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SHAKESPEARE'S MARRIAGE AND

DEPARTURE

FROM STRATFORD

I

INTRODUCTION

THE year 1582, notable in Shakespearean annals as the date of the poet's marriage, acquires additional interest from the probability that this event was very closely preceded or followed by his removal to London. Apart from the curiosity which busies itself with trivial incidents in the lives of great men, the date of this crisis in the poet's affairs, the occurrences that led up to it, and its immediate results, are matters upon which information is much desired on account of their bearing upon the beginnings of his regular employment in the theatre and his literary work in connection therewith. The recorded facts of Shakespeare's youth are very few, and the failure of attempts to reconstruct, from traditions and imperfectly known incidents, portions of the lost history of his early years is exemplified in the contradictory statements and opinions regarding his marriage and the parts played by the friends of the bride and bridegroom in the preliminaries.1

It would, perhaps, have been well if biographers had been content to leave some of the details of this part of Shakespeare's private life in the oblivion from which it has availed little, in the interests of the poet or his readers, to rescue them, on account either of the presumed facts or of the conclusions to which they lead. But, since these personal affairs have

1 See Charles Knight, William Shakspere, A Biography, 1865, pp. 214-76; Thomas de Quincey, Shakspeare, A Biography, 1864, pp. 42-56.

? A not unusual result of inquisitions of this kind.

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