atford as soon as
there was a demand for them. Legends are a stupid man's excuse for his
want of understanding. They are not evidence. Setting aside the legends,
the lies, the surmises and the imputations, several uninteresting things
are certainly known about him.

We know that he was the first son and third child of John Shakespeare, a
country trader settled at Stratford, and of Mary his wife; that he was
baptised on the 26th April, 1564; and that in 1582 he got with child a
woman named Anne or Agnes Hathaway, eight years older than himself. Her
relatives saw to it that he married her. A daughter (Susanna) was born
to him in May 1583, less than six months after the marriage. In January
1585 twins were born to him, a son (Hamnet, who died in 1596) and a
daughter (Judith).

At this point he disappears. Legend, written down from a hundred to a
hundred and sixty years after the event, says that he was driven out of
the county for poaching, that he was a country school-master, that he
made a "very bitter" ballad upon a landlord, that he tramped to London,
that he held horses outside the theatre doors, and that at last he was
received into a theatrical company "in a very mean rank." This is all
legend, not evidence. That he was a lawyer's clerk, a soldier in the Low
Countries, a seaman, or a printer, as some have written books to attempt
to show, is not evidence, nor legend, but wild surmise. It might be
urged, with as great likelihood, that he became a king, an ancient
Roman, a tapster or a brothel keeper.

It is fairly certain that the company which first received him was the
Earl of Leicester's company, then performing at The Theatre in
Shoreditch. The company changed its patron and its theatre several
times, but Shakespeare, having been admitted to it, stayed with it
throughout his theatrical career. He acted with it at The Theatre, at
the Rose and Globe Theatres, at the Court, at the Inns of Court, and
possibly on many stages in the provinces. For many years he professed
the quality of actor. Legend says that he acted well in what are called
"character parts." Soon after his entrance into the profession he began
to show a talent for improving the plays of others.

Nothing interesting is known of his subsequent life, except that he
wrote great poetry and made money by it. It is plain that he was a
shrewd, careful, and capable man of affairs, and that he cared, as all
wise men care, for rank and an honourable state.