g his retirement, and
there must have been ample atonement for the trouble, in the way of
association with old friends who still laboured in the metropolis.

When the poet passed into voluntary retirement he had but five years to
live, but his genius was still ripe. Did he elect deliberately to end
his labours before the first touch of weakness could reach them? Had he
realised his ambition, even as Prospero, who moves with such supreme
dignity through the last play? Was he content to have restored the
family fortunes? Was it to do this, to take full rank among the
gentlemen of Warwickshire, that he had striven so long? There is no
satisfactory answer to these questions. The records are silent as the
grave itself, and if the past has proved so silent on all points that
relate to the growth and trend of the poet's mind outside the domain of
his work, what may we hope from the future?

CHAPTER XI

BACK AGAIN IN STRATFORD

In the foregoing review of the poet's life-work, the progress of his
fortunes on the material side has been of necessity overlooked. It would
have been confusing to deal with the two interests side by side, and now
it is time to look for the signs that mark William Shakespeare's
prosperity. We know that he came to London poor and left it
comparatively wealthy, and the change of his state has some very
definite landmarks. No man passes easily from the duties of an ostler to
the position of part proprietor of prosperous theatres, and the first
few years of Shakespeare's sojourn in the metropolis bore but little
fruit. We know that in those lean times his own purse would have been
but ill-lined, and both his father's household and his own were
suffering from the pinch of poverty. His wife was forced to borrow
money; his father's affairs went steadily from bad to worse. Nor was
there in all Stratford any help for a family that had fallen from
comparative affluence into the slough of financial troubles.

We may presume, from the scanty evidence which records have left and
diligent scholarship has discovered, that the poet himself made no
effort to "fling away ambition." In the early years of his sojourn in
London, when visits to Stratford were few and far between and the fear
of the Squire of Charlecote may have compelled him to lie very low
within the boundaries of Warwickshire, he would have seen or heard of
his father's affairs going from bad to worse. The parental honours were
stripped off o