CHAPTER I. MARVELLOUS IGNORANCE OF THE ENGLISH NATION IN REGARD TO THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF THEIR GREATEST AUTHOR-DICTUM OF STEEVENS ON THE SUBJECT, 1773-RECENT AWAKENING TO THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INQUIRY- — ORGANIZED EFFORTS IN THE LAST FIFTY YEARS TO RESCUE FROM OBLIVION WHATEVER IN THE LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE HAS NOT ABSOLUTELY PERISHED-SUCCESS OF THESE LABORS. O the observer of our literary history, who stands at the head of King James's reign, and looks down the current towards the present time, the very first object in the foreground is one proudly eminent,- -an object not unlike the pyramid of Cheops, as seen by the traveller, which, whether you go up or down the Nile, whether you penetrate its rich valley from the east over the sand-hills of Arabia, or from the west across the trackless desert of Sahara, - from whatever quarter of the horizon you approach,-is the first object to strike, the last to fade from, the vision. So is it here. Whether we approach the year 1600 travelling backwards from the names of Longfellow, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Scott; or descend towards the same point from the author of Piers the Plowman, Chaucer, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, and Spenser, whether we cross the current of our literature by a transition from that of Germany, France, Spain, Italy, or the Orient, - from whatever quarter of the literary horizon we direct our gaze every towards the point indicated, one object stands proudly eminent, one name rises spontaneously on tongue-the greatest name in all English, in all modern, perhaps, absolutely, in all literature. Shakespeare possibly may not be read as much, he certainly is not acted as much, as he once was. But he is studied more; he is better known; his fame is steadily in the ascendant. His star is confessedly higher and brighter now than it was at the beginning of the present century; it has risen perceptibly within the last twenty-five years; it is even yet far from having reached its meridian. Steevens, one of the most famous of the Shakespearian editors, said, over one hundred years ago (1773): "All that is known with any degree of certainty of Shakespeare is, that he was born at Stratford-uponAvon, married and had children there, went to London, where he commenced actor; wrote poems and plays; returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried." This statement, at the time it was made, was substantially true. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the English nation, at the end of a century and a half from the death of their greatest author, knew less of his life, if less were possible, than we now know of Homer's, after the lapse of nearly thirty centuries. It is, in fact, in comparatively recent times only that the lives of men of letters have been counted as forming any important element in the history of a race. If a man fought a battle, or negotiated a treaty, or held a place at court, or was prominently connected in any way with the civil or military administration to be a collection of absurd and contradictory traditions; and, on the other, has become something more than a mere tissue of dates and legal entries. He has become, indeed, to some reasonable extent, personally known. CHAPTER II. of the government, if he was even toady to some titled dowager, his life was thought to be of some public importance; he formed a noticeable integer in the sum total of the national history. But to write a play, or to make a discovery in science, was thought to concern mainly the obscure dwellers of the Grub Street of the day, even though the discoveries of the one might revolutionize the whole fabric of human affairs, and the creations of the other might help to mould the thoughts and manners of the race until the ending doom. But a change has come over the thoughts of men in this matter. We have at last opened our eyes to the fact that the literature of a race contains in it that which has made the race what it is. Those great thoughts which, in the course of centuries, have been developed by its master minds, are the moving springs that have set the race onward in its career of civilization. The man of thought is father to the man of action. Great ideas precede and cause great achievements. The ideal Achilles made the real heroes of Marathon and the Granicus. In the Anglo-Saxon race, from the days of Alfred until now, men of genius, the great original thinkers in T The nearest approach to it that we have is the day successive generations, have given birth to ennobling thoughts, which continue to endure, and which are perpetuated, not only in the language, but in the race itself. We are what these great thinkers have made us. Englishmen and Americans of to-day are living exponents of thoughts and truths elaborated by the illustrious dead. In the literal sense, indeed, no lineal descendant of Shakespeare remains. His blood descendants all died out within the generation that followed his own death. But in a higher and better sense, his true spiritual life-blood, "those thoughts that breathe and words that burn," pulsates at this day in the veins of more than a hundred millions of men, his blood-kin of the English-speaking race, whose diction and whose thoughts, whose impulses and whose actions, consciously or unconsciously, have perceptibly taken tone and color from the man who was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, a little more than three hundred years ago. No wonder, then, that, under the quickening influence of this new method of estimating values in human history, the steadily growing fame of the great dramatist has awakened at length the most intense curiosity to learn something more of his personal story, to gather from the "ruins of time" some precious relics of that once noble edifice. The zeal and critical acumen displayed in this investigation have probably never been surpassed in any new literary undertaking. These labors, though late, have not been entirely without success. Many important facts relative to Shakespeare's life have been ascertained since the death of Steevens, some even within the last few years. The principal facts which have been thus exhumed, have been gathered from legal documents, from registers of births, deaths, marriages, baptisms; from corporation records, wills, title deeds, tax-lists, and the like. From such sources, vague statements, which before rested on mere tradition, have, in some cases, been disproved, in others, have been defined and established, while many facts entirely new have been rescued from oblivion. In this way a somewhat connected and consistent series of facts has been made out, constituting a skeleton for a biography. The filling out the flesh and fulness-has been on this wise: wherever, in the whole range of contemporary literature, a passage has been found, describing the private life and manners of any one similarly situated, it has been eagerly seized as showing one of the possible ways in which Shakespeare may have spent his time. Shakespeare thus has ceased, on the one hand, PARENTAGE OF SHAKESPEARE, WHY IMPORTANT JOHN HE date of Shakespeare's birth is not exactly known. of his baptism, which is found in the parish register of Stratford. He was baptized April 26, 1564. As baptism in those days followed close upon birth, the probabilities are that Shakespeare was born within three or four days of the date of his baptism; and as the 23d of April is the day consecrated to St. George, the tutelary saint of England, Englishmen have been not unwilling to assume that Shakespeare was born on that day. Moreover, unvarying tradition - which must be allowed its weight of authority where historic evidence is wanting-has uniformly assigned the 23d of April as the day on which the Great Poet was born; and accordingly that day is now, as it ever has been, celebrated as his natal day all over the world. Of Shakespeare's parentage we now know several important particulars, important, because they contradict and set aside some of the absurd traditions respecting the poet himself. To the intelligent comprehension of the problem of Shakespeare's authorship, it is necessary to know something of his origina condition in life-whether he was of gentle blood or of base, whether, in the technical sense of the word, he was educated or was merely self-taught, can make his writings neither worse nor better. But the circumstances of his birth and education, his manner of living and his means of knowledge, do affect materially the inferences which may be drawn from his writings. They are essential conditions in the problem of his authorship. John Shakespeare, the father of the poet, was originally, according to the best information thus far obtained, what would be called a "gentleman farmer." The description given by Harrison, in his introduction to Holinshed's Chronicle, published somewhere about 1580,* of a certain class of Englishmen in the days of Elizabeth, might, it is believed, fit very well the character and worldly circumstances of John Shakespeare. "This sort of people," says Harrison, “have a certain preeminence and more estimation than laborers 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 least wise artificers; 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 master's living), do come to great wealth, insomuch *Holinshed d. bet. 157° and 1582, Harrison d. 1592 (?). that many of them are able and do buy the lands of unthrifty gentlemen, and often settling 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 labor, do make them by those means to become gentlemen." John Shakespeare seems to have been, during a considerable portion of his life, an incipient gentleman, somewhat after the same sort. It further appears that he resided originally in a small village (Snitterfield) three miles from Stratford, that he went to Stratford about the year 1551, and engaged there in trade of some kind, made purchases of property, and continued to reside there during all the minority, at least, of his son William. 66 The name SHAKESPEARE was a familiar one in the county of Warwick, being found on record in that county in six different places in the fifteenth century, twenty-two places in the sixteenth century, and thirtytwo places in the seventeenth century. The name has in itself evidence of the occupation of its original holders. Verstegan, the antiquarian, in a work published in 1605, says: "Breakspear, Shakespear, and the like, have been surnames imposed upon the first bearers of them for valor and feats of arms." 99 Camden, under the same date, 1605, says that many ancient families are named from that which they commonly carried; as, Palmer, that is, Pilgrim, for that they [the pilgrims] carried palms when they returned from Hierusalem; Long-sword, Broad-speare, Fortescue (that is, Strong-shield), and in some such respect, Break-speare, Shake-speare, Shot-bolt, Wagstaff." Fuller, in his Worthies of England, 1662, refers to the "warlike sound of his (the poet's) surname, whence," says he, "some may conjecture him of a military extraction,-Hasti-vibrans, or Shakespeare." Hall further records, in his Chronicle, already quoted, that after the battle of Bosworth Field, 1485, which secured the kingdom to Henry VII., "the king began to remember his especial friends and factors, of whom some he advanced to honor and dignity, and some he enriched with possessions and goods, every man according to his desert and merit." This Bosworth field is only thirty miles from Stratford, and one of the Warwickshire Shakespeares, apparently an ancestor of William, seems to have been among those who fought in this battle, and who was thus enriched with possessions and goods. It is furthermore a matter of record that a grant of arms was made to "John Shakespeare, now of Stratford-upon-Avon, county of Warwick, gentleman," a grant first drafted in 1596, and afterwards confirmed in 1599, in which it is recited that "his great-grandfather, and late antecessor, for his faithful and approved service to the late most prudent Prince, Henry VII., of famous memory, was advanced and rewarded with lands and tenements, given to him in those parts of Warwickshire, where they have continued by some descents in good reputation and credit." The coat-of-arms thus granted to the family contains a gold spear, headed with silver on a bend sable, on a field of gold, and also for its crest a falcon brandishing a spear. Spenser, in a passage generally believed to refer to Shakespeare, calls him Aetion, a name formed apparently from the Greek arrós, an eagle, and says, his muse doth, like himself, "heroically sound;" the poet's name, too, it is to be observed, was in that day sometimes printed as two words, connected by a hyphen, Shake-speare. The poet's mother was of an ancient and somewhat wealthy family, of the name of ARDEN. Arden is *Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities, concerning the Most Noble and Renowned English Nation. Antwerp, 1605. 66 said, by Dugdale, the antiquarian, to be an old British word, and to signify "woodiness" or "woodland," and the family has been traced back to the time of Edward, the Confessor. "In this place," says Dugdale, "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." Dugdale further says that Turchill de Warwick, "a man of especial note and power," and of " great possessions" in the time of the Conqueror, was one of the first here in England that, in imitation of the Normans, assumed a surname, and wrote himself Turchillus de Eardene [Turkill of Arden], in the days of King William Rufus." Sir John Arden, of this ancient family, was squire of the body to Henry VII. The office was in those days one of considerable importance. The squire only could array the royal person; no one else could set hand on the king. The squire carried the king's cloak when the latter walked out, and presented the potage when the king would drink, and slept at night in the presence-chamber, for the protection of his majesty's person. Robert Arden, nephew of this Sir John, was groom of the chamber to the same Henry VII. This office also, though inferior to that of squire, was yet one of some mark. While the squire slept in the same apartment with the king, the groom slept in the ante-room outside, to guard the door. He also presented the robes with which the squire arrayed the royal person, and performed various other offices of a like nature. Besides this office, the younger Arden received from Henry VII. a lease of the royal manor of Yoxall, in Staffordshire, and was likewise keeper of the royal park of Aldecar. This Robert Arden, the younger, Groom of the The Arms of John Chamber to Henry VII., was Shakespeare. grandfather of Mary Arden. Thus it appears that both the Shakespeares and the Ardens were persons of consideration in Warwickshire, in the reign of Henry VII., and for the generation or two immediately succeeding. Robert Arden, son of the Robert just named, at his death, in 1556, divided his estate, by will, among several children; but Mary, his youngest, appears for some reason, to have been prominent in his thoughts. She was one of the executors of his will, and received therein a special legacy in these words: "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 £6 138. 4d. of money, to be paid over ere my goods be divided." This Wilmecote estate consisted of about sixty acres of land and a house, and is situated about three miles from Stratford, in the parish of Aston Cantlow. I have said the skeleton of Shakespeare's history has been clothed with flesh and blood, by transferring to a few naked facts materials drawn from contemporaneous literature. Let me give a specimen of this mode of giving "to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Suppose, in the first place, the extracts from the will just quoted. Next, suppose a line record of an interesting domestic occurrence a year extracted from the parish register, being the official or two later. From these two facts a fertile imagination has woven a narrative somewhat after this wise:* Mary Arden! The very name breathes of poetry. But Mary is a mourner. Her father is dead, and she is now left without guidance, an heiress and an orphan. Mary lives, indeed, in a peaceful hamlet. But there are strange things around her, things incomprehensible to a very young woman. When she goes to the parish church on Sunday, there are many things which she did not see there in her father's time. She hears the mass sung and sees the beads bidden. Once, certainly, within those walls she had heard a very different form of worship. She recollects that in her childhood the rich religious houses of the vicinity had been suppressed, their property confiscated, and their buildings torn down or defaced. Now there is apparently a new power trying to re by his wisdom her doubts and perplexities about public affairs are kindly resolved. But ecclesiastical and agricultural affairs are not the only topics discussed under this lonely roof-tree; and so, in due season, and not far from the time when Mary, the Queen, was expiring, and with her the Catholic worship was again disappearing, as the established religion of England, Mary Arden and John Shakespeare were standing before the altar of the parish church of Aston Cantlow, and the house and lands of Asbies became thenceforth administered by one who took possession of the same by the right of the said Mary. One thing at least is certain. The parents of Shakespeare were neither the ill-bred nor the ill-conditioned people they are generally reputed to have been. On the contrary, they were persons of substance, of reputable descent, and in comfortable circumstances, the advantages of breeding and education usually derived from growing up in such a family and attending the village school. What the latter was we shall presently inquire. store these institutions. There are around her mutual and their son had, without the shadow of a doubt, all persecutions and heart-burnings, neighbor warring against neighbor, friend against friend, parents against children, husband against wife. Mary muses on many things with an anxious heart. The wealthier Ardens of Kingsbury and Hampton, of Rotley and Rodburne and Park Hall, are her very good cousins: but bad roads and bad times keep them separate; and so she leads a somewhat lonely life. But village gossip tells of a young man, a yeoman of the neighboring town, an acquaintance of her father's, who often comes to sit upon those wooden benches in the old hall. He is a substantial and towardly young man, already a burgess in the village. From him she gathers useful suggestions as to the management of her little estate; xiv John Shakespeare and Mary Arden were married probably in 1557, some time, at all events, between November 24, 1556, the date of Robert Arden's will, and September 15, 1558, the date of the baptism of their first child. This first child died in infancy. Their second died before it was a year old. Their third, William, as before stated, was baptized April 26, and is commonly reputed to have been born April 23, 1564. He was therefore the oldest of the family, excepting those that died in infancy. *Altered from Knight, p. 11. CHAPTER III. THE SHAKESPEARE HOUSE, ITS IDENTIFICATION AND HISTORY - EVIDENCE IT AFFORDS IN REGARD TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF SHAKESPEARE'S BOYHOOD- BAP TISMAL REGISTER OF THE SHAKESPEARE FAMILYEVIDENCE IT GIVES IN REGARD TO THE COMPANIONSHIP OF THE BOY WILL SHAKESPEARE. THE house in which Shakespeare was born has been identified with sufficient certainty. It was situated in Henley Street, and was bought by John Shakespeare in 1556. He lived in this street, and most of the time in this house, from 1551, the time of his coming to Stratford, till 1601, the time of his death. The property passed, by inheritance or will, first to William Shakespeare, then to his eldest daughter, Susannah Hall, then to his granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall (afterwards Lady Barnard), and then to Thomas and George Hart, grandsons of Shakespeare's sister, Joan, who was married to William Hart, of Stratford. It remained in possession of the Hart family till about the year 1820, the last of that name who occupied it being the seventh in descent in a direct line from Joan Shakespeare, the sister of William. By special contributions, in 1849 this house was made the property of the nation. It has been restored as nearly as possible to its original condition three hundred years ago, has been filled with Shakespeare mementoes of every kind, and a fund has been set apart for the purpose of keeping it permanently in repair, and open to the inspection of visitors from all nations. Enough remains of the original structure to show that Shakespeare was born, and that he spent his boyhood and youth, in a home fully equal, in regard to the comforts and proprieties of life, to those common among the well-to-do burgher class of England in the sixteenth century. No one who wishes to trace the circumstances which have influenced, for good or evil, the growth of a great intellect, will overlook the companionship of childhood. Who were the youthful companions of William Shakespeare? The parish register of Stratford, after the date of William's baptism, contains among others the following entries of the Shakespeare family: Gilbert, baptized October 13, 1566; Joan, baptized April 15, 1569; Richard, baptized March 11, 1574; Edmund, baptized May 3, 1580. bailiff, aldermen, and burgesses. The bailiff, or chief alderman, once a fortnight held a court. There was also a court-leet, which appointed "ale-tasters," a class of officers to prevent fraud in the quality of that important element in an Englishman's comfort. The court-leet appointed also affeerors, whose duty it was to punish citizens for various minor offences for which there was no express provision in the statutes. Last, there was the constable, an officer of no little consideration in such a town. John Shakespeare, the father of William, held successively all these offices. He was on the jury of the court-leet in 1556, an ale-taster in 1557, a burgess in 1558, a constable in 1559, an affeeror in 1559 and again in 1561, an alderman in 1565, and highbailiff or chief magistrate in 1568. William was in his fifth year when his father was at the height of his municipal distinction. One thing is noticeable in regard to this gradual elevation of John Shakespeare in the social scale. In ail the registers where his name occurs prior to 1571, he is recorded simply as John Shakespeare, in one place The Room where Shakespeare was Born in the House in Henley Street. Putting these dates together, and calling imagination once more to our aid, we find that when William was two and a half years old, Gilbert came to be his playmate; when William was five years old, that most precious gift to a loving boy, a sister, was granted, to grow up with him, and to find in him at once a playmate and a protector; at ten, he had another brother to lead out into the green fields; and at sixteen, the youngest was born, "the baby," whom William probably never regarded in any other light than as a plaything. These things may be accounted mere fancies. I think they contain a doctrine. Selfishness and gloom are apt to be engendered by a solitary childhood. The baptismal register shows, in the childhood of Shakespeare, no cause at least for the existence of such morbid affections, as his writings give no evidence that such feelings ever did exist in his healthy and cheerful mind. Stratford-upon-Avon is a small town in Warwickshire, ninety-six miles north-west from London. Its population in the time of Shakespeare was about fifteen hundred. The municipal government consisted of a John Shakespeare, glover. But in a record on September 28, 1571, William being then in his eighth year, the father's name is entered as Magister Shakespeare; and ever after among his neighbors he is known, not as goodman Shakespeare, or plain John Shakespeare, but as Master Shakespeare. This title of Master or Mr. was then never used, as now that of M. D. is never used, except by virtue of some specific legal right, This change of title in the history of John Shakespeare, it can hardly be doubted, was in consequence of his increasing wealth and his position in the village. It shows incontestably that he was about this time a leading man in the town, and consequently that his son, the poet, could not have been the illiterate butcher's boy that the early biographers represented him to be. We are left free to admire his transcendent genius without being called upon to believe the absurd fables of his clownish ignorance. As further bearing upon the circumstances of the poet's childhood, the following ascertained facts may be cited, showing the probable occupation and the worldly condition of John Shakespeare. In 1556 he |