IN REMEMBRANCE OF 23RD APRIL 1564-1616

It is so much the fashion to write and speak of Shakespeare’s misfortunes, his disabilities, disadvantages, and lack of preparedness for becoming great, that perhaps I may best fit my opportunity by touching upon what I believe to be his good fortunes. It is all very true to say, that “poets are born, not made,” but there is a converse possibility, too finely expressed in Gray’s elegy to need repeating. Shakespeare might have been born a poet, and he might have been drowned in the Avon, as his contemporary of the same name was drowned in 1575; or he might have been carried by compelling currents of his life, away from the fruition of the high possibilities of his genius, instead of directly towards them. The whole truth is, that great poets are both born and made, and it is worth pausing to dwell on some of the steps in the making of this “Maker.” In no life is it more clear than in his that

Shakespeare was fortunate in the place of his birth. Warwickshire was in the very heart of England. The whole shire was haunted by legends and stories of a romantic past from the time when it was the Mercia of the Saxons down to the desolating Wars of the Roses. His birthplace was but seven miles from the castled city of Warwick, glorified by traditions of Cymbeline, Guiderius, Ethelfleda, Phillis, and Guy, one of the seven champions of Christendom. Stratford was not far from the tragic Vale of Evesham, from the holiday making of the Cotswolds, and it lay amid gently swelling hills and dales, the richly cultivated Feldon to east and south, the stretches of woodland to north and west, sufficient to satisfy an artist, a dreamer, or a poet. It was of much more relative importance in the sixteenth century than it is to-day. It stood at the crossing of the two great thoroughfares of the whole country, its Avon was another highway, for water transit was much more used in olden days than now. The river was spanned at Stratford by a noble bridge, safe even in floods (thanks to Sir Hugh Clopton); it had important markets, a prosperous trade in wool, manufactures of cloth and leather and other things, and was rich in agricultural commodities. It was a spirited and independent little town, and many important families lived in its neighbourhood. The house in Henley Street in which the poet was born (three houses combined), made a roomy and comfortable home for his youth.

He was fortunate in the date of his birth, on or about 23rd April, 1564. I say on or about, as it might have been a day or two earlier or later. He was baptized on the 26th, and it was then usual enough to baptize infants on the third day after birth. Tradition has always given us the 23rd as the birthday, St. George’s day. In those days, before the reformation of the Calendar, the 23rd of April fell later in the season than it does to-day. There were twelve more days of sunshine to open the May blossoms, and to encourage the nightingales to sing in welcome of another sweet singer. The poet always loved the spring; he was a May-blossom himself.

He was fortunate also in the period in which he arrived. England’s heart was heaving. Great spiritual movements had stirred men’s souls to their depths, and given them inspiration to think for themselves amid diverse creeds; the literary renaissance had brought their intellects in touch with the great minds of other times, and diverse countries; learning had become a hunger as well as a fashion; students translated, imitated, emulated the philosophers and poets of Greece, Italy, and France. England was in the high tide of fervour through its emancipation from the Pope’s authority, its new sense of independence, its command of the sea, and its ever-widening geographical horizons; the romance of a maiden Queen, fortunate since her accession, made a new development in the spirit of patriotism. Poets born in the previous reigns shed their glories on Elizabeth’s. The very atmosphere was charged with negative poetical electricity, which only waited for a positive stimulus to flash forth in light.

He was fortunate in his parents. We know only too little of them, but we do know something. John Shakespeare had sprung from an honest yeoman family, which evidently had seen better days. It had contributed a Prioress and a Sub-Prioress to the venerated Priory of Wroxall, and it had its family legends concerning royal service and royal grants, not necessarily unfounded, but frustrated somehow, perhaps by an Empson or a Dudley. There is a possibility that he had had a Welsh mother, and inherited blue blood from a Cymric past. He evidently had some special charm in person, manner, or wit, because all his life he seems to have been popular among his fellows, and he managed to win the heart and the hand of the youngest daughter of a “gentleman of worship” in the neighbourhood, who was the ground landlord of his father’s farm in Snitterfield. The only definite notice we have of him is “that he was a merry-cheeked old man who said ‘Will was a good honest fellow; but he darest have crakt a jesst with him at any time’” (Dr. Andrew Clark, from the Plume MS. at Maldon). John had risen through all the grades of honour in the town, had shown his predilection for the drama by his payments to players, a predilection not shared by the majority of his townsmen, and we may take it he could tell a story and be good company. The mothers of men are more important to their youth than their fathers are. Mary Arden had descended from the Ardens of Park Hall, a storied Saxon line, counting amidst its ancestors no less a hero than King Alfred. She evidently had the Saxon virtues, was prudent and capable, or her father would not have left her executrix at his death. She is said to have been beautiful; we may believe it, if we realize the verbal descriptions, not the painted portraits of her son. A strong woman, whom we see reflected in the poet’s noble women’s characters, and yet romantic enough to marry where she loved, though doubtless many men of better position and of greater wealth in the country, would have been glad enough of such a well-dowered gentle bride. Hers was evidently a happy marriage, and she ensured her son the benefits of a happy home.

He was fortunate in his school. Stratford had once had a College of Priests with its Collegiate Church, an honourable Guild of the Holy Cross, and a notable grammar school; but all had vanished before the exterminating Henry. John Shakespeare and many of his contemporaries had suffered through the suppression, and had grown up weak in English, lacking in Latin, and unable to write, for their sovereign’s sins. But the school had been restored by King Edward VI, and was in good working order by the time John’s eldest son was ready for it. The post of the master of the Stratford Grammar School was one of the plums of the profession, as he had twice the salary of the Master of Eton. We are sure from the Chamberlain’s accounts, that the best men to be had, graduates in a university, were selected by the town councillors. The grammar school was free to all the sons of burgesses, so that no consideration of expense could have kept back William Shakespeare from its advantages, even at the time of his father’s difficulties. He would meet there not only the boys of the town about his own age, but the sons of the neighbouring gentry. We know from several sources the books then in use for each form of a grammar school, and we may reckon what training would be offered young Shakespeare in classic literature to form his English style. A little better than the average, we should presume it to have been. Becon, some years before, had proclaimed Warwickshire to be the most intellectual of the English Counties, and there is some witness to show it still could hold its own.

He was fortunate in his seeming misfortunes. It was all very well to be born in the little town, with its sweet country surroundings, but Shakespeare would never have been the world-poet had he spent his life in Stratford. The place was not big enough for his expansion. But the cloth manufacturers of Stratford suffered heavily from the importation of foreign manufactured goods, and the great farmers and engrossers did what they could to kill its trade in wool. John Shakespeare lost heavily, he sold Snitterfield, probably meant as the portion of his younger children, he mortgaged and lost Asbies, destined by him as the inheritance and future living of his eldest son. And young Shakespeare was thus saved from being a little country farmer, and forced to go to seek his fortunes in London, where he developed into what was in him to be. In London was literary culture from books and men. In London also he was faced with difficulties. He had hoped for so many things; nothing happened to him which he expected or desired; no door was opened to him except that of the stage. Though he pitifully cries:

yet that led him to the very line of life in which he was best fitted to excel, through which he became what he was.

He was fortunate even in his marriage. I know that an opposite view is generally accepted, but I do not believe it. The only reason suggested is that Anne Hathaway was seven years older than himself. Did any one ever meet a bold, masterful, well-grown lad of eighteen whose first love was not a woman older than himself? Many happy marriages have been made with this difference of age, and I do not think Shakespeare’s an exception. I believe she was a timid, delicate, fair-haired girl, type of the submissive wives he paints. There is reason to believe that he took his family with him to London as soon as he found a home. When fortune came he bought them the best house in Stratford, and came to dwell beside them, as soon as he could give up the acting part of his work. There he died among them, away from the world of business, envy, and of strife. There is nothing to warrant the blot on his good name and that of his wife so much insisted on by those who have not studied the question. Mr. J. S. Gray, in “Shakespeare’s Marriage,” is the only writer who has put it straight, and he speaks with authority.

There is nothing derogatory in the legacy of the second-best bed; it was evidently her own last request. She was sure of her widow’s third; she was sure of her daughters’ love and care, but she wanted the bed she had been accustomed to, before the grandeur at New Place came to her.

He was fortunate in the family she brought him, though unfortunately, his only son was a twin, apparently delicate like his mother, and he died young. For his sake Shakespeare called all boys sweet. His daughters lived a longer life, the elder is recorded as “witty above her sex,” because she was like her father, a devoted daughter, a loving wife, a public benefactor. She brought him for his son-in-law the physician Dr. John Hall, great not only in his own county, who first used anti-scorbutics. He must have been a congenial companion to his father-in-law. Then the little granddaughter came, who must have been his joy.

He was fortunate in his friends. London was then but a little city, after all; it could easily be crossed and compassed on foot; its inhabitants did not reach the sum total of 300,000. On arrival he would study London and Westminster, twin-cities, so great and so story-laden, the clear shining Thames, its haunted Bridge, its Tower, its Churches, and the Northern and Southern heights, where he could revel in Nature, as he did at home. He may have gone to London with high hopes, and many introductions. We do not know of those who mocked him, of those who gave him no direct help. We do not know what he aimed at, but we know he failed. Perhaps he hoped to be made a Yeoman of the Privy Chamber, like Roger Shakespeare and Robert Arden, a Royal Messenger like Thomas Shakespeare, a Royal Letter Carrier, like Edmund Spenser. Possibly he meant to volunteer his help against the Spaniard, but they did without him. Possibly his ambitions sank to a share in the grocery business of Sadler and Quiney at Bucklersbury. Long waiting at the doors of negligent patrons seems to have been his share. But through all he had one friend at least, during his period of toil and preparation. We know that he knew his townsman, Richard Field (his senior by three years), who had been at Stratford Grammar School, and entered life on the solid lines of an apprentice to Thomas Vautrollier, the great French printer, and became his son-in-law and successor. Doubtless Shakespeare went at first to reside with him; certainly he was much with him. His shop was the poet’s university, where he read for his degree, by the inclusions and exclusions of the bookshelves. The firm was licensed to keep foreign journeymen printers, and had many monopolies of classical works. From these alone did Shakespeare quote, and Field’s publications account for the most of his learning. There he was inspired by “Plutarch’s Lives Englished by North,” trained by “Puttenham’s Art of English Poesie,” in the canons of literature and a taste for blank verse. There he found books on music, philosophy, science, travels, medicine, language, and literature, which we know he read. It was Richard Field who printed and published Shakespeare’s two poems, the only works which we are sure he published and corrected himself. By this publication, the friend of his everyday life became associated with the friend of his higher dreams, who patronized, criticised, inspired, glorified Shakespeare, and helped to shape his genius. It is something to hear from his contemporary Webster, the praise of Shakespeare’s “right happy and copious industry.” For he must have been hard at work, in his early days in the metropolis to have been able to publish a poem by 1593, which put him at once among the highest group of contemporary poets over which Spenser reigned supreme. That took the sting out of the dying Greene’s scorn the year before concerning the upstart playwright who “thought he could bumbast out a blank verse as well as the best of us.” The young Earl of Southampton had supplied the one thing hitherto wanting in the culture of the Stratford stranger. He was the ideal man of rank, young, learned, refined, untrammelled, wealthy, impulsive, susceptible to genius, critical in judgement. Next year, ere he came of age, Shakespeare had written for him the “Rape of Lucrece,” and dedicated it to him as the “Lord of his Love.” Through the same time he was writing the sonnets, the witnesses of the thoughts, hopes, feelings, fears, joys, he had passed through with his special friend.

He was fortunate, too, in his “fellows.” He had found no doors open to him but those of James Burbage and his theatre. Play-acting was repugnant alike to his taste and his pride: we can learn that from the Sonnets.

But having been received into the company, having been trained in the “quality,” he did his best to conquer. He was singularly fitted for the stage, as John Davies says, “Wit, courage, good shape, good parts, and all good.” From a performer he went on to be a writer of plays. His company always stood as the best in the metropolis, the members were attached to each other, trusting each other through life, leaving each other legacies at death. How much did he owe to the expression and inspiration of his fellows, especially of Richard Burbage?

It is not too much to believe that without Richard to translate him, he would not have thought of putting on paper his great tragic characters, Othello, Hamlet, Richard III.

He was fortunate, too, in his theatres. The best of their time, they were worth writing for. Unhampered by much stage mechanism, and with no scene shifting, he made his audience co-operate with him through their imagination, and create for themselves the scenery from his suggestions. No interruptions, no intervals for irrelevant conversation drifted men away from the developments of the central and side plots which animated the stage continuously. The progress of a play necessitated one continued process of attention; and through educating his hearers to his level, he came to reign supreme, playing upon their heart strings, and moving them to mirth, woe, sympathy, wonder, repulsion, or admiration as he pleased, in a way that we do not understand to-day.

In another, laudable but more prosaic, aspect, Shakespeare was fortunate, in making money. Trained by the pinch of early poverty, by the humiliations of his father’s debts, by the constant demands of a young family, to estimate its value as a means to any end, he seems to have lost no chance of earning money, and by a self-denying life, to have economized his gains. Thereby he was able to rehabilitate his parents in their old position, to secure them a grant of arms, to place his own family out of the reach of the deprivations he must have suffered himself, and to have lived and died in dignity and honour.

Fortunate in the decline of his life, when his warfare was over and his conquest won, he came back to dwell in the place of his birth, beside the wife of his youth, his daughters, and his wide circle of friends. And when the end came, it was fortunate too. He had been allowed to finish his task, and yet he had not overlived his powers. He did not live too long, as Bacon did. His fellow townsmen did not approve of plays any more than did the Corporation of London, but they saw the playwriter reverently laid to rest in the chancel of their parish church as owner of their tithes. The inartistic monument, and the artistic epitaph were raised by loving hearts to “Shakespeare, with whome Quick nature dide.”

Need more be said as to Shakespeare’s fortunes? It is not given to all great men to fit the time and to find the chance to prove what is in them, and to win success. It is not the fortune of every genius even, however associated with great deeds, to reveal the spirit of his country, and to be the voice of his age, which he helped to make what it was. Yet that was Shakespeare’s fortune and our inheritance, and for this the whole world honours him to-day.

Impromptu speech at the dinner of the “Shakespeare Commemoration League,” 23rd April, 1908.