stories of
heroic deeds. At home great political, religious, and scientific
movements engaged the attention of the more serious readers and
thinkers. It is not strange, therefore, that the writers of plays,
whose {2} most exciting incidents were tavern brawls or imprisonment
for rash satire of the government, found no biographer. After
Shakespeare's death, moreover, the theater rapidly fell into disrepute,
and many a good story of the playhouse fell under the ban of polite
conversation, and was lost.

Under such conditions we cannot wonder that we know so little of
Shakespeare, and that we must go to town records, cases at law, and
book registers for our knowledge. Thanks to the diligence of modern
scholars, however, we know much more of Shakespeare than of most of his
fellow-actors and playwrights. The life of Christopher Marlowe,
Shakespeare's great predecessor, is almost unknown; and of John
Fletcher, Shakespeare's great contemporary and successor, it is not
even known whether he was married, or when he began to write plays.
Yet his father was Bishop of London, and in high favor with Queen
Elizabeth. We ought rather to wonder at the good fortune which has
preserved for us, however scanty in details or lacking in the authority
of its traditions, a continuous record of the life of William
Shakespeare from birth to death.

+Stratford+.--The notice of baptism on April 26, 1564, of William, son
of John Shakespeare, appears in the church records of Stratford-on-Avon
in Warwickshire. Stratford was then a market town of about fifteen
hundred souls. Under Stratford Market Cross the farmers of northern
Warwickshire and of the near-lying portions of Worcestershire,
Gloucestershire, and Oxfordshire carried on a brisk trade with the
thrifty townspeople. The citizens were accustomed to boast {3} of
their beautiful church by the river, and of the fine Guildhall, where
sometimes plays were given by traveling companies. Many of their
gable-roofed houses of timber, or timber and plaster, are still to be
found on the pleasant old streets. The river Avon winds round the town
in a broad reach under the many-arched bridge to the ancient church.
Beyond it the rich pasture land rises up to green wooded hills. Not
far away is the famous Warwick Castle, and a little beyond it
Kenilworth, where Queen Elizabeth was entertained by the Earl of
Leicester with great festivities in 1575. Coventry and Rugby are the
nearest towns.

+