books as "unpaid and unaccounted for;" yet, in a deed of the same date, he is designated a yeoman. This, however, did not keep the woe of death from his hearth; for "Anne, daughter to John Shakespere," was buried on 4th July, 1579. And in the chamberlain's accounts for 1579 we find the following-"Item: for the bell and pall for Mr. Shaxpers dawghter viij.d." This is the highest fee in the list; and is not, therefore, in consonance with the supposed poverty of the family at this time. A John Shakespere resided in this year, and up till, if not beyond, 1583, in Clifford,,-a pretty village about two miles from Stratford-on-Avon, and we may suppose that this was the late alderman of that borough.

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The above facts have given rise to two hypotheses of very opposing natures; first, that of Malone, and the greater part of the biographers of Shakespere-supported so far, if not indeed suggested, by tradition—that the prosperity of John Shakespere had suffered a decline; and, second, that advanced by Charles Knight, that he had turned his attention more towards agriculture at this time, was living less in the borough, though still dwelling in the parish, and therefore paying his rents and bearing his burdens in the latter, though holding property in the former. The lands of Bishopton and Welcombe, of the purchase of which by William Shakespere we have no record," and which he disposes of in his will under the designation of his inheritance, Knight supposes to be the lands purchased at this period. We have no account of the disposal of the properties in Henley Street, and it is difficult to imagine their being held by a person justly indebted to the corporation, or insolvent, or "depending" (as Malone has it) "rather on the credit of others than his own." But the registry of the Court of Record at Stratford from 1569 to 1585 is wanting, and research has as yet been vainly expended in attempting to make up the deficiency. We certainly incline to Knight's hypothesis as highly plausible, and as fully accounting not only for the apparent financial difficulties of the family, but also for the withdrawal of William from school-on account of the distance, and difficulty of attending, as well as for the vagueness and general inaccuracy of the village traditions regarding him.

In 1579, the players of Lord Strange and those of the Countess of Essex held dramatic entertainments in Stratford, in the hall of the guild, under the patronage of the bailiff.

and

1580. The players of the Earl of Derby visited Stratford, and there exhibited as well as they could the transactions of human' passion, "set out with sweetness of words, fitness of epithets, with metaphors, allegories, hyperboles, amphibologies, similitudes, with phrases so picked, so pure, so proper with action, so smooth, so lively, so wanton," as to gratify their audience. On "May 3rd, 1580, Edmund, son to Mr. John Shakespere," was baptized; in "A Book of the Names and Dwelling-Places of the Gentlemen and Freeholders in the County of Warwick, 1580," John Shakespere, of Stratford-on-Avon, in the hundred of Barlichway, has a place. On or before the 29th September (Michaelmas) of this year, in the matter of the mortgage of Asbies,* the money in discharge thereof was duly tendered and refused, unless other moneys in which they were indebted to the mortgagee were also paid-at least, so John and Mary Shakespere declared in Chancery, 1597.

On and after leaving school, what did William Shakespere become? Seven attorneys practised in Stratford during his youth -did he ply the "the trade of Noverint" in an apprenticeship with one of them? as has been guessed to be implied in a sarcastic quip printed by Thomas Nashe in Greene's "Menaphon," 1589; did he exercise his father's trade"? and was that-as Aubrey, 1680, says -a butcher? Or was this Shakespere-as a clerk above eighty years old, that showed the church of Stratford to one Dowdall, 1693, affirmed "bound apprentice to a butcher," but "run from his master to London"? It is now regarded as all but proven that Mr. John Shakespere was not a butcher to business, but rather in some sort a glover, woolstapler, sheepmaster, and agriculturist-as Knight has it, ". a small rural capitalist,"-and it is very probable

that William, his eldest son, should take a share in the conduct of his affairs, especially as he seems to have been somewhat of an arithmetician and penman. In this capacity he might even kill a calf, yea, "doe it in a high stile and make a speech;" and that the love of the marvellous and the indistinctness of tradition-if Shakespere spent his youth out of the borough of Stratford, all the more likely to be wrong-had so transformed the story. During his leisure, how did he disport himself? Did he,

*On June 1st, 1581, Edmund Lambert, and Joan Arden his wife, disposed of their interest in a property at Snitterfield, co-inherited by the latter with other two sisters. These were the holders of the mortgage.

"Under the shade of melancholy boughs,

Lose and neglect the creeping hours of Time."

Did he, with wise studiousness, "chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancies," "observe all qualities with a learned spirit," and note for after use the phenomena of Nature and the acts of men; or did he, "like a wilful youth, pursue a life unprofitably gay," spending his "time in the fencing schools and dancing schools, in stealing deer and conies, in hunting the hare and wooing girls"? Or can we fancy him-as Aubrey tells, on the authority of a Mr. Beeston*as one who "had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country," and whose

"Study had made him very lean,

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And pale, and leaden-eyed"?

We cannot well decide. The tradition regarding the deer-stealing somewhere and at some time-even though it could be proven that Charlecote was not an enclosed ground royally licensed,” and that Sir Thomas Lucy was not likely to accost any one with a Sirrah, "you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge,"

-cannot be pooh-poohed out of the way. It seems to be a myth, with a basis of truth. Neither the ingenuity of De Quincey, nor the palpable wishing-cap reasoning of Knight, can quite rub off the original likelihood of this tradition, nor otherwise account for the co-linking of Lucy and Shallow in the thoughts of men to "be laughed at" for all time. The ballad, we believe, is a forgery of a later date than the age of Shakespere, and we cannot think that this could be the reason for his early and abrupt departure from his native town. Mutual offence may have been given and gotten

* In 1680, Aubrey forwarded his "Minutes of Lives" to Anthony-a-Wood. He was then in his fifty-fifth year. In 1639, a William Bieston, gent., was governor of the King's and Queen's young company of players, at the Cock-pit, in Drury Lane. This Bieston might have known the traditions regarding Shakespere well, and might have met Aubrey. Was this the man?

There were several Beestons connected with the theatres. In a dateless, rough draught in the Chapter-house, among other persons, Christopher Beeston and Robert Beeston, "servauntes unto our (James') dearest wyfe the Queen Anna, with the rest of their associates," are licensed to show and exercise publicly "the art and faculty of playinge comedies," &c., at "the Curtain and the Bores Head,” and elsewhere. The document is quoted at length in Halliwell's "Life of Shakespere," p. 193.

without going quite so far as that, and the player-proprietor may in after years have had a cold shoulder from Sir Thomas, which would not lessen his sense of wrong, or incline him to forget and forgive. That he was a schoolmaster, we would fain believe; but that has little support except from the tradition that he taught some of the actors elocution and the arts of stage-management; that he was studiously observant, requires no proof; and that he occupied himself in wooing, and that right early too, becomes both manifest and prominent on documentary evidences. An old intimacy subsisted between the Shakesperes and the Hathaways, and these ties were drawn more closely together by William on the one part, and Anne on the other, at wakes and fairs and fireside pleasantries, until "love's feeling" began to grow in both. With this eventful crisis, the youth of William Shakespere closes, and the responsibilities of manhood are undertaken; and a new chapter may fitly be devoted to the latter time and its concernments.

CHAPTER III.

EARLY MANHOOD.

"Bright metals on a sullen errand

Will show more goodly, and attract more eyes

Than that which hath no foil to set it off."-Henry IV.

"LET me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment," are the words with which Shakespere commences his 116th Sonnet, and they appear to have embodied the thought uppermost in his mind, not long after he had companioned in intimate associateship with "sweete Anne" Hathaway, whom he early began to address as "My all-the-world." As he walked with her in the hours of "black Vesper's pageants," how keenly and kindly would he express himself on the enduringness of his affection :

"Love is not love

That alters when it alteration finds.

Oh, no!—it is an ever-fixéd mark,

:

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken:
It is the star of every wandering bark.

Love's not Time's fool;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out, even to the edge of doom."

And while he so speaks, do not

A thousand blushing apparitions start
Into her face,"

and tell us a secret that she dare not utter ?

Whatever engaged the youthhood of Shakespere after leaving school-law, trade, or pedagogism-it is pretty clear that he must have made a good use of his eyes in noticing the tints in the sky, the flowered earth, the love-inspiring beauty of the river-threaded meadows, and the changeful variances of the seasons. Nor is it at