of which another daughter was born to him, who was called Margaret. But Mary Arden's little family did not thrive like her husband's business. A few months lightened the young mother's arms, to lay a load upon her heart. Margaret as well Joan died in early infancy.

To the now childless couple there came consolation and a welcome care in their first-born son, whom, on the 26th of April, 1564, they christened and called William. The Reverend (or, as he was then called, Sir) John Breechgirdle probably performed that office. Of the day of William Shakespeare's birth there exists, and probably there was made, no record. Why should it have been otherwise? He was only the son of a Warwickshire yeoman, a burgess of a little rural town. And there were two score at least of children born that year in Stratford, who, in the eyes of their parents and of the good townsfolk, were of just as much importance, and of whose appearance in the world no other note was taken than such as tells us of his advent, — the entry of their christening in the parish register. As yet it was not the custom to record upon the blank leaves of the Bible the dates of life and death in humble families; and had John Shakespeare owned a Bible, neither he nor even his higher-born wife could have written the words to read which, if they had endured, men would have made a pilgrimage. All unsus

pecting what he was whom she had borne and whom she cherished in her bosom, the mother of William Shakespeare could have looked on him only as the probable inheritor of his father's little wealth, the possible recipient of his father's little honors, or mayhap, in some moment of high hope, the occupant of a position like that of his maternal grandfather. And had he become a peer instead of a player, the day of his birth might have been no less uncertain. Tradition says it was the 23d of April; and the old custom of christening the third day after birth, though it was far from universal, if it did not give rumor a hint, gives tradition some support.

A court roll tells us that in 1552 John Shakespeare lived in Henley Street; and another, that he bought the copyhold of a house in that street in 1556. Tradition points out a house in Henley Street, which we know belonged to John Shakespeare, as the birthplace of his illustrious son, who himself became its owner; and the probability of the truth of this tradition amounts, to all intents and purposes, to certainty. Neglect, subdivision, and base uses had reduced this house at the beginning of the present century to a very forlorn and unsightly condition. But as late as 1769 it preserved enough of its original form to show that William Shakespeare was born and passed his childhood and his adolescent years in a home which was not only pretty and pictu

resque, but very comfortable and unusually commodious for a man in his father's station in the middle of the sixteenth century. For in the reign of Elizabeth domestic architecture was in its infancy. Something had been done for the household comfort of noblemen and gentlemen of large estate; but almost nothing for the homes of that large class, composed, in the words of Agar, of those who have neither poverty nor riches, but food convenient for them, and which now gives the architect his chief employment. Old abbeys, priories, and granges, recently sequestered, and newly-built halls, were taking the place of cold, crumbling castles as dwellings for the rich; and between these and the humble farm-house or village cot, often built, as the haughty Spaniard wrote in the reign of Elizabeth's sister, "of sticks and dirt," there was no middle structure. People corresponding in position to those whose means and tastes would now insure them as much comfort in their homes as a king has in his palace, and even simple elegance beside, then lived in houses which in their best estate would seem at the present day rude, cheerless, and confined, to any man not bred in poverty. In 1847 the Shakespeare house passed into the hands of an association, under whose care it has been renovated; but unfortunately, like some of the Shakespeare poetry, not restored to a close resemblance to its first condition; though that was perhaps in both cases

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impossible. Whether it was in this house that John Shakespeare and his wife, with their only precious child, stayed out the plague which visited Stratford in 1564, or whether they fled to some uninfected place, we do not know. But families did not move freely in those days, or easily find house-room; and on the 30th of August in that year John Shakespeare, as the Stratford register tells, was at a hall or meeting, held in a garden, probably for fear of infection. this occasion he gave twelvepence for the relief of poor sufferers. The highest sum given was seven shillings and fourpence, the lowest, sixpence; and there were but two burgesses who gave more than twelvepence. In September he gave sixpence more, and in October eighteenpence. It may be assumed as quite certain, then, that the Shakespeares remained at Stratford during the plague, thus leaving William, like any other child, in peril of the pestilence. passed through a period of fearful trial. The scourge made Stratford desolate. In six months. one sixth of their neighbors were buried. But although around them there was hardly a house in which there was not one dead, there was a charm upon their threshold, and William Shakespeare lived.

They

In the next year the father was chosen one of the fourteen aldermen of the town; and in 1568 he was made high bailiff, which office he filled

one year. He continued to prosper, and in 1570 he took under his cultivation yet other lands, a farm called Ington, at the then goodly rent of £8. The year 1571 saw him chief alderman; and in 1575 he bought two freehold houses in Henley Street, with gardens and orchards. William Shakespeare, therefore, at ten years of age, was the son of one of the most substantial and respected men of Stratford, who was one of its fourteen burgesses, and who had rapidly attained, step by step, the highest honors in the gift of his townsmen. He was styled Master Shakespeare, a designation the manly style of which we have belittled into Mister, voiding it at the same time of its honorable significance. As high bailiff and chief alderman he sat as justice of the peace, and thus even became "worshipful." There has been much dispute as to what was his occupation at this time; his glover's trade having been before abandoned. Rowe, on Betterton's authority, says that he was "a considerable dealer in wool." John Aubrey the antiquary, or rather quid-tunc, says that he was a butcher; in a deed dated 1579, and in another seventeen years later, he is called a yeoman; and his name appears in a list of the gentlemen and freeholders of Barlichway Hundred in 1580. One of his fellow-aldermen, who was his predecessor in the office of bailiff, was a butcher; but with our knowledge of his landed possessions and his consequent agricultural occu