His people's ideals should clearly their kinship disclose, The Spirit of England, thus Shakespeare our Poet arose įor England made Shakespeare, as Shakespeare makes England anew. The Nation's Ideal takes shape, on Nature's old plan,Įxpressing, informing, impelling, the fashioning force of the whole. Who voices the life of its life, the dreams of its soul, When, from the midst of a people, there riseth a man THE GUILD CHAPEL, FROM THE SITE OF NEW PLACE ' 67 PRESENT VIEW OF SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE ' 55 OLD HOUSE AT WILMECOTE, BY SOME SUPPOSED TO BE ROBERT ARDEN'S To face 35 PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Frontispiece CONTEMPORARY WARWICKSHIRE SHAKESPEARES 118 LATER SHAKESPEARES BEFORE THE POET'S TIME 10 Shakespeare Trust, to the Worshipful Company of the Haberdashers, forĪllowing me to study their records to the late Earl of Warwick, forĪdmission to his Shakespeare Library, and to many clergymen who have Town Council of Stratford-on-Avon and Mr. The officials of the British Museum and the Public Record Office, to the Many who have helped me in my long-continued and careful researches, to Mistakes, and neither time nor trouble has been spared. Hence the Coat ofĪrms and the Arden Connections are treated as family matters, apart from

Too largely in a short biography to be proportionate. The order I have preferred has been chronological, limited by theĪdvisability of completing the notices of a family in specialĭisputed questions I have placed in chapters apart, as they would bulk History before the sixteenth century the few notes I have gleaned Having commenced with the family, I may be pardoned for adding to their Times no Shakespeare but himself was connected with the Ardens. But it must not be forgotten that until modern In regard to his mother's family, I thought it important to clear theĮarlier connections.

Our store of real knowledge may bring forward new suggestions and I have also somewhat cleared the groundīy checking errors, such as those made by Halliwell-Phillipps,Ĭoncerning John Shakespeare, of Ingon, and Gilbert Shakespeare, Though sharing in this regret, I have beenĪble, besides adding minor details, to find at last a definite link ofĪssociation between the Park Hall and the Wilmcote Ardens and I have All students must regret that their labours have suchĬomparatively meagre results. The time for romancing has gone by, and nothing more can be doneĬoncerning the poet's life except through careful study and through Of his sister can alone now enter into the poet's pedigree with any Though we are all aware none can be his descendants, and that the family Therefore I have collected every notice I can find of the Shakespeares, That lends a subtler romance to the consciousness of a noble ancestry,Īnd we may be sure this played no small part in the making of the poet.Īll that bear his name gain a certain interest through him, and By the Spear-side his family was at least respectable, andīy the Spindle-side his pedigree can be traced straight back to Guy of Result of my studies tends to prove that it is but an unfoundedĪssumption. Well as a Chaucer, a Keats as well as a Gower, yet I am glad that the I deny any relevance to arguments based on such anĪssumption, for genius is restricted to no class, and we have a Burns as Respect are based on the assumption that he was a man of low origin and Much of the chaotic nonsense that has of late years been written toĭisparage his character and contest his claims to our reverence and Interesting Warwickshire gentleman that the poet is here included. Warwickshire families of which I now treat, and it is only as an Reason is clear it is only the genealogical details of certain Perhaps never before has anyone attempted to writeĪ life of the poet with so little allusion to his plays and poems. Thus to the bald entries of Shakespeare's birth and burial 'Shakespeare's Family' and the 'Warwickshire Ardens,' I carefullyĬorrected them, and expanded them where expansion could be made When I was invited to reprint in book-form the articles which hadĪppeared in the Genealogical Magazine under the titles of STOPES Author of 'The Bacon-Shakespeare Question Answered,' 'Shakespeare's WarwickshireĬontemporaries,' 'British Freewomen,' Etc. SHAKESPEARE'S FAMILY BEING A Record of the Ancestors and Descendants of William Shakespeare WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ARDENS BY MRS.

The Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at Stratford-on-Avon. William Shakespeare from the Drocshout painting now in

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