THE MAGIC JUICE

FROM "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM"

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

[In the little village of Stratford on Avon, on a spring morning in the year 1564, a boy was born in the home of John and Mary Shakespeare. John Shakespeare was a man of some importance in Stratford. He was one of the town officers and a dealer in corn, meat, leather, 5 and other products of the farm. Some say he was a maker of gloves, but that was probably only a part of his business. Mary Shakespeare was the daughter of a wealthy farmer not far from town.

The Shakespeares lived in a well-built house of rough 10 stone, covered outside with plaster and crossed with heavy beams of dark oak. The house is still standing and is visited every year by hundreds of travelers. Do you ask why? It is because of this boy who was born in it, three hundred and fifty years ago, and who after- 15 wards became the greatest of all poets. His name was William Shakespeare.

Other children came into the Shakespeare family, and it was a pleasant life that they led in the old plastered house with the dark-oak beams. The Avon River flowed 20 quietly through the meadows at the end of the next street, and the country all around seemed like a great

playground. For several years young Will attended the Stratford Grammar School, where he learned Latin and busied himself with such other studies as the boys of that day were expected to take up.

Strolling companies of players sometimes came to Stratford, and as Will's father was the officer to whom they came to get permission to act their plays, it is probable that Will saw them and was greatly interested, for he loved above all other things to see a play. The plays 10 were usually acted out of doors, or perhaps in the courtyard of some inn, and the people who looked on either stood, or if it were in an inn court, may have looked out of the windows or sat upon the balconies that often stretched around the sides of the court at each story of 15 the inn. The players would sometimes raise a rough stage of boards; sometimes they would act their play upon the green turf; but there was hardly any scenery. The audience had to imagine a great deal, but the actors wore fine costumes and made a great show in their silks 20 and velvets; and the whole town always poured out to see them.

When Will Shakespeare was about eleven, it was whispered in Stratford one afternoon that Queen Elizabeth was to visit the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth Castle, 25 only about sixteen miles away. The Earl of Leicester was

one of the greatest lords of his time. It was he, you will remember, who helped young Edmund Spenser. And this

visit of the queen was to be the most magnificent affair ever seen in that part of the country. All the people for miles around hurried to Kenilworth to see the show.

We may be pretty sure that John Shakespeare was there, and very likely he took young Will with him. 5 There were plays and shows of all kinds, like a great fair, and above all there was the queen herself, who smiled upon the people as she passed.

When William was about thirteen, a change came over his father's fortunes. John Shakespeare fell into 10 debt and had to sell the larger part of his property; and the boy was obliged to leave school and earn his own living. We do not know just what he did. Some say he worked at the butcher's trade; but the most important thing that he did was to notice carefully all the 15 people whom he met, and the river, and the sky, and the meadows, so that he knew how every sort of man and woman looked and behaved, and how every flower grew, and what every change of season brought. Nothing escaped his eye, and he stored away in his memory all 20 that he saw, so that years later he was able to bring it out and put it into his great plays.

When he was little more than eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, a farmer's daughter living at Shottery, only a short walk across the fields from Stratford. Before 25 long they had a family of three children. People in Stratford thought Will Shakespeare ought to spend less time

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in hunting deer and tramping over the fields and ought to stick to some honest trade. There is a story that he once got into trouble by hunting in a piece of woods belonging to Sir Thomas Lucy, and that Sir Thomas had him arrested. But Shakespeare could not think of settling down to the life of a village tradesman. There was something in him that told him to look farther, and so one day he said good-by to his wife and children and started off for London to seek his fortune.

There is a story that when he reached London he went straight to the theater, determined to get work of some sort there; and that finding nothing better to do, he began by holding the horses of the fine gentlemen who came to see the plays. It is said that a little later he 15 was employed to call out the names of the actors and the pieces, and after a time was given a small part to act. But he soon showed that he could make himself most useful in changing old plays so that they could be more easily acted. That was something which the actors 20 themselves could not do. Every old play that Shakespeare took in hand he made over into something different and far better. Then he began to write plays himself, and almost before he knew it he was famous. All the actors wanted to act Shakespeare's plays, and all the people 25 wanted to see them acted, because there was life in them, and because they showed men and women as they really were.