The father

in muni

cipal office.

II

CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE

its povertyOn July 4, From 1567

IN July 1564, when William was three months old, the
plague raged with unwonted vehemence at Stratford, and
his father liberally contributed to the relief of
stricken victims. Fortune still favoured him.
1565, he reached the dignity of an alderman.
onwards he was accorded in the corporation archives the
honourable prefix of 'Mr.' At Michaelmas 1568 he attained
the highest office in the corporation gift, that of bailiff, and
during his year of office the corporation for the first time
entertained actors at Stratford. The Queen's Company
and the Earl of Worcester's Company each received from
John Shakespeare an official welcome. The circumstance
that he was the first bailiff to encourage actors to visit
Stratford proves that his religion was not that of the
contemporary puritan, whose hostility to all forms of
dramatic representations was one of his most persistent
characteristics. On September 5, 1571, John Shakespeare
was chief alderman, a post which he retained till Septem-
ber 30 the following year. In 1573 Alexander Webbe, the
husband of his wife's sister Agnes, made him overseer of
his will; in 1575 he bought two houses in Stratford, one of
them doubtless the alleged birthplace in Henley Street;
in 1576 he contributed twelvepence to the beadle's salary.
But after Michaelmas 1572 he took a less active part in
municipal affairs; he grew irregular in his attendance
at the council meetings, and signs were soon apparent
that his luck had turned. In 1578 he was unable to pay,
with his colleagues, either the sum of fourpence for the
relief of the poor or his contribution 'towards the furniture
of three pikemen, two bellmen, and one archer' who were
sent by the corporation to attend a muster of the trained
bands of the county.

and

sisters.

Meanwhile his family was increasing. Four children Brothers besides the poet-three sons, Gilbert (baptised October 13, 1566), Richard (baptised March 11, 1574), and Edmund (baptised May 3, 1580), with a daughter Joan (baptised April 15, 1569)- reached maturity. A daughter Ann was baptised September 28, 1571, and was buried on April 4, 1579. To meet his growing liabilities, the father borrowed money from his wife's kinsfolk, and he and his wife mortgaged, on November 14, 1578, Asbies, her valuable property at Wilmcote, for 40%. to Edmund Lambert of Barton-on-the-Heath, who had married her sister, Joan Arden. Lambert was to receive no interest on his loan, but was to take the 'rents and profits' of the estate. Asbies was thereby alienated for ever. Next year, on October 15, 1579, John and his wife made over to Robert Webbe, doubtless a relative of Alexander Webbe, for the sum apparently of 40%., his wife's property at Snitterfield.

financial

John Shakespeare obviously chafed under the humilia- The tion of having parted, although as he hoped only tem- father's porarily, with his wife's property of Asbies, and in the diffiautumn of 1580 he offered to pay off the mortgage; but his culties. brother-in-law, Lambert, retorted that other sums were owing, and he would accept all or none. The negotiation, which was the beginning of much litigation, thus proved abortive. Through 1585 and 1586 a creditor, John Brown, was embarrassingly importunate, and, after obtaining a writ of distraint, Brown informed the local court that the debtor had no goods on which distraint could be levied. On September 6, 1586, John was deprived of his alderman's gown, on the ground of his long absence from the council meetings.

Happily John Shakespeare was at no expense for the Educa education of his four sons. They were entitled to free tion. tuition at the grammar school of Stratford, which was reconstituted on a mediæval foundation by Edward VI. The eldest son, William, probably entered the school in 1571, when Walter Roche was master, and perhaps he knew something of Thomas Hunt, who succeeded Roche in 1577. As was customary in provincial schools, he was taught to write the 'Old English' character, which resembles that still in vogue in Germany. He was never taught the Italian script, which at the time was rapidly winning its way in fashionable cultured society, and is now universal among

The poet's classical equip

ment.

Englishmen. Until his death Shakespeare's 'Old English' handwriting testified to his provincial education. The general instruction that he received was mainly confined to the Latin language and literature. From the Latin accidence, boys of the period, at schools of the type of that at Stratford, were led, through conversation books like the 'Sententiæ Pueriles' and Lily's grammar, to the perusal of such authors as Seneca, Terence, Cicero, Virgil, Plautus, Ovid, and Horace. The eclogues of the popular renaissance poet, Mantuanus, were often preferred to Virgil's for beginThe rudiments of Greek were occasionally taught in Elizabethan grammar schools to very promising pupils; but such coincidences as have been detected between expressions in Greek plays and in Shakespearean drama seem due to accident, and not to Shakespeare's study, either at school or elsewhere, of the Athenian drama.

ners.

Dr. Farmer enunciated in his 'Essay on Shakespeare's Learning' (1767) the theory that Shakespeare knew no language but his own, and owed whatever knowledge he displayed of the classics and of Italian and French literature to English translations. But several of the books in French and Italian whence Shakespeare derived the plots of his dramas Belleforest's 'Histoires Tragiques,' Ser Giovanni's 'Il Pecorone,' and Cinthio's 'Hecatommithi,' for example - were not accessible to him in English translations; and on more general grounds the theory of his ignorance is adequately confuted. A boy with Shakespeare's exceptional alertness of intellect, during whose schooldays a training in Latin classics lay within reach, could hardly lack in future years all means of access to the literature of France and Italy.

In

With the Latin and French languages, indeed, and with many Latin poets of the school curriculum, Shakespeare in his writings openly acknowledged his acquaintance. 'Henry V' the dialogue in many scenes is carried on in French which is grammatically accurate if not idiomatic. In the mouth of his schoolmasters, Holofernes in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and Sir Hugh Evans in 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' Shakespeare placed Latin phrases drawn directly from Lily's grammar, from the 'Sententiæ Pueriles,' and from 'the good old Mantuan.' The influence of Ovid, especially the 'Metamorphoses,' was apparent throughout his earliest literary work, both poetic and dramatic, and is

discernible in the 'Tempest,' his latest play (v. i. 33 seq.). In the Bodleian Library there is a copy of the Aldine edition of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (1502), and on the title is the signature 'Wm. Sh.,' which experts have declared not quite conclusively to be a genuine autograph of the poet. Ovid's Latin text was certainly familiar to him. His closest adaptations of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' often reflect, however, the phraseology of the popular English version by Arthur Golding, of which some seven editions were issued between 1565 and 1597. From Plautus Shakespeare drew the plot of the 'Comedy of Errors,' and it is just possible that Plautus's comedies, too, were accessible in English. Shakespeare had no title to rank as a classical scholar, and he did not disdain a liberal use of translations. His lack of exact scholarship fully accounts for the 'small Latin and less Greek' with which he was credited by his scholarly friend, Ben Jonson. But Aubrey's report that 'he understood Latin pretty well' need not be contested, and his knowledge of French may be estimated to have equalled his knowledge of Latin, while he doubtless possessed just sufficient acquaintance with Italian to enable him to discern the drift of an Italian poem or novel.

and the

Bible.

Of the few English books accessible to him in his Shakeschooldays, the chief was the English Bible, either in the speare popular Genevan version, first issued in a complete form in 1560, or in the Bishops' revision of 1568, which the Authorised Version of 1611 closely followed. References to scriptural characters and incidents are not conspicuous in Shakespeare's plays, but, such as they are, they are drawn from all parts of the Bible, and indicate that general acquaintance with the narrative of both Old and New Testaments which a clever boy would be certain to acquire either in the schoolroom or at church on Sundays. Shakespeare quotes or adapts biblical phrases with far greater frequency than he makes allusion to episodes in biblical history. But many such phrases enjoyed proverbial currency, and others, which were more recondite, were borrowed from Holinshed's 'Chronicles' and secular works whence he drew his plots. As a rule his use of scriptural phraseology, as of scriptural history, suggests youthful reminiscence and the assimilative tendency of the mind in a stage of early development rather than close and continuous study of the Bible in adult life.

The poet's marriage.

Richard Hathaway of Shottery.

Shakespeare was a schoolboy in July 1575, when Queen Elizabeth made a progress through Warwickshire on a visit to her favourite, the Earl of Leicester, at his castle of Kenilworth. References have been detected in Oberon's vision in Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream' (II. ii. 148-68) to the fantastic pageants and masques with which the Queen during her stay was entertained in Kenilworth Park. Leicester's residence was only fifteen miles from Stratford, and it is possible that Shakespeare went thither with his father to witness some of the open-air festivities; but two full descriptions which were published in 1576, in pamphlet form, gave Shakespeare knowledge of all that took place. Shakespeare's opportunities of recreation outside Stratford were in any case restricted during his schooldays. His father's financial difficulties grew steadily, and they caused his removal from school at an unusually early age. Probably in 1577, when he was thirteen, he was enlisted by his father in an effort to restore his decaying fortunes. 'I have been told heretofore,' wrote Aubrey, 'by some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade,' which, according to the writer, was that of a butcher. It is possible that John's ill-luck at the period compelled him to confine himself to this occupation, which in happier days formed only one branch of his business. His son may have been formally apprenticed to him. An early Stratford tradition describes him as 'a butcher's apprentice.' 'When he kill'd a calf,' Aubrey proceeds less convincingly, 'he would doe it in a high style and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne, that was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall witt, his acquaintance, and coetanean, but dyed young.'

At the end of 1582 Shakespeare, when little more than eighteen and a half, took a step which was little calculated to lighten his father's anxieties. He married. His wife, according to the inscription on her tombstone, was his senior by eight years. Rowe, the poet's biographer of 1709, stated that she 'was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford.'

On September 1, 1581, Richard Hathaway, 'husbandman' of Shottery, a hamlet in the parish of Old Stratford, made his will, which was proved on July 9, 1582, and is now preserved at Somerset House. His house and land, 'two and a half virgates,' had been long held in copyhold