Boas's Shakspere and His Predecessors.

Shakspere's language and grammar,

• Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon, and Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar.

For

consult

E. A.

INTRODUCTION

I. SHAKSPERE AND HIS PLAYS

1. LIFE

William Shakspere was born of peasant stock. His father, John Shakspere, was connected with a family of small landholders in Warwickshire, which has been traced back to the fourteenth century. This John Shakspere was a successful trader in Stratford-on-Avon, where he dealt in various kinds of produce, among them meat, a fact which has given rise to the legendary connection of the poet Shakspere with the butcher's trade. John Shakspere was for many years a man of substance, and enjoyed the respect of his neighbors; he served as burgess of the town, as constable, as chamberlain of the borough, and finally as high bailiff or mayor. In 1557 he married Mary Arden, the daughter of a rich farmer of Wilmcote. Of this marriage were born two girls, who died in infancy; then, in April, 1564, a son, William, and following him several more children. Meanwhile John Shakspere had fallen into financial difficulties. By 1578 he had been forced to mortgage most of his own and his wife's property, and

in 1586 it was reported that he had no available goods on which his various creditors might levy. The early experiences of William Shakspere's life may, then, be said to connect themselves with the gradual falling away of his family from a place of ease and honor in the community to one of difficulty.

Shakspere received his elementary education, including a fair amount of Latin, at the Stratford Grammar School. About the age of thirteen, however, he was withdrawn from school to assist his father in his declining business. Five years later he added to the complications of his life by marrying Anne Hathaway, probably the daughter of a farmer of Shottery who had recently died. There is reason for suspecting that this marriage was forced on Shakspere by the bride's family as a measure of reparation. Anne was eight years older than her husband. She bore him three children, Susanna, and the twins Hamnet and Judith, who were born in 1585. After this Shakspere had no more children, and it is conjectured that he left Stratford in the same year, possibly in consequence of difficulties with a gentleman of the neighborhood, Sir Thomas Lucy, on whose estate he is traditionally said to have poached. At all events, within the next few years Shakspere abandoned Stratford for London.

Here Shakspere found his first employment, so far as we know, in the company of actors patronized by the Earl of Leicester, and after his death