assuredly is he to be charged with any want of affection as a husband, because he bequeaths to her only his "second best bed with the furniture;" for (as Mr. Knight first observed,—and it is strange that he should not have been anticipated in the remark) Shakespeare's estates, with the exception of a copyhold tenement expressly mentioned in his will, were freehold; and his widow was, of course, entitled to what the law terms dower. Still, on the other hand, we must allow that the disparity in age between himself and his wife, the circumstances attending their marriage, and the want of proof that she ever resided with him in London, are enough to excite suspicions" that Shakespeare was not a very happy married man." Susanna, the first child of William and Anne Shakespeare, was baptized at Stratford, May 26th, 1583. Hamnet and Judith,2 twins, baptized Feb. 2d, 1584-5, were the only other issue of their marriage. The circumstance next to be noticed in our author's history is one of great importance, inasmuch as, if not the sole cause of his quitting Stratford and putting forth the efforts of his genius, it may at least have contributed to such a result. Having fallen, we are told, into the company of some wild and disorderly young men, he was induced to assist them, on more than one occasion, in stealing deer from the park of Sir Thomas Collier's Life of Shakespeare, p. 66, sec. ed. 2 They were doubtless christened after Hamnet Sadler and Judith his wife. Hamnet (or Hamlet) Sadler, a baker at Stratford, was to the last intimate with Shakespeare, who bequeathed him 36s. and 8d. to buy a ring. Lucy of Charlecote, in the neighbourhood of Stratford. For this offence (which certainly, in those days, used to be regarded as a venial frolic) he was treated, he thought, too harshly; and he repaid the severity by ridiculing Sir Thomas in a ballad. So bitter was its satire, that the prosecution against the writer was redoubled; and forsaking his family and occupation, he took shelter in the metropolis from his powerful enemy. Such is the story3 which tradition has handed down; 3 First put in print by Rowe, Life of Shakespeare, 1709. But in the archives of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, are the Ms. collections of a learned antiquary, the Rev. William Fulman, who died in 1688, with additions by the friend to whom he bequeathed them, the Rev. Richard Davies, rector of Sapperton and archdeacon of Litchfield, who died in 1708. Among these papers, under the article Shakespeare, the following additions by Davies are found; "Much given to all unluckinesse in stealing venison and rabbits; particularly from Sr Lucy, who had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country, to his great advancement: but his reveng was so great, that he is his Justice Clodpate [i.e. his foolish Justice-Justice Shallow]; and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three lowses rampant for his arms." Rowe speaks of the ballad on Sir Thomas Lucy as "lost."-According to Oldys; "There was a very aged gentleman living in the neighbourhood of Stratford (where he died fifty years since) who had not only heard from several old people in that town of Shakespeare's transgression, but could remember the first stanza of that 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 parliemente member, a justice of peace, At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse; Yet an asse in his state We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate. Ms. Notes,-first printed by Steevens. "One stanza of it [the ballad]," says Capell, "which has the appearance and that it has some foundation in truth cannot surely be doubted, notwithstanding what has been argued to the contrary by Malone, whose chief object in writing the Life of our poet was, to shake the credibility of the facts brought forward by Rowe.-There is no mistaking of genuine, was put into the editor's hands many years ago by an ingenious gentleman (grandson of its preserver) with this account of the way in which it descended to him. Mr. Thomas Jones, who dwelt at Tarbick, a village in Worcestershire, a few miles from Stratford-on-Avon, and dy'd in the year 1703, aged upwards of ninety, remember'd to have heard from several old people at Stratford the story of Shakespeare'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 by Shakespeare was stuck upon his park-gate, which exasperated the knight to apply to a lawyer at Warwick to proceed against him. Mr. Jones had put down in writing the first stanza of this ballad, which was all he remember'd of it, and Mr. Thomas Wilkes (my grandfather) transmitted it to my father by memory, who also took it in writing, and his copy is this," &c. Notes and Various Readings, &c. ii. 75.— Except that it has "Sing O lowsie Lucy," &c., Capell's version of the stanza agrees exactly with that given by Oldys. Though it is quite good enough for the occasion, we may hesitate to believe it genuine.— That the entire ballad, said to have been found in a chest of drawers at Shottery, and the two stanzas of a different pasquinade on Sir Thomas Lucy by Shakespeare in Chetwood's Ms. History of the Stage (see Malone's Shakespeare by Boswell, ii. 144, 565) are rank forgeries, no one can doubt. 1863. It appears that a Manuscript Pedigree of the Lucys exists at Charlecote, which contains a note about "the deer-stealing" and its consequences to Shakespeare; but, as far as I can learn, the said note is of comparatively recent date, and therefore of no authority.-I first became aware of the existence of this document from the History of William Shakespeare, &c., by S. W. Fullom,—a most preposterous and disgusting piece of "book-making," which Mrs. Lucy thus mentions in a letter to me, dated August 4th, 1862; "Mr. Fullom had no note whatever from me, or from the Manuscript Pedigree of the Lucys, to justify the absurd and untruthful story he has published in his History of William Shakespeare." * Malone took great pains to prove that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park at Charlecote. He may, however, have had deer; for his son and successor sent a buck as a present to Lord Ellesmere in 1602: see The Egerton Papers (printed for the Camden Society), p. 355. the allusion to the Lucy family in the opening scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor, where Justice Shallow is highly indignant at Falstaff for having "killed his deer:" Slender informs us that the arms of the Shallows are a "dozen white luces," which the broken English of Sir Hugh Evans transforms into a "dozen white louses."5 Various sets of players,—the Queen's company, the servants of Lord Worcester, of Lord Leicester, of Lord Warwick, and of other noblemen, had been in the habit of resorting to Stratford, and usually exhibiting their performances in its Guildhall. Before Shakespeare forsook his home, he had doubtless seen the best dramatic productions, such as they were, represented by the best actors then alive; and it is not unlikely that, his inclination for the theatre having early manifested itself, he had formed an acquaintance with some of the players at Stratford. Even supposing that he was not then under the mortal displeasure of Sir Thomas Lucy, his own circumstances must at the time have been affected by the unprosperous state of his father's affairs: The coat of Sir Thomas Lucy was "gules, three luces [i.e. pikefishes] hariant, argent." Even Malone is forced to allow that passages of this scene "afford grounds for believing that our author, on some account or other, had not the most profound respect for Sir Thomas Lucy." Life of Shakespeare, p. 142.—1863. Not long ago, a copy of the 4to edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1619, was discovered by Mrs. Lucy among the family records, the only old edition of any of Shakespeare's plays which has been found at Charlecote. The earliest notice of theatrical performances at Stratford is in 1569, when John Shakespeare was bailiff. The elder Burbadge is believed to have been of a Warwickshire family; and Thomas Greene was certainly our poet's townsman. it was natural, therefore, that he should have recourse to the theatre as a means of subsistence; and, in all probability, he was nothing loth to exchange the dull uniformity of his original occupation (whatever that was) for the more exciting profession of the stage. His arrival in London may be fixed about the year 1586. According to Rowe, "he was received into the company, at first in a very mean rank;" which agrees with the account given by the old parish-clerk of Stratford to Dowdall9 in 1693, that he "was received into the playhouse as a serviture." Another tradition,10 8 Life of Shakespeare. › See note 37, p. 28. 10 "Here I cannot forbear relating a story which Sir William Davenant told Mr. Betterton, who communicated it to Mr. Rowe; Rowe told it to Mr. Pope, and Mr. Pope told it to Dr. Newton, the late editor of Milton, and from a gentleman [Dr. Johnson], who heard it from him, 'tis here related. Concerning Shakespear's first appearance in the playhouse. When he came to London, he was without money and friends, and being a stranger, he knew not to whom to apply, nor by what means to support himself. At that time, coaches not being in use, and as gentlemen were accustomed to ride to the playhouse, Shakespear, driven to the last necessity, went to the playhouse door, and pick'd up a little money by taking care of the gentlemen's horses who came to the play ; he became eminent even in that profession, and was taken notice of for his diligence and skill in it; he had soon more business than he himself could manage, and at last hired boys under him, who were known by the name of Shakespear's boys. Some of the players, accidentally conversing with him, found him so acute, and master of so fine a conversation, that, struck therewith, they [sic] and recommended him to the house, in which he was first admitted in a very low station, but he did not long remain so, for he soon distinguished himself, if not as an extraordinary actor, at least as a fine writer." Lives of the Poets, &c. By Mr. Cibber, 1753, vol. i. 130. (The title-pages of the later volumes have "By Mr. Cibber, and other Hands.”—Johnson's assertion (in his Life of Hammond, and in his conversation apud Boswell) that these Lives were written wholly by Robert Shiels is incorrect:-Theophilus Cibber contributed largely to them; see Croker's note on Boswell's Life of Johnson, p. 504, onevolume ed.).—“To the foregoing accounts of Shakespear's life I have |