the
village of Wilmcote. But the links that connect Shakespeare's tinker
with Wilmcote are far slighter than those which connect him with Wincot
and Wilnecote.

The mention of Kit Sly's tavern comrades--

Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece,
And Peter Turf and Henry Pimpernell--

was in all likelihood a reminiscence of contemporary Warwickshire life as
literal as the name of the hamlet where the drunkard dwelt. There was a
genuine Stephen Sly who was in the dramatist's day a self-assertive
citizen of Stratford; and 'Greece,' whence 'old John Naps' derived his
cognomen, is an obvious misreading of Greet, a hamlet by Winchcombe in
Gloucestershire, not far removed from Shakespeare's native town.

'Henry IV.'

In 1597 Shakespeare turned once more to English history. From
Holinshed's 'Chronicle,' and from a valueless but very popular piece,
'The Famous Victories of Henry V,' which was repeatedly acted between
1588 and 1595, {167} he worked up with splendid energy two plays on the
reign of Henry IV. They form one continuous whole, but are known
respectively as parts i. and ii. of 'Henry IV.' The 'Second Part of
Henry IV' is almost as rich as the Induction to 'The Taming of The Shrew'
in direct references to persons and districts familiar to Shakespeare.
Two amusing scenes pass at the house of Justice Shallow in
Gloucestershire, a county which touched the boundaries of Stratford (III.
ii. and V. i.) When, in the second of these scenes, the justice's
factotum, Davy, asked his master 'to countenance William Visor of Woncot
{168a} against Clement Perkes of the Hill,' the local references are
unmistakable. Woodmancote, where the family of Visor or Vizard has
flourished since the sixteenth century, is still pronounced Woncot. The
adjoining Stinchcombe Hill (still familiarly known to natives as 'The
Hill') was in the sixteenth century the home of the family of Perkes.
Very precise too are the allusions to the region of the Cotswold Hills,
which were easily accessible from Stratford. 'Will Squele, a Cotswold
man,' is noticed as one of Shallow's friends in youth (III. ii. 23); and
when Shallow's servant Davy receives his master's instructions to sow
'the headland' 'with red wheat,' in the early autumn, there is an obvious
reference to the custom almost peculiar to the Cotswolds of sowing 'red
lammas' wheat at an unusually early season of the agricultural year.
{168b}

The kingly hero of the two plays