departure from Warwickshire. Whichever version be
thought the more probable, the student will do well, be-
fore arriving at a decision, to bear in mind that many
butchers of those days were partially farmers, and that
those of Stratford-on-Avon largely represented the wealth
and commercial intelligence of the town. Among the
latter was Ralph Cawdrey, who had then twice served the
office of High Bailiff, and had been for many years a col-
league of the poet's father. Nor were the accessories of
the trade viewed in the repulsive light that some of them
are at the present time. The refined and lively Rosa-
lind would have been somewhat astonished if she had been
29
Life WILLIAM
told of the day when her alkision to the washing of a
sheep's heart would have been pronounced indecorous and
more thaa unladylike.
Although the information at present accessible does not
enable us to determine the exact natures of Shakespeare's
occupations from his fourteenth to his eighteenth year,
that is to say, from 1577 to 1582, there can be no hesita-
tion in concluding that, daring that animated and recep-
tive period of life, he was mercifully released from what,
to a spirit like his, must have been the deleterious monotony
of a school education. Whether he passed those years as
a butcher or a wool-dealer does not greatly matter. In
either capacity, or in any other that could then have been
found at Stratford, he was unconsciously acquiring a
more perfect knowledge of the world and human natux'e
than could have been derived from a study of
the classics. During nearly if not all the time to
which reference is now being made, he had also the
opportunity of witnessing theatrical performances by some
of the leading companies of the day. But trouble and
sorrow invaded the paternal home. In the autumn of
1578, his father affected the then large mortgage of 4iOl.
on the estate of Asbies, and the records of subsequent
transactions indicate that he was suffering from pecuniary
embarrassments in the two years immediately following.
In the midst of these struggles he lost, in 1579, his
daughter Anne, who was then in her eighth year. It can-
not be doubted that the poet acutely felt the death of his
little sister, nor that he followed her to the grave at a
funeral which was conducted by the parents with affection-
ate tributes. In the next year their last child was born.
He was christened Edmund on May 3, 1580, no doubt re-
30
SHAKESPEARE Life
ceiving tliat name from the husband of his maternal aunt,
Mrs. Lambert. It was this gentleman who held the mort-
gage on Asbies, but on John Shakespeare tendering pay-
ment to him in the following autumn, the money was re-
fused until other sums due the same creditor were also re-
paid. This must have been a great disappointment to the
worthy glover, who had onl}^ in the previous year dis-
posed of his wife's reversionary interests at Snittei-field
for the exact amount that he had borrowed from the Lam-
berts in 1578, a transfer that he had perhaps arranged
with a view to the redemption of the matrimonial estate at
Wilmecote. It must be borne in mind that it was at that
time the practice in mortgages to name a special day for
the repayment of a loan, the security falling into the inde-
feasible ownership of the mortgagee when the terms of
the contract were not rigidly observed. There was not
then the general equity of redemption which, at a later
period, guarded tlie legitimate interests of the borrower.
The reversion that was parted with in the year 1579
consisted of a share in a considerable landed estate that
had belonged to the poet's maternal grandfather, a share
to which John and Mary Shakespeare would have become
absolutely entitled upon the death of Agnes Arden, who
was described as "aged and impotent" in the July of the
following year, 1580, and who died a few months after-
wards, her burial at Aston Cantlowe having taken place on
December 29. In her will, that of a substantial lady
farmer of the period, there is no direct mention of the
Shakespeares, but it is not unlikelj^ that one or more of
their sons may be nicluded in the bequest, — "to everi on
of my god-children x'lj.d. a-peece," — the absence of the
testator's own christian name from their pedigree being
31
Life WILLIAM
a sufficient evidence that her baptismal responsibilities were
not extended to their daughters. Taking merely a life-
interest in a portion of the family estates, and Mary hav-
ing received more than an equitable interest in them, she
might naturally have felt herself absolved from bestowing
larger gifts upon her Henley Street connections.
It was the usual custom at Stratford-on-Avon for ap-
prentices to be bound either for seven or ten years, so that,
if Shakespeare were one of them, it was not likely that
he was out of his articles at the time of his marriage, an
event that took place in 1582, when he was only in his
nineteenth year. At that period, before a license for wed-
lock could be obtained, it was necessary to lodge at the
Consistory Court a bond entered into by two responsible
sureties, who by that document certified, under a heavy
penalty in case of misrepresentation, that there was no im-
pediment of precontract or consanguinity, the former of
course alluding to a precontract of either of the affianced
parties with a third person.
The bond given in anticipation of the marriage of Wil-
liam Shakespeare with Anne Hathaway, a proof in itself
that there was no clandestine intention in the arrange-
ments, is dated November 28, 1582. Their first child,
Susanna, was baptized on Sunday, May 26, 1583. With
thase numerous moralists who do not consider it necessary
for rigid enquiry to precede condemnation, these facts
taint the husband with dishonor, although, even according
to modem notions, that very marriage may have been
induced on his part by a sentiment in itself the very es-
sence of honor. If we assume, however, as we reasonably
may, that cohabitation had previously taken place, no
question of morals would in those days have arisen, or
32
SHAKESPEARE Life
■ could have been entertained. The precontract, which was
usually celebrated two or three months before marriage.
was not only legally recognized, but it invalidated a sub-
sequent union of either of the parties with any one else.
There was a statute, indeed, of 32 Kenry VIII, 1540, c.
38, s. 2, by which certain marriages were legalized not-
withstanding precontracts, but the clause was repealed by
the Act of 2 & 3 Edward VI, 1548, c. 23, s. 2, and the
whole statute by 1 & 2 Phil, and Mar., 1554, c. 8, s. 19,
while the Act of I Elizabeth, 1558, c. 1, s. 11, expressly
confirms the revocation made by Edward VI. The as-
certained facts respecting Shakespeare's marriage clearly
indicate the high probability of there having been a pi'e-
contract, a ceremony which substantially had the validity
of the more formal one, and the improbability of that mar-
riage having been celebrated under mysterious or unusual
circumstances. Whether the early alliance was a prudent
one in a worldly point of view may admit of doubt, but
that the married pair continued on affectionate terms,
until they were separated by the poet's death, may be
gathered from the early local tradition that his wife "did
earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him."
The legacy to her of the second-best bed is an evidence
which does not in any way negative the later testimony.
The poet's two sureties, Fulk Sandells and John Ricli-
ardson, were inhabitants of the little hamlet of Shotterj',
and on the only inscribed seal attached to the bond are
the initiak R. H., while the consent of friends is in that
document limited to those of the bride. No conclusion
can be safely drawn from the last-named clause, it being
one very usual in such instnmicnts, but it may perha})s
be inferred from the other circumstances that the marriage
SS
Life WILLIAM
was arranged under the special auspices of the Hathaway
family, and that the engagement was not received with
favor in Henley Street. The case, however, admits of an-
other explanation. It may be that the nuptials of Shake-
speare, like those of so many others of that time, had been
privately celebrated some months before under the illegal
forms of the Catholic Church, and that the relatives were
now anxious for the marriage to be openly acknowledged.
It was extremely common at that time, among the local
tradespeople, for the sanction of parents to be given to
early marriages in cases where there was no money, and
but narrow means of support, on either side. It is not,
therefore, likely that the consent of John and Mary
Shakespeare to the poet's marriage was withheld on such
grounds, nor, with the exception of the indications in the
jcnd, are there other reasons for suspecting that they
were averse to the union. But whether they were so or not
is a question that does not invalidate the assumption that
the lovers followed the all but universal rule of consolidat-
ing their engagement by means of a precontract. This
ceremony was generally a solemn affair enacted with the
immediate concurrence of all the parents, but it was at
times informally conducted separately by the betrothing
parties, evidence of the fact, communicated by them to
independent persons, having been held, at least in War-
wickshire, to confer a sufficient legal validity on the trans-
action. Thus, in 1585, William Holder and Alice Shaw,
having privately made a contract, came voluntarily before
two witnesses, one of whom was a person named Willis
and the other a John Maides of Snitterfield, on purpose
to acknowledge that they were irrevocably pledged to wed-
lock. The lady evidently considered herself already as
34
SHAKESPEARE Life
good as married, saying to Holder, — "I do confebse that
I am jour wief and have forsaken all my frendes for your
sake, and I hope you will use me well ;" and thereupon she
*'gave him her hand." Then, as Maides observes, "tha
said Holder, mutatis 7nutandis, used the like words unto
her in effect, and toke her by the hand, and kissed to-
getlier in the presence of this deponent and the said Willis."
These proceedings are afterwards referred to in the same
depositions as constituting a definite "contract of mar-
riage." On another occasion, in 1588, there was a pre-
contract meeting at Alcester, the young lady arriving
there unaccompanied by any of her friends. When re-
quested to explain the reason of this omission, "she an-
swered that her leasure wold not lett her and that she
thought she cold not obtaine her mother's goodwill, but,
quoth she, nevertheless I am the same woman that I was
before." The future bridegroom was perfectly satisfied
with this assurance, merely asking her "whether she was
content to betake herself unto him, and she answered,
offring her hand, which he also tooke upon thoffer that
she was content by her trothe, and thereto, said she, I geve
thee my faith, and before these witnesses, that I am thy
wief; and then he likewise answered in theis wordes, vidz.,
and I geve thee my faith and troth, and become thy hus-
band." These instances, to which several others could be
added, prove decisively that Shakespeare could have en-
tered, under any circumstances whatever, into a precon-
tract with Anne Hathaway. It may be worth adding that
espousals of this kind were, in the Midland counties,
almost invariably terminated by the lady's acceptance of a
bent sixpence. One lover, who was betrothed in the same
year in which Shakespeare was engaged to Anne Hath-
35
Life WILLIAM
away, gave also a pair of gloves, two oranges, two hand-
kerchiefs and a girdle of broad red silk. A present of
gloves on such an occasion was, indeed, nearly as universal
as that of a sixpence.
It can never be right for a biographer, when he is un-
supported by the least particle of evidence, to assume that
the subject of his memoir departed unnecessarily from the
ordinary usages of life and society. In Shakespeare's
matrimonial case, those who imagine that there was no
precontract have to make another extravagant admission.
They must ask us also to believe that the lady of his
choice was as disreputable as the flax-wench, and gratui-
tously united with the poet in a moral wrong that could
have been converted, by the smallest expenditure of trouble,
into a moral riglit. The whole theory is absolutely in-
credible. We may then feel certain that, in the summer
of the year 1582, William Sliakespeare and Anne Hath-
away were betrothed either formally or informally, but,
at all events, under conditions that could, if necessary,
have been legally ratified.
There are reasons for believing that later in the century
cohabitation between the precontract and the marriage
began to be generally regarded with much disfavor, but
the only means of arriving at an equitable judgment upon
the merits of the present case lay in a determination to
investigate it strictly in its relation with practices the
legitimacy of which was acknowledged in Warwickshire
in the days of the poet's youth. If the antecedents of
Shakespeare's union with Miss Hathaway were regarded
with equanimity by their own neighbors, relatives, and
friends, upon what grounds can a modern critic fairly
impugn the propriety of their conduct.'* And that they
3G
SHAKESPEARE Life
were so regarded is all but indisputable. Assuming, as
we have a right to assume, that the poet's mother must
liave been a woman of sensitive purity, was she now en-
tertaining the remotest apprehension that her son's honor
was imperiled? Assuredly not, for she had passed her
youth amid a society who believed that a precontract had
all the validity of a marriage, the former being really
considered a more significant and important ceremony than
the other. When her own father, Robert Arden, settled
part of an estate upon his daughter Agnes, on July 17,
1550, he introduces her as nunc uxor Thome Stringer, ac
nuper uxor Johannu Hewyns, and yet the marriage was
not solemnized until three months afterwards. "1550, 15
October, was maryed Thomas Stringer unto Agnes Hwens,
wyddow," (Bearley register). Let us hope that, after the
production of this decisive testimony, nothing more will
be heard of the insinuations that have hitherto thrown an
unpleasant shadow over one of the most interesting periods
of our author's career.
The marriage, in accordance with the general practice,
no doubt took place within two or three days after the
execution of the bond on November 28, 1582, the "once
asking of the bans" being included in the ceremonial sei-v-
ice. The name of the parish in which the nuptials were
celebrated has not been ascertained, but it must have been
one of those places in the diocese of Worcester the early
registers of which have been lost.
Early marriages are not, however, at least with men,
invariably preceded by a dispersion of the wild oats ; and
it appears that Shakespeare had neglected to complete
that usually desirable operation, but now a fortunate omis-
sion that necessitated his removal to the only locality in
37
.? y Z e'"^
Life WILLIAM
whicli it was probable that his dramatic genius could have
arrived at complete maturity. Three or four years after
his union with Anne Hathawa}', he had, observes Rowe,
"by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen
into ill company, and, among them, some, that made a
frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him with them
more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir
Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford ; — for this he
was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, some-
what too severely, and, in order to revenge that ill-usage,
lie made a ballad upon him ; and though this, probably
the first essay of his poetry, be lost yet it is said to have
been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution
against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave
his business and family in Warwickshire for some time,
and shelter himself in London." If we accept this nar-
rative, which is the most reliable account of the incident
that has been preserved, the date of the poet's departure
from his native town may be reasonably assigned to ilie
year 1585. He certainly could not have left the neighbor-
hood before the summer of 1584, the baptisms of his
youngest children, the twin Hamnct and Judith, having
been registered at Stratford-on-Avon on February 2' in
the following year; neither could his retreat have been
enforced during his oppressor's attendance at the Par-
liament which sat from November 23,1584, to March 29",
1585. It is worthy of remark that Sir Thomas had the
charge, early in the last-named month, of a bill "for the
preservation of grain and game," so it is clear that the
knight of Charlecote was a zealous game-preserver, even
if the introduction of the proposed measure were not the
38
SHAKESPEARE Lif.
result of the depredations committed by the poet and his
companions.
Another version of the narrative has been recorded by
Archdeacon Davies, who was the vicar of Sapperton, a
village in the neighboring county of Gloucester, and who
died there in the year 1708. According to this authority
the future great dramatist was "much given to all un-
luckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly
from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft whipped and
sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native
county to his great advancement ; but his revenge was so
great that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great
man, and that in allusion to his name bore three louses
rampant for his arms." It Is evident, therefore, from the
independent testimonies of Rowe and Davies, that the
deer-stealing history was accepted in the poet's native
town and in the neighborhood during the latter part of
the seventeenth century. That it has a solid basis of
fact cannot admit of a reasonable doubt. It was current
at a period in the history of Shakespearean appreciation
before tales of the kind became liable to intentional falsi-
fication, and the impressive story of the penniless fugitive,
who afterwards became a leading inhabitant of Stratford
and the owner of New Place, was one likely to be handed
down with passable fidelity to the grandchildren of his
contemporaries. It is, moreover, one which exactly har-
monizes with circumstances that materially add to its
probability, — with the satirical allusions to the Lucys in
their immediate relation to a poaching adventure, and with
the certainty that there must have been some very grave
reason to induce him to leave his wife and children to seek
39
Life WILLIAM
his unaided fortunes in a distant part of the country,
rendering himself at the same time hable to imprisonment
(5 Eliz. c. 4f. s. 47) for violating the conditions of his
apprenticeship. If there had been no such grave reason,
how should there have been the provincial belief in 1693
that he had ran "from his master to London, and there
received into the play-house as a servitor?" What but
a strong and compulsory motive could have driven him
so far away from a locality to which, as we gather from
subsequent events, he was sensitively attached? The only
theory, indeed, that would sanction the unconditional re-
jection of the traditions is that which assumes that they
were designed in explanation of the allusions in the Merry
Wh€S of Windsor, but surely, if that had been the case,
there would have been a more explicit reference to the
accusations of Master Shallow, charges that are in the
aggregate of a more formidable description than those
which have been transmitted by hearsay. "You have hurt
my keeper, kill'd my dogs, stol'n my deer" (ed. 1602).
"You have beaten my men, kill'd my deer, and broke open
my lodge" (ed. 1623). It is also exceedingly improbable
that there should have been any one at Stratford-on-Avon
at the time of Betterton's visit who would have cared to
elucidate the justice's implications, and it would appear,
from the incorrect quotations which are given by Davies,
that even the archdeacon was somewhat better acquainted
with the history of Sir Thomas Lucy than he was with the
comedy.
Neither the best citizens nor the most amiable men are
always those whose cautious and dispassionate tempera-
ments have enabled them to pass through the heats of
youth without getting into scrapes. Those only, indeed,
40
SHAKESPEARE Life
who consider it their duty to invest the greatest of
dramatists with the honors of canonization will be dis-
tressed to hear that the poet, in the years of his apprentice-
ship to a cheei'less business, got into trouble by netting
rabbits and occasionally joining in the class of adventures
that were then known under the title of "unlawful
huntings." The general tradition among the rustics of
the neighborhood was, and perhaps still is, that he was
wild in his younger days, an impression delivered, as I
have heard it in years gone by, in no tone or spirit of
detraction ; and he was wild in the least reprehensible of
all irregular directions, not in the slums of Warwick, nor
with roisterers in the taverns of Stratford, but in sports
of the wood and the field that may have been illegally
pursued, but were nevertheless regarded by the multitude
as indications of manly spirit and gallantry. Sir Philip
Sydney's May-Lady terms deer-stealing a "prettie serv-
ice," and this was the light in which it was usually viewed
so long as the keepers were outwitted. These were days
when youthful raids for fruit or animals were not only
excusable in the eyes of society, but apt to be considered
desirable features of education, and we accordingly find
a writer of the next century, Francis Osborn, born about
the year 1589, bitterly lamenting that, owing to the mild
character of his home-training, he had lost the advantages
which others had derived from a participation in such-like
kind of exploits ; for, to quote his own words, "not under-
going the same discipline, I must needs come short of their
experience that are bred up in free-schools, who, by plot-
ting to rob an orchard, &c., run through all the subtleties
required in taking of a town ; being made by use familiar to
secrecy and compliance with opportunity, qualities never
41
Life WILLIAM
after to be attained at cheaper rates than the hazard of all ;
whereas these see the danger of trusting others and the rocks
they fall upon by a too obstinate adhering to their own im-
prudent resolutions, and all this under no higher penalty
than a whipping." Then there was the curious fact that
the students of Oxford, the center of the kingdom's learn-
ing and intelligence, had been for many generations the
most notorious poachers in all England. An Act of the
fifteenth century, under which disorderly hunters were to
be banished from the university, does not appear to have
been very effective, for their serious depredations in the
reign of Henry VIII, positively led, as recorded by Leland,
to the disparking of Radley, near Abingdon, a park that
was about four miles distant from the scholastic city. The
same lawless spirit prevailed among the younger collegians
for many years. Dr. Forman relates how two students in
1573, — one of them John Thornborough, then aged
twenty-one, afterwards Dean of York and Bishop of Wor-
cester, — "never studied nor gave themselves to their books,
but to go to schools of defence, to the dancing-schools,
to steal deer and conies, and to hunt the hare, and to woo-
ing of wenches." This was pretty well, and yet we are
told, on the excellent authority of Anthony Wood, that
Thornborough "was a person well-fumish'd with learning,
wisdom, courage, and other as well episcopal as temporal
accomplishments beseeming a gentleman, a dean, and a
bishop" ; so it is clear that his attachment to the recreation
of game-stealing at Shakespeare's poaching-age was not
in any way detrimental to his subsequent reputation. He
would, indeed, have suffered far more in the estimation of
his contemporaries if he had been the Oxford freshman
who, as recorded in the old jest-books, joining his fellow-
4£
SHAKESPEARE ' Life
students in one of their favorite clandestine expeditions
upon the understanding that he was to maintain a rigid
silence, vexatiously frightened away a choice herd of rab-
bits by exclaiming, ^'Ecce cuniculi multi" ; thus excusing
himself when reproved for his folly, — who in the world,
said he, would have thought that conies could have under-
stood Latin?
But although it will be gathered from these evidences