LAUNCHED. APPRENTICE BOY. AMBITION.
_"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our Stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings."_
Will Shakspere and myself left school when we were fourteen years of age.
Our parents being reduced in worldly circumstances, needed the financial
fruits of our labor.
Shakspere was bound to a butcher named John Bull, for a term of three
years, while I was put at the trade of stone-cutting with Sam Granite for
the same period.
Will was one of the finest looking boys in the town of Stratford,
aristocratic by nature, large and noble in appearance, and the pride of all
the girls in the county of Warwick; for his fame as a runner, boxer,
drinker, dancer, reciter, speaker, hunter, swimmer and singer was well
known in the surrounding farms and villages, where he had occasion to
drive, purchase and sell meat animals for his butcher boss, John Bull.
Shakspere's father assisted Bull in selling hides and buying wool.
In the winter of 1580, Will and myself joined a new thespian society,
organized by the boys and girls of Stratford, with a contingent of
theatrical talent from Shottery, Snitterfield, Leicester, Kenilworth and
Coventry.
Strolling players, chartered by Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester,
often visited Stratford and the surrounding towns, infusing into the young,
and even the old, a desire for that innocent fun of tragic or comic
philosophy that wandering minstrels and circus exhibitions generate in the
human heart.
Plays of Roman, Spanish and German origin, as well as those of Old Albion,
were enacted on our rural stage, and although we had not the paraphernalia
and scenery of the London actors, we made up in frantic enthusiasm what we
lacked in artistic finish, and often in our amateur exhibitions at balls,
fairs, races and May Day Morris dances, we "astonished the natives," who
paid from a penny to sixpence to see and hear the "Stratford Oriental
Theatrical Company."
Shakspere always took a leading part in every play, poem and declamation,
but when an encore was given and a demand for a recitation on love, Will
was in his natural element and gave the eager audience dashes from Ovid's
Metamorphoses or Petrarch's Sonnets.
The local company had a large assortment of poetic and theatrical
translations, and many of the boys and girls who had passed through the
Latin school, could "spout" the rhythmic lines of Ovid, Virgil, Horace or
Petrarch in the original language. And strange to say, the Warwickshire
audience would cheer the Latin more than the English rendition, on the
principle that the least you know about a thing the more you enjoy it!
Thus pretense and ignorance make a stagger at information, and while
fooling themselves, imagine that they fool their elbow neighbor!
Shakspere had a most marvelous memory, and his sense of taste, smell,
feeling, hearing and particularly seeing was abnormally developed, and
constant practice in talking and copying verses and philosophic sentences
made him almost perfect in his deductions and conclusions. He was a natural
orator, and impressed the beholder with his superiority.
He had a habit of copying the best verses, dramatic phrases and orations of
ancient authors, and then to show his superiority of epigrammatic, incisive
style, he could paraphrase the poems of other writers into his own divine
sentences, using the crude ore of Homeric and Platonic philosophy,
resolving their thoughts into the best form of classic English, lucid,
brave and blunt!
I have often tested his powers of lightning observation with each of us
running by shop windows in Stratford, Oxford or London, and betting a
dinner as to who could name the greatest number of objects, and he
invariably could name correctly three to my one. In visiting country
farmers in search of cattle, sheep or pigs he could mount a stone fence or
climb a hedge row gate, and by a glance over the field or meadow, give the
correct number of animals in sight.
He was a wonder to the yeomanry of Warwickshire and the surrounding
counties, and when he had occasion to rest for the night at farm houses or
taverns, he was the prime favorite of the rural flames or bouncing,
beaming barmaid. The girls went wild about him. The physical development of
Shakspere was as noticeable as his mental superiority. Often when he
ploughed the placid waters of the Avon, or buffeted the breakers of the
moaning sea, have I gazed in rapture at his manly, Adonis form, standing on
the sands, like a Grecian wrestler, waiting for the laurel crown of the
Olympic games.
_Great Shakspere was endowed with heavenly light;
He read the book of Nature day and night,
And delving through the strata of mankind
Divined the thoughts that thrilled the mystic mind,
And felt the pulse of all the human race,
While from their beating heart could surely trace
The various passions that inspire the soul
Around this breathing world from pole to pole!_
My family and the Hathaway household were on familiar terms, for my father
at times worked an adjoining estate at the edge of the village of Shottery,
a straggling community of farmers and tradesmen, with the usual
wheelwright, blacksmith shop, corn and meat store and alehouse attachments.
William, in his rural perambulations, often put up for the night at our
cottage, and as there was generally some fun going on in the neighborhood
after dark, I led him into many frolics with the boys and girls; and I can
assure you he was a rusher with the fair sex, capturing the plums that fell
from the tree of beauty and passion.
On a certain moonlight night, in the month of May, 1581, a large concourse
of rural belles and beaux assembled at the home of John Dryden, washed by
the waters of the Avon, and thrilled by the songs of the nightingales,
thrushes and larks lending enchantment to the flitting hours.
Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcote and Shottery sent their contingent of
roistering boys and girls to enjoy the moonlight lawn dance and rural feast
set out under flowery bowers by the generous Dryden.
It would have done your heart good to see the variegated dresses, antics
and faces of the happy rural belles. I see them as plain as ever in the
looking-glass of memory. There is Laura Combs, plump and intelligent, Mary
Scott, willowy and keen, Jennie Field, sedate and sterling, Mary Hall,
musical and handsome, Annie Condell, modest and benevolent, Joyce Acton,
witty and aristocratic, Lizzie Heminge, bouncing and beaming, Fannie Hunt,
stately and kind, while Anne Hathaway, the big girl of the party, seemed to
be the leader in all the innocent mischief of the evening.
William took a particular liking to the push and go of Anne, and she seemed
to concentrate her gaze on his robust form at first sight. William asked
me, as the friend of the family, to introduce him to Miss Hathaway, which I
did in my best words, and away they went, on a hop, step and a jump through
the Morris dance that was just then being enacted on the lawn.
The clarion notes of the farm cocks were saluting the rosy footsteps of the
dawn when the various parties dispersed for home.
The last I saw of William he was helping Miss Hathaway over the rustic
stile and hedge row that rimmed the old thatched cottage home of his new
found flame.
It was a frigid day or night when William could not find something fresh
and new among the fair sex, and like a king bee in a field of wild flowers,
he sipped the nectar of love and beauty, and tossed carking care to the
vagrant winds.
It was soon after this moonlight party that a picnic revel was given in the
domain of Sir Hugh Clopton, near the old mill and stone bridge erected by
that generous public benefactor.
The boys and girls of the town turned out _en masse_, and enjoyed the
hawking, hunting, swimming, dancing, archery and boating that prevailed
that day.
In the midst of the festivities, while a long line of rural beauties and
beaux were prancing and rollicking on the bridge, a scream, and a flash of
Dolly Varden dress in the river showed the struggling efforts of Anne
Hathaway to keep her head above water.
One glance at the pride of his heart struggling for her life determined the
soul of the athlete, when he plunged into the running stream, caught the
arm of his adored as she was going down for the third time, and then with a
few mighty sweeps of his brawny arm, he reached the shore and heaved her on
the sands in an almost lifeless condition. She was soon restored, however,
by her numerous companions, with only the loss of a few ribbons and bunches
of hawthorn blossoms that William had tied in her golden hair that morning.
William was the hero of the day, and his fame for bravery rung on the lips
of the Warwickshire yeomanry, while in the heart of Anne Hathaway devotion
reigned supreme.
_"There is no love broker in the world can more prevail in man's
commendation with woman than report of valor."_
The courtship of William and Anne was rapid, and although her father died
only a few months before the 27th of November, 1582, license to marry was
suddenly obtained through the insistence of the yeoman friends of the
Hathaway family, Fulke-Sandells and John Richardson, who convinced the Lord
Bishop of Worcester that one calling of the banns of matrimony was only
necessary.
William left his home in Stratford immediately and took charge of Anne's
cottage and farm, settling down as soon as one of his rollicking nature
could realize that he had been virtually forced into marrying a buxom girl,
eight years older than himself, and a woman of hot temper. _Six_ months
after marriage Susanna, his daughter was born, and about two years after,
February 2d, 1585, his twin children Hammet and Judith were ushered into
his cottage home, as new pledges of matrimonial felicity.
Things did not move on with William as happily after marriage as before,
and while his wife did most of the work, the Bard of Nature preferred to
shirk hard labor in field and wood, longing constantly to meet the "boys"
at the tavern, or fish, sing, hunt and poach along the Avon.
Yoking Pegasus to a Flanders mare would be about as reasonable as joining a
practical, honest woman with a poet!
Water and hot oil will not mix, and the fires of genius cannot be curbed or
subdued by material surroundings. Beef cannot appreciate brains!
Anne was constantly sand papering William about his vagabond life, and
holding up the picture of ruin for her ancestral estate, by his thoughtless
extravagance and determination to attend to other people's business instead
of his own. As the wife was senior and business boss, the Bard endured
these curtain lectures with meekness and surface sorrow and promises of
reformation, but, when out of her sight continued in the same old rut of
playing the clown and philosopher for the public amusement.
_"How hard it is to hide the spark of Nature!"_