A Warwickshire Lad

XIII

Yet a year after this Will Shakespeare, just awakened to a love of letters, threw his books down. Mother's brown hair, as she leaned over her new child, Edmund, showed lines of gray. Dad, the day's trade over, sat brooding at home, and scarce would hie him forth, the fear of process for debt hanging over him.

Tall sturdy Will Shakespeare could buy up cattle and trade for hides as well as the butcher's son in Rother Market. Will Shakespeare threw down his books and went forth into the world-a man.

[Illustration: "Tall, sturdy Will Shakespeare could buy up cattle ... as well as the butcher's son"]

A man? A man, yes; once his stripling days of hot blood are over, days of rustic rout, of fight and wrestle, of deer-stealing, of wanderings with strolling players; a man, husband to Ann Hathaway, father of children, son of Mary Arden of the Asbies, Gentlewoman-of John Shakespeare, failure, who would be Gentleman; a man, this William Shakespeare, gone up to London to do a part in the world. In the world? This world wherein all is gain and nothing loss, does one but make it so; all is garnering; all is treasure; all, if so one deem it, is pageant, poetry, and drama; the rustic, the maid, the gammer, the tapster, the schoolboy, the master; the lubberfolk, the witch, the fairy, the elf, the goblin; the fat woman of Brentford, the man dwelling by the churchyard, Snelling, Sadler, Bardolph, Clowder, the old dog; the mummer, the wait, the revel, the cates and ale, the player strutting the stage as Herod; the sheep-shearing, the pedler, the glove; the white rose and the red; the Princes in the tower; St. George and victory; king, knight, soldier; the Avon sweetly flowing in its banks; the forest; the clouds rocking across the blue; stripling; the foreign doctor; queen, courtier, lady; love, life, death; hope, struggle, despair; pride, ambition, failure; vision, striving, achievement; wisdom, philosophy, contemplation; into the world where all is gain and nothing loss, does one make it so, went William Shakespeare of Stratford, to conquer.