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 ■ THE LIBRARY 
 
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 Col. Arnold W. Shutter 
 
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 THE LITE'RATtr WRINGS Sei^ieS, 
 SHAKESPEARE & STRATFORD
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S TOMB IN STRATFORD CHURCH
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 STRATFORD 
 
 sr 
 
 HENRY Cf ; SHELLEY 
 
 ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
 Br THE AUTHOR 
 
 BOSTON 
 LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
 
 $MM 
 
 9 
 
 Copyright 
 First published 1913 
 
 1PRINTED AT 
 THF. BALLANTYNE PRESS 
 LONDON, ENGLAND
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I : THE BIRTHPLACE 
 II : NEW PLACE 
 
 III : THE CHURCH 
 
 IV : THE TOWN 
 
 V : THE SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES 
 NOTES FOR THE TOURIST 
 
 PAGE I 
 
 j> 
 
 49 
 
 >* 
 
 87 
 
 »> 
 
 133 
 
 5> 
 
 170 
 
 » 
 
 199 
 
 For permission to utilize the manuscript of the auction 
 address of Edmund Robins, the author desires to express 
 his grateful acknowledgment to the Trustees of Shake- 
 speare's Birthplace
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Shakespeare's Tomb 
 
 Shakespeare's Birthplace, Henley Street 
 
 New Place and Nash's House 
 
 Inside the Site of New Place 
 
 Holy Trinity Church 
 
 The Avon at Stratford 
 
 The Clopton Bridge 
 
 Grammar School and Guild Chapel 
 
 Harvard House 
 
 The Red Horse Hotel (Washington Irving's Hotel) 
 
 The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre 
 
 The Shakespeare Memorial Fountain 
 
 Entrance to Charlecote Park 
 
 The Shakespeare Cottage at Snitterfield 
 
 Mary Arden's Cottage, Wilmcote 
 
 Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Shottery 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 Facing page 
 
 2 4 
 
 » 
 
 51 
 
 » 
 
 85 
 
 » 
 
 97 
 
 >5 
 
 1 24 
 
 II 
 
 141 
 
 » 
 
 H3 
 
 ?> 
 
 153 
 
 rEL) „ 
 
 156 
 
 5> 
 
 160 
 
 JJ 
 
 168 
 
 ?5 
 
 174 
 
 5> 
 
 192 
 
 » 
 
 194 
 
 » 
 
 197
 
 CHAPTER I : The Birthplace 
 
 WASN'T he foxy to choose a cute 
 little place like that in which to 
 write his plays ? " 
 
 Perhaps it is hardly necessary to explain that 
 the questioner was a daughter of Uncle Sam, but 
 for the sake of elucidation it is needful to add 
 that the " cute little place " referred to was a trim, 
 half-timbered building in Henley Street, Stratford- 
 on-Avon, and that the "he " was none other than 
 William Shakespeare.' 
 
 It must be noted, however, that the picturesque 
 question was not in accordance with knowledge 
 or tradition. There is nothing to support the 
 implied theory that " Hamlet " and the other 
 plays were written in the Henley Street cottage, 
 nor do any of the many legends clustering around 
 that structure claim for it so high an honour. 
 But to credit Shakespeare with the deliberate 
 choice of a literary workshop is all of a piece with 
 the uncertainty in which so much of his life-story 
 is involved.
 
 SHzAKESPEiARE <i4ND STRATFORD 
 
 Most pilgrims to Stratford-on-Avon have a 
 clearer notion of what they seek when they turn 
 their footsteps in the direction of Henley Street. 
 Following the order of nature, their first desire 
 on reaching Shakespeare's town is to gaze upon 
 the shrine of his nativity, and for more than a 
 century and a half tradition has declared that 
 the three-gabled cottage on the north side of the 
 street in question is the birthplace. 
 
 But is it ? As it ill becomes the Shakespearean 
 to " worship shadows and adore false shapes," the 
 question should be faced boldly and regardless of 
 consequences. Let it be admitted, then, even 
 though such honesty is rare, that there is an 
 older tradition which is fatal to the claims of the 
 Henley Street house. A late echo of that tra- 
 dition sounded in the ears of Washington Irving, 
 for did not the old sexton express " a doubt " as 
 to the genuineness of the birthplace ? It is true 
 that the kindly Geoffrey Crayon, in keeping with 
 his character as a " Gent.," explained the sexton's 
 suspicion on the score of envy, but if he had been 
 acquainted with the lore of the learned and in- 
 dustrious William Oldys he would have realized 
 2
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 that the sexton had good reason for his scepticism. 
 Oldys, in fact, in the first quarter of the eigh- 
 teenth century had recorded a tradition to the 
 effect that Shakespeare was born in a house near 
 the churchyard, and this legend persisted until the 
 nineteenth century. " A house near the river," 
 as the laborious J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps wrote, 
 " called the Brook House, now pulled down, was 
 some years since asserted to have been the birth- 
 place of Shakespeare." 
 
 What makes matters still worse for the Henlev 
 Street shrine is that the earliest visitors who 
 were drawn to Stratford-on-Avon by the fame of 
 Shakespeare entirely ignored its existence. One 
 of the most curious and unnoticed facts in the 
 biography of the dramatist is that he had been 
 dead some seven years before his connexion with 
 Stratford-on-Avon was recorded in print. Of 
 course his name had appeared in contemporary 
 literature long prior to 1616. So much emphasis 
 has been laid upon our shadowy knowledge of the 
 poet that it is often forgotten that his name is of 
 frequent occurrence in prose and verse from 1592 
 onwards. The year just named was the date of 
 
 3
 
 I. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Robert Greene's splenetic and envious reference 
 to the young dramatist as " the only Shakescene 
 in a countrie," but three years later he was 
 christened " Sweet Shakespeare," and thence- 
 forward the chorus of his praise constantly swelled 
 in volume. And yet not one of the numerous 
 references has any allusion to Stratford. 
 
 Undoubtedly his fellow players and poets were 
 well aware that Shakespeare was a native of 
 Stratford, and yet it was not until 1623, when he 
 had been dead seven years, that his name was 
 associated with the town on the Avon. That topo- 
 graphical service was rendered by Leonard Digges, 
 one of the four poets who contributed com- 
 mendatory verses to the famous First Folio, which 
 marked the earliest attempt to give the world a 
 complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. The 
 volume was published in 1623, and it was not 
 until that date that the reading public, through 
 Leonard Digges's assertion that Shakespeare's 
 plays would be alive when " Time dissolves thy 
 Stratford monument," learnt the meagre fact 
 that the poet was buried in that Warwickshire 
 town. 
 
 4
 
 THE "BIRTHPLACE 
 
 Such a casual reference, however, may easily 
 have been overlooked by those curious in bio- 
 graphical details, and hence/ it is highly probable 
 that until the appearance of Sir William Dug- 
 dale's monumental work on the antiquities of 
 Warwickshire in 1656 few were aware of Shake- 
 speare's close connexion with Stratford. To 
 Dugdale, then, belongs the credit of advertising 
 the association in an authoritative manner, for 
 in concluding his notice of Stratford he wrote : 
 " One thing more, in reference to this ancient 
 town, is observable, that it gave birth and 
 sepulture to our late famous poet, Will. Shake- 
 speare." And the antiquary did not confine him- 
 self to that brief reference ; in his account of the 
 tombs in Holy Trinity Church he quoted the 
 inscription on the poet's grave and monument, 
 and presented his readers with a sketch, more 
 imaginary than accurate, of the " Stratford monu- 
 ment " mentioned by Digges. 
 
 But, and this is the significant fact, Dugdale 
 made no reference to the house in which the poet 
 was born. He visited the town three years 
 before his book was published — that is, in 1653 — 
 
 5 
 
 %
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 and at that time, only thirty-seven years after 
 Shakespeare died, there were of course many 
 Stratfordians who could have pointed out the 
 dramatist's birthplace. Perhaps, however, the 
 antiquary was not interested in such matters, and 
 that indifFerence seems to have been shared by 
 many subsequent visitors. In fact, a diligent 
 examination of old records, printed and in 
 manuscript, yields the result that all through the 
 seventeenth century there is no reference to any 
 one specific building as the actual birthplace of 
 Shakespeare. Indeed, one traveller of the late 
 seventeenth century wrote up his diary without 
 mentioning Shakespeare at all. Stratford, he 
 noted, was " well built, with fair streets and good 
 inns," possessed " one good church " and a " long 
 and well-built bridge " ; but he wrote never a 
 word about its most famous son. And that was 
 in 1682. 
 
 Such visitors, however, who were of a more 
 literary turn of mind contented themselves for 
 many years with paying their devotion at the, 
 poet's grave. Thus a diarist namecTDowdall, 
 who passed through Stratford in 1693, confined 
 6
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 his record to the church and grave ; and another 
 pilgrim, William Hall by name, who visited the 
 town the following year, had much to relate of 
 the poet's burial-place, but, like Dowdall and the 
 others, made no reference to the house in which 
 he was bjojnw' Even Horace Walpole, who did 
 not usually overlook much, explored Stratford 
 in the summer of 1 75 1 without discovering the 
 birthplace. Still later, indeed — that is, in 1760, 
 and only nine years before Garrick's spectacular 
 "Jubilee " — a noteworthy visitor was wholly silent 
 as to the dramatist's natal shrine. 
 
 Yet it would be unjust to the Mecca in Henley 
 Street not to admit that by about the middle of 
 the eighteenth century it had begun to rival the 
 attraction of the tomb in Holy Trinity Church, 
 and that by 1769, the year when Garrick exploited 
 himself at Shakespeare's expense, the cottage was 
 firmly established in popular favour as the 
 veritable scene of the poet's nativity. How the 
 earlier tradition referred to above — that which 
 located the event in the Brook House near the 
 river — was supplanted in favour of Henley Street 
 is a mystery which will probably never be solved. 
 
 7
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Unfortunately, too, the perplexities of those 
 who do not wish to "worship shadows and adore 
 false shapes " are not exhausted by the rival claims 
 of the Brook House and Henley Street. There 
 are problems native to Henley Street qua Henley 
 Street. When Nathan Drake, in 1817, made the 
 confident assertion that " the very roof that 
 sheltered Shakespeare's infant innocency can still 
 be pointed out," he postulated a credulity which 
 is no longer possible. Waiving for the moment 
 the question as to whether Henley Street is the 
 correct locality, it is indubitable that while some 
 of the timber framework and fragments of the 
 plaster of the birthplace may have survived from 
 the second half of the sixteenth century, the 
 actual roof of John Shakespeare's house dis- 
 appeared many years ago. No other conclusion 
 is possible from the various drawings which were 
 made of the building from 1762 onward. 
 
 Several stages in the history of the appearance 
 of the birthplace are illustrated by drawings 
 exhibited in one of the rooms of that building. 
 The earliest of these is a pencil sketch made in 
 1788, which was founded on a drawing executed 
 8
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 in 1769. Both these bear a strong likeness to the 
 picture of 1762 which Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps 
 reproduced in one of his books. In fact, all the 
 oldest illustrations have several features in 
 common. They show a modest building consist- 
 ing of two houses, each having its own doorway, 
 but the structure on the east is distinguished from 
 that on the west by having two gables to its 
 companion's one. And the western cottage has 
 a penthouse over its doorway as compared with 
 the unsheltered entrance of the other. In each 
 the surface of the wall is broken up with those 
 massive beams of timber which were so picturesque 
 a feature of houses built in the sixteenth century. 
 It should be added that the right-hand upstair 
 window of the eastern house was in the form of a 
 projecting bay. 
 
 When, however, the drawings made in the 
 early nineteenth century are examined it will be 
 observed that the most notable features of the 
 eighteenth-century pictures have disappeared. 
 The penthouse of the western house has given 
 place to two projecting windows, while the bay of 
 the eastern cottage has become a flat window of 
 
 9
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 four lights. By 1849, too, in the unerring 
 testimony of a photograph, other changes had 
 taken place, including the bricking over of a part 
 of the front wall. In all these later illustrations, 
 moreover, the most striking difference is the 
 aspect presented by the roof, for the three gables 
 of the two houses have been entirely demolished. 
 An ingenious attempt has been made to explain 
 this transformation as having been caused by the 
 window tax, but such a theory ignores the fact 
 that the window tax was first imposed in 1697, 
 and that it was only levied on houses having more 
 than six windows. The more probable explanation 
 of the alterations in the outward appearance of 
 the birthplace is that they were rendered necessary 
 as repairs to the original structure. When the 
 structure was restored it was natural that the 
 architect and builder should closely follow the 
 oldest drawings, and hence its aspect to-day is a 
 trim replica of the sketches of the second half of 
 the eighteenth century. 
 
 Having disentangled the history of the objective 
 aspect of the birthplace, the labours of the seeker 
 after truth are by no means at an end. There 
 10
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 remains the vital question of deciding in which 
 of the rooms Shakespeare was born. If one 
 could accept the confident statement of the official 
 leaflet, that question would be answered as soon 
 as asked. But that is impossible. One reason is 
 provided by the itinerary of a Rev. R. Warner 
 who visited Stratford in 1801. "On inquiring 
 for the birthplace of our great poet," he wrote, 
 " we were not a little surprised to be carried 
 through a small butcher's shop into a dirty back 
 room." And yet it is a front room upstairs 
 which is shown as the actual birth-chamber ! 
 
 Nor does that exhaust the mystery. While 
 it seems probable that the " dirty back room " 
 into which Mr. Warner was shown was situated 
 in the western half of the birthplace, and while 
 the upstairs front room which is now pointed out 
 as the scene of the poet's nativity is in the same 
 portion, there can be no question that if Shake- 
 speare was born in either of the Henley Street 
 cottages he was born in a room of the eastern and 
 not the western building. It is nothing to the 
 purpose that the walls of the alleged birth-room 
 are covered with the autographs of credulous 
 
 11
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 pilgrims ; they were all inscribed prior to the 
 discovery of those documents which have thrown 
 light on John Shakespeare's connexion with the 
 two Henley Street houses. 
 
 f* What, then, are the facts ? Briefly, that while 
 John Shakespeare became the owner of the eastern 
 cottage in 1556, it was not until 1575 that he 
 obtained possession of the western building. That 
 1 is to say, William Shakespeare was eleven years 
 old before his father owned or occupied the build- 
 ing in which his birth-room is so confidently 
 located ! 
 
 When Washington Irving paid his first visit to 
 Stratford in 181 5 he was in no such critical mood 
 as is common with the pilgrim of the twentieth 
 century. " I am always," he confessed, " of easy 
 faith in such matters, and am willing to be 
 deceived, where the deceit is pleasant and costs 
 nothing. I am therefore a ready believer in 
 relics, legends, and local anecdotes of goblins and 
 great men ; and would advise all travellers who 
 travel for their gratification to be the same. 
 What is it to us whether these stories be true or 
 false, so long as we can persuade ourselves into the 
 12
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 belief of them, and enjoy all the charm of the 
 reality ? There is nothing like resolute good- 
 humoured credulity in these matters." Easy 
 faith of a bygone day ! But the scientific historian 
 has rendered such confidence impossible. 
 
 Then the sum of the matter is this. Bearing 
 in mind the priority of the Brook House legend, 
 and remembering that John Shakespeare's purchase 
 of the eastern cottage in Henley Street does not 
 necessarily imply that he required it for a resi- 
 dence, it is feasible that the birth of William 
 Shakespeare in April 1564 took place in that long- 
 demolished cottage near the river, for in such 
 a country town as Stratford an early tradition 
 out-values a volume of learned speculation. If an 
 explanation is asked as to how it came to pass 
 that the Henley Street building, and above all the 
 western portion of that structure, has been since 
 1759 known as the poet's birthplace, Sir Sidney 
 Lee supplies the answer. "The fact of its long 
 occupancy by the poet's collateral descendants 
 accounts for the identification of the western 
 rather than the eastern tenement with his 
 birthplace." 
 
 13
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 But are not all these cold facts fatal to the 
 ardour of hero-worship ? By no means. /If ItT 
 were definitely proved that not even the eastern 
 cottage in Henley Street has any claim to being 
 the birthplace of the dramatist, nothing can rob 
 it and its companion of the distinction which J 
 attaches to both buildings as having been the 
 childhood home of Shakespeare. Here, then, by 
 the time the future poet had attained his eleventh 
 year, the family home was located, and it is 
 probable that thenceforward William Shake- 
 speare knew no other abode in Stratford until he 
 left his native town for that adventure in London 
 which was to have such momentous results. 
 
 John Shakespeare's purchase in 1575 of the 
 western cottage in Henley Street seems to have 
 marked the zenith of his fortunes. Up to that 
 year he had been eminently successful in the 
 practical affairs of life. A native of the adjacent 
 village of Snitterfield, where his father was a 
 farmer in easy circumstances, John Shakespeare 
 appears to have removed to Stratford about 1551 
 and set up in business as a general dealer in 
 agricultural products. He has been described as 
 14
 
 THE "BIRTHPLACE 
 
 a butcher, a glover, a husbandman, a corn-dealer, 
 a wool merchant, and so on, but such occupations 
 must not be regarded as contradictory or as 
 exclusive of each other. To the present day the 
 general store of rural England is an emporium of 
 bewildering resource, and hence it is not sur- 
 prising that a tradesman of the sixteenth century 
 should have dealt in so many articles as were pur- 
 veyed by John Shakespeare. That in the sum total 
 of his various occupations the father of the poet 
 reaped substantial profit may be inferred from the 
 fact that in 1556 he is found purchasing some 
 real estate, and the following year effected a 
 marriage with Mary Arden, the daughter of a 
 prosperous farmer of Wilmcote. From the 
 latter date, too, he began to take a prominent 
 position in the life of Stratford, for in 1557 he 
 was appointed one of the four ale-tasters of the 
 town, men whose duty it was to sample the wares 
 of the local brewers and see that the ale and beer 
 were alike good, wholesome, and reasonable in 
 price. John Shakespeare evidently approved him- 
 self a competent assayer of malt liquors, for in 
 the following year he was chosen one of the four 
 
 J 5
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 petty constables of the town, and thus was clothed 
 with still larger authority over the daily life of 
 Stratfordians. During the next decade, too, he 
 was elected to four other municipal offices of 
 increasing importance, one of which, that of 
 chamberlain or treasurer, he filled for two terms. 
 His crowning honour as a townsman came in 
 1568, when he was voted to the position of high 
 bailiff — that is, mayor — of Stratford. 
 
 Four years earlier — that is, in the month of 
 April 1564 — there had been born to him that son 
 William who was to make the name of Shakespeare 
 illustrious in the literary annals of the world. The 
 actual date of his birth is not known. Such an 
 assertion may surprise those who rely upon calen- 
 dars and the confident statements of biographical 
 dictionaries, in which April 23 is cited as the 
 birthday. But that date rests solely upon 
 inference and tradition. The inference is deduced 
 from the record of the poet's baptism on April 26 
 in the register of Holy Trinity Church. It was 
 customary, so the theorists argue, to baptize 
 a child on the third day after its birth, and hence, 
 as Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, he must 
 16
 
 THE "BIRTHPLACE 
 
 have been born on the 23rd. Perhaps in the 
 average baptisms may have followed births at a 
 three days' interval ; but, as countless exceptions 
 could be cited, and as there was no secular or 
 ecclesiastical law on the subject, the inference in 
 Shakespeare's case is not valid. He may have 
 been a weakling like Addison, who, on that 
 account, was baptized on the actual day of his 
 birth, or circumstances may have delayed his 
 baptism a week or even ten days. But the 
 theorists support their case by legend as well as 
 by inference. It is established, they claim, that 
 Shakespeare died on April 23, and that it was an 
 early tradition that he passed away on his birth- 
 day. The claim may be allowed; he did die on 
 April 23 ; but the tradition as to the coincidence 
 has no more value than any of the many other 
 legends associated with Shakespeare's name. 
 
 If inference is to have any weight, De Quincey's 
 theory in favour of April 22 as the actual birth- 
 day has most in its favour, "Shakespeare's sole 
 granddaughter, Lady Barnard, was married on 
 April 22, 1626, ten years exactly after the poet's 
 death ; and the reason for choosing this day 
 
 b 17
 
 SHzAKESPEiARE ^4ND STRATFORD 
 
 might have had a reference to her illustrious 
 grandfather's birthday, which, there is good 
 reason for thinking, would be celebrated as a 
 festival in the family for generations. Still, this 
 choice may have been an accident, or governed 
 merely by reason of convenience." In the end 
 De Quincey grew out of favour with his own 
 theory, and advised acquiescence in the legendary 
 April 23, with the reservation that we cannot do 
 wrong if we drink to the poet's memory on both 
 days. 
 
 Wherever John Shakespeare was residing during 
 the year he was high bailiff of Stratford, his term 
 of office was marked by an event which must have 
 impressed the imagination of his son William. 
 For, suggestively enough,/ John Shakespeare's I 
 occupancy of the post of high bailiff coincided 
 with the two earliest visits of strolling players of 
 which there is any record in the annals of the 
 town. His term of office began in the September 
 of 1568 and terminated in the same month of the 
 following year, and it is written in the accounts 
 of Stratford that in 1569 the " Quene's players" 
 were awarded a sum of nine shillings and the 
 18 
 
 L
 
 THE "BIRTHPLACE 
 
 "Erie of Worcester's pleers " the sum of twelve 
 pence./' When read in the light of the manners of 
 the times these entries are full of interest. They 
 postulate, for one thing, a keen interest in the 
 drama in John Shakespeare, for the strolling 
 players of those days could not act in a town 
 without the permission of the mayor, and it was 
 to him they looked for the remuneration of their 
 first performance. The first performance, then, 
 was known as the Mayor's play, and he, as the 
 chief patron, would see to it that the members of 
 his family and his own special friends were not 
 the least favoured among the spectators. 
 
 On two different occasions, then, in 1569 the 
 Queen's players and the Earl of Worcester's 
 players set up their stage in Stratford town, and 
 it is not carrying probability far to conclude that 
 on each occasion the audiences included the lad 
 who was destined to become the chief glory of 
 the English drama. It is true he was only 
 in his sixth year at the time, but that that was not 
 too tender an age for a playgoer in the sixteenth 
 century is proved by the parallel case, cited by 
 Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, of the six-year-old son of 
 
 l 9
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 the mayor of Gloucester, who stood between his 
 father's knees and " saw and heard very well ' 
 while a company of strolling players performed 
 " The Cradle of Security." How moving an 
 event a child's first experience of a theatrical 
 performance may be has been described once 
 for all by Charles Lamb, and what was true of 
 his own emotions on such an occasion was doubt- 
 less anticipated in the case of the youthful 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 But to return to the two cottages in Henley 
 Street. Whatever may have been John Shake- 
 speare's connexion with the eastern tenement prior 
 to 1575, it is beyond question that from that 
 year he was the owner and occupier of both 
 buildings. And it is also a fact that the two 
 structures remained in the possession of his 
 descendants until 1806. 
 
 Why John Shakespeare needed both cottages is 
 explained partly by his multifarious occupations 
 and partly by the ample proportions of his family. 
 According to the present ground plan, the com- 
 bined buildings contained twelve rooms, but it is 
 probable that the annex to the rear of the western 
 20
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 cottage was in the poet's time a mere lean-to of 
 inconsiderable accommodation. If that were the 
 case, the rooms were but eight in number, and of 
 those the two on the ground floor of the eastern 
 tenement seem to have been used for commercial 
 purposes, leaving six apartments for domestic 
 use. Then, as now, there was doubtless an 
 interior communication between the two houses, 
 but it seems probable that within a few years after 
 John Shakespeare's death in 1601 the interior 
 doorway was built up so that the houses might be 
 once more occupied as separate dwellings. And 
 it was in the western portion the descendants of 
 John Shakespeare lived for the long period noted 
 above, the eastern cottage being let for various 
 purposes and. finally transformed into an inn 
 known as the Maidenhead, then as the Swan and 
 Maidenhead, and latterly as the Swan. During 
 the eighteenth century the front room of the 
 western cottage was turned into a butcher's shop, 
 and it still retained traces of such an establish- 
 ment when visited by Nathaniel Hawthorne about 
 the middle of the last century. 
 
 As has been shown above, up to the middle of 
 
 21
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 the eighteenth century none of the pilgrims to 
 Stratford seem to have been curious about the 
 poet's birthplace. For nearly a century and a 
 half, then, its whereabouts and identity were 
 treated with indifference. Then came a change, 
 the chief cause of which must be sought in 
 that over-decorated festival known as Garrick's 
 " Shakespearean Jubilee." As the year of that 
 three days' celebration was 1769, the use of the 
 word "jubilee" was a misnomer, for it did not 
 coincide with either the birth or death year of the 
 dramatist. And the whole affair had so many 
 ridiculous features that Samuel Foote, who did 
 not love Garrick, had an easy task in satirizing 
 its principal events. "A jubilee," he wrote, "as 
 it hath lately appeared, is a public invitation, 
 circulated and urged by puffing, to go post with- 
 out horses, to an obscure borough without repre- 
 sentatives, governed by a mayor and aldermen 
 who are no magistrates, to celebrate a great poet, 
 whose own works have made him immortal, by 
 an ode without poetry, music without melody, 
 dinners without victuals, and lodgings without 
 beds ; a masquerade where half the people appeared 
 22
 
 THE "BIRTHPLACE 
 
 barefaced, a horse-race up to the knees in water, 
 fireworks extinguished as soon as they were 
 lighted, a gingerbread amphitheatre, which, like a 
 house of cards, tumbled to pieces as soon as it was 
 finished." 
 
 Foote's reference to Stratford as " an obscure 
 borough " was hardly more uncomplimentary than 
 Garrick's description of it as " the most dirty, 
 unseemly, ill-pav'd, wretched-looking town in all 
 Britain," a verdict which was a replica of Horace 
 Walpole's opinion, penned eighteen years earlier, 
 to the effect that it was the " wretchedest old 
 town " he had ever seen. Garrick, however, 
 reserved his opprobrium for a private letter ; in 
 his public character as the laureate of the 
 "Jubilee" he was prolific of adulatory adjectives. 
 And yet even in his " Ode " he made no reference 
 to the birthplace cottages. But they were not 
 neglected, for the records of the time tell how the 
 humble buildings in Henley Street were adorned 
 with a huge emblematic transparency. 
 
 If there is one day in the early history of those 
 cottages which should be marked with a red 
 letter it is the day when they were muffled in the 
 
 23
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 gorgeous transparency of the Garrick "Jubilee." 
 That distinction established a precedent which 
 with every passing year would tend to the oblitera- 
 tion of the Brook House tradition, and con- 
 sequently, if there is an explanation of how 
 Henley Street usurped the Brook House, it must 
 be sought in the " Jubilee " festivities of 1769. 
 
 Some years, then, before the close of the 
 eighteenth century the western cottage was 
 accepted as the natal shrine of Shakespeare, 
 and by the opening years of the following century 
 it was visited by the forerunners of that band 
 of pilgrims which has now swollen to an annual 
 army of some forty thousand. The first care- 
 taker or cicerone of whom there is any record was 
 that poetical widow, Mary Hornby by name, who 
 did the honours of the cottage to Washington 
 Irving. When he was shown over the house Mrs. 
 Hornby had had twenty-two years' experience in 
 entertaining credulous devotees, and had grown, 
 as Irving noted, somewhat " garrulous." His 
 picture of the widow is more vivid than the sil- 
 houette which now hangs in the house she exploited 
 for twenty-seven years. " A garrulous old lady 
 24 
 
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 a
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 Irving wrote, " in a frosty red face, lighted up 
 by a cold blue anxious eye, and garnished with 
 artificial locks of flaxen hair, curling from under 
 an exceedingly dirty cap. She was peculiarly 
 assiduous," he continued, " in exhibiting the relics 
 with which this, like all other celebrated shrines, 
 abounds. There was the shattered stock of the 
 very matchlock with which Shakespeare shot the 
 deer on his poaching exploits. There, too, was 
 his tobacco-box, which proves that he was a rival 
 smoker to Sir Walter Raleigh ; the sword also with 
 which he played Hamlet ; and the identical lantern 
 with which Friar Laurence discovered Romeo and 
 Juliet at the tomb ! There was an ample supply 
 also of Shakespeare's mulberry-tree, which seems 
 to have as extraordinary powers of self-multiplica- 
 tion as the wood of the true Cross." Such were 
 some of the relics ; as to the building in which 
 they were treasured the author of " The Sketch- 
 Book " noted that it was " a small, mean-looking 
 edifice of wood and plaster." 
 
 Washington Irving was not the first American 
 to make a " poetical pilgrimage " to that un- 
 pretentious house. Three years earlier, namely, 
 
 25
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 in 1 8 12, he had been anticipated by a fellow- 
 countryman named Perkins, who had signalized 
 his pilgrimage by presenting Mrs. Hornby with an 
 album for the recording of visitors' names. That 
 seems to have been the first visitors' book kept 
 at the birthplace, and when its pages were filled 
 it was succeeded by others, for at the sale of 
 the property in 1847 ^ ve such volumes were 
 bought by one bidder for the sum of seventy 
 guineas. 
 
 Mr. Perkins's gift had a result which he little 
 anticipated. That visitors' book inspired Mary 
 Hornby with poetic ambitions. Irving, it will 
 be remembered, in his good-humoured credulity, 
 went so far as to accept the claims of his cicerone 
 to a lineal descent from Shakespeare, when, 
 luckily for his faith, she handed him a play of her 
 own composition, " which set all belief in her 
 consanguinity at defiance." But Mrs. Hornby 
 had begun her poetic career on a less ambitious 
 scale. Observing that many who inscribed the 
 visitors' book were impelled to express their 
 emotions in the form of verse, she was prompted 
 to emulate their example, and for result was duly 
 26
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 delivered of the following " Invitation to Shake- 
 speare's Spring " : 
 
 " Come, drink of the fountain where Shakespeare was 
 
 horn, 
 hike me shed a tear that from earth he was 
 
 torn, 
 Yet his name zvill outlive all the tyrants of 
 
 earth, 
 All -princes and heroes that ever had birth, 
 For tyrants and princes and heroes at best 
 By man are evaded, by man are oppressed ; 
 With them nature' 's beauties incessant are marr'd — 
 While the poet loves nature, "'tis God makes the 
 
 bard." 
 
 In justification of the poetic widow it should be 
 recorded that her wretched doggerel was not out 
 of place in the visitors' book. None of the 
 early nineteenth-century pilgrims were dis- 
 tinguished for poetic inspiration, and hence the 
 little volume which Mrs. Hornby compiled from 
 their and her own effusions, and published in 1 8 17 
 at a shilling a copy, is not exactly a treasure-house 
 
 27
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 of immortal verse, even though some of the lines 
 were, on the authority of her title-page, written 
 by " people of Genius." 
 
 But the chief interest of that collection of 
 "Extemporary Verse " is that it bears witness to 
 the result of Washington Irving's visit to Henley 
 Street. Shakespeare's town owes a large debt to 
 the American essayist, for his graceful sketch 
 of Stratford-on-Avon gave an immense impetus to 
 the pilgrim traffic and is to this day the inspiration 
 of countless visitors. Little did Mrs. Hornby 
 realize that the caller to whom she confided her 
 belief in her Shakespearean ancestry was to be 
 the inadvertent cause of her losing her profitable 
 post as cicerone of the birthplace, and yet no 
 other conclusion is possible from the plaintive 
 prose note she inserted in that book of "Ex- 
 temporary Verses." It was a breathless note, 
 devoid of any punctuation, and read thus: "If I 
 Mary Hornby widow should be obliged to quit 
 this house in a short time it is my intention to 
 take the relics that remain belonging to the 
 immortal Shakespeare to the nearest house I can 
 get for the amusement of those Ladies and Gentle- 
 28
 
 THE "BIRTHPLACE 
 
 men that shall please to favour me with their 
 company." 
 
 What had happened ? Briefly, another case of 
 the unearned increment of genius. The birthplace 
 had been " discovered." Thanks to Washington 
 Irving and other causes, the pilgrims to Shake- 
 speare's shrine constantly increased in numbers. 
 All this was to the pecuniary profit of widow 
 Hornby ; she not only had more purchasers of her 
 "works" — the "ExtemporaryVerses,""The Battle 
 of Waterloo," and " The Broken Vow " — but the 
 " tips " of the devotees represented a considerable 
 revenue. Now it was unfortunate for the 
 poetical widow that she was not the owner of 
 that lucrative birthplace ; on the contrary, she was 
 merely a tenant paying at first the modest rent of 
 ten pounds and then twenty pounds a year. What 
 she made from the donations of the pilgrims she 
 declined to disclose ; but the owner of the cottage 
 came to the conclusion that twenty pounds a 
 year was too small a proportion for her share and 
 announced her intention of raising the rent to 
 forty pounds. This was the juncture at which 
 the cicerone penned that comma-less notice 
 
 29
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 quoted above. The relics of the "immortal 
 Shakespeare ' were her own property, and she 
 seems to have entertained the notion that 
 without them the birthplace would be in a more 
 desperate case than " Hamlet " without the Prince 
 of Denmark. 
 
 Perhaps she was right. The scientific spirit 
 had not been born in those days ; it is quite 
 probable that most of the pilgrims shared Irving's 
 " easy faith " and were more impressed by the 
 relics than by Shakespeare's birth-chamber. 
 
 Certainly Mrs. Hornby had gathered together 
 an awe-inspiring collection. Irving's inventory 
 was almost criminally meagre. Happily another 
 visitor was more copious, even if not exhaustive. 
 In 1819, then, the various " articles of Shake- 
 speare's property " comprised the following mis- 
 cellaneous items : 
 
 " His chair in the chimney-corner ; the match- 
 lock with which he shot the deer ; his Toledo and 
 walking-stick, which seemed of vine, and was 
 elegant in its form ; a small bugle-horn ; his read- 
 ing glass ; the bench and table near his bedside 
 where he wrote ; the glass out of which he drank 
 30
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 without rising in his bed in his last illness; a cup 
 and basin ; his christening bowl ; his child's chair ; 
 a superb table-cover, embroidered in gold, given 
 him by Queen Elizabeth; his easy-chair; his bed 
 complete ; the images that seem to have been 
 posts, and four panels of a triangular form which 
 appear to have made a half-tester, though no 
 longer part of the bedstead ; his lantern ; his 
 coffer, with some money ; his pencil-case ; his 
 wife's shoe ; a bolt taken from the door of the 
 room ; a portrait of him put together from 
 fragments by Dr. Stort, Bishop of Killala." 
 
 Such was the inventory made in 1819 by Miss 
 Hawkins, who, with the curiosity of her sex, 
 cross-questioned the widow Hornby as to her 
 income from the donations given by grateful 
 pilgrims for the sight of such precious relics. 
 But, as hinted above, the astute cicerone refused 
 to be drawn ; the question of increased rent for 
 the cottage was still in dispute, and she may have 
 suspected her visitor as being in collusion with her 
 exacting landlady. The following year, however, 
 the landlady did finally carry into effect her 
 threat to raise the rent of the birthplace to forty 
 
 3i
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 pounds a year, with the result that Mrs. Hornby 
 gave up her tenancy and carried off her relics 
 to another house for the "amusement of those 
 Ladies and Gentlemen " who took pleasure in 
 such souvenirs. 
 
 As already stated, the Henley Street cottages 
 remained in the possession of descendants of the 
 Shakespeare family until 1806, in which year they 
 were purchased by Thomas Court. When he 
 died twelve years later he bequeathed the property 
 to his wife, and hence it was by a sister widow 
 that Mrs. Hornby was practically driven from the 
 custodianship of the birthplace. 
 
 From 1820, then, there were two Richmonds 
 in the field. And it seems probable that for 
 several years the widow Court had good reason 
 to regret the removal of widow Hornby and her 
 relics. For the poetical cicerone had rightly 
 diagnosed the situation ; her various " articles of 
 Shakespeare's property " secured her a liberal share 
 of the pilgrim patronage, and to make matters 
 worse for the extortionate widow Court, the new 
 custodian of the birthplace appears to have sadly 
 neglected her charge. Hence a visitor to Stratford 
 32
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 in 1824 described the Henley Street shrine as 
 "the worst house in the town," which would 
 have been passed by in disgust had it not been 
 for the board outside bearing the legend, " The 
 immortal Shakespeare was born here." That 
 same visitor, however, bore testimony to the 
 increased vogue of the poet, for he said he " met 
 Shakespeare everywhere. The print and book 
 shops have him in all forms." 
 
 Three years later there happened an event which 
 did much to reinstate the birthplace in popular 
 favour. This was another of those Shakespeare 
 "Jubilees" which were made fashionable by 
 Garrick's experiment, and once more the term 
 "jubilee" was a misnomer, for the date, 1827, 
 did not correspond to either the natal or death 
 year of the poet. Owing its initiation to the 
 Shakespearean Club of the town, the festival of 
 April 23, 1827, was planned on a gorgeous scale, 
 with an imposing procession of Shakespeare 
 characters impersonated by the members of a 
 theatrical company which was playing in Stratford. 
 Several characters from fourteen of the plays, 
 numbering upwards of forty without counting the 
 
 c 33
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 attendant witches, satyrs, and' fairies, marched in 
 the pageant, with Melpomene at the head of the 
 tragic section and Thalia leading on the comedy 
 troupe. There were banners, too, and bands, and 
 St. George on horseback in armour, and a brave 
 array of the Shakespearean Club members marching 
 four abreast and liberally decorated with medals 
 struck for the occasion. A glittering cavalcade, 
 indeed, for the quiet streets of Stratford, which, 
 after perambulating the principal thoroughfares, 
 finally halted before the birthplace, where a 
 hustings had been erected for the climax of the 
 pageant, the crowning of a bust of Shakespeare by 
 Melpomene and Thalia to the accompaniment of 
 an eloquent oration. Thenceforward the Henley 
 Street shrine had nothing to fear from the 
 competition of widow Hornby's miscellaneous 
 collection. 
 
 But for many years it was an exceedingly bare 
 shrine in which the pilgrims paid their devotions. 
 That was the condition in which Hawthorne 
 found it in the early years of the second half of 
 the nineteenth century. He reported that the 
 birth-chamber and the entire house were white- 
 
 34
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 washed and exceedingly clean, but the only objects 
 on view were " various prints, views of houses, 
 and scenes connected with Shakespeare's memory, 
 together with editions of his works and local 
 publications about his home and haunts." 
 Hawthorne's cicerone was a worthy successor of 
 the widow Hornby, an old lady with the " manners 
 and aspect of a gentlewoman," who talked with 
 "somewhat formidable knowledge and appreciative 
 intelligence about Shakespeare." 
 
 As compared with the account penned by his 
 fellow-countryman, Washington Irving, Haw- 
 thorne's description of the appearance of the 
 birthplace as he saw it about 1856 is full of 
 minute detail. The house he found almost 
 smaller and humbler than any account would 
 prepare the visitor to expect, while the basement 
 apartment still preserved the butcher's stall with 
 its cleaver-hacked counter. " This lower room," 
 he added, " has a pavement of grey slabs of stone, 
 which may have been rudely squared when the 
 house was new, but are now all cracked, broken, 
 and disarranged in a most unaccountable way. 
 One does not see how any ordinary usage, for 
 
 35
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 whatever length of time, should have so smashed 
 these heavy stones ; it is as if an earthquake had 
 burst up through the floor,which afterwards had 
 been imperfectly trodden down again." Ascend- 
 ing to the upper floor, Hawthorne was ushered into 
 the room " in which Shakespeare is supposed to 
 have been born ; though, if you peep too curiously 
 into the matter, you may find the shadow of an 
 ugly doubt on this, as well as most other points 
 of his mysterious life. It is," he continued, " the 
 chamber over the butcher's shop, and is lighted 
 by one broad window containing a great many 
 small, irregular panes of glass. The floor is made 
 of planks, very rudely hewn, and fitting together 
 with little neatness ; the naked beams and rafters, 
 at the sides of the room and overhead, bear the 
 original marks of the builder's broad-axe, with no 
 evidence of an attempt to smooth off the job. 
 Again we have to reconcile ourselves to the 
 smallness of the space enclosed by these illustrious 
 walls — a circumstance more difficult to accept, as 
 regards places that we have heard, read, thought, 
 and dreamed much about, than any other dis- 
 enchanting particular of a mistaken ideal. A few 
 
 3 6
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 paces — perhaps seven or eight — take us from end 
 to end of it. So low is it that I could easily 
 touch the ceiling, and might have done so with- 
 out a tiptoe-stretch, had it been a good deal 
 higher ; and this humility of the chamber has 
 tempted a vast number of people to write their 
 names overhead in pencil. Every inch of the 
 side walls, even into the obscurest nooks and 
 corners, is covered with a similar record ; all the 
 window-panes, moreover, are scrawled with 
 diamond signatures, among which is said to be 
 that of Walter Scott ; but so many persons have 
 sought to immortalize themselves in close vicinity 
 to his name that I really could not trace him 
 out." 
 
 Between the " Jubilee " of 1827 and the visit of 
 Hawthorne some twenty-nine years later an im- 
 portant event had transpired in the history of the 
 Henley Street cottages. The widow Court died 
 in 1846, and the question of the future ownership 
 of the premises at once began to engage public 
 attention. 
 
 This was the juncture at which the fortunes of 
 the birthplace were threatened by the ubiquitous 
 
 37
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Phineas T. Barnum. That enterprising American 
 showman crops up in the legends of most historic 
 buildings in England. He is credited with a 
 desire to buy them all at some time or other, with 
 the sinister purpose of transplanting them bodily 
 to United States soil. That he had designs upon 
 the famous shrine at Stratford seems beyond 
 dispute ; it would have been the greatest " scoop ' : 
 of his spectacular career if he could have secured 
 possession of the Shakespeare house and trans- 
 planted it to America. And there were some who 
 credited him with the actual achievement of that 
 fact, for some twenty years ago it was confidently 
 affirmed that the birthplace had been removed and 
 was then " somewhere in the United States of 
 America." 
 
 But that was an assertion founded on inadequate 
 knowledge. The " somewhere " proved its falsity. 
 Barnum was not the man to hide such an acquisi- 
 tion under a bushel. And as so many erroneous 
 statements have been made concerning the last 
 purchase of the Henley Street property, it may be 
 interesting to give an outline of the true history 
 of that event. 
 
 38
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 For the construction of such a history there are 
 two records of first-hand value : one is a copy of 
 the sale-book used by the auctioneer, Edmund 
 Robins, on the day when the property was dis- 
 posed of, with an interleaved manuscript draft of 
 his speech on that occasion ; the other the detailed 
 report of the auction which was printed in the 
 Morning Post for September 17, 1847. A com- 
 parison of these records with the innumerable 
 accounts hitherto given of the sale of the birth- 
 place shows that, as in so many other matters, 
 first-hand information has been strangely neg- 
 lected. 
 
 It appears, then, that the heir to widow Court's 
 estate at her death in 1846 was a minor, and that 
 his trustee, acting under legal advice, came to the 
 conclusion that he would best serve the interests of 
 his ward by selling the property. A similar trans- 
 action had been carried out in 1806 without 
 exciting the outside world; by 1846, however, the 
 value of the birthplace as a literary shrine had 
 been materially enhanced, and it was improbable 
 that it would change owners again for the modest 
 sum — £260 — which Thomas Court invested forty 
 
 39
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 years earlier. No sooner, then, was it rumoured 
 that the Shakespeare cottages were to be offered 
 for sale than a committee was formed with the 
 object of raising a fund for their purchase on behalf 
 of the nation. To-day such a committee would 
 have an easy task ; sixty-five years ago it was not 
 a light undertaking. For there were sceptics in 
 the land then, obstinate questioners who did not 
 share the " easy faith " of Washington Irving. 
 Consequently when a member of the London 
 Court of Common Council proposed that that 
 body should vote a sum of money towards the 
 purchase of "Shakespeare's House," the reference 
 of the seconder of the motion to the building as 
 " the house in which he was born" was greeted 
 with an emphatic " No, no ! " and the proposal 
 was defeated by sixty-nine votes to thirty- 
 eight. 
 
 On that very day, at the Mart in London, the 
 sale of the property was completed. It had been 
 announced to take place at "twelve for one 
 precisely," but a few minutes after eleven o'clock 
 the Mart doors were besieged by an excited crowd, 
 and at noon the auction-room was packed " almost 
 40
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 to suffocation. " So dense was the crowd, indeed, 
 that an adjournment had to be made to a larger 
 hall, where Mr. Robins began the sale at " one 
 precisely." His opening address had been care- 
 fully prepared and was pitched in a high key 
 appropriate to the occasion. The interest ex- 
 cited by the event, he declared, had not been 
 equalled in the annals of auctions, and he claimed 
 that instead of the contemplated sale being made 
 the subject of reproach it was a matter for con- 
 gratulation that an opportunity was being openly 
 afforded for the acquisition of " the birthplace of 
 the immortal bard " by the nation. Mr. Robins 
 further protested that he and those for whom he 
 was acting were determined that their conduct 
 in such an important transaction should be 
 thoroughly honourable and as much above 
 suspicion as Caesar's wife, and he appealed to the 
 Committee to meet them in the same spirit. " As 
 I feel it my duty," he added, "to announce that 
 no fictitious bidding whatever will be made by the 
 vendor or on his behalf, still I claim for him to 
 make, in his capacity of guardian, one bidding 
 during the auction. Should, however, the Com- 
 
 4 1
 
 SHiAKESPEzARE *AND STRATFORD 
 
 mittee by their agent at their first bidding, which 
 I hope they will do, name the sum they are dis- 
 posed to give for the property, and should it 
 exceed that which the trustee is advised to bid, I 
 shall at once state the fact and leave the matter in 
 the hands of the public." 
 
 Having thus unburdened himself of his lofty- 
 spirited exordium, Mr. Robins descended to 
 more mercenary matters. Apart from its asso- 
 ciations with Shakespeare, the property was of 
 considerable commercial value as mere buildings 
 and freehold land ; while as a literary shrine its 
 constantly enhancing value was demonstrated by 
 the fact that the yearly total of visitors was ever 
 on the increase. Many of those visitors had 
 " paid large sums for the privilege of sleeping in 
 the room." 
 
 Thus far Mr. Robins had been heard with 
 patience and interest ; but when he proceeded to 
 dwell upon the authenticity of the birth-room and 
 described it as the veritable chamber in which the 
 illustrious poet "first drew the breath of life" his 
 eloquence was rudely interrupted. In the words 
 of the Morning Post reporter, "an individual 
 42
 
 THE "BIRTHPLACE 
 
 wearing a very formidable pair of moustachios, 
 and whose name was stated to be Jones, here 
 called upon Mr. Robins to prove that Shakespeare 
 was born in that identical room." With ready 
 wit the auctioneer retorted that such a demand 
 reminded him of the story of the person who 
 went to Stratford to see the midwife who officiated 
 at the birth of the poet, and the rejoinder so 
 amused the audience that when the gentleman in 
 the " formidable pair of moustachios " made a 
 second attempt to bring Mr. Robins back to the 
 point, he was shouted down with cries of " To 
 business ! " 
 
 To business, accordingly, the auctioneer pro- 
 ceeded. And, so far as the buildings were 
 concerned, it was exhausted in three bids. The 
 first offer, which was made apparently by the 
 trustee, was for a thousand pounds ; the second, 
 tendered by a Mr. Butler, was for double that 
 sum. But where was Barnum ? Was Mr. Butler 
 acting for the famous showman, or was he present 
 in person in the guise of the individual "whose 
 name was stated to be Jones"? This is another 
 Shakespearean mystery which awaits solution. 
 
 43
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 In any case, no sooner had Mr. Butler, whether 
 acting for himself or Barnum, made his bid of 
 two thousand pounds than a memorandum was 
 handed to Mr. Robins stating that the Committee 
 was prepared to give three thousand pounds for 
 the property. "Immense cheers," recorded the 
 Morning Post reporter, " followed the reading of 
 this document, coupled with derisive laughter at 
 the expense of the gentleman in moustachios, who 
 afterwards offered two thousand pounds." With- 
 out waiting for further bids, Mr. Robins clinched 
 the offer of the Committee with the fall of his 
 hammer, and with that resounding tap on 
 September 16, 1847, tne Henley Street home of 
 Shakespeare passed for all time into the possession 
 of the British nation. 
 
 Sixty-five years, then, have elapsed since the 
 Stratford shrine became national property. And 
 if Hawthorne could revisit it to-day he would 
 have much difficulty in recognizing in the 
 smoothly restored and trimly kept building the 
 original of that humble edifice which he described 
 in "Our Old Home," while Washington Irving 
 would utterly fail to identify it with the " mean- 
 
 44
 
 THE "BIRTHPLACE 
 
 looking " cottage of his pilgrimage, and the diarist 
 of 1824 could no longer describe it as "the worst 
 house in the town." What is true, too, of the 
 exterior appearance of the birthplace may also be 
 affirmed of the interior. The various rooms are 
 no longer " squalid " or merely whitewashed ; and 
 the vacuity noted by Hawthorne has given place 
 to a somewhat bewildering collection of objects 
 which are aptly characterized as " miscellaneous " 
 by Sir Sidney Lee. 
 
 Unfortunately few of those three hundred and 
 fifty objects have more than an allusive connexion 
 with Shakespeare. Although the present trustees 
 of the birthplace exercise considerable discrimina- 
 tion in their purchases and acceptance of additions, 
 their earliest predecessors were little disposed to 
 look a gift-horse in the mouth. Not that any 
 relic now shown makes so severe a strain on 
 credulity as some of the objects shown by the 
 widow Hornby, such as the poet's christening 
 bowl or his wife's shoe ; but candour prompts the 
 wish that the trustees were less confident in their 
 official ascriptions of some of their treasures. 
 There is that ring, for example, in the Museum 
 
 45
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 which is catalogued as " Shakespeare's gold finger- 
 ring," but of which the most that can be said 
 is that it is probably a gentleman's ring of the 
 Elizabethan period. There is not a particle of 
 solid evidence to prove that it was once the 
 property of the poet. More reticence, too, is 
 desirable on the part of those cicerones who point 
 to an oak desk from the Grammar School as 
 "Shakespeare's desk," for there again adequate 
 authority is lacking, just as there is nothing to 
 establish the authenticity of the " round oak box 
 made of wood from Shakespeare's pew." 
 
 Many of the objects shown in the Museum, 
 however, have the attractive quality of atmosphere. 
 That is, they date indubitably from the England 
 of Shakespeare's days. Among such are the cast 
 of the face of Sir Thomas Lucy from his monu- 
 ment in Charlecote Church, the various coins of 
 Elizabeth's reign, and the collection of early 
 editions of the plays. But it is the documents, 
 the deeds and wills and conveyances and records of 
 lawsuits, and the private letters which make 
 least demand on the "easy faith " which is more 
 rare to-day than in the credulous age of Washing- 
 
 4 6
 
 THE "BIRTHPLACE 
 
 ton Irving. Those time-stained scraps of vellum 
 or paper are their own evidence, and among them 
 all the one of most absorbing interest is that 
 brief epistle from Richard Quyney to his "Loveinge 
 good Frend and countreymann mr. Wm. Shacke- 
 spere y) which is the only letter addressed to the 
 poet of which there is any knowledge. 
 
 When, then, all deductions have been made, 
 and the scientific spirit placated to the full, the 
 residuum of interest attaching to the Henley Street 
 cottages is sufficient to warrant the devotion 
 of literary pilgrims. In one or other of those 
 buildings Shakespeare undoubtedly spent the years 
 of his boyhood and early manhood ; wherever he 
 was born, it was in Henley Street he had his 
 home before setting out on his high adventure 
 in London; and it is no meagre satisfaction for the 
 hero-worshipping instinct that the rooms which 
 once echoed to his childish laughter contain 
 several of those quarto editions of his plays which 
 were printed in his own lifetime. And for the 
 rest, the peaceful little garden in the rear of 
 the poet's house is richly sown with descendants 
 of those fruits and flowers which have acquired 
 
 47
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 an added fame through many allusions in his 
 deathless lines. His memory is enshrined for ever 
 in " the lily's white " and "the deep vermilion of 
 the rose." 
 
 4 8
 
 CHAPTER II : New Place 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING was so 
 fascinated by Stratford- on-Avon that 
 six years after the poetical pilgrimage 
 described in his " Sketch-Book " he paid a second 
 visit to the town. It was on that occasion he 
 penned the lines the original autograph of which 
 is preserved among the treasures of the birth- 
 place : 
 
 " Of mighty Shakespeare s birth the room we see ; 
 That where he died in vain to find we try. 
 Useless the search : — -for all Immortal He, 
 And those who are Immortal never die." 
 
 Six years, then, had wrought no change in his 
 " easy faith " ; he still accepted the apartment in 
 the Henley Street cottage as the veritable birth- 
 chamber of the poet ; and his allusion to the 
 scene of Shakespeare's death seems to suggest 
 that he knew nothing of New Place and its 
 interesting associations. In the " Sketch-Book," 
 indeed, Irving recorded how he passed from the 
 
 d 49
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 birthplace of the poet to his grave, with never a 
 reference to the site of that house which was 
 connected with the fruition of his fortunes and 
 was the place of his death. Strangely enough, 
 too, Stratford's other famous American pilgrim, 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, was guilty of the same 
 oversight nearly half a century later, for he also 
 wrote that " from Shakespeare's house the next 
 step, of course, is to visit his burial-place." 
 
 And yet such an order of pilgrimage ignores 
 the most interesting spot in Stratford — that vacant 
 plot of ground where once stood the building in 
 which the poet spent the last few years of his life 
 as an honoured and wealthy citizen of his native 
 town. No doubt the grave of Shakespeare is a 
 firm fact for which, amid so much shifting 
 ground, the pilgrim must be duly grateful ; but, 
 as compared with the conflicting legends of the 
 birthplace, the documentary evidence which con- 
 nects the dramatist with New Place is of such 
 an assured nature that even its houseless site is a 
 haunt of surpassing interest. 
 
 Such, no doubt, Irving and Hawthorne would 
 have thought it had they been aware first of its 
 
 50
 
 NEW PLiACE 
 
 existence and then of the memories it suggests. 
 They may not have been ignorant of the first ; of 
 the second they were naturally oblivious, seeing 
 that at the time of their visits J. O. Halliwell- 
 Phillipps had not given to the world that pains- 
 taking volume in which, at the cost of so much 
 zealous research, he was able to set forth the 
 full extent of Shakespeare's association with 
 New Place. 
 
 Although the poet's ownership of the house 
 naturally overshadows every other incident of its 
 history, its annals prior and subsequent to that 
 event were more remarkable than is usually the 
 case with a modest mansion in a quiet country 
 town. All told, that history embraced a period 
 of nearly three centuries, for the original building 
 makes an appearance in documentary records so 
 long ago as 1483, and its successor was not finally 
 demolished until 1759. 
 
 For the pilgrim of to-day, then, the objective 
 next in order to the birthplace is that vacant lot 
 at the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane 
 where the New Place mansion once stood. The 
 frontage, which is somewhat narrow, is on Chapel 
 
 5i
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Street, and is adjoined to the north by an ancient 
 building known as Nash's House ; in its depth 
 the site extends eastward down Chapel Lane for a 
 considerable distance. The whole is shut off from 
 the public thoroughfares by an ornamental iron 
 railing, which is, however, broken by a gateway a 
 little distance down Chapel Lane. That gateway 
 marks approximately the dividing line between 
 the small garden at the rear of the house and the 
 great garden which stretched eastward in the 
 direction of the Avon. 
 
 And another feature of the gateway in the 
 garden of New Place is that it is the only entrance 
 to a Shakespeare shrine in the town which may be 
 passed without paying a monetary toll. Such an 
 exception deserves to be recorded in letters of 
 gold. A small Stratford boy who accompanied 
 the present writer on some of his wanderings bore 
 unconscious testimony to the spirit of the place. 
 " I don't agree," said he, " with all the fuss 
 people make about that Shakespeare." " Why ? " 
 " Well, look at the lot of money he gets ! " 
 That he was astonished when he learnt that the 
 aforesaid Shakespeare was dead does not blunt the 
 
 5 2
 
 NEW PLt^CE 
 
 point of his impeachment. Certainly a " lot of 
 money ' : is demanded in the name of the poet. 
 All who have a sense of the fitness of things must 
 rejoice to learn that a discerning American has 
 christened Stratford as " the sixpenny town." 
 There is no getting away from that sixpenny fee. 
 If the pilgrim wishes to visit the birthplace the 
 charge is sixpence ; if he desires to inspect the 
 museum under the same roof he must hand out 
 another sixpence ; if he would walk over the site 
 of New Place the cry is still sixpence ; if he would 
 enter the Memorial Theatre he cannot do it under 
 sixpence ; if he wanders out to Anne Hathaway's 
 cottage the sixpenny tribute pursues him still. 
 It is not the amount, but the constant iteration 
 which is so wearisome. If the fee must be retained, 
 why cannot the trustees come to an arrangement 
 whereby each pilgrim will be able to purchase the 
 freedom of the town for a specific sum and be rid 
 of the whole sordid business in one transaction ? 
 
 Even New Place, as noted above, is tainted by 
 the blight of that sixpenny toll to a certain 
 extent ; that is, the small and great gardens at the 
 rear are divided by a fence running parallel to the 
 
 53
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 gateway on Chapel Lane, and the ground to the 
 west of that fence may not be trodden unless 
 the sixpenny tribute is forthcoming. 
 
 But, that justice may be done, let it be 
 admitted that, so far as the grounds of New 
 Place are concerned, the pilgrim who pays nothing 
 has the advantage of him who pays sixpence. He 
 can, an he list, overlook the site of Shakespeare's 
 last home to his heart's content, carefully con 
 the broken outlines of its foundations, note the 
 position of the poet's well, and, if he have 
 the gift of imagination, conjure up a vision of the 
 sweet bard of Avon in his sunset days; and then 
 he can turn away to wander at his will along the 
 trim paths and among the shaven lawns and 
 radiant flower-beds which represent to-day that 
 leafy pleasance which was once the dramatist's 
 great garden. It is an ideal retreat for an hour's 
 meditation. From various points of view the eye 
 catches glimpses of quaint gables of ancient 
 houses or the old grey tower of the Guild Chapel, 
 while the shrubs and trees and flowers might be 
 the lineal descendants of those planted by Shake- 
 speare's own hand. Nay, on the edge of one 
 
 54
 
 NEW PLtACE 
 
 velvety lawn there stands the gnarled and aged 
 trunk which is said to be the scion of the poet's 
 own famous mulberry-tree. 
 
 In another corner have been erected some time- 
 stained pillars which once adorned an ancient 
 building of the town, and near by is a stone tablet 
 inscribed with a closely written legend. This 
 legend, which purports to be an extract from a 
 work entitled " The Acts and Monuments of the 
 Fairies," is a decree of King Oberon addressed to 
 such of his loving subjects as were accustomed to 
 hold their revels in the poet's garden. 
 
 " And whereas," so the decree runs, " by the 
 wilful and malicious destruction of the said 
 mulberry-tree, as before recited, and other damage 
 at New Place, late the mortal residence of the 
 said William Shakespeare of immortal memory, 
 the sports and recreations of our good subjects 
 have been grievously disturbed and interrupted, 
 now we, taking the same into our serious con- 
 sideration, have ordered and ordained, and by 
 these presents do order and ordain, that the said 
 sports and recreations formerly kept and held by 
 our good people under the said mulberry-tree do 
 
 55
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 forthwith cease at the place where the said 
 mulberry-tree stood, and that from thenceforth 
 they be duly celebrated and observed with 
 accustomed rites in the piece of ground next 
 thereunto adjoining, being part or parcel of the 
 terrestrial estate of the said William Shakespeare, 
 and now belonging to our beloved William 
 Hunt, of whose affection for us and our people 
 we have undoubted assurance, so likewise of his 
 care to cultivate the same with all manner of pro- 
 ductions agreeable to us, and to cause the same 
 to be laid in proper places with clean and close- 
 binding gravel, and the grass thereof to be greatly 
 and frequently mowed for the better accommoda- 
 tion of our good subjects in celebrating the said 
 rites ; and our royal will and pleasure further 
 is that a part of the said ground lying nearest to 
 the river Avon, and appropriated hereby to the 
 celebration of the said rites, shall henceforth 
 be called Fairy Lawn, and that a fair pedestal or 
 table of stone shall be erected in the centre of the 
 said lawn, and an inscription, recording our affec- 
 tion and regard for the said William Shakespeare 
 and our determination herein, engraven thereon." 
 
 56
 
 NEW PL^CE 
 
 This pleasant conceit originated in the brain of 
 the Rev. Richard Jago, vicar of that Snitterfield 
 parish in which Shakespeare's father was born, and 
 was sent by him in 1778 to his friend William 
 Hunt, town clerk of Stratford, who at that time 
 rented the poet's great garden at New Place. 
 Doubtless the reverend allegorist little anticipated 
 that his fable would one day adorn a " fair 
 pedestal ' in Shakespeare's garden, but there 
 it stands to-day, mutely eloquent of a fantasy 
 which would surely have found favour with 
 the creator of King Oberon. 
 
 And other pleasant memories of the sweet 
 bard of Avon are suggested by the thought that 
 somewhere in the great garden of New Place once 
 stood the orchard which Shakespeare is credited 
 with planting in 1602. " The bare fact would 
 interest little," noted a close student of the 
 dramas, " did not his pomological labours affect 
 his literary work. If we scan his plays up to 1597 
 and after 1604, we find that the outdoor scenes 
 are laid in forests, parks, gardens, woods, and 
 terraces. The orchard is mentioned twice in 
 1 Romeo and Juliet,' 1593, and the final scene of 
 
 57
 
 SHAKESPEARE -/.YD STRATFORD 
 
 'King John,' 1595, is laid in the orchard of 
 Swinstead Abbey (the situation in this instance 
 is taken from the ; Troublesome History ') : but 
 in nearly all the plays written between the years 
 named some scenes are laid or there are frequent 
 references to orchard?. In c 2 Henry IV, 1 1598, 
 * His lordship is walked forth into the orchard ' ; 
 later in the same play Shallow proudly offers 
 to show Falstaff his orchard. Some of the scenes 
 in that delightful comedy ; Much Ado about 
 Nothing.' ibcc. are enacted in Leonato's orchard ; 
 it is in the pleached bower where honeysuckles 
 ripen in the sun that Beatrice is so cunningly 
 duped. 'As You Like It,' 1622, opens in an 
 rchard, and 'Twelfth Night,' 1601, has some 
 incidents in fruit-tree territory. In ; Hamlet,' 
 1602, twice it is stated that it was 'while sleep- 
 ing in mine orchard' that Hamlet's father met his 
 fate; in Brutus's orchard ("Julius Caesar,' 1604) 
 the conspiritors met and planned one of the big 
 assassinations of the world ; and, finally, in 
 'Troilus and Cressida,' i6c6, in Pandarus's 
 orchard, the Trojan wins the love of the false 
 Cressida. The emphatic use of the possessive 
 53
 
 XEir PL-ACE 
 
 indeed. 
 
 
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 'nay. y:u sha '; see -t 
 
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 by z'r.t ;- ::: = r.i :r. his 
 
 the most cheerful davs 
 
 ere an: 
 
 L 
 
 ; : y of livir.r. I living 
 
 - - _ - . 
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 :p oat in all 
 
 joilincation. 
 spent much 
 
 chamber-wi 
 
 re 
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 -- 
 
 ne 
 
 Or.e :ar. 
 
 -* ' v 
 
 w: 
 
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 :_r in 
 
 
 offer •::" a la; 
 
 grarr.r.r ' : " 
 One or" the stn 
 
 of my own 
 
 i» .5 
 
 •.:.-.-■ :
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Place is that it did not make any great figure in 
 the annals of the poet until the last house built 
 on the site had been demolished and the Shake- 
 speare mulberry-tree cut down. Dugdale's silence 
 as to the birthplace of Shakespeare has already 
 been noted ; he was equally unobservant of the 
 house in which he died. Nay, to be strictly 
 accurate, he did devote a few lines to the house 
 when he visited Stratford in 1653, but failed 
 to connect the building with the dramatist. In 
 his references to the Guild Chapel he wrote that 
 to the north of that structure stood " a fair house 
 of brick and timber," the erection of which he 
 attributed to Sir Hugh Clopton, and this was 
 none other than the New Place mansion in which 
 Shakespeare had breathed his last thirty-seven 
 years earlier. 
 
 Locally, of course, the fact of the poet's owner- 
 ship of New Place was well known, and in a plan 
 of Stratford drawn in 1759 the house is indicated 
 as the " place where died Shakespeare." That, 
 however, was not literally true, as will appear 
 presently, but it was the common belief, and was 
 accepted as a fact by the lady who was the first 
 60
 
 NEW PLzACE 
 
 to announce the destruction of the poet's mulberry- 
 tree to the outside world. r~TFwas in iyScTthat the 
 lady in question, being on a visit to Stratford, 
 wrote as follows to a friend in Kent: "There 
 stood here till lately the house in which Shakespeare 
 lived, and a mulberry-tree of his planting ; the ' 
 house was large, strong, and handsome ; the tree 
 so large that it would shade the grass-plot in your 
 garden, which I think is more than twenty yards '' 
 square, and supply the whole town with mulberries ) 
 every year. / As the curiosity of this house ana 
 tree brought much fame, and more company and 
 profit to the town, a certain man, on some disgust, 
 has pulled the house down, so as not to leave one 
 stone upon another, and cut down the tree, and 
 piled it as a stack of firewood, to the great vexa- 
 tion, loss, and disappointment of the inhabitants ; 
 however, an honest silversmith bought the whole 
 stack of wood, and makes many odd things of this 
 wood for the curious, some of which I hope to 
 bring with me to town." 
 
 Now the " certain man " who perpetrated that 
 dual vandalism was of course the Rev. Francis 
 Gastrell, who became the owner of New Place in 
 
 61
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 1756. He is the Judas Iscariot of Shakespearean 
 biography. Until recent years, when more ac- 
 curate knowledge has supplanted careless legend, 
 he was the Anathema Maran-atha of every 
 devotee of the poet, for on his luckless head 
 was piled the heavy mountain of opprobrium 
 of having ruthlessly torn down the indubitable 
 house in which Shakespeare spent his last peace- 
 ful years and laid him down to die. 
 
 No doubt the reverend iconoclast of New Place 
 was a disagreeable, or at least an irritable, person. 
 The testimony on that point seems too clear to be 
 gainsaid. And it would appear that Mrs. Gastrell 
 shared his failing, for, according to Malone, she 
 was " little better than a fiend," and is credited 
 with having played a prominent part in the 
 destruction of the famous mulberry-tree. Which- 
 ever of the two, however, was guilty of what 
 Boswell called the " Gothic barbarity " of felling 
 that tree, neither the one nor the other can be 
 j usdy_charged with razing Shakespeare's house. 
 /For, as a matter of fact, that building had been 
 
 / demolished more than fifty years before Mr. 
 Gastrell became the owner of New Place. The 
 
 1 62
 
 NEW PLzACE 
 
 evidence on this point is beyond dispute ; if any / 
 one is to be execrated for destroying the house in I 
 which the poet lived and died it is that Sir John/ 
 Clopton who, about the year 1700, pulled down 
 the original structure and replaced it with a more \ 
 modern building as a kind of wedding gift to his ) 
 son Hugh. 
 
 Reduced, then, to rigid accuracy, the count 
 against the Rev. Francis amounts to this : the 
 house he destroyed was merely the successor of 
 that in which Shakespeare died, while as to the 
 mulberry-tree the evidence that it was actually 
 planted by the poet is in no link stronger than 
 tradition. 
 
 As the mulberry-tree crops up as persistently in 
 the biographies of Shakespeare as King Charles's 
 head in Mr. Dick's petition, it may be interesting 
 to winnow the facts from the fiction as far as that is 
 possible. To begin with, then, it seems established 
 beyond dispute that there is no reference to the 
 existence of the tree of a date prior to its destruc- 
 tion ; only after it was " piled as a stack of fire- 
 wood " did it emerge from the obscurity in which 
 it had been hidden for so many years. Even then 
 
 63
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 the farthest-back date in its history reached no 
 nearer Shakespeare's time than the year 1 744. It 
 was the actor Macklin who, in 1788, when he was 
 in his eighty-eighth year, asserted that he had been 
 entertained under the famous tree by Sir Hugh 
 Clopton in 1744. Another witness sometimes 
 cited was one named Hugh Taylor, a native of 
 Stratford, who in 1790, when he was eighty-five 
 years old, claimed that in his boyhood the legend 
 that the tree was planted by Shakespeare was 
 generally believed in the town, and that he had 
 often partaken of its fruit. Both these witnesses, 
 however, did not come forward with their testi- 
 mony until after the tree had been cut down. 
 
 Their evidence, combined with much of a 
 similar nature, is conclusive on the point that 
 many years before the middle of the eighteenth 
 century the planting of the tree by Shakespeare 
 was accepted in Stratford as a fact, but that 
 belief was based solely upon the assertion of that 
 member of the Clopton family who owned New 
 Place from the early years of the century. Beyond 
 that point there is no record of the legend. 
 
 By the middle of the eighteenth century, how- 
 
 64
 
 NEW PLiACE 
 
 ever, the mulberry-tree was regarded as one of 
 the most valuable assets of the town. It was, as 
 we have seen, a curiosity which brought "much 
 fame and more company and profit " to Stratford. 
 Consequently when the Rev. Francis had it 
 destroyed he at once became the most unpopular 
 man in the town, and the boys gave point 
 to the general indignation by breaking his 
 windows. "The people of Stratford were seized 
 with grief and astonishment when they were 
 informed of the sacrilegious deed ; and nothing 
 less than the destruction of the offender in the 
 first transports of their rage would satisfy them. 
 The miserable culprit was forced to skulk up and 
 down to save himself from the rage of the 
 Stratfordians : he was obliged at last to leave the 
 town amidst the curses of the populace, who 
 solemnly vowed never to suffer one of the same 
 name to reside in Stratford." Ten years' later 
 Mr. Gastrell still retained a vivid and resentful 
 recollection of those exciting days. " I shall 
 hardly ever," he wrote, " entertain any thoughts 
 of returning to a place where I have been so 
 maltreated." 
 
 e 65
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 As the reverend tree-feller never offered any 
 justification or excuse of his " Gothic barbarity," 
 it is difficult to divine his motive for destroying 
 a relic which was held in such superlative 
 veneration. Dr. Johnson's theory was that he 
 did it to "vex his neighbours," but the explana- 
 tion of Halliwell-Phillipps is more reasonable and 
 charitable. " Several accounts agree in stating 
 that the tree had attained a great magnitude, with 
 overhanging boughs, the trunk being in a state of 
 decay, and, indeed, it is most probable that a tree 
 of a century and a half's growth would have been 
 of a very considerable size, the soil of Stratford 
 being peculiarly favourable to the luxurious 
 growth of the mulberry. If planted at all near 
 the house, its boughs would certainly have over- 
 shadowed some of the rooms at the back. Now 
 Davies, in his ' Life of Garrick,' the first edition 
 of which appeared in 1780, and was probably 
 written in the previous year, expressly asserts that 
 'the mulberry-tree planted by the poet's own 
 hand became an object of dislike to this tasteless 
 owner of it, because it overshadowed his window, 
 and rendered the house, as he thought, subject to 
 66
 
 NEW PLzACE 
 
 damp and moisture.' Here is a plausible reason 
 given for the removal of the tree, which may have 
 been accomplished somewhat thoughtlessly, with- 
 out a full idea of the indignation the act would 
 excite at Stratford ; or it is not impossible, alas ! 
 that the tree was in such a state of decay 
 that its removal was considered by Gastrell an 
 act merely briefly anticipating its natural extinc- 
 tion." 
 
 Whatever the actual motive for the felling of 
 the tree, its demolition was not an unmixed evil 
 for some natives of the town. With that instinct 
 for turning Shakespeare to pecuniary advantage 
 which is still possessed in large measure by so 
 many Stratfordians, several contemporaries of the 
 Gastrell era immediately recognized the golden 
 possibilities which lay dormant in that pile of 
 mulberry-tree logs. Thus one picturesque story 
 affirms that the silversmith, Thomas Sharp by 
 name, who purchased the tree did so for the 
 purpose of utilizing it as firewood, but was 
 awakened to its value by the remark of a friend 
 to the effect that it would be more profitable to 
 carve it into souvenirs. Sharp himself, however, 
 
 67
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 was wont to affirm that it was his " sincere 
 veneration for the memory of its celebrated 
 planter " which prompted him to purchase the tree 
 and work it into " many curious toys and useful 
 articles." 
 
 His industry in the employment appears to 
 have been as inexhaustible as the supply of wood. 
 The latter had the recuperative quality of the 
 widow's cruse. It has been calculated that there 
 is enough wood of the " true Cross " in existence 
 to build a battleship ; another calculation might 
 disclose that Shakespeare's mulberry-tree contained 
 sufficient lumber to have equipped all the half- 
 timber houses of his native town. Mulberry-tree 
 relics, carved into goblets and ink-stands and boxes 
 and tea-chests and tobacco-stoppers and standishes, 
 poured from Sharp's workshop in such an increas- 
 ing stream that within a few years of the 
 destruction of the tree he was accused of using 
 spurious wood. He repelled the charge with indig- 
 nation, and the supply of relics flowed on as before ; 
 and when Garrick superintended the " Jubilee " 
 of 1769 he bore a steward's wand made from the 
 prolific tree and was adorned with a medallion 
 68
 
 NEW PLzACE 
 
 portrait of the poet carved on a piece of the same 
 inexhaustible material. Nay, the supply had not 
 ceased fifty years after Sharp's happy purchase ; 
 for the remarkable John Ange, who assured 
 Washington Irving that he had assisted in felling 
 the miraculous tree, still possessed a fragment 
 which he offered to sell to the American pilgrim ! 
 Well might Garrick sing : 
 
 a 
 
 All shall yield to the Mulberry-Tree, 
 Bend to Thee, 
 Blest Mul-berry." 
 
 As already recorded, a veteran mulberry-tree 
 still stands in the great garden of New Place for 
 which the claim is made that it is a scion of the 
 one planted by Shakespeare ; and another, a sup- 
 posed grand-scion, may be found in the little 
 garden of New Place site. But, unfortunately, 
 their genealogy is open to suspicion, for Robert 
 B. Whaler, the careful historian of Stratford, was 
 of the opinion that the old tree was not per- 
 petuated, adding : " Many people are willing 
 enough to affirm their own as a scion from the 
 
 6 9
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 celebrated tree, but unfortunately their tales are 
 foolish and improbable when examined." But 
 the great garden of New Place has sufficient 
 merits of its own, especially for the devotee who 
 muses therein in the spirit which prompted 
 Malone to write : 
 
 a 
 
 In this retreat our Shakespeare' s godlike mind 
 With matchless skill surveyed all human kind. 
 Here let each sweet that blest Arabia knows, 
 ' Flowers of all hues, and without thorn the 
 
 rose. 
 To latest times their balmy odours fling, 
 And Nature here display eternal spring." 
 
 Shakespeare's connexion with New Place began 
 in 1597, at which date the house was fully a 
 hundred years old. The earliest owner of whom 
 there is any record was that Sir John Clopton, 
 the wealthy mercer who became Lord Mayor of 
 London in 1 49 1 , who was so generous a benefactor 
 to his native town of Stratford, for the reference 
 in his will to his " grete house in Stratford-upon- 
 Avon," when taken in conjunction with the 
 70
 
 NEW PLiACE 
 
 inquisition made on the death of the knight, makes 
 it clear that the " grete house " and New Place 
 were one and the same building. For our first 
 description of the edifice we are indebted to the 
 pen of John Leland, the antiquary, who visited 
 Stratford about 1540, and when referring to the 
 Guild Chapel noted that " this Hugh Clopton 
 builded also by the north syde of this chappell a 
 praty house of bricke and tymbre." Some three 
 years after Leland's visit this "pretty house of 
 brick and timber " was leased for forty years to 
 Dr. Thomas Bentley, who was physician to 
 Henry VIII, and who, on his death about 1549, 
 left the remainder of the lease to his wife on the 
 condition that she did not marry again. The 
 bequest was not of any great value, for at the 
 time of Dr. Bentley 's death the house was in 
 "great ruyne and decay and unrepayryd " ; that 
 his widow did not esteem it in comparison with 
 the attractions of second wifehood may be 
 inferred from the fact that she soon married 
 again. 
 
 By this time the " grete house " of Sir Hugh 
 Clopton's will and the " praty house " of Leland 
 
 7i
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 was known as New Place, for it appears under 
 that name in the legal documents which were 
 occasioned by the widow Bentley's marriage ; 
 consequently there is no foundation for the state- 
 ment so often made that it was Shakespeare 
 who christened the property " New Place." Two 
 other owners intervened between the Bentleys 
 and the poet, Willian Bott and William Under- 
 bill, and it was with the latter that, early in 1597, 
 William Shakespeare came to an agreement to 
 purchase the property, described as consisting of 
 one messuage and two barns and two gardens, for 
 the sum of sixty pounds. 
 
 Only eleven years had passed since, a young man 
 of some twenty-two summers, the eldest son of 
 John Shakespeare had started for London in quest 
 of fortune. And now he is back again purchasing 
 what was perhaps the most considerable house in 
 Stratford. How had he achieved such rapid 
 success ? 
 
 Nothing more than a brief answer to that 
 question need be attempted. It will be remem- 
 bered that tradition described the young Shake- 
 speare as rinding his first employment in 
 72
 
 NEW PLzACE 
 
 London at the doors of theatres, where he took 
 charge of the horses of the playgoers, and one of 
 his biographers has agreed that there is " no 
 inherent improbability " in the story. Another 
 version credits the young Stratfordian with such 
 efficiency in this horse-tending business that he 
 speedily became so much a favourite as prompted 
 him to hire a band of lads who, when " Will 
 Shakespeare " was called for, immediately pre- 
 sented themselves with the statement, " I am 
 Shakespeare's boy, sir." This tale, however, is 
 dismissed as " apocryphal " by the biographer 
 who sees no " inherent improbability" in the 
 balder version. Yet there have been plenty of 
 modern instances, in America if not in England, 
 of sharp-witted but poor youths who have risen 
 to wealth in theatredom by enterprise not vastly 
 different from that which is said to have given the 
 young Shakespeare his first foothold on the ladder 
 of fortune. 
 
 Anyway, it is beyond dispute that soon after 
 arriving in London he formed some kind of 
 connexion with the playhouse, from which he 
 went on to his triumphs as an actor and then as a 
 
 73
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 dramatist. And in eleven years he had obviously 
 been able to amass sufficient capital to warrant him 
 becoming the purchaser of New Place. 
 
 As Sir Sidney Lee has reminded us, too many 
 gratuitous difficulties have been imported into 
 the question of Shakespeare's financial prosperity. 
 He concludes that the nineteen plays which may 
 be set to the poet's credit between 1 591 and 1599 
 cannot have produced less than two hundred 
 pounds, or some twenty pounds a year, and that 
 takes no account of his earnings as an actor. Now, 
 that the stage was a profitable occupation at the 
 close of the sixteenth century seems beyond 
 question. There is a reference in the univer- 
 sity play of "The Return from Parnassus" 
 which, especially in its last line, may be taken 
 as stating the case of Shakespeare. One of the 
 speakers, a poor student, makes an envious 
 complaint of the wealth by which actors were 
 rewarded : 
 
 " England affords these glorious vagabonds, 
 That carried erst their fardles on their backs, 
 Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets, 
 
 74
 
 NEW PLzACE 
 
 Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits, 
 
 And pages to attend their masterships : 
 
 With mouthing words that better wits had framed, 
 
 They purchase lands and now esquires are made." 
 
 Altogether, then, Sir Sidney Lee computes that the 
 income of Shakespeare from his plays and earnings 
 as an actor averaged a hundred and thirty pounds 
 a year prior to 1599, and he adds that such a sum, 
 equal in value to a thousand pounds in modern 
 times, would be regarded as a very large income 
 in a country town. " According to the author of 
 ' Ratsei's Ghost,' " comments the same judicial 
 authority, " the actor, who may well have been 
 meant for Shakespeare, practised in London a 
 strict frugality, and there seems no reason why 
 Shakespeare should not have been able in 1597 to 
 draw from his savings sixty pounds wherewith to 
 buy New Place. His resources might well justify 
 his fellow-townsmen's opinion of his wealth in 
 1598, and suffice between 1597 and 1599 to meet 
 his expenses, in rebuilding the house, stocking the 
 barns with grain, and conducting various legal 
 proceedings. But, according to tradition , he had in 
 
 IS
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 the Earl of Southampton a wealthy and generous 
 friend who on one occasion gave him a large gift 
 of money to enable ' him to go through with ' a 
 purchase to which he had a mind. A munificent 
 gift, added to professional gain, leaves nothing 
 unaccounted for in Shakespeare's position before 
 1599." 
 
 After the date last mentioned the poet's for- 
 tune grew apace, for he became a shareholder 
 in the Globe Theatre and also had some financial 
 interest in the Blackfriars Theatre. In the sum 
 total, then, it is estimated that during the latter 
 portion of his life Shakespeare's income amounted 
 to more than six hundred pounds a year. Indeed, 
 a seventeenth-century vicar of Stratford remarked 
 that in his closing years the poet " spent at the 
 rate of a thousand a year, as I have heard." 
 Documents still survive which afford ample 
 proof of the conviction of his fellow-towns- 
 folk that he was a man of substantial wealth 
 from the time when he became the owner of 
 New Place. 
 
 Although he completed the transaction for the 
 purchase of New Place in 1602, Shakespeare did 
 
 76
 
 NEW PLtACE 
 
 not immediately sever his connexion with London 
 and settle down in his native town. He seems to 
 have disposed of his interest in the Globe and 
 Blackfriars theatres about 161 1, but continued for 
 two or three years longer to pay frequent visits to 
 the capital. No doubt he found it difficult to bid 
 a final farewell to the scenes of his triumphs as 
 an actor and playwright. So far as Stratford was 
 concerned, he may be safely credited with the 
 sentiment which Goldsmith attributed to the 
 native of "sweet Auburn " : 
 
 li And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, 
 Pants to the place from whence at first he flew ', 
 / still had hopes, my long vexation past, 
 Here to return — and die at home at last " ; 
 
 but the spell of London was strong upon him ; the 
 provincialism of Stratford must have been irksome 
 at times in contrast with the literary and theatrical 
 Bohemianism of the capital ; and hence it is not 
 surprising that he did not thoroughly settle 
 down at New Place until 1614. 
 
 And at that date he had barely two years 
 
 77
 
 <\ 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 to live. They were spent, said an early bio- 
 grapher, in ease, retirement, and the conversation 
 of his friends. One of his daughters, the elder, 
 Susannah, was already the wife of Dr. John Hall 
 and the mother of his only granddaughter, Eliza- 
 beth ; the other, Judith, was married in February 
 1 61 6 to Thomas Quiney, a son of one of the 
 poet's early friends. From legal records, and 
 deeds of conveyance, and wills, and entries in the 
 minutes of the Stratford Corporation, it is possible 
 to catch a few fleeting glimpses of the master 
 of New Place during the last two or three years of 
 his life : he is seen supporting his elder daughter 
 in an action prompted by a charge of slander, or 
 adding to his real estate by the purchase of 
 property in London, or entertaining a Puritan 
 preacher at New Place, or receiving a bequest of 
 five pounds under the will of a friend ; but for 
 the greater part mystery broods over those closing 
 years. 
 
 For a moment, however, in January 1616, 
 the veil is lifted. On the sixteenth day of that 
 month the poet was closeted with a solicitor 
 engaged in the serious business of arranging 
 
 78
 
 NEW PUACE 
 
 the terms of his will. That document, which 
 contains, apart from the signatures, the only 
 two words in Shakespeare's handwriting known 
 to be in existence, has been the theme of endless 
 discussion, and was once described as being 
 " absolutely void of the least particle of that 
 spirit which animated our great poet." That 
 critic, as Halliwell-Phillipps suggested, evidently 
 expected to find the will written in blank- 
 verse. " To less exacting persons that document 
 is of great interest for the evidence it gives of the 
 poet's practical nature and the light it throws on 
 his relations with his family and friends. It 
 makes manifest, for example, that the chief place 
 in his affections was held by his elder daughter, 
 Susannah Hall, for it was to her he bequeathed 
 the bulk of his property, including ' that capital 
 messuage or tenement, with the appurtenances, in 
 Stratford aforesaid, called the New Place, wherein 
 I now dwell.' There were liberal bequests, too, 
 to his younger daughter, Judith, to his sister, 
 Joan Hart, to his three nephews, to his grand- 
 daughter, to the poor of Stratford, and to seven 
 friends he left twenty-six shillings and eightpence 
 
 79
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 each for the purchase of memorial rings. He 
 remembered, in short, everybody with the excep- 
 tion of Anne Hathaway, the wife of his youth ; 
 hence the afterthought of that famous interlinea- 
 tion by which she became entitled to his ' second 
 best bed with the furniture.' " 
 
 What did that afterthought portend ? Did it 
 mean that the early love of William Shakespeare 
 for Anne Hathaway had cooled to indifference, 
 that husband and wife had drifted apart and were 
 now linked to one another by nothing more sub- 
 stantial than that mockery of a loveless marriage — 
 a wedding certificate ; or did it imply that the poet 
 thought his wife amply provided for by her legal 
 widow's dower and distrusted her ability to 
 take charge of his estate ? Both theories have 
 had their heated adherents, and the problem 
 will probably be discussed with undiminished 
 warmth to the end of time. 
 
 In support of the estrangement theory many 
 arguments have been adduced. Anne Hathaway 
 was her husband's senior by some eight years, 
 and the disparity of age has been adduced 
 as a probable reason for the dying-down of 
 80
 
 NEW PL^ACE 
 
 Shakespeare's love. Into some lines of his 
 own, then, a personal significance has been 
 read : 
 
 " Let still the woman take 
 An elder than herself; so wears she to him y 
 So sways she level in her husband's heart." 
 
 Again, not only was the bequest of the second 
 best bed an afterthought, but the will is wholly 
 barren of any reference to the Hathaway kindred. 
 
 But on the opposite count it is claimed that 
 bedsteads were elaborate and valuable pieces of 
 furniture in the seventeenth century, that they 
 often figure in wills of the period; and one ingenious 
 theorist suggests that the bequest was of that 
 identical bed which the bride's family presented to 
 the couple on their marriage. It is also argued 
 that the tradition that Shakespeare's widow ex- 
 pressed a desire to be buried in her husband's 
 grave is presumptive proof against the estrange- 
 ment theory. 
 
 Two of the anecdotes told of the poet are of a 
 kind which suggest that he may have been guilty 
 
 f 81
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 of marital unfaithfulness. One, which was an 
 ale-house story in London in 1602, may be given 
 in the words of its first chronicler : " Upon a 
 time, when Burbage played Richard III, there was 
 a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that 
 before she went from the play, she appointed 
 him to come that night unto her by the name 
 of Richard the Third. Shakespeare, overhearing 
 their conclusion, went before, was entertained, and 
 at his game ere Burbage came. Then, message 
 being brought that Richard the Third was at the 
 door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that 
 ' William the Conqueror was before Richard the 
 Third.' " The other anecdote is that which 
 credits the poet with the paternity of Sir William 
 D'Avenant, whose mother, a beautiful woman 
 and of " very light report," was the wife of that 
 John D'Avenant who kept the inn at Oxford 
 where Shakespeare baited on his journey to 
 London. Such is the sum of the matter ; the 
 discerning reader may be left to draw his own 
 conclusions. 
 
 But when Shakespeare, in a cosy room in New 
 Place on that January day of 1 6 1 6, discussed with 
 82
 
 NEW PLsACE 
 
 his solicitor the terms of his "last will and testa- 
 ment," he was nearly finished with all the tempta- 
 tions to which male flesh is heir. On that day, it 
 is true, he was in " perfect health and memory, 
 God be thanked " ; but two months later he was 
 taken with so serious an illness that he thought 
 it expedient to have the rough draft of his will 
 revised and witnessed without further delay. And 
 a month later, on April 23, 161 6, he passed 
 away in his fifty-third year. 
 
 What exactlv was the nature of the illness 
 which put so untimely an end to the life of the 
 poet is another of those mysteries which enshroud 
 so much of his career. The only account which 
 has come down to us was penned some fifty-six 
 years after the dramatist's death by the vicar of 
 Stratford, who made this brief entry in his diary : 
 " Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a 
 merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for 
 Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." 
 On this story, a legend in itself, realistic details 
 have been embroidered, such as that the poet 
 " tumbled into a ditch on his way home, and died 
 there." Sir Sidney Lee decides that the tales of 
 
 83
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Shakespeare's achievements as a hard drinker 
 " may be dismissed as unproven " ; but even so 
 stout a hero-worshipper as Halliwell-Phillipps 
 was inclined to accept the " merry meeting ' : 
 legend, with extenuating circumstances. 
 
 Briefly put, Halliwell-Phillipps accounted for 
 the poet's early death by a conjunction of strong 
 drink and strong odours. " The cause of the 
 malady," he noted, " then attributed to undue 
 festivity, would now be readily discernible in the 
 wretched sanitary conditions surrounding his resi- 
 dence. If truth, and not romance, is to be 
 invoked, were there the woodbine and sweet honey- 
 / suckle within reach of the poet's death-bed, their 
 / fragrance would have been neutralized by their 
 vicinity to middens, fetid water-courses, mud- 
 [D walls, and piggeries." And in support of that 
 
 indictment the same patient student produced a 
 series of entries from the town records which 
 present an alarming and malodorous picture of 
 the filthy condition of Chapel Lane in days 
 anterior and posterior to the poet's lifetime. The 
 references to gutter and muck and dunghills and 
 fetid ditches seem to exhale the concentrated 
 84
 
 NEW PL^CE 
 
 essence of every vile effluvium known to man, and 
 suggest a hot-bed of virulent typhus. And it 
 must be remembered that Chapel Lane ran along- 
 side Shakespeare's house and garden at New Place. 
 Some of the inhabitants of the lane, and probably 
 the poet among the number, protested vigorously 
 to the corporation in 1613 against a pending 
 addition to their many offensive nuisances ; and 
 even so late as the end of the eighteenth century 
 the thoroughfare was still one of the dirtiest i 
 a town not remarkable for cleanliness^y'lt may 
 well have been, then, that the surroundings of 
 New Place, now so well kept and verdant and 
 fragrant, were accountable for Shakespeare's 
 death. 
 
 Those pilgrims who are curious enough to wish 
 to walk over the vacant site of the poet's resi- 
 dence, at the cost of the sixpenny toll above 
 mentioned, are given access to it through that 
 picturesque building which borders it on the 
 north known as Nash's House. In that ancient 
 structure, which was once the home of Shake- 
 speare's granddaughter, are preserved some 
 curious relics of Elizabethan times. But the 
 
 85
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 chief interest of the house, apart from its outlook 
 on the New Place foundations, is that its oak- 
 beamed ceilings and its spacious chimney-nooks 
 are potent aids to the imagination in repic- 
 turing the domestic environments amid which 
 Stratford's most famous son spent his last peace- 
 ful years. 
 
 86
 
 CHAPTER III : The Church 
 
 BY an inversion which is an excellent 
 example of the modern spirit, the 
 twentieth-century pilgrim to Stratford- 
 on-Avon usually visits last that shrine which 
 early devotees made the sole object of their quest. 
 Washington Irving and Hawthorne, as has been 
 remarked, ignored New Place and went straight 
 to the church from the Henley Street cottage ; 
 Dugdale and other forerunners were interested 
 only in the poet's grave. The modern order of 
 pilgrimage is the most seemly, just as it is also a 
 tribute to our greater knowledge of Shakespeare's 
 life. The natural sequence is surely that which 
 takes the birthplace first, New f Place second, and 
 the grave last. 
 
 Many pens have attempted word-pictures of 
 Holy Trinity Church, but in the entire gallery 
 pride of place may still be given to those achieved 
 by Irving and Hawthorne. " A large and 
 venerable pile," Irving described it, "mouldering 
 with age, but richly ornamented. It stands on 
 
 87
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 the banks of the Avon, on an embowered point, 
 and separated by adjoining gardens from the 
 suburbs of the town. Its situation is quiet and 
 retired ; the river runs murmuring at the foot of 
 the churchyard, and the elms which grow upon 
 its banks droop their branches into its clear 
 bosom. An avenue of limes, the boughs of 
 which are curiously interlaced, so as to form in 
 summer an arched way of foliage, leads up from 
 the gate of the yard to the church porch. The 
 graves are overgrown with grass ; the grey tomb- 
 stones, some of them nearly sunk into the earth, 
 are half-covered with moss, which has likewise 
 tinted the reverend old buildings. Small birds 
 have built their nests among the cornices and 
 fissures of the walls, and keep up a continual 
 flutter and chirping ; and rooks are sailing and 
 cawing about its lofty grey spire." 
 
 Hawthorne, too, was not less happy in limning 
 the outward aspect of the poet's resting-place. 
 " The appearance of the church is most venerable 
 and beautiful, standing amid a great green shadow 
 of lime-trees, above which rises the spire, while 
 the Gothic battlements and buttresses and vast 
 88
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 arched windows are obscurely seen through the 
 boughs. The Avon loiters past the churchyard, 
 an exceedingly sluggish river, which might seem 
 to have been considering which way it should 
 flow ever since Shakespeare left ofF paddling in it 
 and gathering the large forget-me-nots that grow 
 among its flags and water-weeds." 
 
 That the Avon should have been pressed into the 
 service of the eulogists of the poet is a natural con- 
 sequence of the close association of that charming 
 river with the beginning and end of his wonderful 
 career. Garrick, in the facile verse which he 
 indited in connexion with his " Jubilee," pro- 
 phesied that not even the Thames would "more 
 harmonious flow in song," and expressed the 
 aspiration 
 
 " Ever may thy stream 
 Of tuneful numbers be the darling theme. ,J 
 
 And then he piped his " shepherd's feeble notes " 
 to the following effect, excusing the weakness of 
 his numbers by the warmth of his zeal : 
 
 89
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 " Thou soft-flowing Avon, by thy silver stream 
 Of things more than mortal, sweet Shakespeare would 
 
 dream, 
 The Fairies by moonlight dance round his green bed. 
 For hallowed the turj is which pillow 'd his head. 
 
 " The love-stricken maiden, the soft-sighing swain 
 Here rove without danger, and sigh without pain ; 
 The sweet bud of beauty, no blight shall here dread, 
 For hallow 'd the turf is which pillow 'd his head. 
 
 " Here youth shall be fam d for their love and their 
 truth, 
 And cheerful old age feel the spirit of youth ; 
 For the raptures of fancy here poets shall tread, 
 For hallow d the turf is which pillow ' d his head. 
 
 a 
 
 Flow on, silver Avon, in song ever flow, 
 Be the swans on thy bosom still whiter than snow, 
 Ever full be thy stream, like his fame may it spread, 
 And the turf ever hallow V which pillow 'd his 
 heady 
 
 Garrick was neither the first nor the most 
 90
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 tuneful singer to link the praise of Shakespeare 
 with his native stream. There was Ben Jonson, 
 for example, with his 
 
 " Sweet swan of Avon I What a sight it were 
 To see thee in our water yet appear, 
 And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, 
 That so did take Eliza, and our James. ' 
 
 And Milton must not be forgotten, for if he 
 ignored Shakespeare's river in his lofty lines he 
 must surely have had the poet's spired church in 
 mind when he asked : 
 
 " What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured 
 bones 
 The labour of an age in piled stones ? 
 Or that his hallowed reliaues should be hid 
 Under a star-ypointing pyramid ? " 
 
 But in this anthology of Shakespeare and the 
 Avon the mid-eighteenth century produced a 
 poem which is less remembered than it deserves. 
 
 9i
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRzATFORD 
 
 Entitled " The Tomb of Shakespeare : a Vision," 
 it was written in 1755 Dv J onn Gilbert Cooper, a 
 minor poet who often achieved lines which would 
 grace the most felicitous work of his major 
 confreres. Obviously his poem owed much to the 
 form and spirit of Gray's famous " Elegy," and 
 some lines might be indicted on the score of close 
 imitation, yet the conception is so original to the 
 author and the execution so happy that the poet's 
 indebtedness to his model may be condoned. As 
 in a dream, then, Cooper imagined his soul 
 emancipated from his body. 
 
 " Through fields of air ; methought, I took my flight, 
 Through every clime, o'er every region pass 'd, 
 No paradise or ruin ''scaped my sight, 
 Hesperian garden, or Cimmerian waste. 
 
 " On Avons banks I lit, whose streams appear 
 
 To wind with eddies fond round Shakespeare 's 
 tomb, 
 The year s first feattiry songsters warble near, 
 And vi lets breathe, and earliest roses bloom. 
 92
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 "Here Fancy sat, (her dewy fingers cold 
 
 Decking with flowerets f resh tfi unsullied 
 sod), 
 And batli d with tears the sad sepulchral 
 mold, 
 Her fav rite offsprings long and last abode. 
 
 " l Ah ! what avails,' she cryd, c a Poet's name ? 
 Ah ! what avails tli immortalizing breath 
 To snatch from dumb Oblivion other s fame? 
 My darling child here lies a prey to Death I 
 
 " l Let gentle Otway, white-rob" d Pity's priest, 
 From grief domestic teach the tears to flow, 
 Or Southern captivate tti impassion d breast 
 With heart-felt sighs and sympathy of woe. 
 
 « < p or no i iq i] iese hi s genius was confind, 
 
 Nature and I each tuneful powW had given, 
 Poetic transports of the madding mind, 
 
 And the wing d words that waft the soul to 
 heaven : 
 
 93
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 " * The fiery glance of tli intellectual eye, 
 Piercing all objects of creation s store, 
 Which on this world's extended surface lie ; 
 And plastic thought that still created more ! ' 
 
 " ' grant J with eager rapture I reply d, 
 
 i Grant me, great goddess of the changeful eye, 
 To view each Being in poetic pride, 
 To whom thy son gave immortality. y " 
 
 Nor did the poet appeal in vain. At the bidding 
 of Fancy and in answer to the waving of her 
 " mystic rod," first Ariel, and then Caliban, and 
 anon the elfin sprites of Oberon's realm and 
 the witches of " Macbeth " and the ghosts of 
 " Richard III " came from the unseen to do 
 honour to the resting-place of their creator. And 
 often in the years that have intervened that 
 imaginary pageant has been repeated, for few can 
 have visited Shakespeare's grave unaccompanied 
 by the great cloud of witnesses which owes its 
 existence to his magic pen. Longfellow seems 
 to have been an exception, for in his vision of 
 the Avon one figure dominated the scene : 
 94
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 " Flow oft) sweet river I like his verse 
 Who lies beneath this sculptured hearse ; 
 Nor wait beside the churchyard wall 
 For him who cannot hear thy call. 
 
 a 
 
 I see him by thy shallow edge 
 JVading knee-deep amid the sedge ; 
 And led in thought, as if thy stream 
 Were the swift river of a dream. 
 
 " He wonders whitherward it flows ; 
 And fain would follow where it goes, 
 To the wide world, that shall ere long 
 Be filed with his melodious song. 
 
 u 
 
 Flow on, fair stream ! That dream is o'er ; 
 He stands upon another shore ; 
 A vaster river near him flows, 
 And still he follows where it goes." 
 
 With a poetic licence which in that instance 
 might easily have given rise to another bewilder- 
 ing legend, Garrick's flowing verse must have 
 conveyed the impression that Shakespeare was 
 
 95
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 buried in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church. 
 And succeeding poets have done not a little to 
 foster that fiction, impelled thereto, no doubt, by 
 the desire to make the adjacent Avon play a 
 picturesque part in their lines. 
 
 Of course, the fact is that Shakespeare's grave 
 is in the chancel of that church, and even Irving, 
 much less Hawthorne, was well aware that such 
 was the case. During the forty odd years, too, 
 which separated the visits of the American 
 pilgrims a notable change had taken place with 
 regard to the relative importance of the Stratford 
 shrines. At the time of Irving's pilgrimage the 
 church was kept locked up, for does he not tell 
 how he had to accompany the sexton Edmonds to 
 his home to fetch the key ? Hawthorne, on the 
 contrary, found himself waylaid at the outer gate 
 by " an old man in small-clothes " who, in 
 anticipation of that sixpenny fee so dear to every 
 Stratfordian, marched before him to the porch 
 and rapped on the door. " I could have done it 
 quite as effectually for myself," thought Haw- 
 thorne ; " but it seems the old people of the 
 neighbourhood haunt about the churchyard, in 
 9 6
 
 HOLY TRINITY CHURCH
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 spite of the frowns and remonstrances of the 
 sexton, who grudges them the half-eleemosynary 
 sixpence which they sometimes get from visitors." 
 By the middle of the last century, then, there was 
 no waiting for the fetching of the key ; the 
 monetary value of Shakespeare's tomb had been 
 realized and had even created an annoying type 
 of middleman. 
 
 In describing the outward appearance of the 
 church each of the American essayists used the 
 word " venerable " ; the same adjective would 
 have been as appropriate from the pen of any 
 writer who had attempted a word-picture of the 
 building on that April day of 1616 when Shake- 
 speare was laid to rest within its walls. 
 
 For even three hundred years ago Holy Trinity 
 Church was already a venerable building. To 
 date from William the Conqueror, with whom 
 more founders of noble families " came over " 
 to England than progenitors of American "good 
 families' 1 crossed to New England on the 
 Mayflower, is often a dubious patent of antiquity ; 
 but in the case of Shakespeare's church there is 
 no disputing the evidence of Domesday Book to 
 
 c 97
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 the effect that in 1086 Stratford could boast of a 
 church and a mill. Whether the present mill, 
 which is close to the church, occupies the site of 
 that mentioned in William's Survey is of no 
 present importance ; but it is of moment to 
 recall that, in the opinion of conservative anti- 
 quaries, the existing church not only stands upon 
 the site of the Domesday building, but actually 
 includes portions of its walls. At the time of 
 Shakespeare's burial, then, some parts of the 
 sacred edifice had weathered the summers and 
 winters of more than five centuries. 
 
 So many alterations have been made in the 
 fabric in modern times that it would require the 
 trained eye of an antiquarian architect to identify 
 such stones as may still remain of the Domesday 
 structure, but there are several parts of the 
 church which are still their own evidence of 
 respectable antiquity. There is the south aisle, 
 for example, which dates from about the year 
 1332. Part of the building in which Shakespeare 
 was buried belongs to the latter half of the 
 fifteenth century, and had been completed 
 in its present form nearly a hundred and 
 
 98
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 fifty years before it received its most illustrious 
 sleeper* 
 
 Many hues, then, of what Ruskin called the 
 golden stair of time had touched the walls of 
 Holy Trinity Church before that April day in 
 1 6 1 6 which i s the m ost memorable day in its 
 annals. /No record of the ceremony of Shake- \ 
 speare's obsequies has survived. In the ancient 
 parish register there is a brief and conventional / '/ 
 entry setting forth the fact of his burial on April 
 25, 161 6; but that is all. And yet how many 
 pens were then busy in England, Ben Jonson's 
 chief of all, which could have done justice to that, 
 solemn scene I 
 
 But that notable sepulture in Holy Trinity 
 Church was to find a chronicler in modern days. 
 Hence that sketch of " Shakespeare's Funeral ' 
 which Sir Edward Hamley outlined with such 
 loving care and sympathy. It is an imaginary 
 picture, of course, and far from flawless to the 
 eye which is keen to detect anachronisms, but it 
 is so suffused with the atmosphere of the seven- 
 teenth century that its violation of fact is 
 condoned by its faithfulness of spirit. 
 
 99
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 As representative, then, of the great world of 
 London, Sir Edward introduces the persons of 
 the poet Drayton and a son of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
 making their visit to Stratford coincide with 
 Shakespeare's burial day. They talk of the poet 
 in the taproom of the Falcon Tavern, interview 
 Kit Sly, meet Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, 
 watch the funeral procession on its way to the 
 grave, and mingle with the mourners inside the 
 church. They listen, too, to the funeral sermon, 
 which, with a bold flight of the imagination, Sir 
 Edward credits to that Puritan preacher who had 
 been a guest at New Place. 
 
 " So, friends," that austere divine is made to 
 say of the dead poet, " having essayed to draw 
 from the presence of death in our midst some 
 matter for edification, I will speak a word of this 
 particular brother who hath departed, dwelling, 
 as is at these seasons the custom, chiefly on what 
 may do him grace, and serve to sweeten his 
 memory in the nostrils of those whom he hath 
 left still in the bonds of the flesh. And first, 
 of the fountain of his charities — it hath been 
 known in Stratford for a perennial spring, 
 ioo
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 abundant in refreshment to the poor, and in 
 counsel and all good offices to those who needed 
 continuance of another kind ; and if (as must be 
 said were a man to speak truly) he ever regarded 
 necessity more than deserving, and inquired not 
 over closely into the way of life of those he 
 relieved — nay, would ofttimes succour and 
 comfort the godless no less than the godly, and 
 bestow his bounty where it was like to be 
 ill-spent — yet is that to be accounted better 
 than the withholding altogether of alms, as some 
 use. Next, of his excellent charity of another 
 sort, I mean the brotherly relation he held with 
 all conditions of men ; it hath been noted among 
 you that he, who was used elsewhere to consort 
 with the great, and hath been favoured even of 
 princes, would yet converse with the lowly on a 
 general level of goodwill, as if the only apparel 
 he took thought of were the skin we are all born 
 with ; for which, indeed, he had a great ensample. 
 And, again, he hath ever gone among his fellows 
 with a cheerful spirit, so that his presence hath 
 been as wine among friends, and as oil among 
 make-bates. And though I dare not say that he 
 
 IOI
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 inclined of preference to the conversation of the 
 godly, nor could be counted of the fellowship of 
 saints, nor even a favourer of them, yet have I 
 ever found him apt at serious converse, courteous 
 in bearing, weighty in reply, and of unshakable 
 serenity when I have adventured to press the 
 truth on him somewhat instantly ; inasmuch, that 
 I, whose vocation 'tis to battle for the truth, 
 have myself, ere now, been sore put to it to hold 
 mine own, and found me in straits to oppose him, 
 so nimble was his wit ; though I doubt not that 
 (the clear sight being with me) I should, with 
 time for recollection, have had vouchsafed to me 
 the wherewithal to give him sufficient answer. 
 And it hath, at these times, seemed to me that 
 he was a goodly vessel full of merchandise, yet 
 driven by the wind apart from the port where 
 alone her cargo could be bartered for that which 
 is bread ; and 1 have travailed over him with a 
 sore travail ; for I have hardly doubted that, with 
 such gifts, he might, had it been so ordered, have 
 justly aspired to be chief magistrate of your 
 town, or even to serve you in parliament ; or 
 again, with diligent study and prayer, to become 
 102
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 a preacher of weight, and have struck in the 
 pulpit a good stroke for God's honour and the 
 Devil's discomfiture. But, alas ! it is known to 
 all of you, and I dare not dissemble it, that his 
 calling hath been one that delighteth the carnal- 
 minded, and profiteth the idle, and maketh the 
 godly sad of heart ; while, as for his talent, it 
 hath been put out to use where the only 
 return is the praise which fleeteth as the bubble 
 on the stream, and the repute which perisheth as 
 the leaves of autumn; for the making of rhymes 
 and verses which flatter the ear, and the art of 
 representing the vain shows of things, howe'er 
 skilfully practised (and I profess not to have that 
 acquaintance with the writings called plays, nor 
 poems other than godly hymns, to judge his 
 handiwork), cannot be held profitable for him 
 that writes nor him that hears them. And 
 therefore, whatsoe'er of wit and sense they may 
 contain must be accounted as water poured out 
 on the sand, which, better bestowed, might have 
 solaced the thirsty, and nourished the herbs and 
 the fruits, whereof many would have eaten and 
 been strengthened. But though I may not 
 
 103
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 altogether hold my peace on these matters, yet 
 am I loath to dwell on them at this time ; rather 
 would I point to the hope that our departed 
 brother had, in the soberer life he of late led 
 among you, put aside such toys as unworthy, and 
 given us warrant to forget in him their author, 
 and, moreover, to believe that, had he been 
 spared unto us, he would have removed himself 
 further, year by year, from such vanities and 
 lightnesses of his youth, until, haply, by the 
 example of a godly household, and the ministra- 
 tions of faithful expounders of God's Word, 
 he should have attained even to the perfect 
 day." 
 
 Such was Shakespeare's funeral sermon as the 
 posthumous reporter imagined it to have been, 
 and it is highly probable that the sentences just 
 quoted are an approximately faithful reflection of 
 the sentiments which the poet's death inspired in 
 the minds of many of his Stratford contemporaries. 
 But Sir Edward Hamley did not content himself 
 with representing the Puritan view of Shake- 
 speare's career. On their walk back to New 
 Place after the funeral young Raleigh and the 
 104
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 poet Drayton fell into converse on the discourse 
 to which they had just listened, and the former 
 hotly exclaimed that he had great difficulty in 
 refraining from answering the preacher even in 
 church. " Here was a man," he declared, " who, 
 having the vision of a mole, mistook Parnassus for 
 a molehill, and went about to measure it with his 
 ell-wand, and even thought to do men service 
 by persuading them that the golden lights and 
 purple shadows of the mountain, its fountains and 
 dells, the forests that clothe it, the clouds that 
 crown it, and the Muses that make it their 
 haunt, are all vain illusions together." 
 
 But Drayton, with the more balanced vision of 
 an older man, reminded his youthful companion 
 that the perception of greatness was a slow 
 growth. " And thus," he added, " will it be 
 with the fame of Shakespeare, who had so much 
 in common with the common men that they 
 accounted him one of themselves, as Mercury 
 passed among herdsmen for a herdsman, and 
 Apollo among shepherds for a shepherd." 
 
 If some forgotten Puritan divine did actually 
 debate the question of Shakespeare's religious 
 
 105
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 faith over the open grave of the poet in Stratford 
 Church nigh three hundred years ago, he merely 
 anticipated that barren discussion which has 
 cropped up so frequently in modern times. As 
 Sir Walter Raleigh has remarked, so great is the 
 power of the poet's name to stimulate unbridled 
 curiosity that whole columns have been filled with 
 the discussion of questions which, even if he were 
 now alive, we could not answer. Such questions 
 as, Was he a Christian ? And, if so, a Roman 
 Catholic or a Protestant ? Or had he any re- 
 ligious faith at all ? All we know is that he was 
 baptized, and had his children baptized, according 
 to the rites of the Church of England, and that 
 his only son Hamnet and he himself were laid 
 to rest with the burial service of that Church. 
 Nothing can be inferred from the exordium of his 
 will : " I comend my soule into the handes of 
 God my Creator, hoping and assuredlie believing, 
 through thonelie merittes of Jesus Christe my 
 Saviour, to be made partaker of lyfe everlastinge " ; 
 for that was a stereotyped form which had no 
 value as a personal confession of faith ; and his 
 most sympathetic biographer has affirmed that it 
 106
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 cannot be claimed that he was " a deep student of 
 the Bible." And as for his writings, they are dis- 
 tinguished for nothing so much as their " grand 
 impersonality." For, as Lowell asked, what has 
 he told us of himself? " If he had sorrows, he has 
 made them the woof of everlasting consolation to 
 his kind ; and if, as poets are wont to whine, the 
 outward world was cold to him, its biting air did 
 but trace itself in loveliest frostwork of fancy on 
 the many windows of that self-centred and cheer- 
 ful soul." 
 
 Fifty years ago the poet's devotees were startled 
 by the announcement that the burial-place and 
 gravestone had been discovered of a man who 
 was one of the pall-bearers at Shakespeare's 
 funeral. This was, indeed, a momentous event ; 
 it suggested that it might yet be possible to 
 unearth new and important details of the poet's 
 closing years. This seemed all the more probable 
 because about the same time the writer of an 
 article bearing the title of " Shakespeare : Was 
 he a Christian ? ' ' declared that an old lady, a 
 native of Stratford, who had been dead some fifty 
 years, was wont to assert that her grandmother 
 
 107
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 was present at the poet's funeral sermon, that the 
 congregation was " very large and very serious," 
 and that the preacher had concluded with the 
 pious aspiration, "Would to God he had been a 
 divine !" — much in the manner of the pulpit orator 
 whose imaginary discourse has been cited above. 
 
 But to return to Shakespeare's pall-bearer. 
 There had been found in the old burial-ground 
 of Fredericksburg, Virginia — so ran the announce- 
 ment of fifty years ago — an ancient slab of sand- 
 stone engraved with the thrilling inscription : 
 " Here lies the body of Edward Helder, prac- 
 titioner in physic and chirurgery. Born in Bed- 
 fordshire, England, in the year of our Lord 
 1542. Was contemporary with and one of the 
 pall-bearers to the body of William Shakespeare. 
 After a brief illness his spirit ascended in the 
 year of our Lord 16 18, aged 76." Nor was that 
 the whole of the story. As proof that the stone 
 had been a " feature ' ' of the district for many 
 years, appeal was made to the columns of the local 
 newspaper, the Fredericksburg Gazette, for the 
 year 1784, in which the following lines were 
 printed : 
 108
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 " For in the churchyard at Fredericksburg 
 Juliet seemed to love t 
 Hamlet mused, and old Lear fell, 
 Beatrice laughed, and Ariel 
 Gleamed through the skies above — 
 As here, beneath this stone, 
 Lay in his narrow hall, 
 He who before had borne the pall 
 At mighty Shakespeare 's funeral '." 
 
 For the moment, then, it looked as though the 
 name of Edward Helder, M.D., had had great- 
 ness thrust upon it, and that henceforth it would 
 have to be added to the select roll of Shakespeare's 
 friends. And yet no sooner had the Fredericks- 
 burg epitaph been announced to the world than 
 cold scepticism began to scrutinize it with a 
 critical eye. "I am suspicious of Americans,'' 
 said one antiquary, " even when their stories seem 
 to elucidate the funeral of Shakespeare." And 
 he looked askance at the Fredericksburg epitaph 
 because it was hardly probable that Dr. Helder 
 should have gone to settle in America in his 
 seventy-fourth year. Anot her disbeliever grounded 
 
 109
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 his doubts on philology ; the phraseology of the 
 epitaph was too modern to his taste, the word 
 " contemporary," for example, being of later 
 coinage. He was afraid, in short, that the in- 
 scription was an exercise of the inventive faculty 
 by " some facetious antiquary of the * Old 
 Dominion.' " 
 
 And there the question remained for a decade, 
 suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, between the 
 realms of faith and incredulity. Some twelve 
 years later Dr. Helder popped up again, only to 
 be assaulted by another sceptic, who tried to lay 
 his ghost by declaring him a figment of " Yankee 
 imagination." At last, a quarter of a century 
 after the good doctor from Bedfordshire had been 
 dragged into publicity, an American, Moncure 
 D. Conway, took a hand in settling the pretensions 
 of the individual whom he characterized as 
 Shakespeare's Jack-in-the-box. He went to the 
 root of the matter by acquiring possession of the 
 much-discussed doctor's gravestone, and found 
 that the epitaph made no reference whatever to 
 Shakespeare or his pall-bearer ! 
 
 In its general aspect the interior of Stratford 
 no
 
 "THE CHURCH 
 
 Church is practically unchanged since Washington 
 Irving noted that its architecture and embellish- 
 ments were superior to those of most country- 
 churches, that the place is " solemn and sepul- 
 chral," and that " tall elms wave before the 
 pointed windows, and the Avon, which runs at a 
 short distance from the walls, keeps up a low 
 perpetual murmur." The gentle author of the 
 " Sketch-Book " did not observe that there was 
 anything remarkable about the position of the 
 graves occupied by Shakespeare and his kindred ; 
 but the quick and observant eye of Hawthorne 
 noted that " the poet and his family are in pos- 
 session of what may be considered the very best 
 burial-places that the church affords." Such is 
 the case, for Shakespeare and his relatives lie in a 
 row just within the altar-rails of the chancel. 
 
 There was a reason for that pre-eminence 
 which the American pilgrims did not know. In 
 1605 Shakespeare purchased a thirty-one years' 
 lease of the tithes of Stratford, and that transac- 
 tion, in addition to making him one of the Jay- 
 rectors, gave him the right of interment in the 
 chancel. It was not pride, then, but the automatic 
 
 1 1 1
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 working of a legal custom which was responsible 
 for the poet being buried in the most conspicuous 
 part of the church. Thus it transpired that the 
 friend who urged him to purchase the tithes was 
 the unwitting cause of Shakespeare's grave occupy- 
 ing that super-eminence which would be its right 
 in any temple of the illustrious dead. 
 
 There, then, just within the altar-rails, and one 
 space removed from the north wall of the chancel, 
 lies that simple slab of stone on which are incised 
 the famous admonitory lines : 
 
 " Good frend for Jesus sake f orb eare, 
 To digg the dust enchased heare : 
 Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones, 
 And curst be he yt moves my bones." 
 
 Did Shakespeare write those jingling lines ? 
 Or were they already in use in his lifetime as 
 a stock epitaph ? As against the latter theory it 
 should be remembered that no copy of the lines 
 or even a colourable model from which they 
 might have been derived has been discovered of a 
 date prior to the year of the poet's death. A 
 112
 
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 clerical simpleton who perpetrated a jejune 
 pamphlet in support of the Baconian madness 
 claimed that he had collected " evidence " to 
 prove that Shakespeare's epitaph was a " crib " 
 from an older inscription ; but his sole " evidence " 
 consists of a copy of the lines found on a grave- 
 stone which was more than eighty years older 
 than the Stratford example ! 
 
 Until late in the last century the earliest-known 
 record dealing with the inscription on Shake- 
 speare's grave was that contained in some notes 
 of a visit paid to Stratford in 1777, the writer of 
 which stated that " at the side of the chancel is a 
 charnel-house filled with human bones, skulls, 
 &c. — the guide said that Shakespeare was so 
 much affected by this charnel-house that he wrote 
 the epitaph for himself to prevent his bones 
 being thrown into it." In 1884, however, there 
 was discovered among the manuscripts of the 
 Bodleian Library an old letter written in 1694 by 
 an antiquary named William Hall, which gave 
 a minute account of the traditions prevalent in 
 Stratford in that year. " I very greedily embrace 
 this occasion of acquainting you," so Hall wrote 
 
 H 113
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 to a close friend, " with something which I found 
 at Stratford-upon-Avon. That place I came 
 unto on Thursday night, and the next day went 
 to visit the ashes of the great Shakespeare which 
 lye interr'd in that church. The verses which, in 
 his lifetime, he ordered to be cut on his tomb- 
 stone, for his monument has others, are these 
 which follow : 
 
 1 Reader, for Jesus' s sake forbear 
 To dig the dust enclosed here ; 
 Blessed be he that spares these stones, 
 And cursed be he that moves my bones' 
 
 " The little learning these verses contain 
 would be a very strong argument of the want 
 of it in the author, did not they carry some- 
 thing in them which stands in need of a comment. 
 There is in this church a place which they 
 call the bone-house, a repository of all bones 
 they dig up, which are so many that they 
 could load a great number of waggons. The 
 Poet, being willing to preserve his bones un- 
 moved, lays a curse upon him that moves them, 
 114
 
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 and having to do with clerks and sextons, for 
 the most part a very ignorant sort of people, 
 he descends to the meanest of their capacity, 
 and disrobes himself of that art which none of 
 his contemporaries wore in greater perfection. 
 Nor has the design mist of its effect, for, lest 
 they should not only draw this curse upon 
 themselves but also entail it upon their posterity, 
 they have laid him full seventeen foot deep, deep 
 enough to secure him." 
 
 In estimating the value of William Hall's 
 tradition it must not be forgotten that he wrote 
 seventy-eight years after Shakespeare's death ; but, 
 on the other hand, it is well to bear in mind that 
 such a period might have been within the recol- 
 lection of some then living in the town. At 
 the utmost it was a tradition removed from the 
 poet's death by only two generations, and in a 
 country town of the seventeenth century such 
 evidence would have almost documentary value. 
 Those sticklers for Shakespeare's fame who 
 demand that everything for which his authorship 
 is claimed shall always be pitched in the high 
 poetic vein must make their account with Hall's 
 
 JI 5
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 ingenious argument that the poet deliberately 
 wrote his epitaph to suit the mental capacity of 
 the class he most desired to impress. Besides, 
 other poets to whom high flights of genius have 
 been easy have been known to descend to doggerel 
 on occasion. 
 
 And in such a matter as this surely it is doing 
 no violence to probability if the poet's verse is 
 scanned in search of passages which may betray 
 his personal feeling. That he possessed in an 
 accentuated form the sentiment of repulsion 
 <y- excited by the fleshless relics of humanity is no 
 
 outrageous inference from those passages in 
 "Romeo and Juliet" and in "Hamlet" which 
 describe the horrors of the charnel-house and the 
 grave. Juliet's fear of the vault, " to whose foul 
 mouth no healthsome air breathes in," and her 
 vision of Tybalt's " festering in the shroud " ; 
 and Romeo's imprecation on the " detestable 
 maw " and " womb of death " ; and Hamlet's 
 shuddering ejaculations as the gravediggers plied 
 their gruesome occupation, his " Did these bones 
 cost no more the breeding but to play at loggats 
 with 'em," and his " And smelt so ? pah ! " do 
 116
 
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 suggest on Shakespeare's behalf an abhorrence of 
 the sights of the charnel-house which may have 
 created a consuming desire that his own bones 
 should be allowed to rest in peace. 
 
 But whether Shakespeare did or did not pen 
 that anathematizing stanza, its effect has been as 
 miraculous as though it had been promulgated 
 by a supernatural being. Washington Irving dis- 
 cerned " something extremely awful " in the 
 lines, and Hawthorne placed on record a singu- 
 larly striking example of their mysterious power. 
 Save in one unimportant particular, they have 
 hitherto preserved the poet's grave from violation. 
 The exception refers to the sandstone slab which 
 covers his resting-place ; that which is now seen 
 in the floor of the chancel is not the original 
 stone, but a substitute which was made about a 
 century ago to replace its outworn predecessor. 
 The original slab has entirely disappeared. 
 
 For nearly three centuries, then, the ashes of 
 Shakespeare have enjoyed quiet repose. The 
 nearest approach to an excavation into the grave, 
 wrote Halliwell-Phillipps, was made in the 
 summer of 1796, in digging a vault in the 
 
 117
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 immediate locality, when an opening appeared 
 which was presumed to indicate the commencement 
 of the site of the bard's remains. "The most 
 scrupulous care, however, was taken not to dis- 
 turb the neighbouring earth in the slightest 
 degree, the clerk having been placed there until 
 the brickwork of the adjoining vault was com- 
 pleted to prevent anyone making an examination. 
 No relics whatever were visible through the small 
 opening that thus presented itself, and as the 
 poet was buried in the ground, not in a vault, the 
 chancel earth, moreover, formerly absorbing a 
 large degree of moisture, the great probability is 
 that dust alone remains." This was the occasion 
 of which Irving learned some particulars on his 
 visit to Stratford. He talked with the old sexton 
 who kept watch for a couple of days over the 
 aperture, and learned how that vigilant sentinel 
 had seen " nothing but dust." As the essayist 
 concluded, it was something to have seen the 
 dust of Shakespeare. 
 
 But there have not been lacking many who 
 would fain see more than that ; as no age has 
 wanted those callous spirits who would " peep 
 118
 
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 and botanize " on a mother's grave, so for several 
 generations past there have been many victims to 
 a ruthless curiosity which has made them anxious to 
 explore the poet's tomb. Sombre German savants 
 have wanted to ringer his skull to ascertain 
 whether his brain-capacity was in accurate ratio 
 with the legacy of his genius; exponents of the 
 Baconian lunacy have wished to rifle his coffin for 
 proofs of their moonshine theory; phrenologists 
 have itched to compare their chart of the bumps 
 on the bust ; students of portraiture have pined 
 for data which might enable them to settle the 
 vexed problem of the poet's true likeness. 
 
 To keep at bay such a horde of cranks has 
 been no light task for the guardians of Shake- 
 speare's grave. Sometimes they have made their 
 assaults as individuals, as when Delia Bacon tried 
 her feminine wiles on one rector, and a spectacled 
 German professor exhorted another in the sacred 
 name of knowledge ; on other occasions they have 
 joined forces and presented argumentative petitions 
 to the corporation. But up to the present every 
 effort to violate the poet's tomb has failed. 
 
 Dark hints have been given from time to time 
 
 119
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 that the general public has been kept ignorant 
 of many of the attempts made on the grave. In 
 recent years, so the whisper goes, no fewer than 
 five such efforts have been frustrated, and it is 
 even asserted that there is a secret society which 
 exists for the sole purpose of guarding the poet's 
 tomb, the membership of which is open to 
 Americans, but strictly barred against Germans. 
 The birthplace is certainly equipped with all kinds 
 of mysterious burglar alarms, and perhaps the 
 secret society — unless that organization has no 
 more corporate existence than in the imagination 
 of a journalist gravelled for " copy" — has taken 
 the same precaution with the grave. It may do good 
 to foster such a legend : if prospective marauders 
 can be convinced that the chancel of Stratford 
 Church bristles with man-traps and spring-guns 
 they will be the more likely to give it a wide 
 berth. 
 
 Unless Hawthorne greatly overstated the facts 
 of the case, it would seem that Shakespeare's 
 grave was never in more imminent danger of viola- 
 tion than when Delia Bacon argued herself into 
 the conviction that the key to the philosophy she 
 120
 
 the church 
 
 read into the poet's works was buried in his grave. 
 She had discovered — so she declared to the author 
 of " Our Old Home " — in the letters of Lord 
 Bacon definite and minute instructions how to 
 find a number of important documents which 
 were hidden in a hollow space under the surface 
 of Shakespeare's gravestone, and she set herself 
 the task of securing possession of those papers. 
 Taking a humble lodging in Stratford, then, she 
 began to haunt the church, and eventually seemed 
 to have enlisted the sympathy of the clerk and 
 rector. But just as she imagined she had secured 
 the consent of the rector to the opening of the 
 grave a doubt arose in her mind that she might 
 have made a mistake as to the depository in which 
 the documents were concealed. 
 
 Nevertheless, as Hawthorne wrote, Miss Bacon 
 ' continued to hover around the church, and 
 seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the 
 daytime, and special licence, on one occasion at 
 least, at a late hour of the night. She went 
 thither with a dark-lantern, which could but 
 twinkle like a glow-worm through the volume 
 of obscurity that filled the great dusky edifice. 
 
 121
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Groping her way up the aisle and towards the 
 chancel, she sat down on the elevated part of 
 the pavement above Shakespeare's grave. If the 
 divine poet really wrote the inscription there, and 
 cared as much about the quiet of his bones as its 
 deprecatory earnestness would imply, it was time 
 for those crumbling relics to bestir themselves 
 under her sacrilegious feet. But they were safe. 
 She made no attempt to disturb them ; though, I 
 believe, she looked narrowly into the crevices 
 between Shakespeare's and the two adjacent 
 stones, and in some way satisfied herself that 
 her single strength would suffice to lift the 
 former in case of need. She threw the feeble 
 ray of her lantern up towards the bust, but could 
 not make it visible beneath the darkness of the 
 vaulted roof. Had she been subject to super- 
 stitious terrors, it is impossible to conceive of a 
 situation that could better entitle her to feel 
 them, for, if Shakespeare's ghost would rise at 
 any provocation, it must have shown itself then ; 
 but it is my sincere belief that, if his figure had 
 appeared within the scope of her dark-lantern, in 
 his slashed doublet and gown, and with his eyes 
 122
 
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 bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just 
 as we see him in the bust, she would have met 
 him fearlessly and controverted his claims to the 
 authorship of the plays to his very face. She 
 had taught herself to contemn ' Lord Leicester's 
 groom ' (it was one of her disdainful epithets for 
 the world's incomparable poet) so thoroughly 
 that even his disembodied spirit would hardly 
 have found civil treatment at Miss Bacon's hands. 
 Her vigil, though it appears to have had no 
 definite object, continued far into the night. 
 Several times she heard a low movement in the 
 aisles : a stealthy, dubious footfall prowling about 
 in the darkness, now here, now there, among the 
 pillars and ancient tombs, as if some restless 
 inhabitant of the latter had crept forth to peep 
 at the intruder. By and by the clerk made his 
 appearance, and confessed that he had been 
 watching her ever since she entered the church." 
 
 But some guardian or other has been watching 
 through all the ensuing years. Delia Bacon's 
 experience should be a warning to other tomb- 
 troublers ; where she failed no one is likely to 
 succeed. The anathematizing stanza protected 
 
 123
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 the poet's ashes through the ages of superstition ; 
 reverence for genius may be relied upon to secure 
 their repose through all succeeding generations. 
 
 Fortunate would it have been had some similar 
 talisman kept guard over that bust of the poet 
 which adorns the wall above his grave. When 
 that monument, with its columns of black marble 
 and its naked cupids, was erected, is not known ; 
 all that is certain is that it was completed prior to 
 1 623, and hence within seven years of Shakespeare's 
 death. It bears two inscriptions, one in Latin, 
 which has been rendered thus : 
 
 " In wisdom a Nestor, in genius a Socrates, in art a 
 Virgil ; 
 The earth shrouds him, the nation mourns him, 
 Olympus guards him "; 
 
 the other in English : 
 
 " Stay, passenger, why goest thou by so fast ? 
 Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plasl 
 Within this monument ; Shakespeare with whome 
 Quick nature dide ; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
 Far more than cost ; sith all yt he hath writt 
 heaves living art but page to serve his witty 
 
 124
 
 THE AVON AT STRATFORD
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 And then follow the mortuary details : " Obit, 
 ano. doi 1 6 1 6. iEtatis 53. Die. 23 Ap." 
 
 Interesting as the epitaph is for its eulogistic 
 references to the genius of the poet, the supreme 
 value of the memorial consists in the portrait 
 bust. 
 
 Is it a faithful likeness ? Those who contend 
 that it is argue that the monument was un- 
 doubtedly erected by Shakespeare's family, that 
 his widow and daughters would entertain a 
 laudable anxiety to have his actual features pre- 
 served for posterity, and that as the sculptor, 
 Gerard Johnson, lived in Southwark in the 
 neighbourhood of the Globe Theatre, he might 
 have known the poet personally, or at the least was 
 acquainted with some who were familiar with his 
 appearance. Besides, the sculptor Chantrey gave 
 it as his confirmed opinion that the bust was 
 taken from a cast after death. 
 
 On the other hand, there was current in the 
 first quarter of the last century a tradition to the 
 effect that the bust was not founded on any por- 
 trait or death-mask, but was modelled from 
 a Stratford blacksmith who bore a remarkable 
 
 125
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 resemblance to the bard. That tradition, indeed, 
 was in existence in the middle of the eigh- 
 teenth century, for a writer in the Gentleman s 
 Magazine for 1759 declared that no genuine 
 portrait of Shakespeare had ever existed, and that 
 that which passed for his was " taken long after 
 his death from a person extremely like him." 
 
 Unfortunately the problem is complicated by 
 the existence of other portraits. There is the 
 engraved half-length, for example, by Martin 
 Droeshout, which formed the frontispiece of the 
 First Folio published in 1623, and other claimants 
 for consideration include the painting from which 
 Droeshout is supposed to have worked, and the 
 Ely House and Chandos portraits. Most of the 
 best authorities now agree that the Droeshout 
 painting — which hangs in the Memorial picture 
 gallery at Stratford — was probably painted from 
 life in Shakespeare's forty-fifth year, and it 
 remains for those who are not authorities to accept 
 that decision in spite of the discrepancies between 
 the canvas and the bust. 
 
 Even the bust has been the occasion of start- 
 ling differences of opinion. Washington Irving 
 126
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 described its aspect as " pleasant and serene, with 
 a finely arched forehead," and added : " I thought 
 I could read in it clear indications of that 
 cheerful, social disposition by which he was as 
 much characterized among his contemporaries as by 
 the vastness of his genius " ; but Hawthorne, more 
 critical than his easy-going compatriot, declared 
 that the sight of it compelled him to " take down 
 the beautiful, lofty-browed, and noble picture ' : 
 of the poet which had hitherto hung in his 
 mental portrait gallery. 
 
 But Hawthorne qualified his criticism. If he 
 felt that the bust could not be said to represent a 
 beautiful face or a noble head, he admitted that 
 it lays firm hold of one's sense of reality and 
 insists upon acceptance as the picture, if not of 
 the poet, yet as the wealthy burgher and the 
 convivial friend of John a' Combe. " I know not 
 what the phrenologists say to the bust," he 
 added. " The forehead is but moderately 
 developed, and retreats somewhat, the upper part 
 of the skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are 
 prominent almost beyond the penthouse of the 
 brow ; the upper lip is so long that it must have 
 
 127
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 been almost a deformity, unless the sculptor 
 artistically exaggerated its length, in consideration 
 that, on the pedestal, it must be foreshortened 
 by being looked at from below. On the whole, 
 Shakespeare must have had a singular rather than 
 a prepossessing face ; and it is wonderful how, with 
 this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted 
 in maintaining an erroneous notion of his 
 appearance, allowing painters and sculptors to 
 foist their idealized nonsense on us all, instead of 
 the genuine man. For my part, the Shakespeare 
 of my mind's eye is henceforth to be a personage 
 of a ruddy English complexion, with a reasonably 
 capacious brow, intelligent and quickly observant 
 eyes, a nose curved slightly outward, a long queer 
 upper lip, with the mouth a little unclosed 
 beneath it, and cheeks considerably developed in 
 the lower part and beneath the chin." In fine, 
 the American writer shared the opinion of the 
 English artist Gainsborough, though he expressed 
 it more politely. When Gainsborough accepted 
 a commission to paint a portrait of Shakespeare 
 he refused to be bound by the Stratford monu- 
 ment or the Droeshout engraving. "Damn the 
 128
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 original picture," he exclaimed. "I think a 
 stupider face 1 never beheld." 
 
 One fact may be urged in extenuation of the 
 Stratford bust : none of its modern critics saw it 
 in its original state. Not being protected by- 
 such a talisman as that which preserved the grave 
 from violation, it, in 1793, was subjected to a 
 process of "restoration" which no efforts to 
 revive its pristine appearance have quite obli- 
 terated. The arch-perpetrator of that sacrilege 
 was Edmund Malone, the Shakespearean com- 
 mentator, who may be allowed to tell the story 
 in his own complacent way. " I ought not to 
 forget to tell you," he wrote a friend concerning 
 his doings on a visit to Stratford, " that I did a 
 public service while I was there. His bust, you 
 know, about forty years ago was painted all over 
 with various colours by some players, under the 
 notion of beautifying it. With Dr. Davenport's 
 permission I brought it back to its original state 
 by painting it a good stone colour, and then, 
 having first erected a small scaffold, we drew him 
 carefully from his niche and took a very good 
 mould from his face." 
 
 1 129
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Malone was mistaken as to the " original 
 state " of the bust ; there can be no question 
 that, as was the custom in the seventeenth 
 century, the bust was from the first coloured in 
 imitation of life; and when the "good stone 
 colour " was removed in 1 86 1 an effort was made 
 to reproduce the hazel of the eyes, the auburn 
 of the hair and beard, the scarlet of the doublet, 
 and the crimson and green of the cushion. So 
 Malone's " public service " was undone, and he 
 now lives in the annals of Stratford Church in the 
 satire of the pilgrim who inscribed these lines in 
 the visitors' book : 
 
 a 
 
 Stranger to whom this monument is shown, 
 Invoke the Poet's curse upon Malone ; 
 Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays 
 And smears his tombstone as he marrd his plays." 
 
 So overwhelming is the fame of Shakespeare 
 that, as Hawthorne remarked, it suffers nothing 
 else to be recognized within its presence unless 
 illuminated by some side-ray from itself. It is 
 130
 
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 true that Stratford Church can boast many stately 
 monuments and curious epitaphs, such as would 
 make the renown of any other temple which did 
 not harbour so illustrious a guest as the poet ; 
 but to the majority of visitors the only other 
 memorials of the dead which arrest attention are 
 those which cover the dust of the Shakespeare 
 kindred. 
 
 And, as has been noted above, they all lie in a 
 row on either side of the immortal poet. To 
 the left of his own grave is that of his wife, the 
 Anne Hathaway of many a romantic legend, who 
 survived him more than seven years, and was at 
 length laid to rest under an epitaph which gave 
 eloquent expression to her children's affection. 
 On the right of Shakespeare's tomb was interred 
 the Thomas Nash who was the first husband of 
 the poet's granddaughter and his last lineal 
 descendant, while next in order come the graves 
 of the poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall, and his elder 
 daughter, Susannah. While the epitaphs on 
 Anne Shakespeare and Thomas Nash and Dr. 
 Hall were couched in Latin, that on Susannah 
 Hall told its story in English : 
 
 *3*
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 " Witty above her sex, but that's not all, 
 Wise to salvation was Mistress Hall, 
 Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this 
 Wholly of him with whom she's now in bliss." 
 
 Which was a happy tribute to hereditary 
 genius and acquired piety, doing justice alike to 
 the Shakespeare strain and the Puritanism of 
 Susannah's husband. 
 
 Such are the poet's companions in death, men 
 and women of his own household, and so not 
 likely to be troubled with that "delicate indi- 
 viduality " which, it has been suggested, might 
 impel more sensitive mediocrities to rise up at 
 midnight and grope their way out of the church- 
 door. And for him and them alike there is the 
 one melodious farewell : 
 
 " Feat no more the heat o the sun 
 Nor the furious winter s rages ; 
 Thou thy worldly task hast done. 
 
 Home art gone and taen thy wages" 
 
 132
 
 CHAPTER IV : The Town 
 
 SUCH a wealth of adulatory adjectives has 
 been heaped upon Stratford-on-Avon solely 
 because it was the home of Shakespeare 
 that the truth is hard to come by. The moral 
 of Henry James's inimitable short story " The 
 Birthplace " has a wider application than to the 
 two tenements in Henley Street. When the 
 meditative scholar and his wife assumed their 
 duties as custodians of that famous shrine they 
 resolved, it will be remembered, to abandon the 
 picturesque legends of their ignorant predecessors 
 and restrict themselves to such facts as were 
 supported by reliable evidence. Of course the 
 result was disastrous. Visitors became fewer and 
 fewer; the annual income dwindled ; the trustees 
 began to complain ; and at length the truthful 
 pair realized that a continuance in well-doing 
 must end in their dismissal. At that juncture 
 they decided to revert to the fanciful stories of 
 their predecessors. The new policy had a mar- 
 vellous effect. In a flash the old popularity of 
 
 133
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 the birthplace was restored ; the stream of visitors 
 increased in volume every month ; the revenue 
 rose to heights it had never touched ; and the 
 trustees and everybody in the town rejoiced. 
 
 While working such a suggestive vein it is a 
 pity Mr. James did not follow it into other 
 seams. He might have included the whole of 
 the town in his scheme of gentle satire. And in 
 so doing he could have pleaded the illustrious 
 examples of Horace Walpole and David Garrick. 
 The opinions of those frank topographers have 
 already been recorded, the former having been 
 quoted as describing Stratford as the " wretchedest 
 old town " he had seen, and the latter as giving 
 it the palm as "the most dirty, unseemly, ill- 
 pav'd, wretched-looking town in all Britain." 
 
 But a truthful chronicler should hasten to add 
 that the indictments of Walpole and Garrick are 
 no longer true. For if the Stratford of the 
 eighteenth century was different from the Strat- 
 ford of the sixteenth century on the score of 
 picturesqueness, the Stratford of the twentieth 
 century has no sanitary likeness to the Stratford 
 of Walpole and Garrick. 
 
 134
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 There is, however, no denying the impeach- 
 ment that Stratford is a singularly sophisticated 
 town. The commercialism of the " shrine ' 
 business is carried to excess. The annual Shake- 
 speare festival is an example. It lasts for three 
 solid weeks ; twenty-one days to celebrate a 
 birthday which is only a tradition ! But the shop- 
 keepers exploit tradition for three hundred and 
 sixty-five days a year. They have set their hearts 
 on sixpences and dollars. In the shadow of the 
 old Clopton Bridge there is a steam-launch flaunt- 
 ing the legend " The George Washington — Wel- 
 come to the Avon," and that seductive greeting 
 is duplicated all over the town. The picture- 
 postal merchant lures with the " King John ' 
 quotation, " Have I not here the best cards ? ' 
 there are " Shakespearean Depots " beyond count ; 
 there is an " As You Like It " tea-house ; to 
 catch the heretics one street boasts its " Bacon's 
 Shakespeare Restaurant " ; dealers in " antiques ' : 
 unblushingly season " old " chairs and chests 
 over their shop-fronts in full view of the un- 
 suspecting tourist ; and if the mulberry-tree 
 relics are gone, the supply is inexhaustible of 
 
 135
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 souvenirs made from wood taken from Shake- 
 speare's church with a " certificate" thrown in. 
 Even the church used to be tainted with that 
 commercial spirit. Before the advent of the 
 present vicar the porch and space just inside the 
 door was a veritable mart for the sale of postals, 
 guide-books, photographs, &c, and at every turn 
 one saw mercenary placards announcing that the 
 fee for this was so much and for that and the 
 other so much more. Happily those money- 
 changers' tables have been overturned. 
 
 Many " records " in " doing " the sights of 
 Stratford have been established. They have, of 
 course, been placed to the credit of " hustling " 
 Americans. Instances are cited of couples seeing 
 Europe for a wager who have startled the at- 
 tendant of the church by the unseemly haste of 
 their progress up the nave to the tomb and back 
 to the door, while it is no uncommon thing for 
 pilgrims to include between trains a dash for the 
 birthplace, New Place, and the grave. 
 
 There are certain parts of Stratford which are 
 unworthy of even such lightning sight-seeing. 
 Not that they are dirty, or ill-paved, or wretched- 
 136
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 looking, but that they are blighted by the mean- 
 ness of Victorian domestic house-building. 
 Most of the streets still bear the names by which 
 Shakespeare knew them, but the dramatist would 
 be greatly exercised to recognize them in any 
 other way. Even the "Old Town" district, 
 save for a house or two, belies its name. There 
 most do flourish those hard-lined red-brick villas 
 which so-called architects were so fond of design- 
 ing in the last century — abominations of brick and 
 slate which are nowhere so offensive as in a town 
 which can show superb examples of Elizabethan 
 domestic architecture. Unless actual experiment 
 had proved the fact beyond dispute, no one 
 would imagine that lovely half-timber work is 
 hidden behind the hideous modern brick fronts 
 of many a house in the business thoroughfares of 
 the town. Had those picturesque object-lessons 
 been in evidence in the last century, however, it 
 is more than probable that their lessons would 
 have been wasted upon house designers so in- 
 different to beauty as those jerry-builders who are 
 responsible for so much of the monotony of 
 Stratford streets. 
 
 137
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 And yet, for those who will seek and spare 
 time for the search, there are not a few buildings 
 still surviving which provide suggestive food for 
 the historic imagination. It is possible, indeed, 
 to piece together a picture which will revive the 
 aspect of the town as it was seen by Shake- 
 speare's eyes in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. 
 
 Two of the venerable landmarks which link 
 our own days with the far-off ages owe their 
 existence to that Sir Hugh Clopton who built the 
 " praty house of bricks and tymbre " which as 
 New Place became the abode of Shakespeare in 
 his last years. A younger son of the Clopton 
 family, whose manor-house is distant about a 
 mile from the town, Sir Hugh Clopton had to 
 carve out his own fortune. And he made a great 
 success of the task. Realizing that there was 
 little scope for his ambition in the quiet town by 
 the Avon, he made his way to the capital and set 
 up business as a mercer. It was the London of 
 the fifteenth century in which his lot was cast, 
 when English commerce was at the beginning of 
 that development which in the next century made 
 138
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 it a formidable rival in the markets of the world, 
 and Hugh Clopton appears to have been a notable 
 example of that combination of trader and aris- 
 tocrat which was not infrequent in those days. 
 He prospered apace ; he gave no hostages to 
 fortune by taking to himself a wife ; he won the 
 favour of his fellow-citizens so thoroughly that 
 he became successively alderman, sheriff, and 
 mayor ; and his great wealth enabled him to 
 emulate the example of those fifteenth-century 
 burghers who lavished so much of their gold on 
 works of public benefit. 
 
 In days when schools and bridges, highways 
 and hospitals, lighting and sanitation are sup- 
 ported by rate charges which fall on the com- 
 munity as a whole, we are apt to forget those 
 generous benefactors who in less orderly ages 
 supplied the lack of state or municipal aid by 
 liberal donations from their private fortunes. 
 Among such benefactors Sir Hugh Clopton 
 deserves to be held in grateful recollection. He 
 was not unmindful of the needs of poor scholars 
 at Oxford and Cambridge, nor did he overlook 
 the claims of the city in which he amassed his 
 
 139
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 wealth ; but he naturally reserved his greatest 
 gifts for the town of his nativity. 
 
 If, then, there is no monument to his memory 
 in Holy Trinity Church — though a high tomb in 
 that building is thought to have been intended 
 for his resting-place — he has in the old bridge 
 over the Avon a memorial which will preserve 
 his name for many generations. The river here, 
 where the London road enters the town, is 
 abnormally wide, and according to the testimony 
 of Leland, who visited the town about 1543, it 
 was originally spanned by a " poore bridge of 
 tymber " which had no safe approach, so that 
 "many poore folkes refused to come to Stratford 
 when the Avon was up, or comminge thither, 
 stood in jeopardye of lyfe." There were many 
 other communities in England as badly off for 
 safe bridges. In the Devonshire town of Barn- 
 staple, for example, it was customary to issue 
 special licences to officials to authorize them to 
 travel hither and thither collecting subscriptions 
 for the repair and maintenance of the Long 
 Bridge over the " great hugy-mighty perylous 
 and dreadful water named Taw." Those licences 
 140
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 appealed to the generous to " departe with some 
 portions ' : of their goods to keep that bridge in 
 order, promising the donors that they would have 
 "gret mede of Almighty God for your so doinge 
 and of vs hartie thankes." They were also 
 promised remembrance in an annual dirge and 
 mass as further reward. 
 
 Perhaps the element of religion played some 
 part in Sir Hugh Clopton's resolve to equip 
 his native town with a noble and substantial 
 bridge. But whatever his motive he spared 
 no expense in carrying out his self-imposed 
 task. Some time, then, in the closing quarter 
 of the fifteenth century he enlisted the services 
 of architect and builder and bade them rear 
 such a bridge over the Avon and connect it 
 with such causeways as would ensure a safe 
 passage over the river for all comers. And this, 
 in its most substantial parts, is the bridge of 
 fourteen large arches which is still mirrored in 
 the placid surface of Shakespeare's stream. It 
 has been widened in more modern times, it is 
 true, but so much of the old structure still 
 remains that it is justly called the Clopton Bridge. 
 
 141
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Like the " auld brig " of Ayr, it will long out- 
 last that nineteenth-century rival of brick which 
 so ineffectually challenges comparison between 
 the methods of the old builders and the new. 
 
 But there is another son of Stratford who has 
 claims upon remembrance in connexion with 
 the bridge over the Avon. This is that John de 
 Stratford who eventually became Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. He came of a capable family, for 
 a brother, Robert, was Chancellor of England and 
 then Bishop of Chichester, and his nephew Ralph 
 ended his days as Bishop of London. John de 
 Stratford was at one time parson of his native 
 town, and when he attained high position and 
 wealth he greatly embellished the church of his 
 early ministry. Nor did he forget more secular 
 matters. Thus in his will, dated 1348, various 
 sums of money were left for the repair of the 
 bridge at Stratford, which must, of course, have 
 been that "poore bridge of tymber " mentioned 
 by Leland. Whether that benefaction ever took 
 effect is, however, open to question. For when 
 John de Stratford died his goods were valued at a 
 sum which, when his debts and funeral expenses 
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 THE TOWN 
 
 were paid, must have left his executors out of 
 pocket. 
 
 By a little effort of the imagination it is 
 possible to denude the Clopton Bridge of its 
 modern accretions and see it in the mind's eye 
 as it was when Shakespeare crossed it on his 
 journeys to and from London. Even less mental 
 reconstruction is required in the case of another 
 building upon which the poet's eyes often rested. 
 Apart from the probable connexion of the struc- 
 ture with his school-days, the fact that the 
 windows of New Place looked out upon the grey 
 tower of the Guild Chapel on the opposite corner 
 of Chapel Lane is sufficient evidence that it was 
 a constant object of his vision. And that tower 
 was another of Sir Hugh Clopton's benefactions. 
 He seems to have died before the work was 
 completed, but in his will he left minute instruc- 
 tions for the carrying on of the work, stipulating 
 that the masons should " sufficiently and ably 
 do and finish the same with good and true work- 
 manship," and providing that his executors should 
 pay the charges out of his estate. 
 
 Of course, Sir Hugh Clopton was the rebuilder, 
 
 H3
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 not the builder, of the Guild Chapel nave and 
 tower. That sacred edifice had a long history 
 behind it when it attracted the re-edifying zeal 
 of Stratford's wealthy mercer son. Indeed, apart 
 from Holy Trinity Church, there is no building 
 in Stratford which has so venerable a history 
 as that group of masonry which marks the 
 southern corner of Chapel Lane. 
 
 As the house of worship used by the members 
 of the fraternity or Guild of the Holy Cross, the 
 Blessed Virgin, and St. John the Baptist it is 
 inseparably associated with the records of that 
 interesting brotherhood. When that organization 
 was first founded is not known ; why it was 
 founded has been made clear in recent years, 
 though the discovery of the document making 
 that fact obvious seems to have been ignored 
 by most writers on the town. Thus the inquirer 
 is informed that the fraternity was established 
 for the " encouragement of friendliness and 
 brotherly love," and also that William Sude 
 is " the name of the author of the earliest extant 
 deed of gift." Most of the books on Stratford 
 are prolific in other statements equally inaccurate. 
 144
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 According to the testimony of the earliest 
 extant document, dated in October 1270, the 
 guild was founded for the support of such poor 
 priests as had been ordained by the Bishop of 
 Worcester, but who held no benefits ; to provide 
 for the necessities of " other indigent persons ' 
 was a secondary matter. And while it is true 
 that William Sude was a benefactor to the extent 
 of endowing the fraternity with a yearly rent of 
 the munificent sum of sixpence, his deed is but 
 one of many made during the reign of Henry III, 
 none of which bear any specific date. There was 
 William Bride, for example, who also left an 
 annual rent of sixpence, and a widow named 
 Juliana de Dumbeltone, whose generosity ex- 
 tended to thirteenpence a year, either of whom 
 may have antedated William Sude. 
 
 Although now known by the threefold name 
 of the Guild of the Holy Cross, the Blessed 
 Virgin, and St. John the Baptist, in its earliest 
 days the fraternity was called simply the Guild of 
 the Holy Cross. It has been inferred that its 
 later designation was the outcome of an in- 
 corporation of two other kindred organizations, 
 
 k 145
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 but on that matter no evidence is yet available. 
 When Godfrey GifFord, Bishop of Worcester, in 
 1270 granted forty days' indulgence to all sincere 
 penitents who had confessed their sins and con- 
 ferred benefits on the fraternity, it was described 
 merely as the Guild of the Holy Cross, and that 
 name continued to be used in the deeds of gift 
 made during many subsequent years. 
 
 Notwithstanding the specific object for which 
 the guild was founded, it seems probable that its 
 sphere of usefulness was soon enlarged. At any 
 rate, by the end of the fourteenth century it had 
 become much more than a charitable society for 
 the exclusive benefit of priests without charges. 
 In 1388 the Parliament called upon the masters 
 and wardens of all guilds to furnish full par- 
 ticulars concerning the foundation, constitution, 
 and property of their several societies, and among 
 the returns which still exist is a curious document 
 describing the ordinances of Stratford's Guild of 
 the Holy Cross. From this it appears that for 
 males the annual fee for membership was four- 
 pence, payable a penny at a time at the four 
 feasts of the year, and that the sisters' contri- 
 146
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 butions were limited to twopence and a great 
 tankard of ale. The brethren, too, were expected 
 to provide an additional twopence on the occa- 
 sion of the Easter feast as well as a tankard of 
 ale comparable to that donated by the weaker 
 sex. 
 
 That Easter feast was in the closing years of 
 the fourteenth century the chief festival of the 
 guild. It was to be conducted in such a manner 
 that " brotherly love shall be cherished among 
 them and evil-speaking driven out ; that peace 
 shall always dwell among them, and true love be 
 upheld." The great tankards of ale were to be 
 given to the poor, but not before all the brethren 
 and sisters had met for prayer in their common 
 hall. 
 
 At the Easter feast, too, as well as at the other 
 three festivals of each year, a wax candle was to 
 be kept alight " before the blessed Cross" in the 
 chapel of the guild. Such pious services, how- 
 ever, did not exhaust the duties of the members. 
 " It is ordained," so ran the rules of the society, 
 " by the brethren and sisters of the guild, that, 
 when any of them dies, the wax candle before- 
 
 147
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 named, together with eight smaller ones, shall be 
 carried from the church to the house of him that 
 is dead ; and there they shall be kept alight 
 before the body of the dead until it is carried 
 to the church; and the wax candles shall be 
 carried and kept alight until the body is buried, 
 and afterwards shall be set before the Cross. 
 Also, all the brethren of the guild are bound to 
 follow the body to the church, and pray for his 
 soul until the body is buried. And whoever 
 does not fulfil this shall pay one halfpenny. It 
 is also ordained by the brethren and sisters that 
 if any poor man in the town dies, or if any 
 stranger has not means of his own out of which 
 to pay for a light to be kept burning before his 
 body, the brethren and sisters shall, for their 
 souls' health, find four wax candles, and one 
 sheet, and a hearse-cloth to lay over the coffin 
 until the body is buried." Nor was that all. 
 On the death of a brother a third part of the 
 brethren were required to watch over his body 
 through each night ere it was borne to the church. 
 And further, when any of the fraternity fell into 
 poverty or was robbed, " then, so long as he 
 148
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 bears himself well and rightly towards the 
 brethren and sisters of the guild, they shall find 
 him in food and clothing and what else he 
 needs." Such were the duties and privileges of 
 guild members in the closing years of the four- 
 teenth century. 
 
 Like many another organization, then, the 
 Stratford guild played an important part in the 
 religious and social life of the town until it was 
 suppressed with the monasteries in 1547. Ere 
 that evil day dawned, however, the brethren had 
 undertaken services for the community which in 
 a modified form are still being rendered. In 
 addition to becoming the chief ruling body of the 
 town, the guild in the fifteenth century established 
 a grammar school for the children of members, 
 and had provided an old-age haven for a dozen 
 poor men and as many poor women. They also 
 bore their share in the upkeep of the bridge over 
 the Avon. Such good works were, no doubt, 
 counted unto Stratford for righteousness when 
 some of the members of the guild petitioned 
 Edward VI to undo the work of his father. 
 
 Nor was the appeal made in vain. For in 1553 
 
 149
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 the boy king granted a new charter to the town 
 by the Avon the terms of which were as follow 
 (the document deserves careful reading for the 
 tribute it bears to the work of the Guild of the 
 Holy Cross) : " Whereas the borough of Stratford- 
 upon-Avon in the county of Warwick, is an 
 ancient borough, in which borough a certain Guild 
 was in former time founded and endowed with 
 divers lands tenements and possessions, from whose 
 rents revenues and profits a certain Grammar 
 School was maintained and supported for the 
 education and instruction of boys and youths, and 
 a certain charitable house was there maintained 
 and supported for the sustenance of twenty-four 
 poor persons, and a certain great stone bridge 
 called Stratford Bridge placed and built over the 
 water and river of the Avon beside the said 
 borough was from time to time maintained and 
 repaired, and the lands tenements and possessions 
 of the same Guild have come into our hand and 
 now remain in our hands ; And whereas the in- 
 habitants of the borough of Stratford aforesaid 
 from time beyond the memory of man have had 
 and enjoyed divers franchises liberties and free 
 150
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 customs jurisdictions privileges reversions and 
 quittances by reason and pretext of charters con- 
 cessions and confirmations made in ancient time 
 by our progenitors to the Master and Brethren of 
 the aforesaid Guild and otherwise, which the same 
 inhabitants of the same borough aforesaid are now 
 very little able to have and enjoy, because the 
 aforesaid Guild is dissolved, and in consideration 
 of other causes now apparent to us whence it 
 appears likely that the borough aforesaid and the 
 government thereof may go to a worse state from 
 time to time, if a remedy be not quickly provided." 
 For that reason, then, the king granted the town 
 a new charter, one effect of which was to restore 
 the grammar school to its beneficent mission, and 
 another to equip the town with a municipal form 
 of government. 
 
 That royal grant came in the nick of time. 
 The new form of government enabled John 
 Shakespeare to attain distinction among his fellow- 
 townsmen by holding various offices in the 
 corporation ; the restitution of the grammar 
 school provided an instrument for the education 
 of Stratford's most famous son. 
 
 151
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Hence the pilgrim to Stratford will not only 
 visit the Guild Chapel as the still-surviving 
 memorial of a friendly society whose picturesque 
 history is of absorbing interest, but will pass into 
 the ancient grammar school and con its panelled 
 walls with the arrested attention which is due to 
 the building where Shakespeare learnt his " small 
 Latin and less Greek." It is true there is no 
 incontestable evidence that this was the scene of 
 the poet's school-days, but the presumption that 
 it was is almost as strong as actual proof. To 
 this school, as Sir Sidney Lee has remarked, the 
 children of the Stratford freemen were sent, with 
 rare exceptions. It was a type of those common 
 schools where all sorts of children were taught in 
 the sixteenth century, and it must be accepted as 
 Shakespeare's place of education until proof to 
 the contrary is forthcoming. Altogether, then, 
 this corner of the town, with 'ts ancient chapel 
 and guild-hall and grammar school and pic- 
 turesque almshouses, should aid the pilgrim not 
 a little in his effort to repicture the Stratford of 
 the past. 
 
 And within a stone's-throw, on the west side 
 152
 
 HARVARD HOUSE
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 of the High Street, there is another ancient 
 building which is the most notable survival of 
 the domestic architecture of Shakespeare's own 
 days. /THisTs'the Harvard House, whiclTTs now~ 
 the property of the Harvard University. Now 
 the date on that house, 1596, coincides with an 
 important year in the life of Shakespeare, for it 
 was in 1596 he lost his only son, and we may be 
 certain that he did not fail to visit his native town 
 on that sad occasion. The house on the High 
 Street was built by Thomas Rogers, a prosperous 
 tradesman of the town who, like John Shake- 
 speare, had held office in connexion with the 
 corporation, and that he made it a conspicuous 
 example of contemporary domestic architecture 
 may .be inferred from the fact that it is even 
 to-day prominent among the show-places of 
 Stratford. Rich as the town is in ancient build- 
 ings, there is no structure of its type which can 
 display such a wealth of curious detailed carving 
 or present such an attractive picture as a whole. 
 From what is known of the houses of Stratford 
 in the sixteenth century it is safe to conclude 
 that this new home of the Rogers family must 
 
 *S3
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 have been the talk of the town in the year of its 
 completion, and there can be little risk in 
 hazarding the guess that Shakespeare himself 
 took an early opportunity of wandering through 
 its rooms. 
 
 But the Harvard House has been a sad 
 stumbling-stone to many Stratford chroniclers. 
 One, for example, commits himself to the asser- 
 tion that Thomas Rogers's daughter Catherine 
 "married John Harvard of Southwark. From 
 their union sprang the Rev. John Harvard, born 
 in Southwark probably in 1607." This choice 
 sample of misinformation is perpetrated in the 
 guide-book issued by a great railway company, 
 the title-page of which is adorned with the 
 warning, " Copyright in Great Britain and the 
 United States of America." There is some 
 consolation in that prohibitive sentence : it may 
 prevent timid compilers from perpetuating absurd 
 blunders. And some day, perhaps, the great 
 railway company will learn that Catherine Rogers 
 married a Robert Harvard, that it was their son 
 who was christened John, and that there is 
 nothing " probable " about the date of his birth. 
 154
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 Some modern pilgrims, it seems, will improve 
 upon truth to the extent of affirming that John 
 Harvard was born in the Harvard House. He 
 was not. His birthplace was in Southwark, not 
 far from the Globe Theatre associated with 
 Shakespeare's London career. What is ad- 
 ditionally certain is that on the eighth day of 
 April 1605 a bridal party set out from the 
 Harvard House in Stratford, and that a few 
 minutes later, at the altar of Holy Trinity Church, 
 close beside the spot where eleven years later to 
 the very month the body of William Shakespeare 
 was to be laid to rest, Robert Harvard and 
 Catherine Rogers plighted that troth which was 
 to have such momentous results for the cause of 
 learning in New England. 
 
 While many of the older houses in Stratford 
 wear an aspect suggestive of their years, there are 
 not a few others which are more venerable than 
 they look. In the first catagory must be placed 
 Hall's Croft, once the home of the Dr. John 
 Hall who married Shakespeare's elder daughter, 
 and The Cage, which was for more than a genera- 
 tion the abode of the poet's younger daughter, 
 
 1S5
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 and the house of Julius Shaw, which adjoins 
 Nash's house ; in the latter class must be in- 
 cluded Mason Croft, the residence of Marie 
 Corelli, the Red Horse Hotel, and several more. 
 In fact, there is no judging the age of Stratford 
 houses by their present appearance, for in the 
 early nineteenth century so many of them had 
 their fronts plastered over that there is no telling 
 what exquisite examples of half-timbered work 
 may not be hidden from view behind the hideous 
 cement which was so much in fashion a century 
 ago. 
 
 Judging from indications which have been 
 discovered while repairs were being carried out, 
 it is highly probable that the Red Horse Hotel 
 could once boast as picturesque an elevation as 
 the Harvard House. Apart from that fact, 
 however, the ancient hostelry is one of the 
 recognized sights of the town owing to its envi- 
 able associations with the memory of Washing- 
 ton Irving. To all readers of the delightful 
 " Sketch-Book " it is as familiar as Shakespeare's 
 birthplace. Who has not been charmed with 
 the gentle essayist's description of the sense of 
 
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 THE TOWN 
 
 comfort which suffused his being as, his boots 
 kicked off and his feet thrust into slippers, he 
 stretched himself before the glowing fire of his 
 little parlour in the hospitable hotel ? Let the 
 world without go as it liked, he mused, let 
 kingdoms rise or fall, so long as he had the 
 means wherewith to pay his reckoning he was 
 monarch of all he surveyed. The armchair was 
 his throne, " the poker his sceptre, and the little 
 parlour, some twelve feet square, his undisputed 
 empire." But the dream was soon broken. The 
 clock struck the midnight hour, and then " there 
 was a gentle tap at the door, and a pretty 
 chambermaid, putting in her smiling face, in- 
 quired, with a hesitating air, whether I had rung. 
 I understood it as a modest hint that it was time 
 to retire. My dream of absolute dominion was 
 at an end; so, abdicating my throne, like a 
 prudent potentate, to avoid being deposed, and 
 putting the Stratford guide-book under my arm, 
 as a pillow companion, I went to bed, and 
 dreamed all night of Shakespeare, the jubilee, and 
 David Garrick." 
 
 Nearly a century has passed since that scene 
 
 157
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 was enacted in the tiny room to the left of the 
 archway which gives entrance to the Red Horse 
 Hotel, but the apartment is to-day as much per- 
 vaded by Washington Irving's presence as when 
 he was its actual occupant. His two rooms, 
 indeed — for his bedroom is immediately over his 
 sitting-room — are practically unchanged and are 
 often sought out by those who hold their one- 
 time guest in affectionate remembrance as the 
 most gracious figure in the annals of American 
 literary history. 
 
 So Georgian, indeed, is the appearance of 
 Washington Irving's parlour that it is not difficult 
 to realize that nearly a hundred years have elapsed 
 since he presided on the armchair throne which 
 is now carefully preserved in a glass-doored cup- 
 board. To shut oneself into the little room 
 for a brief spell of meditation is to lose all 
 reckoning of time. It is true the tables are 
 littered with modern literature, but if the 
 magazines and guide-books of the twentieth 
 century are swept out of sight there is little 
 else to recall the present. The old sexton's 
 grandfather clock, the high-backed chairs, the 
 158
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 venerable tables, the antique topographical views 
 and old prints create an atmosphere wholly in 
 harmony with the spirit of the "Sketch-Book." 
 Perhaps the stickler for accuracy will discover 
 that the apartment is not " some twelve feet 
 square," but measures fourteen feet six inches 
 by nine feet six inches; otherwise he will have 
 little fault to find with Irving's description. It 
 will aid the pilgrim's imagination to gaze upon 
 Irving's portrait and to examine the quaint 
 silhouette of the " pretty chambermaid " who 
 was immortalized by the American guest. If, 
 too, he is a trustworthy person, not given to 
 collecting relics regardless of their ownership, he 
 will be entrusted for a few minutes with that 
 tiny poker, Irving's " sceptre," which is usually 
 kept under lock and key. And from the little 
 parlour he may make a journey upstairs to the 
 modest bedroom where Irving slept and dreamed 
 of Shakespeare and David Garrick. 
 
 Another ancient hostelry, which depends for its 
 attractions more upon its venerable history than 
 associations with famous men, is the Shakespeare 
 Hotel in Chapel Street. Originally a manor- 
 
 iS9
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 house built in the fourteenth century, as the 
 claim is, it has for some two hundred years 
 catered for the needs of the traveller, and 
 within the past few years judicious restoration has 
 transformed the interior into an approximate 
 reproduction of its original oak-beamed and open- 
 fireplaced appearance. The old sign, with a 
 portrait of Shakespeare and the legend, " Take 
 him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like 
 again," hangs at the head of the ancient black oak 
 staircase, while the walls of the passages and 
 public rooms are adorned with countless pictures 
 which owed their inspiration to one or other of 
 the poet's creations. All the bedrooms are named 
 after the titles of the plays, while the bar is 
 decorated with the appropriate words " Measure 
 for Measure." 
 
 But the Clopton Bridge and the Guild Chapel 
 and the Harvard House and the two hostelries just 
 described belong to ancient history ; there are 
 other buildings of a more modern date which the 
 pilgrim to Stratford cannot afford to ignore. 
 
 Chief among the latter is that Shakespeare 
 Memorial which occupies so prominent a site on 
 1 60
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 the bank of the Avon. From the old bridge, 
 indeed, it is as conspicuous as Holy Trinity 
 Church itself, and its lofty tower is as much a 
 beacon to the devotee as the spire of the poet's 
 resting-place. 
 
 Garrick is sometimes credited with entertaining 
 the ambition to found at Stratford an institution 
 in honour of Shakespeare which should serve as a 
 kind of university for all textual and histrionic 
 students of the poet. He may have cherished 
 such an idea before his "Jubilee" experience; 
 subsequently, however, such were the satires and 
 lampoons provoked by his masquerading at 
 Stratford, his enthusiasm cooled, and it was left 
 for another actor to revive the project in the first 
 quarter of the nineteenth century. The actor in 
 question was Charles Mathews, most remarkable 
 of mimics, who when fulfilling an engagement at 
 Stratford in the closing month of 1820 added this 
 footnote to his playbill : " At the conclusion of 
 the evening's entertainment Mr. Mathews will 
 have the honour of submitting to the audience 
 the nature of some proposals that have been 
 suggested for the purpose of erecting, in the 
 
 l 161
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 form of a Theatre in Stratford, a National 
 Monument and Mausoleum to the immortal 
 memory of Shakespeare." As the actor had to 
 give his performance in the Town Hall in lieu of 
 a properly equipped theatre, he may have had 
 an ulterior motive in submitting his scheme to 
 the natives of the town. A " Mausoleum " was 
 certainly not needed in view of the grave and 
 monument in the parish church, but perhaps that 
 was added as a bait to ensure subscriptions for the 
 theatre which was necessary. The project, how- 
 ever, did not awaken any practical enthusiasm, 
 and it was not until Charles E. Flower took 
 the matter in hand in 1874 by presenting a site 
 and a thousand pounds that a serious beginning 
 was made with the movement which eventually 
 resulted in the erection of the semi-Elizabethan 
 pile of buildings familiar to all visitors to 
 Stratford. 
 
 Whether the structure as a whole is as happy 
 in design as might be desired in view of it being 
 the most important modern memorial of Shake- 
 speare in his native town must be decided by each 
 pilgrim for himself. It is, however, a matter for 
 162
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 gratitude that the town does now possess an 
 auditorium eminently suitable for the performance 
 of the poet's plays, a library for the housing of 
 the literature which has sprung up around his 
 name, and a gallery for the display of those works 
 of art in canvas and marble which his genius has 
 inspired. 
 
 Of the theatre nothing more need be said 
 than that it provides an adequate playhouse for 
 those performances which mark the birthday 
 festival every year. It is compact, comfortable, has 
 excellent acoustic properties, is well ventilated, 
 and possesses a picturesque drop-scene represent- 
 ing Queen Elizabeth going in state to the open- 
 ing of the Globe Theatre. The first performance 
 took place on April 23, 1879, wnen Helen Faucit 
 and Barry Sullivan appeared as the chief characters 
 in " Much Ado about Nothing." 
 
 For a library which has not been in existence 
 much more than a generation the oak presses 
 of the Memorial are surprisingly well stocked, the 
 volumes numbering upwards of seven thousand. 
 Here, then, the student, who is given every 
 facility for research, can consult practically every 
 
 163
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 edition of Shakespeare's plays, from the costly 
 First Folios down to the cheapest reprint, while 
 the illustrative literature is rich in the standard 
 works of a critical, historical, bibliographical, and 
 biographical nature. In due time, no doubt, the 
 library will take rank as the most complete collec- 
 tion of all printed material relating to Shakespeare 
 and the history of the drama, for even newspaper 
 cuttings are regularly filed and indexed. 
 
 To the casual visitor, however, it is probable 
 that the picture galleries of the Memorial will 
 provide the greatest pleasure, for on the walls of 
 the hall and landing and upstairs rooms there 
 is already shown an admirable collection of busts, 
 portraits, and imaginative interpretations of the 
 poet's plays. The statuary includes reproduc- 
 tions of the Westminster Abbey monument, 
 the bust in Holy Trinity Church, the Becker 
 Death-Mask, and marble busts of such famous 
 impersonators of the Shakespeare heroines as 
 Mary Anderson, Ellen Terry, Sarah Siddons, 
 Helen Faucit, and Ada Rehan. Most of these 
 are exhibited in the hall or library. 
 
 In the main picture gallery the most con- 
 164
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 spicuous position is rightly given to the Droe- 
 shout portrait of the poet, which, as already 
 noted, is regarded as the only contemporary 
 likeness in existence. The portrait, which is 
 painted on a panel of English elm prepared with 
 white plaster and red priming, bears other evidences 
 of age than the inscription in the upper left-hand 
 corner of "Willm. Shakespeare, 1609." By its 
 side may be seen a proof of the engraving which 
 adorned the First Folio of 1623, and a comparison 
 of the two makes it obvious that the latter was 
 based on the former. If the visitor desires to 
 still further perplex himself with the problem 
 of Shakespeare's portrait, he will find ample 
 material close at hand, for the gallery also includes 
 the Venice, Jacob Tonson, Willett, Napier, and 
 Soest pictures, while in addition there is a photo- 
 graph of the Becker Death-Mask and a replica 
 of that D'Avenant bust which is more satisfactory 
 as a work of art than convincing as a likeness. 
 
 Scattered here and there through the collection 
 are many less dubious portraits of actors and 
 actresses who have won fame by the interpreta- 
 tion of Shakespearean characters. Other portraits 
 
 165
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 might have been rejected with advantage, for it is 
 not easy to understand upon what principle room 
 has been found for W. Farren in the character of 
 Sir Peter Teazle, J. L. Toole and W. H. Stephen 
 in " The Cricket on the Hearth," Mrs. Young as 
 Cora in " Pizarro," or Mrs. Stirling as Peg 
 Woffington. It is to be feared, indeed, that the 
 officials of the Memorial, like the trustees of the 
 Birthplace, have not exercised sufficient discretion 
 in looking gift-horses in the mouth, and that 
 consequently there will some day have to be a 
 wholesale clearance of many incongruous exhibits. 
 When that day arrives, however, there will be no 
 need to plead for the preservation {of Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence's portrait of Mrs. Siddons, George 
 Romney's " Titania," or the spirited bust of 
 " Mary Anderson as Hermione." 
 
 When the visitor turns to the pictures which 
 are frankly imaginative interpretations of scenes 
 in different plays he will probably derive most en- 
 joyment from those which were originally painted 
 as contributions to the famous Boydell Shakespeare 
 Gallery. The originator of that gallery, John 
 Boydell, after amassing a large fortune as a print 
 166
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 publisher, conceived the idea of offering for sub- 
 scription a series of engravings illustrative of the 
 plays of Shakespeare, the originals of which were 
 to be specially painted for the gallery. In pursuit 
 of that ambitious scheme he gave commissions to 
 all the best artists of the day, and as soon as a 
 sufficient number of pictures had been completed 
 he erected a gallery in Pall Mall for their re- 
 ception. In the end upwards of a hundred and 
 seventy paintings were executed by some thirty- 
 three artists, at a cost to Boydell of some thirty 
 thousand pounds. It was, in truth, as the 
 originator claimed, a " national attempt," and no 
 subject, he added, could have been more appro- 
 priate than " England's inspired poet and great 
 painter of nature, Shakespeare." Owing to various 
 circumstances, the pictures are now widely 
 scattered, but some representative examples have 
 happily found a permanent home in the Memorial 
 at Stratford. There are pictures, then, by Robert 
 Smirke, Henry Fuseli, Francis Wheatley, Thomas 
 Stothard, James Northcote, and Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds which are exceedingly valuable illustra- 
 tions of the aesthetic appreciation of Shakespeare 
 
 167
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 in the late eighteenth century. Among the other 
 pictures which lend variety to the gallery are 
 Thomas Brook's arrestive " Shakespeare before 
 Sir Thomas Lucy," H. J. Fradelle's decorative 
 " Othello," and Henry P. Briggs's vivacious 
 picture of "Fanny Kemble in the green-room of 
 Covent Garden dressing for her first appearance 
 as Juliet." Nor should the visitor overlook that 
 stately portrait by Paul van Somer of " Henry 
 Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton," the aristo- 
 cratic friend and patron of Shakespeare. 
 
 Another modern monument which, truth to 
 tell, is more commendable for its utility than its 
 beauty, stands in the centre of the old Rother 
 Market, an open space where five roads meet and 
 not far from the birthplace in Henley Street. 
 This, of course, is the Memorial Fountain, which 
 owes its existence to the generosity of George W. 
 Childs, of Philadelphia. The inscriptions on the 
 four sides of the structure, which includes a four- 
 dialled clock in its upper story, tell how it was 
 the gift of an American citizen to the town of 
 Shakespeare in the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria, 
 repeat quotations from the plays in praise of the 
 168
 
 lisFi^jl? 
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 veteran Queen and " honest water," and cite 
 Washington Irving's eulogy : " Ten thousand 
 blessings on the bard who has gilded the dull 
 realities of life with innocent illusions." At the 
 dedication ceremony in October 1887, whereat 
 the principal speech was delivered by Henry 
 Irving, there was read a felicitous letter from 
 James Russell Lowell declaring that the dust 
 that is sacred to the Englishman is not less sacred 
 to the American, and that sentiment found fitting 
 echo in the poem which Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 wrote specially for the occasion : 
 
 a 
 
 Land of our Fathers, ocean makes us two. 
 
 But heart to heart is true ! 
 Proud is your towering daughter in the JVest^ 
 Tet in her burning life-blood reign confest 
 Her mother s pulses beating in her breast. 
 This holy fount ', whose rills from heaven descend^ 
 
 Its gracious drops shall lend — 
 Both foreheads bathed in that baptismal dew. 
 And love make one the old home and the new I " 
 
 169
 
 CHAPTER V : The Shakespeare 
 Villages 
 
 BIOGRAPHIES of Shakespeare fall na- 
 turally into the two categories of the 
 canonical and the apocryphal. And ac- 
 cording to the type so are the contents. The 
 canonical life is a sober, somewhat dryasdust 
 affair, in which tradition is scouted and anecdote 
 is supplanted by learned fancies. The apocryphal 
 life is apt to go to the other extreme and strain 
 credulity to the breaking-point. 
 
 To hit the happy medium is somewhat diffi- 
 cult. It needs a judgment finely balanced and 
 fully informed. For there are so many legends 
 about the poet which it is difficult to accept or 
 dismiss on the score of fitness and probability. 
 No doubt some of the anecdotes which figured 
 in the jest-books of the eighteenth century were 
 fathered on Shakespeare for lack of a more con- 
 spicuous sponsor, and in the main their puerile 
 nature is a sufficient proof of their bastard origin. 
 The devotee of the poet is often, indeed, in a sad 
 170
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES 
 
 case ; if some of the stones of his hero are 
 scorned as bearing the same relation to sober 
 fact as the Apocrypha to the received Canon of 
 Scripture, he is at least compelled to admit that 
 if they are not authentic they often make good 
 reading. 
 
 And if some authorities are inclined to return 
 the verdict of " not proven " to the charge that 
 Shakespeare was a hard drinker, it must be 
 admitted that the balance of the evidence of 
 tradition inclines to the other scale. There is 
 that old story, for example, which tells how 
 when he took a friend down into his cellar that 
 friend observed there were no chairs to sit upon, 
 and asked the reason. "Because," rejoined the 
 poet, " I will have no man that comes here drink 
 any longer than he can stand." That anecdote 
 is, of course, capable of a temperance interpreta- 
 tion ; but on the other hand it suggests an 
 endurance in imbibition which gives point to 
 another story. 
 
 For about midway in the eighteenth century 
 there • became current an anecdote which has 
 immortalized a group of villages to the south- 
 
 171
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 west of Stratford. The chief of those villages 
 was Bidford, which in the poet's days was the 
 meeting- place of two companies of hard drinkers 
 known as the Topers and the Sippers. The 
 former were, of course, the more seasoned tipplers, 
 but the latter were thought capable of holding 
 their own against any other drinkers in the 
 country. So proud, indeed, were the Topers 
 and Sippers of their accomplishments that they 
 seem to have issued a general challenge to all 
 the devotees of Bacchus. That challenge, so the 
 story went, was the occasion of Shakespeare 
 getting together a little band of his comrades 
 and making a journey to Bidford to sustain 
 the honour of the convivial spirits of Stratford. 
 
 When, however, the Stratford champions 
 arrived at Bidford they discovered to their 
 mortification that the Topers had gone to another 
 village on a similar errand. But the Sippers 
 were at home and expressed their willingness 
 to try a bout with the visitors from Stratford. 
 Although holding this second team in small 
 account, Shakespeare and his companions accepted 
 the challenge, nothing doubting that victory 
 172
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE TILLAGES 
 
 would be swift and easy. But the despised 
 Sippers gave so good an account of themselves 
 that the men of Stratford soon retired from the 
 contest. On leaving Bidford, indeed, they were 
 in so sore a plight that they sank down by the 
 wayside under a crab-tree, and there spent the 
 night. With the morning confidence returned to 
 some of Shakespeare's comrades, and they urged 
 him to return with them to Bidford to try 
 another bout with the victorious Sippers. But 
 the poet declined ; he was quite satisfied with his 
 experience of drinking with 
 
 c< 
 
 Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, 
 Haunted Hillborough, and hungry Grafton, 
 With dadging Exha//, papist Wixford, 
 Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford" 
 
 It would seem, then, that the Topers and 
 Sippers were recruited from eight villages, and 
 the quatrain, which has been fathered upon 
 Shakespeare, has led to those eight hamlets being 
 described as the Shakespeare villages. The con- 
 scientious pilgrim may wish to include them in 
 
 173
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 his itinerary, and the accomplishment of that 
 ambition will lead him through pleasant scenery 
 and make him acquainted with many venerable 
 churches and bridges and manor-houses. At 
 Bidford, indeed, there is still pointed out a 
 handsome Tudor building which is said to have 
 been the Falcon Inn where Shakespeare and his 
 companions were defeated by the Sippers, and 
 Temple Grafton is of greater interest as contain- 
 ing the successor of that ancient church in which 
 in all probability the poet was wedded to Anne 
 Hathaway. 
 
 After all, however, it is not the group of 
 hamlets to the south-west of Stratford, but 
 another group to the north-east which has a far 
 greater right to the designation of the Shakespeare 
 villages. These, of course, are Charlecote, 
 Hampton Lucy/ Snitterfield, Wilmcote, and 
 Shottery. They may all be included in a four 
 hours' drive and should on no account be over- 
 looked by the pilgrim who is anxious to complete 
 his knowledge of the Shakespeare country. 
 
 Of two of the real Shakespeare villages it may 
 be said that they are as familiar to the lover of 
 
 174
 
 ENTRANCE TO CHARLECOTE PARK
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE TILLAGES 
 
 the poet as Stratford itself. One of them, namely, 
 Charlecote, was included in the pilgrimage of 
 Washington Irving and Hawthorne, each of 
 whom rounded out his visit by exploring the 
 scene of Shakespeare's legendary deer-stalking 
 exploit. What is amazing, however, is that both 
 the American pilgrims entirely ignored the other 
 hamlet. Neither in the "Sketch-Book" nor 
 "Our Old Home" is there any reference to 
 Shottery and Anne Hathaway's girlhood home. 
 
 Charlecote is of course of supreme interest for 
 its sixteenth-century master, Sir Thomas Lucy, 
 and its association with the incident which is 
 generally accepted as the cause of Shakespeare 
 leaving his native town for London. But whether 
 the youthful poet did actually indulge in poach- 
 ing and was punished for his offence, and then 
 took revenge by lampooning Sir Thomas Lucy, 
 and finally fled the countryside to escape further 
 whipping and imprisonment, has been a matter of 
 dispute for many years. 
 
 De Quincey, it will be remembered, would 
 have nothing to do with the deer-stealing story. 
 He called it a "slanderous and idle tale," an 
 
 175
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 anecdote " fabulous and "rotten to its core," and 
 asked his readers' permission to deal with it 
 " with summary indignation." Unfortunately the 
 Opium-eaterwasneitheran antiquary nor a judicious 
 historian, and in any case it must be remembered 
 that if so well established a tradition is to be 
 rejected and the same precedent followed in 
 connexion with other stories, there would be 
 practically nothing left of Shakespeare biography. 
 De Quincey protested too much ; after all, deer- 
 stalking was not quite the heinous offence postu- 
 lated by his indignant outburst. 
 
 While it is impossible to date the first ap- 
 pearance of many Shakespeare stories, no such 
 uncertainty attaches to the deer-stealing incident. 
 It was first placed on record in a manuscript 
 written before 1708, the year of the death of 
 that Rev. Richard Davies, a Gloucestershire 
 rector, who made the following note in a manu- 
 script account of the life of Shakespeare : " Much 
 given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and 
 rabbits, particularly from Sir . . . Lucy, who 
 had him oft whipped and sometimes imprisoned, 
 and at last made him fly his native county, to his 
 176
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES 
 
 great advancement. But his revenge was so great 
 that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a 
 great man, and that in allusion to his name 
 bore three louses rampant for his arms. " This 
 version was somewhat amplified by Nicholas 
 Rowe, who, in his life of the poet published in 
 1709, gave the following account of a story 
 which had been gleaned for him independently by 
 a visitor to Stratford : " He had 5 by a mistortune 
 common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill 
 company, and amongst them some, that made 
 a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him 
 more than once in robbing a park that belonged 
 to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. 
 For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as 
 he thought, somewhat too severely ; and in order 
 to revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon 
 him. And though this, probably the first essay 
 of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have 
 been so very bitter that it redoubled the 
 prosecution against him to that degree that he 
 was obliged to leave his business and family in 
 Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself 
 in London." 
 
 M I77
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Rowe, it will be observed, specifically states 
 that the offending ballad which the poet wrote, 
 and, according to another story, affixed to the 
 gates of Sir Thomas Lucy's mansion, was "lost." 
 That, however, did not deter some scribe from 
 an attempt to supply the omission. Indeed, two 
 attempts were made to fill in that lacuna in the 
 works of Shakespeare. Some years, then, after 
 the publication of Rowe's life it was claimed that 
 one verse of the satirical ballad had been dis- 
 covered among the manuscripts of the antiquary 
 Oldys. That stanza seems to have been accepted 
 as genuine by Washington Irving, even though 
 he admitted it was a "rough pasquinade." The 
 reader who is familiar with the Shakespeare style 
 will be competent to form his own judgment 
 when he has read the following lines : 
 
 " A parliament member, a justice of peace, 
 At home a poor scarecrow, at London an asse, 
 If lowsie is Lucy, as some vo/ke miscalle it, 
 Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it. 
 He thinks himself great ; 
 Tet an asse in his state, 
 178
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE PILLAGES 
 
 We allow by his ears but with asses to mate. 
 If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it, 
 Then sing lowsie is Lucy, whatever befall it." 
 
 Quite different in style and point of satire was 
 the other fragment, which is said to have been 
 written down at Stratford after hearing it sung 
 by an old woman. The recorder of the following 
 two stanzas is said to have rewarded the old 
 woman with a new gown, and to have declared 
 that he would have given her ten guineas if she 
 could have remembered the whole : 
 
 " Sir Thomas was too covetous 
 To covet so much deer, 
 When horns enough upon his head 
 Most plainly did appear. 
 
 " Had not his worship one deer left ? 
 What then ? He had a wife 
 Took pains enough to find him horns 
 Should last him during life." 
 
 Such are the samples of doggerel which have 
 
 179
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 been fathered upon Shakespeare in connexion with 
 the deer-stalking legend. They may have in- 
 fluenced others than De Quincey in dismissing the 
 incident as fabulous and a " slanderous and idle 
 tale." But so sober a biographer as Sir Walter 
 Raleigh takes quite another view. He regards 
 the story as perfectly credible; "the evidence 
 that remains to us is unanimous in its favour ; 
 the allusions in the plays bear it out ; and there 
 is no solid argument against it." 
 
 One apparently " solid argument " has certainly 
 been adduced. It has been contended that the 
 Sir Thomas Lucy of the story had no deer-park. 
 De Quincey made fine play with this. "A 
 baronet, who has no deer and no park, is supposed 
 to persecute a poet for stealing these aerial deer out 
 of this aerial park, both lying in nephelococcygia." 
 It may be remarked that Sir Thomas Lucy could 
 hardly have been a " baronet," seeing that he had 
 been in his grave eleven years before that title 
 was created, and with regard to the other point of 
 De Quincey's jest Sir Sidney Lee remarks : "But 
 Sir Thomas Lucy was an extensive game-preserver, 
 and owned at Charlecote a warren in which a few 
 1 80
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES 
 
 harts or does doubtless found an occasional home." 
 In further support of that argument it may be re- 
 called that in 1602 the successor of Sir Thomas 
 Lucy, who also bore his father's Christian name, ap- 
 pears in the list of those who sent bucks to Lord 
 Ellesmere when he entertained Queen Elizabeth. 
 This is a strong presumptive proof that the Sir 
 Thomas of Shakespeare's young manhood pos- 
 sessed both a park and deer at Charlecote. 
 
 By "the allusions in the plays" Sir Walter 
 Raleigh means, of course, the opening scene of 
 "The Merry Wives of Windsor." That scene, 
 indeed, has been accepted by many as Shake- 
 peare's autobiography. One theorist assures us 
 that the poet introduced into that play more of 
 the colour of Stratford life than in any other of 
 his works. It is true the scene is laid in Windsor, 
 but it is claimed that the locality is really 
 Stratford. We are asked to believe, moreover, 
 that Anne Page and William Fenton are but the 
 name-disguises of Anne Hathaway and William 
 Shakespeare. And William Fenton's wart has 
 been adduced as sober evidence, especially as the 
 Chandos portrait of the poet is said to show a 
 
 181
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 " perceptible mark or wart " ! Aside from such 
 hair-splitting interpretations, there remains the 
 fact that the first scene of " The Merry Wives 
 of Windsor " does introduce us to the self-im- 
 portant Justice Shallow, the " Justice Clodpate ,: 
 of the earlier deer-stealing story, and most com- 
 mentators are agreed that Shakespeare's original 
 for that character was none other than his whilom 
 persecutor, Sir Thomas Lucy. The scene, indeed, 
 has been taken as the poet's apologia for his 
 youthful exploit and as his belated and most 
 ample revenge on the knight of Charlecote. He 
 was, of course, a justice of the peace, and 
 "Coram' and " Custaloram " and the "dozen 
 white luces " in his coat-of-arms were an additional 
 clue to the man who boasted " three luces haurient 
 argent." And as Justice Shallow's charge against 
 Falstaff comprised the indictments " You have 
 beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke open 
 my lodge," the identity seems complete. 
 
 Charlecote, then, is not likely to be despoiled 
 of its association with the poet. Besides, romance 
 and art and poetry have strengthened the link. 
 More than one painter has transferred to canvas 
 182
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE TILLAGES 
 
 his imaginative conception of the scene in Charle- 
 cote Hall when the youthful poacher was dragged 
 before Sir Thomas Lucy, while Landor and 
 Richard Garnett have made the episode the 
 theme of prose and verse. Landor's " Citation 
 and Examination of William Shakespeare " won 
 from Charles Lamb the high praise that only two 
 men could have written it — that is, the man who 
 did write it and the man about whom it was 
 written. Landor certainly knew the setting of 
 his story, for he was a Warwick man himself and 
 was as familiar with Charlecote as with the legend. 
 And the skit is most enjoyable for the serious 
 manner in which, as evidence, the table on which 
 Shakespeare had eaten the deer is produced at the 
 trial. There were the four " deadly spots," 
 mounds of grease, which were proof enough of 
 the culprit's offence. And the evidence was con- 
 clusive when the worthy Silas pronounced them 
 on oath, after tasting, to be the fat of buck 
 venison. But the " Citation " must be read as a 
 whole, through all its quaint dialogue and spirited 
 incident down to the sudden escape of the 
 prisoner. 
 
 183
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Nor is Richard Garnett's little drama of 
 " William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher," 
 less amusing. In its motive it owes something to 
 the "horn" doggerel quoted above, for Lady 
 Lucy is described as enamoured of the young 
 poacher and jealous of Anne Hathaway. The 
 climax is different, however, for Shakespeare is 
 released from Sir Thomas Lucy's clutches by no 
 less a person than the Earl of Leicester, who has 
 journeyed to Stratford to command the poet's 
 appearance at court owing to his fame having 
 reached the ears of Queen Elizabeth. Scattered 
 through the drama are many admirable pen- 
 portraits of the poet, and the description of 
 Charlecote is welcome as expressing in verse the 
 picture the house presents to this day: 
 
 " Sound stands the mansion still, Wis true, with roof 
 Impervious to the beams and rains of heaven 
 Nor yet bereft of soaring pinnacle. 
 Or portalled lodge, or zone of stately trees ; 
 The thickest blooms and fruits ; nor hath the 
 
 plough 
 Profaned or daisied mead or lawny dell." 
 
 184
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES 
 
 While Charlecote Hall is rarely open to visitors, 
 the park is traversable on the payment of a fee. 
 But mansion and park alike are well within view 
 from the public road. The latter is still dis- 
 tinguished for those stately, shady, sleepy elms 
 which so took the fancy of Hawthorne. "They 
 were civilized trees," he wrote, " known to man 
 and befriended by him for ages past. There is 
 an indescribable difference between the tamed, 
 but by no means effete (on the contrary, the 
 richer and more luxuriant), Nature of England, 
 and the rude, shaggy, barbarous Nature which 
 offers us its racier companionship in America." 
 And from the trees his fancy wandered to the 
 deer, the descendants of which still browse over 
 the sward of Charlecote park. " By and by, 
 among those refined and venerable trees, I saw a 
 large herd of deer, mostly reclining, but some 
 standing in picturesque groups, while the stags 
 threw their large antlers aloft, as if they had been 
 taught to make themselves tributary to the scenic 
 effect. Some were running fleetly about, vanish- 
 ing from light into shadow and glancing forth 
 again, with here and there a little fawn careering 
 
 185
 
 SHsAKESPEsARE ^ND STRATFORD 
 
 at its mother's heels. These deer are almost in 
 the same relation to the wild, natural state of 
 their kind that the trees of an English park hold 
 to the rugged growth of an American forest. 
 They have held a certain intercourse with man 
 for immemorial years ; and, most probably, the 
 stag that Shakespeare killed was one of the 
 progenitors of this very herd, and may himself 
 have been a partly civilized and humanized deer, 
 though in a less degree than these remote pos- 
 terity. They are a little wilder than sheep, but 
 they do not snuff the air at the approach of 
 human beings, nor evince much alarm at their 
 pretty close proximity; although, if you continue 
 to advance, they toss their heads and take to 
 their heels in a kind of mimic terror, or some- 
 thing akin to feminine skittishness, with a dim 
 remembrance or tradition, as it were, of their 
 having come from a wild stock." It may 
 have been from observing this tame herd, Haw- 
 thorne suggested, that Shakespeare conceived his 
 loving and pathetic description of a wounded 
 stag. 
 
 As to Charlecote Hall itself, the " air of still- 
 186
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE TILLAGES 
 
 ness and solitude " which impressed Washington 
 Irving yet prevails. This notion may be due to 
 that distant view which is all that is possible for 
 most visitors, but it is one which is confirmed 
 each time the mansion is seen. It stands at the 
 end of its umbrageous avenue in a kind of 
 comatose condition, as though ever dreaming of 
 its more glorious past. Although built so long 
 ago as 1559, and of course constructed on a 
 ground plan representing the letter E out of 
 compliment to Queen Elizabeth, it is as well 
 preserved a specimen of Tudor domestic architec- 
 ture as can be found in many a day's search. 
 The house and estates are often said to be still in 
 possession of the original Lucy family, and the 
 pilgrim will now and then have pointed out to him 
 the present owner as a lineal descendant of Shake- 
 speare's Sir Thomas. But all that is a mistake. 
 What descent there was has been much watered 
 by distaff inheritance and assumption of the name 
 of Lucy. The fact is that the direct line became 
 extinct with the sons of a Fulk Lucy, whose 
 second daughter Alice left the estate to her 
 grandson, a Rev. John Hammond. He after- 
 
 187
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 wards assumed the name of Lucy, and in due 
 time it was a daughter of this line who came into 
 the possession of Charlecote. When she married 
 a baronet in his own right there was another 
 assumption of the family name on the part of her 
 husband. 
 
 But the real Lucy line, at least in effigy, may 
 be seen on the tombs which stand in Charlecote 
 Church. Although that church has been rebuilt, 
 the chapel containing the memorials of the knights 
 of Charlecote is intact, and the three principal 
 tombs, it will be observed, preserve the memory 
 of as many Sir Thomases. Hence the pardonable 
 confusion which sometimes bewilders the Shake- 
 spearean pilgrim. The poet, as a matter of fact, 
 was the contemporary of three Sir Thomases, 
 but it was the knight who died in 1600 who was 
 so jealous of his deer. The second enjoyed the 
 title and estates for but five years ; the third out- 
 lived Shakespeare nearly a quarter of a century. 
 
 Although there is no inscription on the altar- 
 tomb of the first Sir Thomas to indicate that he 
 shares it with his wife, it does bear a white marble 
 effigy of the original of Justice Shallow, the face 
 188
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES 
 
 of which, albeit it is that of a goodly-looking 
 man, may suggest to some that self-conceit and 
 pride of rank which one is apt to attribute to a man 
 who may have dealt hardly with the divine poet. 
 By his side lies the full-length effigy of his wife, 
 whose virtues, as celebrated by the inscription 
 from her husband's pen, were so overwhelming as 
 to make Dr. Garnett's suggestion as to her illicit 
 love for Shakespeare seem incredible. "All the time 
 of her lyfe a true and faythful servant of her good 
 God, never detected of any cryme or vice," is a 
 testimonial which puts all poetic licence to shame. 
 And yet it should not be forgotten that the lady's 
 son-in-law described her as a thorough vixen ! 
 
 It was the second Sir Thomas who made Lord 
 Ellesmere that present of a buck referred to 
 above ; the third Sir Thomas was so much a 
 patron of letters that it was thought fit to adorn 
 his monument with a shelf of books. It would 
 have been pleasant if that dummy library had 
 included an identifiable replica of the First Folio. 
 The third Sir Thomas Lucy, however, whatever 
 his leanings towards literature, shared to the full his 
 grandfather's determination to repress all poaching 
 
 189
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 on his estate. In evidence of that ancestral trait 
 there exists a lengthy document in which Sir 
 Thomas laid before the Star Chamber a bill of 
 complaint against a dozen or more poachers who 
 had conspired and combined to hunt deer in one 
 of his parks. This was in July 1610, when 
 Shakespeare was still living and able to appreciate 
 the humour of the situation. All the Lucy 
 monuments, by the way, bear the three luces, 
 otherwise pikes, of the family arms, and one 
 tomb actually shows three luces in four quarters, 
 making a total reminiscent of " the dozen white 
 luces " in " The Merry Wives of Windsor." 
 
 When the pilgrim resumes his tour of the 
 Shakespeare villages, he will, if he be fortunate 
 in his cicerone, have his attention called to that 
 " Tumble-down Stile " which is said to have 
 been the scene of the poet's capture when return- 
 ing from his poaching expedition. The stile is 
 worth noting on its own account. Enticing little 
 models are on sale in the souvenir shops of 
 Stratford, but it is interesting to examine the 
 original set in the hedgerow of this picturesque 
 Warwickshire countryside. It is a unique struc- 
 190
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES 
 
 ture, having nothing in common with the turn- 
 stile or with the usual type which necessitates the 
 climbing of wooden bars. There are four bars, 
 it is true, but they are so pivoted on an upright 
 that they can be depressed with a touch of the 
 hand and fall back into position as soon as 
 released. 
 
 Hampton Lucy, the next village in the 
 itinerary, is pleasantly situated on the Avon 
 and recalls the fact that this part of the Lucy 
 estates was a gift of " Bloody Mary " to Shake- 
 speare's Sir Thomas in 1556. Had that miserable 
 queen been acquainted with the fact that her 
 beneficiary had been educated by the martyrologist 
 Foxe and would live to favour his Puritan 
 sentiments, she would hardly have made him 
 so generous a gift. The church here has been 
 rebuilt, but the old grammar school remains as an 
 example of early seventeenth-century architecture. 
 Like the church, the bridge over the river is 
 modern, but there are nooks and corners of the 
 village which may well have changed but little 
 since the days of the poet. 
 
 Although Hampton Lucy has no direct con- 
 
 191
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 nexion with the life-story of Shakespeare, 
 Snitterfield, which lies two or three miles to 
 the north, is in a different case. That village, 
 it will be remembered, is accepted by the best 
 authorities as the birthplace and boyhood home 
 of the poet's father, John Shakespeare, and to 
 this day there stands, on the outskirts of the 
 hamlet, an attractive little half-timbered building 
 known traditionally as the Shakespeare Cottage. So 
 far as appearance goes, the cottage may well have 
 been built in the sixteenth century, but there is 
 nothing more than legend to connect it with 
 the poet's family. There is every probability 
 that the Richard Shakespeare who in 1550 was 
 the tenant at Snitterfield of Robert Arden of 
 Wilmcote was the grandfather of the poet, and 
 that his son Henry, who never left the village, 
 was his uncle. We know, too, that Mary 
 Shakespeare, the mother of the poet, had an 
 interest in two houses situated at Snitterfield. 
 These details practically exhaust all the known 
 facts of the Shakespeare connexion with the 
 village, and the pilgrim must fill in the blanks 
 as well as his imagination will permit. Rural 
 192
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE COTTAGE AT SNITTERFIELD
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES 
 
 traditions are tenacious things ; they are often 
 trustworthy evidence ; and in the absence of 
 documentary proof to the contrary the Shake- 
 speare Cottage will doubtless long continue to 
 excite interest for its probable connexion with the 
 ancestors of the immortal bard. And in any 
 case the hamlet must always be held in honour 
 as the scene of the ministerial labours of that 
 Rev. Richard Jago whose allegory on the garden 
 of New Place was cited in a previous chapter. 
 
 On the return journey to Stratford the route 
 lies through two hamlets the names of which 
 must quicken the imagination of all devout 
 Shakespeareans. The first of these, Wilmcote, 
 was the home of the poet's mother, Mary Arden ; 
 the second, Shottery, was the scene of his winning 
 Anne Hathaway to his love. Save for the Arden 
 farmhouse, Wilmcote will not detain the visitor 
 long. The blight of modern building has fallen 
 heavily on the village, and in place of thatched 
 roof and oak-beamed walls there is the un- 
 loveliness of slate and common brick. Happily 
 the Arden homestead has not been tampered 
 with. It stands close by the roadside, fenced 
 
 n 193
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 off from the highway by a sturdy stone wall and 
 embowered in summertime with a wealth of 
 rambler roses and other creepers. It is not a 
 pretentious building ; its downstairs windows 
 and upstairs dormers suggest an accommodation 
 limited to some ten rooms ; but it was a spacious 
 house for sixteenth-century days, and the inven- 
 tory of the belongings of Robert Arden shows 
 him to have been a yeoman of more than 
 ordinary substance. The old oak beams in the 
 passage and low-pitched rooms would still pro- 
 vide a seemly setting for those benches and chairs, 
 those coffers and " painted cloths," those chafing- 
 dishes and candlesticks which were tabulated 
 among the " goodes moveable and unmoveable ' 
 of Robert Arden when he died in 1556. His 
 will of the same year showed that his youngest 
 daughter Mary held that uppermost place in his 
 affection which is so often the fortune of the 
 latest-born female child of an old man. In 
 the oblivion which has overtaken so many 
 of the buildings connected with the earthly days 
 of the poet it is a cause for congratulation that 
 there is still spared the quaint old house which 
 194
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES 
 
 was the girlhood home of the woman who gave 
 him birth. 
 
 But Wilmcote has another claim upon the 
 Shakespearean student. When it is recalled that 
 the local pronunciation of the name of the village 
 is " Wincot " a new interest is imparted to the 
 Induction of " The Taming of the Shrew." The 
 modern stage directions inform us that the scene 
 of that humorous prelude was " before an ale- 
 house on a heath," but in the First Folio the 
 imagination of the reader was allowed to locate 
 the episode as he would. There is nothing, then, 
 in the earliest text of the comedy to controvert 
 the view of those who hold that in describing the 
 quarrel between the drunken Christopher Sly and 
 Marian Hacket, the "fat ale-wife," Shakespeare 
 had in mind one of his haunts in the adjacent 
 village of Wilmcote. Tradition, indeed, affirms 
 that the poet was in the habit of frequenting the 
 " Wincot " ale-house that he might divert himself 
 with the sayings of a fool who was employed in a 
 neighbouring mill. It has been discovered, too, 
 that the name of "Sly' : is mentioned several 
 times in the records of Stratford. Altogether, 
 
 J 95
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 then, there are reasonable grounds for believing 
 that in penning the opening scene of " The 
 Taming of the Shrew " the dramatist drew freely 
 upon his Stratford reminiscences. 
 
 One other hamlet remains, the Shottery famous 
 all the world over for that picturesque thatched 
 cottage which was the home of Anne Hathaway. 
 About a generation ago the startling announce- 
 ment was made that an old picture of Shakespeare's 
 marriage with the maiden of Shottery had been 
 brought to light. It depicted an interior and an 
 inner room, the first being occupied by the 
 parents of the bride, of whom the father was 
 engaged in weighing out in scales the gold and 
 silver of his daughter's marriage portion. In the 
 inner room were the figures of Anne and her 
 lover, with a priest joining their hands together. 
 The owner of the picture hazarded the guess that 
 the ceremony was taking place in the house of the 
 bride's father, and he noted that the chief room 
 had a " tessellated pavement " and that its furni- 
 ture included a "cabinet with statuary on the top 
 of it." But no one seems to have been greatly 
 excited over the " discovery," and in a few months 
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 THE SHAKESPEARE TILLAGES 
 
 the canvas sank into that oblivion from which it 
 had been untimely rescued. 
 
 According to the canonical lives of Shake- 
 speare, the father of the poet's bride was a fairly 
 prosperous farmer of Shottery, who left his 
 daughter Agnes, a name which was used as inter- 
 changeable with Anne, the sum of six pounds 
 thirteen shillings and fourpence. The other facts 
 are that the cottage at Shottery remained in the 
 possession of the Hathaway family until well on 
 in the last century and was purchased by the 
 birthplace trustees twenty years ago. In its 
 exterior the cottage is far more akin to what 
 must have been its aspect in the sixteenth century 
 than the birthplace, while the chief interior room, 
 with its latticed windows and great open fireplace 
 and massive-beamed ceiling, seems to exhale the 
 very atmosphere of those far-off days when 
 William Shakespeare came a-courting. The 
 whole question of his marriage has, it is true, 
 been cumbered with much dryasdust discussion 
 about the prenuptial bond and other matters; 
 but those details may be left in the hands of the 
 antiquaries and lawyers. The ordinary pilgrim 
 
 197
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 visits Shottery in a romantic mood ; he can re- 
 picture a lovely Warwickshire maiden issuing 
 from that ancient doorway to meet that handsome 
 young son of John Shakespeare of Stratford, and 
 with that he is content. Than this picturesque 
 cottage, then, with its ancient roof-tree and tangled 
 garden of the flowers of old rural England, there 
 could not be a more seemly terminus for a poetic 
 pilgrimage. 
 
 198
 
 NOTES FOR THE TOURIST
 
 ROUTES 
 
 There is a choice of three railway lines from 
 London to Stratford-on-Avon. During the 
 summer, day excursions at a cheap rate are 
 available by each, particulars of which may be 
 learned from advertisements in the daily news- 
 papers or from the inquiry offices of the different 
 companies. 
 
 Great Central Railway 
 (Marylebone Station) 
 
 This is the shortest route, and consequently the 
 best trains make the quickest journeys of any of 
 the lines, the time occupied being a little over two 
 hours. The usual service consists of six departures 
 from London and five from Stratford-on-Avon 
 daily (except Sundays), and the return fares are 
 29J. $d. ($7.00) first class and 15J. ($3.75) third 
 class. There are also week-end tickets, available 
 
 201
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 from Friday to Tuesday, for 22s. yd. ($5.68) 
 first class and us. 3<^. ($2.83) third class. 
 
 Great Western Railway 
 (Paddington Station) 
 
 By this line there is a fuller service of trains, 
 there being thirteen daily departures from London 
 and twelve from Stratford-on-Avon, while on 
 Sundays there are two outward and one return 
 trains. Several of the trains have restaurant cars. 
 The fares are the same as those on the Great 
 Central Railway. 
 
 London and North-Western Railway 
 (Euston Station) 
 
 This is the longest route, and there are but 
 three trains daily (except Sundays) from London, 
 with four from Stratford-on-Avon. The fares 
 are identical with those from Marylebone. 
 
 202
 
 HOTELS 
 
 Shakespeare Hotel 
 
 Centrally situated on Chapel Street, this ancient 
 hostelry has recently undergone thorough renova- 
 tion and enlargement. The tariff for single bed- 
 rooms ranges from /\.s. 6d. ($1.12) upwards, while 
 private sitting-rooms can be had from Js. 6d. 
 ($1.88). The prices for meals are: Breakfast, 
 from ij. 6d. (37 ct.); luncheon, is. 6d. (62 ct.) ; 
 dinner, 4s. 6d. ($1.12). Weekly inclusive terms for 
 single bedroom and board range from £3 ip. 6d. 
 
 ($i8.37> 
 
 Red Horse Hotel 
 
 Familiarly known as " Washington Irving's 
 hotel," this old-fashioned house is situated on 
 Bridge Street close to the Avon and within a few 
 minutes' walk of the birthplace. At the time of 
 writing the tariff is under revision, but the rates 
 
 203
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 quoted for the Shakespeare Hotel will furnish an 
 approximate guide. 
 
 Falcon Hotel 
 
 On Chapel Street, facing New Place, and hence 
 within easy walking distance of all the Shakespeare 
 shrines. The boarding terms, for single bedroom, 
 are 105. ($2.50) per day or £3 3*. od. ($15.75) P er 
 week. This house makes a special feature of 
 providing bedroom and breakfast for from $s. 
 
 1.25). 
 
 Private hotels, boarding-houses, and furnished 
 apartments are numerous in Stratford, but terms 
 and accommodation vary so much that the visitor 
 contemplating a long stay should put up at one 
 or other of the above-named hotels until suited. 
 
 204
 
 EXCURSIONS 
 
 Apart from the tour of the Shakespeare villages 
 described in the last chapter, numerous interesting 
 excursions can be made from Stratford-on-Avon, 
 including the following : 
 
 Warwick 
 (8 miles by one route ; 9^ by another) 
 
 Famous for its Castle, the Leicester Hospital, 
 and St. Mary's Church. The chief feature of the 
 latter is the celebrated Beauchamp Chapel, with 
 its ornate tombs of the Beauchamps and Dudleys. 
 The Castle, which is one of the most ancient 
 baronial residences of England still in use, may 
 be seen any day on payment of a small fee. The 
 literary pilgrim should note the birthplace of 
 Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 205
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND STRATFORD 
 
 Kenilworth 
 (13 miles) 
 
 The chief object of interest is the ruins of 
 the historic Castle where the Earl of Leicester 
 entertained Queen Elizabeth on such a lavish 
 scale in 1575, as described by Sir Walter Scott in 
 his novel " Kenilworth." 
 
 Leamington 
 (10 miles) 
 
 A typical inland watering-place, with the usual 
 equipment of spring, pump-room, &c. Haw- 
 thorne describes the town in his " Our Old 
 Home ' : ' from personal knowledge, for he once 
 resided here in a " small nest of a place " on 
 Lansdowne Circus. 
 
 Evesham 
 (16 miles) 
 
 Interesting for its noble remains of a Bene- 
 dictine Abbey, of which the most conspicuous is 
 the stately Bell Tower dating from the thirteenth 
 206
 
 EXCURSIONS 
 
 century. On the north of the town is the scene 
 of the battle of 1265 which made Evesham 
 famous in English history. Not far distant is 
 the village of Broadwood, where Madame de 
 Navarro (Mary Anderson) has her picturesque 
 home. 
 
 Coventry 
 (18 miles) 
 
 Godiva's city, or " the City of the Three 
 Spires," is famous for its churches, one of which, 
 St. Michael, dates from 1 133. Two parliaments 
 were held here in the fifteenth century, and it 
 was one of the prisons of Mary Queen of Scots. 
 It was the home of George Eliot for two years. 
 
 An ideal day's outing for those with limited 
 time may be enjoyed by including in one itinerary 
 Warwick, Leamington, and Kenilworth. There 
 is a regular coach trip in the summer making the 
 Warwick and Kenilworth round, for which the 
 fixed charge per person is £1 lis. 6a. ($7.87). 
 The tour of the Shakespeare villages may be made 
 at a cost of 16s. ($4.00).
 
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