Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

ADDENDA.

VOL. I.

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE.

Page 5. His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool,] It appears that he had been an officer and bailiff of Stratford-upon-Avon; and that he enjoyed some hereditary lands and tenements, the reward of his grandfather's faithful and approved services to King Henry VII. THEOBALD.

The chief Magistrate of the Body Corporate of Stratford, now distinguished by the title of Mayor, was in the early charters called the High Bailiff. This office Mr. John Shakespeare filled in 1569, as appears from the following extracts from the books of the corporation, with which I have been favoured by the Rev. Mr. Davenport, Vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon :

"Jan. 10, in the 6th year of the reign of our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth, John Shakespeare passed his Chamberlain's accounts.

"At the Hall holden the eleventh day of September, in the eleventh year of the reign of our sovereign lady Elizabeth, 1569, were present Mr. John Shakespeare, High Bailiff." [Then follow the names of the Aldermen and Burgesses.]

"At the Hall holden Nov. 19th, in the 21st year of the reign of our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth, it is ordained, that every Alderman shall be taxed to pay weekly 4d. saving John Shakespeare and Robert Bruce, who shall not be taxed to pay any thing; and every burgess to pay 2d."

"At the Hall hoiden on the 6th of September in the 28th year of our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth.

"At this Hall William Smith and Richard Courte are chosen to be Aldermen in the places of John Wheler, and John Shakespeare, for that Mr. Wheler doth desire to be put out of the company, and Mr. Shakespeare doth not come to the halls, when they be warned, nor hath not done of long time."

From these extracts it may be collected, (as is observed by the gentlemen above mentioned, to whose obliging attention to my inquiries I am indebted for many particulars relative to our poet's family,) that Mr. John Shakespeare in the former part of his life was in good circumstances, such persons being generally chosen into the corporation; and from his being excused [in 1579] to pay 4d. weekly, and at a subsequent period (1586) put out of the corporation, that he was then reduced in his circumstances.

It appears from a note to W. Dethick's Grant of Arms to him in 1596, now in the College of Arms Vincent, Vol. 157, p. 24, that he was a justice of the peace, and possessed of lands and tenements to the amount of 5001.

Our poet's mother was the daughter and heir of Robert Arden of Wellingcote, in the county of Warwick, who, in the MS. above referred to, is called "a gentleman of worship." The family of Arden is a very ancient one; Robert Arden of Broomwich, being in the list of the gentry of this county, returned by the commissioners in the twelfth year of King Henry VI. A. D. 1433. Edward Arden was Sheriff to the county in 1568.-The woodland part of this county was anciently called Ardern; afterwards softened to Arden. Hence the name.

MALONE.

P. 5. He had bred him it is true, for some time, at a free-school,] The free-school, I presume, founded at Stratford. THEOBALD.

P. 6. into that way of living which his father proposed to him] I believe that on leaving school Shakespeare was placed in the office of some country attorney or the seneschal of some manor court. MALONE.

P. 6. he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young] It is certain he did so; for by the monument in Stratford church erected to the memory of his daughter, Susannah, the wife of John Hall, gentleman. it appears that she was born in 1585, when her father could not be full 19 years old. THEOBALD

Susannah, who was our poet's eldest child, was baptised, May 26, 1583, Shakespeare therefore, having been born in April 1564, was nineteen the month preceding her birth. Mr. Theobald was mistaken in supposing that a monument was erected to her in the church of Stratford. There is no memorial there in honour of either our poet's wife or daughter, except flat tomb stones, by which, however, the time of their respective deaths is ascertained.-His daughter, Susannah, died, not on the second, but the eleventh of July, 1649. Theobald was led into this error by Dugdale. MALONE.

P. 6. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway.] She was eight years older than her husband, and died in 1623, at the age of 67 years. THEOBALD..

The following is the inscription on her tomb-stone in the church of Stratford : "Here lieth interred the body of ANNE, wife of William Shakespeare, who departed this life the 6th day of August, 1623, being of the age of 67 yeares." After this inscription follow six Latin verses not worth preserving.

MALONE.

P. 7. in order to revenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him.] See the first Note in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Ibid. He was received into the company-at first in a very mean rank] There is a stage tradition, that his first office was that of Call-boy, or prompter's attendant; whose employment it is to give the performers notice to be ready to enter, as often as the business of the play requires their appearance on the stage. MALONE.

P. 8. ---she commanded him to continue it for one play more] This anecdote was first given to the public by Dennis, in the Epistle Dedicatory to his comedy entitled The Comical Gallant, 4to. 1702, altered from The Merry Wives of Windsor. MALONE.

P. 9. to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public] In Mr. Rowe's first edition, after these words was inserted the following passage:

"After this, they were professed friends; though I do not know whether the other ever made him an equal return of gentleness and sincerity. Ben was naturally proud and insolent, and in the days of his reputation did so far take upon him the supremacy in wit, that he could not but look with an evil eye upon any one that seemed to stand in competition with him. And if at times he has affected to commend him, it has always been with some reserve; insinuating his uncorrectness, a careless manner of writing, and want of judgment. The praise of seldom altering or blotting out what he writ, which was given him by the players, who were the first publishers of his works after his death, was what Jonson could not bear: he thought it impossible, perhaps, for another man to strike out the greatest thoughts in the finest expression, and to reach those excellences of poetry with the ease of a first imagination, which himself with infinite labour and study could but hardly at tain to."

I have preserved this passage because I believe it strictly true, except that in the last line, instead of but hardly, I would read---never.

[ocr errors]

In The Return from Parnassus, 1606, Jonson is said to be "so slow an editor, that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying." The same piece furnishes us with the earliest intimation of the quarrel between him and Shake speare: Why here's our fellow Shakespeare put them [the university poets] all down, ay, and Ben Jonson too. O, that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Fuller, who was a diligent inquirer, and fived near enough the time to be well informed, confirms this account, asserting in his Worthies, 1662, that "many were the wit-combats" between Jonson and our poet.

It is a singular circumstance that old Ben should for near two centuries have stalked on the stilts of an artificial reputation; and that even at this day, of the very few who read his works, scarcely one in ten yet ventures to confess how little entertainment they afford. Such was the impression made on the public by the extravagant praises of those who knew more of books than of the drama, that Dryden in His Essay on Dramatic Poesie, written about 1667, does not venture to go further in his eulogium on Shakespeare, than by saying, "he was at least Jonson's equal, if not his superior;" and in the preface to his Mock Astrologer, 1671, he hardly dares to assert, what, in my opinion, cannot be denied, that "all Jonson's pieces, except three or four, are but crambe bis octa; the same humours a little varied, and written worse." MALONE.

P. 10. Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, told them] In Mr. Rowe's first edi. tion this passage runs thus:

"Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, hearing Ben frequently reproach him with the want of learning and ignorance of the antients, told him at last, That if Mr.

Shakespeare," &c. By the alteration, the subsequent part of the sentence---" if he would produce," &c. is rendered ungrammatical. MALONE.

[ocr errors]

Ibid. He would undertake to show something upon the same subject at least as well written by Shakespeare.] I had long endeavoured in vain to find out on what authority this relation was founded; and have very lately discovered that Mr. Rowe probably derived his information from Dryden: for in Gildon's Letters and Essays, published in 1694, fifteen years before this Life appeared, the same story is told; and Dryden, to whom an Essay in vindication of Shakespeare is addressed, is appealed to by the writer as his authority. As Gildon tells the story with some slight variations from the account given by Mr. Rowe, and the book in which it is found is now extremely scarce, I shali subjoin the passage in his own words:

"But to give the world some satisfaction that Shakespeare has had as great veneration paid his excellence by men of unquestioned parts, as this I now express for him, I shall give some account of what I have heard from your mouth, sir, about the noble triumph he gained over all the ancients, by the judgment of the ablest critics of that time.

"The matter of fact, if my memory fail me not, was this. Mr. Hales of Eton affirmed, that he would show all the poets of antiquity out-done by Shakespeare, in all the topics and common-places made use of in poetry. The enemies of Shakespeare would by no means yield him so much excellence; so that it came to a resolution of a trial of skill upon that subject. The place agreed on for the dispute was Mr. Hales' chamber at Eton. A great many books were sent down by the enemies of this poet; and on the appointed day my Lord Falkland, Sir John Suckling, and all the persons of quality that had wit and learning, and interested themselves in the quarrel, met there; and upon a thorough disquisition of the point, the judges chosen by agreement out of the learned and ingenious assembly, unanimously gave the preference to Shakespeare, and the Greek and Roman poets were adjudged to vail at least their glory in that, to the English Hero."

Dryden himself also certainly alludes to this story, which he appears to have releted both to Gildon and Rowe, in the following passage of his Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1667; and he as well as Gildon goes somewhat further than Rowe in his panegyric. After giving that fine character of our poet which Dr. Johnson has quoted in his preface, he adds, "The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it MUCH BETTER done by Shakespeare; and however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem and in the last king's court [that of Charles I.] when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him."

Let ever-memorable Hales, if all his other merits be forgotten, be ever mentioned with honour, for his good taste and admiration of our poet. "He was," says Lord Clarendon," one of the least men in the kingdom; and one of the greatest scholars in Europe." See a long character of him in Clarendon's Life, Vol. 1. p. 52.

MALONE.

P. 10. He had the good fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasion.] Gildon, without authority, I believe, says, that our author left behind him an estate of 3001 per ann. This was equal to at least 10001. per ann. at this day; the relative value of money, the mode of living in that age, the luxury and taxes of the present time, and various other circumstances, being considered. But I doubt whether all his property amounted to much more than 2001. per ann. which yet was a considerable fortune in those times. He appears from his grand-daughter's will to have possessed in Bishopton, and Stratford Welcombe, four yard land and a half. A yard land is a denomination well known in Warwickshire, and contains from 30 to 60 acres. The average therefore being 45, four yard land and a half may be estimated at two hundred acres. As sixteen years purchase was the common rate at which the land was sold at that time, that is, one half less than at this day, we may suppose that these lands were let at seven shillings per acre, and produced 701. per annum. If we rate the New-Place, with the appurtenances, and our poet's other houses in Stratford, at 601. a year, and his house, &c. in the Blackfriars, (for which he paid 1401.) at 201. a year, we have a rent-roll of 1501. per annum. Of his personal property it is not now possible to form any accurate estimate: but if we rate it at five hundred pounds. money then bearing an interest of ten per cent. Shakespeares total income was 2001. per ann.* In The Merry Wives of Windsor, which was written soon after the year 1600, three hundred pounds a year is described as an estate of such magnitude as to cover all the defects of its possessor:

*To Shakespeare's income from his real and personal property must be added 2001 per ann. which he probably derived from the theatre, while he continued on the stage.

19

VOL. X.

N

"O, what a world of vile ill-favour'd faults
"Look handsome in three hundred pounds a year."

MALONE.

P. 10. to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford.] In 1614 the greater part of the town of Stratford was consumed by fire; but our Shakespeare's house, among some others, escaped the flames. This house was first built by Sir Hugh Clopton, a younger brother of an ancient family in that neighbourhood. Sir Hugh was Sheriff of London in the reign of Richard III. and Lord Mayor in the reign of King Henry VII. By his will he bequeathed to his elder brother's son his manor of Clopton, &c. and his house, by the name of the Great House in Stratford. Good part of the estate is yet [in 1753] in the possession of Edward Clopton, Esq. and Sir Hugh Clopton, Knt. lineally descended from the elder brother of the first Sir Hugh.

The estate had now been sold out of the Clopton family for above a century, at the time when Shakespeare became the purchaser: who having repaired and modelled it to his own mind, changed the name to New Place, which the mansion-house, since erected upon the same spot, at this day retains. The house, and lands which attended it, continued in Shakespeare's descendants to the time of the restoration; when they were re-purchased by the Clopton family, and the mansion now belongs to Sir Hugh Clopton, Knt. To the favour of this worthy gentleman I owe the knowledge of one particular in honour of our poet's once dwelling-house, of which I presume Mr. Rowe never was apprized. When the Civil War raged in England, and King Charles the First's Queen was driven by the necessity of her affairs to make a recess in Warwickshire, she kept her court for three weeks in New-Place. We may suppose it then the best private house in the town; and her Majesty preferred it to the College, which was in the possession of the Combe family, who did not so strongly favour the King's party. THEOBALD.

From Mr. Theobald's words the reader may be led to suppose that Henrietta Maria was obliged to take refuge from the rebels in Stratford-upon-Avon: but that was not the case. She marched from Newark, June 16, 1643, and entered Stratford-upon-Avon triumphantly, about the 22d of the same month, at the head of three thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse, with 150 waggons and a train of artiliery. Here she was met by Prince Rupert, accompanied by a large body of troops. After sojourning about three weeks at our poet's house, which was then possessed by his grand-daughter Mrs. Nash, and her husband, the Queen went (July 13) to the plain of Keinton under Edge-hill, to meet the King, and proceeded from thence with him to Oxford, where, says a contemporary historian, "her coming (July 15) was rather to a triumph than a war."

Of the college above mentioned the following was the origin. John de Stratford, bishop of Winchester, in the fifth year of King Edward III. founded a Chantry consisting of five priests, one of whom was Warden, in a certain chapel adjoining to the church of Stratford on the south side; and afterwards (in the seventh year of Henry VIII.) Ralph Collingwode instituted four choristers, to be daily assistant in the celebration of divine service there. This chantry, says Dugdale, soon after its foundation, was known by the name of The College of Stratford-upon-Avon.

In the 26th year of Edward III. "a house of square stone" was built by Ralph de Stratford, Bishop of London, for the habitation of the five priests. This house, or another on the same spot, is the house of which Mr. Theobald speaks. It still bears the name of "the College," and at present belongs to the Rev. Mr. Fullerton.

After the suppression of religious houses, the site of the college was granted by Edward VI. to John earl of Warwick and his heirs; who being attainted in the first year of Queen Mary, it reverted to the crown.

Sir John Clopton, Knt. (the father of Edward Clopton, Esq. and Sir Hugh Clop ton,) who died at Stratford-upon-Avon in April, 1719, purchased the estate of Newplace, &c. some time after the year 1685, from Sir Reginald Forster, Bart. who married Mary, the daughter of Edward Nash, Esq. cousin-german to Thomas Nash, Esq. who married our poet's grand-daughter, Elizabeth Hall. Edward Nash bought it after the death of her second husband, Sir John Barnard, Knight. By her will, she directed her trustee, Henry Smith, to sell the New Place, &c. (after the death of her husband,) and to make the first offer of it to her cousin Edward Nash, who purchas ed it accordingly. His son Thomas Nash, whom for the sake of distinction I shall call the younger, having died without issue, in August 1652, Edward Nash by his will, made on the 16th of March, 1678-9, devised the principal part of his property to his daughter Mary, and her husband Reginald Forster, Esq. afterwards Sir Regi nald Forster; but in consequence of the testator's only referring to a deed of settlement executed three days before, without reciting the substance of it, no particular mention of New-Place is made in his will. After Sir John Clopton had bought it from Sir Reginald Forster, he gave it by deed, to his younger son, Sir Hugh, who pulled down our poet's house, and built one more elegant on the same spot.

In May, 1742, when Mr. Garrick, Mr. Macklin, and Mr. Delane visited Stratford,

they were hospitably entertained under Shakespeare's mulberry-tree, by Sir Hugh Clopton. He was a barrister at law, was knighted by George the First, and died in the 80th year of his age, in Dec. 1751. His nephew, Edward Clopton, the son of his elder brother Edward, lived till June, 1753.

The only remaining person of the Clopton family now living, (1788,) as I am informed by the Rev. Mr. Davenport, is Mrs. Partheriche, daughter and heiress of the second Edward Clopton above mentioned. "She resides," he adds, " at the family mansion at Clopton near Stratford, is now a widow, and never had any issue." The New-place was sold by Henry Talbot, Esq. son-in-law and executor of Sir Hugh Clopton, in or soon after the year 1752, to the Rev. Mr. Gastrell, a man of large for tune, who 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 compelled 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 afterwards pulled it down, sold the materiais, and left the town. Wishing as it should seem, to be "damn'd to everlasting fame," he had some time before cut down Shakespeare'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 stood.

That Shakespeare planted this tree, is as well authenticated as any thing of that nature can be. The Rev. Mr. Davenport informs me, that Mr. Hugh Taylor, (the father of his clerk,) who is now eighty-five years old, and an alderman of Warwick, where he at present resides, says, he lived, when a boy, at the next house to NewPlace; that bis family had inhabited the house for almost three hundred years; that it was transmitted from father to son during the last and the present century; that this tree (of the fruit of which he had often eaten in his younger days, some of its branches hanging over his father's garden,) was planted by Shakespeare; and that till this was planted, there was no mulberry-tree in that neighbourhood. Mr. Taylor adds, that he was frequently, when a boy, at New-Piace, and that this tradition was preserved in the Clopton family, as well as in his own.

There were scarce any trees of this species in Eugland till the year 1609, when by order of King James many hundred thousand young mulberry-trees were imported from France, and sent into the different counties, with a view to the feeding of silkworms, and the encouragement of the silk manufacture. See Camdeni Annales ab anno 1603 ad annum 1623, published by Smith, quarto, 1691, p. 7; and Howe's Abridginent of Stowe's Chronicle, edit. 1618, p. 503, where we have a more particular account of this transaction than in the larger work. A very few mulberry-trees had been planted before; for we are told, that in the preceding year a gentleman of Picardy, Monsieur Foresi, kept greate store of English silk-worms at Greenwich, the which the king with great pleasure came often to see them worke; and of their silke he caused a piece of tuffata to be made."

Shakespeare was perhaps the only inhabitant of Stratford, whose business called him annually to London; and probably on his return from thence in the spring of the year 1609, he planted this tree.

As a similar enthusiasm to that which with such diligence has sought after Virgil's tomb, may lead my countrymen to visit the spot where our great bard spent several years of his life, and died; it may gratify them to be told that the ground on which The New-Place once stood, is now a garden belonging to Mr. Charles Hunt, an em inent attorney, and town-clerk of Stratford. Every Englishman will, I am sure. concur with me in wishing that it may enjoy perpetual verdure and fertility: In this retreat our SHAKESPEARE'S godlike mind With matchless skill survey'd all human kind. Here may each sweet that blest Arabia knows, Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose, To latest time, their balmy odours fling, And nature here display eternal spring!

MALONE.

P. 10. the sharpness of the satire is said to have stung the man so severely, that he never forgave it.] I take this opportunity to avow my disbelief that Shakespeare was the author of Mr. Combe's Epitaph, or that it was written by any other person at the request of that gentleman. If Betterton the player did really visit Warwickshire for the sake of collecting anecdotes relative to our author, perhaps he was too easily satisfied with such as fell in his way, without making any rigid search into their authenticity.

I may add, that a usurer's solicitude to know what would be reported of him when he was dead, is not a very probable circumstance; neither was Shakespeare of a disposition to compose an invective, at once so bitter and uncharitable, during a pleasant conversation among the common friends of himself and a gentleman, with whose fami

« AnteriorContinuar »