together, which he gave to Mr. Peyton, an alderman of Stratford, who sent it to Mr. Malone, through the Rev. Mr. Devonport, vicar of Stratford. This paper, which was first published by Malone in 1790, is printed also in Reed's Shakspeare and in Drake's 'Shakspeare and his Times.' It consists of fourteen articles, purporting to be a confession of faith of "John Shakspear, an unworthy member of the holy Catholic religion." We have no hesitation whatever in believing this document to be altogether a fabrication. Malone, when he first published the paper in his edition of Shakspeare, said "I have taken some pains to ascertain the authenticity of this manuscript, and, after a very careful inquiry, am perfectly satisfied that it is genuine." In 1796, however, in his work on the Ireland forgeries, he asserts" I have since obtained documents that clearly prove it could not have been the composition of any one of our poet's family." We not only do not believe that it was "the composition of any one of our poet's amily," but we do not believe that it is the work of a Roman Catholic at all. That John Shakspere was what we popularly call a Protestant in the year 1568, when his son William was four years old, may be shown by the clearest of proofs. He was in that year the chief magistrate of Stratford; he could not have become so without taking the Oath of Supremacy, according to the statute of the 1st of Elizabeth, 1558-9. To refuse this oath was made punishable with forfeiture and imprisonment, with the pains of præmunire and high treason. "The conjecture," says Chalmers (speaking in support of the authenticity of this confession of faith), "that Shakspeare's family were Roman Catholics is strengthened by the fact that his father declined to attend the corporation meetings, and was at last removed from the corporate body." He was removed from the corporate body in 1585, with a distinct statement of the reason for this removal-bis nonattendance when summoned to the halls. According to this reasoning of Chalmers, John Shakspere did not hesitate to take the Oath of Supremacy when he was chief magistrate in 1564, but retired from the corporation in 1585, where he might have remained without offence to his own conscience or to others, being, in the language of that day, a Popish recusant, to be stigmatized as such, persecuted, and subject to the most odious restrictions. If he left or was expelled the corporation for his religious opinions, he would, of course, not attend the service of the church, for which offence he would be liable, in 1585, to a fine of 207. per month; and then, to crown the whole, in this his last confession, spiritual will, and testament, he calls upon all his kinsfolks to assist and succour him after his death" with the holy sacrifice of the mass," with a promise that he "will not be ungrateful unto them for so great a benefit," well knowing that by the Act of 1581 the saying of mass was punishable by a year's imprisonment and a fine of 200 marks, and the hearing of it by a similar imprisonment and a fine of 100 marks. The fabrication appears to us as gross as can well be imagined. To the grammar-school, then, with some preparation, we bold that William Shakspere goes, about the year 1571. His father is at this time, as we have said, chief alderman of his town; he is a gentleman, now, of repute and authority; he is Master John Shakspere; and assuredly the worthy curate of the neighbouring village of Luddington, Thomas Hunt, who was also the schoolmaster, would have received his new scholar with some kindness. As his "shining morning face" first passed out of the main street into that old court through which the upper room of learning was to be reached, a new life would be opening upon him. The humble minister of religion who was his first instructor has left no memorials of his talents or his acquirements; and in a few years another master came after him, Thomas Jenkins, also unknown to fame. All praise and honour be to them; for it is impossible to imagine that the teachers of William Shakspere were evil instructors-giving the boy husks instead of wholesome aliment. They could not have been harsh and perverse instructors, for such spoil the gentlest natures, and his was always gentle :-" My gentle Shakspere" is he called by a rough but noble spirit-one in whom was all honesty and genial friendship under a rude exterior. His won drous abilities could not be spoiled even by ignorant instructors. The first who attempted to write 'Some Account of the Life of William Shakspeare,' Rowe, says, "His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool, had so large a family, ten children in all, that, though he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, it is true, for some time at a free-school, where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was master of; but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language." This statement, be it remembered, was written one hundred and thirty years after the event which it professes to record-the early removal of William Shakspere from the free-school to which he had been sent by his father. We have no hesitation in saying that the statement is manifestly based upon two assumptions, both of which are incorrect:—The first, that his father had a large family of ten children, and was so narrowed in his circumstances that he could not spare even the time of his eldest son, he being taugh for nothing; and, secondly, that the son, by his early removal from the school where he acquired "wha1 Latin he was master of," was prevented attaining a "proficiency in that language," his works manifesting an ignorance of the ancients." It may be convenient that we should in this place endeavour to dispose of both these assertions. The family of John Snakspere did not consist, as we have already shown, of ten children. In the year 1578, when the school education of William may be reasonably supposed to have terminated, and before which period his "assistance at home" would rather have been embarrassing than useful to his father, the family consisted of five children: William, aged fourteen; Gilbert, twelve; Joan, nine; Anne, seven; and Richard, four. Anne died early in the following year; and, in 1580, Edmund, the youngest child, was born; so that | return by the serjeants at mace upon a warrant of dis the family never exceeded five living at the same time. But still the circumstances of John Shakspere, even with five children, might have been straitened. The assertion of Rowe excited the persevering diligence of Malone; and he has collected together a series of documents from which he infers, or leaves the reader to infer, that John Shakspere and his family gradually sunk from their station of respectability at Stratford into the depths of poverty and ruin. The sixth section of Malone's posthumous 'Life' is devoted to a consideration of this subject. It thus commences: "The manufacture of gloves, which was, at this period, a very flourishing one, both at Stratford and Worcester (in which latter city it is still carried on with great success), however generally beneficial, should seem, from whatever cause, to have afforded our poet's father but a scanty maintenance." The assumption that John Shakspere depended for his "maintenance" upon "the manufacture of gloves" rests entirely and absolutely upon one solitary entry in the books of the Bailiff's Court at Stratford. We have seen the original entry; and though we are not learned enough in palæography to pronounce whether the abridged word which commences the third line describes the occupation of John Shakspere, this we know, that it does not consist of the letters Glover, as Malone prints it, he at the same time abridging the other words which are abbreviations in the record. No other entry in the same book, and there are many, recites the occupation of John Shakspere; but the subjects in dispute which are sometimes mentioned in these entries look very unlike the litigations of a glover, whether he be plaintiff or defendant. For example, on the 19th of November, 1556, the year after the action | against Malone's glover, John Shakspere is complainant against Henry Field in a plea for unjustly detaining eighteen quarters of grain. This is scarcely the plea of a glover. But, glover or not, he was a landed proprietor and an occupier of land; and he did not, therefore, in the year 1578, depend upon the manufacture of gloves for" a scanty maintenance." However, be his occupation what it may, Malone affirms that "when our author was about fourteen years old" the "distressed situation" of his father was evident: it rests "upon surer grounds than conjecture." The Corporation books have shown that on particular occasions, such as the visitation of the plague in 1564, John Shakspere contributed like others to the relief of the poor; but now, in January, 1577-8, he is taxed for the necessities of the borough only to pay half what other aldermen pay; and in November of the same year, whilst other aldermen are assessed fourpence weekly towards the relief of the poor, John Shakspere "shall not be taxed to pay anything." In 1579 the sum levied upon him for providing soldiers at the charge of the borough is returned, amongst similar sums of other persons, as "unpaid and unaccounted for." Finally, this unquestionable evidence of the books of the borough shows that this merciful forbearance of his brother townsmen was unavailing; for, in an action brought against him in the Bailiff's Court in the year 1586, he during these seven years having gone on from bad to worse, the tress is, that John Shakspere has nothing upon which distress can be levied. There are other corroborative proofs of John Shakspere's poverty at this period brought forward by Malone. In this precise year, 1578, he mortgages his wife's inheritance of Asbies to Edmund Lambert for forty pounds; and, in the same year, the will of Mr. Roger Sadler of Stratford, to which is subjoined a list of debts due to him, shows that John Shakspere was indebted to him five pounds, for which sum Edmund Lambert was a security," By which," says Malone, "it appears that John Shakspere was then considered insolvent, if not as one depending rather on the credit of others than his own." It is of little consequence to the present age to know whether an alderman of Stratford, nearly three hundred years past, became unequal to maintain his social position; but to enable us to form a right estimate of the education of William Shakspere, and of the circumstances in which he was placed at the most influential period of his life, it may not be unprofitable to consider how far these revelations of the private affairs of his father support the case which Malone holds he has so triumphantly proved. The documents which he has brought forward certainly do not constitute the whole case; and, with out lending ourselves to a spirit of advocacy, we he lieve that the inferences which have been drawn from them, and adopted by men of higher mark than their original promulgator, are altogether gratuitous and incongruous. We shall detain our readers a very short time, whilst, implicitly adopting all these discoveries (as they are called),-without attempting to infer that some of the circumstances may apply to another John Shakspere,—we trace what we think a more probable course of the fortunes of the alderman of Stratford, until the period when his illustrious son had himself become the father of a family. In the year 1568 John Shakspere was high bailiff of Stratford. In 1571 he was chief alderman. The duties of the first office demanded a constant residence in Stratford. Beyond occasional attendance, the duties of the second office would be few. In 1570 he is the occupier of a small estate at Ingon, in the parish of Stratford, two miles from the town, at a rent which unquestionably shows that a house of importance was attached to "the meadow." In 1574 he purchased two freehold houses in Henley Street, with gardens and orchards; and he probably occupied one or both of these. In 1578 he mortgaged the estate of Ashies to Edmund Lambert, who also appears to have been security for him for the sum of five pounds. At the time, then, when Malone holds that Joha Shakspere is insolvent, because another is his security for five pounds, and that other the mortgagee of his estate, he is also excused public payments because he is poor. But he is the possessor of two frechold houses in Henley Street, bought in 1574. Malone, a lawyer by profes sion, supposes that the money for which Asbies was mortgaged went to pay the purchase of the Stratford freeholds; according to which theory, these freeholds had been unpaid for during four years, and the "good and lawful money" was not "in hand" when the vendor parted with the premises. We hold, and we think more reasonably, that in 1578, when he mortgaged Asbies, John Shakspere became the purchaser, or at any rate the occupier, of lands in the parish of Stratford, but not in the borough; and that, in either case, the money for which Asbies was mortgaged was the capital employed in this undertaking. The lands which were purchased by William Shakspere of the Combe family, in 1601, are described in the deed as lying or being within the parish, fields, or town of Old Stretford." But the will of William Shakspere, he having become the heir-at-law of his father, devises all his lands and tenements" within the towns, hamlets, villages, fields, and grounds of Stratford-uponAvon, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe." Old Stratford is a local denomination, essentially different from Bishopton or Welcombe; and, therefore, whilst the lands purchased by the son in 1601 might be those recited in the will as lying in Old Stratford, he might have derived from his father the lands of Bishopton and Welcombe, of the purchase of which by himself we have Lo record. So, in the same way, the tenements referred to by the will as being in Stratford-upon-Avon, comprised not only the great house purchased by him, but the freeholds in Henley Street which he inherited from his father. Indeed it is expressly stated in a document of 1596, a memorandum upon the grant of arms in the Heralds' College to John Shakspere, "he hath lands and tenements, of good wealth and substance, 5001." The lands of Bishopton and Welcombe are in the parish of Stratford, but not in the borough. Bishopton was a hamlet, having an ancient chapel of ease. We hold, then, that in the year 1578 John Shakspere ceased, though perhaps not wholly so, to reside within the borough of Stratford. Other aldermen are rated to pay towards the furniture of pikemen, billmen, and archers, six shillings and eight-pence; whilst John Shakspere is to pay three shillings and four-pence. Why less than other aldermen? The next entry but one, which relates to a brother alderman, answers the question: ceding after proceeding being taken upon it, with a pertinacity on the part of the defendant which appears far more like the dogged resistance of a wealthy man to a demand which he thought unjust, than that of a man in the depths of poverty, seeking to evade a payment which must be ultimately enforced by the seizure of his goods, or by a prison. The distringas, which the officers of the borough of Stratford could not exe cute, was followed by a capias; and then, no doubt, the debt was paid, and the heavier fees of the lawyers discharged. Further, in the very year of this action, John Shakspere ceases to be a member of the corporation; and the circumstances attending his withdrawal or removal from that body are strongly confirmatory of the view we have taken. "I find," says Malone, “on inspecting the records, that our poet's father had not attended at any hall for the seven preceding years." This is perfectly correct. At these halls, except on the very rarest occasions, the members attending do not sign their names; but after the entry of the preliminary form by the town-clerk,—such as "Stratford Burgus, ad aulam ibid. tent. vi. die Septembris anno regui dňæ Elizabethæ vicesimo octavo,"-the town-clerk enters the names of all the aldermen and burgesses, and there is a dot or other mark placed against the names of those who are in attendance. The last entry in which the name of John Shakspere is so distinguished as attending occurs in 1579. But at the ball held on the 6th of September, in the 28th of Elizabeth, is this entry:— "At this hall William Smythe and Richard Courte are chosen to be aldermen in the place of John Wheler and John Shaxspere; for that Mr. Wheler doth desyer to be put out of the companye, and Mr. Shaxspere doth not come to the halls when they be warned, nor hath not done of long tyme." Is it not more credible that, from the year 1579 till the year 1586, when he was removed from the corporation, in all probability by his own consent, John Shakspere was not dwelling in the borough of Stratford,―that he had ceased to take an interest in its affairs, although he was unwilling to forego its dignities;-than that during these seven years he was struggling with hopeless poverty; that he allowed Again, ten months after,-"It is ordained that every his brother aldermen and burgesses to sit in judgment alderman shall pay weekly, towards the relief of the on his means of paying the assessments of the borough; poor, four-pence, save John Shakspere and Robert that they consented to reduce and altogether to disBratt, who shall not be taxed to pay anything." Here charge his assessment, although he was the undoubted John Shakspere is associated with Robert Bratt, who, possessor of property within the borough; that he proaccording to the previous entry, was to pay nothing in claimed his poverty in the most abject manner, and this place; that is, in the borough of Stratford, to which proclaimed it untruly whilst he held any property at the orders of the council alone apply. The return, in all, and his lands were mortgaged for a very inadequate 1579, of Mr. Shakspere as leaving unpad the sum of sum, when the first object of an embarrassed man would three shillings and three pence, was the return upon a have been to have upheld his credit by making an effort levy for the borough, in which, although the possessor to meet every public demand? What is the most extraof property, he might have ceased to reside. Seven ordinary thing of all is, that he should have recovered years after this comes the celebrated return to the war- this long humiliation so suddenly that, in 1596, he goes rant of distress, that John Shakspere has nothing to dis- to the College of Arms for additions to his armorial tran upon. The jurisdiction of the Bailiff's Court of bearings, and states that he is worth five hundred pounds Stratford is wholly confined to the borough; and out of in lands and tenements. During this period he was the borough the officers could not go. We have traced unquestionably a resident in the parish of Stratford; the course of this action in the bailiff's books of Strat- for the register of that parish contains the entry of the ford, beyond the entries which Malone gives us. It burial of a daughter in 1579, and the baptism of a son continued before the court for nearly five months; prom 1580. His grandchildren, also are baptized in that "Robert Bratt, nothing IN THIS PLACE." parish in 1563 and 1595. But his assessments in with some knowledge of Greek, is to assume en ab"that place the borough-are reduced in 1578, and surdity upon the face of the circumstances; and it wholly foregone in 1579. He has ceased to be amen- could never have been assumed at all, had not Rowe, able to the borough assessments. The lands of Wel- setting out upon a false theory, that, because in the combe and Bishopton, we may fairly assume, were his works of Shakspere “we scarce find any traces of anyhome. He has not been dependent upon the trade of thing that looks like an imitation of the ancients," beld Stratford, whether in gloves or wool. He is a culti- | that therefore "his not copying at least something from vator, and his profits are not very variable. His son them may be an argument of his never having read purchases a large quantity of land in the same district them." Opposed to this is the statement of Aubrey, a few years afterwards; and that son himself becomes much nearer to the times of Shakspere: “he understood a cultivator, even whilst he is the most successful Latin pretty well." Rowe had been led into his illodramatist of his time. That son has also his actions in gical inference by the "small Latin and less Greek * the Bailiff's Court, as his father had, for corn sold and of Jonson; the "old mother-wit" of Denham; the "his delivered, of which more hereafter. That son cleaves learning was very little "of Fuller; the "native woodto his native place with a love which no fame won, no notes wild" of Milton,-phrases, every one of which is pleasure enjoyed, in the great capital,—the society of to be taken with considerable qualification, whether we the great, the praises of the learned,‚—can extinguish. regard the peculiar characters of the utterers, or the cirNeither does that son take any part in the affairs of the cumstances connected with the words themselves. The borough. He purchases the best house in Stratford in question rests not upon the interpretation of the dictum. 1597, but the records of Stratford show that he had no of this authority or that, but upon the indisputable fact desire for local honours. The father, instead of sinking that the very earliest writings of Shakspere are imbued into poverty, appears to us to have separated himself with a spirit of classical antiquity, and that the allusive from the concerns of the borough, and from the society nature of the learning that manifests itself in them, of the honest men who administered them. He pro- whilst it offers the best proof of his familiarity with the bably had not more happiness in his struggle to main- ancient writers, is a circumstance which has misled tain the rank of gentleman; but that he did make that those who never attempted to dispute the existence of struggle is, we think, consistent with all the circum- the learning which was displayed in the direct pedantry stances upon record. That the children of William of his contemporaries. If," said Hales of Eton, “he Shakspere should have been brought up at Stratford, had not read the classics, he had likewise not stolen that Stratford should have been his home, although from them." Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and all the early London was his place of necessary sojourn,-is, we dramatists, overload their plays with quotation and think, quite incompatible with the belief that, at the mythological allusion. According to Hales, they steal, exact period when the poet was gaining rapid wealth as and therefore they have read. He who uses his knowa sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre, the father was so ledge skilfully is assumed not to have read. reduced to the extremity of indigence that he had nothing to distrain upon in his dwelling in the place where he had dwelt for years, in competence and honour. It is not our intention here to enter upon a general examination of the various opinions that have been held as to the learning of Shakspere, and the tendency of those opinions to show that he was without learning. We only desire to point out, by a very few observations, that the learning manifested in his early productions does not bear out the assertion of Rowe that his proficiency in the Latin language was interrupted by his early removal from the free-school of Stratford. His youthful poem, 'Venus and Adonis,' the first heir of his invention, is upon a classical subject. The Rape of Lucrece' is founded upon a legend of the beginnings of Roman history. Would he have ventured upon these subjects had he been unfamiliar with the ancient writers, from the attentive study of which he could Seeing, then, that at any rate in the year 1574, when John Shakspere purchased two freehold houses in Stratford, it was scarcely necessary for him to withdraw his son William from school, as Rowe has it, on account of the narrowness of his circumstances (the education at that school costing the father nothing), it is not difficult to believe that the scn remained there till the period when boys were usually withdrawn from grammar-schools. In those days the education of the university commenced much earlier than at present. Boys intended for the learned professions, and more especially for the church, commonly went to Oxford and Cam-alone obtain the knowledge which would enable him bridge at eleven or twelve years of age. If they were to treat them with propriety? His was an age of sound not intended for those professions, they probably re- scholarship. He dedicates both poems to a scholar, mained at the grammar-school till they were thirteen and a patron of scholars. Does any one of his conor fourteen; and then they were fitted for being ap- temporaries object that these classical subjects were prenticed to tradesmen, or articled to attorneys, a treated by a young man ignorant of the classics? Will numerous and thriving body in those days of cheap the most critical examination of these poems detect litigation. Many also went early to the Inns of Court, anything that betrays this ignorance? Is there not the which were the universities of the law, and where there most perfect keeping in both these poems,—an original was real study and discipline in direct connection with conception of the mode of treating these subjects, arlthe several Societies. To assume that William Shak-visedly adopted, with the full knowledge of what might spere did not stay long enough at the grammar-school be imitated, but preferring the vigorous painting of of Stratford to obtain a very fair "proficiency in Latin," nature to any imitation? Love's Labour's Lost. and that he, of all boys of Stratford, would be the least likely to discredit the teaching of Thomas Hunt and Thomas Jenkins, the masters of the grammar-school from 1572 till 1580. undoubtedly one of the earliest comedi s, shows-upon the principle laid down by Coleridge, that "a young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits "--that the habits of William Shakspere "had been scholastic, and those of a student." The Comedy of Errors' is full of those imitations of the ancients in There were other agencies than the grammar-school particular passages which critics nave in all cases been at work in the direction of Shakspere's inquiring boytoo apt to take as the chief evidences of learning. The hood. There are local associations connected with critics of Shakspere are puzzled by these imitations; Stratford which could not be without their influence in and when they see with what skill he adopts, or amends, the formation of his mind. Within the range of such or rejects, the incidents of the 'Menæchmi' of Plautus, a boy's curiosity were the fine old historic towns of they have no resource but to contend that his know- Warwick and Coventry, the sumptuous palace of ledge of Plautus was derived from a wretched transla- | Kenilworth, the grand monastic remains of Evesham. tion, published in all probability eight or ten years His own Avon abounded with spots of singular beauty, after The Comedy of Errors' was written. The three quiet hamlets, solitary woods. Nor was Stratford shut Parts of Henry VI.' are the earliest of the historical out from the general world, as many country towns plays. Those who dispute the genuineness of the First are. It was a great highway; and dealers with every Part affirm that it contains more allusions to mythology variety of merchandise resorted to its fairs. The eyes and classical authors than Shakspere ever uses; but, of Shakspere must always have been open for obwith a most singular inconsistency, in the passages of servation. When he was twelve years old Elizabeth the Second and Third Parts which they have chosen to made her celebrated progress to Lord Leicester's castle pronounce as the additions of Shakspere to the original of Kenilworth. Was William Shakspere at Kenilplays of another writer or writers, there are to be found worth in that summer of 1575, when the great Dudley as many allusions to mythology and classical writers entertained the queen with a splendour which annalists as in the part which they deny to be his. We have have delighted to record, and upon which one of our observed upon these passages that they furnish the own days has bestowed a fame more imperishable than proof that, as a young writer, he possessed a competent that of any annals? Percy, speaking of the old Coknowledge of the ancient authors, and was not unwill-ventry Hock-play, says, "Whatever this old play or ing to display it; "but that, with that wonderful | storial show was at the time it was exhibited to Queen judgment which was as remarkable as the prodigious Elizabeth, it had probably our young Shakspere for a range of his imaginative powers, he soon learnt to avoid spectator, who was then in his twelfth year, and doubtthe pedantry to which inferior men so pertinaciously less attended with all the inhabitants of the surrounding clung in the pride of their scholarship." Ranging country at these princely pleasures of Kenilworth,' over the whole dramatic works of Shakspere, when-whence Stratford is only a few miles distant." The ever we find a classical image or allusion, such as in preparations for this celebrated entertainment were on "Hamlet, "A station like the herald Mercury, New iighted on a heaven-kissing hill," the management of the idea is always elegant and graceful; and the passage may sustain a contrast with the most refined imitations of his contemporaries, or of his own imitator, Milton. In his Roman plays he appears co-existent with his wonderful characters, and to have read all the obscure pages of Roman history with a clearer eye than philosopher or historian. When he employs Latinisms in the construction of his sentences, and even in the creation of new words, he does so with singular facility and unerring correctness. And then, we are to be told, he managed all this by studying bad translations, and by copying extracts from grammare and dictionaries; as if it was reserved for such miracles of talent and industry as the Farmers and the Steevenses to read Ovid and Virgil in their original tongues, whilst the dull Shakspere, whether schoolboy or adult, was to be contented through life with the miserable translations of Arthur Golding and Thomas Phaer.* We believe that his familiarity at least with the best Roman writers was begun early, and continued late; * See a series of learned and spirited papers by the late Dr. Maginn ou Farmer's Essay,' printed in Fraser's Magarine, 18 9. 6 so magnificent a scale, the purveyings must have been so enormous, the posts so unintermitting, that there had needed not the flourishings of paragraphs (for the age of paragraphs was not as yet) to have roused the curiosity of all mid England. In 1575, when Robert Dudley welcomed his sovereign with a more than regal magnificence, it is easy to believe that his ambition looked for a higher reward than that of continuing a queen's most favoured servant and counsellor. It appears to us that the exquisite speech of Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream' is founded upon a recollection of what the young Shakspere heard of the intent of the princely pleasures of Kenilworth, and is associated with some of the poetical devices which he might have there beheld : "Obe. My gentle Pack, come hither: Thou remember'st Since once I sat upon a promontory. And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back. |