them for Mr. Barber's interest" 1 Shottery. probably in land at On February 10, 1616, Judith Shakespeare, then entering upon her thirty-second year, surprised her father, and doubtless the whole town, by suddenly marrying Thomas Quiney, aged twenty-six. The groom came of a good family of Stratford tradesmen, which, however, had seen better days. His father, Richard Quiney, a draper of some education, had been twice honored by his fellowcitizens with election to the office of High Bailiff, and had on several occasions represented the Corporation in London before the Privy Council and the Court. After his death in 1602, the widow kept a tavern; and, though she must have been in straitened circumstances,2 she Thomas: 1623 Qurnere 201 managed to give her children the advantages of an education. Thomas, we know, wrote a beautiful hand, and possessed some knowledge of French; and George, a 1 See C. C. Stopes, Shakespeare's Environment, pp. 86-89. Mrs. Stopes, followed by Lee, Life, p. 478, and Beeching, A Book of Homage to Shakespeare, p. 125, sees in this a benevolent move on Shakespeare's part to benefit the children of the deceased and others; but the evidence does not warrant this interpretation. * In 1615 she was unable to pay a loan for which Thomas Barber had gone security, and William Combe proceeded unmercifully to prosecute Barber for the sum. See C. C. Stopes, Shakespeare's Environment, p. 87. younger brother, was a Bachelor of Arts of Balliol College, Oxford. That Judith was on friendly terms with the Quiney family is shown by her witnessing in 1611 for Mrs. Quiney and her eldest son, Adrian, the deed of a sale of certain property. The culmination of this friendship was her marriage to Thomas Quiney on February 10, 1616. The match evidently was quickly arranged, the ceremony falling within the period of prohibition (which did not end until April 7), so that a special license from the ecclesiastical authorities was necessary. For some reason this license was not secured, and the Bishop of Worcester promptly summoned both Richard and Judith to appear before the Consistory Court to explain their failure to comply with the law. Though twice summoned, they did not obey the order, and a decree of excommunication was issued against them, apparently on March 12, 1616. There seems also to have been danger for a time that the marriage might be declared invalid, and their children, therefore, illegitimate. Shakespeare, we may suppose, was greatly distressed by the whole affair, and perhaps was not altogether pleased with the young man his daughter had selected, who turned out to be far from an ideal husband. We seem to find in the poet's will traces of his displeasure at Judith, and evidence of his lack of confidence in his newly acquired son-in-law. CHAPTER XXV DEATH AND BURIAL SHORTLY after the marriage of Judith, Shakespeare was seized with an illness that was to prove fatal. According to the Reverend John Ward, Vicar of Stratford, the attack was induced by a convivial bout held with the two eminent poets Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting," writes Ward, "and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." We have no reason to reject this story.' Drayton was a frequent visitor in Stratford, Jonson was notoriously fond of the cup, and the creator of Falstaff, as is well attested by early writers and tradition alike, was convivial in his disposition. Moreover, if, as has been suggested, Shakespeare was suffering from chronic Bright's disease, the nature of which was then imperfectly understood, we could explain why an indiscretion of this particular kind might provoke a fatal attack.2 The meeting described by Ward must have taken place early in March, 1616. On the twenty-fifth of that 1 Ward, who was a university graduate, could readily verify the story at the mouths of Shakespeare's two nephews then living as his parishioners at the Henley Street home, from Shakespeare's niece, Elizabeth Hall, or from many old residents of the village. ? It has been customary to attribute Shakespeare's death to the supposed unsanitary conditions of Chapel Lane. But the bits of evidence upon which this hypothesis is based (cited by Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii, 141–42), relate to a much earlier period; and, as Halliwell-Phillipps admits, “The only later notices of the state of the lane in the poet's time which have been discovered relate to a pigsty which John Rogers, the vicar, had commenced to erect about the year 1613." It is significant that when Rogers began to erect this pigsty, the inhabitants at once lodged complaint, and the Town Council promptly forbade it, in spite of the pleadings of the vicar. |