ull in Shakespeare's veins, and who was the Norman
but the racial combination of the Norseman and the Gaul? In this light,
then, I suggest that the name Shakespeare seems to be much closer to the
Norman-French _Jacquespierre_ than it is to the Anglo-Saxon _saexberht_.
In the gradual transition of Norman-French into English pronunciation,
Shakespeare, or as the name was pronounced in Elizabethan days, Shaxper,
is exactly the form which the English tongue would have given to the
name _Jacquespierre_. It is significant that Arden, his mother's name,
is also of Norman origin; that his grandfather's name Richard, his
father's name John, his own name William, and the names of all his
brothers and sisters, but one, were Norman. In view of these
indications, it is not unreasonable to assume that Norman blood held
good proportion in the veins of this greatest of all Englishmen.

Exhaustive research by interested genealogists has failed to trace
Shakespeare's forebears further into the past than to his grandfather,
Richard Shakespeare, a substantial yeoman of Snitterfield, and this
relationship, while generally accepted, is not yet definitely
established. There is no doubt, however, that John Shakespeare, butcher,
glover, woolstapler, or corndealer, or all of these things combined, of
Stratford-upon-Avon, was his father, and that the poet was baptized in
the Parish Church of that town upon 26th April, in the year 1564. He was
born on, or shortly before, 23rd April in the same year.

Shakespeare's mother was Mary Arden, the youngest of eight daughters--by
the first wife--of Robert Arden, a landed gentleman of Wilmcote, related
to the Ardens of Parkhill, at that time one of the leading families of
Warwickshire.

On the theory that men of great intellectual capacity inherit their
qualities from the distaff side, it might help us to realise Shakespeare
better if we know more about his mother: of her personality and
character, however, we know absolutely nothing.

The mothers depicted by Shakespeare in his plays are, as a rule,
devoted, strong, and noble characters, and are probably in some measure
spiritual reflections of the model he knew most intimately. It is
improbable that Shakespeare's childhood should not have shown some
evidence of the qualities he later displayed, and impossible that such
promise should be hidden from a mother's eye.

The wealth of Shakespeare's productiveness in the three years preceding
the end of 159