in pretty well, for he had been in his
younger years a schoolmaster in the country"; "was a handsome,
well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant
smooth wit." It is Aubrey, too, that reports that John Shakespeare was
a butcher, and he adds, "I have been told heretofore by some of the
neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade....
When he killed a calf, he would doe it in a high style and make a
speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne, that
was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall wit, his
acquaintance, and coetanean, but dyed young." The same writer is
authority for the statement that it was at Grendon, near Oxford, on the
road from Stratford to London, that the dramatist "happened to take the
humour of the constable in Midsummer Night's Dream"--a remark that may
refer loosely either to Bottom and his friends, or to Dogberry and
Verges. He also ascribes to the poet an apocryphal epigram on a
Stratford usurer, John Combe.

The Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon for 1662 to 1668, kept
about the time of his coming to this charge a diary in which he relates
certain echoes of the conversation of the town at a time when the poet's
nephews were still living there. From him we hear that in his elder days
Shakespeare retired to Stratford; that in his most active period he
wrote two plays a year; that he spent at the rate of L1000 a year; and
that his death was due to a fever following a "merry meeting" in
Stratford with Jonson and Drayton.

An additional reference to the tradition of Shakespeare's convivial
tendencies is to be found in the legend of his visit to Bidford, six
miles from Stratford, with a group of cronies to compare capacities
with the Bidford Drinkers. According to the earliest version of this
somewhat widespread tale, that of a visitor to Stratford in 1762, "he
enquired of a shepherd for the Bidford Drinkers, who replied they were
absent but the Bidford sippers were at home, and, I suppose, continued
the sheepkeeper, they will be sufficient for you; and so, indeed, they
were; he was forced to take up his lodging under that tree [the
crab-tree, long pointed out] for some hours."

[Page Heading: Traditions]

The earliest description of Shakespeare as "a glover's son" is found in
the memoranda of Archdeacon Plume of Rochester, written about 1656.
Plume adds, "Sir John Mennes saw once his old father in his shop--a
merry