Shakespeare's England . which is rememberedto the great actors credit and honor. Better-ton, no doubt, lodged there when he cameto the town in quest of reminiscences ofShakespeare. The visit of Washington Irving,supplemented with his pleasing chronicle, hascaused a sort of consecration of the parlor inwhich he sat, and the chamber, room No. 15,in which he slept. They still keep the poker,—now marked Geoffrey Crayons sceptre,—with which, as he sat there, in long, ecstaticmeditation, he prodded the fire in the narrow,tiny grate, and also they treasure the chair inwhich he sat. Thus genius can sa
Shakespeare's England . which is rememberedto the great actors credit and honor. Better-ton, no doubt, lodged there when he cameto the town in quest of reminiscences ofShakespeare. The visit of Washington Irving,supplemented with his pleasing chronicle, hascaused a sort of consecration of the parlor inwhich he sat, and the chamber, room No. 15,in which he slept. They still keep the poker,—now marked Geoffrey Crayons sceptre,—with which, as he sat there, in long, ecstaticmeditation, he prodded the fire in the narrow,tiny grate, and also they treasure the chair inwhich he sat. Thus genius can sanctify thehumblest objects. To pass rapidly in review that which isknown of Shakespeares life is, nevertheless, tobe impressed not only by its incessant andamazing literary fertility, but by the quicksuccession of its salient incidents. The vitalitymust have been enormous that created, in soshort a time, such a number and variety ofworks of the highest order. The same quickspirit would naturally have kept in agita-. f <i- r HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 205 lion all the elements of his daily from an ancestor who had foughtfor the Red Rose on Bosworth Field, he wasborn to good repute as well as competence,and, during his early childhood, he receivedinstruction and training in a comfortable is reason to believe that he went to schoolwhen seven years old and left it when aboutfourteen, his once prosperous father havingfallen into misfortune. It is conjectured thathe saw the Players who from time to timeacted in the Guildhall, under the auspices ofthe corporation of Stratford; that he attendedthe religious entertainments which were cus-tomarily given in the city of Coventry; andthat, in particular, he witnessed the elaborate,sumptuous pageants with which, in 1575, theEarl of Leicester welcomed Queen Elizabethto Kenilworth Castle. He married at eighteen,and, leaving a wife and three children, twoof them twins, in Stratford, he went to Lon-don at the age
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