acquired. It must be remembered that for thirty years Shakespeare was on intimate terms with men of scholarly tastes and acquirements. The most splendid tribute among the many which he received from his contemporaries came from the most thoroughly trained of his fellow-dramatists; one who stood preeminently for the classical tradition in the English drama. Shakespeare was neither by instinct nor opportunity a scholar in the sense in which Ben Jonson was a scholar; but he had considerable familiarity with four languages; he had access to many books; he had read some of them with the most vital insight; and he was exceptionally well informed in many directions.

He knew something of law, medicine, theology, history, trade; and this knowledge, easily acquired, was readily used for purposes of illustration; sometimes used inaccurately as regards details, as men of imagination have used knowledge in all times and are using it to-day; but used always with divination of its spiritual or artistic significance. A careful study of Shakespeare's opportunities and a little common sense in reckoning with his genius will dissipate the confusion of mind which has made it possible to regard him as uneducated and therefore incapable of writing his own. works. Aubrey's statement that "he understood Latin pretty well" is abundantly verified by the plays; they also furnish evidence that he understood Italian and French.

That he studied the Bible, either in the Genevan version or in the revision of 1568, is equally apparent. His references to incidents in Biblical history and his

use of Biblical phrases suggest a familiarity acquired in boyhood rather than a habit of reading in maturity. The direct suggestions of the influence of the Bible are numerous; but there is also the impression of a rich and frequent use of Biblical wisdom and imagery. Mr. Locke Richardson has suggested that when Falstaff" babbled of green fields" his memory was going back to the days when, as a schoolboy, the Twentythird Psalm was often in his ears or on his lips; and there are many places in the plays where Shakespeare seems to be remembering something which he learned. from the Bible in youth. No collection of books could have brought him richer material for his view of life and for his art, not only as regards its content but its form.

The Grammar School, in which Cicero and Virgil have been taught in unbroken succession since Shakespeare's time, was a free school, taking boys of the neighbourhood from seven years upwards, and keeping them on the benches with generous disregard of hours. There were holidays, however, and there was time for punting on the river, for rambles across country, and for those noisy games, prolonged far into the evening by the long English twilight, which make the meadows across the Avon as vocal as the old graveyard about the church is reposeful and silent.

Boys in Shakespeare's station in life rarely went to school after their fourteenth year, and the growing financial embarrassments of John Shakespeare probably took his son out of the Grammar School a year earlier. The tide of prosperity had begun to recede

from the active trader some time earlier; whether his declining fortunes were due to lack of judgment or to the accidents of a business career it is impossible to determine. It is clear that he was a man of energy and versatility; that he was successful at an unusually early age and in an unusual degree; and that later, for a time at least, he was overtaken by adversity. In 1578, when the poet was fourteen years old, John Shakespeare mortgaged his wife's property at Wilmcote for the sum of forty pounds, or about two hundred dollars — the equivalent of more than a thousand dollars in present values. In the following year another piece of property at Snitterfield was disposed of for the same amount. Unsatisfied or dissatisfied creditors began to bring suits; taxes went unpaid; other properties were sold without arresting the downward movement; in 1586, when the poet went up to London to seek his fortune, John Shakespeare had ceased to attend the meetings at Guild Hall, and lost his right to wear the Alderman's gown in consequence; later his goods were seized by legal process and warrants for his arrest as an insolvent debtor were issued. There is a story of a considerable loss through the generous act of standing as surety for a brother; and it is known that there was, during these years, great distress in several branches of trade in Warwickshire.

If it cost nothing to send a boy to the Grammar School, it cost something to keep him there; and by the withdrawal of his son when losses began to press heavily upon him John Shakespeare may not only have cut off one source of his expense, but gained some

small addition to his income from the industry of another wage-earner in the family. After leaving school the son may have assisted his father, as Aubrey reports, or he may have entered the office of a lawyer, as a contemporary allusion seems to affirm; nothing definite is known about his occupations between his fourteenth and eighteenth years. There is no reason why anything should have been remembered or recorded; he was an obscure boy living in an inland village, before the age of newspapers, and out of relation with people of fashion or culture. During this period as little is known of him as is known of Cromwell during the same period; as little, but no less. This fact gives no occasion either for surprise or scepticism as to his marvellous genius; it was an entirely normal fact concerning boys growing up in unliterary times and rural communities. That these boys subsequently became famous does not change the conditions under which they grew up.

CHAPTER III

SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY

THE England of Shakespeare's boyhood and youth was not only dramatic in feeling but spectacular in form; the Queen delighted in those gorgeous pageants which symbolized by their splendour the greatness of her place and the dignity of her person. Her vigorous Tudor temper was thrown into bold relief by her intensely feminine craving for personal loyalty and admiration. One of the keenest and most adroit politicians of her time, her instincts as a woman were sometimes postponed to the exigencies of the State, but they were as imperious as her temper. Denied as Queen the personal devotion which as a woman she craved, she fed her unsatisfied imagination on flattery and imposing ceremonies. In the summer of 1575, when Shakespeare was in his twelfth year, the Queen made that memorable visit to Kenilworth Castle which has found its record in Scott's brilliant novel. Four years earlier, the royal presence at Charlecote (Sir Thomas Lucy, the future Justice Shallow, playing the part of host) had brought the Court into the immediate neighbourhood of Stratford. Kenilworth is fifteen miles distant, but the magnificent pageants and stately ceremonies with which Leicester welcomed the Queen were mat