Whereupon, had you been the lordly knight you might have said, "And who might your father be, little one?" Or had you been the low-down tramping tinker you would probably have grunted out: "Hoi, zurs! An' who be'est yure feythur, lad?"
To either of which questions that small boy on the bridge would have answered in some surprise—for he supposed that, surely, all men knew his father—"Why, Master William Shakespeare, the player in London."
For that little river is the Avon; that small bridge of arches is Clopton's mill-bridge, that small boy is Hamnet, the only son of Master William Shakespeare, of Henley Street, in Stratford-on-Avon. And in the year 1595 the name of William Shakespeare was already known in London as one of the Lord Chamberlain's company of actors, and a writer of masterly poems and plays.
Perhaps if you were the tinker, you might be tired enough with your tramping to throw off your pack, and, sitting upon it, to talk with the little lad; or, if you were the knight, it might please your worship to breathe your horse upon the bridge and hold a moment's converse with the child.
Were you tinker or knight the time would not be misspent, for you would find young Hamnet Shakespeare most entertaining.
He would tell you of his twin sister Judith—something of a "tomboy," I fear, but a pretty and lovable little girl, nevertheless. And as Hamnet told you about Judith, you would remember—no, you would not, though, for neither tinker nor knight nor any other Englishman of 1595 knew what we do to-day of Shakespeare's plays; but if you should happen to have a dream of the little fellow now, you might remember that Shakespeare's twins must have been often in the great writer's mind; for they stole into his work repeatedly in such shapes as that charming brother and sister of his Twelfth Night—Sebastian and Viola—
"An apple cleft in two is not more twin
Than these two creatures,"
or the twin brothers Antipholus of Ephesus and Syracuse, and those very, very funny twin brothers of the Comedy of Errors, forever famous as the Two Dromios.
And if young Hamnet told you of his sister he would tell you, doubtless, of his grandfather who was once the bailiff or head man of Stratford town, and who lived with them in the little house in Henley Street; and especially would he tell you of his own dear father, Master William Shakespeare, who wrote poems and plays, and had even acted, at the last Christmas-time, before her Majesty the Queen in her palace at Greenwich. For you may be sure boy Hamnet was very proud of this—thinking more of it, no doubt, than of all the poems and plays his father had written.
Then, perhaps, you could lead the boy to tell you about himself. He might tell you how he liked his school—if he did like it; for perhaps, like his father's schoolboy, he did sometimes go