honourable appointments, which testify the high regard in which he was held by his fellow-townsmen. At different times he was appointed Chamberlain, Alderman and High Bailiff.

I am afraid that education, in our sense of the word, was miserably neglected in those days. Very few of the members of the Corporation of Stratford could write their own names, and among those who used to put their 'mark' was John Shakspere. His wife was as imperfectly educated as himself; and it seems a curious fact that the supreme writer in English literature was the son of a man and woman who had never learnt to write their own names. There has been much discussion about the quantity and quality of the education given to their son William, who was the third of eight children. There was a grammar school at Stratford, and his father, being a member of the Corporation, would have the privilege of sending his children there free of cost.

Some have tried to make out that Shakspere was a very learned man, but I think they have quite failed. It is not likely that he would get much scholarship at the village school, and he entered on the business of life too soon to be able to carry on his studies into wider fields of learning. So in his childhood we may think of Shakspere as

the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school,

very much like the other lads with whom he romped and played, picking up such scraps of learning as the village schoolmaster could impart. We have several proofs that Shakspere was not a scholar in the technical sense of the word. The tales from which he took his plots were evidently read by him in translations. One of his familiar

books was North's translation of Plutarch's Lives. In Ben Jonson's address to him he says :

:

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek.

In London he seems to have acquired some knowledge of French and Italian, but only the merest smattering.

II.

FAMILY TROUBLES AND MARRIAGE.

SHAKSPERE was taken very early from school. His father's circumstances became greatly embarrassed, and the boy had to be kept at home to give what assistance he could to the poverty-stricken family. Before he was fourteen years of age some sad calamity overtook the household, and for years they were in very straitened circumstances. We have ample historical proof of this decline in fortune. In 1578 John Shakspere and his wife mortgaged the estate of Ashbies which she had inherited from her father, and even sold the reversionary interest in some houses at her old home at Snitterfield. We are sure they must have been hard pressed by poverty before they consented to such sacrifices as these. And there are some official records at Stratford

which tell a sad tale. It was agreed in the Town Council that every Alderman should 'paye towards the furniture of thre pikemen, ij billmen, and one archer, vjs. iiijd.;' but Alderman Shakspere was so poor that they let him off for 'iijs. iiijd.' Later on it was ordered that every Alderman should contribute fourpence a week as poor-rate, but it was agreed that John Shakspere should not be taxed to paye anythynge.' This was evidently going from bad to worse. The poor man's name also appears in a list of defaulters in a tax

At

levied to provide armour and defensive weapons. another time a writ was issued to distrain his goods; and the return was made that he had no goods to be seized. At last he was actually arrested, and there is still preserved a copy of the writ which was produced at the time. He seems to have kept the respect of his fellow-townsmen through this season of trouble, and he retained his office of Alderman as long as it was possible. But in September, 1586, we find the following register of the Corporation :'At thys halle William Smythe and Richard Courte are chosen to be Aldermen in the places of John Wheler and John Shaxpere; for that Mr. Wheler dothe desyre to be put owt of the Companye, and Mr. Shaxpere dothe not come to the halles when they be warned, nor hathe done of longe tyme.' Another memorandum tells its sad tale. In the State Paper Office there is a record, dated 1592, of those who have not obeyed the Act of Conformity by attending Church at least once a month. Mr. John Shackespere' is among these delinquents, but not because of any heresy or love of dissent, for opposite his name and those of eight. others we read :— 'It is sayd that these laste nine coom not to Churche for feare of processe for debtte.' Through all this troubled period he managed to keep his house in Henley Street; and he certainly kept the respect and trust of his neighbours, for in the very midst of his misfortunes we find him called to accept the responsible duty of taking inventories of the property of deceased persons. Before his death in 1601 the poor old man seems to have had a short return of prosperity, which, it is supposed, was brought about by the help of his son William, who had made his way in London as a successful dramatist. Those years between 1578 and 1601 had worked great changes for William Shakspere. The troubles began when he was a child of thirteen years, and he was a man of thirty-six when his father died. From

the time he left school until he went to London, about twenty-two years of age, we know very little of the events of his life. We have four different accounts of the business to which he was apprenticed. One report tells us he was apprenticed to a butcher; other authorities make young Shakspere a schoolmaster, a wool-stapler, and an attorney's clerk; so that amidst these conflicting statements we are obliged to confess our ignorance of the young man's occupation. Before he went to London he was married, at the age of nineteen, to Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older than her husband. His wife was the daughter of a farmer at Shottery, who had died twelve months before this marriage took place. We have no reason to suppose that Shakspere's married life was unhappy. But some have tried to find an unkind feeling towards his wife in the only reference he makes to her in his will, where he bequeaths to her his 'second best bed with the furniture.' We must, however, remember that there was little need to mention his wife at all, because she was well provided for as the heiress of all Shakspere's freehold property; so that the condition securing for her the second best bed' most likely had a touch of tenderness in it which we are unable to appreciate; the words, which to the critic's eye look so cold and paltry, may have moved some sacred memory in the widow's mind. I am sure Shakspere was one of the tenderest men, and I like to think that the only words regarding his wife which have come down to us were inspired by fondest love. He was much absent from his wife during his long career in London as a play-writer; but this was necessary, for it devolved on him to retrieve the fortunes of his family. Besides, travelling was a serious matter in those days, and a mother with her children could not very well be carried backwards and forwards between Stratford and London. And I do not think that when he first left Stratford he

intended to remain in London. The great city never weaned him from his native village, where at last he came home to die. He never loved the kind of life he led in London; and some of his sonnets tell us how he rebelled against the conditions of the theatrical world. The player, in those days, was a sort of outlaw, against whom magistrate and mob would on occasion heap insults. A theatrical company could only be sure of protection by placing themselves under the patronage of some great man. The atmosphere of the theatre was, no doubt, repulsive to a pure and noble nature; and I am not surprised that Shakspere kept his wife in the sweet Stratford home, where he visited her faithfully once every year, until at last he came there to rest after his laborious life. It must have been a hard struggle for him; it was doubtless for bread that he went to toil in London; and perhaps, but for that hard necessity, these plays might never have been produced.

There is a story which professes to give the occasion of Shakspere's first visit to London. Here it is in the words of his earliest biographer. 'He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him, more than once, in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlcote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought too severely; and in order to revenge the 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.' That story is a very likely one. Shakspere was just the sort of man to be led away by fun and frolic; and he would have enjoyed tormenting the stiff,