lines has been held to show that Shakspere denounced, with
peculiar solemnity, that impatience which waited not for
"all sanctimonious ceremonies." a But it must be remem-
bered that the solitary position of Ferdinand and Miranda
prevented even the solemnity of a betrothment; there could
be no witnesses of the public contract; it would be of the
nature of those privy contracts which the ministers of re-
ligion, early in the reign of Elizabeth, were commanded to
exhort young people to abstain from. The proper exercise
of that authority during half a century had not only re-
pressed these privy contracts, but had confined the ancient
practice of espousals, with their almost inevitable freedoms,
to persons in the lower ranks of life, who might be some-
what indifferent to opinion. A learned writer on the Com-
mon Prayer, Sparrow, holds that the Marriage Service of the
Church of England was both a betrothment and a marriage.
It united the two forms. At the commencement of the
service the man says, 66
I plight thee my troth;" and the
woman, "I give thee my troth." This form approaches as
nearly as possible to that of a civil contract; but then
comes the religious sanction to the obligation, the sacra-
ment of matrimony. In the form of espousals so minutely
recited by the priest in Twelfth Night,' he is only present
to seal the compact by his "testimony." The marriage
customs of Shakspere's youth and the opinions regarding
them might be very different from the practice and opinions
of thirty years later, when he wrote 'The Tempest.' But
in no case does he attempt to show, even through his lovers
themselves, that the public trothplight was other than a
preliminary to a more solemn and binding ceremonial, how-
ever it might approach to the character of a marriage. It
is remarkable that Webster, on the contrary, who was one
of Shakspere's later contemporaries, has made the heroine
of one of his noblest tragedies, 'The Duchess of Malfi,' in
the warmth of her affection for her steward, exclaim-

I have heard lawyers say, a contract in a chamber
Per verba præsenti is absolute marriage."

a Life of Shakspeare by Mr. de Quincey, in the 'Encyclopædia Britan

nica.'

This is an allusion to the distinctions of the canon law between betrothing and marrying-the betrothment being espousals with the verba de futuro; the marriage, espousals with the verba de præsenti. The Duchess of Malfi had misinterpreted the lawyers when she believed that a secret "contract in a chamber" was absolute marriage," whether the engagement was for the present or the future.

It is scarcely necessary to point out to our readers that the view we have taken presupposes that the licence for matrimony, obtained from the Consistorial Court at Worcester, was a permission sought for under no extraordinary circumstances;-still less that the young man who was about to marry was compelled to urge on the marriage as a consequence of previous imprudence. We believe, on the contrary, that the course pursued was strictly in accordance with the customs of the time, and of the class to which Shakspere belonged. The espousals before witnesses, we have no doubt, were then considered as constituting a valid marriage, if followed up within a limited time by the marriage of the Church. However the Reformed Church might have endeavoured to abrogate this practice, it was unquestionably the ancient habit of the people. It was derived from the Roman law, the foundation of many of our institutions. It prevailed for a long period without offence. It still prevails in the Lutheran Church. We are not to judge of the customs of those days by our own, especially if our inferences have the effect of imputing criminality where the most perfect innocence existed. Because Shakspere's marriage-bond is dated in November, 1582, and his daughter is born in May, 1583, we are not to believe that here was "haste and secrecy." Mr. Halliwell has brought sound documentary evidence to bear upon this question; he has shown that the two bondsmen, Sandels and Richardson, were respectable neighbours of the Hathaways of Shottery, although, like Anne herself, they are described as of Stratford. This disposes of the “ secrecy." In the same year that Shakspere was married, Mr. Halliwell has shown that there were two entries in the Stratford Register, recording the church rite of marriage to have preceded the baptism of a child, by shorter periods than indicated by Shakspere's

marriage-bond; and that in cases where the sacredness of the marriage has been kept out of view, illegitimacy is invariably noted in these registers. The "haste" was evidently not required in fear of the scandal of Stratford. We believe that the course pursued was strictly in accordance with the custom of the time, and of the class to which the Shaksperes and Hathaways belonged.

CHAPTER VI.

"THIS William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about eighteen, and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and did act exceedingly well. Now Ben Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor. He began early to make Essays at Dramatic Poetry, which at that time was very low, and his plays took well." So writes honest Aubrey, in the year 1680, in his 'Minutes of Lives' addressed to his "worthy friend Mr. Anthony à Wood, Antiquary of Oxford." Of the value of Aubrey's evidence we may form some opinion from his own statement to his friend:-""T is a task that I never thought to have undertaken till you imposed it upon me, saying that I was fit for it by reason of my general acquaintance, having now not only lived above half a century of years in the world, but have also been much tumbled up and down in it; which hath made me so well known. Besides the modern advantage of coffee-houses in this great city, before which men knew not how to be acquainted but with their own relations or societies, I might add that I come of a longævous race, by which means I have wiped some feathers off the wings of time for several generations, which does reach high." a It must not be forgotten that Aubrey's account of Shakspere, brief and imperfect as it is, is the earliest known to exist. Rowe's 'Life' was not published

a This letter, which accompanies the 'Lives, is dated London, June 15, 1680.

66

till 1707; and although he states that he must own a particular obligation to Betterton, the actor, for the most considerable part of the passages relating to this Life—“ his veneration for the memory of Shakspeare having engaged him to make a journey into Warwickshire on purpose to gather up what remains he could of a name for which he had so great a veneration"- -we have no assistance in fixing the date of Betterton's inquiries. Betterton was born in 1635. From the Restoration until his retirement from the stage, about 1700, he was the most deservedly popular actor of his time; "such an actor," says 'The Tatler,' as ought to be recorded with the same respect as Roscius among the Romans." He died in 1710; and looking at his busy life, it is probable that he did not make this journey into Warwickshire until after his retirement from the theatre. Had he set about these inquiries earlier, there can be little doubt that the 'Life' by Rowe would have contained more precise and satisfactory information. Shakspere's sister was alive in 1646; his eldest daughter, Mrs. Hall, in 1649; his second daughter, Mrs. Quiney, in 1662; and his grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, in 1670. The information which might be collected in Warwickshire, after the death of Shakspere's lineal descendants, would necessarily be mixed up with traditions, having for the most part some foundation, but coloured and distorted by that general love of the marvellous which too often hides the fact itself in the inference from it. Thus, Shakspere's father might have sold his own meat, as the landowners of his time are reproached by Harrison for doing, and yet in no proper sense of the word have been a butcher. Thus, the supposition that the poet had intended to satirise the Lucy family, in an allusion to their arms, might have suggested that there was a grudge between him and the knight; and what so likely a subject of dispute as the killing of venison? The tradition might have been exact as to the dispute; but the laws of another century could alone have suggested that the quarrel would compel the poet to fly the country. Aubrey's story of Shakspere's coming to London is a simple and natural one, without a single marvellous circumstance about it:-"This William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London." This, the elder

story, appears to us to have much greater verisimilitude than the later:-" He was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London." Aubrey, who has picked up all the gossip" of coffeehouses in this great city," hears no word of Rowe's story, which would certainly have been handed down amongst the traditions of the theatre to Davenant and Shadwell, from whom he does hear something:-" I have heard Sir William Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best comedian we have now) say, that he had a most prodigious wit." Neither does he say, nor indeed any one else till two centuries and a quarter after Shakspere is dead, that," after four years' conjugal discord, he would resolve upon that plan of solitary emigration to the metropolis, which, at the same time that it released him from the humiliation of domestic feuds, succeeded so splendidly for his worldly prosperity, and with a train of circumstances so vast for all future ages.' " a It is certainly a singular vocation for a writer of genius to bury the legendary scandals of the days of Rowe, for the sake of exhuming a new scandal, which cannot be received at all without the belief that the circumstance must have had a permanent and most evil influence upon the mind of the unhappy man who thus cowardly and ignominiously is held to have severed himself from his duty as a husband and a father. We cannot trace the evil influence, and therefore we reject the scandal. It has not even the slightest support from the weakest tradition. It is founded upon an imperfect comparison of two documents, judging of the habits of that period by those of our own day; supported by quotations from a dramatist of whom it would be difficult to affirm that he ever wrote a line which had strict reference to his own feelings and circumstances, and whose intellect in his dramas went so completely out of itself that it almost realises the description of the soul in its first and pure nature—that it "hath no idiosyncrasies; that is, hath no proper natural inclinations which are not competent to others of the same kind and condition." b

a Encyclopædia Britannica.'

Enquiry into the Opinion of the Eastern Sages concerning the Præ-existence of Souls.' By the Rev. Joseph Glanvil.