Utterly ruined, however, as John Shakespeare was, he seems never to have been driven out of his house in Henley Street, or to have lost his property in it; though how this could be in the case of a man as to whom the return upon an execution was "no effects," it is not easy to conjecture. "Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well When our deep plots do fall; and that should teach us Rough-hew them how we will." Upon which thus discourse two acute and learned commentators. George Steevens speaks: "Dr. Farmer informs me that these words are merely technical. A woolman, butcher, and dealer in skewers lately observed to him that his nephew (an idle lad) could only assist him in making them. 'He could rough-hew them, but I was obliged to shape their ends!' To shape the ends of wool-skewers, i. e. to point them, requires a degree of skill; any one can rough-hew them. Whoever recollects the profession of Shakespeare's father will admit that his son might be no stranger to such terms. I have frequently seen packages of wool pinn'd up with skewers." What a revelation at once of the unknown outer and that more mysterious inner life of Shakespeare! Lucky wool-man, butcher, and dealer in skewers! to furnish thus a comment upon the great philosophical tragedy, and proof that you and its author were both of a trade. Fortunate Farmer, to have heard the story! and most sagacious Steevens, to have penetrated its hidden meaning, recollecting felicitously that you had seen packages of wool pinned up with skewers! But, O wisest, highest, and deepest-minded Shakespeare! to have remembered, as you were propounding, Hamlet-wise, one of the great unsolvable mysteries of life, the skewers that you, being an idle lad, could but rough-hew, leaving to your careful father the skill-requiring task of shaping their ends!- - ends without which they could not have bound together the packs of wool with which you loaded But what was William Shakespeare doing in all those years through which his father was descending into the vale of poverty, whither we have followed him to the lowest depth? We have passed over thereby some events of great importance to the son, whom his father's trials seem not carts at the door in Henley Street, or have penetrated the veal of the calves you killed in such high style and with so much eloquence, and which loaded the tray you daily bore on your shoulder to the kitchen-door of New Place, yet unscheming to become its master! Yet I would not insist too strongly upon this evidence that Shakespeare's boyhood was passed as a butcher's and woolstapler's apprentice; because I venture to think that I have discovered like evidence in his works that their author was a tailor. For in the first place I have found that the word "tailor" appears in his plays no less than twenty-seven times! "Measures" occurs nearly thrice as often; "shears," no less than six times; "thimble," thrice; "goose," no less than twenty-seven times! And when we see that in all his thirty-seven plays "cabbage" occurs but once, and then with the careful explanation that it means roots, and is "good cabbage," must we not regard such reticence upon this tender point as touching confirmation of the theory sartorical? His plays abound with like evidence. He says of the use to which his favorite hero Prince Hal will put the manners of his wild companions, that "Their memory Shall as a pattern or a measure live By which his Grace must meet the lives of others." He makes one of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, as his severest censure of the other, reproach him with being badly dressed : "Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch, Thou friend of an ill fashion!" And how unmistakably he gives us in Hamlet a reminiscence of a highly ornamented style of children's clothing :· · to have chastened into sobriety. In estimating Shakespeare's character, the fact that he left among his neighbors the reputation of having been somewhat irregular in his youth cannot be lightly set aside. Nor is it at all strange that such a reputation should have been attained in the early years of a man of his lively fancy, healthy organization, and breadth of moral sympathy. It is from tradition that we learn that during his father's misfortunes he was occasionally engaged in stealing deer; but we know on good evidence that about that time he also got himself married in no very creditable fashion. While he was sowing his wild oats in the fields round Stratford, he naturally visited the cottage of Richard Hathaway, a substantial yeoman of Shottery, who seems to have been on terms of friendship with John Shakespeare. This Richard Hathaway had, "The canker galls the infants of the Spring What more natural than that a tailor, vexed with the memories of peevish customers, should make the incensed Northumberland compare himself to a man who is "impatient of his fit"? And yet this evidence, so strong and cumulative, must not be too much relied upon. For who but a publisher, anxious about the health and the progress in her work of a popular authoress, could have written thus in Twelfth Night? "Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive, If you will lead these graces to the grave The subject expands illimitably before me, and I resign it to the followers of Farmer and of Steevens, and to the Germans. among other children, a daughter named Anne, who might have dandled William Shakespeare in his infancy upon her knee; for she was eight years old when he was born, in 1564. Whether or no Anne Hathaway had a fair face and a winning way which spontaneously captivated William Shakespeare, or whether he yielded to arts to which his inexperience made him an easy victim, we cannot surely tell. But we do know that she, though not vestally inclined, as we shall see, remained unmarried until 1582, and that then the woman of twenty-six took to husband the boy of eighteen. They were married upon once asking of the banns; and the bond given to the Bishop of Worcester for his security in licensing this departure from custom was given in that year, on the 28th day of November.* About those days * "Noverint universi per præsentes nos ffulconem Sandells de Stratford in comitatu Warwici, agricolam, et Johannem Rychardson ibidem agricolam, teneri et firmiter obligari Ricardo Cosin generoso, et Roberto Warmstry notario publico, in quadraginta libris bonæ et legalis monetæ Angliæ, solvend. eisdem Ricardo et Roberto, hæred. execut. vel assignat. suis, ad quam quidem solucionem bene et fideliter faciend. obligamus nos et utrumque nostrum per se pro toto et in solid. hæred. executor. et administrator. nostros firmiter per præsentes sigillis nostris sigillat. Dat. 28 die Novem. anno regni dominæ nostræ Eliz. Dei gratia Angliæ, Franc. et Hiberniæ reginæ, fidei defensor, &c. 25. 66 'The condicion of this obligacion ys suche, that if herafter there shall not appere any lawfull lett or impediment, by reason of any precontract, consangui[ni]tie, affinitie, or by any other lawfull meanes whatsoever, but that William Shagspere one thone partie, and Anne Hathwey of Stratford in the dioces of Worces there was great need that Anne Hathaway should provide herself with a husband of some sort, and that speedily; for in less than five months after she obtained one she was delivered of a daughter. The parish register shows that Susanna, the daughter of William and Anne Shakespeare, was baptized May 26th, 1583. There have been attempts to turn aside the obvious bearings of these facts upon the character of Anne Hathaway. But it is a stubborn and unwise idolatry which resists such evidence as this, —an idolatry which would exempt Shakespeare, ter, maiden, may lawfully solennize matrimony together, and in the same afterwardes remaine and continew like man and wiffe, according unto the lawes in that behalf provided: and moreover, if there be not at this present time any action, sute, quarrell, or demaund, moved or depending before any judge ecclesiasticall or temporall, for and concerning any suche lawfull lett or impediment: and moreover, if the said William Shagspere do not proceed to solemnizacion of mariadg with the said Anne Hathwey without the consent of hir frindes and also, if the said William do, upon his owne proper costes and expences, defend and save harmles the right reverend Father in God, Lord John Bushop of Worcester, and his offycers, for licensing them the said William and Anne to be maried together with once asking of the bannes of matrimony betweene them, and for all other causes which may ensue by reason or occasion thereof, that then the said obligacion to be voyd and of none effect, or els to stand and abide in full force and vertue." To this instrument are attached the rude marks of Sandells and Richardson, and a seal which bears two letters, R, and another, imperfect, which seems to be an H. This seal is conjectured to be that of the bride's father, who at the execution of the bond had been dead five months. |