[Footnote: 1864.]
All England knows that this year (1864) is the three hundredth since
Shakspere was born. The strong probability is likewise that this month
of April is that in which he first saw the earthly light. On the
twenty-sixth of April he was baptized. Whether he was born on the
twenty-third, to which effect there may once have been a tradition, we
do not know; but though there is nothing to corroborate that statement,
there are two facts which would incline us to believe it if we could:
the one that he _died_ on the twenty-third of April, thus, as it were,
completing a cycle; and the other that the twenty-third of April is St.
George’s Day. If there is no harm in indulging in a little fanciful
sentiment about such a grand fact, we should say that certainly it was
_St. George for merry England_ when Shakspere was born. But had St.
George been the best saint in the calendar--which we have little enough
ground for supposing he was--it would better suit our subject to say
that the Highest was thinking of his England when he sent Shakspere into
it, to be a strength, a wonder, and a gladness to the nations of his
earth.
But if we write thus about Shakspere, influenced only by the fashion of
the day, we shall be much in the condition of those _fashionable_
architects who with their vain praises built the tombs of the prophets,
while they had no regard to the lessons they taught. We hope to be able
to show that we have good grounds for our rejoicing in the birth of that
child whom after-years placed highest on the rocky steep of Art, up
which so many of those who combine feeling and thought are always
striving.
First, however, let us look at some of the more powerful of the
influences into the midst of which he was born. For a child is born into
the womb of the time, which indeed enclosed and fed him before he was
born. Not the least subtle and potent of those influences which tend to
the education of the child (in the true sense of the word _education_)
are those which are brought to bear upon him _through_ the mind, heart,
judgement of his parents. We mean that those powers which have operated
strongly upon them, have a certain concentrated operation, both
antenatal and psychological, as well as educational and spiritual, upon
the child. Now Shakspere was born in the sixth year of Queen Elizabeth.
He was the eldest son, but the third child. His father and mother must
have been married not later than the year 1557, two years after Cranmer
was burned at the stake, one of the two hundred who thus perished in
that time of pain, resulting in the firm establishment of a reformation
which, like all other changes for the better, could not be verified and
secured without some form or other of the _trial by fire_. Events such
as then took place in every part of the country could not fail to make a
strong impression upon all thinking people, especially as it was not
those of high position only who were thus called upon to bear witness to
their beliefs. John Shakspere and Mary Arden were in all likelihood
themselves of the Protestant party; and although, as far as we know,
they were never in any especial danger of being denounced, the whole of
the circumstances must have tended to produce in them individually, what
seems to have been characteristic of the age in which they lived,
earnestness. In times such as those, people are compelled to think.
And here an interesting question occurs: Was it in part to his mother
that Shakspere was indebted for that profound knowledge of the Bible
which is so evident in his writings? A good many copies of the
Scriptures must have been by this time, in one translation or another,
scattered over the country. [Footnote: And it seems to us probable that
this diffusion of the Bible, did more to rouse the slumbering literary
power of England, than any influences of foreign literature whatever.]
No doubt the word was precious in those days, and hard to buy; but there
might have been a copy, notwithstanding, in the house of John Shakspere,
and it is possible that it was from his mother’s lips that the boy first
heard the Scripture tales. We have called his acquaintance with
Scripture _profound_, and one peculiar way in which it manifests itself
will bear out the assertion; for frequently it is the very spirit and
essential aroma of the passage that he reproduces, without making any
use of the words themselves. There are passages in his writings which we
could not have understood but for some acquaintance with the New
Testament. We will produce a few specimens of the kind we mean,
confining ourselves to one play, “Macbeth.”
Just mentioning the phrase, “temple-haunting martlet” (act i. scene 6),
as including in it a reference to the verse, “Yea, the sparrow hath
found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay
her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts,” we pass to the following
passage, for which we do not believe there is any explanation but that
suggested to us by the passage of Scripture to be cited.