and more practically efficient jostle aside and underrate for their want of interest in the noisy chit-chat and common-place of the day; but who yet have a sacred power, like that of the spirit of peace, to brood with dove-like wings over the childish heart, and quicken into life the struggling, slumbering elements of a sensitive nature. "I cannot but think, in that beautiful scene where he represents Desdemona as amazed and struck dumb with the grossness and brutality of the charges which had been thrown upon her, yet so dignified in the consciousness of her own purity, so magnanimous in the power of disinterested, forgiving love, that he was portraying no ideal excellence, but only reproducing, under fictitious and suppositious circumstances, the patience, magnanimity, and enduring love which had shone upon him in the household words and ways of his mother. I seem, too, to have a kind of perception of Shakspere's father; a quiet, God-fearing, thoughtful man, given to the reading of good books, avoiding quarrels with a most christian-like fear, and with but small talent either in the way of speech-making or moneygetting; a man who wore his coat with an easy slouch, and who seldom knew where his money went to." When William Shakspere became old enough, it is not unlikely that his parents would send him to the endowed Grammar-school of the town in which they lived. This might probably happen about 1571, when his father had become chief Alderman of the town. It is true that we have no record that Shakspere was at this school, yet it is no less true that his works abound with evidences that he must have been solidly grounded in the learning properly so called, which was taught in Grammar-schools. A belief has obtained that William Shakspere's family, about his fourteenth year, became embarrassed in their circumstances. This may have happened, and in the various changes of fortune and occupation in which his parents were involved, William Shakspere's youth may have been one of very desultory employment, affording him leisure to make those extraordinary acquisitions of general knowledge which could scarcely have been made, or rather the foundations of which could not have been established, during the active life which we believe he led from about his twentieth year. When in his nineteenth year, he married a lady considerably older than himself, the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood. It is uncertain how he was employed at this time, whether in the capacity of assistant to his father, or as a lawyer's clerk, or a Schoolmaster; employed, we have no doubt, he was in some honourable course of industry. His altered situuation, however, as a husband and a father, might incite him, not long after his marriage, to choose the capital of England as offering to him the best field to turn his talents to advantage. Uncertain tradition, however, furnishes the following circumstances as conducive to his departure from Stratford. "He had," says Rowe, "by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deerstealing, engaged him 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, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, 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." In this account, which appears to have been current amidst the gossip of Stratford, there may probably be a great deal of falsehood, with however some tissue of the truth. We must not forget that some are of opinion that there was no park, properly so called, at Charlecote, and, consequently, that William Shakspere was not amenable to the laws relating to parks. However this may be, it is not doubted that after his flight or departure from his native town, he afterwards rose to eminence and fortune in the metropolis. Here he formed an acquaintance with the players, and was enrolled among them, though what sort of characters he performed does not appear. Mr. Rowe observes, that he never could meet with any further account of him as an actor than that his highest part was the Ghost in his own Hamlet.* It appears that about the year 1603, Shakspere was desirous of retiring from the more laborious duties of his profession, but still retaining his property in the theatres. In 1608, the Corporation of London attempted to interfere with the actors of the Blackfriars. There is a reference to this interference in a letter from Lord Southampton to Lord Ellesmere, the Lord Chancellor, which contains the following important passage:- "These bearers," says his lordship, are two of the chief of the company; one of them by name Richard Burbidge, who humbly sueth for your Lordship's kind help, for that he is a man famous as our English Roscius, one who fitteth the action to the word, and the word to the action most admirably. By the exercise of his quality, industry, and good beha 66 *We do not conceive that Shakspere's impersonation of the Ghost, in 'Hamlet,' is any proof of his mediocrity: moreover we are gratified by the information that he performed kingly parts, as expressed in the following lines which were written in 1611, by John Davies, in a poem which is inscribed "To our English Terence, Mr. William Shakspere:" "Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing, And been a king among the meaner sort.' By the "meaner sort," we should, perhaps, understand the subjects of a king, including those who were next in dignity to the monarch, but yet not of the royal line. When we find that Shakspere was a fit 'companion for a king,' we cannot suppose that Davies intended by the 'meaner sort,' to name none other than the dregs of society. B viour, he hath become possessed of the Blackfriars Playhouse, which hath been employed for plays since it was built by his father, now near fifty years ago. The other is a man no whit less deserving of a favour, and my especial friend, till of late an actor of good account in the company, now a sharer in the same, and writer of some of our best English plays, which, as your Lordship knoweth, were most singularly liked of Queen Elizabeth, when the company was called upon to perform before her Majesty at court, at Christmas and Shrovetide. His most gracious Majesty King James also, since his coming to the crown, hath extended his royal favour to the company in divers ways, and at sundry times. This other hath to name William Shakspere, and they are both of one county, and indeed almost of one town: both are right famous in their qualities, though it longeth not to your Lordship's gravity and wisdom to resort unto the places where they are wont to delight the public ear. Their trust and suit now is, not to be molested in their way of life whereby they maintain themselves, and their wives and families, (being both married, and of good reputation,) as well as the widows and orphans of some of their dead fellows," This is something like a breaking down of aristocratic distinctions, to write in this manner of a poor player.-"The other is a man no whit less deserving a favour, and my especial friend." All men must have esteemed our poet when his personal character, as well as his surpassing genius, had thus |