Page:A life of William Shakespeare (IA lifeofwilliamsha02lees).pdf/16

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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Plume writes that the poet 'was a glover's son,' a well-worn statement which calls for no comment. He proceeds thus (I expand the abbreviations): 'S[i]r John Mennes saw once his old f[athe]r in h[is] shop—a merry checked old man th[a]t s[ai]d "Will was a g[oo]d Hon[est] Fellow, but he darest h[ave] crackt a jeast w[i]th him at any time."'

This entry requires some annotation. It is not easy to identify Sir John Mennes. Chronology seems to differentiate him from Sir John Mennes, the admiral and versifier of Charles the First's reign, who was only two years old when Shakespeare's father died in 1601. But it may well be that the story was related by Sir John Mennes, who mingled freely in literary society in the generation following Shakespeare's death, and that Plume hastily and inaccurately credited him with an experience which was in Sir John's conversation assigned to some other. At any rate, Plume's note preserves a personal description

    friend, Drummond of Hawthornden, examples of how the unimpressive game was played at his own expense. When recording Jonson's conversation, Drummond relates that one of the epitaphs suggested for Jonson at a social gathering ran, according to his own account, thus:

    Here lyes honest Ben
    That had not a beard on his chen.

    Plume independently quotes on Hacket's authority another of the mock epitaphs on Ben to like effect:
    Here lies Benjamin . . . w[it]h littl hair up[on] his chin
    Who w[hi]l[e] he lived w[as] a slow th[ing], and now he is d[ea]d is noth[ing].

    This, of course, is the very false gallop of verses, but Plume asserts that the foolish effusion was an impromptu jest of Jonson's friend, 'Shakesp[ea]r[e].'

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