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 L7,
rather more than L50 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.