Page:A life of William Shakespeare (IA lifeofwilliamsha02lees).pdf/23

grounds on which Shakespeare's title to coat armour was questioned by contemporary criticism.

The censor's general allegation is that men of low birth and undignified employment were corruptly suffered by the heralds to credit themselves with noble or highly aristocratic descent, and to bear, in consideration of large money payments, coat armour of respectable antiquity. In one case Brooke avers that an embroiderer, calling himself Parr, who failed to give proof of his right to that surname and was unquestionably the son of a pedlar, received permission to use the crest and coat of Sir William Parr, Marquis of Northampton, who died in 1571, 'the last male of his house.' Three other men, who were accused of bribing the college into forging pedigrees, are credited with the occupations respectively of a seller of stockings, a haberdasher, and a stationer or printer, while a fourth offender is stated to be an alien. In some instances Garter is charged with having pocketed his fee, and then with having prudently postponed the formal issue of the promised grant of arms until the applicant was dead. One feels regret that Shakespeare's name should (in Brooke's neat script) ornament the first leaf of this manuscript treasury of scandal. The dramatist's negotiation with the Heralds' College clearly involved him in a widely distributed notoriety. He identified himself with the bourgeois ambitions of his day so thoroughly as to invite challenge from prosaic minds of his true title to fame.