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+Project Gutenberg's Shakspere, Personal Recollections, by John A. Joyce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Shakspere, Personal Recollections
+
+Author: John A. Joyce
+
+Release Date: January 31, 2007 [EBook #20487]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKSPERE, PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Afra Ullah, Irma Spehar and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+SHAKSPERE
+
+Personal Recollections
+
+BY
+
+COLONEL JOHN A. JOYCE
+
+_Author of "Checkered Life," "Peculiar Poems," "Zig-Zag," "Jewels of
+Memory," "Complete Poems," "Oliver Goldsmith," "Edgar Allan Poe,"
+"Brick-bats and Bouquets," "Beautiful Washington," "Songs," etc._
+
+    Nations unborn, adown the tides of time
+    Shall keep thy name and fame and thought sublime,
+    And o'er the rolling world from age to age
+    Thy characters shall thrill the mimic stage!
+
+--JOYCE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+PUBLISHED BY BROADWAY
+PUBLISHING COMPANY
+835 BROADWAY, NEW YORK
+
+Copyrighted, in 1904.
+
+BY
+
+COLONEL JOHN A. JOYCE
+
+
+All Rights Reserved.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+_DEDICATION._
+
+
+_I dedicate this book to the reader who has energy enough to borrow it,
+bullion enough to buy it, and brains enough to understand its philosophy,
+with the fervent hope that posterity may reap, thresh and consume the
+golden grain of my literary harvest._
+
+_J. A. J._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+It would be a flagrant presumption and a specimen of magnificent audacity
+for any man, but myself, to attempt, to give anything new about the
+personal and literary character of William Shakspere!
+
+I speak of William as I knew him, child, boy and man, from a spiritual
+standpoint, living with him in soul-lit love for three hundred and forty
+years!
+
+Those who doubt my dates, facts and veracity are to be pitied, and have
+little appreciation of romantic poetry, comedy, tragedy and history!
+
+It is well known among my intimate friends, that I sprang from the race of
+Strulbugs, who live forever, originating on the island of Immortality, on
+the coast of Japan--more than a million years ago.
+
+I do not give the name of the play, act or scene, in head or foot lines, in
+my numerous quotations from Shakspere, designedly leaving the reader to
+trace and find for himself a liberal education by studying the wisdom of
+the Divine Bard.
+
+There are many things in this volume that the ordinary mind will not
+understand, yet I only contract with the present and future generations to
+give rare and rich food for thought, and cannot undertake to furnish the
+reader brains with each book!
+
+J. A. J.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                             Page
+Sweepstakes                                   ix
+
+CHAPTER I.
+Birth. School Days. Shows                      1
+
+CHAPTER II.
+Launched. Apprentice Boy. Ambition            11
+
+CHAPTER III.
+Farm. Life. Sporting. Poaching on Lucy        19
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+In Search of Peace and Fortune                27
+
+CHAPTER V.
+London. Its Guilt and Glory                   37
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+Taverns. Theatres. Variegated Society         45
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+Theatrical Drudgery. Compositions             53
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+Growing Literary Renown. Royal Patrons        61
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+Bohemian Hours. Westminster Abbey. "Love's
+Labor's Lost"                                 73
+
+CHAPTER X.
+Queen Elizabeth. War. Shakspere in Ireland    82
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+Rural England. "Romeo and Juliet"             91
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+"Julius Caesar"                               110
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+Two Tramps. By Land and Sea                  130
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+Windsor Park. "Midsummer Night's Dream"      156
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+The Jew. Shylock. "Merchant of Venice"       175
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+The Supernatural. "Hamlet"                   202
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+Death of Queen Elizabeth. Coronation of King
+James                                        233
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+Shakspere as Monologist. King James          244
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+Stratford. Shakspere's Death. Patriotism Down
+the Ages                                     270
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FACSIMILE PAGES.
+
+Autograph Letter of Shakspere              xxiii
+
+Autograph Poem of Shakspere                  170
+
+Autograph Letter of King James               248
+
+Autograph Epitaph of Shakspere               280
+
+
+
+
+SWEEPSTAKES.
+
+
+Shakspere was the greatest delver into the mysterious mind of man and
+Nature, and sunk his intellectual plummet deeper into the ocean of thought
+than any mortal that ever lived, before or after his glorious advent upon
+the earth. He was a universal ocean of knowledge, and the ebb and flow of
+his thoughts pulsated on the shores of every human passion.
+
+He was a mountain range of ideals, and has been a quarry of love, logic and
+liberty for all writers and actors since his day and age, out of which they
+have built fabrics of fame.
+
+No matter how often and numerous have been the "blasts" set off in his
+rocky foundations, the driller, stone mason and builder of books have
+failed to lessen his mammoth resources, and every succeeding age has
+borrowed rough ashlers, blocks of logic and pillars of philosophy from the
+inexhaustible mine of his divine understanding.
+
+He was an exemplification and consolidation of his own definition of
+greatness:
+
+     _"Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness
+     thrust upon them."_
+
+The poet finds in Shakspere a blooming garden of perennial roses, the
+painter finds colors of heavenly hues, the musician finds seraphic songs
+and celestial aspirations, the sculptor finds models of beauty and truth,
+the doctor finds pills and powders of Providence, the lawyer finds suits
+and briefs of right and reason, the preacher finds prophecies superior to
+Isaiah or Jeremiah, the historian finds lofty romance more interesting than
+facts and the actor "struts and frets" in the Shaksperian looking-glass of
+to-day, in the mad whirl of the mimic stage, with all the pomp and glory of
+departed warriors, statesmen, fools, princes and kings.
+
+Shakspere was grand master of history, poetry and philosophy--tripartite
+principles of memory, imagination and reason. He is credited with composing
+thirty-seven plays, comedies, tragedies and histories, as well as Venus and
+Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Lovers' Complaint, The Passionate Pilgrim
+and one hundred and fifty-four classical sonnets, all poems of unrivaled
+elegance.
+
+What a royal troop of various and universal characters leaped from the
+portals of his burning brain, to stalk forever down the center of the stage
+of life, exemplifying every human passion!
+
+Shakspere never composed a play or poem without a purpose, to satirize an
+evil, correct a wrong or elevate the human soul into the lofty atmosphere
+of the good and great. His villains and heroes are of royal mold, and while
+he lashes with whips of scorn the sin of cupidity, hypocrisy and
+ingratitude, he never forgets to glorify love, truth and patriotism.
+
+Virtue and vice are exhibited in daily, homespun dress, and stalking abroad
+through the centuries, the generous and brave nobility of King Lear, Caesar,
+Othello, and Hamlet, will be seen in marked contrast to Shylock, Brutus,
+Cassius, Iago, Gloster and Macbeth. His fools and wits were philosophers,
+while many of his kings, queens, dukes, lords and ladies were sneaks,
+frauds and murderers.
+
+Vice in velvet, gold and diamonds, suffered under the X-rays of his divine
+phrases, while virtue was winged with celestial plumes, soaring away into
+the heaven of peace and bliss. He was the matchless champion of stern
+morality, and the interpreter of universal reason.
+
+Shakspere was a multifarious man, and every glinting passion of his soul
+found rapid and eloquent expression in words that beam and burn with
+eternal light. The stream of time washes away the fabrics of other poets,
+but leaves the adamantine structure of Shakspere erect and uninjured.
+
+Being surcharged, for three hundred and forty years, with the spirit and
+imagination of Shakspere, I shall tell the world about his personal and
+literary life, and although some curious and unreasonable people may not
+entirely believe everything I relate in this volume, I can only excuse and
+pity their judgment, for they must know that the _Ideal_ is the _Real_!
+
+The intellectual pyramids of his thought still rise out of the desert
+wastes of literary scavengers and loom above the horizon of all the great
+writers and philosophers that preceded his advent on the globe.
+
+The blunt, licentious Saxon words and sentences in the first text of
+Shakspere, have been ruthlessly expurgated by his editorial commentators,
+adding, no doubt, to the beauty and decency of the plays, but sadly
+detracting from their original strength.
+
+Pope, Jonson, Steevens and even Malone have made so many minute, technical
+changes in the Folio Plays of 1623, printed seven years after the death of
+Shakspere, that their presumptive elucidation often drivels into obscurity.
+
+Editorial critics, with the best intention, have frequently edited the
+blood, bone and sinews of the original thought out of the works of the
+greatest authors. While attempting to simplify the text for common, rough
+readers, they mystify the matter by their egotistical explanation, and
+while showing their superior research and classical learning, they
+eliminate the chunk logic force of the real author.
+
+For thirty years Shakspere studied the variegated book of London life, with
+all the human oddities, and when spring and summer covered the earth with
+primroses, flowers and hawthorn blossoms, he rambled over domestic and
+foreign lands, through fields, forests, mountains and stormy seas.
+
+With the fun of Falstaff, the firmness of Caesar, the generosity of King
+Lear and the imagination of Hamlet, Shakspere also possessed the love-lit
+delicacy of Ophelia, Portia and Juliet, reveling familiarly with the
+spirits of water, earth and air, in his kingdom of living ghosts. He
+borrowed words and ideas from all the ancient philosophers, poets and story
+tellers, and shoveling them, pell-mell, into the furnace fires of his
+mammoth brain, fused their crude ore, by the forced draught of his fancy,
+into the laminated steel of enduring form and household utility.
+
+The rough and uncouth corn of others passed through the hoppers of
+Shakspere's brain and came out fine flour, ready for use by the theatrical
+bakers. With the pen of pleasure and brush of fancy he painted human life
+in everlasting colors, that will not fade or tarnish with age or wither
+with the winds of adversity. The celestial sunlight of his genius permeated
+every object he touched and lifted even the vulgar vices of earth into the
+realms of virtue and beauty.
+
+Shakspere was an intellectual atmosphere that permeated and enlivened the
+world of thought. His genius was as universal as the air, where zephyr and
+storm moved at the imperial will of this Grand Master of human passions.
+
+Principles, not people, absorbed the mammoth mind of Shakspere, who paid
+little attention to the princes and philosophers of his day. Schools,
+universities, monks, priests and popes were rungs in the ladder of his
+mind, and only noticed to scar and satirize their hypocrisy, bigotry and
+tyranny with his javelins of matchless wit. The flower and fruit of thought
+sprang spontaneously from his seraphic soul.
+
+He flung his phrases into the intellectual ocean of thought, and they still
+shine and shower down the ages like meteors in a midnight sky. Like the
+busy bee, he banqueted on all the blossoms of the globe and stored the
+honey of his genius in the lofty crags of Parnassus.
+
+Shakspere and Nature were confidential friends, and, while she gave a few
+sheaves of knowledge to her other children, the old Dame bestowed upon the
+"Divine" William the harvest of all the ages.
+
+Shakspere's equipoise of mind, placidity of conduct and control of passion
+rendered him invulnerable to the shafts of envy, malice and tyranny, making
+him always master of the human midgets or vultures that circled about his
+pathway.
+
+One touch from the brush of his imagination on the rudest dramatic canvas
+illuminated the murky scene and flashed on the eye of the beholder the
+rainbow colors of his matchless genius.
+
+Ben Jonson, Greene, Marlowe, Fletcher and Burbage gazed with astonishment
+at the versatility of his poetic and dramatic creations, and while pangs of
+jealousy shot athwart their envious souls, they knew that the Divine Bard
+was soaring above the alpine crags of thought, leaving them at the
+foothills of dramatic venture.
+
+He played the role of policy before peasant, lord and king, and used the
+applause and brain of each for his personal advancement, and yet he never
+sacrificed principle for pelf or bedraggled the skirts of virtue in the
+gutter of vice.
+
+The Divine William knew more about everything than any other man knew about
+anything! He had a carnivorous and omnivorous mind, with a judicial soul,
+and controlled his temper with the same inflexible rule that Nature uses
+when murmuring in zephyrs or shrieking in storms, receding or advancing in
+dramatic thought, as peace or passion demanded.
+
+He seemed at times to be a medley of contradictions, and while playing
+virtue against vice, the reader and beholder are often left in doubt as to
+the guilt or glory of the contending actors. He puts words of wisdom in the
+mouth of a fool, and foolish phrases in the mouth of the wise, and
+shuttlecocked integrity in the loom of imagination.
+
+William was the only poet who ever had any money sense, and understood the
+real value of copper, silver, gold, jewels and land. His early trials and
+poverty at Stratford, with the example of his bankrupt father was always in
+view, convincing him early in life that ready money was all-powerful,
+purchasing rank, comfort and even so-called love.
+
+Yet he only valued riches as a means of doing good, puncturing the bladder
+of bloated wealth with this pin of thought:
+
+    _"If thou art rich, thou art poor;
+    For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
+    Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
+    And Death unloads thee!"_
+
+He noticed wherever he traveled that successful stupidity, although
+secretly despised, was often the master of the people, while a genius with
+the wisdom of the ages, starved at the castle gate, and like Mozart and
+Otway, found rest in the Potter's field.
+
+No Indian juggler could mystify the ear and eye and mind of an audience
+like Shakspere, for, over the crude thoughts of other dramatic writers he
+threw the glamour of his divine imagination, making the shrubs, vines and
+briers of life bloom into perpetual flowers of pleasure and beauty.
+
+    _With his mystic wand he mesmerized all,
+      And peasants transformed to kings;
+    While age after age in cottage and hall,
+      He soars with imperial wings._
+
+No one mind ever comprehended Shakspere, and even all the authors and
+readers that sauntered over his wonderful garden of literary flowers and
+fruits have but barely clipped at the hedge-rows of his philosophy, culling
+a few fragmentary mementos from his immortal productions.
+
+Shakspere's chirography was almost as variable as his mind, and when he sat
+down to compose plays for the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, in his room
+adjacent to the Miter Tavern, he dashed off chunks of thought for pressing
+and waiting actors and managers, piecing them together like a cabinet
+joiner or machinist.
+
+In all his compositions he used, designedly, a pale blue ink that
+evaporated in the course of a year, and the cunning actors and publishers,
+who knew his secret, copied and memorized and printed his immortal
+thoughts. He kept a small bottle of indelible ink for ideals on parchment
+for posterity.
+
+I have often found his room littered and covered with numbered sheets of
+scenes and acts, ready for delivery to actors for recital, and many times
+the sunset over London would run its round to sunrise and find William at
+his desk in the rookery, hammering away on the anvil of thought, fusing
+into shape his divine masterpieces.
+
+Shakspere's bohemian life was but an enlarged edition of his rural vagabond
+career through the fields and alehouses of Warwickshire. He only needed
+about four hours' sleep in twenty-four, but when composition on occasion
+demanded rapidity, he could work two days and rise from his labor as fresh
+as a lark from the flowery bank of Avon.
+
+Most of the great writers of antiquity patterned after greater than
+themselves, but Shakspere evolved from the illuminated palace of his soul
+the songs and sentiments that move the ages and make him the colossal
+champion of beauty, mercy, charity, purity, courage, love and truth.
+
+There are more numerous nuggets of thought in the works of Shakspere than
+in all the combined mass of ancient and modern literature.
+
+The various bibles, composed and manufactured by man, cannot compare in
+variety, common sense and eloquence, with the productions of the Immortal
+Bard.
+
+All the preachers, bishops, popes, kings, and emperors that have ever
+conjured up texts and creeds for dupes, devotees and designers to swallow
+without question, have never yet sunk the plummet of reason so deep in the
+human heart as the butcher boy of Stratford!
+
+Shakspere was the most industrious literary prospector and miner of any
+land or time, throwing his searchlight of reason into the crude mass of
+Indian, Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Frank, German, Russian
+and Briton lore, and forthwith appropriated the golden beauties of each
+nation, leaving behind the dross of vice and vulgarity.
+
+Marlowe, Burbage, Peele, Chapman, Greene and Jonson composed many fine
+physical and licentious dramas, pandering to the London groundlings,
+bloated wealth and accidental power; but Shakspere threw a spiritual
+radiance over their brutal, sordid phrases and elevated stage characters
+into the realm of romantic thought, pinioned with hope, love and truth. His
+sublime imagination soared away into the flowery uplands of Divinity, and
+plucked from the azure wings of angels brilliant feathers of fancy that
+shall shine and flutter down the ages.
+
+He flung his javelin of wit through the buckler of ignorance, bigotry and
+tyranny, exposing their rotten bodies to the ridicule and hate of mankind.
+
+In lordly language he swept over the harp strings of the heart with
+infinite expression and comprehension of words, leaving in his intellectual
+wake a multifarious heritage of brain jewels. He flew over the world like a
+swarm of bees, robbing all the fields of literature of their secret sweets,
+storing the rich booty of Nature in the honeycomb of his philosophic hive.
+
+Through his brain the variegated paraphernalia of Nature, in field, forest,
+vale, mount, river, sea and sky were illuminated with a divine radiance
+that shall shine forever and grow greater as mankind grows wiser.
+
+Shakspere has paid the greatest tribute of respect of any writer to women.
+While he gives us a few scolding, licentious, cruel, criminal women, like
+Dame Quickly, Katharina, Tamora, Gertrude and Lady Macbeth, he gives us the
+beautiful, faithful, loving characters of Isabella, Juliet, Desdemona,
+Perdita, Helena, Miranda, Imogen, Ophelia and Cordelia, whose love-lit
+words and phrases shine out in the firmament of purity and devotion like
+morning stars in tropic skies.
+
+Shakspere studied all trades and professions he encountered in daily
+contact with mankind. He thought what he was and was what he thought! To
+him a sermon was a preacher, a writ a lawyer, a pill a doctor, a sail a
+sailor, a sword a soldier, a button a tailor, a nail a carpenter, a hammer
+a blacksmith, a trowel a stone mason, a pebble a geologist, a flower a
+botanist, a ray of light an astronomer, and even a _word_ gave him ample
+suggestion to build up an empire of thought.
+
+He sailed upon the tides and currents of the human heart, and steered
+through the cliffs and caverns of the brain with greater glory than those
+who sought the golden "fleece" among the enchanting waters of Ionian isles.
+
+Shakspere conjured the characters of his plays from elemental principles,
+measures not men, breathing and acting in his divine atmosphere. It is
+strange and marvelous that he never wrote a line about the great men that
+lived and wrote in his day and age, although Cervantes, Rubens, Camoens,
+Bruno, Drake, Raleigh, Calderon, Corneille, Rembrandt, Kepler, Galileo,
+Montaigne, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sidney, Marlowe, Bacon and Ben Jonson
+were contemporaneous authors, poets, dramatists, navigators, soldiers,
+astronomers and philosophers.
+
+Licentious phrases and actions were universal in Shakspere's time, and from
+the corrupt courts of King Henry the Eighth, Elizabeth and King James, to
+the cot of the peasant and trail of the tavern, morality hid her modest
+head and only flourished among the puritans and philosophers who kept alive
+the flame of love and liberty.
+
+Dryden, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe and Jonson infected literature with a
+species of eloquent vulgarity, and Shakspere, willing to please, readily
+infused into his various plays sensuous phrases to catch the rabble cheers
+and purpled applause. While he worshiped nature, he never failed to bend
+the knee for ready cash, and often paid fulsome tribute to lords and
+ladies, who flattered his vanity and ministered to his "itching palm."
+
+Physical passion, mental license and social tyranny ruled in home, church
+and state, where Rome and Reformation struggled viciously for the mastery.
+
+There are nuggets of golden thought still scattered through the plays of
+Shakspere that no author or actor has ever discovered, and although they
+have read and repeated his lines, for more than three hundred years, there
+has been no brain able and brilliant enough to delve into or explain the
+secret caves of Shaksperian wit. Human sparrows cannot know the eagle
+flights of divine philosophy.
+
+The golden gilt of imagination decorated his phrases and the lambent light
+of his philosophy shone like the rosy dawn upon a field of variegated wild
+flowers. The hut and the cottage were transformed into lordly castles while
+the rocks and the hills became ranges of mountain, whose icy pinnacles
+reflected back the shimmering light of suns and stars.
+
+Shakspere was a man of universal moods and like a chameleon took color and
+force from every object he touched. The draughts he took from the deep
+flowing wells of nature made no diminution in the volume of his thought,
+that rushed through his seething brain like an underground cataract filled
+from eternal springs.
+
+Fresh from the mint of his mind fell the clinking, golden coin of universal
+value, bearing the glowing stamp of his genius, unrivaled in the annals of
+time. Since he wrote and acted, no man ever understood the depths of his
+wit and logic, or the height of his imagination and philosophy. The human
+mackerel cannot know the human whale.
+
+Shallow, presumptive college bookworms, arrogant librarians and classical
+compilers, have attempted to explain his plays and sonnets, in footnotes,
+but they have only been entangled in the briers and flowers of his fancy,
+finding themselves suffocated at last, in the luxurious fields of his
+eloquent rhetoric and universal wisdom.
+
+School-teachers, professors, priests, preachers, popes, and princes are
+brushed aside by the cutting phrases of Shakspere and go down to earth like
+grass before the scythe of this rustic reaper. They are dumfounded by his
+matchless mysterious logic. Religion, law and medicine are pitchforked
+about by the Divine William on the threshing floor of his literary granary,
+where he separates wheat from chaff, instanter, leaving the beholder
+mystified by the splendid result.
+
+Viewing the great minds of the world from Homer to Humboldt, Shakspere
+never had an equal or superior, standing on the pinnacle of the pyramid of
+human renown, and lifting his mammoth mental form above the other
+philosophers of the earth as Mount St. Elias soars above its brother peaks.
+
+Distance lends a wizard enchantment to his lofty form and down the rolling
+ages his glory will grow greater until the whole universe is luminous with
+the dazzling lights of his eternal fame.
+
+    _Such god-like men shall never die;
+    They shine as suns in tropic sky,
+    And thrill the world with truth and love
+    Derived from nature far above._
+
+Shakspere's mind was pinioned with celestial imagination, and his rushing
+flight circled the shores of omnipotence. He taught us that ignorance was a
+crime, a murky night without a single star to light the traveler on his
+weary way.
+
+Those who have attempted to fathom the depths of the Shaksperian ocean of
+thought, have only rounded the rim or skimmed over the surface of its
+illimitable magnificence. Tossed about by the billows of Shakspere's brain,
+for three hundred and forty years mankind like a ship in a storm, still
+wonders and runs on the reefs of his understanding, to be wrecked in their
+vain calculation of his divine wisdom.
+
+Leaving the beaten paths of oriental and middle age writers, he dashed deep
+into the forest of nature and surveyed for himself a new dominion of
+thought, that has never been occupied before or since his birth. Like a
+comet of universal light, he shines over the world with the warm glow of
+celestial knowledge.
+
+With the tuning key of his matchless genius he struck the chords of sorrow
+to their inmost tone and played on the heart strings of joy with the tender
+vibrations of an aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the
+wild flowers of ecstatic passion.
+
+And to clap the climax and fathom the logic of love, he eloquently
+exclaims:
+
+"Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds!"
+
+J. A. J.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Shakspere: Personal Recollections
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+BIRTH. SCHOOL DAYS. SHOWS.
+
+    _"One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin."_
+
+
+William Shakspere was born on the 23d of April, 1564, at the town of
+Stratford, on the river Avon, Warwickshire County, England; and died in the
+same town on the 23d of April, 1616, exactly fifty-two years of age, the
+date of his birth being the date of his death, a remarkable coincidence of
+spiritual assimilation.
+
+For several centuries, his ancestors served their king and crown in war and
+peace; and were noted in their day and age as country "gentlemen," a term
+much more significant then than now, when even dressed up "dandy" frauds
+may lay claim to this much-abused title.
+
+The grandfather of Shakspere fought on Bosworth Field with King Henry the
+Seventh, and was rewarded for his military service, leaving to his son
+John, the father of the "Divine" William, influence enough to secure the
+position of a country squire and made him bailiff and mayor of the town of
+Stratford.
+
+John Shakspere, in addition to his judicial duties, dabbled in trade as a
+wool dealer and glove maker, and when he lost influence and office he
+resorted to the business of a butcher to secure bread, meat and shelter for
+his large family.
+
+He married the youngest daughter of Robert Arden, a very beautiful girl of
+Wilmcote, a small village three miles from Stratford. When Arden died,
+Mary, his favorite daughter, was bequeathed thirty-six dollars, and a small
+farm of fifty acres, near the town of Snitterfield. Good inheritance for
+that age.
+
+The Arden family were strict Roman Catholics; and Edward Arden, high
+sheriff of Warwickshire, was executed in 1583, for plotting against her
+majesty, Queen Elizabeth. Those were lively days, when the followers of the
+Pope and King Henry the Eighth, banished, burned and hung presumptive
+heretics for opinion's sake! The lechery and greed of King Hal was the
+primary cause of his separation from papal authority, augmenting the
+Reformation by licentious royalty.
+
+John Shakspere and Mary, his good wife, did not seem to have much of an
+education, for in signing deeds of conveyance, they only made their mark
+like thousands of the yeomanry of England.
+
+Shakspere was a very common name in Warwickshire and the surrounding
+counties, and while the "Divine" William glorified the whole race, there
+were others of his name who fought for king and crown.
+
+John Shakspere had ten children, with the affectionate assistance of Mary
+Arden. Seven daughters and three boys, William being the third child and
+the most active and robust. Several of the flock died, thereby reducing the
+trials and expenses of the household; the "old man" seeming to be one of
+those ancient "Mulberry Sellers," that was forever making "millions" in his
+mind, and chasing gold bags at the west end of rainbows!
+
+For many years he persistently applied to the College of Heralds for a
+"coat of arms;" and finally in the year of 1599, a picture of a "shield"
+with a "spear" and "falcon," rampant, was awarded to the Shakspere family,
+all through the growing influence of the actor and author William, who had
+become famous and wealthy. John Shakspere did not enjoy the glory of his
+"coat of arms" very long, for we find that he died in September, 1601, and
+was buried on the 8th of that month, at the old church in Stratford, and
+his brave old wife, the mother of William Shakspere, followed him to the
+tomb on the 9th of September, 1608.
+
+I first met Will Shakspere on the 23d of April, 1571, at the old log and
+board schoolhouse at the head of Henley street, Stratford, on the river
+Avon. It was a bright, sunny day, and Mr. Walter Roche, the Latin master,
+was the autocrat of the scholastic institution, afterwards succeeded by
+Thomas Hunt.
+
+Will Shakspere and myself happened to be born on the same day, and our
+first entrance at the temple of knowledge marked exactly the seventh
+milestone of our fleeting years.
+
+Will was a very lusty, rollicking boy and was as full of innocent mischief
+as a pomegranate is of seeds. He was handsome and bright, wearing a thick
+suit of auburn curls, that rippled over his shoulders like a waterfall in
+the sunshine. His eyes were very large, a light hazel hue, that glinted
+into blue when his soul was stirred by passion. His forehead was broad and
+high, even as a boy, rounding off into that "dome of thought" that in later
+years, when a six-foot specimen of splendid manhood caused him to conjure
+up such a universal group of immortal characters.
+
+His nose was long and high, but symmetrical, and his distended nostrils,
+when excited at play, would remind you of a Kentucky racehorse in motion.
+His voice was sonorous and musical, and when stirred by passion or pleasure
+it rose and fell like the sound of waves upon a stormy or summer sea. His
+lips were red and full, marked by Nature, with the "bow of beauty," and
+when his luminous countenance was flushed with celestial light, he shot the
+arrows of love-lit glances around the schoolroom and fairly magnetized the
+boys, and particularly the girls, with the radiant influence of his
+unconscious genius.
+
+Will was a constant source of anxiety and wonder to the teacher, who often
+marked him as the scapegoat to carry off the surface sins of sneaking and
+cowardly pupils. Corporal punishment was part of school discipline, and
+William and myself got our share of the rule and rod.
+
+Through all the centuries, in youth and age, private and public, the
+scapegoat has been the real hero in all troubles and misfortunes. He seems
+to be a necessary mortal, but while persecution relentlessly pursues him,
+he almost invariably triumphs over his enemies, and when even devoted to
+the prison, the stake or the scaffold, as a martyr, he triumphs over the
+grave and is monumented in the memory of mankind for his bravery and
+silent self-sacrifice!
+
+For seven school years Will and myself were daily companions. Spring, with
+its cowslips and primroses, and hawthorn blossoms, found us rambling
+through the woods and fields, and angling for the finny tribe disporting in
+the purling waters of the crystal Avon.
+
+Summer brought its grain and fruits, with boys and girls scrambling over
+hedges, fences, stiles and brooks, in search of berries and ripe apples;
+autumn with its nuts, birds and hares, invited us to hunting grounds, along
+the rolling ridges and the dense forest of Arden, even poaching on the
+domain of Sir Thomas Lucy and the royal reaches of Warwick Castle, and old
+winter with his snowy locks and whistling airs brought the roses to our
+young cheeks, skipping and sporting through his fantastic realm like the
+snow birds whirling in clumps of clouds across the withered world.
+
+Looking back over the fields, forests and waters of the past through the
+variegated realms of celestial imagination, I behold after the lapse of
+more than three centuries of human wrecks, the brilliant boys and glorious
+girls I played with in childhood years--still shining as bright and fresh
+as the flowers and fruits of yesterday!
+
+    _"For we are the same our fathers have been,
+    We see the same sights our fathers have seen,
+    We drink the same streams and view the same sun,
+    And run the same course our fathers have run!"_
+
+I remember well the first time Will and myself attended a theatrical
+performance. It was on the first of April, 1573, when we were about nine
+years of age.
+
+A strolling band of comic, and Punch and Judy players had made a sudden
+invasion of Stratford and established themselves in the big barn of the old
+Bear Tavern on Bridge street.
+
+The town was alive with expectation and the school children were wild to
+behold the great play of "The Scolding Wife," which was advertised through
+the streets, in the daytime, by a cartload of bedizened harlequins,
+belaboring each other with words and gestures, the wife with bare arms,
+short dress and a bundle of rods, standing rampant over the prostrate form
+of a drunken husband.
+
+Fifes, drums and timbrels kept up a frantic noise, filling the bylanes and
+streets of Stratford with astonished country louts and tradesmen, until the
+fantastic parade ended in the wagon yard of the tavern.
+
+The old barn had been rigged up as a rustic playhouse, the stage covering
+one end, elevated about three feet from the threshing floor. Curtains with
+daub pictures were strung across the stage, separated in the center and
+shifted backward and forward, as the varying scenes of the family play were
+presented for the hisses or cheers of the variegated audience.
+
+The play consisted of three acts, showing the progress of courtship and
+marriage at the altar, country and town life with growing children, work,
+poverty, and final windup of the husband driven from home by the scolding
+wife, bruised in an alehouse, dead and followed to the graveyard by the
+Beadle, undertaker and a brindle dog.
+
+The climax scene of the play exhibited the wife with a bundle of rods,
+surrounded by ragged children, driving out into a midnight storm the
+husband of her bosom, while peals of thunder and flashes of lightning
+brought goose pimples and shivers to the frightened audience.
+
+The impression made upon the mind of William and myself did not give us a
+very hopeful view of married life, and while the haphazard working,
+drinking habits of the husband seemed to deserve all the punishment he
+received, the modesty, benevolence and beauty of woman was shattered in our
+young souls.
+
+On our way home from the country-tragedy performance we were gladdened by
+the thought, that although the rude, vulgar, criminal passions of mankind
+were portrayed and enacted day by day all over the globe, we could look up
+into the star-lit heavens and see those glittering lamps of night shining
+with reflected light on the murmuring bosom of the Avon, as it flowed in
+peaceful ripples to the Severn and from the Severn to the sea. Nature
+soothed our young hearts, and soon, in the mysterious realms of sleep, we
+forgot the sorrows and poverty of earth, tripping away with angelic
+companions through the golden fields of celestial dreams.
+
+    _"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
+    Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."_
+
+I shall never forget the great shows and pageants that took place in
+Warwickshire County, in July, 1575. All England was alive to the grand
+entrance of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle, as the royal guest of her
+favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Proclamation had gone forth
+that all work be suspended, while yeoman, trader, merchant, doctor, lawyer,
+minister, lords and earls should pay a pilgrimage to Kenilworth and pay
+tribute to the Virgin Queen.
+
+Stratford and the surrounding villages were aflame with enthusiasm, and as
+John Shakspere, the alderman and mayor, took great interest in theatricals
+and particularly those festivities inaugurated for the entertainment of
+royalty, he led a great concourse of devoted patriots through the forests
+of Arden, blooming parks of Warwick Castle on to the grand surroundings of
+Kenilworth, where the people _en masse_ camped, sang, danced, took part in
+country plays, feasted and went wild for eighteen days, over the
+illustrious daughter of Henry the Eighth.
+
+William and myself were among the enthusiastic revelers, and for boys of
+twelve years of age, we felt more cheer than any of the lads and lasses
+from Stratford, because our parents furnished us with milk white ponies, to
+pay tribute, and typify the virtue and chastity of the "Virgin Queen!" We
+did not particularly care about virtue or virginity, so we shared in the
+cakes and ale that were lavished in profusion to the rural multitude.
+
+A high grand throne made out of evergreens and wild flowers was erected in
+the central park of Kenilworth, rimmed in by lofty elms, oaks and
+sycamores.
+
+There, through the fleeting days and nights, the Queen and her royal suite
+of a thousand purpled cavaliers and bejeweled maids of honor, held court
+and viewed the ever-changing, living panorama evolved for their
+entertainment. The Queen looked like a wilderness of lace and variegated
+velvet, irrigated with a shower of diamonds.
+
+On the 9th of July Queen "Bess" and her illuminated suite entered the
+Castle of Kenilworth, and the hands of the clock in the great tower pointed
+to the hour of two, where they remained until her departure, as invitation
+to a continual banquet.
+
+The Earl expended a thousand pounds a day for the fluid and food
+entertainment of his guests, while woodland bowers and innumerable tents
+were scattered through the royal domain generously donated to man and maid
+by night and day. We boys and girls seldom went to bed.
+
+Companies of circus performers, and theatrical artists, from London and
+other towns were brought down to the heart of Old Albion to swell the
+pleasure of the reigning Queen. Continual plays were going on, while horn,
+fife, bugle and drum lent music to the kaleidoscopic revel.
+
+Dancing, hunting, hawking and archery parties, through the day, lent their
+antics to the scene, and when night came with bright Luna showing her
+mystic face, forest fires, rockets and illuminated balloons filled the air
+with celestial wonder, vieing with the stars in an effort to do universal
+honor to the "Virgin Queen!" That's what they called "Bess."
+
+William and myself took part in several of the joint circus and theatrical
+performances, and at the conclusion of one of the plays--"Virtue
+Victorious," Queen Elizabeth called up William and a purple page named
+Francis Bacon, patted them on the head with her royal digits, and said they
+would soon be great men!
+
+I must acknowledge that I felt a little envious at the encomium, not so
+much to William, as to the proud peacock, Bacon, who came in the train of
+the Queen.
+
+At sunrise of the 27th of July, 1575, the festivities closed, and the royal
+cavalcade with a following of ten thousand loyal subjects, accompanied the
+ruling monarch to the borders of Warwickshire, with universal shouts and
+ovations on her triumphal march to London.
+
+    _"I would applaud thee to the very echo,
+    That should applaud again."_
+
+      _"All that glitters is not gold,
+      Often you have heard that told;
+      Many a man his life hath sold
+      But my outside to behold!"_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LAUNCHED. APPRENTICE BOY. AMBITION.
+
+    _"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our Stars,
+    But in ourselves that we are underlings."_
+
+
+Will Shakspere and myself left school when we were fourteen years of age.
+Our parents being reduced in worldly circumstances, needed the financial
+fruits of our labor.
+
+Shakspere was bound to a butcher named John Bull, for a term of three
+years, while I was put at the trade of stone-cutting with Sam Granite for
+the same period.
+
+Will was one of the finest looking boys in the town of Stratford,
+aristocratic by nature, large and noble in appearance, and the pride of all
+the girls in the county of Warwick; for his fame as a runner, boxer,
+drinker, dancer, reciter, speaker, hunter, swimmer and singer was well
+known in the surrounding farms and villages, where he had occasion to
+drive, purchase and sell meat animals for his butcher boss, John Bull.
+Shakspere's father assisted Bull in selling hides and buying wool.
+
+In the winter of 1580, Will and myself joined a new thespian society,
+organized by the boys and girls of Stratford, with a contingent of
+theatrical talent from Shottery, Snitterfield, Leicester, Kenilworth and
+Coventry.
+
+Strolling players, chartered by Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester,
+often visited Stratford and the surrounding towns, infusing into the young,
+and even the old, a desire for that innocent fun of tragic or comic
+philosophy that wandering minstrels and circus exhibitions generate in the
+human heart.
+
+Plays of Roman, Spanish and German origin, as well as those of Old Albion,
+were enacted on our rural stage, and although we had not the paraphernalia
+and scenery of the London actors, we made up in frantic enthusiasm what we
+lacked in artistic finish, and often in our amateur exhibitions at balls,
+fairs, races and May Day Morris dances, we "astonished the natives," who
+paid from a penny to sixpence to see and hear the "Stratford Oriental
+Theatrical Company."
+
+Shakspere always took a leading part in every play, poem and declamation,
+but when an encore was given and a demand for a recitation on love, Will
+was in his natural element and gave the eager audience dashes from Ovid's
+Metamorphoses or Petrarch's Sonnets.
+
+The local company had a large assortment of poetic and theatrical
+translations, and many of the boys and girls who had passed through the
+Latin school, could "spout" the rhythmic lines of Ovid, Virgil, Horace or
+Petrarch in the original language. And strange to say, the Warwickshire
+audience would cheer the Latin more than the English rendition, on the
+principle that the least you know about a thing the more you enjoy it!
+Thus pretense and ignorance make a stagger at information, and while
+fooling themselves, imagine that they fool their elbow neighbor!
+
+Shakspere had a most marvelous memory, and his sense of taste, smell,
+feeling, hearing and particularly seeing was abnormally developed, and
+constant practice in talking and copying verses and philosophic sentences
+made him almost perfect in his deductions and conclusions. He was a natural
+orator, and impressed the beholder with his superiority.
+
+He had a habit of copying the best verses, dramatic phrases and orations of
+ancient authors, and then to show his superiority of epigrammatic, incisive
+style, he could paraphrase the poems of other writers into his own divine
+sentences, using the crude ore of Homeric and Platonic philosophy,
+resolving their thoughts into the best form of classic English, lucid,
+brave and blunt!
+
+I have often tested his powers of lightning observation with each of us
+running by shop windows in Stratford, Oxford or London, and betting a
+dinner as to who could name the greatest number of objects, and he
+invariably could name correctly three to my one. In visiting country
+farmers in search of cattle, sheep or pigs he could mount a stone fence or
+climb a hedge row gate, and by a glance over the field or meadow, give the
+correct number of animals in sight.
+
+He was a wonder to the yeomanry of Warwickshire and the surrounding
+counties, and when he had occasion to rest for the night at farm houses or
+taverns, he was the prime favorite of the rural flames or bouncing,
+beaming barmaid. The girls went wild about him. The physical development of
+Shakspere was as noticeable as his mental superiority. Often when he
+ploughed the placid waters of the Avon, or buffeted the breakers of the
+moaning sea, have I gazed in rapture at his manly, Adonis form, standing on
+the sands, like a Grecian wrestler, waiting for the laurel crown of the
+Olympic games.
+
+    _Great Shakspere was endowed with heavenly light;
+    He read the book of Nature day and night,
+    And delving through the strata of mankind
+    Divined the thoughts that thrilled the mystic mind,
+    And felt the pulse of all the human race,
+    While from their beating heart could surely trace
+    The various passions that inspire the soul
+    Around this breathing world from pole to pole!_
+
+My family and the Hathaway household were on familiar terms, for my father
+at times worked an adjoining estate at the edge of the village of Shottery,
+a straggling community of farmers and tradesmen, with the usual
+wheelwright, blacksmith shop, corn and meat store and alehouse attachments.
+
+William, in his rural perambulations, often put up for the night at our
+cottage, and as there was generally some fun going on in the neighborhood
+after dark, I led him into many frolics with the boys and girls; and I can
+assure you he was a rusher with the fair sex, capturing the plums that fell
+from the tree of beauty and passion.
+
+On a certain moonlight night, in the month of May, 1581, a large concourse
+of rural belles and beaux assembled at the home of John Dryden, washed by
+the waters of the Avon, and thrilled by the songs of the nightingales,
+thrushes and larks lending enchantment to the flitting hours.
+
+Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcote and Shottery sent their contingent of
+roistering boys and girls to enjoy the moonlight lawn dance and rural feast
+set out under flowery bowers by the generous Dryden.
+
+It would have done your heart good to see the variegated dresses, antics
+and faces of the happy rural belles. I see them as plain as ever in the
+looking-glass of memory. There is Laura Combs, plump and intelligent, Mary
+Scott, willowy and keen, Jennie Field, sedate and sterling, Mary Hall,
+musical and handsome, Annie Condell, modest and benevolent, Joyce Acton,
+witty and aristocratic, Lizzie Heminge, bouncing and beaming, Fannie Hunt,
+stately and kind, while Anne Hathaway, the big girl of the party, seemed to
+be the leader in all the innocent mischief of the evening.
+
+William took a particular liking to the push and go of Anne, and she seemed
+to concentrate her gaze on his robust form at first sight. William asked
+me, as the friend of the family, to introduce him to Miss Hathaway, which I
+did in my best words, and away they went, on a hop, step and a jump through
+the Morris dance that was just then being enacted on the lawn.
+
+The clarion notes of the farm cocks were saluting the rosy footsteps of the
+dawn when the various parties dispersed for home.
+
+The last I saw of William he was helping Miss Hathaway over the rustic
+stile and hedge row that rimmed the old thatched cottage home of his new
+found flame.
+
+It was a frigid day or night when William could not find something fresh
+and new among the fair sex, and like a king bee in a field of wild flowers,
+he sipped the nectar of love and beauty, and tossed carking care to the
+vagrant winds.
+
+It was soon after this moonlight party that a picnic revel was given in the
+domain of Sir Hugh Clopton, near the old mill and stone bridge erected by
+that generous public benefactor.
+
+The boys and girls of the town turned out _en masse_, and enjoyed the
+hawking, hunting, swimming, dancing, archery and boating that prevailed
+that day.
+
+In the midst of the festivities, while a long line of rural beauties and
+beaux were prancing and rollicking on the bridge, a scream, and a flash of
+Dolly Varden dress in the river showed the struggling efforts of Anne
+Hathaway to keep her head above water.
+
+One glance at the pride of his heart struggling for her life determined the
+soul of the athlete, when he plunged into the running stream, caught the
+arm of his adored as she was going down for the third time, and then with a
+few mighty sweeps of his brawny arm, he reached the shore and heaved her on
+the sands in an almost lifeless condition. She was soon restored, however,
+by her numerous companions, with only the loss of a few ribbons and bunches
+of hawthorn blossoms that William had tied in her golden hair that morning.
+
+William was the hero of the day, and his fame for bravery rung on the lips
+of the Warwickshire yeomanry, while in the heart of Anne Hathaway devotion
+reigned supreme.
+
+     _"There is no love broker in the world can more prevail in man's
+     commendation with woman than report of valor."_
+
+The courtship of William and Anne was rapid, and although her father died
+only a few months before the 27th of November, 1582, license to marry was
+suddenly obtained through the insistence of the yeoman friends of the
+Hathaway family, Fulke-Sandells and John Richardson, who convinced the Lord
+Bishop of Worcester that one calling of the banns of matrimony was only
+necessary.
+
+William left his home in Stratford immediately and took charge of Anne's
+cottage and farm, settling down as soon as one of his rollicking nature
+could realize that he had been virtually forced into marrying a buxom girl,
+eight years older than himself, and a woman of hot temper. _Six_ months
+after marriage Susanna, his daughter was born, and about two years after,
+February 2d, 1585, his twin children Hammet and Judith were ushered into
+his cottage home, as new pledges of matrimonial felicity.
+
+Things did not move on with William as happily after marriage as before,
+and while his wife did most of the work, the Bard of Nature preferred to
+shirk hard labor in field and wood, longing constantly to meet the "boys"
+at the tavern, or fish, sing, hunt and poach along the Avon.
+
+Yoking Pegasus to a Flanders mare would be about as reasonable as joining a
+practical, honest woman with a poet!
+
+Water and hot oil will not mix, and the fires of genius cannot be curbed or
+subdued by material surroundings. Beef cannot appreciate brains!
+
+Anne was constantly sand papering William about his vagabond life, and
+holding up the picture of ruin for her ancestral estate, by his thoughtless
+extravagance and determination to attend to other people's business instead
+of his own. As the wife was senior and business boss, the Bard endured
+these curtain lectures with meekness and surface sorrow and promises of
+reformation, but, when out of her sight continued in the same old rut of
+playing the clown and philosopher for the public amusement.
+
+    _"How hard it is to hide the spark of Nature!"_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+FARM LIFE. SPORTING. POACHING ON LUCY.
+
+    _"Hanging and wiving go by destiny!"_
+
+
+The drudgery of farm work was not relished by Shakspere, and the spring of
+1586 found the man of destiny more engaged in the sports of Stratford and
+surrounding villages than in the production of corn, cabbage, turnips and
+potatoes. Where fun was to be found William raised the auction and the
+highest bidder at the booths of vanity fair. He was athletic in mind and
+body, and forever like a cribbed lion or caged eagle, struggled to shake
+off his rural environments and dash away into the world of thought and
+action.
+
+Home, with its practical, daily gad grind morality and responsibility, had
+no charm for William, and his stalwart wife made matters worse by her
+continual importunities to her vagabond husband to settle down with the
+muttonhead clodhoppers and tradesmen of Warwickshire. He was not built that
+way!
+
+Her farm logic fell upon deaf ears, for while she was preaching hard work
+he was reading the love-lit flights of Ovid and pondering over the sugared
+sonnets of Petrarch and Sir Philip Sidney, living in the realms of Clio,
+Euterpe and Terpsichore, preparing even then his pathway to the great
+poems of Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, the sonnets and the immortal plays that
+were incubating in the procreant soul of the Divine Bard. He was his own
+schoolmaster, drawing daily draughts from the universal fountains of
+Nature.
+
+And what a blessing it is to the public to have even a social scapegrace
+hatch out golden ideas for their education and amusement, notwithstanding
+the neglect of farm and family!
+
+The greatest good to the greatest number is best for all time.
+
+    _"God moves in a mysterious way,
+      His wonders to perform,
+    He plants His footsteps in the sea
+      And rides upon the storm."_
+
+On the first of September, 1586, the lord high sheriff of Coventry invited
+the people to an archery and drinking contest.
+
+Representatives from twenty-five villages and towns were selected, from the
+various working guilds and professions, to conquer or die (drunk) in the
+Queen's name for the honor of Old Albion.
+
+Ceres, the Goddess of Harvest, had showered her riches on the fields and
+forests of Warwickshire, and to glorify her abundance, a great athletic and
+semimilitary carnival was thus given by the authorities to test the
+bravery, endurance and greatness of the sons of Saint George and the
+Dragon.
+
+The beautiful, broad, undulating, winding highways, leading from Stratford,
+Warwick, Kenilworth and Birmingham to the ancient town of Coventry were
+filled with jolly pilgrims to pay devotion at the shrine of Hercules and
+Bacchus, with the influence of Venus as an ever-present incentive to
+passionate pleasure.
+
+That bright September morning I well remember! Dame Nature was just donning
+her variegated gown of rustic-brown, while fitful airs from the realms of
+Jack Frost were painting the wild roses and forest leaves in cardinal hue,
+and the blackbird, thrush and musical nightingale flew low and sang hoarse,
+but continually, in their assemblages for migration to lands of sun and
+flowers.
+
+From Kenilworth to Coventry the rural scenery is as various and beautiful
+as visions of a dream, and the undulating landscape by hill and dale, field
+and forest, river, marge, cottage, hall, church and castle, grouping
+themselves in shifting pictures of beauty and grandeur, where lofty elms
+and sycamores rise and bend their willowy arms to the passing breeze,
+indelibly impresses the beholder with a splendid kaleidoscopic view of
+English hospitality and agricultural cultivation.
+
+The tall turrets of monasteries, castles and soaring church spires of
+Coventry looked luminous in the morning sunshine, while the brazen tongues
+of century bells rolled their mellifluous matin tones in voluminous welcome
+to the great multitude of revelers within her embattled walls and
+hospitable homes.
+
+Promptly at nine o'clock in the morning, in the Leicester Park, twenty-five
+accoutered long bow men, in archery uniform, took their stand before the
+bull's eye targets two hundred yards away.
+
+At the words "draw," "aim" and "fly" the whizzing arrows centered and
+shivered in the oak targets, and none hit the bull's but Will Shakspere of
+Stratford, who was proclaimed winner of the first prize, an ox, a barrel of
+sack and butt of wine, with the privilege of kissing every girl in the
+county.
+
+The entire day was spent in all kinds of sports, and with roasts, joints,
+bread, pudding, sack, ale, gin, brandy and whiskey, the revelers did not
+break up until daylight, when all were laid under the table but William and
+his friends Burbage, Condell and Dick Field, who had come away from his
+printing house in London to witness one of the greatest rural sports of
+England.
+
+Although Stratford was not a day's walk from Coventry, William and his
+friends did not succeed in getting back for three days, and often they
+traveled by the light of the moon believing it was the sun in midday
+splendor.
+
+Anne Hathaway heard of William's official and social victory, not in the
+proud light of his Stratford and Shottery alehouse companions, but with a
+tongue like a gad, she proposed to lash him into shame as a husband or
+drive him from his cottage home to earn a living for his infant children.
+
+William was a little dubious as to his reception, and in order to temper
+the storm to the "ambling lamb," he earnestly requested me to accompany him
+home, as a buffer to his contemplated reception, believing that Anne would
+mellow her words and actions in the presence of an old friend.
+
+I respectfully declined his pressing invitation and twitted him on being
+afraid of a woman, when he plaintively exclaimed:
+
+    _Anne Hath-a-way that gives me pain,
+      She scolds both day and night;
+    Her tongue goes pattering like the rain
+      And speeds my outward flight;
+    I'll soon be gone to London town
+      And leave her house and land
+    Where I will gain some great renown
+      That she may understand._
+
+I met William the next morning on his way to the Crown Tavern in search of
+a "Martini Cocktail," a new drink that an Indian from America had invented
+for Admiral Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh.
+
+William bore the appearance of a man who had slept by a smoky chimney, or
+encountered the butt end of a threshing flail. He seemed sombre and
+muttered to himself:
+
+    _"When sorrows come they come not single
+      But in battalions!"_
+
+I joined him in liquidation at the tavern, for, to tell the truth, my
+throat felt like the rough edge of a buffalo robe, and my nerves trembled
+like aspen leaves in July.
+
+When our usual village sports filed around the table, and glee and song
+once more prevailed, William began to soften in his statuesque attitude,
+and laughingly proposed that we "go a poaching" on the imprisoned animals
+and birds that Squire Lucy corraled for his special delectation, to the
+detriment of honest apprentices and pure-minded yeomanry.
+
+His proposition was agreed to unanimously, and just as the sun tipped the
+treetops of the Charlecote domain, we had scared up a couple of fat deer,
+and sent our arrows through their trembling anatomy, and the number of
+hares, grouse and pigeons we slaughtered that evening kept the landlord of
+the Crown Tavern busy for two days to dish up to his jolly revelers.
+
+In this escapade we only imitated the aristocratic students of Oxford
+College, who frequently made inroads into lordly domains and took some of
+the treasures that God and Nature intended for all men, instead of being
+hatched, bred and watched by impudent and cruel gamekeepers, employed by
+tyrannical landlords, in defiance of the natural rights of the people.
+
+Even the fish in the Avon, Severn and Bay were registered and claimed by
+scrubs of royalty for their exclusive use, fine and imprisonment being
+imposed for hunting on the land and fishing in the streams that God made
+for all men.
+
+These parliamentary laws should be voted or bulleted out of the statute
+books, and the people again inherit their inalienable rights.
+
+My friend William was arrested by the malicious Lucy, and the gamekeeper,
+Tom Snap, swore to enough facts to exile, hang and quarter the Bard.
+
+Through the influence of his father and John A. Combe, William, the chief
+culprit, was not imprisoned, but compelled to pay a fine of one pound ten.
+
+He did not have but three shillings, yet the boys secretly passed the hat
+around in the court yard and tavern, and soon extricated our chum from the
+toils of Sir Thomas Lucy.
+
+William did not have the courage to face his wife after a week's absence,
+and told me privately that he was going off instanter by the way of Oxford
+to London and seek his fortune.
+
+I applauded his spunk and determination, and, at his solicitation willingly
+joined him in his eloquent rambles. My parents were both dead, and being of
+a bohemian tendency, my home has ever been on any spot of the earth where
+the sun rose or set. Pot luck suits me.
+
+Natural freedom of body and mind has ever been my greatest delight and the
+artificial fashions and tyrannical laws of society I despise and defy, and
+shall to my dying day. My mind is my master.
+
+Right is my religion and God is my instructor!
+
+    _"I must have liberty
+    Withal, as large a charter as the wind
+    To blow on whom I please."_
+
+The evening before we left Stratford William wrote a short note to his wife
+and said that he would take her advice, leave the town, and seek his
+fortune in the whirlpool of grand old London.
+
+I imagine that Anne was delighted to receive his impromptu note, for it
+left her one less mouth to feed; and William was equally satisfied to be
+relieved of the role of playing husband without any of the practical moral
+adjuncts.
+
+In passing by the entrance gate to the lordly estate of Sir Thomas Lucy, or
+Justice Shallow, William nailed up the following poetic shot to the
+hot-headed old squire, which was read and copied the next morning, by all
+the market men going to town, and the tavern lads going to their country
+ploughs:
+
+    _"The tyrant Thomas Lucy
+      Lets no one go to mass,
+    He's a squire for Queen Bess,
+      And in Parliament an ass;
+    Fair Charlecote is ruined
+      By this bluffer of the state,
+    And only his dependents
+      Will dare to call him great.
+    The deer and hares and pidgeons
+      Are imprisoned for his use,
+    Yet, poaching lads from Stratford
+      Pluck this strutting, feathered goose."_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+IN SEARCH OF PEACE AND FORTUNE.
+
+    _"Blessed are those whose blood
+    And judgment are so commingled,
+    That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
+    'To sound what stop she pleases.'
+    'Give me that man that is not passion's slave,'
+    And I will wear him in my heart's core,
+    Ay, in my heart of heart as I do thee."_
+
+
+Early on the morning of the 9th of September, 1586, William and myself took
+our departure from the Crown Tavern. The landlord, Tom Gill, gave us a
+bottle of his best gin and brandy to cheer us on our way to fame and
+fortune. Fannie Hill, the barmaid, threw kisses at us until we rounded the
+corner of the street leading to the old Grammar School. We carried
+blackthorn cudgels to protect us from gamekeepers, lords and dogs.
+
+As we passed the modest cottage where William's parents resided, he
+impulsively broke away from my presence to bid a long farewell to his
+angelic mother, and soon again he was at my side, flushed with pride and
+tears, exclaiming in undertone:
+
+    _A mother's love and fervent hope
+    Are coined into our horoscope,
+    And to our latest dying breath
+    Her heart and soul are ours to death!_
+
+In his clutched hand he held four gold "sovereigns" that his fond mother
+had given him at parting to help him in the daily trials of life, when no
+other friend could be so true and powerful. Gold gilds success.
+
+"Here, Jack, keep two of these for yourself, and if I should ever be
+penniless, and you have gold, I know you will aid me in a pinch. The wine
+nature of your soul needs no bush."
+
+    _"We still have slept together,
+    Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,
+    And wherever we went like Juno's swans,
+    Still we went coupled, and inseparable."_
+
+"William," said I, "memory with her indelible signet shall long imprint
+this generous act of yours upon my soul, and when hundreds of years have
+passed, I shall tell of the undying friendship of two bohemians, who, day
+and night, set their own fashion, created a world of their own, and lived
+ecstatically, oscillating between the blunders of Bacchus and the vanity of
+Venus!"
+
+William's heart was heavy when turning his back on father, mother, brother,
+sister, wife and children, at the age of twenty-two.
+
+We passed along the Clopton stone bridge, and as we tramped over Primrose
+Hill looking back at the roofs and spires of Stratford, glinting in the
+morning light, the Bard uttered this impulsive dash of eloquence:
+
+    _Farewell, farewell! a sad farewell
+    To glowing scenes of boyhood.
+    Ye rocks, and rills and forests primeval
+    List to my sighing soul, trembling on the tongue
+    To vent its echoes in ambient air.
+    No more shall wild eyed deer,
+    Fretful hares, hawks and hounds
+    Entrance mine ear and vision,
+    Or frantically depart when
+    Stealthy footsteps disturb the lark,
+    Ere Phoebus' golden light
+    Illuminates the dawn.
+    Memory, many hued maiden,
+    Oft in midnight hours
+    Shall picture these eternal hills,
+    And purling streams, rimmed by
+    Vernal meadows;
+    And pillowed even in the lap of misery
+    Fantastic visions of thee
+    Shall lull deepest woe to repose.
+    And banqueting at yon alehouse,
+    Nestling near blooming hedge and snowy
+    Hawthorn, I shall live again
+    In blissful dreams among the enchanting
+    Precincts of the silver, serpentine Avon.
+    To thee I lift my hands in prayer
+    Disappearing, and pinioned with Hope;
+    Daughter of Love and sunrise--
+    Go forth to multitudinous London,
+    And, "buckle fortune on my back"
+    "To bear her burden," to successful,
+    Lofty heights of mind illimitable._
+
+With this apostrophe, we took a last look at the glinting gables and
+sparkling spires of Stratford, disappearing over the hill, our steps and
+faces turned to London town, that seething whirlpool of human woe and
+pleasure.
+
+The air was cold and the country roads were rutty and muddy, but the autumn
+landscape was beautiful, in its gray and purple garb, while the notes of
+flitting wild birds chirped and sang from bush, hedge, field and forest, in
+a mournful monotone to the fading glory of the year.
+
+The various birds chattered in clumps along the highway, and then would
+rise over our heads in flitting flocks, steering their course to the south
+and seemingly accompanying us on our wandering way to the great metropolis.
+
+In our zigzag course we passed through the towns of Ettington, Oxhill,
+Wroxton, Woodstock, Eversham and Oxford.
+
+It was near sunset when the lofty towers and steeples of ancient Oxford,
+the great site of classic lore, met our view. In our haste to enter the
+city before dark, we jumped a hedge fence, and stone wall, making a short
+cross-cut over the lordly domain of the Earl of Norfolk, and just as we
+were again emerging into the great road, a gamekeeper was seen approaching
+with a huge mastiff, who rushed upon us like a lion.
+
+We were near a rough wall, and it appeared to both of us that unless we
+stood for immediate fight the dog would tear us to pieces.
+
+The gamekeeper urged the dog in his barking, mad career, but just as he
+made a grand leap at William's throat, his blackthorn cudgel came down with
+a whirl and broke the forelegs of the mastiff, sending him to earth with a
+growl and roar that could be heard over the castle walls that loomed up in
+the evening gray. The gamekeeper aimed a blunderbuss at the Bard, but ere
+he could fire the deadly weapon, I jumped on the petty tyrant whelp, and
+cudgeled his face into a macerated beefsteak.
+
+We then leaped the garden wall and rushed into the city crowd where the
+curtains of night screened us from dogs and licentious lords.
+
+We found our way to the Crown Tavern, kept by Richard Devanant and his
+buxom black-eyed wife.
+
+The old Boniface was jolly, but was in his physical and spiritual dotage,
+yet "Nell," his second wife, was the life of the place, being immensely
+popular with the Oxford students, who circled about the "Crown" in midnight
+hours, with hilarious independence, that defied the raids of beadles,
+watchmen and armed constabulary.
+
+Those were gay and roystering days and nights when the greatest yeoman,
+tradesman, student, or lord, was the one who "drank his comrade under the
+table" and went away at sunrise like a lark, fluttering with dew from his
+downy wing, and soaring into the sky of beauty and action.
+
+It was Saturday night when we pulled up at the old tavern, and there seemed
+to be a great crowd of town people celebrating some local event.
+
+We soon found that the senior class of Oxonian students had conquered the
+senior class of Cambridge at a great game of inter-college football and the
+cheers and yells of Oxford bloods permeated the atmosphere until midnight.
+
+A round table spread in the tavern hall was loaded with food and liquors,
+while songs and speeches were given with a vim, all boasting of the prowess
+and patriotism of Oxford.
+
+A number of strolling players and boxers were introduced during the
+evening.
+
+A young lord named Bob Burleigh, was president of the club, while Mat
+Monmouth was the spokesman, who called on the various students and actors
+to entertain the town roysters who dropped in to see the free and easy
+celebration of the football victory.
+
+While drowning our grief and loneliness in pewter pots of ale at a side
+table, in a snug corner, who should slap William on the shoulder but Ned
+Sadler, our old schoolmate from Stratford. Ned was a jolly rake, and had
+been in London sporting with theatrical companies, and, as a citizen of the
+world, was perfectly at home wherever night overtook him.
+
+At the height of the college banquet Mat Monmouth announced that the
+president of the Cambridge Boxing Club had just challenged the president of
+the Oxford Club to fight, under the King's rule, for a purse of twenty
+guineas.
+
+A wild cheer rent the room, and instanter the chairs and tables were pushed
+aside, when Dick Milton and Jack Norfolk stepped into the improvised prize
+ring, made by the circling arms of the students.
+
+Five rounds with gloves were to be fought, and the champion who knocked out
+his opponent three times, should be the victor.
+
+Dick Milton, the Cambridge athlete, when "time" was called, rushed on Jack
+Norfolk, the Oxford man, with a blow that sent him over the circling arms
+and into the chairs.
+
+Score one for Dick.
+
+Time was called, and Jack, although a little dazed, leaped at his opponent,
+who dodged the rush, and with a quick turn got in a left-hander on Jack's
+neck, and pastured him again among the yelling bloods.
+
+Score two for Dick.
+
+When time was called for the third round, the Oxford man looked bleary and
+tremulous, but with that bull-dog courage that never deserts an Englishman,
+he threw himself on the Cambridge man with great force and both went down
+with a crash.
+
+Dick shook his opponent off like a terrier would a rat, and standing erect
+at the end of the room, waited for the call of time.
+
+Jack Norfolk did not respond to the call.
+
+Score three for Dick. Victory!
+
+Then the yell of the Cambridge students could be heard among the turrets
+and gables of classic Oxford, a recompense for their defeat at the
+afternoon football game.
+
+Dick Milton, flushed with wine and victory, held aloft the purse of
+guineas, and challenged any man in the room to fight him three rounds.
+
+There seemed to be no immediate response, but I noticed a flush in the face
+of William, who modestly rose in his six-foot form and asked if the
+challenge included outside citizens?
+
+Dick immediately replied, "You, or anybody in England." William said he did
+not know much about fighting with gloves, but if the gentleman would
+consent to three rounds with bare knuckles he would be pleased to
+accommodate him at once.
+
+"All right, toe the mark!"
+
+Mat Monmouth called time.
+
+Dick Milton made a tiger leap at William, and landed with his right eye on
+the right knuckles of the Stratford citizen. The quickness and science of
+the Bard was a great surprise to the Cambridge athlete, and when time was
+called he came up groggy with a funeral eye, on the defense, and not on the
+tiger attack.
+
+Considerable sparring for place, and dodging about the human ring, was
+indulged in by Dick, but William foiled each blow, and as the Cambridge man
+inadvertently rubbed his swollen eye, the Bard landed a stinging blow on
+the left optic of Milton and sent him into the arms of the landlord.
+
+When time was called, no response from the Cambridge champion was heard,
+and Mat Monmouth handed over the prize purse to William, when the Oxford
+lads cheered the Stratford stranger to the echo, and made him an honorary
+member of their athletic club.
+
+    _"Screw your courage to the sticking place,
+    And we will not fail."_
+
+At the second crow of the cock William and myself bid good-bye to the jolly
+Boniface and his fantastic spouse, who made a deep impression on the Bard.
+In fact, he was easily impressed when youth, beauty and pleasure reigned
+around, and had he been born in Kentucky, no blue ribbon stallion in the
+commonwealth could match his form, spirit or gait.
+
+Apollo with his rosy footsteps lit up hill, meadow and lawn, and kissed
+away the sparkling dewdrops of bush and hedge, cheering us on our way
+through the towns of Thane, over the Chilton Hills, on to Great Marlow,
+Maidenhead and renowned Windsor, where forest and castle thrilled the
+beholder with admiration for the works of Nature and Art.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when we entered the broad highway to Windsor,
+passing numerous yeomen and tradespeople on their way to and from the royal
+domain of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
+
+In striding along, with hearts light and airy, we were suddenly startled by
+cries of frantic yells coming from the rear, and looking around beheld a
+wild, runaway horse, and an open wagon with two young girls screaming for
+help.
+
+To see, think and act was always the way of William, and as the horse
+rushed by with wagon and girls, nearly clipping our legs off, the Bard made
+a leap for the tail board of the vehicle and landed in the midst of the
+frightened girls. He then, as if inspired with the impulse of a tiger,
+jumped on the back of the rushing animal, grabbed the trailing lines, and
+neck of the horse, and steered him into a huge box hedge row that skirted
+the castle walls of Windsor.
+
+Every one went after the runaway to see the fate of the party; but strange
+to say, the horse was lodged high and dry in the hedge row, while William
+and the girls crawled out of the wreck without a scratch, soon recovering
+from the fear, trepidation and danger that but a moment before reigned
+supreme.
+
+We put up for the night at the Red Lion Tavern, and you may be sure that
+William was the hero of the town.
+
+Rose and Bess Montagle were the young ladies whose lives had been
+providentially saved, and their father was the head gamekeeper of Windsor.
+
+William was invited for breakfast the next morning at the stone lodge to
+receive hearty thanks and reward for his heroic action in risking his life
+for the salvation of others; but the Bard excused himself, saying that he
+must start by daylight for his last stretch to London, and only asked from
+the young ladies a sprig of boxwood and lock of their golden hair.
+
+At parting the father threw William a bag of gold, and the girls presented
+him with the tokens desired, in addition to impulsive bashful kisses.
+
+We were off promptly by sunrise, and steering our course to Houndslow,
+Brentford, Kensington, and to the top of Primrose Hill, we first caught
+sight of the spires, domes, turrets, temples and palaces of multitudinous,
+universal London.
+
+    _"London, the needy villain's general home,
+    The common sewer of Paris and of Rome;
+    With eager thirst by folly or by fate,
+    Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state."_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+LONDON. ITS GUILT AND GLORY.
+
+    _"They say, best men are molded out of faults;
+    And for the most, become much more the better
+    For being a little bad."_
+
+
+It was on the 13th of September, 1586, that William and myself first
+feasted our eyes on the variegated wilderness of wood, mortar, stone and
+tile of wonderful London.
+
+The evening was bright and clear, while a north-west wind blew away the
+smoky clouds that hovered over the city like a funeral pall, displaying to
+our view the silver sinuosities of old Father Thames, as he moved in
+sluggish grandeur by Westminster, Blackfriars Bridge, the Tower, and to
+Gravesend, on his way to the channel and the sea.
+
+To get a grand view of the town, an old sexton advised us to climb the
+steeple steps of crumbling Saint Mary's, that once felt the tread of the
+Crusaders, and heard the chanting hymn of monks, nuns and friars five
+hundred years before.
+
+Standing on a broken column of the old steeple, three hundred feet above
+Primrose Hill, William struck an attitude of theatrical fashion and uttered
+the following oratorical flight:
+
+    _Glorious London! Leviathan of human greed;
+    Palpitating hot-bed of iniquity and joy,
+    Greek, Roman, Spanish, Saxon, Kelt, Scot,
+    Pict, Norman and Dane
+    Have swept over thee like winter storms;
+    And the mighty Caesar, Julius of old,
+    With a myriad of bucklered warriors
+    And one hundred galleons of sailors
+    Triple-oared mariners, defying wave and fate,
+    Have ploughed the placid face of Father Thames,
+    Startling the loud cry of hawk and bittern
+    As his royal prows grated on thy strand,
+    Or skimmed over the marshes of thy infancy.
+    Yet, amid all the wrecks of human ambition
+    Where Pagan, Jew, Buddhist, Turk and Christian
+    Struggled for the mastery of gold and power,
+    You still march forward, giant-like and brave,
+    Facing the morning of progress and liberty,
+    Carrying thy cross and crown to all lands--
+    And with thy grand flotilla, chartered by Neptune
+    Remain mistress of all the seas, defiant--
+    The roar of thy cannon and drum beats
+    Heard with pride and glory around the world!
+    Sad, how sad, to think that the day will come
+    When not a vestige of this wonderful mass
+    Of human energy shall remain;
+    Where the cry of the wolf, bat and bittern
+    Shall only be heard, and Nature again
+    Resume her rustic, splendid desolation!
+    Cities older and far greater than this,
+    Dreaming of everlasting endurance,
+    Have been long since buried in desert sands,
+    Or engulfed in the pitiless waves of ocean,
+    Lost forever from the rusty records
+    Of Time, the tyrant and tomb builder
+    Of man, vain insect of a moment,
+    Who promises himself immortality,
+    And then disappears like the mist of mountains,
+    Or wandering meteors that sparkle and darkle
+    In the midnight of oblivion!_
+
+We quickly descended from the steeple, passed by Buckingham Palace, Regent
+Park, British Museum, through Chancery Lane into Fleet street, by Ludgate
+Hill, under the shadow of old battered Saint Paul's Church on to the
+Devil's Tavern, near Blackfriars Bridge, where we found gay and comfortable
+lodgings for the night, it being twelve o'clock when we shook hands with
+Meg Mullen, the rubicund landlady.
+
+The Devil's Tavern was a resort for actors, authors, bohemians, lords and
+ladies, who did not retire early to their downy couches.
+
+The night we arrived the tavern was crowded, as the Actors' Annual Ball was
+in progress, and many fair women and brave men belated by Bacchus could not
+find their way home, and were compelled to remain all night and be cared
+for by the host of the Devil.
+
+I told "Meg" we were Stratford boys, come up to London to seek our fortune,
+and set the Thames afire with our genius.
+
+Plucking the "rosy" dame aside, I informed her that William Shakspere was a
+poet, author, actor and philosopher; and, while he was posing over the
+counter, smiling at a blooming barmaid, he looked the picture of his own
+immortal Romeo. Meg told me in a quizzical tone that the town was full of
+poets and actors, and that the surrounding playhouses could hire them for
+ten shillings a week, with sack and bread and cheese thrown in every
+Saturday night.
+
+After a hasty supper, I tossed Meg a golden guinea to pay score, as if it
+were a shilling, to convince her that we were of the upper crust of
+bohemians, not strollers from the Strand, or penny puppets from Eastcheap
+or Smithfield.
+
+After passing back the change, Meg sent a gay and festive porter to light
+us to the top cock-loft of the tavern, five stairs up, among the windows
+and angled gables of the tile roof.
+
+A tallow dip and coach candle lit up the room, which was large, containing
+two Roman couches with quilts, robes and blankets, a stout table, two oak
+chairs, a pewter basin, and a large stone jug filled with water.
+
+The tavern seemed to be on the banks of the Thames, for we could see
+through the two large windows, flitting lights as if boats and ships were
+moving on the water, while across the bridge old Southwark could be seen in
+the midnight glare as if it were a field of Jack-o'-lanterns moving in
+mystic parade.
+
+William and myself soon found rest in deep slumber, and wafted away into a
+dreamless realm, our tired bodies lay in the enfolding arms of Morpheus
+until the porter knocked at our door the next morning as the clock of the
+tower struck the hour of nine.
+
+Our first sight of sunrise in London gave us great expectations of fame and
+fortune--for surely all we had was glowing expectations.
+
+    _"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
+    Where most it promises; and oft it hits
+    Where hope is coldest and despair most fits."_
+
+While William stood gazing out of the roof windows of the Devil's Tavern on
+the moving, meandering population of London as they passed below on lane,
+street and stream, by foot, car or boat, he heaved a long drawn sigh,
+turned to me and said, "Jack, what do you think of London?"
+
+"I like its whirl, dash and roar, far better than mingling with the rural
+milk-sops and innocent maidens of Warwick. Here we can work and climb to
+the top of the ladder of fame, while you, dear Will, will not be battered
+in ear by crying kids and tongue-lashing spouse."
+
+Brushing away a tear of sorrow, no doubt for the absence of loved ones at
+Stratford, he dashed down the stairs, and was soon in the jolly whirlpool
+of tavern loungers, where beaming Meg greeted us with a smiling face,
+having prepared in advance a fine breakfast, smoking hot from the busy
+kitchen of the Devil.
+
+In passing out of the dining room, Meg led us through a back hall into a
+low, long room, where a number of "ladies" and "gentlemen" were assembled
+about a round table, playing "cut the card," "spring the top" and "throw
+the dice;" small piles of silver and gold stacked in front of each player,
+while the "King's Dealer," or fat Jack Stafford, lost or paid all bets on
+"call."
+
+William and myself were incidentally introduced to the motley gang as young
+"bloods" from Warwick, who had just entered London for fame and fortune.
+The conclave rose with extreme politeness, and Jack as spokesman welcomed
+us to their bosoms (so to speak), and asked if we would not "sit up and
+take a hand."
+
+I respectfully declined, but William, surcharged with sorrow or flushed
+with ambition, bethought of the guineas in his pocket and belt, and called
+for the "dice box." "Deuces" won double and "sixes" treble coin.
+
+William, to the great amazement of the dealer, flung a guinea in the center
+pot, which was immediately tapped by Jack, while the others looked on in
+silent expectation.
+
+Grasping the dice box, he whirled it in his grasp, rattling the "bones" in
+triumphant glee and threw on the table three "sixes," thus abstracting from
+the inside pocket of the "Gentleman" at the head of the table, twenty-seven
+guineas.
+
+Pushing back the coin and dice box, William proposed another throw, which
+was smilingly consented to by the "child of Fortune," and grasping the box,
+the Bard clicked the "ivories" and flung on the table three aces, which by
+the rule of the game, gave all the coin to the "Royal" dealer.
+
+William never winced or hesitated, but pulling from his waist a buckskin
+belt, threw it on the table, exclaiming, "There's fifteen guineas I wager
+on the next throw."
+
+The polite Jack replied, "All right, sir, take your word for it."
+
+William frantically said:
+
+    _"I have set my life upon a cast,
+    And will stand the hazard of the die!"_
+
+Then, with a round whirl, he threw three "aces" again, rose from the table
+and bolted out of the room like a shot from a blunderbuss.
+
+I immediately followed in his footsteps and found him joking with the
+landlady about a couple of infant bull pups she was fondling in her
+capacious lap.
+
+At this juncture, who should appear on the scene but Dick Field, the first
+cousin of William, who had been in London a few years engaged in the
+printing and publishing business.
+
+If he had dropped out of the clouds William could not have been more
+pleased or surprised, and the feeling was reciprocal.
+
+The printing shop of Field was only a short distance from the Devil's
+Tavern, and we were invited to visit the establishment. On our way we
+passed by the Blackfriars, Curtain, In Yard, Paris and Devil theatres,
+interspersed with hurdy-gurdy concert hall, sailor and soldier, gin and
+sack vaults, where blear-eyed belles and battered beaux vied with each
+other in fantastic intoxication.
+
+Field did a lot of rough printing for the various theatres, issuing bill
+posters, announcing plays, and setting up type sheets for actors and
+managers, in their daily concerts and dramas for the public amusement.
+
+As luck would have it, old James Burbage and his son Dick were waiting for
+Field, with a lot of dramatic manuscript that must be put in print at once.
+
+We were casually introduced to the great theatrical magnate Burbage, as
+relatives from Stratford who were just then in search of work.
+
+James Burbage gazed for a moment on the manly form of William and blurted
+out in his bluff manner, "What do you know?"
+
+Quick as a flash William replied: "I know more than those who know less,
+and know less than those who know more."
+
+"Sharp answer, 'boy.' See me to-morrow at the Blackfriars at noon."
+
+We turned aside and left Field and Burbage to their business; while Dick
+Burbage, the gay theatrical rake, invited us across the way to the Bull's
+Head, where we irrigated our anatomy, and then returned to the printing
+shop.
+
+Field informed me that he had given us a great setting up with old Burbage;
+and would see his partner Greene, the playwright, and add to our
+recommendation for energy and learning.
+
+We were invited to dine with Field that evening at eight o'clock at the
+Boar's Head Tavern, where Dame Quickly dispensed the best food and fluid of
+the lower town, and where the wags and wits of all lands congregated in
+security.
+
+    _"At the very witching time of night
+    When church yards yawn and hell itself
+    Breathes out contagion to this world."_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+TAVERNS. THEATRES. VARIEGATED SOCIETY.
+
+    _"Man's evil manners live in brass;
+    Their virtues we write in water."_
+
+
+The Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap was one of the oldest and best inns in
+London for free and easy rollicking mood, where prince and peasant, king or
+clown, papist or puritan were welcome night and day, provided they intended
+no wrong and kept good nature aglow even in their cups. Magistrate and
+convent prior would sometimes raid the tavern until their physical and
+financial wants were satisfied.
+
+Dame Quickly, with ruffled collar, was the master spirit of the house, and
+had been its light and glory for thirty years. Her round, full face, fat
+neck and robust form was a constant invitation for good cheer, and her
+matchless wit was a marvel to the guests that nightly congregated through
+her three-story gabled stone monastery.
+
+A tavern is the best picture of human folly, nature wearing no garb of
+hypocrisy.
+
+You must know that the Boar's Head had once been the home of the
+"Blackfriars," then a residence of a bishop, a convent, a brewery, and
+finally fell into the hands of the grandfather of Dame Quickly, who
+bequeathed it to his posterity and the public as a depot for plum pudding,
+roast beef, lamb, birds, fish, ale, wine, brandy and universal pleasure. A
+boar's head, with a red light in its mouth was kept constantly burning from
+sunset to sunrise, where wandering humanity found welcome and rest.
+
+Supper parties from the adjacent theatres filled the tavern in midnight
+hours, where actors, authors, politicians, statesmen and ladies of all hue,
+reveled in jolly, generous freedom, beneath the ever-present
+superintendence of buxom Dame Quickly.
+
+    _"The gods are just, and oft our pleasant vices
+    Make instruments to scourge us.
+    Boys, immature in knowledge,
+    Pawn their experience to their present pleasure."_
+
+The main bar, decorated with variegated lights and shining blue bottles and
+glasses, with pewter and silver mugs in theatrical rows, lent a kind of
+enchantment to the nightly scene. Round, square and octagonal oak tables
+were scattered through the various rooms, and rough leather lounges skirted
+the walls.
+
+Promptly at eight o'clock William and myself passed the stony portals of
+the Boar's Head, and were ushered into the back ground floor dining room
+where we met our friend Field and a playwright named Christopher Marlowe,
+standing before a great open chimney, with a blazing fire and a splendid
+supper.
+
+Field seemed to take great pride in making us acquainted with Marlowe, the
+greatest actor and dramatist of his day, whose plays were even then the
+talk and delight of London.
+
+"Tamberlaine the Great" and "Dr. Faustus" had been successfully launched at
+the Blackfriars, and young Marlowe was in his glory, the wit and toast of
+the town. He was but twenty-five years of age, finely formed, a voluptuary,
+high jutting forehead, dark hazel eye, and a typical image of a bohemian
+poet. It was a toss up as to who was the handsomest man, William or
+Marlowe, yet a stranger, on close inspection could see glinting out of
+William's eye a divine light and flashing expression that ever commanded
+respect and admiration. He was unlike any other mortal.
+
+I, alone at that period, knew the bursting ability of William; and that his
+granary of knowledge was full to the brim, needing only an opportunity to
+flood the world with immortal sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and the incubating
+passion plays that lay struggling in his burning brain for universal
+recognition.
+
+During the evening young actors, politicians, college students and
+roystering lords, filled the house and by twelve o'clock Bacchanalian folly
+ruled the madcaps of the town, while battered Venus with bedraggled hair
+and skirts languished in sensuous display.
+
+Field requested his friend Marlowe to recite a few lines from "Dr. Faustus"
+for our instruction and pleasure, and forthwith he gave the soliloquy of
+Faust, waiting at midnight for Lucifer to carry him to hell, the terrified
+Doctor exclaiming to the devil:
+
+    _"Oh mercy! heaven, look not so fierce on me,
+    Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile;
+    Ugly hell gape not; come not, Lucifer;
+    I'll burn my books; oh! Mephistopheles!"_
+
+And then mellowing his sonorous voice, gives thus his classical apostrophe
+to Helen of Greece:
+
+    _"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
+    And burned the topless towers of Illium?
+    Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
+    Her lips suck forth my soul--see where it flies;
+    Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again;
+    Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
+    And all is dross that is not Helena.
+    O, thou art fairer than the evening air,
+    Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!
+    Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
+    When he appeared to hapless Semele;
+    More lovely than the monarch of the sky
+    In wanton Arethusa's azure arms;
+    And none but thou shalt be my paramour!"_
+
+A loud round of applause greeted the rendition of the classical poem, not
+only at our own table, but through the entire hall and adjacent rooms.
+
+At a table not far away sat a number of illustrious gentlemen, favorites of
+Queen Elizabeth and greatly admired by the people.
+
+There sat Sir Walter Raleigh, lately returned from discoveries in America;
+Francis Bacon, Attorney-General to the Crown; Earl Essex, the court
+favorite; Lord Southampton, the gayest in the realm; with young Burleigh,
+Cecil and Leicester, making night melodious with their songs, speeches and
+tinkling silver wine cups.
+
+The young lords insisted that we give another recitation, pictorial of love
+and passion. Marlowe declined to say more, but knowing that William had
+hatched out his crude verses of Venus and Adonis, I insisted that he
+deliver a few stanzas for the enthusiastic audience, particularly
+describing the passionate pleadings of Venus to the stallion Adonis.
+
+Without hesitation, trepidation or excuse, William arose in manly attitude
+and drew a picture of beautiful Venus:
+
+    _"Sometimes she shakes her head and then his hand,
+    Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground;
+    Sometimes her arms infold him like a band;
+    She would, he will not in her arms be bound;
+    And when from thence he struggles to be gone
+    She locks her lily fingers one in one!_
+
+    _"'Fondling,' she saith, 'since I have hemmed thee here,
+    Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
+    I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
+    Feed where thou wilt on mountain or in dale;
+    Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
+    Stray lower where the pleasant fountains lie._
+
+    _"'Within this limit is relief enough,
+    Sweet bottom grass and high delightful plain,
+    Round rising hillocks, brake obscure and rough
+    To shelter thee from tempest and from rain;
+    Then be my deer since I am such a park--
+    No dog shall rouse thee though a thousand bark!'"_
+
+When he dropped in his chair the revelers went wild with enthusiasm, and
+Marlowe and Southampton wished to know where the "Stratford Boy" got the
+poem!
+
+William smiled, tapped his forehead and tossed off a bumper of brandy to
+the cheers that still demanded more mental food.
+
+But as it was two by the clock, our friend Field suggested that we retire,
+when Marlow and himself took us in a carriage to the Devil Tavern, where we
+slept off our first spree in London.
+
+    _"O thou invisible spirit of wine,
+    If thou hast no name to be known by,
+    Let us call thee Devil!"_
+
+We arose the next morning a little groggy, and William had a shade of
+melancholy remorse flash over his usually bright countenance.
+
+He abstractedly remarked: "Well, Jack, we are making a fine start for fame
+and fortune. The stride we took last night, at the Boar's Head, will soon
+land us in Newgate or Parliament!"
+
+I replied that it made little difference to intellectual artists whether
+they served their country in prison or in Parliament, for many a man was in
+Newgate who might honor Parliament, and many secret scoundrels who had not
+been caught should be inmates of Newgate, or, if equal justice prevailed,
+their bodies be dangling on the heights of Tyburn!
+
+    _"A Daniel come to judgment; yea, a Daniel!
+    O wise young judge, how I do honor thee!"_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Poise the cause in justice' equal scales,
+    Whose beam stands sure?_
+
+It was ten o'clock when we stretched our weary legs under the breakfast
+table of Meg Mullen, who had prepared for us a quartette of fat mutton
+chops, with salt pork, baked potatoes, a huge omelet and a boiling pot of
+black tea, sent, as she said, by the Emperor of China for the guests of the
+Boar's Head Tavern!
+
+Meg was a jolly wench, and garnished her food with pleasant words and witty
+quips, believing that love and laughter aided digestion and cheered the
+traveler in his journey of life.
+
+I reminded William that he had a business engagement with the great
+theatrical monarch, Richard Burbage, at noon at the Blackfriars.
+
+The Bard was ready for a stroll, and after brushing our clothes and smiling
+at the variegated guests, we sauntered into the street toward the Thames,
+and soon found the entrance to the renowned Blackfriars Theatre.
+
+A call-boy ushered us into the presence of the great actor and manager, who
+greeted us with a snappish "Good morning!"
+
+A number of authors and actors were waiting their turn to see the prince of
+players, whose signet of approval or disapproval finished their
+expectations. It was Saturday and pay day.
+
+Turning abruptly to William, the proprietor said: "I understand you know
+something about theatres and acting?"
+
+"Try me; you shall be my judge."
+
+"Then, sir, from this hour you are appointed assistant property man and
+assistant prompter for the Blackfriars, at sixteen shillings a week, with
+chance of promotion, if you deserve it!
+
+"Your business hours shall be from noon, every week day, until five
+o'clock; and from eight o'clock in the night until eleven o'clock, when you
+are at liberty until the next day!
+
+"Do you accept the work?"
+
+William promptly replied:
+
+"I accept with immeasurable thanks, and like Caesar of old, I cross the
+dramatic Rubicon."
+
+The Bard was then introduced to Bull Billings, the chief property man and
+prompter, who at once initiated William into the machinery secrets of the
+stage, with its scenes, ropes, chains, masks, moons, gods, swords,
+bucklers, guns, pikes, torches, wheels, chairs, thrones, giants, wigs,
+hats, bonnets, robes, brass jewels, kings, queens, dukes, lords, and all
+the other paraphernalia of dramatic exhibition.
+
+William was now launched upon the ocean of theatrical suns and storms, with
+Nature for his guide and everlasting glory for his name.
+
+    _"Lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
+    Whereto the climber turns his face;
+    But when he once attains the utmost round,
+    He then unto the ladder turns his back,
+    Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
+    By which he did ascend!"_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THEATRICAL DRUDGERY. COMPOSITIONS.
+
+    _"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
+    Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
+    Wears yet a precious jewel in its head."_
+
+
+Shakspere had now his foot firmly planted on the lower round of the ladder
+of fame, whose top leaned against the skies of immortality!
+
+The fermentation of composition began again to work within his seething
+brain, and the daily demands of the Blackfriars spurred him on to emulate
+if not surpass Kyd, Lodge, Greene and Marlowe.
+
+During the time Shakspere had been a strolling player through the middle
+towns of England he had studied the works of Ovid and Petrarch, and read
+with pleasure the sonnets and Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney.
+
+While playing at Kenilworth, the Lady Anne Manners, young and beautiful
+cousin to the Earl of Leicester, honored the young actor with great praise
+for his part in playing the Lover in "Love's Conquest." She presented the
+Bard with a bunch of immortelles, that even when withered, he always kept
+in an inside pocket, and at various times composed sonnets to his absent
+admirer, playing Petrarch to another Laura.
+
+The languishing, luscious, lascivious poem of "Venus and Adonis" was really
+inspired by the remembrance of Miss Manners, and imagination pictured
+himself and the lady as the principals in the sensuous situation!
+
+William, like Dame Nature, was full of life-sap, that circled through his
+body and brain with constant motion and sought an outlet for the surplus
+volume of ideal knowledge, in theatrical action, teaching lessons of right
+and wrong, with vice and virtue struggling forever for the mastery of
+mankind.
+
+The Bard worked night and day in his duties as theatrical drudge for the
+Blackfriars, and made himself valuable and solid with old Burbage, who saw
+in the young actor a marvelous development of new thought and force, that
+had never before been seen on the British stage.
+
+In a few weeks Bull Billings was discharged for tyranny and drunkenness,
+and my friend William was given the place of chief property man and
+prompter.
+
+Various plays were put on and off the Blackfriars stage, through the hisses
+or cheers of the motley audience, the autocrats of the "pit" seeming to be
+the real umpires of the cessation or continuance of the most noted plays.
+
+The last week in October, 1586, was a mournful time for London, as the
+greatest favorite of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Philip Sidney, was to receive a
+State funeral at Saint Paul's.
+
+All England went in mourning for the handsome cavalier and poet, who lost
+his life at the siege of Axel, in the Netherlands, while serving as chief
+of cavalry under his uncle, the Earl of Leicester.
+
+All business closed in honor of the young hero, and the celebrated military
+organization, the "Ancient and Honorable Artillery," led more than thirty
+thousand of the "train bands," who followed in the great procession to
+Saint Paul's Church.
+
+The sacerdotal service began at noon, and Queen Elizabeth rode in a golden
+car on a dark purple throne to witness the last rites in honor of her court
+favorite.
+
+The bells of London churches, temples, turrets, and towers rang continually
+until sundown, filling the air with a universal requiem of grief, while the
+black clouds hanging over the metropolis shed showers of tears for the
+untimely loss of a patriot and a poet.
+
+William and myself saw the funeral car from the steps of St Paul, and as
+the coffin was carried in on the shoulders of eight stalwart soldiers,
+dressed in the golden garb of the Horse Battalions, we bowed our heads in
+holy adoration to the memory and valor of the sonnet-maker--lost in eternal
+sleep.
+
+    _"Come, sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace,
+    The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,
+    The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release--
+    The indifferent judge between the high and low!"_
+
+How truthful this extract from one of Sidney's sonnets!
+
+He was a synonym of bravery and politeness; for being carried from the
+field of battle, thirsty and bleeding, he called for a cup of water, and
+just as he was lifting it to his lips a fatally wounded soldier was being
+carried by who fixed his longing eyes eagerly on the cup--and instanter,
+the gay and gallant Sidney delivered the drink to the poor soldier, saying:
+"Thy necessity is greater than mine!"
+
+Noble self-sacrifice, elemental generosity, imperial nature, sublime and
+benevolent in thought and act!
+
+On our return to the Devil Tavern for supper we found Manager Burbage, of
+Blackfriars, awaiting us. He was in great haste and desired William to look
+over a play that had been submitted by Greene and Lodge, who composed it
+jointly.
+
+It was a comedy-tragedy, entitled "Looking Glass of London," in three
+rambling acts, and while Burbage was disposed to take the play and pay for
+it, he desired that Shakspere should give it such ripping corrections as he
+thought best.
+
+This was surely showing great confidence in a young actor and author--to
+criticise the play of acknowledged dramatists who had been the talk of the
+town.
+
+Shakspere modestly remarked: "I fear, sir, your friends, Lodge and Greene,
+will not like or tolerate my cutting of their play."
+
+"Care not for their opinion! Do as I say, and have the play ready for
+staging Monday afternoon at two o'clock."
+
+"Your command is law, and I obey," said the Bard--and out rushed the
+bluffing, busy Burbage.
+
+The constant circulation of bohemian customers, day and night about the
+Devil's Tavern, was not conducive to careful composition of plays, and
+William and myself moved to modest quarters near Paris Garden, kept by a
+Miss Maggie Mellow, a blonde maiden of uncertain age.
+
+William continued to perform his theatrical duties diligently, while I was
+engaged at the printing shop of Field, translating historic, dramatic and
+poetic works from Latin authors, thus piecing out the price of food,
+clothes and shelter in the whirlpool of London joy and misery.
+
+During my apprenticeship with Sam Granite, as a marble cutter, I spent my
+nights with Master Hunt studying the intricate windings of the Latin
+language, and became proficient in the translation of ancient authors,
+delving also into the philosophy of Greek roots, with its Attic phrases and
+Athenian eloquence.
+
+My parents desired me to leave off the trade of stone cutting and prepare
+for the priesthood, where I could make an easier living, working on the
+fears, egotism and hopes of mankind.
+
+I was always too blunt to play the velvet philosopher and saint-like
+character of a sacerdotal vicaro of any church or creed, feeling full well
+that the so-called divine teacher and pupil know just as much about the
+"hereafter" as I do--and that's nothing! Put not thy faith in wind,
+variable and inconstant.
+
+So, a life of bohemian hack-work for printers, publishers and theatrical
+managers seemed best suited to my nature, giving me perfect freedom of
+thought and a disposition to express my honest opinion to prince or
+peasant, in home, church or state.
+
+God is God, and Nature is His representative!
+
+    _While man, vain creature of an hour,
+    Depressed by grief or blessed by power
+    Is but a shadow and a name--
+    A flash of evanescent fame!_
+
+Most of the dramatic writers during the reigns of Henry the Eighth,
+Elizabeth, James the First, and Charles the Second, were graduates of
+Oxford, Cambridge or other classical halls of learning. They borrowed their
+plots and characters from ancient history and endeavored to galvanize them
+into English subjects, tickling the ears of the groundlings, as well as
+their royal patrons with Grecian and Roman translations of lofty
+allegorical and mythological conceptions.
+
+AEschylus, Euripides, Sophocles and Homer, with Terence, Tacitus, Virgil,
+Horace and Ovid, were constantly pillaged for thoughts to piece out the
+theatrical robes and blank verse eloquence of playwrights who only received
+for their best accepted works from five to twenty pounds; proprietors and
+stage managers driving hard bargains with these brilliant, bacchanalian and
+impecunious bohemians.
+
+The winter and spring of 1587-8 was a busy time for William. In addition to
+his prompting and casting the various plays for Burbage, he was engaged in
+collecting his sonnets, putting finishing touches on "Venus and Adonis," as
+well as composing the "Rape of Lucrece," a Roman epic, based on historic
+truth.
+
+He had also planned and mapped out the English play of "Henry the Fourth,"
+taken from an old historical play, and was figuring on two
+comedies--"Midsummer Night's Dream" and the "Merry Wives of Windsor."
+
+Often when entering his workroom at twelve o'clock at night, or six o'clock
+in the morning, I found him scratching, cutting, and delving away at his
+literary bench and oak chest.
+
+He could work at three or four plays alternately, and, from crude plots
+taken out of ancient history, novels, religious or mythological tableaus,
+devised his characters and put words in their mouths that burned in the
+ears of British yeomen, tradesmen, professional sharpers and lords and
+ladies who crowded the benches and boxes of the Blackfriars.
+
+He reminded me of an expert cabinet-maker, who had piled up in a corner of
+his shop a variety lot of rough timber, from which he fashioned and
+manufactured the most exquisite dressers, sofas and bureaus, dovetailing
+each piece of oak, rosewood or mahogany, with exact workmanship, and then
+with the silken varnish of his genius, sending his wares out to the rushing
+world to be admired, and transmitted to posterity, with perfect faith in
+the endurance of his creations!
+
+In putting the finishing touches on the fifth act of a play he would
+quickly change to the composition of the first act of another, and, with
+lightning rapidity embellish the characters in the third act of some
+comedy, tragedy or history, that constantly occupied his multifarious
+brain.
+
+His working den at the Blackfriars was crowded with a mass of theatrical
+literary productions, ancient and modern, while our lodging rooms were
+piled up with Latin, Greek, Spanish and French translations.
+
+Manager Burbage, Dick Field and even Chris Marlowe were constantly
+patronizing the wonderful William, and supplied him with the iron ore
+products of the ancient and middle ages, which he quickly fashioned into
+the laminated steel of dramatic excellence.
+
+    _"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
+    Like a Colossus; and we petty men
+    Walk under his huge legs and peep about
+    To find ourselves dishonorable graves."_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GROWING LITERARY RENOWN. ROYAL PATRONS.
+
+    _"Follow your envious courses, men of malice;
+    You have Christian warrant for them, and, no doubt,
+    In time will find their fit rewards."_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _"O beware, my lord, of jealousy;
+    It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock
+    The meat it feeds on."_
+
+
+The literary and dramatic world of London in the years 1589 to 1592 was
+stirred with pride and astonishment at the productions of William
+Shakspere, and from the tavern and guilds of tradesmen to the crack clubs
+of authors, lords and royalty itself, the Dramatic Magician of the
+Blackfriars was praised to the skies and sought for by even Queen
+Elizabeth, who saw more than another Edmund Spenser to glorify her reign
+and flash her name down the ages with even finer, luminous colors than
+bedecked the sylvan pathway of the Faerie Queen!
+
+The Earl of Leicester was one of the first great men of England to
+recognize the divine accomplishments of the Warwickshire boy who had made
+his first theatrical adventures through the domain of the old Earl, and who
+was ever the friend of old John Shakspere, the impecunious and agnostic
+father of our brilliant Bard.
+
+On the death of the old Earl in the autumn of 1588, his domain reverted to
+his stepson, the young Earl of Essex, who continued to be the patron of
+letters and often attended the Blackfriars, with his friend, the handsome
+and intellectual Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, who took the
+greatest interest in the plays of "Love's Labor's Lost," "Two Gentlemen of
+Verona," "King John," "Henry the Fourth," "Henry the Fifth," and "Henry the
+Sixth," that were then fermenting in the brain of William.
+
+He had ransacked the history of Hollingshead and others to illustrate on
+the stage the civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, known as
+the war of the Red and White Roses, with canker and thorn to pester each
+royal clan and bring misery on the British people because of a family
+quarrel!
+
+    _"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _"What have Kings that privates have not too,
+        Save ceremony?"_
+
+The jealousy of Kyd, Lodge and Greene continued to secretly knife the
+Stratford butcher boy, but the more they tried to cough him down the more
+he rose in public estimation, until finally these little vipers of spite
+and spleen gave up their secret scandal chase, when, like a roebuck from
+the forest of Arden or Caledonian heather crags, he flashed out of sight
+of all the dramatic and poetic hounds who pursued him, and ever after
+looked down from the imperial heights of Parnassus at the dummies of
+theatrical pretense.
+
+They accused him of wholesale plagiarism and of robbing the archives of
+every land for raw material to build up his comedies, tragedies and
+histories.
+
+He laughed and worked on, night and day, acknowledging the "soft
+impeachment" of his literary integrity, but at the same time defied them to
+equal or surpass the marvelous characters he created for the edification
+and glory of mankind!
+
+Yet, while he had a few envious literary, political and religious
+detractors, he was building up constantly a bulwark of sentimental and
+material friends in London that kept his name on the tongue of thinkers in
+home, tavern, club and palace.
+
+The keen and generous Burbage knew the intrinsic value of Shakspere, and to
+tie him to the interest of the Blackfriars, he gradually increased the
+Bard's salary and gave him an interest in the stock company. Yet, other
+theatres staged his plays.
+
+Edmund Spenser, the greatest rhythmic poet of his day, author of the
+"Faerie Queen," and prime favorite of Sidney and Queen Elizabeth, was
+lavish in his praise of the rising dramatist, while Michael Drayton and
+Christopher Marlowe vied with each other in admiration of the newly
+discovered star of intellectual brilliancy that glittered unceasingly in
+the sky of poetic and philosophic letters.
+
+Essex, Southampton, Raleigh, Bacon, Monmouth, Derby, Norfolk,
+Northumberland, Percy, Burleigh, Cecil, Montague, and many other lords of
+London club life, gave a ready adherence to Shakspere, and after his mighty
+acting on the Blackfriars and other stages, struggled with each other as to
+who should have the honor of entertaining him at the gay midnight suppers
+that delighted the amusement world of London.
+
+One of the most valuable friends William encountered in London was John
+Florio, a Florentine, the greatest linguist of his day, who had traveled in
+all lands and gathered nuggets of thought in every clime. He spoke Spanish,
+Italian, French, German and Greek, with the accent of a native, and had but
+recently translated the works of Montaigne, the great French philosopher.
+The Herbert-Southampton family patronized him.
+
+When not employed at the various theatres, the Stratford miracle could be
+found at the rooms of his friend Florio, at the "Red Lion," across the
+street from Temple Bar, where law students, bailiffs and barristers made
+day and night merry with their professional antics.
+
+William employed Florio to teach him the technical and philosophic merits
+of the Greek and Latin languages, and at the same time furnish him with
+ancient stories that he might dramatize into English classics, and astonish
+the native writers by dressing up old subjects in new frocks, cloaks, robes
+and crowns.
+
+Florio would often read by the hour, gems of Latin, Greek and French
+philosophy, and explain to us the intricate phrases of Virgil, Ovid,
+Terence, Homer, AEschylus, Plutarch, Demosthenes, Plato, Petrarch and Dante,
+while William drank up his imparted knowledge as freely and quickly as the
+sun in his course inhales the sparkling dewdrops from garden, vale and
+mountain.
+
+In the spring of 1591 William and myself paid a flying visit to Stratford,
+the Bard to pay up some family debts and bury a brother who had recently
+migrated to the land of imagination.
+
+The mother and father of William were delighted at the London success of
+their son, and Anne Hathaway seemed to be mellowed and mollified by the
+guineas William emptied into her lap, while Hammet and Judith, the
+rollicking children, were rampant with delight at the toys, sweetmeats and
+dresses presented as Easter offerings.
+
+No matter what the incompatibility of temper between William and Anne, he
+never forgot to send part of his wages for the support of herself and
+children, and although he was a "free lance" among the ladies of London, he
+maintained the "higher law" of family purity and morality.
+
+When he violated any of the ten commandments, he did it with his eyes open,
+and took the consequent mental or physical punishment with stoic
+indifference. He never called on others to shoulder his sins, but on the
+contrary he often bore the burden of cowardly "friends," who made him the
+"scapegoat" for their own iniquity--a common class of scoundrels.
+
+He never bothered himself about the religion manufacturers of mankind,
+knowing that the whole scheme, from the Oriental sunworshipers to the
+quarreling crowd of Pagans, Hebrews, Christians and Moslems, was nothing
+but a keen financial syndicate or trust to keep sacerdotal sharpers in
+place and power at the expense of plodding ignorance, hope and bigotry!
+
+The night we started back for London, by jaunting car, on the road to
+Oxford, the Bard was in a mood of lofty contemplation. He had stowed away
+in the bottom of the car, a mass of school-day and strolling-player
+compositions, evolved in the rush of vanished years.
+
+"William," said I, "can you tell me anything about the silence of those
+sparkling, eternal stars and planets?"
+
+He instantly replied:
+
+    _I question the infinite silence,
+      And endeavor to fathom the deep
+    That rests in the ocean of knowledge
+      And dreams in the heaven of sleep;
+    And I soar with the wing of science,
+      Its mysterious realm to explore,
+    But the wail of the wild sea breakers
+      Drowns my soul in the Nevermore;
+    For the answer of finite wisdom
+      Is as fickle as ambient air,
+    And my wreckage of hopes are scattered
+      On the rocks and shores of despair!_
+
+Arriving at the Crown Tavern, in Oxford, we were, as usual, received by the
+old Boniface Devanant and his handsome wife, with warm words and luxurious
+table cheer. After a day and night of reasonable revelry, we proceeded on
+our way to London, and in due course found our sunny lodgings at the home
+of Maggie Mellow.
+
+The night after our arrival Sir Walter Raleigh gave a grand banquet at the
+Mermaid Club to the principal wits of London.
+
+Burbage, Florio, Field, William and myself were invited as special guests,
+in honor of the poetic and dramatic association.
+
+Representative authors and actors of the various theatrical companies were
+present at the festive war of wits.
+
+The Queen's men, and those who played under the patronage of Leicester,
+Pembroke, Burleigh, and the Lord Admiral were there, while Henslowe, the
+owner of the Rose Theatre on Bankside, with his son-in-law, Edward Alleyn,
+the noted actor, shone in all their borrowed glory.
+
+Spenser, Drayton, Marlowe, Kyd, Nash, Chettle, Peele, Greene, and a young
+author, Ben Jonson, were a few of the literary luminaries present.
+
+A contingent of London lords, patrons of authors and actors graced the
+scene. Essex, Southampton, Pembroke, Cecil, Mortimer, Burleigh and Lord
+Bacon occupied prominent places at the angle table of the club, where
+Raleigh sat as master of ceremonies.
+
+Promptly at eleven o'clock, the great courtier, sailor and discoverer arose
+from his elevated chair and proposed a toast to the Virgin and Fairy Queen!
+
+All stood to their tankards and drank unanimously to the Virgin Queen.
+
+I thought I observed a flash of secret smiles pictured on the lips of
+Essex, Spenser, Bacon and Raleigh when Elizabeth was toasted as the
+_Virgin_ Queen; and William whispered in my ear:
+
+    _"Her virtues graced with eternal gifts,
+    Do breed love's settled passions in my heart!"_
+
+After tremendous cheers were given for the Queen, Sir Walter, in his
+blandest mood said: "We are glorified by having with us to-night the
+greatest poet in the realm, and I trust Sir Edmund Spenser will be gracious
+enough to give us a few lines from the 'Faerie Queen.'"
+
+Sir Edmund arose in his place and said:
+
+"In Una, the Fairy Queen, I beheld the purity and innocence of Elizabeth,
+and in the lion of passion, hungry from the forest, I saw her conquer even
+in her naked habiliments."
+
+    _"One day, nigh weary of the irksome way
+    From her unhasty beast she did alight;
+    And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay,
+    In secret shadow, far from all men's sight,
+    From her fair head her fillet she undight,
+    And laid her stole aside, her angel's face,
+    As the great Eye of Heaven, shone bright
+    And made a sunshine in the shady place--
+    Did never mortal eye behold such grace!
+    It fortuned, out of the thickest wood
+    A ramping Lion rushed suddenly,
+    Hunting full greedy after savage blood;
+    Soon as the Royal Virgin he did spy,
+    With gaping month at her ran greedily,
+    To have at once devoured her tender corse;
+    But to the prey when as he drew more nigh--
+    His bloody rage assuaged with remorse,
+    And with the sight amazed, forgot his furious force!"_
+
+Spenser resumed his seat, while a whirl of echoing applause waved from
+floor to rafter.
+
+Then Sir Walter remarked:
+
+"We are honored to-night by the presence of the counsel extraordinary of
+Queen Elizabeth, the orator and philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon, who will, I
+trust, give us a sentiment in honor of Her Majesty, the patron of art,
+literature and liberty!"
+
+Bacon, handsome, proud, but obsequious, then arose and addressed the jolly
+banqueters as follows:
+
+"Gentlemen: The toast of the evening to her gracious Majesty, Elizabeth,
+the Virgin Queen, meets my soul-lit approval, and had I the wings of fancy,
+instead of the plodding pedals of practical administration, I should raise
+her virtuous statue to the skies until its pinnacle shone above the uplands
+of omnipotence!
+
+"Philosophy teaches us that vice and virtue are at eternal war, and that
+whether married or single, the happiest state of man or woman is personal
+independence!
+
+    _"Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,
+    Or pain his head;
+    Those that live single, take it for a curse,
+    Or do things worse;
+    Some would have children, those that have them mourn,
+    Or wish they were gone;
+    What is it then, to have or have no wife,
+    But single thraldom, or a double strife!_
+
+"My friends: The ocean is the solitary handmaid of eternity. Cold and salt
+cure alike!
+
+"Men are like ants, crawling up and down.
+
+"Some carry corn, some carry their young, and all go to and fro--at last a
+little heap of dust!"
+
+The states' attorney took his seat, with frantic applause rattling in his
+ears.
+
+Although the sentiments of Bacon were variable, mixed, foreign and
+epigrammatic, they received great attention; for no matter who may be the
+speaker at a banquet where royalty and power are the subjects at issue,
+there will be great and tremendous cheering by little sycophants who expect
+reward, and of course, by those patriots who have already received favors
+from the administration pie counter.
+
+Sir Walter at last arose and said "that although the hour was late, or,
+more properly speaking, early, he earnestly desired the noble gentlemen
+present to hear one whose fame, in the world of dramatic letters, like the
+morning sun, had already flashed upon the horizon and rapidly approached
+the high noon of earthly immortality--William Shakspere, of
+Stratford-on-Avon!"
+
+Then could be heard roof-lifting cheers by all present, who had often heard
+the Bard in his lofty language and kingly strides at the Blackfriars.
+
+William, in the flush of self-conscious, imperial, splendid manhood
+exclaimed:
+
+"Gentlemen:
+
+    _Your toast of glory to The Virgin Queen
+    Cracks high heaven with reverberation,
+    And through the ambient air, sonorous,
+    The echoing muses mingle the
+    Harmony of the spheres with celestial repetition!
+    Elizabeth, I lift my song to thee,
+    In holy adoration
+    To echo down the flowing tide of ages!_
+
+    _Within the chronicle of wasted time
+    I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
+    And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
+    In praise of ladies dead and gallant knights,
+    Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best
+    Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
+    I know their antique pen would have expressed
+    Even such a beauty as you master now.
+    So all their praises are but prophecies
+    Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
+    And, for they looked, but with divining eyes,
+    They had not skill enough your worth to sing;
+    For me, which now behold these present days
+    Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise._
+
+    _Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
+    Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
+    Can yet the lease of my true love control,
+    Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
+    The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
+    And the sad augurs mark their own presage;
+    Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
+    And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
+    Now with the drops of the most balmy time,
+    My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
+    Since spite of him I'll live in the poor rhyme
+    While he sweeps over dull and speechless tribes.
+    And thou, in this shall find thy monument,
+    When tyrant crests and tombs of brass are spent!"_
+
+Rapturous and universal praise and applause greeted William and his
+immortal sonnets; and if any critical reader or author will take pains to
+delve into and scan the poetry and philosophy of Spenser and Bacon with
+that of Shakspere, they will quickly and honestly come to the conclusion
+that the former writers are merely rushlights to the flashing electric
+lights of the Divine Bard!
+
+To paraphrase the encomium of Shakspere to Cleopatra would fit the
+greatness of himself:
+
+    _"Age cannot wither him, nor custom stale
+    His infinite variety; other men cloy
+    The appetites they feed; but he makes hungry
+    Where most he satisfies!"_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+BOHEMIAN HOURS. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. "LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST."
+
+    _"I have ventured
+    Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders
+    This many summers in a sea of glory."_
+
+
+The literary bohemians of London three hundred years ago were an
+impecunious and jealous lot of human pismires, who built their dens,
+carried their loads, and were filled with vaulting ambition just the same
+as we see them to-day.
+
+The hack-writer for publishers, the actor for theatrical managers and the
+author of growing renown belonged to clubs and tavern coteries, pushing
+their way up the rocky heights of fame, and struggling, as now, for bread,
+clothes and shelter, many of the Bacchanalian creatures dying from hunger
+at the foothills of their ambition; and instead of winning a niche in the
+columned aisles of Westminster Abbey, dropped dead in some back alley or
+gloomy garret, to be carted away by the Beadle to the voracious Potter's
+field.
+
+They often courted Dame Suicide, who never fails to relieve the wicked,
+wretched, insane or desperate from their intolerable situation.
+
+    _"Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
+    And fear'st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,
+    Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,
+    Content and beggary hang upon thy back;
+    The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law!"_
+
+How often at the Miter or Falcon taverns have I seen these little great
+literary men swell like a toad or puff like a pigeon at the flattery
+bestowed on them by fawning bohemians, meaner than themselves, who sought a
+midnight snack and a tankard of foaming ale.
+
+Of all the despicable and miserable creatures I have ever known it is the
+poor starving devil, with latent genius, who attempts to pay court to a
+cad, snob, or drunken lord around the refuse of literary or sporting clubs
+in midnight hours.
+
+William was always very kind to these threadbare wanderers, and although
+they often gave him pen prods behind his back, he never betrayed any
+recognition of their envious stings, but like the lion in his jungle,
+brushed these busy bees away by the underbrush of his philosophy.
+
+He mildly rebuked their pretense, but relieved their immediate wants,
+impressing upon them the study of Nature and not the blandishments of art,
+having the appearance of Oriental porcelain or Phoenician glass, when it
+was really crude crockery painted to deceive the sight and auctioned off to
+the unwary purchaser as genuine material.
+
+How many authors, artists and actors of to-day follow in the path of their
+London ancestors who blow, and brag, and strut in midnight clubs and
+taverns to the pity and disgust of their table tooters.
+
+Speaking one evening at the Red Lion, in the rooms of Florio, I asked
+William how it was that his plays were so successful, while those of other
+authors had almost been banished from the dramatic boards. He at once
+replied:
+
+    _I draw my plots from Nature's law
+      To sound the depths of human life,
+    And through her realm I find no flaw
+      In all her seeming, varied strife;
+    The good and bad are near allied;
+      With sweet and sour forever blent,
+    While vice and virtue side by side
+      Exist in every continent.
+    The poison vine that climbs the tree,
+      Is just as great in Nature's plan
+    As every mount and every sea
+      Displayed below for little man.
+    And every ant and busy bee
+      Shall teach us how to build and toil
+    If we would mingle with the free,
+      Who plough the seas or till the soil._
+
+I shall never forget the visit Shakspere and myself paid to the cloistered,
+columned, pinnacled proportions of Westminster Abbey.
+
+It was three o'clock in the afternoon of the 24th of December, 1592.
+
+The living London world was rushing in great multitudes by alley, lane,
+street and park preparing for the celebration of Christmas Eve.
+
+Vanity Fair was decked off with palm, spruce, pine, myrtle, ivy and holly
+to garnish home, hall and shop in honor of Jesus, who had been crucified
+nearly sixteen hundred years before for telling the truth and tearing down
+the vested arrogance of religious tyranny.
+
+A bright winter sun was gilding the tall towers of the Abbey with golden
+light, and the mullioned windows were blazing over the surrounding
+buildings like flashes of fire.
+
+We entered the court of Westminster through the old school by way of a
+long, low passage, dimly lighted corridors, with glinting figures of old
+teachers in black gowns, moving like specters from the neighboring tombs.
+
+As we passed along by cloistered walls and mural monuments to vanished
+glory, we were soon within the interior of the grand old Abbey.
+
+Clustered columns of gigantic dimensions, with lofty arches springing from
+wall to nave met the eye of the beholder, and stunned by the solemn
+surroundings, vain man wonders at his own handiwork, trembling with doubt
+amid the monumental glory of Old Albion.
+
+The Abbey clock struck the hour of five as William and myself stood in deep
+contemplation at Poets' corner.
+
+The reverberating tones of time echoed from nave to floor, through
+cloistered walls and columned aisles, noting the passing hour and ages,
+like billows of sound rolling over the graves of vanished splendor.
+
+Here crumble the dust and effigies of courtiers, warriors, statesmen,
+lords, dukes, kings, queens and authors; and yet, there is no spot in the
+Abbey that holds such an abiding interest for mankind as the modest corner
+where lie the dust of noted poets and philosophers.
+
+The great and the heroic of the world may be bravely admired in lofty
+contemplation of nationality, but a feeling of fondness creeps over the
+traveler or reader when he bows at the grave of buried genius, while tears
+of remembrance even wash away the sensuous Bacchanalian escapades of
+impulsive, poetic revelers.
+
+The author, touched by the insanity of genius, must ever live in the mind
+of the reader, and while posterity shall forget even warriors, kings and
+queens, it never fails to preserve in marble, granite, bronze and song the
+name and fame of great poets.
+
+David, Solomon, Job, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Angelo, Dante and Plutarch are
+deeply imbedded in the memory of mankind, and although great kingdoms,
+empires and dynasties, have passed away to the rubbish heap of oblivion,
+the poet, musician, painter, and sculptor still remain to thrill and
+beautify life, and teach hope of immortality beyond the grave.
+
+After gazing on the statues of abbots, Knights Templar, Knights of the
+Bath, bishops, statesmen, kings and queens, many mutilated by time and
+profane hands, William stood by the coffin of Edward the Confessor and
+mournfully soliloquized:
+
+    _Westminster! lofty heir of Pagan Temple;
+    Imperial in stone; a thousand years
+    Crowns the record of thy inheritance,
+    Gilding the glory of thy ancient fame,
+    With imperishable deeds--
+    Liberty of thought and action, shall
+    Forever cluster about thy classic form;
+    While new men with new creeds, and reason,
+    Shall overturn the religions of to-day,
+    As thou hast invaded and destroyed
+    The Pagan, Roman rules of antiquity.
+    These marble hands and faces appealing
+    For remembrance, to animated dust
+    Appeal in vain, for we, whose footfalls
+    Only sound in marble ears, cold and listless,
+    Shall ourselves follow where they led, dying
+    Not knowing the mysterious secrets of the grave.
+    Here the victor and vanquished, side by side,
+    Sleep in dreamless rest, Kings and Queens in life,
+    Battling for power, all conquered by tyrant Death,
+    Whose universal edict, irrevocable,
+    Levels Prince and Peasant, in impalpable dust.
+    Crowns to-day, coffins to-morrow, with monuments
+    Mossed over, letter-cracked, undecipherable
+    As the mummied remains of Egyptian Kings.
+    Vain, vain, are all the monuments of man,
+    The greatest only live a little span;
+    We strut and shine our passing day, and then--
+    Depart from all the haunts of living men,
+    With only Hope to light us on the way
+    Where billions passed beneath the silent clay;
+    And, none have yet returned to tell us where
+    We'll bivouac beyond this world of care;
+    And these dumb mouths, with ghostly spirits near
+    Will not express a word into mine ear,
+    Or tell me when I leave this sinning sod
+    If I shall be transfigured with my God!_
+
+In September, 1592, the second play of Shakspere, "Love's Labor's Lost,"
+was given at the Blackfriars, to a fine audience.
+
+He took the characters of the play from a French novel, based on an Italian
+plot, and wove around the story a lot of glittering talk to please the
+lords and ladies who listened to the silly gabble of their prototypes.
+
+Ferdinand, King of Navarre, and his attendant lords are a set of silly
+beaux who propose to retire from the world and leave women alone for the
+space of three years.
+
+The Princess of France and her ladies in waiting, with the assistance of a
+gay lord named Boyet, made an incursion into the Kingdom of Navarre and
+break into the solitude of the students.
+
+Nathaniel, a parson, and Holofernes, a pedant schoolmaster, are introduced
+into the play by William to illustrate the asinine pretensions of ministers
+and pedagogues, who are constantly introducing Latin or French words in
+their daily conversation, for the purpose of impressing common people with
+their great learning, when, in fact, they only show ridiculous pretense and
+expose themselves to the contempt of mankind.
+
+There are very few noted philosophic sentiments in the play, and the
+attempt at wit, of the clown, the constable and Holofernes, the
+schoolmaster, fall very flat on the ear of an audience, while the rhymes
+put in the mouth of the various characters are unworthy of a boy fourteen
+years of age.
+
+I remonstrated with William about injecting his alleged poetry into the
+love letters sent by the lords and ladies, but he replied that young love
+was such a fool that any kind of rhyme would suit passionate parties who
+were playing "Jacks and straws" with each other.
+
+Ferdinand, the King, opens up the play with a grand dash of thought:
+
+    _"Let fame that all hunt after in their lives,
+    Live registered upon our brazen tombs,
+    And then grace us in the disgrace of death,
+    When, spite of cormorant devouring time,
+    The endeavor of this present breach may buy
+    That honor, which shall bait his scythe's keen edge
+    To make us heirs of all eternity."_
+
+Lord Biron, who imagines himself in love with the beautiful Rosaline,
+soliloquizes in this fashion:
+
+    _"What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
+    A woman that is like a German clock,
+    Still a repairing; ever out of frame.
+    And never going aright, being a watch,
+    But being watched that it may still go right!
+    Is not Love a Hercules
+    Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
+    Subtle as a sphinx; as sweet and musical
+    As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair
+    And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
+    Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony!"_
+
+Holofernes, the Latin pedagogue, criticising Armado, exclaims:
+
+_Novi hominem tanquam te._ His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory. He
+draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his
+argument.
+
+And then Holofernes winds up the play with the Owl and Cuckoo song, a
+rambling verse, Winter speaking:
+
+    _When icicles hang by the wall,
+    And Dick, the shepherd, blows his wail,
+    And Tom bears logs into the hall,
+    And milk comes frozen home in pail,
+    When blood is nipped and ways be foul,
+    When nightly sings the staring owl
+                 To-who;
+    Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note
+    While greasy Joan doth scum the pot._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+QUEEN ELIZABETH. WAR. SHAKSPERE IN IRELAND.
+
+    _"Now all the youth of England are on fire
+    And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
+    Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thought
+    Hangs solely in the breast of every man._
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war!"_
+
+
+The reign of Queen Elizabeth was a most glorious one for the material and
+mental progress of England, but most disastrous for Philip of Spain, Louis
+and Henry of France, Mary of Scotland, O'Neil, O'Brien, Desmond and Tyrone
+of Ireland.
+
+The Reformation of Martin Luther, a Catholic priest, against the faith and
+financial exactions of the Pope of Rome, cracked from the Catholic sky like
+a clap of thunder from the noonday sun, and reverberated over the globe
+with startling detonation.
+
+The cry of personal liberty and personal responsibility to God, went out
+from the German cloister like a roaring storm and echoed in thunder tones
+among the columned aisles of the Vatican.
+
+Entrenched audacity and mental tyranny was broken from its ancient
+pedestal, as if an earthquake had shivered the Roman dominions, leaving
+sacerdotal precedents and papal bulls in the back-alley of bigotry and
+bloated ignorance.
+
+People began to think and wonder how they had been bamboozled for centuries
+by a set of educated harlequins, who, in all lands and climes exhibited
+their antics and nostrums for the delectation and digestion of infatuated
+fools! Millions yet living!
+
+Queen Elizabeth's elevation to the throne of England was a bid for the
+banished and persecuted Protestants to return from foreign lands and again
+pursue their puritanical philosophy.
+
+Pope Paul demanded of Elizabeth that all the church lands, monasteries and
+cathedrals confiscated by her father, Henry the Eighth, be restored to the
+Roman hierarchy, and that she make confession and submission to the divine
+authority of the Catholic Church.
+
+Although religion and civil law was in a very chaotic state, Queen Bess was
+not at all disturbed by the threats of the Vatican or the Armada of Spain.
+With old Lord Cecil as her prime counsel, she never hesitated to believe in
+her own destiny, and, like her opponents, the Jesuits, the end always
+justified the means. When it was necessary to rob or kill anybody, the
+Queen did so without any compunction of conscience.
+
+She did not care for religion one way or the other, and flattered the
+Catholic and Protestant lords alike, manipulating them for her personal and
+official advantage. Victory at any price. Business Bessy!
+
+She professed great love for her sister, Mary Queen of Scots, but to foil
+the French Catholics and satisfy the Scotch and English Protestants, Lizzie
+cut off the head of her beautiful sister. She professed great sorrow after
+Mary's head was detached.
+
+Essex and Raleigh, and many other royal courtiers were sent to the Tower
+and the block by this red-headed, snaggle-tooth she devil, who only thought
+of her own physical pleasures and official vanities, sacrificing everything
+to her tyrannical ambition. She died in an insane, frantic fit.
+
+Yet, with all her devilish conduct, she pushed the material interest of
+Englishmen ahead for five hundred years, and by her patronage of sailors,
+warriors, poets and philosophers, gave the British letters a boom that is
+felt to the present day, and through Shakspere's lofty lines, shall
+continue down the ages to tell mankind that nothing on earth is lasting but
+honest work and eternal truth.
+
+Contention and war is the natural condition of mankind; for all animated
+nature, from birth to death, struggles for food and shelter.
+
+The birds of the air, animals of the land and fishes of the sea, fight and
+devour each other for food, while man, the great robber and murderer of
+all, delights in destruction, and from his first appearance on earth to the
+present day, has been earnestly engaged in emigrating from land to land,
+seeking whom he may rob and kill for personal wealth and power! Doing it
+to-day more than ever.
+
+Civilization is only refined barbarism; and this very hour the unions of
+the world are inventing and manufacturing powder, guns and terrible battle
+ships for the purpose of robbing and killing each other in the next war,
+nearly at hand. Japan and Russia will tear each other to pieces.
+
+Peace is only a slight resting spell for the nations to trade with each
+other and make secret preparations to finally kill and secure increased
+dominion.
+
+The minions of monarchy and lovers of liberty have invariably despised each
+other, and waited only favorable opportunity to rob and murder. Even now,
+they crouch like lions at bay, and fight to the death.
+
+Liberty is forging ahead with ten league boots and monarchy is silently,
+but surely being relegated to the tomb of defeat.
+
+Of course, right is right in the abstract, but might is the winning card in
+the lottery of Fate, and that nation having the most brave men, money and
+guns will come out victorious!
+
+Strong nations have become stronger by robbing and killing weaker nations,
+and the British Government for a thousand years--particularly from the
+bloody reigns of Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell--can boast that it has never
+failed to rob and kill the weak, while truckling and fawning at the feet of
+Russia and the Republic of the United States, which will soon extend from
+Bering Sea and Baffin's Bay to the Isthmus of Panama--absorbing Canada,
+Cuba, Mexico and Central America within its imperial jurisdiction. We
+intend to, and shall rule the world!
+
+Then, this vast Republic, looking over the globe from the dome of our
+national Capitol, at Washington, can invite all lands to banquet at the
+table of the Goddess of Liberty, and in mercy to the blind tyranny of
+monarchy we may lay a wreath of myrtle on the graves of lords, earls,
+dukes, kings, queens and emperors, to be only remembered as the nightmare
+of tyranny, extirpated from the earth forever. God grant their speedy
+official destruction!
+
+The gentle reader (of course) will excuse this enthusiastic digression from
+the story of Queen Bess and my soul friend William Shakspere.
+
+If they were present at this moment, they would not dare deny the truth of
+this memory narrative.
+
+In the summer of 1595, the periodical plague of London was thinning out the
+inhabitants of that dirty city. In the lower part of the city skirting the
+Thames, the sewerage was very bad and but the poorest sanitary rules
+existed. After a hard rain, the lanes, alleys and streets ran with a stream
+of putrefaction, as the offal from many tenement houses was thrown in the
+public highway, where the rays from the hot sun created malarial fever or
+the black plague.
+
+At such times the theatres and churches were closed, and those who could
+get out of London, by land or water, fled to the inland shires of England,
+the mountains of Scotland or to the heather hills of Ireland.
+
+Edmund Spenser, the poet and Secretary of Lord Gray for Ireland, invited
+William and myself to visit his Irish estate near the city of Cork.
+
+One bright morning in May, we boarded the good ship Elizabeth, near the
+Tower, passed out of Gravesend, then into the channel and steered our way
+to Bantry Bay, until we landed in the cove of Cork, as the church bells
+were ringing devotees to early mass.
+
+The green fields and hills of Ireland were blooming in rustic beauty, the
+thrush sang from every hawthorn bush, the blackbird was busy in the fields
+filching grain from the ploughman, the lark, in his skyward flight poured a
+stream of melody on the air, and all Nature seemed happy, but man.
+
+He it is who makes the blooming productive earth miserable, with his
+voracious greed for gold and power.
+
+Elizabeth was then waging war with the various Irish chieftains, importing
+cunning Scotchmen and brutal Englishmen as soldiers and traders to colonize
+the lands and destroy the homes of what she was pleased to call "Barbarous,
+rebellious, wild Irish."
+
+Whenever any strong power invades a weaker one for the purpose of robbery
+and official murder (war), the tyrant labels his victim--a "Rebel!"
+
+That is, the original owner of the land destined to be robbed is regarded
+as bigoted, barbarous and rebellious, unless he submits to be robbed,
+banished and murdered for the edification and glory of freebooters,
+thieves, tyrants, assassins and foreign man hunters.
+
+Leinster, Munster, Ulster and Connaught, the four provinces of Ireland, had
+been marked out for settlement by Henry the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth, and
+hordes of English "carpetbaggers" and soldiers were turned loose on the
+island to rob, burn and destroy the natives.
+
+As soon as counties and provinces were conquered, the military and lordly
+pets of the various monarchs were given large grants of the lands stolen
+from the people.
+
+O'Neil, O'Brien, Desmond, O'Donnell, O'Connor, Burke, Clanrickard and
+Tyrone disputed every inch of ground with Pellam, Mountjoy, Gray, Essex,
+Raleigh and Cromwell; and, although the original commanders and owners of
+the soil have been virtually banished or killed, their posterity has the
+proud satisfaction of knowing that more than a million of Englishmen and
+Scotchmen have been killed by the "Wild Irish," and the battle for liberty
+shall still go on till the Saxon robber relinquishes his blood sucking
+tentacles on the Emerald Isle.
+
+Poet Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh were rewarded by Queen Elizabeth with
+thousands of acres, confiscated from the great estate of the Earl of
+Desmond, who lived at the castle of Kilcolman, near the town of Doneraile.
+
+Spenser paid for his stolen land by writing a dissertation on the way to
+conquer and kill off the Irish race, regarding them no more than the wild
+beasts of the forest. He also flattered Queen Bess by composing a lot of
+flattering verse, called the "Faerie Queen," and made her believe she was
+the beautiful, sweet, mild, chaste, angelic individual that had thrilled
+his imagination in the royal realms of dreamland.
+
+What infernal lies political courtiers, religious ministers and even poets
+have told to flatter the vanity of governors, presidents, kings, queens,
+popes and emperors!
+
+Yet in all the grand sentiments Shakspere evolved out of his volcanic
+brain, he never bent the knee to absolute vice, but pictured the horrors
+of royalty in its most devilish attitudes. His pen was never purchased
+against truth.
+
+We remained at Kilcolman Castle with Spenser for about ten days riding and
+sporting, and then with an escort of soldiers, were piloted through the
+"Rebel" counties on to Dublin, where the head of O'Neil graced one of the
+"Red" walls of that unlucky city.
+
+On our route from Cork to Dublin we beheld misery and ruin in every form,
+burned cabins, churches, monasteries and bridges, and starving women and
+children on the roadside, crouching under bushes, straw stacks and leaking
+sheds, with smouldering turf fires crackling on the ashes of despair!
+
+We took shipping the next morning for Liverpool, as William was very
+anxious to get away from the land of funeral wails, where the cry of the
+"wake" over some dead peasant or defiant "Rebel" echoed on the air
+continually.
+
+    _Where sorrow in her weeping form,
+    Shed tears in sunshine, and in storm,
+    While o'er the land, a reign of blood
+    Was running like a mountain flood!_
+
+As we pushed away from the sight of the Irish hills, Shakspere, leaning
+against the foremast, in pathetic tone exclaimed:
+
+    _Farewell, old Erin, land of nameless sorrow,
+    Albion crushes thee for opinion's sake;
+    'Twixt the Bulls of Rome and Laws of England
+    Thy children are robbed, banished and murdered.
+    And cast away from native land, like leaves
+    Bestrewing forest wilds, bleak and lone.
+    Merged in lands of Liberty, thy children
+    Shall rise again, a new born glorious race--
+    Triumphant in home, church and State, honored,
+    Masters of War, Wit, Eloquence and Poetry.
+    Move out and move on, like the rising sun
+    Whose face so oft is clouded with shadows,
+    Yet, shall burst forth again in noonday splendor--
+    Irradiating a bleak and cruel world!_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+RURAL ENGLAND. "ROMEO AND JULIET"
+
+    _"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows;
+    Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;
+    Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
+    With sweet musk roses and the eglantine."_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _"Stony limits cannot hold love out;
+    And what love can do, that dares love attempt."_
+
+
+We remained in Liverpool three days, and then determined to return to
+London by land, crossing through the inland shires, taking in Manchester,
+Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick, and on to Stratford, where
+clustered the dearest objects of our affection.
+
+We were ten days walking, riding and resting at taverns, in our rural tour
+of Old Albion. The fields were furrowed for the grain, the birds sang from
+every hedge and forest domain, the cattle, sheep and swine grazed in
+lowing, bleating, grunting security along winding streams, public fields or
+on the velvet meadows of rich yeoman or lordly estates, while the men,
+women, boys and girls that we encountered seemed to be infused with the
+delights of May blossoms, forest wild flowers and refreshing showers, all
+noting the practical prosperity of England.
+
+How different these rural scenes to those we had recently encountered in
+poor down-trodden Ireland, the Niobe of nations, besprinkled with the tears
+of centuries for the loss of her crushed and exiled children.
+
+    _Yet, the world is moving upward
+      To the heights where Freedom reigns;
+    Where the sunshine of redemption
+      Shall give joy for all our pains,
+    When the cruel hands of tyrants
+      Shall be banished from the land
+    With our God the only Master
+      Of Dame Nature true and grand!_
+
+We arrived in sight of Stratford as the sun set over the hills of Arden,
+and as the pigeons and rooks sought their nests for the night, a golden
+glow flashed over the evening landscape.
+
+The last rays of Sol shone in dazzling splendor upon the pinnacle of old
+Trinity Church as we gazed with ravished eyes on the winding, glistening
+Avon, meandering through emerald meadows and whispering wild flowers to the
+silvery Severn.
+
+The old tavern was still there, but the old host slept in God's acre near
+by, while the lads we knew ten years before, had, like ourselves, gone out
+into the world for fame and fortune.
+
+William sought out his father and mother, and then Anne Hathaway and the
+children, who still resided at the old Hathaway cottage at Shottery. I
+remained at the tavern for contemplation.
+
+Time and age mellow the most violent spirits; and the temper of Anne had
+become modified by family troubles, inducing an inward survey of self,
+which brings a reasonable person to the realization of the fact that he or
+she is not the only stubborn oak in the forest of humanity.
+
+A practical stubborn wife and a lofty poet never can assimilate.
+
+Shakspere had no equals or superiors. Shakspere was simply SHAKSPERE.
+
+    _At home he found a scolding wife,
+    Abroad he felt the joys of life,
+    While all his glory and renown
+    Were reaped at last in London town.
+    He looked for truth in crowds of men,
+    In field, in street, in tavern,
+    And mingled with the moving throng
+    To hear their story and their song,
+    He pictured life in colors true,
+    As brilliant as the rainbow hue,
+    And all his characters display
+    The pride and passion of to-day.
+    He cared not for the crowds of men--
+    As fierce as beasts within a den,
+    And looked alone to Nature's God
+    Displayed in heaven, in sea and sod,
+    And held the scales of justice high-
+    Uplifted to the sunlit sky,
+    Weighing the passions of mankind
+    With lofty and imperial mind.
+    The Puritan and Pope to him
+    Were overflowing to the brim
+    With bigotry and cruel spleen
+    That desolated every scene.
+    The midget minds of men in power
+    He satirized from hour to hour,
+    And on the stage portrayed the greed
+    Of those who live by crime and creed.
+    He tore the masks from royal brows
+    And showed their guilt and broken vows,
+    Exposing to the laughing throng
+    The horrid face of vice and wrong.
+    In every land and every clime,
+    He honored truth and punctured crime,
+    And down the years his god-like rhyme
+    Shall be synonymous with Time!_
+
+We remained among relatives and friends in Warwickshire until the middle of
+September, when we heard that the London plague had abated and the
+theatrical profession were busy preparing for a winter campaign of dramatic
+glory. Shakspere had several plays partly or nearly finished, and, as
+Burbage and Henslowe desired our immediate services, we took our departure
+from Stratford, with the friendship of the town echoing in our ears.
+
+The flowers and growing fields, the leafy forests and circling and singing
+birds seemed to say good-bye, good luck and God bless you!
+
+We felt happy and hopeful ourselves, and consequently Dame Nature echoed
+the feeling of our souls. All was joy, song, feasting and laughter.
+
+William, on our way to Oxford, in one of his original flights taken from an
+ode of Horace, impulsively exclaimed:
+
+    _Laugh and the world laughs with you;
+      Weep and you weep alone,
+    This grand old earth must borrow its mirth,
+      It has troubles enough of its own.
+    Sing and the hills will answer,
+      Sigh, it is lost on the air,
+    The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
+      But shrink from voicing care._
+
+    _Be glad and your friends are many;
+      Be sad and you lose them all;
+    There are none to decline your nectared wine,
+      But alone we must drink life's gall.
+    There's room in the halls of pleasure,
+      For a long and lordly train,
+    But one by one we must all file on;
+      Through the narrow aisles of pain._
+
+    _Feast, and your halls are crowded,
+      Fast, and the world goes by,
+    Succeed and give, 'twill help you live;
+      But no one can help you die!
+    Rejoice, and men will seek you,
+      Grieve, and they turn and go,
+    They want full measure of all your pleasure
+      But they do not want your woe!_
+
+These lines impressed me very much at the time and from that day to this I
+have never ceased to act on the philosophy of the poem.
+
+It has been part of my nature, and during my wanderings for the past three
+hundred and twenty years I have never failed to carry in my train of
+thought and action--sunshine, beauty, song, love and laughter--advance
+agents to secure welcome in all hearts and homes throughout the world.
+
+We were beautifully entertained by Mrs. Daisy Davenant at the Crown Tavern
+in Oxford, and many of the college "boys," who heard of our arrival in the
+city, hurried to pay their classic friendship to the "Divine" William.
+
+We arrived in London on the 20th of September, and found that our old maid
+landlady had died of the plague, but had kindly sent all our literary and
+wardrobe effects to Florio, who was still alive and well at the Red Lion.
+
+In a couple of days William was up to his head and ears in theatrical
+composition and stage structure.
+
+A few years before the Bard had "dashed off" a love tragedy entitled "Romeo
+and Juliet," taken from an Italian novel of the thirteenth century, and a
+translation of the old family feud in poetry, by Walter Brooke, who had but
+recently delighted London with the story.
+
+Shakspere never hesitated to take crude ore and rough ashler from any
+quarry of thought; and out of the dull, leaden material of others, produced
+characters in living form to walk the stage of life forever, teaching the
+lesson of virtue triumphant over vice.
+
+The exemplification of true love, as pictured in the pure affection of
+Juliet and the intense, heroic devotion of Romeo, have never been equaled
+or surpassed by any other dramatic characters.
+
+The lordly and wealthy gentry of Italy have been noted for their family
+feuds for the past three thousand years, and the party followers of these
+blood-stained rivals have desolated many happy homes in Rome, Florence,
+Milan, Naples, Venice and Verona.
+
+Shakspere showed the finished play of "Romeo and Juliet" to Burbage, and
+the old manager fairly jumped with joy and astonishment at the eloquence of
+the love and ruin drama.
+
+The families of Capulet and Montague of Verona, stuffed with foolish pride
+about the matrimonial choice of their daughters and sons, can be found in
+every city in the world where a tyrant father or purse-proud mother insist
+on selecting life partners for their children.
+
+The story of Romeo and Juliet shows the utter failure of such parental
+folly.
+
+The play was largely advertised among the lights of London and announced to
+come off in all its glory at the Blackfriars on the last Saturday of
+December, 1595.
+
+Queen Elizabeth, in a special box, was there incog, with a royal train of
+lords and ladies; and such another audience for dress and stunning show was
+never seen in London.
+
+Burleigh, Bacon, Essex, Southampton, Derby, Raleigh, Spenser, Warwick,
+Gray, Montague, Lancaster, Mountjoy, Blake, and all the great soldiers and
+sailors of the realm then in London were boxed for a sight of the greatest
+love tragedy ever enacted on the dramatic stage. All the dramatic authors
+were present.
+
+William himself took the part of Romeo, for he was a perfect
+exemplification of the hero of the play. Jo Taylor took the part of Juliet,
+and I can assure you that his makeup, in the form and dress of the
+fourteen-year-old Italian beauty, was a great success.
+
+Dick Burbage took the part of Friar Laurence, Condell played Mercutio,
+Arnim the part of Paris, Field played old Capulet, and Florio played
+Montague, Hemmings played Benvolio, and John Underwood played the part of
+Tybalt, and Escalus, the Prince, was played by Phillips.
+
+The curtain went up on a street scene in Verona, where the partisans of the
+houses of Capulet and Montague quarreled, while Paris, Mercutio, Romeo and
+Tybalt worked up their hot blood and came to blows.
+
+Romeo and his friends, in mask, attended a ball at the home of Juliet, in a
+clandestine fashion, and on first sight of this immaculate beauty Romeo
+exclaims:
+
+    _"O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
+    Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night
+    Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
+    Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
+    So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
+    As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
+    The dancing done, I'll watch her place of stand,
+    And, touching hers, make happy my rude hand,
+    Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight,
+    For I ne'er saw true beauty till to-night!"_
+
+The poetic apostrophe of Romeo to his new discovered beauty elicited
+universal applause, led by the "Virgin Queen," who imagined, no doubt, that
+his tribute to beauty was intended for herself. She never lost an
+opportunity to appropriate anything that came her way. An epigram of
+strenuous audacity. A winner!
+
+In the second act Romeo climbs the wall, hemming in his beautiful Juliet,
+and in defiance of the family feud, locks and bars of old man Capulet, and
+seeks a clandestine interview with his true love, although at the risk of
+his life.
+
+It was the evening of the twenty-first birthday of Romeo, and with love as
+his guide and subject, he felt strong enough to attack a warring world.
+
+Beneath the window of the fair Juliet, Romeo soliloquizes:
+
+    _"He jests at scars, that never felt a wound_--
+        (Juliet appears at an upper window.)
+    _But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks!
+    It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
+    Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
+    Who is already sick and pale with grief,
+    That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she;
+    Be not her maid since she is envious;
+    Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
+    And none but fools do wear it; cast it off--
+    It is my lady; O, it is my love;
+    O, that she knew she were!--
+    She speaks, yet she says nothing: What of that:
+    Her eye discourses, I will answer it.
+    I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks;
+    Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
+    Having some business, do entreat her eyes
+    To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
+    What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
+    The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars.
+    As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven
+    Would through the airy region stream so bright
+    That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
+    See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
+    O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
+    That I might touch that cheek!"_
+
+Juliet speaks, and finally out of her fevered, love-lit mind says:
+
+    _"O, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
+    Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
+    Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
+    And I'll no longer be a Capulet!"_
+
+Romeo replies:
+
+    _"I take thee at thy word;
+    Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized,
+    Henceforth I never will be Romeo."_
+
+She says:
+
+    _"How cam'st thou hither?
+    The orchard walls are too high and hard to climb;
+    And the place death, considering who thou art."_
+
+Romeo quickly responds:
+
+    _"With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls;
+    For stony limits cannot hold love out;
+    And what love can do, that dares love attempt,
+    Therefore thy kinsmen are no hindrance to me!
+    I am no pilot, yet wert thou as far
+    As that vast shore washed with the further sea
+    I would adventure for such merchandise!"_
+
+Then Juliet, with her fine Italian cunning makes the following declaration
+of her love; and considering that she is only fourteen years of age, yet in
+the hands of a house nurse, older and wiser girls could not give a better
+gush of affectionate eloquence:
+
+    "_Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,
+    Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek,
+    For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night.
+    Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain, fain, deny
+    What I have spoke; But, farewell compliment!
+    Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say, Ay;
+    And I will take thy word, yet if thou swear'st,
+    Thou may'st prove false; at lover's perjuries
+    They say Jove laughs. O, gentle Romeo,
+    If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully;
+    Or, if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
+    I'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay,
+    So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world,
+    In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond;
+    And therefore thou may'st think my conduct light;
+    But, trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
+    Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
+    I should have been more shy, I must confess,
+    But that thou overheard'st, ere I was aware,
+    My true love's passion; therefore, pardon me;
+    And not impute this yielding to light love,
+    Which the dark night hath so discovered,
+    My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
+    My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
+    The more I have, for both are infinite!"_
+
+The lovers part, promising eternal love and marriage "to-morrow" at the
+cell of good Friar Laurence, the confessor of the fair Juliet.
+
+The friar, priest, preacher and bishop have ever been great matrimonial
+matchmakers, and when "Love's young dream" is foiled or withered by
+parental tyranny, these velvet-handed philosophers find a way to tie the
+hymeneal knot, even in personal and legal defiance of cruel, social
+dictation.
+
+Friar Laurence, in contemplation of tying love-knots soliloquizes in the
+following lofty lines:
+
+    _"The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
+    Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
+    And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
+    From forth day's pathway, made by Titan's wheels.
+    Now ere the sun advance his burning eye,
+    The day to cheer, and night's dark dew to try,
+    I must fill up this osier cage of ours
+    With baleful needs and precious-juiced flowers.
+    The earth that's Nature's mother, is her tomb;
+    What is her burying grave, that is her womb;
+    And from her womb children of divers kind
+    We sucking on her natural bosom find,
+    Many for many virtues excellent,
+    None, but for some, and yet all different;
+    O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
+    In herbs, plants, stones and their true qualities;
+    For naught so vile that on the earth doth live,
+    But to the earth some special good doth give;
+    Nor aught so good, but strained from that fair use,
+    Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
+    Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied
+    And vice sometimes by action dignified.
+    Within the infant rind of this small flower,
+    Poison hath residence and medicine power,
+    For, this being smelt, with that part cheers each part,
+    Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
+    Two such opposed foes encamp them still
+    In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will,
+    And where the worser is predominant,
+    Full soon the canker death eats up that plant!"_
+
+Romeo implores the holy Friar:
+
+    _"Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
+    Then love devouring death do what he dare,
+    It is enough I may but call her mine!"_
+
+Juliet addressing Romeo in the Friar's cell exclaims:
+
+    _"Imagination more rich in matter than in words,
+    Brags of his substance, not of ornament;
+    They are but beggars that can count their worth;
+    But my true love is grown to such excess,
+    I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth."_
+
+The good old Friar then says:
+
+    _"Come, come with me and we will make short work;
+    For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone
+    Till holy church incorporate two in one!"_
+
+Mercutio and Tybalt fight, in faction of the Capulet and Montague houses.
+Mercutio is killed, and then Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished from the
+State by Prince Escalus.
+
+Juliet awaits Romeo in her room the night after marriage, and with
+passionate, impatient longing exclaims:
+
+    _"Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die
+    Take him and cut him out in little stars,
+    And he will make the face of heaven so bright
+    That all the world will be in love with night,
+    And pay no worship to the garish sun.
+    O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
+    But not possessed it; and, though I am sold;
+    Not yet enjoyed; so tedious is this day,
+    As is the night before some festival
+    To an impatient child that hath new robes,
+    And may not wear them!"_
+
+Although the verdict of banishment was pronounced against Romeo to go to
+Mantua instanter, he found means through the old nurse and good Friar
+Laurence to visit his new-made bride the night before his forced departure;
+and in spite of locks, bars, law, parents and princes, plucked the ripe
+fruit from the tree of virginity.
+
+Romeo must be gone before the first crowing of the cock and ere the rosy
+fingers of the dawn light up the bridal chamber, else death would be his
+portion.
+
+Juliet importunes him to stay, and says:
+
+    _"Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day;
+    It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
+    That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
+    Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree;
+    Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."_
+
+Romeo replies:
+
+    _"It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
+    No nightingale; look, love, what envious streaks
+    Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East;
+    Night's candles are burnt, and jocund day,
+    Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops;
+    I must be gone and live, or stay and die!"_
+
+Juliet further implores him to stay:
+
+    _"Yon light is not daylight, I know it;
+    It is some meteor that the sun exhales;
+    To be to thee this night a torch bearer,
+    And light thee on thy way to Mantua;
+    Therefore stay yet, thou need'st not be gone."_
+
+Romeo willingly consents:
+
+    _"Let me be taken, let me be put to death;
+    I am content so thou wilt have it so;
+    I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye,
+    'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow!
+    Nor that it is not the lark, whose notes do beat
+    The vaulty heaven so high above our heads;
+    I have more care to stay than will to go;--
+    Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so--
+    How is it, my soul? Let's talk, it is not day!"_
+
+Juliet alarmed exclaims:
+
+    _"It is, it is, hie hence, begone away;
+    It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
+    Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
+    Some say the lark makes sweet division;
+    This doth not so, for she divideth us;
+    Some say, the lark and lothed toad change eyes;
+    O, now I would they had changed voices too;
+    Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
+    Hunting thee hence with hunts up to the day.
+    O, now begone; more light and light it grows."_
+
+Romeo descends the ladder, saying his last words to the beautiful Juliet:
+
+    _"And trust me, love, in mine eye so do you,
+    Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu! Adieu!"_
+
+After the banishment of Romeo, old Capulet and his wife insisted that
+Juliet marry young Paris, a kinsman of Prince Escalus, and sorrows
+unnumbered crowded on the new-made secret bride.
+
+To escape marriage with Paris, Juliet consulted Friar Laurence, who gives
+her a drug to be taken the night before the prearranged marriage, that will
+dull all life and the body remain as dead for forty-two hours. This scheme
+of the Friar works out favorably until Juliet is laid away with her
+ancestors in the grand tomb of the Capulets.
+
+But Romeo hears of the whole trouble and hurries back from banishment,
+dashing his way through all impediments until he kills Paris, grieving at
+midnight by the grave of Juliet.
+
+Then, tearing his way into the tomb of Juliet throws himself upon the
+gorgeous bier and exclaims:
+
+       _"Oh, my love! my wife!
+    Death that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,
+    Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty;
+    Thou art not conquered; beauty's ensign yet
+    Is crimson on thy lips, and in thy cheeks,
+    And death's pale flag is not advanced there;
+    Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
+    O, what more favor can I do thee,
+    Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain,
+    To sunder his that was thine enemy!
+    Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
+    Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
+    That unsubstantial death is amorous;
+    And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
+    Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
+    For fear of that I will still stay with thee;
+    And never from this palace of dim night
+    Depart again; here, here will I remain
+    With worms that are thy chambermaids; O, here
+    Will I set up my everlasting rest;
+    And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
+    From this world-wearied flesh; eyes, look your last!
+    Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O, you,
+    The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
+    A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
+    Come, bitter conductor, come, unsavory guide!
+    Thou desperate pilot, now and at once run on
+    The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark!
+    Here's to my love!_ (Drinks poison.) _O, true apothecary!
+    Thy drugs are quick; thus with a kiss I die!"_
+
+Friar Laurence and Balthazar with dark lantern, at this moment approach the
+tomb to extricate and save Juliet from the sleeping drug. She awakes with
+the noise in the tomb and views the deadly situation.
+
+The Friar implores her to come, depart at once, as the night watch
+approach. She says:
+
+    _"Go, get thee hence, for I will not away;
+    What's here? a cup close in my true love's hand;
+    Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end;
+    O churl! drink all; and leave me no friendly drop
+    To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
+    Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them,
+    To make me die with a restorative.
+    Thy lips are warm!
+    Yea, noise? Then I'll he brief. O happy dagger!_
+       (Snatches Romeo's dagger.)
+    _This is thy sheath, there rust and let me die!"_
+       (Stabs herself through the heart.)
+
+The Prince, Capulet and Montague family soon discover all, and Friar
+Laurence tells the true story, punishment follows, and the two contending
+houses of Verona clasp hands over the ruin they have wrought, while the
+Prince exclaims:
+
+    _"For, never was a story of more woe,
+    Than this of Juliet and her Romeo!"_
+
+The drop curtain was rung down and up three times, and the storm of
+applause that greeted Shakspere and Taylor, as the representatives of Romeo
+and Juliet, was never equaled before at the Blackfriars.
+
+The Queen called William and Jo to the royal box and by her own firm hand
+presented a signet ring to Romeo and a lace handkerchief to Juliet!
+
+    _"What fates impose, that men must needs abide;
+    It boots not to resist both wind and tide!"_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+"JULIUS CAESAR."
+
+    _"O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?
+    Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils
+    Shrunk to this little measure?"_
+
+
+The assassination of Julius Caesar by Brutus, Cassius, Casca and twenty
+other Roman Senators, in the capital of the Empire in broad daylight, was
+one of the most cowardly and infamous crimes recorded in the annals of
+time.
+
+The historical and philosophical friends of Brutus and Cassius have tried
+to justify the conspiracy and assassination by imputing the deep design of
+tyranny to Caesar, who was bent on trampling down the rights of the people
+and securing for himself a kingly crown.
+
+They say the motive of the conspirators in the deep damnation of Caesar's
+"taking off" was purely patriotism. Many murderers have used the same
+argument.
+
+The facts do not justify the excuse. For more than thirty years Julius
+Caesar had been a star performer on the boards of the Roman Empire, and his
+family had been illustrious for five hundred years. Sylla, Marius, Cicero,
+Cato, Brutus and Pompey had crossed lances with this civil and military
+genius, and had all become very jealous of his increasing fame.
+
+From boyhood Caesar had been a mixer with the common people, and in midnight
+hours in Rome, among tradesmen, merchants, students, authors, sailors and
+soldiers, he became imbued with their wants and impulsive nature. He had no
+reason to doubt or oppress the people.
+
+As commander of invincible troops in Spain, Gaul, Germany and Britain,
+Caesar had secured a world-wide reputation, for the eagles of his victorious
+legions had swept across the mountains and seas to the shore end of Europe
+and screamed in triumph among the palms and sands of Africa and Asia!
+
+Caesar was a poet, orator, historian, warrior and statesman, and the
+imperial families and politicians of Rome, who were forced to sit in the
+shade of his triumphs and glory, felt a secret pang of jealousy at the
+stride of this colossal character.
+
+He was the pride and idol of his soldiers, and whether in the forests of
+Gaul and Germany, the swamps of Britain, mountains of Spain, or among
+Ionian isles, his presence was ever worth a thousand men in battle action.
+
+His plans were mathematical, his soul sublime and his purpose eternal
+victory!
+
+Bravery and Caesar were synonymous terms, and the little, mean, pismire
+ambitions of Roman politicians he despised, striding over their corrupt
+schemes for pelf and office like a winter whirlwind.
+
+Brutus, while professing horror at the contemplated assassination of his
+friend and natural father Caesar, lent a willing ear and sympathetic voice
+to the prime conspirator--Cassius; and although seemingly dragged into the
+murderous plot, he was in heart the grand villain of the conspiracy,
+believing he might rise to supreme control of the Roman Empire when Julius
+the Great lay weltering in his heroic blood.
+
+Brutus was a dastard, an ingrate, a coward and a murderer, and no pretense
+of patriotism can save him from the contempt and condemnation of mankind.
+There is no justification for assassination!
+
+The death of Caesar was the first great blow in the final destruction of the
+Roman Empire, for up to this time the people had a voice in electing their
+tribunes, consuls and governors, and were consulted as to the burden of
+taxation, although many of their previous rulers had been terrible tyrants.
+
+Brutus and Cassius, and their coconspirators, city senators, who dipped
+their hands in Caesar's sacred blood, were finally driven from all political
+power, their estates confiscated, fleeing like frightened wolves to foreign
+fields and forests and perishing in battle as enemies to their country.
+
+When brought to bay at Philippi, Brutus and Cassius mustered up enough
+courage to commit suicide, which is confession of guilt.
+
+In the winter of 1597 William was deeply studying the new translation of
+Petrarch, and Florio was nightly teaching us the lofty philosophy of
+Grecian and Roman classics. The lives of noted ancient poets, orators,
+warriors, statesmen, governors, kings and philosophers, as written or
+compiled by the great Plutarch has furnished a mine of historic thought
+for the dramatic artist, and Shakspere, above all the men who ever thought,
+wrote or talked on the stage, took most advantage of the lines of Plutarch.
+
+The British people were clamoring for grand historical plays, not only for
+the actions of their own kings and queens, but demanded the enactment of
+the reigns of great, ancient warriors and kings who had given glory to
+Greece and Rome and left imperishable memories for posterity to avoid or
+emulate.
+
+Burbage, Henslowe and other theatrical managers, were ever on the lookout
+for plays to suit cash customers, and of course, the Bard of Avon had first
+call, because his plays went on the various stages like a torchlight
+procession, while those of his so-called compeers, struggled through the
+acts and scenes with only the flicker and sputter of tallow dips of
+dramatic thought.
+
+He knew, and I knew, that his plays would be enacted down the circling
+centuries as long as vice and virtue, hate and love, cowardice and bravery,
+fun, folly, wit and wisdom characterized humanity.
+
+William told Essex and Southampton that he had just composed a play with
+Julius Caesar as the central figure, and wished an opportunity to test its
+merits before a private party of authors, students and lords at the Holborn
+House, the grand castle of Southampton.
+
+These noblemen were delighted with the suggestion, and on the night of the
+first of March, 1597, Burbage, with his whole tribe of theatrical
+"rounders," appeared in the grand banquet room of Southampton, and, under
+the guidance of Shakspere, rendered for the first time "Julius Caesar."
+
+Jo Taylor took the part of Caesar, Dick Burbage acted Brutus, Condell
+represented Cassius and Shakspere played Marcus Antonius, while the other
+characters were distributed among the "stock" as their various talents
+justified.
+
+Calphurnia, wife to Caesar, and Portia, wife to Brutus, were represented
+respectively by Hemmings and Arnim.
+
+The play opens with a street scene in Rome filled with working, rabble
+citizens who have turned out to give Caesar a great triumph on his return
+from successful war.
+
+Flavius and Marullus, tribunes, enter and rebuke the people for greeting
+Caesar.
+
+Flavius twits the turncoat rabble in this style:
+
+    _"O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
+    Knew ye not Pompey? Many a time and oft
+    Have you climbed up to walls and battlements,
+    To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
+    Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
+    The livelong day, with patient expectation,
+    To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome;
+    And when you saw his chariot but appear,
+    Have you not made a universal shout,
+    That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
+    To hear the replication of your sounds,
+    Made in her concave shores?
+    And do you now put on your best attire?
+    And do you now cull out a holiday?
+    And do you now strew flowers in his way,
+    That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?"_
+
+Brutus and Cassius witness the triumphal march of Caesar with jealous,
+vengeful and dagger hearts, and Cassius, the old, desperate soldier, first
+hints at blood conspiracy.
+
+Brutus asks:
+
+    "_What is it that you would impart to me?
+    If it be aught toward the general good,
+    Set honor in eye and death in the other,
+    And I will look on both indifferently."_
+
+Fine talk! Brutus is not the only political murderer that talks of "honor"
+through the centuries, a cloak for devils in human shape to work a personal
+purpose and not "the general good."
+
+Cassius delivers this eloquent indictment against Caesar, the grandest of
+its kind in all history:
+
+    "_Well, Honor is the subject of my story--
+    I cannot tell what you and other men
+    Think of this life; but, for my single self,
+    I had as lief not to be, as live to be
+    In awe of such a thing as I, myself.
+    I was born free as Caesar; so were you.
+    We both have fed as well; and we can both
+    Endure the winter's cold as well as he.
+    For once, upon a raw and gusty day,
+    The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,
+    Caesar said to me, 'Dar'st thou, Cassius, now
+    Leap in with me, into this angry flood
+    And swim to yonder point?' Upon the word,
+    Accoutered as I was, I plunged in
+    And bade him follow; so, indeed, he did.
+    The torrent roared and we did buffet it
+    With lusty sinews; throwing it aside
+    And stemming it with hearts of controversy.
+    But ere we could arrive at the point proposed,
+    Caesar cried, 'Help me, Cassius, or I sink!'
+    I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor,
+    Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulders
+    The old Anchisas bear, so, from the waves of Tiber
+    Did I the tired Caesar; and this man
+    Is now become a god, and Cassius is
+    A wretched creature, and must bend his body,
+    If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
+    He had a fever, when he was in Spain,
+    And when the fit was on him, I did mark
+    How he did shake; 'tis true, this god did shake,
+    His coward lips did from their color fly;
+    And that same eye, whose bend doth awe the world
+    Did lose his lustre; I did hear him groan;
+    Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans
+    Mark him, and write his speeches in their books;
+    Alas! it cried, 'Give me some drink, Titinius,'
+    As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
+    A man of such a feeble temper should
+    So get the start of the majestic world
+    And bear the palm alone!
+    Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
+    Like a Colossus; and we petty men
+    Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
+    To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
+    Men at some time are masters of their fates.
+    The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
+    But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
+    Brutus and Caesar; what should be in that Caesar?
+    Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
+    Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
+    Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
+    Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them
+    Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
+    Now in the name of all the gods at once,
+    Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
+    That he is grown so great?"_
+
+Unanimous applause followed this cunning conspiracy speech, and Jonson,
+Lodge and Drayton gave loud exclamations of approval.
+
+Caesar, with his staff, returning from the games in his honor, sees Cassius
+and remarks to Antonius:
+
+    _"Let me have men about me that are fat;
+    Sleek-headed men and such as sleep of nights;
+    Yonder Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
+    He thinks too much; such men are dangerous;
+    And are never at heart's ease
+    Whiles they behold a greater than themselves!"_
+
+Casca, one of the senatorial conspirators, tells Cassius that Caesar is to
+be crowned king, and he replies thus, contemplating suicide:
+
+    _"I know where I will wear this dagger then;
+    Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius;
+    Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
+    Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat;
+    Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
+    Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron
+    Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
+    But life being weary of these worldly bars,
+    Never lacks power to dismiss itself;
+    That part of tyranny that I do bear
+    I can shake off at pleasure!"_
+
+Brutus, contemplating assassination, says in soliloquy:
+
+    _"To speak the truth of Caesar,
+    I have not known when his affections swayed
+    More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof,
+    That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
+    Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
+    But when he once attains the upmost round,
+    He then unto the ladder turns his back,
+    Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
+    By which he did ascend!"_
+
+This ingratitude of the great to the people is often recompensed by defeat
+and death.
+
+After the senatorial conspirators decided that Caesar should die, Cassius
+insisted wisely that Marcus Antonius should not outlive the great Julius,
+and said:
+
+"Let Antony and Caesar fall together!"
+
+But Brutus would not consent to the death of Antony, believing that he was
+not dangerous to their future, yet insisting that "Caesar must bleed for
+it."
+
+    _"Let's kill him bodily, but not wrathfully;
+    Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
+    Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds;
+    And let our hearts as subtle masters do,
+    Stir up their servants to an act of rage,
+    And after seem to chide them!"_
+
+And yet this is the sweet-scented assassin who prates of "honor," and is
+sometimes known as "the noblest Roman of them all!"
+
+Portia, the wife of Brutus, felt a strange alarm at his recent conduct, and
+Calphurnia, the wife of Caesar, implored him not to attend the session of
+the senate, reminding him of the soothsayer's warning--"Beware the ides of
+March."
+
+Yet, Caesar threw off all fear and suspicion and said:
+
+    _"What can be avoided,
+    Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?
+    Yet Caesar shall go forth, for these predictions
+    Are to the world in general, not to Caesar!
+    Cowards die many times before their deaths;
+    The valiant never taste of death but once!"_
+
+The hour of assassination has arrived, and Caesar, seated in the chair of
+state, says:
+
+    _"What is now amiss
+    That Caesar and his senate must redress?"_
+
+Senator Metellus, one of the chief conspirators, throws himself at the feet
+of Caesar and implores pardon for his traitor brother.
+
+Caesar says:
+
+         _"Be not fond,
+    To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood,
+    That will be thawed from the true quality,
+    With that which meeteth fools; I mean, sweet words,
+    Low, crooked courtesies, and base, spaniel fawning;
+    Thy brother by decree is banished;
+    If thou dost bend, and pray and fawn for him,
+    I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.
+    Know, Caesar doth not wrong; nor without cause
+    Will he be satisfied!
+    But I am constant as the northern star,
+    Of whose true fixed and resting quality
+    There is no fellow in the firmament!"_
+
+The conspirators at this moment crowd around the doomed hero with pretended
+petitions--and, instanter, Casca stabs Caesar in the neck, while several
+other murdering senators stab him through the body, and last Marcus Brutus
+plunges a dagger in the heart of his benefactor and father, when with
+glaring eyes and dying breath, the noble Caesar exclaims:
+
+    _"Et tu, Brute?"_ (And thou, Brutus?)
+
+Thus tumbled down at the base of Pompey's statue the greatest man the world
+has ever known!
+
+Then the citizens of Rome--royal, rabble and conspirators, were filled with
+consternation, while Brutus tried to stem the rising flood of indignation.
+
+Mark Antony was allowed to weep and speak over the pulseless clay of his
+official partner and friend.
+
+Gazing on the cold, bloody form of the amazing Julius, he utters these
+pathetic phrases:
+
+    _"O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?
+    Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
+    Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well--
+    I know not, gentlemen, what you intend,
+    Who else must be let blood, who else is rank;
+    If I myself, there is no hour so fit
+    As Caesar's death-hour; nor no instrument
+    Of half that worth, as those your swords, made rich
+    With the most noble blood of all this world.
+    I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,
+    Now, while your purpled hands do reek and smoke,
+    Fulfill your pleasure. Live a thousand years,
+    I shall not find myself so apt to die;
+    No place will please me so, no mean of death
+    As here by Caesar, and by you cut off,
+    The choice and master spirit of this age!"_
+
+Brutus gave orders for a grand funeral, turning the body of the dead lion
+over to Antony, who might make the funeral oration to the people within
+such bounds of discretion as the conspirators dictated.
+
+Standing alone, by the dead body of Caesar in the Senate, Antony pours out
+thus, the overflowing vengeance of his soul:
+
+    _"O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
+    That I am meek and gentle with these butchers;
+    Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
+    That ever lived in the tide of times.
+    Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
+    Over thy wounds now do I prophesy--
+    Which like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
+    To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue;
+    A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
+    Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
+    Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
+    Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
+    And dreadful objects so familiar,
+    That mothers shall but smile when they behold
+    Their infants quartered with the hands of war;
+    All pity choked with custom of fell deeds;
+    And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
+    With Ate by his side, come hot from hell,
+    Shall in these confines, with a monarch's voice,
+    Cry, 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war!"_
+
+The wild citizens of Rome clamored for the reason of Caesar's death, and
+Brutus mounted the rostrum in the Forum and delivered this cunning and bold
+oration in defense of the conspirators:
+
+"Romans, countrymen and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent that ye
+may hear; believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine honor, that
+you may believe; censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses that you
+may the better judge.
+
+"If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say
+that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his.
+
+"If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my
+answer. Not that I loved Caesar less; but that I loved Rome more!
+
+"Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than Caesar were
+dead, to live all free men?
+
+"As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it;
+as he was valiant, I honor him, but as he was ambitious I slew him!
+
+"There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honor for his valor, and
+death for his ambition!
+
+"Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I
+offended. Who is here so rude that would be a Roman? If any, speak; for him
+have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If
+any, speak; for him have I offended.
+
+"I pause for a reply."
+
+And then the rabble, vacillating, fool citizens said, "None, Brutus, none,"
+and continue to yell, "Live, Brutus, live! live!"
+
+Brutus leaves the Forum and requests the human cattle to remain and hear
+Antony relate the glories of Caesar!
+
+Finally Antony is persuaded to take the rostrum, and delivers this greatest
+funeral oration of all the ages:
+
+    _"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
+    I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
+    The evil that men do live after them;
+    The good is oft interred with their bones;
+    So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
+    Hath told you Caesar was ambitious;
+    If it were so it was a grievous fault;
+    And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
+    Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
+    (For Brutus is an honorable man,
+    So are they all, all honorable men);
+    Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
+    He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
+    But Brutus says he was ambitious;
+    And Brutus is an honorable man.
+    He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
+    Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill;
+    Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
+    When that the poor hath cried, Caesar hath wept;
+    Ambition should be made of sterner stuff;
+    Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
+    And Brutus is an honorable man.
+    You all did see, that on the Lupercal
+    I thrice presented him a kingly crown
+    Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
+    Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
+    And, sure, he is an honorable man.
+    I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
+    But here I am to speak what I know.
+    You all did love him once, not without cause;
+    What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?
+    O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
+    And men have lost their reason! Bear with me;
+    My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
+    And I must pause until it come back to me.
+    But, yesterday the word of Caesar might
+    Have stood against the world, now lies he there,
+    And none so poor to do him reverence.
+    O, Masters! If I were disposed to stir
+    Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
+    I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
+    Who, you all know, are honorable men.
+    I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
+    To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you
+    Than I will wrong such honorable men.
+    But here's a parchment with the seal of Caesar;
+    I found it in his closet, 'tis his will;
+    Let but the commons hear this statement,
+    (Which pardon me, I do not mean to read),
+    And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds;
+    And dip their napkins in his sacred blood;
+    Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
+    And dying, mention it within their wills,
+    Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
+    Unto their issue.
+    If you have tears prepare to shed them now,
+    You all do know this mantle; I remember
+    The first time ever Caesar put it on;
+    'Twas on a summer's evening in his tent;
+    That day he overcame the Nervii;
+    Look! in this place ran Cassius dagger through;
+    See what a rent the envious Casca made;
+    Through this the well beloved Brutus stabbed;
+    And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
+    Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it;
+    As rushing out of doors to be resolved
+    If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no;
+    For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel:
+    Judge, O ye gods, how Caesar loved him!
+    This was the most unkindest cut of all;
+    For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
+    Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms
+    Quite vanquished him, then burst his mighty heart;
+    And in his mantle muffling up his face,
+    Even at the base of Pompey's statue,
+    Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.
+    O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
+    Then I and you and all of us fell down
+    Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.
+    O, now you weep; and I perceive you feel
+    The impression of pity; these are gracious drops.
+    Kind souls, what, weep you, when you but behold
+    Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
+    Here is himself marred, as you see, with traitors!
+    Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
+    To such a sudden flood of mutiny;
+    They that have done this deed are honorable;
+    What private griefs they have, alas, I know not
+    That made them do it; they are wise and honorable
+    And will no doubt with reasons answer you.
+    I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts;
+    I am no orator, as Brutus is:
+    But as you know me all, a plain, blunt man,
+    That love my friends, and that they know full well,
+    That gave me public leave to speak of him.
+    For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
+    Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech
+    To stir men's blood, I only speak right on;
+    I tell you that, which you yourselves do know;
+    Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
+    And bid them speak for me; but were I Brutus,
+    And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
+    Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
+    In every wound of Caesar, that should move
+    The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny!"_
+
+This oration fired the Roman people to mutiny, and Brutus and Cassius with
+their followers fled from the city and prepared for war with Antony and
+Octavius, who had suddenly returned to Rome.
+
+The passionate quarrel between Brutus and Cassius in their military camp at
+Sardis was a natural outcome of conspirators.
+
+Cassius accused Brutus of having wronged him, and Brutus twitted his
+brother assassin thus:
+
+    _"Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
+    Are much condemned to have an itching palm,
+    To sell and mart your offices for gold
+    To undeservers!"_
+
+Cassius fires back this reply:
+
+    _"I an itching palm?
+    You know that you are Brutus that speak this,
+    Or by the gods this speech were else your last!"_
+
+The night before the battle of Philippi the spirit of Caesar appeared in the
+tent of Brutus, who startles from a slumbering trance and exclaims:
+
+    _"Ha! who comes here?
+    I think it is the weakness of mine eyes,
+    That shapes this monstrous apparition.
+    It comes upon me! Art thou anything?
+    Art thou some god, some angel or some devil,
+    That makest my blood cold, and my hair to stare?
+    Speak to me, what thou art."_
+
+The Ghost replies:
+
+    _"Thy evil spirit, Brutus!_
+
+    _Brutus: Why comest thou?_
+
+    _Ghost: To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi._
+
+    _Brutus: Well, then I shall see thee again?_
+
+    _Ghost: Ay, at Philippi!"_
+
+The armies of Antony and Octavius and Brutus and Cassius meet in crash of
+battle.
+
+Cassius is hotly pursued by the enemy, and to prevent capture and
+exhibition at Rome, craves the service of Pindrus to run him through with
+his sword. He says:
+
+    _"Now be a freeman, and with this good sword
+    That ran through Caesar's bowels, search this bosom.
+    Stand not to answer; here, take thou the hilt;
+    And when my face is covered, as 'tis now,
+    Guide thou the sword; Caesar, thou art revenged,
+    Even with the sword that killed thee!"_ (Dies.)
+
+Brutus is run to earth, and most of his generals dead or fled. He implores
+Strato to assist him to suicide, and says:
+
+    _"I pray thee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord;
+    Thou art a fellow of good respect;
+    Thy life hath had some smack of honor in it;
+    Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face,
+    While I do run upon it!
+    Farewell, good Strato; Caesar now be still,
+    I killed not thee with half so good a will!"_
+                  (Runs on his sword and dies.)
+
+Antony and Octavius and his army soon find Brutus slain by his own sword,
+and with a most magnificent and undeserved generosity Antony pronounces
+this benediction over the dead body of the vilest and most intelligent
+conspirator who ever lived!
+
+    _"This was the noblest Roman of them all;
+    All the conspirators, save only he
+    Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
+    He only in a general honest thought,
+    And common good to all made one of them.
+    His life was gentle, and the elements
+    So mixed in him that Nature might stand up,
+    And say to all the world, This was a man!"_
+
+The whole audience, led by Southampton, Essex, Bacon and Drayton gave three
+cheers and a lion roar for "Julius Caesar," the greatest historical and
+classical play ever composed, and destined to run down the ages for a
+million years!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+TWO TRAMPS. BY LAND AND SEA.
+
+    _"Travelers must be content."_
+
+    _"Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety."_
+
+
+The translation of Petrarch, Plutarch, Tacitus, Terence, and particularly
+Homer, by Chapman, gave a great impulse to dramatic writers, and inspired a
+feverish desire to travel through classic lands where classic authors lived
+and died.
+
+Shakspere was a natural bohemian, and while he could conform to the
+conventionalities of society, he was never more pleased than when mixing
+with the variegated mass of mankind, where vice and virtue predominated
+without the guilt of hypocrisy to blur and blast the principles of
+sincerity.
+
+Art, fashion and human laws he knew to be often only blinds for the
+concealment of plastic iniquity, and were secretly purchased by the few who
+had the gold to buy.
+
+By sinking the grappling iron of independent investigation into every form
+and phase of human life, he plucked from the deepest ocean of adversity
+the rarest shells, weeds and flowers of thought, and spread them before the
+world as a new revelation.
+
+By mingling with and knowing the good and bad, he solved the riddle of
+human passions, and with mind, tongue and pen unpurchased, he flashed his
+matchless philosophy on an admiring world, lifting the curtain of deceit
+and obscurity from the stage of falsehood, giving to the beholder a sight
+of Nature in her unexpurgated nakedness!
+
+On the first of May, 1598, William and myself determined to travel into and
+around continental and oriental lands, and view some of the noted
+monuments, cities, seas, plains and mountains, where ancient warriors and
+philosophers had left their imperishable records.
+
+Sailing through the Strait of Dover into the English Channel, our good ship
+Albion landed us in three days at Havre, the port town at the mouth of the
+river Seine, leading on to Rouen and up to the ancient city of Paris.
+
+Our good ship Albion was to remain a week trading between Havre and
+Cherbourg, when we were to be again on board for a lengthy trip to the
+various ports of the Mediterranean.
+
+Our first night in Paris was spent at the Hotel Reims, a jolly headquarters
+for students, painters, authors and actors.
+
+LeMour was the blooming host, with his daughter Nannette as the coquettish
+"roper in." Father and daughter spoke English about as well as William and
+myself spoke French; and what was not understood by our mutual words and
+phrases was explained by our gesticulation of hand, shoulder, foot, eye,
+and clinking "francs" and "sovereigns."
+
+Cash speaks all languages, and it is a very ignorant mortal who can't
+understand the voice of gold and silver.
+
+"Francs," "pounds" and "dollars" are the real monarchs of mankind! William
+in a prophetic mood recited these few lines to the "boys" at the bar:
+
+    _With circumspect steps as we pick our way through
+    This intricate world, as all prudent folks do,
+    May we still on our journey be able to view
+    The benevolent face of a dollar or two.
+    For an excellent thing is a dollar or two;
+    No friend is so true as a dollar or two;
+    In country or town, as we pass up and down,
+    We are cock of the walk with a dollar or two!_
+
+    _Do you wish that the press should the decent thing do,
+    And give your reception a gushing review,
+    Describing the dresses by stuff, style and hue,
+    On the quiet, hand "Jenkins" a dollar or two;
+    For the pen sells its praise for a dollar or two;
+    And flings its abuse for a dollar or two;
+    And you'll find that it's easy to manage the crew
+    When you put up the shape of a dollar or two!_
+
+    _Do you wish your existence with Faith to imbue,
+    And so become one of the sanctified few;
+    Who enjoy a good name and a well cushioned pew
+    You must freely come down with a dollar or two.
+    For the gospel is preached for a dollar or two,
+    Salvation is reached for a dollar or two;
+    Sins are pardoned, sometimes, but the worst of all crimes
+    Is to find yourself short of a dollar or two!_
+
+Although the Bard delivered this truthful poem off hand, so to speak, in
+"broken" French, the cosmopolitan, polyglot audience "caught on" and
+"shipped" the Stratford "poacher" a wave of tumultuous cheers!
+
+That very night at the Theatre Saint Germain the new play of Garnier,
+"Juives," was to be enacted before Henry the Fourth and a brilliant
+audience.
+
+William and myself were invited by a band of rollicking students to join
+them in a front bench "clapping" committee, as Garnier himself was to take
+the part of Old King Nebuchadnezzar in the great play, illustrating the
+siege and capture of Jerusalem.
+
+The curtain went up at eight o'clock, and the French actors began their
+mimic contortions of face, lips, legs and shoulders for three mortal hours,
+and while there was a constant shifting of scenes, citizens, soldiers, Jews
+and battering rams, yells, groans and cheers, it looked as if the audience,
+including King Henry, was doing the most of the acting, and all the
+cheering! A maniac would be thoroughly at home in a French theatre!
+
+The play had neither head, tail nor body, but it was sufficient for the
+excitable, revolutionary Frenchman to see that the Jews were being robbed,
+banished and slaughtered in the interest of Christianity and the late
+Jesus, who is reported as having taught the lessons of "love," "charity"
+and "mercy!"
+
+The "Son of God," it seems, had been crucified more than fifteen hundred
+years before the audience had been created; and although "Old Neb" of
+Babylon had destroyed a million of Hebrews several hundred years previous
+to the birth of the Bethlehem "Savior of Mankind," the "frog" and "snail"
+eaters of France were still breaking their lungs and throats in cheering
+for the destruction of anybody!
+
+It was one o'clock in the morning when we got back to the hotel; and with
+the Bacchanalian racket made by the "students" and fantastic "grisettes" it
+must have been nearly daylight before William and myself fell into the arms
+of sleep.
+
+Sliding into the realm of dreams I heard the "mammoth man" murmur:
+
+    _"Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleeve of care,
+    The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
+    Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
+    Chief nourisher in life's feast!"_
+
+Jodelle, Lariney, Corneille, Moliere, Racine, La Fontaine, Rousseau,
+Voltaire, Balzac, or even Hugo, never uttered such masterly philosophy.
+
+After partaking of a French breakfast, smothered with herbs and mystery, we
+hired a fancy phaeton and voluble driver to whirr us around the principal
+streets, parks and buildings of the rushing, brilliant city, everything
+moving as if the devil were out with a search warrant for some of the stray
+citizens of his imperial dominions.
+
+The driver spoke English very well, and with a telephone voice, surcharged
+with monkey gestures, we listened to and saw the history of Paris from the
+advent of Caesar, Clovis, Charlemagne to Louis and Henry. A city directory
+would have been a surplusage, and we flattered the "garcon" by seeming to
+believe everything he said, exclaiming "Oh my!" "Do tell!" "Gee whizz!"
+"Did you ever!" "Wonderful!" and "Never saw the like!"
+
+As our mentor and nestor pulled up at noted wine cafes to water his horse,
+we contributed to his own irrigation and our champagne thirst. Be good to
+yourself.
+
+It was sundown when we nestled in the Hotel Reims, but had been richly
+repaid in our visit to the king's palace, the great Louvre, St. Denis,
+Notre Dame and the great cathedrals, picture galleries, cemeteries and
+monuments that decorated imperial Paris.
+
+The evening before we left Paris we accepted the invitation of Garnier to
+visit the Latin Quarter. The playwright did not know William or myself,
+except as young English lords--"Buckingham" and "Bacon," traveling for
+information and pleasure, sowing "wild," financial "oats" with the
+liberality of princes.
+
+A well dressed, polite man, with lots of money, and a "spender" from "way
+back" is a welcome guest in home, church and state; and when it comes to
+the "ladies," he is, of course, "a jewel," "a trump" and "darling." They
+know a "soft snap" when they see it.
+
+Some of us have been there.
+
+While basking under the light of flashing eyes and sparkling wine at the
+Royal Cafe, surrounded by a dozen of the artistic "friends" of the "toast
+of the town," Garnier said he noticed us in the front bench the night
+before, and knowing us to be Englishmen, was desirous to know how his play,
+depicting the siege of Jerusalem compared with the new man Shakspere, who
+had recently loomed up into the dramatic sky.
+
+William winked at me in a kind of _sotto voce_ way, and with that natural
+exuberance or intellectual "gall" that never fails to strike the "bull's
+eye," I bluntly said that Garnier's philosophy and composition were as
+different from Shakspere's as the earth from the heaven!
+
+The Frenchman arose and made an extended bow when his "girl" friends yelled
+like the "rebels" at Shiloh and kicked off the tall hat of the noted French
+dramatist! Great sport!
+
+Extra wine was ordered, and then an improvised ballet girl jumped into the
+middle of the wine room, with circus antics, champagne glasses in hand,
+singing the praises of the great and only Garnier! Poor devil, he did not
+know that my criticism was a double ender. Just as well.
+
+I cannot exactly remember how I got to the hotel, but when William aroused
+my latent energies the next morning, I felt as if I had been put through a
+Kentucky corn sheller, or caught up in a Texas blizzard and blown into the
+middle of Kansas.
+
+William was, as usual, calm, polite, sober and dignified, and while he
+touched the wine cup for sociability, in search of human hearts, I never
+saw him intoxicated. He had a marvelous capacity of body and brain, and
+like an earthly Jupiter he shone over the variegated satellites around him
+with the force and brilliancy of the morning sun. He was so far above other
+thinkers and writers that no one who knew him felt a pang of jealousy, for
+they saw it was impossible to even twinkle in the heaven of his philosophy.
+
+The day before leaving Paris we visited Versailles and wandered through its
+pictured palaces, drinking in the historical milestones of the past. Here
+lords, kings, queens, farmers, mechanics, shop keepers, sailors, soldiers,
+robbers, murderers and beggars had appropriated in turn these royal halls
+and stately gardens.
+
+Riot and revolution swept over these memorials like a winter storm, and the
+thunder and lightning strokes of civil and foreign troops had desolated the
+works of art, genius and royalty.
+
+Nations rise and fall like individuals, and a thousand or ten thousand
+years of time are only a "tick" in the clock of destiny.
+
+Early on the morning of the seventh of May, 1598, we went on board a light
+double-oared galley, swung into the sparkling waters of the Seine, and
+proceeded on our way to Rouen and Havre.
+
+The morning sun sparkling on the tall spires and towers, the songs of the
+watermen and gardeners, whirring ropes, flashing flags, blooming flowers,
+green parks, forest vistas, shining cottages, grand mansions and lofty
+castles, in the shimmering distance gave the suburbs of Paris a phase of
+enchantment that lifted the soul of the beholder into the fairy realm of
+dreamland; and as our jolly crew rowed away with rhythmic sweep we lay
+under a purple awning, sheltered from the midday sun, gazing out on the
+works of Dame Nature with entranced amazement.
+
+William, in one of his periodical bursts of impromptu poetry, uttered these
+lines on
+
+    _CREATION._
+
+    _The smallest grain of ocean sand,
+    Or continent of mountain land,
+    With all the stars and suns we see
+    Are emblems of eternity._
+
+    _God reigns in everything he made--
+    In man, in beast, in hill and glade;
+    In sum and substance of all birth;
+    Component parts of Heaven and Earth._
+
+    _The moving, ceaseless vital air
+    Is managed by Almighty care,
+    And from the center to the rim,
+    All creatures live and die in Him._
+
+    _We know not why we come and go
+    Into this world of joy and woe,
+    But this we know that every hour
+    Is clipping off our pride and power._
+
+    _The links of life that make our chain
+    Of golden joy and passing pain,
+    Are broken rudely day by day,
+    And like the mists we melt away._
+
+    _The voice of Nature never lies,
+    Presents to all her varied skies,
+    And wraps within her vernal breast
+    The dust of man in pulseless rest._
+
+    _A billion years of life and death
+    Are but a moment or a breath
+    To one unknown Immortal Force
+    Who guides the planets in their course!_
+
+As the stars began to peep through the gathering curtains of night, and the
+young moon like a broken circle of silver split the evening sky, we came in
+sight of the busy town of Rouen, with its embattled walls and iron gates
+still bidding defiance to British invasion.
+
+After a night's slumber and a speedy passage our galley drew up against the
+side of our stout ship Albion, when gallant Captain Jack O'Neil greeted us
+on board, and refreshed our manhood with a fine breakfast, interspersed
+with brandy and champagne.
+
+The next morning, with all sails filled, we wafted away into the open
+waters of the rolling Atlantic Ocean, touching at the town of Brest, land's
+end port of France, and then away to Corunna in Spain, and on to Lisbon,
+Portugal, where we remained three days viewing the architectural and
+natural sights of the great commercial and shipping city of the Tagus.
+
+About the middle of May we swung out again into the breakers of old ocean,
+and held our course to the wonderful "Strait of Gibraltar," separating
+Europe from Africa, whose inland, classic shores are bathed by the emerald
+waters of the romantic Mediterranean Sea.
+
+We remained for a day at the rocky, stormy town of Gibraltar, meeting
+variegated men of all lands, who spoke all dialects, and preached and
+practiced all religions.
+
+The pagan, the Moslem, the Buddhist, the Jew and the Christian dressed in
+the garb of their respective nationalities, were wrangling, trading,
+praying and swearing in all languages, every one grasping for the "almighty
+dollar."
+
+As the sun went down over the shining shoulders of the Western Atlantic,
+flashing its golden rays over the moving, liquid floor of the heaving ocean
+and Mediterranean Sea, William and myself stood on the topmost crag of
+giant Gibraltar, and the Bard sent forth this impulsive sigh from his
+romantic soul:
+
+    _How I long to roam o'er the bounding sea,
+    Where the waters and winds are fierce and free,
+    Where the wild bird sails in his tireless flight,
+    As the sunrise scatters the shades of night;
+    Where the porpoise and dolphin sport at play
+    In their liquid realm of green and gray.
+    Ah, me! It is there I would love to be
+    Engulfed in the tomb of eternity!_
+
+    _In the midnight hour when the moon hangs low
+    And the stars beam forth with a mystic glow;
+    When the mermaids float on the rolling tide
+    And Neptune entangles his beaming bride,--
+    It is there in that phosphorescent wave
+    I would gladly sink in an ocean grave--
+    To rise and fall with the songs of the sea
+    And live in the chant of its memory._
+
+    _Around the world my form should sweep--
+    Part of the glorious, limitless deep;
+    Enmeshed by fate in some coral cave,
+    And rising again to the topmost wave,
+    That curls in beauty its snowy spray
+    And kisses the light of the garish day;
+    Ah! there let me drift when this life is o'er,
+    To be tossed and tumbled from shore to shore!_
+
+I clapped my hands intensely at the rendition of the poem, and echo from
+her rocky caves sent back the applause, while the sea gulls in their
+circling flight, screamed in chorus to the voice of echo and the eternal
+roar of old ocean.
+
+At sunrise we sailed away into the land-locked waters of the Mediterranean
+Sea, where man for a million years has loved, lived, fought and died among
+beautiful, blooming islands that nestle on its bosom like emeralds in the
+crown of immortality.
+
+We passed along the coast of Spain to Cape Nao, in sight of the Balearic
+Islands, on to Barcelona, to the mouth of the river Rhone, and up to the
+ancient city of Avignon.
+
+In and around this city popes, princes and international warriors lived in
+royal style; but they are virtually forgotten, while Petrarch, the poetic
+saint and laureate of Italy, is as fresh in the memory of man as the day he
+died--July 18th, 1374, at the age of seventy.
+
+William and myself remained all night in the Lodge House of the Gardens of
+"Vacluse," the hermit home of the sighing, soaring poet, who pined his
+life away in platonic love for "Laura," who married Hugh de Sade, when she
+was only seventeen years of age, and presented the nobleman ten children as
+pledges of her homespun affection.
+
+And this is the married lady who Petrarch, the poet, wasted his sonnets
+upon, and was treated in fact as we were told by the "oldest inhabitant" of
+Avignon, with supercilious contempt.
+
+Boccaccio and Petrarch were intimate friends, and both of these passionate
+poets lavished their love on "married flirts," who give promise to the ear
+and disappointment to the heart.
+
+I could see that while Shakspere reveled deep in the mental philosophy of
+Petrarch, and even plucked a flower from his rustic bower, he had no
+sympathy with lovesick swains, and as we signed our names in the Lodge
+House book, he wrote this:
+
+    _Petrarch, grand, immortal in thy sonnets;
+    Sugared by the eloquence of philosophy--
+    Destined to shine through the rolling ages;
+    Emulating, competing with the stars.
+    Thy love for Laura, pure, unreciprocated;
+    Yet, thou, foolish man, passion dazed and sad,
+    Like many of the greatest of mankind
+    Lie dashed in the vale of disappointment;
+    And flowers of hope, given by woman,
+    Have crowned thy brows with nettles of despair!_
+
+Next day the Albion sailed into the Mediterranean, passed by the island of
+Corsica (cradle of one of the greatest soldiers of the world), through the
+Strait of Bonifacio, and in due course kept on to the flourishing city of
+Naples.
+
+It was dark twilight when we came to peer into the surrounding hills and
+mountains of classic Italy.
+
+To the wonder and amazement of every passenger on board, Mount Vesuvius was
+in brilliant action, and the flash of sparks and blazing lights from this
+huge chimney top of Nature dazzled the beholder, and produced a fearful
+sensation in the soul.
+
+As the great jaws of the mountain opened its fiery lips and belched forth
+molten streams of lava, shooting a million red hot meteors into the caves
+of night, the earth and ocean seemed to tremble with the sound and birds
+and beasts of prey rushed screaming and howling to their nightly homes.
+
+Shakspere entranced stood on the bow of the ship and soliloquized:
+
+    _Great God! Almighty in thy templed realm;
+    And mysterious in thy matchless might;
+    Suns, moons, planets, stars, ocean, earth and air
+    Move in harmony at thy supreme will;
+    And yonder torch light of eternity,
+    Blazing into heaven, candle of omnipotence--
+    Lights thy poor, wandering human midgets--
+    An hundred miles at sea, with lofty hope--
+    That nothing exists or dies in vain;
+    But changed into another form lives on
+    Through countless, boundless, blazing, brilliant worlds
+    Beyond this transient, seething, suffering sod!_
+
+At this moment the vessel struck the dock and lurched William out of his
+reverie, coming "within an ace" of pitching the poet into the harbor of
+Naples.
+
+Captain O'Neil informed us that he would be engaged unloading and loading
+his ship for a week or ten days at Naples, before he started for Sicily,
+Greece and Egypt.
+
+William and myself concluded to hire a guide and ride and tramp by land to
+Rome, and view the ancient capital and test the hospitality of the
+Italians.
+
+Early the next morning we set out for the Imperial City, perched on her
+seven hills, and enlightening the world with the radiance of her classic
+memorials.
+
+Our guide, Petro, was a villainous looking fellow, yet the landlord of the
+Hotel Columbo told us he was well acquainted with the mountain bypaths and
+open roads, and could, in the event of meeting robbers, be of great service
+to us.
+
+Petro wanted ten "florins" in advance, and wine and bread on the road; and
+as we could not do any better, the bargain was made, and off we tramped
+through the great city of Milan, scaling the surrounding hills and pulling
+up as the sun went down at the town of Terracino.
+
+After a good night's rest and hot breakfast, we started on horseback
+through a mountain trail for the banks of the Tiber, but when within three
+miles of the Capitoline hills Petro seemed to lose his way and rode off
+into the underbrush to find it.
+
+We stopped in the trail, and in less than five minutes after the
+disappearance of our faithful guide we were captured by a gang of bandits,
+whose garb and countenance convinced us that robbery or murder or both
+would be our fate.
+
+We were dragged off our horses, hustled into the forest gloom, through
+briars, over streams and rocks, until finally pitched into the tiptop
+mountain lair of Roderick, the Terrible.
+
+The evening camp fire was lit, and Tamora, the queen of the robbers, with a
+couple of robber cooks, was preparing supper for the whole band when they
+returned from their daily avocations.
+
+They seemed to be a jolly set, and with joke, laughter and song, these
+chivalric sons of sunny Italy were relating their various exploits, and
+laughing at the trepidation and futile resistance of their former victims.
+
+Just before the band sat around on the ferny, pine clad rocks for supper,
+Roderick addressed William, and asked him if he had anything to say why he
+should not be robbed and murdered.
+
+William said he was perfectly indifferent; for, being only a writer of
+plays and an actor, working for the amusement of mankind, he led a kind of
+dog's life anyhow, and didn't give a damn what they did with him.
+
+The Robber Chief gave a yell and a roar that could be heard for three miles
+among the columned pines and oaks of the Apennines, and yelled, "Bully for
+you! Shake!"
+
+Roderick then turned to me and said, "Who are you?"
+
+I replied at once, "I am a fool and a poet."
+
+He grasped my hand intensely and yelled, "I'm another." That sealed our
+friendship.
+
+Then these gay and festive robbers invited us to partake of the best in the
+mountain wilds, with the request that after the evening feast was over we
+should give samples of our trade.
+
+With the blazing light of a mountain fire, hemmed in by inaccessible rocks
+and gulches, from a tablerock overhanging a roaring, dashing stream, five
+thousand feet below, William stood and was requested to give a sample of
+his dramatic poetry for the edification of the beautiful cut-throat
+audience! And this, as I well remember, was his encomium in Latin to the
+"Gentlemen" and "Queen" of independent, gold-getting, robbing, murdering,
+fantastic Italian "society."
+
+    _When first I beheld your noble band
+    Pounce from rock and lairs vernal,
+    My soul and hair were lifted
+    With admiration and amazement.
+    Free as air, ye sons of immortal sires,
+    Hold these crags, defiant still,
+    As eagles in their onward sweep--
+    Citizens of destiny,
+    Entertainment awaits your advent,
+    Even beneath yon columned capitol!
+    The emperors, pampered in power
+    Were subject to some human laws,
+    But you, great, wonderful chief,
+    Roderick, the Terrible, and fierce
+    Soar superior over all, bloody villain,
+    Force with gold and silver alone--
+    Dictating thy generous onslaughts!
+    Caesar, Pompey and Scipio
+    Could not compete with thy valor;
+    Only Nero, paragon of infamy,
+    Could match the renown of Roderick,
+    Thy fame, great chief, boundless as the globe!
+    Italy, Spain, France and England
+    Pay constant tribute to thy purse,
+    Travelers and pilgrims, seeking glory
+    By kissing the pope's big toe
+    Drop their golden coin and jewels
+    Into thy pockets capacious,
+    Hear me, ye sprites of Apennine,
+    And the ghouls of murdered travelers
+    Let the circumambient air
+    Ring with universal cheers
+    For Roderick, the glory of Robbers,
+    And the terror of mankind._
+                        (Whirlwind of cheers.)
+
+At the conclusion of William's apostrophe to the prince of robbers, Tamora,
+the fair queen, jabbed me with a poniard and ordered me to sing.
+
+I mounted the platform rock, overlooking the horrible vale below, and sang
+in my sweetest strain "Black Eyed Susan," gesticulating at the conclusion
+of each verse in the direction of the queen, who seemed to be charmed with
+my voice and audacity.
+
+An encore was demanded with a yell of delight, and I forthwith sang the new
+song "America," which was cheered to the echo--and as they still insisted
+that I "go on," "go on," I rendered in my best voice the recent composition
+of "Hiawatha."
+
+The robber band yelled like wild Indians, and the fair queen took me to her
+pine bower and fondled me into the realm of dreams, although I could see
+that Roderick was disposed to throw me on the rocks below--but, the "madam"
+was "boss" of that mountain ranch and gave orders with her poniard.
+
+As the earliest beams of morning lit up the crests of the Apennines we fed
+on a roast of roe buck and quail, and barley bread washed down by goblets
+of Falernian wine that had been captured the day before from a pleasure
+party from Brindisi.
+
+The goblets we drank from were skulls of former citizens of the world, who
+attempted to dally with the dictates of Roderick.
+
+The noble chief Roderick and his imperial queen, Tamora, who seemed to rule
+her terrible husband, with one hundred of the most villainous cut-throats
+it had ever been my misfortune to behold, gave us a "great send off" from
+their inaccessible mountain lair.
+
+Roderick gave William a talismanic ring that shown to any of his brother
+robbers on the globe would at once secure safety and hospitality.
+
+Tamora in her sweetest mountain manner gave me a diamond hilted poniard,
+and then with a Fra Diavolo chorus, we were waved off down the precipitous
+crags with a special guide on the main road leading to imperial Rome.
+
+William and myself drew long breaths after we had passed the Horatio
+Bridge, and planted our feet firmly on the Appian Way, leading direct to
+the precincts of Saint Peter's, with its lofty dome shining in the morning
+sun.
+
+Gentle reader, if you have never been in battle or captured by robbers, you
+needn't "hanker" for the experience, but take it as you would your
+clothing, "second hand."
+
+At the "Hotel Caesar" we brushed the dust from our anatomy, and ordered
+dinner, which was served in fine style by a lineal descendant of the great
+Julius, who wore a spreading mustache, a purple smile and an abbreviated
+white apron.
+
+In the afternoon we called on Pope Clement, who had heard of our experience
+with the robbers, and seemed very much interested in our narration of the
+details of our capture and entertainment.
+
+Clement seemed to be a nice, smooth man, setting on a purple chair with a
+purple skull cap on his head, and a purple robe on his fat form.
+
+His big toe was presented to us for adoration, but as we did not seem to
+"ad," he withdrew his pedal attachment and talked about the "relics" and
+the "weather."
+
+We did not purchase any "relics," and as to the Roman "weather," no mortal
+who tries it in summer desires a second dose.
+
+There seemed to be a continuous smell of something dead in the atmosphere
+of Rome, while the droves of virgins, monks, priests, bishops and cardinals
+seemed to be pressing through the streets, night and day, begging, singing,
+riding, and like ants, coming and going out of the churches continually.
+
+Selling "relics," psalm singing and preaching was about all the business we
+could see in the Imperial City.
+
+It is very funny how a fool habit will cling to the century pismires of
+humanity, and actually blind the elements of common sense and patent
+truth.
+
+We were offered a job lot of "relics" for five florins, which included a
+piece of the true cross, a bit of the rope that hung Judas, a couple of
+hairs from the head of the Virgin Mary, a peeling from the apple of Mother
+Eve, a part of the toe nail of Saint Thomas, a finger of Saint John, a
+thigh bone of Saint Paul, a tooth of Saint Antony, and a feather of the
+cock of Saint Peter, but we persistently declined the proffered honors and
+true "relics of antiquity," spending the five florins for a "night liner"
+to wheel us about the grand architectural sights of the city of the Caesars.
+
+The night before leaving Rome William and myself climbed upon the topmost
+rim of the crumbling Coliseum and gazed down upon the sleeping moonlit
+capital with entranced admiration.
+
+The night was almost as bright as day, and the mystic rays from the realm
+of Luna, shining on gate, arch, column, spire, tower, temple and dome,
+revealed to us the ghosts of vanished centuries, and from the depths of the
+Coliseum there seemed to rise the shouts of a hundred thousand voices,
+cheering the gladiator from Gaul, who had just slain a Numidian lion in the
+arena, when, with "thumbs up," he was proclaimed the victor, decorated with
+a crown of laurel and given his freedom forever.
+
+Shakspere could not resist his natural gift of exuberant poetry to sound
+these chunks of eloquence to the midnight air, while I listened with
+enraptured enthusiasm to the elocution of the Bard:
+
+    _Hark! Saint Peter, with his brazen tongue
+    Voices the hour of twelve;
+    The wizard tones of tireless Time
+    Thrills the silvery air;
+    The multitudinous world sleeps,
+    Pope and beggar alike--
+    In the land of lingering dreams--
+    Oblivious of glory,
+    Poverty, or war, destructive;
+    Sleep, the daily death of all
+    Throws her mesmeric mantle
+    Over prince and pauper;
+    And care, vulture of fleeting life
+    Folds her bedraggled wings
+    To rest a space, 'till first cock crow
+    Hails the glimmering dawn
+    With piercing tones triumphant;
+    Father Tiber, roaring, moves along
+    Under rude stony arches
+    And chafes the wrinkled, rocky shores
+    As when Romulus and Remus
+    Suckled wolf of Apennines!
+    Vain are all the triumphs of man.
+    These temples and palaces,
+    Reaching up to the brilliant stars
+    In soaring grandeur, vast--
+    Shall pass away like morning mist,
+    Leaving a wilderness of ruins.
+    And, where now sits pride, wealth and fraud
+    Pampered in purpled power--
+    The lizard, the bat and the wolf
+    Shall hold their habitation;
+    And the vine and the rag-weed
+    Swaying in the whistling winds
+    Shall sing their mournful requiem.
+    The silence of dark Babylon
+    Shall brood where millions struggled,
+    And naught shall be heard in cruel Rome,
+    But the wail of the midnight storm,
+    Echoing among the broken columns
+    Of its lofty, vanished glory--
+    Where vain, presumptive, midget man
+    Promised himself Immortality!_
+
+After five days of sightseeing we took the public stage for Milan, guarded
+by soldiers, and arrived safely on board the Albion, which sailed away,
+through the Strait of Messina, around classic Greece to Negropont and on to
+Alexandria, Egypt, where we anchored for a load of dates, figs and Persian
+spices.
+
+William and myself took a boat up the Nile to Cairo, and hired a guide to
+steer us over the desert to the far-famed Pyramids.
+
+There in the wild waste of desert sands these monuments to forgotten kings
+and queens lift their giant peaks, appealing to the centuries for
+recognition, but although the great granite stone memorials still remain as
+a wonder to mankind, the dark, silent mummies that sleep within and around
+these funereal emblems give back no sure voice as to when and where they
+lived, rose and fell in the long night of Egyptian darkness.
+
+Remains of vast buried cities are occasionally exposed by the shifting,
+searching storm winds of the desert, and many a modern Arab has cooked his
+frugal breakfast by splinters picked up from the bones of his ancestors.
+
+It was night when we got to the Pyramids, and we concluded to camp with an
+Arab and his family at the base of the great Cheops until next morning, and
+then before sunrise scale its steep steps and lofty crest.
+
+A few silver coins insured us a warm greeting from the "Arab family," who
+seemed to vie with each other in preparing a hot supper and clean couches.
+
+They sang their desert songs until nearly midnight, the daughter Cleo
+playing on the harp with dextrous fingers, and throwing a soft soprano
+voice upon the air, like the tones of an angel, echoing over a bank of wild
+flowers.
+
+Standing on the pinnacle of the Pyramid William again struck one of his
+theatrical attitudes, and with outstretched hands exclaimed:
+
+    _Immortal Sol! Image of Omnipotence!
+    To thee lift I my soul in pure devotion;
+    Out of desert wilds, in golden splendor,
+    Rise and flash thy crimson face, eternal--
+    Across the wastes of shifting, century sands;
+    Again is mirrored in my sighing soul
+    The lofty temples and bastioned walls
+    Of Memphis, Balback, Nineveh, Babylon--
+    Gone from the earth like vapor from old Nile,
+    When thy noonday beams lick up its waters!
+    Hark! I hear again the vanished voices
+    Of lofty Memnon, where proud pagan priests
+    Syllable the matin hour, uttering
+    Prophecies from Jupiter and Apollo--
+    To devotees deluded, then as now,
+    By astronomical, selfish fakirs,
+    Who pretend claim to heavenly agency
+    And power over human souls divine.
+    Poor bamboozled man; know God never yet
+    Empowered any one of his truant tribe
+    To ride with a creed rod, image of Himself;
+    And thou, oh Sol, giver of light and heat,
+    Speed the hour when man, out of superstition
+    Shall leap into the light of pure reason,
+    Only believing in everlasting Truth!_
+
+In a short time we crossed the sands of the desert and interviewed the
+Sphynx, but with that battered, solemn countenance, wrinkled by the winds
+and sands of ages, those granite lips still refused to give up the secrets
+of its stony heart, or tell us the mysteries of buried antiquity.
+
+We were soon again in the cabin of the Albion, sailing away to Athens,
+where we anchored for two days.
+
+William and myself ran hourly risk of breaking our legs and necks among the
+classic ruins of Athenian genius, where Plato, Socrates, Aristotle,
+Sophocles, Euripides, Pericles, Alcibiades, Demosthenes, Zeno, Solon,
+Themestocles, Leonidas, Philip and Alexander had lived and loved in their
+glorious, imperishable careers.
+
+We went on top of Mars Hill, and climbed to the top of the ruined
+Acropolis, disturbing a few lizards, spiders, bats, rooks and pigeons that
+made their homes where the eloquence of Greece once ruled the world.
+
+William made a move to strike one of his accustomed dramatic attitudes, but
+I "pulled him off," remarking that he could not, in an impromptu way, do
+justice to the occasion, and intimated that when he arrived at the Red Lion
+in London, he could write up Cleopatra and Antony, and the ten-years' siege
+of Troy, with Helen, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Achilles, Pandarus, Paris,
+Troilus, Cressida and Hector as star performers in the plays.
+
+It was not very often that I interfered with William in his personal
+movements and aspirations, but as he had given so much of his poetry in
+illustration of our recent travels, and knowing that I was in honor bound
+to report to posterity all he said and did as his mental stenographer, I
+begged him to "give us a rest," and "let it go at that."
+
+The next day the Albion bore away for the Strait of Gibraltar, rounding
+Portugal, Spain and France, sailing into the Strait of Dover, passed
+Gravesend, until we anchored in safety under the shadow of the Blackfriars
+Theatre, where a jolly crowd of bohemians greeted our rapid and successful
+tour of continental and classic lands.
+
+    _"This accident and flood of Fortune
+    So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
+    That I am ready to distrust mine eyes
+    And wrangle with my reason that
+    Persuades me to any other trust."_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+WINDSOR PARK. "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM."
+
+    _"This is the fairy land; O spite of spites
+    We talk with goblins, owls, and elfish sprites._
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _'Tis still a dream, or else such stuff as
+    Madmen tongue and brain!"_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _"If music be the food of love, play on;
+    Give me excess of it."_
+
+
+Shakspere had blocked out the play of "Midsummer Night's Dream" in the year
+1593, and completed it in the summer of 1599.
+
+The story of Palamon and Arcite by Chaucer, and the love of Athenian
+Theseus for the Amazonian Queen Hippolyta, as told by Plutarch, gave
+William his first idea of composing a play where the acts of fairies and
+human beings would assimilate in their loves and jealousies.
+
+One evening while seated at the Falcon Tavern, in company with the Earl of
+Southampton, Essex, Florio, Bacon, Cecil, Warwick, Burbage, Drayton and
+Jonson, William read the main points of the play, which was lauded to the
+skies by all present.
+
+Burbage, the manager of the Globe, suggested to Essex and Southampton that
+it would be a grand idea to have the "Dream" enacted in the park and woods
+of Windsor!
+
+It was a novel idea, and one sure to catch the romantic sentiments of Queen
+Elizabeth, as old Duke Theseus, the cross-purposed lovers, Bottom and his
+rude theatrical troop, and the fairies, led by Oberon, Titania and Puck
+could have full swing in the forest, sporting in their natural elements.
+
+In reading or viewing the play, the mind wanders in a mystic grove by
+moonlight and breathes at every step odors of sweet flowers, while
+listening to the musical murmurings of fantastic fairies and echoing hounds
+in forest glens.
+
+Theseus was the first and greatest Grecian in strength of body, second only
+to his cousin Hercules, each reveling in the god-like antics of seduction,
+incest, rape, robbery and murder!
+
+The Persian, Egyptian, Grecian and Roman gods commingled with the heroes
+and heroines of mankind and committed unheard of crimes with impunity, the
+most outrageous villain seeming to be honored as the greatest god!
+
+The amphitheater grove in front of Windsor Castle, overlooking the Thames,
+was the place selected for the exhibition of the "Dream." Natural circular
+terraces for the spectators.
+
+The Virgin Queen had sent out five thousand invitations to her wealthy and
+intellectual subjects to attend the new and romantic play of Shakspere,
+"Midsummer Night's Dream," on the 4th of July, 1599.
+
+Everything had been prepared in the way of natural and artificial scenery
+by the direction of William, while the Queen sat on a sylvan throne,
+embowered in vines and roses, surrounded by all her courtiers, ladies and
+lords, in grand, golden array.
+
+The night was calm, bright and warm, while the young moon and twinkling
+stars, shining over Windsor, lent a celestial radiance to the scene, where
+lovers and fairies mingled in the meshes of affection. Candles, torches,
+chimes, lanterns and stationary fire balloons were interspersed through the
+royal domain in brilliant profusion.
+
+Essex and Southampton were, unfortunately, absent in Ireland putting down a
+rebellion.
+
+William took the part of Theseus, Field played Hippolyta, Burbage played
+Puck, Heminge represented Lysander, and Condell Demetrius, while Phillips
+and Cooke played respectively Hermia and Helen, Jo Taylor played Oberon and
+Robert Benfield acted Titania, the fairy queen.
+
+The characters Pyramus and Thisbe were played by Peele and Crosse.
+
+The play opens with a grand scene in the palace of Theseus, who thus
+addresses the Amazonian Queen Hippolyta:
+
+    _"Now, fair Hippolyta, our mutual hour
+    Draws on apace, four happy days bring in,
+    Another moon; but, O, methinks, how slow
+    This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,
+    Like to a step-dame, or a dowager,
+    Long withering out a young man's revenue!"_
+
+Hippolyta:
+
+    _"Four days will quickly steep themselves in nights;
+    And then, the moon shall behold the night
+    Of our solemnities."_
+
+Egeus, a wealthy Athenian complains to Duke Theseus that his daughter
+Hermia will not consent to marry Demetrius, but disobedient, insists on
+wedding with Lysander.
+
+Theseus decides that she must obey her father or suffer death, or enter a
+convent, excluded from the world forever.
+
+Theseus reasons with Hermia thus:
+
+    _"If you yield not to your father's choice,
+    Whether you can endure the livery of a nun;
+    For aye to be in shady cloister mewed,
+    To live a barren sister all your life;
+    Chanting fair hymns to the cold, fruitless moon.
+    Thrice blessed they that master so their blood,
+    To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
+    But earthlier happy is the rose distilled,
+    Than that, which withering on the virgin thorn
+    Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness!"_
+
+This sentiment was cheered heartily by the great forest audience, and
+"Queen Bess" led the applause!
+
+Lysander pleaded his own case for the heart of Hermia, and sighing, says:
+
+    _"Ah, me! for aught that I could ever read,
+    Could ever hear by tale or history,
+    The course of true love never did run smooth!"_
+
+Hermia and Helena compare notes and wonder at the perversity of their
+respective lovers.
+
+Hermia says:
+
+    _"The more I hate Demetrius, the more he follows
+    me;"_
+
+And Helena says:
+
+    _"The more I love him, the more he hateth me!"_
+
+Hermia still sighing for Lysander says:
+
+    _"Before the time I did Lysander see,
+    Seemed Athens as a paradise to me;
+    O then, what graces in my love do dwell
+    That he hath turned a heaven unto hell."_
+
+Helena soliloquizes regarding the inconsistency of Demetrius since he saw
+Hermia:
+
+    _"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
+    And, therefore, is winged cupid painted blind;
+    I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight;
+    Then to the wood, will he, to-morrow night,
+    Pursue her; and for this intelligence
+    If I have thanks, it is a dear expense;
+    But herein mean I to enrich my pain
+    To have his sight thither and back again."_
+
+A number of rude workingmen of Athens propose to give an impromptu play in
+the Duke's palace in honor of his wedding.
+
+It is a burlesque on all plays, and being so very crude and bad, is good by
+contrast!
+
+Pyramus and Thisby are the prince and princess, who die for love.
+
+Bottom is to play the big blower in the improvised drama and the Jackass
+among the fairies. He says:
+
+    _"I could play a part to tear a cat in, to make all
+    split"--
+            "Tho raging rocks,
+            With shivering shocks,
+            Shall break the locks
+            Of prison gates;
+            And Phoebus' car
+            Shall shine from far
+            And make and mar
+            The foolish fates!"_
+
+Puck, the mischievous Robin Goodfellow, who is ever playing pranks among
+his fairy tribe and human lovers, enters the forest scene and addresses one
+of the fairies thus:
+
+    _"How now, spirit, whither wander you?"_
+
+Fairy says:
+
+    _"Over hill, over dale,
+    Through bush, through brier,
+    Over park, over pale,
+    Through flood, through fire,
+    Farewell, thou wit of spirits, I'll be gone;
+    Our queen and all her elves come here anon."_
+
+Puck, the funny tattler, tells of the jealousy of King Oberon, because
+Titania has adopted a lovely boy:
+
+    _"For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
+    Because that she as her attendant hath
+      A lovely boy stolen from an Indian king,
+    She never had so sweet a changeling!"_
+
+This sly cut at Queen Elizabeth, who had recently adopted a young American
+Indian as her parlor page, elicited applause among the courtiers, yet
+"Lizzie" did not seem to join in the cheers!
+
+Oberon and Titania meet and quarrel, just as natural as if they belonged to
+earthly passion people.
+
+    _"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!
+    What, jealous Oberon? Fairy, skip hence;
+    I have forsworn his bed and company."_
+
+Oberon:
+
+    _"Tarry, rash woman; am I not thy lord?"_
+
+Titania:
+
+    _"Then I must be thy lady?"_
+
+Oberon accuses Titania with being in love with Theseus and assisting him in
+the ravishment of antique beauties.
+
+She replies:
+
+    _"These are the forgeries of jealousy;
+    Never met we on hill, dale, forest or mead;
+    Or on the beached margent of the sea
+    To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
+    But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport!"_
+
+After the departure of Queen Titania and her fairy train, King Oberon calls
+in Puck to aid in punishing her imagined infidelity.
+
+    _"My gentle Puck, come hither; thou remember'st
+    Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+    And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
+    Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
+    The rude sea grew civil at her song;
+    And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
+    To hear the sea maid's music?"_
+
+Puck replies:
+
+    _"I remember."_
+
+Oberon continues:
+
+    _"That very time I saw, but thou could'st not,
+    Flying between the cold moon and the earth
+    Cupid all armed; a certain aim he took
+    At a fair Vestal, throned by the West;
+    And loosed his shaft smartly from his bow,
+    As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
+    But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
+    Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon;
+    And the Imperial Voteress passed on
+    In maiden meditation, fancy free!
+    Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell;
+    It fell upon a little Western flower--
+    Before milk white; now purple with love's wound--
+    And maidens call it 'love in idleness.'
+    Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once,
+    The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid,
+    Will make, or man or woman madly dote
+    Upon the next live creature that it sees.
+    Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again
+    Ere the Leviathan can swim a league."_
+
+Puck replies:
+
+    _"I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty
+    minutes!"_
+
+The audience saw by this time that the "Vestal" and "Imperial Voteress" in
+"maiden meditation, fancy free" was none other than Queen Elizabeth, and
+therefore three cheers and a roaring lion were given for the delicate and
+eloquent compliment of Shakspere to her Virgin Majesty!
+
+Tributes to the powerful, though undeserved, are received with spontaneous
+applause, while just praise for the poor receive no echo from the jealous
+throng. Poor, toadying humanity!
+
+The infatuated Helena follows Demetrius into the dark forest, and though he
+tells her that he does not and cannot love her, she says:
+
+    _"And even for that, do I love you the more;
+    I am your spaniel; and Demetrius
+    The more you beat me, I will fawn on you,
+    And to be used, as you use your dog!"_
+
+I have seen fool women and fool men act just that way, and the more they
+were spurned, the more they clung to their infatuation.
+
+Puck returns with the flower containing the juice that will make wanton
+women and licentious men return to their just lovers.
+
+Oberon grasping the herb says:
+
+    _"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows
+    Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;
+    Quite over-canopied with blooming woodbine,
+    With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine;
+    There sleeps Titania, sometime of the night
+    Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight,
+    And with this juice I'll streak her eyes
+    To make her full of hateful fantasies.
+    And take thou some of it, and seek through this grove;
+    A sweet Athenian lady is in love
+    With a disdainful youth; anoint his eyes;
+    But do it, when the next thing he espies
+    May be the lady."_
+
+Titania enters with her fairy train and orders them to sing her to sleep,
+and be gone.
+
+Oberon finds his queen sleeping and squeezes some of the love juice on her
+eyelids, saying:
+
+    _"What thou see'st when thou dost awake
+    Do it for thy true love take;
+    Love and languish for his sake;
+    When thou makest, it is thy dear,
+    Wake when some vile thing is near."_
+
+Lysander and Hermia wander in the woods, lost and tired, and sink down to
+rest. He says:
+
+    _"One turf shall serve as pillow for us both,
+    One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth!"_
+
+Puck finds the lovers asleep, and says to Lysander:
+
+    _"Churl, upon thy eyes I throw,
+    All the power that this charm doth owe,
+    When thou wakest, let love forbid
+    Sleep his seat on thy eyelid."_
+
+Puck finds Bottom in the woods, rehearsing the play for the marriage of
+Theseus, and translates the weaver into an ass, with a desire for love. He
+wanders near the flowery bed where Queen Titania sleeps.
+
+She hears him sing, and opening her eyes, says:
+
+    _"What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
+    Thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me,
+    On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee!"_
+
+Bottom says:
+
+    _"Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that;
+    Reason and love keep little company now-a-days!"_
+
+Oberon relents and releases his Fairy Queen from her dream of infatuation
+with Bottom disguised as an ass, and says:
+
+    _"But first, I will release the fairy queen,
+    Be as thou wast wont to be;_
+        (Touching her eyes with the herb.)
+    _See as thou wast wont to see;
+    Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower,
+    Hath such force and blessed power,
+    Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen."_
+
+Titania awakes and exclaims:
+
+    _"My Oberon, what visions have I seen!
+    Methought I was enamored of an ass!"_
+
+Titania is not the only woman who is enamored by an Ass; in fact the
+mismatched, cross-purposed, twisted, infatuated affections of the sordid,
+deceitful earth are as thick as blackberries in July, while pretense and
+pampered power greatly prevail around the globe.
+
+Theseus and his train wander through the woods in preparation for the grand
+hunt and find Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia and Helena still asleep under the
+magic influence of Puck.
+
+Theseus wonders how the lovers came to the wood, and says to the father of
+Hermia:
+
+    _"But speak, Egeus; is not this the day
+    That Helena should give answer of her choice?"_
+
+Egeus:
+
+_"It is, my lord."_
+
+Theseus:
+
+    _"Go bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns._
+        (Expresses surprise at their situation.)
+    _How comes this gentle concord in the world,
+    That hatred is so far from jealousy,
+    To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity."_
+
+The lovers are reconciled to their natural choice, and Theseus decides
+against the father:
+
+    _"Egeus, I will overbear your will,
+    For in the temple by and by, with us
+    These couples shall eternally be knit."_
+
+Bottom wakes and tells his theatrical partners:
+
+    _"I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say
+      what dream it was.
+    Man is but an ass, a patched fool.
+    Eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath
+      not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his
+      tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report,
+      what my dream was!"_
+
+The vast audience laughed heartily at the befuddled language of Bottom, the
+weaver, and imagined themselves under the like spell of fantastic fairies.
+
+The fifth and last act opens up with Theseus and his Amazonian Queen in the
+palace, prepared for the nuptial rites, and also the marriage of Lysander
+and Demetrius to their choice.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Theseus speaking of the strange conduct of lovers, delivers this great bit
+of philosophy:
+
+    _"More strange than true, I never may believe
+    These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
+    Lovers and madmen have such seething brains--
+    Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
+    More than cool reason ever comprehends.
+    The lunatic, the lover and the poet,
+    Are of imagination all compact;
+    One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
+    That is the madman; the lover all as frantic,
+    Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt;
+    The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
+    Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
+    And as imagination bodies forth
+    The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
+    Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
+    A local habitation and a name!"_
+
+The play of Pyramus and Thisby is then introduced to the palace audience,
+when Bottom and his Athenian mechanics amuse Theseus and Hippolyta with
+their crude, rustic conception of love-making.
+
+As the play proceeds Hippolyta remarks:
+
+    _"This is the silliest stuff that I ever heard."_
+
+And Theseus says:
+
+    _"The best in this kind are but shadows;
+    And the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them!"_
+
+Pyramus appeals to the moon thus:
+
+    _"Sweet moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams,
+    I thank thee, moon, for shining now so bright,
+    I trust to taste of truest Thisby's sight!"_
+
+Pyramus and Thisby commit suicide, for disappointment in love, in the
+climax scene, and waking again Bottom wishes to know if the Duke wants any
+more of the burlesque play.
+
+Theseus replies:
+
+    "_Your play needs no excuse; for when the players are all dead,
+    There need none to be blamed!_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.
+    Lovers to bed; 'tis almost fairy time,
+    I fear we shall outsleep the coming morn,
+    As much as we this night have overwatched.
+    This palpable, gross play hath well beguiled
+    The heavy gait of night--sweet friends, to bed;
+    A fortnight hold we this solemnity
+    In nightly revels and new jollity!"_
+
+The forest scene is filled with fairies, led by Puck, Oberon and Titania,
+all fantastically dressed, rehearsing and singing in their mystic revels.
+
+Puck leading, says:
+
+    _"Now the hungry lion roars,
+    And the wolf beholds the moon.
+    Whilst the heavy ploughman snores
+    All with weary task foredone;
+    And we fairies, that do run
+    By the triple of Hecate's team,
+    From the presence of the sun
+    Following darkness like a dream."_
+
+Oberon orders:
+
+    _"Through this house give glimmering light,
+    By the dead and drowsy fire;
+    Every elf and fairy sprite
+    Hop as light as bird from brier;
+    And his ditty, after me,
+    Sing and dance it trippingly."_
+
+Titania speaks:
+
+    _"First rehearse this song by rote;
+    To each word a warbling note,
+    Hand in hand with fairy grace
+    Will we sing and bless this place."_
+
+Then all the fairies, joining hands at the command of Oberon, dance and
+sing:
+
+    _"Every fairy take his gait,
+    And each several chamber bless;
+    Through this palace with sweet peace,
+    All shall here in safety rest
+    And the owner of it blest,
+    Trip away, make no stay;
+    Meet me all by break of day!"_
+
+Then mischievous little Puck flies to the front, makes his final bow and
+speech, concluding the play of "Midsummer Night's Dream":
+
+    _"If we shadows have offended,
+    Think but this, and all is mended--
+    That you have but slumbered here,
+    While these visions did appear;
+    And this weak and idle theme
+    No more yielding but a dream;
+    Gentles, do not reprehend;
+    If you pardon we will mend.
+    And, as I am honest Puck,
+    If we have unearned luck,
+    How to escape the serpent's tongue,
+    We will make amends ere long;
+    Else the Puck a liar call,
+    So good night unto you all,
+    Give me your hands if we be friends,
+    And Robin shall restore amends!"_
+
+Unanimous cheers rang through Windsor forest at the conclusion of this
+mystic play, and Queen Elizabeth called up Theseus (William), Hippolyta,
+Oberon, Titania and Puck, presenting to each a five-carat solitaire
+diamond--a slight token of Her Majesty's appreciation of dramatic genius.
+
+It was after two o'clock in the morning when a thousand sky rockets filled
+the heavens with variegated colors, indicating for fifty miles around, that
+"Midsummer Night's Dream" had been successfully launched on the ocean of
+dramatic imagination!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE JEW. SHYLOCK. "MERCHANT OF VENICE."
+
+    _"O, it is excellent
+    To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
+    To use it like a giant."_
+
+    _"Had I power, I should
+    Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
+    Uproar the universal peace, confound
+    All Unity on earth."_
+
+
+In my peregrinations and bohemian investigations I have met on several
+occasions, and in strange lands, Mr. Ahasuerus, the Jerusalem shoemaker,
+who is reported to have jeered and scoffed at Christ as he passed his shop,
+bearing the heavy cross up the rugged heights of Calvary.
+
+That was a terrible day for Jesus of Nazareth (dying for the sins of
+others), but worse for his foolish brother, the Jew shoemaker; for as
+punishment to the scoffing and heartless Ishmaelite, the "Son of God,"
+bending under the weight of the cross, exclaimed to the "Son of Saint
+Crispin": "Tarry thou 'till I come! Move on!"
+
+And from that hour to this the "Wandering Jew" has been traveling and
+seeking for peace and death, but has never found surcease from everlasting
+sorrow and misery.
+
+I have often met his business partners, Solomon Isaacs and David Levy; and
+while these gentlemen are compelled by nations to "move on," they have the
+great gift of loading up their pack with the rarest jewels--silver, gold
+and diamonds being their great specialty--with ready made clothing,
+pawnshops and banks as convenient adjuncts.
+
+Their three golden balls, worn in front of their establishments, they say,
+represent energy, economy and wealth; while their victims insist that they
+represent passion, poverty and suicide.
+
+And yet these wandering Jews of all lands and climes, having no home or
+country anywhere, have the best of homes, churches, banks and temples
+everywhere.
+
+War and peace they often hold in their financial power, and therefore
+become the arbitrators and umpires of national fate.
+
+When my friend William was working on the rough sketch of the "Merchant of
+Venice," in the years 1598 and 1599, there was a great hate manifested
+against the London Jews, Dr. Lopez, the physician of Queen Elizabeth,
+having been recently tried and hung for the design of poisoning Her
+Majesty.
+
+The Jews were accused of clipping the coins of the realm, demanding one
+hundred per cent. usury, bewitching the people, sacrificing Christian boys
+on the altar of religious fanaticism and setting fire to the warehouses and
+shipping along the Thames.
+
+These outrageous stories were believed by many people, and Shakspere, being
+infected by the hate of the multitude (for the first time in his
+intellectual career), fashioned the repulsive character of Shylock, who
+walks the world as a synonym of greed, hate and vengeance.
+
+Several Jew plays had been put on the London boards, like the "Venetian
+Comedy" and the "Jew of Malta," but none had the lofty pitch of
+Shakspere's, who derived his main idea of the play from the Italian story
+of "Pecorone," by Florentina, and Silvayn's "Orator."
+
+Yet, with William's imagination, a hint was sufficient, the rose and acorn
+giving him scope enough to create flower gardens and forest ranges.
+
+The Jew has always been a great subject for the world's contention and
+condemnation, particularly since the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. If
+Christ, the Jew, suffered for others, his own race for nearly two thousand
+years have been "scapegoats" for private and public villains.
+
+From the days of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Louis the Fourteenth of
+France, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth of England, Emperor William of
+Germany and the Czars Nicholas and Alexander of Russia, the Jews have been
+robbed, exiled and murdered by Christian rulers, presumptively for their
+rebellion against the State, but really as an excuse to rob them of their
+jewels and gold. The Caucasian Christian has never hesitated to rob and
+murder anybody anywhere for cash and country!
+
+Look over the world to-day, and you behold nothing but diplomatic cheating,
+domestic and foreign robbery and international murder for individual
+ambition and national territorial expansion! The official hypocrite is the
+greatest liar of the century!
+
+England, Germany, France, Russia and the United States are this very day
+competing with each other in the race for universal empire! Considering
+that "Uncle Sam" has had only one hundred and twenty-six years of national
+life, he has forged to the front amazingly, and has become the grandest
+"General" on the globe! He does things!
+
+The "gentle reader" (confidentially speaking) may think this a slight
+digression from the "Merchant of Venice," which was enacted at the Globe
+Theatre, London, on the first Saturday in December, 1599. The "gentle
+reader" may also have found out by this time that the "subscriber" pays
+little attention to the "unities of time and place," as a thousand years
+are but short milestones in the life of the "Strulbug" family!
+
+What the "gentle reader" needs more than anything else is _knowledge and
+truth_; and he observes, if he observes at all, that I give bits of the
+most eloquent and philosophic speeches in all the plays of Shakspere,
+besides the true personal transactions and escapades of the Bard of Avon!
+
+The enactment of the various scenes of the "Merchant of Venice" takes place
+in the great water city--Venice, "Queen of the Adriatic," that ruled the
+commercial world two thousand years ago.
+
+Antonio, the Christian merchant, and Shylock, the usurious Jew, are the
+principal characters of the play, while Portia, the wealthy heiress, and
+Jessica, the daughter of Shylock, with Bassanio and Lorenzo carry the
+thread of Shakspere's argument trying to prove that it is Christian justice
+to steal an old man's money and daughter, and punish him for demanding his
+legal rights!
+
+In speaking privately to William I tried to have him change the logic and
+morals of the play, but his curt answer was:
+
+"Jack, the dramatic demand and tyrant public must be satisfied."
+
+Burbage took the part of Antonio, Jo Taylor played Shylock, William played
+Portia, Condell acted Bassanio, Heming represented Lorenzo and Field played
+Jessica, Poole played Gratiano, Slye played the Duke.
+
+The Globe Theatre was packed from pit to loft by the greatest variety
+audience I had ever seen; lords, ladies, lawyers, doctors, merchants,
+mechanics, soldiers, sailors, and street riff-raff--all assembled to see
+and hear how the Jew, Shylock, was to be roasted by the greatest dramatist
+of the ages.
+
+Antonio in a street scene in Venice opens up the play thus:
+
+    _"In sooth, I know not why I am so sad;
+    That I am much ado to know myself."_
+
+Salarino replies to the ship merchant:
+
+    _"Your mind is tossing on the ocean;
+    There, where your argosies, with portly sail--
+    Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,
+    Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea
+    As they fly to traffickers with their woven wings."_
+
+Antonio says to his friend Gratiano:
+
+    _"I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
+    A stage where every man must play a part,
+    And mine a sad one."_
+
+But the light and airy Gratiano utters this philosophic speech, which the
+"gentle reader" should cut out and paste in his hat:
+
+    _"Let me play the Fool;
+    With mirth and laughter, let old wrinkles come;
+    And let my liver rather heat with wine,
+    Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
+    Why should a man whose blood is warm within,
+    Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
+    Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice,
+    By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio,--
+    I love thee, and it is my love that speaks;
+    There are a sort of men, whose visages
+    Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond;
+    And do a wilful stillness entertain,
+    With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
+    Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
+    As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,
+    And, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!
+    O, my Antonio, I do know of these,
+    That therefore only are reputed wise,
+    For saying nothing; who I am very sure,
+    If they should speak, would almost damn those ears
+    Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools!"_
+
+Bassanio, in love with the rich heiress, Portia, tries to borrow three
+thousand ducats from Shylock, and Antonio, his friend, is willing to give
+bond for the loan.
+
+The Jew and the Christian hate each other; and Shylock vents his opinion:
+
+    _"How like a fawning publican he looks!
+    I hate him, for he is a Christian;
+    Antonio lends out money gratis and brings down--
+    The rate of usury here with us in Venice.
+    If I can catch him once upon the hip,
+    I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
+    He hates our sacred nation; and he rails,
+    Even there where merchants most do congregate,
+    On me, my bargains, and my well worn thrift,
+    Which he calls interest; cursed be my tribe
+    If I forgive him!"_
+
+Antonio finally asks for the three thousand ducats, and says:
+
+    _"Well, Shylock, shall we be beholden to you?"_
+
+Then in a speech of brave defiance, Shylock humiliates the Gentile merchant
+in this manner:
+
+    _"Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
+    In the Rialto you have rated me
+    About my monies, and my usury;
+    Still have I borne it with a patient shrug;
+    For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe;
+    You call me misbeliever, cut-throat, dog,
+    And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
+    And all for use of that which is mine own.
+    Well, then, it now appears you need my help;
+    Go to, then; you come to me and you say:
+    Shylock, we would have monies; you say so;
+    You, that did void your rheum upon my beard,
+    And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur--
+    Over your threshold; monies is your suit.
+    What should I say to you? Should I not say;
+    Hath a dog money? Is it possible
+    A cur can lend three thousand ducats? Or
+    Shall I bend low, and in a bondsman's key,
+    With bated breath and whispering humbleness say this--
+    Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
+    You spurned me such a day; another time
+    You called me--dog, and for these courtesies
+    I'll lend you thus much monies!"_
+
+Antonio, not any way abashed at the scolding of the money lender, says:
+
+    _"I am as like to call thee dog again,
+    And spit on thee again, to spurn thee, too!"_
+
+Shylock then agrees to lend the three thousand ducats if Antonio will give
+bond and penalty to pay the money back with interest in three months.
+
+Shylock says:
+
+    _"Let the forfeit of the bond
+    Be nominated for an equal pound
+    Of your fair flesh, to be cut off, and taken
+    In what part of your body pleaseth me!"_
+
+The second act opens with Portia in her grand home at "Belmont," awaiting
+suitors for her wealth, beauty and brains.
+
+Her father dying, left three locked chests, gold, silver, and lead, one of
+them containing the picture of Portia; and the fortunate suitor who picked
+out that rich casket, was to be the husband of the brilliant Portia.
+
+The Prince of Morocco and Prince of Arragon, with Bassanio, were the
+suitors.
+
+Portia says to Morocco:
+
+    _"In terms of choice I am not solely led
+    By nice direction of a maiden's eyes;
+    Besides, the lottery of my destiny
+    Bars me the right of voluntary choosing."_
+
+Launcelot, the foolish serving man for Shylock, says to old Gobbo, his
+blind father:
+
+    _"Do you not know me, father?"_
+
+Gobbo replies:
+
+    _"Alack, sir. I am sand-blind. I know you not."_
+
+Launcelot makes this wise statement:
+
+    _"Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes,
+    You might fail of the knowing of me:
+    It is a wise father that knows his own child!"_
+
+Shylock discharges Launcelot, and Jessica, the beautiful daughter of the
+money lender, parts with him regretfully--she gives him a secret letter to
+deliver to her Christian lover, Lorenzo, and then says:
+
+    _"Farewell, good Launcelot--
+    Alack, what heinous sin it is in me
+    To be ashamed to be my father's child!
+    But though I am a daughter to his blood,
+    I am not to his manners; O Lorenzo,
+    If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife;
+    Become a Christian, and thy loving wife!"_
+
+This beautiful Jewess forswears her birth and religion for infatuated love,
+and throws to the winds all duty and honor as a daughter; a renegade of
+matchless quality, stealing her father's money and jewels to elope with the
+fascinating Christian Lorenzo.
+
+The Hebrew race has not produced many Jessicas; and the morality taught by
+Shakspere of a daughter "fooling her father" is base and rotten in
+principle.
+
+Shylock says to his daughter:
+
+    _"Well, Jessica, go in to the house,
+    Perhaps I will return immediately;
+    Do as I bid you;
+    Shut doors after you; fast bind, fast find,
+    A proverb never stale in thrifty mind."_
+
+Then at the turn of his back the beautiful fraud Jessica says:
+
+    _"Farewell, and if my fortune be not crost,
+    I have a father, you a daughter, lost!"_
+
+Lorenzo with his friends appear under the window of Shylock's house to
+steal away Jessica, and she appears above in boy's clothes, and asks:
+
+    _"Who are you? Tell me for more certainty,
+    Albeit, I'll swear that I do know your tongue."_
+
+He responds:
+
+    _"Lorenzo and thy love."_
+
+Jessica before leaving her home spouts the following stuff to her lover:
+
+    _"Here, catch this casket, it is worth the pains;
+    I am glad 'tis night, you do not look on me;
+    For I am much ashamed of my exchange;
+    But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
+    The pretty follies that themselves commit;
+    For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
+    To see me thus transformed to a boy.
+    I will make fast the doors, and gild myself
+    With some more ducats, and be with you straight!"_
+
+Nice specimen of a dutiful daughter.
+
+Contrast the conduct of the Christian Portia with the Hebrew Jessica, and
+the latter's action is thoroughly reprehensible.
+
+Portia obeys the injunction and will of a dead father, while Jessica
+violates criminally the duty she owes a live father, who is in the toils of
+personal and official swindlers.
+
+Portia in her palace awaits foreign and domestic suitors for her hand,
+heart and wealth.
+
+The Prince of Morocco and his train first appear.
+
+Portia in her splendid drawing room receives the Prince, and says to her
+waiting maid:
+
+    _"Go draw aside the curtains, and discover
+    The several caskets to this noble prince;--
+    Now make your choice!"_
+
+The Prince reads the inscriptions on the three caskets, gold, silver and
+lead:
+
+"Who chooseth me, shall gain what many men desire."
+
+"Who chooseth me, shall get as much as he deserves."
+
+"Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath."
+
+The Prince asks:
+
+    _"How shall I know if I do choose the right?"_
+
+Portia replies:
+
+    _"The one of them contains my picture, Prince;
+    If you choose that then I am yours withal."_
+
+The Prince of Morocco makes a long speech on the beauty and glory of
+Portia, and then decides to open the golden casket. Portia hands him the
+key, and when the contents come to view he exclaims:
+
+    _"O hell! what have we here!"_
+
+    _"A carrion death, within whose empty eye
+    There is a written scroll? I'll read the writing._
+
+    _'All that glitters is not gold,
+    Often have you heard that told;
+    Many a man his life hath sold,
+    But my outside to behold;
+    Gilded tombs do worms infold.
+    Had you been as wise as bold,
+    Young in limbs, in judgment old
+    Your answer had not been enscrolled,
+    Fare you well, your suit is cold.'"_
+
+The disappointed black prince says:
+
+    _"Portia, adieu! I have too grieved a heart
+    To take a tedious leave; thus lovers part."_
+
+Portia exclaims after his exit:
+
+    _"A gentle riddance; draw the curtains, go
+    Let all of his complexion choose me so!"_
+
+When Shylock returned home, found his house deserted and robbed, he rushed
+into the street, and cried:
+
+    _"My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!
+    Fled with a Christian? O my Christian ducats!
+    Justice! the law! my ducats and my daughter!
+    A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,
+    Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter!
+    And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones
+    Stolen by my daughter! Justice! Find the girl!
+    She hath the stones upon her and the ducats!"_
+
+The frantic raging of the old broken down, soul lacerated Jew, only brought
+from that Christian audience, laughter, yells, and howling jeers. The mob
+spirit was there, and the appeal for justice by Shylock fell upon deaf ears
+and stony hearts.
+
+Portia still holds court for her hand and heart at beautiful "Belmont,"
+setting like an Egyptian Queen in the circling, blooming hills of the blue
+Adriatic.
+
+The Prince of Arragon comes to the choice of caskets, and with lofty words
+in praise of virtue, says:
+
+    _"Let none presume to wear an undeserved dignity.
+    O, that estates, degrees, and offices,
+    Were not obtained corruptly! and that clear honor
+    Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
+    How many then should cover, that stand bare!
+    How many be commanded that command!
+    How much low corruption would then be gleaned
+    From the true seed of honor! and how much honor
+    Picked from the chaff and ruin of the times!"_
+
+The Globe Theatre shook with applause at this fine political speech of the
+Prince, and may be well contemplated in the State transactions of to-day.
+
+The Prince unlocks the silver casket, and finds a portrait of a blinking
+idiot; and departing exclaims:
+
+    _"Some there be that shadows kiss,
+    Such have but a shadow's bliss;
+    There be fools alive I wis--
+    Silvered o'er, and so was this!"_
+
+Portia soliloquizes:
+
+    _"Thus hath the candle singed the moth
+    Of these deliberate fools, when they do choose,
+    They bare their wisdom by their wit to lose."_
+
+And Nerissa, the bright waiting maid, says:
+
+    _"The ancient saying is no heresy;--
+    Hanging and wiving go by destiny!"_
+
+The third act opens with a street in Venice, and friends of Antonio bemoan
+the reported loss of several of his ships at sea, which will cause his
+default and ruin, by the demands of Shylock.
+
+Salarino says to the Jew:
+
+    _"Why, I am sure if he forfeit, thou wilt not
+    Take his flesh; what's that good for?"_
+
+Shylock now begins to gloat over his prospect of a dire vengeance upon the
+Christian Antonio, and replies to Salarino:
+
+    _"To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else,
+    It will feed my revenge!
+    Antonio hates me because I'm a Jew;
+    Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands;
+    Organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
+    Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons,
+    Subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
+    Warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter,
+    As a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
+    If you tickle us do we not laugh? if you poison us
+    Do we not die? and if you wrong us shall we not revenge?
+    The villainy you teach me, I will execute!"_
+
+Tubal, the Hebrew friend of Shylock, says:
+
+    _"But Antonio is certainly undone."_
+
+Shylock delighted says:
+
+    _"That's true, that's very true.
+    Tubal, fee me an officer; bespeak him a fortnight before.
+    I will have the heart of Antonio if he forfeit the bond.
+    Go, Tubal, meet me at our synagogue."_
+
+Portia again appears for the third time to undergo matrimonial choice.
+
+Bassanio, the particular friend of Antonio, is the real love suitor for the
+hand and heart of the beautiful Portia, and appears at her palace, attended
+by his faithful Venetian friends. He is a high-toned, but impecunious
+Italian gentleman, whose heart and soul are ninety per cent. larger than
+his pockets.
+
+Portia seems to be fascinated with Bassanio, and wishes him to remain at
+her home and take time in choosing the right casket, but he wants to act
+instanter, confessing his love.
+
+Portia says:
+
+    _"Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
+    Now he goes,
+    With no less dignity, but with much more love
+    Than young Alcides, when he did redeem
+    The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy
+    To the sea monster!"_
+
+Bassanio, standing before the leaden casket, utters this high sounding,
+moral, truthful speech:
+
+    _"The world is still deceived with ornament.
+    In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
+    But, being seasoned with a gracious voice
+    Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
+    What damned error, but some sober brow
+    Will bless it, and approve it with a text,
+    Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
+    There is no vice so simple, but assumes
+    Some mark of virtue on his outward parts!
+    How many cowards whose hearts are all as false
+    As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
+    The beard of Hercules, and frowning Mars;
+    Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk?
+    And these assume but valor's excrement,
+    To render them redoubted. Look on beauty
+    And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight;
+    Which therein works a miracle in nature,
+    Making them lightest that wear most of it;
+    So are those curled, snaky golden locks,
+    Which make such wanton gambols with the wind
+    Upon supposed fairness, often known
+    To be the dowers of a second head;
+    The scull that bred them in the sepulchre.
+    Thus ornament is but the treacherous shore
+    To a most dangerous sea!
+    Thou meagre lead casket,
+    Which rather rebuffs than dost promise aught,
+    Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence,
+    And here choose I; joy the consequence!"_
+
+Opening the leaden casket, Bassanio exclaims:
+
+    _"What find I here?
+    Fair Portia's counterfeit. What demigod
+    Hath come so near creation;
+    Here's the scroll,
+    The continent and summary of my fortune--
+    If you be well pleased with this,
+    And hold your fortune for your bliss,
+    Turn you where your lady is
+    And claim her with a loving kiss!"_
+
+Bassanio kisses Portia, and she makes this womanly speech:
+
+    _"You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand
+    Such as I am; though for myself alone
+    I would not be ambitious in my wish
+    To wish myself much better; yet, for you
+    I would be trebled twenty times myself;
+    A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich.
+    Happiest of all is that my fond spirit
+    Commits itself to yours to be directed,
+    As from her Lord, her Governor, her King!
+    Myself and what is mine, to you and yours
+    Is now converted; but now I was the Lord
+    Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
+    Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now,
+    This house, these servants, and this same myself,
+    Are yours, my Lord, I give them with this ring;
+    Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
+    Let it presage the ruin of your love,
+    And be my vantage to exclaim to you!"_
+
+Bassanio tells Portia that he is not a freeman, that Antonio borrowed three
+thousand ducats for him from Shylock, and that now he is miserable because
+Antonio may lose his life by the Jew claiming a pound of flesh in forfeit
+of the bonded debt.
+
+Portia proposes to pay six thousand ducats rather than Antonio suffer, and
+says to Bassanio:
+
+    _"First go with me to church and call me wife,
+    Then away to Venice to your friend.
+    You shall have gold
+    To pay the petty debt twenty times over!"_
+
+Shylock swears out a writ and puts Antonio in jail, and demands trial
+before the Grand Duke of Venice.
+
+The Duke in open court, with all the witnesses and lawyers and people
+present, implores Shylock not to insist to cut a pound of flesh from the
+body of Antonio, and argues for mercy.
+
+But, Shylock, impenetrable to the cries of mercy, says to the judge:
+
+    _"I have told your grace of what I purpose;
+    And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn,
+    To have the due and forfeit of my bond.
+    The pound of flesh which I demand of him
+    Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it;
+    If you deny me, fye upon your law!
+    I stand for judgment; shall I have it?"_
+
+A learned doctor of laws, Bellario, is expected to appear as the advocate
+for Antonio, and the Duke awaits him; but receives a letter saying that a
+young lawyer named Balthazar will represent him, as sickness prevents his
+presence.
+
+Portia disguised like a doctor of laws appears in court.
+
+The Duke asks: "Come you from old Bellario?"
+
+Portia replies: "I did, my lord."
+
+Antonio and Shylock stand up in court, and Portia, after surveying each,
+inquires:
+
+"Is your name Shylock?"
+
+He replies: "Shylock is my name."
+
+She says to Antonio: "You stand within Shylock's control, do you not?"
+
+He responds: "Ay, so he says."
+
+Portia asks: "Do you confess the bond?"
+
+Antonio replies: "I do."
+
+Portia: "Then must the Jew be merciful?"
+
+Shylock asks: "On what compulsion must I? Tell me that?"
+
+Then Portia rises in court and makes this lofty, never to be forgotten
+speech:
+
+    _"The quality of mercy is not strained;
+    It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven,
+    Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed;
+    It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;
+    'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
+    The throned monarch better than his crown;
+    His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
+    The attribute to awe and majesty:
+    Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
+    But mercy is above his sceptred sway,
+    It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
+    It is an attribute to God himself,
+    And earthly power doth then show likest God's
+    When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
+    Though justice be thy plea, consider this,--
+    That in the course of justice, none of us
+    Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy;
+    And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
+    The deeds of mercy, I have spoke this much
+    To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
+    Which, if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
+    Must needs give sentence against the merchant there."_
+
+Shylock, with unforgiving spirit, replies:
+
+    _"My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,
+    The penalty and forfeit of my bond!"_
+
+Portia asks:
+
+    _"Is not Antonio able to discharge the money?"_
+
+Bassanio replies:
+
+    _"Yes; here I tender it for him in the court;
+    Yea, twice the sum,"_
+
+and still appealing to the Duke, says:
+
+    _"To do a great right, do a little wrong,
+    And curb this cruel devil of his will!"_
+
+Portia says:
+
+    _"There is no power in Venice can altar a decree established."_
+
+And Shylock, lighting up with joy, replies:
+
+    _"A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!"_
+
+Preparation is made to cut the pound of flesh from the breast of Antonio;
+and this brave old Christian merchant says to his dearest friend, Bassanio:
+
+    _"Fare you well!
+    Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you;
+    For herein fortune shows herself more kind
+    Than is her custom; it is still her use
+    To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,
+    To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow,
+    An age of poverty."_
+
+Portia, speaking to Shylock, says:
+
+    _"Take thou thy pound of flesh;
+    But, in the cutting, if thou dost shed
+    One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
+    Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscated
+    Unto the State of Venice!"_
+
+The Jew finding himself absolutely blocked consents to take the money
+offered.
+
+Yet, Portia tells him that his property and life are now at the mercy of
+the Duke because he has conspired against the life of a citizen of Venice,
+and bids him:
+
+    _"Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke!"_
+
+Then the great Duke, judge of the court, speaks to Shylock:
+
+    _"That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit,
+    I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it;
+    For half thy wealth, it is Antonio's,
+    The other half comes to the general state!"_
+
+Shylock bravely replies:
+
+    _"Take my life and all, pardon not that;
+    You take my house, when you do take the prop
+    That doth sustain my house; you take my life
+    When you do take the means whereby I live!"_
+
+Then Antonio says if the Jew will give up all his property to Lorenzo and
+his daughter Jessica, and become a Christian, he the "Merchant of Venice,"
+will be content.
+
+Portia then triumphantly asks:
+
+    _"Art thou content, Jew, what dost thou say?"_
+
+And poor old Shylock gasps:
+
+    _"I am content."_
+
+Thus ends one of the most barefaced swindles of the ages; and my friend
+William is responsible for the nefarious and systematic machinery of
+roguery and persecution injected into the play to satisfy Christian hate
+against the wandering Jew.
+
+In looking around the world even to-day, we might truthfully exclaim:
+
+"O, Christianity! Christianity! how many crimes are committed in thy name!"
+
+The fifth act of the "Merchant of Venice" winds up with harmonious love and
+prosperity for all concerned.
+
+At the beautiful home of "Belmont," Bassanio, Portia, Lorenzo and Jessica,
+as well as Gratiano and Nerissa are married and living in blissful
+association.
+
+In the moonlit, lovelit conversation between Lorenzo and his Jewish wife,
+Jessica, Shakspere wings in some of his finest classical allusions, a word
+banquet for all passion struck lovers.
+
+Lorenzo seated amid waving trees, trailing vines and perfumed flowers
+illuminated by the mystic rays of Luna, says to Jessica:
+
+    _"The moon shines bright; in such a night as this,
+    When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
+    And they did make no noise; in such a night,
+    Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls,
+    And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tents
+    Where Cressid lay that night."_
+
+Jessica replies:
+
+    _"In such a night
+    Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew;
+    And saw the lion's shadow ere himself,
+    And ran dismayed away."_
+
+Then Lorenzo talks:
+
+    _"In such a night
+    Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
+    Upon the wild sea banks, and waved her love
+    To come again to Carthage."_
+
+And Jessica:
+
+    _"In such a night
+    Medea gathered the enchanted herbs
+    That did renew old Aeson."_
+
+Lorenzo then triumphant speaks:
+
+    _"In such a night
+    Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew;
+    And with an unthrifty love did run from Venice,
+    As far as Belmont."_
+
+Jessica satirically replies:
+
+    _"In such a night
+    Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well;
+    Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,
+    And ne'er a true one."_
+
+Lorenzo fires back this answer:
+
+    _"And in such a night
+    Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew
+    Slander her love, and he forgave it her."_
+
+Jessica gets in the last word, and says:
+
+    _"I would outnight you, did nobody come;
+    But hark, I hear the footing of a man."_
+
+Lorenzo declines to enter the house for rest or sleep, but still discourses
+of love and music:
+
+    _"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
+    Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
+    Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,
+    Become the touches of sweet harmony.
+    Sit, Jessica; look, how the floor of heaven
+    Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
+    There's not the smallest orb, which thou beholdest
+    But in his motion like an angel sings.
+    Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins;
+    Such harmony is in immortal souls;
+    But, whil'st this muddy vesture of decay
+    Doth grossly close it in, we cannot have it!
+    By the sweet power of music; therefore, the poet
+    Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods.
+    Since naught so stockish, hard and full of rage
+    But music for the time doth change his nature,
+    The man that hath no music in himself
+    Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
+    Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
+    The motions of his spirit are dull as night
+    And his affections dark as Erebus;
+    Let no such man be trusted."_
+
+Portia, Bassanio and friends arrive from the trial of Antonio at Venice,
+and at the brilliant home of Belmont all is peace and love.
+
+Bassanio discovers that the young lawyer in disguise was Portia, and she
+twits him for giving away his ring to the young advocate, as a recompense
+for clearing Antonio from the toils of Shylock; and then she discourses to
+her friends about music by night:
+
+    _"Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day;
+    The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
+    When neither is attuned; and I think
+    The nightingale, if she should sing by day
+    When every goose is cackling, would be thought
+    No better a musician than the wren.
+    How many things by season, seasoned are
+    To their right praise and true perfection!
+    Peace, there, the moon sleeps with Endymion
+    And would not be awaked."_
+              (Music ceases and all retire.)
+
+          _Music murmurs through the soul
+          Hopes of a sweat heavenly goal,
+          And enchants from pole to pole
+          While the planets round us roll!_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE SUPERNATURAL. "HAMLET."
+
+    _"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,
+    That ever I was born to set it right."_
+
+    _"Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge
+    Had stomach for them all."_
+
+
+Shakspere, in January, 1600, was at the height of his dramatic renown, and
+at the age of thirty-six was the ripest philosopher in the world, knowing
+more about the secret impulses of the human heart than any other man.
+
+I could see a great change in his life and thought; for a shade of settled
+melancholy characterized his action, since the death and burial of Spenser,
+and the downfall of Essex and Southampton, through the vengeance of Cecil
+and Bacon, jealous courtiers, who poisoned Queen Elizabeth against the most
+noted Lords of her court.
+
+Shakspere's theatrical company became involved in the conspiracy of Essex,
+and an edict was issued against the Blackfriars and Globe playhouses
+performing their dramatic satires. Children players took their places.
+
+Through the particular vengeance of Lord Bacon, charges of treason were
+trumped up against Essex, the former benefactor of Bacon, and in due course
+the head of Essex went to the block in February, 1601.
+
+Thus perished one of the brightest, bravest and loftiest peers of England,
+a victim to the spleen, hate and tyranny of the ugly Elizabeth, a woman
+without conscience or morality, when her personal interest was involved.
+She shines out as one of the greatest and most infamous queens of history,
+and so long as lofty crime is remembered she will remain on the top
+pedestal of royal iniquity.
+
+In the course of our classical and historical readings, William had become
+very much interested in the tragic story of Amleth or Hamlet as told by the
+Danish writer, _Saxo_--and _Seneca_, the great Roman, in his story of
+_Cornelia_ gives the same tragic tale, while Garnier, the French dramatist,
+as well as Kyd, the friend of Shakspere, made plays out of the tragic
+history of the Prince of Denmark.
+
+But it was left for my friend William to gather up the historical bones of
+the ancient story, and articulate them into a breathing, living,
+passionate, divine being, whose lofty words and phrases should go sounding
+down the centuries, thrilling and reverberating in the soul-lit memory of
+mankind.
+
+The supernatural or spiritual part of creation had ever a fascinating
+influence upon the Bard of Avon, and all the outward manifestations of
+nature were infallible hints to him of the inward sources of the Divine,
+and an absolute belief in the immortality of the soul! His own mind was the
+best evidence of divinity!
+
+Night after night in the winter of 1600, William would read over, and
+ponder upon "scraps of thought," that he had at various times put into the
+mouth of Hamlet, and in our new quarters, near Temple Bar, I assisted him
+in composing the dramatic story of the melancholy Dane.
+
+That is, I blew the bellows, and when his thought was heated to a red rose
+hue he hammered out the play on the anvil of his genius, and made the
+sparks fly in a shower of pristine glory.
+
+His literary blacksmith shop was richly furnished with all the rough iron
+bars and crude ingots of vanished centuries; and all the best dramatic
+writers of London filled his thought factory with contributions of their
+inventions. He worked many of their rough pieces of thought into his
+dramatic plots; but when the phrase, scene and act were finished and placed
+before the footlights for rendition, it sailed away, a full rigged ship of
+dramatic grandeur, showing nothing but the royal workmanship of a master
+builder, the Homer, Phidias and Angelo of artistic perfection.
+
+Mankind cares but little for the various kinds of wheat that compose the
+loaf, the wool or cotton that's in the garment, the timber or stone in the
+house, or the kind of steel in the battleship or guns; all they look for is
+the perfect structure, as they may see to-day in Shakspere's greatest
+play--"Hamlet."
+
+While Hamlet is the central figure of the play, old Polonius, the
+diplomatic double dealer, Laertes, his son, and Ophelia, his daughter, act
+prominently, while Horatio and the ghost of Hamlet's father express words
+of lasting remembrance.
+
+Cruel Claudius, the king who murdered Hamlet's father, stole his throne and
+seduced his wife, is shown up as a first-class criminal villain, while
+Gertrude, the mother of the young prince, is one of the most sneaking,
+mild, incestuous queens in history. Such she devils, with heaven in their
+eyes and face, honeyed words on their lips, and gall and hell in their
+hearts, are the real seducers of infatuated, willing, ambitious man; and
+each should dangle at the end of the same rope or hemlock together!
+
+Contrast Gertrude with Ophelia, and you have a fiend of chicanery and
+crime, with a sweet angel of innocence: "Too good, too fair to be cast
+among the briers of this working day world and fall and bleed upon the
+thorns of life. Like a strain of sad, sweet music which comes floating by
+us on the wings of night and silence, like the exhalation of the violet
+dying even upon the sense it charms, like the snowflake dissolved in air
+before it has caught a stain of earth; like the light surf, severed from
+the billow, which a breath disperses, such is the character of the delicate
+and sanctified Ophelia."
+
+In December, 1601, the ban of disgrace was taken from the Globe Theatre,
+and Burbage and William were permitted to continue their dramatic
+exhibitions.
+
+"Hamlet" was played the night before Christmas. The house was packed closer
+than grass on an English lawn, and the applause was almost continuous, like
+the moan or roar of a distant sea.
+
+Shakspere played the Ghost, Burbage acted Hamlet, Jo Taylor played Horatio,
+Heminge played Ophelia, Peele played Polonius, Condell acted Claudius,
+Kempt played Gertrude, Cooke acted Laertes, and the other parts were taken
+by the best stock actors.
+
+The play opens up on a platform before the castle at "Elsinore,"
+Copenhagen, Denmark.
+
+Bernardo and Francisco are soldiers on night duty. Bernardo says: "Who's
+there?" Francisco says: "Nay, answer me; stand and unfold yourself."
+
+The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to the night officers, and also to
+Horatio and Marcellus, but will not speak. They reveal the wonderful story
+to Hamlet, who makes ready to see and talk to the Ghost the next night at
+twelve o'clock.
+
+In the meantime, the king, queen and courtiers gather at the grand throne
+of the castle and talk of the late king.
+
+Hamlet is moody and sad, and will not be comforted, although persuaded by
+King Claudius and his mother.
+
+Claudius addressing Hamlet, says:
+
+    _"But, now my nephew Hamlet, and my son
+    How is it that the clouds still hang on you?"_
+
+Hamlet says (aside):
+
+    _"A little more than kin and less than kind.
+    Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun."_
+
+Hamlet's mother rebukes him about grieving for his father, and says:
+
+    _"Do not forever with thy veiled lids
+    Seek for thy noble father in the dust;
+    Thou knowest 'tis common, all that live must die,
+    Passing through nature to eternity!"_
+
+Hamlet says:
+
+    _"Ay, madam, it is common."_
+
+Queen says:
+
+    _"If it be,
+    Why seems it so particular with thee?"_
+
+And then surcharged with suspicion of her secret villainy Hamlet exclaims:
+
+    _"Seems, madam! Nay it is; I know not 'seems;'
+    'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
+    Nor customary suits of solemn black,
+    Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
+    No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
+    Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
+    Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief
+    That can denote me truly; these indeed seem,
+    For they are actions that a man might play;
+    But I have that within which passeth show,
+    These but the trappings and the suits of woe."_
+
+Then, after the exit of the old murder-king and his _particeps criminis_
+queen--Hamlet ponders to himself on life and death in these lofty lines:
+
+    _"O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
+    Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
+    Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
+    His canon against self slaughter! O God! O God!
+    How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
+    Seem to me all the uses of this world!
+    Fye on't! O Fye! 'tis an unweeded garden,
+    That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
+    Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
+    But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two;
+    So excellent a King, that was, to this
+    Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
+    That he might not beteem the wind of heaven
+    Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
+    Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him,
+    As if increase of appetite had grown
+    By what it fed on; and yet, within a month--
+    Let me not think on it--frailty, thy name is woman!
+    A little month, or ere those shoes were old
+    With which she followed my poor father's body,
+    Like Niobe all tears; why, she, even she--
+    O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
+    Would have mourned longer,--married with my uncle,
+    My father's brother, but no more like my father
+    Than I to Hercules; within a month;
+    Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
+    Had left the flushing of her galled eyes,
+    She married. O, most wicked speed to post
+    With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
+    It is not, nor can it come to good;
+    But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!"_
+
+Laertes before his departure for France gives his sister Ophelia some
+advice and warns her against the blandishments of Hamlet. He says:
+
+    _"Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
+    And keep you in the rear of your affection,
+    Out of the shot and danger of desire;
+    Be wary then; best safety lies in fear,
+    Youth to itself rebels, though none else near."_
+
+This innocent, beautiful girl gave this wise reply to her brother:
+
+    _"I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
+    As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother
+    Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
+    Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
+    Whilst, like a puffed and wreckless libertine,
+    Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
+    And recks not his own read!"_
+
+Then Polonius, the wise old father, comes in to hasten Laertes off to
+France, with this great advice:
+
+    _"There, my blessing with thee!
+    And these few precepts in thy memory
+    Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue.
+    Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
+    Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
+    Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried,
+    Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.
+    But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
+    Of each new hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
+    Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
+    Bear it that the opposed may beware of thee.
+    Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
+    Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
+    Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
+    But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
+    For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
+    And they in France of the best rank and station
+    Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
+    Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
+    For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
+    And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
+    This above all; to thine own self be true,
+    And it must follow, as the night the day,
+    Thou canst not then be false to any man!"_
+
+      _Good advice is very fine,
+        From those who think and make it;
+      Only one in ninety-nine
+        Will ever stop to take it!_
+
+Hamlet and his friends, Horatio and Marcellus, go to the passing place of
+the Ghost at midnight, and there, to the amazement of Hamlet, he sees the
+apparition of his father, and exclaims:
+
+    _"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
+    Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
+    Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
+    Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
+    Thou comest in such a questionable shape
+    That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet,
+    King, father, royal Dane; O, answer me!
+    Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
+    Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
+    Have burst their cerements; why thy sepulchre,
+    Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned
+    Hath opened his ponderous and marble jaws,
+    To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
+    That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
+    Revisit thus the glimpses of the moon,
+    Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
+    So horridly to shake our disposition
+    With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
+    Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?"_
+
+The Ghost passes across the stage and beckons Hamlet to follow, who
+frantically rushes after the apparition and says:
+
+    _"Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I'll go no farther."_
+
+Ghost utters in sepulchral voice:
+
+                    _"Mark me!
+    I am thy father's spirit;
+    Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
+    And for the day confined to fast in fires
+    Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
+    Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
+    To tell the secrets of my prison house,
+    I could a tale unfold whose lightest words
+    Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
+    Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
+    Thy knotted and confined locks to part
+    And each particular hair to stand on end
+    Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
+    But this eternal blazon must not be
+    To ears of flesh and blood. List! list, O list!
+    If thou did'st ever thy dear father love,--
+    'Tis given out that sleeping in my orchard
+    A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
+    Is by a forged process of my death
+    Rankly abused; but know thou, noble youth,
+    The serpent that did sting thy father's life
+    Now wears his crown!"_
+
+Hamlet exclaims:
+
+    _"O my prophetic soul! My uncle!"_
+
+The Ghost then makes this remarkable speech:
+
+    _"Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
+    With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,
+    O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
+    So to seduce! won to his shameful lust
+    The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen;
+    O, Hamlet, what a falling off was there!
+    From me, whose love was of that dignity
+    That it went hand in hand even with the vow
+    I made to her in marriage; and to decline
+    Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor
+    To those of mine!
+    But virtue, as it never will be moved,
+    Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
+    So lust, though to a radiant angel linked
+    Will sate itself in a celestial bed
+    And prey on garbage.
+    But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
+    Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
+    My custom always of the afternoon,
+    Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
+    With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
+    And in the porches on my ears did pour
+    The leperous distilment; whose effect
+    Holds such an enmity with blood of man,
+    That quick as quicksilver it courses through
+    The natural gates and alleys of the body;
+    And with a sudden vigour, it doth posset
+    And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
+    The thin and wholesome blood: So did it mine;
+    And a most instant tetter barked about,
+    Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
+    All my smooth body.
+    Thus was I sleeping, by a brother's hand,
+    Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched;
+    Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
+    Unhoused, disappointed, unaneled;
+    No reckoning made, but sent to my account
+    With all my imperfections on my head;
+    O, horrible! most horrible!
+    If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
+    Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
+    A couch for luxury and damned incest.
+    But, howsoever, thou pursuest this act,
+    Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
+    Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven,
+    And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
+    To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
+    The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
+    And begins to pale his ineffectual fire!
+    Adieu! adieu! adieu! remember me!"_
+
+As the Ghost ceased and passed off the stage a peculiar shivering cheer
+passed over the great audience, and revealed for the first time in London
+dramatic art, a supernatural being seemingly clothed in the habiliments of
+flesh, blood and bones, resurrected from the tomb.
+
+    _Do spirits revisit this world again
+    When they're released from this body of pain,
+    And do they inhabit a realm afar
+    Beyond the bright sun and sparkling star?_
+
+King Claudius, his queen and Polonius were anxious to get at the real cause
+of Hamlet's lunacy, and send him away from the castle to prevent future
+trouble. The guilty conscience of the king daily feared detection.
+
+Hamlet brooded so intently upon the cruel murder of his father that he was
+constantly on the verge of insanity, devising plans to either slaughter
+himself or wreak a terrible vengeance upon his uncle and mother.
+
+Treading the halls of his ancestral palace he uttered this transcendent
+soliloquy that has puzzled the ages:
+
+    _"To be or not to be; that is the question;
+    Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
+    The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
+    Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
+    And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep;
+    No more; and by a sleep to say we end
+    The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
+    That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
+    Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
+    To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
+    For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
+    When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
+    Must give us pause; there's the respect
+    That makes calamity of so long life;
+    For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
+    The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
+    The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
+    The insolence of office, and the spurns--
+    That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
+    When he himself might his quietus make
+    With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
+    To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
+    But the dread of something after death
+    The undiscovered country from whose bourn
+    No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
+    And makes us rather bear those ills we have
+    Than fly to others that we know not of?
+    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
+    And thus the native hue of resolution
+    Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
+    And enterprises of great pitch and moment
+    With this regard their currents turns awry
+    And lose the name of action!"_
+
+Ophelia at the suggestion of her father and the other conspirators, comes
+in at this juncture and sounds Hamlet as to plighted love and gives back
+the gifts he gave her.
+
+Hamlet pretending to madness still talks double and asks Ophelia if she be
+honest, fair and beautiful.
+
+She says: "Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?"
+
+Hamlet replies: "Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform
+honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate
+beauty into his likeness; this was sometime a paradox, but now the time
+gives it proof. I did love you once."
+
+Ophelia says: "Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so."
+
+And then the fickle Hamlet says: "I loved you not," and with supercilious
+advice, exclaims:
+
+    _"Get thee to a nunnery!
+    Why would'st thou be a breeder of sinners?
+    I am myself indifferent honest;
+    But yet I could accuse me of such things
+    That it were better my mother had not borne me.
+    I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious;
+    With more offenses at my back
+    Than I have thoughts to put them in;
+    Imagination to give them shape,
+    Or time to act them in.
+    What should such fellows as I do
+    Crawling between heaven and earth?
+    We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us--
+    Go thy ways to a nunnery!
+    If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry.--
+    Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow!
+    Thou shall not escape calumny!
+    If thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool;
+    For wise men know well enough what monsters women make of them!
+    Go! get thee to a nunnery!"_
+
+Hamlet thus plays the madman to the eye and mind of Ophelia, that she may
+report his lunacy; and believing her former lover deranged, after his exit
+utters this wail of grief:
+
+    _"O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
+    The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword;
+    The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
+    The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
+    The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
+    And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
+    That sucked the honey of his music vows,
+    Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
+    Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
+    That unmatched form and feature of blown youth,
+    Blasted with ecstacy: O, woe is me,
+    To have seen what I have seen, see what I see."_
+
+The instruction of Hamlet to the players is the most conclusive evidence
+that William Shakspere was not only the greatest dramatic author, but an
+actor and orator of matchless mould.
+
+There was no character that his soul conceived in any of his plays, fool or
+philosopher, that he could not act better than any man in his company.
+
+In the first rehearsal of his plays he usually read the lines to his men
+and gave them the cue and philosophy of the character to be enacted.
+
+A few days before the play of Hamlet I heard him deliver this speech for
+the edification of the whole troupe, that they might know how to render
+their lines in an effective and oratorical manner:
+
+    _"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced
+    It to you, trippingly on the tongue;
+    But if you mouth it, as many of your
+    Players do, I had as lief the town-crier,
+    Spoke my lines. Now do not saw the air too
+    Much with your hand, thus; but use all gently;
+    For in the very torrent, tempest, and,
+    As I may say, whirlwind of your passion,
+    You must acquire and beget a temperance,
+    That may give it smoothness. O, it offends
+    Me to the soul to hear a robustious
+    Periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion
+    To tatters, to very rags, to split the
+    Ears of the groundlings, who for the most part
+    Are capable of nothing, but inexplicable
+    Dumb-shows and noise, I would have such a fellow
+    Whipped for overdoing Termagant;
+    It out-herods Herod; pray you avoid it.
+    Be not too tame neither, but let your own
+    Discretion be your tutor: suit the action
+    To the word, the word to the action;
+    With this special observance, that you o'erstep
+    Not the modesty of nature; for anything
+    So overdone is from the purpose of playing,
+    Whose end, both at the first and now, was and is,
+    To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature;
+    To show virtue her own feature, scorn her
+    Own image, and the very age and body
+    Of the time his form and pressure.
+    Now this, overdone, or come tardy off,
+    Though it make the unskilled laugh, cannot but
+    Make the judicious grieve; the censure of
+    The which one must in your allowance
+    Overweigh a whole theatre of others.
+    O, there be players that I have seen play,
+    And heard others praise, and that highly,
+    Not to speak it profanely, that neither
+    Having the accent of Christians nor the
+    Gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
+    Strutted and bellowed, that I have thought
+    Some of nature's journeymen had made men,
+    And not made them well, they imitated
+    Humanity so abominably!"_
+
+In all the troubles and vicissitudes of Hamlet's life, young Lord Horatio
+remained his unfaltering friend; and this tribute to friendship is one of
+the best in Shakspere. Hamlet says:
+
+    _"Horatio, thou art even as just a man
+    As e'er my conversation coped withal,
+    Nay, do not think I flatter;
+    For what advancement may I hope from thee,
+    That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
+    To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
+    No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
+    And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
+    Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
+    Since my dear soul was mistress of its choice
+    And could of men distinguish, her election
+    Hath sealed thee for herself; for thou hast been
+    As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
+    A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
+    Hast taken with equal composure; and blest are those
+    Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
+    That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
+    To sound what stop she pleases. Give me that man
+    That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
+    In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart
+    As I do thee!"_
+
+In the dumb show murder play, before the King and Queen Shakspere puts
+these phrases in the mouths of the players and Hamlet:
+
+    _"The great man down, you mark his favorite flies;
+    The poor advanced makes friends of enemies;
+    And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
+    For who not needs, shall never lack a friend."_
+
+    _"But what's that, your Majesty;
+    And we that have free souls, it touches us not;
+    Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung!"_
+
+King Claudius frightened at the mock play runs away, and Hamlet says to
+Horatio:
+
+    _"Why let the stricken deer go weep,
+    The hart ungalled play;
+    For some must watch, while some must sleep
+    Thus runs the world away."_
+
+    _"'Tis now the very witching time of night,
+    When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
+    Contagion to this world; now could I drink hot blood,
+    And do such bitter business as the day
+    Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother;
+    I will speak daggers to her, but use none!"_
+
+King Claudius the night before his death, after conspiring with Polonius
+for the exile of Hamlet utters this self-accusing, remorseful soliloquy:
+
+    _"O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;
+    It hath the primal, eldest curse upon it--
+    A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
+    Though inclination be as sharp as will;
+    My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
+    And like a man to double business bound,
+    I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
+    And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
+    Were thicker than itself with brother's blood?
+    Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
+    To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
+    But to confront the visage of offense?
+    And what's in prayer but this twofold force,
+    To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
+    Or pardoned being down? Then I'll look up;
+    My fault is past. But O, what form of prayer
+    Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder?
+    That cannot be, since I am still possessed
+    Of those effects for which I did the murder,
+    My crown, mine own ambition and my queen,
+    May one be pardoned and retain the offense?
+    In the corrupted currents of this world
+    Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice,
+    And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
+    Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above;
+    There, is no shuffling, there, the action lies
+    In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled
+    Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults
+    To give in evidence!"_
+
+In the midnight interview of Hamlet with his mother, Polonius hides behind
+a curtain to spy upon the words of the "melancholy Dane," and is killed by
+a sword thrust of Hamlet, who exclaims:
+
+    _"How now! a rat, dead for a ducat."_
+
+Then Hamlet holds his mother to the talk and pours these lines of liquid
+gall into her trembling ear and frightened heart:
+
+    _"Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
+    The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
+    See what a grace was seated on this brow;
+    Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself,
+    An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
+    A station like the herald Mercury
+    New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
+    A combination and a form indeed,
+    Where every god did seem to set his seal
+    To give the world assurance of a man;
+    This was your husband. Look you now,
+    What follows:
+    Here is your husband: like a mildewed ear,
+    Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
+    Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
+    And batten on this foul moor?
+    Your husband; a murderer and a villain;
+    A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
+    Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
+    A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
+    That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
+    And put it in his pocket!
+    A king of shreds and patches!"_
+
+King Claudius, alarmed at the death of Polonius and his own guilty state,
+conspires with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to take Hamlet to England and
+get rid of him, saying:
+
+    _"Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed abroad,
+    Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night;
+    Away! for everything is sealed and done
+    That else leans on the affair; pray you, make haste!"_
+
+Hamlet before retiring thus bemoans his slowness in wreaking a just
+vengeance upon his murderer uncle:
+
+    _"How all occasions do inform against me,
+    And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
+    If his chief good and market of his time
+    Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
+    Sure, he that made us with such large discourse
+    Looking before and after, gave us not
+    That capability and god-like reason
+    To rot in us unused.
+    Rightly to be great
+    Is not to stir without great argument;
+    But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
+    When honor's at the stake. How stand I then,
+    That have a father killed, a mother stained,
+    Excitements of my reason and my blood,
+    And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
+    The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
+    That for a fantasy and trick of fame
+    Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
+    Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
+    Which is not tomb enough and continent
+    To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
+    My thoughts be bloody or nothing worth!"_
+
+The beautiful Ophelia becomes insane after her father's death, and wanders
+about the castle singing disjointed love songs and uttering musings.
+
+Queen Gertrude says:
+
+    _"How now, Ophelia?"_
+
+She sings:
+
+    _"How should I your true love know
+    From another one?
+    By his cockle hat and staff
+    And his sandal shoon."_
+
+The king asks:
+
+    _"How do you do, pretty lady?"_
+
+She replies:
+
+    _"They say the owl was a banker's daughter;
+    Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be."_
+
+Laertes returns from France and finds his sister insane from grief over the
+loss of her father, and viewing this innocent wreck parading palace halls,
+exclaims:
+
+    _"Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
+    O heavens! is it possible a young maid's wits
+    Should be as mortal as an old man's life?"_
+
+Ophelia unconsciously sings:
+
+    _"They bore him barefaced on the bier;
+    Hey no nonny, nonny hey nonny;
+    And in his grave rained many a tear--
+    Fare you well, my dove!"_
+
+Holding a spray of flowers in her hands she fitfully plucks them and
+murmurs:
+
+    _"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance;
+    Pray you, love, remember;
+    And there is pansies, that's for thoughts;
+    There's fennel for you, and columbines;
+    There's rue for you, and here's some for me;
+    We may call it herb of grace on Sunday;
+    O, you must wear your rue with a difference.
+    There's a daisy; I would give you some violets--
+    But they withered all when my father died!"_
+
+Hamlet and his party in sailing for England encounter a war-like pirate
+ship, and in the fight and grapple Hamlet alone is taken prisoner and his
+keepers go to destruction.
+
+He suddenly appears at Elsinore, and goes to the churchyard, where a grave
+is being prepared for Ophelia, who was drowned in a garden stream in her
+mad ramblings.
+
+Hamlet converses philosophically with the grave diggers about the bones,
+skulls and greatness of a politician, courtier, lady, lawyer, tanner; and
+when the skull of the old king's jester is thrown out of the grave after a
+sleep of twenty-three years, Hamlet, speaking to Horatio, says:
+
+    _"Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio;
+    A fellow of infinite jest, of most
+    Excellent fancy, he hath borne me
+    On his back a thousand times, and now
+    How abhorred in my imagination
+    It is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung
+    Those lips that I have kissed, I know not
+    How oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols?
+    Your songs? Your flashes of merriment,
+    That were wont to set the table in a roar?
+    Not one now, to mock your own grinning!
+    Quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber,
+    And tell her, let her paint an inch thick,
+    To this favor she must come;
+    Make her laugh at that!"_
+
+The funeral procession with the corpse of Ophelia now appears, Laertes,
+King, Queen, train, and priests attending.
+
+The priests tell Laertes that were it not for "great command" his sister's
+body "should in ground unsanctified have lodged till the last trumpet,"
+because of alleged suicide.
+
+Laertes peremptorily says:
+
+    _"Lay her in the earth
+    And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
+    May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
+    A ministering angel shall my sister be
+    When thou liest howling in perdition."_
+
+Laertes and Hamlet, both overpowered with frantic grief, leap into the
+new-made grave and struggle for precedence of affection, the former
+exclaiming:
+
+    _"Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
+    Till of this flat a mountain you have made
+    To o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
+    Of blue Olympus!"_
+
+Hamlet, replying to the King, Queen and Laertes, says:
+
+    _"I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers,
+    Could not, with all their quantity of love
+    Make up my sum:
+    And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
+    Millions of acres on us, till our ground
+    Singeing his pate against the burning zone
+    Make Ossa like a wart!"_
+
+Hamlet tells his friend, Horatio, how on his voyage to England he
+discovered that King Claudius gave commission to his enemies to send his
+head to the block. Hamlet says:
+
+    _"Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
+    When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us
+    There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
+    Rough-hew them how we will."_
+
+King Claudius seeing no other way to get rid of Hamlet, consults his secret
+courtiers and brews up the passion existing between Laertes and himself,
+proposing that they fence with rapiers for a great prize, the King betting
+that in twelve passes of swords Laertes makes not three hits on Hamlet.
+
+The grand contest for excellence in sword-play comes off in the main hall
+of the palace, while the King, Queen, lords and courtiers await the
+entrance of Hamlet.
+
+The rapier point handed by the King to Laertes, was dipped in deadly
+poison, so that it but touch the flesh of Hamlet certain death prevailed,
+and even of the wine cups set on the table to quench the thirst of the
+artistic fencers, one was poisoned and intended for Hamlet's dissolution.
+
+Laertes was in the poison plot, and Hamlet felt in his soul that foul play
+was intended, but in the general scramble and conclusion he hoped to wipe
+off the score of his vengeance from the slate of royal iniquity and
+slaughter.
+
+Trumpet and cannon sound for beginning the sword contest.
+
+First passes favored Hamlet, and the King, grasping the poison wine cup,
+says:
+
+    _"Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
+    Here's to thy health!"_ (Offering him the cup.)
+
+Hamlet replies:
+
+    _"Give Laertes the cup,
+    I'll play this bout first; set it by a while."_
+
+Hamlet makes another pass and touches Laertes, and the Queen grasps the
+poison cup in her excitement and drinks to her son.
+
+The King impulsively says:
+
+    _"Gertrude, do not drink!"_ (Aside) _"It is the
+    poisoned cup!"_
+
+The Queen, as God and Fate would have it, says stubbornly:
+
+    _"I will, my lord, I pray you pardon me!"_
+
+In the third round Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poisoned-pointed rapier,
+and in the struggle Hamlet grasps Laertes' rapier and in turn wounds his
+antagonist.
+
+At this moment the Queen falls off her throne, and dying, says to Hamlet:
+
+    _"O, my dear Hamlet; the drink, the drink; I
+    am poisoned!"_
+
+Laertes then falls, and Hamlet, seeing through the plot, exclaims:
+
+    _"O, villainy! Ho! let the door be locked;
+    Treachery! seek it out!"_
+
+Laertes makes the dying confession of his treachery:
+
+    _"It is here, Hamlet; Hamlet, thou art slain;
+    No medicine in the world can do thee good,
+    In thee there is not half an hour of life;
+    The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
+    Unbated and envenomed; the foul practice
+    Hath turned itself on me, lo, here I lie,
+    Never to rise again; thy mother's poisoned;
+    I can no more; the King, the King is to blame!"_
+
+Then Hamlet, as a lion rushing on his prey, exclaims:
+
+    _"The point envenomed too,
+    Then, venom, to thy work."_
+        (Stabs the King.)
+
+The King falls and says: "I am but hurt"; while Hamlet grasps the poisoned
+cup of wine and dashes it down the throat of the guilty monster,
+exclaiming:
+
+    _"Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
+    Drink off this potion: is thy union here?--
+    Follow my mother!"_ (King dies.)
+
+Laertes' last words:
+
+    _"The King is justly served;
+    Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet."_
+
+Hamlet replies:
+
+    _"Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
+    I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu!
+    You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
+    That are but mutes or audience to this act,
+    Had I but time,--as this fell sergeant--Death,
+    Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you--
+    But let it be. Horatio, I am dead!
+    Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
+    To the unsatisfied.
+    O, I die, Horatio;
+    The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit,
+    I cannot live to hear the news from England;
+    But I do prophesy the election lights
+    On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice;
+    So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
+    Which have solicited. The rest is silence!"_ (Dies.)
+
+And then to close the scene of slaughter, the noble and faithful Horatio,
+bending over the body of his princely friend, exclaims:
+
+    _"Now cracks a noble heart; Good night, sweet prince,
+    And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"_
+
+Such tumultuous applause I never heard in a theatre, and shouts for "The
+Ghost" and "Hamlet" prevailed until William and Burbage came from behind
+the curtain and made a triple bow to the audience as the clock in the tower
+of Saint Paul struck the midnight hour.
+
+    _The lesson in great Hamlet taught,
+    Is that a throne is dearly bought
+    By lawless love and bloody deeds,
+    Which fester like corrupted weeds,
+    And smell to heaven with poison breath
+    Involving all in certain death.
+    For fraud and murder can't be hid
+    Since Eve and Cain did what they did
+    And left us naked through the world,
+    Like meteors in midnight hurled,
+    To darkle in this trackless sphere,
+    Not knowing what we're doing here!_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. CORONATION OF KING JAMES.
+
+    _"All that lives must die,
+    Passing through nature to eternity."_
+
+    _"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."_
+
+    _"What have kings that privates have not too,
+    Save ceremony?"_
+
+
+The New Year of sixteen hundred and three brought no consolation or
+happiness to Queen Elizabeth. Her reign of forty-four years had been
+bloody, but patriotic; and while she had long since passed the noonday of
+her glory, her sunset of life hastened to its setting with a fevered brain
+and tortured heart, to think that she had not one real friend living, but
+surrounded by cunning courtiers, who were already manipulating for the
+favor and patronage of King James.
+
+    _Like a blasted pine on a mountain peak,
+    She moaned and sighed every day and week;
+    Awaiting the deadly, stormy gust
+    That laid her low in the crumbling dust._
+
+To amuse her lingering hours of grief Lord Cecil desired the Shakspere
+Company to give its new version of "Love's Labor's Lost" before the Queen
+in the grand reception hall at Richmond.
+
+Burbage went to the castle and made all the preliminary preparations for
+the play, and on the night of the second of February, 1603, the fantastic
+love play was given for the amusement of the Virgin Queen. She sat in regal
+solitude, and with mock laughter tried to enjoy the mimic show.
+
+The royal audience was great in rank, beauty, wealth and intellect, yet
+through the various scenes of the light-hearted drama, Elizabeth only swung
+her head, muttered and sighed, while her courtiers evinced great amusement
+at the predicament of the various lovers in the play. Nothing can minister
+to a mind diseased.
+
+The Queen professed great disappointment at the absence of Shakspere from
+the performance--"on account of sickness," as Burbage told her Royal
+Highness. But William and myself remained at our rooms at Temple Bar that
+evening working on the first draughts of "Macbeth" to catch the praise and
+patronage of King James, the Scotch-Englishman.
+
+Since the execution of Essex and imprisonment of Southampton Shakspere
+never said a word in praise of Elizabeth, and when he heard of her death on
+the 26th of March, 1603, he betrayed no feeling of grief, but on the
+contrary, expressed delight that the way was now clear for the release of
+Southampton and other victims of Elizabeth from the Tower.
+
+Several weeks before her death Elizabeth was afflicted with a choking
+sensation, and the ghosts of her murdered sister--Mary, Queen of Scots, and
+her former lover, the beheaded Earl of Essex, appeared nightly.
+
+Cecil asked her a few days before she died how she felt, when she muttered,
+"My lord, I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck."
+
+Thus a cruel, bloody conscience sat like a fiend over her dying sighs and
+groans, and though surrounded with the wealth and glory of the world, the
+Virgin Queen stepped into eternity with only the memory of a successful
+tyrant to light her to the Pluto realms of her father, King Henry the
+Eighth!
+
+Her funeral procession and burial in Westminster Abbey was the grandest
+exhibition of royal pomp and magnificence. The whole population seemed to
+fill all the alleys, streets and parks of the great city, with the army and
+navy leading the funeral cortege, while the great bells from steeple, tower
+and temple rang out their periodical wail of sonorous sounds for
+twenty-four hours.
+
+The body of Elizabeth had been scarcely cold in death when Lord Cecil and
+the Royal Council proclaimed James of Scotland, King of England, Ireland,
+Scotland and France, tumbling over each other in a mad race to throw
+themselves prostrate before the rising sun, forgetting in a day the honors
+and benefactions showered upon them for forty years by their late mistress.
+
+    _And thus we see from age to age,
+    The greed of man on every page;
+    No matter whether young or old,
+    His strife in life is search for gold!_
+
+King James left Edinburgh on the 5th of April with a royal escort for
+London, and by easy stage from town to town and castle to castle, made a
+triumphal march to London, where he arrived on the 7th of May, 1603,
+putting up at the Whitehall Palace. The lords of the realm and millions of
+faithful subjects gave James their loyal adhesion and support, lauding him
+to the skies as monarch of the realm and defender of the Faith. Hope had no
+thorns in her crown.
+
+Protestants and Catholics alike, on their first rush of spontaneous
+patriotism, made a bid for the patronage of the new king, who, although
+reared a Protestant, was known to have sympathy for certain Catholic lords,
+who tried to save his mother--Mary, Queen of Scots, from the fatal block.
+James never forgave Elizabeth for the murder of his mother, and in his
+inmost heart despised his predecessor.
+
+King James after his coronation and triumphal entry into London on the 15th
+of March, 1604, ordered a partial jail delivery, releasing hundreds of
+prisoners in Scotland, Ireland and England, exempting only highway and
+house robbers, murderers, and those who had committed overt acts of treason
+against the crown.
+
+Many political prisoners had been immured in the Tower and other state
+prisons on trivial or trumped up charges, preferred by jealous courtiers on
+personal or religious grounds.
+
+James was very friendly to the dramatic profession, and granted a charter
+to the Shakspere Company to play at the Blackfriars, Globe, Prince, Fortune
+and Curtain theatres.
+
+In the coronation procession nine of the "Kings Company" appeared dressed
+out in fantastic array, wearing four yards and a half each of silk-scarlet
+cloth.
+
+The nine chief actors thus honored by the King were William Shakspere,
+Augustine Phillips, Laurence Fletcher, John Hemmings, William Sley, Robert
+Armin, Henry Condell, Richard Cowley and Richard Burbage.
+
+King James sent for Shakspere and Burbage and told them to be ever in
+readiness as the King's servants to perform at any of the palaces that he
+might entertain domestic or foreign guests, and assured them that the
+puritanical policy that had hounded them in the past should not prevail
+during his reign, believing that the stage, properly managed, was as great
+an educator for the people as the church.
+
+When William told me of this interview with the King I expressed great
+delight, with the other literary bohemians that now there sat on the throne
+of old Albion, a patron of poetry, painting, music and sculpture.
+
+The Church of Rome and the Church of England had been battling for nearly a
+hundred years in Britain for the mastery; and although the devotees of
+Luther's Reformation had cracked the creed of popes and princes, there was
+a general demand for a new version and translation of the Bible, cutting
+out the Catholicism of the old book and expurgating the vulgarity and
+superstition engrafted on the "Word of God" by the apostles and bishops of
+the first, second and third centuries, after Christ had been crucified for
+the sins of all mankind.
+
+Curious kind of celestial justice, to kill any man for my sins and crimes?
+I prefer to suffer for my own sins and not fall back on a "scapegoat" to
+carry them off into the wilderness.
+
+On the first of September, 1604, a great religious conclave was held at
+Hampton Court by the established church and the Puritans, and there it was
+determined to make a new, revised and complete edition of the Bible, by the
+royal authority of King James.
+
+On the first of May, 1607, forty-seven of the most learned men of the
+British realm assembled in three parties at Oxford, Cambridge and
+Westminster to make a new Bible for the guidance of mankind. Hebrew, Greek
+and Latin scholars made up the great conclave; and after four years of
+detailed labor the King James edition of the Bible was published to the
+world, cutting loose forever from the power of Rome.
+
+Although the "Word of God" has been revised several times since by man
+there are yet a large number of sentences and verses in the Old and New
+Testament that might be expurgated in the interest of decency, reason and
+science.
+
+This electric age is too rapid and wise to gulp down the obsolete doctrine
+of ancient fanaticism, and the preachers of to-day are painfully alarmed at
+the decreasing number of pewholders and patrons, who once listened to their
+rigmarole platitudes or eloquent dissertations on the power and locution of
+an unknown God.
+
+On Christmas Eve, 1607, the "King's Players," with Shakspere and Burbage in
+the respective roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, produced that great
+historical play at the grand reception room of Whitehall, in the presence
+of King James and the nobles of his court, surrounded by the ministers and
+diplomats from all the civilized nations of the world.
+
+I never saw a grander audience, interspersed with the most beautiful ladies
+of the world, who shone in their jewels and diamonds like a field of
+variegated wild flowers, besprinkled with the morning dew.
+
+The witches in the play seemed to startle the King, and more than ever
+convince him that these inhabitants of earth and air were all of a reality,
+and should be destroyed wherever found, believing that they held the
+destiny of man in the caldron of their incantations.
+
+    _"Come, come, you spirits
+    That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
+    And fill me from the crown to the toe, top full
+    Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
+    Stop up the access and passage to remorse;
+    That no compunctious visitings of nature
+    Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
+    The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
+    And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
+    Wherever in your sightless substances
+    You wait on nature's mischief; come, thick night,
+    And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!
+    That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;
+    Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark!"_
+
+This speech of the devilish Lady Macbeth made a deep impression on the
+audience, and caused the King to squirm in his throne chair at the
+contemplation of the murder of Duncan, but when William entered as Macbeth
+and rendered the following speech James wished himself a million miles
+away, and yet applauded to the echo the murdering thoughts of the Scottish
+chieftain:
+
+    _"If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well
+    It were done quickly. If the assassination
+    Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
+    With his surcease, success; that but this blow
+    Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
+    But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,--
+    We'd jump the life to come; but, in these cases
+    We still have judgment here; that we but teach
+    Bloody instructions, which being taught, return
+    To plague the inventor. This evenhanded justice
+    Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice,
+    To our own lips. He's here in double trust;
+    First as I am his kinsman and his subject,
+    Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
+    Who should against his murderer shut the door,
+    Not bear the knife himself. Besides, this Duncan
+    Hath born his faculties so meek, hath been
+    So clear in his great office, that his virtues
+    Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
+    The deep damnation of his taking off;
+    And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
+    Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
+    Upon the sightless coursers of the air,
+    Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
+    That tears shall drown the wind; I have no spur
+    To prick the sides of my intent, but only
+    Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
+    And falls on the other!"_
+
+Still brooding on the murder of Duncan, Macbeth says:
+
+    _"Is this a dagger which I see before me,
+    The handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee;
+    I have thee not, and yet I see thee still,
+    Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
+    To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
+    A dagger of the mind; a false creation,
+    Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain?
+    I see thee yet in form as palpable
+    As this which now I draw.
+    Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;
+    And such an instrument I was to use.
+    Mine eyes are made the fools of the other senses,
+    Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still;
+    And on thy blade and handle, gouts of blood,
+    Which was not so before, there's no such thing;
+    It is the bloody business, which informs
+    Thus to mine eyes, now o'er the one-half world
+    Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
+    The curtained sleeper; now witchcraft celebrates
+    Pale Hecate's offerings, and withered murder
+    Alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf,
+    Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace
+    With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
+    Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth
+    Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
+    The very stones prate of my whereabout,
+    And take the present horror from the time,
+    Which now suits with it. While I threat, he lives,
+    Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives;
+    I go and it is done; the bell invites me.
+    Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
+    That summons thee to heaven or to hell!"_
+
+After the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth is constantly haunted with the
+ghost of her victim, and in midnight hours, sick at soul, walks in her
+sleep, talking of her bloody deed:
+
+    _"Out damned spot! out I say!
+    Here's the smell of the blood still;
+    All the perfumes of Arabia
+    Will not sweeten this little hand!"_
+
+And then retiring to her purple couch, amidst the cries of her waiting
+woman, she dies with insane groans echoing through her castle halls.
+
+Macbeth, the pliant, cowardly, ambitious tool of his wicked wife, is at
+last surrounded by Macduff and his soldiers, and informed that his lady is
+dead.
+
+And then soliloquizing on time and life, he utters these philosophic
+phrases:
+
+    _"She should have died hereafter;
+    There would have been a time for such a word;
+    To-morrow; and to-morrow, and to-morrow
+    Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
+    To the last syllable of recorded time;
+    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
+    The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
+    Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
+    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
+    And then is heard no more. It is a tale,
+    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury--
+    Signifying nothing!"_
+
+And then, in the forest in front of the castle Macbeth is at last brought
+to bay and killed by Macduff; but the murderer of Duncan, brave to the
+last, exclaims:
+
+    _"Yet I will try the last; before my body
+    I throw my warlike shield; lay on Macduff,
+    And damned be him that first cries, Hold, enough!"_
+
+A whirlwind of applause echoed through the royal halls at the conclusion of
+the great Scotch historical drama, and Shakspere was loudly called before
+the footlights, making a general bow to the audience, and paying deep, low
+courtesy to the King, who beckoned him to the throne chair, and placed
+about his neck a heavy golden chain with a miniature of His Majesty
+attached. William was glorified.
+
+    _"Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
+    With most miraculous organ!"_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+SHAKSPERE AS MONOLOGIST. KING JAMES.
+
+    _"He lives in fame that died in virtue's cause."_
+
+    _"The king-becoming graces
+    Are justice, verity, temperance, stableness,
+    Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
+    Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude."_
+
+
+Shakspere became a prime favorite of King James, and occasionally he
+entertained the Bard at Whitehall Palace, introducing him to the bishops,
+cardinals and lords, who were interested in the revision of the Bible. They
+were astonished at the detailed knowledge of Shakspere, touching the "Word
+of God;" and when he entered into a dissertation of the Hebrew, Greek and
+Latin philosophers and "divines" who concocted the history of the ancients,
+they marveled at his native erudition.
+
+These modern preachers had been educated and empurpled in the classical
+ruts of ancient superstitious divinity, while William communed with
+immediate nature, and taught lessons of virtue and vice on the dramatic
+stage that impresses the rushing world, far more than dictatorial dogmas or
+pulpit platitudes.
+
+Shakspere was a constant searcher of all religious bibles, and particularly
+pondered on the Christian story of the creation, prophecies, crucifixion
+and revelation. Paganism was the advanced guard of Christianity!
+
+Monks, priests, preachers, bishops, cardinals, popes, princes, kings,
+emperors and czars had exercised their minds and hands as commentators on
+the old philosophy of an unknown God; and William saw no reason why he
+should not extract from or paraphrase the best logical phrases and
+sentences of the Bible.
+
+His sonnets and plays are filled with the hidden meaning of the scriptures,
+and those who read closely and delve deeply into the works of the Bard of
+Avon will need no better moral teacher. His axioms and epigrams are used
+to-day as the proverbial philosophy of practical life, and the whole world
+is indebted to the sons of a carpenter and a butcher for the greatest
+pleasure and philosophy that has ever been enunciated on the globe!
+
+The years 1611, 1612 and 1613 found William at the pinnacle of his dramatic
+glory, and like a ripe philosopher he finished his most thoughtful plays,
+"Timon of Athens," "A Winter's Tale," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Pericles,"
+"Cymbeline," "Henry the Eighth," and his cap sheaf in the grain field of
+thought, "The Tempest."
+
+The constant intellectual labor of Shakspere began to tell on his body, but
+his mind like a slumbering volcano, emitted flashes of heat and light,
+irradiating the midnight of literary mediocrity and gilding his declining
+days with golden flashes of fame and fortune.
+
+He sold his interest in the Blackfriars and Globe theatres, and purchased
+property in London and Stratford, making every preparation as a wise and
+thrifty man for himself and his children and family. William ever kept an
+eye on the glint and glory of gold, and while his bohemian theatrical
+companions were squandering their shillings at midnight taverns with
+"belles and beaux" he "put money in his purse," and kept it there.
+
+    _Gold is power everywhere;
+    Best of friends in toil and care;
+    And it surely will outwear
+    Royal purple here or there!_
+
+King James, in searching for an alliance to strengthen his throne by a
+marriage with his beautiful and brainy daughter, Elizabeth, finally hit
+upon the Elector Frederick, Count Palatine of Germany, and in the spring of
+1613 all the loyal nobility of England were delighted that a matrimonial
+alliance had been made with a Protestant prince.
+
+While King James lent his official power to the Protestant religion and
+aided the Reformation in its rapid encroachments upon the papal power of
+Rome, he socially and clandestinely gave ear to the priests, bishops and
+cardinals of the Catholic church.
+
+The ceremonials incident to the marriage of Frederick and Elizabeth were
+splendid in the songs, dances, masques, parades, fireworks, and dramatic
+entertainments at Whitehall.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A dozen of the most appropriate plays of Shakspere were enacted before
+the nobility of the realm; and the diplomatic corps from foreign lands were
+greatly charmed by the magnificence of the theatrical displays.
+
+The King spent one hundred thousand dollars in the palace and London
+festivities of the marriage of his beautiful daughter, and he secretly
+pawned his word and jewels to secure the ready cash.
+
+As an intellectual climax to the splendid, royal nuptials, King James
+invited to the wedding banquet three thousand of the most noted men and
+women of the world and informed his guests that at the conclusion of the
+feast the most wonderful dramatic artist of the age--William Shakspere,
+would recite in monologue from his own plays rare bits of philosophic
+eloquence.
+
+The benevolent reader will be glad to know and see that I have carefully
+preserved the following autographic note of His Majesty King James,
+inviting William to the wedding banquet:
+
+     "WHITEHALL, Feb. 14th, 1613.
+
+     "To WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, "Our Royal
+     Dramatic Poet.
+
+     "GREAT SIR: You will appear this evening at seven o'clock, at
+     Whitehall, to entertain by monologue, at nuptial banquet, three
+     thousand guests.
+
+     "JAMES, Rex."
+
+The Archbishop of Canterbury tied the nuptial knot. The bride and groom,
+arrayed in white satin and German purple, respectively, looked magnificent
+as they knelt at the palace altar to receive the final blessing of the
+Episcopal Church amid the glorious greetings of wealth and power.
+
+Fourteen salutes from the royal artillery in honor of Frederick and
+Elizabeth and St. Valentine's Day, echoed from the heights of Whitehall,
+and carrier pigeons with love notes were sent flying over the temples,
+churches and towers of London to notify all loyal subjects that the throne
+of old Albion had been strengthened by an infusion of Germanic blood.
+
+Promptly at seven o'clock St. Valentine's evening, Richard Burbage, Ben
+Jonson, Shakspere and myself drove up in our festooned carriage to the
+palace portals of Whitehall, and were ushered into the presence of the
+great assembly doing honor to the royal bride and groom, Frederick and
+Elizabeth.
+
+The King sat on a throne chair at the head of the banquet board, with his
+daughter and son-in-law on his left, while the Queen sat on his right.
+
+The other royal guests were seated according to their ancestral rank, while
+our dramatic quartette occupied a special table, William at the head on the
+right of the King and Queen, elevated as an improvised stage, with
+Shakspere, the most intellectual man of the world, "the observed of all
+observers!"
+
+The play of knife and fork, laugh and jest, toast and talk lasted for two
+hours, and then as the foam on the brim of the beakers began to sparkle,
+the King, in his royal robes arose, and said:
+
+"My loyal subjects, health and prosperity to Great Britain and Germany, and
+love and truth for Frederick and Elizabeth."
+
+The three thousand guests standing responded with a storm of cheers, and
+then the King remarked:
+
+"We are honored to-night by the presence of William Shakspere, our most
+loyal and intellectual subject, who will now address you in logic and
+philosophy from his own matchless plays."
+
+(Lord Bacon looked as if he wanted to crawl under the table at the King's
+compliment to the Bard of Avon.)
+
+Shakspere arose, dressed in a dark purple suit, knee breeches and short
+sword by his side, bowed majestically, and for two hours entranced the
+royal assembly with these eloquent pen pictures of humanity:
+
+    _My good friends;
+    I'll skip across the fields of thought
+    And pluck for you the sweetest flowers,
+    That I have from Dame Nature caught
+    To cheer the lingering, leaden hours.
+    While vice and virtue side by side
+    Go hand in hand adown the years,
+    Virtue alone, remains the bride
+    To banish all our falling tears;
+    And here to-night like stars above
+    These flowers of beauty blush and bloom--
+    Commanding honest human love,--
+    Immortal o'er the voiceless tomb!_
+
+Othello thus defends himself against the charge of bewitching Desdemona:
+
+    _"Most potent, grave and reverend signiors,
+    My very noble and approved good masters,
+    That I have taken away this old man's daughter,
+    It is most true; true, I have married her;
+    The very head and front of my offending
+    Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in speech,
+    And little blessed with the set phrase of peace;
+    For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith,
+    Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used
+    Their dearest action in the tented field;
+    And little of this great world can I speak,
+    More than pertains to feats of broil and battle;
+    And therefore, little shall I grace my cause
+    In speaking for myself; yet, by your gracious patience
+    I will a round unvarnished tale deliver
+    Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,
+    What conjuration, and what mighty magic,
+    (For such proceeding I am charged withal)
+    I won his daughter with!"_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _"Her father loved me, oft invited me;
+    Still questioned me the story of my life,
+    From year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes
+    That I have passed.
+    I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
+    To the very moment that he bade me tell it.
+    Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances
+    Of moving accidents, by food and field;
+    Of hair-breadth 'scapes, the imminent deadly breach;
+    Of being taken by the insolent foe,
+    And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence
+    And demeanor in my travel's history;
+    Wherein of caverns vast and deserts idle,
+    Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,
+    It was my hint to speak, such was the process
+    And of the cannibals that each other eat,
+    The anthropophagi, and men whose heads
+    Do grow beneath their shoulders. These things to hear
+    Would Desdemona seriously incline;
+    But still the house affairs would draw her thence;
+    Which ever as she could with haste despatch,
+    She'd come again, and with a greedy ear
+    Devour up my discourse; which I observing
+    Took once a pliant hour; and found good means
+    To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart,
+    That I would all my pilgrimage dilate
+    Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
+    But not intentively; I did consent;
+    And often did beguile her of her tears,
+    When I did speak of some distressful stroke
+    That my youth suffered. My story being done
+    She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;
+    She swore--in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;
+    'Twas pitiful; 'twas wondrous pitiful;
+    She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished,
+    That heaven had made her such a man, she thanked me,
+    And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
+    I should but teach him how to tell my story,
+    And that would woo her. Upon this hint, I spake;
+    She loved me for the dangers I had passed;
+    And I loved her that she did pity them.
+    This only is the witchcraft I have used,
+    Here comes the lady, let her witness it!"_
+
+Timon of Athens, a wealthy, spendthrift lord, becomes bankrupt by his
+generous entertainment of friends, but maddened by their ingratitude,
+retires to a forest cave by the sea, giving this parting curse to the
+people of Athens, and later scattering gold among a band of thieves. Hear
+the self-ruined epicure:
+
+    _"Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall
+    That girdlest in those wolves! Dive in the earth,
+    And fence not Athens! Matrons turn incontinent!
+    Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools,
+    Pluck the grave, wrinkled senate from the bench
+    And minister in their steads! To general filths
+    Convert of the instant, green virginity!
+    Do it in your parents' eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast;
+    Rather than render back, out with your knives,
+    And cut your trusters' throats! bound servants steal!
+    Large-handed robbers your grave masters are;
+    And kill by law! maid, to thy master's bed;
+    Thy mistress is of the brothel! son of sixteen,
+    Pluck the lined crutch from the old, limping sire;
+    With it beat out his brains! piety, and fear
+    Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth,
+    Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighborhood,
+    Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
+    Decrees, observances, customs and laws,
+    Decline to your confounding contraries,
+    And yet confusion live! Plagues incident to men,
+    Your potent and infectious fevers heap
+    On Athens, ripe for stroke! thou cold sciatica,
+    Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt
+    As lamely as their manners! lust and liberty
+    Creep in the minds and marrows of your youth;
+    That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
+    And drown themselves in riot! itches, blains,
+    Sow all the Athenian blossoms; and their crop
+    Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath;
+    That their society, as their friendship, may
+    Be merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee,
+    But nakedness, thou detestable town!_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _You must eat men. Yet thanks I must you con,
+    That you are thieves professed; that you work not
+    In holier shapes; for there is boundless theft
+    In legal professions. Rascal thieves;
+    Here's gold; go, suck the subtle blood of the grape,
+    Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth
+    And so 'scape hanging; trust not the physician;
+    His antidotes are poison, and he slays
+    More than you rob; take wealth and lives together;
+    Do villainy, do, since you profess to do it,
+    Like workmen. I'll example you with thievery;
+    The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
+    Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
+    And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
+    The sea's a thief, whose liquid surges resolves
+    The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief,
+    That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
+    From general excrement; each thing's a thief;
+    The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
+    Have unchecked theft! Love not yourselves; away--
+    Rob one another! There's more gold; cut-throats;
+    All that you meet are thieves! To Athens, go,
+    Break open shops! Nothing can you steal
+    But thieves do lose it!"_
+
+Jaques, in the forest of Arden, discourses to the exiled Duke of the fools
+of fortune, and the nature of man.
+
+    "_A fool, a fool!--I met a fool in the forest
+    A motley fool;--a miserable world!
+    As I do live by food, I met a fool;
+    Who laid him down and basked him in the sun,
+    And railed on Lady Fortune in good terms.
+    In good set terms,--and yet a motley fool.
+    Good morrow, fool, quoth I. No, sir, quoth he,
+    Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune;
+    And then he drew a dial from his poke;
+    And looking on it with lack-luster eye
+    Says very wisely: It is ten o'clock;
+    Thus may we see, quoth he, how the world wags;
+    'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine;
+    And after an hour more, 'twill be eleven;
+    And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
+    And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot,
+    And thereby hangs a tale! When I did hear
+    The motley fool thus moral on the time,
+    My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
+    That fools should be so deep contemplative;
+    And I did laugh sans intermission,
+    An hour by his dial. O noble fool!
+    A worthy fool! Motley is the only wear!"_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _"All the world's a stage,
+    And all the men and women merely players;
+    They have their exits, and their entrances;
+    And one man in his time plays many parts,
+    His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
+    Mewling and pewking in the nurse's arms;
+    And then the whining school boy, with his satchel,
+    And shining, morning face, creeping like a snail
+    Unwilling to school; and then the lover,
+    Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
+    Made to his mistress' eyebrow; then a soldier;
+    Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
+    Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
+    Seeking the bubble reputation
+    Even in the cannon's mouth; and then the justice;
+    In fair, round belly, with good capon lined,
+    With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
+    Full of wise saws and modern instances,
+    And so, he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
+    Into the lean and slippered pantaloon;
+    With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
+    His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
+    For his shrunk shank; and his big, manly voice,
+    Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
+    And whistles in his sound; Last scene of all
+    That ends this strange, eventful history
+    In second childishness, and mere oblivion;
+    Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything!"_
+
+In "Measure for Measure" the brave Duke, the pure Isabella and cowardly
+Claudio discourse thus on death:
+
+    _"Be absolute for death; either death or life,
+    Shall thereby be sweeter. Reason thus with life,--
+    If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
+    But none but fools would keep; a breath thou art,
+    (Servile to all the skiey influences)
+    That dost this habitation, where thou keepest,
+    Hourly afflict; merely, thou art death's fool;
+    For him thou laborest by thy flight to shun,
+    And yet run'st toward him still; Thou art not noble;
+    For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
+    Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant:
+    For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
+    Of a poor worm! Thy best of rest is sleep,
+    And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
+    Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
+    For thou exist'st on many thousand grains
+    That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
+    For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;
+    And what thou hast forgett'st; Thou art not certain
+    For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
+    After the moon. If thou art rich, thou art poor;
+    For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
+    Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
+    And Death unloads thee! Friend hast thou none;
+    For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire
+    The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
+    Do curse the gout, leprosy, and the rheum
+    For ending thee no sooner; Thou hast nor youth, nor age,
+    But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
+    Dreaming on both; For all thy blessed youth
+    Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
+    Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich
+    Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty
+    To make thy riches pleasant!"_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _"O, I do fear thy courage, Claudio; and I quake
+    Lest thou a feverous life should'st entertain,
+    And six or seven winters more respect
+    Than a perpetual honor. Dar'st thou die?
+    The sense of death is most in apprehension;
+    And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
+    In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
+    As when a giant dies!
+    Ay, Isabella, but to die, and go we know not where;
+    To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
+    This sensible, warm motion to become
+    A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
+    To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
+    In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
+    To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
+    And blown with restless violence round about
+    The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
+    Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts
+    Imagine howling! 'Tis too horrible!
+    The weariest and most loathed worldly life
+    That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
+    Can lay on nature, is a paradise
+    To what we fear of death!"_
+
+King Henry the Fourth, on his deathbed thus bitterly rebukes Prince Hal for
+his heartless haste in taking the crown before the last breath leaves his
+father:
+
+    _"Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought;
+    I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.
+    Dost thou so hunger for my empty chair,
+    That thou wilt needs invest thee with mine honors
+    Before thy hour be ripe? O, foolish youth!
+    Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.
+    Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity
+    Is held from falling with so weak a mind
+    That it will quickly drop; my day is dim.
+    Thou hast stolen that, which after some few hours,
+    Were thine without offense; and at my death,
+    Thou hast sealed up my expectation;
+    Thou life did manifest, thou lov'st me not,
+    And thou wilt have me die assured of it.
+    Thou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts;
+    Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
+    To stab at half an hour of my life.
+    What! can'st thou not forbear me half an hour?
+    Then get thee gone; and dig my grave thyself;
+    And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear;
+    That thou art crowned, not that I am dead,
+    Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse
+    Be drops of balm, to sanctify thy head;
+    Only compound me with begotten dust;
+    Give that which gave thee life, unto the worms;
+    Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;
+    For now a time is come to mock at form.
+    Harry the Fifth is crowned; up, vanity!
+    Down royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence!
+    And to the English Court assemble now,
+    From every region, apes of idleness!
+    Now, neighbor confines, purge you of your scum;
+    Have you a ruffian, that will swear, drink, dance,
+    Revel the night; rob, murder and commit
+    The oldest sins, the newest kind of ways!
+    Be happy, he will trouble you no more;
+    England shall double gild his treble guilt;
+    For the Fifth Harry from curbed license plucks
+    The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
+    Shall flesh his tooth in every innocent.
+    O, poor Kingdom, sick with civil blows!
+    When that my care could not withhold thy riots
+    What wilt thou do, when riot is thy care?
+    O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
+    Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!"_
+
+King Lear, the generous old monarch of Britain, in a spasm of parental
+love, bequeathes his dominion to his two daughters, Goneril and Regan, and
+gave nothing to the beautiful Cordelia. Hear the old man rave at his
+ungrateful daughters and the corrupt world:
+
+    _"Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend,
+    More hideous, when thou show'st in a child,
+    Than the sea monster!
+    Hear, nature, hear!
+    Dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose, if
+    Thou did'st intend to make this creature fruitful!
+    Into her womb convey sterility!
+    Dry up in her the organs of increase;
+    And from her degraded body never spring
+    A babe to honor her! If she must teem,
+    Create her a child of spleen; that it may live
+    And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
+    Let it stamp wrinkles on her brow of youth;
+    With falling tears fret channels in her cheeks;
+    Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
+    To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
+    How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
+    To have a thankless child!"_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
+    You cataracts, and hurricanes, spout
+    Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
+    You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
+    Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
+    Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
+    Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world!
+    Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once,
+    That make ingrateful men!
+    Rumble thy belly full! Spit fire! Spout rain!
+    Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters;
+    I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness,
+    I never gave you kingdom, called you children,
+    You owe me no obedience; why then let fall
+    Your horrible pleasure; here I stand your slave,
+    A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man;
+    But yet I call you servile ministers,
+    That have with two pernicious daughters joined
+    Your high-engendered battles 'gainst a head
+    So old as this! I am a man more sinned against
+    Than sinning,..._
+
+            _Ay, every inch a King!
+    When I do stare, see, how the subject quakes!
+    I pardon that man's life; what was thy cause?
+            Adultery;--
+    Thou shalt not die; die for adultery! No!
+    The wren goes to it; and the small gilded fly
+    Does lecher in my sight.
+    Let copulation thrive, for Gloster's bastard son
+    Was kinder to his father than my daughters
+    Got between the lawful sheets;
+    To it luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.--
+    Behold yon simpering dame,
+    Whose face between her forks presageth snow;
+    That minceth virtue, and does shake the head
+    To hear of pleasure's name;
+    The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to it
+    With more riotous appetite.
+    Down from the waist they are centaurs,
+    Though women all above;
+    But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
+    Beneath is all the fiends._
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Through tattered clothes small vices do appear
+    Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold
+    And the strong lance of justice breaks;
+    Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it!"_
+
+Prospero, the Duke philosopher and magician of the "Tempest," is my
+greatest conception, where I command invisible spirits to work out the fate
+of man, and show that love and forgiveness are the greatest attributes.
+Prospero is blessed with a pure and faithful daughter--Miranda, and an
+honorable son-in-law--Ferdinand.
+
+    _"If I have too austerely punished you,
+    Your compensation makes amends; for I
+    Have given you here a thread of mine own life,
+    Or that for which I live; whom once again
+    I tender to thy hand; all thy vexations
+    were but my trials of thy love, and thou
+    Hast strangely stood the test; here afore heaven
+    I ratify this my rich gift. O, Ferdinand,
+    Do not smile at me, that I boost her off,
+    For thou shall find she will outstrip all praise,
+    And make it halt behind her.
+    Then, as my gift, and thine own acquisition,
+    Worthily purchased, take my daughter; But
+    If thou dost break her virgin knot before
+    All sanctimonious ceremonies may
+    With full and holy rites be ministered,
+    No sweet sprinkling shall the heavens let fall
+    To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
+    Sour-eyed disdain, and discord, shall beshrew
+    The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
+    That you shall hate it both; therefore, take heed
+    As Hymen's lamps shall light you!_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _You do look, my son, in a moved sort
+    As if you were dismayed; be cheerful, Sir;
+    Our revels now are ended; these our actors,
+    As I foretold you, were all spirits, and are
+    Melted into air, into thin air;
+    And, like the baseless fabrick of this vision
+    The clod-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
+    The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
+    Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
+    And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
+    Leave not a rock behind; We are such stuff
+    As dreams are made of, and our little life
+    Is rounded with a sleep!_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves;
+    And ye, that on the sands with fruitless feet
+    Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
+    When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that
+    By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,
+    Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
+    Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice
+    To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid
+    (Weak masters though you be), I have bedimmed
+    The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
+    And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
+    Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
+    Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
+    With his own bolt; the strong based promontory
+    Have I made shake; and by the spurs plucked up
+    The pine and cedar; graves, at my command,
+    Have waked their sleepers; gaped, and let them forth,
+    By my so potent art; But this rough magic
+    I here abjure; and when I have required
+    Some heavenly music (which even now I do)
+    To work mine end upon their senses, that
+    This airy charm is for--I'll break my staff,
+    Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
+    And deeper than did ever plummet sound
+    I'll drown my books!"_
+
+The fall of Cardinal Wolsey from the pinnacle of earthly power was the work
+of his own duplicity, greed and fraud, and all ministers of state may take
+warning from this great wreck of unholy ambition! King Henry the Eighth
+sacrificed everything for his physical and religious ambition. Listen and
+profit by the last words of the old, ruined Cardinal:
+
+               _"O, Father Abbot,
+    An old man, broken with the storms of state,
+    Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;
+    Give him a little earth for charity!
+    I have touched the highest point of all my greatness
+    And, from that full meridian of my glory,
+    I haste now to my setting; I shall fall
+    Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
+    And no man see me more!_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _"Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
+    This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth
+    The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
+    And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
+    The third day, comes a frost, a killing frost;
+    And, when he thinks, good, easy man, full surely
+    His greatness is a ripening--nips his root,
+    And then he falls as I do. I have ventured
+    Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders
+    This many summers in a sea of glory;
+    But far beyond my depth; my high blown pride
+    At length broke under me; and now has left me
+    Weary, and old with service, to the mercy
+    Of a rude stream that must forever hide me.
+    Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye;
+    I feel my heart new opened; O, how wretched
+    Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!
+    There is betwixt that smile he would aspire to,
+    That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
+    More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
+    And when he falls he falls like Lucifer,
+    Never to hope again!
+    The King has gone beyond me, all my glories
+    In that one woman (Anne) I have lost forever;
+    No sun shall ever usher forth mine honors,
+    Or gild again the noble troops that waited
+    Upon my smiles. Go, get thee from me, Cromwell,
+    I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now
+    To be thy lord and master; seek the King;
+    That sun, I pray, may never set! I have told him
+    What and how true thou art; he will advance thee;
+    Some little memory of me will stir him
+    (I know his noble nature) not to let
+    Thy hopeful service perish too. Good Cromwell,
+    Neglect him not, make use now, and provide
+    For thine own future safety.
+    Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear
+    In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me
+    Out of thy honest truth to play the woman.
+    Let's dry our eyes; and thus far hear me, Cromwell;
+    And when I am forgotten, as I shall be
+    And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
+    Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee;
+    Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory,
+    And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor
+    Found thee a way out of his wreck to rise in;
+    A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it!
+    Mark but my fall, and that that ruined me,
+    Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition,
+    By that sin fell the angels; how can man then,
+    The image of his own maker hope to win by it?
+    Love thyself least; cherish those hearts that hate thee;
+    Corruption wins not more than honesty!
+    Still in thy right hand carry gentle place
+    To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not!
+    Let all the aims thou aim'st at be thy country's;
+    Thy God's and Truth's; then if thou fall'st, O, Cromwell,
+    Thou fall'st a blessed martyr; serve the King;
+    And, pray thee, lead me in;
+    There take an enventory of all I have
+    To the last penny; 'tis the King's; my robe
+    And my integrity to heaven, is all
+    I dare now call my own. O, Cromwell, Cromwell,
+    Had I but served my God with half the zeal
+    I served my King, he would not in mine age
+    Have left me naked to mine enemies!"_
+
+At the conclusion of this greatest of monologues King James arose at the
+head of the royal banquet board, and lifting a glass of sparkling
+champagne, proposed three cheers for Shakspere, which were given with
+intense feeling, echoed and re-echoed through those royal halls like
+thunder music from the realms of Jupiter.
+
+The King beckoned William to approach the throne chair, and there, in the
+presence of the nobility of the realm, placed upon his lofty brow a wreath
+of oak leaves, with a monogram crown ring to decorate the digit finger of
+the brilliant Bard.
+
+It was worth the gold and glory of all the ages to have heard the "Divine"
+William scatter his nuggets of eloquence; and until my pilgrimage of a
+thousand years reincarnates me again into the "Island of Immortality," I
+shall cherish that banquet night as the greatest milestone in the memory of
+my ruminating rambles.
+
+    _Glory, like the sun on rushing river,
+    Shines down the years, forever, and forever!_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+STRATFORD. SHAKSPERE'S DEATH. PATRIOTISM DOWN THE AGES.
+
+    _"The sands are numbered that make up my life;
+    Here must I stay, and here my life must end."_
+
+    _"Time is the King of man,
+    For he is their parent, and he is their grave,
+    And gives them what he will, not what they crave."_
+
+
+During the years 1614, 1615 and 1616 Shakspere sauntered about for pleasure
+and business among the bohemians and nobility of London, Oxford and
+Stratford, piecing and renewing his personal and real estate for the
+benefit of his two daughters, Susannah and Judith, and thus making every
+preparation for that eternal sleep that never fails to shut down the pale
+and bloodless eyelids of meandering, melancholy man.
+
+The spectacular play of "King Henry the Eighth" was given at the Globe
+Theatre on the evening of the 29th of June, 1613.
+
+It had been largely advertised as a royal historical dramatic treat, and
+the nobility were there in great force.
+
+William and myself before leaving London occupied a private box as
+spectators on the left of the great stage. The audience numbered nearly two
+thousand, pit, gallery and cockloft being filled to overflowing.
+
+During the third act of the play a cannon was fired, giving a grand salute
+to the mimic King Henry and his royal train as they appeared before the
+assembled multitude.
+
+Part of the gun wadding fired by the mock cannon was thrown on the open
+roof of the Globe, and immediately ignited the thatch, spreading flames
+around the top rim of the great octagonal playhouse.
+
+Shakspere saw at once the danger of stampeding the audience through the two
+great, high doors, and with his natural calmness and imperial courage
+rushed in front of the footlights and said:
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen, there is no danger if you be calm and brave, and
+file out of the building in good order."
+
+"Those near the right and left doors will please go out slowly, and all the
+actors will remain on the stage until the people disappear." At this
+juncture, at the suggestion of William, the actors were ordered to sing
+"God Save the King," and every mortal escaped unhurt from the building. Yet
+two hours after it was a mass of blazing cinders and ashes.
+
+Burbage, Jonson, Fletcher, Drayton, Condell, Heming and Peele continued to
+furnish rare sports and masks for theatrical and court edification, but the
+brilliant star that had shone with undimmed luster for thirty years on the
+dramatic stage of London was only glowing with a lambent light, throwing
+its last rays over the world as it went down in crimson glory over the
+western hills of Warwickshire.
+
+Yet, while the great poet and dramatist himself would never again tread the
+play platform, or throw his sonorous, magic voice over a London audience,
+the great children and characters of his matchless brain would hold the
+dramatic boards and thrill the heart and soul of mankind as long as human
+nature laughed and suffered on the globe.
+
+Shakspere had more self-control than any man I ever met, and his reason was
+ever holding court in his conscience.
+
+    _He, who reigns within himself, and rules
+    His passions, desires and fears, is ever King!_
+
+After thirty years of a wandering battle with Dame Fortune, testing her
+griefs and glories, it was a sweet consolation for William and myself to
+drift back to the scenes of childhood and tread again the streets, roads,
+fields and hills that blessed our boyhood hours.
+
+In the spring of 1614 William and myself wandered over the fields and
+ridges to Coventry, and visited Warwick Castle. The young Earl of Leicester
+gave us a hearty welcome; for the praise that William had received at court
+and the light that dazzled from his lamp of literary fame made him an
+honored guest in cot or palace, strewing about his pathway the flowers of
+faith and affection.
+
+Returning to Stratford one evening in May we stood on the same old hill top
+beyond the Clopton Bridge, looking at the sparkling spires and steeples of
+the town; and all seemed as natural as when we left them in the morning of
+life.
+
+The hills and fields were blooming as of old, the Avon wound its serpentine
+course to the sea, the song of the ploughman and shepherd swelled from the
+vale, the lowing of cattle, strolling homeward for the night echoed among
+the hills, the blackbird, thrush and vagrant crow sang and croaked as they
+hastened with their mates to their feathered families, and the daisies,
+wild roses, hedge rows, hawthorn bushes, and grand old elms and oaks
+bloomed in their everlasting garments of variegated beauty.
+
+As the cardinal colors of the dying day threw their last rays over the
+placid bosom of the Avon, and the murmur of laughing voices floated up from
+the town to mingle, as it were, with the curling smoke from glistening
+chimney tops, William and I scampered down the hill, over the bridge, on by
+the old mill, and entered the open gate of "New Place," as Judith, his
+intellectual daughter, welcomed her famous father with exuberant affection.
+
+Here was rest indeed. For like weather-beaten mariners or soldiers of
+fortune, each of us had been buffeted by the billows of Fate; and yet with
+all the scars she gave, we never knew a day, though cloudy and stormy, that
+we could not see rifts of sunshine breaking through the entanglements of
+adversity.
+
+    _Our mind, a kingdom was, in every clime,
+    With souls triumphant over tide and time;
+    And though the world might frown upon our way
+    We believed in God and sunshine every day!_
+
+The strolling players, literary guild and traveling nobles never failed in
+passing through Stratford to visit Shakspere at his beautiful and
+comfortable home at "New Place." It was Liberty Hall to every guest that
+passed the threshold of the retired Bard, where like a full-rigged ship on
+a summer sea, he moved down in peace, through the sunset beams of a
+brilliant life, accompanied by his friends and affectionate daughters into
+the harbor of rest beneath the walls of old Trinity Church.
+
+Susannah, the oldest daughter, had married Dr. John Hall several years
+before the poet's death, and occupied the old Shakspere house on Henley
+street, and her mother lived with the family, a solace to her daughter and
+beautiful granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall.
+
+Mrs. Shakspere, the buxom Anne Hathaway of vanished years, was entirely
+subdued and found consolation in her devoted daughters and religious
+duties. She could be found at every prayer meeting and Sunday sermon in the
+Shakspere pew of Trinity Church.
+
+William seldom attended Puritan meetings, Episcopal conclaves, or Papist
+masses. He paid formal respect, at long range, to all sacerdotal
+ceremonies, not bothering himself about dogmas, creeds and bulls, put forth
+by little, cunning man for earthly power and financial benefit.
+
+    _He believed in God and in himself,
+    Ignoring those who lived for pelf,
+    And through his age and verdant youth
+    He ever worshiped naked Truth!_
+
+Judith, the beautiful and intellectual daughter, kept house for her
+illustrious father, and entered heartily into all his social and business
+schemes for the improvement of the town of Stratford.
+
+Thus days, weeks, months and years were passed in pleasant conclave with
+literary and neighboring friends, until the winter of 1615 and 1616, when a
+severe throat trouble afflicted the Bard, in conjunction with acute pains
+in the head, that prevented the solace of sleep, and which turned into
+chronic insomnia.
+
+In January, Shakspere, in anticipation of his temporary exit from this
+world, determined to make his will and bequeath his property in detail to
+his daughter, relatives and friends. He called in Francis Collins, a
+solicitor of Warwick, who drew the important document, but it was not
+finally signed and witnessed until the 25th of March, 1616.
+
+William, knowing that his wife would inherit legal dower, one-third of his
+real property, and being cared for by her daughter Susannah, only
+bequeathed to the "former Anne Hathaway," the personal gift of his "second
+best bed."
+
+I asked Shakspere one evening about a month before his death if he intended
+the piece of bed furniture for his wife as a rebuke or a compliment.
+
+He replied: "Jack, if you were not so inquisitive you would not have so
+much knowledge!"
+
+I thanked him for his lucid explanation, and let the incident go at that
+remark.
+
+As he was in a good-natured, facetious mood, I asked him why it was that in
+all his dramatic plays of forty years composition he had never placed on
+the boards a great Irish character, although he had created Egyptian,
+Grecian, Italian, French, German, Danish, Scotch and English
+representatives that would go down the ages in eloquent glory.
+
+I said, "William, you only formulated in Henry the Fifth Captain MacMorris,
+a Scotch-Irish bastard-renegade character, who bears about as much relation
+to a true Irish gentleman as does a shark to a whale, a hawk to an eagle,
+or a lynx to a lion."
+
+"Well, Jack, you know as well as I do that the 'eloquent,' 'brave,' 'Irish
+rebel,' against monarchy and tyrannical power has been the sharpest thorn
+in the sides of English royalty, and that with the enmity of Henry the
+Eighth, Queen Elizabeth, King James, and the London Protestants, a great,
+lofty Irish Catholic character would not have been popular, and ministered
+to our daily desire for pence, shillings and pounds!
+
+"Yet posterity will notice the brave wit and greatness of the Irish race by
+their absence from my business plays."
+
+    _While writing for the sake of Truth,
+    From my wild, daring, earliest youth,
+    You knew I never acted rash
+    Or failed to fill my purse with cash;_
+
+    _For, after all is past and told
+    Among the foolish, wise and old--
+    The plot of life is to enfold
+    Within your grasp, Imperial Gold!_
+
+On the 10th of January, 1616, Judith impulsively married Thomas Quincy,
+without the publication of the church banns, to the scandal of the
+community, but love cared naught for rules or creeds when Nature stood as
+monitor.
+
+Seated one April morning in his private apartment, looking over his
+beautiful garden of vegetables, fruit, flowers, vines and waving elms,
+margined by the murmuring waters of the silver Avon, I asked him if he had
+any special message before leaving life to communicate to the ages.
+
+"Yes, my dear Jack, you, by nature's law must, like the Wandering Jew,
+fulfill your destiny, and 'tramp' out your thousand years ere you join me
+on the 'Island of Immortality.' These precepts I enjoin:
+
+    _The Love and Truth that in my plays abide
+    Shall teach the lesson of equal justice;
+    Nothing that's wrong can prosper on this earth,
+    And though your crime-secret be hid in mounts
+    Of adamant, kissing, loftiest sky,
+    The worm of detection and exposure
+    Shall gnaw its way through rugged, granite ribs
+    And blow your foul wickedness around the world.
+    Men, states and empires, rise and flash like bubbles
+    On the rolling ocean of existence,
+    And then like the false, shimmering vision
+    Of a dream, pass into nameless oblivion.
+    The hours, days, years and ages, lost and gone
+    Are only a moment from the ticking clock
+    Of eternity. And all future time,
+    Incalculable as drops of ocean
+    Or leaves of grass, come and go incessant,
+    Like the balmy airs; or whistling winds
+    That blow o'er tropic or arctic lands.
+    I know and feel that myriad spirits
+    People the vast, circumambient air,--
+    And as my soul within knocks at heart and lips
+    For exit from this crumbling house of corruption,
+    Methinks I see and hear a chorus of
+    Angel spirits beckoning my tired soul
+    Onward and upward to omnipotence.
+    Every blade of grass and flower beautiful;
+    Every star that twinkles in the moonlit sky;
+    Every white-crested billow of the sea;
+    Every child that dreams, laughs and sings in glee;
+    Every thought, pinioned with eternal Hope--
+    Guarantees assurance of Immortality!"_
+
+On the 13th of April, 1616, ten days before the death of Shakspere,
+Burbage, Jonson, Drayton, Florio, Field, Condell, Heming and Jo Taylor came
+down from London by special invitation to enjoy the hospitality of the
+Bard.
+
+Judith made every preparation for their social entertainment, and the "New
+Place" was ablaze with hospitality and dramatic glory for a week.
+
+I shall not enter into the pleasant and eccentric details of these authors
+and actors, but leave it to the imagination of the intelligent reader to
+know what a crowd of brilliant bohemians might do in the evening of life
+talking, laughing and drinking to the memory of friends and days that are
+no more!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Three days before the death of the great luminary of dramatic and poetic
+letters, he called me into his bedroom. He was resting in a reclining chair
+by an oaken desk, looking out on his garden, while the birds of spring were
+chirping, singing and courting among the blooming bushes and trees of his
+beautiful home.
+
+Addressing me in the old familiar way, he said: "Jack, my throat and head
+give me great pain. I long to rest beneath the walls of Old Trinity Church,
+never again to gaze upon its glinting spire through sunrise or sunset
+beams.
+
+"You know I feel a horror at the thought of having my poor old bones
+tumbled out of their grave in future years by vulgar sextons, and to
+prevent disturbance I scribbled off a few weeks ago these poetic lines,
+that I wish you would place above my remains. Promise me this last request,
+and I'll die in the hope of Immortality!"
+
+Gazing intently on the melancholy, dying man, my eyes filled with tears, I
+made the sacred promise, and more than that, I here give the manuscript
+imprint of the original epitaph:
+
+    _STRATFORD, APRIL 1st, 1616._
+
+    _For Jesus' sake, good friends, pass by,
+    While here in peace I lowly lie;
+    Disturb not these cold, tongueless stones
+    That shield my bleaching, crumbling bones,
+    In life I took Dame Nature's part
+    Exemplifying soul and heart,
+    And all my plays were heaven sent
+    To be my lasting monument!_
+
+On the morning of the 23d of April, at six o'clock, Judith came rushing
+into my room, and said that her father was dying. I jumped into my clothes
+and quickly knelt by his bedside, where I found Dr. Hall, Susannah, Mr.
+Quincy, Mrs. Hart, Ben Jonson, and Michael Drayton.
+
+I grasped his hand as he made dying lurches, and asked him how he felt, and
+then opening his great bluish gray eyes for the last time on earth, I could
+hear only his death gurgle expression: "God, Truth and Country!"
+
+Thus passed away the noblest and greatest man that ever graced this earthly
+globe.
+
+The news of his death spread like a prairie fire among the people of
+Stratford and the surrounding villages, and on to Oxford and London, where
+the melancholy wail of his obsequies resounded in the halls of the highest
+court circles, and found the deepest sorrow and regret in the heart of King
+James.
+
+At twelve o'clock on the 25th of April the remains of the Bard were
+followed to Trinity Church by an immense concourse of mourning humanity;
+and there, under the north wall of the old cathedral he was buried,
+seventeen feet below the surface, and left forever with his earthly glory
+and his God.
+
+That very night, as the sun went down, Drayton, Jonson, Burbage and myself
+bade farewell to the daughters and personal friends of the Bard, going by
+fast mail car to Oxford and London.
+
+It was one of the saddest nights I had ever experienced, for my dearest
+friend and lofty teacher would no more humor my lunatic impulses, or guide
+me in the even, broad road of universal truth. With his voice and form
+forever gone, there was nothing left to me but to wander over the
+cheerless, mighty world as a literary pioneer and soldier of fortune,
+using my pen and sword wherever Love and Liberty displayed their banners.
+
+In the great literary whirlpool of London life I drowned for a season my
+soul-felt sorrow in the enchanting fumes of the wine cup, and its
+consequent allurements of variegated, fantastic society.
+
+My destiny of a thousand years of life from birth, looked alternately,
+bleak and glorious, yet Fate being my master, and being endowed with an
+irrepressible, forgiving, laughing and progressive disposition, I called up
+the spirits of the air one midnight hour at the Boar's Head Tavern, and
+exacted from them a promise that wherever I wandered over the earth to
+witness the rise and fall of men and nations, like bubbles on a stormy sea,
+they would strictly obey my command.
+
+    _Ariel, Puck and Oberon
+    Lent me their wings to sail upon
+    Over the land and stormy sea
+    To aid the cause of Liberty.
+    A thousand years from date of birth,
+    Destined to wander over the earth,
+    I'll roll with the ages brave and free,
+    Till I round the capes of eternity!_
+
+I have witnessed the greatest events of the centuries in Europe, Asia and
+Africa, and on the spiritual wings of Truth, rapid as the lightning flash,
+I have sailed; and fought the battles of the people in every land and
+clime, being the compeer and critic of the most illustrious poets,
+philosophers, statesmen and warriors for the past three hundred years. I
+move forward for the liberty of man!
+
+Before leaving old Albion for my investigating flight of centuries, I was a
+painful witness to the decapitation of my great friend, Sir Walter Raleigh,
+whose heroic conduct at the block melted the spectators into tears, and
+brought down loud maledictions on the corrupt head of Lord Bacon, who was
+the principal villain in the final destruction of the great navigator,
+warrior and philosopher.
+
+I listened to the great Raleigh on the 29th of October, 1618, standing by
+the block, addressing the executioner and the multitude, when handling the
+shining axe: "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases!"
+Lying down and fitting himself to the block, the executioner asked him to
+alter the position of his head, when he replied: "It is no matter which way
+the head lies, so the heart be right! Why dost thou not strike? Strike,
+man!" And, then, quick as a flash the glittering axe split the head from
+the shoulders of one of the noblest men of England.
+
+I turned away from the gloomy precincts of the terrible Tower, and cursed
+the falsehood and iniquity of Elizabeth, James and Lord Bacon, jealous
+plotters against growing, illustrious men.
+
+Raleigh in his poem "The Soul's Errand," pictures thus this lying world:
+
+    _"Go, soul, the body's guest,
+    Upon a thankless arrant;
+    Fear not to touch the best,
+    The truth shall be thy warrant;
+    Go, since I needs must die,
+    And give the world the lie!_
+
+    _"Go, tell the court it glows
+    And shines like rotten wood;
+    Go tell the church it shows
+    What's good, and doth no good.
+    If church and court reply,
+    Then give them both the lie!_
+
+    _"Tell men of high condition
+    That manage home and state,
+    Their purpose is ambition,
+    Their practice only hate;
+    And if they once reply
+    Then give them all the lie!"_
+
+Disgusted with the growing cruelties of monarchy and state "reformers," I
+joined a band of Puritans who proposed to leave old Albion, and find in
+North America a home and country where they could worship God in their own
+way, and secure freedom for themselves and children for a thousand years to
+come.
+
+I stood on the prow of the Mayflower as the sun rose over the harbor of
+Plymouth on the 17th of September, 1620, as the good ship sailed away from
+England to the west, with one hundred and one passengers, filled with the
+great spirit of religious and material liberty.
+
+After a very stormy passage of sixty-three days, touching at Cape Cod, we
+made final anchor at Plymouth Rock, on the evening of the 16th of December,
+1620.
+
+That rock-bound, stormy, snowy, forest coast, filled with fierce animals
+and fiercer red men, gave the lonely emigrants a cold and terrible winter
+reception.
+
+    _"The breaking waves dashed high
+    On a stern and rock bound coast,
+    And the woods against a stormy sky
+    Their giant branches tossed.
+    And the heavy night hung dark,
+    The hills and waters o'er
+    When a band of exiles moored their bark
+    On the wild New England shore.
+    Amidst the storm they sang,
+    And the stars heard, and the sea;--
+    And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
+    To the anthem of the free!"_
+
+I stood behind the screens of the royal palace on the 30th of January,
+1649, in the presence of the cruel Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, and the
+fanatical Milton, and saw their glee when the axe of the executioner
+severed the head of King Charles the First, for the delectation of the
+beastly and vulgar multitude that howled approbation of the bloody scene;
+and yet, only twelve years after, I saw the crumbling, dead, naked bodies
+of Oliver Cromwell, his son, Ireton and Bradshaw, trundled along the
+streets of London, grappled by Parliamentary order from their graves, and
+hung on the gallows of Tyburn, their broken bones buried at the foot of the
+scaffold, while their withered, rotten heads were placed on the southern
+coping of Westminster Hall.
+
+Thus, the compensating balances of life and death, right and wrong, forever
+tip the beam of justice.
+
+    _The prince and the pauper,
+    The serf and the slave,
+    Are equal at last--
+    In the dust of the grave!_
+
+I saw the wonderful Muscovite monarch,
+
+PETER THE GREAT,
+
+as he rose out of the huge, brutal giant of Russian force, flash on the
+world like a zigzag meteor, lighting up his imperial dominions with
+barbaric splendor.
+
+At the age of twenty-six, 1698, I saw him working with hammer, chisel, saw
+and axe as a common ship carpenter at Amsterdam and Deptford, entertaining
+ambassadors and kings, while he sat on the crosstrees of a new built ship.
+I met him again on the barren swamps of the Neva and icy shores of the
+Baltic, giving orders for the building of his new capital, St. Petersburg,
+in May, 1703, and in June, 1708, watched the compact columns of the great
+Czar rush down upon Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, and on the plains of
+Pultowa, scatter forever the hitherto unconquerable hosts of Scandinavia;
+and then after a great reign he crowned the peasant girl, Catherine of
+Livonia, Empress of all the Russias, the most energetic and remarkable
+female ruler since the days of Semiramis, Isabella and Elizabeth.
+
+I watched the star of
+
+NAPOLEON
+
+as it first flickered over the rock-rimmed island of Corsica, foam fringed
+by the green waters of the Mediterranean. I saw it glitter over the
+mathematical charity scholar of France, the "puss in boots" at royal
+receptions, the artillery officer at the Bridge of Lodi, the general of the
+French-Italian army, scaling the cloud-kissing Alps in mid winter, bearing
+the eagles of liberty over the plains of Lombardy, on to Milan and Rome,
+until the tramp of the unconquerable Frank echoed through the streets and
+halls of the Caesars, and re-echoed in the lofty aisles and arches of the
+Vatican!
+
+I beheld again the star of this "man of destiny" shine in glorious splendor
+at Maringo, Wagram, Austerlitz, Jena, Leipsic and Ulm, and then as First
+Consul and Emperor, sweeping with his unconquerable columns over the sands
+of Egypt and snows of Russia, until at last the fires and smoke of Moscow
+bedimmed the horizon of his glory, and lit up the funeral pyre of five
+hundred thousand of the best soldiers of France, led to their doom by the
+crazy ambition of a selfish tyrant!
+
+Again I saw him escape from Elba, bare his breast to the guns of his former
+legions and rout royalty from its palace portals, and sweeping for a
+hundred days over the vineclad hills of France, he finally on the 18th of
+June, 1815, marshaled his magnificent army around the plains and hills of
+Waterloo, defying the Austrian, Prussian, Russian and British allied
+armies to the death grapple of the century, and went down to irretrievable
+defeat.
+
+And then after five long years of an exile imprisonment on the barren isle
+of St. Helena, I heard his last gasp, "Head of the Army!"
+
+"With no friend but his sword and no fortune but his talents, he rushed in
+the lists, where rank and wealth and genius had arrayed themselves; and
+competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny.
+
+"A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a pretended patriot, he
+impoverished the country; and in the name of Brutus, he grasped without
+remorse and wore without shame the diadem of the Caesars!
+
+"Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual
+consistency were never united in the same character; a Royalist, a
+Republican and an Emperor; a Mahometan, a Catholic, and a patron of the
+synagogue, a subaltern and a sovereign, a traitor and a tyrant, a Christian
+and infidel, he was through all his vicissitudes, the same stern,
+impatient, inflexible original, the same mysterious, incomprehensible
+self--the man without a model and without a shadow!"
+
+    _A wreck of ambition, deserted, alone,
+    He rode o'er the bones of mankind to a throne;
+    The star of his destiny sunk out of view,
+    Eclipsed in the blood of the famed Waterloo.
+    A marvelous meteor that flashed o'er the wave,
+    To darkle at last in the gloom of the grave.
+    Vain, vain all the pomp of Napoleon's pride,
+    Broken-hearted, alone, disappointed he died,
+    And left to the world but the sound of his name--
+    The fool of ambition, the football of fame!_
+
+I sat at the second story corner window of a wine house in Paris on the
+14th of July, 1789, and gazed on the infuriated, surging mob of a hundred
+thousand Frenchmen, as they stormed the
+
+BASTILE,
+
+and struck a grand and lasting blow against the cruel minions of monarchy,
+raising the banner of equal right, and God-given liberty for all mankind.
+
+Five hundred years of royal wrong and imperial lordly wickedness were
+avenged in an hour, and the liberty cap of the people thrown high in the
+air of freedom to bid defiance to government by tyranny.
+
+Then for four bloody years the surging sea of wealth and power against the
+common people, muscle and manhood, defying royalty, I saw thousands of
+heads go to the block, the executioner of to-day being the executed of
+to-morrow, until a river of blood drenched the gutters of Paris, with the
+people at last on top and triumphant as they shall ever be adown the
+circling ages!
+
+I stood near the guillotine of
+
+LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH
+
+as his head went off on the 31st of January, 1793, and then alternately,
+royalist and commoner were imprisoned and killed by the "committee of
+safety!"
+
+Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday, Marat, Madame Roland, Danton,
+Robespierre and one hundred thousand other mortals, rich and poor, went
+down in the insane, frantic effort for equal rights and eternal justice.
+
+The French Revolution following so soon upon the great American Revolution,
+shouldered the people's cause ahead more than a thousand years, and was
+worth every drop of blood spilled in the triumphal march of freedom!
+
+The blood of the martyr has always watered the roots of the tree of
+Liberty; and in a few more years the devilish hoards of "Divine Right"
+robbers and murderers will be swept into the rubbish heaps of oblivion. God
+grant their speedy destruction! Wolves devouring the provender of the
+people!
+
+On the 22d of February, 1732, I saw rise out of the rolling hills of
+Virginia, a glowing light that sparkled and spread, as it shone in the
+heaven of Colonial advancement.
+
+WASHINGTON,
+
+"first in war, first in peace and in the hearts of his countrymen," was the
+God-given vidette of American freedom; and from the time he took command of
+the Continental Army at Boston on the 3d of July, 1775, until he laid down
+his commission, after nine years of trial and blood, with Cornwallis and
+King George defeated forever, he was the same great and good man and
+President, without a stain on his sword or character.
+
+Standing by his bedside at Mount Vernon, on the 31st of December, 1799, I
+watched his great soul as it took flight for heaven, and heard his last
+words on earth, "'Tis well!"
+
+    _Like some grand mountain shining from afar,
+    Or like the radiance of the morning star,
+    Spreading its silver light throughout the gloom,
+    That gilds the glory of his classic tomb;
+    Mount Vernon keeps his loved and sacred dust--
+    An urn of grief that holds a nation's trust,
+    Where pilgrims bend along the waning years,
+    To gaze upon his grave through pearly tears.
+    His monument in coming years shall stand
+    A Mecca for the brave of every land,
+    And while Potomac waters flash and flow,
+    The fame of Washington shall gain and grow,
+    Adown the ages through the aisles of time--
+    A patriot forever in his prime!
+    Age after age will sweep its course away
+    The work of man will crumble and decay;
+    Yet, on the tide of time from sun to sun,
+    Shall shine the glory of our Washington;
+    And all the stars that in their orbit roll,
+    Around the world from pole to pole,
+    Shall keep his name and fame as true and bright,
+    As yonder sparkling jewels of the night!_
+
+The greatest pioneer of Colonial patriotism and independence, the
+Demosthenes of the American Continent, was the eloquent orator,
+
+PATRICK HENRY,
+
+whose meteors of thought dazzled the nations and made tyrants tremble on
+their thrones.
+
+How well I remember that March morning in 1775, as he rose in the
+legislative halls of Virginia, and uttered that impassioned oration against
+tyranny and the minions of King George.
+
+Even now those eloquent phrases sound in mine ears, and waft me back to the
+scenes and men that made the Republic:
+
+     "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp
+     of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the
+     past, and judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in
+     the conduct of the brutal British ministry for the past ten years to
+     justify the hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace
+     themselves and the house.
+
+     "Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced
+     violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded, and we
+     have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne.
+
+     "The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone, it is to the vigilant,
+     the active, the brave. Our chains are forged; their clanking may be
+     heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable; and let it come.
+     I repeat it, let it come.
+
+     "Our brethren are already in the field; why stand we here idle? What
+     is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or
+     peace so sweet, as to be purchased by the price of chains and slavery?
+
+     "Forbid it, Almighty God!
+
+     "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me
+     Liberty or give me Death!"
+
+The patriotism of the cavaliers of Virginia was fermenting to overflowing,
+while that of the Puritans of Massachusetts was boiling with intense heat
+as the stamp-stampers and tea-tossers of Boston prepared for a deadly
+reception to the robbers and murders of King George on the plains of
+Lexington and Concord on the 19th of April, 1775.
+
+Never can I forget the midnight ride I took with
+
+PAUL REVERE,
+
+on beholding the two lanterns displayed on the belfry of the "Old North
+Church"; I told the tale to Mr. Longfellow, and he forthwith immortalized
+the heroic Paul:
+
+    _"A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
+    A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
+    And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
+    Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
+    That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light
+    The fate of a nation was riding that night,
+    And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight
+    Kindled the land into flame with its heat._
+
+    _"You know the rest, in the books you have read,
+    How the British regulars fired and fled--
+    How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
+    From behind each fence and farm yard wall,
+    Chasing the 'Red Coats' down the lane,
+    Then crossing the fields to emerge again,
+    Under the trees at the turn of the road,
+    And only pausing to fire and load._
+
+    _"So through the night rode Paul Revere;
+    And so through the night went his cry of alarm
+    To every Middlesex village and farm;
+    A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
+    A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door
+    And a word that shall echo forevermore!
+    For born on the night wind of the past,
+    Through all our history to the last,
+    In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
+    The people will waken and listen to hear
+    The hurrying hoof beats of that steed,
+    And the midnight message of Paul Revere."_
+
+How my soul thrills with recollection when I think where I stood in
+Carpenters Hall, Philadelphia, on the 4th of July, 1776, among the signers
+of the Declaration of Independence, and heard that grandest of human
+productions proclaimed to the world.
+
+Each of the fifty-six signers was a modern Moses in himself, and to-day
+their heroic statues, in imperishable bronze, should stand aloft on the
+shining marble copings of the National Capitol.
+
+The glowing features and earnest, eloquent tones of
+
+HANCOCK, JEFFERSON, FRANKLIN, AND ADAMS
+
+come back to me now, in the sunlight and zenith of republican glory; and as
+the old bell in the tower rang out Liberty to all the people of the land,
+the city of Brotherly Love took up the acclaim, while on the wings of the
+wind it echoed and reached from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, and
+from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, sounding across the seas, and
+reverberating among the sparkling halls of royalty, shivering the idols of
+"Divine Right," and forcing the plain, common people of the world into
+their long-neglected heritage of Freedom!
+
+And there, side by side with Franklin and Jefferson, sat one of the
+Secretaries of the Continental Congress,
+
+TOM PAINE,
+
+the great deist, patriot and philosopher; whose elementary proclamations,
+"The Crisis," "Rights of Man," "Common Sense," and "Age of Reason," did
+more for the promulgation of freedom during and after the American and
+French revolutions than any other utterance of man.
+
+The logic and philosophy of the great deist and agnostic was worth more to
+the Colonies, and did more injury to King George and his murdering minions,
+than all the purblind, bigoted, saphead pulpit thumpers who ever preached
+for ready cash.
+
+The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced no nobler or better man
+than the brave Tom Paine, the personal and political compeer and friend of
+Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams.
+
+The
+
+DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
+
+was the greatest event in the history of mankind since the creation of Adam
+and the birth of Christ.
+
+It was a lofty and true indictment against the crimes of monarchy, and was
+the entering wedge in splitting the rotten log of robber royalty.
+
+These words and phrases keep ever sounding in my soaring soul:
+
+     "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created
+     equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
+     rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
+     happiness!"
+
+     "The history of the King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
+     injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
+     establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States."
+
+     "The King has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns
+     and destroyed the lives of our people."
+
+     "The road to happiness and glory is open to us; we will climb it apart
+     from the British Government, and acquiesce our eternal separation, and
+     hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace
+     friends."
+
+     "And for the support of this Declaration, with reliance in Divine
+     Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes
+     and our sacred honor!"
+
+Moving along with the martyrs who have died for progress and liberty:
+
+I stood in the English Court September 20th, 1803, beside the heroic
+
+ROBERT EMMET,
+
+and heard him hurl these javelins of defiant patriotic eloquence against
+the brazen brutality of British judicial tyranny:
+
+     "When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade
+     shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed
+     their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their
+     country and virtue, this is my hope: I wish that my memory and name
+     may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency
+     on the destruction of this perfidious Government, which upholds its
+     dominion by blasphemy of the Most High.
+
+     "The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors
+     which surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through
+     the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are
+     bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven!
+
+     "Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no one who knows my motives
+     dares now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them.
+     Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain
+     uninscribed until other times and other men can do justice to my
+     character and memory. When my country shall take her place among the
+     nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be
+     written."
+
+Again, in my peripatetic tour of nations, seeking and aiding the hosts of
+Liberty, I stood with
+
+GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON,
+
+the greatest Irish-American citizen, soldier and President, behind the
+cotton bales and swamps of New Orleans, and on the 8th of January, 1815, I
+saw him hurl more than two thousand "Red Coats" into eternity, with only a
+loss of seven men, three killed and four wounded.
+
+Kentucky and Tennessee "Bushwhackers," with a lot of New Orleans
+shopkeepers, armed with squirrel rifles, killed and defeated General
+Pakenham, and the veteran troops of John Bull, in their raids over the
+globe for land, loot and human blood.
+
+And still moving across the Gulf of Mexico, to Vera Cruz; and by land to
+Buena Vista, with
+
+SCOTT AND TAYLOR,
+
+I heard the scream of the American eagle as it swooped down on the tyrant
+troops of Santa Ana, and with the Stars and Stripes waving in the breeze,
+beheld the United States soldiers charge the castellated heights of
+Chapultepec, and the next day, the 14th of September, 1847, saw General
+Scott plant his colors over the "National Palace," with his conquering army
+marching in glory through the city and halls of the Montezumas.
+
+Yet, with all the woes of Mexico, I saw it in after years, rise out of the
+toils of foreign monarchy, when General Juarez, the native liberator,
+captured and killed the Archduke Maximilian, the representative of the
+Little Napoleon of France.
+
+The "Monroe Doctrine" triumphed in the death gurgle of Maximilian.
+
+_Sic semper tyrannis!_
+
+Treason to tyrants is truth to the people!
+
+Off with the heads of Charles the First, Louis the Sixteenth and
+Robespierre!
+
+I stood by the side of
+
+GENERAL BEAUREGARD
+
+on the 12th of April, 1861, at the city of Charleston, South Carolina, and
+heard him give the order to "fire" on the flag at Fort Sumter.
+
+Slavery and "State Rights" threw down the gauntlet to Freedom and "National
+Rights!" A million of men were destroyed in the great American Rebellion,
+and after four years of the bloodiest civil war in history, the Stars and
+Stripes arose in all its glory at Appomattox, and fluttered again over the
+fort in Charleston Harbor, so nobly defended by the illustrious Major
+Anderson.
+
+Alternate success and defeat came to the Union army and the Confederate
+forces. Bull Run, Donelson, Shiloh, Antietam, Stone River, Vicksburg,
+Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Spottsylvania, Fredericksburg, the
+Wilderness, and Gettysburg, are battle milestones of the Republic that
+shall never be forgotten so long as valor and manhood find a lodgment in
+the human heart.
+
+Gettysburg is the mausoleum of the American Marathon and the Thermopylae of
+Liberty. The grandest heroes of the world died here.
+
+    _"They fell, devoted, but undying;
+    The very gales their names seem sighing;
+    The waters murmur of their name;
+    The woods are peopled with their fame;
+    The silent pillars, lone and gray,
+    Claim kindred with their silent clay;
+    Their spirits wrap the dusky mountain,
+    Their memory sparkles o'er the fountain;
+    The meanest rill, the mightiest river
+    Rolls mingling with their fame forever!"_
+
+What soldier at Gettysburg will ever forget the terrible battles of the
+1st, 2d and 3d of July, 1863, when
+
+GENERAL MEAD AND GENERAL LEE,
+
+with two hundred thousand Americans met in deadly conflict for the
+salvation or destruction of the Great Republic?
+
+The vales and rills and rocks and hills for twenty miles around trembled
+with the onslaught of the contending hosts, and from Culp's Hill to
+Cemetery Heights and Round Top the smoke and blaze of the rifle and the
+cannon lit up the bloody scene with the concussion of an earthquake and
+volcano, and the climax charge of Pickett's Division punctured the bravest
+and most unavailing assault ever made by heroic soldiers; and although
+these warriors in "gray" were doomed to defeat by the defenders of the
+Union, they deserve a crown of unfading glory for imperishable American
+valor.
+
+Standing by the side of
+
+PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+on the heights of Gettysburg, on the 19th of November, 1863, I heard him
+deliver before a multitude of people the following eloquent and
+philosophic address in dedicating the great National Cemetery:
+
+     "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
+     continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
+     proposition that all men are created equal.
+
+     "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
+     or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
+     met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
+     portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave
+     their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
+     proper that we should do this.
+
+     "But, in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
+     cannot hallow this ground. The brave men living and dead, who
+     struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
+     detract.
+
+     "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it
+     can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather,
+     to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
+     have so far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be dedicated to the
+     great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take
+     increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
+     measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
+     not have died in vain: and that this nation under God shall have a new
+     birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people and
+     for the people shall not perish from the earth."
+
+I saw
+
+GENERAL GRANT
+
+at Appomattox on the 9th of April, 1865, I hear again these phrases of the
+silent soldier to General Lee:
+
+     "I am equally anxious for peace with yourself and the whole North
+     entertains the same feeling. The terms upon which peace can be had are
+     well understood. By the South laying down their arms they will hasten
+     that most desirable event, save thousands of human lives, and hundreds
+     of millions of property not yet destroyed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms
+     against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged,
+     and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the
+     men of their commands.
+
+     "The surrender of all munitions of war will not embrace the side arms
+     of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. Each officer and
+     man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by
+     the United States authorities so long as they observe their paroles
+     and the laws in force where they may reside."
+
+Still marching onward in my mission of my love for freedom and keeping
+close and quick step to the music of the Great Republic, I rose again in
+soul, heart and pride, as I stood on the deck of the Olympia, fronting
+Manila and the Spanish navy, and heard the great
+
+ADMIRAL GEORGE DEWEY
+
+say: "When you are ready, fire, Gridley!"
+
+In an hour the royal navy of Spain was at the bottom of the sea, and over
+the citadel of Manila waved the Stars and Stripes, a hope and a blessing to
+the Philippine Islands.
+
+I stood on the turrets of Morro Castle, Havana, as the devilish Weyler
+sailed away from the beautiful "Queen of the Antilles," and wondered that
+the cruel, infernal, tyrannical wretch was not ignominiously slaughtered by
+some of the victims of his starvation reign. A rattlesnake-cobra-tarantula
+human deformity!
+
+It is not the plutocracy of wealth, or the aristocracy of learning, but the
+democracy of the heart that makes the world better and greater.
+
+Selfishness, cupidity and greed lead to tyranny, and tyranny finally
+destroys itself.
+
+Down with the villains who would enslave the people!
+
+    _Dose them, quick, with leaden pills--
+    Only cure for tyrant ills!_
+
+And on the heights of San Juan I beheld the American troops, white and
+black, shoot the cruel Spaniard into defeat, and last, but not least, I
+stood on the prow of the Oregon and beheld the most destructive naval
+engagement of the century.
+
+"Santiago was a captains' fight," and, as Admiral Schley said: "There is
+glory enough for all."
+
+Schley, Sampson, Cook, Clarke, Evans, Taylor and Wainwright shall be
+remembered down the ages with Paul Jones, Decatur, Porter and Farragut; and
+with them the great Arctic hero, Admiral George W. Melville.
+
+The monarchy of Spain that once ruled the western world has been swept off
+the seas, and does not own an inch of land on the American Continent.
+
+I personally participated, with my soldier comrades, in the inauguration
+ceremonies of the lofty Lincoln, the glorious Garfield and the magnanimous
+McKinley, and heard their burning words of patriotism delivered from the
+east front of the National Capitol.
+
+And again it was my melancholy duty to march with the Grand Army of the
+Republic in the funeral train that took their assassinated remains to lie
+in state under the dome of the Capitol for the last view of the people upon
+the calm countenance of these illustrious Americans.
+
+The greatest characters of earth vanish away and are forgotten like the
+mists of the morning.
+
+    "_The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
+    And all that beauty, all that wealth ere gave,
+    Await alike the inevitable hour--
+    The paths of glory lead but to the grave."_
+
+And now bestriding the Isthmus beneath the Stars and Stripes, with my right
+foot at Colon and left foot at Panama, I watch the digging of the
+interocean canal, with the High Priest Roosevelt joining the Atlantic and
+Pacific oceans in eternal wedlock, where the commerce of the globe shall
+float equal and free forever!
+
+Congregated at the World's Fair at St. Louis, the grandest exposition of
+the globe, I see passing in review the men and women of all nations, where
+art, science, letters, manufacture, commerce and government power reveal
+the wonders of man's handiwork.
+
+And now, navigating the circumambient air in an electric ship, I'll sail
+away to the "Island of Immortality," and dream a season from my
+multifarious labors.
+
+    _I'll go swinging round the circle
+    Through six hundred future years,
+    With the roses and the myrtle
+    Growing in celestial spheres;
+    And sweet Freedom, heaven slated
+    Round my footsteps, night and day,
+    When I am incarnated--
+    Shall still hold its deathless sway!
+    And great Shakspere then shall meet me
+    To renew our former youth,
+    And exclaim with honest fervor--
+    "Jack, you always told the truth!"_
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+The original varied spelling has been retained.
+
+
+FIXED ISSUES
+
+p. xvi--typo fixed, changed "Blackfraiars" into "Blackfriars"
+p. 062--inserted missing closing quote after "Henry the Fourth"
+p. 067--typo fixed, changed "Southhampton" to "Southampton"
+p. 077--typo fixed, changed period after Ovid into comma
+p. 078--removed extra comma after "action, shall"
+p. 082--typo fixed, changed "O'Neill" to "O'Neil"
+p. 099--typo fixed, changed "fued" into "feud"
+p. 114--typo fixed, changed "Arnum" to "Arnim"
+p. 122--inserted missing closing quote after "the dogs of war"
+p. 150--typo fixed, changed "exurberant" to "exuberant"
+p. 160--typo fixed, changed "hatheth" to "hateth"
+p. 163--inserted missing closing quote after "the sea maid's music?"
+p. 190--typo fixed, changed "pick" into "prick"
+p. 196--typo fixed, removed an extra word "PAGE"
+p. 203--inserted a missing period after the Prince of Denmark
+p. 209--typo fixed, changed "my" into "by"
+p. 216--typo fixed, changed "beauty" into "honesty"
+p. 218--typo fixed, changed "Dump" into "Dumb"
+p. 224--typo fixed, changed "Margaret" into "Gertrude"
+p. 232--typo fixed, changed "deeds" to "weeds"
+p. 237--typo fixed, changed "Armyn" to "Armin"
+p. 252--typo fixed, changed "speech" to "peace"
+p. 253--typo fixed, changed a closing single qoute to a double quote
+p. 254--typo fixed, changed "parent's yes" to "parents' eyes"
+p. 254--inserted a missing comma after "and trades"
+p. 256--inserted a missing period after "quoth I"
+p. 297--typo fixed, changed "mutally" into "mutually"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Shakspere, Personal Recollections, by John A. Joyce
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKSPERE, PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ***
+
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