D TRADITIONS

In the time of Shakespeare, the fashion of writing lives of men of
letters had not yet arisen. The art of biography could hardly be said to
be even in its infancy, for the most notable early examples, such as the
lives of Wolsey by Cavendish and of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law in
the sixteenth century, and Walton's handful in the seventeenth, are far
from what the present age regards as scientific biography. The
preservation of official records makes it possible for the modern
scholar to reconstruct with considerable fullness the careers of public
men; but in the case of Shakespeare, as of others of his profession, we
must needs be content with a few scrappy documents, supplemented by oral
traditions of varying degrees of authenticity. About Shakespeare himself
it must be allowed that we have been able to learn more than about most
of his fellow dramatists and actors.

In a matter which has been the subject of so much controversy, it may
be an aid to clearness if the facts established by contemporary
documents be first related, and the less trustworthy reports added
later. The first indubitable item is trivial and unsavory enough. In
April, 1552, a certain John Shakespeare, residing in Henley Street,
Stratford-on-Avon, in the county of Warwick, was fined twelvepence for
failing to remove a heap of filth from before his door. This John, who
shared his surname with a multitude of other Shakespeares in the England
and especially in the Warwickshire of his time, appears, without
reasonable doubt, to have been the father of the poet. He is described
in later tradition as a glover and as a butcher; the truth seems to be
that he did a miscellaneous business in farm products. For twenty years
or more after this first record he prospered, rising through various
petty municipal offices to the position of bailiff, or mayor, of the
town in 1568. His fortunes must have been notably improved by his
marriage, for the Mary Arden whom he wedded in 1557 was the daughter of
a well-to-do farmer, Robert Arden, who bequeathed her L6 13_s._ 4_d._ in
money and a house with fifty acres of land.

To John and Mary Shakespeare was born a son William, whose baptism was
registered in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford on April 26,
1564. He was their eldest son, two daughters previously born being
already dead. Their other children were Gilbert, Joan, Anna, Richard,
and Edmund. The precise day of William's birth is unk