St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 13, May 1886, No. 7. / An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks

THE CENTURY CO. NEW YORK. F. WARNE & CO., LONDON. Copyright, 1886, by The Century Co. The de Vinne Press.


IN SPRING-TIME—WHEN SHAKSPERE WAS A BOY. (SEE PAGE 490.)

On Henley street, in quiet Stratford town, there stands an old half-timbered house. The panels between the dark beams are of soft-colored yellow plaster. The windows are filled with little diamond panes; and in one of the upper rooms they are guarded with fine wire outside the old glass, which is misty with innumerable names scratched all over it. Poets and princes, wise men and foolish, have scrawled their names after a silly fashion, on windows, wall, and ceiling of that oak-floored room, because, on the 22d of April, 1564, a baby was born there—the son of John and Mary Shakspere. And on the following Wednesday, April 26, the baby was carried down to the old church beside the sleepy Avon and baptized by the name of William.
Little did John Shakspere and the gossips dream, when the baby William's name was duly inscribed in the register-book with its corners and clasps of embossed brass, that he was destined to become England's greatest poet. Little did they dream, honest folk, that the old market town and the house on Henley street and the meadows across the river, covered in that pleasant April month with cowslips and daisies and lady-smocks all silver-white, would become sacred ground to hundreds of thousands of people from all quarters of the globe, who should come, year by year, on reverent pilgrimage to Shakspere's birthplace.
The baby grew up as most babies do; and when he was two and a half years old, a little brother Gilbert was born. As we walk through the streets to-day, we can fancy the little lads toddling about the town together, while father John was minding his glove and wool trade at the old house. John Shakspere, in those early days, was a well-to-do man. He was a chamberlain of the borough when little Gilbert was born; and in 1568 he was elected High Bailiff, or Mayor, of Stratford, although he, in common with many of his fellow-burgesses, could not write his own name. He had land, too, at Snitterfield, where his father had lived; and his wife, Mary Arden, was the owner of Ashbies, the farm at Wilmcote, hard by.