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apparently one of the brothers of the widow Arden, their share in two tenements and the appurtenances at Snitterfield, being perhaps the very premises once partly occupied by Richard Shakespeare. The sum thus raised was only four pounds, and could have done little to relieve their necessities; for the alderman was soon driven again to Edmund Lambert, who, perceiving that he was likely to retain Ashbies on the easy terms of the mortgage, and perhaps influenced by his wife, Mary Shakespeare's sister, lent him further assistance. This is established by a memorandum attached to the will of Roger Sadler, a baker of Stratford, which mentions, under date of 1580, that Edmund Lambert had joined Mr. Cornish as surety for the payment of five pounds-" the debt of Mr. John Shaksper."

Five pounds, measured by the money standard of the time, was a heavy bill for bread, even for an embarrassed alderman; and the credit of John Shakespeare must indeed have run low, if he had sunk so deep in his baker's books. But it is plain, from the statement of his debts, that Roger Sadler sometimes supplied his customers with money as well as bread, evidently considering that the one was as much the staff of life as the other; and this places the item in a clearer light. The Sadlers and the Shakespeares were hereditary friends. We shall trace the intimacy through three generations; and the transaction that affords our first glimpse of it deserves more than the bare mention yet accorded. It brings before us, in fact, a whole group of the family, dropping a whisper of its history. We find ground to believe that Roger Sadler had opened his purse to John Shakespeare at a time when he was in distress; and we discover the poor alderman, after his friend's death, involving himself further with his sharp brother-in-law that he may repay the money. The list

of Roger Sadler's debtors records a claim also of six pounds eight and fourpence against Richard Hathaway, alias Gardiner, of Shottery, thus extending the connection. to the poet's future father-in-law, and showing that he was largely trusted by Roger Sadler at the same time as his father. Nothing could more clearly attest the friendly relations of the three families at this period, and we learn from the precepts of the Stratford Bailiff's Court, that the same intimacy subsisted between John Shakespeare and Richard Hathaway fourteen years before, for in 1566 John Shakespeare forgot the warning of Solomon, and became surety for his friend. The payment of the alderman's debt to Sadler brings forward also the covetous Lambert, who, under pretence of assisting his brother-in-law, is, as we shall presently see, really taking advantage of his necessities, . and drawing him into his own toils. In short, the whole transaction indicates that thereby hangs a tale.

Edmund Lambert might blind his brother-in-law, but he stamped a clear impression of his character on his nephew. Shakespeare learnt to know him as one who "might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries." We must believe that the young poet watched these proceedings with deep attention. His father's credit, and good name, and some twenty-four broad acres, his own inheritance, were in danger. Well might he be versed in the law, for it came visibly into his home, into his own breast, with every surrounding of dramatic interest,-presenting the distressed father; the dejected mother; the avaricious, plotting uncle ; himself the rightful heir, and in its action, the incidents which kept the fortunes of his family in suspense. This it was that made him learned in the wisdom of the lawyers. He knew every arrow in the attorney's quiver-" his quiddits

1 'Hamlet,' act v, 1.

new, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks :"1 and, perhaps, there were times when he could almost have accepted the proposition of Dick the butcher,-"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

"2

John Shakespeare was now in the situation of Antonio, when his last argosy was wrecked in the Narrows; and his involved affairs led to many councils between himself and his wife, which could not be concealed from their eldest son, who, in his seventeenth year, must have given tokens of his great capacity. It was plain that there was but one thing to be done: they must raise the forty pounds required to free Ashbies by Michaelmas, or Lambert would have his bond. John Shakespeare must "make money," and unhappily this could only be done effectually on Roderigo's plan:

"I'll go sell all my land." 3

The share in the cottages at Snitterfield was already disposed of; Ashbies was mortgaged; and now, to redeem Ashbies, he parted with the reversionary interest which was to devolve to his wife on the death of her stepmother. We learn from the registry of a fine in the Chapter House that the reversion was conveyed, in the Easter term of 1580, to Robert Webb, the widow's kinsman, who had previously bought the cottages; and the purchase money is stated to be forty pounds, the exact sum obtained on the Lambert mortgage. There can, therefore, be no doubt that it was specially raised for this purpose.

On or before Michaelmas day, John Shakespeare went to Lambert's house, at Burton on the Heath, and there tendered him the forty pounds. He may have gone on the errand without a misgiving, in the confidence of a trust

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ing kinsman, and even with a grateful recollection of the several little aids he had since received in moments of pressure. But these loans, which he had accepted as tokens of kindness, Lambert professed to regard as additions to the mortgage. He demanded the immediate payment of the whole debt, as the condition of surrendering the property. That, he maintained, was the bond: his ducats, or the pound of flesh nearest Antonio's heart-the dower of his wife, and the heritage of his children. Perhaps Shakespeare was present at this interview; and, if so, it gave him as full a revelation of the law as he could desire. He learnt nine of its points in one word-possession! On the table was the open deed, which signed away the last remnant of his heritage; and there was the well-known. mark of his father traced on the parchment. We may imagine the reflection it called up in his mind :-"Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment; and that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man ?”1

1 King Henry VI., Part II.,' act iv. 2.

103

IX.

BAD COMPANY.

THERE is a remarkable similarity in the situation of Shakespeare at this period of his life and that of Burns at the same age. In his youth, Burns, like Shakespeare, saw his father constantly involved in difficulties, overtaken by one misfortune after another, yet still struggling-manfully working on to the last. In this atmosphere of gloom, a helpless spectator of the reverses of his family and the blight of his own prospects, he had ever before him his mother's troubled face, and often blended his tears with hers. So the two poets of nature rose under a similar discipline, in the daily experience of disappointment, and in the midst of privation and sorrow. God unlocked the pent-up sympathies in their breasts with the selfsame key.

It is related of Burns that the dark influences around him never destroyed his inherent cheerfulness. If the distress of others cast him down one moment, in the next his trouble was forgotten, and all around were inspirited by his ringing laugh and voice. So it was with Shakespeare. His disposition typified his natal month; and if the sorrow of his home sometimes brimmed his eyes, the tears soon gave way to smiles, to his heart's innate sunshine. As he says of Troilus," he was, an't were, a man born in April." Tradition reports that his "natural wit" was always in motion, as if it flowed through his mind like the blood

1 Troilus and Cressida,' act i. 2.

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