SHAKESPEARE 813 scholarship ; others, at the head of whom is Dr. Richard Farmer, with much ingenuity and some reason, argue that he was ignorant of any language but that of which he was the greatest master. But his friend Ben Jonson, himself a very thorough and laborious, if not a very profound or variously learned scholar, said that Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek ;" from which statement we may reasonably infer that he knew enough of the former language to master such passages of it as he encountered in the course of discursive reading (and in his day these were many), though not enough to read Latin authors for pleasure, and that he had the benefit of some instruction in the latter tongue. His notably frequent use of Latin derivatives in their rad- ical sense favors this view. Of Italian and French he seems to have acquired some knowl- edge in his youth or early manhood. Shortly previous to 1578 John Shakespeare's affairs became much embarrassed. In that year he mortgaged his property ; his assessments by the corporation were reduced to one third of those paid by other aldermen ; he was next excused from paying anything for the relief of the poor ; and finally an execution against him was returned " No effects," and another Stratford burgess was elected in his place, because he had long neglected to attend the "halls" or corporation meetings. He also, be- cause he feared process for debt, which could then be executed on Sunday, remained away from church, and thus incurred suspicion of nonconformity. He however contrived to re- tain possession of his house in Henley street. Thus straitened in his means of livelihood, John Shakespeare would naturally seek to make his eldest son contribute something to the support of the family ; and tradition tells us that he labored first with his father as a wool stapler and a butcher, and afterward as a schoolmaster and an attorney's clerk. The story that he was a butcher rests only on the relation of an old parish clerk, born too late to have any personal knowledge of the mat- ter. That Shakespeare had more than a lay- man's knowledge of law, his plays afford evi- dence, the weight of which cannot be dissipa- ted by the plea of the universality of his genius. Upon the authority of a tradition recorded by the Rev. Richard Davies, who died in 1708, Shakespeare was "much given to all unlucki- nesse in stealing venison and rabbits." In his rovings he had fallen in with Anne Hathaway, the daughter of Richard Hathaway, a yeoman of Shottery, a village near Stratford. This young woman, who was eight years older than Shakespeare, bore a daughter in May, 1583, of which he assumed the paternity by marrying the mother at some time after Nov. 28, 1582, at which date the bishop of Worcester granted a license for the marriage of " William Shag- spere one thone partie, and Anne Hathwey of Stratford in the dioces of Worcester, maiden," upon " once asking of the bannes," the bride- groom being at that time 18 and the bride 26 years old. Thus did Shakespeare find himself, the son of a ruined man, without a settled oc- cupation, and lacking three years of his ma- jority, a prospective father and the husband of a woman old enough to be his father's wife. We should not lightly pass over circumstances which he remembered long and sadly, as we learn from his sonnets, and by a passage in one of his plays (" Twelfth Night," act ii. sc. 4), written 18 years after, in the height of his reputation and his prosperity. How and where he lived with his wife, whether in Stratford or Shottery, we do not know. Nor has it been discovered how long he lived with her; but Hamnet and Judith, twin children of William and Anne Shakespeare, were baptized at Strat- ford, Feb. 20, 1584-'5 ; after which we hear of no other offspring of this ill-starred union. We know nothing positively of Shakespeare from his birth until his marriage, and from that date nothing but the birth of his three children until we find him an actor in London about the year 1589. Play-going was a favorite di- version in the days of Elizabeth, and in fact may be regarded as a means of popular amuse- ment and instruction, which then supplied the place of the popular lecture, the light litera- ture, and the newspaper of our day. The best players performed of course at London ; but strolling bands went through the rural districts, and even the metropolitan companies some- times travelled into the provinces. During Shakespeare's boyhood plays had often been performed at Stratford ; and there is some reason to believe that several of his seniors among the youth of Stratford had gone upon the London stage. Besides his urgent need, his consciousness of dramatic ability, and his certainty of finding acquaintances in the Lon- don theatres, another motive has been fur- nished him by tradition. It is said that his poaching propensities led him to steal a deer from Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford, and that, being harshly treated by the knight, he revenged himself by a lampoon- ing ballad which he stuck upon the gates of the park he had violated. The ballad, as it has come down to us, is coarse, though clever ; it irritated Sir Thomas so much that he redoubled his persecution of Shakespeare, and being the most important man in that vicinity, he drove the poor lad out of Stratford. This story, first told by Rowe, on the information of Betterton the actor, in " Some Account of the Life of William Shakespeare," prefixed to his edition of the poet's works, is sustained by indepen- dent tradition. It has been attacked with vigor and ingenuity by those who would fain have the world believe that the boy Shake- speare neither stole deer nor wrote coarse lam- poons ; but its credibility has never been ma- terially impaired, and it is certainly supported by the sharp cut at Sir Thomas Lucy in the opening of the first scene of " The Merry Wives of Windsor." Shakespeare probably arrived
