troop of Morris-dancers, who went about from
village to village, strangely dressed, to dance at all the feasts.
Shakspere probably had the Marston dancers in his mind when he wrote of
the "three carters, three shepherds, three neat-herds, three
swine-herds," that made themselves all "men of hair," and called
themselves "Saltiers," at the sheep-shearing feast which pretty Perdita
presided over, in "The Winter's Tale." The sheep-shearing feast, which
came when roses were out on the hedges and in the gardens, must have
been a merry and important time for the Shakspere boys. John Shakspere
was, of course, specially interested in the price of a tod of wool, for
wool-stapling was part of his trade. Perhaps William himself was sent by
his mother to buy the groceries for the feast, and stood conning the
list as he makes the clown do, in "The Winter's Tale."

In the spring-time, too, came the peddler with all his wonders and
treasures:

"Lawn as white as driven snow;
Cypress black as e'er was crow;
Gloves as sweet as damask roses;
Masks for faces and for noses."

Those last must have pleased the little boys more than all the rest of
the peddler's goods. And perhaps it was from this very peddler that Will
Shakspere bought the pair of gloves which, after the fashion of the day,
he gave to Anne Hathaway at their betrothal.

But the great event of the year in the quiet country town was Stratford
"Mop" or statute fair, on the 12th of October. The market-place was
filled, as it is to this day, with clowns and mountebanks, wrestlers,
and rope-dancers at their "rope-tricks." Oxen and sheep were roasted
whole. A roaring trade was driven by quack doctors and dentists. All the
servants in the country came and stood around to be hired, as the
farm-hands and the maids for the farm-houses still do--the carters with
a bit of whipcord in their hats; the shepherds with a lock of wool; the
laborers with a straw. And next day, we need not doubt, there were many
candidates for the town stocks, as there are now for the police court.
There were bear-baitings, too, and bull-baitings--those cruel sports
which have only been abolished in Warwickshire within the last hundred
years. But in Shakspere's day bear-baiting was a popular and refined
amusement. During Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth, in 1575, there
was a great bear-baiting in her honor, of which a curious and most
sickening account still exists. And when Shakspere wen