In the
earliest works he was compelled to use his own experience, having no
observation of life to help him, and at the end of his life, having said
almost everything he had to say, he again went back to his early
experience for little vital facts to lend a colour to the fainter
pictures of age. In "The Winter's Tale," a shepherd finds the child
Perdita, who has been exposed; one would expect him to stumble on the
child by chance and express surprise; but this shepherd of Shakespeare
begins to talk in this way:
"I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that
youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but
getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.
Hark you now! Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and
two-and-twenty hunt this weather?"
Now this passage has nothing to do with the play, nor with the
shepherd's occupation; nor is it at all characteristic of a shepherd
boy. Between ten and three-and-twenty a poor shepherd boy is likely to
be kept hard at work; he is not idle and at a loose end like young
Shakespeare, free to rob the ancientry, steal, fight, and get wenches
with child.
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