Virtue and cunning [knowledge] were endowments greater Than nobleness and riches; careless heirs May the two latter darken and expend; But immortality attends the former, And he found More content in course of true delight Can it be conceived that the man who wrote these things would try, by false representations, to secure a coat-of-arms for his family, and seek by every means in his power to grasp the shillings and pence of his poorer neighbors, and at the same time leave one of his children in "barbarous, barren, gross and miserable ignorance"? With an income, as we have shown, equal to $25,000 yearly of our money; with the country swarming with graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, begging for bread and ready to act as tutors; living in a quiet, rural neighborhood, where there were few things to distract attention, William Shakspere permitted his daughter to attain the ripe age of twenty-seven years, unable to read the immortal quartos which had made her father famous and wealthy. We will not we cannot believe it. X. SOME OF THE EDUCATED WOMEN OF THAT AGe. But it may be said that it was the fault of the age. It must be remembered, however, that the writer of the Plays was an exceptional man. He possessed a mind of vast and endless activity, which ranged into every department of human thought; he eagerly absorbed all learning. Such another natural scholar we find in Sir Anthony Cook, tutor to King Edward IV., grandfather of Francis Bacon and Robert Cecil. WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. FRANCIS BACON'S MASK. Fac-simile of the Frontispiece in the Folio of 1623. Facing this portrait in the Folio are presented Ben Jonson's famous lines: This Figure, that thou here seest put O, could he but have drawn his wit As well in brasse, as he hath hit But since he cannot, Reader, looke Like Shakspere of Stratford, his family consisted of girls, and he was not by any means as wealthy as Shakspere. Did he leave his daughters to sign their names with hieroglyphics? No. Macaulay says: Katherine, who became Lady Killigrew, wrote Latin hexameters and pentameters which would appear with credit in the Musa Etonenses. Mildred, the wife of Lord Burleigh, was described by Roger Ascham as the best Greek scholar among the young women of England, Lady Jane Grey always excepted. Anne, the mother of Francis Bacon, was distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian. She corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell, and translated his Apologia from the Latin so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration. She also translated a series of sermons on fate and free will from the Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino.' They were not alone. There were learned and scholarly women in England in those days, and many of them, as there have been in all ages since. Macaulay says: The fair pupils of Ascham and Aylmer who compared, over their embroidery, the styles of Isocrates and Lysias, and who, while the horns were sounding and the dogs in full cry, sat in the lonely oriel with eyes riveted to that immortal page which tells how meekly and bravely the first great martyr of intellectual liberty took the cup from his weeping jailer.2 It is not surprising that William Shakspere, poacher, fugitive, vagabond, actor, manager, brewer, money-lender, land-grabber, should permit one of his two children to grow up in gross ignorance, but it is beyond the compass of the human mind to believe that the author of Hamlet and Lear could have done so. He indicates in one of his plays how a child should be trained. Speaking of King Leonatus, in Cymbeline, he says: Put him to all the learnings that his time If Judith had been the child of the author of the Plays, and had "something of Shakespeare in her," she would have resented and struggled out of her shameful condition; her mind would have sought the light as the young oak forces its way upward through the brush-wood of the forest. She would have replied to her neglectful father as Portia did: 1 Macaulay's Essays, Bacon, p. 246. 2 Ibid., p. 247. 3 Cymbeline, i, 1. F But the full sum of me Is sum of nothing, which to term in gross But she may learn; happier than this, As from her lord, her governor, her king.' But if she was the natural outcome of ages of ignorance, developed in a coarse and rude state of society, and the daughter of a cold-blooded man, who had no instinct but to make money, we can readily understand how, in the midst of wealth, and under the shadow of the school-house, she grew up so grossly ignorant. XI. SHAKSPERE'S FAMILY. There seems to have been something wrong about the whole breed. In 1613, Shakspere being yet alive, Dr. Hall, his son-in-law, husband of his daughter Susanna, brought suit in the ecclesiastical court against one John Lane, for reporting that his wife "had the runninge of the raynes, and had bin naught with Rafe Smith and John Palmer." Halliwell-Phillipps says: The case was heard at Worcester on July the 15th, 1613, and appears to have been conducted somewhat mysteriously, the deposition of Robert Whatcot, the poet's intimate friend, being the only evidence recorded, and throwing no substantial light on the merits of the dispute. Nevertheless, the defendant was excommunicated. This being the case of the oldest daughter, the other, the pothook heiress, does not seem to have been above suspicion. Judith's marriage with Thomas Quiney was a mysterious and hurried one. Phillipps says: There appears to have been some reason for accelerating this event, for they were married without a license, and were summoned a few weeks afterward to the ccclesiastical court at Worcester to atone for the offense.3 Ignorance, viciousness, vulgarity and false pretenses seem to have taken possession of New Place. Not a glimpse of anything that might tell a different story escapes the ravages of time. 1 Merchant of Venice, iii, 2. 2 Outlines Life of Shak., p. 166. 3 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life of Shak., p. 182. |