the nobility, with the exhibition of splendid masks and pageants, and by the people, with pastimes and mummings of every kind. Shrove Tide was, however, the especial season of theatrical exhibition. On this day every town and hamlet, high and low, noble and mean, all must have their spectacle. On May-Day festive processions, with bands of music, were to be seen in every village, and lofty May-poles, adorned with flags and banners, streamers and garlands, were erected, around which the young of both sexes danced merrily. The most beautiful and virtuous maiden was chosen Queen of the May, to preside over the festival, and to dance with the fool, a piper, and four or five Morris dancers, bedecked with shells, ribbons, and scarfs, the so-called Morris-dance -an imitation of the Spanish Morisco; or, perhaps, the place of these games was taken by Robin Hood and his maid Marian, as Queen, surrounded by a band of youths, fantastically disguised, to represent other popular and favourite characters, celebrated in song and legend, such as Friar Tuck, Little John, the Dragon, the Hobby Horse, and such like. Matches at crossbow and dancing usually ended the day. A portion of these festivities, particularly the much-loved Morris-dances, were repeated at Whitsuntide, under the direction of the Lord of Whitsun-Ale, and united with dramatic representations (Whitsun-plays). The Monday after Whitsun-week was the festival of Sheep-shearing, and was kept with like festivities. At the Harvest Home all distinctions of master and man, mistress and maid, were laid aside -all mixed together without restraint; every one did and said what he pleased. In the winter, again, St. Martin's, and especially Christmas-day, were celebrated with song and dancewith games of all kinds and mummings. (Drake, i. 124. 208.) Each season of the year had one at least of such festivals. The anniversaries even of the consecration of churches, the yearly fairs and weddings, were not allowed to pass without dances, games, and even theatrical representations. (Drake, i. 124. 208.) In the intervals, again, between holiday and festival, there was still no lack of amusement. A national favourite was that of bearbaiting, (mentioned by Shakspeare in the "Merry Wives of Windsor,") for which the Paris Garden in London, a large circular building, was expressly built. Cock-fighting, too, which is also alluded to in the same piece, was a far more general and popular amusement than at the present day. Races, hunting, hawking, fishing, and athletic exercises of every sort, (Games at Cotswold, Drake, i. 252), and especially shooting with the long and crossbow, were continually occurring, and eagerly thronged with spectators. Moreover, troops of gypsies, boxers, tumblers, dancers, and minstrels or ballad singers, itinerated through the land, and exhibited their arts and devices. But above all were the strolling players welcome alike to town and village-the cottage and the hall, and employed in various ways, (Drake, i. 247); a custom of which Shakspeare has availed himself in "Hamlet" and the Taming of the Shrew." Merry Old England was yet in its prime. In short, the fantastic and poetic spirit of the middle ages still survived in a time, which was, nevertheless, the dawn of a mental tendency directly opposed to it. Shakspeare stood, in fact, on the boundary line of two great periods. On one hand, with the last warm kisses of parting, he was taking leave of the stately grandeur and magnificence of the middle ages, with the lofty boldness and stern energy of feudalism, the encroaching power and splendour of the Church-the significant and imaginative character of chivalry and the monkish institutions-the independence and isolation of the burgher classes, laborious and peaceful, but at the same time luxurious and powerful-and all the rich treasures of a highly advanced and thoughtful art, which drew its inspiration from earth and heaven alike. On the other hand, there stood to welcome him the future, with the dazzling splendour of a powerful, almost absolute monarchy, with the intellectual vigour and depth of the reformed religion, and the inspiration of a re-animated faith, with the more refined and liberal culture of a gallant, imperious, and courtly nobility-with the growing importance of the middle classes, and their incipient struggles for political independence; and, above all, with the wonders of science, and the irresistible energy of a new intellectual tendency, with its searching spirit of philosophical inquiry. One foot was on the domain of a past, wherein all the several parts of society, shut up within themselves into distinct circles, and rounded off into independent bodies, had acquired determinate objects and shapes, in which mind and life exhibited themselves objectively, under fixed, though pregnant forms, and in which, consequently, the objectivity of mind-the authority of the existentpredominated throughout. With the other foot he pressed on the boundaries of a future, in which the human mind, alarmed at the dead formalism, the immoral outwardness and unmeaningness into which this objectivity had degenerated, was fast rising in revolt against the slavish subjection into which it had fallen, with the design of raising itself above it, and of establishing the divine right of criticism* and reflection—in which in short, the subjectivity of mind began to reign. The gradual decay of the former, and the growing supremacy of the latter tendency, were the necessary results of the Reformation. With the Reformation too, indeedi. e. upon the fall of the Roman Catholic Church-that groundwork of the medieval frame of society-the whole building inevitably fell. The middle ages came to a close, and the modern æra began. Both, however, the former in their exit, and the latter in its entrance-were present with equal vitality in the age of Shakspeare. In Shakspeare poesy, too, they are both equally present; and it will be the business of our next section to show, that in his poetic view of the world and things, both the fixed, strongly defined, and intrinsically massive objectivity of the middle ages, as well as the free subjectivity of the modern spirit, which plays in all possible forms and colour, are combined and blended together into an ideal or organic unity. -- William Shakspeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, on the 23rd April, † 1564. A family of this name (sometimes written Shaxper, Shakspere, Shakspeare, and Shakespeare, the poet himself signed himself-in his will, at least-Shakspeare, mostly flourishing artisans or agriculturists,) were in the sixteenth century widely spread over the woodlands of the county. Of its several branches, however, the poet's father alone, John * How cutting and severe was the spirit of criticism even in the days of Shakspeare, is shown by Drake, i. 456, in many striking instances. + According to the Church Registry, he was baptized on the 26th of April. The 23rd, as the date of his birth, rests, therefore, on probability, of, however, a very high degree. * Shakspeare, is at all known: originally a glover, at Stratford, he afterwards added the trades of skinner and woolstapler, and was in the prime of life a person of property and consideration, being in 1557 elected a member of the town-council, and holding the office of chamberlain from 1561 to 1563; elected alderman 1565; and in 1568-9, serving the office of High Bailiff and lastly, in 1571, the sworn senior alderman. In later years, however, i. e. after 1574, his circumstances appear to have declined; he mortgaged, in 1578, the little property brought him by his wife, and presently was so reduced (not so much, perhaps, by his own fault as from the ruin of the flourishing trade in wool, on which the prosperity of the little town depended), that of the trifling sum of 6s. 8d. which every alderman had to pay, one-half, and the whole of the weekly alms of 4d., was remitted in his favour; and that he was several times arrested and execution repeatedly issued against him without any return. It would appear that he was never able to recover himself, at least in a complaint addressed, in 1597, to one John Lambert, he mentions his own poverty and want of friends. He outlived the prime of his son's fame, and died in 1601.† His wife was Mary, youngest daughter of Robert Arden, of an old, and in the time of Henry VII., very distinguished family of Wellingcote, in Warwickshire. She bore him eight children, of whom, however, several died in early childhood, and she left behind her, besides William, only one daughter, Joan, married to William Hart, a hatter, in Stratford, to whose family belonged the Thomas Hart, who, in 1794, possessed one of the poet's two houses in Stratford. The history of Shakspeare's youth is involved in the greatest obscurity. This alone appears to be certain, that, in consequence of his father's adverse circumstances, his education must have been very imperfect after his tenth year. In the grammar school of his native town, which he probably frequented up to his eleventh or twelfth year, he learnt the little Latin which, according to his * I do not see any reason to question the statements of Aubrey and Rowe on this point. + All this is confirmed, partly by the registries and the town records of Stratford, and partly by deeds, wills, and other extant documents. friend Ben Jonson, he possessed. As tradition goes, he was taken from school in his eleventh year to assist his father in his business of a skinner and woolstapler, but afterwards held the situation of schoolmaster in the neighbourhood of Stratford. These two statements do not, however, rest on any good authority. Boaden (on the Sonnets, p. 8) attempts to furnish further proof of the old conjecture of Bishop Percy, that the youthful Shakspeare was present at the festivities with which Lord Leicester sought to enliven Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth, and probably took a part suitable to his age in the dramatic exhibitions. As the Queen's visit took place in the year 1575, and Kenilworth was only fourteen miles from Stratford, it is at once conceivable that a boy, like Shakspeare, should have felt a strong desire to be present. Although, therefore, the allusions in the "Midsummer Night's Dream," (act 2, scene 1, My Gentle Puck come hither, &c.) which unquestionably refer to some of the masks and scenes of that festival, on which Boaden chiefly rests his arguments, do not prove anything, since they may have been taken from oral or printed accounts of eye-witnesses, the fact is still not improbable. That such an event, if true, must have worked strongly on Shakspeare's youthful fancy and poetic temperament, may well be assumed. In all probability it afforded the leading impulse to his mental development, and was the cause of his subsequent determination to set off for London, and go upon the stage. As early as his eighteenth year Shakspeare married Anne, the daughter of Richard Hathaway, a thriving farmer in the neighbourhood of Stratford. That this marriage took place in 1582 has been inferred from the birth of his eldest child, a daughter of the name of Susan, who was born in 1583, according to the parish register of Stratford. Eighteen months afterwards his family was increased by twins, a son and daughter, who were baptized in February, 1585, by the names of Hammet and Judith. What could have led him to so carly a marriage with a woman eight years his senior, is unknown-probably a youthful indiscretion, which he must conceal and atone for. At all events the union was none of the happiest, as is proved both from his subsequent |