Before his courtship of, and marriage with, Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare was comparatively unknown.  By a few boon companions he was recognized as a gay and talented young fellow, not wholly averse to hazardous adventure, as his famous connection with a certain poaching affair demonstrated.  Shakespeare’s father was a pious man, who was properly revered by his neighbors.  The son was not held in such high estimation by these simple folk.  “Willie, thee beest a merry fellow,” quoth the parson to the young player when he first came back from London, “but thee shall never be soche a man as thy father.”

Down in London his friends were of the rollicking, happy-go-lucky kind; they divided their time between the play-houses and the pot-houses; they lived by their wits, and they were not the first to demonstrate that he who would enjoy immortality must first have learned to live by his wits among mortals.  It was while he led this irresponsible bachelor life in London that Shakespeare met one Elizabeth Frum, or Thrum, and with this young woman he appears to have fallen in love.  The affair did not last very long, but it was fierce while it was on.  Anne Hathaway was temporarily forgotten, and Mistress Frum (whose father kept the Bell and Canister) engaged—­aye, absorbed—­the attentions of the frisky young poet.  At that time Shakespeare was spare of figure, melancholy of visage, but lively of demeanor; an inclination to baldness had already begun to exhibit itself, a predisposition hastened and encouraged doubtless by that disordered digestion to which the poet at an early age became a prey by reason of his excesses.  Elizabeth Frum was deeply enamoured of Willie, but the young man soon wearied of the girl and returned to his first love.  Curiously enough, Elizabeth subsequently was married to Andrew Wilwhite of Stratford-on-Avon, and lived up to the day of her death (1636) in the house next to the cottage occupied by Anne Hathaway Shakespeare and her children!  Wilwhite was two years younger than Shakespeare; he was the son of a farmer, was fairly well-to-do, and had been properly educated.  Perhaps more for the amusement than for the glory or for the financial remuneration there was in it, he printed a modest weekly paper which he named “The Tidings”—­“an Instrument for the Spreading of Proper New Arts and Philosophies, and for the Indication and Diffusion of What Haps and Hearsays Soever Are Meet for Chronicling Withal.”  This journal was of unpretentious appearance, and its editorial tone was modest to a degree.  The size of the paper was eight by twelve inches, four pages, with two columns to the page.  The type used in the printing was large and coarse, but the paper and ink seem to have been of the best quality.  A complete file of The Tidings does not survive.  The British Museum has all but the third, eleventh, twelfth, and seventeenth volumes; the Newberry Library of Chicago has secured the first, seventh, sixteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth volumes,