SHAKESPEARE HOUSE, RESTORED
THE DWELLING-HOUSES OF THE TIME
The house in Henley Street in which William Shakespeare was probably born and spent his early years has undergone many changes; but, as carefully restored in recent years and reverently preserved for a national memorial of the poet, its appearance now is doubtless not materially different from what it was in the latter part of the 16th century.
There are a few houses of the same period and the same class still standing in Stratford and its vicinity, which, according to the highest antiquarian authority, are almost unaltered from their original form and finish. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps mentions one in particular in the Rother Market, "the main features of which are certainly in their original state," and the sketches of the interior given by him closely resemble those of the Shakespeare house.
These houses were usually of two stories, and were constructed of wooden beams, forming a framework, the spaces between the beams being filled with lath and plaster. The roofs were usually of thatch, with dormer windows and steep gables. The door was shaded by a porch or by a pentice, or penthouse, which was a narrow sloping roof often extending along the the front of the lower story over both door and windows, as in Shakespeare's birthplace on Henley Street.
In the Merchant of Venice (ii. 6. 1) Gratiano says:—
"This is the penthouse under which Lorenzo
Desired us to make stand."
In Much Ado About Nothing (iii. 3. 110) Borachio says to Conrade: "Stand thee close, then, under this penthouse, for it drizzles rain." We find a figurative allusion to the penthouse in Love's Labour's Lost (iii. 1. 17): "with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes"; and another in Macbeth (i. 3. 20):—