Part 2 (1/2)

III--THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD

Anne Hathaway's greater burden of years and the likelihood that the poet was forced intoher by her friends were not circuerous to read into Shakespeare's dramatic utterances allusions to his personal experience, the emphasis hich he insists that a woe 'an elder than herself,' {25a} and that prenuptial intimacy is productive of 'barren hate, sour-eyed disdain, and discord,' suggest a personal interpretation

{25b} To both these unpro features was added, in the poet's case, the absence of a means of livelihood, and his course of life in the years that immediately followed implies that he bore his domestic ties with impatience Early in 1585 tere born to hihter (Judith); both were baptised on February 2 All the evidence points to the conclusion, which the fact that he had no more children confirms, that in the later h he was never wholly estranged from his family, he saw little of wife or children for eleven years Between the winter of 1585 and the autumn of 1596--an interval which synchronises with his first literary triumphs--there is only one shadowy mention of his name in Stratford records In April 1587 there died Ede of 1578, and a few ent interest, was joined to that of his father and iven to an abortive proposal to confer on Edmund's son and heir, John Lambert, an absolute title to the estate on condition of his cancelling the20 pounds But the deed does not indicate that Shakespeare personally assisted at the transaction {26}

Poaching at Charlecote

Shakespeare's early literary work proves that while in the country he eagerly studied birds, flowers, and trees, and gained a detailed knowledge of horses and dogs All his kinsfolk were farmers, and with them he doubtless as a youth practised , coursing, and angling abound in his early plays and poe experiences passed at ti to a credible tradition, was the i severance from his native place 'He had,' wrote Rowe in 1709, 'by afellows, fallen into ill co theed hied to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford For this he was prosecuted by that gentleht, soe, he h this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against hied to leave his business and family in Warwickshi+re and shelter himself in London' The independent testimony of Archdeacon Davies, as vicar of Saperton, Gloucestershi+re, late in the seventeenth century, is to the effect that Shakespeare 'wasvenison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft whipt, and sometimes ireat advancement' The law of Shakespeare's day (5 Eliz

cap 21) punished deer-stealers with three months' ie done

Unwarranted doubts of the tradition

The tradition has been challenged on the ground that the Charlecote deer-park was of later date than the sixteenth century But Sir Thoame-preserver, and owned at Charlecote a warren in which a few harts or does doubtless found an occasional home Samuel Ireland was informed in 1794 that Shakespeare stole the deer, not from Charlecote, but from Fulbroke Park, a few miles off, and Ireland supplied in his 'Views on the Warwickshi+re Avon,' 1795, an engraving of an old farmhouse in the hamlet of Fulbroke, where he asserted that Shakespeare was te hovel was locally known for some years as Shakespeare's 'deer-barn,' but no portion of Fulbroke Park, which included the site of these buildings (now ren, and the aend, which was solemnly confided to Sir Walter Scott in 1828 by the owner of Charlecote, seems pure invention {28}

Justice Shallow

The ballad which Shakespeare is reported to have fastened on the park gates of Charlecote does not, as Rowe acknowledged, survive No authenticity can be allowed the worthless lines beginning 'A parliament member, a justice of peace,' which were represented to be Shakespeare's on the authority of an old man who lived near Stratford and died in 1703

But such an incident as the tradition reveals has left a distinct impress on Shakespearean drama Justice Shallow is beyond doubt a re to Archdeacon Davies of Saperton, Shakespeare's 'revenge was so great that' he caricatured Lucy as 'Justice Clodpate,' as (Davies adds) represented on the stage as 'a great , in allusion to Lucy's name, 'three louses rampant for his arms' Justice Shallow, Davies's 'Justice Clodpate,' came to birth in the 'Second Part of Henry IV' (1598), and he is represented in the opening scene of the 'Merry Wives of Windsor' as having come from Gloucestershi+re to Windsor toraid on his estate The 'three luces hauriant argent' were the ared reference in this scene to the 'dozen white luces' on Justice Shallow's 'old coat'

fully establishes Shallow's identity with Lucy

The flight froned to 1585, but itfroht an asylum in London Willia that he had been for a tier years,' and it see Stratford he found soestion that he joined, at the end of 1585, a band of youths of the district in serving in the Low Countries under the Earl of Leicester, whose castle of Kenilworth ithin easy reach of Stratford, is based on an obvious confusion between hie of a soldier's life which Shakespeare exhibited in his plays is no greater and no less than that which he displayed of almost all other spheres of human activity, and to assume that he wrote of all or of any from practical experience, unless the evidence be conclusive, is to underrate his intuitive power of realising life under alination

IV--ON THE LONDON STAGE

The journey to London