Sharing, it may be by hereditary possession, some portion however trifling, of the gains of the bold enterprize, John Shakespeare about the year 1556 felt emboldened to woo. and in due course of time, about a year afterwards, felt doubtless blessed in wedding Mary Arden, in the pleasant, quiet, Auburn-like village of Willmecote, near Stratfordupon-Avon. She was the youngest daughter, and, as testified by the father's will, favourite child of Robert Arden, a yeoman, who traced his pedigree in an uninterrupted line to the highest antiquity of any family in Warwickshire. The worldly circumstances of Shakespeare's father prior to this marriage are thought to have been somewhat depressed; and it has been regretted that the first mention we find of his name in the borough of Stratford is connected with an offensive incumbrance in Henley Street (1552), and in the second place (1556), as a defendant in an action brought by one Thomas Siche for the recovery of £8. But as Mr. Halliwell has discovered that the decision of the court was against the plaintiff, it may be reasonably concluded the claim was unjust, and repudiated in consequence. That he was at this period a well-to-do man may be fairly inferred from the fact of his purchasing house property in Stratford. He is variously described as a butcher, a glover, and a considerable dealer in wool. There is some evidence to show that he was engaged in all of these kindred occupations, and may have been at the same time a farmer. As the heiress of Robert Arden, John Shakespeare's wife brought him a respectable dowry in houses and land, so that we are not surprised to find him rising rapidly to positions of trust and public importance amongst his fellow townsmen. In 1556, he was on the jury of the court-leet; in 1557, an ale-taster; in 1558, a burgess; in 1559, a constable; in 1560, an affeeror; in 1561, a chamberlain; in 1565, an alderman; and in 1568, high bailiff of the town. His education, together with the rise and supposed decline of his worldly prosperity, has formed a subject of controversy amongst biographers. It will perhaps surprise some readers to learn that it has been ascertained he governed the borough without assistance from a glimmering of scholarship; but those who reason on the Baconian principle, from the known to the unknown, will not be astonished to hear that three hundred years ago the chief magistrate of Stratford-uponAvon could not write his name. more. The thriving burgher knew, however, how to succeed in life, and was perhaps "happy because he knew no His respectable wife brought him a respectable family of sons and daughters, who arrived in Stratford, according to the parish register of their baptisms, in the following order : Joan, or Jone, "daughter of John Shakespeare," baptized 15th September, 1558.—Died young. Margaret, baptized 2nd December, 1562.-Died in 1563. WILLIAM, baptized 26th April, 1564.-Died in 1616. Gilbert, baptized 13th October, 1566. [Was alive in 1609.] Joan, or Jone, baptized 15th April, 1569.-Died 1646. Thus of these eight children three died at a very tender age. The burial of Margaret is recorded on 30th April, 1563, and that of Anne on 4th April, 1579. The evidence of the death of the first-born is contained in the fact of the baptism of another Joan in 1569. The burial is not entered on the register, and some have asserted that the latter child was not the sister of William Shakespeare, but the daughter of another John Shakespeare. Mr. Knight says registry of a second Joan leaves no reasonable doubt that the first died, and that a favourite name was preserved in the family;" and as the only second John Shakespeare known in that age was not married till 1584, he was clearly not the father of the child born fifteen years previously. the It would not be to the purpose to try to trace the lives and fortunes of any of the five children, who survived the death of Anne, with the exception of our subject, the incomparable William. The only claimant to be a descendant of the stock of John Shakespeare is George Shakespeare, a worthy workman resident at Wolverhampton, who, with the assistance of Mr. George Griffith and other friends, has been for a considerable time endeavouring, at much expense and trouble, to trace his lineage to Edmund Shakespeare. His faith is founded on family tradition, and he believes he could in all probability establish it to the public satisfaction, but that some leaves have been torn out of the middle of an old registry at Charlecote, which breaks the line of his recorded pedigree. He has not, however, abandoned his dry and somewhat hopeless labours, and every Shakespearian must wish him success. We have no record of the birth of William Shakespeare, or of the house at which he was born, but both important facts are sufficiently established to justify the universal belief that the "Star of Poets" first appeared on the 23rd of April, 1564, in Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon. The first documentary notice of him is in the parish registry, which informs us in bad Latin that William, the son of John Shakespeare, was baptized April 26th, 1564. No register of birth, singular to say, was kept for ages, and those of baptisms, marriages, and deaths not strictly made until 1558, when, by an act of Elizabeth, due attention was enforced to the matter. Baptisms more closely followed the birth, however, in Shakespeare's than in our time, lest death should step in between the events, and the third day after the birth was fixed for the ceremony. The practice is the more likely to have been observed in Shakespeare's case, from the fact that the plague, which raged that year in Stratford, cutting off in six months onesixth of the population, no doubt created a general apprehension of sudden dissolution. There was a glorious escape vouchsafed to Shakespeare's family, and a mercy to the great family of mankind, for the poet remained unscathed by the malady. |