led to his frequent recourse to the lawyers. Shakespeare's
knowledge of the law has often puzzled his biographers, and the
correctness of his phraseology has been advanced by upholders of the
grotesque Baconian heresy as one of the reasons why he could not have
written the plays attributed to him. But it is impossible for the plain
man to follow the arguments that the Baconians adduce and affect to
support.

=THE MERMAID INN=

In later years the poet bought another twenty acres of arable land to
add to his already considerable holding. All these purchases were made
while he was a very busy man--actor, playwright, and manager. Doubtless
he had other investments and interests, of which we may some day know a
little more than we do now. Fresh documents relating to his investments
in the theatrical world were published as recently as the closing months
of 1909, and the records of the reign of Elizabeth and James I. are by
no means fully examined. One truth stands out clearly through the
interesting story of Shakespeare's investments, and that is his love for
the town in which he was born. With so large a share of the world to
choose from, with countless associations that might well have kept him
in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, with friends in Court circles
and acting circles who would scarcely be accessible in a town three,
four, or even five days' journey from London, he seems to have had the
fixed intent of spending his years of ease at home. There is too much
reason to believe that with him marriage was a failure. Reference has
been made already to the birth of his daughter Susanna, who became Mrs.
Hall, and we know that in 1585 his wife bore twins, boy and girl, Hamnet
and Judith, named after Hamnet and Judith Sadler, friends of John
Shakespeare. But the poet saw little of his family or of the three
children of his union, and at the time of his public return to Stratford
little Hamnet Shakespeare died, in his twelfth year. Susanna married, in
1607, the Puritan physician John Hall. Judith the twin married Mr.
Thomas Quiney in the year of her father's death. The poet seems to have
lived on excellent terms with his daughters, but there must be some
justification for the generally accepted story of unhappy married life.
Had he been devoted to his wife, Shakespeare could have sent for her
when he had been a very few years in London; the fact that he did not go
back to her for eleven years has a significance that