APPENDIX II

PROFESSOR WALLACE'S DISCOVERIES CON

CERNING SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE.

THE most important discoveries made for a great many years about Shakespeare's life are due to the tireless researches pursued chiefly in the Record Office, London, by Prof. Charles William Wallace, of the University of Nebraska, with the devoted assistance of his wife. About which see e.g.: "The newly discovered Shakespeare Documents," in the "Nebraska University Studies," October, 1905; "Advance Sheets from Shakespeare, the Globe and the Blackfriars," printed for private circulation, Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1909 (cf. London Times, Oct. 2 and 4, 1909, with criticism by Sir Sidney Lee, Times, Oct. 5, and William Martin, Athenæum, Oct. 9); "New Shakespeare Discoveries: Shakespeare as a man among men," in Harper's Magazine, March 10, 1910; "Shakspere's money interest in the Globe," in the Century, August 1910; "Shakespeare and his London Associates, as revealed in recently discovered documents," "Nebraska University Studies," Oct. 1910.

The documents so happily recovered, those especially first given in Harper's Magazine, introduce us to the modest family of London citizens, with whom lived, at the most brilliant period of his life," William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the countye of Warwick, gentleman,"-"one Mr. Shakespeare,"-" one Wm Shake

speare," as he is also called in the same texts. The documents, which extend from May 11 to June 23, 1612, and describe Shakespeare as "of the age of 48 yeres or thereaboutes" (having been born in April, 1564, he was forty-eight, plus a few weeks), show that, when at the height of his success as a playwright, he was living with a French Huguenot, the wig-maker, Christopher Montjoie (Mountjoy in the English texts), of Crécy, France. The Montjoies' house occupied the corner of the still existing Silver Street and of Mugwell, now Monkwell Street, in the City. Shakespeare was undoubtedly residing with this French family in 1604, the year of "Othello," but for how long before and after is not known with absolute certainty.1 We have, at all events, no longer to ask ourselves how he may have kept up his French, and whose help he could secure to write the not over-refined French dialogues to be found in some of his plays.

The story told by the legal documents so happily brought to light by Mr. Wallace is that of an honest couple, modest but prosperous, with an only daughter, Mary, who marries her father's apprentice, Etienne Belot (Bellott in the texts), also a French Huguenot. On the suggestion of Madame Montjoie, Shakespeare had had a hand in the preliminaries of the match, encouraging the

He declares in his deposition, mentioned further, that he has known the two parties, "as he remembrethe for the space of tenne yeres or thereaboutes," and that he has known "the complainant," Belot, "when he was servant with the defendant," Montjoie, "and that, during the tyme of his the complainantes service with the said defendant, he, the said complainant . . did well and honestly behave himselfe," which implies familiarity, but not necessarily life, all the time, under the same roof.

Mr. Wallace casts a strong doubt on Shakespeare's having lived in Southwark in 1596 and after (Harper's Magazine, March, 1910, p. 305). But it is difficult to discard the testimony of Malone, whose veracity has never been impugned and who states that he believes in such a stay, "from a paper now before me, which formerly belonged to Edward Alleyn." Cf. letter of J. W. Hales in the Athenæum, March 26, 1904.

young man to make his proposal, and leading him to understand that the young girl would not be portionless.

After the marriage, celebrated November 19, 1604, in the near-by church of St. Olave, also in Silver Street, and still in existence, being one of the few buildings that survived the Great Fire, father-in-law and son-in-law had tried the not always successful plan of continuing to live and work together, but they had soon quarrelled, then made up their troubles, then quarrelled again. The young couple had rented a room at an inn kept at some distance to the west, in the parish of St. Sepulchre, by George Wilkins, described in the new documents as a victualer, the same apparently who made some sort of a name as a playwright, and as the probable collaborator of Shakespeare in his "Timon" and his "Pericles." Belot sued his father-in-law, in 1612, chiefly for the non-fulfilment of the promises made by him at the time of the marriage. The humble heroes of this real life play, friends, neighbours, servants, and the great Shakespeare with them, had to go to Westminster and answer, on May 11th, the "Interrogatories" of the judge. And thus, as Prof. Wallace says, we have, certified by his signature (one more of them), "the first personal utterance that has ever reached us from Shakespeare's lips as he spoke among his fellow men."

These discoveries curiously confirm what has been said above (pp. 201, 377) of the inborn tendency in Shakespeare to keep aloof from quarrels. Thrown into this one by circumstances, he is careful not to take sides. Belot, the plaintiff, he declares, "did well and honestly

See in Sidney Lee's "Life of Shakespeare,” 1925, pp. 474 ff., the account of the enclosure of the Stratford-on-Avon common land threatened by the Combe brothers in 1614. "Both parties to the strife," says Lee, "bore witness to Shakespeare's local influence by seeking his countenance. But he proved unwilling to identify himself with either side." Cf. "Ben Jonson's Views on Shakespeare's Art," in the present writer's "School for Ambassadors," etc., 1924, pp. 260 ff.

As

behave himselfe," while Montjoie, the defendant, is, as his opponent has acknowledged, "a very honest fellowe." for the pre-marriage promises and agreements, which are the root of the quarrel, and in which the poet had personally had a part to play, thus becoming the most important of all witnesses, it just happens that he does not remember anything of any use about them. He recollects, it is true, that a "porcion" had been promised, “but what certayne porcion he rememberithe not, nor when to be payed," nor anything, in fact, of what is the true cause of the trouble.

Unable to find its way out of this maze, the court ordered that new hearings should take place, and they were held from the 19th to the 23rd of June; Shakespeare was to be asked, like the others, for further details, but unlike the others he somehow managed to be let alone, so that, after having made, on the first occasion, the most guarded statement, on the second he made none at all. The court, continuing as much in the dark as before, chose to refer this quarrel between French people to the French Protestant church in London, for it to decide as it pleased.

The church decided that Montjoie was in the wrong and should pay Belot twenty nobles.

INDEX TO VOLS. II. AND III.