History of William Shakespeare, Player and Poet (1862)
by Stephen Watson Fullom (9780217223195)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 30 HIS CHILDHOOD. According to the parochial register, William Shakespeare was baptized on the 26th April, 1564; and a later vicar of Stratford made a pencil note that he was born on the 23rd. This has grown into a common belief; and, though not traceable to any authority, receives confirmation from the custom of the time. Queen Elizabeth and Edward VI. were both christened three days after their birth.1 The practice of the present age generally defers this rite to the fourth week, which would carry the birthday of the poet into unseemly proximity to the first of the month. Such an association could not be admitted; and, indeed, we should prefer to make him, like Leonata's daughter, a " March chick." But, though he has not the tears of Troilus, everyone will agree that " he is, an 't were, a man born in April;"2 for, like young Master Fenton, " he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells of April and May."3 This is a point in which we shall not seem to make much ado about nothing. The satirist of the day has said that nobody cares to hear where a great man's grandmother was vaccinated. Yet an illustrious name attaches interest to " trifles light as air," if they carry any meaning; and it is no maudlin feeling that links our national poet with our national saint, by fixing his birth on St. George's day. 1 Strickland's ' Queens of England.' 2 ' Troilus and Cressida, ' act i. 2. 3 ' Merry Wives of Windsor, ' act iii. 2. The coincidence may now seem a presage, but could hardly look so then, for a general gloom veiled every promise. The April that gave England her poet was all tears. Nature, indeed, put on her vernal robe as in the blithest spring, but death was in the air. The plague, which had long been ravaging London, was now everywhere, and fell like a blig...

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