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1.1AM SHAKESPEARE
IIS FAMILY AND
FRIENDS

CHARLES I. ELTON

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS

BY THE LATE CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

ONE OF HER LATE MAJESTY'S COUNSEL

AUTHOR OF THE TENURES OF KENT

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH

HISTORY

&c.

EDITED BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON

WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR BY

ANDREW LANG

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET

1904

PREFATORY NOTE

HP* HE following chapters have been formed from the
•*• greater portion of a series of papers, which the
author evidently intended to be the nucleus of an ex
haustive work upon Shakespeare. This series dealt
with two special subjects. One part of it concerned
the biography and family-history of Shakespeare, and
the various places with which his name can be con
nected. The other division embraced several historical
studies, relating to the sources and production of The
Tempest.

The shape in which these papers were left by Mr.
Elton was incomplete and disconnected. Some had
undergone revision : in some cases, two almost parallel
versions, apparently of the same chapter, existed, testi
fying to the scholarly care with which the work had
been undertaken and planned. There was no definite
indication, however, of the final shape which it had
been intended to assume. To the state of completeness
at which the various parts had arrived, inference was
the only guide ; their purposed order was matter for
pure conjecture.

A number of representative chapters, therefore, have
been selected from the papers, which may define, in
some measure, the scope and character of the book
thus begun. By a collation of all the existing versions

vi PREFATORY NOTE

of chapters and separate details, the editor has en
deavoured to retain everything that seemed to him
ready for publication, while giving each chapter com
pleteness and continuity, so far as was possible, within
itself. Almost all the matter in the first of the divisions
mentioned above has been included. Much of the
portion relating to The Tempest was in so unfinished
a condition that it could not have been inserted with
out fundamental alteration. Fortunately, three of the
existing chapters on that subject were in such a state
that they could be printed, to all intents and purposes,
as they were left : the fourth is the result of a collation
of two parallel chapters, in which Mr. Elton's text,
with a few necessary changes, has been carefully pre
served. The chief portion of the editor's task has
lain in verifying the quotations with which the book
abounds, and supplying the footnotes and references.
As the papers supplied few clues, beyond the names of
the authors, to these quotations and references, this
task has involved some time ; and the publication of
the book has been delayed unavoidably thereby.

It has been the one object of the editor, in under
taking his part in the work, to present these papers in
their true light as a sound and weighty contribution to
Shakespearean scholarship. If, in many cases, they
deal with familiar aspects of the subject, their attitude
seems to him to be distinguished by singular independ
ence of view, and by a characteristic ability to produce
and handle the complex details of evidence, often of a
confusing and contrary nature. They bear convincing
witness to the learning and wide research of their

accomplished author.

A. H. T.

CHICHESTER,

January ', 1904.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHARLES ISAAC ELTON . . . ... 3

FACTS AND TRADITIONS RELATING TO SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 21

STRATFORD-ON-AVON . . . ... 63

I. ORIGIN OF NAME— PREHISTORIC REMAINS : PATHLOW AND THE
LIBERTY — ROMAN ROADS IN WARWICKSHIRE — RYKNIELD
STREET IN "CYMBELINE" . . ... 63

II. MEDIEVAL STRATFORD: ITS CONNECTION WITH THE BISHOPS
OF WORCESTER — GROWTH OF THE TOWN— THE FAIRS AND
MARKETS — EPISCOPAL RIGHTS IN STRATFORD— OFFICERS OF
THE MEDIEVAL BOROUGH . . ... 71

III. THE PARISH CHURCH — COLLEGE OF PRIESTS — LELAND AND

LOVEDAY : THEIR ACCOUNTS OF THE CHURCH AND MONU
MENTS . . . . ... 80

IV. THE GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS : EARLY RULES AND CUSTOMS

—RE-FOUNDATION BY HENRY IV.— THE CHAPEL . . 83

V. INTERIOR OF THE GUILD CHAPEL — THE DANCE OF DEATH:

SHAKESPEARE'S PICTURES OF DEATH — DESCRIPTION OF OTHER
FRESCOES . . . . ... 86

VI. THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL — THE GUILD-HALL : PERFORMANCES OF

PLAYS THEREIN — THE SCHOOLROOMS — THE NEW CORPORA
TION (1553) .. . . ... 97

SNITTERFIELD, WILMCOTE, AND THE MANOR OF ROWINGTON . 107

MIDLAND AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL HISTORY IN SHAKE
SPEARE'S PLAYS . . . . 139

viii CONTENTS

PAGE

LANDMARKS ON THE STRATFORD ROAD AND IN LONDON, 1586-1616 179
i. SHAKESPEARE'S JOURNEY TO LONDON (c. 1586) . . 179

II. THE ROAD TO LONDON — ROLLRIGHT STONES — GRENDON UNDER
WOOD — AYLESBURY TO UXBRIDGE . ... 182

III. UXBRIDGE TO TYBURN — ST. GILES' . ... 190

iv. GRAY'S INN — THE REVELS OF 1594 AND "THE COMEDY OF
ERRORS" — "TWELFTH NIGHT" AT THE MIDDLE TEMPLE,
1601-2 . . . . ... 193

V. THE GARDENS OF GRAY'S INN — JOHN GERARD'S GARDEN IN

HOLBORN . . . . ... 201

VI. SHAKESPEARE A HOUSEHOLDER IN BISHOPSGATE — CROSBY PLACE 2O$

VII. THE PARISH OF ST. HELEN'S— DESCRIPTION IN STOW's "SURVEY" 2IO

SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS— His DEATH AND WILL . . 223
i. SHAKESPEARE'S FAMILY— MARRIAGE OF SUSANNA SHAKESPEARE

TO JOHN HALL — DISPOSAL OF SHAKESPEARE'S REAL PROPERTY

— THE POET'S LEGACY TO HIS WIFE . ... 223

ii. SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH — DESCRIPTION OF THE STRATFORD

MONUMENT — DETAILED NOTES ON THE EPITAPH — JOHN
HALL : ITS POSSIBLE AUTHOR . ... 230

in. JOHN HALL'S CASE-BOOKS—INFORMATION WITH REGARD TO HIS

WIFE AND DAUGHTER— HIS WIDOW . ... 239

IV. JUDITH SHAKESPEARE — HER MARRIAGE TO THOMAS QUINEY —
HER PLACE IN HER FATHER'S WILL — THE QUINEY FAMILY —
ALLUSIONS TO GROCERS AND DRUGGISTS IN SHAKESPEARE . 252

V. ELIZABETH HALL — HER MARRIAGES — HER WILL — SUBSEQUENT

FORTUNES OF SHAKESPEAJIE'S STRATFORD PROPERTY . . 265

ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 277
I. HOWELL'S LETTERS :

i. HOWELL'S RELATIONS WITH BEN JONSON — HIS LINES ON
DAVIES' WELSH GRAMMAR — LONG MKLFORD IN SHAKESPEARE
AND IN HOWELL'S LETTERS . . ... 277

II. HOWELL ON TRADE AND COMMERCE — WINES AND ALES . . 282

III. HOWKLL AT VENICE — ILLUSTRATIONS OF "THE TEMPEST,"

" OTHELLO," ETC. . . . ... 286

IV. ANECDOTES AND LEGENDS IN HOWELL'S LETTERS— IRISH FOLK

LORE—JOAN OF ARC . . ... 293

CONTENTS ix

II. WARD'S DIARY:

I. THE REV. JOHN WARD— HIS MEDICAL TRAINING— HIS REMARKS PACE
ON CLERGY AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION . . . 298

II. WARD AT STRATFORD — HIS NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH—
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EPIDEMICS— CONVIVIAL HABITS OF
THE DAY . . . . ... 304

in. WARD'S MEMORANDA ON SHAKESPEARE'S ART— ILLUSTRATIVE

PHRASES IN THE DIARY . . . . . 3!!

IV. HISTORICAL REFERENCES— WARD ON THE HISTORY AND AN
TIQUITIES OF STRATFORD AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD — HIS
ACQUAINTANCE WITH SHAKESPEARE'S RELATIONS . .31?

III. DOWDALL, AUBREY, ETC.:

i. DOWDALL'S LETTER TO SOUTHWELL, 1693 — ROOD'S PREFACE —

DOWDALL AT KINETON — HIS VISIT TO STRATFORD . . 327

ii. DOWDALL'S VISIT TO WARWICK— THE BEAUCHAMPS AND NB-

VILLES IN SHAKESPEARE— THE GREVILLES . . . 334

in. WILLIAM HALL'S LETTER TO EDWARD THWAITES, 1694 . . 339
IV. A NOTE BY GILDON — AUBREY — MR. BEESTON'S INFORMATION
IN AUBREY'S MSS. — THE "BUTCHER-BOY" AND DAVENANT
LEGENDS . . . . ... 343

V. ALLUSIONS BY SHAKESPEARE TO THE BUTCHER'S TRADB —

INCONSISTENCY OF EVIDENCE ON THE POINT . . . 348

THE PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" . . • • 357

I. HUP^R'S THEORIES, 1839:

i. HUNTER'S "DISQUISITION ON 'THE TEMPEST'"— RALEGH'S
"DESCRIPTION OF GUIANA" — DEWLAPPED MOUNTAINEERS
AND HEADLESS MEN . . ... 357

ii. "THE TEMPEST" AND JONSON'S "EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR"

— FLORIO'S "MONTAIGNE" — "LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" . 368

III. LAMPEDUSA — A SUPPOSED ORIGINAL FOR "THE TEMPEST" —

THE MAGIC OF " THE TEMPEST " — SHAKESPEARE AND ARIOSTO 374

II. THE MARRIAGE OF THE EARL OF ESSEX, AND JONSON'S

"MASQUE OF HYMEN," 1606:

I. ESSEX'S MARRIAGE — ERRORS AS TO EXACT NATURE OF CERE
MONY — MARRIAGE OF LADY ESSEX TO ROCHESTER, 1613 —
ACCOUNT OF THE CEREMONIES AND MASQUES . . 395

ii. SHAKESPEARE'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS MASQUES— JONSON'S

"MASQUE OF HYMEN "—PARALLELS WITH "THE TEMPEST" 410

x CONTENTS

III. THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH, 1613 : PAGE

I. ACCOUNT OF THE MARRIAGE CEREMONIES . . . 423

II. PLAYS ACTED AT WHITEHALL AND HAMPTON COURT, 1613 —

STORY OF THE " VERTUE MSS." . ... 434

IV. ON A POSSIBLE PERFORMANCE AT THE BLACKFRIARS,

c. 1606:

THE BLACKFRIARS THEATRE AND THE COMPANIES OF
BOY ACTORS . . . ... 450

I. BLACKFRIARS — HISTORY OF THE THEATRE . . . 451

II. CONSTRUCTION OF THE THEATRE — ITS PROBABLE APPEARANCE

AND SCENIC ARRANGEMENTS . ... 457

III. CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIVATE THEATRES — SITTING ON THE

STAGE — THE INDUCTION TO JONSON's " CYNTHIA'S REVELS " 463

IV. THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL — NATHANIEL FIELD — THE

PART OF ARIEL IN "THE TEMPEST" . ... 469

V. THE CHILDREN OF THE QUEEN'S REVELS AT BLACKFRIARS . 475

VI. THE DISPUTE OF 1655 BETWEEN PROPRIETORS AND ACTORS AT

THE GLOBE AND BLACKFRIARS . . . . 481

INDEX . . . . . ... 485

CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

THE author of the following studies, a man of many
unusual accomplishments, of numerous interests,
and of the kindest nature, Mr. Charles Elton, was born
at Southampton, on December 6th, 1839. He was the
eldest son of Mr. Frederick Bayard Elton, his mother
being a daughter of Sir Charles Elton, Bart., of
Clevedon Court, on the Bristol Channel. Hard by
the ancient and beautiful house is the church where
Arthur Hallam sleeps, and the place is full of memories
of Tennyson and Thackeray.

It was not the privilege of the writer to have any
acquaintance with Mr. Elton till he met him in London,
about 1878-80, and he is obliged to the kindness of
Mr. John White, C.B., for the following reminiscences
of earlier years, and of a companionship more intimate.
Mr. White writes: "Charles Elton was in the head
class at Cheltenham College along with me for, I think,
about two years, before we both went up, almost at the
same time, to Oxford. There we were again together,
at Balliol, until Elton was elected to an open Fellowship
at Queen's ; and as, very shortly afterwards, I also
became a Fellow of Queen's, we were, throughout our
school and college lives, very much thrown together,

4 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

and, indeed, at the University were almost inseparable
companions.

11 Neither at school nor college was Elton studious in
the ordinary sense of the term. At Cheltenham he sat
contentedly low down in his class; but I believe that
if any class-mate capable of judging had been asked
to point to a boy of genius, he would have been apt to
point straight to Elton. In fact, only one other boy
among us would, I think, have had a chance against
Elton in such a competition — the late Frederick Myers.
These two had several points in common. Both were
wonderful boy-poets. Nothing produced by Elton,
perhaps, equalled the marvellous three poems, all
differing from each other totally in metre, style, and
treatment of subject, which were sent in by Myers for a
school prize on t Belisarius,' and of which two were
bracketed 'equal first,' while a second prize, specially
awarded in that year, was only lost by the third through
some curiously defective rhymes. But Elton also won
our English verse prize, for two or three years in
succession, with very beautiful compositions, richly
eloquent in language, elegant in finish, harmonious in
cadence, often exhibiting a certain gorgeousness of
imagination which was distinctive of him, and rising
sometimes into bursts of very genuine poetry.

"Old Cheltonians may still recall what was, perhaps,
his greatest effort of this kind — a poem written during
the Crimean war on avSpav yap eTn^avuiv Traara yrj ra^o?,
and the fine rendering of its Greek subject in its last
lines —

" ' Far other monuments their praise rehearse —
The grave of heroes is the universe ! '

"Apart from their poetic rivalry, Elton and Myers
resembled each other in being alike the despair of our
headmaster, the Rev. William Dobson, that great
scholar and remarkable man, who created Cheltenham

SCHOOL-DAYS 5

College, and had in Elton's day already made it a school
of nearly seven hundred boys. For a youth of manifest
power and yet complete indifference to success in the
ordinary routine work of the school, Dobson had no
toleration ; and accordingly these two, sitting at the
bottom of the class, moved his ire not a little, especially
Elton. That Elton, however careless of the daily set
task, was reading omnivorously all the time, would not
have consoled Dobson if he knew it. We boys knew
it, and it impressed us much. I remember an account
of Spinoza's philosophy given me by Elton long before
we left school, and made so interesting by him that,
though I was hearing the philosopher's name absolutely
for the first time, I recalled, years afterwards at Oxford
when reading of Spinoza, what Elton had then told me
about him, and was amazed at the masterly grasp got
by a schoolboy of a system of philosophy so difficult
and obscure. But a vague pursuit of knowledge for its
own sake was not encouraged by our headmaster, and
Elton showed no promise or desire of attaining what to
Dobson seemed the schoolboy's true goal — a scholarship
at Balliol. Indeed, even in the kind of acquaintance
he displayed with Latin and Greek — almost our sole
subjects of study — Elton diverged very widely from
our teacher's ideal. Dobson loved composition which
imitated with an absolutely slavish fidelity a correctly
chosen classical model, and he was capable of chuckling
with delight over an exact reproduction of a Thucy-
didean ' anacoluthon.' Elton, who had wandered
through all sorts of Silver Age and mediaeval Latin,
wrote a Latin style certainly not Augustan, but as
certainly his own. Such composition was not likely to
win applause in our class, but to have produced it there
at all showed, I think, original power.

"As a freshman at Balliol I remember being handed
by Jowett a piece of English to be put into Latin.
Straight from the school of Dobson, I, seeing it was

6 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

historical, asked whether I should ' try to do it into the
style of Livy or of Tacitus.' After the characteristic
pause, and with a characteristic smile, ' Do it into good
Latin,' said Jowett ; and his words were a sort of
revelation to me. Elton needed no such revelation.
He was proof against the imitative system of classical
composition which was inculcated at Cheltenham, and
in nothing written by him do I ever remember to
have detected the slightest copying of any other man's
style.

"In personal appearance, Elton as a schoolboy and
undergraduate was a strong contrast to what he after
wards became. The slim youth, whom I recall, with
his pale, grave, interesting face and deep-blue, poetic
eyes, had an air of languor strikingly different from the
mien of that man of very full figure and exuberant
vitality, who in later life impressed all who saw him
with an idea of masterful force and energy. Elton's
early taste for studies beyond his years has been men
tioned, but it probably never occurred to anybody to
call him 'precocious.' He looked in boyhood rruich
older than he was, and the maturity of his mind was
what you would have expected from his looks. That
his youthful languor gave place to higher spirits and
more self-assertive activity was, no doubt, the result
of a distinct improvement in health, and this in turn
was undoubtedly a result of a life of quite singularly
happy and suitable conditions. In youth, even more
than most lads, he was careless of his health, and he
certainly never seemed strong. At no outdoor game
was he expert, though he could enjoy fives and racquets,
and sometimes at school joined in football. But at
indoor games he was always good. From boyhood
he was a capital billiard player and he had a great
knowledge of whist. When towards middle age he
grew more robust, he took keen pleasure in shooting
and lawn tennis ; but when at school and college, he

AT OXFORD 7

never joined at all in the commonest open-air amuse
ments — the cricket and rowing.

"To the pursuit of university honours Elton never
really applied himself with any devotion. His first-
classes in Moderations and the Final School of Law and
History, his Vinerian Scholarship, and his fellowship
at Queen's were got without effort. At Balliol he con
tinued to be the wide and somewhat random rover
through many kinds of literature he had begun to be
at school, and his scholarship remained of a doubtfully
classical kind, ill suited for winning ' Hertfords ' or
'Irelands.' His later love of archaeology had not yet
shown itself, and to philology — just commencing to be
regarded at Oxford as an essential part of good scholar
ship—he paid small attention. The only prize exercise
he tried for was, I think, the Newdigate, and it was an
open secret that his poem on ' The Vikings ' was placed
first for that prize by certainly not the least eminent
of the judges — Matthew Arnold. When odes in
honour of the present Queen were called for by the
University, on her visit to Oxford soon after her
marriage, Elton's English ode was, with one other,
selected for recitation out of numerous competitors. In
the Final School of Literae Humaniores, Elton had not
studied the set books carefully enough to give himself a
fair chance of a first class ; but he nearly got one, not
withstanding ; and when he heard of his second, said
at once that he had time to cover it by getting a first
in Law and History, which he proceeded to do in
remarkably brilliant style.

" But however desultory was his pursuit of honours,
and however devious and undisciplined his reading, I
believe that Elton educated himself very effectively at
Oxford, and left it a remarkably well-informed man.
Of standard books, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy
and Shelley's poems were, I think, those I oftenest saw
him take up ; but it was by his rare acquaintance with

8 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

the less generally well-known periods of history and of
literature that he kept constantly astonishing even his
most intimate friends. He had a genius, we used to
say, for prying into nooks and corners, and that love of
leaving the beaten track and exploring for himself,
which afterwards made him, as a lawyer, specially
erudite in curious and out-of-the-way branches of the
law, displayed itself early. Whether he was ever a
great historian in the common sense I am not sure, but
he could describe delightfully the periods which par
ticularly took his fancy. He cared little for registering
facts about them, but he imbibed their spirit, and his
powerful, pictorial imagination revelled in making
them alive again. All ballad-literature had a peculiar
charm for him, and to him was rich in instruction in
regard to the peoples among whom it had grown up.
But even the lightest literature of the day did not
escape his notice, and he had a broad and human
tolerance of rubbish. Literally, he devoured books by
the roomful. Once, when he was laid up by a tooth
ache, I remember his asking me to bring him ' some
novels.' I brought him a three- volume novel from the
library. 'What's that?'1 said he, pointing contemp
tuously at the three fat volumes. ' I shall have finished
that thing before you can turn round. Tell them to send
me the full of a hand-truck.' And though he ran so
rapidly through what he read, he seldom missed a point
in it. In an examination undergone by him (I think it
was for a ' Jenkyns' Exhibition,' won by the present
master of Balliol, Dr. Caird), the subject for the English
essay was (in effect — I am not sure of the precise
wording), 'Nationality as a basis of political division.'
Elton wrote an essay which so exacting a critic as the
late Archdeacon Edwin Palmer pronounced to me
' excellent — a complete synopsis of the way the whole
thing would work out.' Repeating this compliment to
Elton, I remarked that I did not know he had ever

given a thought to the subject or had read a line upon
it. 'Neither had I,' said he, 'till a few nights ago,
at the Union, I chanced to run my eyes over some
magazine articles, of which two or three bore straight
on this subject. They were rather good, and I think I
got all the plums out of them into my essay — along
with a little make-believe padding of my own. Fancy
my having taken in the Dons so!' The 'Dons' he
had ' taken in ' were the Fellows of Balliol, as compe
tent examiners as could be found. Elton might be
trusted to pick the plums out of whatever he glanced
over. He was the most keen-eyed and unerring of
critics, and any ' padding ' put in by him was sure to
consist of acute and interesting observations, only
' make-believe ' in the sense that, very possibly, they
left an impression of a more thorough and painstaking
mastery of the subject than he had really acquired,
a trick of style few writers would not covet.

"Socially, Elton did not aim in youth at a very large
acquaintance, but he was distinctly popular in his own
set. To be so widely known and such a general favour
ite as he was subsequently in London, and especially
in the House of Commons, would not have seemed
to be in store for him. His manner was quieter
and more subdued than it afterwards became, and he
was as little given to laughter as Mr. Disraeli himself.
But he had in full measure that quality which I
suppose is, among the young, the most attractive of
all — sense of humour. Indeed, I think he had it in the
most 'all-round' form I ever met it. No kind of joke
was lost upon him, and, among those who knew him
well, I am by no means alone in thinking that he had
a singular power of estimating at their right values
all the manifold varieties of wit and of humour.

"And one other quality I think he also showed in
the most ' all-round ' form I have met it — courage. In
regard to this quality boys gauge each other with an

io CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

exactness unattainable in the more artificial later life,
and, having been able to apply their tests to Elton, I
confidently pronounce his to have been as fearless a
nature as I have known. I do not of course refer merely
to the courage which faces personal danger. In that I
believe Elton to have abounded ; but he was strangely
free, too, from the subtler timidities, which, making
men shrink from risk of incurring ridicule or of being
convicted of wrong judgment, frighten them into self-
suppressions and pretences. Elton always dared to be
himself. I never knew him afraid of anybody or of
anything.

"Of Elton's maturer years and the more serious work
of his life it will be for another and abler pen to render
account. It has been my privilege to be allowed to
record these few memories of the youth of one who, for
nearly half a century, was, perhaps, my most intimate
friend. And certainly I had full opportunity not only of
observing Elton's own early years, but of comparing
him, during them, with others, who have since been
tried by the world and have not been found wanting.
In Elton's class at Cheltenham College were Mr. John
Morley and Dr. Henry Jackson of Cambridge. Con
temporary with him at Balliol were, among those now
gone from us, leaving great reputations, Lord Bowen,
Mr. T. H. Green and Sir Henry Jenkyns, and very many
men, still living, who have attained the highest and most
varied distinctions. Indeed, I doubt whether even Balliol
ever saw a generation more remarkable than Elton's. To
it belonged one living poet, who has written most finely ;
it has given eminent judges to the Bench ; at the head
of several Oxford Colleges, and of our two greatest
public schools, are members of it ; in both branches of
the Legislature it has achieved distinction, and among
the officers of Parliament it can claim a curiously large
number of the most prominent. In the Civil Service
it has made its mark, and even in the Army, although

LITERARY WORK n

it sent but some half-dozen recruits, it has scored a
signal success with almost every one of them. Well, as
I look back over all these men with the critical insight
which comes of experience, it is easy to see how, in the
practical qualities leading to fame and fortune, the tricks
of manner which win the world and the steady un
swerving pursuit of single objects which attains them,
this and that man may have excelled the man of whom
I write ; but, among them all, I do not really think
there was anyone of richer and rarer intellectual powers,
of talents more brilliant and various and original, or of
more interesting character and personality, than Charles
Elton."

I cannot hope to add to Mr. White's account any
thing of equal interest. It was plain to all who knew
Mr. Elton well that he had one attribute of genius,
the power of doing well, rapidly, and en se jouant (as
gentle King Jamie said of himself), whatever he under
took.

What he undertook, after his college days, was not
often poetical, though he published some charming
verses in Once a Week, at that time adorned by the
genius of the great artists, Millais, Charles Keene,
Frederick Walker, Sandys, Leech, with one little re
membered, but well worth remembering, M. J. Lawless,
and of George du Maurier. A serial, to which Charles
Reade and Mr. George Meredith contributed novels,
and Mr. Swinburne a remarkable tale of the Armagnac
wars, gave hospitality to Mr. Elton's verse. But his
main literary interest was in the borderland of history,
archaeology, law, and the study of .institutions.
Though he did everything easily, he did nothing in
dolently, and I remember how often he sometimes
rewrote passages in his valuable Origins of English
History, tfirowing away page after page of manuscript,
till he had satisfied himself. In his humour, his good-

12 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

ness of heart, his large facility, and wealth of out-of-
the-way lore, he somewhat reminded one of Dr. John
son. A fragment of his Oxford career may be recalled.
When he won his fellowship at Queen's College, in
1862, among the competitors was Mr. John Addington
Symonds.

In 1863 he married Miss Mary Augusta Strachey,
his fellow-worker in literature and in the collection of
books and of works of art. In 1864, after a tour in
Norway, he published Norway, the Road and the Fell.
He was called to the Bar in Michaelmas Term, 1865,
and at once adopted the line in which he was pre
eminent, the study of early English land laws and
institutions. Of this work the first-fruits was The
Tenures of Kent (1867). But before the publication
of this book, Mr. Elton's love of hunting in the dusty
corners of history, and his loyalty to his friends, had
led him to a discovery of practical moment. His old
friend, Mr. Jowett, of Balliol, was then Regius Professor
of Greek, on a salary of .£40 a year. Christ Church, it
was believed, owned the lands in Worcestershire, which
were burdened by the salary of the Chair. But this
burden appears to have been a point rather of tradition
than of knowledge. Mr. E. A. Freeman had been in
correspondence with Dean Liddell on the subject, and
had called his attention, in a pamphlet, to the point as to
the lands in Worcestershire. Dean Liddell, in a letter
to The Times, challenged anyone to produce the deed
to which Mr. Freeman had referred. For what follows
we are indebted to a letter by Mr. Elton to Mr. Free
man. That historian's statement, and the Dean's
challenge, were the points whence Mr. Elton began his
researches. He thought that he found a flaw in the
Dean's account of the titles of "the House" — a flaw of
which the Dean was unconscious. The House possessed
one deed, in which nothing was said of the lands and
the burden on them. But the tradition as to the

HIS HAPPY DISCOVERY 13

burden was mentioned in Wedmore's History. Wed-
more knew, vaguely, of another deed. No trace or
memory of it was discovered by Mr. Elton at the British
Museum. At the Record Office the authorities were
sceptical. There was only the first deed, already
familiar to Christ Church. Mr. Elton persevered. If
the second deed of Wedmore's tradition could be found,
there was money provided for a suit in Chancery.
Assisted by Dr. Brewer, the eminent historian of
Henry VIII., Mr. Elton continued to pursue the chase,
and at last was rewarded by the discovery of a roll
which was to the purpose, a roll of which, apparently,
no copy existed anywhere. The roll attested the burden
on the lands for the Regius Professorship held by Mr.
Jowett. By Dean Stanley's desire, Mr. Elton com
municated his discovery to The Times, and Christ
Church fulfilled Dean Liddell's promise, and paid the
salary to Mr. Jowett.

Mr. Elton must have greatly enjoyed a search so
congenial, and a discovery which so happily ended a
disagreeable controversy. But I cannot remember
having heard him allude to his triumphant pursuit of
the missing roll. The delights of research in manu
script are poignant, but are known to few. Mr. Elton
never wearied of them at a period when seekers were
even more rare, and when the dark corners of history
were less frequently explored than they are at present.
" Most men," said a Saturday reviewer (Feb. gth, 1867)
"would find it as terrible to be alone in a big room
with a Disgavelling Act as to be alone in a railway
carriage with a man who thinks he understands the
currency." To the vulgar eye, gavelkind seems to be
a peculiarly Kentish custom, whereby, a landowner
dying intestate, his land is equally divided among his
sons. " Gavel," it seems, is really nothing but rent
(usually in kind or in services) paid by free tenants.
Mr. Elton proved that much land, supposed to be held

14 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

in "gavelkind" (according to the popular sense of the
term), was, in fact, not so held ; either it was not so
held at the time of the Norman Conquest, or it has
subsequently been "disgavelled " by Royal Preroga
tive, or by Act of Parliament. Mr. Elton's work, of
which a brief and clear account cannot here be given,
is lucidity itself, and manifests a remarkable power of
dealing with original records, and with complicated
customs. Mr. Elton's practice at the Bar was mainly
concerned with the laws of Real Property, a strange
historical palimpsest.

Mr. Elton's interest in his favourite themes was in
creased, and the spur to that dormant quality, his
ambition, was blunted, when, in 1869, he succeeded to
his uncle's estate of Whitestaunton, in Somerset.
From his boyhood he had been devoid of ambition ;
the work which he did he undertook because he liked
it. Quite probably, had he not become the squire of
Whitestaunton, he would have risen to the higher
honours of his profession. But these were, to him, by
no means a thing to be snatched at, and Whitestaunton
made him extremely happy. The ancient house lies in
a deep green hollow of the Somerset hills, below it are
the fish-ponds of the old Chantry, and beneath these
the foundations of a small Roman villa excavated by
the squire. The estate contains a miniature history of
Southern Britain ; neolithic implements and tools of
bronze are occasionally found ; then comes the villa,
with its traces of the Roman occupation, while the
name, Whitestaunton, speaks of St. White, an early
saint of the English conquerors of the native Celts.
The church is dedicated to St. Andrew, and was
ministered to, of old, by the Guild of St. Mary of
Whitestaunton. At the Reformation the Guild was
confiscated, and the Lady Anne Brett, who declined to
believe in the shifting creeds of Henry VIII., lost her
lands, and her "fair old stone mansion." These were

MULTIFARIOUS STUDIES 15

later restored to her family, and remained in the hands
of the Bretts till 1723, when they were acquired by the
Eltons. The house had been partly remodelled in
the Tudor times, but is essentially a very ancient
structure, lacking nothing but a ghost to add a pleas
ing terror. The fish-ponds still contain large and
highly educated trout, which have ascended from a
burn flowing into the Yarty, "the roaring Yarty " of
Drayton. The scene is typically English, and an ideal
home for an historian and archaeologist.

The little stream, and the changes of the floods and
frosts of centuries, have broken up the baths and hypo-
causts and mosaic flooring of the Roman villa, which
Mr. Elton described in a paper published by The
Academy (September ist, 1883). Not many relics were
found, mainly a few coins of the fourth century and
fragments of the red "Samian" ware. Probably the
villa was the home of a Roman official connected with
the ironworks of the period ; and, judging from the
amount of ashes, the house may have been burned in
a rising of the British workers, or by the English
conquerors. Here Mr. Elton lived a hospitable and
learned life, and the writer has many pleasant recollec
tions of fishing in the Yarty and the ponds, of delving
for undiscovered treasures in the villa, and of lawn
tennis on the lawn. Mr. Elton was much more addicted
to shooting than to the contemplative man's recreation,
and was an active, nay, an indefatigable, player at
lawn tennis. He was indeed an ideal squire of the old
school, and in his dominions was the "Good Tyrant"
of Plato's dream — just, generous, and always accessible
to his rural neighbours. In an obituary notice it is
said that he had been regarded as the model of the
squire in Mrs. Ward's Robert Elsmere — a most im
probable suggestion, as he did not concern himself with
the criticism of the Book of Daniel, and was incapable
of shaking the faith of the most innocent clergyman.

16 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

His studies were multifarious, but not in the field of
biblical conjecture. Doubtless the best representative
of his work is The Origins of English History, a rich
repository of ancient geographical lore and a valuable
exploration of the dim hints of classical knowledge
about our island. Perhaps not less interesting is his
essay on Market Rights and Tolls, contributed in a
Royal Commission of 1888. In working at the early
history of Scotland the present writer found Mr. Elton's
essay on Markets and Burghs invaluable, and his orally
communicated criticism of the greatest service. He
was, indeed, an encyclopaedia of knowledge on all
manner of topics — classical, archaeological, biblio
graphical, artistic, geographical. " Reading makes
a full man," and his reading was as wide as his
criticism of evidence was keen. His Career of Columbus
(1892) is full of the misty legends of " isles indiscover-
able in the unheard-of West," while the thin vein of
historic gold is acutely disengaged and displayed. In
the matter of art he was fond, chiefly, of the faience
of Rhodes, Persia, and Anatolia. A beautiful and
varied collection decorated the large studio, converted
into a drawing-room, of his house in Cranley Place ;
here, too, were some of the finest of his books and
illuminated manuscripts. The rest had no idle life on the
shelves of his study and his library at Whitestaunton.
The pottery is catalogued (1901), as is the library, in a
volume dear to book collectors. His own work on great
book collectors (1893) was undertaken in collaboration
with Mrs. Elton. Indeed, there was none of his work
in which she had not her part ; and it is at once im
possible to write about their long companionship,
and to give any fair idea of Mr. Elton's life, without
entering on a subject too sacred.

Happy nations, they say, have no history, and there
is little biography in the prosperous life of a happy
man. Mr. Elton's politics were of no extreme com-

IN AND OUT OF PARLIAMENT 17

plexion. If his ideas were Liberal in early youth, and
if in 1883 he consented to stand as Conservative candi
date for West Somerset, the change was only due to
the usual effect of years. He defeated his opponent,
Lord Kilcoursie, in February, 1884, and in March of
that year made four " maiden speeches" on the same
afternoon. Punch observed humorously on this novel
performance, but the subjects of the speeches were
legal Bills, concerned with matters in which Mr. Elton
was an expert. As a rule he seldom spoke, only when
he had something useful to say, which perhaps no one
else could have said. He was unseated by Sir Thomas
Acland in 1885, was returned again in 1886, and re
tired at the General Election of 1892. For him the
House had none of the strange fascination which it
exercises over so many men, victory did not elate nor
defeat depress him. He had been heard to say that
"the Age of the Antonines" — the age of peace and
prosperity — " is ended," but history had taught him to
acquiesce in the vicissitudes of national fortunes.
When he spoke it was without nervousness, and with
out rhetoric, but with lucid and genial humour. His
interests in the past, in sport, in literature, in law, and
in the happiness of his tenants and neighbours, re
mained what they had ever been till his death, after a
brief illness, caused by a chill, in April 1900. The loss
to all who knew him in any capacity, as landlord,
friend, or neighbour, was great ; he had not chosen
the path of any ambition, but had modestly and effect
ually done his duty, and the work which he found to
his hand. That his powers might have carried him to
higher place is certain, but ambition is not a duty,
and no man can be justly styled "indolent" who did
the laborious tasks that were his pleasure, and who
communicated the pleasure and the knowledge of
which he was so liberal. If he "warmed both hands
at the fire of life," he diffused the radiance and the
c

CHARLES ISAAC ELTON

glow ; and is remembered as a man just, kind, genial,
and generous would desire to be. One recalls him,
and his friendly welcome, with his pipe among his
books and papers, in his London study ; or on the low
hills, and among the ancient trees of his rural home,
one remembers the happiness afforded by his hospi
tality, his wisdom, and his wit, his fragments of for
gotten lore ; for to him, as to Tom Hearne, the Oxford
antiquary, Time might have said, " Whatever I forget
you learn."

Of his Shakespearean studies, this is not the place
for criticism ; but the book seems likely to be the most
widely appreciated of his works. For once his erudi
tion and acuteness are expended on a theme which does
not interest special students alone, but all lovers of

English literature.

buu. ANDREW LANG

JANUARY, 1904

FACTS AND TRADITIONS RELATING
TO SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

WHEN Oldys began annotating his " Langbaine,"
very little was known of the Stratford records,
which are now so familiar to the world. Hardly any
thing had been done towards distinguishing the several
William Shakespeares and Anne Hathaways who
appear in the local documents, or to separate the history
of the poet's parents from that of the shoemaker, John
Shakespeare, and his wives. We will give an example
of the prevailing confusion of thought from a bio
graphical notice of the poet written by John Britton,
F.S.A., early in the present century,1 observing that the
John Shakespeares in question are treated as one person,
married in due turns to all the Mrs. Shakespeares in
the register. Here, says the antiquary, some doubts
arise ; for if the father of William Shakespeare married
a third wife, that ceremony must have occurred within
seven months after the decease of the second ; and when
he applied for the grant of the Arden arms, he is stated
in the register to have had those children by the third
wife ; yet these children are not alluded to by the College

1 Remarks on the Life and Writings of William Shakespeare in Whit-
tingham's edition of the plays, 1814 ; revised and enlarged, 1818.

22 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

record, nor does it contain any reference to a second or
third marriage. We here see the real origin of Better-
ton's account of the " woolstapler with ten children,"
which Oldys copied in his early note.

There was also a great dispute as to the exact date of
Shakespeare's birth, and consequently of his age when
he died. Langbaine, whose book was printed in 1691,
took a copy of the Stratford epitaph from Dugdale's
Antiquities of Warwickshire to the effect that the poet
died on the 23rd of April, " in the year of our Lord
1616, and of his age fifty-three." Both Langbaine and
Oldys took this as meaning that he was fifty-three years
of age ; whereas, if they had seen the baptismal
certificate, they would have known that he had just
completed the fifty-second, and was beginning the fifty-
third year of his age. The effect was to antedate his
birth by a twelvemonth. The words of Oldys are taken
with little alteration from Rowe and Betterton ; and in
describing the poet he says: "The son of Mr. John
Shakespeare, woolstapler; was the eldest of ten children,
born 23 of April, 1563 ; was brought up in his youth
to his father's business," etc. Opposite to the " Aet. 53 "
in the text he wrote the words, "Consequently born
in 1563." On this, however, Malone remarked : "He
was born in 1564. This inscription led Oldys into
the mistake. He died on his birthday and had exactly
closed his fifty-second year." Mr. Bolton Corney
showed in an essay on the assumed birthday of Shake
speare, that Malone was entirely depending on Joseph
Greene, the master of the free school at Stratford from
1735 to llTli and afterwards Vicar of Welford. Mr.
Greene, a sufficiently learned man, took an extract from
the baptismal register, stating that William, son of
John Shakespeare, was baptised the 26th of April, 1564,
and added in his own handwriting that the birth was
on the 23rd. " He was born three days before," says
Malone ; "I have said this on the faith of Mr. Greene,

HIS BIRTHDAY 23

who I find made the extract from the register which Mr.
West gave to Mr. Steevens ; but quaere, how did Mr.
Greene ascertain this fact ? " l

It has often been said that there was a practice in
those days of christening infants three days after birth;
and Mr. Knight even maintained that infancy was
surrounded with such perils, when medical science was
imperfect, that we might well believe in Shakespeare's
first seeing the light "only a day or two previous to
this legal record of his existence."5 There are probably
as many exceptions as examples to be found of this
rule, if it ever existed. It was occasionally of great
importance that a child should be christened without
delay.3 But in the absence of special circumstances, we
should go by the rule in the Prayer-book. Parents are
now admonished to bring the child to church on the
first or second Sunday after its birth, or some other
holy-day falling between, unless there is grave cause to
the contrary. This rule, though hard of enforcement
in our rigorous climate, is less severe than that which
prevailed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The
admonition of the Prayer-book of 1559 was that
baptism should not be deferred any longer than the
Sunday or other holy-day next after the birth, "unlesse
upon a great and reasonable cause, to be declared
to the Curate, and by hym approved." Let us apply
this doctrine to Shakespeare's case. Taking the

1 See Malone, Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, 1821, ii. 610; also Bolton
Corney, An Argument on the assumed Birthday of Shakspere reduced to
shape, A.D. 1864, pp. 1 6.

8 Charles Knight, William Shakspere, a Biography, 1843, p. 26.

3 A husband's rights, for instance, over his wife's land depended in
some districts on the fact that issue was born alive. There is an ancient
inquisition about lands at Boughton-Aluph, in Kent, set forth in the
Calendarium Genealogicum (ed. C. Roberts, 1865, ii. 469; 21 Edw. I.),
where the jury found " that one Joanna de Laverton bore a daughter at
dawn on the day of her death, which daughter the rector baptised at
the daybreak, alive and crying, and she lived from the time of her birth
unti sunrise of the same day, when she died.'

SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

ordinary tables for finding Easter, we see that Easter
Sunday fell on April Qth, in the Julian year 1564,
or 1564-5 old style. The next holy-day is Wednesday,
April iQth, the festival of Archbishop Alphege. The
next is Sunday, April 23rd, St. George's Day ; the next
again is Tuesday, April 25th, St. Mark's Day ; and
there are no other festivals during the rest of the
month. The following table will show the state of the
calendar.

April, 1 564, Julian; 1564-5, English. Golden Number, 7. Sunday Letter, BA.

DAY.

LETTER.

WEEK-

DAY.

FESTIVALS.

Sun.

First Sunday after Easter. (Low Sunday.)

Mon.

Tues.

Wed.

Alphege, Archbishop and Martyr.

Thurs.

Fri.

Sat.

Inventio Sti Dionysii.

Sun.

Second Sunday after Easter. St. George, Martyr.

Mon.

St. Mark's Eve.

Tues.

St. Mark, Evangelist. (Black Crosses.)

Wed.

Morrow of St. Mark. (Baptism of Shakespeare.)

Thurs.

Fri.

Vitalis, Martyr.

Sat.

Sun.

Third Sunday after Easter. Erkenwald, Bp.

The christening would actually have taken place on
the Sunday, St. George's Day, if the child were born
on any day between the i6th and 2Oth inclusive. If
the birth was on the Friday or Saturday, the strict
letter of the rule would fix the baptism for St. Mark's
Day ; but who would have chosen for such a purpose
the day of the "Great Litany," when all the crosses
and altars used to be draped in black, the festival itself
being commonly known as " Black Crosses "? It may
be said that these observances had been abolished at
the Reformation ; but we should answer that it was
only six years since Protestantism had been re-estab-

HIS BIRTHDAY 25

lished, that Mary Shakespeare herself was almost
certainly a Roman Catholic during the period from
!553 to r558, and that her father, Robert Arden,
showed the sincerity of his own belief by the bequest
of his soul to God "and to our blessed Lady, Saint
Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven."1 But
as a matter of fact, any history of the Calendar will
show that St. Mark's Day continued to be "prolific in
superstitions" long after the Reformation was com
plete. Brand collected a vast quantity of folk-lore
about the ghostly company of those who were to die
within the year walking through the churchyard as
soon as that fatal day began.2 Hampson made a
similar collection in his account of the Mediaeval
Calendar.3 Pennant said that in North Wales no
farmer would "hold his team" on that day, for fear
of losing one of the oxen. "In the year of our Lord
r589," says Vaughan in his Golden Grove, "I being
as then but a boy, do remember that an ale-wife,
making no exception of days, would needs brew upon
St. Mark's days; but lo, the marvellous work of God!
while she was thus labouring, the top of the chimney
took fire, and, before it could be quenched, her house
was quite burnt. Surely, a gentle warning to them that
violate and profane forbidden days ! " The same ob
jection, of course, would have applied if the boy wete
born on St. George's Day, with the additional grave
cause for postponement of the baptism, that there was
only one clear day between the Sunday and the un
lucky or forbidden festival. The result is that we are
left in some uncertainty ; but it seems clear, at least,
that Shakespeare was born either on Friday, April
2ist, 1564, or on the Saturday or Sunday following.

1 See copy of will in Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 53.

2 Brand, Popular Antiquities, ed. Sir H. Ellis, i. 192-6; where the
references to Pennant and Vaughan will likewise be found.

3 Hampson, Medii j£vi Kalendarium, i. 219-25.

26 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

The first great event in Shakespeare's life was his
marriage, which (as it must be presumed) was solemn
ised in the year 1582. The place of marriage is
unknown. The Christian name of his wife and her
age — more than seven years in advance of his own — are
known only by the inscription on her tomb. That her
surname was Hathway or Hathaway is inferred from
a vague phrase or two in her granddaughter's will.
But the early biographers all agreed that Anne
Shakespeare was the daughter of one Hathaway, a sub
stantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford ; and
the original statement is supported by the evidence
which has been since collected. The only dispute
remaining open is whether she belonged to the Hatha-
ways of Stratford, or to those whose home was in the
adjoining parish of Weston, on the left side of the
Avon.

Malone at one time thought that she was that Anne
Hathaway of Shottery who had married William
Wilson in 1580,* but soon found the idea was erroneous.
The coincidence between the names continued, never
theless, to be the source of mistakes. Mr. Greene
" imagined that our poet's wife was of Shottery " ; and
he was induced to this belief, as Malone supposed, by
finding notices in the register about " Richard Hatha
way, otherwise Gardner, of Shottery " and his descend
ants. If he had looked nearer home, he would have
found Hathaways in Luddington or Weston-on-Avon,
both almost within sight of his vicarage. Mr. Greene
jumped to the conclusion that the " cottage," or farm
house, in Shottery belonging to the Misses Tyler, and
before them to an old Mr. Quiney, might have been

1 Stratford marriage register, 1579-80, in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii.
187 ; see Malone's Shakespeare, u.s.t ii. 113, note 7.

ANNE HATHAWAY 27

settled on Judith Shakespeare as part of her mother's
property upon her marriage with Tom Quiney ; all
which things were easily disproved, but soon took
a new lease of life among the roots of the local
traditions.1

At one time Malone thought that Anne Hathaway
was the child of the other Richard Hathaway, of
Shottery, though the evidence was necessarily defi
cient. " There is no entry of her baptism, the register
not commencing till 1558, two years after she was
born." He came round, however, to the opinion that
she was not of Shottery at all, but of the family that
held lands in Luddington, one of the Stratford hamlets,
and owned a small freehold patrimony in the adjoining
parish of Weston, across the Gloucestershire boundary.
There were persons of the name of Hathaway farming
Sir John Conway's lands at Luddington in the reign
of Elizabeth, and the name continued upon the estate
rolls till about the year 1775. Here then, says Malone,
as a final decision, it is not improbable that Shakespeare
found his wife. The suggestion has been improved
by "a so-called tradition" that their marriage took
place at Luddington, for which there is no evidence
of any kind. And Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps2 was of
opinion that the notion of Anne's residence at Ludding
ton should be summarily dismissed. There can be no
doubt, however, that she came from a yeoman's family
at Weston ; and whether her family held a farmhouse
on Sir John Conway's property across the river or not
is a matter of very little importance.

Great efforts have been made to connect her with the
last-mentioned Richard Hathaway of Shottery. Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps quotes an unpublished version of
Rowe's Life of Shakespeare (ante 1766), now in the

1 See quotations from Greene's unpublished version of Rowe's bio
graphy, in Halliwell-Phillipps, «/., 189-90.
a Id., 183.

28 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

British Museum, for the statement that her father's
name was John, and says that Jordan described her as
"a daughter of Samuel Hathaway."1 It is not likely,
he adds, that there was any satisfactory evidence in
favour of either of these "nominal ascriptions," and
we shall find the same remark applicable to the case of
the various Hathaways of Shottery.

Richard Hathaway's will2 contained a legacy to his
daughter Agnes, besides a gift to another Agnes,
daughter of Thomas Hathaway, whose relationship to
the testator is unknown. It is pointed out, moreover,
that Anne Hathaway was a common name in Shottery ;
a person of that name was married, as we have seen, to
William Wilson ; and Bartholomew, Richard Hatha
way's eldest son, had a daughter Anne, who married
Richard Edwardes. The poet's wife, said Malone,
might have been Bartholomew's sister, though he did
not mention her in his will ; but the suggestion was
admitted to be improbable.

It has been surmised that she was the same person
as Richard Hathaway's daughter Agnes, for whom a
marriage portion was provided by his will. That
would account, it is said, for her father's friend taking
part in the application for a licence before her marriage,
for his using a seal with Richard Hathaway's initials
upon the same occasion, and for her acquaintance with
Hathaway's shepherd, Thomas Whittington, who said
in his will (1601) that Mrs. Shakespeare owed him forty
shillings.3 But these are only subsidiary details. The
point to be proved is that Agnes and Anne were used
as two forms of one name. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps4

1 Id., 186.

2 Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 195-6, with other extracts from
wills and registers relating- to the Hathaway families.

3 Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 186, note 10. See also Richard Hathaway's
will, "Item, I owe unto Thomas Whittington, my sheepherd, fower
poundes sixe shillinges eight pence."

4 Id., 184-5, notes.

HIS MARRIAGE 29

thought they were "sometimes convertible." He
shows that the pet name Annice (Annys, Annes) was
used for both without much distinction ; that the person
called " Agnes, daughter of Thomas Hathaway" in
the yeoman's will is named Anne in the parish register;
and that Philip Henslowe spoke of his wife as Agnes
in his will, but that she appeared as Anne in the Dul-
wich register, and also in the inscription on her tomb
stone.

The names in reality appear to be quite distinct.
Agnes, or Agneta, was one of the earliest English
names ; it was used in honour of the saint whose
martyrdom and "second appearance" were com
memorated on the 2ist of January and the octave
following. The other name was not much in use
before the Reformation. It is supposed to refer, not
to the festival of July 26th, but to an Eastern saint
very little known here till the arrival of Queen Anne
of Bohemia. Mr. Chandler noticed, in his edition of
the Cressingham Court-rolls, that Alice, Agnes, and
Margaret were anciently the favourite names for
women. Agnes occurs fourteen times in the rolls,
and Alice sixteen times, but there is only one Anne
in the whole series. Moreover, the subject of "mis
nomer" was so important in our early law that it is
easy to bring together authorities on the point. There
are several relevant cases in the Year-Books and Abridg
ments. As early as the thirty-third of Henry VI. it was
decided that Anne and Agnes are distinct baptismal
names and not convertible, so that if an action was
brought against John and his wife Agnes, and the
wife's name was Anne, the variance was essential and
could not be amended. Two other cases are reported
by Croke. In King v. King, decided in the forty-second
Elizabeth, the Court resolved that Agnes and Anne
are several names, and that a mistake between them
could not be amended after a verdict. In Griffith v.

30 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

Sir Hugh Middleton, in the fifteenth year of James I.,
the Chief Justice said that "Joan and Jane are both
one name, but Agnes and Anne, Gillian and Julian,
are different."1

The suggestion may therefore be dismissed that the
poet married, under the name of Anne, an Agnes
Hathaway of Shottery. It would, indeed, have been
somewhat difficult to prove that his wife was a Hath
away at all, if it were not for the bond relating to
their marriage which Sir Thomas Phillipps found at
Worcester, and for the recognition by Lady Barnard
of the Weston Hathaways as her kinsfolk. There is,
we may say, no reasonable doubt that Anne belonged
to a Gloucestershire family, but whether she was
remotely connected with the great Gloucestershire
Hathaways is a very different question. There are
many records showing that the Hathaways were im
portant people in the Forest of Dean from the twelfth
to the fourteenth century. A William Hathaway held
a manor in Lydney in the tenth year of Henry II. The
Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester in 1221 show that
Gilbert Hathaway and others beat and maimed a certain
Hugo Chark, who was probably a disturber of the
Forest. A William Hathaway was one of the two
owners of the parish of Ruardean in the reign of
Edward I. A Ralf Hathaway owned the manor
of Hathaways at Minsterworth in the next reign.
Another Hathaway was appointed Keeper of the
Forest ; and several instances of the same kind might
be added.

But when we consider that nothing was heard of this
family in later times, and that the Forest of Dean was at
the other end of the county, we must admit that there
is at present no means of connecting them with the
family at Weston-on-Avon. It should also be re
membered that Weston is close to Stratford, and

1 Croke's Reports, ed. Leach, 1790-2, i. 776 ; ii. 425.

HIS MARRIAGE 31

therefore not far from the old Heath-way, which, as we
suspect, gave a surname to the various Hathaways in
that neighbourhood.

The questions raised about the licence and bond
relating to the poet's marriage are interesting in them
selves ; but it must be remembered that they do not
relate to the time at which the marriage was contracted,
but only to a detail of the ceremony at which it was
solemnised.

We may say at once that there is no reason to
suppose that Shakespeare and his wife had made
an irregular or clandestine marriage, though they
appear to have been united by a civil marriage con
tract some time before the ceremony was performed in
face of the Church. We should distinguish between
regular and irregular contracts. A contract of future
espousals was regular, but it did not amount to marriage,
being nothing more in reality than a mutual covenant
to be married at a future time. A contract of present
espousals, on the contrary, was a legal marriage. The
man said, "I take thee for my wife," and the woman
answered, "I take thee for my husband," or to that
effect, before witnesses, and with the gift of a ring or
some other symbolical object. A contract of this kind
might legally be made by a boy over fourteen or a girl
over twelve ; but it was provided by the icoth canon that
infants under twenty-one required the express consent
of their parents and guardians. As Shakespeare was
only eighteen years old, though his bride was twenty-
six, it follows that John Shakespeare's consent was
obtained. The congregation was frequently warned
that such civil marriages ought to be contracted
publicly, and before several witnesses. If these rules
were broken, the offenders were liable to the punish
ments for clandestine marriage, such as fine, im
prisonment, or excommunication ; and the victim
might be condemned to walk, like the Duchess of

32 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

Gloucester, in a white sheet, with bare feet and a
taper alight : —

" Methinks I should not thus be led along,
Mail'd up in shame, with papers on my back ;
And follow'd with a rabble that rejoice
To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans." l

The civil marriage required the religious solemnity to
give the parties their legal status as to property ; but
otherwise it was both valid and regular. The clandes
tine marriage was valid, but all parties could be
punished for their offence against the law. It was of
that kind which has been made familiar to us by the
Fleet Street registers. A bankrupt parson who dreaded
no fine or fall, or some irregular practitioner like Sir
Oliver Martext, would unite a couple of runaways,
"as they join wainscot."2 "Thou saw'st them
married?" asks the Host in Jonson's play of the
New Inn* " I do think I did, and heard the words,
/ Philip, take thee Lettice . . . and heard the priest
do his part." " Where were they married?" " In the
new stable. ..." " Had they a licence?" "Licence
of love, I saw no other."

It may be asked why marriages were not always
solemnised in church after banns published or special
licence obtained. "Get you to church," said Jaques,
"and have a good priest that can tell you what mar
riage is."4 The answer is that it was difficult to get
married, especially with due publication of banns,
except in the latter half of the year, between Trinity
and Advent. The ancient prohibitions had been
relaxed by the Council of Trent ; but the decrees of
that assembly were not accepted in England. In our
own country the ancient rules prevailed. The banns
could not be published, nor marriages solemnised,

1 2 Henry VI., ii. 4, 30-3. 2 As You Like It, in. 3, 88.

3 Act v., scene i. * As You Like //, u.s., 86-7.

LAWFUL TIMES OF MARRIAGE 33

although they might certainly be legally contracted,
during any of the periods of prohibition, unless, indeed,
a special licence were obtained. The periods extended
from Advent to the Octave of the Epiphany, or January
the i3th, exclusive ; from Septuagesima to the end of
Easter Week ; and from the first Rogation Day, three
days before the Feast of the Ascension, to Trinity
Sunday, inclusive. These restrictions are described
in certain old Latin verses, which are thus translated
in the Termes de la Ley :—

" Advent all marriage forbids,
Hilary's feast to nuptials tends,
And Septuagint no wedding rids,
Yet Easter's Octaves that amends.
Rogation hinders hasty loves,
But Trinity that let removes."1

" It is also certain," says Burn, "that a distinction of
times hath been observed as the law of our Reformed
Church, not only from the clause in several licences
which we may observe in our books, Quocunque anni
tempore, but also from a remarkable dispute which
happened in Archbishop Parker's time between the
Master of the Faculties and the Vicar-General, whether
the first only, or the second in conjunction with him,
had a right to grant licences on that particular head.
And after that, in Archbishop Whitgift's table of fees,
there is first a fee for a licence to solemnise matrimony
without banns, and afterwards a fee for a licence to
solemnise matrimony in the time of prohibition of banns
to be published." Several attempts were made to
remove these disabilities, both in Parliament and in
Convocation. In the seventeenth of Elizabeth a Bill
was introduced to declare marriages after banns to be
lawful at all times of the year, with the exception of
nine days specially mentioned. In the Convocation of

1 Les Termes de la Ley (by J. Rastell), 1641, pp. 13, 14, s.v. Advent.
D

34 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

1575, the Queen rejected an article proposing that
marriages might be solemnised on any day in the
year; "but these distinctions, being invented only at
first as a fund (among many others) for dispensations,
and being built upon no rational foundation, nor upon
any law of the Church of England, have vanished of
themselves."1

These dispensations were of different kinds. In
some cases the publication of banns was required once
and no more ; in others, one of the three publications
was forborne ; and there were faculties, or licences,
" expressly requiring all the three publications, and
dispensing only with time or place." Instances of all
these kinds, we are told, are very common in our
ecclesiastical records, especially before the Reformation.

On Thursday, the 28th of November, 1582, William
Shakespeare went to the Bishop's Registry at Wor
cester with his two friends, Fulk Sandells and John
Richardson, the two farmers from Shottery, and ob
tained a licence to be married to Anne Hathaway with
only one publication of banns. Advent Sunday fell
on December ist, so that there was only just time
to get the banns called on the last day of November —
St. Andrew's Day. Even then, however, in the absence
of another dispensation, the wedding in church could
not take place until the i3th of January, being the
Octave of the Epiphany, when the period of prohibi
tion came to an end.

There has been some discussion of an entry made in
the book on the preceding day. There is a minute as
to an application for a marriage licence "for William
Shakespeare and Anne Whately of Temple Grafton in
the County of Warwick." The licence to dispense with

1 Burn, Ecclesiastical Law, gth ed., ii. 467-8. The words, "It is
also certain . . . head," are quoted by Burn from Gibson's Codex, 430.
The prohibited times are given by Lyndwood (see Gibson's Codex, u.s.,
and Ayliffe's Parergon, 364).

HIS MARRIAGE-LICENCE 35

banns was given in favour of " William Shakespeare
and Anne Hathaway of Stratford." Temple Grafton is
not one of the hamlets of Stratford. There is a curious
coincidence in the name ; but we cannot attach much
importance to it when we find that the objects of the
application were quite different, not to mention the
differences in the surnames and residences of the two
intended brides.

Anne Hathaway was not present when the application
was made. This involved the necessity of proof that
she had no parents living, and was beyond the age of
wardship. We know that it was not very easy to prove
her age, owing to the neglect in keeping a parochial
register ; and it is probable that there were no certifi
cates produced to prove that her parents were dead,
especially if they had died at Weston, in another
diocese. Time, however, was very pressing, and an
expedient was devised to meet the difficulty. The bond
of indemnity was drawn in a somewhat unusual form —
with a condition that Anne Hathaway should not be
married " without the consent of her friends."

It was necessary under the circumstances that the
intended bridegroom should attend the office in person.
On being presented to the Ordinary, a lawyer exercising
the Bishop's jurisdiction at the Registry, he had to state
his age and to show, as a minor, that he was furnished
with his father's consent. One of the two friends
would doubtless produce a letter or document bearing
John Shakespeare's signature or attested mark. Then
William Shakespeare had to testify on oath that to the
best of his knowledge and belief there was no impedi
ment by way of precontract, kindred, or alliance, or
by reason of any suit in the Ecclesiastical Court, and,
in short, that he knew of no lawful cause why the
licence should not be given. In the next place formal
proof had to be offered that the parties were "of good
estate and quality " ; a point as to which no question

36 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

was likely to arise. The bonds-men being ready to give
security in the usual way, the licence was accordingly
granted, permitting the parties to be married " with
once asking of the banns of matrimony between them,"
subject, of course, to the ordinary rules as to marrying
in the canonical hours and in the church or chapel of
the place where one of the parties was in residence.
The bond was executed in favour of Mr. Richard Cosin,
a lawyer of Worcester, and Mr. Robert Warmstry,
notary, and principal Registrar for the diocese, an
office which was long hereditary in his family. The
instrument was drawn up according to the precise
directions provided by the Canon Law. The date was
the 28th of November, in the twenty-fifth year of
Elizabeth, the regnal year having commenced on the
1 7th of November, 1582. Fulk Sandells and John
Richardson bound themselves in the sum of £40, the
obligation to be void if there was no impediment of
the kind mentioned, if Anne obtained the consent of
her friends, and if William Shakespeare duly indemni
fied the Lord Bishop of Worcester, John Whitgift,
"for licensing them to be married together with once
asking of the banns of matrimony between them."

We do not know where the marriage took place. If
it had been at Stratford, it would have been entered in
the paper book then used as a register, and would have
been copied into the existing parchment book, besides
being recorded in the transcripts from time to time
forwarded to Worcester. As Shakespeare's place of
residence is not mentioned in the bond, it is possible
that he was living for the time at Weston, or some other
place in the neighbourhood. The wedding ceremony
may have been actually performed at Weston ; but there
are no registers of that parish for the date in question,
and no transcripts for the same period have as yet been
discovered at Gloucester. There is no doubt, however,
that the ceremony was fully performed in accordance

ANNE SHAKESPEARE 37

with the episcopal authority. Malone had an idea that
Shakespeare was married at Billesley ; but this seems
to be a mere conjecture, based on the fact that Elizabeth,
the poet's grandchild, chose Billesley as the place for
her second marriage. The world was all before her ;
and yet she went for no apparent reason, but doubtless
led by sentiment or affection, to the obscure little
church.1 But at Billesley, as at Weston, the early
registers are lost; and, unless transcripts be found, any
further discussion of the question will be unprofitable.

We know nothing about the appearance of Anne
Shakespeare, though it might be possible to show what
she was not like by comparing various passages in the
plays and sonnets. We may be sure that she was not
of the complexion despised in poor Phebe, that she had
not those "inky brows," that " black silk hair," or the
"bugle eyeballs" of Robin Redbreast.2 There are,
of course, many passages in the sonnets which would
hardly have been circulated if Anne had been pale-
lipped and of a dun complexion, and with "black
wires " for curls on her head.3 Oldys thought that he
had found out something more definite, and was con
vinced that Mrs. Shakespeare was lovely, cold, and
frail. He was misled, as Malone has shown, by taking
an incomplete view of the ninety-third sonnet, as if it
had been an isolated statement and not part of an
intricate series of arguments.4 He seems also to have
been much struck with the poet's quotation from
Edward III., as if it had been intended as an imputa
tion against Mrs. Shakespeare's character : —

" For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds ;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."5

1 See Malone, op. «'/., ii. 117, 118. Billesley was about four miles
north-west of Stratford on the Alcester road.

8 As You Like //, iii. 5, 46, 47. 3 Sonnet cxxx., i. 4.

4 " So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceived husband."

8 Sonnet xciv., 13-14, Cf. Ed-ward III. (in "Leopold Shakespeare")
»• 2, 455.

In the next sonnet, however, it is admitted that all faults
are hidden by ''beauty's veil."1 The comments of
Steevens on the suggestion afford us an amusing
specimen of his style. "Whether the wife of our author
was beautiful, or otherwise, was a circumstance beyond
the investigation of Oldys . . . yet surely it was natural
to impute charms to one who could engage and fix the
heart of a young man of such uncommon elegance of
fancy."2

It may be assumed that the young couple lived with
Mr. John Shakespeare, and that Anne Shakespeare
helped in the housework, while her husband found
something to do, either in teaching at school or copy
ing papers in a lawyer's office.

Ill

In or about 1586, Shakespeare came to London to
seek his fortune, and it was not long before he was
well known as an actor and playwright. About a
century afterwards, someone invented the story of his
robbing a park. Not once, but several times, was he
guilty of this "extravagance," to borrow the discreet
phrase of Mr. Nicholas Rowe;3 "and though it seemed
at first to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a
misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the
occasion of exercising one of the greatest geniuses that
ever was known in dramatic poetry." The park, in
process of time, was identified with Charlecote, and
the owner with Sir Thomas Lucy. Malone showed,
however, by reference to the Records, that the Lucys
had no park either at Charlecote or Fulbrooke.4 Part

1 Sonnet xcv., n, " Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot."

2 Quoted in Malone, op. cit., xx. 307, note.

3 Account of the Life of Shakespeare, 1709.

4 Malone, op. cif., ii. 145-9. See tne note 'n Halliwcll-Phillipps, u.s.,
"• 385.

THE DEER-STEALING LEGEND 39

of the Fulbrooke estate, before the Hampton woods
were inclosed, had been a park till the reign of Philip
and Mary. The privileges of park and warren had
been abolished before the property came to the Lucy
family, but the name of Fulbrooke Park was still used
as a title of courtesy.1 But it must be confessed that
taking deer from any inclosed ground, even without
any riotous conduct, was an offence within the Act of
Elizabeth.

After the lapse of centuries, the offence, if it hap
pened, may fairly be condoned. Many people, more
over, are pleased at thinking how valiantly the keepers
would be encountered "on a shiny night." But the
poaching romance seems to have been unknown in
1693, when Mr. Dowdall left his club or "knot of
friends " at Kineton, and stayed at Stratford on the

1 The estate of Fulbrooke was granted, early in the fifteenth century,
to the Regent Duke of Bedford, with leave to impale a park ; it is re
corded that he despoiled a. nunnery, and pulled down a church and a
whole village, to effect his purpose. After his death it was granted to
John Talbot, Lord Lisle of Kingston Lisle. From him it passed to the
great Earl of Warwick ; and after his death to his son-in-law, the Duke
of Clarence, who allowed the park and castle to fall into decay. Ful
brooke came into the possession of the Lucy family for a few years in
1510 ; it passed to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, when lord of
the borough of Stratford ; on his attainder, it was bestowed on Sir
Francis Englefield, who was convicted of treason and fled to Spain.
The tract of open land, the park being dispaled and having no legal
existence, was granted to Sir Francis" nephew, who sold the property
in 1615 to the third Sir Thomas Lucy. "This Sir Thomas renewed
the park, and by the addition of Hampton Woods thereto enlarged
it" (Dugdale, Ant. War., ed. Thomas, ii. 668-70). Leland (I tin.,
ed. Hearne, iv. 51-2) says, "Here (at Barford Bridge) I saw half
a mile lower upon Avon on the right Ripe a fair park called Fulbroke.
In this park was a pretty castle made of stone and brick, and, as one
told me, a Duke of Bereford (Bedford) lay in it. ... This castle of
Fulbroke was an eyesore to the Earls that lay in Warwick-Castle, and
was cause of displeasure between each lord. Sir William Compton,
Keeper of Fulbroke Park and Castle, seeing it go to ruin helped it for
ward, taking part of it (as some say) for the building of his house at
Compton (Wynyates), by Brailes in Warwickshire, and gave or per
mitted others to take pieces of it down." Mr. C. H. Bracebridgc, of
Stratford, published an account of the park in 1862.

40 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

way to the Warwick Assizes.1 The clerk, or old
guide, who showed young Dowdall round the monu
ments, had clearly never heard the story, and did
not mention buck or doe in his little biography :
" This Shakespear was formerly in this towne
bound apprentice to a butcher, but . . . run from
his master to London, and there was received into
the Play-house as a serviture, and by this meanes
had an opportunity to be what he afterwards prov'd.
He was the best of his family, but the male line is
extinguishd." The story first appeared in a private
memorandum made by the Rev. Richard Davies,
Vicar of Sapperton, in Gloucestershire, and at one
time Archdeacon of Lichfield. He was the friend of
a well-known antiquary, the Rev. William Fulman,
who bequeathed all his MSS. and papers to him
in 1688. Mr. Davies died in 1708, and left them
to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, enriched in some
cases with his own additions. These emendations do
not add much credit to his literary character. Mr.
Fulman had written a few words of a note on
Shakespeare : —

"William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon
in Warwickshire about 1563-4. From an actor of playes he
became a composer. He died Apr. 23, 1616, aetat 53, prob
ably at Stratford, for there he is buried, and hath a monu
ment, Dugd., p. 520."

Mr. Davies filled up the gaps in a livelier strain,
adding, between the first and second sentences —

v< Much given to all unluckinesse in stealing venison and
rabbits, particularly from Sr. — Lucy, who had him oft whipt,
and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his
native country to his great advancement ; but his reveng
was so great that he is his Justice Clodpate^ and calls him a
great man."

We omit his coarse variation of the quibble on the

1 Vide infra, p. 327.

ALLEGED BALLAD ON SIR T. LUCY 41

Lucy arms. After the reference to Dugdale and the
Stratford monument, he added, "on which he lays
a heavy curse upon any one who shal remoove his
bones. He dyed a papist."

Davies made no reference to the " bitter ballad," of
which Rowe had heard some account in 1709, though
it was supposed to be lost ; nor can we trace much
likeness between the Archdeacon's foolish talk and the
passages between Falstaff and Shallow. Rowe seems
to have thought that Shakespeare was prosecuted for a
libel. In the young man's opinion, we are told, he
was somewhat too severely treated by Sir Thomas
Lucy, and in order to revenge that ill-usage made a
ballad upon him; " this, probably the first essay of
his poetry ... 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."1

The first stanza of the libel made a semi-public
appearance in 1753, when Oldys was a prisoner for
debt in the Fleet, and Capell was preparing his edition
of the plays. A common interest led to friendly
meetings between them ; and Capell was able to
introduce the antiquary to a Mr. Wilkes, grandson of
Mr. Thomas Wilkes, who had known Mr. Thomas
Jones of Tarbick,2 a village about eighteen miles from
Stratford. Mr. Jones had died in 1703, aged about
ninety years. Their visitor told Capell and Oldys that
Mr. Jones remembered hearing from old people at
Stratford the story of Shakespeare's robbing Sir
Thomas Lucy's park, and that the ballad was stuck
upon the park gate, "which exasperated the knight to
apply to a lawyer at Warwick to proceed against him."
"Mr. Jones," says Capell, "had put down in writing

1 Rowe, op. cit. See Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 380-3.

2 i.e. Tardebigge, three miles from Bromsgrove.

42 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

the first stanza of this ballad, which was all he re
membered of it " ; he seems to be quoting the words
of the visitor, when he adds, "Mr. Thomas Wilkes
(my grandfather) transmitted it to my father by memory,
who also took it down in writing." Oldys gave a less
confused account of the matter, in a note first published
by Steevens in 1778. He said that old Mr. Jones
could remember the first stanza, "which, repeating to
one of his acquaintance, he preserved it in writing,
and here it is, neither better nor worse, but faithfully
transcribed from the copy, which his relation very
courteously communicated to me."1 Such a story would
naturally grow, as soon as any portion of it was pub
lished ; and we accordingly find Mr. A. Chalmers, in
his edition of the plays, in 1811, describing the poet as
"a man who was degrading the commonest rank of
life, and had, at this time, bespoke no indulgence by
superior talents." The ballad, he considered, must
have made some noise at the knight's expense, "as
the author took care it should be affixed to his park-
gates, and liberally circulated among his neighbours."
Malone, in 1790, was furnished with the entire song,
found in a chest of drawers that probably belonged to
Mrs. Dorothy Tyler, of Shottery. She died in 1778,
aged about eighty years, in a house formerly belonging
to Mr. Richard Quiney. Malone printed the lampoon
in his appendix, "being fully persuaded that one part
of this ballad is just as genuine as the other ; that is,
that the whole is a forgery." Most people will now
agree with his opinion that the song was made up from
the opening scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
He went so far as to see an allusion to Sir Thomas
himself, and not merely to the Lucy coat-of-arms, in
Slender's words: "They may give the dozen white
luces in their coat."2 A line in the forged ballad refers

1 See note in Malone, Shakespeare, u.s., ii. 140, 141.

2 Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i. 16, 17.

THE LUCYS IN THE PLAYS 43

to the same idea : " Though luces a dozen he paints in
his coat." This might have been written by a comedian
on tour, but not by a Stratford man ; for everyone
there knew that the Lucy coat showed "three silver
pikes gasping," and that coat is displayed on, or
might be seen on, Sir Thomas Lucy's tomb. He
also used an old device of three luces intertwined or
fretted in a triangle. On one of the Lucy tombs,
it is said, the same device was set in each of four
corners ; but this, of course, is no proof that there were
a dozen " pikefishes " in the family coat.1

Putting aside the question whether Sir Thomas was
caricatured as Shallow, one must admit that Shake
speare showed a certain respect for the Lucys and such
persons bearing their names as he met with in the
English chronicles. He follows Hall and Sir Thomas
More in the matter of the pretended private marriage
between Edward IV. and Dame Elizabeth Lucy, on
which Richard III. rested his title for a time, though
the story was afterwards told of Lady Elizabeth Butler.
Dr. Robert Shaw was ordered to preach on the subject
at Paul's Cross, and delivered a " shameful sermon " to
prove that Edward V. and his brother were illegitimate
by reason of a marriage of precontract with Elizabeth
Lucy. But the people, we are told, stood as if they
had been turned into stones. And "the preacher gat
him home and never after durst look out for shame, but
kept him out of sight as an owl." And when he was
told that he was an object of scorn, "it so strake him
to the heart that in few days after he withered away."2
The usurping Gloucester inquires of the Duke of
Buckingham if he had spoken at the Guildhall about
the blot on his nephew's title. "I did," is the reply,

" with his contract with Lady Lucy,
And his contract by deputy in France." 3

1 The "dozen," however, need not have been intended literally.

2 Hall's Chronicle, ed. 1809, p. 368. * Richard III., iii. 7, 4.

44 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

Once more Gloucester comes in "between two bishops,"
and Buckingham repeats the story :—

" You say that Edward is your brother's son :
So say we too, but not by Edward's wife :
For first he was contract to Lady Lucy —
Your mother lives a witness to that vow."1

Sir William Lucy, who takes a prominent part in
the first part of Henry VI. ,2 is only once mentioned in
Hall's Chronicle. In describing the Battle of North
ampton, fought upon the Qth July, 1460, in which the
Yorkists were victorious, the historian says that Sir
William " made great haste to come to part of the
fight, and at his first approach was stricken in the head
with an axe."3 He is represented in the play as taking
a leading part in the French war. We find him first
coming to the Duke of York from the camp before
Bordeaux, where old Talbot is beleaguered. The
English are " park'd and bounded in a pale," like a
herd of deer. "If we be English deer," says Talbot,

" be then in blood ;
Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch."4

Lucy is sent to get assistance from Richard of York,
and pleads for the rescue of the brave general and
valiant John :

" his son young John, who two hours since
I met in travel toward his warlike father. " 5

" Thou princely leader of our English strength,
Never so needful on the earth of France,
Spur to the rescue of the noble Talbot,
Who now is girdled with a waist of iron
And hemmed about with grim destruction."6

1 Ibid., 177-80.

2 The part which Shakespeare took in this play is, of course, one of
the moot points of Shakespearean criticism. Beside the importance
given to Sir William Lucy, there are, however, one or two possible
references to Stratford-on-Avon. The lines in the first act (i, 154) about
" keeping our great Saint George's feast," and the comparison (i. 2, 142)
of Joan of Arc to " Helen, mother of great Constantine," may be reminis
cences of the paintings in the Guild Chapel.

->1 Hall, u.s. , p. 244. 4 i Henry VI. iv. 2, 45-9.

5 M-, 3f 35-6-

SIR WILLIAM LUCY 45

In the next scene he is introduced to Somerset by one
of Talbot's captains—

" How now, Sir William, whither were you sent? "

Both the question and the answer, we may observe,
are in false English.

" Whither, my Lord? from bought and sold Lord Talbot ;
Who, ring'd about with bold adversity,
Cries out for noble York and Somerset."1

"If he be dead," says the general, " brave Talbot,
then adieu." "His fame lives in the world," retorts
Lucy, "his shame in you."5 The bold knight is very
formal in speech ; his comparison of the generals to
Prometheus, with the " vulture of sedition " feeding in
the bosom, is pedantic ;3 and Joan of Arc is forced to
laugh at his "silly stately style" when he enumerates
his commander's titles.4

" I think this upstart is old Talbot's ghost,
He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit,"

and the Englishman, pragmatical to the last, warns
the Dauphin that from their ashes shall be reared "a
phoenix that shall make all France afeared."5

Almost all the personal anecdotes about Shake
speare have come down to us from Sir William
Davenant, the author of Gondibert. He was proud of
having seen Shakespeare on his occasional visits to
Oxford, and he admired, above everything known in the
past, the English drama, whose traditions he hoped to
perpetuate. In Dryden's preface to the altered Tempest,
he tells us that Sir William first taught him to admire

1 Id., iv. 4, 12-15. 2 Ibid-> 45-6- 3 /rf-» iv- 3» 47 8-

* Id. , 7, 72. The "silly stately style" is characteristic, however, of
the whole play, and not merely of Lucy's speeches.
« Ibid., 87-93.

46 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

Shakespeare, "a poet for whom he had particularly
high veneration."1 If we could evoke some shadow
of the living Shakespeare, it could only be with the
help of Davenant's recollections. We shall find little
help from painting or sculpture ; but we can compare
what was said by those who knew the poet, or had
talked with his friends ; seeking, in his own phrase,
the image " in some antique book, since mind at first
in character was done."

Sir William was the son of Mr. John Davenant, an
Oxford vintner, who kept a tavern afterwards known
as the " Crown." Mr. Davenant was a grave and
discreet man, "yet an admirer and lover of plays and
play-makers, especially Shakespeare, who frequented
his house in his journeys between Warwickshire and
London." His wife was good-looking and clever, and
apparently of unblemished reputation to the end of her
days. The eldest boy, Robert, took after his father,
"who was seldom or never seen to laugh." The next
brother, William, was full of high spirits ; his genius
led him "in the pleasant paths of poetry," though he
picked up some smattering of logic at Lincoln College.2
"Parson Robert" used to meet Aubrey at St. John's,
and told him how kind Shakespeare had been.3 Aubrey
saw his way to a scandal at Mrs. Davenant's expense.
"Now Sir William would sometimes, when he was
pleasant over a glass of wine with his most intimate
friends, e.g. Sam Butler (author of Hudibras), &c.,
say that it seemed to him that he writt with the very
spirit that Shakespeare, and seemed contented enough
to be thought his son."4 There was an old story told

1 Works of Dryden, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, iii. 106.

2 Anthony a Wood, Ath. Oxon. (1692), ii. 292. This, with other
pertinent extracts, was printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 49.

3 See Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, 1898, i. 204. "I have
heard Parson Robert say that Mr. W. Shakespeare has given him a
hundred kisses." These words were crossed out in Aubrey's MS.

4 Ibid, Aubrey omitted a verb after " Shakespeare."

THE DAVENANT STORY 47

by Taylor the water-poet in 1629^ which in process
of time was applied to Davenant. "A boy, whose
mother was noted to be one not overloden with honesty,
went to seeke his godfather, and enquiring for him,
quoth one to him, Who is thy godfather? The boy
reply'd, his name is goodman Digland the gardiner.
Oh, said the man, if he be thy godfather, he is at
the next alehouse, but I feare thou takest God's name
in vain." The quip was ascribed to a townsman.
When applied to Davenant, it was transferred to a
doctor of divinity,'2 and at last to one of the heads of
houses.3 Betterton passed it on to Pope, who be
stowed it upon Oldys at the Earl of Oxford's table,
about 1740-1 ;4 but the antiquary records in his " second
annotated Langbaine" that he had found the story
in its original form among Taylor's collections from
the taverns.

The relationship at which Aubrey sneered was son-
ship of a literary kind. Those who shared in the help
of the same Genius were regarded as fathers and sons,
or as brothers, according to their dignity. Chapman,
for instance, wrote to Nathaniel Field as his " loved
son,"5 and some of HowelPs letters were addressed to
"my father, Mr. Ben Jonson." Sergeant Hoskyns,
said Aubrey, was Jonson's " father"; and his son, Sir
Bennet Hoskyns, asked Jonson to adopt him. "No,"
said Ben, "I dare not; 'tis honour enough for me to
be your brother : I was your father's son, and 'twas he
that polished me."6

1 Extract in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 43, from Taylor's pamphlet,
Wit and Mirth chargeably collected out of Tavernes, etc., 1629 (in fol.
1630).

3 Hearne's MS. pocket-book for 1709, in Bodleian ; extract printed
u.s., ii. 44. 3 Spence's Anecdotes, extract printed u.s.

* Oldys' MS. Collections, printed by Steevens, 1778. The story here
assumes the "old townsman" version. Extract printed u.s., ii. 45.

5 Commendatory verses prefixed to A Woman is a Weathercock,
(published 1612), in Mermaid ed., p. 339.

8 Aubrey, u.s., i. 417-8.

48 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

Something of Shakespeare's life came through
Davenant to William Beeston, an actor at Drury
Lane. His mother, Elizabeth Beeston, was the widow
of Christopher Beeston, apprentice to Augustine
Phillips, of the King's Company. When Phillips died
in 1605, he left bequests in these words: "To my
fellow, William Shakespeare, a thirty shillings piece
in gold ; to my servant Christopher Beeston thirty
shillings in gold." We may attribute to this Christo
pher the best of all the word-portraits, or pictures "in
character," as the poet expressed it : " He was a hand
some, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a
very ready smooth wit." On Christopher Beeston's
death, his widow and her son William were employed
in the management of " The King's and Queen's
Young Company " at the Phcenix ; and when the post
was given to Davenant, in June, 1640, he accepted the
young man as his deputy.1 We know from Aubrey
that William Beeston was his informant about Shake
speare teaching Latin grammar. Shakespeare "under
stood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger
years a schoolmaster in the country — from Mr. . . .
Beeston."2

The story of Shakespeare's organising the horse
boys' brigade came down from Davenant to Dr.
Johnson, who had it first from Bishop Newton, the
editor of Milton. Pope got it from Rowe, who quite
refused to believe it ; but his friend Betterton had
received the details from Sir William direct. Dr.

1 The particulars are recorded in Collier's Annals, ii. 99-102. See
also id., 78, 83, 91. The company seems to have borne familiarly the
name of " Beeston's Boys," and was established about 1636. Collier,
id., p. 91, makes no mention of Christopher Beeston's widow, and says
that William Beeston was probably his brother.

2 Aubrey, u.s., ii. 227. See also i. 97, sub William Beeston, " W.
Shakespeare — quaere Mr. Beeston, who knows most of him from Mr.
Lacy. . . . Quaere etiam for Ben Jonson. Old Mr. Beeston, whom
Mr. (John) Dryden calls 'the chronicle of the stage,' died at his house
in Bishopsg-ate Street without, about Bartholomew-tide, 1682."

THE HORSE-BOYS' BRIGADE 49

Johnson gave it to Robert Shiels, then helping as a
copyist at the Dictionary ; and Shiels printed it in
the Lives of the Poets, which Theophilus Gibber
was trying to pass off as his father's work, in 1753.
When Shakespeare came first to London, it was the
custom to go to the play on horseback. Shakespeare's
expedient to get a living was to hold the horses of
those that rode to the playhouse ; and he was so
careful that everyone called for Will Shakespeare !
This was the dawn of better fortune. Finding more
horses put into his hand than he could hold, he
hired boys to wait under his inspection, who, when
Will Shakespeare was summoned, were immediately
to present themselves with the formula, " I am Shake
speare's boy, Sir ! " As long as the practice of riding
to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the
horses continued to be known as " Shakespeare's Boys."

Such a story would naturally give offence to the
more elegant biographers. Mr. Rowe would not soil
his biography with anything so menial. To Malone,
the idea of a gentleman " holding horses" was offen
sive in the highest degree. Surely, it is urged, Mr.
John Shakespeare would have helped his prodigal son,
or Mrs. Anne, poor young creature, would have raised
money from her farming friends. "We have no
reason to suppose that he had forfeited the protection of
his father who was engaged in a lucrative business, or
the love of his wife who had already brought him two
children, and was herself the daughter of a substantial
yeoman." Were not, it was suggested, all the popular
theatres on Bank-side approached by water, with
sculls, or a smart pair of oars, and not a-horseback or
" a-footback " ? *

Malone seems to have forgotten that the only regular
playhouses, when Shakespeare first came to town,
were in a comfortable corner, half a mile from the city

1 See Malone, Shakespeare, u.s., i. 46.2, note.
E

co SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

wall, and outside the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. The
" Theatre," so called par excellence, was an open-air
amphitheatre, built by James Burbage on a site be
longing to the Nunnery of Holywell. It had an
opening into Finsbury Fields, across which a path led
to the postern at Moorgate ; or one could ride to it
from High Street, Shoreditch, down Holywell Lane.
The "Curtain" was a building on the other side of
the lane, near the great sewer called Moor-ditch. Its
site is approximately shown by the line of Curtain
Road. The playgoers might put their horses up at
the " Lion," in Shoreditch, or go down past the orchard
towards the playhouses.1 Sir John Davies wrote
before 1599 an " epigram to Faustus,"2 which shows
that the playhouses adjoined Finsbury Fields ; but
the riding to them across the grass, or over the
citizen's footpaths, was meant only as a point in the
satire : —

" Faustus, nor lord, nor knight, nor wise, nor old,

To every place about the town doth ride ;
He rides into the fields, plays to behold ;

He rides, to take boat at the water-side."

Hired coaches were rare in Elizabeth's reign, though
not unknown. Mr. G. Chalmers cited the Lords'
Journals for 1601 as to a bill restraining "the excessive
and superfluous use of coaches," and a line about " a
badged coach" from Marston's Cynic Satire, 1599.
Aubrey heard that in Sir Philip Sidney's time it was
as disgraceful for a young gentleman to be seen in
a coach as if he were found walking "in a petticoat
and waistcoat."3 Hired coaches became common about
1605. In Dekker and Webster's Westward-Ho* one

1 There is a sketch of the ride from Bishopsgate in Northward-Ho,
by Dekker and Webster, acted in 1607 by the children of St. Paul's.
a Reprinted in Malone, Shakespeare, u.s., iii. 152, note.

3 Aubrey, u.s., ii. 249.

4 Act ii. sc. 3. Dr. A. W. Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit., ii. 469, says that
West-ward-Ho was certainly written by 1605.

ON THE STAGE 51

of the citizens says, "We'll take a coach and ride to
Ham or so." " O, fie upon't, a coach ! I cannot abide
to be jolted." In Middleton and Dekker's Roaring
Girl (1611), a hack-driver appeared on the stage, with
cape and whip, ready to take his fare from Gray's Inn
Fields to the other end of Marylebone Park.1

Mr. Jones, of "Tarbick," who has been mentioned
in connection with the Lucy legend, took part in
handing down another story told to him by one
of Shakespeare's relations at Stratford. This, at least,
is the account received by Capell from Mr. Wilkes.
"My grandfather heard it from Mr. Jones," was his
formula ; but he also relied on the witness of his friend,
Mr. Oldys, "a late stage-antiquarian." The story
was to the effect that Shakespeare played Adam in
As You Like It, when his relative went to see him at the
Globe.

Oldys, in his own person, told quite a different story.
For some unknown reason he fathered it on Gilbert
Shakespeare, the poet's youngest brother.2 The date
of Gilbert's baptism was the i3th of October, 1566.
The time of his death is unknown ; but if Oldys
were correct in his guess, he would have been about
a century old before he gave up his visits to the theatre.
" One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, who lived to
a good old age, even some years, as I compute, after the
restoration of King Charles the Second, would in his
younger days come to London to visit his brother Will,
as he called him, and be a spectator of him as an actor
in some of his own plays." As Shakespeare's fame
increased, Oldys seems to have believed wrongly that

1 Roaring Girl, iii. i.

2 Richard and Edmund, the intermediate brothers, both died in
Shakespeare's ifetime.

52 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

" his dramatick entertainments grew the greatest sup
port of our principal, if not of all our theatres." When
the stage revived after the Civil War, old Gilbert
began to attend the plays at Drury Lane. Among the
actors there he might have met his own great-nephew ;
for Charles Hart, the great tragedian, was the grandson
of Shakespeare's sister Joan. According to our anti
quary, this rendered the most noted actors greedy for
some personal anecdotes at first hand ; but the strange
visitor seemed to be "a man of weak intellects," or
at any rate so infirm that he could tell them very
little. "All that could be recollected from him of his
brother Will in that station was the faint, general, and
almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a
part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to
personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard,
and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to
walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by
another person to a table, at which he was seated
among some company who were eating, and one of
them sang a song." It seems that neither Davenant
nor Betterton knew of this tradition, or of the more
trustworthy anecdote from Stratford ; for Betterton
expressly said he could never meet with any public
account of Shakespeare's acting, except that "the
top of his performance was the Ghost in his own
Hamlet." He knew that his acting was praised in the
preface to Chettle's Kind-hartes Dreame^ in 1592-3.
Greene had attacked Shakespeare, not for his acting,
but for being a factotum, stealing the trade from the
university play-writers, and fancying himself at the
same time to be the best actor, "the only Shake-
scene." A comedian writing plays seemed shocking
to this poor Ragged Robin: " Here is a peasant, or
rude groom, turned ape or painted monster." Chettle
apologised for the abuse which he had ventured to
publish: "I am as sory as if the originall fault had

HIS PARTS ON THE STAGE 53

beene my fault, because my selfe have seen his de
meanor no lesse civill, than he exelent in the qualitie he
professes."1

In 1598, Shakespeare acted in Jonson's Every Alan
in his Humour; and, as he was the chief comedian,
we may fairly suppose that he took the leading part.
The name of "Mr. Knowell " heads the dramatis
personce ; and that trivial circumstance led to the story
that Shakespeare selected the part of the nervous old
citizen. It is far more probable that he acted the
part in which Garrick attained a success. "Kitely,"
says Thomas Davies, "though not equal to Ford in
The Merry Wives of Windsor, who can plead a
more justifiable cause of jealousy, is yet well con
ceived, and is placed so artfully .in situation, as to
draw forth a considerable share of comic distress."
Burbage, in this case, was clearly marked down for
Captain Bobadill ; and Cob, the merry water-carrier,
belonged to Will Kemp, in preference to Phillips and
Pope, whose clowning was a little worn-out. In 1603,
Shakespeare acted in SejanuSj under Burbage as the
principal tragedian ; but the play died in its birth, and
we know nothing about the cast of the characters.2 It
seems probable that Shakespeare acted the part of
William Rufus in Dekker's Satiro-mastix. In 1601, Ben
Jonson had given great offence to the minor poets in his
Poetaster* produced by the children of the Chapel
Royal: "Thou hast arraigned two poets against all

1 See reprints of Greene's and Chettle's pamphlets in Shakspeare
Allusion-Books, ed. C. M. Ingleby, pt. i, 1874.

a Shakespeare's part may have been that of Tiberius : the title-ro/e
would naturally fall to Burbage.

8 The original offence, as is well known, came from Cynthia's Revels
(1600). Marston and Dekker recognised themselves in the Hedon and
Anaides of the play. Jonson forestalled any really effective reply by
writing The Poetaster — a task which, he says in his prologue, occupied
him fifteen weeks. The Demetrius of this satiric play was Dekker ;
Crispinus is usually supposed to be Marston. The actual cause of the
quarrel is unknown.

54 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

law and conscience, and not content with that, hast
turned them amongst a company of horrible Black-
Friars." Dekker seems to have been chosen as the
champion against the common foe ; and in 1602 his
Satiro-mastix, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet
was acted by the children of Paul's, and afterwards by
the Lord Chamberlain's company at the Globe.1 In a
farce called The Return from Parnassus, written at
Cambridge about that time, we are shown Burbage and
Kempe instructing the students : 2 " Few of the Univer
sity pen plays well ; they smell too much of that writer
Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much
of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow
Shakespeare puts them all down, ay, and Ben Jonson
too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow ! He
brought up Horace giving the poets a pill : but our
fellow Shakespeare had given him a purge ! " Jonson
referred to "the players" in the dialogue appended to
The Poetaster, as it appeared in the folio of 1616 ; in his
opinion, he had touched them very lightly, and they
ought not to have taken offence : —

" What they have done 'gainst me,
I am not moved with : if it gave them meat,
Or got them clothes, 'tis well ; that was their end.
Only amongst them, I am sorry for
Some better natures, by the rest so drawn,
To run in that vile line." 3

The plot of Satiro - mastix lies in the marriage of
Walter Tyrrel and the love of King William for the
bride. It is just possible that " Rufus " was introduced

1 Marston seems previously to have attempted a reply to Cynthia's
Revels in \i\sjack Drum's Entertainment,

3 Return from Parnassus, iv. 5, 14-20 (ed. Arber). The farce was
acted in January, 1602, at St. John's College, Cambridge. It was
printed 1606.

3 Poetaster, "Apologetical Dialogue," 11. 134-9. This dialogue was
written in 1601, but was not allowed to be printed (Ward, op. cit., ii. 360).

HIS PART IN SATIRO-MASTIX 55

by way of reference to the poet's auburn hair. The
picture of Rufus is given thus : —

" Suppose who enters now,
A King, whose eyes are set in silver, one
That blusheth gold, speaks music, dancing walks,
Now gathers nearer, takes thee by the hand,
When straight thou think'st, the very Orb of Heaven
Moves round about thy fingers, then he speaks,
Thus — thus — I know not how."1

If this were Shakespeare's own part, as seems likely,
it would be a good field for displaying his "brave
notions" and "excellent phantasy." His genius, in
deed, as Fuller had heard, was "jocular and inclined
to festivity." There is no reason to believe that he
always played the " heavy father," as Old Knowell, or
Duncan, or Henry IV., as many have supposed.
Rufus was a part just suited to his nimble discourse.
We all remember Fuller's fancy of what the fights
at the "Mermaid" were like. Drake's frigate could run
round La Santissima Trinidad, as Shakespeare could
tack about and outsail Father Ben, "and take advan
tage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and inven
tion." A poor epigram "to our English Terence"
was printed by Malone, from The Scourge of Folly, by
John Davies ; where the Hereford schoolmaster warned
"good Will" that he might have been a courtier or
"companion for a king," if he had not played " some
kingly parts in sport." The lines, at any rate, refer to
characters played by Shakespeare before the accession
of King James.

Mr. John Downes, the prompter, preserved one or two
jjtage traditions about Shakespeare. He was for many
years bookkeeper to the Duke's company, first under
Davenant in the old house, and afterwards at Salisbury
Court, in Whitefriars. In Roscius Anglicanus, a
historical review of the stage, he received assistance

1 Dekker's Dramatic Works, ed. Pearson, 1873, i. 249.

56 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

from Charles Booth, prompter to the company under
Killigrew's patent at Drury Lane. But most of the
work was compiled from his own journals ; for he was
familiar with every play in the stock, had written out
the parts, attended all the rehearsals, and prompted
out of his own book in the afternoons.

On May 28th, 1663, Davenant produced Hamlet,
with Betterton as the Prince. We must remember
that the play was very much cut down, the main plot
retained, and most of the digressions and " side
shows " left out. Mr. Pepys and his wife were there,
having tried for "a room " at the Royal Theatre in
vain; "and so to the Duke's house; and there saw
'Hamlett' done, giving us fresh reason never to think
enough of Betterton." This was the first performance
of Hamlet by Betterton, then a young man of between
twenty-five and thirty years of age. " And he con
tinued to act it," says Downes, " with great spirit and
with much applause till the last year of his life." Sir
William Davenant, so runs the prompter's note, had
seen the part taken by Joseph Taylor, of the Blackfriars
Company, and Taylor had been "instructed by the
author, Mr. Shakespeare." " Sir William taught Mr.
Betterton in every particle of it, which by the exact
performance of it gained him esteem and reputation
superlative to all other players."1 We cannot be sure
that Taylor was taught by Shakespeare himself. He
is believed to have been a member of the King's Com
pany before 1613, and to have left it for a time before
Shakespeare's death. He was, in any event, the first
actor who can be identified as having played the Prince
of Denmark ; and Wright, in the Historia Histrionica
(1699), said "he performed that part incomparably
well." If it be true that Shakespeare had acted the
Ghost, and that Betterton received the tradition of his
methods, we should recall that evening at Drury Lane,

1 Roscius Anglicanus, pp. 29, 30.

TRADITIONS OF HIS FELLOW-ACTORS 57

when Addison sat by Steele, and asked if it was
necessary for Hamlet to rant and rave at his father's
spirit. Steele afterwards showed, in the Tatler, into
what light Betterton had thrown the scene. His voice
never rose with a " wild defiance " of what he naturally
revered. There was first a pause of mute amazement ;
"then, rising slowly to a solemn, trembling voice, he
made the ghost equally terrible to the spectators as
to himself."

On December 23rd, in the same year, Pepys makes
this note : " I perceive the King and Duke and all the
Court was going to the Duke's Playhouse to see
' Henry the Eighth ' acted, which is said to be an
admirable Play."1 He was unfortunately under a vow
not to go inside a theatre for six months ; and it was
very irksome indeed to be told by one of his friends of
the goodness of the new piece, " which made me think
it long till my time is out." On New Year's Day he was
free, and went off at once to Portugal Row, with what
result appears from his diary: "My wife and I rose
from table, pretending business, and went to the Duke's
house . . . and there saw the so much cried-up play of
'Henry the Eighth'; which, though I went with reso
lution to like it, is so simple a thing made up of a great
many patches, that, besides the shows and processions
in it, there is nothing in the world good or well done."
Some years afterwards his tastes changed, for he notes
on December 3Oth, 1668, that he took his wife to the
same play, "and was mightily pleased, better than
I ever expected, with the history and shows of it."
Downes described it as seen from the prompter's box.
"King Henry the 8th. This Play, by order of Sir
William Davenant, was all new cloathed in proper
habits : the King's was new, and all the Lords,

1 See also under Dec. loth. "A rare play, to be acted this week of
Sir William Davenant's. The story of Henry the Eighth with all his
wives."

58 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

the Cardinals, the Bishops, the Doctors, Proctors,
Lawyers, Tipstaves, new Scenes. The part of the
King was so right and justly done by Mr. Betterton,
he being instructed in it by Sir William, who had
it from old Mr. Lowen, that had his instructions
from Mr. Shakespear himself^ that I dare and will
aver, none can, or ever will come near him in
this age, in the performance of this part."1 Downes,
the prompter, credited Shakespeare with the whole
play and all the stage directions, and was thus led
to think that the poet took the most " indefatigable
pains to feed the eye." For the vision of Spirits, Shake
speare's "little Pantomime," he had no praise, except
that it showed some fancy. The grave congees and
stately courtesies put him in mind of Bayes' grand
dance. Perhaps the Duke of Buckingham borrowed a
hint of it from the Queen's vision. "Enter, solemnly
tripping one after another, six personages, clad in
white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays,
and golden vizards on their faces " : they wave a spare
garland over the sleeper, " and so in their dancing they
vanish, carrying the garland with them. The music
continues."2 We should compare the stage-direction
in The Tempest^ where the airy dancers are suddenly
disturbed when Prospero starts and speaks; "after
which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they
heavily vanish."3 The Duke of Buckingham laughs
at them all alike, when he makes Mr. Bayes chide the
players : " You dance worse than the Angels in Harry
the Eight, or the fat Spirits in The Tempest"*

We need not believe that Taylor was selected by
Shakespeare for the Prince of Denmark, or Lowin for
his fat Knight. Lowin joined the King's Company in

1 Roscius Anglicanus, p. 34. 2 Henry VIII. , iv. 2.

3 Tempest, iv. i.

4 The Rehearsal, ii. 5. The grand dance mentioned above will be found
ibid. , v. i.

ALLEGED LETTER FROM THE KING 59

I6O4,1 and Ben Jonson had already (1599) spoken of
Sir John in his Every Man out of his Humour. Burbage
took the part of Macilente, which suited his spare figure
very well. Jonson would not beg of the audience "a
plaudite for God's sake : but if you, out of the bounty of
your good liking, will bestow it, why, you may make
lean Macilente as fat as Sir John FalstafT." 2 He appears
to include both parts of Henry IV. in his reference to the
popular favourite. Lowin doubtless succeeded to the
post very early after joining the company, and would
know how Shakespeare wished it to be played ; and
Taylor in the same way learned what the poet meant
by the distinction between the whirlwind of passion,
with smoothness, and the same passion torn into
tatters.3

William Oldys showed in a note on his Fuller's
Worthies i now in the British Museum, that the story
of the King writing to Shakespeare came through
Davenant to John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire,
an authority of some distinction in literature. In his
commonplace book the Duke wrote : " King James
the First honoured Shakespeare with an epistolary
correspondence, and I think Sir William Davenant
had either seen or was possessed of His Majesty's letter
to him." Oldys, who referred to the preface in
Lintot's edition of Shakespeare's Poems (1709), where

1 A. W. Ward, u.s., ii. 137, says: "There is ... no proof that he
(Lowin) was the original performer of the part, and it is hardly likely to
have been allotted to so young a man (he was born in 1576). " This opinion
is further confirmed by the words of Roberts, the actor, in 1729, quoted
by Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 243 : " I am apt to think, he (Lowin) did
not rise to his perfection and most exalted state in the theatre till after
Burbage, tho' he play'd what we call second and third characters in his
time, and particularly Henry the Eighth originally ; from an observation
of whose acting it in his later days Sir William Davenant conveyed his
instructions to Mr. Betterton."

3 Every Man out of his Humour, v. 7. 3 See Hamlet, iii. 2, 1-16.

60 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE

it was said that "King James the First was pleased
with his own hand to write an amicable letter to
Mr. Shakespeare ; which letter, though now lost, re
mained long in the hands of Sir William Davenant,
as a credible person, now living, can testify." This
person was doubtless the Duke of Buckinghamshire,
who died in 1721. Dr. Farmer tried to guess what was
in the letter — something such as thanks for compliments
in Macbeth; but all such attempts are useless. As to
the custody of the document, we may fairly suppose
that it belonged to Lady Barnard about the time of
Davenant's death in 1668. It would have passed under
Shakespeare's will to Mr. and Mrs. Hall, remaining
with Mrs. Hall on her husband's death. Mr. Hall
tried to make a verbal will, but did not name an
executor ; he intended Thomas Nash to have his pro
fessional manuscripts: "I would have given them to
Mr. Boles," he said, "if hee had been here; but
forasmuch as hee is not heere present, yow may, son
Nash, burne them, or doe with them what yow please."1
Mrs. Hall administered the estate, with a record of the
imperfect gift as part of her authority ; but there is
no reason to think that she gave up the letter in
question. Elizabeth Nash, two years after her hus
band's death, married Mr. Barnard, afterwards knighted,
and on succeeding to her mother's property, lived at
New Place for a time.

In 1742, Sir Hugh Clopton told Mr. Macklin, the
actor, when he visited Stratford in company with
Garrick, that Lady Barnard, on leaving the town,
"carried away many of her grandfather's papers."
Others remained at Stratford, and came with the
probate of Lady Barnard's will into the possession of
Mr. R. B. Wheler, who printed some of them in the
appendix to his History.

1 Nuncupative will of John Hall, printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 61.

STRATFORD-ON-AVON

ORIGIN OF NAME — PREHISTORIC REMAINS: PATHLOW AND THE
LIBERTY — ROMAN ROADS IN WARWICKSHIRE — RYKNIELD
STREET IN " C,YMBELINE "

OTRATFORD, as its name implies, marks the point
vTj where a "street," or paved Roman road, led down
to a passage across the Avon. At first there was only a
ford ; in later ages, as Leland l tells us, a poor wooden
bridge was set up, which must have spoiled the old
access, and yet was a danger in itself. "There was
no causeway to come to it," says the historian, " where
by many poor folks either refused to come to Stratford
when the river was up, or coming thither stood in
jeopardy of life " ; until at last Lord Mayor Clopton,
in the reign of Henry VII., made "the great and
sumptuous bridge" with "fourteen great arches and a
long causeway, made of stone, well walled on each
side, at the west end of the bridge."

The neighbourhood had been inhabited in prehistoric
times by the tribes that made the barrows and stone
circles. Several of the great "lowes," or "graves,"

1 See Leland's Itinerary, ed. Hearne, 1710-12, vol. iv. part ii. pp. 52-3,
for notices of Stratford quoted in these pages.

64 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

were adopted in later ages as meeting-places for the
open-air Courts, at which the Sheriff or owner of a
Liberty transacted the affairs of a district. The
Hundred of Knightlow, for instance, took its name
from Knightlow Hill, on the road from Coventry to
London ; on the summit was a British tumulus, on
which a wayside cross had been erected.1 The Hundred
of Barlichway, in which Stratford is included, held its
Court in Barlichway Grove, described as "a little plot
of ground, about eight yards square, now inclosed
with a hedge and situate upon the top of a hill."2 The
town was in earlier times comprised in the Liberty of
Pathlow, or " Pate's Grave"; here the Bishops of
Worcester had a Hundred Court of their own, with
a jurisdiction extending over many towns and villages,
among which were Bishopton, Luddington, and Wilm-
cote, though most of them, according to Dugdale,
were almost lost by neglect or the corruption of bailiffs.
The place, it was added, that gave its name to this
Hundred "is an heap of earth ... in the very way
betwixt Warwick and Alcester . . . near unto it are
certain enclosed grounds . . . bearing the name of
Pathlows," where Courts were held twice a year.3 If
we refer to The Taming of the Shrew, and what Lang-
baine's editor calls "the story of the tinker, so divert
ing," we should note that it was to one of these Courts
that the ale-wife was to be summoned for serving the

1 Murray's Handbook of Warwickshire, 1899, p. 18. Knightlow is the
most easterly of the four Hundreds — Hemlingford, Barlichway, Kineton,
Knightlow — into which Warwickshire is divided. It comprises four sub
divisions — Kenilworth, Southam, Rugby, and Kirby, called after the
chief towns and villages included in it.

2 Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire, ed. Thomas, 1730, vol. ii.
p. 641. Barlichway Hundred is the south-western portion of the county,
including a tract of land almost square in shape. Its subdivisions are,
on the west, Henley-in-Arden and Alcester ; on the east, Snitterfield and
Stratford.

3 Dugdale, u.s., vol. ii. 641-2. Pathlow is three miles north-west of
Stratford, on the road to Wootton Wawen and Henley-in-Arden.

EARLY HISTORY OF DISTRICT 65

drink in "unsealed quarts."1 The Bishops also held
a three-weeks Court called "Gilpit"; and the name
evidently referred to the high-road from Stratford to
Birmingham, which was commonly known as Guild-
pits, from some right of digging stones or gravel on
land belonging to the Stratford Guild.

The choice of Stratford as a Roman station was due
to the course and disposition of the various military
roads. Any map of the Roman province will show
that the place lies at the lower entrance of a wedge-
shaped district inclosed on three sides by the Watling
Street, the Fosse Way, and the road between Gloucester
and Doncaster, which is now called the Ryknield Street.
The last-named road passed along the western side of
Warwickshire, from Alcester to the neighbourhood of
Birmingham. It was often called the Icknield Way by
the older antiquarians; but it is more convenient to keep
that name for the better-known road which passed
across the eastern part of the districts between the
Wash and Southampton Water,2 and so westward into
Devon and Cornwall.

We shall say a word or two as to each of the great
highways, which by their intersections and branches
completely inclosed the woodlands of Arden. The
first to be made was the Watling Street, which passed
obliquely from the Kentish coast to the Thames at
the Westminster Ford, and so to Verulam and the
Temple of Diana in the market-place at Dunstable.
On the border of Leicestershire and Warwickshire it
passed a place now called High Cross, where its course
was intersected, as time went on, by the Fosse Way.3

1 Taming of the Shrew, Ind., 2, 89-90 : —
" You would present her at the leet,

Because she brought stone jugs and no seal'd quarts."
8 Icknield Street, and Icknield Port Road, in the western portion of
Birmingham, indicate, under the more familiar form, the course of the
Ryknield Way through the city.

3 High Cross (Benonoe, or Venonce) lies in Great Copstone Parish,
F

66 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

Near Wall (Letocetum), two miles south of Lichfield, it
was similarly intersected by the Ryknield Street. We
need not trace minutely the rest of its course ; turning
due west at Wall, it passed to Uriconium or Viro-
conium (Wroxeter), "the White Town by the Wrekin,"
and eventually, taking a north-westerly course, met
the sacred waters of the Dee at Deva (Chester). Its
branches were in North Wales and Mid-Britain, and
ran toward each extremity of the Roman Wall. When
the English invaders saw it, lying like a beam of light
across the land, they gave it the name of Watling
Street, which was their legendary title for the "path
of souls " along the Galaxy, or Milky Way.

The Fosse Way connected the military hospitals at
Bath with the colony of veterans at Lincoln, where it
joined other roads from the south by which supplies and
reliefs were sent to the fortresses by the wall. The
mediaeval chroniclers were fond of a jingling phrase
about the road running "from Totnes to Caithness,"
which Drayton adopted in those lines of the Poly-Olbion
that tell us of the passing of the Fosse : —

" From where rich Corn-wall points to the Iberian seas,
Till colder Cathnes tells the scattered Orcades.1

between Lutterworth and Nuneaton, 440 feet above sea-level. A pillar,
erected in 1711 by the neighbouring- gentry, to commemorate the restora
tion of peace, bears a Latin inscription (translated in Murray's Warwick
shire, p. 8) : " If, traveller, you search for the footsteps of the ancient
Romans, you may here behold them. For here their most celebrated
ways, crossing- one another, extend to the utmost boundaries of Britain ;
here the Vennones kept their quarters ; and, at the distance of one mile
from here, Claudius, a certain commander of a cohort, seems to have
had a camp towards the street : and towards the fosse, a tomb." See
Drayton, Poly-Olbion, i3th song, 311-13: —

"that Cross

Where those two mighty ways, the Watling and the Fosse,

Our centre seem to cut."

Watling Street continues its progress W.N.W. to Mancetter (Mandues-
sedum), ten miles distant ; the Fosse Way proceeds N.N.E. to Leicester
(Ratae) thirteen miles.

1 Poly-Olbion, song xvi. 105-6. Cf. id., xiii. 315-16, "from Michael's
utmost Mount, to Cathnesse."

ROMAN ROADS IN WARWICKSHIRE 67

About ten miles south of Stratford its route is marked
by Stretton-on-the-Foss, and six miles north of Stretton,
by the site of a station that guarded the Stour at
Halford. "Through all this county," says Gale in his
essay on the Four Great Ways, "the course of it is
very plain and conspicuous " ; near Street-Ashton and
Monk's Kirby, he adds, "part of it lies open like a
ditch, having not been filled with stones and gravel as
in most other places."1

The third side of our oblong or coffin-shaped figure
was formed by the road from South Wales and
Gloucester. Where it enters Warwickshire we trace it
from ford to ford, all occupied as military stations. Of
these we have Bidford-on-Avon, and Wixford, and the
Roman station at Alcester (Alauna), where there is a
confluence of rivers. Dugdale thought that " Ickle
Street," in this town, must have been named after the
old military way ; and, at any rate, Roman tiles and
other antiquities, including many gold and silver coins,
have been found there at different times. The Ryknield
Street passed through Coughton, and thence to a point
near Birmingham,2 where it entered Staffordshire,
and "there running thro' Sutton Park and by Shenston,
cutts the Watling Street scarce a mile East from
Wall and Litchfield"* Drayton seems to have felt a
patriotic affection for this Warwickshire road, watching
it from its birth on the shore of the Irish Sea to its final
resting-stage at the foot of the Roman wall. In
Poly-Olbion he is so bold as to personify the Watling
Street, or the Spirit of the Road, as a kind of genius

1 See Gale's essay, printed in Hearne's Leland, vi. 99. Street Ashton
is in Monk's Kirby parish, some four miles south of the junction with
Watling Street at High Cross. A mile south-west, nearer the actual
course of the street, is Stretton-under-Fosse, not to be confused with
Stretton-on-the-Foss. The progress of the street over Dunsmore Heath,
further south again, is marked by Stretton-on-Dunsmore.

2 Near Perry-Bar, in the northern suburbs of the city.
8 Gale's essay, in Leland, u.s., vol. vi.

68 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

loci,1 who tells the tale of the Ryknield struggling
northwards after Fosse Way : —

" Then in his oblique course the lusty straggling Street
Soon overtook the Fosse ; and toward the fall of Tine,
Into the German Sea dissolv'd at his decline."

The neck of the oblong figure was the narrow space
between the fort at Bidford-on-Avon and the post at
Halford, where the Fosse Way crossed the Stour.2 If
the wild tribes of Arden were to be kept in place, it was
necessary to occupy their passage of the Avon at Strat
ford and to make a junction between the two northward
lines ; and this object was attained by driving a road
from Bidford and Alcester to Stratford, and thence
across the ford to the station on the Stour. This, we
suppose, must have been the time when Stratford first
began to exist as a village, with a guard-house, a
posting-station, and such other subsidiary dwelling-
places as would be required.

Shakespeare has made repeated allusions in Cymbe-
line to the Ryknield Street. It will be remembered
that in a large sense the name was given to the whole
route from the extremity of South Wales to the Tyne.
The portions west of Gloucester were also known as
the Julia Strata, a term which may have some connec
tion with Julius Cassar, or with Julius Frontinus, who
subdued the valley of the Severn ; but it seems to be,
in reality, a late fabrication, the name being derived
from Striguil, from which the De Clares, Earls of
Pembroke and Striguil, and their successors, the
Marshals, took their second title.3

It need not be supposed that the poet gave any

1 Poly-Olbion, xvi. 20-219.

2 As the crow flies, this is about ten miles' distance.

3 Striguil, or Strigul (Strigulia), was a castle some four miles from
Chepstow on the road to Abergavenny. The name, however, became
applied in common usage to the greater castle at Chepstow, in the same
lordship. See note in Bohn's Giraldus Cambrensis (ed. Forester and
Wright), p. 1 86.

RYKNIELD STREET 69

credit to the Romans for the construction of the mili
tary roads. It was in his time an article of popular belief
that the Britons had been more or less civilised ever
since the arrival of " Brutus the Trojan," long before
King Bladud had found the seething springs of Bath,
or King Lear had set up his throne in Leicester ; and
Lear and Cordelia, as the chroniclers said,1 were dead
and gone before the first stone had been cut for the
walls of Rome. The great highways, it was thought,
were placed under the King's peace by Mulmutius,
who first reunited "the five kingdoms of Britain";
he was said to have passed a code of laws, of which
fragments are still reputed to exist in Wales ; and we
are told that after a prosperous reign of forty years
he died in " London, or New Troy," and was buried
near the Temple of Concord. Another name for the
capital is used at the end of the play, where Cymbeline
proposes to set the seal on his victory in London :

" So through Lud's-town march :
And in the temple of great Jupiter
Our peace we'll ratify."2

Shakespeare follows Holinshed in the main, and does
not seem to have been acquainted with the romance
of Geoffrey of Monmouth ; otherwise, instead of the
lines about "giglot fortune," and the lost chance of
capturing Caesar's sword,3 we must have had the
legend of the slain Prince Nennius actually carrying
to his grave that " Yellow Death," so called because
none could recover from a blow with its brassy blade.
11 You must know," says the King in the play,

"Till the injurious Romans did extort
This tribute from us, we were free."4

1 See Geoffrey of Monmouth, libb. i. ii., for the early source of these
mythical histories. a Cymbeline, v. 5, 481-3 ; also iii. i, 32.

3 Id., iii. i, 30-1 : " Cassibelan, who was once at point — O gfiglot
fortune! — to master Caesar's sword." The story of Nennius will be
found in Geoffrey of Monmouth, lib. iv. cap. 4.

4 Cymbeline, iii. I, 48-50.

70 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

" Britain is
A world by itself,"

says rough Prince Cloten, in a highly classical phrase,

" and we will nothing- pay
For wearing our own noses."1

The King's speech to the Roman ambassador is full of
reverence for the royal road-maker : —

" Our ancestor was that Mulmutius which
Ordain'd our laws, whose use the sword of Caesar
Hath too much mangled ; whose repair and franchise
Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed,
Though Rome be therefore angry : Mulmutius made

our laws,

Who was the first of Britain which did put
His brows within a golden crown and call'd
Himself a king."2

The Queen speaks bravely of Julius Caesar, and his
brag of "'Came' and 'saw' and 'overcame'"; but
here in Britain,

" ribbed and paled in
With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters,"

and the Goodwin Sands to suck in his ships to the
topmast, Caesar, she said, was carried off from our
coast twice beaten.3 This accounts for the selection
of Milford Haven, on the western extension of the
Ryknield Street, as the port from which the voyages
to Italy were made, and as the landing-place for the
"legions garrison'd in Gallia."4 It was apparently
from Milford that Posthumus set forth to "that drug-
damn'd Italy,"5 and here, when his mind was poisoned,
he appointed a treacherous ambush for fair Imogen.

1 Ibid., 12-14.

2 Ibid., 55-62. See Poly-Olbion, xvi. 97 : " Since us, his kingly Ways,
Mulmutius first began," and Selden's note on the passage. Mulmutius,
Molmutius, or Malmutius, is said to be commemorated in the name of
Malmesbury. Etymologists, however, prefer a more historical derivation.

3 Cymbeline, u.s., 14-33. * Id., iv. 2, 333-6. 6 Id., iii. 4, 15.

RYKNIELD STREET IN CYMBELINE 71

The lady reads his letter: "Take notice, that I am
in Cambria, at Milford Haven."
She cries :

" O for a horse with wings ! Hear'st thou, Pisanio?
He is at Milford Haven : read, and tell me
How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs
May plod it in a week, why may not I
Glide thither in a day ?

... by the way,

Tell me how Wales was made so happy as
To inherit such a haven."1

MEDIEVAL STRATFORD : ITS CONNECTION WITH THE BISHOPS OF
WORCESTER — GROWTH OF THE TOWN — THE FAIRS AND
MARKETS — EPISCOPAL RIGHTS IN STRATFORD— OFFICERS OF
THE MEDIEVAL BOROUGH

We now pass onward to a time when Stratford
formed part of a large agricultural domain belonging
to the Crown of Mercia. The chronicler tells us that
the details of the English conquests in these parts
were never recorded in history. "Many and frequent
were the expeditions from Germany, and many the
lords who strove against each other ; but the names
of the chieftains are unknown by reason of their very
multitude." Mercia, we suppose, was at one time
composed of a number of independent states, which
were gradually fused into a single monarchy. In the
middle of the ninth century it was still in form a
kingdom by itself; but in fact it had become a de
pendency of Wessex under Ethelwulf, the father of
Alfred. Shortly before the year 840, King Bertulf
of Mercia had deprived the Bishop of Worcester of
several valuable estates, and the injured prelate deter
mined to make an appeal to the " Witan," or Council.

1 /(/., iii. 2, 44-63.

72 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

Accordingly at Easter in that year he attended the
Court which Bertulf and his Queen Sedrida were
holding in their royal town of Tamworth. The Bishop
pleaded before the solemn assembly, and gained his
cause, but not without a grievous ransom ; for the King
demanded four warhorses, and a fine ring, and heavy
silver dishes and goblets ; and the avaricious Sedrida
claimed two palfreys, and a parcel-gilt cup, and silver
wine-stoups, and other valuable offerings. On these
terms the Church recovered the estates, freed from
all burdens of royal exaction. The Bishop found
a way of recouping himself a few years afterwards,
when the King of Wessex was away on a pilgrimage
to Rome, and his people were discontented at his
project of raising his " child- wife" Judith to the throne.
It was an opportunity for bringing the power of the
Church to bear on the tyrant of Mercia. Bishop
Eadbert, or Heabert, therefore went in the year 845 to
the Yule Feast at Tamworth, and asked the King to
give up to his Church at Worcester the estate which
had once belonged to an old monastery at Stratford-on-
Avon, comprising twenty farms of arable land in the
common fields, besides the pastures and woodlands.
A copy of the King's deed of gift, duly confirmed by
the Council, is preserved among the Cottonian Manu
scripts.1 It is composed in a very inflated style, as was
usual in the charters of that age, and is written in a
somewhat Mercian kind of Latin. It somewhat re
sembles those Kentish deeds, which were called
" Humana Mens," because they gave as much free
dom as the human mind could conceive, or, to quote
from Jack Cade, who was learned in Kentish law, they
were "as free as heart can wish or tongue can tell."2
The deed began with a pious exordium, showing that

1 Dugxlale gives an abbreviated copy, op. cit., ii. 680, at the beginning-
of his account of Stratford.

2 2 Henry VI., iv. 7, 131-2.

GRANT TO BISHOPS OF WORCESTER 73

Bertulf wished to purchase an eternal reward by giving
up a share of his "transitory wealth." "In nomine
Domini!" he begins, "so fading and fleeting is this
world's state, while all things that we see are rushing
swifter than the wind to their end." " Therefore, with
the consent of my Bishops and Nobles and Elders,
I give to the venerable Bishop Heabert and his house
at Worcester all my rights in the monastery by the
Avon called Over-Stratford, with twenty farms, for
which I have accepted ten pounds' weight of silver in
consideration of the land being njade free for ever. Be
it therefore free from all burdens of human servitude
and all secular tributes and taxes, the Church taking
her rightful profits in wood and field, in meadows and
pastures, in waters and fisheries," and so forth. Then
follows a list of the special exactions to which the lands
of the Crown were liable, such as forced labour and
purveyance of food for the King and his retinue, pro
viding meals for casual guests and huntsmen, and food
for the horses and hawks, and for the boys that led the
hounds. In fine, "Let the land be free," declared
the King, "from all exactions great or small, known
or as yet unknown, so long as the Christian religion
shall remain among the English in this island of
Britain." The charter was marked with the sign of the
cross by Bertulf and Sedrida .and their eldest son
Bertric, by several bishops, an abbot, and a priest, by
Earl Humbert and the rest of the nobles present, and
by a few untitled witnesses who may be taken as
representing the Commons of Mercia.

The Stratford estate remained in much the same con
dition till the reign of Edward the Confessor. It
appears by the Domesday Survey that the extent of
the arable land had somewhat increased. There was
enough corn-land to occupy thirty-one ploughs, which
would represent about 5,000 acres, or a little more or
less according to the system of rotation of crops adopted

74 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

in cultivating plough-lands. There were three farms
in hand, as part of the demesne, and the priest had
another for his glebe : there were about half a dozen
labourers with allotments belonging to their cottages ;
and the rest of the parish was worked in common-field
by twenty-one men of the township. We hear besides
of the mill, rented of the Bishop for ten shillings in
money and a thousand of eels, and of a great meadow
by the river more than half a mile long, and about two
furlongs in breadth.

Stratford did not assume the appearance of a town
till the beginning of the twelfth century. The improve
ment was due to John de Coutances, Bishop of Wor
cester (1195-8), who, in the seventh year of Richard
Cceur-de-Lion, laid out the fields east of Trinity Church
in street and building sites. Each plot, according to
his design, consisted of a strip of land with nearly 57
feet of frontage, and 195 feet in depth. They were all
to be freeholds, being held of the Bishop in burgage-
tenure, at a ground-rent of a shilling a plot. It will,
however, be remembered that their size would be altered
as new streets were made from time to time, and that the
ground-rents would be apportioned when the land was
in any way subdivided. Mr. J. Hill, of Stratford, in
his essay on Shakespeare's birthplace, showed that an
alteration of this kind was made in the fourteenth
century, when Henley Street grew out of a short cut
to the Market Cross, and the Guildpits highway, on
which the frontages had been set, fell into the state of
a back road. Some notion of the change thus effected
may be gained from the discussions about John Shake
speare's property ; and the cutting-down in the length
of the holdings between the two streets will become
especially plain by the documents relating to a strip of
land half a yard wide, which John Shakespeare sold to
a neighbour called George Badger. This strip was
only twenty-eight yards long, and yet it reached from

GROWTH OF THE TOWN 75

the old highway to the frontage on Henley Street.1 In
the survey taken in October, 1590, when, by the death
of Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, in 1589, the lordship of
the borough had reverted to the Crown, there are
passages which show how carefully the original ground-
rents were maintained. We quote from the extracts as
to Henley Street selected by Mr. Hill in his essay :
"The Bailiff and Burgesses of the town of Stratford
are free tenants of one tenement with the appurtenances
by the annual rent to the lord of three-pence . . . John
Shakespeare, free tenant of one tenement with the ap
purtenances of the annual rent of six-pence : the same
John, free tenant of a tenement, etc., by the annual
rent of thirteen-pence : George Badger, free tenant of
one tenement, etc., by the annual rent to the lord of
ten-pence," and so forth. Very full extracts from this
survey have also been published by Mr. Halliwell-
Phillipps.2 It will be remembered that Shakespeare
left part of his Henley Street property to his sister,
Joan Hart, for her life, subject to a burden of the same
kind : " I doe will and devise unto her the house with
the appurtenances in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth,
for her natural lief, under the yeaerlie rent of xijd,"
and the amount, says Mr. Hill, may have been in
tended as a mere nominal rent, "but more likely the
rent payable to the lord, reduced from thirteen-pence
by the apportionment of one penny in respect of the
strip sold to Badger."

Bishop John de Coutances obtained the grant of a
Thursday market for his new town, and Bishop Walter
de Grey, in the sixteenth year of King John, got a
charter for a yearly fair, "beginning on the Even of
the Holy Trinity, and to continue the two next days
ensuing."3 This Trinity fair was confirmed in the
following reign, and the circumstances are remarkable,

1 See conveyance, printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 13.

2 Id., i. 377. 3 Dugdale, u.s.

76 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

not only as giving an instance of a movable fair, de
pending on the date of Easter, but as showing a
persistence in the system of Sunday trading which was
in most parts repugnant to public feeling. The dislike
to Sunday fairs and markets appears to have been due
in a great measure to the preaching of Eustace, Abbot
of Flay, who in the year 1200-1 made a pilgrimage
through England, exhorting the people in every city
and town to abstain from the evil practice.1 The
dispute ended in a kind of compromise ; for, though
Sunday markets were not forbidden by the law till
long afterwards, the judge usually sanctioned a change
from Sunday to a weekday, in case it was generally
desired. The town of Stratford seems to have been
quite remarkable for the number of its fairs. Bishop
William de Blois (12 18-36) set up St. Augustine's Fair,
which began on May 25th, the eve of the commem
oration of the English apostle, and lasted for four days.
Bishop Walter de Cantelupe (1237-66) established the
Holyrood Fair, beginning on September i4th, the
feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and continuing for
two days afterwards. Bishop Giffard (1268-1301) ob
tained leave to found another, to be held on the eve,
day, and morrow of the Ascension ; and Bishop
Walter de Maydenston (1313-17), in the reign of
Edward II., " added another Fair, to be kept on the
day of St. Peter and St. Paul, the 2gth of June, and
fifteen days after."2

The nature of the Bishop's privileges appears by the
proceedings before the Royal Commission, which sat
at Warwick in 1277, to inquire into illegal exactions
and encroachments on the King's prerogative. The
subjects of inquiry were much the same as those which
came before the judges in their septennial visits ; but
the country had been thrown into confusion by the
rebellion of Simon de Montfort and the absence of the

1 Id., 681. 2 Id., 683.

EPISCOPAL PRIVILEGES 77

new King upon a crusade, and it was thought necessary
to hold those special inquiries, with a view to im
mediate reform, which are recorded in the Hundred
Rolls. Stratford still seems to have been treated as
a portion of the Liberty of Pathlow. It is doubtful,
indeed, whether the Bishop had any authority to allow
the townsmen any separate Court, though some
arrangement was afterwards made by which they trans
acted their own affairs before the Bailiff. Throughout
the whole district the Bishop had a certain criminal
jurisdiction, the return of writs, and the regulation of
the sale of bread and ale. He had a gallows for the
execution of thieves, and a prison in the town, as to
which the jury remarked that John the Bailiff had let
a prisoner from Wilmcote escape for a bribe of ten
shillings. They found also that the Bishop had a
right of free-warren over his lands in the parish of
Stratford. This implies the ownership of the pheasants
and partridges, and hares and rabbits found in his
demesnes ; and that he also had rights over the deer
appears by a later trial, in which some of the townsmen
of Stratford were indicted for a riotous assembly. The
jury also presented the existence of a market at Strat
ford from the time of King Richard I., and went on
to give an account of a singular quarrel about the sale
of beer and ale. The dispute no doubt had arisen
out of a doubt as to the Bishop's powers. He certainly
had the management of such matters in the district
of Pathlow as a whole, and in the Manor of Stratford
as a portion of the district ; but when he assumed the
right of setting up a borough, it became doubtful
whether the royal authority would not prevail within
its limits. Towards the end of the preceding reign
the judges had visited Stratford, and had appointed
a standard set of measures for the sale of beer in
the borough. The new gallons and quarts had been
used for a time, but after the battle of Evesham the

78 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

steward of the manor had forbidden the practice ; and
the men of Stratford still persisted in using their local
pottles, and stone jugs, and unsealed quarts, in despite
of the King, his Crown, and dignity.

The supervision of the Assize of Bread and Ale,
as the franchise in question was called, was always
delegated to an official known as the Ale-taster, or
Ale-conner, whose business it was to see that the
brewers and bakers furnished wholesome provisions at
or under the statutory price. The loaf always pre
served the same nominal value according to its quality,
as "household bread," or " white bread," or fancy
loaves, such as "wastels" and "simnels"; but the
weight varied according to the value of a quarter of
wheat, and the gallon of beer changed its price accord
ing to the market value of barley. It will be re
membered that John Shakespeare was appointed one
of the ale-tasters for the borough in 1557. The nature
of his duties will best appear by the common form
of the oath, which is found in all the descriptions of
the Court-leet. "You shall well and truly serve our
Lord the King and the Lord of this Court in the office
of Ale-taster and Assizer for the year to come : you
shall truly and duly see that all bread be weighed and
do contain such weight according to the price of wheat
as by the Statute in that case is provided : you are
to take care that all brewers do brew good and whole
some ale and beer, and that the same shall not be sold
until it is essayed by you, and at such prices as shall
be limited by the Justice of the Peace : and all offences
committed by brewers, bakers, and tipplers, you shall
present to this Court, and in everything else you shall
well and truly behave yourself," etc. The steward
explained in his charge to the jury how the price was
to be fixed. "They which brew to sell shall make
good ale and beer, and wholesome for man's body,
and when it is ready they shall send after the Tasters,

ALE-TASTER AND CONSTABLE 79

who shall taste it and set the assize." The latter term
is explained as being the top price allowed : "if it be
not worth that assize, they shall sell at a lower price
after their discretion." When the ale-wife, or "tippler,"
had got a store of " nappy ale," clear and sheer, to use
the tinker's phrase,1 a signal was made by setting up
a bush, or an ale-stake, or a wooden hand. "When
the assize is set, they should out a sign and sell by
measures ensealed, but not by cups and bowls."

Inasmuch as John Shakespeare also served as con
stable, it may be as well to extract some short account of
that office, though the duties are far better described in
the conversation of Dogberry and Verges. We need
hardly say that these duties are now superseded by the
Acts for maintaining the police. Constables were or
dained, we are told, to keep the peace, to apprehend
felons, and to take surety from persons making an
affray ; they might arrest night-walkers and vagabonds,
and put beggars and vagrant labourers into the stocks ;
they were to encourage archery, and to prevent un
lawful games, such as "bowling, dicing, tabling,
carding, or tennis," unless it were at Christmas, or
excepting a game of bowls in a man's own garden or
orchard ; but it was always to be remembered that
noblemen, and people with £100 a year in land, might
give licences to all who came to their houses to play
at bowls, cards, dice, or any other of the unlawful
games. The watch, said the old Acts, ought to be kept
all night between Ascension and Michaelmas, and in
every town twelve men should watch, and in every
village six, or four at least ; and if any stranger be
arrested he shall be kept until the morning, and then if
there is no "suspicion " in him, he shall go free ; "and
if any will not obey the arrest, they ought to raise Hue
and Cry." Everyone might arrest night-walkers found

1 Taming of the Shrew, Ind. 2, 25: "If she say I am not fourteen
pence on the score for sheer ale."

8o STRATFORD-ON-AVON

lurking or going out of the way. "If you meet the
Prince in the night," says Dogberry, "you may stay
him. . . . Marry, not without the Prince be willing ;
for, indeed the watch ought to offend no man ; and it is
an offence to stay a man against his will ! " l

III

THE PARISH CHURCH — COLLEGE OF PRIESTS — LELAND AND
LOVEDAY : THEIR ACCOUNTS OF THE CHURCH AND MONU
MENTS

The Parish Church is believed to have been built
about the beginning of the thirteenth century ; 2 but
it was much altered and improved by John de Strat
ford, Archbishop of Canterbury, about the year I332.3
He built the south aisle and the Chapel of St.
Thomas of Canterbury, in which he established a
chantry served by five priests ; and the local devotion
to the Martyr may account for the large fresco,
formerly existing in the Guild Chapel, which showed
the murder of the Saint by the four knights before St.
Benedict's altar in the transept at Canterbury. When
this chantry was turned into a College in the reign of
Henry VI., the Warden and Priests were endowed with
an estate of about £jo a year. Ralph de Stratford,
Bishop of London (1340-54), another eminent towns
man,4 built the college-house or mansion for the
priests, which Leland described as "an ancient piece
of work of square-stone hard by the cemetery." Dr.

1 Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3, 80-1, 85-8.

2 Short and accurately written summaries of the architectural features
of the church will be found in Murray's Warwickshire) pp. 110-12, and
in Windle, Shakespeare's Country, pp. 30-1.

8 John of Stratford, in 1332, was Bishop of Winchester. He was
translated to Canterbury in 1333, and died in 1348. He is buried on the
south side of the sanctuary in Canterbury Cathedral.

4 Ralph de Stratford was a nephew of the brothers John and Robert.
During his episcopate he rented a house in Bridge Street, Stratford.

THE PARISH CHURCH 81

Thomas Balshall, says Dugdale,1 Warden in the reign
of Edward IV., helped to improve the church, rebuild
ing the "fair and beautiful Quire " entirely at his own
expense. Dr. Ralph Collingwood, who was Dean of
Lichfield in the reign of Henry VIII., " pursuing the
pious intent of the said Dr. Balshall," provided an
endowment for four children who were to assist as
choristers in the daily service. Some of the rules for
their management are quoted by Dugdale in his
history.2 Their home in the daytime was the College,
where they waited on the priests and read aloud at
mealtime ; they were forbidden to go to the buttery to
draw beer for themselves or anyone else ; and after
their evening lessons they were conducted to the " bed
chamber in the Church," which seems to have been
part of the building afterwards used as a bone-house.
"But it was not long after," said the historian, "this
College, thus completed, came to ruin with the rest"
of the religious foundations. The Priests' House, or
College, is no longer in existence. It was granted to
John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and afterwards Duke
of Northumberland, but went back to the Crown after
his execution for taking part with Lady Jane Grey. It
was afterwards purchased by Mr. John Combe, whom
Shakespeare was supposed to have lampooned. The
lines preserved by Aubrey were probably the composi
tion of Richard Braithwaite : "Ten in the hundred the
Devil allows, but Combe will have twelve he swears
and vows " ; 3 it is only certain that they were fixed
upon " the usurer's tomb" soon after his death in 1614.
The College-house passed on his death to the poet's
friend, Thomas Combe, to whom he bequeathed his
sword. It may still be of use to quote one or two of
the early notices of the monuments near Shakespeare's

1 u.s., 692. Balshall was a Warwickshire man, from Temple Balshall,
or Balsall, about midway between Warwick and Birmingham.

2 Ibid., 692-3. 3 Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 226.

82 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

grave. Leland, writing in the preceding generation,
had described Stratford as a town "reasonable well
builded of timber," with two or three very large
streets, besides back lanes. "The Parish Church is a
fair large piece of work, and standeth at the south end
of the town. . . . The Quire of the Church was of
late time re-edified by one Thomas Balshall, Doctor of
Divinity and Guardian of the College there. He died
1491, and lieth in the north-side of the Presbytery in
a fair tomb." Dugdale l tells us of other monuments
in honour of Mr. John Combe, whose long list of town
charities is duly set forth, of the poet's own grave and
monument, and the tablet to the memory of Anne, the
wife of William Shakespeare, who died in 1623, the
tomb of Agnes Paget, Mistress of the Guild, of
Thomas Clopton and Eglantine his wife, who died,
she in 1642, he in 1643, of George Carew, Lord
Clopton and Earl of Totnes, and his wife Joyce, and
others. From Mr. Loveday's journal 2 we may learn
the condition of the church in 1732, long before the
stone spire was erected. He calls it a very large
structure in the form of a cross, "though the north
and south length, built by the executors of H. Clop
ton, is by no means equal to the east and west."
The middle aisle, he adds, is very lofty, and the
steeple stands almost in it ; it was a tower with a
shingled spire, standing "cathedral-wise" between
the middle aisle and the long chancel. "Fine monu
ments of the Cloptons here. Shakespear in the
Chancel ; A stone also for Susanna his daughter,
widow of John Hall, gent." "Within the rails, an
high-rais'd tomb for a Doctor of the College (as they
call him) Warden Balshal . . . the brass-plates at
top of the tomb torn off; stone-work, small figures on
the sides, as Christ crucify'd, — laid in the Sepulchre,
&c. . . . The charnel-house here is full of sculls and

1 u.s., 685-92. 2 Ed. for Roxburghe Club, 1890, pp. 5, 6.

GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS 83

bones, a room over it. The stalls still remain in the
Chancel of this (once) Collegiate-Church ; the College-
house west of the Church, is Sir William Keyt's."

THE GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS: EARLY RULES AND CUSTOMS
— RE-FOUNDATION BY HENRY IV. — THE CHAPEL

We now come to the story of the little benefit society,
known as the Guild of the Holy Cross, which has played
such an important part in connection with the develop
ment of the town. Its origin was doubtless irregular.
The Bishops seem to have considered that they could do
what they pleased in their new borough ; but it was
decided in later times that none but " they of London "
could set up "fellowships" and fraternities without
licence from the Crown. This Guild, however, seems
actually to have been founded as early as the reign of
King John ; and the Corporation of Stratford are in
possession of hundreds of charters, grants, agreements,
and Papal briefs and indulgences relating to this
foundation, through the whole period between the reign
of Henry III. and the creation of a new guild under the
patronage of Henry IV. Mr. Toulmin Smith1 has
printed the rules of the old Holy Cross Guild, by which
it appears the brothers had to provide a wax-light to be
lit before the Rood and to be carried, with eight smaller
ones, at funerals, and that every brother and sister had
to contribute towards the expenses of a love-feast at
Easter. To this feast every brother and sister brought
a great tankard, and all the tankards were filled with
ale and given to the poor.

Soon after Henry IV. came to the throne, a general
inquiry was instituted as to evasions of the mortmain

1 Documentary History of English Guilds (Early English Text Society),
1870, pp. 211-25.

84 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

laws. There was an obvious defect in the title of the
Stratford Guild, though Edward III. had protected their
estates as far as he could by granting them a dispensa
tion. But when the whole subject was investigated, the
brethren and sisters could not show any regular licence ;
and the Crown seized upon eight houses and a yard-
land in the fields, given by one Richard Fille, and
various other properties ; but upon an earnest petition,
representing the antiquity of the Guild and the piety of
its founders and benefactors, the King allowed a new
Fraternity to be instituted in honour of the Holy Cross
and St. John the Baptist, with power to choose a master
and proctors, and to appoint two or more priests to
celebrate Divine Service, and to pray for the souls of
the King and Queen and the benefactors and brethren
generally. From that time, according to Dugdale, it
appears that " King Henry the 4th was esteemed the
founder of the Guild."1

Robert de Stratford,2 the celebrated parson of the
town, showed the same energy in small surroundings
as when in later days he managed the University
Chest, and composed the feuds of the " Northern and
Southern Nations" as Chancellor of Oxford. His

1 See Dugdale, u.s., 695-6. It is just possible that Shakespeare may
have noticed the connection between Henry IV. and the Holy Cross
Guild. His allusions to the King's intention of going on a Crusade are
numerous (e.g, Richard II., v. 6, 47-50; 2 Henry IV., iii. i, 108-9, etc.).
At the very opening of i Henry IV. (i. i, 24-7) the King declares at
length his purpose to make an expedition to

"those holy fields

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd
For our advantage on the bitter cross."

These words were spoken (1. 52) soon after Holyrood day and the
battle of Homildon. Shakespeare, in writing the scene, cannot but have
remembered the Stratford Guild and its history, and it is not irrational
to imagine that the reminiscence helped to contribute to the beauty of
the lines quoted above.

2 Robert de Stratford became Bishop of Chichester 1337-62. He was
twice Chancellor of England. His elder brother, the Archbishop, also
filled this office.

THE GUILD AND ITS CHAPEL 85

brother, the Archbishop, had taken the parish church
in hand. Robert, with the help of a rate for a short
term, undertook the paving of the town. He obtained
many privileges for the original Guild, and, among
other things, he prevailed on the Bishop to include the
brethren in the Augustinian rule, and to allow them
the dress of that order.1 Leave was also obtained to
build a chapel and almshouse ; and the brotherhood,
indeed, was generally known after Robert de Stratford's
time as the Hospital of the Holy Cross. His chapel
remained unaltered for nearly two centuries. The
original chancel was found, however, to be too small
for the needs of the new foundation. In or about the
year 1443, therefore, the existing chancel was erected ;
the nave was rebuilt by Sir Hugh Clopton, who lived
in the " Great House" opposite. Leland mentions the
building, as it appeared about the year 1540. "There
is a right goodly Chapel," he says, "in a fair street
towards the south end of the town. It was re-edified,"
he adds, "by one Hugh Clopton, Mayor of London.
This Hugh Clopton builded also by the north side of
this Chapel a pretty house of brick and timber, wherein
he lived in his latter days and died." The last remark
is incorrect, as may be seen by a reference to Stow, who
was much interested in the man, as being the only
example then known of an unmarried Lord Mayor.
Sir Hugh Clopton, Alderman and Mercer, was elected
to the higher office in 1491. Stow says that he was
"all his life time a bachelor," remarking that there
never was a bachelor Mayor before.2 He died in 1496,
and was buried at St. Margaret's, Lothbury, with a
handsome monument, mentioned in the Survey of
London* He had intended, indeed, to spend his latter
days at Stratford ; but his mansion there had been let
upon a lease for life to Dr. Thomas Bentley, a former

1 Dug-dale, u.s. a See Stow, Survey, ed. Strype, 1754, ii. 261.
5 Id., i. 573-

86 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

President of the College of Physicians, and this lease
was still subsisting at the time of Sir Hugh Clopton's
death. Leland has also described some of the charities
administered in his time by the Stratford Guild.1 There
was an almshouse in which ten poor brethren were
maintained. The report of the Commissioners who
surveyed the Guild in 1546 showed that these alms-
people had 63.$-. <\d. a year for their maintenance, of
which los. was to be spent in coals, "and besides there
was £5 or £7 given them of the good provision of the
Master of the Guild." Little or nothing appears about
the sisters ; but we must suppose from the inscription
upon Agnes Paget's grave that there was work for a
Mistress of the Guild.2

INTERIOR OF THE GUILD CHAPEL — THE DANCE OF DEATH :
SHAKESPEARE'S PICTURES OF DEATH — DESCRIPTION OF
OTHER FRESCOES

Leland, who described the exterior of the chapel,
did not mention the interior in the Itinerary which he
presented to the King as a New Year's gift, but one
of his notes, containing a curious piece of information,
has been accidentally preserved. It is known that
Stow had many of Leland's papers in his possession
during the preparation of his Survey of London; and
Hearne, who edited Leland's Itinerary, saw Stow's
own copy of that work, with a marginal note, evidently
derived from Leland's memoranda, written opposite
to the account of the Guild Chapel.3 The note was

1 See also Dugdale, u.s.

2 The inscription, as given by Dugdale (u.s. 685), was as follows : —

"Anno milleno C. quater LX. quatriplato
Unicus eximitur annus Pagete obit Agnes
Et nonas Junii, gylde fuit ilia magistra
Annis undenis, cuius mansio sit modo celis."

3 See Hearne's Leland, ix. 185.

THE GUILD CHAPEL 87

as follows: "About the body of this Chapel was
curiously painted the Dance of Death commonly called
the Dance of Paul's, because the same was sometime
there painted about the cloisters on the north-west side
of Paul's Church, pulled down by the Duke of Somer
set tempore Edward the 6th." The latter part of the
note is later than Leland's time, and is inserted on Stow's
own authority. He gives a fuller account of the matter
in the Survey? where he tells us that the cloister used
to go round a plot of open ground called the Pardon
Churchyard, or Pardon Church Haugh, now part of
a garden belonging to the Minor Canons of St. Paul's.
Here Jenken Carpenter, Town Clerk, who was one of
Richard Whittington's executors, had caused to be set
up on large panels "a picture of Death leading all
Estates," with the speeches of Death and the answer
of every Estate, all "artificially and richly painted";
and this, he says, was called the Dance of St. Paul's,
or the " Dance of Machabray." The verses were
composed by John Lydgate, the Monk of Bury, in
imitation of the quatrains upon the Innocents' Cloister
in the Church of Notre Dame in Paris, where paintings
of the same kind had existed since 1423, or thereabouts,
under the name at first of " La Danse Maratre," and
afterwards of " La Danse Macabre." But " in the year
1549, on the loth of April," he tells us, "the said
chapel, by command of the Duke of Somerset, was
begun to be pulled down, with the whole cloister, the
Dance of Death, the tombs and monuments, so that
nothing thereof was left, but the bare plot of ground."
The "Dance of Death" seems to have originated
in a contempt for the human race caused by the shock
of the great plagues which devastated the world. It is
mentioned in a poem of 1379, containing the line —
"Jefis de Macabre la danse" ; and Petrarch had before
that time written in a letter to Francesco Bruni,

1 Stow, u.s., i. 640.

88 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

"Imperious Death joins in a funeral dance, and
Fortune marks the tune." We hear of a painting of
this kind at Minden in 1383, and M. Jubinal collected
the history of many later examples.1 Each country
had its own way of treating the subject. In France
and England, the " Dance" was usually a stately pro
cession like a Polonaise, the Deaths walking in couples
with all sorts and conditions of men. Besides the
examples already mentioned, Mr. Douce alluded to
remains of these Dances at Salisbury and on the
rood-screen at Hexham, in the Archbishop's Palace at
Croydon, and at Wortley Hall in Gloucestershire, be
sides a series of similar designs on certain tapestries
long preserved in the Tower.2

We cannot tell when the figures of Death and his
victims were erased from the nave of the Guild chapel.
They may have been destroyed as a relic of Popery in
the Protector Somerset's time ; they may have lasted
till the year of Shakespeare's birth, and have been
broken up when the chancel was desecrated. An entry
has been found among the Borough records of a pay
ment made in 1564 "for defacing images in the
Chapel"; and this might have covered the destruction
of "Paul's Dance "as well as the mutilation of the
paintings concerned with the elevation of the Cross.

To understand what the figures were like, we should
disregard the vulgar tragi-comic pictures remaining at
Basel or on the Mill-bridge at Lucerne, where Death
is shown intervening in the common affairs of life after
the satirical style introduced by Holbein. One should
rather compare the carved procession in the church at
Fecamp with the copies of the paintings in the Hunger-

1 Achille Jubinal, Explication de la Danse des Marts de la Chaise-
Dieu, 1841.

2 See Douce, Holbein's Dance of Death, chap. iv. In the south aisle
of the choir at St. Mary Magdalene's, Newark-on-Trent, is a single
painting- which probably formed part of a Dance of Death. It is in the
panel of the screen of a small chantry-chapel.

DANCE OF DEATH IN GUILD CHAPEL 89

ford Chapel at Salisbury, published in 1748, and the
reproductions of the Danse Macabre in the Abbey of
La Chaise-Dieu in Auvergne, issued by M. Jubinal in
his monograph of 1841, and by Baron Taylor in the
Voyages Pittoresques dans VAncienne France. The
copy of the " Dance of Macaber," in Dugdale's History
of St. Paul's, was shown by Mr. Douce to be only an
emblematic woodcut prefixed to Lydgate's tract of that
name, printed by Tottel in 1554, as an appendix to the
" Bochas on the falls of Princes." The work itself is a
translation from Boccaccio made at the instance of
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester ; and the appendix
contains the verses written by Lydgate in imitation of
the French original, which were usually set below the
series of " Death and all Estates," as represented in
English churches.

We have no evidence that Shakespeare ever saw
these old designs ; but we may be sure that he was
familiar with that representation of a similar subject
which was known as " Holbein's Dance." The ironical
pictures of the intervention of Death were commonly
used in alphabets of initial letters and in the woodcuts
on service-books and such well-known religious works
as the " Book of Christian Prayer." But Holbein him
self had painted a Dance of Death in fresco in a gallery
of the Palace at Whitehall, which perished in the
fire of 1697. This curious fact, said Mr. Douce, was
ascertained from certain etchings by a Dutch artist
named Nieuhoff Piccard, which were privately circu
lated in the Court of William III. The book had the
following title, engraved in a border : Imagines Mortis,
or the Dead Dance of Hans Holbeyn, painter of King
Henry the VIII. The author states in one of his dedi
cations that he has met with the scarce little work of
H. Holbein in wood, which he himself had painted as
large as life in fresco on the walls of Whitehall.1

1 Id., pp. 115-16, 124-6.

go STRATFORD-ON-AVON

One would suppose that the satire in these drawings
would be too simple to take Shakespeare's fancy. His
pictures of Death are for the most part crowded with
emblematic figures and full of complex design. We see
Death in his gloomy forest, exulting in the rank of his
captives, or pining over those whom he has lost : —

" But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest ;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest."1

Death does not come alone, but stands plotting with
" wasteful Time,"2 or casts insults, like some swagger
ing conqueror, over his "dull and speechless tribes."3
Once or twice the poet seems to make some slight
reference to the famous Dance. Taking his thirty-
second Sonnet, for example, by the reference to the
well-contented day, " when that churl Death with dust
my bones shall cover," we are reminded of Holbein's
drawing of the Counsellor : he stands advising a rich
client, and Death crouches in front holding an hour
glass and a sexton's shovel. There was another picture
of an Unjust Judge, arrested in his bribery by the grim
messenger, who tears his staff away and gripes him
by the throat, and we think of the commencement of
Sonnet Ixxiv. : —

' ' when that fell arrest
Without all bail shall carry me away,"

and of the words of the dying Hamlet : —

" Had I but time — as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest — O, I could tell you —
But let it be."4

The instance commonly quoted to show Holbein's
influence on Shakespeare seems on examination to be

1 Sonnet xviii. 9-12.

2 Sonnet xv. n : "Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay."

3 Sonnet cvii. 4 Hamlet, v. 2, 346-8.

SHAKESPEARE'S PICTURES OF DEATH 91

of a very ambiguous kind. "Let's talk of graves, of
worms and epitaphs," says poor King Richard ;

" Let's choose executors and talk of wills ;
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground ? "

" For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground," he breaks
out again, " And tell sad stories of the death of kings."
They have met with death in many forms, some slain
in war, some poisoned. Shakespeare seems to be think
ing of plots and plays yet unborn, of the ghosts that
may haunt the usurper, of the murder of a sleeping king
in an orchard. "All murder'd," moans the weak and
pining monarch :

" For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp."1

The tiny mask allows the king whom he haunts "a
breath, a little scene." The monarch struts through the
comedy, and strikes the rest with awe, and kills with
looks, while the Antic mocks and jeers.

" Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle-wall, and farewell king ! "2

1 The phrase reappears in Romeo and Juliet, \. 5, 57-9 : —

"What dares the slave
Come hither, cover'd with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity ? "

In the preceding scene (i. 4, 55-6), Mercutio's picture of Queen Mab —
" In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the forefinger of an alderman " —

possibly contains a kindred idea to that of the miniature Death in a
mask sitting among the jewels of the crown. As Shakespeare found in
the Indian agate, of whose marvels he could have read in his English
Pliny, Mab's waggon-spokes, filmy traces, and collars "of the moon
shine's watery beams," so he shows us the presence of Death as in the
carving of an old gem, or as the Destroyer might appear in the miniature
sphere of Fairyland. 2 Richard II., iii. 2, 145-70.

92 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

The nearest approach to this imagery in Holbein's
work is found in his drawing of the Emperor, under the
text, "There shalt thou die, and there the Chariots of
thy Glory shall be." Maximilian is sitting on his throne,
administering justice to his petitioners, and Death in
the canopy behind his seat is at that moment twisting
the crown from his brow ; there is a certain humour
ous alacrity about the workman, which may remind us
of Shakespeare's picture, though the ideas of the mask
and the figures of gem-like delicacy are altogether
absent.

The chapel at Stratford contained many other paint
ings of various dates. They are now almost entirely
obliterated, and the early series which formerly covered
the chancel walls was probably defaced in Shake
speare's infancy. After being long concealed and
forgotten, they came to light again when the church
was restored in 1804. The frescoes in the choir were
destroyed in the removal of the plaster, and those in
the nave were covered up again, being much decayed
by damp ; but Mr. Fisher succeeded in making
accurate copies of all that were left ; and these copies
are carefully reproduced as coloured prints in his
Antiquities of Warwickshire ', after appearing in a
separate volume. They are well described in Neil's
Home of Shakespeare, and in Charles Knight's bio
graphy of the poet ; and one of the best accounts of
their discovery is to be found in a Guide published by
Mr. Merridew of Coventry, from which the following
extract is taken. "The walls were formerly orna
mented with a series of ancient, allegorical, historical,
and legendary paintings in fresco, which were dis
covered during the reparation of the Chapel in the
summer of 1804; and upon carefully scraping off the
whitewash and paint with which they were covered,
many parts were found to be nearly in a perfect state.
The most ancient were those in the Chancel, which

FRESCOES IN THE GUILD CHAPEL 93

were apparently coaeval with this part of the Chapel.
Of these, many parts, especially the Crosses, had been
evidently mutilated by some sharp instrument through
the ill-directed zeal of our early Reformers. The
ravages of time had also so much contributed to in
jure them that the plaster upon which they were painted
was necessarily taken down before the repairs could be
completed ; so that those which were in the Chancel,
with a small exception, are now destroyed ; the rest,
in the Nave and what is now a small Ante-Chapel at
the West end, being painted on the stone itself, still
remain, though again covered over."

Taking the chancel first, as containing the oldest
series of frescoes, we find that the side-walls were
decorated with scenes from the Gospel of Nicodemus
and the Golden Legend, relating to the Invention of
the Cross, celebrated on the 3rd of May, and the
Exaltation, to which the I4th of September, or Holy-
rood Day, was consecrated. Over the Vicar's door
was a spirited design of dragons, and near it a record
of the old legend of the Host being insulted in a
synagogue.1 The side devoted to the Invention of the
Cross displayed the tree of life and showed how it was
preserved for long ages near Jerusalem ; the Queen of
Sheba, a popular figure in Guild-processions, has come
with all her train to admire it, and King Solomon
appears in his glory. Next in order came the dream
of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine ; and we
may remember that she was specially venerated in this
country as being a British Princess, the daughter of
King Coel of Colchester, as the legend ran, and the
patroness of some of the holy wells in Craven at which
the peasantry had paid rustic sacrifices. The anti
quarians used to fight hard for her insular descent in

1 The same subject occurs in the interesting series of medieval frescoes,
illustrating the history of the Blessed Sacrament, at Friskney Church,
between Boston and Wainfleet, Lincolnshire.

94 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

order to maintain the dignity of the British Church.
Camden, for instance, says in writing of Constantius
Chlorus, that he "took to wife Helena, daughter of
Ccelus or Coelius, a British prince, on whom he begat
that noble Constantine the Great, in Britain. For so,
together with that great historiographer Baronius, the
common opinion of all other writers with one consent
beareth witness : unless it be one or two Greek authors
of later time and those dissenting one from the other,
and a right learned man grounding upon a corrupt
place of lul. Firmicus."1 Gibbon took the trouble to
investigate the story, and showed how Mr. Carte
" transports the kingdom of Coil, the imaginary father
of Helena, from Essex to the Wall of Antoninus."2
It should be remembered that the Helen of the Welsh
traditions, who made the Roman roads "from castle to
castle in Britain," belongs to a totally different legend.
The frescoes were continued in a picture of the
Raising of the Cross, which some confused with the
later feast of the Exaltation. Constantine the Great
makes his public entry into Jerusalem ; he is welcomed
by a choir of angels, and the occasion is marked by a
miracle of healing. On the opposite wall were shown
the loss and recovery of the holy relics, and the first
Festival of the Exaltation as instituted by the Emperor
Heraclius. The artist has followed the story in the
Golden Legend. When Chosroes the Persian carried
away the Cross, it had seemed incredible that he should
ever yield to the power of Rome ; but the Emperor,
through a fortunate alliance with the Turks, won a
victory that ranked with the highest feats of antiquity ;

1 Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, 1610, p. 74.

2 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, etc., chap, xiv., note. His reference is to
Carte's "ponderous History of England," vol. i. p. 147. The industry
of Gibbon destroyed the legend of "Coel, duke of Kaercolvin, or
Colchester" (Geoffrey of Monmouth, lib. 5, cap. 6); but St. Helena's
statue forms the very conspicuous apex to the tower of the new town-
hall at Colchester, completed in 1901.

FRESCOES IN THE GUILD CHAPEL 95

and his triumphal return and pious pilgrimage to
Jerusalem were regarded as more important than all
the conquests of Alexander the Great. The frescoes
showed the details of the war with the heathen, the
rout of Chosroes, and the return of Heraclius "in his
great pride," as well as the origin of the Church's feast,
which had a special significance at Stratford on account
of the great Holyrood Fair.

The paintings in the nave were of a somewhat later
date, having been executed towards the end of the
fifteenth century, when Clopton restored the fabric.
Above the chancel arch was a huge picture of the
Day of Judgment, in the style of Orcagna's terrible
painting in the Campo Santo at Pisa. On the right
side, to the spectator's left, one saw the trumpeter,
a choir of angels, and the Saints passing into the
heavenly mansions ; there were satirical figures of a
Pope and a Bishop, and others were shown as saved
by wearing the robe of St. Francis.1 On the other
side was exhibited the doom of the wicked, the Deadly
Sins with their victims, a legion of fiends, and the
traditionary form of the Mouth of the Pit.

The wall at the west end was covered by four pic
tures. On the one hand was seen the Murder of
Becket, as mentioned above ; Tracy and Fitz-Urse
were hacking at his head, Hugh de Moreville swung
a double-handed sword, and Richard Brito, with a
distorted face, was dragging at a broad, ponderous
blade. Beneath was seen an allegorical design of the
soul ascending from a tomb. The limbs were covered
with a pink and white plumage, and the figure wore
a scarlet Phrygian cap. All round this design were
inscribed stanzas of the poem called "Earth upon
Earth " :—

" Earth goeth upon earth as glistening gold,
Yet shall Earth unto earth rather than he wold."

1 Cf. Dante, Inferno, xvi. 106-8.

g6 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

For a variation of the familiar words we may quote
the epitaph on Florens Caldwell and his first wife, set
up about 1590 in the Church of St. Martin's, Ludgate : —

" Earth goes to earth as mold to mold,
Earth treads on earth glittering' in gold,
Earth as to earth return nere should,
Earth shall to earth goe ere he would.
Earth upon earth consider may,
Earth goes to earth naked away,
Earth though on earth be stout and gay,
Earth shall from earth passe poore away."1

There is a certain literary interest about these lines
owing to Shakespeare having used similar metaphors
in the Sonnets, as in the seventy-fourth, where the fell
sergeant makes his arrest —

" The earth can have but earth which is his due " ;

or, as in Sonnet cxlvi., where the soul is rebuked for
painting her outward walls so costly gay —

" Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Fooled by these rebel powers that thee array."

The wall on the other side of the doorway contained
a picture of St. George and the Dragon. The Prin
cess of Egypt was there, with her little white "com
forter dog " ; the hero's horse was barbed in steel, and
had transfixed the monster's neck with a thrust from
the frontlet-spike. Beneath this again was another
mystical design, of Babylon, and the woman clothed
with the sun, and the messengers with sharp sickles
making ready for the harvest. In the niches on the
south wall were the figures of various Saints, almost
destroyed by time ; but it is thought that one of them,
from some remaining letters of the name, and from its
special emblems, was intended to represent St. Mod-
wenna, a British saint who lived in the ninth century,

1 Stow, ed. Strype, u.s., bk. 3, p. 176.

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 97

and whose memory seems to have been preserved on
two festivals, the one beginning on July 5th and the
other held on September gth.

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL — THE GUILDHALL : PERFORMANCES OF
PLAYS THEREIN — THE SCHOOLROOMS — THE NEW CORPORA
TION (1553)

In the return of chantries and fraternities made in
1546, King Henry IV. alone is mentioned as the founder
and patron of the Guild, and its connection with the
numerous local charities was evidently regarded as
accidental. The chapel itself would have been de
stroyed, as dedicated to a superstitious use, if the Royal
Commissioners had not reported that it was of value
for the great quietness and comfort of parishioners ;
"and in time of sickness, as the plague and such-like
diseases doth chance within the said town, then all
such infective persons, with many other impotent and
poor people, doth to the said chapel resort for their
daily service." Leland has left us a brief description
of the whole charity as it existed not long before this
date. " There is a grammar-school on the south side
of this Chapel, of the foundation of one Jolepe (i.e.
Jolyffe), Master of Arts, born in Stratford, where
about he had some patrimony ; and that he gave to
this school. There is also an alms-house of ten poor
folks at the south side of the Chapel of the Trinity,
maintained by a Fraternity of the Holy Cross." The
founder's name is spelt "Jolif" in Stow's transcript.
He is better known as Thomas Jolyffe, a member of
the Guild, who by his will in February, 1482, gave
certain lands in Stratford and Dodwell to the brethren
on trusts " for finding a priest fit and able in knowledge
to teach grammar freely to all scholars coming to him,
H

98 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

taking nothing for their teaching." It seems to have
been treated as a Free School in the proper sense of
the word, the teacher being free to teach grammar,
without dependence upon the leave of the Ordinary ;
and the founder's liberal endowment made it possible
to secure an income for the master by deed, the children
being taught gratuitously, or "freely," as the phrase
ran in common parlance. When Somerset's Commis
sioners paid their visit they found that one of the five
priests was the " school-master of grammar " ; " upon
the premises is one Free School, and one William
Dalam, schoolmaster there, hath yearly for teaching
£10 by patent." A marginal note in the Report shows
that the school was thought to be well conducted, and
was therefore excepted from confiscation. The alms-
houses at that time maintained twenty-four inmates ;
and the number was not altered when the trusts on the
property were transferred to the new corporation. The
old house by the chapel, where the brethren held the
Easter Feasts and the five priests had their chambers,
was turned into a town-hall, or a " guildhall," in the
wide sense of the term ; it ceased to be the home of
the religious Guild, and was used thenceforth as if it
belonged to a borough where the public affairs had
been managed by a Merchant-guild. The house has
often been altered, both inside and out ; but it has not
lost its identity with the building described by Leland,
and it may even claim to be the actual home of Robert
de Stratford's original foundation. In the time of
Edward VI. there was a large hall on the ground-floor,
which was the only place for public deliberations until
a new town-hall was built in 1633. In this hall
theatrical performances took place when some noble
man's " cry of players" came on tour. It will be re
membered that the strolling actors were liable to be
whipped as vagrants, unless they had some nobleman's
licence to perform interludes in his service, even

PLAYS IN THE GUILDHALL 99

before the punishment was rendered more savage
by the Act of 39 Elizabeth against fencers, bear-
wards, common players, and minstrels, not having
an authority under some great person's hand and seal
of arms. When the plague burst out in London, or
stage-plays were for some other reason inhibited, the
City tragedians set forth in little bands to make what
they could in moot-halls, inn-yards, and barns. They
got little enough for their pains, if the municipal
records are correct. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps showed
that the Lord Chamberlain's players, among whom
Shakespeare was enrolled, paid visits to Bath and
Bristol in 1597, and received as much as 30$". at a time
in one fee.1 But the extracts from the Municipal
Records of Bath, lately printed under the authority of
the Town Council, show that much smaller amounts
were occasionally accepted, leave being given in that
case to make a collection from the benches or stalls.
Payments of this kind were made by the Council to
the " Bearwardens of the Queen," and those of Lord
Warwick and Lord Dudley, and to Her Majesty's
and Lord Warwick's Tumblers. Lord Worcester's
players received half-a-crown in 1577 ; but Lord
Leicester's company were paid a fee of 14$-. in the
following season. Mr. Charles E. Davis, in his work
on the Mineral Baths of Bath, quotes the Chamber
Roll of expenses for 1567: "Given to the Earl of
Bath's players, js. qd." ; and five or six years later,
" To my Lord of Worcester's players, 6s. id. : for
frieze to make the musicians' coats, i8.r. gd. : to my
Lord of Sussex his players, <\s. 2d." We have the
pictures of these little travelling bands in Hamlet
(ii. 2 ; iii. 2) and Tlie Taming of the Shrew (Induction,
sc. i). Four or five of them share the waggon that
carries their humble properties : there is the old man

1 Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities
and Towns of England (1887).

ioo STRATFORD-ON-AVON

with a bearded " valanced " face, and the boy who
plays her ladyship's parts, and the robustious man in
a periwig. They are engaged, as they go, to act at
the country-houses, or are announced by the town-
criers to act in public on market-days. The Stratford
records contain entries of several performances during
Shakespeare's childhood and youth. The first is under
the year 1569, when his father was High Bailiff. The
Chamberlain's company and Lord Worcester's players
were both at Stratford in that year, and there is a
note that Lord Worcester's men were well bestowed.
" Good my Lord," said Hamlet, "will you see the
players well bestowed ? Do you hear, let them be
well used."1

They were treated so kindly, indeed, in the case
before us, that they returned in the following year.
Lord Leicester's men, in the same way, played in 1573
"and received a gratuity," and paid another visit four
years afterwards. In 1576, Lord Warwick's troupe
appeared ; and within the next few seasons the Cor
poration allowed performances by the companies of
Lord Strange and Lady Essex and the "dramatic
servants " of the Earl of Derby. In the year 1587 there
seems to have been no less than six companies in the
town.

Above the hall was a room used for council-meetings
and as a place for storing documents ; and here Mr.
Fisher found that vast mass of records relating to the
older and later Guilds, of which he published copies and
abstracts in his book upon the Guild Chapel. Next to
this chamber were the schoolrooms, approached until
comparatively recent times by a tiled staircase from out
side, opening into the yard where the clock was once
set up, which in the last days of the Guild one Oliver
Baker used to keep in order for a yearly fee. The Latin
School is shown, with a ceiling crossed by Tudor beams

1 Hamlet, ii. 2, 546-8.

THE LATIN SCHOOL 101

having carved bosses at their juncture in the middle.
The high timber roof lately opened above the Latin
School was found to be ornamented with a pair of
curious paintings, having reference to the ending of
the Wars of the Roses. There are two of the symbolical
flowers, set side by side ; the red flower shows a white
heart, and the pale rose of York a red heart. The
metaphor of a change of hearts was a favourite with the
Amorettists and even with Sir Philip Sidney, and with
Shakespeare himself. " My true love hath my heart,"
sang fair Charita to the Arcadian swain,

"and I have his,
By just exchange . . .

He loves my heart, for once it was his own :
I cherish his, because in me it bides."1

Or again, let us look at the way of touching the subject
in Richard II. and the twenty-second Sonnet. " Thus
give I mine," says Richard, "and thus take I thy
heart." " Give me mine own again," sobs the Queen,

" 'twere no good part,
To take on me to keep and kill thy heart." 2

Modern opinion is on the side of Elia, who despised the
" bestuck and bleeding heart," as an anatomical symbol
of affection ; the midriff, he thought, would have been
as suitable ; 3 or we might choose that liver-vein of
Biron which makes flesh into a deity and a "green
goose a goddess."4 The best illustration is Shake
speare's own picture of the hearts exchanged like babies
in long clothes. "The beauty that doth cover thee,"
he sings,

" Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,

Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me. . . .

1 Arcadia, lib. 3 (loth ed., 1655, pp. 357-8).

2 Richard II., v. i, 96-8.

3 Essays of Elia, "Valentine's Day."
* Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3, 74-6.

102 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

O therefore, Love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will ;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill." l

With reference to the place where the school was
originally kept, we ought to notice another entry in the
Corporation Book, under the date of the i8th of Febru
ary, 1594-5 : " At this Hall it was agreed by the Bailiff
and the greater part of the company now present that
there shall be no school kept in the Chapel from this
time forth." The Bath records furnish us with a similar
instance, the church of St. Mary by the North-gate
having been used for divine service till 1588, but after
wards transferred to secular purposes, "the Tower used
as a prison, and the Nave for the Free Grammar-
school." We must suppose that Shakespeare was sent
to the Free School at Stratford, as his parents were
unlearned persons, and there was no other public educa
tion available.2

Under these circumstances, it becomes interesting to
consider whether the chapel was used for school pur
poses in Shakespeare's time, and if so, whether there
is any allusion to the subject in his works. It has
been reasonably suggested that there may have been
some temporary necessity for the practice, while the
rooms above the Guildhall were being repaired or
altered, and that this may perhaps have happened on

1 Sonnet xxii.

2 References to Lilly's Grammar, as used in such schools, are to be
found in Titus Andronicus, iv. 2, 22-3, where Chiron, hearing- Demetrius
read the lines from " Integer vit£e," says : —

" O, 'tis a verse in Horace ; I know it well :

I read it in the grammar long- ago."

See also the amusing catechism of the little scholar in Merry Wives of
Windsor, iv. i. Two phrases are borrowed by Holofernes (Love's Labour's
Lost, v. i) from Erasmus's Latin and English dialogues, composed for
schoolboys; viz. " Priscian a little scratched" (11. 31-2) and "I smell
false Latin " (1. 83). Erasmus's phrases are " Diminuit Prisciani caput "
and " Barbariem olet."

THE CHARTER OF 1553 103

several distinct occasions. Mr. Neil, indeed, has gone
so far as to suggest in his Home of Shakespeare that
the poet may have seen Mr. Aspinall the vicar, or
Mr. Thomas Jenkins the schoolmaster, teaching the
grammar or sentences in Malvolio's costume : " strange,
stout, in yellow stockings, and cross-gartered." " And
cross-gartered?" "Most villainously; like a pedant
that keeps a school i' the church . . . You have not
seen such a thing as 'tis. I can hardly forbear hurling
things at him."1

We need not examine minutely the transfer of pro
perty to the new Corporation. They got the Guild
estate, including the lands left for the maintenance of
the school, and the College estate carrying with it
the Rectory of Stratford and the seven hamlets, the
great tithes and a huge tithe-barn in Chapel Lane, and
"altarages and oblations" and other ecclesiastical
perquisites. It may, however, be useful to notice that
there are several certificates among the Exchequer
Records which describe the property in detail ; two of
these are returns to Special Commissions in the nine
teenth year of Elizabeth, and relate to property at
Luddington, Greenborough, Hardwick, and elsewhere,
part of the possessions of the Stratford Guild ; and
there are others made in the seventh or eighth years of
James I., relating to the tithes and tithe-barn and to
lands at Luddington and elsewhere which had formerly
belonged to the College. It should be observed that
the governing body established by Edward VI., about
a fortnight before his death, was not headed by a
Mayor as in ordinary cases. It was not till the re
newal of the charter in 1674 that Stratford had full
local self-government under its own Mayor and Cor
poration. The Corporation as at first established was
headed by the Bailiff, who was still in theory a servant
of the lord of the borough, and was in fact responsible

1 Twelfth Night, iii. 2, 79-87; see Neil, Home of Shakespeare, p. 34.

104 STRATFORD-ON-AVON

for the collection of quit-rents and maintenance of
seignorial privileges. The lordship belonged to John
Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, when the charter
was first granted in 1553, but was forfeited to the
Crown on his attainder a few weeks afterwards.
Queen Mary gave up her rights to the Hospital of the
Savoy, which had been suppressed at the end of the
late reign. This Hospital, says Stow, was again new
founded and endowed by Queen Mary ; and whereas
the beds, bedding, and furniture had been given to the
Bridewell workhouse, "the Court Ladies," says the
chronicler, "and Maids of Honour, in imitation of the
Queen's charity, stored the Hospital anew with sufficient
beds, bedding, and other furniture." l It was not long,
however, before the lordship of the borough was vested
once more in the Crown ; so that, when John Shake
speare was chosen as High Bailiff in 1568-9, he be
came not only a local official, but also a servant of the
Queen. Without an explanation of the Bailiff's posi
tion, it would have been difficult to understand why
Camden and Dethick, when granting the coat-of-arms
in 1599, should have referred to the pattern of the
arms assigned to him at Stratford "whitest he was
her Majestie's officer and baylefe of that towne."2

1 Stow, u.s., i. 236.

2 See grant printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 60-1.

JOHN SHAKESPEARE was the son of a yeoman
living at Snitterfield, a village lying a little to
the north-east of Stratford, not far from Wilmcote.1
The parish appears to have belonged to the famous
Turquil the Saxon, whose earldom and lands were
bestowed by William Rufus on Henry de Newburgh,
Earl of Warwick. His son, Earl Roger, who died in
the reign of King Stephen, is said to have given a
fourth part of all the arable lands and a right of feed
ing swine in the woods to the Collegiate Church of
Warwick. The rest of the estate came down to one
William Cummin, or Commin, who was described as
Lord of Snitterfield in the time of King Henry II.
His successor, Walter Commin, gave some of the
land to the monastery of Bordesley. Dugdale traces
the descent of the property, through an heiress of
the Commins, to John de Cantilupe, who had a seat
here described as "one knight's fee," of which the
Earl of Warwick was the feudal lord. John de
Cantilupe, however, had, as vassal, a complete title to

1 See Dugdale, Ant. War., ed. Thomas, sub "Snitfield," ii. 661-4.

107

io8 SNITTERFIELD

the estate, allowing for what had been given away to
the church and monastery. The village became almost
equal in dignity to a little town ; for John de Cantilupe
is said to have procured a charter for a Wednesday
market and a yearly fair, commencing July the i5th,
on the eve, day, and morrow of the feast of St. Kenelm,
the martyred King of Mercia. In the seventeenth year
of Edward II., one Thomas West, who had married
the heiress of Cantilupe, obtained another charter
changing the market to Tuesday and " enlarging the
fair five days more after St. Kenelm." The estate
afterwards passed under an exchange to William
Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, and descended
to his son Richard, Baron Abergavenny and Earl
of Worcester. About the year 1490 it belonged to
Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who probably
derived his title under an entail through his grand
mother, Anne 'Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick. He
was beheaded in 1499 for high treason, and on his
attainder this estate, among a number of others, known
as " Warwick's Lands," became vested in King Henry
VII. The property remained in the Crown, subject to
various gifts, exchanges, and other transactions, until
nearly the end of the next reign. Henry VIII. granted
the manor of Snitterfield to Mr. Richard Morrison,
a great dealer in abbey-lands and confiscated estates ;
and among the records of the Court of Augmentations
we find a request, dated June i5th, 1545, for leave to
exchange for other lands the manor of Snitterfield, late
of the Earl of Warwick, which had been appointed to
Morrison by the King. The request being granted,
the estate was conveyed by Morrison to Mr. John Hales
of Coventry, Clerk of the Hanaper, a man of great
wealth, who is chiefly remembered as the generous
founder of the Free School at Coventry. He died on
the 5th of January, 1572, in London, and was buried at
the Church of St. Peter the Poor, in Broadstreet Ward,

SHAKESPEARES OF SNITTERFIELD 109

near Gresham House, where his learning and piety
were commemorated "on a faire ancient plate in the
Wall North the Quire."1

Nothing is known at present as to the date when the
Shakespeares established themselves at Snitterfield ;
but it may be worth observing that a certain Roger
Shakespeare was one of the monks of Bordesley at the
time when their monastery was suppressed ; and we
have already noticed the statement that the monks had
lands in this parish. This Roger Shakespeare must
have been a person of some importance, since it appears
that he was granted, by way of compensation, an
annuity of "a hundred shillings for his life." It is
clear that the best chance of ascertaining the lands given
to Shakespeare's ancestor by Henry VII., to which the
Heralds referred in their grant of arms, lies in an ex
amination of such of the records of " Warwick's Lands "
as relate to the manor of Snitterfield.

Mr. Hunter made diligent inquiries about all the
Warwickshire families using the surname of Shake
speare, or other names substantially the same, though
there may have been variations in the spelling. His
instances are very numerous ; but we may sum them up
by saying that he regarded Coventry as the home of the
race, the family making offshoots into South Warwick
shire and the adjacent parts of Gloucestershire and
Worcestershire.2 The few examples from London,
Derby, and Mansfield might be disregarded, in his
opinion, as far as respects the principal argument. His
attention was not turned to Snitterfield ; but he selects
three branches of the stock with which, and with which
alone, as he thought, the poet's ancestor might have
been connected. These were, first, the Shakespeares

1 Stow's Survey, ed. Strype, bk. 2, p. 113.

2 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 252, gives a long- list of Warwickshire
towns and villages, in whose records the name of Shakespeare occurs
between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.

no SNITTERFIELD

of Warwick, a series of persons living in that town
from the end of the reign of Henry VIII. to the twenty-
second year of James I. The head of the family was
always named Thomas : there was a Thomas Shake
speare, gentleman, who was Bailiff of the town of
Warwick in 1614 ; and another Thomas Shakespeare,
a shoemaker in the same place, is believed to have been
the father of William Shakespeare, who was drowned
in the Avon in 1579, and of the John Shakespeare who
followed the shoemaking trade at Stratford. This last
Thomas Shakespeare made his will in 1577, by which
it appeared that he held copyhold lands in the manor of
Balsall in Warwickshire. Here it is important to observe
that the Shakespeares of Warwick appear to have been
related to the Shakespeares of Wroxall ; at any rate,
John Shakespeare of Wroxall, by his will in 1574,
selected " his cousin Laurence Shakespeare of Balshall "
to be his executor. We may for the present disregard
the Shakespeares of Rowington ; and we are left with
the Shakespeares of Wroxall, from whom, in Mr.
Hunter's opinion, the poet himself was descended.
He was able indeed to bring forward very little in
support of his theory, except that there was a well-
known Richard Shakespeare of Wroxall, who might
be the same person as Richard Shakespeare of Snitter-
field.1

We must now consider what is known about the stock
selected by Mr. Hunter as "the progenitors of the
Shakespeares of Stratford." Wroxall2 is a village in
Warwickshire formerly belonging to a priory of Bene
dictine nuns, whose estate in this place was granted to
Sir Robert Burgoine, when the monasteries were
suppressed. There were curious legends about the
foundation of this nunnery. It was said that the whole
place had belonged to one Richard, a Norman, who

1 Hunter, New Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shakespeare, 1845,
i. 10-13. 2 Dug-dale, u.s., ii. 645-7, 649-50.

WROXALL AND THE SHAKESPEARES in

was vassal to Henry, Earl of Warwick, soon after the
Conquest. His son, Hugh Fitzrichard, the lord of the
manor, being "a person of great stature," joined the
first Crusade ; who, having been taken prisoner in the
Holy Land, " so continued in great hardship there for
the space of seven years " ; but, at length, by praying to
St. Leonard, to whom the church was dedicated, was
taken up with his chains on him and set down in a
wood in this his lordship of Wroxall ; where when he
found himself, he remembered St. Leonard's injunction
given him in two apparitions while he was in prison,
that he should build a monastery of St. Benet's Order,
and accordingly made directions where to build it, and,
having erected it, made two of his daughters nuns in
it. Whatever might be the origin of the legend, it
appears that some person of that name gave the nuns
" the whole manor with a quantity of lands and woods,"
and that many other benefactions of the same kind were
added " by persons of quality and of inferior condition."
The court-rolls of the manor of Wroxall do not throw
much light upon the matter. There is an entry for the
year 1508, near the close of the reign of Henry VII.,
relating to a manorial court held by Isabella Shake-
spere, prioress, and lady of the manor : " To this court
came John Shakespere, and took of the said lady a
messuage with three crofts and a grove in Cross-field
at Wroxhall, to hold the same to the said John and
Ellen his wife, and Antony their son, according to the
custom of the manor, at a rent of 17^. 2d., and a heriot
on death or withdrawal, and for a fine upon entry he
gave two capons, and was admitted, and did fealty."
Under the year 1531 we find entries showing that John
Shakespere had died, and that his widow, then called
Ellen Baker, and her son Antony Shakespeare sur
rendered the property just above described to the use
of John Rabon, who had become the purchaser. At
the same court it was presented that Alice Love had

ii2 SNITTERFIELD

surrendered out of court a property consisting of five
crofts at Wroxall, for which a black cow had been
seized for the lady as a heriot, and that now in court
came one William Shakespere and Agnes his wife, and
took the same five crofts for a customary estate at a
rent of IO.T., with a heriot, and fine for entry, and so
forth. The name of Richard Shakespere occurs in the
list of jurymen at this court, and also at the court of
1532. It appears by the minister's accounts, preserved
in the Augmentation Office, and by the Valor Ecclesi-
asticus of 1534, that this Richard Shakespeare was
bailiff to the nuns at a salary of 40^. a year, and that
he held a copyhold cottage, besides certain leasehold
lands, in their manor of Wroxall. Mr. Hunter shows
by extracts from the Subsidy Rolls that he was dead
before the year 1546. It may also be observed that
there was a Guild of St. Anne in the college of priests
at Knowle, near Hampton-in-Arden, founded under a
licence from King Henry IV., "to which so many
persons, and those many of them of quality, were
admitted, that it maintained by their benefactions
three priests continually singing."1 The register of
this Guild for the period between 1460 and 1527 shows
that several of these gifts had been made by the
Shakespeares of Wroxall, the names of the Lady
prioress Isabel, and of Richard, John, and William
Shakespeare being specially kept in remembrance.
But, so far as the inquiries have as yet proceeded, it
cannot be said that there is any evidence of the poet's
ancestors having come from Wroxall.

All that seems to be really known about Richard
Shakespeare of Snitterfield is that he was a franklin, or
yeoman, with land of his own, with another farm held
on lease from Robert Arden of Wilmcote, and that he
had two sons called Henry and John. Henry, as the
elder son, succeeded to his father's land and remained

1 Dugdale, u.s., ii. 959-60.

FARMING IN ENGLAND 113

in business as a farmer ; John, as we know, preferred
to take up a trade, and moved about the year 1551 into
a shop at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Sir Thomas Overbury1 drew an excellent picture of
an English yeoman of his time, who "says not to his
servants, 'Go to field,' but 'Let us go'; and with his
own eye doth both fatten his flock and set forward all
manner of husbandry. . . . He never sits up late but
when he hunts the badger, the vowed foe of his lambs ;
nor uses he any cruelty but when he hunts the hare ;
nor subtilty but when he setteth snares for the snipe or
pitfalls for the blackbird ; nor oppression but when, in
the month of July, he goes to the next river and shears
his sheep. He allows of honest pastime, and thinks
not the bones of the dead anything bruised or the worse
for it though the country lasses dance in the church
yard after evensong. Rock Monday, and the wake in
summer, Shrovings, the wakeful catches on Christmas
Eve, the hockey or seed-cake, these he yearly keeps,
yet holds them no relics of popery. He is not so in
quisitive after news derived from the privy closet, when
the finding an eyry of hawks in his own ground, or the
foaling of a colt come of a good strain, are tidings more
pleasant, more profitable. . . . Lastly, to end him, he
cares not when his end comes, he needs not fear his
audit, for his quietus is in heaven."

Farming at the beginning of the sixteenth century
was in an extremely prosperous condition, wherever
the land had been freed from "the miseries of common-
field." If the farmer was allowed to adopt a mixed
husbandry, with a little arable, something of a dairy,

1 Characters; or, Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry
Persons (1614) in Character Writings of the \-jth Century, ed. Henry
Morley, 1891, pp. 87-8, under heading " A Franklin."
I

ii4 WILMCOTE

and separate inclosures for cattle and sheep, he was
able to get a profit out of the great rise in prices. The
influx of the precious metals from America had altered
the prices offered for hides and wool in a surprising
degree. Some saw only the uncomfortable side of
affairs, and lamented the terrible prices caused by the
depreciation of gold and silver. Strype quotes a com
plaint of this kind from a tract called The Jewel of Joy.
" How swarme they with aboundaunce flockes of shepe,
and yet when was wooll ever so dere, or mutton of so
great pryce. Oh what a diversitie is thys in the sale
of wolles, a stone of woll sometime to be sold at eight
grots, and now for eight shillings, and so likewise of
the shepe, God have mercy on us! 'n We should notice
too that a farmer and his sons, if allowed to have
" several " or separate fields, could effect a great saving
under the head of labour. Fitzherbert, in his treatise
upon Husbandry, reckons up some of the charges,
when a farm lay open with all the rest of the parish :
" The herdman will have for every beast ii.d. a quarter,
or there about : And the swineherd will have for every
swine i.d. at the least. Then he must have a shepherd
of his own, or else he shall never thrive. Then reckon
meat, drink, and wages for his shepherd, the herd-
man's hire, and the swine-herd's hire, these charges
will double his rent or nigh it, except his farm be above
xl.s. by year."2 And besides all this, he remarks that
an inclosed farm can be constantly watched, for a man
always wandering about finds what is amiss. As soon
as he sees the defaults he can note them in his table-
book, "and if he can not write, let him nick the
defaults upon a stick."3

Holinshed used to talk to old men who remembered
the farmers sleeping on straw pallets, with a good

1 The Jewel of Joye, 1553, sig. G, iii., back.

2 Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry, ed. Skeat, 1882 (English Dialect
Society), § 123, p. 77. 3 Id., § 141, pp. 91-2.

HISTORY OF THE HAMLET 115

round log for a bolster, using wooden platters and
spoons, and yet hardly able to pay their rent; but, when
he wrote his description of England, a good farmer
would have six or seven years' rent lying by, to pur
chase a new lease, with a "fair garnish of pewter" on
his side-table or "cupboard," three or four feather-
beds, as many coverlets and carpets of tapestry, a
silver salt-cellar, "a bowl for wine (if not an whole
nest), and a dozen of spoons, to furnish up the suit."1
These statements are borne out by what we are told
of the household of Robert Arden. Wilmcote,2 where
his homestead and most of his lands were situated,
was a hamlet of the parish of Aston Cantlow ; for
some purposes of petty jurisdiction it was a member
of the Liberty of Pathlow, for which the Bishops of
Worcester formerly held courts at a barrow by the
roadside beyond Stratford.3 Most of the hamlet be
longed to the Clopton family, Lord Mayor Clopton
having purchased the manor in the reign of Henry
VII. The church, or rather the chapel of ease, was
dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen ; 4 and it had been
conveyed to the Stratford Guild, while Thomas Clop
ton was Warden. The ancient title of " Wilmunde-
cote " probably indicates the name of the thane, serving
a King of Mercia or a Bishop of Worcester, who had
first made the clearing in the forest. Shortly before
the Norman Conquest, one Lewin Dodda worked the
estate with the help of two farmers and a couple of
slaves. Domesday Book shows that no alteration was
made at the Conquest in the way of laying out the
estate. The new lord of the manor, Urso d'Habetot,
two farmers, two cottagers, and two bondsmen, held
among them sixteen " yardlands " in the arable fields,

1 Holinshed, "Description of England," part ii. chap. x. (in Chronicles,
vol. i., 1577, pp. 85-6).

2 Dugdale, u.s., ii. 838. 3 Vid. sup., p. 64.
4 The modern church is dedicated to St. Andrew.

ii6 WILMCOTE

and a few acres of water-meadow, besides woodland
and waste. As time went on the manor became
divided between the families of co-heiresses : one part
came to a certain Robert de Vale, and another to
Ralph de Lodington, who owned two of the eight
freehold " yardlands " and five of the eight copyhold
yardlands, then in the occupation of his customary
tenants. Nearly the whole estate became united again
in an heiress who married Henry de Lisle, from whom
the Clopton family derived their title. But, at the
time of which we are now speaking, Robert Arden,
the father of Mary Shakespeare, was the owner of one
of the freehold portions and tenant of one of the copy
hold portions, besides certain separate fields and the
usual rights of common. The freehold portion con
sisted of about thirty acres of land scattered about in
little strips through the three common fields, with a
farmhouse, homestead, and other inclosures, with con
veniences and privileges, known collectively as Asbies
Farm, or simply as " Asbies." He was also the owner
of lands at Snitterfield, rented by Richard Shake
speare, as mentioned above ; and Mr. Halliwell-
Phillipps discovered evidence showing that he had
also purchased some interest in a property then called
Warde Barnes, near Wilmcote.

Robert Arden was twice married. By his first wife
he appears to have had four daughters, of whom one
married Mr. Edmund Lambert of Barton-on-the-Heath,
the two younger children, Alice and Mary, being un
married at his death, as appears by the provisions of
his will. His second wife was Agnes Hill, a widow,1
formerly Agnes Webb, for whose benefit he secured
a jointure out of the lands at Snitterfield.

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 368-9, gives a copy of her first husband's
will. He was John Hill, of Bearley, four miles N.N.E. of Stratford.
" Item, I give unto Agnes, my wife, the lease of my farm in Bearley
during her life, and after her decease John, my son, to have it."

ROBERT ARDEN'S FARM OF ASBIES 117

In the treatise upon Husbandry, to which reference
has already been made, we find several passages that
describe the domestic life on farms of this kind. We
confine ourselves here to the work which would usually
fall upon the farmer's wife and daughters. "When
thou art up and ready, then first sweep thy house,"
says Fitzherbert, addressing the industrious housewife,
"dress up thy dishboard, and set all things in good
order within thy house." She is then to milk the cows,
feed the calves, skim the milk, and so on, before
"arraying" the children, and getting the meals ready
for the household.1 We may notice that the Ardens
kept seven cows, and that at Robert's death he had
eight oxen for the plough, two bullocks, and four wean
ing calves, intended "to uphold the stock."2 The
list of the housewives' duties includes putting aside the
corn and malt for the miller, and measuring it before
it goes to the mill and after it returns, and seeing that
the measures duly correspond, allowing for the toll,
"or else the miller dealeth not truly with thee, or else
the corn is not dry as it should be."3 Then comes the
making of butter and cheese, and serving of pigs
twice a day and the poultry once ; and when the
proper time comes, the housewife must "take heed
how thy hens, ducks, and geese do lay, and to gather
up their eggs, and when they wax broody, to set them
there as no beasts, swine, nor other vermin hurt them.
. . . And when they have brought forth their birds,
to see that they be well kept from the gledes, crows,
foulmarts, and other vermin."4 About March, or a
little before, it is time for the wife to make her garden,
not forgetting to keep it free from weeds, and to plant
the flax and hemp ; the flax and hemp, as every house-

1 Fitzherbert, u.s., § 146, p. 95.

9 See Inventory of Robert Arden's goods, 1556, in Halliwell-Phillipps,
us., i\. 53-4. 3 Fitzherbert, u.s.

4 Fitzherbert writes "gleyds," " fullymarts," u.s., p. 96.

ii8 WILMCOTE

wife well knew, had to be sown, weeded, pulled, re-
peeled, watered, washed, dried, beaten, braked, tawed,
heckled, spun, wound, wrapped, and woven; "and
thereof may they make sheets, boardcloths, towels,
shirts, smocks, and such other necessaries, and there
fore let thy distaff be alway ready for a pastime, that
thou be not idle. And undoubted a woman cannot get
her living honestly with spinning on the distaff, but
it stoppeth a gap, and must needs be had."1 He ac
knowledges, indeed, that it might sometimes happen
that the housewife had so many things to do that she
could hardly know where to begin. She had, for
instance, to make coats and gowns for her husband
and herself.2 It is convenient, says Fitzherbert, for
the husbandman to have sheep of his own, and in the
instance before us fifty-two sheep were kept on the
farm. " Then may his wife have part of the wool, to
make her husband and herself some clothes. And at
the least way, she may have the locks of the sheep, either
to make clothes or blankets and coverlets, or both.
And if she have no wool of her own she may take
wool to spin of clothmakers, and by that means she
may have a convenient living, and many times to do
other works." There follows a terrible list of extra
duties. It is a wife's occupation, we are told, to winnow
the corn, to make malt, to wash and wring, to make
hay, reap corn, "and in time of need to help her
husband to fill the muck-wain . . . drive the plough, to
load hay, corn, and such other," besides walking or
riding to market to sell "butter, cheese, milk, eggs,
chickens, capons, hens, pigs, geese, and all manner of
corns."

1 Fitzherbert, ibid, 2 Id., p. 98, with the two quotations following-.

ROBERT ARDEN'S WILL 119

III

Robert Arden's will was dated the 24th of November,
1556, and he died about the beginning of the following
month, the inventory of his goods " moveable and un-
moveable," taken by his daughters Alice and Mary,
bearing date the gth of December in the same year.
He left his soul to Almighty God and the Saints, as
mentioned above, and his body to be buried in the
churchyard of St. John the Baptist in Aston ; in an
other part of the will he appointed certain friends to
"over-see" its execution.1 The details acquire a cer
tain interest from the lines in Lucrece, which suggest
the idea that Shakespeare was familiar with the phras
ing of his grandfather's will. Thus Lucrece exclaims :

"This brief abridgment of my will I make :
My soul and body to the skies and ground ;
My resolution, husband, do thou take ;
Mine honour be the knife's that makes my wound."2

and (1. 1205) "Thou, Collatine, shalt oversee this will."
The gift to his daughter Mary was as follows, the
spelling being modernised: "Also I give and bequeath
to my youngest daughter Mary all my land in Wilmcote
called Asbies, and the crop upon the ground, sown and
tilled as it is, and £6. 13. 4 of money, to be paid or ere
my goods be divided." It appeared, by the proceed
ings in the subsequent Chancery suit, that this little
estate consisted of a farmhouse and farm, comprising a
yard-land of about fifty acres in the common fields, with
four odd acres over, and certain rights of pasture. The
testator left his wife the sum of £6. 13. 4, upon con
dition that she allowed his daughter to share the copy
hold yard-land at Wilmcote, to which the widow was
entitled during her life, according to the custom of

1 "Adam Palmer, Hugh Porter of Snytterfylde, and Jhon Skerlett."
- Lucrece, 11. 1198-1201.

120 WILMCOTE

the manor; and he continued, "if she will not suffer
my daughter Alice quietly to occupy half with her,
then I will that my wife shall have but £3. 6. 8, and
her jointure in Snitterfield." His other bequest to Alice
Arden ran as follows: "I give and bequeath to my
daughter Alice the third part of all my goods, move-
able and unmoveable, in field and town, after my debts
and legacies be performed, besides that good she hath
of her own at this time." There were gifts of groats
"to every house that hath no team in the Parish of
Aston," and twenty shillings apiece to his "over-seers."
The residue of his goods he left to his children other
than Alice, to be divided equally. He appointed his
daughters Alice and Mary to be his "full executors" ;
and the will was witnessed by ' * Sir William Boughton M1
the curate, Adam Palmer, John Scarlet, Thomas Jenks,
William Pitt, and others.

The inventory2 taken immediately after his death is
interesting as showing the way of living in a yeoman's
family, and as describing the actual goods in which
Mary Shakespeare had a share. She was married to
John Shakespeare a short time afterwards, and may be
supposed to have taken her furniture with her to the
new house in Stratford. Arden's house contained a
hall or parlour, a kitchen, a great chamber, and pos
sibly other small rooms. In the hall were two dining-
tables, or table-boards, and a sideboard, three chairs,
two forms with cushions, three benches, and a little
table with shelves. The great chamber contained the
household linen, stored in coffers, including seven pairs
of sheets, and a few table-cloths and towels, bedsteads
and bedding, among which may be noticed a feather
bed with coverlet and pillow, two mattresses, three
bolsters, and eight "canvasses"; and there were no
doubt articles of clothing and necessary use which
belonged to other members of the family. In the

1 In the will " Borton." 2 See p. 117, note 2.

INVENTORY OF ARDEN'S GOODS 121

kitchen, beside the usual pots and pans and domestic
ware, we may notice the pair of cupboards, a churn
and four milkpails, and a kneading-trough. A hus
bandman, says Fitzherbert, ought to have an axe, a
hatchet, a hedging-bill, a pin-auger, a rest-auger, a
flail, a spade, and a shovel j1 and we find that Robert
Arden had an axe, bill, two hatchets, an adze, a mat
tock and iron crow, a longsaw, a handsaw, and "four
nagares," or augers, as they are properly called. The
horned cattle were valued at £24, and four horses, with
three colts, at £8. The flock of fifty-two sheep was
worth £7. The pigs were taken at nearly 3.$-. apiece,2
and the bees and poultry together at a crown. The
stackyard and barns contained wheat, barley, hay,
peas, oats, and straw, worth together £21. 6. 8. The
cart and plough with their gear, and the harrows, stood
at £2. The wood in the yard and the battens in the
roof were priced at 30?. ; the value of the wheat in the
ground was taken at £6. 13. 4, and the whole valua
tion came to the sum of £77. n. 10. It should be
stated, moreover, that the list included no less than
eleven of the " painted cloths," which took the place of
tapestry in families of the middle class, though they
began to be superseded during Shakespeare's lifetime
by the more elegant panels in water-colour. " For thy
walls," says Falstaff, "a pretty slight drollery, or the
story of the Prodigal, or the German hunting in water-
work, is worth a thousand of these bed-hangings and
these fly-bitten tapestries."3 These painted cloths
appear to have been rude representations of classical
or religious subjects, with explanatory verses below.
"You are full of pretty answers," said Jaques, in As
You Like It. "Have you not been acquainted with

1 Fitzherbert, u.s., §5, pp. 14-15.

8 "ix swyne, prisid at xxvis. viijd."

3 2 Henry IV., ii. i, 156-9. Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the
Burning Pestle, Hi. 5, "What story is that painted on the cloth? the
confutation of St. Paul?"

122 WILMCOTE

goldsmiths' wives, and conned them out of rings?"
" Not so," answered Orlando, " but I answer you right
painted cloth, from whence you have studied your
questions."1

It is to be supposed that the great chamber in Arden's
house contained some of those "fly-bitten tapestries."
Agnes Arden, as we know, continued to live at the
farm, and evidently had a share of the furniture ; for in
the inventory of her goods made in 1581, 2 we find a
mention of bed-steads with "apreeware," i.e. ware or
needle-work of Ypres, standing in the upper rooms. It
may be observed also that the same inventory contains
a valuation of the table-boards, a sideboard, shelves,
cushions, forms, and benches, which, by their descrip
tion and value, seem to be the same as those mentioned
in Robert Arden's will. Mrs. Arden had only one of
the painted cloths; and it may therefore be assumed that
the rest were divided between Mary Shakespeare and
her sisters, in accordance with the provisions of their
father's will. This may account in some degree for
Shakespeare's constant reference to objects of this kind,
as in Macbeth for instance, where we hear of the
"eye of childhood that fears a painted devil,"3 or as
when Falstaff marched his ragged regiment to Sutton
Coldfield, and compared them to "Lazarus in the
painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores."4
Other references to pictures of this class may be found
in some of the numerous descriptions of Hercules, and
perhaps in Pistol's garbled allusion to a classical story
in the words, "Sir Actaeon, with Ringwood at thy
heels."5 The most striking reference is to be found in
the poem of Lucrece, where the lady looks on the face
of despairing Hecuba in the picture of the taking of

1 As You Like It, Hi. 2, 287-92.

2 Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 55.

3 Macbeth, ii. 2, 54-5. 4 i Henry IV., iv. 2, 27-9.
8 Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. i, 122.

THE PAINTED CLOTHS AT ASBIES 123

Troy;1 to a thousand lamentable objects "a lifeless
life " was given and " the red blood reeked, to show the
painter's strife " : —

" There might you see the labouring pioneer

Begrimed with sweat, and smeared all with dust ;
And from the towers of Troy there would appear
The very eyes of men through loopholes thrust,
Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust :

Such sweet observance in this work was had,
That one might see those far-off eyes look sad."2

We may pause here for a moment to notice Shake
speare's own fondness for the village where his mother
was born. There was some local tradition that he used
to go down to the old mill at Wilmcote to talk with a
half-witted fellow, or natural fool, who was employed
there in some menial capacity. He might have been
pleased no doubt to meet "a fool in the Forest" ; but
there is no evidence that the legend was true.3 We
observe, however, that he goes out of his way on more
than one occasion to bring little points about Wilmcote
before his London audience. Take, for instance, his
alterations of the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew.
There was an odd kind of village constable, represent
ing the system of keeping the peace that prevailed
before the Norman Conquest, with titles that varied in
different parts of the country. In Kent and Essex he
was called the Borsholder, which seems to be derived
from " borrows-elder " ; and in one of the rural bor
rows or tithings there was a staff with an iron ring
called "the dumb Borsholder," appearing in court
by the help of the village blacksmith, whose duty it

1 Lucrece, 11. 1366-1442. a Ibid., 11. 1380-6.

3 Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s. , i. 233. For evidence see illustrative note, id.,
ii. 308.

124 WILMCOTE

was to lift the staff in the air. In many parts he was
known as the Headborough, and elsewhere as the
Tithing-man : and we may remember how poor Tom
in King Lear was whipped "from tithing to tithing,"
and put in the stocks by these rural officers.1 It appeared
by a trial in the Exchequer, about the middle of the
last century, that the duties of the Tithing-man at Dray-
cot, in Wiltshire, were divided between himself and his
dog. The holder of a certain farm had to undertake the
office and attend the court with his trusty companion :
"and when he is called, and is asked how he appears,
he answers ' My dog and I appears,' and produces the
dog." The Tithing-man of Coombe Keynes in Dorset
came into the court of Winfrith Hundred, and paid
threepence with an incoherent speech beginning, "with
my white rod, and I am a fourth post ; that threepence
makes three."2 In the neighbourhood of Stratford the
officer was called a ' ' Tharborough, "or ' * Thirdborough, "
which is evidently a corruption of "the headborough."
Shakespeare seems to have felt some amusement at the
title and duties of the office. "I am his Grace's
Tharborough,"3 says good Antony Dull, "a man of
good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation."4 He
was not of much account among the wits of Love's
Labour's Lost. He spoke not a word, " nor understood
none, neither, Sir ! "5 But dull, honest Dull was a great
man when he took his place among the lads of the
village ; " I'll make one in a dance, or so ; or I will play
on the tabor to the Worthies and let them dance the
Hay ! " 6 Then there is the scene between the drunken

1 King Lear, iii. 4, 139-41.

2 Hutchins, History of Dorset, i. 127 : "On default of any one of these
particulars, the court-leet of Coombe is forfeited." The remaining- lines
are : —

" God bless the king and the lord of the franchise.
Our weights and our measures are lawful and true,
Good morrow, Mr. Steward, I have no more to say to you."

3 Love's Labour's Lost, \. i, 185. 4 Ibid., 271-2.
* Id., v. i, 158. 6 Ibid., 160-1.

THE HEADBOROUGH 125

tinker and fat Marian Hacket at her ale-house on
Wilmcote Heath. She wants to be paid for her glasses,
and she can only get monnaie de singe, or cold scraps
from The Spanish Tragedy. "I know my remedy, I
must go fetch the third-borough," cries old Marian ;
"Third or fourth or fifth borough, I'll answer him by
law : I'll not budge an inch, boy : let him come, and
kindly," says Christopher Sly. a The story of the
beggar transformed had nothing to do with Warwick
shire, and is in fact as old as the Arabian Nights or the
" golden prime" of Haroun Alraschid. Robert Burton
was a schoolboy at Sutton Coldfield,2 and served as
curate in several Warwickshire parishes ; he was a
great lover of the theatre and loved Shakespeare "as
an elegant poet " ; 3 but Burton tells the tinker's story
out of Ludovic Vives and Heuter's History of Burgundy .
Ludovic Vives was well known in England, but spent the
latter part of his life as a Professor of the Belles Lettres
at Bruges ; and he may have located the story in his
adopted country, just as Shakespeare in the following
generation found room for it at his favourite Wilmcote.
The continental version thus appears in the Anatomy
of Melancholy.* When " Philippus Bonus, that Good
Duke of Burgundy," went to Bruges to attend the
wedding of Leonora of Portugal, the wintry weather was
so bad, as the chroniclers say, that he could find no means

1 Tarn ing of the Shrew, Induction, i, 11-15.

2 Anat. of Mel., ii. sect. ii. mem. iii. (ed. Shilleto, ii. 73): " Sutton
Coldfield in Warwickshire (where I was once a Grammar Scholar) may
be a sufficient witness, which stands, as Camden notes, loco ingrato et
sterili, but in an excellent air, and full of all manner of pleasures." See
Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, 1610, p. 567 B, "Sutton Colfeild, stand
ing in a woddy and on a churlish hard soile, glorieth of John Voisy
Bishop of Excester there born and bred ; who in the reigne of King
Henrie the Eighth, when this little town had lien a great while as dead,
raised it up againe with buildings, priviledges, and a Grammar schoole."

3 Anat. of Mel., iii. sect. ii. mem. ii. subs. ii. (u.s., iii. 79): "When Venus
ran to meet her rose-cheeked Adonis, as an elegant Poet of ours sets her
out."

4 Id., part ii. sect. ii. mem. iv. (u.s., ii. 99).

126 WILMCOTE

of amusement. Hawking and hunting were forbidden by
the snow, and the Duke was " tired with cards, dice,
&c., and such other domestical sports, or to see Ladies
dance." He would therefore disguise himself with
certain of his courtiers and look for adventures about
the town. " It so fortuned, as he was walking late one
night, that he found a country-fellow dead-drunk, snort
ing on a bulk ; l he caused his followers to bring him
to his Palace, and there stripped him of his old clothes,
and attiring him after the Court fashion, when he waked,
he and they were ready to attend upon his Excellency,
persuading him he was some great Duke. The poor
fellow, admiring how he came there, was served in
state all the day long ; after supper he saw them
dance, heard Musick, and the rest of those Court-like
pleasures : but late at night, when he was well tippled,
and again fast asleep, they put on his old robes, and so
conveyed him to the place where they first found him,"
etc.

" What's here? one dead, or drunk?" says the lord
at the hedge-corner on Wilmcote Heath : 2

" Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man ;
What think you, if he were convey'd to bed,
Wrapp'd in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,
A most delicious banquet by his bed,
And brave attendants near him when he wakes,
Would not the beggar then forget himself? " 3

Then begins the scene in the bed-chamber.4 "Will't
please your lordship drink a cup of sack?" "What
raiment will your honour wear to-day ? " says another,
dressed up as a servant. "I am Christophero Sly:
call not me 'honour' nor 'lordship.'' We may
notice Shakespeare's fondness for putting the old law-

1 Shilleto notes, u.s., " Bulk here is probably a bench."

2 Taming of the Shrew, u.s., 1. 31.

3 Ibid., 11. 36-41. * Id., sc. 2.

STORY OF CHRISTOPHER SLY 127

phrases into the mouth of a ruffian like Sly or Jack
Cade.

"Am I not Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-
heath, by birth a pedler, by education a cardmaker, by
transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profes
sion a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of
Wincot, if she know me not : if she say I am not four
teen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for
the lyingest knave in Christendom."1

At last he is persuaded that he has been befooled by
some strange lunacy.2

" Upon my life I am a lord indeed,
And not a tinker nor Christophero Sly."

"O how we joy," says the servant with basin and

napkin,

" to see your wit restor'd!
O that once more you knew but what you are ! "

and the chief player tells him about the ale in stone
jugs and threats of presentment at the leet. "Some
times you would call out for Cicely Hacket." "Ay,
the woman's maid of the house," returns the tinker.
" But then," cries another,

" Why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid,
Nor no such men as you have reckoned up,
As Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece
And Peter Turph and Henry Pimpernell
And twenty more such names and men as these
Which never were nor no man ever saw."3

The name of Stephen Sly was a reminiscence of
Stratford. It was borne by a very respectable towns
man, once servant to Mr. Combe, and afterwards a
householder on his own account. He took a promi
nent part in resisting the inclosure at Welcombe, to
which Shakespeare himself raised a successful objec-

1 Ibid., 18-26. 2 Ibid., 74 et seqq.

» Ibid., 93-8.

128 WILMCOTE

tion.1 It was quite in accordance with the poet's habit
to introduce a real name, by way of a jest reminding
him of home. " Naps of Greece " is a name that may
refer to some hill-farm, where a "knapp," or knoll,
was mounted by steps, or "grees" ; but the other per
sonages appear to be altogether imaginary. We ought
to compare the passage with the list of prisoners in
Measure for Measure, headed by young Master Rash
and Mr. Caper in his peach-coloured satin : —

"Then we have young Dizy, and young1 Master Deep-
vow, and Master Copperspur, and Master Starvelackey
the rapier and dagger man, and young Drop-heir that
killed lusty Pudding, and Master Forthlight the tilter,
and brave Master Shooty the great traveller, and wild
Half-can that stabbed Pots, and I think forty more."2

Brave Shooty (Shoe-tie) surely must have been Tom
Coryat, who wrote the book of "Crudities hastily
gobled up in 5 moneth travells newly digested in the
hungry air of Odcombe," and hung up his only pair of
shoes as a trophy at Odcombe Church in Somerset ;
and there may have been one or two other personal
allusions that might be caught up by a London audience.
We catch another glimpse of the Wilmcote people in
the second part of King Henry IV. The scene is laid
at Shallow's house in Gloucestershire, but the allusions
point to the neighbourhood of Stratford.3

Davy. " I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor
of Woncot against Clement Perkes of the hill.

Shal. There is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor:
that Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.

Davy. I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir; but yet,
God forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance
at his friend's request."

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 308.

2 Measure for Measure, iv. 3, 14-21. 3 2 Henry IV., v. i, 41-9.

MANOR OF ROWINGTON 129

The manor of Rowington has belonged to the Crown
ever since the death of Ambrose Dudley, Earl of War
wick. Queen Elizabeth had entailed the place upon
her favourite;1 but he died without issue in 1589, and
so the entail was at an end. The ancient manor had
been confined to the parish of Rowington, which lies
at some distance from Stratford.2 It was the pro
perty of the Abbey of Reading, to which house also
belonged a large farm at Tiddington, lying south of
the Avon on the Banbury road, some little bits of land
in Stratford itself, and an estate in Leicestershire called
Everkeston, which all passed together under the name
of the manor of Rowington at the time when Shake
speare became a tenant. Lord Coke once explained
how it often happened, " in the time of the Abbots,"
that, for the sake of convenience, one court was held
for several neighbouring properties, and a number of
detached parcels were treated as being in one manor,
for the sake of simplicity in the accounts. A survey of
the manor of Rowington, in this extended sense of the
term, was taken at the accession of James I., and there
is also among the Public Records a document entitled,
"A Survey of the Manor of Rowington ... in the
County of Warwick, late parcel of the possessions of
Henrietta Maria, the relict and late Queen of Charles
Stuart, deceased." We shall make extracts from both

1 See Camden, Britannia, u.s., p. 571 A.B.: "Ambrose, a most worthy
personage, both for warlike prowesse and sweetnesse of nature, through
the fauour of Queene Elizabeth received in our remembrance, the honour
of Earle of Waraiicke to him and his heires males, and for defect of them
to Robert his brother, and the heires males of his body lawfully begotten.
This honour Ambrose bare with great commendation, and died without
children in the yeere one thousand fiue hundred eighty nine, shortly after
his brother Robert Earle of Leicester."

2 Dugdale, u.s., ii. 793-4. Rowington is about six miles N.N.W. of
Warwick, on the main road to Birmingham, and is in the Henley
Division of Barlichway Hundred.

i3o MANOR OF ROWINGTON

these documents, with respect to the customs prevailing
in Shakespeare's time, and with respect also to certain
properties, other than his copyhold, that belonged to
various persons of the same name.

As to the parish of Rowington itself, all the Abbey-
lands belonged to permanent tenants, either freeholders
by ancient right, or customary tenants holding "to
them and theirs" in a security hardly inferior to free
hold. They paid among them about £42 of perpetual
rent. The Leicestershire tenants paid £6. 13^. 4^., and
the two little copyholds in the borough of Stratford
were assessed at 4^. 6d. These small holdings are thus
described in the earlier survey: "Customary rents in
Stratford, parcel of the said manor : Stephen Burman
holdeth . . . according to the custom one messuage
and one orchard, by estimation half an acre, and payeth
rent yearly two shillings. William Shakespeare hold
eth there one cottage and a garden, by estimation a
quarter of an acre, and payeth rent yearly two shillings
and sixpence." Now as to the other Shakespeares,
who seem to have been in no way related to the poet.1
Thomas Shakespeare of Rowington is the freeholder of
a house and yard-land, about thirty-two acres in all,
and is also the customary tenant of a field, and the
site of an old house and sixteen acres that went with
it, and another copyhold house and yard-land of eleven
acres. George Shakespeare, his brother, as it seems,
had a cottage and a couple of acres, worth 2s. a year.
Richard Shakespeare had a messuage, and half a yard-
land containing about fourteen acres, for 13^. a year,
and this seems to correspond to the normal kind of
holding, the house being thrown in, and less than a
shilling an acre charged for the arable in the village
fields. There was a John Shakespeare who held a
cottage and a quarter of land, of about nine acres, who
paid six and eightpence per annum.

1 See the long note in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 253-7.

LOCAL CUSTOMS 131

The list of the local customs is full of curious details.
We learn that the words " to him and his" gave a full
and formal inheritance ; that a widow retained her
husband's estate for her life on paying a penny for
admission ; that the rule of primogeniture prevailed
among females as well as males ; that the tenants
might lop and shred the trees "for tinsel and fire-
making"; and that the custody of all idiots was left to
the discretion of the steward. There is a note in the
earlier document that one John Rogers, an idiot, had
been committed to a Mr. Blount by Queen Elizabeth's
own letters-patent; "but that Clement Griswold then
governed him by virtue of a grant from the High
Steward of Rowington." There is an allusion to these
beggings for idiots in the clown's part in Love's Labour's
Lost. Costard is laughing at the notion that three
threes make nine, which he vows that only an idiot
would believe :

" Not so, sir ; under correction, sir ; I hope it is not so.
You cannot beg1 us, sir, I can assure you, sir ; we know
what we know."1

Something has been said as to Shakespeare's ignor
ance of the Rowington customs as shown by the
provisions of his will. There seems, however, to have
been a very good reason for what he did. In dealing
with his copyhold cottage and garden near New Place,
he gave his daughter Judith an additional legacy of
£50 on condition that she should give up all her estate
and interest therein to her elder sister Susanna. But,
by the Rowington custom, the eldest daughter was the
heir, in case there were no male issue ; so that the
condition, it is said, was evidently not required ; and
it is stated that, as a matter of fact, the eldest daughter
was accepted and admitted as heiress. . But, from what
has been said about the early history of the manor, it

1 Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2, 489-90.

132 MANOR OF ROWINGTON

is obvious that there might well be doubts whether the
custom would apply to the outlying portions, dragged
into the manor for the convenience of the abbots.

Tiddington Farm1 was originally part of the Alveston
estate belonging to the Bishopric of Worcester before
the Conquest. In course of time it was acquired by
the Abbots of Reading, and was annexed to Rowington
in some informal way ; and in the surveys now before
us it is treated as having been a portion of their de
mesne. We shall take the description of the farm
from the Parliamentary Survey of 1649. The farm is
stated to be situate in the parish of Aston Cantlow.2
The farmhouse contained six rooms below and five
above stairs ; it stood with its outbuildings in about
an acre of ground, bounded on one side by the common
field and on another by the Lucys' estate. We shall
only mention those pieces of land belonging to the
farm which are specially connected with our subject.
The form of the entries will show both the situation of
the lands and the methods of agriculture which then
prevailed. There was a little pasture-field called Avon
Close, between Mr. Challoner's lands on the south and
the river of Avon on the north, a Home Close abutting
on the open field, and another known as the Crofts
fronting the highway leading to Banbury ; we find a
meadow called the Lots, which we suppose to have
been originally a lot-meadow divided among the
tenants, and " a parcel of meadow-ground lying in the
common mead called Tiddington Meadow," with
various other entries of the same kind. The next
series of descriptions related to pastures in the unin-
closed fields : "All those several pastures or leys lying
in the common fields called the Cow-pastures, con
taining 84 leys lying intermixed with the lands of

1 Dug-dale, u.s., ii. 676-7.

2 It is now in Alveston parish, where it is locally situated. Aston
Cantlow is six or seven miles away by the nearest road.

(

FARM OF TIDDINGTON 133

the rest of the inhabitants, viz. four leys, Thomas
Higgens, lying on the north, and the lands of William
Challoner in the south . . . one ley, William Alcock's,
lying on the west and Ridges Furlong on the east. . . one
ley, Mr. Lucey, lying on the west, and John Edwards
on the east," and so forth, the whole of the eighty-four
leys containing about twenty-eight acres. The next part
of the survey relates to the land kept for wheat, barley,
oats, and peas: "All those several parcels of arable
land lying in a common field called the West Field,
containing 120 lands lying intermixed with the lands
of the rest of the inhabitants, viz. seven lands, lying
between those of William Challoner on the east and of
William Alcock on the west . . . three ridges, W.
Challoner, lying on the north and the headland on the
south . . . six lands, a furlong lying on the west and
the lands of Thomas Townsend on the east . . . one
headland abutting upon the lands of John Edwards on
the south and the furlong on the north . . . one butt,
John Duley, lying on the east and Thomas Lovel on
the west," etc. Next follows a similar account of 135
lands in the ley-field, lying intermixed as in the former
case, including "One half-land, William Challoner,
lying on the east and Thomas Lords on the west . . .
half a land, William Hine, lying on the north and
John Edwards on the south . . . three half-lands,
William Challoner, on the south and William Alcock
on the north . . . nine small lands abutting on the
way leading to Wilborne l on the north and a furlong
called Hanging Furlong on the south, fifteen lands
called Connegrey's Piece, Mr. Lucy, lying on the east
and the Heathway on the west," etc., the whole 135
lands making up about thirty-five acres. The next entry
refers to nine lands in Rowley Piece, and the next to
1 1 1 lands in the Heath-field, mostly lying near the
Heathway Furlong and the Connegrey Furlong, where

1 i.e. Wellesbourne Mountford.

134 MANOR OF ROWINGTON

the lord's " coney-gree," or rabbit-warren, must have
been a dangerous neighbour to the corn.1 In New
bridge Field there were twenty-one and a half lands,
each strip, as in the other cases, being about the third
part of an acre in size ; in Crabtree Field were twenty-
nine more strips, lying intermixed like the rest ; in
the Craston Hades Field, nineteen lands ; and in the
common field, called Hinde Ridge, twenty-eight lands,
intermixed as before.

These surveys help us to realise the condition of the
country under the open-field system, when a whole
parish was often laid out like a single farm. The yard-
lands consisted mainly of a number of little strips set in
some customary order about the uninclosed field, so
that each owner might be supposed to have the benefit
of different qualities in the soil.2 The system was
absurd from an agricultural point of view ; and it has
been stated by competent observers that the land in
many places was better cultivated under Edward the
Confessor than in the reign of George III. The
accuracy of this opinion is confirmed by what we know
of some of the fields which became well known in con
nection with battles in the Civil wars. We hear, for
instance, of the "sad roads and bad husbandry" in
Chalgrove field ; as to Naseby field, we are told that,
even in this century, it was in much the same state as
on the day of the battle. The lower parts were covered
with furze, rushes, and fern ; the field, in fact, was
almost in a state of nature, the avenues zigzagging as
chance directed, and the hollows being unfilled, except
with mire. The Stratford fields extended for miles in

1 The word is met with in various forms ; e.g. Conygar Hill in Somer
set, between Dunster and Minehead. The derivation is Coney-Garth.
" In Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and other counties in the West of England,
this word, variously spelt ... is often met with as the name of a field,
and sometimes of a street, as in the town of Trowbridge " (Wright,
Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, i. 336).

2 See the drawing in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 245.

SHOTTERY 135

one open tract through Old Stratford, Bishopton, and
Welcombe. In the same neighbourhood was Shottery
field, occupied almost entirely by the several families
of Hathaway. It will be remembered that when Mr.
Abraham Sturley of Stratford wrote to Richard Quiney
in London, on January 24th, 1597-8, on the subject of
the Stratford tithes, he mentioned a report that Shake
speare intended to buy land at Shottery : " This is one
special remembrance from your father's motion. It
seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. Shakespeare,
is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yard
land or other at Shottery or near about us ; he thinketh
it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter
of our tithes."1

The first notices of Shottery appear in the records
of the see of Worcester.2 Between the years 704 and
709, Offa, King of Mercia, appears to have granted to
the Bishop thirty-three "cassates," or homesteads, in
"Scottarit," the estate being described as bounded by
the stream of the Avon. When Domesday Book was
compiled, Shottery seems to have been included in the
general description of Stratford ; but it was not long
before it appeared again as a separate estate. In the
reign of Edward III. it belonged to the energetic
Robert de Stratford, who did so much in the way of
paving and improving the town where he was incum
bent, and by him it was entailed on Sir John Streeche
and Isabel his wife, whose son, Sir John Streeche, sold
the manor to the Dean and Canons of St. Martin-le-
Grand. Dugdale tells a curious story about the owner
ship of the property in the next reign. Shottery at that
time belonged to one Thomas Newnham, a priest in
the King's service. This man was by birth a bondman
belonging to the monastery of Evesham, and every
thing that he had could therefore have been taken by

1 See copy in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 57.

2 Dugdale, u.s., ii. 702-3.

136 MANOR OF ROWINGTON

his masters, if it were not for his employment under
the Crown. In 1394 the monks seized the estate, with
out getting a royal licence ; the property was therefore
forfeited to the Crown, and was granted by the King
to Sir William Arundel "to hold so long as it con
tinued in the Crown for the reason aforesaid." No
regard, it appears, was paid to the equitable claims of
the unfortunate bondman. The state of Shottery in
Shakespeare's time may be conjectured from the later
description in the private Act for its inclosure in 1786.
That Act recites that in Shottery were certain common
fields, meadows, and pastures, called Shottery field,
containing about 1,600 acres; this tract was divided
among thirty-nine and three-quarter yard-lands, with a
few strips or "odd lands" over. All these lands, the
Act proceeds, "lie intermixed and dispersed in small
parcels, subject to frequent trespass and much incon
venience, and in their present state are incapable of
any considerable improvement," and it was pointed
out how much benefit would result from dividing them
into separate portions.

MIDLAND AGRICULTURE AND

NATURAL HISTORY
IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

MIDLAND AGRICULTURE AND

NATURAL HISTORY
IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

I ^ ARLY in 1602, Shakespeare was negotiating with
lj William and John Combe for a farm scattered in
the Stratford common fields, with a view of improving
his position in the parish and making it easier to pur
chase the tithes. Something occurred which postponed
the sale, though the conveyance was ready for execu
tion. The document was printed by Mr. R. B. Wheler
in 1806, with the following heading: "Copies of
several documents relating to Shakspeare, and his
family, never before printed; which, with the Probate
of Lady Barnard's Will, are now in my possession.
The first (unfortunately not executed, though a seal
is appended to it) I have thought proper, it being an
authentic deed of the time, to preserve ; as with the
subsequent ones it shews the extent and value of some
parts of Shakspeare's property."1 Mr. Halliwell-
Phillipps printed the " original conveyance" of the 107
acres,2 with the signatures and seals of William and
John Combe, and a note of delivery of the deed to

1 Wheler, History and Antiquities of Stratford, 1806, p. 139.

2 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 17-19.

139

140 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE

Gilbert Shakespeare on behalf of William Shake
speare ; but these may be later additions, made when
Shakespeare was able to pay the price, amounting to
£320 for about 321 strips of arable, with rights of
common. We know from another document printed
in the Outlines^ that in 1610 Shakespeare had pur
chased this property, with an additional twenty acres
of meadow, and that he had paid the Combes an
additional ;£ioo for confirming the conveyance. In
Lady Barnard's will this meadow was described as
" half a yard-land,"2 as if it had been originally under
tillage. It appears that meadows were often formed
by developing fallow-lands into permanent pasture ;
but it was found convenient to retain the old descrip
tions, to show what property was comprised in the
title.

The Stratford Common Fields were good examples of
the Midland husbandry. The Stratford Inclosure Act,
1774, shows that they consisted of three arable fields,
with pastures adjoining, known as Stratford field,
Bishopton field, and Welcombe field, in the hamlets
of Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, contain
ing altogether about 1,600 acres. It appears from
prior inclosure proceedings that Welcombe field con
tained about 400 acres. Shakespeare's 127 acres are
shown by a conveyance to have been in Stratford field,
partly in the hamlet, and partly in the borough.8

The whole extent of the three fields was estimated
at "fifty yard-lands with some odd lands," Shakespeare's
part being taken at "four yard-lands and a half." Each
yard-land, on the average, contained ninety "lands,"
each ridge, or "land," containing about one-third of an
acre. There were also "small lands," and " half-
lands," and "head-lands." It should be remembered

1 Ibid., 25. 2 Ibid., 62.

3 Ibid., 17: "Scytuate, lying-e and beinge within the parrishe, feildes
or towne of Old Stretford aforesaid."

COMMON FIELDS 141

that a " yard-land" was a small holding measured out
by the yard or rod, and distributed in little strips
about the fields, so that each farmer might have his
shares of good and bad soil.

The field, taken as the unit, apart from the customs
about yard-lands, was laid out in oblong blocks known
as "furlongs"; these were divided by long " balks,"
or grassy spaces, used as lanes. The word balk was
applied to the main tracks leading across the field, and
in some cases to the little oblong ridges, or seed-beds,
themselves. Minsheu gives "to Balke, or make a
balke in earing of land " ; x and this may be illustrated
out of Shakespeare's dedication of his Venus and
Adonis. " But if the first heir of my invention prove
deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father,
and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield
me still so bad a harvest."

The tillage-lands and cow-pastures were protected by
banks and fences called meers ; and the name in time
came to mean a "marking-off" for any special purpose.
Enobarbus applied it to Antony in describing the sea-
fight :—

" When half to half the world opposed, he being
The meered question." 2

At Stratford there was another kind of boundary
called "free -boards," as mentioned in the Stratford
Inclosure Act, 1774. The "free-board" is more
usually found as the ancient boundary of a forest.
"Frith" meant a tract of common,3 and the "free
board " was a band of grass-land marking its extent.
The "free-board" of Stratford field is shown in

1 Minsheu, Ductor in Linguas, 1617, p. 27.

2 Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 13, 9-10.

8 "Frith" meant originally a wood or coppice (Wright, Dictionary^
u.s.t 483), and so came to be applied to any tract covered with under
growth. English Dialect Dictionary, ii. 501, quotes the Cumberland and
Lancashire use of the word in the sense of "unused pasture-land."

142 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE

Winter's plan of Stratford, 1768, behind the Henley
Street houses.1 It was traversed by the Guildpits
Road, leading to the place where the Bishops held a
petty manorial court within their Liberty of Path-
low. The larger court-leet was held twice a year at
the barrow called Pathlow or " Pate's grave."

When the arable lay in fallow it was used as a
common pasture, except in certain places where a
separate right had been acquiesced. In the Rowing-
ton Survey we read of eighty-four leys intermixed, and
of a ley-field of 135 " lands," lately restored to tillage ;
and we find another illustration in Timon's speech to
Mother Earth: "Dry up thy marrows, vines, and
plough-torn leas."2

The rights incidental to Shakespeare's " yard-lands"
comprised privileges on other persons' fallows, called
"hades, leys, and tyings."3 Little is known as to the
meaning of "hades," except they must have been
rights on very small pieces of land, relating probably
to turning the plough on the neighbour's " head-land."
Cowell's Interpreter quotes a document from Orleton
in Herefordshire, where a tenant surrendered two
acres, containing ten ridges, or seed-beds, and two
hades.* The Rowington Survey, as we noticed in the
preceding essay, describes a small common-field by
the name of Craston Hades. The head-lands were
pieces at each end of a furrow, where the plough

1 Reproduced in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 202.

2 Timon of Athens, iv. 3, 193.

3 In conveyance of May, 1602, u.s. : "And also all hades, leys, tyinges,
proffittes, advantages and commodities whatsoever." Cf. Fitzherbert,
Book of Husbandry, ed. Skeat, 1882, §6, p. 15: "The horses may be
tethered or tied upon leys, balks, or hades, where as oxen may not be
kept."

4 Cowell, A Law Dictionary, etc., 1627, s.v., Hades of land. New Eng.
Diet., vol. v., p. 13, gives "Hade. ... A strip of land left unploughed
. . . between two ploughed portions of a field. " The sense connecting
it with the head-lands of the field is "perhaps a mistake arising from
the identification of hade with head."

CULTIVATION OF YARD-LANDS 143

turned ; they were sometimes mere cart-ways, but by
management they might be cropped ; as in the second
part of Henry IV. the servant asks Shallow, "Again,
sir, shall we sow the head-land with wheat? Shal. With
red wheat, Davy."1 Shakespeare also mentions the
early " white wheat," mildewed by the foul fiend,
Flibbertigibbet.2 It was often mixed with rye in a
"blend"; and this was said to be "the surest corn
for growing." But very little rye was ever sown near
Stratford, the soil being heavy and more adapted to
wheat and beans. "Some ground," says Fitzherbert,
"is good for wheat, some for rye, and some is good
for both." The song of the two pages in As You
Like It* may be a true sketch of one side of the "green
corn-field," laid out in the "acres of the rye." The
lover and his lass are in one of the grassy balks be
tween the " lands," chattering about the furrow-weeds,
and the corn-cockles, and wild-mustard, and pink
cuckoo-flowers : —

"This carol they began that hour,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino,
How that a life was but a flower,
In the Spring-time. . .
Sweet lovers love the Spring."

The "rank fumitory"4 was the worst enemy of the
rye. It appeared in June or at the end of spring in
a very wet season. " It groweth like vetches," says
the Book of Husbandry, " but it is much smaller, and it
will grow as high as the corn, and with 'the weight
thereof it pulleth the corn flat to the earth, and fretteth
the ears away."5

Shakespeare refers in The Tempest to the long blocks,

1 2 Henry IV., v. i, 15-17. a King Lear, Hi. 4, 123.

8 As You Like It, v. 3, 17-34.

* Henry V., v. 2, 45. Also see King Lear, iv. 4, 3.
5 Fitzherbert, u.s., §20, p. 30. He calls it "terre," i.e. tares. His
form of "vetches" is "fytches."

144 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE

called "furlongs," in the common fields. Gonzalo
makes a whimsical comparison between the vast tracts
of foam and a little waste corner in the village field.
" Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an
acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any
thing. The wills above be done ! but I would fain die
a dry death."1 We may suppose also that Hermione
referred to the arable furlongs in the Winter's Tale :

"You may ride's

With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
With spur we heat an acre."2

The word "tyings" meant the right of tethering a
horse, hobbled with a "tye" or chain, so as to graze
on the neighbour's herbage. A good illustration occurs
in Fitzherbert's treatise on Husbandry, in a discussion
on the saying, "Eat within your tether." "Take thy
horse, and go tether him upon thine own leys, flit him
as oft as thou wilt, no man will say ' "wrong thou dost ' ;
but make thy horse too long a tether ... so ... that
it reacheth to the midst of another man's leys or corn :
now hast thou given him too much liberty."3

The farmers as a rule enjoyed rights of pastures on
the corn-lands in fallow, the weeds providing an abund
ance of coarse food for the town-herd or common-flock.
But in some districts portions of the fallow were ex-

1 Tempest, i. i, 67-70. Cf. Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. i, 158, where
the messenger is safe from wreck, "being destined to a drier death on
shore." It is interesting to refer to Rabelais, Pantagruel, iv. 18: "O
que troys et quatre foys heureux sont ceulx qui plantent choulx ! O
Farces, que ne me fillastes vous pour planteur de choulx ! O que
petit est le nombre de ceulx a qui lupiter ha telle faueur port£ qu'il les
ha destinez a planter choulx ! Car ilz ont tousiours en terre ung pied,
1'aultre n'en est pas loing." And ibid., 20, where Panurge continues his
seasick lamentations : " Pleust la digne vertus de Dieu qu'a heure presente
ie feusse dedans le clous de Seville^ ou chez Innocent le pastissier, deuant
la caue paincte a Chinon . . . Ie vous donne tout Salmiguondinoys et ma
grande cacquerolliere, si par vostre Industrie ie trouue une foys terre
ferme " (ed. Bibliophile Jacob, pp. 368, 372).

2 Winter's Tale, i. 2, 94-6. 3 Fitzherbert, u.s., §148, p. 100.

RIGHTS OF PASTURE 145

empted from the general right, and were kept as
"severals," or " sunder-lands," for the owner's pri
vate use. Shakespeare refers to this practice in Love's
Labours Lost, where Boyet offers Maria a kiss. " Not
so, gentle beast," she cries ; " My lips are no common,
though several they be." " Belonging to whom?"
4 ' To my fortunes and me."1

The Masque in The Tempest contains several allu
sions to the ancient methods of husbandry. It opens
with a picture of a lovely island, the treasure-house of
the Goddess of Plenty.2 Ceres herself guards the
rampart of cliffs that shut in her vines in cluster on
their poles, her plough-torn leas, and the grassy banks
that "catch flower" in the spring. The sketch of the
vines in their ranks seems to be meant as a sign of
antiquity, indicating that the scene was laid as far back
as the Roman times. It was almost a commonplace in
Shakespeare's time that there had been a store of vines
in this country, since their cultivation had been allowed
by the Emperor Probus.3 There can hardly be a doubt,
when the various phrases of the Masque are examined
in this light, that its island of Ceres was " Britannia."
The landscape shows the girls picking flowers for their
garlands, from banks and pastures,

" When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh 'd and leap'd with him."4

The ploughing of a hillside drew the soil down, till
it was checked by terraces, or natural platforms, which
soon became covered with coppices and underwood.
This explains the word of Ceres as to her "bosky
acres," below the uunshrubb'd down," and the laugh-

1 Love's Labour s Lost, ii. i, 222-4. 2 Tempest, iv. i, 60-117.

3 See Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, p. 269 D. E. , of the Vine, Lord
Sands' house at Basing : " The vines . . . which wee have had in Britaine,
since Probus the Emperours time, rather for shade than fruit," etc.

4 Sonnet xcviii. 2-4.

146 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE

ing talk of Iris about lass-lorn bachelors in the shade
of the broom. The Yorkshire broom-groves are often
twelve feet high, and a " grove " is presumed to con
sist of underwood ; this was laid down in the case of
Robert Barret against his mother.1 We owe the
sketch of "the banks with pioned . . . brims" to a
kindly reminiscence of Spenser's " painefull pyon-
ings" in the second book of The Faerie Queene ;z and
the lass-lorn love may be recognised in his Shepheards
Calender for January : —

" I love thilke lasse (alas ! why doe I love ?)
And am forlorne (alas ! why am I lorne ? ) " s

And in the April eclogue, good Hobbinol is asked :

" Or is thy Bagpype broke, that soundes so sweete?
Or art thou of thy loved lasse forlorne ? " 4

The brims of the banks were " pioned," or raised by
the spade, like mounds in war cast up by the labouring
"pioners."5 The banks were also said to be "twilled,"
a term which has caused a great discussion. It seems
to be an allusion to the diagonal pattern on "twilled
cloth," the bank being marked with parallel lines of
"binders," pegged down when the hedges were
plashed, to protect quick-sets, or boughs split and
"laid down," against the bite of cattle. We find an
illustrative passage in Covel's Diary for October, 1675.
At Malaga, said Dr. Covel, some spread their twills
on the bedsteads, "but I, with one or two more,
had the fortune to put our twills for coolness into the
middle of the floor."6 Theobald's suggestion, that the

1 Sir Thos. Hetley, Reports and Cases, 1657, p. 35: "A Grove
ordinarily is Under-wood." 2 Faerie Queene, ii. 10, stanza 63.

3 Shepheards Calender, Januarie, stanza n.

4 Id,, April, stanza i. 5 Hamlet, i. 5, 163 ; Henry V,, iii. 2, 92.
6 Extracts from the Diaries of Dr. John Covel, 1670-9, ed. J. T.

Bent for Hakluyt Society, 1893, p. 115. "Twilled," in the disputed
passage, has been interpreted without alteration as "covered with
sedge." This view takes "twill" as another form of "quill," through
the French equivalent tuyau. See Appendix iii. (pp. 180-2) to Mr. Morton
Luce's edition of The Tempest (Methuen, 1902).

MASQUE IN THE TEMPEST 147

passage referred to the banks of a stream, Upa2onied
and lilied," brings Shakespeare's Masque down to
the level of The Arraignment of Paris ; for in Peele's
sketch of a brook,

" The watery flowers and lilies on the banks,
Like blazing comets burgeon all in ranks." l

As for peonies, one should remember Gerard's saying,
"that the male Peionie groweth wilde upon a conie
berrie in Betsome;"2 but his editor, Dr. T. Johnson,
added a note in 1633: "I have been told that our
Author himselfe planted that Peionie there, and after
wards seemed to finde it there by accident ; and I do
beleeve it was so, because none before or since have
ever seen or heard of it growing wild since in any part
of this Kingdome."3 In quoting the speech of Iris, we
may also note that stover is used for rough hay, kept
to fodder the sheep in winter. The lines of herbage
and frondage are compared by way of metaphor to the
bays of a roof thatched with reeds or straw. " Reed"
is now a name in the western counties for wheat-straw
made ready for thatching ; but in former times the com
mon rushes and reeds were used for covering roofs,
even in large towns. In 1619 the Privy Council ordered
that the houses " thatched with reed and straw" at
Cambridge, should for the future be slated or tiled ;
and in the same year another order was made to the
same effect about the thatched houses in Stratford,
though one sturdy burgess seems to have refused to
buy slates " to save his neighbour's apricot-tree."
Shakespeare mentions the reed-thatching in describing
the grief of Gonzalo :—

" His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops
From eaves of reeds."4

1 Peele, Arraignment of Paris, i. 3.

2 Gerard, Herbal, 1597, lib. 2, c. 364, p. 831.

3 Id., ed. T. Johnson, 1633, lib. 2, c. 380, p. 983.

4 Tempest, v, i, 16-17.

148 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE

In 1614, Mr. William Combe and his son John
formed a project of inclosing Welcombe field, by
agreement with the majority of the proprietors. They
relied, no doubt, upon a sudden change of policy in the
Court of Chancery, under Lord Ellesmere, who in that
very year had decreed inclosures of wastes and com-
monable lands as being for the public advantage.
Various instances of this kind were collected by "that
famous lawyer, William Tothill," in his Transactions of
the High Court of Chancery, 1649. " The Court," for
instance, " compells certain men, that would not agree
to Inclosures, to yeild unto the same, and binds a
Colledge that would not consent."1 But after a few years
there was another change, and inclosure was no longer
compelled, but was regarded as contrary to the plain
words of the Acts against the population and decay of
tillage. Shakespeare's land was not in Welcombe field,
but he would naturally object to anything that would
injure his tithes, having special regard to the very
high prices for corn in the neighbourhood of Stratford.
Mr. Thomas Greene, Town Clerk of Stratford, made
notes upon the proposed inclosure, which have now
been separately published by Dr. Ingleby.2 The ex
tracts from these notes are given in modern spelling
for the reader's convenience.

"Jovis: 17 No: [vembris, 1614]. My cousin Shakespeare
coming yesterday to town (i.e. Stratford), I went to see him
how he did. He told me that they assured him they meant
to inclose no further than to Gospel Bush . . . and he and
Mr. Hall say, they think there will be nothing done at all."

The Town Council met on the 23rd of December :

" A Hall.8 Letters written, one to Mr. Mainwaring,
another to Mr. Shakespeare, with almost all the company's
hands to either. I also writ of myself to my cousin Shake-

1 Tothill) as in text, ed. 1671, p. 174.

2 Birmingham, 1885. 3 i.e. a council-meeting.

INCLOSURE OF WELCOMBE FIELD 149

speare the copies of all our oaths made,1 and then also a
note of the inconveniences would grow by the inclosure."

A few days afterwards there is a note of an agree
ment with Mr. Replingham, providing an indemnity
for Shakespeare against loss on tithes, Mr. Greene
being now added as a party : "9 Jany., 1614. Mr. Rep
lingham, 28 Octr., articled with Mr. Shakespeare, and
then I was put in by T. Lucas." Greene evidently had
acquired some interest in the tithes. The next entry
runs as follows: "u Jany., 1614. Mr. Mainwaring
and his agreement for me with my cousin Shake
speare." The final entry has been the subject of some
discussion : " Sept. Mr. Shakespeare telling J. Greene
that I was not able to bear the inclosing of Welcombe."
As Thomas Greene and Shakespeare were acting as
partners, it does not much matter which of them made
the objection. Some read the passage, however, as if
/ were used for he or a, which in the local dialects
were almost equivalent.2

Shortly before Shakespeare's death in 1616, the Cor
poration agreed to petition against the inclosure, as an
injury to the Church, charities, and tithes ; and it was
ordered during the Lent Assizes at Warwick that no
inclosure to the decay of tillage should take place
without leave of the justices in open Assizes ; and
this order was confirmed on the same circuit two years
afterwards. Mr. Combe proceeded in the teath of
these orders to throw down the banks, and to cut up
the 400 acres of corn-land into pasture-fields. The Cor
poration appealing to the Privy Council, Sir Richard
Verney and others were commissioned to view the
place and report; and early in 1618 the cause was

1 The handwriting- is difficult to read, and the phrase "oaths made " is
Dr. Ingleby's conjecture. Others read simply "acts."

2 See Henry V.t ii. 3, 9: " 'A made a finer end"; and id., iii. 2, 28: "Lest
'a should be thought a coward." The obvious explanation in this case is
that Thomas Greene quoted Shakespeare's words in oratio recta.

150 NATURAL HISTORY

sent for arbitration to Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the
Rolls, and Sir Edward Coke, late Lord Chief Justice.
On the 1 2th of March the Privy Council wrote to Mr.
Combe about his disobedience, and ordered that his
inclosures should be forthwith laid open, that the
pasture should be turned back into arable, and the
banks and meers restored, at his peril if he made any
further resistance.

There are allusions to the system of common-field
husbandry, both in the plays and the sonnets, which
indicate that Shakespeare had in his mind the un-
drained corn-field and "water furlongs" extending by
the stream of the Avon. The open fallows on which
the sheep were turned appear, as we have noted, in the
interchange of repartee between Boyet and Maria in
Love's Labour's Lost ; a common belongs to several,
but all several things are not common.1 With this
we may compare the lines in the i37th Sonnet: —

" Why should my heart think that a several plot
Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?"2

Another passage in the same play refers to the breed
ing of wild-fowl in the riverside fields. Longaville is
rebuking Berowne for an illogical remark : " He weeds
the corn and still lets grow the weeding " ; and his
friend retorts, with a reference to the marshy fields,
"The Spring is near when green geese are a-breed-
ing."3 Then in A Midsummer Night's Dream we
have a picture of uwild geese that the creeping fowler
eye " ; 4 and we find from early books on sporting that
the gray-lags and barnacle geese used often to be seen
feeding in the furlongs, and that the fowlers caught

1 Sup., p. 145. '- 11. 9-10.

3 Love's Labour s Lost, i. i, 96-7.

4 Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2, 20.

WILD-FOWL 151

them there with limed rods, or used the stalking-horse
to get within shot. Instructions on these points will
be found in The Experienced Fowler. " In Winter time
when no Snow lies, the Wild-geese and Barnacles re
sort to the green Wheat to Grase, here you must
prick down large Rods in the Furrows, as near the
colour of the Earth as may be, and chuse those Furrows
where there is Water."1 For stalking the sportsman
required a canvas screen, cut into the shape of a tree
with twigs and branches, or a cow or stag, or any other
large creature with which the wild-fowl were familiar ;
but the best plan was to have "an old staid horse"
that would not mind the firing ; "and you must guide
him with nothing but a String of a Grass-colour, or
in Snowy Weather white, about his nether Chap, about
two or three Yards long : teach him to walk gently on
the Banks of Brooks and Rivers, or in open Fields, in
a grazing posture." The fowler needed a good fire
lock, about as large as a harquebuss ; "it is not so
discernable to the Fowl as a Match-lock, neither so
troublesome ; and then again in Rain, Snow, Fogs,
or windy weather there is no fear of extinguishing,
as a Match often is, when you are many Miles from a
House, perhaps, and then if you have not a Tinder-
box at hand, your Sport for a time is marred."

We must not forget the " russet-pated chough " that
swarmed in the open fields, " many in sort, rising and
cawing at the gun's report."3 These generally have
been taken for the Cornish choughs, the epithet
"russet-pated" being supposed to refer to their red
beaks and eyes; if "russet-patted" be taken as the
true reading, according to Professor Newton's sugges
tion, the word would refer to their red legs and feet.

1 The Experienc'd Fowler: or, The Gentleman's Recreation, etc.,
printed for G. Conyers at the Golden Ring-, and J. Sprint at the Bell in
Little Britain, p. 66.

2 Id., pp. 49, 41. :f Midsummer Night's Dream, Hi. 2, 21-2.

152 NATURAL HISTORY

For an accurate description of the bird we may refer to
Mr. Cecil Smith's Birds of Somersetshire. The beak,
legs, and toes, he says, are all of a sealing-wax red; the
claws are black; "the irides are of two colours, the
inner ring being red and the outer blue ; the eyelids
are red ; the whole of the plumage is of a beautiful
black shot with purple."1 The Cornish chough is a
frequenter of sea-cliffs, and always has been kept from
occupying the inland parts by " his enemy, the jack
daw." The acts for the destruction of crows and
choughs, passed by Henry VIII. and renewed by
Elizabeth, appear to relate to jackdaws, as distin
guished from Cornish choughs. Parliament declared
that "an innumerable number of rooks, crows, and
choughs, do daily breed and increase throughout this
realm, which yearly do destroy and consume a wonder
ful and marvellous great quantity of corn and grain " ;
and it was enacted that the noxious fowl should be
destroyed by means of birds-nesting, and by crow-nets
to be kept in every parish and to be used with a bait
described as " a sharp made of chaff." The word
" russet-pated " seems to refer to the mingled black
and ash-coloured plumage of the jackdaw's neck. We
hear in one of Captain Marryat's novels of "a dandy
gray-russet cap " ; and it is well known that russet was
used not long ago as being the name of a grey
material. We cannot be quite sure, of course, what
the drapers may have meant by the word in Shake
speare's day ; but there is a passage in Stow's Survey
which seems to show that it implied a mixture of
colours. Stow quoted the household accounts of
Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, for the seventh year of
Edward II., and noticed that among the liveries pro
vided for Christmas was a cloth of russet for the
Bishop of Anjou, and stuff of the same colour for
certain poor men ; on which he adds the note :

1 C. Smith, The Birds of Somersetshire, 1869, p. 221.

" RUSSET-PATED " CHOUGHS 153

" Northern russet ... I have seen sold for Four Pence
the Yard, and was good Cloth of a mingled Colour."1
The description of the Shepherd in Greene's Menaphon
shows, at any rate, that it was not an ordinary red.
Menaphon, we are told, was attired in a " russet jacket,
red sleeves of camlet, a blue bonnet and round slop of
country cloth."2 There are passages in Shakespeare's
plays showing that the word was used as relating
rather to the quality of a stuff than to any colour with
which it might have been dyed ; as, for example, when
Biron talks of taffeta phrases in contrast with "russet
Yeas and honest kersey Noes,"3 or when Hamlet's
friend points to the breaking of the dawn : —

" But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill."4

Let us now examine a few of the passages in which
Shakespeare seems to be distinctly referring to the
scenery and natural products of the corn-fields and
meadows near the Avon. We might include the river
itself and the willows reflected in its "glassy stream,"6
remembering the poet's way of describing the flight
of the wild geese,6 or the "doting mallard,"7 the
wounded duck in the sedge,8 and the little grebe, or
dive-dapper, "peering through a wave."9 He re
membered how the larks were caught in the great
stubbles about harvest -time, just before the wild
hobbies, or lark-hawks, began migrating. Some much
delight, said Robert Burton, to take larks with day-
nets and other small birds with chaff-nets ;l° decoy birds

1 Stow, Survey, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. i. pp. 243-4. "Anjou" is used
here, as in many other instances, as equivalent to Angers.
8 Greene, Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 35.

* Love's Labours Lost, v. 2, 406,412-3. 4 Hamlet, \. \, 166-7.

5 Hamlet, iv. 7, 167-8. ' Midsummer Night's Dream, u.s.

7 Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 10, 20.

8 Much Ado about Nothing, ii. i, 209-10. * Venus and Adonis, 86.
10 Anat. of Mel., ii. §2, mem. 4 (ed. Shilleto, ii. 84).

154 NATURAL HISTORY

being set, as Ariel baited his trap with frippery, for
a " stale" to catch these thieves.1 As to the larks, we
have the railing attack upon Wolsey : —

" If we live thus tamely,
To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet,
Farewell nobility ; let his grace go forward,
And dare us with his cap like larks."2

The fowler took a little trammel of green thread, like
a landing-net, and a hobby on a long pole ; and creep
ing up to the place where the flock alighted, he
suddenly held up the hawk, which cowed the birds
so that they could be netted or taken by hand, " they
are so fearful of the Hobby, which preys on them
about this Season."3 We should remember also the
fluttering of the young Adonis, "Look how a bird
lies tangled in a net";4 and the jest about "bat
fowling" in The Tempest? As to the latter sport,
"Have a Wicker," says the Experienced Fowler, "with
a handle to hold on high, in which you can place three
or four Links." 6 We hear of superstitious fancies about
the birds of night, and not merely as to hooting and
screeching owls, but of dismal night-ravens and night-
crows that throttle out a kind of croaking voice like one
that is strangled. When the wicked King Richard was
born, the "night-crow cried, aboding luckless time."7
When the singer in Much Ado about Nothing sings,
"Sigh no more," and "Sing no more ditties, sing no
mo," what says the mocking Benedick? "An ill
singer, my lord," — in itself a bold jest against the
sweet musician, Jack Wilson, who took the part of

1 Tempest, iv. i, 187. * Henry VIII., iii. 2, 279-82.

3 Experienc'd Fo-wler, u. s. , p. 55.

4 Venus and Adonis, 67. 5 Tempest, ii. i, 185.

6 Experienc'd Fo-wler, u.s., p. 89. One man beats the hedge with a
pole, and one or two more carry long bushes, walking near the light :
when the birds are " unroosted," they flutter about the links, so that the
men with the bushes easily beat them down.

7 3 Henry VI., v. 6, 45.

RAVENS AND CROWS 155

Baltasar — "and I pray God his bad voice bode no
mischief; I had as lief have heard the night-raven,
come what plague could have come after it."1 The
myths about this grim raven come down from the
remotest antiquity ; they appear in the Greek romances
about Alexander ; they reappeared in our time in
Edgar Poe's vision of the ominous bird of yore.
"Tell me, tell me I implore," sighs the haunted
wretch, "tell me what thy lordly name is on the
night's Plutonian shore." John Ray, the great
botanist, is one of the best witnesses in any question
about Shakespeare's country. He paid special atten
tion to the natural history of the Midlands during his
visits to Mr. Willughby at Sutton Coldfield ; and a
passage in his travels shows that the night-raven of
Shakespeare's time was the squacco heron, which
roosts by streams and makes a groaning or gobbling
in the dark. He made a bye-journey from Leyden to
Sevenhuys to see "a remarkable grove where, in time
of year, several sorts of wildfowl build and breed." He
observed there, in great numbers, shags and spoon
bills, and the Quack or lesser heron, and "the Germans
call this bird the Night-raven, because it makes a noise
in the night." ; The same writer's list of northern
words explains another allusion to " Night's black
agents," as they appeared in the fevered imagination
of Macbeth : —

" Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood."8

This has nothing to do with Tennyson's "black re
public" on the elms,4 or the crow "that leads the
clanging rookery home."5 It is rather the night-crow
preparing for deeds of rapine in the misty woods,

1 Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 3, 83-5.

2 J. Ray, Travels through the Low-Countries, etc., 2nd ed., 1738, i. 33.

3 Macbeth, iii. 2, 50-1. 4 Aylmers Field, 529.
* Locksley Hall, stanza 34.

156 NATURAL HISTORY

since " rooky" in Shakespeare's home meant vaporous,
or reeking, and the epithet implies no more than such
phrases as the reek of sighs, or a lover's breath, the
smoke of the lime-kiln,1 or "reek o' the rotten fens."2
Ray also explained another difficult phrase, which
Shakespeare transferred from the milking-shed into
the domain of magic and witchcraft. The Stratford
Records show that there was once an altercation be
tween two old women, in which Goody Bromlie crushed
Goody Holder " with the execration, Arent the, wich ! "
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps3 remarks that the phrase is
shown by this entry to have been commonly used by
the lower classes in Stratford. The words assume a
mystical form as they appear in Macbeth and King
Lear; " Aroint thee, witch! the rump-fed ronyon
cries."4 We observe how the snarling note comes in,
and we are reminded of Romeo and the Nurse.

" Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter?
Ay, nurse, what of that ? both with an R.
Ah, mocker ! that's the dog's name ! "5

In the fish-fag quarrel the sting lay in the epithet
" Witch." Aroint thee, or " rynt thee," was a milk
maid's word, telling her cow to stand away from the
pail. " Rynt ye," said Ray, is " By your leave, stand
handsomely." There was also a proverb about an
impudent maid who had treated her mother like one of
the cows. " Rynt you Witch, quoth Besse Locket to
her Mother." The jest had become a proverb in
Cheshire and the neighbouring districts. 6

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 3, 86.

2 Coriolanus, iii. 12, 13. 3 op. cif., i. 142.

4 Macbeth, \. i, 6. See also King Lear, iii. 4, 129.

5 Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4, 219-23.

6 Ray, Collection of English Words, 3rd ed. , 1737, p. 52.

MEADOW-FLOWERS 157

III

The country round Stratford appears as we read the
Masque in The Tempest.^ The vineyards, indeed, and
the tall broom-groves have a foreign appearance ;
but we are at home in the "rich leas" of corn, the
sheep downs, and flat meads thatched with stover for
winter-keep. It should be noticed that "leas" are
meant for lands in tillage, as in the Ley-field at Row-
ington, and not for fallows, which the word would
technically denote.2 This appears by Fitzherbert's
instructions how to amend lea-ground "the whiche
hath ben errable lande of late": "Ye must take hede
howe the leyse lye, and specially that they lye nat to
hyghe, for an they do, it is more profit to the husbande
to caste it downe agayne, and sowe it with otes.";

There is sometimes a difficulty in understanding the
references to meadow-flowers, owing chiefly to the fact
that the same name is used for different plants, accord
ing to the fancy of the nurses and children in various
districts ; the names themselves, it may be added,
being so vague that there is no reason why they should
not be used for plants that are totally unlike in appear
ance. Ophelia's crow-flowers,4 for instance, may be
buttercups, or bluebells, or any other flower that blows
when the rooks are nesting. Her "long-purples4' are
the orchids called "dead man's thumbs"; but Tennyson
was thinking of the great willowy loose-strife, when he
described the "long purples" creeping towards the
bramble-roses in a country churchyard.5 Shakespeare's
crow-flower was the ragged robin, or meadow-pink,

1 Tempest ', iv. i, 60-75.

2 As in Henry V., v. 2, 44, "her fallow leas." In Timon of Athens,
iv. 3, 192, on the other hand, we have "plough-torn leas," u.s., p. 142.

3 Fitzherbert, Book of Surveying, 1523, cap. xxvii., fol. 44, back.

4 Hamlet, iv. 7, 170. Glossary to "Globe" Shakespeare explains as
" the commoner kinds of ranunculus."

8 "A Dirge" in Juvenilia, stanza v.

158 NATURAL HISTORY

which some called the " cuckoo gilliflower," and this
led at once to its being confused with the red campion
of the hedges and fields, which is more regularly
known as Flos cuculi or cuckoo-flower. Even in
Shakespeare's time, however, there was a third com
petitor for the name. We learn from Gerard that people
were beginning to think that the pale meadow-cress
was the real cuckoo-flower, because it bloomed in April
and May, "when the Cuckow doth begin to sing her
pleasant notes without stammering";1 and Tennyson
brought sufficient authority from Lincolnshire to estab
lish the name among us, as witness his pale Margaret's
" melancholy sweet and frail as perfume of the cuckoo
flower," while the May Queen's song tells us how the
honeysuckle

" round the porch has wov'n its wavy bowers,
And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo
flowers."

Shakespeare preferred to use the name for the red
flowers in the high-grown wheat, as when old King

Lear passes,

" singing aloud ;

Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn."2

For the children's buttercups, or butter-flowers, Shake
speare had the old name of the cuckoo-bud, but for
the pale meadow-cress he used the Warwickshire word.
Gerard claimed to have been the person who taught
the Londoners that the "faint bloom" was the lady-
smock: "They are commonly called ... in North-
folke, Caunterburie bels : at the Namptwich in Cheshire
where I had my beginning, Ladie smocks, which hath
given me cause to christen it after my countrie fashion." 3

1 Gerard, u.s., 1597, lib. 2, cap. 18, p. 203. 2 King Lear, iv. 4, 2-6.
3 Gerard, u.s.

CUCKOO-FLOWERS AND MARIGOLDS 159

But Shakespeare was beforehand with him, and taught
his public their rustic lesson in Love's Labour's Lost.
" Will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men
have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo?

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight."1

The poets have always loved the wild marigold as
the true " heliotrope " or "girasol," and faithful fol
lower of the sun. Her petals droop and close as his
steeds reach their western meadows ; then Aurora
throws open her red-rose gate,

"And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes."

The legend was prettily used in The Spanish Gipsy,
written in part by that William Rowley who was said
to have been Shakespeare's friend. A tawny chieftain
is blessing a young pair who make vows on a garland
of flowers ; the gipsy-man is to be the sun and his bride
the obsequious flower :—

" She to you the Marigold,
To none but you her leaves unfold."3

Shakespeare has compared the sensitive blossoms to
court-favours that bask in a smile, and are frozen in a
moment by cold looks : —

"Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread
But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die."4

Another writer of that time protested that the sweet
"Caltha" of the poets stands up and braves " Sir

1 Love s Labour s Lost, u. s., 894-6, 904-7. 2 Cymbeline, ii. 3, 25-6.
3 Spanish Gipsy, 1653, act iv. sc. i. 4 Sonnet xxv. 5-8.

160 NATURAL HISTORY

Phoebus," and " seconds him" as a rival both at morn
ing and night, "setting the silly sun-burnt god at
scorn " :

" Who in the morning spreads her yellow hair

Like to the blaze of golden Phoebus bright :
That makes the heavenly climes to shine so clear,

Illuminating all the world with light,
So shines my Marygold so fair in sight ;
Till in the dark when as the day is done,
She closeth up and setteth with the Sun."1

Thus far sings Thomas Cutwode, or "Cutwode
Lyte," as some called him, from his imitations of
Mr. Lyte of Lyte's Gary, the eminent botanist. The
marigold, in fact, was one of the commonest of weeds,
and was flaunted by the early ballad-writers, because
it met their eyes in every corn-field. " Golds " was the
common name, and it was the farmer's task in June
to clear the ground of the branching growth that
threatened the life of his crop. "Golds hath a short
jagged leaf, and groweth half a yard high, and hath
a yellow flower as broad as a groat, and is an ill weed,
and groweth commonly in barley and peas."2 We
may quote a passage from Mr. Loveday's Tour, as
printed by the Roxburghe Club. Writing in 1732, he
says of the Scottish farmers: "Their country cannot
reproach them for lack of culture : the cold North
produces extreme good oats, and that chiefly : Gule, a
yellow flower, grows among their corn and in above
a double proportion to it : they pretend that 'tis im
possible to clear the ground of this incroaching weed." 3

The darnel, another of Shakespeare's idle weeds,4

1 Thomas Cutwode, Caltha Poetarum, 1599, stt. 19-20. In the original
text the reading is, "when as the day is dun," which may be an amiable
conceit of the poet, playfully allying "dun" with " dark."

2 Fitzherbert, Booke of Husbandrie, § 20, p. 30.

8 Diary of a Tour in 1732, by John Loveday, ed. J. E. T. Loveday,
Edinburgh, 1890, p. 162.
4 King Lear, u.s. Henry V., v. 2, 45.

WEEDS 161

was also a parasite of the barley, abounding in the
fields, "especially in a moist and dankish soil."1
Some thought that it was a kind of degenerate
barley, and like the cockle, it possessed a redeeming
virtue in the fact that there was "much flour in that
seed."2

The " rank fumiter," or fumitory,3 is another of the
migrant weeds that follow the plough. As Linnaeus
said of the deadly henbane, the darnel and nettle and
fumitory have lived as the companions of man since
houses and fields were invented. The corn-field fumi
tory, with red waxy flowers, came probably with seed-
corn from Sicily. Ray found a yellow-flowered kind,
supposed to have been introduced by the Crusaders.
It grew in several parts of Warwickshire, "ramping
over walls and hedges," and by some of the roadsides
he noticed a smaller variety with blossoms a greenish
white. Among these gaudy weeds the "pale bleak
pansy" makes little show; but it was always a favourite
in Warwickshire, and Shakespeare has given it a place
among the immortals. It is " a little western flower,"
King Oberon tells us, "and maidens call it "love-in-
idleness."4 Mr. Ellacombe says that the name "love-
in-idle" is said to be still used among Warwickshire
rustics, with the meaning of "love in vain," or wasted
affection.5 In Gerard's time the flower was known as
" Harts ease, Pansies, Liue in Idlenes, Cull me to you,
and three faces in a hood."6 The name "heartsease"
properly belonged to the yellow wall-flower, which was
used as a cordial against melancholy. As for pansies,
"that's for thoughts," said Ophelia;7 but "pansy"
and "fancy" are not unlike in sound, and it was prob-

1 Gerard, u.s., 1597, lib. i, cap. 51, p. 71.
8 Fitzherbert, u.s.

3 King Lear and Henry V.t u.s., p. 143.

4 Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. i, 166-8.

8 H. N. Ellacombe, Plant Lore of Shakespeare, p. 151.

8 Gerard, u.s., 1597, lib. 2, c. 299, p. 705. 7 Hamlet, iv. 5, 176-7.

162 NATURAL HISTORY

ably to this accident that the " pretty Paunce " owed its
" amatory character."

Without following him too closely in his constant
allusions to the fields and woods, we may note that
Shakespeare evidently loved strength and brightness
in his trees and flowers. He prefers the bold oxlip
to the pale-faced company in the primrose path ; 1 the
dim violets are loved for their marvellous sweetness,
" sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes";2 his daffodils3
are not the twin-belled flowers of the south, but the old
Crusader's daffodils, " white as the sun, though pale
as a lily," which Ray found growing in crowds on his
journeys through Arden. If we looked with the poet
into the cottage gardens, we should find among the
favourites the bright and jewelled Crown Imperial, the
great Mary-lilies in sheaves, and the golden Flower-de-
luce.4 We pass with a brief reference to Caltha: —

" Here could I set you down the honeysuckle,

The pretty pink and purple pianet,

The bugles, borage, and the bluebottle,

The bonny belamour and violet."5

We might mention the pied gillyflowers, of which
Perdita would have none in her garden,6 for the sake
of Shakespeare's allusion to an odd fashion of his
time. It was the rage to grow pinks and carnations in
all sizes and colours. Gerard speaks in his Herbal of
a violet " Gilloflower," of purple and yellow blooms,7
and of " Pagiants or Pagion colour, Horse-flesh,
blunket,"8 with a bewildering profusion of epithets.
The gardeners, as Shakespeare has shown, professed
to create all their varieties by grafting and change of
soil ; but Ray learned in the next generation, from a

1 Winters Tale, iv. 4, 122-7. 2 Ibid., 120-2.

3 Ibid., 119-20. 4 Ibid., 126-7.

5 Caltha Poetarum, U.S., st. 24. ' Winter's Tale, U.S., 84-5.

7 Gerard, u.s., lib. 2, cap. 114, p. 373 (of Stocke Gilloflowers).

8 Id., cap. 172, p. 472 (of Clove Gilloflowers).

FOREST OF ARDEN 163

Dutch farmer named Lauremberg, that the flowers
were coloured red and green by watering the plants
with certain chemicals for a month and preventing
exposure to the dew.

Warwickshire, according to the old topographers,
was divided into the Fielden and the Wealden. South
of Avon, said Speed, the land was tractable under
cultivation, so " that the husbandman smileth in be
holding his paines, and the medowing pastures with
their green mantles so imbrodered with flowers, that
from Edg-hill wee may behold another Eden."1 The
Wealden was the woodland tract which is better known
as Arden. " I learned at Warwick," wrote Leland,
"that the most part of the shire of Warwick, that
lieth as Avon River descendeth on the right hand
or ripe of it, is in Arden (for so is ancient name of
that part of the shire)."1 It was a tradition in those
parts that a squirrel might once have skipped from
bough to bough across the whole breath of the county.
But Leland, writing about 1540, noticed a rapid shrink
ing of the woods near Stratford.3 When he was
exploring the country round Droitwich he remarked
that " making of salt is a great and notable destruction
of wood, and hath been, and shall be hereafter, except
men use much coppices of young wood."4 The Act
against the destruction of woods was passed soon
afterwards ; but Leland remarks that the salt-boilers
were fetching their wood from Arden, their wonted
supplies having failed.5 He spoke about it to one of

1 Speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, 1611, bk. i., fol. 53.

a Leland, //»'«., ed. Hearne, 1710-12, vol. iv. part ii. p. 51 (fol. 166 a).

3 Leland, id., p. 53 (fol. 167 b) : "Little wood near in sight about
Stratford." 4 Id., p. 87 (fol. 185 b).

5 Ibid.: "They be forced to seek wood as far as Worcester, and all the
parts about Bromsgrove, Alvechurch, and Alcester."

164 NATURAL HISTORY

the salters at the pans.1 "I asked him how much
wood he supposed yearly to be spent at the furnaces,
and he answered that by estimate there was spent
6,000 loads yearly. It is young pole-wood easy to
be cloven."

There were, after all, plenty of woods remaining a
few years afterwards, when Shakespeare was young ;
and we can see by many passages in the plays how
fond he was of the high woods, and the open moors,
and the rough sheep-farms set "in the skirts of the
forest, like fringe on a petticoat."

Looking at certain words of Caliban,2 we can perceive
that the English landscape was in the background of
the poet's mind, even as he wove a mirage of strange
forms from Africa or the Atlantic Islands.3 The find
ing a jay's nest shows that we are in the heart of some
Midland wood. " Let me bring thee where crabs
grow," the monster whines ; and the mind's eye sees
the wilding crab trees bowed down with red and
yellow fruit by the side of a glade in the forest.
" And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts" ;
and the phrase at least takes us far from the Atlantic,
and into the old English pastures on a sandy soil
where the " kipper-nuts " grew. These were the roots
of the drooping plant, looking like large parsley, which
is still esteemed a treasure by schoolboys. The root
was once considered a delicacy when boiled, or served
with pepper in hot gravy. In Shakespeare's time, we
are told, these plants grew in pastures and corn-fields
"almost everywhere";4 but we may observe that the
"earth-nut " of the chalk soils belonged to a separate
variety. "There is a field," says Gerard, "adjoining

1 Ibid.: "The people that be about the furnaces be very*ill coloured."

2 Tempest, ii. 2, 171-6.

3 So Mr. Morton Luce, u.s., Introduction, p. xvii : "There is the smallest
possible proportion of local ' fauna and flora," just enough to place the
spot somewhere beyond seas, and the rest is Stratford-on-Avon, or at
most England." 4 Gerard, u.s. , lib. 2, cap. 415, p. 906.

SHAKESPEARE'S ARDEX 165

to Highgate, on the right side of the middle of the
village, covered over with the same : and likewise in
the next field unto the conduit heads by Maribone, neer
the way that leadeth to Paddington by London, and in
divers other places."1

The " Arden "of As You Like It was a mere region
of romance, belonging to King Oberon's friend, the
good Sir Huon of Bordeaux. The name was derived
from the Belgian Ardennes, and it might no doubt be
connected in some slight degree with our Warwick
shire Arden. We may fairly suppose in each case
that the title of the district was given by its Celtic
occupants, and that the tribes were equally devoted
to the cult of the huntress Arduinna, or " Diana of
Arden." But there is little historical precision in the
play, or in Lodge's novel of Rosalynde, on which its
incidents were based.

In Lodge's version the scene is transferred to the
hot south ; the lovers hang their scrolls upon stone-
pines, and sing madrigals under fig trees and pome
granates. But Shakespeare is always thinking of his
English Arden, and brings the merry company back
to the fern-brakes and the shade of the greenwood
tree. The Duke is like the Earl in Lincoln green
whose mates were Scarlet and Little John.

"There they live like the old Robin Hood of England : they
say many young- gentlemen flock to him every day, and
fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden
world."2

The scenery, indeed, is mixed up in a perplexing
way. A painted snake slips into the bush by the
sleeping Orlando : —

" under which bush's shade
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
Lay couching1, head on ground."1

1 Gerard, ibid, (of Earth Nut, Earth Chestnut, or Kipper Nut).

2 As You Like It, i. i, 122-5. s Jd-> 'v- 3» 109-16.

166 NATURAL HISTORY

When Oliver loses his way, he mixes the terms of
English woodcraft with the description of an Italian

farm : —

" Pray you, if you know,
Where in the purlieus of this forest stands
A sheep-cote fenced about with olive-trees ? " l

Rosalind finds her copy of verses hung on a palm,
instead of being carved on a pine, as in the older
story. " Look here what I found on a palm tree!"
But this is no palm tree of the south ; it is the satiny
palm or sallow, which decked the Warwickshire
churches and " made the country-houses gay." In the
tract called The Supplication of the Poor Commons,
there is a delightful picture of river scenery which,
with slight alterations, might have been applied to
Shakespeare's home. A traveller is supposed to have
espied a fair church, standing in this case on a hill,
and pleasantly set round with groves and fields : "the
goodly green meadows lying beneath, by the banks of
a crystalline river, garnished with willows, poplars,
palm trees, and alders, most beautiful to behold."

Shakespeare showed his thorough knowledge of the
woodlands by his accurate rendering of the terms of
the chace. If we consult the great work on Forest
Law, we shall find that he gives them the exact mean
ing in which they were used by the Forest-judge at
his Justice-seat. No purlieu-man, for example, was
allowed to circumvent or ''fore-stall" the deer:3 "they
may not fore-stall, but only let slip at the tail " ; but it
was a common practice to get the wind of the game
and drive it back to some gap where the nets and toils

1 Id., iv. 3, 76-8.

2 Id., iii. 2, 185-6. See Rosalynde, ed. H. Morley, 1893, p. 49: "Where
they found carved in the bark of a pine tree this passion." p. 50: "Yonder
be characters graven upon the bark of the tall beech tree." p. 82 : " He
engraved with his knife on the bark of a myrrh tree, this pretty estimate
of his mistress's perfection."

3 Manwood, Treatise of the Forest Laws, ed. Nelson, 1717.

SPORTING TERMS IN SHAKESPEARE 167

had been pitched. Just so the King of Denmark
speaks of being "fore-stalled ere we come to fall:"1
and Hamlet himself cries to Guildenstern, " Why do
you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you
would drive me into a toil?" Again, in Love's
Labour's Lost, we find a more complicated allusion to
the practice :—

"The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing myself:
they have pitched a toil : I am toiling in a pitch, — pitch
that defiles."3

Serjeant Manwood gave lists of the "apt and meet
terms" belonging to the beasts of the chace. "You
shall say," he teaches us, "Dislodge the Buck!"
Turning to Shakespeare we read : —

" The Volscians are dislodged, and Marcius gone :
" A merrier day did never yet greet Rome." 4

Again, "You shall say Bolt the Cony!" In Cymbe-
line we find the "bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,
which the brain makes of fumes."3 One might
either uncape or unkennel the fox : and Hamlet speaks
of occulted guilt unkenneling itself in a speech ; '
and there is Mr. Ford of Windsor, with his " Search,
seek, find out : I'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox.
Let me stop this way first. So now, uncape." 7
When the chace is over, said the learned Serjeant,
you shall say, "the Deer is broken," or "the Fox
is cased." We might add a reference to the famous
maxim of " First case your hare " ; and when Parolles
has been "smoked" by old Lafeu, the French lords
vow " You shall see his fall to-night. . . . We'll make
you some sport with the fox ere we case him."8

1 Hamlet, iii. 3, 49. 2 Id., iii. 2, 361-2.

3 Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3, 1-3. * Coriolanus, v. 4, 44-5.

* Cymbeline, iv. 2, 300-1. • Hamlet, iii. 2, 85-6.
7 Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 3, 173-6.

* All's Well that Ends Well, iii. 6, 108, no-ii : see Manwood, v.s.,
sub Buck, Fox, etc.

168 NATURAL HISTORY

It is clear that Shakespeare was familiar with the
Cotswold sports, which were founded, indeed, by
Robert Dover, a lawyer of Barton-on-the-Heath.
Young Slender seems to know something about grey
hounds : " How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I
heard say he was outrun on Cotsall." "Sir, he's a
good dog and a fair dog : can there be more said ?
he is good and fair." l Anyone again who lived
within sound and smell of Paris Garden, and had
"seen Sackerson loose"2 and held him by the chain,
would know all about the "robustious and rough
coming on" of the mastiff,3 and bulldogs that "run
winking into the mouth of a Russian bear, and have
their heads crushed like rotten apples."4 Among the
Royal Archives of Denmark is a volume of travels by
Jean Fontaine and Louis Schonbub, written in 1630,
which contains passages illustrating the history of
public amusements. They seem to be as applicable
to Shakespeare's friends at the Globe as to the House
at Blackfriars, with which they chiefly deal. The
travellers write to the effect that everyone ought to see
the theatres kept up for comedies, bears, bulls, dogs,
and cock-fights: "in all these places fine tragedies
and comedies are played, and the beast-fights are
agreeable spectacles : and there are men and women
who for a penny will bring one tobacco and beer."

But we must return to the woodlands of Arden and
Shakespeare's own knowledge of the hunter's craft.
One may notice how Prince Hal uses a technical
phrase in rating Bardolph : "O villain, thou stolest a
cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with
the manner."5 To be taken with the manner, or

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, \. i, 91-2, 98-9. 2 Ibid., 307.

3 Henry V., iii. 7, 159. 4 Ibid., 153-5. * i Henry IV., ii. 4, 345-7.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE CHACE 169

"mainour," meant that a trespasser was caught in an
offence against the vert or venison of the forest. With
respect to the deer in particular, it implied that the
offender was guilty in woodland language of "back-
bare, bloody-hand, or dog-draw or stable-stand."
Dog-draw was the charge when a man had shot at a
deer and had a dog drawing after the wounded game.
The last-named offence consisted in standing by a tree
with bow bent or greyhounds in leash.1

The legitimate way of shooting from the stand is
described in the last part of Henry VI., where Sinklow
and Humphrey come on dressed as Keepers of a Chace
with cross-bows in hand. Their talk shows them not
to have been much better shots than the sportsmen
in As You Like It, who, as the Duke said, gored the
haunches of the dappled fools with their fork-headed
arrows.2 Sinklow, who appears by the First Folio to
have taken the part of the Head-keeper, proposes that
they shall both shoot at the same buck :

" And in this covert will we make our stand,
Culling- the principal of all the deer." 3

"That cannot be," says the other, "the noise of thy
cross-bow will scare the herd " ; and so they talk till
the quondam King comes in, "a deer whose skin is a
keeper's fee."4

We turn to the gayer scene in Love's Labour's Lost,
when the Princess gained such "credit in the shoot."5

"Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush
That we must stand and play the murderer in? " 6

We know how the poor little animal was knocked over,
and what a discussion arose about his age.7 The argu
ment seems to be taken from Manwood, whose firstsketch
of a work on Forest Law was passing about in manuscript

1 Manwood, v.s., sub Hunting. * As You Like It, ii. i, 22-5.

1 3 Henry VI., iii. I, 3-7. 4 Ibid., 22-3.

8 Love's Labours Lost, iv. i, 26. • Ibid., 7, 8. 7 Ibid., iv. sc. 2.

170 NATURAL HISTORY

long before the first appearance of his treatise in 1598.
As concerning Beasts of Chace, said the learned
Serjeant, the Buck, being the first, is called as
followeth : the first year a Fawn, the second year a
Pricket, the third a Sorel, the fourth year a Sore, the
fifth year a Buck of the first head, the sixth a Buck
or a Great Buck.1 "Truly, Master Holofernes, the
epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least :
but, sir, I assure ye, it was a buck of the first head."
' ' Sir Nathaniel, " says the Schoolmaster, ' ' Hand credo " ;
but honest Dull, the constable, breaks in, "'Twas not a
Hand credo; 'twas a pricket";2 and again, later on, he
insists again that it was a pricket that the Princess had
killed.3 " Will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the
death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, call I
the deer the princess killed a pricket."4 The solemn
sentences of Manwood are built into a rude kind of
rhyme : —

"The preyful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty pleasing

pricket ;
Some say a sore ; but not a sore, till now made sore

with snooting.
The dogs did yell : put L to sore, then sorel jumps from

thicket ;

Or pricket, sore, or else sorel ; the people fall a-hooting.
If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores, one sorel,
Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more
L."

It has been said that Shakespeare can have had little
affection for dogs, and allows his characters to rate them
as curs and mongrels on very slight provocation, as if
they were all " creatures vile," and dogs of no esteem.
We may enter a protest in favour of " Crab my dog " ; 5
and one might point out that old Lear talked of the
house-pets with some slight show of affection: "the

1 Manwood, u.s., sub Buck. 2 Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2, 8-12.

3 Ibid., 21-2. 4 Ibid., 50-3, et seqq.

5 Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 3 ; iv. 4.

DOGS IN SHAKESPEARE 171

little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweet-heart, see,
they bark at me ! "a But whether Shakespeare's likings
extended to " Lady, the brach," * and the toy-terriers, or
was confined to the generous hound, we must acknow
ledge that no writer of that time surpassed him in
knowledge of the subject. In the year 1536, Dr. Caius
published his Latin tract about British Dogs in the form
of a letter to Gesner the naturalist.3 There are passages
in the work, chiefly in the notices of foreign breeds,
which may be useful to students of Shakespeare : such,
for instance, is his account of the Maltese lapdogs,
which might, he thought, be carried for warmth, instead
of a muff or waistcoat ; and such is his picture of the
Icelandic and Pomeranian dogs with face and body all
covered with hair. We hear something about these
last when the ruffians fall out in Henry V. : " Pish ! "
said Nym. " Pish for thee, Iceland dog ! thou prick-
ear'd cur of Iceland!"4 is the retort of Ancient Pistol.
Dr. Caius divided the British varieties into three
principal kinds.5 He takes first the generous breeds
used in the chace. The harrier comes first, he says; but
\ he used the word in a wide sense, for his "harriers"
will hunt the fox, the red and fallow deer, the badger,
and the marten ; next come terriers, and then the blood
hound, flap-eared and with lips in deep flews. Among
the bloodhounds he places otter-hounds and ordinary
fox-hounds, and is particular to keep the word " brach "
for the female, contrary to the usage adopted by
Shakespeare. Next we come to the greyhound class,
in which may be set lym-hounds6 and gaze-hounds,

1 King Lear, iii. 6, 65-6.

8 Id., i. 4, 125. Also I Henry IV., iii. i, 240.

3 English translation (1576) by Abraham Fleming, printed in Arber's
English Garner, iii. 225-68.

* Henry V., ii. i, 43-4.

8 The tract is divided into five sections ; viz. §§ 1-3, Gentle dogs,
serving the game ; § 4, Homely dogs, apt for sundry necessary uses ;
§ 5, Currish dogs, meet for many toys.

' " Leviner or Lyemmer; in Latin, Lorarius."

172 NATURAL HISTORY

Irish deer-hounds, lurchers, and the miniature tumblers.
Of the dogs used in fowling we have hern-dogs, and
spaniels, setters, and water-spaniels or retrievers, which
used to be shaved like French poodles. His second
class takes in the rustic sheep-dogs and house-dogs, the
mastiff, sometimes used in hunting "wild swine," the
butcher's bull-dog, the useful creatures that drew water,
pulled little carts, or carried the tinker's stock, and the
farmer's dog, that barks at beggars, with other " defend
ing dogs " ; he even takes care to describe the " moon-
dog," which does nothing but " bay the moon."1 The
third and last class takes in the useful turnspits and
dancing-dogs, with a crowd of mongrels of all kinds.
With this curious list we should compare the catalogue
of dogs in Macbeth, adding for the sake of completeness
the bob-tail tyke and trundletail, from Edgar's song in
King Lear. 2 " We are men, my liege," says the first
murderer in Macbeth, and this is the tyrant's reply :—

"Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men ;
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves are clept
All by the name of dogs : the valued file
Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
The housekeeper, the hunter, every one
According to the gift which bounteous nature
Hath in him closed, whereby he does receive
Particular addition, from the bill
That writes them all alike."3

There are hunting scenes in Venus and Adonis and
in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew which are
so lifelike, that one might almost describe the look of
the pack and name the country where it was running.
The very names of the hounds will in some cases indi-

1 "He doth nothing- else but watch and ward at an ynche, wasting the
wearisome night season without slumbering or sleeping ; bawing and
wawing- at the moon (that I may use the word of Nonius) ; a quality in
mine opinion strange to consider."

2 King Lear, iii. 6, 69-76. 8 Macbeth, iii. i, 91-101.

SHAKESPEARE'S HUNTING SCENES 173

cate their breed, and the sound of their "gallant
chiding" ; l and we shall find, as in the hunt described
by Sidney in the Arcadia, that "their cry was com
posed of so well sorted mouths, that any man would
perceive therein some kind of proportion, but the
skilful woodmen did find a musick."2

" Every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry,"3

says the Amazon Queen, who had bayed the bear with
Hercules and Cadmus. "The Wood," wrote Sidney,
"seemed to conspire with them against his own citizens,
dispensing their noise through all his quarters, and
even the Nymph Echo left to bewail the loss of Nar
cissus, and became a hunter."4 Shakespeare uses the
same image in his description of the fate of "poor
Wat,"5 or "wily Wat," or "gentle Wat with long
ears," as various ballad-writers had called him. The
hunted hare has "cranks and crosses with a thousand
doubles"; his "many musets" "are like a labyrinth to
amaze his foes " ; he runs among the sheep and the
deer, and the banks "where earth-delving conies
keep," and the scent-snuffing hounds run silent,

" till they have singled
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out ;
Then do they spend their mouths : Echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies."6

"Tender well my hounds," the hunting lord calls out
to his whips on Wilmcote Heath :

" Brach Merriman, the poor cur is emboss'd ;
And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach."7

He uses a word more appropriate to a blown stag or
wild-boar than to a footsore hound ; the old sporting

1 Midsummer Night's Dream, iv. i, 119.

2 Arcadia, bk. i. (loth ed., 1655, p. 34).

3 Midsummer Night's Dream, iv. i, 120-1. 4 Arcadia, u.s.
s Venus and Adonis, 697. 8 Ibid., 679-96.
7 Taming of the Shrew, Ind. i, 16-18.

174 NATURAL HISTORY

books tell us that the deer is said to be " embossed "
when he creeps into holes and lies down, or when
he runs " stiff and lumbering," and slavers and foams
at the mouth, with other signs of fatigue. Looking
through the park at Wilmcote with the " hunting lord"
and his whips, we notice that "Silver" is especially
praised : —

" Saw'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good,
At the hedge-corner, in the coldest fault? " 1

"Silver" appears again in The Tempest, when Ariel
hunts the rascals with his visionary pack.

"Silver! there it goes, Silver! Fury, Fury! there, Tyrant,
there ! " 2

These latter we take as representing the black, or
black-and-tan hounds, like the western slow-hounds,
which were valued not only for their keen scent, but
for giving tongue in a deep, bell-like note : as when
the Goddess knows that some rough beast is found,
from the cry remaining in one place, and finds a
favourite hound of Adonis howling by himself in a
brake. When he has ceased his din,

" Another flap-mouth 'd mourner, black and grim,
Against the welkin volleys out his voice ;
Another and another answer him."3

But " Silver" was, of course, one of the slender, short
hounds, white in colour, with black ears and a black
spot on the back, which were the direct descendants of
the old milk-white English talbot. The rule for the
Midland counties, according to the School of Recreation,
was to use a middle-sized hound, " of a more nimble
Composure than" the slow-hound "and fitter for
Chase." For strength of cry the huntsman was told
to choose "the Loud Clanging (redoubling as it

1 Ibid., 19-20. 2 Tempest, iv. i, 257-8.

3 Venus and Adonis, 920-2.

VARIETIES OF HOUNDS 175

were) Mouth, and to this put the roaring, spending,
and whining Mouth, which will be loud, smart, and
pleasant " ; and such, said the writer, were the Wor
cestershire packs in his day. Some men loved most
to watch "cunning hunting" ; others thought of little
but the "musical discord" and "sweet thunder" of
the hounds. For sweetness of cry they "compounded
the kennel" of a few large hounds "of deep solemn
Mouths, and swift in spending, as the Base in the
Consort " ; then for a Counter-tenor, twice as many
"roaring, loud, ringing Mouths"; add some "hollow
plain, sweet Mouths " for the Mean ; and so shall your
Cry be perfect. Moreover, let the deep-mouthed
hounds be swift of their kind, the middle-sized ones
rather slow, like " Echo " in the Wilmcote pack ; when
" Belman " is praised as better than "Silver," the
lord cries, "Thou art a fool: if Echo were as fleet I
would esteem him worth a dozen such."1 Lastly, the
white, sweet-tongued hounds were to be as slender and
short-legged as might be ; and by taking care of these
points, says the instructor, the pack will be made to
"run even together."

In Cheshire and some other districts, where the coun
try was nearly covered with woods, it was necessary
to use large and heavy hounds, with hardly any im
provement upon the old slow-hound stock from which
they were originally derived. This seems to be the
breed which Theseus praised to Hippolyta when they
rode after a great hart on the first morning in May.
We see the influence of Chaucer in the reference to
Cadmus and to the joy of Duke Theseus in his hounds.
Hunting, as the Knight's Tale has it, was "all his
joye and appetyt " ; 3 and Shakespeare seems to rejoice

1 Taming of the Shrew, Ind. i, 22-7.

2 The School of Recreation; or, a Guide to the Most Ingenious Exercises
of Hunting, etc., by R. H., 1732, pp. 9-11.

1 Chaucer, Knightes Tale, 822 [Cant. Tales, A. 1680].

176 NATURAL HISTORY

with him, as he traces the pedigree from the famous
pack that " found the bear " for Hercules : —

" My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung1
With ears, that sweep away the morning dew ;
Crook-knee'd, and dewlapp'd like Thessalian bulls ;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each." l

If we look at Robert Greene's Menaphon, we shall
find a youngster of Thessaly debating with the Ar
cadian shepherds. They are talking of a ewe, "whose
fleece was as white as the hairs that grow on father
Boreas' chin, or as the dangling dewlap of the silver
bull."2 On so slight a framework of materials Shake
speare raised his marvellous work ; and so easily were
all kinds of knowledge taken up by him, that we might
easily believe, in reference to the passage quoted above,
that he used the old anecdote of Queen Elizabeth, which
was preserved by Anthony Wood. Richard Edwards,
we are told, produced his Palamon and Arcyte in I566,3
though the comedy was not published till 1585. The
comedy was acted before the Queen, in Christchurch
Hall, at Oxford. In the play was acted a cry of
hounds in the "quadrant," "upon the train of a fox,"
during the hunting of Theseus, "with which the young
scholars who stood in the windows were so much taken
(supposing it was real) that they cried out, ' Now now
— there there — he's caught, he's caught.' All which
the Queen merrily beholding said, ' O excellent ! those
boys in very troth are ready to leap out of the windows
to follow the hounds ! '" 4

1 Midsummer Night's Dream , iv. i, 123-8.

2 Greene, Menaphon, u.s., p. 74.

3 Collier, Annals, i. 191 (ed. 1831), gives date September 3rd, 1566.

4 Anthony Wood, Hist, and Ant. of the University of Oxford, ed.
J. Gutch, 1796, ii. 1 60.

LANDMARKS ON THE STRATFORD
ROAD AND IN LONDON

1586-1616

LANDMARKS ON THE STRATFORD
ROAD AND IN LONDON

1586-1616

I
SHAKESPEARE'S JOURNEY TO LONDON (c. 1586)

WE have no precise information as to Shake
speare's first settlement in London ; but the
evidence, as a whole, is in favour of his having left
Stratford in the year 1586. We may fairly suppose
that his journey would be made during the spring so
as to avoid the difficulties of winter travelling, and to
secure employment for the busy time of the year. In
the region of conjecture, Malone's speculations are not
without interest.1 He seems to have felt a shock at
the notion that the son of Mr. Shakespeare, Alderman
and sometime High Bailiff of the Borough, might
have made but a poor appearance when he first offered
himself at the playhouse door. He thought that the
poet might have been helped by his friend, Richard
Quiney, who wrote in such an affectionate strain from
the " Bell," when he came to town on a later occasion.
Was not this Richard, his schoolfellow, remarkably

1 Malone, Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, 1821, ii. 164-7.
179

i8o LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD

clever and forward in his Latin, and did he not after
wards serve in the shop where Mrs. Mary Shakespeare
dealt for her groceries? Malone supposed that Richard
or his father, Adrian Quiney, would have supplied
young Shakespeare with an introduction to Mr.
Bartholomew Quiney, who kept a draper's store near
the carved stone conduit in Fleet Street. So far as
we know, however, there was no connection between
the Stratford tradesman and the London merchant,
except, indeed, that they may both have derived their
descent from the stock of Quineys in the Isle of Man.
Malone returns to the charge with a second argu
ment. Richard Field, the son of Mr. Field, a tanner
at Stratford, had established himself as a printer
in London. He it was who brought out Venus and
Adonis in 1593, and Lucrece in the following year;
his friend and collaborator, Harrison, published the
little books at the sign of the " White Greyhound,"
near St. Paul's. Are we to suppose, suggests Malone,
that Mr. Richard Field would not have rescued
Shakespeare from poverty, or would have allowed "an
amiable and worthy youth " to remain in so degraded
a state ? He is referring, of course, to the story about
holding the horses. It was for Malone to find evi
dence for his own suggestion. We can neither affirm
nor deny that the poet brought a letter of introduction
to the printer. The critic himself rather preferred the
notion that Shakespeare's movements were governed
by his having formed some acquaintance with Lord
Warwick's or Lord Leicester's servants, or the Queen's
company of comedians. " It is, I think, much more
probable that his own lively disposition made him
acquainted with some of the principal performers who
visited Stratford, the elder Burbage, or Knell, or
Bentley." James Burbage was the builder and manager
of the chief London theatre, where Lord Leicester's
players were then engaged. Shakespeare, we are told,

SHAKESPEARE'S JOURNEY TO LONDON 181

might have enrolled himself among the players, and
may have arrived at his new home in company with the
''tragedians of the City."

Malone also said that the Sadlers would have been
sure to help a friend. Hamnet Sadler, as Mr. Hunter
showed, was connected with Hamlet Smith, whose
sister Helen was settled in London.1 She was married
to Mr. Stephen Scudamore, otherwise Skidmore, a
vintner at St. Stephen's, Coleman Street. Mr. Scuda
more was rich himself, and was said to be related to
Sir Clement Scudamore, one of the wealthiest of the
City merchants. But, unfortunately for the theory, it
is plain from the Vintners' records that "Stephen
Skidmore" died in 1584, leaving property at St.
Anne's, Blackfriars, to his Company on various chari
table trusts. Mr. Hunter also examined the story of
John Sadler, who became partner with Richard Quiney
in the grocer's shop at Bucklersbury.2 John Sadler
seems to have been a nephew of Hamnet and Judith.
His father had become impoverished by good living
and hospitality, and he hoped to restore the family by
marrying his son John to a good fortune. Hunter
found the details in a book, published in 1690, upon
"The Holy Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Walker, late wife
of A. W[alker], D.D., rector of Fyfield in Essex."
Mrs. Walker, he says, was John Sadler's daughter,
and a great part of the book consists of extracts « ' from
her old manuscript remains."3 Young John was
romantic, or attached elsewhere, and contrived to
make his escape. His father, as Mrs. Walker told the
story, "provided him good clothes, a good horse, and
money in his purse, and sent him to make his ad
dresses to the gentlewoman in the country. But he,
considering well how difficult a married condition was

1 Joseph Hunter, F.S.A., New Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shake
speare, 1845, i. 52, note. His authority was the will of Helen Scudamore,
1606. 2 Ibid., 69. 3 Ibid., 69-70, note.

182 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD

like to prove, instead of going awooing joined himself
to the carrier and came to London, where he had never
been before, and sold his horse in Smithfield." If we
follow the teaching of Sir John Falstaff, one would
buy a rogue like Bardolph at Paul's, and he would
buy his master a nag on a Friday morning at Smith-
field Market ; if he could add a wife from Bankside,
then were one "manned, horsed, and wived."1

John Sadler hacj no acquaintance in London "to
recommend or assist him." We may observe that
Mrs. Helen Scudamore did not die before 1606 ; but
her relationship to the young adventurer may have
been too remote for his purpose. He wandered from
street to street and house to house, asking if they
wanted an apprentice; "and though he met with
many discouraging scorns and a thousand denials, he
went till he light on Mr. Brooksbank, a grocer in
Bucklersbury."2

THE ROAD TO LONDON — ROLLRIGHT STONES — GRENDON UNDER
WOOD — AYLESBURY TO UXBRIDGE.

Shakespeare, it has been suggested, may have gone
through a similar experience. It is not improbable, at
any rate, that he would hang on to the Stratford
carriers for security against the Clerks of St. Nicholas,
like the rich yeoman in Henry IV. , and the travellers
who breakfasted off eggs and butter.3 The road by
which^he journeyed to London has been described by
many travellers before and since his day. The direct
way lay S.S.E. of Stratford, through Shipston-on-
Stour. After passing through this almost isolated

1 2 Henry IV., i. 2, 58-61. See Nares' Glossary, ed. Halliwell and
Wright, s.v. PAUL'S, ST. 2 Hunter, u.s.

8 i Henry IV., ii. i. An alternative route to the road hereafter de
scribed lay through Kineton and Banbury, joining the road from Shipston
and Chipping Norton at Bicester.

ROLLRIGHT STONES 183

piece of Worcestershire, it recrossed the Stour into
the southern corner of Warwickshire, and finally left
the county for Oxfordshire a little beyond Long
Compton. Just across the border, in Little Rollright
parish, stood the famous stone-circle known as " Roll-
rich stones." Mr. Loveday, to whose English travels
in the middle of the eighteenth century we already
have referred,1 on his way from Oxford to Stratford,
visited the stones. He and his companions went
down hill from Chipping Norton to Long Comp
ton, a "truly long village," and made a detour to
the circle. This, he writes, is "of no very regular
figure " ; the tallest of the stones was about seven feet
high, the others not above four and a half feet. A
single stone on the other side of the hedge in War
wickshire, nine feet high and upwards, was called the
King-stone, and was believed to mark the spot where
Rollo the Norwegian had been crowned. About a fur
long to the east were five other large stones called the
Knights which stood "rounding, as close together as
can be without touching."2 Camden had given his
high authority to the tradition about Rollo, which was
in truth almost as absurd as the theory of the rustics
in Shakespeare's day who believed that the monument
consisted of men turned into stones, and gave the
name of King to the tallest, " because he should have
beene King of England (forsooth) if he had once
scene Long Compton, a little towne so called lying
beneath, and which a man, if he go some few pases
forward, may see."3

1 Diary of a Tour in 1782, made by John Loveday of Caversham, ed.
J. E. T. Loveday, 1890, p. 4.

8 Hence known as the "Whispering Circle" (Virtue's National
Gazetteer, Hi. 339), or the "Whispering Knights " (Murray's Warwick
shire, 1899, p. 102.)

3 Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, 1610, p. 374. He continues,
" Other five standing at the other side, touching as it were, one another,
they imagine to have beene Knights mounted on horsebacke ; and the
rest the army." He connected the Rollo tradition with the battle between

1 84 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD

From Long Compton it was a distance of four miles
into Chipping Norton, where Mr. Loveday on his way
northward stayed at the "Talbot." The town, we are
told, stands on the side of a somewhat steep hill. The
church is a large building in the bottom ; the middle
aisle is almost all window ; there was a charnel-house
at the north-east end of the church like the famous
bonehouse at Stratford, which extended under the aisle
and was entered from outside. Thence the road crossed
Oxfordshire, keeping slightly to the south-east to
Bicester. In Church-Enstone parish, some five miles
out of Chipping Norton, a road forked off S.S.E. to
Woodstock and Oxford ; this, in its turn, divided into
branches in Kiddington parish, half-way to Woodstock.
The left-hand branch kept to the east of Woodstock,
and joined the direct road from Oxford to London,
near Wheatley.

The main road passed into Buckinghamshire a few
miles beyond Bicester. Two or three miles across the
border, on a side road, was a village which a slight
tradition connects with the name of Shakespeare.
Aubrey, in his casual notes on Shakespeare's life,
writes: "The humour of ... the constable, in Mid-
somernight's Dreame, he happened to take at Grendon
in Bucks — I thinke it was Midsomer night that he
happened to lye there — which is the roade from London
to Stratford, and there was living that constable about
1642, when I first came to Oxon : Mr. Josias Howe
is of that parish, and knew him."1 The Rev. Josias

English and Danes at Hook Norton in 917, and the subsequent battle
at the Four-Shire-Stone not far distant. Long Compton is situated
about midway between these two battlefields.

1 Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, 1898, ii. 226 (s.v. Shakespear). In
connection with Josias Howe, we may notice Aubrey's story in his notes
on Dr. Ralph Kettell, President of Trinity (id., ii. 23): " Mris. Howe,
of Grendon" — doubtless Josias' mother — "sent him (the president) a
present of hippocris, and some fine cheese-cakes, by a plain countrey
fellow, her servant. The Dr. tastes the wine : — ' What,' sayd he, ' didst
thou take this drinke out of a ditch?' and when he saw the cheese-

GRENDON UNDERWOOD 185

Howe was a tutor at Trinity College, where he had
been elected to a fellowship in 1637, about five years
before Aubrey came up. He was a native of Grendon
Underwood. The name of the village is sometimes
written Crendon, and care should be taken not to
confuse it with Long Crendon, near Thame, which
lies a little north of the road from Aylesbury to Oxford,
and is described in the life of Anthony Wood. The
rector of Grendon, about the time of Aubrey's boy
hood, was the Rev. Thomas Howe, at whose house the
tutor of Trinity was brought up. Josias was the rector's
son, and would know the village well. He was a
person of some culture and authority on matters of
literature, having been introduced to Ben Jonson, and
being the friend of Denham, Waller, and Shirley.
When William Cartwright's plays and poems were
published in 1651, Howe's commendatory verses ap
peared in company with those of James Howell, Henry
Vaughan the Silurist, and other distinguished Oxford
men.

Aubrey introduces his parenthesis about " Mid-
somer night" with some hesitation. The journey to
Stratford on Midsummer Day would have no relevance
to the title of the play. It was the first of May when
Theseus and Hippolyta rode hunting, as everyone had
known since Chaucer's day ; and it was only by a magical
glamour that Titania could sphere herself in summer
weather, and call up pictures of the vintage and of the
time of apricots and dew-berries. "A Midsummer
Night's Dream" is only a title for a story told on velvet
lawns and under the greenwood tree. Just in the same
way, a "Winter's Tale" is one that might be told at
Christmas in the blaze of the logs, about witches and

cakes : — ' What have we here, crinkum, crankum ? ' The poor fellow
stared on him, and wondered at such a rough reception of such a hand
some present ; but he shortly made him amends with a good dinner and
halfe-a-crowne. "

1 86 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD

ghosts, and "sad stories of the death of kings"; as
Mr. Booth speaks, in his preface to Diodorus, of the
children hearing a Winter Tale " and strange stories of
this brave Hero and that mighty Giant, who did wonders
in the Land of Utopia." Aubrey, at any rate, says
that there was a constable, to whom something hap
pened which appears again in the story of the "hempen
home-spuns " playing their interlude at Athens. The
manuscript is imperfect, and the story, such as it was,
is defaced. The Grendon people might find allusions
to their church porch in Much Ado about Nothing:
"Well, masters, we hear our charge: let us go sit here
upon the church-bench till two, and then all to bed."1
Bernwood Forest may supply the original of Titania's
bank "where the wild thyme blows. ":

The taproom at the old Ship Inn, as we learn
from an amusing essay on "Shakespeare in Bucks,"
may have been frequented by the originals of Quince
the Carpenter and Nick Bottom, and the two who
danced the Bergomask.3 The Grendon tradition,
arising we know not whence, makes the poet say that
there were "only two people worth talking to in the
place," and that these were the breeches-maker and
the tinker ; the suggestion is that they were no other

1 Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3, 94-6.

2 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, ii. i, 249. Camden, u.s., p. 395, speak
ing of the vale of Aylesbury, says : " It is all naked and bare of woods,
unlesse it be on the West side, where among others is Bernewood whose
Forresters surnamed de Borstall were famous in former times. About
this forrest the yeere after Christ's nativity 914, the Danes furiously
raged : and then happily it was, that the ancient Burgh was destroied,
whose antiquity Romane coined peeces of mony there found doe
testifie ; which afterwards became the roiall house of King Edward the
Confessor. But now it is a Country Village, and in stead of Buri-Hill,
they call it short, Brill" Brill is four or five miles south of Grendon.
Bicester, written by Camden "Burcester," has been supposed to derive
its name (Burenceaster, or Bernaceaster) from its neighbourhood to
Bernwood Forest. Cf. with Camden's account of the bareness of the
vale of Aylesbury, Leland's words quoted below, p. 188.

3 Midsummer Night 's Dream, v. i, 360-1.

THE CONSTABLE OF GRENDON 187

in the flesh than Robert Starveling, the tailor, that
played Thisbe's mother,1 and Tom Snout, who pre
sented a "sweet and lovely Wall."2 But then, for the
constable, we are taken back to Much Ado about
Nothing. Might not Dogberry be the man, it is asked,
with his "two gowns, and everything handsome about
him"?3 Dogberry is somewhat too majestical to be
copied from a rustic watchman ; and Goodman Verges
is too old, and "speaks a little off the matter."4
There is a wise officer in Measure for Measure who
comes nearer to the point : —

"If it please your honour, I am the poor duke's constable,
and my name is Elbow : I do lean upon justice, sir,
and do bring in here before your good honour two
notorious benefactors."5

On the whole, however, if there was such an officer at
Grendon to whom the poet intended to refer, "the
most desartless man to be constable " would be either
Hugh Otecake or George Seacole, to whom writing
and reading came by nature.6 George Seacole was
also a well-favoured man by gift of fortune. " You are
thought here," says Master Dogberry, "to be the
most senseless and fit man for the constable of the
watch ; therefore bear you the lantern." We know
nothing for certain about the matter. It is just possible
that a part of this kind may have got into the farces
constructed out of the episode of Pyramus and Thisbe.
These popular versions would naturally be filled with
"gag." The droll, composed on this theme and
called The Merry Conceited Humours of Bottom the

1 id., \. 2, 62-3.

8 Id., v. i, 157, " I, one Snout by name, present a wall."

s Much Ado about Nothing, v. 2, 88-9. * Id., iii. 5, lo-n.

5 Measure for Measure, 5i. i, 47-50.

6 Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, \.
189, remarks that unless the Grendon constable " had attained an in
credible age in the year 1642, he would have been too young for the
prototype."

1 88 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD

Weaver, was described by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in
the Shakespeare Society's Papers; it seems to have
been a popular farce acted by small companies at
Bartlemy Fair and country revels and gatherings.1

Aylesbury was some nine miles further on. Leland,
on his way from Oxford into Warwickshire, came by
way of Thame to Aylesbury, and so on to Bicester,
Banbury, and Warwick. On his way back to London,
he writes : " Or ever I passed into Aylesbury, I rode
over a little bridge of stone called Woman's Bridge
. . . and from this bridge to the town is a stone cause
way. . . . The town's self of Aylesbury standeth on
a hill in respect of all the ground thereabout, a
three-miles flat north from Chiltern Hills. The town
is neetly well builded with timber, and in it is a
celebrate market."2 It may be noticed that a Dane
called Jacobsen, travelling in this country about 1677,
mentions this market as showing the largest oxen in
England ; his travels are preserved among the manu
scripts in the Royal Library at Copenhagen. From
Aylesbury it was a distance of 1'hree miles to Wen-
do ver, " a pretty thorough-fare town."3 " There is a
causeway made almost through to pass betwixt Ayles
bury and it, else the way in wet time as in a low stiff
clay were tedious and ill to pass." Wendover, said
Leland, stood partly on the cliffs of the Chilterns and
partly in the roots of the hills. " Look as the country
of the Vale of Aylesbury for the most part is clean
barren of wood, and is champaign ; so is all the
Chiltern well-wooded, and full of enclosures." After

1 Shakespeare Society's Papers, 1844-9, *v> 13°> n°te ; (A Pew Observa
tions on the Composition of " the Midsummer Nighfs Dream")

2 Leland, Itinerary, ed. Hearne, 1710-12, iv. 100.

8 Leland, ibid., 101. Five miles is nearer the mark, according to our
modern reckoning. Leland's mile corresponds to about a mile and a half
in the present day. Thus, in counting up distances from Warwick, he
reckons the five miles to Barford Bridge as three, and the eighteen
miles to Banbury as twelve.

FROM AYLESBURY TO UXBRIDGE 189

another stage of three1 miles the travellers reached
Great Missenden, a thoroughfare village not yet digni
fied with a market; and here was a "pretty" brick
chapel ; and there was in Leland's time a Priory of
Black Canons standing at the bottom of the hill
among goodly grounds.2 The library of this monas
tery, consisting chiefly of manuscript romances of
chivalry, was purchased in Queen Elizabeth's reign
by Serjeant Fletewode, otherwise Fleetwood, Recorder
of London ; it was sold by his descendant in 1774
under the name of " Bibliotheca Monastico-Flete-
wodiana." Little Missenden was hardly to be ranked
as a village, consisting as it did at that time of a few
houses on each side of the road. Amersham had
only one street, but the buildings were larger and
newer, with clean timber and plaster, and it was "a
right pretty market-town on Friday."3 Uxbridge,
again, had but one long street, with excellent timbered
houses; "the Church," we are told, "is almost a
mile out of the town, in the very highway to London " ;
and this showed that it was not a very ancient town.4
It was not a parish of itself, but was a member of
Great Hillingdon, governed at that time by bailiffs
and constables "and two tything-men, who were also
called head boroughs." There was a market, however,
of a considerable antiquity ; and the townsmen had

1 i.e. five (see above).

1 Tanner, Notitia Monastica, 1787, Buckinghamshire, No. xvi. Dug-
dale, Monasticon, ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, 1830, vi. 547. Camden,
u.s., p. 394: "A religious house that acknowledged the D'Oilies their
founders and certaine Gentlemen surnamed De Missenden their especiall
benefactours upon a vow for escaping a ship-wracke. "

1 Leland, ibid. He gives the name its old form, Hagmondesham, or
Homersham. In Johnson's Life of Waller, we find the form Agmondes-
ham. Camden, u.s., p. 394, has "And then in the Vale Amersham, in
the Saxon tongue Agmundesham, which vaunteth it selfe not for faire
buildings, nor multitude of inhabitants, but for their late Lord Francis
Russell Earle of Bedford, who being the expresse paterne of true
piety and noblenesse lived most deerely beloved of all good men. "

4 Leland, ibid., 102.

190 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

subscribed to build a chapel-of-ease as early as the
reign of Henry VI. An account of the place will be
found in Norden's Speculum Britannue, first published
in 1593. x

III

UXBRIDGE TO TYBURN — ST. GILES*

After crossing the long bridges over the Colne and
passing through Uxbridge, the road went on to
Southall and the thoroughfare at Acton. After pass
ing the Gravel Pits at Kensington, the traveller rode
under the great brick wall of Hyde Park, crossing the
Westbourne Brook, "the original source of the Ser
pentine," 2 and so to the place of execution at Tyburn,
and the banqueting-house near the Marylebone Con
duits. Mr. Loftie's History of London contains a full
account of the changes by which the odious name of
Tyburn was shifted from the village of Marylebone to
the triangular piece of waste land near the Marble
Arch.3 It may be to the shape of the ground that
Shakespeare refers in a passage of Love's Labour's
Lost : —

" Thou mak'st the triumviry, the corner-cap of society,
The shape of Love's Tyburn that hangs up simplicity." 4

That a gallows was at one time left standing there is
shown by Aubrey's anecdote about Sir Miles Fleetwood
of Missenden, who was Recorder of London about
the accession of James I. " He was a very severe
hanger of highwaymen, so that the fraternity were
resolved to make an example of him : which they

1 Spec. Brit., ed. of 1723, p. 41 : "They have a Chappell of Ease
buylt by Ro. Oliuer, Thomas Mandin, John Palmer and lohn Barforde
of the same towne. In the sixth and twentith yeere of Henry the sixt."
Sub Vxbridge or Woxbridge.

2 W. J. Loftie, History of London , 1883-4; "• 236.

8 Id., ii. 217-20. * Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3, 53-4.

TYBURN AND MARYLEBONE CONDUITS 191

executed in this manner : They lay in wait for him
not far from Tyburn, as he was to come from his
house at (Missenden) in Bucks ; had a halter in readi
ness, brought him under the gallows, fastened the
rope about his neck, his hands tied behind him (and
servants bound), and then left him to the mercy of his
horse, which he called Ball. So he cried, ' Ho, Ball !
Ho ! Ball ! ' and it pleased God that his horse stood
still, till somebody came along, which was half a
quarter of an hour or more ; He ordered that this
horse should be kept as long as he would live, and it
was so, — he lived till 1646." l Mr. Loftie describes
the annual festival at which the conduits were in
spected, and quotes Strype's account of the merry
making of the i8th of September, 1562, when the
Lord Mayor and Aldermen visited the Conduit-heads :
they hunted a hare before dinner, and after dinner a
fox: ''there was great cry for a mile, and at length
the hounds killed him at the end of St. Giles's, with
great hollowing and blowing of horns at his death."2
Leland counts his stage from Acton to " Maryburne
Brooke and Parke " as four miles. "This brook," he
writes, "runneth by the Park-wall of St. James";3
he is here referring to the Tyburn Stream, which in
his time ran across the high-road, passing from Mary-
lebone Lane to a village now included in Mayfair.
It is now carried beneath the Green Park and under
the front portion of Buckingham Palace.

At Tyburn Tree there was a parting of the ways.
For Westminster and Charing Cross one turned down
by the fields and lanes. We have letters written in the
next generation which must be applicable to those
earlier times. Going through the park was "as pretty
a piece of road as ever a crow flew over. " From the lane
outside the wall there was "a far distant prospect of

1 Aubrey, u.s., i. 253. 2 Loftie, u.s., ii. 220.

3 Leland, H.S., iv. 102.

192 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

hills and dales," meadows full of cattle, " little wilder
nesses of blackbirds and nightingales." Gerard made
notes about several rare plants which he found not far
from the roadside, of which a few examples may be
mentioned. The Great Burnet, for example, was found
by Gerard " upon the side of a cawsey " leading out of
the road between Paddington and Lisson Green.1 He
found plenty of Pig-nuts near the Marylebone Conduit-
heads.2 His editor also talks of seeing the Bugloss
''upon the drie ditch bankes about Pickadilla."3 The
wild Clary grew in the fields of Holborn, " neere unto
Graies Inne, in the high way by the end of a bricke
wall " ; the purple Clary grew in his own garden.4
Gerard found Rue-leaved Whitlow-grass "up on the
bricke wall in Chauncerie lane, belonging to the Earle
of Southampton, in the suburbes of London, and
sundrie other places."5

The road ran through the fields to Lord Lisle's at
St. Giles', where the old Leper Hospital had formerly
stood ; and here generations of poor prisoners had
rested on their way to Tyburn, and had been allowed
great draughts of ale from St. Giles' Bowl, "thereof to
drink at their pleasure, as to be their last refreshing in
this life."6 The custom survived in a squalid gin-
drinking way until the place of execution was altered.
"At the Dragon I take my gill," was the song of the
dismal highwayman ; or, if he pleased, he might take
his parting-glass at the door of the "Bow" or the
"Angel."7 St. Giles in the Fields was a country
village when Shakespeare came to town. The map
attributed to Ralph Aggas shows an open road as far

1 Gerard, Herball, 1597, lib. ii. cap. 403, p. 889.

2 Id., lib. ii. cap. 415, p. 906.

3 Id., ed. T. Johnson, 1633, lib. ii. cap. 283, p. 799.

4 Id., 1597, lib. ii. cap. 255, p. 628. 5 Id., lib. ii. cap. 186, p. 500.

6 Stow, Survey of London, 1598, ed. H. Morley, p. 399.

7 See W. H. Ainsworth's lyric in Jack Sheppard, epoch i. chap, v.,
"Where Saint Giles's church stands, once a lazar-house stood."

ST. GILES' AND GRAY'S INN 193

as Gray's Inn, with a few buildings about Holborn
Bars, and down as far as the Gateway in Gray's Inn
Lane. But notwithstanding the proclamations against
building near the City, the thin lines of houses were
always creeping westwards on both sides of the way.
" On the high street," says the Sutvey in the edition of
1618, " have ye many fair houses builded, and lodgings
for Gentlemen, Innes for Travellers, and such like, up
almost (for it lacketh but little) to St. Giles in the
Fields."1

GRAY'S INN — THE REVELS OF 1594 AND "THE COMEDY OF ERRORS"

— " TWELFTH NIGHT " AT THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, l6oi-2

The Gray's Inn Fields extended over a wide tract
from the Inn Gateway to Kentish Town and Islington.
Henry, Lord Berkeley, who died as late as 1613, used
when young to hunt in Gray's Inn Fields "and in all
those parts towards Islington and Heygate " while
living with his mother at Kentish Town and at the
family mansion in Shoe Lane ; and his biographer
states that he was always accompanied by a crowd of
Inns-of-Court men, as well as by the hundred and fifty
liveried retainers, "that daily then attended him in
their Tawny coates."

Mr. Douthwaite, in his learned history of Gray's
Inn, has given an interesting account of the Masques
for which the Society was famous.3 These Masques,
or "disguisings," were usually performed for the

1 Stow, u.s., ed. 1618, p. 823.

<J John Smyth, The Lives of the Berkeley's . . . from 1066 to 1618, ed.
Sir John Maclean, F.S.A., 1883, ii. 281-2.

3 W. R. Douthwaite, Cray's Inn, its History and Associations, 1886,
chap. x. pp. 222-46.
O

194 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

amusement of visitors during the period allotted for
Revels. The old dictionaries define Revels and
revelling as being noisy pastimes, or (as we might
say) old-fashioned Christmas sports, such as dancing,
dice-playing, round games, " used in Princes' Courts,
noblemen's houses, or Inns of Court, and commonly
performed at night."1 We are told that at u Grand
Christmas," as celebrated in the Inner Temple, the
Master of the Game summoned his huntsman into the
Hall, who came with a purse-net, and a cat and a fox,
bound to a staff; "and with them nine or ten Couple
of Hounds, with the blowing of Hunting-Homes. And
the Fox and Cat are by the Hounds set upon, and
killed beneath the Fire."2 Mr. Douthwaite describes
the last occasion on which the Solemn Revels took
place at the Inner Temple Hall.3 This was the feast
held on the 2nd of February, 1733-4, to cielebrate the
promotion of Mr. Talbot to the Woolsack. After
dinner, we are told, every member of a mess was
supplied with a flask of claret, besides the usual
allowance of port and sack: "the master of the
revels took the Lord Chancellor by the right hand,
who with his left took Mr. Justice Page, and, the
other Serjeants and benchers being joined together,
all danced about the coal fire three times, according
to the old ceremony (or rather round the fire-place, for
no fire nor embers were in it), while the ancient song,
accompanied with music, was sung by one Tony Aston,
dressed as a barrister." "Dancing to song," said
Bacon, " is a thing of great state and pleasure " ;

1 Minsheu, Ductor in Linguas, 1617, gives the definition " Revels
seemeth to be derived from the French word Reveiller. ... It signifieth
with us sports of dancing, masking, comedies, tragedies, and such like
used in the King's house, the houses of Court, or of other great person
ages. The reason whereof is, because they are most used by night,
when otherwise men commonly sleepe and be at rest."

2 Dugdale, Origines Juridiciales, 1666, cap. 57, p. 154.

3 Douthwaite, u.s. , p. 244-6.

REVELS AT GRAY'S INN 195

but he added in the same essay that "dancing in
song " was a mean and vulgar thing ; whereas "acting
in song, especially in dialogues," seemed to him to
have "an extreme good grace."1 Bacon, it will be
remembered, was often engaged in managing the
Revels at Gray's Inn ; his kindness in matters of this
" lighter and less serious kind " is fully acknowledged
in the dedication to the Masque of Flowers, first re
presented in 1613-14, " by the gentlemen of Gray's
Inn," at the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and
reproduced in our own time at Gray's Inn and the
Middle Temple on the occasion of Queen Victoria's
Jubilee.2

Besides the "Solemn Revels "above-mentioned, there
were certain " Post Revels," performed by the " better
sort" of young Templars "with Galliards, Corrantoes,
and other dances ; or else with stage plays"; " but of
late years," said Dugdale, "these Post Revells have
been dis-used, both here and in the other Innes of
Court."3

Mr. Douthwaite mentions the representation of a
comedy at Gray's Inn on the i6th of January, 1587-8,
at which Lord Burghley and other dignitaries were
present.4 He shows also that on the 28th of February
following eight members of the Society were engaged
in producing a tragedy on the " Misfortunes of Arthur,"
to be represented before the Queen at Greenwich.5
Thomas Hughes was the author, and it is said that
Bacon, who was then a reader, took part in devising
the dumb shows. Mr. Spedding has shown in his
Biography that Bacon must also have been the author
of some of the speeches of the " Prince of Purpoole,"

1 Bacon, Essay xxxvii., "Of Masques and Triumphs." (Works, ed.
Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, 1858, vi. 467).

2 See quotations in Douthwaite, u.s., p. 223.

3 Dugdale, u.s., cap. 61, "The Middle Temple," p. 205.

4 Douthwaite, u.s., p. 225. " Id., pp. 226-7.

196 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

prepared for the Revels of 1594.* As to the play, we
may observe that, though King Arthur was several
times shown on the stage, the Gray's Inn version may
very possibly have suggested some of the reminiscences
of Justice Shallow. "When I lay at Clement's Inn —
I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show."2 "I do
remember him/' says Sir John, "at Clement's Inn
like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring."3
The Revels of 1594 are described in a rare book called
Gesta Grayorum ; or, the History of Henry, Prince of
Purpoole,* from which extracts have been made by
Mr. Spedding and Mr. Douthwaite.5 The "Prince"
was the lord of misrule at Gray's Inn, his duties
answering to those of the Constable Marshal at the
Temple, and the Prince de la Grange at Lincoln's Inn.
The volume in question was not published till 1688,
but it contains a contemporary account of the perform
ance of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. "Besides
the daily Revels and suchlike Sports, which were
usual, there was intended divers Grand nights for the
Entertainment of Strangers." What the crowd would
be like we may judge by a story in Webster and Dek-
ker's Westward Ho! "This last Christmas a citizen
and his wife, as it might be one of you, were invited to

1 Spedding, Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, 1861, i. 342-3. "That
the speeches of the six councillors were written by him, and by him
alone, no one who is at all familiar with his style either of thought or
expression will for a moment doubt."

2 2 Henry IV., iii. 2, 299-300. The reference to "Arthur's show,"
however, has a distinct and recognised origin which has nothing to do
with stage-plays. 3 Ibid., 331-3.

4 Printed by Nichols in Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (ed. 1823), iii. 262.
The "prince's " full style is " The High and Mighty Prince Henry, Prince
of Purpoole, Arch Duke of Stapulia and Bernardia, Duke of High and
Nether Holborn, Marquis of St. Giles and Tottenham, Count Palatine of
Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell, Great Lord of the Cantons of Islington,
Kentish Town, Paddington, and Knights-Bridge, Knight of the Most
Heroical Order of the Helmet, and Sovereign of the same : who reigned
and died A.D. 1594."

5 Spedding, u.s., pp. 332-41 ; Douthwaite, u.s., pp. 227-30.

REVELS OF 1594 197

the Revels one night at one of the Inns-o'-court : the
husband, having business, trusts his wife thither to
take up a room for him before."1 This looks as if
there were reserved seats in stages or galleries, if not
boxes, like the "rooms" in the theatre. We are told
of the torchmen at the gate, and the "whifflers" who
kept the road clear, and of the clamorous crowd "able
to drown the throats of a shoal of fishwives." On
December 28th, the second of the Grand Nights, the
actors came over from Shoreditch to entertain the
guests with a play ; but the beholders were so nu
merous that there was no space for the performers.
The guests from the Temple retired in displeasure,
and the "throngs and tumults," as we are told, "did
somewhat cease, although so much of them continued,
as was able to disorder and confound any good Inven
tions whatsoever." We can imagine the dismay of the
actors at all this noise. The scene recalls the words :
"By my troth, your town is troubled with unruly
boys." '•' "In regard whereof," the narration continues,
"as also for that the sports intended were especially
for the gracing the Templarians, it was thought good
not to offer anything of Account, saving Dancing and
Revelling with Gentlewomen." We now learn what
the managers included in their idea of poor inventions
of no account. " After such sports, a Comedy of Errors
(like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the
Players, so that night was begun and continued to the
end, in nothing but Confusion and Errors ; whereupon
it was ever afterwards called The Night of Errors" 3
It was, in truth, a wild "Tartar limbo,"4 if we borrow

1 West-ward Ho! (ed. Dyce, 1857) act v. sc. 4. Fleay, Biographical
Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, ii. 269-70, ascribes "nearly all" acts
iv. and v. to Dekker "in Dec., 1604, "the rest to Webster "in the sum
mer of 1603. . . . Dekker's part is personally satiric."

2 Comedy of Errors^ iii. i, 62.

3 Gesta Grayorum, u.s.

4 Comedy of Errors, iv. 2, 32.

198 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

the phrases of the comedy, full of sirens and wizards,1
enough to make a man "as mad as a buck":2

" This is the fairy land : O spite of spites !
We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites ;
If we obey them not, this will ensue,
They'll suck our breath or pinch us black and blue."3

Next night was held one of those burlesque Courts
of which the lawyers were so fond ; 4 and it was
pleaded that some sorcerer had interfered, the in
nuendo being evidently directed against Bacon, and
that he had foisted in "a company of base and
common fellows," who had made the disorder worse
by their " play of Errors and Confusions." The
company thus rudely described most probably in
cluded Shakespeare. The selection of his comedy is in
favour of this idea ; and that he was one of the leading
actors appears by the fact that he went with Burbage
and Kempe to act before the Queen at Greenwich on
the 26th and 28th of December, 1594, a few days after
the performance at Gray's Inn. It may be assumed
from the whole scope of the narrative that The Comedy
of Errors was not presented as a new piece. It was
obviously put on as a makeshift ; and there are other
circumstances which have led the commentators to
suppose that it was produced before 1594. The
Mencschmi of Plautus in an English version was not
published before the following year ; but Malone
showed from the printer's own advertisement that the
book had been for a long time circulating in manu
script.5 The joke in the play about France " making
war against her heir " 6 would not have been very
appropriate after the 25th of July, 1593, when Henry
IV. of France made his peace with the Parisians.

1 Id., Hi. 2, 47 ; iv. 4, 61. 2 Id., Hi. i, 72.

3 Id., ii. 2, 191-4. 4 Gesta Grayorum, ii.s.

5 Malone, op. cit., ii. 322. B Comedy of Errors, iii. 2, 126-7.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS 199

The use of the name Menaphon may show that the
play was subsequent to the publication of Greene's
novel of that title in 1589.! Nell the kitchen-maid,
again, is called Dowsabel,'- with reference apparently
to Drayton's " Dowsabel of Arden," who wore "a frock
of frolic green " in his pastoral of 1593 :—

"This maiden in a morn betime,
Went forth when May was in the prime,

To get sweet setywall,
The honeysuckle, the harlock,
The lily, and the lady-smock,

To deck her summer hall."3

But here again we must remember that the poems in
the Shepherd's Garland may have been handed about
for some time in manuscript, and we must be content
with the general statement that the play probably
appeared between 1591 and the beginning of 1593.

On the 3rd of January following there was another
Grand Night at Gray's Inn, at which the players again
attended and went through their performance with
great success.4 The list of guests invited by "our
Prince" included Lord Burghley, "foremost in aught
that concerned the welfare of his chosen inn,"5 the
Earl of Essex, "the Queen's great general," Lord
Compton, Sir Robert Cecil, the young Earl of South
ampton, "with a great number of knights, ladies,
and very worshipful personages : all which had con
venient places, and very good entertainment, to their
good liking and contentment." The next day the
Prince of Purpoole dined in state with the Lord Mayor
at Crosby Place, "attended by eighty gentlemen of
Gray's Inn and the Temple, each of them wearing a
plume on his head."

1 Id., v. i, 367-8 : — "That most famous warrior,

Duke Menaphon."

2 Id., iv. i, no. 3 Drayton, Pastorals, eclogue iv.
4 Gesta Grayorum, u.s. 5 Douthwaite, it.s., p. 225.

200 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

Another allusion to revels of this kind was found in
a letter written by a barrister named Manningham, in
February, 1601-2. l The writer is describing certain
revels at the Middle Temple, and he compares Shake
speare's new comedy to an old Italian play called
Gr Ingannati) which had appeared as early as 1542.
" At our feast wee had a play called Twelve Night, or
what you will, much like the Commedy of Errores, or
Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere to that
in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to
make the steward beleeve his lady widdowe was in
love with him, by counterfayting a letter as from his
lady in general termes, telling him what shee liked
best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling,
his apparraile, &c., and then, when he came to practise,
making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad."
This entertainment took place at the Candlemas Feast
held on February 2nd, 1601, O.S., when the Judges
and Serjeants were entertained. Dugdale has left
some account of this festivity. There were two such
feasts in the year, appointed for All Saints' Day and
the Purification of our Lady, or Candlemas Day.
The invitations were at first confined to the members
of the profession ; " but of later time, divers Noblemen
have been mixed with them, and solemnly invited
as Guests to the Dinner, in regard they were formerly
of the Society." When the company was assembled
"two antient Utter-Baristers " brought basons and
ewers of sweet water for washing their hands, " and
two other like antient barristers with Towells."2

1 Printed and in facsimile in Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 82.
y Dugdale, u.s., cap. 61, p. 205.

GRAY'S INN GARDENS 201

THE GARDENS OF GRAY'S INN — JOHN GERARD'S GARDEN IN
HOLBORN

It appears from the records of the Society that the
gardens of Gray's Inn were laid out under the direc
tion of Bacon about the year 1597. Mr. Douthwaite
quotes an order of the 2Qth of April, 1600, in which
allowance was made for money disbursed by him
"about the Garnishing of the walkes;"1 and men
tions a summer-house upon a small hillock, "open
on all sides, and the roof supported by slender pillars,"
which bore an inscription showing that it had been
erected by Bacon in memory of Jeremy Bettenham,
formerly Reader of Gray's Inn.2 The same records
show that a considerable number of elms, with three
walnut-trees, "and one young ash near the seat," had
been planted as early as I583.3 The walks after
wards became a place of public resort, much visited
"by the gentry of both sexes," especially after the
Restoration. We need here only refer to two
passages in letters written from Venice by James
Howell to his friend Richard Altham at Gray's Inn.
"Did you know all," says Howell, "you would wish
your Person here a-while ; did you know the rare
beauty of this Virgin City, you would quickly make
love to her, and change your Royal Exchange for the
Rialto, and your Gray's-Inn- Walks for St. Mark's-Place
for a time. Farewell, dear Child of Vertue, and
Minion of the Muses, and love still— Yours, J. H."4
In the other letter he addresses his friend as "dear

1 Douthwaite, u.s., p. 183.

2 Id., pp. 184-5, quoted from London and its Environs described, 1761,
»>». 58. 3 jj t> pp 185-6.

4 Howell, Epp. Ho-Elianae, ed. Joseph Jacobs, 1892, p. 73 (bk. i. § i,
letter 32, dated i July, 1621).

202 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

Dick," and says: "I would I had you here with a
wish, and you would not desire in haste to be at Gray's-
Inn, tho' I hold your Walks to be the pleasant'st
place about London, and that you have there the
choicest Society." l These letters appear to have been
written about five years after Shakespeare's death.

There was a garden on the other side of the street,
which must also have been familiarly known to the
poet. John Gerard, the botanist and author of the
celebrated Herbal, lived in Holborn, just inside the
City Liberties, between Chancery Lane and Staple
Inn. We shall select a few specimens from his herb-
garden, before going through the rose-walks and
orchards. We take the tomato first, of which the red
kind was already well known in London, and the
yellow had just been introduced. "Apples of Love,"
says Gerard, "grow in Spaine, Italie, and such hot
countries, from whence my selfe have received seedes
for my garden, where they do increase and prosper . . .
the apple of Love is called in Latine Pomum
Aureum ... in English apples of Love, and
golden apples . . . howbeit there be other golden
apples whereof the poets do fable growing in the
gardens of the daughters of Hesperus."* Shake
speare's allusions to golden apples are confined to the
Ovidian fable : there is Cupid, a little Hercules,
"still climbing trees, in the Hesperides : " 3 and in a
passage of more doubtful authorship is the picture of
a Lady apparelled like the Spring : —

" Before thee stands this fair Hesperides,
With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched ;
For death-like dragons here affright thee hard." 4

Something should be said of potatoes, including in

1 Id., p. 69 (bk. i. § i, letter 30, dated 5 June, 1621).
'2 Gerard, op. cit., lib. ii. cap. 55, p. 275.

3 Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3, 340-1 : "For valour, is not Love a
Hercules," etc. 4 Pericles, i. i, 12, 27-9.

GERARD'S GARDEN 203

the term the yams, or sweet-potatoes, twice mentioned
in the plays, as well as the more familiar "Potatoes
of Virginia," which were brought to this country by
Sir Walter Ralegh. Of the first kind Gerard writes
as follows : " This plant which is called of some . . .
Skyrrits of Peru, is generally of us called Potatus or
Potatoes. It hath long rough flexible branches trail
ing upon the ground, like unto Pompions; whereupon
are set rough hairie leaves, very like unto those of the
wilde Cucumber."1 The flower, he adds, remained
unknown : " yet have I had in my garden divers roots
that have florished unto the first approch of winter, &
have growen unto a great length of branches, but
they brought not foorth any flowers at all." Again,
he tells us that the potatoes grow in India (by which
he means the West Indies and South America), in
Barbary, and in Spain: "of which I planted divers
rootes (that I bought at the exchange in London) in
my garden, where they flourished untill winter, at
which time they perished and rotted." Among the
Spaniards, Italians, and "Indians," these yams or
batatas were valued as being "a meane betweene
flesh and fruit." "Of these rootes may be made con
serves, no less toothsome, wholesome, and daintie,
than of the flesh of Quinces. And likewise these
comfortable and delicate meates, called in shops
Morselli, Placentulae, and divers other such like.
These rootes may serve as a ground or foundation,
whereon the cunning confectioner or Sugar baker may
worke and frame many comfortable delicate conserves,
and restorative sweete meates." Of the Sea-holly,
coupled by Falstaff with these sweetmeats, when he
challenged the sky to rain "potatoes,"2 Gerard says

1 Gerard, op. cit., lib. ii. cap. 334, p. 780. The skirwort, or skirret
proper, was the water-parsnip (stum sisarum). See Nares' Glossary, s.v.

2 Merry Wives of Windsor, v. 5, 20-4 : " Let the sky rain potatoes . . .
hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes."

204 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

that he had both kinds in his London garden, and
"that the rootes condited or preserved with sugar . . .
are exceeding good to be given unto old and aged
people that are consumed and withered with age." l

The root naturalised in this country was called Pap
pus, or Potato of America, or of Virginia, because it
had not only the shape, but something of the taste
and virtue of the better-known yam from Peru. " It
groweth naturally in America," says the Herbalist,
"where it was first discovered, as reporteth C. Clusius,
since which time I have received rootes hereof from
Virginia, otherwise called Norembega, which growe
and prosper in my garden, as in their own native
countrie."2

Of tobacco, "the Indian pot-herb," Gerard had three
kinds under cultivation, distinguished as the Henbane
of Peru, the Trinidada Tobacco, and the dwarf variety.3
Tobacco "was first brought into Europe out of the
prouinces of America, which is called the west Indies
. . . but being now planted in the gardens of Europe,
it prospereth very well."4 Gerard recommended the
juice boiled with sugar into a syrup; but "some use
to drinke it (as it is tearmed) for wantonnesse or rather
custome, and cannot forbeare it, no, not in the middest
of their dinner"; and he earnestly commends the syrup
"above this fume or smokie medicine."5 The Yellow
Henbane, or English tobacco, was often used instead
of the Indian herb, and it was even imported from
Trinidad and Virginia under the names of "Petum,"
or " Petun," and " Nicosiana," that belonged of right
to the true tobacco. We are told that many preferred
to use this "doubtful Henbane," and that it produced
the desired effects: "which any other herbe of hot
temperature will do," says Gerard, "as rosemarie,

1 Gerard, op. tit., lib. ii. cap. 469, p. 1,000.

2 Id., lib. ii. cap. 335, p. 781. 3 Id., lib. ii. cap. 63, p. 286.

4 Ibid., pp. 287-8. * Id., lib. ii. cap. 62, pp. 284-5.

GERARD'S TOBACCO-PLANTS 205

time, winter sauorie, sweet marierome, and such like."1
He might have included colt's-foot, though it was con
sidered to be of a colder temperature ; this was used at
Bartholomew Fair to adulterate the rank Mundungus.
"Three-pence a pipe-full I will have made," says
Ursula, "of all my whole half-pound of tobacco, and
a quarter of pound of colt's-foot mixt with it too, to
[eke] it out"2 We may read in another play how the
"rich smoke," at sixpence a pipe-full, was served in a
smart druggist's shop. The herb is kept in a lily-pot,
and minced on a maple-block ; there are " Winchester
pipes," and silver tongs, and a fire from shavings of
juniper.3

SHAKESPEARE A HOUSEHOLDER IN BISHOPSGATE —
CROSBY PLACE

We find Shakespeare, towards the end of his life,
purchasing an old house in the Liberty of Blackfriars,
nearly opposite the Church of St. Andrew by the

1 Ibid., p. 285.

• Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, ii. i. The editors of Nares, op. cit.,
quote Poor Robin (1713): "Since the man persuaded his master . . .
that he should not put so much colt's-foot in his tobacco." Cf. also
Beaumont and Fletcher, Nice Valour, iii. 2 : —

"Our modern kick,
Which has been mightily in use of late
Since our young men drank colt's-foot."
3 The Alchemist, \. i :—

" He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not
Sophisticate it with sack-lees or oil,
Nor washes it in muscadel and grains,
Nor buries it in gravel, under ground,
Wrapp'd up in greasy leather . . .
But keeps it in fine lily pots, that, open'd,
Smell like conserve of roses, or French beans.
He has his maple block, his silver tongs,
Winchester pipes, and fire of Juniper."

206 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

Wardrobe ; but we have no evidence that he lived in
that neighbourhood at any earlier date. His biog
raphers have relied on slight indications to show that
he may have resided at one time near Shoreditch, at
another time near the new Blackfriars Theatre, and
afterwards near the Globe upon Bankside. There
seems, however, to be nothing that can be treated as
good evidence upon the matter until we come to
Mr. Hunter's discovery that Shakespeare was a house
holder in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street, when a sub
sidy was assessed under an Act of Parliament in the
year 1598.*

There were, however, events which called his atten
tion to that neighbourhood about the time of his first
arrival in London ; and it may be that we owe to them
the allusions to Crosby Place in St. Helen's Parish
which Shakespeare brings into his version of the
tragedy of Richard III. On the 8th of May, 1586,
says Stow, Henry Ramel, or Ramelius, ''Chancellor
of Denmark, ambassador unto the queen's majesty of
England from Frederick the Second, the king of Den
mark," was received by Gilbert Lord Talbot'at Black-
wall, and conducted to Greenwich and thence to the
Tower Wharf ; at the Tower he was received by Lord
Cobham and other noblemen, and was escorted through
Fenchurch Street to Crosby Place, where he was
lodged till he had finished his embassy at the Queen's
expense.2

Crosby Place house, says Stow, was built by Sir
John Crosby under a lease for ninety-nine years from
1466 granted to him by Alice Ashfeld,3 prioress of St.
Helen's: "This house he built of stone and timber,
very large and beautiful, and the highest at that time
in London." He was one of the sheriffs and an alder-

1 Hunter, op. cit.t pp. 76-80. '2 Stow, Survey (1598), u.s., p. 187.
3 Ashfed is the reading in the early editions of Stow ; it was altered
by Strype.

CROSBY PLACE 207

man in 1470, and was knighted during the next year
for helping to repel the Bastard of Faulconbridge when
he attacked the city.1 We may remember how Queen
Margaret complains when Warwick becomes Lord
of Calais, and "stern Falcon bridge commands the
narrow seas."

It is by a poetic licence that Richard of Gloucester
is made to take up his abode in the house before the
date of Sir John Crosby's death. He might be sup
posed to have made appointments for meetings there,
just as he bade King Henry's pall-bearers attend him
at Whitefriars,3 or summoned Dr. Shaw to the palace
of Baynard's Castle ; 4 but Crosby Place seems to be
treated as his own, and to be regarded as a place
offering special facilities for his plots and secret under
takings. Here Catesby and the murderers of Clarence
are summoned,5 and here is carried on the wooing
of the princess, whose husband Richard had stabbed
in his "angry mood " at Tewkesbury : —

"That it may please you leave these sad designs
To him that hath more cause to be a mourner,
And presently repair to Crosby Place."6

Sir John, says Stow, died in the year 1475, "so
short a time enjoyed he that his large and sumptuous
building."7 His tomb in St. Helen's Church bears
his figure in armour, with an alderman's cloak and
a collar of Yorkist badges. It appeared by the picture
of Alderman Darby, who lived in Fenchurch Street at
the time when the tomb was set up, that the official
costume was "a gown of scarlet on his back, and a
hood on his head " and shoulders.8 Sir John Crosby
left five hundred marks as a gift for restoring the
church, which was very well bestowed, "as appeareth

1 Stow, op. cit., p. 186. See also pp. 60, 88, etc.

3 3 Henry VI., \. I, 238-9. * Richard III., i. 2, 227.

4 Id., iii. 5, 105. 8 Id., iii. i, 190. 6 Id., \. 2, 211-3.
7 Stow, op. cit., p. 1 86. 8 Id., p. 445.

208 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

by his arms, both in the stonework, roof of timber,
and glazing."1 His widow, Dame Anne Crosby,
whose figure appears on her husband's tomb, let the
house in 1476 to Richard of Gloucester, then Lord
Protector, and afterwards King. The young King was
for all practical purposes a State prisoner. "The
dealing itselfe," says the historian, "made men to
muse on the matter, though the counsell were close ;
For by little and little all men with-drew from the
Tower, and repaired to Crosbies in Bishopgate streete,
where the Protector kept his house in great state."2
Sir Thomas More lived at Crosby Place between the
years 1516 and 1523, and wrote the Utopia there after
his embassy to Flanders.3 We learn something of his
family life from his own introduction to the romance ;
for he tells us that it was part of his daily business
to talk with his wife, to chatter with the children, and
to consider affairs with his servants.4 " He's a learned
man," says Wolsey :

" May he continue

Long in his highness' favour, and do justice
For truth's sake and his conscience ; that his bones,
When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings,
May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em." 5

It is not known how long More actually lived at
Crosby Place before removing to Chelsea. It appears,
however, that when he became Speaker of the House
of Commons in 1523, he sold the lease to his dear
friend Antonio Bonvisi, a merchant from the little
principality of Lucca; and in 1542, Bonvisi bought

1 Id., p. 1 86.

2 Speed, Historic of Great Britainc, 3rd ed., 1632, p. 896.

3 Arber, in the introduction to Utopia in "English Reprints" series,
says that the second book was written probably at Antwerp, November,
1515, the first in London early in 1516.

4 Utopia, u.s., p. 22 (introductory letter to Peter Giles): "For when
I am come home, I must converse with my wife, chatte with my children,
and talke wyth my seruauntes." 5 Henry VIII., iii. 2, 395-9.

INHABITANTS OF CROSBY PLACE 209

from the Crown the freehold of the mansion, with its
"Solars, Cellars, Gardens . . . void Places of Land"
thereto belonging.1 We shall not follow the title
minutely. The estate was confiscated when the mer
chant went home without leave, was restored by Mary,
hired by Elizabeth. After the death of More's "dear
est friend " the place belonged to another foreigner,
German Cioll, or German Sciol, as the name is
variously written. His wife Cecilia was one of the
parish benefactors. "I find," says Stow, "... is.
also in Bread every Sunday given by Mrs. Sciol."1
We may mention one or two more of the famous
persons who owned or lived in the palace. First,
of course, is Sidney's sister, Mary Sidney, Countess
of Pembroke, who lived here for a time when Pem
broke House, in Aldersgate Street, was used for another
purpose.3 Next came William Bond, "Flos Merca-
torum, quos terra Britanna creavit," as we read on
a goodly monument upon the north wall of St. Helen's
choir. He was " Argolico Mercator lasone major,"
and the winner of a richer prize. The epitaph of 1576
says that he was a " Merchant Venturer, and most
famous (in his Age) for his great Adventures both by
Sea and Land."4

Crosby Place was purchased some time afterwards
by the rich Sir John Spencer, who made great repara
tions and improvements, and kept his mayoralty there
after his election to the office in 1594. He also added
a great warehouse at the back to receive East Indian
goods, being one of the merchants interested in the
voyage of the three ships to India and China, from
which came the East India Company.5 We learn

1 Stow, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. 106.

J Id., p. 103. On p. 1 06 the spelling is Cioll.

3 Loftie, op. tit., i. p. 293.

4 Stow, u.s., bk. ii. p. 106. For epitaph see id., p. 101. Bond died
30th May, 1576. 5 Stow, ed. 1603, p. 187.

210 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

from Stow of an entertainment given to the great
Sully, who brought over the French King's congratula
tions on the accession of James I. "The eight of
June, arrived at London, Mounsieur de Rosny, great
Treasurer of Fraunce : accompanied with Noblemen
and gallant Gentlemen in great number, the same
night they in thirty coaches, rode to the French
Ambassadours leager, then lodged at the Barbicane
by Redcross streete, they supped with him, and
returned to Crosby place, now beelonging to Sir
John Spencer in Bishops-gate streete, where the prin-
cipall was lodged, and the other in places neere
adjoyning."1 Sir John died in 1609, and was laid in
a fair goodly tomb in the south aisle of St. Helen's
choir, "as in a Chapel by itself." His epitaph tells us
that by his wife Alice Bromefield he had one daughter,
Elizabeth, his sole heiress ; that she was married to
William, Lord Compton, who erected the monument
to his most worthy father-in-law.2

VII

THE PARISH OF ST. HELEN'S — DESCRIPTION IN STOW'S "SURVEY"

The Parish of St. Helen's is part of the Ward of
Bishopsgate Within, which also comprises St. Ethel-
burga's, towards the gate, St. Martin's Outwich, and
St. Peter's, crossed by Gracechurch Street. Stow's
careful description, with his editor's notes, will show us
what the neighbourhood was like in Shakespeare's
time.3 At the Gate itself was a conduit, leading on
the right hand to several large inns. He is speaking
of the inns near Gresham College, the " Four Swans,"
the "Green Dragon," and the "Black Bull," all in

1 Stow, Annals, continued by Howes, 1615, p. 825.

2 Stow, Survey, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. 101. 3 Id,, bk. i. ch. 6, p. 90.

ST. HELEN'S PARISH 211

St. Ethel burga's ; the "Vine," the "Angel, "and the
"Wrestlers," all in the same parish, were on the
other side of Bishopsgate Street.1 We hear of plays
occasionally performed in the courtyard of the " Black
Bull"; but the theatre known as the "Bull" was set
up at the "Red Bull," in St. John's Street, Clerkenwell.
Next came Sir Thomas Gresham's great mansion,
almost all in St. Helen's, the parish ending near the
Church of St. Martin's Outwich. At its west corner,
opposite to the church, was "a fair well with two
buckets, so fastened that the drawing up of the one let
down the other " ; but the edition of the Survey issued
in 1603 tells us how "of late this well is turned into a
pump."2

The same volume contains a description of the
boundaries of St. Helen's, verified by John Harvey,
the Parish Clerk, in or about the year i6i2.3 The house
at the south-east corner was occupied by Thomas Child,
who was one of the persons assessed at the minimum
rate, in 1598, as not being worth more than £3 in the
world. His house abutted on a tenement occupied by
James Austen in the Parish of St. Martin Outwich.
Taking a line from this point to the other side of
Bishopsgate Street, we reach the western boundary,
which, according to the extracts already given, must
have been close to the new pump that had replaced the
well with its chain and buckets. The furthest house
in this south-west angle of St. Helen's was occupied by
Thomas Goodson. It abutted on a gate leading into a
tenement in the Parish of St. Martin's Outwich,
"wherein Mr. Richard Foxe, Alderman's Deputy, now
dwelleth." This Mr. Foxe was in charge of so much
of the ward as lay within the Gate, another Deputy
being appointed by the Alderman for the district

1 Id., bk. ii. p. 107. a /<£, 1603, p. 188.

3 /</., 1618, p. 331. In Strype's Stow, bk. ii. p. 105, Jo. Warner, Parish
Clerk, verified the statement.

212 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

between the Gate and the Bars near Shoreditch.
Officials of this kind are sometimes mentioned in the
plays. The City Records inform us that there was
a single Deputy for the Ward of Cheap, and Sir John
Falstaff talked of ''the deputy's wife of the ward."1
The worthy hostess again was warned by the officer
against entertaining swaggerers, when she came before
Mr. Tisick the Deputy (and Mr. Dumbe the Minister
was standing by): " ' Neighbour Quickly,' says he,
'receive those that are civil, for,' said he, 'you are in
an ill name.'"2

From Thomas Child's house the boundary ran up in
a zigzag line to the opening of that winding passage
which connects Great St. Helen's and St. Mary Axe.
The Parish, said John Harvey, takes in Great St.
Helen's Close, wherein is the Parish Church, "with a
Thorough fare to the back Gate leading into St. Mary
at the Axe ; and the utmost House belonging to the
said Parish, is next adjoining to the said Gate towards
the South, and openeth into the Street there, com
monly called St. Mary at Axe."3 Stow has a still more
detailed account. There is a Court, he says, with a
winding lane, coming out against the west end of St.
Andrew Undershaft's Church : " In this Court standeth
the fair Church of St. Helen, sometime a priory of
black nuns, and in the same a parish church of St.
Helen."4 The Priory had been founded before the
reign of Henry III. by William Basing, Dean of St.
Paul's. On its dissolution the partition between the
nuns' church and the parish church was taken down,
so that the parishioners had the whole; it "is a fair
parish church," says the Annalist, " but wanteth such
a steeple as Sir Thomas Gresham promised to have
built " to make up for the great space filled by his
"painted Alderman's tomb."

1 i Henry IV., iii. 3, 130. 2 2 Henry IV., ii. 4, 90-104.

3 Stow, 1618, p. 331. 4 Stow, 1603, p. 185.

BOUNDARIES OF ST. HELEN'S 213

Passing up on the eastern side, the boundary took
in Little St. Helen's Close, formerly belonging to the
same Priory, where at the time of the survey stood
the old Leathersellers' Hall formed out of the nuns'
refectory, with various small tenements and six
"alms-rooms," or houses for the poor, maintained at
the charges of the Company.1 The furthest house
within the parish at the north-east angle belonged to
Mr. Edward Higges the sadler, and abutted on the
Parsonage House of St. Ethelburga's. The line now
proceeds westwards by St. Ethelburga's Church, cross
ing Bishopsgate Street nearly opposite to the old
entrance of the "Green Dragon," and turning so as
to leave out the " Black Bull." The furthest house at
the north-west corner was occupied by Nathaniel
Wright, and it "abutteth," says Harvey, "upon the
Messuage or Tenement Inne, called the Blacke Bull
in the . . . Parish of St. Ethelburge." A few other
parishioners are mentioned by the old Parish Clerk :
we may notice the minister, the Rev. Richard Ball,
the churchwardens, Mr. William Robinson and
Richard Westney, Thomas Edwards and Abraham
Gramer, the sidesmen, and Richard Atkinson, one of
the seven scavengers of the ward, who found the un
fortunate infant "Job Cinere-Extractus" in the Crosby-
Place ashpit, and brought him into the light on his
wheelbarrow.

We shall now deal with the assessment of I598.3
The Parliament of the thirty-ninth and fortieth years
of Elizabeth was dissolved on the Qth of February,
having first granted as supplies for the defence of the
realm "three Subsidies of 4^. in the pound for lands,
and 2s. 8d. in the pound for goods," and six Fifteens.
The Fifteens were taxes upon personalty, levied after
an accustomed rate, which, as far as the Bishopsgate

1 Stow, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. 107.

a /</., 1618, p. 331. * See p. 206, note i.

214 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

people were concerned, were of a very unimportant
amount. Stow tells us that in his time the ward was
only "taxed to the Fifteen" at £13 in the whole.1
The Subsidy was a very different matter. It was
levied on all kinds of property within the realm or
without, the case of aliens and strangers being met by
charging them at a double rate, or by the imposition
of a poll-tax, if they had no property within the realm.
It should be observed, however, that the tax was
charged either on lands or on goods, at the discretion
of the Commissioners, but not on both. Persons who
had not property to the value of £3 altogether were
exempt ; and persons taxed in their usual place of
residence received certificates exempting them from
being charged elsewhere. The clergy taxed them
selves in Convocation.

As regards laymen, subject to what has been said
above, the following rules applied. Land was taken
as including fees of office, annuities, pensions, and
other yearly profits of a fixed kind. In the instance
with which we are now to deal, Shakespeare did not
claim to possess any land or fixed yearly profits, and
we shall therefore consider more closely the principles
on which personalty was assessed. Everyone, as
we have shown, was to pay on his property, if from
all sources together he was worth £3. The taxable
amount was made up as follows : the list included
coin, and what might be valued in coin, as plate,
corn and grain, stock of merchandise, household stuff,
and movable goods, " and all such sums of money as
shall be owing whereof he trusts in his conscience

1 Stow, 1603, p. 188. On p. 208 of his reprint Professor Morley
notes: "The tax of a fifteenth of all movables was first granted to
Henry III. in February, 1225, by the archbishops, bishops, abbots,
priors, earls, barons, knights, freeholders, and all persons of the
realm, on condition of a confirmation of Charters. The Fifteenth had
become under Elizabeth a recognised standard of taxation for the service
of the country."

ASSESSMENT OF ST. HELEN'S PARISH 215

surely to be paid"; the deductions included reason
able apparel for the person assessed and his wife and
children, other than jewels, gold, silver, stone, and
pearl, and he might also deduct from the capital
account all sums that he lawfully owed, "and in his
conscience intended truly to pay." The Commis
sioners had stringent powers for compelling payment ;
but the person charged, if dissatisfied, might have an
appeal or second inquiry, at which he was examined
upon oath.

The first of the three Subsidies granted by Parlia
ment was to be paid at the beginning of October,
1598. The Commissioners for the City included the
Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and three of his
predecessors in office — Sir John Hart, Sir Henry
Billingsley, and Sir John Spencer. The Commis
sioners appointed various deputies, or petty col
lectors, the persons selected for Bishopsgate Ward
being Ferdinando Clutterbuck, draper, and Thomas
Symons, skinner. The deputies made their final
report on the ist of October, their certificates for St.
Helen's and the other parishes in the ward being
appended to an indenture of that date made between
themselves and the Commissioners. The mode of
proceeding is shown by the Act that authorised the
Subsidy. The Commissioners in the first place issued
a precept to the most substantial householders and
inhabitants to meet them at some convenient spot.
This in the case before us would probably be Crosby
Place, since the larger house may have been occupied
by the widowed Lady Gresham, and the Leather-
sellers' Hall was very much out of the way. We
know the names of several persons who must have
been summoned to the meeting, and who doubtless
made out a preliminary list after hearing the Com
missioners' charge. Sir John Spencer would be
there, as a matter of course ; and it was known that

216 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

he would pay on merchandise, in lieu of land, £40 on
a total value of £300, according to the statutory rate.
Lady Gresham was assessed in another district. Mr.
William Reade chose to be charged on his lands, the
value ,£150, the rate ^30, at four shillings in the
pound. Mr. John Allsoppe owned lands to one-third
of that value, and was charged accordingly. Mr. John
Robinson the elder was one of the most important
parishioners. He and his son of the same name both
chose to be assessed on personalty. Mr. Robinson's
tomb is in St. Helen's Church, and the language of
its inscription is worth considering in relation to some
of the discussions about the epitaphs in Stratford
Church.1 The monument is described as being "be
neath the body of the Church in the North Wall."
Within it, we are told, lie the earthly parts of John
Robinson, " Merchant of the Staple in England, free
of the Merchant Taylors, and sometime Alderman of
London," and of Christian his wife. She died in
1592, her husband following her in February, 1599.
" Both much beloved in their Lives, and more
lamented at their Deaths ; especially by the poor, to
whom their good Deeds (being alive) begot many
Prayers, now (being dead) many Tears. The Glass
of his Life held Seventy Years, and then ran out.
To live long, and happy, is an Honour ; but to die
happy, a greater Glory. But these aspired to both.
Heaven (no doubt) hath their Souls, and this House
of Stone their Bodies, where they sleep in Peace, till
the summons of a glorious Resurrection wakens
them."

The duty of the Commissioners was to acquaint the
meeting with the object and provisions of the Act, and
to direct the persons there present to prepare a certifi
cate of all the assessments that ought to be made in
the locality, after making the best inquiry in their

1 Stow, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. 101.

ASSESSMENT OF ST. HELEN'S, 1598 217

power ; and the meeting was then adjourned to a future
day, when the certificate was to be produced. The
Committee, as we may call them, duly prepared and
presented their list at the adjourned meeting. It con
tained forty names of householders, besides aliens and
strangers. There were seven appeals by residents,
and, as might perhaps have been expected, almost all
the foreigners disputed the assessment.

We will take the foreigners first. Mr. Leven Vander-
stylt made no objection ; it is probable that he was
placed on the committee to give information about the
Flemings and Dutchmen. He pays the double rate on
£50, with eightpence for his wife, and a similar poll-
tax for his servants, " Esay Mislonde, Matthew Stilton,
and Barbery Capon." Dr. Cullymore, from Ireland,
paid on ^5 after some dispute. Sherrett Bawkes, los.
8d. on 4or., and Joyce his wife, and Agnes his servant,
per poll, i6d. together. Laurence Bassel's was the
most singular case. He swore that he was not worth
£5 ; and his son Peter, and three servants, " Peter
Greade, Davye Fayrecook, and Frauncis Dynne," all
swore that they could not pay the eightpenny poll-
tax.

The Committee, it would seem, arranged the resident
householders in classes, taking a merciful view in
some cases, though they were forbidden to consider
past assessments or anything except the present values.
Out of the original forty no less than seventeen, includ
ing two widows, were assessed on the minimum value
of £3. Of the richer inhabitants, besides those already
mentioned, we notice that three were taxed on goods
worth £30, and five at £20. Mr. Robert Honywood
disputed the Commissioners' decision, and was finally
charged for lands worth .£40 a year. Dr. Richard
Taylor, Dr. Peter Tumor, and Mr. Edward Swayne,
were each assessed for £10 in land and official fees,
very probably in respect of appointments at Bethlehem

218 LANDMARKS IN LONDON

Hospital. Mr. Snoade, Mr. Peole, and the younger
Mr. Robinson were each charged on the value of £10
in goods and merchandise, and Edward Jorden paid at
the same rate on £8. There were only three persons
in the remaining class, where the whole value was
taken at £5. Of these, Walter Briggen paid with
out dispute, and Thomas Morley and William
Shakespeare appealed. The note on the final cer
tificate in Shakespeare's case was as follows: " Affid.
William Shakespeare. V1- XIIIs IVd- " ; or in other
words, the entries being in tabular form, " Appell
ant sworn : name, William Shakespeare : amount in
goods, £5 : assessment, 13^. 4^. at 2s. 8d. in the
pound."

If we refer to the Act of Parliament we shall see
what took place. It was provided in the case of any
person complaining of the rate before it was certified
into the Exchequer, that two Commissioners at least
should " examine particularly and distinctly the person
so complaining upon his oath, and his neighbours by
their discretions," as to his real and personal property
of every kind ; and, after due examination of all the
circumstances, the Commissioners were empowered
either to diminish or increase the assessment as might
seem just. If it were proved within a year that a false
declaration had been made, the person offending was to
forfeit the amount at which he had originally been
assessed.

We have, of course, no reason to doubt that Shake
speare's appeal and the Commissioners' decision were
based upon just grounds. We must suppose that for
the purposes of that inquiry the appellant proved his
case. Yet what are we to say about the purchase of
the mansion at New Place, which was completed in the
year 1597? What, again, is to be said as to the
return of owners of grain at Stratford, compiled in
February, 1598, considering that Shakespeare was

APPEAL AGAINST ASSESSMENT 219

entered in it as holding ten quarters of corn?1 The
price of wheat in London had fallen a few months
previously from 1045-. to Sos. a quarter; "but then,"
says Stow, "it arose again to the late greatest price."
It should be observed, however, that Mr. Sturley's
letter of the 24th of January, I597-8,2 valued a quantity
of wheat delivered in Stratford at no more than 6s. 8d.
a strike, which would come to only 26s. 8d. a quarter.
He speaks in the same letter of Shakespeare's desire
to buy "some odd yard-land or other at Shottery or
near about us," or to make a bargain about the Strat
ford tithes. We remember, too, how Richard Quiney
the elder wrote in the October following from the "Bell"
to ask Shakespeare for a loan of £30 without much
doubt as to the result.3 Mr. Quiney, it may be said,
was certainly sent to London "as a deputation,"
carrying a request that the borough might be relieved
from the Subsidy. There were many reasons, besides
the occurrence of two disastrous fires, which might
induce Burghley, as Lord Treasurer, to give a favour
able answer to the request. There was a regular
machinery for excusing the poorer towns from the
payment of "Fifteens," and there was nothing un
reasonable in asking that the same principle might be
applied to a subsidy. It may be that this would be
taken into account by the London Commissioners, and
that they would not charge Shakespeare in respect of
his property at Stratford. But even as regards his
possessions in London, we must consider that he was
one of the Lord Chamberlain's company acting regu
larly at Blackfriars, that he had produced at least
eighteen successful plays, and had quite lately sold
the copyright of his popular Richard III.

If the difficulty can be explained at all, it will prob-

1 Facsimile in Halliwell-Phillipps, op, cit., i. 137.

2 Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., ii. 57-8.

3 Printed and in facsimile, «/., i. 166-7.

22O

LANDMARKS IN LONDON

ably be found that the poet had quite recently fallen
into debt, lawful debt which in truth and conscience
he intended to pay. We may observe, in this connec
tion, that the time when he was assessed towards the
Subsidy was also the time when his parents were deep
in their unfortunate Chancery suit.1

1 For particulars of the above assessment, see Hunter, op. cit., i. 77-80.

SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS-
HIS DEATH AND WILL

SHAKESPEARE'S FAMILY — MARRIAGE OF SUSANNA SHAKESPEARE
TO JOHN HALL — DISPOSAL OF SHAKESPEARE'S REAL PRO
PERTY — THE POET'S LEGACY TO HIS WIFE

QHAKESPE ARE'S eldest child, Susanna, was
v_3 baptised at Stratford Parish Church, on Trinity
Sunday, May 26th, 1583. The twins, Hamnet and
Judith, were born about the end of January, 1585, by
modern reckoning. Their baptism took place on
Tuesday, the 2nd of February, 1584-5, being the
Festival of the Purification. It is generally supposed
that the children were named after some of the god
parents, and that the twins must have had Mr. Hamnet
Sadler and his wife Judith among their sponsors. The
name Hamnet seems to have been accepted as equiva
lent to Hamlet, and Mr. Sadler himself appears under
the latter name in Shakespeare's will. Malone points
out that in the entry of his burial, in 1624, he is called
" Hamlet Sadler." " The name of Hamlet," he adds,
"occurs in several other entries in the register." He
instances an entry as to the death of Catharina, wife
of Hamoletus Hassal, in 1564, and another as to

223

224 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

Hamlet, son of Humphry Holdar, who was buried in
1576, and points out that Mr. Hamlet Smith was one
of the benefactors publicly commemorated at Strat
ford. The legend of the Prince of Denmark is shown
to have been commonly known by Nash's reference in
his preface to Greene's Menaphon: "English Seneca
read by candle-light yields many good sentences, as
Blood is a beggar, and so forth ; and if you entreat
him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole
Hamlets, 1 should say handfuls of tragical speeches."1
It is possible, however, that the names of Susanna and
Judith Shakespeare were chosen from the Apocrypha,
to which the poet made constant references. We have
the picture of "god Bel's priests in the old church-
window,"2 and Holofernes choosing the part of Judas
Maccabceus;3 and Sir Toby is made to sing a line
from a dull song about Joachim and his wife, "There
dwelt a man in Babylon, lady, lady ! "4

A bare entry in the register tells us that Hamnet
died before he was twelve years old, the date of his
burial being the nth of August, 1596. Mr. John
Shakespeare died in 1601, his funeral taking place on
September 8th. It is not known whether he left a
will, but it appears that his eldest son inherited the
dwelling-house in Henley Street. Mrs. Mary Shake
speare probably lived on there till her death in 1608,
and the residence was afterwards occupied by Mr. Hart,
who had married Joan Shakespeare. His death oc
curred only a few days before that of Shakespeare,
whose will contained the following provisions in his
sister's favour: "I give and bequeath unto my said
sister Joan £20 and all my wearing apparel, to be paid
and delivered within one year after my decease ; and I

on) ed. Arber, p. 9.

2 Much Ado about Nothing, in. 3, 143-4.

3 Love's Labour's Lost, v. i , 1 33-4.

4 Twelfth Night, ii. 2, 84.

SUSANNA SHAKESPEARE'S MARRIAGE 225

do will and devise unto her the house with the appur
tenances in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her
natural life, under the yearly rent of twelve-pence."
In an earlier part of the will he had also given her a
contingent legacy in case his daughter Judith died
without issue during the term of three years from his
decease. He also gave £5 apiece to her three sons
William, Thomas, and Michael, then aged about
fifteen, eleven, and eight years old respectively. The
Christian name of the second boy was accidentally
omitted in the will.

Susanna Shakespeare was married to Mr. John Hall
on the 5th of June, 1607 ; their daughter Elizabeth
was baptised on the 2ist of February following. They
lived in a street called Old Town, not far from the
church. Mr. Hall was a gentleman by birth, bear
ing the "three talbots" in his shield ; but the coat of
arms on his tomb is not so accurately displayed as to
show the particular family of Halls to which he be
longed.1 It is thought that he came from Acton, in
Middlesex, where he owned a house which he left to
his daughter. We first hear of him as a medical
practitioner at Stratford, where he attained a great
reputation ; and it appears that he was usually known
as Doctor Hall, though he had not taken a medical
degree. How easily a diploma might have been ob
tained is shown by a passage in Ward's Diary : " Mr.
Burnet had a letter out of the Low Countries of the
charge of a doctor's degree, which is at Leyden about
sixteen pounds, besides feasting the professors, at
Angers, in France, not above nine pounds, and feast
ing not necessary neither."2

Mr. and Mrs. Hall and their daughter were the chief
beneficiaries under Shakespeare's will. The residue

1 Mrs. C. C. Slopes, Shakespeare's Family, 1901, p. 97, gives the coat
as " Sable three talbots' heads erased or."
* Ward's Diary, ed. Severn, 1839, p. 12.

226 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

of the personalty, after certain specific legacies, was
given in these words: "All the rest of my goods,
chattels, leases, etc., I give, devise, and bequeath to
my son-in-law, John Hall, gent., and my daughter
Susanna, his wife, whom I ordain and make executors
of my last will and testament." The superintendence
of the trusts was given to Mr. Thomas Russell, of
Stratford, and Mr. Francis Collins, the lawyer from
Warwick by whom the will was prepared. The list
of legacies included £5 to Mr. Russell, and £13. 6s. &£,
or forty nobles, to Mr. Collins. Elizabeth Hall,
whom the testator calls his "niece," was to have all
the plate belonging to him at the date of the will,
except the broad silver-gilt bowl, left to his daughter
Judith. Mr. Thomas Combe had the poet's sword,
and money for mourning rings was given to " Hamlett
Sadler," William Raynoldes, Antony Nashe, John
Nashe, and to "my fellows" John "Hemynges,"
Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell, each receiving
four nobles, or 26^. 8d. : and twenty shillings in gold
to the poet's godson, William Walker. His daughter
Judith had legacies amounting to ^300 in all, with
interest at ten per cent, until payment. Her marriage-
portion accounted for a third part of the amount.
Fifty pounds was given on condition that she gave up
all her interest in the Rowington copyhold. The re
maining payment of £150 was to be held in suspense
for a term of three years ; if she survived that period,
she had it settled on her and her children, unless and
until her husband should settle land of a correspond
ing value ; if she died without issue during that period,
the money was to be given to Elizabeth Hall and Joan
Hart and her children in the shares and under the
provisions mentioned in the will.

The real estate consisted of the residence in Henley
Street and the inn adjoining, the mansion and grounds
at New Place, with the copyhold cottage, the "four

HIS LEGACIES TO THE HALLS 227

and a half yard-lands" in the open fields of Stratford,
Bishopton, and Welcombe, and the house near the
King's Wardrobe at Blackfriars, then in the occupa
tion of John Robinson. Nothing was said about Mrs.
Anne Shakespeare's right to dower, or her right to
keep the copyhold during her life ; but subject to her
rights, and subject to the devise in favour of Joan
Hart, all this real estate was settled upon Mrs. Hall
for her life, with an entail in favour of her sons, down
to the seventh, which never took effect: "and for
default of such issue," the will proceeds, "the said
premises to be and remain to my said niece Hall, and
the heirs males of her body lawfully issuing." This
entail was afterwards barred, and a new settlement
executed ; but as the will stood, Judith had the next
place in the entail, with a final gift to the testator's
heirs.

The gift to Mrs. Shakespeare was inserted as an
interlineation, as if it were an afterthought. " I give
unto my wife my second best bed, with the furniture."
The omission to notice his wife in any other way need
not be attributed to any want of respect or affection on
the testator's part. It has been pointed out that the
gifts of mourning-rings to his three "fellows" were
also interlined, and that he certainly intended no mark
of disrespect as far as they were concerned. The true
explanation is probably that which was suggested by
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps. He speaks of the possibility
of Mrs. Shakespeare having been afflicted with some
"chronic infirmity of a nature that precluded all hope
of recovery." He proceeds: "In such a case, to
relieve her from household anxieties and select a
comfortable apartment at New Place, where she would
be under the care of an affectionate daughter and an
experienced physician, would have been the wisest and
kindest measure that could have been adopted."

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, i. 261.

228 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

If Mrs. Shakespeare was incompetent to manage her
own affairs, there would be no formal assignment of
dower, or claim to a widow's estate, in the copyhold ;
and the legacy itself would in such case be no mere
formality, but rather a gift of some importance to one
whose wealth consisted of "the bed and the cup and
the fire."1 Mrs. Hall placed a strange inscription over
her mother's grave a few years afterwards. "Here
lieth interred the body of Anne, wife of William Shake
speare, who departed this life the 6th day of August,
1623, being of the age of 67 years." The inscription
proceeds with six lines of Latin verse, to the effect
that the spirit as well as the body was held in the
sepulchre. " Ubera tu, mater," it commences: "A
mother's bosom thou gavest, and milk, and life ; for
such bounty, alas ! can I only render stones ! Rather
would I pray the good angel to roll away the stone
from the mouth of the tomb, that thy spirit, even as
the body of Christ, should go forth " ; and the hope is
expressed that Christ may quickly come, so that the
imprisoned soul may be able " to seek the stars. ":

1 There was no question here of the heirlooms or prdciputs, which
were so well known in Wales, Brittany, and Flanders. In the district of
Archenfield, south-west of Hereford, the lands were inherited by all the
sons; but the eldest had certain customary "principals," such as the
best table, the best bed and furniture, and so forth. This custom was
found to be a relic of certain Welsh laws, referred to in Domesday Book.
A similar orig-in was found for the custom of the Hundred of Stretford,
on the opposite side of the Wye, where the eldest son was entitled to
keep as "principals" the best waggon and plough, the best table or
chair, the best bed, the best of the chests, cups, and platters, and other
classes of chattels. There is no indication that any such custom ever
prevailed at Stratford-upon-Avon, or in the manor, liberty, and hundred
in which the borough was comprised.

2 The lines, read at length, but with the original stopping, are as
follows :- « vbera, tu mater, tu lac, vitamque dedisti.

Vae mihi. pro tanto munere saxa dabo ?

Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem, bonus angelus ore

Exeat ut, Christi corpus imago tua.

Sed nil vota valent vemas cito Christe ; resurget

Clausa licet tumulo mater et astra petet."

MRS. SHAKESPEARE 229

Mr. Ward may have been much struck with this
epitaph. His Diary contains religious meditations
upon the Angels at the Sepulchre : in another passage
he reflects that Heaven has verbera as well as ubera,
and can punish as well as show mercy.1 The first
part of the inscription is certainly in a very unusual
form. The mother's care for her infant is treated as
a matter of high importance, but nothing is said about
the rest of her life. In this respect it may, perhaps,
have been modelled upon an epitaph at Lucca, to be
found in the Hortus Inscriptionum of Otto Aicher. A
son asks his father to accept a funeral in return for the
gift of life: " Tu mihi das lucem vitae, do mortis
honores."2 But the exclusive reference to the earliest
cares of motherhood may very well point to a subse
quent incapacity for later duties as the mother of a
household.

Returning to the subject of Shakespeare's will, it is
to be observed that it was made up from an earlier
draft, as appears by the erasures and interlineations.
It has been supposed that it was drawn up in the
January preceding the poet's death, owing to the title
having contained the word "Januarii," altered to
" Martii." The heading as it now stands, when trans
lated, is to the effect that the date of the document was
the 25th of March, in the fourteenth year of King
James' reign in England, and its forty-ninth year
in Scotland, and in the year of our Lord 1616. The
25th of March was the first day of the legal year 1616,
and the second day of the fourteenth regnal year of
King James ; so that if it had ever been intended to
execute the will on the 25th of January, the whole
frame of the heading would have been different.

1 Ward's Diary, u.s., pp. 214-5 ! P- 22O> To the latter passage is
added the reflection, " Subito tollitur, qui diu toleratur."

2 Aicher, Hortus Variorum Inscriptionum, etc., Salisburgi, 1676,
1.403-4. (Luca in S. Salvatore. Fill us Patri. )

23o SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

The will was duly signed and published on the 25th
of March, the witnesses to the publication, as then
required by law, being Mr. Collins, the lawyer from
Warwick, and Julius Shaw, John Robinson, Hamnet
Sadler, and Robert Whatcot,1 all of Stratford. It was
duly proved in London by Mr. Hall, on the 2nd of
June following, power being reserved for his wife to
come in and prove, if necessary.

SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH — DESCRIPTION OF THE STRATFORD
MONUMENT — DETAILED NOTES ON THE EPITAPH — JOHN
HALL : ITS POSSIBLE AUTHOR

On the 23rd of April, Shakespeare died of the fever
mentioned by Mr. Ward. Of "low typhoid fever,"
says Dr. Severn in his edition of the vicar's Diary,
"which clings to the sickening heart, and fastens on
the pallid brow for days and weeks, and sometimes for
months together."2 It is plain that it was thought
to be contagious, since the funeral took place on the
25th. The grave was in the chancel, but there was no
vault or brickwork — nothing, indeed, but his male
diction to protect his "house of clay." He lay close
to the door that led to the bone-vault, and he dreaded,
no doubt, that his place would be required for another
tithe-owner and his remains be cast aside: "Not
a friend, not a friend greet my poor corpse, where
my bones shall be thrown."3 We know that his
hope was fulfilled ; but it was only because no
one dared "to move the maladictive stones." A
tradition arose among the clerks and sextons that,
to carry out his wishes, he was buried seventeen

1 " Whattcott " in original signature.

2 Ward's Diary, u.s. , p. 68. 3 Twelfth Night, ii. 4, 63.

HIS DEATH 231

feet deep. It is all but a hundred years ago that
the workmen building a vault were able to look
through an opening into his grave, and saw nothing
but a hollow space, with no signs of the earth having
been touched. We know, however, that his appre
hensions were justified by what happened afterwards
to the grave of his daughter Susanna and the plun
dered vault of his little " niece Elisabeth."

The monument in Stratford Church was erected
either in or before 1623. The reference by Leonard
Digges, in his commendatory verses prefixed to the
first Folio, although very general, shows that he knew
of such a work by November in that year.1 There
is no reason to doubt Dugdale's statement that the
whole monument was the work of Gerard Johnson of
Southwark, the son of a tomb-cutter from Amsterdam.2
Johnson had been employed in 1614 to erect the
monument, in the east wall of the chancel, to Mr. John
Combe. It seems probable, from the date and lettering
of the inscription on Mrs. Shakespeare's brass plate,
that this sculptor came to set up Shakespeare's me
morial in the autumn of 1623, and added the lines
in honour of his wife. Her grave was interposed
between the north wall of the chancel and the grave
of her husband, so that the blessing and the curse
inscribed on his place of burial protected her remains
as well.

The bust on the monument, in its present state, can
hardly be regarded as a portrait, although Mr. Halli-
well-Phillipps held that a copy of the whitened figure
was the best memorial of Shakespeare that the public
could then possess, "being so much superior in

1 " When that stone is rent,
And Time dissolves thy Stratford moniment,
Here we alive shall view thee still."

2 Dugdale, Diary, ed. W. Hamper, F.S.A., 1827, p. 99. " Gerard
Johnson" is, of course, merely the Anglicised form of Geraert Janssen.
See Diet. Xat. Biog.^ vol. xxix. , s.v. Janssen.

232 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

authenticity to any other resemblance."1 The white
washing, he said, "did not altogether obliterate the
semblance of an intellectual human being," but when
it was coloured again in 1861, he considered that it
became "a miserable travesty." "This bust was
originally coloured to resemble life . . . the eyes being
of a light hazel, and the hair and beard auburn. The
dress consisted of a scarlet doublet, over which was
a loose black gown without sleeves."2 It was repainted
in 1748 by John Hall of Stratford, at the expense
of John Ward, the actor, grandfather of the Kembles
and their sister, Mrs. Siddons. Ward gave the pro
ceeds of a performance of Othello at the Town Hall to
this object in September, 1746. In 1793 it was painted
white, at the suggestion of Malone. "Stranger, to
whom this Monument is shown," runs the famous
inscription (1810) in the visitor's book, " Invoke the
Poet's curse upon Malone." In 1861 little retouching
was found necessary, for when the bust was immersed
in a carefully prepared bath, the old colours reappeared
with some distinctness. The bust is so unlike the
Droeshout print in the first Folio, or the portrait, now
at Stratford, from which that print was probably copied,
that the presentments might well belong to different
persons. The great surgeon, John Bell, when he saw
the coloured bust, and Sir Francis Chantrey, who
examined it when coated with white paint, both said

1 Notes and Queries, 25th October, 1851. In Outlines, i. 297, the same
statement of authenticity is repeated on behalf of this and the Droeshout
frontispiece of the first Folio.

2 R. B. Wheler, History and Antiquities of Sir atford-on- Avon, 1806,
p. 71. Severn (Ward's Diary, pp. 71-2) thus describes the form of the
monument. The bust is " inarched between two Corinthian columns of
black marble, with gilded bases and capitals, with a cushion before him,
a pen in his right hand, and his left resting on a scroll. Above the
entablature are his armorial bearings," etc. A young Oxonian, about
a century ago, while on a visit to Dr. Davenport at the vicarage, took
the original stone pen from the poet's hand ; while trifling with it he let
it fall, and it was shivered to atoms. A quill pen now occupies the place.

HISTORY OF HIS MONUMENT 233

that they saw traces of the use of a mask. Some man's
face had been mechanically copied; but they expressed
no opinion as to whether that man was Shakespeare.
Not many years after the bust was set up the church
was subjected to a course of vile injury, which must
have lessened the value of the memorial as a portrait.
The vicarage of Stratford was held from 1619 to 1638 —
or, according to Wheler's list, till 1640 — by the Rev.
Thomas Wilson, B.D. In 1635, Archbishop Laud's vicar-
general visited Warwickshire. The Commissioners
suspended Mr. Wilson of Stratford "for grossly par
ticularising in his sermons, for suffering his poultry to
roost, and his hogs to lodge in the Chancel, for walking
in the church to con his sermon in time of Divine
Service," etc. The suspension was to last, subject to
Laud's agreement, for only three months, since Mr.
Wilson promised amendment, and was said "to be
a very good scholar, and was the son of a very grave
conformable Doctor of Divinity."1

The English inscription below the bust is of a very
conventional type. This and the Latin couplet above,2
may be ascribed to Mr. Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-
law, whose Latin style is known to have been concise
and fairly correct.3 The preliminary couplet, it must

1 Calendar of Domestic State Papers for 1635, ed. Bruce. See tran
script in preface, p. xl. The abstract itself, made by Sir Nathaniel Brent
as vicar-general, bears date i6th July (Dom. Car. i. ccxciii., No. 128).
2 Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,

Terra tegit, popvlvs maeret, Olympvs habet.
Stay Passenger, why goest thou by so fast?
Read if thou canst, whom envious Death hath plast,
With in this monument Shakspeare : with whome,
Quick nature dide : whose name, doth deck this Tombe,
Far more, then cost : Sith all, that He hath writt,
Leaves living art, but page, to serve his witt.

3 Elze, William Shakespeare, Eng. trans., 508-9; Brandes, William
Shakespeare, Eng. trans., ii. 410, consider Hall's authorship probable.
Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 285, says: "It is not likely that these verses
were composed either by a Stratfordian, or by any one acquainted with
their destined position."

234 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

be confessed, has somewhat of a Dutch complexion.
The phrase "Olympus habet" is remarkably like the
wording of an inscription once in the church of St.
Vitus at Leeuwarden. The church has been de
stroyed ; but the epitaphs are probably preserved in
the old tower that formed the belfry. The capital of
Friesland was famous for quaint epitaphs, and was
reported, indeed, to possess no other attractions.
Father Aicher was a monk at Leeuwarden before he
became a Professor at Salzburg, and we find in his
collection a Frisian epitaph on one Peter Tyara, whose
body lay in the earth, while " Olympus " had taken his
soul. The verses may also be found in the Itinerary
of Gotfried Hegenitius, printed at Leyden in 1630 by
the Elzevirs.1 To come nearer home, there was a
tomb in the Church of St. Martin's Outwich, at
the junction of Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate
Street, set up in memory of Jacob Falck, Treasurer of
Zealand, and Ambassador from the United Provinces
to King James ; he died in 1603, and in one of his
epitaphs, composed by A. Hunter, we find the same
phrase about Olympus.12 This church was close to
Crosby Hall, and to the house in which Shakespeare
may have resided. We might go abroad, however,
and still find the idea recurring. Welcker, for instance,
published a collection of Greek inscriptions in 1828,
and among others he copied an epitaph found on a
sarcophagus in the square by the Great Mosque at
Nicosia;3 and in this instance also we find something

1 Aicher, op. cit,, i. 414, Leovardice in cede S. Viti (No. 4): "Corpus
habet terram, Sibi mentem sumpsit Olympus." G. Hegeniti Itinerarium
Frisio-Hollandicum, Lugd. Batavor., 1630, p. 32.

2 Stow, Survey of London, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. ii. p. 118 :

"Quae natat Oceano Zelandia corpus, Olympus
Ipse animam, peregr& hoc viscera marmor habet."

A. Hunterus.

3 F. T. Welcker, Sylloge Epigrammatum Grcecorum^ Bonnse, 1828,
p. 41, No. 34 : " K.8.V rpoxaSijv jScuprjj, irapoSlra, jSaiov firicrxov," etc.

HIS EPITAPH 235

about the soul being caught into Olympus, and an
opening almost identical with the Shakespearean
"Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast?" Was
it then from London, or from Friesland, or, with far
less likelihood, from the isle of Cyprus, that Mr. Hall
derived his Olympian metaphor? It probably came
from none of these sources by any course that could be
directly traced. Mr. Ward quotes an epitaph from
Warwick to the effect that death takes not all, "for
his heavenly part hath sought the heavens, and his
fame lives immortal on earth " ; x and there was an
other old epitaph of the same class in Stratford Church
itself. We should take these into account, with what
has been stated about St. Martin's Outwich, and with
what Hall may probably have read in the works of a
Puritan poet. Some of the classical writers had
chosen Olympus, instead of Parnassus, as the Muses'
home ; and Francis Rous had revived the idea in his
Spenserian monody. One of the concluding stanzas
of his Thule represents a mourner left on earth by the
envious Fates to weep alone after a poet's departure ;
and it is probable that the phrase on Shakespeare's
tomb was directly taken from this source :—

" here to remaine,

Where with lamenting noyse she plaineth still,
Yet never can her plaints bring" back againe
That soul which mounted on Olympus hill,
In sacred spirits and the Muses traine,
Singing soule-pleasing tunes her dayes doth spend,
Whose musick and whose dayes have never end.";

"The earth covers him, the people mourns him."
" Populus maeret" ; the whole nation is in grief. Mr.
Ward moralised on the populus : "One says thus,

1 Ward's Diary, p. 286 : " Sed non totus obit, petiit pars cselica ca;lum,
Vivit et in terris, nescia fama mori."

3 Thule, or Vertues Historic, by Francis Rous, printed for the Spenser
Society, 1878, p. 151 (bk. ii. canto 8.).

236 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

from the populus, that is, the people, what can bee ex
pected but uncertaintie? as in the populus, or aspen tree,
there is no shade, but the leaves are allways playing."1
The first line of the couplet has been hardly treated
by the commentators. Even Pope was so careless as
to read "ingenio" instead of "judicio" at its com
mencement. " Judicio Pylium " refers to the wisdom
of the Pylian chieftain, or "sage Nestor's counsels,"
if we borrow Ben Jonson's phrase. The epithet of
"Pylian" comes from Ovid,2 and was thereby the
more appropriate to the poet who made such faithful
use of the Metamorphoses that "the sweet, witty soul
of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shake
speare."3 He had the skill of Maro, of Virgil, "the
master of the Epic," and the "genius," or inborn
power, of Socrates. " Genio Socratem " : the proper
name contains an evident false quantity, for no one
will deny that the first vowel was originally long.
Proper names, however, were constantly altered to
suit the hard rules of prosody, long syllables being
made short, and short sounds lengthened, for greater
ease in poetry. The " Danaides " could never have
appeared in a hexameter if their first vowel had not
received an extra weight ; and Silius Italicus was
allowed a similar licence when he was* forced to
mention "^)tolides." We may find a great number
of such cases by referring to the old grammarians,
as Urban of Belluno or the Patronymica of Father
Spadafora, published at Palermo in i668.4 In the last

1 Ward's Diary, p. 291.

2 Ovid, Am. iii. 7, 41 : " Illius ad tactum Pylius iuvenescere possit" ;
id., Ex Ponto, i. 4, 10 : " Pylio Nestore maior ero." See also the more
familiar passage in Horace, Carm., \. 15, 22: " Non Pylium Nestora
respicis?"

3 F. Meres, Pattadis Tamia (in Arber, English Garner, ii. 97).

4 Spadafora, Patronymica Grceca, et Latina, etc., a P. Placido Spatha-
fora (S. J.), Panormi, 1668. See preface ex Urbani Bellunensis Gram-

matica, and p. 183 (Danaldes, vel prima ob necessitatem producta).
For ^Etdlides, see id., p. 8.

WORDING OF HIS EPITAPH 237

instance we get very near the solecism of the Stratford
monument, for in speaking of the philosopher's son as
" Socratides," the author indicates by a special mark
that the first vowel might be used as long or short at
pleasure.1

The point is so far important that it caused Steevens
and some other commentators to propose the insertion
of Sophocles into the epitaph, in place of Socrates ;
though the result of the suggestion, if adopted, would
have a mere triumph of sound over sense. We should,
of course, lose the whole force of the allusion to the
familiar oracle by which the Greek philosopher had
been guided in the path of wisdom. Yet it is obvious
that the author of the couplet was thinking of such
a "genius" or familiar, as is so often mentioned in
the plays. " The Genius and the mortal instruments
are then in council," as Brutus said ; and Troilus talks
of the genius that cries " Come," when one must die.2
Have we not "the affably familiar ghost" in the
eighty-sixth Sonnet ? We might almost say that there
is hardly a sonnet that does not indicate the influence
of such a spiritual agency. We may take another
illustration from Gabriel Harvey's Letters : " And yet
have I on suer frende as harde as the world goith
(I meane my familiar, the Pheere of that which
attendid uppon M. Phaer in Kylgarran Forest when
he translatid Virgils ^Eneidos) . . . that never yet
fay lid me at a pinche."3 The " Daemon " of Socrates
was described as being in the nature of an oracle or
divine monition, giving warning of evil. " I should like
to tell you of a wonderful circumstance," said the phil
osopher in the Apology of Plato. " Hitherto the
familiar oracle within me has constantly been in the

1 /</., p. 96.

a Julius Ccesar, ii. i , 66-7 ; Troilus and Cressida, iv. 4.
3 Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, ed. E. J. L. Scott (Camden Society),
1884, pp. 72-3.

238 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

habit of opposing me, even about trifles, if I was going
to make a slip or error about anything : and now, as
you see, there has come upon me that which may be
thought, and is generally believed to be the last and
worst end. But the oracle made no sign of opposition,
either as I was leaving my house and going out in
the morning, or when I was going up into this court,
or while I was speaking, at anything I was going
to say ; and yet I have often been stopped in the
middle of a speech, but now in nothing I either said or
did touching this matter has the oracle opposed me."1

The actual ending of the epitaph is faulty. It seems
to be modelled on the inscription from Warwick :
" Still lives on earth the undying fame."2 The words
"living art" are taken from Love's Labour's Lost, but
there is a curious change in their application. When
the King of Navarre vowed that his Court should be a
little Academe, " still and contemplative in living art,"
he was referring his young Lords to the contemplation
of an Ars Vivendi, which might be called the science
of right action, or the true " living art."3 When we
are told that " quick Nature died," we recognise a
true Shakespearean idea. The poet had imagined the
slaying of Death : " Death once dead, there's no more
dying then."4 In Venus and Adonis he foretold the
same fate for Nature ; she is condemned for forging
the moulds divine; she is to perish "as mountain-
snow melts with the midday sun : — 5

"As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood,
The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood :
Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn'd despair,
Swear Nature's death for framing thee so fair."6

1 Plato, Apologia Socratis, 40 A. 2 See p. 235, note i.

3 Love s Labour s Lost, i. i, 13-14. 4 Sonnet cxlvi.

5 Venus and Adonis, 750. 6 Id., 739-44.

JOHN HALL 239

"Quick" means more than living ; it rather imports
vigour and liveliness, as of the "quick freshes" in
Prospero's island,1 or "so green, so quick, so fair an
eye as Paris hath.": We read in old receipt-books of
"quick oranges" and mixtures that taste "quick of
the fruit." We may compare this mention of "quick
Nature "with the personification of Nature in Jonson's
poem : —

" Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines !
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit."3

Ill

JOHN HALL'S CASE-BOOKS — INFORMATION WITH REGARD TO
HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER — HIS WIDOW

Mr. Hall's eminence as a physician is shown by the
records of remarkable cures, selected by himself and
afterwards published by James Cooke, as will appear
later. The extracts following will be found in Mr.
Fennell's Shakespeare Repository.* Dr. Bird, at one
time Linacre Professor at Cambridge, made a careful
examination of Mr. Hall's professional papers. " This
learned author," he said, "lived in our time in the
County of Warwick, where he practised physic many
years, in great fame for his skill far and near ; those
who seemed highly to esteem him, and whom by God's
blessing he wrought these cures upon, you shall find
to be amongst others persons noble, rich, and learned ;
and this I take to be a great sign of his ability." Mr.

1 Tempest, iii. 2, 75. 2 Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5, 222-3.

3 Jonson, Underwoods, xii. : "To the Memory of ... William
Shakespeare. "

4 1853, No. 2. The article is contained in a few columns, so that
specific references are needless.

24o SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

Cooke adds in his preface to the select observations :
"It seems the author had the happiness (if I may so
style it) to lead the way to that practice almost gener
ally used by the most knowing, of mixing Scorbutics
in most remedies : It was then, and I know for some
time after thought so strange that it was cast as a
reproach upon him by those most famous in his pro
fession." We suppose that he learned his new
methods at Paris or Montpellier ; Mr. Cooke remarked
that he had been a traveller, and was acquainted with
the French language, "as appeared by part of some
Observations, which I got help to make English."

Mr. Hall was a Puritan, and many of his patients
were Roman Catholics; but even "such as hated his
religion " were glad to avail themselves of his medical
science. His case-books begin in 1617 with entries as
to William, Lord Compton, who became Earl of North
ampton in the following year. Among the names
of the patients we find " Mr. Drayton, an excellent
poet," Dr. Thomas Holyoake, son of "the Mr. Holy-
oake who framed the Dictionary,"1 and Mr. George
Quiney, the curate, "of a good wit, expert in tongues
and very learned." Among entries possessing a local
interest we may notice the Stratford goodwives,
" Goodywife Bets " and Goody Brown ; and the respect
able character of the title may be illustrated by Ward's
notice of Goody Roberts, etc.,2 and by Queen Anne
of Denmark's ironical habit of calling her daughter
"Goody Palsgrave." There are entries as to Grace
Court, "wife to my apothecary," Mr. Nash's servant
lying at the Bear, "Browne, a Romish priest," with

1 Francis Holyoake (1567-1653), rector of Southam, Warwickshire,
1604-42, published his Dictionarium Etymologicum Laiinum in 1633. This
was enlarged in 1677 by his son, Thomas Holyoake (d. 1675), chaplain
of Queen's College, Oxford, and prebendary of St. Peter's in Wolver-
hampton. The son was himself in practice as a doctor for a time, and
might have been cited by John Ward in his memorandum of clerical
physicians. 2 e.g., "Goodie Southerne," Ward's Diary, p. 249.

JOHN HALL'S CASE-BOOKS 241

a memorandum "the Catholic was cured." There
are several entries about Nonconformist divines, as
Mr. Walker at Ilmington, Mr. Fossett and Mr. Wilson
of Stratford, and the Rev. John Trap, "for his piety
and learning second to none, and by much study
fallen into hypochondriac melancholy."

It appears that Mr. Hall used to send his convales
cents to Bath or the Hotwells near Bristol. Mrs.
Delabarr, for example, "came to be so much better
that she could walk and ride, and then would to the
Bath" ; Mrs. Wilson "cooled her body" too much by
drinking at St. Vincent's Well at the Hotwells, and
had to be sent off to Bath in the same way. Shake
speare must have been quite familiar with the practice.
The two Sonnets on "Cupid and his brand"1 were
partly modelled on Spenser's picture of the boiling
baths "which seethe with sacred fire,"2 and partly on
an epigram in the Anthology then in the Palatine
Library at Heidelberg, and now among the manu
scripts in the Vatican.3 But the Sonnets in question
also show a real knowledge of the virtues of the
"Bathonian King's Bath." The little love-god falls
asleep with his torch at his side, which a votaress
of Diana extinguishes in the bubbling spring :

" And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground ;
Which borrovv'd from this holy fire of love
A dateless lively heat, still to endure,
And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure."

The best account of the place as it existed about the
time when these Sonnets were written is to be found in

1 Sonnets cliii., cliv.

a Faerie Queene, ii. canto x. st. 26: "Behold the boyling bathes at
Cairbadon, which seeth with secret fire eternally."
3 Anth. Pal., ix. ep. 627 (Maptdvoi- ^\o\affrlKOv)

fq.5' viro T&J irXaTdws aTaX<j5 Ttrpvfi.tv<n I'lrvtfi

(vdev "E/x«>i, Ni/ju^xxcf Xa/zirdoa Taptf^ievo?, etc.
R

242 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

Dr. Venner's Baths of Bathe, whereto is annexed "a
Censure of the medicinable faculties of the water
of St. Vincent's Rocks near the City of Bristol"
Bath, he says, " is a little well-compacted citie . . .
for goodnesse of ayre, neernesse of a sweet and delect
able River, &c. It is pleasant and happie enough ;
but for the hot waters that boyle up even in the
middest thereof, it is more delectable and happier, than
any other of the Kingdome." l There were four public
baths, besides the little bath for lepers, differing in
their temperature or effects; "the Kings Bath is the
hottest, and it is for beauty, largenesse, and efficacy
of heat, a Kingly Bath indeed, being so hot as can be
well suffered."2 Venner is very severe on the mounte
banks "quacking for patients," and when the season
was over "quacking away to some other place" for
work, "as Crowes seek for Carrion."3 In the course
of his attack upon purse-milkers, he incidentally
explains a difficult Shakespearean phrase. In the list
of omens which heralded the birth of Richard III.,
when the owl shrieked and the night-crow cried, "the
raven rook'd her on the chimney's top";4 and Dr.
Venner says of his bath-side mountebank : " You may
also discerne him by his rooking up and downe, now
here, now there, crooching unto one, insinuating with
another, bragging and vainely boasting of his owne
worth and skill ; as though he had monopolized to
himself e Artis arcana, or that dEsculapius were only
included in his dishonest pate."5

Dr. Hall's case-books contained various notes as to
the health of his wife and daughter, which Mrs. Hall
probably forgot when she sold the manuscripts. With
out entering into unnecessary details, we may observe

1 Venner, Baths of Bathe, supplementary to Via Recta ad Vitam
Long-am, 1638, p. 310.

2 Id., p. 311. 3 Id. , enlarged edition, 1650, p. 352.
4 3 Henry VI. , v. 6, 47. 5 Venner, M.S., 1650, pp. 361-2.

THE HALLS' VISIT TO LONDON 243

that in 1630 she is said to have had terrible pains in
her joints, "so that she could not lie in her bed,
insomuch as when any helped her, she cried out
miserably." Elizabeth Hall was in delicate health as
a girl. "Elisabeth Hall, my only daughter," writes
the Doctor, "vexed with tortura oris, or convulsion of
the mouth. . . . The former form of her mouth and
face was restored 5 January, 1624." He soon after
wards took her with him on a journey to London,
where he had a house, which he wanted to inspect.
" In the beginning of April, she went to London, and
returning homewards the 22nd of the same month she
took cold, and fell into the same distemper on the
contrary side of the face, before it was on the left side,
now on the right ; and although she was grievously
afflicted with it, yet by the blessing of God she was
cured in sixten days."

The Halls appear to have chosen a very unhealthy
time for their excursion. All through the summer
of 1624 there was a prevalence of ague and fevers of an
especially virulent type. There seemed to be every
chance of an outbreak of a more dangerous kind :—

" As a planetary plague, when Jove
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air."1

Dr. Chamberlain of Westminster wrote from his
house in the Abbey Churchyard that there was no
great epidemic as far as the summer had gone : " God
keep it from among us, for we are in danger. But
this spotted fever is cousin-german to it, at least, and
makes as quick riddance almost." It will be remem
bered that King James died of the prevalent " tertian "
a few months afterwards, though Dr. George Eglisham

1 Timon of Athens, iv. 3, 108-10.

2 Letter of August 2ist, 1624, quoted by C. Creighton, History of
Epidemics, 1891, i. 504. See Dom. State Papers, vol. clxxi. , no. 66.

244 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

and others accused the Duke of Buckingham and his
mother of administering arsenic and a poisonous
ointment.1 The King himself expected to die of his
natural complaint, if Ward's entry is correct. He says
that he heard from Mr. Brace that the King was lying
on a couch shortly before his death, and his servants
thought that he was asleep. "But hee starts up and
tels them that hee was not, but was thinking that hee
was an old man and must shortly die, and must leave
behind him three fools, the King of Spaine, the King
of France, and his owne sonne."2

Elizabeth Hall's health broke down soon after her
return from London. " In the same year May the
24th (1624), she was afflicted with an erratic fever;
sometimes she was hot, by and by sweating, again
cold, all in the space of half-an-hour, and thus she was
vexed oft in a day." The old-fashioned doctors would
have bled her nearly to death, before administering
snake-root and jelly of vipers' skins, and tips of
crabs' claws taken when the sun was in the sign of
Cancer. Mr. Hall was of the French school, following
Dr. Pons of Lyons, who had written against indis
criminate bleeding,3 and the learned Sir Theodore de
Mayerne, who left the French Court to become phy
sician to King James. Elizabeth was saved by her
father's skill and patience ; and we find him making
a note long afterwards, "thus was she delivered from
death and deadly diseases, and was well for many
years."

On the 22nd of April, 1626, she was married to Mr.
Thomas Nash, eldest son of Mr. Anthony Nash of

1 See Eglisham, Prodromus vindictce in Ducem Buckingham! ce, pro
•virulenta ccede Magn<e Britannia Regis Jacobi, nee non Marchionis
Hamiltonii ac aliorum •virorum principum, 1626.

2 Ward's Diary, p. 1 19.

3 Jacobus Pons, De nimis licentiosa ac liberaliore intempestati-uaque
sanguinis missione, qua hodie plerique abutuntur, brevis tractatio.
Lugduni, 1596.

MARRIAGE OF ELIZABETH HALL 245

Welcombe, to whom Shakespeare had left money for
a mourning-ring. In the entry upon the register she
was called "Mistress Elisabeth Hall," the title being
at that time given to young girls, as may be seen by
Mr. Hall's own note of his attendance upon " Mrs.
Mary Comb, of Stratford, aged about thirteen." Mr.
Thomas Nash was about thirty-one years of age. He
had studied law at Lincoln's Inn, just enough to in
volve his widow in a Chancery suit. He was entitled
after his father's death to a dwelling-house in Chapel
Street, close to New Place, to certain meadows by the
Stone Bridge and the riverside, and to the tithes
within the hamlet of Shottery. It seems to have been
a great object to him to acquire the Shakespeare
estates and to add them to what he held in the neigh
bourhood after his wife's decease.1

In 1632, Mr. Hall was in great danger. " I fell into
a most cruel torture of my teeth, and then into a
deadly burning fever, which then raged very much,
killing almost all that it did infect, for which I used
the following method, which by the help of God
succeeded. ... I was not only much maciated but
weakened, so that I could not move myself &c. Then
my wife sent for two physicians [my friends] . . . and
I became perfectly well, praised be God ! " Three
years afterwards the malignant fever appeared in many
parts of the country. Dr. Creighton regards it as
having been the precursor of the Plague which raged
so violently in the following year.2 Even in 1635, we
are told, the Plague carried off 3,000 persons at Hull,3
and there were outbreaks in Kent and the eastern
counties, where the infection lingered for a year or
more. Mr. Hall seems to have been struck down very
suddenly. He only had time to make a verbal will

1 See Halliwcll-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 91-3.

* C. Creighton, of>. eft., i. 506-7.

3 The actual number was 2,730 (id., i. 528).

246 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

before his death, and the malignancy of the fever is
shown by his being buried the next day. For a
"nuncupative" will, as it was called, hardly any
ceremonies were at that time required. Malone gives
a copy of the transcript, dated the 25th of November,
1635. l " Imprimis, I give unto my wife my house in
London. Item, I give unto my daughter Nash my
house in Acton. Item, I give unto my daughter Nash
my meadow. Item, I give my goods and money unto
my wife and my daughter Nash, to be equally divided
betwixt them. Item, concerning my study of books,
I leave them, said he, to you, my son Nash, to dispose
of them as you see good. As for my manuscripts, I
would have given them to Mr. Boles, if he had been
here ; but forasmuch he is not here present, you may,
son Nash, burn them or do with them what you
please." The will was witnessed by Thomas Nash,
and Mr. Simon Trapp, the curate ; and no executor
having been appointed, administration was granted to
his widow in the November following.

Although Mr. Hall had sold the lease of the Strat
ford tithes in 1625, his relations were allowed to bury
him in the chancel, as though he still enjoyed a
rectorial privilege. The tombstone lies between those
of his wife and son-in-law. The arms of Hall and
Shakespeare are rudely displayed on a shield, with
the inscription : "Here lyeth the body of John Hall,
Gent. : he marr : Susanna, ye daughter and coheire
of Will. Shakespeare, Gent. : hee deceased Nover 25,
Ao. 1635 aged 60." The Latin epitaph is not without
interest. Its effect in English is as follows: "Here
lies Hall, most renowned for his medical skill, expect
ing the glad joys of the Heavenly Kingdom : he was
worthy for his deserts to rival Nestor in length of
years, but those on earth are carried off by one day
alike for all. Lest aught should be wanting to his

1 Also in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s. , ii. 61.

DEATH OF JOHN HALL 247

tomb, his faithful wife is at hand, and he has the
companion of his life as a comrade in death."1 The
verses, in Malone's opinion, could not have been
inscribed before Mrs. Hall's own death in 1649, unless
the last couplet was added at that time ; but there
seems to be no reason why the epitaph should not
have been written with a view to the future event.

We know hardly anything about Shakespeare's
books, except that they must have passed to Mr. Nash,
and afterwards to his widow, as his residuary legatee.
The poet had a Florio's Montaigne, if the autograph
in the British Museum is genuine, and the Bodleian
library has an Aldine Ovid with his signature, and
a note : " This little booke of Ovid was given to me by
W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will. Shakespeare's."
There is no list of the contents of the " study of books";
but it appears by several authorities that the phrase
means a collection or library. The learned Elias
Ashmole, for example, notes how he bought Mr. John
Booker's study of books for £140. '2 Mr. Ward uses
the phrase in the same way when quoting a story from
one of the Russells : "An auncient minister in their
country, a very good schollar . . . affirmd, that a
divine could not handsomely furnish a studie for his
use under 700 li. ; and he reckond itt upp to him, so
much for such a sort of books, and so much for
another ; as I remember, hee told mee 30 li. for
bibles."3

At the time of Mr. Hall's death, the Nashes were

1 " Hallius hie situs est medica celeberrimus arte,

Expectans regni gaudia laeta Dei.
Dignus erat meritis qui Nestora vinceret annis

In terris omnes sed rapit aequa dies ;
Ne tumulo quid desit, adest fidissima conjux,

Et vitas comitem, nunc quoque mortis habet."

* Memoirs of the Life of . . . Elias Ashmole, Esq. ; Drawn up by
himself by way of Diary , London, 1717, p. 41 (2ist May, 1667).
3 Ward's Diary, p. 285.

248 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

living in their own house, next door to New Place ;
but, in accordance with Mrs. Hall's wish, they gave
up their establishment and kept house with her until
Mr. Nash's death. While they were all living together,
New Place was sometimes called " Mr. Nash's house,"
even by himself; but it appears clearly by the parish-
books that Mrs. Hall was both owner and rateable
occupier.1

In 1636 they became intimate with some of Mrs.
Shakespeare's relations. William Hathaway, who,
according to Malone, was the poet's grandnephew, was
farming the estate at Weston- upon -Avon. His
brother Thomas came in that year to Stratford, when
he was admitted into the Joiner's Company, and made
a freeman of the Borough, paying fees as a ''foreigner,"
though the amount was reduced as a matter of grace.
The brothers became trustees of the New Place estate
upon a settlement being made in 1647, and they seem
to have been accepted without any hesitation as mem
bers of the family. Thomas Hathaway had a son
named William, who is believed to have died in youth,
and there were five daughters : Rose, the eldest, was
baptised at Stratford in 1640 ; Joanna married a Mr.
Edward Kent ; and we hear of Judith, of Elizabeth,
born in 1647, and Susanna, born in the following
year.2

Mrs. Hall was living in New Place in July, 1643,
when Queen Henrietta Maria made her triumphant
entry into the town, and held her gay Court in the
poet's old home.3 A few months afterwards Stratford
was occupied by the Parliamentary forces, and it was
on this occasion that Mr. James Cooke, a surgeon and
general practitioner of high repute at Warwick,

1 See Stopes, op. cit., p. 97.

2 Malone, op. cit., ii. 115-16, where the date of Rose's baptism is
given as 6th November, 1642.

3 See Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 108-10.

JAMES COOKE AND HALL'S NOTES 249

obtained the medical notes prepared by Mr. Hall, and
published a few years afterwards.1 Mr. Cooke was
the author of Mellificium Chirurgice, which appeared
in 1655. It was republished with a supplement as a
duodecimo in 1662, and was enlarged into an octavo
and a quarto in later issues. William Oldys had two
portraits of Cooke in his collection, both by Robert
White, the one taken at the age of sixty-four in an
oval frame uwith hair, and a short neck-cloth," and
the other engraved about seven years afterwards. The
cases selected by Mr. Hall were published some years
after Cooke bought the manuscript. The full title is
given by Mr. Fennell as follows : " Select observations
on English Bodies, or Cures both Empericall and
Historicall performed upon very eminent persons in
desperate Diseases. First written in Latine by Mr.
John Hall, physician, living at Stratford-upon-Avon,
in Warwickshire, where he was very famous, as also
in the counties adjacent, as appears by these Observa
tions drawn out of severall hundreds of his, as choy-
sest ; Now put into English for common benefit by
James Cooke Practitioner in Physick and Chirurgery :
London, printed for John Sherley, at the Golden
Pelican, in Little-Britain, 1657."

An address to the friendly reader contains an ac
count of the editor's interview with Mrs. Hall about
the year i644-2 "Being in my art an attendant to
parts of some regiments to keep the pass at the bridge
of Stratford-upon-Avon, there being then with me a
mate allied to the gentleman that writ the following
observations in Latin, he invited me to the house of
Mrs. Hall, wife to the deceased, to see the books left
by Mr. Hall. After a view of them, she told me she
had some books left by one that professed physic, with

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, id., \. 276, puts the date of Cooke's examination
of the papers earlier, " about the year 1642."
a See preceding note.

250 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

her husband, for some money. I told her, if I liked
them, I would give her the money again ; she brought
them forth, amongst which there was this with another
of the Author's, both intended for the press. I being
acquainted with Mr. Hall's hand, told her that one or
two of them were her husband's, and showed them
her ; she denied, I affirmed, till I perceived she begun
to be offended. At last I returned her the money.
After some time of trial of what had been observed,
I resolved to put it to suffer according to perceived in
tentions, to which end I sent it to London, which after
[being] viewed by an able Doctor, he returned answer
that it might be useful, but the Latin was so abbre
viated or false, that it would require the like pains as
to write a new one. After which, having some spare
hours (it being returned to me), I put it into this
garb, being somewhat acquainted with the author's
conciseness, especially in the Receipts, having had
some acquaintance with his apothecary." In a post
script he adds: "I had almost forgot to tell ye
that these Observations were chosen by him from
all the rest of his own, which I conjectured could
be no less than a thousand, as fittest for public
view."

Mrs. Hall died at Stratford on the nth of July, 1649,
and was buried in the chancel of the Parish Church
five days afterwards. The date of her death is given
by Dugdale as July the 2nd, but this shown by the
register to be only a clerical error. The inscription
on her tombstone was to the following effect : " Heere
lyeth ye body of Svsanna, wife to John Hall Gent : ye
davghter of William Shakespeare Gent. She deceased
ye nth of Jvly, A.D. 1649, aged 66:

Witty above her sexe, but that's not all,
Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall,
Something of Shakespere was in that, but this
Wholy of Him with whom she's now in blisse.

DEATH AND EPITAPH OF MRS. HALL 251

Then, passenger, has't ne're a teare

To weepe with her that wept with all ?
That wept yet set herselfe to chere
Them up with comforts cordiall.
Her Love shall live, her mercy spread,
When thou ha'st ne're a teare to shed."

The whole inscription was erased when her grave
was disturbed at the beginning of the last century.
There was a person named Watts living at Rhyon-
Clifford on a property which is said once to have
belonged to Mr. Hall. He appears to have acquired
some interest in the Stratford tithes, and his relations,
no doubt, put in the usual claim for a grave in the
chancel. He was accordingly buried in Mrs. Hall's
grave, her epitaph being erased. Malone has pre
served the form of the substituted inscription, which
ran as follows: "Here lyeth the body of Richard
Watts of Ryhon-Clifford, in the parish of old Strat
ford, Gent, who departed this life the 23d of May,
Anno Dom. 1707, and in the 46th year of his age."1
The story of the restoration of Mrs. Hall's memorial
is told by Mr. Neil in his Home of Shakespeare. The
intruding lines were erased in 1844 ; the original in
scription was restored " by lowering the surface of the
stone and re-cutting the letters " ; and the tombs of
John Hall and Thomas Nash were also improved " by
deepening the letters and re-cutting the armorial
bearings."2

1 Malone, op. cit., ii. 618, note.

2 Neil, Home of Shakespeare, 1871, p. 49.

252 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

JUDITH SHAKESPEARE — HER MARRIAGE TO THOMAS QUINEY

HER PLACE IN HER FATHER'S WILL — THE QUINEY FAMILY

ALLUSIONS TO GROCERS AND DRUGGISTS IN SHAKESPEARE

Before following the later fortunes of Mrs. Hall's
daughter Elizabeth we must return to the story of
Judith Shakespeare and her relations with the family
of Quiney. Very little seems to be known about her
life, though it was hoped at one time that something
would be found out about her in Mr. Ward's diaries.
The vicar had made a memorandum, of which the
exact date does not appear, about several matters that
required immediate attention. Among other things,
he owed a letter to his brother in Gloucestershire ; he
was to send to his friend, Tom Smith, for a certain
acknowledgment, and, in between the two, he meant
"to see Mrs. Queeny." This entry has been taken
to refer to Shakespeare's younger daughter, but an
examination of the circumstances will show that this
can hardly be correct.1

Judith Shakespeare lived at home till her marriage
in the February before her father's death, when she
was just past thirty-one years of age. The marriage-
entry in the register is as follows: " 1615.2 Feab-
ruary 10. Tho. Queeny tow Judith Shakespeare."
Her husband was considerably younger than herself,
having been baptised on the 26th of February,
1589-90. He was the son of Mr. Richard Quiney,
High Bailiff of Stratford, who died in 1602. 3

The correspondence between this Richard Quiney
and his brother-in-law, Abraham Sturley, about Strat
ford business, is printed in an appendix to the Life

1 Ward's Diary, p. 184. a l6l6>

3 Mulone, op. cit., ii. 613-14.

THE QUINEY FAMILY 253

by Malone ; but it may be convenient to extract one or
two passages directly relating to Shakespeare, with
a change into modern spelling to render them more
generally intelligible. The letter from Sturley, dated
the 24th of January, 1597-8, contains a reference to the
tithes: "This is one special remembrance from your
father's motion : it seemeth by him that our country
man, Mr. Shakespeare, is willing to disburse some
money upon some odd yard-land or other at Shottery
or near about us ; he thinketh it a very fit pattern to
move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the
instructions you can give him thereof, and by the
friends he can make therefor, we think it a fair mark
for him to shoot at, and not unpossible to hit. If
obtained, would advance him indeed, and would do
us much good." The Borough was in great want
of funds, and he writes in November of the same year
that he has received the message importing that this
countryman, Mr. William Shakespeare, would procure
the money, "which I will like of as I shall hear
when, and where, and how, and I pray let not
go that occasion if it may sort to any indifferent con
ditions."1

Mr. Quiney's letter to Shakespeare was dated the
25th of October, 1598. The important passages run
in modern English as follows: "Loving countryman,
I am bold of you, as of a friend, craving your help
with .£30 upon Mr. Bushell's and my security, or
Mr. Mytten's with me. Mr. Rosswell is not come
to London as yet, and I have especial cause. You
shall friend me much in helping me out of all the
debts I owe in London, I thank God, and much quiet
my mind, which would not be indebted . . . My time
bids me hasten to an end, and so I commit this [to]
your care and hope of your help. I fear I shall not
be back this night from the Court. Haste. The Lord

1 Id, , ii. 566. See also transcripts in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s,, ii. 57-60.

254 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

be with you and with us all, Amen ! from the Bell
in Carter Lane. . . . Yours in all kindness, Rye.
Quyney." l

This gentleman had eight children : the three
daughters were named Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary ;
Adrian, the eldest son, named after his uncle, a former
High Bailiff, was born in 1586; Richard, who became
a grocer in London, was born in the following year ;
Thomas, as we have seen, was twenty-seven when he
married Shakespeare's daughter ; William was born
in 1593, according to Boswell's note on Malone, John
in 1597, and George in April, 1600. The last became
the Curate of Stratford, and died in 1624 of a consump
tion.2 We have already mentioned his illness, and
we need only add Mr. Hall's concluding note to the
effect that his patient was a person of good parts, and
for so young a man was very learned in every subject.

Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps considered that the Quineys
must have been anxious to hasten their marriage :
"they were married," he says, ''without a licence, an
irregularity for which a few weeks afterwards they
were fined and threatened with excommunication by
the ecclesiastical court at Worcester."3 There is
something obscure about the statement. The usual
course was to have banns instead of any licence, except
during prohibited periods. Even the Princess Eliza
beth had followed the customary rule. The Vicar
of Stratford heard from Mr. Washburn how "King
James would have his daughter askt three times in
the church, which accordingly shee was, in St.
Margaret's, Westminster."4 It is most improbable
that the incumbent would have wilfully incurred the
punishment due for omitting the banns, in the absence
of a dispensation ; but it has already been shown that

1 See facsimile and transcript in Halliwell-Phillipps, id. , i. 166-7.

2 Malone, op. cit.t ii. 613. 3 Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 255.
4 Ward's Diary, p. 172.

JUDITH SHAKESPEARE'S MARRIAGE 255

there were great differences of opinion about the
necessity of a licence to marry within the periods of
prohibition. In the year of Judith Shakespeare's
marriage, Septuagesima Sunday fell on January 7th,old
style ; the 7th of April following was the First Sunday
after Easter, when the marriage season commenced
again. It is clear that Thomas and Judith ought to
have bought a dispensation, if only to give the officials
their ancient fee. From FalstafFs mouth we learn of
another rule that was rapidly becoming obsolete.
" Marry, there is another indictment upon thee, for
suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to
the law, for the which I think thou wilt howl " ; and
"All victuallers do so," is all that can be urged in
reply."1 It was held to be no answer in Judith's case.
No doubt the biographer is right in saying that they
were actually sued ; the important point for us to con
sider is the effect which these proceedings had upon
Shakespeare. There is no occasion to suppose that the
younger daughter would have stood in her sister's
place if the marriage had been canonically correct ;
but it certainly looks as if Shakespeare apprehended
that the marriage might be declared void. Every
care apparently was taken to meet the danger. The
term of three years was fixed from the date of the will,
during which certain events were to happen, according
as Judith had or had not a child or children ; Thomas
Quiney is not mentioned by name, and, in fact, is only
vaguely indicated as the person who might be Judith's
husband after the expiration of the three-years period.
To make the point clear, it may be convenient to take
the exact words of that part of the will, the words
struck out and inserted in the clauses being indicated
by italics and brackets. The title and heading are
written out at length ; but the pious exordium, dis
posing of soul and body, is omitted.

1 2 Henry IV. , it. 4, 371.

256 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

" Vicesimo Quinto Die (Januarii erased) Martii (inserted)
anno regni domini nostri Jacobi, nunc regis Anglie, &c.
decimo quarto, et Scotiae xlix° annoque Domini 1616. T.
(Testamentuni) Wmi Shackspeare. In the name of God,
amen ! I William Shackspeare of Stratford-upon-Avon in
the countie of Warr, gent., in perfect health and memorie,
God be praysed, doe make and ordayne this my last will and
testament in manner and forme followeing. . . . Item I gyve
and bequeath unto my (sonne in L erased) daughter Judyth
one hundred and fyftie pounds of lawfull English money, to
be paied unto her in manner and forme followeing, that ys
to saye, one hundred pounds in discharge of her marriage
portion (inserted) within one yeare after my deceas, with
consideracion after the rate of twoe shillinges in the pound
for soe long tyme as the same shal be unpaied unto her after
my deceas, and the fyftie pounds residewe thereof upon her
surrendring of (inserted) or gyving of such sufficient securitie
as the overseers of this my will shall like of to surrender or
graunte &c. (the Rowington copyhold). Item I gyve and
bequeath unto my saied Daughter Judith one hundred and
fyftie pounds more, if shee or anie issue of her bodie be
lyvinge att thend of three yeares next ensueing the daie of
the date of this my will, during which tyme my executours
to paie her consideracion from my deceas according to the
rate aforesaied ; and if she dye within the saied terme with
out issue of her bodye, then my will ys, and I doe gyve and
bequeath one hundred poundes thereof to my neece Eliza
beth Hall, and the fiftie poundes to be sett fourth by my
executours during the lief of my sister Johane Harte, and
the use and proffitt thereof cominge shal be payed to my
saied sister Jone, and after her deceas the saied 1. li. shall
remaine amongst the children of my saied sister equallie to
be devided amongst them ; but if my saied daughter Judith
be lyving att thend of the saied three yeares, or anie yssue
of her bodye, then my will ys and soe I devise and bequeath
the saied hundred and fyftie poundes to be sett out by my
executours and overseers (inserted) for the best benefitt of her
and her issue, and the stock (inserted) not to be (inserted)
paied unto her soe long as she shal be marryed and covert
baron (by my executours and overseers erased) ; but my will
ys that she shall have the consideracion yearelie paied unto

HIS LEGACIES TO JUDITH 257

her during her lief, and, after her deceas, the saied stock and
consideracion to be paied to her children, if she have anie,
and if not, to her executours or assignes, she lyving the
saied terme after my deceas, Provided that if such husbond
as she shall att thend of the saied three yeares be marryed
unto, or att anie after,1 doe sufficientle assure unto her and
thissue of her bodie lands awnswereable to the porcion by
this my will gyven unto her, and to be adjudged soe by my
executours and overseers, then my will ys that the saied
cl. //'. shal be paied to such husbond as shall make such
assurance, to his owne use. Item, I gyve and bequeath
unto my saied sister Jone xx //, and all my wearing apparell,
to be paied and delivered within one yeare after my deceas ;
and I doe will and devise unto her the house (inserted) with
thappurtenaunces in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her
naturall lief, under the yearelie rent of \i\d. Item, I gyve
and bequeath unto her three sonns, William Harte, (blank)
Hart, and Michaell Harte, fyve poundes a peece, to be payed
within one yeare after my deceas (to be sett out for her 'within
one yeare after my deceas by my executours, with thadvise and
direccions of my overseers, for her best prqffitt untill her
marriage, and then the same with the increase thereof to be
paied unto her, all but the last word erased). Item, I gyve
and bequeath unto (her erased) the saied Elisabeth Hall
(inserted) All my plate except my brod silver and gilt bole
(inserted), that I now have att the date of this my will.
Item, I gyve and bequeath unto the poore of Stratford afore-
saied tenn poundes &c. Item, I gyve and bequeath to my
saied daughter Judith my broad silver gilt bole. ... In
witnes whereof I have hereunto put my (scale erased) hand
(inserted) the daie and yeare first above written. — By me,
William Shakespeare."

Some of the erasures in the portions of the document
here extracted might lead the reader to infer that the
original draft contained provisions far more beneficial
to Judith and her husband than those which the will
contained as finally executed.

The position and circumstances of Mr. Thomas

1 i.e. at any (time) after.

258 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

Quiney, at the time of his marriage and afterwards,
appear by the extracts from the Corporation Books
collected and published by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps.1
He was living, when he married, in a house on the
west side of the High Street, but after a few months
he moved into a larger house, called the Cage, on the
opposite side, "at the corner of Fore Bridge Street,"
where he had set up a vintner's shop. His mother,
Mrs. Elizabeth Quiney, had kept a tavern ever since
Richard Quiney's death ; and we may suppose that
the newly married couple obtained a transfer or a
renewal of her licence. Thomas Quiney is shown
to have had a good education by his fine penmanship,
and by his use of a French motto used in one of his
accounts for 1623.2 We are told that he was admitted
to the freedom of the Borough in 1617, and acted as
Chamberlain for two years after his first election in
1621. He did not retire from the Town Council till
1630, when his affairs were in an unfortunate position,
since " in that year's annals" it is recorded that he
was fined a shilling for swearing, the amount showing
that he was treated as a person of low station ; and
that he was also fined a like amount for allowing
townsmen to tipple in his house. The proceedings in
the last case were under the Tippling Acts of the first
and fourth years of James I., by which inquiry was to
be made before the Justices of Assize and in every
court-leet as to persons being drunk and continu
ing drinking or tippling, or suffering persons to
continue drinking or tippling. The keepers of ale
houses and victuallers were in like manner bound
by their recognisances not to allow idle persons to
remain in their houses long to sit singing, trifling, or
drinking, to the maintenance of idleness.

Judith Quiney was unfortunate in her marriage. All

1 See Halliwell-Phillips, op. cit., \. 305-7.

2 See facsimiles, id., t. 256.

THOMAS QUINEY'S MISFORTUNES 259

her children died young, and her husband left her
about 1652 to get support from his brother in London.
Shakespeare Quiney, their first child, was baptised on
the 23rd of November, 1616, and died in the following
May. In the entries as to his baptism and burial his
father is styled "gentleman" ; but the epithet is dis
continued afterwards, in consequence, perhaps, of his
trading as a vintner. " Richard, son of Thomas
Quiney," was baptised the gth of February, 1617-18,
and Thomas, the third and last child, on the 23rd of
January, 1619-20. Thomas died first, at the end of
January, 1638-9, and Richard within five weeks after
wards.1

It appears from the local records that Mr. Quiney
was at one time in danger of a prosecution for selling
unwholesome and adulterated wine. The practice, no
doubt, was common ; but a conviction made the offender
liable to very formidable penalties. Mr. Quiney's
excuse was that he had dealt for years with Mr. Francis
Creswick, of Bristol, who had always supplied him
with good wine, and in quantities of several hogsheads
at a time, and that on this particular occasion someone
must have tampered with the stock during its transit
from Bristol to Stratford. One may suspect, however,
that he had become too expert in the mystery of
making artificial wines and restoring pricked and
musty vintages. There were plenty of tavern-keepers
who could make claret or alicant out of cider and mul
berries, and malmsey or a pint of "brown bastard"
with thin white wine and a few raisins of the sun.
Mr. Quiney would probably not get any Rhenish at
Bristol, but he would find plenty of ordinary red wine,
"of an austere sharp taste,"3 which it was customary

1 Malone, op, cit., ii. 615-19. Malone gives date of Thomas Quiney
the younger' s baptism as 291(1 August, 1619 ; but see Halliwell-Phillipps,
op. cit., ii. 52.

a I Henry IV., ii. 4, 82 ; Measure for Measure, iii. 2, 4.

3 Venner, Via Recta ad Vitam Longam, 1638, p. 34.

26o SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

to roughen and make still more astringent with sloe
juice ; he could buy claret, a pure, quick wine, as
Venner says, " scarcely inferiour to any of the regall
wines of France," and white wine of Orleans, hardly
inferior to muscadel, and the usual sacks and canaries.1
The spirits, cordials, and vinegar would probably be
made at home. The extracts from the same records
show that the Quineys also dealt in tobacco, which had
come rapidly into fashion in spite of the royal counter
blasts. Times had changed since Quiney's uncle had
written to warn his father of the dangers of the
town — "Take heed of tobacco whereof we hear per
William Perry" — and had recommended instead
"some good burned wine or aquavita and ale strongly
mingled without bread for a toast."2 Bristol supplied
the jovial weed in all the varieties of " ball, leaf, cane,
and pudding-packs," described by the smoke-hating
Josuah Sylvester.3 Aubrey thus describes its introduc
tion into Wiltshire. "In our part of North Wilts,
e.g. Malmesbury hundred, it came first into fashion
by Sir Walter Long. I have heard my grandfather
Lyte say that one pipe was handed from man to man
round about the table. They had first silver pipes ;
the ordinary sort made use of a walnut shell and a
straw. It was sold then for it's wayte in silver. I have
heard some of our old yeomen neighbours say that
when they went to Malmesbury or Chippenham
market, they culled out their biggest shillings to lay in
the scales against the tobacco."4 Another novelty was
caviare, a proverbial object of dislike, which became
a fashionable provoker of thirst after Shakespeare's

1 Id., pp. 29-33.

2 See Abraham Sturley's letter of 4th November, 1598, in Malone, op.
cit., ii. 569-72.

3 Sylvester, Tobacco Battered, and the Pipes Shattered . . by a
Volley oj Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon, in Works, 1641,
p. 579. col. 2.

4 Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, 1898, ii. 181, sub Sir Walter Raleigh.

THOMAS QUINEY'S TRADE 261

time. Beaumont and Fletcher had their jest against
a simpering novice, as "one that ne'er tasted caveare,
nor knows the smack of dear anchovies."1 All the
accounts of its introduction are derived from the
anonymous Nouveau Voyage du Nord; it appears
to have been exported from the Obi and Volga by
Armenian merchants, and to have found its way to
England through Genoa or Venice. "There is an
Italian sauce," says Venner, "called Caviaro, which
begins to be in use with us, such vaine affectors are we
of novelties. It is prepared of the Spawne of Sturgion :
the very name doth well expresse its nature, that it
is good to beware of it." ~

The date of Thomas Quiney's death is unknown.
He survived his brother Richard, and received an
annuity of £5 charged by his will on the family lands
at Shottery. He does not seem to have returned to
Stratford. The tavern was taken over by a Thomas
Quiney the younger, one of the London grocer's sons,
and Mrs. Judith lived on alone ; she died at the
age of seventy-seven, and was buried at Stratford on
the 9th of February, 1662, according to our way of
reckoning.

It is suggested in Dr. Severn's preface to the Diary
that Mr. Ward may have been appointed vicar by the
King early in 1662, Mr. Alexander Bean, the Presby
terian minister, having been removed soon after the
Restoration.3 If the appointment had been made at
the beginning of the year, the note as to "Mrs.
Queeny" might, of course, be taken as referring to
Shakespeare's daughter. But it appears that this view
is incorrect, and that Mr. Bean was only dismissed

1 Beaumont and Fletcher, Nice Valour, act v. sc. i. Nares' Glossary,
s.v. , refers also to Randolph, Muse's Looking Glass, act ii. sc. 4 : "To feed
on caveare, and eat anchovies." See Cartwright, The Ordinary, act ii.
sc. i, in Dodsley's Old Plays, 1826, vol. x., and the note thereon.

a Venner, Via Recta, 1650, p. 142.

3 Ward's Diary, p. 16. Severn's statement is positive.

262 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

under the provisions of the Act of Uniformity, which
came into operation upon the 24th of August, 1662,
known as "Black Bartholomew's Day." Mr. Bean
would not be reordained or take the oaths of obedience
and non-resistance. Ward tells us how his neighbour,
Mr. Burges of Sutton Coldfield, submitted and then
bitterly repented; "for the leaving of his ministrie
he took much comfort in itt, since itt could not bee
injoyed but uppon the terms wherein now itt is."1
Ward's own appointment is to be found in the Book
of Entries for the diocese, which shows that he was
inducted on the loth of December, 1662, under the
patronage of King Charles II.

The Mrs. Quiney whom Mr. Ward visited may have
been the wife of one of Judith's nephews. William
Quiney had left the London business, and had been
established at Shottery since 1656 ; and Thomas, his
brother, as we have seen, was living at the Cage.
The grocer's and druggist's business had been carried
on in partnership with John Sadler, another Stratford
man. The shop was at the sign of the " Red Lion " in
Bucklersbury, at the end of the Poultry, and close
to the Royal Exchange. Mr. Ward notes that "the
Exchange kept in Lumbard Street before itt came to
Cornhill."2 This removal, however, had taken place
long before Quiney and Sadler sold Italian goods
at the "Red Lion," or Shakespeare himself had come
to town.

It was on the 23rd of January, 1570 (old style),
that the Queen dined with Sir Thomas Gresham, and
afterwards paid a State visit to the "Burse." She
inspected all the principal rooms, and especially the
magazine called the Pawne, which was " richly fur
nished with all sorts of the finest wares," and was
pleased to proclaim that the place should for ever after-

1 Id, , p. 99. 2 Id., p. 297.

THE QUINEYS OF BUCKLERSBURY 263

wards be known as the Royal Exchange.1 The Poultry
and Bucklersbury both opened into the wide market
place of West Cheap, nearly opposite to the Great
Conduit, to which fresh water was brought in pipes
underground from Paddington. The whole street called
Bucklersbury, said Stow, was in his time possessed on
both sides throughout by grocers and apothecaries ;
but a great part of the business carried on by them
would now be considered to belong to the herbalist, the
perfumer, and the chemist.2 Shakespeare must have
known the place well, if he lived in the immediate
neighbourhood. He was fond of referring to drugs
and tinctures. We are told, for instance, of a life in
love "as luscious as locusts," that shall turn "as bitter
as coloquintida."3 When the heart wants some great
cordial it is bidden, "Get you some of this distilled
Carduus Benedictus, and lay it to your heart : it is the
only thing for a qualm."4 When the summer's sweet
ness is preserved by art, we have beauty's child remain
ing as a prisoner or hostage — "a liquid prisoner pent
in walls of glass " : — 5

" O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give !
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses :
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so ;
Of their sweet breath are sweetest odours made."6

1 Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, i. 275. Stow, Survey, ed.
Strype, bk. ii. p. 135.

2 Stow, u.s., bk. iii. p. 27. In ii. 200, he speaks of its inhabitants
as principally Drugsters and Furriers.

3 Othello, i. 3, 354-5. 4 Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 4, 73-5.
5 Sonnet v. 8 Sonnet liv.

264 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

We have a mention of the very place in question
from Falstaff in the Merry Wives of Windsor: —

" I cannot cog and say thou art this and that, like a many
of these lisping hawthorn-buds, that come like women in
man's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-
time."1

Another indication of Shakespeare's interest in the
subject lies in the fact that he employed a separate
druggist of his own. His son-in-law Hall tells us
that he himself employed Mr. Court, of Stratford,
but that John Nason was Shakespeare's apothecary.
He has an entry in his case-book about attendance upon
John Nason, there described as a barber ; but Mr.
Fennell pointed to the undoubted fact that barbers in
those days were not confined to shaving and wig-
making, but let blood and drew teeth, and generally
undertook the lower branches of medicine. There may
have been some economy in having a drugster to one
self, since Ward tells us that "some doctors had a
noble out of the pound of their apothecaries ; many
a crowne, as an apothecarie in London told mee."2
There was less need of any intervention in those days,
when everyone knew the virtues of herbs, and could
send out for powdered eye-bright to freshen the bread
and butter, or a pipefull of sage, rosemary, and betony
for "rheumatism in the brain," as might be required.
Ward's diaries are full of information on such points,
which he perhaps got from the Quineys. Liquorice,
for instance, was much used in the stillroom. He tells
us of a white juice, as well as the black ; the latter
is made "by juicing the little strings of the roots."
"Liquorish (is) planted much about Pontefract, in
Yorkshire. The white juice is deer, about 4 shillings
a pound, as I was certainly informed."3 Dr. Venner

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, Hi. 3, 76-9.

a Ward's Diary, p. 278. 3 Id. , p. 290.

DRUGGISTS AND HERBALISTS 265

was very great upon the excellent virtues of burnet,
now mostly remembered as occurring in a Shakespearean
landscape :—

" The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover."1

It is very effectual against the Plague, said the old
Doctor, and against other affections of the heart ; " for
the leaves being put into wine, especially Claret, yeeld
unto it not only an excellent relish in drinking, but
also maketh it much more comfortable to the heart and
spirits."2 It was, in fact, much the same as bugloss or
borage in its effects, and its use marks the chief stage in
the evolution of claret-cup. But the prescription seems
to have been unknown at Stratford, where, according to
the Vicar, one came to a tavern, and asked for a pint of
claret and burnet; and "the vintner, instead thereof,
went and really burnt itt."3 Ising-glass, again, was
usually described in the dictionaries as "a kind offish-
glue used in medicine, and brought from Iceland " ;
but Mr. Ward was always asking questions about his
friends' business; and "isinglasse," he writes, "is made
of the caul or omentum of sturgeon, as Mr. Quiny
told mee."4

ELIZABETH HALL — HER MARRIAGES — HER WILL — SUBSEQUENT
FORTUNES OF SHAKESPEARE'S STRATFORD PROPERTY

We now return to the story of the elder branch of
the family. When Judith Quiney's sons died in 1638-9,
it became necessary to consider the way in which the
family estates were settled. There might be no diffi
culty if Mrs. Nash should have male issue, which

1 Henry V., v. 2, 48-9. a Venncr, op. ci/., p. 199.

3 Ward's Diary, p. 103. 4 Id., p. 303.

266 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

seemed, indeed, to be unlikely ; but if she had no such
issue, then after her mother and herself were dead, the
whole property would be in Mrs. Quiney's power.
Mrs. Quiney might leave it all to her husband or his
family ; but in such a matter it might fairly be pre
sumed that Shakespeare himself would have wished
his " niece Elisabeth" to have the last word. The
property was accordingly resettled in 1639. The
entail was barred, and Judith Quiney's reversionary
estate brought to an end. The property was settled,
subject to Mrs. Hall's life estate, upon Elizabeth for
life, and her husband, Thomas Nash, for life, if he
survived her ; after their deaths it was entailed upon her
issue by that marriage ; in default, upon her issue by
any marriage, with a remainder to Mr. Nash and his
heirs. Should the entail be barred, his rights would
disappear.1 He seems, however, to have regarded it
all as his own. They had no child ; and he evidently
thought it impossible that Elizabeth should marry
again. His will was dated in 1642 ; but he added a
verbal codicil when he died five years afterwards.2
His epitaph, omitting the somewhat trite Latin
couplets, is to this effect: " Heere resteth the body
of Thomas Nashe Esq. he mar : Elizabeth, the davg :
and heire of lohn Halle gent. He died Aprill 4, A.
1647, aged 53." By his will, as it originally stood,
he gave certain legacies, and made his wife residuary
legatee and executrix ; and as to the real property, he
gave her a life-interest in his house in Chapel Street,
his meadows at Stratford, and his tithes in Shottery ;
and he devised the Shakespeare estate in Stratford
and London, by a very imperfect description, to his
cousin, Edward Nash, and his heirs. By the transcript
of his verbal codicil he is shown to have made several
other bequests, among which were the following :

1 Deed of ayth May, 1639, in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 108.

2 See id., 114.

WILL OF THOMAS NASH 267

"To his mother Mrs. Hall £50: to Elizabeth Hatha
way £50: to Thomas Hathaway £50: to Judith
Hathaway £10 : to his Uncle and Aunt Nash, each
twenty shillings to buy them rings : to his cousin
Sadler and his wife the same : to his cousin Richard
Quiney and his wife the same : to his cousin Thomas
Quiney and his wife (Judith) the same." The altera
tions made in the disposition of his real estate show
that he must have forgotten the main provisions of
his will.

Taking the words of the codicil as they appear
in Malone's Appendix, we find that he devised his
meadows to his wife and her heirs absolutely "to
the end that they may not be severed from her own
land"; and he further declared "that the inheritance
of his land given to his cousin, Edward Nash, should be
by him settled, after his decease, upon his son, Thomas
Nash, and his heirs."1 The will was duly proved, but
Mrs. Nash declined to carry out the provisions that
purported to deal with Shakespeare's estate. She took
the precaution of barring the existing entails and
making a new settlement, of which, among others,
William Hathaway of Weston-upon-Avon and Thomas
Hathaway of Stratford were trustees. Its effect was to
place the whole property at her own disposal, subject to
her mother's life-estate. These proceedings led to a
Chancery suit, which Mrs. Nash was able to compromise
upon favourable terms, her grandfather's estate at
Stratford being secured to her and her heirs, subject to
a promise that Edward Nash should have an option of
purchase at her death.2

On the 5th of June, 1649, Elizabeth Nash was
married to John Barnard, son of Mr. Baldwin Barnard
of Abington, near Northampton. The manor of
Abington had been in the Barnard family for more

1 Malone, op. cit.t ii. 620.

2 Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 115-16.

268 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

than two hundred years.1 Mr. John Barnard was a
widower with a large family. He had married a
daughter of Sir Clement Edmonds, of Preston, a
village close to Abington ; 2 and his wife had died in
1642, leaving four sons and as many daughters. At
the time of Mr. Barnard's second marriage, three of
the girls were still in the schoolroom. Within a short
time after her marriage, Mrs. Barnard was summoned
to attend her mother in her last illness, which, as we
have already noticed, ended fatally on the nth of July
in the same year. On her death, Mr. and Mrs. Barnard
cook possession of New Place and the rest of the
Stratford property ; and they seem to have remained
there at least until 1653, when a certain settlement
made by them is known to have been witnessed by
persons residing at Stratford. It may have been a
few months afterwards that they moved to the family
place at Abington, not, we may suppose, without
some regret ; for Mr. Ward has preserved a Stratford
saying that ''Northamptonshire wants three f s ; that
is, fish, fowl, and fuel."3 Abington Hall was in a
somewhat dreary situation, fronting upon the road from
Northampton to Cambridge, which at that time ran
between great tracts of common-field on either side.
We hear of no traditions about the house, except a

1 Bridges, History and Antiquities of Northants, ed. Whalley, 1791,
i. 401. Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Lyllyng, lord of the manor
temp. Henry V., married Robert Bernard, who became possessed of the
manor and advowson in the right of his wife. " In this family they re
mained for upwards of two hundred years, till purchased of Sir John
Bernard vn. 1671, by William Thursby, Esquire."

2 Commonly called Preston-Deanery, about 6 miles away, and 4$
miles south of Northampton, in Wimersley Hundred. See Bridges,
op. cit., i. 381.

3 Ward's Diary, p. 133. Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 117, says:
" How long after their marriage they occupied New Place does not
appear, but it is mentioned as in his (John Barnard's) tenure in 1652,
and, from the names of the witnesses, it may perhaps be assumed that
Mrs. Barnard was living at Stratford when she executed the deed of
1653-"

SECOND MARRIAGE OF MRS. NASH 269

few suggestions preserved by Malone. "If any of
Shakespeare's manuscripts remained in his grand
daughter's custody at the time of her second marriage
(and some letters, at least, she surely must have had),
they probably were then removed to the house of her
new husband at Abington." This does not allow for
their residence at Stratford, but the point does not
very much affect his argument. "Sir Hugh Clopton,
who was born two years after her death, mentioned to
Mr. Macklin, in the year 1742, an old tradition that
she had carried away with her from Stratford many of
her grandfather's papers." Mr. Barnard was created
a Baronet by King Charles II. on the 25th of
November, 1661, though he is generally called " Sir
John Barnard, knight." As to the papers, Malone
continued, "on the death of Sir John Barnard they
must have fallen into the hands of Mr. Edward Bagley,
Lady Barnard's executor ; and if any descendant of
that gentleman be now living, in his custody they
probably remain."1

Most of Sir John Barnard's children died in his life
time without living issue. The survivors were three of
his daughters — Elizabeth, wife of Henry Gilbert of
Locko in Derbyshire ; Mary, widow of Thomas Higgs
of Colesborne, Gloucestershire ; and Eleanor, wife of
Samuel Cotton of Henwick in the county of Bedford.2

Elizabeth Barnard died at Abington Hall about the
middle of February, 1669-70. The entry in the register
is as follows: "Madam Elizabeth Bernard, wife of
Sir John Bernard kt., was buried 17° Febr., 1669."
It is believed that she and her husband were both laid
in a vault under the chancel of the parish church at
Abington, though their remains have since been re
moved. A tombstone still bears a pompous epitaph in
memory of Sir John. " Here rest the remains," as we
may translate it, "of a man of most noble race, illustrious

1 Malone, op. ct't., ii. 623, note. 2 Ibid., 625, note.

270 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

through his father, grandfather, great - grandfather,
great-great-grandfather, and other ancestors having
been lords of this town of Abington for more than 200
years : he yielded to Fate in the 6gth year of his age,
on the 5th day before the Nones of March in the year
of the Nativity 1673." The date in modern parlance
was the 3rd of March, 1673-4. Lady Barnard's hus
band, it was complained, did not show his respect for
her memory by a monument or inscription of any
kind: "he seems not to have been sensible of the
honourable alliance he had made." " Shakespeare's
granddaughter," said Malone, with a somewhat pathetic
incongruity, " would not, at this day, go to her grave
without a memorial."1 It seems, however, that Sir
John sold the property very soon after his wife's death.
Dame Elizabeth's will was dated the 29th of January,
1669-70, and was proved in London "at Exeter House
in the Strand " on the 4th of March following.2 Its
effect was as follows, omitting the formal introduction.
Whereas by a settlement made in 1653 the estate at
New Place and the common-field land was given upon
trust for sale, after the deaths of Sir John and Dame
Elizabeth Barnard, the surviving trustee being Henry
Smith of Stratford, now it was directed that such sale
was to take place as speedily as possible after Sir John's
decease, the testatrix adding, " that my loving cousin
Edward Nash, esq. shall have the first offer or refusall
thereof according to my promise formerly made to
him." Some of the legacies are worth mentioning.
An annuity of £5, to be redeemed by a capital sum of
.£40 in certain events, was given to Judith Hathaway,
one of the daughters of Lady Barnard's kinsman,
Thomas Hathaway, late of Stratford, and then de
ceased ; a sum of £50 was secured to Mrs. Joan Kent,
wife of Edward Kent, another daughter of Thomas

1 Ibid., 624, note.

2 Copy in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cif., ii. 62-3.

LADY BARNARD'S WILL 271

Hathaway, with provisions in certain events for paying
it to her son Edward ; another sum of £30 was given
to the child Edward Kent " towards putting him out
as an apprentice " ; the sum of ^40 apiece was given
to Rose, Elizabeth, and Susanna, three other of the
daughters of Thomas Hathaway. The trustee was to
have £5 for his pains, and all the rest of the money
produced by the sale was to go to Lady Barnard's
loving kinsman, Mr. Edward Bagley, citizen of London,
who was appointed executor. If Mr. Nash did not
accept the option of purchase, the trustee was to make
the same offer to Mr. Bagley. The houses in Henley
Street were left to the family of the Harts, the inn and
the house next adjoining, with the barn thereto belong
ing, being entailed upon Thomas Hart and the heirs of
his body, and in default of such issue, upon his brother
George for a similar estate.

The clause as to the occupation of New Place was
as follows: "That the executors or administrators of
my said husband Sir John Barnard shall have and
enjoy the use and benefit of my said house in Stratford
called the New Place, with the orchard, garden, &c.,
for and during the space of six months next after the
decease of him the said Sir John Barnard." Sir John
died intestate, and administration of his effects was
granted on the yth of November, 1674, to Mr. Gilbert,
Mrs. Higgs, and Mrs. Cotton. "I know not," said
Malone, "whether any descendant of these be now
living : but if that should be the case, among their
papers may probably be found some fragment or other
relating to Shakespeare.1 Neither Mr. Nash nor Mr.
Bagley appears to have exercised the option of pur
chase given by the will ; and the property was accord
ingly sold by the trustee in 1675 to Sir Edward Walker
of Clopton. He was a member of an ancient family of
Walkers, long settled at Nether Stowey in Somerset,

1 Malone, u.s.

272 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

where they held the old castle and a red-deer park,
with other property in various parts of the county.
Sir Edward gave the Shakespeare estate to his daugh
ter Barbara, wife of Sir John Clopton, with remainder
after death to her son Edward ; but the settlement was
altered after Sir Edward Walker's death in 1677. Sir
John Clopton, by some family arrangement, obtained
the complete power of disposal ; and when his son
Hugh was engaged to Miss Millward in 1702, he chose
to pull down the old mansion, and to rebuild it on a
different plan, in order to provide a good modern house
for the bride.1

Mr. Ward seems to have felt much interest in the
earlier changes of ownership, and he has preserved
several stories about the new purchaser and his family.
" Sir Edward Walker," he says, " was secretarie to the
Earl of Arundel, when hee went embassador to the
Emperor about restitution of the palatinate. Hee was
secretarie to the same Earl when hee was general of the
King's forces against the Scots."2 Of the employ
ment of secretaries upon such missions it was said :
" As in a chimney the brazen andirons stand for state,
while the dogs do the service, so in embassies it was
usual formerly to have a Civilian employed with a
Lord, the one for state, and the other for transactions."
Mr. Ward adds that the same gentleman, by the King's
command, "wrote the actions of the warre in 1644":
" I saw itt (the book), and King Charles the First his
correcting of itt, with his owne hand-writing ; for
Sir Edward's maner was to bring itt to the King every
Saturday, after diner, and then the King putt out and
putt in, with his owne hand, what hee pleased."3 The
work was first published under the title of Iter Caro-
Imum, and appeared in 1705 as Historical Discourses

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 119. The subsequent history of New
Place is carefully traced, ibid., 120-135.

2 Ward's Diary, p. 180. 3 Ibid.

SIR EDWARD WALKER OF CLOPTON 273

in folio, with a large print of Charles I. and of the
author writing on a drum.1 Its author was regarded
as being Secretary of State for War. According to
Symonds' Diary he was knighted by the King at his
winter-quarters in Oxford on Sunday, the gth of Feb
ruary, 1644-5 ; '2 and he was soon afterwards appointed
Garter King at Arms. Returning to Ward's conver
sations, we learn how the Queen Mother of France died
at " Agrippina," or Cologne, in 1642, and her son
Louis XIII. soon afterwards, "for whom King Charles
mourned in Oxford in purple, which is prince's mourn
ing."3 "Sir Edward Walker went to the King im
mediately after King Charles the First had his head
cut off; hee carried but forty pound along with him,
and one twenty pound, which hee received from
England in all the twelve years. Hee saies the Duke
of Ormond and my Lord Chancellor kept but two men
apeece when they were beyond sea with the King."4
Lady Clopton talked about foreign convents, and how
the nuns had "two yeers' time to make trial," even
though they wore the habits of their order in the
second twelvemonth.5 Her father declaimed against
the French noblemen, who only took up religion for
fashion's sake,6 but praised the Dutch for their con
tinual charity : " In Holland, every Sunday, there is a
collection in their churches for the poor, and in such
a church as ours att Stratford, five or ten pounds may
bee gatherd ; every one gives something."7 "He
told mee hee carried the garter to the Marquis of Bran
denburg, and had 125 pound for itt ; that hee had a
stately palace at Berline ; that hee is not such a drinker
as people say. Sir Edward said hee dined with him,

1 See description in Lowndes, Bibliog. Manual, 1864, v. p. 2,811.
1 Symonds' Diary, ed. C. E. Long-, 1859, p. 162.
3 Ward's Diary, p. 177. * Id,, p. 137.

8 Id., p. 130. 6 Id., p. 131.

7 Id., p. 151. He adds: "Wee in England give only at the Sacra
ment."

274 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS

and protested that hee had risen from the table
thirstie."1 Something, too, was said about the Great
Fire, which, according to the vicar, began " in Pudding
Lane, in one Mr. Farmer's house" ; but the name was
really "Farryner," as it appears in the depositions.2
"Almanack-makers doe bring their almanacks to
Roger le Estrange, and hee licenses them. Sir Edward
Walker told mee hee askt him, and hee confest that
most of them did foretel the fire of London last year,
but hee caused itt to bee put out ! " 3

1 id., P. 137.

2 See Allen, Hist, and Ant. of 'London , 1827, i. 403.

3 Ward's Diary, p. 94.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

I. HOWELL'S LETTERS

HOWELL'S RELATIONS WITH BEN JONSON — HIS LINES ON DAVIES'
WELSH GRAMMAR — LONG MELFORD IN SHAKESPEARE AND IN
HOWELL'S LETTERS

IN our examination of various anecdotes preserved
by those who had special facilities for knowing
about Shakespeare and his friends, we shall begin with
James Howell, who must still be considered the prince
of letter-writers in his age, though many attempts have
been made from time to time to discredit his accuracy
in particular statements. He may fairly be counted
among the poet's contemporaries, since he was born in
1594; and it should also be observed that he had left
Oxford, and was well known in London society for
some time before Shakespeare's death.1 He was a
loving "son and servitor" to Ben Jonson, with whom
he kept up a delightful correspondence, and on whose

1 Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., lyth December, 1613. See Epistolce
Ho-Eliance — The Familiar Letters of James Howell . . . edited . . by
Joseph Jacobs, 1892, introduction, pp. xxvi.-xxviii.

277

278 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

death he composed a manly decastich of verse.1 We
quote a few sentences from one or two of these letters :
" Fa[ther] Ben, ... I thank you for the last regalo
you gave me at your Musceum, and for the good com
pany. I heard you censured lately at Court, that you
have lighted too foul upon Sir Inigo, and that you
write with a Porcupine's quill dipt in too much gall.
Excuse me that I am so free with you ; it is because
I am, in no common way of Friendship — Yours, J.H."
In a similar strain he writes once more: "The Fangs
of a Bear, and the Tusks of a wild Boar, do not bite
worse, and make deeper gashes, than a Goose-quill,
sometimes . . . Your quill hath prov'd so to Mr.
Jones ; but the Pen wherewith you have so gash'd him,
it seems, was made rather of a Porcupine than a
Goose-quill, it is so keen and firm."3

In a letter addressed "to my Father Mr. Ben.
Johnson," he criticised "the strong sinewy labours"
that had produced such strenuous lines. We omit the
Latin quotations with which the letters were larded
according to the taste of the age. "There's no great
Wit without some mixture of madness ; so saith the
Philosopher : Nor was he a fool who answer'd . . .
nor small wit without some allay of foolishness.
Touching the first, it is verify'd in you, for I find that
you have been oftentimes mad ; you were mad when
you writ your Fox, and madder when you writ your
Alchymist; you were mad when you writ Catilin, and
stark mad when you writ Sejanus ; but when you writ
your Epigrams, and the Magnetick Lady, you were not
so mad : Insomuch that I perceive there be degrees of
madness in you. Excuse me that I am so free with

1 Upon the Poet of his Time, Benjamin Jonson, his honoured Friend
and Father, being the twelfth elegy in Jonsonus Virbius, (Works of
Jonson, ed. Gifford, 1838, p. 796.)

2 Epp. Ho-El,, u.s., p. 324 (bk. i. § 6, let. 20, dated Westminster],
3 of May 1635).

3 Id., p. 376 (bk. ii. let. 2 : Westm., 3 July 1635).

HOWELL AND BEN JONSON 279

you. The madness I mean is that divine Fury, that
heating and heightning spirit which Ovid speaks of
. . . I cannot yet light upon Dr. Davies's Welsh
Grammar, before Christmas I am promis'd one."1
When the book arrived, Howell thought it better than
any of the " Accidences" used for teaching Irish and
Basque ; he makes no mention of the famous Grammar
published by Griffith Roberts at Milan, in 1567.
"Father Ben, you desir'd me lately to procure you
Dr. Davies's Welsh Grammar, to add to those many
you have ; I have lighted upon one at last, and I am
glad I have it in so seasonable a time that it may serve
for a New-year's-gift, in which quality I send it
you : . . .

" ' 'Twas a tough task, believe it, thus to tame
A wild and wealthy Language, and to frame
Grammatic toils to curb her, so that she
Now speaks by Rules, and sings by Prosody :
Such is the strength of Art rough things to shape,
And of rude Commons rich Inclosures make.' " 2

In a letter to "Sir Tho. Hawk "[ins] he tells us of
a meeting with his " Father" which has a peculiar
interest in connection with the current story about the
causes of Shakespeare's death. " I was invited yester
night to a solemn Supper, by B.J., where you were
deeply remember'd ; there was good company, excellent
cheer, choice wines, and jovial welcome : One thing
interven'd, which almost spoil'd the relish of the rest,
that B. began to engross all the discourse, to vapour
extremely of himself, and, by vilifying others, to
magnify his own Muse. T. Ca.z buzz'd me in the ear,
that tho' Ben. had barrell'd up a great deal of know-

1 Id., p. 267 (i. §5, let. 16; Westm., 27 June 1629).

2 Id., p. 276 (i. § 5, let. 26 : Cal. Apr. 1629). The lines proclaiming
Davies' superiority to the Irish and " Bascuence " Accidences, occur in
the middle of this effusion.

8 i.e. Thomas Carew. See Carew's Poems, ed. Vincent, 1899, introd.
pp. xxiv.-xxv.

28o ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

ledge, yet it seems he had not read the Ethtques, which,
among other precepts of Morality, forbid self-commen
dation. . . . But for my part, I am content to dispense
with this Roman infirmity of B., now that time hath
snowed upon his pericranium."1

Howell's reference to the "rude commons" and
"rich inclosures," in the poem on Davies' Grammar
above cited, may very well have been suggested by
a Shakespearean instance. It will be remembered that
in the second part of Henry VI. a certain petition is
presented to the Lord Protector.

"Suf. What's yours? What's here? (Reads.} 'Against
the Duke of Suffolk, for enclosing the commons of Melford. '
How now, sir knave !

" Petitioner. Alas, sir, I am but a poor petitioner of our
whole township."2

We do not know what the circumstances may have
been to which the petition related ; but Shakespeare
may have been familiar with the old local history
through the Cloptons, some of the family having long
been established at Melford and others at Cockfield, in
Suffolk. Mr. Ward notes in his Diary that Walter
Clopton became owner of the Manor of Cockfield, in
Essex, (sic\ "and assumed the name of itt."3 Long

1 Epp. Ho-El, pp. 403-4 (ii. let. 13 : Westm., 5 Apr. 1636).

2 2 Henry VI., i. 3, 23-7.

3 Diary of the Rev. John Ward, ed. C. Severn, 1839, p. 186. The
church of the Holy Trinity, Long Melford, was rebuilt by Sir William
Clopton (d. 1446), of Kentwell Hall, and other rich laymen of the parish.
William's son John (d. 1497) continued his father's work, and added the
beautiful and unique Lady Chapel at the east end of the building. The
ornamental "flushwork" of the parapets of the Lady Chapel, south side
of the church, and south porch, takes the form of inscriptions asking
prayers for the benefactors of the church. Among these are the
Cloptons and their wives, and a butler in their family. In the north
aisle of the choir is the altar-tomb, with effigy, of the elder Clopton,
hard by which are the handsome brasses of his two wives, and
of other members of the family. East of William Clopton's tomb, and
north of the chancel, is the mortuary chapel of the Cloptons, containing
some later monuments and incised slabs ; it is separated by a wall, in

28 1

Melford was described as " one of the biggest towns
in England that is not a market-town." "The Lady
Rivers," says Cox in his history of the county, "had
a house in this town in the time of the rebellion."
Fuller says it was the first-fruits of plundering in
England, and Floyd adds that she lost the value of
£20,000. The house had belonged to Sir Thomas
Savage, created Lord Savage in 1626 ; he was suc
ceeded in 1635 by his son Thomas, the second Lord,
who inherited the Earldom of Rivers four years after
wards. Howell was employed for a short time as
tutor in the family, and he has left a very interesting
description of the house as it stood in its perfection,
before it became the first-fruits of violence. He says
that he never saw a great mansion so neatly kept: "the
Kitchen and . . . other Offices of noise and drudgery
are at the fag-end ; there's a Back-gate for the Beggars
and the meaner sort of Swains to come in at." The
gardens were full of "costly choice flowers," and fruits
of many kinds: "here you have your Bon Christian
Pear and Bergamot in perfection, your Muscadell
Grapes in such plenty, that there are some Bottles
of Wine sent every year to the King"; and Mr.
Daniel, a worthy neighbour, made "good store in his
Vintage." The park had once belonged to the Abbot
of Bury St. Edmund's, and had probably been inclosed
out of the commons. The park, "for a chearful rising

which is a small lychnoscope, from the aisle of which it is the termina
tion. Between it and the High Altar is the tomb of Sir John Clopton
under a very depressed ogee arch : it has no effigy, and is supposed to
have served the purpose of an Easter sepulchre. The arms of Clop-
ton occur in the stained glass at the west end of the aisles. Sir John
Clopton was a Lancastrian, and was implicated in the charge for which
John, twelfth earl of Oxford, and his son Aubrey, were executed in 1462.
Kentwell Hall, the residence of the Cloptons, is about a quarter of a
mile north-west of the church ; Melford Hall, where Howell lived for
a time, is about the same distance south-east. See the late Sir William
Parker's History of Long Melford^ 1873 ; Murray's Handbook to the Eastern
Counties, 1892, pp. 125-6.

282 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

Ground, for Groves and Browsings for the Deer, for
rivulets of Water, may compare with any for its high
ness in the whole Land ; it is opposite to the front of
the great House, whence from the Gallery one may see
much of the Game when they are a-hunting."1 It
is somewhat singular that when the Abbey was dis
solved, the profits of the park were valued at no more
than ten shillings a year.

HOWELL ON TRADE AND COMMERCE — WINES AND ALES

Howell is one of the chief authorities on the trade
and commerce of his time. We can learn from him,
for example, the meaning of all the Shakespearean
references to small ale and good double beer, to sack
and sherris and cups of Canary. Of the first he says
jestingly : " In this Island the old drink was Ale, . . .
But since Beer hath hopp'd in among us, Ale is
thought to be much adulterated, and nothing so good
as Sir John Oldcastle and Smug the Smith was us'd to
drink."2 He is referring to his visits to the theatre on
Bank-side, for he writes to Mr. Caldwall from York,
"I am the same to you this side Trent, as I was the
last time we cross'd the Thames together to see Smug
the Smith, and so back to the Still-yard"* When he
had been ill in Paris, he tells his father on another
occasion, the doctors and surgeons who attended him
came to pay him a visit on his recovery, and among
other things, they began talking about wine ; " and so

1 Epp. Ho-EL, pp. 106-7 0- § 2> let- & '• "From the Lord Savage's
House in Long-Melford," 20 May 1619. The words "the Lord Savage''
show that Howell re-dated the letter for publication, as they could not
have been written in 1619.

2 Id., p. 451 (ii. let. 54 : Westm., 17 Oct. 1634).

3 Id., p. 247 (i. § 5, let. i : York, 13 July 1627). Smug the Smith is
here used as the name of a character in The Merry Devil of Edmonton.
John Taylor, Pennyles Pilgrimage, uses the phrase "a mad smuggy
smith" (ed. Hindley, 1872, p. u).

ALE AND BEER 283

by degrees they fell upon other beverages ; and one
Doctor in the company who had been in England, told
me that we have a Drink in England call'd Ale, which
he thought was the wholsomest liquor . . . for while
the Englishmen drank only Ale, they were strong,
brawny, able Men, and could draw an arrow an ell
long ; but when they fell to wine and beer, they are
found to be much impair'd in their strength and age :
so the Ale bore away the bell among the Doctors." *

In Low Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, etc.,
he tells us, beer was almost the universal drink.2 We
may note, however, that the Dutch were wine-drinkers,
the Rhine-wines being the sole staple of the town of
Dort ; Middelburg was the centre of the trade in
French and Spanish wines.3 We might make another
exception for the Court at Elsinore, where the King
the "swaggering up-spring " reeled, and drained down
huge cups of Rhenish.4 " In the Duke of Saxe's
Country there is Beer as yellow as Gold, made of
Wheat";5 and Holinshed tells us that "yellow as a
gold noble " was a phrase of the English topers.6
This Saxon beer, it should be observed, was the same
as the Brunswick mum, for which a brewery was at
one time set up in Stratford ; the promoters hoped that
their town would become the head of the mum-trade,
and might even be known as " New Brunswick." The
Vicar of Stratford complains in his Diary that "we
have utterly lost what was the thing that preserved
beer so long, before hops were found out in England."7
Sir Hugh Platt of Lincoln's Inn thought that it might
have been done by using wormwood, centaury, hepatic

1 Epp. Ho-El., pp. 136-7 (i. § 2, let. 21, from Paris, 10 Dec. 1622).

2 Id. , p. 45 1 , as note.

3 Id., pp. 126-7 ('• § 2» 'et- '5 : Antwerp, i May 1622).

4 Hamlet, i. 4, 9-10. 5 Epp. Ho-El., p. 451, as note.

8 Holinshed, The Description of England, chap. vi. , in Chronicles, ed.
Hooker, 1586, vol. i. p. 170.
7 Ward's Diary, u.s.

284 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

aloes, or artichoke-leaves,1 and it is well known that ivy
was a common substitute when hops were prohibited
by Henry VIII. According to Holinshed it was only
the nobility that drank beer of "two years' tunning";
it was often brewed in the spring, and was then known
as March-beer ; and in an ordinary household it was
usually about a month old, " ech one coveting to have
the same stale as he may, so that it be not sowre.":
It was probably from his Chronicle that Shakespeare
took the phrase "pink eyne" in the song which the
boy sang on Pompey's galley.3 Some have thought
that he referred to colour, since "pink" in the old
Dictionaries is explained as "a kind of yellow used in
painting." The verb "to pink" signified winking,
and people "with eyes like pigs" were often called
pink-eyed.4 Pliny had said that a man with both
eyes very small would be nicknamed Ocella, and in
Holland's version this appears as "Also them that
were pinke-eied and had verie small eies, they tearmed
OceMce."5 Holinshed, however, shows us that Bacchus
was accused in the song of a tipsy blinking ; for in his
sketch of the pot-knights he makes them afraid to stir
from the alehouse-bench, where they sit half-asleep,
"still pinking with their narrow eyes," until the fume
of their adversary passes away.6 We should add a
few words about wine. Shakespeare barely refers to
claret and other "small red wines"; it is sufficient to
notice that the Scotch had the preference and pick of
the market at Bordeaux,7 and that Portugal as yet pro
duced nothing worth bringing to England.8 The best

1 Sir Hugh Platt, The Jewell House of Art and Nature, 1594, pp. 15-19,
under heading- " How to brew good and wholsom Beere without anie
Hoppes at all."

* Holinshed, op. cit., i. p. 167. 3 Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 7, 121.

4 See instances in Nares' Glossary, s.v.

5 Pliny, Nat. Hist., tr. Holland, 1601, bk. xi. ch. 37. (vol. i. p. 335 E.)

6 Holinshed, op. cit., i. 170. 7 Epp. Ho-El., p. 456, as note.
8 Id., p. 455.

FOREIGN WINES 285

Hock, said Howell, came from Bacharach, or "Bach-
rag" as he called it,1 and the worst never saw the
Rhine at all, but was " stummed up" out of a hard
green wine from Rochelle.2 The Rhenish grape was
" the father of Canary." From Bacharach came the
first stock of vines for the island of Grand Canary.
"I think there's more Canary brought into England
than to all the World besides. I think also there is a
hundred times more drunk under the name of Canary
Wine than is brought in ; for Sherries and Malagas
well mingled pass for Canaries in most Taverns, more
often than Canary itself."3 It was even said that with
a spoonful of Spirit of Clary, that could be bought of
any apothecary, a bottle of cider might be made to
resemble Canary so nearly that an experienced palate
could not tell the difference. The best account of
Sack is to be found in Dr. Venner's Via Recta ad Vitam
longam, of which editions were issued in 1638 and
i65o.4 " Some affect," he says, "to drink with sugar,
and some without, as is best pleasing to their palates."
On this matter, he concluded, everyone must be his
own director, according to his state of health; "but
what I have spoken of mixing Sugar with Sack, must
be understood of Sherrie Sack, for to mix Sugar with
other wines, that in a common appellation are called
Sack, and are sweeter in taste, makes it unpleasant to
the palat." Malaga Sack, he said, was neither pleasant
nor wholesome, being nauseous and fulsomely sweet.
" Canarie-wine ... is also termed a Sack ... it is
not so white in colour as Sherrie Sack, nor so thinne
in substance."5 The truest kind of Sack was exported

1 Id., p. 457.

1 Id., p. 456 : " This is called stooming of Wines." Stum = strong new
wine. See Nares, s.v. 3 Id., pp. 457-8.

4 The earliest edition belongs to 1620. The edition of 1650 contains
many additions. Both the 1638 and 1650 volumes contain, as an
appendix, The Bathes of Bathe and the treatise on tobacco-taking.

8 Venner, u.s., ed. 1650, pp. 33-4.

286 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

from Santa Cruz in the isle of Palma ; it was a thin,
dry wine of a very pale colour. This was Ben Jonson's
favourite, according to a saying ascribed to him :
" I laid the plot of my Volpone, and wrote most of it,
after a present of ten dozen of Palm Sack from my
very good Lord."1 We get an idea about these wines
from Venner's use of sweet Muscadel as a standard.
Muscadel was, in his opinion, exactly equal to sweet
Malmsey or Malvaria ; and Bastard was somewhat like
Muscadel, "and may also instead thereof be used."2 We
should remember, however, that the sugared Sherries,
and all the quarts and gallons of Sack which went to
Falstaff's reckonings were in reality not stronger than
negus. Howell says of these white wines in general,
that "when Sacks and Canaries were brought in first
among us, they were us'd to be drank in Aqua vitce
measures," and were regarded as liqueurs for old
people and invalids; "but now they go down every
one's throat, both young and old, like milk."3

Ill

HOWELL AT VENICE — ILLUSTRATIONS OF "THE TEMPEST,"
"OTHELLO," ETC.

We find several passages which throw some light
upon allusions in The Tempest to King Alonso "upon
the Mediterranean flote, bound sadly home for Naples,"4
and the foul witch, Sycorax, who for "sorceries terrible"
was banished from Argier : "for one thing she did,
they would not take her life."5 "I know," writes

1 Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 12, says : " Canarie was his beloved liquour."

2 Venner, u.s.

3 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 458, as note. His phrase is: "'Twas held fit only
for those to drink of them who were us'd to carry their legs in their
hands, their eyes upon their noses, and an Almanack in their bones."

4 Tempest, i. 2, 234-5. 5 Ibid,, 263-7.

HOWELL AT ALGIERS 287

Howell, "the Lightness and Nimblenessof A/gt'erships;
when I liv'd lately in Alicant and other places upon
the Mediterranean , we should every Week hear some
of them chas'd, but very seldom taken ; for a great
Ship following one of them, may be said to be as a
Mastiff Dog running after a Hare."1 When the light
pirate-ship was in chase of a great merchant-man
another figure was required ; and in Sandys' Travels
we accordingly read of "a little frigot" venturing "on
an Argosie," which ran ashore before the pursuer, as if
a whale should fly from a dolphin.2 Howell is writing
to his friend, Captain Thomas Porter, upon his return
from an attempt upon the galleys in Algiers Roads,
which had failed through the spells of the Demon and
his Hadjis and Marabouts ; "it was one of the bravest
Enterprizes, and had prov'd such a glorious Exploit
that no Story could have parallel'd ; but it seems their
Haggles, Magicians, and Maribots were tampering
with the ill Spirits of the Air all the while, which
brought down such a still Cataract of Rain-waters
suddenly upon you, to hinder the working of your
Fire-works ; such a Disaster the Story tells us, befell
Charles the Emperor, but far worse than yours, for he
lost Ships and multitudes of Men, who were made
Slaves, but you came off with loss of eight Men only,
and Algier is anotherghess thing now than she was
then, being I believe an hundred degrees stronger by
Land and Sea."3

When Howell was quite a young man, he was sent to
Venice to learn the secrets of glass-making. William
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, in partnership with Sir
Robert Mansell and a few others, had obtained a
monopoly for making glass with pit-coal at Swansea,
"to save those huge Proportions of Wood which were

1 Epp. ffo-El., p. no (i., § 2, let n : St. Osith, Dec. 1622).

2 Sandys' Relation of a Journey, etc., 1615, p. 2.

3 Epp. Ho-EL, as note i.

288 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

consumed formerly in the Glass Furnaces : And this
Business," he continues, "being of that nature, that
the Workmen are to had from Italy, and the chief
Materials from Spain, France, and other foreign
Countries ; there is need of an Agent abroad for this
Use." x At Alicante, on his way to Venice, he embarked
with a " lusty Dutchman " who despised the Algerines.
There had been a sad misfortune with the pirates a
short time before : " had I come time enough to have
taken the Opportunity, I might have been made either
Food for Haddocks, or turn'd to Cinders, or have
been by this time a Slave in the Bannier at Algier,
or tugging at a Oar." They arrived quite safely at
Malamocco, but were nearly forty days at sea. "We
passed by Majorca and Minorca ... by some Ports
of Barbary, by Sardinia, Corsica, and all the Islands
of the Mediterranean Sea. We were at the Mouth
of Tyber, and thence fetch'd our Course for Sicily ; we
pass'd by those sulphureous fiery Islands, Mongibel and
Strombolo, and about the Dawn of the Day we shot
thro' Scylla and Charybdis, and so into the Phare of
Messina; thence we touch'd upon some of the Greek
Islands, and so came to our first intended Course, into
the Venetian Gulph, and are now here at Malamocco"''
This is like the voyage from Naples to Tunis, where
Queen Claribel dwelt ten leagues beyond man's life :—

" She that from Naples

Can have no note, unless the sun were post —
The man i' th' moon's too slow — till new-born chins
Be rough and razorable."3

"Now," says our traveller, "we are in the Adrian
Sea, in the Mouth whereof Venice stands, like a gold
Ring in a Bear's Muzzle."4 In considering Shake-

1 Id., p. 20 (i. § i, let. 2 : Broad Street, London, i March 1618).

2 Id., p. 62 (i. § i, let. 26 : Malamocco, 30 April 1621).
J Tempest, ii. i, 247-50.

4 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 63 (i. $ i, let. 27 : "From on Shipboard before Venice,"
5 May 1621).

HOWELL AT VENICE 289

speare's references to Venice, it must always be remem
bered that the republic was the mistress of a vast
dominion. Mr. Rawdon Brown has some apposite
remarks on this point. We find an account of a series
of letters written from London by the Venetian Am
bassadors in Shakespeare's time in his Catalogue of
Manuscripts preserved among the Venetian State
Papers. In one of the letters, dated the i8th of
February, 1610, Arabella Stuart is mentioned as com
plaining that certain comici publici intended to bring
her into a play. Mr. Rawdon Brown takes these for
the King's players, "who, by turning Arabella into
ridicule, expected to please their chief patron." Lady
Braybrooke, he adds, spoke of "Venetian Players"
acting in London in 1608, and also of Lord Suffolk's
players in 1610. "I wonder whether either of these
two companies had any hand in bringing Arabella
Stuart on the stage, and I should also like to know
whether the fact of there having been ' Venice Players '
in England in Shakespeare's time had been noted by
his commentators, when alluding to the Venetian origin
of so many of his plays ; for we must consider as
Venetian not merely scenes actually laid in Venice, but
also all such as relate to the Signory's dependencies,
whether on the mainland as at Padua and Verona, or
in Cyprus, or in Dalmatia." With reference to this
point we should consult Howell's letter to Sir James
Crofts and the Survey of the Signorie of Venice ',
which he published as a separate work in 1651. " Tho'
this City be thus hem'd in with the Sea, yet she spreads
her Wings far and wide upon the Shore ; she hath in
Lombardy six considerable Towns, Padua, Verona,
Vicenza, Brescia, Crema, and Bergamo: she hath in
the Marquisat, Bassan and Castelfranco ; she hath
all Friuli and Istria; she commands the Shores of
Dalmatia and Sclavonia; she keeps under the Power
of St. Mark the Islands of Corfu (anciently Corcyra),

29o ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

Cephalonia, Zant, Cerigo, Lucerigo, and Candy r."1 In
1488 she had received the kingdom of Cyprus from
" Kate the Queen,"2 otherwise "La Regina Caterina
Cornaro Lusignana," and had only lost it in 1571 after
a desperate struggle with the " Ottomites." "It was
quite rent from her by the Turk : which made that
high-spirited Bassa, being taken Prisoner at the Battle
of Lepanto, where the Grand Signior lost above 200
Gallies, to say, That that Defeat to his great Master was
but like the shaving of his Beard, or the paring of his
Nails ; but the taking of Cyprus was like the cutting off
of a Limb, which will never grow again. This mighty
Potentate being so near a Neighbour to her, she is
forced to comply with him, and give him an annual
Present in Gold."3

We see the misfortune coming, even when Othello
brings Cyprus comfort and assistance. " The desperate
tempest hath so bang'd the Turks, that their design-
ment halts " ; 4 but still the Turk with a most mighty
preparation makes for Cyprus. All that the Venetians
can do is to bear a brave heart, and so steal something
from the thief :

' ' So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile ;
We lose it not, so long as we can smile.
He bears the sentence well that nothing bears
But the free comfort which from thence he hears,
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow
That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow."5

Shakespeare evidently knew as much about Venice
as many a traveller who had " swam in a gondola." To
take another point from Othello, we may note that the
ship in which Cassio sailed to Cyprus is described as "a
Veronesa" ;6 and if one looks at the list of ships that

1 Epp. Ho-El., p. 77 (i. § i, let. 35 : Ven., i Aug. 1621).

2 See R. Browning, Pippa Passes.

3 Epp. Ho-El., u.s. * Othello, ii. i, 21-2.
6 Id., i. 3, 210-15. 6 Id., ii. i, 26.

VENICE 291

took part in the battle of Lepanto, it will be seen at
once that the inland towns were credited with the ships
built at their expense, such as the " Royalty " of Padua,
the "Alessandrica" of Bergamo, and the " Tower" and
"Sea-man" of Vicenza. It is in one of the earliest
plays that the proverb is quoted which said that "the
eye is the best judge of Venice," or "Who sees not
Venice, loves her not." Howell adds the line which
the young "Italianate signers" were apt to leave out: —

" Venetia, Venetia, chi non te vede non te Pregia,
Ma chi f ha troppo veduto te Dispreggia "—

" Venice, Venice, none Thee unseen can prize ;
Who hath seen [thee] too much will Thee despise."

Such was the "common Saying that is used of this
dainty City of Venice."1 Howell takes the liberty
of borrowing the celebrated metaphors of the "pool"
and the -"girdle" in Cymbeline. "You shall find
us," laughed Prince Cloten, "in our salt-water girdle:
if you beat us out of it, it is yours " ; 2 and Imogen
argues in a classical phrase that Britain is outside the
world, "in a great pool a swan's nest."3 Venice, said
Howell, may be said to be walled with water: "it is
the water, wherein she lies like a swan's nest, that doth
both fence and feed her."*

He says of the Venetian ladies that they wore bright
colours and went unveiled. " They are low and of small
statures for the most part, which makes them to raise
their bodies upon high shooes called Chapins."5 We

1 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 79 (i. § i, let. 36: Ven., 12 Aug. 1621). Cf. Love's
Labours Lost, iv. 2, 99-100.

2 Cymbeline, iii. i, 80-2. 3 Id., in. 4, 142.

4 See also Howell's Instructions for Forraine Travell, 1642, sect. viii. :
" A rich magnificent City seated in the very jaws of Neptune. "

8 Survey of the Signorie of Venice, p. 39. See Nares' Glossary, s.v.
CHIOPPINE, where numerous references to this Venetian custom are
brought together. " The derivation is Spanish, (chapin)." New English
Dictionary, s.v. Chopine, Chopin, says, " Identical with obs. F. chapins,
chappins . . . mod. Sp. chapin . . Portuguese chapim. The Eng. writers
c. 1600 persistently treated the word as Italian."

292 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

remember the boy who played the female characters
at Elsinore : " What, my young lady and mistress!
By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when
I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine."1 The
Venetian Senate often endeavoured to put down these
pattens and wooden shoes, " but all women," said the
traveller, "are so passionately delighted with this kind
of state that no Law can wean them from it."2 He
tells a story of a great lady who found a new use for
the chopine. " Not long before her death, the late
Queen of Spain took off one of her Chapines, and
clowted Olivares about the noddle with it ... telling
him, that he should know, she was Sister to a King
of France, as well as Wife to a King of Spain."* The
commoner kind of people used to walk shrouded in
black veils, whereas in Rome or Naples all faces wore
a "Celestial hue," according to Howell's valentine on
Lady Robinson.4 This shows incidentally how ac
curately the reproach of Imogen was directed against
the Roman Bettina or Saltarella, whom Posthumus was
supposed to have admired: "Some jay of Italy," she
cries, " whose mother was her painting! " 5 The phrase
itself seems borrowed from Roger Ascham's Toxophilus,
in the passage where he inveighs against his country
men as being more Turkish than the Turks: "Our
unfaithful sinful living, which is the Turk's mother,
and hath brought him up hitherto, must needs turn
God from us, because sin and He hath no fellowship
together. If we banished ill-living out of Christen
dom, I am sure the Turk should not only, not overcome
us, but scarce have a hole to run into, in his own
country."6

1 Hamlet, ii. 2, 444-7. 2 Howell, Survey, u.s.

3 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 437 (ii. let. 43 : Fleet, i Dec. 1643).

4 Id., p. 271 (i. § 5, between lett. 21 and 22).

6 Cymbeline, iii. 4, 51-2. 6 Ascham, Toxophi us, ed. Arber, p. 81.

SYRIAN WOLVES 293

ANECDOTES AND LEGENDS IN HOWELL'S LETTERS — IRISH
FOLK-LORE — JOAN OF ARC

Howell has also preserved an anecdote which may
throw light on a passage in As You Like It. The
comedy is based upon Lodge's Rosalynde as a ground
work, but the witty scene of the chorus of lovers is
Shakespeare's own : —

" Phe. Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love.
Sil. It is to be all made of sighs and tears ;

And so am I for Phebe :
Phe. And I for Ganymede :
Orl. And I for Rosalind : "

and so on again and again. But what says Rosalind ?
"Pray you, no more of this; 'tis like the howling
of Irish wolves against the moon." x His hearers would
expect " Syrian," not " Irish," wolves — a common
place among writers of the day. When Samela turned
out to be a king's daughter, poor Menaphon returned
to his rustic loves. "Seeing his passions were too
aspiring, and that with the Syrian wolves he barked
against the Moon, he left such lettuce as were too fine
for his lips."; And so in Lodge's novel, where Gany
mede sits under the pomegranate bough and condoles
with the shepherd : " I tell thee, Montanus, in courting
Phcebe, thou barkest with the wolves of Syria against
the moon, and rovest at such a mark with thy thoughts,
as is beyond the pitch of the bow."3 The lovers in
the comedy were all aiming too high and crying for the

1 As You Like It, v. 2.

2 Greene, Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 92. Cf. id., p. 53 ; there Melicertus
says to Samela : ' ' Therefore I fear with the Syrian wolves to bark against
the moon."

3 Lodge, Rosalynde, ed. H. Morley, 1893, p. 163.

294 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

moon ; but why like Irish wolves? The answer is that
the Irish, like other northern nations, had been sus
pected of changing shapes with wolves when they
pleased, or at a certain time of year. We should add
that some of the peasantry were accused of worshipping
the moon.

" In Ireland" said Howell, " the Kerns of the
mountains, with some of the Scotch Isles, use a fashion
of adoring the new Moon to this very day, praying
she would leave them in as good Health as she found
them."1 Camden had written a strange account of
these mountaineers, declaring that they took "unto
them Wolves to bee their Godsibs : whom they tearme
Chari Christ, praying for them and wishing them
well."2 Spenser traced elaborately the legendary con
nection between the native Irish and the Scythians as
described by Herodotus. " The Scythians said, that
they were once every year turned into wolves, and
so it is written of the Irish : though Mr Camden in
a better sense doth suppose it was a disease, called
Lycanthropia, so named of the wolf. And yet some
of the Irish do use to make the wolf their gossip."3
Howell tells a story of "two huge Wolves" that stared
at him while he was at luncheon under a tree in Biscay,
but had the good manners to go away. "It put me
in mind of a pleasant Tale I heard Sir Tho. Fairfax
relate of a Soldier in Ireland" The soldier being tired
sat down under a tree to eat: "but on a sudden he
was surpriz'd with two or three Wolves, who coming
towards him, he threw them scraps of bread and cheese,
till all was gone ; then the Wolves making a nearer Ap
proach to him, he knew not what shift to make, but by

1 Epp. Ho-EL, pp. 397-8 (ii. let. n : Westm., 25 Aug. 1635).

2 Camden, Scotia, Hibemia, etc., tr. Holland, 1610, p. 146. Camden
was copying- from I. Good : "A Priest . . . who about the yeere of our
Lord 1566 taught the Schoole at Limirick."

3 View of present state of Ireland, 1596, in Works, ed. Morris, p. 634.

IRISH TRADITIONS 295

taking a pair of Bag-pipes which he had, and as soon
as he began to play upon them the Wolves ran all
away as if they had been scar'd out of their wits."
But the soldier only said, "If I had known you had
lov'd Musick so well, you should have had it before
dinner."1

When As You Like It came out in the year I599,2
any topical allusion to Ireland was sure of success.
The arch-rebel, Hugh O'Neill, was leading a crusade
against the English ; it was popularly believed that
the Pope had sent him a plume of Phcenix feathers ;
and he had been so far successful that he had crushed
Bagenal at the Blackwater, and was maintaining a
bold front against the wavering forces of Essex. It is
not surprising therefore that the ichneumon of Egypt,
or "Indian Rat," should be transferred to Ireland
with the Syrian wolves. For what says Rosalind when
she found the poem on the palm-tree? "I was never
so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an
Irish rat, which I can hardly remember." There is a
reference, of course, to the idea that rats had been ex
pelled for many ages from the Isle of Saints. The
historian, Gerald de Barry, had told the world how St.
Yvor with bell, book, and candle had driven away all
the rats in the Bishopric of Ferns, and the very words
used in such exorcisms were well known. The rats,
we learn, "were so entirely expelled by the curse of
St. Yvorus, the bishop, whose books they had probably
gnawed, that none were afterwards bred there, or could
exist if they were introduced."4 Shakespeare, we may
add, seems to have been fond of a quip about Pytha
goras ; we have the case of the crocodile's transmigra-

1 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 211 (i. § 3, let. 39 : " from Bilboa," 6 Sept. 1624).

2 1599, at all events, is the date commonly agreed upon ; the evidence
is indirect. See A. W. Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit., ii. 128-9.

3 As You Like It, iii., 2, 186-8.

4 Gir. Camb., Topographia Hibernica, Dist. ii. Cap. xxxii. (tr. Forester,
p. 96). See id., rap. xix. for " Irish wolves."

296 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

tion,1 and the argument about Malvolio's grandmother
in the shape of a woodcock.2 There is no reason,
however, to suppose that he had studied the Italian
philosophy, or Lucian's burlesque in the dialogue
between the Cock and the Cobbler. He probably
went no further than to Holinshed's Chronicle, where
he could learn the dogma that an unworthy soul might
be "shut up in the bodie of a slave, begger, cocke,
owle, dog, ape, horsse, asse, worme or monster, there
to remaine as in a place of purgation and punish
ment,"3 as indeed it was once said of the Trojan War :
"How should Homer know anything about it, when
he was himself at that very time a camel in Bactria?"

We shall take leave of James Howell for the present
after one more extract, which may serve to show how
little even cultivated people knew or cared in his time
about writing with historical accuracy. He writes to Sir
John North from the fair town of Orleans, where he
had seen a civil and military procession in honour of
"La pauvre Pucelle " : "Jehanne la bonne Lorraine,
qu'Anglois bruslerent a Rouen."4 She was praised
by the poets of her time as being very sweet and
gracious: "Tres-douce, aimable, mouton sans orgeuil,"
is her character from Martial de Paris. She won at
Patay in 1429 and was executed two years later ; yet
Shakespeare allows her to beat Talbot at Chatillon in
1453, in the shape of a ranting Fury, perhaps imagined
as restored to some diabolic or magical kind of life.5
Howell's words show how little was known about the
matter. "Her Statue stands upon the Bridge, and
her Clothes are preserv'd to this day, which a young
Man wore in the Procession ; which makes me think

1 Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 7, 46-51.

2 Twelfth Night, iv. 2, 54-65.

3 Holinshed, The Description of Britaine, chap, ix., in Chronicles,
u.s., i. 20. 4 Villon, Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis.

5 i Henry VI., iv. 7.

HOWELL ON JOAN OF ARC 297

that her Story, tho' it sound like a Romance, is very
true." The English had driven Charles VII. to
Bourges in Berry, "Which made him to be call'd, for
the time, King of Berry.''' "There came to his Army
a Shepherdess, one Anne de Argue, who with a con
fident look and language told the King, that she was
design'd by Heaven to beat the English, and drive
them out of France. . . . The Siege was rais'd from
before Orleans, and the English were pursu'd to Paris,
and forced to quit that, and driven to Normandy : She
us'd to go on with marvellous courage and resolution,
and her word was Hara ha."1

1 Epp. Ho-El., p. 140 (i. § 2, let. 23 : Orleans, 3 Mar. 1622).

II. WARD'S DIARY

THE REV. JOHN WARD — HIS MEDICAL TRAINING — HIS REMARKS
ON CLERGY AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION

r I ^HE Rev. John Ward came to Stratford in 1662,
JL and resided there until his death in 1681. He
was always a literary man ; but he also took an active
part in local affairs, not only as vicar, but also as a
practising physician. Seventeen of his commonplace
books came eventually into the possession of Dr. James
Sims, an eminent writer upon medical subjects, who
graduated at Leyden in 1764, and died in 1820. His
library, including the commonplace books in question,
became the property of the Medical Society of London ;
and an important volume of extracts was issued in 1839
by Dr. Charles Severn, then Registrar to the Society,
under the title of the Diary of the Rev. John Ward,
A.M., Vicar of Sir atford-upon- Avon, extending from
1648 to i6j<). Dr. Severn states in his preface that on
perusing the first volume, the series being in no regular
order of date, he found that it was begun in the early
part of 1661 and was completed " at Mr. Brooks his
house, Stratford-upon-Avon, April 25, 1663." Most of
the entries related to theological and medical matters ;
but he hoped that entries might be found in the other
volumes relating, perhaps, to Shakespeare himself, or
at least to his family and friends. He felt that the great
precision of Ward's writing, and the generous way
in which opponents were treated throughout the Diary,
showed that dependence might justly be pla,ced on a

298

JOHN WARD 299

person of so much learning, observation, and candour.
"In this . . . search," he said, " I was fortunately not
entirely disappointed ; and though the notices of
Shakespeare made by Mr. Ward are, alas ! very few
and brief, as they supply information at once novel,
interesting, and of strict authenticity, they are of great
value."1

Mr. Ward was the son of a Northamptonshire land
owner, who fought as a lieutenant in Appleyard's Regi
ment, and was imprisoned by the Republicans after
Naseby fight. John Ward was born in 1629, and took
his Bachelor's degree at Oxford at the age of nine
teen, about the time when his series of Table-books
begins. He remained at the University until he
proceeded to the degree of M.A., in 1652. He
studied divinity at the Bodleian, and made some
progress in the Oriental languages, as well as in
Anglo-Saxon literature, which was beginning to be
a favourite subject ; but the bent of his mind was
towards medicine, and he appears to have spent a great
part of his time among the doctors and their apothe
caries, or with old Mr. Jacob Bobart, who kept the
Physic Garden by Magdalen Bridge. Bobart's son,
who succeeded to his post, was the ingenious fabricator
of a dragon, made from a dead rat, which took in
Magliabecchi and caused a great stir in the scientific
world; it was kept in the Ashmolean Museum as "a
masterpiece of art," and perhaps is still upon the
shelves.2 Dr. Sydenham used to maintain that medicine
could not be learned at the Universities, and that "one
had as good send a man to Oxford to learn shoemaking
as practicing physic";3 but Sydenham was all for more

1 Ward's Diary, ed. Severn, preface, pp. xi.-xii.

2 Gray, Notes on " Hudibras," quoted by Mr. B. D. Jackson in Diet.
Nat. Biography, vol. v., s.v. Bobart, Jacob. The dates of the elder
Bobart are 1599-1680, of the younger, 1641-1719.

8 Ward's Diary, u.s., p. 242. Thomas Sydenham (1624-89) was
fellow of All Souls.

300 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

anatomy, and for students learning their profession
practically as apprentices ; and he was bitterly attacked
by doctors of the old school as a decrier of natural
philosophy. But there was no lack of surgery at
Oxford, if one of Ward's friends is to be believed. A
young surgeon named Gill told stories about " his Mr.
Day," who had cut off plenty of limbs, and only two
patients had died ; and of the German who killed a
Balliol man by pricking a tendon, and even of a woman
who was to be " trepanned " on the ribs. Ward doubts,
and asks " Whether it canne be? " and he sagely adds,
" I suspected itt to be a ly."1 He tells us of a woman
at the " Blew Bore," with three physicians in attend
ance, who could have saved her if a surgeon had been
there to open a vein.2 There is another story about
young Punter, who kept a tame viper, "which stung
a dog of Bobarts, so that his head was twice as bigg as
formerly, and Jacob gave him white horehound and
aristolochia 3 in butter, and cured him presently."4
Some of the information comes from Stephen Toon, the
apothecary, and Flexon, the barber, whose father kept
the Chequers Inn, much used by the country carriers.
Flexon said that he remembered Mrs. Kirk, a Court
beauty, coming up in one of the waggons, in very
mean attire, though she soon had a lodging at All
Souls ; he also told Ward of a Cornet in the Guards
who used to wash his face in sack and be shaved in
half a pint of the same.5 We are told something of
the "Antelope," where the landlord had such an in
firmity of sleep upon him "that if one yawned hee
could not chuse but yawne";6 something, indeed,
about all the inns, except the " Crown," where Shake
speare lay. When Mr. Ward went up to London, he

1 Id. , pp. 280, 265-6. 2 Id., pp. 266-7.

8 i.e. birthwort. Cf. Cicero, De Div,, i. 10 : "Quid aristolochia ad
morsus serpentum possit." 4 Ward's Diary, p. 277.

5 Id. , pp. 143, 162. 6 Id., p. 122.

WARD AT OXFORD AND IN LONDON 301

took lodgings at the " Bell," in Aldersgate Street, so
as to be near "Barber Surgeons' Hall." Lord Petre
had a house in the same street,1 occupied at that time
by the Marquess of Dorchester, "the pride and glory
of the Society of Physicians."2 Ward had much to say
about the medical lectures, the skeleton in a frame
above the table, and the wooden man showing the
muscles, for which Dr. Charles Scarborough had paid
;£io.3 The Doctor, who was afterwards knighted by
Charles II., had been a soldier, marching up and down
with the army, as Aubrey records, until Dr. Harvey
saw his merits, and said, " Prithee leave off thy gun
ning, and stay here: I will bring thee into practice."4
Ward devoted himself chiefly to the study of domestic
medicine, with a view to the necessities of a country
living ; for he had made up his mind to settle down
in some secluded place, where he could keep up his
medical knowledge in the hours spared from Hebrew
and Arabic. He appears to have been chiefly intimate
with old Mr. Sampson and another chemist, George
Hartman, who had served with Sir Kenelm Digby
"for many years across the seas." Ward pronounced
Sir Kenelm Digby to be " as great an empirick as any
in Europe " ;6 but he was not above using some of his
receipts. When "Goodie Tomlins" fell into some un
known disease at Stratford, we find him applying
" Lucatella's Balsam," which Hartman prepared after
his master's own receipt. " Mark what comes of itt,"6
says Ward ; but as it was chiefly composed of oil, wine,
and wax, with St. John's wort and Venice-turpentine,7

1 Id., p. 167.

2 Henry Pierrepont, first Marquess of Dorchester, second Earl of
Kingston (1608-80), F.R.C.P., 1658. 3 Ward's Diary, p. 9.

4 Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, 1898, i. 299, sub William Harvey.

5 Ward's Diary, p. 173.

8 Id., p. 248. The symptoms of the disease were asthmatic, accom
panied by bleeding from the lungs.

7 G. Hartman, True Presenter and Restorer of Health, 1682, pp. 241-5.

302 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

it was not likely to do much harm. " Mr. Hartman,"
says Ward, " had a piece of unicorn's horn, which one
Mr. Godeski gave him ; hee had itt at some foraine
prince's court. I had the piece in my hand. ... It
approved itself as a true one, as hee said, by this : iff
one drew a circle with itt about a spider, shee would not
move out of itt."1

" A living drollery. Now I will believe
That there are unicorns, that in Arabia
There is one tree, the phoenix' throne " ;

so vows Sebastian in The Tempest, and so agrees
Antonio.2 But the story was upset by Shakespeare's
little godson, when he was made page to the first
Duchess of Richmond. Aubrey remembered hearing
from Davenant how the Duchess " sent him to a famous
apothecary for some Unicornes-horne, which he was
resolved to try with a spider which he encircled in
it, but without the expected successe ; the spider would
goe over, and thorough and thorough, unconcerned."3
Before Mr. Ward went to Stratford, he tried to obtain
permission from the Archbishop to practise medicine
in all parts of England ; but he could only obtain a
licence for the province of Canterbury. It will be
remembered that the Bishops or Archbishops had
power to allow their clergy to practise, whether they
had taken a medical degree or not. The form of the
permission appears by one of Ward's memoranda.
"A licens granted to practice by Dr. Chaworth to Mr.
Francis throughout the archbishop's province, itt did
not cost him full out thirty shillings : there were some
clauses in itt as ' quamdiu se bene gesserit,' and ' accord
ing to the laws of England,' but I suppose itt was the
proper form which is used in such a case."4 The

1 Ward's Diary, pp. 171-2. 2 Tempest, iv. i, 21-3.

3 Aubrey, op. cit., \. 205, sub Sir William Davenant.

4 Ward's Diary, p. 14.

THE CLERGY AND MEDICINE 303

diocesan officials seem to have given a good deal of
trouble in the matter. " Mr. Burnet said of Mr. Francis
his licens, that itt must bee renewed every year ; the
apparitor would dunne him else, that his father never
was nor never would be doctor ; and the apparitor
used constantly to ply him, but he laughed him out of
it."1 Mr. Ward collected evidence to show that
physic had been practised by the clergy ever since the
Conquest. He makes special mention of Nicholas de
Farnham, the chief English physician, and Bishop of
Durham ; Hugh of Evesham, physician and Cardinal ;
Tideman de Winchcomb, Bishop of Llandaff, and
afterwards of Worcester, who was chief physician to
Richard II. ; John Chambers, Doctor of Physic, last
head of Peterborough Abbey, and first Bishop of the
new see; and Paul Bush, "an Oxford B.D.," well
read both in physic and theology, whose work on
" Certayne Costly Medycynes necessary to be used
among wel disposed people to eschew and avoid the
comen plague of pestilence," was printed by Redman.2

1 Id., pp. 13-14.

8 /</., pp. 117, 160. Nicholas of Farnham died in 1248; Ward writes
his surname as Ternham (sic). Hugh of Evesham (d. 1287) was physician
to Pope Martin IV., and wrote Canones Medicinales.

Ward is guilty, with Bishop Godwin (de Preesulibus, ii. 138), of con
fusing Abbot (afterwards Bishop) John Chambers (d. 1556), whose de
grees were merely M.A. and B.D. of Cambridge, with John Chambre
(1470-1549) dean of St. Stephen's, Westminster, and holder of various
preferments at Lincoln and in other cathedral bodies. Chambre was a
fellow of Merton, and warden from 1525 to 1544; he became M.D. of
Padua in 1506, and of Oxford in 1531. He was physician to Henry VII.
and Henry VIII., and in the famous picture of Henry VIII. and the
company of Barber-Surgeons he occupies a conspicuous place. The
late Precentor Venables pointed out Godwin's error in Diet. Nat. fft'og.,
vol. x., sub Chambers, John. Ward probably borrowed it from God
win's work. See article by Dr. Norman Moore on John Chambre in
Diet. Nat. Biog u.s.

" Syr Paull Busshe, prest and bonhomme of the good house Edynden "
(i.e. Edingdon), as he describes himself in the work mentioned in the text,
was the first Bishop of Bristol in 1542. He married Edith Ashley, and
resigned his see in 1554, from which time to his death in 1558 he was
rector of Winterbourne, near Bristol. He and his wife are buried in the

304 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

We may add to this list such names as those of the
Rev. Charles Evelegh, M.D., vicar of Harberton,
Devon, in 1678 ; the Rev. Hamnett Ward, D. Med. of
Angers, rector of Porlock, Somerset, in 1662 ; and the
Rev. William Stukely, M.D., rector of St. George's,
Queen Square, in 1747, F.R.C.P., F.R.S., and F.S.A.

WARD AT STRATFORD — HIS NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH
— SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EPIDEMICS— CONVIVIAL HABITS OF
THE DAY

When Mr. Ward came to Stratford in the winter of
1662, he seems to have embarked without delay upon
a course of medical experiments. The church bone-
house, divided only by a door from the chancel, con
tained in itself a whole treasury of relics. He was
interested in some question about the cranium, and
there were plenty of skulls " knocked about the
mazzard," l and piled on a shelf. "I searched thirty-
four skulls, or thereabouts, and of them all I found but
four which had the suture downe the forehead to the
very nose ; another which seemed to have a squami-
forme suture uppon the vertex, which I admird very
much at."2 ''Here's fine revolution, an we had the

north aisle of the choir of Bristol Cathedral. It is to be noted that his
"medycynes" against the pestilence were merely "gostly."

Ward, between the names of Hugh of Evesham and Tideman, adds
" Grysant, physician and pope." The reference is not obvious at first
sight ; but he doubtless meant Guillaume de Grimoard, born at Grisac
in Languedoc in 1309, a Benedictine, and abbot of St. Victor at Mar
seilles. He was for a time professor at Montpellier, the chief medical
school of France. In 1362, on the death of Innocent VI., he was chosen
pope at Avignon, and took the name of Urban V. See Gregorovius,
Geschichte der Stadt Rom (English translation, vi. 407). He is famous
for his temporary transfer of the papacy from Avignon to Rome, 1367-70.
He died in 1370, soon after his return from Rome.

1 Hamlet, v. i, 97. 2 Ward's Diary, p. 238.

WARD'S MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS 305

trick to see't."1 Mr. Ward seems to have been a bold
experimenter, perhaps not much averse from damaging
a patient in the cause of science. " Remember to hire
some fellow or other to have a caustick made uppon
him, that I may see the manner of itts operation."
When Goody Roberts caught the small-pox, he under
took the case, for, "apothecaries in ... suchlike
diseases which are infectious, charge for attendance."3
He tried antimony for its action on the skin, quoting
the authority of Dr. Sabel of Warwick, who gave a
drachm at a time.4 We observe that it was the chief
ingredient in one of Hartman's receipts, invented by
Dr. Cornachine of Pisa, who "made a great com
mentary on it," and strongly recommended by Digby.
"The Diaphoretick Antimony you may buy for six
pence an ounce," says Hartman ;5 so that it had also
the merit of cheapness. Ward said that it succeeded
very well with his patient: "so that in short, I think
diaphoreticks canne do no hurt in feavours, practice
itt constantly."6 On another occasion he says: "Can
not you use a loving violence? That expression
was Phipps his, of giving nature a fillip. . . . He
used in desperate cases to give many cordials ; and
when he gave any thing that was desperate say, ' With
itt they may die, but without itt they will die.' " 7

Mr. Ward paid particular attention to fevers, as
being especially prevalent at Stratford. He distrusted
the ordinary methods of cure, and especially hated
the doctors' fondness for bleeding, as if it must be
the "prologue to the play."8 He laughed at their
"Chaldaean charms," and could see little to admire in
viper-broth, a mole's liver, or the foot of a tortoise.9

1 Hamlet, u.s., 98-9. * Ward's Diary, p. 274.

3 Id., pp. 236, 106. 4 Id., p. 236.

8 Hartman, True Preserver and Restorer of Health, 1682, pp. 275-6.
6 Ward's Diary, p. 236. 7 Id., p. 250.

8 Id., p. 252. » Id., pp. 242-3.

306 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

He was, in fact, remarkably free from the superstitions
of his time ; but he would never open a vein when the
moon was new or at the full.1 Most of the clerical
practitioners in those parts seem to have hankered after
the occult. Dr. Napier and his friend Mr. Marsh, both
holding livings in Buckinghamshire, were astrologers
as well as physicians.2 Mr. Marsh told a friend of
Aubrey's that he worked under the direct guidance of
certain "blessed Spirits"; and Nick Culpepper told
Ward himself that "a physitian without astrologie is
like a pudden without fat."3 The notes upon various
local maladies have an interest in connection with
Shakespeare's last illness. Ward remarked, for ex
ample, that after a cold winter and spring there was a
great outbreak of measles, and "men, about July, had
agues and feavours in abundance " ; and most people
were strangely disordered, "some with coughs, some
with headach, some with one thing, some with an
other."4 Again, towards August, 1668, after a warm
winter and spring and "a strange moist summer,"
there was a prevalence of throat disease and such-like
distempers.5 All these feverish disorders were caused
in Ward's opinion by "sootie vapours," or foul air.6
Frogs and serpents could less live in Ireland, "foxes in
Crete, stagges in Africa, horses in Ithaca, and fishes in
warme water, than the heart of man abide with impure
smels, or live long in infected air."7 His note on
Shakespeare's illness is as follows: "Shakespeare,
Drayton, and Ben Jonson, had a merie meeting, and itt
seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour

1 id., p. 253.

2 Richard Napier or Napper, 1559-1634, was rector of Great Linford,
near Newport Pagnell. See Aubrey, op. cit., i. 91.

3 Ward's Diary, p. 95.

4 Id. , pp. 270-1 : "After a cold winter, a cool spring, and a very hot
summer."

5 Id., p. 272; see also p. 160. "In the heat of sumer, about July
and August (1668), wee had in Stratford fewer burials than ordinary."

6 Id., p. 254. 7 Id., p. 255.

WARD ON SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH 307

there contracted."1 We need not dispute the existence
of the fever. The question is why Mr. Ward should
have put it down to "drinking too hard." The story
may have come from one of the Harts or Mrs. Hatha
way of Chapel Street. The Vicar might have heard
it at the "Bear," among the gentlemen's servants, or at
the new " Falcon," with the poet's crest on the sign
board, or the " George," where, as we know from his
Diary, he dropped in to take a flagon of ale.2

We learn nothing from Dr. Hall's case-books, which
as we have seen, contained no memoranda of the
year in which his father-in-law died. But we are not
without the means of forming some opinion on the
matter. The first quarter of the seventeenth century
was marked by the appearance of epidemic fevers more
malignant in type than the old-fashioned tertians and
agues. There was a " new disease " in 1612, to which
Henry, Prince of Wales, fell a victim. It seems to have
been of a typhoid nature, to judge by the official
reports and the discussion of the symptoms by Dr.
Norman Moore in the volume printed for St. Bartholo
mew's Hospital in 1882. 3 The epidemic of 1615-16 was
more like some kind of influenza. The signs are
described by Ben Jonson in Every Man in his Humour.
" My head aches extremely on a sudden," says Kitely.
"Alas, how it burns," cries his wife. She thinks that
her "good mouse" must have caught the fever, though
it is only jealousy. " Keep you warm : good truth it is
this new disease, there's a number are troubled withal." 4
The more virulent typhus was of rare occurrence,
except the occasional visitations of gaol-fever, as to
which Ward's Diary contains some useful remarks :
" Within these eight or nine years there happened the
like in Southwark, which did in King James' time,

1 Id., p. 183. a fd.,P. 141.

8 The Illness and Death of Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1612, 1882.

4 Every Man in his Humour, ii. i.

308 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

which Bacon mentions as killing the judges by the
scent of the prisoners ; one speedie way to bring the
plague." l War-typhus was not known in this country
before 1643, and Shakespeare himself called England a

" fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war."2

It raged as a pestilence during the Civil War.
"Wounds of the body," says Ward, "are more diffi
cultly cured when the air is corrupt, as appeared at
Wallingford, in the time of the late warre, where,
because the air was infected, allmost all wounds were
mortall."3 "Mr. Swanne told mee a storie of the
experience they had in feavours, in letting their men
doe what they would ; their chyrurgions did keep them
to a strict diet, as broaths and the like, in feavours, and
they all died ; after, by permitting them to eat what
they pleased in moderation, they lost not a man ; which
argues the methodical doctors to bee infinitely out in
their pretended way of cure."4 The "inch dyet," he
concluded, "wherein wee eat by drammes and drink
by spoonfuls, more perplexeth the mind than cureth
the bodie."5 The Vicar described another "new dis
ease" which appeared at Stratford in his time, and
commonly cloked itself "under the ague, so much the
more dangerous." 6

Some thought that Prince Henry died of the ague ;
but the more usual opinion was that he brought on his
illness by an irregularity in melons or some such
watery fruit. He had been bathing at Richmond too
often. He was always taking oysters, like Lord
Shaftesbury's friend, who had a full oyster-table at one
end of the hall. The King himself had laughed at
such a habit, saying, " Hee was a valiant man that

1 Id., p. 256. 2 Richard II., ii. i, 43-4.

3 Ward's Dif^ry, p. 235. 4 Id. , p. 253.

8 Id., p. 254. 6 A/.,«p. 256.

FEVERS AND EPIDEMICS 309

durst first eat oysters," as Ward has noted. 1 Some said
that the Prince played tennis too violently in a summer
"excessive in degree and continuance of heat beyond
the memory of living man " ; and yet people who got
hot by exercise were not usually troubled with fevers
"in regard that itt [the heat] evaporates the sootie
vapours which cause them."2 Everyone was ready
with some personal detail to account for the disease,
like the gossips who talked to Mr. Ward about Shake
speare's case ; and they quite forgot that thousands
of similar instances, to which these personalities could
not be applied, were being registered in all parts of the
country. Dr. Creighton has shown us in his work
on Epidemics that the year in which Shakespeare died
was extremely unhealthy. It was, indeed, a worse
season than had been known since 1605, when there
had been a bad outbreak of fever and plague ; and the
mortality was not so great again until the fever-stricken
summer of 1623. The winter that preceded the poet's
death was of a very exceptional character. ' ' Warm
and tempestuous . . . winds prevailed from November
to February." The storms came from the west and
south-west, and there were East-Indian ships anchored
for ten weeks in the Downs, unable to proceed down
Channel. " The warm winds brought ' perpetual weep
ing-weather, foul ways and great floods.' ' The spring
came much too early, and we hear of blackbirds hatch
ing out their young in Archbishop Abbot's garden
at Lambeth before the end of February. Altogether,
though we do not know that any single type of disease
predominated, it is clearly made out that there was in
fact an extraordinary mortality.3

With regard to the Vicar's suggestion that the three
poets held a convivial party, we should remember that
at that time the subject of drunkenness was generally

1 Id., p. in. * id., p. 254.

s C. Creighton, History of Epidemics, i. 513.

310 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

treated as a joke. " One Mr. Cutler, of our house,"
says the worthy Vicar, "when hee was allmost drunk,
used to say, ( Now, gentlemen, wee beginne to come to
ourselves.'"1 He tells a story of a Dutchman who
visited Oxford in his time, where "they did so liquor
his hide " that he made an entry in his table-book of
their Modus Bibendi called Once againe, " qui fecit me
pernoctare in Bagley Wood."2 Burton was writing
his book on Melancholy about the time of Shake
speare's death, though it was not published till about
five years afterwards ; and according to him, things
were at such a pass "that he is no Gentleman, a very
milksop, a clown, of no bringing up, that will not
drink." Of the tradesmen he says that drinking was
their " summum bonum . . . their felicity, life, and
soul," and "their chief comfort, to be merry together
in an Alehouse or Tavern, as our modern Musco
vites do in their Mede-inns, and Turks in their Coffee
houses." Their favourite proverb taught that there
was as much valour in feasting as in fighting ; and so
they "wilfully pervert the good temperature of their
bodies, stifle their wits, strangle nature, and degenerate
into beasts."3 If the meeting of the three poets took
place at all, London would seem to be the likeliest place
of rendezvous. Ben Jonson was employed there in
1616 in bringing out the collected edition of his works,
and it was in the same year that he produced his
comedy called The Devil is an Ass. His conversations
with Drummond at Hawthornden took place only three
years afterwards. They talked about the merits of the
English poets, including Drayton and Shakespeare,
and about Jonson's own knowledge of their characters
and his behaviour towards them. If the meeting had
taken place, it would be strange indeed that it should

1 Ward's Diary, p. 120. 2 Id., p. 124.

8 Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. § 2, memb. 2, subs. 2 (ed.
Shilleto, vol. i. 261-3).

WARD ON SHAKESPEARE 311

not have been discussed on that occasion, especially as
Jonson spoke of his dislike of Drayton. The visitor
allowed that Michael Drayton's "long verses pleased
him not," and that he "esteemed not of" Drayton; and
he boasted that Drayton was afraid of him. At Strat
ford, however, it would seem the most natural of all
things to suppose that Shakespeare would consort with
the two great poets with whose names the townsmen
were most familiar.1

Ill

WARD'S MEMORANDA ON SHAKESPEARE'S ART — ILLUSTRATIVE
PHRASES IN THE DIARY.

Mr. Ward had something to say about Shakespeare's
plays, though he seems to have known little about the
poems. "I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a
natural wit, without any art at all." Jonson was
known to have said that Shakespeare "wanted art,"3
though he expressed a very different opinion in his
introduction to the collected plays. Mr. Ward was
perhaps referring to the "Virgilian art," which was
claimed for the poet on his monument. " Hee fre
quented the plays," continues the Vicar, "all his
younger time, but in his elder days lived at Stratford,
and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and
for itt had an allowance so large, that hee spent att
the rate of £1000 a-year, as I have heard." Others
put the amount at ,£300 ; but even the latter opinion
may have been exaggerated. " Remember," says
Ward, "to peruse Shakespeare's plays, and bee much
versed in them, that I may not be ignorant in that

1 Notes of Ben Jonson s Conversations with William Drummond, ed.
Lang (Shakespeare Soc. , 1842), p. 2. On p. 10 : " Drayton feared him ;
and he esteemed not of him." a Ward's Diary, p. 183.

3 Notes oj Ben Jonson' s Conversations, u.s., p. 3.

312 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

matter." He already doubts in his own mind,
''whether Dr. Heylin does well, in reckoning up the
dramatick poets which have been famous in England,
to omit Shakespeare."1 Dr. Peter Heylyn of Mag
dalen College, Oxford, wrote a celebrated Description
of the World, first published in 1621, and afterwards
expanded into the folio Cosmography? The Puritans
hated him for his opinions, and one of their preachers
pointed out Heylyn to the congregation as the ''geo
graphical knave " that went to and fro and compassed
the earth. The King ordered his book to be sup
pressed, because France and the French King were
given precedence over England ; but the author got out
of it by saying that the printer had changed "was" into
"is," and that he took the rest of the sentence out of
Camden, and was besides only speaking of England
before it was "augmented by Scotland."3 Mr. Thorns
quotes Aubrey as saying that Dr. Heylyn wrote the
History of St. George of Cappadocia, "which is a very
blind business ... I don't thinke Dr. Heylin con
sulted so much Greeke."4 He also wrote an account
of the Presbyterians, the famous life of Archbishop
Laud called Cyprianus Anglicus (1668), and a curious
work called A Help to English History ', which became
the foundation of Collins' Peerage and Baronetage.^
His opinions on Shakespeare as a dramatist seem
to have been "a very blind business," to borrow
Aubrey's phrase.

1 Ward's Diary, pp. 183-4.

2 The title of the original work was MiKpoKO<r/j.os, A little description
of the Great World, expanded into Cosmographie in four bookes, contain
ing the horographie and historic of the "whole "world, etc., 4 pt. , London,
1652, fol.

3 W. J. Thorns, Anecdotes and Traditions, illustrative of Early
English History and Literature (Camden Society), 1839, pp. 2-33 (No.
Ivii., from Sir R. L'Estrange, No. 274).

4 Id. , 102-3 (No. clxxiv.).

5 'HpuoXoyia. Anglorum ; or, an Help to English History containing a
succession of all the Kings of England, etc., 1641, I2mo.

GILDON ON SHAKESPEARE 313

Gildon has a better account of the matter, though he
was very ignorant about the " smaller pieces." Shake
speare, he says, wrote many plays, such as The Tempest,
brought much into esteem by Mr. Dryden, and Pericles,
" much admired in the Author's Lifetime and published
before his Death " ; but, after his list of genuine and
doubtful plays, he adds, "Our author writ little else,
we find in print only two small pieces of Poetry pub-
lish'd by Mr. Quarles, viz; Venus and Adonis, 8vo,
1602, and The Rape of Lucrece, 8vo, 1655." "He was
both Player and Poet ; but the greatest Poet that ever
trod the stage."1 Such, no doubt, was Mr. Ward's
opinion. At any rate, he carried out his design of
perusing the plays, since a folio Shakespeare appeared
among the effects bequeathed by him in 1681 to his
brother, the Rev. Thomas Ward, rector of Stow-on-
the-Wold in Gloucestershire. The editor of his papers
tells us that there was a slip of paper pasted into the
volume with "W. Shakespeare" inscribed on it, and
suggests that this may have been a genuine autograph
obained at Stratford.2 There are a few odd phrases in
the Diary which show how constantly the compiler bore
Shakespeare in mind.

Of the May-weed, or wild camomile, Lyly had said
in Euphues, that "the more it is trodden and pressed
down, the more it spreadeth."3 Old Falstaffhad repeated
the metaphor : "The Camomile, the more it is trodden
on the faster it grows."4 It was indeed a regular say
ing among the farmers, who hated the straggling
"mathes" which infested every pathway through the
corn. Ward probably knew nothing about Euphues ;
but he may, perhaps, have had Falstaff in his mind
when he pressed the metaphor into his service. "The

1 Langbaine, Account of English Dramatic Poets, continued by Gildon,
1699, pp. 126-9.

2 Ward's Diary, pp. 33, 24. * Evphues, 1579, ed. Arber, p. 46.
4 i Henry IV., ii. 4, 441-2.

314 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

Church of God," he writes, "is like camomill, the
more you tread itt, the more you spread itt."1

We may find another example in Shakespeare's
sonnet upon changeful weather :

" Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day
And make me travel forth without my cloak? "

The motive of the poem is shown by the words of Sir
Proteus when he rhapsodises in the Two Gentlemen of
Verona " :

" O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away."3

In the second quatrain of the sonnet we are reminded
that a half-cure is no cure at all ; it is not enough to
wipe the rain-drops from the storm-beaten face :

" For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace."

Mr. Ward may have had this in his thoughts when
he wrote the memorandum in his book: " Hee that is
branded with anie hainious crime, when the wound is
cured, his credit will bee killed with the scarre."4

He meditates upon death thus: "Wee poor men
steal into our graves with no greater noise than can bee
made by a sprigg of rosemary or a black ribband . . .
no comet or prodigie tolls us the bell of our departure."5
We remember the "fires in the element" that boded

1 Ward's Diary, p. 211. 2 Sonnet xxxiv.

3 T-wo Gentlemen o/ Verona, i. 3, 84-7. 4 Ward's Diary, p. 229.

6 It is not unlikely that Ward may have remembered the prodigies
related in Macbeth, act ii. sc. 4. His phrase " tolls the bell of our
departure " echoes the characteristic accent of the most striking pas
sages in that tragedy. His sentiment, in a more violent form, occurs in
Webster's White Devil, with a strong similarity of phrase.
"O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twin
To sweetest slumber ! no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure. ..." etc.

SHAKESPEAREAN PHRASES IN WARD 315

Caesar's death, and spirits running up and down in the
night,1 and how Shakespeare improved Plutarch's story
by adding the "exhalations whizzing in the air," and
all the phenomena of a great meteor-shower :

" Never till to-night, never till now,

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire."2

For a more modern example we may cite Howell, tell
ing his father of the Queen's death at Denmark House:
"which is held to be one of the fatal Events that
follow'd the last fearful Comet that rose in the Tail of
the Constellation of Virgo '."3 Mr. Ward found as many
prodigies and omens in his own experience as had
been observed during the siege of Jerusalem. "The
Stars to do their duty did not fail ; the elements have
often spoke already." So sang George Wither un-
melodiously in his Sighs for the Pitchers;* and the
Vicar adds, "Wee had two comets succeeding each
other in few months before the late devouring pestilence
and consuming fire, visibly seen in and over London,
not to bee paralleld in any age."6 But the star-gazers,
as Howell said, were always obtruding their predic
tions, and were so familiar with the heavenly bodies
" that Ptolemy and Tycho Brake were Ninnies to
them."6

In the same letter of Howell we have a Shakespearean
phrase, of which Ward afterwards made a singular use
in describing the Gunpowder Plot. " I fear, that while
France sets all wheels a-going, and stirs all the Caco-
damons of Hell to pull down the House of Austria,

1 North, Plutarch, ed. Rouse, vol. vii. pp. 202-3.

• Julius Caesar, ii. i, 44 ; i. 3, 9-10.

8 Epp. Ho-EL, ed. Jacobs, p. 105 (i. § 2, let. 7 : 20 Mar. 1618, O.S.).
Mr. Jacobs points out (id., p. 719) that Anne's death took place at
Hampton Court, not Denmark House, on 2 March, 1618-19.

4 Sigh[s]for the Pitchers: Breathed out in a Personal Contribution to
the National Humiliation, etc. 1666, p. 16.

5 Ward's Diary, p. 309.

6 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 506 (ii. let. 76: Fleet, 3 Feb. 1646).

316 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

she may chance at last to pull it upon her own head."1
The last words seem to refer to what Henry VIII. said
about the Supplication of the Beggars: " If a man
should pull down an old stone wall and begin at the
lower part, the upper part might chance to fall upon
his head."2 As to the cacodaemons, their very name
implies that they were the worst of fiends. In Greek,
the word is an adjective implying subjection to a bad
angel or evil genius.3 In the science of astrology it
was a term of deep meaning, and signified the " twelfth
House" in a figure of the heavens, " because of its
baleful signification."4 Shakespeare, however, uses
the word as if it only meant a demon. Queen Mar
garet applies it with great force to Richard III. : —

" Hie thee to hell for shame and leave this world,
Thou Cacodaemon ! there thy kingdom is." 5

To understand further Ward's use of the phrase, we
must turn to the dialogue between Duke Humphrey
and his wife in the second part of Henry VI. " Nay,
Eleanor," he chides; and " Ill-nurtured Eleanor," and
"wilt thou still be hammering treachery?"6 When
Ward describes the Gunpowder Plot, we see that he is
combining two or three Shakespearean phrases, and is
not borrowing from letter-writer or astrologer: "It
is said of the gunpowder plott, that itt seemd a piece
rather hammerd in hell by a conventicle of caco-
demons, than tracd by humane invention."7

1 Id., p. 505, u.s.

2 Fox, Acts and Monuments, 3rd ed. , 1 576, p. 896. See Fish's Suppli
cation, ed. Arber, pp. xv.-xvi.

3 Liddell and Scott cite Aristophanes, Rq. , 112, for the substantival use
of Ko,Ko5al/j.uv = an evil genius, as in Shakespeare.

4 In this sense cf. Fletcher, The Bloody Brother, iv. 2: "The twelfth
the Cacodemon" (cited by New Eng. Diet. s.v.).

8 Richard III., i. , 3, 143-4. 6 2 Henry VI., i. 2, 41 50.

7 Ward's Diary, p. 163.

WARD AND THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 317

HISTORICAL REFERENCES— WARD ON THE HISTORY AND AN
TIQUITIES OF STRATFORD AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD — HIS
ACQUAINTANCE WITH SHAKESPEARE'S RELATIONS

Let us now consider some of the historical memo
randa, which are scattered without order through the
Diary, though they all seem to have a direct bearing
on the subject of the Vicar's studies. The first relates
to one who, like his master, assumed "the port of

Mars," one of

" the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt."1

" Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick," says Ward,
"was a roaring housekeeper, six oxen being usually
eaten att a breakfast att his house in London, and every
taverne full of his meate : and any who had acquaint
ance with the familie might have as much sodden and
roost as hee could carrie on a dagger."2

We next have a picture of "impious Beaufort, that
false priest," who " limed bushes to betray the wings"
of Humphrey of Gloucester : —

" Beaufort's red sparkling eyes blab his heart's malice,
And Suffolk's cloudy brow his stormy hate."3

This Beaufort, said Ward, was the great Cardinal
" who was reported to say on his deathbed, ' Iff all Eng
land could save his life, he was able, either by monie
or policie, to procure itt.'"4

"King. How fares my Lord, speak, Beaufort, to thy sovereign.

1 Henry V., prologue, 11. 6, 13-14. a Ward's Diary, p. 139.

* 2 Henry VI., H. 4, 53-4; iii. i, 154-5.
4 Ward's Diary, p. 177.

318 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

Cardinal. If thou be'st death, I'll give thee England's treasure,
Enough to purchase such another island,
So thou wilt let me live, and feel no pain." 1

In another passage he discusses the policy of Arch
bishop Chichele, who was accused, perhaps unjustly,
of having promoted war with France in order to stave
off an attack upon the Church. The opening scene in
Henry V. explains the situation. The Commons were
eager for a Bill, which had already passed their House
in "the Ignorant Parliament" :

" If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possession."

"Thus runs the bill," says Canterbury, and "This
would drink deep," says Ely. " 'Twould drink the cup
and all ! " " But what prevention ? " The conversation
must be supposed to take place in the second year of
Henry's reign, Chichele having been translated from
St. David's to the primacy on the 27th of April, 1414.
He explains to the Bishop of Ely that young Harry
seems indifferent, or rather swaying somewhat towards
the Church :

" I have made an offer to his majesty . . .
Which I have opened to his grace at large,
As touching France, to give a greater sum
Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal."

Harry of Monmouth, he maintains, is the heir of Phara-
mond and Charlemagne, and of the Lady Ermengarde,
from whom the fair Queen Isabel, otherwise the "French
she-wolf," derived her title, the heir of Pepin and
" Bertha Broadfoot," so that, as the learned prelate con
cludes in the next scene :

" As clear as is the summer's sun,

King Pepin's title and Hugh Capet's claim,
King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear
To hold in right and title of the female."2

1 2 Henry VI., iii. 3, 1-4. 2 Henry V., i. 2, 86-9.

ARCHBISHOP CHICHELE 319

The Bishop of Ely makes an excellent remark about
the King's virtues having been hidden under the veil
of wildness:

"The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality " ;

and the audience would naturally be pleased with the
allusion to the great strawberry-banks, the saffron-beds,
and the rose-thickets of Hatton House.

" My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn,
I saw good strawberries in your garden there."1

Ward remarks with some acuteness that Henry V. was
not called "his majesty." "The titles of kings have
much alterd. Grace was the title of Henry the 4th, ex
cellent grace of Henry the 6th, and majestie of Henry
the 8th ; before, they were usualy calld soveraigne lord,
leige lord, and highnes."

"Archbishop Chichly," he says, "having persuaded
King Henry the 5th to a warre with France, built a
colledg in Oxon, to pray for the souls of those who
were killed in the warres of France. He called it All
soulls, as intended to pray for all, but more especialy for
those killed in the warrs." " King Henry the 5th . . .
again had a great mind to the clergie's revenues in
England, and had probably effected itt, had not Chickley
advisd him to warrs in Fraunce."3

The Vicar has left us a very interesting account of
the town and its immediate neighbourhood. "Wee
are ignorant," he writes, "of the reason of the names of

1 Henry V.,\. i, 60-2 ; Richard III. , iii. 4, 32-4. The Bishop of Ely
in Henry V. would be John de Fordham (d. 1425) ; in Richard III. John
Morton, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1500).

a Ward's Diary, p. 311. The title of "majesty" was assumed first
in Spain by Charles V. after his election as Emperor. " The vanity of
other courts soon led them to imitate the example of the Spanish "
(Robertson, Charles V., bk. i. p. 116, in one vol. ed.). In Richard III.,
for example, Shakespeare alternates between the use of "grace" and
" majesty." 3 Ward's Diary, pp. 172, 310.

320 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

many townes and places in England, they being of
Saxon original ; for the Romans first, and the Saxons
afterwards, did without doubt give names to most
places."1 " Stratford is so called from a street passing
over a ford." " Avon a British word, aufona with them
signifying as much as fluvius with us." "Arden signifies
a woody place, and was so used by the Galls and the old
Britons."2 We place his scattered notes in some
order of date. " Stratford superr Avon belonged to the
Bishop of Worcester, three hundred years before the
conquest. . . . Our church is of auncient structure,
and little lesse than the conqueror's time. Robert de
Stratford, who afterwards was bishop, was parson
of Stratford. . . . Our Thursday mercate att Stratford
was graunted to the towne in King Richard the First's
time, through the meanes of John de Constantiis, Bishop
of Worcester. ... A fair procurd for Stratford by
Walter de Maydenstone, made Bishop of Worcester in
Edward the Second's time, which should last fifteen
days, beginning on the eve of St. Peter and St. Paul.
. . . John de Chesterton, a lawyer in Edward the
Third's time, hadd the manner of Stratford, in lease of
the Bishop of Worcester ; but in the third of Edward
the 6, Nicholas Heath passd itt to John Dudley, Earl of
Warwick, for lands in Worcestershire. Stratford was
made a corporation in the seventh of Edward the sixth.
In the eighteenth of Elizabeth, the mannor was
graunted to Ralph Coningsby, by lease for twenty-one
years."3

He gives Sir Hugh Clopton the credit of having
built the transept, or " north and south crosse," of
Stratford Church. He has a notice also of the arms
on Sir Hugh's cenotaph : " Itt was a usage in auncient
time, where they could hitt of anything that sounded
neer or like their names, to bear itt in their armes, as

1 Id., p. 291. 2 /c?., pp. 185, 138, 147.

3 Id., pp. 185-7.

THE CLOPTONS AND ARDENS 321

Clopton hath a tunne." * No doubt he was thinking
of Shakespeare with the De Mauley falcon and lance,
and Lucy with his fishes hauriant ; and the Cloptons
might have given him an example from Suffolk, where
Mr. Abel, a great clothworker, had a monument in
Nayland Church : " and to signify his name, as also to
make up his coat-armour, the letter A. and the picture
of a bell are cast upon the monument."2

His notice of the old Arden stock is not quite in
accordance with the received opinion. Mr. Hunter,
for instance, taking Edward Arden's execution as a
starting-point, gives the following account of his de
scendants. By his wife, a daughter of Sir Robert
Throckmorton, he had three daughters, who married
into the great Warwickshire families of Devereux,
Somerville, and Shuckborough ; "he had also a son,
Robert Arden, who recovered Park -hall, and was
living there in 1621. From him several Ardens de
scended ; and in the female line the persons are in
numerable who descend from these Ardens."3 But as to
the male line, Mr. Ward only says: "The last of the
Ardens, which was Robert, dyed at Oxford, unmarried,
an. 1643. "4 The list of Warwickshire gentlemen on
the King's side printed in Symonds' Diary for 1645,
contains no mention of any Arden, though it notices Sir
Richard Shuckborough and Mr. Devereux of Shustoke
as having taken an active part, and "Justice Combes
of Stratford-upon-Avon," who "sitts at home."5

1 Id. , p. 140. A similar case in point is the tun in the punning coat-of-
arms of Taunton. On p. 187 Ward notes: "Sir John Clopton's sonne
buried in the vault under his seat, by mee on Saturday night, Aug. n,
1666."

2 There is now no monument of the kind remaining at Nayland—
unless one of the brasses whose matrices remain in the floor of the
church may have displayed this coat.

3 Joseph Hunter, New Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shakespeare,
l845. '• 33-43- * Ward's Diary, p. 147.

8 Symonds, Diary of Marches kept by the Royal Army (Camden
Society), 1859, pp. 191-2. "Shistock" is his form of "Shustoke."
Y

322 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

Mr. Ward's account of the Charlecote family is for
the most part derived from Dugdale. "The Lucies
are descended of the Montforts : William de Lucy was
heir to Walter de Cherlcote. . . . The Lucies great
lovers of horses aunciently, proved by one of them
giving forty mark to a London merchant for one in
King Edward the First's time, which was then a vast
summe." Sir Thomas Lucy the first much enlarged
Charlecote Park * ' by the addition of Hampton Woods. " l
Of Sir Thomas Lucy, his grandson, we hear some
thing in Howell's correspondence. He was supposed,
at any rate, to be in Venice, and received jovial
messages from friends at home: "My Lady Miller
commends her kindly to you, and she desires you to
send her a compleat Cupboard of the best Christal
Glasses Murano can afford by the next shipping ;
besides she intreats you to send her a pot of the best
Mithridate, and so much of Treacle. . . . Farewell,
my dear Tom, have a care of your courses, and con
tinue to love him who is — Yours to the Altar, J.H."2
Mithridate and Venice - treacle were supposed to be
antidotes to all kinds of poison ; and so Love, by
Diella's poet, was called the "Mithridate to overcome
the venom of disdain."3

We suppose that the Vicar's friend, Mr. Russell,4
was the son or near relation of Mr. Thomas Russell,
who knew the poet very well and acted as supervisor
of his will. Mr. Ward has one or two anecdotes about
them which shows that they belonged to the celebrated

1 Ward's Diary, p. 187. The order of the citations is slightly altered.
See Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire, ed. Thomas, 1730, i. 502, etc.
Ward adds to the words " Hampton Woods," the note " (Dugdale)."

2 Epp. Ho-EL, u.s., pp. 419-20 (ii. let. 27: Westm., i$Jan. 1635).

3 R. L. , Diella, Sonnet xii. 9-10, in Arber, Eng. Garner, vii. 195. So
in Taylor's Pennyles Pilgrimage, 1618 : " Mithridate, that vigrous health
preserves."

4 Ward's Diary, p. 285 : " Mr. Russell told me of an auncient minister
in their country," etc.

THE LUCIES AND THE RUSSELLS 323

west-country stock. " I have heard this account of
the rise of the family of the Russels. About the time
when Philip, King of Castile, father to Charles the
Fifth, was forcd by foul weather into the harbour of
Weymouth, Sir Thomas Trenchard bountifully enter-
taind this royal guest ; and Mr. Russel, a gentleman
or esquire of Kingston Russel, in the countie of
Dorset, who had travaild beyond seas, and was much
accomplisht himself, was sent for to compleat the enter
tainment. King Philip took such delight in his com-
panie, that when hee went home, hee recommended
him to Henry the yth, as a person of abilities to stand
before princes. King Henry the 8th much favoured
him, making him controller of his house, privy
counseller, and made him Lord Russel. Edward
the 6th, (made him) Earl of Bedford. Two rich
Abbeys, Tavistock and Thome, in Cambridgeshire,
fell to him att the dissolution."1

There are other entries bearing on the domestic
affairs of Shakespeare's family. We hear of a Stratford
tradesman called Thomas Rogers, a relation of the
Philip Rogers whom Shakespeare sued for debt in the
Borough Court. * He left two sons, Joseph and
Thomas ; and when administration was granted to
Thomas Rogers the younger, "Joseph was, as itt
were, distracted. Witness Goody Hathaway and Mr.
Burnet."3 This "Good-wife" is thought to have
been Mrs. Joan Hathaway, widow of Thomas Hathaway
of Weston and afterwards of Stratford, who lived as
a widow in a shop at Chapel Street from 1655 to her
death in 1696. Her death, it is generally agreed,
" terminated the connection of the poet's Hathaways
with Stratford and its neighbourhood."4 It may be

1 Id,, 175. Thorne is usually spelt Thorney. Woburn also was
granted him in 1550.

8 See Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, iL JJ-8,
3 Ward's Diary, p. 187. * Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 189.

324 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

mentioned, however, that Mrs. Baker, while in charge
of the " Hathaway Cottage," in 1866, wrote a letter,
in the writer's possession, in which she claimed
to be a member of the family. "My great-grand
mother," she said, " was the last of the Hathaway
name, it having been since lost by marriage " ; and she
appears to have been under the impression that she
might be described as being in some sense "a descend
ant of Anne Hathaway."

Mr. William Hart, the hatter, who married Shake
speare's sister Joan, died in the same year and month
as the poet ; but his widow lived on at the house in
Henley Street, next to the Swan Inn, for about thirty
years afterwards.1 The Vicar has something to say
about their trade ; and it seems, indeed, as if he had
been ready with a remark before every window and
penthouse. "Hats," he notes, " invented since the
reign of Queen Elizabeth."2 He may have had the
Stratford Register in mind, where the epithet "hatter"
is given to William Hart for the first time in 1605. 3 He
was talking, at any rate, of high hats. There were
hats as well as hosen, we suppose, from a period of
remote antiquity. The rustic in Lydgate's London
Lyckpeny saw hats enough near Westminster Hall,

" Where flemynges began on me for to cry,
Master, what will you copen or by ?
Fyne felt hatts, or spectacles to reede,
Lay down your sylver, and here you may speede."4

We find all kinds of delicate fine hats in the plays, the
"thrummed hat,"5 the rye-straw,6 the "copatain," that
went with velvet hose and a scarlet cloak,7 besides
the pilgrim's cockle hat as shabby as his clouted

1 Id., i. 387. She died in 1646. 2 Ward's Diary, pp. 296-7.

3 Halliwell-Phillipps, op. tit., ii. 52.

4 St. vii., as reprinted in Skeat's Specimens of English Literature^

79. 5 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 2, 80.

6 Tempest, iv. i, 136. 7 Taming of the Shrew, v. i, 69-70.

HATTERS AND BARBERS 325

shoon.1 There was a Statute of Hats and Caps which
prescribed the height and quality of the head-gear for
the various grades of society ; it had been passed in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth to check the sudden luxury of
the steeple-like and bell-shaped structures, and the
threatened collapse of square-caps and round-caps and
old English bonnets of blue. " Round knitt caps were
the ancient mode," says Mr. Ward, " before hatts came
upp, and a capper of Bewdley then was a very good
trade."2

Before the barber's shop he muses on " crisped
locks," and tresses that live "a second life on second
head."3 The poet had compared dark hair to wires,
and waving curls to a golden mesh, that entrapped the
hearts of men " faster than gnats in cobwebs."*
''Fair hair, as the poets say, is the prison of Cupid;
that is the cause, I suppose," the Vicar continues, "the
ladies make rings and brooches, and lovelocks to send
to their lovers, and why men curl and powder their
hair, and prune their pickatevants."5 The last term is
taken by his editor as referring to mustachios, but it is
more likely that Ward meant the pointed beards, peaked
a la Pique-devant.

He had something to say about the tithes which
figure so largely in the list of Shakespeare's possessions.
It appears that they might have been abolished under
the Commonwealth, though "warranted by an Act of
State as high as Offa's time," had it not been for the
interference of Francis Rouse. "The buisnes of tithes
in the Protector's time being once hotly agitated
in the council, Mr. Rouse stood upp and bespake them
thus: 'Gentlemen,' says he, 'I'll tell you a storie ;
being travelling in Germany, my boot in a place being

1 Hamlet, iv. 5, 25. 2 Ward's Diary, p. 297.

3 Merchant of Venice, iii. 2 ; Sonnet Ixviii.

4 Sonnet cxxx. ; Merchant of Venice, u.s.
8 Ward's Diary, p. 103.

326 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

torne, I staid to have itt mended, and then came to mee
a very ingenious man and mended itt ; I staying the
Lord's day in that place, saw one who came upp to
preach who was very like the man who mended my
boot ; I inquired and found itt was he, itt grievd mee
much ; they told me they had tithes formerly, but now
being taken away, the minister was faine to take any
imployment on him to get a living.' I heard," said
Ward, "this storie turnd the Protector, and hee
presently cried out, ' Well, they shall never mend
shoes while I live.'"1

1 Zd., p. 121.

III. DOWDALL, AUBREY, ETC.

DOWD ALL'S LETTER TO SOUTHWELL, 1693 — ROOD'S PREFACE
— DOWDALL AT KINETON — HIS VISIT TO STRATFORD

WE shall now examine the statements of persons
who visited Stratford before the close of the
seventeenth century, either with a view of inspecting
the monuments or of picking up anecdotes about
Shakespeare's life. We shall begin with the account
of Stratford given by a barrister named Dowdall, who
visited the town in 1693 on his way to the Assizes at
Warwick. Some of his recollections are cited by Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps under the heading of "Anecdotes
respecting Shakespeare, from a little manuscript account
of places in Warwickshire by a person named Dow
dall,"1 and the whole work was published in 1838 by
Mr. Rodd, "the learned bookseller,"2 in a pamphlet
entitled Traditionary Anecdotes of Shakespeare. The
manuscript had come into his possession about four
years previously at the sale in which Lord de Clifford's
papers were dispersed. It is in the form of a letter,
dated the loth of April, 1693, and written from Butler's
" Merston,"3 "which is eight miles from Warwick, six
miles from Stratford-super-Avon, and one mile from
Kineton," not far from the main London road, which

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 71-2 (being No. vii. of the extracts
grouped under the general heading- of " Biographical Notices ").

a Thomas Rodd the younger (1796-1849), who carried on his father's
(d. 1822) business from 1821. The pamphlet is so small that references
in the footnotes would be superfluous. :t Usually " Marston."

327

328 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

led to Stratford by Kineton Field and Edgehill. " The
Assize, " says the writer, ' ' begins at Warwick to-morrow
morning, and in order to be there to hear the charge
&c. from Mr. Justice Clodpate, viz. Justice Ne — 1, my
friend and I ride thither this afternoon ; we shall stay
there till thursday." The letter has no formal signature,
but ends with a jocular message "from your very faith-
full Kinsman and most affte humble servt till death,
John at Stiles." It is addressed to the writer's cousin,
Mr. Edward Southwell, and was endorsed by him,
"From Mr. Dowdall, Description of several places in
Warwickshire."

"Brief as the notice of the poet is," said Mr. Rodd
in his interesting preface, "it is nevertheless of great
curiosity and importance, since it appears to indicate
the source of much of the information which has been
handed down to us by Aubrey ; and to point out one
of the persons who have invented, or perpetuated,
the few anecdotes of his early life that have reached us."
He quotes Malone for the statement that Aubrey col
lected his materials about 1680, and adds that, from the
coincidences in the two sets of anecdotes, there can be
no doubt that both received them from the clerk who is
mentioned in the letter. He expresses his own opinion
that the reports of "the vagrant tenor" of the poet's
youth are no more entitled to credit than the later
fables which have been thrust into the biographies.
"The most monstrous conjectures respecting him," he
complains, " have been boldly advanced, many of them
at total variance with each other." He quotes the old
poaching story as an example of the effect produced
by naming a well-known locality as the scene of a
legendary occurrence. A visit to the supposed place
of an imaginary event "hallows the deception," till
even the most incredulous yield to the delusion. When
Malone, he says, proved that there was no park at
Charlecote, "the Lucys . . . shifted the locality," being

THOMAS ROOD ON SHAKESPEARE 329

determined not to lose the honour of being robbed
by Shakespeare. An amusing illustration is added
from the Life of Sir Walter Scott. The incident is
taken from a letter written by Miss Scott to Mrs.
Lockhart from Carlisle. "We went to the Castle,
where a new showman went through the old trick
of pointing out Fergus Maclvor's very dungeon.
Peveril said — ' Indeed — are you quite sure, sir?' And
on being told there could be no doubt, was troubled
with a fit of coughing, which ended in a laugh. The
man seemed exceeding indignant : so when papa
moved on, I whispered who it was. I wish you had
seen the man's start, and how he stared and bowed
as he parted from us ; and then rammed his keys into
his pocket and went off at a hand-gallop to warn the
rest of the garrison. But the carriage was ready, and
we escaped a row."1 Mr. Rodd next referred to the
absurd suggestion that the " well-made and graceful"
Shakespeare was lame of one leg, because in the thirty-
seventh Sonnet he compared himself to a decrepit father,
and complained of being "made lame by fortune's
dearest spite " ; while, of course, no attention is paid to
the other half of the metaphor : —

" So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give
That I in thy abundance am sufficed
And by a part of all thy glory live."

In his Macbeth again, and in Henry VI I I., he has
left us, says Mr. Rodd, complete evidence of his being
a Protestant; "yet, because there are in his Hamlet
some allusions to the rites of the Roman church, he
has been set down as a Catholic." The reference is to
Ophelia's "maimed rites," and the death of Hamlet's
father " unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled";2 but it

1 Lockhart, Life of Scott, \ vol. ed., 1845, pp. 687-8.
- Hamlet, v. i, 242 ; i. 5, 77.

330 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

should have been stated that there is a definite asser
tion by the Rev. Richard Davies, made at some time
before 1708, that Shakespeare "died a papist."1
Nothing, however, has been adduced that is worthy of
the name of evidence, and the statement may now be
disregarded. "It would appear," says Mr. Rodd,
"from the practice of some recent writers, that where
the great dramatist is the subject, each conceives him
self at liberty to add whatever his fancy may dictate to
those already apocryphal accounts of him " ; and as a
climax he points out that someone had the hardihood to
doubt the poet's identity, "having laboured to prove
that he was one and the same person with Christopher
Marlowe ! "

In reading the young barrister's sprightly effusion one
must regret that he only cast a glance towards "our
English tragedian," though he was rapt in admiration
of the Beauchamp tombs at Warwick, being to his
mind such a fair and stately assembly " which . . .
will afford matter enough to feed the most hungry pen
in Europe for a considerable time." He rebukes his
dear cousin for the brevity of his news from home.
" But 'tis folly to expect a fee-farm of joys in this
world ; we must down on our marrow-bones, and thank
heaven for affording us one single glance. This epistle
(I suppose) you may justly call Mr. D — ll's travels into
Warwickshire, for herein you shall have such par
ticulars as I can at present call to mind, and by this
prolix relation I shall partly (tho' not designedly) re
venge the brevity of yours. On Friday, the roth of
March last, I set out from London, and lay that night
at Aylesbury. The next day I came hither to Butler's-
Merston." He then proceeds to describe his friend's
ancient mansion with its demesnes, the noble fishponds
and great dovehouse, "and in the stables there be as

1 Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 71. See full discussion,
id., \. 263-6, and supra, pp. 40-1.

WARWICK GENTLEMEN AT KINETON 331

stately a number of horses as a man can wish or desire
to ride on." l

" Having come so far, I may now venture to inform
you of our advances abroad ; and in order to that, I
must acquaint you first that there is a knott in these
parts that meet at Kineton every Saturday in the after
noon, who are one and AH, of which number my friend
is one ; and they are as true and sincere as they are
generous and hospitable." This looks like a reference
to the Merry Wives of Windsor:

" Shallow, etc. Well met, Master Ford.
" Ford. Trust me, a good knot : I have good cheer at
home, and I pray you all go with me."

Then Ford becomes afraid that some tough knot might
be knit, "a knot, a ging, a pack, a conspiracy," against
him ; 2 and we find something like it in Mr. Pepys'
Diary, when he notes that "all do conclude Mr.
Coventry, and Pett, and me, to be of a knot ; and that
we do now carry all things before us."3

The chief person in the Warwickshire society was
Mr. Charles Newsham of Chadshunt,4 a good scholar
and historian, "a great admirer of your Royal-Society-
learning, but not to be infatuated with the itch of experi
mental discoveries, &c." Next came his son-in-law,
Mr. Peeres, who lived at his manor of Alveston on the
Avon.5 " Another of the fraternity is Justice Bentley,
an honest true-hearted gentleman," living at Kineton.

1 " The Manor House has belonged to descendants of the Woodward
family since the time of Queen Mary. Richard Woodward and his
brother, who supported King Charles, were both slain at the battle of
Edge Hill." — Murray's Warwickshire, p. 105.

2 Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 2, 51-3; iv. 2, 123.

* 16 Dec. 1662, in Diary, ed. Braybrooke, 3rd ed., 1848, ii. 79.

4 A mile and a half N.N.E of Kineton. " Chadshunt House was
formerly the seat of the Newsham family, in the park is the well of St.
Chad, in which pilgrims used to bathe," etc. Murray's Warwickshire,
p. 104.

5 Two miles N. E. of Stratford, close to the road from Kineton.

332 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

Mr. Loggins of Butler's - Marston, was the fourth :
" excellent company, and keeps as excellent cyder."
From all these gentlemen Mr. Dowdall received oblig
ing civilities ; "and, as a mark of their kindness and
esteem, they have admitted me of their society. . . .
Now I proceed to inform you what antiquities I have
observed, and now and then, if I should prove tedious
by telling stories relating to these matters, you will, I
hope, excuse it, for 'tis what I thought worthy my
remembrance, and by consequence my friends. The
first remarkable place in this county that I visited, was
Stratford-super-Avon, where I saw the effigies of our
English tragedian, Mr. Shakespeare : part of his
epitaph I sent Mr. Lowther, and desired he would
impart it to you, which I find by his last letter he has
done ; but here I send you the whole inscription.
Just under his effigies in the wall of the chancell
is this written. Judicio Pylium &C."1 The visitor
does not describe the " effigies." "Near the wall,"
continued Mr. Dowdall, "where his monument is
erected, lieth a plain freestone, underneath which his
body is buried, with his epitaph made by himself a little
before his death : —

" ' Good friend, for Jesus sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.'

"The clerk that showed me this church was above
eighty years old. He says that this Shakespeare was
formerly in this town bound apprentice to a butcher,
but that he ran from his master to London, and there
was received into the playhouse as a servitour, and by
this means had an opportunity to be what he afterwards
proved. He was the best of his family ; but the male

1 Halliwell-Phillipps printed " Pylum," and the sentence "Just . . .
written." Rodd probably altered the error, but omitted to transcribe the
sentence.

THE STRATFORD TOMBS 333

line is extinguished. Not one, for fear of the curse
above said, dare touch his grave-stone, tho' his wife
and daughters did earnestly desire to be laid in the
same grave with him." The Parish- books show that
one William Castle, born in 1628, was clerk and sexton
at the time of Mr. Dowdall's visit, and throughout all
the latter part of the century. It has been frequently
assumed that it was he who gave the curious informa
tion about the poet and his family ; but it is very unlikely
that a clever young barrister should have taken a person
of about sixty-five for a man "above eighty years old,"
more especially as on that theory he would have been
talking to one who was born in Shakespeare's lifetime.
The visitor made no special remark upon Mr. John
Combe's tomb, which is generally admired as Gerard
Johnson's best piece of work ; he merely said that there
were some fine monuments, including one in memory
of George Carew, Lord Carew of Clopton, created
Earl of Totnes in I626.1 He was " a considerable man
in Ireland in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and also
in the time of King James, both there and in England.
He died temper. Car i. His brave actions and titles
of honour are here upon his monument enumerated,
which are too tedious to be here inserted. There is
also the monument of the Cloptons here, who are an
ancient family : there are some of them still remaining
in this town."

1 In 1605 he had been created Baron Carew of Clopton House. The
date of his death on the monument is 27 March 1629. He married Joyce,
daughter and heiress of William Clopton and Anne his wife. His father
was George Carew, Dean of Exeter (d. 1583).

334 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

DOWDALL'S VISIT TO WARWICK — THE BEAUCHAMPS AND
NEVILLES IN SHAKESPEARE — THE GREVILLES

" I shan't trouble you any more in this place," Dow-
dall continues, "but my next stage shall be to the
Church of Warwicke." He begins his description of
that church with an account of Thomas Beauchamp,
Earl of Warwick, who fought at Crecy and Poitiers,
and of his son Thomas, the thirteenth Earl, whose
honours were forfeited under Richard II., but restored
when the new reign began. " I made my next step to
the monument of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick,
son to the last mentioned Earl Thomas : he died at
Roan,1 anno 1439, and lies buried in a vault here ; in
memory of whom stands the noblest monument that
ever my eyes beheld ; 'tis in my judgment, much
beyond Henry the seventh's. His statue in brass,
double gilt, is the most exact and lively representation
that hitherto I ere met with." Then follows the in
scription, showing how the said " Richard Beauchamp,
late Earl of Warwicke, Lord Despenser of Bergavenny,
and of mony greate other Lordships," died in 1439,
" he being at the time Lieutenant Generall and Govern-
our of the Roialme of France and of the Dutchy
of Normandy by sufficient authority of our soveraign
lord the King Harry the VI." Round the main effigy
were fourteen statues of gilt copper representing the
great man's kindred. "To recount the many noble
exploits of this man would require a treatise of itself —
nay, the stories of him which still continue fresh in
this town of Warwick would be very tedious," says
Mr. Dowdall. The autobiography of Thomas Hearne
the antiquary shows that there was such a separate

1 i.e. Rouen.

BEAUCHAMP MONUMENTS 335

treatise, and gives a clue to the source of the traditions
current in Warwick. It was compiled by John Ross
the Hermit, who wrote the history of Warwick Castle,
and is catalogued by Hearne among the works which
he had edited as " The contents or Arguments of John
Ross's book (in the Cottonian Library) of the story
of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. From a
MS. of Sir William Dugdale in Museo Ashmol. Oxon.
pag. 359. "* Might we not presume that Shakespeare
would be familiar with the history of the Beauchamp
line, and made some reference to all these local glories?
Perhaps, indeed, this may be the origin of his
"brass eternal" and the " tombs of brass" in the
sonnets,2 and the opening words of Love's Labour's
Lost :—

" Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register'd upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death."5

But on turning to the historical plays the great
Earl's portraiture is found to be strangely distorted.
Let us take the first part of Henry VI. The scene
in the Temple Garden is ascribed by most competent
critics to Shakespeare,4 though many other passages
may have been written by Marlowe or another. Its
date is fixed, by the entry of Edmund Mortimer, to some
time between Henry the Sixth's accession in 1422 and

1 The Life of Mr. Thomas Hearne . . . from his own MS. copy, 1762,
p. 100, in appendix relating to his edition of the Monk of Eveshan's
History. No. i of the same series of appendices describes his own edition
of "John Ross's historical account of the Earle of Warwick, from an
eminent MS. in the hands of Tho. Ward, of Warwick, Esqr., p. 217."

2 Sonnets Ixv., cvii. ; also lv., "the gilded monuments of princes";
cL, "a gilded tomb." The phrase in Hamlet, \. 4, 48-50 (quoted below,
p. 343), is admirably descriptive of many contemporary monuments that
Shakespeare must have seen, e.g. William Clopton's tomb at Stratford or
the Hunsdon tomb in Westminster Abbey — both erected about 1596,
before the date of Hamlet.

3 Love's Labour's Lost, i. i, 1-3.

* e.g. Dr. Furnivall and Dr. A. W. Ward (a cautious assent).

336 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

Mortimer's death in 1425, and the ''Warwick" of that
time was, therefore, the high and puissant Prince who
died at Rouen and was laid at Warwick " in a fair chest
of stone."1 He was standing in the garden when the
debate between Plantagenet and Somerset began.
"Judge you, my Lord of Warwick, then between us."
As we all know, he plucked the White Rose of York,
loving no colours, as he said, and showing no " colour
of flattery." But what a picture he draws of his own
position and character. His mind is given up to hawks
and hounds. He can judge between a couple of Toledos
" which bears the better temper " :

" Between two horses, which doth bear him best ;
Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye ;
I have, perhaps, some shallow spirit of judgment.
But, in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.":

The great Earl was succeeded by his son Henry, Earl
and Duke of Warwick, crowned "King of the Isle of
Wight" shortly before his death in 1445. His sister,
Anne Beauchamp, was permitted to carry the earldom
with her on her marriage with Richard Neville, eldest
son of the Earl of Salisbury ; 3 he was Earl of Salis
bury himself before he died at Barnet, but will always
be best remembered as Warwick the Kingmaker.

The second part of Henry VI. confuses the valiant
Beauchamp with his son-in-law, the more popular hero.
Beauchamp had helped to conquer Anjou and Maine
and our other possessions in France. But the credit

1 Richard Beauchamp had succeeded to the earldom on the death
of his father in 1401. 2 i Henry VI., ii. 4.

3 Dugdale, Ant. War., ed. Thomas, 1730, i. 414-15. The widow of
Earl Richard, Isabelle le Despenser, who died 27th Dec., 1439, was
buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, where, in 1422, she had erected the beau
tiful chantry-chapel to the memory of her first husband, the Earl of
Abergavenny and Worcester — another Richard Beauchamp, and cousin
to her second husband. Hence the Earl of Warwick's title, u.s., " Lord
Despenser of Bergavenny. "

THE EARLS OF WARWICK 337

of his actions is claimed for his successor, Richard
Neville, when the provinces were yielded up in 1445 :

" Anjou and Maine ! myself did win them both ;
Those provinces these arms of mine did conquer :
And are the cities that I got with wounds,
Deliver'd up again with peaceful words ?
Mort Dieu ! " l

Even if we go back to the times before Agincourt, we
find the same confusion. There is a " Warwick" in
the second part of Henry IV. He is, of course, no
other than the great Earl entombed among the double-
gilt statues. But the King is made nevertheless to
call him " Cousin Nevil," as if he must have belonged
to the blood of "the setter-up and plucker-down of
Kings." Mr. Dowdall evidently followed all the
lineal changes with interest. " There be severall other
large and fine monuments belonging to the family of
the Nevilles, that after the Beauchamps came to be
Earls of Warwick, and also many noble monuments
in memory of the family of the Dudleys, who were
Earls of Warwick after the extinguishment of the
Nevilles."

" Besides this, there is the monument of Sir Foulke
Greville, which, as I am informed by the learned in
the orders of building, is for its architecture inferior to
none in the kingdom. The epitaph on the tomb is in my
mind worth your knowing, which is this, viz : — ' Fulke
Grevil, servant to Queene Elizabeth, Councellour to
King James, and Friend to Sr Phillip Sidney : Trophceum
peccati:' Now I will bid adieu to monuments and cast
my eye on Kenilworth." The same thought appears
in the title of the biography, "The Life of the re
nowned Sir Philip Sidney. With the true interest of
England, &c : Written by Sir Fulke Grevil, knight,
lord Brook, a servant to Queen Elisabeth, and his

1 2 Henry VI., i. i, 119-23. * 2 Henry IV., iii. i, 66.

338 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

companion and friend."1 Lord Brooke died in 1628,
and was succeeded by his cousin, Robert Greville, who
was killed at Lichfield in 1643, upon St. Chad's Day,
by a shot from a deaf and dumb boy among the de
fenders of St. Chad's Cathedral.2 Lord Brooke, says
Aubrey, "was armed cap a pied; only his bever was
open. I was then at Trinity College in Oxon. and doe
perfectly rememember the story."3 The first Lord
Brooke has earned a title for devoted friendship, as
Eusebius was content to take the name " Pamphili," as
the friend of his master, St. Pamphilus. But Aubrey,
who loved the memory of Lord Bacon, has left a bitter
paragraph about Greville, which cannot properly be
omitted.

"In his lordship's prosperity, Sir Fulke Grevil, lord
Brookes (sic) was his great friend and acquaintance ;
but when he (Bacon) was in disgrace and want, he was
so unworthy as to forbid his butler to let him have any
more small beer, which he had often sent for, his
stomach being nice, and the small beere of Grayes
Inne not liking his pallet. This has donne his memory
more dishonour then Sir Philip Sydney's friendship
engraven on his monument hath donne him honour."4

1 Published in 1652. Title in Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, i. 275.

2 There is a good account of the legend of. Lord Brooke's death at
the hands of "Dumb Dyott " in Mr. A. B. Clifton's Cathedral Church
of Lichfield, 1898, pp. 12-15. The shot was said to have been fired from
the central tower, the spire of which was destroyed in the ensuing siege.
Lord Brooke took Stratford-upon-Avon before his death.

3 Aubrey, op. cit., 5. 275, sub Greville.

* Id., i. 67, sub Francis Bacon. Aubrey's citation of authorities which
he intended to verify some day is very characteristic. " Vide . . . History,
and (I thinke) Sir Anthony Weldon."

HALL'S LETTER TO THWAITES 339

III

WILLIAM HALL'S LETTER TO EDWARD THWAITES, 1694

Mr. Dowdall's account of his visit should be read in
connection with the letter by William Hall found at the
Bodleian in 1884 and published in the papers of June
the 24th in that year ; a copy was also printed by Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps.1 William Hall was a young gradu
ate of Queen's College, Oxford, and his letter was
addressed to his friend, Edward Thwaites, who was
already a Fellow of that College. It must have been
written after the end of the autumn term, or about
Christmas, in the year 1694, the date being approxi
mately fixed by a reference to a promised list of Stafford
shire words, which duly arrived in Oxford on the 2nd
of January. Mr. Thwaites was a great philologist. He
lectured on Anglo-Saxon and helped Hickes in his
Treasury of the Northern Languages ; "a very beautiful
transcript of Somner's (Anglo-Saxon) Dictionary, with
Thwaites' additions, is now among the Ballard MSS.
in the Bodleian, written by himself with the greatest
accuracy and neatness." He was beloved by all his
contemporaries. Mr. Brome, in writing to Ballard,
gives us an anecdote about him on the authority of
Dr. Bernard, who was a great book collector, as well
as being Serjeant-Surgeon to Queen Anne. "Mr.
Thwaites I was most intimately acquainted with and
have by me several of his letters. He was certainly one

1 Shakespeare's Grave. Notes of Traditions that were current at
St rat ford-on- Avon in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century, privately
printed, 1884.

8 Thwaites' various accomplishments are recorded in Diet, Nat. Biog.,
vol. Ivi. In 1698 he became Fellow and "Anglo-Saxon Preceptor" of
Queen's College ; it was during this period that Hickes' Treasury
appeared (1703-5). In 1708 he became Regius Professor of Greek and
Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy. He died at Iffley in 1711.

340 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

of the greatest geniuses of the age : much a gentleman,
a good-natured man. His patience and magnanimity
in his sufferings from lameness was beyond compare :
so great that it was not impertinent in Serjeant Bernard,
his surgeon, to acquaint Queen Anne therewith, who
ordered him £100, and made him Greek Professor in
Oxford." Some say that the Queen gave double that
amount.

His friend, William Hall, was the son of an inn
keeper at Lichfield. He was educated at the Cathedral
Grammar School, and at the age of seventeen was
nominated one of the Batlers, or servitors, at Queen's
College. His friend Thwaites had been a Batler, one
of these Pueri Pauperes, at St. Edmund's Hall ;
Humphrey Wanley,1 the Earl of Oxford's learned
librarian, occupied the same position ; and we read
in Hearne's autobiography how his patron, Mr. Cherry,
had him entered as "a Battelar of Edmund-Hall," in
Michaelmas Term, 1695. 2 The word is, of course,
derived from the " battels," or rations, from the buttery-
hatch ; at Cambridge they are called "sizings," which
Ray derived from "size," a cant word for half a loaf.
In the diverting play of The Puritan, so long ascribed
to Shakespeare, an adventurer is made to say : "I am
a poor gentleman, and a scholar ; I have been matricu
lated in the university, wore out six gowns there
. . . went bareheaded over the quadrangle, ate my
commons with a good stomach, and battled with dis
cretion."3 Shakespeare really used the Cambridge
phrase, as might be expected from the friend of Frank
Beaumont and "Jack Fletcher": "No, Regan," says
King Lear,

" Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give
Thee o'er to harshness . . .

1 1672-1726. 2 Life of Mr. Thomas Heame, u.s., p. 4.

3 The Puritan, i. 2 (Supplementary Works of Shakespeare, ed. W.
Hazlitt, 1852).

WILLIAM HALL OF LICHFIELD 341

Tis not in thee

To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train,
To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes." *

Mr. Hall matriculated in 1690, and " put on his gown "
in October, 1694. His letter to Thwaites was written a
few weeks later from the " White Hart," at Lichfield,
kept by his father, Mr. William Hall, the vintner.
"Dear Neddy," he begins, "I very greedily embrace
this occasion of acquainting you with something which
I found at Stratford-upon-Avon. That place I came
unto on Thursday night, and the next day went to
visit the ashes of the great Shakespear which lye
interr'd in that church. The verses which, in his life
time, he ordered to be cut upon his tombstone, for his
monument have others, are these which follow, —

Reader, for Jesus's sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here ;
Blessed be he that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

The little learning these verses contain would be a very
strong argument of the want of it in the author, did
not they carry something in them which stands in need
of a comment. There is in this church a place which
they call the bone-house, a repository for all bones they
dig up, which are so many that they would load a great
number of waggons. The Poet, being willing to pre
serve his bones unmoved, lays a curse upon him that
moves them, and haveing to do with clerks and sextons,
for the most part a very ignorant sort of people, he
descends to the meanest of their capacitys, and dis
robes himself of that art which none of his co-tempor
aries wore in greater perfection. Nor has the design
mist of its effect, for, lest they should not only draw

1 King Lear, ii. 4, 173-8. Mr. W. J. Craig, in his edition of the play
(1901), quotes Sherwood's English-French Dictionary (1622) : " To Size,
En 1'Universite de Cambridge, c'est la mesme chose, comme to battle en
Oxford."

342 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

this curse upon themselves, but also entail it upon their
posterity, they have laid him full seventeen foot deep,
deep enough to secure him. And so much for Strat
ford, within a mile of which Sir Robinson lives, but it
was so late before I knew, that I had not time to make
him a visit. Mr. Allen Hammond, the bearer hereof,
my particular acquaintance and schoolfellow, upon Mr.
Dean's recommendation designs for Queen's, and in
tends to have Mr. Waugh for his tutor. I desire that
you would assist him in what you can as to a study,
and make use of your interest with the senior poor
children to be kind to him in what concerns the going
about the fires. My bed, which is in Pennington's
chamber, I have ordered him to make use of, if he
need one, and do desire you to help him to it. Pray
give my service to Jacky White, Harry Bird, and to
all my Lichfield acquaintance, when you see them, and
to all those also that shall ask after me. As for the
Staffordshire words we talked of, I will take notice of
them and send them. Pray let me hear from you at
Mr. Hammond's man's return, wherein you will greatly
oblige your friend and servant, Wm. Hall. Direct
your letter for Wm. Hall, junr., at the White-hart
in Lichfield. For Mr. Edward Thwaites in Queen's
College in Oxon."

Mr. Hall took his M.A. degree in July, 1697. He
was afterwards collated to the rectory of Acton,
Middlesex, and in the spring of 1708 became Pre
bendary of Chiswick in St. Paul's Cathedral.1 He
finished building the parsonage house at Acton just
before his death in December, 1726; which caused Mr.
Edward Cobden, his successor, to inscribe on one of
the windows a set of verses on the time-honoured theme,
" Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves."2

1 Le Neve, Fasti Ecc. Ang., ii. 379.

2 See E. Walford, Greater London, i. 18.

GILDON ON SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE 343

A NOTE BY GILDON— AUBREY— MR. BEESTON'S INFORMATION IN
AUBREY'S MSS. — THE "BUTCHER-BOY" AND DAVENANT LEGENDS

Gildon is our authority for another piece of gossip.
He says of Shakespeare, in his edition of Langbaine,
that he was buried with his wife and daughter in Strat
ford Church, under a monument with the inscription
" Ingenio Pylum," etc., showing a carelessness even
greater than Pope's in the matter of quotation.1 "I
have been told that he writ the Scene of the Ghost in
Hamlet, at his House which bordered on the Charnel-
House and Churchyard." 2 He may have been thinking
of the College ; but he ought to have known that New
Place was not near the church. The Ghost in Hamlet
reminded Gildon of churchyards, in the absence of any
precise ideas about the high platform at Elsinore.
"What may this mean? That thou, dead corse" — we
know the Prince's thought : —

" Let me not burst in ignorance ; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements ; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again."3

We must now quote some of the information which
Aubrey derived from Dr. William Beeston or from his
papers. It is in the form of a contrast between Shake
speare and Jonson. Beeston recollected the sturdy
laureate very well, but had very dim recollections of
what he had heard in his boyhood about "that Greater
Spirit." The wonder is that Aubrey himself had not

1 Cf. supra, p. 332, note i.

3 Langbaine, Account of English Dramatic Authors, ed. Gildon, 1699,
p. 126. 3 Hamlet, i. 4, 46-51.

344 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

made inquiries when he was an undergraduate in Dr.
Ralph Kettell's time. Mr. Howe, as we have seen,
was a tutor, fond of talking about the poets. Dr.
Kettell was a contemporary of Shakespeare, being in
his seventy-ninth year in 1642, when young Beeston
and Aubrey came up. Aubrey says that he spoke much
about the Articles, "and the rood-loft, and of the
wafers," and remembered "those times."1 His brain,
says the biographer, was "like a hasty pudding,"
where memory and judgment and fancy were "all
stirred together."2 He hated a periwig-pated fellow,
and periwigs had gone out of fashion since the poet's
time; "he beleeved them to be the scalpes of men
cutt off after they were hang'd, and so tanned and
dressed for use."3 We already have noticed the story
of his reception of the kindly meant present which Mr.
Howe's mother sent from Grendon Underwood.4 It
is probable, said Aubrey, that the doctor would have
"finisht his century," if it had not been for the Civil
War; but all discipline and learning began to disappear
when the army came in. "I remember, being at the
Rhetorique lecture in the hall, a foot-soldier came in
and brake his hower-glasse. . . . Our grove was the
Daphne for the ladies and their gallants to walke in,
and many times my lady Isabella Thynne would make
her entrey with a theorbo or lute played before her. I
have heard her play on it in the grove myselfe, which
she did rarely ; for which Mr. Edmund Waller hath in
his Poems for ever made her famous."5 The under
graduates seem to have got completely out of hand.

1 Aubrey, op. tit., ii. 18, sub Ralph Kettell. Aubrey wrote "36"
Articles, with " quaere " in the margin.

2 Ibid., p. 19. Aubrey was quoting- from one of the fellows of
Trinity. 3 Ibid., p. 21. 4 Supra, pp. 184-5.

5 Aubrey, u.s., p. 24. He notes that Lady Isabella Thynne "lay
at Balliol College"; her friend, Mrs. Fanshawe "lay at our college."
See Waller's poems, ed. G. Thorn Drury, 1893, p. 90: Of my Lady Isabella,
playing upon a Lute.

AUBREY AT OXFORD 345

The President used to call them " Tarrarags (these were
the worst sort, rude rakells), Rascal-Jacks, Blindcinques,
Scobberlotchers (these did no hurt, were sober, but went
idleing about the grove with their hands in their
pocketts, and telling the number of the trees there, or
so)."1 We cannot tell which class was affected by young
Mr. Beeston, but it is pretty clear that Aubrey himself
was a Scobberlotcher.

Aubrey doubtless obtained from "old Mr." Beeston
a tradition of Shakespeare which he wrongly attributed
to another poet, "Michael Drayton, esq., natus in
Warwickshire at Atherston upon Stower (quaere
Thomas Mariett). He was a butcher's sonne. Was
a squire ; viz. one of the esquires to Sir Walter Aston,
Knight of the Bath. . . . He lived at the bay-windowe
house next the east end of St. Dunstan's Church in
Fleet-street."2 "From Mr. Beeston" he heard a
similar story in the other case.3 "Mr. William
Shakespear was borne at Stratford-upon-Avon in the
county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I
have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours,
that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade,
but when he kill'd a calfe he would doe it in a high
style, and make a speech. There was at that time
another butcher's son in this towne that was held
not at all inferior to him for a naturall witt, his
acquaintance and coetanean, but dyed young. This
William, being inclined naturally to poetry and
acting, came to London, I guesse, about 18 ; and

1 Aubrey, M.S., p. 26. 2 Id. , i. 239, sub Michael Drayton.

3 " From Mr. . . . Beeston " is the note with which Aubrey ends his
account of Shakespeare. That most, if not all, of his account was
derived from this source appears from a note in vol. i. p. 97. " W.
Shakespeare — quaere Mr. Beeston, who knows most of him from Mr.
Lacy. He lives in Shoreditch at Hoglane within 6 dores north of
Folgate. Quaere etiam for Ben Jonson." Also id. , p. 96. "Old Mr.
[Beeston], who knew all the old English poets, whose lives I am taking
from him ; his father was master of the . . . playhouse."

346 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act
exceedingly well."1 Aubrey has a note about Ben
Jonson, received from Mr. J. Greenhill, that when he
came home from the Low Countries he "acted and
wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of
nursery or obscure playhouse, somewhere in the
suburbes (I think towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell).
. . . Then," Aubrey continues, "he undertooke again
to write a playe, and did hitt it admirably well."2
" Now B. Johnson," to return to the account of Shake
speare, "was never a good actor, but an admirable
instructor."3 Then of Shakespeare again : " He began
early to make essayes at dramatique poetry, which
at that time was very lowe ; and his playes took
well. He was a handsome, well-shap't man : very good
company, and of a very readie and pleasant smooth
witt." We omit the anecdotes about Grendon, and the
epitaphs on "Combes, an old rich usurer." "Ben
Johnson and he did gather humours of men dayly where
ever they came. . . . He was wont to goe to his native
countrey once a yeare. I thinke I have been told that
he left 2 or 300 li per annum there and thereabout to
a sister. ... I have heard Sir William Davenant
and Mr. Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best
comcedian we have now) say that he had a most pro
digious witt, and did admire his naturall parts beyond
all other dramaticall writers. He was wont to say4 that
he 'never blotted out a line in his life'; said Ben:
Johnson, ' I wish he had blotted-out a thousand.' His
comcedies will remaine witt as long as the English
tongue is understood, for that he handles mores
hominum. Now our present writers reflect so much
upon particular persons and Coxcombeities, that twenty
yeares hence they will not be understood. Though, as

1 Aubrey, u.s., ii. 225-6. 2 Id., ii. 12.

3 Parenthesis following the words " did act exceedingly well," u.s.

4 Aubrey adds the parenthesis (" B. Johnson's Underwoods.")

AUBREY'S ANECDOTES 347

Ben: Johnson sayes of him, that he had but little Latine
and lesse Greek, he understood Latine pretty well, for
he had been in his younger yeares a schoolmaster in
the countrey."1

Aubrey gives a very full version of the story about
Mr. and Mrs. Davenant, which seems to have been
based on the idea of a literary relationship, of which
instances have been given above.2 It should be added
that in a sentence which has been erased from his manu
script he seems to have been tempted to make the
insinuation against Mrs. Davenant, which Oldys re
futed, when he traced its original to an ancient jest-
book.3 Davenant's father was a vintner at the Crown
Inn at Oxford, or the " Crowne taverne," as Aubrey
calls it. His mother was beautiful, "and of conversa
tion extremely agreable. They had three sons, viz. i,
Robert, 2, William, and 3, Nicholas (an attorney).
Robert was a fellow of St. John's College in Oxford,
then preferred to the vicarage of West Kington by
Bishop Davenant, whose chaplain he was. They also
had two handsome daughters — one married to Gabriel
Bridges (B.D., fellow of C.C. Coll., beneficed in the
Vale of White Horse), another to Dr. Sherburne
(minister of Pembridge in Hereford, and a canon of
that church). Mr. William Shakespeare was wont to
goe into Warwickshire once a yeare, and did commonly
in his journey lye at this house in Oxon. where he was
exceedingly respected. I have heard Parson Robert
say that Mr. W. Shakespeare haz given him a hundred
kisses." The last sentence is not in the printed Lives,
but was added from the manuscript at the Bodleian by
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, who said that it had been

1 Aubrey, u.s., ii. 226-7.

2 See sup. p. 47 (Jonson and Serjeant Hoskyns) ; p. 47 and inf. p. 473
(Field and Chapman).

1 See the documentary evidence printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. tit. ,
pp. 43-50.

348 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

erased in the last century, but could still be distinctly
read when placed under a magnifying-glass. " Now
Sir William would sometimes, when he was pleasant
over a glasse of wine with his most intimate friends
— e.g. Sam Butler (author of Hudibras) &c. — say,
that it seemed to him that he writt with the very spirit
that Shakespeare, and seemed contented enough to be
thought his son."1 Samuel Butler seems to have been
quite of Dr. Beeston's opinion about the affectations and
coxcombry of the fashionable writers, for in talking of
Waller, who was also very intimate with Davenant, he
remarked that Waller's way of " quibling with sence"
would soon grow out of fashion and be "as ridicule as
quibling with words."2

ALLUSIONS BY SHAKESPEARE TO THE BUTCHER'S TRADE —
INCONSISTENCY OF EVIDENCE ON THE POINT

On the question whether Shakespeare was a butcher-
boy, it will be observed that the stories told to Aubrey's
informant and to Dowdall in no way coincide. Beeston
had heard that John Shakespeare was a butcher, one of
two in that trade who supplied the town, and that his
little son helped in the shop and shambles. But Dow
dall was informed by his aged guide that the boy had
been bound apprentice to a master-butcher, obviously
not his father.3

According to the Corporation books, Mr. Ralf
Cawdrey was a butcher at Stratford during the poet's
childhood. He was twice High Bailiff, and served in
other municipal offices. He seems to have been much

1 Aubrey, u.s., i. 204, sub Sir William Davenant; Halliwell-Phillipps,
op. cit., ii. 43.

2 Aubrey, u.s., i. 136, sub. Samuel Butler. To this Aubrey adds,
" quod N.B. " :! Vide supra, p. 332.

WAS SHAKESPEARE A BUTCHER? 349

respected in his day ; and he may still be regarded
with interest as the father, if the story is believed, of
the "little boy blue" who helped to carry the trays of
meat round the town. But Mr. John Shakespeare,
by the same books, is shown not to have been a butcher,
but a glover. He was "gloving" in 1556, and was
still in the same trade thirty years afterwards. Shake
speare seems to allude to the business in The Merry
Wives of Windsor: —

" Quidkly. And Master Slender's your master?
"Simple. Ay, forsooth.

" Quickly. Does he not wear a great round beard, like a
glover's paring-knife?

' ' Simple. No, forsooth. " a

People have talked of John Shakespeare's multifarious
pursuits, suggesting that he farmed in the common-field
at Asbies, and made up the wool and butchered the
stock at Stratford ; but, in fact, the farm was under
lease to a tenant, and he would never have been allowed
in any case to join such incongruous trades as those
of a butcher and a glover. He could not keep a regular
meat-shop while trading in skins, and no one has
seriously suggested that he worked about as a slaughter
man, though such people were classed among butchers.
The meat trade was stringently regulated by statute,
and nothing was allowed to interfere with the regular
official inspection. The killing of calves was the subject
of constant restrictions, and it is certain that the in
spectors would put a stop to anything that might injure
the veal ; it is almost inconceivable, indeed, that a boy
would be allowed to play such pranks in the shambles
as the gossips described. A butcher's business was to
sell wholesome meat and suet at a profit not exceeding
a penny in the shilling, not taking his veal too young,
nor keeping the calf so long that its meat might encroach

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 4, 18-22.

350 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

on the steer-beef, and not selling any lean meat as if
he had got it from the fat stock. He was bound,
moreover, to keep the horns and hide of every beast till
all the beef was sold, so that in case of theft the owner
might identify his property. The Tanners' Act was
passed in 1530, and was continually renewed; and
although it became obsolete of late years, it was not
formally repealed till 1863. The butchers were for
bidden by that Act to intermeddle in any way with the
craft of curriers and tanners, partly because they had
taken to issuing " untrue and deceivable leather," and
partly to prevent them from buying stolen cattle and
making away with the hides.

If we do not believe in the killing of calves "in a high
style," we need not trouble much about the "speech";
but it is easy to imagine the townsfolk might make up
the story out of the good Duke Humphrey's fate :

"And as the butcher takes away the calf
And binds the wretch and beats it when it strays,
Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house,
Even so remorseless have they borne him hence ;
And as the dam runs lowing up and down,
Looking the way her harmless youngf one went,
And can do naught but wail her darling's loss,
Even so myself bewails good Gloucester's case
With sad unhelpful tears."1

There are a few allusions to the trade which require
some slight explanation. We have Dick, the butcher,
who works in his shirt : " Then is sin struck down like
an ox, and iniquity's throat cut like a calf." " Where's
Dick, the Butcher of Ashford," asks Jack Cade. " They
fell before thee like sheep and oxen," he proceeds :
"... therefore thus will I reward thee, the Lent shall
be as long again as it is ; and thou shalt have a licence
to kill for a hundred lacking one.": The English, in

1 2 Henry VI., in. r, 210-18; cf. id., iii. 2, 188-90.

2 Id., iv. 9, 28-9; iv. 3, 1-9.

ALLUSIONS TO BUTCHERS' TRADE 351

their own way, were strict observers of Lent. They
were very particular about the Friday fast throughout
the year, and in Lent they abstained from meat on
alternate days. Even when meat was taken, Mercutio's
song about the "old hare" shows that some had to
shift with a mouldy Lenten pie. l There is a ballad
called "Woe worth thee, Lenten," in the volume
edited by Mr. Wright for the Roxburghe Club, which
shows how the butcher's trade suffered.2 It was written
by some unknown poet about the beginning of Queen
Mary's reign, and there is some reason to think that
it had come under Shakespeare's notice. In Twelfth
Night, for example, Olivia sings :

" I am as mad as he,
If sad and merry madness equal be " ; 3

and the ballad-writer complains that Lent has exiled
"jentill Cristimas, with his myrry madnes." In
Measure for Measure ', again, we hear of a beggar that
smelt " brown bread and garlic,"4 and of Lent the song
complains :

" He wyll mayk many to pyll a garlyke hede,
Syt dovven and eat hit with a pece off brownie brede,

Such sorrow ! "

The butcher, the poulter, and partridger may take to
their beds or go on a pilgrimage. Farewell to the
mutton and beef, farewell the bustard and brawn ; " Far
well, jentill Wat, with thy longe ears." But rich
people could obtain dispensations, and might deal with
a butcher duly licensed to sell. "I desire no more,"
says Dick of Ashford : " And, to speak truth," answers
Jack Cade, "thou deservest no less."5

Most of the poet's references to the trade are of a

1 Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4, 141-6.

2 Songs and Ballads . . . chiefly of the Reign of Philip and Mary, ed.
Wright, 1860, p. 12, No. v., [W]o worthe the, Lenttone.

3 Twelfth Night, iii. 4, 15-16.

4 Measure for Measure, iii. 2, 194-5. 8 2 Henry VI., u.s., 10-11.

352 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

disparaging kind. What says the Hostess? "Did
not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then
and call me gossip Quickly? . . . And didst thou not
. . . desire me to be no more so familiarity with such
poor people?"1 Launce, again, when he addresses his
cruel-hearted cur, vows that "he is a stone, a very
pebble-stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog." 2
This looks like a reference to Cock Lorell's Boat,
with its crew of rascals that supplied the tag about
"swearing and staring." Among the brigands who
sail "from Tyburn to Chelsea" is a butcher with two
bulldogs at his tail :

" In his hande he bare a flap for flyes
His hosen gresy upon his thyes
On his necke he bare a cole tre logge
He had as moche pyte as a dogge. " 3

It has been suggested that Shakespeare showed more
technical knowledge than a boy would have gained by
peeping into the shambles or watching his mother in the
kitchen. The instance chosen is Rosalind's metaphor :

" This way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean
as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one
spot of love in't."4

But this is only another jest upon the "liver vein," the
"pure idolatry" of which we have heard in Love's
Labour's Lost, with a further suggestion that the lover
was as silly as a sheep ; 5 and, indeed, Biron himself
had said :

"This love is as mad as Ajax : it kills sheep; it kills me,
I a sheep : well proved again o' my side. " 6

Here we will leave the question whether the boy
Shakespeare was ever employed in a butcher's busi-

1 2 Henry IV.,\\, i, 101-8.

2 Tivo Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 3, 10-12.

3 Cock LorelTs Boat, ed. H. Drury, 1817, Sig. B. i.

4 As You Like It, iii. 2, 441-4.

5 Love's Labour s Lost, iv. 3, 74-5. ° Ibid. , 6-8.

THE BUTCHER-BOY STORY

353

ness, feeling that the safe course would be to adopt
Rowe's cautious style, and to say that " upon his
leaving school, he seems to have given entirely into
that way of living which his father proposed to him ;
and, in order to settle in the world after a family
manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very
young."1

1 Rowe, in Malone, ed. Boswell, i. 437-8. See also J. O. Halliwell,
Was Nicholas ap Roberts that butcher's son . . . who is recorded by Aubrey
as har>ing- been an acquaintance of Shakespeare . . . and -was Shakespeare
an apprentice to Griffin ap Roberts? Privately printed, 1864.

2 A

THE PRODUCTION OF
"THE TEMPEST"

I. HUNTER'S THEORIES, 1839

HUNTER'S "DISQUISITION ON 'THE TEMPEST'' —RALEGH'S
"DESCRIPTION OF GUIANA" — DEWLAPPED MOUNTAINEERS
AND HEADLESS MEN

MR. HUNTER contended that Shakespeare pro
duced The Tempest in 1596, as a counterblast
to Ralegh's description of Guiana.1 The book con
tained exaggerated accounts of what the explorers had
seen and heard. The title was, in Mr. Hunter's opinion,
"enough to condemn it, boastful and ridiculous": "The
discoverie of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of
Guiana, with a Relation of the great and golden City of
Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the
Provinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, and other

1 Joseph Hunter, F.S.A., A Disquisition on the Scene, Origin, Date,
etc. etc., of Shakespeare's Tempest, in a letter to Benjamin Heywood
Brigll, Esq., 1839. The substance of this tract was reprinted as part
of the Neiv Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shakespeare, 1845, vol. i.
pp. 123-89.

357

358 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST

countries, with their rivers, adjoining ; performed in
the year 1595 by Sir W. Ralegh, Knight." The book
is printed in Hakluyt's collection of voyages, and was
well summarised by William Oldys in his Life of Sir
Walter Raleigh, from his birth to his death on the
scaffold.1 The main object of the expedition was to
reach the White Lake and the golden-roofed city of
Manoa, in which all the world at that time believed ;
and there were hopes of finding gold and silver in the
lower valley of the Orinoco. Ralegh did not go
further than the mouth of the Caroli River in
Arromaia ; and here he was told of certain inland
tribes who were very rich in gold, and of a great
silver-mine further up the river. He marched over
land to see the "strange over-fals of the river of
Caroli," described by him as a " wonderfull breach of
waters," with ten or twelve steep cataracts, every one as
high over the other as a church tower. Here Ralegh
and his friends picked free gold out of the quartz with
their daggers ; 2 and in later days there was much con
troversy at home about the value of the specimens.
Mr. Ward of Stratford noted in his Diary that Mr.
Sampson, a chemist living in Great Alley Street about
East Smithfield, told him many things about Sir
Walter ; on the 4th of January, 1661, he added : " Old
Sampson, the chymist, told me that he made the aqua
fortis with which Sir W. Raleigh did precipitate gold
to inrich an oar, which he presented to King James,
proffering to bring the same from beyond sea, but
could not perform his promise."3 Howell described
Sir Walter's last attempt to fulfil his design, in a letter
to Sir James Crofts : " The news that keeps greatest

1 Hakluyt, Voyages, etc., 1600, in., 627-66, contains Ralegh's Guiana.
Oldys' life of Ralegh occupies pp. Ixxvi.-cix. of the 1736 ed. of the
History of the World.

2 Ralegh, Discovery, etc., in Hakluyt, u.s., iii. 652.

3 Ward's Diary, pp. 168-9.

RALEGH'S VOYAGE TO GUIANA 359

noise here now, is the return of Sir Walter Raleigh
from his Mine of Gold in Guiana, the South parts of
America, which at first was like to be such a hopeful
boon Voyage, but it seems that that Golden Mine is
proved a mere Chimera, an imaginary airy Mine . . .
'tis pity such a knowing well-weigh'd Knight had not
had a better fortune."1 But he acknowledged in a
subsequent letter to Mr. Carew Ralegh that there was
a real mine: "for you write of divers pieces of Gold
brought thence by Sir Walter himself and Captain
Kemys, and of some Ingots that were found in the
Governor's Closet at St. Thomas's, with divers Crucibles
and other refining Instruments."2 The travellers had
never seen "a more beautiful country, nor more lively
prospects" than in Arromaia : "The deere crossing in
every path, the birds towards the evening singing on
every tree with a thousand severall tunes, cranes and
herons of white, crimson, and carnation pearching in
the rivers side, the aire fresh with a gentle Easterly
winde : and every stone that we stouped to take up,
promised either golde or silver by his complexion."
Prince Gualtero, the son of an old chief, went back
with Ralegh as a pledge of friendship.3 On the return
voyage towards Emeria other gold mines were dis
covered, and from one of the branches of the Orinoco
they saw what was called the Mountain of Crystal ; it
looked at a distance " like a white Church-tower of an
exceeding height," over the top of which a mighty
river rushed down with "so terrible a noyse and clamor,
as if a thousand great bels were knockt one against
another." Antonio Berreo told Ralegh that there were
diamonds and other stones of great value there, "and
that they shined very farre off."4 At Curiapan they

1 Epp. Ho-EL, ed. J. Jacobs, 1892, p. 23 (bk. i. § i. let. 4 : London,
28 March 1618).

8 Id,, p. 480 (ii. let. 61 : Fleet, 5 May 1645).
1 Ralegh, u.s., pp. 652-6. 4 Id., p. 657.

3<3o PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

found their ships at anchor; "there was never to us
a more joyfull sight," says Ralegh. They had
struggled against "the fury of Orinoco," and had
suffered the extremes of wet and heat, and hunger and
pain, they had fed on "all sorts of corrupt fruits and
made meales of fresh fish without seasoning, of Tor-
tugas, of Lagartos or Crocodiles, and of all sorts good
and bad," and yet no Calentura befell them, "or other
of those pestilent diseases which dwell in all hot regions,
and so neere the Equinoctiall line."1

The old chieftain had showed Ralegh great plates of
gold, shaped like eagles, and said that the tribes of the
interior found the metal in the Lake of Manoa and in
the beds of several rivers ; "they gathered it in graines
of perfect gold . . . and that they put to it a part of
copper, otherwise they could not work it, and that they
used a great earthen pot with holes round about it, and
when they had mingled the gold and copper together,
they fastened canes to the holes, and so with the breath
of men they increased the fire till the metall ran, and
then they cast it into moulds of stone and clay, and
so made those plates and images."2 The same chief
confirmed the story of the Amazons, with whom
Orellana had fought on the "River of Maranon," or the
Amazons' River, saying that there was a nation of
female warriors in the provinces of Topago, within the
Empire of Guiana : and that, like the bordering nations,
these women wore plates of gold, which they obtained
in barter for the "spleen-stones," made of the green
jade called Saussurite. "Of these," says Ralegh, "I
saw divers in Guiana, for every King or Casique hath
one, which their wives for the most part weare, and they
esteem them as great jewels."3 La Condamine, in the
last century, found the same legend prevailing, the
Indians saying that they inherited the "divine stones "

1 Id., pp. 659, 660. 2 Id., p. 656.

3 /</.)P. 638.

AMAZONS OF GUIANA 361

from their fathers, who received them from the "Women-
living-alone."1 Later travellers confirmed his report,
and Humboldt was inclined to believe that a society of
women might have acquired some power "in one part
of Guiana."2 Sir Walter Ralegh had an object in view ;
"he sought to fix the attention of Queen Elizabeth on
the great Empire of Guiana, the conquest of which he
proposed " ; but the influence of such motives would
not warrant us in entirely rejecting the tradition. The
treatise on Guiana concluded with a prayer that the
King of kings might put it into her heart, who is Lady
of ladies, to possess it ; "if not," says he, " I will judge
these men worthy to be Kings thereof, that by her
grace and leave will undertake it of themselves."3
" Had I plantation of this isle, my Lord," says old
Gonzalo in the play, ". . . and were the King on't,
what would I do ? " 4 The phrase is obscure ; but the
notion certainly resembles Ralegh's proposal that the
Queen should allow Guiana to be planted and held by
her subjects as " under-kings."5

A stanza in the Faerie Queene seems to be inspired
with Ralegh's spirit, when he sought to force England
into the acceptance of " glory and endless gain " :

"Joy on those warlike women, which so long
Can from all men so rich a kingdome hold !
And shame on you, O men, which boast your strong
And valiant hearts, in thoughts less hard and bold,
Yet quaile in conquest of that land of gold." 6

1 C. M. de la Condamine, Relation abre'ge'e d'un Voyage fait dans
Vinterieur de lAmtrique Me"ridionale, 1745, p. 104.

8 A. v. Humboldt, Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, tr.
Thomasina Ross, vol. ii., 1852, p. 401.

3 Ralegh, u.s., p. 662. * Tempest, ii. i, 143-5.

5 On the system of the encomienda, by which villages "were made
over as fiefs to the colonists " in the Spanish West Indies, " who stood to
them in the position of the king, and received their tribute," see E. Arm
strong, The Emperor Charles V., 1902, vol. ii. chap. iv. ; also E. J. Payne
in Cambridge Modern History, vol. i. , 1902, p. 46.

6 Spenser, Faerie Qiieene, iv. canto 1 1 , st. 22.

362 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

We have a glimpse of Eldorado in the picture of bright-
eyed Mrs. Page.

"Here's another letter to her: she bears the purse, too;
she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be
cheater to them both, and they shall be exchequers to
me ; they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will
trade to them both " ;

and Falstaff bids Robin take care :

" Hold, sirrah, bear you these letters tightly ;
Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores."1

Ralegh's book, argued Mr. Hunter, must have
afforded conversation for half London. He felt sure
that Shakespeare at once seized upon it, either because
the subject was so popular, or because he wished to
warn his countrymen against a dangerous delusion.
"He made this pamphlet," we are told, "the object
of his satire, introducing beside general girds at the
wonders told by travellers, and the absurdities of
schemes of new settlements, a special attack on what,
after all, is really the weakest point in Ralegh's pam
phlet." 2 We turn at once to the famous passage : —

" When we were boys,

Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em
Wallets of flesh ? or that there were such men,
Whose heads stood out in their breasts ? which now we find
Each putter-out of five for one will bring us
Good warrant of."3

We shall deal first with the headless, or high-
shouldered men. Ralegh was informed that to the
west of the Caroli were "divers nations of Cannibals,
and of those Ewaipanoma without heads. " He described
the monsters in a passage, distinguishing the various
forms of the story. "Next unto A?vi there are two

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, \. 3, 75-80, 88-9.

2 Hunter, New Illustrations, u.s., i. 140. 3 Tempest, Hi. 3, 43-9.

THE HEADLESS MEN 363

rivers, Atoica and Caora, and on that branch which is
called Caora, are a nation of people, whose heads appeare
not above their shoulders ; which though it may be
thought a meere fable, yet for mine owne part I am re
solved it is true, because every childe in the provinces
of Arromaia and Canuri affirme the same; they are
called Eiuaipanoma, they are reported to have their
eyes in their shoulders and their mouthes in the middle
of their breasts." He was also assured that one of
them had been taken prisoner, and taken to the old
chief of Arromaia, a few months before. In talking
over the matter with Prince Gualtero, Ralegh expressed
doubts about the story and called it "a wonder" ; but
the Prince said they were no " wonder" in his country,
for they had lately slain many hundreds of his father's
people. When Ralegh visited Cumana, he met a
Spanish merchant who had been far up the Orinoco;
and on hearing that the English had reached the Caroli,
he asked if Ralegh had seen those Indians, and declared
that he had seen many of them himself. " Whether it
be true or no," said Sir Walter, "the matter is not
great, neither can there bee any profit in the imagina
tion : for mine own part I saw them not, but I am
resolved that so many people did not all combine, or
forethinke to make the report."1

He professed great reliance upon a passage in
" Mandevile," which came originally out of Pliny's
Natural History, and had found its way into the col
lections of Vincent de Beauvais and Isidore of Seville.
In modern spelling it runs as follows: "In another
isle are foul men without heads, and they have eyes in
either shoulder one, and their mouths are round-shaped,
like a horse-shoe, amidst their breasts ; in one other isle
are men without heads, and their eyes are behind in
their shoulders."2 Ralegh had a special reason for

1 Ralegh, u.s., pp. 652-3.

3 Mandevile, ed. Halliwell, 1866, ch. xix. p. 203.

364 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

maintaining the authority of the old volume of won
ders. "Such a nation," he said, "was written of by
Mandevile, whose reports were holden for fables many
yeeres, and yet since the East Indies were discovered,
we find his relations true of such things as heretofore
were held incredible."1 Now " Mandevile " had found
a connection between the occurrence of gold and
crystal ; and Ralegh had found a great quantity of
crystal and a little gold. " Upon the rocks of crystal,"
we read, "grow the good diamonds that be of treble
colour . . . and albeit men find good diamonds in
India, yet nevertheless men find them more commonly
upon the rocks in the sea, and upon hills where the
mine of gold is."2 The question was whether the
abundance of crystal in Guiana might not be taken as
a sign of the presence of gold.

Just before Ralegh's book appeared, Captain Popham
had found letters in a Spanish prize, describing the
advance of Berreo's forces to the country of the head
less men. We ought to adopt the ambiguous words of
Othello by calling them

" men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."3

The Spaniards arrived at the foot of the range where
they lived, and sent up messengers with a quantity of
Jews'-harps to barter for poultry and gold eagles.
There was no suggestion in the letters that the Indians
had not mouths of the ordinary kind. The guides sus
pected treachery, because the King, called "El Dorado,"
was drinking with his warriors, and was smeared with
balsam and powdered with gold. In the middle of the
night a message arrived that the high-shouldered men
were on the march ; and the Spaniards at once broke
up their camp and escaped at full speed. These letters

1 Ralegh, u.s. 2 Mandevile, u.s., ch. xiv. pp. 157-8.

3 Othello, i. 3, 144-5.

THE RAYA INDIANS 365

were printed at the end of Ralegh's book by Order
of the Council.1 M. de Pauw, writing about 1767, ex
plained the matter thus: "In Caribane there are
savages with hardly any necks, and their shoulders as
high as their ears ; this is an artificial monstrosity, the
children's heads being loaded with heavy weights, so
that the vertebra of the neck seem to be almost pressed
into the shoulder-bones ; they look at a distance as if
they had their mouths in their breasts ; and it is just
the occasion for an excitable or ignorant traveller to
bring out once more the story of the headless men."2
The Spanish missionaries compared these men to
skates and rays, with broad mouths across their bodies ;
they called them Rayas, and placed them at the mouth
of the Sipapo, a branch of the Upper Orinoco, in a
forest-region that has hardly been explored. Humboldt
tells us of his meeting an old man at Carichana, who
boasted of having been a cannibal, and of having seen
the Raya Indians 'with his own eyes.'"3

We now come to the mountaineers adorned with
4 'dangling dewlaps" like the snow-white bull in Mena-
phon.* They had fleshy pockets below their necks, on
the model of the pedlar's "sow-skin bowget." A
budget was "a pouch or bag," according to the old
Dictionaries ; and Nash, in Pierce Penm'lesse, talked
of churls who should be "constrained to carry their
flesh-budgets from place to place on foot."5 Some
think that the " flesh - pockets " were copied from
animals, and Mr. Furness refers us to the description
of the "pouched Ape."6 It would be quite as easy
to connect them with Drake's account of the Californian

1 In Hakluyt, u.s., Hi. 663-6.

2 C. de Pauw, Rdcherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, 1768-9,
i. 152-3. * v. Humboldt, «.s., ii. 317.

4 Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 74: "The dangling dewlap of the silver
bull."

8 Nash, Pierce Penniless' Supplication, ed. Collier, 1842, p. 48.
6 Furness, New Variorum Shakespeare, ix. 179.

366 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

marmot, or " prairie-dog " : " A strange kind of Conies
. . . under her chinne on either side a bagge, into the
which shee gathereth her meate."1 Other writers cited
in the Variorum edition go back to Pliny and Solinus,
or the History of Quadrupeds, by Conrad Gesner, " the
German Pliny," best known in English as Topsell's
Natural History. These authorities deal with the satyrs
of mythology, described by Pliny and his follower,
Solinus, as " having nothing of human-kind about
them except the shape." These ancient writers did
not write of "satyrs" as men, though Gesner attributed
the opinion to Solinus ; but as time went on the
"satyr" was counted among the savages that dwell
in the clefts of rocks. Isidore of Seville reminds his
readers of St. Anthony holding a conversation with a
poor goat-legged "satyr" in the wilderness, and such
creatures were sometimes represented as having bags
of flesh at their throats.2

There is nothing to show that Shakespeare was
referring to any South American fable when he men
tioned his "dewlapped mountaineers." Ralegh does
not speak of any such people. Acarete crossed the
continent from Paraguay to the Cordilleras, and noticed
the prevalence of " Colo," a slight thickening of the
throat attributed to snow-water or stagnant air in the
valleys ; but this was hardly considered a blemish.8
M. de Pauw compared the coto to the European goitre,
known in England as "Derbyshire neck," and men
tioned several instances of "spurious rumination " and
other abnormal effects of the disease observed in
Switzerland.4 It seems probable that Shakespeare re
ferred to a special form of the malady called "the
Bavarian pouch," which had broken out in the neigh
bourhood of Salzburg, and had caused a great migra-

1 Drake, in Hakluyt, u.s., iii. 442. 2 Furness, u.s.

8 Acarete de Biscay, Voyage up the River de la Plata, etc., Eng\
trans. 1698, p. 33. 4 de Pauw, u.s., i. 154-5.

DEWLAPPED MOUNTAINEERS 367

tion from the Tyrol and Styria into Germany. Burton
mentioned the outbreak in his Anatomy of Melancholy
as follows : " /. Aubanus Bohemias refers that struma,
or poke, of the Bavarians and Styrians, to the nature
of their waters, as Munster doth that of the Valesians
in the Alps." 1 The learned John Ray, in his tract on
The Wisdom of God, considered the effect of great
numbers of people being born "with a Bavarian poke
under our chins."2 And in his Travels through the
Low -Countries, Germany, etc., he says of the Valley
of the Mur, in Styria : "We saw in these parts many
men and women with large swellings under their chins
or on their throats, called, in Latin, or rather in Greek,
BroncJwcele, by some in English, Bavarian Pokes.
Some of them were single, others double and treble."8
Mr. Hunter proposed to alter the text by reading
"Each putter-out on five for one" in place of "Each
putter-out of five for one "; but the change was hardly
required. The meaning is that every traveller who had
taken out a five-for-one insurance would warrant the
existence of headless Indians and pouched mountain
eers. Mr. Hunter illustrated the nature of such a
contract by the case of Mr. Henry Moryson, who paid
£400 to receive three times as much if he returned
safely from Constantinople and Jerusalem ; and another
example is taken from the cofTfused mass of memoranda
known as the Commonplace Book of John Sanderson,
a Turkey Merchant, preserved among the Lansdowne
MSS. in the British Museum.4 The details of such an
insurance will be found in William West's collection
of precedents, entitled Symboleographie. The traveller
paid down a sum of money which the assuring party
might invest for his own benefit, and the latter gave

1 Burton, Anat. of Mel., part i. sect. ii. mem. 2, sub. i (ed. Shilleto,
vol. i. p. 257). a Ray, Wisdom of God, yd ed., 1701, p. 236.

8 Ray, Travels through the Low-Countries, etc., 2nd ed., 1738, i. 121.
4 Hunter, AVw Illustrations, i. 140-1, note.

368 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

a bond to pay the traveller a larger sum on his return,
within a stated time, and with proper evidence that he
had made the voyage.1 Such wagering contracts were
fashionable in the time of Elizabeth and James I., but
died out in the following reign. There is usually some
humorous exaggeration in the literary references to
this practice. Thus John Davies, in his forty-second
Epigram, writes of the dangers of Italy :

" Lycus who lately hath to Venice gone,
Shall if he do return have three for one."

The "five-for-one" in The Tempest may be intended
as a reference to Every Man out of his Humour, where
Jonson's ingenious knight said, "I am determined
to put forth some five thousand pound, to be paid
me five for one, upon the return of myself, my wife,
and my dog from the Turk's Court in Constantinople.
... If we be successful, why, there will be five-and-
twenty thousand pound to entertain time withal."2

" THE TEMPEST " AND JONSON'S " EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR "
— FLORIO'S " MONTAIGNE" — "LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON"

Mr. Hunter argued that The Tempest was older than
Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, and that the last-
named play was acted in 1597. Jonson's own statement
was as follows : "This Comedy was first acted in 1598
by the Lord Chamberlain's Servants : the principal
Comedians were Will. Shakespeare, Ric. Burbage,
etc." It appears by Henslowe's note-books at Dulwich,
that a play called Humours was acted in 1597 at the
Rose, by the Lord Admiral's Servants, and it is now

1 Symboleographie, 1605. See Halliwell-Phillipps, Memoranda on
Shakespeare's Tempest.

2 Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, ii. i.

JONSON'S SUPPOSED ATTACK 369

allowed on all hands that this was a poor play by Chap
man, called The Humorous Day's Mirth.1 Mr. Gifford
had made the mistake in his Memoirs of Jonson, * and
Mr. Hunter did not profess to have found any better
authority ; he maintained that The Tempest was plainly
satirised in the prologue to Jonson's play, though it is
difficult to imagine that an author would attack one of
his principal comedians.3 But there is no proof that
the prologue was as old as the play. It did not appear in
the surreptitious quarto of 1601, but was printed in the
authorised Works of 1616. It contains a reference to
the Chorus in King Henry V.y as " wafting" of the
audience across the sea ; and it appears to have been
proved by Mr. Fleay, in his Life and Work of Shake
speare, that this historical play was first acted in I59Q.4
The prologue, moreover, so arrogantly claims to show
a pattern for all other comedies, that we must suppose
Jonson to have earned a success before he added his
self-praise. The squibs, rolled bullets, and "tempestu
ous drum " would suit many other tempests beside that
storm which Shakespeare "taught to roar."5 It was

1 Henslowe's Diary, ed. Collier. See F. G. Fleay, Biographical
Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, i. 55.

2 Memoirs of Jonson, prefatory to one volume edition of plays (1838), p. 8.
s Hunter, Disquisition on " Tempest," p. 81 ; New Illustrations, \. 136-9.

4 F. G. Fleay, Chronicle History of '. . . Shakespeare, pp. 204-6. See also
Biographical Chronicle, u.s., i. 358, in which the date of the revised
play is taken as April, 1601.

5 The lines referred to are as follows. Jonson blames the " ill customs
of the age " :

" To make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
He rather prays you will be pleased to see
One such to-day, as other plays should be ;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please,
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard
The gentlewomen ; nor roll'd bullet heard
2 B

370 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

urged, however, that two passages in the prologue must
have been intended as attacks upon Shakespeare.1 The
first was the line which, in Mr. Hunter's view, must have
referred to the ''descent of Juno ": "Nor creaking
throne comes down the boys to please." We do not
know that this device was employed in the miniature
masque of The Tempest; but it is arguable that the
"creaking throne" was Jonson's description of the
chariot drawn by peacocks ; it is clear, however, that
the occurrence of the phrase in Jonson's prologue does
not in any way determine the date of The Tempest.
The other passage related to "monsters, "and therefore,
it was urged, could be nothing but an allusion to
Prospero's "servant-monster." "You that have so
grac'd monsters, may like men." "Who but Caliban
can be intended?" asked the critic. An answer might
be found in Jonson's own comedy ; for young Knowell
says, "Here within this place is to be seen the true,
rare, and accomplished monster, or miracle of nature,
which is all one."2 In the book of Mandevile we find a
definition: "A monster is a thing deformed against
kind both of man or of beast, or of anything else."3
The word was used in a very general way, to signify
any birth or living creature degenerating from the
proper form of its species ; it was used for any large

To say, it thunders ; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come ;
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
Except we make them such, by loving still
Our popular errors, when we know they're ill.
I mean such errors as you'll all confess,
By laughing at them, they deserve no less :
Which, when you heartily do, there's hope left then
You, that have so grac'd monsters, may like men."

1 The reference to "York and Lancaster's long jars " is more to the
point than either reference in question.

1 Every Man in his Humour, i. 2.

3 Mandevile, u.s., ch. v. p. 47.

SHAKESPEARE AND FLORIO 371

wild beast, and for the tame beasts shown by the
" master of the monsters" at a fair. In the Histoire
Naturelle des lies Antilles, published by Leers of
Rotterdam in 1658, we are told to distinguish whales
from sea-monsters, the latter term taking in all ugly
and dangerous creatures such as porpoises, manatees,
sharks, saw-fish, and sword-fish.1 We are therefore at
liberty to conjecture that Jonson's line referred to mon
strosities in general, and was not specially directed
against Caliban.

One of Mr. Hunter's chief difficulties lay in the fact
that Shakespeare had quoted freely from Florio's
Montaigne. Hardly any of the Essays had been trans
lated by John Florio in 1600, and his book was not
published till 1603. Mr. Hunter suggested that the
passages used in The Tempest might have been cir
culated in manuscript for several years before they
were published. He supposed that Shakespeare was
Florio's pupil in French and Italian, or, at any rate,
knew Florio personally.2 He did not explain why
Shakespeare should be allowed to ornament his play
with long extracts from the unpublished work. Mr.
Hunter quoted the Essays of Sir William Cornwallis
as direct proof that the whole or part of Florio's trans
lation was known some years before 1600. These Essays
were printed in that year, but had been in private
circulation for some years previously. We are told that
Cornwallis was "a pupil of Florio's," but this seems to
be a matter of inference. He did not name Florio,
but said that he had seen various passages from Mon
taigne translated: "they that understand both lan
guages say very well done" ; "it is done by a fellow
less beholding to nature for his fortune than his wit,
yet lesser for his face than his fortune. The truth is,
he looks more like a good fellow than a wise man ; and

1 L. de Poincy, Histoire naturelle et morale des lies Antilles, 2nd ed.
1665, p. 190. 2 Hunter, Ne~w Illustrations, i. 146.

372 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

yet he is wise beyond either his fortune or education."1
Florio's portrait, by Hole, taken at the age of fifty-
eight, is prefixed to the second edition of his Italian
Dictionary, 1 6 1 1 .

Another difficulty lay in the omission of The Tempest
from the well-known lists of Shakespeare's plays in the
11 noted school-book" by Meres, called Palladis Tamia;
or, Wit's Treasury. This book was published in 1598.
For Shakespeare's excellence in comedy Meres called
to witness The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy
of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant
of Venice, Love's Labour's Lost, and another play
called Love's Labour's Won.2 Meres seems to have
been careless about the titles, writing " Errors," " Love
Labours Lost," and "Love Labours Won"; but it is
only as to the last name that controversy has arisen. It
is commonly supposed that Dr. Farmer was right in
identifying this play with All's Well that Ends Well;
but many arguments have been adduced to show that
it was The Taming of the Shrew, or Much Ado about
Nothing. Mr. Fleay, in his Life and Work of Shake
speare, adopts the view that Love's Labour's Won
appeared in its first form in 1590, and was altered for
a Court performance at Christmas, 1596 ; and that in
the following year, or early in 1598, the play, as finally
altered, was produced as Much Ado About Nothing*
Mr. Hunter, however, was compelled by his theory to
assert that Love's Labour's Won was The Tempest under
another title. According to his argument, however,
the title should be "Love-labours win," or "Love-
labours have won." Prospero, it is said, makes trial
of Ferdinand's love by imposing certain labours. " The
particular kind of labour is the placing in a pile logs of
firewood. He serves in this as Jacob did for Rachel,

1 Cornwallis, Essays, p. 99, quoted by Hunter, u.s. , pp. 145-6.

2 See reprint by Arber, English Gamer, (ed. 1897), ii. 98.

3 Fleay, Chronicle History of '. . . Shakespeare, 1886, pp. 104, 134, 304-5.

"LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" 373

•winning his bride from her austere father by them . . .
and thus his love labours win the consent of Prospero
to their union." * He quotes the speech of the " patient
log-man," and Miranda's tender offers of help.
"There be some sports are painful"; but then the
hard work is part of the amusement, or the player may
trim the balance by setting off the work against the
pleasure. But this mean slavery would be as heavy as

it is odious.

"But

The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead
And makes my labours pleasures :

. . . My sweet mistress

Weeps when she sees me work, and says, such baseness
Had never like executor. I forget :
But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
Most busy, lest when I do it.":

In the First Folio there is a comma after busy, which
seems to be a mere clerical error. The Second reads
"least" for "lest": but these forms are sometimes
treated as equivalent ; in the Charge of a Court-leet,
for instance, written about 1572, and now in the
writer's possession, one paragraph begins: "Least
that easy forgiveness do give other occasion to do
evil." Theobald's invention of "busy-less" for "not-
busy " is chiefly remarkable as having been accepted
by Dr. Johnson, who even printed the word in his
Dictionary. The meaning of the much-disputed pass
age may be that Ferdinand's labours and thoughts are
personified. The labours are cheered and refreshed by
the sweet thoughts, and work best in their presence ;
but they do least when Ferdinand turns from his
thoughts and resumes the control of the work.8

1 Hunter, u.s., p. 133. He adds: "Not win the willing consent of
Miranda, as I have been foolishly represented as contending."

2 See Tempest, iii. i, 1-15.

8 But see Mr. Morton Luce's useful note in his edition of The Tempest,
1902, where ample evidence is given on behalf of the First Folio reading.

374 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

III

LAMPEDUSA — A SUPPOSED ORIGINAL FOR "THE TEMPEST" — THE
MAGIC OF "THE TEMPEST" — SHAKESPEARE AND ARIOSTO

Mr. Hunter was convinced that the labours in the
woodyard indicated the exact situation of Prospero's
island. The scene of the action, he believed, was
Lampedusa, a rocky island between Malta and the
African coast, * ' not far from the track of a vessel sail
ing from Tunis to Naples." The official surveys show
that it is long, narrow in shape, and about 13! miles
in circuit; on which Mr. Hunter declared that " in
its dimensions Lampedusa is just what we may imagine
Prospero's Island to have been."1 The idea that
Lampedusa was in Shakespeare's mind may be fairly
called ridiculous. Mr. Hunter, indeed, attributed the
" disco very" to Mr. Francis Douce; but Mr. Douce is
known to have received it from Mr. Rodd, known as
" the learned bookseller," soon after the appearance in
1824 of Sicily and its Islands, by Admiral Smyth, then
Captain W. H. Smyth, R.N. Mr. Douce may have
accepted the suggestion provisionally, for future con
sideration.2

Lampedusa had been mentioned by Crusius, other
wise Martin Kraus, a Professor at Tubingen, in his
Turco-Grcecia, published at Basel in 1584. He said
that the nights at Lampedusa were full of a rabble of
spectres ; 3 but it has not been suggested that Shake
speare was acquainted with his work. Mr. Hunter
prefers to rely on the sailors' tradition that Lampedusa
was an enchanted island. Vincenzo Coronelli, Geogra
pher to Louis XIV., gave some account of the place in

1 Hunter, u.s., p. 160.

2 Hunter, u.s., ii. 343, in "Corrections and Additions."

3 Hunter, u.s., i. 161 : " Noctes ibi spectris tumultuosae."

HUNTER'S LAMPEDUSA THEORY 375

his Specchio del Mare Mediterraneo. * Alfonso of the Two
Sicilies gave the island, then only the haunt of a few
smugglers and vagrants, to his page, Di Caro, with the
right to build a castle and to exercise baronial jurisdic
tion ; and a tower was built, but was never occupied,
the smugglers having raised enough "horrible spectres"
to frighten away this Baron of opera-bouffe. The
Turks were the owners for some time, but were turned
out in 1611 by the Spaniards, as appears by Sir Ralph
Winwood's correspondence.2 Lampedusa belonged
to the Tommasi family of Palermo from 1667 till the
time of Captain Smyth's last visit, and afterwards.
About the year 1812, Mr. Fernandez, a British subject,
took a lease of the island, intending to set up a trade in
cattle and "refreshments" with Malta and Barbary ;
but when Captain Smyth saw him last, he was living
with his family near the Grotto in the ravine by Gala
Croce ; a few labourers, hiding about in the other
" troglodytic caves," made up the rest of the popula
tion. " From the harbour," wrote Captain Smyth, "a
stout wall, erected at the expense of Mr. Fernandez,
runs over in a north-west direction to the opposite
coast, entirely separating the broadest part of the
eastern end, which is under cultivation, from the rest
of the island. The western parts are covered with
dwarf olives, and a great variety of plants, so that a
great deal of firewood is cut and sent to Tripoli and
Malta ; and among this profusion there are plenty of
wild goats, that used to annoy the farm considerably,
until the erection of the above-mentioned wall ; they still
find a destructive enemy in the Numidian crane, called
from its graceful gait, the damsel ; these birds arrive

1 Venice, 1698, part i. p. 70, quoted by Hunter, ibid. The details fol
lowing were borrowed from various sources by Captain W. H. Smyth,
Memoir descriptive of the resources of Sicily and its islands, 1824.

3 Carleton to Turnbull, 18 October, 1611, in Winwood, Memorials, etc.
iii. 298.

376 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

in great numbers in May, and delight to revel among
the legumes."1 Mr. Hunter admits that " Lampedusa
is a deserted island or nearly so, and was so in the time
of Shakespeare . . . the Earl of Sandwich, who visited
the island in 1737, found only one person living
upon it ; and, going backward to the time of Shake
speare, earlier voyagers and geographers give the same
account."2 He appears to have believed, nevertheless,
that there was an important trade in pine-logs between
this deserted island and Malta at the time when The
Tempest was written. They must have been pine-logs,
though there are now no pine woods, because Ariel
was shut by Sycorax into a cloven pine ; and by the
same reasoning there must have been other timber,
because Prospero threatened to peg the sprite into the
cleft of a knotty oak.3 The trade in pine-logs is to be
inferred from the labours imposed upon the Prince,
and more especially from the tender words of Miranda :

" Alas, now, pray you,

Work not so hard : I would the lightning had
Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin'd to pile !
Pray, set it down and rest you : when this burns,
'Twill weep for having wearied you."4

"The coincidence," we are told, "is very extra
ordinary," and the point of resemblance "too peculiar
to have existed at all," if there was no connection
between Lampedusa and the island in the play.5 There
is proof, however, that no fuel trade in dwarf-olives, or
canes and brushwood, or in pine-logs or other hard
wood, was carried on between Malta and Lampedusa
in Shakespeare's time, and certainly not within the
half-dozen years before or after the production of The
Tempest. Mr. George Sandys, the traveller, at one time
Treasurer of Virginia, began a journey to the Levant

1 Smyth, op. cit. , quoted at length by Hunter, Disquisition, p. 24.

2 Hunter, New Illustrations, i. 160. 3 Tempest, i. 2, 277, 294-5.
4 Id., iii. i. B Hunter, U.S., p. 163.

THE ISLAND OF LAMPEDUSA 377

in the year 1610, and arrived at Malta on his return in
the following year. In 1615 he published an interest
ing volume, entitled A Relation of a Journey begun
An : Dom : 1610. Foure Bookes, containing a description
of the Turkish Empire, etc. The countryfolk in Malta,
he said, had a kind of Carline, or great thistle, used
with farmyard manure, which served them for fuel :
"who need not much in a Clime so exceeding hote."
For the rest, he says, " A country altogether champion,
being no other then a rocke couered ouer with earth,
but two feete deepe where the deepest; hauing few trees
but such as beare fruite, whereof of all sorts plentifully
furnished. So that their wood they haue from Sicilia."1

We ought to take some brief notice of the other
alleged coincidences. Captain Smyth said that there
had been a celebrated recluse, who lived in the grotto,
"up a ravine in some degree picturesque."1 "The
Cell of Prospero is made by Shakespeare, perhaps
accidentally, picturesque, by shading it with line-trees";
and these line-trees, or lindens, are described by Hunter
a little later as a grove in which we may imagine
"alcoves and bowers of delight in unison with the
character of the young and susceptible Miranda."3

The Sicilians used to call a man who was ready to
serve any faith by the nickname " Hermit of Lampe-
dusa." The notion was that the recluse served both
a chapel and a mosque in his grotto, and lit up for
Cross or Crescent, according to the flag shown by
a ship entering the harbour. In this hermit Mr. Hunter
found "a faint prototype of Prospero." Captain Smyth
had heard of another legend ; and this, too, according
to Mr. Hunter, "bears a slight resemblance to the
subject of this Play." It is, as he points out, the
subject of Wieland's poem of Klelia und Sinibald.

1 Sandys, A Relation, etc., u.s., p. 228.

8 Smyth, quoted by Hunter, Disquisition, p. 24.

" Hunter, New Illustrations, i. 162, 177.

378 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

Rosina and Clelia, two ladies of Palermo, were washed
ashore from a wreck, and on the island they found two
hermits — Guido and Sinibald — who were glad to re
nounce their vows for a double wedding.1

Caliban, we are reminded, lived in a cave, like one
of the labourers engaged by Mr. Fernandez. We have
another allusion to these caves in the conversation
between the clowns concerning the wine :

" Trinculo. O Stephano, hast any more of this?
" Stephano. The whole butt, man ; my cellar is in a rock by
the seaside where my wine is hid." 2

Coronelli asserted that the Turks, if they found the
place empty, always left a present. "They are governed
by a ridiculous superstitious idea that no one would be
able to go out of the island who did not leave some
thing there, or who had the hardihood to take away the
merest trifle " ; and he added that the Knights of Malta
went every year with their galleys, and took back to
Malta the offerings from the chapel for the support of
their "Hospital for the Infirm."3 Mr. Hunter compares
with this "one mode of the operations of Prospero."
Ariel was asked how fared the King and his followers,

and he replies :

" All prisoners, sir,

In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell ;
They cannot budge till your release. The King,
His brother and yours, abide all three distracted
And the remainder mourning1 over them,
Brimful of sorrow and dismay/'4

A good account of the grotto was given by Jean de
Thevenot in the second part of his Voyages au Levant,

1 Hunter, u.s., p. 163. 2 Id. , p. 162; Tempest, ii. 2, 136-8.

3 Coronelli, Specchio del Mare. Cf. Crusius, as quoted by Hunter,
Disquisition, p. 20 : " Eodem modo in altera templi parte a Turcis obla-
tiones fiunt. Aiunt qui non offerat aut aliquod oblati auferat, nee restituit,
non posse ab insula abire."

4 Hunter, New Illustrations, i. 161 ; Tempest, v. i, 9-14.

TRAVELLERS ON LAMPEDUSA 379

translated into English by D. Lovell in 1687. His vessel
passed close to Lampedusa in February, 1659. They did
not land, because the only inhabitants were the rabbits:
" West habitee que de connils." Some on board had
been in the harbour and had seen the statue and the
shrine. There was a little chapel with an image of Our
Lady of the Grotto, venerated by Christians and Turks
alike. In front of the image stood an altar with money
on it, but the remaining space was like a marine store.
Any visitor might deposit money or goods, and he
would find what he wanted — arms and ammunition,
biscuit, wine, or oil, anything that he required "down
to a little needle-case."1

Once a year came the Malta galley and took the
money from the altar to the church of Our Lady at
Trapani. Both Trapani and its little dependency were
under the Archbishop of Palermo.2 We may remember
how Ariosto confesses in the forty-second book of his
Orlando that he had quite misdescribed the island, as
Archbishop Fulgoso had justly complained, and that
the tournament could not have taken place, because
there was not "one level foot of ground," unless in the
course of centuries nature might have caused some
great change by earthquake or flood.3

Thevenot also heard a story about a "Christian
vessel " that could not for a long time be got out of the
harbour, until at last it was found that a sailor had
taken stores without leaving the value ; and when
restitution was made the ship was able to depart.4

1 J. de Thevenot, Voyage Jait au Levant, 1664, vol. i. part ii., pp. 537-8.

2 Trapani was raised to the rank of a bishopric (suffragan to Palermo)
3ist May, 1844 (Gams, Serifs Episcoporum, 1873, p. 956). Before the
Saracen conquest there had been a bishop of Drepanum.

3 Orlando Fur., canto xlii. 20-1 :

"1'isola si fiera,

Montuosa e inegual ritrovi tanto,
Che non e, dice, in tutto il luogo strano,
Ove un sol pie1 si possa metter piano," etc.

4 J. de The'venot, w.s., p. 538.

380 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

These legends of the grotto look like a survival from
ancient folk-lore. The Scholiast in Apollonius Rhodius
preserved a story told by Pytheas of Marseilles, in
the fourth century B.C., to the following effect: "In
Lipari and Stromboli the God of Fire seems to
dwell, for one hears the roar of flame and a terrible
bellowing, and it was said from old times that any
one might leave unwrought iron there, with some
money, and next day he would find a sword or any
implement that he desired."1 In Dr. Thurnam's tract
on Wayland Smith we find a similar legend about the
great cromlech at Ashbury : " At this place lived
formerly an invisible smith, and if a traveller's horse
had lost a shoe upon the road, he had no more to do
than to bring the horse to this place, with a piece
of money, and leaving both there for a time, he might
come again and find the money gone, but the horse
shod." A similar story was current in Oldenburg,
where the smith was known as "the Hitter" Many
instances of a somewhat similar nature have been
collected by M. Dupont in L 'Homme pendant les Ages
de la Pierre, Behren in Hercynia Curiosa, Professor
Boyd-Dawkins in Cave-hunting, and Keightley in his
Fairy Mythology, under Frensham, Surrey, as to leaving
money at the mouth of a cave, and finding what was
wanted spread out a short time after.

Mr. Hunter endeavoured to show how Shakespeare
became acquainted with Lampedusa. In the first place,
he pointed out that all the romantic plays, with two
exceptions, were known to be based on existing stories,
which in several cases were not of home growth, but
the work of foreign invention. These exceptions were
Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest; and the fact was
the more remarkable, because both of them seemed to

1 Scholia ex Codice Parisiensi in Apollonii Argonauticis iv. 761 (ed.
Brunck, 1813, ii. 299-300). The scholiast adds : " TaOra <f>ri<rl Hv0ias tv
yfjs trfpi6$<f), \tyuv /cai ryv 6a.\o.a<ra.v £/ce? £eiv."

HISTORICAL REFERENCES 381

be "offshoots from a stock of genuine history." The
discussion of the French King's contract in the former
play reads as if it were some vague reminiscence of a
chronicle, and in Mr. Hunter's opinion the story of The
Tempest showed some distorted reference to the history
of Naples and Milan. "But still," he said, "through
the mist we can discern the real persons who were in
the mind of the author, and some of the real events
which are the basis of his fable."1 One proof is ad
duced to show that The Tempest is "a translated, not
an original, composition." Mr. Hunter refers us to
Antonio's exaggerated speech about Queen Claribel :

" She that is queen of Tunis ; she that dwells
Ten leagues beyond man's life ; she that from Naples
Can have no note, unless the sun were post —
The man-i'-the-moon's too slow — till new-born chins
Be rough and razorable. ";

" Man's-life," he suggested, was the name of an
African city which was turned into English by an
"erroneous principle of translation" ; adding that Leo
Africanus wrote of a city south of Tunis, known by
the name of Zoa, which was probably the place in
question.3 The illustration was somewhat unfortunate,
because Leo does not mention any town or city called
either Zoa or Zoe ; but the place at which Mr. Hunter
pointed was called Zoara, or Zuagha, a coast town in
Tripoli, nowhere near the city of Tunis, but distant
about twelve miles from the present capital, and close
to the ruins of old Tripoli. The other examples of his
"principle of translation" are equally unimportant.
He found a place called "Evil-town" in the Travels
of Mandevile. Then we have "Mars-hill" for the
Areopagus in the Acts of the Apostles ; but Shake
speare, one may observe, would have been more
familiar with another form ; the reading of the Geneva

1 Hunter, u.s., p. 167. a Tempest, ii. i, 246-50.

3 Hunter, M.S., p. 166.

382 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

version being, They " broght hym into Mars strete,"
with a note, "This was a place called, as you would
say, Mars Hill, where the Judges sate."1 Another
example was taken from The Comedy of Errors, where
"the Place of Depth " is put forward as a translation
of Barathrum; but the context is in favour of the
accepted reading, "place of death and sorry execution,
behind the ditches of the abbey here."2 The last
example is the most appropriate ; for Villafranca was
evidently the original of " Old Free-town, our common
judgement-place," to which the Prince summoned
Capulet and Montague.3

The Tempest, then, is alleged to contain a distorted
kind of history; and the same may be said of Love's
Labour's Lost; and therefore, said Mr. Hunter, "there
is great reason to conclude that the stories on which
Shakespeare wrought in both are in one and the same
book."4 This seems to be the essential fallacy on
which the whole argument depends. He assumes the
existence of a single volume without a vestige of proof
or of any presumption of probability.

The imaginary book is only a mirage of the brain.
Shakespeare made mistakes, if he was trying to copy
the real history of Milan ; he always copied something ;
and therefore there must have been a prototype con
taining the same mistakes. He was quite as much at
sea in his history of France and Navarre ; and therefore
he must have taken it from the same source. It follows
that the volume containing all these blunders, or an
English translation of it, must have been in Shakespeare's
possession as early as 1585, or whenever Love's Labour's
Lost was first produced. No such translation is men-

1 Acts xvii. 19. Tyndale, 1534, has " Marsestrete " ; Cranmer, 1539,
" Marce strete " (texts in English Hexapla, Bagster, 1841).

2 Comedy of Errors, v. i, 121-2.

3 Romeo and Juliet, i. i, 109. See Hunter, u.s., p. 166.

4 Hunter, ibid.

ORIGIN OF THE PLAY 383

tioned in the Stationer's Registers or elsewhere ; nor,
indeed, has any proof been found that the original ever
existed. " In England," said the critic, " it is in vain
now to hope to find such a volume." He wished that
those who had access to the popular literature of France,
Navarre, and Italy would exert themselves to find the
original volume: "That such a book once existed
there cannot be a reasonable doubt : that every copy of
an English translation should have perished, is a
possibility which the history of the popular literature
of England will forbid any person from doubting. In
its native language, however, such a book may still, I
trust, be existing."1

Mr. William Collins, the poet, was next cited as a
witness to prove that the magic of The Tempest, apart
from the storm, was derived from an Italian romance.
Now Collins, said Dr. Johnson, was "a man of ex
tensive literature." He knew "the learned tongues,"
French, Italian, and Spanish, and had studied all the
fiction that he could find in those languages. " He
loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters ; he delighted
to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze
on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the
water-falls of Elysian gardens." The latter part of his
life, says Dr. Johnson, "cannot be remembered but
with pity and sadness." For some years before his
death in 1756 his mind became oppressed by "a general
laxity and feebleness" ; and, after being some time in a
lunatic asylum, he was placed under the care of his
sister at Chichester, where he lived in a very depressed
condition. Mr. Thomas Warton and some other friends
used to visit him there ; and they reported that "what
he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit, but a few
minutes exhausted him."2 Among other things, Collins
told Mr. Thomas Warton that he had seen the novel

1 Hunter, u,s., p. 169.

a Johnson, Lives of Poets, ed. Cunningham, 1854, iii. 283-5.

384 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

"which principally appeared to have suggested the magi
cal part of The Tempest.'11 He thought that it was in a
book, printed in four languages, and entitled Aurelio
and Isabella ; but this, says Mr. Hunter, turns out to
be a mistake ; " the Aurelio and Isabella I now possess,
and it has no resemblance whatever to the story of The
Tempest."1 This romance was written by Juan de
Flores. The full title, according to Lowndes, ran as
follows: "The History of Aurelio and of Isabell,
Daughter of the Kinge of Schotlande, nyewly trans-
latede in foure languages, Frenche, Italien, Spanishe,
and Inglishe. Impressa en Anuers, 1556, i2mo."2

Mr. Thomas Warton gave some account of the matter
in his History of English Poetry. He concluded that
Shakespeare's story was to be found in some old Italian
novel, or, at any rate, in some book preceding the date of
The Tempest. " Mr. Collins," he says, " had searched
this subject with no less fidelity than judgment and in
dustry : but his memory failing in his last calamitous
indisposition, he probably gave me the name of one
novel for another." Moreover, Mr. Collins had said
something, had "added a circumstance," leading us
to think that the novel was about "a chemical necro
mancer " with a demon at his call : it might be con
jectured that his name was " Aurelio," because alchemy
dealt with the making of gold.3 Malone rejected
the conclusion altogether. He had his own theory
about the storm, and he thought that the story of
Prospero might owe something to Greene's story of
Alphonsus; but the limits were so slight that Shake
speare was left in full possession of "the highest praise
that the most original and transcendent genius can
claim." Mr. James Boswell, however, reverted to Mr.
Thomas Warton's opinion, when he edited thzVariorum

1 Hunter, u.s., p. 167.

2 Lowndes, Bibliographer s Manual, ed. Bohn, 1864, i. 88.

3 Warton, History of English Poetry, sect. Ix. (ed. 1840, iii. 386).

THE "LOST ORIGINAL" 385

of Malone ; for Collins, he considered, "was much more
likely to have confounded in his memory two books
which he had met with nearly at the same time, than
to have fancied that he had read what existed only in
his own imagination."1 Mr. Hunter called this "a
just remark";2 but we cannot help agreeing with
Malone, who had been pressed with the same argu
ment, that there is no evidence of the two books having
been read about the same time. Collins, in short, made
a mistake, owing to the weakness of his mind, and it
is impossible to build up a positive argument on what
he left out or what he might have intended to say.

Mr. Hunter not only believed in the lost book, but
felt himself able to describe its authorship and its
principal contents. It was, he believed, the production
of a French, Spanish, or Italian writer, but most
probably the work of an Italian, "to whom the attri
butes, physical and metaphysical, of the island of
Lampedusa were familiarly known, as easily as they
might be." By the term "metaphysical attributes" he
may have meant the apparitions and dreams that were
believed to haunt visitors to the enchanted island.3

The unnamed writer was shown to be singularly weak
in his Italian history; but "through the mist," we are
told, we can discern the persons who were in his mind,
"and some of the real events which are the basis of
his family." It would be more correct to say that The
Tempest has nothing to do with the history of Naples
or Milan, except in its use of the familiar names of
Alonzo and Ferdinand. Massimiliano Sforza, elder
son of Ludovico il Moro, was turned out of Milan

1 Malone, ed. Boswell, xv. 6, etc. On p. 16 Malone also mentions
tentatively Dent's translation of Commines, 1596, pp. 293-4, where
Alfonso II. of Naples is mentioned in connection with the designs of
the Sforzas against his house. He suggests that Prospero Colonna may
have furnished the suggestion for " Prospero," while Miranda may have
arisen from the mention of a lord of Mirandola.

3 Hunter, u.s., p. 167. 3 Hunter, t?ev> Illustrations, p. 165.

2 C

386 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

by the French after the battle of Marignano in 1515 ;
his brother, Francesco Sforza, after the battle of Bicocca
in 1522, began his disturbed career as Duke of Milan.
There is nothing like this in The Tempest, except the
bare old news of Charles the Wrestler in As You
Like It:—

" There is no news at the court, sir, but the old news : that
is, the old duke is banished by his younger brother the
new duke."1

Alfonso of Naples gave up his kingdom to his natural
son Ferdinand and retired to Sicily, where he gave
himself up to "study and religion," but died after a
few months. We find nothing in the story to remind
us of King Alonzo and the wily Sebastian.

The anonymous novelist is presented to us as an
adept in the "Chaldean Philosophy." Mr. Hunter con
sidered that this philosophy came "from the very
depths of human civilization." He appears to have
been ignorant of the history of Chaldean magic and
the Grceco-Egyptian magic, which have become familiar
subjects since the essay was written. His list included
in one class "Jannes and Jambres, who withstood
Moses," King Solomon, the Three Kings from the East,
Simon Magus, and those that used "curious books" at
Ephesus. He refers to the mediaeval fancies about the
enchanter Virgil ; but it is difficult to follow the track
of the argument. " There are then," he summed it up,
"a crowd of persons of obscure name in the countries
of modern Europe, and especially about the shores of
the Mediterranean, who were professors of this so-
called philosophy. . . . The Adepts in this philosophy
were supposed to hold communication with the spiritual
world, and they had their servant-spirits, whom they

1 As You Like It, \. i, 103-5. A less fanciful, if equally inconclusive,
correlation of fact with fiction would be to recall the usurpation of
Ludovico 51 Moro in 1494 and its sanction by the King- of the Romans,
Maximilian I.

HUNTER ON CHALDEAN PHILOSOPHY 387

bound in stones or stocks, from which they knew how
to evoke them when their services were needed. Fallen
Angels they were who had lost their first estate."
Prospero, of course, is taken as an impersonation of
the true adept, and Ariel as the chief of the " servant-
spirits" under his command.1 We are informed that
The Tempest contains a good deal that is Hebraistic ;
"as might be expected when there was so much of the
Chaldee philosophy." "The measure of time, 'till
new-born chins are rough and razorable,' is quite
Hebraistic."1 In one case we gain a direct insight
into the novelist's mind, if we can only accept these
Babylonian reasonings. Caliban's form, not his words
or acts, but his shape and figure, was of "Oriental
origin," whether Philistine, Hebraist, or Chaldee. As
to form, we are told, Caliban is the god of the
Philistines, Dagon the Fish-god, who had the body
of a fish, and the head, hands, and feet of a man.
" Nothing can be more precise than the resemblance :
the two are, in fact, one, as far as form is concerned.
Caliban is thus a kind of tortoise, the paddles expand
ing in arms and hands, legs and feet." Does not
Prospero himself say, "Come forth, thou tortoise"?
This form, Mr. Hunter assures us, is consistent with
everything that Caliban says or does; but "it was a
difficult figure to manage on the stage," as Shakespeare
must have known full well. Why, then, should he
have chosen it, if he were not "under constraint";
in other words, the figure was "prescribed" by the
novelist, whose mind had been occupied by that Fish-
god whose head and hands were cut off upon the
threshold at Ashdod.3 Mr. Hunter referred his readers
to Origmes Hebrcece, the Antiquities of the Hebrew
Republic, by Thomas Lewis, 1724-5, and to Selden's

1 Hunter, v.s., pp. 179-81.

2 Id. , p. 183. Ariel (p. 181) is connected with the Hebrew name given
by Isaiah (xxix. i) to Jerusalem ! * Hunter, u.s. , pp. 183-5.

388 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

treatise on the Syrian gods in the second volume of
his works ; the latter was published separately in 1617
under the title De Diis Syriis. An extract is added
from Selden's letter to Jonson, written in 1615, on the
rule against men wearing women's apparel, in which
the shape of Dagon was discussed, and legends from
Berosus added, about " Oannes," the Fish-god of the
Euphrates, "with the body of a fish, and one of the heads
like a man's head, and feet in its tail."1 Mr. Hunter's
conclusion from these vague traditions appears in the
sentences following. "The similarity of Caliban and
Dagon is confined to form. I hold it to be certain,
first, that the form was not an invention of the English
poet ; secondly, that he found it in the story on which
he wrought in this play ; and thirdly, that the original
constructor of the story was versed in Chaldee an
tiquities, and thence drew this strange and unnatural
and eminently undramatic compound."2 Mr. Hunter
ascribed all Prospero's magical powers to the influences
derived from Babylon : " He calls up splendid visions :
at his command the air is filled with sweet music, or
with the sounds of hound and horn."8 But one may
remember that charms of this kind were given to brave
Owen Glendower, without reference to any Eastern
philosophy : —

" Those musicians that shall play to you
Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence,
And straight they shall be here : sit, and attend."4

Prospero raises or quells the storm, and plucks up
great trees ; « Graves at my command

Have waked their sleepers " ; 5

but Mr. Hunter acknowledged that this "rough magic"
was borrowed from the Medea of Golding's translations
from Ovid.6 The Roman had addressed the spirits of

1 Hunter, ibid. (note). 2 Ibid.

3 Id. , pp. 180-1. 4 i Henry IV., iii. i, 226-8.

5 Tempest, v. i, 48-9. 6 Hunter, u.s., ii. 162 (in essay on Macbeth).

PROSPERO'S MAGIC POWERS 389

the night, of the mountains, woods, and waters ;
Golding could not understand that to every object
corresponded a spiritual essence, or genius ; and he
solved the difficulty by addressing the incantation to
the familiar fairies, or elves. " Ye aires and winds, yee
elues of hilles, of brooks, of woods alone, Of standing
lakes, and of the night approch ye euerichone."1
Shakespeare added the fairies dancing at the margin of
the shore, the tiny forms that tread the grass into
"green sour ringlets," or after curfew steal out to set
mushrooms for their midnight crop. By the help of
such frail creatures, ' ' weak Masters of elemental
force," Prospero had performed his mighty tasks :—

" I have bedimmed

The noon-tide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt ; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar : graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped and let 'em forth,
By my so potent art."2

The witchcraft of Sycorax is derived from an equally
classical source. The witch of Algiers is a copy of the
Mussylian sorceress who came at Queen Dido's call.
Shakespeare found her attributes in the translation
of the fourth dEneid by Thomas Phaer. She could
shift the trees of the forest, or turn the flow of the
rivers, and alter the courses of the stars ; and Sycorax
was as strong a witch :

"That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,
And deal in her command without her power."3

The meaning appears to be that Sycorax, like the
witches of Thessaly, could make the moon come down,

1 A. Golding, The x-v. Bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, etc., 1584, bk. vii.
p. 90. - Tempest, v. i, 33-50. 3 Id.,\. i, 270-1.

390 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

and fill the estuaries, and by authority from below
could do feats beyond any human power.

The office of Ariel was treated by Mr. Hunter as if
the airy spirit were an ordinary "familiar." There
was a common superstition that a witch or conjurer was
attended by a demon in the form of a fly, or some such
creature ; and Paracelsus used to boast that he carried
a devil in the pommel of his sword. Mr. Hunter
discusses the nature of the call by which the "familiar"
was summoned. He found several instances in The
Tempest. "The words," he said, "are such as Lesbia
might have used to her sparrow, or an Eastern beauty
to a bird of paradise : ' Come, away, Servant, come
. . . approach, my Ariel, come.' " In the fourth act
we have it again : " Now come, my Ariel, appear ; and
pertly"; and again, "Come with a thought: Ariel,
come ! " " The call," he adds, " is introduced on other
occasions, and is always in harmony with the delicate
form of Ariel, in which the idea of a bee perhaps rather
predominates than that of any other living thing."1
This may be founded on some notion that Ariel was to
live "under the blossom," like the elf in his "Bee-
song," instead of returning to his elemental home.2
But in the play itself the situation was far more compli
cated. When Prospero arrived, the sprite was an exile
from those airy confines. Sycorax had fitted him with
a body with nerves susceptible of pain ; and had thrust
him, thus materialised, into the rift of a cloven pine.
The air was full of shrieks and groans, repeated " as

fast as mill-wheels strike " :

" Thy groans

Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts
Of ever angry bears : it was a torment
To lay upon the damned, which Sycorax
Could not again undo : it was mine art,
When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape
The pine and let thee out."

1 Hunter, u.s. , pp. 182-3. 2 Tempest, v. i, 93-4.

THE CHARACTER OF ARIEL 391

Sycorax could only perform the feat by the help of her
" potent ministers," and when she died they could not
undo their work. But Prospero's power was of a higher
rate. "Mine art," he says, "let thee out. Ariel. I
thank thee, Master":

" Pros. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak
And peg thee in his knotty entrails till
Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters."1

It was in a lost Italian story, as Mr. Hunter imagined,
that Shakespeare found his isle of Lampedusa ; and
being thus "carried there," must have cast about for
more information, and was thus, perhaps, led to
Ariosto. The Orlando Furioso had been turned into
English verse by Sir John Harington in 1591 : and
in it Shakespeare might find the description of a ship
wreck "in the seas about the very group of islands
of which Lampedusa is one." Mr. Hunter proposed
to show that the passage had been read by Shakespeare
shortly before preparing the opening scene of The
Tempest. His object was to show that this scene was
designed to exhibit in dramatic action "the same
spectacle which Ariosto had presented in his epic."
There is nothing strange in the general idea, though it
is difficult to accept some of the so-called coincidences.
Some of them are explained by the fact that Harington
had served at sea, and tried to explain Italian terms
of art by English phrases. Mr. Hunter had found
similarities which he would not have expected " in two
perfectly independent compositions."3 In both storms
we read of the master and the master's whistle ; and it
seemed to him improbable that the "whistle" would
occur to the minds of independent writers.4 In both
narratives the sails are struck, and in both there is a
"falling to prayer " at the end. Ariosto's ship sprang

1 Id., \. 2, 274-96. 2 Hunter, u.s., pp. 169-70, 173. 3 Id., p. 173.
4 See Tempest, \. i, and Orlando Furioso, tr. Harington, 1591, bk. xli.
stt. 8- 1 8.

392 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

a leak ; and old Gonzalo made a jest about leakiness.
Even more remarkable, it is said, was the contempt of
rank and royalty in both ; " What care I for the name
of King : get out of my way, I say." But this is only
a paraphrase of the Boatswain's, who will be patient
when the sea is so :

" Hence ! What care these roarers for the name of King?
To cabin ! silence ! trouble us not."

In the Orlando we are told that "of King nor Prince
no man takes heed or note " ; but the "roarers " in The
Tempest are only the noisy waves. Some of the verbal
"coincidences" deserve very little attention. The
"cry," when the ship was dashed to pieces, did knock
against Miranda's "very heart"; the comment is that
the words of Ariosto seem to have been ringing in the
poet's ears :

" Twas lamentable then to hear the cries,
Of companies of every sort confused,
In vain to heaven they lift their hands and eyes,
Making late vows, as in such case is used."1

When Miranda was told the story of her father's exile,
" O the heavens! " she cried,

" What foul play had we, that we came from thence,
Or blessed was't we did ! "

And her father answers :

"Both, both, my girl:

By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heaved thence,
But blessedly holp hither."2

Mr. Hunter suggested that Shakespeare got these
phrases from the fortieth book of the Orlando, where
Agramant was driven by another storm to a harbour
where he found an ally who promised assistance :
" Agramant praised much this offer kind,
And called it a good and blessed storm,
That caused him such a friend as this to find,
And thanks him for his offer."3

Tempest, \. 2, 8-9; Harington, xli. 20. 2 Tempest, i. 2, 59-63.

Harington, xl. 47. Hunter quoted the first line inaccurately.

SHAKESPEARE AND HARINGTON 393

The hermit, again, who helped Ruggiero to climb
the rock, could "allay" the waves with the sign of the
cross; and Miranda begged her father to " allay " the
wild waters, if he had caused them to roar.1 There is
nothing singular in the word, which was often used by
Shakespeare in a similar sense ; but Mr. Hunter argued
that a word need not be peculiar to serve " as an index "
to a later author's train of thought : "A peculiarity in
its use, or an application of it to the same or similar
circumstances, may do as well." The nearest approach
to a real coincidence is to be found by comparing the
flames in Ariosto's storm with the fires of Ariel in Ttie
Tempest; but Shakespeare was probably familiar with
an account of Magellan's voyage, which would supply
him with all the necessary information.3

The slightest part of the argument lies in the com
parison of passages from Shakespeare and Harington,
very much to the disadvantage of the former. When
the young lord-in-waiting was consoling King Alonzo,
he gave a minute account of the prince's escape from
drowning : —

" I saw him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs ; he trod the water,
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
The surge most swoln that met him ; his bold head
'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd
Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke
To the shore, that o'er his wave- worn basis bow'd,
As stooping to receive him."4

What is called the "corresponding passage," in the

1 Tempest, i. 2, 2 ; Harington, xliii. 178, where the word is "still,"
not "allay." 2 Hunter, u.s., p. 173.

3 Pigafetta, Primo Viaggio intorno al Gfobo, included in Ramusio,
Raccolta delle Navigazioni e Viaggi, 1588. A French summary of Piga-
fetta's description had appeared in 1534. A translation of this was added
by Richard Willes to his edition of Richard Eden's Historic of Travayle
in the West and East Indies, 1577.

4 Tempest, ii. i, 114-21.

394 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

forty-first book of the Orlando, shows us how Ruggiero
" above the water keeps his head " :

" With legs and arms he doth him so behave,
That still he kept upon the floods aloft,
He blows out from his face the boistrous wave
That ready was to overwhelm him oft."1

According to Mr. Hunter, the passage in The Tempest
is laboured, "and betrays marks of effort," as if the
writer was attempting "to rival a great original."
"We have," he said, "a similar correspondence in
another of the laboured passages in The Tempest, in
which he opens to view the guiltiness of the conscience
of Alonzo " :

" Methought the billows spoke and told me of it ;
The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced
The name of Prosper : it did bass my trespass.
Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and
I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded
And with him there lie mudded."3

This, again, is said to be written with the same strained
effort, " produced, perhaps, by the attempt to rival and
surpass the earlier poet." 4

1 Harington, xli. 22. 2 Hunter, u.s., 175.

3 Tempest, iii. 3, 96-102.

4 Hunter, u.s. The passage which called forth this "attempt" on
Shakespeare's part is singularly weak in comparison with the "attempt"
itself.

II. THE MARRIAGE OF THE EARL OF

ESSEX, AND JONSON'S "MASQUE

OF HYMEN," 1606

ESSEX'S MARRIAGE — ERRORS AS TO EXACT NATURE OF CERE
MONY — MARRIAGE OF LADY ESSEX TO ROCHESTER, 1613
— ACCOUNT OF THE CEREMONIES AND MASQUES

ON Sunday, the 5th of January, 1606, a strange
wedding was celebrated in the palace of White
hall. The King and Queen, and all the great people
of the court, were assembled to see two children united
in holy matrimony. The bride was a girl under
thirteen, and the bridegroom about a twelvemonth
older. The object of the alliance was to make some
amends for the judicial murder of Queen Elizabeth's
favourite, and for the imprisonment of his friend, Lord
Southampton, to attach the remaining " Essex faction "
to the King's side, and incidentally to please more than
one powerful minister.

The bride, Lady Frances Howard, was the younger
daughter of Thomas, Earl of Suffolk, then Lord
Chamberlain and afterwards Lord High Treasurer.
She was a pretty child, and became renowned for her
good looks before she was seventeen. Arthur Wilson,
her husband's "gentleman," wrote a history of the
reign, and said that she grew to be "a beauty of the
greatest magnitude in that horizon . . . and every
tongue grew an orator at that shrine."1

1 Life and Reign of James /., printed in Kennett's Compleat History
of England (1706), vol. ii. p. 686, col. 2.

395

396 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST'

The boy was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and Eu,
Viscount Hereford and Bourchier, and Baron Ferrers
of Chartley in the county of Salop, Bourchier, and
Louvain, his father's honours having been restored
when the new reign began ; l and in course of time
he attained a greater place as His Excellency the
Captain-General of the Armies of the Parliament.
King James disliked him for his sour looks ; perhaps
he was a little afraid of him. He once said, "I fear
thee not, Essex ! if thou wert as well beloved as thy
father, and hadst forty thousand men at thy heels. ":
The Earl had passed quickly through Eton and Merton,
and was made Master of Arts when the King visited
Oxford in the summer of 1605. 3 He must have for
gotten all about his degree, says his " gentleman," "or
he would not have received the same honour about
thirty years afterwards."4 While he was still under
Sir Henry Savile's tuition at Merton, young Essex
showed a great love for serious study ; but he also
excelled in outdoor accomplishments, especially at
fencing and pike-practice, "at riding the great horse,"
and at tilting or running at the ring.

A notice of the marriage is preserved in the Old
Cheque-book of the Chapel-Royal at Whitehall, now
kept with the records of the Chapel-Royal, St. James's
Palace. "The younge Earle of Essex was maryed to
Frances Howard, daughter to the Earle of Suffolke,
Lo. Chamberlaine, in the Kinges Chappell at White
hall, the 5 or 6 of January, 1605, 5 (the Kinges Majestic
givinge her in maryage), wher was paid for fees to the
Deane of the Chappell, he maryinge them, 10 li, and
to the gentlemen of the Chappell then ther attendinge
5 li ; which manage was solemnized in the third

1 i8th April, 1604. 2 Wilson, u.s., p. 747, col. 2.

3 3oth August, 1605. Wood, Ath, Ox., ed. Bliss, 1813-20, iii. 190.

4 In August, 1636, Id., iii., 192.
r> 5th January, 1606, N.S.

NOTICES OF THE WEDDING 397

yeare of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lord Kinge
James."1

An interesting account of the marriage is preserved
among the Cottonian MSS. It was written to Sir
Robert Cotton by Mr. John Pory, the friend of Richard
Hakluyt. Mr. Pory was a traveller and a scholar. He
received much praise for his spirited translation of Leo
Africanus. He was Member of Parliament for Bridge-
water from 1605 to 1610, and in 1619 was made Secretary
to the Colony of Virginia. " Ever since your departure
I have been very unfit to learn any thing, because my
hearing (which Aristotle calls Sensus Eruditionis] hath,
by an accidental cold, been almost taken from me ;
which makes me very unsociable, and to keep within
doors ; yet not in such a retired fashion but that I have
seen the Mask on Sunday, and the Barriers on Monday
night. The bridegroom carried himself so gravely and
gracefully as if he were of his father's age.2 He had
greater gifts given him than my Lord Montgomery
had ; his plate being valued at £3,000, and his jewels,
money, and other gifts at £1,000 more."3 Sir Philip
Herbert, brother of William, Earl of Pembroke, had
married Lady Susan de Vere in 1604. The entry in the
"Old Cheque-book" runs as follows: "Sir Philipp
Harbert, Knight, was maryed to Susanna Vere, daugh
ter of the Earle of Oxford, in the Chappell at White-
haule, 1604, wher was payd for fees to Mr. Deane of the
Chappell x li. and to the gentlemen of the sayd Chap-
pell v li., December the 27th in the second yere of the
reigne of oure Sovereigne Lord Kinge James."4 Sir
Philip Herbert was created Baron Herbert of Shurland

1 The Old Cheque-Book . . . of the Chapel Royal, ed. E. F. Rimbault,
1872 (Camden Society), p. 161.

2 The second Earl of Essex, born loth November, 1566, executed
25th February, 1601, would have been in his fortieth year had he lived to
see his son's marriage.

8 Text in Nichols, Progresses of James /., ii. 33.
4 Rimbault, op. tit., p. 160.

398 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

and Earl of Montgomery on the 4th of May, 1605, and
succeeded his brother, William Herbert, in the Earldom
of Pembroke in 1630. Mr. Pory next proceeds to
describe the "Masque of Hymen," presented on the
evening of the wedding, but we postpone that part
of his letter till we come to Ben Jonson's own stage-
directions.

Another notice of the marriage is found in the title
of the Masque of Hymen, as published by Ben Jonson
in its first edition: " Hymenaei, or the Solemnities of
Masque and Barriers, Magnificently performed on the
Eleventh and Twelfth Nights from Christmas, at
Court : to the auspicious celebrating of the Marriage-
union betweene Robert Earle of Essex and the Lady
Frances, second daughter of the most noble Earle of
Suffolke, 1605-6. The Author, B. J." After the con
viction of the Earl and Countess of Somerset for the
murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1613, the title was
changed, and the piece appears in Jonson's collected
works as Hymenaei, or the Solemnities of Masque and
Barriers at a Marriage.

It has been supposed that The Tempest was connected
in some way with this marriage, ever since Holt pub
lished his essay on the play in I749.1 Its miniature
masque was obviously written in honour of some noble
alliance ; that appears from the love-scene in the wood-
yard, the promise of a royal wedding at Naples, the
chanted blessings of the great goddesses, united, as we
are twice told, "a contract of true love to celebrate."2
The Masque, said Holt, was "a compliment intended
by the poet, on some particular solemnity of that kind ;
and if so, none more likely, than the contracting the

1 An Attempte to rescue that aunciente, English poet, and play -"wrighte,
Maister Williaume Shakespere ; from the maney errours, faulsely charged
on him, by certaine new-fangled ivittes . . . by a Gentleman formerly of
Greys-Inn, 1749.

2 Tempest, iii. i ; v. i, 306-9 ; iv. i, 84 and 132-3.

HOLT'S ESSAY ON THE PLAY 399

young Earl of Essex, in 1606, with the Lady Frances
Howard." Holt was of opinion that the play was a
testimony of Shakespeare's gratitude to Lord South
ampton, "a warm patron of the Author's, and as
zealous a friend to the Essex family." It is true that
Holt continually wavered between the ideas of a be
trothal and an actual marriage. He selected the year
1610 as the time when the union was complete. Then
he gave his readers leave to accept the theory that The
Tempest was written for the wedding of the Princess
Elizabeth to the Prince Palatine on Valentine's Day,
1613. Next he seems to have forgotten all about "the
Palsgrave and our Lady Bess " ; for he ascribes the
play to some time in the year 1614, before the produc
tion of Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, though the play
was known, at any rate, to have been acted before
the Princess in the previous year.1

Malone followed Holt in his mistake about betrothal
and marriage. The bride and bridegroom were of
lawful age and their matrimony was duly solemnised.2
Lord Essex and his child-wife were too young to set up
a home, and it was arranged that she should live with
her mother, while he travelled with "a guide or tutor"
through France and Germany. He stayed abroad for
about four years. Malone believed that he came home
in 1609, on the authority of some of the depositions in
the divorce proceedings ;3 but most of the biographers
agreed with Holt in thinking that he returned in the
following year. In writing on the chronological order
of the plays, Malone explained his views as follows :

1 Holt, op. cit., pp. 17, 62, 67.

a In a pamphlet containing- the divorce proceedings, published by
Curll in 1711, the first declaration of the Lady Frances Howard is " that
she and Robert Earle of Essex were Maried by Publicke Rites and
Ceremonies in January 1606 " (p. i). To this the Earl of Essex an
swered in the affirmative (p. 5). Arthur Wilson, u.s., amply bears out
the fact of marriage as opposed to betrothal.

3 Malone's Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, 1821, xv. 418.

400 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST'

"Mr. Holt conjectured, that the masque in the fifth
(sic) Act of this comedy was intended by the poet as
a compliment to the Earl of Essex, on his being united
in wedlock, in 1611, to Lady Frances Howard, to
whom he had been contracted some years before. Even
if this had been the case, the date which that commen
tator has assigned to this play (1614,) is certainly too
late : for it appears from the MSS. of Mr. Vertue that
the Tempest was acted by John Heminge and the rest
of the King's Company, before prince Charles, the
lady Elizabeth, and the prince Palatine elector, in the
beginning of the year 1613." Mr. Boswell, in his
notes to the Variorum edition, added for himself :
" Mr. Holt (Observations on ' The Tempest,' p. 67) im
agined that Lord Essex was united to Lady Frances
Howard in 1610 ; but he was mistaken : for their union
did not take place till the next year." In his next note
he refers again to the words "contracted some years
before." He gives the date as "January the 5th,
1606-7," which must be wrong, whatever style of
reckoning be adopted; and proceeds to say, "The
Earl continued abroad four years from that time ; so
that he did not cohabit with his wife till 161 1." l In his
Essay on the origin and date of The Tempest, printed
in 1808, and appended to the play in the Variorum
edition, Malone once more spoke of the marriage of
the Earl and Lady Frances, "to whom he had been
betrothed in i6o6."2

The marriage, as we have seen, was solemnised in
1606. It was annulled on the 25th of September, 1613,
by a Commission of Delegates, after various scandalous
and collusive proceedings. When Essex returned from
the Continent, he found his wife entangled in an in
trigue with Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, the all-
powerful favourite. On the 4th of November, Carr was
created Earl of Somerset, and was married to Lady

1 Id. , ii. 466 and note. 2 Id. , as note

REMARRIAGE OF LADY ESSEX 401

Frances on December 26th. The "Old Cheque-book"
contains the form of the banns published on the igth
of December, the 2ist of December, and Christmas
Day: "I aske the banes of matrimony betweene the
Right Honorable personages, Roberte Earle of Somer-
sett, of the on[e] partie, and the Ladie Francis Howard,
of the other part : if any man can shewe any just cause
why these may not lawfully be joyned together, lett
him speake." Among the entries of royal and noble
marriages we find the following note: "After that the
Earle of Essex and his Wiffe, the Ladie Frauncis
Howard had byn maryed eight yeares, ther was by a
Commission of Delegates an anullity found to be in
that maryage . . . wheruppon they beinge sundered,
ther was a maryage solemnized betweene the Earle of
Somersett and her upon the 26th of December, 1613,
at Whithall, in the Chappell, being St. Steeven's
daie, at which maryage was present the Kinges
Majestie and the Queene, with the Prince and all the
Lordes and Ladies of the Court and about London.
The Bride was given by the Earle of Suffolke, Lord
Chamberlaine, her Father. And the gentlemen of the
Chappell had for their fee as before had been used, the
somme of five poundes."1 John Chamberlain described
the scene in a letter to Miss Carleton. " The Marriage
was on Sunday, without any such bravery as was
looked for. Only some of the Earl's followers bestowed
cost upon themselves ; the rest exceeded not either in
number or expence. The Bride was married in her
hair " (that is, Mr. Nichols explains, with her hair
hanging loosely down, as the Princess Elizabeth had
worn it at her wedding) "... The Dean of the Chapel
coupled them ; which fell out strangely that the same
man should marry the same person in the same place,
upon the self-same day (after eight years), the former
party yet living. All the difference was, the King

1 Rimbault, op. cit,, pp. 162, 166.
2 D

402 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

gave her the last time, and now her father. The King
and Queen were both present, and tasted wafers and
ypocrass, as at ordinary weddings."1 On the same
evening a Masque by Thomas Campion was presented
in the Banqueting-House at Whitehall ; it was pub
lished in 1614, and is reprinted by Mr. Nichols in
his Progresses of King James I. The author gave an
interesting account of the way in which his stage was
prepared. The upper part, or "dais," of the great
hall "was theatred with pillars, scaffolds," etc.; "at
the lower end of the Hall, before the sceane, was made
an arch tryumphall, passing beautifull, which enclosed
the whole workes." The scene itself was in several
compartments, the upper part showing a sky cut off
by clouds, and the lower part a garden ; there were
side-pieces showing two promontories, one running
in rocks into the sea and the other covered with wood ;
"in the midst betweene them appeared a sea in per
spective with ships, some cunningly painted, some
arteficially sayling." Campion explained that the
figures of mythology were out of fashion: "Our
modern writers have rather transferd their fictions to
the persons of Enchaunters and Commaunders of
Spirits, as that excellent Poet Torquato Tasso hath
done, and many others."2

It seems reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare was
intended to be one of that class, more especially as
Campion makes pointed reference to the dispersal of
the fleet :

" A storm confused against our tackle beat,
Severing the ships."

And Shakespeare's master "capering" to see the
gallant vessel in safety3 may have suggested Campion's

1 Chamberlain to Mrs. Alice Carleton, 30 Dec. 1613, in Dom. State
Papers, vol. Ixxv. no. 53. Text in Nichols, Progresses of James /.,
ii. 725.

2 Text in Nichols, id., pp. 707-8. 3 Tempest, v. i, 238.

MASQUES AT SOMERSET'S MARRIAGE 403

skippers "shouting and tryumphing after their manner."
"Twelve Skippers in red capps, with short cassocks
and long slopps wide at the knees of white canvass
striped with crimson, white gloves and pomps, and
red stockings."1

On the day after the wedding, Jonson produced his
entertainment, printed in his collected Works as A
Challenge at Tilt at a Marriage.* Two Cupids came
in wrangling : "I serve the Man, and the nobler
creature." "But I the woman, and the purer; and
therefore the worthier." It is agreed that the question
shall be fought out at another time by the ten knights
on each side in the tiltyard.

On Wednesday, the 2Qth of December, some of the
King's servants, or gentlemen about the Court, per
formed Jonson's comical Irish Masque* "Out ran a
fellow," says Jonson, "attired like a citizen," and
after him several Irish footmen. There was Dennis, the
King's Costermonger's Boy, and Donnell, Dermock,
and Patrick, and others, whose masters had brought
them from Ireland. There was "a great news of a
great bridal," and they had come over to see the
show. "Ty man, Robyne, tey shay": "Marry ty man
Toumaish hish daughter, tey shay" : " Ay, ty good man
Toumaish o' Shuffolke." Their masters had come to
dance "fading and te fadow," country dances in the
style of " Sir Roger de Coverley " ; but they had lost
their fine clothes in a storm, and found no great fish
or "devoish vit a clowd " to help them. "Tey will
fight for tee, King Yamish, and for my Mistresh tere" :
"and my little Maishter" : " And te vfrow, ty Daugh
ter, tat is in Tuchland." The footman and as many
boys danced "to the bagpipe, and other rude music" ;
and then the gentlemen danced in their great Irish

1 See stage directions in Nichols, U.S., p. 713.
8 Jonson, Works, ed. Giflfbrd, 1838, pp. 591-2.
3 /«*•! PP- 593-4-

4o4 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST"

mantles "to a solemn music of harps" ; and a "civil
gentleman " of that nation brought in a bard whose
singing of charms to two harps reminds us of the
"harmonious sphere" of the Masque of Hymen and
Ferdinand's "harmonious charmingly" in The Tem
pest.^ Ariel's business "in the veins o' the earth,
when it is baked with frost,"2 may have influenced
the form of the bard's last song, when he sang of
"Earth's ragged chains, wherein rude winter bound
her veins."

A letter, before quoted, from Chamberlain to Mrs.
Alice Carleton contains an account of the enter
tainment : "Yesterday there was a medley Masque of
five English and five Scots, which are called the high
Dancers, among whom Sergeant Boyd, one Aber-
crombie, and Auchmouty, that was at Padua and
Venice, are esteemed the most principal and lofty."3
Mr. Nichols identified the first of these high-steppers
with "Sergeant Bowy," a clerk in the Royal cellars,
who appears in the roll of New Year's gifts for 1605-6
as giving his Majesty "a botle of ypocras."4 Mr.
Patrick Abercrombie appears in the lists of persons
to whom the King gave orders on the Exchequer;
Mr. John Auchmuty was one of the Grooms of the
King's Bedchamber, who obtained in 1607-8 a grant
of £2,000 at once, out of "Recusants'" lands and
goods.5

Chamberlain writes again on the 5th of January,
this time to Sir Dudley Carleton, and has more to say

1 Tempest, iv. i, 119. For the "harmonious sphere of love," vide
infra, p. 417. 2 Tempest, i. 2, 255-6.

3 Vide sup., p. 402, note i. 4 Nichols, n.s. , i. 598.

6 Id. , i. 599, note. Taylor, in his Pennyles Pilgrimage (1618), tells us
how, on his way back to London, he was entertained by Master John
" Acmootye," one of the grooms of His Majesty's bed-chamber, at his
house in East Lothian. John Auchmuty went with Taylor to Dunbar,
"where ten Scottish pints of wine were consumed," and James Auchmuty,
a brother, and a groom of the privy chamber, accompanied him on his
road as far as Topcliffe in Yorkshire, where they parted ways.

SOMERSET'S MARRIAGE 405

about the medley: "The lofty Maskers were so well
liked at Court the last week, that they are appointed
to perform it again on Monday ; yet this Device,
which was a mimical imitation of the Irish, was not
so pleasing to many, which think it no time, as the
case stands, to exasperate that nation by making it
ridiculous." l

We now return to the Cupids and their challenge at
tilt. On the New Year's day, at the time fixed for trying
the match, twenty knights rode into the tilt-yard, in
splendid doublets and "bases," like petticoats from waist
to knee. " On the New Year's day," said Chamberlain,
"was the tiltings of ten against ten. The bases, trap
pings, and all other furniture of the one party was
murrey and white, which were the Bride's colours ; the
other green and yellow for the Bridegroom. There
were two handsome chariots or pageants that brought
in two Cupids, whose contention was, whether were the
truer, his or hers, each maintained by their champions."
Among the bride's combatants we notice the names of
the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Pembroke and
Montgomery ; the Bridegroom's party was commanded
by the Earl of Rutland, with whom rode the bride's
brother and several others of her family. The part of
umpire was taken by "Hymen," who charged both sides
to lay down their weapons: "The contention is not, who
is the true Love, but, being both true, who loves
most ; cleaving the bow between you, and dividing the
palm."

"The Lord Mayor," continues Chamberlain, "was
sent to by the King, to entertain this new-married
couple. ... It was resolved to do it at the charge
of the City in the Merchant Taylors' Hall upon four
days' warning, and thither they went yesternight about
six o'clock, in through Cheapside, all by torch-light,

1 In Dom. State Papers, vol. Ixxvi. no. 2. Text in Nichols, u.s.,\\.
732-3-

406 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

accompanied by the Father and Mother of the Bride,
and all the Lords and ladies about the Court. The Men
were all mounted and richly arrayed, making a goodly
shew ; the women all in coaches. ... I understand that
after supper they had a Play and a Masque, and after
that a Banquet. . . . Mr. Attorney's Masque is for
tomorrow, and for a conclusion of Christmas and their
shews together, for the King says he will be gone
towards Royston upon Friday."1 The full title of
Bacon's Masque was as follows: "The Maske of
Flowers, by the Gentlemen of Graie's Inn, at the Court
of Whitehall, in the Banquetting House, upon Twelfe
Night, 1613-14. Being the last of the solemnities and
magnificences which were performed at the marriage of
the Right Honourable the Earle of Somerset and the
Lady Frances, daughter of the Earle of Suffolke, Lord
Chamberlaine."2

In a letter written a few days before, Chamberlain
mentions the same entertainment : " Sir Francis Bacon
prepares a Maske which will stand him in above ^2,000,
and though he has been offered some help . . . yet
he would not accept it, but offers them the whole charge
with the honour."3

The idea, or "device," was this. The Sun, wishing
to do honour to the marriage, orders the Winter and the
Spring to go to Court and there present sports, such as
are called " Christmasse sportes, or Carnavall sportes,"
as Winter's gift, and shows of greater pomp and splen
dour on the part of Spring. Moreover, the Winter was
to take notice of a challenge between Silenus, the
champion of wine, and Kawasha, an Indian god, who
claimed the greater merit for tobacco. The contrast
to be settled by anti-masques, or " anticke-maskes " of
dance and song. The Lady Primavera, or Spring,

1 Nichols, ibid.

2 Text in Nichols, id., p. 735, etc.

:f Letter of gth Dec. Text in Nichols, op. cit. , ii. 705.

BACON'S MASQUE 407

was to inquire as to certain youths, such as Adonis
and Narcissus, who had been transformed into flowers,
and were now to return to human life. The "fabric"
showed a garden on a slope, with an arbour arched on
pillars at the top ; at the lower end of the Hall was
a "travers," or screen, painted in perspective, and
showing a city wall, a gate, temples, and the roofs of
houses. Out of the great gate entered Winter " in a
short gowne of silke shagge, like withered grasse, all
frosted and snowed over, and his cap, gown, gamashes "
(or spatterdashes), "and mittens, furred crimson."
Primavera enters, and claps the old man on the
shoulder. "See where she comes, apparell'd like the
spring."1 Imagine a wood-nymph, her neck swathed
in pearls; her bodice of embroidered satin, a short
kirtle of cloth of gold, worked with branches and
leaves ; she wore a mantle of green and silver, and
white buskins tied with green ribbons and adorned
with flowers.

Now enters Chanticleer (Callus), a smart postman,
with a message from the Sun, and almost immediately
follows the " Anticke-Maske of the Song." Silenus
wears a crimson satin doublet, "without wings, collar,
or skirts," with " sleeves of cloth of golde, bases and
gamashaes of the same " ; his Sergeant bears a copper
mace ; his singers were a miller, a cooper, a brewer,
and a vintner's boy ; and their music the tabor and
pipe, a sackbut, viols treble and bass, and a little
mandora lute. Kawasha, in snuff-colour, is carried
on a pole by two Floridans ; his Sergeant holds a
tobacco-pipe "as big as a caliver " ; his shabby band
is headed by a blind harper and his boy. Kawasha is
nicknamed " Potan," after Powhatan, Emperor of
Virginia and father of the Princess Pocohontas. Mr.
Strachey may have been the authority for the name;
for in his Travaile into Virginia he confessed himself

1 Pericles, i. i, u.

408 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

bound to Lord Bacon "by being one of the Graies Inne
Societe."1 The Singers of Silenus began their catch
with this allusion :

" Ahay for and a hoe,
Let's make this great Potan
Drinke off Silenus' kan ;
And when that he well drunke is,
Returne him to his munkies
From whence he came. "

The songs are followed by an " Anticke-masque of
the Dance." Sixteen favourite characters linked hands
and leaped in a madcap round. We can distinguish
Smug the Smith, two Switzers, a Roaring Boy, Maid
Marian with her Sweep, and a Jewess of Portugal.
Loud music sounded and the screens were withdrawn,
and Primavera appeared in a garden "of a glorious
and strange beauty." The Flowers were transformed
into Masquers, magnificent in white satin, with carna
tion and silver embroidery, and with egret-plumes
in their caps, who performed their set figures and sang
their Flower-song.

They selected their partners and trod a measure or so
even before the masque was over ; and when their
vizards were off, they danced in the regular Suite, the
grave Pavane, or a Saraband, and then the vigorous
Galliards and Courantes, and at the end something gay
and brisk like a Morris, when the dancer shook his
bells, "capering upright like a wild Morisco." "They
took their ladies," according to the composer's note,
"with whom they danced Measures, corantoes, duret-
toes, morascoes, galliards " ; and we find a similar phrase
in Beaumont's masque, when the knights take out their
ladies "to dance with them galliards, durets, corantoes,
&c." The nature of the Duret, or Duretto, is unknown.
The Galliard, or Cinquepace, was a swift and wandering

1 W. Strachey, Historic of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, etc., ed.
R. H. Major, i84Q, Dedication to Bacon.

DANCES AT SOMERSET'S MARRIAGE 409

dance, according to Sir John Davies, whose Orchestra
was printed in 1596.

" Five was the number of the Music's feet ;
Which still the Dance did with five paces meet." l

4 'What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?"
asked Sir Toby in Twelfth Night:

" Faith, I can cut a caper : . . . I think I have the back-
trick simply as strong as any man in Illyria."2

We find an allusion to the Galliard in the Boatswain's
speech at the end of The Tempest:

" Where we, in all her trim, freshly beheld
Our royal, good and gallant ship, our master
Capering to eye her."3

There is another allusion to the dance in Howell's
letter to Lady Sunderland on the murder of Bucking
ham : "The Duke did rise up in a well-dispos'd humour
out of his bed, and cut a Caper or two."4

The Courante, or Coranto, was a kind of devious
glissade. The dancer, said Davies, must range, "and
turn, and wind, with unexpected change " :

" What shall I name those current tra vases,
That on a triple Dactyl foot, do run
Close by the ground, with sliding passages ;
Wherein that dancer greatest praise hath won,
Which with best order can all orders shun ? " 5

Amid all these marriage festivities there was an
uneasy suspicion of crime. Sir Thomas Overbury had
been sent to the Tower early in the year, and had died
there on the i5th of September, before the marriage.
It was known that Overbury's real offence was his
attempt to thwart the divorce proceedings. His death
was ascribed to natural causes, but it was thought that
Mrs. Turner was concerned in the case ; and Mrs.

1 Davies, Orchestra, st. 67. a Twelfth Night, i. 3, 127-32.

3 Tempest, v. i, 236-8.

4 Epp Ho-EL, ed. Jacobs, 1892, p. 253 (i. § 5, let. 7 : Stamford, 5 Aug.
1628). 8 Orchestra, st. 69.

410 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

Turner not only professed to be a witch, but was
believed to be a dealer in philtres and poisons. It was
not proved till October, 1615, that Overbury had been
cruelly murdered. The Earl and Countess of Somerset,
Mrs. Turner, and several of their aiders and abetters,
were convicted of murder. Mrs. Turner made a good
end at the three-cornered Tyburn tree ; her good looks
and gold ringlets were accepted by the crowd as suffi
cient proof of her repentance. The Earl and Countess
were pardoned, but dismissed from Court. Somerset
got a new lease for life, as James Howell wrote to his
father about that time, and so had the "articulate
Lady," as they called the Countess, from her "Articles "
against Essex. "She was afraid," says Howell, "that
Coke the Lord Chief-Justice . . . would have made
white Broth of them, but that the Prerogative kept them
from the Pot : yet the subservient Instruments, the
lesser Flies could not break thorow, but lay entangled
in the Cobweb ; amongst others Mistress Turner, the
first inventress of yellow Starch , was executed in a Cob
web Lawn Ruff of that colour at Tyburn, and with her
I believe that yellow Starch, which so much disfigured
our Nation, and rendered them so ridiculous and fan
tastic, will receive its Funeral."1

SHAKESPEARE'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS MASQUES — JONSON'S
" MASQUE OF HYMEN " — PARALLELS WITH " THE TEMPEST "

We return to the wedding of 1606, with the object of
comparing The Tempest with the regular Court-Masques,
and more especially with the " Masque of Hymen and
Festivity at Barriers."

Anne of Denmark was glad of any excuse for a masque.

1 Epp. Ho-El., u.s., pp. 20, 21 (i. § i, let. 2: Broad Street, London,
i March 1618).

MASQUES 411

Her Court, according to Arthur Wilson's history, was
"a continued Maskarado" where she and her ladies
appeared in splendid attire, "like so many Sea-nymphs
. . . to the ravishment of the beholders."1 The
essence of the masque was "pomp and glory": so
said Lord Bacon, who understood the business as well
as the best professional : " These things are but toys
. . . but yet, since princes will have such things, it is
better they should be graced with elegancy than daubed
with cost."2 Mr. Isaac D'Israeli described some of these
festivities in his Curiosities of Literature, and praised
them for their " fairy-like magnificence and lyrical
spirit."3 Mr. Gifford, in the Memoirs of Jonson, goes
deep into the subject.4 The masque, he thought, was a
combination of dialogue, singing, and dancing, har
moniously blended by the use of some slight plot or
fable ; the scenery was costly and splendid ; " the most
celebrated Masters were employed on the songs and
dances " ; and the dresses, on which the ultimate success
depended, were always new and strange, rich to ex
travagance, all gold and jewels :

" Now this mask

Was cried incomparable ; and the ensuing night

Made it a fool and beggar."5

Mr. D'Israeli quotes Warburton's odd saying :
"Shakespeare was an enemy to these fooleries, as
appears by his writing none." This was a hit at
Jonson, who was thought to have classed The Tempest
among common fooleries ; but the word used by him
was "drolleries," a common name for the puppet-
show.6 Malone was scornful at "the wretched taste of
such bungling performances."

1 Wilson, u.s., p. 685, col. 2. '2 Essays, xxxvii.

3 Curiosities of Literature, i2th ed. , 1840, pp. 375-8.

4 Preface to Works of Jonson, u.s., p. 65.

5 King Henry VIII., \. \, 26-8.

* Jonson, Induction to Bart. Fair: "If there be never a servant-
monster in the fair, who can help it, he says . . . ? he is loth to make

4i2 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

But Shakespeare himself was not averse from " revels,
dances, and Masques." There was a masque at York
Place in his Henry VIII. ; in Timon of Athens,
Cupid enters "with a mask of Ladies as Amazons, with
lutes in their hands, dancing and playing " ; and each
of the Lords singled out an Amazon, "and all dance,
men with women, a lofty strain or two to the haut
boys" ; and in Love's Labour's Lost, when the trumpet
sounds, the masquers enter, some as blackamoors and
some in Russian habits, to tread a measure with the
Ladies on the grass.1 In The Tempest we have the
sketch of a Court-masque, as well as a little anti-
masque, or "antic masque," as some used to call it.

Dr. Hurd was a cautious critic ; but he seems to
have fallen into a mistake about this "masque" in The
Tempest. He affirmed that the spectacle of Iris and
the goddesses and the dancing nymphs and husband
men put to shame all the masques of Jonson, not only
in construction, but in the splendour of its show.2
Gifford went to the opposite extreme, in saying that
the little interlude was danced and sung in the ordinary
course "to a couple of fiddles, perhaps, in the balcony
of the stage."

The costumes of Shakespeare's goddesses were prob
ably copied from Samuel Daniel's Royal masque,
performed at Hampton Court in 1604. The stage
directions for dresses and dances were written by
Daniel himself, and are further explained by Mr.
Ernest Law in his reprint. It appears that Queen

nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempests, and such
like drolleries."

1 Henry VIII. , i. 4 ; Timon of Athens, i. 2 ; Loves Labour s Lost, v. 2.

2 Hurd, Dissertation iv., On the Marks of Imitation, in Collected
Works, i8n, vol. ii. p. 251. His actual words are : " The knowledge of
antiquity requisite to succeed in them was, I imagine, the reason that
Shakespeare was not over fond to try his hand at these elaborate trifles.
Once, indeed, he did, and with such success as to disgrace the very best
things of this kind we find in Jonson."

SHAKESPEARE'S DEBT TO MASQUES 413

Anne supplied herself out of Queen Elizabeth's ward
robe ; and at the Tower "there were found no less
than 500 robes, all of the greatest magnificence."1
Some of them, as altered for the masque, were minutely
described by the composer. Venus appeared in a
dove-coloured and silver mantle, embroidered with
doves ; Ceres in straw-colour and silver embroidery,
with ears of corn in her hair ; Tethys in a sea-green
mantle, "with a silver embroidery of waves, and a
dressing of reeds" (for her hair).2 Lord Bacon, we
may observe, preferred spangles: " Oes or spangs,
as they are of no great cost, so they are of most glory :
as for rich Embroidery, it is lost and not discerned."3
Juno took the chief place in the masque. Daniel de
scribed her as wearing a gold crown and a sky-coloured
mantle, embroidered with gold, and figured with pea
cocks' feathers :

" First here Imperiall/«w0 in her Chayre,

With Scepter of command for King-domes large :
Descends, all clad in colours of the Ayre,

Crown 'd with bright Starres, to signifie her charge." 4

Jonson brought out his Masque of Hymen on the
wedding-day, January 5th, 1606, with the help of
Inigo Jones, as contriver of the machines. We con
tinue our extracts from Pory's letter to Cotton.5 " But
to return to the Mask ; both Inigo, Ben, and the Actors,
men and women, did their parts with great commenda
tion. The concert or soul of the Mask was Hymen
bringing in a bride, and Juno Pronuba's priest, a
bridegroom, proclaiming that these two should be
sacrificed to Nuptial Union. And here the Poet made
apostrophe to the Union of the Kingdoms. But before
the sacrifice could be performed, Ben Jonson turned
the globe of the earth, standing behind the altar, and

1 Law, Introd. to The Vision of the T-welve Goddesses, 1880, p. 13.

2 Id., 59-61. * Essays, xxxvii. , u.s.

4 Vision of the T-welve Goddesses, p. 68. 8 See sup., p. 397, note 3.

414 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

within the concave sat the eight men-Maskers repre
senting the four Humours and the four Affections, who
leapt forth to disturb the sacrifice to Union. But,
amidst their fury, Reason, that sat above all, crowned
with burning tapers, came down and silenced them.
These Eight, together with Reason their moderatress,
mounted above their heads, sat somewhat like the
Ladies in the scallop-shell the last year." This was a
reminiscence of Jonson's Masque of Blackness, per
formed on Twelfth-night, 1605, *n which the Queen,
Lady Suffolk, and ten other ladies, appeared as blacka
moors, daughters of Niger.1 The masquers were
placed in a shell of mother-o'-pearl, curiously made to
move "and rise with the billow." The machine was
described, in a letter, by Sir Dudley Carleton:2 "There
was a great engine at the lower end of the room, which
had motion, and in it were the images of sea-horses,
with other terrible fishes, which were ridden by the
Moors ; the indecorum was that there was all fish, and
no water. At the further end was a great shell in form
of a skallop, wherein were four seats." Earlier in the
letter he describes the wedding of Sir Philip Herbert,
afterwards Earl of Montgomery, and Lady Susan Vere,
"performed at Whitehall, with all the honour could
be done a great favourite."3 The phrase serves to
illustrate Prospero's complaint of the plot to confer
fair Milan on his brother, " with all the honours."4

Mr Pory continues as follows : " About the Globe of
Earth hovered a middle region of clouds, in the centre
whereof stood a grand concert of musicians, and upon
the cantons or horns sat the Ladies, four at one corner
and four at another, who descended upon the stage,
not after the stale, downright perpendicular fashion,

1 Jonson, Works, u.s., pp. 544-7.

2 To Sir Ralph Winwood, Jan., 1605. Text in Winwood, Memorials,
etc., 1725, ii. 43-5; Nichols, u.s., ii. 470-6.

8 Vide sup. , pp. 397-8.
4 Tempest, i. 2, 126-7.

PORY'S LETTER TO COTTON 415

like a bucket into a well, but came gently sloping
down."1 These eight represented the nuptial powers of
Juno, such as "Juga," "who made one, of twain," and
" Curis" whose office was to deck the "fair tresses"
of the bride. "The men were clad in crimson, and
the women in white." Mr. Pory is only describing the
general effect. "They had every one a white plume of
the richest hern's feathers, and were so rich in jewels
upon their heads as was most glorious. I think they
hired and borrowed all the principal jewels and ropes of
pearl both in Court and City. The Spanish Ambassador
seemed but poor to the meanest of them. They danced
all the variety of dances both severally and promiscue ;
and then the women and men, as namely, the Prince,
who danced with as great perfection and as settled a
majesty as could be devised, the Spanish Ambassador
. . . &c. And the men gleaned out of the Queen, the
bride, and the greatest of the Ladies."

The dancers performed several intricate figures,
ending with a Ladies' Chain, when all took other
partners to dance Measures, Galliards, and Corantoes.
The whole "scene" being drawn again, and covered
with clouds, they left off these "intermixed dances,"
and danced in figures again, ending up with a circle or
inner ring round the altar of sacrifice.

" Up, youths ! hold up your lights in air,
And shake abroad their flaming hair.
Now move united, and in gait,
As you, in pairs, do front the state."

The writer of the masque had ransacked antiquity
for his marriage-lore. He was familiar with every detail
of the Athenian and Roman weddings ; and the piece
was printed with an apparatus of notes from the gram
marians and poets.2 It was a nourishing and sound

1 A can/on, in heraldry, is the eighth part of the escutcheon, cut off by
cross lines.

2 In Jonson's Works, u.s., pp. 552-61.

416 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

meat, said Father Ben, though some were too squeamish
to enjoy it ; let them take on their empty trenchers "a
few Italian herbs, picked up and made into a salad."
"It is not my fault, if I fill them out nectar, and they
run to metheglin."1

The opening is full of the ceremonies described by
,Varro and Festus. The scene or curtains being
"drawn," an altar was discovered, to which advanced
five pages with waxen tapers: "behind them, one
representing a Bridegroom : his hair short, and bound
with party-coloured ribands and gold twist : his gar
ments purple and white." On the other side entered
Hymen in a saffron-coloured robe, "his head crowned
with roses and marjoram, in his right hand a torch
of pine-tree." After him a youth in white, carrying
a torch of white-thorn, and under his arm "a little
wicker flasket," and then two men in white, with distaff
and spindle.

Now one enters personating the bride, her hair flow
ing and loose and lightly dusted with grey; "on her
head a garland of roses, like a turret " ; her garments
white ; on her back a fleece hanging down ; " her zone,
or girdle about her waist of white wool, fastened with
the Herculean knot." Next marched the two " hand-
fasters," or joiners of hands,2 and two that sang and
carried the water and fire, and the musicians crowned
with roses. Near the altar stood the globe, or micro
cosm, called the "huge body" and "little world of
man," from which rushed out the men-masquers "with
a kind of contentious music." Hymen is alarmed and
cries to his torch-bearers :

" Save, save the virgins ; keep your hallow'd lights
Untouch'd ; and with their flame defend our rites."

When Reason has restored peace, she describes the

1 Preface to Masque.

2 Called in the text "Auspices."

JONSON'S MASQUE OF HYMEN 417

ceremonies, the meaning of the flask, the distaff and
spindle, and the mystical dress of the bride ; her hair
shed with grey, the fleece and the utensils of spinning,
imply that she is now a matron :

" The Zone of wool about her waist,
Which, in contrary circles cast,
Doth meet in one strong knot, that binds,
Tells you, so should all married minds.
And lastly, these five waxen lights
Imply perfection in the rites."

The speech of Reason concludes the " first masque " ;
we are now to see the entrance of the "women-mas
quers," and the vision of Juno, Queen of Heaven, the
Dispenser and Governor of Marriages. The upper
part of "the scene" was all of clouds, "made artifici
ally to swell and ride like the rack" ; "the air clearing,
in the top thereof was discovered Juno, sitting in a chair,
supported by two beautiful peacocks"; she wore a white
diadem and a veil tied with "several coloured silks,"
and crowned with a garland of lilies and roses." At
her feet stood Iris, her messenger, and on either side
the ladies that were to act in " the second masque " :

" And see where Juno, whose great name
Is Unio, in the anagram,
Displays her glittering state and chair,
As she enlightened all the air !
Hark how the charming tunes do beat
In sacred concords 'bout her seat ! "

The ladies descend, in clouds that stoop gently down
to earth, and begin their dances in circles round "the
harmonious sphere of Love."

"Such was the exquisite performance," said Ben
Jonson ; "... nor was there wanting whatsoever
might give to the furniture or complement ; either in
riches, or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of dances,
magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of music."
2 E

418 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

The costumes of the eight lords were copied from
ancient statues, "with some modern additions: which
made it both graceful and strange." They wore
Persian crowns and tight coats of "carnation cloth of
silver," with streamers, or "labels," of white satin,
sleeves of "watchet cloth of silver," capes of several-
coloured silks, and silver greaves. Jonson considered
that the ladies' attire was "full of glory" ; "the upper
part of white cloth of silver, wrought with Juno's birds
and fruits " ; a loose garment of carnation and silver,
and a golden zone ; another flowing robe of watchet
and gold ; all made " round and swelling," with a look
of the "farthingale" fashion; "their shoes were
azure and gold, set with rubies and diamonds ; so were
all their garments ; and every part abounding in orna
ment."

"No less to be admired," said Jonson, was "the
whole machine of the spectacle," the first part consist
ing of the globe, "filled with countries, and those
gilded ; where the sea was exprest, heightened with
silver waves." The upper part was crowned with a
statue of Jupiter the Thunderer, above a sphere of fire
moving so swiftly that no eye could distinguish its
colour. In this high region, between painted clouds,
sat Juno on her golden throne, encircled with meteors
and blazing stars ; below her a rainbow in which sat
musicians in costumes of varied colours, to represent
"Airy Spirits."1

In the masque of The Fortunate Isles and their Union,
produced in January, i625-6,2 Jonson described the
proper dress of one of these companions of Ariel.
"His Majesty being set, enter, running, Jophiel, an
airy spirit . . . attired in light silks of several
colours, with wings of the same, a bright yellow hair,

1 Jonson's notes, at end of Masque.

2 Jonson's Works, u.s., pp. 648-52.

THE MASQUE AND BARRIERS 419

a chaplet of flowers, blue silk stockings, and pumps,
and gloves, with a silver fan in his hand " :

" Sir, my name is Jophiel,
Intelligence unto the sphere of Jupiter,
An airy jocular Spirit, employed to you
From Father Outis."

The sketch of an "Aery Spirit" by Inigo Jones is pre
served in the Duke of Devonshire's Library. It was
copied in facsimile in the volume upon Inigo Jones,
printed for the Shakespeare Society ; x but so far as we
can judge, it was intended neither for Ariel nor for
Jophiel. We see no chaplet on the yellow curls, no
gloves or fan, and the silk stockings and dancing-
pumps are replaced by buskins of an ancient fashion.
There is no reason for doubting the accuracy of
Jonson's description. We suppose that he was present
at the masque of The Fortunate Isles ; and we have his
own note on the earlier occasion that his " airy Spirits "
appeared "in habits various," and in dresses of
"several colours."

The Monday evening was devoted to the sports of
the barriers, a kind of military masque combined with
an assault of arms. A dispute about marriage was to
arise between "Truth," in a blue dress and a wreath of
palm, and her rival " Opinion," an impostor who had
chosen the same costume. This dispute could only be
decided by arms ; and two sets of champions advanced
with pikes and swords to the bar set across the hall.
The Duke of Lennox commanded fifteen "Knights in
carnation and white " for Truth ; the Earl of Sussex led
as many in watchet and white for her rival. They
were all led to the dais by the Earl of Nottingham,
Lord High Constable for that night, supported by the
Earl of Worcester as Earl-Marshal ; and the champions
then fought, at first in pairs, and afterwards three to

1 Edited by Peter Cunningham, J. R. Planche, and J. P. C.ollier, 1848.

420 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

three ; "and performed it with that alacrity and vigour,
as if Mars himself had been to triumph before Venus,
and invented a new Masque."1

The military entertainment has little connection with
The Tempest, except as being an appendix or "corol
lary " to the actual wedding-masque ; but there are
lines and phrases in it which will be found useful in
explaining certain difficult passages in the play. "You
look wearily," says Miranda ;

" No, noble mistress ; 'tis fresh morning with me
When you are by at night."2

This seems to mean that Miranda's eyes were the
heavens in which his sunlight dawned. Calderon has
the same thought in his play Bien vengas, Mai, where
the bright sun rises in the lady's eyes; "En tus ojos,
Senora, madrugaba el claro Sol" ; 3 and in the speech of
Truth at the barriers we find the couplet :

" Marriage Love's object is ; at whose bright eyes
He lights his torches, and calls them his skies."

The same speech contains a reference to "mirrors
decked with diamonds." This affords an illustration of
Prospero's words: "When I have decked the sea with
drops full salt," and Caliban's talk of "brave utensils
for so he calls them, which, when he has a house, he'll
deck withal."4 In the Two Gentlemen of Verona the
lady's glove is called "Sweet ornament that decks a
thing divine."5 Shakespeare may have thought of the
be-diamonded mirror, or of the sea as personified as
Tethys. We perceive that the word, as used by him,
always implies the idea of adornment. We take

1 Jonson's notes on the Masque, among the stage-directions.

2 Tempest, iii. i, 32-4.

3 Bien vengas, Mai, Jornada i. Escena 5, in Hartzenbusch's ed. of
Calderon, vol. iv. p. 310, col. 3.

4 Tempest, i. 2, 155 ; iii. 2, 104-5.

8 Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii, 1,4.

ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES 421

another instance from the first scene in the Midsummer
Night's Dream :

" When Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass." l

Dr. Johnson thought it absurd to suppose that the
sea could be adorned with teardrops. Decking, he
thought, was "covering," as a deck covers the ship.
"In some parts," he added, "they yet say deck the
table" Yet here again we can surely detect the idea
of display and adornment. Malone introduced a new
idea, which received a very general approval. ' ' To deck,
I am told, signifies in the North, to sprinkle"* He
cited Mr. John Ray's Collection of English Words > not
generally used, first printed in 1674, an<^ afterwards in
1691. Among the north-country words we find " deg "
and "leek," in the sense of sprinkling? In many
glossaries, " deg " is specially used for sprinkling linen
before ironing in the laundry ; and the servants in
Holderness are bidden to sprinkle the pavement before
sweeping it: "Dag causey, afoor thoo sweeps it."
Among Ray's South and East Country Words we find
the following definition : " Dag ; Dew upon the Grass.
Hence Daggle-tail is spoken of a Woman that hath
dabbled her Coats with Dew, Wet, or Dirt." It seems
almost certain that Shakespeare's phrase bore the mean
ing belonging to it in literary English. There is also
a difficulty about the drops being "full salt," as salt
as the waves. Why, it may be asked, should Prospero
make a point about salt tears and salt seas? There
is certainly an obscurity about the argument ; but
perhaps we may take it as an instance of the " pathetic
fallacy " by which external nature is treated as being in

1 Midsummer Night's Dream, i. i, 209-11.

2 Johnson and Malone on Tempest, i. 2, 155, in Boswell's Malone,
vol. xv.

3 p. 4, "to Deg, v. Leek ; p. 26, Leek on, pour on more, Liquor, v.g."

422 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

harmony with human feelings. Prospero himself, a
few lines earlier in his speech, had found mercy and
protection in the waves and winds :

" There they hoist us,

To cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sigh
To the winds whose pity, sighing back again,
Did us but loving wrong. " 1

For a modern example we might take the stanza from
Lord Tennyson's Maud on the wind in the mead :

" From the meadow your walks have left so sweet

That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes." 2

1 Tempest, i. 2, 148-51. 2 Tennyson, Maud, part i. xxii.

III. THE MARRIAGE OF THE
PRINCESS ELIZABETH, 1613

ACCOUNT OF THE MARRIAGE CEREMONIES

'THE TEMPEST was certainly acted at Court
shortly before the Princess Elizabeth's wedding.
It may have been on the list of plays ordered for
performance during the preceding autumn, but its
production, in that case, was considerably delayed by
the illness and death of the Prince of Wales in
November, 1612.

Prince Frederick, the accepted suitor, arrived in
London about the middle of October. He was the
object of great popular interest, the nation regarding
him as a pillar of the Protestant cause. He was usually
known as the Palsgrave, as being Count of the
Pfalz, the Palatinate of the Rhine. He was also an
Elector of the Empire, and held the nominal dignity
of Arch-server, or "Arch-sewer of the Dishes," at the
imperial banquets. The "Sewer" was an official who
placed the dishes on the table, as we learn from Over-
bury's character of "a Puny Clerk" : "he practices to
make the words in his declaration spread as a sewer
doth the dishes of a niggard's table."1 His other
titles were enumerated by the kings-at-arms, "the high
and mighty Prince Frederick, by the grace of God,
Count Palatine of the Rhine, Arch-sewer and Prince

1 Overbury, Characters, in Character Writings of the Seventeenth
Century, ed. Henry Morley, 1891, p. 67.

423

424 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, Duke of Bavaria,
and Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter."1

Before his marriage he was lower in rank than the
Lady Elizabeth, "sole daughter of the Crown of
England." After the marriage she took the place next
below her husband — a circumstance of great use in
fixing the order in which the plays were performed.
It was on this point of precedence that the Queen
opposed the match, and threatened not to go to the
wedding. James Howell, who knew the gossip of
Denmark House, heard that Queen Anne's affection
for her daughter had diminished, "so that she would
often call her Goody Palsgrave '."2 He writes later on,
when Frederick had lost his crown at the battle of
Prague, that the Duke of Brunswick was going to
help the Lady Elizabeth, "who, in the Low Countries
and some parts of Germany, is called the Queen
of JBoheme, and for her winning princely comportment,
The Queen of Hearts"* Ben Jonson had praised her
as a girl in the speeches at Prince Henry's barriers in
a stately passage :

"... That most princely maid, whose form might call
The world to war, and make it hazard all
His valour for her beauty ; she shall be
Mother of nations, and her princes see
Rivals almost to these."4

Nor can it be said that these matters have lost all
savour of political interest, since the Crown was settled
by authority of Parliament upon the heirs, being Pro
testants, of the Electress Sophia, daughter of Eliza
beth, late Queen of Bohemia.

On the 25th of October, 1612, Prince Henry was
seized with a fever. Some attributed it to a chill after

1 Nichols, Progresses of James I. , ii. 523.

2 Epp. Ho-EL, ed. J. Jacobs, 1892, p. 105 (bk. i. § 2, let. 7 : 30 March
1618). 3 Id., p. 112 (bk. i. § 2, let. 12 : 19 March 1622).

4 Jonson, Works, ed. Gifford, 1838, p. 580.

DEATH OF PRINCE HENRY 425

tennis at Hampton Court and a long swim in the river,
and others to carelessness in diet. Sir Simonds D'Ewes
preserved a tradition that the Prince was bewitched
by Mrs. Turner, at the instigation of Overbury, who
advised "removing out of the way and world that
royal youth by fascination, and was himself afterwards
in part an instrument for the effecting of it."1 Even Sir
Theodore de Mayerne, the King's physician, was in
dread of some planetary influence, for on the 2Qth he
saw a double rainbow, with one end in the fields and
the other resting on a room at St. James' where a lady
had lately died.2 A doctor at that time required to
know something of the occult, or, as Nick Culpepper
told Mr. Ward of Stratford, "a physitian without
astrologie" was " like a pudden without fat."3 John
Chamberlain, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, said that
it was a case of "the ordinary ague," but others put
it down to "the New Disease," which was breaking
out in all parts of the country.4 Dr. C. Creighton
considered that the symptoms pointed to typhus,5 and
Dr. Norman Moore discussed it in the Reports of
St. Bartholomew's Hospital as "the earliest case of
typhoid fever on record."6

The Hallowmas plays and revels had been com
manded for the November festivities ; but on the ist
of the month all the announcements were postponed on
account of a bad bulletin from St. James' House. The
next morning's report was more favourable: "His
Highness was never so well as on this the 8th day,
throughout the disease." But the improvement was
followed by a relapse, and on the 6th of November the
Prince died.

1 Sir Simonds D'Ewes' Autobiography, ed. Halliwell, 1845, i. 91.

2 Nichols, u.s. , ii. 477. 3 Vide supra, p. 306.
4 Text in Nichols, u.s., ii. 487.

8 Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain, 1891, i. 536.
6 The Illness and Death of Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1612, 1882. See
elaborate account by Sir Charles Cornwallis, in Nichols, u.s., ii. 469-87.

426 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

A public mourning of nearly six months was ordered.
The Court was to wear black till the 29th of March,
and the wedding was fixed for May-day. " It would
be thought absurd," writes Chamberlain, "that foreign
ambassadors, coming to condole the Prince's death,
should find us feasting and dancing : so that it is de
ferred till May-day."1 The lying in state lasted till the
7th of December, when the Prince was buried in West
minster Abbey.

The espousals or "affiancing of the royal pair" took
place on the 27th. The mourning was interrupted for
the occasion, and the Children of the Revels from
Whitefriars were allowed to act The Coxcomb at
the palace.2 The service was conducted in French,
but according to the English ritual. The Princess
wore black velvet, " semee of crosslets or quatrefoils
silver," and a white aigrette in her hair. The Prince
was also in black, and wore a velvet cloak " caped with
gold lace." The Archbishop presided at the espousals;
Sir Thomas Lake gave out the " Mot, Frederic,"
and "Mot, Elisabeth": "I, Frederick, take thee,
Elizabeth, to my wedded wife," etc., "and thereto I
plight thee my troth"; "I, Elizabeth, take thee, Fre
derick, to my wedded husband," and so forth. The
translation was so bad, and the responses were so
gabbled over and badly pronounced, that the Princess
began to laugh, and then broke into a "fou rire" in
which the company joined, until the Archbishop ended
the scene by reading the blessing.3 The contract pro
vided that these espousals should be followed by "a
true and lawful marriage," because the betrothal of the

1 Chamberlain to Carleton, 19 Nov. 1612, in Dom. State Papers, vol.
Ixxi. no. 38. Text in Nichols, u.s., ii. 489.

2 See F. G. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of English Drama, 1891,
i. 185-6.

3 See Chamberlain to Carleton, 31 Dec. 1612, in Dom. State Papers,
u.s., no. 70; Chamberlain to Winwood, 23 Feb. 1612-13, in Winwood,
u.s., iii. 434-5; Nichols, u.s, ii. 513-16.

ESPOUSALS OF THE PRINCESS 427

Princess did not amount to a marriage under the
"family law," or "Law of the Crown," though the
effect might have been different in the case of an
ordinary subject.

As soon as the betrothal was over, the Palsgrave's
counsellors began to press for an advancement of the
marriage, the Prince being anxious to return to Heidel
berg, and hoping to start about the middle of April.
The Court mourning barely lasted over Twelfth-night.
On the 5th of January the children from Whitefriars
acted Cupid's Revenge before Prince Charles, the Lady
Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine, the Princess still
retaining her relative rank.1 After the play Sir Thomas
Lake wrote to his friend Carleton : "The black is
wearing out, and the marriage pomps preparing."1
The household was subscribing for a masque, and the
Inns of Court were busy at magnificent shows.

The river sports at Shrovetide formed the people's
share of the festivities. They began on the nth of
February with a show of fireworks in front of the
galleries at Whitehall. The artillery roared from
Lambeth while St. George fought the dragon, and the
deer was chased by flaming hounds; "and as the
culverins played upon the Earth, the fire- works danced
in the air." When the smoke cleared off, a Christian
fleet was seen advancing against a Turkish fortress,
"ships and gallies bravely rigd with top and top
gallant, their flagges and streamers waving like men-
of-warr." On the Saturday there was a sea-fight off
Whitehall Stairs between Christian and Turkish fleets
rigged out by Mr. Bettis, the chief shipwright at
Chatham. A fort called the Castle of Argier had been
set up at Stangate, in Lambeth, "environed with
craggie rocks as the Castle is now situate in Turkic."

1 Fleay, u.s., i. 186-7.

2 Lake to Carleton, 6 Jan. 1613, in Dom. Slate Papers, vol. Ixxii.
no. 6.

428 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

The Algerine pirates first captured a Spanish argosy
and two Venetian ships, and then an English fleet was
seen "with their red crost streamers most gallantly
waving in the ayre." The English Admiral took the
pirate's galleys and the castle itself, and the Turkish
Commander, "attired in a red jacket with blue sleeves,"
and all his bashaws and officers, were taken to the
private stairs, where the Prince Palatine and the Lady
Elizabeth were stationed.1

On Shrove Sunday, being St. Valentine's Day, the
marriage took place in the Chapel-Royal at Whitehall.
From Henry Peacham's Period of Mourning, £r>c., with
Nuptiall Hymnes, we learn that it was a "sunshine
wedding " :

" Heaven, the first, hath throwne away
Her weary weede of mourning hew,
And waites Eliza's Wedding-day
In starry-spangled gown of blew."

The ceremonies are described in the " Old Cheque-book
of the Chapel," and in a tract by William Burley,
which has been quoted already. The procession
started from the council chamber, on the river-side of
Holbein's gate, and passed through the presence-room
and guard-chamber to a banqueting-house erected for
the occasion, and then crossed the courtyard by a plat
form set up near the north gate, and thence to the
great chamber near the tilt-yard, and through the
lobby, and downstairs to the chapel, " into which this
Royal troupe marched in this order"; first came the
bridegroom, arrayed in cloth of silver (called "white
satin " in some accounts), richly embroidered with
silver, with all the young gallants and gentlemen of
the Court ; but there entered the chapel only sixteen
young bachelors, so many as the bridegroom was
years old. When he was seated, the bride was intro
duced : "the Lady Elizabeth," says Burley, "in her

1 Tract by William Burley, printed in Nichols, u.s,, ii. 539-41.

THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 429

virgin-robes, clothed in a gowne of white sattin . . .
upon her head a crown of refined golde, made Imperiall
by the pearls and diamonds thereupon placed, which
were so thicke beset that they stood like shining
pinnacles upon her amber-coloured haire, dependantly
hanging playted downe over her shoulders to her
waste." l The description in the official record is even
more picturesque : " She was supported or ledd by the
Prince Charles on the righte hand, and the Earl of
Northampton, Lord Privie Scale, on the left hand,
attended with 16 younge Ladies and Gentlewomen of
honor bearinge her traine, which was of cloth of silver
as her gowne was, her hayre hanginge doune at length
dressed with ropes of pearle, and a Coronett uppon
her head richly dect with precious stones."1 Opinions
differed about the appearance of the King and Queen.
The official report described them as gloriously arrayed.
The King wore the great diamond in his felt hat ; but
John Chamberlain wrote: "The King, me thought,
was somewhat strangely attired, in a cap and feathers,
with a Spanish cope and a long stocking." The
Queen wore all her jewels, "a Lady walled about with
diamonds " ; and it was agreed on all sides that their
Majesties must have carried at least a million's worth
of jewels between them.3

The form of the banns is preserved in the Old Cheque
book of the Chapel-Royal at Whitehall. The first
asking was in these terms, and they were all in a
similar form: "I aske the banes of matrimonie be
tween the two great Princes, Fredericke Prince Elector
Count Palatine of Reine of the one partie, and the
Lady Elizabethe her Grace, the only daughter of the
highe and mightie King of Great Brittany of the other

1 Id., pp. 541-9.

2 Old Cheque-book of the Chapel Royal, ed. Rimbault, p. 464.

8 Chamberlain to Alice Carleton, 18 Feb. 1613, in Dom. State Papers,
Ixxii. no. 30. Text in Nichols, u.s., ii. 588.

430 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

partie. If any man can shew any cause why these two
Princes may not be lawfully joyned in matrimony, let
him speake, for this is [the first time of asking]." The
memorandum continues : " First asked in the Chappell
at Whithall the last daye of Januarie, 1612, (1613, New
Style), and there also the second of Februarie next
followinge the second tyme, and the third tyme at
Winsore the yth daie of the foresaid Februarie. The
Prince Palatine beinge installed Knight of the Garter
the same daie."1 Mention is made in Ward's Diary of
a double calling of the banns ; Mr. Washburn, of
Oriel, was the Vicar's authority: " I have heard that
King James would have his daughter askt three times
in the church, which accordingly shee was, in St.
Margaret's, Westminster."2

The whole assembly being settled in their places,
the service began with an anthem, followed by a
sermon by the Dean (James Montague, Bishop of
Bath and Wells) ; while another anthem was in sing
ing, the Archbishop and Dean put on their "rich
copes," and after the singing was over ascended
the steps of the throne, "where these Two great
Princes were married by the Archbishop of Canter
bury, in all points according to the Book of Common
Prayer ; the Prince Palatine speaking the words of
marriage in English after the Archbishop."3

Their Majesties retired after the wedding, the bride
and bridegroom dining in state in the new banqueting-
hall;4 and after dinner the household presented The
Masque of Frantics, composed by Dr. Campion, with
scenery by Inigo Jones.5 There was a revolving firma
ment, and stars moving in their spheres. " I suppose,"
said Campion, "fewe have ever seene more neate arti
fice than Master Innigoe Jones showed in contriving"

1 Old Cheque-Book, u.s., p. 163. 2 Vide supra, p. 254.

8 Tract in Nichols, u.s. , ii. 546-7. * Id., 548.

5 The Lords' Maske, printed in Nichols, u.s. , ii. 554-65.

SHROVE SUNDAY AND MONDAY, 1613 431

this "motion." l The argument was dull, and wanting
in light and shade ; all the characters were mad, and
the ladies complained that "it was more like a Play
than a Masque."

Shrove Monday was devoted to sports in the tilt-
yard. The tilting itself was arranged like a scene in
a comedy. The King took the ring on his spear three
times, and the trumpets sounded, and the people
shouted for joy. The Palatine took it twice, and the
crowd roared again, and his own silver trumpets
saluted the Prince of the Rhine. Little Prince Charles
rode five times and scored four rings, " a sight of much
admiration, and an exceeding comfort to all the land."3
The glory of such sports, said Lord Bacon, depended
on the "bravery" of the liveries, and the "goodly
furniture " of the horses and armour,4 so that perhaps
we should mention some of the tradesmen, whose bills
are preserved to this day. The Guards wore scarlet,
with velvet facings, provided by Mr. Danson, His
Majesty's tailor ; the spangles and circles came from
Mr. Giles Simpson, the Court goldsmith ; and all the
embroidery was supplied by Mr. William Broderick,
successor to Mr. Parr of Blackfriars, who had been
for twenty-five years embroiderer to Queen Elizabeth
and the reigning King.

In the evening, the gentlemen of Lincoln's Inn and
the Middle Temple rode in procession through the
Strand to Whitehall. They started from the Rolls
House in Chancery Lane, Sir Edward Phelips leading
the way, with witty Dick Martin, whom the King
delighted to honour. Sixty gentlemen rode after them
upon armoured chargers, with torch-bearers and pages
at their sides. Then came a rabble-rout of boys on
ponies and donkeys, with monkey-faces for the anti-
masque ; they wore Italian hats and cart-wheel ruffs,

1 Id., p. 558. * Chamberlain to Winwood, u.s., p. 426, note 3.

3 Tract in Nichols, u.s. , ii. 549-50. 4 Bacon, Essays, xxxvii.

432 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

or starched " pickadills," and as they rode they tossed
handfuls of " cockle-demoys " among the crowd. After
them came the cars and pageants. In one of them the
musicians sat, disguised as Virginian conjurers, in
turbans lit up with fireflies and bright with plumes ; in
another sat the Emperor Powhatan and his Indian
lords ; and in a third the Goddess of Honour was en
throned, arrayed in welkin-blue, and her fair tresses
"in tucks braided up with silver." On reaching the
Palace the cortege passed through the gateway by
Scotland Yard, and so through the tilt-yard into the
park, riding round the buildings till they came to
the banqueting-hall ; and here they performed the
masque, written by George Chapman, and sang the
nuptial ode, which appears in the printed book.1

On Shrove Tuesday the King held a grand recep
tion. "In the evening," wrote Chamberlain, "there
was much expectation of a Play, to be acted in the
Great Hall by the King's Players, and many hundreds
of people were taking up their positions for it. But it
had been arranged that the Gentlemen of the Inner
Temple and Gray's Inn should present a Masque called
The Marriage of the Thames and Rhine, devised by Sir
Francis Bacon, with words by Frank Beaumont."2 This
entertainment brought in many witty allusions to The
Tempest. The procession came by water, from Win
chester House upon Bank-side up the river to White
hall Stairs, and the gateway between the crowded long
windows of the galleries. The dresses, it was agreed,
were magnificent, Sir Francis and the poet in velvet,
the masqueraders in cloth of gold, "with other robes,"
said the ladies, "of much delight and pleasure." All
went well at first, John Chamberlain reports in a letter
of gossip to Miss Alice Carleton ; but when they

1 Tract in Nichols, u.s., ii. 550- i. See Chamberlain's letter of 18 Feb.,
u.s., and full account of procession and masque in Nichols, ii. 566-86.

2 Printed in Nichols, u.s. , ii. 591-600.

MASQUE OF THE TWO INNS 433

reached the hall, " O, spite of spites," there was
nothing but a new Comedy of Errors. "By what ill
planet it fell out I know not ; they came home as they
went without doing anything." The King was tired
out and dazed with sleep. Bacon remembered what
His Majesty had said when the Prince was becoming
too popular. "They are trying to bury me quick,"
said King James. They tried to rouse him with an
echo of his royal wit: "Nay, your Majesty, do not
bury us quick!" "Well then," said the King, "you
must bury me quick, for I can last no longer." The
masque was perforce adjourned until the Saturday
evening ; and the gentlemen went sadly back to their
barges, having shown all their new dresses for nothing.
When they returned on the Saturday, they were shown
into the banqueting-hall, where noisy revels were
going on, and there was a terrible squeezing and
jostling.1 "All is nothing," Lord Bacon notes in his
Essay, "except the room be kept clear and neat."1
The Lady Bess came in to see the masque, though she
had been laughing all the afternoon over The Dutch
Courtesan, as presented by her own players in the
Cock-pit. The show passed off very well, amid showers
of compliments ; and Sir Francis Bacon and his friend
Beaumont, with forty other " Inns-of-Court Men," were
invited to a solemn banquet in the same pavilion next
night.

The King won the expenses of the banquet from the
Palatine and his German knights in a Sunday morning
tilt. The winners had all the amusement, for the room
was so small that there was no space for the losers to
sit down ; and a letter from young Lady Rich is still
preserved among the State Papers, complaining that
her husband "had to pay .£30, and could not even
have a drink for his money."

1 Id., pp. 589-90. a Bacon, u.s.

2 F

434 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

PLAYS ACTED AT WHITEHALL AND HAMPTON COURT, 1613 —
STORY OF THE " VERTUE MSS. "

It is possible to get near the exact date at which The
Tempest was performed in the pretty Court-theatre at
Whitehall. We have the list of plays shown before
Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Pals
grave, who was styled "Prince Palatine" after the
espousals ; and since that contract, said Chamberlain,
was "usually prayed for in the Church among the
King's Children."1 After the wedding he was com
monly called "His Highness, Count Palatine." We
have seen that the Princess had precedence, till she
was married, so that we know which plays were acted
before February the i4th ; but after that day there was
an immediate change, which may be illustrated by the
following examples. On the 2Oth of February her
company were paid the usual £6. 13$. <\d. for acting
Cockle-demoy ', before Bacon and Beaumont presented
their masque, the comedy being played "before the
Prince's Highness Count Palatine Elector and the
Lady Elizabeth " ; and on June the yth, William
Rowley was paid on behalf of the Prince's Company
for performing the first and second parts of The Knaves
on the and and the 5th of March, "before His High
ness Count Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth."2 We
know that from the gth of January the Court-mourning
had been relaxed, so that it became allowable to enjoy
the sorrows of the stage. The King left London for
Royston and Newmarket on January the nth, the
Prince Palatine remaining in town. John Chamberlain

1 Chamberlain to Winwood, 9 Jan. 1612-13. Text in Winwood,
u.s., ii. 421 ; Nichols, -u.s., ii. 515.

2 P. Cunningham, Plays acted at Court Anno i6zj (Shakespeare
Society's Papers, 1844-9, ''• I24)-

PLAYS AT WHITEHALL 435

wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood on the subject. "The
day of the King's departure hence, the Lord Arch
bishop feasted the Palsgrave's followers, which he took
so kindly that, when they were ready to sit down,
himself came, though he were neither invited nor ex
pected. The Entertainment was very great, and such
as became the giver and receiver. The Prince Palatine
goes to be installed at Windsor the seventh of the next
month. . . . Yesternight (the 28th of January), the
Prince Palatine feasted all the Councill at Essex House,
where, in regard of the good entertainment he found
with the Archbishop, he showed more kindness and
caresses to him and his followers than to all the rest
put together."1

We may fairly suppose that soon after the King's de
parture the Royal Company were ordered to attend with
their repertoire. We take an early date for convenience,
and reckon that the Royal Company began their set
of fourteen plays for the Princess about the i5th
January. The King returned to Whitehall on the
2nd of February and left again on the 5th. There is
a separate list of plays presented before him on a
different scale of payments ; and it is possible that in
the short stay in London he may have seen "one play
called A bad beginning makes a good ending" perhaps
a shorter version of All's Well that ends Well^ Fletcher's
Captain, or Jonson's Alchemist. The Palatine's absence
at Windsor and his attendance at the public sports
when he returned fill up the period so closely that we
may suppose the fourteen plays to have been acted
during the last sixteen days of January, omitting the
28th, on account of the entertainment at Essex House.
The Tempest was sixth on the list, so that it was prob
ably performed on the 2ist of January, or close upon
that time.2

1 Chamberlain to Winwood, 29 Jan. 1612-13. Text in Winwood,
u.s., ii. 428-30; Nichols, u.s., ii. 517. 2 Cunningham, u.s., p. 125.

436 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

The Palatine was installed in St. George's Chapel
on the 7th of February. Mr. Nichols gives us an
account of the ceremony from the relation of Mr.
Howes: "The Palsgrave in person, and the Grave
Maurice by his deputie Count Lodowic of Nassau, his
cousin, were installed as Knights of the Garter at
Windsor, in the presence of the King, Prince, and
Nobility."1 We learn from a letter from Chamberlain
to Sir Dudley Carleton that the King and the Princes
came back to London on Tuesday, the gth of February.2
We may allow two days for the journey to Windsor,
for the preparations and unpacking, and perhaps a
day's rest after a long, cold ride. We can imagine the
bustle and tumult through the whole countryside by
reading what the Welsh parson said of all the hosts " of
Readins, of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, of horses and
money," and remembering from the same Merry Wives
of Windsor how Dr. Caius bawled in French-English
for the host of the Garter: "Here, Master Doctor, in
perplexity and doleful dilemma." "I cannot tell vat
is dat ; but it is tell-a me dat you make grand prepara
tion for a duke de Jamany."3

The lists of plays acted at Court, as it appears in the
SJwkespeare Society's Papers, was said to be taken
"from the accounts of Lord Harrington, Treasurer of
the Chamber to King James I." Mr. Cunningham, who
edited the article, intended perhaps to refer to John,
Lord Harington of Exton, cousin of Sir John Haring-
ton, translator of the Orlando.* The list is to be
ascribed in reality to John, Lord Stanhope of Harring
ton, who was Lord Treasurer of the King's chamber

1 Nichols, u.s. , ii. 522-3.

2 Chamberlain to Carleton, n Feb. 1613, Dom, State Papers, Ixxii.
no. 26. Text in Nichols, u.s. , ii. 524.

3 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 5, 80-9.

4 Lord Harington of Exton had been guardian of the Princess in
1605 ; he escorted her to Germany after her marriage, and died at
Worms as he returned.

LORD STANHOPE OF HARRINGTON 437

in 1613, and held the office till 1618. The reversion
to his place had at one time been procured for the
unfortunate Overbury ; but it was purchased by
Sir William Uvedale soon after "the poisoning
business."1

The Treasurer of the Chamber was in effect the
director of the King's amusements. As King James
loved outdoor sports, Lord Stanhope's business was
chiefly concerned with hunting and hawking at Theo
balds Park. There are numerous entries on the sub
ject among the Domestic State Papers and the copies
of Danish Archives at the Public Record Office. We
may read of the gerfalcons from Iceland, a herd of
great stags from Denmark, tame elks brought from the
forests between Norway and Sweden, and a cheetah, or
hunting-leopard, which we assume to have been "a
present from the Sophy." The Treasurer accounted
for the expense of the never-ending progresses, the
hunting at Royston, the tennis at Hampton Court, the
plays, masques, and Court entertainments.

By the list before us we find that The Tempest must
have been acted at Whitehall about the 22nd of January,
1612, Old Style, or 1613, by the "historical reckoning."
The accounts show a payment to Mr. John Heminge of
£93. 6s. 8d. for presenting fourteen several plays. This
was the correct amount, according to the ancient scale
of fees ; but in some copies, and among others in
Mr. Cunningham's paper, the amount was stated as
.£94. 6s. 8d. , perhaps merely a copyist's error.

The Privy Council records show that John Heminge,
as Treasurer to the King's Players, received £80 on
a warrant of the igth of May, 1613, for eight perform
ances before His Majesty. Some of them may have
taken place at Whitehall ; but Steevens puts down
six of them, at any rate, as having been shown at

1 See Dom. State Papers, i July 1615 (vol. Ixxxi.), and letter from
Chamberlain to Carleton, 13 July (ibid., no. 15).

438 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

Hampton Court.1 The amount of £80 was made up
as follows. The official fee for a play was ten marks, or
£6. i$s. qd. ; when the King was present, he added a gift
of ten nobles, or £3. 6s. 8d. The mark and noble were
"monies of account," the one taken at 13.?. 4^. and the
other at 6s. 8d. The King's gift of ten nobles made
the ten marks into ten pounds.

Six of these plays are mentioned in the Lord
Treasurer's account, under the titles of A Bad Begin
ning makes a Good Ending, The Captain, The Alchemist,
"one other, Cardano, one other, Hotspur, and one other
called Benedicite and Betteris" ; the account ending,
"paid fortie poundes, and by way of his Majestie's
rewarde twenty pounds more, in all £60." Cardenno,
or Cardema, was also acted, according to the Lord
Treasurer's accounts, on the 8th of June, 1613, before
the Duke of Savoy's Ambassador. It was one of these
plays, not even included in the "spurious list," which
was attributed to Shakespeare by audacious booksellers
long after his death.2

The fourteen plays were acted before Prince Charles,
the Lady Elizabeth, and Frederick, Prince Palatine,
with their lords and ladies in attendance. The
titles of the plays are given in the order of their per
formance on those leaves of Lord Stanhope's office-
book, which are often called "the Vertue MSS." The
memoranda run as follows: "Item, paid to John
Heminges uppon the Cowncell's warrant dated att
Whitehall XX° die Maii, 1613, for presentinge before
the Princes Highnes, the Lady Elizabeth, and the
Prince Pallatyne Elector, fowerteene severalle playes,
viz., one playe called Pilaster, one other called the
Knott of Fooles, one other Much A doe abowte nothinge,
the Mayed's Tragedy, the merye dyvell of Edmonton,

1 Steevens, Shakespeare ', ed. Reed, 1803, vi. 182.

2 Cunning-ham, u.s., p. 125. See New Shakspere Society's Transactions,
1895-6, part ii. p. 419.

"THE MAID'S TRAGEDY," ETC. 439

the Tempest, A Kinge and no kinge, the Twins Tragedie,
the Winters Tale, Sir John Falstafe, the Moore of
Venice, the Nobleman, Caesar's Tragedye, and one other
called Love lyes a bleedinge, all which playes weare
played within the time of this accompte, viz., iiijxx xiij
li. vis. viijd."

The full title of the first play was Philaster; or, Love
lies a-bleeding. It has been supposed that this master
piece of Beaumont and Fletcher was twice commanded
by the Princess ; but the list, on the other hand, was
announced as containing "fourteen several Plays," and
it seems likely that the last entry referred to some short
interlude adapted from the famous original. Philaster
and The Maid's Tragedy long continued to be the
objects of universal admiration ; and Waller expressed
the popular verdict, though his neat mind was shocked
at their vigour of thought and language :

" Of all our elder plays
This and Philaster have the loudest fame ;
Great are their faults, and glorious is their flame.
In both our English genius is expressed ;
Lofty and bold, but negligently dressed."1

The plot of The Maid's Tragedy is flat regicide, and
it was not surprising that Charles II. was disposed to
prohibit its performance ; but Waller retouched the
piece with such zeal that everyone was killed except the
King, and it was found necessary in a still later version
to despatch the King after all.2 "It was agreeable,"
said his editor, "to the sweetness of Mr. Waller's temper,
to soften the rigor of the Tragedy . . . but, whether
it be so agreeable to the nature of Tragedy it self, to
make everything come off easily, I leave to the Critics."5

1 Prologue to The Maid's Tragedy in Waller's Poems, ed. G. Thorn
Drury, 1893, p. 224.

2 See A. W. Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit., 1893, ii. 673, where the doubtful
reason of the impending' prohibition is discussed in a note.

3 Elijah Fenton, Preface to the second part of Waller's Poems, 1729,
pp. 446-7.

440 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST "

A King and no King of Beaumont and Fletcher
was a fine piece, "always received with applause."
Rymer made a severe attack upon it in his letter on the
Tragedies of the Last Age. He seemed to forget that
the plays in Shakespeare's time were not tragedies or
comedies on the strict classical model, but scenes from
human life, which you might call tragi-comedies, or
interludes, or what one pleased. A King and no King
was licensed in 1611. The plot, it was admitted, had
proportion or shape, and "(at the first sight) an outside
fair enough." But the characters were not like Rymer's
classical favourites. They were "all improbable and
improper in the highest degree," he said, and ran quite
wide of the design ; " nothing could be imagined more
contrary." "We blunder along without the least streak
of life, till in the last act we stumble on the Plot, lying
all in a lump together." The Queen is nothing but a
Patient Grissel, and Panthea must have had "a knock
in her cradle ; so soft she is at all points, and so silly.
No Linsey-woolsey Shepherdess but must have more
soul in her, and more sense of decency (not to say)
honour."1

The Merry Devil of Edmonton, the next piece of im
portance, was a stock piece at the Globe, where the
prentices rejoiced in the tavern-wit and the merry
knight who reminded them of Falstaff.2 The author
ship of the piece is unknown. It was printed in the
volume labelled Shakespeare's Plays, vol. ii., which
belonged to Charles the Second's library. It was even
licensed as "by Shakespeare" in the Stationer's Register
for 1653 ; and after the Restoration it was sold by Kirk-
man, the bookseller, with Shakespeare's name on the

1 Rymer, Tragedies of the Last Age, 1678, pp. 56-70.

2 Howell mentions the play under the name of "Smug the Smith,"
from one of its popular characters, in Epp. Ho-El. , p. 247 (i. § 5, let. i. :
York, 13 July 1627). See id., p. 451 (ii. let. 54: Westm., 17 Oct. 1634).
Mr. Jacobs, in his notes, apparently has overlooked the fact that this is
a synonym for The Merry Devil.

"A KING AND NO KING," ETC. 441

title.1 Charles Lamb quoted certain passages to show,
by way of excuse, that the play had something of
Shakespeare's sweetness and good nature. "It seems
written to make the reader happy. Few of our drama
tists or novelists have attended enough to this. They
torture and wound us abundantly. They are econom
ists only in delight." He wished that Michael Drayton
could be shown to have written the piece,2 but for this
there was no evidence, except a story of Mr. Coxeter,
the bookseller, who had seen a copy with a memor
andum that it was "by Michael Drayton." William
Oldys had heard the same thing, but did not lend his
authority to the suggestion ; and on the subject of
Drayton's works the judgment of Oldys is supreme.3
Hazlitt ascribed the play to Thomas Heywood,4 but in
this case also there is a complete absence of proof.

The Knot of Fools may have been Chapman's All
Fools, though the word "knot" implies a limit of
number.5 There was also a " comical-moral" piece,
called Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools? but as
it was in seven long acts we can hardly suppose that
it was included in the performances "by Command."
Little or nothing is known of the other plays on the list.
The Nobleman suggests the title of Fletcher's Noble
Gentleman, but this was not licensed till 3rd February,
i626.7 As to The Twins, there was a tragi-comedy of
that name, by William Rider, acted by Davenant's
Company at Salisbury Court,8 but nothing seems to be

1 Langbaine, Acct. Eng. Dram. Poets, 1691, p. 541.

- Lamb, Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, (Bohn's ed.), p. 48, note.

3 Oldys' MS., note to Langbaine u.s. , p. 541 : "It has been said too
that Michael Drayton was the Author."

4 Hazlitt, Lectures on Literature of Age of Elizabeth (Bohri's ed.),
p. 169. 6 Vide supra, p. 331. B See Fleay, u.s. , ii. 333-4.

7 Sir H. Herbert's Office Book, quoted in Collier, Annals of the Stage,
1831, i. 437, note.

8 Fleay, u.s. , ii. , 149, states that The Twins, by R. Niccols (entered
Stat. Reg. 15 Feb. 1612) was the play acted at Court. Rider's play
(id., 170) was probably a revival.

442 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

known about the author or his play, except that he
called himself a Master of Arts, and that Langbaine
judged from the style that the play was an old one.1

Shakespeare and Fletcher divide the honours of the
list. Jonson's name only appeared when the King
gave a supplemental " command." Shakespeare was
still regarded as supreme ; Fletcher was almost too
witty, and he offended against "the decorum of the
stage." But his raillery was "so dressed," says
Langbaine, that it rather pleased than disgusted ;2 and
the list of plays, if closely scrutinised, seems to show a
preference for comedy in a court costume.

Ccesar's Tragedy we take as being Shakespeare's
Julius Ccesar, sometimes called "Julius Caesar his
tragedy," or simply "Caesar," as in the encomium
of Leonard Digges :

" So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare,
And on the stage at halfe-sword parley were,
Brutus and Cassius, how the audience
Were ravish'd ! with what wonder they went thence."3

Malone and G. Chalmers took their information from
Vertue, through a transcript made by Oldys : "It
appears from the papers of the late Mr. George Vertue,
that a Play called Caesar's Tragedy was acted at court
before the loth of April, in the year 1613. This was
probably Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, it being much
the fashion at that time to alter the titles of his Plays."4
There were, of course, several pieces on the same sub-

1 Langbaine, u.s. , p. 427 : " Of which University or Colledge, is to me
unknown. . . . This Play is not contemptible, either as to the Language,
Oeconomy of it, tho' I judge it older far than the Date of it imports."
Oldys altered Langbaine's ascription of Rider's date from Charles the
Second's reign to "James the First," confusing Rider and Niccols.

2 Langbaine, ii.s., p. 204. See Dryden, Essay on Dramatic Poetry of
the Last Age, in Works, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, iv. 229.

3 Verses prefixed to Shakespeare's poems, 1640. Printed in Halliwell-
Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 89.

4 Malone's Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, ii. 450-1.

"CESAR'S TRAGEDY," ETC. 443

ject; but none of them were likely to have been selected
for the occasion. The Julius Ccesar of W. Alexander
(afterwards Earl of "Sterline") was one of his four
Monarchicke Tragedies, intended only for reading in
the library.1

We learn something about the first appearance of
the Winter's Tale from the old Office-book quoted by
Malone and Collier.2 This book had been kept by
Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to Charles I.
Nothing had been heard of it for nearly a century,
when it was found by a curious accident. Horace
Walpole was editing the Life of Lord Herbert of Cher-
bury from a stained and torn MS. at Lymore, and
had made vain inquiries about a duplicate once belong
ing to Lord Herbert's brother, Sir Henry Herbert of
Ribbisford. At last, in the year 1727, this duplicate
was sent to Lord Powis by a gentleman who had
bought the estate at Ribbisford ; it appeared that a
great oak chest had been allowed to go with the house,
and in this chest were found the duplicate " Life," and
various books and papers, including the Office-book
of Sir Henry Herbert, with notes from August, 1623,
onwards. On the igth of August, 1623, Sir Henry
made a note of a visit from old Mr. Heminge : "For
the king's players. An olde playe called Winter's
Tale, formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke, and
likewise by mee on Mr. Hemmings his worde that there
was nothing profane added or reformed, thogh the
allowed booke was missing ; and therefore I returned
it without a fee."3 The play seems to have been
popular, but in 1741 it was announced, during the
Shakespearean revival, that The Merchant of Venice
and the Winter's Tale had not been performed for a

1 Printed in Scotland, 1604 ; in London, 1607. See A. W. Ward,
op. cit., ii. 138, 140, on this and other plays bearing on the subject.

a See Malone's long note on Sir Henry Herbert's Office-Book, op. ctf.,
iii. 57-9. 3 Id., iii. 229.

444 PRODUCTION OF " THE TEMPEST"

century, and that AIVs Well that Ends Well had been
last acted in Shakespeare's time. With respect to the
boatswain's curses in The Tempest, we should note that
the Master of the Revels took a very stringent view
of " profaneness." On January gth, 1633, we have
a note about Davenant's play of The Wits. Herbert
had crossed out " faith," "slight," and similar ex
pressions ; but the King took him to the window, and
showed the play with the words reinserted : "The kinge
is pleased to take faith, death, slight, for asseverations,
and no oaths, to which I doe humbly submit as my
master's -judgment ; but under favour conceive them to
be oaths, and enter them here, to declare my opinion
and submission. The 10 of January, 1633, I returned
unto Mr. Davenant his playe-booke of The Wits,
corrected by the king."1

Mr. Steevens had a misleading note on the perform
ances in the Supplemental List. "Much ado about
Nothing" he says, "(as I understand from one of Mr.
Vertue's MSS.) formerly passed under the title of
Benedick and Beatrix. Heming the player received, on
the aoth of May, 1613, the sum of forty pounds, and
twenty pounds more as his Majesty's gratuity, for ex
hibiting six Plays at Hampton Court, among which
was this comedy."2 Steevens had taken a copy of a
transcript by Oldys, which came to Sir S. Egerton
Brydges, and was bought by Dr. Birch at the Lee
Priory sale, and afterwards deposited in the British
Museum. Mr. Cunningham's statement in the Shake
speare Society Papers seems to be incorrect. He said
that the list of plays as there printed was taken from
the copy by Steevens,3 but it probably came from the
annotated Langbaine, described in Heber's Catalogue
as " Langbaine, with many important additions by

1 Id., Hi. 235.

2 Steevens in Variorum Shakespeare, 1803, vi. 182.

3 Cunningham, tt.s. , p. 123.

"MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING," ETC. 445

Oldys, Steevens, and Reed," which is also in the
British Museum.

Seeing the difference in the titles, one might rather
expect that Benedict and Beatrix was not the same as
Much Ado about Nothing. It may well have been an
abridgement, with the addition of characters from out
side. It is common knowledge that this practice was
adopted when required. A Midsummer Nighfs Dream
is an example in point. When plays were forbidden, it
appeared as an interlude of clowns and strolling players.
During the Commonwealth it was acted as Bottom's
Dream at the fairs.1 Benedict and Beatrix may have
been a travesty of the same kind. For this we have
the testimony of Leonard Digges in the verses pre
fixed to Shakespeare's Poems in 1640. It is clear that
Malvolio had been brought in from Twelfth Night to
pad out the witty scenes between Signior Benedick and

Lady Beatrice :

" Let but Beatrice

And Benedicke be seen, loe, in a trice
The cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full
To hear Malvoglio, that crosse-garter'd gull."2

The Hotspur, again, as acted at Hampton Court, may
have been made up of extracts from the first part
of King Henry IV. A separate play was put together
for Falstaff, composed of scenes from both parts of
King Henry IV. and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Something may have been borrowed from the death-
scene in Henry V., so pitifully described by Mistress
Nell Pistol, better known as Dame Quickly of East-
cheap and Staines, or the ''Quondam Quickley."
These were hints useful for expansion in the epilogue
to Henry IV., where a promise was made which the
Cobhams would never allow to be fulfilled: "Our
humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in

1 Vide supra, pp. 187-8, and Ward, op. cit., ii. 86.
a Vide supra, p. 442, note 3. 3 Henry V., ii. 3.

it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France :
where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a
sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard
opinions ; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not
the man." Fuller's words would be appropriate to a
made-up "Falstaff," but he can hardly be suspected
of an attack upon the memory of Shakespeare: "Sir
John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of Sir John
Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his
place ; but it matters as little what petulant poets, as
what malicious papists have written against him."1
He added in his Worthies of England: " Now as I am
glad that Sir John Oldcastle is put out, so I am sorry
that Sir John Fastolfe is put in, to relieve his memory
in this base service, to be the anvil for every dull wit to
strike on." It appears from an entry in Sir Henry
Herbert's note-book that Sir John Falstaff was in two
parts, the first part having been acted on New Year's
Eve, 1624-5, by the King's Company in the Cockpit at
Whitehall.3 We learn also from the verses by Digges
that the "wild Prince" and Poins were both in the
play. He was noticing the dislike of the public for
tedious " Catiline " and irksome " Seganus" :

' ' And though the Fox and subtill Alchimist,
Long intermitted, could not quite be mist,
Though these have sham'd all the ancients, and might raise
Their authour's merit with a crowne of bayes,
Yet these sometimes, even at a friends desire
Acted, have scarce defrai'd the sea coale fire
And doore-keepers : when, let but Falstaffe come,
Hall, Poines, the rest, you scarce shall have a roome,
All is so pester'd."

Steevens gave the title of "the Vertue MSS." to the
leaf from Lord Stanhope's book. But the name properly

1 Fuller, Church History of Britain (ed. Nichols, 1868), iii. 568.

2 Fuller, Worthies of England (ed. Nuttall, 1840), ii. 455. Sub
Worthies of Norfolk ; Soldiers.

3 Malone, u.s., iii. 228.

THE VERTUE MSS. 447

belonged to the whole collection of miscellaneous papers
got together by George Vertue, the celebrated engraver.
He began to gather materials for a History of Art as early
as the year 1713. He paid great attention to the archi
tecture of London, and his library included the plans
used in Rocque's Survey, and the note- books of Nicholas
Stone, the master-mason, who put up Spenser's monu
ment in the Abbey, and built the existing banqueting-
house at Whitehall. In the Memoir of W. Oldys, by
Mr. Yeowell, we find an extract from the antiquary's
note-book, dated the 27th of September, 1749: " Mr.
Vertue sent me a transcript of King Charles his Patent
to Ben Jonson for £100 per annum. Also extracts from
the accounts of Lord Stanhope, Treasurer of the Cham
ber to King James, from the Year 1613 to 1616, relating
to the payment of the Players for acting of Plays in and
between those Years at Court."1 Mr. G. Chalmers used
the term "Vertue MSS." in the same careless way when
he wrote about a point in his Supplemental Apology:
"There is a note subjoined to the Manuscripts of Vertue,
which about thirty years ago were lent to Mr. Steevens
by Mr. Garrick." The great actor may have got much
information from Steevens when they were arranging
the Stratford Jubilee of 1769 ; but it is well known that
the engraver's general collection was purchased en bloc
by Horace Walpole for the library at Strawberry Hill.
Vertue's notes on the history of Art became, in fact,
the foundation of Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in
England. To show how difficult it would be to trace
the paper copied for Oldys and Garrick, we may refer
to a correspondence mentioned in Prior's Life of M alone.
The critic first inquired, without success, about a docu
ment connected with Shakespeare, supposed to be with
Mrs. Eva Garrick at Hampton ; and he then inquired
about the history of a painting by Carlo Maratti.
Walpole replied that he thought it came from some

1 A Literary Antiquary : Memoir of William Oldys, 1862, p. 32.

448 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

note by Vertue, but could not be sure : "All Vertue's
memorandums were indigested, and written down suc
cessively as he made them in forty volumes, often on
loose scraps of paper, so it is next to impossible to find
the note."1

The paper sent by Vertue to W. Oldys was doubtless
thrown into the bag of clippings which he called his
" Shakespeare Budget," which was lost in the confusion
of his sale ; but he transcribed the contents into his
Second Annotated Langbaine, in the form of marginal
notes ; and this copy was purchased by Dr. Birch, and
was bequeathed by him to the British Museum. The
notes in this volume were highly esteemed for their
minute learning, and were several times copied. Bishop
Percy, for instance, borrowed the book from Dr. Birch,
and wrote out the "marginalia" in four interleaved vol
umes; " His Lordship," said Mr. Joseph Haslewood,
"was so kind as to favour me with the loan of this book,
with a generous permission to make what use of it I
might think proper, and when he went to Ireland he
left it with Mr. Nichols for the benefit of the new edition
of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian."2 Malone's
copy seems to have been taken from these interleaved
volumes, though he had access to all the papers that
were inspected by Bishop Percy ; it is now among the
" Malone MSS. " at the Bodleian Library.

The original leaves from the Treasurer's Office- book
were saved from destruction by Samuel Pepys, who not
only loved his library, but treasured everything relating
to stage-plays, and to The Tempest above all other
plays. He studied to the best of his power the con
ditions of London life in the past, with special reference
to the development of the English Drama. So great

1 Prior, Life of Malone, 1860, pp. 126-7.

3 Haslewood's Langbaine : MS. notes by Joseph Haslewood, vol. i.
extra leaf 9. He tells us that Bishop Percy's interleaved copy "very
narrowly escaped the flames, and was much injured by the water thrown
in to quench the fire at Northumberland House."

PEPYS AND LORD STANHOPE'S MS. 449

were his accumulations of plays and ballads that some
called him the Father of Black-letter Collectors. Dr.
Dibdin, the arbiter of such matters, would not class
him with "the Black-letter Dogs"; but he said that
Mr. Secretary Pepys was a Bibliomaniac "of the very
first order and celebrity." He kept his books and
papers till his death in that "very noble house and
sweet place " at Clapham, which John Evelyn so affec
tionately described.1 The library was left en bloc to
Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the hope of keep
ing it entire ; and there, to borrow a phrase from
Oldys, among the folios peeped out his black-letter
ballads, "and penny merriments, penny witticisms,
penny compliments, and penny godlinesses." This
was the critical moment for our "Tempest manu
script"; for, as a matter of fact, the list of plays
performed at Whitehall did not go to Cambridge with
the rest. Dr. Richard Rawlinson, "a Bishop among
the Nonjurors," collected everything in the shape of
a book or the semblance of a manuscript. He laid
more than thirty great libraries under contribution, and
was not above purchasing " ships' logs and the pickings
of chandlers' and grocers' shops." In 1741, he wrote :
" My agent met with some papers of Archbishop Wake
at a Chandler's shop ; this is unpardonable in his
executors, as all his MSS. were left to Christ Church :
but quaere whether these did not fall into some servant's
hands, who was ordered to burn them ; and Mr. Martin
Follets ought to have seen this done." In much the
same way he acquired the Miscellaneous Papers of
Samuel Pepys, in twenty-five volumes, which in
cluded the list of plays in question, as well as other
"Treasurer's Accounts." All these were bequeathed
by him to the Bodleian Library, where they now form
part of the " Rawlinson MSS."

1 Evelyn, Diary, May 26, 1703; also Sept. 23, 1700 (ed. Bray, 1879,
iii. 165, 154).
2 G

IV. ON A POSSIBLE PERFORMANCE
AT THE BLACKFRIARS, C. 1606.

'TTHE TEMPEST, as we learn from Dryden,1 was
brought out with success at the private theatre in
Blackfriars. There was too much music in the piece to
make it suitable for the Globe. It was a work of such
airy and delicate fancy as to require an educated audi
ence ; and at the private houses the prices were kept
high, in order to drive away the Copper Captains and
Nuns of Alsatia, the sailors, the flat-capped prentices,
and " youths that thunder at a playhouse and fight for
bitten apples."2 A. fantasia like The Tempest was better
suited to boys than to grown-up actors ; and to young
boys, whose voices had not broken, such as the choris
ters of St. Paul's, or the children of the Chapel-Royal
at Whitehall.

1 Preface to The Tempest ; or, the Enchanted Island (1670), in Works,
ed. Scott and Saintsbury, iii. 106. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 309,
says : " It is not at all improbable that the conspicuous position assigned
to this comedy in the first folio is a testimony to its popularity."

2 King Henry VIII., v. 4, 63-4.

450.

THE LIBERTY OF BLACKFRIARS 451

BLACKFRIARS — HISTORY OF THE THEATRE

There were three of these private theatres in
London ; the Whitefriars house, constructed in the
hall of the Carmelites, near the Temple ; : the Phoenix,
or Cockpit, in Drury Lane, built on the site of a dis
used cockpit, and bearing the Phoenix on its sign;2
and the house built by James Burbage in the precinct
of Blackfriars. This third house we are now about to
describe.

The liberty of Blackfriars was a district outside the
Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, though set within the walls
of the city. Before the suppression of the monasteries
it belonged to the Dominican order of friars ; and the
powers given by charter to the prior were for a long
time regarded as having passed to his lay successors.3
The ancient boundaries are well known, though the
walls and gateways are gone, and the lines of division
have been altered by the building of the Blackfriars
and Ludgate Hill railway stations and the opening of
Queen Victoria Street above the Embankment. There
were once four great gates : one was in Carter Lane,
nearly opposite to Creed Lane ; another opened into
the old Pilgrims' Way, leading through Pilgrim Street
and the Broadway into Water Lane by the city wall,
and as far as the prior's water-gate. The fourth gate-

1 See notice in Collier, Annals of the stage, ist ed., 1831, iii. 289-95.
In 1629 a new theatre in Salisbury Court took the place of the old
Whitefriars theatre, "on or near the site of the old edifice."

2 Collier, id., 328-32. This theatre does not seem to have existed until
Shakespeare had left London.

3 Dug-dale, Manasticon, ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, 1830, vi. 1487,
quoting- from Stevens : " Neither the Mayor nor the Sheriffs, nor any
other Officers of the City of London, had the least jurisdiction or authority
therein. All which liberties the inhabitants preserved some time after
the suppression of the Monastery."

452 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

way opened on the timber bridge leading through
Union Street towards Bridewell, across that ancient
" river of wells," better known afterwards as the filthy
ditch of the Fleet.1

If we could carry back our mental vision to the days
of Henry VIII., we might call up the picture of the
precinct in its time of magnificence. On the place
now occupied by the Times office and Printing-house
Square stood the conventual church, richly furnished
with hangings and ornaments, and containing, on the
side near Bridewell, a great hall called the parliament-
chamber. Here the marriage of Queen Katharine was
annulled;2 and, sitting in this chamber, the Parlia
ment declared the ruin of Wolsey. The cloisters
stood behind the church, towards Ludgate, their old
site being indicated by the name of Cloister Court.
The priory buildings were next to the cloisters ; their
site was taken at one time for the King's printing-
house, and is now covered by the Times printing office.
Just within the precinct and at the back of Carter
Lane was the little church of St. Anne, Blackfriars,
where two open spaces still remain to show the site of
the church and churchyard in the lane now called
Church Entry. On the city side the friars' quarters
were bounded by St. Andrew's Hill, leading from
Carter Lane to Puddle Dock. At the top of the hill
was the King's wardrobe, a fine building, used as a
museum of royal costumes, and as a place of custody
for confidential documents relating to the estates of the
Crown ; lower down the church of St. Andrew met the
eastern limit of the precinct.

King Henry lodged, on his visits to the prior, in a
fine tower built near the water-gate ; and on one great
occasion, when Charles V. visited London, a flying

1 See topography in Stow, Survey of London, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. iii.
PP- 193-4-

2 The stage directions in King Henry VIII. , ii. 4, give some sugges
tion of the historical surroundings of the scene.

THE PRIORY IN BLACKFRIARS 453

bridge was set up from the Emperor's lodging in the
Blackfriars to the new palace at Bridewell.1 The
precinct was then a busy place, what with the friars
and librarians, the prior's justices and their retinue,
the pilgrims trooping from the "Bell " in Carter Lane
to Chaucer's hostelry in Southwark "with full devout
corage." A few years passed ; the priory was sup
pressed, and the precinct became as bare as a wilder
ness. Part of the house itself was turned into the Pipe
office, where they kept the great rolls of the Pipe,
huge sheepskins looking like drain-pipes of the largest
size. Several houses and gardens were given or sold
to courtiers, as Sir Thomas Cheyney, a mighty hunter
of abbey-lands ; Mary Lady Kingston, the dowager,
and Sir Francis Bryan.2 In the fourth year of Edward
VI., the site of the monastery, including the great
church and what remained of the other buildings, was
granted to Sir Thomas Cawarden, then Master of the
Revels. He destroyed the church, and had the assur
ance to pull down also St. Anne's parish church, on
the excuse that it was part of the monastery. The
priory buildings were divided into chambers, flats, and
tenements. On Queen Mary's accession, Cawarden
was ordered to find a church for the parishioners. He
allowed them the use of a lodging on a first floor, with
an outside flight of steps ; but the stairs and lodging-
room having fallen down in 1597, a collection was
made, and the church was rebuilt with an enlargement,
and was dedicated in November of that year.3

On February 4th, 1596, James Burbage, actor and
builder, bought a house formerly included in the priory
from Sir William More, Cawarden's surviving trustee.
His object was to set up a private theatre, for the
amusement of a select audience of visitors and licensees,
and certainly not open to any customer who might

1 Stow, u.s., bk. iii. p. 264. a Dug-dale, u.s.

* Stow, u.s,, bk. iii. p. 180.

454 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

come with his penny in hand. The new population
of the precinct belonged to a quiet race ; they were
chiefly Puritans, Calvinists, or Huguenots, with shops
for embroidery, lawns, and cambrics, "confections,"
and dressmaking. They were celebrated for fans and
feather-work ; and the most popular sign in the liberty
was the Fool laughing at a Feather. Ben Jonson gibes
at the poor, hard-working Puritans in his confutati6n
of Zeal-of-the-land Busy by "puppet Dionysius."
"Yea ! what say you to your tire- women then? . . .
Or feather-makers in the Friars, that are of your faction
of faith? are not they, with their perukes, and their
puffs, their fans, and their huffs, as much pages of
Pride, and waiters upon Vanity? What say you, what
say you, what say you?" "I will not answer for
them," replies Zeal-of-the-land. The puppet retorts,
" Because you cannot, because you cannot. Is a
bugle-maker a lawful calling? or the confect-makers?
such as you have there ; or your French fashioner? You
would have all the sin within yourselves, would you not,
would you not?"1 When a fine periwig was required,
people went to the milliners in the Strand ; but Black-
friars was the place for a hand-glass, an ornamental
comb, smoky lawn, yellow starch, or crape from Cyprus.2
The shopkeepers of Blackfriars got up a strong

1 Bartholomew Fair, act v. sc. 3. Cf. The Alchemist, i. i, where Dol.
Common abuses Face as an "apocryphal captain, Whom not a Puritan
in Blackfriars will trust So much as for a feather." Webster's induction
to The Malcontent contains the words, " This play hath beaten all young
gallants out of the feathers. Black-friars hath almost spoiled Black
friars for feathers." For other references, see Nares' Glossary, ed.
Halliwell-Phillipps and Wright, s.v. "Black-friars." Randolph's The
Muses Looking'- Glass (printed 1638) has two characters, Bird the feather-
man, and Mrs. Flowerdew, a haberdasher of smallwares, described as
"two of the sanctify'd fraternity of Black-friars." Bird (i. i) says:
" We dwell by Black-friars college, where I wonder How that profane
nest of pernicious birds Dare roost themselves there in the midst of us,
So many good and well-disposed persons. O impudence ! "

2 It was a common saying that Blackfriars was right for a mouse-
skin eyebrow, but the Strand for a ringlet or a periwig. The word

BURBAGE'S PURCHASE 455

petition to the Privy Council in November, 1596, when
the new house was nearly completed.1 They urged the
proximity of the theatre to the houses of the nobility
and gentry ; it was close to Lord Hunsdon's mansion,
and touched on a house under lease to Lord Cobham.2
The crowds coming to the plays might spread disease
through the district, already too tightly packed, especi
ally if the pestilence should return.3 "And besides,"
they said, ". . . the same playhouse is so neere the
Church that the noyse of the drummes and trumpetts
will greatly disturbe and hinder both the ministers and
parishioners in tyme of devine service and sermons."
In this paragraph they are shown by the date to be
referring to Cawarden's temporary church, up one pair
of stairs ; but the theatre was in fact at the lower end of
a large yard, extending as far as the churchyard and
the site of the church, as soon afterwards restored.

The paper was signed by some of the great people
who owned houses in the precinct. The list was headed

milliner meant a dealer in articles from Milan ; and, while the Italian
mode lasted, the Strand shops were full of doublets worked with
gold thread, gilt-leather gloves called " Milan skins," and Milan silk
stockings, "twice as strong as ours," said an English traveller, "and
very massive." Beaumont and Fletcher, Valentinian, ii. 2, couple
"gilded doublets And Milan skins." The commodities of Blackfriars
were also to be found in that part of the Exchange known as the Pawn,
"which was richly furnished with all sorts of the finest wares in the
city," on Queen Elizabeth's memorable visit, Jan. 23, 1570 (Stow, Survey,
Cornhill Ward). See Sylvester's lines on London, inserted in his translation
of Du Bartas (week ii. , day 2, part 3) : " For costly Toys, silk Stockings,
Cambrick, Lawn, Here's choice-full Plenty in the curious PAWN."

1 The petition is printed (from a transcript c. 1631), in Halliwell-
Phillipps, u.s., i. 304.

a This appears from the deed of feoffment, printed ibid., 299-304:
" All that little yard or peice of void grounde . . . enclosed with the
same bricke wall and with a pale, next adjoyneinge to the house of the
said Sir William More, nowe in thoccupacyon of the right honorable
the Lord Cobham."

8 " And allso to the greate pestring and filling up of the same precinct,
yf it should please God to send any visitation of sicknesse as heretofore
hath been, for that the same precinct is allready growne very
populous."

456 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

by Elizabeth, dowager Lady Russell, and Sir George
Carey, eldest son of Lord Hunsdon, the chamberlain
of the Household. The Hunsdon family had an ancient
mansion in the parish, and usually were buried at
St. Anne's. Within a few weeks Lord Hunsdon died,1
and was succeeded by his son George, in his office as
well as his estates and dignities ; but by that time it
was too late to object. Among the other names we
notice William de Lavine,2 Robert Baheire, John Le
Mere, and Ascanio de Renialmire, all apparently, by
their names, foreign Protestant refugees, and John
" Robbinson," who afterwards became Shakespeare's
tenant of the dwelling-house occupied by William
Ireland, right opposite to the King's wardrobe on St.
Andrew's Hill, and built in part upon a great gateway
at the entrance to Ireland Yard.

The dispute went on for about half a century, perhaps
till the theatre was pulled down. The Lord Mayor
and the parishioners made repeated complaints about
the private house; the Lords of the Council as repeatedly
evaded the question by making regulations only for
the public theatres. Queen Anne's juvenile company
played at Blackfriars for some years ; Queen Henrietta
loved everything that savoured of the stage. Then
came an ordinance of 1642, prohibiting the acting of
plays ; 3 and, five years later, another which provided
for the whipping of contumacious players, and the
breaking-up of the platforms, boxes, and galleries, and
whirled away all the rags and properties into the limbo
of vanity.4

1 He was buried, not in St. Anne's, Blackfriars, but in Westminster
Abbey. His immense monument, in St. John Baptist's Chapel, north of
the apse, was erected by his son. Sir George Carey signs the petition
"G. Hunsdon."

2 Also named in the deed of feoffment, u.s., as "William de Lawne,
Doctor of Physick."

3 Sept. 2, 1642, printed in Collier, op. tit., ii. 105.

4 Feb. n, 1647-8, printed ibid. , pp. 114-17, note, from text in Scobell's
Collection of Acts and Ordinances. For the history of the ordinance in

PETITIONS AGAINST THE THEATRE 457

One of the petitions, on which the Lord Mayor
founded an order — an order disregarded, as usual — has
still some interest, as showing the dislike of the shop
keepers to carriages. In 1631, the churchwardens and
parishioners asked Bishop Laud to remove the players
from Blackfriars ; but his endorsement, " to the council
Table," indicates that the matter was shelved or laid by.
By reason of the great resort of coaches, it was urged,
the shopkeepers' wares were broken and beaten off
their stalls. This crowd of coaches was so thick that
the inhabitants could not fetch in afternoon beer, or
coals, or get water to put out a fire : persons of quality,
living in Blackfriars, could not get out of their houses :
ordinary folk were much disturbed at christenings and
burials, and could not take their walks to Ludgate or
down to the river.1

CONSTRUCTION OF THE THEATRE — ITS PROBABLE APPEARANCE
AND SCENIC ARRANGEMENTS

The conveyance to Burbage, printed by Halliwell-
Phillipps,'2 helps us to realise the look of the old house
in the priory, converted by him into what is now called
a "bijou" theatre. It must have been like a Dutch

question, see ibid., pp. 110-19; A. W. Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit., iii. 278-9.
See also Collier, u.s,, iii. 273-8, on the Blackfriars Theatre. He quotes
Sir Aston Cokain's " Praeludium " to Richard Brome's plays, 1653:
" Black, and Whitefriars too, shall flourish again, Though there have
been none since Queen Mary's reign." " But," he adds, " on the revival
of the drama, we never hear of its employment, and as it was then an
old building, it was probably pulled down." Shirley, in a prologue
printed also in 1653, among his Six NCTVC Playes, and quoted by Nares,
u,s., s.v. Black-friars, writes: "But you that can contract yourselves,
and sit As you were now in the Black-Fryers pit."

1 The petitions are all abstracted in the Calendar of State Papers
(Domestic), ed. Bruce, 1631-3, pp. 219-21 (also see 1633-4, pp. 266-90).
The petition made in 1631 (no date) was renewed in 1633, "but the
petitioners obtained no redress" (Collier, op. cit., iii. 277). The petition
was debated at the Council Table, Oct.-Nov. , 1633.

2 Vide sup., p. 455, note i.

458 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

house, of an oblong shape, three-storied, with a high-
pitched roof and dormer windows. It stood near Water
Lane, looking into it from the west side of the north
end : one of the yards was divided from the street only
by a brick wall.1 On the same side it touched the Pipe
office, the covered passage leading to the main entrance
(afterwards the theatre door), and a winding stone stair
case open to the air. At other points it touched several
houses looking on the street — Sir George Carey's man
sion, Sir William More's house on the Cawarden
estate, and another which we have mentioned as being
under lease from Sir William to Lord Cobham.

The house having been divided into flats, the descrip
tion of the interior was somewhat complicated. The
general effect was as follows, if we omit such small
matters as entries, cellars, and coal-holes. The ground-
floor had been let in four rooms as chambers, a little
contracted in breadth by the passage along the wall of
the Pipe office. The first floor2 had been occupied by
one Rocco Bonnetto. Its dimensions were only 52 x 37
feet ; and from this we may calculate the size of the
theatre. The second floor contained seven rooms,
which, in the days of the friars, had been all in one,
and two more rooms beyond, with a buttery, certain
garrets, and a stone staircase leading to the roof. The
"seaven greate upper romes" were described as lately
occupied by Dr. William "de Lawne" or Lavine, who
afterwards joined in the petition against the theatre.

The amount of alterations required appears by various
scattered descriptions of the private houses, and by the
contract, preserved at Dulwich, under which the For
tune Theatre was built in i6oo.3 We know that plays

1 " lyeinge and being- nexte the Queenes highewaye leadinge unto the
ryver of Thamis."

2 In the language of the deed, "the Midle Romes or Midle Stories."

3 Printed in Halliwell Phillipps, u.s., 304-6. Collier, Annals, iii.
304-6, gives a good abstract. "This document," notes Halliwell-
Phillipps, "incidentally reveals to some extent the nature of the con
struction of the Globe Theatre."

CONSTRUCTION OF THE THEATRE 459

were at first acted in the coachyards of inns. The
Globe and the Fortune were modified imitations of the
yards at the Bell or the Belle Sauvage ; and the Red
Bull, in St. John Street, was nothing more than an inn-
yard converted into a permanent theatre.1 The stage
was a platform in the open air, fenced off by strong
palings from the ground where the crowd found stand
ing-room. The lower boxes replaced the rooms looking
out into the yard : the scaffolding was copied from the
gallery leading to the bedrooms ; but in a theatre it was
necessary to cut off portions for "gentlemen's rooms"
and "twopenny rooms" in double tiers. Part of the
ground tier was taken for a stage-box, which was re
placed at some theatres, after a time, by private rooms
at the back of the stage, close to the music gallery.

The contracts for building the Globe and the Fortune
provided that the house should be in a timber frame,
three stories high, with divisions for the boxes, "a
stadge and tyreing-howse . . . with a shadowe or cover
over the said stadge." The stage was to be forty-
three feet wide, "and in breadth to extend to the middle
of the yarde," or the pit, as it afterwards was called.
The platform and the ground-tier boxes were to be
paled in with "good stronge and sufficyent newe oken
bourdes," and "fenced with stronge yron pykes."

We find no mention of a balcony in the contract for
building the Fortune ; but we know that there was
usually such a fabric at the back, over the entrance

1 See the account in Collier, u.s., 324-8. Among- the literary refer
ences which he gives is one to Randolph's The Muse's Looking- Glass
(sup., p. 454, note i), which is of interest in connection with the Puritan
hostility to the theatres. Mrs. Flowerdew (act i. sc. 2) says : " It was a
zealous prayer I heard a brother make, concerning playhouses. Bird.
For charity, what is't? Mrs. F. That the Globe, Wherein (quoth he)
reigns a whole world of vice, Had been consum'd : the Phoenix burnt to
ashes : . . . Black-Friars, He wonders how it 'scap'd demolishing I' th"
time of reformation : Lastly, he wished The Bull might cross the Thames
to the Bear-garden, And there be soundly baited. Bird. A good prayer."
(Dodsley, Old Plays, 1825, voL ix.)

460 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

from the dressing-rooms. Juliet's balcony is proof
enough for the Globe ; Marston's Fawn climbs a tree
and is received "above" by Dulcimel j1 and the Queen
of Cyprus in The Dumb Knight, by Lewis Machin
and Gervase Markham, plays Mount-saint, or Piquet,
"aloft" with Philocles, while the King, disguised as
one of the guard, watches them from the side of the
stage.2 In the private houses the balcony was freely
used. In The Tempest, Prospero stood there invisible,
when the lovers met in the yard. He must have
mounted the upper stage while they talked ; when they
departed, he came forward and spoke down to the
audience.3 And again, in the scene with the three
villains, when the trumpery from the house is brought
"for stale to catch these thieves," we must suppose
that, while Caliban and his friends groped about near
the entrance and the curtain that was supposed to hide
the cell, Prospero and Ariel ensconced themselves un
seen in the fabric above.4

The principal entrance must have been under the
balcony. It was generally covered by a large curtain ;
but, if that were "knocked up,"5 the opening would
serve to show the interior of a room or a cavern. In
The Tempest there is a famous example. "This cell's
my court," says Prospero —

' ' here have I few attendants
And subjects none abroad : pray you, look in. "

He lifts the tapestry, and so "discovers" Ferdinand
playing at chess with Miranda.6 On each side of the
entrance and along one breadth of the platform there
were rods and rings for side-curtains, where the actors
took unseen parts, or sang, or made a "confused

1 Act v. sc. i, in Bullen's ed. of Marston, 1885, etc., vol. ii. p. 210.

2 Act iv. sc. i in Dodsley, u.s. , vol. iv.

8 Tempest, iii. i. * Id., iv. i.

6 Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, act v. (Dodsley, u.s., vol. iii.) ; " Enter
Hieronimo, he knocks up the curtain." 6 Tempest, v. i.

ARRANGEMENT OF THEATRE 461

noise," as might be required ; and, on occasion, a
screen, or "traverse," was set near the tapestry, so that
a speech might be given without the figure being seen.
We have some hint of this in The Tempest. Antonio,
his brother's substitute, persuaded himself that he was
the actual Duke, "out of the substitution," and as
wearing the face royal by prerogative right. Says
Prospero :

" To have no screen between this part he played

And him he played it for, he needs will be

Absolute Milan."1

There was no scenery in the modern sense of the
term.2 "Before the Wars," says the Cavalier in
Wright's Historia Histrionica (about 1699), "... tho'
the town was not much more than half so populous as
now, yet then the prices were small (there being no
scenes)."3 Davenant brought the fashion from France
when acting was still forbidden, and gave The Siege of
Rhodes, Sir Francis Drake, and other recitations and
private theatricals, "made a presentation by the Art
of Prospective in Scenes, and the Story sung in Recita
tive Musick."4 After the Restoration he began again
to use scenery at the Duke of York's house in Portugal
Row,5 and the King's Players followed suit, when, in
1663, they moved from the Tennis Court by Clare
Market to Drury Lane. The accounts of the Lord

1 Id., i. 2, 107-9.

8 In The Spanish Tragedy, u.s., we have a passage illustrating the
primitive character of contemporary " scenery." "Well done, Balthazar,
hang up the title : Our scene is Rhodes." The passage in Sidney's
Apdlogie for Poetrie is familiar: "What childe is there, that coming to a
play and seeing Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth
believ that it is Thebes?" 3 In Dodsley, u.s., vol. i. p. cxlviii.

4 Title-page of The Siege oj Rhodes, 1656, in Dramatic Works of Sir
W. DAvenant, Edinburgh, 1873, vol. iii. p. 232. The Siege of Rhodes
(1656) was produced at Rutland House in Aldersgate Street; The Cruelty
of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake
(1659), at the Cockpit in Drury Lane. See A. W. Ward, op. cit., iii.
280-5.

6 The Portugal Row theatre was opened in 1661, closed in 1673.

462 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

Admiral's company, among the Henslowe MSS. at
Dulwich, show that the actors used properties almost
fit to be classed among "scenes," such as a "hell's
mouth," after Orcagna's style, a city of Rome, castles
and villages, the tomb of Dido, "pageants" in wood
work and canvas, and "a cloth of the Sun and Moon,"
which, in Boswell's opinion, was "the Ne plus ultra"
of those days. It is very possible that a rude mast
and tackling were used in The Tempest, when the play
opened on a ship at sea. The cabins were behind the
side-hangings ; the master would naturally mount the
balcony. "Where is the master, boatswain?" asks
Antonio. "Do you not hear him?" is the answer.
"You mar our labour: keep your cabins: you do
assist the storm."1

The stage -covering, or "shadow," in the public
theatres was sometimes known as the "heavens."
Malone inferred, from Heywood's words in the Apology
for Actors, that this was painted a sky-colour or welkin
blue.2 But the phrase may have been a mere copy of
the Italian cielo; and in a tragedy, we know, by
familiar examples, that "the heavens " were hung with
black.3 A private theatre had a proper ceiling instead
of a painted canvas ; but there was nothing to prevent
the use of "property" clouds and draperies. This
would suit Trinculo's storm, which sang in the wind,
while a cloud arose like a black-jack full of muddy beer.

" Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul
bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder
as it did before, I know not where to hide my head :
yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls." 4

The bombards at the court buttery were the huge
pails in which the maids and pages received their

1 Tempest, i. i, 12-14. 2 Malone's Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, iii. 108.

3 i Henry VI,, i. i. So Northward Ho, iv. i : "As I was saying, the
stage all hung with black velvet," where the reference is to Chapman's
Conspiracy of Byron. 4 Tempest, ii. 2, 20-5.

SCENERY AND STAGE-COVERING 463

"broken beer."1 The bombard in The Tempest is
the shadow of a cloud on the ceiling, or a drapery
with a similar effect, in shape like the stumpy cannon
that were used as pieces for bombardment, or like a
magnified "leather bottel," or a huge boot, or the
largest of the shiny pails which slopped the floor near
the butler's hatch.2

Ill

CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIVATE THEATRES — SITTING ON THE
STAGE — THE INDUCTION TO JONSON'S " CYNTHIA'S REVELS "

The differences between a private theatre and a
common playhouse may be classified as follows.3 The
prices at the former were high, but the standard of
comfort was totally different. The roof was covered in
with a ceiling ; the windows were glazed ; and there
were comfortable, though narrow, seats throughout the
pit and the galleries. The stage was small ; for even

1 The daily allowance of meat and drink was called "bouge (i.e. Fr.
bouche) of court." So Jonson, Masque of Augurs, acted at court on
Twelfth-Night, 1621-2 ; Groom . . . I am an officer, groom of the revels,
that is my place. Notch. To fetch bouge of court, a parcel of invisible
bread and beer for the players." In Skelton's allegorical poem of this
name, Bouge of Courte is the name of the ship of Fortune. In Jonson's
masque of Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists, acted at court 1614,
Mercury describes a bargain he has concluded with the alchemists :
" One day I am to deliver the buttery in, so many firkins of aittum
potabile as it delivers out bombards of bouge to them between this and
that."

a In another passage of Shakespeare (Henry VIII., v. 4, 82-6), a
"jack" of this kind is compared to the uncouth form of a bear tied to
the post, and attacked by thirsty enemies on all sides at once. The Lord
Chamberlain rebukes the noisy servants in the palace-yard. " Ye are
lazy knaves ; And here ye lie baiting of bombards, when Ye should do
service." John Taylor, the water-poet, in the argument of Farewel, to
the Tower Bottles, Dort, 1622, relates the history of the gift of "two
black Leather Bottles, or Bombards of wine," granted to the Tower
" from every ship that brought wine into the river of Thames."

3 Collier, op. cit., iii. 335-40. In addition to those tabulated here, we
learn that " the boxes or rooms at private theatres were enclosed and
locked, and the key given to the individual engaging them."

464 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

the forty-three foot platform at the Fortune was called
"vast" in comparison with the boards at Blackfriars.
The house was lighted with chandeliers and wax
candles ; but where the yard was open to the weather,
as at the Globe or Fortune, they could use only
branched candlesticks on the stage, with "cressets" or
cages for tarred ropes' ends to flare in front of the
boxes. The plays in the private houses were acted
usually by boys, some of whom belonged to the choir
of St. Paul's ; others, the Queen's Children of the
Revels, belonged to the Chapel Royal. This led to
the "throwing about of brains" in the quarrel rebuked
by Hamlet.1 The poets, for their own purposes, stirred
up the "aery of children" to " berattle the common
stages," and so draw the public to Blackfriars or the
singing-room of Paul's. These "little eyases" de
clined to follow the actors' reading, or " cry in the top
of" their argument. The judgment of Hamlet's friends
had cried in the top of his own, when he praised a play
that displeased the million ; but these boys went quite
beyond the proper limits of discussion: "they cry out
on the top of question, and are most tyrannically
clapped for't."

1 Hamlet, ii. 2. About 1599 or 1600 (see Fleay, Biog. Chron. Eng.
Drama, 1891, ii. 30, 78) the boys of Blackfriars most audaciously invaded
the acting rights of the Globe company by performing' Kyd's famous
Spanish Tragedy. The King's company, in 1604, annexed Marston's
Malcontent, a stock piece at Blackfriars, which probably had been pro
duced about 1601 (see A. W. Ward, op. tit., ii. 483; iii. 52). Two
editions of the play were printed in 1604 ; the second is prefaced by
Webster's comical induction. "Why not," says Burbage to Sly on his
three-legged stool, "why not Malevole in folio with us as well as
Jeronimo in decimo sexto with them? They taught us a name for our
play, we call it, One for another." Burbage, Sly, Condell, Lowin, and
Sinklow took various parts in the induction ; but it is clear that Shake
speare himself was not playing at the time. There are respectful
references to his works, as when Sly quotes from Osric's part in Hamlet,
v. 2, 109, refusing to put on his hat with " No, in good faith for mine
ease," and again, when he offers to compose an ending, and, with a bow
and a scrape, throws off a passable imitation of the epilogue to As You
Like It.

THE PRIVATE THEATRES 465

The custom of sitting on the stage, either on stools or
among the rushes on the floor, prevailed in all the
private houses among the visitors : we may perhaps
regard the row of stools by the arras as a rough equiva
lent for our modern stalls.1 The town-fops smoked and
cracked nuts on the platform, and sometimes slapped
down their cards in a game, just as the third trumpet
was sounding, and the Prologue stood quaking in his
black velvet cloak at the entrance.2 The excuse was
made that it was necessary to judge of the acting very
closely, as appears by the preface to the first folio of
Shakespeare's plays. "Censure," wrote the editors,
"will not drive a trade or make the jacke go. And
though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage
of Black-Friers or the Cock-pit to arraigne playes dailie,
know, these playes have had their triall alreadie, and
stood out all appeales." A gallant sometimes would

1 Allusions to this custom are innumerable. Ben Jonson, The Devil
is an Ass (acted by the King's men at Blackfriars, 1616), i. 3, has a
passage to the point. Fitzdottrel has a new cloak, to be seen in which
he purposes to "go to the Blackfriars playhouse" ; self-display, he tells
his wife, is "a special end why we go thither, All that pretend to stand
fort on the stage." Collier, op. cit., iii. 339, quotes] Francis Lenton's
Young Gallant's Whirligig, 1629 : " The Cockpit heretofore would serve
his wit, But now upon the Friars stage he'll sit." The epilogue to
Chapman's All Fools, a Blackfriars play, contains an allusion to the
critics and their tripods: "We can but bring you meat, and set you
stools " ; and, in the prologue, the self-appointed judges are prayed not
to spoil the performance by leaving their places too soon : " If our other
audience see You on the stage depart before we end ; Our wits go with
you all, and we are fools."

a Prologue to Hey wood's Four Prentices of London (in Dodsley, u.s.,
vol. vi.). Three rival prologues meet at the entrance; the first ex
postulates : " What mean you, my masters, to appear thus before your
times? Do you not know that I am the Prologue? Do you not see
this long black velvet cloak upon my back? Have you not sounded
thrice ? Do I not look pale as fearing to be out in my speech ? Nay
have I not all the signs of a Prologue about me?" In the prologue to
Fletcher's Woman-Hater, acted by the children of Paul's probably
about Easter, 1607, we read: "Gentlemen, inductions are out of date;
and a Prologue in verse is as stale as a black velvet cloak and a bay
garland."

2 H

466 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

propose to sit on the stage at one of the larger theatres;
but he would generally be turned off amid a shower of
bitten apples, with yells and catcalls and shouts of
"Away with the fool ! " In the induction to The Mal
content, William Sly, the actor, disguised as a fop,
mounts the platform at the Globe, and asks one of the
dressers for a three-legged stool. "Sir," is the answer,
"the gentlemen will be angry if you sit here." Sly
retorts: "Why we may sit upon the stage at the
private house. Thou do'st not take me for a country
gentleman, do'st? do'st thou fear hissing?"

Ben Jonson brought out in the year 1600 his Cynthia's
Revels, which was acted by the children of the Chapel,
at Blackfriars. Before the play opened, the author sent
on three of the boys for an induction, in which the
practice of smoking on the stage was satirised. The
chief parts were taken by Nathaniel Field, the Mercury
of the play, John Underwood, who seems to have been
the traveller Amorphus, and probably by Salathiel Pavy,
who played Cupid. John Underwood is addressed as
" Resolute Jack" by way of an allusion to " resolute "
John Florio. Field, who appears as "number three,"
gives an imitation of a genteel auditor with clay
pipe alight : "I have my three sorts of tobacco in my
pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin." Mixtures not
being invented, he must bring three kinds in his pouch,
"cane, pudding, and right Trinidado,"and was lucky if
his herb were not mostly yellow henbane, or a quarter of
a pound of colt's-foot to every half-pound that had crossed
the Atlantic. He smokes and puffs between his sen
tences. " By this light, I wonder that any man is so

mad, to come to see these rascally tits play here.

They do act like so many wrens or pismires not the

fifth part of a good face amongst them all. And then

their music is abominable able to stretch a man's

ears worse than ten pillories, and their ditties —

most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make

"CYNTHIA'S REVELS" 467

them poets." The object of these precocious child-
players is far from that of " berattling the common
stages" as " little eyases." Field was only thirteen at
this time ; the others younger : yet, later in the same
play, these words are made to describe their aim and
ambition. " Since we are turn'd cracks," says Mercury
to Cupid, " let's study to be like cracks ; practise their
language and behaviours, and not with a dead imitation :
Act freely, carelessly, and capriciously, as if our veins
ran with quicksilver, and not utter a phrase, but what
shall come forth steep'd in the very brine of conceit,
and sparkle like salt in fire." l

In the next "turn," Jack Underwood is lounging
about, dressed ready to come on, and Field is a sober
"garter-gathered" squire, unused to the ways of the
town. Underwood steps forth "like one of the children."
" Would you have a stool, sir?" " A stool, boy!" "Ay,
sir, if you'll give me sixpence I'll fetch you one." " For
what, I pray thee? what shall I do with it?" "O Lord,
sir ! will you betray your ignorance so much ? why,
throne yourself in state on the stage, as other gentlemen
use, sir." The next answer is full of information about
the stage decorations. "Away, wag; what, would'st
thou make an implement of me ? 'Slid, the boy takes
me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some
silk curtain, come to hang the stage here ! Sir crack,
I am none of your fresh pictures, that use to beautify
the decayed dead arras in a public theatre."

Underwood next gives a sketch in which Jonson
himself is contrasted with the ordinary playwright at
rehearsal, the officious poet who is always in the tiring-
house. He begs the visitor to leave the stage, as the
play is about to begin. "Most willingly, my good wag ;

1 Cynthia's Revels, ii. I. For the use of "crack" (defined in Nares'
Glossary as "a boy . . . that cracks or boasts) cf. 2 Henry IV., iii. 2,
32-4, " I saw him break Skogan's head at the court-gate, when a' was
a crack not thus high."

468 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

but I would speak with your author : where is he ? "
"Not this way, I assure you, sir; we are not so
officiously befriended by him, as to have his presence
in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the
book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor
tireman, rail the music out of tune, and sweat for
every venial trespass we commit. ... If you please to
confer with our author, by attorney you may, sir ; our
proper self here, stands for him." The visitor rails at
the authors who stuff their plays with stories out of old
books, or from the mouths of laundresses and hackney
men, or the common stages. Towards the end he gives
his interlocutor a warning. " O, (I had almost forgot
it too,) they say the umbra or ghosts of some three or
four plays departed a dozen years since, have been seen
walking on your stage here ; take heed, boy, if your
house be haunted with such hobgoblins, 'twill fright
away all your spectators quickly." "Good, sir; but
what will you say now, if a poet, untouched with any
breath of this disease, find the tokens upon you, that
are of the auditory ? " This is an allusion to the pesti
lence of 1593, to which Shakespeare had alluded in
Love's Labour's Lost.1

1 Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2, 418-23.

"Soft, let us see :

Write ' Lord have mercy on us ' on those three ;

They are infected, in their hearts it lies ;

They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes ;

These lords are visited ; you are not free,

For the Lord's tokens on you do I see."

There is not enough in Jonson's allusion to show that he was thinking of
Shakespeare. All that he actually says is that a poet, with no tokens of
staleness about him, might find ghosts enough among the audience, who
talked of twenty years since, and the fashions "when Monsieur was
here," or swore "that the old Hieronimo, as it was first penned, was the
only best and judiciously penned play of Europe."

Allusions to the "tokens" of pestilence in Shakespeare are not un
common after the great outbreak of plague in the winter of 1602, which,
between Christmas and Christmas, killed in London and its liberties
more than 30,000 people. The tokens were redder than in former pesti
lences : hard spots of a bright flaming red were accounted a fatal

THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL 469

THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL — NATHANIEL FIELD- -THE PART
OF ARIEL IN "THE TEMPEST"

From its opening in 1597 till the spring of 1603 the
Blackfriars theatre was served by the ''Children of
the Chapel," or, in other words, by the choristers of the
Chapel Royal at Whitehall. They were under the orders
of Dr. Nathaniel Giles, Master in Song,1 and after
wards organist, and they received instructions in acting
from Mr. Henry Evans, the lessee and manager. Dr.

symptom. When Cleopatra spread her sails in flight, the battle, says the
Roman, looked "like the tokened pestilence, where death is sure (Ant.
and Cleopatra, iii. 10, 9-10). Volumnia (Coriolanus, iv. i, 13) called down
the "red pestilence" on "all the trades in Rome." Caliban's curse
(Tempest, i. 2, 363) was "the red plague rid you," or, as Davenant
altered the reading, the "red botch." The writer possessed a receipt-
book written out in 1627 by " Elizabeth Bulkley," showing how the red
plague required red medicine — ivy berries, red sage, and red bramble
leaves. Hartman, in his Preserver of Health, 1682, pp. 69, 75, 128-30, gives
numerous receipts of a similar kind for plague-waters and cordials ; and
Dr. Creighton tells us, in his History of Epidemics (i. 676), that the
nurses in the last plague used to say that "cochineal is a fine thing
to bring out the tokens."

The end of the induction to Cynthia's Revels contains a phrase which
illustrates All's Well that Ends Well, iv. i, 22: "chough's language,
gabble enough, and good enough." "Here, take your cloak," says
Field to Pavy, "and promise some satisfaction in your prologue, or,
I'll be sworn we have marr'd all." "Tut, fear not, child," adds Under
wood, "this will never distaste a true sense: be not out, and good
enough."

1 The history of the Children of the Chapel was traced by Dr. Rim-
bault in the edition of the Old Cheque-book, or Book of Remembrance,
of the Chapel Royal from 1561 to 1744, printed for the Camden Society
in 1882. His list of " Masters of the Song" begins with Henry Abingdon
and Gilbert Banister, mentioned in acts of resumption of the I3th and
22nd Ed. iv. Under William Cornish, who followed Banister, the gentle
men of the Chapel acted before the King, and received rewards as
players of the Chapel: "When the Children took part in a dramatic
performance under Cornish, they received a gratuity of £6. 13. 4." (pp.
iv., v.). This was the equivalent of ten marks or twenty nobles in
the old money of account, the mark being taken at 135. 4/f. and the
noble at dr. 8d.

470 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

Giles was deputed to exercise the prerogative right
of impressing boys with good voices for service in the
Chapel Royal and for taking part in entertainments at
Court. The custom of pressing boys for service in the
choir existed as far back as the time of Richard III.,
and probably grew out of a still older claim to enrol
minstrels for the King's service. It was part of the
children's duty to act plays at Court, and it became
the practice to train them at one of the smaller theatres.
The choristers of St. Paul's were taught in their own
singing-room, behind the convocation-house and near
the library, until the cathedral was burned. Out of the
eight Chapel Royal choristers it was usual to send six
at one time to be trained at Blackfriars ; but an order
was made in 1626, while Dr. Giles was still master,
to pacify the Puritans, "that none of the Choristers or
Children of the Chappell, soe to be taken by force
of this Commission, shalbe used or imployed as Come
dians or Stage players, or to exercise or acte any Stage
plaies, interludes, Comedies or Tragedies."1 Besides
their singing and acting, the choristers were obliged to
attend classes in their grammar school. When their
time was out, two of them had a claim to be appointed
"epistlers," or readers of the epistle, and to take rank
among the yeomen of the Chapel. If any of the
children reached eighteen years of age, and his voice
was changed, then, in case there were no vacancy in
the Chapel, the King would send him to a college
of his foundation at Oxford or Cambridge, "there to
be at fynding and studye both suffytyently, tylle the
King may otherwise advaunse them." 2 While engaged
as choristers, they were expected to lodge and take
their meals at Whitehall ; and the royal accounts show
that they had daily among them "two loaves, one

1 Printed in Collier, op. cit., ii. 16 ; Rimbault, u.s. , pp. viii., ix. The
stage-plays are reckoned in this document among' "lascivious and pro-
phane exercises." 2 Rimbault, u.s. , p. iv.

BOY COMEDIANS 471

messe of greate meate, ij galones of ale," with the
addition, in the winter season, of four candles of pitch,
three faggots of cleft wood, and litter for their pallets.1

We already have referred to the children who took
the chief parts in the performance of Cynthia's Revels.
"This comical satire," we read in Jonson's description
of the cast, "was first acted in the year 1600 by the
then children of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel ; the principal
comedians were Nat Field, John Underwood, Sal Pavy,
Robert Baxter, Thomas Day, and John Frost." Baxter
and Frost were replaced by William Ostler and Thomas
Marton, a junior chorister, before The Poetaster was
brought out in the next season. Pavy acted in the last-
named play, but died early in 1603, at the age of
thirteen, having acted for three years at the Blackfriars,
chiefly in old men's characters. So much we gather
from Jonson's well-known epitaph on "S.P. a child
of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel."2

Underwood probably left the house at Blackfriars
and the company of children who then acted in it
about 1608, when, as we shall see, they had to leave the
theatre. His name is not in the list of Children of the
Revels who acted Jonson's Silent Woman at White-
friars in that year; and the cast of The Alchemist in
1610 shows that he had joined the King's players at
the Globe. About the same time he acquired shares
and interests in the Globe itself, in the Blackfriars
house, and in the Curtain Theatre at Shoreditch. By
his will in 1624 he disposed of these shares on trusts
in favour of his children, describing them as "the
part or share, that I have and enjoy at this present by
lease or otherwise . . . within the Blackfriars, London,
or in the company of His Majesty's servants, my loving
and kind fellows, in their house there, or at the Globe,
on the Bankside ; and also that my part and share or

1 Rimbault, «/., p. iii. The word used for "faggots of cleft wood" is
"talsheids." * Jonson, Epigrams, cxx.

472 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

due in or out of the playhouse called the Curtaine,
situate in or near Holloway, in the parish of St. Leonard,
London."1

William Ostler's name appears among the principal
comedians in The Alchemist^ described by Jonson as
" first acted in 1610 by the King's Majesty's Servants."
He was called the " Roscius of these times" and "the
King of actors " in a short poem by John Davies, the
schoolmaster of Hereford.2 It was admitted on all
hands that Burbage came first ; but, among the
younger men, Ostler and Field were perhaps the best
pair of actors in England.3 Both Field and Ostler
appear in the first folio among the principal actors in
Shakespeare's plays. Ostler had left the stage, or was
dead, before the volume appeared. Field was among
those who signed the actors' prefatory address ; and it
is conjectured that he had then been a member of the
company for about four years. Mr. Payne Collier
points out that he was engaged at Paris Garden for
some time after 1614, and that his name does not
occur before 1619 in any extant patent. As we have
seen, he was a chorister of the Chapel Royal ; but,
about 1606, we find him taking the leading part in
Bussy d'Ambois, presented by the Children of Paul's.4

1 Printed by Collier, Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of
Shakespeare, 1846, pp. 229-30.

2 Collier, id. 202-3 ; Davies, Scourge of Folly, ep. 205.

3 The celebrity of Field is, at any rate, beyond any question. There
was a puppet-show in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, v. 3, kept by one
Lanthorn Leatherhead, the ''master of the monsters," identified by Fleay
(Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, i. 378) and others with Inigo Jones —
a doubtful, but plausible conjecture. Leatherhead is asked a question
about his " small players." " Which is your Burbage now?" "What
mean you by that, sir? " " Your best actor, your Field? "

4 The date of performance of Chapman's drama is uncertain. Fleay,
u.s., i. 60, inclines to 1605. It may have been performed much earlier,
since Tucca in Satiromastix , 1601 (Dekker's Dram, Works, 1873, i. 230),
quotes a line from the tragedy, as if it were well known : " Go not out
farthing candle, go not out, For trusty Damboys now the deed is done."
The tragedy was one of the stock plays of the Children of Paul's. The

NATHANIEL FIELD 473

As he was certainly not a chorister in the cathedral, we
must suppose that he was just then free of engagements,
or lent for the occasion by his manager. He soon
returned to Blackfriars, where he acted among the
Queen's Children of the Revels, and afterwards as a
grown-up actor, when the King's Company took over
the house in addition to the Globe. This may explain
a disputed passage in Wright's Historia Histrionica of
1699. " Some of those Chapel boys, when they grew
men, became actors at the Black-friers, such were
Nathan. Field, and John Underwood."1 Field became
a dramatist of some note. Gerard Langbaine gave him
a kindly notice in his gossiping account of the dramatic
poets.2 "Not only a Lover of the Muses, but belov'd
by them, and the Poets his Contemporaries. He was
adopted by Mr. Chapman for his Son (i.e. in literature),
and call'd in by Old Massinger to his Assistance, in the
play call'd Tlie Fatal Dowry."* Field, he added, "writ
himself two plays which will still bear reading." The
first of these was written in Field's youth ; it was called
A Woman is a Weathercock, and was brought out at
the private house in Whitefriars in or before 1610.
Very soon afterwards he produced another comedy,
intended as an apology for the first, and entitled
Amends for Ladies. To this title, in 1639, were added
the words, "with the merry pranks of Moll Cutpurse,
or the Humour of Roaring."4

prologue to the edition of 1641, in which a new supporter of the title-rSle
is introduced, contains the lines " Field is gone, Whose action first did
give it name." The new actor is supposed by some to be Swanston,
one of the petitioners in the lawsuit (vide infra), against the proprietors
of the Globe Theatre, 1635. See w- L- Phelps, Best Plays of George
Chapman, 1895, P- I25> note. J Printed in Dodsley, u.s., p. clvi.

~ Langbaine, Account of English Dramatick Poets, 1691, p. 198.

3 Fleay, u,s.t i. 208, gives the date of performance of The Fatal
Do-wry as " 1619, about Shrovetide." It was published in 1632. One
passage, ii. 2, was transferred by Field from Amends for Ladies.

* A. W. Ward, op. cit., iii. 49, assumes, from internal evidence, the
date of composition of both plays to be 1610, of their production 1610 or
1611. See Fleay, v.s., i. 185, 201-2. Mr. A. W. Verity, in his preface to

474 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

There are some faint indications that Nathaniel Field
may have acted Ariel in The Tempest. Mr. Payne
Collier1 quoted an epigram on "Fuscus" from The
Furies of Richard Nichols (1614). Fuscus had left his
business for the stage "in hopes to outact Roscius in
a scene."

" Players do now as plentifully grow
As spawn of frogs in March ; yet evermore
The great devour the less. Be wise, therefore ;
Procure thou some commendatory letter
For the Burmoothe's — 'tis a course far better."

As we know from the history of the Summer Islands
that the colonists were then at the extremity of their
misery, it is clear that the advice was merely sarcastic.
Mr. Collier thought that this "Roscius" must have
been Burbage ; but at that date the title might as easily
have been given to Field. The mention of the " Bur-
moothes" instinctively recalls Ariel's words in The
Tempest, where he speaks of the creek :

" Where once

Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew

From the still-vex'd Bermoothes."2

The same biographer quotes an epigram from the
Ashmolean Library, copied into many commonplace
books of the seventeenth century, which was jocosely
ascribed to Field. It was headed, "Field, the Player,
on his mistress, the Lady May," and began :

" It is the fair and merry month of May,
That clothes the Field in all his rich array. " 3

The zephyrs are invoked for a cool breeze, and the
clouds so kind are prayed to " distil their honey drops."

the plays in the " Mermaid" edition (1888) assigns the production of the
first to 1609, of the second to 1612. In 1609-10 Field would have been
twenty-two years old : he was baptised at St. Giles without Cripplegate,
Oct. 17, 1587.

1 Collier, Memoirs of Actors, p. 40, note 2. 2 Tempest, \. 2, 227-9.

3 The epigram will be found on p. 217 of Collier's Memoirs of Principal
Actors.

FIELD AS A POSSIBLE ARIEL 475

This, of course, was Ariel's phrase when he presented
Queen Ceres in the masque. Phaer, in his translation
of Virgil, had spoken of "Dame Rainbow with saffron
wings of dropping showers"; but Shakespeare seems
to have altered the phrase to the more delicate form :

" Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers
DifFusest honey-drops." l

These coincidences of phrase may suggest a reference
to Field's assumption of the part of Ariel, but are too
slight to be in any sense conclusive.

THE CHILDREN OF THE QUEEN'S REVELS AT BLACKFRIARS

There is no evidence that the Children of the Chapel
acted at Blackfriars after Queen Elizabeth's death on
the 24th of March, 1603. It is clear, at all events, that
their connection with that theatre ceased at the end of
the year. Queen Anne wished for a juvenile company
of her own ; and on the 3oth January, 1604, a licence
was granted to Edward Kirkham and his three partners
to procure and train boys in a company to be called
"The Children of the Revels to the Queen," and to
exercise them in playing at the theatre of Blackfriars
and elsewhere.2 The children were to be engaged by
contract, as the Queen could not exercise the preroga
tive of impressment. About the same time it was pro
vided that every play should be submitted to Mr.
Samuel Daniel, Groom of the Chambers to the Queen,
and by a fresh appointment Master of Her Majesty's
Children of the Revels. Daniel was not an official
court-poet ; but he was universally respected as a poet
and historian, and, in the popular estimation, without

1 Tempest, iv. i, 78-9. a Printed in Collier, Annals, i. 353.

476 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

any salary or butt of sack, he took rank after Spenser
"as the best of the laureates."1 He entered on his
duty without a moment's delay ; for, according to the
treasurer's accounts among the Rawlinson MSS. in the
Bodleian Library, the council of the 24th of February,
1605, issued a warrant for the payment of twenty marks,
" and by way of his Highnesses reward 20 nobles ; in
all the sum of £20," to Samuel Daniel and Henry
Evans for a play performed before the King on New
Year's Day, and for another performed two evenings
later by the "Queen's Majesties Children of the
Revels."

We have no list of the Queen's company at Black-
friars. It is conjectured that Nat. Field was retained ;
but Ostler, Day, and Underwood migrated in course of
time to the Globe — Underwood, as we have seen, in
or before 1609. The boys still serving in the choir
of the Chapel Royal were debarred from attendance.
Mr. G. Chalmers, in his Farther Account of the Early
English Stage, was positive that Field became a mem
ber of the Revels company when he left the chapel,2
and when that company was formed, he was in his
seventeenth year. It is also reasonable to suppose that
William Barkstead belonged to the same house. We
first hear of him in 1609, as an actor in Jonson's Silent
Woman at Whitefriars, after the Blackfriars Theatre
had been taken over by the King's men, and some of
the children had been dismissed from the Queen's first
company. Field and Barkstead took the leading parts,
Field, then about twenty-two years old, probably play-

1 His " laureateship" was, as Malone first suggested, an informal
office. Alexander Chalmers, in the life prefixed to his edition of Daniel
in The Works of the English Poets, vol. iii. , quotes an epigram by
Charles FitzGeffrey (i575?-i638), the author of Drake (1596), beginning
" Spenserum si quis nostrum velit esse Maronem, Tu, Daniele, mihi Naso
Britannus eris." Fuller bears testimony to his twofold excellence as an
" exquisite poet . . . also a judicious historian."

'2 Chalmers, in Boswell's Malone, iii. 510.

CHILDREN OF THE QUEEN'S REVELS 477

ing the title character of Epiccene, the Silent Woman.
Barkstead, called "a young gentleman almost of age,"
must have been nearly two years younger, though he
had published his poem of Mirrha in 1607. l He
worked with Lewis Machin, some of whose eclogues
were appended to the poem. Four years afterwards
Barkstead brought out another poem on the popular
subject of Irene — Hiren; or, the Faire Greeke. He has
been credited with at least a share in The Insatiate
Countess, ascribed to Marston in the editions of 1613
and 1631, but not included in his collected works of
i633.2 Mr. Payne Collier traced some of Barkstead's
engagements from entries in the Dulwich MSS., show
ing that he joined Prince Henry's players, afterwards
known as the Prince Palatine's company, and in 1615
joined a partnership at Alleyne's Rose on Bankside, a
house which up to that time had been devoted to bear-
baiting and similar sports.3

Among the principal comedians in The Silent Woman
were also Giles Gary and William Penn, and next to
them Hugh Atwell ; the list also containing the names
of Richard Allen, John Smith, and John Blaney.4
William Penn was a player of some distinction. He
was one of the Prince's company at the Fortune, and
joined the new company at the Hope on Bankside,
where room was found for a stage alongside of the
bear-pit and bull-ring. He was promoted into the
King's service in 1629, the Lord Chamberlain's accounts

1 Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis, or Lust's Prodigies, Stationers'
Register, 12 Nov. 1607.

a Mr. Kemble, according to IheBiographia Dramatica, possessed a copy
with the name of Barkstead, as the author, on the title page ; and Mr.
Payne Collier mentions other copies inscribed with memoranda to the same
effect (Memoirs of Actors, p. xxx, note i). See A. W. Ward, op. cit.t
ii. 481. Fleay, u.s., ii. 80- 1, supposes that Barkstead condensed The
Insatiate Countess from a tragedy and comedy already existing.

3 Collier, u.s., p. xxx. note 2.

4 In the list: "Gil. Carie ; Will. Pen; Hug. Attawel ; Ric. Allin,"
etc.

478 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

showing that he received the usual two years' livery :
"four yards of bastard scarlet for a cloak, and a quarter
yard of crimson velvet for the capes." Of Smith and
Allen little seems to be known. Blaney was one of
the actors at the Red Bull, before the old-fashioned
house in the inn-yard was taken over by the Queen's
servants. Gary, and probably Atwell, were members of
the Prince Palatine's company, and were both engaged
by Alleyne as members of his new troupe at the
Rose.

The boys who acted in The Silent Woman, with
possible exceptions one way or the other, may be taken
as representing the Children of Her Majesty's Revels,
who continued the traditions of the Children of the
Chapel at Blackfriars. They occupied the theatre from
1603 till 1608. In the winter of 1604 took place their un
lucky performance of Jonson, Chapman, and Marston's
Eastward-Hoy which was printed in the following
spring.1 The King, as is well known, ordered certain
passages to be cancelled, at the complaint of Sir James
Murray, as libels on the Scottish nobility. The joint
authors were brought before the Star Chamber : there
was a likelihood, as Jonson told Drummond, " that they
should then have had their ears cut and noses " ; and
it was only upon their submission that His Majesty
granted a pardon. The play, with the necessary
omissions, was acted before James I. in i6i4.2 About
the same time, the children presented a play by
Marston, Cocledemoy ; or, the Dutch Courtesan. This
was one of the plays selected in 1613 for the entertain
ment of the Princess Elizabeth at Whitehall. Lang-

1 Fleay, u.s., ii. 81 : "The date of production lies between that of
Westward- Ho, ist Nov. 1604, and of North-ward-Ho, early in 1605."
See also Collier, Annals, \. 356.

2 The play is printed as modified in Dodsley, Old Plays, ed. 1825,
iv. 183-280. For the story of Jonson's imprisonment, with its legendary
details, see id., p. 189, note, and Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, 1898,
ii. 12.

PLAYS ACTED AT BLACKFRIARS, 1603-8 479

baine describes it as a comedy several times presented
at the Blackfriars, by the Children of the Queen's
Majesty's Revels, and printed in quarto in 1605. x He
thought that the collection called Les Contes du Monde
was the origin of the light-fingered heroine's pranks,
"and cheating Mrs. Mulligrub, the Vintner's wife, of
the goblet and salmon." Another version of the same
story is to be found in the little novel of the Doctor of
Laws, in Painter's Palace of Pleasure.

Marston supplied the house with popular plays, such
as Parasitaster, better known as The Fawn.z About
the same time he gave them The Wonder of Women,
or the Tragedy of Sophonisba, a musical piece, from
which Malone collected many valuable directions. 3
Chapman supplied the Children with the classical piece
known as All Fools,* which may have appeared,
in the list of pieces acted at Whitehall in 1613, as
A Knot of Fools ; and later, they acted his Conspiracy
of Charles Duke of Byron. 5

In the introductory note to the present chapter we
have hinted that The Tempest possibly may have been
produced at Blackfriars during the boys' tenancy of
the theatre. The date has always been a matter of
dispute, and is not in itself of great importance. But
the occasion of the play is of real interest, as showing
some glimpse of the poet's own design. We may

1 Fleay, u.s., ii. 77, thinks that The Dutch Courtesan " was produced
originally" by the Children "when they were the Chapel children of
Queen Elizabeth " (sic).

a Fleay, id., ii. 79, acted "undoubtedly in 1604."

3 Fleay, ibid., thinks that this play (printed 1606) was acted by the
Chapel Children before the plague and change of company.

4 The title is " Al Fooles. A Comedy ; presented at the Black Fryers
and lately before his Majestic . . . 1605."

6 Norih-ward-Ho, in which Chapman was satirised under the name of
Bellamont, and his French tragedies alluded to, has a reference to
stage music, and possibly to the performance of this play at the Black
friars. "I ... shall take some occasion, about the music of the fourth
act, to step to the French king" (iv. i). See also supra, p. 462, note 3.

480 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

connect it with the marriage of Lord Essex in January,
1606, and the fame at once accorded to Jonson's Masque
of Hymen, as well as with the recent discoveries in
New England, and the hope of restoring the lost colony
in Virginia. If this be granted, we may assume that
the production of The Tempest at Blackfriars, alluded
to by Dryden, took place in 1606. If the boys, to
whom the piece would be entirely suitable, produced
it, it could not have been acted by them at Blackfriars
later than the early part of 1608. We already have
referred to the migration to Whitefriars. Early in
1608, the Queen's company at Blackfriars was broken
up, and the boys dismissed, by Philip Herbert, Earl
of Montgomery, as Chamberlain of the Household.
This appears from a letter from Sir Thomas Lake to
the Earl of Salisbury, dated the nth of March, 1607-8,
now among the domestic state papers in the Public
Record Office.1 This document dealt with various cases
of misconduct which had occurred in the theatres, more
especially in connection with Welsh mines. "His
Majesty was pleased with what your lordship adverteth
concerning the committal of the players that have
offended in the matter of France, and commands me
to signify to your lordship that for the others who have
offended in the matter of the Mines, and other lewd
words, which is the children of Blackfriars, then though
he signified his mind to your lordship by my lord of
Montgomery, yet I should repeat it again : that his
lordship had vowed they should never play more, but
should for it beg their bread, and he would have his
vow performed : and therefore my lord Chamberlain by
himself, or your lordship at this table, should take order
to dissolve them, and to punish the matter besides."
In the sequel, another company was formed under the
old title, as "the Children of her Majesty's Revels,"
sometimes called the "Children of Whitefriars," from

1 Dom. State Papers (Jas. I.), vol. xxxi., no. 73.

THE CHILDREN OF THE REVELS 481

their occupation of the private house near the Temple.1
We cannot tell how many of the Blackfriars boys were
dismissed "to beg their bread"; but, from the cast
of The Silent Woman, we have seen that several new
names appeared at once in the list of the Queen's
Children of the Revels. The Blackfriars theatre was
given over to the King's company, who acted there
when the Globe happened to be closed.

THE DISPUTE OF 1635 BETWEEN PROPRIETORS AND ACTORS
AT THE GLOBE AND BLACKFRIARS

Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps printed a curious series of
documents about Blackfriars,2 embodying a statement
which gained no credit at the time when it was made,
and bears upon its face a number of obvious errors. In
1635 there was a dispute about the profits of the Globe
and Blackfriars. There was a lease of the former made
in 1619, with about five years still to run, and another
lease of the private house made about 1620, with four
years to run. There was no lawsuit, or anything in the
nature of litigation. The matter was referred to the
summary decision of the Earl of Pembroke and Mont
gomery, as Chamberlain of the Household. The peti
tions and answers were kept among the official MSS.
of the Lord Chamberlain's office at St. James' Palace,
but are now preserved among the domestic state papers
at the Public Record Office. Robert Benfield, with
other actors in the King's company,3 petitioned for a
share of the profits, which they wished to buy from
some of the lessees who were neither actors nor em
ployed in His Majesty's service. As far as the Black-

1 Patent granted to Philip Rosseter, Jan. 4, 1609-10. See Collier,
Annals, \. 372. * u.s.t i. 312-19.

3 The co-petitioners were Heliard Swanston and Thomas Pollard.
2 I

482 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

friars house was concerned, they wished only to pur
chase at a fair price an extra one-eighth share belong
ing to the actor John Shanks. Another eighth share
belonged at that time to Cuthbert Burbage, brother of
Richard ; the remaining fractions belonged to Mrs.
Winifred Burbage, Richard's widow,1 and William,
son of Richard and Winifred. The five other shares
belonged to Robinson, Taylor, Lowin, Condell, and
Underwood respectively. The complaint was that the
lessees or housekeepers were only six in number to
the actors' nine ; but the minority had a full half of the
receipts for boxes and galleries in both houses, and of
the tiring-house door at the Globe. The actors had the
other half, with the outer doors : yet out of their frac
tional profits they had to find the wages of hired men
and boys, the music, lights, and so forth, beside the
extraordinary charge "which the actors are wholly at
for apparel and poets." John Shanks, in reply, made
out a good case for himself, as having spent much
money in finding boys as apprentices.2 Cuthbert Bur
bage joined with his sister-in-law Winifred and her son
William in a rambling statement, to which the Lord
Chamberlain seems to have paid little regard. There
were evidently several mistakes in the old stories, which
Cuthbert tried to recollect, about what his father had
done under Queen Elizabeth and early in the reign of
King James. The elder Burbage, they said, had been
a player when young, and became the first builder of

1 Mrs. Richard Burbage had married a second time, and was now
Mrs. Robinson. Her husband is mentioned by the actors in their second
petition (printed by Collier, u.s., i. 313) as a housekeeper in right of his
wife. He has been identified conjecturally with the actor Richard
Robinson, mentioned by Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, ii. 3.

2 Printed u.s., i. 316. Shanks speaks of himself as one " who hath still
of his owne purse supplyed the company for the service of his Majesty
with boyes, as Thomas Pollard, John Thompson deceased (for whome hee
payed 40 /*') . . . and at this time maintaines three more for the sayd
service." As Pollard was one of the complainants, there was some
additional point in this apology.

DISPUTE AMONG KING'S PLAYERS 483

playhouses. He built the Theatre at Shoreditch, and
afterwards the Globe on Bankside. " Now for the
Blackfriers," wrote Cuthbert, "that is our inheritance;
our father purchased it at extreame rates, and made it
into a playhouse with great charge and treble ; which
after was leased out to one Evans, that first sett up the
boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children
of the Chapell. In process of time, the boyes growing
up to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler,
and were taken to strengthen the King's service ; and
the more to strengthen the service, the boyes dayly wear
ing out, it was considered that house would bee as fitt
for ourselves, and soe purchased the lease remaining from
Evans with our money, and placed men players, which
were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare &c. And Richard
Burbage, who for thirty-five yeeres paines, cost and
labour, made meenes to leave his wife and children
some estate, and out of whose estate soe many of other
players and their families have beene mayntained, these
new men, that were never bred from children in the
King's service, would take away with oathes and
menaces that wee shall be forced and that they will not
thank us for it ; soe that it seemes they would not pay
us for what they would have or wee can spare, which,
more to satisfie your honour then their threatening
pride, wee are for ourselves willing to part with a part
betweene us, they paying according as ever hath beene
the custome and the number of yeeres the lease is made
for." The document concludes with a reiteration of the
deserts of the Burbages, and an appeal that Richard
Burbage's widow should not be left to starve in her old
age, which, in face of the fact that she was married
again, loses a little of its pathos.

It is obvious that there are gaps in the wording as
well as the sense ; l but the statements are preserved

1 e.g. the sentence beginning "And Richard Burbage," in which the
words " whose estate " are governed by " out of," and at the same time
are transferred tcarii (rfivtaw as an object to the verb in the next sentence.

484 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST"

only in what appears to be a clerk's transcript. Cuth-
bert Burbage evidently confused two separate leases,
one, relating to the Blackfriars house, for a term of
twenty-one years from 1597, and another, relating to
the Globe, for twenty-one years from 1598. To the
renewal of these leases we already have alluded.1 The
statement that one Evans "first set up" the Children
of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel can easily be shown to be
a mistake ; but one Henry Evans seems to have been
the lessee from the building of the theatre until 1604,
when the Children of the Queen's Revels were formed
into a company. Mr. Shanks, however, proved that
he had offered to sell his part of the shares on fair
terms ; and the Lord Chamberlain ordered Sir John
Firett, Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, and
his own solicitor, Mr. Bedingfield, to fix an equitable
price for the shares and to make a final agreement.

1 In Lord Pembroke's decision, printed u.s., i. 313, we read "for the
fower yeeres remayning- of the lease of the house in Blackfriers, and for
five yeeres in that of the Globe."

INDEX

N.B. — The italicised figures refer to pages where the person, place, or other subject
is mentioned in the footnotes alone.

Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canter
bury, 309, 426, 430, 435
Abel, Mr., of Nayland, Suffolk, 321
Abergavenny, Baron. See Beau-
champ, William, etc.
Abingdon, Henry, of the Chapel

Royal, 469
Abington, Northants, 267, and see

Barnard, Baldwin, etc.
Acarete de Biscay, Voyage of, quoted,

366
Acton, Middlesex, 190, 191, 225, 342,

and see Hall, John (2), and Rev.

William

Acts of the Apostles, quoted, 381-2
Addison, Joseph, anecdote of, 57
Adepts in magic, 386-7
Admiral, the Lord : his players. See

Howard, Sir Charles
Aggas or Agas, Ralph : his map of

London, 192-3
Agnes, the name and its variants,

28-30

Agrippina. See Cologne
Ague in seventeenth century, 308
Aicher, Otto, Hortus Inscriptionum

of, quoted, 229, 234
Ainsworth, William Harrison, Jack

Sheppard, quoted, 192
Albans, Viscount St. See Bacon,

Sir Francis

Alcester, Warwickshire, 67, 68, i6j
Alchemist, The, See Jonson, Ben
Alcock, William, of Tiddington, 133

Aldersgate Street, E.G., 209, 301,

and see Bell Inn and Pembroke

House
Ale-Conner or Ale -Taster, office of,

78-9

Ale, English, 282, 283
Alexander, Sir William, Earl of

Stirling, his plays, 443
Alfonso I., King of Naples and the

Two Sicilies, 375, 386
Alfonso II., King of Naples, etc., j$5
Algiers, pirate-ships of, 287, 288
Alicante, Howell's visit to, 287, 288 ;

wine of, 259

Allen, Richard, actor, 477, 478
Allen, Thomas, History of London

referred to, 274.
Alleyne, Edward, actor - manager,

477, 478

All Fools. See Chapman, George
Allsoppe, John, of St. Helen's parish,

216
Alfs Well that Ends Well. See

Shakespeare, William (l)
Almshouse of Stratford Guild, 86
Altham, Richard, of Gray's Inn, 201
Alvechurch, Worcestershire, i6j
Alveston, Warwickshire, 331, 132
Amapaia, Province of, 357
Amazons, legends concerning, 360-1
Amends for Ladies. See Field,

Nathaniel

Amersham, Bucks, 189
Andrew by the Wardrobe, Church of

St., E.C., 205, 452

485

486

INDEX

Andrew's Hill, St., E.G., 452
Andrew Undershaft, Church of St.,

E.G., 212

Angel Inn, Bishopsgate, E.G., 211
Angers, Bishop of. See Le Maire,

Guillaume

Anjou, English conquest of, 336-7
Anjou, equivalent for Angers, 152, /£?
Anne, Church of St., Blackfriars,

E.G., 452, 453, 456; parish of, 181
Anne, Guild of St., at Knowle,

Warwicks., 112
Anne of Denmark, Queen-Consort of

James I., 240, 401, 402, 403, 410,

4", 4I3» 4M, 424, 429, 4S6, 475
Antelope Inn at Oxford, 300
Anthologia Palatina, quoted, 241
Anthony, legend of St. , 366
Antilles, Histoirc Naturelle des lies.

See Poincy, L. de
Anti-Masques, 407, 408, 412
Antimony, medical uses of, 305
Antony and Cleopatra. See Shake
speare, William (l)
Antwerp, Sir Thomas More at, 208
Apocrypha, Shakespeare's references

to the, 224
Apollonius Rhodius, Scholiast on

Argonautica of, quoted, 380
"Apples of Love," synonym for

tomatoes, 202
Appleyard, Sir Mathew, his regiment,

299

" Apreeware," 122, and see Ypres
Aquafortis, used by Sir W. Ralegh,

358
Arber, Prof. Edward, F.S.A., quoted,

208

Archenfield, Herefordshire, local cus
toms of bequest, 228
Arch-Sewer, title of Elector Palatine,

423
Arden, Agnes, second wife of Robert

(i), 116, 119, 120, 122
Arden, Alice, daughter of Robert (l),

116, 119, 120
Arden, Edward, 321
Arden, Forest of, 163-4; derivation

of name, 165, 320
Arden, Mary, daughter of Robert (l).

See Shakespeare, Mary
Arden, Robert (i), grandfather of

Shakespeare, 25, 112, 115, 116,

117; his will, 119-20; inventory

of his property, 1 20-2
Arden, Robert (i), of Park Hall, son

of Edward, 321
Argier, old form of Algiers, 286 ;

Castle of, sham sea-fight of, at

Lambeth, 427-8
Ariel, Joseph Hunter's theories as to,

390-1 ; part of, on stage, 474-5
Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso

of, quoted, 379, and see Harington,

Sir John

Aristolochia (birthwort), medical em
ployment of, 300
Armstrong, Edward, Charles V., by,

referred to, 361

"Aroint thee," meaning of, 156
Arraignment of Paris, The. See

Peele, George
Arromaia, Province of, 357, 358, 359,

363

"Arthur's Show," 196
"Articulate Lady," the, 410, and

see Devereux, Frances
Arundel, Earl of. See Howard,

Thomas (l)

Arundel, Sir William, 136
Arvi River, in Guiana, 362
Asbies, Robert Arden's farm of, 116,

"9, 349
Ascham, Roger, Toxophilus of, quoted,

292

Ashbury, Berks, Cromlech at, 3?o
Ashfeld, Alice, prioress of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, 206

Ashmole, Elias, M.D., quoted, 247
Ashmolean Museum, artificial dragon

in, 299
Assessment of St. Helen's parish,

E.G., in 1598, 213-20
Assize of Bread and Ale at Stratford,

77-9
Aston Cantlow, Warwickshire, parish

of, 115, 119, 120, 132
Aston, Tony, 194

Astrology in medical profession, 306
As You Like It. See Shakespeare,

William (l)
Atherstone-on-Stour, Warwickshire,

345

Atoica, River, in Guiana, 363
Atwell, Hugh, actor, 477, 478
Aubrey, John, quotations from, 46,
47, 48, 50, 184, 185, 190-1, 260,
286, 301, 302, 306, 312, 338, 343-8
passim ; references to, 8 1 , 478 ;
Rodd on, 328

Auchmuty, James and John, 404
Aurea Legenda. See Voragine, Jaco
bus de

Aurelio and Isabella, romance of, 384
Austen, James, of St. Martin Out-
wich, E.G., 211

INDEX

487

Avon, River, in Warwickshire, 150,
153 ; meaning of name, 320

Aylesbury, Bucks., 185, 188, 330;
vale of, 186

Bacharach, wines of, 285
" Back-bare," sporting term, 169
Bacon, Sir Francis, Viscount St.
Albans, 195, 198, 201, 338, 432,
433. 434; Essays quoted, 194-5.
411, 413, 431, 433 ; his Masque of
Flowers, 406-8
Bad beginning makes a good ending, A,

anonymous play, 435, 438
Badger, George, of Stratford, 74, 75
Bagenal or Bagnal, Sir Henry, 295
Bagley, Edward, citizen of London,

269, 271

Bagley Wood, Berks., story of Dutch
man in, 310
Bagpipes, story of their effect on

wolves, 294-5

Baheire, Robert, of Blackfriars, 456
Bailiff, office of, at Stratford, 103-4
Baker, Ellen. See Shakespeare, Ellen
Baker, Mrs., of Shottery, 324
Baker, Oliver, of Stratford, IOO
Balcony in private theatres, 459-60
" Balk," substantive and verb, mean
ing of, 141
Ball, Rev. Richard, of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, 213
Ballard, George, letter of Mr. Brome

to, quoted, 339-40
Balsall, Temple, Warwickshire, 81,

no
Balshall, Thomas, D.D., Dean of

Stratford, 8l, 82
Banbury, Oxon., i8at 188
Banister, Gilbert, of the Chapel

Royal, 469

Barbary, potatoes in, 203
Barber Surgeons' Hall, E.G., 301
Barford Bridge, Warwickshire, /88
Barkstead, William, actor-dramatist,
476-7 ; his Hiren referred to, 477
Barlichway, Hundred of, Warwick
shire, 64, 129
Barnacle geese, 150
Barnard, Baldwin, Esq., of Abington,

Northants, 267

Barnard, Dame Elizabeth, grand
daughter of Shakespeare, 30, 60,
139, 140, 225, 226, 227, 231, 243,
244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 256, 257,
265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 ;
and see Barnard, Sir John ; Hall,

John and Susanna ; and Nash,
Thomas

Barnard, Eleanor. See Cotton, Elea
nor

Barnard, Elizabeth. See Gilbert,
Elizabeth

Barnard, Mary. See Higgs, Mary

Barnard, Sir John, Bart., of Abing
ton, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271

Barriers at Earl of Essex's wedding,
419-20, and see Jonson, Ben

Bartholomew Fair. See Jonson, Ben

"Bartholomew's Day, Black," 262

Barton-on-the-Heath, Warwickshire,
116, i 68

Basel, Dance of Death at, 88

Basing, William, Dean of St. Paul's,
212

Bassel, Laurence and Peter, of St
Helen's, Bishopsgate, 217

Bastard wine, 259, 286

Bath, Earl of, his players, 99

Bath, Lord Chamberlain's players
at, 99

Bath, Municipal Records, quoted,
99, 102

Batlers at Oxford colleges, 340

"Bavarian pouch," 366-7

Bawkes, Sherrett, of St. Helen's,
Bishopsgate, 217

Baxter, Robert, actor, 471

Bean, Alexander, intruded minister
at Stratford, 261, 262

Bear Inn at Stratford, 240, 307

Bearley, Warwickshire, 116

Bearwardens, companies of, 99

Beauchamp, Anne, Countess of War
wick. See Neville, Anne

Beauchamp, Henry, Duke of War
wick, 336

Beauchamp, Richard (i), K.G., I4th
Earl of Warwick, 317, 334, 335-6,

337
Beauchamp, Richard (2), Earl of

Worcester, 108, jj6
Beauchamp, Thomas (i), 1 2th Earl

of Warwick, 334
Beauchamp, Thomas (2), 1 3th Earl

of Warwick, 334
Beauchamp, William, Baron Aber-

gavenny, 108
Beauchamps, monuments of the, at

Warwick, 330, 334-7
Beaufort, Henry, Cardinal, Bishop of

Winchester, 317-18
Beaumont, Francis, Masque by, 432,

433, and see Fletcher, John
Bedford, Duke of. See John

INDEX

Bedford, Earl of. See Russell, Sir

John
Bedingfield, Mr., solicitor to the

Lord Chamberlain, 484
Beer in England and Germany, 282,

283

Beeston, Christopher, actor, 48
Beeston, Elizabeth, wife of Christo
pher, 48
Beeston, William, son of Christopher

and Elizabeth, 48, 343-8 passim
Behren's Hercynia Curiosa referred

to, 380

Belle Sauvage Inn, 459
Bell Inn, Aldersgate Street, E.G., 301
Bell Inn, Carter Lane, E.G., 453, 459
Bell, John, F.R.C.S. Edin., his visit

to Stratford, 232

Benedick and Beatrix, probable equiv
alent of Much Ado, 438, 444-5
Benfield, Robert, actor, 481
Bentley, actor, 180
Bentley, Justice, of Kineton, 331
Bentley, Thomas, M.D., President

R.C.P., 85-6

Bergamot at Long Melford, 281
Berkeley, Henry, Baron, 193
Bermudas, trials of colonists in, 474
Bernard, Charles, serjeant-surgeon to

Queen Anne, 339, 340
Bernard or Barnard, Elizabeth, wife

of Robert, of Abington, 268
Bernwood Forest, Bucks., 186
Berreo, Antonio, Spanish explorer,

359, 364

Bertulf, King of Mercia, 71, 72, 73

Betony, medical uses of, 264

Bettenham, Jeremy, formerly Reader
of Gray's Inn, 201

Betterton, Thomas, actor, 22, 47, 48,
56,57

Bettis, Mr., chief shipwright at Chat
ham, 427

Bewdley, Worcestershire, cap-making
at, 325

Bicester, Oxon., 182, 184, iS6, 188

Bicocca, Battle of, 386

Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, 67,
68

Billesley, Warwickshire, 37

Billingsley, Sir Henry, Lord Mayor
of London, 215

Biographia Dramatica, quoted, 477

Birch, Samuel, LL.D., D.C.L., 444,
448

Bird, Dr., Linacre Professor at Cam
bridge, 239

Birmingham, Roman road at, 65, 67

Biscay, Howell's adventure in, 294
Bishopsgate Within, Ward of, 210
Bishopton, Warwickshire, 64, 135, 140
Black Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street,

E.G., 210, 213
" Black Crosses," old name for St.

Mark's Day, 24
Blackfriars, Liberty of, description

of, 451-3
Blackfriars Theatre, 1 68, 206, 219,

450-84 passim
Blackness, Masque of. See Jonson,

Ben

Blackwater, Battle of the, 295
Blaney, John, actor, 477, 478
" Blindcinques," nickname for class

of undergraduates, 345
Blois, William de, Bishop of Worces
ter, 76

Bloodhounds, varieties of, 171
Bloody Brother, The, See Fletcher,

John

"Bloody hand," sporting term, 169
Blue Boar Inn at Oxford, 300
Bobart, Jacob, of the Oxford Physic

Garden, 299, 300
Bobart, Jacob, jun., 299
Bohemia, King and Queen of. See

Frederick and Elizabeth (i)
" Bolt," sporting term, 167
Bombards, 462-3
Bon Chretien pears at Long Melford,

281
Bond, William, of Crosby Place, his

monument, 209
Bone-house at Chipping Norton, 184;

at Stratford, 81, 230, 304, 341
Bonnetto, Rocco, of Blackfriars, 458
Bonvisi, Antonio, of Lucca, 208-9
Booker, John, his "study of books,"

247
Book of Common Prayer, 1 559, quoted,

Booth, Charles, prompter at Drury

Lane, 56
Bordeaux, Scottish wine-merchants

at, 284
Bordesley, Warwickshire, priory of,

107, 109
Borsholder, traditional duties of the,

"3-4

Boswell, James, jun., quoted, 384-5,

400, 462
Bottom, Drolls on the subject of,

187-8, 445

" Bouge of Gourt," meaning of, 463
Boughton or Borton, William, curate

of Aston Cantlow, 120

INDEX

489

Boycl or Bowy, Sergeant, 404
"Brach," Shakespeare's use of word,

I7i, '73
Brackley, Viscount. See Egerton, Sir

Thomas

Braithwaite, Richard, 81
Brand, John, F.s.A., Popular An
tiquities of, referred to, 25
Brandenburg, Sir Edward Walker's

mission to, 273-4
Brandes, Georg, William Shakespeare,

by, referred to, 233
Brent, Sir Nathaniel, Vicar-General

to Abp. of Canterbury, 233
Bridewell, 452 ; palace at, 453
Bridges, Rev. Gabriel, B.D., 347
Bridges, John, K.S.A., History of

Northants, quoted, 268
Briggen, Walter, of St. Helen's

parish, Bishopsgate, 218
Brill, Bucks., 186
Bristol, Lord Chamberlain's players

at, 99 ; Tobacco trade at, 260
Britton, John, F.s. A., quoted, 21-2
Broadway, E.G., 451
Broderick, William, embroiderer to

James I., 431
Bromefield, Alice. See Spencer , Dame

Alice

Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, 163
Bronchoceles, 367, and see Bavarian

pouch
Brooke, Baron. See Greville, Sir

Fulke and Robert
Brooke, Henry, K.G., Baron Cobham,

206, 455, 458

Brooksbank, Mr., of Bucklersbury, 182
Broom-groves, 146
Brown, Rawclon L., Catalogue of

MSS., etc., quoted, 289
Browne, Father, mentioned by Ward,

240
Browning, Robert, his Pippa Passes

quoted, 290

Bruni, Francesco. See Petrarca, Fran
cesco

Brunswick, Duke of, 424
Bryan, Sir Francis, 453
Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton, 444
Buc, Buck, or Bucke, Sir George,

Master of Revels, 443
Buck, varieties of, 170
Buckingham, Duke of. See Villiers,

Sir George

Buckinghamshire, Duke of. See Shef
field, John
Buckinghamshire, Shakespeare in,

essay on, referred to, 186

Bucklersbury, 181, 182, 262, 263, 264
"Budget," meaning of, 365
Bulkley, Elizabeth, receipt-book of,

Suoted, 4.69
1-dogs, 172

Bull Theatre. See Red Bull Inn
Burbage, Cuthbert, son of James,

482, 483, 484
Burbage, James, 50, 180, 451, 453,

457, 482, 483
Burbage, Richard, son of James, 53,

198, 226, 464, 472, 474, 482, 483
Burbage, William, son of Richard,

482
Burbage, Winifred, wife of Richard.

See Robinson, Winifred
Burges, Rev. Mr., of Sutton Cold-
field, 262
Burghley, Baron. See Cecil, Sir

William

Burgoine, Sir Robert, of Wroxall, 1 10
Burley, William, tract on Princess

Elizabeth's wedding, by, quoted,

427-32

Burman, Stephen, of Rowington, 130
Burn, Rev. Richard, D.c. L., Eccle
siastical Law, quoted, 33-4
Burnet, Great, plant, where found,

192 ; curative virtues of, 265
Burnet, Mr., of Stratford, 303, 323
Burse, the. See Exchange, Royal
Burton, Robert, Anatomy of Melan
choly, by, quoted, 125-6, 153, 310,
367
Bury St. Edmunds, Abbey of, 281,

282
Bush, Paul, Bishop of Bristol, 303,

3<>4
Bussy d'Amoois. See Chapman,

George

"Busy-less," 373
Butcher, trade of, 349-50
Butler, James, K.G., 1st Duke of

Ormonde, 273
Butler, Samuel, author of Hudibras,

348
Butler's Marston, Warwickshire, 327,

330-1, 332
Byron, Conspiracy of Charles, Duke

of. See Chapman, George.

Cacodaemon, use of word in Shake
speare, etc., 315-16
Caesar, Sir Julius, Master of Rolls, 150
Casar's Tragedye, probably old form
of Julius Ctesar, 439, 442-3

490

INDEX

Cage, the, house of Thomas Quiney

in Stratford, 258
Caius, John, M.D., tract on British

Dogs, quoted, 171-2
Gala Croce, in island of Lampedusa,

375
Calderon . de la Barca, Pedro, Bien

vengas, Mai of, quoted, 420
Caldwall, Daniel, letter of Howell

to, 282
Caldwell, Florens, epitaph on. See

Martin's, St., Ludgate, Church of
Calendarium Genealogicum, quoted,

Caliban, Joseph Hunter on, 387-8

Caltha, See Cutwode, Thomas

Cambridge, Privy Council order con
cerning thatched roofs at, 147

Camden, William, Clarenceux king-
of-arms, 104 ; his Britannia (in
Holland's translation), quoted, 94,
123, 129, 145, 183, 1 86, 189, 294

Camomile, legend concerning, 313

Campion, Thomas, poet and phy
sician, Masque by, 402-3 ; his
Masque of Frantics or Lords'
Masque, 430-1

Canary wine, 285

Cane tobacco, 260, 466

Cannibals, reference by Ralegh to,
362

Cantelupe, Walter de, Bishop of
Worcester, 76

Canterbury bells, synonym for "lady-
smock," 158

Cantilupe, John de, of Snitterfield,
107-8

Canton, heraldic term, 414, 415

Canuri, Province of, 363

Caora, River, in Guiana, 363

Capell, Edward, editor of Shake
speare, 41, 51

Capon, Barbery, of St. Helen's
parish, Bishopsgate, 217

Captain, The. See Fletcher, John

Cardano, Cardema, or Cardenno,
anonymous play, 438

Carduus Benedictus, reference to, by
Shakespeare, 263

Carew, Sir George, Earl of Totnes,

333
Carew, Joyce, Countess of Totnes,

333

Carew, Thomas, poet, 279

Carey, Sir George, 2nd Baron Huns-
don, son of Sir Henry, 456, 458

Carey, Sir Henry, K.G. , ist Baron
Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain, 455,

456 ; his monument, jjj, 456 ; his

players, 99, 100
Caribane, 365

Carichana, Humboldt at, 365
Carleton, Alice, sister of Sir Dudley,

401, 404, 429, 432
Carleton, Sir Dudley, Viscount Dor
chester, letters by, quoted, 375,

414 ; letters to, quoted, 404-6,

425, 426, 427, 436, 437 ; and see

Chamberlain, John ; Lake, Sir

Thomas ; and Winwood, Sir Ralph
Carline, Maltese thistle, 377
Carlo Emanuele, Duke of Savoy, 438
Carnations, varieties and treatment

of, 162
Caro, Di, page of Alfonso I. of

Naples, 375
Caroli, River, in Guiana, and its falls,

358, 362, 363
Carpenter, Jenken, town clerk of

London, 87

Carr, Frances. See Devereux, Frances
Carr, Robert, Earl of Somerset, 398,

400, 401
Carte, Thomas, historian, referred

to, 94

Carter Lane, E.G., 451, 452, 453
Cartwright, Rev. William, dramatist,

185 ; his Ordinary referred to, 261
Gary, Giles, actor, 477, 478
"Case, to," sporting term, 167
Castle, William, clerk of Stratford

parish church, 328, 332-3
Caterina, Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus,

290
Catiline, his Conspiracy. See Jonson,

Ben

Caviare, references to, 260-1
Cawarden, Sir Thomas, Master of

the Revels, 453, 455, 458
Cawdrey, Ralf, butcher at Stratford,

348-9

Cecil, Sir Robert, K.B., 1st Earl of
Salisbury, 199 ; letter to, quoted,
480 ; and see Lake, Sir Thomas

Cecil, Sir William, Baron Burghley,

195. 199, 219
Chadshunt, Warwickshire, 331, and

see Newsham, Charles
Chaise-Dieu, La, Haute-Loire, Danse

Macabre at, 89
" Chaldsean Philosophy," Hunter on,

386-7

Chalgrove field, Beds., 134
Challenge at Tilt. See Jonson, Ben
Challoner, William, of Tiddington,

132. 133

INDEX

491

Chalmers, Alexander, F.s.A., quoted,

42 ; referred to, 476
Chalmers, George, quoted, 50, 442 ;

referred to, 447, 476
Chamberlain, Dr., of Westminster,

quoted, 243
Chamberlain, John, letters of, quoted,

401-2, 404, 405, 406, 425, 426,

429, 43 !, 432. 433- 434, 435. 43^,

437
Chamberlain, the Lord : his company

of players. See Carey, Sir Henry
Chambers, John, Bishop of Peter
borough, 303
Chambre, John, M.D., Dean of St.

Stephen's, Westminster, 303
Chancery Lane, wild flowers in, 192
Chantrey, Sir Francis L., sculptor, at

Stratford, 232
Chantries, Return of, 1546, referred

to, 97
Chapel Royal, Children of the, 450,

464, 469-75, 478
Chapel Royal, Old Cheque-Book of,

quoted, 396, 397, 401, 428, 429-3°,

469, 470-1
Chapman, George, dramatist, 47, 432,

473 ; his All Fools, 441, 463, 479 ;

Bussyd'Ambois, 472; Byron, Con
spiracy of Charles, Duke of, 462 ;

479 ; Eastward- Ho, see Jonson,

Ben ; Humorous Day's Mirth,

368-9 ; Masque by, performed, 432
Chari Christ, Irish euphemism for

wolves, 294
Charing Cross, 191
Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon,

38, 322, 328
Charles I., King of England, 272,

444; as heir-apparent, 400, 401,

427, 429, 431. 434, 436, 438
Charles II., King of England, 439 ;

plays in his library, 440
Charles V., Emperor, and King of

Spain, 287, Sf9> his visit to

London, 453

Charles VII., King of France, 297
Chatillon, Battle of, 296
Chaucer, Geoffrey, quoted, I75»453
Chaworth, Dr., 302
Cheap, Ward of, 212
Cheap, West, 263
Cheetah sent to James I. , 437
Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire, 268
Cherry, Francis, benefactor of Thos.

Hearne, 340
Cheshire, hunting in, 175 ; proverb

used in, 156

Chester, termination of Watling

Street, 66
Chesterton, John de, lord of manor

of Stratford, 320
Chettle, Henry, Kind-hartes Dreame,

by, quoted, 52-3
Cheyney, Sir Thomas, K.G., Treasurer

of the Household, 453
Chichele, Henry, Archbishop of Can
terbury, 318

Chichester, Collins the poet at, 383
Child, Thomas, of St. Helen's parish,

Bishopsgate, 211-12
Children of the Revels, the Queen's,

426, 427, 464, 471. 473, 475-8!!

and see Blackfriars and Whitefriars

Theatres

Chiltern Hills, Bucks., 1 88
Chioppines or Chapins at Venice and

elsewhere, 291-2
Chippenham, Wilts., 260
Chipping Norton, Oxon., 182, 183,

184
Choristers of Stratford Church : their

order of life, 81
Choughs, 151-2; Act of Parliament

for destruction of, 152
Christ Church, Oxon., performance

of Palamon and Arcyte in, 176
Church-Enstone, Oxon., 184
Church Entry, E.G., 452
Gibber, Theophilus, 49
Cicero, de Drvinatione, quoted, 300
Cinquepace, 408, and see Galliard
Cioll or Sciol, Cecilia and German,

of Crosby Place, E.G., 209
City of London Records, referred to,

212
Clapham, Surrey, Samuel Pepys'

house at, 449
Clare Market. See Tennis Court

Theatre

Clarence, Duke of. See George
Clarendon, Earl of. See Hyde, Ed
ward
Claret, 259, 260, 265, 284, and see

Bordeaux

Clary, purple and wild, 192
Clary, spirit of, used in manufacturing

wines, 285
Clerkenwell, Middlesex, 21 1, 346,

and see Red Bull Inn.
Clifton, A. B., Cathedral Church of

Lichfield, by, ref. to, 338
"Clodpate, Mr. Justice," 328
Cloister Court, Blackfriars, E. C.,

452
Clopton, Anne, wife of William, 333

492

INDEX

Clopton, Dame Barbara, wife of Sir

John (i), 272, 273
Clopton, Eglantine, wife of Thomas

(2), 82

Clopton family, 116; their coat-of-

arms, 320-1 ; their monuments, 82,

333 ; their Suffolk collaterals, 280.
Clopton House, rebuilding of, 272
Clopton, Sir Hugh (i), of Clopton,

Lord Mayor of London, 63, 82, 85,

95, 115, 320
Clopton, Sir Hugh (2), of Clopton

(fl. 1742), 60, 269, 272
Clopton, Sir John (i), of Clopton, 272,

321
Clopton, Sir John (2), of Kentwell,

Suffolk, 280-1
Clopton, Joyce, daughter of William

and Anne. See Carew, Joyce.
Clopton, Thomas (i), brother of Sir

Hugh(i), 115
Clopton, Thomas (2), of Clopton (d.

1643), 82
Clopton, Walter, of Cockfield, Suffolk,

280

Clopton, William, of Clopton, 333
Clopton, Sir William, of Kentwell, 280
Clutterbuck, Ferdinando, draper, of

Bishopsgate ward, 215
Cobden, Rev. Edward, Vicar of Acton,

Middlesex, 242
Cobham, Baron. See Brooke, Henry,

and Oldcastle, Sir John
Cockfield, Suffolk. See Clopton,

Walter
Cockle, 161

Cockle-demoys, small coins, 432
Cock LorelFs Boat, quoted, 352
Cockpit Theatre. ^Phoenix Theatre
Cockpit at Whitehall, 433, 446
Cocledemoy. See Marston, John
Coel, early British king, 93, 94
Cokain, Sir Aston, quoted, 457
Coke, Sir Edward, Lord Chief Justice,

129, 150, 410

Colchester, legendary origin of, 93, 94
Colesborne, Gloucestershire. See

Higgs, Thomas.

College-house at Stratford, 80, 343
Collier, John Payne, F.S.A., 776, 443,

45i, 4S7, 45^, &9> 463, *6j> 472,

474, 477, etc.
Collingwood, Ralph, Dean of Lich-

field, 8 1
Collins, Arthur, his Peerage referred

to, 412
Collins, Francis, lawyer, of Warwick,

226, 230

Collins, William, poet, 383, 384, 385
Cologne (Agrippina), death of Maria

de Medici at, 273
Colonna, Prospero, 385
Coloquintida, 263
Colt's-foot, used to adulterate tobacco,

205, 466

Comb, Mary, of Stratford, 245
Combe, John, of Stratford, 8l, 82,

127, 139, 148, 231, 333, 346
Combe, Thomas, of Stratford, 81, 226
Combe, William, of Stratford, 139,

148, 149, 150

" Combes," Justice, of Stratford, 321
Comedy of Errors. See Shakespeare,

William (i)

Commin, Walter, of Snitterfield, 107
Commin, William, father of Walter,

107

Commines, Philippe de, Dent's trans
lation of, 385
Common-fields at Stratford, 134-5,

140
Compton - by - Brailes, Warwickshire,

Compton, Elizabeth, wife of William,

210

Compton, William, K.G., Earl of
Northampton, 199, 210, 240

Compton, Sir William, of Compton-
by-Brailes, Warwickshire, 39

Condamine, C. M. de la, Voyage of,
quoted, 360-1

Condell, Henry, actor, 226, 464, 482,

483
Conduit, the Great, near West Cheap,

263
Conduit-heads at Marylebone, 165,

190, 191, 192
" Coney -gree," meaning and uses of,

134
Coningsby, Ralph, lord of manor of

Stratford, 320
Constable, Legend of, at Grendon

Underwood, Bucks., 184-8
Constable, Office of, at Stratford, 79
Constable Marshal at the Temple,

196

Constantius Chlorus, 94
Conies du Monde , Les, referred to, 479
Conway, Sir John, of Luddington, 27
Cooke, James, surgeon, of Warwick,

239, 240, 248, 249, 250
Coombe Keynes, Dorset, Tithing-man

of, 124
Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Earl of

Shaftesbury, 308
Coranto, The, 195, 408, 409, 415

INDEX

493

Coriolanus. See Shakespeare, William
(0

Cornachine, Dr., of Pisa, 305

Corney, Bolton, essay on Shake
speare's birthday, quoted, 22

Cornish, William, of the Chapel
Royal, 469

Cornwallis, Sir Charles, referred to,

425
Cornwallis, Sir William, son of Sir

Charles, Essays by, quoted, 371-2
Coronelli, Vincenzo, his Specchio del

Mare referred to, 374, 375, 378
Coryat, Thomas, his Crudities re
ferred to, 128
Cosin, Richard, lawyer, of Worcester,

36
Goto, ailment prevalent in South

America, 366
Cots wold sports, 168
Cotton, Eleanor, wife of Samuel, 269,

271

Cotton, Sir Robert. See Pory, John
Cotton, Samuel, of Henwick, Beds.,

269

Coughton, Warwickshire, 67
Courante. See Coranto
Court, Grace, daughter of following,

240
Court, Mr., apothecary, of Stratford,

240, 264

Court-leet, Charge of, quoted, 373
Coutances, John de, Bishop of Wor
cester, 320
Covel, Rev. John, D. D. , Z^aryquoted,

146
Coventry, Free School at, 108 ; Hunter

on Shakespeares of, 109
Coventry, Sir William, Commissioner

of the Navy, 331
Cowell, John, LL.D., Interpreter of,

quoted, 142
Cox, on history of Long Melford,

quoted, 281

Coxcomb, The. See Fletcher, John
Coxeter, Thomas, bookseller and

antiquary, 441
"Crack," meaning and use of word,

467
Craig, Mr. W. J., his edition of

Am/ Lear referred to, 341
Granmer, Thomas, his version of the

Bible referred to, jSa
Craven, Holy Wells in, 93
Creed Lane, E.G., 451
Creighton, Charles, M. D. , his History

of Epidemics referred to, 243, 245,

309, 425, 469

Crendon. See Grendon Underwood,

Long Crendon
Cressingham Court-rolls, referred to,

29
Creswick, Francis, wine-merchant, of

Bristol, 259
Crofts, Sir James, friend of Howell,

289, 3158
Croke, Sir George, judge, Reports

quoted, 29-30

Cromwell, Oliver, story of, 325-6
Crosby, Dame Anne, wife of Sir

John, 208
Crosby, Sir John, of Crosby Place,

206-8
Crosby Place, Bishopsgate, E.G., 199,

206-10, 213, 215, 234
Crow-flowers, 157-8
"Crown Imperial," flower, 162
Crown Inn, Oxon., 346, 347
Croydon, Surrey, Dance of Death in

Archbishops' palace at, 88
Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru,

The. See Davenant, Sir William
Crusius, Martinus. See Kraus, Martin
Crystal in Guiana, 364; Mountain

of, 359

Cuckoo- buds, 158-9
Cuckoo-flowers, 158
Cullymore, Dr., of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, 217
Culpeper or Culpepper, Nicholas,

306, 425

Cumana, Ralegh at, 363
Cunningham, Peter, paper by, re
ferred to, 434

Cupid's Revenge. See Fletcher, John
Guriapan, Ralegh at, 359
Curll, pamphlet on Essex divorce

published by, referred to, ^99
Curtain in theatres, use of, 460
Curtain Theatre, Shoreditch, E., 50,

471

Cutler, Mr., story of, 310
Cutwode, Thomas, CattAa, by, quoted,

1 60, 162
Cymbeline. See Shakespeare, William

Cynthia 's Revels. See Jonson, Ben
Cyprus, crape from, 454 ; and Venice,

290

Daffodils in Shakespeare, 162
Dagon, Hunter's theories as to

Caliban and, 387-8
Dalam, William, schoolmaster of

Stratford, 98

494

INDEX

Dance of Death at Stratford and
elsewhere, 87-92

Dancers, the High, at Somerset's
marriage, 404-5

Daniel, Mr., of Long Melford, 281

Daniel, Samuel, and the Children of
the Revels, 475-6 ; his Vision of
the Twelve Goddesses, 412-13

Danish Archives at Record Office,
referred to, 437

Danson, Mr., tailor to James I., 431

Darby, Alderman, of Fenchurch
Street, E.G., 207

Darnel, 160-1

Davenant, John (i), Bishop of Salis
bury, 347

Davenant, John (2), vintner, of Ox
ford, 46, 347

Davenant, Mrs., wife of John (2),

46, 347-
Davenant, Nicholas, son of John (2),

347-
Davenant, Rev. Robert, son of John

(2), 46, 347
Davenant, Sir William, 45-8, 59,

302, 346, 347, 348, 441, 444, 461 ;

his Shakespearean revivals, 56-8 ;

his Siege of Rhodes, etc., 461 ; his

Wits, 444
Davenport, Rev. James, D.D., Vicar

of Stratford, 232
Davies, John, of Hereford, epigrams

by, quoted, 55, 368, 472
Davies, Rev. John, D.D., of Mallwyd,

Merionethshire, his Welsh Gram
mar, 279
Davies, Sir John, epigram by, quoted,

50 ; his Orchestra quoted, 409
Davies, Rev. Richard, Vicar of

Sapperton, Gloucestershire, quoted,

40-1, 330.
Davies, Thomas, prompter, quoted,

53, 58
Davis, Mr. C. E. , Mineral Baths of

Bath, by, referred to, 99
Dawkins, Prof. W. Boyd, Cave

Hunting, by, referred to, 380
Day, Mr. , surgeon at Oxford, 300
Day, Thomas, actor, 471, 476
De Clifford, Lord, sale of family

papers belonging to, 327
"Deck, to," dispute as to meaning

of, 420-1.

Deer-hounds, Irish, 172
Dekker or Decker,Thomas, dramatist,

his Satiro-Mastix, 53-5 ; quoted,

55. 472.
Dekker, Thomas, and Middleton,

Thomas, their Roaring Girl quoted,

5i
Dekker, Thomas, and Webster, John,

their Northward- Ho, 30 ; their

Westward-Ho, quoted, etc., 50-1,

196-7, 478
Delabarr, Mrs., patient of John Hall,

241

Denham, Sir John, 185
Deputies, Alderman's, for City Wards,

211-12

Derby, Earl of. See Stanley, Henry
Derby, Shakespeares of, 109
"Derbyshire neck," synonym for

goitre, 366
Dethick, Sir William, Garter king-

of-arms, 104
Devereux, Frances, Countess of Essex,

395-422, passim
Devereux, Lettice, Countess of Essex

(afterwardsof Leicester), her players,

IOO

Devereux, Robert, K.G., 2nd Earl of
Essex, 199, 395, 397

Devereux, Robert, 3rd Earl of Essex,
395-422, passim, 480

Devereux family, of Shustoke, War
wickshire, 321

Devil is an Ass, The. See Jonson,
Ben.

D'Ewes, Sir Simonds, quoted, 425

" Dewlapped mountaineers," origin
of phrase, 365-7

Dialect Dictionary, English, referred
to, 141

Diamonds in Guiana, 364

Diaphoretics, use of, in medicine,

305
Dibdin, Rev. Thomas Frognall, D.D.,

quoted, 449
Dictionary of National Biography,

referred to, 231, 299, 303, 339
Diella, book of sonnets by R. L.,

quoted, 322

Digby, Sir Kenelm, 301, 305
Digges, Leonard, verses by, quoted,

231, 442, 445, 446
Diplomas, medical, how obtained, 225
" Dislodge," sporting term, 167
D'Israeli, Isaac, Curiosities of Liter-
attire, quoted, 411
Dive - dapper, the, mentioned by

Shakespeare, 153
Dodda, Lewin, pre-Conquest farmer

of Wilmcote, 115
Dodwell, Warwickshire, 97
" Dog-draw," sporting term, 169
Dogs in Shakespeare, 170-6

INDEX

495

Dogs, tract on English. See Caius,
John

Domesday Book, referred to, 73, 115,
135, 228

Domestic State Papers, Calendar of,
quoted, 233, etc.

Dominicans at Blackfriars, 451

Dorado, El, king of the headless
men, 364

Dorchester, Marquess of. See Pierre-
pont, Henry

Dorchester, Viscount. See Carleton,
Sir Dudley

Dort, wine-trade at, 283

Douce, Francis, 374 ; his Dante of
Death referred to, 88, 89

Douthwaite, W. R., Gray's Inn, by,
quoted, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 201

Dover, Robert, of Barton -on- the -
Heath, 168

Dowdall, Mr., his letter to Edward
Southwell, 39-40, 327-38, 348.

Downes, John, his Roscius Angli-
fanus, quoted, 55, 56, 57-8

" Dowsabel," Shakespeare's use of
name, 199

Drake, Sir Francis, quoted, 365-6

Draycot, Wilts., Tithing- man at, 124

Drayton, Michael, 240, 306, 310, 31 1,
345, 441 ; his Pastorals quoted,
199; his Poly-Olbion quoted, 66,
67-8, 70

Droeshout, Martin, his portrait of
Shakespeare, 232

Droitwich, Worcestershire, Leland at,
163

11 Drolleries," use of word, 411

Drummond, William, of Hawthorn-
den. See Jonson, Ben

Drunkenness in I7th century, 309-10

Drury Lane Theatre, 461

Dryden, John, his Essay on Dramatic
Poetry of the Last Age referred to,
442 ; his alteration of The Tempest
referred to, 313, 480; its preface
quoted, 45-6, 450

Duck, Wild, mentioned in Shake
speare, 153

Dudley, Sir, Ambrose, Earl of War
wick, 75, 129 ; his bearwardens
and tumblers, 99 ; his players, 100,
1 80

Dudley, Sir Edward, 4th Baron Dud
ley ; his bearwardens, 99

Dudley family, Earls of Warwick, 337

Dudley, John, Duke of Northumber
land and Earl of Warwick, jp, 81,
104, 320

Dudley, Sir Robert, K.G., Earl of
Leicester, his players, 99, 100, 180
Dugdale, Sir William, Garter king-
of-arms, his Antiquities of War
wickshire, Quoted, 64, 67, 75, 76,
81, 82, 84, 85, 107-8, 112, 115-16,
129, 132, 135-6, 250, 322; referred
to, 7.2, 86, 336 ; Diary referred to,
231 ; History of St. Paul's referred
to, 89 ; Monasticon Anglicanum
referred to, 189, 451*453; Origines
Juridiciales quoted, 194, 195, 200
Duley, John, of Tiddington, 133
Dulwich, MSS. preserved at, 458,

462
Dumb Night, The. See Machin,

Lewis ; Markham, Gervase.
Dunbar, John Taylor at, 404
Dunsmore Heath, Warwickshire, 67
Dunstable, Temple of Diana at, 65
Dupont, M., VHomme pendant lei

Ages de la Pierre, referred to, 380
Duret or Duretto, the, species of

dance, 408
Dutch Courtesan, or Cocledemoy. See

Marston, John

Dutchman at Oxford, story of, 310
Dynne, Francis, servant to Laurence
Bassel, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate,
217

Eadbert, Bishop of Worcester, 72, 73

Earth-nuts, 164

" Earth upon earth," poems and

epitaphs on subject, 95-6
East India Company, Early be
ginnings of, 209
Eastward-Ho. See Jonson, Ben
Eden, Richard, his Historic of Tra~

vayle referred to, jyj
Edgehill, Warwickshire, 163, 328 ;

Battle of, 331
Edingdon, Wilts., house of Bon-

hommes at, 303
Edmonds, Sir Clement, of Preston,

Northants, 268
Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of

George, Duke of Clarence, 1 08
Edwards, John, of Tiddington, 133
Edwards, Richard, of the Chapel

Royal, his Palanion and Arcyle, 1 76
Edwards, Thomas, sydesman of St.

Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213
Egerton, Sir Thomas, Baron Elles-

mere and Viscount Brackley, 148
Eglisham, George, M.D., his Pro-

dromus Vindict<£ referred to, 243-4

496

INDEX

Eldorado, Region and city of, 357,
362

Elizabeth (i), Princess of England,
Countess Palatine of the Rhine,
and Queen of Bohemia, 240, 254,
399, 400, 423-49 passim

Elizabeth (2), Queen of England, 129,
176, 262, 361, 4ss, 475; her
company of players, 180 ; of
tumblers, 99

Elizabeth (3) de Bourbon, Queen-
Consort of Philip IV. of Spain, 292

Elks brought to England, 437

Ellacombe, Rev. H. N., Vicar of
Bitton, Gloucestershire, his Plant-
lore of Shakespeare, quoted, 161

Ellesmere, Baron. See Egerton, Sir
Thomas

Elze, Karl, his William Shakespeare
referred to, 233

"Embossed," meaning of, 173-4

Emeria, Province of, 357, 359

Encomienda, system of, in Spanish
colonies, 361

Englefield, Sir Francis, 39

Entrance to stage in early theatres,
460

Entries, Book of, for Worcester
diocese, referred to, 262

Epigrams. See Davies, John and
Sir John ; FitzGeffrey, Charles ;
Jonson, Ben

"Epistlers," chosen from boys of
Chapel Royal, 470

Erasmus, his Latin and English
dialogues, referred to, 102

Espousals, Contracts of, 31-2; royal,
426-7

Essex, Countess of. See Devereux,
Frances and Lettice

Essex, Earl of. See Devereux, Robert

Essex House, banquet at, 435

Ethelburga, St., Bishopsgate, church
and parish of, 216) 213

Ethelwulf, King of Wessex, 71, 72

Eusebius, 338

Eustace, Abbot of Flay, his preaching-
tour in England, 76

Evans, Henry, theatrical manager,
469, 476, 483, 484

Evelegh, Rev. Charles, M.D., of
Harberton, Devon, 304

Evelyn, John, Diary, quoted, 449

Everkeston, Leicestershire, 129

Every Man in His Humour. See
Jonson, Ben

Every Man out of His Humour. See
Jonson, Ben

Evesham, Abbey of, connection with

Shottery, 135-6
Evesham, Hugh of, cardinal and

physician, 303
"Evil-town," 381
Ewaipanoma, the headless nation,

362
Exchange, Royal, Queen Elizabeth's

visit to, 262, 455

Exchequer Records, referred to, 103
Exeter House, will of Lady Barnard

proved at, 270
Experienced Fowler, The, quoted,

ISI. 154
Exton, Lord Harington of. See Har-

ington, John
Eye-bright, powdered, 264

"Fading" and "fadow," country

dances, 403
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 3rd Baron

Fairfax of Cameron, 294
Fairs at Stratford, 75, 76, 95
Falck, Jacob, Dutch ambassador,

monument of, 234
Falcon Inn at Stratford, 307
Falstafe, Sir John, play of, 439,

445-6

Familiar spirits, 390
Fanshawe, Mrs., 344
Farmer, Rev. Richard, D.D., F.S.A.,

master of Emmanuel College,

Cambridge, referred to, 60, 372
Farnham, Nicholas de, Bishop of

Durham, 303
Farryner, baker in Pudding Lane,

E.G., 274

Fastolf, Sir John, K.G., 446
Fatal Dowry, The. See Massinger,

Philip
Faulconbridge or Fauconberg, Thos.,

his attack on London, 207
Fawn, buck of first year, 170
Fawn, The. See Marston, John
Fayrecook, Davye, servant to Laurence

Bassel, 217

Feather-workers of Blackfriars, 454
Fecamp, Dance of Death at, 88
Fee for performance of play, official,

438
Fennell, J., Shakespeare Repository

referred to, 239, 249, 264
Fenton, Elijah, his edition of Waller,

quoted, 439
Ferdinand I. (Ferrante), King of

Naples, 386

INDEX

497

Fernandez, Mr., of Lampedusa, 375,
378

Ferns, expulsion of rats from bishopric
of, 295

Festus, Sext. Pompeius, Jonson's
debt to, 416

Fevers, varieties of, 243, 305-9

Field, Mr., tanner, of Stratford,
father of Richard, 180

Field, Nathaniel, actor-dramatist, 47,
466, 467, 469, 471, 472, 473- 474,
475. 476, 477, 483 J his plays, 473

Field, Richard, printer, 180

Fielden of Warwickshire, 163

Fifteen, tax of the, 213, 219

Pilaster. See Philaster and Fletcher,
John

Fille, Richard, benefactor of Strat
ford guild, 84

Fire of London, Great, 274

Firett, Sir John, 484

Fish, Simon : his Supplication of the
Beggars, 316

Fisher's Antiquities of Warwickshire,
referred to, 92, 100

FitzGeffrey, Charles, epigram by,
quoted, 476

Fitzherbert, Sir Anthony, judge, his
Book of Husbandry quoted, 114,
117, 118, 121, 142, 143, 144, 161 ;
his Book of Surveying quoted, 157,
1 60

Fitzrichard, Hugh, of Snitterfield, III

Fleay, F. G., his Chronicle of Drama
quoted, etc., 197, 369, 426, 441,
464, 472, 473, 477, 478, 479; his
Chronicle -History of Shakespeare
quoted, 369, 372

Fleet Ditch, 452

Fleetwood, Sir Miles, Recorder of
London, 189, 190, 191

Fleming, Abraham, translator of
Caius' tract on dogs, iji

Fletcher, John, dramatist, 340, 342

Fletcher, John, and Francis Beaumont,
plays by, quoted or referred to ;
Bloody Brother, The, 316; Captain,
The, 435, 438; Coxcomb, The, 426;
Cupid's Revenge, 427 ; King and
no King, A, 439, 440 ; Knight of
the Burning Pestle, 121 ; Maid s
Tragedy, The, 438, 439; Nice
Valour, The, 205, 261 ; Noble
Gentleman, The, 441 ; Philaster,
or, Love lies a-bleeding, 438, 439 ;
Valentinian, 455 ; Woman-Hater,
The, 465

Flexon, Mr., barber, of Oxford, 300

Flores, Juan de, author of Aurelio

and Isabella, 384
Floridans in Bacon's Masque of

Flowers, 407

Florio, John, 466 ; his Italian dic
tionary, 372 ; his translation of

Montaigne, 247, 371
Flower -de- Luce, 162
Floyd, quoted, 281
Folio of Shakespeare's plays, first,

preface to, quoted, 465 ; referred

to, 472
Fontaine, Jean, and L. Schonbub,

Travels of, quoted, 468
Fordham, John de, Bishop of Ely, in

Shakespeare, 318, 319
"Fore-stall, to," sporting term, 166-7
Fortunate Isles, Masque of the. See

Jonson, Ben

Fortune Theatre, 458, 459, 464, 477
Fosse Way, Roman road from Bath

to Lincoln, 65, 66-7, 68
Fossett, Mr., Nonconformist divine

at Stratford, 241
Four Prentices of London, The. See

Hey wood, Thomas
Four-Shire-Stone, near Chipping Nor
ton, Battle of the, 184
Four Swans Inn, Bishopsgate, 210
Fox, The. See Jonson, Ben
Fox or Foxe, John, his Acts and

Monuments referred to, 316
Foxe, Richard, Alderman's deputy

for ward of Bishopsgate Within,

211

Fox-hounds, 171

Fox-hunting at Marylebone conduit-
heads, 191
Francis, Mr., Archbishop's medical

licence granted to, 302-3
Frederick, Count Palatine of the

Rhine, King of Bohemia, K.G.,

399, 400, 423-49 passim; his

company of players, 477
" Free-board," agricultural term at

Stratford, 141-2
Frensham, Surrey, 380
Friskney, Lincolnshire, frescoes in

church of, 93
"Frith," agricultural term, meaning

of, 141

Frost, John, actor, 471
Fulbrooke, Warwickshire, 38, 39
Fuller, Rev. Thomas, quoted, 55,

281, 446, 476
Fulman, Rev. William, of Meysey

Hampton, Gloucestershire, 40.
Fumitory, 143, 161

2 K

498

INDEX

" Furlongs, "J divisions of common

field, 141, 143-4
Furness, Mr. H. H., his Variorum

edition of The Tempest quoted,

365-6
Furnivall, Dr. F. J., referred to, 333

Gale, Roger, F.S.A., his Four Great

Ways quoted, 67
Galliards, 195, 408-9, 415
Gams, Series Episcoporum, referrefl

to, 379

Gaol-fever, visitations of, 307-8
Garrick, David, 53, 60, 447
Garrick, Eva, wife of David, 447
Gaze-hounds, 171
Geneva version of Bible, quoted,

381-2

Genius, personified use of word, 237
Geoffrey of Monmouth, his Historia

Britonum referred to, 69, 94
George, Duke of Clarence, brother of

Edward IV. , j>9
George Inn at Stratford, 307
George, St., Queen Square, W.,

Church of, 304, and see Stukely,

Rev. William
Gerard, John, his garden, 202-5 5 his

Herball quoted, 147, 158, 161, 162,

164, 165, 192, 202, 203, 204, 205
Gerfalcons, imported from Iceland,

437

Gesner, Conrad, his History of Quad
rupeds referred to, 366 ; letter of
John Caius to, concerning dogs.
See Caius, John

Gesta Grayorum, quoted, 196-9

Gibbon, Edward, his History, etc.,
quoted, 94

Giffard, Godfrey, Bishop of Worcester,
76

Gifford, William, his life of Jonson
referred to, 369, 411, 412

Gilbert, Elizabeth, nee Barnard, wife
of following, 269

Gilbert, Henry, of Locko, Derby
shire, 269, 271

Gildon, Charles, his edition of Lang-
baine, 312, 343, and see Langbaine,
Gerard

Giles, Nathaniel, Mus. Doc., of the
Chapel Royal, 469, 470

Giles'-in-the-Fields, parish of St.,
191, 192

Gill, Dr., surgeon at Oxford, 300

Gillyflower, varieties of, 162-3

Gilpit, court of, at Stratford, 65, and
see Guildpits

Giraldus Cambrensis, his Itinerarium
Cambrics referred to, 68; his
Topographia Hibernica, 295

" Globe " Shakespeare, glossary to,
quoted, 757

Globe Theatre, 168, 206, 440, 450,
459, 464, 466, 471, 473, 481, 482,
483, 484

Gloucester, Roman roads at, 67, 68

Glover, trade of, 349

Godeski, Mr., friend of George Hart-
man, 302

Godwin, Francis, Bishop of Hereford,
his De Prasulibus referred to, 303

Goitre. See " Bavarian pouch," Goto,
" Derbyshire neck "

Gold, found in Guiana, 360

Golden Legend. See Voragine,
Jacobus de

Golding, Arthur, his translation of
Ovid quoted, 388-9

" Golds," popular name for marigold,
1 60

Gondomar, Diego de Acufia, Conde
de, Spanish ambassador, 415

Good, Isaac, of Limerick, quoted by
Camden, 294

Goodson, Thomas, of St. Helen's
parish, Bishopsgate, 211

"Goodwife, Goody," title of, 240

Gracechurch Street, E.G., 210

Grain, Return of owners of, at Strat
ford, referred to, 218-19

Gramer, Abraham, sidesman of St.
Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213

Grand Christmas at Inner Temple,
194

Grange, Prince de la, at Lincoln's
Inn, 196

Gravel Pits, Kensington, 190

Gray, Thomas, notes on Hudibras,
referred to, 299

Gray-lags, 150

Gray's Inn Fields, 193 ; gardens, 201,
202 ; masques performed by gentle
men of, 406-8, 432-3 ; revels at,

193-9

Greade, Peter, servant to Laurence

Bassel, 217

Grebe. See Dive-dapper
Greenborough, Warwickshire, 102
Green Curtain play-house, 346
Green Dragon Inn, Bishopsgate, E.G.,

210, 213
Greene, Rev. Joseph, of Welford, near

Stratford, 22, 26, 27

INDEX

499

Greene, Robert, his Alphonsus re
ferred to, 384 ; his Groats-worth of
Wit quoted, 52 ; his Menaphon
quoted, 153, 176, 293, 365, referred
to, 199, 224

Greene, Thomas, town-clerk of Strat
ford, 148, 149

Greenhill, J., friend of Aubrey, 346

Greenwich, Lord Chamberlain's
players at, 198

Gregorovius, Ferdinand, his Ge-
schichte der Stadt Rom referred to,

304

Grendon Underwood, Bucks., 184-7
Gresham College, 210
Gresham, Lady, wife of Sir Thomas,

215, 216
Gresham, Sir Thomas, 211, 212,

262
Greville, Sir Fulke, K.B., ist Baron

Brooke, 337-8
Greville, Robert, 2nd Baron Brooke,

338
Grey, Walter de, Archbishop of York

(formerly Bishop of Worcester), 75
Griswold, Clement, 131
"Grove," technical meaning of, 146
"Grysant, physician and pope." See

Urban V.

Gualtero, Prince, 359, 360
Guards, Uniform of, at wedding of

Princess Elizabeth, 431
Guiana, Ralegh's visit to, 357-68
Guild of Holy Cross at Stratford, 83-

97 ; its chapel, 80, 85-97
Guildhall at Stratford, 98-104; plays

in, 98
Guildpits, name of road at Stratford,

65, 74, 142
Gunpowder Plot, Ward's remarks on,

3I5-I6

Hades, agricultural term, 142

Hadjis and Marabouts, magic spells
of, 287

Hakluyt, Richard, Archdeacon of
Westminster, 397 ; his Voyages re
ferred to, jjS, 366

Hales, John, of Coventry, Clerk of
the Hanaper, 108-9

Halford, Warwickshire, 67, 68

" Hall," in sense of council-meeting,
148

Hall, Edward, his Union, etc., quoted,

43,44

Hall, Elizabeth. See Barnard, Dame
Elizabeth

Hall, John (i), painter, of Stratford,
232

Hall, John (2), physician, Shake
speare's son-in-law, 60, 225, 226,
227, 230, 233, 235, 239-51 passim,
254, 264, 307

Hall, Susanna, n<fe Shakespeare, wife
of John, 60, 131, 223-30 passim,
231, 242-51 passim, 266, 268

Hall, Rev. William, of Acton, Middle
sex, letter of, to Edward Thwaites,
339-42

Hall, William, vintner, of Lichfield,
father of Rev. William, 341

Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell-Phil-
lipps, James Orchard, F. R. s. , F. s. A. ;
his Outlines referred to, etc., 27, 28,

29, 75. *°9> I23, 'JO, 134, 139, MO,
156, 187, 227, 231-2, 233, 254, 258,
*6?» 327. 332, 347-8, and frequently
in notes. Other tracts referred to,
99, 187-8, 339, JJJ, J&?

Hamlet. 5« Shakespeare, William (i)

Hamlet, legend of, 224

Hampson, Medii Jfcvi Kalendarium,
referred to, 25

Hampton Court, Masque performed
at. See Daniel, Samuel ; tennis at,
425, 437 J plays at, 437-8, 444

Hampton-in-Arden, Warwickshire,
112

Hampton Woods, near Charlecote,322

" Kara ha," Jeanne d' Arc's watch
word, 297

Harberton, Devon. See Evelegh,
Rev. Charles

Hardwick, Warwickshire, 103

Harington, John, Baron Harington
of Exton, 436

Harington, Sir John, 436 ; his trans
lation of Ariosto, 391-4

Harley, Robert, Earl of Oxford, 340

Harriers, 171

Harrington, Baron Stanhope of. See
Stanhope, Sir John

Harrison, John, publisher, 180

Hart, Charles, actor, grandson of
William (i), 52

Hart, George, 271

Hart, Joan, nte Shakespeare, wife of
William (i), 52, 75, 224, 226, 227,
256, 257, 324

Hart, Sir John, Lord Mayor of London,
215

Hart, Michael, son of William (i),
225, 257

Hart, Thomas ( I ), son of William ( I ),
225, 257

5oo

INDEX

Hart, Thomas (2), of Stratford,

271
Hart, William ( I ), hatter, of Stratford,

224, 324

Hart, William (2), son of William (i),

225, 257

Hartman, George, 302, his True

Preserver quoted, 301, 305, ^6p
Harvey, Gabriel, quoted, 237
Harvey, John, parish clerk of St.

Helen's, Bishopsgate, 211,212, 213
Harvey, William, M.D., 301
Haslewood, Joseph, F.S.A., quoted,

448
Hassal, Catharina, wifeof Hamoletus,

223

Hassal, Hamoletus, 223
Hathaway, Agnes, persons of the

name, 28, 29
Hathaway, Anne. See Edwardes,

Anne ; Shakespeare, Anne ; and

Wilson, Anne
Hathaway, Bartholomew, of Shottery,

28
Hathaway, Elizabeth, daughter of

Thomas (i), 248, 267, 271
Hathaway, families of, in Forest of

Dean, 30 ; at Luddington, 26, 27,

29; at Shottery, 28, 135 ; at Weston-

on-Avon, 26, 30-1
Hathaway, Gilbert, of Forest of

Dean, 30
Hathaway, Joan, wife of Thomas (i),

307. 323
Hathaway, Joanna, daughter of

Thomas (i). See Kent, Joanna
Hathaway, John, supposed father of

Anne Shakespeare, 27-8
Hathaway, Judith, daughter of

Thomas (i), 248, 267, 270
Hathaway, Ralf, of Minsterworth,

Gloucestershire, 30
Hathaway, Richard, of Shottery, 27,

28
Hathaway, Richard, alias Gardner,

of Shottery, 26
Hathaway, Rose, daughter of Thomas

(i), 248, 271
Hathaway, Samuel, supposed father

of Anne Shakespeare, 28
Hathaway, Susanna, daughter of

Thomas (i), 248, 271
Hathaway or Hathway, Thomas (i),

of Stratford, 248, 267, 270, 271, 323
Hathaway, Thomas (2), father of

Agnes, 28
Hathaway, William (i), of Lydney,

Gloucestershire, 30

Hathaway, William (2), of Ruardean,

Gloucestershire, 30
Hathaway, William (3), of Stratford,

son of Thomas (i), 248
Hathaway, William (4), of Weston-

on-Avon, brother of Thomas (I),

248, 267

Hats and hatters, 324, 325
Hatton House, Holborn, W.C., 319
Hawkins, Sir Thomas, letter of

Howell to, 279

Hazlitt, William, referred to, 441
Headborough, or Tithing-man, office

of, 124 ; at Great Hillingdon,

Middlesex, 189

Head-lands, agricultural term, 142-3
Headless men, legend of, 362-5
Hearne, Thomas, 47, 86, 334-5 ; his

Autobiography quoted, 335, 340
Heartsease, 161
" Hearts, Queen of," complimentary

name given to Princess Elizabeth,

424
Heath, Nicholas, Archbishop of York

(formerly Bishop of Worcester), 320
"Heavens," technical meaning of

term on stage, 462
Heber, Richard, D.C.L., catalogue of

his library, 444

Hebraisms in Tempest, Hunter's dis
covery of, 387
Hegenitius, Gotfried, his Itinerarium

referred to, 234
Helen, Welsh legends of, and Roman

roads, 94
Helena, St., 93-4
Helen's, St. , Bishopsgate, E.G. , church

and parish of, 206, 207, 209, 210,

211,212,213; priory of, 206, 212-13
Helen's Close, Great St., E.G., 212;

Little St., 213

Heliotrope or Girasol. See Marigold
Heming (also Heminge, Heminges,

Hemings, Hemmings, Hemynges,

etc.), John, actor, 226, 400, 437,

438, 443, 444, 483
Henbane, yellow, substitute for to
bacco, 204, 466
Henrietta Maria, Queen-Consort of

Charles I., 466 ; her visit to Strat
ford, 248
Henry IV., King, parts i. and ii. See

Shakespeare, William (i)
Henry IV., King of France, 198
Henry V,, King. See Shakespeare,

William (i)
Henry VI., King, parts i., ii., and

iii. See Shakespeare, William (i)

INDEX

Henry VIII., King, 108

Henry VIII., King. See Shake-

speare, William (i)
Henry, Prince of Wales, son of

James I., 415, 433; his death,

307-9, 423-6 ; his players, 477
Henslowe MSS. at Dulwich, 368,

462
Henslowe, Agnes or Anne, wife of

Philip, 29

Henslowe, Philip, 29
Henwick Beds. See Cotton, Samuel
Heraclius, Emperor of the East, 94-5
Herbert, Edward, Baron Herbert of

Cherbury, Walpole's edition of

Life of, 443
Herbert, Sir Henry, Master of the

Revels, 484; his Office-Book, 441,

443, 444, 446

Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pem
broke, mother of William ( I ), 209

Herbert, Sir Philip, K.G., 4th Earl
of Pembroke and ist Earl of Mont
gomery, 397, 398, 405, 414, 480,
481, 482, 484

Herbert, Susan, Countess of Pem
broke and Montgomery, 397

Herbert, William (i), 3rd Earl of
Pembroke, 287, 397, 398, 405

Herbert, William (2), 2nd Marquess
and titular Duke of Powis, 443

Hern-dogs, 172

Hetley, Sir Thomas, Reports of,
quoted, 146

Heuter, Pontus, his History of Bur
gundy, referred to, 125

Hexham Abbey, Northumberland,
Dance of Death at, 88

Heylyn, Rev. Peter, D.D., 312

Hey wood, Thomas, 441 ; his Apology
for Actors referred to, 462 ; his
Four Prentices of London quoted,

Hickes, George, Bishop-suffragan of
Thetford, his Linguarum veterum
septentrionalium thesaurus referred
to, 339

Higgens, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133
Higges, Edward, saddler, of St

Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213
Higgs, Mary, nte Barnard, wife of

Thomas, 269, 271
Higgs, Thomas, of Colesborne, Glou
cestershire, 269

High Cross, near Nuneaton, 65-6
Highgate, Middlesex, 165, 193
Hill, Agnes, widow of John. See
Arden, Agnes

Hill, J., of Stratford, his essay on

Shakespeare's birthplace referred

to, 74, 75

Hill, John, of Bearley, Warwick
shire, 7/6

" Hiller, The," legend of, 380
Hillingdon, Great, Middlesex, 189
Hine, William, of Tiddington, 133
Hiren, or the Faire Greeke, See

Barkstead, William
Historia Histrionica. See Wright,

James

Hobbies, or lark-hawks, 153, 154
Hock, varieties of, 285
Holbein, Hans, his "Dance of

Death," 88, 89, 90, 92
Holborn, wild-flowers in, 192
Holborn Bars, 193
Holdar, Hamlet, son of Humphry,

224

Holdar, Humphry, of Stratford, 224
Holderness, phrase used in, 421
Hole or Holle, William, portrait of

Florio by, 372
Holinshed, Raphael, his Description

of Britaine quoted, 114-15, 283,

284, 296
Holland, Philemon, see Camden,

William ; his translation of Pliny,

quoted, 284
Holt, J., his essay on The Tempest,

398-9
Holyoake, Rev. Francis, of Southam,

Warwickshire, 240
Holyoake, Rev. Thomas, son of

Rev. Francis, 240
Honywood, Robert, of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, 217
Hook Norton, Oxon., 184.
Hope Theatre, 477
Horace, Carmina, quoted, fj6
Horehound, white, medical use of,

300
Hotspur, The, anonymous play, 438,

445-*

Hotwells, the, near Bristol, 241
Howard, Sir Charles, 1st Earl of

Nottingham, Lord High Admiral,

419 ; his players, 368, 461-2
Howard, Frances. See Devereux,

Frances
Howard, Henry, K.G., ist Earl of

Northampton, 429
Howard, Thomas (i), K.G., 2nd Earl

of Arundel and Surrey, 272
Howard, Thomas (2), K.G., ist Earl

of Suffolk, 395, 401 ; his players,

289

502

INDEX

Howe, Mrs., wife of Rev. Thomas,

•184, 344
Howe, Rev. Josias, B.D., of Trinity

Coll., Oxon., son of Rev. Thomas,

184, 185, 344
Howe, Rev. Thomas, of Grendon

Underwood, Bucks., 185
Howell, James, Epistolce Ho-Eliana,

quoted, etc., 47, 201, 202, 277-97

passim, 315-16, 322, 358-9, 409,

410, 424, 440; his Survey of Venice

quoted, 289, 292 ; verses by, re
ferred to, 185
Howell, Rev. Thomas, of Cynwil

and Abernant, Carmarthen, father

of James, 410
Howes, Mr., quoted by J. G. Nichols,

436

Hudibras, notes on. See Gray, Thomas
Hugh. See Evesham, Hugh of
Hughes, Thomas, of Gray's Inn, his

Misfortunes of Arthur ; 195
Hull, plague at, 245
" Humana Mens," Kentish deed of

gift, 72
Humboldt, Baron Alexander von, his

Travels quoted, 361, 365
Humorous Day's Mirth, The. See

Chapman, George
Humours, probably a synonym for

the above, 368
Humphrey, actor, 169
Hunsdon, Baron. See Carey, Sir

George and Sir Henry
Hunter, A., epitaph composed by,

quoted, 234
Hunter, Joseph, F.S.A., referred to,

etc., 109, no, 112, 181, 182, 206,

220, 321 ; his essay on The Tempest,

357-94

Hurd, Richard, D.D., Bishop of Wor
cester, quoted, 412

Hutchins, Rev. John, his History of
Dorset quoted, 124

Hyde, Edward, 1st Earl of Clarendon,

273

Hyde Park, 190
Hymen, Masque of. See Jonson,

Ben

Icelandic dogs, 171
Ichneumon, 295
Icknield Way, 65
Idiots, custody of, 131
"Ignorant Parliament," the, 318
India (i.e. West Indies, etc.), 203

Ingannati, Gl', and GT Inganni,

Italian comedies, 200
Ingleby, C. M., LL.D., referred to,

S3, 148, 149
Insatiate Countess, The. See Marston,

John
Insurances in seventeenth century,

367-8

Ireland, William, of Blackfriars, 456
Ireland Yard, Blackfriars, 456
Irish Masque, The. See Jonson, Ben
" Irish rat," Shakespeare's allusion

to, 295

Irish wolves, legends of, 293-4
Isidore of Seville, referred to, 363,

366

Ising-glass, 265
Islington, 193
Iter Carolinum. See Walker, Sir

Edward
Ivy, used for hops in brewing, 284

"Jack, Resolute," nickname for John

Florio, 466
Jackson, Mr. B. D., referred to,

299
Jacobs, Mr. Joseph, referred to, j/5",

440
Jacobsen, Danish traveller, referred

to, 188
James L, 59-60, 243, 244, 254, 308-9,

312, 396, 401, 402, 429, 431, 433,

434, 435. 436, 437, 47&
James' Park, St., 291
Janssen, Geraert, sculptor, 231, 333
Jeanne d'Arc, traditions concerning,

296-7
Jenkins, Thomas, schoolmaster at

Stratford, 102
Jenks, Thomas, of Aston Cantlow

parish, 120

Jewel ofjoye, The, quoted, 1 14
"Job Cinere-Extractus," 213
John, Bailiff of Stratford, 77
John, Duke of Bedford, son of

Henry IV., 39
Johnson, Gerard. See Janssen,

Geraert
Johnson, Samuel, LL.D., 48, 373, 421 ;

his Life of Collins quoted, 383 ;

Life of Waller referred to, 189
Johnson, Thomas, M.D. , his additions

to Gerard's Herball quoted, 147,

192

John's wort, St., 301
Joiners' Company at Stratford, 248

INDEX

503

Jolyffe, Thomas, of Stratford, 97
Jones, Inigo, 278, 413, 419, 430
Jones, Thomas, of Tardebigge, Wor
cestershire, 41, 51

Jonson, Ben, 47, 185, 236, 277, 278,
279, 280, 286, 306, 343, 343, 346,
347. 388, 412, 447 J his
Alchemist, quoted, 203, 454; re
ferred to, 278, 435, 438, 471, 472
Augurs, Masque of, quoted, 463
Barriers at a Wedding, described,

419-20

Bartholomew Fair, quoted, 205,
411-12, 454, 472; referred to,

399

Blackness, Masque of, described,

414
Catiline his Conspiracy, referred to,

278
Challenge at Tilt, described, 403,

405
Conversations with Drummond,

quoted, 310-11
Cynthia's Revels, quoted, 466-8,

47 1 ; referred to, jj
Devil is an Ass, quoted, 465 ; re
ferred to, 310

Eastward-Ho, referred to, 478
Epigrams, 278, 471
Every Man in his Humour, 369-70
Every Man out of his Humour,

368
Fortunate Isles, Masque of the,

418-19

Fox, or Volpone, 278, 286
Hymen, Masque of, quoted, etc.,

398, 404, 410, 480 ; described,

413-18

Irish Masque, described, 403-4
Magnetic Lady, 278
Mercury Vindicated from the Al
chemists, 463
New Inn, quoted, 32
Poetaster, J^he, 471 ; quoted, 53-4
Prince Henry's Barriers, quoted,

424

Sejanus his Fall, 278
Silent Woman, 471, 476, 477, 478,

481

Underwoods, quoted, 239
Jonsonus Virbius, Howell's elegy in,

referred to, 278
Jorden, Edward, of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, 218
Jubilee at Stratford in 1769, 447
Jubilee of Queen Victoria (1887),
Masque at Middle Temple during,
'95

Jubinal, Achille, his essay on La

Chaise-Dieu referred to, 88
Julia Strata. See Ryknield Street
Julius Ctzsar. See Shakespeare,
William (i)

Kawasha, Indian god represented in

masque, 406, 407
Katharine of Aragon, Queen-Consort

of Henry VIII. , 452
Keightley, Thomas, his Fairy Myth
ology referred to, 380
Kemble, Charles, actor, 232, 477
Kemble, John Philip and Stephen,

232

Kemp, William, actor, 53, 198
Kemys, Captain Lawrence, 359
Kensington. See Gravel Pits
Kent, Edward, 248, 270
Kent, Edward, jun., son of Edward,

271
Kent, Joanna, wife of Edward, 248,

270

Kent, plague in, 245
Kentish Town, Middlesex, 193
Kentwell Hall, Suffolk, 280, 281
Kerns of Ireland, 294
Kettell, Rev. Ralph, D.D., President

of Trin. Coll., Oxon., ffy-J, 344-5
Kiddington, Oxon., 184
Kineton, Warwickshire, 182, 327,

328; informal club at, 331-2;

hundred of, 64
King and No King, A. See Fletcher,

John

Kingston, Mary Lady, 453
Kingston Russel, Dorset, 323
King-stone, near Long Co nap ton,

Warwickshire, 183
Kington, West, Wilts., 347
Kipper-nuts, 164

Kirby, Monk's, Warwickshire, 67
Kirk, Mrs., 300
Kirkham, Edward, 475
Kirkman, Francis, bookseller, 440
Klelia and Sinibald. See Wieland
Knaves, The. See Rowley, William
Knell, actor, 180
Knight, Charles, quoted, 23
Knight of the Burning Pestle, The.

See Fletcher, John

Knightlow Hill and Hundred, War
wickshire, 64
" Knot," meaning of, 331
Knot of Fools, A, unidentified play,

438, 441, 479, and see Chapman,

George

504

INDEX

Knowle, Warwickshire, Collegiate

Church of, 1 12
Kraus orCrusius, Martin, of Tubingen,

Turco-Grcecia, referred to, 374, 378
Kyd, Thomas, his Spanish Tragedy,

quoted, etc., 125, 460, 461, 464

Lacy, John, actor and dramatist,

345

Lady-smocks, 158-9
Lagartos, i.e. alligators, 360
Lake, Sir Thomas, 426 ; letters by,

quoted, 427, 480
Lamb, Charles, quoted, 101, 441
Lambert, Edmund, of Barton-on-the-

Heath, Warwickshire, 116
Lambeth, Surrey, river-sports at, 427 ;

palace-garden at, 309
Lampedusa, island of, its supposed

connection with Tempest, 374-94
Lancaster, Earl of. See Thomas
" Lands" in husbandry, 140-1
Langbaine, Gerard, his Account of

English Dramatic Poets, quoted,

etc., 22, 442, 444, 473, 478-9, and

seeGildon, Charles; Oldys, William
Larks, methods of catching, 153-4
Latin School at Stratford, 100-1
Laud, William, D.D., Archbishop of

Canterbury, 233, 312, 457
Lauremberg, Dutch farmer, 163
Lavine or Lawne, William de, Doctor

of Physic, 456, 458.
Law, Mr., his edition of Daniel's

Vision, etc., quoted, 412-3
Lear, King. See Shakespeare, William

(I)
Leatherhead, Lanthorn, character in

Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, 472
Leathersellers' Hall, 213, 215
" Leek," provincial word, 421
Lee Priory, Kent, 444
Leeuwarden, Holland, epitaph at,

quoted, 234
Leicester, Earl of. See Dudley, Sir

Robert ; Sidney, Robert
Leland, John, his Itinerary quoted,

39, 63, 80, 82, 85, 86, 87, 97, 163,

164, 188, 189, 191, and see Hearne,

Thomas ; Stow, John
Le Maire, Guillaume, Bishop of

Angers, 152
Le Neve, Rev. John, his Fasti

referred to, 342
Lennox, Duke of. See Stuart, Ludo-

vick

Lenten observances in England, 350-1
Lenton, Francis, of Lincoln's Inn,

his Whirligig quoted, 463
Leo Africanus, 381 ; Pory's transla
tion of, 397

Lepanto, Ships at Battle of, 291
Lepers, bath for, at Bath, 242 ;

hospital for, at St. Giles', 192
L'Estrange, Sir Roger, 274
Lewis, Thomas, his Origines Hebrtza

referred to, 387
Leyden, John Ray at, 155
" Leys," agricultural term, 142
Licences, Archbishops', issued to

doctors, 302 ; marriage, 31-6, 254-5
Lichfield, Staffordshire, 66, 67, 340,

341, 342; siege of, 338
Liddell, H. G., D.D., and Scott,

Robert, D.D., their Greek Lexicon

cited, 316
Lilly or Lily, William, his Gram-

matices Rudimenta referred to, 102
Limerick. See Good, I.
Lincoln's Inn, 196, 245 ; gentlemen

of, 43 *

Line-trees, 377

Linnzeus, Carolus, referred to, 161
Lintot, Barnaby Bernard, his edition

of Shakespeare's poems quoted,

59-60

Lipari, Islands of, 380
Liquorice, used by druggists, 264
Lisle, Henry de, of Clopton, War
wickshire, 116

Lisle, Baron. See Talbot, John
Lisle, Viscount. See Sidney, Robert
Lisson Green, Middlesex, 192
Livery of King's players, described,

478
Locket, Besse, in Cheshire tradition,

156
Lockhart, J. G., his Life of Scott

quoted, 329
Locko, Derbyshire, 269
Lodge, Thomas, his Rosalynde, quoted,

165, 166, 293
Lodington (Luddington), Ralph de,

116
Loftie, Rev. W. J., F.s.A., his History

of London quoted, 190, 191, 209
Loggins, Mr., of Butler's Marston,

Warwickshire, 332
Lombard Street, Royal Exchange in,

262

Long, Sir Walter, 260
Long Compton, Warwickshire, 183,

184
Long Crendon, Oxon., 185

INDEX

505

Long Melford, Suffolk, 280-2 ; church

of, 280-1
Long-purples, 157
Lords, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133
Louis XIII., King of France, death

of, 273
Love, Alice, of Wroxall, Warwick-

shire, 111-12
Loveday, John, his Tour quoted,

82-3, 160, 183, 184
" Love-in-Idleness," 161
Lovel, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133
Love lyes a bleedinge. See Fletcher,

John
Lovell, D., translator of J. de The-

venot's Voyages, 379
Love's Labour's Lost. See Shake
speare, William (i)
Love's Labour's Won, question of j

identity of, 372-3

Lowin, John, actor, 58, 59, 464, 482 i
Lowndes, W. T., his Bibliographer's \

Manual referred to, 273, 384
Lucas, T., of Stratford, 149
Lucatella's Balsam, 301
Lucca. See Bonvisi, Antonio ; epitaph

at, 229
Luce, Mr. Morton, his edition of

The Tempest, referred to, 146, 164,

373

Lucerne, Dance of Death at, 88
Lucian, referred to, 296
Lucrece. See Shakespeare, William (2)
Lucy, Dame Elizabeth, 43-4
Lucy family, 39, 322, 328 ; coat-of-

arms of, 40-1, 42-3, 321
Lucy, Mr., of Tiddington, 132, 133
Lucy, Sir Thomas, 38, 40, 41, 42,

43. 322

Lucy, Sir Thomas III., 39, 322
Lucy, Sir William, 44-5
Luddington, Warwickshire, 26, 27,

64, 102
Ludgate, 452, 457, and see Martin,

St., church of
Ludgate Hill Railway Station, E.G.,

451

Lud's-town, name for London, 69
Ludwig of Nassau, Count, 436
Lurchers, 172
Lydgate, John, his verses on the

Dance of Death referred to, 87,

89 ; his London Lyckpeny quoted,

324
Lyllyng, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir

Nicholas. See Bernard, Elizabeth
Lyllyng, Sir Nicholas, of Abington,

Northants, 268

Lyly, John, his Euphues quoted, 313

Lym-hounds, 171

Lymore, 443

Lyte, Henry, of Lyte's Gary, Somer
set, 160

Lyte, Isaac, of Easton Piers, Wilts.,
260

Macbeth. See Shakespeare, William
Machabray, Dance of. See Dance of

Death
Machin, Lewis, 477 ; his Dumb

Knight referred to, 460, and see

Markham, Gervase
Macklin, Charles, actor, 60, 269
Magdalene College, Cambridge,

Pepysian Library at, 449
Magellan (Fernao de Magalhaes),

Voyage of, 393, and see Pigafetta,

Antonio

Magi, cited by Hunter, 386
Magliabecchi, 299
Magnetic Lady, The. See Jonson,

Ben
Maid's Tragedy, The. See Fletcher,

John

" Mainour." See Manner
Main waring, Mr., of Stratford, 148,

149

"Majesty," title of, 319
Malaga Sack or Wine, 285
Malcontent, The. See Marston, John ;

Webster, John
Mallard, references to in Shakespeare,

153

Malmesbury, Wilts., 70 ; hundred of,
260

Malmsey wine, 259, 286

Malone, Edmund, 232 ; his Variorum
Shakespeare quoted, etc., 22, 22-3,
26, 27, 28, 37, 38, 42, 49, 179, 180,
18 1, 198, 223, 224, 246, 247, 248,
251, 2 S3, 259, 267, 269, 270, 271,
328, 384, 385, 399, 400, 421, 442,
443, 448, 462, and frequently in
notes

Malta, George Sandys at, 376-7 ;
Knights of, 378 ; supposed trade
with Lampedusa, 376

Maltese lapdogs, 171

Mandeville, Travels of Sir John,
quoted, 363, 364, 370, 381

" Manner,' term in forest-law, 168-9

Manners, Francis, K.G., sixth Earl
of Rutland, 405

Manningham, John, of Middle Tem
ple, 200

506

INDEX

Manoa, city and lake of, 357, 358,

360
Mansell, Sir Robert, Vice-Admiral

of England, 287
Mansfield, Notts, Shakespeares at,

109
" Man's life," Hunter's suggestion as

to, 381
Manwood, John, of Lincoln's Inn,

his Lawes of the Forest quoted, 1 66,

167, 169, 170
Marabouts. See Hadjis
Marafion, river, 360
Maratti, Carlo, 447
Marble Arch, W., 190
Maria de' Medici, Queen-Consort of

Henry IV. of France, death of,

273

Marian, Maid, and Sweep, characters

in anti-masque, 408
Marignano, Battle of, 386
Marigold, varieties of, 159-60
Markham, Gervase, part author of
The Dumb Knight, 460, and see
Machin, Lewis
Mark's Day, St., medieval beliefs

concerning, 24-5
Marlowe, Christopher, his part in

I Henry VI., 335
Marmot, Californian, 365-6
Marriage of Thames and Rhine, The.
See Beaumont, Francis, Masque by
Marryat, Frederick, C.B., F.R.S.,

captain R.N., quoted, 152
Mars hill, Mars strete, 381-2
Marsh, Mr., parson and astrologer,

306

Marston, John, 53, his Cynic Satire
quoted, 50 ; Dutch Courtesan, or
Cocledemoy, 478-9 ; Eastward- Ho.
See Jonson, Ben ; Insatiate Coun
tess, The, referred to, 477 ; Jack
Drum's Entertainment referred to,
54 ; Malcontent, The, 464, and see
Webster John ; Parasitaster, or the
Fawn, referred to, 460, 479 ; his
Wonder of Women, or Sofhonisba,

479

Martial de Paris, quoted, 296

Martin, Richard, Recorder of Lon
don, 431

Martin - le - Grand, St. , Collegiate
church of, 135

Martin, St., Ludgate, E.G., church
of, epitaph in, 96

Martin, Outwich, St., E.G., church
of, epitaph in, 234, 235 ; parish of,

2IO, 211

Marton, Thomas, of the Chapel
Royal, 471

Mary Axe, St., E.C.f church and
lane, 212

Marylebone, St., Middlesex, 190,
and see Conduit-heads

Mary-lilies, 162

Mary, Queen of England, her bene
factions to Savoy Hospital, 104

Masques. See Bacon, Francis ; Beau
mont, Francis ; Campion, Thomas ;
Chapman, George ; Daniel, Samuel ;
Gray's Inn ; Jonson, Ben.

Masques, Shakespeare's attitude to,
411-12; his masque in The Tem
pest, 145-7, 157

Massinger, Philip, his Fatal Dowry
mentioned, 473, and see Field,
Nathaniel

Master of the Game at Inner Temple,
194

Mastiffs, 172

" Mathes," weeds in corn, 313

Mauley, family of de, their coat-of-
arms, 321

Maurice, Count Palatine, K.G., 436

Maximilian I., King of the Romans,
Emperor-elect, 92

Maydenstone or Maydestone, Walter
de, Bishop of Worcester, 76,
320

Mayerne, Sir Theodore Turquet de,
M.D., 244, 425

Meadow-cress, 158

Measure for Measure. See Shake
speare, William (i)

Medical Society of London, 298

" Meers," agricultural term, 141

Melford. See Long Melford

Mellificium Chirurgice, by James
Cooke, referred to, 249

Mencechmi. See Plautus.

Menaphon. See Greene, Robert ;
Shakespeare's use of name, 199

Merchant of Venice, The. See Shake
speare, William (l)

Merchant Taylors' Hall, Entertain
ment in, described 405-6

Mercia, 71

Mercury Vindicated from the Al
chemists. See Jonson, Ben

Mere, John le, of Blackfriars, 456

Meres, Rev. Francis, his Palladis
Tamia quoted, 236, 372

Merridew, Mr., of Coventry, Guide
by, quoted, 92-3

Merry Devil of Edmonton, The, re
ferred to, 282, 438, 440-1

INDEX

507

Merry Wives of Windsor, The. See
Shakespeare, William (i)

Middelburg, wine-trade at, 283

Middleton, Thomas. See Dekker,
Thomas

Midsummer- Nigh t's Dream, A. See
Shakespeare, William (i)

Milan, history of, supposed allusions
to, in The Tempest, 381, 385-6

" Milan skins," 455

Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, 70-1

Milliners in the Strand, 454-3

Minden, Dance of Death at, 88

Mines in Wales, 480

Minsheu, John, his Ductorin Linguas
quoted, 141, 194

Mirandola, Miranda and, jSj

Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis, by
William Barkstead, 477

Misfortunes of Arthur, The. See
Hughes, Thomas

Mislonde, Esay, servant to Leven
Vanderstylt, 217

Missenden, Great and Little, 189 ;
priory at Great, 189

" Mistress," title of, 245

Mithridate, 322

Modwenna, St., 96

Monarchicke Tragedies. See Alexan
der, Sir William

" Monster," special use of word, 370-1

Montagu, James, Bishop of Win
chester (formerly Bath and Wells),

43«>
Montague, John, F.R.S., 4th Earl of

Sandwich, 376
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem, Seigneur

de, his Essays. See Florio, John
Montgomery, Earl of. See Herbert,

Sir Philip
Montpellier, medical school at, 240,

3<>4

" Moon-dog," 172
Moore, Norman, M.D., his essay on

Prince Henry's death referred to,

307. 425
Moore of Venice, The, play, probably

Othello, 439
More, Sir Thomas, at Crosby Place,

Bishopsgate, 208, 209 ; his Utopia

quoted, 209

More, Sir William, 453, 458
Morley, Professor Henry, quoted, 214
Morley, Thomas, of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, 218
Morris-dancing, 408
Morrison, Richard, lord of the manor

of Sniuerfield, 108

Morselli, "comfortable and delicate
meates," 203

Mortimer, Edmund, 5th Earl of
March, 335-6

Morton, John, Cardinal, D.C.L., Arch
bishop of Canterbury, 319

Moryson, Henry, referred to by
Hunter, 367

Much Ado about Nothing. See Shake
speare, William (i)

Mulmutius, British king, 69, 70

Mum, Brunswick, 283

Mundungus, in tobacco, 205

Mur, river in Styria, 367

Murano, glass from, 322

Murray's Handbook to Eastern Coun
ties, referred to, 281 ; Handbook to
Warwickshire, quoted, etc. , 64, 66,
So, 183, 331

Murray, Sir James, 478

Muscadel wine, 281, 286

Muses' Looking - Glass, The. See
Randolph, Rev. Thomas

Nantwich, Cheshire, 158

Napier or Napper, Rev. Richard, of
Great Linford, Bucks., 306

Naples, history of, supposed references
to in The Tempest, 381, 385

"Naps of Greece, old John," 127, 128

Nares, Robert, Archdeacon of Staf
ford, his Glossary referred to, 182,
205, 261, 284, 285, 291, 454, 457,
467

Naseby, Northants, 134 ; Battle of, 299

Nash or Nashe, Anthony, of Wei-
combe, Warwickshire, father of
Thomas (2), 226, 244

Nash, Edward, cousin of Thomas (2),
266, 267, 270, 271

Nash, Elizabeth. See Barnard, Dame
Elizabeth

Nash or Nashe, John, mentioned in
Shakespeare's will, 226

Nash or Nashe, Thomas (i), of St.
John's Coll. , Cambridge, his preface
to Menaphon quoted, 224, and see
Greene, Robert ; his Pierce Penni-
lesse quoted, 365

Nash, Thomas (2), of Stratford, first
husband of Elizabeth, 60, 244, 245,
246, 247, 248, 251, 266

Nash, Thomas (3), son- of Edward,
267

Nason, John, apothecary, of Strat
ford, 264

INDEX

Nayland, Suffolk, monument at, 321
Neil, Samuel, his Home of Shake
speare quoted, 92, 103, 251
Nennius, British prince, legend of,

69
Nether Stowey, Somerset, 271, and

see Walker, Sir Edward
Neville, Anne, Countess of Warwick,

wife of Richard, 336
Neville, Richard, K.G., Earl of War
wick and Salisbury, 39, 336, 337
Newark-on-Trent, remains of Dance

of Death at, 88
Newburgh, Henry de, 1st Earl of

Warwick, 107, III
Newburgh, Roger de, 2nd Earl of

Warwick, 107
"New Disease," the, 425
New English Dictionary ; referred to,

142, 291-2, 316

Newmarket, King James I. at, 434
Newnham, Thomas, priest, of Shot-

tery, story of, 135-6
New Place, Shakespeare's house at

Stratford, 218, 226, 227, 245, 248,

268, 270, 271, 272
Newsham, Charles, of Chadshunt,

Warwickshire, 331
Newton, Prof. Alfred, referred to, 151
Newton, Thomas, D.D., Bishop of

Bristol, 48
Niccols, Richard, his Twynnes Trage-

die mentioned, 441, 442
Nice Valour ; The, See Fletcher, John
Nichols, John, 448 ; his Progresses of

Queen Elizabeth referred to, /$>6,

262-3 5 his Progresses of James I.

referred to, 397, 401, and in notes,

401-36 passim
Nichols (? Niccols), Richard, The

Furies, by, quoted, 474
Nicodemus, Gospel of, 93
Nicosia, Cyprus, epitaph at, quoted,

234-5

" Nicosiana," name for tobacco, 204
Night-crow, Night-raven, 154-6
"Night of Errors, the," 197-8
Noble Gentleman, The. See Fletcher,

John
Nobleman, The, unidentified play,

439, 44i

Norden, John, his Speculum Britan
nia, quoted, 190

Norembega, name of Virginia, 204

North, Sir John, letter of Howell to,
296-7

North, Sir Thomas, his translation of
Plutarch, quoted, 314-15

Northampton, Earl of. See Compton,
William ; Howard, Henry

Northamptonshire, proverb concern
ing, 268

Northumberland House, fire at, 448

Northward- Ho. See Dekker, Thomas

Nottingham, Earl of. See Howard,
Sir Charles

Numidian crane, the, 375

Nuncupative will, its character, 246

Cannes, fish-god of the Euphrates,

388
Oar, golden, presented by Raleigh to

James I., 358
Ocella, nickname for small-eyed men,

284
Odcombe, Somerset, 128, and see

Coryat, Thomas
Offa, King of Mercia, 135
Oldcastle, Sir John, styled Baron

Cobham, 282, 446
Oldenburg, invisible smith of. See

Killer, the

"Old Free-town," 382
Old Town, street in Stratford, 225
Oldys, William, Norroy king-of-arms,

21, 22, 37, 41, 42, 47, 51, 59, 358,

441, 442, 444, 445, 448, 449 ; and

see Yeowell, James
Olivares, Caspar de Guzman, Conde-

Duque de, 292

" Once againe," modus bibetidi, 310
O'Neill, Hugh, 2nd Earl of Tyrone,

295
Open - field system of agriculture,

134-5

Orchestra. See Davies, Sir John
Ordinances against play-acting, 456
Orellana, Francisco, 360
Orford, Earl of. See Walpole,

Horace

Origines Hebraa. See Lewis, Thomas
Orinoco, River, 358, 359, 360, 363, 365
Orleans, Howell at, 296 ; white wine

of, 260

Orleton, Herefordshire, 142
Ormonde, Duke of. See Butler,

James
Ostler, William, actor, 471, 472, 476,

483

Othello. See Shakespeare, William ( I )
Otter-hounds, 171
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 398, 409-10,

425, 437 ; his Characters quoted,

II3» 423

INDEX

509

Ovid, quoted, 236, 279 ; copy of, j

possibly Shakespeare's, 247 ; and

see Golding, Arthur
Oxford, 184 ; James I. at, 396
Oxford, Earl of. See Harley ; Vere,

de
Oysters, fondness of Prince Henry

for, 308

Paddington, Middlesex, 165, 192,

263

Page, Sir Francis, judge, 194
Paget, Agnes, Mistress of the Strat
ford guild, her tomb, 83, 86
"Painted cloths," 121-2
Painter, William, his Palact of

Pleasure, 479
Palamon and Arcyte. See Edwards,

Richard
Palladia Tamia. See Meres, Rev.

Francis

Palma, Sack from, 286
Palmer, Adam, witness of Robert

Arden's will, 119, 120
Palsgrave. See Frederick, Count

Palatine

Pamphilus, St., 338
Pansies, 161-2
Pappus (potato), 204
Paracelsus, Philippus Aureolus, legend

of, 390

Parasitaster. See Marston, John
Paris, Dance of Death at Notre Dame,

87 ; medical school at, 240
Paris Garden, bear-pit and theatre,

168, 472
Parker, Sir William, his History of

Long Melford referred to, 281
Parliament-chamber, in Blackfriars,

452
Parr, Mr., of Blackfriars, embroiderer

to Elizabeth and James I., 431
Pasture, rights of, 144-5
Patay, Battle of, 296
Pathetic fallacy in Shakespeare, 421-2
Pathlow, liberty of, Warwickshire,

64, 77, US. '4*

Paul's St., children of, 464, 470, 472 ;
Dance of Death at, 87

Pauw, C. de, his Recherches quoted,
365, 366

Pavane, 408

Pavy, Salathiel, child of the Chapel
Royal, 466, 469, 471

Pawn, the, part of the Royal Ex
change, 262, 433

Payne, Mr. E. J., referred to, 36 f

Peacham, Henry, of Wymondham,
Norfolk, 428

Peele, George, his Arraignment of
Paris quoted, 147

Peeres, Mr., of Alveston, Warwick
shire, 331

Pembridge, Hereford. See Sher-
burne, Rev. Dr.

Pembroke, Countess, Earl of. See
Herbert, Mary, Sir Philip, etc.

Pembroke and Striguil, medieval
Earls of, 68

Pembroke House, Aldersgate Street,
E.C., 209

Penn, William, actor, 477-8

Pennant, Thomas, referred to, 25

Peole, Mr., of St. Helen's parish,
Bishopsgate, 218

Pepys, Samuel, his Diary quoted, 56,
57 1 33 J J his library, 448^-9

Percy, Thomas, D.D., Bishop of
Dromore, 448

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, See Shake
speare, William (i)

Periwigs, Dr. Kettell's opinion of, 344

Pestilence of 1593, 468

Peter the Poor, St., 210; monument
in, 108

Petitions against Blackfriars Theatre,

45S-7

Petrarca, Francesco, letter to Fran
cesco Bruni by, quoted, 87-8

Petre, William ; 4th Baron Petre, his
house in Aldersgate Street, 301

Pett, Peter, commissioner of the navy,

331

"Petum" or " Petun," name of to
bacco, 204

Phaer, Thomas, M.D., 237 ; his trans
lation of Virgil quoted, 389, 475
Phelips, Sir Edward, Master of the

Rolls, 431

Philaster. See Fletcher, John
Philip I., Archduke of Austria and

King of Castile, 323
Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy,

125-6

Phillipps, Sir Thomas, Bart., 30
Phillips, Augustine, actor, 48, 53
Phipps, Mr., surgeon, 305
Phoenix Theatre, or Cockpit, 451
Physic Garden at Oxford, 299
Piccard, Nieuhoff, Dutch artist, 89
" Pickadill," form of ruff, 432
Pierce Penniless* Supplication. See

Nash or Nashe, Thomas (l)
Pierrepont, Henry, ist Marquess of
Dorchester, 301

INDEX

Pigafetta, Antonio, his Primo Viaggio,
referred to, 393

Pig-nuts, 164, 192

Pilgrim Street, B.C., and the Pilgrims'
Way, 451

" Pink-eyed," meaning of, 284

Pinks, 162

" Pioned," meaning of, 146-7

Pipe office and rolls, 453, 458

Pique-devant beards, 325

Pitt, William, witness of Robert
Arden's will, 120

Placentula, "comfortable and deli
cate meates," 203

Plague, epidemics of, 245

Plato, Apologia Socratis quoted,
237-8

Platt, Sir Hugh, his Jewell House
quoted, 283-4

Plautus, Menachmi of, 197; English
translation of referred to, 198

Players, Acts of Elizabeth against
strolling, 98-9

Pliny, Historia Naturalis referred to,
363, 366 ; and see Holland, Phile
mon

Pocohontas, Virginian princess, daugh
ter of Powhatan, 407

Poe, Edgar Allan, quoted, 155

Poetaster, The. See Jonson, Ben.

Poincy, L. de, his Histoire des Antilles
quoted, 371

Pollard, Thomas, actor, 481, 482

Pomeranian dogs, 171

Pons, Dr. Jacques, of Lyons, his
work on bleeding, 244

Pontefract, Yorkshire, liquorice grown
at, 264

Pope, actor, 53

Pope, Alexander, referred to, 47, 48,
236, 343

Popham, Captain, letters discovered
by, 364-5

Porlock, Somerset. See Ward, Rev.
Hamnett

Porter, Hugh, of Snitterfield, War
wickshire, ii<)

Porter, Captain Thomas, letter, from
Howell to, 287

Portugal Row, W.C., Duke of York's
Theatre in, 461

Portugal, wine trade of, 284

Pory, John, letter by, to Sir Robert

Cotton, quoted, 397, 398, 413-15
Post Revels, 195

"Potan." See Powhatan
Potatoes, 202-3
Poultry, E.G., 262-3

Powhatan, Emperor of Virginia, 407,
432

Powis, Marquess of. See Herbert,
William (2)

Prague, Battle of (1620), 424

Prtciputs, custom of, 228

Preston Deanery, Northants, 268

Pricket, buck of second year, 170

Printing- House Square, E.G., 452

Prior, Life of Malone, quoted, 447-8

Private theatres, 451 ; their pecu
liarities, 463-4

Probus, Emperor, 145

Profanity in plays, 444

Prologue, customs of, 465

Prospero,Hunter's theories as to, 388-9

Ptolemy, astronomer, 315

Pudding Lane, E.G., 274

Puddle Dock, E.G., 452

Pueri Pauperes at Oxford, 340

Puritan, The, anonymous play,
quoted, 340

" Purpoole, Prince of," 195, 196, 199

Pylius, i.e. Nestor, 236

Pythagoras, Shakespearean allusions
to, 295-6

Pytheas of Marseilles, 380

"Quack," the lesser heron, 155

Quarles, publisher, 313

Queen Square, Bloomsbury. See
George, St., church of

Queen Victoria Street, E.G., 451

"Queeny" (Quiney), Mrs., of Strat
ford, perhaps wife of Thomas (2)
Quiney, 252, 261, 262

Quiney, Adrian (i), 180

Quiney, Adrian (2), Bailiff of Strat
ford, son of Adrian (i), 254

Quiney, Adrian (3), son of Richard ( I ),
254

Quiney, Anne, daughter of Richard
(i), 254

Quiney, Bartholomew, draper, of
Fleet Street, 180

Quiney, Elizabeth (i), wife of
Richard (i), 258

Quiney, Elizabeth (2), daughter of
Richard (i), 254

Quiney family in Isle of Man, 180

Quiney, Rev. George, curate, of
Stratford, son of Richard (i), 240,
254, 265

Quiney, Judith, nee Shakespeare,
wife of Thomas (i), 27, 131, 223-7
passim, 252-67 passim

INDEX

Quiney, Mary, daughter of Richard ( I ) ,

254

Quiney, Richard (i), Bailiff of Strat
ford, son of Adrian (i), 42, 135,
179, 180, 219, 252, 253, 254,
258

Quiney, Richard (2), grocer in Buck-
lersbury, son of Richard (i), 181,
254, 259, 261, 267

Quiney, Richard (3), son of Thomas

(I), 259
Quiney, Shakespeare, son of Thomas

(i), 259

Quiney, Thomas ( i ), vintner, of Strat
ford, son of Richard (i), 27, 252-67

passim
Quiney, Thomas (2), son of Richard

(2), 261, 262
Quiney, Thomas (3), son of Thomas

(i), 259
Quiney, William (i), son of Richard

(i), 254
Quiney, William (2), of Shottery, son

of Richard (2), 262
"Quiny," Mr., probably Rev.

George Quiney, 265

Rabelais, Fran£ois, his Pantagruel

quoted, 144

Rabon, John, of Wroxall, 1 1 1
Radcliffe, Sir Robert, 5th Earl of

Sussex, nephew of Sir Thomas,

419
Radcliffe, Sir Thomas, 3rd Earl of

Sussex, his players, 99
Ragged robin, 157
Ralegh, Carew, son of Sir Walter,

letter of Howell to, 359
Ralegh, Sir Walter, his voyage to

Guiana, 357-8

Ralph. See Stratford, Ralph de
Ramel, Henry, Chancellor of Den
mark, his visit to London, 206
Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, his

Raccolta, etc. , referred to, 393
Randolph, Rev. Thomas, his Muses'

Looking-Glass quoted, 261, 454,

459

" Rascal Jacks," nickname for a class
of undergraduates, 345

Rastell, John, his Termes de la Ley
quoted, 33

Rawlinson, Rt. Rev. Richard, D.C.L.,
449 ; his MSS., 449, 476

Ray, John, of Trinity Coll., Cam
bridge, his Collection of English

Words quoted, 156, 421 ; his

Travels quoted, 155, 161, 162,163;

his Wisdom of God quoted, 367
Raya Indians, 365
Raynoldes, William, mentioned in

Shakespeare's will, 226
Reade, William, of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, 216
Reading, Abbey of, 129, 132
Records. See Bath, Stratford - on •

Avon
Red Bull Inn and Theatre, Clerken-

well, 211, 459, 478
"Red Lion," sign of shop in Buck-

lersbury, 262

Redman, Robert, printer, 303
Reed, Isaac, editor of Shakespeare,

445

" Reed," technical meaning of, 147
Rehearsal, The. See Villiers, George
Renialmire, Ascanio de, of Black-
friars, 456

Replingham, Mr., of Stratford, 149
Return from Parnassus, The, quoted,

Revels, Children of the. See Children
of the Revels

Rhenish wines, 283, 285

Rhyon-Clifford, Warwickshire, 251

Ribbisford, or Ribbesford, Worcester
shire, 443

Rich, Sir Robert, Baron Rich (after
wards 2nd Earl of Warwick), letter
of his wife referred to, 433

Richard II. and the estate of Shottery,

136

Richard II. , King. See Shakespeare,
William (i)

Richard III., occupier of Crosby
Place, 208

Richard III., King. See Shake
speare, William (i)

Richard, Norman, owner of Wroxall,
no

Richardson, John, farmer, of Shottery,

24, 36

Richmond and Lennox, Duchess of.

See Stuart, Frances
Richmond, Surrey, Prince Henry at,

308
Rider, William, his Twins referred

to, 441-2
Rimbault, E. F., Mus. Doc., F.S.A.,

his ed. of Old Cheque-Book, etc.,

quoted. See Chapel Royal, Old

Cheque-Book of
Rivers, Earl and Countess of. See

Savage, Thomas (2)

512

INDEX

River sports at Princess Elizabeth's

wedding, 427-8
Roaring boy, character in anti-masque,

408

Robert. See Stratford, Robert de
Roberts, Goody, of Stratford, 305
Roberts, Griffith, M.D., his Welsh

Grammar referred to, 279
Robertson, William, D.D., his Charles

V. referred to, 319
Robin Hood, 165
Robinson, Frances, Lady, valentine

by Howell addressed to, quoted,

292
Robinson, John, of Blackfriars, 227,

456
Robinson, John, of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, and his monument,

216

Robinson, John, of Stratford, 230
Robinson, Richard, actor, 482

Robinson, Sir , of Stratford, 342

Robinson, William, of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, 213, 218
Robinson, Winifred, probably wife

of Richard, 482, 483
Rochelle, La, green wine from, 285
Rocque's Survey of London, referred

to, 447
Rodd, Thomas, jun., 374 ; his edition

of Dowdall's letter quoted, etc.,

327, 328-30, 332
Rogers, John, idiot, of Rowington,

Warwickshire, 131
Rogers, Joseph, of Stratford, son of

Thomas (i) 323

Rogers, Philip, of Stratford, 323
Rogers, Thomas (i), of Stratford, 323
Rogers, Thomas (2), son of Thomas

(i), 323
Rollo the Norwegian, coronation of,

183
Rollright, Little, Oxon., and stones,

183

Rolls House in Chancery Lane, 431
Romeo and Juliet, See Shakespeare,

William (i)

" Rook, to," meaning of, 242
" Rooky wood," meaning of, 155-6
Rosalynde. See Lodge, Thomas
Rosdus Anglicanus. See Downes,

John

Rose Theatre, 368, 477, 478
Rosemary, medical use of, 264
Ross or Rous, John, his account of

Earls of Warwick referred to, 335
Rouen, death of Richard ( Beauchamp),

Earl of Warwick, at, 334

Rous or Rouse, Francis, M.P. , story
of, 325-6 ; his Thule quoted, 235

Rowe, Nicholas, his Life of Shake
speare quoted, 22, 27-8, 38, 41, 48,

49. 353
Rowington, Warwickshire, no, 129;

manor of, 129-34, 142-3, 157
Rowley, William, his Knaves referred

to, 434 ; his Spanish Gipsy quoted,

169
Royston, Herts., James I. at, 406,

434, 437
Russell, Elizabeth, Baroness Russell,

456

Russell, family of, rise of, 323
Russell, Mr., of Stratford, 322
Russell, Sir John, K.G., 1st Earl of

Bedford, 323
Russell, Thomas, of Stratford, 226,

322

Russet, 152-3

" Russet-pated," meaning of, 151-3
Rutland, Earl of. See Manners,

Francis

Ryknield Street, 65, 66, 67-71
Rymer, Thomas, of Gray's Inn, his

Tragedies of the Last Age quoted,

440

Sabel, Dr., of Warwick, 305

Sack, varieties of, 285-6 ; Ward's
story of, 300

Sackerson, bear at Paris Garden,
1 68

Sadler, Elizabeth. See Walker, Eliza
beth

Sadler, Hamnet, of Stratford, 181,
223, 226, 230

Sadler, John, of Bucklersbury, E.G.,
181, 182, 262, 267

Sadler, Judith, wife of Hamnet, 181,
223

Sage, use as a drug, 264

Salisbury Court Theatre, 441, 451

Salisbury, Dance of Death at, 88-9

Salisbury, Earl of. See Cecil, Sir
Robert, and Neville, Richard

Sallows, 166

Salt-boiling at Droitwich, Worcester
shire, 163

Saltonstall, Sir Richard, Lord Mayor
of London, 215

Salzburg, outbreak of goitre at, 366

Sampson, chemist in Smithfield, 301,
358

Sandells, Fulk, farmer, of Shottery,

34, 36

INDEX

513

Sanderson, John, Turkey merchant,

367
Sandwich, Earl of. See Montagu,

John
Sandys, George, his Relation of a

Journey quoted, 287, 376-7
Santa Cruz de la Palma, wine from,

286

Saraband, 408

Satiromastix. See Dekker, Thomas
Satyrs, 366
Saussurite, 360
Savage, Thomas (i), Baron Savage,

281, 282
Savage, Thomas (2), Earl of Rivers,

son of Thomas (i), 281
Savile, Sir Henry, warden of Merton

Coll., Oxon., 396
Savoy, Duke of, his ambassador,

438 ; and see Carlo Emanuele
Savoy Hospital, 104
Saxony, beer in, 283
Scarborough or Scarburgh, Sir Charles,

M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., 301

Scarlet or Skerlett, John, of Snitter-

field, 7/9, 1 20
Scenery in theatres, 461-3
Schonbub, Louis. See Fontaine, Jean
School of Recreation, quoted, 174, 175
Scioll or Sciol. See Cioll
" Scobberlotchers," nickname for a

class of undergraduates, 345
Scotland Yard, 432
Scott, Sir Walter, Bart., story of.

See Lockhart, J. G.
Scottarit, ancient form of Shottery,

X35
Scrope, — , Countess of Sunderland,

letter of Howell to, 409
Scudamore, Sir Clement, 181
Scudamore, Helen, wife of Stephen,

181, 182
Scudamore, Stephen, vintner, of St.

Stephen's, Coleman Street, 181
Scylla and Charybdis, 288
Sea-holly or eringo, 203
Sedrida, Queen of Mercia, 72, 73
Sejanus his Fall. See Jonson, Ben
Selden, John, bencher of the Inner

Temple, his De Diis Syriis, 387-8 ;

letter to Jonson quoted, 388
Serpentine, source of the, 190
Sevenhuys, near Leyden, John Ray

at, ISS
Severn, Charles, M.D., his preface to

Ward's Diary quoted, etc., 230,

332, 261, 298-9; and see Appendix
Sewer, meaning of the word, 423

Seymour, Sir Edward, K.G., Duke

of Somerset, 87
Sforza, Francesco, Duke of Milan,

son of Ludovico, 386
Sforza, Ludovico, Duke of Milan,

385. J*»
Sforza, Massimiliano, Duke of Milan,

son of Ludovico, 385
" Shadow " in theatres, 462-3
Shadwell, Thomas, 346
Shaftesbury, Earl of. See Cooper,

Anthony Ashley
Shakespeare, Agnes, wife of William

(3)> "2
Shakespeare, Anne, wife of William

(i), 26-38 passim, 227, 231 ; her

grave, 82 ; inscription on tomb

quoted, etc., 228-9
Shakespeare, Antony, of Wroxall,

son of John (4), 1 1 1
Shakespeare, Ellen (afterwards Baker),

wife of John (4), III
Shakespeare, Gilbert, son of John (2),

51, 52, 140
Shakespeare, George, of Rowington,

130
Shakespeare, Hamnet, son of William

(i), 223, 224
Shakespeare, Henry, of Snitterfield,

son of Richard (2), 112
Shakespeare, Isabella, prioress of

Wroxall, III
Shakespeare, Joan, daughter of John

(2). See Hart, Joan
Shakespeare, John (i), of Rowington,

'jo
Shakespeare, John (2), son of Richard

(2), Bailiff of Stratford, 22, 31, 74,

75. 78, 79, 104, 107, 112, 113, 120,

179, 224, 348, 349
Shakespeare, John (3), of Stratford,

shoemaker, 21, no
Shakespeare, John (4), of Wroxall,

III, 112

Shakespeare, John (5), of Wroxall,
no

Shakespeare, Judith, daughter of
William (i). See Quiney, Judith

Shakespeare, Laurence, of Balsall,
no

Shakespeare, Mary (nte Arden), wife
of John (2), 25, 116, 120, 122, 224

Shakespeare, Richard (i), of Rowing-
ton, 130

Shakespeare, Richard (2), of Snitter
field, 107, 1 10, 112, 1 16

Shakespeare, Richard (3), of Wroxall,
no, 112

2 L

INDEX

Shakespeare, Roger, monk of Bordes-
ley, 109

Shakespeare, Susanna, daughter of
William (i). See Hall, Susanna

Shakespeare, Thomas (i), of Rowing-
ton, 130

Shakespeare, Thomas (2), Bailiff, of
Warwick, no

Shakespeare, Thomas (3), shoemaker,
of Warwick, 1 10

Shakespeare, William (i), son of
John (2), his birth and bajjfcm,
22-5 ; his marriage, 26-38 f deer-
stealing legend, 38-45 ; the Dave-
nant legend, 45-7, 347-8; journey
to and arrival in London, 38,
179-82 ; his traditional brigade of
horse-boys, 48-51 ; as an actor,
traditions of, 51-9; a member of
James Burbage's company, 483 ;
alleged letter to, from James I.,
59-60 ; his connection with Wilm-
cote, 123-8; his copyhold in manor
of Rowington, 130, 131, 226, 256;
his interest in the Stratford tithes,
I3S» 253 5 his interest in the Strat
ford common-fields, 139-40, 142 ;
his protest against inclosure of
Welcombe field, 148-9 ; probably
present at Comedy of Errors in
Gray's Inn (1594), 198; with actors
at Greenwich Palace, 198; possibly
a householder in St. Helen's,
Bishopsgate, 205-6, 214, 218-20;
a householder in Blackfriars, 205,
227, 456; his will, 131-2, 224,
225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 255-7 ;
his death and burial, 230-1 ; his
grave and monument, 82, 230-9,
332~3> 341-2 5 Ward's notes on
and stories of, 306-13 ; Aubrey's
stories of, 345-8 ; Aubrey's butcher-
boy story, 348-53 ; subsequent
reputation of, 442

Shakespeare, William (i), plays and
poems of, references to and quota
tions from —

Airs Well that Ends Well, 167,

372> 435) 444> 4&9, and see Bad

Beginning makes a Good Ending,

A, and Love's Labour's Won

Antony and Cleopatra, 141, 153,

284, 295-6, 469

As You Like It, 32, 37, 121-2, 123,
143, 165, 166, 293, 295, 352, 386,
464

Comedy of Errors, 196, 197, 198,
199, 372, 382, 433

Coriolanus, 156, 167, 469
Cymbeline, 68, 69, 70, 71, 159, 167,

291, 292
Hamlet, 56-7, 58, 59, 90, 99, 100,

M6,i53, 157,161, 167,283,292,

304, 30S» 324-5, 329> 335, 343,
464
Henry IV., King, part i. , 84, 122,

168, 777, 182, 212, 259, 313, 388,

445

Henry IV., King, part ii., 84, 121,
128, 143, 182, 196, 212, 255, 286,

337, 352, 445-6, 4^7
Henry V., King, 143, 146, 149,

7/7, 160, 161, 168, 171, 265,

317, 318, 319, 369,445
Henry VI., King, part i., 44, 45,

296, 335, 336, 462
Henry VI., King, part ii., 32, 72,
280, 316, 317, 318, 336, 337, 350,

35i
Henry VI. , King, part iii., 154,

169, 207, 242

Henry VIII. , King, 57, 58, 154,
208, 329, 411, 450, 4^2, 463

Julius Ccesar, 237, 315, 442-3

Lear, King, 124, 143, 156, 158,
160, 161, 170-1, 172, 340-1

Love's Labour's Lost, 101, 102, 124,
131, 145, 150, 153, 158, 159, 167,

169, I7O, I9O, 202, 224, 238, 291,

335. 352, 372, 380, 382, 412, 468
Lucrece, 119, 123, 180, 313
Macbeth, 122, 155, 156, 172,314,

329
Measure for Measure, 128,187,259,

35i

Merchant of Venice, The, 325, 443
Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 42,

102, 122, 156, 167, 168, 203, 264,

324, 331, 349, 362, 436, 445
Midsummer-Nighfs Dream, A,

I50,l5i,i53,l6i,l73, 176,184,

185, 186, 372, 421, 445
Much Ado about Nothing, 79, 80,

153, '54-5, !86, 187, 224, 263,

372, 438, 444-5
Othello, 232, 263, 290, 364
Pericles, 202, 313, 407
RichardII.,King,84, 91, 101, 1 86,

308
Richard III., King, 43, 44, 207,

219, 316, 319
Romeo and Juliet, 91, 156, 239, 351,

382, 460
Sonnets, 37, 38, 90, 96, 101-2, 145,

150, 159, 237, 238, 241, 263, 314,

325, 329, 335

INDEX

Taming of the Shrew, 64-5, 79, 99,
125, 126, 127, 128, 173, 174, 175,
324

Tempest, 58, 144, 145, 146, 147,
154, 157, 164, 239, 286, 288,
302, 313, 324, 357, 361, 362, 370,
373. 376, 378, 381, 388, 389, 390,
391, 392, 393, 394, 398, 402, 404,
409, 410, 41 1, 414, 420, 421, 422,
423, 432, 434, 435, 437, 439, 444,
448, 450, 460, 461, 462, 463, 469,
474, 475

Timon of Athens, 142, 757, 243,
412

Titus Andronicus, toa

Troilus and Cressida, 237

Twelfth Night, 103, 200, 224, 230,
296, 351, 409, 445

Two Gentlemen of Verona, 144, 1 70,
3M, 352, 372, 420

Venus and Adonis, 141, 153, 154,
174, 180, 238, 313

Winter's Tale, 144, 162, 185-6,

439, 443

Shakespeare, William (2), of Temple
Grafton, Warwickshire, 34

Shakespeare, William (3), of War
wick, probably son of Thomas (3),
no

Shakespeare, William (4), of Wroxall,
112

Shanks, John, actor, 482, 483, 484

Shaw, Julius, of Stratford, 230

Sheffield, John, 1st Duke of Bucking
hamshire, 59, 60

Shenstone, Staffordshire, 67

Sherburne, Rev. Dr., of Pembridge,
Herefordshire, 347

Sherley, John, printer, 249

Sherry, 285, 286

Shiels, Robert, 49

Shilleto, A. R. , his edition of Burton's
Anatomy quoted, 146

Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, 182

Shirley James, dramatist, 185 ; quoted,

457
Shoe Lane, Berkeley Mansion in,

193
" Shooty, brave Master," meaning of

allusion, 128
Shoreditch. See Curtain Theatre,

Green Curtain play-house, Theatre,

the ; tradition of Shakespeare's

residence near, 206
Shottery, 135, 136, 245, 261, 266,

and see Hathaway, Anne, etc.
Shrewsbury, Earl of. See Talbot,

Gilbert

Shuckborough or Shuckburgh, Sir

Richard, of Shuckburgh, Warwick
shire, 321
Sicily and its Islands. See Smyth,

Admiral W. H.

Sicily, origin of fumitory in, 161
Siddons, Sarah, n<!e Kemble, actress,

232

Sidney, Mary. See Herbert, Mary
Sidney, Sir Philip, 50, 209, 337, 338;

his Apologiefor Poetrie quoted, 461 ;

his Arcadia quoted, 101, 173
Sidney, Robert, Earl of Leicester and

Viscount Lisle, 192
Siege of Rhodes, The. See Davenant,

Sir William

Silent Woman, The. See Jonson, Ben
Silius Italicus, his Punica referred

to, 236

Simpson, Giles, court goldsmith, 431
Sims, James, M.D., 297
Sinklow, actor, 169, 464
Sipapo, River, 365
Sir Francis Drake. See Davenant,

Sir William
" Sizings," word in use at Cambridge,

340
Skeat, Prof. W. W., Litt. D., his

Specimens of English Literature

referred to, 324
Skelton, John, his Bouge of Courte

referred to, 463

Skerlett, John. See Scarlet, John
Skidmore. See Scudamore
"Skyrrits of Peru," synonym for

potatoes, 203

Sly, Stephen, of Stratford, 127
Sly, William, actor, 464, 466
Smith, Cecil, his Birds of Somerset-

shire quoted, 152
Smith, E. Toulmin, English Guilds,

referred to, 83

Smith, Hamlet, of Stratford, 181,224
Smith, Helen, sister of Hamlet. See

Scudamore, Helen
Smith, Henry, of Stratford, 270
Smith, John, actor, 477, 478
Smithfield, 182
Smug the Smith, 282, 408 ; synonym

for Merry Devil of Edmonton, 440
Smyth, John, his Lives of the Berkeley s

quoted, 193
Smyth, Admiral W. H., his Sicily

and its Islands quoted, 374, 375,

376, 377

Snitterfield, Warwickshire, 107-16
Snoade, Mr., of St. Helen's parish,

Bishopsgate, 218

INDEX

Socrates, 236, 237-8

Solinus, referred to, 366

Somerset, Duke of. See Seymour,

Sir Edward

Somerset, Earl of. See Carr, Robert
Somerset, Edward, K.G., 4th Earl of

Worcester, son of William, 419
Somerset, William, K.G., 3rd Earl of

Worcester, his players, 99, 100
Somerville, family of, 321
Somner, William, his Dictionarium

referred to, 339

Sonnets. See Shakespeare, William ( i )
Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 424
Sophonisba, Tragedy of. See Marston,

John
Sore, Sorel, names given to bucks,

170

Southall, Middlesex, 190
Southampton, Earl of. >S«Wriothesley,

Henry
Southwell, Edward, letter by Dowdall

addressed to, 328
Spadafora, Placido, his Patronymica

referred to, 236-7
Spain, Potatoes in, 203
Spain, Queen of. See. Elizabeth (3)
Spaniels, water-spaniels, 172
Spanish Gipsy, The. See Rowley,

William
Spanish Tragedy, The. See Kyd,

Thomas
Specchio del Mare. See Coronelli,

Vincenzo
Spedding, James, 195, 196 ; his Life

of Bacon quoted, /06
Speed, John, his Historic, etc., quoted,

208; his Theatre, etc. , quoted, 163
Spence, Joseph, his Anecdotes re
ferred to, 47
Spencer, Dame Alice, wife of Sir

John, 210
Spencer, Elizabeth. See Compton,

Elizabeth
Spencer, Sir John, Lord Mayor of

London, 209, 210, 215
Spenser, Edmund, 447, 476; his

Faerie Queene quoted, 146, 241,

361 ; Shepheards Calender ; 146 ;

View of Ireland, 294
Spider, legend of, and unicorn's horn,

302
Spirit, sketch of, as represented on

stage, 419
Spleen-stones, 360
Squacco heron, 155
" Stable-stand," term in forest-law,

169

Stage, in private theatres, 459 ;
covering of. See " Heavens,"
Shadow ; custom of sitting on,
465-8

Stags from Denmark, 437

Stand, shooting from the, 169

Stangate, in Lambeth, 427

Stanhope, Sir John, 1st Baron Stan
hope of Harrington, 436, 437, 438,
446, 447, 448

Stanley, Ferdinando, 5th Earl of
Derby and Baron Strange, his
players, 100

Stanley, Henry, K.G., 4th Earl of
Derby, his players, 100

Starch, yellow, 410, 454

Stationers' Register, referred to, 440

Steele, Sir Richard, 57

Steelyard, 282

Steevens, George, F.R.S., F.S.A.,
quoted, etc., 38, 237, 437-8, 444,

445, 447
Stephen, St., Coleman Street, parish

of, 181
Stilton, Matthew, of St. Helen's,

Bishopsgate, 217
Stirling, Earl of. See Alexander, Sir

William

Stone, Nicholas, master-mason, 447
" Stooming " of wine, 285
Slopes, Mrs. C. C. , her Shakespeare's

Family referred to, 225, 248
Stour, River, in Warwickshire, 67,

68, 183

" Stover," meaning of, 147
Stow, John, hisAnnals quoted, 210;

his Survey of London quoted, etc. ,

85, 86, 87, 96, 104, 109, 152-3,

I92> J93> 206, 207, 208, 209, 210,

211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 219, 263,

452, 453, 455

Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire.
See Ward, Rev. Thomas

Strachey, William, of Gray's Inn, his
Virginia quoted, 407-8

Strange, Baron. See Stanley, Fer
dinando

Stratford - on - Avon, Warwickshire,
63-104; account of, by Dowdall,
332-3 1 meaning of name, 320 ;
records referred to, 100, 102, 156,
258 ; register referred to, 324

Stratford, John de, Archbishop of
Canterbury, 80, 84, 85

Stratford, Old, Warwickshire, 135,
140

Stratford, Ralph de, Bishop of Lon
don, 80

INDEX

Stratford, Robert de, Bishop of
Chichester, So, 84, 85, 135

Strawberry Hill, Walpole's library
at, 447

Streeche, Dame Isabel, wife of Sir
John (I), 135

Streeche, Sir John (i), of Shottery,

»35
Streeche, Sir John (2), son of Sir

John (I), 135

Street-Ashton, Warwickshire, 67
Stretford, hundred of, Herefordshire,

aa8
Stretton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire,

Stretton-on-the-Foss, Warwickshire,

Stretton-under-Fosse, Warwickshire,
67

Striguil, castle of, Monmouthshire, 68

Stromboli, island of, 380

Strutna, or gottre, 367

Stype, John, referred to, 114, 191

Stuart, Arabella, 289

Stuart, Frances, Duchess of Rich
mond and Lennox, 302

Stuart, Ludovick, 2nd Duke of Lennox,
405, 419

" Study of books," use of phrase, 247

Stukely, Rev. William, M.D., etc.,
of St. George's, Queen Square, 304

Sturley, Abraham, of Stratford, letter
by, quoted, 135, 219, 252-3, 260

Subsidy of 1598, assessment of, 206,
and see Assessment

Suffolk, Earl of. See Howard, Thomas

Sugar, mixed with sack, 285, 286

Sully, Maximilien de Bethune, Due
de, in London, 210

Sunderland, Countess of. 5«Scrope —

Supplication of the Poor Commons^
quoted, 1 66

Sussex, Earl of. See Radcliffe, Sir
Robert and Sir Thomas

Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, 67,
122, 125, 155, 262

Swan Inn at Stratford, 324

Swanne, Mr., surgeon, 308

Swansea, Glamorganshire, 287

Swanston, Heliard, actor, 473, 481

Swayne, Edward, of St. Helen's
parish, Bishopsgate, 217

Sycorax, Hunter's theories concern
ing, 389-90

Sydenham, Thomas, M.D., 299-300

Sylvester, Josuah, his translation of
Du Bartas quoted, 455 ; his
Tobacco Battered quoted, 260

2 L 2

Symboleographie. Set West, William
Symonds, Ralph, his Diary quoted,

273, 3"
Symons, Thomas, skinner, alderman's

deputy for Bishopsgate ward, 215
Syrian wolves, 293

Tabard Inn, Southwark, 453

Talbot, Charles, Baron Talbot of
Hensol, Lord Chancellor, 194

Talbot, Gilbert, 7th Earl of Shrews
bury, 206

Talbot, John, Baron Lisle of King
ston Lisle, S9

Talbots, English dogs, 174

"Talsheids, equivalent to faggots,

471

Tamworth, 72
Tanner, Thomas, D.D., Bishop of St.

Asaph, his Notitia Monastica re
ferred to, 189
Tanners' Act of 1530, 350
Tardebigge, Worcestershire, 41
11 Tarrarags," nickname for a class of

undergraduates, 345
Taunton, coat-of-arms of, 321
Tavistock Abbey, Devon, 323
Taylor, Joseph, actor, 56, 58, 59, 482
Taylor, Baron, his Voyages referred

to, 89
Taylor, John, the water-poet, quoted,

47, 282, 322, 404, 463
Taylor, Dr. Richard, of St. Helen's

parish, Bishopsgate, 217
Tempest, The. See Shakespeare,

William (I)
Temple Grafton, Warwickshire, 34,

Temple, Inner, solemn revels at, 194 ;
masque of, and Gray's Inn. See
Beaumont, Francis.

Temple, Middle, masques and revels
at, 195, 200 ; gentlemen of, 431

Tennis Court Theatre, 461

Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron Tenny
son, quoted, 155, 157, 158, 422

Terriers, 171

Thame, Oxon., 185

" Thar borough " or "third borough,"
meaning of, 124

Theatre, The, Shoreditch, 50, 180,

483

Theobald, Lewis, 146-7, 373
Theobalds Park, Herts., 437
Thevenot, Jean de, his Voyages au

Levant quoted, 378-9

INDEX

Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, brother

of Edward I., 152
Thompson, John, actor, 482
Thorns, W. J., F.S.A., his Anecdotes

quoted, 312

Thorney Abbey, Cambridgeshire, 323
Threadneedle Street, E.G., 234
Throckmorton, Sir Robert, 321
Thurnam, John, M.D., F.R.C.P., his

tract on Wayland Smith referred

to, 380
Thwaites, Rev. Edward, of Queen's

Coll., Oxon., letter by, quoted, 339
Thynne, Lady Isabella, 344
Tiddington, Warwickshire, farm of,

129, 132-4
Timon of Athens. See Shakespeare,

William (i)
Tippling Acts, 258
Tithe-barn at Stratford, 102
Tithes, story concerning, 325-6 ; the

Stratford, 135

Tithing-man. See Headborough
Titus Andronicus. See Shakespeare,

William (i)

Tobacco, varieties of, 204
" Toil," sporting term, 167
' ' Tokens " of pestilence, 468, 46g
Tomatoes, 202

Tomlins, Goody, of Stratford, 301
Tommasi family of Palermo, 375
Toon, Stephen, apothecary, of Oxford,

300

Topago, Provinces of, 360
Topcliffe, Yorkshire, 404
Topsell, Rev. Edward, his Historie

of Foure-footed Beastes referred to,

366
Tortugas, turtles, mentioned by

Ralegh, 360
Tortura arts, Elizabeth Hall's attack

of, 243
Tothill, William, his Transactions of

Chancery quoted, 148
Totnes, Earl and Countess of. See

Carew, Sir George and Joyce
Tottel, Richard, publisher, 89
Tower of London, Dance of Death

in, 88

Town-hall at Stratford, New, 98
Townsend, Thomas, of Tiddington,

133

Trapani, in Sicily, 379
Trapp, Rev. John, of Weston-on- Avon

and Welford, Warwickshire, 241
Trapp, Rev. Simon, of Stratford, 246
Travaile into Virginia. See Strachey,

William

" Traverse " on stage of theatres, 461

Treacle, Venice, 322

Treasurer of the Chamber, office of,

437

Trenchard, Sir Thomas, 323
Trinidada tobacco, or Trinidado, 204,

466
" Troglodytic " caves at Lampedusa,

375

Trowbridge, Wilts., 134
Tumbler dogs, 172
Tumblers, companies of, 99
Turco-Grada. See Kraus, Martin
Turner, Mrs. Anne, 409-10, 425
Tumor, Dr. Peter, of St. Helen's

parish, Bishopsgate, 217
Turnspit dogs, 172
Turpentine, Venice, 301
Turquil the Saxon, 107
Twelfth Night. See Shakespeare,

William (i)

" Twilled," meaning of, 146
Twins, The. See Niccols, Richard ;

Rider, William
Two Gentlemen of Verona. See

Shakespeare, William (i)
Two Wise Men and All the Rest

Fools, anonymous play, 441
Tyara, Peter, epitaph of, at Leeu-

warden, 234

Tyburn, Middlesex, 190, 191, 410
Tycho Brahe, 315

" Tyings," agricultural term, 142, 144
Tyler, Dorothy, of Shottery, 42
Tyndale, William, his version of the

Bible referred to, 382
Typhoid fever and typhus, varieties

of, 3°7, 308, 425

" Uncape," sporting term, 167
Underwood, John, actor, 466, 467,

469, 471-2, 473, 476, 482, 483
Unicorn's horn, legends concerning,

302

Uniformity, Act of (1662), 262
Union Street, E.G., 452
" Unkennel," sporting term, 167
Urban V., Pope, 304
Urban of Belluno, 236
Urso d'Habetot, Lord of Wilmcote,

Warwickshire, 115
Utopia. See More, Sir Thomas
"Utter-barristers" of the Middle

Temple, 200

Uvedale, Sir William, 437
Uxbridge, Middlesex, 189-90

INDEX

Vale, Robert de, of Wilmcote, 116
Valentinian. See Fletcher, John
Valor Ecclesiasticus (1534), 1 12
Vanderstylt, Leven, of St. Helen's

parish, Bishopsgate, 217
Varro, M. Terentius, Jonson's ob
ligations to, 416

Vaughan, Henry, "Silurist," 185
Vaughan, William, LL.D., his Golden

Grovt quoted, 25
Venables, Rev. Edmund, precentor

of Lincoln, referred to, 303
Venice, Howell at, 201, 287-92;

players from, in England, 289
Venner, Tobias, M.D., his Baths of
Bathe quoted, etc., 242, 283 ; his
Via Recta quoted, 259, 260, 261,
264-5, 285, 286
Venus and Adonis. See Shakespeare,

William (l)

Vere, Aubrey de, son of John, 281
Vere, John de, 1 2th Earl of Oxford,

«£r

Vere, Lady Susan de, daughter of
Edward, ijth Earl of Oxford, 397
Verity, Mr. A. W., referred to, 473-4
Vemey, Sir Richard, 149
" Veronesa," ship of Verona, 290
Vertue, George, engraver, his MSS.,

400, 438, 442, 444, 446-9
Verulam, Roman road at, 65
Villafranca. See " Old Free-Town "
Villiers, Sir George, K.G., ist Duke

of Buckingham, 244, 409
Villiers, George, 2nd Duke of Buck
ingham, The Rehearsal, chiefly by,
Suoted, 58
on, Francois, quoted, 296
Vincent of Beauvais, his Speculum

referred to, 363
Vincent's Well, St., near Bristol,

241

Vine Inn, in Bishopsgate Street, 21 1
Vine, The, near Basing, Hants., 145
Vines in England, 145
Vintners' Company, records of, re
ferred to, i Si

Violets in Shakespeare's plays, 162
Virgil, legends concerning, 386
Virgil, translation of, quoted. See

Phaer, Thomas
Virginia, tobacco from, 204
Virtue, George, National Gazetteer,

published by, referred to, 183
Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. See
Daniel, Samuel

Vives, Johannes Ludovicus, D.C.L.,

of C.C.C., Oxon., 125
Voisy, Veysey, Voysey, or Harman,

John, LL.D., Bishop of Exeter,

125
Voragine, Jacobus de, Archbishop of

Genoa, his Aurea Legenda, 93, 94

Wake, William, D.D., Archbishop of

Canterbury, 449
Walford, Edward, his Greater London

referred to, 342
Walker, Barbara. See Clopton, Dame

Barbara
Walker, Sir Edward, Garter King-of-

Arms, 271, 272, 273, 274
Walker, Elizabeth, «<fc Sadler, 181
Walker, Mr., Nonconformist divine

at Ilmington, Warwickshire, 241
Walker, William, godson of Shake
speare, 226

Wall (Letocetum), near Lichfield, 66
Waller, Edmund, 185, 344, 348;

quoted, 439
Wallingford, Berks., pestilence at,

308
Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford,

443. 447

Walter. Set Cantelupe, Grey, May-
denstone, Walter de

Wanley, Humphrey, 340

Warburton, William, D.D., Bishop of
Gloucester, quoted, 41 1

Ward, A. W., Litt. D., his English
Dramatic Literature referred to,
50,54,59, 295, 335, 439, 443, 445*
457, 4&*t tf*, 473, 477

Ward, Rev. Hamnett, M.D., of For-
lock, Somerset, 304

Ward, Rev. John, Vicar, of Stratford-
on-Avon, his Diary quoted, 225,
229, 235, 236, 240, 244, 247, 252,
254, 261, 262, 264, 265, 268, 272,
273. 274, 280, 283, 298-326 passim,
358, 425, 43°

Ward, John, actor, 232

Ward, Rev. Thomas, of Stow-on-the-
Wold, Gloucestershire, 313

Warde Barnes, near Wilmcote, War
wickshire, 116

Wardrobe, King's, St. Andrew's Hill,
E.C., 452. 456

Warmstry, Robert, notary, of Wor
cester, 36

Warner, John, parish clerk of St.
Helen's, Bishopsgate, 211

520

INDEX

Warton, Rev. Thomas, B.D., 383-4;
his History of English Poetry
quoted, 384

Warwick, 188 ; assizes at, 149, 328 ;
collegiate church of St. Mary at,
IO7> 334 5 Earls of. See Beauchamp,
Dudley, Edward, Greville, Neville,
Newburgh, Rich ; epitaph at,
quoted, 235, 238;

"Warwick's Lands," 108

Warwickshire, its divisions, 64, 163 ;
Laud's visitation of, 233

Washburn, Mr. , of Oriel Coll. , Oxon. ,
quoted by Ward, 254, 430

Water Lane, E.G., 451, 458

Watling Street, course of Roman
road, 65-6

Watts, Richard, of Rhyon-Clifford,
Warwickshire, 251

Waugh, John, tutor of Queen's Coll.,
Oxon., 342

Wayland Smith, legend of, 380

Wealden of Warwickshire, 163

Webb, Agnes. See Arden, Agnes

Webster, John, his induction to The
Malcontent quoted, 454, 464, 466,
and see Marston, John ; his White
Devil quoted, 314 ; his Northward-
Ho and Westward- Ho. See Dekker,
Thomas

Welcker, F. T., his Sylloge Epi-
grammatum quoted, 234, 235

Welcombe, Warwickshire, 127, I35>
140, 148

Wellesbourne Mountford, Warwick
shire, 133

Wendover, Bucks., 188

West, Thomas, of Snitterfield, War
wickshire, 1 08

West, William, of the Middle Temple,
his Symboleographie referred to,
367-8

Westbourne Brook, Middlesex, 190

Westminster, roads from Tyburn to,
191

Westney, Richard, churchwarden of
St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213

Weston-on-Avon, Gloucestershire, 26,

27, 36

Westward- Ho. See Dekker, Thomas
Whatcot, Robert, of Stratford, 230
Whately, Anne, of Temple Grafton,

Warwickshire, 34
Wheat, price of, in 1598, 219
Wheatley, Oxon., 184
Wheler, R. B., his History of Strat
ford referred to, etc., 60, 139, 232,
233

" Whifflers " at theatres, 197
"Whispering Knights," the, at Roll-
right, Oxon., 183
White Lake, the, in Guiana, 358
White, Robert, portraits of James

Cooke by, 249
Whitefriars Theatre, 426, 427, 451,

471, 476, 480, 481
Whitehall Palace, Dance of Death at,

89 ; Masque of Flowers performed

at, 195 ; weddings, masques, and

plays at, 395-449 passim, 478
Whitehall Stairs, sham sea-fight off,

427-8 ; procession at, 432
White Hart Inn, at Lichfield, 341
Whitgift, John, D.D., Archbishop of

Canterbury (formerly Bishop of

Worcester), 33, 36
Whitlow-grass, 192
Wieland, Christoph Martin, Klelia

and Sinibald of, referred to, 377-8
Wild-fowl, breeding of, etc., 150-1
Wilkes, Mr., interview of Capell

with, 41, 51
Willes, Richard, his translation of

Pigafetta's Viaggio, 393
William II., 107
William. See Blois, William de
Willughby, Francis, F.R.S., 155
Wilmcote, Warwickshire, 64, 77,

115-16, 119, 123-8, 173, 174
Wilson, Anne, ne'e Hathaway, wife

of William, 26
Wilson, Arthur, his History quoted,

etc., 395, 396, 399, 411
Wilson, Mrs., of Stratford, 241
Wilson, Rev. Thomas, B.D., Vicar,

of Stratford, 233
Wilson, Mr., Nonconformist divine

at Stratford, 241
Winchcomb, Tideman de, Bishop of

Worcester, 303
Winchester House, 432
Winchester pipes, 205
Wincote. See Wilmcote
Windle, Prof. B. C. A., M.D., F.S.A.,

etc., his Shakespeare's Country re
ferred to, 80
Windsor, installation of the Elector

Frederick in St. George's Chapel

at, 436

Winfrith, hundred of, Dorset, 124
Winter's plan of Stratford, referred

to, 142

Winterbourne, Gloucestershire, 303
Winter's Tale. See Shakespeare,

William (i)
Winwood, Sir Ralph, letter of Sir D.

INDEX

521

Carleton to, 414 ; letters of Cham
berlain to, 426, 431, 434, 435

Wither, George, his Sighs for the
Pitchers quoted, 315

Wits, The. See Davenant, Sir
William

Wixford, Warwickshire, 67

Woburn Abbey, Beds. , 323

Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal, Arch
bishop of York, 452

Wolves, legends of, 293-5

Woman's Bridge at Ay lesbury, Bucks. ,
1 88

Woman-Hater, The. See Fletcher,
John

Woman is a Weathercock, A. See
Field, Nathaniel

Woncot. Set Wilmcote

Wonder of Women, The. 5«Marston,
John

Wood, Anthony a, his Athena quoted,
46, 176, 185,^96

Woodstock, Oxon., 184

Woodward family of Butler's Marston,
Warwickshire, 331

Worcester, 163 ; Bishops of, their
privileges at Stratford, 71-8 ; Earls
of, see Beauchamp, Richard (2) ;
Somerset, Edward and William

Worcestershire, hunting in, 175

Worms, death of Lord Harington of
Exton at, 436

Wortley Hall, Gloucestershire, Dance

of Death at, 88
" Wo worthe the, Lenttone," ballad,

quoted, 351
Wrestlers Inn, Bishopsgate Street,

211
Wright, James, his Historia His-

trionica quoted, 56, 461, 473
Wright, Nathaniel, of St Helen's

parish, Bishopsgate, 213
Wright, Thomas, F.S.A., 351 ; his

Dictionary quoted, 134, 141
Wriothesley, Henry, K.G., 3rd Earl

of Southampton, 192, 199, 399
Wroxall, Warwickshire, 110-12
Wroxeter (Viroconium), Shropshire,

Yams, 203

Yeowell, James, his Memoir of Oldys

referred to, 447
York, James, Duke of, his theatre.

See Portugal Row
Yorkshire, broom-groves in, 146
Ypres, ware of, 122
Yvor, St., 295

Zoa, supposed city of, 381
Zoira in Tripoli, 381

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