Biographical Essays

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Finally, it is urged, that the small number of editions through
which Shakspeare passed in the seventeenth century, furnishes a
separate argument, and a conclusive one against his popularity. We
answer, that, considering the bulk of his plays collectively, the
editions were _not_ few. Compared with any known case, the
copies sold of Shakspeare were quite as many as could be expected
under the circumstances. Ten or fifteen times as much consideration
went to the purchase of one great folio like Shakspeare, as would
attend the purchase of a little volume like Waller or Donne.
Without reviews, or newspapers, or advertisements, to diffuse the
knowledge of books, the progress of literature was necessarily
slow, and its expansion narrow. But this is a topic which has
always been treated unfairly, not with regard to Shakspeare only,
but to Milton, as well as many others. The truth is, we have not
facts enough to guide us; for the number of editions often tells
nothing accurately as to the number of copies. With respect to
Shakspeare it is certain, that, had his masterpieces been gathered
into small volumes, Shakspeare would have had a most extensive
sale. As it was, there can be no doubt, that from his own
generation, throughout the seventeenth century, and until the
eighteenth began to accommodate, not any greater popularity in
_him_, but a greater taste for reading in the public, his fame
never ceased to be viewed as a national trophy of honor; and the
most illustrious men of the seventeenth century were no whit less
fervent in their admiration than those of the eighteenth and the
nineteenth, either as respected its strength and sincerity, or as
respected its open profession. [Endnote: 7]

It is therefore a false notion, that the general sympathy with the
merits of Shakspeare ever beat with a languid or intermitting
pulse. Undoubtedly, in times when the functions of critical
journals and of newspapers were not at hand to diffuse or to
strengthen the impressions which emanated from the capital, all
opinions must have travelled slowly into the provinces. But even
then, whilst the perfect organs of communication were wanting,
indirect substitutes were supplied by the necessities of the times,
or by the instincts of political zeal. Two channels especially lay
open between the great central organ of the national mind, and the
remotest provinces. Parliaments were occasionally summoned, (for
the judges' circuits were too brief to produce much effect,) and
during their longest suspensions, the nobility, with large
retinues, continually resorted to the court. But an intercourse
more constant and more comprehensive was maintained through the
agency of the two universities. Already, in the time of James I.,
the growing importance of the gentry, and the consequent birth of a
new interest in political questions, had begun to express itself at
Oxford, and still more so at Cambridge. Academic persons stationed
themselves as sentinels at London, for the purpose of watching the
court and the course of public affairs. These persons wrote
letters, like those of the celebrated Joseph Mede, which we find in
Ellis's Historical Collections, reporting to their
fellow-collegians all the novelties of public life as they arose,
or personally carried down such reports, and thus conducted the
general feelings at the centre into lesser centres, from which
again they were diffused into the ten thousand parishes of England;
for, (with a very few exceptions in favor of poor benefices, Welch
or Cumbrian,) every parish priest must unavoidably have spent his
three years at one or other of the English universities. And by
this mode of diffusion it is, that we can explain the strength with
which Shakspeare's thoughts and diction impressed themselves from a
very early period upon the national literature, and even more
generally upon the national thinking and conversation.[Endnote: 8]

The question, therefore, revolves upon us in threefold
difficulty--How, having stepped thus prematurely into this
inheritance of fame, leaping, as it were, thus abruptly into the
favor alike of princes and the enemies of princes, had it become
possible that in his native place, (honored still more in the final
testimonies of his preference when founding a family mansion,) such
a man's history, and the personal recollections which cling so
affectionately to the great intellectual potentates who have
recommended themselves by gracious manners, could so soon and so
utterly have been obliterated?

Malone, with childish irreflection, ascribes the loss of such
memorials to the want of enthusiasm in his admirers. Local
researches into private history had not then commenced. Such a
taste, often petty enough in its management, was the growth of
after ages. Else how came Spenser's life and fortunes to be so
utterly overwhelmed in oblivion? No poet of a high order could be
more popular.

The answer we believe to be this: Twenty-six years after
Shakspeare's death commenced the great parliamentary war. This it
was, and the local feuds arising to divide family from family,
brother from brother, upon which we must charge the extinction of
traditions and memorials, doubtless abundant up to that era. The
parliamentary contest, it will be said, did not last above three
years; the king's standard having been first raised at Nottingham
in August, 1642, and the battle of Naseby (which terminated the
open warfare) having been fought in June, 1645. Or even if we
extend its duration to the surrender of the last garrison, that war
terminated in the spring of 1646. And the brief explosions of
insurrection or of Scottish invasion, which occurred on subsequent
occasions, were all locally confined, and none came near to
Warwickshire, except the battle of Worcester, more than five years
after. This is true; but a short war will do much to efface recent
and merely personal memorials. And the following circumstances of
the war were even more important than the general fact.

First of all, the very mansion founded by Shakspeare became the
military headquarters for the queen in 1644, when marching from the
eastern coast of England to join the king in Oxford; and one such
special visitation would be likely to do more serious mischief in
the way of extinction, than many years of general warfare.
Secondly, as a fact, perhaps, equally important, Birmingham, the
chief town of Warwickshire, and the adjacent district, the seat of
our hardware manufactures, was the very focus of disaffection
towards the royal cause. Not only, therefore, would this whole
region suffer more from internal and spontaneous agitation, but it
would be the more frequently traversed vindictively from without,
and harassed by flying parties from Oxford, or others of the king's
garrisons. Thirdly, even apart from the political aspects of
Warwickshire, this county happens to be the central one of England,
as regards the roads between the north and south; and Birmingham
has long been the great central axis, [Endnote: 9] in which all
the radii from the four angles of England proper meet and
intersect. Mere accident, therefore, of local position, much more
when united with that avowed inveteracy of malignant feeling, which
was bitter enough to rouse a re-action of bitterness in the mind of
Lord Clarendon, would go far to account for the wreck of many
memorials relating to Shakspeare, as well as for the subversion of
that quiet and security for humble life, in which the traditional
memory finds its best _nidus_. Thus we obtain one solution,
and perhaps the main one, of the otherwise mysterious oblivion
which had swept away all traces of the mighty poet, by the time
when those quiet days revolved upon England, in which again the
solitary agent of learned research might roam in security from
house to house, gleaning those personal remembrances which, even in
the fury of civil strife, might long have lingered by the chimney
corner. But the fierce furnace of war had probably, by its
_local_ ravages, scorched this field of natural tradition, and
thinned the gleaner's inheritance by three parts out of four. This,
we repeat, may be one part of the solution to this difficult
problem.

And if another is still demanded, possibly it may be found in the
fact, hostile to the perfect consecration of Shakspeare's memory,
that after all he was a player. Many a coarse-minded country
gentleman, or village pastor, who would have held his town
glorified by the distinction of having sent forth a great judge or
an eminent bishop, might disdain to cherish the personal
recollections which surrounded one whom custom regarded as little
above a mountebank, and the illiberal law as a vagabond. The same
degrading appreciation attached both to the actor in plays and to
their author. The contemptuous appellation of "play-book," served
as readily to degrade the mighty volume which contained Lear and
Hamlet, as that of "play-actor," or "player-man," has always served
with the illiberal or the fanatical to dishonor the persons of
Roscius or of Garrick, of Talma or of Siddons. Nobody, indeed, was
better aware of this than the noble-minded Shakspeare; and
feelingly he has breathed forth in his sonnets this conscious
oppression under which he lay of public opinion, unfavorable by a
double title to his own pretensions; for, being both dramatic
author and dramatic performer, he found himself heir to a twofold
opprobrium, and at an era of English society when the weight of
that opprobrium was heaviest. In reality, there was at this period
a collision of forces acting in opposite directions upon the
estimation of the stage and scenical art, and therefore of all the
ministers in its equipage. Puritanism frowned upon these pursuits,
as ruinous to public morals; on the other hand, loyalty could not
but tolerate what was patronized by the sovereign; and it happened
that Elizabeth, James, and Charles I., were _all_ alike lovers
and promoters of theatrical amusements, which were indeed more
indispensable to the relief of court ceremony, and the monotony of
aulic pomp, than in any other region of life. This royal support,
and the consciousness that any brilliant success in these arts
implied an unusual share of natural endowments, did something in
mitigation of a scorn which must else have been intolerable to all
generous natures.

But whatever prejudice might thus operate against the perfect
sanctity of Shakspeare's posthumous reputation, it is certain that
the splendor of his worldly success must have done much to
obliterate that effect; his admirable colloquial talents a good
deal, and his gracious affability still more. The wonder,
therefore, will still remain, that Betterton, in less than a
century from his death, should have been able to glean so little.
And for the solution of this wonder, we must throw ourselves
chiefly upon the explanations we have made as to the parliamentary
war, and the local ravages of its progress in the very district, of
the very town, and the very house.

If further arguments are still wanted to explain this mysterious
abolition, we may refer the reader to the following succession of
disastrous events, by which it should seem that a perfect malice of
misfortune pursued the vestiges of the mighty poet's steps. In
1613, the Globe theatre, with which he had been so long connected,
was burned to the ground. Soon afterwards a great fire occurred in
Stratford; and next, (without counting upon the fire of London,
just fifty years after his death, which, however, would consume
many an important record from periods far more remote,) the house
of Ben Jonson, in which probably, as Mr. Campbell suggests, might
be parts of his correspondence, was also burned. Finally, there was
an old tradition that Lady Barnard, the sole grand-daughter of
Shakspeare, had carried off many of his papers from Stratford, and
these papers have never since been traced.

In many of the elder lives it has been asserted, that John
Shakspeare, the father of the poet, was a butcher, and in others
that he was a woolstapler. It is now settled beyond dispute that he
was a glover. This was his professed occupation in Stratford,
though it is certain that, with this leading trade, from which he
took his denomination, he combined some collateral pursuits; and it
is possible enough that, as openings offered, he may have meddled
with many. In that age, and in a provincial town, nothing like the
exquisite subdivision of labor was attempted which we now see
realized in the great cities of Christendom. And one trade is often
found to play into another with so much reciprocal advantage, that
even in our own days we do not much wonder at an enterprising man,
in country places, who combines several in his own person.
Accordingly, John Shakspeare is known to have united with his town
calling the rural and miscellaneous occupations of a farmer.

Meantime his avowed business stood upon a very different footing
from the same trade as it is exercised in modern times. Gloves were
in that age an article of dress more costly by much, and more
elaborately decorated, than in our own. They were a customary
present from some cities to the judges of assize, and to other
official persons; a custom of ancient standing, and in some places,
we believe, still subsisting; and in such cases it is reasonable to
suppose, that the gloves must originally have been more valuable
than the trivial modern article of the same name. So also, perhaps,
in their origin, of the gloves given at funerals. In reality,
whenever the simplicity of an age makes it difficult to renew the
parts of a wardrobe, except in capital towns of difficult access,
prudence suggests that such wares should be manufactured of more
durable materials; and, being so, they become obviously susceptible
of more lavish ornament. But it will not follow, from this
essential difference in the gloves of Shakspeare's age, that the
glover's occupation was more lucrative. Doubtless he sold more
costly gloves, and upon each pair had a larger profit, but for that
very reason he sold fewer. Two or three gentlemen "of worship" in
the neighborhood might occasionally require a pair of gloves, but
it is very doubtful whether any inhabitant of Stratford would ever
call for so mere a luxury.

The practical result, at all events, of John Shakspeare's various
pursuits, does not appear permanently to have met the demands of
his establishment, and in his maturer years there are indications
still surviving that he was under a cloud of embarrassment. He
certainly lost at one time his social position in the town of
Stratford; but there is a strong presumption, in _our_
construction of the case, that he finally retrieved it; and for
this retrieval of a station, which he had forfeited by personal
misfortunes or neglect, he was altogether indebted to the filial
piety of his immortal son.

Meantime the earlier years of the elder Shakspeare wore the aspect
of rising prosperity, however unsound might be the basis on which
it rested. There can be little doubt that William Shakspeare, from
his birth up to his tenth or perhaps his eleventh year, lived in
careless plenty, and saw nothing in his father's house but that
style of liberal house-keeping, which has ever distinguished the
upper yeomanry and the rural gentry of England. Probable enough it
is, that the resources for meeting this liberality were not
strictly commensurate with the family income, but were sometimes
allowed to entrench, by means of loans or mortgages, upon capital
funds. The stress upon the family finances was perhaps at times
severe; and that it was borne at all, must be imputed to the large
and even splendid portion which John Shakspeare received with his
wife.

This lady, for such she really was in an eminent sense, by birth as
well as by connections, bore the beautiful name of Mary Arden, a
name derived from the ancient forest district [Endnote: 10] of
the country; and doubtless she merits a more elaborate notice than
our slender materials will furnish. To have been _the mother of
Shakspeare, _--how august a title to the reverence of infinite
generations, and of centuries beyond the vision of prophecy. A
plausible hypothesis has been started in modern times, that the
facial structure, and that the intellectual conformation, may be
deduced more frequently from the corresponding characteristics in
the mother than in the father. It is certain that no very great man
has ever existed, but that his greatness has been rehearsed and
predicted in one or other of his parents. And it cannot be denied,
that in the most eminent men, where we have had the means of
pursuing the investigation, the mother has more frequently been
repeated and reproduced than the father. We have known cases where
the mother has furnished all the intellect, and the father all the
moral sensibility; upon which assumption, the wonder ceases that
_Cicero,_ Lord Chesterfield, and other brilliant men, who took
the utmost pains with their sons, should have failed so
conspicuously; for possibly the mothers had been women of excessive
and even exemplary stupidity. In the case of Shakspeare, each
parent, if we had any means of recovering their characteristics,
could not fail to furnish a study of the most profound interest;
and with regard to his mother in particular, if the modern
hypothesis be true, and if we are indeed to deduce from her the
stupendous intellect of her son, in that case she must have been a
benefactress to her husband's family, beyond the promises of fairy
land or the dreams of romance; for it is certain that to her
chiefly this family was also indebted for their worldly comfort.

Mary Arden was the youngest daughter and the heiress of Robert
Arden, of Wilmecote, Esq., in the county of Warwick. The family of
Arden was even then of great antiquity. About one century and a
quarter before the birth of William Shakspeare, a person bearing
the same name as his maternal grandfather had been returned by the
commissioners in their list of the Warwickshire gentry; he was
there styled Robert Arden, Esq., of Bromich. This was in 1433, or
the 12th year of Henry VI. In Henry VII.'s reign, the Ardens
received a grant of lands from the crown; and in 1568, four years
after the birth of William Shakspeare, Edward Arden, of the same
family, was sheriff of the county. Mary Arden was, therefore, a
young lady of excellent descent and connections, and an heiress of
considerable wealth. She brought to her husband, as her marriage
portion, the landed estate of Asbies, which, upon any just
valuation, must be considered as a handsome dowry for a woman of
her station. As this point has been contested, and as it goes a
great way towards determining the exact social position of the
poet's parents, let us be excused for sifting it a little more
narrowly than might else seem warranted by the proportions of our
present life. Every question which it can be reasonable to raise at
all, it must be reasonable to treat with at least so much of minute
research, as may justify the conclusions which it is made to
support.

The estate of Asbies contained fifty acres of arable land, six of
meadow, and a right of commonage. What may we assume to have been
the value of its fee-simple? Malone, who allows the total fortune
of Mary Arden to have been 110L 13s 4d., is sure that the value of
Asbies could not have been more than one hundred pounds. But why?
Because, says he, the "average" rent of land at that time was no
more than three shillings per acre. This we deny; but upon that
assumption, the total yearly rent of fifty-six acres would be
exactly eight guineas. [Endnote: 11] And therefore, in assigning
the value of Asbies at one hundred pounds, it appears that Malone
must have estimated the land at no more than twelve years'
purchase, which would carry the value to 100L. 16s. "Even at this
estimate," as the latest annotator [Endnote: 12] on this subject
_justly_ observes, "Mary Arden's portion was a larger one than
was usually given to a landed gentleman's daughter." But this
writer objects to Malone's principle of valuation. "We find," says
he, "that John Shakspeare also farmed the meadow of Tugton,
containing sixteen acres, at the rate of eleven shillings per acre.
Now what proof has Mr. Malone adduced, that the acres of Asbies
were not as valuable as those of Tugton? And if they were so, the
former estate must have been worth between three and four hundred
pounds." In the main drift of his objections we concur with Mr.
Campbell. But as they are liable to some criticism, let us clear
the ground of all plausible cavils, and then see what will be the
result. Malone, had he been alive, would probably have answered,
that Tugton was a farm specially privileged by nature; and that if
any man contended for so unusual a rent as eleven shillings an acre
for land not known to him, the _onus probandi_ would lie upon
_him_. Be it so; eleven shillings is certainly above the
ordinary level of rent, but three shillings is below it. We
contend, that for tolerably good land, situated advantageously,
that is, with a ready access to good markets and good fairs, such
as those of Coventry, Birmingham, Gloucester, Worcester,
Shrewsbury,. &c., one noble might be assumed as the annual rent;
and that in such situations twenty years' purchase was not a
valuation, even in Elizabeth's reign, very unusual. Let us,
however, assume the rent at only five shillings, and land at
sixteen years' purchase. Upon this basis, the rent would be 14L,
and the value of the fee simple 224L. Now, if it were required to
equate that sum with its present value, a very operose [Endnote:
13] calculation might be requisite. But contenting ourselves with
the gross method of making such equations between 1560 and the
current century, that is, multiplying by five, we shall find the
capital value of the estate to be eleven hundred and twenty pounds,
whilst the annual rent would be exactly seventy. But if the estate
had been sold, and the purchase-money lent upon mortgage, (the only
safe mode of investing money at that time,) the annual interest
would have reached 28L, equal to 140L of modern money; for
mortgages in Elizabeth's age readily produced ten per cent.

A woman who should bring at this day an annual income of 140L to a
provincial tradesman, living in a sort of _rus in urbe_,
according to the simple fashions of rustic life, would assuredly be
considered as an excellent match. And there can be little doubt
that Mary Arden's dowry it was which, for some ten or a dozen years
succeeding to his marriage, raised her husband to so much social
consideration in Stratford. In 1550 John Shakspeare is supposed to
have first settled in Stratford, having migrated from some other
part of Warwickshire. In 1557 he married Mary Arden; in 1565, the
year subsequent to the birth of his son William, his third child,
he was elected one of the aldermen; and in the year 1568 he became
first magistrate of the town, by the title of high bailiff. This
year we may assume to have been that in which the prosperity of
this family reached its zenith; for in this year it was, over and
above the presumptions furnished by his civic honors, that he
obtained a grant of arms from Clarencieux of the Heralds' College.
On this occasion he declared himself worth five hundred pounds
derived from his ancestors. And we really cannot understand the
right by which critics, living nearly three centuries from his
time, undertake to know his affairs better than himself, and to tax
him with either inaccuracy or falsehood. No man would be at leisure
to court heraldic honors, when he knew himself to be embarrassed,
or apprehended that he soon might be so. A man whose anxieties had
been fixed at all upon his daily livelihood would, by this chase
after the armorial honors of heraldry, have made himself a butt for
ridicule, such as no fortitude could enable him to sustain.

In 1568, therefore, when his son William would be moving through
his fifth year, John Shakspeare, (now honored by the designation of
_Master_,) would be found at times in the society of the
neighboring gentry. Ten years in advance of this period he was
already in difficulties. But there is no proof that these
difficulties had then reached a point of degradation, or of
memorable distress. The sole positive indications of his decaying
condition are, that in 1578 he received an exemption from the small
weekly assessment levied upon the aldermen of Stratford for the
relief of the poor; and that in the following year, 1579, he is
found enrolled amongst the defaulters in the payment of taxes. The
latter fact undoubtedly goes to prove that, like every man who is
falling back in the world, he was occasionally in arrears. Paying
taxes is not like the honors awarded or the processions regulated
by Clarencieux; no man is ambitious of precedency there; and if a
laggard pace in that duty is to be received as evidence of
pauperism, nine tenths of the English people might occasionally be
classed as paupers. With respect to his liberation from the weekly
assessment, that may bear a construction different from the one
which it has received. This payment, which could never have been
regarded as a burthen, not amounting to five pounds annually of our
present money, may have been held up as an exponent of wealth and
consideration; and John Shakspeare may have been required to resign
it as an honorable distinction, not suitable to the circumstances
of an embarrassed man. Finally, the fact of his being indebted to
Robert Sadler, a baker, in the sum of five pounds, and his being
under the necessity of bringing a friend as security for the
payment, proves nothing at all. There is not a town in Europe, in
which opulent men cannot be found that are backward in the payment
of their debts. And the probability is, that Master Sadler acted
like most people who, when they suppose a man to be going down in
the world, feel their respect for him sensibly decaying, and think
it wise to trample him under foot, provided only in that act of
trampling they can squeeze out of him their own individual debt.
Like that terrific chorus in Spohr's oratorio of St. Paul, _"
Stone him to death "_ is the cry of the selfish and the
illiberal amongst creditors, alike towards the just and the unjust
amongst debtors.

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