The mature charms of Anne Hathaway turned jest into earnest and sent prudence down the wind. There was a hasty wedding, nobody knows where, and John Shakespeare's burdens were presently increased by the advent of three grandchildren. It was obviously high time for this ne'er-do-well young John-a-Dreams--"yet he's gentle; never schooled, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved"--to strike out into the world and seek his fortune.
Next to the Guild Hall stands the Guild Chapel, whose former frescoes of the Day of Judgment must have made deep impression on the "eye of childhood that fears a painted devil"; and over the way from the Guild Chapel is New Place. On this site in the time of Henry VII rose the Great House, built by a Stratford magnate and benefactor, Sir Hugh Clopton,--he who gave the town that "fair Bridge of Stone over Avon." In 1597 Shakespeare, who could hardly have been in London a dozen years, had prospered so well, albeit in the disreputable crafts of actor and playwright, that he bought the estate, repaired the mansion then in "great ruyne and decay," and renamed it New Place. Yet although it was his hour of triumph, his heart was sorrowful, for his only son, his eleven-year-old Hamnet, "jewel of children," had died the year before. At least another decade passed before Shakespeare finally withdrew from London and settled down at New Place with the wife eight years his senior, a plain country woman of Puritan proclivities. In his twenty years of intense creative life,
"The inward service of the mind and soul"
must have widened beyond any possible comprehension of hers, nor can his two daughters, unlettered and out of his world as they were, have had much inkling of the career and achievements of "so rare a wonder'd father." His parents were dead. Their ashes may now mingle with little Hamnet's in some forgotten plot of the elm-shadowed churchyard. Of his two daughters, Susanna, the elder, had married a Stratford physician, and there was a grandchild, little Elizabeth Hall, to brighten the gardens of New Place. As I lingered there,--for the gardens remain, though the house is gone,--my eyes rested on a three-year-old lass in a fluttering white frock,--no wraith, though she might have been,--dancing among the flowers with such uncertain steps and tossing such tiny hands in air that the birds did not trouble themselves to take to their wings, but hopped on before her like playfellows.