"The whimsical, delightful, happy-go-lucky humour which he has put into the mouths of so many merry folk."
_Clown._ Well, God give them wisdom, that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.
[Illustration: THE CLOWN AND MARIA. _Painting by W. Heath Robinson._]
Shakespeare did not linger over his dinner. Naturally no great eater, and by the robust, full-blooded Elizabethans considered a very poor drinker, he was lost in thought. That customary flow of scintillating wit, which made him the life and centre of a crowd--that nervous, excitable, impatient brilliance which often characterized him in company--seemed awhile to have forsaken him. To the irrelevant ups and downs of the artistic temperament he was singularly subject. Various familiar friends passed in and out, with loud and jolly greetings: Mr. Will Shakespeare was hail-fellow-well-met with all men, from carters to courtiers. But to-day Mr. Will Shakespeare only smiled at them with a humorous, pensive air, and retired yet further into himself.
What was saddening and silencing him? Had a sudden distaste for his occupation seized upon his sensitive mind? Had some slight been put upon him by careless young nobles, such as my lords Pembroke or Southampton, who take up a man one day and drop him the next? Had he received ill news from Stratford, as when the tidings arrived, three years ago, of the death of his only little son? Or was he simply cogitating one of his "sugared sonnets"?
Thus the quidnuncs of the _Mermaid_ questioned among themselves: and there was much surmising, and putting of heads together, and wagering upon the thoughts of Master Shakespeare's melancholy: for of a surety he had lost his wonted flow of spirits. But only one or two men guessed truly at the secret troubles that sat heavy on his cheerful, mercurial mind.
Seventeen years ago, at the age of eighteen, Shakespeare had made a hasty and ill-assorted marriage. Anne Hathaway, his senior in years, his inferior in position, was no fit mate for the impetuous, ambitious youth. A father at nineteen, with neither employment nor source of income, he had chafed and fretted for five years against the consequences of his own rash folly: at twenty-three, he found the position intolerable. He quitted Stratford, and had never returned, save for brief and flying visits. Nor had he ever brought up his wife and children to London. He was maintaining them in comfort, he was purchasing a fine house in Stratford, whither he would eventually retire and play the parts of husband and father. But--blame him or not, as you will--there are limits beyond which human nature cannot be forced: and the illiterate, ill-tempered, incompatible Anne Hathaway was the skeleton in Shakespeare's cupboard: not to be explained away--the thought of whom left a bitter taste at the bottom of every pleasure.