KING HENRY V. BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WITH NOTES, ETC., BY D. FERGUSON, M.A. AND IO FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. WHEELWRIGHT NEW IMPRESSION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1903 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born on the 22nd or 23rd April, 1564, in the pleasant old country town of Stratford-on-Avon. The name Shakespeare is found pretty frequently in the records of the towns and villages of Warwickshire during the early part of the sixteenth century, but not in those of Stratford itself. John Shakespeare, the father of the poet, was the first of the name to settle in the town, and he came thither in 1550 or 1551 from Snitterfield, a village about four miles away to the north-east, where his father Richard was a farmer. John Shakespeare is said to have been a glover, but it appears probable that he also traded in cattle and other agricultural produce. He prospered in trade, and in 1557 married Mary Arden, the daughter and heiress of a wealthy yeoman of Wilmecote, a village a few miles away to the north-west. In 1556 he bought a house and garden in Henley Street, and a house with a garden and croft in Greenhill Street. Both houses are still standing, and are preserved as a Shakespearean museum. Little is known of Shakespeare's childhood, but in 1568, while John Shakespeare was bailiff of Stratford, the Queen's Players came to the town and received a licence to play. The same thing happened next year, and no doubt the child of five was there with open eyes to see. At seven years of age he was sent to the Free Grammar School of the Holy Cross, a few streets away from his father's house, and it is thought probable that in Love's Labour's Lost, his earliest play, he has portrayed, in the character of the pedantic but |