In 1585 the first English colony in America is established at Roanoke. In 1587 Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded. In 1589 Henry of Navarre comes to the throne of France. In the same year English people begin to ride in coaches. In 1592 Montaigne finishes his essay-writing for this world. In 1595 Torquato Tasso dies. In 1596 Descartes is born. In 1598 Edmund Spenser becomes poet laureate of England. In the same year the Edict of Nantes carries joy to the hearts of the Huguenots. In 1600 the great East India Company of England is established; Charles I of England is born; and Giordano Bruno, a philosopher of very nimble wit, is burned at Rome for heresy. In 1601 Essex is beheaded. In 1603 many thousand persons perish of the plague in London. In the same year James I, son of Mary Queen of Scots, unites the crowns of England and Scotland upon his own head. In 1604 the great translation of the Bible which we all now use is resolved upon by the conference of prelates and ministers. In 1606 Dr. Gilbert becomes acquainted with the powers of electric conductors and non-conductors. In 1608 people begin to eat with forks in England. In 1614 Sir John Napier invents logarithms; and New York City is founded by the Dutch. In this year also a project which had an immense influence upon the health and comfort of the people of London is carried out. The New River is brought to the city and supplies it with water. The inhabitants had previously been served by water-carriers, who brought the water round in tankards every morning, as our postman carries letters, to each household. The poorer sort of people had to send apprentices, servants, and children after their water. In Ben Jonson's comedy of Every Man in his Humour, Cob, one of the main characters, is a water-carrier. And when we think of the lavish way in which we use water from our liberal reservoirs, it gives one a startling idea of the housekeeping in those days when one finds a whole household like Kitely's, in Jonson's comedy, dependent on the water that one man, Cob, could bring; for I find in one passage where Kitely, the master of the household, reproaches Cob, who has been delayed on his rounds that day, with the trouble he had caused, telling him the maids will have him by the back, i' faith, for coming so late in the morning. Perhaps in those days of the mighty consumption of ale and sack the people shared in that aversion to water which old Jack Falstaff expresses when he declares, with loathing, water swells a man. In 1615 Richard Baxter is born. In 1616 William Shakspere dies. Here, then, you have before your eyes the outer life of this wonderful age. I ask you now to put the agility of your imaginations to its proof, and to pass on from this dazzling array of names and events whose influence is in many cases so intimately connected with the every-day life not only of Shakspere's time but of our own, for the purpose of looking in upon some occurrences in the private life of Shakspere, which throw light upon the inner life we shall discuss later, just as these historical facts help to explain the inner life of those marvellous centuries under review. CHAPTER XVI THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME-II ANNOUNCED in my last lecture that the present one would consist of a romance which I had made, in which, taking Shakspere for a hero, I proposed to weave a picture of the manners of his contemporaries, and so complete my account of Domestic Life in Shakspere's Time. In coming to put together the facts that I had collected with the story wherein I wished to embody them, I have found that the limits to which my lecture is confined would be wholly insufficient to develope the narrative with any satisfaction. Of course under these circumstances I sacrifice the story. I wish to give you as many of the facts of Shakspere's environment and of his age as possible; and, as it is, there will be a melancholy overplus, when I am done, of interesting matters which I should have liked to present to you, but which I must suppress for lack of time. Instead of entirely sacrificing my story of Shakspere, however, I can, without developing it, at least give you as I go along a sort of ground-plan, or, rather, architect's bill, of it, that will serve to show how it could be constructed from the materials which I shall lay before you in the shape of facts. Without more ado, then, fancy that on the night of Friday, July 8, in the year 1575, about twelve o'clock, when all the good burgesses in Stratford were comfortably asleep, the family of John Shakspere, residing in a doubletenement house in Henley Street, were awakened by a furious knocking at the front door. The eldest son of the family - then only a couple of months past eleven years of age was the first to hear the noise. He was, indeed, always a light sleeper -as if Destiny intended he should lose as little as possible of the world which he was afterwards to weave into his poems. And so, hastily springing from his bed, he knocked at his father's door. His mother answered-for Mary Shakspere, like most mothers who have brought up children, started from sleep at slight sounds; and distinguishing his mother's vigorous shake of the stout alderman by her side, followed by the sudden stoppage of the snores with which honest John Shakspere was bugling the progress of the night, William passed quickly down the steps, and was in the act of unbarring the front door when his father called to him: " Hold, William! wouldst thou unbar the door to every knock, like a dicing-house? Let him thunder; perhaps it is some gallant, or drunken roisterer, that would have a night's lodging and defile the house. I'll speak him from the window." Hereupon John Shakspere thrust his head from the window of a low chamber in the second story, which projected over the lower part of the house, at the same time calling out, "Who is this below there that beats honest folk out of bed in the midnight?" Marry, one that wishes he was where ye have just come from," replied a voice from the street, where the |