NOTE ON CHRISTENING CUSTOMS.

HOWES, in his 'Continuation of Stow's Chronicle,' has this passage: "At this time (the first year of Queen Elizabeth), and for many years before, it was not the use and custom, as now it is (1631), for godfathers and godmothers generally to give plate at the baptism of children (as spoons, cups, and such like), but only to give christening shirts, with little bands and cuffs wrought either with silk or blue thread; the best of them for chief persons were edged with a small lace of black silk and gold, the highest price of which for great men's children was seldom above a noble, and the common sort two, three, or four and five shillings a-piece." Most of our readers are probably familiar with the story of Shakspere's own present as a godfather to the son of Ben Jonson. It is found in a manuscript in the British Museum, bearing the title of 'Merry Passages and Jests,' compiled by Sir Nicholas Lestrange. Such parts of this manuscript as are fit for publication, with other selections, have been published by the Camden Society in a little volume entitled 'Anecdotes and Traditions.' We would give this story if it were only to show our respect to Mr. Thoms, the editor of the volume, who has our sympathy when in his l'envoy he pleasantly says, “Go forth, my little book. Thou wilt, I know, find some friendly hands outstretched to give thee welcome. Yet, peradventure thou mayest meet also with unfriendly frowns-kindly meant, but hard to bear withal -signs of disapproval from good men and true, amongst whom it is the orthodox opinion that, as antiquarian matters are as old as the desert, they should be made as dry." The anecdote, in the orthography of the original, is as follows: "Shake-speare was god-father to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after the christ'ning, being in a deepe study, Jonson came to cheere him up, and ask't him why he was so melancholy? 'No, faith, Ben' (says he), 'not I, but I have been considering a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my god-child, and I have resolv'd at last.' 'I pr'y the, what?' sayes he. 'I' faith, Ben, I'le e'en give him a douzen good Lattin Spoones, and thou shalt translate them."

939

NOTE ON SHAKSPERE'S MARRIAGE-LICENCE.

THE following is a copy of the document in the Consistorial Court of Worcester, which was first published by Mr. Wheler in 1836, having been previously discovered by Sir R. Phillips. It consists of a bond to the officers of the Ecclesiastical Court, in which Fulk Sandells, of the county of Warwick, farmer, and John Rychardson, of the same place, farmer, are bound in the sum of forty pounds, &c. It is dated the 28th day of November, in the 25th year of Elizabeth (1582):

"Novint univsi p psentes nos Fulcone Sandells de Stratford in Comit Warwic agricolam et Johem Rychardson ibm agricola teneri et firmiter obligari Rico Cosin gnoso et Robto Warmstry notario puo in quadraginta libris bone et legalis monete Angliæ solvend eisdem Rico et Robto hered execut vel assignat suis ad quam quidem soluconem bene et fidelr faciend obligam nos et utrūq nrm p se pro toto et in solid hæred executor et administrator nros firmiter p pntes sigillis nris sigillat. Dat 28 die Nove Anno Regni Dne nre Eliz Dei gratia Angliæ Franc et Hibniæ Regine Fidei Defensor &c. 25".

"The condicon of this obligacon ys suche, that if hereafter there shall not appere any lawfull lett or impediment by reason of any p contract or affinitie, or by any other lawful meanes whatBoev, but that Willm Shagapere on thone ptie, and Anne Hathwey, of Stratford, in the Dioces of

Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize mriony, and in the same afterwards remaine and continew like man and wife, according unto the laws in that case provided; and moreov, if there be not at this psent time any action, suit, quarrel, or demand, moved or depending before any iudge ecclesiastical or temporall for and concerning any suche lawfull lett or impediment. And moreov, if the said Willm Shagspere do not pceed to solemnizacon of marriadg with the said Ann Hathwey without the consent of hir frinds. And also if the said Willm do upon his own pper costs and expences defend and save harmles the Right Revend Father in God Lord John Bushop of Worcester and his offycers, for licensing them, the said Willm and Anne, to be maried together wth once asking of the bannes of iriony betwene them and for alle other causes wch may ensue by reason or occasion thereof, that then the said obligacon to be voyd and of none effect, or else to stand and abide in fulle force and vertue."

е

In the Life of Shakspeare' by Mr. de Quincey the following observations are appended to an abridgment of the Marriage-Licence. The view thus taken is entirely opposed to our own, principally because it goes on to assume that the marriage of the young poet was unhappy-that his wife had not his respect and this unhappiness drove him from Stratford. All this appears to us to be gratuitous assumption, and altogether inconsistent with this undeniable fact, that Shakspere is especially the poet who has done justice to the purity and innocence of the female character. It is not, we think, to be lightly inferred that his own peculiar experience would have offered him an example throughout his life of the opposite qualities. It would be unfair, however, not to give the opinion which is thus opposed to our own:

"What are we to think of this document? Trepidation and anxiety are written upon its face. The parties are not to be married by a special licence, not even by an ordinary licence; in that case no proclamation of banns, no public asking at all, would have been requisite. Economical scruples are consulted, and yet the regular movement of the marriage 'through the bell-ropes' is disturbed. Economy, which retards the marriage, is here evidently in collision with some opposite principle which precipitates it. How is all this to be explained? Much light is afforded by the date when illustrated by another document. The bond bears date on the 28th day of November, in the 25th year of our lady the queen, that is, in 1582. Now, the baptism of Shakspeare's eldest child, Susanna, is registered on the 26th of May in the year following. ** Strange it is, that, whilst all biographers have worked with so much zeal upon the most barren dates or most baseless traditions in the great poet's life, realising in a manner the chimeras of Laputa, and endeavouring 'to extract sunbeams from cucumbers,' such a story with regard to such an event, no fiction of village scandal, but involved in legal documents, a story so significant and so eloquent to the intelligent,should formerly have been dismissed without notice of any kind; and even now, after the discovery of 1836, with nothing beyond a slight conjectural insinuation. For our parts, we should have been the last among the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal. But in this case

there seems to have been something more in motion than passion or the ardour of youth. I like not,' says Parson Evans (alluding to Falstaff in masquerade), 'I like not when a woman has a great peard; I spy a great peard under her muffler.' Neither do we like the spectacle of a mature young woman, five years past her majority, wearing the semblance of having been led astray by a boy who had still two years and a half to run of his minority."

"THIS William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about eighteen, and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and did act exceedingly well. Now Ben Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor. He began early to make Essays at Dramatic Poetry, which at that time was very low, and his plays took well." So writes honest Aubrey, in the year 1680, in his Minutes of Lives' addressed to his "worthy friend, Mr. Anthony à Wood, Antiquary of Oxford." Of the value of Aubrey's evidence we may form some opinion from his own statement to his friend :-" "T is a task that I never thought to have undertaken till you imposed it upon me, saying that I was fit for it by reason of my general acquaintance, having now not only lived above half a century of years in the world, but have also been much tumbled up and down in it; which hath made me so well known. Besides the modern advantage of coffeehouses in this great city, before which men knew not how to be acquainted but with their own relations or societies, I

might add that I come of a longævous race, by which means I have wiped some feathers off the wings of time for several generations, which does reach high.”* It must not be forgotten that Aubrey's account of Shakspere, brief and imperfect as it is, is the earliest known to exist. Rowe's Life' was not published till 1707; and although he states that he must own a particular obligation to Betterton, the actor, for the most considerable part of the passages relating to this life -"his veneration for the memory of Shakspeare having engaged him to make a journey into Warwickshire on purpose to gather up what remains he could of a name for which he had so great a veneration we have no assistance in fixing the date of Betterton's inquiries. Betterton was born in 1635. From the Restoration, until his retirement from the stage, about 1700, he was the most deservedly popular actor of his time; "such an actor," says The Tatler,' as ought to be recorded with the same respect as Roscius among the Romans." He died in 1710; and, looking at his busy life, it is probable that he did not make this journey into Warwickshire until after his retirement from the theatre. Had he set about these inquiries earlier, there can be little doubt that the Life' by Rowe would have contained more precise and satisfactory information, if not fewer idle tales. Shakspere's sister was alive in 1646; his eldest daughter, Mrs. Hall, in 1649; his second daughter, Mrs. Quiney, in 1662; and his grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, in 1670. The information which might be collected in Warwickshire, after the death of Shakspere's lineal descendants, would necessarily be mixed up with traditions, having for the most part some foundation, but coloured and distorted by that general love of the marvellous which too often hides the fact itself in the inference from it. Thus, Shakspere's father might have sold his own meat, as the landowners of his time are reproached by Harrison for doing, and yet in no proper sense of the word have been a butcher. Thus, the supposition that the poet had intended to satirize the Lucy family, in an allusion to their arms, might have suggested that there was a grudge between him and the knight; and what so likely a subject of dispute as the killing of venison? the tradition might have been exact as to the dispute; but the laws of another century could alone have suggested that the quarrel would compel the poet to fly the country. Aubrey's story of Shakspere's coming to London is a simple and natural one, without a single marvellous circumstance about it :-"This William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London." This, the elder story, appears to us to have much greater verisimilitude than the later:-" He was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London." Aubrey who has picked up all the gossip "of coffeehouses in this great city," hears no word of Rowe's story which would certainly have been handed down amongst the traditions of the theatre to Davenant and Shadwell, from whom he does hear something :-"I have heard Sir William Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best comedian we have now) say, that he had a most prodigious wit." Neither does he say, nor indeed any one else till two centuries and a quarter after Shakspere is

* This letter, which accompanies the 'Lives,' is dated London, June 15, 1680.

26

Susanna daughter to prilliam Shakspent

May

dead, that, “after four years' conjugal discord, he
would resolve upon that plan of solitary emigration to
the metropolis, which, at the same time that it released
him from the humiliation of domestic feuds, succeeded
so splendidly for his worldly prosperity, and with a
train of circumstances so vast for all future ages.' "* It
is certainly a singular vocation for a writer of genius to
bury the legendary scandals of the days of Rowe, for
the sake of exhuming a new scandal, which cannot be
received at all without the belief that the circumstance
must have had a permanent and most evil influence
upon the mind of the unhappy man who thus cowardly
and ignominiously is held to have severed himself from
his duty as a husband and a father. We cannot trace the
evil influence, and therefore we reject the scandal. It
has not even the slightest support from the weakest tra-
dition. It is founded upon an imperfect comparison
of two documents, judging of the habits of that period
by those of our own day; supported by quotations from
a dramatist of whom it would be difficult to affirm that
he ever wrote a line which had strict reference to his
own feelings and circumstances, and whose intellect in
his dramas went so completely out of itself that it
almost realizes the description of the soul in its first
and pure nature-that it "hath no idiosyncrasies; that
is, hath no proper natural inclinations which are not
competent to others of the same kind and condition.Ӡ
In the baptismal register of the parish of Stratford.
for the year 1583 is the entry of the birth of Susanna.
This record necessarily implies the residence of the
wife of William Shakspere in the parish of Stratford
Did he himself continue to reside in this parish?
There is no evidence of his residence.
His name ap-

February 2. Hannet & Judeth fonne & daughter to willia Shadspore

pears in no suit in the Bailiff's Court at this period. He fills no municipal office such as his father had filled before him. But his wife continues to reside in the native place of her husband, surrounded by his relations and her own. His father and his mother no doubt watch with anxious solicitude over the fortunes of their first son. He has a brother, Gilbert, seventeen years of age, and a sister of fourteen. His brother Richard is nine years of age; but Edmund is young enough to be the playmate of his little Susanna. In 1585 there is another entry in the parochial register, the birth of a son and a daughter:

* Encyclopædia Britannica.

+ Enquiry into the Opinion of the Eastern Sages concerning the Præ-existence of Souls. By the Rev. Joseph Glanvil.