all improbable that he sauntered, in slouched hat, into the taverns along the road, and lounged about travelled highways, or sped over the downs with dog at heel, and at night took a shot at a deer. These were the common amusements of his day. But we can never think of him as an idler, nor can we imagine him viciously bent on a breach of the law. With Anne Hathaway to occupy his thoughts and time with her influence to keep him right-we cannot picture him as a wildling and a worldling, nor believe him to have been a culprit, exposed to penalty and ignominy. Before his marriage, that would be unlikely; after it, still more improbable. The germ of the deer-stealing myth is palpable, but that it grew is just as plain. Aubrey (1680), the earliest writer of his life, says nothing about it. Rowe (1707) first relates it, with some circumstantiality. The Rev. Richard Davies, Rector of Sapperton and Archdeacon of Lichfield (1708), is more particular in his narrative still, though he makes mistakes regarding known facts, which he might easily have avoided, and therefore shows his incompetency as a reporter. Capel (1768) brings an increase to the tradition; and in 1778, a confirmation of Capel's news comes from Oldys. Rowe says the anti-Lucy ballad was "lost." Capel and Oldys recover one verse of it, and Malone gets and prints the entire poem, but believes "that the whole is a forgery." In this opinion most critics now coincide.

We believe Shakespere took his sport like a man, not like a vagabond; and we are the more inclined to think this, because we know that a true attachment is the best safeguard to a young man's character.

Our next earliest definite notice of Shakespere refers to

1582, and is Shakespere's marriage-bond. It was found by Sir Thomas Philips in the Worcester registry, in 1836. It bears date 28th November, 1582, and in it Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, farmers, of Stratford, become bound in £40, "that William Shagspere, one thone partie, and Anne Hathwey, of Stratford, in the dioces of Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize marriage together," "with once asking of the bannes."

This document, besides the signatures of the bondsmen, bears the seal of R. H. (Richard Hathaway?) so that it seems probable that responsible friends on both sides had agreed to the match, We may believe, as was the custom of his age, that some time

before he " was affianced to her by oath, and the nuptial appointed; between which time of the contract and limit of the solemnity,"

"Before the perfect ceremony of Love's rite,"

they had deported themselves, as the registers of Stratford in his time will prove to have been often the case, as married persons, esteeming the troth-plight and betrothal as equivalent to moral though destitute of legal sanction; for though we know not where the marriage ceremony was performed (perhaps Luddington?) we learn in the Stratford register that in

"1583, May 26th, Susanna, daughter to William Shakspere," was baptized as a child begotten in wedlock. Shakespere was then little above nineteen, and his wife a little over twenty-six.

It is only reasonable to presume that, prior to friends consenting to this union, and the occurrence of the marriage, Shakespere had some independent means of support. What these were, we have no means of now ascertaining; but we know (or at least infer), that he was resident in Stratford parish in

1585, for in that year, "February 2, Hamnet and Judith, sonne and daughter to William Shakespere," were baptized. Before he has attained his majority, he has a family about him, and it needed no impulse from any Justice Shallow, no poaching notoriety or danger, to prompt a first-class mind like his to act in a kind and manly spirit, and "being inclined naturally to poetry and acting,” as Aubrey says, to take his way to London, where, probably, his townsmen, if not his relatives, were at that time successfully getting on, and so become an actor at one of the playhouses," and show

that he could, as well

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as

did, act exceedingly well." Aubrey tells us, too, that "he began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very low, and his plays took well." In the desire to drive hunger from the home of his children, we find a motive; and in his conscious possession of superior power, we perceive an occasioning cause for his removal from the "circumscription and confine" of Stratford to the city on "the banks of the Thames.” When a given sufficient, efficient cause is given, there is no principle of logic which necessitates the search for a greater or more unusual We need not invent miracles to account for every-day oc

one.

.

"It is impossible to contemplate Shakespere's removal from his native town,

Did Shakespere go alone to London? and did he there forget a father's love, a husband's duty? If the sonnets be in aught autobiographical, I would suggest that those numbered 50, 39, 36, 27— 29, 44-49, 61, and 97, should be read as here arranged, as a reply. So read, we fancy that they will help to unthread the maze into which commentators have got themselves when they write as follows, viz. :—

"Another section of Shakespere's history is composed by that romantic chain of adventure which is supposed to be hidden beneath the obscure allusions of the Sonnets. There was, we are told, a friend and patron of the poet, a youth of high birth and personal accomplishments; there was also a dark-haired lady, whom the poet loved, but over whose relations towards him there is thrown a veil of mystery, allowing us to see little except the feeling of the parties—that their love was guilt. The female, introduced to the youthful friend, transferred her passion to him. The poet, at first shaken to his inmost soul, recognized at length, in the double treachery, a judicial visitation, punishing his own offence. He cast off the faithless woman for ever, but received the repenting friend again to his heart. That something not very unlike this did really happen, we firmly believe. The supposition that the most specific of the sonnets were written by Shakespere for a friend or friends, is too absurd to be listened to for a moment." *

Beautiful tissue-paper romance, vanish! Is there truth in man, and that man Shakespere? Then read, seriatim, that splendid justificatory series of sonnets, 109—121, beginning,—

“Oh, never say that I was false of heart,” &c.,

and if there be self-reference in them at all, the calumny shall wither faster and more surely than the gourd of Jonah.

With regard to the vexed question as to whether Shakespere lived alone in London, and left his wife also alone in Stratford, we may call attention to a succession of sonnets, which may have reference to

without pausing to reflect upon the consequences that followed that event. Had he not left his humble occupation in Warwickshire, how many matchless lessons of wisdom and morality, how many unparalleled displays of wit and imagination, of pathos and sublimity, had been buried in oblivion!-pictures of emotion, of character, of passion, more profound than mere philosophy had ever conceived, — more impressive than poetry had ever yet embodied!”—Drake's “Shakspeare and His Times."

• Edinburgh Review, July, 1840, p. 466.

his early absences from Stratford, and to his coming and going periodically from the "mighty heart" of Britain to his household's home in Stratford. These bear the numbers in the ordinary editions, 27-29, 36, 39, 43-52, 97-99. It may be inferred, from his brother Edmund having lived (with him ?) in Southwark, that Shakespere had a house there; and that, though he lived some time a solitary in London at first, he had the company of his own Anne beside him, until he began to think of Shottery and property in Stratford.

1586. On January 19th, 1586, the return to a Distringas--|| writ to seize upon goods, &c., for debt, or to secure a person's appearance on a certain day, is-John Shakespere has nothing in which he is able to be distrained; a capias a writ of personal seizure-was then issued; again in February; again in March. He was afterwards deprived of his alderman's gown, the reason being, he "doth not come to the halles, nor hath he of long time." What these writs were about we do not know; perhaps to force compearance in the halls, perhaps to call in the fines due for non-attendance.

1587. Was John Shakespere arrested in 1587? In that year he produced a writ of habeas corpus, i. e., a writ for the release or bailing of a person who considers himself illegally imprisoned.

On February 1st, 1587, John Shakespere was sued by Nicholas Lane for payment of a debt, for which he was surety for his brother Henry. Was it in stay of the consequent proceedings, that this writ was taken out? The court records show that John Shakespere was several times surety for his brother, and more than once with a similar result.

These several law transactions may imply that he was then a man of falling or fallen fortunes, though they can also bear the interpretation that he was then living beyond the jurisdiction and power of the courts of Stratford. Were these legal actions indeed against this John Shakespere ?-there was another, a shoemaker, resident in Stratford then.

1587. "The Queen's players" (Burbadge's company-incorporated as the Queen's, 1583-with whom Shakespere is supposed to have thus early formed a connection) made their first appearance in Stratford, and are more highly rewarded than any previous company,-e. g., Oxford's, Warwick's, Essex', in 1584.

1589. A document, said to have been found among the Ellesmere

papers, used to be quoted, though doubtfully, regarding this date, to show that at this period Shakespere was a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre-twelfth out of sixteen-but this has recently been branded as a fabrication; and though the matter is, in itself, probable enough, we forbear the insertion of it—as it may readily be found elsewhere-to save space.

1590. The " 'Anatomie of Absurditie," by Thomas Nash, ("& man," as Izaak Walton says, of a sharp wit and the master of a scoffing satirical merry pen, author of "Summer's Last Will and Testament," &c.,) published in 1590, speaks of " new found songs and sonnets, which every red nose fiddler hath at his fingers' end;" of men who "make poetry an occupation; lying is their living; and fables are their moveables ;" and who "think knowledge a burden, tapping it before they have half tunde it, venting it before they have filled it, in whom the saying of the orator is verified-Ante ad dicendum quam ad cognoscendum veniunt. They come to speak before they come to know. They contemn arts as unprofitable, contenting themselves with a little country grammar knowledge." As all the dramatists of this period (except Thomas Greene, Shakespere's fellow-townsman, a playwright and actor-unless it may have been Drayton, a Warwickshire man, or Kyd?) had received a university education, it is quite evident that Nash was here gnashing his teeth in spite at the achievements of a country grammar school scholar then rising into fame, whose sonnets were known, and who was beginning to obtain the name and repute of an English poet; yet not then so successful as to restrain the affected contempt and real jealousy of "the alchemists of eloquence," of whom Shakespere was then one-and one, too, who could "outbrave even him in 'the swelling bombast of bragging blank verse." Nash was an intimate of Robert Greene, Lodge, Marlowe, Peele, Maunday, and Chettle, who felt their reputation waning before this brighter light. It is held, therefore, with great probability, that the above is a notice of Shakespere.

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In 1590, the first three books of the "Fairie Queen" were published, and Edmund Spenser was appointed poet-laureate by Queen Elizabeth. Its popularity induced Ponsonbie, the bookseller, to collect a number of small poems, which, under the title of "Complaints," &c., he entered at Stationers' Hall in 1590, and published in the following year, viz., 1591. Of these poems, the second is