ecome badly involved and his
creditors uncomfortably persistent, his son's family and his own care
were increased by the addition of the twins, Judith and Hamnet. The few
records we have of this period (1585-86) show a most unhappy state of
affairs; his creditors are still on the warpath, and one, owning to the
solid name of John Brown, having secured judgment against him, is
compelled to report to the court that "the defendant hath no property
whereon to levy." Shortly after this, John Shakespeare is shorn of the
last shred of his civic honours, being deprived of his office of
alderman for non-attendance at the council meetings. In this condition
of things we may realise the feelings of an imaginative and sensitive
youth of his son's calibre; how keenly he would feel the helplessness
and the reproach of his position, especially if--as was no doubt the
case--it was augmented by the looks of askance and wagging of heads of
the sleek and thrifty wise-ones of his community.

We are fairly well assured that Shakespeare did not leave Stratford
before the end of 1585, and it appears probable that he remained there
as late as 1586 or 1587. Seeing that he had compromised himself at the
age of eighteen with a woman eight years his senior, whom he married
from a sense of honour or was induced to marry by her friends, we may
infer that the three or four subsequent years he spent in Stratford were
not conducive either to domestic felicity or peace of mind. How
Shakespeare occupied himself during these years we may never know,
though it is very probable that he worked in the capacity of assistant
to his father. That these were years of introspection and remorse to one
of his spirit, however, there can be little doubt; there can be still
less doubt that they were also years of formative growth, and that in
this interval the irresponsible youth, who had given hostages to fortune
by marrying at the age of eighteen, steadied by the responsibility of a
growing family, quickly developed into some promise of the man to be.

No biographer has yet taken into consideration the effect which the
circumstances of Shakespeare's life during these four or five formative
years must necessarily have had in the development of his character.
That this exquisite poet, this builder of dreams, should in the common
affairs of life have displayed such an effectively practical bent, has
always appeared an anomaly; a partial explanation is to be found in the