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SHAKESPEARE
THE PILGRIM BOOKS
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
THE PILGRIM BOOKS
_General Editor_--
S. L. BENSUSAN
1. SHAKESPEARE
2. LAMB
3. WORDSWORTH
_Others in Preparation_
=THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT AT SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE=
WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE
HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS
BY
S.L. BENSUSAN
WITH TWELVE DRAWINGS IN CRAYON BY
A. FORRESTIER
AND FOUR PORTRAITS
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
AND EDINBURGH
HUNC LIBELLUM
REVERENDISSIMO
M. GASTER, PH.D.
VIRO ERUDITISSIMO
PRAECEPTORI PERITISSIMO
AMICO FIDELISSIMO
MAGNA CUM REVERENTIA
D.D.D.
OLIM DICIPULUS
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. STRATFORD-ON-AVON 1
II. THE POET'S YOUTH 8
III. NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY 15
IV. FIRST DAYS IN LONDON 20
V. SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON 24
VI. THE STAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY 28
VII. SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY PLAYS 35
VIII. THE ELIZABETHAN TAVERNS 41
IX. THE MIDDLE PERIOD 46
X. THE LATEST PLAYS 50
XI. BACK AGAIN IN STRATFORD 55
XII. THE POET'S DOMESTIC LIFE 64
XIII. STRATFORD AS IT WAS 72
XIV. THE CLOSE OF LIFE 81
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE ELY PORTRAIT AT SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE _Frontispiece_
THE HOME OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE, SNITTERFIELD _Facing p._ 4
ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE--INTERIOR " 12
MARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE " 16
THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON " 20
ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE " 24
GUILD CHAPEL AND SCHOOL " 28
HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND THE AVON, STRATFORD " 32
BEN JONSON " 36
CHARLECOTE HALL " 40
INTERIOR OF ST. SAVIOUR'S AT SOUTHWARK " 44
THE FIRST GLOBE THEATRE " 48
MICHAEL DRAYTON " 52
THE MERMAID INN " 64
SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON " 72
SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON " 80
PREFACE
In telling the story of Shakespeare's life and work within strict limits
of space, an attempt has been made to keep closely to essential matters.
There is no period of the poet's life, there is no branch of his
marvellous work, that has not been the subject of long and learned
volumes, no single play that has not been discussed at greater length
than serves here to cover the chief incidents of work and life together.
If the Homes and Haunts do not claim the greater part of the following
pages, it is because nobody knows where to find them to-day. Stratford
derives much of its patronage from unsupported traditions, the face of
London has changed, and though we owe to the painstaking researches of
Dr. Chas. Wm. Wallace the very recent discovery that the poet lodged
with a wig-maker named Mountjoy at the corner of Silver and Monkwell
Streets in the City of London, much labour must be accomplished before
we shall be able to follow his wanderings between the time of his
arrival in and departure from the metropolis.
For the purposes of this little book many authorities have been
consulted, and the writer is specially indebted to the researches of Dr.
Sidney Lee, the leading authority of our time on Shakespeare, and the
late Professor Churton Collins.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
CHAPTER I
STRATFORD-ON-AVON
To read the works of a great master of letters, or to study the art of a
great painter, without some first-hand knowledge of the country in which
each lived and from which each gathered his earliest inspiration, is to
court an incomplete impression. It is in the light of a life story and
its setting, however slight our knowledge, that creative work tends to
assume proper proportions. It is in the surroundings of the author that
we find the key to the creation. For, as Gray has pointed out in his
"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," there are many in the dust and
silence whose hands "the rod of Empire might have swayed, or waked to
ecstasy the living lyre."
We know that it is not enough to have the creative force dormant in the
mind; environment must be favourable to its development, or it will
sleep too long. We see in the briefest survey of the lives of the poet,
the statesman, the soldier and the artist, that there are many great
ones who would have been greater still were it not that then, as now,
"man is one and the fates are three."
To study the life history of a man and to consider its setting is to
understand why he succeeded and how he came to fail, and our wonder at
his success will not be lessened when we find that some simple event,
favourable or untoward, was the deciding factor in a great life. The
hour brings the man, but circumstances mould him and chance leads him to
the fore, unless it be true that "there's a Divinity that shapes our
ends, rough hew them how we will." In our own time we have seen how the
greatest empire-builder of Victorian history, Cecil John Rhodes, came
into prominence because he was sent to South Africa for the cure of weak
lungs. And, looking back to the life and times of William Shakespeare,
who has summed up for so many of his fellow-countrymen, and still more
strangers, the whole philosophy of life, we shall see that he became
articulate through what he may have reasonably regarded as mischance.
Out in the autumn fields, the pigeon and the squirrel, to say nothing of
other birds and beasts, hunt for acorns to eat or store. On the road to
roost or storehouse many are dropped. Of these no small number fall on
waste ground; a few take root, only to be overgrown or destroyed before
they reach the beginnings of strength. But here and there an acorn drops
on favourable soil; the rich earth nourishes it; the germ, when it has
lived on all the store within the shell, can gather its future needs
from the ground. Little roots and fibres pierce the soil; a green twig
rises to seek the sun; there are long years of silent precarious growth,
and then the sapling stage is passed and a young tree sends countless
leaves to draw nourishment from air and sky. Following this comes the
time when no storm can uproot the tree that a hungry rabbit might have
destroyed in days past--something has come to complete maturity and has
developed all the possibilities that were equally latent in so many
million acorns to which growth was denied. As it is with plants, so it
is with men, and thus it becomes permissible to compare literature with
a forest wherein are so many trees, so many saplings, and so much dense
undergrowth, from which trees of worth and beauty may one day spring. In
our national forest there is an oak that first saw life in the year
1564. There are many older trees of splendid worth, but this is the one
which stands alone. What manner of soil nourished it? Whence came its
strength? This little work is a brief attempt to set the well-known
answer down again in a form that may offer a certain convenience in
point of size and selection to lovers of a great poet.
When we read Shakespeare's plays for the first time, it is at once
apparent that the poet was a countryman. He has the knowledge, founded
upon close observation, that we associate with the highly intelligent
dweller in the countryside, the man or woman from whom the poet differs
merely in his supreme capacity for expression. We turn again to his
scenes of city life to find he is no less at home there. It is quite
another world, but he has fathomed it; quite another company of men, but
he has gauged their strength and weakness, the pathos and humour of
their lives. He deals with rulers and courts, and his touch is as sure
and faithful as before; his genius has taught him that kings and queens
are men and women like the rest of us, that environment cannot alter
fundamental characteristics, that royalty is swayed by the same forces
that rule the lives of lesser men.
Only when he deals with foreigners the poet of Avon is often an
unconscious humorist, for his store of geography is inadequate to meet
the small demands upon it, and some of his simple errors, such as "the
seashore of Bohemia," excite our kindly laughter now. But it is easy to
see that the poet's habit of accurate observation was established in the
country and that he applied to the larger life of London the self-taught
methods he had acquired in the little town of his birth.
It is on this account that the minds of his admirers turn to
Stratford-on-Avon, and the footsteps of enthusiasts are directed, year
in, year out, to the pleasant county of Warwickshire. In and around
Stratford we can keep company with the poet in his earliest and latest
days; nor can the bustling crowds of tourists from all parts, the
clamour of innkeepers and coach-drivers, the ever-present determination
to turn a national genius to profitable account, stir our deep content.
Men and public places have changed, but the country is as it was when
William Shakespeare, poor and little known, was gathering the stores of
knowledge and habit of thought that were to lift him to heights no
following Englishman has scaled.
=THE HOME OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE--SNITTERFIELD=
The wayfarer coming into Stratford for the first time to pay his mute
tribute to the poet who seems destined to live as long as our
civilisation, will enjoy a pleasant impression if he chance to have
chosen a fine day and to have reached the town by the road. Stratford
lies on the right bank of the river Avon, a beautiful river whose waters
flow peacefully over the level land on their way from Naseby to the
Severn. The town was happily planned of old time, and owed its inception
to the establishment of a monastery shortly after the Anglo-Saxon began
to take an interest in Christianity. It is clear that Stratford enjoyed
three centuries of comparative peace, if not of substantial progress,
before Norman William and Saxon Harold met at Senlac; echoes of that
fray could not have pierced to the little town on Avon's banks. Nor have
the subsequent centuries done much to disturb its natural seclusion.
The hand of the builder has raised streets of prosperous shops and
new-built villas; small hotels abound; there is a bustling railway and a
sleepy canal. A Memorial Theatre overlooks the river, and cyclists pass,
not singly but in battalions, along peaceful roads leading to Birmingham
or Warwick. Throughout the summer season Stratford-on-Avon becomes a
metropolis "whereunto the tribes of men assemble." To "do Stratford" is
an article of faith with American visitors, even if they have no more
than a week in which to master the wonders of Great Britain and Ireland.
Germany sends many admirers, for nowhere is Shakespeare's genius more
widely recognised, more highly esteemed, than in that country. London
and the big midland towns of England send visitors daily.
Let it be suggested, with all due respect to those who think otherwise,
that there is no reward for those who seek to discover Shakespeare's
land in the course of a few hours' hurried travel. They will see
Shakespeare's alleged birthplace, and the room in which he is said,
without much authority, to have been born. They will pass through the
Museum, Library, and Picture Gallery; they may even admire the rather
poor monument in Holy Trinity Church, and perhaps a few other sights
that the town affords; and then, with a welter of confused impressions,
will return whence they came. There is no reward for this frenzied
exercise; it is impossible to gather any impression of the scenes in
which the poet passed his early and later days, from a hurried scamper
through the town and a frank acceptance of local traditions, concerning
which some of our leading Shakespearian scholars have much destructive
critical comment to offer. He who wishes to establish some manner of
association with the poet must enter Stratford as the poet left it--by
the road. He should leave the railway and walk in from Warwick, find
quiet lodgings, of which there is no lack, in the town, and visit in
turn the highways and by-ways of Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcote,
Aston Clinton, Shottery, Wotten Wawens, Charlecote, and a dozen other
points of interest, of which he will learn when he has definitely left
the ranks of excursionists and has made friends among the people of
Shakespeare's countryside. He will not add a jot to our knowledge of
country or people--a hundred pens have said all there is to say--but he
will come away with a measure of appreciation and recognition that will
make the significance of the poet, as an interpreter of a life that
never changes, far more vital and true. Here is no small reward for a
truly delightful holiday in country full of the best traditions of rural
England. And the intelligent visitor will be one with the great lovers
of Shakespeare, living and dead, from Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, and
Milton down to Matthew Arnold and our own contemporaries, even though
his contribution to the poet's praise be no more than a little note in a
private diary. His journey will open a fresh field of literary research,
if he be not already a student of Elizabethan literature. He will be
enrolled on the long and unexhausted list of pilgrims to the shrine of
the country's greatest poet, the man whose thoughts have lost nothing of
their depth and beauty in the slow passage of three eventful centuries.