Nothing further is heard of Mrs. Mary Shakespeare till her death in 1608.  On the 9th of September, that year, the parish register notes the burial of “Mary Shakespeare, widow,” her husband having died seven years before.  That she had in a special degree the confidence and affection of her father, is apparent from the treatment she received in his will.  It would be very gratifying, no doubt, perhaps very instructive also, to be let into the domestic life and character of the Poet’s mother.  That both her nature and her discipline entered largely into his composition, and had much to do in making him what he was, can hardly be questioned.  Whatsoever of woman’s beauty and sweetness and wisdom was expressed in her life and manners could not but be caught and repeated in his susceptive and fertile mind.  He must have grown familiar with the noblest parts of womanhood somewhere; and I can scarce conceive how he should have learned them so well, but that the light and glory of them beamed upon him from his mother.  At the time of her death, the Poet was in his forty-fifth year, and had already produced those mighty works which were to fill the world with his fame.  For some years she must in all likelihood have been more or less under his care and protection; as her age, at the time of her death, could not well have been less than seventy.

And here I am minded to notice a point which, it seems to me, has been somewhat overworked within the last few years.  Gervinus, the German critic, thinks—­and our Mr. White agrees with him—­that Shakespeare acquired all his best ideas of womanhood after he went to London, and conversed with the ladies of the city.  And in support of this notion they cite the fact—­for such it is—­that the women of his later plays are much superior to those of his earlier ones.  But are not the men of his later plays quite as much superior to the men of his first?  Are not his later plays as much better every way, as in respect of the female characters?  The truth seems to be, that Shakespeare saw more of great and good in both man and woman, as he became older and knew them better; for he was full of intellectual righteousness in this as in other things.  And in this matter it may with something of special fitness be said that a man finds what he brings with him the faculty for finding.  Shakespeare’s mind did not stay on the surface of things.  Probably there never was a man more alive to the presence of humble, modest worth.  And to his keen yet kindly eye the plain-thoughted women of his native Stratford may well have been as pure, as sweet, as lovely, as rich in all the inward graces which he delighted to unfold in his female characters, as any thing he afterwards found among the fine ladies of the metropolis; albeit I mean no disparagement to these latter; for the Poet was by the best of all rights a gentleman, and the ladies who pleased him in London doubtless had sense and womanhood enough to recognize him as such.  At all events, it is reasonable to suppose that the foundations of his mind were laid before he left Stratford, and that the gatherings of the boy’s eye and heart were the germs of the man’s thoughts.