been so prolific of fictitious genealogies that this claim is open to suspicion; what is certain is the substantial character of the poet's ancestors, their long residence in Warwickshire, and the fact that some of them were farmers, land-renters, and land-owners. The grandfather of the poet was probably Richard Shakespeare, a farmer who lived within easy walking distance of Stratford. John Shakespeare removed to Stratford about the middle of the sixteenth century, and became a trader in all manner of farm produce. Then, as now, malt and corn were staple articles of commerce in Stratford; John Shakespeare dealt in these and in wool, skins, meat, and leather. He has been called a glover and a butcher; he was both, and had several other vocations besides.

Henley Street was then one of the thoroughfares of Stratford, and got its name from the fact that it led to Henley-on-Avon, a market town of local importance. That John Shakespeare was an active man of affairs, with a keen instinct for business, if not with a sound judgment, is clear, not only from the variety and number of his business interests, but from the frequency of the suits for the recovery of small debts in which he appeared. His early ventures were successful, and he soon became a man of substance and influence. His prosperity was increased by his marriage, in 1557, to Mary Arden, the youngest daughter of a well-to-do farmer of Wilmcote, not far from Stratford. She brought her husband a house and fifty acres of land, some money, and other forms of property. During the year before his marriage John Shakespeare had

purchased the house, with a garden, in Henley Street, which is now accepted as the birthplace of the poet. In the following year his growing influence was evidenced by his election as a tester of the quality of bread and of malt liquors. Various public duties were devolved upon him. He was elected a burgess or member of the town council; he became a chamberlain of the borough; and later was advanced to the highest position in the gift of the municipality, that of Bailiff. There were two daughters who died in infancy; then came the first son, William, who was christened, the parish register tells us, on the 26th day of April, 1564. The custom of the time with regard to the interval between birth and baptism was so well settled that there seems no reason to doubt that the poet was born on the 22d or 23d of the month. There were then two detached houses standing in Henley Street where the present house now stands; tradition assigns the house to the west as the place of the poet's birth. This house finally came into the possession, by the bequest of the poet's granddaughter, of the family of his sister Joan Hart, and until 1806 was occupied by them; the adjoining house to the east was let as an inn. In 1846 both houses were secured for preservation, restored as far as possible to the condition in which they were in the poet's time, joined in a single structure, and made one of the most interesting museums in the world. In this structure there is every reason to believe that Shakespeare was born. The continued possession of the part which was once the western house by the poet's kinsfolk was probably

the basis for a tradition which runs back for an indefi

nite period.

The Birthplace, as it is called, is a cottage of plaster and timber, two stories in height, with dormer windows, and a pleasant garden in the rear-all that remains of a considerable piece of land. It stands upon the street, and the visitor passes at once, through a little porch, into a low room, ceiled with black oak, paved with flags, and with a fireplace so wide that one sees at a glance what the chimney-corner once meant of comfort and cheer. On those seats, looking into the glowing fire, the imagination of a boy could hardly fail to kindle. A dark and narrow stair leads to the little bare room on the floor above in which Shakespeare was probably born. The place seems fitted, by its very simplicity, to serve as the starting-point for so great a career. There is a small fireplace; the low ceiling is within reach of the hand; on the narrow panes of glass which fill the casement names and initials are traced in irregular profusion. This room has been a place eagerly sought by literary pilgrims since the beginning of the century. The low ceiling and the walls were covered, in the early part of the century, with innumerable autographs. In 1820 the occupant, a woman who attached great importance to the privilege of showing the house to visitors, was compelled to give up that privilege, and, by way of revenge, removed the furniture and whitewashed the walls of the house. A part of the wall of the upper room escaped the sacrilegious hand of the jealous custodian, and names running back to the third decade of the

last century are still to be found there. Other and perhaps more famous names have taken the places of those which were erased, and the walls are now a mass of hieroglyphs. Scott, Byron, Rogers, Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, have left this record of their interest in the room. No new names are now written on these blackened walls; the names of visitors are kept in a record-book on the lower floor.

In a small room behind the birth-room what is known as the Stratford portrait of the poet is shown. On the first floor, opening from the room into which the visitor enters, is a larger room in which are collected a number of very interesting articles connected with the poet. There are to be seen the deed which conveyed the property to his father; the letter in which Richard Quiney, whose son Thomas married the poet's youngest daughter, Judith, in 1616, asked him for a loan of money; the seal ring on which the letters W. S. are engraved; the desk which stood in the Grammar School three hundred years ago; and many other curiosities, memorials, documents, and books which find proper place in such a museum. the garden, sweet with the fragrant breath of summer, there are pansies and violets, columbines and rosemary, daisies and rue flowers which seem to belong to Shakespeare, since they bloom in the plays as if they first struck root in the rich soil of his imagination. This property, which remained continuously in the possession of Shakespeare's kin until the beginning of the present century, is now set apart forever, with the home of Anne Hathaway, the ground which the poet

In

purchased in 1597, and where he built his own home, and the adjoining house, as memorials of the poet's life in Stratford.

John Shakespeare prospered in private fortune and in public advancement for nearly a decade after the birth of the poet. His means were very considerable for the time and place, and as Bailiff and chief Alderman he was the civic head of the community. An ingenious attempt has been made to prove that he was a man of Puritan temper and associations; but the fact that he applied for a grant of arms, and that as Bailiff he welcomed the actors of the Earl of Worcester's Company and the Queen's Company to Stratford in 1568, would seem to indicate that, whatever his religious convictions and ecclesiastical tendencies may have been, he did not share the fanatical temper of some of his contemporaries.

The child William, then four years old, may have seen these companies, bravely dressed, with banners flying, drums beating, and trumpeters sounding their ringing tones, riding over Clopton bridge and halting in the market-place where High and Bridge Streets intersect, and where the market, with its belfry and clock, now stands. The players of the day led a wandering life, full of vicissitude, but, in fair weather and a hospitable community, they brought with them a visible if sometimes shabby suggestion of the great London world, which made their occasional coming into a quiet town like Stratford an unforgettable occurrence. The horses they rode were gayly caparisoned, the banners they carried were splendidly emblazoned