[Illustration: 0074]
[Illustration: 0075]
|THE traveller who would enter into the full charm of "Shakspere's
country" is recommended to start from the quaint and ancient city of
Coventry, and to pursue the high road to Warwick, taking Kenilworth in
his way. There is scarcely a walk in England more perfect in its own
kind of beauty than the five miles from Coventry to Kenilworth. A wide,
well-kept road follows, almost in a straight line, the undulations
of the hills. Soon after leaving the city, a broad, flower-enamelled
coppice, open to the road, is reached; then the hedgerows are flanked
on both sides with noble elms, forming a stately avenue, through which
glimpses are ever and anon obtained of purple wood-crested hills in
the distance. Broad rolling pastures, and cornfields, rich in promise,
stretch away on either hand; the grassy road-side and high hedge-banks,
showing the deep red subsoil of the sandstone, or variegated clays of
the red marls, are bright with wild flowers, and the air is musical
with the song of birds. Travellers are few; the railway scream in the
distance, to the left, suggests that all who are in a hurry to reach
their destination have taken another route; if it be holiday time,
parties of young men on Coventry bicycles are sure to flash past; but
it is our delight to linger and enjoy. We are, as Thomas Fuller says,
in the "Medi-terranean" part of England; and English scenery nowhere
displays a more characteristic charm.
[Illustration: 0076]
Kenilworth old church and the castle at length are reached; the latter,
a stately ruin. The visitor will duly note Cæsar's Tower, the original
keep, with its walls, in some parts, sixteen feet thick; then the
remains of the magnificent banqueting hall, built by John of Gaunt,
and, lastly, the dilapidated towers erected by Robert Dudley, Earl of
Leicester, one part of which bears the name of poor Amy Robsart. No
officious cicerone is likely to offer his services; a trifling gate-fee
opens the place freely to all, either to rest on the greensward, or to
climb the battered ramparts; to survey, at one view, the ancient moat,
the castle garden, the tilt-yard, where knights met in mimic battle;
the bed of the lake, where sea-fights were imitated for a monarch's
sport--in short, the impressive memorials of a fashion in life and act
that have long since yielded to nobler things. "The massy ruins," says
Sir Walter Scott, "only serve to show what their splendour once was,
and to impress on the musing visitor the transitory value of human
possessions, and the happiness of those who enjoy a humble lot in
industrious contentment." There are other lessons, too, national,
as well as individual; and we turn away from old Kenilworth with
thankfulness that the ruins of the nineteenth century will at least tell
to our descendants no tales of feudal tyranny, of royal murders, or of
sanguinary civil strife.
[Illustration: 0078]
The town of Kenilworth is of considerable size, containing, at the last
census, more than 3,000 inhabitants. The traveller may rest here, or in
a quaint little hostelry close to the castle gates, not forgetting to
visit the ancient church--that at the other end of the town is modern,
and need not detain him. After due refreshment, he will probably be in
the humour for another five miles' walk, or drive, along a road almost
equal in beauty to that by which he came, to Warwick, calling at Guy's
Cliff by the way. He had better make up his mind, for the time at least,
to believe in Guy, "the Saxon giant who slew the dun cow," and, after a
life of doughty deeds, retired to a hermitage, here where the Avon opens
into a lake-like transparent pool, at the foot of the exquisitely-wooded
cliff. The cave of the giant's retreat may be seen; and the traveller
will be charmed by the fair mansion on the one side overhanging the
Avon, and on the other opening down a long avenue, flowery and verdant,
to the high road.
[Illustration: 0079]
Warwick Castle is so frequently visited, that it needs little
description. The winding road, cut out of the solid rock from the
lodge to the castle gate, is a fitting approach to the stately
fortress-palace, and well prepares the visitor for what is to follow.
Some will prefer to roam the gardens, so far as watchful custodians
permit, turning aside to the solid-looking Gothic conservatory to see
the great Warwick vase, brought from fair Tivoli; others will follow the
courteous housekeeper down the long suite of castle halls, poting the
glorious views from the deep embayed windows, duly admiring the bed in
which Queen Anne once slept, with the portrait of her majesty, plump and
rubicund, on the opposite wall. The logs heaped up, as logs have been
for centuries, in readiness for the great hall-fire, carry the mind
back to olden fashions; the inlaid table of precious stones, said to be
"worth" ten thousand pounds, excites a languid curiosity; the helmet
of Oliver Cromwell, an authentic relic, suggests many a thought of
the great brain which it once enclosed; and, while other items in the
antique show pass as phantasmagoria before the bewildered attention,
there are some portraits on the walls, to have seen which is a lasting
pleasure of memory. It is a happy thing that these were spared by the
fire of 1871; justly counted as a national calamity rather than a
family misfortune. The traces of the conflagration are now almost wholly
removed, although some priceless treasures have been irrecoverably lost.
[Illustration: 0080]
At the lodge, by the castle gate, there is a museum of curiosities,
which will interest the believers in the great "Guy," and will amuse
others. For there is the giant's "porridge pot" of bell-metal, vast in
circumference and resonant in ring; with his staff, his horse's armour,
and, to crown all, some ribs of the "dun cow" herself! What if, in sober
truth, some last lingerer of a species now extinct roamed over the
great forest of Arden, the terror of the country, until Sir Guy wrought
deliverance?
Warwick itself need not detain us long; the church, however, demands
a visit; and the Beauchamp Chapel, with its monuments, is one of the
finest in England. But the pedestrian will probably elect to spend the
night at Leamington, close by, before continuing his pilgrimage. A visit
to the ever beautiful Jephson Gardens, with their wealth of evergreen
oaks, soft turfy lawn, and broad fair water, will afford him a
pleasant evening, and the next morning will see him _en route_ for
Stratford-upon-Avon.
[Illustration: 8081]
Again let him take the road, drinking in the influence of the pleasant
Warwickshire scene; quiet, rural loveliness varying with every mile, and
glimpses of the silver Avon at intervals enhancing the charm. A slight
détour will lead to Hampton Lucy, and Charlecote House and Park,
memorable for the exploits of Shakspere's youth, and for the worshipful
dignity of Sir Thomas Lucy, the presumed original of Mr. Justice
Shallow. The park having been skirted, or crossed, the tourist
proceeds three or four miles further by a good road, and enters
Stratford-upon-Avon by a stone bridge of great length, crossing the Avon
and adjacent low-lying meadows.
The bridge, which dates from the reign of Henry VII., has been widened
on an ingenious plan, by a footpath, supported on a kind of iron
balcony.
It is easy, however, to imagine its exact appearance when Shakspere
paced its narrow roadway, or hung over its parapet to watch the skimming
swallow or the darting trout and minnow.
This Warwickshire town has been so often and so exhaustively described,
that we may well forbear from any minute detail. Every visitor knows,
with tolerable accuracy, what he has to expect. He finds, as he had
anticipated, a quiet country town, very much like other towns; neither
obtrusively modern, nor quaintly antique--in one word, common-place,
save for the all-pervading presence and memory of Shakspere. The house
in Henley Street, where he is said to have been born, will be first
visited, of course; then the tourist will walk along the High Street,
noting the Shakspere memorials in the shop-windows, looking up as he
passes to the fine statue of the poet, placed by Garrick in front of the
Town Hall.
At the site of New Place, now an open, well-kept garden, with here and
there some of the shattered foundations of the poet's house, protected
by wire-work, on the greensward, the visitor will add his tribute of
wonder, if not of contempt, to the twin memories of Sir Hugh Clopton,
who pulled down Shakspere's house in one generation, and of the Rev.
Francis Gastrell, who cut down Shakspere's mulberry-tree in another.
Just opposite are the guild chapel, the guild hall, with the
grammar-school where the poet, no doubt, received his education; and,
after some further walking, the extremity of the town will be reached,
where a little gate opens to a charming avenue of over-arching
lime-trees, leading to the church.
[Illustration: 0082]
Before he enters, let him pass round to the other side, where the
churchyard gently slopes to the Avon, and drink in the tranquillity and
beauty of the rustic scene. Then, after gaining admission, he will go
straight to the chancel and gaze upon those which, after all, are the
only memorials of the poet which possess a really satisfying value, the
monument and the tomb.
[Illustration: 0084]
As all the world knows, the tomb is a dark slab, lying in the chancel,
the inscription turned to the east. No name is given, only the lines
here copied from a photograph:
"Good Frend for Jesvs sake forbeare
To DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEAEE:
Blest be ye man v'spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yl moves mv bones.
[Illustration: 0085]
To suppose these lines written by Shakspere himself, seems absurd.
They are not, indeed, the only doggrel unjustly fathered upon him. The
prostrate figure on a tomb in the east wall of the chancel, representing
Shakspere's contemporary and intimate, John-a-Combe, suggests another
stanza, even inferior in taste and diction. But we have no room now
for such thoughts. Above us, on the left, is the monument of the poet,
coloured; not content with "improving" the plays, caused the bust
also to be improved by a coating of white paint, how the barbarism was
removed in 1861, and the statue restored, is a tale often told. The
effigy certainly existed within seven years of Shakspere's death, so
that, in all probability, we have a faithful representation of the poet
as his contemporaries knew him.
[Illustration: 9086]
The inscription is clumsy enough, but proves that the poet's greatness
was not, as sometimes alleged, unrecognised in his own generation. The
epitaph on Mistress Susanna Hall, a higher note. Thus it began
"Witty above her sex--but that's not all--
Wise to salvation, was good Mistress Hall.
Something of Shakspere was in that; but this
Wholly of Him with Whom she's now in bliss."
It is to be regretted that this inscription has been effaced, to make
room for the epitaph of some obscure descendant. That to Shakespere's
widow, the wife of his youth, Anne Hathaway however remains placed over
Her grave by her son; there is something in it pathetically and nobly
Christian. It is in Latin, and may be rendered freely: "My mother: thou
gavest me milk and life: alas, for me, that I can but repay thee with a
sepulchre! Would that some good angel might roll the stone away, and
thy form come forth in the Saviour's likeness! But my prayers avail not.
Come quickly, O Christ! then shall my mother, though enclosed in the
tomb, arise and mount to heaven!"
Before leaving the church we may note some monuments worth attention,
at least in any other place; as well as a stained glass window, not yet
complete, but intended to illustrate from Scripture Shakspere's Seven
Ages of Man. Moses the infant, Jacob the lover, Deborah the Judge, and
one or two other representations are finished, but the observer feels
that the types of character are not Shakspere's.
The day's explorations are not yet over. The epitaph on Anne Hathaway's
tomb, if nothing else, has quickened our desire to know something more
of her surroundings in those days when Shakspere won and wooed her in
her rustic home. Retracing our steps through the town, we are directed
to a field-path bearing straight for Shottery, a village but a mile
distant. It is not difficult to picture the youthful lover, perhaps,
out here in the fair open country, among the wild flowers which line the
walk, and which he has so well described, for there are few traditions
of Stratford-upon-Avon better authenticated than that which represents
this as Shakspere's walk in the clays when he "went courting." The
village is a straggling one, with a look of comfort about its farmsteads
and cottages; and, at the furthest extremity from Stratford, in a
pleasant dell, opposite a willow-shaded stream, we find the cottage,
not much altered, it may be, in externals, since the poet, then a lad of
eighteen, there found his bride. The capacious chimney-corner, where
no doubt the lovers sat, is genuine; and other antique relics, from a
carved bed to an old Bible, carry the mind back, at least, to the era
of the poet; while the garden and orchard, with the well of pure spring
water, must be much as Shakspere saw them.
And now having returned to our comfortable hotel--where almost every
room, by the way, is named after one of the dramas, ours being "All's
well that ends well"--what was the net result of the visit in regard
to the personality and history of the great poet? It may seem a strange
thing to confess, but the effect of the whole was to put Shakspere
himself further from us, and to deepen the mystery which every student
of his life and works finds so perplexing. For, save the monument and
the tomb, there was absolutely nothing to tell of the poet's life;
no scrap of his writing, no book known to have been his, no original
authentic record of his words and deeds, no contemporary portrait, no
object, whether article of furniture, pen, inkstand, or other implement
of daily use, associated with his name. Strange that a generation,
which, as we have seen, so honoured his genius and character, should not
have preserved the poorest or smallest memorial of his life among them!
True, there is an old, worm-eaten desk in the birth-place, at which he
may have, sat in the grammar-school; in a room in the town above the
seed-shop there is a rude piece of carving, representing David and
Goliath, which once ornamented a room of the house in Henley Street, and
bears an inscription, "said to have been composed by Shakspere," A.D.
1606. Let our readers judge:
"Goliath comes with sword and spear,
And David with his sling:
Although Goliath rage and swear
Down David doth him bring."
For the rest, the relics are evidently imported: an ancient bedstead,
old-fashioned chairs, and the like; interesting in their way, but
with nothing to tell us of the poet. He remains to the most zealous
relic-hunter as great a mystery as Homer himself. Or if in anything here
we see the poet, it is in those scenes of external nature which he has
so vividly pictured. We find him among the flowers: beside the
"bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."
[Illustration: 0089]
By a happy ingenuity the garden of the house in Henley Street, now
prettily and daintily kept, has been planted to a great extent
with Shakspere's flowers; "pansies for thoughts," "rosemary for
remembrance," with "columbines," the "blue-veined violets," the wild
thyme, woodbine, musk-rose, and many more. His works are his true
monument; and of these there is, in the same house, a very large and
noble collection, with a whole library of literature bearing upon them,
gathered with admirable care. Yet how few autobiographical details do
the volumes contain! How hopeless the task of constructing, even from
the sonnets, a connected picture of his life and career! And of the
half-dozen anecdotes which have in one way or other descended to us of
his words and ways, who can say that any detail is true?
[Illustration: 9090]
It is, perhaps, from the portraits, after all, that we may gain the most
trustworthy impression of the poet's individuality. That on the tomb is
for obvious reasons the most valuable. There it has been, in the sight
of all men, from the very days of Shakspere. The eyes of his widow and
of their children must often have rested upon it; and there can be no
doubt that it presents the true aspect of the man. The engravings of
the bust, and even the photographs, seem to us to exaggerate the calm,
serene expression of the countenance. Partly, it may be, from the effect
of the colouring on the full and shapely cheeks, there is an air almost
of joviality about the face. It is quite as easy to recognise the
Warwickshire squire of New Place, as to feel the presence of the poet
of all time. There is, in the Henley Street house, a portrait of
extraordinary history; lately discovered. The antiquity of this portrait
seems indubitable; but the face seems a copy, and, so far as we could
judge without seeing the two side by side, of that on the monument.
For the we naturally associate with Shakspere, we must go rather to
the "Chandos portrait," now in the National Portrait Gallery, or to the
terra-cotta bust, disinterred in 1845, from the site of the old theatre
in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and presented by the Duke of Devonshire to
the Garrick Club. In a somewhat rough fashion, the Droeshout portrait,
prefixed to the first folio edition of the plays, in 1623, gives
a similar impression of power; and Ben Jonson, who knew Shakspere
personally, testifies strongly to its correctness:
"This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakspere cut;
Wherein the graver had a strife
With Nature, to outdo the Life."
But most of all is the greatness of Shakspere brought home to us by the
simple record of the names of those who, from all quarters of the world,
have come to this little Warwickshire town, to do homage to his memory.
In all the world there is no shrine of pilgrimage like this, not only
in the number of the visitants, but in their wonderful variety in
character, temperament, and belief.
[Illustration: 9091]
The power of the spell shows the magician. The fading pencilled
inscriptions which cover the walls of the chamber in Henley Street; the
pages of the autograph books; the words in which visitors have recorded
their impressions, attest the strange attractiveness and power of this
one genius. Perhaps the most interesting of the autograph books is that
which was removed from the house in Henley Street many years ago, and is
now to be seen in the room over the seed-room, to which we have referred
already. It seems to have been purchased and presented by an American
gentleman, Mr. T. H. Perkins, of Boston, in 1812; and its pages contain
the autographs of Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Miss Edge-a Baillie,
James Professors Sedgarence," "Arthur, Duke of Wellington," with a host
beside. A thoughtful hour may well be spent in turning the well-worn
pages, and in meditating on "the vanity and glory of literature."
For there was one point in which even Shakspere failed, and the admiring
reverence with which we join the throng of pilgrims to the shrine never
passes into _worship_. We mean, of course, such "worship" as a
merely human being may supposably claim; and, in view of the highest
possibilities of our nature, we mark in Shakspere a certain limitation
on the _heavenward_ side of his genius. The point at which intellectual
sympathy and admiring affection pass into adoration, is the point
at which we are raised _beyond ourselves_, and made conscious of the
infinite. Never will our moral nature consent to unite with our reason
and our heart in yielding its deepest worth, reverence, until it is
uplifted into that sphere in which we can only walk by faith, and from
which we can look down upon earthly things dwarfed and humbled by the
comparison with the illimitable beyond.
Now Shakspere's genius belongs essentially to the lower sphere. On
earth he is the master. Every phase of nature, every subtilty of the
intellect, every winding of the heart, is familiar to him. To use
the comparison, often repeated because always felt to be so true, his
wonderful mind was the mirror of all earthly shapes and various human
energies. His own idiosyncracy never appears; the mirror is absolutely
colourless and true. His genius is universal: in reading him we are but
surveying the face of nature. To many a subtle criticism, the answer has
been given, Shakspere surely never meant this! The reply may be, perhaps
not, but nature meant it; and, therefore, we have a right to find it
there! Such is the highest achievement of _literature_, whose business
it is to reflect the facts of the world, of society, of the human
heart--plentifully to declare the thing as it is, and compendiously
to reduce this round world into the microcosm of a book. Here is
Shakspere's transcendent power, and the secret of his supremacy among
writers. He is simply the greatest literary man that ever lived.
The transparency of the mirror, to return to the illustration, is
maintained, not only by the absence of intrusive individuality, but by
his perfect mastery over the instrument of expression. It is worth while
to read his dramas over again, as a study of language alone. No writer
has ever approached Shakspere in the precision, picturesqueness, and the
finished, yet seemingly careless, beauty of his diction. His prose is
even more marvellous than his poetry. In the sense in which we use the
word "classic," his works may truly be called the foremost classic of
the world.
What, then, is the defect which will for ever prevent Shakspere from
receiving the entire homage of the heart of man? In a sentence, the
mirror is turned towards earth alone, and in its very completeness hides
heaven from the view. "It would be impossible," says a contemporary
writer, "to find a more remarkable example of a genius wide as the
world, yet _not_ in any sense _above_ the world, than our great English
poet's." And again, "it would be almost impossible to find any great
Christian poet whose type of imagination is so entirely and singularly
_contrasted_ with that of the Bible, or in whom that peculiar faculty
which, for want of a better term, we are forced to call the thirst _for
the supernatural_, is more remarkably absent."
This statement we accept, in full remembrance of the morals manifold,
the theological references, and Scriptural parallels, which are
scattered through the poet's writings. Bishop Wordsworth, of
St. Andrew's, and others, have spent much labour, not altogether
unprofitably, in showing that Shakspere knew his Bible: while, oddly
enough, among the passages expunged by the estimable Bowdler, the
Biblical references occupy a considerable place, as though it had been
profanity to introduce them in such a connexion! The most is made of
Shakspere's religiousness by the present Archbishop of Dublin, in a
sermon preached at Stratford-upon-Avon at the Shakspere Tercentenary, in
1864.
He knew the deep corruption of our fallen nature, the desperate
wickedness of the heart of man; else he would never have put into the
mouth of a prince of stainless life such a confession as this: 'I am
myself indifferently honest: but yet I could accuse one of such things
that it were better my mother had not borne me.... with more offences
at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give
them shape, or time to act them in.' He has set forth the scheme of
our redemption in words as lovely as have ever flowed from the lips of
uninspired man:--
'Why, all the souls that live were forfeit once,
And He that might the vantage best have Look,
Found out the remedy.'
He has put home to the holiest here their need of an infinite
forgiveness from Him who requires truth in the inward parts:
'How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are?'
"He was one who was well aware what a stewardship was his own in those
marvellous gifts which had been entrusted to him, for he has himself
told us:--
'Heaven does with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us,'twere all alike
As if we had them not.'