CHAPTER III.

SHAKESPEARE'S TRADITIONAL BIRTHDAY.*

T

HE birth of Shakespeare is, I believe, universally celebrated on the 23rd April. The tradition on

which the celebrants rely is, that he was born on the 23rd April, 1564, Old Style; and it is somewhat discomforting to precisians to learn that in Shakespeare's day the New Style (which was not then observed in England) was ten days in advance of the Old; and that there is now a difference of twelve days between them so that the 23rd April, O.S., was in 1564 the 3rd May, N.S.; a date which at the present time corresponds to the 5th May, N.S. It has accordingly been made a question whether we should not celebrate the occasion on either the 3rd or the 5th May, in every year.

I refer to this question, which springs out of the difference of Style, not for the purpose of attempting to settle it, but simply because it has been so often asserted that Shakespeare

From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. x, New Series. Read, May 17, 1871.

:

and Cervantes died on the same day the fact being that Shakespeare survived Cervantes ten days.

source.

It is even more discomforting to the punctual keeper of birthdays to find that the tradition of Shakespeare's birth on the 23rd April, 1564, O.S., cannot be traced to any authentic The student of Shakespeare-biography soon becomes inured to scepticism. One cherished fact after another falls before the scythe of criticism, till only a small and unimportant residue remains. In sheer despair of ascertaining facts, the majority of biographers have been content to weave a tissue of fictions. The most trustworthy memoirs of the bard are those which support the meagre text by a formidable array of foot-notes, adduced in disproof of nearly everything that forms the very staple of the old biographies.

Such work is like pulling down a National Gallery to make room for a peep-show. There is, indeed, some little proof of Shakespeare's lineage; and he himself seems to have been born in the year 1564 at the traditional birthplace. But having launched our hero on that 'sea of troubles' which every mortal has to navigate as best he may-some to reach the wished-for haven, some, on shoal or quicksand, like the headstrong, man in Eschylus, to perish unwept, unknown (ἄκλαυστος, αἴστος)—we lose sight of the poet to obtain a few partial and isolated glimpses of his outer life: but in the hands of biographers, these glimpses become the more shining parts of 'a round and varnished tale.' I, too, can find pleasure in the creations of a semi-prophetic ingenuity; but I cannot treat those creations as historical facts.

Sunt et mihi carmina; me quoque dicunt

Vatem pastores; sed non ego credulus illis.

It would occupy too much time and paper if I were to sift, in detail, the traditional life of Shakespeare: but I may at least indicate a few points, besides that of the birthday, which are repeated by almost every biographer, and which have hitherto remained unsupported by any satisfactory evidence.

1. We are told that Shakespeare 'had been in his younger yeares a schoolmaster in the country.' We get that scrap of news from conscientious John Aubrey, whose manuscript (circa 1680) is in the Ashmolean collection; and Aubrey says he got it from Mr. Beeston.' This was probably William Beeston, Governor of the King and Queen's young Company of Players,' who lost his office in 1640, and was then succeeded by D'Avenant.

2. We are told further that Shakespeare had been formerly 'bound apprentice to a butcher' in Stratford, but 'run from his master to London.' We get that from a letter dated the 10th April, 1693, written by a Mr. John Dowdall to a Mr. Edward Southwell. Who they were we do not know: but we know that this Mr. Dowdall professed to have obtained it from the Parish Clerk of Stratford, who was at that time over eighty years of age. His testimony, after all, was, probably, but ill-remembered gossip.

3. We are further told that, in all likelihood, Shakespeare had been to school; but we have no evidence whatever of the fact. Mr. J. O. Halliwell (Phillipps), in his Life of Shakespeare, 1848, p. 92, makes no question of Shakespeare having

been educated at the Stratford Grammar School, and naïvely remarks:

It would be a very difficult task to identify the exact position of the room in which Shakespeare was educated.

But it would not be a whit more difficult to identify the exact position in that room of the form on which Shakespeare sat! It is all one, surely, since we really do not know that he ever attended that school, or any other. If he did go to school, I make no doubt that, according to the estimate of the day, he was accounted a shocking dunce; that many a time and oft he felt the remorseless 'bob' of the village pedagogue, and took his stand on a stool in the corner of the school-room, wearing the ensign of duncedom on his head. If, as Mr. Harness fancifully conjectures, he was lame, he may have contracted his lameness through the caning of his master or the tunding of his elders in the school! Be that as it may, we may be quite sure that he suffered, if not for his pains, at least for his brains; just as, at a later period, Goldsmith and Byron were punished as incurable dunces, and the immortal Gauss was flogged for his audacity in solving an arithmetical problem before the rest of the school had taken it down. It is pleasant to indulge in such picturesque imaginings: but imagination is not biography.

4. As to another tradition in Shakespeare's life, viz., the deer-stealing episode, I am disposed, with De Quincey, to discredit it altogether, and even to treat it as a myth invented to account for Shakespeare's seeming animosity toward Sir Thomas Lucy. My late lamented friend, Charles Holte

Bracebridge, following the lead of Malone, has apparently settled the question, and proved that Charlecote Park was not a deer preserve,* and that to have sported at Fulbroke would not have been a breach of the law. The tale, after all, rests on a manuscript of the Rev. William Fulman, who died in 1688. Fulman having bequeathed it to the Rev. Richard Davies, and died, that gentleman recorded the story on the manuscript in his own handwriting. Mr. Davies died in 1708; and the manuscript is now in Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Whence he obtained the story he does not tell us.

5. Lastly, we are told that when Shakespeare did get to London, he earned a livelihood by holding horses at the doors of the theatres. I fear that is a myth too. We get the story from the anonymous author of The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, 1753, and he says he obtained it from a gentleman whose name he does not give.† But after these two anonyms we get on a little better: for anonym the second is said to have heard it from Dr. Newton; and it is further said that Newton got it from Pope; and that Pope got it from Rowe; and that Rowe got it-with a mass of similar rubbish-from Betterton, the actor; and that Betterton got it

Since writing this, Mr. J. O. Phillipps has called my attention to a curious entry in The Egerton Papers, 4to, 1840, p. 355, where, among the 'List of Presents at Harefield,' in the year 44 Elizabeth, we read:

taking that for what it is worth, it fails to disprove Mr. Bracebridge's conclusion.

Said by some to have been Dr. Johnson, because Shiels, who wrote the greater part of the Lives for Cibber, was Dr. Johnson's amanuensis.

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