It was whilst he was still a schoolboy that Queen Elizabeth visited the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth; and thither many from the districts round about flocked to gaze upon her Majesty, and to witness with open–eyed wonder the magnificent pageants which were enacted for her amusement. As Stratford is but thirteen miles distant from Kenilworth by road it appears more than possible that both Shakespeare and his father were amongst the spectators. If this were the case it is probable that the Kenilworth festivities were the first introduction which the future dramatist had to the stage, and that the influence of the scenes he must have witnessed becomes easily traceable in several of his plays. [Illustration: ABBOTS SALFORD.] Every life of Shakespeare, even with the benefit of the latest discoveries and the most recent and learned reasoning and deductions, must unhappily be largely conjectural. Not because it is possible to believe that it was blank or useless in its earlier days, but because, alas! the records are so scanty that the most able and painstaking research has succeeded in eliciting from the past but a fragmentary chain of circumstances and comparatively unimportant facts where one would have had detailed evidence. Shakespeare’s wedding with Anne Hathaway when he was nineteen and she seven years his senior, some time in the early part of the month of December 1582, was followed on May 26 of the succeeding year by the birth of his daughter Susannah. No evidence exists to settle the question of either Shakespeare’s employment or mode of life during the early period of his married life, and the only indisputable fact that has come down to us relating to the next year or two is the record of the birth of twins, a son Hamnet and a daughter Judith, on February 2, 1585, who were baptized in Stratford Church. It was about this time that Shakespeare went to London, though probably quite late in the year. The reason of his removal from his native town is quite unknown, although some authorities appear to favour the traditional story that it was in consequence of his poaching exploits, and the action of Sir Thomas Lucy. Others think that he was drawn thither by a desire to better his position, and thus provide for his increasing family. Two years later, in 1587, he was found, according to Mr. Fleay, a member of the Earl of Leicester’s players either at the time of or shortly after their visit to Stratford, when they probably gave performances in the Guild Hall. This is, however, entirely supposition, as there is neither any very definite tradition nor any recorded fact which proves Shakespeare to have left Stratford under these circumstances.