A Hannah[360] Shakespeare, born 1777, is mentioned in the pedigree of Esterby and Sootheran.
Henry Shakespear, of London, was a broker Loriner, 1775, connected with Hertford (see p. 137).
On June 29, 1794, was baptized Joshua,[361] son of Thomas and Ann Shakespeare.
A warm eulogy of the charity and virtues of William Shakespeare, Esq., of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, who died in January, 1799, aged seventy-three, is given in the Gentleman's Magazine[362] of that date; and in May of the same year the death is noticed, in Paddington, of George Shakespeare, Esq., son of the late George Shakespeare, Esq., of Walton-upon-Thames, and Pimlico, Middlesex.[363]
M. L. Jeny, in L'Intermédiaire, March 25, 1889, states that "he had read in L'Abeille du Cher of Friday, November 18, 1836, that a poor old man of seventy-seven, named George Shakspeare, was found dying with cold and hunger in the middle of the frightful night of Wednesday preceding, in Clarence Street, London, and was taken to the Hospital, and died there. He was one of the poet's descendants."[364]
So late as November, 1880, there was a Mrs. Anne Shakespeare who died at Brighton, aged 102.[365]
There are several American branches of Shakespeares, some of them literary, and two of the name are settled in Vancouver's Island.[366]
Among the list of authors[367] we find the names of Alexander Shakespear, on the "North-West Provinces of India," 1848; Edward Shakespear, "A Book of Divinity," 1740; and Sophia Shakespear, 1753, a biography; Henry Shakespear, "Province of Bengal," 1824, and "Wild Sports of India," 1860; H. W. Shakespear's "Refutation of Mr. Tryon," 1847; John Shakespear's Hindustani books; Emily Shakespeare's "Tennyson Birthday Book," 1877; and Mrs. O. Shakespear, a novel, in 1895. Edward O. Shakespeare, of Washington, U.S.A., has a medical work on "Inflammation."
Mr. Russell French, from whose pages I have gleaned the bulk of the facts concerning these modern Shakespeares, expatiates on the glories of the later Shakespeare marriages. By the Currie alliance he traces back descent to the royal Scottish families of the Bruces and the Stewarts; by the Talbot alliance he traces back their pedigree to Edward I.; by the Davenport alliance he again connects them with the Ardens, through Sir Thomas Leighton and the eighth Lord Zouch, who married Joan, daughter of Sir John Denham, by his wife Joan, daughter and heir of Sir Richard Archer, who married Joan, the second daughter and coheir of Giles de Arden, grandson of Sir Robert de Arden, the descendant of Turchil; but these rather tend to glorify the modern branches than the poet's name.
It were to be desired that there were more concerted study of registers and other records concerning the name. Much more might thus be found, and much of the energy now dissipated in futile searches might be utilized in connecting the scattered links, because the study of genealogy is the ancient form of the very modern inquiries into heredity which interest so many followers of Mr. Francis Galton. It is after all worth knowing who were the ancestors of William Shakespeare, what heroic, chivalric, poetic, philosophic strains went to form the nature of the perfect poet; and it is of mildly sentimental interest to us that we should know whether any of his line is left on the earth. Of sentimental interest, I say, for rarely, if ever, does genius repeat itself, nor do different environing circumstances weld and mould genius in the same way. Its nature is very easy to kill, or dwarf, or distort, but it is our excuse for being concerned with those who bear the honoured name.