The Facts About Shakespeare | Page 7

to be identified with Agnes or Anne, the daughter of Richard Hathaway of the neighboring hamlet of Shottery, who had died in the previous July, and had owned the house of which a part still survives and is shown to visitors as "Anne Hathaway's cottage." The date on Anne's tombstone indicates that she was eight years older than the poet.
A comparison of the bond just mentioned with other documents of the kind indicates it to be exceptional in the absence of any mention of consent by the bridegroom's parents, a circumstance rendered still more remarkable by the fact that he was a minor. The bondsmen were from Shottery, and this, along with the considerations already advanced, has naturally led to the inference that the marriage was hurried by the bride's friends, and to the finding of a motive for their haste in the birth within six months of "Susanna, daughter to William Shakespere," who was baptized on May 26, 1583.
[Page Heading: "The only Shake-scene"]
The record of the baptism of Shakespeare's only other children, the twins Hamnet and Judith, in February, 1585, practically exhausts the documentary evidence concerning the poet in Stratford until 1596. It is conjectured, but not known, that about 1586 he found his way to London and soon became connected with the theater, according to one tradition, as call-boy, to another, as holder of the horses of theatergoers. But by 1592 we are assured that he had entered the ranks of the playwrights, and had achieved enough success to rouse the jealous resentment of a rival. Robert Greene, who died on the third of September in that year, left unpublished a pamphlet, Greenes Groatsworth of Witte: bought with a Million of Repentaunce, in which he warned three of his fellows against certain plagiarists, "those puppits, I meane, that speake from our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours." "Yes, trust them not," he goes on; "for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his owne conceit the only Shake-scene in a countrie. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses, and let those apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions! I know the best husband of you all will never prove an usurer, and the kindest of them all wil never proove a kinde nurse; yet, whilst you may, seeke you better maisters, for it is pittie men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes." The phrase about the "tyger's heart" is an obvious parody on the line,
Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide!
which occurs both in The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and in the variant of that play which is included in the First Folio as the third part of Henry VI. "The only Shake-scene" has naturally been taken as an allusion to Shakespeare's name; and it is scarcely possible to doubt the reference to him throughout the passage. This being so, we may infer that by this date Shakespeare had written, with whatever else, his share in the three parts of Henry VI, and was successful enough to seem formidable to the dying Greene. It is noteworthy, too, that thus early we have allusion to his double profession: as an actor in the words "player's hide" and "Shake-scene," and as an author in the charge of plagiarism. That the reference in "beautified with our feathers" is to literary plagiarism is confirmed by the following lines from Greene's Funeralls, by R. B., 1594, which seem to have been suggested by Greene's phrase:
Greene is the ground of everie painters die; Greene gave the ground to all that wrote upon him. Nay, more, the men that so eclipst his fame, Purloynde his plumes: can they deny the same?
Somewhat less certain is the allusion in a document closely connected with the foregoing. Greenes Groatsworth had been prepared for the press by his friend Henry Chettle, and in the address "To the Gentlemen Readers" prefixed to his Kind-Harts Dreame (registered December 8, 1592), Chettle regrets that he has not struck out from Greene's book the passages that have been "offensively by one or two of them taken." "With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be. The other, whome at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heate of living writers, and might have usde my owne discretion,--especially in such a case,