Chapter 2

THE POET'S YOUTH

In these days, when biographies of nobody in particular are as the sand upon the seashore for multitude, and the demand for personal paragraphs is seemingly well-nigh as great as the supply, we have some occasion to regret the absence of similar craving in the spacious times of Queen Elizabeth. If there had been a daily, weekly, or monthly publication that submitted famous men to the ordeal of the interview, we might pardon the glut of our latter day. Unhappily for our desire to know what manner of man Shakespeare was, the available records are exceedingly scanty, or are at least insufficient for our legitimate needs, and we are face to face with the initial difficulty that in the sixteenth century Shakespeare's name was quite common. From Cumberland down to Warwickshire there was probably no county in which a William Shakespeare could not have been found for the searching, and this fact is accountable for many curious mistakes that have been made by students and biographers. In Warwickshire alone there were more than a score of families bearing the surname in the sixteenth century, and half as many again in the following century, when the name was one to conjure with. The poet's father, John Shakespeare, who was a native of Snitterfield and moved to Stratford in the middle of the sixteenth century, to carry on what would seem to have been the business of a big store-keeper, applied for a right to bear arms towards the century's close, and made certain claims on behalf of ancestors. But the opinion of competent critics is that John Shakespeare was as capable of drawing the long-bow as he was of selling general stores, and that he was closely connected, from a mental standpoint, with the successful tradesmen of our day who, having proved fortunate business men, seek to confer upon themselves such advantage as a dubious pedigree may assure. We cannot, then, accept the version of his family history that satisfied the complaisant Heralds' College.

The chief difference between our modern Arms-seekers and John Shakespeare is that they are moneyed tradesmen and he was not. The early days of his commercial career were comparatively prosperous, and he found time to serve the borough of Stratford in many offices, including those of ale-taster, burgess, petty constable, borough chamberlain, and chief alderman. He married Mary Arden of Wilmcote near Stratford, the marriage taking place in Wilmcote's parish church at Aston Clinton, and William was the third child of the union. The poet's registration in the parish records at Stratford is dated April 26, 1564. The place of his birth is generally assumed to be the house in Henley Street purchased by John Shakespeare a year before his marriage, and we are told that he was born in a certain room on the first floor. Here again contemporary criticism may make some people regret the loss of the sixpence that was demanded before the scene of the birth could be surveyed; but, after all, there is much saving grace in a tradition, and whether the place be all it is alleged to be or less, little harm is done. Suffice it that thousands, gifted with faith and sixpences, have visited the room, ceilings and windows bear countless traces of the desire that besets the most commonplace people to deface walls with their uninteresting names. Shakespeare's alleged birthplace is a charming little residence enough, with dormered roof and penthouse entrance, and sixpence is a small price to pay for a pleasant illusion.

In the very early days of the poet's life the _res angusta domi_ had not yet begun to trouble his father, who was appointed Bailiff of the Stratford Corporation in 1568, and Chief Alderman three years later. In 1575 he bought a house in Henley Street, and no less an authority than Dr. Sidney Lee, whose researches command the respect of all, believes that this house is the one in which the poet is now said to have been born. It would seem that John Shakespeare's prosperity received a rude shock soon after the date of their purchase, for in 1578 and 1579 he was mortgaging his wife's property at Wilmcote and Snitterfield, and gradually the once wealthy man fell from power and place. Creditors pursued him, and he lost his standing in the Corporation.

In the meantime William was receiving his early training at Stratford Grammar School, and picked up more than a smattering of French and Latin, with perhaps a little Italian as well. That his school life or home life was closely associated with Bible reading and study is proved by the readiness with which he turns to Scripture for graphic and concise expression of a thought, or for the purpose of an apt comparison. But he was destined to learn in a larger and rougher school than that of King Edward's foundation at Stratford. His leisure came to an abrupt end when he had just entered his teens and his father told him to look after one of his failing businesses. So the brightest genius of English poetry became, while yet a boy, a butcher or a butcher's assistant, and for some four or five years passed an uneventful life in Stratford under conditions that might well have coarsened and spoilt him. Happily the exquisite surroundings of the little town, and his own response to them, made a somewhat sordid occupation possible; but of his daily life and steady growth in the most impressionable period of his career no reliable details have reached us.

To his associates in the old Warwickshire home he was no more than the clever, precocious eldest son of an alderman who had seen better days. He went his own way, and may be supposed to have lived a somewhat free life, for before he was nineteen he appears to have found himself compelled to marry one Anne Hathaway of Shottery in the parish of Old Stratford. Her father had died rather more than a year before her marriage; she was twenty-six years of age, and had inherited by will a sum amounting in the currency of the day to a little less than £7, rather more than £50 of our money. The marriage would seem to have been hurried and irregular, and though it may have followed a formal and binding betrothal of a kind that had more sanction then than now, the poet's first child--his daughter Susanna--was born less than six months later. It was not a fortunate union. Twins were born to William and Anne Shakespeare in 1585, and then all record of the home life closes for a long period. Some of Shakespeare's biographers think that the poet had run away to London before the year closed, and that for more than a decade he did not return to the town without taking care that his presence should not be noticed. We do not know how strained his marital relations had become, but we may assume that his home was not a happy one, for in the early days of his union he ran risks that most young married men would avoid for the sake of wife and family.

It seems clear that the story of his poaching expeditions in Charlecote or Fulbroke Parks is not a mere legend unsupported by facts. Sir Thomas Lucy, the owner of Charlecote Park, was of course a game preserver, and Shakespeare must have thought that poaching was a reasonable pastime enough. He dared "do all that may become a man," and the penalty of exciting the wrath of a great landowner and game preserver was no less then than now. Sir Thomas was angry; the poet is said to have written a vulgar, bitter lampoon, still preserved, and affixed a copy to the gates of Charlecote. The response was a persecution that made Stratford too hot to hold a greater man than all the big sportsmen from Nimrod's day to ours, and William Shakespeare left wife and children and vanished from the old town's ken. Some think he lived in neighbouring towns or villages awhile, and found work as a schoolmaster. There was an idea that he went for a time as a soldier to the Low Countries under the Earl of Leicester, whose splendid pageants in honour of a visit from Queen Elizabeth may have inspired some of the fantasy of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

=ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE--INTERIOR=

Doubtless there was a Shakespeare or two in Lord Leicester's regiment; the name was a common one enough; but it was no part of the poet's experience "to trail a pike in Flanders." Directly or indirectly, he was on the high road to London, and Sir Thomas Lucy was to find his claim to immortality in the pursuit of a young poacher and in the poacher's creation of Mr. Justice Shallow of Gloucestershire, whose foolishness, suggested in "Henry IV." (Part II., Act iii. sc. 2), is still further emphasised in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," where he figures as one who has come to make a Star Chamber matter out of Sir John Falstaff's poaching. His complaint will be remembered. "Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broken open my lodge ... the council shall know this."

There has been no lack of determined effort among the poet's countless biographers to give the lie direct to every story that does not cast credit upon his youth. Because he was a great man, many people require his history to be written in a fashion that shall lessen, ignore, or deny his weaknesses. There can be no valid reason for pursuing such a course, for we know that the rule of art is not the rule of morals, and that while a very good poet may be a very bad man, a very worthy man may be a vile poet. The apologists have picked out the finest moral thoughts in the plays and poems and declared that he who could conceive them could not have been less than a saint. They might as well pick out the countless villains of the tragedies and declare that he who presented them must have been a sinner. Truth to tell, the question is one of no importance. Shakespeare was in some respects a man like the majority of men; in other regards he stands alone. Only in this latter aspect have we any occasion to consider him. We have neither the right, the capacity, nor the data by which to sit in judgment; but it is hardly honest to withhold reports, that seem to be well founded, because they do not flatter the youthful career of a great man. In his own "Henry IV." and "Henry V." Shakespeare shows how the recklessness of youth is not incompatible with sound living and a high standard of morality and common sense in the days of responsibility.