Instead of a pippin hath throwne me an apple;
But as for an apple he hath cast a crab,
So instead of an honest woman God hath sent him a drab.'
'The people,' says the relator, 'laughed heartily; for the fellow had a quean to his wife.'"[66:A]
Shakspeare was now, to all appearance, settled in the country; he was carrying on his own and his father's business; he was married and had a family around him; a situation in which the comforts of domestic privacy might be predicted within his reach, but which augured little of that splendid destiny, that universal fame and unparalleled celebrity, which awaited his future career.
In adherence, therefore, to the plan, which we have announced, of connecting the circumstances of the times with our author's life, we have chosen this period of it, as admirably adapted for the introduction of a survey of country life and manners, its customs, diversions and superstitions, as they existed in the age of Shakspeare. These, therefore, will be the subject of the immediately following chapters, in which it shall be our particular aim, among the numerous authorities to which we shall be obliged to have recourse, to draw from the poet himself those passages which throw light upon the topics as they rise to view; an arrangement which, when it shall have been carried, in all its various branches, through the work, will clearly show, that from Shakspeare, more than from any other poet, is to be collected the history of the times in which he lived, so far as that history relates to popular usage and amusement.
FOOTNOTES:
[59:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 139. note 4.
[60:A] "Heere Lyeth Interrid The Bodye of Anne, Wife of Mr. William Shakespeare, Who Depted. This Life The 6th Day of Avgvst, 1623, Being of The Age of 67 Yeares."—Wheler's Stratford, p. 76.