The allusion here to the maiden queen is not obscure. Spectacles like these must have had a wonderful effect on the mind of a boy in whom that imagination must even then have begun to play which afterwards became so rich and gorgeous. CHAPTER III. YOUTH TO MANHOOD. 1579-1586. Occupation of Shakespeare after leaving school-Was he apprenticed to a butcher?-Aubrey-Was he a schoolmaster?-Was he articled to an attorney? The Topers and Sippers of Bidford-Quartett ascribed to Shakespeare-His marriage-Its haste and secrecy-Anne HathawayThis union, whether or not a happy one. WE have no means of ascertaining the exact year in which Shakespeare left the grammar school of Stratford. It is stated by Rowe that "the narrowness of his father's circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language (Latin)." Although the evidence is conflicting, we think, on the whole, the proof conclusive, that about 1579 John Shakespeare's affairs were not in a flourishing condition. At or before this time he may have withdrawn his son from school, not so much from the expense of maintaining him, since the education was free, as that, finding he could not give him a learned education, he must needs send his son betimes to some other occupation. What calling the youthful Shakespeare followed after from his leaving school till the time he went to London is extremely uncertain. We may here insert some curious statements on this point, found in Aubrey's MSS. in the Ashmolean Museum. He says, "Mr. William Shakespear was born at Strat ford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick; his father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade; but when he killed a calf, he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech." There is, however, a slightly different version of the story. In 1693, a clerk of the parish church at Stratford, then eighty years old, affirmed, in pointing to his monument, that "this Shakespeare was formerly in this town bound apprentice to a butcher, but that he ran from his master to London." Probably Aubrey had this old clerk for his authority, and the point in which there is a variation of the stories, is most likely a fictitious addition of the narrators, to explain what the youth Shakespeare had to do with killing a calf. His father, as a yeoman, might kill his own calves, as other yeomen did, and there is certainly an air of truth about the story that William Shakespeare, in killing a calf, would do it in a high style, and make a speech.* This is just what we would expect from the dramatic turn of his mind, and the natural eloquence of his fluent tongue. It is very unlikely, however, that John Shakespeare was ever a butcher, or that his son was apprenticed to one. Another statement of Aubrey, for which he cites Mr. Beeston as his authority, is to the effect that, "though Shakespeare, as Ben Jonson says of him, had but little Latin and less Greek, he understood Latin pretty well; for he had been in his younger days a schoolmaster in * See, however, another hypothesis at page 81. |