'^c/Aflvaaii-jx^' 'c/Aflvdairi^' <»iu:w?wi' CO 5 1 ir^ t ^JJirwvsoi'^ "^/jaBAiNflav^^ %oimi^^ ^ s OS < OS aa ^lOSANcncr^ C2 = "^(^AHvaan^ ^^ so -< ^^lllbKAHW/C ^^^t•llBKAHrCir ^^'^1t■l)NlvtKv^ %jnv3jo^ \mm\^^ ^tjuonvsoi^ "^ ^OFCAIIFO% ^OFCAllFOff^ AWFUNIVERJ/^ ^ ,\\MUNIVtKVA %13DNVS01^ o ^ 6 > "^/SJGAINnJWV^ ^(tfOJITVDJO'^ \MEDNIVERJ/A vvlOSANCElfT> * "-lajiM Mfi ' S ^'rtEUNIVERjy^ ^lOSANCnefo % -s^iUBRAJnrQr i^lUB ^J^UDNVSOl^ %a3AINIl-3V^^ ^OJnVDJO'^ ^tfOJI ^5»MINIVER% ^10SAKCEI% ^OFCAlIFOftij^^ ^OFO '<'5i33Nvs(n-'^ "^/xaaAiNfl-av^ >&A8vaan-i^ ^&Aav /»-. /^ d- " Doubtless Shakspere had seen many a Bottom in the old Warwickshire hamlets ; many a Sir Nathaniel playing ' Alissander,' and iinding himself ' a little o'erparted.' He had been with Snug the joiner, Quince the carpenter, and Flute the bellows-mender, when a boy, we wUl not question, and acted with them, and written their parts for them." Feoude's History of England, vol. i. ch. 1. pp. 69, 70. " Shakspere had to be left with his kingcups and clover : pansies — the passing clouds — the Avon's flow— and the undulating hUls and woods of Warwick." Ecskin's Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. xx. § 29, p. 373. SIAKSPEEE: BIRTHPLACE AND ITS NEIGHBOUKHOOB. fr^^'fMv Th. T m'-s-.utb^' SHAKSPERE: BIRTHPLACE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. BY JOHN E. WISE. ILLDSTI^ATED BY W. J. LINTON^ Porch of Trinity Church LONDON: SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. M.DCCC.LXI. [ The Right of Translation is reserved.'] PR CONTENTS. ^'^/^ CHAP. PAGE I. Introductory 1 II. Stratfoed-cpon-Avon — The House where Shakspere WAS BOKN 13 m. Stratford — The Parish Church 20 IV. The Grammar School — Chapel of the Guild — New Place 28 V. The Chamberlain's Books, etc., of Stratford — Private Manuscripts in Stratford 35 VI. Charlecote Park 43 Vn. Welcombe and Snitterfield 58 Vm. Shottery 70 IX. The Avon — ^Luddington — ^Welfoed .... 75 X. " Pipinq Pebwoeth — Dancing Marston " ... 86 XI. Waewickshirb Orchards and Harvest Homes . . 93 Xn. The Provincialisms of Shakspere .... 103 XHI. Shakspere 116 Glossary of Woeds still used in Warwickshire to BE FOUND IN ShAKSPEBE 149 Index 159 11800 NOTE. Whilst these sheets were in the press, the munificent bequest of 2,500/., left, together with an annuity of 60/., by the late Mr. John Shakespear, of Worthington, Leicestershire, has been set aside by a decree of the Court of Chancery, and the committee for the repairs of the house in Henley Street, where Shakspere was bom, find themselves liable for a heavy debt. Surely, however, the English nation, which loves and reverences its greatest poet, will not suffer the people of Stratford long to need assistance for repairing the birthplace of Shakspere, when Australia, to her honour, is setting up a statue to him in her principal town. LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS. PAOE The Tombs in the Chancel — Frontispiece. Porch of Trinity Church — Title-page. The room in which Shakspere was bom 12 His Father's House in Henley Street 13 Old Font of Trinity Church 19 Trinity Chm-ch . 20 The Latin School . . . 28 The Mathematical School 34 Back of Grammar School, and Guild Chapel 35 Shakspere's Desk 42 Charlecote Hall 43 Autograph and Seal of Sir Thomas Lucy 57 Stratford, from Welcombe Grounds 58 Welcombe Thorns 69 Anne Hathaway's Cottage 70 Avon at the Weir Brake 75 Bidford Bridge 86 The Fool^Bridge at the Mill . . . . . . , . 92 At Luddington 93 Apple Gathering 102 The House in Henley Street as Restored 108 Honey Stalks 115 Bust of Shakspere 116 Remains of Shakspere's House at New Place 148 Autograph 158 SHAKSPERE: HIS BIETHPLACE AND ITS NEIGHBOUEHOOD. CHAPTER I. INTKODUCTORY. How often do we liear it said, " How I should liave liked to have seen Shakspere." Had we seen him, most likely we should have found him a man like ourselves, greater because he was not less but more of a man, suffering terribly from all the ills to which flesh is heir ; and we should have been disappointed and said, " Is this all, is this what we came out to see?" and proved ourselves in all probability mere valets to the hero. It is better as it is ; we must be content to let Shakspere have had Ben Jonson for a friend, and joyfully to take his testimony, brief as that is, — " I loved the man, and do honour his memory, 1 2 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BERTHPLACE. on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature." Though springing fi'om an excellent feeling, it is a mistaken wish to see with the physical eye the world's crreat men. The least part of a great man is his materia presence. It is better for us each to draw our own ideal of Shakspere ; to picture his face so calm and happy and gentle, as his friends declare his spirit to have been ; yet not unseared by misfortune and chastened by the divine relifrion of sorrow. It is better as it is. We know not for certain even his likeness, or his form. The earth-dress falls away, the worthless mortal coil is shuffled off", and only what is pure and noble, the essence of all that is great in the man, remains for evermore as a precious birthright to all the world. A more reasonable wish is one, also often heard, that we had some diary of Shakspere, some of his private letters to his wife or liis children, or even a correspondence with Ben Jonson. I do not know that even this is to be regretted. Ben Jonson's correspondence has been brought to light, and alas ! he has been found out to have been a poor government spy. And though of Shakspere we can confidently trust. That whatever record leap to light, He never shall be sliamcd ; vet I still think it better as it is. The gods should live INTRODUCTOEY. 3 by themselves. And as was the case with the physical, so with the spiritual man, it is best for us to draw our own ideal. Of the greatest poets who have ever lived, the world knows nothing. Homer is to us only a name. Of the singer of the Nibelungen Lied we know not so much as that. And yet all that is good and noble of them remains to us. We surely will not grudge our Shakspere their happy lot. The truest biographer of Shakspere, it has been well said, is the most earnest student of his plays. Even did we possess the private letters and diaries of Shakspere, what use could we make of them ? One man only has been born, since Shakspere died, fit to write his history, and that man, Goethe, is a foreigner. Most biographies, even where the amplest in- formation abounds, are mere catalogues of dates, a history of what the great man eats and drinks, and whatwithal he is clothed. To know Shakspere's life would undoubtedly be to know one of the highest lives ever lived. To know his struggles, for struggles he had, bitter as ever man endured, his sonnets alone would testify ; to trace how from darkness he fought his way to light, how he moulded circumstances, how he bore up against fortune and misfortune, were indeed to know a history such as we cannot expect ever now to have revealed. 1—2 4 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIETHPLACE. Still tlie wish will ever linger that we did possess some scraps of information. We ever shall care to know what we can about onr greatest men ; it is the one feeling that will last to all time : and this love, this reverence for the good and great men of the earth, is amongst the best traits in our human nature. I will not blame even that feeling which hoards up Garrick cups, and mulberry tooth-picks as treasures ; even this, in its way, is a testimony to the infinite worth of true greatness. Halliwell and Collier have given up their time in searching every record and deed for the minutest allusion to our poet ; and the least thing they have discovered has been eagerly welcomed. But we seem ever doomed to disappointment ; not one scrap, not a half-sheet of paper of Shakspere's handwriting ever turns up : the most painful search adds but little to our knowledge ; nothing beyond a name or two, or another date or so. His life is at best but a collection of fines and leases ; everything connected with his private life perished with him ; when he died he carried with him his secret. No external history could of course reveal to us the fount of his inspiration : that is just as visible now, as ever, to the seeing eye, and the sympathetic love of any reader. But the man himself, what he did here on earth, how he struggled with outward circumstances, and how from being the apprentice to a butcher or a woolstapler he rose to become INTRODUCTORY. 5 the writer of Hamlet, we know not. It is idle to say tliat this is of second-rate importance, and that Shakspere's inner life, which may be gleaned from his writings, is alone worth knowing ; men ever will wish to know his exterior life. I feel that I can add nothing new to the researches of Collier and Halliwell, but I have always thought that something might be written better than the present guide- books to Stratford. Here was Shakspere born, and here he died ; here in the archives of the town the only infor- mation about him and his family exists ; and here, still more important, is the country where he rambled when a boy, and which he loved when a man ; and here people still come, day after day, on a pilgrimage to his house, showing that hero-worship is not dead, proving that even in these days the world pays homage to its great men. The aim of this little book is not very high, but if it will, in some measure, take away the reproach of meagreness from the hand-books to Stratford, and throw some little light on the text of Shakspere, by giving the reader a better idea of the land where the poet lived, I shall be very well content. To me it has always appeared a most happy circum- stance that Shakspere should have been born in That shire which we the heart of Eugland well may call, as his fellow-countryman Drayton sings, and that his child- 6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. hood should have fallen amidst such true rural English scenery ; for it is fi'om the storehouse of childhood that in after years we draw so much wealth. Happy indeed was it that his hom.e should have been amongst the orchards and woodlands round Stratford, and the meadows of the Avon. The perfection of quiet English scenery is it, such as he himself has di'awn in the Midsummer NlghCs Dream, and The Winter's Tale, and As You Like It, and a hundred places. I cannot but hold the theory of the eflfects of local causes on a poet's mind, remembering what the poets themselves have said. Coleridge declared that the memo- ries of his youth were so graven on his mind, that when a man and far away from the spot, he could still see the river Otter flowing close to him, and hear its ripple as plainly as when in years long past he wandered by its side ; and Jean Paul Richter, when lamenting how greatly the absence of the sea had affected his Avritings, exclaimed, " I die without ever having seen the ocean ; but the ocean of eternity I shall not fail to see." And just as climate modifies the physical condition of a nation, so scenery affects the mental condition of a poet. I have no wish to strain the theory. I know well that a truth may be so overstated that it at last becomes a falsehood ; I know too that a poet's mind cannot be tied down to any spot, but it takes a colour from everything which it sees, and that INTRODUCTORY. 7 the saying of Thucydides, av^piov ETrt^avwv Traaa -yn ra^oc, will bear reversing, and all the earth is as truly the birth- place of a great man as his grave; yet still I somehow think that the quiet fields round Stratford, and the gentle flow of the Avon, so impressed themselves upon Shakspere's mind, that his nature partook of their gentleness and quietness. Take up what play you will, and you will find glimpses there of the scenery round Stratford. His maidens ever sing of " blue-veined violets," and " daisies pied," and " pansies that are for thoughts," and " ladies'-smocks all silver-white," that still stud the meadows of the Avon. You catch pictures of the willows that grow ascaunt the brooks, showing the under-part of their leaves, so white and hoar, in the stream ; * and of orchards, too, when The moon tips with silver all the fi-uit-ti'ee tops. -- I do not think it is any exaggeration to say that nowhere in England are meadows so full of beauty as those round Stratford. I have seen them by the river-side in early * Virgil, who, with all his shortcomings and failings, had a real love for Natui-e, and, as long as he kept to descriptions of her, was always truthful, describes the willow somewhat similarly, — " glauca canentia fronde salicta " (^Georgic ii. 13), though it is a veiy inferior picture to Shakspere's of the leaves reflected in the water. Virgil was probably thinking of the willow- leaves when the wind stirred them, making them glisten with silver. 8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. spring burnished with gold ; and then later, a little before hay-harvest, chased with orcliisses, and blue and white milkwort, and yellow rattle-grass, and tall moon-daisies: and I know nowhere woodlands so sweet as those round Stratford, filled with the soft green light made by the budding leaves, and paved with the golden ore of prim- roses, and their banks veined with violets.* All this. * The finest part of Drayton's Polyolbion is the thirteenth book, where he describes the scenery of his native Wainvickshire, and of his " old Arden." The following passage will interest the reader, as a description of the country in Shakspere's time, Drayton being born only one year before Shakspere: — Brave "Warwick that abroad so long advanced her Bear, By her illustrious Earls renowned everywhere : Above her neighboming shires which always bore her head, My native countiy, then, which so brave spirits hast bred. If there be -vdrtues yet remaining in thy earth, Or any good of thine thou bredst into my birth, Accept it as thine own, whilst now I sing of thee, Of all thy later brood the unworthiest though I be. When Phoebus lifts his head out of the watery wave. No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave. At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring, But Hunt's up to the mom, the feathered sylvans sing; And, in the lower grove, as on the rising knoll, Upon the highest spray of ever}' mounting pole, There quiresters are perched, with many a speckled breast: Then from her burnished gates the goodly glittering East INTRODUCTORY. 9 and the tenderness that such beauty gives, you find in the pages of Shakspere ; and it is not too much to say that he painted them, because they were ever associated in his mind with all that he held precious and dear, both of the earliest and the latest scenes of his life. Therefore I repeat, that it was well that Shakspere was born here. And I dwell especially upon his love for flowers, — a love always manifested by our great poets : Gilds every mountain top, which late the humorous night Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's sight; On which, the mirthful quires, with their clear open throats Unto' the joyful morn so strain their warbUng notes, That hills and valleys ring, and e'en the echoing air Seems aU composed of sounds about them everywhere. The throstle with shrill sharps, as purposely he sung To awake the listless sun, or chiding that so long He was in coming forth that should the thickets thrill ; The woosel near at hand, that hath a golden bill. As nature him had marked, of purpose t' let us see That from all other birds his tunes should different be: For with their vocal sounds they sing to pleasant May; Upon his dulcet pipe the merle doth only play. When, in the lower brake, the nightingale hard by. In such lamenting strains the joyful hours doth ply, As though the other birds she to her tunes would draw. But the passage does but faint justice to the sweetness of the birds in the Warwickshire woodlands. The reader will remember how, in the Mid- summer Night's Dream, Shakspere sings of the nightingale, and the " woosel- cock with his orange tawny bill," and " the throstle with his note so tnie; " and they may still all be heard singing as sweetly as ever in the woods aroimd Sti'atford. 10 SIIAKSPERE AND HIS BIllTHPLACE. by Spenser, and Chaucer, and Milton, who seem to regard them Avith a human sympathy, and to endow them, too, with human feehngs. So Shakspere loved, as Lord Her- bert of Cherbury would have said, " our felIow-creatm*es the plants ; " and so speak Imogen and Perdita of them, and so, too, Ophelia. Violets Ophelia would ha\e given to her brother ; but they died all, when her father died. And I dwell also upon this love for flowers, because we must remember that God has given them, as it were, as a peculiar gift to the poor (that is, to the great body of mankind), for their delight and their contemplation. Other things they have not — pictures, nor gardens, nor libraries, nor sculpture-galleries ; but floAvers they always have, and it is the contemplation and the love of them that distinguishes us from the beasts of the field. * Happy, indeed, therefore, was Shakspere's lot to have been born in the country among such scenes ! far happier * It is tme tlmt Shakspere can paint sca-cliifs, as in Lear ; or mountains, as in Ci/mbeline ; or the sea in a stomi, as in the Tempest; but he ne^x^ dwells upon them with that fondness with which he paints his own lowland meadows. This must certainly, in a great measure, be attributed to the reasons given in tlie text, but partly also to the fact, that man in Shakspere's day had not yet learnt to see a bcautj' in the clouds, or the wild ravine, or the stormy sea. For this insight we must thank our modern poets and painters; though we must ever remember that there are touches and lines in Shakspere describing mountains and stonn, and sunset scenes and clouds, which have never been equalled. INTRODUCTORY. 11 than befell his great fellow-poets, Spenser and Milton, both born in the turmoil of London. And surely, too, it was well that he was born amongst country rustics, and that from the scenes of early life he was able to gather strength, and to idealize, without weakening their reality, his Christopher Slys, his Quinces the carpenters, and his Snugs the joiners, such as we may easily conceive he saw and knew in his boyhood. I know that it is often brought as a reproach against him that he should have drawn them ; but I, for my own part, find in this Shakspere's greatest merit, feeling assured that there is nothing insignificant in humanity, and that the humblest man is by no means the worthless thing generally tliought. Surely I think, that in painting these rough forms so lovingly, we may detect Shakspere's true great- ness of mind. And the simple thought that nature has made the most numerous of the world's family these same so-called common men, might inspire us with a wish to know and to love them. By painting them, Shakspere could better paint the complexities and troubles of daily life, with its hard toil, such as will last as long as the world lasts. These things may be in themselves very paltry, but they cease to be paltry when we know that by them millions of human beings are strangely affected. And here let me take the opportunity of saying, what 12 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. has been often said before, but which cannot be too often repeated, that Shakspere's chief excellence lies in this, that he has not drawn mere lay-figures, but human, breathing, complex men and women — not Romans, not Greeks, but simply men; that he has never obtruded mere party creeds, but given us true religion ; never painted mere finite systems, but true perennial human sympathy; and tliat he has never forgotten the broad principle, that whether Saxon or Celt, Jew or Gentile, we are all bro- thers; that, in fact, to use his own words, he has ever " held the mirror up to nature," reflecting there all forms and shapes, but reflecting them with the charity that looks upon a brother's shortcomings in pity, knowing well how utterly impossible it is to judge another. The Boom iu wtuch lie was Born. The House in Henley Street. CHAPTER II. STRATFORD-UPON-AVON — THE HOUSE WHERE SHAKSPERE WAS BORN. This little country town lies in the Vale of the Red Horse, so called from the giant figure of a horse cut in the red marl on the side of the Edgeliills, some twelve miles off, and which gives its name, like its fellow on the Berkshire hills, to the surrounding country. The Avon, after passing 14 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. under the walls of Warwick Castle, and thi'ough the park of Charlecote, widens out broader and shallower as it approaches the town, where used to be a ford, still visible by the side of the bridge, from which the place takes its name, the Saxon prefix of " Strsete" or " Stret" signifying a street. It is, like most of our Enghsh country towns, very quiet all the week, but waking into some little stir on market- days and fairs. There is nothing about it to attract atten- tion; no old gates, no picturesque old buildings, as at the neighbouring city of Warwick ; nothing but the Avon, and the sun'omiding country, and the one name of Shak- spere. And, since the traveller will only take an interest in it as connected with Shakspere, I shall not go into the history of the place, but leave that to the local historian, and confine myself entirely to what relates to Shakspere. The first spot which every one looks for is Shakspere's birthplace. It stands in Henley Street ; and though there is no absolute evidence that he was born there, yet we know that his father rented it in 1552, and this, coupled with the tradition, makes the fact nearly certain. The property was subsequently purchased by his father for forty pounds in 1575 ; and from the fine levied at the time we learn that it consisted of two messuages, and two gardens, and two orchards. In 1597 his father sold a THE HOUSE WHERE SHAKSPERE WAS BORN. 15 small portion of the land for two pounds, and in the deed relating to the sale we find him described as a yeoman.* The house has passed through many changes ; but recently, thanks to the liberality of the late Mr. John Shakspere, and to the good taste of the people of Stratford, it has been restored to its original state in Shakspere's time, and been separated from the surrounding buildings, and the garden planted with all the flowers the poet sings of so lovingly in his plays. The house is one of the old timbered houses that may still be seen standing in many parts of the county, with their great beams chequering the walls with squares, and their high-pitched gable roofs and dormer windows. Come, we will go in and see the room where was born the man in whose pages live all the poetry, and nobleness, and Avorth of one of the best ages of English history. It is but a platitude to say that this room stands before all palaces. And as we look at it, and remember that pro- bably it was much scantier and smaller, we bethink our- selves how little Nature cares for her greatest children. She flings them by in obscure corners of the world, leaving them to fight their way. In poverty have been born the world's greatest men. Homer was born, no one knows * Mr. Halliwell, in his accurate Life of Shakspere, gives both the fine and this document in full, pp. 34, 37. 16 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. where ; Socrates Avas tlie son of a midwife ; and Newton's and Burns's birthplaces were ploughmen's cottages. So it has been, and so it will be. The order of the world was changed by One born in a manger, and the highest Gospel was preached by fishermen ; and States were overthrown by a poor priest, preaching only out of the sincerity of his heart. Let us note, too, all the signatures on the walls, and not be angry with them, for they are but the expression of a true feelino; of love and reverence. It is something to think of, that here to this room should be drawn all men, high and low, rich and poor, to pay homage to the sou of a yeoman, or, at most, a mere woolstapler. While such an influence lasts, the world is on the right road. Princes and conquerors, blustering and bullying, pass away ; but the works of one genuine man are eternal. It would be well if for one moment we could see the old Stratford of the sixteenth century; for unless we can throw ourselves back into the past, and into its spirit, even Shak- spere is meaningless. The street in wliich he was born was still, as now, called Henley Street ; and consisted, nearer the main town, of old, timbered, high-gabled houses, squared with black oak beams; but towards the other end, where now runs Clopton Lane, was unenclosed land. In the High Street stood the houses of the gentry THE HOUSE WHERE SHAKSFERE WAS BORN. 17 and the richer tradesmen, with their open courts and galleries, and their rush- strewn floors, and their wide barge-boards, rich with carving. And the Falcon still stood where it does now, as a hostelry, with its red lattices. And opposite to it was " the Great House" of the Cloptons, some day to be the New Place of Shakspere, and the Chapel of the Guild, and the Grammar School, with its staircase outside, and the Guild Hall beneath it, where the companies of players used to perform when the Corpora- tion gave an entertainment ; * and somewhat lower down, below the timbered almshouses, stood the house of the priests of the Guild, with its round dove-tower ; and you might just catch a glimpse of the Church of the Trinity, * No doubt these entertainments acted strongly upon the mind of Shak- spere when a boy, and perhaps gave him his first bias to the stage. The following extracts from the Chamberlain's books at Stratford, will interest the reader, as showing how frequently the players exhibited. The two companies first mentioned performed when Shakspere's father was baihfF. 1569. Item, payd to the Queue's pleyers . Item, to the Erie of Worcester's pleers 1573. Paid to Mr. Bayly for the Earle of Lecester'i 1576. Geven my Lord of Warwicke players Paid the Earle of Worceter players 1577. Paid to my lord of Leyster players . Paid to my lord of Wosters players 1579. Paid to the Countys of Essex plears 1580. Paid to the Earle of Darbye's players 1581. Paid the Earle of Worcester his players Paid to the L. Bartlett his players player; ix?«-. xijrf. vs. \-iijd. XVIJS. \s. viiji. xvs. iijs. iiijd. xiiijs. vjd. V11J5. iiij. IIJS. nij. iijs. i}d. 2 18 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIETHPLACE. with its timbered and lead-coated spire; and the crosses still stood here and there in the streets.* And the gallants moved about the old town in their rich picturesque dresses, their doublets of velvet, and their slashed shoes, and their ruffles, and their peach-coloured hose. Trade was then prospering. The middle-classes of England were for the first time growing into importance, and the lower classes were far better off than they had ever before been. And, going on to more important matters, let us remember that now was the day-spring of Protestantism, and that the minds of men were awakening from the deathlike sleep that had bound them. The spirit of the Reformation could not end where it began, but passed through every- thing, altering the whole tendency of English thought. Learning and philosophical inquiry now marked a new birthday from which men should date. And the poet is ever the reflex of all that is noble and good of his time. His birth becomes a necessity. For every age must have * Two certainly, one in Rother Street and the other at the market cross. See Wheler's History of Stratford, p. 109, from which, together with the late Captain Saunders' valuable collection of sketches, I have partly drawn this description of old Stratford. I ought to mention that the existence of the Falcon rests only upon tradition. The three inns in Shakspere's time, " Tlie Crowne," " The Beare," and " The Swanne," were all in Bridge Street, as may be seen iu an order of the Corporation, dated 18 Dec., 8 James I. Probably it was one of the ale-houses, of which there were thirtj' within the borough. THE HOUSE WHERE SHAKSPERE WAS BORN. 19 its own poet. And just as spinning-machines were the necessity of the eighteenth, so was Shakspere the inevi- table outcome of the sixteenth century. The energy of that age must be revealed, not alone in defeating Spanish Armadas or in Reformations, but in some JBsthetic shape. And in the drama Shakspere luckily found ready made to hand the materials on which he so impressed the patriotism and the high feeling of his day that they will live to all time. If we do not understand this, we do not understand Shakspere. Old Font of Trinity Churcii. 2—2 Trinity Church, Stratford. CHAPTER III. STRATFORD — THE PARISH CHURCH. Renownicd Spenser ! lie a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer, and, rare Beaumont I lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakspere, in your thi-ecfold, fourfold, toml). The next spot to which we instinctively turn, after the birtliphice of Shakspere, is the parish church of Stratford. Very beautiful is it, with its avenue of limes and its great STRATFOED — THE PARISH CHURCH, 21 elms by tlie river-side, their topmost Loughs now red in the April sun, and the rooks cawing and building in the branches, and the Avon flowing close by, with the sound of its splashing weir. It is a spot where any poet might wish to be buried. And Shakspere lies in the chancel close to the river, where, if any sounds reach the dead, he might hear the noise of its weir. It is pleasant to think of him resting here side by side Avith his wife, and his favourite daughter and her husband. It never makes me sad to look at their graves. His was a lot which any one might envy — to be laid with those in death whom they loved dearest in life. And those lines on his grave- stone — Good frend, for Jesus' sake, forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare; Blest be the man that spares thes stones, And curst be he that moves my bones; wdiicli have for so long passed as unmeaning doggrel, are to me inexpressibly beautiful. I do not for one moment suppose that Shakspere wrote them ; but I do think that whoever wrote and placed them there, felt he was express- ing, to the best of his powers, Shakspere's own feelings on the subject. They are in accordance with all we know of the man — a simple prayer to be left alone in peace where some day the dust of all that he best loved would 22 SIIAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. be laid with him. It is the same entreaty that his fellow poet, Spenser, utters in the Fairy Queen — O dearest God ! me grant, I dead be not defouled. B. I., Canto x. 42. And as I before noticed how much happier than Milton's and Spenser's was Shakspere's lot to be born in the country, so, too, do I think it far happier for him to be buried in the quiet church of Stratford than, like them, in the bustle and roar of London. No poet, perhaps, rests so happily as Shakspere. This is better than being buried in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's, to lie at peace amongst your own. Goethe rests beside a royal duke and Schiller ; but I think Shakspere's a far happier lot. Dante sleeps in a marble tomb far away from his native Florence, " parvi mater amoris" as he bitterly said; but Shakspere rests here under the plain gravestones, amongst his own friends and kindred. Let us mark also some of the other inscriptions, parti- cularly that to Shakspere's favourite daughter Susanna, the wife of Dr. Hall : — Witty above her sexe ; but that's not all — Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall ; Something of Shakspere was in that, but this Wholly of Uim with whom she now's in bliss. It is not too much to conjecture that this gentleness STRATFORD — THE PARISH CHURCH. 23 and goodness of spirit made her Shakspere's favourite daughter. And it is pleasant to know that she placed the inscription to the memory of her mother, who lies on her husband's right hand, and to know, ftirther, that they both earnestly desired to be buried with Shakspere.* But it always makes me sad, as I read the date on the monument on the wall, to think that almost in the prime of life the poet was snatched away, and what Hamlets and Lears the world has missed. I hope the old tradition is true, that the last play he wrote was the Tempest, with its creations " on the skirts of human nature dwelling." Above all others this play is built upon the firm foundations of spirit, and derives a tragic interest from the fact that the poet himself was so soon to be called away to that spirit-land. Nor let us forget the bust, with its face looking so calm and quiet ; and though perhaps it does not realize Shakspere's countenance to us, still there is about it a certain quietness and gentleness that accords with all that we know of him. " Here is a man who has struggled toughly," I always think of Shak- spere, as Goethe said of himself; and the smooth, un- meaning portraits we have of him, give me not the * From a letter written in 1693, from Mr. Dowdall to Mr. Edward Southwell, and published under the title of Traditionary Anecdotes of Shakspere, London, 1838. 24 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. slightest idea of the man. The bust, however, was sculptured by Gerard Johnson, one of the best artists of his day, and erected only seven years after Shakspere's death, when his features would still be well remembered ; and we must therefore regard it as the only authentic like- ness of him we possess. Originally it was coloured, the eyes beino; a lio-ht hazel, and the hair and beard auburn. In 1743 it was repainted, and the old colours were faithfully preserved; but in 1793 Malone caused the whole bust to be whitewashed by some common house-painter, for which he righteously suffered the penalty of the well-known epigram.* The old parish register is full of entries of baptisms and deaths in the Shakspere family, the most important, of course, being — "Baptisms, 1564, April 26. Gulielmus filius Johannis Shakspere ; " and yet if you ask where is the font where the three-day-born baby Avas baptized, it cannot be shown. When I lived near Stratford, the old font was in the possession of a private individual. I trust it may be restored to its proper place. For if there is any one of whom Protestantism may be proud, * Stranger, to whom this monument is shown, Invoke the poet's curses on Malone: Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste displays, And daubs his tombstone as he maiTcd his plays. STRATFORD— THE PARISH CHURCH. 25 it is Shakspere ; and surely the font where he was sealed a member of the Church, and for which, too, in after life he proved himself a faithful soldier, should not be allowed to rot to pieces, Milton has in these days been discovered to be a Unitarian. But against Shakspere the strictest orthodoxy has never brought a single charge. Yet if ever there was a man who questioned fate, who fought " the cruel battle within," and yet remained faithful, it was Shakspere. Never in any of his plays is there the slightest symptom of that disbelief which ends in despair and mockery. Too large-minded for any one particular creed or system, he ever treats not only religion, but all things, with the purest spirit of reverence ; and I do say that he deserves better of his Church than that the font at wdiich he was baptized should be cast aside and forgotten. There is a monument on the north side of the great east window worth looking at, on account of its connection with Shakspere, and executed by the same sculptor as his own, to the memory of John Combe. He M^as, as is well known, a money-lender, and the story runs that he asked Shakspere to write his epitaph, the severity of which the miser is said never to have forgiven. But the same thought may be found in different shapes in literature long before Shakspere's time, and there is pro- 26 SHAKSrERE AND HIS BIETHPLACE. bably but little truth in the tradition, as we find John Combe leaving by his will five pounds to Shaksperc.* The church itself is very beautiful, especially when seen as I have often seen it by night, the moon lighting up the yellow-gray tower, etching its great black shadow on the churchyard, and breaking in soft silver lights upon the clerestory windows. Very beautiful, too, must that chancel have been where Shakspere lies, when the windows were glazed with the forms of saints and angels, and the old oak roof hung down with its pendant figures and carved statues. But all this sinks into utter insignificance when compared with the one fact that this is the church where Shakspere knelt and jorayed, and where he confessed the heavy burden and the mystery of the world. I scarcely ever like to put much faith in tradition, but I think we may trust the tradition of Shakspere's deeply religious cast of thought towards the end of his life. I see no reason for disbelieving it. We may surely better accept this than the other ^ile stories we unhesitatingly swallow. This much I know, gathered from some little experience, that generally speaking, all bad traditions are false, but * The common version is that given by Aubrey: — Ten in the Imndred lies here ingraved : 'Tis a hiuidred to ten his soul is not saved: If any man ask who lies in this tomb? Oh! oh! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John a Combe. STRATFORD — THE PARISH CHURCH, 27 that good traditions ever contain some germ of truth; the reason being that human nature is too prone to invent not good, but evil report. And through all Shakspere's plays, as I before said, there ever shines forth a reverence not only for religion, but for the mysteries of life and the world. We do ourselves no good by disbelieving this account, testified, as I surely think it is, by the evidence of the sonnets. And in conclusion I would intreat the reader to ponder over this, one of the most beautiful of Shakspere's autobiographical poems : — Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Fooled by those rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease. Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss. And let that pine to aggravate thy store : Buy terms divine in seUing hoiu-s of dross : Within be fed, without be rich no more : So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And death once dead, there's no more dying then. Sonnet 146. The Lauu School. CHAPTER lY. THE GRAMiLA-R SCHOOL — CHAPEL OF THE GUILD- NEW PLACE. Not far from the cliurcli stood the College of Stratford, whose tithes Shakspere rented, and where John Combe lived, but which has long since been pulled down. The Grammar School, however, where competent authorities say Shakspere must have been educated, still remains. THE GKAMMAE SCHOOL, ETC. 29 It is a long, low building, in the main street, with the school-rooms on the upper story, verj much altered from its original state in Shakspere's time, one of those good old grammar schools that have done so much good for England. Twenty years ago the old stone staircase, roofed over with tile, by which the boys, from the time of Shakspere, had ascended to the school-room, was stand- ing. But this, too, is gone. Here it was, then, that Shakspere was educated ; and in proof of the fact, a desk is shown at which he sat ; but we will not inquire too closely into the matter. Credimus quia incredihile est must be, in the case of the desk, the gromicj for our belief. Ben Jonson tells us that Shakspere knew " little Latin and less Greek ; " most probably, like all of us, whatever is most valuable, he tauoht himself. Thouo-h I, for my part, should be very well content if our grammar schools, and all other schools and colleges, would teach but " little Latin and less Greek," and more German and French. Uuderneath the school-room is the former Hall of the Stratford Guild, where, probably, Shakspere learnt more than in the room above, for there, as was said in a previous chapter, the various companies of players per- formed before the corporation. Adjoining the grammar school is the Chapel of the Guild, which appears, from an entry in the Corporation 30 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. Books, in February, 159a, to have been temporarily used as the school, and the commentators bring forward the passage in Twelfth Night (act iii. scene 2), where Mal- volio is described wearing " yellow stockings, and cross- gartered, like a pedant that keeps a school i' the church," as an allusion to the circumstance, which probably is only accidental, as there used to be school-rooms in many of the old churches, as to this day in the Priory Church at Christchurch, in Hampshire. In the chapel there was a pew belonging to New Place, and here in Shakspere's time the walls were frescoed with paintings, which were whitewashed over by the Puritans, and have since fallen to pieces.* One spot was there which we should all have loved more than any other — New Place, where Shakspere passed his last days. A clergyman of the name of Gastrell, into whose possession it eventually came, annoyed by visitors and inquiries, not only cut down the very mulberry- tree Shakspere planted, but to save the taxes, razed the house itself. I trust he lived to repent of his deed, * In Whclcr's History of Strafford, pp. 98, 99, 100, will be found an account of some of these paintings. Lcland, in his Itinerary, says, " Aboute the body of this chaple was curiously pajnited the Daunce of Death, com- monly called the Daunce of Powlcs, because the same was sometime there paynted about the cloysters on the north-west syde of Powles Church, puUcd down by the Duke of Somerset tempore E. 6." THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, ETC. 31 and that he some day read how a heathen king, when he destroyed Thebes, spared the home of its poet. The old house, says Dugdale, in his History of Warioichshire, was built by Sir Hugh Clopton, Knt., in Henry VH.'s reign, *' a fair house, made of brick and timber," and in Sir Hugh's will was called "the Great House." In 1563 it passed by sale out of the Clopton family, and was purchased in 1597 by Shakspere, who entirely repaired and remodelled it, changing the name to New Place. The fact of his purchasing the best house in Stratford when still young, proves how soon he rose to prosperity. Here, too, at the outbreak of the civil war, Henrietta Maria kept her court for three weeks. A modern house is built on the old site, but in a part of what was Shak- spere's garden, with happy propriety, stands the Stratford Theatre. To myself there has always seemed something very beautiful in Shakspere's coming back to his native town to spend the rest of his days among his friends and kindred. He was contented and happy with his lot, and this "measureless content" is ever the mark of true greatness. And in that town where he was born he was content to die. And fate ordained, as in Raphael's case, that that day which saw his birth was alone worthy to see his death. As was before said, all the relics of former days have 32 SHAKSPEEE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. passed away from Stratford. The College and New Place are both gone; and the house in Chapel Lane, sold by Getley to Sliakspere, has been destroyed. There are not even any picturesque old houses, that so link us with the past, still standing ; one only in the High Street, with its carved barge-boards and its ornamented corbels under the windows, bearing the date of 1596. But the whole town, though, is interesting when connected with Shakspere. Fairer seems the ancient citr, and the sunshine seems more fair, That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air. The very streets speak to us of him. In Timon of Athens (act iv. scene 3) occur the following lines : — It is the pasture lards the brother's sides. The want that makes him lean; the meaning of which was a complete riddle to all com- mentators. The late Mr. Singer very happily proposed " rother's sides," that is, oxen's, obviously the true reading. And in Stratford to this day is there a street still called Rother Street, and formerly the Rother Market, that is, the market for cattle, which is still held there.* Again, * To those who arc interested in Mord-lore, the following note may, per- haps, be acceptable, about a word still used in Warwickshire, but about which so little is known in the dictionaries. liother is said by Golding to mean black cattle, but probably any sort, as it is derived fi-om the Saxon, hnjther, a quadruped, connected with rowt or rawt, to bellow or low like an THE GRAMMAE SCHOOL, ETC. 33 there is Sheep Street, which is invariably pronounced Ship Street by the lower orders. And this pronunciation we find in Shakspere. Thus, in the Comedy of Errors (act iv. scene 1), Antipholus of Ephesus says to Dromio of Syracuse — How now, a madman ? "Why, thou peevish sheep. What ship of Epidamnus stays for me? Again, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (act i. scene 1), Speed thus laments : — Twenty to one he is shipped already, And I have played the sheep in losing him. And Shakspere in one of his poems actually rhymes the word " sheep " as if it were spelled " ship." But leaving these minor considerations, let us look steadily at the one fact, how a truly noble man can ox ; as (Save, from j3odu). We meet with the word in a petition of Parliament from Wotton Basset to Chai'les I., about " the free common of pasture for the feeding of all manner of rother-beasts, as cowes." Again, in the parish register of Harbing, Sussex, is an account of " a well-disposed person who gave a cow to the inhabitants on their keeping in order a bridge called Rother Bridge." And in Worcestershire and Warwickshire, the manure of cattle is still called " rother-soil." The village of Rotherwell, near Hom- castle, where the petition to Heniy VIH. was drawn up in 1536, and Rother- field, a hamlet in Sussex, and the towns of Rotheram and Rotherhithe, I may notice, are derived from this word; hithe, in the last compound; signifying a wharf. 3 34 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. ennoble even material things ; can make the very stones of the street and the very walls of the houses full of romance. It is equally true in another sense than that in which it was written — OutTrard fonns receive Their finer influences fi'om the life within. And so the mere name of Shakspere consecrates the old town for ever, and fills it with beaut3^ And he himself, though long dead, still speaks, and still continues to shed an influence incalculable to all ends of the earth, through all time. The Matliematical School. Back of Grammar Scbool, and Guild Chapel. CHAPTER V. THE chamberlain's BOOKS, ETC. OF STRATFORD. — PRIVATE MANUSCRIPTS IN STRATFORD. Very interesting are tlie Chamberlain's accounts of Strat- ford, for tliey give us all the reliable information, brief as it is, that we possess of Shakspere's family, and as the reader is not likely to inspect them, I have determined to give a short summary of their contents.* They enable us * I here take the opportunity of thanking Mr. W. 0. Hunt for his repeated kindnesses in allo^ving me to inspect the coiporation books, &c. of 3—2 36 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. to see the varying circumstances of Shakspere's father, and prove, apart from all other considerations, that Shakspere might have been driven by sheer necessity and poverty to seek liis fortune. The first entry that I shall quote is dated January 10, 156f, when his father was one of the Chamberlains of Stratford. " Item, payd to Shakspeyr for a pec tymbur . iiJ5." We must, of course, bear in mind that the value of money was nearly three times as much as it is now. And in a meeting of a hall, held January 26 in the same year, we find:— " Item, at the same hall the cliambur ys found in arrerage and ys in det unto John Shakspeyre . . . xxvs. viijc?.-' Proving not only that Shakspere's father was not in want of money, but was a man of some substance. I am not, of course, one of those who care in the least, or think it of the slightest value, to prove that Shakspere, or his father, was '• a gentleman born," as the clown in the Wi?iter^s Tale would say. But I think that this information is important when taken in connection with what follows. Again, in 1565, we find : — Stratford, and in giving me any information he was able. The way in which they are kept and preseiTed might be ])rofitably imitated by other coi-pora- tions, who seem often not at all aware of the valuable histoi'ical matter to be found in their documents. THE CHAMBEELAIN'S BOOKS OF STRATFORD. 37 " Item, pajd to Shakspeyr for a rest of old det ..... iij7. ijs. vijd" '" In this accompt the chambur ys in det unto John Shakspejr to be payd unto hym by the next cham- berlens ..... vijs. iiijcZ." All tending to prove that John Shakspere was a man who could afford to let his money lie by. But his social position in the town is still more distinctively shown by a list dated the 30th of August, 1564, where we find only one burgess giving more than he does for the relief of the poor, who were suffering in that year from the plague.* Another meeting is held on the 6tli and the 27th of September; and again on the 20th of October, when he gave in a similar proportion. All things seem prospering with him. In 1569, he is the chief magis- trate of Stratford. In 1570, he rents Ingon Meadow Farm. In 1575, lie buys the property in Henley Street. The tide of fortune then suddenly turns. Three years afterwards, we find in the corporation books that he, with another alderman, is excepted from paying the * Mr. Halliwell, in his Life of Shakspere, gives this and other documents in ftill from the Chamberlain's books, &c. at Stratford, leaving me nothing new to add, and to the extreme accuracy of his extracts I beg to testify, having compared them with the originals. 38 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. full levy of six and eightpence for equipping " three pikemen, two bellmen, and an archer," showing that from a prosperous man he was fast declining. Again, later in the same year, the state of his affairs is more significantly shown by the fact that, in an order for the relief of the poor, he is excused from any payment. And in the March of the following year, his name is marked as a defaulter for three and threepence, the reduced sum which was levied on him for purchasing the armour. From other sources we know his altered position. In 1578, he is obliged to mortgage for forty pounds his estate of Ashbies, near Wilmecote, which he received with his wife ; and in 1579, he sold the interest of his property at Snitterfield for four pounds. All things are evidently going wrong. Returning, however, to the corporation books, we find the following remarkable entry, dated September 6, 1586 : — " At thys halle William Smythe and Richard Courte are chosen to be aldermen in the places of John Wheler and John Shaxspere; for that Mr. Wheler dothe desyre to be put owt of the companye, and Mr. Shaxspere doth not come to the halles when they be warned, nor hathe not done of longe tyme." He is removed ; and we meet liis name but once or twice more. But in a return procured by Su' Thomas Lucy we find him in 1592, mentioned amongst other THE CHAMBEKLAIN'S BOOKS OF STRATFOED. 39 recusants as staying away from clmrch, for fear of being arrested for debt. To this has the prosperous man been reduced. It is a sad history. Then suddenly comes the wonderful change. In 1596, we find the man, who was almost beggared but four years before, applying to the herald's office for a grant of arms. There can, I think, be but one solution, that the son was now prospering and helped him. And this is corroborated by the fact that we know that in the following year the poet bought New Place. A few more years pass by, and, in 1601, John Shakspere dies, having lived to see the success of his son. It is, indeed, a strange eventful history. And I have told the story in its barest shape, without conjecture or remark, just as it may be read in the Chamberlain's and Corporation books of Stratford, for it needs no comment, no filling up of outlines, to give it pathos and interest. And of Shakspere himself, we know less than even this. A few anecdotes by Aubrey and others,* all probably with * Gossiping old Aubrey's account is as follows: — "Mr. William Shak- spere was borne at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick. His fether was a butcher ; and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade; but when he kill'd a calfe, he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son iu this to^Tie, that was held not at aU inferior to him for a naturall witt, his acquaintance and coetanean, but dyed young. This Wm., being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I gucsse about 18, and was an actor at one of the play- 40 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. some little glimmering of truth, but all going to prove his extreme poverty when first turned adrift in the world ; a few obscure passages in contemporary writers, showing how quickly he rose to fame, is all that we know of liim. In a manuscript list of the quantity of corn and malt in Stratford, in February, ^, a time of great dearth, we find Shakspere possessing the large quantity of ten quarters, and learn from the ward in which his name appears that he was living at New Place.* In the Chamberlain's books for the same year we meet with the following : — " Pd. to Mr. Shaxspere for on lod of ston. . . xcZ." And in a letter of the date of January, j||, preserved amongst the documents of the Stratford Town Council, we find his name mentioned as likely to purchase land at Shot- tery, proving that he was now a man of wealth and means. And this, with one or two other incidental notices in other letters, is all we know of him. No document belonging to Shakspere ever turns up, with one exception, a letter to him from Richard Quiney, which, when I last saw it, was in houses, and did act exceedingly well. Now, B. Johnson was never a good actor, hut an excellent instructor. He hegan early to make cssayes at dramaticjue poetry, which at that time was verj- lowe, and his plays took well. He was a handsome, well-shap't man, very good company, and of a very rcadie and pleasant smooth wit," &c. ♦ This list, as well as the next letter, is quoted in full by Mr. Halliwell, pp. 167, 172. THE CHAMBEKLAIN'S BOOKS OF STRATFORD. 41 the possession of the late Mr. Wheler, of Stratford, and which I shall venture to give in full : — *' Loveinge contreyman, I am bolde of you, as of a ffrende, cravinge your helpe with xxx. li uppon Mr. Bushells and ray securitee, or Mr. Myttens with me. Mr. Rosswell is nott come to London as yeate, and I have especiall cawse. You shall ffrende me muche in helpeinge me out of all the debettes I owe in London, I thanck God, and muche quiet my mynde, which wolde nott be indebted. I am nowe towardes the Cowrte, in hope of answer for the dispatche of my buyseness. You shall nether loose creddyt nor monney by me, the Lorde wyllinge ; and nowe butt perswade yourselfe soe, as I hope, and you shall nott need to feare, butt, with all hartie thanckefullnes, I wyll holde my tyme, and content your ffrende, and yf we bargaine further, you shal be the paie-master yourselfe. My tyme biddes me hastin to an ende, and soe I committ thys (to) yowr care and hope of yowr helpe. I feare I shall not be backe thys night firom the Cowrte. Haste. The Lorde be with yow and with us all. Amen ! ffrom the Bell in Carter Lane, the 25 October, 1598. " Yowrs in all kyndenes, " Rych. Qutnet." " To my lovinge good ffrend and contreyman Mr. Wm. Shackespere deliver thees." 42 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. This is the only scrap of paper -which we know for certain that we possess that Shakspere ever read. It is a precious document — one short glimpse which we catch of the poet. I see not the slightest ground for the conjec- ture, which has been founded upon it, that Shakspere at one period of his life was a money-lender. " Loving good friend," and " loving countryman," is not quite, I should suppose, the way in which a usurer would be addressed upon money matters at any period of the world's history. Nor does the tone of the rest of the note coimtenance the supposition. Better, surely, is it for us to regard this letter as showing Shakspere in the light of a friend helping a friend, possessed with that love, which is so mai'ked in all his writings, and that sympathy which is the finest trait in our human nature. ShaUspei-e's Desk. CHAPTER VI. CHARLECOTE PARK. As I noticed iu the first ciiapter, how happy a circumstance it was that Shakspere's birth should have fallen in the very heart of England ; so, too, do I think it was no less a happy event that it should have happened in the month of April, in " the sweet of the year," and that the flowers should both be blooming when he was born and when he died. It is no mere idle fancy. If there be any truth in the 44 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. definition that poetry is " the unison of man with nature," then, I repeat, it is a happy event that the greatest jioet should have been born in nature's sweetest time. As a much inferior man to Shakspere, Jean Paul Richter used to say, " I, the Professor, and the Spring came together," and if he should think this a happy circumstance with regard to himself, let us, too, not doubt it with respect to Shakspere. Therefore, it shall be April when we will go amongst the fields — where we know Shakspere must have rambled. I suppose every one knows the story of the deer-poaching at Charlecote Park ; how, so it runs, Shakspere was caught in the very act, and brought before the old knight, and how, in revenge, the future poet wrote, and fixed to tlie park -gates, some doggerel, of which I can only say with the German commentators, that it is more marked for Aristophanic abuse than for wit or poetical beauty, and, in consequence, was obliged to fly his home. * Well, to-day, • There are two versions of this dogpcrel; the one most commonly known purporting to be from the MS. notes of Oldys, is as follows: — A parliament member, a justice of peace, At home a poor scarecrow, at London an asse; If lousie is Lucy, as some volkc miscallc it, Then Lucy is lousie, whatever bcfalle it : He thinkcs himselfe grcatc. Yet an asse in his state, We allowe by his earcs but with asses to mate: CHARLECOTE PARK. 45 on Shakspere's birthday will we go to this old Charlecote Park. Our way lies over the bridge across the Avon. The sides of the river, close up to the bridge, are fringed with large marigolds, with their golden shadows floating on the water, and the osier twigs in the aits are tipped with budding silver, where the Warwickshire peasant even now believes that the swallows hide themselves during the winter. The road, for the most part of the way, skirts the river-side. On the hedge-banks, the primroses and violets are nestling in the warm places, and the hedge itself is just dappled with green, whilst here and there the leafless boughs of the blackthorn are completely crusted with flowers. The wryneck, the cuckoo's mate, as the War- wickshire country people call the bird, is singing close to If Lucie is lousie, as some volke miscalle it, Sing lousie Lucy, whatever befalle it. Subsequently, some other modem stanzas were fabricated and joined on to this. The other version, said to have been gathered from an old woman, by Professor Barnes, of Cambridge, thus runs: — Sir Thomas was too covetous, To covet so much deer. When horns 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. 46 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIETHPLACE. in an elm ; and the cuckoo himself is calling his name afar off. On through the little village of Alveston we pass, leaving Alveston pastures to the right, where, later in the year, grow columbines, of which Ophelia speaks, blue, and purple, and white. And now at last, in the distance, rise up the tall elms of Charlecote, and we presently come to a footpath which will lead us through an angle of the park. This is Charlecote, and the Lucys still live here. It is like many more fine old places dotted all over England, and it would be, like them, equally unknown and uncared for, but for Shakspere. Little could the old knight have ever dreamt that, but for that poacher, he would never have been remembered. He, too, would have gone the way of all the other knights and squires of the Lucys. But now Charle- cote and the name of the Lucys will live for ever as connected with Shakspere. Singular, too, this poaching business in connection with higher matters. But perhaps for that one circumstance we should never have had Hamlets and Lears. For from all Ave know of Shak- spere, there was no particle of ambition in his mind. He wrote not for fame. He cared not even to collect his works when written. There they were; care for them who might. He was indifferent to all vanity on the subject. He simply Avas content to do his duty in that state of life in which his calling lay; and he was first CHARLECOTE PARK. 47 driven into it not from choice, but, as far as we can tell, from sheer necessity. Of late years it has become the fashion to throw dis- credit on this poaching story. It will not do for Shak- spere to be made out a common poacher. No doubt whatever, that deer-stealing was a far more venial affair than it is now. But, the story itself, if considered as the account of a wild youthful frolic, there is no reason what- ever to disbelieve. That there is a certain basis of truth in it may be gathered from Shakspere's own writings. As a young man, he seems to have delighted in those sports, in which our forefathers, and, in fact, all English- men, have ever been famous. In his earliest piece, the Venus and Adonis, he describes a horse in all his points ; whilst in the Midsummer Night's Dream, the hounds are equally well drawn. Nor is this the slight matter that it may appear. Shakspere's writings are always fresh and healthy, and much of this is owing to the free play with which he seems to have developed the physical along with the spiritual man. Take the description of hare-hunting in the Venus and Adonis — And when thou hast on foot the pnrbhnd hare, Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles, How he outruns the wind, and with what care He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles : 48 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. The many musits * through the which he goes, Are hke a labp-inth to amaze his foes. Sometimes he runs among a flock of sheep, To make the cunning homids mistake their smell; And sometimes where earth-delving conies keep, To stop the loud pursuers in their yell: And sometimes sortethf vrith a herd of deer: Danger deviseth shifts; ■wit waits on fear; For there his smell with others being mingled, The hot-scent-snuffing hormds are driven to doubt. Ceasing their clamorous cry tiU they have singled, With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out : Then do they spend their mouths : Echo replies. As if another chase were in the skies. By this poor "Wat, far off upon a hiU, Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, To hearken if his foes pursue him still: Anon their loud alaiiims he doth hear: And now his grief may be compared well To one woe-sick, that heai's the passing bell. Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way ; Each envious brier his weaiy legs doth scratch : Each shadow makes him stop, each mm-mur stay; For misery is trodden on by many. And being low, never reheved by any. This description of the run is wonderfully true ; how the " dew-bedabbled -wi-etch " betakes himself to a flock of Gaps in the hedges. f Consorteth. CHARLECOTE PAEK. 49 sheep to lead the hounds off the scent ; how she stops to listen, and again makes another double. Mark, too, the beauty and aptness of the epithets, " the hot-scent-snuffing " hounds, and the " earth-delving " conies ; but more espe- cially mark the pity that the poet feels for the poor animal, showing that he possessed a true feeling heart, without which no line of poetry can ever be written. But returning to the deer-poaching — the matter is, in fact, substantiated by the character of Justice Shallow, who is evidently drawn from the old Knight of Charlecote, with "a dozen white luces" in his coat of arms, which the family still bear, though not in quite such numbers. Dante we know used to put his foes into hell, and Michael Angelo to paint them there, and even Milton alludes to his enemies in the Paradise Lost, and surely we may excuse Shakspere for taking revenge on his old prosecutor, especially in so playful a manner. The first Act of the Merry Wives of Windsor is well worth reading, as we sit beneath the elms in the park. Here is a passage or two which has evidently some connection with the place : — Master Page. I am glad to see your worship is well; I thank You for my venison, Master Shallow. Justice Shallow. Master Page, I am glad to see you; much good do it your heart ! I wished your venison better: it was ill killed. 4 50 SIIAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. I cannot help thinking that there is a double meaning in these last words of *' ill killed," a naive allusion to former days, which at the time would be understood by more than one living person. The old Justice is drawn in a frank and kindly spirit. He loves Master Page : " I love you always with my heart: ha I with my heart." And then they fall to talking about Page's " fallow greyhound who was outrun at Cotsall," that is, on the Cotsvvold hills, and still so called by the Warwickshire peasant, and which may be seen from the roof of Charlecote House. And then FalstafF comes and joins them, " who has beaten the Justice's men, and killed his deer, and broken open his lodge, but not kissed the keeper's daughter;" but all is taken and given in good part. The " hot venison pasty " comes in for dinner, and Master Page hopes " we shall drink down all unkindness." Surely in all this, and in the mention of FalstaflP's " coney-catching rascalls," there is some allusion to the past ; but we will trust with Master Page that the Knight and Shakspere drank down all unkindness; at least we know Shakspere was not the man to bear malice against any one. Again, too, in the Second Part of King Henry IV. (act iii. scene 2), we meet with the old Justice, who mentions his friend. Will Squele, " a Cotswold man ; " and the allusion CHAELECOTE PARK. 51 to the Knight is as marked as ever by FalstafTs saying, " if the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason in the law of Nature, but I may snap at him," a luce being a full-grown pike, and snap at him Falstaff does, taking off all his peculiarities in such a way as to make him a character that will last for all time.* And now that we are in the park, let us linger for a little. The red gables of the hall peep through the still bare elms, where the rooks are cawing above their nests ; the Avon flows silently through the park, and troops of deer are winding down to its banks ; the place itself in all its main features is unaltered from Shakspere's day ; the great gates flanked by their stone towers, leading from the park into the courtyard, are still standing ; and the house itself, the exterior at least, is much the same, with its stone-casemated windows, and its octagon towers at each corner crowned with their vanes ; and inside the old hall still remains with its wide fireplace, and its deep bay * This view is also supported by a statement quoted by Mr. Halliwell from the MSS. of the Rev. Richard Davies, who died in 1708, at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, " that Sir Lucy made Shakspere fly his native country to his great advancement ; but his revenge is 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 aims." 4—2 52 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. window blazoned with armorial bearings, in which the memorable luces are conspicuous.* And as we gaze on the scene, the imagination will go back to the old times, and we can see the hawking party setting out in the morning with its long train, and the favourite little merlin perched on its mistress's wrist, and the falconers with their gyrs and their lanners ; and so they pass on under the old elms, never again to be seen. It is useless speculating on Shakspere's offence, for we know nothing but the bare tradition, which, as we have seen, has probably some basis of truth. Whether he was captured, or what punishment he suffered, we know not ; one local tradition, by the way, makes the scene of the exploit to have been Fulbrook deer-park, which, as Mr. Knight has shown, did not come into the possession of the Lucy family till after Shakspere's death. Certain it is that this incident, combined, perhaps, with his father's declining fortune, caused Shakspere to leave vStratford. What he first did in London we know not ; there is the story that he held horses for people at the theatre-doors, but this, like the tale of Homer being a * In Dugdale's Warwickshire (Thomas's wlition, 1730), there is a ^iew given of Charlecote, with its formal gardens, and its rows of trees, and straight walks, jtist as it appeared in Shakspere's day. CHARLECOTE PARK. 53 beggar and blind, is only a popular exaggeration of his poverty, and the hardships that every poet must go through. Well, then, as we lie on the grass, let us take up old Drayton, who knew Warwickshire well, and thus sings of deer-hunting — not at Charlecote, but at Arden, only some twelve miles off : — How when the hart doth hear The often-bellowing hounds to scent his secret lair, He, rousing, rusheth out, and through the brakes doth daive, As though up by the roots the bushes he would rive : And through the cumbrous thicks as fearfully he makes, He with his branched head the tender sapUng shakes. That sprinkling their moist pearls, do seem for him to weep, When after goes the cry with yelling loud and deep ; That all the forest rings, and every neighbouring place, And there is not a hound but falleth to the chase ; Rechating with his horn, which then the hunter cheers. While still the lusty stag his high-palmed head uprears. And then, after some more lines of description — how the deer takes to the open country, and tries the brooks and the ponds — Drayton relates how the ploughman — His team he letteth stand, To assail him with his goad; so, with his hook in hand. The shepherd him pursues, and to his dog doth hollo. When, with tempestuous speed, the hounds and huntsmen follow. The poor thing next tries the villages, but it is too late : he turns in a last effort upon his foes : — 54 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. The chiirlish-throated hounds then holding him at bay, And, as their cruel fangs on his harsh skin they lay, With his shai-p-pointed head he dealeth deadly wounds. The hunter, coming in to help his wearied hoimds, He desperately assails: until, oppressed by force, He, who the mourner is to his own dying corse. Upon the ruthless earth his precious tears lets falL This is vigorous writing, but it is very poor compared with what Shakspere puts into the mouth of one of the lords in As You Like It (act ii. scene 1 ), where the scene is in the same Warwickshire Forest of Arden : — Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood; To the which place a poor sequestered stag That from the hunter's aim had ta'cn a hurt. Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord. The wretched animal heaved forth such groans That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting; and the big round tears Coiu-s'd one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase ; and thus, the haiiy fool. Much marked of by the melancholy Jaques, Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook. Augmenting it with tears. Mark here how the speaker turns away from the chase itself and the excitement of the sport, to the poor animal, wounded and dying, and weeping almost human tears ; and notice too how Jaques invests the whole with a human sympathy, explaining and interpreting by it human affairs : — CHAKLECOTE PARK. 55 First, for his weeping in the needless stream, Poor deer, qixoth he, thou muk'st a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more I To that which had too much. Then being alone, Left and abandoned of his velvet friends; 'Tis right, quoth hc; thus misery doth part The flux of company. Anon, a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, And never stays to greet him. Ay, quoth Jaques, Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens, ' Tis just the fashion. Wlierefore do you look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there ? This is true poetry, looking upon all things with love and pity, that can see nothing suffering pain without profound sorrow, and which, too, exalts Nature by making her the interpreter of human life and human griefs. But we must leave the old park, and go out again into the road; and, passing the new church of Charlecote, where still remains the white marble e^gj of the old Justice in full armour, and then on through Hampton Lucy, we reach the right bank of the river, and wander on towai'ds Hatton Rock. Very beautiful indeed is Hatton Rock, with its wood sloping down to the Avon. It is full of all the spring flowers — orchisses, and oxlips, and prim- roses, as if April had stolen some from her sister May. There are white and pink wind-flowers still blossoming, and the bluest and sweetest violets, whilst the leaves of the bluebell cover the ground wdth their grass. And all the 56 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. birds of spring have come here^ and loud above tbem all, even in the middle of the day, the nightingale is sinking ; but the oaks and the ash show not a single bud, as if not quite certain that the warm weather had really set in. But we must continue our walk under Rbeon Hill, and so on, still by the bank of the river. The wheat in the corn-fields is now about as high as grass at midsummer, but of a darker, richer green than ever grass is ; whilst the meadows are golden with buttercups. And so, at last, we reach the Wai-wick road, and find ourselves at Stratford, and see the flags flying, and hear the bells ringing, in honour of the day. It is something to ponder on, that men should keep this day, and that they should come year after year to the annual dinner at Stratford. It may not be a very aesthetic mode of celebrating a poet's birthday ; yet men are but men, and ordinary mortals but ordinary mortals. It is something as it is ; we will not ask for more : it is hero- worship in the best way that men at present know. But it is something more to rejoice at, that on this night a festival in honour of the poet is held some three thousand miles away at New York ; and the thought arises, as our Saxon language spreads, where will Shakspere's influence stop ? Already is our tongue lisped in backwoods and CHARLECOTE PARK. 57 desert places ; and there, surely, too, will Shakspere some day help to conquer the material world : with the Bible and with Shakspere we can never go back. Autograpli and Seal of Sir Thomas Lucy. Etra'-ford, frcm Welcombe Grounds CHAPTER yil. WELCOMBE AND SNITTERFIELD. Whilst it is still spring — still " proud-pied April," as Shakspere beautifully calls his natal month — we will wander to some more of the places connected with his name. You can go nowhere round Stratford that is not associated with him. It is to me always a most enjoyable feeling, to know WELCOMBE AND SNITTERFIELD. 59 I am breathing the air that Shakspere breathed, and am wandering where he wandered, and where he must have felt *' all the mighty ravishment of Spring." To-day we will go to Welcombe. Our road lies by the back of the town, and then through fields, until we reach what are called the " dingles " — trenches, most probably, formed, in the first place, by natural causes, and then artificially deepened. Shakspere must have often come this way, for his father possessed property a little farther on, at Snitter- field. And here, still in the Welcombe grounds, stand old gnarled thorn-trees, to-day just budding, which the poet must have seen. They are, above all, worth preserving, for they are probably the only trees in the neighbourhood old enough to have existed in his time, now that the " one elm " boundary-tree on the Birmingham road has been destroyed. The Dingles and Welcombe are closely connected with Shakspere. For it happened that in 1614 an attempt was made to enclose them, with other lands at Bishopton and Clopton, which Shakspere, who had bought the lease of the tithes, and the corporation of Stratford, successfully re- sisted. And in a memorandum, dated " 1614, Jovis, 17 No.," formerly in the possession of the late Mr. Wheler, we find that Shakspere told his cousin Greene, the clerk of the corporation, who had been sent to London on the matter, 60 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. that the " dyngles " were not to be enclosed ; * whilst in another document, quoted by Mr. Bell, with the date of the 1st September, 1615, he is represented as saying that " he was not able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe." To-day everything is full of beauty. The lambs are leaping from land to land. The larch's purple tufts are just hardening into fir-cones ; and the large pale stars of the primroses are shining brilliantly on the hedge banks; and down in the hedge ditch the arum is lifting its one spike, the " long purple " of Ophelia, — That liberal shepherds give a grosser name ; But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them ; and by these names is it known to this day to the War- wickshire peasant boy and girl.f But the passage is of * I trust that the valuable collection of documents referring to Shakspere made by the late Mr. Wheler, will be carefully preserv^ed, and never allowed to leave Stratford. They are by far the most interesting of any that I know in private hands. The memorandum refen-ed to nms as follows: — " 1614 Jovis, 17 No. My cosen Shakspcar comyng yesterdy to town, I went to sec him how he did. He told me that they assured him they ment to inclose no further than to Gospell Bush, and so upp straight Oea^ying out part of the dyngles to the flSeld) to the gate in Clopton hedg, and take in Salisburj'es peece; and that they mean in Aprill to survey the land, and then to gyve satisfaccion, and not before: and he and Mr. Hall say they think ther will be nothyug done at all." f I know that there are several interpretations of " long-purples." Miss Baker, in her excellent Glossary of Northamptonshire Words, conceives it ■^■ ■/ WELCOMBE AND SNITTERFIELD. 61 more value than as a reference to local names, for it shows the instinctive delicacy of Shakspere's mind. He will not put even into the wicked queen's mouth the gross country name. He is as delicate as the most refined lady. Come on a little farther, to the brow of the hill, where, when Shakspere was dead, was fought one of the skir- mishes in the Civil War, and where men have been dug up, buried, in hot haste, in their armour, with their swords by their sides, just as they fell. Come, we have soon reached the top of the hill, and are now in a grass-field, where we shall see Ophelia's " crow-flowers," by which name the butter-cup {ranunculus hulhosus) is still called in Warwickshire, and must not be confounded with the to be the purple loosestrife of the river side. I have no doubt whatever that this latter bears this name, as well as the arum, but it does not, happily, also bear the grosser name. Besides, Shakspere, with his wondei-fiil accuracy in describing Nature, would not have mixed the loosestrife, a summer plant, with " the crow-flowers, nettles, and daisies," all of them spring flowers, which also is the anim. Some commentators say that the orchis is the flower intended; but it is not nearly so like a dead man's fingers as the livid, purple, flabby, finger-like flower of the arum. Besides, about Stratford, at least, the orchis is always called " king's-fingers." But the names of " dead man's fingers and thumb " are common in various parts of the countiy to other plants. Thus, the fiunitory is called " bloody man's thumb " in some places, and the musk-hyacinth " dead man's thumb," as in the old song: — Such flowers which in the meadow grew. The dead man's thumb and harebell blue. 62 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. crow-foot {ranunculus arvensis), of wliicli Mr. Tennyson writes — The cowslip and the crow-foot are over all the hill; and which Milton calls " the tufted crow-toe," the " dill- cup" or "yellow-cress" of the more southern counties, but which does not bloom till the middle of May. We shall find, too, all the flowers mentioned in Lovers Labour Lost (act V. scene 2): — The daisies pied, and violets blue, And ladies'-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Which paint the meadows vdih. delight. The cuckoo-buds are still in Warwickshire now, as in Shakspere's time — the lesser celandines, which are in full bloom when the cuckoo comes. And the ladies'-smocks, also, are called cuckoo-flowers, for the cuckoo is a favourite bird with the English peasant. And a little later in the sprmg Ave should see pansies peeping through the grass, still called throughout the midland counties, as in the Midsummer Night's Dream (act ii. scene 2), love-in- idleness, but in the more southern counties simply, love- and-idle. To me there is always something very beautiful in the names with which the peasants christen their flowers and their birds. There is ever something so simple, yet WELCOMBE AND SNITTERFIELD. 63 characteristic, in them, that many of them are poetry itself. And in our great poets, we always find their names faith- fully preserved, as we have just seen in Shakspere's case. Take that most beautiful of all flowers, the wild columbine, which formerly grew in such abundance in our English woods and pastures, and examine its old name which has passed away, of culver-keys, used by Isaac Walton, a true prose-poet. It is exactly the same in meaning as the scientific term of aquilegia, only far more beautiful and expressive, " culver " signifying a dove, and having refer- ence to the dove-like flowers taking their flight, as it were, away from their nest. And so, through the whole nomenclature of English wild flowers, our wake-robins, ladies'-tresses, daisies, and cuckoo-flowers, and gossamer (still called " gauze o' the summer " in the northern coun- ties), were all names given by true poets, who felt the meaning and the worth of their beauty. And I dwell especially upon this, because in this generation we seem to have thrown aside all love for nature, and prefer to live, penned up like cattle, in a town, to dwelling in the country. I know not how the vast difference can be ex- pressed in words between the times when May-day was a festival for high and low, and when a May-pole was set up in the Strand, and our present day, when London is one vast desert of pavement, with red and blackened ramparts 64 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. of hideous streets, and its outskirts one wilderness of brick- fields ; but it is a difference that is sensibly making itseli felt in our literature. Our road still lies through fields, and, leaving Ingon to the right, where Shakspere's father, as we have seen, in 1570 held a small farm of about fourteen acres, called Ingon Meadow, we reach Snitterfield, where the poet's grandfather and uncle lived, and in the parish register may be found entries of various members of their family ; and where the Ardens, Shakspere's mother's family, also held property, which through his wife came to Shakspere's father. Beyond Snitterfield are the " Bushes," now young timber, but where probably there have been woods from time immemorial. The wild daffodil is still shining through the bare trees, and violets, and primroses, and oxlips are growing so thick together that you cannot help treading down thousands as you walk. The place where Shakspere's father lived is now no longer known, although tradition still points to where his house stood. But I can- not help thinking that Shakspere must have known some of the haunts round Snitterfield. Here, more beautiful than anywhere else, do all the flowers which bloom in his pages still blossom. I have seen these woods, early in the cold days of February, just in the spaces where the trees had been cleared, covered with celandines, making a golden WELCOMBE AND SNITTEEFIELD. 65 sunshine on the ground when none was to be seen in the heaven ; and then, when these were all gone, the earth was snowed over with white wind-flowers ; and as these went, new beauty came, for now the ground was paved with clumps and tufts of primroses and patches of wood- violets ; and when these, too, were gone, the hyacinths arose, encircling the trunks of the trees in a blue haze ; and so one growth of beauty was ever succeeded by another, still more beauteous. I can never go into these woods in the spring time without thinking of that wondrous description in the Wmter's Tale (act iv. scene 3) : — O Prosei-pina, For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall Froin Dis's waggon ! — daffodils. That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beanty; violets, dim, But sweeter than the lids of Junos eyes, Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength — a malady Most incident to maids. Mark the whole passage. How wonderfully accurate it is ! Every flower is mentioned in the order it grows. No idle word-painting, either, is there : no superfluous, common- place epithets ; no colour is laid on for mere colouring's sake, but everything goes to the very essence of the matter. You can see at once that the writer is describing, not for 5 66 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. mere description's sake, but from his pure, deep love of beauty. The daffodils are simply the early flowers, that come before the swallow, marking the advent of both, their earliness being their chief chai'acteristic — blooming when nothing else blooms. And the violets, they are dim, that is, dimly seen among their green leaves ; and their essence is not their colour — not blue or purple, as inferior poets would have called them — but their sweetness : " sweeter than e'en Cytherea's breath." Milton, in a well-knoAvn passage, calls the violet " glowing ; " but there is no dis- crepancy between the two poets : one is describing the budding violet, scarcely seen amidst its green foliage, and the other the full-blown flower, quite purple and bright in the sunshine. And of the primroses, he notes of them, as Milton does, that they die so soon ; not that they actually do, for they last as long as any flower, but because we are so sorry to lose them, that the time they have been with us seems so very short. He calls them pale, as he does also in Cymheline, probably for two reasons: first, because they are pale, when compared with the deep gold of the celan- dine, close to which they so often grow; and secondly, because round Stratford a red variety is found, and the country-people, to distinguish them, as in other parts of England, call them respectively red and white primroses. WELCOMBE AND SNITTERFIELD. 67 Through these " Bushes," too, runs the old lane, where Charles 11. rode, disguised as Jane Lane's servant, in flight after the battle of Worcester, and to this day one portion of the lane is called King's Lane, and not many years ago the peasant would have pointed you out an oak under which the fugitive is said to have taken shelter. But the old lane is now nearly destroyed, and we shall do better to try the fields. So, leaving the farm-house of Cummings behind us, with its gorse cover, now golden with blossoms, we find ourselves once more on the same ridofe of hills of which Welcombe is a continuation. Let us sit here on the stile for a little while. It is the most beautiful, but least known, of all the views round Stratford. I could sit here for hours. Below us lies the real country of Shakspere, outrolled like a map. Take aAvay the canal and the two railroads, and it is essentially the same that Shakspere saw. The hills are the same. And Avon rolls on the same through the midst. And the same gray clouds come moving day after day across the heavens ; and the sun sets down the same. Let us look at it once more, for it is as beautiful a picture of quiet English scenery as can be found anywhere, and when joined with the name of Shakspere, becomes doubly beautiful. No one, I suppose, could look upon Thermopylae without feeling some glow of patriotism, and 5—2 68 SHAKSPEKE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. no one, surely, can look upon this scene without experi- encing some feelings of poetry. Before us rise the Cots- wold Hills, with their outlyer, Meon, with its " copped " head, to use a word of Shakspere's, its sides still covered with wood; and, more to the right, Binton, with its mounded terraces, under which the Avon flows, fettering hamlet to hamlet with its silver links ; and, farther off, the long back of Bredon ; and, still farther, the two peaks of Malvern, cleaving the clear air. And nearer to us lies Wimpcote, where Shakspere's mother lived, and where his father held the farm of Ashbies ; and Shottery, nestling amongst elms ; whilst Stratford and its church are steeped in the golden sunlight. Well, we must now return to the old town. The path- way goes down the hill, and then by the side of high hedges, where the wild pear and apple-trees are now blossoming; one of the most striking features in spring- time of Warwickshire and the Midland districts. On through Lower Clopton, and then crossing the lane, past Clopton House, of which John Combe's daughter was once the mistress. The house has been entirely rebuilt, excepting a portion of the back, where the curious old entrance-gate still stands, and under which Shakspere and John Combe may often have passed. On down Clopton Lane, and so into the main road, where stood the "one WELCOMBE AND SNITTERFIELD. 69 elm," a parish boundary mark, which we know by parish documents was standing in Shakspere's time. But it has been destroyed. We really seem in these days to have lost all reverence for the past. Heme's oak at Windsor was cut down, either through negligence or wilfulness. And now this old elm is gone. It might have been spared as long as it would stand, to have yearly put forth its few green leaves, and that the passer-by might have said, " Shakspere saw this tree." Welcombe Thorns. Anne Hathaway s Cottage CHAPTER VIII. SHOTTERY. If there be one place more interesting than another in connection with Shakspere, it is the little hamlet of Shottery, for here he found his wife. It lies but a few fields' length from Stratford — one of tlie prettiest of Eng- lish villages. Very lovely is it always in April — in " the winter of the blackthorn," as the Warwickshire country- SHOTTERY. 71 people call the season. It consists of but a few cottages and farm-houses, straggling here and there, with their gar- dens full of flowers. The white snowdrops, and the crocuses that had fringed the beds with a border of flame, are all gone, though a few dafi'odils still remain ; but the oxlips, and the primroses, and the jonquil on its slender rush, are shining bright, whilst the turk's-cap lilies, and the tulips, and the columbines, are all springing up, covering the earth with their green leaves, and the apple-trees are just opening their pink rose-buds, and the pears and the cherry-trees are covered with their white May blossoms. At the far end of the village, down in a little valley, where runs the village brooklet, stands Anne Hathaway's cottage. An old, long, timbered house is it, its front chequered with squares, where the vine now stretches its cane-coloured naked arms, its stones crusted with moss, and its thatch, too, green with tufts and clumps of moss. Inside it is nothing more than a simple English cottage, with its high mantel-shelf ornamented with a bright row of candlesticks and earthenware, and its clean floor of Binton stone, sunk and cracked in places. And its garden is simply an English cottage garden, such as you may see thousands of in Warwickshire, but still none the less beautiful, with its well and its wallflowers, and its lavender-shrubs, and kitchen herbs. And behind stands 72 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. a small orchard, which, if it be an early season, will be a mass of pink blossom, whilst the meadows beyond are covered wnth cowslips. All this was here in Shakspere's time. There was the same beauty in the old world as is now. Nothing can alter that. And, doubtless, to Shakspere this place and these fields were, above all others, the most beautiful, for he had seen them through the inspiration of love. Upon Shakspere's house doubts have been thrown, but upon this no shade of suspicion rests. The traveller can believe with a full faith that here Shakspere, when a young man, came and won his wife. It is something to think of, that Shakspere's helpmate — the woman who above every one else influences a man's life for either extreme good or utter evil — here dwelt. I cannot enter into that barren controversy as to who she was, or what her father might be, but of this do I feel certain, that she influenced Shakspere's mind for good, and not for harm. There is, I know, that base theory, for I can call it nothing else, that Shakspere and his wife lived on bad terms. Verily the w^orld is hard upon its greatest men. And what is the foundation for this belief? Simply because in his will Shakspere left her only his second best bed. Perhaps from husband to wife there was no more precious bequest: the bed whereon they had slept SHOTTERY. 73 for years, where their children had been born to them, and where they themselves might hope to die in peace and quietness. I would myself sooner believe in the creeds of South Sea Islanders than in such utter baseness of thought. If there is one thing Shakspere dwells upon more than another it is the duty and love of husband and wife, and of children to parents. To suppose that he was at variance with his wife, is to suppose that he must have ever been o'iving; the lie to his own thoughts. The man who asked — What nearer debt in all Immanity Than wife to husband ? was the man who could best answer the question. There really does seem a sort of epidemic of base belief, among men, which loves to traduce the world's heroes. If one thing be certain, it is that Shakspere was a good man — including under it a good husband. It is no paradox to say that a good poet must be a good man. The reason (^Vernunft) can only flourish with moral truth. It is as true now as it was two thousand years ago, that h a^en? TTOirjTov (Tvve'C^vKTai ry tov avdpdJirov, Kai ovk o'lov rs ayaOov yiviadai 7roiiiTr}v ^t77 Trporepov yevrjOivra avopa ayaOov. Not until the experiment of brambles bringing forth figs succeeds, will the still greater miracle of a bad 74 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. man writing true poetry come to pass. For poetry is, after all, nothing but the reflex of the spiritual nature of a man. And I feel sure of this, that Shakspere's vast superiority over his fellow-dramatists sprang not so much from his intellect as from his higher moral power. Even Ulrici and the best German critics fall into this common error of Shakspere living on bad terms with his wife, perhaps not knowing, as Mr. Knight first showed, that she was already provided for by her dowry, and there was therefore no occasion for her to be mentioned in his will. There is, however, direct testimony of at least her love for her husband, which has been previ- ously quoted, in her affecting and touching wish to be buried with him in his grave. To suppose that Shakspere and his wife had no griefs, no embitterments, is to suppose what never happened to two people on tliis earth. But griefs, if wisely taken, only the more endear affection ; and that was, no doubt, the use to which Shakspere turned his trials and afflictions. Life, whether wedded or unwedded, is action springing from suffering; and the greater the man, and the finer and tenderer his conscience, the more he realizes this truth. Avon at the Weir Brake. CHAPTER IX. THE AVON— LUDDINGTON — WELFORD. We must wait till midsummer to go by the side of the Avon, for then it is in its greatest beauty. So, on some warm day in June will we go. There is a path on both sides of the river, but we will pass over the foot-bridge at the mill, and ascend " the cross of the Hill," for here we shall find a spot curiously connected with Shakspere. 76 SHAKSPERE AXD HIS BERTHPLACE. " I beseech you, sir," says Davy to Justice Shallow, in the second part of King Henry IV. (act v. scene 1), " to countenance William Visor of Wincot against Clement Perkes of the Hill ; " to whom the Justice replies : " There are many complaints, Davy, against that Visor ; that Visor is an arrant knave on my knowledge." Now the Cherry- Orchard Farm, close to which we are, is still called the Hill Farm ; and whoever lives there is to this day spoken of as Mr. A., or Mr. B., of the Hill, and is so named from time immemorial in the Weston parish register. Whilst Wincot is still the name of a farm some three miles to the left, where, probably, there was once a village, the satae Wincot where Christopher Sly runs fourteen- pence in debt with Marian Hacket for " sheer ale," or rather " Warwickshire ale," as Mr. Collier's corrector proposes, and of which reading I suppose all Warwick- shire people will approve.* Depend upon it all these * In Cokain's Small Poems, published in 1658, may be found a curious epigram, addressed to Mr. Clement Fisher, of Wincot, refening to Christopher Sly: — Shakspere your Wincot ale hath much renown'd, That fox'd a be Hillborough is now a mere farmhouse by the river-side, quite lonely enough to have the credit for being haunted. It was formerly an old manor-house, and is but little changed from what it was in Shak spore's time, with its old bams, and its old round-stone dove-house. "Dodging" "PIPING PEBWORTH — DANCING MAESTON." 91 Exliall, as I venture to write, instead of the usual " dadg- ing " Exhall, is, I must suppose, so called on account of the trouble there is to find it. I know that the first time that I went there, I was several hours before I could reach the place, and then, to use an Hibernicism, never found it ; unless two or three straggling cottages make the village. The prettiest place of them all is " Hungry" Grafton, or Temple-Grafton, as it is also called, where some of the old Knights Templar once lived. But where their dwell- ing was, there is nothing now but a farmhouse standing very prettily amongst its elms, and you may trace by the mounds and hollows in the adjoining meadow, where had once been the fishpools of the old Knights. The epithet " hungry " is still true of the soil, which is very poor ; and a farm in the parish, to this day, bears the name of Hungry Arbour Farm. There is little to be seen in the village but a few houses built of the blue lias stone of the district. We will go on. A quiet village footpath through the meadows, by the side of a brook, which flows down to the Avon, will bring us out into the Stratford roacL* But it is not these places alone that should interest us. It is the whole country. And as we go on to Stratford, * For those who take a greater interest in the tradition of the Crab-tree than I can persuade myself to feel, a work has been published, entitled, The Legend of Shakspere's Crab-tree, by C. P. Green. London, 1857. 92 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIETHPLACE. let US now and then stop, and look back, and watch the Autumn sunset fading behind us upon this our last walk, as Shakspere often must have seen it ; flake upon flake of cloud burning with fire behind the Binton Hills, and casting their rosy shadows to the far East, as if there another sun- rise was dawning upon us instead of night. And let us, too, rising from Shakspere even up to higher things, re- member, with some of that feeling of patriotism which so marks his plays, that this was the land, where at Edgehill, the first battle in the great struggle for English liberty was fought, in — His native county, which so brave spirits hath bred. The Foob-Brid^e at the Mill. At Luddington CHAPTER XI. WARWICKSHIRE ORCHARDS AND HARVEST-HOMES. I REMARKED ill tlie first chapter how happy an event it was that Shakspere should have been born in the centre of Englaind, amongst its pastures and its orchards. No poet has such a love for nature as Shakspere ; and it is this deep, true love for her that ever gives him such a freshness, 94 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. and a healthy tone. Take the invocation to Ceres in the Tempest (act iv. scene 1) : — Ceres, most bouuteons lady, thy rich leas Of wheat, lye, barley, vetches, oats, and peas; Thy tiii-ij^ mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep ; Thy banks ^vith peonied and Hlied brims, Which spongy April at thy 'best betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves. Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves. Or his various descriptions of shepherd's life in As You Like It, and other plays, but especially the famous one in the Third Part of King Henry VI. (act ii. scene 5): — God ! methinks it were a happy life, To be no better than a homely swain; To sit upon a hill, as I do now. To can-e out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes, how they iim; How many make the hour fuU complete, How many hom-s bring about the day, How many days will finish up the year. How many days a mortal man may live. * * * * Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely! I suppose no one would wish to prove from these pas- sages that Shakspere was either a farmer or a shepherd, notliing beyond his love for nature and his knowledge of countr}' scenes. And it is this love for nature that makes him ever paint her so fiithfully and accurately; never suffering him to degenerate into any common-place or bald WARWICKSHIRE ORCHARDS, ETC. 95 epithet. Thus, in the first passage above quoted, he calls April " spongy," and in the same play, the briars are " toothed," not merely prickly, or sharp, as ordinary poets would have written, but literally " toothed," with their teeth-like fangs. The leaves with him are not merely green, but " velvet" {Love's Labour Lost, act iv. scene 3), thus giving their very texture and quality. So, again, in the Midsummer NigMs Dream (act iii. scene 2), the choughs are not merely garrulous, or talkative, but " russet- pated ; " and in the same play, the bee is not " humming," or " busy," but " red-hipped ; " or, as we find him calling it in AlVs Well that Ends Well{2iQ,i iv. scene 5)," red-tailed." And so I could go on heaping up instances of his wonderful faithfulness of detail in all his drawings of nature. And rising, too, above this mere accuracy of description, let me add, that he also saw into what has been well called " the open secret " of the universe hid beneath each flower, and each thing, without seeing which, all sight is blindness. But just now, my object is to point out his allusions, not so much to nature, as to certain country matters. Sheep- shearing, and May-day, and Whitsuntide Festivals, and Harvest-homes are all alluded to in his pages. Nay, many tilings are spoken of, both by him and all the Elizabethan dramatists, which can only be understood by one who has long dwelt in the country. And here I am not 96 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. going into any descriptions of the beauty of the Midland orchards, but am in a most prosaic manner about to treat of their fruit, which may, perhaps, throw some httle light on some passages in his plays. Take, for instance, the Clown's speech in the Winter's Tale (act iv. scene 2), " I must have saffron to colour the warden-pies." To this day, in the Warwickshire hedge-rows, the warden-pear, or " hard-warden," as it is more commonly called, still grows. It is of a dark green colour, when hanging on the tree, but, when kept, turns after Christmas to a deep yellow tinge. A peasant once gave me the following graphic description of it : — " It is a winter pear, rather long at the ' snout' end, and narrowisli at the ' stuck' end." A warden- pie is, to this day, in Warwickshire, called a warden-cob, and consists merely of a warden-pear wrapped in a coat of paste, and then baked, forming a most primitive dish. So again, too, in the Second Part of King Henry IV. (act V. scene 3), Davy serves Justice Shallow with " leathern-coats," or leatheran coats as they are now called, an apple peculiar to the neighbourhood of Stratford. A very old tree of this species was standing, till recently, at Weston Sands, from which other young trees have been raised. The fruit is still highly valued, possessing a jfine white pulp, of a delicate acid flavour, beneath its thick, tough rind, whence it derives its name, sometimes to be met WARWICKSHIRE ORCUARDS, ETC. 97 with in the more southern counties, under the forms of " leather-jacket," " buff-coat," and " russetine." Other apples, too, mentioned in his plajs, are found round Stratford. Thus, in the dialogue between Mercutio and Romeo (Romeo mid Juliet, act ii. scene 4) : — Mercutio. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest. Romeo. Nay, good goose, bite not. Mercutio. Thy wit is a very bitter-sweeting ; it is a most sharp sauce. Jiomeo. And is it not well served unto a sweet goose? This species is still grown, especially at Cleeve and Littleton, where it is now prized as a cider apple. It might, with more propriety, be called a " sweet-bitter," than its present country name of " bitter-sweet," for its flavour is at first sweet, and afterwards of a very astringent bitter. The minute allusion to its use as a sauce, which is still the case, I would note as an instance of Shakspere's observance in the commonest things. Again, too, in the First Part of King Henry IV. (act iii. scene 3), we find Falstafi" complaining that he is "withered like an old apple-John ; " and in the Second Part (act ii. scene 4) we find two drawers thus conversing : — First Draiver. What the devil hast thou brought there ? Apple- Johns ? Thou knowcst. Sir John cannot endure an apple-John. Second Draiver. Thou sayest trae. The prince once set a dish of ai^ple- Johns before him, and told him, there were five more Sir Johns: and, putting oft' his hat, said, " I will now take my leave of these six diy, round, old, withered knights." .7 98 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. This very apple which gave so much offence to Falstaff, may still be found at " Dancing " Marston ; but only one tree remains, like that of the leather-coat at Weston Sands, quite prostrate with age ; and another at Bishopton, but the species is fast wearing out and becoming very scarce. The fruit is red and ruddy, of good quality, and in perfec- tion in September. The common notes upon this passage say that it is " an apple which will keep two years," the very reverse of the case, altogether missing the prince's loke, Avhich likens Sir John to his red and ruddy name- sake, which so soon becomes old and withered. There is also, I may notice, in Warwickshire, a species of crab, called crab-John and crab-Jack, which will keep almost for years, and is used by the farmers for puddings in winter time, and also mixed with pears in making perry, being very juicy, but too sour by itself to make cider ; but it must not be confounded with Shakspere's api)le- John, of which Philips says : — Its withered rind, entrenched By many a forrow, aptly represents Decrepit age. drier, B. i. thus corroborating the fitness of the prince's simile.* * Steevens appositely quotes a passage from the Ball, by Chapman and Shirley :— " Thy man A])i)lo-Jolui, that looks As he had been a se'nnight in the straw, A-ripening fur the market." WARWICKSHIRE ORCHARDS, ETC. 99 Again, too, in the same play (act v. scene 3) we find Shallow, in his house in Gloucestershire — only the other side of the Avon — saying to Falstaff, " You shall see mine orchard, where in an arbour we will eat a last year's pippin of mine own grafting, with a dish of carraways;" which do not, of course, mean the comfits of that name, as most of the notes say, but the carraway-russet, an apple still well known, both in the midland and southern counties, for its flavour and its good keeping qualities. So, too, in Love's Labour's Lost (act iv. scene 2), we meet the old pedant Holofernes talking about the " pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of cwlo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven, and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth ;" which is, in its way, an excellent description, for the pomewater is a large apple, looking very tempting on the tree, but, in reality, excessively sour.* And now for a few words about Warwickshu'e harvest- homes, when, as Shakspere says : — The Summer's green is girded iij) in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard. Every one will remember the description in the Winter'' s * Alhided to in the old ballad, Blue Cap for Me : — " Whose cheeks did resemble two roastmg pomewaters." 100 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BmT"HPLACE. Tale (act iv. scene 3) of the sheep-shearing supper, which, by the way, Shakspere has most unaccountably placed, when — The year's growing ancient — Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth Of trembling winter, — instead of at the latter end of the spring. Well, sheep shearing suppers are out of date, but this passage — Fie, daughter! when my old wife liv'd, upon This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook ; Both dame and ser\'ant; welcom'd all; sen''d all; Would sing her song, and dance her turn: now hete At upper end o' the table, now, i' the middle, On his shoulder, and his: her face o' fire "With labour; and the thing she took to quench it. She would to each one sip, — might to this day stand as a description of a harvest-supper at some of the old Warwickshire farm-houses. And at such feasts some short snatches of the songs found in Shakspere's plays may still be heard. Many of them turn upon the same subject as Ophelia's, and it is rather diffi- cult to separate the dross from the gold without injury to the sense. In one that I have heard occur the very linos: — Then up he rose, and donned his clothes, And dupped the chamber door. WARWICKSHIRE ORCHARDS, ETC. 101 And in answer to the entreaties of the maid, which are word for word with Ophelia's, — You promised me to wed ; the faithless swain replies, — I ne'er will wed with any one So easily found as you; which is the same in sense as the lines in Hamlet. And in another song, touching on the same subject, the treacherous lover tells the forlorn maiden, — Go home to your father's garden: * * * * Eor there's a herb in j'our father's garden, Some will call it rue: When fishes fly, and swallows dive, Young men they will prove true. It is the same sad rue, the " herb o' grace o' Sundays," which Ophelia reserves for herself. I have but little doubt that Shakspere heard many of the songs, which he has from memory transcribed into his plays, sung at wakes and festivals. " Let us cast away nothing, for we may live to have need of such a verse," he writes in Troilus and Cressida ; and the songs that old Autolycus sings in the Winter^s Tale, Shakspere may, perhaps, have picked up from some strolling pedlar, and improved with his own thoughts.* * I subjoin, for the sake of comparison, an ordinary pedlar's song, from Munday's Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington (act iii. scene 1), with 102 SHAKSPERE AND HIS BIRTHPLACE. Autolycus's, in the Winter's Tale (act iv. scene 3). The reader will at once see how Shakspere has idealized the theme. First, for Munday's: — AVhat lack ye? what lack ye? What is it you will buy? Any points, pins, or laces, Any laces, points, or pins? Fine gloves, fine glasses. Any busks or masks. Or any other pretty things? And now for Shakspere's: — Lawn, as white as driven snow; CypiTis, black as e'er was crow ; Gloves, as sweet as damask roses; Masks for faces, and for noses; Bugle-bracelet, necklace-amber, Perfume for a lady's chamber; Come, cheap for love, or buy for Any coney, coney skins? [money. Or laces, points, or pins? Fair maids, come choose or buy ; I have pretty poking-sticks, And many other tricks, [money. Come, choose for love, or buy for Golden quoifs, and stomachers, For my lads to give their dears; Pins and poking-sticks of steel; What maids lack from licad to heel. Come buy of me, come: come buy, come buy; Buy, lads, or else your lasses en,*. What a diflcrcnce there is even in the verj- rhythm of the lines ? ^' s. U'ba-i ,