The house in Henley Street in which William Shakespeare was probably born and spent his early years has undergone many changes; but, as carefully restored in recent years and reverently preserved for a national memorial of the poet, its appearance now is doubtless not materially different from what it was in the latter part of the 16th century. There are a few houses of the same period and the same class still standing in Stratford and its vicinity, which, according to the highest antiquarian authority, are almost unaltered from their original form and finish. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps mentions one in particular in the Rother Market, "the main features of which are certainly in their original state," and the sketches of the interior given by him closely resemble those of the Shakespeare house. These houses were usually of two stories, and were constructed of wooden beams, forming a framework, the spaces between the beams being filled with lath and plaster. The roofs were usually of thatch, with dormer windows and steep gables. The door was shaded by a porch or by a _pentice_, or _penthouse_, which was a narrow sloping roof often extending along the the front of the lower story over both door and windows, as in Shakespeare's birthplace on Henley Street. In the _Merchant of Venice_ (ii. 6. 1) Gratiano says:-- "This is the penthouse under which Lorenzo Desired us to make stand." In _Much Ado About Nothing_ (iii. 3. 110) Borachio says to Conrade: "Stand thee close, then, under this penthouse, for it drizzles rain." We find a figurative allusion to the penthouse in _Love's Labour's Lost_ (iii. 1. 17): "with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes"; and another in _Macbeth_ (i. 3. 20):-- "Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his penthouse lid"; the projecting eyebrow being compared to this part of the Elizabethan dwelling. [Illustration: ROOM IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN] The better houses, like New Place, were of timber and brick, instead of plaster, though sometimes entirely of stone. Shakespeare appears to have rebuilt the greater part of New Place with stone. The roofs of this class of dwellings were usually tiled, but occasionally thatched. We read of one Walter Roche, who in 1582 replaced the tiles of his house in Chapel Street with thatch. The wood-work in the front of some houses, as in a fine example still to be seen in the High Street (page 59 below), was elaborately carved with floral and other designs.