 Through these pleasant places would the boy William Shakspere walk hand in 
 hand with his father, or wander at his own free will with his school companions. 
 All the simple processes of farming life would be familiar to him. The pro- 
 fitable mysteries of modern agriculture would not embarrass his youthful expe 
 rience. He would witness none of that anxious diligence which compels the 
 
 53
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 earth to yield double crops, and places little reliance upon the unassisted opera- 
 tions of nature. The seed-time and the harvest in the corn-fields, the gather- 
 ing-in of the thin grass on the uplands, and of the ranker produce of the flooded 
 meadows, the folding of the flocks on the. hills, the sheep-shearing, would seem 
 to him like the humble and patient waiting of man upon a bounteous Provi- 
 dence. There would be no systematic rotation of crops to make him marvel at 
 the skill of the cultivator. Implements most skilfully adapted for the saving 
 of animal labour would be unknown to him. The rude plough of his Saxon 
 ancestors would be dragged along by a powerful team of sturdy oxen ; the 
 sound of the flail alone would be heard in the barn. Around him would, how- 
 ever, be the glad indications of plenty. The farmer would have abundant stacks, 
 and beeves, and kine, though the supply would fail in precarious seasons, when 
 price did not regulate consumption ; he would brew his beer and bake his rye- 
 bread ; his swine would be fattening on the beech-mast and the acorns of the 
 free wood : his skeps of bees would be numerous in his garden ; the colewort 
 would sprout from spring to winter for his homely meal, and in the fruitful 
 season the strawberry would present its much coveted luxury. The old orchard 
 would be rich with the choicest apples, grafts from the curious monastic varie- 
 ties ; the rarer fruits from southern climates would be almost wholly unknown. 
 There would be no niggard economy defeating itself ; the stock, such as it was, 
 would be of the best, although no Bakewell had arisen to preside over its im- 
 provement : — 
 
 " Let carren and barren be shifted away, 
 For best is the best, whatsoever ye pay." * 
 
 "William Shakspere would go out with his father on a Michaelmas morning, 
 and the fields would be busy with the sowing of rye and white wheat and 
 barley. The apples and the walnuts would be then gathered ; honey and 
 wax taken from the hives ; timber would be felled, sawn, and stacked for sea- 
 soning. In the solitary fields, then, would stand the birdkeeper with his 
 bow. As winter approached would come what Tusser calls " the slaughter- 
 time," the killing of sheep and bullocks for home consumption ; the thresher 
 would be busy now and then for the farmer's family, but the wheat for the baker 
 would lie in sheaf. No hurrying then to market for fear of a fall in price ; 
 there is abundance around, and the time of stint is far off. The simple routine 
 was this : — 
 
 " In spring-time we rear, we do sow, and we plant ; 
 In summer get victuals, lest after we want. 
 In harvest we carry in corn, ind the fruit, 
 In winter to spend, as we need, of each suit."* 
 
 The joyous hospitality of Christmas had little fears that the stock would be pre- 
 maturely spent ; and whilst the mighty wood-fire blazed in the hall to the mirth 
 of song and carol, neighbours went from house to house to partake of the abund- 
 ance, and the poor were fed at the same board with the opulent. As the frost 
 
 * Tusser, chapter xvi. I Ibid., chapter xxiv.
 
 A BIOGRAtlxi*. 
 
 breaks, the labourer is again in the fields ; hedging and ditching are somewhat 
 understood, but the whole system of drainage is very rude. Wth such agricul 
 ture man seems to have his winter sleep as well as the earth. But nature is 
 again alive ; spring corn is to be sown ; the ewes and lambs are to be carefully 
 tended ; the sheep, now again in the fields, are to be watched, for there 
 are hungry " mastiffs and mongrels " about ; the crow and pie are to be destroyed 
 in their nests ere they are yet feathered ; trees are to be barked before timber is 
 fallen. Then comes the active business of the dairy, and, what to us would be 
 a strange sight, the lambs have been taken from their mothers, and the ewes are 
 milked in the folds. May demands the labour of the weed-hook ; no horse- 
 hoeing in those simple days. There are the flax and hemp too to be sown to sup- 
 ply the ceaseless labour of the spinner's wheel ; bees are to be swarmed ; and 
 herbs are to be stored for the housewife's still. June brings its sheep-washing 
 and shearing ; with its haymaking, where the farmer is captain in the field, pre- 
 siding over the bottles and the wallets from the hour when the dew is dry to set 
 of sun. Bustle is there now to get "grist to the mill," for the streams are dry- 
 ing, and if the meal be wanting how shall the household be fed ? The harvest- 
 time comes; the reapers cry "largess" for their gloves ; the tithe is set out for 
 " Sir Parson ; " and then, after the poor have gleaned, and the cattle have been 
 turned in " to mouth up " what is left, 
 
 " In harvest-1 inie, harvest-folk, servants and all, 
 Should make, all together, good cheer in the hall ; 
 And fill out the black bowl of blythe to their song, 
 And let them be merry all harvest-time long." * 
 
 Such was the ancient farmer's year, which Tusser has described with wonder, 
 ful spirit even to the minutest detail ; and such were the operations of hus- 
 bandry that the boy Shakspere would have beheld with interest amidst his 
 native corn-fields and pastures. When the boy became deep-thoughted he 
 would perceive that many things were ill understood, and most operations in- 
 differently carried through. He would hear of dearth and sickness, and he 
 would seek to know the causes. But that time was not as yet. 
 
 The poet who has delineated human life and character under every variety of 
 passion and humour must have had some early experience of mankind. The 
 loftiest imagination must work upon the humblest materials. In his father's 
 home, amongst his father's neighbours, he would observe those striking differ- 
 ences in the tempers and habits of mankind which are obvious even to a child. 
 Cupidity would be contrasted with generosity, parsimony with extravagance. 
 He would hear of injustice and of ingratitude, of uprightness and of fidelity. 
 Curiosity would lead him to the bailiff's court ; and there he would learn of 
 bitter quarrels and obstinate enmities, of friends parted "on a dissension of a 
 doit," of foes who " interjoin their issues" to worry some wretched offender. 
 Small ambition and empty pride would grow bloated upon the pettiest distinc- 
 tions ; and " the insolence of office " would thrust humility off the causeway. 
 
 * Tusser, chapter xlvii. 
 
 55
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 There would be loud talk of loyalty and religion, while the peaceful and the 
 pious would be suspected ; and the sycophant who wore the great man's livery 
 would strive to crush the independent in spirit. Much of this the observing 
 boy would see, but much also would be concealed in the general hollowness that 
 belongs to a period of inquietude and change. The time would come when he 
 would penetrate into the depths of these things ; but meanwhile what was upon 
 the surface would be food for thought. At the weekly Market there would be 
 the familiar congregation of buyers and sellers. The housewife from her little 
 farm would ride in gallantly between her panniers laden with butter, eggs, 
 chickens, and capons. The farmer would stand by his pitched corn, and, as 
 Harrison complains, if the poor man handled the sample with the intent to pur- 
 chase his humble bushel, the man of many sacks would declare that it was sold. 
 The engrosser, according to the same authority, would be there with his under- 
 standing nod, successfully evading every statute that could be made against 
 forestalling, because no statutes could prevail against the power of the best price. 
 There, before shops were many and their stocks extensive, would come the 
 dealers from Birmingham and Coventry, with wares for use and wares for 
 show, — horse-gear and women-gear, Sheffield whittles, and rings with posies. 
 At the joyous Fair-season it would seem that the wealth of a world was 
 emptied into Stratford ; not only the substantial things, the wine, the wax, the 
 wheat, the wool, the malt, the cheese, the clothes, the napery, such as even great 
 lords sent their stewards to the Fairs to buy,* but every possible variety of 
 such trumpery as fill the pedler's pack, — ribbons, inkles, caddises, coil's, 
 stomachers, pomanders, brooches, tapes, shoe-ties. Great dealings were there 
 on these occasions in beeves and horses, tedious chafferings, stout affirmations, 
 saints profanely invoked to ratify a bargain. A mighty man rides into the Fair 
 who scatters consternation around. It is the Queen's Purveyor. The best horses 
 are taken up for her Majesty's use, at her Majesty's price ; and they probably 
 find their way to the Earl of Leicester's or the Earl of Warwick's stables at a 
 considerable profit to Master Purveyor. The country buyers and sellers look 
 blank ; but there is no remedy. There is solace, however, if there is not redress. 
 The ivy-bush is at many a door, and the sounds of merriment are within, as the 
 ale and the sack are quaffed to friendly greetings. In the streets there are 
 morris-dancers, the juggler with his ape, and the minstrel with his ballads. We 
 can imagine the foremost in a group of boys listening to the " small popular 
 musics sung by these cantdbanqui upon benches and barrels' heads," or more 
 earnestly to some one of the "blind harpers, or such-like tavern minstrels, that 
 give a fit of mirth for a groat ; their matters being for the most part stories 
 of old time, as 'The Tale of Sir Topas,' ' Bevis of Southampton,' ' Guy of War- 
 wick,' ' Adam Bell and Clymme of the Clough,' and such other old romances or 
 historical rhymes, made purposely for the recreation of the common people. 'f 
 A bold fellow, who is full of queer stories and cant phrases, strikes a few notes 
 upon his gittern, and the lads and lasses are around him ready to dance their 
 
 5G 
 
 Seo the Northumberland Household Boole. 
 i Puttcnham's ' Art of Pc3try,' 1589.
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 country measures. He is thus described in the year 1564, in a tract by William 
 Bulleyn : " Sir, there is one lately come into this hall, in a green Kendal coat, 
 with yellow hose, a beard of the same colour, only upon the upper lip ; a russet 
 hat, with a great plume of strange feathers, and a brave scarf about his neck, 
 in cut buskins. He is playing at the trey-trip with our host's son : he playeth 
 trick upon the gittern, and dances 'Trenchmore' and ' Heie de Gie,' and telleth 
 news from Terra Florida." Upon this strange sort of indigenous troubadour 
 did the schoolboy gaze, for he would seem to belong to a more knowing race 
 than dwelt on Avon's side. His " news from Terra Florida" tells us of an age 
 of newstongues, before newspapers were. Doubtless such as he had many a 
 story of home wonders ; he had seen London perhaps ; he could tell of Queens 
 and Parliaments ; might have beheld a noble beheaded, or a heretic burnt ; he 
 could speak, we may fancy, of the wonders of the sea ; of ships laden with rich 
 merchandize, unloading in havens far from this inland region ; of other ships 
 wrecked on inhospitable coasts, and poor men made rich by the ocean's spoils. 
 Food for thought was there in all these things, seeds of poetry scattered care • 
 lessly, but not wastefully, in the rich imaginative soil. 
 
 [The Fair.] 
 
 The Fair is over ; the booths are taken down ; the woollen statute-caps, which 
 the commonest people refuse to wear because there is a penalty for not wearing 
 them, are packed up again ; the prohibited felt hats are all sold ; the millinery 
 has found a ready market amongst the sturdy yeomen, who are careful to 
 
 57
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 propitiate their home-staying wives after the fashion of the Wife of Bath'l 
 husbands : — 
 
 " I governed hem so well after my lawe, 
 That eche of hem full blissful was, and fawe 
 To bringen me gay thinges fro the feyre ; 
 They were full glade," &c. 
 
 The juggler has packed up his cup and balls; the last cudgel-play has been 
 fought out : — 
 
 " Near the dying of the day 
 , There will be a cudgel-play, 
 Where a coxcomb will be broke, 
 Ere a good word can be spoke : , 
 But the anger ends all here, 
 Prench'd in ale, or drown' d in beer." * 
 
 Morning comes, and Stratford hears only the quiet steps of its native popula- 
 tion. But upon the bench, under the walnut-tree that spreads its broad arms 
 to shadow a little inn, sits an old man, pensive, solitary ; he was not noted in 
 the crowd of yesterday, — louder voices and bolder faces carried the rewards 
 which he had once earned. The old man is poor ; yet is his gown of Kendal 
 green not tattered though somewhat tarnished. The harp laid by his side 
 upon the bench tells his profession. There was a time when he was welcomed 
 at every hall, and he might fitly wear starched ruffs, and a chain of pewter as 
 bright as silver, and have the wrest of his harp jauntily suspended by a green 
 lace.f Those times are past. He scarcely now dares to enter worshipful 
 men's houses ; and at the Fairs a short song of love or good fellowship, or a 
 dance to the gittern, are preferred to his tedious legends. He may now say 
 with that luckless minstrel Richard Sheale (who, if his own chants are deplor- 
 able enough, has the merit of having assisted in the preservation of ' Chevy 
 Chase'),— 
 
 " My audacity is gone, and all my merry talk; 
 There is some here have seen me as merry as a hawk ; 
 But now I am so troubled with phan'sies in my mind, 
 That I cannot play the merry £nave according to my kind.''' 
 
 There are two or three boys with satchel in hand gazing on that old minstrel ; 
 one of them bestows on him a penny, and goes his way. School time is over, 
 and as the boy returns the old man is still sunning himself on the ale-bench. 
 He speaks cheerfully to the boy, and asks him his name. "William Shak- 
 spere." The old man's eye brightens. "A right good name," he exclaims; 
 "a name for a soldier:" and then, with a clear but somewhat tremulous voice, 
 he sings — 
 
 "Off all that se a Skottishe knight, 
 
 Was callyd Sir Hewe the Mongon-byrry, 
 He sawe the Duglas to the death was dyght ; 
 He spendyd a spear a trusti tre : 
 
 • Herri ek. t See Laneham'a description of the Minstrel at Kenilworth, 
 
 53
 
 A BIOGEArilY. 
 
 He rod uppon a corsiare 
 
 Throughe a hondrith archery ; 
 He never styntyde, nar never blane, 
 
 Till he came to the good lord Perse. 
 
 He set uppone the lord Perse 
 
 A dynte, that was full soare , 
 With a suar spear of a mighte tie 
 
 Clean thorow the body he the Perse bore." * 
 
 The boy's heart is moved " more than with a trumpet/' and he is not content 
 till he has heard the whole of that " old song of Percy and Douglas." It is easy 
 to imagine, further, that the poor minstrel lingered about Stratford ; that he had 
 welcome at least in one house ; and that from time to time the memory of the 
 grammar-school boy was not unprofitably employed in treasuring up snatches 
 of old romances side by side with his syntax. Could not that old man tell all 
 the veritable legend of Sir Guy, how he wed the fair Phillis, and, " all clad in 
 grey in pilgrim-sort," voyaged to the Holy Land, and there slew the giant 
 Amarant and the treacherous Knight of Pavye, and how he utterly did redeem 
 England from Danish tribute, by slaying the giant Colbrand, and moreover 
 destroyed the dragon of Northumberland, and the cow of Dunsmore Heath, 
 whose bones even then might be seen at Warwick ? And had he not viewed 
 the cave at Guy's Cliff made by the champion's own hands out of a craggy 
 rock of stone, where he long dwelt in poverty, begging his daily bread at his 
 own castle-gate ? This legend, indeed, would tell of wondrous deeds done close 
 at hand ; and the boy-poet would ardently desire to see the famous castle of 
 Warwick, and the hermit's cave, where the lady of Sir Guy, having received 
 their wedding-ring by a trusty servant, came in haste, and finding her sick lord, 
 "herself closed up his dying eyes." The minstrel would affirm the truth of 
 this legend ; and his young listener would believe it all. There was not only 
 boy-faith in those days, but there was faith in tradition even amongst worldly 
 men. The imagination could rest confidingly upon the distant and the past. 
 Even in the middle of the next century an antiquary, unequalled for indus- 
 trious and minute inquiry, could surrender his belief to the general truth of 
 the history of Sir Guy: "Of his particular adventures, lest what I say should 
 be suspected for fabulous, I will only instance that combat betwixt him and 
 the Danish champion, Colebrand, whom some (to magnify our noble Guy the 
 more) report to have been a giant. The story whereof, however it may be 
 thought fictitious by some, forasmuch as there be those that make a question 
 whether there was ever really such a man ; or, if so, whether all be not a dream 
 which is reported of him, in regard that the monks have sounded out his 
 praises so hyperbolically : yet those that are more considerate will neither 
 doubt the one nor the other, inasmuch as it hath been so usual with our ancient 
 historians, for the encouragement of after-ages unto bold attempts, to set forth 
 the exploits of worthy men with the highest encomiums imaginable : and 
 therefore, should we for that cause be so conceited as to explode it, all history 
 
 * Ancient ballad of ' Chevy Chase ' — the one which Sidney describes as " evil appareled in th* 
 dust and cobweb of that uncivil acre." 
 
 59
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE : 
 
 of those times might as well be villified."* We are changed, Is the change 
 for the better ? 
 
 But the old minstrel has heroic songs that are not altogether of the marvel- 
 lous. There was a story of Richard Coeur-de-Lion — 
 
 " Against whose fury and unmatched force 
 The awless lion could not wage the fight ;" t 
 
 which told in homely verse how — 
 
 " The lyon was hongry and megre, 
 And bette his tayle to be egre." 
 
 There was the simple burst of patriotic exultation for the victory at Agincourt, 
 beginning — 
 
 " Owre kynge went forth to Normandy, 
 With grace and myght of chivalry ; 
 The God for him wrought marvelously, 
 Wherefore Englonde may calle, and cry 
 
 Deo gratias : 
 Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria." 
 
 Many a long " fitte" had he, which told of doughty deeds of Arthur and his 
 chivalry, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain, Sir Launfal, and Sir Isenbras ; and, after he 
 had preluded with his harp, the minstrel would begin each in stately wise with 
 " Listen, lordlings, and hold you still," or " Listen to me a little stond." Pass 
 we over all the merry tales of Robin Hood which fell triplingly from his tongue, 
 for many of these were fresh in the memory of the people, and were sung in the 
 greenwood or by the Christmas fire. But he had songs which he could scarcely 
 sing without a tear in his eye, for they were remembrances of days when the 
 minstrel was welcomed by the porter at the abbey-gate, and the buttery-hatch 
 was unclosed to give him a generous meal. They were songs of pilgrimages 
 made by true lovers to shrines of Our Lady, — songs that two centuries after 
 were to be adopted in a more correct school of poetry, but one scarcely more 
 spirited and natural : — 
 
 " Gentle herdsman, tell to me, 
 Of curtesy I thee pray, 
 Unto the town of Walsingham 
 
 Which is the right and ready way," 
 
 has a fine racy melody about it, pleasanter we think, than the somewhat cloying 
 
 " Turn, gentle hermit of the dale." , 
 
 The minstrel has departed ; but he has left behind him such lore as will be long 
 cherished by that wondrous boy of the Free Grammar-school. There are many 
 traces in the works of Shakspere of his familiarity with old romances and old 
 ballads ; but, like all his other acquirements, there is no reproduction of the 
 same thing under a new form, Rowe fancied that Shakspere's knowledge of 
 the learned languages was but small, because " it is without controversy that in 
 
 * Dugdale'a 'Warwickshire, page 299. | King John, Act i. Scene i, 
 
 60
 
 A BIOGRAF/IT. 
 
 his works we scarce find any traces of anything that looks like an imitation of 
 the ancients." It is for inferior men to imitate. It was for Shakspere to sub- 
 ject his knowledge to his original power of thought, so that his knowledge and 
 his invention should become one perfect and entire substance ; and thus the 
 minute critic, who desires to find the classical jewels set in the English gold, 
 proclaims that they are not there, because they were unknown and unappre- 
 ciated by the uneducated poet. So of the traditionary lore with which Shak- 
 spere must have been familiar from his very boyhood. That lore is not in his 
 writings in any very palpable shape, but its spirit is there. The simplicity, the 
 vigour, the pathos, the essential dramatic power, of the ballad poetry stood out 
 in Shakspere's boyhood in remarkable contrast to the drawling pedantry of the 
 moral plays of the early stage. The ballads kept the love and the knowledge 
 of real poetry in the hearts of the people. There was something high, and 
 generous, and tolerant, in those which were most popular ; something which 
 demonstratively told they belonged to a nation which admired courage, which 
 loved truth, which respected misfortune. Percy, speaking of the more ancient 
 ballad of ' Chevy Chase,' says — "One may also observe a generous impartiality 
 in the old original bard, when in the conclusion of his tale he represents both 
 nations as quitting the field without any reproachful reflection on either ; though 
 he gives to his own countrymen the credit of being the smaller number." The 
 author of that ballad was an Englishman ; and we may believe this " impar- 
 tial^" to have been an ingredient of the old English ^triotism. At any rate 
 it entered into the patriotism of Shakspere.
 
 fg^ll 
 
 [The Boundary F.lm, Str.af.jrd.] 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HOLIDAYS. 
 
 It is the twenty-third of April, and the birthday of William Shakspere is a 
 general holiday at Stratford. It is St. George's day. There is high feasting 
 at Westminster or at Windsor. The green rushes are strewn in the outward 
 courts of the Palace ; the choristers lift up the solemn chants of the Litany 
 as a procession advances from the Queen's Hall to her Chapel ; the Heralds 
 move on gorgeously in their coat-armour ; the Knights of the Garter and the 
 Sovereign glitter in their velvet robes ; the Yeomen of the Guard close round 
 in their richest liveries.* At Stratford there is humbler pageantry. Upon 
 the walls of the Chapel of the Holy Cross there was a wondrous painting of a 
 terrible dragon pierced through the neck with a spear ; but he has snapped the 
 
 C2 
 
 1 See Nichols's 'Progresses of Elizabeth,' vol. i., p.
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 weapon in two with his fearful talons, and a gallant knight in complete armour 
 is uplifting his sword, whilst the bold horse which he bestrides rushes upon 
 the monster with his pointed champfrein : * in the background is a crowned 
 lady with a lamb ; and on distant towers a king and queen watching the 
 combat. This story of Saint George and the delivery of the Princess of 
 Silene from the power of the dragon was, on the twenty-third of April, wont to 
 be dramatized at Stratford. From the altar of Saint George was annually 
 taken down an ancient suit of harness, which was duly scoured and repaired ; 
 and from some storehouse was produced the figure of a dragon, which had also 
 all needful annual reparation. Upon the back of some sturdy labourer was 
 the harness fitted, and another powerful man had to bear the dragon, into 
 whose body he no doubt entered. Then, all the dignitaries of the town being 
 duly assembled, did Saint George and the Dragon march along, amidst the 
 ringing of bells and the firing of chambers, and the shout of the patriotic 
 population of " Saint George for England." f Here is the simplest of dramatic 
 exhibitions, presented through a series of years to the observing eyes of a boy 
 in whom the dramatic power of going out of himself to portray some incident, 
 or character, or passion, with incomparable truth, was to be developed and 
 matured in the growth of his poetical faculty. As he looked upon that rude 
 representation of a familiar legend he may first have conceived the capability 
 of exhibiting to the eye a moving picture of events, and of informing it with 
 life by appropriate dialogue. But in truth the essentially dramatic spirit of 
 the ancient church had infused itself thoroughly into the popular mind ; and 
 thus, long after the Reformation had swept away most of the ecclesiastical 
 ceremonials that were held to belong to the superstitions of Popery, the people 
 retained this principle of personation in their common festivals ; and many 
 were the occasions in which the boy and the man, the maiden and the matron, 
 were called upon to enact some part, in which bodily activity and mental 
 readiness might be required ; in which something of grace and even of 
 dignity might be called forth; in which a free but good-tempered wit might 
 command the applause of uncritical listeners ; and a sweet or mellow voice, 
 pouring forth our nation's songs, would receive the exhilarating homage of a 
 jocund chorus. Let us follow the boy William Shakspere, now, we will sup- 
 pose, some ten or eleven years old, through the annual course of the principal 
 rustic holidays, in which the yeoman and the peasant, the tradesman and the 
 artisan, with their wives and children, were equally ready to partake. We 
 may discover in these familiar scenes not only those peculiar forms of a dra- 
 matic spirit in real manners which might in some degree have given a direc- 
 tion to his genius, but, what is perhaps of greater importance, that poetical 
 aspect of common life which was to supply materials of thought and of imagery 
 
 * The armour for the horse's head, with a long projecting spike, so as to make the horse re- 
 semble an unicorn. 
 
 t It appears from accounts which are given in fac-siniile in Fisher's 'Work on the Chapol of 
 the Guild that this procession repeatedly took place in the reign of Henry VIII. ; and other ao 
 counts show that it was continued as late as 1579. 
 
 63
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE • 
 
 to him who was to become in the most eminent degree the poet of humanity 
 In all its imaginative relations. 
 
 The festivities of Christmas are over. The opening year calls the husband- 
 man again to his labours ; and Plough Monday, with its plough dragged along 
 to rustic music, and its sword-dance, proclaims that wassail must give place to 
 work. The rosemary and the bays, the misletoe and the holly, are removed 
 from the porch and the hall, and the delicate leaves of the box are twined into 
 the domestic garland.* The Vigil of Saint Agnes has rewarded or disappointed 
 the fateful charm of the village maiden. The husbandman has noted whether 
 Saint Paul's day " be fair and clear," to guide his presages of the year's fertility. 
 ' Cupid's Kalendere ' has been searched on the day of " Seynte Valentine," as 
 Lydgate tells. The old English chorus, which Shakspere himself has pre- 
 served, has been duly sung — 
 
 " 'Tis merry in ball, when beards wag all, 
 And welcome merry Sbrove-tide." 
 
 Easter is come, after a season of solemnity. The ashes w r ere no longer blessed at 
 the beginning of Lent, nor the palms borne at the close ; yet there was strong 
 devotion in the reformed church — real penitence and serious contemplation. 
 But the day of gladness arrives — a joy which even the great eye of the natural 
 world was to make manifest. Surely there was something exquisitely beautiful 
 in the old custom of going forth into the fields before the sun had risen on 
 Easter-day, to see him mounting over the hills with a tremulous motion, as if 
 it were an animate thing bounding in sympathy with the redeemed of man- 
 kind. The young poet might have joined his simple neighbours on this cheerful 
 morning, and yet have thought with Sir Thomas Browne, " We shall not, I 
 hope, disparage the Resurrection of our Redeemer if we say that the sun doth 
 not dance on Easter-day." But one of the most glorious images of one of his 
 early plays has given life and movement to the sun : — 
 
 " Nigbt's candles are burnt out, ami jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on tbe misty mountain's topa." 
 
 Saw he not the sun dance— heard he not the expression of the undoubting 
 belief that the sun danced— as he went forth into Stratford meadows in the 
 early twilight of Easter-day ? 
 
 On the road to Henley-in-Arden, about two or three hundred yards from the 
 house in Henley Street where John Shakspere once dwelt, there stood, when this 
 Biography was first written, a very ancient boundary-tree — an elm which is recorded 
 in a Presentment of the Perambulation of the boundaries of the Borough of Strat- 
 ford, on the 7th of April, 1591, as "The Elme at the Dovehouse-Close end."f 
 The boundary from that elm in the Henley road continued in another direction to 
 "the two elms in Evesham highway." Such are the boundaries of the borough at 
 this day. At a period, then, when it was usual for the boys of Grammar Schools 
 t:= attend the annual perambulations in Rogation-week of the clergy, the ma<ns- 
 
 * Herrick. t Tbe original came into tbe possession of R. Wheler, Esq., of Stratford. 
 
 61
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 tr ates and public officers, and the inhabitants, of parishes and towns,* would 
 William Shakspere be found, in gleeful companionship, under this oid boundary 
 elm. There would be assembled the parish priest, and the schoolmaster, the 
 bailiff and the churchwardens. Banners would wave, poles crowned with gar- 
 lands would be carried by old and young. Under each Gospel-tree, of which 
 this Dovehouse- Close Elm would be one, a passage from Scripture would be 
 read, a collect recited, a psalm sung. With more pomp at the same season 
 might the Doge of Venice espouse the Sea in testimony of the perpetual 
 domination of the Republic, but not with more heartfelt joy than these the 
 people of Stratford traced the boundaries of their little sway. The Reforma- 
 tion left us these parochial processions. In the 7th year of Elizabeth (1565) 
 the form of devotion for the " Rogation days of Procession " was prescribed, 
 " without addition of any superstitious ceremonies heretofore used ; " and it was 
 subsequently ordered that the curate on such occasions " shall admonish the 
 people to give thanks to God in the beholding of God's benefits," and enforce 
 the scriptural denouncements against those who removed their neighbours' 
 landmarks. Beautifully has Walton described how Hooker encouraged these 
 annual ceremonials : — " He would by no means omit the customary time of pro- 
 cession, persuading all, both rich and poor, if they desired the preservation of 
 love and their parish rights and liberties, to accompany him in his perambula- 
 tion ; and most did so : in which perambulation he would usually express more 
 pleasant discourse than at other times, and would then always drop some loving 
 and facetious observations, to be remembered against the next year, especially 
 by the boys and young people; still inclining them, and all his present 
 parishioners, to meekness and mutual kindnesses and love, because love thinks 
 not evil, but covers a multitude of infirmities." And so, perhaps, listening to 
 the gentle words of some venerable Hooker of his time, would the young Shak- 
 spere walk the bounds of his native parish. One day would not suffice to visit 
 its numerous Gospel-trees. Hours would be spent in reconciling differences 
 amongst the cultivators of the common fields ; in largesses to the poor ; in 
 merry-making at convenient halting-places. A wide parish is this of Stratford, 
 including eleven villages and hamlets. A district of beautiful and varied 
 scenery is this parish — hill and valley, wood and water. Following the Avon 
 upon the north bank, against the stream, for some two miles, the processionists 
 would walk through low and fertile meadows, unenclosed pastures then in all 
 likelihood. A little brook falls into the river, coming down from the marshy 
 uplands of Ingon, where, in spite of modern improvement, the frequent bog 
 attests the accuracy of Dugdale's description. + The brook is traced upwards 
 into the hills of Welcombe ; and then for nearly three miles from Welcombe 
 Greenhill the boundary lies along a wooded ridge, opening prospects of sur- 
 passing beauty. There may the distant spires of Coventry be seen peeping 
 above the intermediate hills, and the nearer towers of Warwick lying cradled 
 in their surrounding woods. In another direction a cloud-like spot in the 
 
 • See Brand's ' Popular Antiquities,' by Sir H. Ellis, edit. 1841, vol. i., p. 123. 
 
 t See p. 29. 
 Liie. F 65
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEKE : 
 
 extreme distance is the far-famed Wrekin ; and turning to the north-west are 
 the noble hills of Malvern, with their well-defined outlines. The Cotswolds 
 lock-in the landscape on another side ; while in the middle distance the bold 
 Bredon-hill looks down upon the vale of Evesham. All around is a country of 
 unrivalled fertility, with now and then a plain of considerable extent ; but more 
 commonly a succession of undulating hills, some wood-crowned, but all culti- 
 vated. At the northern extremity of this high land, which principally belongs 
 to the estate of Clopton, and which was doubtless a park in early times, we 
 have a panoramic view of the valley in which Stratford lies, with its hamlets of 
 Bishopton, Little Wilmecote, Shottery, and Drayton. As the marvellous boy 
 of the Stratford grammar-school then looked upon that plain, how little could 
 he have foreseen the course of his future life ! For twenty years of his man- 
 hood he was to have no constant dwelling-place in that his native town ; but it 
 was to be the home of his affections. He would be gathering fame and opu- 
 lence in an almost untrodden path, of which his young ambition could shape no 
 definite image ; but in the prime of his life he was to bring his wealth to his 
 own Stratford, and become the proprietor and the contented cultivator of some 
 of the loved fields that he now saw mapped out at his feet. Then, a little 
 while, and an early tomb under that grey tower — a tomb so to be honoured in 
 all ages to come, 
 
 " That kings for such a tomb would wish to die." 
 
 For some six miles the boundary runs from north to south, partly through 
 land which was formerly barren, and still known as Drayton Bushes and Dray- 
 ton Wild Moor. Here, 
 
 " Far from her nest the lapwing cries away." * 
 
 The green bank of the Avon is again reached at the western extremity of the 
 boundary, and the pretty hamlet of Luddington, with its cottages and old trees 
 standing high above the river sedges, is included. The Avon is crossed where 
 the Stour unites with it ; and the boundary extends considerably to the south- 
 east, returning to the town over Clopton's Bridge. Where once were quiet 
 pastures there is now the Stratford Railway for the conveyance of coal and 
 corn — a thing undreamt of by the perambulators. But there is a greater 
 marvel of modern science associated with the name of Shakspere. Thn cliff at 
 Dover, whose base was inaccessible except to 
 
 " The fishermen that walk upon the beach," 
 
 is now pierced through by the tunnel of a railway. A few centuries, a thou- 
 sand years, and the arches of the tunnel may be fallen in, its mouth choked 
 with shingle and sea-weed, and some solitary antiquarian poking with his small 
 lantern amongst its rubbish. But the rock itself will be unchanged ; and so 
 will be the memorable description of " its high and bending head." And he 
 who wrote that description, and painted the awful turmoil of human passion 
 and misery associated with that rock, is at the time of which we speak a happy 
 
 G5 
 
 Comedy of Errors.
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 schoolboy at Stratford ; perambulating his parish with his honest father ; made 
 joyful, perhaps, with a kind word or two from the great esquire ; and smiling 
 to liimself at the recollection of " some loving and facetious observations " of the 
 good vicar. All the rest of that group, where are their honours now ? It is 
 something to know that when William Shakspere was twelve years old, Henry 
 Heycroft was vicar of Stratford, and William Clopton the great man of the 
 parish. If they bestowed kindness upon that boy, as upon other boys ; if they 
 cherished the poor ; if they reconciled differences ; if they walked humbly in 
 their generation, — they have their reward, though the world has forgotten 
 them. 
 
 Shottery, the prettiest of hamlets, is scarcely a mile from Stratford. Here, 
 in all probability, dwelt one who in a few years was to have an important influ- 
 ence upon the destiny of the boy-poet. A Court Roll of the 34th Henry VIII. 
 (1543) shows us that John Hathaway then resided at Shottery; and the sub- 
 stantial house which the Hathaways possessed, now divided into several cot- 
 tages, remained with their descendants till the very recent period of 1838. 
 There were Hathaways, also, living in the town of Stratford, contemporaries of 
 John Shakspere. We cannot say, absolutely, that Anne Hathaway, the future 
 wife of William Shakspere, was of Shottery ; but the prettiest of maidens (for 
 the veracious antiquarian Oldys says there is a tradition that she was eminently 
 beautiful) would have fitly dwelt in the pleasantest of hamlets. Tieck has 
 written an agreeable novelet, 'The Festival at Kenilworth,' on the subject of 
 Shakspere — introductory to another on the same subject, * Poet-Life.' He 
 makes, somewhat unnecessarily we think, John Shakspere morose and harsh to 
 his boy ; and he brings in Anne Hathaway to obtain his consent that William 
 shall go to Kenilworth : " Anne took the graceful youth in her arms, and said, 
 laughingly, ' Father Shakspere, you know William is my sweetheart, and 
 belongs as much to me as to you ; we have promised one another long ago, and 
 if I go to Kenilworth he must go with me.' William withdrew himself, half- 
 ashamed, from the arms of the mischievous girl, and said, with great feeling, 
 ' Cease, Anne ; you know I cannot bear this : I am too young for you/ " There 
 is verisimilitude in this scene, if not truth ; and it is easy to comprehend how 
 the playful friendship of a handsome maiden for an interesting boy, some seven 
 years younger, might grow into a dangerous affection. Assuredly, with neigh- 
 bourly intercourse between their families, William Shakspere would be at 
 Shottery, 
 
 " To do observance to a morn of May; "* 
 
 FAid indeed, to be just to the youths anu maidens of Stratford and Shotten , it 
 was " impossible " 
 
 " To make them sleep 
 On May-day moruiug." f 
 
 Pass the back of the cottage in which the Hathaways dwelt (of which we shall 
 hereafter have to speak) and enter that beautiful meadow which rises into a 
 
 * Midaummer-Niglit's Dream. t Henry VIII 
 
 F2 67
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPER&: 
 
 gentle eminence commanding the hamlet at several points. Throw down the 
 hedges, and is there not here the fittest of localities for the May-games ? An 
 impatient group is gathered under the shade of the old elms, for the morn- 
 ing sun casts his slanting beams dazzlingly across that green. There is the 
 distant sound of tabor and bagpipe : — 
 
 " Hark, hark ! I hear the dancing, 
 And a nimble morris prancing ; 
 The bagpipe and the morris bells, 
 That they are not far hence us tells." * 
 
 From out of the leafy Arden are thoy bringing in the May-pole. The oxen 
 move slowly with the ponderous wain : they are garlanded, but not for the 
 sacrifice. Around the spoil of the forest are the pipers and the dancers — 
 maidens in blue kirtles, and foresters in green tunics. Amidst the shouts of 
 young and old, childhood leaping and clapping its hands, is the May-pole 
 raised. But there are great personages forthcoming — not so great, however, as 
 in more ancient times. There are Robin Hood and Little John, in their grass- 
 green tunics ; but their bows and their sheaves of arrows are more for show 
 than use. Maid Marian is there ; but she is a mockery — a smooth-faced youth 
 in a watchet-coloured tunic, with flowers and coronets, and a mincing gait, but 
 not the shepherdess who 
 
 "With garlands gay 
 "Was made the lady of the May." f 
 
 There is farce amidst the pastoral. The age of unrealities has already in part 
 arrived. Even amongst country-folks there is burlesque. There is personation, 
 with a laugh at the things that are represented. The Hobby-horse and the 
 Dragon, however, produce their shouts of merriment. But the hearty Morris - 
 dancers soon spread a spirit of genial mirth amidst all the spectators. The 
 clownish Maid Marian will now 
 
 " Caper upright like a wild Morisco ; " J 
 
 Friar Tuck sneaks away from his ancient companions to join hands with some 
 undisguised maiden ; the Hobby-horse gets rid of pasteboard and his foot- 
 cloth ; and the Dragon quietly deposits his neck and tail for another season. 
 Something like the genial chorus of 'Summer's Last Will and Testament' is 
 rung out : — 
 
 " Trip and go, heave and ho, 
 Up and down, to and fro, 
 From the town to the grove, 
 Two and two, let us rove, 
 A Maying, a playing; 
 Love hath no gainsaying : 
 So merrily trip and go." 
 
 The early-rising moon still sees the villagers on that green of Shottery. The 
 Piper leans against the May-pole; the featliest of dancers still swim to his 
 music : — 
 
 Weelkes's Madrigals, 1600. 
 \ Nicholas Breton, % Heray VI, Part II. 
 
 68
 
 A JJTOGUAPHY 
 
 " So have I B^n 
 Tom Piper stand upon our village green, 
 Back'd with the May-pole, whilst a jocund crew 
 In gentle motion circularly threw 
 Themselves around him." * 
 
 The same beautiful writer — one of the last of our golden age of poetry — haa 
 described the parting gifts bestowed upon the " merry youngsters" by 
 
 " The lady of the May 
 Set in an arbour, (on a holy-day,) 
 Built by the May-pole, whore the jocund swains 
 Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe's strains, 
 When envious night commands them to be gone." f 
 
 It is easy to believe that Anne Hathaway might have been the Lady of the 
 May of Shottery ; and that the enthusiastic boy upon whom she bestowed " a 
 garland interwove with roses " might have cherished that gift with a gratitude 
 that was not for his peace. 
 
 Browne's ' Britannia's Pastorals/ Book ii., Second Song 
 
 f Book ii., Fourth Song. 
 
 
 W 
 
 
 
 i\ V V 
 
 
 - - .v 
 
 '— J.-'" c \- 
 
 [ShottO y.]
 
 WTT.TJAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Eight villages in the neighbourhood of Stratford have been characterized in 
 well-known lines by some old resident who had the talent of rhyme. It is 
 remarkable how familiar all the country-people are to this day with these 
 lines, and how invariably they ascribe them to Shakspere : — 
 
 " Piping Febworth, dancing Marston, 
 Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton, 
 Dudging * Exhall, Papist Wicksford, 
 Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford." 
 
 It is maintained that these epithets have a real historical trulh about them ; 
 and so we must place the scene of a Whitsun-Ale at Bidford. Aubrey has 
 given a sensible account of such a festivity : — " There were no rates for the 
 poor in my grandfather's days ; but for Kingston St. Michael (no small parish) 
 the Church-Ale of Whitsuntide did the business. In every parish is, or was, a 
 church-house, to which belonged spits, crocks, &c, utensils for dressing provi- 
 sion. Here the housekeepers met and were merry, and gave their charity. 
 The young people were there, too, and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, 
 &c, the ancients sitting gravely by, and looking on. All things were civil, and 
 without scandal." f The puritan Stubbes took a more severe view of the matter 
 than Aubrey's grandfather : — " In certain towns where drunken Bacchus bears 
 sway, against Christmas and Easter, Whitsuntide, or some other time, the 
 churchwardens of every parish, with the consent of the whole parish, provide 
 half a score or twenty quarters of malt, whereof some they buy of the church- 
 stock, and some is given them of the parishioners themselves, every one con- 
 ferring somewhat, according to his ability ; which malt, being made into very 
 strong ale or beer, is set to sale, either in the church or some other place assigned 
 to that purpose, Then, when this is set abroach, well is he that can get the 
 soonest to it, and spend the most at it." I Carew, the historian of Cornwall 
 (1G02), says, "The neighbour parishes at those times lovingly visit one another, 
 and this way frankly spend their money together." Thus lovingly might John 
 Shakspere and his friends on a Whit-Monday morning have ridden by the 
 pleasant road to Bidford — now from some little eminence beholding their Avon 
 flowing amidst a low meadow on one side and a wood-crowned steep on the 
 other, turning a mill-wheel, rushing over a dam — now carefully wending their 
 way through the rough road under the hill, or galloping over the free downs, 
 glad to escape from rut and quagmire. And then the Icknield Street § is 
 crossed, and they look down upon the little town with its gabled roofs ; and 
 they pass the old church, whose tower gives forth a lusty peal ; and the hostel 
 at the bridge receives them ; and there is the cordial welcome, the outstretched 
 hand and the full cup. 
 
 But nearer home Whitsuntide has its sports also ; and these will be more 
 attractive for William Shakspere. Had not Stratford its " Lord of Whitsun- 
 
 * Sulky, stubborn, in dudgeon. 
 •| Miscellanies. J Anatomy of Abuses, 1585. 
 
 § The Roman way which runs near Bidford. 
 70
 
 t_\Sidford Bridge.] 
 
 tide?" Might the boy not behold at this season innocence wearing a face of 
 
 freedom like his own Perdita ? — 
 
 " Come, take your flowers : 
 Methiuks, I play as I have seen them do 
 In Whitsmi pastorals." 
 
 Would there not be in some cheerful mansion a simple attempt at dramatic 
 representation, such as his Julia has described in her assumed character nf a 
 page ? — 
 
 " At Pentecost, 
 When all our pageants of delight were play'd, 
 Our youth got me to play the womau's part ; 
 And I was trimm'd in madam Julia's gown ; 
 Which served me as fit, in all men's judgments, 
 As if the garment had been made for me ; 
 f herefore, I know she is about my height. 
 /I.nd at that time I mado her weep a-good, 
 F'or I did play a lamentable part : 
 Madam, 't was Ariadne, passioning 
 For Theseus' perjury and unjust flight." f 
 
 Certainly on that holiday some one would be ready to recite a moving tale 
 from Gower or from Chaucer — a fragment of the ' Confessio Amantis ' or of the 
 ' Troilus and Creseide : ' — 
 
 " It hath been sung at festivals, 
 On ember eves, and holy-ales." J 
 
 The elements of poetry would be around him ; the dramatic spirit of the people 
 
 • Winter's Tale, Act iv., Scene in. + Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iv., Sc. in. 
 
 ; I'ei ides, Act J. 
 
 71
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 would be struggling to give utterance to its thoughts, and even then he might 
 cherish the desire to lend it a voice. 
 
 The sheep-shearing — that, too, is dramatic. Drayton, the countryman of our 
 poet, has described the shepherd-king : — 
 
 " But, Muae, return to tell Low there the shepherd-king, 
 Whose flock hath chanc'd that year the earliest lamb to bring, 
 In his gay baldric sits at his low grassy board, 
 With flawns, curds, clouted cream, and country dainties stor'd : 
 And, whilst the bagpipe plays, each lusty jocund swain 
 Quaffs syllabubs in cans to all upon the plain ; 
 And to their country girls, whose nosegays they do wear, 
 Some roundelays do sing, — the rest the burden bear." * 
 
 The vale of Evesham is the scene of Drayton's sheep-shearing. But higher up 
 the Avon there are rich pastures ; and shallow bays of the clear river, where 
 the washing may be accomplished. Such a bay, so used, is there near the 
 pretty village of Alveston, about two miles above Stratford. One of the most 
 delicious scenes of the Winter's Tale is that of the sheep-shearing, in which 
 we have the more poetical shepherd-gwen. There is a minuteness of circum- 
 stance amidst the exquisite poetry of this scene which shows that it must have 
 been founded upon actual observation, and in all likelihood upon the keen and 
 prying observation of a boy occupied and interested with such details. Surely 
 his father's pastures and his father's homestead might have supplied all these 
 circumstances. His father's man might be the messenger to the town, ana 
 reckon upon "counters" the cost of the sheep-shearing feast. "Three pound 
 of sugar, five pound of currants, rice" — and then he asks, "What will this sister 
 of mine do with rice ? " In Bohemia, the clown might, with dramatic propriety, 
 not know the use of rice at a sheep -shearing ; but a Warwickshire swain would 
 have the flavour of cheese-cakes in his mouth at the first mention of rice and 
 currants. Cheese-cakes and warden-pies were the sheep-shearing delicacies. 
 How absolutely true is the following picture : — 
 
 " Fie, daughter ! when my old wife liv'd, upon 
 This day she was both pantler, butler, cook ; 
 Both dame and servant : welcom'd all, seiVd all 
 Would sing her song, and dance her turn ; now here 
 At upper end o' the table, now i' the middle ; 
 On his shoulder, and his : her face o' fire 
 With labour ; and the thing she took to quench it 
 She would to each one sip." 
 
 This is the literal painting of a Teniers ; but the same hand could unite the 
 unrivalled grace of a Correggio. William Shakspere might have had some 
 boyish dreams of a " mistress o' the feast," who might have suggested his Per- 
 dita ; but such a creation is of higher elements than those of the earth. Such a 
 bright vision is something more than "a queen of curds and cream." 
 The poet who says 
 
 " Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn ; 
 With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear, 
 And draw her home with music," f 
 
 • Polyolbiou, Song XIV, j Merchant of Venice, Act v., Scene I, 
 
 72
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 had seen the Hock-Cart of the old harvest-home. It was the same that Paul 
 Hentzner saw at Windsor in 1598: "As we were returning to our inn we 
 happened to meet some country-people celebrating their Harvest-home. Their 
 last load of corn they crown with flowers, having besides an image richly 
 dressed, by which perhaps they would signify Ceres. This they keep moving 
 about, while men and women, men and maid-servants, riding through the 
 streets in the cart, shout as loud as they can till they arrive at the barn." In 
 the reign of James I., Moresin, another foreigner, saw a figure made of corn 
 drawn home in a cart, with men and women singing to the pipe and the drum. 
 And then Puritanism arose, to tell us that all such expressions of the heart 
 were pagan and superstitious, relics of Popery, abominations of the Evil One. 
 Robert Herrick, full of the old poetical feeling, sung the glories of the Hock 
 Cart in the time of Charles I. : but a severe religion, and therefore an unwise 
 one, denounced all such festivals as the causes of debauchery ; and so the 
 debauchery alone remained with us. The music and the dancing were 
 banished, but the strong drinks were left. Herrick tells us that the cere- 
 monies of the Hock-Cart were performed "with great devotion." Assuredly 
 they were. Devotion is that which knocks the worldly shackles off the spirit ; 
 strikes a spark out of our hard and dry natures ; enforces the money-getter 
 for a moment to forego his gain, and the penniless labourer to forget his 
 hunger- satisfying toil. Devotion is that which brings a tear into the eye, 
 and makes the heart throb against the bosom, in silent forests where the doe 
 gazes fearlessly upon the unaccustomed form of man, by rocks overhanging the 
 sea, in the gorge of the mountains, in the cloister of the cathedral when the 
 organ-peal comes and goes like the breath of flowers, in the crowded city when 
 joyous multitudes shout by one impulse. Devotion lived amidst old cere- 
 monials derived from a long antiquity ; it waited upon the seasons ; it hal- 
 lowed the seed-time and the harvest, and made the frosts cheerful. And thus 
 it grew into Religion. The feeling became a principle. But the formalists 
 came, and required men to be devout without imagination ; to have faith, 
 rejecting tradition and authority, and all the genial impulses of love and reve- 
 rence associated with the visible world, — the practical poetry of life, which is 
 akin to faith. And so we are what we are, and not what God would have us 
 to be. 
 
 We have retained Christmas ; a starveling Christmas ; one day of excessive 
 eating for all ages, and Twelfth-cake for the children. It is something that 
 relations meet on Christmas -day ; that for one day in the year the outward 
 shows of rivalry and jealousy are not visible ; that the poor cousin puts on his 
 best coat to taste port with his condescending host of the same name ; that the 
 portionless nieces have their annual guinea from their wealthy aunt. But 
 where is the real festive exhilaration of Christmas ; the meeting of all ranks 
 as children of a common father ; the tenant speaking freely in his landlord's 
 hall ; the labourers and their families sitting at the same great oak table ; the 
 Yule Log brought in with shout and song ? 
 
 " No night ia now with hymn or carol blest." * 
 
 * Midsummer-Is ight'fl Droaza. 
 
 73
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERB : 
 
 Tliere are singers of carols even now at a Stratford Christmas. Warwickshire 
 nas retained some of its ancient carols. But the singers are wretched chorus- 
 makers, according to the most unmusical style of all the generations from the 
 time of the Commonwealth. There are no "three-man song-men" amongst 
 then?, no "means and bases;" there is not even "a Puritan" who "sings 
 psalms to hornpipes."* They have retained such of the carols as will most 
 provoke mockery : — 
 
 " Rise up, rise up, brother Dives, 
 And come along with me, 
 For you've a place provided in hell, 
 Upon a sarpant's knee." 
 
 And then the crowd laugh, and give their halfpennies. But in an age of music 
 we may believe that one young dweller in Stratford gladly woke out of his 
 innocent sleep, after the evening bells had rung him to rest, when in the still- 
 ness of the night the psaltery was gently touched before his father's porch, 
 and he heard, one voice under another, these simple and solemn strains : — 
 
 " As Joseph was a-walking 
 He heard an angel sing, 
 This night shall be born 
 Our heavenly king. 
 
 He neither shall be born 
 
 In housen nor in hall, 
 Nor in the place of Paradise, 
 
 But in an ox's stall. 
 
 He neither shall be clothed 
 
 In purple nor in pall, 
 But all in fair linen, 
 
 As were babies all. 
 
 He neither shall be rock'd 
 
 In silver nor in gold, 
 But in a wooden cradle 
 
 That rocks on the mould." 
 
 London has perhaps this carol yet, amongst its halfpenny ballads. A msn 
 whose real vocation was mistaken in his busy time, for he had a mind attuned 
 to the love of what was beautiful in the past, instead of being enamoured with 
 the ugly disputations of the present, has preserved it ;f but it was for another 
 age. It was for the age of William Shakspere. It was for the age when 
 superstition, as we call it, had its poetical faith : — 
 
 " Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes 
 Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 
 This bird of dawning singeth all night long ; 
 And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; 
 The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strikft. 
 No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm : 
 So hallow'd and so gracious is the time." + 
 
 » Winter's Tale, 
 t William Hcne's 'Ancient Mysteries,' p. 02. \ Ham'ei, Act j., Scene T. 
 
 71
 
 A BIOGTUPITY. 
 
 Surely it is the poet himself, who adds, in the person of Horatio, 
 
 " So have I heard, and do in yart believe it." 
 
 Such a night was a preparation for a " happy Christmas ; " — the prayers of an 
 earnest Church, the Anthem, the Hymn, the Homily. The cross of Stratford 
 was garnished with the holly, the ivy, and the bay. Hospitality was in every 
 house ; but the hall of the great landlord of the parish was a scene of rare 
 conviviality. The frost or the snow will not deter the principal friends and 
 tenants from the welcome of Clopton. There is the old house, nestled in the 
 woods, looking down upon the little town. Its chimneys are reeking ; there is 
 bustle in the offices ; the sound of the trumpeters and the pipers is heard 
 through the open door of the great entrance ; the steward marshals the guests ; 
 the tables are fast filling. Then advance, courteously, the master and the mis- 
 tress of the feast. The Boar's head is brought in with due solemnity ; the wine- 
 cup goes round; and perhaps the Saxon shout of Waes-hael and Drink-hael 
 may still be shouted. The boy-guest who came with his father, the tenant of 
 Ingon, has slid away from the rout ; for the steward, who loves the boy, has a 
 sight to make him merry. The Lord of Misrule, and his jovial attendants, 
 are rehearsing their speeches; and the mummers from Stratford are at the 
 porch. Very sparing are the cues required for the enactment of this short 
 drama. A speech to the esquire, closed with a merry jest ; something about 
 ancestry and good Sir Hugh ; the loud laugh ; the song and the chorus, — and 
 the Lord of Misrule is now master of the feast. The Hall is cleared • " Away 
 
 :^F>- 
 
 [CI pton House.]
 
 WTLLTAM STTAKSPTWE ! 
 
 with the joint-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the plate." * There 
 is dancing till Curfew; and then a walk in the moonlight to Stratford, the 
 pale beam shining equally upon the dark resting-place in the lonely aisle of 
 the Clopton who is gone, and upon the festal hall of the Clopton who remains, 
 where some loiterers of the old and the young still desire 
 
 " To burn this night with torches." f 
 
 « Eomeo and Juliet, Act I., Scene Y. •[ Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv., Scene n. 
 
 (The Clopton Monument 
 
 Stratford Church.]
 
 J^Kr^f "\y S^Tiv 
 
 Si 
 
 Was William Shakspere at Kenilworth in that summer of 1575, when the 
 great Dudley entertained Elizabeth with a splendour which annalists have 
 delighted to record, and upon which one of our own days has bestowed a fame 
 more imperishable than that of any annals ? Percy, speaking of the old 
 Coventry Hock-play, says, " Whatever this old play or storial show was at 
 the time it was exhibited to Queen Elizabeth, it had probably our young 
 Shakspere for a spectator, who was then in his twelfth year, and doubtless 
 attended with all the inhabitants of the surrounding country at these ' princely 
 pleasures of Kenilworth,' whence Stratford is only a few miles distant." * The 
 preparations for this celebrated entertainment were on so magnificent a scale, 
 the purveyings must have been so enormous, the posts so unintermitting, that 
 there had needed jiot the flourishings of paragraphs (for the age of paragraphs 
 was not as yet) to have roused the curiosity of all mid-England. Elizabeth 
 had visited Kenilworth on two previous occasions. In 1565, after she had 
 created Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester, she bore her sunshine to the posses- 
 sions she had given to her favourite ; and passing through Coventry, " she was 
 honourably received by the mayor and citizens with many fair shows and 
 pageants." It was on this occasion that Humphrey Brownell, the Mayor, 
 IT ust have delighted the Queen with his impromptu speech, worth a hundred 
 
 ! On the Origin of the English Stage :' — Reliques, vol. L
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE : 
 
 of the magnificent orations of John Throgmorton the Recorder. Elizabeth had 
 a ready hand for the rich gifts of her subjects ; and when on their knees the 
 Corporation of Coventry presented her Majesty a heavy purse, her satisfaction 
 broke out into the exclamation, "A good gift, a hundred pounds in gold ! 1 
 have but few such gifts!" The words were addressed to her lords; but the 
 honest Mayor boldly struck in, " If it please your grace, there is a great deal 
 more in it." "What is that?" said the Queen. "The hearts of all your 
 loving subjects," replied the Mayor.* Elizabeth on this occasion departed 
 from Kenilworth offended with Leicester. Had he been too bold or too timid ? 
 In the summer of 1572 the royal progress was again for Warwickshire. "The 
 weather having been very foul long time before, and the way much stained 
 with carriage," the Queen was conveyed into her good town of Warwick 
 through bye-ways not quite so miry ; but the bailiff and the burgesses knelt in 
 the dirt, and her Majesty's coach was brought as near to the said kneelers as it 
 could be. The long oration, and the heavy purse, of course followed. During 
 this visit to Kenilworth in 1572 two important state affairs were despatched. 
 Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland was beheaded at York ; and the offer 
 of marriage of Francis Duke of Alencon was definitively rejected. In the 
 previous June, Leicester wrote touching this proposal, — " It seems her Majesty 
 meaneth to give good ear to it." There was a counsellor at Kenilworth in the 
 following August who would possess the Queen's " good ear " in a more eminent 
 degree than Montmorenci, the French Ambassador. In 1575, when Robert 
 Dudley welcomed his sovereign with a more than regal magnificence, it is easy 
 to believe that his ambition looked for a higher reward than that of continuing 
 a queen's most favoured servant and counsellor. It is tolerably clear that the 
 exquisite speech of Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream is associated with 
 some of the poetical devices which the young Shakspere might have beheld 
 a; Kenilworth, or have heard described: — 
 
 " Ohe. My gentle Puck, cume hither : Thou reniember'st 
 Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
 And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
 That the rude sea grew civil at her song ; 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, 
 To hear the sea-maid's music. 
 
 Puck. I remember. 
 
 Obe. That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,) 
 Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
 Cupid all arm'd ; a certain aim he took 
 At a fair vestal, throned by the west; 
 And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
 As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : 
 But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
 Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon ; 
 And the imperial votaress passed on, 
 In maiden meditation, fancy-free." 
 
 * See Nichols's 'Progresses,' vol. i., p. i&li
 
 The most remarkable of the shows of Kenilworth were associated with the 
 mythology and the romance of lakes and seas. " Triton, in likeness of a mer- 
 maid, came towards the Queen's Majesty." " Arion appeared sitting on a 
 dolphin's back." So the quaint and really poetical George Gascoigne, in his 
 ' Brief Rehearsal, or rather a true copy of as much as was presented before 
 her Majesty at Kenilworth.' But the diffuse and most entertaining coxcomb 
 Laneham describes a song of Arion with an ecstacy which may justify the 
 belief that the "dulcet and harmonious breath" of "the sea-maid's music" 
 might be the echo of the melodies heard by the young poet as he stood beside 
 the lake at Kenilworth : — " Now, Sir, the ditty in metre so aptly endited to 
 the matter, and after by voice deliciously delivered ; the song, by a skilfui 
 artist into his parts so sweetly sorted ; each part in his instrument so clean 
 and sharply touched ; every instrument again in his kind so excellently tunable ; 
 and this in the evening of the day, resounding from the calm waters, where the 
 presence of her Majesty, and longing to listen, had utterly damped all noise 
 and din, the whole harmony conveyed in time, tune, and temper, thus incom- 
 parably melodious ; with what pleasure (Master Martin), with what sharpness 
 of conceit, with what lively delight, this might pierce into the hearers' hearts, 
 I pray ye imagine yourself, as ye may." If Elizabeth be the " fair vestal 
 throned by the west," of which there can be no reasonable doubt, the most 
 appropriate scene of the mermaid's song would be Kenilworth, and " that very 
 time" the summer of 1575. Of the hidden meaning of that song we shall have 
 
 presently to speak. 
 
 1*
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 
 
 Percy, believing that the boy Shakspere was at Kenilwcrth, has remarked, 
 with his usual taste and judgment, that "the dramatic cast of many parts of 
 that superb entertainment must have had a very great effect upon a young 
 imagination, whose dramatic powers were hereafter to astonish the world." 
 Without assuming with Percy that " our young bard gained admittance into 
 the castle" on the evening when "after supper there was a play of a very good 
 theme presented ; but so set forth, by the actors' well handling, that pleasure 
 and mirth made it seem very short, though it lasted two good hours and 
 morei''* yielding not our consent to Tieck's fiction, that the boy performed 
 the part of ' Echo ' in Gascoigne's address to the Queen, and was allowed to 
 see the whole of the performances by the especial favour of her Majesty, — we 
 shall run over the curious narratives of Laneham and of Gascoigne, to show 
 that, without being a favoured spectator, William Shakspere with his friends 
 might have beheld many things on this occasion which " must have had, a very 
 great effect upon a young imagination," and have assisted still further in giving 
 it that dramatic tendency which, as we have endeavoured already to point out, 
 was a peculiar characteristic of the simplest and the commonest festivals of his 
 age. 
 
 It was eight o'clock in the evening of Saturday the 9th of July when, after 
 "great cheer at dinner," at a place seven miles from Kenilworth, and "pleasant 
 pastime in hunting by the way after," Elizabeth arrived within "a night- 
 shoot " of the first gate of the castle. The open space before that gate would 
 be crowded with spectators, some, worn out with long waiting, stretched 
 beneath the trees of the park, others gazing upon the leads and battlements, 
 where stood, " six trumpeters hugely advanced, much exceeding the common 
 stature of men in this age, who had likewise huge and monstrous trumpets* 
 counterfeited, wherein they seemed to sound. "f But before the real trumpeters 
 hidden behind them sounded, Sibylla, " comely clad in a pall of white silk, pro- 
 nounced a proper poesy in English rhyme and metre. "J Sibylla would, we 
 are sure, repeat to the crowd what she had addressed to the Queen ; for Master 
 Hunnis, master of her Majesty's chapel, would desire all honour for his pleasant 
 verses : — 
 
 " The rage of war bound fast in chains 
 Shall never stir nor move ; 
 But peace shall govern all your days, 
 Increasing subjects' love." 
 
 It was through the gate of the tilt-yard, on the south side of the castle, and 
 not by the great gate-house on the north, that Elizabeth entered. Little would 
 the crowd hear therefore of the speech of the mighty porter, " tall of person, 
 big of limb, and stern of countenance," who met the Queen at the gate of Morti- 
 mer's Tower, which led into the base-court; and, indeed, even for ourselves, 
 Gascoigne and Laneham might have spared their descriptions, for a mightier 
 than they has described this part of the ceremonial after his own fashion. The 
 
 * Laneham. f Gascoigne. 
 
 J Laneham. As we shall quote fragments from each writer, it will be scarcely necessary to 
 refer to them on every occasion. 
 80
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 gate croses upon the train, when the Lady of the Lake, " from the midst of the 
 pool, where, upon a moveable island, bright blazing with torches, she floated to 
 land, met her Majesty with a well-penned metre." The wearied Queen had 
 yet more to endure ; there were Latin verses to be pronounced before she could 
 be conveyed up to her chamber ; and then " after did follow so great a peal of 
 guns, and such lightning by firework," that " the noise and flame were heard and 
 seen twenty miles off." 
 
 Sunday was a day of rest ; but Monday brought another of the store of 
 dramatic devices — open-air recitations, which Elizabeth would be best pleased 
 to hear with the people crowding around her. In the evening of a hot day the 
 Queen rode into the chase " to hunt the hart of force;" and upon her return 
 by torchlight there came forth out of the woods a savage man, " with an oaken 
 plant, plucked up by the roots, in his hand, himself foregrown all in moss and 
 ivy, who, for personage, gesture, and utterance beside, countenanced the mat- 
 ter to very good liking." The savage man, and his attendant ' Echo/ may 
 appear to us a rude device, and there would be little dramatic propriety in the 
 man " all in ivy" pouring forth such verses as, — 
 
 " The winds resound your worth, 
 The rocks record your name, 
 These hills, these dales, these woods, these waves, 
 These fields, pronounce your fame." 
 
 The days of the gorgeous and refined masque were not yet come ; the drama had 
 almost wholly to be created. But the writer of these lines, a man of consider- 
 able talent, was evidently proud of his invention of the savage man and his 
 echo, for he says, with a laughable humility, " These verses were devised, 
 penned, and pronounced, by Master Gascoigne ; and that (as I have heard 
 credibly reported) upon a very great sudden." To William Shakspere such 
 representations, rude as they were, must have been exceedingly impressive. 
 The scene was altogether one of romance. That magnificent castle, its stately 
 woods, its pleasant lake, its legends of King Arthur, its histories of the Mont- 
 forts and the Mortimers, its famous revivals of the Round Table, the presence 
 of a real Queen, the peaceable successor of the fiery Yorkists and Lancastrians 
 who had once inhabited it, — would stir his imagination even though he saw not 
 the devices and heard not the poetry. The enthusiasm of Master Gascoigne, 
 when he pronounced the wild man's address, bordered a little upon the extrava- 
 gant, according to Laneham : "As this savage, for the more submission, broke 
 his tree asunder, and cast the top from him, it had almost light upon her High- 
 ness's horse's head ; whereat he startled, and the gentleman much dismayed." 
 The recollection of the savage man's ecstacy might have slept in the mind of the 
 young poet till it shaped itself into the passion of Biron : — 
 
 " Who aees the heavenly Rosaline, 
 That, like a rude and savage man of Inde, 
 
 At the first opening of the gorgeous east, 
 Bows not his vassal head; and, strucken blind, 
 
 Kisses the base ground with obedient breast ? " * 
 
 • Lore's Labour's Lost, Act IV., Scene I. 
 Lmr& G SI
 
 nfe. 
 
 Thursday, the fourteenth of July, saw a change in the Queen's diversions. 
 There were thirteen bears in the inner court of Kenil worth, and " a great sort 
 of ban- dogs " in the outer. They were brought together, and set face to face. 
 "It was a sport," says the coxcomb-historian, "very pleasant of these beasts: 
 to see the bear with his pink eyes leering after his enemies' approach, the 
 nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his advantage, and the force and ex- 
 perience of the bear again to avoid the assault : If he was bitten in one place 
 how he would pinch in another to get free ; that if he was taken once then 
 what shift, with biting, with clawing, with roaring, tossing, and tumbling, he 
 would work to wind himself from them ; and when he was loose, to shake his 
 ears twice or thrice, with the blood and the slaver about his visnomy, was a 
 matter of a goodly relief." Oh, Master Laneham, is it you, " always among the 
 gentlewomen by my good will," — is it you, with your dancing, your gittern, your 
 cittern, your virginals, — your high reaches, your fine feigning, your deep diapa- 
 son, your wanton warblings, when the ladies flock about you like bees to honey, 
 that can write thus of these cruelties ? And truly in this matter of the bears 
 we believe you speak more according to the fashion of the polite than " Cousin 
 Abraham Slender," when he said " Women, indeed, cannot abide 'em." They 
 came into the inner court for the diversion of the Queen and her ladies ; they 
 were brought especially from London ; the masters of her Majesty's games had 
 the Chamberlain's warrant to travel peaceably with the bears, and to press all 
 ban-dogs that should be needful ; they were the lawful tenants of Paris Garden, 
 before the glories of the Globe Theatre, and they divided the town with 
 Hamlet even in that theatre's most palmy days. When the young Shakspere 
 heard the roaring and the barking he knew not that his most obstinate rivals 
 were at their vocation ; — rivals that even his friend Alleyn would build his 
 best profits upon in future days, and found a college out of their blood and 
 82
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 slaver. Rut let us not forget that they were the especial amusements of the 
 town ; and that forty years after, the sovereign of a debauched and idle court, 
 although he could enjoy the comedies of Shakspere and the masques of Jonson, 
 is petitioned by Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn for some gratuity, seeing 
 the great diminution of profits they sustain by the restraint against baiting "on 
 the Sundays in the afternoon, after divine service/' more particularly on account 
 of " the loss of divers of these beasts, as before the King of Denmark, which 
 lofct a goodly bear called George Stone ; and at our last being before your 
 Majesty were killed four of our best bears, which in your kingdom are not the 
 like to be had." * Laneham tells us not that the country-folks were recreated 
 with the bears : — " As this sport was held at day-time in the castle, so was there 
 abroad at night very strange and sundry kinds of fireworks." 
 
 The bear-tragedy of Thursday was succeeded by the enactment of a most 
 extraordinary farce on Sunday. " After divine service in the parish-church for 
 the Sabbath-day, and a fruitful sermon there in the forenoon," Elizabeth was 
 recreated with a mockery of the simple ceremonials of her people, on one of the 
 most joyful and yet serious occasions of human life. A village-bridal was to be 
 burlesqued — a "merry-marriage," as Gascoigne calls it. A procession was set in 
 order in the tilt-yard to make its show in the Castle before the Great Court. 
 " Sixteen wights, riding-men, and well beseen," and then "the bridegroom fore- 
 most in his father's tawny worsted jacket (for his friends were fain that he 
 should be a bridegroom before the Queen), a fair straw hat with a capital 
 crown, steeple-wise on his head ; a pair of harvest-gloves on his hands, as a sign 
 of good husbandry ; a pen and inkhorn at his back, for he would be known to 
 be bookish ; lame of a leg that in his youth was broken at foot-ball ; well-beloved 
 of his mother, who lent him a new muffler for a napkin, that was tied to his 
 girdle for losing it. It was no small sport to mark this minion in his full 
 appointment ; that, through good tuition, became as formal in his action as had 
 he been a bridegroom indeed." Then came the morris-dancers, Maid Marian, 
 and the Fool ; bride-maids, " as bright as a breast of bacon, of thirty years old 
 apiece;" a freckled-faced, red-headed lubber with the bride-cup; the "wor- 
 shipful bride, thirty-five years old, of colour brown-bay, not very beautiful 
 indeed, but ugly, foul, and ill-favoured;" and, lastly, a dozen other damsels 
 "for bride-maids, that for favour, attire, for fashion and cleanliness, were as 
 meet for such a bride as a tureen-ladle for a porridge-pot." We must do Eliza- 
 beth the justice to believe that such a mummery was scarcely agreeable to 
 her ; it could not have been agreeable to her people. In that Court, as in 
 other Courts, must there have dwelt that heartless exclusiveness which finds 
 subjects for ridicule in what delights the earnest multitudes. Many a bridal 
 procession had gone forth from the happy cottages of Kenilworth to the porch 
 of that old parish -church, amidst song and music, with garlands of rosemary 
 and wheat-ears, parents blessing, sisters smiling in tears ; and then the great 
 lord —the heartless lord, as the peasants might whisper, whose innocent wife 
 
 * Collier's ' Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' p. K.
 
 I? : If " lH 
 
 
 
 perished untimely — is to make sport of their 
 
 homely joys before their Queen. There was, 
 
 perhaps, one in the crowd on that Sunday afternoon who was to see the 
 
 very heaven of poetry in such simple rites — who was to picture the shepherd, 
 
 thus addressing his mistress in the solemnity of the troth-plight : — 
 
 " I take tliy hand ; this hand 
 As soft a.s dove's down, and as white as it; 
 Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow 
 That 'a bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er." * 
 
 He would agree not with Master Laneham — " By my troth 't was a lively pas- 
 time : I believe it would have moved a man to a right merry mood though it 
 had been told him that his wife lay dying." Leicester, as we have seen, had 
 procured abundance of the occasional rhymes of flattery to propitiate Elizabeth. 
 This was enough. Poor Gascoigne had prepared an elaborate masque, in two 
 acts, of Diana and her Nymphs, which for the time is a remarkable production. 
 "This show," says the poet, "was devised and penned by Master Gascoigne, 
 and being prepared and ready (every actor in his garment) two or three days 
 together, yet never came to execution. The cause whereof I cannot attribute 
 to any other thing than to lack of opportunity and seasonable weather." It is 
 easy to understand that there was some other cause of Gascoigne's disappoint- 
 ment. Leicester, perhaps, scarcely dared to set the puppets moving who were 
 to conclude the masque with these lines : — 
 
 * Winter's Tale, Act iv., Scene in 
 
 84
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 " A world of wealth at will 
 
 You henceforth shall enjoy 
 In wedded state, and therewithal 
 
 Hold up from great annoy 
 The staff of your estate : 
 
 queen, worthy queen, 
 Yet never wight felt perfect bliss 
 
 But such as wedded been." 
 
 But when tlie Queen laughed at the word marriage, the wily couitier had his 
 impromptu device of the mock bridal. The marriages of the poor were the 
 marriages to be made fun of. But there was a device of marriage at which 
 Diana would weep, and all the other Gods rejoice, when her Majesty should 
 give the word. Alas, for that crowning show there was " lack of opportunity 
 and seasonable weather." 
 
 It is difficult to imagine anything more tedious than the fulsome praise, the 
 mythological pedantries, the obscure allusions to Constancy and Deep -Desire, 
 which were poured into the ears of Elizabeth during the nineteen days of 
 Kenilworth. There was not, according to the historians of this visit, one frag- 
 ment of our real old poetry produced to gratify the Queen of a nation that had 
 the songs and ballads of the chivalrous times still fresh upon its lips. There 
 were no Minstrels at Kenilworth ; the Harper was unbidden to its halls. The 
 
 [Lciccstcr.J
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 old English spirit of poetry was dead in a scheming court. We have man/ 
 evidences besides the complaint of poor Richard Sheale,* that the courtly and 
 the rich had begun to hold the travelling depositaries of the old traditionary 
 lore of England in unwise contempt. A few years after, and they were pro- 
 scribed by statute : — 
 
 " Beggars they are with one consent, 
 And rogues by act of parliament." ) 
 
 Laneham gives an account of " a ridiculous device of an ancient minstrel and 
 his song, prepared to have been proffered, if meet time and place had been 
 found for it." This is not the minstrel himself, but a travestie of him. He 
 was "a Squire Minstrel of Middlesex;" and an absurd narrative is put into 
 his mouth of " the worshipful village of Islington, well known to be one of the . 
 most ancient and best towns in England next London, at this day." Laneham 
 goes on to describe how " in a worshipful company" the "fool "who was to 
 play the Minstrel was put out of countenance by one cleverer than himself — 
 Master Laneham perhaps ; and how " he waxed very wayward, eager, and 
 sour." But he was pacified with fair words, and sack and sugar ; and after a 
 little warbling on his harp came forth with a " solemn song, warranted for story 
 out of King Arthur's acts, the 1st book and 26th chapter." Percy prints ' The 
 Minstrel's Sonnet ' in his ' Reliques,' under the title of ' King Ryence's Chal- 
 lenge,' saying — " This song is more modern than many of them which follow it, 
 but is placed here for the sake of the subject. It was sung before Queen Eliza- 
 beth at the grand entertainment at Kenilworth Castle in 1575, and was proba- 
 bly composed for that occasion." Not so. Laneham says expressly, " it was 
 prepared to have been proffered." It is remarkable that' Percy does not state 
 what is so evident — that this ballad was intended to be a burlesque upon the 
 Romances of Chivalry. If all Laneham's conceited description of the Minstrel 
 did not show this, the following stanza is decisive enough ; being the answer to 
 the messenger of King Ryence, who came to demand, in the language of the 
 ' Morte Arthur,' the beard of the British king, "for king Ryence had purfeled 
 a mantell with kings' beards, and there lacked for one a place in the mantell : " — 
 
 " But say to sir Ryence, thou dwarf, quoth the king, 
 
 That for his bold message I do him defye ; 
 And shortlye with basins and pans will him ring 
 
 Out of North-Gales : where he and I 
 
 With swords and not razors ciuickly shall tryo 
 Whether he or king Arthur will prove the best harbor ; 
 And therewith he shook his good sword Excalabor." 
 
 It was something higher that in a few years called up Spenser and Shakspere. 
 Yet there was one sport, emanating from the people, which had heart and 
 reality in it. Laneham describes this as a " good sport presented in an historical 
 cue by certain good-hearted men of Coventry, my lord's neighbours there." 
 They " made petition that they might renew now their old storial show : 
 of argument how the Danes, whilom here in a troublous season, were for 
 
 * See Chapter V.
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 quietness borne withal and suffered in peace ; that anon, by outrage and urisup 
 portable insolency, abusing both Ethelred the King, then, and all estates every- 
 where beside, at the grievous complaint and counsel of Huna, the King's chief- 
 tain in wars, on Saint Brice's night, Anno Dom. 1012 (as the book says, that 
 falleth yearly on the thirteenth of November), were all despatched, and the 
 realm rid. And for because that the matter mentioneth how valiantly our 
 Englishwomen, for love of their country, behaved themselves, expressed in 
 action and rhymes after their manner, they thought it might move some mirth 
 to her Majesty the rather. The thing, said they, is grounded in story, and for 
 pastime wont to be played in our city yearly, without ill example of manners, 
 papistry, or any superstition ; and else did so occupy the heads of a number, 
 that likely enough would have had worse meditations ; had an ancient beginning 
 and a long continuance, till now of late laid down, they knew no cause why, 
 unless it was by the zeal of certain of their preachers, men very commendable 
 for their behaviour and learning, and sweet in their sermons, but somewhat too 
 sour in preaching away their pastime." The description by Laneham is the 
 only precise account which remains to us of the "old storial show," the " sport 
 presented in an historical cue." It was a show not to be despised, for it told the 
 people how their Saxon ancestors had arisen to free themselves from " outrage 
 and unsupportable insolency," and " how valiantly our Englishwomen, for love 
 of their country, behaved themselves." Laneham, in his accustomed style, is 
 more intent upon describing " Captain Cox," an odd man of Coventry, " mason, 
 ale-conner, who hath great oversight in matters of story," than upon giving us 
 a rational account of this spectacle. We find, however, that there were the 
 Danish lance-knights on horseback, and then the English ; that they had furious 
 encounters with spear and shield, with sword and target ; that there were foot' 
 men, who fought in rank and squadron ; and that " twice the Danes had the 
 better, but at the last conflict beaten down, overcome, and many led captive for 
 triumph by our Englishwomen." The court historian adds, — " This was the 
 effect of this show, that as it was handled made much matter of good pastime, 
 brought all indeed into the great court, even under her Highness's window, to 
 have seen." But her Highness, having, pleasanter occupation within, " saw but 
 little of the Coventry play, and commanded it therefore on the Tuesday follow- 
 ing to have it full out, as accordingly it was presented." This repetition of the 
 Hock-play in its completeness, full out, necessarily leads to the conclusion that 
 the action was somewhat more complicated than the mere repetition of a mock- 
 combat. Laneham, in his general description of the play, says, " expressed in 
 action and rhymes." That he has preserved none of the rhymes, and has given 
 us a very insufficient account of the action, is characteristic of the man, and of 
 the tone of the courtiers. The Coventry clowns came there, not to call up any 
 patriotic feeling by their old traditionary lhymes and dumb-show, but to be 
 laughed at for their awkward movement and their earnest declamation It 
 appears to us that the conclusion is somewhat hasty which says of this piay of 
 Hock Tuesday, "It seems to have been merely a dumb-show."' Percy, rest- 
 
 « Collier, 'Aimala of the Stage,' vol. i., p. 234.
 
 WILLIAM SHAKBPEEE : 
 
 ing upon the authority of Laneham, says that the performance " seems on tluii 
 occasion to have been without recitation or rhymes, and reduced to mere dumb- 
 show." Even this we doubt. But certainly it is difficult to arrive at any other 
 conclusion than that of Percy, that the play, as originally performed by the 
 men of Coventry, " expressed in action and rhymes after their manner," — re- 
 presenting a complicated historical event, — the insolence of tyranny, the indig- 
 nation of the oppressed, the grievous complaint of one injured chieftain, the 
 secret counsels, the plots, the conflicts, the triumph, — must have offered us " a 
 regular model of a complete drama." If the young Shakspere were a witness 
 to the performance of this drama, his imagination would have been more highly 
 and more worthily excited than if he had been the favoured spectator of all the 
 shows of Tritons, and Dianas, and Ladies of the Lake, that proceeded from " the 
 conceit so deep in casting the plot " of his lordship of Leicester. It would be 
 not too much to believe that this storial show might first suggest to him how 
 English history might be dramatized ; how a series of events, terminating in 
 some remarkable catastrophe, might be presented to the eye ; how fighting- 
 men might be marshalled on a mimic field ; how individual heroism might 
 stand out from amongst the mass, having its own fit expression of thought and 
 passion ; how the wife or the mother, the sister or the mistress, might be there 
 to uphold the hero, even as the Englishwomen assisted their warriors ; and how 
 all this might be made to move the hearts of the people, as the old ballads had 
 once moved them. Such a result would have repaid a visit to Kenilworth by 
 William Shakspere. Without this, he, his father, and their friends, might have 
 retired from the scene of Dudley's magnificence, as most thinking persons in all 
 probability retired, with little satisfaction. There was lavish expense ; but 
 according to the most credible accounts, the possessor of Kenilworth was the 
 oppressor of his district. We see him not delighting to show his Queen a 
 happy tenantry, such as the less haughty and ambitious nobles and esquires 
 were anxious to cultivate. The people come under the windows of Elizabeth 
 as objects of ridicule. Slavish homage would be there to Leicester from the 
 gentlemen of the county. They would replenish his butteries with their gifts , 
 they would ride upon his errands ; they would wear his livery. There was one 
 gentleman in Warwickshire who would not thus do Leicester homage — Edward 
 Arden, the head of the great house of Arden, the cousin of William Shakspere's 
 mother. But the mighty favourite was too powerful for him : " Which Edward 
 though a gentleman not inferior to the rest of his ancestors in those virtues 
 wherewith they were adorned, had the hard hap to come to an untimely death 
 in 27 Eliz., the charge laid against him being no less than high treason against 
 the Queen, as privy to some foul intentions that Master Somerville, his son-in- 
 law (a Roman Catholic), had towards her person : For which he was prosecuted 
 with so great rigour and violence, by the Earl of Leicester's means, whom he 
 had irritated in some particulars (as I have credibly heard), partly in disdain- 
 ing to wear his livery, which many in this country, of his rank, thought, in those 
 days, no small honour to them ; but chiefly for galling him by certain harsh 
 expressions, touching his private accesses to the Countess of Essex before she
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 was his wife ; that through the testimony of one Hall, a priest, he was found 
 guilty of the fact, and lost his life in Smithfield."* The Rev. N. J. Halpin, who 
 has contributed a most interesting tract to the publications of ' The Shakespeare 
 Society ' on the subject of ' Oberon's Vision in the Midsummer Night's Dream,' 
 has explained the allusions in that exquisite passage with far more success than 
 the belief of Warburton that the Queen of Scots was pointed at, or of Mr. Boaden 
 that Amy Robsart was the " little western flower." He considers that Edward 
 Arden, a spectator of those very entertainments at Kenilworth, discovered 
 Leicester's guilty "accesses to the Countess of Essex;" that the expression of 
 Oberon, "That very time, I saw, but thou couldst not," referred to this discovery; 
 that when "the Imperial Votaress passed on," he "marked where the bolt of 
 Cupid fell ;" that " the little western flower," pure, "milk-white" before that 
 time, became spotted, "purple with love's wound." We may add that there is 
 bitter satire in what follows — "that flower," retaining the original influence, 
 "will make or man or woman madly dote," as Lettice, Countess of Essex, was 
 infatuated by Leicester. The discovery of Edward Arden, and his "harsh expres- 
 sions " concerning it, might be traditions in Shakspere's family, and be safely 
 allegorized by the poet in 1594 when Leicester was gone to his account. f 
 
 Laneham asks a question which in his giddy style he does not wait to 
 answer, or even to complete : — •" And first, who that considers unto the stately 
 seat of Kenilworth Castle, the rare beauty of building that his Honour hath 
 advanced, all of the hard quarry-stone ; every room so spacious, so well be- 
 
 * Dugdale's Warwickshire,' p. 681. 
 
 t Professor Craik, in his most interesting work, ' The Romance of the Peerage,' is of opinion 
 ihat no reader who shall come to the perusal of Mr. Halpin's Essay, with a mind free from prepos- 
 sessions and a sufficient knowledge of the time, "will retain any doubt that the secret meaning of 
 •bhese lines has now been discovered — that Cupid is Leicester, that the Moon and the Vestal typify 
 Elizabeth, that the Earth is the Lady Sheffield,, and the little western flower the Countess of 
 Essex." (Vol. i. p. 75.) 
 
 [Ruins of Kenilworth,in the 17tli century.
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 lighted, and so high roofed within ; so seemly to sight by due proportion with- 
 out ; in day-tiine on every side so glittering by glass ; at nights, by continual 
 brightness of candle, fire, and torch-light, transparent through the lightsome 
 windows, as it were the Egyptian Pharos relucent unto all the Alexandrian 
 coast," — who that considers (we finish the sentence) what Kenil worth thus 
 was in the year 1575 will not contrast it with its present state of complete ruin? 
 Never did a fabric of such unequalled strength and splendour perish so inglo- 
 riously. Leicester bequeathed the possession to his brother the Earl of 
 Warwick for life, and the inheritance to his only son, Sir Robert Dudley, 
 whose legitimacy was to be left doubtful. The rapacious James contrived, 
 through the agency of the widow of the Earl of Leicester, to cheat the son out 
 of the father's great possessions. The more generous Prince Henry, upon 
 whom Kenilworth was bestowed, negotiated for its purchase with Sir Robert 
 Dudley, who had gone abroad. A fifth only of the purchase-money was ever 
 paid ; yet upon the death of his brother, Charles took possession of the castle 
 as his heir. A stronger than Charles divided the castle and lands, thus un- 
 justly procured by the Crown, amongst his captains and counsellors ; and from 
 the time of Cromwell the history of Kenilworth is that of its gradual decay 
 
 ^ • i 

 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 and final ruin. No cannon has battered its strong walls, " in many places of 
 fifteen and ten foot thickness ; " no turbulent soldiery has torn down the hang- 
 ings and destroyed the architraves and carved ceilings of " the rooms of great 
 state within the same;" no mines have exploded in its "stately cellars, all 
 carried upon pillars and architecture of freestone carved and wrought." The 
 buildings were whole, and are described, as we have just quoted, in a survey 
 when James laid his hand upon them. Of many of the outer walls the 
 masonry is still as fresh and as perfect as if the stone had only been quarried 
 half a century ago. Silent decay has done all this work. The proud Leicester, 
 who would have been king in England, could not secure his rightful inherit- 
 ance to his son, undoubtedly legitimate, whom he had the baseness to disown 
 whilst he was living. No just possessor came after him. One rapacity suc- 
 ceeded another, so that even a century ago Kenilworth was a monument of the 
 worthlessness of a grovelling ambition. 
 
 The historian of Warwickshire has given us " the ground-plot of Kenil- 
 worth Castle," as it was in 1640. By this we may trace the pool and 
 the pleasance ; the inner court, the base court, and the tilt-yard ; Caesar's 
 Tower and Mortimer's Tower ; King Henry's Lodgings and Leicester's 
 Buildings ; the Hall, the Presence Chamber, and the Privy Chamber. There 
 was an old fresco painting, too, upon a wall at Newnham Padox, which 
 was copied in 1716, and is held to represent the castle in the time of James I. 
 Without these aids Kenilworth would only appear to us a mysterious mass of 
 ruined gigantic walls ; deep cavities whose uses are unknown ; arched door- 
 ways, separated from the chambers to which they led ; narrow staircases, 
 suddenly opening into magnificent recesses, with their oriels looking over 
 corn-field and pasture ; a hall with its lofty windows and its massive chimney- 
 pieces still entire, but without roof or flooring ; mounds of earth in the midst 
 of walled chambers, and the hawthorn growing where the dais stood. The 
 desolation would probably have gone on for another century ; the stones of 
 Kenilworth would still have mended roads, and been built into the cowshed 
 and the cottage, till the ploughshare had been carried over the grassy courts ; 
 had not, some twenty-five years ago, a man of middle age, with a lofty forehead 
 and a keen grey eye, slightly lame but withal active, entered its gatehouse, 
 and, having looked upon the only bit of carving left to tell something of interior 
 magnificence, passed into those, ruins, and stood there silent for some two hours.* 
 Then was the ruined place henceforward to be sanctified. The progress of 
 desolation was to be arrested. The torch of genius again lighted up " every 
 room so spacious," and they were for ever after to be associated with the recol- 
 lections of their ancient splendour. There were to be visions of sorrow and 
 suffering there too ; woman's weakness, man's treachery. And now Kenilworth 
 is worthily a place which is visited from all lands. The solitary artist sits on 
 
 * Some five and twenty years ago there was a venerable and intelligent farmer, Mr. Bodington 
 living in the Gatehouse at Kenilworth. He remembered Scott's visit, although he knew not at the 
 time of the visit who he was ; and the frank manners and keen inquiries of the great novelist left an 
 impression upon him which he described to us. The old man is dead. 
 
 91
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEItE : 
 
 the stone seat of the great bay-window, and sketches the hall where he fancies 
 Elizabeth banqueting. A knot of young antiquarians, ascending a narrow 
 staircase, would identify the turret as that in which Amy Robsart took refuge. 
 1 loppy children run up and down the grassy slopes, and wonder who made so 
 pretty a ruin. The contemplative man rejoices that the ever-vivifying power 
 of nature throws its green mantle over what would be ugly in decay ; and that. 
 in the same way, the poetical power invests the desolate places with life and 
 beauty, and, when the material creations of ambition lie perishing, builds them 
 up again, not to be again destroyed.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAG E A N T 8. 
 
 IT is " the middle summer's spring." On 
 the day before the feast of Corpus Christi 
 all the roads leading to Coventry have far 
 more than their accustomed share of pedes- 
 trians and horsemen. The pageants are to 
 be acted to-morrow, and perhaps for the last 
 time. The preachers in their sermons have 
 denounced them again and again ; but since 
 the Queen's Majesty was graciously pleased 
 with the Hock-play at Kenilworth, that 
 ancient sport, so dear to the men of Coven- 
 try, has been revived, and the Guilds have 
 struggled against the preachers to prevent 
 their old pageants from being suppressed. 
 And why, say they, should they be sup- 
 pressed ? Have not they, the men of the 
 Guilds, been accustomed to act their own 
 pageants long after the Grey Friars had 
 gone into obscurity ? Has not the good city 
 all that is needful for their proper per- 
 formance? Do not they all know their 
 parts, as arranged by the town-clerk ? Are 
 not their robes in goodly order, some new, 
 and all untattered ? Moreover, is not the 
 
 ips. trade of the city greatly declined — its blue 
 
 thereof 
 crowds 
 
 thread thrust out by thread brought from 
 beyond sea — its caps and girdles superseded 
 by gear from London ; * and was not in the 
 old time "the confluence of people from far 
 and near to see this show extraordinary 
 great, and yielded no small advantage to 
 this city ? " f The pageants shall be played 
 in spite of the preachers ; and so the bruit 
 
 goes through the country, and Coventry is still to see its accustomed 
 
 on the day of Corpus Christi. 
 
 * See ' A Briefe Conceipte if English rollkve,' 1 f 81. 
 
 t Di 
 
 g<laJe. 
 93
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 It requires not the imagination of the romance -writer to assume that before 
 William Shakspere was sixteen, that is, before the year 1580, when the pageants 
 at Coventry, with one or two rare exceptions, were finally suppressed, he would 
 be a spectator of one of these remarkable performances, which were in a few 
 years wholly to perish ; becoming, however, the foundations of a drama more 
 suited to the altered spirit of the people, more universal in its range, — the 
 drama of the laity, and not of the church. What a glorious city must Coventry 
 have been in the days when that youth first looked upon it — the " Prince's 
 Chamber," as it was called, the " third city of the realm," a " shire-town," * full 
 of stately buildings of great antiquity, unequalled once in the splendour of its 
 monastic institutions, full of associations of regal state, and chivalry, and high 
 events ! As he finally emerges from the rich woodlands and the elm-groves 
 which reach from Kenilworth, there would that splendid city lie before him, 
 surrounded by its high wall and its numerous gates, its three wondrous spires, 
 which he had often gazed upon from the hill of Welcombe, rising up in match- 
 less height and symmetry, its famous cross towering above the gabled roofs. 
 At the other extremity of the wall, gates more massive and defying — a place of 
 strength, even though no conqueror of Cressy now dwelt therein — a place of 
 magnificence, though the hand of spoliation had been there most busy. William 
 Shakspere and his company ride through the gate of the Grey Friars, and they 
 are presently in the heart of that city. Eager crowding is there already in 
 these streets on that eve of Corpus Christi, for the waits are playing, and ban- 
 ners are hung out at the walls of the different Guilds. The citizens gathered 
 round the Cross are eagerly discussing the particulars of to-morrow's show. 
 Here and there one with a beetling brow indignantly denounces the superstitious 
 and papistical observance ; whilst the laughing smith or shearman, who is to 
 play one of the magi on the morrow, describes the bravery of his new robe and 
 the lustre of his pasteboard crown that has been fresh gilded. The inns are 
 full, " great and sumptuous inns," as Harrison describes those of this very day, 
 " able to lodge two hundred or three hundred persons, and their horses, at ease, 
 and thereto, with a very short warning, make such provision for their diet as 
 to him that is unacquainted withal may seem to be incredible : And it is a 
 world to see how each owner of them contendeth with other for goodness of 
 entertainment of their guests, as about fineness and change of linen, furniture 
 of bedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate, strength of 
 drink, variety of wines, or well using of horses." So there would be no lack of 
 cheer ; and the hundreds that have come into Coventry will be fed and lodged 
 better even than in London, whose inns, as the same authority tells us, are the 
 worst in the kingdom. Piping and dancing is there in the chambers, madrigals 
 worth the listening. But silence and sleep at last fitly prepare for a busy dav. 
 Perhaps, however, a stray minstrel might find his way to this solemnity, and 
 forget the hour in the exercise of his vocation, like, the very ancient anony- 
 mous poet of the Alliterative Metre, whose manuscript, probably of the date of 
 Henry V., has contrived to escape destruction : — 
 
 * Coventry has altogether separate jurisdiction. It is " the County of the City of Ccveat'-y." 
 It is culled "a shire-town" by Dugdale, to mark this distinction. 
 91
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 " Ones y me ordayned, as y have ofte doon, 
 With frendes, and felawes, frendemen, and other ; 
 And caught me in a company on Corpus Christi eve? 
 Six, other seven myle, oute of Suthampton, 
 To take melodye, and mirthes, among my makes ; 
 With redyng of romaunces, and revelyng among, 
 The dym of the darknesse drowe into the west, 
 And began for to spryng in the grey day."* 
 
 Perhaps the inquiring youth from Stratford would meet with some old Coventry 
 man, who would describe the pageants as they were acted by the Grey Friars 
 before the dissolution of their religious house. The old man would tell him 
 how these pageants, ' ' acted with mighty state and reverence by the friars of 
 this house, had theatres for the several scenes, very large and high, placed upon 
 wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the city for the better advantage 
 of spectators ; and contained the story of the New Testament composed into old 
 English rhyme, as appeareth by an ancient manuscript, entitled Ludus Corporis 
 Christi, or Ludus Coventrice."f That ancient man, who might have been a 
 friar himself, but felt it not safe to proclaim his vocation, might describe how 
 Henry V. and his nobles took great delight in seeing the pageants ; how Queen 
 Margaret in the days of her prosperity came from Kenilworth to Coventry 
 privily to see the play, and saw all the pageants played save one, which could 
 not be played because night drew on ; how the triumphant Richard III. came 
 to see the Corpus Christi plays ; and how Henry VII. much commended them. X 
 He could recite lines from these Corpus Christi plays with a reverential solem- 
 nity ; lines that for the most part sounded rude in the ear of that youth, but 
 which, nevertheless, had a vigorous simplicity, fit for the teaching of an unin- 
 structed people. He would tell how in the play of ' The Creation ' the pride 
 of Lucifer disdained the worship of the angels, and how he was cast down — 
 
 " With mirth and joy never more to mell." 
 
 How in the play of ' The Fall/ Eve sang — 
 
 " In this garden I will go see 
 All the flowers of fair beauty, 
 And tasten the fruits of great plenty 
 That be in Paradise ; " 
 
 and how the first pair lost that garden, and went forth into the land to labour . 
 He could repeat, too, a hymn of Abel, very sweet in its music :— 
 
 "Almighty God, and full of might, 
 
 By whom all thing is made of nought, 
 To thee my heart is ready dight, 
 For upon thee is all my thought." 
 
 Moreover, in the play of 'Noah,' when the dove returned to the ark with the 
 
 * See Percy's ' Eeliques : ' On the Alliterative Metre. We give the lines as corrected in Sharp'g 
 ' Coventry Mysteries.' 
 t Dugdale. 
 
 J See Sharp'g quotations from the manusci*ipt Annals of Coventry, ' Dissertation,' p i. 
 
 95
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEItE: 
 
 olivc-brancl), there was a joyful chorus, such as now could never be lieaid in the 
 bf reels of Coventry : — 
 
 " Mare vidit ct fugit, 
 Jordanis conversus est retrorsum. 
 Noa nobis, Doraine, non nobis, 
 Sed noinini tao da gloriam." 
 
 Much more would he have told of those ancient plays, forty-three in number, 
 but time would not.* He defended the objects for which they were instituted : 
 the general spread of knowledge might have brought other teaching, but they 
 familiarized the people with the great scriptural truths ; they gave them amuse- 
 ments of a higher nature than military games, and contentions of mere brute 
 force. They might be improved, and something like the drama of Greece and 
 Rome might be founded upon them. But now the same class of subjects were 
 to be handled by rude artificers, who would make them ridiculous. There was 
 much truth in what the old man said ; and the youth of Stratford would go 
 thoughtfully to rest. 
 
 The morning of Corpus Christi comes, and soon after sunrise there is stir in 
 the streets of Coventry. The old ordinances for this solemnity require that the 
 Guilds should be at their posts at five o'clock. There is to be a solemn proces- 
 sion — formerly, indeed, after the performance of the pageant — and then, with 
 hundreds of torches burning around the figures of our Lady and St. John, can- 
 dlesticks and chalices of silver, banners of velvet and canopies of silk, and the 
 members of the Trinity Guild and the Corpus Christi Guild bearing their cruci- 
 fixes and candlesticks, with personations of the angel Gabriel lifting up the lily, 
 the twelve apostles, and renowned virgins, especially St. Catherine and St. Mar- 
 garet. The Reformation has, of course, destroyed much of this ceremonial ; 
 and, indeed, the spirit of it has in great part evaporated. But now, issuing 
 from the many ways that lead to the cross, there is heard the melody of harpers 
 and the voice of minstrelsy ; trumpets sound, banners wave, riding-men come 
 thick from their several halls ; the mayor and aldermen in their robes, the city 
 servants in proper liveries, St. George and the Dragon, "and Herod on horse- 
 back. The bells ring, boughs are strewed in the streets, tapestry is hung out of 
 the windows, officers in scarlet coats struggle in the crowd while the procession 
 is marshalling. The crafts are getting into their ancient order, each craft with 
 its streamer and its men in harness. There are " Fysshers and Cokes, — Bax- 
 ters and Milners, — Bochers, — "Whittawers and Glovers, — Pynners, Tylers, and 
 Wrightes, — Skynners, — Barkers, — Corvysers, — Smythes, — Wevers, — Wir- 
 drawers, — Cardemakers, Sadelers, Peyntours, and Masons, — Gurdelers, — Tay- 
 lours, Walkers, and Sherman, — Deysters, — Drapers, — Mercers." f At length 
 the procession is arranged. It parades through the principal lines of the city, 
 from Bishopgate on the north to the Grey Friars' Gate on the south, and from 
 Broadgate on the west to Gosford Gate on the east. The crowd is thronging 
 to the wide area on the north of Trinity Church and St. Michael's, for there is 
 
 * Seo the ' LuJus Coventrise,' published by the Shakespeare Society. 
 f Sharp's ' Dissertation,' page 1G0.
 
 [Coventry Cburchcn and Pageants.] 
 
 the pageant to be first performed. There was a high house or carriage which 
 stood upon six wheels ; it was divided into two rooms, one above the other. In 
 the lower room were the performers ; the upper was the stage. This ponderous 
 vehicle was painted and gilt, surmounted with burnished vanes and streamers, 
 and decorated with imagery ; it was hung round with curtains, and a painted 
 cloth presented a picture of the subject that was to be performed. This simple 
 stage had its machinery, too ; it was fitted for the representation of an earth- 
 quake or a storm ; and the pageant in most cases was concluded in the noise 
 and flame of fireworks. It is the pageant of the company of Shearmen and 
 Tailors which is now to be performed, — the subject of the Birth of Christ and 
 Offering of the Magi, with the Flight into Egypt and Marder of the Innocents. 
 The eager multitudes are permitted to crowd within a reasonable distance of 
 the car. There is a moveable scaffold erected for the more distinguished spec- 
 Life. h 97
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSrETCE : 
 
 tators. The men of the Guilds sit firm on their horses. Amidst the sound of 
 harp and trumpet the curtains are withdrawn, and Isaiah appears, prophesying 
 the blessing which is to come upon the earth. Gabriel announces to Mary the 
 embassage upon which he is sent from Heaven. Then a dialogue between Mary 
 snd Joseph, and the scene changes to the field where shepherds are abiding in 
 the darkness of the night — a night so dark that they know not where their sheep 
 may be ; they are cold and in great heaviness. Then the star shines, and they 
 hear the song of " Gloria in excelsis Deo." A soft melody of concealed music 
 hushes even the whispers of the Coventry audience ; and three songs are sung, 
 such as may abide in the remembrance of the people, and be repeated by them 
 at their Christmas festivals. " The first the shepherds sing : " — 
 
 " As I rode out this enders * night, 
 Of three jolly shepherds I saw a sight, 
 And all about their fold a star shone bright ; 
 They sang terli terlow : 
 So merrily the shepherds their pipes can blow." 
 
 There is then a song " the women sing : " — 
 
 " Lully, lulla, you little tiny child : 
 By, by, lully, lullay, you little tiny child : 
 
 By, by, lully, lullay. 
 sisters two, how may we do 
 For to preserve this day 
 This poor youngling, for whom we do sing 
 By, by, lully, lullay ? 
 
 Herod the king, in his raging, 
 Charged he hath this day 
 His men of might, in his own sight, 
 All young children to slay. 
 
 That woe is me, poor child, for thee, 
 And ever mourn and say, 
 For thy parting neither say nor sing 
 By, by, lully, lullay." 
 
 The shepherds again take up the song : — 
 
 " Down from heaven, from heaven so high, 
 Of angels there came a great company, 
 With mirth, and joy, and great solemnity : 
 They sang terly, terlow : 
 So merrily the shepherds their pipes can blow." 
 
 The simple melody of these songs has come down to us ; they are part songs, 
 each having the treble, the tenor, and the bass.f The star conducts the shepherds 
 to the " crib of poor repast," where the child lies ; and, with a simplicity which 
 
 * Enders night — last night. . 
 
 t This very curious Pageant, essentially different from the same portion of Scripture-history 
 in the 'Imdiis Coventrice,' is printed entire in Mr. Sharp's Dissertation,' as well as the score of 
 these songs. 
 
 98
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 is highly characteristic, one presents the child his pipe, the second his hat, and 
 the third his mittens. Prophets now come, who declare in lengthened rhyme 
 the wonder and the blessing : — 
 
 " Neither in halls nor yet in bowers 
 Born would he not be, 
 Neither in castles nor yet in towers 
 That seemly were to see.'' 
 
 The messenger of Herod succeeds ; and very curious it is, and characteristic of 
 a period when the king's laws were delivered in the language of the Conqueror, 
 that he speaks in French. This circumstance would carry back the date of the 
 play to the reign of Edward III., though the language is occasionally modern- 
 ized. We have then the three kings with their gifts. They are brought before 
 Herod, who treats them courteously, but is inexorable in his cruel decree. 
 Herod rages in the streets ; but the flight into Egypt takes pkee, and then the 
 massacre. The address of the women to the pitiless soldiers, imploring, defying, 
 is not the least curious part of the performance ; for example — 
 
 " Sir knightes, of your courtesy,' 
 This day shame not your chivalry, 
 But on my child have pity," 
 
 is the mild address of one mother. Another raves — 
 
 " He that slays my child in sight, 
 If that my strokes on him may light, 
 Be he squire or knight, 
 I hold him but lost." 
 
 The fury of a third is more excessive : — 
 
 " Sit he never so high in saddle, 
 But I shall make his brains addle, 
 And here with my pot ladlo 
 With him will I fight." 
 
 We have little doubt that he who described the horrors of a siege, — 
 
 " Whiles the mad mothers with their howl3 confr.s'd 
 Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry 
 At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen," " — 
 
 had heard the bowlings of the women in the Coventry pageant. And so "fynes 
 lude de taylars and scharmen." 
 
 The pageants thus performed by the Guilds of Coventry were of various sub- 
 jects, but all scriptural. The Smiths' pageant was the Crucifixion ; and most 
 curious are their accounts, from 1449 till the time of which we are speaking, 
 for expenses of helmets for Herod and cloaks for Pilate ; of tabards for Oaiaphas 
 
 * Henry V., Act m., Scene 1:1. 
 H 2 W
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 and gear for Pilate's wife ; of a staff for the Demon, and a beard for Judas 
 There are payments, too, to a man for hanging Judas and for cock-crowing. 
 The subject of the Cappers' pageant was the Resurrection They have charges 
 for making the play-book and pricking the songs ; for money spent at the first 
 rehearsal and the second rehearsal ; for supper on the play-day, for breakfasts 
 and for dinners. The subject of the Drapers' pageant was that of Doomsday ; 
 and one of their articles of machinery sufficiently explains the character of their 
 performance — " A link to set the world on fire," following "Paid for the barrel 
 for the earthquake." We may readily believe that the time was fast approach- 
 ing when such pageants would no longer be tolerated. It is more than probable 
 that the performances of the Guilds were originally subordinate to those of the 
 Grey Friars ; perhaps devised and supported by the parochial clergy.* But 
 when the Church became opposed to such representations — when, indeed, they 
 were incompatible with the spirit of the age — it is clear that the efforts of the 
 laity to uphold them could not long be successful. They would be certainly 
 performed without the reverence which once belonged to them. Their rude 
 action and simple language would be ridiculed ; and when the feeling of ridi- 
 cule crept in, their nature would be altered, and they would become essentially 
 profane. There is a very curious circumstance connected with the Coventry 
 pageants which shows the struggle that was made to keep the dramatic spirit 
 of the people in this direction. In 1584 the Smiths performed, after many pre- 
 parations and rehearsals, a new pageant, the Destruction of Jerusalem. The 
 Smiths applied to one who had been educated in their own town, in the Free 
 School of Coventry, and who in 1584 belonged to St. John's, Oxford, to write 
 this new play for them. The following entry appears in the city accounts : — 
 
 " Paid to M r Smythe of Oxford the sv th daye of aprill 1581 for bys paynes for writing of tho 
 tragedye— xiij 1 , vj s , viij d ." 
 
 We regret that this play, so liberally paid for when compared with subse- 
 quent payments to the Jonsons and Dekkers of the true drama, has not been 
 preserved. It would be curious to contrast it with the beautiful dramatic poem 
 on the same subject, by an accomplished scholar of our own day, also a member 
 of the University of Oxford. But the list of characters remains, which shows 
 that the play was essentially historical, exhibiting the contests of the Jewish 
 factions as described by Josephus. The accounts manifest that the play was got 
 up with great magnificence in 1584 ; but it was not played again till 1591, when 
 it was once more performed along with the famous Hock Tuesday. It was then 
 ordered that no other plays whatever should be performed ; and the same order, 
 which makes this concession " at the request of the Commons," directs " that 
 all the May-poles that now are standing in this city shall be taken down before 
 Whitsunday next, and none hereafter to be set up." In that year Coventry 
 saw the last of its pageants. But Marlowe and Shakspere were in London, 
 building up something more adapted to that age ; more universal : dramas that 
 
 * It is clear, we think, that the pageants performed by the Guilds were altogether different 
 from the ' Ludus Coventriic,' which Dugdale expressly tells us were performed by tho Grey 
 Friars. 
 
 100
 
 A BIOGKAPHY. 
 
 no change of manners or of politics can destroy. The Pageants of Coventry 
 have perished, as her strong gates and walls have perished. They belonged 
 essentially to other times. They are no longer needed. A few fragments 
 remain to tell us what they were ; and upon these the learned, as they are 
 called, will doubt and differ, and the general world heed them not. 
 
 And now the men of Coventry lead the way of the strangers to another spot, 
 with the cry of " The Hock-play, the Hock-play \" There was yawning and ill- 
 repressed laughing during the pageant, but the whole population now seems 
 animated with the spirit of joyfulness. As one of the worthy aldermen gallantly 
 presses his horse through the crowd, is there not a cry, too, of "A Nycklyn, a 
 Nycklyn ! " for did not the worthy mayor, Thomas Nycklyn, three years ago, 
 cause " Hock Tuesday, whereby is mentioned an overthrow of the Danes by the 
 inhabitants of this city, to be again set up and showed forth, to his great com- 
 mendation and the city's great commodity ? "* In the wide area of the Cross- 
 cheaping is the crowd now assembled. The strangers gaze upon " that stately 
 Cross, being one of the chief things wherein this city most glories, which for 
 workmanship and beauty is inferior to none in England. "f It was not then 
 venerable for antiquity, for it had been completed little more than thirty years ; 
 but it was a wondrous work of gorgeous architecture, story rising above story, 
 with canopies and statues, to a magnificent height, glittering with vanes upon 
 its pinnacles, and now decorated with numerous streamers.]: Around the square 
 are houses of most picturesque form ; the balconies of their principal floors 
 filled with gazers, and the windows immediately beneath the high-pitched roofs 
 showing as many heads as could be thrust through the open casements. The 
 area is cleared, for the play requires no scaffold. The English and the Danes 
 marshal on opposite sides. There are fierce words and imprecations, shouts of 
 defiance, whisperings of counsel. What is imperfectly heard or ill understood 
 by the strangers is explained by those who are familiar with the show. There 
 is no ridicule now; no laughing at Captain Cox, in his velvet cap, and flourish- 
 ing his tonsword ; all is gravity and exultation. Then come the women of 
 Coventry, ardent in the cause of liberty, courageous, much enduring ; and some 
 one tells in the pauses of the play, how there once rode into that square, in a 
 death-like solitude and silence, a lady all naked, who, " bearing an extraordinary 
 affection for this place, often and earnestly besought her husband that he would 
 free it from that grievous servitude whereunto it was subject ;"§ and he telling 
 her the hard conditions upon which her prayer would be granted — 
 
 " She rode fortb, clothed on with chastity." 
 
 * Extract from manuscript AnnaiS of Coventry in Sharp's ' Dissertation/ p. 129. 
 
 + Dugdale. 
 
 X The Cross has perished, not through age, but by the hands of Cominon-councilmen and Com 
 missioners of Pavement. The Turks broke up the Elgin marbles to make mortar for their Athenian 
 hovels, and we call them barbarians. These things went on amongst us up to a very recent time. 
 In an old Chapel of Ease in the neighbourhood of Stratford was, a few years ago, one of the very 
 fine recumbent figures of a Templar. The figure was missed by a clergyman who sometimes visited 
 the place, and he asked the sexton what had become of it ? The answer was, "What I that cross 
 legged chap ? Oh ! I mended the road wi' he; a saved a deal o' limestone." 
 
 § Dugdale. 
 
 101
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSrERE: 
 
 Noble-hearted women such as the Lady Godiva were those of Coventry who 
 assisted their husbands to drive out the Danes ; and there they lead their captives 
 in triumph ; and the Hock-play terminate* with song and chorus. 
 
 But the solemnities of the day are not yet concluded. In the space around 
 Swine Cross, and near St. John's School, is another scaffold erected ; not a lofty 
 scaffold like that of the drapers and shearmen, but gay with painted cloths and 
 ribbons. The pageant of ' The Nine Worthies ' is to be performed by the dramatic 
 body of the Grammar School ; the ancient pageant, such as was presented to 
 Henry VI. and his Queen in 1455, and of which the Leet-book contains the 
 faithful copy.* Assuredly there was one who witnessed that performance care- 
 fully employed in noting down the lofty speeches which the three Hebrews, 
 Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabseus ; the three Infidels, Hector, Alexander, and 
 Julius Caesar ; and the three Christians, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of 
 Boulogne, uttered on that occasion. In the Coventry pageant Hector thus 
 speaks : — 
 
 " Most pleasant princes, recorded that may be, 
 I, Hector of Troy, that am chief conqueror, 
 Lowly will obey you, and kneel on my knee." J 
 
 And Alexander thus : — 
 
 " I, Alexander, that for chivalry beareth the ball, 
 Most courageous in conquest through the world am I named, — 
 Welcome you, princes." 
 
 And Julius Caesar thus : — 
 
 " I, Julius Cassar, sovereign of knighthood 
 And emperor of mortal men, most high and mighty, 
 Welcome you, princes most benign and good." 
 
 Surely it was little less than plagiary, if it were not meant for downright parody, 
 when, in a pageant of ' The Nine Worthies ' presented a few years after, Hector 
 comes in to say — 
 
 " The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, 
 Gave Hector a gift, the heir of Ilion : 
 A man so breath' d, that certain he would fight, yea, 
 
 From morn till night, out of his pavilion. 
 I am that flower." 
 
 And Alexander :— 
 
 " When in the world I liv'd, I was the world's commander ; 
 By east, west, north, and south, I spread my conquering migb.'j 
 My 'scutcheon plain declares that I am Alisander." 
 
 And Pompey, usurping the just honours of his triumphant rival :— 
 
 " I Pompey am, Pompey surnamed the great, 
 That oft in field, with targe and shield, did make my foe to awoat" 
 
 * Sharp, pago 115.
 
 A BIOGKAPITY. 
 
 But the laugh of the parody was a harmless one. The Nine Worthies were 
 utterly dead and gone in the popular estimation. Certainly in the crowd before 
 St. John's School at Coventry there would be more than one who would laugh 
 at the speeches — merry souls, ready to " play on the tabor to the Worthies, and 
 let thera dance the hay."* 
 
 * Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. It is scarcely necessary to refer tho reader to the same play 
 for tlio speeches of Hector, Alexander, and Pompey. The coincidence between these and the 
 old Coventry Fagcant is remarkable. 
 
 [Ancient Cute oi Coventry, 184? J
 
 William SHAKSPEftfi; 
 
 NOTE ON THE COVENTRY PAGEANTS. 
 
 The " Cheater Mysteries," winch appear greatly to have resembled those of Coventry, wera 
 dually suppressed in 1574. Archdeacon Rogers, who in his MSS. rejoices tbat "such a cloud 
 of ignorance " would be no more seen, appears to have been an eye-witness of their performance, 
 of which he has left the following description : — (See Markland's ' Introduction to a Specimen 
 of the Chester Mysteries.') 
 
 " Now of the playes of Chester, called the Whitson playes, when the weare played, and what 
 occupations bringe forthe at theire charges the playes or pagiantes. 
 
 " Heare note that these playes of Chester, called the Whitson playes, weare the worke of one 
 Tlondell, a Moncke of the Abbaye of Sainte Warburghe in Chester, who redused the whole his- 
 torye of the bible into englishe storyes in metter in the englishe tounge ; and this Monke, in a 
 good desire to doe good, published the same. Then the firste maior of Chester, namely, S r John 
 Arnewaye, Knighte, he caused the same to be played : the maner of which playes was thus : — 
 they weare divided into 24 pagiantes according to the copanyes of the Cittie ; and every com- 
 panye broughte forthe theire pagiant, w ch was the cariage or place w dl the played in ; and before 
 these playes weare played, there was a man w ch did ride, as I take it, upon S' Georges daye 
 throughe the Cittie, and there published the tyme and the matter of the plays in breeife : the 
 weare played upon Mondaye, Tuesday, and Wensedaye in Whitson weeke. ' And thei first be- 
 ganne at the Abbaye gates ; and when the firste pagiante was played at the Abbaye gates, then 
 it was wheled from thense to the Pentice, at the hyghe Crosse, before the maior, and before that 
 was clonne the seconde came ; and the firste went into the Watergate Streete, and from thense 
 unto Bridge Streete, and so one after an other 'till all the pagiantes weare played appoynted for 
 the firste daye, and so likewise for the seconde and the thircle daye. These pagiantes or carige 
 was a hyghe place made like a bowse with 2 rowmes, beinge open on the tope ; the lower rowme 
 iheie ajoparrelled and dressed themselves, and the higher rowme theie played, and theie stoode 
 npon vi wheeles ; and when the had doune with one cariage in one place theie wheled the same 
 from one streete to another, first from the Abbaye gate to the pentise, then to the Watergate 
 streete, then to the bridge streete through the lanes, and so to the este gate streete : and thus 
 tha came from one streete to another, kepinge a directe order in everye streete, for before thei 
 firste carige was gone from one place the seconde came, and so before the seconde was gone the 
 thirde came, and so till the laste was donne all in order withoute anye stayeinge in anye place, 
 tor worde beinge broughte howe every place was neere doone, the came and made no place to 
 tarye till the laitci was played." 
 
 1U4
 
 [Stratford Church, and Mill. From an original drawing at the beginning of ths last Coaiury.] 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOME. 
 
 We have thus endeavoured to fill up, with some imperfect forms and feeble 
 colours, the very meagre outline which exists of the schoolboy life of William 
 Shakspere. He is now, we will assume, of the age of fourteen — the year 1578 ; 
 a year which has been held to furnish decisive evidence as to the worldly con- 
 dition of his father and his family. The first who attempted to write ' Some 
 Account of the Life of William Shakspeare,' Rowe, says, " 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 hin no better education than his 
 own employment. He had bred him, it is true, for some time at a free-school, 
 where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was master of : but the narrow 
 ness of his circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forced his 
 father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further pro- 
 ficiency in that language." This statement, be it remembered, was written 
 one hundred and thirty years after the event which it professes to record — the 
 early removal of William Shakspere from the free-school to which he had been 
 sent by his father. We have no hesitation in saying that the statement is 
 manifestly lased upon two assumptions, both of which are incorrect : — The 
 first, that his father had a large family of ten children, and was so narrowed in 
 his circumstances that he could not spare even the time of his eldest son, he 
 being taught for nothing; and, secondly, that the son, by his early removal 
 from the school where he acquired " what Latin he was master of," was pre- 
 
 105
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSrEKE : 
 
 vented attaining a "proficiency in that language," his works manifesting "an 
 ignorance of the ancients." It mav be convenient that we should in this place 
 endeavour to dispose of both these assertions. Mr. Halliwell, commenting upon 
 this statement, says, " John Shakspeare's circumstances began to fail him when 
 William was about fourteen, and he then withdrew him from the grammar-school, 
 for the purpose of obtaining his assistance in his agricultural pursuits." Was 
 fourteen an unusually early age for a boy to be removed from a grammar-school ? 
 We think not, at a period when there were boy-bachelors at the Universities. If 
 he had been taken from the school three years before, when he was eleven, — ■ 
 certainly an early age, — we should have seen his father then recorded, in 1575, 
 as the purchaser of two freehold houses in Henley Street, and the " narrowness 
 of his circumstances " as the reason of Shakspere's " no better proficiency," 
 would have been at once exploded. In his material allegation Rowe utterly 
 fails. 
 
 The family of John Shakspere did not consist, as we have already shown, of ten 
 children. In the year 1578, when the school education of William may be 
 reasonably supposed to have terminated, and before which period his " assistance 
 at home " would rather have been embarrassing than useful to his father, the 
 family consisted of five children : William, aged fourteen ; Gilbert, twelve ; Joan, 
 nine ; Anne, seven ; and Richard four. Anne died early in the following year ; 
 and, in 1580, Edmund, the youngest child, was born ; so that the family never 
 exceeded five living at the same time. But still the circumstances of John 
 Shakspere, even with five children, might have been straitened. The assertion of 
 Rowe excited the persevering diligence of Malone ; and he has collected together 
 a series of documents from which he infers, or leaves the reader to infer, that 
 John Shakspere and his family gradually sunk from their station of respectability 
 at Stratford into the depths of poverty and ruin. The sixth section of Malone's 
 posthumous * Life ' is devoted to a consideration of this subject. It thus com- 
 mences : " The manufacture of gloves, which was, at this period, a very flourishing 
 one, both at Stratford and Worcester (in which latter city it is still carried on 
 with great success), however generally beneficial, should seem, from whatever 
 cause, to have afforded our poet's father but a scanty maintenance." The 
 assumption that John Shakspere depended for his "maintenance" upon " the 
 manufacture of gloves " rests entirely and absolutely upon one solitary entry in 
 the books of the bailiff's court at Stratford. In Chapter II. we have endeavoured 
 to show to what extent, and in what manner, John Shakspere was a glover. 
 Glover or not, he was a landed proprietor and an occupier of land in 1578. 
 
 We proceed to the decisive statement of Malone that " when our author 
 was about fourteen years old," the " distressed situation " of his father was evi- 
 dent : it rests " upon surer grounds than conjecture." The Corporation books 
 have shown that on particular occasions, such as the visitation of the plague in 
 1564, John Shakspere contributed like others to the relief of the poor ; but now, 
 in January, 1577-8, he is taxed for the necessities of the borough only to pay 
 half what other aldermen pay ; and in November of the same year, whilst other 
 aldermen are assessed fourpence weekly towards the relief of the poor, John 
 Shakspere " shall not be taxed to pay anything." In 1579 the sum levied upon 
 
 10G
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 him for providing soldiers at the charge of the borough is returned, amongst 
 similar sums of other persons, as " unpaid and unaccounted for." Finally, this 
 unquestionable evidence of the books of the borough shows that this merciful 
 forbearance of his brother townsmen was unavailing ; for, in an action 
 brought against him in the bailiff's court in the year 1586, he during these 
 seven years having gone on from bad to worse, the return by the Serjeants 
 at mace upon a warrant of distress is, that John Shakspere has nothing upon 
 which distress can be levied.* There are other corroborative proofs of John 
 Shakspere's poverty at this period brought forward by Malone. In this precise 
 year, 1578, he mortgages his wife's inheritance of Asbies to Edmund Lambert 
 for forty pounds ; and, in the same year, the will of Mr. Roger Sadler, of Strat- 
 ford, to which is subjoined a list of debts due to him, shows that John Shak- 
 spere was indebted to him five pounds, for which sum Edmund Lambert was a 
 security, — "By which," says Malone, "it appears that John Shakspere was 
 then considered insolvent, if not as one depending rather on the credit of others 
 than his own." It is of little consequence to the present age to know whether 
 an alderman of Stratford, nearly three hundred years past, became unequal to 
 maintain his social position ; but to enable us to form a right estimate of the 
 education of William Shakspere, and of the circumstances in which he was 
 placed at the most influential period of his life, it may not be unprofitable to 
 consider how far these revelations of the private affairs of his father support the 
 case which Malone holds he has so triumphantly proved. 
 
 At the time in question, the best evidence is unfortunately destroyed ; for the 
 registry of the Court of Record at Stratford is wanting, from 1569 to 1585. 
 Nothing has been added to what Malone has collected as to this precise period. 
 It amounts therefore to this, — that in 1578 he mortgages an estate for forty 
 pounds ; that he is indebted also five pounds to a friend for which his mortgagee 
 had become security ; and that he is excused one public assessment, and has not 
 contributed to another. At this time he is the possessor of two freehold houses 
 in Henley Street, bought in 1574. Malone, a lawyer by profession, supposes 
 that the money for which Asbies was mortgaged went to pay the purchase of the 
 Stratford freeholds ; according to which theory, these freeholds had been unpaid- 
 for during four years, and the " good and lawful money " was not " in hand " 
 when the vendor parted with the premises. We hold, and we think more reason- 
 ably, that in 1578, when he mortgaged Asbies, John Shakspere became the 
 purchaser, or at any rate the occupier, of lands in the parish of Stratford,, but not 
 in the borough ; and that, in either case, the money for which Asbies was 
 mortgaged was the capital employed in this undertaking. The lands which were 
 purchased by William Shakspere of the Combe family, in 1601, are described in 
 the deed as " lying or being within the parish, fields, or town of Old Stretford." 
 But the will of William Shakspere, he having become the heir-at-law of his father, 
 devises all his lands and tenements " within the towns, hamlets, villages, fields, 
 and grounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe." 
 
 * We print correct copies of these entries at the end of tho Chapter. Malouc's copies exhibil 
 Iub usual inaccuracies. 
 
 107
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEEE : 
 
 Old Stratford is a local denomination, essentially different from Bishopton or 
 Welcombe; and, therefore, whilst the lands purchased by the son in 1601 might 
 be those recited in the will as lying in Old Stratford, he might have derived from 
 nis father the lands of Bishopton and Welcombe, of the purchase of which by 
 himself we have no record. But we have a distinct record that William Shakspere 
 did derive lands from his father, in the same way that he inherited the two 
 freeholds in Henley Street. Mr. Halliwell prints, without any inference, a " Deed 
 of Settlement of Shakespeare's Property, 1639 ;" that deed contains a remarkable 
 recital, which appears conclusive as to the position of the father as a landed 
 proprietor. The fine for the purpose of settlement is taken upon ; 1, a tenement 
 in Blackfriars ; 2, a tenement at Acton ; 3, the capital messuage of New Place ; 
 4, the tenement in Henley Street; 5, one hundred and twenty- seven acres of 
 land purchased of Combe ; and 6, " all other the messuages, lands, tenements 
 and hereditaments whatsoever, situate lying and being in the towns, hamlets, 
 villages, fields and grounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton 
 and Welcombe, or any of them in the said county of Warwick, which heretofore 
 were the inheritance of William Shakspere, gent., deceased." The word 
 inheritance could only be used in one legal sense ; they came to him by descent, as 
 heir-at-law of his father. It would be difficult to find a more distinct confirma- 
 tion of the memorandum upon the grant of arms in the Heralds' College to 
 John Shakspere, " he hath lands and tenements, of good wealth and substance, 
 500/." The lands of Bishopton and Welcombe are in the parish of Stratford, but 
 not in the borough. Bishopton was a hamlet, having an ancient chapel of ease. 
 We hold, then, that in the year 1578 John Shakspere, having become more, com- 
 pletely an agriculturist — a yeoman as he is described in a deed of 1579 — ceased, 
 for the purposes of business, to be an occupier within the borough of Stratford. 
 Other aldermen are rated to pay towards the furniture of pikemen, billmen, and 
 archers, six shillings and eight-pence ; whilst John Shakspere is to pay three 
 shillings and four-pence. Why less than other aldermen ? The next entry but 
 one, which relates to a brother alderman, suggests an answer to the question : — 
 " Robert Bratt, nothing in this place." Again, ten months after, — " It is 
 ordained that every alderman shall pay weekly, towards the relief of the poor, 
 four-pence, save John Shakspere and Robert Bratt, who shall not be taxed to pay 
 any thing." Here John Shakspere is associated with Robert Bratt, who, according 
 to the previous entry, was to pay nothing in this place ; that is, in the borough of 
 Stratford, to which the orders of the council alone apply. The return, in 1579, 
 of Mr. Shakspere as leaving unpaid the sum of three shillings and three-pence, 
 was the return upon a ievy for the borough, in which, although the possessor of 
 property, he might have ceased to reside, or have only partially resided, paying his 
 assessments in the parish. The Borough of Stratford, and the Parish of Stratford, 
 are essentially different things, as regards entries of the Corporation and of the 
 Court of Record. The Report from Commissioners of Municipal Corporations 
 says, "The limits of the borough extend over a space of about half a mile in 
 breadth, and rather moie in length * * *. The mayor, recorder, and senior 
 aldermen of the borough have also jurisdiction, as justices of the peace, over a 
 small town or suburb adjoining the Church of Stratford-upon-Avon, called Old 
 
 108
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Stratford, and over the precincts of tne church itself." We shall have occasion 
 to revert to this distinction between the borough and the parish, at a more 
 advanced period in' the life of Shakspere's father, when his utter ruin has been 
 somewhat rashly inferred from certain obscure registers. 
 
 Seeing, then, that at any rate, in the year 1574, when John Shakspere pur- 
 chased two freehold houses in Stratford, it was scarcely necessary for him to 
 withdraw his son William from school, as Rowe has it, on account of the narrow- 
 ness of his circumstances (the education at that school costing the father nothing), 
 it is not difficult to believe that the son remained there till the period when 
 boys were usually withdrawn from grammar-schools. In those days the 
 education of the university commenced much earlier than at present. Boys 
 intended for the learned professions, and more especially for the church 
 commonly went to Oxford and Cambridge at eleven or twelve years of age. If 
 they were not intended for those professions, they probably remained at the 
 grammar-school till they were thirteen or fourteen ; and then they were fitted 
 for being apprenticed to tradesmen, or articled to attorneys, a numerous and 
 thriving body in those days of cheap litigation. Many also went early to the 
 Inns of Court, which were the universities of the law, and where there was 
 real study and discipline in direct connection with the several Societies. To 
 assume that William Shakspere did not stay long enough at the grammar- 
 school of Stratford to obtain a very fair " proficiency in Latin," with some 
 knowledge of Greek, is to assume an absurdity upon the face of the circum- 
 stances ; and it could never have been assumed at all, had not Rowe, setting 
 out upon a false theory, that, because in the works of Shakspere " we scarce find 
 any traces of anything that looks like an imitation of the ancients," held that 
 therefore " his not copying at least something from them may be an argument of 
 his never having read them." Opposed to this is the statement of Aubrey, much 
 nearer to the times of Shakspere : " he understood Latin pretty well." Rowe 
 had been led into his illogical inference by the " small Latin and less Greek " 
 of Jonson ; the "old mother- wit" of Denham ; the "his learning was very 
 little " of Fuller ; the " native wood-notes wild " of Milton, — phrases, every 
 one of which is to be taken with considerable qualification, whether we regard 
 the peculiar characters of the utterers, or the circumstances connected with the 
 words themselves. The question rests net upon the interpretation of the dictum 
 of this authority or that ; but upon the indisputable fact that the very earliest 
 writings of Shakspere are imbued with a spirit of classical antiquity ; and that 
 the allusive nature of '.he learning that manifests itself in them, whilst it offers 
 the best proof of his familiarity with the ancient writers, is a circumstance 
 which has misled those who never attempted to dispute the existence of the 
 learning which was displayed in the direct pedantry of his contemporaries. 
 " If," said Hales of Eton, " he had not read the classics, he had likewise not 
 stolen from them." Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and all the early dramatists, over- 
 load their plays with quotation and mythological allusion. According to Hales, 
 they steal, and therefore they have read. He who uses his knowledge skilfully 
 
 is assumed not to have read. 
 
 109
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 It is not our intention to enter upon a general examination of the various 
 opinions that have been held as to the learning of Shakspere, and the tend- 
 ency of those opinions to show that he was without learning.* We only 
 desire to point out, by a very few observations, that the learning manifested in 
 his early productions does not bear out the assertion of Rowe that his profi- 
 ciency in the Latin language was interrupted by his early removal from the 
 free-school of Stratford. His youthful poem, Venus and Adonis, the first heir 
 of his invention, is upon a classical subject. The Rape of Lucrece is founded 
 upon a legend of the beginnings of Roman history. Would he have ventured 
 upon these subjects had he been unfamiliar with the ancient writers, from the 
 attentive study of which he could alone obtain the knowledge which would 
 enable him to treat them with propriety ? His was an age of sound scholarship. 
 He dedicates both poems to a scholar, and a patron of scholars. Does any one 
 of his contemporaries object that these classical subjects were treated by a young 
 man ignorant of the classics? Will the most critical examination of these 
 poems detect anything that betrays this ignorance? Is there not the most 
 perfect keeping in both these poems, — an original conception of the mode of 
 treating these subjects, advisedly adopted with the full knowledge of what 
 might be imitated, but preferring the vigorous painting of nature to any imita- 
 tion ? Love's Labour 's Lost, undoubtedly one of the earliest comedies, shows — 
 upon the principle laid down by Coleridge, that " a young author's first work 
 almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits " — that the habits of William Shak- 
 spere " had been scholastic, and those of a student." The Comedy of Errors is 
 full of those imitations of the ancients in particular passages which critics have 
 in all cases been too apt to take as the chief evidences of learning. The critics 
 of Shakspere are puzzled by these imitations ; and when they see with what 
 skill he adopts, or amends, or rejects, the incidents of the ' Mensechmi ' of 
 Plautus, they have no resource but to contend that his knowledge of Plautus 
 was derived from a wretched translation, published in all probability eight or 
 ten years after the Comedy of Errors was written. The three Parts of Henry 
 VI. are the earliest of the historical plays. Those who dispute the genuineness 
 of the First Part affirm that it contains more allusions to mythology and classical 
 authors than Shakspere ever uses ; but, with a most singular inconsistency, in 
 the passages of the Second and Third Parts which they have chosen to pronounce 
 as the additions of Shakspere to the original plays of another writer or writers, 
 there are to be found as many allusions to mythology and classical writers as in 
 the part which they deny to be his.f We have remarked upon these passages 
 that they furnish the proof that, as a young writer, he possessed a competent 
 knowledge of the ancient authors, and was not unwilling to display it ; " but 
 that, with that wonderful judgment which was as remarkable as the pro- 
 digious range of his imaginative powers, he soon learnt to avoid the pedantry 
 to which inferior men so pertinaciously clung in the pride of their scholarship." 
 
 * This question ia further touched upon in our ' History of Opinion on the Writings of 
 Shakspere.' — Section I. 
 
 + Sec our Essay on Henry VI. and Richard III. Historic , Vol. II. page 432. 
 110
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Ranging over the whole dramatic works of Shakspere, whenever we find a clas- 
 sical image or allusion, such as in Hamlet, — 
 
 " A station like the herald. Mercury, 
 New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill," — 
 
 the management oi' the idea is always elegant and graceful ; and the passage 
 may sustain a contrast with the most refined imitations of his contemporaries, 
 or of his own imitator, Milton. In his Roman plays he appears co-existent 
 with his wonderful characters, and to have read all the obscure pages of Roman 
 history with a clearer eye than philosopher or historian. When he employs 
 Latinisms in the construction of his sentences, and even in the creation of new 
 words, he does so with singular facility and unerring correctness. And then, 
 we are to be told, he managed all this by studying bad translations, and by 
 copying extracts from grammars and dictionaries ; as if it was reserved for such 
 miracles of talent and industrv as the Farmers and the Steevenses to read Ovid 
 and Virgil in their original tongues, whilst the dull Shakspere, whether school- 
 boy or adult, was to be contented through life with the miserable translations 
 of Arthur Golding and Thomas Phaer.* We believe that his familiarity at 
 least with the best Roman writers was begun early, and continued late ; and 
 that he, of all boys of Stratford, would be the least likely to discredit the teach- 
 ing of Thomas Hunt and Thomas Jenkins, the masters of the grammar-school 
 from 1572 till 1580. 
 
 The happy days of boyhood are nearly over. William Shakspere no longer 
 looks for the close of the day when, in that humble chamber in Henley Street, 
 his father shall hear something of his school progress, and read with him some 
 
 * See a series of learned and spirited papers by Dr. Maginn on Farmer's Essay, printed in 
 Frazer's Magazine. 1839. 
 
 'v-j. . • -
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 English book of history or travel, — volumes which the active presses of London 
 had sent cheaply amongst the people. The time is arrived when he has quitted 
 the free-school. His choice of a worldly occupation is scarcely yet made. The 
 wishes of his father, whatever they may be, are rather hinted at than carried out. 
 It is that pause which so often takes place in the life of a youth, when the world 
 dhows afar off like a vast plain with many paths, all bright and sunny, and losing 
 themselves in the distance, where it is fancied there is something brighter still. 
 {.t this season we may paint the family of John Shakspere at their evening 
 fireside. The mother is plying her distaff, or hearing Richard his lesson out of 
 the ABC book. The father and the elder son are each intent upon a book of 
 chronicles, manly reading. Gilbert is teaching his sister Joan Gamut, " the 
 ground of all accord ; " whilst the little Anne, a petted child, is wilfully twang- 
 ing upon the lute which her sister has laid down. A neighbour comes in upon 
 business with the father, who quits the room ; and then all the group crowd 
 round their elder brother, who has laid aside his chronicle, to entreat him for a 
 story; the mother even joins in the children's prayer to their gentle brothei. 
 Has not he, himself, pictured such a home scene ? May we not read for Her- 
 mione, Mary Shakspere, and for Mamillius, William ? — 
 
 " Her. What wisdom stirs amongst you ? Come, sir, now 
 I am for you again : Pray you, sit by us, 
 And tell 's a tale. 
 
 Mam. Merry, or sad, shall 't be ? 
 
 Her. As merry as you will. 
 
 Mam. A sad tale 's best for winter : 
 
 I have one of sprites and goblins. 
 
 Her. Let 's have that, good sir. 
 
 Come on, sit down : — Come on, and do your best 
 To fright me with your sprites : you 're powerful at it. 
 
 Mam. There was a man, — 
 
 Her. Nay, come, sit down ; then on. 
 
 Mam. Dwelt by a churchyard. — I will tell it softly; 
 Yon crickets shall not hear it. 
 
 Her. Come on then, 
 
 And give 't me in mine ear." * 
 
 And truly that boy had access to a prodigious mine of such stories, whether 
 " merry or sad." He had a copy, well thumbed from his first reading days, of 
 ' The Palace of Pleasure, beautified, adorned, and well furnished with pleasaunt 
 histories and excellent nouelles, selected out of diuers good and commendable 
 authors ; by William Painter, Clarke of the Ordinaunce and Armarie.' In this 
 book, according to the dedication of the translator to Ambrose Earl of Warwick, 
 was set forth " the great valiance of noble gentlemen, the terrible combats of 
 courageous personages, the virtuous minds of noble dames, the chaste hearts of 
 constant ladies, the wonderful patience of puissant princes, the mild sufferance 
 of well-disposed gentlewomen, and, in divers, the quiet bearing of adverse 
 fortune." Pleasant little apophthegms and short fables were there in that book, 
 which the brothers and sisters of William Shakspere had heard him tell with 
 marvellous spirit, and they abided therefore in their memories. There was 
 
 ♦ Winter's Tale, Act n., Scene I. 
 112
 
 a biography. 
 
 /Esop's fable of the old lark and her young ones, wherein " he prettily and aptly 
 -loth premonish that hope and confidence of things attempted by man ought to 
 be fixed and trusted in none other but in himself." There was the story, most 
 delightful to a child, of the bondman at Rome, who was brought into the open 
 place upon which a great multitude looked, to fight with a lion of a marvellous 
 bigness ; and the fierce lion when he saw him " suddenly stood still, and after- 
 wards by little and little, in gentle sort, he came unto the man as though he 
 had known him," and licked his hands and legs ; and the bondman told that he 
 had healed in former time the wounded foot of the lion, and the beast became 
 his friend. These were for the younger children ; but William had now a new 
 tale, out of the same storehouse, upon which he had often pondered ; the subject 
 of which had shaped itself in his mind into dialogue that almost sounded like 
 verse in his earnest and graceful recitation. It was a tale which Painter trans- 
 lated from the French of Pierre Boisteau — a true tale, as he records it, " the 
 memory whereof to this day is so well known at Verona, as unneths* their 
 blubbered eyes be yet dry that saw and beheld that lamentable sight." It was 
 ' The goodly history of the true and constant love between Romeo and Julietta.' 
 Then the youth described how Romeo came into the hall of the Capulets, whose 
 family were at variance with his own, the Montesches, and, " very shamefaced, 
 withdrew himself into a corner; — but by reason of the light of the torches, 
 which burned very bright, he was by and by known and looked upon by the 
 whole company;" how he held the frozen hand of Juliet, the daughter of the 
 Capulet, and it warmed and thrilled, so that from that moment there was love 
 between them ; how the lady was told that Romeo was the " son of her father's 
 capital enemy and deadly foe;" how, in the little street before her father's 
 house, Juliet saw Romeo walking, " through the brightness of the moon ; " how 
 they were joined in holy marriage secretly by the good Friar Lawrence ; and 
 then came bloodshed, and grief, and the banishment of Romeo, and the friar 
 gave the lady a drug to produce a pleasant sleep, which was like unto death ; 
 and she, " so humble, wise, and debonnaire," was laid " in the ordinary grave of 
 the Capulets," as one dead, and Romeo, having bought poison of an apothecary, 
 went to the tomb, and there lay down and died ; and the sleeping wife awoke, and 
 with the aid of the dagger of Romeo she died beside him. There were " blub- 
 bered eyes " also at that fireside of the Shaksperes, for the youth told the story 
 with wonderful animation. From the same collection of tales had he before 
 half dramatized the story of " Giletta of Narbonne," who cured the King of 
 France of a painful malady, and the King gave her in marriage to the Count 
 Beltramo, with whom she had been brought up, and her husband despised and 
 forsook her, but at last they were united, and lived in great honour and felicity. 
 There was another collection, too, which that youth had diligently read, — the 
 ' Gesta Romanorum,' translated by R. Robinson in 1577, — old legends,, come 
 down to those latter days from monkish historians, who had embodied in their 
 narratives all the wild traditions of the ancient and modern world. He could 
 tell the story of the rich heiress who chose a husband by the machinery of a 
 gold, a silver, and a leaden casket ; — and another story of the merchant whose 
 
 * Unneths, scarcely. 
 Life. 113
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 inexorable creditor required the fulfilment of his bond in cutting a pound of 
 flesh nearest the merchant's heart, and by the skilful interpretation of the bond 
 the cruel creditor was defeated. There was the story too, in these legends, of 
 the Emperor Theodosius, who had three daughters ; and those two daughters 
 who said they loved him more than themselves were unkind to him, but the 
 youngest, who only said she loved him as much as he was worthy, succoured 
 him in his need, and was his true daughter. There was in that collection also 
 a feeble outline of the history of a king whose wife died upon the stormy sea, and 
 her body was thrown overboard, and the child she then bore was lost, and found 
 by the father after many years, and the mother was also wonderfully kept in 
 life. Stories such as these, preserved amidst the wreck of time, were to that 
 youth like the seeds that are found in the tombs of ruined cities, lying with the 
 bones of forgotten generations, but which the genial influences of nature will 
 call into life, and they shall become flowers, and trees, and food for man. 
 
 But, beyond all these, our Mamillius had many a tale " of sprites and goblins." 
 He told them, we may well believe at that period, with an assenting faith, if 
 not a prostrate reason. They were not then, in his philosophy, altogether "the 
 very coinage of the brain." Such appearances were above nature, but the com- 
 monest movements of the natural world had them in subjection : — 
 
 " I have heard, 
 The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, 
 Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat 
 Awake the god of day, and at his warning, 
 Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, 
 The extravagant and erring spirit hies 
 To his confine."* 
 
 Powerful they were, but yet powerless. They came for benevolent purposes ; 
 to warn the guilty ; to discover the guilt. The belief in them was not a debasing 
 thing. It was associated with the enduring confidence that rested upon a world 
 beyond this material world. Love hoped for such visitations ; it had its dreams 
 of such — where the loved one looked smilingly, and spoke of regions where 
 change and separation were not. They might be talked of, even amongst 
 children then, without terror. They lived in that corner of the soul which had 
 trust in angel protections ; which believed in celestial hierarchies ; which listened 
 to hear the stars moving in harmonious music — 
 
 " Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins," 
 
 but listened in vain, for, 
 
 " Whilse this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hoar it." f 
 
 William Shakspere could also tell to his greedy listeners, how 
 
 " In olde dayis of the king Artour, 
 Of which that Bretons speken gret honour, 
 All was this lond full filled of faerie ; 
 The elf-queene, with her jolly compagnie, 
 Danced full oft in many a grene mede." J 
 
 Hamlet. f Merchant of Venice. J Chaucer, 'Wife of Bath's Tale. 
 
 114
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Here was something in his favourite old poet for the youth to work out into 
 beautiful visions of a pleasant race oi supernatural beings ; who lived by day in 
 the acorn cups of Arden, and by moonlight held their revels on the green sward 
 of Avon-side, the ringlets of their dance being duly seen, 
 
 " Whereof the ewe not bites ;" 
 
 who tasted the honey-bag of the bee, and held counsel by the light of the glow- 
 worm ; who kept the cankers from the rosebuds, and silenced the hootings of 
 the owl. But he had his story, too, of a " shrewd and knavish sprite," whether 
 named Robin-Goodfellow, Kit-with-the-canstick, Man-in-the-oak, Fire-drake, 
 Puckle, Tom-tumbler, or Hobgoblin. Did he not grind malt and mustard, 
 and sweep the house at midnight, and was not his standing fee a mess of white 
 milk ? * Some day would William make a little play of Fairies, and Joan 
 should be the Queen, and he would be the King ; for he had talked with the 
 Fairies, and he knew their language and their manners, and they were " good 
 people," and would not mind a boy's sport with them. 
 
 But when the youth began to speak of witches there was fear and silence. 
 For did not his mother recollect that in the year she was married Bishop Jewel 
 had told the Queen that her subjects pined away, even unto the death, and that 
 their affliction was owing to the increase of witches and sorcerers ? Was it not 
 known how there were three sorts of witches, — those that can hurt and not help, 
 those that can help and not hurt, and those that can both help and hurt ? f It 
 was unsafe even to talk of them. But the youth had met with the history of 
 the murder of Duncan King of Scotland, in a chronicler older than Holinshed • 
 and he told softly, so that " yon crickets shall not hear it/' — that, as Macbeth 
 and Banquo journeyed from Forres, sporting by the way together, when the 
 warriors came in the midst of a laund three weird sisters suddenly appeared to 
 them, in strange and wild apparel, resembling creatures of an elder world, and 
 prophesied that Macbeth should be King of Scotland ; and Macbeth from that 
 hour desired to be King, and so killed the good King his liege lord. And then 
 the story-teller and his listeners would pass on to safer matters — to the calcula- 
 tions of learned men who could read the fates of mankind in the aspects of the 
 stars ; and of those more deeply learned, clothed in garments of white linen, 
 who had command over the spirits of the earth, of the water, and of the air. 
 Some of the children said that a horse-shoe over the door, and vervain and dill, 
 would preserve them, as they had been told, from the devices of sorcery. But 
 their mother called to their mind that there was security far more to be relied 
 on than charms of herb or horse-shoe — that there was a Power that would pre- 
 serve them from all evil, seen or unseen, if such were His gracious will, and 
 if they humbly sought Him, and offered up their hearts to Him, in all love and 
 trust. And to that Power this household then addressed themselves ; and the 
 night was without fear, and their sleep was pleasant. 
 
 * See Scot's 'Discovery of Witchcraft,' 15S4. t K»id. 
 
 1 2 l]fi
 
 [Stratford Church, West End.] 
 
 NOTE ON THE STRATFORD REGISTERS 
 
 The Parish Register of Stratford is a tall, narrow book, of considerable thickness, the leaves 
 formed of very fine vellum. This oue book contains the entries of Baptisms, Marriages, and 
 Burials. The Register commences with the record of a baptism, on the 25th of March, 1558. 
 But it hac not been previously stated (it ought to have been stated by Malone) that the entries, 
 whether of Baptisms, Marriages, or Burials, are all, without exception, in the same handwriting, 
 from the first entry, to September 14 in the year 1G00. But although the Register is thus only 
 a transcript for forty-two years, there is no reason to doubt its authenticity and perfect correct- 
 ness; for each page is signed by Richard Bifield, the vicar, and four churchwardens, in attesta- 
 tion of its being a correct copy. • Richard Bifield was vicar of Stratford from 159G to 1G10; and 
 to him we are, in all probability, indebted for this transcript of the original Registers, which 
 were most likely on loose leaves of paper. Subsequently, the Registers are not made at the time 
 of the performance of the Church-office. They generally appear to be entered monthly; but 
 sometimes the transcript seems to have been made at longer intervals. The signature of the 
 churchwardens of the year is then affixed to each page as a testimonial of its accuracy. 
 
 The following List is transcribed verbatim from this Register Book. It includes all the entries 
 which are impoi'tant to the general reader. 
 
 no
 
 A BIOGKAPni'. 
 
 BAPTISMS. 
 
 1558 Septcber 15 Jone Shakspere daughter to John Shakspere. 
 
 1562 December 2 Margareta filia Johannis Shakspere. 
 
 1564 April 26 ...... Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere. 
 
 1566 October 13 ..... . Gilbertus filius Johannis Shakspere. 
 
 1569 April 15 ...... lone the daughter of John Shakspere, 
 
 1571 Septeb 28 Anna filia Magistri Shakspere. 
 
 1573 [15734] March 11 . . . Richard sonne to Mr. John Shakspeer. 
 1580 May 3 .... . . Edmund sonne to Mr. John Shakspere. 
 
 15S3 May 26 Susanna daughter to William Shakspere. 
 
 1584 [1584-5] February 2 , . . Hamnet & Iudeth sonne and daughter to Willia 
 
 Shakspere. 
 There are then entries of Ursula, 1588; Humphrey, 1590; Philippus, 1591; — children 
 John Shakspere (not Mr.). 
 
 of 
 
 1607 Junii 5 
 
 1615 [1615-6] February 10 
 
 MARRIAGES. 
 
 John Hall gentlema & Susanna Shaxspere. 
 Tho : Queeny tow Judith Shakspere. 
 
 1563 April 30 " . . . 
 1579 April 4 . . . . 
 1596 August 11 . . . 
 1601 Septemb 8 . . . 
 1603 Sept 9 . . . . 
 1612 [1612-13] February 
 1616 April 25 ... 
 1623 August 8 . . . 
 1649 July 16 ... . 
 1661 ,' 1661-2] Feb. 9 . 
 
 Margareta filia Johannis Shakspere. 
 
 Anne daughter to Mr. John Shakspere. 
 
 Hamnet filius William Shakspere. 
 
 Mr. Johanes Shakspeare. 
 
 Mayry Shaxspere, Wydowe. 
 
 Rich. Shakspeare. 
 
 Will : Shakspere, Gent. 
 
 Mrs. Shakspeare. 
 
 Mrs. Susanna Hall, Widow. 
 
 Judith, uxor Thomas Quiney. 
 
 * # * It appears by the Register of Burials that Dr. Hall, one of the sons-in-law of William 
 Shakspere, was buried on the 26th November, 1635. He is described in the entry as "Medicus 
 peritissimus." The Register contains no entry of the burial of Thomas Quiney. Elizabeth, 
 the daughter of John and Susanna Hall, was baptized February 21, 1607 [1607-8]; and she 
 is mentioned in her illustrious grandfather's will. The children of Judith, who was only married 
 two months before the death, of her father, appear to have beeia throe sons, nil of whom died 
 before their mother, 
 
 n;
 
 WILLIAM SllAKhU'EKE : 
 
 NOTE ON THE ALLEGED POVERTY OF JOHN SHAKSPERE. 
 
 The following are the principal documents upon which Malone's argument is established : — 
 
 ' & 1P , > Ad aulam ibm tent. xxix° die Januarii, a regni dnao Elizabeth, &c., vicesimo. 
 
 Stratford. ) ° 
 
 At this hall yt is agreed that every alderman, except such underwritten excepted, shah 
 paye towards the furniture of three pikemen, ij billmen, and one archer, vis. viijcZ., and 
 every burgess, except such underwrytten excepted, shall pay iijs. ivcZ. : — 
 Mr. Plymley, vs. 
 Mr. Shaxpeare, iijs. ivrZ. 
 John Walker, ijs. vicZ. 
 Eobert Bratt, nothinge in this place. 
 Thomas Brogden, ijs. vicZ. 
 William Brace, ijs. 
 Anthony Tanner, ijs. vicZ. 
 
 Sum, xili. xiiijcZ. 
 The inhabitants of every ward are taxed at this hall,* as by notes to them delivered yt 
 may appear." 
 
 2, " Ad aulam ibm tent. xix°. die Novembris a regni dnse Elizabeth, &c, xxi°. 
 
 Itm. yt is ordeined that every alderman shall paye weekely towards the relsif of the poore 
 ihjcZ. saving John Shaxpeare and Eobert Bratt, who shall not be taxed te pay any- 
 thinge. Mr. Lewes and Mr. Plimley are taxed to pay weekely, eyther of them iijcZ.,+ 
 and every burgesses are taxed to pay weekely at ijcZ. apece." 
 
 3 "Stratford ) Curia dnaf) Reginec ibm tent. xiii. die Januarii, anno regni, &c, vicesimo 
 
 Burgus. ) octavo. 
 
 Ad hunc diem Servien. ad Clavam burgi predict, retom. pr. de distr. eis direct, versus 
 
 Johem Shackspere ad sect. Johis Browne, q d predict. Johes Shackspere nihil habet 
 
 unde distr. potest.^ Ideo fiat Ca. versus Johem Shackspere ad sect. Johis Browne, si 
 
 petatur." 
 
 i " Debtes which are owing unto me, Roger Sadler. 
 
 Imprimis, of Mr. John Combes, the elder, for a horse, 3Z. 
 
 Item, of the same J. C, due to me by bond at Christmas next, 201. 
 
 Item, of Richard Hathaway, alias Gardyner, of Shottery, 61. 8s. id. 
 
 Item, of Edmond Lambart, and Cornishe, for the debt of Mr. John Shacksper. 51." 
 
 * M«lonc has omitted, at this hall. f Malono here inserts, ajpea. 
 
 t Here Malone has inserted, levari.
 
 A BIOGHAPHY. 
 
 NOTE ON THE SCHOOL LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 
 
 WiT have already referred to the two novelets of Tieck, in which he sketches out the early career 
 of the poet. The following extract may be interesting to our readers. It is scarcely necessary 
 to say that we do not take the same view as the German critic— that we do not think the school- 
 progress of William Shakspere was slow ; that he suffered from the strict temper of his father, 
 and waa the witness of family misfortunes. The evidence of all the early writings of Shakspere 
 goes far to prove that he had looked upon existence with an eye of untroubled cheerfulness. Never 
 did any young poet possess his soul more undisturbed with fears of 
 
 " Poverty's unconquerable bar." 
 
 The narrative which we subjoin professes to be a relation by the poet himself to the Earl ot 
 Southampton. We give it from a translation which appeared some years ago in ' The Academic 
 Chronicle/ a literary journal of considerable merit, but of short vitality : — 
 
 " ' It was in a season of religious and political commotion,' resumed the poet, ' that I myself 
 was born. It happened, too, that at that very period ithere came to Warwickshire and the neigh- 
 bouring counties a man of superior ability and learning, who in the course of his travels had gained 
 over numerous converts to the Catholic Church, — William Allen, who was afterwards made a 
 cardinal. Among other places he visited Stratford, and excited much disquiet both in that little 
 town and in our family. He entirely worked himself into the affections of my uncle, my father's 
 brother ; and even my father himself was for some time wavering in doubt, and greatly troubled 
 in mind. The latter, who was of a gloomy disposition, was always melancholy, and this agitation 
 of religious opinions led him into many disputes both with his own relations and with his neigh- 
 bours. Besides this, it wa3 a matter of peril to hold any intercourse with foreign priests, while, 
 at the same time, those who were either evil-disposed, or were zealous Protestants, caught at every 
 suspicious report. My earliest impressions were of a gloomy cast ; my mother alone, who made 
 much of me, was of a cheerful temper. She was of a clever turn, and her memory was stored with 
 many a tale of marvel and mystery which she was wont to relate to me. On the intelligence of 
 the dreadful tragedy of St. Bartholomew's eve reaching England, many proselytes — at least those 
 who had begun to lean towards the ancient faith — again changed their sentiments. 
 
 " ' My father, however, still continued dissatisfied with me, for my progress at school was 
 exceedingly slow. Never shall I forget that free-school in the Guildhall, where I used to sit at the 
 old worm-eaten oaken desk, poring over my task, till what sense and comprehension I had seemed 
 ready to leave me, and I often feared that I should become quite stupid. Would not one be 
 tempted to think such schools had been purposely contrived to terrify children altogether from 
 study and learning, lest too much thinking should disturb society ? This eternal going over the 
 same thing, this useless repetition of what has already been learned, calculated only for such as 
 are slow of comprehension, while no regard is had to him who is more apt in his studies, often 
 drove me to distraction. Even this very repetition of what was already familiar to me prevented 
 me from retaining it in my memory, and my disgust at this mode of teaching increased to such a 
 degree, that I felt a horror of mind whenever I thought of this school and my instructors there. 
 
 " ' My poor father, whose business was altered materially for the worse, wished to have as Boon 
 as possible some assistance in the management of it and in keeping his accounts ; nor was I by 
 any means sorry that he took me away earlier than usual from school, aud gave me a private 
 teacher at home, while I was employed by him in his own affairs. It was natural that I should 
 form acquaintances with lads of my own ago, who would frequently take me along with them in 
 
 119
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE ! 
 
 their little excursions and rambles, or invite "me to join their meetings. My father, however, who 
 entertained very strict and singular notions of morality, accounted all such recreations sinful 
 indulgence, nor could he easily be brought to consent that I should partake in them. In the 
 family of the Hathaways I used to spend much of my time : the son was a brisk, lively fellow — 
 a jolly boon-companion ; and the daughter, Anne, who was my senior by some ten years,* 
 treated me as if I had been her younger brother. Like many other persons in our town and its 
 neighbourhood, the Hathaways showed me friendliness and kindness, but I perceived they consi- 
 dered me a lad fit for very little, and one who would never turn out to be anything extraordinary.' " 
 
 * An error. Anne Hathawsy (Tieck calls her Johaime) died in 1G23, aged G7. 
 than her husband. 
 
 She was tis»« about seven years nlder 
 
 [ Chimney cornei of the Kitchen in Henley Street.]
 
 
 
 [The Bailiff's Hay.] 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE PLAYERS AT STRATEOED. 
 
 The ancient accounts of the Chamberlain of the borough of Stratford exhibit a 
 number of payments made out of the funds of the corporation for theatrical per- 
 formances.* In 1569, when John Shakspere was high bailiff, there is a payment 
 of nine shillings to the Queen's players, and of twelve pence to the Earl of 
 Worcester's players. In 1573 the Earl of Leicester's players received five shillings 
 and eightp^nce. In 1576 "my Lord of "Warwick's players" have a gratuity of 
 seventeen shillings, and the Earl of Worcester's players of five and eightpence. In 
 1577 "my Lord of Leicester's players" receive fifteen shillings, and "my Lord of 
 Worcester's players" three and fourpence. In 1579 and 1580 the entries are more 
 circumstantial : — 
 
 * Mr. Halliwell, in his Life of Shakspere, presents us with voluminous extracts from the account 
 books of the chamberlains from 1543 to 1717. 
 
 121
 
 WILLIAM shakspeee: 
 
 " 1579. Item paid to my Lord Strange men the xi th day of February at the comaundemeat ol 
 Mr. Bayliffe, vs. 
 
 P J at the comandement of Mr. Baliffe to the Countys of Essex plears, xivs. vie?. 
 
 1580. P d to the Earle of Darbyes players at the comaundement of Mr. Baliffe, viiia. iv^. rt 
 
 It thus appears that there had been three sets of players at Stratford within a 
 short distance of the time when William Shakspere was sixteen years of age. 
 We shall here endeavour to present a general view of the state of the stage at 
 this point of its history ; with reference to the impressions which theatrical 
 performances would then make upon him who would be the chief instrument in 
 building up upon these rude foundations a noble and truly poetical drama — 
 such a view as may enable the reader to form a tolerable conception of the 
 amusements which were so highly popular, and so amply encouraged, in a small 
 town far distant from the capital, as to invite three distinct sets of players there 
 to exhibit in the brief period which is defined in the above entries. 
 
 It is a curious circumstance that the most precise and interesting account 
 which we possess of one of the earliest of the theatrical performances is from 
 the recollection of a man who was born in the same year as William Shakspere. 
 In 1639 K. W. (R. Willis), stating his age to be seventy-five, published a little 
 volume, called ' Mount Tabor,' which contains a passage which is essential to 
 be given in any history or sketch of the early stage.* 
 
 " Upon a Stage-Plat which I saw when I was a Child. 
 
 " In the city of Gloucester the manner is (as I think it is in other like corporations) that, when 
 1 layers of interludes come to town, they first attend the mayor, to inform him what nobleman's 
 servants they are, and so to get licence for their public playing ; and if the mayor like the actors, 
 or would show respect to their lord and master, he appoints them to play their first play before 
 himself and the aldermen and common council of the city ; and that is called the mayor's play, 
 where every one that will comes in without money, the mayor giving the players a reward as he 
 thinks fit, to show respect unto them. At such a play my father took me with him, and made 
 me stand between his legs, as he sat upon one of the benches, where we saw and heard very well. 
 The play was called ' The Cradle of Security,' wherein wa3 personated a king or some great prince 
 with his courtiers of several kinds, amongst which three ladies were in special grace with him, and 
 they, keeping him in delights and pleasures, drew him from his graver counsellors, hearing of ser- 
 mons, and listening to good counsel and admonitions, that in the end they got him to lie down in 
 a cradle upon the stage, where these three ladies, joining in a sweet song, rocked him asleep, that 
 he snorted again, and in the mean time closely conveyed under the clothes wherewithal he was 
 covered a vizard like a swine's snout upon his face, with three wire chains fastened thereunto, the 
 other end whereof being holden severally by those three ladies, who fall to singing again, and then 
 disco vercd his face, that the spectators might see how they had transformed him going on with 
 their singing. Whilst all this was acting, there came forth of another door at the farthest end of the 
 stage, two old men, the one in blue, with a sergeant-at-arni3 his mace on his shoulder, the other in 
 red, with a drawn sword in his hand, and leaning with the other hand upon the other's shoulder, 
 and so they two went along in a soft pace, round about by the skirt of the stage, till at last they 
 came to the cradle, when all the court was in greatest jollity, and then the foremost old man with 
 his mace struck a fearful blow upon the cradle, whereat ail the courtiers, with the three ladies and 
 the vizard, all vanished ; and the desolate prince, starting up barefaced, and finding himself thus 
 sent for to judgment, made a lamentable complaint of his miserable case, and so was carried away 
 by wicked spirits. This prince did personate in the moral the wicked of the world; the three 
 
 * This account was first extracted by Malonc in his 'Rise and Progress of the English Stage. 
 It has been given also, with the correction of a few inaccuracies, by Mr. Collier. 
 122
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ladies, pride, covetousness, and luxury ; the two old men, the end of the world and the last judg- 
 ment. This sight took such impression in me, that when I came towards man's estate it was as 
 t'rcsh in my memory as if I had seen it newly acted." 
 
 We now understand why the bailiff of Stratford paid the players out of the 
 public money. The first performance of each company in this town was the 
 bailiff's, or chief magistrate's, play ; and thus, when the father of William Shak- 
 spere was bailiff, the boy might have stood " between his legs as he sat upon one 
 of the benches." It would appear from Willis's description that ' The Cradle of 
 Security ' was for the most part dumb show. It is probable that he was present 
 at its performance at Gloucester when he was six or seven years of age ; it 
 evidently belongs to that class of moral plays which were of the simplest con- 
 struction. And yet it was popular long after the English drama had reached its 
 highest eminence. When the pageants and mysteries had been put down by 
 the force of public opinion, when spectacles of a dramatic character had ceased 
 to be employed as instruments of religious instruction, the professional players 
 who had sprung up founded their popularity for a long period upon the ancient 
 habits and associations of the people. Our drama was essentially formed by a 
 course of steady progress, and not by rapid transition. We are accustomed to 
 say that the drama was created by Shakspere, Marlowe, Greene, Kyd, and a few 
 others of distinguished genius ; but they all of them worked upon a foundation 
 which was ready for them. The superstructure of real tragedy and comedy had 
 to be erected upon the moral plays, the romances, the histories, which were 
 beginning to be popular in the very first days of Queen Elizabeth, and continued 
 to be so, even in their very rude forms, beyond the close of her long reign. 
 
 We have very distinct evidence that stories from the Sacred Scriptures, in 
 character perhaps very little different from the ancient Mysteries, were per- 
 formed upon the London stage at a period when classical histories, romantic 
 jegends, and comedies of intrigue, attracted numerous audiences both in the 
 capital and the provinces. At the period which we are now describing there 
 was a fierce controversy going forward on the subject of theatrical exhibitions ; 
 and from the very rare tracts then published we are enabled to form a tolerably 
 accurate estimate of the character of the early theatre. In one of these tracts, 
 which appeared in 1580, entitled ' A Second and Third Blast of Retrait from 
 Plaies and Theaters,' we have the following passage: — "The reverend word of 
 God, and histories of the Bible, set forth on the stage by these blasphemous 
 players, are so corrupted by their gestures of scurrility, and so interlaced with 
 unclean and whorish speeches, that it is not possible to draw any profit out of 
 the doctrine of their spiritual moralities. For that they exhibit under laugh- 
 ing that which ought to be taught and received reverendly. So that their 
 auditory may return made merry in mind, but none comes away reformed in 
 manners. And of all abuses this is most undecent and intolerable, to suffer 
 holy things to be handled by men so profane, and defiled by interposition of 
 dissolute words." (Page 103.) Those who have read the ancient Mysteries, 
 and even the productions of Bishop Bale which appeared not thirty years 
 before this was written, will agree that the players ought not wholly to have 
 the blame o* the " interposition of dissolute words." But unquestionably it 
 
 123
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPLTvE : 
 
 was a great abuse to have "histories of the Bible set forth on the stage;" for 
 the use and advantage of such dramatic histories had altogether ceased. In- 
 deed although Scriptural subjects might have continued to h?ve been repre- 
 sented in 1580, we apprehend that they were principally taken from apocrypha- 
 stories, which, were regarded with little reverence even by those who were 
 most earnest in their hostility to the stage. Of such a character is the ver' 
 curious play, printed in 1565, entitled 'A pretie new Enterlude, both pithie 
 and pleasaunt, of. the story of King Daryus, being taken out of the third and 
 fourth chapter of the third book of Esdras.' This was an interlude that 
 might acceptably have been performed, at the commandment of the bailiff of 
 Stratford, by my Lord Strange's men, in February, 1580; and we request 
 therefore the indulgence of our readers whilst we endeavour to describe what 
 such a performance would have been. 
 
 The hall of the Guild, which afterwards became the Town Hall, was the 
 occasional theatre of Stratford. It is now a long room, and somewhat low, 
 the building being divided into two floors, the upper of which is used at? 
 the Grammar School. The elevation for the Court at one end of the hall 
 would form the stage ; and on one side is an ancient separate chamber, to which 
 the performers would retire. With a due provision of benches, about three 
 hundred persons could be accommodated in this room ; and no doubt Mr. 
 Bailiff would be liberal in the issue of his invitations, so that Stratford might 
 not grudge its expenditure of five shillings. A plain cloth curtain — "the 
 blanket" of the stage — is drawn on one side; and "the Prolocutor" comes 
 forward with solemn stride, to explain the object of * The worthy Entertain- 
 ment of King Daryus : ' — 
 
 " Good people, hark, and give car a while, 
 For of this enterlude I will declare the style. 
 
 A certain king to you we shall bring in 
 Whose name was Darius, good and virtuous ; 
 This king commanded a feast to be made, 
 And at that banquet many people had. 
 
 And when the king in counsel was set 
 
 Two lords commanded he to be fet, 
 
 As concerning matters of three young men ; 
 
 Which briefly showed their fantasy then : 
 
 In writings their meanings they did declare, 
 
 And to give them to the king they did not spare. 
 
 Now silence I desire you therefore, 
 For the Vice is entering at the door." 
 
 The stage-direction then says, " The Prologue goeth out and Iniquity comes 
 in. This is "the formal Vice Iniquity" of Richard III. ; the "Vetus Ini- 
 quitas" of 'The Devil is an Ass;' the Iniquity with a "wooden dagger," and 
 " a juggler's jerkin with false skirts," of ' The Staple of News.' But in the in- 
 terlude of 'Darius' he has less complex offices than are assigned him by Gifford — 
 " to instigate the hero of the piece to wickedness, and, at the same time, to 
 124
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 protect him from the devil, whom he was permitted to buffet and baffle with 
 his wooden sword, till the process of the story required that both the protector 
 and the protected should be carried off by the fiend ; or the latter driven roaring 
 from the stage by some miraculous interposition in favour of the repentant 
 offender."* The first words which Iniquity utters indicate, however, that he 
 was familiar with the audience, and the audience familiar with him : — 
 
 l ' How now, my masters ; how goeth the world new ? 
 I come gladly to talk with you.'' 
 
 And in a most extraordinary manner he does talk ; swaggering and bullying as 
 if the whole world was at his command, till Charity comes in, and reads him a 
 very severe lecture upon the impropriety of his deportment. It is of little 
 avail ; for two friends of Iniquity — Importunity and Partiality — come to his 
 assistance, and fairly drive Charity off the stage. Then Equity enters to take 
 up the quarrel against Iniquity and his fellows ; but Equity is no match for 
 them, and they all make way for King Darius. This very long scene has 
 nothing whatever to do with the main action of the piece, or rather what pro- 
 fesses to be its action. But the Stratford audience is a patient one ; and the 
 Vice, however dull was his profligacy, contrived to make them laugh by the 
 whisking of his tail and the brandishing of his sword, assisted no doubt by 
 some well-known chuckle like that of the Punch of our own days. King Darius, 
 however, at length comes with all his Council ; and most capital names do his 
 chief councillors bear, not unworthy to be adopted even in Courts of greater 
 refinement — Perplexity and Curiosity. The whole business of this scene of 
 King Darius is to present a feast to the admiring spectators. Up to the present 
 day the English audience delights in a feast ; and will endure that two men 
 should sit upon the stage for a quarter of an hour, uttering the most unrepeatable 
 stupidity, provided they seem to pick real chicken-bones and drink real port. 
 The Darius of the interlude feasted whole nations — upon the representative 
 system ; and here, at Stratford, Ethiopia, Persia, Judah, and Media, ate their 
 fill and were very grateful. But feasts must have their end ; and so the curtain 
 closes upon the eaters, and Iniquity " cometh in singing :" — ■ 
 
 " La, soule, soule, fa, my, re, re, 
 I miss a note I dare well say : 
 I should have been low when I was so hi^h ; 
 I shall have it right anon verily." 
 
 Again come his bottle-holders, Importunity and Partiality; and in the course 
 of their gabble Iniquity tells them that the Pope is his father. Unhappily his 
 supporters go out ; and then Equity attacks him alone. Loud is their debate ; 
 and faster and more furious is the talk when Constancy and Charity come in. 
 The matter, however, ends seriously ; and they resolving that it is useless to 
 argue longer with this impenitent sinner, " somebody casts fire to Iniquity," and 
 he departs in a tempest of squibs and crackers. The business of the play now 
 
 * Ben Jonsou's \V0rk3. Note on ' The Devil is an Ass.' 
 
 125
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE ' 
 
 at length begins. Darius tells his attendants that the three men who kept his 
 chamber while he slept woke him by their disputing and murmuring,— 
 
 " Every man to say a weightier matter than the other." 
 
 The subject of their dispute was, what is the strongest thing ; and their answers 
 as we are informed by the King's attendants, had been reduced to writing:— 
 
 * The sentence of the first man is this, 
 Wine a very strong thing is ; 
 The second also I will declare to you, 
 That the king is stronger than any other thing verily . 
 The third also I will declare — 
 Women, saith he, is the strongest of all, 
 Though by women we had a fall."' 
 
 Of their respective texts the three young men are then called in to make expo- 
 sition ; and certainly, whatever defects of manners were exhibited by the 
 audiences of that day, they must have possessed the virtue of patience in a 
 remarkable degree to have enabled them to sit out these most prolix harangues. 
 But they have an end ; and the King declares Zorobabel to be deserving of 
 signal honours, in his demonstration that, of all things, woman is the strongest. 
 A metrical prayer for Queen Elizabeth, uttered by Constancy, dismisses the 
 audience to their homes in such a loyal temper as befits the Corporation of 
 Stratford and their friends on all public occasions to cherish. We doubt if 
 William Shakspere considers " the pretty new interlude both pithy and plea- 
 sant of the story of King Darius" to be the perfect model of a populai 
 drama.* 
 
 The sojourn of my Lord Strange's men at Stratford has been short; but now 
 the Countess of Essex's players have arrived. We have seen that in previous 
 years the players of Lord Warwick, of Lord Leicester, of Lord Worcester, have 
 been at Stratford, and on each occasion they have been patronised by the Corpora- 
 tion. In a later period of the stage, when the actors chiefly depended upon the 
 large support of the public, instead of receiving the wages of noblemen, how- 
 ever wealthy and powerful, the connection of a company of players with the 
 great personage whose " servants " they were called was scarcely more than a 
 licence to act without the interference of the magistrate. But in the period of 
 the stage which we are now describing, it would appear that the players were 
 literally the retainers of powerful lords, who employed them for their own 
 recreation, and allowed them to derive a profit from occasional public exhibi- 
 tions. In 'The Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theatres' we have the 
 following passage, which appears decisive upon this point : — " What credit can 
 return to the nobleman to countenance his men to exercise that quality which is 
 not sufferable in any commonweal ? Whereas, it was an ancient custom that no 
 man of honour should retain any man but such as was as excellent in some one 
 
 * There is a copy of this very curious production in the Garrick Collection of plays in the British 
 Museum ; and a transcript of Garrick's copy is in the Bodleian Library. Its date, as before mentioned, 
 is 1565. 
 
 12C
 
 A BIOGKAPHY. 
 
 good quality or another, whereby, if occasion so served, he might get his own 
 living. Then was every nobleman's house a commonweal in itself. But since 
 the retaining of these caterpillars the credit of noblemen hath decayed, and they 
 are thought to be covetous by permitting their servants, which cannot live by 
 themselves, and whom for nearness they will not maintain, to live on the devo- 
 tion or alms of other men, passing from country to country, from one gentleman's 
 house to another, offering their service, which is a kind of beggary. Who, 
 indeed, to speak more truly, are become beggars for their servants. For com- 
 monly the good will men bear to their lords makes them draw the strings of 
 their purses to extend their liberality to them, where otherwise they would not." 
 Speaking of the writers of plays, the same author adds, — " But some perhaps 
 will say the nobleman delighteth in such things, whose humours must be con- 
 tented, partly for fear and partly for commodity; and if they write matters 
 pleasant they are best preferred in Court among the cunning heads." — (Page 
 108.) In the old play of 'The Taming of a Shrew' the players in the 'In- 
 duction' are presented to us in very homely guise. The messenger tells the 
 lord — 
 
 " Your players be come, 
 And do attend your honour's pleasure here." 
 
 The stage-direction then says, " Enter two of the players with packs at their backs, 
 and a boy." To the questions of the lord, — 
 
 " Now, sirs, what store of plays have you ? " — 
 
 the Clown answers, " Marry, my lord, you may have a tragical or a commodity, 
 or what you will;" for which ignorance the other player rebukes the Clown, 
 saying, "A comedy, thou shouldst say : zounds ! thou 'It shame us all." Whether 
 this picture belongs to an earlier period of the stage than the similar scene in 
 Shakspere's ' Induction,' or whether Shakspere was familiar with a better order 
 of players, it is clear that in his scene the players appear as persons of somewhat 
 more importance .and are treated with more respect : — 
 
 " Lord. Sirrah, go see what trumpet 't is that sounds : 
 Belike, some noble gentleman, that means, 
 Travelling some journey, to repose him here. 
 
 Re-enter a Servant. 
 How now ? who is it ? 
 
 Serv. An it please your honour, 
 
 Players, that offer service to your lordship. 
 
 Lord. Bid them come near. 
 
 Enter Players. 
 
 Now, fellows, you are welcome. 
 Players. We thank your honour. 
 Lord. Do you intend to stay with me to-night J 
 2 Play. So please your lordship to accept our du'-y 
 Lord. With all my heart." 
 
 The lord, however, even in this scene, gives his order, "Take them to tin 
 buttery," — a proof that the itinerant companies were classed little above menials. 
 
 i2r
 
 [Itinerant Players.] 
 
 The welcome of a corporate town was perhaps as acceptable to the players of 
 the Countess of Essex as the abundance of the esquire's kitchen ; and so the 
 people of Stratford are to be treated with the last novelty. 
 
 The play which is now to be performed is something very different from 
 ' King Darius.' It is 'A Pleasant Comedie called Common Conditions.' This 
 is neither a Mystery nor a Moral Play. It dispenses with impersonations of 
 Good and Evil ; Iniquity holds no controversy with Charity, and the Devil is 
 not brought in to buffet or to be buffeted. The play is written in rhymed 
 verse, and very ambitiously written. The matter is "set out with sweetness 
 of words, fitness of epithets, with metaphors, allegories, hyperboles, amphibolo- 
 gies, similitude."* It is a dramatized romance, of which the title expresses 
 that it represents a possible aspect of human life ; and the name of the chief 
 character, Common Conditions, from which the play derives its title, would 
 import that he does not belong to the supernatural or allegorical class of per- 
 sonages, f The audience of Stratford have anticipated something at which they 
 
 * Gosson. ' Plays Confuted,' second action. 
 
 T Mr. Collier, in his ' History of Dramatic Poetry,' expresses an opinion that the character or 
 12S
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 are to laugh ; and their mirth is much provoked when three tinkers appear 
 upon the stage singing, 
 
 " Hey tisty toisty, tinkers good fellows they be ; 
 In stopping of cne hole, they use to make three." 
 
 These worthies are called Drift, Unthrift, and Shift; and, trade being bad with 
 them, they agree to better it by a little robbing. Unthrift tells his companions, 
 
 " But, masters, wot ye what ? I have heard news about the court this day, 
 That there is a gentleman with a lady gone away ; 
 And havo with them a little parasite full of money and coia." 
 
 These travellers the tinkers agree to rob ; and we have here an example of the 
 readiness of the stage to indulge in satire. The purveyors who, a few years 
 later, were denounced in parliament, are, we suppose, here pointed at. Shift 
 says, 
 
 " We will take away their purses, and say we do it by commission ; " 
 
 to which Drift replies, 
 
 " Who made a commissioner of you? 
 If thou make no better answer at the bar, thou wilt hang, I tell thee true." 
 
 The gentleman and lady from the court, Sedmond and Clarisia, then come out 
 of the wood, accompanied by their servant, Conditions. It appears that their 
 father has long been absent, and they are travelling to seek him. Clarisia is 
 heavy-hearted; and her brother thus consoles her, after the fashion of "epi- 
 thets, metaphors, and hyperboles : " — 
 
 " You see the chirping birds begin you melody to make, 
 But you, ungrateful unto them, their pleasant voice forsake : 
 You see the nightingale also, with sweet and pleasant lay, 
 Sound forth her voice in chirping wise to banish care away. 
 You see Dame Tellus, she with mantle fresh and green, 
 For to display everywhere most comely to be seen ; 
 You see Dame Flora, she with flowers fresh and gay, 
 Both here and there and everywhere, her banners to display." 
 
 The lady will have no comfort. She replies to her brother in a long echo to 
 his speech, ending — 
 
 " And therefore, brother, leave off talk ; in vain you seem to prate : 
 Not all the talk you utter can, my sorrows can abate." 
 
 Conditions ungallantly takes part against the lady, by a declamation in dis- 
 praise of women ; which is happily cut short by the tinkers rushing in. Now 
 indeed we have movement which will stir the audience. The brother escapes ; 
 the lady is bound to a tree : Conditions is to be hanged ; but his adroitness, 
 which is excessively diverting, altogether reminding one of another little knave, 
 the Flibbertigibbet of Scott, is setting the Stratford audience in a roar. They 
 
 Common Conditions is the Vice of the performance. It appears to us, on the contrary, that the 
 ordinary craft of a cunning knave — a little, restless, tricky servant — works out all the action, in the 
 same way that the Vice had formerly interfered with it in the moral plays; but that he is essen* 
 tiaily and purposely distinguished from the Vice. Mr. Collier also calls this play merely an inter- 
 lude : it appears to us in its outward form to bo as much a comedy as the Winter's Tale. 
 
 Life. K 129
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE: 
 
 are realizing the description of Gosson, — " In the theatres they generally take 
 up a wonderful laughter, and shout altogether with one voice when they see 
 some notable cozenage practised."* When the tinkers have the noose round 
 the neck of Conditions, he persuades them to let him hang himself, and to help 
 him up in the tree to accomplish his determination. They consent ; arguing 
 that if he hangs himself they shall be free from the penalty of hanging him ; 
 and so into the tree he goes. Up the branches he runs like a squirrel, halloo- 
 ing for help, whilst the heavy tinkers have no chance against his activity and 
 his Sheffield knife. They finally make off; and Conditions releases his mistress. 
 The next scene presents us Sedmond, the brother, alone. He laments the 
 separation from his sister, and the uncertainty which he has of ever finding his 
 father ; and he expresses his grief and his determination in lines which seem to 
 have rested upon the ear of one of that Stratford audience : — 
 
 " But farewell now, my coursers brave, attrapped to the ground ; 
 Farewell, adieu, all pleasures eke, with comely hawk and hound : 
 Farewell, ye nobles all ; farewell each martial knight ; 
 Farewell, ye famous ladies all, in whom I did delight." 
 
 And, continuing his lament, he says, — 
 
 " Adieu, my native soil ; adieu, Arbaccas king ; 
 Adieu each wight and martial knight; adieu each living thing : 
 Adieu my woful sire, and sister in like case, 
 Whom never I shall see again each other to embrace ; 
 For now I will betake myself a wandering knight to be, 
 Into some strange and foreign land, their comeliness to see." 
 
 When Conditions released the lady we learnt that the scene was Arabia : — 
 
 " And, lady, it is not best for us in Arabia longer to tarry." 
 
 It is to Arabia, his native soil, that Sidmond bids adieu. But the Stratford 
 audience learn by a very simple expedient that a change is to take place : a 
 board is stuck up with the word " Phrygia " upon it, and a new character, 
 Galiarbus, entereth "out of Phrygia." He is the father of the fugitives, who, 
 banished from Arabia, has become rich, and obtained a lordship from the Duke 
 of Phrygia ; but he thinks of his children, and bitterly laments that they must 
 never meet. Those children have arrived in Phrygia ; for a new character ap- 
 pears, Lamphedon, the son of the Duke, who has fallen violently in love with a 
 
 * 'Plays Confuted,' &c. 
 
 t We hare analysed this very curious comedy from the transcript in the Bodleian Library made 
 under the direction of Malone from the only printed copy, and that an imperfect one, which is 
 supposed to exist. In the page which contains the passage now given Malone has inserted the fol- 
 lowing foot-note, after quoting the celebrated lines in Othello, " Farewell the tranquil mind," &c. — 
 " The coincidence is so striking that one is almost tempted to think that Shakspeare had read this 
 wretched piece." . It is scarcely necessary for us to point out how constantly .the date of a play 
 must be borne in mind to allow us to form any fair opinion of its merits. Malone himself con- 
 siders that this play was printed about the year 1570, although we believe that this conjecture 
 fixe3 the date at least ten years too early. It appears to us that it is a remarkable production even 
 for 1580; and if, as a work of art, it be of little worth, it certainly contains the elements of the 
 romantic drama, except tho tme poetical element, which could only be the result of extraordi- 
 nary individual genius. 
 130
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 lady whom we know by his description to be Clarisia. Conditions has discovered 
 that his mistress is equally in love with Lamphedon ; all which circumstances 
 are described and not rendered dramatic : and then Conditions, for his own ad- 
 vantage, brings the two lovers together, and they plight their troth, and are finally 
 married. The lost brother, Sedmond, next makes his appearance under the 
 name of Nomides ; and with him a Phrygian lady, Sabia, has fallen in love. 
 But her love is unrequited ; she is rejected, and the uncourteous knight flies 
 from her. Lamphedon and Clarisia are happy at the Duke's court ; but Con- 
 ditions, as it obscurely appears, wanting to be travelling again, has irritated the 
 Duchess against her daughter-in-law, and they both, accompanied by Conditions, 
 fly to take ship for Thracia. They fall in with pirates, who receive them on 
 ship-board, having been secretly promised by Conditions that they will afford 
 a good booty. We soon learn, by the appearance of Lamphedon, that they have 
 thrown him overboard, and that he has lost his lady ; but the pirates, who are 
 by no means bad specimens of the English mariner, soon present themselves 
 again, with a sea-song, which we transcribe ; for assuredly it was fitted to rejoice 
 the hearts of the playgoers of a maritime nation : — 
 
 " Lustily, lustily, lustily, let us sail forth ; 
 The wind trim doth serve us, it blows from the north. 
 
 All things we have ready and nothing we want 
 
 To furnish our ship that rideth hereby ; 
 Victuals and weapons they be nothing scant ; 
 
 Like worthy mariners ourselves we will try. 
 
 Lustily, lustily, &e. 
 
 Her flags be new trimmed, set flaunting aloft ; 
 
 Our ship for swift swimming, oh, she doth exeel : 
 We fear no enemies, we have escaped them oft : 
 
 Of all ships that swimmeth, she beareth the bell. 
 
 Lustily, lustily, &.C 
 
 And here is a master excelleth in skill, 
 
 And our master's mate he is not to seek ; 
 And here is a boatswain will do his good will, 
 
 And here is a ship, boy, we never had leak. 
 
 Lustily, lustily, &c. 
 
 If Fortune then fail not, and our next voyage prove, 
 
 We will return merrily and make good cheer, 
 And hold all together as friends link'd in love ; 
 
 The cans shall be filled with wine, ale, and beer. 
 
 Lustily, lustily, &c." 
 
 The action of this comedy is conducted for the most part by description ; an 
 easier thing than the dramatic development of plot and character. Lamphe- 
 don falls in with the pirates, and by force of arms he compels them to tell him 
 of the fate of his wife. She has been taken, it seems, by Conditions to be sold 
 to Cardolus, an island chief; and then Lamphedon goes to fight Cardolus, and 
 he does fight him, but finds not the lady. Conditions has however got rid of 
 his charge, by persuading her to assume the name of Metraea, and enter the ser- 
 vice of Leostnines. Hardship must have wonderfully changed her ; for after a 
 K 2 131
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 time her brother, Sedmond, arrives under his assumed name, and becomes a can- 
 didate for her affections. The good old man under whose protection she re- 
 mains has adopted her as his daughter. Lamphedon is on the way to seek 
 her, accompanied by Conditions ; and thus by accident, and by the intrigues of 
 the knavish servant, all those are reunited who have suffered in separation : for 
 Leosthines is the banished father.* How Conditions is disposed of is not so 
 clear. He is constantly calling himself a little knave, and a crafty knave, a 
 oarasite, a turncoat ; and he says, 
 
 " Conditions ? nay, double Conditions is my name, 
 That for my own advantage such dealings can frame." 
 
 It is difficult to discover what advantage he derives from his trickiness, yet he 
 has always a new ' trick. It is probable that he was personated by some dimi- 
 nutive performer, whose grimaces and ugliness would make the audience roar 
 with delight. The tinkers in the first scene say they know not what to do with 
 him, except to "set him to keep crows." The object of the writer of the 
 comedy, if he had any object, would appear to be to show that the purposes of 
 craft may produce results entirely unexpected by the crafty one, and that hap- 
 piness may be finally obtained through the circumstances which appear most to 
 impede its attainment. This comedy is remarkable for containing none of the 
 ribaldry which was so properly objected to in the plays of the early stage. It 
 is characterised, also, by the absence of that melo-dramatic extravagance which 
 belonged to this period, exhibiting power, indeed, but not the power of real 
 art. These extravagances are well described by the author of ' The Third Blast 
 of Retreat from Plays and Theatres ; ' although his notion that an effort of ima- 
 gination, and a lie, are the same thing is very characteristic : — " The writers of 
 our time are so led away with vain glory that their only endeavour is to plea- 
 sure the humour of men, and rather with vanity to content their minds than 
 to profit them with good ensample. The notablest liar is become the best poet ; 
 he that can make the most notorious lie, and disguise falsehood in such sort that 
 lie may pass unperceived, is held the best writer. For the strangest comedy 
 brings greatest delectation and pleasure. Our nation is led away with vanity, 
 which the author perceiving, frames himself with novelties and strange trifles 
 to content the vain humours of his rude auditors, feigning countries never heard 
 of, monsters and prodigious creatures that are not : as of the Arimaspie, of the 
 Grips, the Pigmies, the Cranes, and other such notorious lies." Sidney, writing 
 of the same period of the drama, speaks of the apparition of " a hideous mon- 
 ster with fire and smoke. "f And Gosson, having direct reference to some 
 romantic dramas formed upon romances and legendary tales, as ' Common Con- 
 ditions ' was, says, " Sometimes you shall see nothing but the adventures of an 
 amorous knight, passing from country to country for the love of his lady, en- 
 countering many a terrible monster made of brown paper ; and at his return is 
 so wonderfully changed, that he cannot be known but by some posy in his 
 
 * A leaf or two is lost of the original copy, but enough remains to let us see how the plot will 
 end. We learn that Noinides repents of his rejection of Sabia. 
 f ' Defence of Poesy.' 
 
 in
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 tablet, or by a broken ring, or a handkerchief, or a piece of a cockle- shell."* 
 When the true masters of the romantic drama arose, they found the people pre- 
 pared for the transformation of the ridiculous into the poetical. 
 
 If there was amongst that audience at Stratford, in 1580, witnessing the 
 performance of ' Common Conditions,' one in whom the poetical feeling was 
 rapidly developing, and whose taste had been formed upon better models than 
 anything which the new drama could offer to him — such a one perhaps was 
 there in the person of William Shakspere — he would perceive how imper- 
 fectly this comedy attained the end of giving delight to a body of persons 
 assembled together with an aptitude for delight. And yet they were pleased 
 and satisfied. There was in this comedy bustle and change of scene ; some- 
 thing to move the feelings in the separation of lovers and their re-union ; 
 laughter excited by grotesqueness which stood in the place of wit and humour ; 
 music and song; and, more than all, lofty words and rhymed cadences which 
 sounded like poetry. But to that one critical listener the total absence of the 
 real dramatic spirit would be most perplexing. At the moment when he him- 
 self would be fancying what the characters upon the scene were about to do, — 
 how their discourse, like that of real life, would have reference to the imme- 
 diate business of the action in which they were engaged, and explain their 
 own feelings, passions, peculiarities, — the writer would present, through the 
 mouth of some one of these characters, a description of what some one else was 
 doing or had done ; and thus, though the poem was a dialogue, it was not to 
 his sense a drama ; it did not realize the principle of personation which his 
 mind was singularly formed to understand and cultivate. The structure of 
 the versification, too, would appear to him altogether unfit to represent the 
 thoughts and emotions of human beings engaged in working out a natural train 
 of adventures. Some elevation of style would be required to distinguish the 
 language from that of ordinary life, without being altogether opposed to that 
 language ; something that would convey the idea of poetical art, whilst it 
 was sufficiently real not to make the art too visible. He had diligently read. 
 'The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex;' and the little volume printed in 1571, 
 containing that play " as the same was showed on the stage before the Queen's 
 Majesty, about nine year past, by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple," was a 
 precious volume to him ; for it gave to him the most complete specimen of that 
 species of verse which appeared fitted for the purposes of the higher drama. 
 The speeches were indeed long, after the model of the stately harangues 
 which he had read in his ' Livy ' and ' Sallust ; ' but they were forcible and im- 
 pressive ; and he had often upon his lips those lines on the causes and miserie? 
 of civil war of which our history had furnished such fearful examples : — 
 
 " And thou, Britain ! whilom in renown, 
 Whilom in wealth and fame, shalt thus be torn, 
 Dismember'd thus, and thus be rent in twain, 
 Thus wasted and defac'd, spoil'd and destroy'd : 
 These be the fruits your civil wars will bring. 
 
 * ' riays Confuted.' 
 
 133
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEEE : 
 
 Hereto it comes, when kings will not consent 
 
 To grave advice, but follow wilful will. 
 
 This is the end, when in fond princes' hearts 
 
 Flattery prevails, and sage rede hath no place. 
 
 These are the plagues, when murder is the mean 
 
 To make new heirs unto the royal crown. 
 
 Thus wreak the gods, when that the mother's wrath 
 
 Naught but the blood of her own child may 'snago 
 
 These mischiefs spring when rebels will arise, 
 
 To work revenge, and judge their prince's fact. 
 
 This, this ensues, when noble men do fail 
 
 In loyal truth, and subjects will be kings. 
 
 And this doth grow, when, lo ! unto the prince, 
 
 Whom death or sudden hap of life bereaves, 
 
 No certain heir remains ; such certain heir 
 
 As not all only is the rightful heir, 
 
 But to the realm is so made known to be, 
 
 And truth thereby vested in subjects' hearts." 
 
 Even this versification he would think might be improved. The entire play 
 of ' Ferrex and Porrex,' was to him monotonous and uninteresting ; it seemed 
 as if the dramatic form oppressed the undoubted genius of one of the authors 
 of that play. How inferior were the finest lines which Sackville wrote in this 
 play, correct and perspicuous as they were, compared with some of the noble 
 bursts in the Induction to 'A Mirror for Magistrates'! Surely the author of 
 the sublime impersonation of War could have written a tragedy that would 
 have filled the heart with terror, if not with pity ! — 
 
 " Lastly stood War in glittering arms yclad, 
 With visage grim, stern looks, and blackly hued ; 
 In his right hand a naked sword he had 
 That to the hilts was all with blood imbrued ; 
 And in his left (that kings and kingdoms rued) 
 Famine and Fire he held, and therewithal 
 He razed towns, and threw down towers and all." 
 
 Still, he wondered that the example which Sackville had given of dramatic 
 blank verse had not been followed by the writers of plays for the common 
 theatres. He saw, however, that a change was taking place ; for the First Part 
 of ' Promos and Cassandra,' of which he had recently obtained a copy, was 
 wholly in rhyme ; while in the Second Part, Master George Whetstone had 
 freely introduced blank verse. In the little book which Stephen Gosson had 
 just written against plays, — his second book in answer to Thomas Lodge,— 
 which had been lent him to read by a zealous minister of the church, who 
 disapproved of such vanities, he found an evidence that the multitude most 
 delighted in rhyme : " The poets send their verses to the stage, upon such feet 
 as continually are rolled up in rhyme at the fingers' ends, which is plausible to 
 the barbarous and carrieth a sting into the ears of the common peop'e."* And 
 yet, from another passage of the same writer, he might collect that even the 
 refined and learned were delighted with the poetical structure of the common 
 
 * ' Plays Confuted, in Five Actions.' 
 134
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 dramas: "So subtle is the devil, that under the colour of recreation in Lon- 
 don, and of exercise of learning in the universities, by seeing of plays, he 
 maketh us to join with the Gentiles in their corruption. Because the sweet 
 numbers of poetry, flowing in verse, do wonderfully tickle the hearers' ears, 
 the devil hath tied this to most of our plays, that whatsoever he would have 
 stick fast to our souls might slip down in sugar by this enticement, for that 
 which delighteth never troubleth our swallow. Thus, when any matter of love 
 is interlarded, though the thing itself be able to allure us, yet it is so set out 
 with sweetness of words, fitness of epithets, with metaphors, allegories, hyper- 
 boles, amphibologies, similitude ; with phrases so picked, so pure, so proper ; 
 with action so smooth, so lively, so wanton ; that the poison, creeping on se- 
 cretly without grief, chokes us at last, and hurleth us down in a dead sleep." 
 It was difficult to arrive at an exact knowledge of the truth from the descrip- 
 tion of one who wrote under such strong excitement as Master Stephen Gosson. 
 
 The controversy upon the lawfulness of stage-plays was a remarkable feature 
 of the period which we are now describing ; and, as pamphlets were to that 
 age what newspapers are to ours, there can be little doubt that even in the 
 small literary society of Stratford the tracts upon this subject might be well 
 known. The dispute about the Theatre was a contest between the holders of 
 opposite opinions in religion. The Puritans, who even at that time were 
 strong in their zeal if not in their numbers, made the Theatre the especial 
 object of their indignation, for its unquestionable abuses allowed them so to 
 frame their invectives that they might tell with double force against every 
 description of public amusement, against poetry in general, against music, 
 against dancing, associated as they were with the excesses of an ill-regulated 
 stage. A Treatise of John Northbrooke, licensed for the press in 1577, is 
 directed against " dicing, dancing, vain plays, or interludes." Gosson, who had 
 been a student of Christchurch, Oxford, had himself written two or three plays 
 previous to his publication, in 1579, of 'The School of Abuse, containing a 
 Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such-like Cater- 
 pillars of a Commonwealth.' This book, written with considerable ostentation 
 of learning, and indeed with no common vigour and occasional eloquence, 
 defeats its own purposes by too large an aim. Poets, whatever be the character 
 of their poetry, are the objects of Gosson's new-born hostility : — " Tiberias the 
 Emperor saw somewhat when he judged Scaurus to death for writing a tragedy ; 
 Augustus when he banished Ovid ; and Nero when he charged Lucan to put 
 up his pipes, to stay his pen, and write no more." Music comes in for the 
 same denunciation, upon the authority of Pythagoras, who " condemns them 
 for fools that judge music by sound and ear." The three abuses of the time 
 are held to be inseparable : — " As poetry and piping are cousin-germans, so 
 piping and playing are of great affinity, and all three chained in links of 
 abuse." It is not to be thought that declamation like this would produce any 
 great effect in turning a poetical mind from poetry, or that even Master 
 Gosson'3 contrast of the "manners of England in old time" and "New England" 
 would go far to move a patriotic indignation against modern refinements. We 
 have, on one hand, Dion's description how Englishmen " went naked and were 
 
 135
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSl'ERE : 
 
 good soldiers ; they fed upon roots and barks of trees ; they would stand up 
 to the chin many days in marshes without victuals;" and, on the other hand, 
 " but the exercise that is now among us is banqueting, playing, piping, and 
 dancing, and all such delights as may win us to pleasure, or rock us in sleep. 
 Quantum mutatus ah illo!" If the young Shakspere had his ambition turned 
 towards dramatic poetry when he was sixteen, that ambition was not likely to 
 be damped by Gosson's general declamation ; and in truth in this his first 
 tract the worthy man has a sneaking kindness for the theatre which he can 
 with difficulty suppress: — "As some of the players are far from abuse, so 
 some of their plays are without rebuke, which are easily remembered, as 
 quickly reckoned. The two prose books played at the Bell Savage, where you 
 shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter 
 placed in vain. ' The Jew,' and ' Ptolemy,' shown at the Bull ; the one repre- 
 senting the greediness of worldly choosers, and bloody minds of usurers ; the 
 other very lively describing how seditious estates with their own devices, 
 false friends with their own swords, and rebellious commons in their own 
 snares are overthrown ; neither with amorous gestures wounding the eye, nor 
 with slovenly talk hurting the ears of the chaste hearers. 'The Blacksmith's 
 Daughter,' and ' Catiline's Conspiracies,' usually brought in at the Theatre : 
 the first containing the treachery of Turks, the honourable bounty of a noble 
 mind, the shining of virtue in distress. The last, because it is known to be a 
 pig of mine own sow, I will speak the less of it ; only giving you to understand 
 that the whole mark which I shot at in that work was to show the reward of 
 traitors in Catiline, and the necessary government of learned men in the per- 
 son of Cicero, which foresees every danger that is likely to happen, and fore- 
 stalls it continually ere it take effect." 
 
 The praise of the "two prose books at the Bell Savage," that contained 
 " never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in 
 vain," is quite sufficient to show us that these prose books exhibited neither 
 character nor passion. The 'Ptolemy' and the ' Catiline' there can be no doubt 
 were composed of a succession of tedious monologues, having nothing of the 
 principle of dramatic art in them, although in their outward form they appeared 
 to be dramas. Gosson says, " These plays are good plays and sweet plays, and 
 of all plays the best plays, and most to be liked, worthy to be sung of the Muses, 
 or se L out with the cunning of Roscius himself; yet are they not fit for every 
 mans diet, neither ought they commonly to he shown." It is clear that these 
 good plays and sweet plays had not in themselves any of the elements of popu- 
 larity; therefore they were utterly barren of real poetry. The highest poetry 
 is essentially the popular poetry : it is universal in its range, it is unlimited in 
 its duration. The lowest poetry (if poetry it can be called) is conventional ; it 
 lives for a little while in narrow corners, the pet thing of fashion or of pedantry. 
 When Gosson wrote, the poetry of the English drama was not yet born; and 
 the people contented themselves with something else that was nearer poetry 
 than the plays which were " not fit for every man's diet." Gosson, in his 
 second tract which, provoked by the answer of Lodge to his ' School of Abuse/ 
 is written with much more virulence against plays especially, thus describes 
 130
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 what the people most delighted in : " As the devil hath brought in all that 
 Poetry can sing, so hath he sought out every strain that Music is able to pipe 
 and drawn all kinds of instruments into that compass, simple and mixed. Foi 
 the eye, beside the beauty of the houses and the stages, he sendeth in garish 
 apparel, masks, vaulting, tumbling, dancing of jigs, galiards, morisces, hobby- 
 horses, showing of juggling casts ; nothing forgot that might serve to set out 
 the matter with pomp, or ravish the beholders with variety of pleasure." Lodge, 
 in his reply to Gosson's ' School of Abuse,' had indirectly acknowledged the 
 want of moral purpose in the stage exhibitions ; but he contends that, as the 
 ancient satirists were reformers of manners, so might plays be properly directed 
 to the same end. " Surely we want not a Roscius, neither are there great 
 scarcity of Terence's profession : but yet our men dare not now-a-days presume 
 so much as the old poets might ; and therefore they apply their writings to the 
 people's vein; whereas, if in the beginning they had ruled, we should now-a- 
 days have found small spectacles of folly, but of truth You say 
 
 unless the thing be taken away the vice will continue ; nay, I say, if the style 
 were changed the practice would profit." To this argument, that the Theatre 
 might become a censor of manners, Gosson thus replies : " If the common people 
 which resort to theatres, being but an assembly of tailors, tinkers, cordwainers, 
 sailors, old men, young men, women, boys, girls, and such-like, be the judges of 
 faults there pointed out, the rebuking of manners in that place is neither law- 
 ful nor convenient, but to be held for a kind of libelling and defaming." * The 
 notion which appears to have possessed the minds of the writers against the 
 stage at this period is, that a fiction and a lie were the same.f Gosson says, 
 " The perfectest image is that which maketh the thing to seem neither greater 
 nor less than indeed it is ; but in plays, either the things are feigned that never 
 were, as Cupid and Psyche played at Paul's, and a great many comedies more 
 at the Blackfriars, and in every playhouse in London, which, for brevity sake, 
 I overskip ; or, if a true history be taken in hand, it is made like our shadows, 
 longest at the rising and fall of the sun ; shortest of all at high noon." 
 
 The notion evidently was, that nothing ought to be presented upon the stage 
 but what was an historical fact ; that all the points belonging to such a history 
 should be given ; and that no art should be used in setting it forth beyond that 
 necessary to give the audience, not to make them comprehend, all the facts. It 
 is quite clear that such a process will present us little • of the poetry or the 
 philosophy of history. The play-writers of 1580, weak masters as they were, 
 knew their art better than Gosson ; they made history attractive by changing 
 
 * 'Plays Confuted,' &c. The Shakspere Society reprinted in one volume 'The School of Abuse, 
 first published in 1579, and Heywood's ' Apology for Actors,' first published in 1612. These publica- 
 tions belong to different periods. The controversy of the first period was presented more completely 
 by Lodge's answer to Gosson, by Gosson's ' Plays Confuted ' in reply to Lodge, and by the Second 
 and Third ' Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theatres,' the author of which counted ' The School of 
 Abuse ' the First Blast. These tracts are exceedingly rare, and they open to us clearer notions of the 
 early stage than any other contemporary productions. 
 
 t See Note at the end of this chapter,
 
 WILLIAM SlIAKSPEIiE : 
 
 it into a melo-drama : — " The poets drive it (a true history) most commonly 
 unto such points as may best show the majesty of their pen in tragical speeches 
 or set the heroes agog with discourses of love, or paint a few antics to fit their 
 own humours with scoffs and taunts, or bring in a show to furnish the stage 
 when it is bare. When the matter of itself comes short of this, they follow the 
 practice of the cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull it out. So was 
 the history of ' Caesar and Pompey,' and the play of * The Fabii,' at the theatre 
 both amplified there where the drums might walk or the pen ruffle. When the 
 history swelled or ran too high for the number of the persons who should play 
 it, the poet with Proteus cut the same to his own measure : when it afforded no 
 pomp at all, he brought it to the rack to make it serve. Which invincibly 
 proveth on my side that plays are no images of truth." The author of 'The 
 Blast of Retreat,' who describes himself as formerly " a great affector of that 
 vain art of play-making," charges the authors of historical plays not only with 
 expanding and curtailing the action, so as to render them no images of truth, 
 but with changing the historical facts altogether : — " If they write of histories 
 that are known, as the life of Pompey, the martial affairs of Csesar, and other 
 worthies, they give them a new face, and turn them out like counterfeits to 
 show themselves on the stage." From the author of 'The Blast of Retreat' we 
 derive the most accurate account of those comedies of intrigue of which none 
 have come down to us from this early period of the drama. We might fancy 
 he was describing the productions of Mrs. Behn or Mrs. Centlivre, in sentences 
 that might appear to be quoted from Jeremy Collier's attacks upon the stage 
 more than a century later : — "Some, by taking pity upon the deceitful tears of 
 the stage-lovers, have been moved by their complaint to rue on their secre' 
 friends, whom they have thought to have tasted like torment : some, having 
 noted the ensamples how maidens restrained from the marriage of those whom 
 their friends have misliked, have there learned a policy to prevent their parents 
 by stealing them away : some, seeing by ensample of the stage-player one carried 
 with too much liking of another man's wife, having noted by what practice she 
 has been assailed and overtaken, have not failed to put the like in effect in 
 earnest that was afore shown in jest The device of carrying and re- 
 carrying letters by laundresses, practising with pedlars to transport their tokens 
 by colourable means to sell their merchandise, and other kind of policies to 
 beguile fathers of their children, husbands of their wifes, guardians £of their 
 wards, and masters of their servants, is it not aptly taught in ' The School of 
 Abuse'?"* Perhaps the worst abuse of the stage of this period was the licence 
 of the clown or fool — an abuse which the greatest and the most successful of 
 dramatic writers found it essential to denounce and put down. The author of 
 'The Blast of Retreat' has described this vividly: — "And all be [although] 
 these pastimes were not, as they are, to be condemned simply of their own nature, 
 yet because they are so abused they are abominable. For the Fool no sooner 
 showeth himself in his colours, to make men merry, but straightway lightly 
 there followeth some vanity, not only superfluous, but beastly and wicked. Yet 
 
 * The editor of the tract appends a note : — "lie meaneth plays, who are not unfitly so called." 
 138
 
 A. BIOGRAPIIY. 
 
 we, so carried away by his unseemly gesture and unreverenced scorning, that 
 we seem only to be delighted in him, and are not content to sport ourselves with 
 modest mirth, as the matter gives occasion, unless it be intermixed with knavery, 
 drunken merriments, crafty cunnings, undecent jugglings, clownish conceits, and 
 such other cursed mirth, as is both odious in the sight of God, and offensive to 
 honest ears." 
 
 In the controversial writers of the period immediately before us we find no 
 direct mention of those Histories, " borrowed out of our English chronicles, 
 wherein our forefathers' valiant acts that have been long buried in rusty brass 
 and worm-eaten books are revived, and they themselves raised from the grave 
 of oblivion and brought to plead their aged honours in open presence." This 
 is a description of the early chronicle histories of the stage, as given by Thomas 
 Nashe in 1592; and although we believe that in this description some of the 
 plays of Shakspere himself would necessarily be included, it can scarcely be 
 imagined that he was altogether the inventor of this most attractive as well as 
 most obvious species of drama. Whilst the writers for the stage previous to 
 L580 were reproducing every variety of ancient history and fable, it is not 
 likely that they would have entirely neglected the copious materials which the 
 history of their own country would present to them. Nashe in another passage 
 says, " What a glorious thing it is to have King Henry V. represented on the 
 stage leading the French King prisoner, and forcing both him and the Dauphin 
 to swear fealty ! " Something like this dramatic action is to be found in one of 
 these elder historical plays which have come down to us, * The Famous Vic- 
 tories of Henry V., containing the Honourable Battle of Agincourt.' The only 
 other English historical play that can be safely assigned to the dramatic period 
 before Shakspere is ' The True Tragedy of Richard III.'* It has been already 
 necessary for us to notice ' The Famous Victories ' somewhat fully in connexion 
 with Shakspere's plays of King Henry IV., and King Henry V., but the view 
 which we are here endeavouring to give of the state of the early stage would 
 be essentially incomplete, were we to pass over a class of dramas so important 
 in themselves, and so interesting in connexion with what we may believe to 
 have been the earliest productions of Shakspere's dramatic genius, as the English 
 Histories ; and of these ' The Famous Victories ' is an authentic and a very curious 
 example.! 
 
 There is a full audience collected in the Town Hall of Stratford, to witness 
 the new performance of the Earl of Darby's players. Slight preparation will 
 be necessary for the performance, although the history to be performed will be 
 a regal story; its scenes changing from the tavern to the palace, from England 
 to France; now exhibiting the wild Prince striking the representative of his 
 father on the seat of justice, and then after a little while the same Prince a 
 hero and a conqueror. The raised floor at the upper end of the Town Hall 
 will furnish ample room for all these displays. The painted board will lead 
 
 * See the Notices of Richard III. in the fourth volume of this edition. 
 
 t The play of ' The Famous Victories' was not printed till 1594 ; but there is no doubt that the 
 celebrated Tarleton, who died in 1588, played the clown in it; and it is reasonably assigned to 
 the period of which we arc writing. 
 
 139
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 the imagination of the audience from one country to another; and when the 
 honourable bathe of Agincourt is to be fought, "two armies fly in represented 
 with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it 
 for a pitched field?"* The curtain is removed, and without preparation we 
 encounter the Prince in the midst of his profligacy. Ned and Tom are his 
 companions ; and when the Prince says, " Think you not that it was a villainous 
 part of me to rob my father's receivers?" Ned very charitably answers, "Why 
 no, my lord, it was but a trick of youth." Sir John Oldcastle, who passes by 
 the familiar name of Jockey, joins this pleasant company, and he informs the 
 Prince that the town of Deptfoi'i has risen with hue and cry after the Prince's 
 man who has robbed a poor carrier. The accomplished Prince then meets 
 with the receivers whom he lias robbed; and, after bestowing upon them the 
 names of villains and rascals, ho drives them off with a threat that if they say 
 a word about the robbery he wiil have them hanged. With their booty, then, 
 will they go to the tavern in Eastcheap, upon the invitation of the Prince : — 
 " We are all fellows, I tell you, sirs ; an the king my father were dead, we 
 would be all kings." The scene is now London, with John Cobbler, Robin 
 Pewterer, and Lawrence Costermonger keeping watch and ward in the accus- 
 omed style of going to sleep. There is short rest for them ; for Derrick, the 
 carrier who has been robbed by the Prince's servant, is come to London to seek 
 his goods. But why does the Stratford audience begin to roll about in a 
 phrenzy of laughter, which waits not for laughter-moving words, but is set on 
 by a look or a gesture, more irresistible than words ? It is Tarleton, the 
 famous Clown, who plays the Kentish carrier; and he is in high humour to- 
 night. It matters little what the author of the play has written down for 
 him, for his "wondrous plentiful pleasant extemporal wit" will do much 
 better for the amusement of his audience than the dull dialogue of the prompt- 
 books. In the scene before us he has to catch the thief, and to take him before 
 the Lord Chief Justice; and when the Court is set in order, and the Chief 
 Justice cries, " Gaoler, bring the prisoner to the bar," Derrick speaks accord 
 ing to the book, — " Hear you, my lord, I pray you bring the bar to the 
 prisoner ; " but what he adds, having this hint for a clown's licence, soon renders 
 the Chief Justice a very insignificant personage. The real wit of Tarleton 
 probably did much to render the dullness of the early stage endurable by 
 persons of any refinement. Henry Chettle, in his curious production ' Kind- 
 Hartes Dreame,' written about four years after Tarleton's death, thus describes 
 his appearance in a vision : — " The next, by his suit of russet, his buttoned 
 cap, his tabor, his standing on the toe, and other tricks, I knew to be either 
 the body or resemblance of Tarleton, who living, for his pleasant conceits was 
 of all men liked, and dying, for mirth left not his fellow."! The Piince 
 
 * Sidney. ' Defence of Poesy. 
 
 ■(- From the 'Palladia Tamia' of Francis Meres we learn that Dr. John Case, the commentator 
 upon Aristotlo, did not think Tarleton beneath his notice : — " A3 Antipater Sidonius was famous 
 for extemporal verse in Greek, and Ovid for his ' Quicquid conabar dicere versus erat,' so was our 
 Tarleton, of whom Dr. Case, that learned physician, thus speaketh in the seventh book and seven- 
 teenth chapter of his 'Politics :' — ' Aristoteles suura Theodnretum laudavit quendam peritum tragoe- 
 liO
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 enters and demands the release of his servant, which the Chief Justice refuses. 
 The scene which ensues when the Prince strikes the Chief Justice is a remark- 
 able example of the poetical poverty of the early stage. In the representation 
 the action would of course be exciting, but the dialogue which accompanies it 
 is beyond comparison bald and meaningless. The audience was, however, 
 compensated by Tarleton's iteration of the scene : — " Faith, John, I'll tell thee 
 what ; thou shalt be my lord chief justice, and thou shalt sit in the chair ; 
 and I'll be the young prince, and hit thee a box on the ear ; and then thou 
 shalt say, To teach you what prerogatives mean, I commit you to the Fleet." 
 The Prince is next presented really in prison, where he is visited by Sir John 
 Oldcastle. The Prince, in his dialogue with Jockey, Ned, and Tom, again 
 exhibits himself as the basest and most vulgar of ruffians ; but, hearing his 
 father is sick, he goes to Court, and the bully, in the twinkling of an eye, 
 becomes a saintly hypocrite : — " Pardon me, sweet father, pardon me ; good 
 my lord of Exeter, speak for me : pardon me, pardon, good father : not a 
 word : ah, he will not speak one word : ah, Harry, now thrice unhappy Harry. 
 But what shall I do? I will go take me into some solitary place, and there 
 lament my sinful life, and, when I have done, I will lay me down and die." 
 The scene where the Prince removes the crown, poor as it is in poetical con- 
 ception, touches the Stratford audience ; and there is one there who fancies he 
 could extemporize that scene into something more touching. Henry IV. dies ; 
 Henry V. is crowned; the evil companions are cast off; the Chief Justice is 
 forgiven ; and the expedition to France is resolved upon. To trace the course 
 of the war would be too much for the patience of our readers. The clashing of 
 the four swords and bucklers might have rendered its stage representation 
 endurable, and Derrick has become a soldier. This is the wit set down for 
 him : — 
 
 "Derrick. I was four or five times slain. 
 
 John. Four or five times slain ! Why, how couldst thou have been 
 alive now? 
 
 Derrick. John, never say so, for I was called the bloody soldier 
 amongst them all. 
 
 John. Why, what didst thou? 
 
 Derrick. Why, I will tell thee, John : every day when I went into the 
 field, I would take a straw, and thrust it into my nose, and make my 
 nose bleed ; and then I would go into the field ; and when the captain saw 
 me, he would say, Peace, ah bloody soldier; and bid me stand aside, 
 whereof I was glad." 
 
 The scene which Nashe represented as a glorious thing does not violate the his- 
 torical fact in making Henry lead the French king prisoner; but there is a 
 swearing of fealty in which the Dauphin participates : — 
 
 "Henry V. Well, my good brother of France, there is one thing I 
 must needs desire. 
 
 French King. What is that, my good brother of England ? 
 Henry V. That all your nobles must be sworn to be true to me. 
 
 diarum actorem ; Cicero suum Roscium ; nos Angli Tarletonum, in cujus voce et vultu onn cs jocosi 
 affectus, in cujus cerebroso capite lepidso facetke habitant.' " 
 
 141
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE : 
 
 French King. Whereas they have not stuck with greater matters, I 
 know they will not stick with such a trifle : begin you with my lord 
 duke of Burgundy. 
 
 Henry V. Come, my lord of Burgundy, take your oath upon my 
 sword. 
 
 Burgundy. I, Philip duke of Burgundy, swear to Henry king of 
 England to be true to him, and to become his league-man ; and that, if 
 I, Philip, hear of any foreign power coming to invade the said Henry, 
 or Mb heirs, then I, the said Philip, to send him word, and aid him 
 with all the pcwer I can make ; and thereunto I take my oath. 
 
 [lie MstsetA the sword. 
 
 Henry V. Come, prince Doiphin, you must swear too. 
 
 [He Tcisscth the sword." 
 
 It was about the period which we are now touching upon that Sidney wrote 
 his Defence of Poesy.' The drama was then as he has described it, "much 
 used in England, and none can be more pitifully abused ; which, like an unman- 
 nerly daughter showing a bad education, causeth her mother Poesy's honour to 
 be called in question." The early framers of the drama seem scarcely to have 
 considered that she was the daughter of Poesy. A desire for dramatic exhibi- 
 tions — not a new desire, but taking a new direction — had forcibly seized upon 
 the English people. The demand was to be supplied as it best might be, by 
 the players who were to profit by it. They were, as they always will be, the 
 best judges of what would please an audience ; and it was to be expected that, 
 having within themselves the power of constructing the rude plot of any popular 
 story, so as to present rapid movement, and what in the language of the stage is 
 called business, the beauty or even propriety of the dialogue would be a second- 
 ary consideration, and indeed would be pretty much left to the extemporal 
 invention of the actor. That the wit of the clown was almost entirely of this 
 nature we have the most distinct evidence. Sidney, with all his fine taste, was 
 a stickler for "place and time, the two necessary companions of all corporal 
 actions. For," he says, "where the stage should always represent one place, 
 and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle's precept 
 and common reason, but one day, there is both many days and many places 
 inartificially imagined." As the players were the rude builders of our early 
 drama, and as that drama was founded upon the ruder Mysteries and Moral 
 Plays, in which all propriety was disregarded, so that the senses could be grati- 
 fied, they naturally rejected the unities of time and place, the observance of 
 which would have deprived their plays of their chief attraction — rapid change 
 and abundant incident. And fortunate was it that they did so ; for they thus 
 went on strengthening and widening the foundations of our national drama, the 
 truth and freedom of which could not exist under a law which is not the law of 
 nature. Had Sidney lived five or six years longer, had he seen or read Romeo 
 and Juliet, or A Midsummer-Night's Dream, he would probably Hve ceased 
 to regard the drama as the unmannerly daughter of Poesy ; he would in all 
 likelihood have thought that something was gained even through the " defec- 
 tuous circumstances " that spurn the bounds of time and place, and compel the 
 imagination to be still or to travel at its bidding, to be utterly regardless of the 
 142
 
 A. BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 halt or the march of events, so that one dominant idea possess the soui and sway 
 all its faculties. But this was only to be effected when a play was to become a 
 great work of art ; when all the conditions of its excellence should be. fully 
 comprehended ; when it should unite the two main conditions of the highest 
 excellence — that of subjecting the popular mind to its power, through the skill 
 which only the most refined understanding can altogether appreciate. When 
 the young man of Stratford, who, as we have conceived, knew the drama of his 
 time through the representations of itinerant players, heard the rude dialogue 
 of 'The Famous Victories' not altogether without delight, and laughed most 
 heartily at the extemporal pleasantness of the witty clown, a vivid though an 
 imperfect notion of the excellence that might be attained by working up such 
 common materials upon a principle of art must assuredly have been developed 
 in his mind. If Sidney's noble defence of his beloved Poesy had then been pub- 
 lished, he would, we think, have found in it a reflection of his own opinions as 
 to the "bad education" of the drama. "All their plays be neither right 
 tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter 
 so carrieth, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in 
 majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion: so. as neither the 
 admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel 
 tragi-comedy obtained." The objection here is scarcely so much to the mingling 
 kings and clowns, when "the matter so carrieth," as to the thrusting in the 
 clown by head and shoulders. Upon a right principle of art the familiar and 
 the heroic might be advantageously blended. Here, in this play of ' The 
 Famous Victories,' the Prince was not only prosaic, but altogether brutalized, 
 so that the transition from the ruffian to the hero was distasteful and unnatural. 
 But surround the same Prince with companions whose profligacy was in some 
 sort balanced and counteracted by their intellectual energy, their wit, their 
 genial mirthfulness ; make the Prince a gentleman in the midst of his most 
 wanton levity ; and the transition to the hero is not merely probable, it is grace- 
 ful in itself, it satisfies expectation. But the young poet is yet without models 
 and he will remain so. He has to work out his own theory of art ; but that 
 theory must be gradually and experimentally formed. He has the love of 
 country living in his soul as a presiding principle. There are in his country's 
 annals many stories such as this of Henry V. that might be brought upon the 
 stage to raise "heroes from the grave of oblivion," for glorious example tc 
 "these degenerate days." But in those annals are also to be found fit subjects 
 for " the high and excellent tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds, and 
 showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue ; that maketh kings 
 fear to be tyrants, and tyrants to manifest their tyrannical humours ; that, with 
 stirring the affections of admiration and commiseration, teacheth the uncer- 
 tainty of this world, and upon how weak foundations gilded roofs are builded." * 
 As the young poet left the Town Hall of Stratford he would forget Tarleton 
 and his tricks ; he would think that an English historical play was yet to be 
 written ; perhaps, as the ambitious thought crossed his mind to undertake such 
 a task, the noble lines of Sackville would be present to his memory : — 
 
 * Sidney. 'Defence of Poesy.' 
 
 143
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 g And sorrowing I to see the summer flowers, 
 The lively green, the lusty leas forlorn, 
 The sturdy trees so shatter' d with the showera, 
 The fields so fade that flourish'd so beforn ; 
 It taught me well all earthly things be bom 
 To die the death, for nought long time may last ; 
 The summer's beauty yields to winter's blast. 
 
 Then looking upward to the heaven's learns, 
 With night's stars thick -powdered everywhere, 
 Which erst so glisteu'd with the golden streams 
 That cheerful Phoebus spread down from his sphere, 
 Beholding dark oppressing day so near : 
 The sudden sight reduced to my mind 
 The sundry changes that in earth we find. 
 
 That musing on this worldly wealth in thought, 
 
 Which comes and goes more faster than we see 
 
 The flickering flame that with the fire is wrought, 
 
 My busy mind presented unto me 
 
 Such fall of peers as in this realm had be : 
 
 That oft I wish'd some would their woes descrive, 
 
 To warn the rest whom fortune left alive."
 
 A BI0G11APHY. 
 
 NOTE ON SIDNEY'S ' DEFENCE OF POESY.' 
 
 It has scarcely, we think, been noticed that the justly-celebrated work of Sir Philip Sidney forms 
 an important part of the controversy, not only against the Stage, but against Poetry and Music, that 
 appears to have commenced in England a little previous to 1580. Gosson, as we have seen, attacks 
 the Stage, not only for its especial abuses, but because it partakes of the general infamy of Poetry. 
 According to this declaimer, it is "the whole practice of poets, either with fables to show their 
 abuses, or with plain terms to unfold their mischief, discover their shame, discredit themselves, 
 and disperse their poison throughout the world." Gosson dedicated his 'School of Abuse' to 
 Sidney; and Spenser, in one of his letters to Gabriel Harvey, shows how Sidney received the 
 compliment : — " New books I hear of none ; but only of one that, writing a certain book called 
 * The School of Abuse,' and dedicating it to Master Sidney, was for his labour scorned ; if, at 
 least, it be in the goodness of that nature to scom. Such folly is it not to regard aforehand 
 the inclination and quality of him to whom we dedicate our books." We have no doubt that 
 the 'Defence of Poesy,' or, as it was first called, 'An Apology for Poetry,' was intended 
 as a reply to the dedicator. There is every reason to believe that it was written in 1581. 
 Sidney can scarcely avoid pointing at Gosson when he speaks of the " Poet-haters," as of " people 
 who seek a praise by dispraising others," that they " do prodigally spend a great many wandering 
 words in quips and scoffs, carping and taunting at each thing whicb, by stirring the spleen, may 
 stay the brain from a thorough beholding the worthiness of the subject." AVe have seen how the 
 early fanatical writers against the stage held that a Poet and a Liar were synonymous. To this 
 ignorant invective, calculated for the lowest understandings, Sidney gives a brief and direct answer : 
 — " That they should be the principal liars, I answer paradoxically, but truly, I think truly, that oi 
 all writers under the sun, the poet is the least liar, and though he would, as a poet, can scarcely be 
 a liar. The astronomer, with his cousin the geometrician, can hardly escape when they take iipon 
 them to measure the height of the stars. How often, think you, do the physicians lie, when they 
 aver things good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great number of souls drowned in 
 a potion before they come to his ferry ? And no less of the rest which take upon them to affirm : 
 Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth ; for, as I take it, to lie is to affirm 
 that to be true which is false : So as the other artists, and especially the historian, affirming many 
 things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from many lies : But the poet, as 
 I said before, never affirmeth, the poet never maketh any circles about your imagination, to conjure 
 you to believe for true what he write th : He citeth not authorities of other histories, but even for 
 his entry calleth the sweet Muses to aspire unto him a good invention: In troth, not labouring to 
 to tell you what is or is not, but what should or should not be. And therefore, though he recount 
 things not true, yet, because he telleth them not for true, he lieth not, unless wo will say that 
 Nathan lied in his speech, before alleged, to David; which as a wicked man durst scarce say. so 
 think I none so simple would say that /Esop lied in the tales of his beasts ; for who thinketh that 
 jEsop wrote it for actually true were well worthy to have his name chronicled among the beasts he 
 writeth of. What child is there that, coming to play and seeing ' Thebes ' written in great letters 
 upon an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes ? If then a man can arrive to the child's age, to 
 know that the poet's persons and doings are but pictures what should be, and not stories what have 
 been, they will never give the lie to things not affirmatively, but allegorically and figuratively, 
 written ; and therefore, as in history, looking for truth, they may go away full fraught with false 
 hood, so in poesy, looking but for fiction, they shall use the narration but as an imaginative ground- 
 plat of a profitable invention." 
 
 Lifa. 
 
 145
 
 , I I ■ - 
 
 [Guy's Cliff in the 17th Century.] 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 LIVING IN THE PAST. 
 
 The earliest, and the most permanent, of poetical associations are those which 
 are impressed upon the mind by localities which have a deep historical interest. 
 It would be difficult to find a district possessing more striking remains of a past 
 time than the neighbourhood in which William Shakspere spent his youth. 
 The poetical feeling which the battle-fields, and castles, and monastic ruins of 
 mid England would excite in him, may be reasonably considered to have derived 
 an intensity through the real history of these celebrated spots being vague, and 
 for the most part traditional. The age of local historians had not yet arrived. 
 The monuments of the past were indeed themselves much more fresh and per- 
 fect than in the subsequent days, when every tomb inscription was copied, and 
 every mouldering document set forth. But in the year 1580, if William Shak- 
 spere desired to know, or example, with some precision, the history which 
 belonged to those noble towers of Warwick upon which he had often gazed 
 H6
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 with a delight that scarcely required to be based upon knowledge, he would 
 look in vain for any guide to his inquiries. Some old people might tell kim 
 that they remembered their fathers to have spoken of one John Rous, the son 
 of Geffrey Rous of Warwick, who, having diligently studied at Oxford, and 
 obtained a reputation for uncommon learning, rejected all ambitious thoughts, 
 shut himself up with his books in the solitude of Guy's Cliff, and was engaged 
 to the last in writing the Chronicles of his country, and especially the history 
 of his native County and its famous Earls : and there, in the quiet of that 
 pleasant place, performing his daily offices of devotion as a chantry priest in the 
 little chapel, did John Rous live a life of happy industry till 1491. But the 
 world in general derived little advantage from his labours. Another came 
 after him, commissioned by royal authority to search into all the archives of the 
 kingdom, and to rescue from damp and dust all ancient manuscripts, civil and 
 ecclesiastical. The commission of Leland was well performed ; but his ' Itine- 
 rary 'was also to be of Tittle use to his own generation. William Shakspere 
 knew not what Leland had written about Warwickshire ; how the enthusiastic 
 and half-poetical antiquary had described, in elegant Latinity, the beauties of 
 woodland and river ; and had even given the characteristics of such a place as 
 Guy's Cliff in a few happy words, that would still be an accurate description of 
 its natural features, even after the lapse of three centuries. Caves hewn in the 
 living rock, a thick overshadowing wood, sparkling springs, flowery meadows- 
 mossy grottos, the river rolling over the stones with a gentle noise, solitude and 
 the quiet most friendly to the Muses, — these are the enduring features of the place 
 
 
 [Chapel at Guy's Cliff.)
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 as painted by the fine old topographer.* But his manuscripts were as sealed to 
 the young Shakspere as those of John Rous. Yet if the future Poet sustained 
 some disadvantage by living before the days of antiquarian minuteness, he could 
 still dwell in the past, and people it with the beings of his own imagination. 
 The Chroniclers who had as yet attempted to collect and systematize the records 
 of their country did not aim at any very great exactness either of time or place. 
 When they dealt with a remote antiquity they were as fabulous as the poets 
 themselves ; and it was easy to see that they most assumed the appearance of 
 exactness when they wrote of times which have left not a single monumental 
 record. Very diffuse were they when they had to talk of the days of Brute. 
 Intimately could they decipher the private history of Albanact and Humber. 
 The fatal passion of Locrine for El stride was more familiar to them than that 
 of Henry for Rosamond Clifford, or Edward for Elizabeth Woodville. Of the 
 cities and the gates of King Lud they could present a most accurate descrip- 
 tion. Of King Leir very exact was their narration : how he, the son of Baldud, 
 " was made ruler over the Britons the year of the world 4338 ; was noble of 
 conditions, and guided his land and subjects in great wealth." Minutely thus 
 does Fabyan, a chronicler whose volume was open to William Shakspere's boy- 
 hood, describe how the King, " fallen into impotent age," believed in the pro- 
 fessions of his two elder daughters, and divided with them his kingdom, leaving 
 his younger daughter, who really loved him, to be married without dower to 
 the King of France ; and then how his unkind daughters and their husbands 
 "bereft him the governance of the land," and he fled to Gallia, " for to be com- 
 forted of his daughter Cordeilla, whereof she having knowledge, of natural 
 kindness comforted him." This in some sort was a story of William Shak- 
 spere's locality ; for, according to the Chronicle. Leir " made the town of Caer- 
 leir, now called Leiceter or Leicester;" and alter he was "restored again to his 
 lordship he died, and was buried at his town of Caerleir." The local associa- 
 tion may have helped to fix the story in that mind, which in its maturity was 
 to perceive its wondrous poetical capabilities. The early legends of the chroni- 
 clers are not to be despised, even in an age which in many historical things 
 iustly requires evidence ; for they were compiled in good faith from the his- 
 toiies which had been compiled before them by the monkish writers, who 
 1 landed down from generation to generation a narrative which hung together 
 with singular consistency. They were compiled, too, by the later chroniclers, 
 with a zealous patriotism. Fabyan, in his Prologue, exclaims, with a poetical 
 spirit which is more commendable even than the poetical form which he adopts, — 
 
 " Not for any pomp, nor yet for groat raced, 
 
 This work have I taken on hand to compile, 
 But only because that I would spread 
 
 The famous honour of this fertile isle, 
 
 That hath continued, by many a long while, 
 In excellent honour, with many a royal guide, 
 Of whom the deeds have sprong to the world wide." 
 
 * "Antra in viro saxo, nemusculum ibidem opacum, fontes liquids) et gemmei; prata florida, 
 antra muscosa, rivi levis ct per saxa discursus ; necnon solitudo et quies Musis amicissima." — ■ 
 Iceland's MS. ' Itinerary,' a3 quoted by Dugdalc. 
 14?
 
 A BIOGEAI'IIY. 
 
 Lines such as these, homely though they are, were as seeds sown upon a goodly 
 soil, when they were read by William Shakspere. His patriotism was almost 
 instinct. 
 
 In the immediate neighbourhood of Stratford there are two remarkable 
 monuments of ancient civilization, — the great roads of the Ichnield-way and 
 the Foss-way. Upon these roads, which two centuries and a half ago would 
 present a singular contrast in the strength of their construction to the miry 
 lanes of a later period, would the young Shakspere often walk ; and he would 
 naturally regard these ways with reverence as well as curiosity, for his chro- 
 niclers would tell him that they were the work of the Britons before the inva- 
 sion of the Romans. Fabyan would tell him, in express words, that they were 
 the work of the Britons ; and Camden and Dugdale were not as yet to tell him 
 otherwise. Robert of Gloucester says — 
 
 " Faire weyes many on ther ben in Englondc ; 
 But four most of all ther ben I understonde, 
 That thurgli an old kynge were made ere this, 
 As men schal in this boke aftir here tell I wis. 
 Frain the South into the North takith Erminge-stretc. 
 Fram the East into the West goeth Ikeneld-strete. 
 Frani South-est to North-west, that is sum del grete 
 Fram Dover into Chestre goth Watlyng-strete. 
 The ferth of thise is most of alle that tilleth fram Tateneys. 
 Fram the South-west to North-est into Englondes ende 
 Fosse men callith thilke wey that by mony town doth wende. 
 Thise foure weyes on this londe kyng Belin the wise 
 Made and ordeined hem with gret fraunchise." 
 
 His notion, therefore, of the people of the days of Lud and Cymbeline would 
 be that they were a powerful and a refined people ; excelling in many of the 
 arts of life ; formidable in courage and military discipline ; enjoying free insti- 
 tutions. When the matured dramatist had to touch upon this period, he would 
 paint the Britons boldly refusing the Roman yoke, but yet partakers of the 
 Roman civilization. The English king who defies Augustus says — 
 
 " Thy Caesar knighted me ; my youth I spent 
 Much under him ; of him I gather' d honour ; 
 Which he to seek of me again, perforce, 
 Behoves me keep at utterance." * 
 
 This is an intelligent courage, and not the courage of a king of painted savages. 
 In the depths of the remarkable intrenchments which surround the hill of 
 Welcombe, hearing only the noise of the sheep-bell in the uplands, or the even- 
 ing chime from the distant church-tower, would William Shakspere think 
 much of the mysterious past. No one could tell him who made these intrench- 
 ments, or for what purpose they were made. Certainly they were produced by 
 the hand of man ; but were they for defence or for religious ceremonial ? Was 
 the lofty mound, itself probably artificial, which looked down upon them, a fort 
 
 * Cymbeline, Act in., Scene t 
 
 1*9
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 or a temple ? Man, who would know everything and explain everything, 
 assuredly knows little, when he cannot demand of the past an answer to such 
 inquiries. But does he know much more of things which are nearer to his 
 own days ? Is the annalist to be trusted when he undertakes not only to 
 describe the actions and to repeat the words, but to explain the thoughts and 
 the motives which prompted the deeds that to a certain extent fixed the destiny 
 of an age ? There was a truth, however, which was to be found amidst all the 
 mistakes and contradictions of the annalists — the great poetical truth, that the 
 devices of men are insufficient to establish any permanent command over events ; 
 that crime would be followed by retribution ; that evil passions would become 
 their own tormentors ; that injustice could not be successful to the end ; that, 
 although dimly seen and unwillingly acknowledged, the great presiding power 
 of the world could make evil work for good, and advance the general happiness 
 out of the particular misery. This was the mode, we believe, in which that 
 thoughtful youth read the Chronicles of his country, whether brief or elaborate. 
 Looking at them by the strong light of local association, there would be local 
 tradition at hand to enforce that universal belief in the justice of God's provi- 
 dence which is in itself alone one of the many proofs of that justice. It is this 
 religious aspect of human affairs which that young man cultivated when he 
 cherished the poetical aspect. His books have taught him to study history 
 through the medium of poetry. ' The Mirror for Magistrates ' is a truer book 
 for him than Fabyan's ' Chronicle.' He can understand the beauty and the 
 power of his beloved Froissart, who described with incomparable clearness the 
 events which he saw with his own eyes. To do this, as Froissart has done it, 
 requires a gift of imagination as well as of faithfulness ; of that imagination 
 which, grouping and concentrating things apparently discordant, produces the 
 highest faithfulness, because it sees and exhibits all the facts. But the prosaic 
 digest of what others had seen and written about, disproportionate in its estimate 
 of the importance of events, dwelling little upon the influences of individual 
 character, picturing everything in the same monotonous light, and of the same 
 height and breadth; this, which was called history, was to him a tedious fable. 
 He stands by the side of the tomb of King John at Worcester. There, with 
 little monumental pomp, lies the faithless King, poisoned, as he has read, by a 
 monk. The poetical aspect of that man's history lies within a narrow compass. 
 He was intriguing, treacherous, bloody, an oppressor of his people, a persecutor 
 of the unprotected. His life is one of contest and misery ; he loses his foreign 
 possessions ; his own land is invaded. But he stands up against foreign 
 domination, and that a priestly domination. According to the tradition, he 
 falls by private murder, as a consequence, not of his crimes, but of his resistance 
 to external oppression. The prosaic view of this man's history separates the 
 two things, his crimes and their retribution. The poetical view connects them. 
 Arthur is avenged when the poisoned king, hated and unlamented, finds a rest- 
 ing-place from his own passions and their consequences in the earth beneath the 
 paving-stones of the cathedral of Worcester. But there was a tear even for that 
 man's grave, when his last sufferings were shadowed out in the young poet's 
 mind : — 
 150
 
 [Tomb of King John, Worcester.] 
 
 " Poison' d, — ill fare ; — dead, forsook, cast off; 
 And none of you will bid the winter corne, 
 To thrust his icy fingers in my maw ; 
 Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course 
 Through my burn'd bosom ; nor entreat the north 
 To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips, 
 And comfort me with cold." * 
 
 When the dramatic power was working, as we have no doubt it was working 
 early, in the mind of William Shakspere, he would look at history to see how 
 events might be brought together, not in the exact order of time, but in the 
 more natural order of cause and effect. Events would be made prominent, not 
 according to their absolute political importance, but as they were the result of 
 high passions and fearful contests of opinion. The epic of history is a different 
 thing from the dramatic. In the epic the consequences of an event, perhaps the 
 remote consequences, may be more important than the event itself ; may be fore- 
 seen before the event comes ; may be fully delineated after the event has hap- 
 pened. In the drama the importance of an action must be understood in the 
 action itself ; the hero must be great in the instant time, and not in the possible 
 future. It is easy to understand, therefore, how the matured Shakspere 
 attempted not to work upon many of the local associations which must have 
 been vividly present to his youthful fancy. The great events connected with 
 certain localities were not capable of sustaining a dramatic development. There 
 
 * King John, Act v., Scene vu. 
 
 151
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEEB ■ 
 
 was no event, for example, more important in its consequences than the Battle 
 of Evesham. The battle-field must have been perfectly familiar to the young 
 Shakspere. About two miles and a half from Evesham is an elevated point, 
 neai the village of Twyford, where the Alcester road is crossed by another 
 track. The Avon is not more than a mile distant on either hand ; for, flowing 
 from Offenham to Evesham, a distance of about three miles, it encircles that 
 town, returning in a nearly parallel direction, about the same distance, to Charl- 
 bury. The great road, therefore, from Alcester to Evesham continues, after it 
 passes Twyford, through a narrow tongue of land bounded by the Avon, having 
 considerable variety of elevation. Immediately below Twyford is a hollow 
 now called Battlewell, crossing which the road ascends to the elevated platform 
 of Greenhill. Here, then, was the scene of that celebrated battle which put an end 
 to the terrible conflicts between the Crown and the Nobility, and for a season 
 left the land in peace under the sway of an energetic despotism. The circum- 
 stances which preceded that battle, as told in ' The Chronicle of Evesham ' (which 
 in William Shakspere's time would have been read and remembered by many 
 an old tenant of the Abbey), were singularly interesting. Simon Montfort, the 
 great Earl of Leicester, was waiting at Evesham the arrival of his son's army 
 from Kenilworth ; but Prince Edward had surprised that army, and taken 
 many of its leaders prisoners, and young Montfort durst not leave his strong- 
 hold. In that age rumour did not fly quite so quickly as in our days. The 
 Earl of Leicester was ignorant of the events that had happened at Kenilworth. 
 He had made forced marches from Hereford to Worcester, and thence to Eves- 
 ham. There were solemn masses in the Abbey Church on the 3rd of August, 
 1265, and the mighty Earl, who had won for himself the name of ' Sir Simon 
 the Righteous,' felt assured that his son was at hand, and that Heaven would 
 uphold his cause against a perjured Prince. On the morning of the 4th of 
 August the Earl of Leicester sent his barber Nicholas to the top of the Abbey 
 tower, to look for the succour that was coming over the hills from Kenilworth. 
 The barber came down with eager gladness, for he saw, a few miles off, the banner 
 of young Simon de Montfort in advance of a mighty host. And again the Earl 
 sent the barber to the top of the Abbey tower, and the man hastily descended 
 in fear and sorrow, for the banner of young de Montfort was no more to be seen, 
 but, coming nearer and nearer, were seen the standards of Prince Edward, and 
 of Mortimer, and of Gloucester. Then saw the Earl his imminent peril ; and 
 he said, according to one writer, " God have our souls all, our days are all done; " 
 or, according to another writer, "Our souls God have, for our bodies be theirs." 
 But Montfort was not a man to fly. Over the bridge of Evesham he might 
 have led his forces, so as to escape from the perilous position in which he was 
 shut up. He hastily marched northward, with King Henry his prisoner, at 
 two o'clock in the afternoon of that day. Before nightfall the waters of the 
 little valley were blood-red. Thousands were slain between those two hills; 
 thousands fled, but there was no escape but by the bridge of Evesham, and they 
 perished in the Avon. The old King, turned loose upon a war-horse amidst the 
 terrible conflict, was saved from death at the hands of the victors by crying 
 out, " I am Henry of Winchester." The massacre of Evesham, where a hun- 
 152
 
 
 
 [Bridge at Evesham.] 
 
 dred acd eighty barons and knights, in arms for what they call their liberties 
 were butchered without quarter, was a final measure of royal vengeance. It 
 was a great epic story. It had dramatic points, but it was not essentially 
 dramatic. If Shakspere had chosen the wars of the Barons, instead of the wars 
 of the Roses, for a vast dramatic theme, the fate of Simon de Montfort and his 
 gallant company might have been told so as never to have been forgotten. But 
 he had another tale of civil war to tell ; one more essentially dramatic in the 
 concentration of its events, the rapid changes in its fortunes, the marked cha- 
 racters of its leaders. On the battle-field of Evesham he would indeed medi- 
 tate upon " The ill success of treason, the fall of hasty climbers, the wretched 
 end of usurpers, the misery of civil dissension, and how just God is evermore 
 in punishing murder."* But these lessons were to be worked out more em- 
 phatically in other histories. Another Warwickshire poet would sing the great 
 Battle of Edward and Leicester : — 
 
 " In that black night before this sad and dismal day, 
 "Were apparitions strange, as dread Heaven would bewray 
 The horrors to ensue : most amazing sight ! 
 Two armies in the air discerned were to fight, 
 Which came so near to earth, that in the morn they found 
 The prints of horses' feet remaining on the ground ; 
 Which came but as a show, the time to entertain 
 Till th' angry armies join'd, to act the bloody scene. 
 Shrill shouts, and deadly cries, each way the air do fill, 
 And not a word was heard from either side, but kill ; 
 The father 'gainst the son, the brother 'gainst the brother, 
 With gleaves, swords, bills, and pikes, were niurtkering one mother. 
 
 jfe he 
 
 133
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE I 
 
 The full luxurious earth seems surfeited with blood, 
 Whilst in his uncle's gore th' unnatural nephew stood ; 
 Whilst with their charged staves the desperate horsemen meet, 
 They hear their kinsmen groan under their horses' feet. 
 Dead men, and weapons broke, do on the earth abound ; 
 The drums, bedash'd with brains, do give a dismal sound. 
 Great Le'ster there expir'd, with Henry his brave son, 
 When many a high exploit they in that day had done. 
 Scarce was there noble house of which those times could tell, 
 But that some one thereof on this or that side fell ; 
 Amongst the slaughter'd men that there lay heap'd on piles, 
 Bohuns and Beauchamps were, Bassets and Mandeviles : 
 Segraves and Saint Johns seek, upon the end of all, 
 To give those of their names their Christian burial. 
 Ten thousand on both sides were ta'en and slain that day ; 
 Prince Edward gets the goal, and bears the palm away." * 
 
 There is peace awhile in the land. A strong man is on the throne. The 
 first Edward dies, and, a weak and profligate son succeeding him, there is 
 again misrule and turbulence. Within ten miles of Stratford there was a 
 fearful tragedy enacted in the year 1312. On the little knoll called Blacklow 
 Hill, about a mile from Warwick, would William Shakspere ponder upon the 
 fate of Gaveston. In that secluded spot all around him would be peacefulness ; 
 the only sound of life about him would be the dashing of the wheel of the old 
 mill at Guy's Cliff. The towers of Warwick would be seen rising above their 
 
 [Mill atony's Cliff.] 
 
 surrounding trees ; and, higher than all, Guy's Tower. He would have heard 
 that this tower was not so called from the Saxon champion, the Guy of min- 
 strelsy, whose statue, bearing shield and sword, he had often looked upon in 
 the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen at Guy's Cliff. The Tower was called after 
 
 15*1 
 
 Drayton's ' Polyolbion,' 22nd Song.
 
 [Ancient Statue of Guy r.t Guy's Cliff.] 
 
 the Guy whose common name — a name of opprobrium fixed on him by 
 Gaveston — was associated with that of his maternal ancestors, — Guy, the Black 
 Dog of Arden. And then the tragedy of Blacklow Hill, as he recollected this, 
 would present itself to his imagination. There is a prisoner standing in the 
 great hall of Warwick Castle. He is unarmed ; he is clad in holiday vest- 
 ments, but they are soiled and torn ; his face is pale with fear and the fatigue 
 of a night journey. By force has he been hurried some thirty miles across the 
 country from Dedington, near Banbury ; and amidst the shouts of soldiery 
 and the rude clang of drum and trumpet has he entered the castle of his 
 enemies, where they are sitting upon the dais, — Warwick and Lancaster, and 
 Hereford and Arundel, — and the prisoner stands trembling before them, a 
 monarch's minion, but one whom they have no right to punish. But the 
 sentence is pronounced that he shall die. He sued for mercy to those whom 
 he had called "the black dog" and "the old hog," but they spurned him. A 
 sad procession is marshalled. The castle gates are opened ; the drawbridge is 
 let down. In silence the avengers march to Blacklow Hill, with their prisoner 
 in the midst. He dies by the axe. In a few years his unhappy master falls 
 still more miserably. Here is, indeed, a story fit for tragedy ; and that the 
 young Shakspere had essayed to dramatize it, or at any rate had formed a 
 dramatic picture of so remarkable an event, one so fitted for the display of 
 character and passion, may be easily conjectured. But it was a story, also., 
 which in some particulars his judgment would have rejected, as unworthy to 
 be dramatized. Another poet would arise, a man of undoubted power, of 
 daring genius, of fiery temperament, who would seize upon the story of 
 Edward II. and his wretched favourite, and produce a drama that should 
 present a striking contrast te the drawling histories of the earlier stage. The 
 
 loo
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 subject upon which the "dead Shepherd" had put forth his strength was not 
 to be touched by his greater rival.* 
 
 A reign of power succeeds to one of weakness. Edward III. is upon the 
 throne. William Shakspere is familiar with the great events of this reign ; for 
 the ' Chronicles ' of Froissart, translated by Lord Berners, have more than the 
 charm of the romance-writers ; they present realities in colours more brilliant 
 than those of fiction. The clerk of the chamber to Queen Philippa is overflow- 
 ing with that genial spirit which was to be a great characteristic of Shakspere 
 himself. Froissart looks upon nothing with indifference. He enters most 
 heartily into the spirit of every scene into which he is thrown. The luxuries 
 • of courts unfit him not for a relish of the charms of nature. The fatigues of 
 camps only prepare him for the enjoyment of banquets and dances. He throws 
 himself into the boisterous sports of the field at one moment, and is proud to 
 produce a virelay of his own composition at another. The early violets and 
 white and red roses are sweet to his sense ; and so is a night draught of claret 
 or Rochelle wine. He can meditate and write as he travels alone upon his 
 palfrey, with his portmanteau, having no follower but his faithful greyhound ; 
 he can observe and store up in his memory when he is in the court of David II. 
 of Scotland, or of Gaston de Foix, or in the retinue of the Black Prince. The 
 hero of Froissart is Edward Prince of Wales, the glorious son of a glorious 
 father. William Shakspere was in the presence of local associations connected 
 with this prince. He was especially Prince of Coventry; it was his own city; 
 and he gave licence to build its walls and gates, and cherished its citizens, and 
 dwelt among them. As the young poet walked in the courts of the old hall of 
 St. Mary's, itself a part of an extensive palace, he would believe that the prince 
 had sojourned there after he had won his spurs at Cressy ; and he would picture 
 the boy-hero, as Froissart had described him, left by his confiding father in the 
 midst of danger to struggle alone, and alone to triumph : — " The prince's bat- 
 talion at one period was very hard pressed ; and they with the prince sent a 
 messenger to the king, who was on a little windmill hill ; then the knight said 
 to the king, ' Sir, the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of Oxford, Sir Regnold 
 Cobham, and others, such as be about the prince your son, are fiercely fought 
 withal, and are sore handled ; wherefore they desire you that you and your 
 battle will come and aid them ; for if the Frenchmen increase, as they doubt 
 they will, your son and they shall have much ado.' Then the king said, ' Is 
 my son dead or hurt, or on the earth felled ? ' ' No, Sir,' quoth the knight, ' but 
 he his hardly matched, wherefore he hath need of your aid.' ' Well,' said the 
 king, ' return to him and to them that sent you hither, and say to them that 
 they send no more to me for any, adventure that falleth, as long as my son is 
 alive ; and also say to them that they suffer him this day to win his spurs, for, 
 
 * The notice by Shakspere of Marlowe, in As You Like It, is one of the few examples we haya 
 of any mention by the great poet of his contemporaries. This is a kind notice conveyed in the in- 
 troduction of a lino from Marlowe's ' Hero and Leander :' — 
 
 " Dead Shepherd ! now I find thy saw of might, 
 Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight ?"
 
 [St. Mary's Hall, Court Front.] 
 
 if God be pleased, 1 will this journey be his, and the honour thereof, and to 
 them that be about him.' Then the knight returned again to them, and showed 
 the king's words, the which greatly encouraged them, and they repined in that 
 they had sent to the king as they did." And then, it may be, the whole epopee 
 of that great war for the conquest of France might be shaped out in the young 
 man's imagination, and amidst its chivalrous daring, its fields of slaughter, its 
 perils overcome by almost superhuman strength, kings and princes for prisoners, 
 and the conqueror lowly and humble in his triumph, would there be touching 
 domestic scenes, — Sir Eustace de Pierre, the rich burgher of Calais, putting his 
 life in jeopardy for the safety of the good town, and the vengeance of the stern 
 conqueror averted by his gentle queen, all arranging themselves into something 
 like a great drama. But even here the dramatic interest was not sustained. 
 There was a succession of stirring events, but no one great action to which all 
 other actions tended and were subservient. Cressy is fought, Calais is taken, 
 Poictters is to come, after the hero has marched through the country, burning
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 and wasting, regardless of the people, thinking only of his father's disputed 
 rights ; and then a mercenary war in Spain in a bad cause, and the hero dies in 
 his bed, and the war for conquest is to generate other wars. These are events 
 that belong to the chronicler, and not to the dramatist. Romance has come in 
 to lend them a human interest. The future conqueror of France is to be a weak 
 lover at the feet of a Countess of Salisbury ; to be rejected ; to cast off his weak- 
 ness. The drama may mix the romance and the chronicle together ; it has done 
 so : but we believe not that he who had a struggle with his judgment to unite 
 the epic and the dramatic in the history of Henry V. ever attempted to drama- 
 tize the story of Edward III.* 
 
 Warwick — it is full of historical associations, but its early history is not dra- 
 matic according to the notions that William Shakspere will subsequently work 
 out. Let the ballad-makers and the heroic poets that are to follow sing the 
 legend of Guy the Saxon, and his combat with Colbrand the Dane. The stern 
 power of the later Guy is for another to dramatize. Thomas Earl of Warwick, 
 who led the van at Cressy, shall have his fame with the Cobhams and the Chan- 
 
 * See our Notice of the play entitled 'The Reign of Edward III.' in the Analysis trf plays 
 Hscribed tc Shakspere. 
 
 [Warwick Castle, from the Island.]
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 doses, and posterity shall look upon his tomb in the midst of the choir of the 
 collegiate church at Warwick. The Earl who was cast aside by Richard II. 
 (be also was named Thomas) shall be merged in the eventful history of that 
 time ; but it shall be recollected that he built " that strong and stately tower 
 standing at the north-east corner of the Castle here at Warwick. "* His strong 
 and stately tower could not stead him in his necessity, for he was made prisoner 
 by the King at a feast to which he was treacherously invited, banished, subse- 
 quently imprisoned in the Tower, and his possessions seized upon. The fall of 
 Richard restored him to his honours and possessions ; and he was enabled to 
 appoint by his will " that the sword and coat of mail sometime belonging to the 
 famous Guy" should remain to his son and his heirs after him. This sword 
 and coat of mail would have been a more appropriate, though perhaps not a 
 more authentic, relic for the young Shakspere to look upon than the famous 
 porridge-pot of our own day. In the reign of Henry IV. there came Earl 
 Richard, who took the banner of Owen Glendower, and fought against the Percies 
 at Shrewsbury ; who voyaged to the Holy Land, and hung up his offerings 
 at the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem, and was royally feasted by the Soldan's 
 lieutenant, "hearing that he was descended from the famous Sir Guy of War- 
 wick, whose story they had in books of their own language." f And it was he 
 who was sent to France to treat for the marriage of Henry V. with the Lady 
 Katherine ; and it was he who, after the death of the Conqueror of Agincourt, 
 had tutelage of the young Henry his son ; and was lieutenant-general and 
 governor of the realm of France. The remainder of his history might be read 
 by William Shakspere, inscribed upon that splendid monument which he erected 
 in the chapel called after his name, and ordered by his will to be built adjoining 
 the collegiate church. Visited by long sickness, he died in the Castle at Rouen, 
 His monument is still a glorious specimen of the arts of the middle ages, and so 
 is the chapel under whose roof it is erected. Another lord of Warwick suc- 
 ceeded, who, having been created Duke of Warwick, moved the envy of other 
 great ones in that time of faction : but he died young, and without issue ; and 
 his sister, the wife of Richard Neville, succeeded to her brother's lands and 
 castles, and by patent her husband became Earl of Warwick. This was indeed 
 a mighty man, the stout Earl of Warwick, the king-maker, he who first fought 
 at St. Albans in the great cause of York, and after many changes of opinion 
 and of fortune fell at Barnet in the cause of Lancaster. The history of this, 
 the greatest of the lords of the ragged staff, is in itself a wonderful drama, in a 
 series of dramas that are held together by a strong poetical chain. The first 
 scene of this great series of dramas begins when the Duke of Hereford and the 
 Duke of Norfolk meet in the lists 
 
 " At Coventry upon St. Lambert's day." + 
 
 The last scene is at Bosworth, when he who is held to have wanted every virtue 
 but courage left the world exclaiming 
 
 " A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse ! " § 
 
 * Dugdale, quoting Walsingham. f Dugdale. 
 
 I Richard IT., Act L § Richard III., Act v 
 
 159
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 The family traditions of William Shakspere ; the Chronicle "of the two noble 
 and illustre Families of Lancaster and York," his household book ; the localities 
 amidst which he dwelt ; must have concurred early in fixing his imagination 
 upon the dramatic capabilities of that magnificent story which has given us a 
 series of eight poetical ' Chronicle Histories/ of which a German critic has said, — 
 " The historian who cannot learn from them is not yet perfect in his own art."* 
 
 * Tisck. ' Dramaturgische Blatter. 
 
 [JSeauclsamji Cimpel, Warwick.]
 
 [St. Mary's Hall— Interior.] 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 YOEK AND LANCASTER. 
 
 Hall, the chronicler, writing his history of ' The Families of Lancaster ana 
 York/ about seventy years after the " continual dissension for the crown of this 
 noble realm" was terminated, says, — "What nobleman liveth at this day, or what 
 gentleman of any ancient stock or progeny is clear, whose lineage hath not been 
 infested and plagued with this unnatural division?" During the boyhood of 
 William Shakspere, it cannot be doubted that he would meet with many a gentle- 
 man, and many a yeoman, who would tell him how their forefathers had been 
 Life. M 161
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 thus " infested end plagued." The traditions of the most stirring events of thtt 
 contest would at this time be about a century old ; generally diluted in their 
 interest by passing through the lips of three or four generations, but occasionally 
 presented vividly to the mind of the inquiring boy in the narration of some 
 amongst the " hoary-headed eld," whose fathers had fought at Bosworth or 
 Tewksbury. Many of these traditions, too, would be essentially local ; extend- 
 ing back even to the period when the banished Duke of Hereford, in his bold 
 march 
 
 " From Ravenspurg to Cotswold," * 
 
 gathered a host of followers in the counties of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, 
 Warwick, and Worcester. Fields, where battles had been fought ; towns, where 
 parliaments had assembled, and. treaties had been ratified ; castles, where the 
 great leaders had stood at bay, or had sallied forth upon the terrified country — 
 such were the objects which the young poet would associate with many an 
 elaborate description of the chroniclers, and many an interesting anecdote of his 
 ancient neighbours. Let us endeavour rapidly to trace such portion of the 
 history of these events as may be placed in association with the localities that 
 were familiar to William Shakspere ; for it appears to us that his dramatic 
 power was early directed towards this long and complicated story, by some prin- 
 ciple even more exciting than its capabilities for the purposes of the drama. It 
 was the story, we think, which was presented to him in the evening-talk around 
 the hearth of his childhood ; it was the story whose written details were most 
 accessible to him, being narrated by Hall with a rare minuteness of picturesque 
 circumstance ; but it was a story also of which his own district had been the 
 scene, in many of its most stirring events. Out of ten English Historical Plays 
 which were written by him, and some undoubtedly amongst his first perform- 
 ances, he has devoted eight to circumstances belonging to this memorable story. 
 No other nation ever possessed such a history of the events of a century, — a 
 history in which the agents are not the hard abstractions of warriors and states- 
 men, but men of flesh and blood like ourselves ; men of passion, and crime, and 
 virtue ; elevated perhaps by the poetical art, but filled, also through that art, 
 with such a wondrous life, that we dwell amongst them as if they were of our 
 own day, and feel that they must have spoken as he has made them speak, and 
 act as he has made them act. It is in vain that we are told that some events are 
 omitted, and some transposed ; that documentary history doe3 not exhibit its 
 evidence here, that a contemporary narrative somewhat militates against the 
 representation there. The general truth of this dramatic history cannot be 
 shaken. It is a philosophical history in the very highest sense of that some- 
 what abused term. It contains the philosophy that can only be produced by 
 the union of the noblest imagination with the most just and temperate judg- 
 ment. It is the loftiness of the poetical spirit which has enabled Shakspere 
 alone to write this history with impartiality. Open the chroniclers, and we 
 
 * Richard II., Act n., Scene in. 
 1G2
 
 A BIOGKAl'IIV. 
 
 find the prejudices of the Yorkist or the Lancastrian manifesting the intensity 
 of the old factious hatred. Who can say to which faction Shakspcre belongs ? 
 He has comprehended the whole, whilst others knew only a part. 
 
 After the first two or three pages of Hall's ' Chronicle,' we are plunged into 
 the midst of a scene, gorgeous in all the pomp of chivalry ; a combat for life or 
 death, made the occasion of a display of regal magnificence such as had been 
 seldom presented in England. The old chronicler of the two Houses puts forth 
 all his strength in the description of such scenes. He slightly passes over the 
 original quarrel between Hereford and Norfolk : the pride, and the passion, and 
 the kir.gJy craft, are left for others to delineate ; but the " sumptuous theatre 
 and lists royal " at the city of Coventry are set forth with wondrous exactness. 
 We behold the High Constable and the High Marshal of England enter the 
 lists with a great company of men in silk sendall, embroidered with silver, to 
 keep the field. The Duke of Hereford appears at the barriers, on his white 
 courser barbed with blue and green velvet, embroidered with swans and ante- 
 lopes of goldsmith's work ; and there he swears upon the Holy Evangelists that 
 his quarrel is true and just; and he enters the lists, and sits down in a chair of 
 green velvet. Then comes the King, with ten thousand men in harness ; and 
 he takes his seat upon a stage, richly hanged and pleasantly adorned. The 
 Duke of Norfolk hovers at the entry of the lists, his horse being barbed with 
 crimson velvet, embroidered with lions of silver and mulberry-trees ; and he, 
 having also made oath, enters the field manfullv, and sits down in his chair of 
 crimson velvet. One reader of Hall's pompous description of the lists at Coventry 
 will invest that scene with something richer than velvet and goldsmith's work. 
 He will make the champions speak something more than the formal words of 
 the chivahic defiance ; and yet the scene shall still be painted with the minutest 
 ceremonial observance. We in vain look, at the present day, within the streets 
 once enclosed by the walls of Coventry, for the lists where, if Richard had not 
 thrown down his warder, the story of the wars of the Roses might not have been 
 written. Probably in the days of the young Shakspere the precise scene of 
 that event might have been pointed out. The manor of Cheylesmore, which 
 was granted by Edward III. to the Black Prince for the better support of his 
 honour as Duke of Cornwall, descended to his son Richard ; and in the eighth 
 year of his reign, " the walls on the south part of this city being not built, the 
 mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty thereof humbly besought the King to give them 
 leave that they might go forward with that work, who thereupon granted 
 licence to them so to do, on condition that they should include within their 
 walls his said manor-place standing within the park of Cheylesmore, as the 
 record expresseth, which park was a woody ground in those times."* En- 
 croached upon, no doubt, was this park in the age of Elizabeth. But Coventry 
 would then have abundant memorials of its ancient magnificence which have 
 now perished. He who wrote the glorious scene of the lists upon St. Lambert's 
 doy in all probability derived some inspiration from the genius loci. 
 
 The challenger and the challenged are each banished. John of Gaunt dies, 
 
 * Dugdalc. 
 M °- 168
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE: 
 
 and the King seizes upon the possessions of his dangerous son. Then begins 
 that vengeance which is to harass England with a century of blood. Hall and 
 Froissart make the Duke of Lancaster, after his landing, march direct to Lon- 
 don, and afterwards proceed to the west of England. There can be no doubt 
 that they were wrong ; that the Duke, having brought with him a very small 
 force, marched as quickly as possible into the midland counties, where he had 
 many castles and possessions, and in which he might raise a numerous army 
 among his own friends and retainers. The local knowledge of the poet, founded 
 upon traditionary information, would have enabled him to decide upon the 
 correctness of the statement which shows Bolingbroke marching direct from 
 Ravenspurg to Berkeley Castle. The natural and easy dialogue between 
 Bolingbroke and Northumberland exhibits as much local accuracy in a single 
 line as if the poet had given us a laboured description of the Cotswolds : — 
 
 " I am a stranger here in Glostershire. 
 These high wild hills, and rough uneven ways, 
 Draw out our miles, and make them wearisome." * 
 
 In a few weeks England sustains a revolution. The King is deposed ; the 
 great Duke is on the throne. Two or three years of discontent and intrigue, 
 and then insurrection. Shrewsbury can scarcely be called one of Shakspere's 
 native localities, yet it is clear that he was familiar with the place. In 
 Falstaff's march from London to Shrewsbury the poet glances, lovingly as it 
 were, at the old well-known scenes. "The red-nosed innkeeper at Daventry " 
 had assuredly filled a glass of sack for him. The distance from Coventry to 
 Sutton- Coldfield was accurately known by him, when he makes the burly 
 commander say — " Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of 
 sack : our soldiers shall march through : we '11 to Sutton Cophill to-night. "f 
 Shakspere, it seems to us, could scarcely resist the temptation of showing the 
 Prince in Warwickshire: — "What, Hal? How now, mad wag? What a devil 
 dost thou in Warwickshire ? " A word or two tells us that the poet had seen 
 the field of Shrewsbury : — 
 
 " How bloodily the sun begins to peer 
 Above yon busky hill ! " 
 
 The Chronicle informs us that Henry had marched with a great army towards 
 Wales to encounter Percy and Douglas, who were coming from the north to 
 join with Glendower ; and then, " The King, hearing of the Earls' approaching, 
 thought it policy to encounter with them before that the Welshman should 
 join with their army, and so include him on both parts, and therefore returned 
 suddenly to the town of Shrewsbury. He was scantly entered into the town, 
 
 * Richard II., Act EC, Scene in. 
 
 + All the old copies of The First Part of Henry IV. have Cop-hill. Thcr.; is no doubt that 
 Sutton Coldfield, as it is now spelt, was meant by Cop-hill; but the old printers, we believe, im- 
 properly introduced the hyphen ; for Dugdale, in his map, spells the word Cofeild; and it is ea?y to 
 see how tho common pronunciation would be Cojihill, or Cofill. 
 164
 
 ■■ - 
 
 . *£>?;■■■■■*■'>■■:•■?— , 
 
 [Shrewsbury.] 
 
 but he was by his posts advertised that the Earls, with banners displayed and 
 battles ranged, were coming toward him, and were so hot and so courageous 
 that they with light horses began to skirmish with his host. The King, per- 
 ceiving their doings, issued out, and encamped himself without the east gate 
 of the town. The Earls, nothing abashed although their succours them deceived, 
 embattled themselves not far from the King's army." There was a night of 
 watchfulness ; and then, " the next day in the morning early, which was the 
 vigil of Mary Magdalen, the King, perceiving that the battle was nearer than 
 he either thought or looked for, lest that long tarrying might be a minishing 
 of his strength, set his battles in good order." The scene of this great contest 
 is well defined ; the King has encamped himself without the east gate of 
 Shrewsbury. The poet, by one of his magical touches, shows us the sun rising 
 upon the hostile armies ; but he is more minute than the chronicler. The 
 King is looking eastward, and he sees the sun rising over a wooded hill. This 
 is not only poetical, but it is true. He who stands upon the plain on the east 
 side of Shrewsbury, the Battle Field as it is now called, waiting, not " a long 
 hour by Shrewsbury clock," but waiting till the minute 
 
 " when the morning sun shall raise his car 
 Above the border of this horizon," 
 
 will see that sun rise over a " busky hill," Haughmond Hill. We may well 
 
 * Henry VI., Part III., Act iv., Scene vn. 
 
 165
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEEE ! 
 
 lelieve therefore, from this accuracy, that Shrewsbury had lent a local interest 
 in the mind of Shakspere to the dramatic conception of the death-scene of the 
 gallant Percy. Insurrection was not crushed at Shrewsbury ; but the course 
 of its action does not lie in the native district of the poet. Yet his Falstaff 
 has an especial affection for these familiar scenes, and perhaps through him 
 the poet described some of the "old familiar faces." Shallow and Silence 
 assuredly they were his good neighbours. We think there was a tear in his 
 eye when he wrote, " And is old Double dead ? " Mouldy, and Shadow, and 
 Wart, and Feeble — were they not the representatives of the valiant men of 
 Stratford, upon whom the Corporation annually expended large sums for 
 harness ? After the treacherous putting down of rebellion at Gualtree Forest, 
 Falstaff casts a longing look towards the fair seat of " Master Robert Shallow, 
 Esquire." " My lord, I beseech you give me leave to go through Gloucester- 
 shire." We are not now far out of the range of Shakspere's youthful journeys 
 around Stratford. Shallow will make the poor carter answer it in his wages 
 " about the sack he lost the other day at Hinckley Fair." " William Visor of 
 Wincot," that arrant knave who, according to honest and charitable Davy 
 " should have some countenance at his friend's request," was he a neighbour 
 of Christopher Sly's " fat ale-wife of Wincot ; " and did they dwell together in 
 the Wincot of the parish of Aston- Clifford, or the Wilmecote of the parish of 
 Aston- Cantlow ? The chroniclers are silent upon this point ; and they tell us 
 nothing of the history of " Clement Perkes of the Hill." The chroniclers deal 
 with less happy and less useful sojourners on the earth. Even " gooaman 
 Puff of Barson," one of " the greatest men in the realm," has no fame beyond 
 the immortality which Master Silence has bestowed upon him. 
 
 The four great historical dramas which exhibit the fall of Richard II., the 
 triumph of Bolingbroke, the inquietudes of Henry IV., the wild career of his 
 son ending in a reign of chivalrous daring and victory, were undoubtedly 
 written after the four other plays of which the great theme was the war of the 
 Roses. The local associations which might have influenced the young poet in 
 the choice of the latter subject would be concentrated, in a great degree, upon 
 Warwick Castle. The hero of these wars was unquestionably Richard Neville. 
 It was a Beauchamp who fought at Agincourt in that goodly company who 
 were to be remembered " to the ending of the world," — 
 
 " Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, 
 Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester." 
 
 He ordained in his will that in his chapel at Warwick " three masses every day 
 should be sung as long as the world might endure." The masses have long 
 since ceased ; but his tomb still stands, and he has a memorial that will last 
 longer than his tomb. The chronicler passes over his fame at Agincourt, but 
 the dramatist records it. Did the poet's familiarity with those noble towers in 
 which the Beauchamp had lived suggest this honour to his memory? But 
 here, at any rate, was the stronghold of the Neville. Here, when the land was 
 at peace in the dead sleep of weak government, which was to be succeeded by 
 108
 
 ■"■J/lCK-s.,,, 
 
 [Entrance to Wanvick Castle.] 
 
 fearful action, the great Earl dwelt with more than a monarch's pomp, having 
 his own officer-at-arms called Warwick herald, with hundreds of friends and 
 dependants bearing about his badge of the ragged staff; for whose boundless 
 hospitality there was daily provision made as for the wants of an army ; whose 
 manors and castles and houses were to be numbered in almost every county ; 
 and who not only had pre-eminence over every Earl in the land, but, as Great 
 Captain of the Sea, received to his own use the King's tonnage and poundage. 
 When William Shakspere looked upon this castle in his youth, a peaceful Earl 
 dwelt within it, the brother of the proud Leicester — the son of the ambitious 
 Northumberland who had suffered death in the attempt to make Lady Jane 
 Grey queen, but whose heir had been restored in blood by Mary. Warwick 
 Castle, in the reign of Elizabeth, was peaceful as the river which glided by it, 
 the most beautiful of fortress palaces. No prisoners lingered in its donjon 
 keep ; the beacon blazed not upon its battlements, the warder looked not 
 anxiously out to see if all was quiet on the road from Kenilworth ; the draw- 
 bridge was let down for the curious stranger, and he might refresh himself in the 
 buttery without suspicion. Here, then, might the young poet gather from the 
 old servants of the house some of the traditions of a century previous, when the 
 followers of the great Earl were ever in fortress or in camp, and for a while there 
 seemed to be no king in England, but the name of Warwick was greater than 
 that of king. Here, in the quiet woods and launds of this castle, or stretched 
 
 167
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 on the bank of his own Avon beneath its high walls, might he have imagined, 
 without the authority of any chronicler, that scene in the Temple Gardens 
 which was to connect the story of the wars in France with the coming events 
 in England. In this scene the Earl of Warwick first plucks the " white rose 
 with Plantagenet ; " and it is Warwick who prophesies what is to come : — 
 
 " This brawl to-day 
 Grown to this faction, in the Temple garden, 
 Shall send, between the red rose and the white, 
 A thousand souls to death and deadly night." * 
 
 In the connected plays which form the Three Parts of Henry VI., the Earl 
 of Warwick, with some violation of chronological accuracy, is constantly brought 
 forward in a prominent situation. When the " brave peers of England " unite 
 in denouncing the marriage of Henry with Margaret of Anjou, the Earl of 
 Salisbury says to his bold heir : — 
 
 Warwick, nay son, the comfort of my age, 
 
 Thy deeds, thy plainness, and thy housekeeping, 
 
 Hath won the greatest favour of the Commons."f 
 
 In a subsequent scene, Beaufort calls him " ambitious Warwick." A scene or 
 two onward, and Warwick, after privately acknowledging the title of Richard 
 Duke of York, exclaims — 
 
 " My heart assures me that the earl of Warwick 
 Shall one day make the duke of York a king." 
 
 « Henry VI., Part I., Act n., Scene iv. 
 
 t Henry VI., Part II., Act II., Scene I. 
 
 [Warwick, from Lodge Hill.]
 
 A BIOGKAPJir 
 
 It is he, the ' biunt-witted lord," that defies Suffolk, and sets the men of Bury 
 upon him to demand his banishment. It is he who stands by the bed of the 
 dying Beaufort, judging that 
 
 " So bad a death argues a monstrous life." 
 
 All this is skilfully managed by the dramatist, to keep Warwick constantly 
 before the eyes of his audience, before he is embarked in the great contest for 
 the crown. The poet has given "Warwick an early importance, which the 
 chroniclers of the age do not assign to him. He is dramatically correct in so 
 doing ; but, at the same time, his judgment might in some degree have been 
 governed by the strength of local associations. Once embarked in the great 
 quarrel, Warwick is the presiding genius of the scene : — 
 
 " Now, by my father's badge, old Nevil's crest, 
 The rampant bear chain'd to the ragged staff, 
 This day I '11 wear aloft my burgonet, 
 As on a mountain-top the cedar shows 
 That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm." * 
 
 The sword is first unsheathed in that battle-field of St. Albans. After three or 
 four years of forced quiet it is again drawn. The " she-wolf of France " plunges 
 her fangs into the blood of York at Wakefield, after Warwick has won the great 
 battle of Northampton. The crown is achieved by the son of York at the field 
 of Towton, where 
 
 " Warwick rages like a chafed bull." 
 
 The poet necessarily hurries over events which occupy a large space in the 
 narratives of the historian. The rash marriage of Edward provokes the resent- 
 ment of Warwick, and his power is now devoted to set up the fallen house of 
 Lancaster. Shakspere is then again in his native localities. After the battle 
 of Banbury, according to the chronicler, " the northern men resorted toward 
 
 Warwick, where the Earl had gathered a great multitude of people 
 
 The King likewise, sore thirsting to recover his loss late sustained, and desirous 
 to be revenged of the death and murders of his lords and friends, marched 
 toward Warwick with a great army. . . . All the King's doings were by espials 
 declared to the Earl of Warwick, which, like a wise and politic captain, intend- 
 ing not to lose so great an advantage to him given, but trusting to bring all his 
 purposes to a final end and determination, by only obtaining this enterprise, 
 in the dead of the night, with an elect company of men of war, as secretly as 
 was possible set on the King's field, killing them that kept the watch, and ere 
 the King was ware (for he thought of nothing less than of that chance that 
 happened), at a place called Wolney (Wolvey), four mile from Warwick, he was 
 taken prisoner, and brought to the Castle of Warwick."! The statement that 
 Wolvey is four miles from Warwick is one of many examples of the inaccuracy 
 of the old annalists in matters of distance. It is upon the borders of Leicester- 
 
 * Henry VI., Part II., Act v., Scene in. t Hall. 
 
 169
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 shire, Coventry lying equidistant between Wolvey and Warwick. Shakspere 
 has dramatized the scene of Edward's capture. Edward escapes from Middle 
 ham Castle, and, after a short banishment, lands again with a few followers in 
 England, to place himself again upon the throne, by a movement which has only 
 one parallel in history.* Shakspere describes his countrymen, in the speech 
 which the great Earl delivers for the encouragement of Henry : — 
 
 " In Warwickshire I have true-hearted friends, 
 Not mutinous in peace, yet bold in war ; 
 Those will I muster up." 
 
 Henry is again seized by the Yorkists. Warwick, " the great-grown traitor," 
 is at the head of his native forces. The local knowledge of the poet is now 
 rapidly put forth in the scene upon the walls of Coventry : — 
 
 " War. Where is the post that cornea fiom valiant Oxford? 
 How far hence is thy lord, mine honest fellow ? 
 
 1 Mess. By this at Dunsmore, marching thitherward. 
 War. How far off is our brother Montague ? 
 
 Where is the post that came from Montague ? 
 
 2 Mess. By this at Daintry, with a puissant troop. 
 
 Enter Sir John Somerville. 
 
 War. Say, Somerville, what says my loving son ? 
 And, by thy guess, how nigh is Clarence now ? 
 
 Som. At Southam I did leave him with his forces, 
 And do expect him here some two hours hence. 
 
 [Drum heard. 
 
 War. Then Clarence is at hand, I hear his drum. 
 
 Som. It is not his, my lord ; here Southam lies ; 
 The drum your honour hears marcheth from Warwick." f 
 
 The chronicler tells the great event of the encounter of the two leaders at 
 Coventry, which the poet has so spiritedly dramatized : — " In the mean season 
 King Edward came to Warwick, where he found all the people departed, and 
 from thence with all diligence advanced his power, toward Coventry, and in a 
 plain by the city he pitched his field. And the next day after that he came 
 thither his men were set forward and marshalled in array, and he valiantly 
 bade the Earl battle : which, mistrusting that he should be deceived by the Duke 
 of Clarence, as he was indeed, kept himself close within the walls. And yet 
 he had perfect word that the Duke of Clarence came forward toward him with 
 a great army. King Edward, being also thereof informed, raised his camp, and 
 made toward the Duke. And lest that there might be thought some fraud to 
 be cloaked between them, the King set his battles in an order, as though he 
 would fight without any longer delay ; the Duke did likewise." J Then " a 
 
 • The landing of Bonaparte from Elba, and Edward at Ravenspurg, are remarkably similar in 
 their rapidity and their boldness, though very different in their final consequences, 
 t Henry VI., Part III., Act V., Scene I. 
 t Hall. 
 
 170
 
 I J * 
 
 • - 
 
 " 
 
 [St. Mary's Hall— Street Front.] 
 
 fraternal amity was concluded and proclaimed," which was the ruin of War- 
 wick, and of the House of Lancaster. Ten years before these events, in the 
 Parliament held in this same city of Coventry — a city which had received 
 great benefits from Henry VI. — York, and Salisbury, and Warwick had been 
 attainted. And now Warwick held the city for him who had in that same city 
 denounced him as a traitor. With store of ordnance, and warlike equipments, 
 had the great Captain lain in* this city for a few weeks ; and he was honoured 
 as one greater than either of the rival Kings — one who could bestow a crown 
 and who could take a crown away ; and he sate in state in the old halls of 
 Coventry, and prayers went up for his cause in its many churches, and the 
 proud city's municipal officers were as his servants. He marched out of the 
 city with his forces, after Palm Sunday ; and on Easter-day the quarrel between 
 hirn and the perjured Clarence and the luxurious Edward was settled for ever 
 upon Barnet Field : — 
 
 " Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge, 
 
 Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle ; 
 Under whose shade tlv? rainpicg lion elept ; 
 
 171
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEKE : 
 
 Whose top-branch overpeer'd Jove's spreading tree, 
 And kept low shrub3 from winter's powerful wind." » 
 
 The Battle of Barnet was fought on the 14th of April, 1471. Sir John 
 Paston, a stout Lancastrian, writes to his mother from London on the 18th of 
 April: — "As for other tidings, it is understood here that the Queen Margaret 
 is verily landed, and her son, in the west country, and I trow that as to-morrow, 
 0- else the next day, the King Edward will depart from hence to her ward to 
 drive her out again." f Sir John Paston, himself in danger of his head, seems 
 to hint that the landing of Queen Margaret will again change the aspect of 
 things. In sixteen days the Battle of Tewksbury was fought. This is the 
 great crowning event of the terrible struggle of sixteen years ; and the scenes 
 at Tewksbury are amongst the most spirited of these dramatic pictures. "We 
 may readily believe that Shakspere had looked upon the " fair park adjoining 
 to the town," where the Duke of Somerset " pitched his field, against the will 
 and consent of many other captains which would that he should have drawn 
 aside;" and that he had also thought of the unhappy end of the gallant Prince 
 Edward, as he stood in " the church of the Monastery of Black Monks in 
 Tewksbury," where "his body was homely interred with the other simple 
 corses." i 
 
 » Henry VI., Part III., Act v., Scene n. 
 { ' Paston Letters,' edited by A. Ramsay, vol. ii., p. GO. 
 
 % Hall. 
 
 
 [Tewksbury . |
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 There were twelve years of peace between the Buttle of Tcwksbury and the 
 death of Edward IV. Then came the history which Hall entitles, ' The 
 Pitiful Life of King Edward the Fifth/ and ' The Tragical Doings of King 
 Richard the Third.' The last play of the series which belongs to the wars of 
 the Roses is unquestionably written altogether with a more matured power 
 than those which preceded it ; yet the links which connect it with the other 
 three plays of the series are so unbroken, the treatment of character is so con- 
 sistent, and the poetical conception of the whole so uniform, that, whatever 
 amount of criticism may be yet in store to show that our view is incorrect, we 
 now confidently speak of them all as the plays of Shakspere, and of Shakspere 
 alone.* Matured, especially in its wonderful exhibition of character, as the 
 Richard III. is, we cannot doubt that the subject was very early familiar to 
 i he young poet's mind. The Battle of Bosworth Field was the great event of 
 his own locality, which for a century had fixed the government of England. 
 The course of the Reformation, and especially the dissolution of the Monasteries, 
 had produced great social changes, which were in operation at the time in 
 which William Shakspere was born ; whose effects, for good and for evil, he 
 must have seen working around him, as he grew from year to year in know- 
 ledge and experience. But those events were too recent, and indeed of too 
 delicate a nature, to assume the poetical aspect in his mind. They abided still 
 in the region of prejudice and controversy. It was dangerous to speak of the 
 great religious divisions of the kingdom with a tolerant impartiality. History 
 could scarcely deal with these opinions in a spirit of justice. Poetry, thus, 
 which has regard to what is permanent and universal, has passed by these 
 matters, important as they are. But the great event which placed the Tudor 
 family on the throne, and gave England a stable government, however occa- 
 sionally distracted by civil and religious division, was an event which would 
 seize fast upon such a mind as that of William Shakspere. His ancestor, there 
 can be little doubt, had been an adherent of the Earl of Richmond. For his 
 faithful services to the conqueror at Bosworth he was rewarded, as we are 
 assured, by lands in Warwickshire. That field of Bosworth would therefore 
 have to him a family as well as a local interest. Burton, the historian ot 
 Leicestershire, who was born about ten years after William Shakspere, tells 
 us " that his great-great-grandfather, John Hardwick, of Lindley, near Bos- 
 worth, a man of very short stature, but active and courageous, tendered his 
 service to Henry, with some troops of horse, the night he lay at Atherston, 
 became his guide to the field, advised him in the attack, and how to profit by 
 the sun and by the wind."f Burton further says, writing in 1622, that the in- 
 habitants living around the plain called Bosworth Field, more properly the plain 
 of Sutton, "have many occurrences and passages yet fresh in memory, by 
 reason that some persons thereabout, which saw the battle fought, were living 
 within less than forty years, of which persons myself have seen some, and have 
 
 * See our ' Essrvy on the Three Parts of King Henry VI., "and King Richard III.' 
 t Ilutton's 'Bosworth Field. ' 
 
 L73
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 heard of their disclosures, though related by the second hand." This "living 
 within less than forty years " would take us back to about the period which we 
 are now viewing in relation to the. Ufa of Shakspere. But certainly there is 
 something over- marvellous in Burton's story, to elable us to think that William 
 Shakspere, even as a very young boy, could have conversed with "some persons 
 thereabout " who had seen a battle fought in 1485. That, as Burton more 
 reasonably of himself says, he might have " heard their discourses at second- 
 hand" is probable enough. Bosworth Field is about thirty miles from Strat- 
 ford. Burton says that the plain derives its name from Bosworth, " not that 
 this battle was fought at this place (it being fought in a large, flat plain, and 
 spacious ground, three miles distant from this town, between (lie towns of 
 Shenton, Sutton, Dadlington, and Stoke) ; but for that this town was the most 
 worthy town of note near adjacent, and was therefore called Bosworth Field. 
 That this battle was fought in this plain appeareth by many remarkable 
 places : By a little mount cast up, where the common report is, that at the 
 first beginning of the battle Henry Earl of Richmond made his pareenetical 
 oration to his army ; by divers pieces of armour, weapons, and other warlike 
 accoutrements, and by many arrowheads here found, whereof, about twenty 
 years since, at the enclosure of the lordship of Stoke, great store were digged 
 up, of which some I have now (1622) in my custody, being of a long, large, 
 and big proportion, far greater than any now in use ; as also by relation of the 
 inhabitants, who have many occurrences and passages yet fresh in memory."* 
 Burton goes on to tell two stories connected with the eventful battle. The 
 one was the vision of King Richard, of " divers fearful ghosts running about 
 him, not suffering him to take any rest, still crying ' Revenge.' " Hall relates 
 the tradition thus : — " The fame went that he had the same night a dreadful 
 and a terrible dream, for it seemed to him, being asleep, that he saw divers 
 images like terrible devils, not suffering him to take any quiet or rest." Burton 
 says, previous to his description of the dream, " The vision is reported to be in 
 this manner." And certainly his account of the fearful ghosts " still crying 
 Revenge " is essentially different from that of the chronicler. Shakspere has 
 followed the more poetical account of the old local historian ; which, however, 
 couid not have been known to him : — 
 
 " Methought the souls of all that I have murthcr'd 
 Came to my tent : and every one did threat 
 To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard." 
 
 Did Shakspere obtain his notion from the same source as Burton — from " rela- 
 tion of the inhabitants who have many occurrences and passages yet fresh in 
 memory ? " The topographer has another story, not quite so poetical, which 
 the dramatist does not touch : " It was foretold, that if ever King Richard did 
 come to meet his adversary in a place that was compassed with towns whose 
 termination was in ton (what number is adjacent may, by the map, be pcr- 
 
 * From Burton's Manuscripts, quoted by Mr. Nicholla. 
 174
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ceived;, that there he should come to great distress ; or else, upon the same 
 occasion, did happen to lodge at a place beginning and ending with the same 
 syllable of An (as this of Anbian), that there he should lose his life, to expiate 
 that wicked murder of his late wife Anne, daughter and coheir of Richaid 
 Neville Earl of Salisbury and Warwick." This is essentially a local tradition. 
 The prediction and the vision were in all likelihood rife in Sutton, and Shenton, 
 and Sibson, and Coton, and Dadlington, and Stapleton, and Atherston, in the 
 days of Shakspere's boyhood. Anbian, or AmDiam, a small wood, is in the centre 
 of the plain called Bosworth Field. Tradition has pointed out a hillock where 
 Richard harangued his army ; and also a little spring, called King Richard's 
 Well. Dr. Parr, about forty years ago, found out a well " in dirty, mossy ground," 
 in the midst of this plain ; and then a Latin inscription was to be set up to 
 enlighten the peasantry of the district, and to preserve the memory of the spot 
 for all time. Two words about the well in Shakspere would have given it a 
 better immortality. 
 
 King Henry is crowned upon the Field of Bosworth. According to the Chro- 
 nicler, Lord Stanley " took the crown of King Richard, which was found amongst 
 the spoil in the field, and set it on the Earl's head, as though he had been 
 elected king by the voice of the people, as in ancient times past in divers realms 
 it hath been accustomed." Then, " the same night in the evening King Henry 
 with great pomp came to the town of Leicester," where he rested two days. " In 
 the mean season the dead corpse of King Richard was as shamefully carried to 
 the town of Leicester, as he gorgeously the day before with pomp and pride 
 departed out of the said town." 
 
 Years roll on. There was another conqueror, not by arms but by peaceful 
 intellect, who had once moved through the land in " pomp and pride," but who 
 came to Leicester in humility and heaviness of heart. The victim of a shifting 
 policy and of his own ambition, Wolsey, found a grave at Leicester scarcely 
 more honourable than that of Richard : — 
 
 " At last, with- easy roads, he came to Leicester, 
 Lodg'd in the abbey ; where the reverend abbot, 
 With all his convent, honourably receiv'd him ; 
 To whom he gave these wotds : — ' 0, father abbot, 
 An old man, broken with the storms of state, 
 Is come to lay his weary bone3 among ye ; 
 Give him a little earth for charity ! ' 
 So went to bed ; where eagerly his sickness 
 Pursued him still ; and three nights after this, 
 About the hour of eight, (which he himself 
 Foretold should be his last,) full of repentance, 
 Continual meditations, tears, and sorrows, 
 He gave his honours to the world again, 
 His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.*' " 
 
 Henry VIII., Act IV., Scene n. 
 
 115
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 
 
 Wolsey is the hero of Shakspere's last historical play ; ana even in this history, 
 large as it is, and belonging to the philosophical period of the poet's life, we may 
 trace something of the influence of the principle of Local Association, 
 
 lifer*! 
 
 [Leicester.]
 
 ~:V : 
 
 [Evesham. The Bell-Tower.] 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 KUINS, NOT OF TIME. 
 
 " High towers, fair temples, goodly theatres, 
 Strong walls, rich porches, princely palaces, 
 Large streets, brave houses, sacred sepulchres, 
 Sure gates, sweet gardens, stately galleries, 
 Wrought with fair pillars and fine imageries ; 
 All these, pity ! now are turn'd to dust, 
 And overgrown with black oblivion's rust." 
 
 Such is Spenser's noble description of what was once the "goodly Verlara." 
 These were " The Ruins of Time." But within sixteen miles of Stratford 
 would the young Shakspere gaze in awe and wonder upon ruins more solemn 
 than any produced by " time's decay.''' The ruins of Evesham were the fearful 
 Life. N 177
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE ; 
 
 monuments of a political revolution which William Shakspere himself had not 
 seen ; but which, in the boyhood of his father, had shaken the land like an 
 earthquake, and, toppling down its " high steeples," had made many 
 
 " An heap of lime and sand, 
 For the screech-owl to build her baleful bower." 
 
 Such were the ruins he looked upon, cumbering the ground where, forty years 
 before, stood the magnificent abbey whose charters reached back to the days of 
 the Kings of Mercia. 
 
 The last great building of the Abbey of Evesham is the only one properly 
 belonging to the monastery which has escaped destruction. The campanile 
 which formed an entrance to the conventual cemetery was commenced by Abbot 
 Lichfield in 1533. In 1539 the good abbot resigned the office which he had 
 held for twenty-six years. His successor was placed in authority for a few 
 months to carry on the farce which was enacting through the kingdom, of a 
 voluntary grant and surrender of all the remaining possessions of the religious 
 houses, which preceded the Act of 1539 "for dissolution of abbeys." Leland, 
 who visited the place within a year or two after the suppression, " rambling to 
 and fro in this nation, and in making researches into the bowels of antiquity,"* 
 says, " In the town is no hospital, or other famous foundation, but the late 
 abbey." The destruction must indeed have been rapid. The house and site 
 of the monastery were granted to Philip Hobby, with a remarkable exception ; 
 namely, " all the bells and lead of the church and belfry." The roof of this 
 magnificent fabric thus went first ; and in a few years the walls became a stone- 
 quarry. Fuller, writing about a century afterwards, says of the abbey, " By a 
 long lease it was in the possession of one Mr. Andrewes, father and son ; whose 
 grandchild, living now at Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, hath better thriven, 
 by God's blessing on his own industry, than his father and grandfather did with 
 Evesham Abbey ; the sale of the stones whereof he imputeth a cause of their 
 ill success."! All was swept away. The abbey-church, with its sixteen altars, 
 and its hundred and sixty-four gilded pillars,! its chapter-house, its cloisters, 
 its library, refectory, dormitory, buttery, and treasury ; its almery, granary, 
 and storehouse ; all the various buildings for the service of the church, and for 
 the accommodation of eighty-nine religious inmates and sixty-five servants, 
 were, with a few exceptions, ruins in the time of William Shakspere. Habing- 
 don, who has left a manuscript * Survey of Worcestershire,' written about two 
 centuries ago, says, " Let us but guess what this monastery now dissolved was 
 in former days by the gate-house yet remaining ; which, though deformed with 
 age, is as large and stately as any at this time in the kingdom." That gateway 
 has since perished. Of the great mass of the conventual buildings Habingdon 
 states that nothing was left beyond " a huge deal of rubbish overgrown with 
 grass.'' One beautiful gateway, however, formerly the entrance to the chapter- 
 house, yet remains even to our day. It admits us to a large garden, now let 
 
 » Wood, 'Athense Oxon.' t Church History. 
 
 % Dugdale's ' Monasticon,' ed. 1819, vol. ii., p. 12. 
 178
 
 ^m 
 
 out in small allotments to poor and industrious inhabitants of Evesham. The 
 change is very striking. The independent possession of a few roods of land 
 may perhaps bestow as much comfort upon the labourers of Evesham as their 
 former dependence upon the conventual buttery. But we cannot doubt that, 
 for a long course of years, the sudden and violent dissolution of that great 
 abbey must have produced incalculable poverty and wretchedness. Its 
 princely revenues were seized upon by the heartless despot, to be applied to 
 his unbridled luxury and his absurd wars. The same process of destruction 
 and appropriation was carried on throughout the country. The Church, 
 always a gentle landlord, was succeeded in its possessions by the grasping 
 creatures of the Crown ; the almsgiving of the religious houses was at an 
 end ; and then came the age of vagabondage and of poor-laws. The general 
 effects of the dissolution of the abbeys have been well described by Edmund 
 Howes : — 
 
 " In the time of Henry VIII. the clergy was exceeding rich and power- 
 ful, and were endowed with wondrous stately palaces and great possessions, so 
 as in every city, and county, and towns corporate, and in very many remote 
 places, then were very strong and sumptuous houses for religious persons : as 
 abbeys, priories, friaries, monks regular, minories, chantries, nunneries, and 
 such-like ; at which time the clergy grew proud, negligent, and secure, presum- 
 ing, like the Knights Templars, upon their proper greatness, as well in regard 
 of the reasons aforesaid, as that every Lord Abbot and Lord Prior that wore 
 mitre sat in the upper Parliament and had free voices, as Barons, subsistent 
 with the Bishops. The Lords, and Ladies Abbesses, of which houses were 
 usually of noble birth, and sometime of the blood royal, as well women as men ; 
 for by this time, through the charitable devotion and special affection of former 
 kings, princes, peers, and common people, the monasteries were so much 
 increased, gloriously builded and adorned, and plenteously endowed with large 
 privileges, possessions, and all things necessary. Albeit they relieved the poor, 
 and raised no rents, nor took excessive fines, yet they many ways neglected 
 N 2 179
 
 WILLIAM siiaxspere: 
 
 their duty to God and man, being verily persuaded tlicir estate and safety to 
 be more safe and secure than ever was any condition of people, because* their 
 houses were repaired, their rents increased, their churches new builded and 
 beautified, even to the very day of their general dissolution, which came sud- 
 denly upon them, like the universal deluge. For, whilst the religious persons 
 thus flattered and secured themselves, the King obtained the ecclesiastical 
 supremacy into his particular possession, and therewithal had power given him 
 by Parliament, to survey and reform the abuses of all those houses and persons 
 above said : but the King, because he would go the next way to work, over- 
 threw them, razed them ; many ruins of them remain a testimony thereof to this 
 day : whereat many of the peers and common people murmured, because they 
 expected that the abuses should have been only reformed, and the rest have 
 still remained. The general plausible project which caused the Parliament 
 consent unto the reformation or alteration of the monasteries was that the 
 King's exchequer should for ever be enriched, the kingdom and nobility 
 strengthened and increased, and the common subjects acquainted [acquitted] 
 and freed from all former services and taxes, to wit, that the abbots, monks, 
 friars, and nuns, being suppressed, that then in their places should be created 
 forty earls, threescore barons, and three thousand knights, and forty thousand 
 soldiers, with skilful captains, and competent maintenance for them all, ever 
 out of the ancient churches' revenues, so as, in so doing, the King and succes- 
 sors should never want of treasure of their own, nor have cause to be beholding 
 to the common subjects, neither should the people be any more charged with 
 loans, subsidies, and fifteens. Since which time, there have been more statute- 
 laws, subsidies, and fifteens than five hundred years before. And not long 
 after that the King had subsidies granted, and borrowed great sums of money, 
 and died in debt, and the forenamed religious houses were utterly ruinated, 
 whereat the clergy, peers, and common people were all sore grieved, but could 
 not help it."* 
 
 The sense which we justly entertain of the advantages of the Reformation has 
 accustomed us to shut our eyes to the tremendous evils which must have been 
 produced by the iniquitous spoliations of the days of Henry VIII. and Edward 
 VI. The religious houses, whatever might have been their abuses, were centres 
 of civilization. Leland says, "There was no town at Evesham before the found- 
 ation of the abbey." Wherever there was a well-endowed religious house, 
 there was a large and a regular expenditure, employing the local industry in 
 the way best calculated to promote the happiness of the population. Under 
 this expenditure, not only did handicrafts flourish, but the arts were encouraged 
 in no inconsiderable degree. The commissioners employed to take surrender 
 of the monasteries in Warwickshire reported of the nunnery of Polsworth, 
 " that in this town were then forty-four tenements, and but one plough, the 
 residue of the inhabitants being artificers, who had their livelihood by this 
 house."f In another place Dugdale says, " Nor is it a little observable that, 
 whilst the monasteries stood, there was no act for relief of the poor, so amply 
 
 * Continuation of Stow's 'Chronicle.' t Dugdale's 'Warwickshire,' p. 800. 
 
 ISO
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 did those houses gi've succour to them that were in want ; whereas in the next 
 age, namely 39th of Elizabeth, no less than eleven bills were brought into the 
 House of Commons for that purpose."* We have little doubt that the judi- 
 cious encouragement of industry in the immediate neighbourhood of each 
 monastery did a great deal more to render a state provision for the poor unne- 
 cessary than the accustomed " succour to those who were in want." The bene- 
 volence of the religious houses was systematic and uniform. It was not the 
 ostentatious and improvident almsgiving which would raise up an idle pauper 
 population upon their own lands. The poor, as far as we can judge from the 
 acts of law-makers, did not become a curse to the country, and were not dealt 
 with in the spirit of a detestable severity, until the law- makers had dried up 
 the sources of their profitable industry. Leland, writing immediately after 
 the dissolution of the Abbey of Evesham, says of the town that it is " meetly 
 large and well builded with timber ; the market-sted is fair and large ; there 
 be divers pretty streets in the town." While the abbey stood there was an 
 annual disbursement there going forward which has been computed to be equal 
 to eighty thousand pounds of our present money. f The revenues, principally 
 
 * Dugdale's ' Warwickshire/ p. 803. 
 + ' History of Evesham,' by George May, A remarkably intelligent local guide. 
 
 air MiiiS; 
 
 iSii 
 
 [The Parish Caurches, Evesham.]
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE ■ 
 
 derived fvom manors and tenements in eight different counties, are seized upon 
 by the Crown. The site of the abbey is sold or granted to a private person, 
 who will derive his immediate advantage by the rapid destruction of a pile of 
 buildings which the piety and magnificence of five or six centuries had been 
 rearing. More than a hundred and fifty inmates of this monastery are turned 
 loose upon the world, a few with miserable pensions, but the greater number 
 reduced to absolute indigence. Half the population at least of the town ot 
 Evesham must have derived a subsistence from the expenditure of these in- 
 mates, and this fountain is now almost wholly dried up. In the youth of 
 William Shakspere it is impossible that Evesham could have been other than a 
 ruined and desolate place. Not only would its monastic buildings be destroyed, 
 but its houses would be untenanted and dilapidated ; its reduced population 
 idle and dispirited. Its two beautiful parish churches, situated close to the 
 precincts of the abbey, escaped the common destruction of 1539 ; but till 
 within the last seven years that of St. Lawrence had been long disused, and 
 had fallen into ruin. It is now restored; for after three centuries of destruc- 
 tion and neglect we have begun to cherish some respect for what remains of our 
 noble ecclesiastical edifices. 
 
 The act for the suppression of the smaller religious houses (27th Henry 
 VIII.) recites that "manifest sin, vicious, carnal, and abominable living, is 
 daily used and committed amongst the little and small abbeys, priories, and 
 other religious houses." But in suppressing and confiscating all such small 
 houses, whose annual expenditure is not two hundred pounds, the same statute 
 affirms that, in the " great solemn monasteries of this realm, thanks be to God, 
 religion is right well kept and observed." The smaller houses were destroyed, 
 according to the statute, through the ardent desire of the King's most royal 
 majesty for "the increase, advancement, and exaltation of true doctrine and 
 virtue in the said church." And yet, in four years, the "great solemn 
 monasteries of this realm, wherein, thanks be to God, religion is right well kept 
 and observed," were also utterly suppressed and annihilated, under the pre- 
 tence that they had been voluntarily surrendered to the King. It was the 
 policy of the unscrupulous reformers — who, whatever service they may ulti- 
 mately have worked in the destruction of superstitious observances, were, as 
 politicians, the most dishonest and rapacious — it was their policy, when (to 
 use their own heartless cant) they had driven away the crows and destroyed 
 their nesi.3, to heap every opprobrium upon the heads of the starving and 
 houseless brethren, of whom it has been computed that fifty thousand were 
 wandering through the land. The young Shakspere was in all probability 
 brought into contact with some of the aged men who had been driven from 
 the peaceful homes of their youth, where they had been brought up in scholastic 
 exercises, and had looked forward to advance in honourable office, each in his 
 little world. Some one of the Grey Friars of Coventry, or the Benedictines of 
 Evesham, must he nave encountered, hovering round the scenes of their ancient 
 prosperity ; sheltered perhaps in the cottage of some old servant who could 
 labour with his hands, and upon whom the common misfortune therefore had 
 
 m
 
 [Old Houses, Evesham.] 
 
 fallen lightly. The friars of llie future great dramatist would, of necessity, be 
 characters formed either out of his early observation, or moulded according to 
 the general impressions of his early associates. In his mature life the race 
 would be extinct. These his dramatic representations are wonderfully consist- 
 ent ; and it is manifest that he looked upon the persecuted order with pity and 
 with respect. It was for Chaucer to satirize the monastic life in the days of its 
 greatness and abundance. It was for this rare painter of manners to show the 
 grasping, dissimulating friar, sitting down upon the churl's bench, and endea- 
 vouring to frighten or wheedle the bed-ridden man out of his money : — 
 
 " Thomas, nought of your tresor I desire 
 As for myself, but that all our coveut 
 To pray for you is aye so diligent." 
 
 The ridicule in those times of the Church's pride might be salutary ; but other 
 days had come. The most just and tolerant moralist that ever helped to dis- 
 encumber men of their hatreds and prejudices has consistently endeavoured to 
 represent the monastic character as that of virtue and benevolence. One of 
 Shakspere's earliest plays is Romeo and Juliet ; and many of the rhymed por- 
 tions of that delicious tragedy might have been the desultory compositions of a 
 very young poet, to be hereafter moulded into the dramatic form. Such is the, 
 graceful soliloquy which first introduces Friar Lawrence. The kind old man 
 going forth from his cell in the morning twilight to fill his osier basket with 
 weeds and flowers, and moralizing on the properties of plants which at once 
 yield poison and medicine, has all the truth of individual portraiture. But 
 Friar Lawrence is also the representative of a class. The Infirmarist of a mo- 
 nastic house, who had charge of the sick brethren, was often in the early days 
 of medical science their sole physician. The book-knowledge and the expe- 
 
 183
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 rience of such a valuable member of a conventual body would still allow hiin 
 to exercise useful functions when thrust into the world ; and the young Shak- 
 spere may have known some kindly old man, full of axiomatic wisdom, and 
 sufficiently confident in his own management, like the well-meaning Friar Law- 
 rence. In Much Ado about Nothing, it is the friar who, when Hero is unjustly 
 accused by him who should have been her husband, vindicates her reputation 
 with as much sagacity as charitable zeal : — ■ 
 
 " I have mark'd 
 A thousand blushing apparitions start 
 Into her face ; a thousand innocent shames 
 In angel whiteness bear away those blushes ; 
 And in her eye there hath appear'd a fire, 
 To burn the errors that these princes hold 
 Against her maiden truth : — Call me a fool ; 
 Trust not my reading, nor my observations, 
 Which with experimental seal doth warrant 
 The tenor of my book ; trust not my age, 
 My reverence, calling, nor divinity, 
 If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here 
 Under some biting error." 
 
 In Measure for Measure the whole plot is carried on by the Duke assuming the 
 reverend manners, and professing the active benevolence, of a friar ; and his 
 agents and confidants are Friar Thomas and Friar Peter. In an age when the 
 prejudices of the multitude were flattered and stimulated by abuse and ridicule 
 of the ancient ecclesiastical character, Shakspere always exhibits it so as to 
 command respect and affection. The poisoning of King John by a monk, " a 
 resolved villain," is despatched by him with little more than an allusion. The 
 Germans believe that Shakspere wrote the Old King John, in two Parts. The 
 vulgar exaggeration of the basest calumnies against the monastic character 
 satisfies us that the play was written by one who formed a much lower estimate 
 than Shakspere did of the dignity of the poet's office, as an instructor of the 
 people. 
 
 A deep reverence for antiquity is one of the clearest indications of the inti- 
 mate union of the poetical and the philosophical temperament. An able writer 
 of our own day has indeed said, " In some, the love of antiquity produces a sort, 
 of fanciful illusion : and the very sight of those buildings, so magnificent in 
 their prosperous hour, so beautiful even in their present ruin, begets a sympathy 
 for those who founded and inhabited them."* But, rightly considered, the fanci- 
 ful illusion becomes a reasonable principle. Those who founded and inhabited 
 these monastic buildings were for ages the chief directors of the national mind. 
 Their possessions were, in truth, the possessions of all classes of the people. The 
 highest offices in those establishments were in some cases bestowed upon the 
 noble and the wealthy, but they were open to the very humblest. The studious 
 and the devout here found a shelter and a solace. The learning of the monastic 
 bodies has been underrated ; the ages in which they flourished have been 
 
 * Hallam's ' Constitutional History of England.' 
 184
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 called dark ages ; but they were almost the sole depositaries of the knowledge 
 of the land. They were the historians, the grammarians, the poets. They 
 accumulated magnificent libraries. They were the barriers that checked the 
 universal empire of brute force. They cherished an ambition higher and more 
 permanent than could belong to the mere martial spirit. They stood between 
 the strong and the weak. They held the oppressor in subjection to that power 
 which results from the cultivation, however misdirected, of the spiritual part of 
 our nature. Whilst the proud baron continued to live in the same dismal castle 
 that his predatory fathers had built or won, the churchmen went on from age 
 to age adding to their splendid edifices, and demanding a succession of ingeni- 
 ous artists to carry out their lofty ideas. The devotional exercises of their life 
 touched the deepest feelings of the human heart. Their solemn services, handed 
 down from a remote antiquity, gave to music its most ennobling cultivation ; 
 and the most beautiful of arts thus became the vehicle of the loftiest enthusiasm. 
 Individuals amongst them, bringing odium upon the class, might be sordid, 
 luxurious, idle, in some instances profligate. It is the nature of great pros- 
 perity and apparent security to produce these results. But it was not the 
 mandate of a pampered tyrant, nor the edicts of a corrupt parliament, that 
 could destroy the reverence which had been produced by an intercourse of 
 eight hundred years with the great body of the people. The form of vene- 
 rable institutions may be changed, but their spirit is indestructible. The 
 holy places and mansions of the Church were swept away ; but the memory 
 of them could not be destroyed. Their ruins, recent as they were, were 
 still antiquities, full of instruction. The lightning had blasted the old oak, 
 and its green leaves were no longer put forth ; but the gnarled trunk was a 
 thing not to be despised. The convulsion which had torn the land was of a 
 nature to make deep thinkers. After the wonder and the disappointment of 
 great revolutions have subsided, there must always be an outgushing of 
 earnest thought. The form which that thought may assume may be the result 
 of accident ; it may be poetical or metaphysical, historical or scientific. By a 
 combination of circumstances, — perhaps by the circumstance of one man being 
 born who had the most marvellous insight into human nature, and whose mind 
 could penetrate all the disguises of the social state, — the drama became the 
 great exponent of the thought of the age of Elizabeth. It was altogether a new 
 form for English poetry to put on. The drama, as we have seen, had been the 
 humblest vehicle for popular excitement. When the Church ceased to use it 
 as an instrument of instruction, it fell into the hands of illiterate mimics. The 
 courtly writers were too busy with their affectations and their flatteries to 
 recognise its power, and its especial applicability to the new state of society. 
 Those who were of the people ; who watched the manifestations of the popular 
 feeling and understanding ; whose minds had been stirred up by the political 
 storms, the violence of which had indeed passed away, but under whose in- 
 fluence the whole social state still heaved like a disturbed sea ; — those were to 
 build up our great national drama. But, at the period of which we are speak- 
 ing, they were for the most part boys, or very young men. It is perhaps for- 
 
 185
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE : 
 
 tunate for us that the most eminent of these was introduced to the knowledge 
 of life under no particular advantages ; was not dedicated to any one of the 
 learned professions ; was cloistered not in an university ; was an adherent of 
 no party ; was obliged to look forward to the necessity of earning his own main- 
 tenance, and yet not humiliated by poverty and meanness. William Shakspere 
 looked upon the very remarkable state of society with which he was surrounded, 
 with a free spirit. But he saw at one and the same time the present and the 
 past. He knew that the entire social state is a thing of progress ; that the 
 characters of men are as much dependent upon remote influences as upon the 
 matters with which they come in daily contact; that the individual essentially 
 belongs to the general, and the temporary to the universal. His drama can 
 never be antiquated, because he primarily deals with whatever is permanent 
 and indestructible in the aspects of external nature, and in the constitution of 
 the human mind. But at the same time it is no less a faithful transcript of the 
 prevailing modes of thought even of his own day. Individual peculiarities, in 
 his time called humours, he left to others. 
 
 This principle of looking at life with an utter disregard of all party and 
 sectarian feelings, of massing all his observations upon individual character, 
 could have proceeded only from a profound knowledge of the past, and a 
 more than common apprehension of the future. As we have endeavoured to 
 show, the localities amidst which he lived were highly favourable to his culti- 
 vation of a poetical reverence for antiquity. But his unerring observation of 
 the present prevented the past becoming to him an illusion. He had. always 
 an earnest patriotism ; he had a strong sense of the blessings which had been 
 conferred upon his own day through the security won out of peril and suffering 
 by the middle classes. The destruction of the old institutions, after the first 
 evil effects had been mitigated by the energy of the people, had diffused 
 capital, and had caused it to be employed with more activity. But he, who 
 scarcely ever stops to notice the political aspects of his own day, cannot forbear 
 an indignant comment upon the sufferings of the very poorest, which, if not 
 caused by, were at least coincident with, the great spoliation of the property of 
 the Church. Poor Tom, "who is whipped from tithing to tithing, and stocked, 
 punished, and imprisoned,"* was no fanciful portrait; he is the creature of the 
 pauper legislation of half a century. Exhortations in the churches, " for the 
 furtherance of the relief of such as were in unfeigned misery," were prescribed 
 by the statute of the 1st of Edward VI.; but the same statute directs that the 
 unhappy wanderer, after certain forms of proving that he has not offered him- 
 self for work, shall be marked V with a hot iron upon his breast, and adjudged 
 to be "a slave" for two years to him who brings him before justices of the 
 peace ; and the statute goes on to direct the slave-owner " to cause the said 
 slave to work by beating, chaining, or otherwise." Three years afterwards the 
 statute is repealed, seeing that it could not be carried into effect bv reason or 
 the multitude of vagabonds and the extremity of their wants. The whipping 
 and the stocking were applied by successive enactments of Elizabeth. The 
 
 * King Lear, Act in., Scene jv, 
 186
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 gallows, too, was always at hand to make an end of the wanderers when, 
 hunted from tithing to tithing, they inevitably became thieves. Nothing but 
 a compulsory provision for the maintenance of the poor could then have saved 
 England from a fearful Jacquerie. It cannot reasonably be doubted that the 
 vast destruction of capital by the dissolution of the monasteries threv for many 
 years a quantity of superfluous labour upon the yet unsettled capital of the 
 ordinary industry of the country. That Shakspere had witnessed much of this 
 misery is evident from his constant disposition to descry " a soul of goodness 
 in things evil," and from his indignant hatred of the heartlessness of petty 
 authority : — 
 
 " Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand." * 
 
 And yet, with many social evils about him, the age of Shakspere's youth was 
 one in which the people were making a great intellectual progress. The poor 
 were ill provided for. The Church was in an unsettled state, attacked by the 
 natural restlessness of those who looked upon the Reformation with regret and 
 hatred, and by the rigid enemies of its traditionary ceremonies and ancient 
 observances, who had sprung up in its bosom. The promises which had been 
 made that education should be fostered by the State had utterly failed ; for 
 even the preservation of the universities, and the protection and establishment 
 of a few grammar-schools, had been unwillingly conceded by the avarice of 
 those daring statesmen who had swallowed up the riches of the ancient esta- 
 blishment. The genial spirit of the English yeomanry had received a check 
 from the intolerance of the powerful sect who frowned upon all sports and 
 recreations — who despised the arts — who held poets and pipers to be " cater- 
 pillars of a commonwealth." But yet the wonderful stirring up of the intellect 
 of the nation had made it an age favourable for the cultivation of the highest 
 literature ; and most favourable to those who looked upon society, as the young 
 Shakspere must have looked, in the spirit of cordial enjoyment and practical 
 wisdom. 
 
 * Lear, Act iv., Scene vi. 
 
 [Bengewurth Church, seen through the Arch of the Bell-TWer.]
 
 
 Jffisii Ie ifi 
 
 SR3^^P^1 
 
 [Welford. The Wake.] 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SOCIAL HOURS. 
 
 I.— The Wake. 
 
 Decay, followed by reproduction, is the order of nature; and so, if the vital 
 power of society be not extinct, the men of one generation attempt to repair 
 what the folly or the wickedness of their predecessors has destroyed. Sump- 
 tuous abbeys were pulled down in the reign of Henry VIII.; but humble parish - 
 churches rose up in the reign of Elizabeth. Within four miles of Stratford, on 
 the opposite bank of the Avon, is the pretty village of Welford; and here 
 is a church which bears the date of 1568 carved upon its wall. Although the 
 church was new, the people would cling, and perhaps more pertinaciously than 
 ever, to the old usages connected with their church. They certainly would 
 188
 
 A BIOfiRAPIIY 
 
 not forego their Wake, — " an ancient custom among the Christians of this island 
 to keep a feast every year upon a certain week or day in remembrance of the 
 finishing of the building of their parish-church, and of the first solemn dedi- 
 cating of it to the service of God."* For fifty years after the period of which 
 we are writing, the wakes prevailed, more or less, throughout England. The 
 Puritans had striven to put them down ; but the opposite party in the Church 
 as zealously encouraged them. Charles I. spoke the voice of this party in one 
 of his celebrated declarations for sports, which gave such deep, and in some 
 respects just, offence. In 1633 the King's declaration in favour of wakes was 
 as follows : — " In some counties of this kingdom, his Majesty finds that, under 
 pretence of taking away abuses, there hath been a general forbidding, not only 
 of ordinary meetings, but of the feasts of the dedication of the churches, com- 
 monly called Wakes. Now, his Majesty's express will and pleasure is, that 
 these feasts, with others, shall be observed; and that his justices of the peace, 
 in their several divisions, shall look to it, both that all disorders there may be 
 prevented or punished, and that all neighbourhood and freedom, with manlike 
 and lawful exercises, be used."f Neighbourhood and freedom, and manlike 
 exercises, were the old English characteristics of the wakes. At the period 
 when William Shakspere was just entering upon life, with the natural disposi- 
 tion of youth, strongest perhaps in the more imaginative, to mingle in the 
 recreations and sports of his neighbours with the most cordial spirit of enjoy- 
 ment, the Puritans were beginning to denounce every assembly of the people 
 that strove to keep up the character of merry England. Stubbes, writing at 
 this exact epoch, says, describing " The manner of keeping of Wakesses," that 
 " every town, parish, and village, some at one time of the year, some at an- 
 other, but so that every one keep his proper day assigned and appropriate to 
 itself (which they call their wake-day), useth to make great preparation and 
 provision for good cheer ; to the which all their friends and kinsfolks, far and 
 near, are invited." Such were the friendly meetings in all mirth and freedom 
 which the proclamation of Charles calls " neighbourhood." The Puritans de- 
 nounced them as occasions of gluttony and drunkenness. Excess, no doubt, 
 was occasionally there. The old hospitality could scarcely exist without excess. 
 But it must not be forgotten that, whatever might be the distinction of ranks 
 amongst our ancestors in all matters in which " coat-armour " was concerned, 
 there was a hearty spirit of social intercourse, constituting a practical equality 
 between man and man, which enabled all ranks to mingle without offence and 
 without suspicion in these public ceremonials ; and thus the civilization of the 
 educated classes told upon the manners of the uneducated. There is no writer 
 who furnishes us a more complete picture of this ancient freedom of intercourse 
 than Chaucer. The company who meet at the Tabard, and eat the victual of 
 the best, and drink the strong wine, and submit themselves to the merry host, 
 and tell their tales upon the pilgrimage without the slightest restraint, are not 
 only the very high and the very humble, but the men of professions and the 
 
 * Brand's 'Popular Antiquities,' by Ellis, 1841, vol. ii., p. 1. 
 t Rushworth's ' Collections,' quoted in Harris's ' Life of Charles I.' 
 
 189
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 men of trade, who in these later days too often jostle and look big upon the de- 
 bateable land of gentility. And so, no doubt, this freedom existed to a consi- 
 derable extent even in the days of Shakspere. In the next generation Herriclc, 
 a parish priest, writes, — 
 
 " Come, Anthea, let ns two 
 Go to feast, as others do. 
 Tarts and custards, creams and cakes, 
 Are the junkets still at wakes : 
 Unto which the tribes resort, 
 Where the business is the sport." 
 
 With " the tribes " were mingled the stately squire, the reverend parson, and 
 the well-fed yeoman ; and, what was of more importance, their wives and 
 daughters there exchanged smiles and courtesies. The more these meetings 
 were frowned upon by the severe, the more would they be cherished by those 
 who thought not that the proper destiny of man was unceasing labour and 
 mortification. Some even of the most pure would exclaim, as Burton ex- 
 claimed after there had been a contest for fifty years upon the matter, " Let 
 them freely feast, sing, and dance, have their puppet-plays, hobby-horses, 
 tabors, crowds, bagpipes, &c, play at ball and barley-breaks, and what sports 
 and recreations they like best ! " * 
 
 From sunrise, then, upon a bright summer morning, are the country people 
 in their holiday dresses hastening to Welford. It is the Baptist's day. There 
 were some amongst them who had lighted the accustomed bonfires upon the 
 hills on the vigil of the saint ; and perhaps a maiden or two, clinging to the 
 ancient superstitions, had tremblingly sat in the church-porch in the solemn 
 twilight, or more daringly had attempted at midnight to gather the fern-seed 
 which should make mortals "walk invisible." Over the bridges at Binton 
 come the hill people from Temple Grafton and Billesley. Arden pours out its 
 scanty population from the woodland hamlets. Bidford and Barton send in 
 their tribes through the flat pastures on either bank of the river. From Strat- 
 ford there is a pleasant and not circuitous walk by the Avon's side, now leading 
 through low meadows, now ascending some gentle knoll, where a long reach of 
 the stream may be traced, and now close upon the sedges and alders, with a 
 glimpse of the river sparkling through the green. It is a merry company who 
 follow along this narrow road ; and there is a clear voice carolling 
 
 " Jog on, jog on, the foot-path, way, 
 And merrily hent the stile-a : 
 A merry heart goes all the day, 
 Your Bad tires in a mile-a." f 
 
 They soon cross the ferry at Ludington, and, passing through the village cf 
 Weston, they hear the church-bells of Welford sending forth a merry peal. At 
 
 ' • Anatomy of Melancholy, Part II., Sec. 2. 
 
 t Winter's Tale, Act iv., Scene u. The music of this song is given in the Pictorial Shakspere, 
 and in Mr. Chappell's admirable collection of ' English National Airs.' We are indebted to Mr, 
 Chappell for many of the facts connected with our ancient music noticed in the present chapter. 
 190
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 length they reach the village. There is cordial welcome in every house. The 
 tables of the Manor Hall are set out with a substantial English breakfast ; and 
 the farmer's kitchen emulates the same bounteous hospitality. In a little while 
 the church-tower sends forth another note. A single bell tolls for matins. The 
 church soon fills with a zealous congregation ; not a seat is empty. The service 
 for this particular feast is attended to with pious reverence ; and when the 
 people are invited to assist in its choral parts, they still show that, however the 
 national taste for music may have been injured by the suppression of the 
 chauntries, they are familiar with the fine old chaunts of their fathers, and can 
 perform them with spirit and exactness, each according to his ability, but the 
 most with some knowledge of musical science. The homily is ended. The 
 sun shines glaringly through the white glass of this new church ; and some oi 
 the Stratford people may think it fortunate that their old painted windows are 
 not yet all removed.* The dew is off the green that skirts the churchyard ; 
 the pipers and crowders are ready ; the first dance is to be chosen. Thomas 
 Heywood, one of Shakspere's pleasant contemporaries, has left us a dialogue 
 which shows how embarrassing was such a choice : — 
 
 " JacTc. Come, what shall it be ? ' Rogero ? ' 
 Jenhin. ' Rogero ? ' no ; we will dance ' The beginning of the world.' 
 Sisly. I love no dance so well as ' John, come kiss me now.' 
 Nicholas. I have ere now deserv'd a cushion ; call for the ' Cushion-dance.' 
 Roger. For my part, I like nothing so well as ' Tom Tyler.' 
 Jenhin. No ; we'll have ' The hunting of the fox.' 
 Jack. ' The hay, The hay ; ' there's nothing like ' The. hay.' 
 JcnJcin. Let me speak for all, and we'll have ' Sellenger's round.' "t 
 
 Jenkin, who rejects ' Rogero,' is strenuous for * The Beginning of the World,' 
 and he carries his proposal by giving it the more modern name of ' Sellenger's 
 Round.' The tune was as old as Henry VIII. ; for it is mentioned in 'The 
 History of Jack of Newbury,' by Thomas Deloney, whom Kemp called the 
 great ballad-maker : — " In comes a noise of musicians in tawny coats, who, 
 taking off their caps, asked if they would have any music ? The widow 
 answered, 'No ; they were merry enough.' 'Tut!' said the old man; 'let us 
 hear, good fellows, what you can do ; and play me The Beginning of the 
 World.' " A quaint tune is this, by whatever name it be known — an air not 
 boisterous in its character, but calm and graceful ; — a round dance " for as 
 many as will ; " who " take hands and go round twice, and back again," with a 
 succession of figures varying the circular movement, and allowing the display 
 of individual grace and nimbleness : — 
 
 * "AH images, shrines, tabernacles, roodlofts, and monuments of idolatry are removed, taken 
 down, and defaced ; only the stories in glass windows excepted, which, for want of sufficient store 
 of new stuff, and by reason of extreme charge that should grow by the alteration of the same into 
 white panes throughout the realm, are not altogether abolished in most places at once, but by httle 
 and little suffered to decay, that white glas3 may be provided and set up in their rooms." — Harri- 
 son's 'Description of England : ' 1586. 
 
 t A Woman Killed with Kindness. 1600. 
 
 191
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE : 
 
 " Each one, tripping on his toe, 
 Will be here with mop and mov.e."* 
 
 The countryfolks of Shakspere s time put their hearts into the dance ; and, as 
 their ears were musical by education, their energy was at once joyous and 
 elegant. Glad hearts are there even amongst those who are merely lookers-on 
 upon this scene. The sight of happiness is in itself happiness ; and there was 
 real happiness in the " unreproved pleasures" of the youths and maidens 
 
 " Tripping the comely country-round 
 With daffodils and daisies crown'd." t 
 
 If Jenkin carried the voices for ' Sellenger's Round,' Sisly must next be gratified 
 with ' John, come kiss me now.' Let it not be thought that Sisly called for a 
 vulgar tune. This was one of the most favourite airs of Queen Elizabeth's 
 ' Virginal Book,' and after being long popular in England it transmigrated into 
 a "godly song" of Scotland. The tune is in two parts, of which the first part 
 only is in the ' Virginal Book,' and this is a sweet little melody full of grace and 
 tenderness. The more joyous revellers may now desire something more stir- 
 ring, and call for ' Packington's Pound,' as old perhaps as the days of Henry VIII., 
 and which survived for a couple of centuries in the songs of Ben Jonson and 
 Gay. J The controversy about players, pipers, and dancers has fixed the date 
 of some of these old tunes, showing us to what melodies the young Shakspere 
 might have moved joyously in a round or a galliard. Stephen Gosson, for 
 example, sneers at ' Trenchmore.' But we know that ' Trenchmore ' was of an 
 earlier date than Gosson's book. A writer who came twenty years after Gos- 
 son shows us that the ' Trenchmore ' was scarcely to be reckoned amongst the 
 graceful dances : " In this case, like one dancing the ' Trenchmore,' he stamped 
 up and down the yard, holding his hips in his hands. "|| It was the leaping, 
 romping dance, in which the exuberance of animal spirits delights. Burton 
 says — " We must dance ' Trenchmore ' over tables, chairs, and stools." Selden 
 has a capital passage upon ' Trenchmore,' showing us how the sports of the 
 country were adopted by the Court, until the most boisterous of the dancing 
 delights of the people fairly drove out " state and ancientry." He says, in his 
 ' Table Talk,' — "The Court of England is much altered. At a solemn dancing, 
 first you had the grave measures, then the corantoes and the galliards, and this 
 kept up with ceremony ; and at length to ' Trenchmore ' and the ' Cushion- 
 dance : ' then all the company dances, lord and groom, lady and kitchen-maid, 
 no distinction. So in our Court in Queen Elizabeth's time, gravity and state 
 were kept up ; in King James's time things were pretty well ; but in King 
 Charles's time there has been nothing but ' Trenchmore ' and the ' Cushion- 
 dance,' omnium gatherum, tolly polly, hoite come toite." It was in this spiri 
 that Charles II. at a court ball called for ' Cuckolds all arow,' which he said 
 
 * Tempest, Act iv., Scene II. f Herrick's 'Hesperidea.' 
 
 J See Ben Jonson's song in ' Bartholomew Fair,' beginning — 
 
 " My masters, and friends, and good people, draw near." 
 § See p. 56. || Deloney's 'Gentle Craft:' 1598. 
 
 192
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 was "the old dance of England."* From its name, and its jerking melody, this 
 would seem to be one of the country dances of parallel lines. They were each 
 danced by the people ; but the round dance must unquestionably have been the 
 most graceful. Old Burton writes of it with a fine enthusiasm : — " It was a 
 pleasant sight, to see those pretty knots and swimming figures. The sun and 
 union (some say) dance about the earth, the three upper planets about the sun 
 as their centre, — now stationary, now direct, now retrograde ; now in apoga?o, 
 then in pcrigrco ; now swift, then slow ; occidental, oriental ; they turn round, 
 jump and trace, ? and ? about the sun with those thirty-three Maculae or 
 Burbonian planets, circa solem saltuntcs Cytharedum, saith Fromundus. Four 
 Mediccan stars dance about Jupiter, two Austrian about Saturn, &c, and all 
 (belike) to the music of the spheres." f 'Joan's Placket,' the delightful old 
 tunc that we yet beat time to, when the inspiriting song of ' When I followed 
 a lass ' comes across our memories, J would be a favourite upon the green at 
 Welford ; and surely he who in after-times said, '* I did think by the excellent 
 constitution of thy leg it was formed under the star of a galliard,"§ might 
 strive not to resist the attraction of the air of ' Sweet Margaret/ and willingly 
 surrender himself to the inspiration of its gentle and its buoyant movements. 
 One dance he must take part in ; for even the squire and the squire's lady can- 
 not resist its charms, — the dance which has been in and out of fashion for two 
 
 * Pcpys's 'Memoirs,' Svo., vol., i. p. 359. 
 
 t 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' Part III., Sec. 2. Burton, the universal reader, might have 
 caught the idea from Sir John Davies's 'Orchestra; or, a Poem expressing tbe Antiquity and Ex- 
 cellency of Dancing:' — 
 
 " Dancimr, bright lady, then began to be, 
 When tbe first seeds -whereof the world did spring, 
 The fire, air, earth, and water, did agree, 
 By Love's persuasion, Nature's mighty king, 
 To leave their first disorder'd combating ; 
 And in a dance such measure to observe, 
 As all the world their motion should preserve. 
 
 Since when they still are earned in a round, 
 And, changing, come one in another's place ; 
 Yet do the}- neither mingle nor confound, 
 But every one doth keep the bounded space 
 Wherein the dance doth bid it turn or trace 
 This wondrous miracle did Love devise, 
 For dancing is Love's proper exercise. 
 
 Like this, he fram'd the gods' eternal bower, 
 
 And of a shapeless and confused mass, 
 
 By his through-piercing and digesting power, 
 
 The turned vault of heaven formed was : 
 
 "Whose starry wheels he hath so made to pass, 
 
 As that their movings do a music frame, 
 
 And they theinsolvos still dance unto the same." 
 
 X Love in a Yilla/o § Twelfth Night, Act L, Scene id. 
 
 Life. 193
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 centuries and a half, and has again asserted its rights m England, in despite of 
 waltz and quadrille. We all know, upon the most undoubted testimony, that 
 the Sir Roger de Coverley who to the lasting regret of all mankind caught a 
 cold at the County Sessions, and died, in 1712, was the great-grandson of the 
 worthy knight of Coverley, or Cowley, who " was inventor of that famous 
 country-dance which is called after him."* Who can doubt, then, that William 
 Shakspere might have danced this famous dance, in hall or on greensward, with 
 its graceful advancings and retirings, its bows and curtsies, its chain figures, its 
 pretty knots unravelled in simultaneous movement ? In vain for the young blood of 
 1580 might Stubbes denounce peril to body and mind in his outcry against the 
 " horrible vice of pestiferous dancing." The manner in which the first Puritans set 
 about making people better, after the fashion of a harsh nurse to a froward child, 
 was very remarkable. Stubbes threatens the dancers with lameness and broken 
 legs, as well as with severer penalties ; but, being constrained to acknowledge 
 that dancing " is both ancient and general, having been used ever in all ages as 
 well of the godly as of the wicked," he reconciles the matter upon the following 
 principle : — " If it be used for man's comfort, recreation, and godly pleasure, 
 privately (every sex distinct by themselves), whether with music or otherwise, 
 it cannot be but a very tolerable exercise." We doubt if this arrangement 
 would have been altogether satisfactory to the young men and maidens at the 
 Welford Wake, even if Philip Stubbes had himself appeared amongst them, 
 with his unpublished manuscript in his pocket, to take the place of the pipers, 
 crying out to them — " Give over, therefore, your occupations, you pipers, you 
 tiddlers, you minstrels, and you musicians, you drummers, you tabretters, you 
 fluters, and all other of that wicked brood." f Neither, when the flowing cup 
 was going round amongst the elders to song and story, would he have been 
 much heeded, had he himself lifted up his voice, exclaiming, " Wherefore should 
 the whole town, parish, village, and country, keep one and the same day, and 
 make such gluttonous feasts as they do? "X One young man might have an- 
 swered, " Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more 
 cakes and ale ?"§ 
 
 Crossing the Avon by the ancient mill of Welford, we descend the stream for 
 about a mile, till we reach the rising ground upon which stands the hamlet of 
 Hillborough. This is the " haunted Hillborough " of the lines which tradition 
 ascribes to Shakspere. || Assuredly the inhabitants of that fine old farm-house, 
 btill venerable in its massive walls and its mullioned windows, would be at the 
 wake at Welford. They press the neighbours from Stratford to go a little out 
 of their way homewards to accept their own hospitality. There is dance and 
 merriment within the house, and shovel-board and tric-trac for the sedentary. 
 But the evening is brilliant ; for the sun is not yet setting behind Bardon Hill, 
 and there is an early moon. There will be a game at Barley-Break in the field 
 before the old House. The lots are cast ; three damsels and three youths are 
 
 194 
 
 Spectator, Noa. 2 and 517. 1 Anatomy of Abuses. J Ibid. 
 
 § Twelfth Night, Act n., Scene in. fl Sec p. C9
 
 ■■-■ ^HvV 
 
 
 ' 4. 
 
 •i'^-.- 
 
 -» '-I '',, j 
 
 [Great Ilillburough. Barley-break.] 
 
 chosen for the sport ; a plot of ground is marked out into three compartments, 
 in each of which a couple is placed, — the middle division bearing the name of 
 hell. In that age the word was not used profanely nor vulgarly. Sidney and 
 Browne and Massinger describe the sport. The couple who are in this con- 
 demned place try to catch those who advance from the other divisions, and we 
 may imagine the noise and the laughter of the vigorous resistance and the coy 
 yieldings that sounded on Hillborough, and scared the pigeons from their old 
 dovecote. The difficulty of the game consisted in this — that the couple in the 
 middle place were not to separate, whilst the others might loose hands when- 
 ever they pleased. Sidney alludes to this peculiarity of the game : — 
 
 " There you may see, soon as the middle two 
 Do, coupled, towards either couple make, 
 They, false and fearful, do their hands undo." 
 
 But half a century after Sidney, the sprightliest of poets, Sir John Suckling, 
 described the game of Barley-break with unequalled vivacity : — 
 
 " Love, Reason, Hate, did once bespeak 
 Three mates to play at barley-break ; 
 Love, Folly took ; and Reason, Fancy ; 
 And Hate consorts with Pride ; so dance they : 
 Love coupled last, and so it fell 
 That Love and Folly were in hell. 
 
 They break, and Love would Reason moot, 
 But Hate was nimbler on her feet ; 
 Fancy looks for Pride, and thither 
 Hiea, and they two hug together : 
 
 - 
 
 1W>
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE : 
 
 Yet this new coupling still doth tell 
 That Love and Folly were in hell. 
 
 The rest do break again, and Friilo 
 Hath now got Reason on her side ; 
 Hate and Fancy meet, and stand 
 Untouch' d by Love in Folly's hand ; 
 Folly was dull, but Love ran well, 
 So Love and Folly were in hell." 
 
 The young Shakspere, whose mature writings touch lightly upon country 
 sports, but who mentions them always as familiar things, would be the foremost 
 in these diversions. He would "ride the wild mare with the boys,"* and 
 "play at quoits well/'f and "change places" at "handy-dandy,"]: and put out 
 all his strength in a jump, though he might not expect to "win a lady at leap- 
 frog,'^ and run the country-base" with " striplings," [| and be a "very good 
 bowler." ^J It was not in solitude only that he acquired his wisdom. He 
 knew 
 
 " All qualities, with a teamed spirit, 
 Of human dealings," * * 
 
 through his intercourse with his fellows, and not by meditating upon abstrac- 
 tions. The meditation was to apply the experience and raise it into philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 There is a temptation for the young men to make another day's holiday, 
 resting at Hillborough through the night. No sprites arc there to disturb the 
 rest which has been earned by exercise. Before the sun is up they are in the 
 dewy fields, for there is to be an otter-hunt below Bidford. The owner of the 
 Grange, who has succeeded to the monks of Evesham, has his pack of otter- 
 dogs. They are already under the marl-cliffs, busily seeking for the enemy of 
 all anglers. " Look ! down at the bottom of the hill there, in that meadow, 
 checkered with water-lilies and lady-smocks ; there you may see what work 
 they make ; look ! look ! you may see all busy ; men and dogs ; dogs and men ; 
 all busy." Thus does honest Izaak Walton describe such an animated scene 
 The otter-hunt is now rare in England ; but in those days, when field-sports 
 had the double justification of their exercise and of their usefulness, the otter- 
 hunt was the delight of the dwellers near rivers. Spear in hand, every root 
 and hole in the bank is tried by watermen and landsmen. The water-dog, as 
 the otter was called, is at length found in her fishy hole, near her whelps. She 
 takes to the stream, amidst the barking of dogs and the shouts of men \ horse- 
 men dash into the fordable places ; boatmen push hither and thither ; the dogs 
 have lost her, and there is a short silence ; for one instant she comes up to the 
 surface to breathe, and the dogs are after her. One dog has just seized her, 
 bit she bites him, and he swims away howling ; she is under again, and they 
 
 * Henry IV., Act n., Scene IV, f Ibid. % Lear, Act IV., Scene vi. 
 
 § Henry V., Act v., Scene ir. || Cyrubeline, Act v., Scene iv. 
 
 % Love's Labour 's Lost, Act v., Scene ii. ** OtbeVJo. Act m., Scene m. 
 
 li>3
 
 
 t.^.r'f.f 
 
 
 [Marl Cliffs, near Bidford.] 
 
 are at fault. Again she rises, or, in the technical language, vents. " Now 
 Sweetlips has her ; hold her, Svveetlips ! Now all the dogs have her ; some 
 above, and some under water : but now, now she is tired, and past losing." This 
 is the catastrophe of the otter-hunt according to Walton. Somerville, in his 
 grandiloquent blank verse, makes her die by the spears of the huntsmen. 
 
 When Izaak Walton and his friends have killed the otter, they go to their 
 sport of angling. Shakspere in three lines describes " the contemplative man's 
 recreation " as if he had enjoyed it : — 
 
 " The pleasantest angling is to see the fish 
 Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, 
 And greedily devour the treacherous bait." * 
 
 The oldest books upon angling have something of that half poetical, half devout 
 enthusiasm about the art which Walton made so delightful. Even the author 
 of the ' Treatise of Fishing with an Angle,' in the ' Book of St. Albans,' talks of 
 " the sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead-flowers," and the " melodious 
 harmony of fowls;" and concludes the 'Treatise' thus: — "Ye shall not use this 
 foresaid crafty disport for no covetyseness to the increasing and sparing of your 
 money only, but principally for your solace, and to cause the health of your 
 body, and specially or your soul ; for when ye purpose to go on your disports 
 in fishing ye will not desire greatly many persons with you, which might let 
 
 * Much Ado about Nothing, Act in., Scene i. 
 
 197
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 vou of your game. And then ye may serve God devoutly in saying affec 
 tuously your customable prayer, and thus doing ye shall eschew and void 
 many vices." * According to this good advice, with which he was doubtless 
 familiar, would the young poet go alone to fish in the quiet nooks of his Avon. 
 With his merry companions about him he would not try the water at BidforJ 
 on this day of the otter-hunt. 
 
 About a mile from the town of Bidford on the road to Stratford was, some twenty 
 years ago, an ancient crab-tree well known to the country round as Shakspere's 
 Crab-tree. The tradition which associates it with the name of Shakspere is, 
 like many other traditions regarding the poet, an attempt to embody the 
 general notion that his social qualities were as remarkable as his genius. In 
 an age when excess of joviality was by some considered almost a virtue, the 
 genial fancy of the dwellers at Stratford may have been pleased to confer upon 
 this crab-tree the honour of sheltering Shakspere from the dews of night, on 
 an occasion when his merrymakings had disqualified him from returning home- 
 ward, and he had laid down to sleep under its spreading branches. It is 
 scarcely necessary to enter into an examination of this apocryphal story. But 
 as the crab-tree is associated with Shakspere, it may fitly be made the scene of 
 some of his youthful exercises. He may "cleave Ve pin" and strike the 
 quintain in the neighbourhood of the crab-tree, as well as sleep heavily beneath 
 its shade. We shall diminish no honest enthusiasm by changing the assocb- 
 
 * 'The Treatyses perteynyng to ITawkynge, Iluutyngc, and Fissbynge with an Anglo.' 1496 
 
 ""•.'■■.!, '""jfSvi 
 
 yiidlox-d.]
 
 A BJOGIIAI'H*. 
 
 tion Indeed, although the crab-tree was long ago known by the name of 
 Shakspere's Crab-tree, the tradition that he was amongst a party who had. 
 accepted a challenge from the Bidford topers to try which could drink hardest, 
 and there bivouacked after the debauch, is difficult to be traced further than 
 the hearsay evidence of Mr. Samuel Ireland. In the same way, the merry 
 folks of Stratford will tell you to this day that the Falcon inn in that town was 
 the scene of Shakspere's nightly potations, after he had retired from London 
 to his native home ; and they will show you the shovel -board at which he 
 delighted to play. Harmless traditions, ye are yet baseless ! The Falcon was 
 not an inn at all in Shakspere's time, but a goodly private dwelling. 
 
 About the year 1580 the ancient practice of archery had revived in England. 
 The use of the famous English long-bow had been superseded in war bv —e 
 arquebuss ; but their old diversion of butt-shooting would not readily be aban 
 doned by the bold yeomanry, delighting as they still did in stories of their 
 countrymen's prowess, familiar to them in chronicle and ballad. The 'Toxo- 
 philus ' of Roger Ascham was a book well fitted to be amongst the favourites of 
 our Shakspere ; and he would think with that fine old schoolmaster that the 
 book and the bow might well go together.* He might have heard that a 
 wealthy yeoman of Middlesex, John Lyon, who had founded the grammar- 
 school at Harrow, had instituted a prize for archery amongst the scholars. 
 Had not the fame, too, gone forth through the country of the worthy ' Show and 
 Shooting by the Duke of Shoreditch, and his Associates the Worshipful Citizens 
 of London,' f and of ' The Friendly and Frank Fellowship of Prince Arthur's 
 Knights in and about the City of London ? ' I There were men of Stratford 
 who within a year or two had seen the solemn processions of these companies of 
 archers, and their feats in Hogsden Fields ; where the wealthy citizens and their 
 ladies sat in their tents most gorgeously dressed, and the winners of the prizes 
 were brought out of the field by torchlight, with drum and trumpet, and volleys 
 of shot, mounted upon great geldings sumptuously trapped with cloths of silvei 
 and gold. Had he not himself talked with an ancient squire, who, in the elder 
 days, at "Mile End Green" had played "Sir Dagonet at Arthur's Show?''§ 
 And did he not know " old Double," who was now dead ? — " He drew a good 
 bow ; and dead ! — he shot a fine shoot : * * * Dead ! — he would have clapped 
 i' the clout at twelve score ; and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and 
 fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man's heart good to see." || 
 Welcome to him, then, would be the invitation of the young men of Bidford 
 for a day of archery ; for they received as a truth the maxim of Ascham, — 
 " That still, according to the old wont of England, youth should use it for the 
 
 « " Would to God that all men did bring up their sons, like my worshipful master Sit Henry 
 Wingefield, in the book and the bow." — AscnAir. 
 
 t This is the title of a tract published in 1583 ; but the author says that these mock solemnities 
 had been "greatly revived, and within these five years sot forward, at the great cost and charges 
 of sundry chief citizens." 
 
 $ The title of a tract by Richard Mulcaster : 1531. 
 
 § Henry IV., Part II., Act in., Scene n. |) Ibid.
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE : 
 
 most honest pastime in peace." The butts are erected in the open fields after 
 we cross the Ichnield way on the Stratford road. It is an elevated spot, which 
 looks down upon the long pastures which skirt the Avon. These are not the 
 ancient butts of the town, made and kept up according to the statute of 
 Henry VIII. ; nor do the young men compel their fathers, according to the 
 same statute, to provide each of them with " a bow and two shafts," until they 
 are of the age of seventeen ; but each is willing to obey the statute, having " a 
 bow and four arrows continually for himself." Their butts are mounds of turf, 
 on which is fixed a small piece of circular paper with a pin in the centre. The 
 young poet probably thought of Robin Hood's more picturesque mark : — 
 
 " ' On every syde a rose garlondc, 
 They shot under the lyne. 
 
 AVhoso fayleth of the rose garlonde,' sayd Robin, 
 ' His takyll he shall tyne.' " 
 
 At the crab-tree are the young archers to meet at the hour of eight : — 
 " Hold, or cut bowstrings." * 
 
 The costume of Chaucer's squire's yeoman would be emulated by some of the 
 assembly : — 
 
 " He was cladde in cote and hode of grene ; 
 A shefe of peacock arwes bright and kene 
 Under his belt he bare ful thriftily. 
 Wei coude he dresse his takel yemanly : 
 His arwes drouped not with fetheres lowe. 
 And in his bond he bare a mighty bowe. 
 
 Upon his arme he bare a gaie bracer." 
 
 The lots arc cast ; three archers on either side. The marker takes his place, to 
 "cry aim." Away flies the first arrow — "gone" — it is over the butt; a second 
 — " short ; " a third — " wide ; " a fourth " hits the white," — " Let him be clapped 
 on the shoulder and called Adam ; " f a fifth " handles his bow like a crow- 
 keeper." \ Lastly comes a youth from Stratford, and he is within an inch of 
 "cleaving the pin." There is a maiden gazing on the sport; she whispers a 
 word in his ear, and " then the very pin of his heart " is " cleft with the blind 
 bow-boy's butt-shaft. "§ He recovers his self-possession, whilst he receives his 
 arrow from the marker, humming the while — 
 
 " The blinded boy, that shoots so trim, 
 From heaven down did hie ; 
 He drew a dart and shot at him, 
 la place where he did lie." |j 
 
 Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act I., bcenc u. f Much Ado about Nothing, Act I, 
 
 % Lear. § Romeo and Juliet, Act ir., Scene iv. 
 
 || Ballad of 'King Cophetua and tho Beggar-Maid.' 
 200
 
 [The Crab-tree.] 
 
 After repeated contests the match is decided. But there is now to be a tria 
 cf greater skill, requiring the strong arm and the accurate eye — the old English 
 practice which won the day at Agincourt. The archers go up into the hills : 
 he who has drawn the first lot suddenly stops ; there is a bush upon the rising 
 ground before him, from which hangs some rag, or weasel-skin, or dead crow ; 
 away flies the arrow, and the fellows of the archer each shoot from the same 
 spot. This was the roving of the more ancient archery, where the mark was 
 sometimes on high, and sometimes on the ground, and always at variable dis- 
 tances. Over hill and dale go the young men onward in the excitement of 
 their exercise, so lauded by Richard Mulcaster, first Master of Merchant Tai- 
 lors' School : — " And whereas hunting on foot is much praised, what moving ol 
 the body hath the foot-hunter in hills and dales which the roving archer hath 
 not in variety of grounds ? Is his natural heat more stirred than the archer's 
 is? Is his appetite better than the archer's ? '' * This natural premonition sends 
 the party homeward to their noon-tide dinner at the Grange. But as they pass 
 along the low meadows they send up many a " flight/' with shout and laughter. 
 An arrow is sometimes lost. But there is one who in after-years recollected his 
 bovish practice under such mishaps : — 
 
 " In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft 
 I shot his fellow of the self-same flight 
 The self-same way, with more advised watch 
 To find tbe other forth; and, by adventuring both, 
 I oft found both : I urge this childhood proof, 
 Because what follows is pure innocence. 
 
 * Positions: 1581.
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEHE : 
 
 I owe you much; and, like a wilful youth, . 
 That which I owe is lost : but, if you please 
 To shoot another arrow that self way 
 Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, 
 As I will watch the aim, or to find both, 
 Or bring your latter hazard back again, 
 And thankfully rest debtor for the first." * 
 
 There are other sports to be played, and other triumphs to be achieved, 
 before the day closes. In the meadow, at some little distance from the butts, i3 
 fixed a machine of singular construction. It is the Quintain. Horsemen are 
 beginning to assemble around it, and are waiting the arrival of the guests from 
 the Grange, who are merry in " an arbour " of mine host's " orchard." But the 
 youths are for more stirring matters; and their horses are ready. To the in- 
 experienced eye the machine which has been erected in the field — ■ 
 
 " That which here stands up, 
 Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block." f 
 
 It is the wooden figure of a Saracen, sword in hand, grinning hideously upon 
 the assailants who confront him. The horsemen form a lane on either side, 
 whilst one, the boldest of challengers, couches his spear and rides violently at 
 the enemy, who appears to stand firm upon his wooden post. The spear strikes 
 the Saracen just on the left shoulder; but the wooden man receives not his 
 wound with patience, for by the action of the blow he swings round upon his 
 pivot, and hits the horseman a formidable thump with his extended sword 
 before the horse has cleared the range of the misbeliever's weapon. Then one 
 chorus of laughter greets the unfortunate rider as he comes dolefully back to 
 the rear. Another and another fail. At last the quintain is struck right in 
 the centre, and the victory is won. The Saracen conquered, a flat board is set 
 up upon the pivot, with a sand-bag at one end, such as Stow has described : — 
 " I have seen a quintain set upon Comhill, by Leadenhall, where the attendants 
 of the lords of merry disports have run and made great pastime; for he that hit 
 not the board end of the quintain was laughed to scorn; and he that hit it full, 
 if he rode not the faster, had a sound blow upon his neck with a bag full of sand 
 hanged on the other end." { The merry guests of the Grange enjoy the sport 
 as heartily as Master Laneham, who saw the quintain at Kenilworth : — " The 
 speciality of the sport was to see how some of his slackness had a good bob with 
 the bag ; and some for his haste to topple downright, and come tumbling to the 
 post ; some striving so much at the first setting out, that it seemed a question 
 between the man and the beast, whether the course should be made a horseback 
 or a foot : and, put forth with the spurs, then would run his race by us among 
 the thickest of the throng, that down came they together hand over head. * * * 
 By my troth, Master Martin, 't was a goodly pastime." And now they go to 
 supper, 
 
 " What time the labour'd ox 
 In his loose traces from the furrow came." § 
 
 The Merchant of Venice, Act r., Scene I. + As You Lika Ic. \ct r., Scone m. 
 
 + Survey of London. § Milton : ' Comua. 
 
 202
 
 A DTOGTUriTT. 
 
 The moon shines brightly upon the terraced garden of the Grange. The 
 mill-wheel is at rest. The ripple of the stream over the dam pleasantly breaks 
 the silence which is around. There is merriment within the house, whose open 
 casements welcome the gentle night-breeze. The chorus of a jovial song has 
 just ceased. Suddenly a lute is struck upon the terrace of the garden, and 
 three voices beneath the window command a mute attention. They are singing 
 one of those lovely compositions which were just then becoming popular in 
 England — the Madrigal, which the Flemings invented, the Italians cultivated, 
 and which a few years after reached its perfection in our own country. The 
 beautiful interlacings of the harmony, its " fine bindings and strange closes," * 
 its points, each emulating the other, but each in its due place and proportion, 
 required scientific skill as well as voice and ear. But the young men who sang 
 the madrigal were equal to their task. There was one who listened till his 
 heart throbbed and his eyes were wet with tears ; for he was lifted above the 
 earth by thoughts which he afterwards expressed in lines of wondrous loveli- 
 ness : — 
 
 " How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! 
 Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 
 Creep in our ears • soft stillness, and the night, 
 Become the touches of sweet harmony. 
 Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. 
 There 's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins : 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." + 
 
 The madrigal ceased ; but the spirit of harmony which had been thus evoked 
 was not allowed to be overlaid by ruder merriment. ' Watkin's Ale,' and ' The 
 Carman's Whistle,' ' Peg-a-Ramsay,' ' Three merry men we be,' and ' Heartease,' 
 were reserved for another occasion, when a fresh " stoup of wine " might be 
 loudly called for, and the jolly company might roar out their " coziers' catches 
 without any mitigation or remorse of voice." J But there was many an "old 
 and antique song." full of elegance and tenderness, to be heard that night. We 
 were a musical people in the age of Elizabeth ; but our music was no new 
 fashion of the "brisk and giddy-paced times." There was abundant music 
 with which the people were familiar, whether sad or lively, quaint or simple. 
 There was many an air not to be despised by the nicest taste, of which it might 
 be said, 
 
 " It is old and plain : 
 The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, 
 And the free maids that weave their thread with bones, 
 Do use to chant it ; it is silly sooth, 
 And dallies with the innocence of love, 
 Like the old age." § 
 
 * Morley's ' Treatise :' 1597. f Merchant of Venice, Act v., Scene i. 
 
 X Twelfth Night, Act n., Scene in. § Ibid- Act n., Scene iv. 
 
 2C
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPELE : 
 
 Such was the plaintive air of ' Robin Hood is to the Greenwood gone,' a line of 
 which has been snatched from oblivion by Ophelia : — 
 
 " For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy." * 
 Such was the ' Light o' Love/ — the favourite of poets, if we may judge from its 
 repeated mention in the old dramas. Such was the graceful tune which the 
 young Shakspere heard I hat night with words which ho had himself written 
 for a friend :— - 
 
 " 0, mistress mine, where are you roaming ? 
 0, stay and hear; your true love's comiug, 
 
 That can sing both high and low : 
 Trip no further, pretty sweeting ; 
 Journeys end iu lovers' meeting, 
 Every wise man's son doth know. 
 
 What is love ? 'tis not hereafter ; 
 Present mirth hath present laughter ; 
 
 What 's to come is still unsure : 
 In delay there lies no plenty ; 
 Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty ; 
 
 Youth's a stuff will not endure." 
 
 And the challenge was received in all kindness ; and the happy lover might 
 say, with Sir Thomas Wyatt, 
 
 " She me caught in her arms long and small. 
 Therewithal sweetly she did me kiss, 
 And softly said, ' Dear heart, how like you this ? ' " — 
 
 for he was her accepted "servant," — such a "servant "as Surrey sued to Ger- 
 aldine to be< — the recognised lover, not yet betrothed, but devoted to his mis- 
 tress with all the ardour of the old chivalry. In a few days they would be 
 handfasted ; they would make their public troth-plight. 
 
 * Hamlet, Act iv., Soene v. 
 
 [Bidford Grange.]
 
 
 IPv 
 
 [Charlcote Church.] 
 
 II. — The Wedding. 
 
 Chahlcote : — the name is familiar to every reader of Shakspere , but it is not 
 presented to the world under the influence of pleasant associations with the 
 world's poet. The story, which was first told by Rowe, must be here repeated : 
 " An extravagance that he was guilty of forced him both out of his country, 
 and that way of living which he had taken up ; and though it seemed at first to 
 be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards 
 happily proved the occasion of exerting one of the greatest geniuses that ever 
 was known in dramatic poetry. He had, by a misfortune common enough to 
 young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, amongst them, some that made a 
 frequent practice of deer-stealing engaged him more than once in robbing a 
 park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlcote, 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 redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, 
 that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some 
 time, and shelter himself in London."* The good old gossip Aubrey is wholly 
 
 * Some Accc unt of the Life of William Shakespear, written by Mr. Eowe. 
 
 205
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEPvE 
 
 3ilent about the deer-stealing and the flight to London, merely saying, " This 
 William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess 
 about eighteen." But there were other antiquarian gossips of Aubrey's age, 
 who have left us their testimony upon this subject. The Reverend William 
 Fulman, a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who died in 1688, be- 
 queathed his papers to the Reverend Richard Davies of Sandford, Oxfordshire ; 
 and on the death of Mr. Davies, in 1708, these papers were deposited in the 
 library of Corpus Christi. Fulman appears to have made some collections for 
 the biography of our English poets, and under the name Shakspere he gives the 
 dates of his birth and death. But Davies, who added notes to his friend's 
 manuscripts, affords us the following piece of information : " He was much 
 given to all unluckiness, in stealing venison and rabbits ; particularly from Sir 
 Lucy, who had him oft whipped, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him 
 fly his native country, to his great advancement. But his revenge was so great, 
 that he is his Justice Clodpate. and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion 
 to his name, bore three louses rampant for his arms." The accuracy of this 
 chronicler, as to events supposed to have happened a hundred years before he 
 wrote, may be inferred from his correctness in what was accessible to him. 
 Justice Clodpate is a new character ; and the three louses rampant have 
 diminished strangely from the " dozen white luces " of Master Slender. In 
 Mr. Davies's account we have no mention of the ballad — through which, accord- 
 ing to Rowe, the young poet revenged his "ill usage." But Capell, the editor 
 of Shakspere, found a new testimony to that fact : " The writer of his ' Life,' 
 the first modern, [Rowe] speaks of a ' lost ballad,' which added fuel, he says, to 
 the knight's before-conceived anger, and 'redoubled the prosecution;' and 
 calls the ballad ' the first essay of Shakspere's poetry : ' one stanza of it, which 
 has the appearance of genuine, was put into the editor's hands many years ago 
 by an ingenious gentleman (grandson of its preserver), with this account of the 
 way in which it descended to him : Mr. Thomas Jones, who dwelt at Tarbick, 
 a village in Worcestershire, a few miles from Stratford-on-Avon, and died in the 
 year 1703, aged upwards of ninety, remembered to have heard from several old 
 people at Stratford the story of Shakespeare's robbing Sir Thomas Lucy's park ; 
 and their account of it agreed with Mr. Rowe's, with this addition — that the 
 ballad written against Sir Thomas by Shakespeare was stuck upon his park-gate, 
 which exasperated the knight to apply to a lawyer at Warwick to proceed 
 against him. Mr. Jones had put down in writing the first stanza of the ballad, 
 which was all he remembered of it, and Mr. Thomas Wilkes (my grandfather) 
 transmitted it to my father by memory, who also took it in writing." * 
 
 The first stanza of the ballad which Mr. Jones put down in writing as all he ro- 
 membered of it, has been so often reprinted, that we can scarcely be justified iu 
 omitting it. It is as follows : — 
 
 " A p:\rliamcnte member, a justice of peace, 
 At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse ; 
 
 Notes and various Readings to Shakespeare, Part III., p. 75. Sec Note to this Chapter. 
 206
 
 a irrooRAriTY. 
 
 If lowsie is Lucy, as somo volko miscnlle it, 
 Theii Lucy ia lowsie, whatever befall it. 
 
 He thinkes himself greate, 
 
 Yet an asso iu his state 
 We allowe by his eares but with asses to mate. 
 If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it, 
 Sing lowsie Lucy, whatever befalle it." 
 
 But the tradition sprang up in another quarter. Mr. Oldys, the respectable anti- 
 quarian, has also preserved this stanza, with the following remarks : — "There was a 
 very aged gentleman living in the neighbourhood of Stratford (where he died fifty 
 years since), who had not only heard from several old people in that town of Shak- 
 speare's transgression, but could remember the first stanza of that bitter ballad, 
 which, repeating to one of his acquaintance, he preserved it in writing, and here it 
 is, neither better nor worse, but faithfully transcribed from the copy, which his 
 relation very courteously communicated to me."* The copy preserved by Oldys 
 corresponds word by word with that printed by Capcll ; and it is therefore pretty 
 evident that each was derived from the same source, — the person who wrote down 
 the verses from the memory of the one old gentleman. In truth, the whole matter 
 looks rather more like an exercise of invention than of memory. Mr. De Quincey 
 has expressed a very strong opinion " that these lines were a production of Charles 
 II. 's reign, and applied to a Sir Thomas Lucy, not very far removed, if at all, from 
 the age of him who first picked up the precious filth : the phrase ' parliament 
 member' we believe to be quite unknown in the colloquial use of Queen Elizabeth." 
 But he has overlooked a stronger point against the authenticity of the ballad. He 
 says that " the scurrilous rondeau has been imputed to Shakspeare ever since the 
 days of the credulous Rowe." This is a mistake. Rowe expressly says the ballad 
 is " lost." It was not till the time of Oldys and Capell, nearly half a century after 
 Rowe, that the single stanza was found. It was not published till seventy years 
 after Rowe's " Life of Shakspeare." We have little doubt that the regret of Rowe 
 that the ballad was lost was productive not only of the discovery, but of the 
 creation, of the delicious fragment. By-and-by more was discovered, and the 
 entire song " was found in a chest of drawers that formerly belonged to Mrs. Dorothy 
 Tyler, of Shottery, near Stratford, who died in 1778, at the age of 80." This is 
 Malone's account, who inserts the entire song in the Appendix to his posthumous 
 " Life of Shakspeare," with the expression of his persuasion " that one part of this 
 ballad is just as genuine as the other ; that is, that the whole is a forgery." We 
 believe, however, that the first stanza is an old forgery, and the remaining stanzas 
 a modern one. If the ballad is held to be all of one piece, it is a self-evident 
 forgery. But in the " entire song " the new stanzas have not even the merit of 
 imitating the versification of the first attempt to degrade Shakspere to the character 
 of a brutal doggrel-monger. 
 
 This, then, is the entire evidence as to the deer- stealing tradition. According to 
 Rowe, the young Shakspere was engaged more than once in robbing a park, for 
 which he was prosecuted by Sir Thomas Lucy; he made a ballad upon his pro- 
 secutor, and then, being more severely pursued, fled to London. According to 
 
 * MS. Notes upon Langbaiue, from which Steevens published the lines in 1778. 
 
 207
 
 WILLIAM RIIAKSI'EIIE : 
 
 Davies, lie was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits ; 
 for which he was often whipped, sometimes imprisoned, and at last forced to 
 fly the country. According to Jones, the tradition of Rowe was correct as to 
 robbing the park ; and the obnoxious ballad being stuck upon the park-gate, a 
 lawyer of Warwick was authorised to prosecute the offender. The tradition is thus 
 full of contradictions upon the face of it. It necessarily would be so, for each ot 
 the witnesses speaks of circumstances that must have happened a hundred years 
 before his time. We must examine the credibility of the tradition therefore by 
 inquiring what was the state of the law as to the offence for which William Shak- 
 spere is said to have been prosecuted ; what was the state of public opinion as to 
 the offence ; and what was the position of Sir Thomas Lucy as regarded his 
 immediate neighbours. 
 
 The law in operation at the period in question was the 5th of Elizabeth, 
 chapter 21. The ancient forest-laws had regard only to the possessions of the 
 Crown ; and therefore in the 32nd of Henry VIII. an Act was passed for the pro- 
 tection of ''every inheritor and possessor of manors, land, and tenements," which 
 made the killing of deer, and the taking of rabbits and hawks, felony. This Act was 
 repealed in the 1st of Edward VI.; but it was quickly re-enacted in the 3rd and 
 4th of Edward VI. (1549 and 1550), it being alleged that unlawful hunting pre- 
 vailed to such an extent throughout the realm, in the royal and private parks, that 
 hi one of the king's parks within a few miles of London five hundred deer were 
 slain in one dav. For the due punishment of such offences the taking of deer was 
 again made felony. But the Act was again repealed in the 1st of Mary. In the 
 5th of Elizabeth it was attempted in Parliament once more to make the offence a 
 capital felony. But this was successfully resisted ; • and it was enacted that, if any 
 person by night or by day "wrongfully or unlawfully break or enter into any park 
 empaled, or any other several ground closed with wall, pale, or hedge, and used for 
 the keeping, breeding, and cherishing of deer, and so wrongfully hunt, drive, or 
 chase out, or take, kill, or slay any deer within any such empaled park, or closed 
 ground with wall, pale, or other enclosure, and used for deer, as is aforesaid," he 
 shall suffer three months' imprisonment, pay treble damages to the party offended, 
 and find sureties for seven years' good behaviour. But there is a clause in this Act 
 (1562-3) which renders it doubtful whether the penalties for taking deer could be 
 applied twenty years after the passing of the Act, in the case of Sir Thomas Lucy. 
 " Provided always, That this Act, or anything contained therein, extend not to any 
 park or enclosed ground hereafter to be made and used for deer, without the grant 
 or licence of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her heirs, successors, or progenitors." 
 At the date of this statute Charlcotc, it is said, was no', a deer-park ; was not an 
 enclosed ground royally licensed. It appears to us that Malone puts the case 
 f.gainst the tradition too strongly when he maintains that Charlcote was not a 
 licensed park in 15G2 ; and that, therefore, its venison continued to be unprotected 
 till the statute of the 3rd of James. The Act of Elizabeth clearly contemplates any 
 " several ground " " closed with wall, pale, or hedge, and used for the keeping of 
 deer;" and as Sir Thomas Lucy built the mansion at Charlcote in 1558, it may 
 reasonably be supposed that at the date of the statute the domain of Charlcote was 
 closed with wall, pale, or hedge. The Lucys, however, whatever was the state ot 
 203
 
 A BIOCRAHIY. 
 
 the law as to their park, had a proprietorship in deer, for the successor of the Sii 
 Thomas of the ballad sent a present of a buck to the Lord Keeper Egerton in 1602. 
 The deer-stealing tradition has shifted its locality as it has advanced in age. 
 Charlcote, according to Mr. Samuel Ireland, was not the place of Shakspere's un- 
 lucky adventures. The Park of Fulbrooke, he says, was the property of Sir Thomas 
 Lucy ; and he gives us a drawing of an old house where the young offender was 
 conveyed after his detection. Upon the Ordnance Map of our own day is the Deer 
 
 K& 
 
 [Deer Barn, Fulbrooke.] 
 
 Barn, where, according to the same tradition, the venison was concealed. The 
 engraving here given is founded upon a representation of the Deer Barn, " drawn 
 by W. Jackson, 1798." I found it amongst some papers belonging to Mr. Waldron, 
 that came into my possession, and I presented it to the author of a tract, published 
 in 1802, entitled " Shakespeare no Deer- Stealer." The rude di awing is now in the 
 Museum at Stratford. 
 
 The author of this tract, Mr. C. Holte Bracebridge, cannot be named by ourselves, 
 nor, indeed, by any of his contemporaries, without a feeling of deep respect. His 
 generous exertions to alleviate the miseries accompanying the war in the Crimea, 
 originated in the same high principle as those of Florence Nightingale. But he 
 must excuse us if we hesitate in our belief that the shifting of the scene of the deer- 
 stealing from Charlcote to Fulbrooke adds much additional value to the credibility 
 of the tradition. The argument of Mr. Bracebridge is in substance as follows : — 
 "From 1553 to 1592, Fulbrooke Park was held in capite of the Crown by Si; - 
 Francis Englefield, From 1558 to the time of his death, abroad, in 1592, Sir 
 Francis had been attainted, and his property sequestered, although the proceeds 
 were not appropriated by the Queen. It follows, then, that neither Sir Thomas 
 Lucy nor his family had a proprietary right in Fulbrooke until the last years of 
 Shakspere's life, when the estate, having been re-granted to the mother of the 
 termer attainted owner, it had been purchased from his nephew. But as Lucy's 
 park ran along the bank of the Avon for nearly a mile, and for about the same 
 distance Fulbrooke occupied the opposite bank ; as the river was shallow and had a 
 regular ford at Hampton Lucy, situate at one angle of Charlcote Park, the deer of 
 Life. r 209
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Fulbrooke and the deer of Charlcote were only kept separate by the fence on either 
 side, that of the banished man being probably broken down. It is clear, holds 
 Mr. Bracebridge, that if Shakspere had broken into Charlcote, and had there taken 
 a buck or a doe, he would have been liable to the penalties of the 5th of Elizabeth ; 
 and that Sir Thomas Lucy would not have abstained from taking the satisfaction of 
 the law, " for an offence, looked upon at that period, by the gentry at least, very 
 much as housebreaking is with us." Because, therefore, Sir Thomas Lucy was a 
 gentleman of ancient lineage, as his ancestor once held Fulbrooke Park of the 
 Crown ; as Englefield was abroad as a proscript, "he, Lucy, no doubt, hunted 
 there." We state the argument of Mr. Bracebridge, from these facts, in his own 
 words : — " In this state of things, Shakspeare would treat very lightly the warnings 
 of the Charlcote keepers, knowing as a young lawyer that he had as good a right aa 
 Sir Thomas to sport over Fulbrooke, insomuch as there was no legal park there." 
 If Mr. Bracebridge's arguments may be admitted to prove that William Shakspere, 
 in the eye of the law, was not a deer-stealer ; if he himself knew that he had as 
 good a right to take a deer in Fulbrooke as Sir Thomas Lucy himself, what becomes 
 of the tradition, first reduced to shape by Rowe, that he was prosecuted by Sir 
 Thomas Lucy, somewhat too severely as he thought ; that in order to revenge the 
 ill-usage he made a ballad upon the knight; and that this production was so very 
 bitter that he was obliged to leave his business and family, and shelter himself in 
 London ? The elaborate and ingenious argument of the author of " Shakespeare no 
 Deer- Stealer," offers the best support to our opinion, thus noticed by him : — 
 " Mr. Knight, after reviewing the evidence as to the tradition, considers it unworthy 
 of belief." All the accessories of the story confirm us in this opinion. Under the 
 law, as it existed from Henry VIII. to James I., our unhappy poet could not be 
 held to have stolen rabbits, however fond he might be of hunting them ; and cer- 
 tainly it would have been legally unsafe for Sir Thomas Lucy to have whipped him 
 for such a disposition. Pheasants and partridges were free for men of all condition 
 to shoot with gun or cross-bow, or capture with hawk. There was no restriction 
 against taking hares except a statute of Henry VIII., which, for the protection of 
 hunting, forbade tracking them in the snow. With this general right of sport — 
 whatever might have been the opinion of the gentry that the taking of a deer was as 
 grievous an offence as the breaking into a house — it is clear that, with those of 
 Shakspere's own rank, there was no disgrace attached to the punishment of an 
 offender legally convicted. All the writers of the Elizabethan period speak of 
 killing a deer with a sort of jovial sympathy, worthy the descendants of Robin Hood. 
 " I '11 have a buck till I die, I'll slay a doe while I live," is the maxim of the Host in 
 'The Merry Devil of Edmonton;' and even Sir John, the priest, reproves him not : 
 he joins in the fun. With this loose state of public opinion, then, upon the subject of 
 venison, is it likely that Sir Thomas Lucy, with the law on his side, would have pursued 
 for such an offence the eldest son of an alderman of Stratford with any extraordinary 
 severity ? If the law were not on his side, Sir Thomas Lucv would only have made 
 himself ridiculous amongst his neighbours by threatening to make a Star Chamber 
 matter of it. The knight was nearly the most important person residing in the imme- 
 diate neighbourhood of Stratford. In 1578 he had been High Sheriff. At the period 
 when the deer-stealing may be supposed to have taken place he was seeking to be 
 210
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 member for the county of Warwick, for which he was returned in 1584. lie 
 was in the habit of friendly intercourse with the residents of Stratford, for in 
 1583 he was chosen as an arbitrator in a matter of dispute by Hamnet Sadler, 
 the friend of John Shakspere and of his son. All these considerations tend, 
 we think, to show that the improbable deer-stealing tradition is based, like 
 many other stories connected with Shakspere, on that vulgar love of the mar- 
 vellous which is not satisfied with the wonder which a being eminently endowed 
 himself presents, without seeking a contrast of profligacy, or meanness, or igno- 
 rance in his early condition, amongst the tales of a rude generation who came 
 after him, and, hearing of his fame, endeavoured to bring him as near as might 
 be to themselves. 
 
 [Charlcote House. From Avenue. 1 
 
 Charlcote, then, shall not, at least by us, be surrounded by unpleasant asso- 
 ciations in connexion with the name of Shakspere. It is, perhaps, the met 
 interesting locality connected with that name ; for in its great features it is 
 essentially unchanged. There stands, with slight alteration, and those in good 
 taste, the old mansion as it was reared in the days of Elizabeth. A broad 
 avenue leads to its fine gateway, which opens into the court and the principal 
 entrance. We would desire to people that hall with kindly inmates ; to ima- 
 gine the fine old knight, perhaps a little too puritanical, indeed, in his latter 
 days, living there in peace and happiness with his family ; merry as he ought 
 to have been with his first wife, Jocosa (whose English name, Joyce, soundcth 
 not quite so pleasant), and whose epitaph, by her husband, is honourable alike 
 to the deceased and to the survivor.* We. can picture him planting the second 
 P2 211
 
 
 [Oharlcote House. From the Avon.] 
 
 avenue, which leads obliquely across the park from the great gateway to the 
 porch of the parish-church. It is an avenue too narrow for carriages, if car- 
 riages then had been common; and the knight and his lady walk in stately 
 guise along that grassy pathway, as the Sunday bells summon them to i jeer. 
 their humble neighbours in a place where all are equal. Charlcote is fu 1 of 
 rich woodland scenery. The lime-tree avenue, may, perhaps, be of a later date 
 than the age of Elizabeth ; and one elm has evidently succeeded another from 
 century to century. But there are old gnarled oaks and beeches dotted about 
 the park. Its little knolls and valleys are the same as they were two centuries 
 ago. The same Avon flows beneath the gentle elevation on which the house 
 stands, sparkling in the sunshine as brightly as when that house was first 
 built. There may we still lie 
 
 • " All the time of her life a true and faithful servant of her good God ; never detected of any 
 crime or vice ; in religion, most sound ; in love to her husband, most faithful and true ; in friend- 
 ship, most constant ; to what in trust was committed to her, most secret: in wisdom, excelling; in 
 governing her house, and bringing up of youth in the fear of God, that did converse with her, most 
 rare and singular. A great maintainor of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters; mislikci 
 of none unless of the envious. When all is spoken that can be said, a woman so furnished and 
 garnished with virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled of any. As she lived mo' 
 virtuously, so she died most godly. 
 
 "Set down by hira that best did know what hath beeu written to be true, Thomas Lucy." 
 212
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 " Under au oak, whose antique root peeps out 
 Upon the brook that brawls along his wood," 
 
 and doubt not that there was the place to which 
 
 " A poor sequesterM stag, 
 That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, 
 Did come to laDguish." * 
 
 There may we still see 
 
 " A careless herd, 
 Full of the pasture," 
 
 leaping gaily along, or crossing the river at their own will in search of fresh 
 fields and low branches whereon to browse. We must associate Charlcote with 
 happy circumstances. Let us make it the scene of a troth-plight. 
 
 [House in Charlcote Village.] 
 
 The village of Charlcote is now one of the prettiest of objects. Whatever is 
 new about it — and most of the cottages are new — "looks like a restoration of what 
 was old. The same character prevails in the neighbouring village of Hampton 
 Lucy; and it may not be too much to assume that the memory of him who 
 walked in these pleasant places in his younger days, long before the sound of 
 his greatness had gone forth to the ends of the earth, has led to the desire to 
 pre&erve here something of the architectural character of the age in which he 
 lived. There are a few old houses still left in Charlcote ; but the more fan- 
 
 * As You Like It, Act u., Sceno I. 
 
 213
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEKE: 
 
 portant have probably been swept away. In one such house, then, about a year we 
 will say before William Shakspere's own marriage, we may picture a small party 
 assembled to be present at a solemn rite. There can be little doubt that the ancient 
 ceremony of betrothing had not fallen into disuse at that period. Shakspere 
 himself, who always, upon his great principle of presenting his audiences with 
 matters familiar to them, introduces the manners of his own country in his 
 own times, has several remarkable passages upon the subject of the troth-plight 
 In Measure for Measure we learn that the misery of the " poor dejected Ma 
 riana" was caused by a violation of the troth-plight : — 
 
 " Duke. She should this Angelo have married ; wa3 affianced to her 
 by oath, and the nuptial apj)ointed : between which time of the con- 
 tract and limit of the solemnity, her brother Frederick was wracked at 
 sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his Bister. But 
 mark, how heavily this befel to the poor gentlewoman : there she lost a 
 noble and renowned brother, in his love toward her ever most kind 
 and natural; with him the poi'tion and sinew of her fortune, her 
 marriage-dowry; with both, her combinate husband, this well-seeming 
 Angelo. 
 
 Isabella. Can this be so ? Did Angelo so leave her ? 
 
 DuJce. Left her in tears, and dried not one of them with his comfort ; 
 swallowed his vows whole, pretending, in her, discoveries of dishonour; 
 in few, bestowed her on her own lamentation, which she yet wears for 
 his sake; and he, a marble to her tears, is washed with them, but 
 relents not." 
 
 Angelo and Mariana were bound then "by oath;" the nuptial was appointed; 
 there was a prescribed time between the contract and the performance of the 
 solemnity of the Church. But, the lady having lost her dowry, the contract 
 was violated by her " combinate" or affianced husband. The oath which An- 
 gelo violated was taken before witnesses ; was probably tendered by a minister 
 of the Church. In Twelfth Night we have a minute description of such a 
 ceremonial. "When Olivia is hastily espoused to Sebastian, she says, — 
 
 " Now go with me, and with this holy man, 
 [ Into the chantry by : there, before him, ' s 
 
 And underneath that consecrated roof, 
 
 Plight me the full assurance of your faith ; 
 
 That my most jealous and too doubtful soul 
 
 May live at peace : He shall conceal it 
 
 Whiles you are willing it shall come to note, 
 
 What time we will our celebration keep 
 
 According to my birth." 
 
 This was a private ceremony before a single witness, who would conceai it till 
 the proper period of the public ceremonial. Olivia, fancying she has thus 
 espoused the page, repeatedly calls him "husband;" and, being rejected, she 
 summons the priest to declare 
 
 " What thou dost know 
 Hath newly pass'd between this youth and me." 
 
 m
 
 a, BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The priest answers, - 
 
 " A contract of eternal bond of love, 
 Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, 
 Attested by the holy close of lips, 
 Strengthen'd by interchangernent of your rings ; 
 And all the ceremony of this compact 
 Seal'd in my function, by my testimony : 
 Since when, my watch has told me, toward my grave 
 I have travel? d but two hours." 
 
 But from another passage in Shakspere, it is evident that the troth-plight was 
 
 exchanged without the presence of a priest, but that witnesses were essential 
 
 to the ceremony.* The scene in the "Winter's Tale where this occurs is altogether 
 
 so perfect a picture of rustic life, that wo may fairly assume that Shakspere had in 
 
 view the scenes with which his own youth was familiar, where there was mirth 
 
 without grossness, and simplicity without ignorance : — - 
 
 u Flo. 0, hear me breathe my life 
 
 Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem, 
 Hath sometime lov'd : / tale thy hand ; this hand, 
 As soft as dove's down, and as white as it ; 
 Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow, 
 That 's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er. 
 
 Pol. What follows this ?— 
 How prettily the young swain seems to wash 
 The hand was fair before ! — I have put you out : — 
 But to your protestation ; let me hear 
 What you profess. 
 
 Flo. Do, and be witness to 't. 
 
 Pol. And this my neighbour too ? 
 
 Flo. And he, and mora 
 
 Than he, and men ; the earth, the heavens, and all : 
 That, were I crown'd the most imperial monarch, 
 Thereof most worthy ; were I the fairest youth 
 That ever made eye swerve ; had force, and knowledge, 
 More than was ever man's, I would not prize them, 
 Without her love : for her, employ them all ; 
 Commend them, and condemn them, to her service, 
 Or to their own perdition. 
 
 Pol. Fairly offer'd. 
 
 Cam. This shows a sound affection. 
 
 Shep. But, my daughter, 
 
 Say you, the like to him 1 
 
 Per. I cannot speak 
 
 So well, nothing so well ; no, nor mean better : 
 By the pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out 
 The purity of his. 
 
 Shep. TaJce hands, a bargain ; — " 
 
 And, friends unknown, you shall bear witness to't : 
 
 • Hulinalied states that at a synod held at Westminster, in the reign of Henry I., it ww 
 decreed "that contracts made between man and woman, without witnesses, concerning marriage, 
 should be void if either of them denied it."
 
 WILLIAM SI1AKSPERE : 
 
 I give my daughter to him, and will mako 
 
 Her portion equal his. 
 
 Flo. 0, that must be 
 
 I' the virtue of your daughter : one being dead, 
 
 I shall have more than you can dream of yet ; 
 
 Enough then for your wonder : But, come on, 
 
 Contract us 'fore these witnesses. 
 
 Shep. Come, your hand; 
 
 And, daughter, yours." 
 
 To the argument of Polixenes that the father of Florizel ought to know of lifa 
 proceeding, the young man answers, — 
 
 "Flo. Come, come, he must not : — 
 
 Mark our contract." 
 
 And then the father, discovering himself, exclaims, — 
 
 "Mark your divorce, young sir." 
 
 Here, then, in the publicity of a village festival, the hand of the loved one is 
 solemnly taken by her " servant ; " he breathes his life before the ancient 
 stranger who is accidentally present. The stranger is called to be witness to 
 the protestation; and so is the neighbour who has come with him. The maiden 
 is called upon by her father to speak, and then the old man adds, — 
 
 " Take hands, a bargain." 
 
 The friends are to bear witness to it : — 
 
 " I give my daughter to him, and will make 
 Her portion equal his." 
 
 The impatient lover then again exclaims, — 
 
 " Contract us 'fore these witnesses." 
 
 The shepherd takes the hands of the youth and the maiden. Again the lover 
 exclaims, — 
 
 " Mark our contract." 
 
 The ceremony is left incomplete, for the princely father discovers himself 
 with, — 
 
 " Mark your divorce, young sir." 
 
 We have thus shown, by implication, that in the time of Shakspere betroth- 
 ment was not an obsolete rite. Previous to the Reformation it was in all pro. 
 bability that civil contract derived from the Roman law, which was confirmed 
 indeed by the sacrament of marriage, but which usually preceded it for a 
 definite period, — some say forty days, — having perhaps too frequently the effect 
 of the marriage of the Church as regarded the unrestrained intercourse of those 
 so espoused. In a work published in 1543, 'The Christian State of Matri- 
 mony/ we find this passage ; " Yet in this thing also must I warn every rea- 
 216
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 sonable and honest person to beware that in the contracting of marriage they 
 dissemble not, nor set forth any lie. Every man likewise must esteem the 
 person to whom he is handfasted none otherwise than for his own spouse ; 
 though as yet it be not done in the church, nor in the street. After the hand- 
 fasting and making of the contract the church-going and wedding should not 
 be deferred too long." The author then goes on to rebuke a custom, " that at 
 the handfasting there is made a great feast and superfluous banquet ; " and he 
 adds words which imply that the Epithalamium was at this feast sung, without 
 a doubt of its propriety, " certain weeks afore they go to the church, where 
 
 " All sanctimonious ceremonies may 
 With full and holy rite be minister'd." 
 
 The passage in The Tempest from which we quote these lines has been rj^ld 
 to show that Shakspere denounced, with peculiar solemnity, that impatience' 
 which waited not for " all sanctimonious ceremonies." * But it must be re- 
 membered that the solitary position of Ferdinand and Miranda prevented even 
 the solemnity of a betrothment ; there could be no witnesses of the public 
 contract ; it would be of the nature of those privy contracts which the ministers 
 of religion, early in the reign of Elizabeth, were commanded to exhort young 
 people to abstain from. The proper exercise of that authority during half a 
 century had not only repressed these privy contracts, but had confined the 
 ancient practice of espousals, with their almost inevitable freedoms, to persons 
 in the lower ranks of life, who might be somewhat indifferent to opinion. A 
 learned writer on the Common Prayer, Sparrow, holds that the Marriage Ser- 
 vice of the Church of England was both a betrothment and a marriage. It 
 united the two forms. At the commencement of the service the man says, 
 " I plight thee my troth ; " and the woman, " I give thee my troth." This 
 form approaches as nearly as possible to that of a civil contract ; but then comes 
 the religious sanction to the obligation, — the sacrament of matrimony. In the 
 form of espousals so minutely recited by the priest in Twelfth Night, he is only 
 present to seal the compact by his " testimony." The marriage customs of 
 Shakspere's youth and the opinions regarding them might be very different from 
 the practice and opinions of thirty years later, when he wrote The Tempest. 
 But in no case does he attempt to show, even through his lovers themselves, 
 that the public troth-plight was other than a preliminary to a more solemn and 
 binding ceremonial, however it might approach to the character of a marriage. 
 It is remarkable that Webster, on the contrary, who was one of Shakspere's 
 later contemporaries, has made the heroine of one of his noblest tragedies, ' The 
 Duchess of Malfi,' in the warmth of her affection for her steward, exclaim — 
 
 " I have heard lawyers say, a contract in a chamber 
 Per verba prcesenti is absolute marriage." 
 
 This is an allusion to the distinctions of the canon law between betrothing and 
 marrying — the betrothment being espousals with the verba de futuro ; the mai - 
 
 * Life of Shakspeare, by Mr. de Quincey, in the ' Encyclopedia Britannica.' 
 
 217
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPKRE : 
 
 riage, espousals with the verba da prasenh. The Duchess of Malfi had mis- 
 interpreted the lawyers when she believed that a secret " contract in a chamber " 
 was "absolute marriage," whether the engagement was for the present or the 
 f uture. 
 
 Such a ceremonial, then, may have taken place in the presence of the young 
 Shakspere, as he has himself described with inimitable beauty in the contract of his 
 Florizel and Perdita. But under the happy roof at Charlcote there is no for- 
 bidding father ; there is no inequality of rank in the parties contracted. They 
 are near neighbours ; a walk from Hampton Lucy through the grounds of 
 Charlcote House brings the lover to the door of his mistress. And now, the 
 contract performed, they merrily go forth into those grounds, to sit, with 
 happiness too deep for utterance, under the broad beech which shades them 
 from the morning sun ; or they walk, not unwelcome visitors, upon the terrace 
 of the new pleasure-garden which the good knight has constructed for the 
 special solace of his lady. The relations between one in the social position of 
 Sir Thomas Lucy and his humbler neighbours could not have been otherwise 
 than kindly ones. The epitaph in which he speaks of his wife as " a great 
 maintainer of hospitality " is tolerable evidence of his own disposition. Hos- 
 pitality, in those days, consisted not alone in giving mighty entertainments to 
 the rich and noble, but it included the cherishing of the poor, and the welcome 
 of tenants and dependents. The Squire's Hall was not, like the Baron's Castle, 
 filled with a crowd of prodigal retainers, who devoured his substance, and 
 kept him as a stranger amongst those who naturally looked up to him for 
 protection. Yet was the Squire a man of great worship and authority. He 
 was a Justice of the Peace ; the terror of all depredators ; the first to be ap- 
 pealed to in all matters of village litigation. "The halls of the justice of 
 peace /.ere dreadful to behold ; the screen was garnished with corslets, and 
 helmets gaping with open mouths, with coats of mail, lances, pikes, halberds. 
 
 [Charlcoto JToubc, from the Garden.]
 
 A BIOGRAPHY". 
 
 brown bihs, bucklers."* The Justice had these weapons ready to arm his 
 followers upon any sudden emergency ; but, proud of his ancestry, his fighting- 
 gear was not altogether modern. The "old worshipful gentleman who had a 
 great estate " is described — 
 
 " With an old hall, hung about with pikes, guns, and bows, 
 With old swords, and bucklers, that had borne many shrewd blows." r ' 
 
 There was the broad oak-table in the hall, and the arm-chair large enough for 
 a throne. The shovel-board was once there; but Sir Thomas, although he 
 would play a quiet game with the chaplain at tric-trac, thought the shovel- 
 board an evil example, and it was removed. Upon ordinary occasions the 
 Justice sat in his library, a large oaken room with a few cumbrous books, of 
 which the only novelty was the last collection of the Statutes. The book 
 upon which the knight bestowed much of his attention was the famous book of 
 John Fox, 'Acts and Monuments of these latter and perillous Dayes, touching 
 Matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great 
 Persecutions, and horrible Troubles, that have been wrought and practised by 
 the Romishe Prelates.' This book was next to his Bible. He hated Popery, 
 as he was bound to do according to law ; and he somewhat dreaded the inroads 
 of Popery in the shape of Church ceremonials. He was not quite clear that 
 the good man to whom he had presented the living of Charlcote was perfectly 
 right in maintaining the honour and propriety of the surplice ; but he did not 
 altogether think that it was the "mark of abomination." I He reprobated the 
 persecution of certain ministers " for omitting small portions or some cere- 
 mony prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer." § Those ministers were of 
 the new opinions which men began to call puritanical. 
 
 The good knight's visits to Stratford may be occasionally traced in the Chamber- 
 lain's accounts, especially upon solemn occasions, when he went thither with " my 
 Lady and Mr. Sheriff," and left behind him such pleasant memorials as " paid at 
 the Swan for a quart of sack and a quartern of sugar, burned for Sir Thomas Lucy." [| 
 The " sack and sugar " would, we think, indispose him to go along with the violent 
 denouncers of old festivals ; and those who deprecated hunting and hawking were in 
 his mind little better than fools. He had his falconer and his huntsman ; and never 
 was he happier than when he rode out of his gates with his hounds about him, and 
 graciously saluted the yeomen who rode with him to find a hare in Fulbrooke. If, 
 then, on the day of the troth-plight, Sir Thomas met the merry party from the village, 
 he would assuredly have his blandest smiles in store for them ; and as the affianced 
 made their best bow and curtsey he would point merrily to the favour in the hat, the 
 little folded handkerchief, with its delicate gold lace and its tassel in each corner. ^[ 
 
 * Aubrey. + The Old and Young Courtier. X See Hooker's ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' book v. 
 
 § When in Parliament, in 1584, Sir Thomas Lucy presented a petition against the interference of 
 ecclesiastical courts in such matters, wherein these words are used. 
 
 •J Chamberlain's Accounts. — Halliwell, p. 101. 
 
 H " And it was then the custom for maids, and gentlewomen, to give their favourites, as tokens of 
 their love, little handkerchiefs of about three or four inches square, wrought round about, and with 
 a button, or a tassel at each corner, and a little in the middle, with silk or thread. The best 
 edged with a little small gold lace, or twist, which being folded up in four cross folds, so as the 
 middle might be seen, gentlemen and others did usually wear them in their hats, as favours c f their 
 loves and mistresses." — Howes's Continuation of Stow, p. 1039. 219
 
 YflLLIAM SIIAKSPERE : 
 
 There is an early and a frugal dinner in the yeoman's house at Charlcote. 
 Gervase Markham, in his excellent ' English Housewife/ describes " a humble 
 feast or an ordinary proportion which any good man may keep in his family 
 for the entertainment of his true and worthy friend." We doubt if so luxurious 
 a provision was made in our yeoman's house; for Markham's "humble feast" 
 consisted of three courses, the first of which comprised sixteen " dishes of meat 
 that are of substance." Harrison, writing about forty years earlier, makes the 
 yeoman contented with somewhat less abundance : " If they happen to stumble 
 upon a piece of venison, and a cup of wine or very strong beer or ale (which 
 latter they commonly provide against their appointed days), they think their 
 cheer so great, and themselves to have fared so well, as the Lord Mayor 01 
 London."* But, whatever was the plainness or the delicacy of their dishes, 
 there is no doubt of the hearty welcome which awaited all those who had 
 claims to hospitality : "If the friends of the wealthier sort come to their houses 
 from far, they are commonly so welcome till they depart as upon the first day 
 of their coming." f Again: "Both the artificer and the husbandman are suffi- 
 ciently liberal and very friendly at their tables ; and when they meet they are 
 so merry without malice, and plain without inward Italian or French craft or 
 subtility, that it would do a man good to be in company among them." J 
 
 Shakspere has himself painted, in one of his early days, the friendly inter- 
 course between the yeomen and their better educated neighbours. To the table 
 where even Goodman Dull was welcome, the schoolmaster gives an invitation 
 to the parson : "I do dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of mine ; 
 where if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I 
 will, on my privilege I have with the parents of the aforesaid child or pupil, 
 undertake your ben venuto." § And it was at this table that the schoolmaster 
 won for himself this great praise: "Your reasons at dinner have been sharp 
 and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious 
 without impudence, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy." fl 
 England was at that day not cursed with class and coterie society. The dis- 
 tinctions of rank were sufficiently well defined to enable men to mix freely, as 
 long as they conducted themselves decorously. The barriers of modern society 
 belong to an age of pretension. 
 
 The early dinner at Charlcote finished, the young visitors from Stratford 
 take a circuitous road home over the Fulbrooke hills. The shooting season is 
 approaching, and they have to breathe their dogs. But after they have crossed 
 Black Hill they hear a loud shouting ; and they know that the hurlers are 
 abroad. Snitterfield is matched against Alveston ; and a crowd of players from 
 each parish have, with vast exertion, been driving their ball "over hills, dales, 
 nedges, ditches, — yea, and thorough bushes, briars, mires, plashes, and rivers." ^[ 
 The cottage at the entrance of Fulbrooke is the goal. The Stratford youths 
 must see the game played out, and curfew has rung before they reach home. 
 
 * Description of England, 15S6, p. 170 f Ibid., p. 168. + Ibid. 
 
 § Love's Labour's Lost, Act iv., Scone ir. |j Ibid., Act v., Scone L 
 
 ^f Carew's ' Survey of Cornwall." 
 
 220
 
 [Fulbrooke. Uuilics-.] 
 
 A few weeks roll on, and the bells of Hampton Lucy are ringing for a wed- 
 ding. The out-door ceremonials are not quite so rude as those which Ben 
 Jonson has delineated ; but they are founded on the same primitive customs. 
 There are " ribands, rosemary, and bay for the bridemeu;" and some one ol 
 the rustics may exclaim — 
 
 " Look ! an the wenches ha' not found 'un out, 
 And do parzent 'un with a Tan of rosemary, 
 And bays, to vill a bow-pot, trim the head 
 Of my best vore-horse ! we shall all ha' bride laces, 
 Or points, I zee." * 
 
 Like the fathei in Jonson's play, the happy yeoman of Charlcote might say to 
 his dame — 
 
 " You 'd have your daughters and maids 
 Dance o'er the fields like fays to church :" 
 
 out he will not add — 
 
 " I '11 have no roundels." 
 
 He will not be reproached that he resolved 
 
 * Tale of a Tub, Act i., Scene- n. 
 
 221
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE : 
 
 " To let no music go afore liis child 
 To church, to cheer her heart up."* 
 
 On the other hand, there are no court ceremonials here to be seen, 
 
 " As running at the ring, plays, masks, and tilting." \ 
 
 There would be the bride-cup and the wheaten garlands ; the bride led by fair- 
 haired boys, and the bridegroom following with his chosen neighbours ; — 
 
 ' Glide by the banks of virgins then, and pass 
 The showers of roses, lucky four-leav'd grass; 
 The while the cloud of younglings sing, 
 And drown ye with a flow'ry spring ; 
 While some repeat 
 Your praise, and bless you, sprinkling you with wheat, 
 
 While that others do divine 
 ' Blest is the bride on whom the sun doth shine.' " J 
 
 The procession enters the body of the church ; for, after the Reformation, the 
 knot was no longer tied, as, at the five weddings of the Wife of Bath, at 
 " church-door." The blessing is pronounced, the bride-cup is called for : the 
 accustomed kiss is given to the bride. But neither custom is performed after 
 the fashion of Petrucio : — 
 
 " He calls for wine : — ' A health,' quoth hs ; as it 
 He had been aboard, carousing to his mates 
 After a. storm : — quaff 'd off the muscadel, 
 And threw the sops all in the sexton's face ; 
 Having no other reason, — 
 But that his beard grew thin and hungerly, 
 And seem'd to ask him sops as he was drinking. 
 This done, he took the bride about the neck, 
 And kiss'd her lips with such a clamorous smack, 
 That, at the parting, all the church did echo." § 
 
 They drink out of the bride-cup with as much earnestness (however less the 
 formality) as the great folks at the marriage of the Elector Palatine to the 
 daughter of James I. : — " In conclusion, a joy pronounced by the King and 
 Queen, and seconded with congratulation of the lords there present, which 
 crowned with draughts of Ippocras out of a great golden bowl, as an health to 
 the prosperity of the marriage, began by the Prince Palatine, and answered by 
 the Princess. "|| 
 
 We will not think that " when they come home from church then beginneth 
 
 * Talc of a Tub, Act n., Scene I. 
 A New Way to pay Old Debts, Act IV., Scene in. + Herrick's '^Hesperides.' 
 
 § Taming of the Shrew, Act in., Scene n. 
 || Quoted in Reed's Shakspeare, from Finet's ' Philoxenia.' 
 222
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 races, of eating and drinking.-and as much is wasted in one day as were snf- 
 
 <:z s l z ba;;:rz cw - ma ™ d foiks ,wif * >~ <° ^ «*-•"• *. «~ 
 
 " Hark, hark, I hear the minstrels play." f 
 
 Christian State of Matrimony. 
 
 h Taming of the Shrew. Act in., Scone o>
 
 [Daisy HilL] 
 
 JIT. — Field Sports. 
 
 There is a book with which William Shakspere would unquestionably be 
 familiar, the delightful ' Scholemaster ' of Roger Ascham, first printed in 1570. 
 which would sufficiently encourage him, if encouragement were wanting, in the 
 common pursuit of serious study and manly exercises. " I do not mean," says 
 this fine genial old scholar, " by all this my talk, that young gentlemen should 
 always be poring on a book, and, by using good studies, should lose honest 
 pleasure and haunt no good pastime ; I mean nothing less : for it is well known, 
 that I both like and love, and have always and do yet still use, all exercises 
 and pastimes that be fit for my nature and ability. And beside natural dis- 
 position, in judgment also, I was never either stoic in doctrine, or Anabaptist 
 in religion, to mislike a merry, pleasant, and playful nature, if no outrage be 
 
 committed against law, measure, and good order Therefore to 
 
 ride comely ; to run fair at the tilt or ring ; to play at all weapons ; to shoot 
 fair in bow or surely in gun; to vault lustily; to run; to leap; to wrestle; to 
 swim ; to dance comely ; to sing, and play of instruments cunningly ; to hawk ; 
 to hunt ; to play at tennis ; and all pastimes generally which be joined with 
 labour, used in open place, and in the daylight, containing cither some fit 
 exercise for war, or some pleasant pastime for peace, be not only comely and 
 decent, but also very necessary for a courtly gentleman to use." 
 224
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 To " ride comeiy," to " shoot fairly in bow, or surely in gun," " to hawk, to 
 hunt," were pastimes in which William Shakspere would heartily engage. 
 His plays abound with the most exact descriptions of matters connected with 
 field sports. In these exercises, " in open place and in the daylight," would he 
 meet his neighbours ; and we may assume that those social qualities which 
 won for him the love of the wisest and the wittiest in his mature years, would 
 be prominent in the frankness and fearlessness of youth. Learned men had 
 despised hunting and hawking — had railed against these sports. Surely Sir 
 Thomas More, he would think, never had hawk on fist, or chased the destruc- 
 tive vermin whose furs he wore, when he wrote, " What delight can there be, 
 and not rather displeasure, in hearing the barking and howling of dogs ? " * 
 Erasmus, too, was a secluded scholar. Ascham appreciated these things, be- 
 cause he liked, and loved, and used them. With his " stone-bow" in hand 
 would the boy go forth in search of quail or partridge. It was a difficult 
 weapon — a random shot might hit a man "in the eye," f but it was not so 
 easy when the small bullet flew from the string to bring down the blackbird 
 from the bush. There is abundant game in Fulbrooke. Ever since the 
 attainder of John Dudley it had been disparked ; granted by the Crown to a 
 favourite, and again seized upon. A lovely woodland scene was this in the 
 days when Elizabeth took into her own hands the property which her sister 
 had granted to Sir Henry Englefield, now a proscribed wanderer. The boy- 
 sportsman is on Daisy Hill with his "birding-bow ;" but the birds are for 
 a while unheeded. He stops to gaze upon that glorious view of Warwick 
 which here is unfolded. There, bright in the sunshine, at the distance of four 
 or five miles, are the noble towers of the Beauchamps ; and there is the lofty 
 church beneath whose roof their pride and their ambition lie low. Behind 
 him is his own Stratford, with its humbler spire. All around is laund and 
 bush, — a spot which might have furnished the scene of the Keepers in 
 Henry VI. :— 
 
 " 1 Keep. Under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves ; 
 For through this laund anon the deer will come ; 
 And in this covert will we make our stand, 
 Culling the principal of all the deer. , 
 
 2 Keep. I 'il stay above the hill, so both may shoot. 
 
 1 Keep. That cannot be ; the noise of thy cross-bow 
 Will scare tbc herd, and so my shoot is lost. 
 Here stand we both, and aim we at the best ;" — J 
 
 ;t spot to which many a fair dame had been led by gallant forester, with bow 
 bent, and " quarrel" fitted : — 
 
 " Pi in. Then, forester, my friend, where is the busk 
 That we must stand and play the murtherer in ? 
 
 For. Here by, upon the edge of yonder coppice ; 
 A stand, where you may make the fairest shoot." § 
 
 * Utopia, book ii. chap. 7. 
 t " 0, for a stone-bow ! to hit him in the eye."— Twelfth Night. 
 % Henry VI., Part III., Act in., Scene I. § Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV., Scone L 
 
 Lifk. Q 2'25
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 With the timid deer even the cross-bow scares the herd with its noise. But it 
 was retained in "birding" long after the general use of fire-arms, that the 
 covey might not be scattered. Its silent power of destruction was its principal 
 merit. 
 
 But as boyhood is thrown off there are nobler pastimes for William Shak- 
 spere than those of gun and cross-bow. Like Gaston de Foix "he loved 
 hounds, of all beasts, winter and summer."* He was skilled in the qualities 
 of hounds : he delighted in those of the noblest breed, — 
 
 "So flew'd, so Banded; and their beads are liuu^ 
 With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
 Crook-kneed and dew-lapp'd, like Thessalian build ; 
 Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
 Each under each." f 
 
 The chase in his day was not a tremendous burst for an hour or two, whose 
 breathless speed shuts out all sense of beauty in the sport. There was har- 
 mony in every sound of the ancient hunt — there was poetry in all its associa- 
 tions. Such lines as those which Hippolita utters were not the fancies of a 
 cloistered student : — 
 
 " I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, 
 When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear 
 With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear 
 Such gallant chiding ; for, besides the groves, 
 The skies, the fountains, every region near 
 Seern'd all one mutual cry : I never heard 
 So musical a discord, such sweet thunder." J 
 
 The solemn huntings of princes and great lords, where large assemblies were 
 convened to chase the deer in spaces enclosed by nets, but where the cook and 
 the butler were as necessary as the hunter, were described in stately verse by 
 George Gascoigne. "The noble art of Venerie" seems to have been an admir- 
 able excuse for ease and luxury " under the greenwood tree." But the open 
 hunting with the country squire's beagles was a more stirring matter. By day- 
 break was the bugle sounded ; and from the spacious offices of the Hall came 
 forth the keepers, leading their slow-hounds for finding the game, and the 
 foresters with their greyhounds in leash. Many footmen are there in attend- 
 ance with their quarter-staffs and hangers. Slowly rides forth the master and 
 his friends. Neighbours join them on their way to the wood. There is merri- 
 ment in their progress, for, as they pass through the village, they stop before 
 the door of the sluggard who ought to have been on foot, singing "Hunt's up 
 to the day :" — § 
 
 " The hunt is up, the hunt is up, 
 Sing merrily we, the hunt is up ; 
 
 * Lord Berners' ' Froissart,' book iii. chap. 26. 
 t Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iv., Scene i. ^ 1 1, id. 
 
 § Komco and Juliet, Act in., Scene V. 
 22G
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The birds they sing, 
 The deer they fling : 
 
 Hey nony, nony-no . 
 The hounds they cry, 
 The hunters they fly : 
 
 Hey troli lo, trololilo. 
 The hunt is up." * 
 
 It is a cheering and inspiriting tune — the reveillee — awakening :ike the 
 "singing" of the lark, or the "lively din" of the cock. Sounds like these 
 were heard, half a century after the youth of Shakspere, by the student whose 
 poetry scarcely descended to the common things which surrounded him ; for it 
 was not the outgushing of the heart over all life and nature ; it was the reflec- 
 tion of his own individuality, and the echo of books — beautiful indeed, but not 
 all-comprehensive :-— 
 
 " Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn 
 Cheerly arouse the slurnb'ring morn, 
 From the side of some hoar hill, 
 Through the high wood echoing shrill." f 
 
 To the wood leads the chief huntsman. He has tracked the hart or doe to the 
 covert on the previous night ; and now the game is to be roused by man and 
 dog. Some of the company may sing the fine old song, as old as the time of 
 Henry VIII. :— 
 
 ''Blow thy horn, hunter, 
 Blow thy horn on high. 
 In yonder wood there lieth a doe ; 
 In faith she woll not die. 
 
 Then blow thy horn, hunter, 
 Then blow thy horn, hunter, 
 Then blow thy horn, jolly hunter." Z 
 
 j fie hart is roused. The hounds have burst out in "musical confusion." Soho 
 is cried. The greyhounds are unleashed. And now rush horsemen and foot- 
 men over hill — through dingle. A mile or two of sharp running, and he is 
 again in cover. Again the keepers beat the thicket with their staves. He is 
 again in the open field, crossing Ingon Hill. And so it is long before the treblc- 
 mort is sounded ; and the great mystery of " wood-craft," the anatomy of the 
 venison, is gone through with the nicest art, even to the cutting off a bone for 
 the raven. § 
 
 It is in his first poem — " the first heir of my invention " — that the sportsman 
 is most clearly to be identified with the youthful Shakspere. Who ever painted 
 a hare-hunt with such united spirit and exactness ? We see the cranks, and 
 crosses, and doubles, of the poor wretch; the cunning with which he causes the 
 
 * Douce, ' Illustrations of Shakspeare,' vol. ii. p. 192. t Milton, ' L' Allegro.' 
 
 + The MS. of this fine song is in the British Museum. It has beer, published by Mr. Chappell. 
 § Ben Jonson's 'Sad Shepherd,' Act I., Scene vi. 
 Q 2 227
 
 ^•' 
 
 ' v'3 ":!•!$ 
 
 ?|^^^3 
 
 ■'■'^'M^j, 
 
 [I'igon Kill.] 
 
 hounds to mistake the smell ; the listening upon a hill for his pursuers ; the 
 turning and returning of poor Wat. Who ever described a horse with such a 
 complete mastery of all the points of excellence ? In his plays, all the niceties 
 of falconry are touched upon ; and the varieties of hawk — " haggard," " tassel- 
 gentle," "eyas musket," — spoken of with a master's knowledge. Hawking was 
 the universal passion of his age, especiallv for the wealthy. Coursing was for 
 the yeomen— such as Master Page.* The love of all field-sports lasted half a 
 century longer ; and some of Shakspere's great dramatic successors have put 
 out all their strength in their description. There are few things more spirited 
 than the following passage from Massinger : — 
 
 " Bur. I must have you 
 
 To my country villa : rise before the sun, 
 Then make a breakfast of the morning clew, 
 Serv'd up by nature on some grassy bill. 
 
 Cold. You talk of nothing. 
 
 Bur. This ta'en as a preparative, to strengthen 
 Your queasy stomach, vault into your saddle ; 
 With all this flesh I can do it without a stirrup : — 
 My hounds uncoupled, and my huntsmen ready, 
 You shall hear such music from their tunable mouths, 
 That you shall say the viol, harp, theorbo, 
 Ne'er made such ravishing harmony ; from the groves 
 
 22S 
 
 * Merry Wives of Windsor, Act L, Scene L
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 And neighbouring woods with frequent iterations, 
 Enamour' d of the cry, a thousand echoes 
 Repeating it. 
 
 Dar In the afternoon, 
 
 For wo will have variety of delights, 
 
 Wo '11 to the field again ; no game shall rise 
 
 But we'll be ready for't : if a hare, my greyhounds 
 
 Shall make a course ; for the pie or jay, a sparhawk 
 
 This from the fist ; the crow so near pursued, 
 
 •Shall be compell'd to seek protection under 
 
 Our horses' bellies ; a hearn put from her siege, 
 
 And a pistol shot off in her breech, shall mount 
 
 So high, that, to your view, sho '11 seem to soar 
 
 Abovo the middle region of the air : 
 
 A cast of haggard falcons, by me mann'd, 
 
 Eying the prey at first, appear as if 
 
 They did turn tail ; but with their labouring wingn 
 
 Getting above her, with a thought their pinions 
 
 Cleaving the purer element, make in, 
 
 And by turns bind with her ; the frighted fowl, 
 
 Lying at her defence upon her back, 
 
 With her dreadful beak awhile defers her death, 
 But by degrees forced down, we part the fray, 
 And feast upon her. 
 
 Cold. This cannot be, I grant, 
 
 But pretty pastime. 
 
 Dur. Pretty pastime, nephew ! 
 
 'Tis royal sport. Then, for an evening flight, 
 A tiercel gentle, which I call, my masters, 
 As he were sent a messenger to the moon, 
 In such a place flies, as he seems to say, 
 . See me, or see me not ! the partridge sprung, 
 
 He makes his stoop ; but, wanting breath, is forced 
 To cancelier ; then with such speed, as if 
 lie carried lightning in his wings, he strikes 
 The tumbling bird, who even in death appears 
 Proud to be made his quarry." * 
 
 The passage in which Massinger thus describes what had been presented to 
 his observation is one of the many examples of the rare power which the dra- 
 matists of Shakspere's age possessed, — the power of seeing nature with their 
 own eyes. But we may almost venture to say that this power scarcely existed 
 in dramatic poetry before Shakspere taught his contemporary poets that there 
 was something better in art than the conventional images of books — the 
 shadows of shadows. The wonderful superiority of Shakspere over all others, 
 in stamping the minutest objects of creation, as well as the highest mysteries 
 of the soul of man, with the impress jf truth, must have been derived, in some 
 degree, from his education, working vith his genius. All his early experience 
 must have been his education; and we therefore are not attempting mere fan- 
 
 The Guardian, Act I., Scene The speakers are Darazza and Caldoro. 
 
 229
 
 WILLIAM siiakspere: 
 
 ciful combinations of the individual with the circumstances of iiis socia. position, 
 when we surround hirn with the scenes which belong to his locality, his time, 
 and his condition of life. 
 
 
 
 [Snilterfield.J
 
 a moGRAPHy. 
 
 NOTE ON THE SIfAKSrEllIAN LOCALITIES. 
 
 We liuve endeavoured to render the local descriptions and allusions in this chapter, and in preceding 
 passages, more intelligible, by subjoining a map of the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this 
 neighbourhood there is little of that scenery which we call romantic ; but the surpassing fertility, 
 the undulating surfaces, the rich woodlands, the placid river, and the numerous and beautiful 
 old churches, render it an interesting country to walk over, independent of its associations. Those 
 associations impart to this neighbourhood an unequalled charm ; and the outline map hero given 
 may probably assist the lover of Shakspere in a ramble through his 
 
 "Dailj 7 walks, and ancient neighbourhood." 
 
 The very beautiful sketches of Mr. Harvey, of which we can attest the fidelity, as far as regards 
 their local accuracy, may also lend an interest to such a visit. The map has been constructed with 
 reference to the insertion of places only which are either named in Shakspere's works, or with 
 which he or his family were connected, or which have appeared to us demanding mention or allusion 
 in his biography. Tho map is, of course, a map for the present day, but there are very few names 
 inserted which are not found in Dugdalo's Map of the hundreds which contain this neighbourhood. 
 Many, of course,, are omitted which arc there found.
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEHE. 
 
 Q 
 
 O 
 
 to 
 
 H 
 03 
 
 P 
 O 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 w 
 
 ^
 
 
 [Hampton Lucy, from road near Alveston.] 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SOLITARY HOURS. 
 
 The poet who has described a man of savage wildness, cherishing " unshaped, 
 half-human thoughts " in his wanderings among vales and streams, green wood 
 and hollow deU, has said that nature ne'er could find the way into his heart: — 
 
 " A primrose by a river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And it was nothing more." 
 
 These are lines at which some of the worldly-wise and clever have been wont 
 to laugh ; but they contain a deep and universal truth. Without some asso- 
 ciation, the most beautiful objects in nature have no charm ; with association, 
 the commonest acquire a value. The very humblest power of observation is 
 
 ,233
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEEE ■ 
 
 necessarily dependent upon some higher power of the mind. Those who ob- 
 serve differ from those who do not observe in the possession of acquired know- 
 ledge, or original reflection, which is to guide the observation. The observer 
 who sees accurately, who knows what others have observed, and who applies 
 this knowledge only to the humble purpose of adding a new flower or insect to 
 his collection, we call a naturalist. But there are naturalists, worthy of the 
 name, who, without bringing any very high powers of mind to their observation 
 of nature, still show, not only by the minuteness and accuracy of their eye, but 
 by their genial love and admiration of the works of the Creator, that with them 
 nature has found the way into the heart. Such was White of Selborne. We 
 delight to hear him describe the mouse's nest which he found suspended in the 
 head of a thistle ; or how a gentleman had two milk-white rooks in one nest : 
 we partake in his happiness when he writes of what was to him an event : 
 " This morning I saw the golden-crowned wren whose crown glitters like bur- 
 nished gold ; " and we half suspect that the good old gentleman had the spirit 
 of poetry in him when he says of the goat-sucker, '* This bird is most punctual 
 in beginning its song exactly at the close of day ; so exactly that I have known 
 it strike up more than once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth even- 
 ing gun." He wrote verses ; but they are not so poetical as his prose. A na- 
 turalist endowed with higher powers of association has taught us how philosophy 
 looks upon the common aspects of the outer world. Davy was a scientific 
 observer. He shows us the reason of the familiar prognostications of the wea- 
 ther — the coppery sunset, the halo round the moon, the rainbow at night, the 
 nVht of the swallow. Even omens have a touch of science in them ; and there 
 is a philosophical difference in the luck of seeing one magpie or two. But 
 there is an observer of nature who looks upon all animate and inanimate exist- 
 ence with a higher power of association even than these. It is the poetical 
 naturalist. Of this rare class our Shakspere is decidedly the head. Let us 
 endeavour to understand what his knowledge of external nature was, how it was 
 applied, and how it was acquired. 
 
 Some one is reported to have said that he could affirm from the evidence of 
 his ' Seasons ' that Thomson was an early riser. Thomson, it is well known, 
 duly slept till noon. Bearing in mind this practical rebuke of what is held to 
 be internal evidence, we still shall not hesitate to affirm our strong conviction 
 that the Shakspere of the country was an early riser. Thomson, professedly a 
 descriptive poet, assuredly described manv things that he never saw. He 
 looked at nature very often with tne eyes or others. To our mind his cele- 
 brated description of morning offers not the slightest proof that he ever saw the 
 sun rise.* In this description we have the meek-eyed morn, the dappled east, 
 brown night, young day, the dripping rock, the misty mountain : the hare 
 limps from the field ; the wild deer trip from the glade ; music awakes in 
 woodland hvmns ; the shepherd drives his flock from the fold ; the sluggard 
 sleeps :— 
 
 '. « Summer. Liuo 43 to 06, 
 234
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 " But youdcr comes the powerful king of day, 
 Rejoicing in the east ! The lessening cloud, 
 The kindling azure, and the mountain's brow, 
 Ilium' d with fluid gold, his near approach 
 Betoken glad. Lo, now apparent all, 
 Aslant the dew-bright earth and colour'd air, 
 He looks in boundless majesty abroad, 
 And sheds the shining day, that burnish'd plays 
 On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering Btrcame, 
 Iligh-gleaming from afar." 
 
 This is conventional poetry, the reflection of books ; — excellent of its kind, but 
 still not the production of a poet-naturalist. Compare it with Chaucer: — 
 
 " The besy larke, the messager of day, 
 Saleweth in hire song the niorwe gray ; 
 And firy Phebua riseth up so bright, 
 That all the orient laugheth of the sight, 
 And with hia stremes drieth in the greve3 
 The silver dropes, hanging on the leves." * 
 
 The sun drying the dewdrops on the leaves is not a book image. The bril- 
 liancy, the freshness, are as true as they are beautiful. Of such stuff are the 
 natural descriptions of Shakspere always made. He is as minute and accurate 
 as White ; he is more philosophical than Davy. The carrier in the inn-yard 
 at Rochester exclaims, "An't be not four by the day, I'll be hanged: Charles' 
 wain is over the new chimney." f Here is the very commonest remark of a 
 common man ; and yet the principle of ascertaining the time of the night by 
 the position of a star in relation to a fixed object must have been the result of 
 observation in him who dramatized the scene. The variation of the quarter 
 in which the sun rises according to the time of the year may be a trite problem 
 to scientific readers ; but it must have been a familiar fact to him who, with 
 marvellous art, threw in a dialogue upon the incident, to diversify and give 
 repose to the pause in a scene of overwhelming interest : — 
 
 " Decius. Here lies tho east : Doth not the day break here ? 
 
 Casca. No. 
 
 Cinna. 0, pardon, sir, it doth ; and yon gray lines, 
 That fret the clouds, are messengers of day. 
 
 Casca. You shall confess that you are both deceiv*d. 
 Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises ; 
 Which is a great way growing on the south, 
 Weighing the youthful season of the year. 
 Some two months hence, up higher toward the north 
 He first presents his fire ; and the high east 
 Stands, as the Capitol, directly here." * 
 
 It was in his native fields that Shakspere had seen morning under every aspect ; 
 
 * The Knight's Tale. Line 1493. t Henry IV., Part I., Act n., Scene I. 
 
 X Julius Caesar, Act n., Scene I. 
 
 235
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 — now, "in russet mantle clad;" now, opening her "golden gates." A mighty 
 battle is compared to the morning's war : — 
 
 " When dying clouds contend with growing light." 
 
 Perhaps this might have been copied, or imagined ; but the poet throws in 
 reality, which leaves no doubt that it had been seen : — 
 
 "What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, 
 Can neither call it perfect day, nor night." * 
 
 What but actual observation could have told the poet that the thin flakes of ice 
 which he calls "flaws" are suddenly produced by the coldness of the morning 
 just before sunrise ? The fact abided in his mind till it shaped it itself into a 
 comparison with the peculiarities in the character of his Prince Henry : — 
 
 " As humorous as wipter, and as sudden 
 As flaws cougealed in the spring of day." 
 
 He has painted his own Romeo, when under the influence of a fleeting first 
 love, stealing: " into the covert of the wood," 
 
 " An hour before the worshipp'd sun 
 Peer'd forth the golden window of the east."t 
 
 A melancholy and joyous spirit would equally have tempted the young poet 
 to court the solitudes that were around him. Whether his "affections" were 
 to be " most busied when most alone •" t or, objectless, 
 
 " Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy ;" § 
 
 or intent upon a favourite book ; or yielding to the imagination which " bodies 
 forth the forms of things unknown," — many of the vacant hours of the young 
 man would be solitary hours in his own fields. Yet, whatever was the pervading 
 train of thought, he would still be an observer. In the vast storehouse of his 
 mind would all that he observed be laid up, not labelled and classified after the 
 fashion of some poetical manufacturers, but to be called into use at a near or a 
 distant day, by that wonderful power of assimilation which perceives all the 
 subtile and delicate relations between the moral and the physical worlds, and 
 thus raises the objects of sense into a companionship with the loftiest things 
 that belong to the fancy and the reason. Who ever painted with such marvel- 
 lous power — we use the word advisedly — the changing forms of an evening 
 sky, " black vesper's pageants"? — 
 
 " Sometime wo aeo a cloud that 'a dragonish ; 
 A vapour, aometime, like a bear, or lion, 
 A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock, 
 A forked mountain, or blue promontory 
 With trees upon 't, that nod unto the world, 
 And mock our eyes with air." || 
 
 • Henry VI., Part III., Act 11. Scene v. + Romeo and Juliet, Act I., Scene I. 
 
 X Ibid. § As You Like It, Act rv., Scene m. 
 
 || Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv., Scene xu. 
 236
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 This is noble painting, but it is something higher. "When Antony goes on to 
 compare himself to the cloud which "even with a thought the rack dislimns," 
 we learn how the great poet uses his observation of nature. Not only do such 
 magnificent objects as these receive an elevation from the poet's moral appli- 
 cation of them, but the commonest things, even the vulgarest things, ludicrous 
 but for their management, become in the highest degree poetical. Many a time 
 in the low meadows of the Avon would Shakspcre have seen the irritation of the 
 herd under the torments of the gad-fly. The poet takes this common thing to 
 describe an event which changed the destinies of the world : — 
 
 " Yon ribald nag of Egypt, 
 Whom leprosy o'ertake ! i' the mirist o' the fight, — 
 When vantage like a pair of twins appear'd, 
 Both as the same, or rather ours the elder, — ■ 
 The brizc upon her, like a cow in June, 
 Hoists sails, and flies." * 
 
 When Hector is in the field, 
 
 " The strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge, 
 Fall down before him, like the mower's swath." t 
 
 Brutus, speculating upon the probable consequences of Ccesar becoming king, 
 
 exclaims : — 
 
 " It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, 
 And that craves wary walking." J 
 
 * Antony and Cleopatra, Act in., Scene vin. 
 \ Troilua and Creesida, Act v., Scene v. + Julius Csesar, Act n., Soane. i 
 
 m 
 
 [Sleadovra near Wtlford.]
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Tlie same object had been seen and described in an earlier play, without its grand 
 association : — 
 
 " The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun." * 
 
 The snake seems a liege subject of the domain of poetry. Her enamel skin is 
 a weed for a fairy ; f the green and gilded snake wreathed around the sleeping 
 man:}: is a picture. But what ordinary writer would not shrink from the poet- 
 ical handling of a snail ? It is the surpassing accuracy of the naturalist that 
 has introduced the snail into one of the noblest passages of the poet, in juxta- 
 position with the Hesperides and Apollo's lute : — 
 
 " Love's feeling is more soft and sensible 
 Than are the tender horns of cockled snails." § 
 
 One of the grandest scenes of a tragedy of the mature poet is full of the most 
 familiar images derived from an accurate observation of the natural world. The 
 images seem to rise up spontaneously out of the minute recollections of a life 
 spent in watching the movements of the lower creation. " A deed of dreadful 
 note " is to be done before nightfall. The bat, the beetle, and the crow are the 
 common, and therefore the most appronriate, instruments which are used to 
 mark the approach of night. The simplest thing of iife is thus raised into 
 sublimity at a touch : — 
 
 " Ere the bat hath flown 
 His cloister'd flight ;" 
 
 ere 
 
 " The shard-bome beetle, with his drowsy hums, 
 Hath rung night's yawning peal ;" 
 
 the murder of Banquo is to be done. The very time is at hand : — 
 
 " Light thickens ; and the crow 
 Makes wing to the rooky wood." || 
 
 The naturalist has not only heard the " drowsy hums " of the beetle as he wan- 
 dered in the evening twilight, but he has graced the insect to its hiding-place. 
 The poet associates the fact with a great lesson, — to be content in obscure 
 safety : — 
 
 " Often, to our comfort, shall we find 
 The sharded beetle in a safer hold 
 Than is the full-wing'd eagle." ^f 
 
 Let it not be forgotten that the young Shakspcre had to make himself a na- 
 turalist. Books of accurate observation there were none to guide him ; for the 
 popular works of natural history, of which there were very few, were full of 
 extravagant fables and vague descriptions. Mr. Douce has told us that Shak- 
 spere was extremely well acquainted with one of these works — ' Batman nppon 
 
 * Titus Andronicus, Act n., Scene in. 
 t A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act n., Scene n. J As You Like It, Act iv., Scene in. 
 
 § Love's Labour's Lost, Act iv., Scene i. || Macbeth, Act in., Scene IL 
 
 H Cymbeline, Act in., Scene m. 
 238
 
 A BIOGUAPflY. 
 
 Bartholome his booke De proprictatibus rerum, 1582;' and he has ascertained 
 that the original price of this volume was eight shillings. But Shakspere did 
 not go to Bartholomcus, or to Batman (who made large additions to the ori- 
 ginal work from Gesner), for his truths in natural history. Mr. Douce has cited 
 many passages in his ' Illustrations,' in which he traces Shakspere to Bartho- 
 lorneus. We have gone carefully through the volumes where these are scat- 
 tered up and down, and we find a remarkable circumstance unnoticed by Mr. 
 Douce, that these passages, with scarcely an exception, refer to the vulgar 
 errors of natural history which Shakspere has transmuted into never-dying 
 poetry. It is here that we find the origin of the toad which wears " a precious 
 jewel in his head;"* of the phoenix of Arabia ;f of the basilisk that kills the 
 innocent gazer; X of the unlicked bear-whelp. § But the truths of natural his- 
 tory which we constantly light upon in Shakspere were all essentially derived 
 from his own observation. There is a remarkable instance in his discri- 
 mination between the popular belief and the scientific truth in his notice of 
 the habits of the cuckoo. The Fool in Lear expresses the popular belief in 
 a proverbial sentence : — 
 
 " For you trow, nuncle. 
 The hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long 
 That it had its head bit off by its young." 
 
 Worcester in his address to Henry IV., expresses the scientific fact without 
 the vulgar exaggeration, — a fact unnoticed till the time of Dr. Jenner by any 
 writer but the naturalist William Shakspere : — 
 
 " Being fed by us, you used us so 
 As that ungentle gull the cuckoo's bird 
 Useth the sparrow : did oppress oicr nest ; 
 Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk, 
 That even our love durst not come near your sight." || 
 
 The noble description of the commonwealth of bees in Henry V. was sug- 
 gested, in all probability, by a similar description in Lyly's ' Euphues.' But 
 Shakspere's description not only displays tne wonderful accuracy of his obser- 
 vation, in subservience to the poetical art, but the unerring discrimination of 
 his philosophy. Lyly makes his bees exercise the reasoning faculty — choose 
 a king, call a parliament, consult for laws, ecect officers ; Shakspere says " they 
 have a king and officers ; " and he refers their operations to " a rule in nature." 
 The same accuracy that he brought to the observation of the workings of nature 
 in the fields, he bestows upon the assistant labours of art in the garden. The fine 
 dialogue between the old gardener at Langley and the servants, is full of tech- 
 nical information. The great principles of horticultural economy, pruning and 
 weeding, are there as clearly displayed as in the most anti-poetical of treatises. 
 We have the crab -tree slip grafted upon noble stock (the reverse of the gar- 
 dener's practice) in one play:^[ in another we have the luxurious "scions put 
 
 » As You Like It, Act n., Scene I. + Tempest, Act m., Scene n. 
 
 J Henry VI., Tart II., Act ni., Scene ir. § Ibid., Part III., Act in., Scene n. 
 
 II See our Illustration of this passage, Henry IV., Part I., Act v., Scene I. 
 
 U Henry VI., Tart II., Act in., Scene n. 
 
 239
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 in wild and savage stock."* A writer in a technical periodical work seriously 
 maintains that Shakspere was a professional gardener, f This is better evi- 
 dence of the poet's horticultural acquirements than Steevens's pert remark, 
 " Shakspeare seems to have had little knowledge in gardening."! Shak- 
 spere's philosophy of the gardener's art is true of all art. It is the great 
 Platonic belief which raises art into something much higher than a thing of 
 mere imitation, showing the great informing spirit of the universe working 
 through man, as through any other agency of his will : — 
 
 "Per. Sir, the year growing ancient, — 
 
 Nor yet on summer's death, nor"on the birth 
 
 Of trembling winter, — the fairest flowers o' the season 
 
 Are our carnations, and streak' d gilly 'vors, 
 
 Which some call nature's bastards : of that kind 
 
 Our rustic garden 's barren ; and I care not 
 
 To get slips of them. 
 
 Pol. Wherefore, gentle maiden, 
 
 Do you neglect them ? 
 
 Per. For I have heard it said, 
 
 There is an art which, in their piedness, shares 
 With great creating nature. 
 
 Pol. Say, there be ; 
 
 Yet nature is made better by no mean, 
 But nature makes that mean : so, over that art, 
 Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art, 
 That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 
 A gentler scion to the wildest stock ; 
 And make conceive a bark of baser kind 
 By bud of nobler race : This is an art 
 Which does mend nature, — change it rather : but 
 The art itself is nature." § 
 
 Perdita's flowers ! who can mention them, and not think of the wonderful 
 union of the accuracy of the naturalist with the loveliest images of the poet? 
 It his been well remarked that in Milton's ' Lycidas ' we have "among vernal 
 flowers many of those which are the offspring of Midsummer;" but Shakspere 
 distinguishes his groups, assorting those of the several seasons. || Perhaps in 
 the whole compass of poetry there is no such perfect combination of elegance 
 and truth as the passage in which Perdita bestows her gifts — parts of which 
 are of such surpassing loveliness, that the sense aches at them :— 
 
 " 0, Proserpina, 
 For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall 
 [ From Dis's waggon ! daffodils, 
 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty ; violets, dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno'3 eyes, 
 Or Cythcrea's breath." ^ 
 
 * Henry V., Act in., Scene v. f The Gardener's Chronicle, May 29, 1841. 
 
 J Note on As You Like It, Act in., Scene 11. § Winter's Tale, Act rv., Scene nr. 
 
 !1 Patterson's 'Natural. History of the Insects mentioned in Shakspeare's PlayB.' 
 
 U Winter's Tale, Act IV., Scene III. 
 
 240
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Of all the objects of creation it is in flowers that Shakspere's geniu3 appears 
 most to revel and luxuriate ; but the precision with which he seizes upon their 
 characteristics distinguishes him from all other poets. A word is a description. 
 The " pale primrose," the " azur'd harebell," are the flowers to oe strewn upon 
 Fidele's grave ; but how is their beauty elevated when the one is compared to 
 her face, and the other to her veins ! Shakspere perhaps caught the sweetest 
 image of his sweetest song from the lines of Chaucer which we have recently 
 quoted ; where we have the lark, and the fiery Phoebus drying the silver drops 
 on the leaves. But it was impossible to have translated this fine passage, as 
 Shakspere has done, without the minute observation of the naturalist working 
 with the invention of the poet : — 
 
 " Hark ! hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings, 
 And Phoebus 'gins arise, 
 His steeds to water at those springs 
 On ckalic'd flower a that lies." * 
 
 The rosebud shrivels and dies, and the cause is disregarded by a common ob- 
 server. The poetical naturalist points out " the bud bit by an envious worm."f 
 Again, the microscope of the poet sees " the crimson drops i' the bottom of a 
 cowslip," and the observation lies in the cells of his memory till it becomes a 
 comparison of exquisite delicacy in reference to the " cinque-spotted " mark of 
 the sleeping Imogen. But the eye which observes everything is not only an eye 
 for beauty, as it looks upon the produce of the fields ; it has the sense of utility 
 as strong as that which exists in the calculations of the most anti -poetical. 
 The mad Lear's garland is a catalogue of the husbandman's too luxuriant 
 enemies : — 
 
 " Crown'd with rank fumitcr, and furrow weeds, 
 With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, 
 Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow 
 In our sustaining corn." X 
 
 Who could have conceived the noble picture in Henry V. of a country wasted 
 by war, but one who from his youth upward had been familiar, even to the 
 minutest practice, with all that is achieved by cultivation, and all that is lost 
 by neglect ; — who had seen the wild powers of nature held in subjection to the 
 same producing power under the guidance of art ; — who had himself assisted 
 in this best conquest of man ? — 
 
 " Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, 
 Unpruned dies : her hedges ev en-pleach' d, 
 Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair 
 Put forth disorder' d twigs : her fallow leas 
 The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory, 
 Doth root upon ; while that the coulter rusts, 
 That should deracinate such savagery : 
 The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth 
 
 * Cymbeline, Act n., Scene in. t Romeo and Juliet, Act I., Scone I. 
 
 X King Lear, 'Act rv., Scene iv. 
 Lifk. R 241
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, 
 Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, 
 Conceives by idleness ; and nothing teems 
 But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, 
 Losing both beauty and utility." * 
 
 Even the technical words of agriculture find their place in his language cl 
 poetry : — 
 
 " Like to the summer's corn by tempest lod'j'd." -f 
 
 He goes into the woods of his own Arden, and he associates her oaks wilh the 
 sublimest imagery ; but still the oak loses nothing of its characteristics. " The 
 thing of courage, as roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise," 
 
 "When splitting winds 
 Make flexible the Icnccs of knotted oaks." 
 
 Again : — 
 
 " Merciful Heaven ! 
 Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt 
 Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak 
 Than the soft myrtle."' § 
 
 Even the woodman's economy, who is careful not to exhaust the tree that 
 furnishes him fuel, becomes an image to show, by contrast, the impolicy of 
 excessive taxation : — 
 
 " Why, we take 
 
 From every tree, lop, bark, and part o' the timber ; 
 
 And, though we leave it with a root, thus hack'd 
 
 The air will drink the sap." || 
 
 It is in these woods that he has studied the habits of the "joiner squirrel," 
 who makes Mab's chariot out of an " empty hazel-nut. "% Here the active boy 
 was no doubt the "venturous fairy" that would seek the "squirrel's hoard, 
 and fetch new nuts."** Here he has watched the stock-dove sitting upon her 
 nest, and has stored the fact in his mind till it becomes one of the loveliest ci 
 poetical comparisons : — 
 
 " Anon as patient as the female dove 
 When that her golden couplets are disclos'd, 
 His Bilence will sit drooping." JJ 
 
 What book -fed poet could have chosen a homely incident of country life as the 
 aptest illustration of an assembly suddenly scattered by their fears ? — 
 
 " Russet-painted choughs, many in sort, 
 Hieing and cawing at tbe gun's report, 
 Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky." H 
 
 * Henry V., Act v., Scene n. f Henry VI., Tart II., Act in , Set-no i. 
 
 J Troilus and Crossida, Act r., Scene ill. § Measure for Measure, Act II., Scene n. 
 
 il Henry VIII., Act I., Scene n. 1! Romeo and Juliet, Act I., Scene iv. 
 
 * * A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act iv., Scene I. ft Hamlet, Act v., Scene I. 
 
 A Midsummer-Night's Drearn, Act in., Scene n. 
 242
 
 A BI13GRAPHY. 
 
 The poet tells us — and we believe him as much as if a Pliny or a Gesner had 
 
 written it — that 
 
 " The poor wren, 
 The most diminutive of birds, will fight, 
 Her young one3 in her nest, against the owl." * 
 
 The boy has climbed to the kite's nest, and there perchance has found some of 
 the gear that " maidens bleach;" the discovery becomes a saying for Autolycus : 
 — " When the kite builds, look to lesser linen." f In all this practical part 
 of Shakspere's education it is emphatically true that the boy " is father of the 
 man. "J 
 
 Shakspere, m an early play, has described his native river : — 
 
 " The current, that with gentle murmur glides, 
 Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage ; 
 But, when his fair course is not hindered, 
 He makes sweet music with the enamcll'd stones, 
 Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
 He overtaketh in his pilgrimage ; 
 And so by many winding nooks he strays, 
 With willing sport, to the wild ocean." § 
 
 [Near AlvPston.J 
 
 The solitary boat of the young poet may be fancied floating down this "current." 
 There is not a sound to disturb his quiet, but the gentle murmur when " the 
 waving sedges play with wind."|| As the boat glides unsteered into some 
 winding nook, the swan ruffles his proud crest ; and the quick eye of the 
 naturalist sees his mate deep hidden in the reeds and osiers :- - 
 
 " So doth the swan her downy cygnets Gave, 
 Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings." *$ 
 
 • Macbeth, Act IV., Scene n. 
 
 r Winter's Tale, Act iv., Scene n. 
 
 Wordsworth 
 
 { Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II., Scene vii. 
 
 Induction to Taming of the 
 
 TI Henry VI., Pisrt I., J> ct v., Scene in. 
 
 R 2 
 
 243
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Very lovely is this Avon for some miles above Stratford ; a poet's river in its 
 beauty and its peacefulness. It is disturbed with no sound of traffic ; it holds 
 its course unvexed by man through broad meadows and wooded acclivities, 
 which for generations seem to have been dedicated to solitude. All the great 
 natural features of the river must have suffered little change since the time of 
 Shakspere. Inundations in some places may have widened the channel ; osier 
 islands may have grown up where there was once a broad stream. But we 
 here look upon the same scenery upon which he looked, as truly as we gaze 
 upon the same blue sky, and see its image in the same glassv water. As we 
 unmoor our boat from the fields near Bishop's Hampton,* we look back upon 
 the church embosomed in lofty trees. The church is new ; but it stands upon 
 
 [Old Church of Hampton Lucy.] 
 
 the same spot as the ancient church : its associations are the same. We glide 
 by Charlcote. The house has been enlarged ; its antique features somewhat 
 improved; but it is essentially the same as the Charlcote of Shakspere. We 
 pass its sunny lawns, and are soon amidst the unchanging features of nature. 
 We are between deep wooded banks. Even the deer, who swim from shore to 
 shore where the river is wide and open, are prevented invading these quiet 
 deeps. The old turrets rising amidst the trees alone tell us that human habita- 
 tion is at hand. A little onward, and we lose all trace of that culture which is 
 ever changing the face of nature. There is a high bank called Old Town, 
 where perhaps men and women, with their joys and sorrows, once abided. It 
 
 244 
 
 * The oH name for Hampton Lucy.
 
 
 [A Feep at Charlcotc] 
 
 13 colonized by rabbits. The elder-tree drops its white blossoms luxuriantly 
 over their brown burrows. The golden cups of the yellow water-lilies lie 
 brilliantly beneath on their green couches. The reed-sparrow and the willow- 
 wren sing their small songs around us : a stately heron flaps his heavy wing 
 above. The tranquillity of the place is almost solemn ; and a broad cloud 
 deepens the solemnity, by throwing for a while the whole scene into shadow. 
 We have a book with us that Shakspere might have looked upon in the same 
 spot two hundred and sixty years ago ; a new book then, but even then seeking 
 to go back into the past, in the antique phraseology adopted by the young 
 author. It is the first work of Spenser, — ' The Shepherd's Calendar,' originally 
 
 (Old Town.]
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSI'ERE : 
 
 printed in 1579. Let us pause a little upon its pages ; and thence look back also- 
 with a brief glance, at the poetical models in his own language which were open 
 to the study of one who, without models, was destined to found the greatest school 
 of poetry which the world had seen. 
 
 Spenser, displeased with the artificial character of the literature of his own 
 early time, its mythological affectations, its mincing and foreign phraseology, 
 thought to infuse into it a more healthy tone by familiarizing the court of 
 Elizabeth with the diction of the age of Edward III. The attempt was not 
 successful. His friend and editor, E. K., indeed says, — " In my opinion it is 
 one especial praise, of many which are due to this poet, that he hath laboured 
 to restore, as to their rightful heritage, such good and natural English words 
 as have been long time out of use, and almost clean disherited. Which is the 
 only cause that our mother tongue, which truly of itself is both full enough of 
 prose, and stately enough for verse, hath long time been counted most bare and 
 barren of both."* But even Sidney, to whom the work was dedicated, will not 
 admit the principle which Spenser was endeavouring to establish : — " ' The 
 
 [Sponser.] 
 
 Shepherd s Calendar ' hath much poetry in his eclogues worthy the reading, if 
 I be not deceived. That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I 
 dare not allow ; since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sanna- 
 zarius in Italian, did affect it."f Yet we can well imagine that ' The Shepherd's 
 Calendar/ dropping in the way of the young recluse of Stratford, must have 
 been exceedingly welcome. " Colin Clout, the new poet," as his editor calls 
 him, had the stamp of originality upon him ; and therefore our Shakspere would 
 
 • Epistle to Master Gabriel Harvey, prefixed to ' The Shepherd's Calendar,' edition 1 579. 
 f Defence of Poesy. 
 216
 
 A BIOGRAPHY, 
 
 agree that " his name shall come into the knowledge of men, and his worthiness 
 be sounded in the trump of fame."* The images and the music of the despairing 
 shepherd would rest upon his ear : — 
 
 " You naked trees, whose shadie leaves are lost, 
 Wherein the birds were wont to build their bowre, 
 And now are clothd with mosse and hoarie frost, 
 In steede of blossomes, wherewith your buds did floure ; 
 
 I see your teares that from your boughes do raine, 
 
 Whose drops in drerie ysicles remaine. 
 
 All so my lustfull leafe is drie and sere, 
 
 My timely buds with wayling all are wasted ; 
 
 The blossome which my braunch of youth did beare, 
 
 With breathed sighes is blowne away and blasted ; 
 
 And from mine eyes the drizling teares descend, 
 
 As on your boughes the ysicles depend." f 
 
 We read the passage, and our memory involuntarily turns to the noble commence- 
 ment of one of Shakspere's own Sonnets : — 
 
 " That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
 Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang." J 
 
 But here we also see the difference between the two poets. Shakspere's com- 
 parison of his declining energies with the "bare ruin'd choirs" of the woods of 
 autumn has all the power of reality. The love-sick shepherd who " compareth 
 his careful case to the sad season of the year, to the frosty ground, to the frozen 
 trees, and to his own winterbeaten flock," § is an affectation. The pastoral poetry 
 of all ages and nations is open in some degree to this objection ; but Spenser, who 
 makes his shepherds bitter controversialists in theology, has carried the falsetto 
 style a degree too far even for those who can best appreciate the real poetical 
 power which is to be discovered in these early productions. One passage in these 
 Eclogues sounded, as we think, a note that must have sunk deeply into the 
 ambition of him who must very early have looked upon the thoughts and habits 
 of real life as the proper staple of poetry : — 
 
 " Who ever castes to compasse wightie prise, 
 And thinkes to throwe out thundring words of threat, 
 Set powre in lavish cups and thriftie bittes of meate, 
 For Bacchus fruite is friend to Phoebus wise ; 
 And, when with wine the braine begins to sweat, 
 The numbers flow as fast as spring doth rise. 
 
 Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rime should rage ; 
 O, if my temples were distain'd with wine, 
 And girt in girlonds of wilde yvie twine, 
 How could I reare the muse on stately stage, 
 And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine, 
 With queiut Bellona in her equipage ?" || 
 
 * Epistle, &c. + Eclogue 1. 
 
 \ Sonnet 73. § Argument to the Ecloguo. || Ecloguo 10. 
 
 2«r
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 The&e verses sound to us exceedingly like a sarcasm upon the " huft, puft, 
 braggart " vein of the drama which preceded Shakspere by a few years, and 
 which fixed its character even upon the first efforts of the great masters whose 
 light soon gleamed out of this dun smoke. It was no doubt a drunken drama. 
 But there was one in whom we believe the desire was early planted to raise 
 dramatic composition into a high art. The shepherd who speaks these lines in 
 the ' Calendar ' is represented in the argument as " the perfect pattern of a poet, 
 which, finding no maintenance of his state and studies, complaineth of the con- 
 tempt of poetry, and the causes thereof." The cause of the contempt was the 
 want of true poets. The same argument says of poetry, that it is "a divine 
 gift, and heavenly instinct, not to be gotten by labour and learning, but adorned 
 with both, and poured into the wit by a certain Enthousiasmos and celestial 
 inspiration." In the case of Shakspere the Enthousiasmos must have come early ; 
 nor, in our minds, were the labour and learning wanted to direct it. The 
 great model of Spenser, in his early efforts, was Chaucer. Chaucer too was 
 his later veneration : — 
 
 " Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled." * 
 
 In ' The Shepherd's Calendar' Chaucer is " Tityrus, god of shepherds :" — 
 
 " Goe, little Calender ! thou hast a free passeporte ; 
 Goe but a lowly gate amongst the meaner sorte : 
 Dare not to match thy pype with Tityrus his stile." f 
 
 The greatest minds at the period of which we are writing reverenced Chaucer. 
 Sidney says of him, — " I know not whether to marvel more either that he in 
 that misty time could see so clearly, or that we in this clear age go so stumblingly 
 after him." X Passing over the minor poetry with which Shakspere must have 
 been familiar, — the elegance of Wyatt, the tenderness of Surrey, the dignity of 
 Sackville, the broad humour of Skelton, — we have little hesitation in believing 
 that the poetical master of Shakspere was Chaucer. But whilst Spenser imi- 
 tated his style, Shakspere penetrated into the secret of that excellence which is 
 almost independent of style. The natural and moral world was displayed 
 before each ; and they became its interpreters, each after his own peculiar 
 genius. 
 
 And yet, whilst we believe that Shakspere was the pupil of Chaucer; whilst 
 we imagine that the fine bright folio of 1542, whose bold black letter seems 
 the proper dress for the rich antique thought, was the closet companion of the 
 young poet ; that in his solitary walks unbidden tears came into his eyes when 
 he recollected some passage of matchless pathos, or irrepressible laughter arose 
 at those touches of genial humour which glance like sunbeams over the page — 
 comparing, too, Chaucer's fresh descriptions with the freshest things under the 
 sky, and seeing how the true painter of Nature makes oven her loveliness more 
 lovely ; — believing all this, we yet reverentially own that this wondrous 
 
 * Fairy Queen, hook iv., canto 2. f Epilogue to the ' Calender.' 
 
 J Defence of Poesy. 
 248
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 excellence was incommunicable, was not to be imitated. But nevertheless the 
 early familiarity with such a poet as Chaucer must have been a loadstar to one 
 like Shakspere, who was launched into the great ocean of thought without a 
 chart. The narrow seas of poetry had been navigated by others, and their track 
 might be followed by the common adventurer. Chaucer would disclose to him 
 the possibility of delineating individual character with the minutest accuracy, 
 without separating the individual from the permanent and the universal. 
 Chaucer would show him how a high morality might still consist with freedom 
 of thought and even laxity of expression, and how all that is holy and beau- 
 tiful might be loved without such scorn or hatred of the impure and the evil 
 as would exclude them from human sympathy. Chaucer, working as an artist, 
 would inform him what stores lay hidden of old traditions and fables, legends 
 that had travelled from one nation to another, gathering new circumstances as 
 they became clothed in new language, the property of every people, related 
 in the peasant's cabin, studied in the scholar's cell ; and he would teach him 
 that these were the best materials for a poet to work upon, for their universality 
 proved that they were akin to man's inmost nature and feelings. In these, 
 and in many more things, Chaucer would be the teacher of Shakspere. The 
 pupil became greater than the master, partly through the greater comprehen- 
 siveness of his genius, and partly through its dramatic direction. The form of 
 their art was essentially different, but yet the spirit was very much the same. 
 These two poets, England's two greatest poets, have so much in common, that 
 we scarcely regard the different modes in which they worked when we think 
 of their mutual characteristics. Each is equally unapproachable in his humour 
 as in his pathos ; each is so masterly a delineator of character that we converse 
 with the beings of their creation as if they had moved and breathed around 
 us ; each is the closest and the clearest painter of external nature ; each has 
 the profoundest skill in the management of language, so as to send his thoughts 
 with the greatest effect, and with the least apparent effort, into the depths of 
 the understanding ; each, according to his own theory, is a perfect master of 
 harmonious numbers. "What was superadded in Shakspere sets him above all 
 comparison with any other poet. But with Chaucer he may be compared; 
 and having so much in common with him, it is impossible not to feel that the 
 writings of Chaucer must have had an incalculable influence on the formation 
 of the mind of Shakspere. 
 
 Such were the speculations that came across us in that silent reach of the 
 Avon below Charlcote. But the silence is broken. The old fisherman of 
 Alveston paddles up the stream to look for his eel-pots. We drop down the 
 current. Nothing can be more interesting than the constant variety which 
 this beautiful river here exhibits. Now it passes under a high bank clothed 
 with wood ; now a hill waving with corn gently rises from the water's edge. 
 Sometimes a flat meadow presents its grassy margin to the current which 
 threatens to inundate it upon the slightest rise ; sometimes long lines of willow 
 or alder shut out the land, and throw their deep shadows over the placid stream. 
 Islands of sedge here and there render the channel unnavigable, except to 
 
 249
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 the smallest boat. A willow thrusting its trunk over the stream reminds us of 
 Ophelia : — 
 
 " There is a willow grows askaunt the brook 
 That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." * 
 
 A gust of wind raises the underside of the leaves to view, and we then perceive 
 the exquisite correctness of the epithet "hoar." Hawthorns, here and there, 
 grow upon the water's edge ; and the dog-rose spots the green bank with its 
 faint red. That deformity, the pollard-willow, is not so frequent as in most 
 rivers ; but the unlopped trees wear their feathery branches, as graceful as 
 ostrich-plumes. The gust which sings through that long colonnade of willows 
 is blowing up a rain-storm. The wood-pigeons, who have been feeding on the 
 banks, wing their way homewards. The old fisherman is hurrying down the 
 current to the shelter of his cottage. He invites us to partake that shelter. 
 His family are busy at their trade of basket -making ; and the humble roof, 
 with its cheerful fire, is a welcome retreat out of the driving storm. It is a long 
 as well as furious rain. We open the volume of Shakspere's own poems ; and 
 we bethink us what of these he may have composed, or partly shadowed out, 
 wandering on this river-side, or drifting under its green banks, when his happy 
 and genial nature instinctively shaped itself into song, as the expression of his 
 sympathy with the beautiful world around him. 
 
 • Hamlet, Act IV.. Sceuc vu. 
 
 
 
 'i'v/'",-.-?**^ 
 
 
 [Below Charlcoto.J
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 " The first heir of my invention." — This may be literally true of the Venus 
 and Adonis, but it does not imply that the young poet had not been a diligent 
 cultivator of fragmentary verse long before he had attempted so sustained a 
 composition as this most original and remarkable poem. We must carry back 
 our minds to the publisbed poetry of 1593, when the Venus and Adonis ap- 
 peared,, fully to understand the originality of this production. Spenser had 
 indeed then arisen to claim the highest rank in his own proper walk. Six 
 books of ' The Fairy Queen ' had been published two or three years. But, 
 rejoicing as Shakspere must have done in ' The Fairy Queen,' in his own poems 
 we cannot trace the slightest imitation of that wonderful performance ; and it 
 is especially remarkable how steadily he resists the temptation to imitate the 
 archaisms, which Spenser's popularity must have rendered fashionable. If we 
 go back eight or ten years, and suppose, which we have fairly a right to do, 
 that Shakspere was a writer of verse before he was twenty, the absence of any 
 recent models upon which he could found a style will be almost as remarkable, 
 in the case of his narrative compositions, as in that of his dramas. In William 
 Webbe's 'Discourse of English Poetrie,' published in 1586, Chaucer, Gower, 
 Lydgate, and Skelton are the old poets whom he commends. His immediate 
 predecessors, or contemporaries, are — " Master George Gascoigne, a witty 
 gentleman, and the very chief of our late rhymers," Surrey, Vaux, Norton, 
 Bristow, Edwards, Tusser, Churchyard, Kunnis, Heywood, Hill, the Earl of 
 Oxford (who "may challenge to himself the title of the most excellent" among 
 " noble lords and gentlemen in her Majesty's court, which in the rare devices 
 of poetry have been and yet are most excellent skilful ") ; Phaer, Twyne, Gold- 
 ing, Googe, and Fleming the translators ; Whetstone, Munday. The eminence 
 of Spenser, even before the publication of ' The Fairy Queen,' is thus acknow- 
 ledged : — "This place have I purposely reserved for one, who, if not only, yet 
 in my judgment principally, deserveth the title of the rightest English poet 
 that ever I read: that is, the author of 'The Shepherd's Calendar.'" George 
 Puttenham, whose 'Arte of English Poesie' was published in 1589, though 
 probably written somewhat earlier, mentions with commendation among the 
 later sort — " For eclogue and pastoral poesy, Sir Philip Sidney and Master 
 Challenner, and that other gentleman who wrate the late ' Shepherd's Calendar.' 
 For ditty and amorous ode I find Sir Walter Raleigh's vein most lofty, insolent, 
 and passionate. Master Edward Dyer for elegy most sweet, solemn, and of 
 high conceit. Gascoigne for a good metre and. for a plentiful vein." The 
 expression — "that other gentleman who wrate the late 'Shepherd's Calendar'" 
 — would fix the date of this passage of Puttenham almost immediately subse- 
 quent to the publication of Spenser's poem in 1579, the author being still 
 unknown. Shakspere, then, had very few examples amongst his contemporaries, 
 even of the first and most obvious excellence of the Venus and Adonis — "the 
 perfect sweetness of the versification."* To continue the thought of the same 
 critic, this power of versification was " evidently original, and not the result of 
 
 Ccier.dge Biographia Literaria.' 
 
 251
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 an easily imitable mechanism." But, at the same time, he could not have 
 attained the perfection displayed in the Venus and Adonis without a long and 
 habituai practice, which could alone have bestowed the mechanical facility. It 
 is not difficult to trace in that poem itself portions which might have been 
 written as the desultory exercises of a young poet, and afterwards worked up 
 so as to be imbedded in the narrative. Such is the description of the steed ; 
 such of the hare-hunt. Upon the principle upon which we have regarded the 
 Sonnets, that they are fragmentary compositions, arbitrarily strung together, 
 there can be no difficulty in assigning several of these, and especially those 
 which are addressed to a mistress, to that period of the poet's life of which his 
 own recollection would naturally suggest the second stage in his Seven Ages. 
 "The lover sighing like furnace" would have poured himself out in juvenile 
 conceits, such as characterize the Sonnets numbered 135, 136, 143 ; or in play- 
 ful tokens of affection, such as the 128th, the 130th, the 145th ; or in complain- 
 ing stanzas, " a woeful ballad," such as the 131st and 132nd. The little poems 
 of The Passionate Pilgrim which can properly be ascribed to Shakspere have 
 the decided character of early fragments. The beautiful elegiac stanzas of 
 Love's Labour's Lost have the same stamp upon them; as well as similar pas- 
 sages in The Comedy of Errors. The noble scene of the death of Talbot and his 
 son, forming the 5th, 6th, and 7th scenes of the 4th act of Henry VI., Part I., 
 are so different in the structure of their versification from the other portions of 
 the play that we may fairly regard them as forming a considerable part of some 
 separate poem, and that perhaps not originally dramatic. " The period," says 
 Malone, "at which Shakspeare began to write for the stage will, I fear, never 
 be precisely ascertained."* Probably not. But in the absence of this precise 
 information it is a far more reasonable theory that he was educating himself in 
 dramatic as well as poetical composition generally at an early period of his life, 
 when such a mind could not have existed without strong poetical aspirations, 
 than the prevailing belief that the first publication of the Venus and Adonis, 
 and his production of an original drama, were nearly contemporaneous. This 
 theory assumes that his poetical capacity was suddenly developed, very nearly 
 in its perfection, at the mature age of twenty-eight, in the midst of the laborious 
 occupation of an actor, who had no claim for reward amongst his fellows but as 
 an actor. We, on the contrary, consider that we adopt not only a more reason- 
 able view, but one which is supported by all existing evidence, external anc 
 internal, when we regard his native fields as Shakspere's poetical school. 
 Believing that, in the necessary leisure of a country life, — encumbered as we 
 think with no cares of wool-stapling or glove-making, neither educating youth 
 at the charge-house like his own Holofernes, nor even collecting his knowledge 
 of legal terms at an attorney's desk, but a free and happy agriculturist, — the 
 young Shakspere not exactly " lisped in numbers," but cherished and cultivated 
 the faculty when " the numbers came ; " we yield ourselves up to the poetical 
 notion, because it is at the same time the more rational and consistent one. 
 
 * Posthumous Life, p. 167. 
 2G2
 
 A THOGRAPHY. 
 that the genius of verse cherished her 
 
 batiks :" — 
 
 young favourite "on these "iriuW 
 
 " Here, as with honey gather' J from the rock 
 5~ fed the Uttle Pettier, and with songs ' 
 
 Oft sooth'cl his wonderin 
 
 ears ; with deep delight 
 
 On her soft lap he sat, and caught the sounds." . 
 
 Joseph Warlon. 
 
 [Wear Alveston.]
 
 H-^m 
 
 «II^ 
 
 r^F 
 
 *. ; >. 
 
 -w 
 
 
 | Near Luding-ton.l 
 
 NOTE ON THE SCENERY OF THE AVON. 
 
 The Avon of Warwickshire, called the Upper Avon, necessarily derives its chief interest from ita 
 associations with Shakspere. His contemporaries connected his fame with his native river : — 
 
 " Sweet swan r,f Avon, what a sight it were, 
 To see thee in our waters yet appear, 
 And make those flights upon the banks of Thames 
 That so did take Eliza and our James !" 
 
 So wrote Jonson in his manly lines, 'To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author Mr. William 
 Shakespeare, and what he hath left ub.' After him came Davenant, with a pretty conceit that 
 the river had lost its beauty when the great poet no longer dwelt upon its banks : — 
 
 " Beware, delighted poets, when you sing, 
 To welcome nature in the early spring, 
 
 Your numerous feet not tread 
 The banks of A von ; for each flow'r, 
 As it ne'er knew a sun or snow r, 
 Hangs there the pensive hea^i. 
 •2;"4
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Each tree, -whose thick and spreading growth hath made 
 Rather a night beneath the boughs than shade, 
 
 Unwilling now to grow, 
 Looks like the plume a captain wears, 
 Whose rifled falls are steep'd i' the tears 
 
 Which from his last rage flow. 
 
 The piteous river wept itself away 
 Long since, alas ! to such a swift decay, 
 
 That, reach the map, and look 
 If you a river there can spy, 
 And, for a river, your mock'd eye 
 
 Will find a shallow brook." * 
 
 Joseph Warton describes fair Fancy discovering the infant Shakspere "on the winding Avon's 
 willowed banks." Thomas Warton has painted the scenery of the Avon and its associations with a 
 bright pencil : — ■ 
 
 " Avon, thy rural views, thy pastures wild, 
 The willows that o'erhang thy twilight edge, 
 Their boughs entangling with the embattled sedge; 
 Thy brink with watery foliage quaintly fringed, 
 Thy surface with reflected verdure tinged ; 
 Soothe me with many a pensive pleasure mild. 
 But while I muse, that here the Bard Divine, 
 Whose sacred dust yon high-arch'd aisles enclose, 
 Where the tall windows rise in stately rows, 
 Above th' embowering shade, 
 Here first, at Fancy's fairy-circled shrine, 
 Of daisies pied his infant offering made ; 
 Here playful yet, in stripling years unripe, 
 Framed of thy reeds a shrill and artless pipe 
 Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled, 
 As at the waving of some magic wand ; 
 An holy trance my charmed spirit wings, 
 And awful shapes of leaders and of kings, 
 People the busy mead, 
 
 Like spectres swarming to the wizard's hall ; 
 And slowly pace, and point with trembling hand 
 The wounds ill-cover'd by the purple pall. 
 Before m? Pity seems to stand, 
 A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore 
 To see Misfortune rend in frantic mood 
 His robe, with regal woes embroider'd o'er. 
 Pale Terror leads the visionary band, 
 And sternly shakes his sceptre, dropping blood.'' » 
 
 The well-known lines of Gray arc amongst his happiest efforts : — 
 
 " Far from the sun and summer gale, 
 In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid, 
 What time, where lucid Avon stray'd, 
 To him the mighty mother did unveil 
 Her awful face : the dauntless child 
 Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled. 
 ' This pencil take,' she said, ' whose colours clear 
 Richly paint the vernal year : 
 Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy I 
 This can unlock the gates of joy ; 
 Of horror that, and thrilling fears, 
 Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.' ''J 
 
 These quotations sufficiently show that the presiding genius of the Avon is Shakspero. But evon 
 without this paramount association, the river, although little visited, abounds with picturesque 
 scenery and interesting objects. A big, dull book has been written upon it, by one who could 
 
 * In Remembrance of Master William Shakspeare. Ode. 
 » Ucncdv, written near &ratford-upon-Avon. j The Progress of Po^sy. 
 
 255
 
 WILLTAM SHAKSPERE ! 
 
 neither put down with exactness what he saw, nor impart any life to hi3 meagre descriptions. 
 From the first section of his book, which tells us that " The river Avon derives its source from a 
 spring called Avon Well in the village of Naseby," to the last, in which he informs us that "Avon's 
 friendly streams with Severn join," the 'Picturesque Views' of Mr. Samuel Ireland appear to us 
 the production of the most spiritless of delineators. We would not recommend the tourist to en- 
 cumber himself with this heavy book. The associations of the Avon with Shakspere may be consi- 
 dered to begin in the neighbourhood of Kenilworth. The river is not navigable above Stratford, 
 and therefore the traveller will find it no very easy matter to trace its course; but still a pedestrian 
 can overcome many difficulties. The beautiful grounds of Guy's Cliff are shown to visitors. A 
 little below, a boat will convey the wayfarer through somewhat tame scenery to Warwick Bridge. 
 The noble castle is an object never to be forgotten ; and perhaps there is no pile of similar interest 
 in England which in so high a degree unites the beautiful with the magnificent. The Avon flows 
 for a considerable distance through the domain of the castle. Below, the left bank is bold and 
 well-wooded, especially near Barford. The reader may now trace the river by the little map (p. 
 232). The course of the stream is generally through flat meadows from Barford to Hampton Lucy ; 
 but the high ground of Fulbrooke offers a great variety of picturesque scenery, and occasionally 
 one or the other bank is lofty and precipitous, as at Hampton Wood. The reader is already familiar 
 with the characteristics of the river from Hampton Lucy to Stratford. The most romantic spot is 
 Hatton Rock ; a bank of considerable j height, where the current, narrow and rapid, washes the 
 base of the cliff, which is luxuriantly wooded. The river view of Stratford, as we approach the 
 bridge, is exceedingly picturesque. When we have passed the church and the mill we may follow 
 the river, by the tow-path on the right bank, the whole way to Bidford. The views are not very 
 picturesque till we have passed the confluence of the Stour. Near Ludington we meet at every turn 
 with subjects for the sketch-book. Opposite Welford, on the pathway to Hilborough, the landscape 
 is very lovely. A mill is always a picturesque object ; aud here is one that seems to have held its 
 place for many a century. Of the Grange and of Bidford we have often spoken. Below the little 
 
 • 'mm 
 
 [The Mill ; Welford.]
 
 A BIOGKAPUY. 
 
 town the river becomes a much more Important stream ; and the left bank for several miles will 
 appear bold and romantic even to those who are familiar with the Wye. This is especially the 
 case under the Marl Cliff Hill. Here the Arrow contributes its rapid waters to swell the stream. 
 We have now quitted Warwickshire. As we approach Evesham the town with its noble tower and 
 ancient spires forms a most interesting termination to such a walk of three days as we have now 
 briefly traced. 
 
 Life. 
 
 2-57
 
 ^KSfe^ZZ 
 
 -Bv 
 
 [Worcester.] 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A DAY AT WORCESTER. 
 
 The hospitality of our ancestors was founded upon their sympathies with 
 each other's joys and sorrows. The festivals of the church, the celebrations of 
 sheep -shearing and harvest-home, the Mayings, were occasions of general glad 
 ness. But upon the marriage of a son or of a daughter, at the christening of a 
 child, the humblest assembled their neighbours to partake of their particular 
 rejoicing. So was it also with their sorrows. Death visited a family, and its 
 neighbours came to mourn. To be absent from the house of mourning would 
 have seemed as if there was not a fellowship in sorrow as well as in joy. Chris- 
 tian neighbours in those times looked upon each other as members of the same 
 family. Their intimacy was much more constant and complete than in days 
 that are thought more refined. Privacy was not looked upon as a desirable 
 '.hing. The latch of every door was lifted without knocking, and the dance in 
 258
 
 A r.IOGEAPIIY. 
 
 the hall wls arranged the instant some young taborci struck a note ; or the 
 gossip's bowl was passed around the winter fire-side, to jest and song :— 
 
 " And then the whole quire hold their hips and lofFe, 
 And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear 
 A merrier hour was never wasted there." * 
 
 Young men married early. In the middle ranks there was little outfit required 
 to begin housekeeping. A few articles of useful furniture satisfied their simple 
 tastes ; and we doubt not there was as much happiness seated on the wooden 
 bench as now on the silken ottoman, and as light hearts tripped over the green 
 rushes as upon the Persian carpet. A silver bowl or two, a few spoons, con- 
 stituted the display of the more ambitious ; but for use the treen platter was 
 at once clean and substantial, though the pewter dish sometimes graced a 
 solemn merry-making. Employment, especially agricultural, was easily ob- 
 tained by the industrious ; and the sons of the yeomen, whose ambition did not 
 drive them into the towns to pursue commerce, or to the universities to try for 
 the prizes of professions, walked humbly and contentedly in the same road as 
 their fathers had walked before them. They tilled a little land with indiffer- 
 ent skill, and their herds and flocks gave food and raiment to their household. 
 Surrounded by the cordial intimacies of the class to which he belonged, it is 
 not difficult to understand how William Shakspere married early ; and the very 
 circumstance of his so marrying is tolerably clear evidence of the course of life 
 in which he was brought up. 
 
 It has been a sort of fashion of late years to consider that Shakspere was 
 
 clerk to an attorney. Thomas Nash in 1589 published this sentence: "It is 
 
 a common practice now-a-days, among a sort of shifting companions, that run 
 
 through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto 
 
 they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could 
 
 scarcsly latinize their neck-verse if they should have need ; yet English Seneca, 
 
 read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as Bloud is a Beggar, and so 
 
 forth : and, if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole 
 
 Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches. f This quotation is held 
 
 to furnish the external evidence that Shakspere had been an attorney, by the 
 
 connection here implied of " the trade of Noverint " and " whole Hamlets.' 
 
 Noverint was the technical beginning of a bond. J It is imputed, then, by 
 
 Nash, to a sort of shifting companions, that, running through every art and 
 
 thriving by none, they attempt dramatic composition, drawing their tragical 
 
 speeches from English Seneca. Does this description apply to Shakspere ? 
 
 Was he thriving by no art? In 1589 he was established in life as a sharer in 
 
 the Blackfriars Theatre. Does the use of the term "whole Hamlets" fix the 
 
 allusion upon him? It appears to us only to show that some tragedy called 
 
 'Hamlet,' it maybe Shakspere's was then in existence; and that ?t was a play 
 
 * A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act II., Scene i. 
 
 f Epistle prefixed to Greene's 'Arcadia,' by Thomas Na^h. 
 
 t See Shakspere's Marriage-Bond : Note to this Chapter. 
 
 S 2 259
 
 WILLIAM SI1AKSPERE : 
 
 also at which Nash might sneer as abounding with tragical speeches. But it 
 does not seem to us that there is any absolute connection between the Noverint 
 and the Hamlet. Suppose, for example, that the Hamlet alluded to was 
 written by Marlowe, who was educated at Cambridge, and was certainly not a 
 lawyer's clerk. The sentence will read as well ; the sarcasm upon the tragical 
 speeches of the Hamlet will be as pointed ; the shifting companion who has 
 thriven by no art, and has left the calling to which he was born, may study 
 English Seneca till he produces " whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, oi 
 tragical speeches." In the same way Nash might have said whole Tamburlaines 
 of tragical speeches, without attempting to infer that the author of ' Tamburlaine 
 had left the trade of Noverint. We believe that the allusion was to Shak- 
 spere's Hamlet, but that the first part of the sentence had no allusion to Shak- 
 spere's occupation. The context of the passage renders the matter even 
 clearer. Nash begins, — " I will turn back to my first text of studies of delight, 
 and talk a little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators." Nash 
 aspired to the reputation of a scholar ; and he directs his satire against those 
 who attempted the labours of scholarship without the requisite qualifications. 
 The trivial translators could scarcely latinize their neck-verse — they could 
 scarcely repeat the verse of Scripture which was the ancient form of praying 
 the benefit of clergy. Seneca, however, might be read in English. We have 
 then to ask was Hamlet a translation or an adaptation from Seneca ? Did 
 Shakspere ever attempt to found a play upon the model of Seneca ; to be a 
 trivial translator of him ; even to transfuse his sentences into a dramatic com- 
 position ? If this imputation does not hold good against Shakspere, the mention 
 of Hamlet has no connection with the shifting companion who is thus talked to 
 as a trivial translator. Nash does not impute these qualities to Hamlet, but to 
 those who busy themselves with the endeavours of art in adapting sentences 
 from Seneca which should rival whole Hamlets in tragical speeches. And then 
 he immediately says, "But, O grief! Tcmpits eihx rerum; — what is it that 
 will last always ? The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be dry ; and 
 Seneca, let blood line by line, and page by page, at length must needs die to 
 our stage." 
 
 The external evidence of this passage (and it is the only evidence of such a 
 character that has been found) wholly fails, we think, in showing that Shakspere 
 was in 1589 reputed to have been an attorney. But had he pursued this occu- 
 pation, either at Stratford or in London, it is tolerably clear that there would 
 have been ample external evidence for the establishment of the fact. In those 
 times an attorney was employed in almost every transaction between man and 
 man of any importance. Deeds, bonds, indentures, were much more common 
 when legal documents were untaxed, and legal assistance was comparatively 
 cheap. To every document attesting witnesses were numerous ; and the attor- 
 ney's clerk, as a matter of course, was amongst the number. Such papers and 
 parchments are better secured against the ravages of time than any other ma- 
 nuscripts. It is scarcely possible that, if Shakspere had been an attorney's clerk, 
 his name would not have appeared in some such document, as a subscribing 
 
 2(10
 
 A BIOGRAPIU*. 
 
 witness.* No such signature has ever been found. This fact appears to us 
 to dispose of Malone's confident belief that upon Shakspere leaving school ho 
 was placed for two or three years in the office of one of the seven attorneys who 
 practised in the Court of Record in Stratford. Malone adds, " The compre- 
 hensive mind of our poet, it must be owned, embraced almost every object of 
 nature, every trade, and every art, the manners of every description of men, 
 and the general language of almost every profession : but his knowledge and 
 application of legal terms seem to me not merely such as might have been 
 acquired by the casual observation of his all-comprehending mind ; it has the 
 appearance of technical skill ; and he is so fond of displaying it on all occasions, 
 that there is, I think, some ground for supposing that he was early initiated 
 in at least the forms of law."f Malone then cites a number of passages exem- 
 plifying Shakspere's knowledge and application of legal terms. The theory 
 was originally propounded by Malone in his edition of 1790; and it gave rise 
 to many subsequent notes of the commentators, pointing out these technical 
 allusions. The frequency of their occurrence, and the accuracy of their use, 
 are, however, no proof to us that Shakspere was professionally a lawyer. There 
 is every reason to believe that the principles of law, especially the law of real 
 property, were much more generally understood in those days than in our 
 own. Educated men, especially those who possessed property, looked upon law 
 as a science instead of a mystery ; and its terms were used in familiar speech 
 instead of being regarded as a technical jargon. When Hamlet says, " This 
 fellow might be in his time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recog- 
 nizancies his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries," he employs terms with 
 which every gentleman was familiar, because the owner of property w r as often 
 engaged in a practical acquaintance with them. This is one of the examples 
 given by Malone. "No writer," again says Malone, "but one who had been 
 conversant with the technical language of leases and other conveyances, would 
 have used determination as synonymous to end." He refers to a passage in the 
 13th Sonnet, — 
 
 " So should that beauty which you hold in lease 
 Find no determination." 
 
 We may add that Coriolanus uses the verb in the same way : — 
 
 " Shall I be charg'd no further than this present 
 Must all dttermim here?" 
 
 The word is used as a term of law, with a full knowledge of its primary mean- 
 ing ; and so Shakspere uses it. The chroniclers use it in the same way. Upon 
 the passage in the Sonnets to which we have just referred, Malone has a note, 
 with a parallel passage from Daniel : — 
 
 * Mr. Wheler, of Stratford, having taken up the opinion many years ago, upon the suggestion of 
 Malone, that Shakspere might have been in an attorney's office, has availed himself of his opportu- 
 nities as a solicitor to examine hundreds of documents of Shakspere's time, in the hope of discover- 
 ing Ids signature. The examination was altogether fruitless. 
 
 f Posthumous ' Life.' 
 
 261
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 " In beauty's lease expir'd appears 
 The date of age, the calends of our death." 
 
 Daniel was not a lawyer, but a scholar and a courtier. Upon the passage in 
 Richard III.,-— 
 
 " Tell me, what state, what dignity, what honour, 
 Canst thou demise to any child of mine ?" — 
 
 Malone asks what poet but Shakspere has used the word demise in this sense , 
 observing that "hath demised, granted, and to farm let" is the constant 
 language of leases. Being the constant language, a man of the world would be 
 familiar with it. A quotation from a theologian may show this familiarity as 
 well as one from a poet : — " I conceive it ridiculous to make the condition of an 
 indenture something that is necessarily annexed to the possession of the demise." 
 If Warburton had used law-terms in this logical manner, we might have recol- 
 lected his early career ; but we do not learn that Hammond, the great divine 
 from whom we quote, had any other than a theological education. We are 
 further told, when Shallow says to Davy, in Henry IV., "Are those precepts 
 served ? " that precepts, in this sense, is a word only known in the office of a 
 justice of peace. Very different would it have been indeed from Shakspere's 
 usual precision, had he put any word in the mouth of a justice of peace that 
 was not known in his office. When the Boatswain, in The Tempest, roars out 
 '' Take in the topsail," he uses a phrase that is known only on shipboard. In 
 the passage of Henry IV., Part II., — 
 
 " For what in me was purchas'd, 
 Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort," — 
 
 it is held that purchase, being used in its strict legal sense, could be known onl) 
 to a lawyer. An educated man could scarcely avoid knowing the great distinc- 
 tion of purchase as opposed to descent, the only two modes of acquiring real 
 estate. This general knowledge, which it would be vary remarkable if Shak- 
 spere had not acquired, involves the use of the familiar law-terms of his day, 
 fee simple, fine and recovery, entail, remainder, escheat, mortgage^ The com- 
 monest practice of the law, such as a sharp boy would have learnt in two or 
 three casual attendances upon the Bailiffs Court at Stratford, would have 
 familiarized Shakspere very early with the words which are held to imply con- 
 siderable technical knowledge — action, bond, warrant, bill, suit, plea, arrest. It 
 must not be forgotten that the terms of law, however they may be technically 
 applied, belong to the habitual commerce of mankind ; they are no abstract 
 terms, but essentially deal with human acts, and interests, and thoughts : and 
 it is thus that, without any fanciful analogies, they more readily express the 
 feelings of those who use them with a general significancy, than any other 
 words that the poet could apply. A writer who has carried the theory of 
 Shakspere's professional occupation farther even than Malone, holds that the 
 Poems are especially full of these technical terms ; and he gives many instances 
 from the Venus and Adonis, the Lucrece, and the Sonnets, saying, " they 
 362
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 warm in his poems even to deformity."* Surely, when we read those exquisite 
 
 lines, — 
 
 " When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
 I summon up remembrance of things past,"— 
 
 we think of anything else than the judge and the crier of the court; and yet 
 this is one of the examples produced in proof of this theory. Dryden's 
 noble use of " the last assizes " is no evidence that he was a lawyer. f Many 
 similar instances are given, equally founded, we think, upon the mistake of 
 believing that the technical language has no relation to the general language. 
 Metaphorical, no doubt, are some of these expressions, such as 
 
 " But be contented when that fell arrest 
 "Without all bail shall carry me away ; " 
 
 but the metaphors are as familiar to the reader as to the poet himself. They 
 present a clear and forcible image to the mind ; and, looking at the habits of 
 society, they can scarcely be called technical. Dekker describes the conversa- 
 tion at the third-rate London ordinary : — " There is another ordinary, at which 
 your London usurer, your stale bachelor, and your thrifty attorney do resort ; 
 the price three-pence ; the rooms as full of company as a jail ; and indeed 
 divided into several wards, like the beds of an hospital. The compliment 
 between these is not much, their words few ; for the belly hath no ears : every 
 man's eye here is upon the other man s trencher, to note whether his fellow 
 lurch him, or no : if they chance to discourse, it is of nothing but of statutes, 
 bonds, recognizances, fines, recoveries, audits, rents, subsidies, sureties, enclo- 
 sures, liveries, indictments, outlawries, feoffments, judgments, commissions, 
 bankrupts, amercements, and of such horrible matter." t Here is pretty good 
 evidence of the general acquaintance with the law's jargon ; and Dekker, who 
 is himself a dramatic poet, has put together in a few lines as many technical 
 terms as we may find in Shakspere. It has been maintained, as we have men- 
 tioned, that our poet was brought up as a gardener, as proved by his familiarity 
 with the terms and practice of the horticultural art. Malone, after citing his 
 legal examples, says, — " Whenever as large a number of instances of his eccle- 
 siastical or medicinal knowledge shall be produced, what has now been stated 
 will certainly not be entitled to any weight." We shall not argue that none 
 but an apothecary could have written the description of the vendor of dru^* 
 and the culler of simples, in whose 
 
 " needy shop a tortoise hung, 
 An alligator stuff' d, and other skins 
 Of ill-shap'd fishes ; and about his shelves 
 A beggarly account of empty boxes, 
 Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds." § 
 
 Nor do we hold, because he has mentioned the ague about a dozen times, he 
 was familiar with the remedies for that disorder; nor that, when Falstaff 
 describes the causes of apoplexy to the Chief Justice, and says that he has read 
 
 » Brown's Autobiographical Poems, &c. f Ode on Mrs. Killigrew. 
 
 t Dekker's ' Gull's Hornbook : ' 160&. § Tvomeo and Juliet, Act v., Scene i. 
 
 263
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 of the effects in Galen, Shakspere had gone through a course of study in that 
 author to qualify himself for a diploma. He does not use medical terms as 
 frequently as legal, because they are not as apposite to the thoughts and situations 
 of his speakers. It is the same with the terms of divinity, which Malone 
 cannot find in such abundance as the terms of law. But if the terms be not 
 there, assuredly the spirit lives in his pure teaching ; and his philosophy is 
 lighted up with something much higher than the moral irradiations of the 
 unassisted understanding. Of his manifold knowledge it may be truly said, as 
 he said of his own Henry V.,— 
 
 " Hear him but reason in divinity, 
 And, all-adiniritig, with an inward wish 
 You would desire the king were made a prelate : 
 Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, 
 You would say, — it hath been all-in-all his study : 
 List his discourse of war, and you shall hear 
 A fearful battle render'd you in music : 
 Turn him to any cause of policy, 
 The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, 
 Familiar as his garter ; that, when he speaks, 
 The air, a charter' d libertine, is still, 
 And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, 
 To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences ; 
 So that the art and practick part of life 
 Must be the mistress to this theoric." * 
 
 We should have thought it unnecessary to have added anything to the views 
 which we thus entertained in 1843 (when the original edition of this Biography was 
 published), had the subject not been invested with a new importance, in its treat- 
 ment by the late Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench. In 1859 
 Lord Campbell published a volume, entitled ' Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements 
 considered.' The subject is approached by the learned Judge in a just and liberal 
 spirit, essentially different from that of the Shaksperian critics of the last age. He 
 holds " that there has been a great deal of misrepresentation and delusion as to 
 Shakespeare's opportunities when a youth of acquiring knowledge, and as to the 
 knowledge he had acquired. From a love of the incredible, and a wish to make 
 what he afterwards accomplished actually miraculous, a band of critics have con- 
 spired to lower the condition of his father, and to represent the son, when approach- 
 ing man's estate, as still almost wiioliy illiterate. ' We are gratified, that in re- 
 capitulating the various facts which militate against the vague traditions, and ignorant 
 assumptions, some of which prevailed only a quarter of a century ago, Lord Campbell 
 refers " to that most elaborate and entertaining book, Knight's ' Life of Shakspere,' 
 1st edit. p. \6." But, of the general argument comprised in our preceding five 
 pages, Lord Campbell does not take the slightest notice. He no doubt weighed 
 well all the points in which, with my own imperfect legal knowledge, I ventured to 
 
 * Henry V., Act I. Seene l 
 264
 
 A BIOGKAPIIY. 
 
 doubt whether Shakspere was bred an attorney. He does not overlook the words 
 of Nashe about "the trade of Noveri?it," and "whole Hamlets," but he thus 
 judicially decides : — " Now, if the innuendo which would have been introduced 
 into the declaration in an action, ' Shakespeare v. Nash,' for this libel ( — ' thereby 
 then and there meaning the said William Shakespeare ' — ) be made out, there can 
 be no doubt as to the remaining innuendo ' thereby then and there meaning that the 
 said William Shakespeare had been an attorney's clerk, or bred an attorney." With 
 the most laudable industry Lord Campbell has made a selection from the Plays and 
 Poems, occupying more than two-thirds of his book, to exhibit " expressions and 
 allusions, that must be supposed to come from one that has been a professional 
 lawyer." He also holds that Shakspere's will was in all probability composed by 
 himself, and that "a testator without professional experience, could hardly have 
 used language so appropriate as we find in this will to express his meaning." We 
 should have thought that Lord Campbell, following up his own argument, that in 
 this will, when Shakspere leaves his second best bed to his wife, he showed his 
 technical skill by omitting the word devise, which he had used in disposing of his 
 realty, might have stated that in this bequest Shakspere was aware that his wife was 
 entitled to dower ; and yet he does not hesitate to repeat the ' misrepresentation 
 and delusion " which had been attached to this fact before we had the good fortune 
 to discover that Shakspere on his death-bed did not exhibit a contemptuous neglect 
 of his wife. Our argument is, we venture to hope, not affected by Lord Campbell's 
 judicial sneers and exaggerated inferences : — " The idolatrous worshippers of Shake- 
 speare, who think it necessary to make his moral qualities as exalted as his poetical 
 genius, account for this sorry bequest, and for no other notice being taken of pool 
 Mrs. Shakespeare in the will, by saying that he knew she was sufficiently provided 
 for by her right of dower out of his landed property, which the law would give her ; 
 and they add that he must have been tenderly attached to her, because (they take 
 upon themselves to say) she was exquisitely beautiful as well as strictly virtuous. 
 But she was left by her husband without house or furniture (except the second best 
 bed), or a kind word, or any other token of his love ; and I sadly fear that between 
 William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway the course of true love never did run 
 smooth." Lord Campbell's plural " idolatrous worshippers " is a gentle form of 
 referring to the one worshipper who originated this new view with regard to dower. 
 That worshipper, in his idolatry, never held up Ann Hathaway as " exquisitely 
 beautiful;" " strictly virtuous " he believed her to have been according to the custom 
 of betrothment which existed in Shakspere's youth. With Lord Campbell's well-known 
 habit of literary appropriation — " convey the wise it call " — did he forbear to adopt 
 this interpretation because it was not discovered by a lawyer? The Chief Justice 
 knew perfectly well that the right to dower totally upset all the inferences about the 
 second best bed, which the Commentators — lawyers as some of them were — set 
 forth, and which were currently accepted up to the time when I presumed to say 
 
 that lawyers had shut their eves to the fact. 
 
 1 ; 265
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 We hold, then, that William Shakspere, the son of a possessor and cultivator 
 of land, a gentleman by descent, married to the heiress of a good family, com- 
 fortable in his worldly circumstances, married the daughter of one in a similar 
 rank of life, and in all probability did not quit his native place when he so 
 married. The marriage-bond, which was discovered a few years since, has set 
 at rest all doubt as to the name and residence of his wife. She is there described 
 as Anne Hathwey, of Stratford, in the diocese of Worcester, maiden. Rowe. in 
 his ' Life,' says, — " Upon his leaving school he seems to have given entirely 
 into that way of living which his father proposed to him : and in order to settle 
 in the world, after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet 
 very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a 
 substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford." At the hamlet of 
 Shottery, which is in the parish of Stratford, the Hathaways had been settled 
 forty years before the period of Shakspere's marriage ; for in the Warwickshire 
 Surveys, in the time of Philip and Mary, it is recited that John Hathaway 
 held property at Shottery, by copy of court-roll, dated 20th of April, 34th of 
 Henry VIII. (1543).* The Hathaway of Shakspere's time was named Richard; 
 and the intimacy between him and John Shakspere is shown by a precept in an 
 action against Richard Hathaway, dated 1576, in which John Shakspere is his 
 bondman. Before the discovery of the marriage-bond Maione had found a con- 
 firmation of the traditional account that the maiden name of bnakspere's wife: 
 was Hathaway ; for Lady Barnard, the grand-daughter of Shakspere, makes 
 bequests in her will to the children of Thomas Hathaway, "her kinsman." 
 But Maione doubts whether there were not other Hathaways than those of 
 Shottery, residents in the town of Stratford, and not in the hamlet included in 
 the parish. This is possible. But, on the other hand, the description in the 
 marriage-bond of Anne Hathaway, as of Stratford, is no proof that she was not 
 of Shottery ; for such a document would necessarily have regard only to the 
 parish of the person described. Tradition, always valuable when it is not 
 opposed to evidence, has associated for many years the cottage of the Hathaways 
 at Shottery with the wife of Shakspere. Garrick purchased relics out of it at 
 the time of the Stratford Jubilee ; Samuel Ireland afterwards carried off what 
 was called Shakspere's courting- chair ; and there is still in the house a very 
 ancient carved bedstead, which has been handed down from descendant to 
 descendant as an heirloom. The house was no doubt once adequate to form a 
 comfortable residence for a substantial and even wealthy yeoman. It is still a 
 pretty cottage, embosomed by trees, and surrounded by pleasant pastures ; and 
 
 * The Shottery property, which was called Ilewland, remained with the descendants of the 
 Hathaways till 183S. 
 206
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 hero the young poet might have surrendered his prudence to his affections : — 
 
 " As in the sweetest buds 
 The eating canker dwells, so eating love 
 Inhabits in the finest wits of all." * 
 
 The very early marriage of the young man, with one moie than seven years hia 
 elder, has been supposed to have been a rash and passionate proceeding. Upor> 
 
 £al 
 
 
 [Shottery Cottage.] 
 
 the face of it, it appears an act that might at least be reproved in the words 
 which follow those we have just quoted : — 
 
 "As the most forward bud 
 Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, 
 Even so by love the young and tender wit 
 Is turn'd to folly ; blasting in the bud, 
 Losing his verdure even in the prime, 
 And all the fair effects of future hopes." 
 
 This is the common consequence of precocious marriages ; but we are not 
 therefore to conclude that "the young and tender. wit" of our Shakspere was 
 "turned to folly" — that his "forward bud" was "eaten by the canker"— that 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act r., Scene i. 
 
 207
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 'his verdure" was lost "even in the prime," by his marriage with Anne 
 Hathawav before he was nineteen. The influence which this marriage must 
 have had upon his destinies was no doubt considerable ; but it is too much to 
 assume, as it has been assumed, that it was an unhappy influence. All that 
 we really know of Shakspere's family life warrants the contrary supposition. 
 We believe, to go no farther at present, that the marriage of Shakspere was 
 one of affection ; that there was no disparity in the worldly condition of 
 himself and the object of his choice ; that it was with the consent of friends ; 
 that there were no circumstances connected with it which indicate that it was 
 either forced or clandestine, or urged on by an artful woman to cover her 
 apprehended loss of character. Taking up, as little as possible, a controversial 
 attitude in a matter of such a nature, we shall shape our course according to 
 this belief. 
 
 In the last week of November, in the year 1582, let us look upon a cheerful 
 family scene in the pretty village of Clifford. The day is like a green old age, 
 "frosty but kindly." The sun shines brightly upon the hills, over which a 
 happy party have tripped from Stratford. It is a short walk of some mile and 
 a half. The village stands very near the confluence of the Stour with the 
 Avon. It is Sunday ; and after the service there is to be a christening. The 
 visitors assemble at a substantial house, and proceed reverently to cnurch. 
 The age is not yet arrived when the cold formalities of a listless congregation 
 have usurped the place of real devotion. The responses are made with the 
 earnest voice which indicates the full heart ; and the young, especially, join in 
 the choral parts of the service, so as to preserve one of the best characters of 
 adoration, in offering a tribute of gladness to Him who has filled the world 
 with beauty and joy. During the service the sacrament of baptism is admi- 
 nistered with a reverential solemnity. "William Shakspere had often been so 
 present at its administration, and the ceremonial has appeared to him full of 
 truth and holiness. But the opinions which were earnestly disseminated 
 amongst the people, by teachers pretending to superior sanctity and wisdom, 
 would be also familiar to him ; and he would have learnt, from those who 
 were opposed to most ancient ceremonial observances, that the signing with 
 the Cross in baptism was a superstitious relic of Rome — a thing rejected by 
 the understanding, and only preserved as a delusion of the imagination. A 
 book with which he was familiar in after-life was not then written ; but on 
 such occasions of controversy it would occur to him that " the holy sign,'' 
 " imprinted on the gates of the palace of man's fancy," would suggest associa- 
 tions which to Christian men would be " a most effectual though a silent 
 teacher to avoid whatsoever may deservedly procure shame." Through the 
 imagination would this holy sign work ; for " the mind, while we are in this 
 present life, whether it contemplate, meditate, deliberate, or howsoever exercise 
 itself, worketh nothing without continual recourse unto imagination, the only 
 storehouse of wit, and peculiar chair of memory. On this anvil it ceaseth not 
 day and night to strike, by means whereof, as the pulse declareth how the 
 268
 
 A BIOGRAPIIY. 
 
 heart doth work, so the very thoughts and cogitations of man's mind, be they 
 good or bad, do nowhere sooner bewray themselves than through the crevices 
 of that wall wherewith Nature hath compassed the cells and closets of fancy."* 
 Such was the way in which the young Shakspere would, we think, religiously 
 and philosophically, regard this ceremony ; it would be so impressed upon his 
 '* imagination." But the service is ended ; the gossips are assembled in the 
 churclryard. A merry peal rings out from the old tower, ^ordial welcome is 
 
 ^#;v.-v.*--; :'< , . 
 
 [Clifford Church. J 
 
 there within the yeoman's house, to whose family such an occasion as this is a 
 joyful festival. The chief sponsors duly present the apostle-spoons to the 
 child ; but one old lady, who looks upon this practice as a luxurious innovation 
 of modern times, is content to offer a christening shirt.f The refection of the 
 guests aspires to daintiness as much as plenty ; and the comely dames upon 
 their departure do not hesitate to put the sweet biscuits and comfits into their 
 
 • Hooter's ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' book v. 
 
 f See Note to this Chapter. 
 2C9
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 pockets. There is cordial salutation, at this meeting, of William Shakspere 
 and his fair companion. He and Anne Hathaway are bound together by the 
 trothplight. There is no secret as to this union ; there is no affectation in 
 concealing their attachment. He speaks of her as his wife ; she of him as her 
 husband. He is tall and finely formed, with a face radiant with intellect, and 
 capable of expressing the most cheerful and most tender emotions ; she is in 
 the full beauty of womanhood, glowing with health and conscious happiness. 
 Some of the gossips whisper that she is too old for him ; but his frank and 
 manly bearing, and her beauty and buoyant spirits, would not suggest this, if 
 some tattle about age was not connected with the whisper. No one of that 
 company, except an envious rival, would hold that they were " misgraffed in 
 respect of years." The Church is in a few days to cement the union, which, 
 some weeks ago, was fixed by the public trothplight. They are hand-fasted, and 
 they are happy. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that Shakspere was remarkable for manly 
 beauty : — " He was a handsome, well-shaped man/' says Aubrey. According to 
 tradition, he played Adam in As You Like It, and the Ghost in Hamlet. Adam 
 says, — 
 
 " Though I look old, yet I am strocg and lusty." 
 
 Upon his personation of the Ghost, Mr. Campbell has the following judicious 
 remarks : — " It has been alleged, in proof of his mediocrity, that he enacted the 
 part of his own Ghost, in Hamlet. But is the Ghost in Hamlet a very mean 
 character ? No : though its movements are few, they must be awfully graceful ; 
 and the spectral voice, though subdued and half-monotonous, must be solemn 
 and full of feeling. It gives us an imposing idea of Shakspere's stature and 
 mien to conceive him in this part. The English public, accustomed to see their 
 lofty nobles, their Essexes, and their Raleighs, clad in complete armour, and 
 moving under it with a majestic air, would not have tolerated the actor Shak- 
 speare, unless he had presented an appearance worthy of the buried majesty of 
 Denmark."* That he performed kingly parts is indicated by these lines, writ- 
 ten, in 1611, by John Davies, in a poem inscribed 'To our English Terence, 
 Mr. William Shakspeare : ' — 
 
 " Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing, 
 
 Hadst thou not play'd some Icinghj parts in sport, 
 Thou hadat been a companion for a king, 
 And been a king among the meaner sort." 
 
 The portrait by Martin Droeshout, prefixed to the edition of 1623, when Shak- 
 spere would be well remembered by his friends, gives a notion of a man of 
 remarkably fine features, independent of the wonderful development of fore- 
 head. The lines accompanying it, which bear the signature B. I. (most likely 
 Ben Jonson), attest the accuracy of the likeness. The bust at Stratford bears 
 the seme character. The sculptor was Gerard Johnson. It was probably erected 
 soon after the poet's death ; for it is mentioned by Leonard Digges, in his 
 
 ' Remarks prefixed to Moxon'<? edition of the Dramn'.ic Works. 
 270
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 verses upon the publication of Shaksperc's collected works by his " pious fellows. ' 
 All the circumstances of which we have any knowledge imply that Shaksperc, 
 at the time of his marriage, was such a person as might well have won the heart 
 of a mistress whom tradition has described as eminently beautiful. Anne 
 Hathaway at this time was of mature beauty. The inscription over her grave 
 in the church of Stratford-upon-Avon states that she died on " the 6th day of 
 August, 1623, being of the age of 67 years.' - ' In November 1582, therefore, 
 she would be of the age of twenty-six. This disparity of years between Shak- 
 spere and his wife has been, we think, somewhat too much dwelt upon. Malone 
 holds that '* such a disproportion of age seldom fails at a subsequent period of 
 life to be productive of unhappiness." Malone had, no doubt, in his mind the 
 belief that Shakspere left his wife wholly dependent upon her children, — a belief 
 of which we have intimated the utter groundlessness, and to which we shall advert 
 when we have to notice his Will. He suggests that in the Midsummer Night's 
 Dream this disproportion is alluded to, and he quotes a speech of Lysander in Act i. 
 Scene i., of that play, not however giving the comment of Hermia upon it. The 
 lines in the original stand thus : — 
 
 " Lys. Ah me ! for aught that ever I could read, 
 Could ever hear by tale or history, 
 The course of true love never did run smooth : 
 I3ut either it was different in blood ; — ■ 
 
 Her. cross ! too high to be enthrall' d to low ! 
 
 Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years ; — ■ 
 
 Her. spite ! too old to be engag'd to young ! 
 
 Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends ; — 
 
 Her. hell ! to choose love by another's eye ! 
 
 Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, 
 War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it." 
 
 Difference in blood, disparity of years, the choosing of friends, are opposed 
 to sympathy in choice. But was Shakspere's own case such as he would bear 
 in mind in making Hermia exclaim, " O spite ! too old to be engag'd to young ! " ? 
 The passage was in all probability written about ten years after his marriage, 
 when his wife would still be in the prime of womanhood. When Mr. de 
 Quincey, therefore, connects the saying of Parson Evans with Shakspere's early 
 love, — " I like not when a woman has a great peard," — he scarcely does justice 
 to his own powers of observation and his book-experience. The history of the 
 most imaginative minds, probably of most men of great ability, would show 
 that in the first loves, and in the early marriages, of this class, the choice has 
 generally fallen upon women older than themselves, and this without any refer- 
 ence to interested motives. But Mr. de Quincey holds that Shakspere, " looking 
 back on this part of his youthful history from his maturest years, breathes forth 
 pathetic counsels against the errors into which his own inexperience had been 
 ensnared. The disparity of years between himself aud his wife he notices in a 
 beautiful scene of the Twelfth Night."* In this scene Viola, disguised as a 
 page, a very boy, one of whom it is said — 
 
 * Life of Shakspeare in the 'Encyelopicdia Ihit.innica. ' 271
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE! 
 
 " For they shall yet belie thy happy year3 
 That say thou art a man," — 
 
 is pressed by the Duke to own that his eye "hath stay'd upon some favour." 
 Viola, who is enamoured of the Duke, punningly replies, — " A little, by your 
 favour;" and being still pressed to describe the "kind of woman," she says, of 
 the Duke's " complexion " and the Duke's " years." Any one who in the stage 
 representation of the Duke should do otherwise than make him a grave man of 
 thirty-five or forty, a staid and dignified man, would not present Shakspere's 
 whole conception of the character. There would be a difference of twenty 
 years between him and Viola. No wonder, then, that the poet should make 
 the Duke dramatically exclaim, — 
 
 " Too old, by Heaven ! Let still the woman take 
 An elder than herself ; so wears she to him, 
 So sways she level in her husband's heart." 
 
 And wherefore ? — 
 
 " For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, 
 Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, 
 More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, 
 Than women's are." 
 
 The pathetic counsels, therefore, which Shakspere is here supposed to breathe 
 in his maturer years, have reference only to his own giddy and unfirm fancies. 
 We are of opinion, as we have before stated with regard to this matter, that, 
 upon the general principle upon which Shakspere subjects his conception ot 
 what is individually true to what is universally true, he would have rejected 
 instead of adopted whatever was peculiar in his own experience, if it had been 
 emphatically recommended to his adoption through the medium of his self- 
 consciousness. Shakspere wrote these lines at a time of life (about 1602) when 
 a slight disparity of years between himself and his wife would have been a very 
 poor apology to his own conscience that his affection could not hold the bent ; 
 and it certainly does happen, as a singular contradiction to his supposed " earnest- 
 ness in pressing the point as to the inverted disparity of years, which indicates 
 pretty clearly an appeal to the lessons of his personal experience,"* that at this 
 precise period he should have retired from his constant attendance upon the 
 stage, purchasing land in his native place, and thus seeking in all probability 
 the more constant companionship of that object of his early choice of whom 
 he is thus supposed to have expressed his distaste. It appears to us that this 
 is a tolerably convincing proof that his affections could hold the bent, however 
 he might dramatically and poetically have said, 
 
 " Then let thy love be younger than thyself, 
 Or thy affection cannot hold the bent : 
 For women are as roses ; whose fair flower, 
 Being once display* d, doth fall that very hour." 
 
 The season is not the most inviting for a journey on horseback of more than 
 
 * Life in ' Encyclopedia Britannica.' 
 272
 
 A BIOdKArilY. 
 
 thirty miles, and yet William Shakspere, with two youthful frienns, must ride to 
 Worcester. The families of Shakspere and of Hathaway are naturally desirous 
 that the sanction of the Church should be given within the customary period to 
 the alliance which their children have formed. They are reverential observers 
 of old customs ; and their recollections of the practice of all who went before 
 them show that the marriage, commenced by the trothplight, ought not to be 
 postponed too long. Convenience ought to yield to propriety ; and Christmas 
 must see the young housekeepers well settled. A licence must be procured 
 from the Bishop's Court at Worcester. Fulk Sandclls and John llychardson, 
 the companions of young Shakspere, substantial yeomen, will cheerfully be his 
 bondsmen. Though lie is a minor, and cannot join in the bond, they know that 
 he will faithfully perform what he undertakes ; and that their forty pounds are 
 in no peril. They all well know the condition of such a bond. There is no 
 pre-contract ; no affinity between the betrothed ; William has the consent of 
 Anne's friends. They desire to be married with once asking of the banns ; not 
 an uncommon case, or the court would not grant such a licence. They desire 
 not to avoid the publicity of banns ; but they seek a licence for one publication, 
 for their happiness has made them forget the lapse of time : the betrothment was 
 binding indeed for ever upon true hearts, but the marriage will bless the contract, 
 and make it irrevocable in its sanctity. And thus the three friends, after tender 
 adieus, and many lingerings upon the threshold of the cottage at Shottery, mount 
 their horses, and take the way to Worcester. 
 
 Fulk Sandells and John Rychardson (as the marks to the marriage-bond 
 testify) were not lettered persons. But, nevertheless, they might have been 
 very welcome companions to William Shakspere. The non-ability to write 
 did not necessarily imply that their minds had not received a certain degree 
 of cultivation. To him, who drew his wondrous knowledge out of every source 
 — books, conversation, observation of character — no society could be wholly 
 uninteresting. His genial nature would find objects of sympathy in the com- 
 monest mind. That he was a favourite amongst his own class it is impossible 
 to doubt. His mental superiority would be too great to be displayed in any 
 assumption ; his kindliness of nature would knit him to every heart that was 
 capable of affection — and what heart is not ? Unintelligible would he be, no 
 doubt, to many ; but, as far as it is possible to conceive of his character, he would 
 be wholly remote from that waywardness which has been considered the attribute 
 of genius — neither moping, nor shy, nor petulant, nor proud ; affecting no mis- 
 anthropy, no indifference to the joys and sorrows of those around him ; and 
 certainly despising the fashion through which 
 
 " Young gentlemen would be as sad as night, 
 Only for wantonness." * 
 
 Assuredly the intellect of Shakspere was the most healthful ever bestowed upon 
 man ; and that was one cause of its unapproachable greatness. The soundest 
 
 * King John, Act iv., Scene i. 
 Life. I -73
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 judgment was in combination with the highest fancy. With such friends, then, 
 as Fulk Sandells and John Rychardson, would this young man be as free and 
 as gladsome as if they were as equal in their minds as in their worldly circum- 
 stances. To a certain extent he would doubtless take the lead ; he must of 
 necessity have been the readiest in all discourse in his own circle ; — the uncon- 
 scious instructor of his companions ; one that even age would listen to with 
 reverence. To the young he would have been as a spirit of gladness lighted 
 upon the earth, to make everything more bright and beautiful amidst which 
 he walked. A sharp gallop over Bardon Hill shakes off the cold of the grey 
 morning; and as the sun shoots a sudden gleam over a reach of the Avon, the 
 young poet warms up into a burst of merriment which brings his friends in a 
 moment to his side. He is full of animation. All the natural objects around 
 furnish him with a theme. The lapwing screams, and he has a story to tell 
 which is not the less enjoyed by his hearers because Ovid had told it before 
 him ; a hare runs towards them on the road, and he has a laugh for the super- 
 stition that ill-luck is boded— mingled with a remark, which is more for him- 
 self than his listeners, that " there is more in this world than is known to our 
 philosophy." They hold their course gallantly on through Bidford and Sal- 
 ford ; pausing a moment to look upon that fine old- monastic house, which has 
 become deserted since the dissolution of the abbeys. There were once state and 
 
 <•:*!?>: 
 
 I Nunnery at Sal ford.] 
 
 wealth within its walls. Its tenants are scattered or perished : and if some 
 solitary nun shall still endure, she will at last find a resting-place amongst the 
 poorest — no requiem will be sung for her, such as she has heard sung for her 
 sisters. 
 
 274
 
 rPershore.] 
 
 They rest for an hour or two at Evesham. Well known is that interesting 
 town to William Shakspere ; and he has many traditions connected with its 
 ruined abbey, which have a deep interest even for those who look not upon 
 such matters with the spirit of poetical reverence. Onwards again they ride 
 through the beautiful vale, unequalled in its picturesque fertility. As they 
 catch the first glimpse of the bold Malvern hills the young poet's eye is lighted 
 up with many thoughts of the vast and wonderful of nature ; for, to the inhabit- 
 ants of a level and cultivated country even the slightest character of mountain- 
 ous scenery brings a sense of the sublime. Nearer and nearer they approach 
 these hills, and still they are indistinct, though apparently lifted to the clouds ; 
 and he watches that blue haze which hangs around them, as if in their solitudes 
 there was something to be found more satisfying than in the pent-up plains. 
 Pershore is reached ; a magnificent work, like Evesham, made desolate by 
 changes of opinion, urged on by violence and rapacity. The spires and towers 
 of Worcester are soon in view. An hospitable inn there receives them. They 
 arc weary ; and their business is deferred to the morrow. The morning comes ; 
 and the young men are surprised at the readiness of the official persons to pro- 
 mote their object. The requisite formalities are soon accomplished. The 
 morning is passed in looking over the wonders of that interesting city — rich tf 
 monuments of the past which time and policy have spared. The evening sec\ 
 the travellers on their way homeward. Sunday comes ; and the banns art 
 once asked. On Monday is the wedding. 
 
 T2 2 " 5
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to point out to our readers that the view we have 
 taken presupposes that the licence for matrimony, obtained from the Consis- 
 torial Court at Worcester, was a permission sought for under no extraordinary 
 circumstances ; — still less that the young man who was about to marry was 
 compelled to urge on the marriage as a consequence of previous imprudence. 
 We believe, on the contrary, that the course pursued was strictly in accordance 
 with the customs of the time, and of the class, to which Shakspere belonged. 
 The espousals before witnesses, we have no doubt, were then considered as con- 
 stituting a valid marriage, if followed up within a limited time by the marriage 
 of the Church. However the Reformed Church might have endeavoured to 
 abrogate this practice, it was unquestionably the ancient habit of the people. 
 It was derived from the Roman law, the foundation of many of our institutions. 
 It prevailed for a long period without offence. It still prevails in the Lutheran 
 Church. We are not to judge of the customs of those days by our own, espe- 
 cially if our inferences have the effect of imputing criminality where the mos 
 per fed innocence existed.* 
 
 * See Note on tie Marriasre-Licencfi 
 
 Miii! 
 
 'iYui cestui CathediiJ.j
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 NOTE ON CHRISTENING CUSTOMS. 
 
 Howes, in his 'Continuation of Stow's Chronicle,' has this passage: "At this time (the first 
 year of Queen Elizabeth), and for many years before, it was not the use and custom, as now it is 
 (1031), for godfathers and godmothers generally to give plate at the baptism of children (as spoons, 
 cups, and such like), but only to give christening shirts, with little bands and cuffs wrought either 
 with silk or blue thread ; tho best of them for chief persons were edged with a small lace of black 
 silk and gold, tho highest price of which for great men's children was seldom above a noble, and 
 the common sort two, three, or four and five shillings a-piece." Most of our readers are probably 
 familiar with the story of Shakspere's own present as a godfather to the son of Ben Jonson. It is 
 found in a manuscript in the British Museum, bearing the title of 'Merry Passages and Jests,' 
 compiled by Sir Nicholas Lestrange. Such parts of this manuscript as are fit for publication, with 
 other selections, have been published by the Camden Society in a little volume entitled 'Anecdotes 
 and Traditions.' We would give this story if it were only to show our respect to Mr. Thorns, the 
 editor of tho volume, who has our sympathy when in his V envoy he pleasantly says, " Go forth, my 
 little book. Thou wilt, I know, find some friendly hands outstretched to give thee welcome. Yet, 
 peradventure thou mayest meet also with unfriendly frowns— kindly meant, but hard to bear withal 
 — signs of disapproval frorn good men and true, amongst whom it is the orthodox opinion that, as 
 antiquarian matters are as old as the desert, they should be made as dry." The anecdote, in the 
 orthography of the original, is as follows : " Shake-speare was god-father to one of Ben Jonson's 
 children, and after the christ'ning, being in a deepe study, Jonson came to cheere him up, and ask't 
 him why he was so melancholy ? ' No, faith, Ben ' (says he), ' not I, but I have been considering a 
 great while what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my god-child, and I have resolv'd 
 at last.' 'I pr'y the, what?' sayes he. T faith, Ben, I'le e'en give him a douzen good Lattin 
 Spoones, and thou shalt translate them.' 
 
 NOTE ON SHAKSPERE'S MARRIAGE-LICENCE. 
 
 The following is a copy of the document in the Consistorial Court of Worcester, which was first 
 published by Mr. Wheler in 1836, having been previously discovered by Sir R. Phillips. It con- 
 sists of a bond to the officers of the Ecclesiastical Court, in which Fulk Sandells, of the county of 
 Warwick, farmer, and John Rychardson, of the same place, farmer, are bound in the sum of forty 
 pounds, &c. It is dated the 28th day of November, in the 25th year of Elizabeth (15S2) : — 
 
 " Novint univsi p psentes nos Fulcone Sandells de Stratford in Comit Warwic agricolam et 
 Johem Rychardson ibm agricola teneri et firmiter obligari Rico Cosin guoso et Robto Warmstry 
 notario puo in quadraginta libris bone et legalis monete Anglim solvend eisdem Rico et Robto hered 
 execut vel assignat suis ad quam quidem soluconem bene et fidelr faciend obligam nos et utruq 
 nrm p se pro toto et in solid liDered executor et administrator' nros firmiter p pntes sigillis iirin 
 eigillat. Dat 28 die Novo Anno Regni Due nre Eliz Dui gratia Anglice Franc et Hibnia; Regine 
 Fidei Defensor &c. 25°. 
 
 " The condicon of this obligacon ys suche, that if hereafter there shall not appere any lawfull 
 lett or impediment by reason of any p contract or affinitie, or by any other lawful meanes what- 
 Boev, but that Willm Shagspero on thone ptie, and Anne ITathwey, of Stratford, in the Dioccs of 
 
 277
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE: 
 
 Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize mriouy, and in the same afterwards remaine and 
 continew like man and wife, according unto the laws in that case provided ; and moreov, if there bo 
 not at this psent time any action, suit, quarrel, or demand, moved or depending before any iudgo 
 ecclesiastical or temporall for and concerning any suche lawfull lett or impediment. And moreov, 
 if the said Willm Shagspere do not pceed to solemnizacon of marriadg with the said Ann Hathwey 
 without the consent of hir frinds. And also if the said Willm do upon his own pper costs and ex- 
 peuces defend and save harmles the Right Revend Father in God Lord John Bushop of Worcester 
 and his offycers, for licensing them, the said Willm and Anne, to be maried together wth once 
 asking of the bannes of mriony betwene them and for alle other causes wch may ensue by reason 
 or occasion thei*eof, that then the said obligaeon to be voyd and of none effect, or else to stand and 
 abide in fulle force and vertue " 
 
 In the ' Life of Shakspeare ' by Mr. de Quincey the following observations are appended to an 
 abridgment cf the Marriage-Licence. The view thus taken is entirely opposed to our own, prin- 
 cipally because it goes on to assume that the marriage of the young poet was unhappy — that his 
 wife had not his respect — and this unhappiness drove him from Stratford. All this appears to 
 us to be gratuitous assumption, and altogether inconsistent with this undeniable fact, that Shak- 
 spere is especially the poet who has done justice to the purity and innocence of the female cha- 
 racter. It is not, we think, to be lightly inferred that his own peculiar experience would have 
 offered him an example throughout his life of the opposite qualities. It would be unfair, however, 
 not to give the opinion which is thus opposed to our own : — 
 
 " What are we to think of this document ? Trepidation and anxiety are written [upon its face. 
 The parties are not to be married by a special licence, not even by an ordinary licence ; in that case 
 no proclamation of banns, no public asking at all, would have been requisite. Economical scruples 
 are consulted, and yet the regular movement of the marriage ' through the bell-ropes ' is disturbed. 
 Economy, which retards the marriage, is here evidently in collision with some opposite principle 
 which precipitates it. How is all this to be explained ? Much light is afforded by the date when 
 illustrated by another document. The bond bears date on the 2Sth day of November, in the 25th 
 year of our lady the queen, that is, in 1582. Now, the baptism of Shakspeare's eldest child, Su- 
 sanna, is registered on the 26th of May in the year following. * * * * Strange it is, that, whilst 
 all biographers have worked with so much zeal upon the most barren dates or most baseless tra- 
 ditions in the great poet's life, realising in a manner the chimeras of Laputa, and endeavouring ' to 
 extract sunbeams from cucumbers,' such a story with regard to such an event, no fiction of village 
 scandal, but involved in legal documents, — a story so significant and so eloquent to the intelligent, — 
 should formerly have been dismissed without notice of any kind ; and even now, after the discovery 
 of 1836, with nothing beyond a slight conjectural insinuation. For our parts, we should have 
 been the last among the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal. * * * * But in this case 
 there seems to have been something more in motion than passion cr the ardour of youth. ' I like 
 not,' says Parson Evans (alluding to Falstaff in masquerade), ' I like not when a woman has a 
 great peard ; I spy a great peard under hor muffler.' Neither do we like the spectacle of a mature 
 young woman, five years past her majority, wearing the semblance of having been led astray by a 
 boy who had still two years and a half to run of his minority." 
 
 279
 
 [Palace of Woodstock.] 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 TEE FIRST RIDE TO LONDON. 
 
 "This William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, 
 I guess about eighteen, and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and did act 
 exceedingly well. Now Ben Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent 
 instructor. He began early to make Essays at Dramatic Poetry, which at that 
 time was very low, and his plays took well." So writes honest Aubrey, in the 
 year 1680, in his 'Minutes of Lives' addressed to his "worthy friend, Mr. 
 Anthony a Wood, Antiquary of Oxford." Of the value of Aubrey's evidence 
 we may form some opinion from his own statement to his friend : — " 'T is a 
 task that I never thought to have undertaken till you imposed it upon me, 
 saying that I was fit for it by reason of my general acquaintance, having now 
 not only lived above half a century of years in the world, but have also been 
 much tumbled up and down in it ; which hath made me so well known. Besides 
 the modern advantage of coffeehouses in this great city, before which men 
 knew not how to be acquainted but with their own relations or societies, I 
 
 279
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEEE: 
 
 might add that 1 come of a longacvous race, by which means I have wiped some 
 feathers off the wings of time for several generations, which does reach high."* 
 It must not be forgotten that Aubrey's account of Shakspere, brief and imperfect 
 as it is, is the earliest known to exist. Rowe's ' Life ' was not published till 
 1707; and although he states that he must own a particular obligation to Better- 
 ton, the actor, for the most considerable part of the passages relating to this life 
 — "his veneration for the memory of Shakspeare having engaged him to make 
 a journey into Warwickshire on purpose to gather up what remains he could of 
 a name for which he had so great a veneration " — we have no assistance in 
 fixing the date of Betterton's inquiries. Betterton was born in 1635. From 
 the Restoration, until his retirement from the stage, about 1700, he was the 
 most deservedly popular actor of his time; "such an actor," says 'TheTatler,' 
 " as ought to be recorded with the same respect as Roscius among the 
 Romans." He died in 1710 ; and, looking at his busy life, it is probable that 
 he did not make this journey into Warwickshire until after his retirement 
 from the theatre. Had he set about these inquiries earlier, there can be 
 little doubt that the ' Life ' by Rowe would have contained more precise and 
 satisfactory information, if not fewer idle tales. Shakspere's sister was alive in 
 1646 ; his eldest daughter, Mrs. Hall, in 1649 ; his second daughter, Mrs. 
 Quiney, in 1662 ; and his grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, in 1670. The 
 information which might be collected in Warwickshire, after the death of 
 Shakspere's lineal descendants, would necessarily be mixed up with traditions, 
 having for the most part some foundation, but coloured and distorted by that 
 general love of the marvellous which too often hides the fact itself in the in- 
 ference from it. Thus, Shakspere's father might have sold his own meat, as the 
 landowners of his time are reproached by Harrison for doing, and yet in no 
 proper sense of the word have been a butcher. Thus, the supposition that the 
 poet had intended to satirize the Lucy family, in an allusion to their arms, 
 might have suggested that there was a grudge between him and the knight ; 
 and what so likely a subject of dispute as the killing of venison ? the tradition 
 might have been exact as to the dispute; but the laws of another century could 
 alone have suggested that the quarrel would compel the poet to fly the country. 
 Aubrey's story of Shakspere's coming to London is a simple and natural one, 
 without a single marvellous circumstance about it : — "This William, being 
 inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London." This, the elder 
 story, appears to us to have much greater verisimilitude than the later : — " He 
 was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and 
 shelter himself in London." Aubrey who has picked up all the gossip " of 
 coffeehouses in this great city," hears no word of Rowe's story which would 
 certainly have been handed down amongst the traditions of the theatre to 
 Davenant and Shadwell, from whom he does hear something : — " I have heard 
 Sir William Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best 
 comedian we have now) say, that he had a most prodigious wit." Neither does 
 he say, nor indeed any one else till two centuries and a quarter after Shakspere is 
 
 * This letter, which accompanies tho 'Lives,' is elated London, Juno 15, 1680. 
 280
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 dead, that, "after four years' conjugal discord, he 
 would resolve upon that plan of solitary emigration to 
 the metropolis, which, at the same time that it released 
 him from the humiliation of domestic feuds, succeeded 
 so splendidly for his worldly prosperity, and with a 
 
 train of circumstances so vast for all future ages." * It gv» 
 
 is certainly a singular vocation for a writer of genius to *>£ 
 
 bury the legendary scandals of the days of Rowe, for >^ 
 
 the sake of exhuming a new scandal, which cannot be ^> 
 
 received at all without the belief that the circumstance ^sv, 
 
 must have had a permanent and most evil influence ^h 
 
 upon the mind of the unhappy man who thus cowardly $ 
 
 and ignominiously is held to have severed himself from £ 
 
 his dutv as a husband and a father. We cannot trace the £ 
 evil influence, and therefore we reject the scandal. It 
 
 r has not even the slightest support from the weakest tra- [« 
 
 S"£ dition. It is founded upon an imperfect comparison fi/* 
 
 ^r of two documents, judging of the habits of that period £ 
 
 J A by those of our own day ; supported by quotations from pjjf 
 
 •0 a dramatist of whom it would be difficult to affirm that J£ 
 he ever wrote a line which had strict reference to his 
 
 own feelings and circumstances, and whose intellect in Jf\\ 
 
 his dramas went so completely out of itself that it S 
 
 almost realizes the description of the soul in its first ^ 
 
 and pure nature — that it "hath no idiosyncrasies; that A^ 
 
 is, hath no proper natural inclinations which are not \ . 
 
 competent to others of the same kind and condition." f D 
 
 \q In the baptismal register of the parish of Stratford. (^ 
 
 "N for the year 1583 is the entry of the birth of Susanna. ^j 
 
 "^v This record necessarily implies the residence of the jfT* 
 <?b^ wife of William Shakspere in the parish of Stratford 
 
 C^. Did he himself continue to reside in this parish? ^ 
 
 C^ There is no evidence of his residence. His name ap- ft 
 
 pears in no suit in the Bailiff's Court at this period. |k 
 
 He fills no municipal office such as his father had filled before him. e>: 
 
 But his wife continues to reside in the native place of her hus- f ~ 
 
 band, surrounded by his relations and her own. His father and (^Lj 
 
 his mother no doubt watch with anxious solicitude over the fortunes 3 
 
 of their first son. He has a brother, Gilbert, seventeen years of "^\ 
 
 ago, and a sister of fourteen. His brother Richard is nine years of c j 
 
 age; but Edmund is young enough to be the playmate of his little rf 
 Susanna. In 1585 there is another entry in the parochial register, the birth of a 
 son and a daughter : — 
 
 * Encyclopedia Britannica. 
 
 t Enquiry into the Opinion of tha Eastern Sages concerning tho Prce-existcnce of Souls. By the 
 Bcv. Joseph Glanvil. 
 
 281
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 William Shakspere has now nearly attained his majority. While he is yet 
 a minor he is the father of three children. The circumstance of his minority 
 may perhaps account for the absence of his name from all records of court-leet, 
 or bailiff's court, or common-hall. He was neither a constable, nor an ale-conner, 
 nor an overseer, nor a jury-man, because he was a minor. We cannot affirm that 
 he did not leave Stratford before his minority expired ; but it is to be inferred, 
 that, if he had continued to reside at Stratford after he was legally of age, we 
 should have found traces of his residence in the records of the town. If his 
 residence were out of the borough, as we have supposed his father's to have been 
 at this period, some trace would yet have been found of him, in all likelihood, 
 within the parish. Just before the termination of his minority we have an undeniable 
 record that he was a second time a father within the parish. It is at this period, 
 then, that we would place his removal from Stratford ; his flight, according to the 
 old legend ; his solitary emigration, his unamiable separation from his family, accord- 
 ing to the new discovery. That his emigration was even solitary we have not a 
 tittle of evidence. The one fact we know with reference to Shakspere's domestic 
 arrangements in London is this: that as early as 1596 he was the occupier of a 
 house in Southwark. " From a paper now before me, which formerly belonged to 
 Edward Alleyn, the player, our poet appears to have lived in Southwark near the 
 Bear-garden, in 1596."* Malone does not describe this paper; but Mr. Collier 
 found it at Dulwich College, and it thence appears that the name of "Mr. Shaksper* 
 was in a list of " Inhabitants of Sowtherk as have complaned, this — of Jully, 1596." 
 It is immaterial to know of what Shakspere complained, in company with "Wilson 
 the piper," and sundry others. The neighbourhood does not seem to have been a 
 very select one, if we may judge from another name in this list. We cannot affirm 
 that Shakspere was the solitary occupier of this house in Southwark. Chalmers 
 says, " it can admit of neither controversy nor doubt, that Shakspere in very early 
 life settled in a family way where he was bred. Where he thus settled, he probably 
 resolved that his wife and family should remain through life ; although he himself 
 made frequent excursions to London, the scene of his profit, and the theatre of his 
 fame." Mr. Hunter has discovered a document which shews that " William 
 Shakespeare was, in 1598, assessed in a large sum to a subsidy upon the parish of 
 St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. He was assessed, also, in the Liberty of the Clink, 
 Southwark, in 1609; but whether for a dwelling-house, or for his property in the 
 Globe, is not evident. His occupation as an actor both at the Blackfriars and the 
 Globe, the one a winter, the other a summer theatre, continued till 1603 or 1604. 
 His interest as a proprietor of both theatres existed in all probability till 1612. In 
 1597 Shakspere became the purchaser of the largest house in Stratford, and he 
 resided there with his family till the time of his death in 1616. Many circum- 
 stances show that his interests and affections were always connected with the place 
 of his birth. 
 
 William Shakspere, " being inclined naturally to poetry and acting," natu- 
 rally became a poet and an actor. He would become a poet, without any 
 
 Malono, Inquiry, &c, p. 215. 
 282
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 impelling circumstances not necessarily arising out of his own condition. " He 
 began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very 
 low." Aubrey's account of his early poetical efforts is an intelligible and con- 
 sistent account. Shakspere was familiar with the existing state of dramatic 
 poetry, through his acquaintance with the stage in the visits or various com- 
 panies of actors to Stratford. We have shown what that condition was in 
 1580. It was not much improved in 1585. In the previous year there had 
 been three sets of players at Stratford, remunerated for their performances out 
 of the public purse of the borough. These were the players of " my Lord of 
 Oxford," the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of Essex. In 1585 we have no 
 record of players in the borough. In 158G there is only one performance paid 
 for by the Corporation. But in 1587 the Queen's players, for the first time, 
 make their appearance in that town ; and their performances are rewarded at 
 a much higher rate than those of any previous company. Two years after 
 this, that is in 1589, we have undeniable evidence that Shakspere had not only 
 a casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as many players were, 
 but was a shareholder in this very Queen's company, with other shareholders 
 below him in the list. The fair inference is, that he did not at once jump 
 into his position ; and even that two years before, when the Queen's players 
 visited Stratford for the first time, there was some especial cause for their 
 visit ; and that the cause is easily found in the circumstance that one of then- 
 company was a native of Stratford, with influential friends and connexions 
 there, and that he was not ashamed to exhibit his vocation amongst the com- 
 panions of his youth. Rowe says that, after having settled in the world in a 
 family manner, and continued in this kind of settlement for some time, the 
 extravagance of which he was guilty in robbing Sir Thomas Lucy's park 
 obliged him to leave his business and family. He could not have so left, even 
 according to the circumstances which were known to Rowe, till after the birth 
 of his son and daughter in 1585. But the story goes on : — " It is at this time, 
 and upon this accident, that he is said to have made his first acquaintance in 
 the playhouse. He was received into the company then in being, at first in a 
 very mean rank ; but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, 
 soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent 
 writer." Six years after the time of Rowe the story assumed a more cir- 
 cumstantial shape, as far as regards the mean rank which Shakspere filled in 
 his early connexion with the theatre. Dr. Johnson adds one passage to the 
 ' Life,' which he says " Mr. Pope related, as communicated to him by Mr. 
 Howe." It is so remarkable an anecdote that it is somewhat surprising that 
 Rowe did not himself add it to his own meagre account : — 
 
 " In the time of Elizabeth, coaches being yet uncommon, and hired coaches 
 not at all in use, those who were too proud, too tender, or too idle to walk, 
 went on horseback to any distant business or diversion. Many came on horse- 
 back to the play ; and when Shakspere fled to London from the terror of a 
 criminal prosecution, his first expedient was to wait at the door of the play- 
 house, and hold the horses of those that had no servants, that they might be 
 
 2S3
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ready again after the performance. In this office he became so conspicuous for 
 his care and readiness, that in a short time every man as he alighted called for 
 Will Shakspeare, and soarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while 
 Will Shakspeare could be had. This was the first dawn of better fortune. 
 Shakspeare, rinding more horses put into his hand than he could hold, hired 
 boys to wait under his inspection, who, when Will Shakspeare was summoned, 
 were immediately to present themselves, — ' I am Shakspeare's boy, Sir.' In 
 time, Shakspeare found higher employment ; but as long as the practice of 
 riding to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the horses retained the 
 appellation of Shakspeare's boys." 
 
 Steevens has attempted to impugn the credibility of this anecdote by saying, 
 — " That it was once the general custom to ride on horseback to the play I am 
 yet to learn. The most popular of the theatres were on the Bankside ; and we 
 are told by the satirical pamphleteers of that time that the usual mode of 
 conveyance to these places of amusement was by water, but not a single writer 
 so much as hints at the custom of riding to them, or at the practice of having 
 horses held during the hours of exhibition." Steevens is here in error ; he 
 has a vague notion — which is still persevered in with singular obstinacy, even 
 by those who have now the means of knowing that Shakspere had acquired 
 property in the chief theatre in 1589 — that the great dramatic poet had felt 
 no inspiration till he was about eight-and-twenty, and that, therefore, his con- 
 nexion with the theatre began in the palmy days of the Globe on the Bankside 
 ■ — a theatre not built -till 1593. To the earlier theatres, if they were frequented 
 by the gallants of the Court, they would have gone on horses. They did so 
 go, as we learn from Dekker, long after the Bankside theatres were established. 
 The story first appeared in a book entitled ' The Lives of the Poets,' considered 
 to be the work of Theophilus Cibber, but said to be written by a Scotchman 
 of the name of Shiels, who was an amanuensis of Dr. Johnson. Shiels had 
 certainly some hand in the book; and there we find that Davenant told the 
 anecdote to Betterton, who communicated it to Rowe, who told it to Pope, who 
 told it to Dr. Newton. Improbable as the story is as it now stands, there 
 may be a scintillation of truth in it, as in most traditions. It is by no means 
 impossible that the Blackfriars Theatre might have had Shakspere's boys to 
 hold horses, but not Shakspere himself. As a proprietor of the theatre, Shakspere 
 might sagaciously perceive that its interest would be promoted by the readiest 
 accommodation being offered to its visitors ; and further, with that worldly 
 adroitness which, in him, was not incompatible with the exercise of the highest 
 genius, he might have derived an individual profit by employing servants to 
 perform this office. In an age when horse-stealing was one of the commonest 
 occurrences, it would be a guarantee for the safe charge of the horses that they 
 were committed to the care of the agents of one then well known in the world, 
 — an actor, a writer, a proprietor of the theatre. Such an association with the 
 author of Hamlet must sound most anti-poetical ; but the fact is scarcely 
 less prosaic that the same wondrous man, about the period when he wrote 
 281
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Macbeth, had an action for debt in the Bailiff's Court at Stratford, to recover 
 thirty-five shillings and tenpence for corn by him sold and delivered. 
 
 Familiar, then, with theatrical exhibitions, such as they were, from his ear- 
 liest youth, and with a genius so essentially dramatic that all other writers that 
 the world has seen have never approached him in his power of going out of 
 himself, it is inconsistent with probability that he should not have attempted 
 some dramatic composition at an early age. The theory that he was first em- 
 ployed in repairing the plays of others we hold to be altogether untenable ; 
 supported only by a very narrow view of the great essentials to a dramatic 
 work, and by verbal criticism, which, when carefully examined, utterly fails 
 even in its own petty assumptions.* There can be no doubt that the three 
 Parts of Henry VI. belong to the early stage. We believe them to be wholly 
 and absolutely the early work of Shakspere. But we do not necessarily hold that 
 they were his earliest work ; for the proof is so absolute of the continual im- 
 provements and elaborations which he made in his best productions, that it 
 would be difficult to say that some of the plays which have the most finished 
 air, but of which there were no early editions, may not be founded upon very 
 youthful compositions. Others may have wholly perished ; thrown aside after 
 a season ; never printed ; and neglected by their author, to whom new inven- 
 tions would be easier than remodellings of pieces probably composed upon a 
 false theory of art. For it is too much to imagine that his first productions 
 would be wholly untainted by the taste of the period. Some might have been 
 weak delineations of life and character, overloaded with mythological conceits 
 and pastoral affectations, like the plays of Lyly, which were the Court fashion 
 before 1590. Others might have been prompted by the false ambition to pro- 
 duce effect, which is the characteristic of Locrine, and partially so of Titus 
 Andronicus. But of one thing we may be sure — that there would be no want 
 of power even in his first productions ; that real poetry would have gushel out 
 of the bombast, and true wit sparkled amidst the conceits. His first plays 
 would, we think, fall in with the prevailing desire of the people to learn the 
 history of their country through the stage. If so, they would certainly not 
 exhibit the feebleness of some of these performances which were popular about 
 the period of which we are now speaking, and which continued to be popular 
 even after he had most successfully undertaken 
 
 lo raise our aucieut sovereigns from their hear.se."' 
 
 The door of the theatre was not a difficult one for him to enter. It is a sin- 
 gular fact, that several of the most eminent actors of this very period are held 
 to have been his immediate neighbours. The petition to the Privy Council, 
 which has proved that Shakspere was a sharer in the Blackfriars playhouse in 
 1589, contains the names of sixteen shareholders, he being the twelfth on the 
 list. The head of the Company was James Burbage ; the second, Richard 
 Burbage his son. Malone suspected that both John Heminge, one of the 
 
 . See our Essay on the Three Parts of Henry VI. and Richard III. 
 
 £65
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 
 
 editors of Shakspere's Collected Works, and Richard Burbage, " were Shak- 
 spere's countrymen, and that Heminge was born at Shottery." His conjecture 
 with regard to Heminge was founded upon entries in the baptismal register of 
 Stratford, which show that there was a John Heminge at Shottery in 1567, 
 and a Richard Heminge in 1570. Mr. Collier has shewn that a John Burbadge 
 was bailiff of Stratford in 1555 ; and that many of the same name were residents 
 in Warwickshire. But Mr. Hunter believes that Richard Burbage was a native of 
 London. A letter addressed by Lord Southampton to Lord Ellesmere in 1G08, 
 introducing Burbage and Shakspere to ask protection of that nobleman, then Lord 
 Chancellor, against some threatened molestation from the Lord Mayor and alder- 
 men of London, says, " they are both of one county, and indeed almost of one 
 town." This would be decisive, had some doubts not been thrown upon the au- 
 thenticity of this document. We do not therefore rely upon the assumption tha 
 William Shakspere and Richard Burbage were originally neighbours. But from the 
 visits of the Queen's players to Stratford, Shakspere might have made friends with 
 Burbage and Heminge, and have seen that the profession of an actor, however dis- 
 graced by some men of vicious manners, performing in the inn-yards and smaller 
 theatres of London, numbered amongst its members men of correct lives and 
 honourable character, Even the enemy of plays and players, Stephen Gosson, had 
 been compelled to acknowledge this : " It is well known that some of them are 
 sober, discreet, properly learned, honest householders, and citizens well thought on 
 among their neighbours at home." * It was a lucrative profession, too ; especially 
 to those who had the honour of being the Queen's Servants. Their theatre was 
 frequented by persons of rank and fortune ; the prices of admission were high ; 
 they were called upon not unfrequently to present their performances before the 
 Queen herself, and their reward was a royal one. The object thus offered to the 
 ambition of a young man, conscious of his own powers, would be glittering enough 
 to induce him, not very unwillingly, to quit the tranquil security of his native home. 
 But we inverse the usual belief in this matter. We think that Shakspere became 
 an actor because he was a dramatic writer, and not a dramatic writer because he was 
 an actor. He very quickly made his way to wealth and reputation, not so much by 
 a handsome person and pleasing manners, as by that genius which left all other 
 competitors far behind him in the race of dramatic composition ; and by that pru- 
 dence which taught him to combine the exercise of his extraordinary powers with 
 a constant reference to the course of life he had chosen, not lowering his art for 
 the advancement of his fortune, but achieving his fortune in showing what mighty 
 things might be accomplished by his art. 
 
 There is a subject, however, which we arc now called upon to examine, which 
 may have had a material influence upon the determination of Shakspere to throw 
 himself upon the wide and perilous sea of London dramatic society. We have 
 uniformly contended against the assertion that the poverty of John Shakspere pre- 
 vented him giving his son a grammar-school education. We believe that all the 
 supposed evidences of that poverty, at the period of Shakspere's boyhood, arc 
 
 * ' School of Abuse,' 1570. 
 2C6
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 extremely vague and contradictory.* But, on the other hand, it appears to us more 
 than probable that after William Shakspcre had the expenses of a family to meet, 
 there were changes, and very natural ones, in the worldly position of his father, arid 
 consequently of his own, which might have rendered it necessary that the son 
 should abandon the tranquil course of a rural life which he probably contemplated 
 when he married, and make a strenuous and a noble exertion for independence, in 
 a career which his peculiar genius opened to him. We will first state the facts 
 which appear to bear upon the supposed difficulties of John Shakspere, about the 
 period when William may be held to have joined Burbage's company in London — 
 facts which are far from indicating any thing like ruin, but which exhibit some 
 involvements and uneasiness. 
 
 In 1 578 John Shakspere mortgaged his property of Asbics, acquired by marriage. 
 Four years before this he purchased two freehold houses in Stratford, which he 
 always retained. In 1578, therefore, he wanted capital. In 1579 he sold an in- 
 terest in some property at Snitterfleld. But then, in 1580, he tendered the mort- 
 gage money to the mortgagee of the Asbies' estate, which was illegally refused, on 
 the pretence that other money was owing. A Chancery suit was the consequence, 
 which was undetermined in 1597. In an action for debt in the bailiff's court in 
 1586, the return of the serjeants-at-mace upon a warrant of distress against John 
 Shakspere is, that he had nothing to distrain upon. It is held, therefore, that all 
 the household gear was then gone. Is it not more credible that the family lived else- 
 where ? Mr. Hunter has discovered that a John Shakspere lived at Clifford, a pretty 
 village near Stratford, in 1579, he being described in a will of 1583 as indebted to 
 the estate of John Ashwell, of Stratford. His removal from Stratford borough as a 
 resident, is corroborated by the fact that he was irregular in his attendance at the 
 halls of the corporation, after 1578; and was finally, in 1586, removed from the 
 body, for that he " doth not come to the halls when they be warned." And yet, as 
 there were fines for non-attendance, as pointed out by Mr. Halliwell, there is some 
 proof that he clung to the civic honours, even at a personal cost; though, from 
 some cause, and that probably non-residence, he did not perform the civic duties. 
 Lastly, he is returned in 1592, with other persons, as not attending church, and 
 this remark is appended to a list of nine persons, in which is the name of " Mr. 
 John Shackespere," — " It is said that these last nine come not to church for fear of 
 process for debt." If he had been residing in the borough it would have been quite 
 unnecessary to execute the process in the sacred precincts ; — he evidently lived and 
 was occupied out of the borough. It is tolerably clear that the traffic of Henley 
 Street, whether of wool, or skins, or carcases, was at an end. John Shakspere, the 
 yeoman, was farming ; and, like many other agriculturists, in all districts, and all 
 times, was a sufferer from causes over which he had no control. There were pecu- 
 liar circumstances at that period which, temporarily, would have materially affected 
 his property. 
 
 In 1580 John Shakspere tendered the mortgage money for his wife's inheritance 
 at Asbies. The property was rising in value ; — the mortgagee would not give it up. 
 
 • Sec Book II. Chap. I. 
 
 287
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Me had taken possession, and had leased it, as \vc learn from the Chancery proceed- 
 ings. He alleges, in 1597, that John Shakspere wanted to obtain possession, because 
 the lease was expiring, "whereby a greater value is to be yearly raised." Other 
 property was sold to obtain the means of making this tender. John Shakspere 
 would probably have occupied his estate of Asbies, could he have obtained posses- 
 sion. But he was unlawfully kept out : and he became a tenant of some other land, 
 in addition to what he held of his own. There was, at this particular period, a 
 remarkable pressure upon proprietors and tenants who did not watchfully mark the 
 effects of an increased abundance of money — a prodigious rise in the value of all 
 rommodities, through the greater supply of the precious metals. In "ABriefe 
 Conceipte touching the Commonweale," already quoted,* there is, in the dialogue 
 between the landowner, the husbandman, the merchant, the manufacturer, and the 
 doctor of divinity, a complaint on the part of the landowner, which appears to offer 
 a parallel case to that of John Shakspere : — " All of my sort — I mean all gentlemen 
 — have great cause to complain, now that the prices of things are so risen of ah 
 hands, that you may better live after your degree than we ; for you may and do 
 raise the price of your wares as the prices of victuals and other necessaries do rise, 
 and so cannot we so much ; for though it be true, that of such lands as come to 
 hands either by purchase or by determination and ending of such terms of years 
 tliat I or my ancestors had granted them in time past, I do receive a better fine 
 than of old was used, or enhance the rent thereof, being forced thereto for the charge 
 of my household, that is so encreased over that it was ; yet in all my lifetime I look 
 not that the third part of my land shall come to my disposition, that I may enhance 
 the rent of the same, but it shall be in men's holding either by leases or by copy 
 granted before my time, and still continuing, and yet like to continue in the same 
 state for the most part during my life, and percase my sons. * * * * * * 
 We arc forced therefore to minish the third part of our household, or to raise the 
 third part of our revenues, and for that we cannot so do of our own lands that 
 is already in the hands of other men, many of us are enforced to keep pieces of 
 our own lands when they fall in our own possession, or to purchase some farm of 
 other men's lands, and to store them with sheep or some other cattle, to help make 
 up the decay of our revenues, and to maintain our old estate withal, and yet all is 
 little enough." 
 
 In such a transition state, wc may readily imagine John Shakspere to have been 
 a sufferer. But his struggle was a short one. He may have owed debts he was 
 unable to pay, and have gone through some seasons of difficulty, deriving small rents 
 from his own lands, " in the hands of other men," and enforced to hold " some farm 
 of other men's lands " at an advanced rent. Yet this is not ruin and degradation. 
 He maintained his social position ; and it is pleasant to imagine that his illustrious 
 son devoted some portion of the first rewards of his labour to make the condition 
 of his father easier in that time of general uneasiness and difficulty. In ten years 
 prosperity brightened the homes of that family. The poet bought the best house 
 in Stratford ; the yeoman applied to the College of Arms for bearings that would 
 
 * Tage 19. 
 283
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 exhibit his gentle lineage, and asserted that he was a man ot' landed substance, 
 sufficient to uphold the pretension. But in the period of rapid changes in the value 
 of property, — a transition which, from the time of Latimer, was producing the most 
 remarkable effects on the social condition of all the people of England, pressing 
 severely upon many, although it was affording the sure means of national progress, 
 - -it is more than probable that Shakspere's father gradually found himself in 
 straitened circumstances. This change in his condition might have directed his son 
 to a new course of life which might be entered upon without any large pecuniary 
 means, and which offered to his ambition a fair field for the exercise of his peculiar 
 genius. There was probably a combination of necessity and of choice which gave 
 us "Hamlet" and "Lear." If William Shakspere had remained at Stratford he 
 would have been a poet — a greater, perhaps, than the author of " The Faery Queen ; " 
 but that species of literature which it was for him to build up, almost out of chaos, 
 and to carry onward to a perfection beyond the excellence of any other age, might 
 have been for him an " unweeded garden." 
 
 The two young men, Richard Eurbage and William Shakspere, " both of one 
 county, and indeed almost of one town," may be assumed, without any improba- 
 bility, to have taken their way together towards London, on the occasion when 
 one of them went forth for the first time from his native home, depressed at 
 parting, but looking hopefully towards the issue of his adventure. There would 
 be little said till long after the friends had crossed the great bridge at Stratford. 
 The eyes of one would be frequently turned back to look upon the old spire. 
 Thoughts which unquestionably have grown out of some such separation as this 
 would involuntarily possess his soul : — 
 
 " How heavy do I journey oa the way, 
 When what I seek, — my weary travel's end, — 
 Doth teach that ease and that repose to say, 
 ' Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend ! ' 
 The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, 
 Plods dully on to bear that weight in me, 
 As if by some instinct the wretch did know 
 His rider lov'd not speed, being made from thee." * 
 
 The first stages of this journey would offer little interest to the travellers. 
 Having passed Long Compton, and climbed the steep range of hills that divide 
 Warwickshire from Oxfordshire, weary stretches of barren downs would pre- 
 sent a novel contrast to the fertility of Shakspere's own county. But after a 
 few miles the scene would change. A noble park would stretch out as far as 
 the eye could reach — rich with venerable oaks and beeches, planted in the reign 
 of Henry I., — the famous park of Woodstock. The poet would be familiar with 
 all the interesting associations of this place. Here was Rosamond Clifford secluded 
 from the eyes of the world by her bold and accomplished royal lover. Here 
 dwelt Edward III. Here, more interesting than cither fact, Chaucer wrote 
 soifcKs^Df his early poems — 
 
 * Sonnet 50, 
 Lii'E. n 239
 
 WILLIAM SHAKKl'tliE : 
 
 " Within a lodge out of the way, 
 Beside a well in a forest." * 
 
 And here, when he retired from active life, he composed his immortal ' Canter- 
 bury Tales.' Here was the Lady Elizabeth a prisoner, almost dreading death, 
 only a year or two before she ascended the throne. Here, " hearing upon a time 
 out of her garden a certain milkmaid singing pleasantly, she wished herself 
 to be a milkmaid, as she was ; saying that her case was better, and life more 
 merrier, than was hers in that state as she was."f The travellers assuredly 
 visited the palace which a few years after Hentzner described as abounding in 
 magnificence ; and near a spring of the brightest water they would have viewed 
 all that was left of the tomb of Rosamond, with her rhyming epitaph, the pro- 
 duction, probably, of a later age : — 
 
 " Hie jacet in tumba, Rosamundi uou Rosamunda, 
 Noa redolet sed olet, qme redolere solet." 
 
 The earliest light of the next morning would see the companions on their 
 way to Oxford ; and an hour's riding would lodge them in the famous hostelry 
 of the Corn Market, the Crown. Aubrey tells us that " Mr. "William Shake- 
 speare was wont to go into Warwickshire once a-year, and did commonly in 
 his journey lie at this house in Oxon, where he was exceedingly respected."]: 
 The poet's first journey may have determined his subsequent habit of resting 
 at this house. It is no longer an inn. But one who possessed a true enthu- 
 siasm, Thomas Warton, described it in the last century in the belief " that 
 Shakspeare's old hostelry at Oxford deserves no less respect than Chaucer's 
 Tabard in Southwark." He says, " As to the Crown Inn, it still remains an 
 inn, and is an old decayed house, but probably was once a principal inn in Ox- 
 ford. It is directly in the road from Stratford to London. In a large upper 
 room, which seems to have been a sort of hall for entertaining a large company, 
 or for accommodating (as was the custom) different parties at once, there was 
 a bow-window, with three pieces of excellent painted glass." We have ample 
 materials for ascertaining what aspect Oxford presented for the first time to 
 the eye of Shakspere. The ancient castle, according to Hentzner, was in ruins ; 
 but the elegance of its private buildings, and the magnificence of its public 
 ones, filled this traveller with admiration. So noble a place, raised up entirely 
 for the encouragement of learning, would excite in the young poet feelings that 
 were strange and new. He had wept over the ruins of religious houses ; but 
 here was something left to give the assurance that there was a real barrier 
 against the desolations of force and ignorance. A deep regret might pass 
 through his mind that he had not availed himself of the opening which was 
 presented to the humblest in the land, here to make himself a ripe and good 
 scholar. Oxford was the patrimony of the people ; and he, one of the people, 
 had not claimed his birthright. He was set out upon a doubtful adventure ; 
 the persons with whom he was to be associated had no rank in society ; they 
 
 * Chaucer's ' Dream. -|- Holiushed. J Life of Davenant, 
 
 290
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 were to a certain extent despised ; they were the servants of a luxurious court, 
 and, what was sometimes worse, of a tasteless public. But, on the other hand, 
 as he paused before Balliol College, he must have recollected what a fearful 
 tragedy was there acted some thirty years before. Was he sure that the 
 day of persecution for opinions was altogether past? Men were still disputing 
 everywhere around him ; and the slighter the differences between them the 
 more violent their zeal. They were furious for or against certain ceremonial 
 observances ; so that they appeared to forget that the object of all devotional 
 forms was to make the soul approach nearer to the Fountain of wisdom and 
 
 
 [Eillio] Collegp, in the sixteenth century.] 
 
 goodness, and that He could not be approached without love and charity. 
 The spirit of love dwelt in the inmost heart of this young man. It was 
 in after-time to diffuse itself over writings which entered the minds of the 
 loftiest and the humblest, as an auxiliary to that higher teaching which 
 is too often forgotten in the turmoil of the world. His intellect would at 
 any rate be free in the course which was before him. Much of the know- 
 ledge that he had acquired up to this period was self-taught; but it was not 
 the less full and accurate. He had ranged at his will over a multitude of 
 books,— idle reading, no doubt, to the systematic and professional student; but. 
 if weeds, weeds out of which he could extract honey. The subtile disputations 
 
 291 
 
 U 2
 
 
 . ■ L 
 
 IgLiJIL 
 
 ^Divinity Schools, in the sixteenth ccntur; | 
 
 of the schools, as they were then conducted, were more calculated, as he had 
 heard, to call forth a talent for sophistry than a love of truth. Falsehood 
 might rest upon logic, for the perfect soundness of the conclusion might hide 
 the rottenness of the premises. He entered the beautiful Divinity Schools ; 
 and there, too, he found that the understanding was more trained to dispute, 
 than the whole intellectual being of man to reverence. He would pursue his 
 own course with a cheerful spirit ; nothing doubting that, whilst he worked out 
 his individual happiness, he might still become an instrument of good to his 
 fellow- men. And yet did the young man reverence Oxford; because he re- 
 verenced letters as opposed to illiteracy. He gave his testimony to the worth 
 of Oxford at a distant day, when he held that the great glory of Wolsey was to 
 have founded Christchurch : — 
 
 2U2 
 
 ' He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one : 
 Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading : 
 Lofty and sour to them that lov'd him not ; 
 But to those men that sought him, sweet as sumrac 
 And though he were unsatisfied in getting, 
 (Which was a sin), yet in bestowing, madam, 
 He was most princely : Ever witness for him 
 Those twins of learning that he rais'd in you, 
 Ipswich and Oxford ! one of which fell with him, 
 Unwilling to ou Hive the good ho did it ; 
 The other, though uufmish'd, yet so famous,
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 So excellent in art, and .still so rising, 
 
 That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue." * 
 
 The journey from Oxford to London must have occupied two days, in that 
 age of bad roads and long miles. Harrison, in his ' Chapter on Thoroughfares ' 
 (1586), gives us the distances from town to town: — Oxford to Whatleie, 4 
 miles ; Whatleie to Thetisford, 6 ; Thetisford to Stockingchurch, 5 , Stocking- 
 church to East Wickham, 5 ; East Wickham to Baccansfield, 5 ; Baccansfield to 
 Uxbridge, 7 ; Uxbridge to London, 15. Total, 47 miles. Our modern admea- 
 surements give 54. Over this road, then, in many parts a picturesque one, 
 would the two friends from Stratford take their course. They would fare well 
 and cheaply on the road. Harrison tells us, " Each comer is sure to lie in 
 clean sheets, wherein no man hath been lodged since they came from the 
 laundress, or out of the water wherein they were last washed. If the traveller 
 have a horse his bed doth cost him nothing;, but if he go on foot he is sure to 
 pay a penny for the same. But whether he be horseman or footman, if his 
 chamber be once appointed he may carry the key with him, as of his own house, 
 so long as he lodgeth there. If he lose aught whilst he abideth in the inn, the 
 host is bound by a general custom to restore the damage, so that there is no 
 greater security anywhere for travellers than in the greatest inns of England." 
 
 * Henry VIII., Act iv., Scene n. 
 
 . i ... in tUc slxteoati
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEEE : 
 
 On the evening of the fourth day after their departure from home would the 
 young wayfarers, accustomed to fatigue, reach London. They would see only 
 fields and hedge-rows, leading to the hills of Hampstead and Highgate on the 
 north of the road, and to Westminster on the south. They would be wholly in 
 the country ; with a long line of road before them, without a house, at the spot 
 which now, although bearing the name of a lane — Park Lane — is one of the 
 chosen seats of fashion. Here Burbage would point out to his companion the 
 distant roofs of the Abbey and the Hall of Westminster ; and nearer would 
 stand St. James's Palace, a solitary and somewhat gloomy building. They 
 
 £*§&': 
 
 [Ancient View of St. James's and Westminster.] 
 
 would ride on through fields, till they came very near the village of St. Giles's. 
 Here, turning from their easterly direction to the south, they would pass through 
 meadows ; with the herd quietly grazing under the evening sun in one enclosure, 
 and the laundress collecting her bleached linen in another. They are now in 
 St. Martin's Lane ; and the hum of population begins to be heard. The inn in 
 the Strand receives their horses, and they take a boat at Somerset Place. Then 
 bursts upon the young stranger a full conception of the wealth and greatness of 
 that city of which he has heard so much, and imagined so much more. Hundreds 
 of boats arc upon the river. Here and there a stately barge is rowed along, 
 gay with streamers and rich liveries ; and the sound of music is heard from its 
 decks, and the sound is repeated from many a beauteous garden that skirts the 
 water's edge. He looks back upon the cluster of noble buildings that form the 
 
 294
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Palace of Westminster. York Place, and the spacious Savoy, bring their 
 historical recollections to his mind. He looks eastward, and there is the famous 
 Temple, and the Palace of Bridewell, and Baynard's Castle. Above all these 
 rises up the majestic spire of Paul's. London Bridge, that wonder of the 
 world, now shows its picturesque turrets and multitudinous arches ; and in the 
 distance is seen the Tower of London, full of grand and solemn associations. 
 The boat rests at the Blackfriars. In a few minutes they are threading the narrow 
 streets of the precinct ; and a comfortable house affords the weary youths a 
 cheerful welcome. 
 
 gjefe j^ssij- ^ ~
 
 NOTE ON AUBREY'S ' LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 Auckey's 'Life,' as we hare mentioned, is the earliest connected account of Shakspcre Brief a:i 
 it is, it is full of curious and characteristic matter; made up of gossip, indeed, and evidently 
 inaccurate in one or two particulars, but still valuable as reflecting the general notion of Shak- 
 spere's career entertained by hi3 immediate successors, with whom Aubrey was familiar. Howe's 
 'Life' comes later; and the facts are so mixed up with the critical opinions of his age, which 
 uniformly desire to represent Shakspere as an uneducated man, that we cannot regard it as so 
 genuine a production as Aubrey's tattle, in which he told what he had heard without much regard 
 to the inferences to be drawn from his tale. It ought to be read entire, properly to judge of its 
 credibility ; and therefore we so present it to our readers : — 
 
 " Mr. William Shakespear was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick ; hi3 
 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 a 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. This William, 
 being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess, about 18, and was an actor 
 at one of the playhouses, and did act exceedingly well. Now B. Jonson was never a good actor, 
 but an excellent Instructor. He began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that 
 time was very low, and his plays took well. He was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good 
 
 company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit. The humour of the constable, in 
 
 A Midsummer-Night's Dream, he happened to take at Grendon,* in Bucks, which is the road from 
 London to Stratford, and there was living that constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon. 
 Mr. Jos. Howe is of that parish, and knew him. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men 
 daily wherever they came. One time as he was at the tavern at Stratford-upon-Avon, one Combes, 
 an old rich usurer, was to be buried ; he makes there this extemporary epitaph : — 
 
 ' Ten in the hundred the devil allows, 
 But Combes will have twelve, he swears and vows : 
 If any one asks who lies in this tomb, 
 "Ho!" quoth the devil, "'tis my John o' Combe.'" 
 
 He was wont to go to his native country once a-year. I think I have been told that he left 2 or 
 SOOL per annum there and thereabout to a sister. I have heard Sir William Davenant and Mr. 
 Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best comedian we have now) say that he had a most prodi- 
 gious wit, and did admire his natural parts beyond all other dramatical writers. He was wont to 
 say that he never blotted out a line in his life ; said Ben Jonson, ' I wish he had blotted out a 
 thousand.' His comedies will remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he 
 handles mores hominum ; now our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and cox- 
 CMmbities, that twenty years hence they will not be understood. 
 
 "Though, as Ben Jonson says of him, that he had but little Latin and less Greek, he understood 
 Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country." t 
 
 * " I think it wa? Midsummer night that he happened to lie there." 
 t From Mr. Beesfon. 
 
 END OF BOOK I. 
 
 2y«
 
 
 ..£. 
 
 iiHiM r 
 
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 A BIOGRAPHY*.
 
 
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 [A Play at tho Elackfriars.] 
 
 BOOK IT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A NEW PLAY, 
 
 Amongst those innumerable by-ways in London which are familiar to the 
 hurried pedestrian, there is a well-known line of streets, or rather lanes, leadin- 
 from the hill on which St. Paul's stands to the great thoroughfare of Black! 
 friars Bridge. The pavement is narrow, the carriage-way is often blocked up 
 by contending carmen, the houses are mean ; yet the whole district is full of 
 interesting associations. We have scarcely turned out of Ludgate Street, under 
 a narrow archway, when the antiquary may descry a large lump of the ancient 
 
 299
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSl'ERE : 
 
 city wall embedded in the lath and plaster of a modern dwelling. A little 
 farther, and we pass the Hall of the Apothecaries, who have here, by dint of 
 long and earnest struggle, raised their original shopkeeping vocation into a 
 science. A little onward, and the name Printing-house Yard indicates another 
 aspect of civilization. Here was the King's printing-house in the days of the 
 Stuarts ; and here, in Dur own days, is the office of the ' Times ' Newspaper, the 
 organ of a greater power than that of prerogative. Between Apothecaries' 
 Hall and Printing-house Yard is a short lane, leading into an open space called 
 Playhouse Yard. It is one of those shabby places of which so many in London 
 lie close to the glittering thoroughfares ; but which are known only to their 
 own inhabitants, and have at all times an air of quiet which seems like desola- 
 tion. The houses of this little square, or yard, are neither ancient nor modern. 
 Some of them were probably built soon after the great fire of London ; for a 
 few present their gable fronts to the streets, and the wide casements of others 
 have evidently been filled up and modern sashes inserted. But there is nothing 
 here, nor indeed in the whole precinct, with the exception of the few yards of the 
 ancient wall, that has any pretension to belong to what may be called the anti- 
 quities of London. Yet here, three centuries ago, stood the great religious 
 house of the Dominicans, or Black Friars, who were the lords of the precinct ; 
 shutting out all civic authority, and enclosing within their four gates a busy 
 community of shopkeepers and artificers. Here, in the hallowed dust of the 
 ancient church, were the royal and the noble buried ; and their gilded tombs 
 proclaimed their virtues to the latest posterity. Where shall we look for a 
 fragment of these records now? Here parliaments have sat and pulled down 
 odious favourites ; here kings have required exorbitant aids from their com- 
 plaining subjects ; here Wolsey pronounced the sentence of divorce on the per- 
 secuted Katharine. In a few years the house of the Black Friars ceased to 
 exist ; their halls were pulled down ; their church fell into ruin. The precinct 
 of the Blackfriars then became a place of fashionable residence. Elizabeth, at 
 the age of sixty, here danced at a wedding which united the houses of Worcester 
 and Bedford. In the heart of this precinct, close by the church of the sup- 
 pressed monastery, surrounded by the new houses of the nobility, in the very 
 spot which is now known as Playhouse Yard, was built, in 1575, the Blackfriars 
 Theatre. 
 
 The history of the early stage, as it is to be deduced from statutes, and pro- 
 clamations, and orders of council, exhibits a constant succession of conflicts 
 between the civic authorities and the performers of plays. The act of the 
 14th of Elizabeth, " for the punishment of vagabonds, and for relief of the poor 
 and impotent," was essentially an act of protection for the established companies 
 of players. We have here, for the first time, a definition of rogues and vaga- 
 bonds ; and it includes not only those who can " give no reckoning how he or 
 she doth lawfully get his or her living," but " all fencers, bearwards, common 
 players in interludes, and minstrels, not belonging to any baron of this realm or 
 towards any other honourable personage of greater degree ; all jugglers, pedlers 
 linkers, and petty chapmen ; which said fencers, bearwards, common players 
 
 300
 
 A BIOGRAFHY. 
 
 in interludes, minstrels, jugglers, pedlers, tinkers, and petty chapmen, shall 
 wander abroad, and have not licence of two justices of the peace at the least* 
 whereof one to be of the quorum, where and in what shire they shall happen 
 to wander." The circumstance of belonging to any baron, or person of greater 
 degree, was in itself a pretty large exception ; and if in those times of rising 
 puritanism the licence of two justices of the peace was not always to be procured, 
 the large number of companies enrolled as the servants of the nobility offers 
 sufficient evidence that the profession of a player was not a persecuted one, but 
 one expressly sanctioned by the ruling powers. The very same statute throws 
 by implication as much odium upon scholars as upon players ; for amongst its 
 vagabonds are included " all scholars of the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge 
 that go about begging, not being authorised under the seal of the said Uni- 
 versities."* There was one company of players, the Earl of Leicester's, which 
 within two years after the legislative protection of this act received a more 
 important privilege from the Queen herself. In 1574 a writ of privy zeal was 
 issued to the keeper of the great seal, commanding him to set forth letters 
 patent addressed to all justices, &c, licensing and authorizing James Burbage, 
 and four other persons, servants to the Earl of Leicester, " to use, exercise, and 
 occupy the art and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, interludes, stage- 
 plays, and such other like as they have already used and studied, or hereafter 
 shall use and study, as well for the recreation of our loving subjects, as for our 
 solace and pleasure, when we shall think good to see them." And they were to 
 exhibit their performances " as well within our city of London and liberties of 
 the same," as " throughout our realm of England." Without knowing how 
 far tie servants of the Earl of Leicester might have been molested by the 
 authorities of the city of London, in defiance of this patent, it is clear that the 
 patent was of itself insufficient to insure their kind reception within the city ; 
 for it appears that, within three months after the date of the patent, a letter 
 was written from the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor, directing him " to 
 admit the comedy-players within the city of London, and to be otherwise 
 favourably used." This mandate was probably obeyed; but in 1575 the Court 
 of Common Council, without any exception for the objects of the patent of 
 1574, made certain orders, in the city language termed an act, which assumed 
 that the whole authority for the regulation of plays was in the Lord Mayor and 
 Court of Aldermen ; that they only could license theatrical exhibitions within 
 the city ; and that the players whom they did license should contribute half 
 their receipts to charitable purposes. The civic authorities appear to have 
 stretched their power somewhat too far ; for in that very year James Burbage, 
 and the other servants of the Earl of Leicester, erected their theatre amidst the 
 houses of the great in the Blackfriars, within a stone's throw of the city walls, 
 but absolutely out of the control of the city officers. The immediate neighbours 
 
 " It is curious that the act against vagabonds of the 39th of Elizabeth somewhat softens this 
 matter; for in its definition of vagabonds it includes "all persons calling themselves scholars, going 
 about begging. ' It says nothing, with regard to players, about the licence of two justices ; and 
 requires that the nobleman's licence shall be under his hand and seal. 
 
 801
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 of the players were the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Hunsdon, as we learn from 
 a petition against the players from the inhabitants of the precinct.* The peti- 
 tion was unavailing. The rooms which it states " one Burbadge hath lately 
 bought" were converted "into a common playhouse;" and within fourteen 
 years from the period of its erection William Shakspere was one of its pro- 
 prietors. 
 
 The royal patent of 1574 authorised in the exercise of their art and faculty 
 " James Burbadge, John Perkyn, John Lanham, William Johnson, and Robert 
 Wylson," who are described as the servants of the Earl of Leicester. Although 
 on the early stage the characters were frequently doubled, we can scarcely 
 imagine that these five persons were of themselves sufficient to form a company 
 of comedians. They had, no doubt, subordinate actors in their pay ; they being 
 the proprietors or shareholders in the general adventure. Of these five original 
 patentees four remained as the "sharers in the Blackfriars Playhouse" in 1589, 
 the name only of John Perkyn being absent from the subscribers to a certificate 
 to the Privy Council that the company acting at the Blackfriars " have never 
 given cause of displeasure in that they have brought into their "plays matters of 
 state and religion." This certificate — which bears the date of November, 1589 — 
 exhibits to us the list of the professional companions of Shakspere in an early stage 
 of his career, though certainly not in the very earliest. The subject-matter of 
 this document will require to be noticed in another chapter. The certificate 
 describes the persons subscribing it as "her Majesty's poor players," and sets forth 
 that they are " all of them sharers in the Blackfriars Playhouse." Their names 
 are presented in the following order : — 
 
 1. James Burbadge. 
 
 2. Richard Burbadge. 
 
 3. John Laneham. 
 -1. Thomas Greene. 
 
 5. Robert Wilson. 
 
 6. John Taylor. 
 
 7. Anth. Wadeson. 
 
 8. Thomas Pope. 
 
 9. George Peele. 
 
 10. Augustine Phillipps. 
 
 1 1 . Nicholas Towley. 
 
 12. William Shakespeare. 
 
 13. William Kempe. 
 
 14. William Johnson. 
 
 15. Baptistc Goodale. 
 
 16. Robert Armyn. 
 
 The position of James Burbagc at the head of the list is a natural, one. He 
 was no doubt the founder of this theatrical company. The petition of 1570 
 
 * Lord Hunsdon's name appears to this petition, but the Lord Chamberlain's does not appear. 
 
 302
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 against the Blackfriars Theatre mentions "one Burbadge" as having lately 
 bought certain rooms in the precinct. This distinction was long preserved to 
 his more celebrated son Richard, the second in the list. He died in 1619; and 
 he probably continued at the head of the sharers until his decease gave occasion 
 to the briefest epitaph ever written — "Exit Burbidge."* It would appear, 
 from Jonson's masque of 'Christmas,' presented at Court in 16 1G, that Bur- 
 bagc and Heminge were joint managers ; for Venus, who appears as " a deaf 
 tire-woman," says she could have let out Cupid by the week to the King's 
 players : " Master Burbage has been about and about with me, and so has old 
 Master Heminge too ; they have need of him." The early companionship of 
 Shakspere with Richard Burbage became unquestionably a friendship which 
 lasted through life; for he was one of the three professional friends — "fellows" 
 — mentioned in the poet's will. Richard Burbage, by universal consent, was 
 the greatest actor of his time. Sir Richard Baker calls him "such an actor 
 as no age must ever look to see the like." William Shakspere and Richard 
 Burbage were, in all probability, nearly of the same age. At the date of the 
 certificate before us Shakspere was twenty-five. The third and fifth shares in 
 this list were of the original patentees in 1574. But the fourth amongst those 
 patentees stands the fourteenth in the list. If the order in the list be evidence 
 of the rank which each person held in the company — and such a deduction is 
 reasonable from the fact of the Burbages being at the head of the list — it is 
 clear that the order was determined upon another principle than that of seni- 
 ority. Of John Laneham, whose name follows that of the Burbages, we know 
 nothing. 
 
 Thomas Greene, the fourth name attached to this certificate, is the person who 
 has been conjectured to have been a native of Stratford-upon-Avon, and to have 
 introduced Shakspere to the theatre. He was a comic actor, of great and 
 original powers ; and so celebrated was he as the representative of a particular 
 part in one comedy, that the play was called after his name, ' Greene's Tu 
 Quoque,' and bears his portrait in the title-page. This comedy, which long 
 continued to be popular, was written by John Cook. Although the title-page 
 of this play states that it " hath been divers times acted by the Queen's Majesty's 
 servants," it is probable that Greene did not long continue a member of the 
 company to which Shakspere belonged. He is mentioned by name in the 
 ' Tu Quoque ' as the clown at the Red Bull. His name does not appear in a 
 petition to the Privy Council from the Blackfriars company in 1596; and he is 
 not included in the list of the "names of the principal actors" of all Shak- 
 spere's plays, which is prefixed to the folio of 1623. Greene, as well as others 
 of higher eminence, was a poet as well as an actor. In the lines which have 
 been ascribed to him upon somewhat doubtful anthority, he is made to say — 
 
 " I prattled poesy in my nurse's arms." . . 
 But his ambition was not powerful enough to induce him to claim the honours 
 
 ' * Philipot's additions to Camden's ' Remains concerning Britain.' 
 
 303
 
 [Thomas Greene.] 
 
 of a poet till a very ripened age; for upon the accession of James I. he ad- 
 dressed to the king * A Poet's Vision, and a Prince's Glory/ in which he is 
 thus spoken to in the vision : — 
 
 " What though the world saw never line of thine, 
 Ne'er can the muse have a birth more divine." 
 
 Robert Wilson, the fifth on the list, was a person of great celebrity. He 
 was amongst the first of the Queen's sworn servants in 1583. His reputation 
 was long enduring as an actor in a very peculiar vein. Howes describes him as 
 of "a quick, delicate, refined, extemporal wit." This was a traditional reputa- 
 tion. But Meres, writing in 1598, after mentioning Antipater Sidonius as 
 " famous for extemporal verse in Greek," and alluding to a similar power in 
 Tarleton, adds — " And so is now our witty Wilson, who for learning and ex- 
 temporal wit, in this faculty is without compare or compeer, as to his great and 
 eternal commendations he manifested in his challenge at the Swan on the Bank- 
 side." Wilson, as we have seen, belonged to the very earliest period of our 
 reguiar drama ; and there can be little doubt that originally a great deal of the 
 comedy was improvised by men oi real talent, such as Tarleton and himself. 
 But Wilson was also a dramatic writer. Prior to 1580 he had written a play 
 304
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 on the subject of Catiline, -which is mentioned in Lodge's ' Reply to Gosson.'* 
 Of his poetical capacity we may form some judgment from one of his plays, 
 'The Cobbler's Prophecy,' printed as early as 1594. It probably belongs to an 
 earlier period ; for allegorical characters are introduced in company with the 
 Heathen gods, and with a cobbler, by name Ralph, upon whom rests the burthen 
 of the merriment, the character being probably sustained by Wilson himself. He 
 was one of the authors also of ' Sir John Oldcastle, Part I/f It appears from 
 Henslowe's papers that Wilson was not only associated with three dramatic 
 friends in writing this play, but that he, in the production of other pieces for 
 Henslowe's theatre, repeatedly co-operated with Drayton, Chettle, Dekker, 
 Anthony Munday, and others. We find entries of his name amongst Henslowe's 
 authors from 1597 to 1G00. His name is not amongst the petitioners of the 
 Blackfriars company in 1596. We may therefore conclude that he had then 
 quitted the company, and had become permanently associated with that of Hen- 
 slowe, as a dramatic writer, and probably as a performer. 
 
 The sixth on the list, John Taylor, was probably an old actor ; and might be 
 the father of the famous Joseph Taylor, of whom tradition says that Shakspere 
 taught him to play Hamlet. Anthony Wadeson, the seventh on the list, was a 
 dramatic writer as well as a player. He probably had left the Blackfriars 
 company early, for his name does not appear to the petition of 1596; and in 
 1601 we find him a writer for Henslowe's theatre. The diary of that manager 
 contains the following entry amongst his catalogue of plays and their authors : 
 ' The Honourable Life of the Humorous Earl of Gloster, with his Conquest of 
 Portugal, by Anthony Wadeson.' His name is not amongst the list of actors 
 of Shakspere's plays. Thomas Pope, the eighth name of the certificate, as 
 well as Augustine Phillipps, the tenth name, are mentioned by Heywood, in 
 his ' Apology for Actors/ 1612, amongst famous performers: "Though they be 
 dead, their deserts yet live in the remembrance of many." Pope, Phillipps, 
 Towley, Kempe, Richard Burbage, and Shakspere himself, are the only names 
 in the list of 1589 which appear to the petition of 1596 ; and it is also to be 
 noticed, that, out of the same sixteen persons, these six, with the addition of 
 Robert Armin, are the only ones amongst the original fellows of Shakspere who 
 are mentioned in the list of the names of the principal actors in Shakspere's 
 plays. William Kempe, the thirteenth name in the certificate, was the famous 
 successor of Tarleton, the extemporising clown, who died in 1588. Of this pair 
 Heywood says, " Here I must needs remember Tarleton, in his time gracious 
 with the Queen, his sovereign, and in the people's general applause, whom suc- 
 ceeded Will. Kempe, as well in the favour of her Majesty, as in the opinion and 
 good thoughts of the general audience." Kempe was a person of overflowing 
 animal spirits, as we may judge from his own extraordinary account of his 
 rnorris-dance from London to Norwich. But it was for Shakspere to give his 
 vivacity a right direction; and to associate his powers with such enduring de- 
 lineations of human nature as Dogberry and Bottom. William Johnson, the four- 
 teenth name, has been already mentioned as one of the first patentees Of Baptist 
 
 * See p. 137. \ See Analysis of Doubtful Plays, p. 210. 
 
 Life. X 305
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE .; 
 
 Goodall, the fifteenth in the list, we know nothing. Robeit Aimin, the last name 
 in the document, was a comic actor, said to have been taught by Tarleton. He ap~ 
 pears to have been a writer of ballads and other ephemeral publications, as well as 
 an actor ; for he is mentioned in this capacity by Thomas Nash, in a pamphlet 
 of 1592.* Armin wrote several plays of no great merit or reputation ; and he 
 published a translation of a little Italian novel. His 'Nest of Ninnies' has 
 been reprinted by the Shakespeare Society. This tract, which contains very 
 little that can interest us as a picture of the times, and which displays a brisk 
 sort of buffoonery, on the part of its author, rather than any real wit or humour, 
 is a collection of queer anecdotes of domestic fools, most of which, the editor of 
 the reprint very justly observes, "will strike all readers as merely puerile and 
 absurd." Armin's stories, however, are told with an absence of offensive ribaldry 
 which was scarcely to be expected from his peculiar talent. He desires to make 
 his readers laugh ; but he does not seek to do so by obtruding the grossnesses 
 by which his subject was necessarily surrounded. 
 
 We have thus run through the list of Shakspere's fellows in 1589, to point 
 to the characters of the men with whom he was thrown into daily companion- 
 ship. Some were of the first eminence as actors, and their names have survived 
 the transitory reputation which belongs to their profession. Several had pre- 
 tensions to the literary character, and probably were more actively engaged in 
 preparing novelties for the early stage than we find recorded in its perishable 
 annals. But there is one name, the ninth on the list, which we have purposely 
 reserved for a more extended mention : it is that of George Peele. 
 
 In the ' Account of George Peele and his Writings,' prefixed to Mr. Dyce's 
 valuable edition of his works (1829), the editor says, "I think it very probable 
 that Peele occasionally tried his histrionic talents, particularly at the com- 
 mencement of his career, but that he was ever engaged as a regular actor I 
 altogether disbelieve." But the publication, in 1835, by Mr. Collier, of the 
 certificate of the good conduct in 1589 of the Blackfriars company, which he 
 discovered amongst the Bridgewater Papers, would appear to determine the 
 question contrary to the belief of Mr. Dyce. Mr. Collier, in the tract in which 
 he first published this important document, f says, with reference to the enu- 
 meration of Peele in the certificate, " George Peele was unquestionably the 
 dramatic poet, who, I conjectured some years ago, was upon the stage early in 
 life." The name of George Peele stands the ninth on this list ; that of William 
 Shakspere the twelfth. The name of William Kempe immediately follows 
 that of Shakspere. Kempe must have become of importance to the company at 
 least a year before the date of this certificate ; for he was the successor of 
 Tarleton in the most attractive line of characters, and Tarleton died in 1588. 
 We hold that Shakspere had won his position in this company at the age of 
 twenty-five by his success as a dramatic writer ; and we consider that in the 
 same manner George Peele had preceded him, and had acquired rank and pro- 
 perty amongst the shareholders, chiefly by the exercise of his talents as a dra- 
 
 * Collier' a Introduction to Armiu's ' Nest of Ninnies,' p. xiii. 
 t New Facta regarding the Life of Shakestieare.
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 malic poet. Those of his dramatic works which have come down to us afford 
 evidence that he possessed great flexibility and rhetorical power, without 
 much invention, with very little discrimination of character, and with that 
 tendency to extravagance in the management of his incidents which exhibits 
 small acquaintance with the higher principles of the dramatic art. He no doubt 
 became a writer for the stage earlier than Shakspere. He brought to the task a 
 higher poetical feeling, and more scholarship, than had been previously employed 
 in the rude dialogue which varied the primitive melodramatic exhibitions, 
 which afforded a rare delight to auaiences with whom the novel excitement 
 of the entertainment compensated for many of its grossnesses and deficien- 
 cies. Thomas Nash, in his address ' To the Gentlemen Students of both Uni- 
 versities,' prefixed to Greene's ' Menaphon,' mentions Peele amongst the most 
 celebrated poets of the day : " Should the challenge of deep conceit be intruded 
 by any foreigner, to bring our English wits to the touchstone of art, I would 
 prefer divine Master Spenser, the miracle of wit, to bandy line by line for my 
 life, in the honour of England, against Spain, France, Italy, and all the world 
 Neither is he the only swallow of our summer (although Apollo, if his tripos 
 were up again, would pronounce him his Socrates); but he being forborne 
 there are extant about London many most able men to revive poetry, though 
 it were executed ten thousand times, as in Plato's, so in Puritans' common- 
 wealth ; as, namely, for example, Matthew Roydon, Thomas Achlow, and 
 George Peele ; the first of whom, as he hath showed himself singular in the 
 immortal epitaph of his beloved Astrophell, besides many other most absolute 
 comic inventions (made more public by every man's praise than they can be by 
 my speech); so the second hath more than once or twice manifested his deep- 
 witted scholarship in places of credit ; and for the last, though not the least of 
 them all, I dare commend him unto all that know him, as the chief supporter 
 of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and primus verborum artifex ; 
 whose first increase, the 'Arraignment of Paris,' might plead to your opinions 
 his pregnant dexterity of wit, and manifold variety of invention, wherein {me 
 judice) he goeth a step beyond all that write." 'The Arraignment of Paris,' 
 which Nash describes as Peele's first increase, or first production, was per- 
 formed before the Queen in 1584 by the children of her chapel. It is called in 
 the title- page "a pastoral." It is not improbable that the favour with which this 
 mythological story of the Judgment of Paris was received at the Court of Eli- 
 zabeth might in some degree have given Peele his rank in the company of the 
 Queen's players, who appear to have had some joint interest with the children 
 of the chapel. The pastoral possesses little of the dramatic spirit; but we 
 occasionally meet with passages of great descriptive elegance, rich in fancy, 
 though somewhat overlaboured. The goddesses, however, talk with great 
 freedom, we might say with a slight touch of mortal vulgarity. This would 
 scarcely displease the courtly throng ; but the approbation would be over- 
 powering at the close, when Diana bestows the golden ball, and Venus, Pallas ; 
 and Juno cheerfully resign their pretensions in favour of the superior beauty, 
 wisdom, and princely state of the great Eliza. Such scenes were probably not 
 for the multitude who thronged to the Blackfriars. Peele was the poet of the 
 X 2 307
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 City as well as of the Court. He produced a Lord Mayor's Pageant in 1585, 
 when Sir Wolstan Dixie was chief magistrate, in which London, Magnanimity. 
 Loyalty, the Country, the Thames, the Soldier, the Sailor, Science, and a 
 quaternion of nymphs, gratulate the City in melodious verse. Another of his 
 pageants before "Mr. William Web, Lord Mayor," in 1591, has come down te 
 us. He was ready with his verses when Sir Henry Lee resigned the office of 
 Queen's Champion in 1590; and upon Jie occasion also of an Installation at 
 Windsor in 1593. When Elizabeth visited Theobalds in 1591, Peele produced 
 the speeches with which the Queen was received, in the absence of Lord Bur 
 leigh, by members of his household, in the characters of a hermit, a gardener 
 and a mole-catcher. In all these productions we find the facility which distin- 
 guished his dramatic writings, but nothing of that real power which was to 
 breathe a new life into the entertainments for the people. The early play of 
 'Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes' is considered by Dr. Dyce to be the produc- 
 tion of Peele. It is a most tedious drama, in the old twelve-syllable rhyming 
 verse, in which the principle of alliteration is carried into the most ludicrous 
 absurdity, and the pathos is scarcely more moving than the woes of Pyramus 
 and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream. One example of a lady in 
 distress may suffice : — 
 
 " The sword of this my loving knight, behold, I here do take, 
 Of this my woeful corpse, alas, a final end to make ! 
 Yet, ere I strike that deadly stroke that shall my life deprave, 
 Ye Muses, aid me to the gods for mercy first to crave ! " 
 
 In a few years, perhaps by the aid of better examples, Peele worked himself 
 out of many of the absurdities of the early stage ; but he had not strength 
 wholly to cast them off. We have noticed at some length his historical play 
 of 'Edward I.' in the examination of the theory that he was the author of the 
 three Parts of Henry VI. in their original state ; and it is scarcely necessary for 
 us here to enter more minutely into the question of his dramatic ability. It is 
 pretty manifest that a new race of writers, with Shakspere at their head, was 
 rising up to push Peele from the position which he held in the Blackfriars 
 company in 1589. We think it is probable that he quitted that company soon 
 after the period when Shakspere had become the master-spirit which won for 
 the shareholders fame and fortune. His name is not found in the petition to 
 the Privy Council in 1596. He is one of the three, moreover, to whom Robert 
 Greene in 1592 addressed his dying warning. He was, according to the re- 
 pentant profligate, driven like himself to extreme shifts. He was in danger 
 like Greene, of being forsaken by the puppets "that speak from our mouths." 
 The reason that the players are not to be trusted is because their place is sup- 
 plied by another : " Yes, trust them not ; for there is an upstart crow beautified 
 with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, sup- 
 poses he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and, 
 being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake- 
 scene in a country." The insult offered to Shakspere was atoned for by the 
 editor of the unhappy Greene's posthumous effusion of malignity. We mention 
 it here, as some indication of the difficulties with which the young poet had to 
 308
 
 A BIOGKAPHY. 
 
 struggle, in coming amongst the monarchs of the barbarian stage with a higher 
 ambition than that of being "primus verborum artifex." 
 
 It would not be an easy matter, without some knowledge of minute facts and 
 a considerable effort of imagination, to form an accurate notion of that building 
 in the Blackfriars — rooms converted into a common playhouse — in which we 
 may conclude that the first plays of Shakspere were exhibited. The very 
 expression used by the petitioners against Burbage's project would imply that 
 the building was not very nicely adapted to the purposes of dramatic repre- 
 sentation. They say, " which rooms the said Burbage is now altering, and 
 meaneth very shortly to convert and turn the same into a common playhouse." 
 And yet we are not to infer that the rooms were hastily adapted to their 
 object by the aid of a few boards and drapery, like the barn of a strolling com- 
 pany. In 1596 the shareholders say, in a petition to the Privy Council, that 
 the theatre, " by reason of its having been so long built, hath fallen into grea*. 
 decay, and that, besides the reparation thereof, it has been found necessary to 
 make the same more convenient for the entertainment of auditories coming 
 thereto." The structure no doubt was adapted to its object without any very 
 great regard to durability ; and the accommodations, both for actors and 
 audience, were of a somewhat rude nature. The Blackfriars was a winter 
 theatre ; so that, differing from the Globe, which belonged to the same company, 
 it was, there can be little doubt, roofed in. It appears surprising that, in a 
 climate like that of England, even a summer theatre should be without a roof; 
 but the surprise is lessened when we consider that, when the Globe was built, 
 in 1594, not twenty years had elapsed since plays were commonly represented 
 in the open yards of the inns of London. The Belle Savage * was amongst the 
 most famous of these inn-yard theatres ; and some ten years ago the area of 
 that inn showed how readily it might have been adapted for such performances. 
 We turned aside from the crowds of Luagate Hill, and passed down a gateway 
 which opened into a considerable space. The inn occupied the east and north 
 sides of the area, the west side consisted of private houses of business. But once 
 the inn occupied the entire of the three sides, with open galleries running all 
 round, and communicating with the chambers. Raise a platform with its back 
 to the gateway for the actors, place benches in the galleries which run round 
 three sides of the area, and let those who pay the least price be contented with 
 standing-room in the yard, and a theatre, with its stage, pit, and boxes, is 
 raised as quickly as the palace of Aladdin. The Blackfriars theatre was pro- 
 bably, therefore, little more than a large space arranged pretty much like the 
 Belle Savage yard, but with a roof over it. Indeed, so completely were the 
 public theatres adapted after the model of the temporary ones, that the space 
 for the "groundlings" long continued to be called the yard. One of the 
 earliest theatres, built probably about the same time as the Blackfriars, was 
 called the Curtain, from which we may infer that the refinement of separating 
 the actors from the audience during the intervals of the representation was at 
 first peculiar to that theatre 
 
 * The old writers spell the word less learnedly than we— Bel-savage. 
 
 309
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERK : 
 
 In the petition to the Privy Council in 1596, it is stated that the petitioners 
 " are owners and players of the private house or theatre in the precinct or 
 liberty of the Blackfriars." Yet the petition of the inhabitants of the precinct 
 against the enterprise of Burbage, in 1576, states the intention of Burbage to 
 convert the rooms which he has bought " into a common playhouse," and it 
 alleges the inconvenience that will result from the "gathering together of all 
 manner of vagrant and lewd persons, under colour of resorting to the plays." 
 Here then is an apparent contradiction, — the Blackfriars theatre is called a pri- 
 vate house, and also a common playhouse. But the seeming contradiction is 
 reconciled when we learn that for many years a distinction was preserved 
 between public and private theatres. The theatres of inn-yards were un- 
 doubtedly public theatres. The yard was hired for some short period, the 
 scaffold hastily run up, and the gates closed, except to those who came with 
 penny in hand. Such were the theatres of the Belle Savage in Ludgate Hill, 
 the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, and the Bull in Bishopsgate Street. 
 But, as we learn from a passage in an old topographer, in which he expressly 
 mentions the Belle Savage, the penny at the theatre gate was something like 
 the penny at the porch of our cathedral show-shops of the present day, — other 
 pennies were demanded for a peep at the sights within. " Those who go to 
 Paris Garden, the Belsavage, or Theatre, to behold bear-baiting, interludes, 
 or fence-play, must not account of any pleasant spectacle, unless first they pay 
 one penny at the gate, another at the entry of the scaffold, and a third for quiet 
 standing."* The Paris Garden here mentioned was the old bear-baiting place 
 which had existed from the time of Henry VIII., and perhaps earlier. The 
 Belle Savage, rude as its accommodations doubtless were, had yet its graces 
 and amenities, if Stephen Gosson be not a partial critic : " The two prose books 
 played at the Bel-savage, where you shall find never a word without wit, 
 never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain."f The Theatre also 
 mentioned by Lambarde was a public playhouse so called. It was situated in 
 Shoreditch, without the City walls. In Aggas's map we see a tolerably con- 
 tinuous street, leading from Bishop's Gate to Shoreditch Church ; but on each 
 side of this street there is a wide extent of fields and gardens, Spital field to the 
 east, and Finsbury field to the west, with rude figures, in the map, of cows and 
 horses, archers, laundresses, and water-carriers, which show how completely 
 this large district, now so crowded with human life in all its phases of comfort 
 and misery, was in the days of Elizabeth a rural suburb. Stow, in the first 
 edition of his 'Survey,' 1599, mentions the old Priory of St. John the Baptist, 
 called Holy well. " The church thereof being pulled down, many houses have 
 been there builded for the lodgings of noblemen, of strangers born, and other. 
 And thereunto are builded two public houses for the acting and show of 
 comedies, tragedies, and histories, for recreation. Whereof the one is called 
 the Curtain, the other the Theatre, both standing on the south-west side 
 
 * Lambanle's 'Perambulation of Kent,' 1576. 
 t School of Abuse. 1579. 
 
 310
 
 A BIOGKAI IIY. 
 
 toward the field."* In a sermon by John Stockwood, in 1578, the Theatre is 
 called a "gorgeous playing place." Stubbes, in 1583, rails bitterly against 
 these public playhouses : " Mark the flocking and running to Theatres and 
 Curtains." The early history of the less important theatres is necessarily in- 
 volved in great obscurity. There were playhouses on the Bankside, against the 
 immoralities of which, particularly as to playing on Sundays, the inhabitants 
 of Southwark complained to the authorities in 1587; but it is not known when 
 Henslowe's playhouse, the Rose, which was in that neighbourhood, was erected. 
 The Swan and the Hope, also theatres of the Bankside, were probably, as well 
 as the Rose, mean erections in the infancy of the stage, which afterwards grew 
 into importance. There was an ancient theatre also at Newington, which offered 
 its attractions to the holiday-makers who sallied out of the City to practise z.l 
 the Butts. 
 
 In the continuation of Stow's ' Chronicle,' by Edmund Howes, there is a very 
 curious passage, which carries us back from the period in which he was writing 
 (1631) for sixty years. He describes the destruction of the Globe by fire in 
 . <U3, the burning of the Fortune Playhouse four years after, the rebuilding cf 
 both theatres, and the erection of "a new fair playhouse near the Whitefriars." 
 He then adds, — " And this is the seventeenth stage, or common playhouse, 
 which hath been new made within the space of threescore years within London 
 and the suburbs, viz. : five inns, or common hostelries, turned to playhouses, 
 one Cockpit, St. Paul's singing-school, one in the Blackfriars, and one in the 
 Whitefriars, which was built last of all, in the year one thousand six hundred 
 twenty-nine. All the rest not named were erected only for common play- 
 houses, besides the new-built Bear-garden, which was built as well for plays, and 
 fencers' prizes, as bull-baiting ; besides one in former time at Newington Butts. 
 Before the space of threescore years abovesaid I neither knew, heard, nor read 
 of any such theatres, set stages, or playhouses, as have been purposely built 
 within man's memory." It would appear, as far as we can judge from the very 
 imperfect materials which exist, that in the early period of Shakspere's connec- 
 tion with the Blackfriars it was the only private theatre. At a subsequent 
 period the Cockpit, or Phcenix, in Drury Lane, was a private theatre ; and so 
 was the theatre in Salisbury Court, — the " new fair playhouse near the White- 
 friars " of Howes. What then was the distinction between the private theatre 
 of the Blackfriars, of which Shakspere was a shareholder in 1589, and the 
 permanent and temporary public theatres with which it entered into com- 
 petition? It is natural to conclude that the proprietors of this theatre, being 
 the Queen's servants, not merely nominally, but the sworn officers of her house- 
 hold, were the most respectable of their vocation ; conformed to the ordinances 
 of the state with the utmost scrupulousness ; endeavoured to attract a select 
 audience rather than an uncritical multitude ; and received higher prices for 
 
 * Hr. Collier, who originally pointed out this passage, by comparing the printed copy with 
 Stow's manuscript in the British Museum, found that "activities" (tumbling) were mentioned ad 
 performed at c.'n^e theatres, as weil as plays. 
 
 311
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 admission than were paid at the public theatres. The performances at the 
 Blackfriars were for the most part in the winter. Whether the performances 
 were in the day or evening, artificial lights were used. The audience in what 
 we now call the pit (then also so called) sat upon benches, and did not stand a« 
 in the yard open to the sky of the public playhouses. There were small rooms 
 corresponding with the private boxes of existing theatres. A portion of the 
 audience, including those who aspired to the distinction of critics, sat upon the 
 sta^e. " Though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage at Blackfriars 
 to arraign plays daily," says the preface to the first folio of Shakspere. The 
 passage we have quoted from Lambarde gives us a notion of the prices of admis- 
 sion at the very early theatres. Those who paid a penny for the " entry of the 
 scaffold " had, of course, privileges not obtained by those who merely paid " the 
 penny at the gate ; " and those who, when they had reached the scaffold, had to 
 pay another penny " for quiet standing," had no doubt the advantage of some 
 railed-off space, in some degree similar to the stalls of the modern pit. But the 
 mass of the audience must have been the penny payers. The passages in old 
 plays and tracts which allude to the prices of admission, for the most part 
 belong to the high and palmy period of the stage. But we learn from one of 
 Lyly's tracts, in 1590, that the admission at "The Theatre" was twopence, 
 and at St. Paul's fourpence ; though a penny still seems from other authorities 
 to have been the common price. It is possible, and indeed there is some evi- 
 dence, that the rate of admission even then varied according to the attraction 
 of the performance ; and we may be pretty sure that a company like that of 
 Shakspere's generally charged at a higher rate than the larger theatres, which 
 depended more upon the multitude. At a much later period, Ben Jonson and 
 Fletcher mention a price as high as half-a- crown ; and the lowest price which 
 Jonson mentions is sixpence. At a later period still, Jonson speaks of the six- 
 penny mechanics of the Blackfriars. Those who sat upon the stage, it would 
 appear, paid sixpence for a stool, in addition to their payment for admission. 
 It is scarcely worth while to enter more minutely into the evidence on this 
 point, which may be consulted by the curious in Malone's ' Historical Account 
 of the English Stage,' and more fully in Mr. Collier's ' Annals of the Stage.' 
 With these preliminary notices we may proceed to the picture of a new play at 
 the Blackfriars, about a year or so before the period when it has been ascertained 
 that Shakspere was one amongst the sixteen shareholders of that company, 
 with four other shareholders, and those not unimportant persons, below him on 
 the list. 
 
 On the posts of the principal thoroughfares of the City a little bill is affixed, 
 announcing that a new History will be performed at the private theatre of the 
 Blackfriars. The passengers are familiar with such bills ; they were numerous 
 enough in the year 1587 to make it of sufficient importance that one printer 
 should be licensed by the Stationers' Company for their production. At an 
 early hour in the afternoon the watermen are actively landing their passengers 
 at the Blackfriars Stairs ; and there are hasty steps along tiie narrow thorough- 
 fares to the south of Lud Gate. The pit of the Blackfriars is soon filled. The 
 
 312
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 people for the most part wait for the performance in tolerable quiet, but now 
 and then a disturbance takes place. If we may judge from sober documents 
 and allusive satires, London was never so full of cheats and bullies as about 
 this period. There is a curious passage in Henry Chettle's ' Kind-Harte's 
 Dream," printed in 1593, in which tract the author, "sitting alone not long 
 since, not far from Finsbury, in a taphouse of antiquity, attending the coming 
 of such companions as might wash care away with carousing," falls asleep, and 
 has a vision of five personages, amongst whom is Tarleton, the famous clown 
 In the discourse which Tarleton makes is this passage : — " And let Tarleton 
 entreat the young people of the city, either to abstain altogether from plays, or 
 at'their coming thither to use themselves after a more quiet order. In a place 
 so civil as this city is esteemed, it is more than barbarously rude to see the 
 shameful disorder and routs that sometimes in such public meetings are used. 
 The beginners are neither gentlemen nor citizens, nor any of both their servants, 
 but some lewd mates that long for innovation ; and when they see advantage 
 that either servingmen or apprentices are most in number they will be of 
 either side.* Though indeed they are of no side, but men beside all honesty, 
 willing to make booty of cloaks, hats, purses, or whatever they can lay hold on 
 in a hurley-burley. These are the common causers of discord in public places 
 If otherwise it happen, as it seldom doth, that any quarrel be between man and 
 man, it is far from manhood to make so public a place their field to fight in : 
 no men will do it but cowards that would fain be parted, or have hope to have 
 many partakers." Amongst the quiet audience the sellers of nuts and pippins 
 are gliding. Ever and anon a cork bounces out of a bottle of ale. Tobacco was 
 not as yet. While the audience are impatiently waiting for the three soundings 
 of trumpet that precede the prologue, a noise of many voices is heard behind 
 the curtain which separates them from the stage. The noise is not of the 
 actors ; but of the crowd of spectators who have entered by the tiring-room 
 door, and are struggling for places, or in eager groups communicating their 
 expectations of the performance, and their opinions of the author. Amongst 
 this crowd would be the dramatic writers of the time, who in all probability 
 then, as without doubt at a subsequent period, had a free admission to the 
 theatres generally, the stage being their prescriptive place.*f* We may venture 
 to sketch the group of compeers that would be collected on this occasion, to 
 witness the new production of one of Burbage's men, who, if we are not greatly 
 mistaken, was not even then wholly unknown to fame as a dramatic writer. 
 
 Robert Greene has been described by his friend Henry Chettle as "a man of 
 indifferent years, of face amiable, of body well-proportioned, his attire after the 
 habit of a scholarlike gentleman, only his hair somewhat long." J At the 
 period of which we are now writing Greene was probably under thirty years 
 of age, for he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts at Cambridge in 1578. The 
 " somewhat long hair " is scarcely incompatible with the " attire after the habit 
 
 * This indicates a state of quarrel between serving-men and apprentices. 
 t See Ben Jonson's Induction to Cynthia's Revel?. 
 t Kind-Harte's Dream. 
 
 S13
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 of a scholar." Chet.tle's description of the outward appearance of the man 
 would scarcely lead us to imagine, what he has himself told us, that "his com- 
 pany were lightly the lewdest persons in the land." Greene took his degree 
 of Master of Arts in 1583. In one of his posthumous tracts : 'The Repentance 
 of Robert Greene,' which Mr. Dyce, the editor of his works, holds to be ge- 
 nuine, he says, " I left the University and away to London, where (after I had 
 continued some short time, and driven myself out of credit with sundry of my 
 friends) I became an author of plays, and a penner of love pamphlets, so that 1 
 soon grew famous in that quality, that who for that trade grown so ordinary 
 about London as Robin Greene ? Young yet in years, though old in wicked- 
 ness, I began to resolve that there was nothing bad that was profitable : where- 
 upon I grew so rooted in all mischief, that I had as great a delight in wicked- 
 ness as sundry hath in godliness ; and as much felicity I took in villainy as 
 others had in honesty." The whole story of Greene's life renders it too pro- 
 bable that Gabriel Harvey's spiteful caricature of him had much of that real 
 resemblance which renders a caricature most effective : "I was altogether 
 unacquainted with the man, and never once saluted him by name : but who in 
 London hath not heard of his dissolute and licentious living ; his fond dis- 
 guising of a Master of Art with ruffianly hair, unseemly apparel, and more 
 unseemly company ; his vainglorious and Thrasonical braving ; his fripperly 
 extemporizing and Tarletonizing ; his apish counterfeiting of every ridiculous 
 and absurd toy ; his fine cozening of jugglers, and finer juggling with cozeners ; 
 his villainous cogging and foisting ; his monstrous swearing and horrible for- 
 swearing ; his impious profaning of sacred texts ; his other scandalous and 
 blasphemous raving ; his riotous and outrageous surfeiting ; his continual shift- 
 ing of lodgings ; his plausible mustering and banqueting of roysterly acquaint- 
 ance at his first coming ; his beggarly departing in every hostess's debt ; his 
 infamous resorting to the Bankside, Shoreditch, Southwark, and other filthy 
 haunts ; his obscure lurking in basest corners ; his pawning of his sword, cloak, 
 and what not, when money came short ; his impudent pamphleting, fantastical 
 interluding, and desperate libelling, when other cozening shifts failed ? "* This 
 is the bitterness of revenge, not softened even by the penalty which the 
 wretched man had paid for his offence, dying prematurely in misery and soli- 
 tariness, and writing from his lodging at a poor shoemaker's these last touching 
 lines to the wife whom he had abandoned : " Doll, I charge thee by the love 
 of our youth, and by my soul's rest, that thou wilt see this man paid : for if he 
 and his wife had not succoured me, I had died in the streets." This cata- 
 strophe happened some four years after the time of which we are writing. 
 Robert Greene is now surrounded by a group who are listening with delight to 
 his eloquence and wit. Sometimes he extemporizes in a vein of lofty imagery ; 
 then he throws around him his sarcasms and invectives, heedless where they 
 fall ; and suddenly he breaks off into a licentious anecdote, which makes the 
 oetter-minded, who had gathered round him to wonder at his facility, turn 
 aside with pity or contempt. He is indifferent, so that his passionate love of 
 
 * Four Letters, &c., especially touching Robert Greene ; 1592. n 
 314
 
 A BIOORAPHT. 
 
 display can be gratified ; and, as he tells us, provided he continued to be " be 
 loved of the more vainer sort of people." As a writer he is one amongst the 
 most popular of his day. His little romances of some fifty pages each were the 
 delight of readers for amusement for half a century. They were the compa- 
 nions of the courtly and the humble, — eagerly perused by the scholar of the 
 University and the apprentice of the City. They reached the extreme range 
 of popularity. In Anthony Wood's time they were "mostly sold on ballad- 
 monger's stalls ; " and Sir Thomas Overbury describes his Chambermaid as 
 reading " Greene's works over and over." Some of these tales are full of 
 genius, ill-regulated no doubt, but so pregnant with invention, that Skakspere 
 in the height of his fame did not disdain to avail himself of the stories of his 
 early contemporary.* The dramatic works of Greene were probably much 
 more numerous than the few which have come down to us ; and the personal 
 character of the man is not unaptly represented in these productions. They 
 exhibit great pomp and force of language ; passages which degenerate into pure 
 bombast from their ambitious attempts to display the power of words ; slight 
 discrimination of character ; incoherence of incident ; and an entire absence of 
 that judgment which results in harmony and proportion. His extravagant 
 pomp of language was the characteristic of all the writers of the early stage 
 except Shakspere ; and equally so were those attempts to be humorous which 
 sank into the lowest buffoonery. In the lyrical pieces which are scattered up 
 and down Greene's novels, there is occasionally a quiet beauty which exhibits 
 the real depths of the man's genius. Amidst all his imperfections of character, 
 that genius is fully acknowledged by the best of his contemporaries. 
 
 By the side of Greene stands Thomas Lodge, his senior in age, and greatly 
 his superior in conduct. He has been a graduate of Oxford ; next a player, 
 though probably for a short time ; and is now a member of Lincoln's Inn. He 
 is probably hovering in the choice of a profession between physic and the law ; 
 for a successful physician of the name of Thomas Lodge is held to be identical 
 with Lodge the poet. He is the author of a tragedy, ' The Wounds of Civil 
 War : lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Sylla.' He had 
 become a writer for the stage before the real power of dramatic blank verse 
 had been adequately conceived. His lines possess not the slightest approach to 
 flexibility ; they invariably consist of ten syllables, with a pause at the end of 
 every line — "each alley like its brother;" the occasional use of the triplet is 
 the only variety. Lodge's tragedy has the appearance of a most correct and 
 laboured performance ; and the result is that of insufferable tediousness. With 
 Greene he is an intimate. In conjunction with him he wrote, probably about 
 this time, 'A Looking Glass for London,' one of the most extraordinary pro- 
 ductions of that period of the stage, the character of which is evidently de- 
 rived not from any desire of the writers to accommodate themselves to the taste 
 of an unrefined audience, but from an utter deficiency of that common sense 
 which could alone recommend their learning and their satire to the popular 
 apprehension. For pedantrv and absurdity 'The Looking-Glass for London' 
 
 * See Introductory Notico to A Winter's Tale. 
 
 315
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 is unsurpassed. Lodge, as well as Greene, was a writer of little romances ; and 
 here he does not disdain the powers of nature and simplicity. The early 
 writers for the stage, indeed, seem one and all to have considered that the lan- 
 guage of the drama was conventional ; that the expressions of real passion 
 ought never there to find a place ; that grief should discharge itself in long 
 soliloquies, and anger explode in orations set forth upon the most approved 
 forms of logic and rhetoric. There is some of this certainly in the prose ro- 
 mances of Greene and Lodge. Lovers make very long protestations, which are 
 far more calculated to display their learning than their affection. This is the 
 sin of most pastorals. But nature sometimes prevails, and we meet with a 
 touching simplicity, which is the best evidence of real power. Lodge, as well 
 as Greene, gave a fable to Shakspere.* 
 
 Another of the chosen companions of Robert Greene stands at his elbow. It 
 is Thomas Nash, who in his " beardless years " has thrown himself upon the 
 town, having forfeited the honours which his talents would have commanded 
 in the due course of his University studies. He is looked upon with some 
 dread, and with more suspicion, for his vein is satire. In an age before that of 
 newspapers and reviews, this young man is a pamphleteering critic ; and very 
 sharp, and to a great extent very just, is his criticism. The drama, even at this 
 early period, is the bow of Apollo for all ambitious poets. It is Nash who, in 
 the days of Locrine, and Tamburlaine, and perhaps Andronicus, is the first to 
 laugh at " the servile imitation of vainglorious tragedians, who contend not so 
 seriously to excel in action, as to embowel the clouds in a speech of comparison ; 
 thinking themselves more than initiated in poets' immortality if they but once 
 get Boreas by the beard, and the heavenly Bull by the Dewlap." f It is he 
 who despises the " idiot art-masters that intrude themselves to our ears as the 
 alchymists of eloquence, who, mounted on the stage of arrogance, think to out- 
 brave better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging blank verse." J As 
 Greene is declaiming to those around him, Nash looks up to him with the 
 admiration of his facility which thus shaped itself into printed words : " Give 
 me the man whose extemporal vein iu any humour will excel our greatest art- 
 master's deliberate thoughts ; whose inventions, quicker than his eye, will 
 challenge the proudest rhetorician to the contention of like perfection with like 
 expedition." § In a year or two Nash was the foremost of controversialists. 
 There are few things in our language written m a bitterer spirit than his 
 pamphlets in the " Marprelate " controversy, and his letters to Gabriel Harvey. 
 Greene, as it appears to us, upon his deathbed warned Nash of the danger of 
 his course : " With thee [Marlowe] I join young Juvenal, that biting satirist, 
 that lastly with me together writ a comedy. Sweet boy, might I advise thee, 
 be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words : inveigh against vain 
 men, for thou canst do it, no man better, no man so well : thou hast a liberty 
 to reprove all, and name none : for one being spoken to, all are offended ; none 
 being blamed, no man is injured. Stop shallow water still running, it will 
 
 * See Introductory Notice to As You Like It. 
 ■f Epistle prefixed to Greene's ' Meuaphon.' I Ibid. § Ibid. 
 
 310
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 rage ; tread on a worm, and it will turn : then blame not scholars who are 
 vexed with sharp and bitter lines, if they reprove thy too much liberty of 
 reproof." It is usual to state that Thomas Lodge is the person thus addressed. 
 So say Malone and Dr. Dyce. The expression, " that lastly with me together 
 writ a comedy," is supposed to point to the union of Greene and Lodge in the 
 composition of ' The Looking-Glass for London.' But it is much easier to be- 
 lieve that Greene and Nash wrote a comedy which is unknown to us, than that 
 Greene should address Lodge, some years his elder, as " young Juvenal," and 
 " sweet boy." Neither have we any evidence that Lodge was a " biting 
 satirist," and used "bitter words " and personalities never to be forgiven. We 
 hold that the warning was meant for Nash. It was given in vain ; for he spent 
 his high talents in calling others rogue and fool, and having the words returned 
 upon him with interest ; bespattering, and bespattered. 
 
 George Peele is dressed for his part, a minor one. But the knot we have 
 attempted to describe are his familiar friends ; and he must have a laugh and a 
 sneer with them at the young author of the day. They regard that author as a 
 pretender. He has taken no degree at the universities : he is not of their own 
 habitual tavern acquaintance. His daily life is that of a base mechanical ; — he 
 labours hard at his desk. Old Burbage, experienced as he is, has learnt much 
 from him in the economical management of their joint adventure. The sharers 
 are prospering under his advice ; but for such a drudge to write anything worth 
 the listening, God save the mark ! He is a favourite too ; gentle, considerate, 
 but unfailing in his own duty, and accustomed to expect order and punctuality 
 in others. He is a mere novice in the ways of the town ; pays his reckoning at 
 the ordinary when he dines there ; has never learnt to cog a die, and scarcely 
 knows pedlers' French. The social accomplishments of George Peele are re- 
 corded in pamphlet and play ; * and it is not to be wondered at if he looks 
 upon William Shakspere with more than poetical rivalry. 
 
 But there is one of higher mark who occasionally mingles with this knot of 
 dissolute wits, but suddenly turns away from them, as if he sought to breathe a 
 purer atmosphere. That impatient spirit, with the flashing eye and the lofty 
 brow, is Christopher Marlowe. It is the author of ' Tamburlaine the Great.' 
 It is he who addressed his first audience in words which told them that one 
 of high pretensions was come to rescue the stage from the dominion of feeble- 
 ness and buffoonery : — 
 
 " From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, 
 And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, 
 We '11 lead you to the stately tent of war, 
 Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine, 
 Threat'ning the world with high astounding terms." + 
 
 His daring was successful. It is he who is accounted the " famous gracer of 
 tragedians. "% It is he who has "gorgeously invested with rare ornaments and 
 
 * See ' The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele,' and ' The Puritan.' 
 f Prologue to ' Tamburlaine the Great.' J Greene. 
 
 317
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE : 
 
 splendid habiliments the English tongue."* It is he who, after his tragical end 
 was held 
 
 " Fit to write passions for the souls below." f 
 
 It is he of the " mighty line. "J The name of Tamburlaine was applied to 
 Marlowe himself by his contemporaries. It is easy to imagine that he might 
 be such a man as he has delighted to describe in his Scythian Shepherd : — 
 
 " Of stature tall, and straigbtly fashioned, 
 Like his desire lift upward and divine ; 
 So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit, 
 Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear 
 Old Atlas' burthen. 
 
 Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion, 
 Thirsting with sovereignty and love of arms, 
 His lofty brows in folds do figure death, 
 And in their smoothness amity and life ; 
 About them hangs a knot of amber hair, 
 Wrapped in curls, as fierce Achilles' was, 
 On which the breath of heaven delights to play, 
 Making it dance with wanton majesty. 
 His arms and fingers, long and snowy-white, 
 Betokening valour and excess of strength." § 
 
 The essential character of his mind was that of a lofty extravagance, shaping 
 itself into words that may be likened to the trumpet in music, and the scarlet 
 in painting — perpetual trumpet, perpetual scarlet. One of the courtiers of 
 Tamburlaine says, — 
 
 " You see, my lord, what working words he hath." 
 
 Hear a few of these " working words : " — 
 
 " The god of war resigns his room to me, 
 Meaning to make me general of the world : 
 Jove, viewing me in arms, looks pale and wan. 
 Fearing my power should pull him from his throne. 
 Where'er I come the fatal sisters sweat, 
 And grisly Death, by running to and fro, 
 To do their ceaseless homage to my sword ; 
 And here, in Afric, where it seldom rains, 
 Since I arriv'd with my triumphant host, 
 Have swelling clouds, drawn from wide-gasping wounds, 
 Been oft resolv'd in bloody, purple showers, 
 A meteor that might terrify the earth, 
 And make it quake at every drop it drinks." || 
 
 Through five thousand lines have we the same pompous monotony, the same 
 splendid exaggeration, the same want of truthful simplicity. But the man was 
 in earnest. His poetical power had nothing in it of affectation and pretence. 
 There is one speech of Tamburlaine which unveils the inmost mind of Tam- 
 
 * Meres. f Peele. J Jonson. 
 
 § Tamburlaine, Part I., Act n. || Ibid., Part I., Act v. 
 
 9\n
 
 A BIOGRAPHY, 
 
 burlaine's author. It is by far the highest passage in the play, revealing tc 
 us something nobler than the verses which "jet on the stage in tragical buskins, 
 every word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bow-bell :"* — 
 
 " Xature that forni'd us of four elements, 
 Warring within our breasts for regiment, 
 Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds ; 
 Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend 
 The wondrous architecture of the world, 
 And measure every wandering planet's course, 
 Still climbing after knowledge infinite, 
 And always moving as the restless spheres, 
 Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest, 
 Until we reach the ripest fruit of all." f 
 
 The "ripest fruit of all," with Tamburlaine, was an "earthly ciown;" but 
 with Marlowe, there can be little doubt, the " climbing after knowledge infinite " 
 was to be rewarded with wisdom, and peace, the fruit of wisdom. But he sought 
 for the " fruit " in dark and forbidden paths. He plunged into the haunts of 
 wild and profligate men, lighting up their murky caves with his poetical torch, 
 and gaining nothing from them but the renewed power of scorning the un- 
 spiritual things of our being, without the resolution to seek for wisdom in the 
 daylight track which every man may tread. If his life had not been fatally cut 
 short, the fiery spirit might have learnt the value of meekness, and the daring 
 sceptic have cast away the bitter " fruit " of half-knowledge. He did not long 
 survive the fearful exhortation of his dying companion, the unhappy Greene : — 
 " Wonder not, thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Greene, who hath said 
 with thee, like the fool in his heart, there is no God, should now give glory unto 
 His greatness : for penetrating is His power, His hand lies heavy upon me, He 
 hath spoken unto me with a voice of thunder, and I have felt He is a God that 
 can punish enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, His gift, be so blinded 
 that thou shouldest give no glory to the giver ? "J Marlowe resented the accu- 
 sation which Greene's words conveyed. We may hope that he did more ; thai, 
 he felt, to use other words of the same memorable exhortation, that the " liberty " 
 which he sought was an " infernal bondage." 
 
 Turn we to a soberer group than those we have described. On his stool, with 
 his page behind him — for he is a courtier, though a poor one — sits " eloquent 
 and witty John Lyly." § He was called, by a bookseller who collected his plays 
 some forty years or more after their appearance, " the only rare poet of that time, 
 the witty, comical, facetiously quick, and unparalleled John Lyly, Master of Arts." 
 Such is the puff-direct of a title-page of 1632. The title-pages and the puffs 
 have parted company in our day, to carry en their partnership in separate fields, 
 and sometimes looking loftily on each other, as if they were not twin-brothers. 
 He it was that took hold of the somewhat battered and clipped but sterling 
 coin of our old language, and, minting it afresh, with a very sufficient quantity 
 
 * Greene. *)• Tamburlaine, Part I., Act n. J Groat's- worth of Wit. 
 
 § Mere3. 
 
 319
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 of alloy, produced a sprakling currency, the very counters of court compliment. 
 Tt was truly said, and it was meant for praise, that he " hath stepped one step 
 further than any either before or since he first began the witty discourse of his 
 ' Euphues.' " * He is now some forty years old. According to Nash, " he is but 
 a little fellow, but he hath one of the best wits in England."! The little man 
 smiles briskly upon all around him ; but there is a furrow on his brow, for he 
 knows 
 
 " What hell it is in suing long to bide." 
 
 He has been a dreary time waiting and petitioning for the place of Master of 
 the Revels. In his own peculiar phraseology he tells the Queen, in one of his 
 petitions, — " For these ten years I have attended with an unwearied patience, 
 and now I know not what crab took me for an oyster, that in the middest of 
 your sunshine, of your most gracious aspect, hath thrust a stone between the 
 shells to rate me alive that only live on dead hopes." % Drayton described him 
 truly, at a later period, when poetry had asserted her proper rights, as 
 
 " Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, ilies, 
 Playing with words, and idle similies." 
 
 Lyly was undoubtedly the predecessor of Shakspere. His ' Alexander and 
 Campaspe,' acted not only at Court but at the Blackfriars, was printed as early 
 as 1584. It is not easy to understand how a popular audience could ever have 
 sat it out ; but the incomprehensible and the excellent are sometimes con- 
 founded. What should we think of a prologue, addressed to a gaping pit, and 
 hushing the cracking of nuts into silence, which commences thus ? — " They 
 that fear the stinging of wasps make fans of peacock's tails, whose spots are like 
 eyes : and Lepidus, which could not sleep for the chattering of birds, set up a 
 beast whose head was like a dragon : and we, which stand in awe of report, are 
 compelled to set before our owl Pallas's shield, thinking by her virtue to cover 
 the other's deformity." Shakspere was a naturalist, and a true one ; but Lyly 
 was the more inventive, for he made his own natural history. The epilogue to 
 the same play informs the confiding audience that " Where the rainbow toucheth 
 the tree no caterpillars will hang on the leaves : where the glow-worm creepeth 
 in the night no adder will go in the day." ' Alexander and Campaspe ' is in 
 prose. The action is little, the talk is everything. Hephaestion exhorts Alex- 
 ander against the danger of love, in a speech that with very slight elaboration 
 would be long enough for a sermon. Apelles soliloquizes upon his own love for 
 Campaspe in a style so insufferably tedious, that we could wish to thrust the 
 picture that he sighs over down his rhetorical throat, (even as Pistol was made 
 to swallow the leek), if he did not close his oration with one of the prettiest 
 songs of our old poetry : — 
 
 * Wobbe's 'Discourse of Eng'ish Poetry,' 1586. 
 \ Apology of Pierce Pennilease. 
 J Petition to the Queen in the Uarlcian MSS.: Dodsley's Old Plays, 182,', vol. il 
 320
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 " Cupid and my Carnpaspe play'd 
 At cards for kisses, Cupid paid ; 
 He stakes bis quiver, bow, and arrows, 
 His mother's doves and team of sparrows 
 Loses tbem, too ; then down be throws 
 The coral of his lip, the rose 
 Growing on 's cheek (but none knows ho\v\ 
 With these the crystal of his brow, 
 And then the dimple of his chin ; 
 All these did my Carnpaspe win. 
 At last he set her both his eyes, 
 She won, and Cupid blind did rise. 
 Love ! has she done this to thee ? 
 What shall, alas ! become of me ? " 
 
 The dramatic system of Lyly is a thing unique in its kind. He never attempt, 
 to deal with realities. He revels in pastoral and mythological subjects. He 
 makes his gods and goddesses, his nymphs and shepherds, all speak a language 
 which common mortals would disdain to use. In prose or in verse, they are all 
 the cleverest of the clever. They are, one and all, passionless beings, with no 
 voice but that of their showman. But it is easy to see how a man of consider- 
 able talent would hold such things to be the proper refinements to banish for 
 ever the vulgarities of the old comedy. He had not the genius to discover that 
 the highest drama was essentially for the people ; and that its foundations must 
 rest upon the elemental properties of mankind, whether to produce tears or 
 laughter that should command a lasting and universal sympathy. Lyly came 
 too early, or too late, to gather any enduring fame ; and he lived to see a new 
 race of writers, and one towering above the rest, who cleared the stage of his 
 tinselled puppets, and filled the scene with noble copies of humanity. His fate 
 was a hard one. "Without the vices of men of higher talent, he had to endure 
 poverty and disappointment, doomed to spin his " pithy sentences and gallant 
 tropes " for a thankless Court and a neglectful multitude ; and, with a tearful 
 merriment, writing to his Queen, " In all humility I entreat that I may dedicate 
 to your Sacred Majesty Lyly de Tristibus, wherein shall be seen patience 
 labours, and misfortunes." 
 
 Around Lyly are collected the satellites of the early stage, looking perhaps 
 with little complacency upon the new author, whose bolder and simpler style, 
 though scarcely yet developed — whose incidents, though encumbered as yet with 
 superfluous horrors — have seized upon the popular mind as something to be 
 felt and understood. The critics can scarcely comprehend that there is genius 
 in this young man ; for he labours not at words, and appears to have no parti- 
 cular anxiety to be fine and effective. Robert Wilson, of whom we have spoken, 
 compares notes with the great Euphuist ; and they think the age is growing 
 degenerate. Thomas Kyd is there in the full flush of his popularity. He is 
 the author of ' Jeronimo,' which men held a dozen years after " was the only 
 best and judiciously penned play in Europe." * It is of the same period as 
 
 * Jonson's Induction to ' Cynthia's Reveb.' 
 Lij-b. Y 821
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Andronicus. Wherever performed originally, the principal character was 
 adapted to an actor of very small stature. It is not impossible that a precocious 
 boy, one of the children of Paul's, might have filled the character. Jeronimo 
 the Spanish marshal, and Balthazar the Prince of Portugal, thus exchange com- 
 pliments : — 
 
 "Balthazar. Thou inch of Spain, 
 Thou man, from thy hose downward scarce so much.. 
 Thou very little longer thau thy beard, 
 Speak not such big words; they '11 throw thee down, 
 Little Jeronimo : words greater than thyself ! 
 It must be. 
 
 Jeronimo. And thou, long thing of Portugal, why not ? 
 Thou that art full as tall 
 As an English gallows, upper beam aud all, 
 Devourer of apparel, thou huge swallower. 
 My hose will scarce make thee a standing collar : 
 What ! have I almost quited you ?" 
 
 There can be no doubt that ' Jeronimo,' whatever remodelling it may have 
 received, belongs essentially to the early stage. There is killing beyond all 
 reasonable measure. Lorenzo kills Pedro, and Alexandro kills Rogero : Andrea 
 is also killed, but he does not so readily quit the scene. After a decent in- 
 terval, occupied by talk and fighting, the man comes again in the shape of 
 his own ghost, according to the following stage-direction : — " Enter two, dragging 
 of ensigns ; then the funeral of Andrea : next Horatio and Lorenzo leading Prince 
 Balthazar captive : then the Lord General, with others, mourning : a great cry 
 within, Charon, a boat, a boat : then enter Charon and the Ghost of Andrea." 
 Charon, Revenge, and the Ghost have a little pleasant dialogue ; and the Ghost 
 then vanishes with the following triumphant words : — 
 
 " I am a happy ghost ; 
 Revenge, my passage now cannot be cross'd : 
 Come, Charon ; come, hell's sculler, waft me o'er 
 Your sable streams which look like molten pitch ; 
 My funeral rites are made, my hearse hung rich." 
 
 The Ghost of Shakspere's first Hamlet was, we have little doubt, an improve- 
 ment upon this personage. 
 
 Henry Chettle, a friend of Greene, but who seems to have been a man of 
 higher morals, if of inferior genius ; and Anthony Munday, who was called by 
 Meres " the best plotter " (by which he probably means a manufacturer of dumb 
 shows), are the only remaining dramatists whose names have escaped oblivion 
 that can be called contemporaries of Shakspere in his early days at the Black- 
 friars. 
 
 Chettle is one of the very few persons who have left us any distinct memorial 
 of Shakspere. He appears to have had some connexion with the writers of 
 his time, in preparing their manuscripts for the press. He so prepared 
 Greene's posthumous tract, 'The Groat's-worth of Wit,' copying out the 
 author's faint and blotted sheets, written on his sick-bed. He says, in the 
 
 322 

 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 preface to ' Kind-Harte's Dream,' in which he is very anxious to explain the 
 share which he had in the publication of Greene's pamphlet, " I had only in 
 the copy this share : it was ill-written, as sometimes Greene's hand was none of 
 the best ; licensed it must be, ere it could be printed, which could never be if 
 it might not be read. To be brief, I writ it over, and, as near as I could, 
 followed the copy, only in that letter I put something out, but in the whole 
 book not a word in ; for I protest it was all Greene's, not mine, nor Master 
 Nash's, as some unjustly have affirmed." In this pamphlet of Greene's an 
 insult was offered to Shakspere ; and it would appear from the allusions of 
 Chettle that he was justly offended. Marlowe, also, resented, as well he might, 
 the charge of impiety which was levelled against him. Chettle says, " "With 
 neither of them that take offence was I acquainted." By acquaintance he 
 means companionship, if not friendship. He goes on, " And with one of them 
 I care not if I never be." He is supposed here to point at Marlowe. But to 
 the other he tenders an apology, in all sincerity : " The other, whom at that 
 time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that as I have mo- 
 derated the heat of living writers, and might have used my own discretion 
 (especially in such a case), the author being dead, that I did not I am as sorry 
 as if the original fault had been my fault ; because myself have seen his de- 
 meanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes : besides, 
 divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his 
 honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art." In the In- 
 duction to ' Cynthia's Revels ' Ben Jonson makes one of the personified spec- 
 tators on the stage say, "I would speak with your author; where is he?" It 
 may be presumed, therefore, that it was not uncommon for the author to mix 
 with that part of the audience ; and thus Henry Chettle may be good evidence 
 of the civil demeanour of "William Shakspere. We may imagine the young 
 " maker " composedly moving amidst the throng of wits and critics that fill the 
 stage. He moves amongst them modestly, but without any false humility. In 
 worldly station, if such a consideration could influence his demeanour, he is 
 fully their equal. They are for the most part, as he himself is, actors, as well 
 as makers of plays. Phillips says Marlowe was an actor. Greene is reason- 
 ably conjectured to have been an actor. Peele and Wilson were actors of 
 Shakspere's own company ; and so was Anthony Wadeson. There can be little 
 doubt that upon the early stage the occupations for the most part went toge- 
 ther. The dialogue was less regarded than the action. A plot was hastily got 
 up, with rude shows and startling incidents. The characters were little discri- 
 minated ; one actor took the tyrant line, and another the lover ; and ready 
 words were at hand for the one to rant with and the other to whine. The 
 actors were not very solicitous about the words, and often discharged their 
 mimic passions in extemporaneous eloquence. In a few years the necessity of 
 pleasing more refined audiences changed the economy of the stage. Men of 
 high talent sought the theatre as a ready mode of maintenance by their writings ; 
 but their connexion with the stage would naturally begin in acting rather than 
 in authorship. The managers, themselves actors, would think, and perhaps 
 
 2 Y 2 323
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE . 
 
 rightly, that an actor would be the best judge of dramatic effect ; and a Master 
 of Arts, unless he were thoroughly conversant with the business of the stage, 
 might better carry his taffeta phrases to the publishers of sonnets. The rewards 
 of authorship through the medium of the press were hi those days small 
 indeed ; and paltry as was the dramatist's fee, the players were far better pay- 
 masters than the stationers. To become a sharer in a theatrical speculation 
 offered a reasonable chance of competence, if not of wealth. If a sharer existed 
 who was "excellent" enough in "the quality" he professed to fill the stage 
 creditably, and added to that quality " a facetious grace in writing," there is 
 no doubt that with " uprightness of dealing " he would, in such a company as 
 that of the Blackfriars, advance rapidly to distinction, and have the counte- 
 nance and friendship of " divers of worship." One of the early puritanica. 
 attacks upon the stage has this coarse invective against players : " Are they not 
 notoriously known to be those men in their life abroad, as they are on the stage, 
 roysters, brawlers, ill-dealers, boasters, lovers, loiterers, ruffians ? So that they are 
 always exercised in playing their parts and practising wickedness ; making that an 
 art, to the end that they might the better gesture it in their parts ? " * By the 
 side of this silly abuse may be placed the modest answer of Thomas Heywood, the 
 most prolific of writers, himself an actor : "I also could wish that such as are 
 condemned for their licentiousness might by a general consent be quite excluded 
 our society ; for, as we are men that stand in the broad eye of the world, so 
 should our manners, gestures, and behaviours, savour of such government and 
 modesty, to deserve the good thoughts and reports of all men, and to abide the 
 sharpest censure even of those that are the greatest opposites to the quality. Many 
 amongst us I know to be of substance, of government, of sober lives, and 
 temperate carriages, housekeepers, and contributory to all duties enjoined them, 
 equally with them that are ranked with the most bountiful; and if, amongst so 
 many of sort, there be any few degenerate from the rest in that good demeanour 
 which is both requisite and expected from their hands, let me entreat you not to 
 censure hardly of all for the misdeeds of some, but rather to excuse us, as Ovid 
 doth the generality of women : — 
 
 ' Parcite paucaruui diffundere crimen in oinnes ; 
 Spectetur meritia quaeque puella suis.' " t 
 
 Those of Shakspere's early competitors who approached the nearest to him in 
 genius possessed not that practical wisdom which carried him safely and honourably 
 through a life beset with some temptations. They knew not the value of " govern- 
 ment and modesty." He lived amongst them, but we may readily believe that he 
 was not of them. 
 
 The curtain is drawn back, slowly, and with little of mechanical contrivance. 
 The rush-strewn stage is presented to the spectators. The play to be performed 
 is Henry VI. The funeral procession of Henry V. enters to a dead march ; * 
 
 * Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Players. 
 •| Apology for Actors. 
 
 o24
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 few mourners in sable robes following the bier. The audience is silent as the 
 imaginary corse ; but their imaginations are not stimulated with gorgeous 
 scenery. There is no magical perspective of the lofty roof and long-drawn 
 aisles of Westminster Abbey ; no organ peals, no trains of choristers with tapers 
 and censers sing the Requiem. The rushes on the floor are matched with the 
 plain arras on the walls. Bedford speaks : — 
 
 " Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night," 
 
 Lofty in his tone, corresponding with the solemn and unvarying rhythm. It is 
 the "drumming decasyllabon " which Nash ridicules. The great master of a 
 freer versification is not yet confident of his power. The attention of the 
 auditory is fixed by the stirring introduction. There are old remembrances of 
 national honour in every line. The action moves rapidly. The mourners dis- 
 perse ; and by an effort of imagination the scene must be changed from England 
 to France. Charles the king marches with drum and soldiers. The English 
 are encountered, the French are beaten. The Maid of Orleans appears. The 
 people will see the old French wars which live in their memories fought over 
 again ; and their spirits rise with every alarum. But the poet will show too 
 the ruinous course of faction at home. The servingmen of Gloucester and 
 Winchester battle at the Tower gates. The Mayor of London and his officers 
 suppress the riot. Again to Orleans, where Salisbury is slain by a fatal linstock. 
 All is bustle and contention in France ; but the course of intrigue in England is 
 unfolded. The first page of the fatal history of York and Lancaster is here 
 read. We see the growth of civil war at home ; we trace the beginnings of 
 disaster abroad. The action presents a succession of events, rather than de 
 veloping some great event brought about by a skilful adjustment of many parts. 
 But in a " chronicle history " this was scarcely to be avoided ; and it is easy to 
 see how, until the great principle of art which should produce a Lear and a 
 Macbeth was evolved, the independent succession of events in a chronicle history 
 would not only be the easiest to portray by a young writer, but would be the 
 most acceptable to an uncritical audience, that had not yet been taught the 
 dependences of a catastrophe upon slight "preceding incidents, upon niceties 
 of character, upon passion evolved out of seeming tranquillity, the danger of 
 which has been skilfully shadowed forth to the careful observer. It was in 
 detached passages, therefore, that the young poet would put out his strength in 
 such a play. The death of Talbot and his son was a fit occasion for such an 
 effort ; and the early stage had certainly seen nothing comparable in power and 
 beauty to the couplets which exhibit the fall of the hero and his boy. Other 
 poets would have noticed the scene. Shakspere painted it; and his success 
 is well noticed by Thomas Nash, who for once loses his satirical vein in fer- 
 ment admiration : — " How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the 
 French) to think that, after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he 
 should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the 
 tears of ten thousand spectators at least 'at several times), who, in the tragedian 
 
 325
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPETIE '. 
 
 that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!"* The 
 prejudices of the age are gratified by the condemnation of the Pucelle ; but 
 the poet takes care to make it felt that her judges are " bloody homicides." 
 At the very close of the play a new series of events is opened, ending here with 
 the mission of Suffolk to bring a bride for the imbecile king ; but showing that 
 the issue is to be presented in some coming story. The new play is a success : 
 and the best of his brother poets have a ready welcome for the author, in spite 
 of a sneer or two at " Shake-scene." 
 
 • Pierce Pcuuilessa.
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 NOTE ON THE DATE OF NASH'S EPISTLE PREFIXED TO 
 
 • MENAPHON.' 
 
 Thomas Nasii took Lis degree of Bachelor of Arts at Cambridge in 1 585. In a tract published hi 
 1595, Cambridge is said to have been unkind to Nash in weaning him before his time. As he never 
 took a higher degree than that of Bachelor of Arts, he is supposed to have left the university in some 
 disgrace. He is held to have travelled before he acquired a distinction amongst the satirical and con- 
 troversial writers of London. In the address to 'Menaphon' he says to the gentlemen-students — 
 " Read favourably to encourage me in the firstlings of my folly." It has been usual to assign the date 
 of this epistle to 1589. The first recorded edition of Greene's 'Menaphon' bears the date of that 
 year. Nash in the epistle promises a satirical work called 'Anatomy of Absurdities/ and in 1589 such 
 a work appears. Mr. Dyce, however, fixes the date of the first edition of 'Menaphon' as 1587 ; but he 
 cites the title from the earliest edition he has met with, that of 1589. It would be satisfactory to 
 know upon what authority an earlier date than that of 1589 is given to Nash's edition. If Nash wrote 
 the epistle in 1589, his high praise of Peele as the Atlas of poetry, and the omission of all mention of 
 Marlowe, looks like partiality, if not prejudice. If it first appeared in 1587, there is less suspicion for 
 an unworthy motive for the omission of Marlowe. The same reasoning applies to Shakspere. But we 
 apprehend that the date of 1587 is a mistake. The reference made in the epistle of Nash to a play of 
 Hamlet — " whole Hamlets — I should say handfuls — of tragical speeches " (see p. 259) — has been held 
 by persons whose opinions are entitled to more weight than our own to be an allusion to the Hamlet 
 of Shakspere — an earlier Hamlet than any we possess. But this does not fall in with the theory that 
 Shakspere first began to write for the stage about six or seven years after he became connected with 
 the theatre. It is, therefore, convenienence adopt Mr. Dyce's date of 15S7 without inquiry; and to 
 say " there cannot be a moment's doubt" that the Hamlet alluded to by Nash "was written and acted 
 many years before Shakspeare's tragedy." See Mr. Collier's Introduction to ' The History of Hamlet,' 
 1841 j in which he says, Avithout qualification, " Malone erred as to the date of Greene's ' Menaphon.' " 
 Malone gives the date as 1589. But in his Introduction to Nash's 'Pierce Pennilesse,' 1842, Mr. Collier 
 speaks more doubtingly : — "We take the date of Greene's 'Menaphon,' 1587, from the edition of that 
 author's Dramatic Works by the Rev. A. Dyce. He does not seem to have met with any copy of it of 
 bo early a date as 1587, and quotes the title-page of the impression of 1589." As regards the possible 
 allusion to Shakspere's first Hamlet, we look upon the difference of two years as a matter of little 
 importance ; for a Hamlet whose characteristic was " whole handfuls of tragical speeches " might have 
 been as readily produced by the Shakspere of twenty-three as by the Shakspere of twenty-five. 
 (See our Notice on the Authenticity of Titus Andronicus, p. 58, and the Introductory Notice to 
 Hamlet.)
 
 WILLIAM SlIAKSl'EEE: 
 
 NOTE ON MARLOWE. 
 
 It has long been the fashion to consider Marlowe as the precursor of Shakspere ; to regard Marlowe 
 as one of the founders of the regular drama, and Shakspere only as an improver. The internal 
 evidence for this belief has been entered into with some fulness in our Essay on the Three Parts 
 of Henry VI., &c. We may here say a few words as to the external evidence. Marlowe was killed 
 in a wretched brawl on the 1st of June, 1593. Of his age nothing is exactly known; but he took 
 his degree of Bachelor of Arts, in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1583 ; and that of Master 
 of Arts in 1587. The age of Elizabeth had its boy bachelors, as well as that of her father. Youths 
 went earlier to the university than in our time, and received their first degree earlier. We may con- 
 clude, therefore, that Marlowe was not older than Shakspere. Phillips, in his • Theatrum Poetarum,' 
 thus speaks of him: — "Christopher Marlowe, a kind of a second Shakspeare (whose contemporary 
 he was), not only because like him he rose from an actor to be a maker of plays, though inferior 
 both in fame and merit," &c. We have no distinct record of Marlowe as an actor. We know that 
 he was early a maker of plays. There appears to be little doubt that he was the author of ' Tam- 
 burlaine;' and ' Tamburlaine ' is mentioned by Greene in 1588. But Hamlet is mentioned by Nash 
 in 1587 (if 1587 be the date of Greene's 'Menaphon'), and the evidence is quite as good that this was 
 the Hamlet of Shakspere, as that the other was the ' Tamburlaine ' of Marlowe. The young Shak- 
 spere and the young Marlowe, it is agreed, were nearly of the same age. What right have we 
 to infer that the one could produce a ' Tamburlaine ' at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five, and the 
 other not produce an imperfect outline of his own Hamlet at the same age ? Malone connects the 
 supposed date of Shakspere's commencement as a dx*amatic writer with the notice of him by some of 
 his contemporaries. He passes over Nash's "whole Hamlets;" he maintains that Spenser's descrip- 
 tion, in 1591, of the "gentle spirit," who 
 
 " Dotli rather choose to sit in idle cell 
 Than so himself to mockery to sell," 
 
 applied not to Shakspere, but to Lyly, who was at that instant most active in "mockery;" but he 
 fixes Shakspere with having begun to write in 1592, because Greene in that year sneers at him as 
 " the only Shake-scene in a country." Does a young writer suddenly jump into the distinction of 
 a sneer of envy from one much older in reputation, as Greene was ? In an age when there were no 
 newspapers and no reviews, it must be extremely difficult to trace the course of any man, however 
 eminent, by the notices of the writers of his times. An author's fame, then, was not borne through 
 every quarter of the land in the very hour in which it was won. More than all, the reputation of a 
 dramatic writer could scarcely be known, except to a resident in London, until his works were com- 
 mitted to the press. The first play of Shakspere's which was printed was The First Part of the 
 Contention (Henry VI., Part II.), and that did not appear till 1594. Now, Malone says, "In 
 Webbe's ' Discourse of English Poetry,' published in 15S6, we meet with the names of most of the 
 celebrated poets of that time; particularly those of George Whetstone and Anthony Munday, who 
 were dramatic writers ; but we find no trace of our author, or of any of his works." But Malone 
 does not tell us that in Webbe's ' Discourse of Poetry,' we find the following passage : — " I am 
 humbly to desire pardon of the learned company of gentlemen scholars, and students of the univer- 
 sities and inns of court, if I omit their several commendations in this place, which I know a great 
 number of them have worthily deserved, in many rare devices and singular inventions of poetry : for 
 neither hath it been my good hap to have seen all which I have heard of, neither is my abiding in such 
 place where I can with facility get knowledge of their works." 
 
 "Three years afterwards," continues Malone, "Puttenham printed his 'Art of English Poesy;' 
 328
 
 A BIOGKAPIIY. 
 
 and in that work also we look in vain for the name of Shakspeare." The book speaks of the one- 
 and- thirty years' space of Elizabeth's reign ; and thus puts the date of the writing a year earlier 
 than the printing. But we here look in vain for some other illustrious names besides that of 
 Shakspere. Malone has not told us that the name of Edmund Spenser is not found in Puttenham ; 
 nor, what is still more uncandid, that not one of Shakspere's early dramatic contemporaries is 
 mentioned — neither Marlowe, nor Greene, nor Peele, nor Kyd, nor Lyly. The author evidently 
 derives his knowledge of " poets and poesy " from a much earlier period than that in which he pub- 
 lishes. He does not mention Spenser by name, but he does " that other gentleman who wrote the 
 late ' Shepherd's Calendar.' " The ' Shepherd's Calendar ' of Spenser was published in the year 
 1579. Malone goes on to argue that the omission of Shakspere's name, or any notice of his works 
 in Sir John Harrington's 'Apology of Poetry,' printed in 1591, in which "he takes occasion to 
 speak of the theatre, and mentions some of the celebrated dramas of that time," is a proof that none 
 of Shakspere's dramatic compositions had then appeared. The reader will be in a better position 
 to judge of the value of this argument by a reference to the passage of Sir John Harrington : — 
 " For tragedies, to omit other famous tragedies : that, that was played at St. John's in Cambridge, 
 of Richard III., would move, I think, Phalaris the tyrant, and terrify all tyrannous-minded men." 
 [This was a Latin play, by Dr. Legge, acted some years before 1588.] " Then for comedies. How 
 full of harmless mirth is our Cambridge ' Pedantius ' and the Oxford ' Bellum Grammaticale ' ! " 
 [Latin plays again.] " Or, to speak of a London comedy, how much good matter, yea, and matter 
 of state, is there in that comedy called ' The Play of the Cards,' in which it is showed how four 
 parasitical knaves robbed the four principal vocations of the realm ; videl. the vocation of soldiers, 
 scholars, merchants, and husbandmen ! Of which comedy, I cannot forget the saying of a notable 
 wise counsellor that is now dead, who, when some (to sing Placebo) advised that it should be for- 
 bidden, because it was somewhat too plain, and indeed as the old saying is (sooth boord is no boord), 
 \et he would have it allowed, adding it was fit that they which do that they should not, should hear 
 that they would not." 
 
 Nothing, it will be seen, can be more exaggerated than Malone's statement, " He takes occasion to 
 speak of the theatre, and mentions some of the celebrated dramas of that time." Does he men- 
 tion ' Tambm-laine,' or 'Faustus,' or 'The Massacre of Pari3,' or ' The Jew of Malta'? As he does 
 not, it may be assumed with equal justice that none of Marlowe's compositions had appeared in 1591 ; 
 and yet we know that he died in 1593. So of Lyly's ' Galathea,' 'Alexander and Campaspe,' ' Endy- 
 mion,' &c. So of Greene's 'Orlando Furioso,' 'Friar Bacon,' 'James IV.' So of the 'Spanish 
 Tragedy ' of Kyd. The truth is, that Harrington in his notice of celebrated dramas was even more 
 antiquated than Puttenham ; and his evidence, therefore, in this matter, is utterly worthless. But 
 Malone has given his crowning proof that Shakspere had not written before 1591, in the following 
 words : — " Sir Philip Sidney, in his ' Defence of Poesie,' speaks at some length of the low state of 
 dramatic literature at the time he composed this treatise, but has not the slightest allusion to Shak- 
 speare, whose plays, had they then appeared, would doubtless have rescued the English stage from the 
 contempt which is thrown upon it by the accomplished writer; and to which it was justly exposed by 
 the wretched compositions of those who preceded our poet. ' The Defence of Poesie ' was not pub- 
 lished till 1595, but must have been written some years before. - ' There is one slight objection to this 
 argument: Sir Philip Sidney was killed at the battle of Zutphen, in the year 15S6; and it would 
 really have been somewhat surprising if the illustrious author of the ' Defence of Poesy ' could havo 
 included Shakspere in his account " of the low state of dramatic literature at the time he composed 
 this treatise," which was in effect a reply to ' The School of Abuse ' of Gosson, and to other contro- 
 versialists of the puritanical fnction, who were loudest about 1580. At that time fehakspere was 
 &ir.teen j'ears of age. 
 
 825)
 
 --y~" 
 
 
 [The misfortunes of Ai thur.] 
 
 CHAPTER I I. 
 
 THE COURT AT GREENWICH. 
 
 Ar the close of the year 1587, and the opening, according to our new style, of 
 1588, "the Queen's Majesty being at Greenwich, there were showed, pre- 
 sented, and enacted before her Highness, betwixt Christmas and Shrovetide, 
 seven plays, besides feats of activity and other shows, by the children of Paul's, 
 her Majesty's own servants, and the gentlemen of Gray's Inn, on whom was 
 employed divers remnants of cloth of gold and other stuff out of the store.' 
 Such is the record of the accounts of the revels at Court. Of the seven plays 
 performed by the children of Paul's and the Queen's servants there is no me- 
 morial ; but we learn from the title of a book of uncommon rarity of what 
 330
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 nature were the " Certaine Devises and Shewes presented Her Majestie by the 
 Gentlemen of Graye's Inne, at Her Highnesse Court in Greenwich, the twenty- 
 eighth day of Februarie, in the thirtieth yeare of Her Majestie's most happy 
 raigne."* The "Misfortunes of Arthur, Uther Pendragon's son," was the 
 theme of these devices and shows. It was "reduced into tragical notes by 
 Thomas Hughes, one of the society of Gray's Inn. It was " set down as it 
 passed from under his hands, and as it was presented, excepting certain words 
 and lines, where some of the actors either helped their memories by brief omis- 
 sion, or fitted their acting by alteration." Thomas Hughes also tells us that he 
 has put " a note at the end of such speeches as were penned by others, in lieu 
 of these hereafter following." It is pleasant to imagine the gentlemen of Gray's 
 Inn sitting over their sack during the Christmas of 1587, listening to Thomas 
 Hughes reciting his doleful tragedy; cutting out a speech here, adding some- 
 llung wondrously telling there; the most glib of tongue modestly declining to 
 accept the part of Arthur the king, and expressing his content with Mordred 
 the usurper ; a beardless student cheerfully agreeing to wear the robes of 
 Guenevra the queen ; and a grey-headed elder undertaking the Ghost of the 
 Duke of Cornwall. A perfect play it is, if every accessory of a play can render 
 it perfect ; for every act has an argument, and every argument a dumb-show, 
 and every dumb-show a chorus. Here is indeed an ample field for ambitious 
 members of the honourable society to contribute their devices ; and satisfactory 
 it is that the names of some of his fellow-labourers in this elaborate work have 
 been preserved to us by the honour-giving Thomas Hughes. " The dumb-shows 
 and additional speeches were partly devised by William Fulbeck, Francis 
 Flower, Christopher Yelverton, Francis Bacon, John Lancaster, and others, 
 who with Master Penroodock and Lancaster directed these proceedings at 
 Court." Precious is this record. The salt that preserves it is the one name 
 of Francis Bacon. Bacon, in 1588, was Reader of Gray's Inn. To the devices 
 and shows of Hughes's tragedy — accompaniments that might lessen the tedious- 
 ness of its harangues, and scatter a little beauty and repose amongst its scenes 
 of • crime and murder — Bacon would bring something of that high poetical 
 spirit which gleams out at every page of his philosophy. Nicholas Trotte, 
 gentleman, penned the Introduction, "which was pronounced in manner follow- 
 ing, namely, three Muses came upon the stage apparelled accordingly, bringing 
 five gentlemen-students attired in their usual garments, whom one of the 
 Muses presented to her Majesty as captives." But the dresses, the music, the 
 dancing to song, were probably directed by the tasteful mind who subsequently 
 wrote, "These things are but toys; but yet, since princes will have such things, 
 it is better that they should be graced with elegancy than daubed with cost."f 
 Under the roof then of the old palace at Greenwich — the palace which Hum- 
 phrey of Gloucester is said to have built, and where Elizabeth was born — are 
 assembled the gentlemen of Gray's Inn and the Queen's players. The two 
 master-spirits of their time— amongst the very greatest of all time— are there. 
 
 * A copy io in the Garrick Collection, in the British ilusoum. 
 t Of Masques and Triumphs : Essay 37. 
 
 S3!
 
 ss^ir s 
 
 [Ba«oa.] 
 
 Francis Bacon, the lawyer, and William Shakspere, the actor, are unconscious 
 each of the greatness of the other. The difference of their rank probably pre- 
 vents that communication which might have told each something of the other's 
 power. Master Penroodock and Master Lancaster may perhaps solicit a little 
 of the professional advice of Burbage and his men ; and the other gentlemen 
 who penned the dumb -shows may have assisted at the conference. A flash of 
 wit from "William Shakspere may have won a smile from the Reader of Gray's 
 Inn; and he may have dropped a scrap of that philosophy which is akin to 
 poetry, so as to make the young actor reverence him more highly than as the 
 son of Elizabeth's former honest Lord Keeper. But the signs of that free- 
 masonry by which great minds know each other could scarcely be exchanged. 
 They would go their several ways, the one to tempt the perils and the degra- 
 dations of ambition, and to find at last a refuge in philosophy ; the other to be 
 content with a well-earned competence, and gathering amidst petty strifes and 
 jealousies, if such could disturb him, something more than happiness in the 
 culture of that wondrous imagination which had its richest fruits in his own 
 unequalled cheerful wisdom. 
 
 Elizabeth, the Queen, is now in her fifty-fifth year. She is ten years younger 
 than when Paul Hentzner described her, as he saw her surrounded with her 
 state in this same palace. The wrinkles of her face, oblong and fair, were per- 
 haps not yet very marked. Her small black eyes, according to the same 
 authority, were pleasant even in her age. The hooked nose, the narrow lips, 
 and the discoloured teeth, were perhaps less noticeable when Shakspere looked 
 upon her in his early days. The red hair was probably not false, as it after- 
 wards was. The small hand and the white ringers were remarkable enough of 
 themselves ; but, sparkling with rings and jewels, the eye rested upon them.
 
 [Elizabeth.] 
 
 The young poet, who has been lately sworn her servant, has stood in the back- 
 ward ranks of the presence-chamber to see his dread mistress pass to chapel. 
 The room is thronged with councillors and courtiers. The inner doors are 
 thrown open, and the gentlemen-pensioners, bearing their gilt battle-axes, 
 appear in long file. The great officers of the household and ministers of state 
 are marshalled in advance. The procession moves. When the Queen appears, 
 sudden and frequent are the genuflexions : " Wherever she turned her face as 
 she was going along, everybody fell down upon their knees." But she is 
 gracious, according to the same authority : " Whoever speaks to her it is kneel- 
 ing; now and then she raises some with her hand." As she moves into the 
 ante-chapel, loud are the shouts of " Long live Queen Elizabeth." The service 
 is soon ended, and then to dinner. While reverence has been paid to " the 
 only Ruler of princes," forms as reverent in their outward appearance have 
 been offered even to the very place where the creature comforts of our every- 
 day life are to be served up to majesty. Those who cover the table with 
 the cloth kneel three times with the utmost veneration ; so do the bearers oJ 
 
 333
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERK : 
 
 llie salt-cellar, of the plate, and of the bread. A countess, dressed in white 
 silk, prostrates herself with the same reverence before the plate, which she rubs 
 with bread and salt. The yeomen of the guard enter, bearing the dishes ; 
 and the lady in white silk, with her tasting-knife, presents a portion of each 
 dish to the lips of the yeomen, not in courtesy but in suspicion of poison. The 
 bray of trumpets and the clang of kettle-drums ring through the hall. The 
 Queen is in her inner chamber ; and the dishes are borne in by ladies of honour 
 with silent solemnity. When the Queen has eaten, the ladies eat. Brief is the 
 meal on this twenty-eighth of February, for the hall must be cleared for the 
 play. 
 
 The platform in the hall at Greenwich, which was to resound with the 
 laments of Arthur, was constructed by a cunning workman, so as to be speedily 
 erected and taken down. It was not so substantial an affair as the "great 
 stage, containing the breadth of the church from the one side to the other," 
 that was built in the noble chapel of King's College, Cambridge, in 1564, for the 
 representation before the Queen of a play of Plautus. Probably in one particular 
 the same arrangement was pursued at Greenwich as at Cambridge on that occa- 
 sion : "A multitude of the guard had every man in his hand a torch-staff; and 
 the guard stood upon the ground by the stage-side holding their lights." But 
 there would be some space between the stage and the courtly audience. Raised 
 above the rushes would the Queen sit upon a chair of state. Around her 
 would stand her honourable maids. Behind, the eager courtiers with the 
 ready smile when majesty vouchsafed to be pleased. Amongst them is the 
 handsome captain of the guard, the tall and bold Raleigh — he of the high 
 forehead, long face, and small piercing eye.* His head is ever and anon in- 
 clined to the chair of Elizabeth. He is " as good as a chorus," and he can tell 
 more of the story than the induction " penned by Nicholas Trotte, gentleman." 
 He has need, however, to tell little as the play proceeds. The plot does not 
 unravel itself; the incidents arise not clearly and naturally; but some worthy 
 person amongst the characters every now and then informs the audience, with 
 extreme politeness and with a most praiseworthy completeness of detail, every- 
 thing that has happened, and a good deal of what will happen ; and thus the 
 unities of time and place are preserved according to the most approved rules, 
 and Mr. Thomas Hughes eschews the offences which were denounced by the 
 lamented Sir Philip Sidney, of having " Asia of the one side, and Afric of the 
 other, and so many other under kingdoms that the player when he comes in 
 must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be con- 
 ceived, "f The author of 'The Misfortunes of Arthur' avoids this by the 
 somewhat drowsy method of substituting the epic narrative for the dramatic 
 action. The Queen whispers to Raleigh that the regular players are more 
 amusing. 
 
 A day or two passes on, and her Majesty again wants diversion. She bends 
 
 * " He had a most remarkable aspect, an exceeding high forehead, long-faccJ, and sour eye- 
 lidded — a kind of pig eye." — Aubrey. 
 f Defence of Poesy. 
 334
 
 bcr mind manfully to public affairs, and it is a high and stirring time ; but, it 
 it only be to show her calmness to her people, she will not forego her accus- 
 tomed revels. Her own players are sent for ; and the summons is hasty and 
 peremptory for some fitting novelty. Will the comedy which young Shakspere 
 lias written for the Blackfriars, and which has been already in rehearsal, be 
 suited for the Court ? The cautious sagacity of old Burbage is willing to confide 
 in it. Without attempting too close an imitation of Court manners, its phrases 
 he conceives are refined, its lines are smooth. There are some slight touches 
 of satire, at which it bethinks him the Queen will laugh : but there is nothing 
 personal, for Don Armado is a Spaniard. The verse, he holds, sounds according 
 to the right stately fashion in the opening of the play : — ■ 
 
 " Let fame that all hunt after in their lives 
 Live register'd upon our brazen tombs." 
 
 The young poet is a little licentious, however, in the management of his verse 
 as he proceeds ; he has not Marlowe's lofty cadences, which roll out so nobly 
 from the full mouth. But the lad will mend. Truly he has a comic vein. If 
 Kempe takes care to utter what is put down for him in Costard, her Majesty 
 will forget poor Tarleton. And then the compliments to the ladies : — 
 
 " They are the books, the arts, the academes, 
 That show, contain, and nourish all the world." 
 
 335
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEBB: 
 
 Elizabeth will take the compliments to herself. The young man's play shall 
 be " preferred." 
 
 It is a bright sparkling morning — "the first mild day of March" — as the 
 Queen's barge waits for Burbage and his fellows at the Blackfriars Stairs. 
 They are soon floating down the tide. Familiar as that scene now is to him, 
 William Shakspere cannot look upon it without wonder and elation of heart. 
 The venerable Bridge, with its hundred legends and traditions ; the Tower, 
 where scenes have been acted that haunt his mind, and must be embodied some 
 day for the people's instruction. And now, verses, some of which he has 
 written in the quiet of his beloved Stratford, characters that he has drawn from 
 the stores of his youthful observation, are to be presented for the amusement of 
 a Queen. But with a most modest estimate of his own powers, he is sure that 
 he has heard some very indifferent poetry, which nevertheless has won the 
 Queen's approbation ; with many jokes at which the Queen has laughed, that 
 scarcely have seemed to him fitting for royal ears. If his own verses are not 
 listened to, perhaps the liveliness of his little Moth may command a smile. At 
 any rate, there will be some show in his pageant of the Nine Worthies. He will 
 meet the issue courageously. 
 
 The Queen's players have now possession of the platform in the Hall. Bur- 
 bage has ample command of tailors, and of stuff out of the store. Paste- 
 board and buckram are at his service in abundance. The brandies are gar- 
 nished ; the arras is hung. The Queen and her Court are seated. But the 
 experiment of the new play soon ceases to be a doubtful one. Those who can 
 judge, and the Queen is amongst the number, listen with eagerness to some- 
 thing different to the feebleness of the pastoral and mythological stories to 
 which they have been accustomed. "The summer's nightingale"* himself 
 owns that a real poet has arisen, where poetry was scarcely looked for. The 
 Queen commands that rewards, in some eyes more precious than the accus- 
 tomed gloves, should be bestowed upon her players. Assuredly the delightful 
 comedy of 'Love's Labour's Lost,' containing as it does in every line the evi- 
 dence of being a youthful work, was very early one of those 
 
 " flights upon the banks of Thames 
 That so did take Eliza." 
 
 Raleigh is so called by Spc riser. 
 
 S3«
 
 NOTE ON HENTZNER'S ACCOUNT OF THE COURT AT GREENWICH. 
 
 Taul Hentzner, a man of learning and ability, accompanied a young German nobleman to England, 
 upon a visit of curiosity, in 1598. The account of what he saw is written in Latin ; and was trans- 
 lated by Horace Walpole. His description of the Queen and her state at Greenwich is amongst the 
 most curious and authentic records which we possess of that time. It has been often quoted ; but it 
 will save the reader trouble if we here copy it : — 
 
 " First went gentlemen, barons, earls, knights of the garter, all richly dressed and bareheaded ; 
 next came the Chancellor, bearing the seals in a red silk purse, between two ; one of which carried the 
 royal sceptre, the other the sword of state, in a red scabbard, studded with golden fleur-de-lis, the 
 point upwards : next came the Queen, in the sixty-fifth year of her age, we are told, very majestic ; 
 her face oblong, fair but wrinkled ; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant ; her nose a little hooked, 
 her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of 
 sugar) ; she had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops ; she wore false hair, and that red ; upon 
 her head she had a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lune- 
 bourg table : her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it, till they many ; and she had 
 on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels ; her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither 
 tall nor low ; her air was stately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she was dressed 
 in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with 
 silver threads ; her train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness ; instead of a chain she 
 had an oblong collar of gold and jewels. As she went along in all this state and magnificence, she 
 spoke very graciously, first to one, then to another, whether foreign ministers, or those who attended 
 for different reasons, in English, French, and Italian ; for, besides being well skilled in Greek, Latin, 
 and the languages I have mentioned, she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and Dutch : whoever speaks 
 to her, it is kneeling ; now and then she raises some with her hand. While we were there, W. Slawata, 
 a Bohemian baron, had letters to present to her ; and she, after pulling off her glove, gave him her 
 right hand to kiss, sparkling with rings and jewels — a mark of particular favour : wherever she turned 
 her face, as she was going along, everybody fell down on their knees. The ladies of the court followed 
 next to her, very handsome and well shaped, and for the most part dressed in white ; she was guarded 
 on each side by the gentlemen-pensioners, fifty in number, with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel 
 next the hall where we were, petitions were presented to her, and she received them most graciously, 
 which occasioned the acclamation of ' Long live Queen Elizabeth ! ' She answered it with, ' I thank 
 you, my good people.' In the chapel was excellent music ; a3 soon as it and the service was over, 
 which scarce exceeded half an hour, the Qaeen returned in the same state and order, and prepared 
 to go to dinner. But while she was still at prayers, we saw her table set out with the following 
 solemnity : — 
 
 "A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him another who had a table-cloth, 
 which, after they had both kneeled three times with the utmost veneration, he spread upon the table, 
 and, after kneeling again, they both retired. Then came two others, one with the rod again, the other 
 with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread ; when they had kneeled, as the others had done, and placed what 
 was brought upon the table, they too retired with the same ceremonies performed by the first. At 
 last came an unmarried lady (we were told she was a countess), and along with her a married one, 
 bearing a tasting-knife ; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she had prostrated herself 
 three times in the most graceful manner, approached the table, and rubbed the plates with bread and 
 salt, with as much awe as if the Queen had been present : when they had waited there a little while, 
 the yeomen of the guards entered, bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with a golden rose upon their backs, 
 bringing in at each turn a course of twenty -four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt ; these dishe.3 
 were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while 
 the lady-taster gave to each of the guard a mouthful to eat of the particular dish he had brought, for 
 fear of any poison. During the time that this guard, which consists of the tallest and stoutest men 
 that can be found in all England, being carefully selected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve 
 trumpets and two kettle-drums made the hall ring for half an hour together. At the end of all this 
 ceremonial a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who, with particular solemnity, lifted the meat off 
 the table, and conveyed it into the Queen's inner and most private chamber, where, after she had 
 chosen for herself, the rest goes to the ladies of the court.' 
 
 Life. Z 337
 
 ^, 
 
 [Fuscr.il of Sidney.]' 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE MIGHTY HEART. 
 
 In the spring of 15S8, and through the summer also, we may well believe that 
 Shakspere abided in London, whether or not he had his wife and children 
 about him. The course of public events was such that he would scarcely have 
 left the capital, even for a few weeks. For the hearts of all men in the vast 
 city were mightily stirred ; and whilst in that " shop of war " might be heard on 
 every side the din of " anvils and hammers waking to fashion out the plates 
 and instruments of armed justice,"* the poet had his own work to do, in urging 
 forward the noble impulse through which the people, of whatever sect, or 
 whatever party, willed that they would be free. It was the year of the Ar- 
 mada. When Shakspere first exchanged the quiet intercourse of his native 
 
 * Milton: 'Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.' 
 333
 
 A BIOGRArilY. 
 
 town for the fierce contests of opinion amongst the partisans of London — he 
 must have had fears for his country. A conspiracy, the most daring and ex- 
 tensive, had burst out against the life of the Queen ; and it was the more 
 dangerous that the leaders of the plot were high-minded enthusiasts, who 
 mingled with their traitorous designs the most chivalrous devotion to another 
 Queen, a long-suffering prisoner. The horrible cruelties that attended the 
 execution of Babington and his accomplices aggravated the pity which men 
 felt that so much enthusiasm should have been lost to their country. More 
 astounding events were to follow. In a year of dearth the citizens had ban- 
 queted, amidst bells and bonfires, in honour of the detection of Babington and 
 his followers ; and now, within three weeks of the feast of Christmas, the 
 Lord Mayor and Aldermen, assisted with divers earls, barons, and gentlemen 
 of account, and worshipful citizens " in coats of velvet and chains of gold, all on 
 horseback, in most solemn and stately manner, by sound of four trumpets, 
 about ten of the clock in the forenoon, made open and public proclamation and 
 declaration of the sentence lately given by the nobility against the Queen of 
 Scots under the great seal of England."* At the Cross in Cheap, or at the end 
 of Chancery Lane, or at St. Magnus Corner near London Bridge, would the 
 young sojourner in this seat of policy hear the proclamation : and he would 
 hear also "the great and wonderful rejoicing of the people of all sorts, as ma- 
 nifestly appeared by ringing of bells, making of bonfires, and singing of psalms 
 in every of the streets and lanes of the City."f But amidst this show of 
 somewhat ferocious joy would he encounter gloomy and fear-stricken faces. 
 Men would not dare even to whisper their opinions, but it would be manifest 
 that the public heart was not wholly at ease. On the eighth of February the 
 Queen of Scots is executed. Within a week after London pours forth its mul- 
 titudes to witness a magnificent and a mournful pageant. The Queen has 
 taken upon herself the cost of the public funeral of Sir Philip Sidney. She has 
 done wisely in this. In honouring the memory of the most gallant and accom- 
 plished of her subjects, she diverts the popular mind from unquiet reflections 
 to feelings in which all can sympathise. Even the humblest of the people, 
 who know little of the poetical genius, the taste, the courtesy, the chivalrous 
 bearing of this star of the Court of Elizabeth, know that a young and brave 
 man has fallen in the service of his country. Some of his companions in arms 
 have perhaps told the story of his giving the cup of water, about to be lifted to 
 his own parched lips, to the dying soldier whose necessities were greater than 
 his. And that story indeed would move their tears, far more than all the 
 gallant recollections of the tilt-yard. From the Minorites at the eastern ex- 
 tremity of the City, to St. Paul's, there is a vast procession of authorities in 
 solemn purple ; but more impressive is the long column of " certain young men 
 of the City marching by three and three in black cassokins, with their short 
 pikes, halberds, and ensign trailing on the ground." There are in that pro- 
 cession many of the " officers of his foot in the Low Countries " his " gentlemen 
 and yeoman-servants," and twelve "knights cf his kindred and friends." One 
 
 * Store's Annals. t Ibid. 
 
 2 2 339
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSrERE : 
 
 there is amongst tLem upon whom all eyes are gazing — Drake, the ooia seaman 
 who has carried the terror of the English flag through every sea, and in afew 
 months will he " singeing the King of Spain's beard." The corpse of Sidney 
 is borne by fourteen of his yeomen ; and amongst the pall-bearers is one weep- 
 ing manly tears, Fulke Greville, upon whose own tomb was written as the 
 climax of his honour that he was "friend to Sir Philip Sidney." The uncle, 
 of the dead hero is there also, the proud, ambitious, weak, and incapable Lei- 
 cester, who has been kinging it as Governor- General of the Low Countries 
 
 [Le'eoster.] 
 
 without the courage to fight a battle, except that in which Sidney was sacri- 
 ficed. He has been recalled ; and is in some disfavour in the courtly circle, 
 although he tried to redeem his disgraces in the Netherlands by boldly coun- 
 selling the poisoning of the Queen of Scots. Shakspere looks upon the haughty 
 peer, and shudders when he thinks of the murder of Edward Arden.* 
 
 * See p, 
 
 MU
 
 [Sir Philip Sidney-] 
 
 Within a year of the burial of Sidney the popular temper had greatly 
 changed. It had gone forth to all lands that England was to be invaded. 
 Philip of Spain was preparing the greatest armament that the combined navies 
 of Spain and Portugal, of Naples and Sicily, of Genoa and Venice, could bear 
 across the seas, to crush the arch-heretic of England. Rome had blessed the 
 enterprise. Prophecies had been heard in divers languages, that the year 
 1588 "should be most fatal and ominous unto all estates," and it was "now 
 plainly discovered that England was the main subject of that time's opera- 
 tion." * Yet England did not quail. " The whole commonalty," says the 
 annalist, " became of one heart and mind." The Council of War demanded 
 five thousand men and fifteen ships of the City of London. Two days were 
 craved for answer ; and the City replied that ten thousand men and thirty 
 ships were at the service of their country. f In every field around the capital 
 were the citizens who had taken arms practising the usual points of war. The 
 
 * Stow's Annals. 
 
 t It has been said, in contradiction to the good old historian of London, that the City only gave 
 what the Council demanded; 10,000 men were certainly levied in the twenty-five wards. 
 
 341
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Camp at Tilbury was formed. " It was a pleasant sight to behold the soldiers, 
 as they marched towards Tilbury, their cheerful countenances, courageous 
 words and gestures, dancing and leaping wheresoever they came ; and in the 
 camp their most felicity was hope of fight with the enemy : where ofttimes 
 divers rumours ran of their foe's approach, and that present battle would be given 
 them ; then were they joyful at such news, as if lusty giants were to run a race." 
 There is another description of an eager and confident army that may parallel 
 this : — 
 
 " All furnish'd, all in arms : 
 All plum'd, like estridges that with the wind 
 Bated, — like eagles having lately bath'd ; 
 Glittering in golden coats, like images ; 
 As full of spirit as tbe month of May, 
 And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer : 
 Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls." * 
 
 * Henry 1 V., Part I., Act iv., Scone I. 
 
 [Camp at Tilbmy.J
 
 A JJIOGEAPHY. 
 
 He who wrote this description had, we think, looked upon the patriot train- 
 bands of London in 1588. But, if we mistake not, he had given an impulse to 
 the spirit which had called forth this "strong and mighty preparation," in a 
 voice as trumpet-tongued as the proclamations of Elizabeth. The chronology 
 of Shakspere's King John is amongst the many doubtful points of his literary 
 career. The authorship of the 'King John', in two Parts is equally doubtful. 
 But if that be an older play than Shakspere's, and be not, as the Germans 
 believe with some reason, written by Shakspere himself, the drama which we 
 receive as his is a work peculiarly fitted for the year of the great Armada. 
 The other play is full of matter that would have offended the votaries of the 
 old religion. This, in a wise spirit of toleration, attacks no large classes of men 
 — excites no prejudices against friars and nuns, but vindicates the independence 
 of England against the interference of the papal authority, and earnestly ex- 
 horts her to be true to herself. This was the spirit in which even the un- 
 doubted adherents of the ancient forms of religion acted while England lav 
 under the ban of Rome in 1588. The passages in Shakspere's King John 
 appear to us to have even a more pregnant meaning, when they are connected 
 with that stirring time : — 
 
 "K. John. What earthly name to interrogatories 
 Can task the free breath of a sacred king ? 
 Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name 
 So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous, 
 To charge me to an answer, as the pope. 
 Tell him this tale ; and from the mouth of England 
 Add thus much more, — that no Italian priest 
 Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ; 
 But as we under Heaven are supreme head, 
 So under Him, that great supremacy, 
 Where we do reign, we will alone uphold, 
 Without the assistance of a mortal hand : 
 So tell the pope ; all reverence set apart 
 To him and his usurp' d authority. 
 
 K. Phil. Brother of England, you blaspheme in thin. 
 
 K. John. Though you, and all the kings of Christendom, 
 Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, 
 Dreading the curse that money may buy out ; 
 And, by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust, 
 Purchase corrupted pardon of a man, 
 Who, in that sale, sells pardon from himself; 
 Though you, and all the rest, so grossly led, 
 This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish ; 
 Yet I, alone, alone do me oppose 
 Against the pope, and count his friends my foes." 
 
 " K. John. The legate of the pope hath been with me, 
 And I have made a happy peace with him ; 
 And ho hath promised to dismiss the powers 
 Led by the dauphin. 
 
 313
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Bast. inglorious league ! 
 
 Shall we, upon the footing of our land, 
 Send fair-play orders, and make compromise, 
 Insinuation, parley, and base truce, 
 To arms invasive ?" 
 
 " This England never did, nor never shall, 
 Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 
 But when it first did help to wound itself. 
 Now these her princes are come home again, 
 Come the three corners of the world in arms, 
 And we shall shock them : Nought shall make us rue, 
 If England to itself do rest but true." 
 
 The patriotism of Shakspere is less displayed in 
 set speeches than in the whole life of his historical 
 plays— incident and character. Out of inferior 
 writers might be collected more laudatory sentences 
 flattering to national pride ; but his words are bright 
 and momentary as the spark which fires the mine. 
 The feeling is in the audience, and he causes it to 
 burst out in shouts or tears. He learnt the manage - 
 ment of this power, we think, during the excitement 
 of the great year of 1588. 
 
 The Armada is scattered. England's gallant 
 sons have done their work ; the winds, which a 
 greater Power than that of sovereigns and councils 
 holds in His hand, have been let loose. The praise 
 is to Him. Again, a mighty procession is on the 
 way to St. Paul's. Shakspere is surely amongst 
 the gazers on that great day of thanksgiving. 
 He has seen the banners taken from the Spanish 
 ships hung out on the battlements of the ca- 
 thedral ; and now, surrounded by all the nobles 
 
 I ; :! 
 
 
 Iff 
 
 !, 
 
 r& 
 
 ff Hr 
 : 
 
 
 § 
 
 
 
 Qw 

 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 and mighty men who have fought her battles, the Queen descends from her 
 " chariot throne " to make her " hearty prayers on her bended knees." Leicester, 
 the favourite to whose weak hand was nominally intrusted the command of the 
 troops, has not lived to see this triumph. But Essex, the new favourite, would 
 be there; and Hunsdon, the General for the Queen. There too would be Ra- 
 leigh, and Hawkins, and Frobisher, and Drake, and Howard of Effingham — one 
 
 [Howard.] 
 
 who forgot all distinctions of sect in the common danger of his country, 
 mij ht the young poet thus apostrophize this country ! — 
 
 " This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 This other Eden, demi-paradise ; 
 This fortress, biult by Nature for herself, 
 Against infestion and the hand of war ; 
 This happy breed of men, this little world ; 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
 "Which serves it in the office of a wall, 
 Or as a moat defensive to a house, 
 Against the envy of less happier lands ; 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England." 
 
 345 
 
 Well
 
 [Drake. 1 
 
 But, glorious as was the contemplation of the attitude of England during the 
 year of the Armada, the very energy that had called forth this noble display 
 of patriotic spirit exhibited itself in domestic controversy when the pressure 
 from without was removed. The poet might then, indeed, qualify his former 
 admiration : — 
 
 " England ! model to thy inward greatness, 
 Like little body with a mighty heart, 
 What mightst thou do that honour would thee do, 
 Were all thy chddren kind and natural !" 
 
 The same season that witnessed the utter destruction of the armament of Spain 
 saw London excited to the pitch of fury by polemical disputes. It was not 
 now the quarrel between Protestant and Romanist, but between the National 
 Church and Puritanism. The theatres, those new and powerful teachers, lent 
 themselves to the controversy. In some of these their licence to entertain the 
 people was abused by the introduction of matters connected with religion and 
 politics ; so that in 1589 Lord Burghley not only directed the Lord Mayor to 
 inquire what companies of players had offended, but a commission was ap- 
 pointed for the same purpose. How Shakspere's company proceeded during 
 this inquiry has been made out most clearly by the valuable document disco- 
 vered at Bridgcwater House by Mr. Collier, wherein they disclaim to have 
 conducted themselves amiss. " These are to certify your right Honourable 
 Lordships that her Majesty's poor players, James Burbage, Richard Burbage, 
 John Lancham, Thomas Greene, Robert Wilson, John Taylor, Anth. Wade- 
 son, Thomas Pope, George Peele, Augustine Phillipps, Nicholas Towley, Wil- 
 liam Shakespeare, William Kempe, William Johnson, Baptiste Coodale, and 
 31G
 
 A BIOGRAniY. 
 
 Robert Armyn, being all of them sharers in the Blackfriars playhouse, have never 
 given cause of displeasure, in that they have brought into their plays matters of 
 state and religion, unfit to be handled by them or to be presented before lewd 
 spectators : neither hath any complaint in that kind ever been preferred against 
 them or any of them. Wherefore they trust most humbly in your Lordships' 
 consideration of their former good behaviour, being at all times ready and willing to 
 vield obedience to any command whatsoever your Lordships in your wisdom may 
 think in such case meet," &c. 
 
 "Nov. 1589." 
 
 In this petition, Shakspere, a sharer in the theatre, but with others below him 
 in the list, says, and they all say, that "they have never brought into their plays 
 matters of state and religion." The public mind in 1589-90 was furiously 
 agitated by " matters of state and religion." A controversy was going on 
 which is now known as that of Martin Marpr elate, in which the constitution 
 and discipline of the Church were most furiously attacked in a succession of 
 pamphlets ; and they were defended with equal violence and scurrility. Izaak 
 Walton says, — " There was not only one Martin Marprelate, but other venom- 
 ous books daily printed and dispersed, — books that were so absurd and scur- 
 rilous, that the graver divines disdained them an answer." Walton adds, — 
 " And yet these were grown into high esteem with the common people, till 
 Tom Nash appeared against them all, who was a man of a sharp wit, and the 
 master of a scoffing, satirical, merry pen." Connected with this controversy, 
 there was subsequently a more personal one between Nash and Gabriel Harvey ; 
 but they were each engaged in the Marprelate dispute. John Lyly was the 
 author of one of the most remarkable pamphlets produced on this occasion, 
 called ' Pap with a Hatchet.' Harvey, it must be observed, was the intimate 
 friend of Spenser ; and in a pamphlet which he dates from Trinity Hall, No- 
 vember 5, 1589, he thus attacks the author of ' Pap with a Hatchet/ the more 
 celebrated Euphuist, whom Sir Walter Scott's novel has made familiar to 
 us : — 
 
 " I am threatened with a bable, and Martin menaced with a comedy — a fit 
 motion for a jester and a player to try what may be done by employment of his 
 faculty. Babies and comedies are parlous fellows to decipher and discourage men 
 (that is the point) with their witty flouts and learned jerks, enough to lash any man 
 out of countenance. Nay, if you shake the painted scabbard at me, I have done ; 
 and all you that tender the preservation of your good names were best to please 
 Pap -Hatchet, and fee Euphues betimes, for fear lest he be moved, or some one of 
 his apes hired, to make a play of you, and then is your credit quite undone for ever 
 and ever. Such is the public reputation of their plays. He must needs be 
 discouraged whom they decipher. Better anger an hundred other than two such 
 that have the stage at commandment, and can furnish out vices and devils at their 
 pleasure." * 
 
 We thus see that Harvey, the friend of Spenser, is threatened by one of 
 those who " have the stage at commandment " with having a play made of him. 
 
 • Tierce's 'Supererogation.' Repvlntecl in ' Areluvica,' p. 137. 
 
 •317
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEItE : 
 
 Such plays were made in 1589, and Nash thus boasts of them in one of his 
 tracts printed in 1589: — " Methought Vetus Comcedia began to prick him at 
 London in the right vein, when he brought forth divinity with a scratched 
 face, holding of her heart as if she were sick, because Martin would have 
 forced her ; but missing of his purpose, he left the print of his nails upon her 
 cheeks, and poisoned her with a vomit, which he ministered unto her to make 
 her cast up her dignities." Lyly, taking the same side, writes, — " Would 
 those comedies might be allowed to be played that are penned, and then I am 
 sure he [Martin Marprelate] would be deciphered, and so perhaps discouraged." 
 Here are the very words which Harvey has repeated, — " He must needs be 
 discouraged whom they decipher." Harvey, in a subsequent passage of the 
 same tract, refers to this prostitution of the stage to party purposes in very 
 striking words : — " The stately tragedy scorneth the trifling comedy, and the 
 trifling comedy jiouteth the new ruffianism." These circumstances appear to us 
 very remarkable, with reference to the state of the drama about 1590. Shak- 
 spere's great contemporary, Edmund Spenser, in a poem entitled ' The Tears 
 of the Muses,' originally published in 1591, describes, in the 'Complaint' of 
 Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, the state of the drama at the time in which he is 
 writing : — 
 
 " Where be the sweet delights of learning's treasure, 
 
 That wont with comic sock to beautify 
 The painted theatres, and fill with pleasure 
 
 The listeners' eyes, and ears with melody ; 
 In which I late was wont to reign as queen, 
 And mask in mirth with graces well beseen ? 
 
 ! all is gone ; and all that goodly glee, 
 
 Which wont to be the glory of gay wits, 
 Is laid a-bed, and nowhere now to see ; 
 
 And in her room unseemly Sorrow sits, 
 With hollow brows and grissly countenance, 
 Marring my joyous gentle dalliance. 
 
 And him beside sits ugly Barbarism, 
 
 And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late 
 Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm, 
 
 Where being bred, he light and heaven docs h;.te; 
 They in the minds of men now tyrannize, 
 And the fair scene with rudeness foul disguise. 
 
 All places they with folly have possess'd, 
 
 And with vain toys the vulgar entertain ; 
 But me have banished, with all the rest 
 
 That whilom wont to wait upon my train, 
 Fine Counterfcsance, and unhurtful Sport, 
 Delight, and Laughter, deck'd in seemly sort." 
 
 Spenser was in England in 1590-91, and it is probable that 'The Tears of the 
 Muses' was written in 1590, and that the poet described the prevailing state of 
 the drama in London daring the time of his visit. 
 
 The four stanzas which we have quoted are descriptive, as we think, of a 
 348
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 period of the drama when it had emerged from the semi-barbarism by which it 
 was characterized, " from the commencement of Shakspere's boyhood, till about 
 the earliest date at which his removal to London can be possibly fixed." * This 
 description has nothing in common with those accounts of the drama which have 
 reference to this " semi-barbarism." Nor does the writer of it belong to the 
 school which considered a violation of the unities of time and place as the great 
 defect of the English theatre. Nor does he assert his preference of the classic 
 school over the romantic, by objecting, as Sir Philip Sidney objects, that "plays 
 be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns." 
 There had been, according to Spenser, a state of the drama that would 
 
 " Fill with pleasure 
 The listeners' eyes, and ears with melody." 
 
 Can any comedy be named, if we assume that Shakspere had, in 1590, not 
 written any, which could be celebrated — and by the exquisite versifier of ' The 
 Fairy Queen ' — for its " melody " ? Could any also be praised for 
 
 " That goodly glee 
 Which wont to be the glory of gay wits " ? 
 
 Could the plays before Shakspere be described by the most competent of judges 
 — the most poetical mind of that age next to Shakspere — as abounding in 
 
 " Fine Counterfesance, and unhurtful Sport, 
 Delight, and Laughter, deck'd in seemly sort" ? 
 
 We have not seen such a comedy, except some three or four of Shakspere's, 
 which could have existed before 1590. We do not believe there is such a 
 comedy from any other pen. What, according to the ' Complaint ' of Thalia, 
 has banished such comedy? "Unseemly Sorrow," it appears, has been fashion- 
 able ; — not the proprieties of tragedy, but a Sorrow 
 
 " With hollow broivs and gristly countenance ;"— 
 
 the violent scenes of blood which were offered for the excitement of the multi- 
 tude, before the tragedy of real art was devised. But this state of the drama is 
 shortly passed over. There is something more defined. By the side of this 
 false tragic sit " ugly Barbarism and brutish Ignorance." These are not the 
 barbarism and ignorance of the old stage ; — they are 
 
 " Ycrept of late 
 Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm." 
 
 They "now tyrannize;" they now "disguise" the fair scene "with rudeness." 
 lhe Muse of Tragedy, Melpomene, had previously described the "rueful spec- 
 tacles" of "the stage." It was a stage which had no "true tragedy." But it 
 had possessed 
 
 " Delight, and Laughter, deck'd in seemly sort." 
 
 New " the trifling comedy flouteth the new ruffianism." The words of Gabriel 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, vol. lsxi., p. 469. 
 
 349
 
 WILLIAM S1IAKSPEKE : 
 
 Harvey and Edmund Spenser agree in this. The bravos that '* have the stage 
 at commandment can furnish out vices and devils at their pleasure/' says Har- 
 vey. This describes the Veins Comcedia — the old comedy— of which Nash 
 boasts. Can there be any doubt that Spenser had this state of things' in view 
 when he denounced the 
 
 Ugly Barbarism, 
 AlcI brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late 
 Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm ,! ? 
 
 lie denounced it in common with his friend Harvey, who, however he partook 
 of the controversial violence of his time, was a man of learning and eloquence ; 
 and to whom only three years before he had addressed a sonnet, of which the 
 highest mind in the country might have been proud. 
 
 But we must return to the 'Thalia.' The four stanzas which wc have 
 quoted are immediately followed by these four others : — 
 
 " All these, and all that else the comic stage 
 
 With season' d wit and goodly pleasure graced, 
 By which man's lifo in his likcst image 
 
 Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced ; 
 And those sweet wits, which wont the like to frame, 
 Are now despised, and made a laughing game. 
 
 And he, the man whom Nature self had made 
 
 To mock herself, and Truth to imitate, 
 With kindly counter, under mimic shade, 
 
 Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late : 
 With whom all joy and jolly merriment 
 Is also deaded, and in dolour drent. 
 
 Instead thereof scoffing Scurrility, 
 
 And scornful Folly, with Contempt, is crept, 
 Rolling in rhymes of shameless ribaldry, 
 
 Without regard or due decorum kept ; 
 Each idle wit at will presumes to make, 
 And doth the Learned's task upon him take. 
 
 But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen 
 
 Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow, 
 Scorning the boldness of such base-born men, 
 
 Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw, 
 Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell 
 Than so himself to mockery to sell." 
 
 Here there is something even stronger than what has preceded it, in tke direct 
 allusion to the state of the stage in 1590. Comedy had ceased to be an exhi- 
 bition of "seasoned wit" and "goodly pleasure;" it no longer showed "man's 
 life in his likest image." Instead thereof there was " Scurrility " — " scornful 
 Polly " — " shameless Ribaldry ; " — and " each idle wit " 
 
 "doth the Learned's task upon him fake." 
 350
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 It was the task of " the Learned " to deal with the high suhjects of religious 
 controversy — the " matters of state and religion," with which the stage had 
 meddled. Harvey had previously said, in the tract quoted hy us, it is " a godly 
 motion, when interluders leave penning their pleasureahlc plays to become zeal- 
 ous ecclesiastical writers." He calls Lyly more expressly, with reference to 
 this meddling, " the foolmaster of the theatre." In this state of things the 
 acknowledged head of the comic stage was silent for a time : — 
 
 " IIe, the man whom Nature self had made 
 To mock herself, and Truth to Imitate, 
 With kindly counter, under mimic shade, 
 Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late." 
 
 And the author of 'The Fairy Queen' adds, 
 
 " But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen 
 
 Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow, 
 Scorning the holdness of such base-horn men, 
 
 Which dare their follies forth so madly throw, 
 Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell 
 Than so himself to mockery to sell." 
 
 The love of personal abuse had driven out real comedy ; and there was one who 
 for a brief season had left the madness to take its course. We cannot doubt 
 that 
 
 " IIe, the man whom Nature self had made 
 To mock herself, and Truth to imitate," 
 
 was William Shakspere. Mr. Collier, in his ' History of Dramatic Poetry/ 
 says of Spenser's * Thalia,' — " Had it not been certain that it was written at so 
 early a date, and that Shakespeare could not then have exhibited his talents and 
 acquired reputation, we should say at once that it could be meant for no other 
 poet. It reads like a prophetic anticipation, which could not have been ful- 
 filled by Shakspere until several years after it was published." Mr. Collier, 
 when he wrote this, had not discovered the document which proves that Shak- 
 spere was a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre at least a year before this poem 
 was published. Spenser, we believe, described a real man, and real facts. He 
 made no " prophetic anticipation ; " there had been genuine comedy in ex- 
 istence ; the ribaldry had driven it out for a season. The poem has reference 
 to some temporary degradation of the stage ; and what this temporary degrada- 
 tion was is most exactly defined by the public documents of the period, and the 
 writings of Harvey, Nash, and Lyly. The dates of all these proofs correspond 
 with minute exactness. And who then is "our pleasant Willy," according to 
 the opinion of those who would deny to Shakspere the title to the praise of the 
 other great poet of the Elizabethan age ? It is John Lyly, says Malone — the 
 man whom Spenser's bosom friend was, at the same momem, denouncing as 
 " the foolmaster of the theatre." We say, advisedly, that there is absolutely no 
 proof that Shakspere had not written The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The 
 
 3S1
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE 5 
 
 Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, and All's 
 Well that Ends Well, amongst his comedies, before 1590: we believe that he 
 alone merited the high praise of Spenser ; that it was meant for him.* 
 
 * This argument was originally advanced by r.s in a email Life of Shakspere ; and we here repeat 
 it, with slight alteration. 
 
 [Spenser.]
 
 *v^ ft. J^« 
 
 suB»i"&'i'' i" 
 
 [Richmond-] 
 
 CHAPTER I V. 
 
 EOW CHANCES IT THEY TRAVEL. 
 
 John Stanhope, one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, writes thus to 
 Lord Talbot, in December, 1589: — "The Queen is so well as, I assure you, six 
 or seven galliards in a morning, besides music and singing, is her ordinary 
 exercise."* This letter is dated from Richmond. The magnificent palace 
 which the grandfather of Elizabeth erected upon the ruins of the old palace of 
 the Plantagenets was a favourite residence of the Queen. Here, where she 
 danced her galliards, and made the courts harmonious with her music, she 
 closed her life some ten years after, — not quite so deserted as was the great 
 Edward upon the same spot, but the victim, in all probability, of blighted 
 affections and unavailing regrets. Scarcely a vestige is now left of the second 
 palace of Richmond. The splendid towers of Henry VII. have fallen, but the 
 
 * ' Lodge's EUustvations,' 4to., vol. ii., page 411. 
 Life. - A «*53
 
 "WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 name which he gave to the site endures, and the natural beauty which fixed 
 here the old sovereigns of England, and which the people of all lands still come 
 to gaze upon, is something which outlives the works of man, if not the memory 
 of those works. In the Christmas of 1589, the Queen's players would be neces- 
 sarily busy for the diversion of the Court. The records are lost which would 
 show us at this period what were the precise performances offered to the Queen ; 
 and the imperfect registers of the Council, which detail certain payments for 
 plays, do not at this date refer to payments to Shakspere's company. But there 
 can be little doubt that the Lord Chamberlain's servants were more frequently 
 called upon for her Majesty's solace than the Lord Admiral's men, or Lord 
 Strange's men, or the Earl of Warwick's men, to whom payments £.re recorded 
 at this period. It is impossible that the registers of the Council, as published 
 originally by Chalmers, should furnish a complete account of the theatrical 
 performances at Court ; for there is no entry of any payment whatever for such 
 performances, under the Council's warrant, between the 1 1 th of March, 1 593, 
 and the 27th of November, 1597. The office-books of the Treasurers of the 
 Chamber exhibit a greater blank at this time. We can have no doubt that 
 the last decade of the sixteenth century was the most brilliant period of the 
 regal patronage of the drama ; the period when Shakspere, especially, 
 "Made those flights upon the banks of Thames" 
 
 to which Jonson has so emphatically alluded. That Shakspere was familiar 
 with Richmond we can well believe. He and his fellows would unquestionably, 
 at the holiday seasons of Christmas and Shrovetide, be at the daily command 
 of the Lord Chamberlain, and in attendance upon the Court wherever the 
 Queen chose to dwell. The servants of the household, the ladies waiting upon 
 the Queen, and even the great officers composing the Privy Council, seem to 
 have been in a perpetual state of migration from palace to palace. Elizabeth 
 carried this desire for change of place to an extent that was not the most agree- 
 able to many of- her subjects. Her progress from house to house, with a cloud 
 of retainers, was almost ruinous to some who were yet unable to reject the 
 honour. But even the frequent removals of the Court from palace to palace 
 must have been productive of no little annoyance to the grave and the delicate 
 amongst the royal attendants. The palaces were ill-furnished ; and whenever 
 the whim of a moment directed a removal, many of the heavier household 
 necessaries had to be carried from palace to palace by barge or waggon. In the 
 time of Henry VIII. we constantly find charges attendant upon these removals.* 
 Giffbrd infers that in the time of which we are writing, the practice was suffi- 
 ciently common and remarkable to have afforded us one of our most significant 
 and popular words : "To the smutty regiment, who attended the progresses, 
 and rode in the carts with the pots and kettles, which, with every other article 
 of furniture, were then moved from palace to palace, the people, in derision, 
 gave the name of black guards, — a term since become sufficiently familiar, and 
 vever properly explained." f The palaces themselves were most inconveniently 
 
 * See Nicolas' s 'Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry the Eighth,' 
 | Note to ' Every Man out of his Humour.' 
 ?54
 
 B 3 e|.||.»|l;^Jr-J^g S 
 [!, @- uj li [it ■ ,v t ^fcj'.:. kj ^ liuiT - 'iy a i a? 
 
 ' .fekl 
 
 fea^--- - 
 
 
 [St. James's.] 
 
 adapted for these changes. Wherever the Queen was, there was the seat oi 
 government. The Privy Council were in daily attendance upon the Queen ; 
 and every public document is dated from the Court. Official business of the 
 most important nature had to be transacted in bedchambers and passages. 
 Lady Mary Sidney, whose husband was Lord President of Wales, writes the 
 most moving letter to an officer of the Lord Chamberlain, to implore him to 
 beg his principal " to have some other room than my chamber for my lord to 
 have his resort unto, as he was wont to have, or else my lord will be greatly 
 troubled when he shall have any matters of dispatch ; my lodging, you see, 
 being very little, and myself continually sick, and not able to be much out of 
 my bed."* A great officer of state being obliged to transact business with his 
 servants and suitors in his sick wife's bedroom, is a tolerable example of the 
 inconvenient arrangements of our old palaces. Perhaps a more striking example 
 of their want of comfort, and even of decent convenience, is to be found in a 
 memorial from the maids of honour, which we have seen in the State Paper 
 Office, humbly requesting that the partition which separates their sleeping- 
 rooms from the common passage may be somewhat raised, so as to shut them 
 out from the possible gaze of her Majesty's gallant pages. If Windsor was thus 
 inconvenient as a permanent residence, how must the inconvenience have been 
 doubled when the Queen suddenly migrated here from St. James's, or Somerset 
 Place, or Greenwich? The smaller palaces of Nonsuch and Richmond were 
 
 The letter is giveu iu Malone'a ' Inquiry,' p. 91. 
 
 •?A2 
 
 355
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE ■ 
 
 probably still less endurable. But they were all the seats of gaiety, throwing 
 a veil over fears and jealousies and feverish ambition. Our business is not 
 with their real tragedies. 
 
 From about the period of Shakspere's first connection with the stage, and 
 thence with the Court, Henry Lord Hunsdon, the kinsman of Elizabeth, was 
 Lord Chamberlain. It is remarkable, that when Burbage erected the Black- 
 friars Theatre, in 1576, close by the houses of Lord Hunsdon and of the famous 
 Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, Lord Hunsdon was amongst the petitioners against 
 the project of Burbage. But the Earl of Sussex, who was then Lord Cham- 
 berlain, did not petition against the erection of a playhouse ; and he may there- 
 fore be supposed to have approved of it. The opinions, however, of Lord 
 Hunsdon must have undergone some considerable change ; for upon his suc- 
 ceeding to the office of Lord Chamberlain upon the death of Sussex, he became 
 the patron of Shakspere's company. They were the Lord Chamberlain's men ; 
 or, in other words, the especial servants of the Court. Henry Lord Hunsdon 
 hold this office for eleven years, till his death in 1596. Elizabeth bestowed 
 
 (Lord ITunsdou.]
 
 " "-.'Vitaiaje^ 
 
 
 -'ri-'^Tt,-'.; 
 
 [Somerset House.] 
 
 upon him as a residence the magnificent palace of the Protector Somerset. 
 Here, in the halls which had been raised out of the spoliation of the great 
 Priory of St. John of Jerusalem, would the company of Shakspere be frequently 
 engaged. The Queen occasionally made the palace her residence ; and it can 
 scarcely be doubted that on these occasions there was revelry upon which the 
 genius of the new dramatic poet, so immeasurably above all his compeers, would 
 bestow a grace which a few years earlier seemed little akin to the spirit of the 
 drama. That palace also is swept away ; and the place which once witnessed 
 the stately measure and the brisk galliard — where Cupids shook their painted 
 wings in the solemn masque — and where, above all, our great dramatic poet 
 may first have produced his Comedy of Errors, his Two Gentlemen of Verona, 
 his Romeo and Juliet, and have been rewarded with smiles and tears, such as 
 seldom were bestowed in the chill regions of state and etiquette, — that place 
 now sees the complicated labours of the routine departments of a mighty 
 government constantly progressing in their prosaic uniformity. No contrast 
 can be more striking than the Somerset House of Queen Elizabeth's Lord 
 Chamberlain, and the Somerset House of Queen Victoria's Commissioners of 
 Stamps and Taxes. 
 
 "How chances it they travel?" says Hamlet, speaking of the players — 
 Their residence both in reputation and profit was better both ways." Ham- 
 
 357
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 let's "tragedians jf the city" travel because "the boys carry it away." But 
 there were other causes that more than once forced Shakspere's company to 
 disperse, and which affected also every other company. That terrible affliction 
 from which England has so long been free, the plague, almost invariably broke 
 up the residence of the players. They were in general scattered about the 
 country seeking a precarious maintenance, whilst their terror-stricken families 
 remained in the fated city. In the autumn of 1592 the plague raged in Lon- 
 don. Michaelmas term was kept at Hertford ; as in 1593 it was at St. Albans. 
 During this long period all the theatres were closed, the Privy Council justly 
 alleging " that infected people, after their long keeping in and before they be 
 cleared of their disease and infection, being desirous of recreation, use to resort 
 to such assemblies, where through heat and throng they infect many sound 
 persons." In the letters of Alleyn the player, which are preserved in Dulwich 
 College, there is one to his wife, of this exact period, being dated from Chelms- 
 ford, the 2nd of May, 1593, which exhibits a singular picture of the indignities 
 to which the less privileged players appear to have been subjected : — " I have no 
 news to send thee, but I thank God we are all well, and in health, which I pray 
 God to continue with us in the country, and with you in London. But, mouse, 
 I little thought to hear that which I now hear by you, for it is well known, 
 they say, that you were by my Lord Mayor's officers made to ride in a cart, 
 you and all your fellows, which I am sorry to hear ; but you may thank your 
 two supporters, your strong legs I mean, that would not carry you away, but 
 let you fall into the hands of such termagants."* On the 1st of September, 
 1592, there was a company of players at Cambridge, and, as it appears, engaged 
 in a contest with the University authorities. On that day the Vice-Chancellor 
 issues a warrant to the constable forbidding the inhabitants to allow the players 
 .o occupy any houses, rooms, or yards, for the purpose of exhibiting their inter- 
 ludes, plays, and tragedies. The players, however, disregarded the warrant ; 
 for on the 8th of September, the Vice-Chancellor complains to the Privy Council 
 that " certain light persons, pretending themselves to be her Majesty's players, 
 &c, did take boldness, not only here to proclaim their interludes (by setting 
 up of writings about our college gates), but also actually at Chesterton to play 
 the same, which is a village within the compass of the jurisdiction granted to 
 us by her Majesty's charter, and situated hard by the plot where Stourbridge 
 fair is kept." The Privy Council does not appear to have been in a hurry to 
 redress the grievance ; for ten days afterwards the Vice-Chancellor and various 
 heads of colleges repeated the complaint, alleging that the offenders were sup- 
 ported by Lord North (who resided at Kirtling, near Cambridge), who said " in 
 the hearing as well of the players, as of divers knights and gentlemen of the 
 shire then present," that an order of the Privy Council of 1575, forbidding the 
 performance of plays in the neighbourhood of universities, " was no perpe- 
 tuity." It was not till the following year that the Privy Council put an end 
 to this unseemly contest, by renewing the letters of 1575. The company of 
 Shakspere was not, wc apprehend, the "certain light persons, pretending them- 
 
 * Collier's 'Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' p. 21, 
 353
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 selves to be her Majesty's players." The complaint of the Vice-Chancelloi 
 recites that one Dutton was a principal amongst them ; and Dutton's company 
 is mentioned in the accounts of the Revels as early as 1572. But for this 
 notice of Dutton we might have concluded that the Queen's players were the 
 company to which Shakspere belonged ; and that his acquaintance with Cam- 
 bridge, its splendid buildings, and its noble institutions, was to be associated 
 with the memory of a dispute that is little creditable to those who resisted the 
 just exercise of the authority of the University. The Queen and her courtiers 
 appear to have looked upon this contest in something of the spirit of mischiev- 
 ous drollery. Three months after the dispute, Dr. John Still, then Vice-Chan- 
 cellor, Master of Trinity College, and Bishop of Bath and Wells, writes thus to 
 the Lords of the Council : " Upon Saturday last, being the second of December, 
 we received letters from Mr. Vice-Chamberlain by a messenger sent purposely, 
 wherein, by reason that her Majesty's own servants in this time of infection 
 may not disport her Highness with their wonted and ordinary pastimes, his 
 Honour hath moved our University (as he writeth that he hath also done the 
 other of Oxford) to prepare a comedy in English, to be acted before her High- 
 ness by some of our students in this time of Christmas. How ready we are 
 to do anything that may tend to her Majesty's pleasure, we are very desirous 
 by all means to testify ; but how fit we shall be by this is moved, having no 
 practice in this English vein,* and being (as we think) nothing beseeming our 
 
 * The English vein had gone out of use. In 1564, 'Ezekias,' a comedy in English by Dr. 
 Nicholas Udall, was performed before Elizabeth in King's College Chapel. 
 
 ' Anele-.it View of Cambrids'e ]
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 students, specially out of the University, we much doubt; and do find our prin- 
 cipal actors (whom we have of purpose called before us) very unwilling to play 
 in English."* If Dr. Still were the author of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' as 
 commonly believed, the joke is somewhat heightened ; but at any rate it is 
 diverting enough, as a picture of manners, to find the University who have 
 opposed the performances of professional players, being called upon to produce 
 a play in the " English vein," a species of composition mostly held in contempt 
 by the learned as fitted only for the ignorant multitude. 
 
 In relation to Shakspere, we learn from these transactions at Cambridge, that 
 at the Christmas of 1592 there were no revels at Court: "her Majesty's own 
 servants in this time of infection may not disport her Highness with their 
 wonted and ordinary pastimes." Shakspere, we may believe, during the long 
 period of the continuance of the plague in London, had no occupation at the 
 Blackfriars Theatre ; and the pastimes of the Lord Chamberlain's servants were 
 dispensed with at the palaces. It is probable that he was residing at his own 
 Stratford. The leisure, we think, afforded him opportunity of preparing the 
 most important of that wonderful series of historical dramas which unquestion- 
 ably appeared within a few years of this period ; and of producing some other 
 dramatic compositions of the highest order of poetical excellence. The accounts 
 of the Chamberlains of Stratford exhibit no payments to players from 1587 to 
 1592; but in that year in the account of Henry Wilson, the Chamberlain, we 
 have the entry of " Paid to the Queenes players XXs," and a similar entry 
 occurs in the account of John Sadler, Chamberlain in 1593. Were these pay- 
 ments to the Lord Chamberlain's company, known familiarly as the Queen's 
 players ? We cannot absolutely decide. Another company was at Cambridge 
 pretending to be the Queen's players ; and in the office book of the Treasurer 
 of the Chamber, in 1590, there is the record of a payment " to Lawrance Dutton 
 and John Dutton, her Majesty's players, and their company." The Lord Cham- 
 berlain's players appear to have ceased to be called " the Queen's players," about 
 this time. Upon the whole, we are inclined to the belief, — although we have 
 previously assumed that the Queen's players who performed at Stratford in 
 1587 were Shakspere's fello\vs,f — that the Lord Chamberlain's servants did 
 not " travel." If the " profit " of their " residence " in London was interrupted 
 by the plague, it did not consist with their " reputation " to seek out the scanty 
 remuneration of uncritical country audiences. It appears to us, also, looking 
 at the poetical labours of Shakspere at this exact period, that there was some 
 pause in his professional occupation ; and that many months' residence in Strat- 
 ford, from the autumn of 1592 to the summer of 1593, enabled him more 
 systematically to cultivate those higher faculties which placed him, even in the 
 opinion of his contemporaries, at the head of the living poets of England. % 
 
 One of the peculiar characteristics of the genius of Shakspere consists in its 
 essentially practical nature — its perfect adaptation to the immediate purpose of 
 its employment. It is not inconsistent, therefore, with the most unlimited re- 
 
 * The various documents may be consulted in Collier's • Annals of the Stage,' vol. I. 
 
 \ See page 281. J See note at the end of this chapter. 
 
 360
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 verence for the higher qualities of that genius, to believe that in its original 
 direction to the drama it was guided by no very abstract ideas of excellence, 
 but sought to accommodate itself to the taste and the information of the people, 
 and to deal only with what was to them obvious and familiar. It is thus that 
 we may readily admit that many of the earliest plays of Shakspere were 
 founded upon some rude production of the primitive stage. Andronicus had, 
 no doubt, its dramatic ancestor, who exhibited the same Gothic view of Roman 
 history, and whose scenes of blood were equally agreeable to an audience re- 
 quiring strong excitement. Pericles, however remodelled at an after period, 
 belonged, we can scarcely doubt, to Shakspere's first efforts for the improvement 
 of some popular dramatic exhibition which he found ready to his hand. So of 
 The Taming of the Shrew, of which we may without any violence assume 
 that a common model existed both for that and for the other play with a very 
 similar name, which appears to belong to the same period. It is in the highest 
 degree probable that the three parts of Henry VI. may in the same manner 
 be founded upon older productions ; but it is utterly inconsistent with our con- 
 fidence in the originality of Shakspere's powers, even when dealing with old 
 materials, to believe that those plays which we know as the two parts of The 
 Contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster, were the plays upon 
 which Shakspere founded the second and third parts of Henry VI. They are 
 as much his own as the Hamlet of 1603 is his own, or the Henry V. of 1600, 
 or the Merry Wives of 1602, each of which is evidently the sketch, and per- 
 haps the mutilated sketch, of the finished picture which was subsequently 
 delivered to us. That sketch of Hamlet, which in all probability was the 
 remodelling of something earlier from the same pen (which earliest piece might 
 even have been founded upon some rude dialogue or dumb show of a murder 
 or a ghost), proves to us, comparing it with the finished play, the quarto of 
 1604, how luxuriantly the vigorous sapling went on year by year to grow into 
 the monarch of the forest. But from the first, Shakspere, with that consummate 
 judgment which gave a fitness to every thing that he did, or proposed to do, 
 held his genius in subjection to the apprehension of the people, till he felt 
 secure of their capability to appreciate the highest excellence. In his case, as 
 in that of every great artist, perfection could only be attained by repeated 
 efforts. He had no models to work upon ; and in the very days in which he 
 lived the English drama began to be created. It was not " Learning's triumph 
 o'er her barbarous foes " which " first rear'd the stage," but a singular combina- 
 tion of circumstances which for the most part grew out of the reformation of 
 religion. He took the thing as he found it. The dramatic power was in him 
 so supreme that, compared with the feebler personifications of other men, it 
 looks like instinct. He seized upon the vague abstractions which he found in 
 the histories and comedies of the Blackfriars and the Bel Savage, and the 
 scene was henceforth filled with living beings. But not as yet were these 
 individualities surrounded with the glowing atmosphere of burning poetry. 
 The philosophy which invests their sayings with an universal wisdom, that 
 enters the mind and becomes its loadstar, was scarcely yet evoked out of that 
 
 361
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 profound contemplation of human actions and of the higher things dimly re- 
 vealed in human nature, which belonged to the maturity of his wondrous mind. 
 The wit was there in some degree from the first, for it was irrepressible ; but 
 it was then as the polished metal, which dazzlingly gives back the brightness 
 of the sunbeams ; in after times it was as the diamond, which reflects every- 
 thing, and yet appears to be self-irradiated in its lustrous depths. If these 
 qualities, and if the humour which seems more especially the ripened growth 
 of the mental faculty, could have been produced in the onset of Shakspere's 
 career, it is probable that the career would not have been a successful one. 
 He had to make his audience. He himself has told us of a play of his earliest 
 period, that " I remember, pleased not the million ; 'twas caviarie to the ge- 
 neral : but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgments in such mat- 
 ters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play ; well digested in the scenes : 
 set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there were 
 no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury ; nor no matter in the phrase 
 that might indite the author of affectation ; but called it an honest method, as 
 wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine."* Was this 
 play an attempt of Shakspere himself to depart from the popular track ? If it 
 were, we probably owe much to the million. 
 
 Let us place then the Shakspere of eight-and-twenty once more in the soli- 
 tude of Stratford, with the experience of seven years in the pursuits which he 
 has chosen as his profession. He has produced, we believe, several plays be- 
 longing to each class of the drama with which the early audiences were familiar. 
 In the tragedy of Andronicus, as it has come down to us, and with great pro- 
 bability in the first conceptions of Hamlet and of Romeo and Juliet, the physical 
 horrors of the scene were as much relied upon as attractions, if not more so, 
 than the poetry and characterization. The struggles for the empery of France, 
 and the wars of the Roses, had been presented to the people with marvellous 
 animation ; but the great dramatic principle of unity of idea had been but im- 
 perfectly developed, and probably, without the practice of that apprentice-period 
 of the poet's dramatic life, would scarcely have been conceived in its ultimate 
 perfection. Comedy, too, had been tried ; and here the rude wit and the 
 cumbrous affectations of his contemporaries had been supplanted by drollery 
 and nature, with a sprinkle of graceful poetry whose essential characteristic is 
 the rejection of the unnatural ornament and the conventional images which 
 belong to every other dramatic writer of the period. The Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona, the Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, 
 and All 's Well that Ends Well, are essentially nobler and purer in their poetical 
 elements than anything that Peele, or Greene, or Lyly, or Lodge, have be- 
 queathed to us. That they are superior in many respects to many of the best 
 productions of Shakspere's later contemporaries may be the result of the after- 
 polish which we have no doubt the poet bestowed even upon his least important 
 works. They, with the histories and tragedies we have named, essentially 
 
 * Hamlet, Act II., Sc. II. 
 362
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 bc.cnged, we think, to his earliest period. We are about to enter upon the career 
 of a higher ambition. 
 
 William Shakspere left Stratford about 1585 or 1586, an adventurer probably, 
 but, as we hold, not the reckless adventurer which it has been the fashion to 
 represent him. We know not whether his wife and children were with him in 
 London. There is no evidence to show that they did not so dwell. If he were 
 absent alone during a portion of the year from his native place, his family probably 
 lived under the roof of his father and mother. His visits to them would not 
 necessarily be of rare occurrence and of short duration. The Blackfriars was 
 a winter theatre, although at a subsequent period, when the Globe was erected, it 
 was let for summer performances to the " children of the Chapel." With rare 
 exceptions the performances at Court occupied only the period from Hallowmas 
 Day to Shrove Tuesday. The latter part of the summer and autumn seem, 
 therefore, to have been at Shakspere's disposal, at least during the first seven or 
 eight years of his career. That he spent a considerable portion of the year in the 
 quiet of his native walks we may be tolerably well assured, from the constant 
 presence of rural images in all his works, his latest as well as his earliest. We 
 have subsequently more distinct evidence in his farming occupations. At the time 
 of which we are now writing we believe that a great public calamity gave him 
 unwonted leisure ; and that here commences what may be called the middle period 
 of his dramatic life, which saw the production of his greater histories, and of some 
 of his most delightful comedies. 
 
 There is a well-known passage in A Midsummer Night's Dream which goes very 
 far towards a determination of its date. Titania thus reproaches Oberon : 
 
 " These are the forgeries of jealousy : 
 And never, since the middle summer's spring, 
 Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, 
 By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, 
 Or on the beached margent of the sea, 
 To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, 
 But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport. 
 Therefore, the winds, piping to us in vain, 
 As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea 
 Contagious fogs ; which, falling in the land, 
 Have every pelting river made so proud, 
 That they have overborne their continents : 
 The ox hath therefore stretch' d his yoke in vain, 
 The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn 
 Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard : 
 The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 
 And crows are fatted with the murrain flock; 
 The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud 
 And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, 
 For lack of tread, are undistinguishable." 
 
 The summers of 1592, 1593, and 1594 were so unpropitious, that the minute 
 description of Titania, full of the most precise images derived from the observ- 
 ation of a resident in the country, gives us a far more exact idea of these re- 
 
 363
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 markable seasons than any of the prosaic records of the time. In 1594, Dr. J. 
 Xing thus preaches at York : " Remember that the spring (that year when the 
 plague broke out) was very unkind, by means of the abundance of rains that 
 fell. Our July hath been like to a February, our June even as an April, so 
 that the air must needs be infected." He then adds, speaking of three succes- 
 sive years of scarcity, " Our years are turned upside down. Our summers are 
 no summers ; our harvests are no harvests ; our seed-times are no seed-times."* 
 There are passages in Stow's * Annals,' and in a manuscript by Dr. Simon For- 
 man in the Ashmolean Museum, which show that in the June and July of 
 1594 there were excessive rains. But Stow adds, of 1594, "notwithstanding 
 in the month of August there followed a fair harvest." This does not agree 
 with 
 
 " The ox liath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, 
 The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green com 
 Hath rotted, ere his youth attain'd a beard." 
 
 It is not necessary to fix Shakspere's description of the ungenial season upon 1594 
 in particular. There was a succession of unpropitious years, when 
 
 " The spring, the summer, 
 The childing autumn, angry winter, change 
 Their wonted liveries." 
 
 " Our summers are no summers ; our harvests are no harvests ; our seed-times 
 are no seed-times." Churchyard, in his preface to a poem entitled ' Charity,'f 
 says, " A great nobleman told me this last wet summer the weather was too cold 
 for poets." The poetry of Shakspere was as much subjective as objective, to use 
 one of the favourite distinctions which we have derived from the Germans. The 
 most exact description of the coldness of the "wet summer" becomes in his 
 hands the finest poetry, even taken apart from its dramatic propriety; but in 
 association with the quarrels of Oberon and Titania, it becomes something much 
 higher than descriptive poetry. It is an integral part of those wondrous efforts 
 of the imagination which we can call by no other name than that of creation. 
 It is in A Midsummer Night's Dream, as it appears to us, that Shakspere first 
 telt the entire strength of his creative power. That noble poem is something 
 so essentially different from anything which the stage had previously possessed, 
 that we must regard it as a great effort of the highest originality ; conceived 
 perhaps with very little reference to its capacity of pleasing a mixed audience ; 
 probably composed with the express intention of being presented to " an audience 
 fit though few," who were familiar with the allusions of classical story, of 
 " masque and antique pageantry," but who had never yet been enabled to form 
 an adequate notion of 
 
 " Such sights as youthful poets dream 
 On summer eves by haunted stream." 
 
 * See our Illustrations of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ir., Sc. II. 
 + Quoted by Mr. Halliwell, in hi3 ' Introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream.' 
 364
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The exquisite delicacy of the compliment tc " the imperial votaress " fully war- 
 rants the belief that in the season of calamity, when her own servants " may 
 not disport her Highness with their wonted and ordinary pastimes," one of them 
 was employed in a labour for her service, which would make all other pastimes 
 of that epoch appear flat and trivial. 
 
 It is easy to believe that if any external impulse were wanting to stimulate 
 the poetical ambition of Shakspere — to make him aspire to some higher cha- 
 racter than that of the most popular of dramatists — such might be found in 
 1593 in the clear field which was left for the exercise of his peculiar powers. 
 Robert Greene had died on the 3rd of September, 1592, leaving behind him a 
 sneer at the actor who aspired " to bombast out a blank verse." Had his genius 
 not been destroyed by the wear and tear, and the corrupting influences, of a 
 profligate life, he never could have competed with the mature Shakspere. But 
 as we know that "the only Shake-scene in a country," at whom the unhappy 
 man presumed to scoff, felt the insult somewhat deeply, so we may presume he 
 took the most effectual means to prove to the world that lie was not, according 
 to the malignant insinuation of his envious compeer, " an upstart crow beautified 
 with our feathers." We believe that in the gentleness of his nature, when he 
 introduced into A Midsummer Night's Dream 
 
 " The thrice three Muses mourning tor the death 
 Of learning late deceas'd in beggary," 
 
 he dropped a tear upon the grave of him whose demerits were to be forgiven 
 in his misery. On the 1st of June, 1593, Christopher Marlowe perished in a 
 wretched brawl, "slain by Francis Archer," as the Register of Burials of the 
 parish of St. Nicholas, Deptford, informs us. Who was left of the dramatists 
 that could enter into competition with William Shakspere, such as he then 
 was ? He was almost alone. The great disciples of his school had not arisen. 
 Jonson had not appeared to found a school of a different character. It was for 
 him, thenceforth, to sway the popular mind after his own fashion ; to disregard 
 the obligation which the rivalry of high talent might have imposed upon him 
 of listening to other suggestions than those of his own lofty art ; to make the 
 multitude bow before that art, rather than that it should accommodate itself to 
 their habits and prejudices. But at a period when the exercise of the poetical 
 power in connection with the stage was scarcely held amongst the learned and 
 the polite in itself to be poetry, Shakspere vindicated his reputation by the 
 publication of the Venus and Adonis. It was, he says, " the first heir of my 
 invention." There may be a doubt whether Shakspere meant to say literally 
 that this was the first poetical work that he had produced ; or whether he held, 
 in deference to some critical opinions, that his dramatic productions could not 
 be classed amongst the heirs of " invention." We think that he meant to use 
 the words literally ; and that he used them at a period when he might assume, 
 without vanity, that he had taken his rank amongst the poets of his time. He 
 dedicates to the Earl of Southampton something that had not before been given 
 to the world. He calls his verses " unpolished lines ; " he vows to take advari. 
 
 3fi5
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPilRE : 
 
 tage of all idle hours till he had honoured the young patron of the Muses with 
 "some graver labour." But invention was received then, as it was afterwards, 
 as the highest quality of the poet. Dry den says, — " A poet is a maker, as the 
 word signifies ; and he who cannot make, that is invent, hath his name for 
 nothing." We consider, therefore, that " my invention " is not the language 
 of cne unknown to fame. He was exhibiting the powers which he possessed 
 upon a different instrument than that to which the world was accustomed ; but 
 the world knew that the power existed. We employ the word genius always 
 with reference to the inventive or creative faculty. Substitute the word genius 
 for invention, and the expression used by Shakspere sounds like arrogance. 
 But the substitution may indicate that the actual expression could not have 
 been used by one who came forward for the first time to claim the honours 
 of the poet. It has been argued from this expression that Shakspere had 
 produced nothing original before the Venus and Adonis — that up to the period 
 of its publication, in 1593, he was only a repairer of the works of other men. 
 We hold that the expression implies the direct contrary. 
 The dreary summer of 1593 has passed away ; 
 
 " And on old Hyems' chin, and icy crown, 
 An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 
 Is, as in mockery, set." 
 
 From the 1st of August in that year to the following Christmas the Queen was 
 at Windsor. The plague still raged in London, and the historian gravely 
 records, amongst the evils of the time, that Bartholomew Fair was not held. 
 Essex was at Windsor during this time, and probably the young Southampton, 
 was there also. It was a long period for the Court to remain in one place. 
 Elizabeth was afraid of the plague in the metropolis ; and upon a page dying 
 within the castle on the 21st of November, she was about to rush away from the 
 pure air which blew around the "proud keep." But "the lords and ladies 
 who were accommodated so well to their likings had persuaded the Queen to 
 suspend her removal from thence till she should see some other effect." * Living 
 in the dread of " infection," we may believe that the Queen would require 
 amusement ; and that the Lord Chamberlain's players, who had so long for- 
 borne to resort to the metropolis, might be gathered around her without any 
 danger from their presence. If so, was the Midsummer Night's Dream one of 
 the novelties which her players had to produce ? But there was another novelty 
 which tradition tells us was written at the especial desire of the Queen herself 
 — a comedy which John Dennis altered in 1702, and then published with the 
 following statement: — "That this comedy was not despicable, I guessed for 
 several reasons : first, I knew very well that it had pleased one of the greatest 
 queens that ever was in the world — great not only for her wisdom in the arts of 
 government, but for her knowledge of polite learning, and her nice taste of the 
 drama ; for such a taste we may be sure she had, by the relish which she had of 
 the ancients. This comedy was written at her command, and by her direction, 
 
 • Lettor from Mr. Standen to Mr, Paeon, in Birch's ' Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth,' 
 3'JO
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 niul she was so eager to see it acted, that she commanded it to be finished in 
 fourteen days ; and was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased at 
 the representation." The plain statement of Dennis, "this comedy was written 
 at her command," was amplified by Rowe into the circumstantial relation that 
 Elizabeth was so well pleased with the character of Falstaft* in Henry IV. " that 
 she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love.' 
 Hence all the attempts, which have only resulted in confusion worse confounded, 
 to connect The Merry Wives of Windsor with Henry IV. We have stated this 
 question fully, and, we hope, impartially, in the Introductory Notice to The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor. Let us give one corroboration of the belief there 
 expressed, that the comedy was written in 1 593, or very near to that time ; tne 
 circumstance itself being somewhat of a proof that Shakspere was at Windsor 
 precisely at that period, and ready to obey the Queen's command that a comedy 
 suggested by herself should " be finished in fourteen days." 
 
 " Ben Jonson and he [Shakspere] did gather humours of men daily wherever 
 they came." So writes honest Aubrey. "The humour of the constable," which 
 Shakspere, according to the same authority, "happened to take at Grendon 
 in Bucks, which is on the road from London to Stratford," may find a paralle* 
 in mine host of the Garter of The Merry Wives of Windsor. We have little 
 doubt that the character was a portrait of a man well known to the courtiers, 
 and whose good-natured bustling importance was drawn out by the poet as he 
 passed many a cheerful evening of the winter of 1593 around his sea-coal fire. 
 We have shown that in all likelihood the "perplexity" of the host when he 
 lost his horses was a real event. Let us quote the cause of this perplexity from 
 the original sketch of The Merry Wives, as published in 1602. The unfortunate 
 host, who when he is told " Here be three gentlemen come from the Duke, the 
 stranger, sir, would have your horse," exclaims with wondrous glee " They 
 shall have my horses, Bardolph, they must come off, I'll sauce them," is now 
 " cozened." Sir Hugh, who has a spite against mine host, thus tells him the 
 ill news: "Where is mine Host of the Garter? Now, my Host, I would 
 desire you, look you now, to have a care of your entertainments, for there is 
 three sorts of cosen garmombles is cosen all the Host of Maidenhead and Read- 
 ings." Dr. Caius has previously told him " Dere be a Garman Duke come to 
 de Court has cosened all de host of Branford and Reading." We have pointed 
 out that in 1592 a German Duke did visit Windsor; and that he had a kind ot 
 passport from Lord Howard addressed to all justices of peace, mayors, and 
 bailiffs, expressing that it was her Majesty's pleasure " to see him furnished 
 with post-horses in his travel to the sea-side, and there to seek up such shipping, 
 he paying nothing for the same." We asked, was there any dispute about the 
 ultimate payment for the Duke's horses for which he was to pay nothing? We 
 have no doubt whatever that the author of The Merry Wives of Windsor 
 literally rendered the tale of mine host's perplexity for the amusement of the 
 Court. For who was the German Duke who visited Windsor in the autumn 
 of 1592? "His Serene Highness the Right Honourable Prince and Lord 
 Frederick Duke of Wiirtemburg and Teck, Count of Mumpelgart." The pass- 
 
 3G7
 
 WILLIAM SnAKSPEEE : 
 
 port of Lord Howard describes him as Count Mombeliard. And who are those 
 who have rid away with the horses? " Three sorts of cosen garmombles." One 
 device of the poets of that day for masking a real name under a fictitious was 
 to invert the order of the syllables ; thus, in the ' Shepherd's Calendar ' Algrind 
 stands for Archbishop Grindal, and Morel for Elmor, Bishop of London. In 
 Lodge's ' Fig for Momus,' we also find Donroy for Matthew Roydon, and Ringde 
 for Dering. Precisely according to this method Garaiomble is Momble^crr — 
 Mumpelgart.* We think this is decisive as to the allusion ; and that the allusion 
 is decisive as to the date of the play. What would be a good joke when the 
 Court was at Windsor in 1593, with the visit of the Duke fresh in the memory 
 of the courtiers, would lose its point at a later period. Let us fix then the per- 
 formance of The Merry Wives of Windsor at that period when Elizabeth 
 remained five months in her castle, repressing her usual desire to progress from 
 
 • We arc indebted for this suggestion to i\ correspondent to whom we offer our best thacks. 
 
 
 tfe 
 
 •"' -
 
 a MOGBAPirr. 
 
 county to county, cr to move from palace to palace. She has completed hei 
 noble terrace, with its almost unrivalled prospect of beauty and fertility. Her 
 gallery too is finished, whose large bay window looks out upon the same mag- 
 nificent, landscape. The comedy, which probably arose out of some local inci- 
 dent, abundantly provocative of courtly gossip and merriment, has hastily been 
 produced. The hand of the master is yet visible in it. Its allusions, contrary 
 to the wont of the author, are all local, and therefore agreeable to his audience. 
 As his characters hover about Frogmore, with its farm-house where Anne Page 
 is a-feasting ; as Falstaff meets his most perilous adventure in Datchet Mead ; 
 as Mistress Anne and her fairies crouch in the castle ditch, — the poet shows 
 that he has made himself familiar with the scenes where the Queen delighted 
 to dwell. The characters, too, are of the very time of the representation of the 
 play, perhaps more than one of them copied from actual persons. In the ori- 
 ginal sketch Shakspere hardly makes an attempt to transfer the scene to an 
 earlier period. The persons of the drama are all of them drawn from the rich 
 storehouse of the humours of the middle classes of his own day. We may 
 readily believe the tradition which tells us that the Queen was "very well 
 pleased at the representation." The compliment to her in association with 
 Windsor, in the last scene, where the drollery is surrounded with the most 
 appropriate poetry, sufficiently indicates the place at which the comedy was 
 performed, and the audience to whom it was presented : — 
 
 " About, about ; 
 Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out : 
 Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room, 
 That it may stand till the perpetual doom, 
 In state as wholesome as in state 't is fit ; 
 Worthy the owner, and the owner it." 
 
 This is one of the few passages which in the amended edition remain unaltered 
 from the original text. 
 
 Lira. 1 B 369
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 NOTE ON SHAKSPERE'S OCCUPATIONS IN 1593. 
 
 It may bo assumed with tolerable certainty that for nearly a year Shakspere was unemployed in hia 
 profession. "We have endeavoured to show in this chapter how he filled up some part of his leisure. 
 But with reference to his poetical labours it is scarcely necessary to infer that all his time was spent in 
 " lonely musing." A notion has been propounded that he personally visited Italy. In tbe Local 
 Illustrations to the Taming of the Shrew, and the Merchant of Venice, with which we were favoured 
 by Miss Mai'tineau, will be found some very striking proofs of Shakspere's intimate acquaintance, not 
 only with Italian manners, but with those minor particulars of tbe domestic life of Italy, such as the 
 furniture and ornaments of houses, which could scarcely be derived from books, nor, with reference to 
 their minute accuracy, from the conversation of those who had "swam in a gondola." These observa- 
 tions were communicated to us by our excellent friend, without any previous theorizing on the subject, 
 or any acquaintance with the opinions that had been just then advanced on this matter by Mr. Brown. 
 It is not our intention here to go over this ground again ; but it appears to us strongly confirmatory of 
 the belief that Shakspere did visit Italy, that in 1593 he might have been absent several months from 
 England without any interference with his professional pursuits. It is difficult to name any earlier 
 period of his life in which we can imagine him with the leisure and the command of means necessary 
 for such a journey. The subsequent part of the sixteenth century certainly left him no leisure. The 
 Merchant of Venice and Othello (in which there is also one or two remarkable indications of local 
 knowledge) were produced within a few years of 1593. The Taming of the Shrew probably belongs 
 to the exact period.
 
 \M 
 
 [The Globe Theatre. j 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 T II E GLOB E. 
 
 We have a distinct record when the theatres were re-opened after the plague. 
 The 'Diary' of Philip Henslowe records that " the Earl of Sussex his men' 
 acted 'Huon of Bordeaux' on the 28th of December, 1593. Henslowe ap- 
 pears to have had an interest in this company. It is probable that Shakspere'a 
 theatre of the Blackfriars was opened about the same period. We have some 
 evidence to show what was the duration of the winter season at this theatre ; 
 for the same diary shows that from June, 1594, the performances of the theatre 
 2 B 2 S71
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 
 
 at Newington Butts were a joint undertaking by the Lord Admiral's men and 
 the Lord Chamberlain's men. How long this association of two companies 
 lasted is not easy to determine ; but during the month of June we have entries 
 of the exhibition of Andronicus, of Hamlet, and of The Taming of a Shrew 
 No subsequent entries exhibit the names of plays which have any real or appa- 
 rent connection with Shakspere.* It appears that in December, 1593, Richard 
 Burbage entered into a bond with Peter Streete, a carpenter, for the per- 
 formance on the part of Burbage of the covenants contained in an indenture of 
 agreement by which Streete undertook to erect a new theatre for Burbage's 
 company. This was the famous Globe on the Bankside, of which Shakspere 
 was unquestionably a proprietor. We thus see that in 1594 there were new 
 demands to be made upon his invention ; and we may reasonably conclude that 
 the reliance of Burbage and his other fellows upon their poet's unequalled 
 powers was one of their principal inducements to engage in this new enter- 
 prise. 
 
 In the midst of his professional engagements, which doubtless were renewed 
 with increased activity after their long suspension, Shakspere published his 
 Rape of Lucrece. He had vowed to take advantage of all idle hours till he 
 had honoured Lord Southampton with some graver labour than the first heir 
 of his invention. The Venus and Adonis was entered in the Registers of the 
 Stationers' Company on the 18th of April, 1593. The Lucrece appears in the 
 same Registers on the 9th of May, 1594. That this elaborate poem was wholly 
 or in part composed in that interval of leisure which resulted from the shutting 
 of the theatres in 1593 may be reasonably conjectured; but it is evident that 
 during the year which had elapsed between the publication of the first and the 
 second poem, Shakspere had been brought into more intimate companionship 
 with his noble patron. The language of the first dedication is that of distant 
 respect, the second is that of grateful friendship : — 
 
 " To the Rigid Honourable Henry Wriothcshj, Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield. 
 
 " The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end ; whereof this pamphlet, without begin- 
 ning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the 
 worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I 
 have to do is yours ; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty 
 woidd show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life, 
 still lengthened with all happiness. Your Lordship's in all duty, 
 
 " Williaji Shakespeare." 
 
 Henry Wriothesly was born October 6th, 1573. His grandfather, the first 
 Earl, was the celebrated Chancellor of Henry VIII., a fortunate statesman and 
 lawyer, whose memory, however he was lauded by his contemporaries, is in- 
 famously associated with the barbarous cruelties of that age in the torture of 
 the heroic Ann Askew. His son Henry, the second Earl, bred up by his father 
 in the doctrines opposed to the Reformation, adhered with pertinacity to the 
 old forms of religion, and was of course shut out from the honours and employ- 
 
 * See our Introductory Notice to Hamlet. 
 372
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ments of the government. He was unmolested, however, till his partisanship 
 in the cause of Mary Queen of Scots occasioned his imprisonment in the Tower, 
 in 1572. The house in which his father the Chancellor dwelt was also his 
 London residence ; and its site is still indicated by the name of Southampton 
 Buildings. In Aggas's map the mansion appears to have been backed by ex- 
 tensive gardens. Gervase Markham, in his curious book, printed in 1624, 
 entitled 'Honour in his Perfection; or, a Treatise in Commendation of the 
 Vertues and Renowned Vertuous Vndertakings of the Illustrious and Heroicall 
 Princes Henry Earle of Oxenford, Henry Earle of Southampton, Robert Earle 
 of Essex, &c.,' thus describes the state with which the father of Shakspere's 
 friend was surrounded :— " His muster-roll never consisted of four lackeys and 
 a coachman, but of a whole troop of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen 
 and yeomen ; he was not known in the streets by guarded liveries, but by gold 
 chains ; not by painted butterflies, ever running as if some monster pursued 
 them, but by tall goodly fellows, that kept a constant pace, both to guard his 
 person and to admit any man to their lord which had serious business." The 
 pomp with which he was encircled might in some degree have compensated for 
 the absence of courtly splendour. But he lived not long to enjoy his solitary 
 dignity, or, as was sufficiently probable, to conform to the opinions which 
 might have opened to him the road to the honours of the crown. He died in 
 1581, leaving two children, Henry and Mary. The boy earl was only eight 
 years old at the death of his father. During his long minority the accumula- 
 tion of the family property must have been great : and we may thus believe 
 that the general munificence of his patronage in after-life has not been over- 
 rated. He appears to have had careful guardians, who taught him that there 
 were higher honours to be won than those which his rank and wealth gave 
 him. At the age of twelve he became a student of St. John's College, Cam- 
 bridge ; and four years afterwards took the degree of Master of Arts by the 
 usual exercises.* He subsequently became, according to one account, a mem- 
 ber of Gray's Inn. At the period when Shakspere dedicated to him his Venus 
 and Adonis, he was scarcely twenty years of age. He is supposed to have 
 become intimate with Shakspere from the circumstance that his mother had 
 married Sir Thomas Hencage, who filled the office of Treasurer of the Chamber, 
 and in the discharge of his official duties would be brought into frequent inter- 
 course with the Lord Chamberlain's players. This is Drake's theory. The 
 more natural belief appears to be that he had a strong attachment to literature, 
 and, with the generous impetuosity of his character, did not regard the distinc- 
 tions of rank to the extent with which they were regarded by men of colder 
 temperaments and more worldly minds. Shakspere appears to have been the 
 first amongst the writers of his day that offered a public tribute to the merits 
 of the young nobleman. Both the dedications, and especially that of Lucrece, 
 are conceived in a modest and a manly spirit, entirely different from the ordi- 
 nary language of literary adulation. Nash, who dedicates a little book to him 
 
 * " Cum prius dieputssset public^ pro gradu." — Harleian MS. 7133. 
 
 H72
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPLRE : 
 
 at the same period, after calling him "a dear lover and cherisher, as well of 
 the lovers of poets as of poets themselves," gives us one of the many proofs 
 that the characters of satirist and flatterer may have some affinity : — *' Incom- 
 prehensible is the height of your spirit, both in heroic resolution and matters 
 of conceit. Unreprievably perisheth that book whatsoever to waste paper which 
 on the diamond rock of your judgment disasterly chanceth to be shipwracked." 
 Gervase Markham, who many years after became the elaborate panegyrist of 
 Southampton, dedicates a tragedy to him in the following sonnet, in 1595 : — 
 
 " Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill, 
 Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious ]>en ; 
 Bright lamp of virtue, in whose sacred skill 
 Lives all the bliss of ears-enchanting men : 
 
 From graver subjects of thy grave assays. 
 Bend thy courageous thoughts unto these lines ; 
 The grave from whence mine humble Muse doth raise 
 True honour's spirit in her rough designs : 
 
 And when the stubborn stroke of my harsh song 
 Shall seasonless glide through almighty ears, 
 Vouchsafe to sweet it with thy blessed tongue, 
 Whose well-tun'd sound stills music in the spheres : 
 
 So shall my tragic lays be blest by thee, 
 
 And from thy lips suck their eternity." 
 
 This hyperbolical praise is something different from Shakspere's simple expres- 
 sions of respect and devotion in the dedication to the Lucrece. There is evi- 
 dence in that dedication of a higher sort of intercourse between the two minds 
 than consists with any forced adulation of any kind, and especially with any 
 extravagant compliments to the learning and to the abilities of a superior in 
 rank. Such testimonies are always suspicious ; and probably honest old Florio, 
 when he dedicated his 'World of Words' to the Earl in 1598, shows pretty 
 correctly what the race of panegyrists expected in return for their compliments : 
 " In truth, I acknowledge an entire debt, not only of my best knowledge, but of 
 all ; yea of more than I know, or can to your bounteous lordship, in whose pay 
 and patronage I have lived some years ; to whom I owe and vow the years I 
 have to live. But, as to me, and many more, the glorious and gracious sun- 
 shine of your honour hath infused light and life." There is an extraordinary 
 anecdote told by Rowe of Lord Southampton's munificence to Shakspere, which 
 seems to bring the poet somewhat near to Florio's plain-speaking association of 
 pay and patronage : — " What grace soever the Queen conferred upon him, it 
 was not to her only he owed the fortune which the reputation of his wit made. 
 He had the honour to meet with many great and uncommon marks of favour 
 and friendship from the Earl of Southampton, famous in the histories of that 
 time for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Essex. It was to that noble 
 lord that he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis. There is one instance 
 so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakspeare's, that if I had not 
 been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who 
 art
 
 A BIOGRAPIIY. 
 
 -vas probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured 
 to have inserted ; that my Lord Southampton it one time gave him a thousand 
 pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a 
 mind to. A bounty very great, and very rare at any time, and almost equal to 
 that profuse generosity the present age has shown to French dancers and Italian 
 singers."* This is one of the many instances in which we are not warranted 
 in rejecting a tradition, however we may look suspiciously upon the accuracy of 
 its details. D'Avenant could scarcely be very well acquainted with Shak- 
 spere's affairs, for he was only ten years old when Shakspere died. The sum 
 mentioned as the gift of the young nobleman to the poet is so large, looking at 
 the value of money in those days, that it could scarcely consist with the inde- 
 pendence of a generous spirit to bear the load of such a prodigality of bounty. 
 The notions of those days were, however, different from ours. Examples will 
 readily suggest themselves of the most lavish rewards bestowed by princes and 
 nobles upon great painters. They received such gifts without any compromise 
 of their intellectual dignity. It was the same then with poets. The public, 
 now the best patron, was then but a sorry paymaster; and the great stepped 
 in to give the price for a dedication as they would purchase any other gratifi- 
 cation of individual vanity. According to the habits of the time, Shakspere 
 might have received a large gift from Lord Southampton, without any for- 
 feiture of his self-respect. Nevertheless, Rowe's story must still appear suffi- 
 ciently apocryphal : " My Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand 
 pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a 
 mind to." It is not necessary to account for the gradual acquisition of property 
 by Shakspere that we should yield our assent to this tradition, without some 
 qualification. In 1589, when Lord Southampton was a lad at College, Shak- 
 spere had already acquired that property which was to be the foundation of his 
 future fortune. He was then a shareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre. That 
 the adventure was a prosperous one, not only to himself but to his brother 
 shareholders, may be inferred from the fact that four years afterwards they 
 began the building of another theatre. The Globe was commenced in De- 
 cember, 1593 ; and being constructed for the most part of wood, was ready to be 
 opened, we should imagine, in the summer of 1594. In 1596 the same pros- 
 perous company were prepared to expend considerable sums upon the repair 
 and extension of their original theatre, the Blackfriars. The name of Shak- 
 spere occupies a prominent position in the document from which we collect this 
 fact : it is a petition to the Lords of the Privy Council from " Thomas Pope, 
 Richard Burbadge, John Hemings, Augustine Philips, William Shakespeare. 
 William Kempe, William Slye, Nicholas Tooley, and others, servants to the. 
 Right Honorable the Lord Chamberlain to her Majesty;" and it sets forth that 
 they are " the owners and players of the private theatre in the Blackfriars ; 
 that it hath fallen into decay; and that it has been found necessary to make 
 the same more convenient for the entertainment of auditories coming thereto." 
 
 * Rowe's ' Life of Shakspeare.' 
 
 375
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSl'ERE. 
 
 It then states what is important to the present question : — " To this end 
 your petitioners have all and each of them put down sums of money according 
 to their shares in the said theatre, and which they have justly and honestly 
 gained by the exercise of their quality ot stage-players." It then alleges that 
 certain inhabitants of the precinct had besought the Cr ; 'ancil not to allow the 
 said private house to remain open, "but hereafter to be shut up and closed, to 
 the manifest and great injury of your petitioners, who have no other means 
 whereby to maintain their wives and families, but by the exercise of their 
 quality as they have heretofore done." The common proprietorship of the 
 company in the Globe and Blackfriars is also noticed : — " In the summer season 
 your petitioners are able to play at their new-built house on the Bankside, 
 called the Globe, but in the winter they are compelled to come to the Black- 
 friars." If the winter theatre be shut up, they say they will be " unable to 
 practise themselves in any plays or interludes when called upon to perform for 
 the recreation and solace of her Majesty and her honourable Court, as they have 
 been heretofore accustomed." Though the Registers of the Council and the 
 Office-books of the Treasurer of the Chamber are wanting for this exact period, 
 we have here the distinct evidence of the intimate relation between Shakspere's 
 company and the Court. The petitioners, in concluding by the prayer that 
 their " honourable Lordships will grant permission to finish the reparations 
 and alterations they have begun," add as a reason for this favour that they 
 " have hitherto been well ordered in their behaviour and just in their deal- 
 ings."* The performances at the Blackfriars went on without interruption. 
 Shakspere, in 1597, bought "all that capital messuage or tenement in Stratford 
 called the New Place." This appears to have been his first investment in pro- 
 perty distinct from his theatrical speculations. The purchase of the best house 
 in his native town, at a period of his life when his professional occupations 
 could have allowed him little leisure to reside in it, would appear to have had 
 in view an early retirement from a pursuit which probably was little agreeable 
 to him. His powers as a dramatic writer might be profitably exercised with- 
 out being associated with the actor's vocation. We know from other circum- 
 stances that at this period Stratford was nearest to his heart. On the 24th of 
 January, 1598, Mr. Abraham Sturley, an alderman of Stratford, writes to his 
 brother-in-law, Richard Quiney, then in London : — " I would write nothing 
 unto you now — but come home. I pray God send you comfortably home. 
 This is one special remembrance, from youv father's motion. It seemeth by 
 him that our countryman Mr. Shakspere is willing to disburse some money 
 upon some odd yard land or other at Shottery, or near about us. He thinketh 
 it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the 
 instructions you can give him thereof, and by the friends he can make there- 
 fore, we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and not impossible to hit. It 
 obtained, would advance him indeed, and would do us much good." We thus 
 see that in a year after the purchase of New Place, Shakspere's accumulation 
 
 * The petition is printed in Mr. Collier's 'Annals of the Stage,' vol. i., p. 298. 
 S7G
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 of money was going on. The worthy aldermen and his connections appear to 
 look confidently to their countryman, Mr. Shakspere, to assist them in their 
 needs. On the 4th of November, in the same year, Sturley again writes a very 
 long letter " to his most loving brother, Mr. Richard Quiney, at the Bell, in 
 Carter Lane, in London," in which he says of a letter written by Quiney to 
 him on the 21st of October, that it imported, amongst other matters, " that our 
 countryman Mr. W. Shakspere would procure us money, which I well like of, 
 as I shall hear when, and where, and how ; and I pray let not go that occasion, 
 if it may sort to any indifferent conditions." Quiney himself at this very time 
 writes the following characteristic letter to his "loving good friend and coun- 
 tryman, Mr. "William Shakspere : " — " Loving countryman, I am bold of you as 
 of a friend, craving your help with thirty pounds upon Mr. Bushell and my 
 security, or Mr. Myttens with me. Mr. Rosswell is not come to London as 
 yet, and I have especial cause. You shall friend me much in helping me out 01 
 all the debts I owe in London, I thank God, and much quiet to my mind which 
 would not be indebted. I am now towards the Court in hope your answer for 
 the dispatch of my business. You shall neither lose credit nor money by me, 
 the Lord willing ; and now but persuade yourself so as I hope, and you shall 
 not need to fear but with all hearty thankfulness I will hold my time, and 
 content your friend, and if we bargain farther, you shall be the paymaster 
 yourself. My time bids me to hasten to an end, and so I commit this to your 
 care and hope of your help. I fear I shall not be back this night from the 
 Court. Haste. The Lord be with you and with us all. Amen. From the Bell 
 in Carter Lane, the 25th October, 1598. Yours in all kindness, Rye. Quiney.' 
 The anxious dependence which these honest men appear to have upon the good 
 offices of their townsman is more satisfactory even than the evidence which 
 their letters afford of his worldly condition. 
 
 In the midst of this prosperity the registers of the parish of Stratford-upon- 
 Avon present to us an event which must have thrown a shade over the brightest 
 prospects. 
 
 This is the register of the burial of the only son of the poet in 1596. Hamnet 
 was born on the 2nd of February, 1585; so that at his death he was eleven 
 years and six months old. He was a twin child ; and it is not unlikely that he 
 was constitutionally weak. Some such cause interfered probably with the edu- 
 cation of the twin-sister Judith ; for whilst Susanna, the elder, is recorded to 
 have been " witty above her sex," and wrote a firm and vigorous hand, as we 
 may judge from her signature to a deed in 1639,
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 -y^A u4H) a U a£L 
 
 the. mark of Judith appears as an attesting witness to a conveyance in 1611, 
 
 GL\& 
 
 Shakspere himself has given us a most exquisite picture of a boy, who, like hia 
 own Hamnet, died young, in whom the imaginative faculty was ail -predominant. 
 Was this a picture of his own precocious child ? 
 
 " Her. Take the boy to you : he so troubles me, 
 'T is past enduring. 
 
 1 Lady. Come, my gracious lord, 
 
 Shall I be your playfellow ? 
 
 Mam. No, I '11 none of you. 
 
 1 Lady. Why, my sweet lord ? 
 
 Mam. You '11 kiss me hard ; and speak to me as if 
 I were a baby still. — I love you better. 
 
 2 Lady. And why so, my lord ? 
 
 Mam. Not for because 
 
 Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say, 
 Become some women best ; so that there be not 
 Too much hair there, but in a semi-circle, 
 Or a half moon made with a pen. 
 
 2 Lady. Who taught you thia ? 
 
 Mam. I learn'd it out of women's faces. — Pray, now, 
 What colour are your eyebrows ? 
 
 1 Lady. Blue, my lord. 
 
 375
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Mam. Nay, that 's a mock : I have seen a lady's noae 
 That has been blue, but not her eyebrows." 
 
 "Her. What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now 
 I am for you again : Pray you, sit by us, 
 And tell 's a tale. 
 
 Mam. Merry, or sad, shall 't be ? 
 
 Tier. As merry as you will. 
 
 Mam. A sad tale 's best for winter : 
 
 I have one of sprites and goblins. 
 
 Her. Let 's have that, good sir. 
 
 Come on, sit down : — Come on, and do your best 
 To fright me with your sprites : you 're powerful at it. 
 
 Mam. There was a man 
 
 Her. Nay, come, sit down ; then on. 
 
 Mam. Dwelt by a churchyard ; —I will tell it softly ; 
 Yon crickets shall not hear it. 
 
 Her. Come on then, 
 
 And give 't in mine ear." * 
 
 With the exception of this inevitable calamity, the present period may pro 
 bably be regarded as a happy epoch in Shakspere's life. He had conquered any 
 adverse circumstances by which his earlier career might have been impeded. 
 He had taken his rank among the first minds of his age ; and, above all, his 
 pursuits were so engrossing as to demand a constant exercise of his faculties, 
 but to demand that exercise in the cultivation of the highest and the most 
 pleasurable thoughts. This was the period to which belong the great histories 
 of Richard II., Richard III., and Henry IV., and the delicious comedies of the 
 Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, and Twelfth Night. These 
 productions afford the most abundant evidence that the greatest of intellects 
 was in the most healthful possession of its powers. These were not hasty 
 adaptations for the popular appetite, as we may well believe some of the earlier 
 plays were in their first shape ; but highly-wrought performances, to which all 
 the method of his cultivated art had been strenuously applied. It was at this 
 period that the dramatic poet appears not to have been satisfied with the ap- 
 plause of the Globe or the Blackfriars, or even with the gracious encourage- 
 ments of a refined Court. During three years he gave to the world careful 
 editions of some of these plays, as if to vindicate the drama from the pedantic 
 notion that the Muses of tragedy and comedy did not meet their sisters upon 
 equal ground. Richard II. and Richard III. were published in 1597 ; Love's 
 Labour's Lost, and Henry IV., Part I., in 1598 ; Romeo and Juliet, corrected and 
 augmented, in 1599; Henry IV., Part II., the Merchant of Venice, A Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream, and Much Ado about Nothing, in 1600. The system of pub- 
 lication then ceased. It no doubt interfered with the interests of his fellows ; 
 and Shakspere was not likely to assert an exclusive interest, or to gratify an 
 exclusive pride, at the expense of his associates. But his reputation was higher 
 than that of any other man, when only four of his plays were accessible to the 
 readers of poetry. In 1598 it was proclaimed, not timidly or questionably, that 
 
 * Winter's Tale, Act II., So. I.
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 " as Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for tragedy and comedy among 
 die Latins, so Shakespeare, among the English, is the most excellent in both 
 kinds for the stage :" and " As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in 
 Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey- 
 tongued Shakespeare."* It was certainly not at this period of Shakspere's life 
 that he wrote with reference to himself, unlocking his heart to some nameless 
 friend . — 
 
 u When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
 
 I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
 
 And trouble deaf Heaven -with my bootless cries, 
 
 And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 
 Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'^, 
 
 Desiriug this man's art, and that man's scope, 
 
 With what I most enjoy contented least ; 
 
 Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
 
 Haply I think on thee, — and then my state 
 
 (Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 
 From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate ; 
 For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings, 
 That then I scorn to change my state with kings." 
 
 Sonnets of Shakspere were in existence in 1598, when Meres tells us of "his 
 sugared sonnets among his private friends." We have entered so fully into the 
 question, whether these poems are to be considered autobiographical, that it 
 would be useless for us here to repeat an argument not hastily entered upon, or 
 carelessly set forth. We believe that the order in which they were printed is 
 an arbitrary one ; that some form a continu us poem or poems, that others are 
 Isolated in their subjects and the persons to whom they are addressed ; that 
 some may express the poet's personal feelings, that others are wholly fictitious, 
 dealing with imaginary loves and jealousies, and not attempting to separate the 
 personal identity of the artist from the sentiments which he expressed, and the 
 situations which he delineated. " We believe that, taken as works of art, having 
 a certain degree of continuity, the Sonnets of Spenser, of Daniel, of Drayton, 
 of Shakspere, although in m.my instances they might shadow forth real feel- 
 ings and be outpourings of the inmost heart, were presented to the world as 
 exercises of fancy, and were received by the world as such."f Even of those 
 portions of these remarkable relics which appear to have an obvious reference 
 to the poet's feelings and circumstances, we cannot avoid rejecting the principle 
 of continuity ; for they clearly belong to different periods of his life, if they are 
 the reflection of his real sentiments. We have the playfulness of an early love, 
 and the agonizing throes of an unlawful passion. They speak of a period when 
 the writer had won no honour or substantial rewards — " in disgrace with for- 
 tune and men's eyes," the period of his youth, if the allusion was at all real ; 
 ind yet the writer is 
 
 "With time's injurious hand crush' d and o'erworn." 
 
 1 Francis Mer<?s. t Illustrations of the Sonnets, Pictorial Edition, p. 114. 
 
 380
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 One little dedicatory poem says, 
 
 " Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage 
 Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, 
 To thee I send this written embassage, 
 To witness duty, not to show my wit." 
 
 Another (and it is distinctly associated with what we hold to be a continued 
 little poem, wholly fictitious, in which the poet dramatizes as it were the poeti- 
 cal character) boasts that 
 
 " Not marble, not the gilded monuments 
 Of princes shall outlive thi3 powerful rhyme." 
 
 Without attempting therefore to disprove that these Sonnets were addressed to 
 the Earl of Southampton, or to the Earl of Pembroke, we must leave the reader 
 who fancies he can find in them a shadowy outline of Shakspere's life to form 
 his own conclusion from their careful perusal. We have endeavoured, in our 
 analysis of these poems, to place before him all the facts which have relation to 
 the subject. But to preserve in this place the unity of our narrative with 
 reference to the period before us, we venture to reprint a passage from the 
 Illustrations to which we refer: "The 71st to the 74th Sonnets seem bursting 
 from a heart oppressed with a sense of its own unworthiness, and surrendered to 
 some overwhelming misery. There is a line in the 74th which points at suicide. 
 We cling to the belief that the sentiments here expressed are essentially dra- 
 matic. In the 32nd Sonnet, where we recognise the man Shakspere speaking in 
 his own modest and cheerful spirit, death is to come across his ' well contented 
 day.' The opinion which we have endeavoured to sustain of the probable admix- 
 ture of the artificial and the real in the Sonnets, arising from their supposed 
 original fragmentary state, necessarily leads to the belief that some are accurate 
 illustrations of the poet's situation and feelings. It is collected from these 
 Sonnets, for example, that his profession as a player was disagreeable to him ; 
 and this complaint is found amongst those portions which we have separated 
 from the series of verses which appear to us to be written in an artificial character. 
 It might be addressed to any one of his family, or some honoured friend, such as 
 Lord Southampton : — 
 
 ' 0, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
 The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 Than public means, which public manners breeds. 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.' 
 
 But if from his professional occupation his nature was felt by him to be subdued 
 to what it worked in, — if thence his name received a brand, — if vulgar scandal 
 sometimes assailed him, — he had high thoughts to console him, such as were 
 never before imparted to mortal. This was probably written in some period of 
 dejection, when his heart was ill at ease, and he looked upon the world with a 
 
 3S1
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 slight tinge of indifference, if not of dislike. Every man of high genius has 
 felt something of this. It was reserved for the highest to throw it off, ' like 
 dew-drops from the lion's mane.' But the profound self-abasement and de- 
 spondency of the 74th Sonnet, exquisite as the diction is, appear to us unreal, as 
 a representation of the mental state of William Shakspere ; written, as it most 
 probably was, at a period of his life when he revels and luxuriates (in the comedies 
 which belong to the close of the sixteenth century) in the spirit of enjoyment, rush- 
 ing from a heart full of love for his species, at peace with itself and with all the 
 world." 
 
 I Riflmrd Burbage.
 
 fc Li 
 
 [The Falcon Tavern.] 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WIT-COMBATS. 
 
 "Manv were the wit-combatg betwixt him and Ben Jonson ; which two 1 
 behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war : Master Jonson 
 (like the former) was built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow, in his per- 
 formances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but 
 lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage 
 of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." Such is Thomas 
 Fuller's well-known description of the convivial intercourse of Shakspere and 
 Jonson, first published in 1662. A biographer of Shakspere says, "The me- 
 mory of Fuller perhaps teemed with their sallies." That memory, then, must 
 have been furnished at secondhand ; for Fuller was not born till 1608. He 
 beheld them in his mind's eye only. Imperfect, and in many respects worth- 
 less, as the few traditions of these wit-combats are, there can be no doubt of the 
 companionship and ardent friendship of these two monarchs of the stage. Ful- 
 
 383
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEKE : 
 
 ler's fanciful comparison of their respective conversational powers is probably 
 to some extent a just one. The difference in the constitution of their minds, 
 and the diversity of their respective acquirements, would more endear each to 
 the other's society. 
 
 Rowe thus describes the commencement of the intercourse between Shak- 
 spere and Jonson : — " His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remark- 
 able piece of humanity and good nature. Mr. Jonson, who was at that time 
 altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, 
 in order to have it acted ; and the persons into whose hands it w ? as put, after 
 having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were just upon returning it 
 to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their com- 
 pany, when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so 
 well in it as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recom- 
 mend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public."* The tradition which Rowe 
 thus records is not supported by minute facts which have since become known. 
 In Henslowe's Diary of plays performed at his theatre, we have an entry under 
 the date of the 11th of May, 1597, of 'The Comedy of Humours.' This was 
 no doubt a new play, for it was acted eleven times ; and there can be little 
 question that it was Jonson's comedy of ' Every Man in his Humour.' A few 
 months after we have the following entry in the same document: — "Lent unto 
 Benjamin Jonson, player, the 22nd of July, 1597, in ready money, the sum of 
 four pounds, to be paid it again whensoever either I or my son shall demand 
 it." Again: " Lent unto Benjamin Jonson, the 3rd of December, 1597, upon a 
 book which he was to write for us before Christmas next after the date hereof, 
 which he showed the plot unto the company : I say, lent in ready money unto 
 him the sum of twenty shillings." On the 5th of January, 1598, Henslow r e 
 records in the same way the trifling loan of five shillings. An advance is also 
 made by Henslowe to his company on the 13th of August, 1598, "to buy a 
 book called ' Hot Anger soon cold,' of Mr. Porter, Mr. Chettle, and Benjamin 
 Jonson, in full payment, the sum of six pounds." We thus see, that in 1597 
 and 1598 there was an intimate connection of Jonson with the stage, but not 
 with Shakspere's company. It can scarcely be supposed that Jonson was a 
 writer for the stage earlier than 1597, and that the " remarkable piece of hu- 
 manity and good nature " recorded of Shakspere took place before the con- 
 nection of Jonson with Henslowe's theatre. He was born, according to Gifford, 
 in 1574. In January, 1G19, he sent a poetical "picture of himself" to Drum- 
 mond, in which these lines occur : — - 
 
 '•' My hundred of grey haira 
 Told six and forty years." 
 
 This would place his birth in 1573.f Drummond, in narrating Jonson's ac- 
 count of "his own life, education, birth, actions," up to the period in which we 
 have shown how dependent he was upon the advances of a theatrical manager, 
 
 * 'Life of Shakspeare.' 
 •f See 'Jonson's Conversations with Drnmmon<V published by the Shakespeare Society, 
 384
 
 A BIOOKAPHY. 
 
 thus writes : — " His grandfather came from Carlisle, and, he thought, from 
 Annandale to it: he served King Henry VIII., and was a gentleman. His 
 father lost all his estate under Queen Mary, having been cast in prison and for- 
 feited ; at last turned minister : so he was a minister's son. He himself was 
 posthumous born, a month after his father's decease ; brought up poorly, put to 
 school by a friend (his master Camden) ; after, taken from it, and put to another 
 craft (I think was to be a wright or bricklayer), which he could not endure ; 
 then went he to the Low Countries ; but returning soon, he betook himself to his 
 wonted studies. In his service in the Low Countries, he had, in the face of 
 both the camps, killed an enemy and taken opima spolia from him ; and since 
 his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adver- 
 sary which had hurt him in the arm, and whose sword was ten inches longer 
 than his ; for the which he was imprisoned, and almost at the gallows. Then 
 took he his religion by trust, of a priest who visited him in prison. Thereafter 
 he was twelve years a Papist." Aubrey says in his random way, " He killed 
 Mr. Marlowe the poet on Bunhill, coming from the Green Curtain Playhouse." 
 We know where Marlowe was killed, and when he was killed. He was slain at 
 Deptford in 1593. Gifford supposes that this tragical event in Jonson's life 
 took place in 1595; but the conjecture is set aside by an indisputable account of 
 the fact. Philip Henslowe, writing to his son-in-law Alleyn on the 26th of 
 September, 1598, says, " Since you were with me I have lost one of my com- 
 pany, which hurteth me greatly, that is Gabrell [Gabriel], for he is slain in 
 Hogsden Fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer ; therefore I 
 would fain have a little of your counsel, if I could."* This event took place 
 then, we see, exactly at the period when Jonson was in constant intercourse 
 with Henslowe's company ; and it probably arose out of some quarrel at the 
 theatre that he was " appealed to the fields." The expression of Henslowe, 
 "Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer," is a remarkable one. It is inconsistent with 
 Jonson's own declaration, that after his return from the Low Countries he "be- 
 took himself to his wonted studies." We believe that Henslowe, under the 
 excitement of that loss for which he required the counsel of Alleyn, used it as 
 a term of opprobrium, that was familiar to his company. Dekker, who was a 
 writer for Henslowe's theatre, and who in 1599 was associated with Jonson in 
 the composition of two plays, ridicules his former friend and colleague, in 1602, 
 as a "poor lime and hair rascal," — as one who ambled "in a leather pilch by a 
 play-waggon in the highway" — "a foul-fisted mortar-treader " — "one famous 
 for killing a player " — one whose face " looks for all the world like a rotten 
 russet-apple when it is bruised" — whose "goodly and glorious nose was blunt, 
 blunt, blunt" — who is asked, " how chance it passeth that you bid good bye to 
 an honest trade of building chimnies and laying down bricks for a worse handi- 
 craftness?" — who is twitted with "dost stamp, mad Taraburlaine, dost stamp; 
 thou think'st thou'st mortar under thy feet, dost ? " — one whose face was 
 'punched full of eyelet-holes like the cover of a warming-pan" — "a hollow- 
 cheeked scrasi." It is evident from all this abuse, which we transcribe as the 
 
 o 
 
 * Letter iu Dulwich Colloge, quoted in Collier's ' Memoirs of Alleyn.' 
 Liff. 2 C 385
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 passages occur in Dekker's ' Satiro-Mastix, that the poverty, the personal 
 appearance, and, above all, the original occupation of Jonson, exposed him to 
 the vulgar ridicule of some of those with whom he was brought into contact at 
 the theatre. They did not feel as honest old Fuller felt, when, describing 
 Jonson, being in want of maintenance, as " fain to return to the trade of his 
 father-in-law," the old chronicler of the Worthies says — "Let not them blush 
 that have, but those who have not, a lawful calling." We can thus understand 
 what Henslowe means when he says " Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer." In the 
 autumn of 1598 the bricklayer-poet was lying in prison. At the Christmas of 
 that year ' Every Man in his Humour,' greatly altered from the original sketch 
 produced by Henslowe's company, was brought out by the Lord Chamberlain's 
 company at the Blackfriars. The doors of Henslowe's theatre on the Bankside 
 were probably shut against the man who had killed Gabriel, " whose sword was 
 ten inches longer than his." There seems to have been an effort on the part of 
 some one to console the unhappy prisoner under his calamity. He was a writer 
 for a rival theatre, receiving its advances up to the 13th of August, 1598. 
 His improved play was brought out by the company of a theatre which stood 
 much higher in the popular and the critical estimation a few months after- 
 wards. There was an act of friendship somewhere. May we not believe that 
 this proud man, who seems to have been keenly alive to neglect and injury — 
 who says that " Daniel was at jealousies with him," — that " Drayton feared 
 him" — that "he beat Marston, and took his pistol from him" — that "Sir 
 William Alexander was not half kind unto him " — that " Markham was but a 
 base fellow " — that " such were Day and Middleton," — that " Sharpham, Day, 
 Dekker, were all rogues, and that Minshew was one," — that " Abraham Francis 
 was a fool"* — may we not believe that some deep remembrance of unusual 
 kindness induced him to write of Shakspere, " I loved the man, and do honour 
 his memory on this side idolatry as much "iS any. He was indeed honest, and 
 of an open and free nature?" We have no hesitation in abiding by the com- 
 mon sense of Gifford, who treated with ineffable scorn all that has been written 
 about Jonson's envy, and malignity, and coldness towards Shakspere. We 
 believe with him " that no feud, no jealousy ever disturbed their connection ; 
 that Shakspere was pleased with Jonson, and that Jonson loved and admired 
 Shakspere." They worked upon essentially different principles of art ; they 
 had each their admirers and disciples ; but the field in which they laboured was 
 large enough for both of them, and they each cultivated it after his own fashion. 
 With the exception of such occasional quarrels as those between Jonson and 
 Dekker, the poets of that time lived as a generous brotherhood, whose cordial 
 intercourse might soften many of the rigours of their worldly lot. Jonson was 
 by nature proud, perhaps arrogant. His struggles with penury had made him 
 proud. He had the inestimable possession of a well-educated boyhood ; he had 
 the consciousness of great abilities and great acquirements. He was thrown 
 amongst a band of clever men, some of whom perhaps laughed, as Dekker un- 
 worthily did, at his honest efforts to set himself above the real disgrace of earn- 
 
 « All those passages are extracted from his conversations with Drunimond. 
 380
 
 [Jonson.] 
 
 ing his bread by corrupt arts ; who ridiculed his pimpled face, his " one eye 
 lower than t'other," and his " coat like a coachman's coat, with slips under the 
 arm-pits." So Aubrey describes him who laid down laws of criticism, and 
 married music and painting to the most graceful verse. But when the brick- 
 layer had the gratification of seeing his first comedy performed by the Lord 
 Chamberlain's company, to 
 
 " Sport with human follies, not with crimes," 
 
 there was one amongst that company strong enough to receive with kindliness 
 even the original prologue, in which the romantic drama, perhaps some of his 
 own plays, were declaimed against by one who belonged to another school of 
 art. Shakspere could not doubt that a man of vigorous understanding .had 
 arisen up to devote himself to the exhibition of "popular errors," — humours — 
 passing accidents of life and character. He himself worked upon more endur- 
 ing materials ; but he would nevertheless see that there was one fitted to deal 
 with the comedy of manners in a higher spirit than had yet been displayed. 
 Not only was the amended ' Every Man in his Humour ' acted by Shakspere's 
 2 C 2 387
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEIIE : 
 
 company, Shakspere himself taking one of the characters ; but the second comedy 
 from the same satirist was first produced by that company in 1599. When the 
 author, in his Induction, exclaims 
 
 " If any here chance to behold himself, 
 Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong ; 
 For, if he shame to have his follies known, 
 First he should shame to act 'em : my strict hand 
 Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe 
 Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls 
 As lick up every idle vanity," — 
 
 the poet who "was not for an age, but for all time," — he, especially, who never 
 once comes before the audience in his individual character, — might gently smile at 
 these high pretensions. But he would stretch out the hand of cordial friendship to 
 the man ; for he was in earnest — his indignation against vice was an honest one. 
 Though a little personal vanity might peep out — though the satirist might " venture 
 on the stage when the play is ended to exchange courtesies and compliments with 
 gallants in the lord's rooms, to make all the house rise up in arms and to cry, — 
 That's Horace, that's he, that's he, that's he, that pens and purges humours and 
 diseases," * Shakspere's congratulations on the success of Asper — for so Jonson de- 
 lighted to call himself — would come from the heart. An evening at the Falcon 
 might fitly conclude such a first play. 
 
 The things " done at the Mermaid " were not as yet. Francis Beaumont, who 
 has made them immortal by his description, was at this period scarcely sixteen 
 years of age. His ' Letter to Jonson ' may, however, give us the best notion of 
 the earlier convivial intercourse of some of the illustrious band to whom the young 
 dramatist refers : — 
 
 " Methinks the little wit I had is lost 
 Since I saw you ; for wit is like a rest 
 Held up at tennis, which men do the best 
 With the best gamesters : what things have we seen 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble, and so full of subtile flame, 
 As if that every one from whence they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
 And had resolv'd to live a fool the rest 
 Of his dull life ; then when there hath been thrown 
 Wit able enough to justify the town 
 For three days past — wit that might warrant be 
 For the whole city to talk foolishly 
 Till that were cancell'd : and when that was gone, 
 We left an air behind us, which alone 
 Was able to make the two next companies 
 Right witty : though but downright fools, mere wise." 
 
 The play at the Blackfriars would be over at five o'clock. The gallants who 
 came from the ordinary to the playhouse would have dined ; and so would the 
 players. At three the play commenced ; and an audience more rational than 
 
 * Satiro-Miwth:. 
 388
 
 A HIOGHAPHY. 
 
 those of our own times as to the quantity of amusement which they demanded 
 would be quite satisfied with the two hours' exhibition : — 
 
 " Those that come to see 
 Only a show or two, and so agree 
 The play may pass, if they be still and willing, 
 I '11 undertake may see away their shilling 
 Richly in two short hours." * 
 
 Out of the smoke and glare of the torches (for in the private theatres the win- 
 dows were closed so as to exclude the day) would the successful author and 
 his friends come forth into the grey light of a January evening. f The Black- 
 friars Stairs are close at hand. John Taylor the water-poet was then a very 
 young man ; but the apprentice of the Thames might be there, with the ambi- 
 tion already developed to be the ferryman to the wits and actors from the Black- 
 friars to the Bankside. The "gentlemanlike sculler," as he was subsequently 
 called, might listen even then with a chuckling delight to the sallies of " Master 
 Benjamin Jonson," whom some eighteen years afterwards he wrote of as " my 
 long-approved and assured good friend " — generous withal beyond his means, 
 for " at my taking leave of him he gave me a piece of gold and two-and-twenty 
 shillings to drink his health." % The merry party are soon landed at Paris 
 Garden, and walking up the lane, which was a very little to the east of the 
 present Blackfriars Bridge, they turn eastward before they reach the old stone 
 cross, and in a minute or two are on the Bankside, close to the Falcon Inn, in 
 
 * Prologue to Henry VIII. 
 
 t It would appear from the Epilogue that ' Every Man out of his Humour' was acted at the 
 Globe ; and perhaps for the first time there. We are of course only here attempting a generalization 
 not literally accurate. 
 
 % Taylor's' Penniless Pilgrimage.' 
 
 [John Taylor.]
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 the liberty of the Clink. At a very short distance from this is the Bear Gar- 
 den, and a little farther eastward the Globe. Part of the Falcon Tavern was 
 standing in 1805, a short distance from the north end of Gravel-lane. Tradi- 
 tion holds it to have been the favourite resort of Shakspere and his companions. 
 It is highly probable. He was a householder in the Clink liberty ; but his 
 disposition was eminently social, and sociality was the fashion of those days — 
 in moderation, not a bad fashion. Gifford has noticed this with great justness : 
 " Domestic entertainments were, at that time, rare ; the accommodations of a 
 private house were ill calculated for the purposes of a social meeting ; and 
 taverns and ordinaries are therefore almost the only places in which we hear of 
 such assemblies. This, undoubtedly, gives an appearance of licentiousness to 
 the age, which, in strictness, does not belong to it. Long after the period of 
 which we are now speaking, we seldom hear of the eminent characters of the 
 day in their domestic circles."* Jonson laughs at his own disposition to con- 
 viviality in connection with his habitual abstemiousness : " Canary, the very 
 elixir and spirit of wine ! This is that our poet calls Castalian liquor, when 
 he comes abroad now and then, once in a fortnight, and makes a good meal 
 among players, where he has caninum appetitum ; marry, at home he keeps a 
 good philosophical diet, beans and buttermilk ; an honest pure rogue, he will 
 take you off three, four, five of these, one after another, and look villainously 
 when he has done, like a one-headed Cerberus. "f He puts these words into 
 the mouth of a buffoon. In his own person he speaks of himself in a nobler 
 strain : 
 
 " I that spend half my nights, and all my days, 
 Here in a cell to get a dark pale face, 
 To come forth worth the ivy and the bays ; 
 And, in this age, can hope no other grace." J 
 
 The alternations of excessive labour and joyous relaxation belong to the ener- 
 gies of the poetical temperament. Jonson has been accused of excess in his 
 pleasures. Drummond ill-naturedly says, " Drink is one of the elements in 
 which he liveth." But no one affirmed that in his convivial meetings there was 
 not something higher and better than sensual indulgence . 
 
 "Ah, Ben! 
 Say how, or when 
 Shall we thy guests 
 Meet at those lyric feasts, 
 
 Made at the Sun, 
 The Dog, the Triple Tun ? 
 Where we such clusters had, 
 As made us nobly wild, not mad ; 
 And yet each verse of thine 
 Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine." 
 
 * ' Memoirs of Ben JonsoD,' p. cxc. 
 t ' Every Man out of his Humour.* % The Poetaster. 
 
 § Herrick's ' HeBperides.' 
 K90
 
 A MOUliAl'UY'. 
 
 Amongst the group that might be assembled at the Falcon, let us first trace 
 the lineaments of Thomas Dekker. He has not yet quarrelled with Jonson. 
 He has no tbeen held up to contempt as Demetrius in the ' Poetaster,' nor re- 
 turned the satire with more than necessary vehemence in the Satiro-Mastix. 
 He is one who has looked upon the world with an observant eye ; one of whom 
 it has been said that his " pamphlets and plays alone would furnish a more 
 complete view of the habits and customs of his contemporaries in vulgar and 
 middle life than could easily be collected from all the grave annals of the. 
 times."* His 'Gull's Horn-Book ' has not yet appeared; but its writer can 
 season his talk with the most amusing relations of the humours of Paul's Walk, 
 of the ordinary, of the playhouse, of the tavern. He was not a very young man 
 at the period of which we write. In 1631 he says, " I have been a priest in 
 Apollo's temple many years ; my voice is decaying with my age." He is con- 
 fident in his powers ; and claims to be a satirist by as indefeasible a title as 
 that of his greater rival: — "I am snake-proof; and though, with Hannibal, 
 you bring whole hogsheads of vinegar-railings, it is impossible for you to 
 quench or come over my Alpine resolution. I will sail boldly and desperately 
 alongst the shores of the isle of Gulls ; and in defiance of those terrible block- 
 houses, their loggerheads, make a true discovery of their wild yet habitable 
 country." f He has many a joke against the gallants whom he has noted even 
 that afternoon sitting on the stage in all the glory of their coxcombry — on the 
 very rushes where the comedy is to dance, beating down the mews and hisses 
 of the opposed rascality. The proportionable leg, the white hand, the love- 
 lock of the essenced fop, have none of them passed unmarked. The red beard 
 artistically dyed according to the most approved fashion supplies many a 
 laugh ; especially if the wearer had risen to be gone in the middle of the scene, 
 saluting his gentle acquaintance to the discomfiture of the mimics. He, above 
 all, is quizzed who hoards up the play scraps upon which his lean wit most 
 savourily feeds in the presence of the Euphuesed gentlewomen. Dekker has 
 been that morning in Paul's Walk, in the Mediterranean Aisle. He has noted 
 one who walks there from day to day, even till lamp-light, for he is safe from 
 his creditors. One more fortunate parades his silver spurs in the open choir, 
 that he may challenge admiration as he draws forth his perfumed embroidered 
 purse to pay the forfeit to the surpliced choristers. Another is waited upon 
 by his tailor, who steps behind a pillar with his table-book to note the last 
 fashion which hath made its appearance there, and to commend it to his wor- 
 ship's admiration. Equally familiar is the satirist with the ordinary. He tells 
 of a most absolute gull that he has marked riding thither upon his Spanish 
 jennet, with a French lacquey carrying his cloak, who having entered the 
 public room walks up and down scornfully with a sneer and a sour face to pro- 
 mise quarrelling ; who, when he does speak, discourses how often this lady has 
 sent her coach for him, and how he has sweat in the tennis-court with that 
 lord. An unfledged poet, too, he has marked, who drops a sonnet out of the 
 large fold of his glove, which he at last reads to the company with a pretty 
 
 * ' Quarterly Review.' f 'Gull's Hornbook.' 
 
 391
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 counterfeit lothness. He has a story of the last gull whom he saw there 
 skeldered of his money at primero and hazard, who sat as patiently as a dis- 
 armed gentleman in the hands of the bailiffs. At the tavern he has drawn out 
 a country gentleman that has brought his wife to town to learn the fashions, 
 and see the tombs at Westminster, and the lions in the Tower ; and is already 
 glib with the names of the drawers, Jack and Will and Tom : the tavern is to 
 him so delightful, with its suppers, its Canary, its tobacco, and its civil hostess 
 at the bar, that it is odds but he will give up housekeeping. Above all, " the 
 satirical rogue " is familiar with the habits of those who hear the chimes at 
 midnight. He knows how they shun the waking watch and play tricks with 
 the sleeping, and he hears the pretenders to gentility call aloud Sir Giles, or 
 Sir Abraham, will you turn this way ? Every form of pretence is familiar to 
 him. He has watched his gull critical upon new books in a stationer's shop, 
 and has tracked him through all his vagaries at the tobacco ordinary, the 
 barber's, the fence-school, and the dancing-school. Thomas Dekker is certainly 
 one of those who gather humours from all men ; but his wit is not of the 
 highest or the most delicate character ; yet is he listened to and laughed at by 
 many of nobler intellect who say little. He knows the town, and he makes 
 the most of his knowledge. Though he is a " high flyer in wit," as Edward 
 Philipps calls him, yet is he a poet. At this very time he is engaged with 
 Henry Chettle and William Haughton in the composition of ' Patient Grissil ' 
 for Henslowe's theatre, in earnest of which they received three pounds of good 
 and lawful money on the 19th of December, 1599. There is one of the partners 
 in this drama who has drunk his inspiration at the well of Chaucer. The ex- 
 quisite beauty of ' The Clerk's Tale ' must have rendered it exceedingly difficult 
 to have approached such a subject ; but a man of real genius has produced the 
 serious scenes of the comedy, and it is difficult to assign them to any other of 
 the trio but Dekker. Might not some Jack Wilson* have, for the first time 
 touched his lute to the following exquisite song, for the suffrages of the gay 
 party at the Falcon ? 
 
 "Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers ? 
 Oh, sweet content ! 
 Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed ? 
 
 Oh, punishment ! 
 Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed 
 To add to golden numbers, golden numbers ? 
 
 Oh, sweet content ! Oh, sweet, &c. 
 Work apace, apace, apace, apace ; 
 Honest labour bears a lovely face ; 
 Then hey noney, noney, hey noney, noney 
 
 Canst drink the waters of the crisped spring? 
 Oh, sweet content- ' 
 Swimm'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears f 
 Oh, punishment ' 
 
 A singpr of Shakspere's company. See Much Ado about Nothing, Introductory Notice. 
 392
 
 A. IHOGRAPHY. 
 
 Then he that patiently want's burden bears, 
 No burden bears, but is a king, a king ! 
 
 Oh, sweet content ! &c. 
 Work apace," &c. 
 
 There is one, we may believe, in that company of poets who certainly " is 
 thought not the meanest of English poets of that time, and particularly for his 
 dramatic writings." George Chapman, as Anthony Wood tells us, " was a 
 person of most reverend aspect, religious and temperate, qualities rarely meet- 
 ing in a poet." Anthony Wood has a low notion of the poetical character, as 
 many other prosaic people have. He tells us of an unhappy verse-maker of 
 small merit who was " exceedingly given to the vices of poets." Chapman was, 
 however, the senior of the illustrious band who lighted up the close of the six- 
 teenth century, and might be more reverend than many of them. He was 
 seven years older than Shakspere, being born in 1557. Yet his inventive 
 faculties were brilliant to the last. Jonson told Drummond, in 1619, that 
 " next himself only Fletcher and Chapman could make a masque." He said 
 also, what was more important, that " Chapman and Fletcher were loved of 
 him." No one can doubt the vigour of the poet who translated twelve books of 
 the Iliad in six weeks, — the daring fiery spirit of him who, in the opinion of 
 the more polished translator, gave us a Homer such as he might have been before 
 he had come to the years of discretion. This is meant by Pope for censure. 
 Meres, in 1598, enumerates Chapman amongst the "tragic poets," and also 
 amongst the "best poets for comedy." We have no evidence that he wrote 
 before the period when Shakspere raised the drama out of chaos. He had not 
 the power to become a great dramatist in the strict sense of the word ; for his 
 
 [Georpe Chapman.]
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 genius was essentially didactic. He could not go out of himself to paint all 
 the varieties of passion and character in vivid action ; but he could analyze the 
 passion, exhibit its peculiarities, describe its current, with wondrous force and 
 originality, throwing in touches of the purest poetry, clothed in the most 
 splendid combinations of language. Dryden has not done justice to him, when 
 he says that " a dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words is his charac- 
 teristic." There are the gigantic words, but the thought is rarely dwarfish. 
 Had he become a dramatist ten years earlier, as he well might from the period 
 in which he was born, we should have found more extravagance and less poeti- 
 cal fire. Shakspere rendered the drama not so easy of approach by inferior 
 men, as it was in the early days of the Greenes and Peeles. Chapman with his 
 undramatic mind has done wonders in his own way. 
 
 Beside the man of reverend aspect sits a young scholar, who is anxious to 
 say, I too am a poet. John Fletcher was born in 1576. His father, the 
 Bishop of London — he who poured into the ears of the unhappy Mary of Scots 
 on the scaffold that verbosam orationem, as Camden has it, which had more re- 
 gard to his own preferment than the Queen's conversion — he who, marrying a 
 second time, fell under his royal mistress's displeasure, and died of grief and 
 excessive tobacco, in 1596, " seeking to lose his sorrow in a mist of smoke," * — 
 he has left his son John to carry his " sail of phantasy " into the dangerous 
 waters of the theatre. The union of real talent with fashionable pretension, 
 which in time made him one of the most popular of dramatists, and the lyrical 
 genius which will place him for ever amongst the first of English poets, were 
 budding only at the close of the sixteenth century. We can scarcely believe 
 that his genius was only called out by the " wonderful consimility of fancy " 
 between him and Francis Beaumont ; and that his first play was produced only 
 in 1607, when he was thirty-one and Beaumont twenty-one. It is possible 
 that in his earlier days he wrote in conjunction with some of the veterans of 
 the drama. Shakspere is held to have been associated with him in the ' Two 
 Noble Kinsmen.' We have discussed that question elsewhere ; and it is scarcely 
 necessary for us to attempt any summary here, for the reason of our belief that 
 the union, if any there were, was not with Shakspere. At this period Fletcher 
 would be gathering materials, at any rate, for some of those pictures of manners 
 which reveal to us too much of the profligacy of the fine people of the beginning 
 of the seventeenth century. The society of the great minds into which he 
 would be thrown at the Falcon, and the Mermaid, and the Apollo Saloon, 
 would call out and cherish that freshness of his poetical nature which survives, 
 and indeed often rides over, the sapless conventionalities and frigid licentious- 
 ness of his fashionable experience. In the company of Shakspere, and Jonson, 
 and Chapman, and Donne, he would be taught there was something more in the 
 friendship, and even in the mere intercourse of conviviality, of men of high in- 
 tellect, than the town could give. He would learn from Jonson's ' Leges Con- 
 vivales,' that there was a charm in the social hours of the " eruditi, urbani, 
 hilares, honesti," which was rarely found amidst the courtly hunters after plea- 
 
 • Fuller's ' Worthies.' 
 394
 
 [John Fletcher.] 
 
 sure ; and that a festival with them was something better than even the excite- 
 ment of wine and music. A few years after this Fletcher ventured out of the 
 track of that species of comedy in which he won his first success, giving a real 
 poem to the public stage, which, with all its faults, was a noble attempt to 
 emulate the lyrical and pastoral genius of Shakspere. To our minds there is as 
 much covert advice, if not gentle reproof, to Fletcher, as there is of just and 
 cordial praise, in Jonson's verses upon the condemnation of ' The Faithful 
 Shepherdess' by the audience of 1610 : — 
 
 " The wise, and many -headed bench, that sits 
 Upon the life and death of plays and wits, 
 (Compos'd of gamester, captain, knight, knight's man, 
 Lady, or pucelle, that wears mask or fan, 
 Velvet, or taffata cap, rank'd in the dark 
 With the shop's foreman, or some such brave spark 
 That may judge for his sixpence) had, before 
 They saw it half, damn'd thy whole play, and more : 
 Their motives were, since it had not to do 
 With vices, which they look'd for, and came to. 
 I, that am glad thy innocence was thy guilt, 
 And wish that all the Muses' blood were spilt 
 In such a martyrdom, to vex their eyes, 
 Do crown thy murder'd poem : which shall rise 
 A glorified woi-k to time, when fire 
 Or moths shall eat what all those fools admire." 
 
 There is another young poet who has fairly won his title to a place amongst 
 the most eminent of his day. John Donne is there, yet scarcely seven-and- 
 twenty ; who wrote the most vigorous satires that the English language had 
 seen as early as 1593. No printed copy exists of them of an earlier date than 
 that of his collected works in 1633 ; but there is an undoubted manuscript of 
 the three first satires in the British Museum, bearing the title " Ihon Dunne 
 
 395
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 his Satires, Anno Domini 1593." No one has left a more vigorous picture oi 
 this exact period than has Donne, the student of Lincoln's Inn, who has already 
 looked upon the world with the eye of a philosopher. He stands in the middle 
 street and points, as they pass along, to the " captain bright parcel gilt " — to 
 the " brisk perfumed pert courtier " — to the 
 
 "Velvet justice, with a long 
 Great train of blue-eoata twelve or fourteen strong " 
 
 to the " superstitious Puritan " with his " formal hat." He and his friend, the 
 " changeling motley humourist," take their onward way, and thus he paints the 
 characters they encounter. The condensation of the picture is perfect : — 
 
 " Now we are in the street : he first of all, 
 Improvidently proud, creeps to the wall, 
 And so imprison'd and hemm'd in by me, 
 Sells for a little state his liberty ; 
 Yet though he cannot skip forth now to greet 
 Every fine silken painted fool we meet, 
 He them to him with amorous smiles allures, 
 And grins, smacks, shrugs, and such an itch endures 
 As 'prentices or school-boys, which do know 
 Of some gay sport abroad, yet dare not go ; 
 And as fiddlers stoop lowest at highest sound, 
 So to the most brave stoops he nigh'st tbe ground ; 
 But to a grave man he doth move no more 
 Than the wise politic horse would heretofore ; 
 Or thou, elephant or ape ! wilt do 
 When any names the king of Spain to you. 
 Now leaps he upright, jogs me, and cries, Do you see 
 Yonder well-favour'd youth ? Which ? Oh ! 't is he 
 That dances so divinely. Oh ! said I, 
 Stand still ; must you dance here for company ? 
 He droop'd, we went, till one (which did excel 
 Th' Indians in drinking his tobacco well) 
 Met us : they talk'd ; I whisper'd Let us go ; 
 It may be you smell him not ; truly I do. 
 He hears not me ; but on the other side 
 A many-colour'd peacock having spy'd, 
 Leaves him and me : I for my lost sheep stay ; 
 He follows, overtakes, goes on the way, 
 Saying, Him whom I last left all repute 
 For his device in handsoming a suit, 
 To judge of lace, pink, panes, print, cut and plaifc, 
 Of all the court to have the best conceit : 
 Our dull comedians want him ; let him go." 
 
 There is something in these Satires deeper than mere satirical description 
 example : — 
 
 " Sir, though (I thank God for it) I do hate 
 Perfectly all this town, yet there 's one state 
 In all ill things so excellently best, 
 That hate towards them breeds pity towards the rest." 
 
 Donne's genius was too subjective for the drama ; yet his delineations of indi- 
 306
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 vidual character are full of humour. Take the barrister, who " woos in lan- 
 guage of the Pleas and Bench :" — 
 
 " A motion, lady 1 Speak, Coscus. I have been 
 In love e'er since tricesimo of the queen. 
 Continual claims I 've made, injunctions got 
 To stay my rival's suit, that he should not 
 Proceed ; spare me, in Hilary term I went ; 
 You said, if I return'd next 'size in Lent, 
 I should be in remitter of your grace : 
 In th' interim my letters should take place 
 Of affidavits." 
 
 Jonson well knew Donne's powers. Drummond records that "He esteemeth 
 John Donne the first poet in the world in some things : his verses of the ' Lost 
 Chain ' he hath by heart ; and that passage of the ' Calm,' ' That dust and fea- 
 thers do not stir, all was so quiet.' Affirmeth Donne to have written all his 
 best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old." That " passage of the Calm " to 
 which Jonson alludes, is found in his poetical letters " from the Island voyage 
 with the Earl of Essex." Never were the changing aspects of the sea painted 
 with more truth and precision than in the two ' Letters ' of ' the Storm ' and ' the 
 Calm.' He made this island voyage in 1597. He is now again in London. 
 What a life is before him of the most ardent love, of married poverty, of dedi- 
 cation to the sacred profession for which his mind was best fitted, of years of 
 peace and usefulness ! Jonson said that Donne, " for not being understood 
 would perish." Not wholly so. There are some who will study him, whilst 
 less profound thinkers are forgotten. 
 
 (Domic]
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 The diary of Henslowe during the last three years of the sixteenth century 
 contains abundant notices of Michael Drayton as a dramatist. According to 
 this record, of which we have no reason to doubt the correctness, there were 
 extant in 1597 'Mother Red Cap,' written by him in conjunction with Anthony 
 Munday ; and a play without a name, which the manager calls a " book wherein 
 is a part of a Welchman," by Drayton and Henry Chettle. In 1598 we have 
 ' The Famous Wars of Henry I. and the Prince of Wales,' by Drayton and Tho- 
 mas Dekker ; ' Earl Goodwin and his three Sons,' by Drayton, Chettle, Dekker. 
 and Robert Wilson ; the ' Second Part of Goodwin,' by Drayton ; ' Pierce of 
 Exton,' by the same four authors ; ' The Funeral of Richard Cceur de Lion,' by 
 Wilson, Chettle, Munday, and Drayton ; ' The Mad Man's Morris,' ' Hannibal 
 and Hermes,' and ' Pierce of Winchester,' by Drayton, Wilson, and Dekker ; 
 ' William Longsword,' by Drayton ; ' Chance Medley,' by Wilson, Munday, 
 Drayton, and Dekker ; ' Worse Afeard than Hurt,' ' Three Parts of the Civil 
 Wars of France/ and ' Connan, Prince of Cornwall,' by Drayton and Dekker. 
 In 1600 we have the 'Fair Constance of Rome,' in two parts, by Munday, Hath- 
 way, Drayton, and Dekker. In 1601, 'The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey,' by 
 Munday, Drayton, Chettle, and Wentworth Smith. In 1602, 'Two Harpies,' 
 by Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, Webster, and Munday. This is a most extra- 
 ordinary record of the extent of dramatic associations in those days ; and it is 
 more remarkable as it regards Drayton, that his labours, which, as we see, were 
 not entirely in copartnership, did not gain for him even the title of a dramatic 
 poet in the next generation. Langbaine mentions him not at all. Philipps 
 says nothing of his plays. Meres indeed thus writes of him : " We may truly 
 term Michael Drayton Tragediographus, for his passionate penning the down- 
 falls of valiant Robert of Normandy, chaste Matilda, and great Gaveston." 
 But this praise has clearly reference to the ' Heroical Epistles' and the 'Legends.' 
 If ' The Merry Devil of Edmonton ' be his, the comedy does not place his dra- 
 matic powers in any very striking light ; but it gives abundant proofs, in com- 
 mon with all his works, of a pure and gentle mind, and a graceful imagination. 
 Meres is enthusiastic about his moral qualities ; and his testimony also shows 
 that the character for upright dealing which Shakspere won so early was not 
 universal amongst the poetical adventurers of that day : " As Aulus Persius 
 Flaccus is reported among all writers to be of an honest and upright conversa- 
 tion, so Michael Drayton (quern toties honoris et amoris causa nomino), among 
 scholars, soldiers, poets, and all sorts of people, is held for a man of virtuous 
 disposition, honest conversation, and well-governed carriage, which is almost 
 miraculous among good wits in these declining and corrupt times, when there 
 is nothing but roguery in villainous man, and when cheating and craftiness is 
 counted the cleanest wit, and soundest wisdom." The good wits, according to 
 Meres, are only parcel of the corrupt and declining times. Yet, after all, his 
 dispraise of the times is scarcely original : " You rogue, here's lime in this 
 sack too. There is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous man." * 
 Jonson was an exception to the best of his contemporaries when he said of 
 Drayton that " he esteemed not of him." That Shakspere loved him we may 
 
 * F<-nry IV., Part T., Act n., Sc. rv. 
 39S
 
 [Drayton J 
 
 readily believe. They were neatly of an a^e, Drayton being oi.ly one year his 
 elder. They were born in the same county — they had each the same love of 
 natural scenery, and the same attachment to their native soil. Drayton ex- 
 claims — 
 
 " My native country then, which so brave spirits hath bred, 
 If there be virtues yet remaining in thy earth, 
 Or any good of thine thou bred'st into my birth, 
 Accept it as thine own, whilst now I sing of thee ; 
 Of all thy later brood th' unworthiest though I be." 
 
 It is his own Warwickshire which he invokes. They had each the same fami- 
 liar acquaintance with the old legends and chronicles of English history ; the 
 same desire to present them to the people in forms which should associate the 
 poetical spirit with a just patriotism. It was fortunate that they walked by 
 different paths to the same object. However Drayton might have been asso- 
 ciated for a few years with the minor dramatists of Shakspere's day, it may be 
 doubted whether his genius was at all dramatic. Yet was he truly a great 
 poet in an age of great poets. Old Aubrey has given us one or two exact par- 
 ticulars of his life: — "He lived at the bay window house next the east end of 
 St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street." Would that bay window house were 
 standing ! Would that the other house of precious memory close by it, where 
 Izaak Walton kept his haberdasher's shop, were standing also ! He " who has 
 not left a rivulet (so narrow that it may be stepped over) without honourable 
 mention ; and has animated hills and streams with life and passion above the 
 dreams of old mythology;"* and he who delighted to sit and sing under the 
 honeysuckle hedge while the shower fell so gently upon the teeming earth, — 
 they loved not the hills and streams and verdant meadows the less because 
 they daily looked upon the Mde of London life in the busiest of her thorough- 
 fares. There is one minute touch in Aubrey's notice of Drayton that must not 
 pass without mention : — " Natus in Warwickshire, at Atherstone-upon-Stour. 
 
 * Charles Lamb. 
 
 399
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 He was a butcher's son." The writers of biography have let Aubrey's testi- 
 mony pass. In spite of it they tell us he " was of an ancient and worthy 
 family, originally descended from the town of Drayton, in Leicestershire, 
 which gave name to his progenitors."* Not so indifferent has biography been 
 to the descent of William Shakspere as recorded by the same historiographer : 
 he " was born at Stratford-upon Avon, in the county of Warwick : his father was 
 a butcher." The original record in each case is of precisely equal value. 
 
 The ' Cleopatra ' of Samuel Daniel places him amongst the dramatic poets of 
 this period ; but his vocation was not to the drama He was induced, by the 
 persuasion of the Countess of Pembroke, 
 
 " To sing of state, and tragic notes to frame 
 
 After Shakspere had arisen he adhered to the model of the Greek theatre. 
 According to Jonson, " Samuel Daniel was no poe' ." Jonson thought Daniel 
 "envied him," as he wrote to the Countess of RuHsnd. He tells Drummond 
 that " Daniel was at jealousies with him." Yet for all this even with Jonson 
 he was '* a good honest man." Spenser formed the same estimate of Daniel's 
 genius as the Countess of Pembroke did : — 
 
 " Then rouse thy feathers quickly, Daniel, 
 And to what course thou please thyself advance : 
 But most, mesDems, thy accent will excel 
 In tragic plaints, and passionate mischance." + 
 
 Daniel did wisely when he confined his "tragic plaints" to narrative poetry. 
 He went over the same ground as Shakspere in his ' Civil Wars ; ' and there 
 are passages of resemblance between the dramatist and the descriptive poet 
 which are closer than mere accident could have produced. J The imitation, on 
 whatever side it was, was indicative of respect. 
 
 * ' Biographia Britannica.' 
 t ' Colin Clout '3 come Home again.' J See Introductory Notice to Richard II. 
 
 f Samuel Daniel. 1
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 In the company at the Falcon we may place John Marston, a man of original 
 talent, who had at that period won some celebrity. He was at this time probably 
 about five and twenty, having taken his Bachelor's degree at Oxford in 1592. 
 There is very little known with any precision about his life ; but a pretty accurate 
 opinion of his character may be collected from the notices of his contemporaries, 
 and from his own writings. He began in the most dangerous path of literary 
 ambition, that of satire, bitter and personal : — 
 
 " Let others sing, as their good genius moves, 
 Of deep designs, or else of clipping loves. 
 Fair fall them all that with wit's industry 
 Do clothe good subjects in true poesy ; 
 But as for me, my vexed thoughtful soul 
 Takes pleasure in displeasing sharp control. 
 
 Quake, guzzle-dogs. that live on sDotted lime, 
 Scud from tne lasnes or my yerking rhyme." * 
 
 His first performance, ' The Metamorphoses of Pygmalion's Image,' has been 
 thought by Warton to have been written in ridicule of Shakspere's Venus and 
 Adonis. The author says, 
 
 " Know, I wrot 
 These idle rhymes, to note the odious spot 
 And blemish, that deforms the lineaments 
 Of modern poesy's habiliments." 
 
 In his parody, if parody it be, he has contrived to produce a poem, of which the 
 licentiousness is the only quality. Thus we look upon a sleeping Venus of Titian, 
 and see but the wonderful art of the painter ; a dauber copies it, and then beauty 
 becomes deformity. He is angry that his object is misunderstood, as well it might 
 be:— 
 
 " these same buzzing gnats 
 That sting my sleeping brows, these Nilus rats, 
 Half dung, that have their life from putrid slime, 
 These that do praise my loose lascivious rhyme, 
 For these same shades I seriously protest, 
 I slubbered up that chaos Lndigest, 
 To fish for fools, that stalk in goodly shape : 
 What though in velvet cloak, yet still an ape ! " 
 
 He had the ordinary fate of satirists — to live in a state of perpetual warfare, and to 
 have offences imputed to him of which he was blameless. The " galled jade " not 
 only winces, but kicks. The comedy of 'The Malecontent,' written in 1600, 
 appears to have been Marston's first play ; it was printed in 1605. He says in the 
 Preface, " In despite of my endeavours, I understand some have been most 
 unadvisedly over-cunning in misinterpreting me, and with subtilty (as deep as hell) 
 have maliciously spread ill rumours, which springing from themselves, might to 
 
 • 'Scourge of Villainy; Three Books of Satire :' 1598. 
 Life. 2 D 401
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPEHE ! 
 
 themselves have heavily returned."* Marston says in the Preface to one of his 
 later plays, " So powerfully have I been enticed with the delights of poetry, and 
 (I must ingenuously confess), above better desert, so fortunate in these stage- 
 pleasings, that (let my resolutions be never so fixed, to call mine eyes unto myself) 
 I much fear that most lamentable death of him — 
 
 ' Qui nimis notus omnibus, 
 Ignotus moritur sibi.' " — Seneca. 
 
 He adds, " the over-vehement pursuit of these delights hath been the sickness 
 of my youth." He unquestionably writes as one who is absorbed by his pur- 
 suit ; over whom it has the mastery. In his plays, as well as in his satires, 
 there is no languid task-work ; but, as may be expected, he cannot go out of 
 himself. It is John Marston who is lashing vice and folly, whatever character 
 may fill the scene ; and from first to last in his reproof of licentiousness we not 
 only see his familiarity with many gross things, but cannot feel quite assured 
 that he looks upon them wholly with pure eyes. His temper was no doubt 
 capricious. It is clear that Jonson had been attacked by him previous to the 
 production of ' The Poetaster.' He endured the lash which was inflicted on 
 him in return, and became again, as he probably was before, the friend of Jon- 
 son, to whom he dedicates 'The Malecontent ' in 1605. Gifford has clearly 
 made out that the Crispinus of ' The Poetaster ' was Marston. Tucca thus de- 
 scribes him, in addressing the player : " Go, and be acquainted with him then ; 
 he is a gentleman, parcel poet, you slave ; his father was a man of worship, I 
 tell thee. Go, he pens high, lofty, in a new stalking strain, bigger than half 
 the rhymers in the town again : he was born to fill thy mouth, Minotaurus, he 
 was ; he will teach thee to tear and rand. Rascal, to him, cherish his muse, 
 go ; thou hast forty — forty shillings, I mean, stinkard ; give him in earnest, do, 
 he shall write for thee, slave ! If he pen for thee once, thou shalt not need to 
 travel with thy pumps full of gravel any more, after a blind jade and a hamper, 
 and stalk upon boards and barrel heads to an old cracked trumpet." Jonson, 
 in the same play, has parodied Marston's manner, and has introduced many of 
 his expressions, in the following verses which are produced as those of Cris- 
 pinus : — 
 
 " Ramp up, my genius, be not retrograde ; 
 But boldly nominate a spade a spade. 
 What, shall thy lubrical and glibbery muse 
 Live, as she were defunct, like punk in stews ! 
 Alas ! that were no modern consequence, 
 To have cothurnal buskius frighted hence. 
 No, teach thy Incubus to poetize, 
 And throw abroad thy spurious snotteries, 
 Upon that puft-up lump of balmy froth, 
 Or clumsy chilblain'd judgment; that with oath 
 Magnificates his merit ; and bespawls 
 The conscious time with humorous foam, and brawls, 
 As if his organons of sense would crack 
 The sinews of my patience. Break his back, 
 
 * See Note at the end of this Chap tor.
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 poets all and some ! for now we list 
 Of strenuous vengeance to clutch the fist" 
 
 The following advice is subsequently given to him ; — 
 
 " You must not hunt for wild outlandish terms, 
 To stuff out a peculiar dialect ; 
 But let your matter run before your words. 
 And if at any time you chance to meet 
 Some Gallo-Belgic phrase, you shall not straight 
 Rack your poor verse to give it entertainment, 
 But let it pass ; and do not think yourself 
 Much damnified if you do leave it out, 
 When nor your understanding nor the sense 
 Could well receive it." 
 
 Marston, with all his faults, was a scholar and a man of high talent , and it is 
 pleasant to know that he and Ben were friends after this wordy war. He appears 
 to us to describe himself in the following narrative of a scholar in ' What You 
 Will:*— 
 
 " I was a scholar : seven useful springs 
 Did I deflour in quotations 
 Of cross'd opinions 'bout the soul of man ; 
 The more I learnt the more I learnt to doubt, 
 Knowledge and wit, faith's foes, turn faith about. 
 
 Nay, mark, list ! Delight, Delight, my spaniel, slept, 
 
 whilst I bauz'd * leaves, 
 Toss'd o'er the dunces, por'd on the old print 
 Of titled words, and still my spaniel slept. 
 Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, 'bated my flesh, 
 Shrunk up my veins, and still my spaniel slept. 
 And still I held converse with Zabarell, 
 Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saw 
 Of antic Donate, still my spaniel slept. 
 Still on went I, first an sit anima, 
 Then, an it were mortal ; oh, hold, hold, 
 At that they are at brain buffets, fell by the ears, 
 Amain, pell-mell together ; still my spaniel slept. 
 Then whether 't were corporeal, local, fix'd, 
 Extraduce ; but whether 't had free will 
 Or no, philosophers 
 
 Stood banding factions, all so strongly propp'd, 
 I stagger'd, knew not which was firmer part ; 
 Rut thought, quoted, read, observ'd, and pried, 
 Stuff'd noting books, and still my spaniel slept. 
 At length he wak'd, and yawn'd, and by yon sky, 
 For aught I knew, he knew as much as I. 
 
 * Mr. Dilke, in his valuable 'Selection from the Early Dramatic Writers,' prints three of 
 Marston's plays. He says this word maybe derived from baiser, to kiss; and that basse has been 
 used by Chaucer in this sense. 
 
 2 D 2 4 °3
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 How 'twas created, how the soul exists; 
 
 One talks of motes, the soul was made of motes ; 
 
 Another fire, t'other light, a third a spark of star-like natare 1 
 
 Hippo, water; Anaximenes, air; 
 
 Aristoxenus, music ; Critias, I know not what ; 
 
 A company of odd Phrenetici 
 
 Did eat my youth ; and when 1 crept abroad, 
 
 Finding my numbness in this nimble age, 
 
 I fell a railing." 
 
 The light jest, the glancing wit, the earnest eloquence, the deep criticism, which 
 would wear away the hours in such a company as that assembled at the Falcon, are 
 to be interrupted. The festivity is about to close ; when Marston, in the words of 
 one of his own characters, says 
 
 " Stay, take an old rhyme first : though dry and lean, 
 'Twill serve to close the stomach of the scene ;" 
 
 and then bursts out into a song which bears the stamp of his personal character : 
 
 " Music, tobacco, sack, and sleep, 
 The tide of sorrow backward keep. 
 If thou art sad at others' fate, 
 Rivo ! drink deep, give care the mate. 
 
 On us the end of time is come, 
 Fond fear of that we cannot shun ; 
 Whilst quickest sense doth freshly last, 
 Clip time about, hug pleasure fast." * 
 
 Shakspere suddenly leaves the room, ere the song be ended ; for one who bears the 
 badge of the Earl of Essex waits without. His message is a brief but a sad one. 
 He returns just to hear the last lines of Marston's song, 
 
 " When I can breathe no longer, then 
 Heaven take all ; there put amen," 
 
 and to break up all revelry with the message — Spenser is dead. 
 
 In the obscure lodging-house in King's Street, Westminster, where he lay 
 down heart-broken, alone, has the poor fugitive died in his forty-sixth year. 
 Jonson says, "He died for lack of bread in King's Street, and refused twenty 
 pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, and said he was sorry he had no time 
 to spend them." The lack of bread could scarcely be. He could only have 
 been a very short time in London when he came to seek that imperfect com- 
 pensation which the government might afford him for some of his wrongs. His 
 house was burnt ; his wife and two children had fled from those outrages which had 
 made 
 
 " The cooly shade 
 Of the green alders by the Mulia's shore " 
 
 * ' What You WilL*
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 a place of terror and fata) recollections ; his infant had perished in the flames, 
 which destroyed his property. But it seems impossihle that one in his social 
 position could die for lack of bread. He died most probably of that which kills 
 as surely as hunger — the "hysterica passio" of Lear. In a few days most of 
 those we have named would be gathered round Spenser's grave in Westminster 
 Abbey : " his hearse attended by poets, and mournful elegies, and poems, with 
 the pens that wrote them, thrown into his tomb." * One of the ablest writers 
 of our day, in his quaint and pleasant ' Citation and Examination of William 
 Shakspeare,' &c, says, "William Shakspeare was the only poet who abstained 
 from throwing in either pen or poem, — at which no one marvelled, he being of 
 low estate, and the others not having yet taken him by the hand." This is the 
 language only of romance ; for assuredly when Shakspere stood by the grave of 
 Spenser, he of all the poets then living must have been held to be the head. 
 Five years before, Spenser himself had without doubt thus described him : — 
 
 "And there, though last not least, is Action; 
 A gentler shepherd may nowhere bo found : 
 Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention, 
 Doth like himself heroically sound." f 
 
 Jonson says — 
 
 " He seems to shake a lance 
 As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance " 
 
 Fuller compares him to the poet Martial " in the warlike sound of his surname, 
 whence some may conjecture him of a military extraction, hasti-vibrans, or 
 Shake-speare." We cannot doubt of the allusion. He could not have meant 
 to compare the poet with the Roman painter Aetion. The fancy of Spenser 
 might readily connect the " high thoughts " with the soaring eagle — aero? — 
 and we might almost fancy that there was some association of the image with 
 Shakspere's armorial bearings — " his crest or cognizance, a falcon, his wings 
 displayed." 
 
 The spring of 1599 saw Shalcsperes friends and patrons, Essex and South- 
 ampton, in honour and triumph. "The 27th of March, 1599, about two o'clock 
 in the afternoon, Robert Earl of Essex, Vicegerent of Ireland, &c, took horse 
 in Seeding Lane, and from thence, being accompanied with divers noblemen 
 and many others, himself very plainly attired, rode through Grace Street, Corn- 
 hill, Cheapside, and other high streets, in all which places, and in the fields, 
 the people pressed exceedingly to behold him, especially in the highways for 
 more than four miles space, crying, and saying, God bless your Lordship, God 
 preserve your honour, &c, and some followed him until the evening, only to 
 behold him. When he and his company came forth of London, the sky was 
 very calm and clear, but before he could get past Iseldon [Islington] there arose 
 a great black cloud in the north-east, and suddenly came lightning and thun- 
 der, with a great shower of hail and rain, the which some held as an ominous 
 
 * Camden. + 'Colin Clout's come Home again,' 1594. 
 
 4u0
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE ' 
 
 prodigy." * It was perliaps with some reference to such ominous forebodings 
 that in the chorus to the fifth Act of Henry V. — which of course must have 
 been performed between the departure of Essex in March, and his return in 
 September — Shakspere thus anticipates the triumph of Essex : — 
 
 " But now behold, 
 In the quick forge and working house of thought, 
 How London doth pour out her citizens ! 
 The mayor and all his brethren, in best sort, — 
 Like to the senators of the antique Rome, 
 With the plebeians swarming at their heels, — 
 Go forth, and fetch their conquering C<esar in : 
 As, by a lower but by loving likelihood, 
 Were now the general of our gracious empress 
 (As, in good time, he may) from Ireland cominp. 
 Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, 
 How many would the peaceful city quit 
 To weicome him !" 
 
 * Stowr's ' Annais.
 
 [John Lowin.] 
 
 NOTE ON MARSTON'S ' MALECONTENT.' 
 
 Mausion's comedy, as it appears by the edition of 1605, was then played by Shakspere's companj, 
 " the King's Majesty's Servants ; " but it had been previously played by another company, as we 
 learn from the very singular Induction, in which some of the most eminent of Shakspere's fellows 
 come upon the stage in their own characters. We have here William Sly, Harry Condell, and 
 Dick Burbage ; with Sinklow (of whom little is known beyond his twice being mentioned by 
 accident instead of the dramatic character in the folio of Shakspere) and John Lowin, famous 
 for his performance of Falstaff. The Induction itself presents so curious a picture of the theatre 
 in Shaksperes time, that we may properly fill a little space with a portion of it : — 
 
 " Enter W. Sly ; a Tire-man following him with a stool. 
 
 Tire-man. Sir, the gentlemen will be angry if you sit here. 
 
 Sly. Why, we may sit upon the stage at the private house. Thou dost not take me for a country gentleman, dost ? Dost 
 thou fear hissing? I'll hold my life thou took'st me for one of the players. 
 
 Tire-man. No, sir. 
 
 Sly. By God's-slid, if you had I would have given you but sixpence for your stool. Let them that have stale suits sit in 
 the galleries. Hiss me! He that will be laughed out of a tavern, or an ordinary, shall seldom feed well, or be drunk in 
 good company. Where's Harry Condell, Dick Burbage, and William Sly? Let me speak with some of them. 
 
 Tire-man. An 't please you to go in, sir, you may. 
 
 Sly. I tell you no ; I am one that hath seen this play often, and can give them intelligence for their action. I have most 
 of the jests here in my table-book. 
 
 Enter Sinklow. 
 
 Sinklow. Save you, coz. 
 
 Sly. O 1 cousin, come, you shall sit between my legs here. 
 
 Sinhlow. No indeed, cousin; the audience then will take me for a viol de gambo, and think that you play upon me. 
 
 Sly. Nay, rather that I work upon you, coz. 
 
 Sinklow. We staid for you at supper last night at my cousin Honeymoon's, the woollen-draper. After supper we drew 
 cuts for a score of apricots ; the longest cut still to draw an apricot ; by this light, 't was Mrs. Frank Honeymoon's fortune 
 .till to have the longest cut. I did measure for the women. What be these, coz ? 
 
 Fitter D. Burbage, H. Condell, and 3. Lowin. 
 
 Sly. The playcr9. God save you. 
 iturbaye. You are very welcome. 
 
 407
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE \ 
 
 Sly. I pray you know this gentleman, my cousin ; 't is Mr. Doomsday's son, the usurer. 
 
 Condell. I beseech you, sir, be cover'd. 
 
 Sly. No, in good faith, for mine ease ; look you, my hat's the handle to this fan : God's so, what a beast was I, I did not 
 leave my feather at home I Well, but I take an order with you. [Puts a feather in nis pockcl. 
 
 Burbage. Why do you conceal your feather, sir ? 
 
 Sly. Why ! do you think I'll have jests broken upon me in the play to be laughed at ? This play hath beaten all younn 
 gallants out of the feathers. Blackfriars hath almost spoiled Blackfriars for feathers. 
 
 Sinklow. God's so ! I thought 'twas for somewhat our gentlewomen at home counselled me to wear my feather to the 
 play ; yet I am loath to spoil it. 
 Sly. Why, coz f 
 
 Sinklow. Because I got it in the tilt-yard : there was a herald broke my pate for taking it up. But 1 have worn it up and 
 down the Strand, and met him forty times since, and yet he dares not challenge it. 
 
 Sly. Do you hear, sir? this play is a bitter play. 
 
 Condell. Why, sir, 't is neither satire nor moral, but the mere passage of an history : yet there are a sort of discontented 
 creatures that bear a stingless envy to great ones, and these will wrest the doings of any man to their base, malicious appli- 
 ment ; but should their interpretation come to the test, like your marmoset, they presently turn their teeth to their tail and 
 eat it. 
 
 Sly. I will not go far with you j but I say any man that hath wit may censure, if he sit in the twelve-penny room : and 
 I say again, the p\, f is bitter. 
 
 Burbage. Sir, you '« like a patron that, presenting a poor scholar to a benefice, enjoins him not to rail against anything 
 that stands within compass of his patron's folly. Why should not we enjoy the ancient freedom of poesy X Suall we protest 
 to the ladies, that their pointing makes them angels X or to my young gallant, that his expense in the brothel should gain 
 him reputation? No, sir, »uch vices as stand not accountable to law should be cured as men heal tetters, by casting ink 
 upon them. Would you be satisfied in anything else, sir ? 
 
 Sly. Ay, marry would I : I would know how you came by this play ? 
 Condell. Faith, sir, the book was lost ; and because 'twas pity so good a play should be lost, we found it, and play it. 
 Sly. I wonder you play it, another company having interest in it.
 
 
 - 
 
 [Essex House.] 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EVIL DAYS. 
 
 About the close of the year 1599, the Blackfriars Theatre was remarkable for 
 the constant presence of two men of high rank, who were there seeking amuse- 
 ment and instruction as some solace for the bitter mortifications of disappointed 
 ambition. " My Lord Southampton and Lord Rutland came not to the Court; 
 the one doth but very seldom : they pass away the time in London merely in 
 going to plays every day."* Essex had arrived from Ireland on the 28th of 
 September, 1599 — not 
 
 " Bringing rebellion broached on his sword," — 
 not surrounded with swarms of citizens who 
 
 " Go forth, and fetch their conquering Csesar in," — 
 
 * Letter of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sydney, in the Sydney Tapers. 
 
 409
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPLRE: 
 
 hut a fugitive from his army ; one who in his desire for peace had treated with 
 rebels, and had brought down upon him the censures of the Court ; one who 
 knew that his sovereign was surrounded with his personal enemies, and who in 
 his reckless anger once thought to turn his army homeward to compel justice 
 at their hands ; one who at last rushed alone into the Queen's presence, " full 
 of dirt and mire," and found that he was in the toils of his foes. From that 
 Michaelmas till the 26th of August, 1600, Essex was in the custody of the Lord 
 Keeper ; in free custody as it was termed, but to all intents a prisoner. It was 
 at this period that Southampton and Rutland passed " away the time in London 
 merely in going to plays every day." Southampton in 1598 had married Eli- 
 zabeth Vernon, a cousin of Lord Essex. The marriage was without the consent 
 of the Queen ; and therefore Southampton was under the ban of the Court, 
 having been preremptorily dismissed by Elizabeth from the office to which 
 Essex had appointed him in the expedition to Ireland. Rutland was also con- 
 nected with Essex by family ties, having married the daughter of Lady Essex, 
 by her first husband, the accomplished Sir Philip Sidney. The season when 
 these noblemen sought recreation at the theatre was one therefore of calamity 
 to themselves, and to the friend who was at the head of their party in the state. 
 At Shakspere's theatre there were at this period abundant materials for the 
 highest intellectual gratification. Of Shakspere's own works we know that at 
 the opening of the seventeenth century there were twenty plays in existence. 
 Thirteen (considering Henry IV. as two parts) are recorded by Meres in 1598 ; 
 Much Ado About Nothing, and Henry V. (not. in Meres' list), were printed in 
 1600; and we have to add the three parts of Henry VI., The Taming of the 
 Shrew, and the original Hamlet, which are also wanting in Meres' record, but 
 which were unquestionably produced before this period. We cannot with 
 extreme precision fix the date of any novelty from the pen of Shakspere when 
 Southampton and Rutland were amongst his daily auditors ; but there is every 
 reason to believe that As You Like It belongs as nearly as possible to this 
 exact period. It is pleasant to speculate upon the tranquillizing effect that 
 might have been produced upon the minds of the banished courtiers, by the 
 exquisite philosophy of this most delicious play. It is pleasant to imagine 
 Southampton visiting Essex in the splendid prison of the Lord Keeper's house, 
 and there repeating to him from time to time those lessons of wisdom that 
 were to be found in the woods of Arden. The two noblemen who had once 
 revelled in all the powers and privileges of Court favouritism had now felt by 
 how precarious a tenure is the happiness held of 
 
 " That poor man that hangs on princes' favours." 
 
 The great Jiamatic poet of their time had raised up scenes of surpassing love- 
 liness, where happiness might be sought for even amidst the severest penalties 
 of fortune : — 
 
 " Now, my co-mates, and brothers in exile. 
 Hath not old custom made this life more sweot 
 Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods 
 More free from peril than the envious court?" 
 410
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 It was for them to feel how deep a truth was there in this lesson : — 
 
 " Sweet are the uses of adversity." 
 
 Happy are those that can feel such a truth ; 
 
 " That can translate the stubbornness of fortune 
 Into so quiet and so sweet a style." 
 
 And yet the same poet had created a character that could interpret the feelings of 
 those who had suffered undeserved indignities, and had learnt that the greatest 
 crime in the world's eye was to he unfortunate. There was one in that play 
 who could moralize the spectacle of 
 
 " A poor sequester'd stag, 
 That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a huit," 
 
 and who thus pierced through the hollowness of " this our life :" — 
 
 " ' Poor deer,' quoth he, ' thou mak'st a testament 
 As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more 
 To that which had too much.' Then, being there alone, 
 Left and abandon'd of his velvet friend ; 
 ' 'T is right,' quoth he ; ' thus misery doth part 
 The flux of company :' Anon, a careless herd, 
 Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, 
 And never stays to greet him ; 'Ay,' quoth Jaques, 
 ' Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens ; 
 'T is just the fashion : Wherefore do you look 
 Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there ? ' " 
 
 We could almost slide into the belief that As You Like It had an especial reference 
 to the circumstances in which Essex and Southampton were placed in the spring of 
 1600. There is nothing desponding in its tone, nothing essentially misanthropical 
 in its philosophy. Jaques stands alone in his railing against mankind. The healing 
 influences of nature fall sweetly and fruitfully upon the exiled Duke and his 
 co-mates. But, nevertheless, the ingratitude of the world is emphatically dwelt 
 upon, even amidst the most soothing aspects of a pure and simple life " under 
 the greenwood tree." The song of Amiens has perhaps a deeper meaning even 
 than the railing of Jaques : — 
 
 " Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky. 
 That dost not bite so nigh 
 
 As benefits forgot : 
 Though thou the waters warp, 
 Thy sting is not so sharp 
 
 As friend remember'd not." 
 
 There was one who had in him much of the poetical temperament — a gorgeous 
 imagination for the externals of poetry — upon whose ear, if he ever sought 
 common amusement in the days of his rising power these words must have 
 tallen like the warning voice that cried " woe." There was one who, when 
 Essex in the days of his greatness had asked a high place for him and had 
 
 411
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 been refused, received from the favourite a large private gift thus bestowed : — 
 " I know that you are the least part of your own matter, but you fare ill be- 
 cause you have chosen me for your mean and dependence. You have spent 
 your time and thoughts in my matters. I die, if I do not somewhat towards 
 your fortune. You shall not deny to accept a piece of land, which I will 
 bestow upon you." The answer of him who accepted a park from the hands 
 of the generous man who had failed to procure him a place, was prophetic. 
 The Duke of Guise, he said, was the greatest usurer in France, " because he 
 had turned all his estates into obligations, having left himself nothing. . . . 
 I would not have you imitate this course, for you will find many bad debtors." 
 It was this man who, in the darkest hour of Essex, when he was hunted to the 
 death, said to the Lord Steward, " My lord, I have never yet seen in any case such 
 favour shown to any prisoner." 
 
 " Blow, blow, tliou winter wind, 
 Thou art not so unkind 
 As man's ingratitude." 
 
 Who can doubt that the ingratitude had begun long before the fatal catastrophe of 
 the intrigues of Cecil and Raleigh ? Francis Bacon, the ingrate, justifies himself 
 by the " rules of duty " which opposed him to his benefactor, at the bar in his 
 " public service." The same rules of duty were powerful enough to lead him to 
 blacken his friend's character after his death, by garbling with his own hand the 
 depositions against the victim of his faction, and publishing them as authentic 
 records of the trial.* Essex, before the last struggles, had acquired experience of 
 " bad debtors." The poet of As You Like It might have done something in 
 teaching him to bear this and other afflictions bravely : — 
 
 " Thou seest, we are not all alone unhappy 
 This wide and universal theatre 
 Presents more woeful pageants than the scene 
 Wherein we play in." 
 
 Essex was released from custody in the August of 1600; but an illegal sen- 
 tence had been passed upon him by commissioners, that he should not execute 
 the offices of a Privy Councillor, or of Earl Marshal, or of Master of the Ord- 
 nance. The Queen signified to him that he was not to come to Court without 
 leave. He was a marked and a degraded man. The wily Cecil, who at this 
 very period was carrying on a correspondence with James of Scotland, that 
 might have cost him his head, was laying every snare for the ruin of Essex. 
 He desired to do what he ultimately effected, to goad his fiery spirit into mad- 
 ness. Essex was surrounded with warm but imprudent friends. They relied 
 upon his unbounded popularity not only as a shield against arbitrary power, 
 but as a weapon to beat down the strong arm of authority. During the six 
 months which elapsed between the release of Essex and the fatal outbreak of 
 1601, Essex House saw many changing scenes, which marked the fitful temper 
 and the wavering counsels of its unhappy owner. Within a month after he had 
 
 * See Jardine's ' Criminal Trials,' vol. i., p. 387. 
 412
 
 [Robert Cecil.] 
 
 been discharged from custody, the Queen refused to renew a valuable patent to 
 Essex, saying that " to manage an ungovernable beast he must be stinted in 
 his provender." On the other hand, rash words that had been held to fall 
 from the lips of Essex were reported to the Queen. He was made to say, " She 
 was now grown an old woman, and was as crooked within as without."* The 
 door of reconciliation was almost closed for ever. Essex House had been strictly 
 private during its master's detention at the Lord Keeper's. Its gates were now 
 opened, not only to his numerous friends and adherents, but to men of all per- 
 suasions, who had injuries to redress or complaints to prefer. Essex had always 
 professed a noble spirit of toleration, far in advance of his age ; and he now re- 
 ceived with a willing ear the complaints of all those who were persecuted by 
 the government for religious opinions, whether Roman Catholics or Puritans. 
 He was in communication with James of Scotland, urging him to some open 
 assertion of his presumptive title to the crown of England. It was altogether 
 a season of restlessness and intrigue, of bitter mortifications and rash hopes. 
 Between the closing of the Globe Theatre and the opening of the Blackfriars, 
 Shakspere was in all likelihood tranquil amidst his family at Stratford. The 
 
 There is a slight resemblance in a passage in The Tempest : 
 
 " And as with <age his body uglier grows. 
 So his mind cankers." 
 
 413
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE : 
 
 winter comes, and then even the players are mixed up with the dangerous 
 events of the time. Sir Gilly Merrick, one of the adherents of Essex, was 
 accused, amongst other acts of treason, with " having procured the out-dated 
 tragedy of the 'Deposition of Richard II.' to be publicly acted at his own 
 charge, for the entertainment of the conspirators."* In the 'Declaration of 
 the Treasons of the late Earl of Essex and his Complices,' which Bacon acknow- 
 ledges to have been written by him at the Queen's command, there is the fol- 
 lowing statement : — " The afternoon before the rebellion, Merrick, with a great 
 company of others, that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be 
 played before them the play of deposing King Richard the Second ; — when it 
 was told him by one of the players, that the play was old, and they should have 
 loss in playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty shillings ex- 
 traordinary given to play, and so thereupon played it was." In the ' State 
 Trials ' this matter is somewhat differently mentioned : " The story of Henry 
 IV. being set forth in a play, and in that play there being set forth the killing 
 of the King upon a stage ; the Friday before, Sir Gilly Merrick and some others 
 of the Earl's train having an humour to see a play, they must needs have the 
 play of Henry IV. The players told them that was stale ; they could get 
 nothing by playing that ; but no play else would serve : and Sir Gilly Merrick 
 gives forty shillings to Phillips the player to play this, besides whatsoever he 
 could get." Augustine Phillips was one of Shakspere's company ; and yet it is 
 perfectly evident that it was not Shakspere's Richard II., nor Shakspere's Henry 
 IV., that was acted on this occasion. In his Henry IV. there is no " killing of 
 the king upon a stage. His Richard II., which was published in 1597, was 
 certainly not an out-dated play in 1601. A second edition of it had appeared 
 in 1598, and it was no doubt highly popular as an acting play. But if any 
 object was to be gained by the conspirators in the stage representation of the 
 ' deposing King Richard II.,' Shakspere's play would not assist that object. 
 The editions of 1597 and 1598 do not contain the deposition scene. That por- 
 tion of this noble history which contains the scene of Richard's surrender of the 
 crown was not printed till 1608 ; and the edition in which it appears bears in 
 the title the following intimation of its novelty : ' The Tragedie of King 
 Richard the Second, with new additions of the Parliament Sceane, and the de- 
 posing of King Richard. As it hath been lately acted by the Kinges servantes, 
 at the Globe, by William Shake-speare.' In Shakspere's Parliament scene our 
 sympathies are wholly with King Richard. This, even if the scene were acted 
 in 1601, would not have forwarded the views of Sir Gilly Merrick, if his pur- 
 pose were really to hold up to the people an example of a monarch's dethrone- 
 ment. But nevertheless, it may be doubted whether such a subject could be 
 safely played at all by the Lord Chamberlain's players during this stormy period 
 of the reign of Elizabeth. Her sensitiveness on this head was most remarkable. 
 There is a very curious record existing of " that which passed from the Excel - 
 
 * This is the translation of the passage in Camden's ' Annales,' &c, as printed in Kennett's 
 ' History of England.' The accusation against Merrick is thus stated in the original : — " Quod 
 exoletam tragecdiam de tragica abdicatione regis Ilicardi Secundi in publico theatro coram conju* 
 ratis data pecuuia agi curasset." 
 414
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 lent Majestie of Queen Elizabeth, in her Privie Chamber at East Greenwich, 
 4° Augusti, 1601, 43° Reg. sui, towards William Lambarde," * which recounts 
 his presenting the Queen his ' Pandecta ' of historical documents to be placed 
 in the Tower, which the Queen read over, making observations and receiving 
 explanations. The following dialogue then takes place : — 
 
 " W. L. He likewise expounded these all according to their original diversities, which she took 
 in gracious and full satisfaction ; so her Majesty fell upon the reign of King Richard II., saying, 
 'I am Richard II., know ye not that ?' 
 
 " W. L. ' Such a wicked imagination was determined and attempted by a most unkind gentle- 
 man, the most adorned creature that ever your Majesty made.' 
 
 "Her Majesty. 'He that will forget God will also forget his benefactors : this tragedy w&s 
 played forty times in open streets and houses.' " 
 
 The "wicked imagination" that Elizabeth was Richard the Second is fixed 
 upon Essex by the reply of Lambarde, and the rejoinder of the Queen makes 
 it clear that the " wicked imagination " was attempted through the performance 
 of the Tragedy of the Deposition of Richard the Second : " This tragedy 
 was played forty times in open streets and houses." The Queen is speak- 
 ing six months after the outbreak of Essex ; and it is not improbable that 
 the outdated play — that performance which in the previous February the 
 players " should have loss in playing " — had been rendered popular through 
 the partisans of Essex after his fall, and had been got up in open streets and 
 houses with a dangerous avidity. But there is a circumstance which renders 
 it tolerably evident that, although Sir Gilly Merrick might have given forty 
 shillings to Phillips to perform that stale play, the company of Shakspere 
 were not the performers. In the Office Book of the Treasurer of the Chamber f 
 there is an entry on the 31st of March, 1601, of a payment to John Heminge 
 and Richard Cowley, servants to the Lord Chamberlain, for three plays showed 
 before her Highness on St. Stephen's Day at night [26th of December, 1600], 
 Twelfth Day at night [January 6th, 1601], and Shrove Tuesday at night 
 [Easter Day being on the 12th of April in 1601, Shrove Tuesday would be on 
 the 3rd of March]. Shakspere's company were thus performing before the 
 Queen within a week of the period when Essex was beheaded. They would 
 not have been so performing had they exhibited the offensive tragedy. 
 
 In her conversation with Lambarde, Elizabeth uttered a great truth, which 
 might not be unmingled with a retrospect of the fate of Essex. Speaking of 
 the days of her ancestors, she said, — " In those days force and arms did prevail, 
 but now the wit of the fox is everywhere on foot, so as hardly a faithful or vir- 
 tuous man may be found." When Raleigh was called upon the trial of Essex, 
 and "his oath given him," Essex exclaimed, "What booteth it to swear the 
 fox ? " The fox had even then accomplished his purpose. He had driven his 
 victim onwards to that fatal movement of Sunday the 8th of February, which, 
 begun without reasonable plan or fixed purpose, ended in casual bloodshed and 
 death by the law. We may readily believe that the anxiety of Shakspere for 
 
 * This was first printed from the original in Nicholls's ' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.' Lam 
 barde died in a fortnight after this interview, 
 t Cunningham's ' Revels at Court.' 
 
 415
 
 [.Essex.] 
 
 his friends and benefactors would have led him to the scene of that wild com- 
 motion. He might have seen Essex and Southampton, with Danvers, Blount, 
 Catesby, Owen Salisbury, and a crowd of followers, riding into Fleet Street, 
 shouting, " For the Queen ! for the Queen ! " He might have heard the people 
 crying on every side, " God save your honour ! God bless your honour ! " An 
 nour or two later he might have listened to the proclamation in Gracechurch 
 Street and Cheapside, that the Earl and all his company were traitors. By two 
 o'clock of that fatal Sunday, Shakspere might have seen his friends fighting 
 their way back through the crowds of armed men who suddenly assailed them, 
 and, taking boat at Queenhithe, reach Essex House in safety. But it was sur- 
 rounded with soldiers and artillery ; shots were fired at the windows ; the cries 
 of women within mingled with the shouts of fury without. At last came the 
 surrender, at ten o'clock at night. The axe with the edge turned towards the 
 prisoners followed as a matter of course. 
 
 The period at which Essex fell upon the block, and Southampton was under 
 condemnation, must have been a gloomy period in the life of Shakspere. The 
 friendship of Southampton in all likelihood raised the humble actor to that just 
 appreciation of himself which could alone prevent his nature being subdued to 
 what it worked in. There had been a compromise between the inequality of 
 rank and the inequality of intellect, ana the fruit had been a continuance and a 
 strengthening of that " love " which seven years earlier had been described as 
 " without end." Those ties were now broken by calamity. The accomplished 
 noble, a prisoner looking daily for death, could not know the depth of the love 
 of his " especial friend." * He was beyond the reach of any service that this 
 
 * The expression is used by Southampton in his Letter to Lord Ellesmere introducing Shaksppre 
 and Burbage in 1G08. See Collier's ' New Facts,* p. 33. 
 410
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 friend could render him. All was gloom and uncertainty. It has been said, 
 and we believe without any intention to depreciate the character of the great 
 poet, that " There seems to have been a period of Shakspeare's life when his 
 heart was ill at ease, and ill content with the world or his own conscience ; the 
 memory of hours mis-spent, the pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the 
 experience of man's worser nature, which intercourse with ill-chosen associates. 
 by choice or circumstance, peculiarly teaches ; — these, as they sank down into 
 the depths of his great mind, seem not only to have inspired into it the concep- 
 tion of Lear and Timon, but that of one primary character, the censurer of man- 
 kind."* The genius of Shakspere was so essentially dramatic, that neither 
 Lear, nor Timon, nor Jaques, nor the Duke in Measure for Measure, nor Hamlet, 
 whatever censure of mankind they may express, can altogether be held to reflect 
 " a period of Shakspeare's life when his heart was ill at ease, and ill content 
 with the world." That period is referred to the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, to which the plays belong that are said to exhibit these attributes.! 
 But from this period there is certainly a more solemn cast of thought in all the 
 works of the great poet. We wholly reject the opinion that this tone of mind 
 in the slightest degree partakes of " the memory of hours mis-spent, the pang 
 of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of man's worser nature, 
 which intercourse with ill-chosen associates, by choice or circumstance, pecu- 
 liarly teaches." There is a strong but yet tolerant censure of the heartlessness 
 of worldly men, and the delusions of friendship, such as we have pointed out, in 
 As You Like It. There is the fierce misanthropy of Timon, so peculiar to his 
 character and situation that it is quite lifted out of the range of a poet's self- 
 consciousness : " the experience of man's worser nature " was not to make oi 
 Shakspere one "who all the human sons doth hate." Measure for Measure 
 was, we believe, a covert satire upon the extremes of weak and severe govern- 
 ment : it interprets nothing of unrequited affections and an evil conscience. 
 The bitter denunciations of Lear are the natural reflections of his own dis ■ 
 turbed thoughts, seeking to recover the balance of his feelings out of the vehe- 
 mence of his passion. The Hamlet, such as we have it in its altered state, as 
 compared with the earlier sketch, does indeed contain passages which have a 
 peculiar fitness for Hamlet's utterance, but which, at the same time, might 
 afford relief in their expression to the poet's own wrestlings with the problem 
 of existence. An example or two of these new passages will suffice : 
 
 " How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
 Seems to me all the uses of this world ! 
 Fye on 't ! fye ! 't is an unweeded garden 
 That grows to seed ; things rank, and gross in nature, 
 Possess it merely." 
 
 Again : — 
 
 " I have of late (but, wherefore, 1 know not) lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises 
 and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a 
 
 * Hallam's ' Literature of Europe,' vol. hi., p. 568. 
 + Mr. Halkin refers to Hamlet in its altered form. 
 Life. 2 E 417
 
 WILLIAM SIIAK8PERE : 
 
 rteril promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look yon, — this brave o'erhanging — this 
 majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pesti- 
 lent congregation of vapours." 
 
 We can conceive this train of thought to be in harmony with the temper in 
 which Shakspere must have regarded the public events of 1600. We may even 
 believe that those events might have directed his mind to a more passionate and 
 solemn and earnest exercise of its power than had previously been called forth. 
 We may fancy such tragic scenes having their influence in rendering the great 
 master of comedy, unrivalled amidst his contemporaries for the brilliancy of his 
 wit and the genuineness of his humour, turn to other and loftier themes : — 
 
 " I come no more to make you laugh ; things now, 
 That bear a weighty and a serious brow, 
 Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, 
 Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow 
 We now present." * 
 
 But the influence of time in the formation and direction of the poetical powe r 
 must also be taken into account. Shakspere was now thirty-seven years of age 
 He had attained to the consciousness of his own intellectual strength, and he 
 had acquired by long practice the mastery of his own genius. He had already 
 learnt to direct the stage to higher and nobler purposes than those of mere 
 amusement. It might be carried farther into the teaching of the highest philo- 
 sophy through the medium of the grandest poetry. The epoch which produced 
 Othello, Lear, and Macbeth has been described as exhibiting the genius of 
 Shakspere in full possession and habitual exercise of power, " at its very point 
 of culmination." t 
 
 The year 1601 was also a year which brought to Shakspere a great domestic 
 affliction. His father died on the 8th of September of that year. It is impos- 
 sible not to feel that Shakspere's family arrangements, imperfectly as we know 
 them, had especial reference to the comfort and honour of his parents. When 
 he bought New Place in 1597, his occupations then demanding his presence in 
 London through great part of the year, his wife and children, we may readily 
 imagine, were under the same roof with his father and mother. They had 
 sighed over the declining health of his little Hamnet, — they had watched over 
 the growth of his Susanna and Judith. If restricted means had at any previous 
 period assailed them, he had provided for the comforts of their advanced age 
 And now that father, the companion of his boyhood — he who had led him forth 
 into the fields, and had taught him to look at nature with a practical eye — was 
 gone. More materials for deep thought in the year 1601. The Register of 
 Stratford thus attests the death of this earliest friend : — 
 
 • Prologue to Henry VIIJ t Coleridge. 
 
 418 

 
 [Edinburgh in the Seventeenth Century.] 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DID SHAKSPEBE VISIT SCOTLAND. 
 
 § i 
 
 The question which we set forth as a title to this chapter was first raised, in 
 1767, by William Guthrie, in his 'General History of Scotland;' "a.d. 1599. 
 The King, to prove how thoroughly he was now emancipated from the tutelage 
 of his clergy, desired Elizabeth to send him this year a company of English 
 comedians. She complied, and James gave them a licence to act in his capital 
 and in his court. I have great reason to think that the immortal Shakspere 
 was of the number." Guthrie, a very loose and inaccurate compiler, gives no 
 authority for his statement ; but it is evidently founded upon the following 
 passage in Archbishop Spottiswood's ' History of the Church of Scotland,' 
 which the writer says was "penned at the command of King James the Sixth 
 2E2 419
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 who bid the author write the truth and spare not:" — "In the end of the year 
 [1599] happened some new jars betwixt the King and the ministers of Edin- 
 burgh ; because of a company of English comedians, whom the King had licensed 
 to play within the burgh. The ministers, being offended with the liberty 
 given them, did exclaim in their sermons against stage-players, their unruliness 
 and immodest behaviour ; and in their sessions made an act, prohibiting people 
 to resort unto their plays, under pain of the church censures. The King, 
 taking this to be a discharge of his licence, called the sessions before the 
 council, and ordained them to annul their act, and not to restrain the people 
 from going to these comedies ; which they promised, and accordingly performed ; 
 whereof publication was made the day after, and all that pleased permitted to 
 repair unto the same, to the great offence of the ministers." The assertion of 
 Guthrie, that James " desired Elizabeth to send him this year a company of 
 English comedians," rests upon no foundation ; and his conjecture " that the 
 immortal Shakspere was of the munber" is equally baseless. The end of the 
 year 1599, the period mentioned by Spottiswood, must be taken to mean some- 
 where about the month of December ; for by an alteration of style, exactly at 
 this period, the legal year in Scotland commenced on the 1st of January, 1600. 
 We find, both from the Registers of the Privy Council,* and the Office Books 
 of the Treasurers of the Chamber, that the Lord Chamberlain's servants per- 
 formed before Queen Elizabeth on St. Stephen's Day at night, the 26th of 
 December, 1599. This is decisive evidence that the company of English come- 
 dians, who were licensed by James to play at Edinburgh at the end of the year 
 1599, was not Shakspere's company. 
 
 But it has been conjectured that Shakspere visited Scotland at a much earlier 
 period. In Sir John Sinclair's ' Statistical Account of Scotland,' there is a de- 
 scription of the parish of Perth, by the Rev. James Scott, in which, speaking of 
 modern plays at Perth, the writer says, " It may afford what may be reckoned 
 a curious piece of information to relate how plays were regulated in Perth 
 more than two hundred years ago. It appears from the old records that a com- 
 pany of players were in Perth, June 3, 1589. In obedience to an act of the 
 General Assembly, which had been made in the year 1574-5, they applied to 
 the consistory of the church for a licence, and showed a copy of the play which 
 they proposed to exhibit." The words of the record, some of them a little mo- 
 dernized, are, "Perth, June 3, 1589 — The minister and elders give licence to 
 play the play, with conditions that no swearing, banning, nor ane scurrility 
 shall be spoken, which would be a scandal to our religion which we profess, 
 and for an evil example unto others. Also that nothing shall be added to what 
 is in the register of the play itself. If any one who plays shall do in the con- 
 trary, he shall be warded, and make his public repentance." Mr. Scott then 
 alludes to Guthrie's statement, and says of Shakspere, " that actor and writer 
 of plays most probably began his excursions before the year 1589. If, there- 
 fore, they were English actors who were at Perth that year, he might perhaps 
 be one of them." 
 
 * See Chalmers's 'Apology,' p. 401. 
 420
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The conjectures of Guthrie and of Scott are so manifestly loose and untenable, 
 that we can easily understand why they attracted no regard amongst the Eng- 
 lish writers on Shakspere. Sir John Sinclair, as stated by Drake, "when 
 speaking of the local traditions respecting Macbeth's castle at Dunsinane, infers 
 from their coincidence with the drama, that Shakspere, ' in his capacity of 
 actor, travelled to Scotland in 1599, and collected on the spot materials for the 
 exercise of his imagination.'"* Drake doubts the validity of the inference; 
 and Stoddart holds that here " conjecture seems to have gone its full length, if 
 not to have overstepped the modesty of nature." f Chalmers, although he 
 notices at some length the state of the drama in Scotland previous to the acces- 
 sion of James to the English crown, has no mention of the opinion that Shak- 
 spere had visited Scotland. Malone gives the statement and the conjecture of 
 Guthrie, adding, " If the writer had any ground for this assertion, why was it 
 not stated ? It is extremely improbable that Shakspeare should have left London 
 at this period. In 1599 his King Henry V. was produced, and without doubt 
 acted with great applause." } Mr. Collier, mentioning that " Towards the close of 
 the year 1599 a company of English players arrived in Edinburgh," says in a note, 
 " It has been supposed by some, that Shakespeare was a member of this company, 
 and that he even took his description of Macbeth's castle from local observation. 
 No evidence can be produced either way, excepting Malone's conjecture, that 
 Shakespeare could not have left London in 1599, in consequence of the production 
 of his Henry V. in that year."§ Mr. Collier does not notice a subsequent visit of 
 a company of English players to Scotland, as detailed in a bulky local history 
 published in London in 1818, — the 'Annals of Aberdeen,' by William Kennedy. 
 This writer does not print the document upon which he founds his statement ; 
 but his narrative is so circumstantial as to leave little doubt that the company of 
 players to which Shakspere belonged visited Aberdeen in 1601. The account of 
 Mr. Kennedy has since been commented upon in a paper published in the 
 Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland in 1830 (to which we shall 
 presently further allude) ; and in a most lively, instructive, and learned volume — 
 a model of guide-books — ' The Book of Bon Accord, or a Guide to the City of 
 Aberdeen,' 1839. 
 
 Before we proceed to state the additional evidence which we have collected 
 upon this question, we would briefly direct the attention of our readers to the 
 bearings of the subject upon Shakspere's life, in connection with his writings. 
 Macbeth is altogether one of the most remarkable of the plays of Shakspere, 
 not only as displaying the highest power, but as presenting a story and a ma- 
 chinery altogether different in character from any other of his works. If it 
 can be proved, or reasonably inferred, that this story was suggested, or its local 
 details established, or the materials for the machinery collected, through the 
 presence of the great poet upon Scottish ground, a new interest is created in 
 Macbeth, not only for the people of Scotland, but for every one to whom Shak- 
 
 * ' Chronological Order,' Boswell's Edition, p. 41, 
 t ' Shakspeare and his Times,' vol. ii., p. 588. 
 X ' Remarks on Local Scenery, &c, in Scotland. 
 § 'Annals of the Stage,' 1831, vol. L, p. 344. 
 
 421
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 spere is familiar. It is especially interesting as a literary question, from the 
 circumstance that if we can trace Shakspere's accurate observation of the things 
 which were around him, in recent events, in scenery, and in the manners of the 
 people, during a brief visit to a country so essentially different in its physical 
 features from his own — of which the people presented so many characteristics 
 which he could not find in England — we may add one more to the proofs which 
 we have all along sought to establish, that Shakspere was the most careful of 
 observers, and the most diligent of workers ; that his poetical power had a deep 
 foundation of accuracy ; that his judgment was as remarkable as his imagina- 
 tion. Inclining, therefore, to the belief that Shakspere did visit Scotland in 
 1601, — having the precise date of the visit of a company of players to Aberdeen 
 in October, 1601, — we shall, in the first instance, go through the play of Mac- 
 beth with the impression that it may contain some peculiarities which were 
 not wholly derived from books ; which might have been more vividly im- 
 pressed upon the mind of the poet by local associations ; which become more 
 clear and intelligible to ourselves when we understand what those associations 
 especially were. We request our readers not to be incredulous at the onset of 
 this examination. We may distinctly state that, as far as any public or private 
 record informs us, there is no circumstance to show that the Lord Chamber- 
 lain's company was not in Scotland in the autumn of 1601. It is a curious fact 
 that even three months later, at the Christmas of that year, there is no record 
 that the Lord Chamberlain's company performed before Queen Elizabeth. 
 The Office- Book of the Treasurer of the Chamber records no performance be- 
 tween Shrove Tuesday, the 3rd of March, 1601, and St. Stephen's Day, the 
 26th of December, 1602. There is a record, however, which shows that Shak- 
 spere's company was in London at the beginning of 1602. It is that note in 
 the table-book of the student of the Middle Temple, which proves that Twelfth 
 Night was performed at the feast of that society on the 2nd of February, 1602. 
 If it can be shown that the company to which Shakspere belonged was performing 
 in Scotland in October, 1601, there is every probability that Shakspere himself was 
 not absent. He buried his father at Stratford on the 8th of September of that 
 year. The summer season of the Globe would be ended ; the winter season at the 
 Blackfriars not begun. He had a large interest as a shareholder in his company ; 
 he is supposed to have been the owner of its properties or stage equipments. His 
 duty would call him to Scotland. The journey and the sojourn there would 
 present some relief to the gloomy thoughts which the events of 1601 must have 
 cast upon him. 
 
 The commentators on Shakspere have taken some pains to assign to his 
 tragedy of Macbeth a different origin than the narrative of Holinshed. That 
 narrative was, of course, before the author of Macbeth. It was a striking narra- 
 tive and, after the accession of James, the poet's attention might have been 
 drawn to it by other circumstances than its capacity for the drama. Holinshed 
 speaks of " Banquo the Thane of Lochabar, of whom the house of the Stuarts is 
 descended, the which by order of lineage bath now for a long time enjoyed the 
 crown of Scotland even till these our days." It is clear that Shakspere con- 
 suited Holinshed ; for he has engrafted some of the circumstances related of the 
 422
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 murder of King Duff upon the story of Macbeth. But we still admit that the 
 commentators might niturally look for some circumstance that should have im- 
 pressed the history of the fortunes of Macbeth and Banquo more forcibly upon 
 the imagination of Shakspere than the narrative of Holinshed. It was not the 
 custom of the poet to adopt any story that was not in some degree familiar to 
 his audience, either in their chroniclers, their elder dramatists, or in their 
 novelists. Here was a story quite out of the range of the ordinary reading even 
 of educated Englishmen. The wild romance of Scottish history had not as yet 
 been popularized and elevated into poetry. The field was altogether untrodden. 
 The memory of the patriot heroes of Scotland would not be acceptable to those 
 who desired to see revived upon the stage their own " forefathers' valiant acts 
 that had been long buried in rusty brass and worm-eaten books."* 'The Scot- 
 tish History of James IV. slain at Flodden,' of Robert Greene, is altogether a 
 romance, the materials for which can be traced in no Scottish history or tradi- 
 tion. The fable of that wild play has no reference to the death of James IV. at 
 Flodden. It was the knowledge of these facts which probably led Dr. Farmer to 
 the following notion of the origin of Macbeth: "Macbeth was certainly one of 
 Shakspeare's latest productions, and it might possibly have been suggested to 
 him by a little performance on the same subject at Oxford, before King James, 
 I605."f Dr. Farmer acquired his knowledge of this performance from a 
 description in Wake's ' Rex Platonicus,' 1607, from which it appears that three 
 young men, habited as sibyls, came forth from St. John's College, singing alter- 
 nate verses, in which they professed themselves to be the three Sibyls who, 
 according to the ancient history of Scotland, appeared to Macbeth and Banquo, 
 predicting that one should be king, but should have no kingly issue, and that 
 the other should not be king, but should be the father of many kings. '% The 
 actual verses of the little performance were subsequently found annexed to the 
 ' Vertumnus ' of Dr. Gwynne, 1607. The whole interlude, as it is called, con- 
 sists of twenty -nine lines, six of which only have any reference to Banquo, and 
 none whatever to Macbeth. We must seek farther for the origin of Shakspere's 
 Macbeth. A. Nixon, in his 'Oxford Triumphs,' 1605, says "The King did 
 very much applaud the conceit of three little boys dressed like three nymphs." 
 This is very limited applause. " Hearing of this favourable reception," says 
 Chalmers, " Shakspeare determined to write his tragedy, knowing that he could 
 readily find materials in Holinshed's Chronicle, his common magazine." If we 
 believe that the materials of Holinshed were not sufficiently suggestive to the 
 poet, — if we think that local associations might probably have first carried 
 Shakspere to the story of Macbeth, more strikingly than a romantic narrative, 
 mixed up with other legends as strongly seizing upon the imagination, — we 
 may find upon Scottish ground some memories of an event which could not 
 itself be safely dramatized (although even that was subsequently shown upon 
 the stage), but which might have originated that train of thought which was 
 finally to shape itself into the dramatic history of King Duncan's murder, under 
 the influence of " fate and metaphysical aid." 
 
 * Nashe. \ ' Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare.' 
 
 J The Latin quotations from Wake may be consulted in Boswell'a Malone, vol. xi., pp. 2S.0, 281. 
 
 428
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 If Shakspere visited Perth in the autumn of 1601, he was in that citj within 
 fourteen months of the period when one of the most extraordinary tragedies in 
 the tragic history of Scotland had been acted within its walls. With the details 
 of this real tragedy Shakspere might have been familiar without a visit to 
 Perth ; for ' The Earle of Gowrie's Conspiracie against the Kingis Maiestie of 
 Scotland, at Saint Johnstoun,* vpon Tuesday the fift of August, 1600,' was 
 printed at London by Valentine Simmes (the printer of several of Shakspeie's 
 quarto plays) in the same year that the conspiracy took place. Whatever might 
 have been the insinuations of the Presbyterian divines in Scotland, this author- 
 ized account could not have presented itself to an unprejudiced English mind 
 except as a circumstantial, consistent, and true relation. The judicial evidence 
 which has been collected and published in recent times sustains this narrative 
 in all essential particulars. Place the poet in the High Gate [High Street] of 
 Perth, looking upon the Castle of Gowrie ; let the window be pointed out to 
 him from which the King cried out " I am murdered ; " let him enter the 
 " Blak Turnpike," the secret stair which led to the "gallery chalmer" from 
 which the cries proceeded ; — let him, surrounded with .the courtiers of James, 
 listen to the details of terror which would be crowded into the description of 
 such an event ; and Scottish history might then be searched for some parallel of 
 a king murdered by an ambitious subject. Let us see if there are any details 
 in the ' Discourse of the vnnaturall and vile Conspiracie attempted against his 
 Maiesties person, at Saint Johnstoun, upon the fift day of August, being Tues- 
 day, 1600,' or in the judicial evidence before the court held in Perth on the 22nd 
 of August of that year, or in the previous examinations at the King's Palace at 
 Falkland,! which have any resemblance to the incidents in the tragedy of Mac- 
 beth. 
 
 John Earl of Gowrie, and his brother Alexander, the Master of Ruthven, 
 were two young noblemen of great popularity. They had travelled ; they were 
 accomplished in many branches of knowledge. Amongst the attempts to blacken 
 the character of the unhappy Earl it was desired to be shown that he practised 
 sorceries, and that he conversed with sorcerers. James Weimis, of Bogy, re- 
 counts the Earl's conversations with him upon mysterious subjects ; — of serpents 
 which could be made to stand still upon pronouncing a Hebrew word ; of a ne- 
 cromancer in Italy with whom he had dealings ; of a man whose hanging he 
 predicted, and he was hanged ; *' and that this deponent counselled the Earl to 
 beware with whom he did communicate such speeches, who answered that he 
 would communicate them to none except great scholars." Master William 
 Reid deposed to certain magical characters found in his lord's pocket after his 
 death ; that he always kept the characters about him ; and that in his opinion 
 it was for no good. Thus, then, we encounter at the onset something like the 
 belief of Macbeth in matters beyond human reason. " I have learned by the 
 perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge." J According 
 
 * Saint Johustoun was another name for Perth. 
 | See Pitcairn's ' Criminal Trials,' vol. ii., p. 14C to p. 332. 
 
 X A Latin treatise wa3 published at Edinburgh, in 1601, ' De execrabili et nefanda fratrvm 
 Hvvcnorvra in aeienisaimi Scotoruin Regis caput Conjuratione,' which learnedly dwells upon the 
 424
 
 A BIOGRAPHi. 
 
 to tne narrative of the Gowrie Conspiracy, Alexander Ruthven met the King 
 as he was going out of his palace at Falkland, and earnestly solicited him to go 
 to Perth, to examine a man who had discovered a treasure. The King reluct- 
 antly consented, but at last did consent. Ruthven then directed "Andrew 
 Henderson, Chamberlain to the said Earl, to ride in all haste to the Earl, com- 
 manding him that he should not spare for spilling of his horse, and that he 
 should advertise the Earl that he hoped to move his Majesty to come thither." 
 Compare this with the fifth scene of Macbeth : — 
 
 " Attendant. The King comes here to-night. 
 
 Lady Macbeth. Thou 'rt mad to say it : 
 
 Is not thy master with him ? who, wer 't so, 
 Would have inform'd for preparation. 
 
 Atten. So please you, it is true ; our thane is coming; 
 One of my fellows had the speed of him ; 
 Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more 
 Than would make up his message. 
 
 Lady M. Give him tending, 
 
 He brings great news." 
 
 Macbeth precedes Duncan. Alexander Ruthven goes before James. The Duke 
 of Lennox says, " After that Master Alexander had come a certain space with 
 his Highness, he rode away and galloped to Perth before the rest of the com- 
 pany towards his brother's lodgings, of purpose, as the deponent believes, to 
 advertise the Earl of Gowrie of his Majesty's coming there." So Macbeth : 
 "Duncan comes here to-night." When Macbeth receives the prophecy of the 
 weird sisters he is so absorbed with 
 
 " That suggestion 
 Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, 
 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, 
 Against the use of nature," 
 
 that Banquo exclaims 
 
 " Look, how our partner's rapt ! " 
 
 King James thought Alexander Ruthven " somewhat beside himself," and 
 noticed " his raised and uncouth staring and continued pensiveness." The 
 description of the banquet with which Gowrie receives the King, — sorry cheer, 
 
 charge against Gowrie of tampering with supernatural aid, and which in one passage bears a still 
 more remarkable resemblanee to the original promptings of Macbeth's ambition : — " Quis est euiin 
 in noscitandis adolescentum nostri sevi ingenijs adeo peregrinus, qui non continuo subodoretur 
 Govvrium hsereditaria ea scabie prava? curiositatis prurientem, atque in patris ac aui mores insti- 
 tutaque euntem, consuluisse Magum hunc, quae sors maneret eum, aut quo fato esset periturus : et 
 veteratori3 spiritus astu (ita vt fit) ambigua aliqua rcsponsione fucum illi factum." This is the very 
 sentiment of Macbeth : — 
 
 " And be these juggling fiends no more belie v'd, 
 That palter with us in a double sense ; 
 That keep the word of promise to our ear, 
 And break it to our hope." 
 
 425
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPE11E. 
 
 according to his Majesty, excused upon the suddenness of his coming — is very 
 remarkable : " His Majesty being set down to his dinner, the said Earl stood 
 very pensive, and with a dejected countenance, at the end of his Majesty's 
 table, oft rounding [whispering] over his shoulder, one while to one of his 
 servants, and another while to another; and oft-times went out and in to the 
 chamber." Very similar to this is the situation expressed by the original stage 
 direction in Macbeth : " Enter a Sewer, and divers servants with dishes and 
 service over the stage. Then enter Macbeth." We can imagine Gowrie, on 
 one of the occasions when he went out and in to the chamber, thinking the very 
 thoughts which Macbeth thinks aloud when he has left the King : — 
 
 " If it were done, when 't is done, then 't were well 
 It were done quickly." 
 
 We can fancy the Master of Ruthven seeking his brother, (the favourite of 
 the people of Perth,) as Lady Macbeth sought her husband : — 
 
 " Lady M. He haa almost supp'd : Why have you left the chamber ? 
 
 Macb. Hath he ask'd for me ? 
 
 Lady M. Know you not he has ? 
 
 Macb. We will proceed no further in this business : 
 He hath honour'd me of late ; and I have bought 
 Oolden opinions from all sorts of people." 
 
 King James is led by Master Alexander "up a turnpike, ano through two or 
 three chambers, the said Master Alexander ever locking behind him every door 
 as he passed." Then comes the attempt at assassination. The circumstances 
 in Macbeth are of course essentially different ; but the ambition which prompted 
 the murder of Duncan, and the attempt upon James, are identical. The King 
 is held to have said while he was in the death grip of the Master of Ruthven, 
 " Albeit ye bereave me of my life, ye will nought be King of Scotland, for I 
 have both sons and daughters." So 
 
 " We will establish our estate upon 
 Our eldest Malcolm." 
 
 It is a singular characteristic of the Gowrie tragedy that the chief conspirators, 
 the Earl of Gowrie and the Master of Ruthven, were put to death in so sudden 
 a way that the real circumstances of the case must always be involved in some 
 doubt. The evidence is not wholly satisfactory. The Duke of Lennox, who 
 was the chief witness of credit, says of himself, the Earl of Mar, and their com- 
 pany, that " Notwithstanding long forcing with hammers, they got nought entry 
 at the said chamber until after the Earl of Gowrie and his brother were both 
 
 slain And at their first entry they saw the Earl of Gowrie lying 
 
 dead in the chamber, Master Alexander Ruthven being slain and taken down 
 the stair before their entry." The official account says that Sir John Ramsey, 
 finding the turnpike- door open (not the regular entrance, but one that led 
 direct from the street), entered the chamber where the King and the Master 
 were struggling. He struck the traitor with his dagger, " who was no sooner 
 shot out at the door but he was met bv Sir Thomas Erskine and Sir Hugh 
 4-26
 
 [Perth, and Vicinity. J 
 
 Hemes, who there upon the stair ended him." The Earl of Gowrie followed 
 these servants of the King ; and then the Earl was " stricken dead with a stroke 
 through the heart which the said Sir John Ramsey gave him." Sir Thomas 
 Erskine and Sir John Ramsey confirm this account. The people of Perth be- 
 lieved that the Earl of Gowrie, their Provost, was unjustly slain ; and their cry 
 was, " Bloody butchers, traitors, murderers, ye shall all die ! give us forth our 
 Provost ! Woe worth ye greencoats, woe worth this day for ever ! Traitors 
 and thieves that have slain the Earl of Gowrie!" The slaying of the two bro- 
 thers gave rise to the belief that " the King was a doer, and not a sufferer." * 
 It was this belief that moved the people of Perth to utter " most irreverent and 
 undutiful speeches against his Majesty," even though the Earl was denounced 
 as " a studier of magic, and a conjurer of devils." Macbeth has furnished the 
 excuse for such a sudden slaying of the brothers : — 
 
 " Macbeth. 0, yet I do repent me of my fury, 
 That I did kill them. 
 
 Macduff. Wherefore did you so ? 
 
 Macb. Who can be wise, amaz'd, temperate, and furioufl, 
 Loyal, and neutral, in a moment ? No man : 
 The expedition of my violent love 
 Outran the pauser reason." 
 
 The people of Perth, however, became reconciled to James. On the 15th of 
 April, 1601, "The King's Majesty came to Perth, and was made burgess at the 
 
 * Galloway's Discourse before the King. 
 
 427
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 ..xoiKct Cross. There was eight puncheons of wine set there, and all drunken 
 out. He received the banquet at the town, and subscribed the guild- book with 
 his own hand, ' Jacobus Rex, parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.' " 
 
 In a paper read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, by John Anderson, 
 Esq., 'On the Site of Macbeth's Castle at Inverness,'* the author says, "The 
 extreme accuracy with which Shakspere has followed the minutiae of Macbeth's 
 career has given rise to the opinion that he himself visited those scenes which 
 are immortalized by his pen." It is our duty to examine this opinion some- 
 what particularly, whatever be the conclusions to which the examination may 
 conduct us. 
 
 The story of Macbeth was presented to Shakspere in a sufficiently complete 
 form by the chronicler from whom he derived so many other materials, Holin- 
 shed. In testing, therefore, " the extreme accuracy with which Shakspere has 
 followed the minutiae of Macbeth's career " — by which we understand the writer 
 to mean the accuracy of the poet in details of locality — we must inquire how 
 far he agrees with, or differs from, and how far he expands, or curtails, the 
 local statements or allusions of his chief authority. In the tragedy, Macbeth 
 and Banquo, returning from their victory, are proceeding to Forres : " How far 
 is't called to Forres?" In the chronicler we find, " It fortuned as Macbeth and 
 Banquo journeyed towards Forres, where the king then lay." So far there is 
 agreement as to the scene. The historian thus proceeds : " They went sporting 
 by the way together without other company, passing thorough the woods and 
 fields, when suddenly, in the middest of a laund, there met them three women 
 in strange and wild apparel." This description presents to us the idea of a 
 pleasant and fertile place. The very spot where the supernatural solicit- 
 ing occurs is a laund, or meadow amongst trees. f The poet chose his scene 
 with greater art. The witches meet "upon the heath;" they stop the way of 
 Macbeth and Banquo upon the " blasted heath." But the poet was also more 
 accurate than the historian in his traditionary topography. The country around 
 Forres is wild moorland. Boswell, passing from Elgin to Forres in company 
 with Johnson, says, " In the afternoon we drove over the very heath where 
 Macbeth met the witches, according to tradition. Dr. Johnson again solemnly 
 repeated, ' How far is't called to Forres?' &c." But, opposed to this, the more 
 general tradition holds that the " blasted heath " was on the east of Forres, 
 between that town and Nairn. " A more dreary piece of moorland is not to be 
 
 found in all Scotland There is something startling to a stranger in 
 
 seeing the solitary figure of the peat-digger or rush-gatherer moving amidst the 
 waste in the sunshine of a calm autumn day ; but the desolation of the scene in 
 stormy weather, or when the twilight fogs are trailing over the pathless heath, 
 or settling down upon the pools, must be indescribable."! We thus see that, 
 whether Macbeth met the weird sisters to the east or west of Forres, there was 
 in each place that desolation which was best fitted for such an event, and not 
 
 * ' Transactions,' vol. iii., 28th January, 1828. 
 f A laund is described by Camden as " a plain amongst trees*" 
 X Local Illustrations of Macbeth, Act L 
 428
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 the woods and fields and launds of the chronicler. From Forres, where Macbeth 
 proffers his service and his loyalty to his king, was a day's ride to his own castle : 
 " From hence to Inverness." Boece makes Inverness the scene of Duncan's 
 murder. Holinshed merely says, " He slew the king at Enverns, or (as some say) 
 at Botgosvane." The chroniclers would have furnished Shakspere no notion of the 
 particular character of the castle at Inverness. Without some local knowledge the 
 poet might have placed it upon a frowning rock, lonely, inaccessible, surrounded 
 with a gloom and grandeur fitted for deeds of murder and usurpation. He has 
 chosen altogether a different scene : — 
 
 " Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses. 
 
 Ban. This guest of summer, 
 
 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, 
 By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath 
 Smells wooingly here ; no jutty, frieze, 
 Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird 
 Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle : 
 Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd, 
 The air is delicate." 
 
 Such a description, contrasting as it does with the deeds of terror that are to be 
 acted in that pleasant seat, is unquestionably an effort of the highest art. But 
 here again the art appears founded upon a reality. Mr. Anderson, in the paper 
 which we have already quoted, has shown from various records that there was 
 an old castle at Inverness. It was not the castle whose ruins Johnson visited 
 and of which Boswell says, " It perfectly corresponds with Shakspeare's descrip- 
 tion ; " but a castle on an adjacent eminence called the Crown — so called from 
 having been a royal seat. Traditionary lore, Mr. Anderson says, embodies this 
 opinion, connecting the place with the history of Macbeth. " Immediately 
 opposite to the Crown, on a similar eminence, and separated from it by a small 
 valley, is a farm belonging to a gentleman of the name of Welsh. That part of 
 the ascent to this farm next Viewfield, from the Great Highland Road, is called 
 ' Banquc's Brae.' The whole of the vicinity is rich in wild imagery. From 
 the mouth of the valley of Diriebught to King's Mills, thence by the road to 
 Viewfield, and down the gorge of Aultmuniack to the mail -road along the sea- 
 shore, we compass a district celebrated in the annals of diablerie." The writer 
 then goes on to mention other circumstances corroborating his opinion as to the 
 site of Macbeth's castle : " Traces of what has been an approach to a place of 
 consequence are still discernible. This approach enters the lands of Diriebught 
 from the present mail-road from Fort George ; and, running through the valley, 
 gradually ascends the bank of the Crown Hill ; and, the level attained, strikes 
 again towards the eastern point, where it terminates. Here the ' pleasant seat ' is 
 rumoured to have stood, facing the sea ; and singularly correct with respect to the 
 relative points of the compass will be found the poet's disposal of the portal ' at the 
 south entry/ " 
 
 The investiture of Macbeth at Scone, and the burial of Duncan at Colmeskill, 
 are facts derived by the poet from the chronicler. Hence also Shakspere derived 
 
 429
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 the legend, of which he made so glorious a use, that " a certain witch whom he had 
 in great trust had told Macbeth that he should never be slain with man born of any 
 woman, nor vanquished till the wood of Birnane came to the castle of Dunsinane." 
 From Holinshed, also, he acquired a general notion of the situation of this castle : 
 " He builded a strong castle on the top of an high hill called Dunsinane, situate 
 in Gowne, ten miles from Perth, on such a proud height that standing there aloft 
 a man might behold well near all the countries of Angus, Fife, Stirmond, and 
 Erndale, as it were lying underneath him." The propinquity of Birnam Wood to 
 Dunsinane is indicated only in the chronicler by the circumstance that Malcolm 
 rested there the night before the battle, and on the morrow marched to Dunsinane, 
 every man " bearing a bough of some tree or other of that wood in his hand." 
 The commanding position of Dunsinane, as described by the chronicler, is strictly 
 adhered to by the poet : — 
 
 " As I did stand my watch upon the hill 
 I looked toward Birnam, and anon, methought 
 The wood began to move." 
 
 But the poet has a particularity which the historian has not ; — 
 
 " Within this three mile may you see it coming ; 
 I say, a moving grove." 
 
 This minuteness sounds like individual local knowledge. The Dunsinane Hills 
 form a long range extending in a north-easterly direction from Perth to Glamis. 
 The castle of the " thane of Glamis " has been made a traditionary scene of the 
 murder of Duncan. Birnam Hill is to the north-west of Perth ; and between 
 the two elevations there is a distance of some twelve miles, formed by the valley 
 
 -;-:- 
 
 'Vunsinane.]
 
 [Q lamia Castle. J 
 
 of the Tay. But Birnam Hill and Birnam Wood might have been essentially 
 different spots two centuries and a half ago. The plain is now under tillage ; but 
 even in the time of Shakspere it might have been for the most part woodland 
 extending from Birnam Hill within four or five miles of Dunsinane ; distinguished 
 from Birnam Hill as Birnam Wood. At the distance of three miles it was "a 
 moving grove." It was still nigher to Dunsinane when Malcolm exclaimed, 
 
 " Now, near enough, your leafy screens throw down." 
 
 These passages in the play might have been written without any local know- 
 ledge, but they certainly do not exhibit any local ignorance. It has been said, 
 " The probability of Shakspeare's ever having been in Scotland is very remote. 
 It should seem, by his uniformly accenting the name of this spot Dunsinane, 
 that he could not possibly have taken it from the mouths of the country-people, 
 who as uniformly accent it Dunsinnan." * This is not quite accurate, as Dr 
 Drake has pointed out. Shakspere has this passage : — 
 
 " Macbeth shall never vanquish' d be, until 
 Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill 
 Shall come against him." 
 
 Stoddart's ' Remarks on the Local Scenery and Manners in Scotland,' 1801. 
 
 431
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 
 
 Wintoun, in his ' Chronicle,' has both Dunsinane and Dunsinane. But we are 
 informed by a gentleman who is devoted to the study of Scotch antiquities that 
 there is every reason to believe that Dunsinane was the ancient pronunciation, 
 and that Shakspere was consequently right in making Dunsinane the exception 
 to his ordinary method of accenting the word. So much for the topographical 
 knowledge displayed in ' Macbeth.' Alone, it is scarcely enough to found an 
 argument upon. 
 
 But there is a point of specific knowledge in this tragedy which opens out a 
 wider field of inquiry. Coleridge has said — " The Weird Sisters are as true a 
 creation of Shakspeare's, as his Ariel and Caliban, — fates, furies, and materializ- 
 ing witches being the elements. They are wholly different from any representa- 
 tion of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient 
 external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on 
 the audience." Fully acknowledging that the weird sisters are a creation — for 
 all the creations of poetry to be effective must still be akin to something which 
 has been acted or believed by man, and therefore true in the highest sense of 
 the word — we have still to inquire whether there were in existence any common 
 materials for this poetical creation. We have no doubt that the witches of 
 ' Macbeth ' " are wholly different from any representation of witches in the con- 
 temporary writers." Charles Lamb says of the ' Witch of Edmonton,' a tragi- 
 comedy by Rowley, Dekker, and Ford, that Mother Sawyer " is the plain tradi- 
 tional old woman witch of our ancestors ; poor, deformed, and ignorant ; the 
 terror of villages, herself amenable to a justice." She has " a familiar which 
 serves her in the likeness of a black dog." It is he who strikes the horse lame, 
 and nips the sucking child, and forbids the butter to come that has been churn- 
 ing nine hours. It is scarcely necessary to inquire whether the ' Witch ' of 
 Middleton preceded the ' Macbeth ' of Shakspere. Davenant engrafted Mid- 
 dleton's Lyrics upon the stage ' Macbeth ; ' but those who sing Locke's music 
 are not the witches of Shakspere. Middleton's witches are essentially un- 
 poetical, except in a passage or two of these Lyrics. Hecate, their queen, has 
 all the low revenges and prosaic occupations of the meanest of the tribe. Take an 
 example : — 
 
 " Hec. Is the heart of wax 
 Stuck full of magic needles ? 
 
 Stadlin. 'T is done, Hecate. 
 
 Hec. And is the farmer's picture, and his wife's, 
 Laid down to th' fire yet ? 
 
 Stad. They are a roasting both, too. 
 
 Hec. Good; 
 Then their marrows are a melting subtlely, 
 And three months' sickness sucks up life in 'em. 
 They deny'd me often flour, barm, and milk, 
 Goose-grease and tar, when I ne'er hurt their churnings, 
 Their brew-locks, nor their batches, nor fore-spoke 
 Any of their breedings. Now I '11 be meet with 'em. 
 Seven of their young pigs I have bewitch'd already 
 Of the last litter; nine ducklings, thirteen goslings, and a hop 
 Fell lame last Sunday after even-song too.
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 And mark Low their sheep prosper; or what soup 
 
 Each mileh-kine gives to th pail : I'll send these snakes 
 
 Shall milk 'em all beforehand : the dew'd-skirted dairy weuctvee 
 
 Shall stroke dry dugs for this, and go home cursing : 
 
 I'll mar their syllabubs, and swathy feastings 
 
 Under cows' bellies, with the parish youths." 
 
 Maudlin, the witch of Ben Jonson's ' Sad Shepherd,' is scarcely more elevated. 
 He has indeed, thrown some poetry over her abiding place — conventional 
 poetry, but sonorous : — 
 
 " Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell, 
 Down in a pit o'ergrown with brakes and briars, 
 Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey, 
 Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground, 
 'Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnel-house." 
 
 But her pursuits scarcely required so solemn a scene for her incantations. liei 
 
 business was 
 
 " To make ewes cast their lambs, swine eat their farrow, 
 The housewives' tun not work, nor the milk churn ; 
 Writhe children's wrists, and suck their breath in sleep, 
 Get vials of their blood ; and where the sea 
 Casts up his slimy ooze, search for a weed 
 To open locks with, and to rivet charms, 
 Planted about her in the wicked feat 
 Of all her mischiefs, which are manifold." 
 
 For these ignoble purposes she employs all the spells of classical antiquity ; but 
 she is nevertheless nothing more than the traditional English witch who sits 
 in her form in the shape of a hare : — 
 
 "I'll lay 
 My hand upon her, make her throw her skut 
 Along her back, when she doth start before us. 
 But you must give her law : and you shall see her 
 Make twenty leaps and doubles ; cross the paths, 
 And then squat down beside us." 
 
 The peculiar elevation of the weird sisters, as compared with these representa 
 tions of a vulgar superstition, may be partly ascribed to the higher character of 
 the scenes in which they are introduced, and partly to the loftier powers of the 
 poet who introduces them. But we think it may be also shown, in a great 
 degree, that some of their peculiar attributes belong to the superstitions of 
 Scotland rather than to those of England ; and, if so, we may next inquire how 
 the poet became familiarly acquainted with those superstitions. 
 
 The first legislative enactment against witchcraft in England was in the 33rd 
 of Henry VIII. This bill is a singular mixture of unbelief and credulity. The 
 preamble recites, that "Where [whereas] divers and sundry persons unlawfully 
 have devised and practised invocations and conjurations of spirits, pretending 
 by such means to understand and get knowledge for their own lucre in what 
 Life. 2 F *■*"
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEUE : 
 
 place treasure of gold and silver should or might be found or had in the earth 
 or other secret places, and also have used and occupied witchcrafts, enchant- 
 ments, and sorceries, to the destruction of their neighbours' persons and goods." 
 Thus the witches have pretended to get knowledge of treasure, but they have 
 used enchantments to the injury of their neighbours. The enactment makes it 
 felony to use or cause to be used " any invocations or conjurations of spirits, 
 witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorceries, to the intent to get or find money or 
 treasure, or to waste, consume, or destroy any person in his body, members, or 
 goods." So little was the offence regarded in England, or the protection of the 
 law desired, that this statute was repealed amongst other new felonies in the 
 first year of Edward VI., 1547- The Act of the 5th of Elizabeth, 1562-3, ex- 
 hibits a considerable progress in the belief in witchcraft. It recites that since 
 the repeal of the statute of Henry VIII., " Many fantastical and devilish per- 
 sons have devised and practised invocations and conjurations of evil and wicked 
 spirits, and have used and practised witchcrafts, enchantments, charms, and 
 sorceries, to the destruction of the persons and goods of their neighbours, and 
 other subjects of this realm." The enactment makes a subtle distinction be- 
 tween those who " use, practise, or exercise any invocations or conjurations of 
 evil and wicked spirits to or for any intent or purpose," and those who " use 
 any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall 
 happen to be killed or destroyed." The conjuration of spirits, for any intent, 
 was a capital crime : plain witchcraft was only capital when a person was 
 through it killed or destroyed. It would seem, therefore, that witchcraft 
 might exist without the higher crime of the conjuration of evil spirits. By 
 this enactment the witchcraft which destroyed life was punishable by death ; 
 but the witchcraft which only wasted, consumed, or lamed the body or member, 
 or destroyed or impaired the goods of any person, was punishable only with 
 imprisonment and the pillory for the first offence. The treasure-finders were 
 dealt with even more leniently. The climax of our witch legislation was the 
 Act of the 1st of James I., 1603-4. This statute deals with the offence with a 
 minute knowledge of its atrocities which the learning of England had not yet 
 attained to. The King brought this lore from his own land : " And for the 
 better restraining the said offences, and more severe punishing the same, be it 
 further enacted by the authoritv aforesaid, that if anv person or persons, after 
 the said Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel next coming, shall use, practise, 
 or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall 
 consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked 
 spirit to or for any intent or purpose, or take up any dead man, woman, or 
 child out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body 
 resteth, or the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person, to be employed 
 or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment ; or shall 
 use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, where- 
 by any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in 
 his or her body, or any part thereof ; that then every such offender or offenders, 
 their aiders, abettors, and counsellors, being of any the said offences duly anc 
 
 lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer pains of death as a felon or felons 
 434
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 and shall lose the privilege and benefit of clergy and sanctuary.' It is a re- 
 markable proof of the little hold which the belief in witchcraft had obtained in 
 England, that the legislation against the crime appears to have done very little 
 for the production of the crime. " In one hundred and three years from the 
 statute against witchcraft, in the 33rd of Henry VIII. till 1644, when we were 
 in the midst of our civil wars, I find but about sixteen executed."* The po- 
 pular fury against witchcraft in England belongs to a later period, which we 
 call enlightened ; when even such a judge as Hale could condemn two women 
 to the flames, and Sir Thomas Browne, upon the same occasion, could testify his 
 opinion that " the subtlety of the devil was co-operating with the malice of 
 these which we term witches." It was in 1597 that James VI. of Scotland 
 [James I.] published his ' Dsemonology,' written " against the damnable opi 
 nions of two principally, in our age, whereof the one called Scott, an English 
 man, is not ashamed, in public print, to deny that there can be such a thing as 
 witchcraft." The opinions of the King gave an impulse, no doubt, to the su- 
 perstitions of the people, and to the frightful persecutions to which those 
 superstitions led. But the popular belief assumed such an undoubting form, 
 and displayed itself in so many shapes of wild imagination, that we may readily 
 believe that the legal atrocities were as much a consequence of the delusion as that 
 they fostered and upheld it. If Shakspere were in Scotland about this period, he 
 would find ample materials upon which to found his creation of the weird sisters, — 
 materials which England could not furnish him, and which it did not furnish to his 
 contemporaries. 
 
 On the 2nd of February, 1596, a commission was issued by the King ol 
 Scotland " in favour of the Provost and Baillies of the burgh of Aberdeen, for 
 the trial of Janet Wishart and others accused of witchcraft." Other commis- 
 sions were obtained in 1596 and 1597, and during the space of one year no less 
 than twenty-three women and one man were burned in Aberdeen, upon con- 
 viction of this crime, in addition to others who were banished and otherwise 
 punished. Many of the proceedings on this extraordinary occasion were re- 
 cently discovered in an apartment in the Town House of that city, and they 
 were published in 1841 in the first volume of 'The Miscellany of the Spaldinj 
 Club/ — a Society established " For the printing of the historical, ecclesiastical, 
 genealogical, topographical, and literary remains of the north-eastern counties 
 of Scotland." These papers occupy more than a hundred closely-printed quarto 
 pages ; and very truly does the editor of the volume say, " There is a greater 
 variety of positive incident, and more imagination, displayed in these trials 
 
 than are generally to be met with in similar records They reflect 
 
 a very distinct light on many obsolete customs, and on the popular belief of our 
 ancestors." We opened these most curious documents with the hope of finding 
 something that might illustrate, however inadequately, the wonderful display 
 of fancy in the witches of Shakspere — that extraordinary union of a populai 
 belief and a poetical creation which no other poet has in the slightest degref 
 approached. We have not been disappointed. The documents embody thr 
 
 • 'An Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft,' by Francis Hutchinson, D.D., 1720. 
 2 f 2 435
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 superstitions of the people within four years of the period when Shakspere is 
 supposed to have visited Scotland ; and when the company of which he was one 
 of the most important members is held to have played at Aberdeen. The popular 
 belief, through which twenty-four victims perished in 1597, would not have 
 died out in 1601. Had Shakspere spent a few weeks in that city, it must have 
 encountered him on every side, amidst the wealthy and the poor, the learned and 
 the ignorant, the clergy and the laity. All appear to have concurred in the un- 
 shaken confidence that they were acting rightly in the allegation and the credence of 
 the most extraordinary instances of supernatural power. It was unnecessary that 
 Shakspere should have heard the trials or read the documents which are now open 
 to us, if he had dwelt for a short time amongst the people who were judges and 
 witnesses. The popular excitement did not subside for many years. To the 
 philosophical poet the common delusion would furnish ample materials for wonder 
 and for use. 
 
 ' Graymalkin ' the cat, and ' Paddock ' the toad, belong to the witcli supersti- 
 tions of the south as well as the north. The witches of the extreme north, the 
 Laplanders and Finlanders, could bestow favourable winds. Reginald Scott, 
 with his calm and benevolent irony, says, " No one endued with common sense 
 but will deny that the elements are obedient to witches and at their command- 
 ment, or that they may, at their pleasure, send rain, hail, tempests, thunder, 
 lightning, when she, being but an old doting woman, casteth a flint stone over 
 her left shoulder towards the west." Shakspere in Macbeth dwells upon this 
 superstition : — 
 
 " Fair is foul, and foul is fair," 
 
 say the witches in the first scene. The second and third sisters will each give their 
 revengeful sister " a wind : " — 
 
 " I myself have all the other ; 
 And the very ports they blow, 
 All the quarters that they know 
 I' the shipman's card." 
 
 Macbeth and Banquo, before they meet the sisters, have not seen " so foul and fair 
 a day." Macbeth, in the incantation scene, invokes them with, 
 
 " Though you untie the winds, and let them fight 
 Against the churches." 
 
 In the ' Dittay against Issobell Oige ' at Aberdeen she is thus addressed : — 
 " Thou art indicted and accused cf practising of thy witchcraft in laying of the 
 wind, and making of it to become calm and lowdin [smooth], a special point 
 teached to thee by thy master Satan."* In those humble practices of the 
 witches in Macbeth which assimilate them to common witches, such a? 
 " killing swine " in the third scene of the first act, Shakspere would scarcely 
 need the ample authority wh^ti is furnished by charge upon charge in the 
 
 * In these quotations we shall take the freedom to change the Scottish orthography into English, 
 to save unnecessary difficulty to our readers. 
 4Rfl
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 trials at Aberdeen. But even amongst these there is one incident so peculiar 
 that we can scarcely believe that the poet could have conceived it amongst the 
 woods and fields of his own mid- England : — 
 
 " A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, 
 And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd : — ' Give me,' quoth I : 
 ' Aroint thee, witch ! ' the rump-fed ronyon cries. 
 ' Her husband 's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger : 
 But in a sieve I '11 thither sail, 
 And like a rat without a tail, 
 I '11 do, I '11 do, I '11 do.* " 
 
 One of the images here employed certainly came from Scotland. The witches 
 who were evidence against Dr. Fian, the notable sorcerer who was burnt at 
 Edinburgh in 1591, in their discovery ' s how they pretended to bewitch and 
 drown his Majesty in the sea coming from Denmark," testified " that all they 
 together went to sea, each one in a riddle or sieve." The revengeful witch 
 goes on to say, 
 
 " Though his bark cannot be lost, 
 Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd." 
 
 In the indictment against Violet Leys, she is told that " Alexander Lasoun 
 thy husband, being one long time mariner in William Finlay's ship, was put 
 forth of the same three years since. Thou and thy umquhile mother together 
 bewitched the said William's ship, that since thy husband was put forth of the 
 same she never made one good voyage ; but either the master or merchants at 
 some times through tempest of weather were forced to cast overboard the 
 greatest part of their lading, or then to perish, men, ship, and gear." This is a 
 veritable sea-port superstition ; and it is remarkable that nearly all the dialogue 
 of the witches before " Macbeth doth come," is occupied with it. Such delu- 
 sions must have been rife at Aberdeen at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century. In the witch superstitions of England, whether recorded in legis- 
 lative enactments, in grave treatises, or in dramatic poetry, we find nothing of 
 witchcraft in connexion with maritime affairs. 
 
 We have seen that in the enactment of Henry VIII., the superstitious belief 
 that the power of witchcraft could waste the body was especially regarded. 
 Shakspere need not, therefore, have gone farther for, 
 
 " Sleep shall neither night nor day 
 Hang upon his pent-house lid ; 
 He shall live a man forbid : 
 Weary sev'n nights nine times nine, 
 Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine." 
 
 But the extent to which this belief was carried in Aberdeen, in 1596-7. is almost 
 beyond credence. There was no doubt a contagious distemper ravaging the 
 city and neighbourhood ; for nearly all the witches are accused of having pro- 
 duced the same effects upon their victims — " The one half day rossin [roasting] 
 as in a fiery furnace, with an extraordinary kind of drought that she could not 
 be slockit [slaked], and the other half day in an extraordinary kind of sweat- 
 
 487
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 
 
 mg, melting and consuming her body as a white burning candle, which kind 
 of sickness is a special point of witchcraft." Still this is not essentially a super- 
 stition of the north. Bishop Jewell, preaching before the Queen previous to 
 the revived statute against witchcraft, says, " Your grace's subjects pine away 
 even unto the death. Their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is 
 benumbed, their sense is bereft." But there is a superstition alluded to in 
 Macbeth which we do not find in the south. Banquo addresses the weird 
 sisters, — 
 
 "If you can look into the seeds of time, 
 And say, which grain will grow, and which will not, 
 Speak then to mo." 
 
 This may be metaphorical, but the metaphor is identical with an Aberdeen 
 delusion. In the accusation against Johnnet Wischert there is this item, — 
 " Indicted for passing to the green growing corn in May, twenty-two years 
 since or thereby, sitting thereupon tymous in the morning before the sun-rising, 
 and being there found and demanded what she was doing, thou answered, I shall 
 tell thee, I have been piling [peeling] the blades of the corn, I find it will be 
 one dear year, the blade of the corn grows withersones [contrary to the course 
 of the sun], and when it grows sonegatis about [with the course ot the sun] it 
 will be good cheap year." 
 
 The witches' dance can scarcely be distinctly found in any superstition of the 
 south. In Macbeth the first witch says, — 
 
 " I'll charm the air to give a sound 
 While you perform your antique round." 
 
 The Aberdeen trials abound with charges against those who partook in such 
 fearful merriment. They danced early in the morning upon St. Catherine's 
 Hill ; they danced at twelve-hours at even round the Fish Cross of the borough. 
 The devil, their master, was with them, playing on his form of instruments. 
 Marion Grant is thus accused : " Thou confessed that the devil thy master, 
 jvhom thou termest Christsonday, caused thee dance sundry times with him, 
 and with Our Lady, who, as thou sayest, was a fine woman, clad in a white 
 walicot, and sundry others of Christsonday's servants with thee whose names 
 thou knowest not, and that the devil played on his form of instruments very 
 pleasantly unto you."* Here is something like the poetry of witchcraft opening 
 upon us. Here are dances something approaching to those of Hecate, 
 
 " Like elves and fairies in a ring." 
 
 * The reader cannot fail to observe that this article of the witch-belief lingered in Scotland until 
 the period when Burns preserved it for all time in ' Tarn o' Shanter :' — 
 
 " Warlocks and witches in a dance : 
 Nae cotillon brent new frae France, 
 But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, 
 Put life and mettle in their heels. 
 A winnock-bunker in the east, 
 
 There sat auld Nick in shap« o' beast ; A towzio 
 
 438
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Here is what the editor of the ' Witchcraft Trials ' so justly calls a display of 
 " imagination." What if we here should find the very character of Hecate 
 herself,-— something higher than the Dame Hecate of Ben Jonson, — more de- 
 finite in her attributes than the Hecate of the mythology ? Andro Man is thus 
 indicted : — " Thou art accused as a most notorious witch and sorcerer, in so far 
 as thou confessest and affirmest thyself that by the space of threescore years 
 since or thereby the devil thy master came to thy mother's house in the like- 
 ness and shape of a woman, whom thou callest the Queen of Elphen." The 
 Queen of Elphen, with others, rode upon white hackneys. She and her com- 
 pany have shapes and clothes like men, and yet they are but shadows, but are 
 starker [stronger] than men ; " and they have playing and dancing when they 
 please, and also that the Queen is very pleasant, and will be old and young 
 when she pleases." The force of imagination can scarcely go farther than in 
 one of the confessions of this poor old man : — " Thou affirmest that the Queen 
 of Elphen has a grip of all the craft, but Christsonday is the good man, and has 
 all power under God, and that thou kennest sundry dead men in their com- 
 pany, and that the king who died in Flodden and Thomas Rymour is there." 
 There is here almost imagination enough to have suggested the scene of that 
 vision of the dead of which Macbeth exclaimed, 
 
 " Now I see 't is true : 
 For the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me." 
 
 When Johnson produced the ' Masque of Queens ; at Whitehall, in 1609, he 
 did not hesitate to allude to the opinions of James as an authority for some of 
 the imagery of his witch-scenes. In his note upon the goat which the witch 
 Dame was to ride, he says — " His Majesty also remembers the story of the 
 devil's appearance to those of Calicut, in that form, Dsemonol. lib. ii. cap. 3." 
 But the witch Dame of Jonson was a being not to be found in the popular 
 superstitions of Scotland, or in the King's confiding description of the super- 
 natural evils with which that country was afflicted. Jonson says — " This 
 Dam<9 I make to bear the person of Ate, or Mischief, for so I interpret it out of 
 Homer's description of her." The precision with which the poet describes this 
 personage leaves nothing doubtful for a proper conception of his idea : — " At 
 ohis the Dame entered to them, naked-armed, bare-footed, her frock tucked, her 
 hair knotted, and folded with vipers ; in her hand a torch made of a dead man's 
 arm, lighted, girded with a snake. To whom they all did reverence, and she 
 spake, uttering, by way of question, the end wherefore they came." The Dame 
 of Ben Jonson is thus entirely unconnected with the popular superstitions of 
 his own time and country. But King James had associated the belief in fairies 
 *nd in witches : " Witches have been transported with the pharie to a hill, 
 
 A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large, 
 To gi'e them music was his charge : 
 He screw'd the pipes, and gart them skirl. 
 Till roof and rafter- a' did dirl." 
 
 439
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 *hich opening they went in and there saw a fairie qi een." But James also 
 especially says, that the spirits whom the Gentiles called Diana and her 
 wandering court were known by the name of pharie. It would scarcely be 
 necessary for Shakspere to go farther for his Hecate. " We find the elves occa- 
 sionally arrayed in the costume of Greece and Rome, and the Fairy Queen and 
 her attendants transformed into Diana and her nymphs, and invested with their 
 attributes and appropriate insignia. — (Delrius, pp. 168, 807.) According to 
 the same author, the Fairy Queen was also called Habundia. Like Diana, 
 who, in one capacity, was denominated Hecate, the goddess of enchantment, 
 the Fairy Queen is identified, in popular tradition, with the Gyre-Carline, 
 Gay Carline, or mother-witch of the Scottish peasantry."* But nothing, as it 
 appears to us, so distinctly associates the popular superstition in witchcraft and 
 in fairies, — so distinctly makes the Queen of the Fairies to be also the Queen 
 of the Witches, — as the extraordinary matters revealed in the Aberdeen trials. 
 Accustomed to the stage representations of Shakspere's witches, we shape our 
 notion of his Hecate somewhat according to this statement of Jonson : " Amongst 
 our vulgar witches, the honour of Dame is given with a kind of pre-eminence 
 to some special one at their meetings." Upon the stage, Hecate is a personage 
 with a somewhat longer broom, and a somewhat gayer dress, than the inferior 
 witches ; but still one of skinny lip and beard. But shut out these attributes 
 of the tiring-room, and regard alone what Shakspere has set down for his 
 Hecate, and we behold quite another being. She denounces the witches as 
 beldams ; she proclaims herself the mistress of their charms ; she admits their 
 participation with her in all harms — ("the glory of our art") — but she lays 
 her commands upon them with an authority before which they tremble. She 
 is surrounded with no vulgar accessaries, of a green cock, a goat, or a horse of 
 wood, such as even the Dame Ate of Jonson rode upon ; but she communes 
 with spirits who wait for her in clouds. When she again appears she gives 
 praise and promises reward ; and amidst the gloomy solemnities of the witch- 
 mean tation she brings music and dancing ; — 
 
 " And now about the caldron sing 
 Like elves and fairies in a ring." 
 
 She was unquestionably meant to be an evil spirit, a mischievous one, some- 
 thing essentially different from the gentle and benevolent Titania, but never- 
 theless brilliant and beautiful. The Queen of Elphen of poor Andro Man had 
 "the likeness and shape of a woman;" she and her troop rode upon white 
 hackneys; she delighted in "playing and dancing;" she was "very pleasant, 
 and will be old and young when she pleases." And yet, according to the wild 
 imagination of the same poor wizard, she held her unhallowed rites in companv 
 with the devil, who was called Christsonday, and they claimed allegiance 
 together from their common subjects. Shakspere certainly could not have 
 found more exact materials for drawing a Fairy Queen essentially different 
 from the "lovely lady" who sat in the "spiced Indian air" gossiping with 
 
 * Scott's 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' vol. ii., p. 279. 
 
 410
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 a votaress of her order, or slept upon banks of flowers " lull'd with dances 
 and delight." 
 
 We might pursue this subject in tracing minutely some minor points of the 
 imagery of Macbeth which might have been derived from the Scottish super- 
 stitions. It may be sufficient just to mention one or two of the more striking. 
 The spells of the incantation scene are derived by Shakspere for the most part 
 from the great storehouse of his own imagination. But the last ingredient of 
 the caldron — 
 
 "Grease that's sweaten 
 
 From the murderer's gibbet, throw 
 
 Into the flame," — 
 
 has distinct regard to a special superstition. Johnnet Wischert is thus accused : 
 — " Thou and thy daughter, Violet Leys, desired thy woman to gang with thy 
 said daughter at twelve hours at even to the gallows, and cut down the dead 
 man hanging thereon, and take a part of all his members from him, and burn 
 the dead corpse." This comes nearer to the Shaksperian spell than anything 
 which we find in English superstitions. Even the glorious description of 
 Duncan's horses might have received some colouring from Aberdeen delusions. 
 In describing the prodigies which followed the death of King Duff, Holinshed 
 says, " Horses in Lothian, being of singular beauty and swiftness, did eat 
 their own flesh, and would in no wise taste any other meat." Shakspere 
 has used this : — 
 
 " 'T is said, they eat each other." 
 
 But he did not find in Holinshed that they 
 
 " Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, 
 Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would 
 Make war with mankind." 
 
 The horses of King Duncan have a humble parallel in the oxen of William 
 Smith, in Tarserhill, whom Merjorie Mutche is thus accused of injuring : — 
 "Thou having discord for some alleged wrongs he did you, for revenge of the 
 which thou earnest to his plough, he being gangand [going] and tilling the land 
 as use is, and then thou cast thy witchcraft and sorcery on his oxen, through 
 which they instantly run all wod [mad], brak the plough, two thereof ran over 
 the hills to Deir, and other two thereof up Ithan Side, which could never be 
 taken nor apprehended again, which thou did nor canst not deny." Even sheep, 
 according to these accusations, " ran wod and furious, that no man durst look 
 on them, for fear and danger of their lives." Here was material for the poet's 
 imagination to work upon. Or had he heard of the wonderful incident at the 
 storm of Jedburgh, in the reign of Henry VIII., when fifteen hundred horses 
 were " so mad that they ran like wild deer into the field," throwing themselves 
 over rocks, and rushing into the flames of the burning town ? Lord Surrey, who 
 writes of these wonders to the King, says, — " Universally all their company 
 say plainly the devil was that night among them six times." * 
 
 * See Scott's 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' vol. i., p. 243. 
 
 411
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Othello was acted before Queen Elizabeth, at Harefield, the mansion of her 
 Lord Keeper Ellesmere, in August, 1602.* We have no evidence that it was 
 then acted for the first time, but it was in all probability a new play. Coming 
 so closely upon Shakspere's probable visit to Scotland, in the autumn of 1601, 
 does Othello exhibit any marks, however slight, of Scottish associations ? Iago's 
 song, 
 
 " King Stephen was a worthy poer. ' 
 
 is, according to Percy, "supposed to have been originally a Scotch ballad." 
 We may observe that " lowne," as given in the first folio edition, rhyming to 
 *' crowne," is not an English word. It is the same word that we find in 
 Macbeth, thus printed in the same folio : — 
 
 " The diueil damne thee blacke, thou cream-faced loone." 
 
 It is the Scotch loon, rhyming in Iaao's song to croon. In the same edition of 
 Othello, printed no doubt from Shakspere's manuscript, the last line of Iago's 
 song is thus given ; — 
 
 " And take thy awl'd cloake about thee." 
 
 A Scotticism is here clearly intended. But, if it be not to inquire " too curiously," 
 may we not trace one of the most striking passages in Othello to the humble 
 source of an Aberdeen superstition ? 
 
 " That handkerchief 
 Did an Egyptian to my mother give ; 
 She was a charmer, and could almost read 
 The thoughts of people : she told her, while she kept it 
 'T would make her amiable, and subdue my father 
 Entirely to her love." 
 
 In the information against Isobell Straquhan, it is alleged that " the said Iso- 
 bell came to Elspet Mutray in Wodheid, she being a widow, and asked of her if 
 she had a penny to lend her, and the said Elspet gave her the penny ; and 
 the said Isobell took the penny and bowit [bent] it, and took a clout and a piece 
 red wax, and sewed the clout with a thread, the wax and the penny being 
 within the clout, and gave it to the said Elspet Mutray, commanding her to use 
 the said clout to hang about her crag [neck], and when she saw the man whom 
 she loved best, take the clout, with the penny and the wax, and stroke her face 
 therewith, and she so doing, she should attain in to the marriage of that man 
 whom she loved." The "clout" sewed "with a thread" wants, indeed, the 
 poetical colouring of the "handkerchief " of Othello ; but still 
 
 " There's magic iu the web of it." 
 
 More curious in the effects produced is another example of the " prophetic 
 fury " of the " Sibyl," Isobell Straquhan. She could not only produce love, but 
 
 " ' Egerton Papers,' published by the Camden Society, p. 313. 
 442
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 remove hatred: "Walter Ronaldsone had use to strike his wife, who took con- 
 sultation with Scudder [alias Straquhan], and she did take pieces of paper, and 
 sew them thick with thread of divers colours, and did put them in the barn 
 amongst the corn, and from henceforth the said Walter aia never strike his 
 wife, neither yet once found fa^lt with her, whatsomever she did." He was 
 subdued, "entirely to her love."
 
 WILLIAM SHAE8PEWB: 
 
 NOTE ON THE QUEEN OF ELPHEN. 
 
 In the highly interesting collection of 'Criminal Trials betore the High Court of Justiciary in 
 Scotland,' published from original records by Robert Pitcaim, the learned editor says of the trial of 
 Bessie Dunlop for witchcraft, in 1 576, that " it is in every view extremely interesting, but more 
 particularly on account of the very minute and graphic details given by Bessie of many circumstances 
 connected with the prevailing superstition, especially in relation to the Court of Faerie ; which, so far 
 as the editor knows, are not elsewhere to be fownd." This was published in 1829, when the records of the 
 Aberdeen trials were undiscovered. The Fairy superstitioii of Bessie Dunlop varies considerably from 
 that of Audro Man. Bessie describes many of her meetings with " Thorn Reid," a name by which the 
 evil spirit was known to her. He brought her iuto the company, on one occasion, of " twelve persons, 
 eight women and four men. The men were clad in gentlemen's clothing, and the women had all plaids 
 round about them, and were very seemly like to see." When she asked Thorn who they were, he said, 
 " they were the good witches that wynnit [dwelt] in the Court of Elfame." Again, Bessie was asked 
 by Thorn Reid if she did not rememoer that after the birth of a child, " a stout woman came in to her, 
 and sat down on the form beside her, aud asked a drink at her, and she gave her ; who also told her 
 that that bairn would die, and that her husband should mend of his sickness. The said Bessie answered, 
 that she remembered well thereof ; and Thorn said, that was the Queen of Elfame, his mistress, who 
 had commanded him to wait upon her and to do her good." In 1588 Alisoun Peirsoun is also indicted 
 "for haunting and repairing with the good neighbours and the Queen of Elfame." But this Queen of 
 Elfame [Elf-holm] has not such a specific connection with witches and witchcraft as the Queen of 
 Elphen of Aniro Man, who " has a grip of all the craft."
 
 A BIOGUAPHY. 
 
 § JJ. 
 
 The fortieth volume of the registers of the Town Council of Aberdeen contains the 
 
 following entries : — 
 
 "Nono Octobris 1601. 
 
 " Ordinance to the dean of gild. 
 
 " The sameD day The prouest Bailleis and counsall ordanis the svme of threttie tua merkis to be 
 gevin to the Kingis serwandes presently in this burcht . . quha playes comedeis and staige playee 
 Be reasoun they ar recommendit be his majesties speciall letter and hes played sum of their comedies 
 in this burcht and ordanis the said svme to be payit to tham be the dean of gild quhilk salbe allowit 
 in his comptis." 
 
 " 22 Oct' 1601. 
 
 " The quhilk day Sir Francis Hospitall of Haulszie Knycht Frenschman being recommendit be his 
 majistie to the Prouest Bailleis and Counsall of this brocht to be favorablie Interteneit with the 
 gentilmen his majesties seruands efter specifeit quha war direct to this burcht be his majestie to 
 accumpauie the said Frenshman being ane nobillman of France cumming only to this burcht to 
 Bie the towne and cuntrie the said Frenshman with the knightis and gentillmen folowing wer all 
 ressauit and admittit Burgesses of Gild of this burcht quha gawe thair aithis in common form 
 folowis the names of thame that war admittit burgesses 
 
 Sir Francis Hospitall of halzie knycht 
 
 Sir Claud Hamiltoun of Schawfeild knycht 
 
 Sir John Grahame of orkill knycht 
 
 Sir John Ramsay of Ester Baronie knycht 
 
 James Hay James Auckterlony Robert Ker James Schaw Th >mas foster James 
 
 Gleghorne Dauid Drummond Seruitors to his Majestie 
 Monsieur de Scheyne Monsieur la Bar Seruitours to the said Sir Francis 
 James Law 
 
 James Hamiltoun seruitour to the said Sir Claud 
 Archibald Sym Trumpeter 
 Laurence Fletcher comediane to his majestie. 
 Mr Dauid Wod 
 Johne Bronderstainis " 
 
 These documents present something more than the facts, that a company of 
 players, specially recommended by the King, were paid a gratuity from the 
 Corporation of Aberdeen for their performances in that town, one of them sub- 
 sequently receiving the freedom of the borough. The provost, baillies, and 
 council ordain that thirty-two marks should be given to the King's servants 
 then in that borough, who played comedies and stage-plays. The circumstance 
 that they are recommended by the King's special letter is not so important as 
 the description of them as the King's servants. Thirteen days after the entry 
 of the 9th of October, at which first period these servants of the King had 
 played some of their comedies, Lawrence Fletcher, comedian to his Majesty, is 
 admitted a burgess of Guild of the borough of Aberdeen — the greatest honour 
 which the Corporation could bestow. He is admitted to this honour, in com- 
 
 445
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEkE, 
 
 pany with a nobleman of Fiance visiting Aberdeen for the gratification of his 
 curiosity, and recommended by the King to be favourably entertained ; as well 
 as with three men of rank, and others, who were directed by his Majesty to 
 accompany " the said Frenchman." All the party are described in the docu- 
 ment as knights and gentlemen.* We have to inquire, then, who was Law- 
 rence Fletcher, comedian to his Majesty? Assuredly the King had not in his 
 service a company of Scotch players. In 1599 he had licensed a company of 
 English comedians to play at Edinburgh. Fond as James was of tneatrical ex- 
 hibitions, he had not the means of gratifying his taste, except through the visits 
 of English comedians. Scotland had no drama. Before the Reformation she 
 had her Mysteries, as England had. The Moralities of Lyndsay, of which 
 ' The Satyre of the three Estaitis ' is one of the most remarkable, were indeed 
 dialogues, but in no sense of the word dramas. The biting humour, the fierce 
 invectives, the gross obscenity which we find in ' The Satyre of the three Es- 
 taitis,' were no doubt the characteristics of other popular exhibitions of the 
 same period. But, taking that singular production as a specimen, they were 
 scarcely so dramatic in their form and spirit as the contemporary productions in 
 England of John Hey wood, of which 'The four P's ' is a favourable example. 
 ' Philotus ' — " Ane verie excellent and delectabill Treatise intitulit Philotvs, 
 qvhairin we may persave the greit inconveniences that fallis out in the Mar- 
 riage betvvene age and zouth " — belongs to a later period. It was first printed 
 in 1603, and again in 1612, when it was entitled 'a Comedy.' The plot is 
 founded upon one of the stories of Barnaby Rich, told by him in the collection 
 from which Shakspere is supposed to have derived some hints for the conduct of 
 the action in Twelfth Night. The dialogue of ' Philotus ' is in verse, not deficient 
 in spirit and harmony, but utterly undramatic — sometimes easy and almost refined, 
 at others quaint and gross beyond all conception. The stanza with which the play 
 opens will furnish some notion of the prevailing metre, and of the poetical tone, 
 of this singular performance : 
 
 " lustie luifsome lamp of licht, 
 Your bonynes, your bewtie bricht, 
 Your staitly stature trym and ticht, 
 
 With gesture graue and gude : 
 Your countenance, your cullour cleir, 
 Your lauching lips, your smyling cheir 
 Your properties dois all appear, 
 My senses to illude." 
 
 Until William Alexander appeared in 1603 with his tragedy of 'Darius,' Scotland 
 nossessed no literature that could be called dramatic ; and it may be doubted if 
 even Alexander's ' Historical Dialogues ' can be properly called dramas. We may 
 safely conclude that King James would have no Scottish company of players, 
 because Scotland had no dramas to play. 
 
 * Archibald Sym, trumpeter, was a person or dignified occupation. He was no doubt the state- 
 trumpeter, whose business it was to assist in proclaiming the royal commands to the people. In 
 Scottish annals we find constant notices of certain acts of authority notified at Edinburgh " by open 
 proclamation and sound of trumpet at the Cross." 
 44 (i
 
 A BIOGKAPIIY. 
 
 " Lawrence Fletcher, comedian to his Majesty," was undoubtedly an English- 
 man ; and " the King's servants presently in this borough who play comedies 
 and stage-plays" were as certainly English piayers. There are not many facts 
 known by which we can trace the history of Lawrence Fletcher. He is not men- 
 tioned amongst " the names of the principal actors in all these plays," which list 
 is given in the first folio edition of Shakspere ; but he undoubtedly belonged to 
 Shakspere's company. Augustine Phillipps, who, by his will, in 1605, bequeathed 
 a thirty-shilling piece of gold to his "fellow" William Shakspere, also be- 
 queathed twenty shillings to his "fellow" Lawrence Fletcher. But there is 
 more direct evidence than this of the connection of Fletcher with Shakspere's 
 company. The patent of James I., dated at Westminster on the nineteenth of 
 May, 1603, in favour of the players acting at the Globe, is headed "Pro Lau- 
 rentio Fletcher et Willielmo Shakespeare & aliis ; " and it licenses and autho- 
 rises the performances of " Laurence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard 
 Burbage, Augustine Phillippes, John Hemings, Henrie Condel, William Sly, 
 Robert Armin, Richard Cowly, and the rest of their associates." The connec- 
 tion in 1603 of Fletcher and Shakspere cannot be more distinctly established 
 than by this document. Chalmers says that Fletcher " was placed before Shak- 
 speare and Richard Burbage in King James's licence as much perhaps by acci- 
 dent as by design." * The Aberdeen Register is evidence against this opinion. 
 Lawrence Fletcher, comedian to his Majesty, is admitted to honours which are 
 not bestowed upon the other King's servants who had acted plays in the bo- 
 rough of Aberdeen in 1601. Lawrence Fletcher is first named in the letters 
 patent of 1603. It is evident, we think, that he was admitted a burgess 
 of Aberdeen as the head of the company, and that he was placed first in 
 the royal licence for the same reason. But there is a circumstance, we ap- 
 prehend, set forth in the Aberdeen Registers which is not only important 
 with reference to the question of Shakspere having visited Scotland, but which 
 explains a remarkable event in the history of the stage. The company 
 rewarded by the Corporation of Aberdeen on the 9th of October, 1601, were 
 not only recommended by his Majesty's special letter, but they were the 
 King's servants. Lawrence Fletcher, according to the second entry, was co- 
 median to his Majesty. This English company, then, had received an honour 
 from the Scottish King, which had not been bestowed upon them by the 
 English Queen. They were popularly termed the Queen's players about 1590 ; 
 but, subsequently, we find them invariably mentioned in the official entries 
 as the Lord Chamberlain's servants. As the servants of the first officer of 
 the Court, they had probably higher privileges than the servants of other 
 noblemen ; but they were not formally recognised as the Queen's servants 
 during the remainder of Elizabeth's reign. In Gilbert Dugdale's ' The Time 
 Triumphant ; declaring in briefe the arival of our Soveraigne Leidge Lord 
 King James into England,' printed in 1604, the author, after noticing that the 
 King " dealt honours as freely to our nations as their hearts could wish," adds, 
 " not only to the indifferent of worth and the worthy of honour did he freely 
 
 • 'Apologj,' p. 422. 
 
 447
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 ileal about these causes ; but to the mean gave grace : as taking to him the late 
 Lord Chamberlain's servants, now the King's actors ; the Queen taking to her 
 the Earl of Worcester's servants, that are now her actors ; the Prince their son, 
 Henry Prince of Wales, full of hope, took to him the Earl of Nottingham his 
 servants, who are now his actors ; so that of Lords' servants they are now the 
 servants of the King, the Queen, and Prince." Mr. Collier, in noticing the 
 licence ' Pro Laurentio Fletcher et Willielmo Shakespeare et aliis,' says that 
 the Lord Chamberlain's company '* by virtue of this instrument, in which they 
 are termed ' our servants,' became the King's players, and were so afterwards 
 constantly distinguished." * But the instrument did not create Lawrence 
 Fletcher, William Shakspere, and others, the King's servants ; it recognises 
 them as the King's servants already appointed : f " Know you that we, of our 
 special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, have licensed and authorised, 
 and by these presents do license and authorise, these our servants," &c. They 
 are licensed to use and exercise their art and faculty " as well for the recreation 
 of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall think good 
 to see them.'' They are " to show and exercise publicly to their best com- 
 modity when the infection of the plague shall decrease, within their now usual 
 house called the Globe," as in all other places. The justices, mayors, sheriffs, 
 and others to whom the letters patent are addressed, are called upon to aid and 
 assist them, and to do them courtesies ; and the instrument thus concludes : 
 ' And also what further favour you shall show to these our servants for our 
 sake we shall take kindly at your hands." The terms of this patent exhibit 
 towards the players of the Globe a favour and countenance, almost an affec- 
 tionate solicitude for their welfare, which is scarcely reconcilable with a belief 
 that they first became the King's players by virtue of this instrument. James 
 arrived in London, at the Charter House, on the 7th of May, 1603. He then 
 removed to the Tower, and subsequently to Greenwich on the 13th. The 
 Privy Seal, directing the letters patent to Fletcher, Shakspere, and others, is 
 dated from Greenwich on the 17th of May; and in that document the exact 
 words of the patent are prescribed. The words of the Privy Seal and of the 
 patent undoubtedly imply some previous appointment of the persons therein 
 named as the King's servants. It appears scarcely possible that during the 
 three days which elapsed between James taking up his residence at Greenwich, 
 and the day on which the Privy Seal is issued, the Lord Chamberlain's ser- 
 vants, at the season of the plague, should have performed before the King, and 
 have so satisfied him that he constituted them his own servants. It would at 
 first seem improbable that amidst the press of business consequent upon the 
 accession, the attention of the King should have been directed to the subject of 
 players at all, especially in the selection of a company as his own servants, con- 
 trary to the precedent of the former reign. If these players had been the 
 servants of Elizabeth, their appointment as the servants of James might have 
 been asked as a matter of course ; but certain players were at once to be placed 
 
 * 'Annals of the Stage,' vol. L, p. 348. 
 t The proper place for this document will be in a subsequent chapter. 
 448
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 above all their professional brethren, by the King's own act, earned into effect 
 within ten days after his arrival within his new metropolis. But all these ob- 
 jections are removed when we refer to the facts opened to us by the council 
 registers of Aberdeen. King James the Sixth of Scotland had recommended 
 his servants to the magistrates of Aberdeen ; and Lawrence Fletcher, there can 
 be no doubt, was one of those servants so recommended. The patent of James 
 the First of England directed to Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakspere, and 
 others, eighteen months after the performances at Aberdeen, is directed to 
 those persons as " our servants." It does not appoint them the King's servants, 
 but recognises the appointment as already existing. Can there be a reasonable 
 doubt that the appointment was originally made by the King in Scotland, and 
 subsisted when the same King ascended the English throne ? Lawrence 
 Fletcher was admitted a burgess of Guild of the borough of Aberdeen as come- 
 dian to his Majesty, in company with other persons who were servitors to 
 his Majesty. He received that honour, we may conclude, as the head of the 
 company, also the King's servants. We know not how he attained this distinc- 
 tion amongst his fellows, but it is impossible to imagine that accident so 
 favoured him in two instances. The King's servant who was most favoured at 
 Aberdeen and the King's servant who is first in the patent in 1603, was surely 
 placed in that position by the voice of his fellows, the other King's servants. 
 William Shakspere is named with him in a marked manner in the heading of 
 the patent. Seven of their fellows are also named, ns distinguished from " tho 
 
 [James the Sixtli of Scotland and First of England.] 
 
 Life. 2 G 
 
 -14:)
 
 WILLIAM S1IAKSPEKE : 
 
 rest oi their associates." There can be no doubt of the identity of the Lavv- 
 lence Fletcher, the servant of James VI. of Scotland, and the Lawrence 
 Fletcher, the servant of James I. of England. Can we doubt that the King's 
 servants who played comedies and stage plays in Aberdeen, in 1601, were, taken 
 as a company, the King's servants who were licensed to exercise the art and 
 faculty of playing, throughout all the realm, in 1603? If these points are 
 evident, what reason have we to doubt that William Shakspere, the second 
 named in the licence of 1603, was amongst the King's servants at Aberdeen in 
 1601 ? Every circumstance concurs in the likelihood that he was of that 
 number recommended by the King's special letter ; and his position in the 
 licence, even before Burbage, was, we may well believe, a compliment to him 
 who in 1601 had taught "our James" something of the power and riches of 
 the English drama. 
 
 The circumstances which we have thus detailed give us, we think, warranty 
 to conclude that the story of Macbeth might have been suggested to Shakspere 
 upon Scottish ground ; that the accuracy displayed in the local descriptions and 
 allusions might have been derived from a rapid personal observation ; that 
 some of the peculiarities of. his witchcraft imagery might have been found in 
 Scottish superstitions, and more especially in those which we have shown may 
 have been rife at Aberdeen at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Is 
 there anything whatever to contradict the inferences which are justly to be 
 deduced from the records which we have described and commented upon ? 
 It cannot be denied, we apprehend, that Shakspere's company was at Aberdeen 
 in the autumn of 1601. There is nothing that we have found which can be 
 opposed to the fair and natural inferences that belong to the registers of the 
 Town Council. The records of the Presbytery of Aberdeen are wholly silent 
 upon the subject of this visit of a company of players to their city. These 
 records, on the 25th of September, 1601, contain an entry regarding Lord 
 Glamis — an entry respecting one of the many deeds of violence for which Scot- 
 land was remarkable, when the strong hand so constantly attempted to defy the 
 law : Mr. Patrick Johnson, it seems, had been killed by Lord Glamis, and the fact 
 is here brought under the cognizance of the Presbytery. An entry of the 9th of 
 October deals with Alexander Ceath [Keith], on a charge of adultery. Another 
 of the 23rd of October relates to John Innis. Beyond the 5th of November, when 
 there is another record, it would be unnecessary to seek for any minute regarding 
 the players who were rewarded and honoured by the Town Council. There is 
 no entry whatever on the subject.* If Shakspere's company were at Aberdeen 
 -and to disprove it, it must be shown that Lawrence Fletcher, who was the 
 King of Scotland's comedian in 1601, was not the Lawrence Fletcher who was 
 associated with Shakspere in the patent granted by James upon his accession 
 
 • We consulted these documents, which are preserved in the fine library of the Advocates at 
 Edinburgh. We were assisted by veiy kind friends — William Spalding, Esq., Professor of Rhetoric 
 in the University of Edinburgh (who very early distinguished himself as a critic on Shakspere), 
 and John Hill Burton, Esq. (who possesses tho most complete knowledge of the treasures of that 
 valuable library) — in searching for documents Uiat could illustrate this question. 
 450
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 in 1603 — what possible reason can there be for supposing that Shakspere was 
 absent from his company upon so interesting an occasion as a visit to the Scot- 
 tish King and Court? The extraordinary merits of the dramas of Shakspere 
 might have been familiar to the King through books. Previous to 1601, there 
 have been nine undoubted plays of Shakspere's published, which might readily 
 have reached Scotland.* Essex and Southampton were in the habit of corre- 
 spondence with James ; and at the very hour when James officially knew of his 
 accession to the crown of England, he dispatched an order from Holyrood House 
 to the Council of State for the release of Southampton from the Tower. It is 
 not likely that the Lord Chamberlain's servants would have taken the long 
 journey to Scotland upon the mere chance of being acceptable to the Court. 
 If they were desired to come, it is not probable that Shakspere would have 
 been absent. It was probably his usual season of repose from his professional pur- 
 suits in London. The last duties to his father's memory might have been per- 
 formed on the 8th of September, leaving abundant time to reach the Court, 
 whether at Holyrood, or Stirling, or Linlithgow, or Falkland ; to be enrolled 
 amongst the servants who performed before the King ; and subsequently to 
 have been amongst those his fellows who received rewards on the 9th of October 
 for their comedies and stage-plays at Aberdeen. 
 
 In the summer of 1618 Ben Jonson undertook the extraordinary task of 
 travelling to Edinburgh on foot. Bacon said to him with reference to his pro- 
 ject, " He loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical Dactylus and 
 Spondseus."t Jonson seems to have been proud of his exploit, for in his 'News 
 from the New World discovered in the Moon,' a masque presented at Court in 
 1620, he makes a printer say, "One of our greatest poets (I know not how 
 good a one) went to Edinburgh on foot, and came back." According to Drum- 
 mond he was " to write his foot pilgrimage hither, and call it a discovery." 
 We have no traces of Jonson in this journey, except what we derive from the 
 ' Conversations with Drummond,' and the notice of honest John Taylor in his 
 ' Pennilesse Pilgrimage : ' "I went to Leith, where I found my long-approved 
 and assured good friend, Master Benjamin Jonson, at one Master John Stuart's 
 house." Jonson remained long enough in Scotland to become familiar with its 
 hospitable people and its noble scenery. He wrote a poem in which he called 
 Edinburgh 
 
 " The heart of Scotland, Britain's other eye." 
 
 " He hath intention," saith Drummond, " to write a fisher or pastoral play, and 
 set the stage of it in the Lomond Lake." After his return to London, he 
 earnestly solicits Drummond, by letter, to send him " some things concerning 
 the Loch of Lomond." We find nothing in Jonson's poetry that gives us an 
 impression that he had caught any inspiration from the country of mountains 
 ind lakes. We have no internal evidence at all that he had been in Scotland. 
 
 * There is a beautiful copy of the first edition of Love's Labour's Lost, 1598, amon :st Drum- 
 mond's books, preserved apart in the library of the University of Edinburgh. 
 f ' Conversations with Drummond.' 
 
 2 G 2 451
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 We have no token of the impress of its mountain scenery opon his mind at all 
 npproaching to the distinctness of a famous passage in Shakspere — a solitary 
 passage in a poet who rarely indeeed describes any scenery, but one which could 
 scarcely have been written without accurate knowledge of the realities to which 
 " black vesper's pageants " have resemblance : — 
 
 " Sometime we see a cloud that 's dragonish ; 
 A vapour, sometime, like a bear or lion, 
 A tower'd citadel, a pendant rock, 
 A forked mountain, or blue promontory 
 With trees upon it, that nod unto the world 
 And mock our eyes with air." * 
 
 John Taylor, homely as he is, may better enable us to trace Shakspere's pro- 
 bable course. Taylor, also travelling on foot, was a week in reaching Lich- 
 field passing through Coventry. He was another week filling up some time 
 with over-much carousing, before he got out of Manchester. Preston detained 
 him three days with its jollity ; and it was another week before, passing over 
 the hills of Westmoreland, he reached Carlisle. Shakspere, setting out on 
 horseback from Stratford, would reach Carlisle by easy stages in six days. 
 Taylor stops not to describe the merry city. It was more to his purpose to 
 enjoy the "good entertainment" of which he there "found store," than to 
 survey its castle and its cathedral ; or to look from its elevated points upon 
 fertile meadows watered by the Eden, or the broad Frith, or the distant sum- 
 mits of Crossfell and Skiddaw. Would he had preserved for us some of the 
 ballads that he must have heard in his revelries, that told of the wondrous 
 feats of the bold outlaws who lived in the greenwood around 
 
 "Carlisle, in the north countree." 
 
 Assuredly Shakspere had heard of Adam Bell, the brave archer of Inglewood ; 
 " He that hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder and called Adam."f It 
 is pleasant to believe that some snatches of old minstrelsy might have recreated 
 his solitary journey as he rode near the border-land. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, in the delightful introduction to his ' Minstrelsy of the 
 Scottish Border,' says, " The accession of James to the English crown converted 
 the extremity into the centre of his kingdom." The Scottish poet would seem 
 to have borrowed the idea from a very humble English brother of the craft : — 
 
 "For now those crowns are both in one combin'd, 
 Those former borders that each one confin'd 
 Appears to me (as I do understand) 
 To be almost the centre of the land : 
 This was a blessed heaven-expounded riddle 
 To thrust great kingdoms' skirts into the middle." + 
 
 John Taylor trudges from Carlisle into Annandale, wading through the Esk, 
 and wondering that he saw so little difference between the two countries, seeing 
 
 * Antony and Cleopatra, one of Shakspere's later plays, 
 t Much Ado about Nothing. J Taylor's ' Pennilesse Pilgrimage.' 
 
 452
 
 that Scotland had its sun and sky, its sheep, and corn, and good ale. But ho 
 tells us that in former times this border-land 
 
 "Was the curs'd climate of rebellious crimes." 
 
 According to him, and he was not far wrong, pell-mell fury and hurly-burly, 
 spoiling and wasting, sharking, shifting, cutting throats, and thieving, con- 
 stituted the practice both of Annandale and Cumberland. When Taylor made 
 his pilgrimage, the existing generation would have a very fresh recollection of 
 these outrages of former times. If Shakspere travelled over this ground, he 
 would be more familiar with the passionate hatreds of the borderers, and would 
 hear many a song which celebrated their deadly feuds, and kept alive the spirit 
 of rapine and vengeance. As recently as 1596 the famous Raid of Carlisle had 
 taken place, when the Lord of Buccleuch, then Warden of Liddesdale, sur- 
 prised the Castle of Carlisle, and carried off a daring Scotch freebooter, Kin- 
 mont Willie, who had been illegally seized by the Warden of the West Marches 
 of England, Lord Scrope. The old ballad which, forty years ago, was preserved 
 by tradition on the western borders of Scotland, was perhaps sung by many a 
 sturdy clansman at the beginning of the seventeenth century : — 
 
 " Wi' coulters, and wi' forehanimers. 
 We garr'd the bars bang merrilie, 
 Until we came to the inner prison, 
 Where Willie o' Kiumout he did ho. 
 
 iia
 
 WILLIAM S1IAKSPER2. 
 
 And when we cam' to the lower prison, 
 
 Where Willie o' Kininont he did lie — 
 'O sleep ye, wake ye, Kinmont Willie,* 
 
 Upon the morn that thou's to die?" t 
 
 But the feuds of the Scotch and English borderers were not the only causes of 
 Insecurity on the western frontier. If the great dramatic poet, who has painted 
 so vividly the desolation of civil war in his own country, had passed through 
 Annandale in 1601, he would have seen the traces of a petty civil war which 
 was then rapine between the clans of Maxwell and Johnstone, who a few years 
 
 DO J 
 
 before had met in deadly conflict on the very ground over which he would 
 pass. The Lord of Maxwell, with a vast band of followers, had been slain 
 without quarter. This was something different from the quiet security of 
 England — a state of comparative blessedness that Shakspere subsequently 
 described in Cranmer's prophecy of the glories of Elizabeth : — 
 
 " In her days every man shall eat in safety, 
 Under his own vine, what he plants ; and sing 
 The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours." \ 
 
 The penniless pilgrim travelled • over this ground when the security of Eng- 
 land had been extended to Scotland ; and he found no greater dangers than 
 wading through the Esk and the Annan, and no severer evils than sleeping in 
 a poor hut upon the hard ground, with dirty pigeons roosting around him.§ 
 
 Place the poet safely in Edinburgh, after he has made his solitary journey of 
 three hundred miles, through unaccustomed scenery, partly amongst foreign 
 people and strange manners. A new world has been opened to him. He has 
 left behind him his old fertile midland counties, their woods, their corn-fields 
 now ripe for the harvest, to pass over wild moorlands with solemn mountains 
 shutting in the distance, now following the course of a brawling stream through 
 a fertile valley, cultivated and populous, and then again climbing the summit of 
 some gloomy fell, from which he looks around, and may dream he is in a land 
 where man has never disturbed the wild deer and the eagle. He looks at one 
 time upon 
 
 " Turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, 
 And flat meads thatch'd with stover," 
 
 and he may say with the Water Poet, *' I thought myself in England still." 
 He is presently in the gorge of the mountains, and there are fancies awakening 
 in him which are to shape themselves not into description, but into the deli- 
 neations of high passions which are to be created out of lofty moods of the 
 mind. In Edinburgh he meets his fellows. The probability is that the Court 
 
 * The snatch of melody in Lear, in all likelihood part of an English song, will occur to the 
 reader: — 
 
 " Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd ? 
 
 f 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' vol. ii., p. 58. 
 J Henry VIII., Act v. 
 
 § Taylor tells several portions of his adventures in plain prose; and we know of no better picture 
 wf the country and its manners than his simple descriptions furnish. 
 4.54
 
 
 is not there, for it is the hunting season. Holyrood is a winter palace; and 
 Edinburgh is not then a city particularly attractive to the Scottish King, who has 
 not forgotten the perils and indignities he has endured through the influence 
 of the stern and uncompromising ministers of religion, who would have made 
 the temporal power wholly submissive to the spiritual. The timid man has 
 conquered, but all his actions are there viewed with jealousy and malevolence ; 
 and the English players may afford him safer pleasures in other places than 
 where their " unruliness and immodest behaviour" are uncharitably denounced 
 duly from the pulpit. Shakspere may rest at Edinburgh a day or two ; and 
 the impressions of that city will not easily be forgotten : — a town in which the 
 character of the architecture would seem to vie with the bold scenery in which 
 it is placed, full of historical associations, the seat of Scottish learning and 
 authority, built for strength and defence as much as for magnificence and comfort, 
 whose mansions are fastnesses that would resist an assault from a rival chief or 
 a lawless mob. He looks for a short space upon the halls where she who fell 
 betore the arbitrary power of his own Queen lived in her days of beauty and 
 youthfulness, surrounded by false friends and desperate enemies, weak and 
 miserable. He sees the pulpits from which Knox thundered, the University which 
 James had founded, and the Castle for whose possession Scotch and English 
 had fought with equal bravery, but varying success. He has gained materials 
 for future reflection. 
 
 455
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 The country palaces of the Scottish Kings inhabited at that period were 
 Linlithgow, Stirling, and Falkland. The gentle lake, the verdant park of 
 Linlithgow were suited for a summer palace. It was the favourite residence of 
 Mary of Guise, Queen of James V. " Gude Schir David Lindsay," Lion King at 
 Arms under James V., here presented to the Court and people his ' Satyre of the 
 Three Estaitis ; ' and, whatever be his defects, no one can doubt that he possessed 
 a si rong vein of humour, and had the courage to speak out boldly of public vice 
 and private immorality, as a poet ought to speak. The conclusion of the drama 
 offers a pleasant sample of the freedom with which these old writers could address 
 even a courtly audience :• — 
 
 " Now, let ilk man his way avaiice, 
 Let sum ga drink, and sum ga dance : 
 Meustrell, blaw up ane brawll of Fiance, 
 
 Let se quha hobbila best : 
 For 1 will rin, incontinent, 
 To tba tavern, or ever I stout : 
 And pray to God, omnipotent, 
 
 To send you all gude rest. 
 
 If the halls of Linlithgow had witnessed the performance of one of Shakspeie 
 
 ■& •■ 
 
 [Linlithgow.]
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 comedies by the company of Lawrence Fletcher, no changes in taste during 
 half a century could be more striking than such a contrast of the new drama of 
 England with the old drama of Scotland. But we apprehend that Lawrence 
 Fletcher went in another direction. 
 
 The English comedians, servants to James VI., might have contributed to 
 the solace and recreation of the King in the noble castle where he was born. 
 Seven years before Stirling had been the scene of rare festivities, on the occa- 
 
 [Stirlnig.J 
 
 sion of the baptism of Prince Henry.. !t was a place fit for a monarch's resi- 
 dence. From these walls he could look at once upon the fertility and the 
 grandeur of his dominions — its finest river, its boldest mountains, the vale of 
 the Forth, and the summits of Ben Lomond. He could here cherish the 
 proudest recollections of his country's independence. Stirling must have been 
 dear to James as the residence of his boyhood, where he learnt to make Latin 
 verses from Buchanan, the most elegant of pedagogues. He would, perhaps, 
 be prouder of his school-room in the old castle than of its historical associations, 
 and would look with greater delight upon the little valley where he had once 
 seen a gentle tournament, than upon the battle-fields of Camlu^kenneth anu 
 Bannockburn. Stirling was better fitted for the ceremonial displays of the
 
 WTLLTAM SHAKRl'EKk : 
 
 Scottish Court than the quiet residence of a monarch like James VI. We have 
 seen no record of such displays in the autumn of 1601. 
 
 Dunfermline was the jointure house of Anne of Denmark, and her son Charles 
 was here born in November, 1600. It was a quiet occasional retreat from the 
 turmoil of Edinburgh. But the favourite residence of James in the " latter 
 summer" and autumn was Falkland. The account published by authority of 
 the Gowrie conspiracy opens with a distinct picture of the King's habits : " His 
 Majesty having his residence at Falkland, and being daily at the buck-hunting 
 (as his use is in that season), upon the fifth day of August, being Tuesday, he 
 rode out to the park, between six and seven of the clock in the morning, the 
 weather being wonderful pleasant and seasonable." A record in Melville's 
 Diary,* within three weeks of this period, gives us another picture of the 
 King and the Court : " At that time, being in Falkland, 1 saw a fuscambulus 
 Frenchman play strong and incredible praticks upon stented [stretched] tackle 
 in the palace-close before the King, Queen, and whole Court. This was po- 
 liticly done to mitigate the Queen and people for Gowrie's slaughter ; even 
 then was Henderson tried before us, and Gowrie's pedagogue who had been 
 buted [booted, tortured]." In the great hall of the palace of Falkland, of which 
 enough remains to show its extent and magnificence, we think it probable that 
 Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows exhibited very different performances in the 
 following autumn. They would have abundant novelties to present to the 
 Scottish Court, for all would be new. At the second Christmas after James 
 had ascended the English throne, the early plays of Shakspere were as much in 
 
 * (Quoted in Piteuiru's 'Trials,' vol. ii., j>. 23 
 
 I if.dM&n.l.l
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 request at the Court as those which belong to a later period. The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, Henry V., 
 The Merchant of Venice, all the productions of the previous century, were pro- 
 duced at Court, and the King commanded The Merchant of Venice a second 
 time. The constant performance of Shakspere's plays, as shown by the accounts 
 of the Revels, at this early period after James's accession, would seem to indi- 
 cate something like a previous acquaintance with them ; and this acquaint- 
 ance we may justly assume took place upon the visit of Lawrence Fletcher 
 and his company to Scotland in the autumn of 1601. 
 
 From Falkland to Aberdeen would be a considerable journey in those days 
 of neglected roads, when rivers had to be forded, and mountains crossed by 
 somewhat perilous paths. It is not improbable that the company halted at 
 Perth, which was within a morning's ride of Falkland. The Presbytery of that 
 town, as we have seen, were more favourably disposed some twelve years before 
 to theatrical performances than the ministers of religion at Edinburgh ; they 
 tolerated them under wise restrictions. The King, in 1601, was anxious to 
 stand well with the people of Perth, and he became a burgess of the city, and 
 banqueted with the citizens. It " was politicly done," as Melville says of the 
 French rope-dancer. He might venture in tbat city to send his servants the 
 players to amuse the people ; for those who had supported his leanings towards 
 Episcopalian Church government were strong there, and would gladly embrace 
 any occasion to cultivate amusements that were disagreeable to their ascetic 
 opponents. The same feelings would prevail still more strongly at Aberdeen. 
 The young citizens of Bon Accord, as it was called, clung to the amusements of 
 the older times, the Robin Hoods and Queens of May, in spite of the pro- 
 hibitions of their magistrates. The Kirk Session prohibited maskers and dancers, 
 but the people still danced ; and upon the solemn occasion when the popish 
 Earls of Huntley and Errol were received into the bosom of the Kirk, upon 
 renouncing their errors, there was music and masking around the Cross, and 
 universal jollity was mingled with the more solemn ceremonials. The people 
 of Aberdeen were a loyal people, and we are not surprised that they welcomed 
 the King's players with rewards and honours. 
 
 There is preserved, in the Library of Advocates, a very curious description 
 of Aberdeen in the middle of the seventeenth century, written originally in 
 Latin by James Gordon, parson of Rothemay, with a contemporary translation. 
 The latter has been lately printed by the Spalding Club. The changes during 
 half a century would not be very considerable ; and the English players would 
 therefore have sojourned in a city which, according to this authority, " exceeds 
 not only the rest of the towns in the north of Scotland, but likewise any city 
 whatsomever of that same latitude, for greatness, beauty, and frequency of 
 trading." Gordon's description is accompanied by a large and well-executed 
 plan, which has also been published ; and certainly the new and old towns of 
 Aberdeen, as they existed in those days, were spacious, and judiciously laid 
 i ut. with handsome public buildings and well-arranged streets, backed by 
 wooded gardens, — a pleasant place to look upon, with fruitful fields immedi- 
 ately around it, though " anywhere you pass a mile without the town the 
 
 459
 
 ->-"--. - ■-■"-' 
 
 [Abe. deeu. 
 
 country is barren like, the hills scraggy, the plains full of marshes and mosses." 
 The parson of Rothemay, with a filial love for his native place, says, " The 
 air is temperate and healthful about it, and it may be that the citizen 5 owe 
 the acuteness of their wits thereunto, and their civil inclinations." This, 
 indeed, was a community fitted to appreciate the treasures which Lawrence 
 Fletcher and his fellows would display before them ; and it is to the honour ot 
 Aberdeen that, in an age of strong prejudices, they welcomed the English 
 comedians in a way which vindicated their own character for "wisdom, learn- 
 ing, gallantry, breeding, and civil conversation." It is not to those who so 
 welcomed them that we must chiefly lay the charge of the witch persecutions. 
 In almost every case these atrocities were committed under the sanction of the 
 Kirk Session ; and in the same way, when a stern religious asceticism became 
 ihe dominant principle in England, the feeling of religious earnestness, lofty 
 as it was in many essentials, too often was allied with superstitious enthusiasm, 
 which blinded the reason and blunted the feelings as fearfully as the worst 
 errors of the ancient Church. The tolerant Shakspere would have listened to 
 the stories of these persecutions with the same feelings with which he regarded 
 the ruins of the great Dominican convent at Aberdeen, which was razed to the 
 ground in 1560. A right principle was in each case wrongly directed: "There 
 is some soul of goodness in things evil." 
 
 We have thus, upon evidence that we cannot doubt of Shakspere's company 
 460
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 being at Aberdeen in October, 1601, assumed that Shakspere would naturally be of 
 the number ; having endeavoured previously to show that his tragedy of Macbeth, 
 especially, exhibits traces of local knowledge which might have been readily 
 collected by him in the exact path of such a journey. We have attempted very 
 slightly to sketch the associations with which he might have been surrounded during 
 this progress, putting these matters, of course, hypothetically. as materials for the 
 reader to embody in his own imagination. We may conclude the subject by very 
 briefly tracing his path homeward. 
 
 Honest John Taylor, who seems to have been ready for every kindness that 
 fortune could bestow upon him, left Edinburgh in better guise than he came 
 thither : " Within the port, or gate, called the Netherbow, I discharged my 
 pockets of all the money I had : and as I came penniless within the walls of 
 that city at my first coming thither, so now, at my departing from thence, I 
 came moneyless out of it again." But he soon found a worthy man ready to 
 help him in his straits: "Master James Acmootye, coming for England, said, 
 that if I would ride with him, that neither I nor my horse should want betwixt 
 that place and London." If we take Taylor as our guide, we may see how 
 Shakspere journeyed with his fellows upon the great high road between Edin- 
 burgh and London. On the first day they would ride to Dunbar ; on the 
 second day they would reach Berwick. They might lodge at an inn, but the 
 exuberance of the ancient Scotch hospitality would probably afford them all 
 welcome in the stronghold of some wealthy laird. Taylor thus describes the 
 hospitality of his hosts at Cober-spath [Cockburns -path] , between Dunbar and 
 Berwick: "Suppose ten, fifteen, or twenty men and horses come to lodge at 
 their house, the men shall have flesh, tame and wild fowl, fish, with all variety 
 of good cheer, good lodging, and welcome ; and the horses shall want neither 
 hay nor provender : and at the morning at their departure the reckoning is just 
 nothing. This is this worthy gentleman's use, his chief delight being only to 
 give strangers entertainment gratis." His description of the hospitality " in 
 Scotland beyond Edinburgh " is more remarkable : — " I have been at houses 
 like castles for building ; the master of the house his beaver being his blue 
 bonnet, one that will wear no other shirts but of the flax that grows on his 
 own ground, and of his wife's, daughters', or servants' spinning ; that hath his 
 stockings, hose, and jerkin of the wool of his own sheep's backs ; that never 
 (by his pride of apparel) caused mercer, draper, silk-man, embroiderer, or 
 haberdasher to break and turn bankrupt ; and yet this plain homespun fellow 
 keeps and maintains thirty, forty, fifty servants, or perhaps more, every dav 
 relieving three or four score poor people at his gate ; and, besides all this, can 
 give noble entertainment, for four or five days together, to five or six Earls and 
 Lords, besides Knights, Gentlemen, and their followers, if they be three or four 
 hundred men and horse of them, where they shall not only feed but feast, and not 
 feast but banquet ; this is a man that desires to know nothing so much as his duty 
 to God and his King, whose greatest cares are to practise the works of piety, 
 charity, and hospitality : he never studies the consuming art of fashionless fashions, 
 he never tries his strength to bear four or five hundred acres on his back at once ; 
 his legs are always at liberty — not being fettered with golden garters, and manacled 
 
 461
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 with artificial roses, whose weight (sometime) is the relics of some decayed 
 lordship. Many of these worthy housekeepers there are in Scotland : amongst 
 some of them I was entertained ; from whence I did truly gather these aforesaid 
 observations." 
 
 The Water Poet passes through Berwick without a word. The poet of Henry 
 IV. would associate it with vivid recollections of his own Hotspur : — 
 
 " He had byn a march-man all hys dayes, 
 Aud kepte Barwyke upon Twede." * 
 
 He was now in the land of old heroic memories, which had reached the ear of his 
 boyhood in his own peaceful Stratford, through the voice of the wandering harper ; 
 and which Froissart had recorded in a narrative as spirited as the fancies of 
 " the old song of Percy and Douglas." The dark blue Cheviots lifted their 
 summits around him, and beneath them were the plains which the Douglas wasted, 
 who 
 
 "Boldely brente Northoniberlonde, 
 And haryed many a towyn." 
 
 He was in the land which had so often been the battle-field ot Scotch and 
 English in the chivalrous days, when war appeared to be carried on as much for 
 sport as for policy, and a fight and a hunting were associated in the same song. 
 The great battle of Otterbourn, in 1388, "was as valiantly foughten as could 
 be devised," says Froissart; "for Englishmen on the one party, and Scots on 
 the other party, are good men of war : for when they meet there is a hard fight 
 without sparring ; there is no love between them as long as spears, axes, or 
 daggers will endure, but lay on each upon other ; and when they be well 
 beaten, and that the one part hath obtained the victory, they then glorify so 
 in their deeds of arms and are so joyful, that such as be taken they shall be 
 ransomed or they go out of the field, so that shortly each of them is so content 
 with other, that at their departing courteously they will say, God thank you ; but 
 in fighting one with another there is no play nor sparring." The spirit that moved 
 the Percy and Douglas at Otterbourn animated the Percy and another Douglas 
 at Holmedon in 1402. 
 
 " On Holy-rood day, the gallant Hotspur there, 
 Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald, 
 That ever valiant and approved Scot, 
 At Holmedon met, 
 Wherfl they did spend a sad and bloody hour." f 
 
 The scene of this conflict was not many miles from Berwick. A knowledge of 
 these localities was not necessary for Shakspere, to - produce his magnificent 
 creation of Hotspur. But in a journey through Northumberland the recollec- 
 tions of Hotspur would be all around him. At Alnwick, he would ride by the 
 
 * ' The Battle of Otterbourne.' t Henry IV., Part I., Act I., Scene I. 
 
 462
 
 
 • '. -^ .*, '••■• 
 
 ■'(.-■ ■' ' 
 
 [Berwick.] 
 
 gate which Hotspur built, and look upon the Castle in which the Percies dwelt. 
 Two centuries had passed since Hotspur fell at Shrewsbury ; but his memory 
 lived in the ballads of his land, and the dramatic poet had bestowed upon it a 
 more lasting glory. The play of Henry IV. was written before the union of 
 England and Scotland under one crown, and when the two countries had con- 
 stant feuds which might easily have broken out into actual war. But Shak- 
 spere, at the very time when the angry passions of England were excited by the 
 Raid of Carlisle, thus made his favourite hero teach the English to think ho- 
 nourably of their gallant neighbours : — 
 
 " P. Henry. The noble Scot, lord Douglas, when he saw 
 The fortune of the day quite turn'd from him, 
 The noble Percy slain, and all his men 
 Upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest ; 
 And, falling from a hill, he was so bruis'd 
 That the pursuers took him. At my tent 
 The Douglas is ; and I beseech your grace 
 I may dispose of him. 
 
 K. Hen. With all my heart. 
 
 P. Hen. Thpn, brother John of Lancaster, to 
 This honourable bounty shall belong : 
 Go to the Douglas, and deliver him 
 Up to his pleasure, ransomless, and free : 
 His valour, shown upon our crests to day. 
 
 463
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds, 
 Even in the bosom of our adversaries." * 
 
 John Taylor contrived to be eighteen days on the road riding from Edin- 
 burgh to London : he was fifteen days in his progress from Berwick to Islington. 
 Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows would make greater speed, and linger not so 
 recklessly over the good cheer of the inns and mansions that opened their gates 
 to them. " The way from Berwick to York and so to London " is laid down 
 very precisely in Harrison's ' Description of England ; ' and the several stages 
 present a total of 260 miles. The route thus given makes a circuit of several 
 miles at Tadcaster ; and yet it is 82 miles shorter than the present distance 
 from Berwick to London. Taylor says, "The Scots do allow almost as large 
 measure of their miles as they do of their drink." So it would appear they 
 did also in England in the days of Shakspere. Sir Robert Carey crept out of 
 the Palace of Richmond, where Elizabeth had just died, at three o'clock in the 
 morning of Thursday the 24th of March, and he reached Edinburgh on the 
 nio-ht of Saturday the 26th. He had of course relays of horses. Lawrence 
 Fletcher and his fellows without this advantage would be ten or twelve days 
 on the same road. 
 
 * Henry IV., Part I.. Act v., Scene v. 
 
 [Alnwick Castle.]
 
 
 *mm 
 
 [Hall of the Middle Temple.] 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LABOUES AND EEWAEDS. 
 
 ' At our feast we had a play called Twelve Night ; or, What you Will, much 
 like the Comedy of Errors, or Menechmus in Plautus, but most like and 
 neere to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the 
 steward believe his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a 
 letter, as from a lady, in generall termes telling him what shee liked best iD 
 him, and prescribing his gestures, inscribing his apparaile, &c, and then when 
 he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad." The 
 student of the Middle Temple, whose little diary, after snugly lying amongst the 
 Harleian Manuscripts, now in the British Museum, unnoticed for two centuries 
 and a quarter, luckily turned up to give us one authentic memorial of a play 
 of Shakspere's, is a facetious and gossiping young gentleman, who appears to 
 have mixed with actors and authors, recording the scandal which met his ear 
 with a diligent credulity. The 2nd of February, 1602, was the Feast 01 the 
 Life. 2 H 4o5
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Purification, which feast and All-Hallown Day, according to Dugdale, "are 
 the only feasts in the whole year made purposely for the Judges and Serjeants 
 of this Society, but of later time divers noblemen have been mixed with them." 
 The order of entertainment on these occasions is carefully recorded by the 
 same learned antiquary.* The scarlet robes of the Judges and Serjeants, the 
 meat carried to the table by gentlemen of the house under the bar, the solemn 
 courtesies, the measures led by the Ancient with his white staff, the call by 
 the reader at the cupboard " to one of the gentlemen of the bar, as he is walk- 
 ing or dancing with the rest, to give the Judges a song," the bowls of hypocras 
 presented to the Judges with solemn congees by gentlemen under the bar, — 
 all these ceremonials were matter of grave arrangement according to the most 
 exact precedents. But Dugdale also tells us of " Post Revels performed by the 
 better sort of the young gentlemen of the Society, with galliards, corantos, 
 and other dances; or else with stage plays." The historian does not tell us 
 whether the stage plays were performed by the young gentlemen of the 
 Society, or by the professional players. The exact description which the 
 student gives of the play of Twelfth Night would lead us to believe that it 
 had not been previously familiar to him. It was not printed. The probability 
 therefore is that it was performed by the players, and by Shakspere's company. 
 The vicinity of the Blackfriars would necessarily render the members of the 
 two Societies well acquainted with the dramas of Shakspere, and with the poet 
 himself. There would be other occasions than the feast days of the Society 
 that Shakspere would be found amidst those Courts. Amongst "the solemn 
 temples " which London contained, no one would present a greater interest than 
 that ancient edifice in which he might have listened, when a young man, to 
 the ablest defender of the Church which had been founded upon the earlier 
 religion of England ; one who did not see the wisdom of wholly rejecting all 
 ceremonials consecrated by habit and tradition ; who eloquently wrote — " Of 
 Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, 
 her voice the harmony of the world : all things in heaven and earth do her 
 homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted 
 from her power." f It was in the spirit of this doctrine that Shakspere himself 
 wrote — 
 
 " The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, 
 Observe degree, priority, and place, 
 Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, 
 Office, and custom, in all line of order." + 
 
 Dugdale's ' Origines ' was published six years after the Restoration. He 
 speaks of the solemn revels of the Inns of Court, with reference to their past 
 and to their existing state. They had wont to be entertained with Post Revels, 
 which had their dances and their stage plays. This was before the domina- 
 tion of the Puritans, when stage plays and dancing were equally denounced, 
 as> "the very works, the pomps, inventions, and chief delights of the devil " § 
 
 * ' Origines Juridiciales,' p. 205. t Hooker's ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' Book I. 
 
 t Troilus and Cressida, Act I., Scene in. § Prynne's ' Histrio-Mastix.' 
 
 4G8
 
 [Interior of the Temple Church.] 
 
 There is a passage in Dugdale which shows how the revels at the Inns o( 
 Court gradually changed their character according to the prevailing opinions : 
 — " When the last measure is dancing, the Reader at the Cupboard calls to 
 one of the Gentlemen of the Bar, as he is walking or dancing with the rest, to 
 give the Judges a song : who forthwith begins the first line of any psalm as he 
 thinks fittest ; after which all the rest of the company follow, and sing with 
 him." This is very like the edifying practice of the Court of Francis I., where 
 the psalms of Clement Marot were sung to a fashionable jig, or a dance of 
 Poitou.* Shakspere had good authority when he made the clown say of his 
 three-man song-men, " They are most of them means and basses : but one 
 Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes." f This is one of 
 the few allusions which Shakspere has to that rising sect, which in a few years 
 was to become the dominant power in the state. Ben Jonson attacks them 
 again and again with the most bitter indignation and the coarsest satire .% 
 The very hardest gird which Shakspere has at them is contained in the gentle 
 reproof of Sir Toby to the steward, " Dost thou think, because thou art vir- 
 tuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale ? " In this very scene of Twelfth 
 Night he ridicules the unreasoning hostility with which the Puritans them- 
 selves were assailed by the ignorant multitude. Sir Toby asks to be told 
 something of the steward : — 
 
 « See Warton's ' History of English Poetry/ Section xlv. 
 t Winter's Tale, Act iv. Scene n. J See ' The Alchyniist,' and ' Bartholomew Fair ' 
 
 2 H 2 46 ?
 
 WILLIAM 8HAKSPERE: 
 
 " Mar. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan. 
 Sir And. 0, if I thought that, I 'd beat him like a dog. 
 Sir Toby. What, for being a Puritan ? thy exquisite reason, doar knight i 
 Sir And. I have no exquisite reason for 't, but I have reason good enough." 
 
 This is in the best spirit of toleration, which cannot endure that any body of 
 men should be persecuted for their opinions, and especially by those who will 
 show no reason for their persecution but that they "have reason good enough." 
 
 In May, 1602, Shakspere made a large addition to his property at Stratford 
 by the purchase, from William and John Combe, for the sum of three hundred 
 and twenty pounds, of one hundred and seven acres of arable land in the town 
 of Old Stratford. The indenture, which was in the possession of the late 
 Mr. Wheler of Stratford, but is now in the Stratford Museum, is dated the 1st of 
 May, 1602.* The conveyance bears the signatures of the vendors of the property, 
 of which the following are fac-similes. But although it concludes in the usual 
 
 tfeu^r 
 
 form, "The parties to these presents having interchangeably set to their hands and 
 seals," the counterpart has not the hand and seal of the purchaser of the property 
 described in the deed as " William Shakespere, of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the 
 countie aforesaid, Gentleman." The counterpart is not signed, and the piece of 
 wax which is affixed to it is unimpressed with any seal. The acknowledgment of 
 possession is, however, thus recorded : — 
 
 ^0m- $&*- 
 
 
 -^rtfa^ 
 
 O^W&y 
 
 _^P— 
 
 The document, which contains nothing remarkable in its clauses, is given hi Mr- Wheler's History 
 of Stratford-upon-Avon. 
 463
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The property is delivered to Gilbert Shakspere to the use of William. Gi'bert 
 was two years and a half younger than William, and in all likelihood was the 
 cultivator of the land which the poet thus bought, or assisted their father in 
 the cultivation. 
 
 We collect from this document that William Shakspere was not at Stratford 
 on the 1st of May, 1602, and that his brother Gilbert was his agent for the 
 pavment of the three hundred and twenty pounds paid " at and before the 
 sealing " of the conveyance. In the following August the Lord Chamberlain's 
 company performed Othello in the house of the Lord Keeper at Harefield. 
 The accounts of the large expenditure on this occasion, in the handwriting of 
 Sir Arthur Mainwaring, were discovered by Mr. Collier amongst the Egerton 
 Papers, and they contain the following entry : — 
 
 "6 August, 1602. Rewardes to the vaulters, players, and dauncer3. Of 
 this x 1 ' to Burbidge's players for Othello, lxiiij 1 ' xviij s . x d ." * 
 
 The Queen came to Harefield on the 31st of July, and remained there during 
 the 1st and 2nd of August. In those days Harefield Place was "a fair 
 house standing on the edge of the hill, the river Coin passing near the same 
 through the pleasant meadows and sweet pastures yielding both delight and 
 profit." This is Norden's description, a little before the period of Elizabeth's 
 visit. The Queen was received, after the usual quaint fashion of such enter- 
 tainments, with a silly dialogue between a bailiff and a dairymaid, as she 
 entered the domain ; and the house welcomed her with an equally silly colloquy 
 between Place and Time. The Queen must have been somewhat better pleased 
 when a copy of verses was delivered to her in the morning, beginning 
 
 " Beauty's rose, and virtue's book, 
 Angel's mind, and angel's look." 
 
 The weather, we learn from the same verses, was unpropitious : 
 
 " Only poor St. Swithin now 
 Doth hear you blame his cloudy brow." 
 
 Some great poet was certainly at work upon this occasion, but not Shakspere. * 
 It was enough for him to present the sad story of 
 
 " The gentle lady married to the Moor." 
 Another was to come within some thirty years who should sing of Harefield 
 
 * This important entry was first published by Mr. Collier in his ' New Particulars regarding the 
 Works of Shakespeare,' 1836. Mr. Collier in the same tract publishes "a poetical relic," of which he 
 says, "Although I believe it to be his, I have some hesitation in assigning it to Shakespeare." This 
 copy of verses, without date or title, found amongst the same papers, bears the signature W. Sh. or 
 W. Sk. (Mr. Collier is doubtful which). If the verses contained a single line which could not be 
 produced by any one of the " mob of gentlemen who write with ease," we would venture to borrow 
 a specimen. 
 
 f These verses, with other particulars of the entertainment, were first published from an original 
 manuscript in Nicholls's ' Progresses <>{ Queen Elizabeth.' 
 
 469
 
 "WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 with the power of a rare fancy working upon classical models, and who thus 
 makes the Genius of the Wood address a noble audience in that sylvan 
 
 scene : — 
 
 " For know, by lot from Jove I am the Power 
 Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower, 
 To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove 
 With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove. 
 And all my plants I save from nightly ill 
 Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill 
 And from the boughs brush off the evil dew, 
 And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue, 
 Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites, 
 Or hurtful worm with canker'd venom bites. 
 When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round 
 Over the mount, and all this hallow'd ground ; 
 And early, ere the odorous breath of morn 
 Awakes the slumb'ring leaves, or tassel'd horn 
 Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about, 
 Number my ranks, and visit every sprout 
 With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless." 
 
 Doubly honoured Harefield ! Though thy mansion has perished, yet are thy 
 groves still beautiful. Still thy summit looks out upon a fertile valley, where 
 the gentle river wanders in silent beauty. But thy woods and lawns have a 
 charm which are wholly their own. — Here the Othello of William Shakspere 
 
 
 -<*3g 
 
 
 [Hai-pfield.l
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 was acted by his own company ; here is the scene of the Arcades of John 
 Milton. 
 
 Amongst the few papers rescued from " time's devouring maw " which enable 
 us to trace Shakspere's career with any exactness, there is another which 
 relates to the acquisition of property in the same year. It is a copy ot 
 Court Roll for the Manor of Rowington, dated the 28th of September, 1602, 
 containing the surrender by Walter Getley to the use of William Shakspere of 
 a house in Stratford, situated in Walker Street. This tenement was opposite 
 Shakspere's house of New Place. It is now taken down ; it was in existence a few 
 years ago. 
 
 This document, which was in the possession of Mr. Hunt, the worthy town-clerk of 
 Stratford, but has been presented by him to the Museum formed at the Shakspere 
 House, shows that at the latter end of September, 1602, William Shakspere, the 
 purchaser of this property, was not at Stratford. It could not legally pass to him, 
 being a copyhold, tiJl he had done suit and service in the Lord's Court ; and the 
 surrender, therefore, provides that it should remain in the possession of the lord till 
 he, the purchaser, should appear. 
 
 In the September of 1602 the Earl of Worcester, writing to the Karl of 
 Shrewsbury, says, " We are frolic here in Court, much dancing in the Privy 
 Chamber of country-dances before the Queen's Majesty, who is exceedingly 
 p.eased therewith." In the December she was entertained at Sir Robert Cecil's 
 house in the Strand, and some of the usual devices of flattering mummery 
 were exhibited before her. A few months saw a period to the frolic and the 
 flattery. The last entry in the bocks of the Treasurer of the Chamber during 
 the reign of Elizabeth, which pertains to Shakspere, is the following; — melan- 
 choly in the contrast between the Candlemas-Day of 1603, the 2nd of February, 
 and the following 24th of March, when Elizabeth died : — " To John Hemynges 
 and the rest of his companie, servaunts to the Lorde Chamberleyne, uppon the 
 Councells Warraunte, dated at Whitehall the xxth of Aprill, 1603, for their 
 paines and expences in presentinge before the late Queenes M tie twoe playes, 
 the one uppon St. Stephens day at nighte, and thother upon Candlemas day 
 at night, for ech of which they were allowed, by way of her Ma ts rewarde, 
 
 471
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 tenne poundes, amounting in all to xx 1 '." The late Queen's Majesty ! Before 
 she had seen the play on Candlemas-day, at night, she had taken Sir Robert 
 Carey by the hand, and wrung it hard, saying, " Robin, I am not well." At 
 the date of the Council's warrant to John Hemings, Elizabeth had not been 
 deposited in the resting-place of Kings at Westminster. Her pomp and glory 
 
 '■#vfrnii:||ii 
 
 
 f 
 
 mm® 
 
 were now to be limited to the display of heralds and 
 banners and officers of state ; and, to mark especially the 
 nothingness of all this, " The lively picture of her Majesty's 
 whole body, in her Parliament- robes, with a crown on her 
 head, and a sceptre in her hand, lying on the corpse en- 
 shrined in lead, and balmed ; covered with purple velvet ; 
 borne in a chariot, drawn by four horses, trapped in black 
 velvet.'' 
 
 King James I. of England left his good city of Edinburgh on the 5th of 
 April, 1603. He was nearly five weeks on the road, banqueting wherever he 
 rested ; at one time releasing prisoners, " out of his princely and Christian 
 commiseration," and at another hanging a cut-purse taken in the fact. He 
 entered the immediate neighbourhood of London in a way that certainly 
 472
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 monarch never entered before or since : — " From Stamford Hill to London was 
 made a train with a tame deer, that the hounds could not take it faster than 
 his Majesty proceeded." On the 7th of May he was safely lodged at the 
 Charter-House ; and one of his first acts of authority in the metropolis, after 
 creating four new peers, and issuing a proclamation against robbery on the 
 Borders, was to order the Privy Seal for the patent to Lawrence Fletcher, 
 William Shakspere, and others.* We learn from the patent itself that the 
 King's servants were to perform publicly " when the infection of the plague 
 shall decrease." It is clear that the King's servants were not at liberty then 
 to perform publicly. How long the theatres were closed we do not exactly 
 know ; but a document is in existence, dated April 9th, 1604, directing the 
 Lord Mayor of London, and Justices of Middlesex and Surrey, "to permit and 
 suffer the three companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince to exer- 
 cise their plays in their several and usual houses. "\ On the 20th of October, 
 1603, Joan, the wife of the celebrated Edward Alleyn, writes to her husband 
 from London, — " About us the sickness doth cease, and likely more and more, 
 by God's help, to cease. All the companies be come home, and well, for aught 
 we know." Her husband is hawking in the country, and Henslow, his partner, 
 is at the Court. Another letter has been found from Mrs. Alleyn to her husband, 
 which, if rightly interpreted, would show that not only was Shakspere in London at 
 this time, but went about pretty much like other people, calling common things by 
 their common names, giving advice about worldly matters in the way of ordinary 
 folk, and spoken of by the wife of his friend without any wonder or laudation, just 
 as if he had written no Midsummer Night's Dream, or Othello : — " About a weeke 
 a goe there came a youthe, who said he was Mr. Francis Chaloner, who would have 
 
 borrowed x H to have bought things for and said he was known unto vou 
 
 and Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe, who came .... said he knewe hym not, onely 
 
 he herde of hym that he was a roge so he was glade we did not lend him 
 
 the monney Richard Johnes [went] to seeke and inquire after the fellow, 
 
 and said he had lent hym a horse. I feare me he gulled hym, thoughe he gulled 
 not us. The youthe was a prety youthe, and hansome in appayrell : we knowe not 
 what became of hym." J The authority of this letter has been thus disputed by 
 Mr. Halliwell : — " It has been stated that Shakspeare was in London in October, 
 1603, on the strength of a letter printed in Mr. Collier's Memoirs of Alleyn, p. 63 : 
 but having carefully examined the original, I am convinced it has been misread. 
 The following is now all that remains," And then Mr. Halliwell prints " all that 
 remains," which does not contain the name of Shakspere at all. Mr. Collier avers 
 that he saw the words which he for the first time published ; though the letter was 
 much damaged by the damp, and was falling to pieces. 
 
 Whether or not Shakspere was in London on the 20th of October, 1603, it is 
 tolerably clear that the performances at the public theatres were not resumed till 
 
 * See the Patent at the eurl of this Chapter. 
 
 t Malone's ' Inquiry,' p. 215. Mr. Collier prints the document in his ' Life of Alleyn,' by which it 
 appears that there had been letters of prohibition previously issued that had reference to the con- 
 tinuance of the plague, and that it still partially continued. 
 
 ♦ From the Papers in Dulwich College printed in Mr. Collier's ' Memoirs of Edward Alleyn.' 
 
 473
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 after the order of the 9th of April, 1604. In the Office Books of the Treasurer 
 of the Chamber there is an entry of a payment of thirty-two pounds upon the 
 Council's warrant dated at Hampton Court, February 8th, 1604, "by way ot 
 his Majesty's free gift " to Richard Burbage, one of his Majesty's comedians, 
 " for the maintenance and relief of himself and the rest of his company, being 
 prohibited to present any plays publicly in or near London, by reason of great 
 peril that might grow through the extraordinary concourse and assembly ot 
 people, to a new increase of the plague, till it shall please God to settle the city 
 in a more perfect health."* But though the public playhouses might be closed 
 through the fear of an " extraordinary concourse and assembly of people," the 
 King, a few months previous, had sent for his own players to a considerable 
 distance to perform before the Court at Wilton. There is an entry in the same 
 Office Book of a payment of thirty pounds to John Hemings " for the pains and 
 expenses of himself and the rest of his company in coming from Mortlake in 
 the county of Surrey unto the Court aforesaid, and there presenting before his 
 Majesty one play on the 2nd of December last, by way of his Majesty's reward. "f 
 Wilton was the seat of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, to whom it has been 
 held that Shakspere's Sonnets were addressed. We do not yield our assent to this 
 opinion.j But we know from good authority that this nobleman, " the most 
 universally beloved and esteemed of any man of that age," (according to Claren- 
 don,) befriended Shakspere, and that his brother joined him in his acts of 
 kindness. The dedication by John Heminge and Henry Condell, prefixed to 
 the first collected edition of the works of Shakspere, is addressed "To the most 
 
 * Cunningham's ' Revels at Court,' p. xxxv. 
 
 T See our Illustrations of the Sonnets 
 
 f Id. p. xxxiv. 
 
 [William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.]
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 noble and incomparable pair of brethren, William Earl of Pembroke, and 
 Philip Earl of Montgomery." In the submissive language of poor players to 
 their " singular good lords " they say, " When we value the places your Honours 
 sustain, we cannot but know their dignity greater than to descend to the read- 
 ing of these trifles ; and while we name them trifles, we have deprived ourselves 
 of the defence of our dedication. But since your Lordships have been pleased 
 to think these trifles something, heretofore ; and have prosecuted both them, 
 and their author living, with so much favour : we hope that (they out-living 
 him, and he not having the fate, common with some, to be executor to his own 
 writings) you will use the like indulgence toward them you have done unto their 
 parent." They subsequently speak of their Lordships liking the several parts 
 of the volume when they were acted ; but their author was the object of their 
 personal regard and favour. The call to Wilton of Shakspere's company 
 might probably have arisen from Lord Pembroke's desire to testify this favour. 
 It would appear to be the first theatrical performance before James in England. 
 The favour of the Herberts towards Shakspere thus began early. The testi- 
 mony of the player-editors would imply that it lasted during the poet's life. 
 The young Earl of Pembroke, upon whom James had just bestowed the Order of 
 
 [Philip HerUert, Eurl of Montgomery, j 
 
 the Garter, would scarcely, we think, have been well pleased to have welcomed 
 the poet to Wilton who had thus addressed him : — 
 
 " How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame, 
 Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, 
 Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name ! "* 
 
 * Sonnet xcv. 
 
 475
 
 [Wolsey's Hall, Hampton Court,] 
 
 At the Christmas of the same year the King had taken up his residence at 
 Hampton Court. It was here, a little before the period when the Conference 
 on Conformity in Religion was begun, that the Queen and eleven ladies of 
 honour were presenting Daniel's Masque ; and Shakspere and his fellows per- 
 formed six plays before the King and Prince, receiving twenty nobles for each 
 play.* The patronage of the new King to his servants players acting at the 
 Globe seems to have been constant and liberal. To Shakspere this must have 
 been a season of prosperity and of honour. The accession of the King gave him 
 something better. His early friend and patron Southampton was released from 
 a long imprisonment. Enjoying the friendship of Southampton and Pembroke, 
 who were constantly about the King, their tastes may have led the monarch to 
 a just preference of the works of Shakspere before those of any other drama- 
 tist. The six plays performed before the King and Prince in the Christmas 
 
 * Cunningham's ' Revels at Court.,' p. xxxv. 
 
 47o
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 of 1603-4 at Hampton Court, were followed at the succeeding Christmas by 
 performances " at the Banqueting-House at Whitehall," in which the plays of 
 Shakspere were preferred above those of every other competitor. There were 
 eleven performances by the King's players, of which eight were plays of Shak- 
 spere. Jonson shared this honour with him in the representation of ' Every 
 One in his Humour,' and ' Every One out of his Humour.' A single play by 
 Heywood, another by Chapman, and a tragedy by an unknown author, com- 
 pleted the list of these revels at Whitehall. It is told, Malone says, " upon 
 authority which there is no reason to doubt, that King James bestowed especial 
 honour upon Shakspere." The story is told in the Advertisement to Lintot's 
 edition of Shakpere's Poems — " That most learned Prince, and great Patron ot 
 learning, King James the First, was pleased with his own hand to write an 
 amicable letter to Mr. Shakespeare ; which letter, though now lost, remained 
 long in the hands of Sir William Davenant, as a credible person now living can 
 testify." Was the honour bestowed as a reward for the compliment to the 
 King in Macbeth, or was the compliment to the King a tribute of gratitude for 
 the honour? 
 
 ' The Accompte of the Office of the Reuelles of this whole yeres Charge, 
 in An 1604/ which was discovered through the zealous industry of Mr. 
 Peter Cunningham, is a most interesting document : first, as giving the names 
 cf the plays which were performed at Court, and showing how pre-eminently 
 attractive were those of Shakspere ; secondly, as exhibiting the undiminished 
 charm of Shakspere's early plays, such as The Comedy of Errors, and Love's 
 Labour 's Lost ; and, thirdly, as fixing the date of one of our poets dramas 
 
 [Banqueting-House. Whitehall.]
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE '. 
 
 which has generally been assigned to a later period — Measure for Measure. 
 The worthy scribe who keeps the accounts has no very exact acquaintance 
 with " the poets wch mayd the plaies," as he heads the margin of his entries : 
 for he adds another variety to the modes of spelling the name of the greatest 
 of those poets — " Shaxberd." The list gives us no information as to the actors 
 which acted the plays, in addition to the poets which made them. We learn, 
 indeed, from the corresponding accounts in the Office Books of the Treasurer of 
 the Chamber, that on the 21st of January, 1605, sixty pounds were paid "To 
 John Hemynges, one of his Ma t9 players, for the paines and expences of him- 
 selfe and the reste of his companie, in playinge and presentinge of sixe Enter- 
 ludes, or plaies, before his Ma tie ." The name of Shakspere is found amongst 
 the names of the performers of Ben Jonson's ' Sejanus,' which was first acted 
 at the Globe in 1603. Burbage, Lowin, Hemings, Condell, Phillipps, Cooke, 
 and Sly had also parts in it. In Jonson's ' Volpone/ brought out at the Globe 
 in 1605, the name of Shakspere does not occur amongst the performers. It 
 has been conjectured, therefore, that he retired from the stage between 1603 
 and 1605. But, appended to the letter from the Council to the Lord Mayor 
 and other Justices, dated April the 9th, 1604 (which we have already noticed) 
 there has been found the following list of the " King's Company :"* — 
 " Burbidge Armyn, 
 
 Shakspeare, Slye, 
 
 Fletcher, Cowley, 
 
 Phillips, Hostler, 
 
 Condle, Day." 
 
 Hemminges, 
 It is thus seen that in the spring of 1604 Shakspere was still an actor, and still 
 held the same place in the company which he held in the patent of the pre- 
 vious year. Lawrence Fletcher, the first named in that patent, has changed 
 places with Burbage. The probable explanation of these changes is, that the 
 shareholders periodically chose one of their number as their chairman, or 
 official head; that Lawrence Fletcher filled this office at Aberdeen in 1601, 
 and at London in 1603, Burbage succeeding to his rank and office in 1604. 
 In the mean time the reputation of Shakspere as a dramatic poet must have 
 secured to him something higher than the fame of an actor, and something 
 better than courtly honours and pecuniary advantages. He must have com- 
 manded the respect and admiration of the most distinguished amongst his 
 contemporaries for taste and genius. Few, indeed, comparatively of his plays 
 were printed. The author of Othello, for example, must have been content 
 with the fame which the theatre afforded him. But in 1604, probably to vin- 
 dicate his reputation from the charge of having, in his mature years, written 
 his Hamlet, such as it appeared in the imperfect edition of 1603, was pub- 
 lished ' The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. By William 
 Shakespeare. Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it 
 was, according to the true and perfect coppie.' Edition after edition wa3 
 
 * Collier's ' Memoirs of Alleyn,' p. 68. 
 473
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 (jailed for ; and assuredly that wonderful tragedy, whose true power can only 
 be adequately felt by repeated study, must have carried its wonderful philo- 
 sophy into the depths of the heart of many a reader who was no haunter of 
 play-houses, and have most effectually vindicated plays and play-books from 
 the charge of being nothing but " unprofitable pleasures of sin," to be denounced 
 in common with " Love-locks, periwigs, women's curling, powdering and 
 cutting of the hair, bonfires, New-year's gifts, May-games, amorous pastorals, 
 lascivious effeminate music, excessive laughter, luxurious disorderly Christmas 
 keeping, mummeries."* From the hour of the publication of Hamlet, in 1604, 
 to these our days, many a solitary student must have closed that wonderful 
 book with the application to its author of something like the thought that 
 Hamlet himself expresses, — " What a piece of work is man ! How noble in 
 reason how infinite in faculty ! " 
 
 • Prynne's ' fiietrio-Mustix.'
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 
 
 NOTE ON THE PATENT TO THE COMPANY ACTING AT 
 
 THE GLOBE. 
 
 Malone, in his ' Historical Account of the English Stage,' prints the "licence to the company at 
 the Globe, which is found in Rymer's 'Fcedera.'" Mr. Collier, in his 'Annalo of the Stage,' 
 publishes the document "from the Privy Seal, preserved in the Chapter-House, Westminster, and not 
 from Bymer's ' Fcedera,' whence it has hitherto been inaccurately quoted." The Patent as given in 
 Rymer, and the Privy Seal as given by Mr. Collier, do not differ in the slightest particular, except 
 in the orthography, and the use of capital letters. These matters in Rymer are so wholly arbitrary, 
 that in printing the document we modernize the orthography. Malone adheres to it only partially, 
 and this possibly constitutes the principal charge of inaccuracy brought against him. He has, 
 however, three errors of transcription, but not of any consequence to the sense. At line 9 he has 
 " like other" instead of " others like ; " at line 18 " our pleasure" instead of " our said pleasure ;" and 
 at the same line, " aiding or assisting" instead of " aiding and assisting." 
 
 "Pro Laurentio Fletcher & Willielmo Shakespeare & aliis. A.D. 1603. Pat. 
 
 " 1 Jac. p. 2, m. 4. James by the grace of God, &c, to all justices, mayors, sheriffs, constables, 
 headboroughs, and other our officers and loving subjects, greeting. Know you that we, of our 
 special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, have licensed and authorised, and by these 
 presents do license and authorise, these our servants, Laurence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, 
 Richard Burbage, Augustine Philippes, John Hemings, Henry Condel, William Sly, Robert 
 Armyn, Richard Cowly, and the rest of their associates, freely to use and exercise the art and 
 faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, histories, interludes, morals, pastorals, stage-plays, and such 
 others like as they have already studied, or hereafter shall use or study, as well for the recreation 
 of our loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure when we shall think good to see them, 
 during our pleasure : and the said comedies, tragedies, histories, interludes, morals, pastorals, stage- 
 plays, and such like, to show and exercise publicly to their best commodity, when the infection of the 
 plague shall decrease, as well within their now usual house, called the Globe, within our county of 
 Surrey, as also within any town-halls or moot-halls, or other convenient places within the liberties 
 and freedom of any other city, university, town, or borough whatsoever within our said realms and 
 dominions. Willing and commanding you and every of you, as you tender our pleasure, not only 
 to permit and suffer them herein, without any your lets, hindrances, or molestations, during our 
 said pleasure, but also to be aiding and assisting to them if any wrong be to them offered, and to 
 allow them such former courtesies as hath been given to men of their place and quality ; and also 
 what further favour you shall show to these our servants for our sake, we shall take kindly at your 
 hands. In witness whereof, &c. 
 
 " Witness ourself at Westminster, the nineteenth day of May., 
 " Per Breve de privato sigillo."
 
 A*3RJBIbi 
 
 
 ■•; 
 
 
 ? » -ft*. 
 
 ^-^M'£$%i!SC"* 
 
 
 [The Garden of New Place.] 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 REST. 
 
 We have seen that in the year 1602 Shakspere was investing the gains of hiy 
 profession in the purchase of property at Stratford. It appears from the origi- 
 nal Fines of the Court of King's Bench, preserved in the Chapter-house, that a 
 little before the accession of James, in 1603, Shakspere had also purchased a 
 messuage at Stratford, with barns, gardens, and orchards, of Hercules Underbill, 
 for the sum of sixty pounds.* There can be little doubt that this continued 
 acquisition of property in his native place had reference to the ruling desire of 
 the poet to retire to his quiet fields and the placid intercourse of society at 
 Stratford, out of the turmoil of his professional life and the excitement of the 
 
 * The document was fir3t published in Mr. Collier's ' Xew Facta.' 
 Lifk. 2 I 481
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 companionship of the gay and the brilliant. And yet it appears highly piobable 
 that he was encouraged, at this very period, through the favour of those who 
 rightly estimated his merit, to apply for an office which would have brought 
 him even more closely in connexion with the Court. As one of the King's 
 servants he received the small annual fee of three pounds six and eight-pence. 
 
 On the 30th of January, 1604, Samuel Daniel was appointed by letters 
 patent to an office which, though not so called, was in fact that of Master of the 
 Queen's Revels. Tn a letter from Daniel to Lord Ellesmere, he expresses his 
 
 thanks for a *' new, great, and unlooked for favour I shall now be 
 
 able to live free from those cares and troubles that hitherto have been my con- 
 tinual and wearisome companions I cannot but know that I am less 
 
 deserving than some that sued by other of the nobility unto her Majesty 
 for this room : if M. Drayton, my good friend, had been chosen, I should not 
 have murmured, for sure I am he would have filled it most excellently ; but 
 it seemeth to mine humble judgment that one who is the author of plays now 
 daily presented on the public stages of London, and the possessor of no small 
 gains, and moreover himself an actor in the King's Company of Comedians, 
 could not with reason pretend to be Master of the Queen's Majesty's Revels, 
 forasmuch as he would sometimes be asked to approve and allow of his own 
 writings. Therefore he, and more of like quality, cannot justly be disappointed 
 because through your honour's gracious interposition the chance was haply 
 mine." * It appears highly probable that Shakspere was pointed at as the 
 author of popular plays, the possessor of no small gains, the actor in the King's 
 company. It is not impossible that Shakspere looked to this appointment as a 
 compensation for his retirement from the profession of an actor, retaining his 
 interest, however, as a theatrical proprietor. Be that as it may, he still carried 
 forward his ruling purpose of the acquisition of property at Stratford. In 
 1605 he accomplished a purchase which required a larger outlay than any pre- 
 vious investment. On the 24th of July, in the third year of James, a convey- 
 ance was made by Ralph Huband, Esq., to William Shakspere, gentleman, of a 
 moiety of a lease of the great and small tithes of Stratford, for the remainder of 
 a term of ninety-two years, and the amount of the purchase was four hundred 
 and forty pounds. Tbere can be little doubt that he was the cultivator of his 
 own land, availing himself of the assistance of his brother Gilbert, and, in an 
 earlier period, probably of his father. An account in 1597 of the stock of malt 
 in the borough of Stratford, is said to exhibit ten quarters in the possession of 
 William Shakspere, of Chapel Street Ward. New Place was situated in Chapel 
 Street. The purchase of a moiety of the tithes of so large a parish as Stratford 
 might require extensive arrangements for their collection. Tithes in those 
 days were more frequently collected in kind than by a modus. But even if a 
 modus was taken, it would require a knowledge of the value of agricultural 
 produce to farm the tithes with advantage.! But before the date of this pur- 
 
 • This letter, found amongst the Egerton Papers, is published by Mr. Collier in his ' New 
 tf acts.' 
 t There is k document dated the 2Sth of October, 1614, in which William Replingham cove- 
 
 482
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 chase it is perfectly clear that William Shakspere was in the exercise of the 
 trading part of a farmer's business. He bought the hundred and seven acres of 
 land of John and William Combe in May, 1602. In 1604 a declaration was 
 entered in the Borough Court of Stratford, on a plea of debt, William Shak- 
 spere against Philip Rogers, for the sum of thirty-five shillings and ten-pence, 
 for corn delivered. The precept was issued in the usual form upon this decla 
 ration, the delivery of the corn being stated to have taken place at several times 
 in the first and second years of James. There cannot be more distinct evidence 
 that William Shakspere, at the very period when his dramas were calling forth 
 the rapturous applause of the new Sovereign and his Court, and when he him- 
 self, as it would seem, was ambitious of a courtly office, did not disdain to 
 pursue the humble though honourable occupation of a farmer in Stratford, and 
 to exercise his just rites of property in connexion with that occupation. We 
 must believe that he looked forward to the calm and healthful employment of the 
 evening of his days, as a tiller of the land which his father had tilled before 
 him, at the same time working out noble plans of poetical employment in his 
 comparative leisure, as the best scheme of life in his declining years. The 
 exact period when he commenced the complete realization of these plans is 
 somewhat doubtful. He had probably ceased to appear as an actor before 
 1605.* If the date 1608 be correctly assigned to a letter held to be written 
 by Lord Southampton,! it is clear that Shakspere was not then an actor, for he 
 is there described as " till of late an actor of good account in the company, now 
 a sharer in the same." His partial freedom from his professional labours certainly 
 preceded his final settlement at Stratford. 
 
 In the conveyance by the Combes to Shakspere in 1602, he is designated as 
 William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon. The same designation holds in 
 subsequent legal documents connected with Stratford ; but there is no doubt 
 that, at the period of the conveyance from the Combes, he was an actor in the 
 company performing at the Blackfriars and at the Globe ; and in tracing there- 
 fore the " whereabout " of Shakspere, from the imperfect records which remain 
 to us, we have assumed that where the fellows of Shakspere are to be found, 
 there is he to be also located. But in the belief that before 1608 he had ceased 
 to be an actor, we are not required to assume that he was so constantly with his 
 company as before that partial retirement. His interest would no doubt require 
 his occasional presence with them, for he continued to be a considerable pro 
 prietor in their lucrative concerns. That prudence and careful management 
 which could alone have enabled him to realize a large property out of his pro- 
 fessional pursuits, and at the same time not to dissipate it by his agricultural 
 occupations, appears to have been founded upon an arrangement by which he 
 secured the assistance of his family, and at the same time made a provision for 
 them. We have seen that in 1602 his brother Gilbert was his representative 
 
 nants with William Shakspere to make recompense for any loss and hindrance, upon arbitration, for 
 and in respect to the increasing value of tithes. 
 
 * See Chapter IX., p. 478. 
 
 f See Note at the end of this Chapter. 
 
 2 12 *8d
 
 WILLIAM BHAK8PERE: 
 
 at Stratford. Richard, who was ten years his junior, and who, dying a year 
 before him, was buried at Stratford, would also appear to have been resident 
 there. His youngest brother Edmund, sixteen years his junior, was, there can 
 be little question, associated with him in the theatre ; and he probably looked 
 to him to attend to the management of his property in London, after he retired 
 from any active attention to its conduct. But Edmund died early. He lived 
 in the parish of St. Saviour's, in all probability at his brother's house in the 
 liberty of the Clink ; an the register of burials of that parish has the following 
 record: — "1607, December 31st, Edmond Shakespeare, a player, in the 
 church." * The death of his brother might probably have had a considerable 
 influence upon the habits of his life, and might have induced him to dispose of 
 all his theatrical property, as there is reason to believe he did, several years 
 before his death. The value of a portion of this property has been ascertained, 
 as far as it can be, upon an estimate for its sale ; and by this estimate the 
 amount of his portion, as compared with that of his co-proprietors, is distinctly 
 shown. The original establishment of the theatre at the Blackfriars in 1574 
 was in opposition to the attempt of the Corporation of London to subject the 
 players to harsh restrictions. Within the city the authority of the Lord 
 Mayor and Aldermen appears to have been powerful enough to resist the pro- 
 tection which was given to the players by the Court. Burbage therefore built 
 his theatre at a convenient place, just out of the jurisdiction of the city.f In 
 1579 the Corporation were defeated in some attempt to interfere with the 
 players at the Blackfriars Theatre, by a peremptory order in Council that they 
 should not be restrained nor in anywise molested in the exercise of their quality 
 The players at a subsequent period occasionally exercised freedoms towards the 
 dignitaries of the city, not so much in the regular drama, as in those merri- 
 ments or jigs with which the comic performers amused the groundlings. In 
 1605 the worshipful magistrates took this freedom so greatly to heart that they 
 brought the matter before the Privy Council : — " Whereas Kemp, Armin, and 
 others, players at the Blackfriars, have again not forborne to bring upon their 
 stage one or more of the worshipful Aldermen of the City of London, to their 
 great scandal and to the lessening of their authority ; the Lords of the right 
 honourable the Privy Council are besought to call the said players before them 
 and to inquire into the same, that order may be taken to remedy the abuse, 
 either by putting down or removing the said theatre." t It was probably with 
 reference to such satirizers, often extemporal, whose licentiousness dates back 
 as far as the days of Tarleton, that Hamlet said, " After your death you had 
 better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you lived." Nothing was 
 done by the Privy Council in consequence of the complaint of 1605; but it 
 appears that in 1608 the question of the jurisdiction of the City in the Black- 
 friars, and especially with reference to the playhouse, was again brought before 
 Lord Ellesmere. The proprietors of the theatre remained in undisturbed 
 possession. Out of this attempt a negociation appears to have arisen for the 
 purchase of the property by the City ; for amongst the documents connected 
 
 * See p. 282. t See p. 301. J Collier's ' New Facta. 
 
 4S4
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 with this attempt of the Corporation is found a paper headed, " For avoiding 
 of the playhouse in the precinct of the Blackfriars." The document states, in 
 conclusion, that " in the whole it will cost the Lord Mayor and the citizens at the 
 least 7000/." Richard Burbage claims 1000/. for the fee, and for his four shares 
 933/. 6s. 8d. Laz. Fletcher owns three shares, which he rates at 700/., that is, 
 at seven years' purchase. " W. Shakespeare asketh for the wardrobe and pro- 
 perties of the same playhouse 500 u , and for his four shares, the same as his 
 fellowes Burbidge and Fletcher, viz. 933 h 6 a 8 d ." Heminge and Condell have 
 each two shares, Taylor and Lowin each a share and a half ; four more plavers 
 each a half share ; which they all value at the same rate. The hired men if the 
 company also claim recompense for their loss; "and the widows and orphans 
 of players who are paid by the sharers at divers rates and proportions.' * It 
 thus appears that, next to Richard Burbage, Shakspere was the largest pro- 
 prietor in the theatre ; that Burbage was the exclusive owner of the real pro- 
 perty, and Shakspere of the personal. We see that Fletcher s the next largest 
 shareholder. Fletcher's position, both at Aberdeen and in the licence of 1603, 
 did not depend, we conclude, upon the amount of his proprietary interest. In 
 the same way that we find in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber 
 payments to Heminge, when he was a holder of a smaller number of shares 
 than Burbage, or Shakspere, or Fletcher (he probably being then paid as the 
 man of business representing the company), so Fletcher in 1601 and 1603 stood 
 at their head by some choice independent of his proprietorship. There is a 
 precision in Fletcher's valuation of his shares which shows that he possessed 
 the qualities necessary for representing the pecuniary interests of his fellows : — 
 " Three shares which he rateth at 700/., that is at seven years' purchase for 
 each share, or thirty-three pounds six shillings and eight-pence one year with 
 another." Shakspere founds the valuation of his share upon the valuation of 
 Burbage and Fletcher. If the valuation be correct, Shakspere's annual income 
 derived from his shares in the Blackfriars alone, was 133/. 6s. 8d. His ward- 
 robe and properties, being perishable matters, were probably valued at five 
 years' purchase, giving him an additional income of 100/. This income was 
 derived from the Blackfriars alone. His property m the Globe Theatre was in 
 all likelihood quite equal. He would, besides, derive additional advantages 
 as the author of new plays. With a professional income, then, of 400/. or 500/. 
 per annum, which may be held to be equal to six times the amount in our 
 present money, it is evident that Shakspere possessed the means not only of a 
 liberal expenditure at his houses in London and at Stratford, but from the 
 same source was enabled to realize considerable sums, which he invested in real 
 property in his native place. We can trace his purchase of his "capital mes- 
 suage" in 1597; of his hundred and seven acres of land and of a tenement in 
 1602; of another tenement in 1603; and of a moiety of the tithes of Stratford 
 in 1605. He had previously invested capital in the building of the Globe and 
 the repairs of the Blackfriars. His unprofessional purchases during a period of 
 
 • This valuable document was disco^rec b* Mr. Collier, and published by him in hia ' New 
 t'acU.' 
 
 465
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 ten years establish the fact that he improved his worldly advantages with that 
 rare good sense which formed so striking a feature in the whole character of his 
 mind. That he acquired nothing by unfair dealings with his fellow-labourers, 
 authors or actors, -we may well believe, even without the testimony of Henry 
 Chettle in the early period of his career, that "divers of worship have reported 
 his uprightness of dealing," and of Heminge and Condell after his death, who 
 speak in their Dedication with deep reverence of "so worthy a friend and 
 fellow." It would seem, however, that his prosperity was envied. Mr. Collier 
 supposes that a passage in an anonymous tract called ' Ratsey's Ghost,' applies 
 to Shakspere : " When thou feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee some place of 
 lordship in the country, that, growing weary of playing, thy money may there 
 
 bring thee to high dignity and reputation for, I have heard indeed of 
 
 some that have gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to be 
 exceeding wealthy." If the application be correct, we still cannot hold with 
 Mr. Collier that the "gone to London very meanly " of this writer implies that 
 " Shakespeare came to London a penniless fugitive."* Mr. Collier has shown 
 that in 1589 Shakspere was a shareholder in the Blackfriars, taking precedence 
 of the most ' popular actors, Kempe and Armin, and also of William Jonson, a 
 shareholder of fifteen years' standing. If Shakspere won this position out of 
 the depths of that poverty which it is the fashion to surround him with, abso- 
 lutely without a tittle of evidence, the success of the first four or five years of 
 his professional career must have been greater than that of any subsequent 
 period. All the records of Shakspere's professional life, and the results of his 
 success as exhibited in the accession of property, indicate, on the contrary, a 
 steady and regular advance. They show us that perseverance and industry 
 were as much the characteristics of the man as the greatness of his genius ; that 
 he held with constancy to the course of life which he had early adopted ; that 
 year by year it afforded him increased competence and wealth ; and that if he 
 had the rare privilege of pursuing an occupation which called forth the highest 
 exercise of his powers, rendering it in every essential a pleasurable occupation, 
 he despised not the means by which he had risen : he lived in a free and genial 
 intercourse with his professional brethren, and to the last they were his friends and 
 fellows. 
 
 Aubrey says of Shakspere, " He was wont to go to his native country once 
 a-year." This statement, which there is no reason to disbelieve, has reference 
 to the period when Shakspere was engaged as an actor. There is another 
 account of Shakspere's mode of life, which does not contradict Aubrey, but 
 brings down his information to a later period. In the ' Diary of the Rev. John 
 Ward, Vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon,' the manuscript of which was discovered 
 in the library of the Medical Society of London, we find the following curious 
 record of Shakspere's later years : — " I have heard that Mr. Shakspeare was a 
 natural wit, without any art at all ; hee frequented the plays all his younger 
 time, but in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two 
 plays every year, and for itt had an allowance so large, that hee spent att the 
 
 * ' New Facts,' p. 31 
 486
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 rate of 1000/. a-year, as I have heard." The Diary of John Ward extends 
 from 1648 to 1679; and it is in many respects interesting, from the circum- 
 stance that he united the practice of medicine to the performance of his duties 
 as a parish priest. Amidst the scanty rural population such a combination was 
 not unusual, the bishop of the diocese granting a licence to an incumbent to 
 practise medicine in the diocese where he dwelt. Upon the removal from the 
 vicarage of Stratford-upon-Avon of Alexander Beane, who had held the living 
 from 1648 to the Restoration, John Ward, A.M., was appointed his successor in 
 1662.* It is evident that, although forty-six years had elapsed since the death 
 of Shakspere, his memory was the leading association with Stratford-upon- 
 Avon. After noticing that Shakspere had two daughters, we find the entry 
 presented above. It is just possible that the new vicar of Stratford might have 
 seen Shakspere's younger daughter Judith, who was born in 1585, and, having 
 married Thomas Quiney in 1616, lived to the age of seventy-seven, having been 
 buried on the 9th of February, 1662. The descendants of Shakspere's family 
 and of his friends surrounded the worthy vicar on every side ; and he appears 
 to have thought it absolutely necessary to acquire such a knowledge of the pro- 
 ductions of the great poet as might qualify him to speak of them in general 
 society : — " Remember to peruse Shakespeare's plays, and bee much versed in 
 them, that I may not bee ignorant in that matter." The honest vicar was not 
 quite certain whether the fame of Shakspere was only a provincial one, for he 
 adds — "Whether Dr. Heylin does well, in reckoning up the dramatick poets 
 which have been famous in England, to omit Shakespeare ?" f The o-ood man 
 is not altogether to be blamed for having previously to 1662 been "ignorant" 
 of Shakspere's plays. He was only thirty-three years of age ; and his youth 
 had been passed in the stormy period when the Puritans had well nigh banished 
 all literature, and especially dramatic literature, from the minds of the people, 
 in their intolerant proscription of all pleasure and recreation. At any rate we 
 may accept the statements of the good vicar as founded upon the recollections 
 of those with whom he was associated in 1662. It is wholly consistent with 
 what we otherwise know of Shakspere's life, that " He frequented the plays all 
 his younger time." It is equally consistent that he " in his elder days lived at 
 Stratford." There is nothing improbable in the belief that he "supplied the 
 stage with two plays every year." The last clause of the sentence is somewhat 
 startling: — "And for it had an allowance so large, that he spent at the rate of 
 1000/. a-year, as I have heard." And yet the assertion must not be considered 
 wholly an exaggeration. "He spent at the rate of 1000/. a-year," must mean 
 the rate of the time when Mr. Ward is writing. During the half century 
 which had preceded the Restoration, there had been a more important decrease 
 in the value of money than had even taken place in the reign of Elizabeth. 
 During that reign the prices of all commodities were constantly rising ; but 
 after the reduction of the legal rate of interest from ten per cent, to eight in 
 1624, and from eight to six in 1651, the change was still more remarkable. Sir 
 
 * See the list of incumbents in Wheler s ' History of Stratfonl-upon-Avon, 32. 
 + See 'Diary,' &e., 1839, p. 133. 
 
 487
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Josias Child, in 1688, says that five hundred pounds with a daughter, sixty 
 years before, was esteemed a larger portion than two thousand pounds now. It 
 would appear, therefore, that the thousand a-year in 1662 was not more than 
 one-third of the amount in 1612: and this sum, from 300/. to 400/., was, as 
 near as may be, the amount which Shakspere appears to have derived from his 
 theatrical property. In all probability he held that property during the greater 
 part of the period when he "supplied the stage with two plays every year;' 
 and this indirect remuneration for his poetical labours might readily have been 
 mistaken, fifty years afterwards, as " an allowance so large " for authorship that 
 the good vicar records it as a memorable thing. 
 
 It is established that Othello was performed in 1602 ; Hamlet, greatly 
 enlarged, was published in 1604; Measure for Measure was acted before the 
 Court on St. Stephen's night in the same year. If we place Shakspere's partial 
 retirement from his professional duties about this period, and regard the plays 
 whose dates up to this point have not been fixed by any authentic record, or 
 satisfactory combination of circumstances, we have abundant work in reserve 
 for the great poet in the maturity of his intellect. Lear, Macbeth, Timon of 
 Athens, Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, 
 Henry VIII., Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, eleven of the 
 noblest productions of the human intellect, so varied in their character, — the 
 deepest passion, the profoundest philosophy, the wildest romance, the most 
 comprehensive history, — what a glorious labour to fill the nine or ten remaining 
 years of the life of the man who had left his native fields twenty years before 
 to seek for advancement in doubtful and perilous paths, — in a profession which 
 was denounced by some and despised by others, — amongst companions full of 
 genius and learning, but who had perished early in their pride and their self- 
 abandonment ! And he returns wealthy and honoured to the bosom of those 
 who are dearest to him — his wife and daughters, his mother, his sisters and 
 brothers. The companions of his boyhood are all around him. They have 
 been useful members of society in their native place. He has constantly kept 
 up his intercourse with them. They have looked to him for assistance in their 
 difficulties. He is come to be one of them, to dwell wholly amongst them, to 
 take a deeper interest in their pleasures and in their cares, to receive their sym- 
 pathy. He is come to walk amidst his own fields, to till them, to sell their 
 produce. His labour will be his recreation. In the activity of his body will 
 the energy of his intellect find its support and its rest. His nature is eminently 
 fitted for action as well as contemplation. Were it otherwise, he would have 
 " bad dreams," like his own Hamlet. Morbid thoughts may have come over 
 him "like a passing cloud;" but from this time his mind will be eminently 
 healthful. The imagination and the reason henceforth will be wonderfully 
 balanced. Much of this belongs to the progressive character of his understand- 
 ing ; something to his favourable position. 
 
 To a mind which habitually dwells amongst high thoughts, — familiar with 
 the greatness of the past, the littleness of the present, and the vastness of the 
 future, — the petty jealousies, the envies, the heart-burnings, that have ever 
 
 488
 
 A BIOORAPHr. 
 
 belonged to provincial society can only present themselves under the aspect of 
 the ludicrous. William Shakspere was no doubt pointed out by some of his 
 neighbours as the rich player that had " gone to London very meanly." It 
 appears to us that we can trace the workings of this jealousy in a small matter 
 which has hitherto been viewed somewhat differently. The father and mother 
 of Shakspere were of good family, — a circumstance more regarded in those days 
 than wealth. We never have attempted to show that John Shakspere was a 
 wealthy man ; but we have contended that the evidence by which it has been 
 sought to prove that he was " steeped up to the very lips in poverty " did not 
 support the allegation.* On the grant of arms to John Shakspere made in 
 1596, which is preserved in the Herald's College,! there is a memorandum 
 which appears to have been made as an explanation of the circumstances con- 
 nected with the grant. It recites that John Shakspere showed a previous 
 patent; that he had been chief officer of Stratford; "that he hath lands and 
 tenements, of good wealth and substance, five hundred pounds ; that he married 
 a daughter and heir of Arden, a gentleman of worship." Malone, who pub- 
 lished this document, holds that the assertion that he was worth five hundred 
 pounds is incompatible with the averment of a bill in Chancery, filed by John 
 Shakspere and Mary his wife, against John Lamberte, who had foreclosed upon 
 the estate of Asbies, mortgaged to his father in 1578. The concluding petition 
 of this bill in Chancery says : — "And for that also the said John Lamberte is 
 of great wealth and ability, and well friended and allied amongst gentlemen 
 and freeholders of the country in the said county of Warwick, where he dwell- 
 eth, and your said orators are of small wealth and very few friends and alliance 
 in the said county." Malone calls this "the confession of our poet's father 
 himself" of his poverty, and even of his insolvency. The averments of the 
 petition and the replication afford a proof to the contrary ; for these documents 
 state that the mortgagee wrongfully held possession of the premises, although 
 the mortgage-money was tendered in 1580. The complainant says that he is a 
 man of small wealth, — the man against whom he complains is one of great 
 wealth. The possessor of five hundred pounds was not, even in those days, a 
 man of great wealth ; but it was a reason, according to the heralds, for such a 
 grant of arms as belonged to a gentleman. But he had " very few friends and 
 alliance in the said county." This was a motive probably for some one of 
 higher wealth and greater friends making an attempt to disturb the honours 
 which the heralds had confirmed to John Shakspere. It appears that some 
 charges were made against Garter and Clarencieux, Kings at Arms (which offices 
 were then held by Dethick and Camden), that they had wrongfully given arms 
 to certain persons, twenty-three in number. The answer of Garter and Claren- 
 cieux, preserved in the Herald's College, was presented on the 10th of May, 
 1602 ; and it appears that John Shakspere was one of those named in the 
 " libellous scroll," as the heralds call it. Their answer as regards Shakspere is 
 as follows: " Shakespere. — It may as well be said that Hareley, who beareth 
 gould a bend between two cotizes sables, and all other that [bear] or and argent 
 
 * See p. 108. f See p. 6. 
 
 480
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 
 
 a bend sables, usurpe the coat of Lo. Manley. As for the speare in bend, [it] is a 
 patible difference ; and the person to whom it was granted hath borne mages- 
 tracy, and was justice of peace at Stratford-upon-Avon. He married the daughter 
 and heire of Arderne, and was able to maintain that estate." The information, 
 or " libellous scroll," was heard before Lord Howard and others on the 1st of 
 May, 1602. At that time John Shakspere had been dead six months. The 
 answer of the heralds points to the position of the person to whom the arms 
 were granted in 1599, when the shield of Shakspere was impaled with the an- 
 cient arms of Arden of Wellingcote.* In May, 1602, William Shakspere bore 
 these joint arms of his father and mother by virtue of the grant of 1599 ; and 
 against him, therefore, was the " libellous scroll " directed. He had bought a 
 " place of lordship " in the county of Warwick ; he was written down in all 
 indentures, gentleman and generosus ; he had a new coat of arms, it is true, but 
 he claimed it through a gentle ancestry. Was there any one in his immediate 
 neighbourhood, a rich and proud man, who looked upon the acquisition of lands 
 and houses by the poor player with a self-important jealousy ? Sir Thomas 
 Lucy — he who possessed Charlcote in the days of William Shakspere's youth — 
 was dead. He died on the 6th of July, 1600; and it is probable that he who 
 had looked with reverence upon the worthy knight when, as a boy, he was un- 
 familiar with greatness, might have dropped a tear upon his grave in the 
 parish church of Charlcote. But another Sir Thomas Lucy, who had just suc- 
 ceeded to large possessions, might have thought it necessary to make an 
 attempt to lower, in the eyes of his neighbours, the importance of the presump- 
 tuous man who, being nothing but an actor and a poet, had presumed to write 
 himself gentleman. In the first copy of The Merry Wives of Windsor there is 
 
 S«e o. 7. 
 
 [M inument of Sir Thomas Lucy.]
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 not a word about the dignities of Justice Shallow, his old coat, or his quarters. 
 Those passages first appeared in the folio of 1623. They probably existed when 
 the play was acted before James in November, 1604 : — 
 
 " Shalloio. Sir Hugh, persuade me not ; I will make a Star-chamber matter of it : if he were twenty 
 Sir John FalstafFs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire. 
 
 Slender. In the county of Gloster, justice of peace, and coram. 
 
 Shal. Ay, cousin Slender, and cust-alorum. 
 
 Slen. Ay, and ratolorum too ; and a gentleman born, master parson ; who writes himself armi- 
 gero ; in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, armigero. 
 
 Shal. Ay, that I do : and have done any time these three hundred years. 
 
 Slen. All his successors, gone before him, have done't; and all his ancestors, that come after him, 
 may : they may give the dozen white luces in their coat. 
 
 Shal. It is an old coat. 
 
 Evans. The dozen white louses do become an old coat well ; it agrees well, passant : it is a familiar 
 boast to man, and signifies love. 
 
 Shal. The luce is the fresh fish ; the salt fish is an old coat." 
 
 The allusion of the dozen white luces cannot be mistaken. "Three luces 
 hauriant, argent," are the arms of the Lucys. The luce is a pike — "the fresh 
 fish," — but the pike of the Lucys, as shown in their arms in the church window 
 of Charlcote,* are hauriant, springing, — the heraldic term applied to fish ; saltant 
 being the term applied to quadrupeds in the same attitude. This is the salt or 
 saltant fish of Shallow. The whole passage is a playful satire upon the solemn 
 pretensions of one with three hundred years of ancestry boasting of his " old 
 coat." The "dozen white louses" (the vulgarism covered by the Welshman's 
 pronunciation) points the application of the satire with a personality which, 
 coming from one whose habitual practice was never to ridicule classes or indi- 
 viduals, shows that it was a smart return for some insult or injury. The old 
 coat, we believe, could not endure the neighbourhood of the new coat. The 
 "dozen white luces" could not leap in the same atmosphere in which the 
 " spear in bend " presumed to dwell. We can understand the ridicule of the 
 old coat in the second copy of The Merry Wives of Windsor, without connecting 
 it with the absurd story of the prosecution for deer-stealing by the elder Sir 
 Thomas Lucy. The ballad attributed to Shakspere is clearly a modern forgery, 
 founded upon the passage in The Merry Wives of Windsor. f If the ridicule 
 of the "old coat" had been intended to mark Shakspere's sense of early injuries, 
 it would have appeared in the first copy of that play, when the feeling which 
 prompted the satire was strong, because the offence was recent. It finds a 
 place in the enlarged copy of that comedy, produced, there can be little doubt, 
 at a period when some one had prompted an attack upon the validity of the 
 armorial honours which were granted to his father; attacking himself, in all 
 likelihood, in the insolent spirit of an aristocratic provinciality. The revenge is 
 enduring ; the subject of the revenge is forgotten. The antiquarian microscope 
 has discovered that, in 1602, Sir Thomas Lucy (not the same who punished 
 Shakspere "for stealing his deer," because he died in 1600}) sent Sir Thomas 
 
 * See Dugdale's ' Warwickshire,' p. 401. + See p. 230. 
 
 1 See Egerton Papers, published by the Cam.len Society, p. 350, in which this fact is overlooked. 
 
 491
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Egerton the present of a buck, on the very occasion when the Othello of Shak- 
 spere was presented before Queen Elizabeth at Harefield. Whatever might be 
 the comparative honours of William Shakspere and the Knight of Charlcote at 
 the beginning of the seventeenth century, this fact furnishes a precise estimate 
 of their relative importance for all future times. Posterity has settled the 
 debate between the new coat and the old coat by a very summary arbitrement. 
 
 With the exception of this piece of ridicule in The Merry Wives of Windsor, 
 we know not of a single personality which can be alleged against Shakspere, 
 in an age when his dramatic contemporaries, especially, bespattered their rivals 
 and their enemies as fiercely as any modern paragraph writer. But vulgar 
 opinion, which is too apt most easily to recognise the power of talent in its 
 ability to inflict pain — which would scarcely appreciate the sentiment, 
 
 " 0, it is excellent 
 To have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous 
 To use it like a giant " — 
 
 has assigned to Shakspere a performance which has the quality, extraordinary 
 as regards himself, of possessing scurrility without wit. It is something lower 
 in the moral scale even than the fabricated ballad upon Sir Thomas Lucy ; for 
 it exhibits a wanton and unprovoked outrage upon an unoffending neighbour, 
 in the hour of convivial intercourse. Rowe tells the story as if he thought he 
 were doing honour to the genius of the man whose good qualities he is at the 
 same moment recording : " The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of 
 good sense will wish theirs may be — in ease, retirement, and the conversation 
 of his friends. He had the good fortune to gather an estate equal to his occa- 
 sion, and in that, to his wish ; and is said to have spent some years before his 
 death at his native Stratford. His pleasurable wit and good nature engaged 
 him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship, of the gentlemen of 
 the neighbourhood. Amongst them, it is a story still remembered in that 
 country that he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman 
 noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury : it happened, that in a pleasant 
 conversation amongst their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakspeare, in a 
 laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph, if he hap- 
 pened to outlive him, and since he could not know what might be said of him 
 when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately, upon which Shak- 
 speare gave him these four lines : — 
 
 ' Ten in the hundred lies here iugrav'd ; 
 'T is a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd : 
 If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb ? 
 Oh ! Oh ! quoth the devil, 't is my John-a-Combe.' 
 
 But the sharpness of the satire is said to have stung the man so severely, that 
 he never forgave it." Certainly this is an extraordinary illustration of Shak- 
 spere's "pleasurable wit and good nature" — of those qualities which won for 
 him the name of the "gentle Shakspere;" which made Jonson, stern enough to 
 most men, proclaim — " He was honest, and of an open and free nature," and 
 that his "mind and manners" were reflected in his "well-turned and true- 
 492
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 filed lines." Jolm-a-Combe never forgave the sharpness of the satire ! And 
 yet he bequeathed by his last will "To Mr. William Shakspere, five pounds. ' 
 Aubrey tells the story with a difference : — " One time, as he was at the tavern 
 at Stratford-upon-Avon, one Combes, an old rich usurer, was to be buryed, he 
 makes there this extemporary epitaph;" and then he gives the lines with a varia- 
 tion, in which " vows " rhymes to " allows," instead of " sav'd " to " ingrav'd." 
 
 Of course, following out this second story, the family of John Combe resented 
 the insult to the memory of their parent, who died in 1614 ; and yet an intimacy 
 subsisted between them even till the death of Shakspere, for in his own will he 
 bequeaths to the son of the usurer a remarkable token of personal regard, the 
 badge of a gentleman: — "To Mr. Thomas Combe my sword." The whole story 
 is a fabrication. Ten in the hundred was the old name of opprobrium for one 
 who lent money. To receive interest at all was called usury. " That ten in the 
 hundred was gone to the devil," was an old joke, that shaped itself into epigrams 
 long before the death of John Combe ; and in the ' Remains of Richard Brath- 
 waite,' printed in 1618, we have the very epitaph assigned to Shakspere, with 
 a third set of variations, given as a notable production of this voluminous 
 writer : " Upon one John Combe, of Stratford-upon-Avon, a notable usurer, 
 fastened upon a Tombe that he had caused to be built in his Lifetime." The 
 lie direct is given by the will of Tohn Combe to this third version of the lines 
 against him ; for it directs that a convenient tomb shall be erected one year 
 after his decease. John Combe was the neighbour and without doubt the 
 friend of Shakspere. His house was within a short distance of New Place, 
 being upon the site of the ancient College, and constructed in part out of 
 the offices of that monastic establishment.* It was of John Combe and his 
 
 * This fine old building, we regret to say, was taken down in 1799. 
 
 '•"*- • "'-fSjJ* 
 
 >.<^Cv" 
 
 I , <r s 
 
 [The College.]
 
 [Ancient Hall in the College.] 
 
 brother that Shakspere made a large purchase of land in 1602. The better 
 tradition survived the memory of Rowe's and Aubrey's epitaph ; and before the 
 mansion was pulled down, the people of Stratford delighted to look upon the 
 Hall where John Combe had listened to the " very ready and pleasant smooth 
 wit " * of his friend " the immortal Shakspere," as the good folks of Stratford 
 always term their poet. It was here that the neighbours would talk of "pip- 
 pins " of their " own grafhng," — of a fine " dish of leathercoats," — " how a good 
 yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair ? " — "how a score of ewes now?" The poet 
 had brought with him from London a few of the new mulberry plants. There 
 was one at New Place, and one at the CoHege. Which throve best? Should 
 they ever raise silk-worms upon the leaves, and give a new manufacture to 
 Stratford ? The King was sanguine about the success of his mulberry-tree pro- 
 ject, for he procured plants from France, and dispersed them through the king- 
 dom ; but they doubted. f The poet planted his mulberry-tree for the ornament 
 
 * Aubrey. 
 494 
 
 f See Howe's Continuation of Stow's 'Chronicle.' p. SQL
 
 A BIOGB \P(I7. 
 
 of his "curious knotted garden;" little dreaming that his very fame in future 
 times should accelerate its fall. 
 
 It would be something if we could now form an exact notion of the house in 
 which Shakspere Lived ; of its external appearance, its domestic arrangements. 
 Dugdale. speaking of Sir Hugh Clopton, who built the bridge at Stratford and 
 repaired the chapel, says — " On the north side of this chapel was a fair house built 
 of brick and timber, by the said Hugh, wherein he lived in his later days, and died." 
 This was nearly a century before Shakspere bought the " fair house," which, in the 
 will of Sir Hugh Clopton, is called " the great house." Theobald says that Shak- 
 spere, " having repaired and modelled it to his own mind, changed the name to 
 New Place." Malone holds that this is an error : — " I find from ancient docu- 
 ments that it was called New Place as early at least as 1565." The great house, 
 having been sold out of the Clopton family, was purchased by Shakspere of William 
 Underhill, Esq. Shakespere by his will left it to his daughter, Mrs. Hall, with 
 remainder to her heirs male, or, in default, to her daughter Elizabeth and her heirs 
 male, or the heirs male of his daughter Judith. Mrs. Hall died in 1649 ; surviving 
 her husband fourteen years. There is little doubt that she occupied the hoi se 
 when Queen Henrietta Maria, in 1643, coming to Stratford in royal state with a 
 large army, resided for three weeks under this roof. The property descended to her 
 daughter Elizabeth, first married to Mr. Thomas Nash and afterwards to Sir Thomas 
 Barnard. She dying without issue, New Place was sold in 1675, and was ulti- 
 mately repurchased by the Clopton family. Sir Hugh Clopton, in the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, resided there. The learned knight, according to some of the 
 local historians, thoroughly repaired and beautified the place, and built a modern 
 front to it. But it is evident, from recent excavations, that he did much more. 
 Malone says that he " pulled down our poet's house, and built one more elegant on 
 the same spot." After the death of Sir Hugh, in 1751, it was sold to the Rev. 
 Francis Gastrell, in 1753. 
 
 The total destruction of New Place in 1757, by its new possessor, is difficult to 
 account for upon any ordinary principles of action. Malone thus relates th*. 
 story : — '* The R.ev. Mr. Gastrell, a man of large fortune, resided in it but a few 
 years, in consequence of a disagreement with the inhabitants of Stratford. Every 
 house in that town that is let or valued at more than 40s. a-year is assessed by the 
 overseers, according to its worth and the ability of the occupier, to pay a monthly 
 rate toward the maintenance of the poor. As Mr. Gastrell resided part of the year 
 at Lichfield, he thought he was assessed too highly ; but being very properly com- 
 pelled by the magistrates of Stratford to pay the whole of what was levied on him, 
 on the principle that his house was occupied by his servants in his absence, he 
 peevishly declared that that house should never be assessed again ; and soon after- 
 wards pulled it down, sold the materials, and left the town. Wishing, as it should 
 seem, to be ' damn'd to everlasting fame,' he had some time before cut down Shak- 
 speare's celebrated mulberry- tree, to save himself the trouble of showing it to those 
 whose admiration of our great poet led them to visit the poetic ground on which it 
 
 495
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 stood." The cutting down of the mulberry-tree seems to have been regarded as 
 a great offence in Mr. Gastrell's own generation. His wife was a sister of John- 
 son's correspondent, Mrs. Aston. After the death of Mr. Gastrell, his widow 
 resided at Lichfield; and in 1776, Boswell, in company with Johnson, dined with 
 the sisters. Boswell on this occasion says — " I was not informed, till afterwards, 
 that Mrs. Gastrell's husband was the clergyman who, while he lived at Stratford- 
 upon-Avon, with Gothic barbarity cut down Shakspeare's mulberry-tree, and, as 
 Dr. Johnson told me, did it to vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reason to 
 believe on the same authority, participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts oi 
 our immortal bard deem almost a species of sacrilege." The mulberry-tree was cut 
 down in 1756; was sold for firewood; and the bulk of it was purchased by a 
 Mr. Thomas Sharp, of Stratford-upon-Avon, clock and watch maker, who made a 
 solemn affidavit, some years afterwards, that out of a sincere veneration for the 
 memorv of its celebrated planter he had the greater part of it conveyed to his own 
 premises, and worked it into curious toys and useful articles. The destruction of 
 the mulberry-tree, which the previous possessor of New Place used to show r with 
 pride and veneration, enraged the people of Stratford ; and Mr. Wheler tells us that 
 he remembers to have heard his father say that, when a boy, he assisted in the 
 reverse of breaking the reverend destroyer's windows. The hostilities were put an 
 end to by the Rev. Mr. Gastrell quitting Stratford in 1757 ; and, upon the principle 
 of doing what he liked with his own, pulling the house to the ground. 
 
 We may charitably believe, not only that this reverend person had no enthu- 
 siastic reverence for the spot hallowed by associations with the memory of 
 Shakspere ; but that he thought nothing of Shakspere in the whole course 
 of his proceedings. He bought a house, and paid for it. He wished to enjoy 
 it in quiet. People with whom he could not sympathise intruded upon him 
 to see the gardens and the house. In the gardens was a noble mulberry-tree. 
 Tradition said it was planted by Shakspere ; and the professional enthusiasts of 
 Shakspere, the Garricks and the Macklins, had sat under its shade, during the occu- 
 pation of one who felt that there was a real honour in the ownership of such a 
 pk'.ce. The Rev. Mr. Gastreil wanted the house and the gardens to himself. He 
 had that strong notion of the exclusive rights of property which belongs to most 
 Englishmen, and especially to ignorant Englishmen. Mr. Gastrell was an ignorant 
 man, though a clergyman. We have seen his diary, written upon a visit to 
 Scotland three years after the pulling down of New Place. His journey was connected 
 with some electioneering intrigues in the Scotch boroughs. He is a stranger in 
 Scotland, and he goes into some of its most romantic districts. The scenery makes 
 no impression upon him, as may be imagined ; but he is scandalized beyond measure 
 when lie meets with a bad dinner, and a rough lodging. He has just literature 
 enough to know the name of Shakspere ; but in passing through Forres and Glamis 
 he has not the slightest association with Shakspere's Macbeth. A Captain Gordon 
 informs his vacant mind upon some abstruse subjects, as to which we have the 
 following record : — " He assures me that the Duncan murdered at Forres w T as the 
 same person that Shakspeare writes of." There scarcely requires any further 
 
 4f>J
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 evidence of the prosaic character of his mind ; and if there be some truth in the 
 axiom of Shakspere, that 
 
 " The man that hath no music in himself, 
 Nor is not inov'd with concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils," 
 
 we hold, upon the same principle, that the man who speaks in this literal way of 
 the "person that Shakspere writes of," was a fit man to root up Shakspere's 
 mulberry-tree; pull down the house which had some associations with the more 
 ancient structure in which the author of some of the greatest productions of the 
 human intellect had lived and died ; and feel not the slightest regret in abandoning 
 the gardens which the matchless man had cultivated. 
 
 It is a singular fact that no drawings or prints exist of New Place as Shakspere left 
 it, or at any period before the new house was built by Sir Hugh Clopton. It is a more 
 singular fact that although Garrick had been there only fourteen years before the 
 destruction, visiting the place with a feeling of veneration that might have led him 
 and others to preserve some memorial of it, there is no trace whatever existing of 
 
 what New Place was before 1757. The wood-cut here given is a fac-simile of an 
 engraving, first published by Malone, and subsequently appended to the variorum 
 editions, which is thus described : — " New Place, from a drawing in the margin of 
 an Ancient Survey, made by order of Sir George Carew (afterwards Baron Carew of 
 Clopton, and Earl of Totnes), and found at Clopton, near Stratford-upon-Avon, in 
 1786." A person resident at Stratford at the period mentioned as that of the 
 finding of the drawing— Poet Jordan, as he was called — an ignorant person, but 
 ready enough to impose upon antiquarian credulity — an instrument perhaps in the 
 hands of others — he sent to Malone this drawing of New Place from the margin of 
 an ancient survey. If it was a survey found at Clopton, it was a survey of the 
 Clopton property in the possession of the Earl of Totness, who was a contemporary 
 Life. 2K 497
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 of Shakspere. New Place, as Malone knew, had been out of the Clopton family 
 fifty years when Shakspere bought it. The drawing is found on the margin of an 
 ancient survey. It is not described in the margin, or elsewhere, as New Place. 
 Immediately opposite New Place is a house which, though altered, is still a very 
 old house. The gables have been concealed by a parapet, the windows have been 
 modernized ; but the gables are still to be traced upon ascending the roof. Restore 
 the gables and windows to their primitive state, and we have the very house repre- 
 sented upon " the margin of an ancient survey." That house, which is now 
 occupied by Mr. Hunt, the town-clerk of Stratford, did belong to the Earl of 
 Totness. But look at Shakspere's arms over the door, the " spear in bend." How 
 do we account for this ? There is a letter written by Malone on the 1 5th of April, 
 1790, to his convenient friend at Stratford, "good Mr. Jordan," in which the 
 following passage occurs : — " Mr. Malone would be glad to have Shakspeare's house 
 on the same scale as that of Sir Hugh Clopton's. He thinks the arms of Shakspere 
 a very proper ornament over the door, and very likely to have been there; and neat 
 wooden pales may be placed with propriety before the house." And yet this man was 
 the most bitter denouncer of the Ireland forgeries ; and shows up, as he had a just 
 right to do, the imposition of the " View of my Masterre Irelande's House," with 
 two coats-of-arms beneath it. Good Mr. Jordan, when, in the pride of his heart at 
 having such a correspondent, he gave a copy of Malone's letter to a gentleman at 
 Stratford, admitted that he had, of his own accord, added the porch to the house 
 represented " in the margin of an ancient survey " * 
 
 The register of marriages at Stratford-upon-Avon, for the year 1607, contains 
 the following entry : — 
 
 <M 5 
 
 Susanna, the eldest daughter of William Shakspere, was now twenty-four years 
 of age. John Hall, gentleman, a physician settled at Stratford, was in his thirty- 
 second year. This appears in every respect to have been a propitious alliance. 
 Shakspere received into his family a man of learning and talent. Dr. Hall 
 lived at a period when medicine was throwing off the empirical rules by which 
 it had been too long directed ; and a school of zealous practitioners were begin- 
 ning to rise up who founded their success upon careful observation. It was the 
 age which produced the great discoveries of Harvey. Shakspere's son-in-law 
 belonged to this school of patient and accurate observers. He kept a record of 
 the cases which came under his care ; and his notes, commencing in the year 
 1617, still exist in manuscript. The minutes of his earlier practice are probably 
 lost. The more remarkable of the cases were published more than twenty years 
 
 * Soe 51 oto at the end of the Volume. 
 498
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 after his death, being translated from the original Latin by James Cooke, and 
 given to the world under the title of ' Select Observations on English Bodies, 
 or Cures in desperate Diseases.' This work went through three editions. 
 
 a. 
 
 [Signature of Dr. Hall.] 
 
 The season at which the marriage of Shakspere's elder daughter took place 
 would appear to give some corroboration to the belief that, at this period he 
 had wholly ceased to be an actor. It is not likely that an event to him so 
 deeply interesting would have taken place during his absence from Stratford. 
 
 [House in the High Street, Stratford.] 
 
 ft -was the season of performances at the Globe ; when the eager multitude who 
 crowded the pit might look up through the open roof upon a brilliant sky j and 
 when the poet, whose productions were the chief attraction of that stage, might 
 2 K 2 499
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 rejoice that he could wander in the free woods, and the fresh fields, from the 
 spring time, 
 
 " When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, 
 Hath put a spirit of youth in everything," 
 
 to the last days of autumn, when he saw 
 
 " The summer's green all girded up in sheaves, 
 Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard." 
 
 A pleasanter residence than Stratford, independent of all the early associ- 
 ations which endeared it to the heart of Shakspere, would have been diffi- 
 cult to find as a poet's resting-place. It was a town, as most old English towns 
 were, of houses amidst gardens. Built of timber, it had been repeatedly devas- 
 tated by fires. In 1594 and 1595 a vast number of houses had been thus 
 destroyed ; but they were probably small tenements and hovels. New houses 
 arose of a better order ; and one still exists, bearing the date on its front of 
 1596, which indicates something of the picturesque beauty of an old country 
 town before the days arrived which, by one accord, were to be called elegant 
 and refined — their elegance and refinement chiefly consisting in sweeping away 
 our national architecture, and our national poetry, to substitute buildings and 
 books which, to vindicate their own exclusive pretensions to utility, rejected 
 every grace that invention could bestow, and in labouring for a dull uniformity, 
 lost even the character of proportion. Shakspere's own house was no doubt one 
 of those quaint buildings which were pulled down in the last generation, to set 
 up four walls of plain brick, with equi-distant holes called doors and windows. 
 His garden was a spacious one. The Avon washed its banks ; and within its 
 
 [Rislinpron Chapel.] 
 
 enclosures it had its sunny terraces and green lawns, its pleached alleys and 
 honeysuckle bowers. If the poet walked forth, a few steps brought him into 
 the country. Near the pretty hamlet of Shottery lay his own grounds of 
 Bishopton, then part of the great common field of Stratford. Not far from the 
 ancient chapel of Bishopton, of which Dugdale has preserved a representation 
 600
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 and the walls of which still remain, would he watch the operation of seed-time 
 and harvest. If he passed the church and the mill, he was in the pleasant mea- 
 dows that skirted the Avon on the pathway to Ludington. If he desired to 
 cross the river, he might now do so without going round by the great bridge ; 
 for in 1599, soon after he bought New Place, the pretty foot-bridge was erected 
 which still bears that date. His walks and his farm-labours were his recrea- 
 tions. But they were not his only pleasures. It is at this period that we can 
 fix the date of Lear. That wonderful tragedy was first published in 1608; and 
 the title-page recites that " It was plaid before the King's Majesty at White- 
 Hall, uppon S. Stephen's Night ; in Christmas Hollidaies." This most extra- 
 ordinary production might well have been the first fruits of a period of com- 
 parative leisure ; when the creative faculty was wholly untrammelled by petty 
 cares, and the judgment might be employed in working again and again upon 
 the first conceptions, so as to produce such a masterpiece of consummate art 
 without after labour. The next season of repose gave birth to an effort of 
 genius wholly different in character; but almost as wonderful in its profound 
 sagacity and knowledge of the world, as Lear is unequalled for its depth o 
 individual passion. Troilus and Cressida was published in 1609. Both these 
 publications were probably made without the consent of the author ; but it 
 would seem that these plays were first produced before the Court, and there 
 
 [Foot-bridge above the Mill.] 
 
 might have been circumstances which would have rendered it difficult or im- 
 possible to prevent their publication, in the same way that the publication was 
 prevented of any other plays after 1603, and during the author's life-time.* 
 We may well believe that the Sonnets were published in 1609, without the con- 
 sent of their author. That the appearance of those remarkable lyrics should 
 
 • See Introductory Notice to Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 SOI
 
 A BrOQRAPHY. 
 
 have annoyed him, by exposing, as they now appear in the eyes of some to do 
 the frailties of his nature, we do not for a moment believe. They would be 
 received by his family and by the world as essentially fictitious, and ranked 
 with the productions of the same class with which the age abounded.* 
 
 The year 1608 brought its domestic joys and calamities to Shakspere. In 
 the same font where he had been baptized, forty-three years before, was bap- 
 tized, on the 21st of February, his grand -daughter, "Elizabeth, daughter of 
 John Hall." In the same grave where his father was laid in 1601, was buried 
 his mother, "Mary Shakspere, widow," on the 9th of September, 1608. She 
 
 [Stratford Church.] 
 
 was the youngest daughter of Robert Arden, who died in 1556. She was pro. 
 bably, therefore, about seventy years of age when her sons followed her to the 
 " house of all living." Whatever had been the fortunes of her early married 
 life, her last years must have been happy, eminently happy. Her eldest son, 
 bv the efforts of those talents which in their development might have filled her 
 with apprehension, had won his way to fame and fortune. Though she had 
 parted with him for a season, he was constant in his visits to the home of his 
 childhood. His children were brought up under her care ; his wife, in all 
 likelihood, dwelt in affection with her under the same roof. And now he was 
 
 " See Illustration of tho Sonnets.
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 come to be seldom absent from her; to let her gaze as frequently as she might 
 upon the face of the loved one whom all honoured and esteemed ; whose fame 
 she was told was greater than that of any other living man. And this was the 
 child of her earliest cares, and of her humble hopes. He had won for himself a 
 distinction, and a worldly recompense, far above even a mother's expectations. 
 But in his deep affection and reverence he was unchangeably her son- In all 
 love and honour did William Shakspere, in the autumn of 1608, lay the head 
 of his venerable mother beneath the roof of the chancel of his beautiful parish 
 church.* 
 
 * Shakspere was at Stratford later hi the autumn of 1608. In his will he makes a bequest U 
 his godson, William Walker. The child to whom he was sponsor fjaa baptized at Stratford, 
 October 16, 1608.
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 NOTE ON THE COPY OF A LETTER SIGNED H. S., PRESERVED AT 
 
 BRIDGEWATER HOUSE. 
 
 In the valuable little volume, by Mr. Collier, entitled 'New Facts regarding the Life of Shake- 
 speare,' published in 1835, the most interesting document that had ever been discovered in con- 
 nection with the life of Shakspere was first given to the world. Mr. Collier thus describes it : — 
 " It is the copy of a letter signed H. S., and addressed, as we must conclude, to Lord Ellesmere, 
 in order to induce him to exert himself on behalf of the players at Blackfriars, when assailed by 
 the Corporation of London. It has no date, but the internal evidence it contains shows that, in 
 all probability, it refers to the attempt at dislodgement made in the year 1608, and it was in the 
 same bundle as the paper giving a detail of the particular claims of Burbage, Fletcher, Shake- 
 speare, and the rest The initials, H. S., at the end, I take to be those of Henry 
 
 Southampton, who was the noble patron of Shakespeare, and who in this very letter calls the poet 
 
 hio ' especial friend.' It has no direction, and the copy was apparently made on half a 
 
 sheet of paner; but there can be little doubt that the original was placed in the hands of Lord 
 Ellesmere by Burbage or by Shakespeare, when they waited upon the Lord Chancellor in com- 
 pany." We can sympathize with the enthusiasm of Mr. Collier when he discovered this paper :— 
 " When I took up the copy of Lord Southampton's letter, and glanced over it hastily, I could 
 scarcely believe my eyes, to see such names as Shakespeare and Burbage in connection in a manu- 
 script of the time. There was a remarkable coincidence also in the discovery, for it happened on 
 the anniversary of Shakespeare's birth and death. I will not attempt to describe my joy and 
 surprise." But for some considerations to which we shall presently advert, we should scarcely feel 
 justified in printing this letter at length ; for the tract in which it was originally published was limited 
 to a small number of copies, and Mr. Collier has the best claim to an extended publicity. The 
 document is as follows : — 
 
 "My verie honored Lord, — The manie good offices I haue received at youi Lordships hands, 
 which ought to make me backward in asking further favors, onely imbouldens me to require more 
 in the same kinde. Your Lordship will be warned howe hereafter you graunt anie sute, seeing it 
 draweth on more and greater demaunds. This which now presseth is to request your Lordship, in 
 all you can, to be good to the poore players of the Black Fryers, who call them selues by authoritie 
 the Seruaunts of his Majestie, and aske for the protection of their most graceous Maister and 
 Scvereigue in this the tyme of their troble. They are threatened by the Lord Maior and Alder- 
 men of London, never friendly to their calling, with the distraction of their meanes of livelihood, 
 by the pulling downe of theire plaiehouse, which is a private Theatre, and hath neuer giuen ocasion 
 of anger by anie disorders. These bearers are two of the chiefe of the companie ; one of them by 
 name Richard Burbidge, who humblie sueth for your Lordships kinde helpe, for that he is a man 
 famous as our English Roscius, one who fitteth the action to the word, and the word to the action 
 most admirably. By the exercise of his qualitye, industry and good behaviour, he hath be come 
 possessed of the Black Fryers playhouse, which hath bene imployed for playes sithence it was 
 builded by his Father now nere 50 yeres agone. The other is a man no whitt lesse deserving 
 favor, and my especiall friende, till of late an actor of good account in the cumpanie, now a sharer 
 <n the same, and writer of some of our best English playes, which as your Lordship knoweth were 
 most singularly liked of Queen Elizabeth, when the cumpanie was called uppon to performe before 
 her Ma'ie at Court at Christmas and Shrovetide. His most gracious Matie King James alsoe, 
 since his coming to the crowne, hath extended his royall favour to the companie in divers waiea 
 and at sundrie tymes. This other hath to name William Shakespeare, and they are both of one 
 countie, and indeede almost of one towne: both are right famous in their qualityes, though it 
 604
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 longo.th not to your Lo. gravitie and wisedome to resort unto the places where they are wont 
 to delight the publique eare. Their trust and sute nowe is not to be molested in their waye of 
 life, whereby they maintaine themselves and their wives and families (being both maried and of 
 good reputation) as well as the widowes and orphanes of some of their dead fellows. 
 
 " Your Lo. most bounden at com. 
 
 " H. S." 
 " Copia vera." 
 
 An opinion has arisen, which we are bound to state, that the letter signed H. S. is not genuine. 
 The objection was made to us a year and a half ago by a gentleman of great critical sagacity. No- 
 thing can be more complete than the evidence connected with its discovery. 'I he high character of 
 the gentleman by whom it was discovered renders this evidence of its authenticity, as far as it goes, 
 entirely unexceptionable. It is beyond all possibility of doubt that this was a " document preserved 
 at Bridgewater House ; " found amongst " large bundles of papers, ranging in point of date between 
 1581, when Lord Ellesmere was made Solicitor-General, and 1616, when he retired from the office 
 of Lord Chancellor." This letter, Mr. Collier says, " was in the same bundle as the paper giving a 
 detail of the particular claims of Burbage, Fletcher, Shakespeare, and the rest." But he does not 
 inform us whether this individual bundle was of the number of those which " remained unex- 
 plored" — whether it belonged to the class of bundles of which he says, "It was evident that many 
 of them had never been opened from the time when, perhaps, his own hands [Lord Ellesmere's] tied 
 them together.'" Some of the bundles had previously been examined for purposes of antiquarian 
 research : "The Rev. H. J. Todd had been there before me," says Mr. Collier, "and had classed some 
 of the documents and correspondence." It is beyond all doubt that if any addition were made 
 to these papers, it must have been at a period quite distinct from that of the Rev. Mr. Todd's 
 examination of them ; and in all probability that gentleman did not open the bundle which con- 
 tained the estimate of the property at the Blackfriars. Was there any previous antiquarian critic 
 who had access to the papers preserved in Bridgewater House ? One of the most elaborate for- 
 geries of modern times, that of ' The English Mercurie,' of 1588, was insinuated into the manu- 
 scripts of Dr. Birch in the British Museum, which were purchased in 1766. For half a century, 
 upon that authority alone, we went on proclaiming that to the wisdom of Elizabeth and the 
 prudence of Burleigh we owed the first English newspaper. In 1840 it was discovered, through 
 the sagacity of Mr. Watts of the Museum, that the first English newspaper was a palpable forgery. 
 How did it get amongst the papers of Dr. Birch, himself above suspicion ? The question has not 
 been solved. But the circumstance is sufficient to justify any inquiry into the genuineness of a 
 document in the slightest degree questionable, although it be found tied up amongst other undoubted 
 documents. The external evidence relating to its discovery requires to be compared with the 
 external evidence of the genuineness of the document ; as well as with that portion of the external 
 evidence which is necessary to complete the chain, but which is not supplied by the discoverer. 
 
 In the controversy respecting the Ireland Papers in 1796, a good deal of the argument turned 
 upon a letter from Shakspere to the Earl of Southampton, and the Earl's answer. W. H. Ireland, 
 in his ' Authentic Account of the Shakspere Manuscripts,' says, " Having heard of the Lord 
 Southampton's bounty to Shakspere I determined on writing the correspondence between them on 
 that subject ; but, on inquiry, could not learn that any signature of his Lordship's was in existence : 
 I accordingly formed his mode of writing, merely from myself." The forger would have more 
 readily got over the difficulty had he purported that the letter was a copy. The danger of detec- 
 tion would have been less; but the supposed authenticity of the document would have been 
 impaired. It would have been said, these papers purport to have belonged to Shakspere ; how is it 
 that the original is not found ? So may it be asked of the copia vera of the letter of H. S. That 
 the document is a copy is the great defect in the external evidence of the genuineness. It could 
 not be received in any les;al inquiry, unless the date of the copy, the circumstances under which it 
 was made, the proofs of its authenticity derived from the hand-writing, the ink, the paper, were 
 exhibited. All these proofs are wanting in Mr. Collier's account of the discovery. But we cannot 
 here adopt a legal precision. We receive the copy as evidence, however imperfect. But we have 
 first to ask, did the copyist omit the date and the superscription ? If so, it was not a copia 
 vera. If they were omitted in the original, the omission, although not without a precedent, 
 is an exception to the ordinary practice of those days. A letter from Southampton to the 
 Lord Keeper Williams (preserved in the Harleian MSS. is superscribed " To the right honorable my 
 very good io : the lo : Keeper of the great Seale of England." It is subscribed, " Your Lo : most 
 assured frend to do you service, H Southampton." But it was the moro necessary that the super- 
 
 505
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 scription should not have been omitted on the occasion of the letter of H. S., because the letter was for 
 
 the purpose of introducing two persons to ask a favour of a nobleman high in office. Without such 
 
 a superscription, the nobleman to whom it was presented might have doubted whether it was intended 
 
 for his hands. It might have been a current letter of recommendation for the Lord Chamberlain or 
 
 the Lord Chancellor. How do we know that the letter was addressed to Lord Ellesmere at all? It 
 
 contains not the slightest allusion to his high legal office, unless the sentence " It longeth not to your 
 
 Lo. gravitie and wisedom to resort unto the places where they are wont to delight the publique 
 
 eare," may be especially meant for a Lord Chancellor. The letter is certainly of a very peculiar 
 
 nature. Mr. Collier says, " I do not recollect any instances of letters of a precisely similar kind of 
 
 so old a date, but they no doubt exist." If the letter were addressed to Lord Ellesmere in 1608, as 
 
 Mr. Collier holds, it would appear from legal documents found at Bridgewater House that the question 
 
 then before the Chancellor was the claim by the City of London to jurisdiction within the 
 
 Blackfriars. A legal opinion in favour of the claim, and proofs against it, are amongst these 
 
 papers. But the letter of H. S. deals with a very different question. It asks his very honoured 
 
 Lord " to be good to the poor players of the Blackfriars," who " are threatened by the Lord Maior 
 
 and Aldermen of London, never friendly to their calling, with the distruction of their meane3 of 
 
 livelihood by the pulling downe of theire plaiehouse." If the Lord Mayor and Aldermen had even 
 
 established their jurisdiction, it was utterly impossible that they could have pulled down the 
 
 playhouse of the Servants of his Majesty. The players could have had no fear of such an issue. A 
 
 quarter of a century before, the authorities of the City had pulled down the temporary scaffolds for 
 
 theatrical performances erected in the yards of the Cross Keys, the Bull, and the Belle Savage ; but 
 
 even then, and much less in 1608, they could no more pull down the substantial private theatre of 
 
 the Blackfriars Company, the fee of which we have seen was valued at a thousand pounds, than they 
 
 could pull down Lord Ellesmere's own mansion. To avert this evil, the poor players " aske for the 
 
 protection of their most graceous Maister and Sovereigue in this the tyme of their troble." They 
 
 needed not that protection; they already had it. A patent was issued to them in 1603, in virtue 
 
 of a writ of Privy Seal, directed to Lord Ellesmere himself, in which all justices, mayors, &c, were 
 
 called upon in all places not to offer them hindrance ; to aid and assist them ; to render them favours. 
 
 In the following year, this very theatre of the Blackfriars was expressly recognised in a patent for the 
 
 performances of the Children of the Revels. But even if the protection of the King were needed by 
 
 the King's servants, it would scarcely be asked through the Lord Chancellor. Pembroke and 
 
 Southampton were immediately about the King's person ; Pembroke was the Lord Chamberlain. 
 
 H. S. sets out by acknowledging the good offices he has received at the hands of his very honoured 
 
 Lord. These civilities presume a freedom of intercourse between two equals in rank, if it is 
 
 Southamptan who writes the letter, and Lord Ellesmere to whom it is written. But how do we know 
 
 that Southampton wrote the letter ? The subscription is H. S. In the Ireland controversy Malone 
 
 asserted that Southampton signed his name H. Southampton. Chalmers contended that he had 
 
 written Southampton without the H. But no one pretended that he had ever signed a letter or a 
 
 document, with his initials only. The formality of that age was entirely opposed to such a practice. 
 
 " Your Lordship's most bounden at command," is not the way in which an Earl and a Knight of the 
 
 Garter would subscribe himself to an equal and an intimate. "Affectionate friend," "assured friend," 
 
 " loving friend," is the mode in which noblemen subscribe themselves in their familiar correspondence 
 
 with each other. But " most bounden," " most obedient," " most humbly bounden," is the mode 
 
 in which a commoner addresses a nobleman. " Most bounden at command" is a humility of which 
 
 we scarcely find a precedent except in the letter of a servant. Such are the points of objection 
 
 which first present themselves upon the face of the letter. 
 
 But there is a peculiarity in this letter which is very deserving of notice ; and which would lead 
 us to wish, especially, that no possible suspicion could rest upon its authenticity. It contains a 
 great deal that is highly interesting to us at the present day, but which must have been considered 
 somewhat impertinent by a great officer of state in his own times. Richard Burbage, according to 
 the letter, is " our English Roscius, one who fitteth the action to the word and the word to the 
 action most admirably." It is pleasant to believe that Lord Southampton was so familiar with 
 Hamlet that he had the very words of the play at his tongue's end. Alleyn in his own day was 
 called " Roscius for a tongue," and Fuller says " He was the Roscius of our age." But H. S. claims 
 the honour for Burbage. This, however, is not a material point in the question about pulling down 
 the playhouse. It is more pleasant to have Lord Southampton calling Shakspere " my especial 
 friend." The description might startle the proud Chancellor; but, passing that, he would scarcely 
 want to know that he was "of late an actor of good accompte in the company." The nobleman, 
 who had himsHf sent for Shakspere's company to perform Othello before the Queen at Harefield, 
 506
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 could scarcely require to be told that Shakspere was the "writer of some of our beet English 
 play3;" that "they were most singularly liked of Queen Elizabeth;" that the players performed 
 before the Court at Christmas and Shrovetide. The Chancellor to King James, who issued the 
 patent to the company within a few weeks after the accession, could scarcely require to be told that 
 the King had extended his royal favour to them. Interesting as the fact is to us, it seems remarkable 
 that a great law officer should be informed, as to two persons whom his gravity and wisdom must 
 hold somewhat cheap, " they are both of one countie and iudeede almost of one towne " It is scarcely 
 complimentary to the nobleman who is addressed, be he Lord Ellesmere or not, to assume that he 
 could only judge of the qualities of these men, the poet and the actor, unless he resorted " unto tha 
 places where they are wont to delight the publique eare." Was the nobleman addressed never at the 
 Court of James during the performances at Christmas and at Shrovetide ? The writer of the letter 
 whoever he be, had not a very logical perception. He contradicts what he has assumed, disjoins what 
 has a connexion, and associates what is essentially distinct. A real man, telling a real story, scarcely 
 does this. H. S. assumes that Lord Ellesmere knows nothing about the poor players. He describes 
 them, therefore, with a curious minuteness. One is "writer of some of our best English plays;" 
 and it is added, these plays, " as your Lordship knoweth, were most singularly liked of Queen 
 Elizabeth." With such a knowledge on the part of his Lordship, it would have been sufficient to 
 mention the name of one of the men who delivered the letter. And yet his Lordship is left for some 
 time to guess who the man is whose plays, as he knows, were singularly liked of Queen Elizabeth ; and 
 other matters are gone into before he is told that his name is William Shakespeare ; which he did not 
 want to know if he knew that his plays were so liked. When he is told the name, it is assumed that 
 he has forgotten all his former knowledge ; and he is also told that William Shakespeare is right 
 famous, though it longeth not to his Lordship's wisdom to know anything about him, a3 he could only 
 attain that knowledge by resorting to public playhouses. And yet he could not so attain this 
 knowledge, because the writer ha3 ceased to be an actor, and is no longer "wont to delight the 
 publique eare." The especial friend, late an actor, is " now a sharer." This would imply that when he 
 was an actor he was not a sharer ; and yet we know that he was a sharer twenty years before this. 
 Perhaps there is no positive error here ; but there is that looseness of construction which seldom 
 accompanies an actual knowledge of present facts ; which indeed is characteristic of an attempt to 
 fabricate a document which should deal safely with remote and minute circumstances. Certainly there 
 are several indications of vagueness and inconsistency, which would render us unwilling wholly to rely 
 upon this document, interesting as it is, for any material fact. 
 
 But what fact does it tell us that we did not know from other sources ? The evidence a3 to the 
 writer is not distinct. The person to whom it is written is not defined. The time at which it is 
 written can only be inferred. Is there any fact that could not be known, or assumed, by a person 
 writing so vague a letter, some half century ago, with the intention to deceive, and calling it a copy, 
 to get over the difficulty of imitating a known handwriting ? We know that there was a man then 
 living who perpetrated such deceptions ; who, moving in good society, might readily have had access 
 to the papers at Bridgewater House, and have dropped his cuckoo egg in the sparrow's nest. The 
 failure of William Henry Ireland in the fabrication of a letter from Southampton, might have set a 
 cleverer and more learned man upon trying his hand upon some fabrication more consistent than that 
 of the unlettered forger of the Shakspere Manuscripts, and which should have the safe quality of 
 assuming nothing that was opposed to the belief of those who had written upon Shakspere. If the 
 letter be genuine, it is a singular circumstance that it so entirely corroborates many points of his life 
 with which we had previously been familiar, and tells us so little that was not previously known. It is 
 of a different character in this respect from the important document discovered by Mr. Collier amongst 
 
 the same papers, showing that Shakspere was a shareholder in the Blackfriars in 1589; wholiy 
 
 different also from the paper entitled "For avoiding of the Playhouse in the Precinct of the 
 Blacke Friers." 
 
 But, on the other hand, there are some facts in the letter of H. S. which have only been brought to 
 light in very recent times. We did not know, until the discovery of the Estimate for avoiding the 
 Theatre, that Burbage had "become possessed of the Blacke Fryers playhouse." We did not know till 
 Mr. Collier published a document in his « Annals of the Stage,* found in the State Paper Office, that 
 "it was builded by his Father." The statement that it was builded "now nere 50 yeres agone" is 
 contrary to the precise information conveyed in that document. We did not know that the company 
 at the Blackfriars maintained "the widowes and orphanes of some of their dead fellows" till we learnt 
 from the Estimate for avoiding the Playhouse that " the Widowes and Orphanes of Playeres are paide 
 by the Sharers at divers rates and proportions." We subjoin, in parallel columns, some coincidences 
 of statement, and some resemblances of style, which may assist our readers in judging for themselves 
 
 507
 
 WILLIAM SnAKSPERE. 
 
 in a question m which it is exceedingly difficult to discriminate between the imitations of forgery, aud 
 the habitual phrases and current knowledge of a real person : — 
 
 [Passages from old and modern writings.] 
 
 " I have found your Lordship already so favourable and 
 affectionate unto me, that I shall be still hereafter desirous 
 to acquaint you with what concerns me, and bold to ask 
 your advice and counsel." — Southampton's Letter to Lord 
 Keeper Williams : Ma lane's Inquiry, 1796. 
 
 "The time of trouble." — Psalm xxvii. 
 
 "Never given cause of displeasure." — Petition, 1589: 
 Collier's New Facts. 
 
 " The Roscius of our age." — Fuller. 
 
 " When Roscius was an actor at Rome." — Hamlet. 
 
 " Suit the action to the word, the word to the action." — 
 Ha ml 'J. 
 
 "Clepe to your conseil a few of youre frendes that ben 
 especial." — Chancer. 
 
 " Dearest Friend." — Ireland's forged Letter of Southamp- 
 ton to Shakspere. 
 
 " At sundrie times and in divers manners." — Ep. to He- 
 brews. 
 
 "I suspect that both he [Heninges] and Burbage were 
 Shakspeare's countrymen." — Malone's History of the Stage. 
 
 " Who have no other means whereby to maintain their 
 wives and families." — Petition of 1596: Collier's Annali. 
 
 " The widows and orphans of players, who are paid by 
 the sharers." — Estimate, &c. : Collier's New Facts. 
 
 We have stated frankly and without reserve the objections to the authenticity of this document which 
 have presented themselves to our mind. It is better to state these fully and fairly than to " hint a 
 doubt." Looking at the decided character of the external evidence as to the discovery, and taking into 
 consideration the improbability of a spurious paper having been smuggled into the company of the 
 Bridgewater documents, we are inclined to confide in it. But, apart from the interesting character of 
 the letter, and the valuable testimony which it gives to the nature of the intercourse between 
 Southampton and Shakspere — " my especial friend" — we might lay it aside with reference to its 
 furnishing any new materials for the life of the poet, with the exception of the statement that he and 
 Burbage were "both of one county." Confiding in it, as we are anxious to do, we accept it as 
 a valuable illustration of that life. We have on several occasions referred to the letter of H. S. ; and 
 in this examination we can have no wish to neutralize our own inferences from its genuineness. These, 
 however, in this Biography, have reference only to the assertion, 1st, That Burbage and Shakspere 
 were of one county and almost of one town : this was a conjecture made by Malone. 2nd. That 
 there was deep friendship between Southampton and Shakspere : this is an old traditionary belief 
 supported by the dedications of Venus and Adonis and the Lucrece. 3rd. That Shakspere left the 
 stage previous to 1608 : this differs little from the prevailing opinion, that he quitted it before 1605» 
 founded upon his name not appearing to a play of Ben Jonson in that year. 
 
 [Passages from the Letter of H. S.] 
 "The many good offices I have received at your Lordship's 
 hands, which ought to make me backward in asking further 
 favours, only emboldens me to require more in the same 
 kind." 
 
 " The time of their trouble " 
 
 " Never given occasion of anger." 
 
 " Our English Roscius." 
 
 " One who fitteth the action to the word and the word to 
 the action. " 
 •• My especiai friend.' 
 
 " In divers ways and at sundry times." 
 
 "They are both of one connty, ard indeed almost of one 
 town." 
 
 " Whereby they maintain themselves and their wives and 
 families." 
 
 " The widows and orphans of some of their dead fellows."
 
 fnie Rear Oarrten.J 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 GLIMPSES OE LONDON. 
 
 There is a memorandum existing (to which we shall hereafter more particu- 
 larly advert), by Thomas Greene, a contemporary of Shakspere, residing at Strat- 
 ford, which, under the date of November 17th, 1614, has this record : — " My 
 cousin Shakspeare coming yesterday to town, I went to see him how he did." 
 We cite this memorandum here, as an indication of Shakspere's habit of occa- 
 sionally visiting London ; for Thomas Greene was then in the capital, with the 
 intent of opposing the project of an inclosure at Stratford. The frequency of 
 Shakspere's visits to London would essentially depend upon the nature of his 
 connexion with the theatres. He was a permanent shareholder, as we have 
 seen, at the Blackfriars ; and no doubt at the Globe also. His interests as a 
 sharer might be diligently watched over by his fellows ; and he might only 
 
 509
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE! 
 
 have visited London when he had a new play to bring forward, the fruit of his 
 leisure in the country. But until he disposed of his wardrobe and other pro- 
 perties, more frequent demands might be made upon his personal attendance 
 than if he were totally free from the responsibilities belonging to the charge of 
 such an embarrassing stock in trade. Mr. Collier has printed a memorandum in 
 the handwriting of Edward Alleyn, dated April 1612, of the payment of various 
 sums " for the Blackfryers," amounting to 599/. 65. Sd. Mr. Collier adds, " To 
 whom the money was paid is nowhere stated ; but, for aught we know, it was to 
 Shakespeare himself, and just anterior to his departure from London." The 
 memorandum is introduced with the observation, " It seems very likely, from 
 evidence now for the first time to be adduced, that Alleyn became the purchaser 
 of our great dramatist's interest in the theatre, properties, wardrobe, and stock of 
 the Blackfriars." Certainly the document itself says nothing about properties 
 wardrobe, and stock. It is simply as follows : — 
 
 "April 1612. 
 
 Money paid by me E. A. for the Blackfryers . 160 li 
 
 More for the Blackfryers 1 26 li 
 
 More againe for the Leasse . . . . . 310 li 
 
 The writiuges for the same, and ether small charges 3 li 6s. 8d." 
 
 More than half of the entire sum is paid " again for the lease." If the estimate 
 " For avoiding of the Playhouse," &c* be not rejected as an authority, the 
 conjecture of Mr. Collier that the property purchased by Alleyn belonged to 
 Shakspere is wholly untenable ; for the Fee, valued at a thousand pounds, was the 
 property of Burbage, and to the owner of the Fee would be paid the sum for the 
 lease. Subsequent memoranda by Alleyn show that he paid rent for the Black- 
 friars, and expended sums upon the building — collateral proofs that it was not 
 Shakspere's personal property that he bought in April 1612. There is distinct 
 evidence furnished by another document that Shakspere was not a resident in 
 London in 1613; for in an indenture executed by him on the 10th of March in 
 that year, for the purchase of a dwelling-house in the precinct of the Blackfriars, 
 he is described as " William Shakespeare of Stratforde Upon Avon in the countie 
 of Warwick, gentleman ; " whilst his fellow John Hemyng, who is a party to the 
 same deed, is described as " of London, gentleman." From the situation of the 
 property it would appear to have been bought either as an appurtenance to the 
 theatre, or for some protection of the interests of the sharers. In the deed of 
 1602, Shakspere is also described as of Stratford-upon-Avon. It is natural that he 
 should be so described, in a deed for the purchase of land at Stratford ; but upon 
 the same principle, had he been a resident in London in 1613, he would have been 
 described as of London in a deed for the purchase of property in London. Yet we 
 also look upon this conveyance as evidence that Shakspere had in March 1613 not 
 wholly severed himself from his interest in the theatre. f He is in London at the 
 signing of the deed, attending, probably, to the duties which still devolved upon 
 him as a sharer in the Blackfriars. He is not a resident in London ; he has come 
 
 See page 485. + See Note at the ond of this Chapter. 
 
 510
 
 fEdward Allevn.] 
 
 to town, as Thomas Greene describes, in 1614. But we have no evidence that he 
 sold his theatrical property at all. Certainly the evidence that he sold it to Edward 
 Alleyn may be laid aside in any attempt to fix the date of Shakspere's departure 
 from London. 
 
 In the November of 1611 two of Shakspere's plays were acted at Whitehall. 
 The entries of their performance are thus given in the * Book of the Revels :' — 
 
 " By the Kings Hallomas nyght was presented att Whithall before y e Kinge 
 
 Players : Ma lie a play called the Tempest. 
 
 The Kings The 5th of Nouember; A play called y e winters nighte 
 
 Players : Tayle." 
 
 That The Tempest was a new play when thus performed, it would be difficult 
 to affirm, upon this entry alone. In the earlier part of the reign of James we 
 have seen that old plays of Shakspere were performed before the King ; but at 
 that period all his plays would be equally novel to the Monarch and to the 
 Court. According to the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, the per- 
 formances at Court of the King's players appear to have been so numerous after 
 the year of the accession, that it would be necessary to add the attraction of 
 
 511
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 novelty even to Shakspere's stock plays. At the Christmas and Shrovetide of 
 1604-5 there were thirteen performances by Shakspere's company ; in 1605-6, 
 ten plays by the same; in October, 1606, upon the occasion of the visit of the 
 King of Denmark, three plays; in 1606-7, twenty-two plays; in 1607-8 there 
 is no record of payments, but in 1608-9 there are twelve plays; in 1610-11 
 fifteen plays; and in 1611-12 (the holidays to which we are now more par- 
 ticularly referring) there were six performances by Shakspere's company before 
 the King, and sixteen by the same company " before the Prince's Highness." 
 But, however probable it may be that the players would be ready with novelties 
 for the Court, especially when other companies performed constantly before the 
 royal family, we have a distinct record that the plays of Shakspere held their 
 around, even though the Court was familiar with them. At the Easter of 1618, 
 Twelfth Night and The Winter's Tale were performed before the King. We 
 are not, therefore, warranted in concluding that in 1611 The Tempest was a 
 new play ; although we have evidence that The Winter's Tale was then a new 
 play. Dr. Forman saw The Winter's Tale at the Globe on the 15th of May, 
 161 1 ; and he describes it with a minuteness which would make it appear that 
 he had not seen it before. This is not conclusive ; but in 1623 The Winter's 
 Tale is entered in the Office-Book of the Master of the Revels as an old play, 
 " formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke." Sir George's term of office com- 
 menced in 1610. This fixes the date with tolerable accuracy, and shows that 
 it was not an old play when performed at Court on the 5th of November, 1611. 
 There is a passage in the play which might be implied to refer to the great 
 event of which that day was the anniversary : — 
 
 " If I could find example 
 Of thousands that had struck anointed kings 
 And flourish'd after, I 'd not do 't : but since 
 Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears not one, 
 Let villainy itself forswear 't." 
 
 But there was a more recent example of the fate of one who had struck an 
 anointed king. Henry the Fourth of France was stabbed by Ravaillac on the 
 14th of May, 1610; and certainly the terrible end of the assassin was a warning 
 for " villainy itself " to forswear such a crime. If The Tempest and The Win- 
 ter's Tale, and probably Cymbeline also, belong to this epoch — and we believe 
 that they were separated by a very short interval — we have the most delightful 
 evidence of the perfect healthfulness of Shakspere's mind at this period of his 
 life. To the legendary tales upon which the essentially romantic drama is 
 built, he brought all the graces of his poetry and all the calm reflectiveness of 
 his mature understanding. Beauty and wisdom walked together as twin 
 sisters. 
 
 The Book of the Revels, 1611-12, which thus shows us that the graces of 
 Perdita and the charms of Prospero had shed their influence over the courtly 
 throngs of Whitehall, also informs us that on Twelfth Night the ' Prince's 
 Masque ' was performed. In the margin there is this entry : " This day the 
 King and Prince with divers of his noblemen did run at the ring for a prize.' 
 512
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 There was a magnificence about the Court of James at this period which pro- 
 bably had some influence even upon the productions which Shakspere presented 
 to the Court and the people. The romantic incidents of The Winter's Tale 
 and The Tempest, the opportunities afforded by the construction of their plots 
 for gorgeous scenery, the masque so beautifully interwoven with the loves of Fer- 
 dinand and Miranda, all was in harmony with the poetical character of the royal 
 revels. Prince Henry in his premature manhood was distinguished for his skill 
 in all noble exercises. The tournaments of this period were attempts on the 
 part of the Prince to revive the spirit of chivalry. The young man was him- 
 self of a high and generous nature ; and if he was surrounded by some favourites 
 whose embroidered suits and glittering armour were the coverings of heartless 
 profligacy and low ambition, there were others amongst the courtiers who 
 honestly shared the enthusiasm of Henry, and invoked the genius of chivalry, 
 
 " Possess'd with sleep, dead as a lethargy," 
 
 to awake at the name Meliadus.* The 'Prince's Masque' was one of those 
 elegant productions of Ben Jonson which have given an immortality to the 
 fleeting pleasures of the nights of Whitehall. Jonson's own descriptions of the 
 scenery of these masques show how mucn that was beautiful as well as surpris- 
 ing was attempted with imperfect materials. The effects were perhaps very 
 inferior to the scenic displays of the modern stage, though Inigo Jones was the 
 machinist. But the descriptions of these wonders — rocks, and moons, and 
 transparent palaces, and moving chariots — are as vivid as if the genius of Stan- 
 field had realized the poet's conceptions.f It was probably on some one of these 
 occasions that Jonson became known to Drummond, who had succeeded to his 
 
 * The name adopted by the Prince. Drummond called him Masliadcs, an anagram of Miles & Deo. 
 t See Mr. Peter Cunningham's 'Life of Inigo Jones;' — one of those performances in which is shown 
 bow accuracy and dulness are not essential companions ; how taste and autiquarianism may co-exist. 
 
 Life. 2 L [Wiihau Drummond.] 513
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 inheritance, and was seeking in the excitement of travel some relief to that 
 melancholy which was produced by the sudden bereavement of his betrothed 
 mistress — a loss which embittered his life, but gave to his genius much of its 
 delicacy and tenderness. The mind of Drummond was too refined for the rough 
 work which belongs to a court, even amongst its glittering . 
 
 " how more sweet is bird's harmonious moan, 
 Or the hoarse sobbings of the widow'd dove, 
 Than those smooth whisp'rings near a prince's throne, 
 Which good make doubtful, do the evil approve." 
 
 There was another maker of verses — a Scot — in the Court of James, who, though 
 not without talent, would in his inmost heart despise the " love of peace and lonely 
 musing " which were characteristic of the poet of Hawthornden. William 
 
 [William Alexander, Earl of Stirling.] 
 
 Alexander had essentially a prosaic mind ; though he did accomplish four monarchic 
 tragedies, which some wise critics have put in the same class with the Roman 
 plays of Shakspere. Whether he was engaged in the manufacture of plays or 
 copper money, he had essentially an eye to his own advancement ; and if James 
 called him his philosophical poet, we may still believe that the King thought there 
 was more true philosophy in Alexander's money-making scheme for a new order of 
 baronets than in the many thousand lines of laborious writing and reading which 
 by courtesy were called ' Recreations with the Muses.' We may without much 
 want of charity suspect that Jonson's ' Prince's Masque' and Shakspere's Winter's 
 514
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Tale might be regarded by the Earl of Stirling as Pepys regarded the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream — *' It is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in mv 
 life." 
 
 The refinements of the Court extended to the people. The Bear- Garden 
 was adapted to theatrical performances ; and rendered " convenient in all things 
 both for players to play in, and for the game of bears and bulls to be baited in 
 the same."* The gorgeousness of the scenic displays of Whitehall became at 
 this period a subject of imitation at the public theatres. Sir Henry Wotton 
 thus writes to his nephew on the 6th of July, 1613: — "Now to let matters of 
 state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what happened this week 
 at the Bankside. The King's players had a new play, called ' All is True,' 
 representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which 
 was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, 
 even to the matting of the stage ; the knights of the order, with their Georges 
 and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats and the like ; sufficient, in 
 truth, within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous." This 
 description, as we believe, applies to the original representation of Shakspere's 
 play of Henry VIII. f We believe also that Shakspere on this occasion intro- 
 duced such a compliment to the government of the King as was consistent with 
 the independence of his character and that genuine patriotism that was a part of 
 his nature . — 
 
 " Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine, 
 His honour, and the greatness of his name, 
 Shall be, and make new nations." 
 
 This is somewhat different from Jonson's compliment to the man : — 
 
 " His meditations, to his height, are even ■ 
 All, all their issue is akin to heaven — 
 He is a god o'er kings." + 
 
 And yet it has been said, either that Shakspere condescended to be a flatterer, or 
 that he did not write the compliment to James implied in Cranmer's prophecy. 
 We believe that he did write the lines ; that they are not an interpolation ; and 
 that, although they may have been written in the spirit of gratitude for personal 
 favours, it is gratitude of the loftiest kind, honourable alike to the giver and to the 
 receiver, because wholly free from adulation. 
 
 There was a catastrophe at this representation of the new play of Henry VIII. 
 which may possibly have had some influence upon the future life of Shakspere. 
 Sir Henry Wotton thus describes the burning of the Globe theatre : — " Now 
 King Henry, making a mask at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain can- 
 nons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper, or other stuff wherewith 
 one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where, being thought at first 
 but an idle smoke, and their eyes being more attentive to the show, it kindled 
 inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming, within less than an hour, the 
 whole house to the very ground." The Globe was re-built in the ensuing 
 
 * Collier's 'Annals of the Stage,' vol. iii., p. 285. 
 t See Introductory Notice to Henry VIII. J Masque of Oberon. 
 
 2L2 515
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE ! 
 
 spring. The conflagration was so rapid that Prynne wished to show it was a 
 judgment of Providence upon players — " The sudden fearful burning even to 
 the ground." Jonson, in his 'Execration upon Vulcan,' says the Globe was 
 
 " Raz'd, ere thought could urge, this might have been." 
 
 It appears likely that this calamity terminated the direct and personal connexion 
 of Shakspere with the London stage. We do not find him associated with 
 the rebuilding of the Globe, nor with any of the schemes for new theatres with 
 which Alleyn and Henslow were so busy. We have no record whatever of any 
 new play of Shakspere's being produced after this performance of Henry VIII. 
 at the Globe. Was he wholly idle as a writer ? We apprehend not. Of the 
 three Roman plays we have yet to speak. In the meanwhile let us take a rapid 
 survey of the state of dramatic poetry, and of the later disciples of the school of 
 Shakspere. We have already given a sketch of the more remarkable of the 
 contemporaries with whom he would necessarily be associated in the last years 
 of the previous century. 
 
 In the Address to the Reader prefixed to the first edition, published in 1612, 
 of ' The White Devil, or Vittcria Corombona,' of John Webster, is the following 
 passage : — " Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance : for mine own part, I 
 have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men's worthy labours, 
 especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman ; the laboured 
 and understanding works of Master Jonson ; the no less worthy composures of 
 the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher ; and lastly 
 (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry of 
 Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker, and Master Heywood, wishing what I 
 write may be read by their light ; protesting that, in the strength of mine own 
 judgment, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my own work, 
 yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martial : 
 
 ' Non norunt hasc monumenta mori.' " 
 
 Webster was formed upon Shakspere. He had no pretensions to the inex- 
 haustible wit, the all-penetrating humour of his master ; but he had the power 
 of approaching the terrible energy of his passion, and the profoundness of his 
 pathos, in characters which he took out of the great muster-roll of humanity, 
 and placed in fearful situations, and sometimes with revolting imaginings 
 almost beyond humanity. Those who talk of the carelessness of Shakspere 
 may be surprised to find that his praise is that of a " right happy and copious 
 industry." It is clear what dramatic writers were the objects of Webster's 
 love. He did not aspire to the " full and heightened style of Master Chap- 
 man," nor would his genius be shackled by the examples of " the laboured and 
 understanding works of Master Jonson." He belonged to the school of the 
 romantic dramatists. Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher are " worthily 
 excellent;" but his aspiration was to imitate "the right happy and copious 
 industry of Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker, and Master Heywood, wishing 
 what I write may be read by their light." There were critics, then, who 
 516
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 regarded the romantic drama as a diversion for the multitude only ; and Web- 
 ster thinks it necessary to apologize for his deliberate choice — " Willingly and 
 not ignorantly in this kind have I faulted." He says — " If it be objected this 
 is no true dramatic poem, I shall easily confess it, non potes in nugas dicere 
 plura meas, ipse ego quam dixi ; willingly, and not ignorantly, in this kind 
 have I faulted : for should a man present, to such an auditory, the most senten- 
 tious tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height 
 of style, and gravity of person, enrich it with the sententious Chorus, and, as it 
 were, 'liven death, in the passionate and weighty Nuntias ; yet, after all this 
 divine rapture, O dura messorum ilia, the breath that comes from the uncapable 
 multitude is able to poison it ; and, ere it be acted, let the author resolve to fix 
 to every scene this of Horace — 
 
 'Haec poi-cis hcdie coraedenda relinques.' " 
 
 As early as 1602, Webster was a writer for Henslow's theatre, in conjunction 
 with Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, Chettle, Hey wood, and Wentworth Smith. 
 A.t a later period he was more directly associated with Dekker alone His 
 great tragedies of ' The White Devil ' and ' The Duchess of Main* ' were pro- 
 duced at the period when Shakspere had almost ceased to write ; and it is pro- 
 bably to this circumstance we owe these original and unaided efforts of Web 
 ste; 's genius. There was a void to be filled up, and it was worthily filled up. 
 
 (Thomas Dekker ] 
 
 Webster has placed his coadjutor Dekker next to Shakspere. We have before 
 pointed attention to this remarkable man's early career. As he advanced in 
 years he was wielding greater powers, and dealing with higher things than 
 belonged to the satirist. In his higher walk he is of the school of nature and 
 
 517
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 implicity. Hazlitt speaks of one of his plays, perhaps the best, with true 
 <rtistical feeling : — " The rest of the character is answerable to the beginning 
 The execution is, throughout, as exact as the conception is new and masterly. 
 There is the least colour possible used ; the pencil drags ; the canvas is almost 
 seen through : but then, what precision of outline, what truth and purity of 
 
 tone, what firmness of hand., what marking of character ! It is as if 
 
 there were some fine art to chisel thought, and to embody the inmost move- 
 ments of the mind in every-day actions and familiar speech."* Dekker acquired 
 some of his satirical propensities, but the tenderness of his heart was also called 
 forth, in the crooked ways and dark places of misfortune. Almost the first record 
 of his life is a memorandum by Henslow of the loan of forty shillings, " to dis- 
 charge Mr. Dicker out of the Counter in the Poultry." Oldys, in his manu- 
 script notes upon Langbaine, affirms that he was in the King's Bench Prison 
 from 1613 to 1616. His own calamities furnish a commentary to the tender- 
 ness of many such passages as the following, in which a father is told of the 
 miseries of his erring daughter : — 
 
 " I 'in glad you are wax, not marble ; you are made 
 Of man's best temper ; there are now good hopes 
 That all these heaps of ice about your heart, 
 By which a father's love was frozen up, 
 Are thaw'd in these sweet show'rs fetch'd from your eyes : 
 We are ne'er like angels till our passion dies. 
 She is not dead, but lives under worse fate ; 
 I think she's poor." + 
 
 The praise of industry belongs to Dekker, though its fruits were poverty. 
 He lived to a considerable age, and he laboured to the last at play or pamphlet. 
 But the amount of his productions becomes almost insignificant when compared 
 with the more than " copious industry " of Thomas Heywood. He was a 
 scholar, having been educated at Cambridge — at Peterhouse, it is said ; but he 
 became an actor as early as 1598, being then a sharer in Henslow's company. 
 In 1633 he claimed for himself the authorship, entirely or in part, of two hun- 
 dred and twenty dramas. We have expressed an opinion that Heywood might 
 have been the writer of 'The Yorkshire Tragedy.' Many of his two hundred 
 and twenty dramas were probably such short pieces as that clever performance. 
 Heywood had the power of stirring the affections, of moving pity and terror 
 by true representations of the course of crime and misery in real life. Charles 
 Lamb has summed up the character of his writings in three lines : — " Heywood 
 is a sort of prose Shakspeare. His scenes are to the full as natural and affecting. 
 But we miss the poet, that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above 
 ttie surface of the nature." Winstanley, not a very trustworthy authority, 
 speaking of Heywood's wonderful fertility, says — " He not only acted himself 
 almost every day, but also wrote each day a sheet ; and that he might lose no 
 time, many of his plays were composed in the tavern, on the back side of tavern 
 bills , which may be an occasion that so many of them are lost." 
 
 * ' Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth.' 
 )- ' The Honest Whore,' Secoud Part, Act I., Scene l
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Francis Beaumont was a boy at the period to which our slight notice of his 
 great coadjutoi Fletcher belongs. At the epoch we are now describing he is 
 within three years of the termination of his short race. The poetical union of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher has given birth to stories, such as Aubrey delights in 
 telling, that their friendship extended even to a community of lodging and 
 clothes, with other matters in common that are held to belong to the perfection 
 of the social system. We neither believe these things entirely, nor do we quite 
 receive the assertion of Dr. Earle, that Beaumont's " main business was to cor 
 rect the overflowings of Mr. Fletcher's wit." Edward Phillips repeats this 
 assertion. They first came before the world in the association of a title-page in 
 1607- The junior always preceded the elder poet in such announcements of 
 their works ; and this was probably determined by the alphabetical arrange- 
 ment. We have many indications that Beaumont was regarded by his contem- 
 poraries as a man of great and original power. It was not with the exaggeration 
 of a brother's love that Sir John Beaumont wrote his affecting epitaph upon 
 the death of Francis : — 
 
 " Thou shouldst have follow'd me, but death to blame 
 Miscounted years, and measur'd age by fame." 
 
 He was buried by the side of Chaucer and Spenser, in the hallowed earth 
 where it was wished that Shakspere should have been laid : — 
 
 * Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh N ^ 
 
 To learned Chaucer ; and, rare Beaumont, lie 
 A little nearer Spenser, to make room 
 For Shakespear in your threefold, fourfold tomb. 
 To lodge all four in one bed make a shift, 
 For, until doomsday hardly will a fifth, 
 Betwixt this day and that, by fates be slain, 
 For whom your curtains need be drawn again." * 
 
 * ' Elegy on Shakespear,' by W. Basso. 
 
 [Francis Beaumont,]
 
 WILLIAM shakspere: 
 
 When Shakspere's company performed at Wilton, in December, 1603, it is 
 more than probable that there was a young man present at those performances, 
 perhaps familiar with Shakspere himself, whose course of life might have been 
 determined by the impulses of those festive hours. Philip Massinger, who in 
 1603 was nineteen years of age, was the son of a gentleman filling a service of 
 trust in the household of the Earls of Pembroke. At this period Philip was a 
 commoner of St. Alban Hall, Oxford. " Being sufficiently famed for several 
 specimens of wit, he betook himself to making plays." This is Anthony Wood's 
 account of the dedication of Massinger to a pursuit which brought him little 
 but hopeless poverty. Amongst Henslow's papers was found an undated letter, 
 addressed to him by Nathaniel Field, with postscripts signed by Robert Da- 
 borne and Philip Massinger. Malone conjectures that the letter was written 
 between 1612 and 1615, Henslow having died in January, 1616 The letter, 
 which is a melancholy illustration of the oft-told tale of the misfortunes of 
 genius, was first given in the additions to Malone's ' Historical Account of the 
 English Stage : ' — 
 
 [Philip Massinger.] 
 
 u To our most loving friend, Mr. Philip Hinchlow, Esquiro, These. 
 "Mr. Hinchlow, 
 " You understand our unfortunate extremity, and I do not think you so void of Christianity but 
 that you would throw so much money into the Thames as we request now of you, rather than en- 
 danger so many innocent lives. You know there is xZ. more at least to be received of you for th^ 
 
 520
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 play. We desire you to lend ua vl. of that; which shall be allowed to you; without which we 
 cannot be bailed, nor I play any more till this be dispatched. It will lose you xxl. ere the end of 
 the next week, besides the hinderance of the next new play. Pray, Sir, consider our cases with 
 humanity, and now give us cause to acknowledge you our true friend in time of need. We have 
 entreated Mr. Davison to deliver this note, as well to witness your love as our promifjcs, and always 
 acknowledgment to be ever 
 
 " Your most thankful and loving friends, 
 
 "Nat. Field. 
 " The money shall be abated out of the money remains for the play of Mr. Fletcher and ours. 
 
 "Robert Daborne. 
 " I have ever found you a true loving friend to me, and in so small a suit, it being honest, I hope you 
 will not fail us. 
 
 " Philip Massinger." 
 
 [^atliaoiel Field.] 
 
 By an indorsement on tne letter it is shown that Henslow made the advance 
 which these unfortunate men required. But how was it that Massinger, who 
 was brought up under the patronage of a family distinguished for their 
 encouragement of genius, was doomed to struggle for many years with abject 
 penury, and when he died in 1640 was left alone in the world, to have his 
 name inscribed in the burial register of St. Saviour's as " Philip Massinger, 
 a stranger"? Gifford conjectures that he became a Roman Catholic early in 
 life, and thus gave offence to the noble family with whom his father had been 
 so intimately connected. In 1623 Massinger published his 'Bondman/ 
 dedicating it to the second of the Herberts, Philip Earl of Montgomery. The 
 dedication shows that he had been an alien fiom the house in the service of 
 which his father lived and died : " However I could never arrive at the hap- 
 piness to be made known to your Lordship, yet a desire, born with me, to make 
 a tender of all duties and service to the noble family of the Herberts, descended 
 to me as an inheritance from my dead father, Arthur Massinger. Many years 
 he happily spent in the service of your honourable house, and died a servant to 
 it." There is something unintelligible in all this ; though we may well believe 
 with Gifford that " whatever might be the unfortunate circumstance which 
 
 521
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 
 
 deprived the author of the patronage and protection of the elder branch of the 
 Herberts, he did not imagine it to be of a disgraceful nature ; or he would not, 
 in the face of the public, have appealed to his connexions with the family."* 
 It is difficult to trace the course of Massinger's poetical life. ' The Virgin 
 Martyr,' in which he was assisted by Dekker, was the first printed of his plays ; 
 and that did not appear till 1622. But there can be little doubt that it belongs 
 to an earlier period; for in 1620 a fee was paid to the Master of the Revels on 
 the occasion of ' New reforming The Virgin Martyr." The ' Bondman ' was 
 printed within a year after it was produced upon the stage ; and from that 
 period till the time of his death several of his plays were published, but at very 
 irregular intervals. It would appear that during the early portion of his 
 career Massinger was chiefly associated with other writers. To the later period 
 belong his great works, such as ' The Duke of Milan,' ' The City Madam,' and 
 the ' New Way to pay Old Debts.' Taken altogether, Massinger was perhaps 
 the worthiest successor of Shakspere ; and this indeed is praise enough. 
 
 Nat Field, the writer of the letter to Henslow, was a player, as we learn by 
 that letter. The same document shows that he was a player in the service of 
 Henslow. But he is mentioned in the first folio edition of Shakspere's plays, 
 as one of the principal actors in them. The best evidence of the genius of 
 Field is his association with Massinger in the noble play of ' The Fatal Dowry.' 
 He probably was not connected with Shakspere's company during Shakspere's 
 life ; but he is named in a patent to the actors at the Blackfriars and Globe in 
 1620. Robert Daborne, who was associated with Field and Massinger in their 
 " extremity," was either at this period, or subsequently, in holy orders. 
 
 Thomas Middleton was a contemporary of Shakspere. We find him early 
 associated with other writers, and in 1602 was published his comedy of "Blurt 
 Master-Constable." Edward Phillips describes him as " a copious writer for 
 the English stage, contemporary with Jonson and Fletcher, though not of equal 
 
 • Introduction to the Works of Massinger. 
 
 ITIiomas Middleton.J
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 repute, and yet on the other side not altogether contemptible." He continued 
 to write on till the suppression of the theatres, and the opinion of Phillips wa3 
 the impression as to his powers at the period of the Restoration. Ford, — who 
 has truly been called " of the first order of poets " — Rowley, Wilson, Hathway, 
 Porter, Houghton, Day, Tourneur, Taylor, arose as the day-star of Shakspere 
 was setting. Each might have been remarkable in an age of mediocrity, some 
 are still illustrious. The great dramatic literature of England was the creation 
 of half a century only ; and in that short space was heaped up such a prodigality 
 of riches that we regard this wondrous accumulation with something too much 
 of indifference to the lesser gems, dazzled by the lustre of the 
 
 " One entire and perfect chrysolite." 
 
 NOTE ON THE CONVEYANCE TO SHAKSPERE IN 1613. 
 
 The counterpart of the original conveyance, and a mortgage-deed connected with it, in addition 
 to the information which they furnish us as to Shakspere'3 life, exhibit two out of the six 
 undoubted examples of his autograph.* The person disposing of the property is " Henry 
 Walker, citizain of London aDd minstrel of London." William Shakspere is the purchaser, for the 
 sum of 1401. ; but there are other parties to the deed, namely, William Johnson, John Jackson, 
 and John Heminge. It appears, by an assignment executed after Shakspere's death by these 
 parties, that they held this property in trust, and surrendered it to the uses of Shakspere's will. It 
 Beems to us probable that this tenement was purchased by Shakspere for some object connected with 
 the property in the theatre, for this reason : On the day after the purchase, the 11th of March, he 
 and the other parties execute a mortgage-deed to Henry Walker, the vendor (in the form of a lease 
 of a hundred years at a pepper-cosm rent) of the property so purchased, with a covenant that if 
 William Shakspere shall pay the sum of 601. on the 29th of September next coming, to the said 
 Henry Walker, the lease shall be null and void. It thus appears that Shakspere was not in a con- 
 dition on the 10th of March to pay the whole of this purchase money ; but that he could rely upon 
 the receipt of the difference within the next six months. It would appear unlikely that he would 
 purchase a tenement in London, being straitened in the means of paying for it, if he had disposed 
 of his theatrical property in the Blackfriars the year previous ; or that he would have bought it at 
 all unless with some reference to the advantage of that theatrical property. At the date of the in- 
 denture the premises appear to have been untenanted. They were " now or late in the occupation 
 of one William Ireland." But according to Shakspere's will, thre8 years afterwards, " one John 
 RobiDson" dwelt in the messuage "in the Blackfriars in London, near the Wardrobe." Richard 
 Robinson was one of the principal actors in Shakspere's plays — the "Dick Robinson" of Ben 
 Jonson. John Robinson was probably also connected with the theatre. 
 
 • See Note on Shakspere's Autographs at the end of Chapter XII. 
 
 628
 
 [Chancel of Stratford Church.] 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE LAST BIRTHDAY. 
 
 Every one agrees that during the last three or four years of his life Shakspere 
 ceased to write. Yet we venture to think that every one is in error. The 
 opinion is founded upon a belief that he only finally left London towards the 
 close of 1613. We have shown, from his purchase of a large house at Strat- 
 ford, his constant acquisition of landed property there, his active engagements 
 in the business of agriculture, the interest which he took in matters connected 
 with his property in which his neighbours had a common interest, that ho 
 524
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 must have partially left London before this period. There were no circum- 
 stances, as far as we can collect, to have prevented him finally leaving London 
 several years before 1613. But his biographers, having fixed a period for the 
 termination of his connexion with the active business of the theatre, assume 
 that he became wholly unemployed ; that he gave himself up, as Rowe has 
 described, to " ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends." His 
 income was enough, they say, to dispense with labour ; and therefore he did 
 not labour. They have attained to " a perfect conviction, that when Shakspere 
 bade adieu to London, he left it predetermined to devote the residue of his 
 days exclusively to the cultivation of social and domestic happiness in the 
 shades of retirement." These are Dr. Drake's words, who repeats what he has 
 found in Malone and the other commentators. Mr. De Quincey, a biographer 
 of a higher mark, gives a currency to a very similar opinion : — "From 1591 to 
 1611 are just twenty years, within which space lie the whole dramatic creations 
 of Shakspeare, averaging nearly one for every six months. In 1611 was 
 written The Tempest, which is supposed to have been the last of all Shak- 
 speare's works."* The Tempest has been held by some to be Shakspere's 
 latest work ; as Twelfth Night was held by others to be the latest. The con- 
 clusion in the case of the Twelfth Night has been proved to be far wide of the 
 truth. There was poetry, at any rate, in the belief that he who wrote 
 
 " I'll break my staff, 
 Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, 
 And deeper than did ever plummet sound 
 I'll drown my book," 
 
 was "inspired to typify himself ;"\ — for ever to renounce the spells by which 
 he had bound the subject mind. This is, indeed, poetical ; but it is opposed to 
 all the experience of the course of a great intellect. Shakspere had to abjure 
 no "rough magic," such as his Prospero abjured. His "potent art" was built 
 on the calm and equal operations of his surpassing genius. More than half of 
 his life had been employed in the habitual exercise of this power. The strong 
 spur, first of necessity, and secondly of his professional duty, enabled him to 
 wield this power, even amidst the distractions of a life of constant and variable 
 occupation. But when the days of pleasure arrived, is it reasonable to believe 
 that the mere habit of his life would not assert its ordinary control ; that the 
 greatest of intellects would suddenly sink to the condition of an every-day 
 man — cherishing no high plans for the future, looking back with no desire to 
 equal and excel the work of the past ? At the period of life when Chaucer 
 began to write the ' Canterbury Tales,' Shakspere, according to his biographers, 
 was suddenly and utterly to cease to write. We cannot believe it. Is there a 
 parallel case in the career of any great artist who had won for himself competence 
 and fame ? Is the mere applause of the world, and a sufficiency of the goods of 
 life, "the end-all and the be-all" of the labours of a mighty mind? These 
 attained, is the voice of his spiritual being to be heard no more? Are the 
 
 * ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ' — Article, ' Shakspeare.' 
 f Campbell — Preface to Moxon's Edition of Shakspeare. 
 
 525
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 thoughts with which he daily wrestles to have no utterance ? Is he to come 
 down from the mountain from which he had a Pisgah-view of life, and what is 
 beyond life, to walk on the low shore where the other children of humanity 
 pick up shells and pebbles, from the first hour of their being to the last ? If 
 those who reason thus could present a satisfactory record of the dates of all 
 Shakspere's works, and especially of his later works, we should still cling to 
 the belief that some fruits of the last years of his literary industry had wholly 
 perished. It is unnecessary, as it appears to us, to adopt any such theory. 
 Without the means of fixing the precise date of many particular dramas, we 
 have indisputable traces, up to this period, of the appearance of at least five- 
 sixths of all Shakspere's undoubted works. The mention by contemporaries, 
 the notices of their performance at Court, the publications through the press, 
 enable us to assign epochs to a very large number of these works, whether the 
 labours of his youth, his manhood, or his full and riper years. It is not a 
 fanciful theory that these works were produced in cycles ; that at one period 
 he saw the capabilities of the English history for dramatic representation ; at 
 another poured forth the brilliancy of his wit and the richness of his humour 
 in a succession of heart-inspiriting comedies ; at another conceived those great 
 tragic creations which have opened a new world to him who would penetrate 
 into the depths of the human mind ; taking a loftier range even in his lighter 
 efforts, at another time shedding the light of his philosophy and the richness of 
 his poetry over the regions of romantic fiction, while other men would have 
 been content to amuse by the power of a well-constructed plot and a rapid suc- 
 cession of incidents. Are there any dramas which belong to a class not yet 
 described — dramas whose individual appearance is not accounted for by those 
 who have attempted to fix the exact chronology of other plays ? There is such 
 a class. It is formed of the three great Roman plays of Coriolanus, Julius 
 Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. In our Introductory Notices to those plays 
 we have stated every circumstance by which Malone and others attempted to 
 fix their date as between 1607 and 1610. There is not one atom of evidence 
 upon the subject beyond the solitary fact that " A book called Antony and 
 Cleopatra," without the name of Shakspere as its author, was entered at 
 Stationers' Hall on the 20th of May, 1608. Every other entry of a play by 
 Shakspere has preceded the publication of the play, whether piratical or other- 
 wise. The Antony and Cleopatra of Shakspere was not published till fifteen 
 years afterwards; it was entered in 1623 by the publishers of the folio as one 
 of the copies " not formerly entered to other men." And yet we are told that 
 the entry of 1608 is decisive as to the date of Shakspere's Antony and Cleopatra. 
 The conjectures of Malone and Chalmers, which would decide the date of these 
 great plays by some fancied allusion, are more than usually trivial. What they 
 are we need not here repeat. 
 
 The lines prefixed by Leonard Digges to the first collected edition of Shak- 
 spere's works would seem to imply that Julius Caesar had been acted, and was 
 popular : — 
 
 520
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE : 
 
 1 Nor fire nor cank'ring age, as Naso said 
 Of his, thy wit fraught book shall once invade ; 
 Nor shall I e'er believe or think thee dead 
 (Though miss'd) until our bankrout stage be sped 
 (Impossible !) with some new straiu'd t' outdo, 
 Passions of Juliet and her Romeo ; 
 Or till I hear a scene more nobly take 
 Than when thy half-sword parleying Romans spake.' 
 
 The " half-sword parleying Romans " alludes, there can be little doubt, to the 
 quarrel between Brutus and Cassius ; and this is evidence that the play was 
 performed before the publication of Digges's verses. We believe that it was 
 performed during Shakspere's lifetime. Malone says, " It appears by the 
 papers of the late Mr. George Vertue, that a play called Caesar's Tragedy was 
 acted at Court before the 10th of April, in the year 1613." We agree with 
 Malone that this was probably Shakspere's Julius Caesar. That noble tragedy 
 is in every respect an acting play. It is not too long for representation ; it has 
 no scenes in which the poet seems to have abandoned himself to the inspiration 
 of his subject, postponing the work of curtailment till the necessities of the 
 stage should demand it. Not so was Coriolanus ; not so especially was -Antony 
 and Cleopatra. They each contain more lines than any other of Shakspere's 
 plays ; they are each nearly a third longer than Julius Caesar. It is our belief 
 that they were not acted in Shakspere's lifetime ; and that his fellows, the 
 editors of the folio in 1623, had the honesty to publish them from the posthu- 
 mous manuscripts, uncurtailed. In their existing state they are not only too 
 long for representation, but they exhibit evidence of that exuberance which 
 characterizes the original execution of a great work of art, when the artist, 
 throwing all his vigour into the conception, leaves for a future period the 
 rejection or compression of passages, however splendid they may be, which 
 impede the progress of the action, and destroy that proportion which must 
 never be sacrificed even to individual beauty. We know that this was the 
 principle upon which Shakspere worked in the correction of his greatest efforts 
 — his Hamlet, his Lear, his Othello. We believe that Coriolanus and Antony 
 and Cleopatra have come down to us uncorrected ; that they were posthumous 
 works : that the intellect which could not remain inactive conceived a mighty 
 plan, of which these glorious performances were the commencement ; that 
 Shakspere, calmly meditating upon the grandeur of the Roman story, seeing 
 how fitted it was, not only for the display of character and passion, but for pro- 
 found manifestations of the aspects of social life, ever changing and ever the 
 same, had conceived the sublime project of doing for Rome what he had done 
 for England. He has exhibited to us the republic in her youthfulness, and her 
 decrepitude ; her struggle against the sovereignty of one ; the great contest for 
 a principle terminating in ruin ; an empire established by cunning and pro- 
 scription. There were, behind, the great annals of Imperial Rome ; a story 
 perhaps unequalled for the purposes of the philosophical dramatist, but one 
 which the greatest who had ever attempted to connect the actions and motives of 
 public men and popular bodies with lofty poetry, not didactic but "ample and 
 
 527
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERK : 
 
 true with life," was not permitted to touch. The marvellous accuracy, the real 
 substantial learning, of the three Roman plays of Shakspere, present the most 
 complete evidence to our minds that they were the result of a profound study of 
 the whole range of Roman history, including the nicer details of Roman manners, 
 not in those days to be acquired in a compendious form, but to be brought out by 
 diligent reading alone. It is pleasant to believe that the last years of Shakspere's 
 life were those of an earnest student. We confidently ask if the belief is not 
 a reasonable one ? 
 
 The happy quiet of Shakspere's retreat was not wholly undisturbed by 
 calamity, domestic and public. His brother Richard, who was ten years his 
 junior, was buried at Stratford on the 4th of February, 1613. Of his father's 
 family his sister Joan, who had married Mr. William Hart of Stratford, was 
 probably the only other left. There is no record of the death of his brother 
 Gilbert ; but as he is not mentioned in the will of William, in all likelihood he 
 died before him. Oldys, in his manuscript notes upon Langbaine, has a story 
 of " One of Shakspeare's younger brothers, who lived to a good old age, even 
 some years, as I compute, after the restoration of King Charles II." Gilbert 
 was born in 1566; so that if he had lived some years after the restoration of 
 Charles- II., it is not surprising that " his memory was weakened," as Oldys 
 reports, and that he could give " the most noted actors " but " little satisfaction 
 in their endeavours to learn something from him of his brother." The story of 
 Oldys is clearly apocryphal, as far as regards any brother of Shakspere's. 
 They were a short-lived race. His sister, indeed, survived him thirty years. 
 The family at New Place, at this period, would be composed therefore of his 
 wife only, and his unmarried daughter Judith ; unless his elder daughter and 
 his son-in-law formed a part of the same household, with their only child 
 Elizabeth, who was born in 1608. The public calamity to which we have 
 alluded was a great fire, which broke out at Stratford on the 9th of July, 1614; 
 and " within the space of two hours consumed and burnt fifty and four dwelling- 
 houses, many of them being very fair houses, besides barns, stables, and other 
 houses of office, together with great store of corn, hay, straw, wood, and timber 
 therein, amounting to the value of eight hundred pounds and upwards ; the 
 force of which fire was so great (the wind setting full upon the town), that it 
 dispersed into so many places thereof, whereby the whole town was in very 
 great danger to have been utterly consumed."* That Shakspere assisted with 
 all the energy of his character in alleviating the miseries of this calamity, and 
 in the restoration of his town, we cannot doubt. In the same year we find him 
 taking some interest in the project of an inclosure of the common-fields of 
 Stratford. The inclosure would probably have improved his property, and 
 especially have increased the value of the tithes, of the moiety of which he held 
 a lease. The Corporation of Stratford were opposed to the inclosure. They 
 held that it would be injurious to the poorer inhabitants, who were then deeply 
 suffering from the desolation of the fire ; and they appear to have been solicitous 
 
 • Brief granted for the relief of the inhabitauts, on the 11th of May, 1615, quoted from Wheier's 
 History of Stratford, p. 15. 
 628
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 that Shakspere should take the same view of the matter as themselves. His 
 friend William Combe, then high sheriff of the county, was a principal person 
 engaged in forwarding the inclosure. The Corporation sent their common 
 clerk, Thomas Greene, to London, to oppose the project ; and a memorandum in 
 his hand-writing, which still remains, exhibits the business-like manner in 
 which Shakspere informed himself of the details of the plan. The first memo- 
 randum is dated the 17th of November, 1614, and is as follows: — "My Cosen 
 Shakspeare comyng yesterday to town, I went to see how he did. He told rne 
 that they assured him they ment to inclose no further than to Gospel Bush, 
 and so upp straight (leaving out pt. of the Dyngles to the field) to the gate in 
 Clopton hedg, and take in Salisbury's peece ; and that they mean in Aprill to 
 svey. the land and then to gyve satisfaccion, and not before : and he and 
 Mr. Hall say they think yr. will be nothyng done at all." Mr. Greene appears 
 to have returned to Stratford in about a fortnight after the date of this memo- 
 randum, and Shakspere seems to have remained in London ; for according to a 
 second memorandum, which, is damaged and partly illegible, an official letter 
 was written to Shakspere by the Corporation, accompanied by a private letter 
 from Mr. Greene, moving him to exert his influence against this plan of the 
 inclosure : — " 23 Dec. A. Hall, Lres. wrytten, one to Mr. Manyring— another 
 to Mr. Shakspeare, with almost all the company's hands to eyther. I also 
 
 wrytte myself to my Csn. Shakspear, the coppyes of all our then also 
 
 a note of the inconvenyences wold ... by the inclosure." Arthur Mannering, to 
 whom one of these letters was written by the Corporation, was officially con- 
 nected with the Lord Chancellor, and then residing at his house ; and from the 
 letter to him, which has been preserved, " it appears that he was apprized of 
 the injury to be expected from the intended inclosure ; reminded of the damage 
 that Stratford, then ' lying in the ashes of desolation,' had sustained from recent 
 fires; and entreated to forbear the inclosure."* The letter to Shakspere has 
 not been discovered. The fact of its having been written leaves no doubt of 
 the importance which was attached to his opinion by his neighbours. Truly 
 in his later years he had 
 
 " Honour, love, obedience, troops of friends." 
 
 John Combe, the old companion of Shakspere, died at the very hour that the 
 great fire was raging at Stratford. According to the inscription on his monu- 
 ment, he died on the 10th of July, 1614. Upon his tomb is a fine recumbent 
 figure executed by the same sculptor who, a few years later, set up in the same 
 Chancel a monument to one who, " when that stone is rent," shall still be 
 " fresh to all ages." Shakspere was at this period fifty years old. He was in 
 all probability healthful and vigorous. His life was a pure and simple one ; 
 and its chances of endurance were the greater, that high intellectual occupation, 
 not forced upon him by necessity, varied the even course of his tranquil exist- 
 ence. His retrospections of the past would, we believe, be eminently happy. 
 His high talents had been employed not only profitably to himself, but for the 
 
 * Wheler's ' Guide to Stratford.' , 
 Life. 2 M 629
 
 [Monument of Joan ComLiu.J 
 
 advantage of his fellow-creatures. He had begun life obscurely, the mem- 
 ber of a profession which was scarcely more than tolerated. He had found 
 the stage brutal and licentious. There were worse faults belonging to the 
 early drama than its ignorant coarseness. It was adapted only for a rude 
 audience in its strong excitement and its low ribaldry. He saw that the 
 drama was to be made a great teacher. He saw that the highest things 
 in the region of poetry were akin to the natural feelings in the commonest 
 natures. He would make the noblest dramatic creations the most popular. 
 He knew that the wit that was unintelligible to the multitude was not true 
 wit, — that the passion which did not move them to tears or anger was not 
 real passion. He had raised a despised branch of literature into the highest 
 art. He must have felt that he had produced works which could never die. 
 It was not the applause of princes, or even the breath of admiring crowds, that 
 told him this. He would look upon his own great creations as works of art, 
 no matter by whom produced, to be compared with the performances of other 
 men, — to be measured by that high ideal standard which was a better test than 
 any such comparisons. Shakspere could not have mistaken his own intellectual 
 position ; for if ever there was a mind perfectly free from that self-conscious- 
 ness which substitutes individual feelings for general truths, it was Shakspere's 
 mind. To one who is perfectly familiar with his works, they come more and 
 more to appear as emanations of the pure intellect, totally disconnected from 
 G30
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 the personal relations of the being which has produced them. Whatevei 
 might have been the worldly trials of such a mind, it had within itself the 
 power of rising superior to every calamity. Although the career of Shakspere 
 was prosperous, he may have felt "the proud man's contumely/' if not "the 
 oppressor's wrong." If we are to trust his Sonnets, he did feel these things. 
 But he dwelt habitually in a region above these clouds of common life. He 
 suffered family bereavements ; yet he chronicled not his sorrows with that false 
 sentimentality which calls upon the world to see how graceful it is to weep. 
 In his impersonations of feeling, he has looked at death under every aspect 
 with which the human mind views the last great change. To the thoughtless 
 and selfish Claudio, 
 
 " The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
 That age, aeh, penury, and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death." 
 
 To the philosophical Duke life is a thing 
 
 " That none but fools would keep." 
 
 To Hamlet, whose conscience [consciousness] " puzzles the will," 
 
 " The dread. of something after death " 
 
 "makes cowards of us all." To Prospero the whole world is as perishable as 
 the life of man : 
 
 " The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve ; 
 And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind : We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 Shakspere, when he speaks in a tone approaching to that of personal feeling, 
 looks upon death with the common eye of humanity : 
 
 " That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
 Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang 
 In me thou see'st the twilight of such day 
 As after sunset fadeth in the west, 
 Which by and by black night doth take away, 
 Death's second self, that seals up all in rest." 
 
 Sonnet lxxiii. 
 
 He dwells in the place of his birth, and when he asks, " the friends of my 
 childhood where are they ? an echo answers, where are they ? " Some few re- 
 main ; — the hoary-headed eld that he remembered fresh and full of hope. Ever 
 and anon as he rambles through the villages where he rambled in his boyhood, 
 
 2112 531
 
 [Leicester's Hospital, Warwick.] 
 
 the head of some one is laid under the turf whose name he remembers as the 
 foremost at barley-break or foot-ball. 
 
 " To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
 To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death." 
 
 =V-? 
 
 [ Weston Church.]
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The younger daughter of Shakspere was married on the 10th of February 
 1616, to Thomas Quiney, as the register of Stratford shows . 
 
 "Z2"&> (^&y*yjv*> 4^&'&@^ 
 
 '■g^fflovh* 
 
 Thomas Quiney was the son of Richard Quiney of Stratford, whom we have 
 seen in 1598 soliciting the kind offices of his loving countryman Shakspere. 
 Thomas, who was born in 1588, was probably a well-educated man. At any 
 rate he was a great master of calligraphy, as his signature attests : 
 
 dSi 
 
 The last will of Shakspere would appear to have been prepared in some de- 
 gree with reference to this marriage. It is dated the 25th of March, 1616 : 
 but the word " Januarii " seems to have been first written and afterwards 
 struck out, " Martii " having been written above it. It is not unlikely, and 
 indeed it appears most probable, that the document was prepared before the 
 marriage of Judith ; for the elder daughter is mentioned as Susanna Hall, — 
 the younger simply as Judith. To her one hundred pounds is bequeathed, 
 and fifty pounds conditionally. The life-interest of a further sum of one hun- 
 dred and fifty pounds is also bequeathed to her, with remainder to her children j 
 but if she died without issue within three years after the date of the will, the 
 hundred and fifty pounds was to be otherwise appropriated. We pass over the 
 various legacies to relations and friends * to come to the bequest of the great 
 bulk of the property. All the real estate is devised to his daughter Susanna 
 Hall, for and during the term of her natural life. It is then entailed upon her 
 first son and his heirs male ; and in default of such issue, to her second son and 
 
 * See the Will at the end of this Chapter. 
 
 533
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 his heirs male ; and so on : in default of such issue, to his grand -daughter 
 Elizabeth Hall (called in the language of the time his " niece ") : and in default 
 of such issue, to his daughter Judith, and her heirs male. By this strict entail- 
 ment it was manifestly the object of Shakspere to found a family. Like many 
 other such purposes of short-sighted humanity the object was not accomplished. 
 His elder daughter had no issue but Elizabeth, and she died childless. The 
 heirs male of Judith died before her. The estates were scattered after the 
 second generation ; and the descendants of his sister were the only transmitters 
 to posterity of his blood and lineage.* 
 
 " Item, I give unto my wife my second-best bed, with the furniture." This 
 is the clause of the will upon which, for half a century, all men believed that 
 Shakspere recollected his wife only to mark how little he esteemed her, — to 
 'cut her off, not indeed with a shilling, but with an old bed."f We had the 
 satisfaction of first showing the utter groundlessness of this opinion ; and it is 
 pleasant to know, that the statement which we originally published, some twenty 
 years ago, is now fully acquiesced in by all writers on Shakspere. But it was once 
 very different. To show the universality of the former belief in such a charge, we 
 will first exhibit it in the words of one, himself a poet, who cannot be suspected of 
 any desire to depreciate the greatest master of his art. Mr. Moore, in his " Life 
 of Byron," speaking of unhappy marriages with reference to the domestic mis- 
 fortune of his noble friend, thus expresses himself : — 
 
 " By whatever austerity of temper, or habits, the poets Dante and Milton may 
 have drawn upon themselves such a fate, it might be expected that, at least, the 
 ' gentle Shakspere * would have stood exempt from the common calamity of his 
 brethren. But, among the very few facts of his life that have been transmitted to 
 us, there is none more clearly proved than the unhappiness of his marriage. The 
 dates of the births of his children, compared with that of his removal from Strat- 
 ford, — the total omission of his wife's name in the first draft of his will, and the 
 bitter sarcasm of the bequest by which he remembers her afterwards, all prove 
 beyond a doubt both his separation from the lady early in life, and his unfriendly 
 feeling towards her at the close of it. In endeavouring to argue against the con- 
 clusion naturally to be deduced from this will, Boswell, with a strange ignorance of 
 human nature, remarks, — ' If he had taken offence at any part of his wife's conduct, 
 I cannot believe he would have taken this petty mode of expressing it.' " 
 
 Steevens, amongst many faults of taste, has the good sense and the good feeling 
 to deny the inferences of Malone in this matter of the " old bed." He considers 
 this bequest " a mark of peculiar tenderness ; " and he assumes that she was pro- 
 vided for by settlement. Steevens was a convevancer by profession. Malone, who 
 was also at the bar, says, " what provision was made for her by settlement does not 
 appear." A writer in " Lardner's Cyclopaedia" doubts the legal view of the matter 
 which Steevens charitably takes: — " Had he already provided for her? If so, he 
 would surely have alluded to the fact ; and if he had left her the interest of a 
 specific sum, or the rent of some messuage, there would, we think, have been a 
 stipulation for the reversion of the property to his children after her decease.' 
 
 * See note on some points of Shakspere's \* ill at the end of this Chapter. 
 + Malone. 
 634
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Boswell, a third legal editor, thus writes upon the same subject : — " If we may 
 suppose that some provision had been made for her during his lifetime, the bequest 
 of his second-best bed was probably considered in those days neither as uncommon 
 or reproachful." As a somewhat parallel example Boswell cites the will of Sir 
 Thomas Lucy, in 1600, who gives his son his second-best horse, but no land, 
 because his father-in-law had promised to provide for him. We will present our 
 readers with a case in which the parallel is much closer. In the will of David 
 Cecil, Esq., grandfather to the great Lord Burleigh, we find the following bequest 
 to his wife : — 
 
 " Item — I will that my wife have all the plate that was hers before I married her ; 
 and twenty kye and a bull."* 
 
 Our readers will recollect the query of the Cyclopaedist, — " Had he already provided 
 for her? If so, he would surely have alluded to the fact." Poor Dame Cecil, 
 according to this interpretation, had no resource but that of milking her twenty kye, 
 kept upon the common, and eating sour curds out of a silver bowl. 
 
 The " forgetfulness " and the " neglect " by Shakspere of the partner of his for- 
 tunes for more than thirty years is good-naturedly imputed by Steevens to " the 
 indisposed and sickly fit." Malone will not have it so : — " The various regulations 
 and provisions of our author's will show that at the time of making it he had the 
 entire use of his faculties." We thoroughly agree with Malone in this particular, 
 Shakspere bequeaths to his second daughter three hundred pounds under certain 
 conditions ; to his sister money, wearing apparel, and a life interest in the house 
 where she lives ; to his nephews five pounds each,- to his grand-daughter his plate ; 
 to the poor ten pounds ; to various friends, money, rings, his sword. The chief 
 bequest, that of his real property, is as follows : — 
 
 " Item — I give, will, bequeath, and devise, unto my daughter, Susanna Hall, for 
 better enabling of her to perform this my will, and towards the performance thereof, 
 all that capital messuage or tenement, with the appurtenances, in Stratford aforesaid, 
 called the New Place, wherein I now dwell, and two messuages or tenements, with 
 the appurtenances, situate, lying, and being in Henley Street, within the borough of 
 Stratford aforesaid ; and all my barns, stables, orchards, gardens, lands, tenements, 
 hereditaments whatsoever, situate, lying, and being, or to be had, received, perceived, 
 or taken, within the towns, hamlets, villages, fields, and grounds of Stratford-upon- 
 Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, or in any of them, in the said 
 county of Warwick ; and also that messuage or tenement, with the appurtenances, 
 wherein one John Robinson dwelleth, situate, lying, and being in the Blackfriars in 
 London, near the Wardrobe ; and all other my lands, tenements, and hereditaments 
 whatsoever: to have and to hold all and singular the said premises, with their 
 appurtenances, unto the said Susanna Hall, for and during the term of her natura 
 life ; and after her decease to the first son of her body lawfully issuing," &c. 
 
 Immediately after this clause, — by which all the real property is bequeathed to 
 Susanna Hall, for her life, and then entailed upon her heirs male ; and in default of 
 such issue upon his grand-daughter, and her heirs male ; and in default of such 
 issue upon his daughter Judith and her heirs male, — comes the clause relating to 
 his v ife : — 
 
 * Peek's ' Desiderata Curiosa,' lib. iii., No. 2. 
 
 336
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEEE : 
 
 "Item — I give unto my wife my second-best bed, with the furniture." 
 
 It was the object of Shakspere by this will to perpetuate a family estate. In 
 doing so did he neglect the duty and affection which he owed to his wife ? He 
 did not. 
 
 Shakspere knew the law of England better than his legal commentators. His 
 estates, with the exception of a copyhold tenement, expressly mentioned in his will, 
 were freehold. His wife was entitled to DOWER. She was provided for, as 
 the wife of David Cecil was provided for, who, without doubt, was not " cut off" 
 with her own plate and twentv kye and a bull. She was provided for amply, by the 
 clear and undeniable operation of the English law. Of the lands, houses, and gardens 
 which Shakspere inherited from his father, she was assured of the life-interest of a 
 third, should she survive her husband, the instant that old John Shakspere died. 
 Of the capital messuage, called New Place, the best house in Stratford, which 
 Shakspere purchased in 1597, she was assured of the same life-interest, from the 
 moment of the conveyance, provided it was a direct conveyance to her husband. 
 That it was so conveyed we may infer from the terms of the conveyance of the 
 lands in Old Stratford, and other places, which were purchased by Shakspere in 1602, 
 and were then conveyed " to the onlye proper use and behoofe of the saide William 
 Shakespere, his heires and assignes, for ever." Of a life-interest in a third of these 
 lands also was she assured. The tenement in Blackfriars, purchased in 1614, was 
 conveyed to Shakspere and three other persons ; and after his death was re-conveyed 
 by those persons to the uses of his will, " for and in performance of the confidence 
 and trust in them reposed by William Shakespeare deceased." In this estate cer- 
 tainly the widow of our poet had not dower. The reason is pretty clear — it was 
 theatrical property. It has been remarked to us that even the express mention of 
 the second-best bed was anything but unkindness and insult ; that the best bed was 
 in all probability an heir-loom : it might have descended to Shakspere himself from 
 his father as an heir-loom, and, as such, was the property of his own heirs. The 
 best bed was considered amongst the most important of those chattels which went 
 to the heir by custom with the house. " And note that in some places chattels as 
 heir-looms (as the best bed, table, pot, pan, cart, and other dead chattels moveable) 
 may go to the heir, and the heir in that case may have an action for them at the 
 common law, and shall not sue for them in the ecclesiastical court; but the heir- 
 loom is due by custom, and not by the common law." * 
 
 It is unnecessary for us more minutely to enter into the question before us. It 
 
 is sufficient for us to have the satisfaction of having first pointed out the absolute 
 
 certainty that the wife of Shakspere was provided for by the natural operation of the 
 
 law of England. She could not have been deprived of this provision except by 
 
 the legal process of Fine, — the voluntary renunciation of her own right. If her 
 
 husband had alienated his real estates she might still have held her right, even 
 
 against a purchaser. In the event, which we believe to be improbable, that she and 
 
 the " gentle Shakspere " lived on terms of mutual unkindness, she would have 
 
 refused to renounce the right which the law gave her. In the more probable case, 
 
 that, surrounded with mutual friends and relations, they lived at least amicably, she 
 
 could not have been asked to resign it. In the most probable case, that they lived 
 
 * ' Coke ujion Littleton,' 18 b. 
 536
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 affectionately, the legal provision of dower would have been regarded as the natural 
 and proper arrangement — so natural and usual as not to be referred to in a will. 
 By reference to other wills of the same period it may be seen how unusual it was to 
 make any other provision for a wife than by dower. Such a provision in those days, 
 when the bulk of property was real, was a matter of course. The solution which 
 we have here offered to this long- disputed question supersedes the necessity of any 
 conjecture as to the nature of the provision which those who reverence the memory 
 of Shakspere must hold he made for his wife. Amongst those conjectures the most 
 plausible has proceeded from the zealous desire of Mr. Brown * to remove an 
 unmerited stigma from the memory of our poet. He believes that provision was 
 made for Shakspere's widow through his theatrical property, which he imagines was 
 assigned to her. Such a conjecture, true as it may still be, is not necessary for the 
 vindication of Shakspere's sense of justice. We are fortunate in having first pre- 
 sented the true solution of the difficulty. There are lines in Shakspere familiar to 
 all, which would have pointed to it : — 
 
 " Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour 
 Draws on apace ; four happy days bring in 
 Another moon ; but, oh ! methinks how slow 
 This old moon wanes ! she lingers my desires 
 Like to a step-dame, or a dowager f 
 Long withering out a young man's revenue." 
 
 Midrtimmtr Night's Dream, Act 1. Sc. I. 
 
 The will of Shakspere thus commences : — " I, William Shakspere, of Strat- 
 ford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, gent., in perfect health and memory, 
 (God be praised !) do make and ordain this my last will and testament." And 
 yet within one month of this declaration William Shakspere is no more : 
 
 OBIIT ANO. DOI. 1616. jETATIS 53. die 23. AP. 
 
 Such is the inscription on his tomb. It is corroborated by the register of his 
 burial : — 
 
 Writing forty-six years after the event, the vicar of Stratford says, " Shakspere, 
 Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard, 
 for Shakspere died of a fever there contracted." A tradition of this nature, 
 surviving its object nearly half a century, is not much to be relied on. But 
 if it were absolutely true, our reverence for Shakspere would not be diminished 
 by the fact that he accelerated his end in the exercise of hospitality, according 
 to the manner of his age, towards two of the most illustrious of his friends. 
 The " merry meeting," the last of many social hours spent with the full-hearted 
 Jonson and the elegant Drayton, may be contemplated without a painful feel- 
 
 * ' Shakspere's Autobiographical Poems. 
 
 t Dowager is here used in the original sense of a widow receiving dower out of the " revenue ' whiiJii 
 has descended to the heir with this customary charge.
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 ing. Shakspere possessed a mind eminently social — " he was of a free and 
 generous nature." But, says the tradition of half a century, " he drank too 
 hard" at this "merry meeting." We believe that this is the vulgar colouring 
 of a common incident. He " died of a fever there contracted." The fever that 
 is too often the attendant upon a hot spring, when the low grounds upon a 
 river bank have been recently inundated, is a fever that the good people of 
 Stratford did not well understand at that day. The " merry meeting" rounded 
 off a tradition much more effectively. Whatever was the immediate cause of 
 his last illness, we may well believe that the closing scene was full of tranquil- 
 lity and hope ; and that he who had sought, perhaps more than any man, to 
 look beyond the material and finite things of the world, should rest at last in 
 the " peace which passeth all understanding " — in that assured belief which 
 the opening of his will has expressed with far more than formal solemnity : — 
 " I commend my soul into the hands of God my creator, hoping, and assuredly 
 believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made 
 partaker of life everlasting,"
 
 [.Monument at Stratford.] 
 
 SHAKSPERE'S WILL. 
 
 - v Vicesimo quinto die Marti?, Anno Regni Domini nostri JacoLi nunc Regis Anglim, tire, decxrno 
 quarto, et Scotice quadra gesimo nono. Anno Domini 1G1G. 
 
 a In the name of God, Amen. I, William Shakspere, of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county 
 of Warwick, gent., in perfect health and memory, (God bo praised !) do make and ordain this 
 my last will and testament in manner and form following ; that is to say : 
 
 "First, I commend my soul into the hands of God iny creator, hoping, and assuredly 
 believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life 
 everlasting ; and my body to the earth whereof it is made. 
 
 " Item, I give and bequeath unto my daughter Judith one hundred and fifty pounds of lawful 
 English money, to be paid unto her in manner and form following; that is to say, one hundred 
 
 539
 
 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE : 
 
 pounds in discharge of her marriage portion within one year after my decease, with consider- 
 ation after the rate of two shillings in the pound for so long time as the same shall be unpaid 
 unto her after my decease ; and the fifty pounds residue thereof, upon her surrendeiing of, or 
 giving of such sufficient security as the overseers of this my will shall like of, to surrender or 
 grant, all her estate and right that shall descend or come unto her after my decease, or that 
 she now hath, of, in, or to, one copyhold tenement, with the appurtenances, lying and being in 
 Stratford-upon-Avon aforesaid, in the said county of Warwick, being parcel or hoh'en of the 
 manor of Rowington, unto my daughter Susanna Hall, and her heirs for ever. 
 
 " Item, I give and bequeath unto my said daughter Judith one hundred and fifty pounds 
 more, if she, or any issue of her body, be living at the end of three years next ensuing the day 
 of the date of this my will, during which time my executors to pay her consideration from 
 my decease according to the rate aforesaid : and if she die within the said term without issue 
 of her boay, then my will is, and I do give and bequeath one hundred pounds thereof to my 
 niece Elizabeth Hall, and the fifty pounds to be set forth by my executors during the life of 
 my sister Joan Hart, and the use and profit thereof coming, shall be paid to my said sister 
 Joan, and after her decease the said fifty pounds shall remain amongst the children of my said 
 sister, equally to be divided amongst them ; but if my said daughter Judith be living at the 
 end of the said three years, or any issue of her body, then my will is, and so I devise and 
 bequeath, the said hundred and fifty pounds to be set out by my executors and overseers for 
 the best benefit of her and her issue, and the stock not to be paid unto her so long as she shall 
 be married and covert baron ; but my will is, that she shall have the consideration yearly paid 
 unto her during her life, and after her decease the said stock and consideration to be paid to 
 her children, if she have any, and if not, to her executors or assigns, she living the said term 
 after my decease: provided that if such husband as she shall at the end of the said three years 
 be married unto, or at any [time] after, do sufficiently assure unto her, and the issue of her 
 body, lands answerable to the portion by this my will given unto her, and to be adjudged so by 
 my executors and overseers, then my will is, that the said hundred and fifty pounds shall bo 
 paid to such husband as shall make such assurance, to his own use. 
 
 " Item, I give and bequeath unto my said sister Joan twenty pounds, and all my wearing 
 apparel, to be paid and delivered within one year after my decease ; and I do will and devise 
 unto her the house, with the appurtenances, in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her naturla 
 life, under the yearly rent of twelve-pence. 
 
 " Item, I give and bequeath unto her three sons, William Hart, Hart, and Michael Hart, 
 
 five pounds apiece, to be paid within one year after my decease. 
 
 " Item, I give and bequeath unto the said Elizabeth Hall all my plate (except my broad 
 silver and gilt bowl) that I now have at the date of this my will. 
 
 " Item, I give and bequeath unto the poor of Stratford aforesaid ten pounds ; to Mr. Thomas 
 Combe my sword ; to Thomas Russel, esq., five pounds ; and to Francis Collins of the borough 
 of Warwick, in the county of Warwick, gent., thirteen pounds six shillings and eight-pence, to 
 be paid within one year after my decease. 
 
 "Item, I give and bequeath to Hamlet [Hamnei] Sadler twenty-six shillings eight-pence, to 
 buy him a ring ; to William Reynolds, gent., twenty-six shillings eight-pence, to buy him 
 a ring; to my godson William Walker, twenty shillings in gold; to Anthony Nash, gent., 
 twenty-six shillings eight-pence ; and to Mr. John Nash, twenty-six shillings eight-pence ; and 
 to my fellows, John Hemynge, Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell, twenty-six shillings 
 eight-pence apiece, to buy them rings. 
 
 " Item, I give, will, bequeath, and devise, unto my daughter Susanna Hall, for better enabling 
 of her to perform this my will, and towards the performance thereof, all that capital messuage 
 or tenement, with the appurtenances, in Stratford aforesaid, called the New Place, wherein 
 I now dwell, and two messuages or tenements, with the appurtenances, situate, lying, and 
 being in Henley Street, within the borough of Stratford aforesaid ; and all my barns, stables, 
 orchards, gardens, lands, tenements, and hereditaments whatsoever, situate, lying, and being, 
 or to be had, received, perceived, or taken, within the towns, hamlets, villages, fields, and 
 grounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, or in any of them, 
 in the said county of Warwick ; and also all that messuage or tenement, with the appurten- 
 540
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ances, wherein one John Robinson dwelleth, situate, lying, and being, in the Blackfriars in 
 London, near the Wardrobe ; nnd all other my lands, tenements, and hereditaments what- 
 soever ; to have and to hold all and singular the said premises, with their appurtenances, unto 
 the said Susanna Hall, for and during the term of her natural life; and after her decease to 
 the first son of her body lawfully issuing, and to the heirs males of the body of the said first son 
 lawfully issuing ; and for default of such issue, to the second son of her body lawfully issuing, 
 and to the heirs males of the body of the said second son lawfully issuing ; and for default of 
 such heirs, to the third son of the body of the said Susanna lawfully issuing, and to the heirs 
 males of the body of the said third son lawfully issuing ; and for default of such issue, the 
 same so to be and remain to the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh sons of her body, lawfully 
 issuing one after another, and to the heirs males of the bodies of the said fourth, fifth, sixth, 
 and seventh sous lawfully issuing, in such manner as it is before limited to be and remain to 
 the first, second, and third sons of her body, and to their heirs males ; and for default of such 
 issue, the said premises to be and remain to my said niece Hall, and the heirs males of her 
 body lawfully issuing ; and for default of such issue, to my daughter Judith, and the heirs 
 males of her body lawfully issuing ; and for default of such issue, to the right heirs of me 
 the said William Shakspeare for ever. 
 
 " Item, I give unto my wife my second best bed, with the furniture. 
 
 " Item, I give and bequeath to my said daughter Judith my broad silver gilt bowl. All 
 the rest of my goods, chattels, leases, plate, jewels, and household-stuff whatsoever, after my 
 debts and legacies paid, and my funeral expenses discharged, I give, devise, and bequeath to 
 my son-in-law, John Hall, gent., and my daughter Susanna his wife, whom I ordain and make 
 executors of this my last will and testament. And 1 do entreat and appoint the said Thomas 
 Russel, esq., and Francis Collins, gent., to be overseers hereof. And do revoke all former 
 wills, and publish this to be my last will and testament. In witness whereof I have 
 hereunto put my hand, the day and year first above-written. 
 
 " By me, SKilliam S^ahspcw. 
 
 " Witness to the publishing hereof, 
 Fra. Collyns, 
 Julius Shaw, 
 John Robinson, 
 Hamnet Sadler, 
 Robert Whattcoat. 
 
 H Probatum fuit lestamentum suprascriptum apud London, coram Magistro William Byrde, Legum 
 Boctore, 8fc. vicesimo secundo die mensis Junii, Anno Domini 1616; juramento Johunnis Hall 
 unius ex. cui, fyc. de bene, 8fc. jurat, reservata potestate, §-c. Susanna [Fail, alt. tr, 8fc. earn mm 
 venerit, 8fc. petitur, frc"
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE ! 
 
 NOTE ON SOME POINTS OF SHAKSPERE'S WiLL. 
 
 The solemn clause, " My body to the earth whereof it is made," was carried into effect by the 
 burial of William Shakspere in the chancel of his parish church. A tomb of which wo shall 
 presently speak more particularly, was erected to his memory before 1623. The following lines 
 are inscribed beneath the bust : — 
 
 " Jvdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
 Terra tegit, popvlvs mjeret, Olympvs habet. 
 
 Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so fast, 
 Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs death hath plast 
 Within this monvment, Shakspeare, with whome 
 Qvtck natvre dide; whose name doth deck ys. tombe 
 Far more then cost ; sith all yt. he hath writt 
 Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt. 
 
 Obiit ano. doi. 1616. ^etatis 53. die 23. ap." 
 
 Below tne monument, but at a few paces from the wall, is a flat stone, with the following 
 extraordinary inscription : — 
 
 Good Frend for Jesus SAKE forbeare 
 To digg T— E Dust EncloAsed HE.Re. 
 Blese be T — E Man * spares T — Es Stones 
 And curst be He * moves my Bones. 
 
 In a letter from Warwickshire, in 1693,* the writer, after describing the monument to Shak- 
 spere, and giving its inscription, says, " Near the wall where this monument is erected 
 lie the plain free-stone underneath which his body is buried, with this epitaph made by 
 himself a little before his death." He then gives the epitaph, and subsequently adds, 
 " Not one for fear of the curse above-said dare touch his grave-stone, though his wife and 
 daughters did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him." This information 
 is given by the tourist upon the authority of the clerk who showed him the church, who " was 
 above eighty years old." Here is unquestionable authority for the existence of this free-stone 
 seventy-seven years after the death of Shakspere. We have an earlier authority. In a plate 
 to Dugdale's ' Antiquities of Warwickshire,' first published in 1656, we have a representation 
 of Shakspere's tomb, with the following : — " Neare the wall where this monument is erected 
 lyeth a plain free-stone, underneath which his body is buried, with this epitaph — 
 
 " Good frend," &c. 
 
 But it is very remarkable, we think, that this plain free-stone does not bear the name of 
 Shakspere — has nothing to establish the fact that the stone originally belonged to his grave. 
 We apprehend that during the period that elapsed between his death and the setting-up of 
 the monument, a stone was temporarily placed over the grave ; and that the warning not to 
 touch the bones was the stone-mason's invention, to secure their reverence till a fitting monu- 
 ment should be prepared, if the stone were not ready in his yard to serve for any grave. We 
 quite agree with Mr. De Quincey that this doggrel attributed to Shakspere is " equally below 
 his intellect no less than his scholarship," and we hold with him that "as a sort of atstt 
 viator appeal to future sextons, it is worthy of the grave-digger or the parish clerk, wh was 
 probably its author." 
 
 The bequest of the second-best bed to his wife was an interlineation in Shakspere's Will, 
 "He had forgot her," says Malone. There was another bequest which was also an interlineation 
 
 * Published from the original manuscript by Mr. Rodd, 1838. 
 .540
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 'To my fellows, John Hemynge, Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell twenty-six shillings 
 eightpence apiece, to buy them rings." It is not unlikely that these companions of his pro- 
 fessional life derived substantial advantages from his death, and probably paid him an annuity 
 after his retirement. The bequest of the rings marked his friendship to them, as the bequest 
 of the bed his affection to his wife. She died on the 6th of August, 1623, and was buried on 
 the 8th, according to the register — 
 
 Her grave-stone 13 next to the stone vv>th the doggrel inscription, but nearer to the north 
 wall, upon which Shakspere's monument m placed. The stone has a brass plate, with the 
 following inscription: — 
 
 " Heere lyeth interred the bodye of Anne, wife op Mr. William Shakespeare, who 
 pepted. this life the 6th day op avgvst, 1623, being op the age of 67 yeares." 
 
 " vbera, tu mater, to lac vitamq. dedisti, 
 
 vje mikl; pro tanto munere saxa dabo ! 
 quam mallem, amoueat lapidem, bonos angel' ore' 
 
 Exeat ut Christi Corpus, imago tua 1 
 Sed nil vota valent, venias cito Christe resurget, 
 
 clausa licet t0mulo mater, et astra petet." 
 
 It is evident that the epitaph was intended to express the deep affection of he/ daughter, 
 to whom Shakspere bequeathed a life interest in his real property, and the bulk of his personal. 
 The widow of Shakspere in all likelihood resided with this elder daughter. It is possible 
 that they formed one family previous to his death. That daughter died on the 11th of July, 
 1649, having survived her husband, Dr. Hall, fourteen years. She is described as widow in 
 the register of burials : — 
 
 Ranging with the other stones, but nearer the south wall, is a flat stone now bearing the 
 following inscription : — 
 
 " Heere lyeth ye. body of Svsanna, wife to John Hall, Gent. ye. davghter op 
 William Shakespeare, Gent. She deceased ye. 11th of Jvly, Ao. 1649, aged 66." 
 
 On the same stone is an inscription for Richard Watts, who had no relationship to Shakspere 
 or his descendants. Fortunately Dugdale has preserved an inscription which the masons of 
 Stratford obliterated, to make room for the record of Richard Watts, who has thus attained 
 a distinction to which he had no claim: 
 
 "Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, 
 Wise to Salvation was good Mistris Hall, 
 Something of Shakespere was in that, but this 
 Wholy op him with whom she's now in blisse. 
 
 Then, passenger, ha'st ne're a teare, 
 
 to weefe with her that wept with all? 
 That wept, yet set herselpe to chere 
 
 Them up with comforts cordiall. 
 Her love shall live, her mercy spread, 
 When thou hast ne're a teare to shed." 
 
 Judith, the second daughter of Shakspere, lived till 1662. She was buried on the 9th of 
 February of that year ■ 
 
 543
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 Her married life must have been one of constant affliction in the bereavement of her 
 children. Her first son, who was named Shakspere, was born in November, 1616, and died in 
 May, 1617. Her second son, Richard, was born in February, 1618, and died in February, 1639. 
 Her third son, Thomas, was born in August, 1619, and died in January, 1639. Thus perished 
 all of the second branch of the heirs male of William Shakspere. His grand-daughter Elizabeth, 
 the only child of his daughter Susanna, was married in 1626, when she was eighteen years of 
 age, to Mr. Thomas Nash, a native of Stratford. He died in 1647, leaving no children. She 
 remained a widow about two years, having married, on the 5th of June, 1649, Mr. John Barnard 
 of Abington, near Northampton. He was a widower with a large family. They were married 
 at Billesley, near Stratford. Her husband was created a knight by Charles II. in 1661. The 
 grand-daughter of Shakspere died in February, 1670, and was buried at Abington. Her 
 signature, with a seal, the same as that used by her mother, — the arms of Hall impaled with 
 those of Shakspere, is affixed to a deed of appointment in the possession of Mr. Wheler of 
 Stratford. She left no issue. 
 
 J^jpM JbfrridaA'cL 
 
 We have seen that all the sons of Judith Quiney were dead at the commencement of 1639. 
 Shakspere's elder daughter and grand-daughter were therefore at liberty to treat the property 
 as their own by the usual processes of law. The mode in which they, in the first instance, 
 made it subservient to their family arrangements is thus clearly stated by Mr. Wheler, in an 
 interesting tract on the birth-place of Shakspere : — " By a deed of the 27th of May, 1639, and 
 a fine and recovery (Trinity and Michaelmas Terms, 15th Charles I.), Mrs. Susannah Hall, 
 Shakspere's eldest daughter, with Thomas Nash, Esq., and Elizabeth his wife (Mrs. Hall's only 
 child), confirmed this and our bard's other estates to Mrs. Hall for her life, and afterwards 
 settled them upon Mr. and Mrs. Nash, and her issue; but in the event of her leaving no 
 family, then upon Mr. Nash. As, however, Mr. Nash died 4th April, 1647, without issue, 
 a resettlement of the property was immediately adopted, to prevent its falling to the heir of 
 Mr. Nash, who had, by his will of the 26th of August, 1642, devised his reversionary interest in 
 the principal part of Shakspere's estates to his cousin Edward Nash. By a subsequent settle- 
 ment, therefore, of the 2nd of June, 1647, and by another fine and recovery (Easter and 
 Michaelmas Terms, 23rd Charles I.), Shakspere's natal place and his other estates were again 
 limited to the bard's descendants, restoring to Mrs. Nash the ultimate power over the 
 property." Upon the second marriage of Shakspere's grand-daughter other arrangements 
 were made, in the usual form of fine and recovery, by which New Place, and all the other 
 property which she inherited of William Shakspere, her grandfather, were settled to the use 
 of John Barnard and Elizabeth his wife, for the term of their natural fives ; then to the heirs 
 of the said Elizabeth ; and in default of such issue to the use of such person, and for such 
 estate, as the said Elizabeth shall appoint by any writing, either purporting to be her last will 
 or otherwise. She did make her last will on the 29th of January, 1669; according to which, 
 after the death of Sir John Barnard, the property was to be sold. Thus, in half a century, the 
 estates of Shakspere were scattered and went out of his family, with the exception of the two 
 houses in Henley Street, where he is held to have been born, which Lady Barnard devised to her 
 kinsman Thomas Hart, the grandson of Shakspere's sister Joan. Those who are curious to 
 trace the continuity of the line of the Harts will find very copious extracts from the Stratford 
 registers in Boswell's edition of Malone. 
 544
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 NOTE ON THE AUTOGRAPHS OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 The will of Sbakspere, preserved in the Prerogative Office, Doctors' Commons, is written upon 
 three sheets of paper. The name is subscribed at the right-hand corner of the first sheet; at 
 the left -hand corner of the second sheet ; and immediately before the names of the witnesses 
 upon the third sheet. These signatures, engraved from a tracing by Steevens, were first 
 published in 1778. The first signature has been much damaged since it Was originally traced 
 by Steevens. It was for a long time thought that in the first and second of these signatures 
 the poet had written his name Shakspere, but in the third Shalcspeare; and Steevens and Malone 
 held, therefore, that they had authority in the handwriting of the poet for uniformly spelling 
 his name Skakspeare. They rested this mode of spelling the name not upon the mode in which 
 it was usually printed during the poet's life, and especially in the genuine editions of his own 
 works, which mode was Shakespeare, but upon this signature to the last sheet of his will, 
 which they fancied contained an a in the last syllable. When William Henry Ireland, in 1795, 
 produced his ' Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments,' it was necessary that he should 
 fabricate Shakspere's name, and the engraving published by Steevens enabled him to do so. 
 He varied the spelling, as he fouud it said to be varied in the signatures to the will; but he 
 more commonly spelt the name with the a in the final syllable. His confidence in the 
 Shakspere editors supplied one of the means for his detection. Malone, in his ' Inquiry,' 
 published in 1796, has a confession upon this subject, which is almost as curious as any one 
 of Ireland's own confessions: — "In the year 1776 Mr. Steevens, in my presence, traced with 
 the utmost accuracy the three signatures affixed by the poet to his will. While two of these 
 manifestly appeared to us Shakspere, we conceived that in the third there was a variation • 
 and that in the second syllable an a was found. Accordingly ice have constantly so exhibited th» 
 poefs name ever since that time. It ought certainly to have struck us as a very extraordinary 
 circumstance, that a man should write his name twice one way, and once another, on the 
 same paper: however, it did not; and 1 had no suspicion of our mistake till, about three 
 years ago, I received a very sensible letter from an anonymous correspondent, who showed 
 me very clearly that, though there was a superfluous stroke when the poet came to write the 
 letter r in his last signature, probably from the tremor of his hand, there was no a discover- 
 able in that syllable; and that this name, like both the other, was written 'Shakspere.' 
 Revobang tnis matter in my mind, it occurred to me, that in the new facsimile of his name which 
 I gave in 1790, my engraver had made a mistake hi placing an a over the name which was there 
 exhibited, and that what was supposed to be that letter was only a mark of abbreviation, with 
 a turn or curl at the first part of it, which gave it the appearance of a letter. ... If 
 Mr. Steevens and I had maliciously intended to lay a trap for this fabricator to fall into, we 
 could not have done the business more adroitly." The new fac-simile to which Malone here 
 alludes continued to be given with the a over the name, in subsequent editions ; and we have 
 no alternative but to copy it from the engraving. It was taken from the mortgage deed 
 executed by Shakspere on the 11th of March, 1613.* When Malone's engraver turned the re 
 of that signature into an a, the deed was in the possession of Mr. Albany Wallis, a solicitor. 
 It was subsequently presented to Garrick ; but after his death was nowhere to be found. 
 Malone, however, traced that the counterpart of the deed of bargain and sale, dated the 10th 
 of March, 1613, was also in the possession of Mr. Wallis ; and he corrected his former error by 
 engraving the signature to that deed in his 'Inquiry' He says, "Notwithstanding this 
 authority, I shall still continue to write our poet's name Sliak.tpeare, for reasons which I have 
 
 * See Note at the end of Chapter XI. 
 Lifh. 2 N 645
 
 WTLLIAM SHAKSPERE : 
 
 assigned in his Life. But whetbei in doing so I am right or wrong, it is manifest that he wrote 
 it himself Shakspere; and therefore if any original Letter or other MS. of his shall ever be dis- 
 covered, his name will appear in that form." This prophecy has been partly realized. The 
 autograph of Shakspere, corresponding in its orthography with the other documents, was 
 found in a small folio volume, the first edition of Florio's translation of Montaigne, having 
 been sixty years in the possession of the Eev. Edward Patteson, minister of Smethwick, 
 near Birmingham. In 1838 the volume was sold by auction, and purchased by the British 
 Museum for one hundred pounds. The deed of bargain and sale, the signature of which 
 was copied by Maloue in 1796, was sold by auction in 1841, and was purchased by the 
 Corporation of London for one hundred and forty-five pounds. The purchase was denounced 
 in the Court of Common Council as " a most wasteful and prodigal expenditure ; " but it was 
 defended upon the ground that " it was not very likely that the purchase of the autograph 
 would be acted upon as a precedent, for Shakspere stood alone in the history of the literature 
 of the world." Honoured be those who have thus shown a reverence for the name of Shak- 
 spere ! It is a symptom of returning health in the Corporation of London, after a long plethora, 
 which might have ended in sudden diath. In former ages she has been the assertor of liberty 
 and the encourager of learning. She has called in the poet to her pageants and the painter to 
 her high festivals. In later times her state and ancientry have been child's play and burlesque 
 If the altered spirit of the majority is willing thus to reverence the symbol of the highest 
 literature, in Shakspere's autograph, that spirit will lead to a wise employment of the civic 
 riches, in the encouragement of intellectual efforts in their own day. This was written in 
 1843. There are evidences of a better spirit, such as is evinced in the City Library, a most 
 valuable institution, freely opened to men of letters. 
 
 We subjoin fac-similes of the six authentic autographs of Shakspere. That at the head of 
 the page is from the Montaigne of Florio ; the left, with the seal, is from the counterpart of 
 the Conveyance in the possession of the Corporation of Loudon ; the right, with the seal, is 
 from Malone's fac simile of the Mortgage-deed which has been lost ; the three others are from 
 [he three sheets of the will.
 
 ^.jj>/ti c 
 
 w , 66*f£* 

 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 
 
 STRATFORD REGISTERS. 
 
 BAPTISMS. 
 
 Iflfco Septeber i5 .... Jone Sbakspere daughter to John Shakspere- 
 
 1562 December 2 . . . . Margareta filia Johannis Sbakspere. 
 
 1564 April 26 Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere. 
 
 1566 October 13 .... Qilbertus filius Johannis Shakspe.-e. 
 
 1569 April 15 lone the daughter of John Shakspere. 
 
 1571 Septeb 28 Anna filia Magistri Shakspere. 
 
 1573 [1573-4] March 11 . . Richard sonne to Mr. John Shakspeer. 
 
 1580 May 3 Edmund Sonne to Mr. John Shakspere. 
 
 1583 May 26 Susanna daughter to William Shakspere. 
 
 1584 [1584-5] February 2 . Hamnet & Iudeth sonne & daughter to Willia Shakspere. 
 
 I'here are then entries of Ursula, 1588 ; Humphrey, 1590; Philippus, 1591;— ohildrenof 
 John Shakspere (not Mr.) 
 
 MARRIAGES. 
 
 1607 Junii 5 John Hall geutlema & Susanna Shaxspore. 
 
 1615 [1615-6] February 10. Tho : Queeny tow Judith Shakspere. 
 
 BURIALS. 
 
 1563 April 30 Margaret filia Johannis Shakspere. 
 
 1579 April 4 Anne daughter to Mr. John Shakspere, 
 
 1596 August 11 Hamnet filius William Shakspere. 
 
 1601 Septenib 8 Mr. Johanes Shakspeare. 
 
 1608 Sept 9 Mayry Shaxspere, Widowe. 
 
 1612 [1612-13] February 4 . Rich. Shakspeare. 
 
 1616 April 25 Will : Shakspere, Gent. 
 
 1623 August 8 Mrs. Shakspeare. 
 
 1649 July 16 Mrs. Susanna Hall, Widow. 
 
 1661 [1661-2J Feb. 9 . . . Judith uxor Thomas Quiney. 
 
 %* It appears by the Register of Burials that Dr. Hall, one of the sons-in-law of William Shakepere, 
 was buried on the 26th November, 1635. He is described in the entry as " Medicus peritissimus." 
 The Register contains no entry of the burial of Thomas Quiney. Elizabeth, the daughter of John ar.d 
 Susanna Hall, was baptized February 21, 1607 [1607-8]; and she is mentioned in her illustrious 
 grandfather's will. The children of Judith, who was only married two months before the death of her 
 father, appeal- to have been three sons, all of whom died before their mother. 
 
 548
 
 NOTE ON THE PORTRAITS OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 The title-page to this volume, which has been engraved by Mr. Thompson in a style that carries tha 
 powers of wood-engraving as far as they can go, contains five portraits of Shakspere. There are several 
 other portraits which are held to be authentic ; and many which bear the imputation of being forgeries. 
 Volumes have been written on the subject of the genuineness of Shakspere's portraits. We shall only 
 attempt a very brief notice of those which we now publish. The design over the title of the volume 
 exhibits the bust upon Shakspere's Monument in three several positions. The sculptor of that 
 monument was Gerard Johnson. The tomb itself is accurately represented at the head of Shakspere's 
 Will. We learn the name of the sculptor from Dugdale's correspondence, published by Mr. Hamper 
 in 1827; and we collect from the verses by Leonard Digges, prefixed to the first edition of Shakspere, 
 that it was erected previous to 1623 : — 
 
 " Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give 
 The world thy works . chy works by which outlive 
 Thy tomb thy name must: when that stone is rent, 
 And time dissolves thy Stratford monument, 
 Here we alive shall view thee still. This book, 
 When brass and marble fade, shall make thee Iook 
 Fresh to all ages." 
 
 The fate of this portrait of Shakspere, for we may well account it as such, is a singular one. Mr. 
 Britton, who has on many occasions manifested an enthusiastic feeling for the associations belong- 
 ing to the great poet, published in 1816 'Remarks on his Monumental Bust,' from which we 
 extract the following passage : — " The bust is the size of life ; it is formed out of a block of soft 
 stone; and was originally painted over in imitation of nature. The hands and face were of flesh 
 colour, the eyes of a light hazel, and the hair and beard auburn ; the doublet or coat was scarlet, 
 and covered with a loose black gown, or tabard, without sleeves ; the upper part of the cushion was 
 green, the under half crimson, and the tassels gilt. Such appear to have been the original features 
 of this important, but neglected or insulted bust. After remaining in this state above one hundred 
 and twenty years, Mr. John Ward, grandfather to Mrs. Siddons and Mr. Kemble, caused it to be 
 'repaired,' and the original colours preserved, in 1748, from the profits of the representation of 
 Othello. This was a generous, and apparently judicious act; and therefore very unlike the next 
 
 540
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 
 
 alteration it was subjected to in 1793. In that year Mr. Malone caused the bust to be covered ovei 
 with one or more coats of white paint ; and thus at once destroyed its original character, and greatly 
 injured the expression of the face." It is fortunate that we live in an age when no such unscrupulous 
 insolence as that of Malone can be again tolerated. 
 
 The small head to the right of the bust, engraved from the little print, by William Marshall, 
 prefixed to the edition of Shakspere's poems in 1640, is considered amongst the genuine portraits of 
 Shakspere. It is probably reduced, with alterations, from the print by Martin Droeshout, which 
 is prefixed to the folio of 1623. This portrait appears at the bottom of our title. The original 
 engraving is not a good one ; and as the plate furnished the portraits to three subsequent editions, it 
 is not easy to find a good impression. The persons who published this portrait were the friends of 
 Shakspere. It was published at a time when his features would be well recollected by many of his 
 contemporaries. The accuracy of the resemblance is also attested by the following lines from the pen 
 of Ben Jonson : — 
 
 " This figure, that thou here seest put, 
 It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; 
 Wherein the graver had a strife 
 With Nature, to outdo the life : 
 O, could he but have drawn his wit 
 As well in brass, as he had hit 
 His face, the print would then surpass 
 All that was ever writ in brass. 
 But, since he cannot, Reader, look 
 Not on hia Picture, but bis Book." — B. J. 
 
 Under these circumstances we are inclined to regard it as the most genuine of the portraits of 
 Shakspere. It wants that high art which seizes upon a likeness by general resemblance, and not 
 through the merely accurate delineation of features. The draughtsman from whom this engraving 
 was made, and the sculptor of the bust at Stratford, were literal copyists. It is perfectly clear that 
 they were working upon the same original. 
 
 The portrait on the right of our title is the famous Chandos picture, formerly preserved at Stowe. 
 It has a history belonging to it which says much for its authenticity. It formerly belonged to 
 Davenant, and afterwards to Betterton. When in Betterton's possession it was engraved for Rowe's 
 edition of Shakspere's works. It subsequently passed into various hands ; during which transit it 
 was engraved, first by Vertue and afterwards by Houbraken. It became the property of the Duke 
 of Chandos, by marriage; and thence descended to the Buckingham family. Kneller copied this 
 portrait for Dryden, and the poet addressed to the painter the following verses as a return for his 
 gift :*— 
 
 " Shakspeare, thy gift, I place before my sight, 
 With awe I ask his blessing as I write ; 
 With reverence look on his majestic face, 
 Proud to be less, but of his godlike race. 
 His soul inspires me, while thy praise I write, 
 And I like Teucer under Ajax fight : 
 Bids thee, through me, be bold; with dauntless breast 
 Contemn the bad, and emulate the best : 
 Like his, thy critics in the attempt are lost, 
 When most they rail, know then, they envy most." 
 
 At tbe sale of the Duke of Buckingham's effects it was purchased by the Earl of Eilesmere, and was 
 presented by him to the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery. 
 
 The portrait on tne left is held to have been painted by Cornelius Jansen. An engraving from it 
 was made by Earlom, and was prefixed to an edition of King Lear, published in 1770, edited by 
 Mr. Jennens. It has subsequently been more carefully engraved by Mr. Turner, for Mr. Boaden's 
 'Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Portraits of Shakspere.' This portrait has the inscription, 
 " JE le 46, 1610;" and in a scroll over the head are the words "Ut : Magus." Mr. Boaden says, "The 
 two words are extracted from the famous Epistle of Horace to Augustus, the First of the Second 
 Book ; the particular passage this : — 
 
 * This picture, by permission of the late Duke of Buckingham, was copied for the engraving in the 'Gallery of Portraits,' 
 for ihe first time for forty years ; and the copy, by Mr. Witherington, R.A., is in our possession. 
 550
 
 A BIOGRAPHY - . 
 
 ' Ille per extenlum funem mihi posse videtur 
 Ire poeta ; meum qui pectus inaniter angit, 
 Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet, 
 Ut Magus ; et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis. 
 
 No niau ever took this 'extended range' more securely than Shakspere; no man ever possessed an 
 ample a control over the passions ; and he transported his hearers, ' as a magician,' over lands and 
 seas, from one kingdom to another, superior to all circumscription or confine." The picture pasaed 
 from the possession of Mr. Jennens into that of the Duke of Somerset. 
 
 [Bust at Stratford.]
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 
 
 NOTE ON THE SHAKSPERE HOUSE AND NEW PLACE. 
 
 In accordance with a Note to Chap. III., page 33, we proceed to give an account of the present 
 state of those properties at Stratford, connected with Shakspere, which have been purchased by public 
 subscription. The writer of this ' Biography ' has given, in his ' Passages of a Working Life,' some 
 particulars relating to the purchase of the premises in Henley Street, of which the following is an 
 abridgment : — 
 
 The house in which Shakspere is reputed to have been born was for sale. The old tenement at 
 Stratford-upon-Avon, in which his father had lived, had been an object of curiosity and reverence 
 during many years. Our countrymen went out of their way to look at it, even in the days before 
 railroads. Foreigners, and Americans especially, talked about it and wrote about it. The freehold 
 property had descended to a branch of Shakspere's family of the name of Hart. At the beginning of 
 1847 it was announced that it was to be .sold to the highest bidder. It was determined, amongst a few 
 friends, to call a public meeting at the Thatched House Tavern. There were no titled names paraded 
 to draw together a company ; yet there was a full attendance. A Committee was nominated, chiefly of 
 men of letters. One nobleman only, Lord Morpeth, was included in the nomination. He was not a 
 mere ornamental adjunct to a working Committee, but laboured as strenuously as any of us to 
 accomplish the object for which we were associated. We raised a large subscription, though it was 
 somewhat short of the three thousand pounds for which we obtained the property. The deficiency 
 was subsequently made up, in some measure, by a performance at Coveut Garden Theatre, in which 
 all the great actors and actresses of the time took scenes from various plays of Shakspere; and partly 
 by the proceeds of gratuitous Readings by Mr. Macready, at the time when he was leaving the stage. 
 
 When the Shakspere House had been purchased by the London Committee, and when the adjoining 
 tenements had also been purchased by a separate subscription at Stratford, the necessity was apparent 
 of having the house taken care of, and shown to visitors, by some one, who, at the least, would not 
 cast an air of ridicule over the whole thing, as was the case with the ignorant women who had made a 
 property of it by the receipt of shillings and sixpences. Mr. Charles Dickens organized a series of 
 Amateur Performances, "in aid of the Fund for the endowment of a perpetual Curatorship of Shak- 
 spere's House, to be always held by some one distinguished in Literature, and more especially in 
 Dramatic Literature; the profits of which it is the intention of the Shakspere House Committee to 
 keep entirely separate from the fund now raising for the purchase of the House." In the July of that 
 year the same performances, with a few variations of cast, were repeated at Edinburgh and at Glasgow. 
 The receipts of the London and Provincial performances were considerable. There were many diffi- 
 culties in the way of appointing a Curator of the Shakspere House. Lord Morpeth had pledged himself, 
 in his official character, that if the house were vested in the Crown, it should be preserved with reli- 
 gious care, as the property of the British people, and should be maintained as the honoured residence 
 of some dramatic author, who should be salaried by the Government. This project, defeated by the 
 retirement of Lord Morpeth from office, would have been in many respects desirable ; for we may 
 venture to inquire if there is any efficient Trust for this property, and whether the Act of Mortmain 
 does not interfere with any such Trust being created. It was conveyed in fee by the vendors, in 1847, 
 to two gentlemen. Mr. Dickens and his friends wisely determined to do something useful with the 
 proceeds of their labours, and they bought an annuity for one of the most able of our dramatic authors, 
 Mr. Sheridan Knowles. 
 
 A bequest made by a gentleman of the same name as the poet has enabled the authorities at Strat- 
 ford to put the premises in Henley Street in good repair ; to remove all nuisances surrounding 
 them ; and to lay out the garden in a style that has pleasing associations, for its shrubs and 
 flowers are of those mentioned by Shakspere. In this house a Library and Museum have been 
 established. The admission here is upon a payment of sixpence. 
 
 In 18C2, certain premises, which could be identified as part of the old property of New Place, were 
 convsyed to Mr. Halliwell, upon his payment of £3,200. This sum was raised by public subscription. 
 
 In September, 1865, Mr. Ramsay visited Stratford, at the request of the writer of this 'Biography;' 
 and has furnished him with the following memorandum of the condition of New Place : — 
 552
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 The ground has been excavated all over, and parts of the foundations of Shakspere's house, and 
 of Clopton's, which succeeded it, have been laid bare. They are hollowed out from the surface, and 
 covered with the coarse glass which is used for paving. These foundations are of rude, almost unhewn 
 stone, the same kind as that of which the neighbouring Chapel has been built. A well has been 
 cleaned out, and bricked down to the original stone groining, which had given way for about ten of 
 twelve feet, and the water rises only to within about a foot of this groining. The adjoining house is 
 called Nash's, and has been bought, though it was not Shakspere's property. The outside is all 
 modernized, but inside is a fine old oak staircase, and other work, probably coeval with Shakspere's 
 house, which adjoined it. The stones remain on which the timber uprights for the side of Shakspere's 
 house rested, and the mark of the old gable is to be traced on Nash's house, which was the higher of 
 the two. Nash's house had only a narrow slip of garden ground; and the foundation of the dividing 
 wall still remains. At the bottom of Shakspere's Great Garden (as it was called) were lately some 
 cottages and a barn. The latter, it was thought, might have been Shakspere's, from the appearance of 
 the timber ; these have been pulled down, but the timbers of the barn have been preserved by Mr 
 Ilalliwell, and are stowed away in a cellar. An extremely ugly red-brick building — it is a theatre — is 
 thrust in upon the grounds of New Place, the entrance being in Chapel Lane. Mr. Halliwell wishes it 
 to be bought, and it is certainly desirable that it should be, for it is not only ugly in itself, but 
 prevents the laying out of the grounds in anything like symmetry. The land at present is in a state 
 of most admired disorder : money is wanted. Mr. Hunt (the worthy town-clerk of Stratford, who 
 takes a great interest in all relating to Skakspere) thinks the proposed plan of making it free to the 
 public will not answer, as there must be, in any case, watchers employed to prevent mischief." 
 
 Mr. Halliwell has published a splendid quarto volume, descriptive of New Place. The Rev. G. C. M. 
 Bellew has written an agreeable book, entitled ' Shakespere's Home at New Place.' In 1SC3 was 
 issued 'A Brief Guide to the Gardens of Shakespear, and a Prospectus of the Shakespear Fund,' a 
 pamphlet of sixteen pages. The opening is rather high-flown for ' A Brief Guide ': — 
 
 " Unless the visitor . . . can feel that he is treading on ground hallowed by the fact that hero 
 undoubtedly the Poet himself walked and meditated, and breathing the very air which was a breath to 
 Shakespear, let him pass on to other scenes. It cannot be, however, but that interest will be raised, 
 in the mind of every intelligent visitor, when told that these walls enclose the exact ground which 
 formed the garden to the Poet's house. 
 
 " The evidences upon which thi3 fact is established are too voluminous to be here introduced. 
 Suffice it to say that they are incontrovertible, and that the exact boundaries, on all sides but one, 
 that to the right on entering, have been ascertained to an inch. 1 ' 
 
 The objects contemplated in the formation of " The Shakespeare Fund" are perhaps too grand to 
 be realized in a country not much disposed to " Fetish worship." 
 
 "This fund was established in October, 1861, to accomplish the following objects : — 1. The purchase 
 of the Gardens of Shakespeare, at New Place. 2. The purchase of the remainder of the Birth-Place 
 Estate. 3. The purchase of Anne Hathaway's Cottage, with an endowment for a custodian. 4. The 
 purchase of Getley's Copyhold, Stratford-on-Avon. 5. The purchase of any other properties at or near 
 Stratford-on-Avon, that either formerly belonged to Shakespeare, or are intimately connected with the 
 memories of his life. 6. The culendering and preservation of those records at Stratford-on-Avon 
 which illustrate the Poet's life, or the social life and history of Stratford-on-Avon in his time. 
 And 7. The erection and endowment of a Shakespeare Library and Museum at Stratford-on-Avon.'' 
 
 END OF TUB BIOGRArLIY. 
 
 O ,i PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY LOAD, LONDON. 
 
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