SHAKESPEARE'S HOME
It is the everlasting glory of Stratford-upon-Avon that it was the
birthplace of Shakespeare. Situated in the heart of Warwickshire, which
has been called "the garden of England," it nestles cosily in an
atmosphere of tranquil loveliness and is surrounded with everything that
soft and gentle rural scenery can provide to soothe the mind and to
nurture contentment. It stands upon a plain, almost in the centre of the
island, through which, between the low green hills that roll away on
either side, the Avon flows downward to the Severn. The country in its
neighbourhood is under perfect cultivation, and for many miles around
presents the appearance of a superbly appointed park. Portions of the
land are devoted to crops and pasture; other portions are thickly wooded
with oak, elm, willow, and chestnut; the meadows are intersected by
hedges of fragrant hawthorn, and the region smiles with flowers. Old
manor-houses, half-hidden among the trees, and thatched cottages
embowered with roses are sprinkled through the surrounding landscape;
and all the roads that converge upon this point--from Birmingham,
Warwick, Shipton, Bidford, Alcester, Evesham, Worcester, and other
contiguous towns--wind, in sun and shadow, through a sod of green
velvet, swept by the cool, sweet winds of the English summer.
Illustration: "The Grange."
Such felicities of situation and such accessories of beauty, however,
are not unusual in England; and Stratford, were it not hallowed by
association, though it would always hold a place among the pleasant
memories of the traveller, would not have become a shrine for the homage
of the world. To Shakespeare it owes its renown; from Shakespeare it
derives the bulk of its prosperity. To visit Stratford is to tread with
affectionate veneration in the footsteps of the poet. To write about
Stratford is to write about Shakespeare.
More than three hundred years have passed since the birth of that
colossal genius and many changes have occurred in his native town within
that period. The Stratford of Shakespeare's time was built principally
of timber, and it contained about fourteen hundred inhabitants. To-day
its population numbers more than eight thousand. New dwellings have
arisen where once were fields of wheat, glorious with the shimmering
lustre of the scarlet poppy. Many of the older buildings have been
altered. Manufacture has been stimulated into prosperous activity. The
Avon has been spanned by a new bridge, of iron--a path for pedestrians,
adjacent to Clopton's bridge of stone. (The iron bridge was opened
November 23, 1827. The Clopton Bridge was 376 yards long and about 16
yards wide. Alterations of the west end of it were made in 1814.) The
streets have been levelled, swept, rolled and garnished till they look
like a Flemish drawing, of the Middle Ages. Even the Shakespeare
cottage, the old Harvard house in High Street, and the two old
churches--authentic and splendid memorials of a distant and storied
past--have been "restored." If the poet could walk again through his
accustomed haunts, though he would see the same smiling country round
about, and hear, as of old, the ripple of the Avon murmuring in its
summer sleep, his eyes would rest on but few objects that once he knew.
Yet, there are the paths that Shakespeare often trod; there stands the
house in which he was born; there is the school in which he was taught;
there is the cottage in which he wooed his sweetheart; there are the
traces and relics of the mansion in which he died; and there is the
church that keeps his dust, so consecrated by the reverence of mankind
"That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."
In shape the town of Stratford somewhat resembles a large cross, which
is formed by High Street, running nearly north and south, and Bridge
Street and Wood Street, running nearly east and west. From these, which
are main avenues, radiate many and devious branches. A few of the
streets are broad and straight but many of them are narrow and crooked.
High and Bridge streets intersect each other at the centre of the town,
and there stands the market house, an ugly building, of the period of
George the Fourth, with belfry and illuminated clock, facing eastward
toward the old stone bridge, with fourteen arches,--the bridge that Sir
Hugh Clopton built across the Avon, in the reign of Henry the Seventh. A
cross once stood at the corner of High Street and Wood Street, and near
the cross was a pump and a well. From that central point a few steps
will bring the traveller to the birthplace of Shakespeare.
Illustration: "Shakespeare's Birthplace in Henley Street."
It is a little, two-story cottage, of timber and plaster, on the north
side of Henley Street, in the western part of the town. It must have
been, in its pristine days, finer than most of the dwellings in its
neighbourhood. The one-story house, with attic windows, was the almost
invariable fashion of building, in English country towns, till the
seventeenth century. This cottage, besides its two stories, had
dormer-windows, a pent-house over its door, and altogether was built and
appointed in a manner both luxurious and substantial. Its age is
unknown; but the history of Stratford reaches back to a period three
hundred years antecedent to William the Conqueror, and fancy, therefore,
is allowed ample room to magnify its antiquity. It was bought, or
occupied, by Shakespeare's father in 1555, and in it he resided till his
death, in 1601, when it descended by inheritance to the poet. Such is
the substance of the complex documentary evidence and of the emphatic
tradition that consecrate this cottage as the house in which Shakespeare
was born. The point has never been absolutely settled. John Shakespeare,
the father, was the owner in 1564 not only of the house in Henley Street
but of another in Greenhill Street. William Shakespeare might have been
born at either of those dwellings. Tradition, however, has sanctified
the Henley Street cottage; and this, accordingly, as Shakespeare's
cradle, will be piously guarded to a late posterity.
It has already survived serious perils and vicissitudes. By
Shakespeare's will it was bequeathed to his sister Joan--Mrs. William
Hart--to be held by her, under the yearly rent of twelvepence, during
her life, and at her death to revert to his daughter Susanna and her
descendants. His sister Joan appears to have been living there at the
time of his decease, in 1616. She is known to have been living there in
1639--twenty-three years later,--and doubtless she resided there till
her death, in 1646. The estate then passed to Susanna--Mrs. John
Hall,--from whom in 1649 it descended to her grandchild, Lady Barnard,
who left it to her kinsmen, Thomas and George Hart, grandsons of Joan.
In this line of descent it continued--subject to many of those
infringements which are incidental to poverty--till 1806, when William
Shakespeare Hart, the seventh in collateral kinship from the poet, sold
it to Thomas Court, from whose family it was at last purchased for the
British nation. Meantime the property, which originally consisted of two
tenements and a considerable tract of adjacent land, had, little by
little, been curtailed of its fair proportions by the sale of its
gardens and orchards. The two tenements--two in one, that is--had been
subdivided. A part of the building became an inn--at first called "The
Maidenhead," afterward "The Swan," and finally "The Swan and
Maidenhead." Another part became a butcher's shop. The old
dormer-windows and the pent-house disappeared. A new brick casing was
foisted upon the tavern end of the structure. In front of the butcher's
shop appeared a sign announcing "William Shakespeare was born in this
house: N.B.--A Horse and Taxed Cart to Let." Still later appeared
another legend, vouching that "the immortal Shakespeare was born in this
house." From 1793 till 1820 Thomas and Mary Hornby, connections by
marriage with the Harts, lived in the Shakespeare cottage--now at length
become the resort of literary pilgrims,--and Mary Hornby, who set up to
be a poet and wrote tragedy, comedy, and philosophy, took delight in
exhibiting its rooms to visitors. During the reign of that eccentric
custodian the low ceilings and whitewashed walls of its several chambers
became covered with autographs, scrawled thereon by many enthusiasts,
including some of the most famous persons in Europe. In 1820 Mary Hornby
was requested to leave the premises. She did not wish to go. She could
not endure the thought of a successor. "After me, the deluge!" She was
obliged to abdicate; but she conveyed away all the furniture and relics
alleged to be connected with Shakespeare's family, and she hastily
whitewashed the cottage walls. Only a small part of the wall of the
upper room, the chamber in which "nature's darling" first saw the light,
escaped that act of spiteful sacrilege. On the space behind its door may
still be read many names, with dates affixed, ranging back from 1820 to
1729. Among them is that of Dora Jordan, the beautiful and fascinating
actress, who wrote it there June 2, 1809. Much of Mary Hornby's
whitewash, which chanced to be unsized, was afterward removed, so that
her work of obliteration proved only in part successful. Other names
have been added to this singular, chaotic scroll of worship. Byron,
Scott,[1] Rogers, Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, and Dickens are among the
votaries there and thus recorded.
[1] Sir Walter Scott visited Shakespeare's birthplace in August, 1821, and
at that time scratched his name on the window-pane. He had previously,
in 1815, visited Kenilworth. He was in Stratford again in 1828, and on
April 8 he went to Shakespeare's grave, and subsequently drove to
Charlecote. The visit of Lord Byron has been incorrectly assigned to the
year 1816. It occurred on August 28, possibly in 1812.
The successors of Mary Hornby guarded their charge with pious care. The
precious value of the old Shakespeare cottage grew more and more evident
to the English people. Washington Irving made his pilgrimage to
Stratford and recounted it in his beautiful _Sketch-Book. _Yet it was
not till P. T. Barnum, from the United States, arrived with a
proposition to buy the Shakespeare house and convey it to America that
the literary enthusiasm of Great Britain was made to take a practical
shape, and this venerated and inestimable relic became, in 1847, a
national possession. In 1856 John Shakespeare, of Worthington Field,
near Ashby-de-la-Zouche, gave a large sum of money to restore it; and
within the next two years, under the superintendence of Edward Gibbs and
William Holtom of Stratford, it was isolated by the demolition of the
cottages at its sides and in the rear, repaired wherever decay was
visible, and set in perfect order.
The builders of this house must have done their work thoroughly well,
for even after all these years of rough usage and of slow but incessant
decline the great timbers remain solid, the plastered walls are firm,
the huge chimney-stack is as permanent as a rock, and the ancient
flooring only betrays by the channelled aspect of its boards, and the
high polish on the heads of the nails which fasten them down, that it
belongs to a period of remote antiquity. The cottage stands close upon
the margin of the street, according to ancient custom of building
throughout Stratford; and, entering through a little porch, the pilgrim
stands at once in that low-ceiled, flag-stoned room, with its wide
fire-place, so familiar in prints of the chimney-corner of Shakespeare's
youthful days. Within the fire-place, on either side, is a seat
fashioned in the brick-work; and here, as it is pleasant to imagine, the
boy-poet often sat, on winter nights, gazing dreamily into the flames,
and building castles in that fairyland of fancy which was his celestial
inheritance. You presently pass from this room by a narrow, well-worn
staircase to the chamber above, which is shown as the place of the
poet's birth. An antiquated chair, of the sixteenth century, stands in
the right-hand corner. At the left is a small fire-place. Around the
walls are visible the great beams which are the framework of the
building--beams of seasoned oak that will last forever. Opposite to the
door of entrance is a threefold casement (the original window) full of
narrow panes of glass scrawled all over with names that their worshipful
owners have written with diamonds. The ceiling is so low that you can
easily touch it with uplifted hand. A portion of it is held in place by
a network of little iron laths. This room, and indeed the whole
structure, is as polished and orderly as any waxen, royal hall in the
Louvre, and it impresses observation much like old lace that has been
treasured up, in lavender or jasmine. These walls, which no one is now
permitted to mar, were naturally the favourite scroll of the Shakespeare
votaries of long ago. Every inch of the plaster bears marks of the
pencil of reverence. Hundreds of names are written there--some of them
famous but most of them obscure, and all destined to perish where they
stand. On the chimney-piece at the right of the fireplace, which is
named The Actor's Pillar, many actors have inscribed their signatures.
Edmund Kean wrote his name there--with what soulful veneration and
spiritual sympathy it is awful even to try to imagine. Sir Walter
Scott's name is scratched with a diamond on the window--"W. Scott." That
of Thackeray appears on the ceiling, and upon the beam across the centre
is that of Helen Faucit. The name of Eliza Vestris is written near the
fireplace. Mark Lemon and Charles Dickens are together on the opposite
wall. Byron wrote his name there, but it has disappeared. The list would
include, among others, Elliston, Buckstone, G. V. Brooke, Charles Kean,
Charles Mathews, and Fanny Fitzwilliam. But it is not of these offerings
of fealty that you think when you sit and muse alone in that mysterious
chamber. As once again I conjure up that strange and solemn scene, the
sunshine rests in checkered squares upon the ancient floor, the motes
swim in the sunbeams, the air is very cold, the place is hushed as
death, and over it all there broods an atmosphere of grave suspense and
mystical desolation--a sense of some tremendous energy stricken dumb and
frozen into silence and past and gone forever.
Opposite to the birthchamber, at the rear, there is a small apartment,
in which is displayed "the Stratford Portrait" of the poet. This
painting is said to have been owned by the Clopton family, and to have
fallen into the hands of William Hunt, town clerk of Stratford, who
bought the mansion of the Cloptons in 1758. The adventures through which
it passed can only be conjectured. It does not appear to have been
valued, and although it remained in the house it was cast away among
lumber and rubbish. In process of time it was painted over and changed
into a different subject. Then it fell a prey to dirt and damp. There is
a story that the little boys of the tribe of Hunt were accustomed to use
it as a target for their arrows. At last, after the lapse of a century,
the grandson of William Hunt showed it by chance to Simon Collins, an
artist, who surmised that a valuable portrait might perhaps exist
beneath its muddy surface. It was carefully cleaned. A thick beard was
removed, and the face of Shakespeare emerged upon the canvas. It is not
pretended that this portrait was painted in Shakespeare's time. The
close resemblance that it bears,--in attitude, dress, colours, and other
peculiarities,--to the painted bust of the poet in Stratford church
seems to indicate that it is a modern copy of that work. Upon a brass
plate affixed to it is the following inscription: "This portrait of
Shakespeare, after being in the possession of Mr. William Oakes Hunt,
town-clerk of Stratford, and his family, for upwards of a century, was
restored to its original condition by Mr. Simon Collins of London, and,
being considered a portrait of much interest and value, was given by
Mr. Hunt to the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, to be preserved in
Shakespeare's house, 23d April, 1862." There, accordingly, it remains,
and, in association with several other dubious presentments of the poet,
cheerfully adds to the mental confusion of the pilgrim who would form an
accurate image of Shakespeare's appearance. Standing in its presence it
was worth while to reflect that there are only two authentic
representations of Shakespeare in existence--the Droeshout portrait and
the Gerard Jonson bust. They may not be perfect works of art; they may
not do justice to the original; but they were seen and accepted by
persons to whom Shakespeare had been a living companion. The bust was
sanctioned by his children; the portrait was sanctioned by his friend
Ben Jonson, and by his brother actors Heminge and Condell, who prefixed
it, in 1623, to the first folio of his works. Standing among the relics
that have been gathered into a museum in an apartment on the
ground-floor of the cottage it was essential also to remember how often
"the wish is father to the thought" that sanctifies the uncertain
memorials of the distant past. Several of the most suggestive documents,
though, which bear upon the sparse and shadowy record of Shakespeare's
life are preserved in this place. Here is a deed, made in 1596, which
proves that this house was his father's residence. Here is the only
letter addressed to him that is known to exist--the letter of Richard
Quiney (1598) asking for the loan of thirty pounds. Here is a
declaration in a suit, in 1604, to recover the price of some malt that
he had sold to Philip Rogers. Here is a deed, dated 1609, on which is
the autograph of his brother Gilbert, who represented him, at Stratford,
in his business affairs, while he was absent in London, and who,
surviving, it is dubiously said, almost till the period of the
Restoration, talked, as a very old man, of the poet's impersonation of
Adam in _As You Like It._ (Possibly the reference of that legend is not
to Gilbert but to a son of his. Gilbert would have been nearly a century
old when Charles the Second came to the throne.) Here likewise is shown
a gold seal ring, found many years ago in a field near Stratford church,
on which, delicately engraved, appear the letters W. S., entwined with a
true lovers' knot. It may have belonged to Shakespeare. The conjecture
is that it did, and that,--since on the last of the three sheets which
contain his will the word "seal" is stricken out and the word "hand"
substituted,--he did not seal that document because he had only just
then lost this ring. The supposition is, at least, ingenious. It will
not harm the visitor to accept it. Nor, as he stands poring over the
ancient, decrepit school-desk which has been lodged in this museum, from
the grammar-school, will it greatly tax his credulity to believe that
the "shining morning face" of the boy Shakespeare once looked down upon
it, in the irksome quest of his "small Latin and less Greek." They call
it Shakespeare's desk. It is old, and it is known to have been in the
school of the guild three hundred years ago. There are other relics,
more or less indirectly connected with the great name that is here
commemorated. The inspection of them all would consume many days; the
description of them would occupy many pages. You write your name in the
visitors' book at parting, and perhaps stroll forth into the garden of
the cottage, which encloses it at the sides and in the rear, and there,
beneath the leafy boughs of the English lime, while your footsteps press
"the grassy carpet of this plain," behold growing all around you the
rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, rue, daisies, and violets, which
make the imperishable garland on Ophelia's grave, and which are the
fragrance of her solemn and lovely memory.
Thousands of times the wonder must have been expressed that while the
world knows so much about Shakespeare's mind it should know so little
about his life. The date of his birth, even, is established by an
inference. The register of Stratford church shows that he was baptised
there in 1564, on April 26. It was customary to baptise infants on the
third day after their birth. It is presumed that the custom was followed
in this instance, and hence it is deduced that Shakespeare was born on
April 23--a date which, making allowance for the difference between the
old and new styles of reckoning time, corresponds to our third of May.
Equally by an inference it is established that the boy was educated in
the free grammar-school. The school was there; and any boy of the town,
who was seven years old and able to read, could get admission to it.
Shakespeare's father, an alderman of Stratford (elected chief alderman,
October 10, 1571), and then a man of worldly substance, though afterward
he became poor, would surely have wished that his children should grow
up in knowledge. To the ancient school-house, accordingly, and the
adjacent chapel of the guild--which are still extant, at the south-east
corner of Chapel Lane and Church Street--the pilgrim confidently traces
the footsteps of the poet. Those buildings are of singular, picturesque
quaintness. The chapel dates back to about the middle of the thirteenth
century. It was a Roman Catholic institution, founded in 1296, under the
patronage of the Bishop of Worcester, and committed to the pious custody
of the guild of Stratford. A hospital was connected with it in those
days, and Robert de Stratford was its first master. New privileges and
confirmation were granted to the guild by Henry the Sixth, in 1403 and
1429. The grammar-school, established on an endowment of lands and
tenements by Thomas Jolyffe, was set up in association with it in 1482.
Toward the end of the reign of Henry the Seventh the whole of the
chapel, excepting the chancel, was torn down and rebuilt under the
munificent direction of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London and
Stratford's chief citizen and benefactor. Under Henry the Eighth, when
came the stormy times of the Reformation, the priests were driven out,
the guild was dissolved, and the chapel was despoiled. Edward the Sixth,
however, granted a new charter to this ancient institution, and with
especial precautions reinstated the school. The chapel itself was
occasionally used as a schoolroom when Shakespeare was a boy, and until
as late as the year 1595; and in case the lad did go thither (in 1571)
as a pupil, he must have been from childhood familiar with the series of
grotesque paintings upon its walls, presenting, in a pictorial panorama,
the history of the Holy Cross, from its origin as a tree at the
beginning of the world to its exaltation at Jerusalem. Those paintings
were brought to light in 1804 in the course of a renovation of the
chapel which then occurred, when the walls were relieved of thick
coatings of whitewash, laid on them long before, in Puritan times,
either to spoil or to hide from the spoiler. They are not visible now,
but they were copied and have been engraved. The drawings of them, by
Fisher, are in the collection of Shakespearean Rarities made by J. O.
Halliwell-Phillipps. This chapel and its contents constitute one of the
few remaining spectacles at Stratford that bring us face to face with
Shakespeare. During the last seven years of his life he dwelt almost
continually in his house of New Place, on the corner immediately
opposite to this church. The configuration of the excavated foundations
of that house indicates what would now be called a deep bay-window in
its southern front. There, probably, was Shakespeare's study; and
through that casement, many and many a time, in storm and in sunshine,
by night and by day, he must have looked out upon the grim, square
tower, the embattled stone wall, and the four tall Gothic windows of
that mysterious temple. The moment your gaze falls upon it, the
low-breathed, horror-stricken words of Lady Macbeth murmur in your
memory:--
"The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements."
New Place, Shakespeare's home at the time of his death and the house in
which he died, stood on the north-east corner of Chapel Street and
Chapel Lane. Nothing now remains of it but a portion of its
foundations--long buried in the earth, but found and exhumed in
comparatively recent days. Its gardens have been redeemed, through the
zealous and devoted exertions of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps and have been
restored to what is thought to have been almost their condition when
Shakespeare owned them. The crumbling fragments of the foundation are
covered with screens of wood and wire. A mulberry-tree, a scion of the
famous mulberry that Shakespeare is known to have planted, is growing on
the lawn. There is no authentic picture in existence that shows New
Place as it was when Shakespeare left it, but there is a sketch of it as
it appeared in 1740. The house was made of brick and timber, and was
built by Sir Hugh Clopton nearly a century before it became by purchase
the property of the poet. Shakespeare bought it in 1597, and in it he
passed, intermittently, a considerable part of the last nineteen years
of his life. It had borne the name of New Place before it came into his
possession. The Clopton family parted with it in 1563, and it was
subsequently owned by families of Bott and Underhill. At Shakespeare's
death it was inherited by his eldest daughter, Susanna, wife of Dr. John
Hall. In 1643, Mrs. Hall, then seven years a widow, being still its
owner and occupant, Henrietta Maria, queen to Charles the First, who had
come to Stratford with a part of the royal army, resided for three days
at New Place, which, therefore, must even then have been the most
considerable private residence in the town. (The queen arrived at
Stratford on July 11 and on July 13 she went to Kineton.) Mrs. Hall,
dying in 1649, aged sixty-six, left it to her only child, Elizabeth,
then Mrs. Thomas Nashe, who afterward became Lady Barnard, wife to Sir
John Barnard, of Abingdon, and in whom the direct line of Shakespeare
ended. After her death the estate was purchased by Sir Edward Walker, in
1675, who ultimately left it to his daughter's husband, Sir John Clopton
(1638-1719), and so it once more passed into the hands of the family of
its founder. A second Sir Hugh Clopton (1671-1751) owned it at the
middle of the eighteenth century, and under his direction it was
repaired, decorated, and furnished with a new front. That proved the
beginning of the end of this old structure, as a relic of Shakespeare;
for this owner, dying in 1751, bequeathed it to his son-in-law, Henry
Talbot, who in 1753 sold it to the most universally execrated iconoclast
of modern times, the Rev. Francis Gastrell, vicar of Frodsham, in
Cheshire, by whom it was destroyed. Mr. Gastrell was a man of fortune,
and he certainly was one of insensibility. He knew little of
Shakespeare; but he knew that the frequent incursion, into his garden,
of strangers who came to sit beneath "Shakespeare's mulberry" was a
troublesome annoyance. He struck, therefore, at the root of the vexation
and cut down the tree. That was in 1756. The wood was purchased by
Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker of Stratford, who subsequently made the
solemn declaration that he carried it to his home and converted it into
toys and kindred memorial relics. The villagers of Stratford, meantime,
incensed at the barbarity of Mr. Gastrell, took their revenge by
breaking his windows. In this and in other ways the clergyman was
probably made to realise his local unpopularity. It had been his custom
to reside during a part of each year in Lichfield, leaving some of his
servants in charge of New Place. The overseers of Stratford, having
lawful authority to levy a tax, for the maintenance of the poor, on
every house in the town valued at more than forty shillings a year, did
not neglect to make a vigorous use of their privilege in the case of
Mr. Gastrell. The result of their exactions in the sacred cause of
charity was significant. In 1759 Mr. Gastrell declared that the house
should never be taxed again, pulled down the building, sold the
materials of which it had been composed, and left Stratford forever. He
repaired to Lichfield and there died. In the house adjacent to the site
of what was once Shakespeare's home has been established a museum of
Shakespearean relics. Among them is a stone mullion, found on the site,
which may have belonged to a window of the original mansion. This
estate, bought from different owners and restored to its Shakespearean
condition, became on April 17, 1876, the property of the corporation of
Stratford. The tract of land is not large. The visitor may traverse the
whole of it in a few minutes, although if he obey his inclination he
will linger there for hours. The enclosure is an irregular rectangle,
about two hundred feet long. The lawn is perfect. The mulberry is extant
and tenacious, and wears its honours in contented vigour. Other trees
give grateful shade to the grounds, and the voluptuous red roses,
growing all around in rich profusion, load the air with fragrance.
Eastward, at a little distance, flows the Avon. Not far away rises the
graceful spire of the Holy Trinity. A few rooks, hovering in the air and
wisely bent on some facetious mischief, send down through the silver
haze of the summer morning their sagacious yet melancholy caw. The
windows of the gray chapel across the street twinkle, and keep their
solemn secret. On this spot was first waved the mystic wand of Prospero.
Here Ariel sang of dead men's bones turned into pearl and coral in the
deep caverns of the sea. Here arose into everlasting life Hermione, "as
tender as infancy and grace." Here were created Miranda and Perdita,
twins of heaven's own radiant goodness,--
"Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath."
To endeavour to touch upon the larger and more august aspect of
Shakespeare's life--when, as his wonderful sonnets betray, his great
heart had felt the devastating blast of cruel passions and the deepest
knowledge of the good and evil of the universe had been borne in upon
his soul--would be impious presumption. Happily to the stroller in
Stratford every association connected with him is gentle and tender. His
image, as it rises there, is of smiling boyhood or sedate and benignant
maturity; always either joyous or serene, never passionate, or
turbulent, or dark. The pilgrim thinks of him as a happy child at his
father's fireside; as a wondering school-boy in the quiet, venerable
close of the old guild chapel, where still the only sound that breaks
the silence is the chirp of birds or the creaking of the church vane; as
a handsome, dauntless youth, sporting by his beloved river or roaming
through field and forest many miles around; as the bold, adventurous
spirit, bent on frolic and mischief, and not averse to danger, leading,
perhaps, the wild lads of his village in their poaching depredations on
the chace of Charlecote; as the lover, strolling through the green lanes
of Shottery, hand in hand with the darling of his first love, while
round them the honeysuckle breathed out its fragrant heart upon the
winds of night, and overhead the moonlight, streaming through rifts of
elm and poplar, fell on their pathway in showers of shimmering silver;
and, last of all, as the illustrious poet, rooted and secure in his
massive and shining fame, loved by many, and venerated and mourned by
all, borne slowly through Stratford churchyard, while the golden bells
were tolled in sorrow and the mourning lime-trees dropped their blossoms
on his bier, to the place of his eternal rest. Through all the scenes
incidental to this experience the worshipper of Shakespeare's genius may
follow him every step of the way.
Illustration: "Anne Hathaway's Cottage."
The old foot-path across the fields to Shottery remains accessible.
Wild-flowers are blooming along its margin. The gardens and meadows
through which it winds are sprinkled with the gorgeous scarlet of the
poppy. The hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile from Stratford,
stepping toward the sunset; and there, nestled beneath the elms, and
almost embowered in vines and roses, stands the cottage in which Anne
Hathaway was wooed and won. This is even more antiquated in appearance
than the birthplace of Shakespeare, and more obviously a relic of the
distant past. It is built of wood and plaster, ribbed with massive
timbers, and covered with a thatch roof. It fronts southward, presenting
its eastern end to the road. Under its eaves, peeping through embrasures
cut in the thatch, are four tiny casements, round which the ivy twines
and the roses wave softly in the wind of June. The western end of the
structure is higher than the eastern, and the old building, originally
divided into two tenements, is now divided into three. In front of it is
a straggling garden. There is a comfortable air of wildness, yet not of
neglect, in its appointments and surroundings. The place is still the
abode of labour and lowliness. Entering its parlour you see a stone
floor, a wide fireplace, a broad, hospitable hearth, with cosy
chimney-corners, and near this an old wooden settle, much decayed but
still serviceable, on which Shakespeare may often have sat, with Anne at
his side. The plastered walls of this room here and there reveal
portions of an oak wainscot. The ceiling is low. This evidently was the
farm-house of a substantial yeoman, in the days of Henry the Eighth. The
Hathaways had lived in Shottery for forty years prior to Shakespeare's
marriage. The poet, then undistinguished, had just turned eighteen,
while his bride was nearly twenty-six, and it has been foolishly said
that she acted ill in wedding her boy-lover. They were married in
November, 1582, and their first child, Susanna, came in the following
May. Anne Hathaway must have been a wonderfully fascinating woman, or
Shakespeare would not so have loved her; and she must have loved him
dearly--as what woman, indeed, could help it?--or she would not thus
have yielded to his passion. There is direct testimony to the beauty of
his person; and in the light afforded by his writings it requires no
extraordinary penetration to conjecture that his brilliant mind,
sparkling humour, tender fancy, and impetuous spirit must have made him,
in his youth, a paragon of enchanters. It is not known where they lived
during the first years after their marriage. Perhaps in this cottage at
Shottery. Perhaps with Hamnet and Judith Sadler, for whom their twins,
born in 1585, were named Hamnet and Judith. Her father's house assuredly
would have been chosen for Anne's refuge, when presently (in 1585-86),
Shakespeare was obliged to leave his wife and children, and go away to
London to seek his fortune. He did not buy New Place till 1597, but it
is known that in the meantime he came to his native town once every
year. It was in Stratford that his son Hamnet died, in 1596. Anne and
her children probably had never left the town. They show a bedstead and
other bits of furniture, together with certain homespun sheets of
everlasting linen, that are kept as heirlooms in the garret of the
Shottery cottage. Here is the room that may often have welcomed the poet
when he came home from his labours in the great city. It is a homely and
humble place, but the sight of it makes the heart thrill with a strange
and incommunicable awe. You cannot wish to speak when you are standing
there. You are scarcely conscious of the low rustling of the leaves
outside, the far-off sleepy murmur of the brook, or the faint fragrance
of woodbine and maiden's-blush that is wafted in at the open casement
and that swathes in nature's incense a memory sweeter than itself.
Associations may be established by fable as well as by fact. There is
but little reason to believe the legendary tale, first recorded by Rowe,
that Shakespeare, having robbed the deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy of
Charlecote (there was not a park at Charlecote then, but there was one
at Fullbrooke), was so severely persecuted by that magistrate that he
was compelled to quit Stratford and shelter himself in London. Yet the
story has twisted itself into all the lives of Shakespeare, and whether
received or rejected has clung to the house of Charlecote. That noble
mansion--a genuine specimen, despite a few modern alterations, of the
architecture of Queen Elizabeth's time--is found on the west bank of the
Avon, about three miles north-east from Stratford. It is a long,
rambling, three-storied palace--as finely quaint as old St. James's in
London, and not altogether unlike that edifice, in general
character--with octagon turrets, gables, balustrades, Tudor casements,
and great stacks of chimneys, so closed in by elms of giant growth that
you can scarce distinguish it, through the foliage, till you are close
upon it.
Illustration: "Charlecote."
It was erected in 1558 by Thomas Lucy, who in 1578 was Sheriff of
Warwickshire, who was elected to the Parliaments of 1571 and 1584, and
who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1565. The porch to this building
was designed by John of Padua. There is a silly ballad in existence,
idly attributed to Shakespeare, which, it is said, was found affixed to
Lucy's gate, and gave him great offence. He must have been more than
commonly sensitive to low abuse if he could have been annoyed by such a
manifestly scurrilous ebullition of the blackguard and the
blockhead,--supposing, indeed, that he ever saw it. The ballad,
proffered as the work of Shakespeare, is a forgery. There is but one
existing reason to think that the poet ever cherished a grudge against
the Lucy family, and that is the coarse allusion to the "luces" which is
found in the _Merry Wives of Windsor. _There was apparently, a second
Sir Thomas Lucy, later than the Sheriff, who was more of the Puritanic
breed, while Shakespeare evidently was a Cavalier. It is possible that
in a youthful frolic the poet may have poached on Sheriff Lucy's
preserves. Even so, the affair was trivial. It is possible, too, that in
after years he may have had reason to dislike the ultra-Puritanical
neighbour. Some memory of the tradition will, of course, haunt the
traveller's thoughts as he strolls by Hatton Rock and through the
villages of Hampton and Charlecote. But this discordant recollection is
soon smoothed away by the peaceful loveliness of the ramble--past aged
hawthorns that Shakespeare himself may have seen, and under the boughs
of beeches, limes, and drooping willows, where every footstep falls on
wild-flowers, or on a cool green turf that is softer than Indian silk
and as firm and elastic as the sand of the sea-beaten shore. Thought of
Sir Thomas Lucy will not be otherwise than kind, either, when the
stranger in Charlecote church reads the epitaph with which the old
knight commemorated his wife: "All the time of her Lyfe a true and
faithfull servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice;
in religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithfull and true.
In friendship most constant. To what in trust was committed to her most
secret; in wisdom excelling; in governing her House and bringing up of
Youth in the feare of God that did converse with her most rare and
singular; a great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her
betters; misliked of none unless the envious. When all is spoken that
can be said, a Woman so furnished and garnished with Virtue as not to be
bettered, and hardly to be equalled of any; as she lived most
virtuously, so she dyed most godly. Set down by him that best did know
what hath been written to be true. Thomas Lucy." A narrow formalist he
may have been, and a severe magistrate in his dealings with scapegrace
youths, and perhaps a haughty and disagreeable neighbour; but there is a
touch of manhood, high feeling, and virtuous and self-respecting
character in those lines, that instantly wins the response of sympathy.
If Shakespeare really shot the deer of Thomas Lucy the injured gentleman
had a right to feel annoyed. Shakespeare, boy or man, was not a saint,
and those who so account him can have read his works to but little
purpose. He can bear the full brunt of his faults. He does not need to
be canonised.
The ramble to Charlecote--one of the prettiest walks about
Stratford--was, it may surely be supposed, often taken by Shakespeare.
Many another ramble was possible to him and no doubt was made. He would
cross the mill bridge (new in 1599), which spans the Avon a little way
to the south of the church. A quaint, sleepy mill no doubt it
was--necked with moss and ivy--and the gaze of Shakespeare assuredly
dwelt on it with pleasure.
Illustration: "Meadow Walk by the Avon."
His footsteps may be traced, also, in fancy, to the region of the old
college building, demolished in 1799, which stood in the southern part
of Stratford, and was the home of his friend John Combe, factor of Fulke
Greville, Earl of Warwick. Still another of his walks must have tended
northward through Welcombe, where he was the owner of land, to the
portly manor of Clopton, or to the home of William, nephew of
John-a-Combe, which stood where the Phillips mansion stands now. On what
is called the Ancient House, which stands on the west side of High
Street, he may often have looked, as he strolled past to the Red Horse.
That picturesque building, dated 1596, survives, notwithstanding some
modern touches of rehabilitation, as a beautiful specimen of Tudor
architecture in one at least of its most charming traits, the carved and
timber-crossed gable. It is a house of three stories, containing
parlour, sitting-room, kitchen, and several bedrooms, besides cellars
and brew-shed; and when sold at auction, August 23, 1876, it brought
L400. In that house was born John Harvard, who founded Harvard
University. There are other dwellings fully as old in Stratford, but
they have been covered with stucco and otherwise changed. This is a
genuine piece of antiquity and it vies with the grammar-school and the
hall of the Guild, under the pent-house of which the poet would pass
whenever he went abroad from New Place. Julius Shaw, one of the five
witnesses to his will, lived in the house next to the present New Place
Museum, and there, it is reasonable to think, Shakespeare would often
pause, for a word with his friend and neighbour. In the little streets
by the riverside, which are ancient and redolent of the past, his image
seems steadily familiar. In Dead Lane (once also called Walker Street,
now called Chapel Lane) he owned a cottage, bought of Walter Getley in
1602, and only destroyed within the present century. These and kindred
shreds of fact, suggesting the poet as a living man and connecting him,
however vaguely, with our everyday experience, are seized with peculiar
zest by the pilgrim in Stratford. Such a votary, for example, never
doubts that Shakespeare was a frequenter, in leisure or convivial hours,
of the ancient Red Horse inn. It stood there, in his day, as it stands
now, on the north side of Bridge Street, westward from the Avon. There
are many other taverns in the town--the Shakespeare, a delightful
resort, the Falcon, the Rose and Crown, the old Red Lion, and the Swan's
Nest, being a few of them,---but the Red Horse takes precedence of all
its kindred, in the fascinating because suggestive attribute of
antiquity. Moreover it was the Red Horse that harboured Washington
Irving, the pioneer of American worshippers at the shrine of
Shakespeare; and the American explorer of Stratford would cruelly
sacrifice his peace of mind if he were to repose under any other roof.
The Red Horse is a rambling, three-story building, entered through an
archway that leads into a long, straggling yard, adjacent to offices and
stables. On one side of the entrance is found the smoking-room; on the
other is the coffee-room. Above are the bed-rooms. It is a thoroughly
old-fashioned inn--such a one as we may suppose the Boar's Head to have
been, in the time of Prince Henry; such a one as untravelled Americans
only know in the pages of Dickens. The rooms are furnished in neat,
homelike style, and their associations readily deck them with the
fragrant garlands of memory. When Drayton and Jonson came down to visit
"gentle Will" at Stratford they could scarcely have omitted to quaff the
humming ale of Warwickshire in that cosy parlour. When Queen Henrietta
Maria was ensconced at New Place the general of the royal forces
quartered himself at the Red Horse, and then doubtless there was enough
and to spare of revelry within its walls. A little later the old house
was soundly peppered by Roundhead bullets and the whole town was overrun
with the close-cropped, psalm-singing soldiers of the Commonwealth. In
1742 Garrick and Macklin lodged in the Red Horse, and thither again came
Garrick in 1769, to direct the Shakespeare Jubilee, which was then most
dismally accomplished but which is always remembered to the great
actor's credit and honour. Betterton, no doubt, lodged there when he
came to Stratford in quest of reminiscences of Shakespeare. The visit of
Washington Irving, supplemented with his delicious chronicle, has led to
what might be called almost the consecration of the parlour in which he
sat and the chamber (No. 15) in which he slept. They still keep the
poker--now marked "Geoffrey Crayon's sceptre"--with which, as he sat
there in long, silent, ecstatic meditation, he prodded the fire in the
narrow, tiny grate. They keep also the chair in which he sat--a plain,
straight-backed arm-chair, with a haircloth seat, marked, on a brass
plate, with his renowned and treasured name. Thus genius can sanctify
even the humblest objects,
"And shed a something of celestial light
Round the familiar face of every day."
To pass rapidly in review the little that is known of Shakespeare's life
is, nevertheless, to be impressed not only by its incessant and amazing
literary fertility but by the quick succession of its salient incidents.
The vitality must have been enormous that created in so short a time
such a number and variety of works of the first class. The same quick
spirit would naturally have kept in agitation all the elements of his
daily experience. Descended from an ancestor who had fought for the Red
Rose on Bosworth Field, he was born to repute as well as competence, and
during his early childhood he received instruction and training in a
comfortable home. He escaped the plague that was raging in Stratford
when he was an infant, and that took many victims. He went to school
when seven years old and left it when about fourteen. He then had to
work for his living--his once opulent father having fallen into
misfortune--and he became an apprentice to a butcher, or else a lawyer's
clerk (there were seven lawyers in Stratford at that time), or else a
schoolteacher. Perhaps he was all three--and more. It is conjectured
that he saw the players who from time to time acted in the Guildhall,
under the auspices of the corporation of Stratford; that he attended the
religious entertainments that were customarily given in the not distant
city of Coventry; and that in particular he witnessed the elaborate and
sumptuous pageants with which in 1575 the Earl of Leicester welcomed
Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle. He married at eighteen; and,
leaving a wife and three children in Stratford, he went up to London at
twenty-two. His entrance into theatrical life followed--in what capacity
it is impossible to say. One dubious account says that he held horses
for the public at the theatre door; another that he got employment as a
prompter to the actors. It is certain that he had not been in the
theatrical business long before he began to make himself known. At
twenty-eight he was a prosperous author. At twenty-nine he had acted
with Burbage before Queen Elizabeth; and while Spenser had extolled him
in the "Tears of the Muses," the hostile Greene had disparaged him in
the "Groat's-worth of Wit." At thirty-three he had acquired wealth
enough to purchase New Place, the principal residence in his native
town, where now he placed his family and established his home,--himself
remaining in London, but visiting Stratford at frequent intervals. At
thirty-four he was heard of as the actor of Knowell in Ben Jonson's
comedy of _Every Man in his Humour_[1] and he received the glowing
encomium of Meres in _Wits Treasury. _At thirty-eight he had written
_Hamlet _and _As You Like It, _and moreover he had now become the owner
of more estate in Stratford, costing L320. At forty-one he made his
largest purchase, buying for L440 the "unexpired term of a moiety of the
interest in a lease granted in 1554 for ninety-two years of the tithes
of Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe." In the meantime he had smoothed
the declining years of his father and had followed him with love and
duty to the grave. Other domestic bereavements likewise befell him, and
other worldly cares and duties were laid upon his hands, but neither
grief nor business could check the fertility of his brain. Within the
next ten years he wrote, among other great plays, _Othello, Lear,
Macbeth, _and _Coriolanus._
[1] Jonson's famous comedy was first acted in 1598, "By the then Lord
Chamberlain his servants." Knowell is designated as "an old gentleman."
The Jonson Folio of 1692 names as follows the principal comedians who
acted in that piece: "Will. Shakespeare. Aug. Philips. Hen. Condel.
Will. Slye. Will. Kempe. Ric. Burbadge. Joh. Hemings. Tho. Pope. Chr.
Beston. Joh. Duke."
At about forty-eight he seems to have disposed of his interest in the
two London theatres with which he had been connected, the Blackfriars
and the Globe, and shortly afterwards, his work as we possess it being
well-nigh completed, he retired finally to his Stratford home. That he
was the comrade of many bright spirits who glittered in "the spacious
times" of Elizabeth several of them have left personal testimony. That
he was the king of them all is shown in his works. The Sonnets seem to
disclose that there was a mysterious, almost a tragical, passage in his
life, and that he was called to bear the burden of a great and perhaps a
calamitous personal grief--one of those griefs, which, being caused by
sinful love, are endless in the punishment they entail. Happily,
however, no antiquarian student of Shakespeare's time has yet succeeded
in coming near to the man. While he was in London he used to frequent
the Falcon Tavern, in Southwark, and the Mermaid, and he lived at one
time in St. Helen's parish, Aldersgate, and at another time in Clink
Street, Southwark. As an actor his name has been associated with his
characters of Adam, Friar Lawrence, and the Ghost of King Hamlet, and a
contemporary reference declared him "excellent in the quality he
professes." Some of his manuscripts, it is possible, perished in the
fire that consumed the Globe theatre in 1613. He passed his last days in
his home at Stratford, and died there, somewhat suddenly, on his
fifty-second birthday. That event, it may be worth while to observe,
occurred within thirty-three years of the execution of Charles the
First, under the Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. The Puritan
spirit, intolerant of the play-house and of all its works, must then
have been gaining formidable strength. His daughter Susanna, aged
thirty-three at the time of his death, survived him thirty-three years.
His daughter Judith, aged thirty-one at the time of his death, survived
him forty-six years. The whisper of tradition says that both were
Puritans. If so the strange and seemingly unaccountable disappearance of
whatever play-house papers he may have left at Stratford should not be
obscure. This suggestion is likely to have been made before; and also it
is likely to have been supplemented with a reference to the great fire
in London in 1666--(which in consuming St. Paul's cathedral burned an
immense quantity of books and manuscripts that had been brought from all
the threatened parts of the city and heaped beneath its arches for
safety)--as probably the final and effectual holocaust of almost every
piece of print or writing that might have served to illuminate the
history of Shakespeare. In his personality no less than in the
fathomless resources of his genius he baffles scrutiny and stands for
ever alone.
"Others abide our question; thou art free:
We ask, and ask; thou smilest and art still--
Out-topping knowledge."
It is impossible to convey an adequate suggestion of the prodigious and
overwhelming sense of peace that falls upon the soul of the pilgrim in
Stratford church. All the cares and struggles and trials of mortal life,
all its failures, and equally all its achievements, seem there to pass
utterly out of remembrance. It is not now an idle reflection that "the
paths of glory lead but to the grave." No power of human thought ever
rose higher or went further than the thought of Shakespeare. No human
being, using the best weapons of intellectual achievement, ever
accomplished so much. Yet here he lies--who was once so great! And here
also, gathered around him in death, lie his parents, his children, his
descendants, and his friends. For him and for them the struggle has long
since ended. Let no man fear to tread the dark pathway that Shakespeare
has trodden before him. Let no man, standing at this grave, and seeing
and feeling that all the vast labours of that celestial genius end here
at last in a handful of dust, fret and grieve any more over the puny and
evanescent toils of to-day, so soon to be buried in oblivion! In the
simple performance of duty and in the life of the affections there may
be permanence and solace. The rest is an "insubstantial pageant." It
breaks, it changes, it dies, it passes away, it is forgotten; and though
a great name be now and then for a little while remembered, what can the
remembrance of mankind signify to him who once wore it? Shakespeare,
there is reason to believe, set precisely the right value alike upon
contemporary renown and the homage of posterity. Though he went forth,
as the stormy impulses of his nature drove him, into the great world of
London, and there laid the firm hand of conquest upon the spoils of
wealth and power, he came back at last to the peaceful home of his
childhood; he strove to garner up the comforts and everlasting treasures
of love at his hearthstone; he sought an enduring monument in the hearts
of friends and companions; and so he won for his stately sepulchre the
garland not alone of glory but of affection. Through the high eastern
window of the chancel of Holy Trinity church the morning sunshine,
broken into many-coloured light, streams in upon the grave of
Shakespeare and gilds his bust upon the wall above it. He lies close by
the altar, and every circumstance of his place of burial is eloquent of
his hold upon the affectionate esteem of his contemporaries. The line of
graves beginning at the north wall of the chancel and extending across
to the south seems devoted entirely to Shakespeare and his family, with
but one exception.[1] The pavement that covers them is of that blue-gray
slate or freestone which in England is sometimes called black marble. In
the first grave under the north wall rests Shakespeare's wife. The next
is that of the poet himself, bearing the world-famed words of blessing
and imprecation. Then comes the grave of Thomas Nashe, husband to
Elizabeth. Hall, the poet's granddaughter, who died April 4, 1647. Next
is that of Dr. John Hall (obiit November 25, 1635), husband to his
daughter Susanna, and close beside him rests Susanna herself, who was
buried on July 11, 1649. The gravestones are laid east and west, and all
but one present inscriptions. That one is under the south wall, and
possibly it covers the dust of Judith--Mrs. Thomas Quiney--the youngest
daughter of Shakespeare, who, surviving her three children and thus
leaving no descendants, died in 1662. Upon the gravestone of Susanna an
inscription has been intruded commemorative of Richard Watts, who is
not, however, known to have had any relationship with either Shakespeare
or his descendants.
[1] "The poet knew," says J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, "that as a tithe-owner
he would necessarily be buried in the chancel."
Shakespeare's father, who died in 1601, and his mother, Mary Arden, who
died in 1608, were buried in or near this church. (The register says,
under Burials, "September 9, 1608, Mayry Shaxspere, wydowe.") His infant
sisters Joan, Margaret, and Anne, and his brother Richard, who died,
aged thirty-nine, in 1613, may also have been laid to rest in this
place. Of the death and burial of his brother Gilbert there is no
record. His sister Joan, the second--Mrs. Hart--would naturally have
been placed with her relatives. His brother Edmund, dying in 1607, aged
twenty-seven, is under the pavement of St. Saviour's church in
Southwark. The boy Hamnet, dying before his father had risen into local
eminence, rests, probably, in an undistinguished grave in the
churchyard. (The register records his burial on August 11, 1596.) The
family of Shakespeare seems to have been short-lived and it was soon
extinguished. He himself died at fifty-two. Judith's children perished
young. Susanna bore but one child--Elizabeth--who became successively
Mrs. Nashe and Lady Barnard, and she, dying in 1670, was buried at
Abingdon, near Oxford. She left no children by either husband, and in
her the race of Shakespeare became extinct. That of Anne Hathaway also
has nearly disappeared, the last living descendant of the Hathaways
being Mrs. Baker, the present occupant of Anne's cottage at Shottery.
Thus, one by one, from the pleasant gardened town of Stratford, they
went to take up their long abode in that old church, which was ancient
even in their infancy, and which, watching through the centuries in its
monastic solitude on the shore of Avon, has seen their lands and houses
devastated by flood and fire, the places that knew them changed by the
tooth of time, and almost all the associations of their lives
obliterated by the improving hand of destruction.
One of the oldest and most interesting Shakespearean documents in
existence is the narrative, by a traveller named Dowdall, of his
observations in Warwickshire, and of his visit, on April 10, 1693, to
Stratford church. He describes therein the bust and the tombstone of
Shakespeare, and he adds these remarkable words: "The clerk that showed
me this church is above eighty years old. He says that not one, for fear
of the curse above said, dare touch his gravestone, though his wife and
daughter did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him."
Writers in modern days have been pleased to disparage that inscription
and to conjecture that it was the work of a sexton and not of the poet;
but no one denies that it has accomplished its purpose in preserving the
sanctity of Shakespeare's rest. Its rugged strength, its simple pathos,
its fitness, and its sincerity make it felt as unquestionably the
utterance of Shakespeare himself, when it is read upon the slab that
covers him. There the musing traveller full well conceives how dearly
the poet must have loved the beautiful scenes of his birthplace, and
with what intense longing he must have desired to sleep undisturbed in
the most sacred spot in their bosom. He doubtless had some premonition
of his approaching death. Three months before it came he made his will.
A little later he saw the marriage of his younger daughter. Within less
than a month of his death he executed the will, and thus set his affairs
in order. His handwriting in the three signatures to that paper
conspicuously exhibits the uncertainty and lassitude of shattered
nerves. He was probably quite worn out. Within the space, at the utmost,
of twenty-five years, he had written thirty-seven plays, one hundred and
fifty-four sonnets, and two or more long poems; had passed through much
and painful toil and through bitter sorrow; had made his fortune as
author and actor; and had superintended, to excellent advantage, his
property in London and his large interests in Stratford and its
neighbourhood. The proclamation of health with which the will begins was
doubtless a formality of legal custom. The story that he died of
drinking too hard at a merry meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson is idle
gossip. If in those last days of fatigue and presentiment he wrote the
epitaph that has ever since marked his grave, it would naturally have
taken the plainest fashion of speech. Such is its character; and no
pilgrim to the poet's shrine could wish to see it changed:--
"Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare;
Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones."
It was once surmised that the poet's solicitude lest his bones might be
disturbed in death grew out of his intention to take with him into the
grave a confession that the works which now follow him were written by
another hand. Persons have been found who actually believe that a man
who was great enough to write _Hamlet _could be little enough to feel
ashamed of it, and, accordingly, that Shakespeare was only hired to play
at authorship, as a screen for the actual author. It might not, perhaps,
be strange that a desire for singularity, which is one of the worst
literary crazes of this capricious age, should prompt to the rejection
of the conclusive and overwhelming testimony to Shakespeare's genius
that has been left by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and that shines
forth in all that is known of his life. It is strange that a doctrine
should get itself asserted which is subversive of common reason and
contradictory to every known law of the human mind. This conjectural
confession of poetic imposture has never been exhumed. The grave is
known to have been disturbed, in 1796, when alterations were made in the
church,[1] and there came a time in the present century when, as they were
making repairs in the chancel pavement (the chancel was renovated in
1835), a rift was accidently made in the Shakespeare vault. Through
this, though not without misgiving, the sexton peeped in upon the poet's
remains. He saw nothing but dust.
[1] It was the opinion--not conclusive but interesting--of the late J. O.
Halliwell-Phillipps that at one or other of these "restorations" the
original tombstone of Shakespeare was removed and another one, from the
yard of a modern stone-mason, put in its place. Dr. Ingleby, in his book
on _Shakespeare's Bones, _1883, asserts that the original stone was
removed. I have compared Shakespeare's tombstone with that of his wife,
and with others in the chancel, but I have not found the discrepancy
observed by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, and I think there is no reason to
believe that the original tombstone has ever been disturbed. The letters
upon it were, probably, cut deeper in 1835.
The antique font from which the infant Shakespeare may have received the
water of Christian baptism is still preserved in this church. It was
thrown aside and replaced by a new one about the middle of the
seventeenth century. Many years afterward it was found in the
charnel-house. When that was destroyed, in 1800, it was cast into the
churchyard. In later times the parish clerk used it as a trough to his
pump. It passed then through the hands of several successive owners,
till at last, in days that had learned to value the past and the
associations connected with its illustrious names, it found its way back
again to the sanctuary from which it had suffered such a rude expulsion.
It is still a handsome stone, though broken, soiled, and marred.
Illustration: "Remains of the Old Font at which, probably, Shakespeare
was christened, now in the Nave of Stratford Church."
On the north wall of the chancel, above his grave and near to "the
American window," is placed Shakespeare's monument. It is known to have
been erected there within seven years after his death. It consists of a
half-length effigy, placed beneath a fretted arch, with entablature and
pedestal, between two Corinthian columns of black marble, gilded at base
and top. Above the entablature appear the armorial bearings of
Shakespeare--a pointed spear on a bend sable and a silver falcon on a
tasselled helmet supporting a spear. Over this heraldic emblem is a
death's-head, and on each side of it sits a carved cherub, one holding a
spade, the other an inverted torch. In front of the effigy is a cushion,
upon which both hands rest, holding a scroll and a pen. Beneath is an
inscription in Latin and English, supposed to have been furnished by the
poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall. The bust was cut by Gerard Jonson, a native
of Amsterdam and by occupation a "tomb-maker," who lived in Southwark
and possibly had seen the poet. The material is a soft stone, and the
work, when first set up, was painted in the colours of life. Its
peculiarities indicate that it was copied from a mask of the features
taken after death. Some persons believe (upon slender and dubious
testimony) that this mask has since been found, and busts of Shakespeare
have been based upon it, by W. R. O'Donovan and by William Page. In
September, 1764, John Ward, grandfather of Mrs. Siddons, having come to
Stratford with a theatrical company, gave a performance of _Othello, _in
the Guildhall, and devoted its proceeds to reparation of the Gerard
Jonson effigy, then somewhat damaged by time.
Illustration: "Shakespeare's Monument."
The original colours were then carefully restored and freshened. In
1793, under the direction of Malone, this bust, together with the image
of John-a-Combe--a recumbent statue upon a tomb close to the east wall
of the chancel--was coated with white paint. From that plight it was
extricated, in 1861, by the assiduous skill of Simon Collins, who
immersed it in a bath which took off the white paint and restored the
colours. The eyes are painted light hazel, the hair and pointed beard
auburn, the face and hands flesh-tint. The dress consists of a scarlet
doublet, with a rolling collar, closely buttoned down the front, worn
under a loose black gown without sleeves. The upper part of the cushion
is green, the lower part crimson, and this object is ornamented with
gilt tassels. The stone pen that used to be in the right hand of the
bust was taken from it, toward the end of the last century, by a young
Oxford student, and, being dropped by him upon the pavement, was broken.
A quill pen has been put in its place. This is the inscription beneath
the bust:--
Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, popvlvs maeret, Olympvs habet.
Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so fast?
Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs Death hath plast
Within this monvment: SHAKSPEARE: with whome
Qvick Natvre dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe
Far more than cost; sieth all yt he hath writt
Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt.
Obiit Ano. Doi. 1616. AEtatis 53. Die. 23. Ap.
The erection of the old castles, cathedrals, monasteries, and churches
of England was accomplished, little by little, with laborious toil
protracted through many years. Stratford church, probably more than
seven centuries old, presents a mixture of architectural styles, in
which Saxon simplicity and Norman grace are beautifully mingled.
Different parts of the structure were built at different times. It is
fashioned in the customary crucial form, with a square tower, an octagon
stone spire, (erected in 1764, to replace a more ancient one, made of
oak and covered with lead), and a fretted battlement all around its
roof. Its windows are diversified, but mostly Gothic. The approach to it
is across a churchyard thickly sown with graves, through a lovely green
avenue of lime-trees, leading to a porch on its north side. This avenue
of foliage is said to be the copy of one that existed there in
Shakespeare's day, through which he must often have walked, and through
which at last he was carried to his grave. Time itself has fallen asleep
in that ancient place. The low sob of the organ only deepens the awful
sense of its silence and its dreamless repose. Yews and elms grow in the
churchyard, and many a low tomb and many a leaning stone are there, in
the shadow, gray with moss and mouldering with age. Birds have built
their nests in many crevices in the timeworn tower, round which at
sunset you may see them circle, with chirp of greeting or with call of
anxious discontent. Near by flows the peaceful river, reflecting the
gray spire in its dark, silent, shining waters. In the long and lonesome
meadows beyond it the primroses stand in their golden ranks among the
clover, and the frilled and fluted bell of the cowslip, hiding its
single drop of blood in its bosom, closes its petals as the night comes
down.
Northward, at a little distance from the Church of the Holy Trinity,
stands, on the west bank of the Avon, the building that will always be
famous as the Shakespeare Memorial. The idea of the Memorial was
suggested in 1864, incidentally to the ceremonies which then
commemorated the three-hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth. Ten
years later the site for this structure was presented to the town by
Charles Edward Flower, one of its most honoured inhabitants.
Contributions of money were then asked, and were given. Americans as
well as Englishmen contributed. On April 23, 1877, the first stone of
the Memorial was laid. On April 23, 1880, the building was dedicated.
The fabric comprises a theatre, a library, and a picture-gallery. In the
theatre the plays of Shakespeare are annually represented, in a manner
as nearly perfect as possible. In the library and picture-gallery are to
be assembled all the books upon Shakespeare that have been published,
and all the choice paintings that can be obtained to illustrate his life
and his works. As the years pass this will naturally become a principal
depository of Shakespearean objects. A dramatic college may grow up, in
association with the Shakespeare theatre. The gardens that surround the
Memorial will augment their loveliness in added expanse of foliage and
in greater wealth of floral luxuriance. The mellow tinge of age will
soften the bright tints of the red brick that mainly composes the
building. On its cone-shaped turrets ivy will clamber and moss will
nestle. When a few generations have passed, the old town of Stratford
will have adopted this now youthful stranger into the race of her
venerated antiquities. The same air of poetic mystery that rests now
upon his cottage and his grave will diffuse itself around his Memorial;
and a remote posterity, looking back to the men and the ideas of to-day,
will remember with grateful pride that English-speaking people of the
nineteenth century, although they could confer no honour upon the great
name of Shakespeare, yet honoured themselves in consecrating this votive
temple to his memory.
Illustration: "Gable Window"