87 WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. "Thou smiling queen of every tuneful breast, AKENSIDE. IT is to be lamented that the indefatigable industry of so many commentators as have engaged in the laudable work of illustrating and explaining the works of our immortal bard, should have failed in collecting those particulars which would have given an exact picture of his private and domestic character. The life of Shakspeare, by Rowe, has been adopted by all the succeeding editors, not from any high admiration of the performance, but from the want of more correct and more ample information. Yet a few traditional circumstances have been gleaned; and, in a volume like the present, it would be altogether unpardonable to pass, unnoticed, the name of Shakspeare. His father had filled the first civil office in the borough of Stratford-upon-Avon, but becoming reduced, G 4 reduced, he was excused paying the usual fees to the corporation, and, in 1586, he was dismissed from the situation of Alderman, on account of nonattendance. The education of Shakspeare was scanty, but it is evident that he must have had some small knowledge of Latin, notwithstanding the invidious remark of Ben Jonson to the contrary, but his continuance at school could not be long, and Mr. Malone is of opinion that, on quitting it, he became clerk to a country attorney, or to the seneschal of a manor-court. Shakspeare married when very young, for his daughter was born in 1583, when he had just attained his nineteenth year. But this settlement did not allay the heat and wildness of youth. Shakspeare was fond of company, and he engaged with some persons who made a practice of stealing deer in the park of Sir Thomas Lucy. In the course of these depredations Shakspeare was discovered and prosecuted, on which he libelled the knight in a ballad, which he fixed upon his park gate. In consequence of this, the prosecution was renewed, and Shakspeare was obliged to fly to London. Such is the account given by Rowe; and it is confirmed by many authorities. A contempary of Shakspeare, has a quaint or punning allusion to this circumstance, in a Play intituled, "The Return from Parnassus; or the Scourge of Simony; publiquely acted by the students 、 students in Saint John's colledge in Cambridge: Printed at London in 4to. 1606." Giving a character of Shakspeare, the author says: "Who loves Adonis' love, or Lucre's rape, His sweeter verse contains HART ROBBING life; That industrious antiquary, Mr. William Oldys, one of the writers of the Biographia Britannica, in his manuscript collections for a life of Shakspeare, says, "There was a very aged gentleman in the neighbourhood of Stratford, who had not only heard from several old people in that town, of Shakspeare's transgression, but could remember the first stanza of the bitter ballad, which, repeating to one of his acquaintance, he preserved it in writing, and here it is neither better nor worse, but faithfully transcribed from the copy which his relation very courteously communicated to me. "A parliamente member, a justice of peace, He thinks himself greate, Yet an asse in his state; We allowe by his eares, but with asses to mate; Sing lowsie Lucy whatever befall it." Mr. Steevens observes upon these doggrel lines, that, "contemptible as this performance must now appear, at the time when it was written it might have had sufficient power to irritate a vain, weak, and vindictive inagistrate; especially as it was affixed to several of his park gates, and consequently published among his neighbours. It may be remarked, likewise, that the jingle on which it turns occurs in the first scene of the Merry Wives of Windsor." Now with all due deference to this worthy commentator, and making every allowance that ought to be made to Shakspeare's youth, we cannot but think that the knight has been unjustly treated. To rob him of his property, and then to libel him in a ballad, well adapted to render him ridiculous among the common people, was enough to exercise the patience of any man; and it is wrong to charge a man with being 'weak and vindictive' for prosecuting one who had so little sense of his fault, as to add insult to injury. According to Mr. Capell, this ballad came originally from Mr. Thomas Jones, who lived at Tarbick, a village in Worcestershire, about eighteen miles from Stratford-upon-Avon, and died in 1703, aged upwards of ninety. He remembered to have heard from several old people at Stratford, the story of Shakspeare's robbing Sir Thomas Lucy's park, and their account of it agreed with Mr. Rowe's, with this addition that, the ballad written against Sir Thomas Lucy, by Shakspeare, Shakspeare, was stuck upon his park gate, which exasperated the knight to apply to a lawyer at Warwick, to proceed against him. Mr. Jones put down in writing the first stanza of this ballad, which was all he remembered of it." Mr. Malone has this additional account: "In a manuscript history of the stage, full of forgeries and falsehoods of various kinds, (written I suspect, by William Chetwood, the prompter,) sometime between April, 1727, and October, 1730, is the following passage, to which the reader may give as much credit as he thinks fit: "Here we shall observe, that the learned Mr. Joshua Barnes, late Greek professor of the University of Cambridge, baiting about forty years ago, at an inn in Stratford, and hearing an old woman singing part of the above-said song, such was his respect for Mr. Shakspeare's genius, that he gave her a new gown for the two following stanzas in it, and could she have said it all, he would, (as he often said in company, when any thing has casually arose about him) have given her ten guineas; "Sir Thomas was too covetous To covet so much deer; Had not his worship one deer left What then? he had a wife Took pains enough to find him horns, Should last him during life." |