It is pleasanter to picture him in his work than in his life, to see him drawing with a master hand such figures as Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Gaveston, and planning for the future even more perfect dramatic work; and it is sad to think that such a future was never realised. The end came to those great Elizabethan figures in many different forms, and with varying tragedy, but perhaps in all that it implies, more really tragic than hasty burial beneath far-off Western waters, than death on a foreign battlefield, or even on an English scaffold, is the end of the brilliant dramatist, Christopher Marlowe, done to death by a ruffianly associate in a drunken tavern brawl.

CHAPTER XIV

SHAKSPERE

AT first sight it seems strange that while the lives of so many of his contemporaries should lie open to the gaze of all, that of Shakspere himself should be wrapped in such dim shadows. But perhaps this is best: his world is that of his own creation; there figures move and speak with gestures and words so instinct with human vitality, that we lose all sense of their being creations of his brain. His work is, as it were, a dream so vivid and so beautiful, that we put the thought of the dreamer out of sight, lest we lose the sense of the reality of the dream.

With most men it is interesting to study the steps by which their experience in life was gained, to know their surroundings, their worldly difficulties and successes, but one hardly feels this with the giant form of Shakspere.

"Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask.-Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge."

"Thou, who did'st the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Did'st stand on earth unguess'd at.-Better so!

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,

All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole voice in that victorious brow."

And in spite of the loving toil which many great men have given to the study of his life, he still stands "on earth unguess'd at.'

Of his parentage, home, and surroundings we know something, of himself hardly anything but that which can be drawn from these, and from his works.

William Shakspere was the son of John Shakspere, a well-to-do trader in corn, wool, meat, and skins. He has been called at one time a glover, and at another a butcher, and also a husbandman from the share he took in the family farm at Snitterfield, in Warwickshire.

In 1551 John Shakspere moved to Stratfordon-Avon, and there in the little wood-gabled house, near where the beautiful church keeps watch above the Avon, and surrounded by the green fields of Warwickshire, the greatest Englishman was born.

He was baptized in the parish church on April 26th, 1564; his mother was Mary, the daughter of a small Warwickshire landowner, Robert Arden,

and William was her third child; her two little daughters, Joan and Margaret, had both been christened in Stratford church, but both died in infancy.

Later on, several more children were born to the Shaksperes, three sons and two daughters, who all lived to grow up, except one little girl. The four brothers all went to the grammar school of the town, where they were entitled to a free education as soon as they had learned to read, and where they were taught English and Latin according to the fashion of the day, and possibly Greek. John Shakspere's income did not increase as time went on, and he was obliged to remove his promising eldest son from school, and he probably took him, for a time at least, to assist in his own business.

But, genius though he was, William Shakspere did no more to ease the burden on his father's shoulders than many a commonplace son has done since his time; on the contrary, at the age of eighteen and a half he married "the daughter," says Rowe, "of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford."

All visitors to the pretty Warwickshire town will remember the field-path that leads over the

meadows to where "Anne Hathaway's cottage" stands, and to which so many guides are eager to conduct the wandering Shaksperian student.

Anne Hathaway was eight years older than her husband, and the bond of affection between them does not appear to have been strong.

Three children were born, a daughter, Susanna, in the first year of their marriage, and twins two years later, who were baptized as Hamnet and Judith in the parish church on February 2nd, 1585. It seems to have been shortly after their birth that Shakspere left his family and went to London-the magnet then, as now, for all great and discontented spirits.

Rowe, writing in 1709, says that the immediate reason of Shakspere's departure was a poaching affray in which he was concerned. "He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, among them, some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him with them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that illusage, he made a ballad upon him, and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost,