William Shakspeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, April 23, 1564. He was one of ten children. His father was a dealer in wool, as it is generally said, but according to Malone, a glover, and alderman in the corporation of Stratford. Our great poet received such education as the lower forms of the Grammar School at Stratford could give him; but he was removed from that establishment at an early age, to serve as clerk in a country attorney’s office. This anecdote of his boyhood receives confirmation from the frequent recurrence of technical law-phrases in his plays; and it has been remarked that he derives none of his allusions from other learned professions. Before he was eighteen years of age he contracted a marriage with Anne Hathaway, a woman some years older than himself, and the daughter of a substantial yeoman in his own neighbourhood. He went to London about 1586, when he was but twenty-two years of age, being obliged, as the common story goes, to fly the country, in consequence of being detected in deer-stealing. This tale is thought to be confirmed by the ridicule cast on his supposed prosecutor, Sir Thomas Lucy, in the character of Justice Shallow, pointed as it is by the
_From the Picture in the Possession of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham, at Stowe._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street. June 1, 1835._ ]
commendation of the “dozen white luces as a good coat.” But as this is the only lawless action which tradition has imputed to one of the most amiable and inoffensive of men, we may perhaps esteem the tale to be the mere gossip of the tiring-room: indeed, Malone has adduced several arguments to prove that it cannot be correctly told. It is not necessary to suppose that Shakspeare was compelled to fly his native town because he came to the metropolis; his emigration is sufficiently accounted for by his father’s falling into distressed circumstances, and being obliged in this very year, 1586, to resign his alderman’s gown on that account. Another traditional anecdote, that Shakspeare’s first employment was to wait at the play-house door, and hold the horses of those who had no servants, is discredited by Mr. Steevens, who says, “That it was once the general custom to ride on horseback to the play I am yet to learn. The most popular of the theatres were on the Bankside; and we are told by the satirical pamphleteers of that time that the usual mode of conveyance to those places of amusement was by water; but not a single writer so much as hints at the custom of riding to them, or at the practice of having horses held during the hours of exhibition. Let it be remembered too, that we receive this tale on no higher authority than that of Cibber’s ‘Lives of the Poets.’”