The boy was christened by the name of Hamnet in compliment to his god-father Mr. Hamnet Sadler, and the girl was called Judith, from a similar deference to his wife, Mrs. Judith Sadler, who acted as her sponsor. Mr. Hamnet or Hamlet Sadler, for they were considered as synonymous names, and therefore used indiscriminately[65:A], appears to have been some relation of the Shakspeare family; he is one of the witnesses to Shakspeare's will, and is remembered in it in the following manner:—"Item, I give and bequeath to Hamlet Sadler twenty-six shillings eight-pence, to buy him a ring." Mr. Sadler died at Stratford in October 1624, and is supposed to have been born about the year 1550. His wife was buried there March 23. 1613-14, and Mr. Malone conjectures that our poet was probably god-father to their son William, who was baptized at Stratford, February 5. 1597-8.[65:B] In the Stratford Register are to be found entries of the baptism of six of Mr. Sadler's children, four sons and two daughters, William being the last but one.
An anecdote of Shakspeare, unappropriated to any particular period of his life, and which may with as much, if not more, probability, be ascribed to this stage of his biography, as to any subsequent era, has been preserved as a tradition at Stratford. A drunken blacksmith, with a carbuncled face, reeling up to Shakspeare, as he was leaning over a mercer's door, exclaimed, with much vociferation,
"Now, Mr. Shakspeare, tell me, if you can,
The difference between a youth and a young man:"
a question which immediately drew from our poet the following reply:
"Thou son of fire, with thy face like a maple,
The same difference as between a scalded and a coddled apple."
A part of the wit of this anecdote, which, says Mr. Malone, "was related near fifty years ago to a gentleman at Stratford, by a person then above eighty years of age, whose father might have been contemporary with Shakspeare," turns upon the comparison between the blacksmith's face and a species of maple, the bark of which, according to Evelyn, is uncommonly rough, and the grain undulated and crisped into a variety of curls.
It would appear, indeed, from a book published in 1611, under the title of Tarleton's Jeasts, that this fancied resemblance was a frequent source of sarcastic wit; for it is there recorded of this once celebrated comedian, that, "as he was performing some part 'at the Bull in Bishopsgate-street, where the Queen's players oftentimes played,' while he was 'kneeling down to aske his father's blessing,' a fellow in the gallery threw an apple at him, which hit him on the cheek. He immediately took up the apple, and, advancing to the audience, addressed them in these lines:
'Gentlemen, this fellow, with his face of mapple,