CHAPTER III.
SHAKSPEARE, AFTER LEAVING SCHOOL, FOLLOWS HIS FATHER'S TRADE—STATEMENT OF AUBREY—PROBABLY PRESENT IN HIS TWELFTH YEAR, AT KENELWORTH, WHEN ELIZABETH VISITED THE EARL OF LEICESTER—TRADITION OF AUBREY CONCERNING HIM—WHETHER THERE IS REASON TO SUPPOSE THAT, AFTER LEAVING HIS FATHER, HE WAS PLACED IN AN ATTORNEY'S OFFICE WHO WAS LIKEWISE SENESCHAL OR STEWARD OF SOME MANOR—ANECDOTES OF SHAKSPEARE—ALLUSIONS IN HIS WORKS TO BARTON, WILNECOTTE AND BARSTON, VILLAGES IN WARWICKSHIRE—EARTHQUAKE IN 1580 ALLUDED TO—WHETHER, AFTER LEAVING SCHOOL, HE ACQUIRED ANY KNOWLEDGE OF THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN LANGUAGES.
That Shakspeare, when taken from the free-school of Stratford, became an assistant to his father in the wool-trade, has been the general opinion of his biographers from the period of Mr. Rowe, who first published the tradition in 1709, to the present day. The anecdote was probably collected by Mr. Betterton the player, who visited Stratford in order to procure intelligence relative to his favourite poet, and from whom Mr. Rowe professes to have derived the greater part of his information.[34:A] A few incidental circumstances tend also to strengthen the account that both father and son were engaged in this employment, and, for a time, together: in the first place, we may mention the discovery already noticed of the arms of the merchants of the wool-staple on a window of the house in which the poet was born[34:B]; secondly, the almost certain conclusion that the poverty of John Shakspeare, which we know to have been considerable in 1579,
would naturally incline him to require the assistance of his son, in the only way in which, at that time, he could be serviceable to him; and thirdly, we may adduce the following passages from the works of our Dramatist, which seem to imply a more than theoretic intimacy with his father's business. In the Winter's Tale, the Clown exclaims,
"Let me see:—Every 'leven wether—tods; every tod yields—pound and odd shilling: fifteen hundred shorn,—What comes the wool to?"
Act IV. Scene 2.
Upon this passage Dr. Farmer remarks, "that to tod is used as a verb by dealers in wool; thus, they say, 'Twenty sheep ought to tod fifty pounds of wool,' &c. The meaning, therefore, of the Clown's words is, 'Every eleven wether tods; i. e. will produce a tod, or twenty-eight pounds of wool; every tod yields a pound and some odd shillings; what then will the wool of fifteen hundred yield?'"
"The occupation of his father," subjoins Mr. Malone, "furnished our poet with accurate knowledge on this subject; for two pounds and a half of wool is, I am told, a very good produce from a sheep at the time of shearing."
"Every 'leven wether—tods," adds Mr. Ritson, "has been rightly expounded to mean that the wool of eleven sheep would weigh a tod, or 28lb. Each fleece would, therefore, be 2lb. 8oz. 11-1/2dr., and the whole produce of fifteen hundred shorn 136 tod, 1 clove, 2lb. 6oz. 2dr. which at pound and odd shilling per tod, would yield 143l. 3s. 0d. Our author was too familiar with the subject to be suspected of inaccuracy.
"Indeed it appears from Stafford's Breefe Conceipte of English Pollicye, 1581, p. 16, that the price of a tod of wool was at that period twenty or two and twenty shillings: so that the medium price was exactly 'pound and odd shilling.'"[35:A]