Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

754
SHAKESPEARE
Sir
Thomas
Lucy.
the Stratford authorities, being naturally anxious to propitiate the
great man, may have suggested that it would be well if young
Shakespeare could be out of the way for a time. This would
help him to decide on the adoption of a plan already seriously
entertained of going to London to push his fortune among the
players.
There is, however, another aspect in which this traditional
incident may be looked at, which seems at least worthy
of consideration. It is possible that Sir Thomas Lucy may
have been prejudiced against the Shakespeares on religious
grounds, and that this feeling may have prompted him
to a display of exceptional severity against their eldest
son. As we have seen, he was a narrow and extreme, a
persecuting and almost fanatical Protestant, and several
events had recently happened calculated to intensify his
bitterness against the Romanists. In particular, Mary
Shakespeare’s family connexions—the Ardens of Parkhall
—had been convicted of conspiracy against the queen’s
life. The son-in-law of Edward Arden, John Somerville,
a rash and “hot-spirited young gentleman,” instigated
by Hall, the family priest, had formed the design of
going to London and assassinating Queen Elizabeth with
his own hand. He started on his journey in November
1583, but talked so incautiously by the way that he was
arrested, conveyed to the Tower, and under a threat of the
rack confessed everything, accusing his father-in-law as an
accomplice and the priest as the instigator of the crime.
All three were tried and convicted, their fate being
probably hastened, as Dugdale states, by the animosity
of Leicester against the Ardens. Somerville strangled
himself in prison, and Edward Arden was hanged at
Tyburn. These events produced a deep impression in
Warwickshire, and no one in the locality would be more
excited by them than Sir Thomas Lucy. His intensely
vindictive feeling against the Romanists was exemplified
a little later by his bringing forward a motion in parlia¬
ment in favour of devising some new and lingering
tortures for the execution of the Romanist conspirator
Parry. As Mr Froude puts it, “ Sir Thomas Lucy,—
Shakespeare’s Lucy, the original perhaps of Justice Shallow,
with an English fierceness at the bottom of his stupid
nature,—having studied the details of the execution of
Gerard, proposed in the House of Commons ‘that some
new law should be devised for Parry’s execution, such as
might be thought fittest for his extraordinary and horrible
treason.’ ” The Ardens were devoted Romanists; the
terrible calamity that had befallen the family occurred only
a short time before the deer-stealing adventure ; and the
Shakespeares themselves, so far from being Puritans, were
suspected by many of being but indifferent Protestants.
John Shakespeare was an irregular attendant at church,
and soon ceased to appear there at all, so that Sir Thomas
Lucy probably regarded him as little better than a
recusant. In any case Sir Thomas would be likely to
resent the elder Shakespeare’s convivial turn and profuse
hospitality as alderman and bailiff, and especially his
official patronage of the players and active encouragement
of their dramatic representations in the guild hall. The
Puritans had a rooted antipathy to the stage, and to the
jaundiced eye of the local justice the reverses of the
Shakespeares would probably appear as a judgment on
their way of life. He would all the more eagerly seize
any chance of humiliating their eldest son, who still held
up his head and dared to look upon life as a scene of
cheerful activity and occasional enjoyment. The young
poet, indeed, embodied the very characteristics most
opposed to Sir Thomas’s dark and narrow conceptions of
life and duty. His notions of public duty were very much
restricted to persecuting the Romanists and preserving the
game on Protestant estates. And Shakespeare probably
took no pains to conceal his want of sympathy with these
supreme objects of aristocratic and Puritanical zeal. And
Sir Thomas, having at length caught him, as he imagined,
in a technical trespass, would be sure to pursue the culprit
with the unrelenting rigour of his hard and gloomy nature.
But, whatever may have been the actual or aggravating
circumstances of the original offence, there can be no
doubt that an element of truth is contained in the deer¬
stealing tradition. The substantial facts in the story are
that Shakespeare in his youth was fond of woodland sport,
and that in one of his hunting adventures he came into
collision with Sir Thomas Lucy’s keepers, and fell, under
the severe ban of that local potentate. The latter point is
indirectly confirmed by Shakespeare’s inimitable sketch of
the formal country justice in the Second Part of Henry
IV. and the Merry Wives of Windsor,—Robert Shallow,
Esq., being sufficiently identified with Sir Thomas Lucy by
the pointed allusion to the coat of arms, as well as by
other allusions of a more indirect but hardly less decisive
kind. To talk of the sketch as an act of revenge is to
treat it too seriously, or rather in too didactic and
pedestrian a spirit. Having been brought into close
relations with the justice, Shakespeare could hardly be
expected to resist the temptation of turning to dramatic
account so admirable a subject for humorous portraiture.
The other point of the tradition, Shakespeare’s fondness
for woodland life, is supported by the internal evidence of
his writings, and especially by the numerous allusions to the
subject in his poems and earlier plays. The many refer¬
ences to woods and sports in the poems are well known;
and in the early plays the allusions are not less frequent
and in some respects even more striking. Having no space,
however, to give these in detail, a general reference must
suffice. The entire action of Love's Labour’s Lost takes
place in a royal park, while the scene of the most critical
events of the Two Gentlemen of Verona is a forest inhabited
by generous outlaws whose offences appear to have been
youthful follies, and who on being pardoned by the duke
become his loyal followers. In these early plays it seems
as though Shakespeare could hardly conceive of a royal
palace or capital city without a forest close at hand as the
scene of princely sport, criminal intrigue, or fairy enchant¬
ment. Outside the gates of Athens swept over hill and
dale the wonderful forest which is the scene of the
Midsummer Night's Dream; and in Titus Andvonicus
imperial Rome seems to be almost surrounded by the
brightness and terror, the inspiring charm and sombre
shades of rolling forest lawns and ravines, the “ ruthless,
vast, and gloomy woods.”
There can be no doubt, therefore, that during the years Shake-
of home life at Stratford Shakespeare was often in the sPeare’s
forest. But in the latter part of the time he would be maiTiaSe-
found still more frequently hastening through the fields
to Shottery, paying long visits at the Hathaway farm,
followed by late and reluctant leave-takings. For the
next important fact in Shakespeare’s history is his
marriage with Anne Hathaway. This event, or rather
the formal and ecclesiastical part of it, took place in the
end of November 1582, the bond for the licence from the
consistory court being dated on the 28th of the month.
Mr Halliwell-Phillipps has, however, sufficiently proved by
detailed instances that the formal and public part of the
ceremony would, according to the usage of the time, have
been preceded some months earlier by the betrothal or
pre-contract, which was in itself of legal validity. Shake¬
speare’s marriage may therefore be dated from the summer
of 1582, he being then in his nineteenth year, while his
bride was between seven and eight years older. Many of
the poet’s biographers have assumed that the marriage
was a hasty, unsuitable, and in its results an unhappy one.
It is necessary therefore to repeat with all possible