St. Nicholas/Volume 13/Number 7/When Shakspere was a Boy
By Rose Kingsley.
On Henley street, in quiet Stratford town, there stands an old half-timbered house. The panels between the dark beams are of soft-colured yellow plaster. The windows are filled with little diamond panes; and in one of the upper rooms they are guarded with fine wire outside the old glass, which is misty with innumerible names scratched all over it. Poets and princes, wise men and foolish, have scrawled their names after a silly fashion, on windows, wall, and ceiling of thatoak-floored room, because, on the 22d of April, 1564, a baby was born there—the son of John and Mary Shakspere. And on the following Wednesday, April 26, the baby was carried down to the old church beside the sleepy Avon and baptized by the name of William.
Little did John Shakspere and the gossips dream, when the baby William’s name was duly inscribed in the register-book with its corners and clasps of embossed brass, that he was destined ts become England’s greatest poet. Little did they dream, honest folk. that the old market town and the house on Henley street and the meadows across the river, covered in that pleasant April month with cowslips and daisies and--lady-smocks all silver-white.” would become sacred ground to hundreds of thousands of people from all quarters of the globe, who should come, year by year, on reverent pilgrimage to Shakspere’s birthplace.
The baby grew up as most babies do and when he was two and a half years old, a little brother Gilbert was born. As we walk through the streets to-day, we can fancy the little lads toddling about the lawn together, while father John was minding his glove and wool trade at the old house, John Shakspere, in these early days, was a well-to-do man. He was a chamberlain of the borough when little Gilbert was born; and in 1568 he was elected High Bailiff, or Mayor, of Stratford, although he, in common with many of his fellow-burgesses, could not write his own name. He had land, too, at Snitterfield, where is father had lived; and his wife, Mary Arden, was the owner of Ashbies, the farm at Wilmcote, hard by.
But, though the parents were illiterate, they knew the value of a good education. The Free Grammar School had been refounded a few years before by Edward VI. And although there is no actual record of his school days, we may take it as certain that little Will Shakspere was sent to the Free School when about seven years old, as we know his brother Gilbert was, a little later. The old Grammar School still stands; and boys still learn their lessons in the self-same room with the high pitched roof and oaken beams, where little Will Shakspere studied his “A,B,C book,” and got his earliest notions of Latin. But during part of Shakspere’s school days the schoolroom was under repair; and boys and master—Walter Roche by name—migrated for a while to the Guild Chapel next door, And this was surely in the poet’s mind when, in later years, he talked of a “pedant who keeps a school i’ the church.”
All boys learned their Latin then from two well-known books—the “Accidence” and the “Sententiæ Pueriles.” And that William was no exception to the rule we may see by translations from the latter in several of his plays, and by an account, in one of his plays, of Master Page’s examination in the “Accidence.” An old desk which came from the Grammar School and stood there in Shakspere’s time is shown at the birthplace, And when we look at it we wonder what sort of a boy little William was—whether his future greatness made a mark in any way during his school days; whether that conical forehead of his stood him in good stead as he learned his Latin Grammar; whether he was quiet and studious, or merry and mischievous; whether he hid dormice and apples and birds’ eggs in his desk, and peeped at them during school hours; whether he got into scrapes and was whipped. Just think of Shakspere getting a whipping! No doubt he often did. Masters in those days were not greater, but rather less, respecters of persons than they are now, and they believed very firmly in the adage which is going out of fashion, that to spare tie rod is to spoil the child. So we may think of little Will Shakspere coming out of the Grammar School and passing the old Guild Chapel and the Falcon Inn with two little red fists crammed into two little red and streaming eyes, and going home to mother Mary in Henley street to be comforted and coddled and popped down on the settle in the wide chimney corner, with some dainty, dear to the heart of small boys who got into trouble three hundred years ago just as they do now. Let us hope his cake was not like one he describes as “dough on both sides.”
But I fancy that lessons bore a very small part in Will Shakspere’s education. He certainly never knew much Latin; but he knew all about country things as only a country-bred boy can know about them. He and Gilbert must have run many a time to Ashbies, their mother’s farm at Wilmecote, and watched the oxen plowing in the heavy clay fields; and cried, perhaps, as children do now “as the butcher takes away the calf”; and played with the shepherd’s “ob-tailed cur”; and gossiped with Christopher Sly, who could tell them all manner of wonderful tales, for had he not been peddler, card-maker, bear-herd, “and now by present profession a tinker”?
They must have listened to their father and their uncle Henry up at the big farm close to Snitterfield church (where Henry Shakspere lived) as the two men discussed the price of a yoke of oxen at Stratford or Warwick fair, or debated whether they should “sow the head-land with wheat.—with red wheat, Davy,” or grumbled over the “smith’s note for shoeing and plough-irons,” or told the latest turn in the quarrel between “William Visor of Woncot”? and “Clement Perkes of the Hill” Very likely the little hazel-eyed boys took William Visor’s part, though they wisely kept their opinions to themselves, since small boys in that period were not allowed the liberty of speech they enjoy in these degenerate times. William Visor was a neighbor of the Ardens, and possibly a friend of “Marian Hackett, the fat ale-wife of Wincot”; for Wincot, Woncot, and Wilmcote are all the same place. Or perhaps the young lads sided with Clement Perkes, for the Hill where he lived at Weston was known as Cherry Orchard Farm, a name full of tempting suggestions to little boys. And we know that Shakspere, like many less wise people, was fond of “ripe red cherries.” He mentions them again and again. He and Gilbert, and their little friends the Sadlers and Harts and Halls, must haye played bob-cherry, as we do now,— drawing up the stem of the cherry with our tongues, and, with a sudden snap, getting the round, ripe fruit between our lips,—and then have used the stones for “cherry-pit”—a child’s game that is frequently mentioned by Shakspere and other old writers, which consisted in pitching cherry-stones into a small hole.
The school and guild chapel.
There were grapes, too, growing plentifully in Warwickshire in his day; and “apricocks,” “ripe figs. and mulberries,” like those with which the fairies were told to feed Bottom the weaver. Blackberries and the handsome purple dewberries grew then as now, by the hedges in the orchards and in the shade of the Weir-brake just below Stratford mill, where, so says tradition, the scene of the “Midsummer Night‘s Dream” was laid. In the Weir-brake, too, and in all the woods about their home, the Shakspere boys must have gone nutting—that most delightful harvest of the year, when you bend down “the hazel twig,” so “straight and slender,” and fill baskets and pockets with the sweet nuts in their rough, green husks, and crack them all the way home like so many happy squirrels.
All the hedge-rows were full then, as they are to this day, of wild pear-trees, wild apples, and “crabs,” as crab-apples are called in England. Roasted ‘crabs’ served with hot ale were a favorite Christmas dish in Shakspere’s time. And I doubt not that the boys rejoiced at the house in Henley street as the time of year came round “when roasted crabs hiss in the bowl.”
How snug the “house-place” in the old home must have looked with its roaring fire of logs, on winter evenings, when the two little boys of nine and seven, and Joan and Anne, the little sisters, huddled up in the chimney-corner with baby Richard in his cradle, while the mother prepared hot ale and “roasted crabs” far her gossips. Will, I warrant, as with twinkling eyes he watched Mrs. Hart or Mrs. Sadler or Mrs. Hathaway, from Shottery, thought that it was Puck himself, the very spirit of mischief, who had got into the bowl “in very likeness of a roasted crab.”
It must have been a recollection of those winter evenings that made little Will, in later years, write his delightful “Winter Song”;
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blond is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.”
Among the gossips there would be much talk of wonders, appearances, mysterious occurrences, and charms; and the children listened with all their ears, you may be sure. Perhaps one of Mistress Shakspere's friends possessed the power that some people in Warwickshire are still said to possess, of charming away warts by a touch and some murmured invocation; or curing toothache and all other aches and pains. There are plenty of people now who, after your second cup of tea is finished, will take the cup, twist the grounds around three times, turn it mouth downward in the saucer, and then, by looking at the tea-leaves which still stick to the bottom of the cup, will undertake to tell you what is going to happen—of presents you will receive, or people who are coming to see you. And many Warwickshire women still believe firmly that whooping-cough can be charmed away by the patient walking nine times over running water.
The boys’ games of those days were much the same as they are to-day. Each game then, as now, had its regular season in the year. In the season for marbles, no one would dream of playing anything else. ”Knuckle-hole“ is still the favorite game in Warwickshire. The standing-up game, pitching the taw from a mark scraped across the ground, is. I am told by competent authorities, rather going out of fashion: but it is still played. The marble season lasts through the late winter, much to the distraction of mothers, who have to clean and mend their sons’ nether garments, which are worn with kneeling and plastered with mud at that time of year. Then comes the spinning-top, whip-top, and peg-top time. Later again there is tip-cat for the boys, and hop-scotch for the girls.
On the corn-bins in the Warwickshire ale-house stables we can still find the lines rudely cut for ”nine men’s morris.” This, in Shakspere’s day, was a favorite game, and one much in vogue among the shepherd boys in the summer, who cut a ”board” in the short turf and whiled away the long hours by playing it. Little Will must often have gone to watch his father play ”shovel-board” at the Falcon tavern, in Stratford, on the board upon which tradition says he himself played, in later life. And at home, he and his brother must have played “push-pin,” an old game which is still played in remote parts of the country. Two pins are laid on the table; the players in turn jerk them with their fingers, and he who throws one pin across the other is allowed to take one of them, while those who do not succeed have to give a pin. This is the game Shakspere alludes to in ”Love’s Labour ’s Lost,” when he says, ”And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys.”
Little Will knew a great deal about sport. All his allusions to sporting or woodcraft are those of a man who had been familiar with such things from his childhood. He and Gilbert must have set plenty of ”springes, to catch wood-cocks,” and dug out the “earth-delving conics” that swarmed in the commonland of m Welcombe, those dingles that in later years he fought so hard to preserve from inclosure.
They must have fished many a time, as the Stratford boys do to this day, in the slow waters of the Avon, sitting quietly intent for hours upon the steep clay bank.
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait”[2]
Then who can doubt that he often watched the hunting of the hare? Each line in his wonderful description of the hunted hare is written by a thorough sportsman and a keen observer of nature. How the purblind hare runs among a flock of sheep or into a rabbit-warren, or “sorteth with a herd of deer” to throw out “the hot scent-snuffing hounds.” How they pause silent till they have worked “with much ado the cold fault cleanly out,” and then burst into music again.
Of deer, Shakspere knew much—too much for his own comfort. In his childhood, there were herds at Fulbrooke,—and when he was older, at Charlecote, at Grove Park, and at Warwick. And probably there were a few roe in the wilder parts of the Forest of Arden, which came down within three miles of Stratford, and covered the whole of the country north of the Avon, out ta Nuneaton and Birmingham. We can fancy how the boys stole out to watch the Grevilles and Leycesters and Lucys and Verneys on some great hunting party, and whispered to each other,
For through this lawnd anon the deer will come.”
But the time of all others in the year that we connect most closely with Shakspere is the sweet spring-time, when the long cold winter—very long and very cold among those undrained clay-lands of Warwickshire—had come to an end. How closely little Will watched for
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty”;
and for
We can fancy the little boys hunting in some sheltered nook in the Welcombe woods for the first primroses; and climbing up Borden Hill just beyond Shottery, perhaps with Anne Hathaway from the pretty old house in the orchards below, to the bank—the only one in the neighborhood,—
Where oxlips, and the nodding violet grows”;
or wandering over the flat sunny meadows along the Avon valley, picking cowslips, and looking into each tiny yellow bell for the spots in their gold coats,—
In those freckles live their savors,”—
as they brought home baskets of the flower-heads for their mother to make into cowslip wine.
Spring, in this Stratford country, is exquisite, The woods are carpeted with primroses and wild hyacinths; while in the “merry month of May” the nightingale swarms among the hawthorn trees white with blossom,
On every yillage green there stood a painted May pole—one is still standing at Weston, near Stratford; and May-Day is still kept in Warwickshire with a “May feast” upon old May-Day, the 12th of May. Every one knows how the prettiest girl in the village was chosen Queen o’ the May, and how all joined in the “Whitsun Morris-dance.”
A bunch of cowslips.
Long Marston,—“Dancing Marston,” as it has been called ever since Shakspere’s time,—a few miles from Stratford, was famous till within the memory of man for a troop of Morris-dancers, who went about from village to village, strangely dressed, to dance at all the feasts. Shakspere probably had the Marsten dancers in his mind when he wrote of the “three carters, three shepherds, three neat-herds, three swine-herds,” that made themselves all “men of hair,” and called themselves “Saltiers,” at the sheep-shearing feast which pretty Perdita presided over, in “The Winter’s Tale.” The sheep-shearing feast, which came when roses were out on the hedges and in the gardens, must have been a merry and important time for the Shakspere boys. John Shakspere was, of course, specially interested in the price of a tod of wool, for wool-stapling was part of his trade. Perhaps William himself was sent by his mother to buy the groceries for the feast, and stood conning the list as he makes the clown do, in “The Winter’s Tale.”
In the spring-time, too, came the peddler with all his wonders and treasures:
Cypress black as e’ver was crow;
Gloves as sweet as damask roses;
Masks for faces and for noses.”
Those last must have pleased the little boys more than all the rest of the pedidler’s goods. And perhaps it was from this very peddler that Will Shakspere bought the pair of gloves which, after the fashion of the day, he gave to Anne Hathaway at their betrothal.
But the great event of the year in the quiet country town was Stratford “Mop” or statute fair, on the 12th of October, The market-place was filled, as it is to this day, with clowns and mountebanks, wrestlers, and rope-dancers at their “rope-tricks.” Oxen and sheep were roasted whole. A yoaring trade was driven by quack doctors and dentists. All the servants in the country came and stood around to be hired, as the farm-hands and the maids for the farm-houses still do—the carters with a bit of whipcord in their hats; the shepherds with a lock of wool; the laborers with a straw, And next day, we need not doubt, there were many candidates for the town stocks, as there are now for the police court. There were bear-baitings, too, and bull-baitings—those cruel sports which have only been abolished in Warwickshire within the last hundred years. But in Shakspere’s day bear-baiting was a popular and refined amusement. During Queen Elizabcth’s visit to Kenilworth, in 1575, there was a great bear-baiting in her honor, of which a curious and most sickening account still exists. And when Sbakspere went to London his lodgings were close to the bear-garden, or “Bear's College,” at Southwark, whither all London flocked to see the poor beasts tormented and tortured.
There was, however, one amusement which, from his earliest years, must have delighted little Will Shakspere above all others—I mean a visit from the players, That he inherited his love for the drama from his father is more than probable; for it was during the year of John Shakspere’s High Bailiffship that plays are first mentioned in the records at Stratford. According to the custom of the day, when the players belonging to some great nobleman came to a town, they reported themselves to the mayor to get a license for playing. 1f the mayor liked them, or wished to show respect to their master, he would appoint them to play their first play before himself and the Council. This was called the Mayor’s Play, every one coming in free, and the mayor giving the players a reward in money. Between the autumns of 1568 and 1569.
“The Queen’s and the Earl of Worcester’s players visited the town and gave representations before the Council, the former company receiving nine shillings and the latter twelve pence for their first performances.”
And there is little reason to doubt that our little Will, then between five and six years old, was taken to see them by his father, the mayor, as a little boy named Willis was taken at Gloucester that same year, being exactly William Shakspere’s age; and, standing between his father’s knees, Master Will probably there got his first experience of the art in which he was to become the master for all ages. We wonder what that first play was—some quaint, rude drama probably, such as the one little Willis saw at Gloucester, with plenty of princes and fair ladies, and demons with painted masks, and the “Herod” in red gloves, of the “Coventry Mystery” players.
Not only in Stratford, but in most of the towns roundabout, there are various records of players giving performances. When little Will was eleven years old, Queen Elizabeth came on her celebrated visit, in 1575, to Lord Leycester at Kenilworth; and as all the country flocked to see the great show, it is probable that the boy and his father were among the crowds of spectators and saw some of the plays given in the Queen’s honor.
A year or two later, troubles began to multiply at the house in Henley street. John Shakspere got into debt. The farm at Ashbies was mortgaged. His daughter Anne died in 1579; and two years before her death, young William, then thirteen, was taken from school and apprenticed—some accounts say to a butcher—or, as seems more probable, to his own father, to help him in his failing wool-trade.
For the next five years nothing is known about Will Shakspere, Then we find him courting Anne Hathaway in the pretty old brick and timbered cottage at Shottery, its garden all full of roses and rosemary, ”carnations and striped gilly-vors.” A year or two later, he is stealing one of Sir Thomas Lucy’s deer,—writing a lampoon on the worthy justice,—and flying to London from his wrath, to hold horses at the door of the Globe Theater before he joined the Lord Chamberlain’s players, and became known to all posterity as Mr. William Shakspere, Writer of Plays.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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