great patron. His literary practices and aims were those of contemporary men of letters, and the difference in the quality of his work and theirs was due not to conscious endeavour on his part to act otherwise than they, but to the magic and involuntary working of his genius. He seemed unconscious of his marvellous superiority to his professional comrades. The references in his will to his fellow-actors, and the spirit in which (as they announce in the First Folio) they approached the task of collecting his works after his death, corroborate the description of him as a sympathetic friend of gentle, unassuming mien. The later traditions brought together by Aubrey depict him as 'very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit,' and there is much in other early posthumous references to suggest a genial, if not a convivial, temperament, linked to a quiet turn for good-humoured satire. But Bohemian ideals and modes of life had no genuine attraction for Shakespeare. His extant work attests his 'copious' and continuous industry, and with his literary power and sociability there clearly went the shrewd capacity of a man of business. Pope had just warrant for the surmise that he For gain not glory winged his roving flight, His literary attainments and successes were chiefly valued as serving the prosaic end of providing permanently for himself and his daughters. His highest ambition was to restore among his fellow-townsmen the family repute which his father's misfortunes had imperilled. Ideals so homely are reckoned rare among poets, but Chaucer and Sir Walter Scott, among writers of exalted genius, vie with Shakespeare in the sobriety of their personal aims and in the sanity of their mental attitude towards life's ordinary incidents. XV SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS SHAKESPEARE'S widow died on August 6, 1623, at the age The surof sixty-seven, and was buried near her husband inside the vivors. chancel two days later. Some affectionately phrased Latin elegiacs doubtless from Dr. Hall's pen were inscribed on a brass plate fastened to the stone above her grave. The words run: 'Heere lyeth interred the bodye of Anne, wife of Mr. William Shakespeare, who depted. this life the 6th day of August, 1623, being of the age of 67 yeares. Vbera, tu, mater, tu lac vitamq. dedisti, Vae mihi; pro tanto munere saxa dabo! Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem bonus Angel[us] ore, Sed nil vota valent; venias cito, Christe; resurget, The younger daughter, Judith, resided with her husband, Mistress The poet's elder daughter, Mrs. Susanna Hall, resided at Mistress The last descendant. New Place till her death. Her sister Judith alienated to hei Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, To weepe with her that wept with all? Mrs. Hall's only child, Elizabeth, was the last surviving descendant of the poet. In April 1626 she married her first husband, Thomas Nash of Stratford (b. 1593), who studied at Lincoln's Inn, was a man of property, and, dying childless at New Place on April 4, 1647, was buried in Stratford Church next day. At Billesley, a village four miles from Stratford, on June 5, 1649, Mrs. Nash married, as a second husband, a widower, John Bernard or Barnard of Abington, Northamptonshire, who was knighted by Charles II in 1661. About the same date she seems to have abandoned New Place for her husband's residence at Abington. Dying without issue, she was buried there on February 17, 1669-70. Her husband survived her four years, and was buried beside her. On her mother's death in 1649 Lady Barnard inherited under the poet's will the land near Stratford, New Place, the house at Blackfriars, and (on the death of the poet's sister, Joan Hart, in 1646) the houses in Henley Street, while her father, Dr. Hall, left her in 1635 a house at Acton with a meadow. She sold the Blackfriars house, and apparently the Stratford land, before 1667. By her will, dated January 1669-70, and proved in the following March, she left small bequests to the daughters of Thomas Hathaway, of the family of her grandmother, the poet's wife. The houses in Henley Street passed to her cousin, Thomas Hart, the grandson of the poet's sister Joan, and they remained in the possession of Thomas's direct descendants till 1806 (the male line expired on the death of John Hart in 1800). By her will Lady Barnard also ordered New Place to be sold, and it was purchased on May 18, 1675, by Sir Edward Walker, Garter King-of-arms, through whose daughter Barbara, wife of Sir John Clopton, it reverted to the Clopton family. Sir John restored it in 1702. On the death of his son Hugh in 1752, it was bought by the Rev. Francis Gastrell (d. 1768), who demolished the renovated building in 1759. The site was left vacant and, with the garden attached, was annexed to the garden of the adjoining house. In 1864 the ground was purchased by public subscription and was converted into a public recreation ground. brothers. Of Shakespeare's three brothers, only one, Gilbert, seems Shaketo have survived him. Edmund, the youngest brother, 'a speare's player,' was buried at St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, 'with a fore noone knell of the great bell,' on December 31, 1607; he was in his twenty-eighth year. Richard, John Shakespeare's third son, died at Stratford in February 1613, aged 39. 'Gilbert Shakespeare adolescens,' who was buried at Stratford on February 3, 1611-12, was doubtless son of the poet's next brother, Gilbert; the latter, having nearly completed his forty-sixth year, could scarcely be described as 'adolescens;' his death is not recorded, but according to Oldys he survived to a patriarchal age. Extant specimens of Shakespeare's hand writing. His mode XVI AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS THE only extant specimens of Shakespeare's handwriting that are of undisputed authenticity consist of the five autograph signatures which are reproduced in this volume. As in the case of Edmund Spenser and of almost all the great authors who were contemporary with Shakespeare, no fragment of Shakespeare's handwriting outside his signatures no letter nor any scrap of his literary work known to be in existence. -- - is These five signatures were appended by the poet to the following documents: The Purchase-deed (on parchment), dated March 10, 1612-13, of a house in Blackfriars, which the poet then acquired (since 1841 in the Guildhall Library, London). A Mortgage-deed (on parchment), dated March 11, 1613, relating to the house in Blackfriars, purchased by the poet the day before (since 1858 in the British Museum). The Poet's Will, finally executed in March 1616, within a month of his death. This document, which is now at Somerset House, London, consists of three sheets of paper, at the foot of each of which Shakespeare signed his name. In all the signatures Shakespeare used the old of writing. 'English' mode of writing, which resembles that still in vogue in Germany. During the seventeenth century the old 'English' character was finally displaced in England by the 'Italian' character, which is now universal in England and in all English-speaking countries. In Shakespeare's day highly educated men, who were graduates of the Universities and had travelled abroad in youth, were capable of writing both the old 'English' and the 'Italian' character with equal facility. As a rule they employed the |