SHAKESPEARE 367 SHAKESPEARE and spirits have become, as of old, the familiars and ministers of men. The name was also applied to an Eng- lish Millenarian sect founded by Mrs. Mary Anne Girling, who gave out that she was a new incarnation of the Deity, and could never die. Her followers es- tablished a community on the borders of the New Forest; but Mrs. Girling died on Sept. 18, 1886, and her followers dis- persed. SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM (1564- 1616), was the son of John Shakespeare, a dealer in agricultural products in the town of Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwick- shire, England. John, at the height of his fortune, which was probably improved by his marriage with Mary Arden, the daughter of a well-to-do squire, rose to be bailiff or mayor of the town; but later he seems to have had business reverses. The birth of William was presumably a few days previous to April 26, 1564, on which day his baptism was registered in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Strat- ford; and this presumption is strength- ened by the statement on the monument over his tomb that at his death on April 23, 1616, he was fifty-two years of age. We have no documentary evidence as to his education, but we know that there was a free grammar school in the town, and it is safe to infer that the bailiff's son would be sent to it, and would study there the usual Latin authors. There is a tradition that he left school to help his father at about the age of thirteen. When he was a little over eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior, and who bore to him a daugh- ter, Susanna, baptized May 26, 1583, and Hamnet and Judith, twins, baptized in February, 1585. The statement that he went to London in 1586 is only conjecture, and the stories of his acting as call-boy in a theater and holding horses at the door are uncertain traditions. We know, however, that by 1592 he had become a playwright of sufficient importance to be attacked by a rival, Robert Greene, for plagiarism. The language of Greene's attack, which occurs in Greene's "Groatsworth of Witte," implies that Shakespeare was by this time actor as well as author. Henry Chettle, who prepared Greene's book for the press, in the preface to his own "Kind-Harts Dreame," expresses regret for not having removed the offensive pas- sages from Greene's posthumous book, and seems to refer to Shakespeare when he speaks of one of the victims of Greene's spleen as in "demeanour no lesse civill, than he exclent in the qualitie [i. e., pro- fession of acting] he professes. Besides divers of worship have reported his up- rightnes of dealing, which argues his hon- esty, and his facetious grace in writing, that aprooves his Art." In 1593, Shakespeare issued the first publication bearing his name, the poem "Venus and Adonis," dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. This was followed by "Lucrece" in 1594, dedicated to the same nobleman. Seven editions of the first poem and five of the second were published during the poet's lifetime, and complimentary references to them are frequent in the writing of the time. They are highly wrought re-tellings of the WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE familiar classical stories, vivid and sen- suous in description, and fluent and melo- dious in style. It was through them rather than through his plays that Shakespeare achieved a literary reputa- tion among his contemporaries. Meantime he had become a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Company of Ac- tors, and at Christmas, 1594, he was one of those chosen to play before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich. The Stratford documents again con- tribute to his family history with the record of the death of his son Hamnet on Aug. 11, 1596. In the same year John Shakespeare applied for a grant of arms to the College of Heralds, and a renewed application in 1599 was suc- cessful. In 1597, the poet bought for sixty pounds, New Place, the largest house in his native town, and there is documen- tary evidence of a series of real estate
