THE poet in his well-known Seven Ages' has necessarily presented to us only the great boundary-marks of a human life: the progress from one stage to another he has left to be imagined:

Muling and puking in the nurse's arms."

Perhaps the most influential, though the least observed, part of man's existence,. that in which he learns most of good or of evil, lies in the progress between this first act and the second:

"And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school."

Between "the nurse's arms" and the "school" there is an important interval,

filled up by a mother's education. Let us see what the home instruction of the young Shakspere would probably have been.

There is a passage in one of Shakspere's Sonnets, the 89th, which has induced a belief that he had the misfortune of a physical defect, which would render him peculiarly the object of maternal solicitude:

"Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,

And I will comment upon that offence:
Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt;
Against thy reasons making no defence."

Again, in the 37th Sonnet :

"As a decrepit father takes delight

To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth."

These lines have been interpreted to mean that William Shakspere was literally lame,* and that his lameness was such as to limit him, when he became an actor, to the representation of the parts of old men. We should, on the contrary, have no doubt whatever that the verses we have quoted may be most fitly received in a metaphorical sense, were there not some subsequent lines in the 37th Sonnet which really appear to have a literal meaning; and thus to render the previous lame and lameness expressive of something more than the general selfabasement which they would otherwise appear to imply. In the following lines lame means something distinct from poor and despised :—

"For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,

Or any of these all, of all, or more,

Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit,

I make my love engrafted to this store:

So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis'd,

Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give."

Of one thing, however, we may be quite sure-that, if Shakspere were lame, his infirmity was not such as to disqualify him for active bodily exertion. The same series of verses that have suggested this belief that he was lame also show that he was a horseman.† His entire works exhibit that familiarity with external nature, with rural occupations, with athletic sports, which is incompatible with an inactive boyhood. It is not impossible that some natural defect, or some accidental injury, may have modified the energy of such a child; and have che

"Malone has most inefficiently attempted to explain away the palpable meaning of the above lines; and adds, If Shakspeare was in truth lame, he had it not in his power to halt occasionally for this or any other purpose. The defect must have been fixed and permanent.' Not so. Surely, "many an infirmity of the kind may be skilfully concealed; or only become visible in the moments of hurried movement. Either Sir Walter Scott or Lord Byron might, without any impropriety, have written the verses in question. They would have been applicable to either of them. Indeed the lameness of Lord Byron was exactly such as Shakspeare's might have been; and I remember, as a boy, that he selected those speeches for declamation which would not constrain him to the use of such exertions as might obtrude the defect of his person into notice."-Life of William Shakspeare, by the Rev. William Harness, M.A.

† See Sonnets 50 and 51.

rished in him that love of books, and traditionary lore, and silent contemplation, without which his intellect could not have been nourished into its wondrous strength. But we cannot imagine William Shakspere a petted child, chained to home, not breathing the free air upon his native hills, denied the boy's privilege to explore every nook of his own river. We would imagine him communing from the first with Nature, as Gray has painted him

"The dauntless child

Stretch'd forth his little arms and smil'd.

The only qualifications necessary for the admission of a boy into the Free Grammar School of Stratford were, that he should be a resident in the town, of seven years of age, and able to read. The Grammar School, as we shall presently have to show in detail, was essentially connected with the Corporation of Stratford; and it is impossible to imagine that, when the son of John Shakspere became qualified by age for admission to a school where the best education of the time was given, literally for nothing, his father, in that year, being chief alderman, should not have sent him to the school. We assume, without any hesitation, that William Shakspere did receive in every just sense of the word the education of a scholar; and as such education was to be had at his own door, we also assume that he was brought up at the Free Grammar School of his own town. His earlier instruction would therefore be a preparation for this school, and the probability is that such instruction was given him at home. The letters have been taught, syllables have grown into words, and words into short sentences. There is something to be committed to memory:—

"That is question now;

And then comes answer like an Absey-book."

6

In the first year of Edward VI. was published by authority The A B C, with the Pater-noster, Ave, Crede, and Ten Commandementtes in Englysshe, newly translated and set forth at the kynges most gracious commandement." But the A B C soon became more immediately connected with systematic instruction in religious belief. The alphabet and a few short lessons were followed by the catechism, so that the book containing the catechism came to be called an A B C book, or Absey-book. Towards the end of Edward's reign was put forth by authority A Short Catechisme, or playne instruction, conteynynge the sume of christian learninge,' which all schoolmasters were called upon to teach after the "little catechism" previously set forth. Such books were undoubtedly suppressed in the reign of Mary, but upon the accession of Elizabeth they were again circulated. A question then arises, Did William Shakspere receive his elementary instruction in Christianity from the books sanctioned by the Reformed Church? It has been maintained that his father belonged to the Roman Catholic persuasion. This belief rests upon the following foundation. In the year 1770, Thomas Hart, who then inhabited one of the tenements in Henley Street which had been bequeathed to his family by William Shakspere's granddaughter, employed a bricklayer to new tile the house; and this bricklayer, by

name Mosely, found hidden between the rafters and the tiling a manuscript consisting of six leaves stitched together, which he gave to Mr. Peyton, an alderman of Stratford, who sent it to Mr. Malone, through the Rev. Mr. Devonport, vicar of Stratford. This paper, which was first published by Malone in 1790, is printed also in Reed's Shakspeare and in Drake's 'Shakspeare and his Times.' It consists of fourteen articles, purporting to be a confession of faith of "John Shakspear, an unworthy member of the holy Catholic religion." We have no hesitation whatever in believing this document to be altogether a fabrication. Chalmers says, "It was the performance of a clerk, the undoubted work of the family priest." Malone, when he first published the paper in his edition of Shakspeare, said—“ I have taken some pains to ascertain the authenticity of this manuscript, and, after a very careful inquiry, am perfectly satisfied that it is genuine." In 1796, however, in his work on the Ireland forgeries, he asserts" I have since obtained documents that clearly prove it could not have been the composition of any one of our poet's family." We not only do not believe that it was "the composition of any one of our poet's family," nor "the undoubted work of the family priest," but we do not believe that it is the work of a Roman Catholic at all. It professes to be the writer's "last spiritual will, testament, confession, protestation, and confession of faith." Now, if the writer had been a Roman Catholic, or if it had been drawn up for his approval and signature by his priest, it would necessarily, professing such fulness and completeness, have contained something of belief touching the then material points of spiritual difference between the Roman and the Reformed Church. Nothing, however, can be more vague than all this tedious protestation and confession, with the exception that phrases, and indeed long passages, are introduced for the purpose of marking the supposed writer's opinions in the way that should be most offensive to those of a contrary opinion, as if by way of bravado or seeking of persecution. Thus: "Item, I, John Shakspear, do protest that I will also pass out of this life armed with the last sacrament of extreme unction." Again: “Item, I, John Shakspear, do protest that I am willing, yea, I do infi. nitely desire and humbly crave, that of this my last will and testament the glorious and ever Virgin Mary, mother of God, refuge and advocate of sinners, (whom I honour specially above all saints,) may be the chief executress, together with these other saints, my patrons, (Saint Winefride,) all whom I invoke and beseech to be present at the hour of my death, that she and they comfort me with their desired presence." Again: "Item, I, John Shakspear, do in like manner pray and bescech my dear friends, parents, and kinsfolks, by the bowels of our Saviour Jesus Christ, that, since it is uncertain what lot will befall me, for fear notwithstanding lest by reason of my sins I be to pass and stay a long while in purgatory, they will vouchsafe to assist and succour me with their holy prayers and satisfactory works, especially with the holy sacrifice of the mass, as being the most effectual means to deliver souls from their torments and pains; from the which if I shall, by God's gracious goodness, and by their virtuous works, be delivered, I do promise that I will not be ungrateful unto them for so

great a benefit." This last item, which is the twelfth of the paper, is demonstrative to us of its spuriousness. That John Shakspere was what we popularly call a Protestant in the year 1568, when his son William was four years old, may be shown by the clearest of proofs. He was in that year the chief magistrate of Stratford; he could not have become so without taking the Oath of Supremacy, according to the statute of the 1st of Elizabeth, 1558-9.* To refuse this oath was made punishable with forfeiture and imprisonment, with the pains of præmunire and high treason. The conjecture," says Chalmers (speaking in support of the authenticity of this confession of faith), "that Shakspeare's family were Roman Catholics, is strengthened by the fact that his father declined to attend the corporation meetings, and was at last removed from the corporate body.” He was removed from the corporate body in 1585, with a distinct statement of the reason for this removal-his non-attendance when summoned to the halls. According to this reasoning of Chalmers, John Shakspere did not hesitate to take the Oath of Supremacy when he was chief magistrate in 1564, but retired from the corporation in 1585, where he might have remained without offence to his own conscience or to others, being, in the language of that day, a Popish recusant, to be stigmatized as such, persecuted, and subject to the most odious restrictions. If he left or was expelled the corporation for his religious opinions, he would, of course, not attend the service of the church, for which offence he would be liable, in 1585, to a fine of 201. per month; and then, to crown the whole, in this his last confession, spiritual will, and testament, he calls upon all his kinsfolks to assist and succour him after his death "with the holy sacrifice of the mass," with a promise that he "will not be ungrateful unto them for so great a benefit," well knowing that by the Act of 1581 the saying of mass was punishable by a year's imprisonment and a fine of 200 marks, and the hearing of it by a similar imprisonment and a fine of 100 marks. The fabrication appears to us as gross as can well be imagined. It must be borne in mind that the parents of William Shakspere passed through the great changes of religious opinion, as the greater portion of the people passed, without any violent corresponding change in their habits derived from their forefathers. In the time of Henry VIII. the great contest of opinion was confined to the supremacy of the Pope; the great practical state measure was the suppression of the religious houses. Under Edward VI. there was a very careful compromise of all those opinions and practices in which the laity were participant. In the short reign of Mary the persecution of the Reformers must have been offensive even to those who clung fastest to the ancient institutions and modes of belief; and even when the Reformation was fully established under Elizabeth, the habits of the people were still very slightly interfered with. The astounding majority of the conforming clergy is a convincing proof how little the opinions of the laity must have been

* “And all and every temporal judge, mayor, and other lay or temporal officer and minister, and every other person having your Highness's fee or wages within this realm, or any your Highness's dominions, shall make, take, and receive a corporal oath upon the Evangelist, before such person or persons as shall please your Highness, your heirs or successors, under the great seal of England, to assign and name to accept and take the same, according to the tenor and effect hereafter following, that is to say," &c.

See Note at the end of this Chapter.