of arms. I do not, however, entirely disbelieve it, though' it may have been forged by the Heralds for an intelligible purpose. John Shakespeare seems to have ceased to be a glover some time previously, (for the trade only occurs once attached to his name,) and at this time to have been in prosperous circumstances; his wife, it is certain, was descended from a very ancient family, and the ambition, if not the sentiment of grade, which certainly animated his son, may have induced him to avail himself of an opportunity to secure a title to gentry.

There is clearly not sufficient evidence to found a decision, but enough is known to show that there was every opportunity for Shakespeare to be stimulated by a motive powerful with certain natures, the consciousness of title by descent and connection, to a higher rank than the gifts of fortune have confirmed.

John Shakespeare married in 1557, which may account for his neglectful attendance as aletaster, by which he incurred fine. His wife was Mary Arden, youngest daughter of Robert Arden, or Arderne, of Wilmecote, in the neighbouring parish of Aston Cantlowe, who has no better title in law papers than agricola, or husbandman, and evidently from the inventory of his house at death had the occupation of a yeoman, but nevertheless was not only of good descent, but possessed considerable landed property. Robert Arden was owner of houses and land at Snitterfield, about three miles from Stratford -his wife's jointure was here, and in 1550 had a Richard Shakespeare tenant of part of this property. As Johr Shakespeare had a brother Henry, and a Henry Shakespeare lived and died at Snitterfield, it is not unlikely, though not proved, that they were sons of the tenant of Robert Arden, and in any case the intercourse of the families is explained. Mary Arden and Alicia, the only unmarried sisters out of seven, were executors of their father's will, at his death at the end of 1556. Mary Arden inherited £6 13s. 4d. (ten nobles) in money, and a small estate in fee, in the parish of Aston Cantlowe, called Asbyes, consisting of a messuage, fifty acres of

́arable land, six of meadow and pasture, with right of common, and in addition she had an interest in property in Snitterfield. If she was of age when she was left executrix, this would bring her to seventy-two when she died. Reckoning in like manner, from the first mention of John Shakespeare as a householder, he would be twenty-five when he married, and seventy-two at death. Their youngest child was born in 1580, when William Shakespeare, their eldest son, was sixteen; and this settles, approximately, all that is of interest, the relative ages of parents and child; the general probability being in favour of a lower age for Mary Shakespeare than forty-five at birth of last child.

The family of the Ardens had possessions adjoining the forest of Arden, or Arderne, and their pedigree is traced by Dugdale, without interruption, to Edward the Confessor. In later times, a Walter Arden married a daughter of John Hampden of Bucks, and was brother to Sir John Arden, Squire to the body of Henry VII., and grandfather to a Robert Arden, groom of the chamber to the same monarch, and from this junior branch, within the moderate limits of family tradicion, was deducible the line of the mother of Shakespeare.

An Arden, a cousin of Mary Shakespeare, some degrees removed, was Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1568, the same year in which her husband reached the height of municipal honour as Bailiff. One of her sisters was married to an Edward Lambert, of Barton on the Heath, of whom we shall hear again.

It seems not improbable that the occupations of John Shakespeare were modified by the portion of land that he received with his wife, and in 1570 he rents a meadow (Ingon) of fourteen acres, at a rent implying that there was a good house upon it. His connection with the town, however, still continued; it was during his term as Chief Alderman, 1571-2, that Queen Elizabeth visited Sir Thomas Lucy at Charlecote, close to Stratford, of which town he was the most powerful and important neighbour. The corporation were at moderate charges

"for the Queen's provision;" here probably she heard the news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. In 1575, Warwickshire was in excitement with the bustle and magnificence of her entertainment at Kenilworth. In this year, when William Shakespeare was eleven years old, his father bought two houses in Henley Street for £40; this is the last trace of his comparative prosperity; notes that ensue, scanty and scattered, are uniformly of a less cheerful cast, until better days came back by the successes of his son. The cause of his difficulties is not discoverable, but the hints of his proceedings suggest that it was rather from excessive than deficient activity; true, he could not, or did not write, but signed manfully with a mark; so, however, did most of his colleagues on the corporation, who would naturally be the busiest and most thriving men of the town. Some tradition of these embarrassments reached Rowe, but in ascribing them to a numerous family, his informant seems to have erred by misreading the register, and giving to the father of the poet the family of a namesake, a shoemaker. His last child, Edmund, was born when William was sixteen, making the fifth living, Gilbert being fourteen years old, Joan eleven, and Richard six. A sister Anne, however, had died the previous year, aged eight. Two daughters died in infancy, before the birth of William. Commentators have remarked, that at the funeral of Anne, 8d. was paid for bell and pall, an expense that was not generally incurred, and as difficulties were already accruing, it may be that they were aggravated, if not brought on by imprudences of ambition—but we have said we will eschew conjecture.

While half the aldermen could not write, and perhaps not read, there were others who could read Latin and write it too, as their preserved letters avouch. From the time of Edward IV. (1482) the Guild of the Holy Cross of Stratford had held lands on condition of maintaining a priest competent to teach grammar, that is Greek and Latin, freely to all scholars of the town. After the disso

lution of the fraternity, a charter of Edward VI. established the free school of the town, and here no doubt, as in others of like origin, Latin at least was taught more or less efficiently—it might be even very efficiently. The present grammar-school is an ancient room over the old town-hall, adjoining the chapel of the guild; but it appears, from a change that was made in 1505, that the school had previously been held in the chapel itself. The structure belongs, for the most part, to the reign of Henry VII., and the interior was anciently adorned with paintings of the traditional history of the Holy Cross, and others, which were discovered beneath encrusted whitewash in 1804; the first obliterating coat was given in the birth-year of Shakespeare, when the Corporation expended 2s. for "defacing ymage in Chappell.”

Rowe asserts that Shakespeare's father bred him for some time at a free school, but was forced by narrow circumstances, and want of his assistance at home, to withdraw him prematurely. This agrees in both points with what we know of his father's circumstances; as to the degree of efficiency the pupil carried away, the line of Ben Jonson," and though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek," implies that he had learned, if not even the rudiments of Greek, something more than the rudiments of Latin. My own impression from his works is, that he probably had no acquaintance with Greek literature whatever, and comparatively little with Latinnone at all, it may be, beyond one or two school-text books, but that his knowledge of the language, of the vocabulary and the accidence, was originally sufficient, however it may have rusted from counter attractions determining him to other reading.

Illustration in abundance has been obtained of the numerous opportunities which surrounded the youth of Shakespeare for the development of a taste for the drama, dramatic poetry and the stage. The town accounts of the time show usually several, sometimes many payments yearly to different companies of players, who are distinguished as the Earl of Leicester's players, the Earl of

Worcester's players, and so forth, according to the nobleman whose protection they enjoyed, and whose servants they styled themselves. It is remarkable, that the first of these entries occurs in the year of John Shakespeare's magistracy, as if he had set the example from peculiar liking and interest in playing, though for the rest it was the ordinary custom of the time for players visiting a town to accredit themselves in the first instance to the Mayor or High Bailiff, and exhibit for the first time in the town-hall, under his patronage. Ten or eleven different companies are noted within a few years, and many of them over and over again; and there can be no doubt from what is known of the history of the stage, that the performances even of the same company were most various in style and constantly diversified by novelty.

Between the dates of Shakespeare's birth and majority we find notices of acted plays that range through every variety of Moral and Miracle play, plays from English and Ancient history, mythological, romantic, and what may be called fantastic subjects. Blank verse, prose, rhyme, extemporised dialogue, dumb show and, to a certain extent, spectacle, were interchanged and combined with every degree of extravagance and simplicity. At the same time the custom of the presentation of plays by the Inns of Court, public schools, choristers and universities. brought into exercise the invention of a different class of minds, which would have a stimulant reaction the rather that their productions were frequently presented to the same audience, to royalty, nobility, and the court. The interest of the audiences was not unfrequently stimulated by very direct treatment of matters polemical as well as political, a tendency that from time to time was sharply checked; at other times a source of amusement was sought in personal satire, especially it would seem in London, where the players and the corporation were at constant feud,-the mayor and aldermen apparently being butts as highly valued at that time as they have been so often since.