a grudge, unmistakable traces of which appear in his plays.' Authentic documents show him hastening, for reasons which have been the occasion of endless discussions, the preliminaries of a marriage with Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a small husbandman of Shottery, near Stratford. To the more than probable displeasure of his family, the youth of eighteen had become engaged to Anne, who was twenty-six; he married her in November or December, 1582,2 and six months later their first child saw the light: "1583, B[irth]-May 26. Susanna, daughter to William Shakspere," reads the register of Holy Trinity Church. In 1585 twins were born, Hamnet and Judith; at twenty-one Shakespeare had three children. Meanwhile his parents' affairs had declined; they were reduced to loans and make-shifts. What could be done in such troubles? A family to rear, parents in distress, powerful neighbours hostile: all combined to induce the young man to go and seek his fortunes elsewhere. He started for London as best he could, without resources. For some years he disappears completely; when we find him again, in 1592, his course is laid out, he belongs to the stage, and his first successes already cause anxiety to those in possession of public favour. Why actor and playwright, rather than glover, printer, grocer: printer like his compatriot Field 3; grocer, If the motives can be contested, the reality of the grudge cannot : ridicule cast on the Lucy coat of arms in "Merry Wives," i. 1. The identification of Sir Thomas himself with Justice Shallow is, however, absolutely hypothetical; some traits in no way answer caricatural intentions. 2 Later than the 28th of November, when a bond was drawn at Worcester in view of the intended marriage; text in Halliwell-Phillipps, "Outlines,” ii. p. 55, and Gray, "Shakespeare's Marriage," p. 202. 3 Who printed, with a care then uncommon, much excellent poetry, including his fellow-townsman's "Venus” and “Lucrece," Harington's version of "Orlando Furioso," Chapman's "Odyssey," etc. See list in Mrs. Stopes' "Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries," Stratford, 1907, p. 18. The two young men were of the same age; their parents were neighbours and like his other compatriot Sadler, come from Stratford to London at about the same time as himself? Evidently because he had a different vocation, awakened perhaps, as early as his Stratford days, when travelling troupes would come and give performances. His father favoured them and had, to our knowledge, two of them, the Queen's players, and the Earl of Worcester's, act before him in the Guildhall when he was bailiff. The dramatist's works show a great familiarity with mystery plays and their noisy Herod, moralities and their facetious Vice, with ballad-singers, jugglers, and jesters; he came across them again no doubt in the capital, but they were most likely for him childhood associations, seen at their best, especially the latter sort, at the Stratford "great fayre on Holy-Rode daye, 14 of Sept." mentioned by friends. Field had been apprenticed to the famous Vautrollier, a French Huguenot, whose daughter he married and successor he was. See Plomer, "Short History of English Printing,” 1900, p. 117; S. Lee, “Shakespeare's Venus in facsimile," 1905, p. 39; Mrs. Stopes, ut supra, p. 8. 1 The same building, still in existence, with low-ceiled rooms supported by strong oaken rafters, served as Guildhall and Grammar school; it adjoins the Guild chapel in Chapel Street. What took place on the coming of strolling players is well known to us, having been minutely described, in his old age, by one who had witnessed such a performance, at the same period when Shakespeare, then a child, probably stood "betweene his [father's] leggs," and got an early glimpse of theatrical life: "In the city of Gloucester the manner is, as I think it is in other like corporations, that, when players of enterludes come to towne, they first attend the Mayor to enforme him what noblemans servants they are, and so to get licence for their publike 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 himselfe and the Aldermen and Common Counsell of the city; and that is called the Mayors play, where every one that will comes in without money, the Mayor giving the players a reward as hee thinks fit to shew respect unto them. At such a play my father tooke me with him, and made mee stand betweene his leggs as he sate upon one of the benches, where wee saw and heard very well. The play was called the Cradle of Security."-Willis's "Mount Tabor . . . published in the yeare of his age 75," London, 1639 (the author must therefore have been born the same year as Shakespeare); in Halliwell-Phillipps, “Outlines," 1898, i. p. 43. The reward given by Shakespeare's father to the Queen's players was nine shillings and to the Earl of Worcester's players only twelve pence. Leland. The hell mouth, if he found it among his theatre's properties, was no new sight for him; a large sized one was painted on the wall of the Guild chapel at Stratford, and he was, perhaps, recalling personal remembrances when he made Lady Macbeth say: 'Tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil.2 Destitute of money, of notoriety, of influential friends, of a college education, his beginnings could not but be of the most modest. According to tradition, the first employment which connected him with the dramatic world consisted in holding the horses of the well-to-do spectators who frequented the Theatre or the Curtain. He seems to have been afterwards an actor's boy or page; perhaps one of those "players' men" satirised by Gosson, hired by comedians as men of all work, and discovered one day "prating on the stage" and parading "under gentlemen's noses in sutes of silke," when only "the Sunday before they begged an almes." 3 Certain it is, from the results, that this preliminary period was well employed. The prentice-poet, the prenticeactor, watched, observed, noted the tastes of the crowd, made himself familiar with the approved means of pleasing, perfected his education (without ever completing it fully) by reading, chiefly, as was natural, works connected with dramatic art: novels and romances, old plays which could be remodelled, national chronicles, classics translated, a few of these read also perhaps in the original. His knowledge of French, as we shall see, cannot be doubted; his passion for music is certain. In all his works there is no subject he recurs to so often; to him, music "Itinerary," ed. Lucy T. Smith, Part iv., p. 48. • II. 2; see supra, vol. I. p. 471. 3 "School of Abuse," 1579, Arber's ed., p. 39. heightens joys, softens sorrow, charms, cures, consoles; it inspires happy decisions: Let music sound while he doth make his choice, says Portia, while Bassanio hesitates between the three caskets; it can alleviate even the anguish of death. His Henry IV. forms the same wish, expressed since by that exquisite poet, Sully Prudhomme; like our contemporary, Shakespeare could enjoy the singing of a "doux air qui touche, avec peu de voix". Oh fellow! come, the song we had last night: The spinsters and knitters in the sun. . . . To him, whosoever likes not music has a dark soul: "Let no such man be trusted."4 Among his companions Shakespeare shone as an eloquent and even exuberant talker, gay, facetious, inexhaustible, and he knew also how to listen, how to * "Merchant," iii. 2. • Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends, Unless some dull favourable hand Will whisper music to my weary spirit ("2 Henry IV.," iv. 4). "Twelfth Night,” ii. 4. Vous irez chercher ma pauvre nourrice Qui mène un troupeau, Et vous lui direz que c'est mon caprice, Au bord du tombeau, D'entendre chanter, tout bas, de sa bouche, Un air d'autrefois, Simple et monotone, un doux air qui touche, Avec peu de voix . . . ("L'Agonie"). "Merchant," v. 1. Cæsar mistrusts Cassius who "hears no music," i. 2. Same thought, almost same words, in Ronsard, Preface to "Livre de Meslanges," 1560. drink, he was indulgent to others and to himself, not exacting, no precisian; he was all things to all men, full of resources, ability and ideas, the very factotum of the theatre as soon as he had set foot in it. The first certain allusion to him as an author is found in the strange confession and last will of the famous bohemian of letters, Robert Greene, a "Groats-worth of Wit, bought with a million of Repentaunce." I In this treatise, written as he was dying, Greene, it will be remembered, recommends his fellow dramatists, Nash, Peele,2 and Marlowe, to live better lives than his, to turn aside from that profane milieu where reigns neither virtue nor good faith, and no one is sure of enjoying the fame he has earned. The firstcomer takes it from you, and, remodelling your plays, transfers to himself the glory. "Yes trust them not: for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tigers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is, in his owne conceit, the onely Shake-scene in a countrie." Shake-scene for Shake-speare; "tiger's heart," etc., a parody on a line of "Henry VI.," 3 then unpublished, but already played and known to have been altered by the new-comer: the allusion was more than transparent. It was offensive and unfair; for the young poet, in seeking to earn his livelihood by remodelling plays, was doing what was then quite usual; 4 above "... Written before his death and published at his dying request,' London [1592], seventh ed. 1637; "Works," Grosart, 1881 ff., vol. xii. P. 144. Perhaps Lodge. 2 O, tiger's heart, wrapp'd in a woman's hide! ("3 Henry VI.," i. 4.) 4 What caused Greene to be so sensitive was that he prided himself precisely on his plots, rough as they are in our eyes, so that any one adopting them and decking them with poetry was sure to cause him keen irrita |