--Obituary.

[209] _Notes and Queries_, Fifth Series, VII. 287. But she had no
children, as proved both by the registers and the wills. She was Sir
John Barnard's second wife.

[210] _Ibid._, 519. Smith really descended from the Harts.

CHAPTER X

COLLATERALS

John Shakespeare had other sons than William. There were three--Gilbert,
Richard and Edmund. These all died comparatively young, and none of them
was married.

Edmund, the youngest child of John and Mary Shakespeare, seems to have
been the only one who followed his eldest brother to London. He also
chose the stage as a profession, but we never hear of any success. From
London registers we know that on August 12, 1607, in the parish of St.
Giles', Cripplegate, was buried "Edward, the base-born son of Edward
Shakespeare, Player," and that on December 31 of the same year was
buried within the Church of St. Saviour's, Southwark,[211] "Edmund
Shakespeare, Player," "with a forenoon knell of the Great Bell."[212]
The poet paid every honour he could to his brother.

Gilbert, born two and a half years after William, seemed often to have
been his practical helper and representative in Stratford-on-Avon. Some
writers have imagined that because the clerk added the word "adolescens"
to the burial entry in 1611 of "Gilbert Shakespeare,"[213] that it could
not have been this Gilbert, but some other, probably a young son of his.
But there is no record of a marriage, of the birth of any child, of the
death of his wife, or of his own death, if this entry be given another
translation than the natural one. We may well imagine the clerk did not
fully understand the meaning of the word. Shakespeare often satirizes
the ignorant use of learned terms at his time. There is no saying what
hazy notions might have floated through the writer's brain of the age or
position of the defunct. He would be no worse than a Mrs. Malaprop if he
intended "adolescens" to represent "deeply regretted."

Of the last surviving brother, Richard, born 1573, we know nothing,
except that he died February 12, in the year 1612-13.[214]

The negative evidence of the registers is supported by the negative
evidence of the Shakespeare wills; there is no mention of a Shakespeare
in the wills of William Shakespeare (so anxious to perpetuate his family
and his name) or in those of his descendants.

We may therefore hold it as proved that there are no collateral lines of
Shakespeares descending from the