Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

cess in London-Death of Hamnet, William Shakespeare's only son-Shakespeare buy

while he was reaching fame and making money in London as a playwright and an actor, he held no communication with his kith and kin. There remains no local record of William Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon between the year 1587, when he joined with his father in mortgaging the property at Asbies, Wilmcote, which had been his mother's marriage portion, until 1596, when the register of the d

ble fine of ￡20 all those who had not attended church for one month. John Shakespeare's recusancy has been unwarrantably assumed to be due to Roman Catholic obstinacy; but the

almost any chosen field of intellectual activity with which a born genius is gifted. The saying that "genius is a capacity for taking pains" is a dull, plodding man's definition. Genius will very

had not reached a high level, excepting those of Marlowe, to whose inspiration Shakespeare at first owed much. If Shakespeare lived in these times he would be called a shameless plagiarist, for he went to other authors for his plots-as Chaucer had done with his Canterbury Tales, two hundred ye

osed from lack of evidence to the contrary, that most other dramatic authors submitted to this treatment in silence; perhaps because they had all been employed, at some time or other in the same way. But one man seems to have bitterly resented a mere actor presuming to call himself an author. This was Rob

ph. The author played in his own piece, and the other dramatists looked on in dismay. Jealousy does not seem to have followed Shakespeare's good fortune, and the numerous references to him as poet and playwright by others are kindly and fully recognise his superiority. Only Greene's posthumous work exists to show how one resented it. The tract has the singular title of "A Groat

woman's hide," which is a quotation from the Third Part of Henry the Sixth, where the Duke of York addresses Queen Margaret; whi

say Adam in As You Like It, an even less important character, was his favourite; but the suggestion we love the better to believe is that his best part was the cynical, melancholy, philosophic Jaques. Donnelly, chief of the Bacon heretics, has in his Great Cryptogram, a weird story of how Bacon wrote the part of Falstaff for Shakespeare,

uous on the stage," but ought never to be on it; like the celebrated actor-manager whose impersonation of Hamlet was, according to Sir W. S. Gilbert's caustic remark, "funny

be termed, in theatres and the drama. Theatres multiplied in London, theatrical compan

n, Hamnet, whose burial register in the bo

et. In July, also, his father had applied to the Heralds' College for a grant of arms, an application for a patent of gentility which would have come absurdly from a penniless tradesman. The inference therefore, although we have no documentary evidence to that effect, is that William Shakespeare had not only kept in touch with his people, but had helped his father out of his difficultie

e most prudent prince king H. 7 of famous memorie, was advanced and rewarded with lands and tenements geven to him," etc. The description of the miserly Henry the Seventh as "prudent" is, like "mobled queen," distinctly "good"; but we are not greatl

f actor, but with his company much in request at Court and in the mansions of the great. He was, one thinks, a little sobered by the passage of time; and by the death, this year, of his only son; and quite sensible of the dignity that new patent of arms had conferred upon his father and himself. To mark it, he bought in 1597 a residence, the best residence in the town, although wofully out of repair. It was known, w

. He had accumulated a large stock of corn, over against the shortage, and in a return made of the quantity of grain held in the town he held ten quarters. In the January of this year he contemplated buying some land at Shottery. "Our countriman, Mr. Shaksper," wrote Abraham Sturley to Richard Quiney on January 24th, "is willinge to disburse som

he only letter addressed to him now in existence. It is dated October 25th and addresse

nde and contreymann Mr. W

my mynde wch wolde nott be indebeted. I am nowe towardes the Cowrte, in hope of answer for the dispatche of my Buysenes. Yow shall nether loase credytt nor monney by me, the Lorde wyllinge; & nowe butt perswade yowrself soe, as I hope, & yow shall not need to feare butt with all hartie thanckefullenes I wyll holde my tyme & content

in all

. Qu

owever, was not the personal matter it would seem to be. Quiney was a substantial man, mercer and alderman of Stratford, and w

ter is extant, addressed by one of the town council, Abraham Sturley, to Quiney, on November 4th, in which he says: "Ur letter of the 25 October . . . which imported . . . that our cou

g land in the neighbourhood of Snitterfield and Welcombe from the Combes; no less than 107 acres, and in succeeding years he considerably added to it; further, in July 1605, expending ￡440 in the purchase of tithes. Early in September 1601, his father,

uthampton, in which he laments having made himself "a motley to the view." Henceforth he would be a country gentleman and dramatic author, and let who would seek the applause of the crowd. He now wrote the Taming of the Shrew, whose induction is permeated with local allusions; he bought more land in the neighbourhood of Stratford; he

slands, which were discovered by Admiral Sir George Somers' expedition in 1609. The "discovery" was made by the Admiral's ship, the Sea Venture, being driven in a storm on the hitherto unknown islands. The disasters, the adve

eive in the character of the magician, Prospero, a portraiture of himself, his work done, and

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for many years the theatre and the actor's calling, and even to behead a king and work a political revolution. The puritan leaven was working even in Stratford, and in 1602 the town council solemnly decided that stage-

ms to have been belonged to no extreme party; but it is to be noted that Dr. John Hall, husband of his eldest daughter, was a Purit

lace." If we may measure his preaching by his drinking, he must have delivered poisonously long sermons. But the town council were connoisseurs in sermons, just as the council of forty years earlier had been patrons of the drama; and they sought out and welcomed preac

as married to Thomas Quincy, vintner, son of that Richard who eighteen years earlier had sought to borrow the ￡30. In March he was taken ill and the draft will was amended without being fair-copied, a