education he may have had. Having learned his trade, McGonagall proceeded to educate himself, taking "great delight in reading books", particularly cheap editions of Shakespeare's plays. On 11 July 1846, he married Jean King, a fellow mill worker from Stirling. Together they had five sons and two daughters. Despite the Industrial Revolution slowly making weavers obsolete, McGonagall appeared to prosper, as there was still need for skilled workers to perform tasks of great complexity. Whilst working at the loom, McGonagall would entertain his shopmates with recitations from Shakespeare. On one occasion they paid a local theatre owner to allow him to appear in the title role in a production of Macbeth. Convinced that the actor playing Macduff was envious of him, McGonagall refused to die in the final act. For this performance, the Book of Heroic Failures awarded him the title of the "worst Macbeth" as well as "worst British poet". Career The turning point in McGonagall's life came in June 1877. Work as a weaver had become more difficult to find, as his eldest daughter had shamed the family by giving birth to an illegitimate child; at this point, he was seized with a new inspiration: He wrote his first poem, "An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan", displaying the hallmarks that would characterise his work. Gilfillan, himself an untrained and poorly reviewed polemic Presbyterian preacher who occasionally dabbled in poetry, commented admiringly "Shakespeare never wrote anything like this." McGonagall realised if he were to succeed as a poet, he required a patron and wrote to Queen Victoria. He received a letter of rejection, written by a royal functionary, thanking him for his interest. McGonagall took this as praise for his work. During a trip to Dunfermline in 1879, he was mocked by the Chief Templar at the International Organisation of Good Templars, of which McGonagall was a member, who told him his poetry was very bad. McGonagall told the man that "it was so very bad that Her Majesty had thanked McGonagall for what the Chief Templar had condemned." The letter gave McGonagall confidence in his "poetic abilities", and he felt his reputation could be enhanced further if he were to give a live performance before the Queen. In July 1878, he walked from Dundee to Balmoral, a distance of about over mountainous terrain and through a violent thunderstorm to perform for Queen Victoria. When he arrived, he