ervisor, and the other witness to
the will of Anne's father Richard? They might have been at Worcester
market with him.

They were both "good men" in the financial sense, and their bond for L40
was accepted at the Bishop of Worcester's Registry in support of the
assertion that there was no impediment against this marriage by ground
of consanguinity or pre-contract. If this were all right, and if the
bride's friends were willing, by which must have been intended her
mother and brothers, then the marriage might be solemnized. It was
clearly a question in which the woman's friends were the proper parties
to summon. The bond of John Shakespeare would not then have been good
for L40, and the would-be bridegroom had nothing of his own. The place
where they were married has not yet been discovered; it is quite
possible to have been at "a private mass," as was the case in another
marriage with a similar bond at the same registry.[138] But they were
married somehow, and William probably brought home his fatherless bride
to his father's house, and there her little portion of L6 13s. 4d. might
go the further. But a wife and a family of three children sorely
handicapped a penniless youth, not yet of age, bred to no trade, heir to
no fortune, whose father was himself in trouble.

The after-date gossip of wild courses, deer-stealing, and combats with
Sir Thomas Lucy, are, I think, quite unfounded on fact. I have discussed
this fully in my article in the _Athenaeum_[139] on "Sir Thomas Lucy,"
and in my chapter on "The Traditional Sir Thomas and the Real."[140] It
is much more than likely Shakespeare was concerned in the religious
turmoil of the times, was somewhat suspected, and was indignant at the
cruel treatment of Edward Arden, head of the house, the first victim of
the Royal Commission[141] in 1583.

Eventually he went to London, probably with introductions to many people
supposed to be able and willing to help him. There were both Ardens and
Shakespeares in London, and many Warwickshire men, and they thought that
some place might be found even for him, the landless, unapprenticed,
untrained son of a straitened father. But there were so many in a
similar case. It is evident he succeeded in nothing that he hoped or
wished for. His own works prove that. He was unable to act the
gentleman, but was determined to play the man. He may have dwelt with,
and certainly frequently visited, his old Stratford friend Richard
Field, the appr