“Accuse me thus:  That I have scanted all
    Wherein I should your great deserts repay;
    Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
    Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
    That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
    And given to time your own dear-purchas’d right.”

It will take more than has yet appeared, to convince me, that when the Poet wrote these and other similar lines his thoughts were travelling anywhere but home to the bride of his youth and mother of his children.

I have run ahead of my theme; but it may as well be added, here, that Francis Meres, writing in 1598, speaks of the Poet’s “sugared Sonnets among his private friends”; which indicates the purpose for which they were written.  None of them had been printed when this was said of them.  They were first collected and published in 1609; the collection being arranged, I think, in “most admirable disorder,” so that it is scarce possible to make head or tail to them.

On the 2d of February, 1585, two more children, twins, were christened in the parish church as “Hamnet and Judith, son and daughter to William Shakespeare.”  We hear of no more children being added to the family.  I must again so far anticipate as to observe, that the son Hamnet was buried in August, 1596, being then in his twelfth year.  This is the first severe home-stroke known to have lighted on the Poet.

Tradition has been busy with the probable causes of Shakespeare’s going upon the stage.  Several causes have been assigned; such as, first, a natural inclination to poetry and acting; second, a deer-stealing frolic, which resulted in making Stratford too hot for him; third, the pecuniary embarrassments of his father.  It is not unlikely that all these causes, and perhaps others, may have concurred in prompting the step.

For the first, we have the testimony of Aubrey, who was at Stratford probably about the year 1680.  He was an arrant and inveterate hunter after anecdotes, and seems to have caught up, without sifting, whatever quaint or curious matter came in his way.  So that no great reliance can attach to what he says, unless it is sustained by other authority.  But in this case his words sound like truth, and are supported by all the likelihoods that can grow from what we should presume to have been the Poet’s natural turn of mind.  “This William,” says he, “being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess, about eighteen, and was an actor in one of the playhouses, and did act exceedingly well.  He began early to make essays in dramatic poetry, which at that time was very low, and his plays took well.  He was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit.  Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men daily wherever they came.”