The loose-liver is usually a spendthrift.
There are worse faults to be laid to his account than lechery and
extravagance. Every one who has read his works with any care must admit
that Shakespeare was a snob of the purest English water. Aristocratic
tastes were natural to him; inherent, indeed, in the delicate
sensitiveness of his beauty-loving temperament; but he desired the
outward and visible signs of gentility as much as any podgy millionaire
of our time, and stooped as low to get them as man could stoop. In 1596,
his young son, Hamnet, died at Stratford, and was buried on 11th August
in the parish church. This event called Shakespeare back to his village,
and while he was there he most probably paid his father's debts, and
certainly tried to acquire for himself and his successors the position
of gentlefolk. He induced his father to make application to the College
of Heralds for a coat of arms, on the ground not only that his father
was a man of substance, but that he had also married into a "worshipful"
family.
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