was arranged under the special auspices of the Hathaway family, and that the engagement was not received with favor in Henley Street. The case, however, admits of another explanation. It may be that the nuptials of Shakespeare, like those of so many others of that time, had been privately celebrated some months before under the illegal forms of the Catholic Church, and that the relatives were now anxious for the marriage to be openly acknowledged.

It was extremely common at that time, among the local tradespeople, for the sanction of parents to be given to early marriages in cases where there was no money, and but narrow means of support, on either side. It is not, therefore, likely that the consent of John and Mary Shakespeare to the poet's marriage was withheld on such grounds, nor, with the exception of the indications in the bond, are there other reasons for suspecting that they were averse to the union. But whether they were so or not is a question that does not invalidate the assumption that the lovers followed the all but universal rule of consolidating their engagement by means of a precontract. This ceremony was generally a solemn affair enacted with the immediate concurrence of all the parents, but it was at times informally conducted separately by the betrothing parties, evidence of the fact, communicated by them to independent persons, having been held, at least in Warwickshire, to confer a sufficient legal validity on the transaction. Thus, in 1585, William Holder and Alice Shaw, having privately made a contract, came voluntarily before two witnesses, one of whom was a person named Willis and the other a John Maides of Snitterfield, on purpose to acknowledge that they were irrevocably pledged to wedlock. The lady evidently considered herself already as

good as married, saying to Holder,-"I do confesse that I am your wief and have forsaken all my frendes for your sake, and I hope you will use me well;" and thereupon she "gave him her hand." Then, as Maides observes, "the said Holder, mutatis mutandis, used the like words unto her in effect, and toke her by the hand, and kissed together in the presence of this deponent and the said Willis." These proceedings are afterwards referred to in the same depositions as constituting a definite "contract of marriage." On another occasion, in 1588, there was a precontract meeting at Alcester, the young lady arriving there unaccompanied by any of her friends. When re

quested to explain the reason of this omission, “she answered that her leasure wold not lett her and that she thought she cold not obtaine her mother's goodwill, but, quoth she, nevertheless I am the same woman that I was before." The future bridegroom was perfectly satisfied with this assurance, merely asking her "whether she was content to betake herself unto him, and she answered, offring her hand, which he also tooke upon thoffer that she was content by her trothe, and thereto, said she, I geve thee my faith, and before these witnesses, that I am thy wief; and then he likewise answered in theis wordes, vidz., and I geve thee my faith and troth, and become thy husband." These instances, to which several others could be added, prove decisively that Shakespeare could have entered, under any circumstances whatever, into a precontract with Anne Hathaway. It may be worth adding that espousals of this kind were, in the Midland counties, almost invariably terminated by the lady's acceptance of a bent sixpence. One lover, who was betrothed in the same year in which Shakespeare was engaged to Anne Hath

away, gave also a pair of gloves, two oranges, two handkerchiefs and a girdle of broad red silk. A present of gloves on such an occasion was, indeed, nearly as universal as that of a sixpence.

It can never be right for a biographer, when he is unsupported by the least particle of evidence, to assume that the subject of his memoir departed unnecessarily from the ordinary usages of life and society. In Shakespeare's matrimonial case, those who imagine that there was no precontract have to make another extravagant admission. They must ask us also to believe that the lady of his choice was as disreputable as the flax-wench, and gratuitously united with the poet in a moral wrong that could have been converted, by the smallest expenditure of trouble, into a moral right. The whole theory is absolutely incredible. We may then feel certain that, in the summer of the year 1582, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway were betrothed either formally or informally, but, at all events, under conditions that could, if necessary, have been legally ratified.

There are reasons for believing that later in the century cohabitation between the precontract and the marriage began to be generally regarded with much disfavor, but the only means of arriving at an equitable judgment upon the merits of the present case lay in a determination to investigate it strictly in its relation with practices the legitimacy of which was acknowledged in Warwickshire in the days of the poet's youth. If the antecedents of Shakespeare's union with Miss Hathaway were regarded with equanimity by their own neighbors, relatives, and friends, upon what grounds can a modern critic fairly impugn the propriety of their conduct? And that they

were so regarded is all but indisputable. Assuming, as we have a right to assume, that the poet's mother must have been a woman of sensitive purity, was she now entertaining the remotest apprehension that her son's honor was imperiled? Assuredly not, for she had passed her youth amid a society who believed that a precontract had all the validity of a marriage, the former being really considered a more significant and important ceremony than the other. When her own father, Robert Arden, settled part of an estate upon his daughter Agnes, on July 17, 1550, he introduces her as nunc uxor Thome Stringer, ac nuper uxor Johannis Hewyns, and yet the marriage was not solemnized until three months afterwards. "1550, 15 October, was maryed Thomas Stringer unto Agnes Hwens, wyddow,” (Bearley register). Let us hope that, after the production of this decisive testimony, nothing more will be heard of the insinuations that have hitherto thrown an unpleasant shadow over one of the most interesting periods of our author's career.

The marriage, in accordance with the general practice, no doubt took place within two or three days after the execution of the bond on November 28, 1582, the "once asking of the bans" being included in the ceremonial service. The name of the parish in which the nuptials were celebrated has not been ascertained, but it must have been one of those places in the diocese of Worcester the early registers of which have been lost.

Early marriages are not, however, at least with men, invariably preceded by a dispersion of the wild oats; and it appears that Shakespeare had neglected to complete that usually desirable operation, but now a fortunate omission that necessitated his removal to the only locality in

which it was probable that his dramatic genius could have arrived at complete maturity. Three or four years after his union with Anne Hathaway, he had, observes Rowe, "by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, among them, some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him with them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford;—for this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely, and, in order to revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him; and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London." If we accept this narrative, which is the most reliable account of the incident that has been preserved, the date of the poet's departure from his native town may be reasonably assigned to the year 1585. He certainly could not have left the neighborhood before the summer of 1584, the baptisms of his youngest children, the twins Hamnet and Judith, having been registered at Stratford-on-Avon on February 2 in the following year; neither could his retreat have been enforced during his oppressor's attendance at the Parliament which sat from November 23,1584, to March 29, 1585. It is worthy of remark that Sir Thomas had the charge, early in the last-named month, of a bill "for the preservation of grain and game," so it is clear that the knight of Charlecote was a zealous game-preserver, even if the introduction of the proposed measure were not the