marks.

The fabrication appears to us as gross as can well be imagined.

That John Shakspere was what we popularly call a Protestant in the year 1568, when his son William was four years old, may be shown by the clearest of proofs. He was in that year the chief magistrate of Stratford; he could not have become so without taking the Oath of Supremacy, according to the statute of the 1st of Elizabeth, 1558-9. To refuse this oath was made punishable with forfeiture and imprisonment, with the pains of præmunire and high treason. "The conjecture," says Chalmers (speaking in support of the authenticity of this confession of faith), "that Shakspeare's family were Roman Catholics, is strengthened by the fact that his father declined to attend the corporation meetings, and was at last removed from the corporate body." He was removed from the corporate body in 1586, with a distinct statement of the reason for this removal-his nonattendance when summoned to the halls. But a subsequent discovery of a document in the State Paper Office, communicated by Mr. Lemon to Mr. Collier, shows that in 1592, Mr. John Shakspere, with fourteen of his neighbours, were returned by certain Commissioners as "such recusants as have been heretofore presented for not coming monthly to the church according to her Majesty's laws, and yet are thought to forbear the church for debt and for fear of process, or for some other worse faults, or for age, sickness, or impotency of body." John Shakspere is classed amongst nine who ". came not to church for fear of process for debt." We shall have to notice this assigned reason for the recusancy in a future Chapter. But the religious part of the question is capable of another solution, than that the father of Shakspere had become reconciled to the Romish religion. At that period the puritan section of the English church were acquiring great strength in Stratford and the neighbourhood; and in 1596, Richard Bifield, one of the most zealous of the puritan ministers, became its Vicara. John Shakspere and his neighbours might not have been Popish recusants, and yet have avoided the church. It

a Hunter: 'New Illustrations,' vol. i. p. 106.

must be borne in mind that the parents of William Shakspere passed through the great changes of religious opinion, as the greater portion of the people passed, without any violent corresponding change in their habits derived from their forefathers. In the time of Henry VIII. the great contest of opinion was confined to the supremacy of the Pope; the great practical state measure was the suppression of the religious houses. Under Edward VI. there was a very careful compromise of all those opinions and practices in which the laity were participant. In the short reign of Mary the persecution of the Reformers must have been offensive even to those who clung fastest to the ancient institutions and rodes of belief; and even when the Reformation was fully established under Elizabeth, the habits of the people were still very slightly interfered with. The astounding majority of the conforming clergy is a convincing proof how little the opinions of the laity must have been disturbed. They would naturally go along with their old teachers. We have to imagine, then, that the father of William Shakspere, and his mother, were, at the time of his birth, of the religion established by law. His father, by holding a high municipal office after the accession of Elizabeth, had solemnly declared his adherence to the great principle of Protestantism-the acknowledgment of the civil sovereign as the head of the church. The speculative opinions in which the child was brought up would naturally shape themselves to the creed which his father must have professed in his capacity of magistrate; but, according to some opinions, this profession was a disguise on the part of his father. The young Shakspere was brought up in the Roman persuasion, according to these notions, because he intimates an acquaintance with the practices of the Roman church, and mentions purgatory, shrift, confession, in his dramas. Surely the poet might exhibit this familiarity with the ancient language of all Christendom, without thus speaking "from the overflow of Roman Catholic zeal."b Was it "Roman Catholic zeal" which induced him to write

a See Chalmers's 'Apology,' p. 200.

Chalmers. See also Drake, who adopts, in great measure, Chalmers's argument.

those strong lines in King John against the "Italian priest," and against those who

"Purchase corrupted pardon of a man"?

Was it "Roman Catholic zeal" which made him introduce these words into the famous prophecy of the glory and happiness of the reign of Elizabeth—

"God shall be truly known"?

He was brought up, without doubt, in the opinions which his father publicly professed, in holding office subject to his most solemn affirmation of those opinions. The transition from the old worship to the new was not an ungentle one for the laity. The early reformers were too wise to attempt to root up habits-those deep-sunk foundations of the past which break the ploughshares of legislation when it strives to work an inch below the earth's surface.

66

To the grammar-school, then, with some preparation, we hold that William Shakspere goes, about the year 1571. His father is at this time, as we have said, chief alderman of his town; he is a gentleman, now, of repute and authority, he is Master John Shakspere; and assuredly the worthy curate of the neighbouring village of Luddington, Thomas Hunt, who was also the school-master, would have received his new scholar with some kindness. As his 'shining morning face" first passed out of the main street into that old court through which the upper room of learning was to be reached, a new life would be opening upon him. The humble minister of religion who was his first instructor has left no memorials of his talents or his acquirements; and in a few years another master came after him, Thomas Jenkins, also unknown to fame. All praise and honour be to them; for it is impossible to imagine that the teachers of William Shakspere were evil instructors— giving the boy husks instead of wholesome aliment. They could not have been harsh and perverse instructors, for such spoil the gentlest natures, and his was always gentle:-"My gentle Shakspere" is he called by a rough but noble spirit-one in whom was all honesty and genial friendship under a rude exterior. His wondrous abilities could not be spoiled even by ignorant instructors.

There were other agencies than the grammar-school at work in the direction of Shakspere's inquiring boyhood. There are local associations connected with Stratford which could not be without their influence in the formation of his mind. Within the range of such a boy's curiosity were the fine old historic towns of Warwick and Coventry, the sumptuous palace of Kenilworth, the grand monastic remains of Evesham. His own Avon abounded with spots of singular beauty, quiet hamlets, solitary woods. Nor was Stratford shut out from the general world, as many country towns are. It was a great highway; and dealers with every variety of merchandise resorted to its fairs. The eyes of Shakspere must always have been open for observation.

When he was twelve years old Elizabeth made her celebrated progress to Lord Leicester's castle of Kenilworth. Was William Shakspere at Kenilworth in that summer of 1575, when the great Dudley entertained Elizabeth with a splendour which annalists have delighted to record, and upon which one of our own days has bestowed a fame more imperishable than that of any annals? Percy, speaking of the old Coventry Hock-play, says, "Whatever this old play or storial show was at the time it was exhibited to Queen Elizabeth, it had probably our young Shakspere for a spectator, who was then in his twelfth year, and doubtless attended with all the inhabitants of the surrounding country at these 'princely pleasures of Kenilworth,' whence Stratford is only a few miles distant." The preparations for this celebrated entertainment were on so magnificent a scale, the purveyings must have been so enormous, the posts so unintermitting, that there had needed not the flourishings of paragraphs (for the age of paragraphs was not as yet) to have roused the curiosity of all mid-England. Elizabeth had visited Kenilworth on two previous occasions,—in 1565, and in 1572.

Whether the boy Shakspere was at Kenilworth in 1575, when Robert Dudley welcomed his sovereign with a more than regal magnificence, is not necessary to be affirmed or denied. It is tolerably clear that the exquisite speech of

a 'On the Origin of the English Stage:'-Reliquos, vol. i.

Oberon in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is associated with some of the poetical devices which he might have there beheld, or have heard described :

.

"Obe. My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remeinber st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea-maid's music.

Obe. That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,)
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd; a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal throned by the west;

And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:

But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft

Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon
And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation fancy-free."

The most remarkable of the shows of Kenilworth were associated with the mythology and the romance of lakes and seas. "Triton, in likeness of a mermaid, came towards the Queen's Majesty.” "Arion appeared sitting on a dolphin's back." So the quaint and really poetical George Gascoigne, in his 'Brief Rehearsal, or rather a true Copy of as much as was presented before her Majesty at Kenilworth.' But the diffuse and most entertaining coxcomb Laneham describes a song of Arion, with an ecstacy which may justify the belief that the "dulcet and harmonious breath" of "the seamaid's music" might be the echo of the melodies heard by the young poet as he stood beside the lake at Kenilworth :Now, Sir, the ditty in metre so aptly endited to the matter, and after by voice deliciously delivered; the song, by a skilful artist into his parts so sweetly sorted; each part in his instrument so clean and sharply touched; every instrument again in his kind so excellently tunable; and this in the evening of the day, resounding from the calm waters, where the presence of her Majesty, and longing to listen, had utterly damped all noise and din, the whole harmony conveyed in time, tune, and temper thus incomparably melodious; with what pleasure (Master Martin), with what