INNER TEMPLE, March 8, 1609.
To WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:
We have been retained by Mistress Anne Page as her solicitors to
bring against you an action, for that you have not fulfilled and in
sooth cannot fulfil with her a contract of marriage, and to seek
against you under the laws of this realm heavy damages and an
imprisonment of the body, in that you have in unholy ways trifled
with her affections, contrary to the statute in such cases provided.
She especially avers that you did, two days before Michaelmas, swear
to her on a parcel gilt goblet that you did love her alone, and did
then give to her a bracelet of price. But yesterday, as she was
bargaining with a yeoman named Christopher Sly, from Stratford, for
the purchase of a spotted pig of his own fattening, the said Sly did
reveal to her that you were his friend, and that you had wife and
children in your native town where he dwelt. We beg you to
straightway name to us your solicitors, that we may confer with them
and attend to the issuance of the writs.
I have aimed to select from the letters sent me only those bearing on
some trouble tending to cause sleeplessness on the part of the poet, but
make an exception in case of a letter of Sir Walter Raleigh, next in
chronological order, which refers to matters of general interest.
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