There is some excuse for him, if excuse be needed. At the time the
marriage must have seemed the wildest folly to him, seething as he was
with inordinate conceit. He was wise beyond his years, and yet he had
been forced to give hostages to fortune before he had any means of
livelihood, before he had even found a place in life. What a position
for a poet--penniless, saddled with a jealous wife and three children
before he was twenty-one. And this poet was proud, and vain, and in love
with all distinctions.
But why did Shakespeare nurse such persistent enmity all through his
life to jealous, scolding Anne Hathaway? Shakespeare had wronged her;
the keener his moral sense, the more certain he was to blame his partner
in the fault, for in no other way could he excuse himself.
It was overpowering sensuality and rashness which had led Shakespeare
into the noose, and now there was nothing for it but to cut the rope. He
had either to be true to his higher nature or to the conventional view
of his duty; he was true to himself and fled to London, and the world is
the richer for his decision.
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