supported by external testimony of any weight', and it should be noticed that in the circumstances, public and private, of his father's career, involving close and habitual contact with the law, he had special opportunities for becoming acquainted with judicial terms and procedures.

But, whatever his occupation, he did not succeed in mending the fallen fortunes of his family, and it was not long before he incurred additional grave responsibilities on his own account. On November 28, 1582, a licence was granted by the Bishop of Worcester for the marriage of William Shakspere and Anne Hathaway upon once asking of the banns. The bridegroom was rather over eighteen, and the lady was some seven years his senior. She was the daughter of Richard Hathaway, a substantial yeoman of Shottery, a village about a mile distant from Stratford. Her father had been dead a short time, but her friends seem to have pressed on the match, not without sufficient reason, for a child was born in May, 1583, six months after the wedding. It has been urged on Shakspere's behalf by HalliwellPhillipps and others that a precontract had probably been celebrated some months before the betrothal in church, and that such a ceremony, as is plain from the poet's own words in Measure for Measure, was recognized as giving complete legal validity to a union. But the existence of a precontract in Shakspere's case is a pure supposition, and the point will scarcely seem worth debating to those who see in the poet's Sonnets an unmistakable confession of subsequent disloyalty to his marriage vow. Such a confession also, if accepted as genuine, goes far to answer the question whether the union, so inauspiciously begun, was happy or the reverse. Flawless

1 Nash's words, in his preface to Greene's Menaphon, may apply to Shakspere, 'It is a common practice nowadays among a sort of shifting companions, that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint whereto they were born [i.e. that of an attorney's clerk, so called because legal documents generally began Noverint universi] and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarce Latinize their neck-verse, if they should have need.' (But see p. 62, note.) The fullest account of Shakspere's knowledge of law is given by Lord Campbell in his Shakspere's Legal Acquirements. Campbell, however, leaves it an open question whether Shakspere had ever been professionally engaged in law-work. Elze maintains strongly that Shakspere must have been in an attorney's office.

it cannot have been, and the famous passage in Twelfth Night, where the Duke declares with an emphasis uncalled for by the special situation, 'Let still the woman take an elder than herself,' has a ring that seems to come from the dramatist's own heart. The fact that in his will he only left her his second-best bed, and that apparently as an afterthought, supports the theory that his marriage was unhappy. It is true that her dower in his freehold property was secured to her by law, but had he felt for her the devotion of an affectionate husband, he would have been at pains to secure for her more than the legal minimum of his worldly belongings.

One fact at least is certain, that the marriage made it more imperative than ever that Shakspere. should secure an adequate income. Within two years of the birth of his first child, who had been christened Susannah, his wife bore him twins, baptized as Hamnet and Judith in the parish church on Feb. 2, 1583. It was probably these increased responsibilities that largely determined him to seek his fortunes in a wider field than Stratford, but there is no reason for absolutely discrediting Rowe's circumstantial statement that the immediate cause of his departure was a quarrel with Sir Thomas Lucy, the powerful owner of Charlecote House. Rowe's story of the poaching expedition 1, of Lucy's prosecution of Shakspere, of the latter's reprisal in a satirical ballad, 'which was probably the first essay of his poetry,' and of Lucy's redoubled severity which drove him from Stratford, need not be accepted in every detail, but it is supported in its main features by the earlier authority of Davies, vicar of Saperton, who wrote at the close of the seventeenth century, and it has doubtless a kernel of truth. Davies also states that Lucy is Shakspere's 'Justice Clodpate,' and 'he calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three louses rampant for his arms.' Justice Clodpate is, of course, Justice Shallow, and the reference is to the opening scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Shallow

1 In his pamphlet, Shakspere no Deer-Stealer, Mr. Bracebridge has sought to show that the scene of the adventure was not Charlecote Park, but the neighbouring estate of Fulbrooke, which had been sequestered by the Crown, and of which Sir Thomas Lucy may, without any legal right, have constituted himself the guardian.

has come up from Gloucestershire to make a Star-chamber matter of a poaching affray on his estates, in which Falstaff is the chief culprit, and it is here worth noticing that Lucy in 1585 introduced a bill into Parliament for the better preservation of game. In a conversation with his cousin Slender, Shallow enlarges upon his judicial functions and his ancient lineage, and Slender in support of the latter claim alludes to the 'dozen white luces' in his 'coat.' Luce is the heraldic term for a pike, and the words undoubtedly refer to the 'three luces hauriant argent,' which are the arms of the Lucys and are engraved on their monuments in Charlecote Church. Shakspere makes the conversation linger round the topic, for Shallow replies, "It is an old coat,' and Sir Hugh Evans makes the delightfully blundering comment, ‘The dozen white louses do become an old coat well.' Shortly afterwards, when Falstaff enters, Shallow flings his misdeeds in his teeth, 'Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broken open my lodge,' and he reiterates his resolve to bring the matter before the Council. Here would seem to be a reminiscence of incidents like those described by Rowe, and it is at any rate certain that more than ten years after Shakspere had left Stratford he still felt a sufficiently deep grudge against the owner of Charlecote to satirize him in the only one of his characters who can be successfully identified with an original'.

1 The identification finds further support in Henry IV, Part II, where Shallow is proud to call himself one of the king's justices of the peace, and where, as commissioner of the muster, he helps Falstaff to review his ragged regiment. Sir Thomas Lucy served in both these capacities, and Shallow's officiousness tallies with what the Stratford archives record of his fondness for the exercise of his legal authority.

CHAPTER VII.

SHAKSPERE IN LONDON. THE SONNETS.

He had had

It was almost certainly in 1586 or 1587 that Shakspere set out for London and began his theatrical career. frequent opportunities in Stratford of becoming familiar with plays and players. His father, when bailiff in 1568, had licensed two important companies to play in the town, and between 1573 and 1581 performances had been given yearly in the Guildhall. Shakspere can scarcely fail to have been present on many of these occasions, and he may also have seen the great Miracle cycle at Coventry on Corpus Christi Day. He may even himself at festival times have played a part in rural comedies, such as the 'pageants of delight,' of which Julia speaks in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, or the show of the 'Nine Worthies' presented by Holofernes and his companions in Love's Labour's Lost. The year 1587 was one of unusual theatrical activity at Stratford, and Shakspere doubtless took the opportunity of joining a travelling company, and so making his way to the capital. But, if unanimous tradition is to be at all trusted, he must have begun his connexion with the stage in some very humble capacity. Johnson, writing in 1765, states that after the poet's arrival in London he 'lived for a time by very mean employments,' and he tells the well-known story that his first expedient was to wait at the door of the playhouse, and hold the horses of those that had no servants, that they might be ready again after the performance.' According to Castle, the parish clerk of Stratford, he was received into the

playhouse as a serviture' or attendant on the actors, and Malone towards the close of the eighteenth century mentions the stage tradition that his first office was that of prompter's attendant. Fleay maintains that in all probability the company in which Shakspere enlisted was that of Lord Leicester which visited Stratford in 15871. The earl's original body of actors, together with that of Lord Warwick, had been broken up in March, 1583, by the selection of twelve men to form the Queen's players. But enough remained to compose a second company, and in 1586, during the prevalence of the plague in London, they travelled on the Continent, where they acted for Frederick II of Denmark, who afterwards transferred five of them to Christian I, Duke of Saxony. On their return to England in 1587 they made a provincial tour, and it was during this that Shakspere may be supposed to have joined them. The company then included Kempe and Pope, two of the most noted comedians of the day, and possibly the tragedian, Richard Burbage. On Sept. 4, 1588, Leicester died, and his players soon afterwards found a new patron in Lord Strange. They then settled in London and acted for a time at the Cross Keys, but in February, 1592, they migrated to the Rose Theatre on the Bank Side, built by the enterprising manager, Henslowe. At this time or possibly earlier, Henslowe's son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, joined the company, which on March 3 produced with triumphant success (as we learn from Nash in his introduction to Piers Penniless) Henry VI, Part I, in whose composition Shakspere had a hand. That by this year Shakspere had become sufficiently prominent both as actor and as dramatist to excite professional jealousies is plain from the well-known words of Greene in his valedictory Groatsworth of Wit, where he warns Marlowe and other writers for the stage against putting any trust in players. Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the

1 Fleay's Life and Work of Shakspere, pp. 8-26 and 90-125.