NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY
We find Shakespeare, just out of his teens, travelling on the road to
London, and it is worth while to see what equipment and what resources
he is taking to the metropolis. It is safe to assume that he has no
money, and that his local reputation is not one of the very best, though
the worst to be urged against him is that he has loved not wisely but
too well--and this fault has not been too clearly substantiated--and
that he has ignored the game laws, as so many men had done before, have
done since, and will do as long as these laws exist.
The early life of a truly imaginative man had been passed in the most
beautiful surroundings that rural England can provide, and by reason,
perhaps, of the lack of restrictions, had helped him to enlarge his
experiences and develop all the facets of a luminous mind. The
expression is chosen deliberately. Man's mind is like a diamond, and
experience is the lapidary. Every action, every stroke of good fortune
or of bad, leaves its definite mark; every association does the same. As
a boy Shakespeare lived in close touch with Nature. His father's
business would have brought him into contact with farmers, given him
the freedom of their fields, taught him the significance of the seasons.
Even now, when glimpses of Elizabethan England are few and far between,
we are touched by the supreme peace that still broods over land on which
the old-time houses, with their thatched roofs or well-worn tiles, their
ingle nooks, their dormer windows, their oak rafters and their many
gables, tell of a time when the jerry-builder was not and the suburban
villa had not yet come into being. It was an age of beauty, and the
walks round Stratford remain beautiful to this hour, despite the growth
of villadom and the advent of the railway line.
We can follow the roads that Shakespeare knew, to the woods of his
poaching exploits, and the meadows over which he passed to thatched,
half-timbered Shottery, where the village inn was still standing when
men, now middle-aged, were born. Rustic gardens, white-blossomed
orchards, tiny brooks beloved by the kingfisher, trees that may have
seen the courting of the poet and his wife, still remain to tell the
story of England's unchanging charm. In the spring and early summer
there is such an atmosphere about the countryside as George Meredith has
created in his "Richard Feverel" when Richard and Lucy meet in "the very
spring-tide of their youth." Doubtless there are other regions in
plenty, scattered through the length and breadth of our fascinating
English country, wherein the attractions are hardly less than here; but
Shakespeare's genius has hallowed Stratford for us, because that
particular countryside made him a poet and sent him to London, full of
such inspiration as has not fallen to any other Englishman even in times
when the literary activity of the age has been at its highest point.
=MARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE=
It may be suggested in passing that much of the early romance associated
with Anne Hathaway's cottage is spurious, and the worthy people who tell
of the poet's courtship there overlook the fact that his relations with
his wife were clandestine and his marriage almost a secret union. But
the cottage itself is beautiful enough to account for the enthusiastic
departure from the path of truth, if not to justify it.
Lying on the left as you come out of Stratford to Shottery, past the
post-office, to the "Bell Inn," where the road has crossed a stream, we
see the cottage, and, _horribile dictu!_ a row of modern brick-built
cottages for background! Long, thatched and creeper-covered, built upon
slabs of stone, with timber and plaster above, with tiny windows under
the thatch, surrounded by a well-filled and carefully tended garden, the
place makes a quick and enduring appeal to the imagination, even though
the legends associated with it are, for the most part, legends and
nothing more. It is easy to realise the supreme beauty of the scene that
Shakespeare knew, to understand how the lovers' secret meetings were
made all the more memorable by reason of their surroundings. The scene
and the associations went to the making of the poet; they were among the
treasures he carried up to London when he was compelled to leave
Stratford behind him and time and distance were smoothing all the little
troubles that had beset his short and uneventful life. He must have
heard Stratford and Shottery calling to him in the heart of the town,
for when his name was made and his future assured, he came back to home,
wife, and little ones to enjoy the "poor remains" of life.
On his road to and from Shottery, he would have passed "under the shade
of melancholy boughs" and watched the "guest of summer, the
Temple-haunting martlet," that built under the eaves of Anne Hathaway's
house. Doubtless to his mood of elation or depression, and to his quick
and intimate response to the wild life round him, we owe those clear
impressions that connect certain scenes and phases of our life with his
more familiar utterances. To hear the cuckoo and the nightingale to-day
in the woods round Shottery and Wilmcote is to recall some of the poet's
most inspired moods. But it is not the familiar birds alone that caught
the poet's eye and stimulated his imagination. In the days of his youth,
before he went to London, he must have studied bird life closely and
accurately. Nearly fifty wild birds find mention in his plays and poems,
and for the most part they are birds he would not have seen in London,
though in his day the metropolis was small enough, and the outer London
of his time was well-nigh as wild and wooded as the least frequented
parts of Warwickshire to-day. The halcyon or kingfisher, the
white-breasted water-ouzel, the skylark, the "ruddock" or
robin-redbreast, the wren, the green plover, the woodcock--these serve
for some of his moods; but he mentions eagle, kite, hawk, buzzard, owl,
falcon, cormorant, and a number of others, always with discretion and
with the full measure of knowledge vouchsafed to his time. Classical
lore and country superstitions are sometimes found in his references,
but the most of them point to the poet's own loving observation at a
time when there was no widespread interest in birds or beasts, unless
they had a part to play in hunting. Shakespeare's references to the
chase are accurate and suggest first-hand observation, coupled with the
keen instincts of the sportsman, and it is easy to see that the
extraordinary receptivity of his mind enabled him to take impressions
from every aspect of life.