"_Every 'leven wether—tods_," adds Mr. Ritson, "has been rightly expounded to mean that the wool of _eleven sheep_ would weigh a _tod_, or 28lb. Each fleece would, therefore, be 2lb. 8oz. 11½dr., and the whole produce of _fifteen hundred shorn 136 tod_, 1 clove, 2lb. 6oz. 2dr. which _at pound and odd shilling per tod_, would yield 143_l._ 3_s._ 0_d._ Our author was too familiar with the subject to be suspected of inaccuracy. "Indeed it appears from Stafford's _Breefe Conceipte of English Pollicye_, 1581, p. 16, that the price of a tod of wool was at that period _twenty_ or _two_ and _twenty shillings_: so that the medium price was exactly '_pound and odd shilling_.'"[35:A] In Hamlet, the prince justly observes, There's a divinity that _shapes our ends_, _Rough-hew_ them how we will. _Act V. Scene 2._ Lines, of which the words in italics were considered by Dr. Farmer as merely technical. "A woolman, butcher, and dealer in _skewers_," says Mr. Stevens, "lately observed to him (Dr. F.), that his nephew, an idle lad, could only _assist_ him in making them; '—he could _rough-hew_ them, but I was obliged to _shape their ends_.' To shape the ends of _wool-skewers_, i. e. to _point_ them, requires a degree of skill; any one can _rough-hew_ them. Whoever recollects the profession of Shakspeare's father, will admit that his son might be no stranger to such terms. I have frequently seen packages of wool pinned up with _skewers_."[36:A] We may, therefore, after duly considering all the evidence that can now be obtained, pretty confidently acquiesce in the traditional account that Shakspeare was, for a time, and that immediately on his being taken from the free-school, the assistant of his father in the wool-trade; but it will be necessary here to mention, that Aubrey, on whose authority it has been related that John Shakspeare was, at one period of his life, a butcher, adds, with regard to our poet, that "when he was a boy, he exercised his father's trade;" and that "when he killed a calfe, he would do it in a _high style_, and make a speech."[36:B] That John Shakspeare, when under the pressure of adversity, might combine the two employments, which are, in a certain degree, connected with each other, we have already recorded as probable; it is very possible, also, that the following similes may have been suggested to the son, by what he had occasionally observed at home: And as the butcher takes away the calf, And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays, Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house; Even so, remorseless, have they borne him hence. And as the dam runs lowing up and down, Looking the way her harmless young one went, And can do nought but wail her darling's loss; Even so, &c. &c. _Henry VI. Part II. Act III. Scene 1._