may
be a vile poet. The apologists have picked out the finest moral thoughts
in the plays and poems and declared that he who could conceive them
could not have been less than a saint. They might as well pick out the
countless villains of the tragedies and declare that he who presented
them must have been a sinner. Truth to tell, the question is one of no
importance. Shakespeare was in some respects a man like the majority of
men; in other regards he stands alone. Only in this latter aspect have
we any occasion to consider him. We have neither the right, the
capacity, nor the data by which to sit in judgment; but it is hardly
honest to withhold reports, that seem to be well founded, because they
do not flatter the youthful career of a great man. In his own "Henry
IV." and "Henry V." Shakespeare shows how the recklessness of youth is
not incompatible with sound living and a high standard of morality and
common sense in the days of responsibility.

CHAPTER III

NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY

We find Shakespeare, just out of his teens, travelling on the road to
London, and it is worth while to see what equipment and what resources
he is taking to the metropolis. It is safe to assume that he has no
money, and that his local reputation is not one of the very best, though
the worst to be urged against him is that he has loved not wisely but
too well--and this fault has not been too clearly substantiated--and
that he has ignored the game laws, as so many men had done before, have
done since, and will do as long as these laws exist.

The early life of a truly imaginative man had been passed in the most
beautiful surroundings that rural England can provide, and by reason,
perhaps, of the lack of restrictions, had helped him to enlarge his
experiences and develop all the facets of a luminous mind. The
expression is chosen deliberately. Man's mind is like a diamond, and
experience is the lapidary. Every action, every stroke of good fortune
or of bad, leaves its definite mark; every association does the same. As
a boy Shakespeare lived in close touch with Nature. His father's
business would have brought him into contact with farmers, given him
the freedom of their fields, taught him the significance of the seasons.
Even now, when glimpses of Elizabethan England are few and far between,
we are touched by the supreme peace that still broods over land on which
the old-time houses, with their thatched roofs or well-wo