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The Shakespeares—John Shakespeare, Glover, Wool-merchant—Birth of William Shakespeare—Rise and Decline of John Shakespeare—Early Marriage of William.

A MODERN man who now chanced to own the name of “Shakespeare” would feel proud, even of that fortuitous and remote association with the greatest figure in English literature. He might even try to live up to it, although the probabilities are that he would quite early forgo the attempt and become a backslider to commonplace. But available records tell us no good of the earliest bearers of the name. The first Shakespeare of whom we have any notice was a John of that name. He was hanged in 1248, for robbery. It is a very long time ago since this malefactor suffered, and perhaps he was one of those very many unfortunate persons who have been in all ages wrongfully convicted. But the name was not in olden times a respectable one. It signified originally one who wielded a spear; not a chivalric and romantic knight warring with the infidel in Palestine, or jousting to uphold the claims to beauty of his chosen lady, but a common soldier, a rough man-at-arms; one who was in great request in his country’s wars, but was accounted an undesirable when the piping times of peace were come again and every man desired nothing better than to sit beneath his own vine and fig-tree. We have record of a certain Shakespeare who grew so weary of the name that he changed it for “Saunders.” But Time was presently to bring revenge, when William Shakespeare, afterwards to become a poet and dramatist of unapproachable excellence, was born, to make the choice of that recreant bearer of the name look ridiculous.

One Shakespeare before the dramatist’s time had reached not only respectability but some kind of local eminence. This was Isabel Shakespeare, who became Prioress of the Priory of Baddesley Clinton, near Knowle. Baddesley Clinton is in the ancient and far-spreading Forest of Arden, and near it is the village of Rowington, where there still remains the very picturesque fifteenth-century mansion called Shakespeare Hall, which is said to have been in the dramatist’s time the residence of a Thomas Shakespeare, an uncle. But William Shakespeare’s genealogy has not been convincingly taken back beyond his grandfather Richard (whose very Christian name is only traditional), who is stated to have been a farmer at Snitterfield, three miles from Stratford-on-Avon.

Warwickshire was, in fact, extremely rich in Shakespeares, many of them no relatives of the dramatist’s family. They grew in every hedgerow, and very many of them owned the Christian name of William, but they spelled their patronymic in an amazing number of ways. It is said to be capable of four thousand variations. We will forbear the most of these. “Shaxpeare” is the commonest form. The marriage-bond for William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway spells his name “Shagspere,” and the dramatist himself spells it in two different ways in the three signatures on his will, which forms to the Baconians conclusive proof of the two following contradictory propositions (1) that he did not know how to spell his own name, and (2) that, the spelling being different, the so-called signatures were written by a law-clerk! As a matter of fact, the spelling of one’s name was in those times a matter of taste and fancy, which constantly varied. Sir Walter Raleigh, contemporary with Shakespeare, was a scholar whom no one will declare an illiterate, yet he wrote his own name, with a fine disregard of consistency and of what future generations might say, “Rawley,” “Ralegh,” “Rawleighe” and “Rauleygh.”

In any case, the “law-clerk” theory will hardly do. A law-clerk who wrote such a shocking bad hand as the six signatures of Shakespeare display could not have earned his living with lawyers and conveyancers. They are signatures, nearly all of them, which might confidently be taken to a chemist, to be “made up,” but exactly how he would read the “prescription” must be left to the imagination.

Sure and certain foothold upon genealogical fact is only reached with William Shakespeare’s father, who established himself at Stratford-on-Avon about 1551, when he seems to have been twenty-one years of age. He was described at various times as a fell-monger and glover, a woolstapler, a butcher and a dealer in hay and corn. Probably, as a son of the farmer at Snitterfield, he was interested in most of these trades. His home and place of business in the town was in Henley Street, then, as now, one of the meaner streets of the place. Its name derives from this forming the way out of Stratford to the town of Henley-in-Arden.

The very first thing we have recorded of John Shakespeare at Stratford is his being fined twelve pence for having a muck-heap in front of his door. Twelve pence in that day was equal to about eight shillings and sixpence of our own times; and thus, when we consider the then notoriously dirty and insanitary condition of Stratford, endured with fortitude, if not with cheerfulness by the burgesses, we are forced to the conclusion that Mr. John Shakespeare’s muck-heap must have been a super muck-heap, an extremely large and offensive specimen, that made the gorge of even the least squeamish of his fellow-townsmen rise. Two other tradesmen were fined at the same time, and in 1558 he was, in company with four others (among whom was the chief alderman, Francis Burbage) fined in the smaller sum of fourpence for not keeping his gutter clean.

By 1556, however, he would seem to have been prospering, for in that year he purchased two copyhold tenements, one in Henley Street, next the house and shop now known as “the birthplace” which he was already occupying; the other in Greenhill Street. Next year he married Mary Arden, of Wilmcote, three miles from Stratford, daughter of Robert Arden, yeoman farmer of that place, said on insufficient evidence to have been kin to the ancient knightly family of Arden. She had become, on her father’s death in December 1556, owner of landed property called Asbies, at Wilmcote, and some like interests at Snitterfield, in common with her brothers and sisters. She was thus, in a small way, an heiress. Wilmcote being then merely a hamlet in the parish of Aston Cantlow, they were married at the church of that place.

John Shakespeare was now a rising tradesman, and in this same auspicious year became a member of the town council, a body then newly established, upon the granting of a charter of incorporation in 1553.

On September 15th, 1558 his daughter Joan was baptized. She died an infant. In 1565, after serving various municipal offices, he became an alderman. Meanwhile, at the close of November 1562, a daughter, Margaret, was born, who died the next year; and in 1564, on April 26th, his son William was baptized. The date of the poet’s birth is traditionally St. George’s Day, April 23rd; now, with the alteration in the calendar, identical with May 5th.

In that year the town was scourged by a terrible visitation of the plague, and John Shakespeare is recorded, among others, as a contributor to funds for the poor who suffered by it. On August 30th he paid twelve pence; on September 6th, sixpence; on the 27th of the same month another sixpence; and on October 20th eightpence; about twenty-two shillings of our money. It is only by tradition—but that a very old one—that William Shakespeare was born at “the birthplace” in Henley Street; but there is no reasonable excuse for doubting it, unless we like to think that he was born at the picturesque old house in the village of Clifford Chambers, which afterwards became the vicarage and is now a farmhouse. A John Shakespeare was at that time living there, two miles only from Stratford, and it has been suggested that he is identical with the father of William, and that in this plague year he took the precaution of removing his wife out of danger.

In 1566 we find a link between the Shakespeares and the Hathaways in John. Shakespeare standing surety for Richard Hathaway; and in the same year his son Gilbert was born; another Joan being born in 1569. In 1568 and 1571 he attained the highest municipal offices, being elected high-bailiff and senior alderman, and thus, as chief magistrate, is found described in local documents as “Mr.” Shakespeare. In 1571 also his daughter Anne, who died in 1579, was born; and in 1573 a son, Richard. In 1575 he purchased the freehold of “the birthplace” from one Edmund Hall, for £40.

Early in 1578 the first note of ill-fortune is sounded in the career of John Shakespeare. Some financial disaster had befallen him. In January, when the town council had decided to provide weapons for two billmen, a body of pikemen, and one archer, and assessed the aldermen for six shillings and eightpence each and the burgesses at half that amount, two of the aldermen were excused the full pay. One, Mr. Plumley, was charged five shillings, and Mr. Shakespeare was to pay only three and fourpence. The following year he defaulted in an assessment for the same amount. Meanwhile, he had been obliged to mortgage Asbies, which had come to him with his wife, and to sell the interests at Snitterfield. The Shakespeares, although they in after years again grew prosperous, never recovered Asbies.

No one knows what caused these straitened circumstances. Possibly it was some disastrous speculation in corn. In the midst of this trouble, his seven-year-old daughter, Anne, died, and another son, Edmund, was horn, 1580. He ceased to attend meetings of the town council, and his son William entered into an improvident marriage.