An account of the dates, &c., of Shakespeare's plays will follow this Life. Here, therefore, it need only be remarked that they extended over a space of less than twenty years (from 1592 to 1610?), during which time he had an active share in the management of the two theatres, and was also an actor for the whole or the greater part of it. He was, as we may well suppose, with Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and others, a member of the club instituted by Sir Walter Raleigh, and which met at the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street, in which street, it may be observed by the way, Milton was born during this period. Fuller has left us some account of the wit-combats that used to take place at the Mermaid between our poet and Ben Jonson.
The relations between Shakespeare and his family during this time are in a state of ambiguity, which no conjecture can fully clear up. There is not the slightest ground for supposing that he ever was on ill terms with his wife; and surely we have no right to suppose that, like La Fontaine, he left her in the country while he himself lived in the metropolis; for Shakespeare was a householder, while La Fontaine lived usually in the hôtels of his patrons. The more natural supposition is that he would have removed his wife and children to London as soon as he had got a firm footing there. Certainly no entry of the birth of any child of his is to be found in the register of any London parish; but may not some physical change, with which we are unacquainted, have caused his wife to cease from childbearing after the birth of the twins? There is also no entry of this kind in the register of Stratford; and yet it can hardly be that he, any more than La Fontaine, abstained from the bed of his wife in the annual visits which, according to Aubrey's very probable account, he was in the habit of making to his native town. But the burial of his son Hamnet took place in Stratford on the 11th of August, 1596, whence it might appear that the family was living there at that time. To this, however, it may be replied that the family, though usually resident in London, may have been down at Stratford when Hamnet took ill, or that he may have taken ill in London and have been ordered by the physicians to try the effect of his native air, or that, finally, he may have died in London, and his body have been taken down to Stratford for interment with his family, an act quite in character with Shakespeare. The mist, therefore, remains so far undispelled. But we are also to remember that Shakespeare, as above stated, was a householder in London, which might seem to intimate that he had a family there. It is to me a matter of extreme difficulty to believe that he who created so many of the loveliest female characters that the world has ever witnessed, should have led, as, we may say, he otherwise must have done, an irregular life with regard to the sex; for the effect of such conduct is almost always a degrading view of female nature; and how pure on this subject his ideas must always have been is strongly indicated by the circumstance that three of his most lovely female characters—Perdita, Miranda, Imogen—occur in the very last plays he wrote. We may here note the difference between him and La Fontaine. On the whole, then, my opinion is that Shakespeare had his wife and children with him in London, and that his life there was as regular and domestic as his profession permitted.
It has been argued, from a passage in Twelfth Night, in which a man is advised always to marry a woman younger than himself, that Shakespeare had felt the evil consequences of the opposite course. But surely we should not press thus closely language resulting from the situation of a character in a drama. And if Shakespeare was so convinced of the ill consequences of such a procedure, how came it that only a few months before his death he gave an apparently cheerful consent to the marriage of his daughter Judith with Thomas Quiney, who was four years her junior? This objection, then, also may be dismissed, and we remain as uncertain as ever.
We may also venture to deal in a similar way with a passage in the Tempest (iv. 1.), condemnatory of the conduct which he and his wife had pursued before their marriage. Further, as the only mention of his wife in his will is an interlineation, bequeathing her his "second best bed, with the furniture," a want of due regard for her comfort and independence has been inferred. But this in reality is rather indicative of affection; for, as Mr. Knight was the first to observe, as his property was mostly freehold, the law provided for her by assigning her what it terms dower. Lastly, the desire which Mrs. Shakespeare is said to have expressed to be buried with her husband is surely some proof of mutual affection.
It would also seem to be a matter of which there can be little doubt, that Shakespeare must have been an indefatigable reader during the first years of his residence in London. It is strange how none of the commentators appear to have been aware of this fact; for it is the only way of accounting for the remarkable copiousness of his vocabulary. Max Müller, following Professor Marsh, in his Lectures on the Science of Language, having observed, on the authority of a country clergyman, that some of our peasantry have not more than 300 words in their vocabulary, proceeds as follows:—
"A well-educated person in England, who has been at a public school and at the university, who reads his Bible, his Shakespeare, the Times, and all the books of Mudie's Library, seldom uses more than about 3000 or 4000 words in actual conversation. Accurate thinkers and close reasoners, who avoid vague and general expressions, and wait till they find the word that exactly fits their meaning, employ a larger stock; and eloquent speakers may rise to a command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words; Milton's works are built up with about 8000; and the Old Testament says all that it has to say with 5642 words."
Now how else but by reading could Shakespeare have got such a store of words? It could not be by conversation, and he surely did not invent more than a few of them. This also tends to prove that Venus and Adonis was not written at Stratford; for his rural vocabulary could hardly have sufficed for such a poem.
But further, I think I am justified in asserting that during the earlier years of his dramatic career Shakespeare acquired a competent knowledge of the French and Italian languages. As we shall see, some of his plays were founded on Italian tales and plays of which no translation has ever been discovered; and the natural inference then is, that he had read them in the original. As to the French, he must have been able to write as well as read it. As a proof, in his Henry V. there are scenes of mingled French and English, which scenes are, like all the prose scenes in our old dramatists, in what I have denominated metric prose; and this could only be caused by the whole scene having been the production of the one mind. The French, too, is incorrect, as it is also in the really prose French scene between Katherine and Alice. It seems therefore probable in the highest degree that Shakespeare was able to write French. In like manner Ben Jonson has shown in his Alchemist and elsewhere, that he was able to write Spanish and other languages.
Another curious question is, Was Shakespeare ever out of England? This, too, cannot be determined; but it is clear to me, from various passages of his plays, that he must have been familiar with the sea-shore; and, from his correct use of nautical terms, we might suspect that he had been at sea on board a ship once, if not oftener. I cannot see any equal proof of his having been familiar with mountain scenery; and from the comparative vagueness of his language respecting mountains in Cymbeline and elsewhere, I rather suspect that he had never gazed on a mountain-range.
In 1597, the year after he had lost his only son, Shakespeare began to carry into effect his long-cherished project of acquiring property in his native county. For the seemingly trifling sum of £60 he purchased from William Underhill one of the best houses in the town of Stratford, named New Place, built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry VII., consisting of one messuage, two barns, and two gardens, with their appurtenances. It was situated in Chapel-street Ward; and as, in a note taken of corn and malt during a dearth in the beginning of the following year, we find him set down as the holder of ten quarters, it would appear that his family, if not he himself, must have been residing at that time in this place.