CHAPTER XX. Shakespeare's return to Stratford. Marriage of his daughter Judith to Thomas Quiney in February, 1616. Shakespeare's will prepared in January, but dated in March, 1616. His last illness: attended by Dr. Hall, his son-in-law. Uņcertainty as to the nature of Shakespeare's fatal malady. His birth-day and death-day said to be the same. Entry of his burial in the register at Stratford. His will, and circumstances to prove that it was prepared two months before it was executed. His bequest to his wife, and provision for her by dower. THE autumn seems to have been a very usual time for publishing new books, and Shakespeare having been in London in the middle of November, 1614, as we have remarked, he was perhaps there when "The Ghost of Richard the Third" came out, and, like Ben Jonson, Chapman, and others, might be acquainted with the author. He probably returned home before the winter, and passed the rest of his days in tranquil retirement, and in the enjoyment of the society of his friends, whether residing in the country, or occasionally visiting him from the metropolis. "The latter part of his life," says Rowe, "was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the society of his friends;" and he adds, what cannot be doubted, that "his pleasurable wit and good-nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood." He must have been of a lively and companionable disposition; and his long residence in London, amid the bustling and varied scenes connected with his public life, independently of his natural powers of conversation, could not fail to render his society most agreeable and desirable. We can readily believe that when any of his old associates of the stage, whether authors or actors, came to Stratford, they found a hearty welcome and free entertainment at his house; and that he would be the last man, in his prosperity, to treat with slight or indifference those with whom, in the earlier part of his career, he had been on terms of familiar intercourse. It could not be in Shakespeare's nature to disregard the claims of ancient friendship, especially if it approached him in a garb of comparative poverty. "Some Account of the Life, &c. of Mr. William Shakespear," 1709, p. xxxvi. One of the very latest acts of his life was bestowing the hand of his daughter Judith upon Thomas Quiney, a vintner and wine-merchant of Stratford, the son of Richard Quiney. She must have been four years older than her husband, having, as already stated, beer born on 2nd February, 1585, while he was not born until 26th February, 1589: he was consequently twenty-seven years old, and she thirty-one, at the time of their marriage in February, 1616'; and Shakespeare thus became father-in-law to the son of the friend who, eighteen years before, had borrowed of him 30%., and who had died on 31st May, 1602, while he was bailiff of Stratford. As there was a difference of four years in the ages of Judith Shakespeare and her husband, we ought perhaps to receive that fact as some testimony, that our great dramatist did not see sufficient evil, at all events, in such a disproportion, to induce him to oppose the union. His will had been prepared as long before its actual date as 25th January, 1615-16, and this fact is apparent on the face of it: it originally began " Vicesimo quinto die Januarij," (not Februarij, as Malone erroneously read it) but the word Januarij was subsequently struck through with a pen, and Martij substituted by interlineation. Possibly it was not thought necessary to alter vicesimo quinto, or the 25th March might be the very day the will was executed: if it were, the signatures of the testator, upon each of the three sheets of paper of which the will consists, bear evidence (from the want of firmness in the writing) that he was at that time suffering under sickness. It opens, it is true, by stating that he was "in perfect health and memory," and such was doubtless the case when the instrument was prepared in January, but the execution of it might be deferred until he was attacked by serious indisposition, and then the date of the month only might be altered, leaving the assertion as to health and memory as it had originally stood. What was the nature of Shakespeare's fatal illness we have no satis 5 The registration in the books of Stratford church is this: "1615-16 February 10. Tho Queeny tow Judith Shakspere." The fruits of this marriage were three sons; viz. Shakespeare, baptized 23rd November, 1616, and buried May 8th, 1617; Richard, baptized 9th February, 1617-18, and buried 26th February, 1638-9; and Thomas, baptized 23rd January, 1619-20, and buried 28th January, 1638-9. Judith Quiney, their motter, did not die until after the Restoration, and was buried 9th February, 1661-2. The Stratford registers contain no entry of the burial of Thomas Quiney, her husband, and it is very possible, therefore, that he died and was buried in London. factory means of knowing, but it was probably not of long duration; and if when he subscribed his will he had really been in health, we are persuaded that, at the age of only fiftytwo, he would have signed his name with greater steadiness and distinctness. All three signatures are more or less infirm and illegible, especially the two first, but he seems to have made an effort to write his best when he affixed both his names at length at the end, "By me William Shakspeare"." We hardly need entertain a doubt that he was attended in his last illness by his son-in-law, Dr. Hall, who had then been married to Susanna Shakespeare more than eight years: we have expressed our opinion that Dr. and Mrs. Hall lived in the same house with our poet, and it is to be recollected that in his will he leaves New Place to his daughter Susanna. Hall must have been a man of considerable science for the time at which he practised, and he has left behind him proofs of his knowledge and skill in a number of cases which had come under his own eye, and which he described in Latin : these were afterwards translated from his manuscript, and published in 1657 by James Cooke, with the title of "Select Observations on English Bodies," but the case of Dr. Hall's father-in-law is not found there, because most unfortunately the "observations" only begin in 1617. One of the earliest of them shows that an epidemic, called "the new fever," then The Rev. John Ward's Diary, printed in 1839, to which we have before referred, contains (p. 183) the following undated paragraph: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson, had a merie meeting, and, itt seems, drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a fevour there [then?] contracted." What credit may be due to this statement, preceded as it is by the words "it seems," implying a doubt on the subject in the writer's mind, we must leave the reader to determine. That Shakespeare was of sober, though of companionable habits, we are thoroughly convinced he could not have written seven-and-thirty plays (not reckoning alterations and additions now lost) in five-and-twenty years had he been otherwise; and we are sure also, that if Drayton and Ben Jonson visited him at Stratford, he would give them a generous welcome. We have no reason to think that Drayton was at all given to intoxication, although it is certain that Ben Jonson was a bountiful liver. We quote the following from the accounts of the Chamberlain of Stratford in 1614: : "Item, for a quart of sack and a quart of clarret wine, given to the preacher at the New Place xxd." The sermon had probably been delivered at Shakespeare's house, but the wine was paid for out of the corporate funds. 7 The Rev. R. Davies, who made the additions to Fulman's MSS. already mentioned on p. 69], asserts, without qualification, that Shakespeare "died a papist," a statement entirely inconsistent with what we know of the life and works of our great dramatist. prevailed in Stratford and "invaded many." Possibly Shakespeare was one of these; though, had such been the fact, it is not unlikely that, when speaking of "the Lady Beaufoy" who suffered under it on July 1st, 1617, Dr. Hall would have referred back to the earlier instance of his fatherin-law'. He does advert to a tertian ague of which, at a period not mentioned, he had cured Michael Drayton, (“ an excellent poet," as Hall terms him) when he was, perhaps, on a visit to Shakespeare. However, Drayton, as formerly remarked, was a native of Warwickshire', and Dr. Hall may have been called in to attend him at Hartshill. We are left, therefore, in utter uncertainty as to the immediate cause of the death of Shakespeare, at an age when he would be in full possession of his faculties, and when, in the ordinary course of nature, he might have lived many years in the enjoyment of the society of his family and friends, in that grateful and easy retirement, which had been earned by his genius and industry, and to obtain which had • He several times speaks of sicknesses in his own family, and of the manner in which he had removed them: a case of his own, in which he mentions his age, accords with the statement in his inscription, and ascertains that he was thirty-two when he married Susanna Shakespeare in 1607. “Mrs. Hall, of Stratford, my wife," is more than once introduced in the course of the volume, as well as "Elizabeth Hall, my only daughter." Mrs. Susanna Hall died in 1649, aged 66, and was buried at Stratford. Elizabeth Hall, her daughter by Dr. Hall (baptized on the 21st Feb. 1607-8), and granddaughter to our poet, was married on the 22nd April, 1626, to Mr. Thomas Nash (who died in 1647), and on 5th June, 1649, to Mr. John Bernard, of Abingdon, who was knighted after the Restoration. Lady Bernard died childless in 1670, and was buried, not at Stratford, with her own family, but at Abingdon with that of her second husband. She was the last of the lineal descendants of William Shakespeare. 1 Sir Aston Cokayne in his volume of "Small Poems," 12mo, 1658, thus speaks of Shakespeare and Drayton as renowned natives of Warwickshire : "Now, Stratford upon Avon, we would chuse, Thy gentle and ingenious Shakespeare muse, T'our antiquary's merit some just praise: And sweet-tongu'd Drayton, that bast given renown Unto a poor (before) and obscure town, Than all our English counties are beside." In Song xiii. of his "Polyolbion" Drayton claims Warwickshire as his native county. He was one year older than Shakespeare, and was born at Hartshill, a hamlet in the parish of Mancetter. apparently been the main object of many years of toil, anxiety, and deprivation. Whatever doubt may prevail as to the day of the birth of Shakespeare, none can well exist as to the day of his death. The inscription on his monument in Stratford church tells us, "Obiit Anno Domini 1616. And it is remarkable that he was born and died on the same day of the same month, supposing him to have first seen the light on the 23rd April, 1564'. It was most usual about that period to mention the day of death in inscriptions upon tomb-stones, tablets, and monuments; and such was the case with other members of the Shakespeare family. We are thus informed that his wife, Anne Shakespeare, "departed this life the 6th day of Augu. 1623':" Dr. Hall "deceased Nove. 25. A. 1635" Thomas Nash, who married Hall's daughter, • Upon this point I cannot do better than subjoin a note with which I have been favoured by my triend Mr. W. W. Williams : “There is a tradition, very generally received, that Shakespeare died on his birth-day. Some of his biographers treat it as an established fact; but the records which have come down to us do not justify such an inference. The Stratford register gives us the date of his baptism—April 26th, 1564. The inscription on his monument runs thus:— 'Obiit Ano Dot 1616 If we are to give these lines credit for accuracy and consistency-viz. by supposing all the numbers to be ordinals, notwithstanding the omission of the small contracted terminations, which sometimes denote ordinals—they are susceptible of no other construction than that he died in the sixteen-hundred-and-sixteenth year of our Lord—in the fifty-third year of his age—on the twenty-third of April. Had the 23rd of April been his birth-day, he would have been exactly fifty-two on the day on which he died, and it has been asserted (see "Malone's Shakspeare, by Boswell," ii. p. 505) that this was the case. The inscription would, however, rather lead us to conclude, that he must have been born at an earlier date; and it seems improbable that, had he died on his birth-day, so remarkable a fact, in the instance of so remarkable a man, should not have been duly recorded, especially in an age when monuments were apt to be garrulous." The inscription, upon a brass plate, let into a stone, is in these terms:"Heere lyeth interred the Body of Anne, Wife of William Shakespeare, who departed this life the 6th day of Augu. 1623. being of the age of 67 yeares. Ubera, tu mater, tu lac, vitamq; dedisti: Væ mihi, pro tanto munere saxa dabo. Quam mallem amoveat lapidem bonus angel' ore, Sed nil vota valent; venias cito, Christe, resurget, The following is the inscription commemorating him : "Heere lyeth the Body of Iohn Hall, Gent: Hee marr: Susanna ye daughter |