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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Shakespeare, by Samuel Levy Bensusan
+
+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: William Shakespeare
+       His Homes and Haunts
+
+Author: Samuel Levy Bensusan
+
+Illustrator: A. Forrestier
+
+Release Date: August 5, 2009 [EBook #29611]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Florian Hofmann, Stephanie Eason and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(Illustration images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+THE PILGRIM BOOKS
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+
+  THE PILGRIM BOOKS
+
+  _General Editor_--
+
+  S. L. BENSUSAN
+
+  1. SHAKESPEARE
+  2. LAMB
+  3. WORDSWORTH
+
+  _Others in Preparation_
+
+
+
+=THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT AT SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE=
+
+
+
+
+  WILLIAM
+  SHAKESPEARE
+
+  HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS
+
+
+  BY
+  S.L. BENSUSAN
+
+  WITH TWELVE DRAWINGS IN CRAYON BY
+  A. FORRESTIER
+  AND FOUR PORTRAITS
+
+  LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+  16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
+  AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+  HUNC LIBELLUM
+
+  REVERENDISSIMO
+
+  M. GASTER, PH.D.
+
+  VIRO ERUDITISSIMO
+
+  PRAECEPTORI PERITISSIMO
+
+  AMICO FIDELISSIMO
+
+  MAGNA CUM REVERENTIA
+
+  D.D.D.
+
+  OLIM DICIPULUS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAP.                                                            PAGE
+
+     I. STRATFORD-ON-AVON                                             1
+
+    II. THE POET'S YOUTH                                              8
+
+   III. NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY                          15
+
+    IV. FIRST DAYS IN LONDON                                         20
+
+     V. SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON                                         24
+
+    VI. THE STAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY                               28
+
+   VII. SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY PLAYS                                    35
+
+  VIII. THE ELIZABETHAN TAVERNS                                      41
+
+    IX. THE MIDDLE PERIOD                                            46
+
+     X. THE LATEST PLAYS                                             50
+
+    XI. BACK AGAIN IN STRATFORD                                      55
+
+   XII. THE POET'S DOMESTIC LIFE                                     64
+
+  XIII. STRATFORD AS IT WAS                                          72
+
+   XIV. THE CLOSE OF LIFE                                            81
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  THE ELY PORTRAIT AT SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE      _Frontispiece_
+
+  THE HOME OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE, SNITTERFIELD         _Facing p._      4
+
+  ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE--INTERIOR                        "         12
+
+  MARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE                                     "         16
+
+  THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON                                  "         20
+
+  ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE                                  "         24
+
+  GUILD CHAPEL AND SCHOOL                                  "         28
+
+  HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND THE AVON, STRATFORD              "         32
+
+  BEN JONSON                                               "         36
+
+  CHARLECOTE HALL                                          "         40
+
+  INTERIOR OF ST. SAVIOUR'S AT SOUTHWARK                   "         44
+
+  THE FIRST GLOBE THEATRE                                  "         48
+
+  MICHAEL DRAYTON                                          "         52
+
+  THE MERMAID INN                                          "         64
+
+  SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON                   "         72
+
+  SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON          "         80
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In telling the story of Shakespeare's life and work within strict limits
+of space, an attempt has been made to keep closely to essential matters.
+There is no period of the poet's life, there is no branch of his
+marvellous work, that has not been the subject of long and learned
+volumes, no single play that has not been discussed at greater length
+than serves here to cover the chief incidents of work and life together.
+If the Homes and Haunts do not claim the greater part of the following
+pages, it is because nobody knows where to find them to-day. Stratford
+derives much of its patronage from unsupported traditions, the face of
+London has changed, and though we owe to the painstaking researches of
+Dr. Chas. Wm. Wallace the very recent discovery that the poet lodged
+with a wig-maker named Mountjoy at the corner of Silver and Monkwell
+Streets in the City of London, much labour must be accomplished before
+we shall be able to follow his wanderings between the time of his
+arrival in and departure from the metropolis.
+
+For the purposes of this little book many authorities have been
+consulted, and the writer is specially indebted to the researches of Dr.
+Sidney Lee, the leading authority of our time on Shakespeare, and the
+late Professor Churton Collins.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+STRATFORD-ON-AVON
+
+
+To read the works of a great master of letters, or to study the art of a
+great painter, without some first-hand knowledge of the country in which
+each lived and from which each gathered his earliest inspiration, is to
+court an incomplete impression. It is in the light of a life story and
+its setting, however slight our knowledge, that creative work tends to
+assume proper proportions. It is in the surroundings of the author that
+we find the key to the creation. For, as Gray has pointed out in his
+"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," there are many in the dust and
+silence whose hands "the rod of Empire might have swayed, or waked to
+ecstasy the living lyre."
+
+We know that it is not enough to have the creative force dormant in the
+mind; environment must be favourable to its development, or it will
+sleep too long. We see in the briefest survey of the lives of the poet,
+the statesman, the soldier and the artist, that there are many great
+ones who would have been greater still were it not that then, as now,
+"man is one and the fates are three."
+
+To study the life history of a man and to consider its setting is to
+understand why he succeeded and how he came to fail, and our wonder at
+his success will not be lessened when we find that some simple event,
+favourable or untoward, was the deciding factor in a great life. The
+hour brings the man, but circumstances mould him and chance leads him to
+the fore, unless it be true that "there's a Divinity that shapes our
+ends, rough hew them how we will." In our own time we have seen how the
+greatest empire-builder of Victorian history, Cecil John Rhodes, came
+into prominence because he was sent to South Africa for the cure of weak
+lungs. And, looking back to the life and times of William Shakespeare,
+who has summed up for so many of his fellow-countrymen, and still more
+strangers, the whole philosophy of life, we shall see that he became
+articulate through what he may have reasonably regarded as mischance.
+
+Out in the autumn fields, the pigeon and the squirrel, to say nothing of
+other birds and beasts, hunt for acorns to eat or store. On the road to
+roost or storehouse many are dropped. Of these no small number fall on
+waste ground; a few take root, only to be overgrown or destroyed before
+they reach the beginnings of strength. But here and there an acorn drops
+on favourable soil; the rich earth nourishes it; the germ, when it has
+lived on all the store within the shell, can gather its future needs
+from the ground. Little roots and fibres pierce the soil; a green twig
+rises to seek the sun; there are long years of silent precarious growth,
+and then the sapling stage is passed and a young tree sends countless
+leaves to draw nourishment from air and sky. Following this comes the
+time when no storm can uproot the tree that a hungry rabbit might have
+destroyed in days past--something has come to complete maturity and has
+developed all the possibilities that were equally latent in so many
+million acorns to which growth was denied. As it is with plants, so it
+is with men, and thus it becomes permissible to compare literature with
+a forest wherein are so many trees, so many saplings, and so much dense
+undergrowth, from which trees of worth and beauty may one day spring. In
+our national forest there is an oak that first saw life in the year
+1564. There are many older trees of splendid worth, but this is the one
+which stands alone. What manner of soil nourished it? Whence came its
+strength? This little work is a brief attempt to set the well-known
+answer down again in a form that may offer a certain convenience in
+point of size and selection to lovers of a great poet.
+
+When we read Shakespeare's plays for the first time, it is at once
+apparent that the poet was a countryman. He has the knowledge, founded
+upon close observation, that we associate with the highly intelligent
+dweller in the countryside, the man or woman from whom the poet differs
+merely in his supreme capacity for expression. We turn again to his
+scenes of city life to find he is no less at home there. It is quite
+another world, but he has fathomed it; quite another company of men, but
+he has gauged their strength and weakness, the pathos and humour of
+their lives. He deals with rulers and courts, and his touch is as sure
+and faithful as before; his genius has taught him that kings and queens
+are men and women like the rest of us, that environment cannot alter
+fundamental characteristics, that royalty is swayed by the same forces
+that rule the lives of lesser men.
+
+Only when he deals with foreigners the poet of Avon is often an
+unconscious humorist, for his store of geography is inadequate to meet
+the small demands upon it, and some of his simple errors, such as "the
+seashore of Bohemia," excite our kindly laughter now. But it is easy to
+see that the poet's habit of accurate observation was established in the
+country and that he applied to the larger life of London the self-taught
+methods he had acquired in the little town of his birth.
+
+It is on this account that the minds of his admirers turn to
+Stratford-on-Avon, and the footsteps of enthusiasts are directed, year
+in, year out, to the pleasant county of Warwickshire. In and around
+Stratford we can keep company with the poet in his earliest and latest
+days; nor can the bustling crowds of tourists from all parts, the
+clamour of innkeepers and coach-drivers, the ever-present determination
+to turn a national genius to profitable account, stir our deep content.
+Men and public places have changed, but the country is as it was when
+William Shakespeare, poor and little known, was gathering the stores of
+knowledge and habit of thought that were to lift him to heights no
+following Englishman has scaled.
+
+
+=THE HOME OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE--SNITTERFIELD=
+
+
+The wayfarer coming into Stratford for the first time to pay his mute
+tribute to the poet who seems destined to live as long as our
+civilisation, will enjoy a pleasant impression if he chance to have
+chosen a fine day and to have reached the town by the road. Stratford
+lies on the right bank of the river Avon, a beautiful river whose waters
+flow peacefully over the level land on their way from Naseby to the
+Severn. The town was happily planned of old time, and owed its inception
+to the establishment of a monastery shortly after the Anglo-Saxon began
+to take an interest in Christianity. It is clear that Stratford enjoyed
+three centuries of comparative peace, if not of substantial progress,
+before Norman William and Saxon Harold met at Senlac; echoes of that
+fray could not have pierced to the little town on Avon's banks. Nor have
+the subsequent centuries done much to disturb its natural seclusion.
+
+The hand of the builder has raised streets of prosperous shops and
+new-built villas; small hotels abound; there is a bustling railway and a
+sleepy canal. A Memorial Theatre overlooks the river, and cyclists pass,
+not singly but in battalions, along peaceful roads leading to Birmingham
+or Warwick. Throughout the summer season Stratford-on-Avon becomes a
+metropolis "whereunto the tribes of men assemble." To "do Stratford" is
+an article of faith with American visitors, even if they have no more
+than a week in which to master the wonders of Great Britain and Ireland.
+Germany sends many admirers, for nowhere is Shakespeare's genius more
+widely recognised, more highly esteemed, than in that country. London
+and the big midland towns of England send visitors daily.
+
+Let it be suggested, with all due respect to those who think otherwise,
+that there is no reward for those who seek to discover Shakespeare's
+land in the course of a few hours' hurried travel. They will see
+Shakespeare's alleged birthplace, and the room in which he is said,
+without much authority, to have been born. They will pass through the
+Museum, Library, and Picture Gallery; they may even admire the rather
+poor monument in Holy Trinity Church, and perhaps a few other sights
+that the town affords; and then, with a welter of confused impressions,
+will return whence they came. There is no reward for this frenzied
+exercise; it is impossible to gather any impression of the scenes in
+which the poet passed his early and later days, from a hurried scamper
+through the town and a frank acceptance of local traditions, concerning
+which some of our leading Shakespearian scholars have much destructive
+critical comment to offer. He who wishes to establish some manner of
+association with the poet must enter Stratford as the poet left it--by
+the road. He should leave the railway and walk in from Warwick, find
+quiet lodgings, of which there is no lack, in the town, and visit in
+turn the highways and by-ways of Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcote,
+Aston Clinton, Shottery, Wotten Wawens, Charlecote, and a dozen other
+points of interest, of which he will learn when he has definitely left
+the ranks of excursionists and has made friends among the people of
+Shakespeare's countryside. He will not add a jot to our knowledge of
+country or people--a hundred pens have said all there is to say--but he
+will come away with a measure of appreciation and recognition that will
+make the significance of the poet, as an interpreter of a life that
+never changes, far more vital and true. Here is no small reward for a
+truly delightful holiday in country full of the best traditions of rural
+England. And the intelligent visitor will be one with the great lovers
+of Shakespeare, living and dead, from Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, and
+Milton down to Matthew Arnold and our own contemporaries, even though
+his contribution to the poet's praise be no more than a little note in a
+private diary. His journey will open a fresh field of literary research,
+if he be not already a student of Elizabethan literature. He will be
+enrolled on the long and unexhausted list of pilgrims to the shrine of
+the country's greatest poet, the man whose thoughts have lost nothing of
+their depth and beauty in the slow passage of three eventful centuries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE POET'S YOUTH
+
+
+In these days, when biographies of nobody in particular are as the sand
+upon the seashore for multitude, and the demand for personal paragraphs
+is seemingly well-nigh as great as the supply, we have some occasion to
+regret the absence of similar craving in the spacious times of Queen
+Elizabeth. If there had been a daily, weekly, or monthly publication
+that submitted famous men to the ordeal of the interview, we might
+pardon the glut of our latter day. Unhappily for our desire to know what
+manner of man Shakespeare was, the available records are exceedingly
+scanty, or are at least insufficient for our legitimate needs, and we
+are face to face with the initial difficulty that in the sixteenth
+century Shakespeare's name was quite common. From Cumberland down to
+Warwickshire there was probably no county in which a William Shakespeare
+could not have been found for the searching, and this fact is
+accountable for many curious mistakes that have been made by students
+and biographers. In Warwickshire alone there were more than a score of
+families bearing the surname in the sixteenth century, and half as many
+again in the following century, when the name was one to conjure with.
+The poet's father, John Shakespeare, who was a native of Snitterfield
+and moved to Stratford in the middle of the sixteenth century, to carry
+on what would seem to have been the business of a big store-keeper,
+applied for a right to bear arms towards the century's close, and made
+certain claims on behalf of ancestors. But the opinion of competent
+critics is that John Shakespeare was as capable of drawing the long-bow
+as he was of selling general stores, and that he was closely connected,
+from a mental standpoint, with the successful tradesmen of our day who,
+having proved fortunate business men, seek to confer upon themselves
+such advantage as a dubious pedigree may assure. We cannot, then, accept
+the version of his family history that satisfied the complaisant
+Heralds' College.
+
+The chief difference between our modern Arms-seekers and John
+Shakespeare is that they are moneyed tradesmen and he was not. The early
+days of his commercial career were comparatively prosperous, and he
+found time to serve the borough of Stratford in many offices, including
+those of ale-taster, burgess, petty constable, borough chamberlain, and
+chief alderman. He married Mary Arden of Wilmcote near Stratford, the
+marriage taking place in Wilmcote's parish church at Aston Clinton, and
+William was the third child of the union. The poet's registration in the
+parish records at Stratford is dated April 26, 1564. The place of his
+birth is generally assumed to be the house in Henley Street purchased by
+John Shakespeare a year before his marriage, and we are told that he
+was born in a certain room on the first floor. Here again contemporary
+criticism may make some people regret the loss of the sixpence that was
+demanded before the scene of the birth could be surveyed; but, after
+all, there is much saving grace in a tradition, and whether the place be
+all it is alleged to be or less, little harm is done. Suffice it that
+thousands, gifted with faith and sixpences, have visited the room,
+ceilings and windows bear countless traces of the desire that besets the
+most commonplace people to deface walls with their uninteresting names.
+Shakespeare's alleged birthplace is a charming little residence enough,
+with dormered roof and penthouse entrance, and sixpence is a small price
+to pay for a pleasant illusion.
+
+In the very early days of the poet's life the _res angusta domi_ had not
+yet begun to trouble his father, who was appointed Bailiff of the
+Stratford Corporation in 1568, and Chief Alderman three years later. In
+1575 he bought a house in Henley Street, and no less an authority than
+Dr. Sidney Lee, whose researches command the respect of all, believes
+that this house is the one in which the poet is now said to have been
+born. It would seem that John Shakespeare's prosperity received a rude
+shock soon after the date of their purchase, for in 1578 and 1579 he was
+mortgaging his wife's property at Wilmcote and Snitterfield, and
+gradually the once wealthy man fell from power and place. Creditors
+pursued him, and he lost his standing in the Corporation.
+
+In the meantime William was receiving his early training at Stratford
+Grammar School, and picked up more than a smattering of French and
+Latin, with perhaps a little Italian as well. That his school life or
+home life was closely associated with Bible reading and study is proved
+by the readiness with which he turns to Scripture for graphic and
+concise expression of a thought, or for the purpose of an apt
+comparison. But he was destined to learn in a larger and rougher school
+than that of King Edward's foundation at Stratford. His leisure came to
+an abrupt end when he had just entered his teens and his father told him
+to look after one of his failing businesses. So the brightest genius of
+English poetry became, while yet a boy, a butcher or a butcher's
+assistant, and for some four or five years passed an uneventful life in
+Stratford under conditions that might well have coarsened and spoilt
+him. Happily the exquisite surroundings of the little town, and his own
+response to them, made a somewhat sordid occupation possible; but of his
+daily life and steady growth in the most impressionable period of his
+career no reliable details have reached us.
+
+To his associates in the old Warwickshire home he was no more than the
+clever, precocious eldest son of an alderman who had seen better days.
+He went his own way, and may be supposed to have lived a somewhat free
+life, for before he was nineteen he appears to have found himself
+compelled to marry one Anne Hathaway of Shottery in the parish of Old
+Stratford. Her father had died rather more than a year before her
+marriage; she was twenty-six years of age, and had inherited by will a
+sum amounting in the currency of the day to a little less than £7,
+rather more than £50 of our money. The marriage would seem to have been
+hurried and irregular, and though it may have followed a formal and
+binding betrothal of a kind that had more sanction then than now, the
+poet's first child--his daughter Susanna--was born less than six months
+later. It was not a fortunate union. Twins were born to William and Anne
+Shakespeare in 1585, and then all record of the home life closes for a
+long period. Some of Shakespeare's biographers think that the poet had
+run away to London before the year closed, and that for more than a
+decade he did not return to the town without taking care that his
+presence should not be noticed. We do not know how strained his marital
+relations had become, but we may assume that his home was not a happy
+one, for in the early days of his union he ran risks that most young
+married men would avoid for the sake of wife and family.
+
+It seems clear that the story of his poaching expeditions in Charlecote
+or Fulbroke Parks is not a mere legend unsupported by facts. Sir Thomas
+Lucy, the owner of Charlecote Park, was of course a game preserver, and
+Shakespeare must have thought that poaching was a reasonable pastime
+enough. He dared "do all that may become a man," and the penalty of
+exciting the wrath of a great landowner and game preserver was no less
+then than now. Sir Thomas was angry; the poet is said to have written a
+vulgar, bitter lampoon, still preserved, and affixed a copy to the
+gates of Charlecote. The response was a persecution that made Stratford
+too hot to hold a greater man than all the big sportsmen from Nimrod's
+day to ours, and William Shakespeare left wife and children and vanished
+from the old town's ken. Some think he lived in neighbouring towns or
+villages awhile, and found work as a schoolmaster. There was an idea
+that he went for a time as a soldier to the Low Countries under the Earl
+of Leicester, whose splendid pageants in honour of a visit from Queen
+Elizabeth may have inspired some of the fantasy of "A Midsummer Night's
+Dream."
+
+
+=ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE--INTERIOR=
+
+
+Doubtless there was a Shakespeare or two in Lord Leicester's regiment;
+the name was a common one enough; but it was no part of the poet's
+experience "to trail a pike in Flanders." Directly or indirectly, he was
+on the high road to London, and Sir Thomas Lucy was to find his claim to
+immortality in the pursuit of a young poacher and in the poacher's
+creation of Mr. Justice Shallow of Gloucestershire, whose foolishness,
+suggested in "Henry IV." (Part II., Act iii. sc. 2), is still further
+emphasised in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," where he figures as one who
+has come to make a Star Chamber matter out of Sir John Falstaff's
+poaching. His complaint will be remembered. "Knight, you have beaten my
+men, killed my deer, and broken open my lodge ... the council shall know
+this."
+
+There has been no lack of determined effort among the poet's countless
+biographers to give the lie direct to every story that does not cast
+credit upon his youth. Because he was a great man, many people require
+his history to be written in a fashion that shall lessen, ignore, or
+deny his weaknesses. There can be no valid reason for pursuing such a
+course, for we know that the rule of art is not the rule of morals, and
+that while a very good poet may be a very bad man, a very worthy man may
+be a vile poet. The apologists have picked out the finest moral thoughts
+in the plays and poems and declared that he who could conceive them
+could not have been less than a saint. They might as well pick out the
+countless villains of the tragedies and declare that he who presented
+them must have been a sinner. Truth to tell, the question is one of no
+importance. Shakespeare was in some respects a man like the majority of
+men; in other regards he stands alone. Only in this latter aspect have
+we any occasion to consider him. We have neither the right, the
+capacity, nor the data by which to sit in judgment; but it is hardly
+honest to withhold reports, that seem to be well founded, because they
+do not flatter the youthful career of a great man. In his own "Henry
+IV." and "Henry V." Shakespeare shows how the recklessness of youth is
+not incompatible with sound living and a high standard of morality and
+common sense in the days of responsibility.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY
+
+
+We find Shakespeare, just out of his teens, travelling on the road to
+London, and it is worth while to see what equipment and what resources
+he is taking to the metropolis. It is safe to assume that he has no
+money, and that his local reputation is not one of the very best, though
+the worst to be urged against him is that he has loved not wisely but
+too well--and this fault has not been too clearly substantiated--and
+that he has ignored the game laws, as so many men had done before, have
+done since, and will do as long as these laws exist.
+
+The early life of a truly imaginative man had been passed in the most
+beautiful surroundings that rural England can provide, and by reason,
+perhaps, of the lack of restrictions, had helped him to enlarge his
+experiences and develop all the facets of a luminous mind. The
+expression is chosen deliberately. Man's mind is like a diamond, and
+experience is the lapidary. Every action, every stroke of good fortune
+or of bad, leaves its definite mark; every association does the same. As
+a boy Shakespeare lived in close touch with Nature. His father's
+business would have brought him into contact with farmers, given him
+the freedom of their fields, taught him the significance of the seasons.
+Even now, when glimpses of Elizabethan England are few and far between,
+we are touched by the supreme peace that still broods over land on which
+the old-time houses, with their thatched roofs or well-worn tiles, their
+ingle nooks, their dormer windows, their oak rafters and their many
+gables, tell of a time when the jerry-builder was not and the suburban
+villa had not yet come into being. It was an age of beauty, and the
+walks round Stratford remain beautiful to this hour, despite the growth
+of villadom and the advent of the railway line.
+
+We can follow the roads that Shakespeare knew, to the woods of his
+poaching exploits, and the meadows over which he passed to thatched,
+half-timbered Shottery, where the village inn was still standing when
+men, now middle-aged, were born. Rustic gardens, white-blossomed
+orchards, tiny brooks beloved by the kingfisher, trees that may have
+seen the courting of the poet and his wife, still remain to tell the
+story of England's unchanging charm. In the spring and early summer
+there is such an atmosphere about the countryside as George Meredith has
+created in his "Richard Feverel" when Richard and Lucy meet in "the very
+spring-tide of their youth." Doubtless there are other regions in
+plenty, scattered through the length and breadth of our fascinating
+English country, wherein the attractions are hardly less than here; but
+Shakespeare's genius has hallowed Stratford for us, because that
+particular countryside made him a poet and sent him to London, full of
+such inspiration as has not fallen to any other Englishman even in times
+when the literary activity of the age has been at its highest point.
+
+
+=MARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE=
+
+
+It may be suggested in passing that much of the early romance associated
+with Anne Hathaway's cottage is spurious, and the worthy people who tell
+of the poet's courtship there overlook the fact that his relations with
+his wife were clandestine and his marriage almost a secret union. But
+the cottage itself is beautiful enough to account for the enthusiastic
+departure from the path of truth, if not to justify it.
+
+Lying on the left as you come out of Stratford to Shottery, past the
+post-office, to the "Bell Inn," where the road has crossed a stream, we
+see the cottage, and, _horribile dictu!_ a row of modern brick-built
+cottages for background! Long, thatched and creeper-covered, built upon
+slabs of stone, with timber and plaster above, with tiny windows under
+the thatch, surrounded by a well-filled and carefully tended garden, the
+place makes a quick and enduring appeal to the imagination, even though
+the legends associated with it are, for the most part, legends and
+nothing more. It is easy to realise the supreme beauty of the scene that
+Shakespeare knew, to understand how the lovers' secret meetings were
+made all the more memorable by reason of their surroundings. The scene
+and the associations went to the making of the poet; they were among the
+treasures he carried up to London when he was compelled to leave
+Stratford behind him and time and distance were smoothing all the little
+troubles that had beset his short and uneventful life. He must have
+heard Stratford and Shottery calling to him in the heart of the town,
+for when his name was made and his future assured, he came back to home,
+wife, and little ones to enjoy the "poor remains" of life.
+
+On his road to and from Shottery, he would have passed "under the shade
+of melancholy boughs" and watched the "guest of summer, the
+Temple-haunting martlet," that built under the eaves of Anne Hathaway's
+house. Doubtless to his mood of elation or depression, and to his quick
+and intimate response to the wild life round him, we owe those clear
+impressions that connect certain scenes and phases of our life with his
+more familiar utterances. To hear the cuckoo and the nightingale to-day
+in the woods round Shottery and Wilmcote is to recall some of the poet's
+most inspired moods. But it is not the familiar birds alone that caught
+the poet's eye and stimulated his imagination. In the days of his youth,
+before he went to London, he must have studied bird life closely and
+accurately. Nearly fifty wild birds find mention in his plays and poems,
+and for the most part they are birds he would not have seen in London,
+though in his day the metropolis was small enough, and the outer London
+of his time was well-nigh as wild and wooded as the least frequented
+parts of Warwickshire to-day. The halcyon or kingfisher, the
+white-breasted water-ouzel, the skylark, the "ruddock" or
+robin-redbreast, the wren, the green plover, the woodcock--these serve
+for some of his moods; but he mentions eagle, kite, hawk, buzzard, owl,
+falcon, cormorant, and a number of others, always with discretion and
+with the full measure of knowledge vouchsafed to his time. Classical
+lore and country superstitions are sometimes found in his references,
+but the most of them point to the poet's own loving observation at a
+time when there was no widespread interest in birds or beasts, unless
+they had a part to play in hunting. Shakespeare's references to the
+chase are accurate and suggest first-hand observation, coupled with the
+keen instincts of the sportsman, and it is easy to see that the
+extraordinary receptivity of his mind enabled him to take impressions
+from every aspect of life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FIRST DAYS IN LONDON
+
+
+Three hundred and twenty-four years have passed since William
+Shakespeare set out to prove his fortune in London, and in those
+far-away days that his genius makes so real for us the journey was long
+and at times dangerous. Three days would suffice in fine summer weather,
+while four or five might be required in winter time, when rivers were
+swollen and fords were dangerous. Not only were roads bad, but bridges
+were conspicuous by their absence. To send a letter from Stratford to
+London and receive a reply to it would occupy nearly a fortnight, and
+if, as some writers believe, Shakespeare had already made a certain name
+by his skilled handling of other men's work when touring companies came
+to his town, it is quite clear that his best chance of establishing
+himself as a playwright would be found in the metropolis. Even if he had
+not found trouble in his native place, he could not hope to thrive
+there. It is thought that he travelled to town on foot by way of Oxford
+and High Wycombe, and that once in the metropolis he sought a friend of
+the family, one Richard Field of Stratford, who had left Warwickshire
+seven years before, and after serving his apprenticeship to a
+printer, had set up an office of his own in Blackfriars.
+
+
+=THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON
+In the National Portrait Gallery=
+
+
+It is possible that he owed his introduction to the world of the London
+theatre to Field, and that at one of the only two houses in the
+metropolis, "The Theatre" in Shoreditch or "The Curtain" in Moorfields,
+he served for a time in a very humble capacity, looking after the horses
+of the men of fashion who rode to the play. The keen relish with which
+he deals with the moods and thoughts of ostlers, stable-boys, and the
+lower classes that frequented the stable and the theatre, lends a
+certain countenance to the legend. A year later, when his friend Field
+had been admitted a member of the Stationers' Company, Shakespeare found
+his employment inside one of the two theatres--probably the house in
+Shoreditch; some writers have said that his first work there was that of
+a call-boy. It is certain, at least, that his apprenticeship was a hard
+one, and that in those early days his contributions to the support of
+the Warwickshire home must have been few and scanty.
+
+When Shakespeare came to town there were some half-dozen companies of
+licensed actors, that is to say, companies that enjoyed and exercised
+their rights under an Act of Parliament (14 Eliz. c. 2). It said that
+all actors, save those who held the licence of a peer of the realm or
+other person of importance, were to be treated as rogues and vagabonds.
+The company to which Shakespeare was admitted derived its rights from
+the Earl of Leicester, and soon after he joined, if not before, it
+passed under the support of the Earl of Derby, and in later years under
+the supreme patronage of King James I., whose admiration for the poet
+and his works was very large and real. James Burbage was owner of "The
+Theatre," and it was in his time, we may presume, that Shakespeare acted
+as ostler and call-boy. But he must have risen up from the ranks at no
+small pace when his gifts became well known, for not only do we find him
+a regular member of the company, but a friend of the leading members,
+men like Richard Burbage, son of the proprietor, and Augustus Phillips.
+And at "The Theatre" in Shoreditch he won some fame as a playwright,
+though it was not at "The Theatre" but at "The Rose," a new house on the
+Bankside at Southwark, that the poet's genius was to "blossom and bud
+and fill the face of the world with fruit."
+
+The close of the sixteenth century was a season of considerable activity
+among actors; the destruction of the "galleons of Spain" had relieved
+the country of a very real danger. Some of the leading companies
+amalgamated for a time when in town; new houses were springing up. In
+addition to "The Rose" there was one at Newington Butts, and in 1599 the
+Burbages transplanted "The Theatre" to Bankside and called it "The
+Globe." Here Shakespeare did the most of his work and made the most of
+his reputation, acquiring considerable wealth the while.
+
+James Burbage built the Blackfriars Theatre, to which Shakespeare
+brought his company shortly before he retired to Stratford. He
+gradually acquired certain interests in the theatres, so his profits
+were not only those of actor and playwright. The wealth that was to be
+his was drawn from three sources.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON
+
+
+Of the landmarks that Shakespeare knew, the Great Fire of London
+destroyed many, and Time, dealing in rather gentler fashion, has effaced
+the most of those that the fire spared. A map made by Peter Van den
+Keere in 1593 shows us the old London Bridge, with the Church of St.
+Saviour's, then known as "St. Marye Overyes," facing the river on the
+Southwark side. This church, which would have been well known to the
+poet, is, with the exception of Westminster Abbey, the only ancient
+example of pure Gothic architecture in London. Its earliest name would
+have been St. Mary Over Rye, rye being perhaps the old name for ferry.
+When it was built there could have been no London Bridge, and St. Mary's
+was built upon the site of a still older priory founded by two Norman
+knights. In this church one finds a stone in the centre aisle marked
+"Edmond Shakespeare. Died December 1607."
+
+
+=ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE=
+
+
+This marks the mortal remains of a brother of the poet, said by some to
+have been concerned with the business side of his undertakings, and
+certainly his companion in London for some time. In St. Mary Over Rye or
+St. Saviour's, King James I. of Scotland was married; here the poet
+Gower, with whose works Shakespeare was undoubtedly familiar, was
+buried, and his monument is a fine one with many inscriptions, including
+one that describes him as "Anglorum Poeta celeberrimus." Beyond "St.
+Marye Overyes" on Van den Keere's map one sees the famous "Bears House,"
+and below that the "Play House," and beyond this the town merges into
+gardens stretching up to "Lambeth Marsh." Across the river we see "More
+Feyldes" and "Spittlefeyldes," big open spaces, and then Islington, but
+there is no sign of another theatre. Had the worthy cartographer known
+what was to give his map an abiding interest three centuries after its
+making, he would doubtless have given more thought to the playhouses.
+
+To-day the Church of St. Saviour's stands well-nigh smothered by
+factories, shops, and small houses. London, a muddy stream, has
+overflown its banks and spread on that side far into regions where birds
+and beasts of the chase flew or ran in the poet's day. Tradition tells
+us that the Thames sometimes rose above its boundaries and flooded the
+graveyard of St. Mary's, and in like fashion the town itself has spread
+beyond all limits, until the south side, within a very restricted area,
+holds more than all London held in the poet's day. Doubtless the old
+church fared better at the hands of the river than the town does now,
+for three hundred years ago the hands of Father Thames were clean; the
+river still ran sparkling under London Bridge, then a comparatively low
+structure, with houses on either side of it, like the Ponte Vecchio in
+Florence.
+
+Shakespeare's London held about a quarter of a million souls, on
+generous computation, and it is said that about 15 per cent. of the
+number found employment and their means of livelihood on the river. The
+writ of the civic authorities did not run on the south side of the
+Thames, and it is to this that we owe the existence of so many houses of
+amusement in Southwark. Nor were they the only ones to be placed for
+choice beyond the eye of authority. The river Thames brought foreigners
+by the thousand to London, adventurers from all lands, men who said with
+ancient Pistol, "The world's my oyster, that I with sword will open."
+London held dangerous riverside slums.
+
+Many associations whose members were banded together for protection
+against the lawful authorities throve on the south side of the Thames,
+and the numbers increased as the years went past. It is a fascinating
+chapter in London's life, this organised revolt against ever-growing
+authority, but one with which in this place there is no lawful occasion
+to deal at length. We know that when Shakespeare had settled in the
+metropolis he lived for a time in Southwark, near the "Bears House"
+marked on the map to which reference has been made. But he is also
+assessed as the owner of property in St. Helen's, Bishopgate, where a
+window given by some anonymous lover of the poet to St. Helen's Church
+records the association. It is likely that Shakespeare in his acting
+days took part in some of the plays given in the yard of the "Bull
+Inn," then the most important hostelry in Bishopgate Street. Old "Crosby
+Hall," the subject of such a prolonged discussion in the press a year or
+so back, was in Bishopgate Street, and Shakespeare lays one of the
+scenes there in his "Richard III." The poet's activity unites Southwark
+with St. Helen's, though in his day the distance between the two must
+have been regarded as considerable.
+
+Many attempts have been made to find out what manner of life the poet
+lived in London, but the material for a reliable opinion is quite
+wanting. Some have imagined that he was a free liver and roysterer,
+after the fashion of his time, that he lived as Robert Greene and
+Christopher Marlowe and other dissipated writers. There is no more
+authority for such a suggestion than there is for the statements on the
+other side telling us that William Shakespeare was the personification
+of every virtue. We simply do not know; there is no record extant. We
+grope with dim eyes through the London of Shakespeare's time, glad to
+find any trace of his presence in some favoured spot, and content to
+make it a place of pilgrimage for his sake. It is to the history of the
+stage itself that we must turn in order to piece together some
+fragmentary record of his life in a city so changed by time and
+prosperity that if the poet could revisit the glimpses of the moon, and
+were to be set down in Bishopgate or Southwark to-day, he would not know
+where to turn, and the metropolis of which we are so proud would be no
+more to him than "the monstrous fabric of a vision."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE STAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY
+
+
+When Shakespeare was at work the women of the plays were represented by
+men or boys. In the highest society the Elizabethan women might take
+some part in masques or pageants without rebuke, but the appearance of a
+woman on the public stage in Shakespeare's day would have aroused
+something like the emotion that would be caused by the appearance of a
+Moslem woman unveiled in the chief thoroughfare of a fanatical
+Mohammedan city, or a suffragist in the House of Commons. Costumes were
+those of the day. Just as the great painters of Italy dressed the heroes
+and heroines of Bible story in the contemporary costume, so the actor of
+Shakespeare's time did no more than wear the best Elizabethan clothes he
+could assume. Scenery was unknown. The front curtain, opening in the
+middle, revealed a bare stage with perhaps a balcony at the back. This
+was sometimes used by the actors, but where the play did not require a
+balcony, visitors to the play would find their places there, just as at
+the Queen's Hall, when a piano or violin recital is given, the orchestra
+is sometimes added to the auditorium. A trumpet flourish warned
+playgoers that the curtain was about to rise, and between the acts a
+small company of musicians helped the interval to pass.
+
+
+=GUILD CHAPEL AND SCHOOL=
+
+
+It was not until the celebrated Inigo Jones designed scenery for certain
+masques given at the Court of King James that the traditional bareness
+of the boards was covered, and it was not until the time of Charles II.
+that women began to make their appearance upon the boards and unite the
+stage with the second estate. Many writers have emphasised the
+difficulties besetting the Elizabethan dramatist; Sir Philip Sidney
+himself has apologised to the spectator for the heavy overdraft on his
+imagination, and we have but to consider some of the most striking
+moments in our poet's work to realise what they must have lost under the
+Elizabethan tradition. How could bare boards conjure up a vision of
+Juliet's garden, of the wood "outside Athens" in which Titania and
+Oberon met, of Prospero's island, of the Forest of Arden? How could any
+boy, however smoothly spoken, present a Rosalind, a Juliet, a Miranda,
+or Cordelia? While we wonder at these things, it is well to remember
+that to those who have never eaten wheat, acorns may prove very
+satisfactory fare. The tradition of the theatre being so strictly
+circumscribed, nobody could imagine anything better than bare boards,
+boy heroines, and modern costumes. There are many sound judges of stage
+matters to-day who are very strongly of the opinion that we have
+travelled too far in the opposite direction, that by reason of costly
+mounting, extravagant costumes, alluring music, and the rest, we are no
+longer able to maintain that "the play's the thing." Doubtless the need
+for the finest possible expression of thought, and the knowledge that
+his words must carry the full burden of success, stimulated not only
+Shakespeare, but every dramatist of the great Elizabethan age.
+
+There was one special advantage attaching to the limitation of stage
+equipment--touring was a simple matter. When we remember that three or
+even four days were required to travel on horseback from London to
+Stratford-on-Avon, owing to the bad tracks that enjoyed the courtesy
+title of roads, and the fords that must be crossed out of flood time, it
+is easy to see that no part of the cumbersome equipment of the modern
+stage could have been taken far out of London without vast and
+unremunerative labour. But the Elizabethan actor travelled light, and as
+soon as the fine weather came he would leave London for the country, and
+tour in all manner of unexpected places until autumn warned him home,
+because it was no longer possible to pass from town to town.
+
+To turn up the old touring list of the Elizabethan companies is to find
+special attention given to towns of which no town is on the first
+touring list to-day. Saffron Walden (the quaint market-town in Essex,
+that opposed the coming of the Great Eastern Railway, and is now served
+by a little branch line), Rye in Sussex (then probably a seaport of some
+dimensions), Marlborough, Coventry, Oxford, Faversham, Hythe, Bath, New
+Romney, Folkestone--here are some of the cities or towns that the
+touring companies delighted to honour in the best season of the year.
+There is ample evidence to show that some companies crossed the border
+into Scotland, and that others went still farther afield--to France,
+Germany, Austria, and other countries. Probably these companies were
+sent abroad by their patrons and supporters, and were consequently
+assured of a hearing and adequate remuneration. It is hardly probable
+that the conditions of continental travel would have been favourable
+enough, or the security for life and property great enough, to tempt
+even third-rate English actors oversea unless they had a definite
+programme and an assured welcome.
+
+Some have thought that Shakespeare in his acting days travelled on the
+Continent, or at least into Scotland, but modern expert opinion does not
+accept the suggestion; it rather inclines to the belief that the poet
+did no more than make a small provincial tour. As far as the Continent
+is concerned, his quaint ideas of French pronunciation and European
+geography should do much to settle the question with regard to these
+countries. His references to Denmark in "Hamlet" are no more than he
+could have founded on a brief chat with actors who had been there. Then,
+again, the period of his active and sole association with the actor's
+profession was brief; he soon became playwright and manager as well, too
+busy to stir far beyond the boundaries of London until the time came
+when he could enjoy his brief period of well-earned ease. Dr. Sidney Lee
+says that the name of Shakespeare does not appear in any known list of
+the actors who travelled from England between 1580 and 1630, a period
+more than sufficient to cover the debatable years. Against this must be
+set the fact that the name appears in certain records of the town of
+Aberdeen as that of a member of a travelling company visiting the city
+in the period covered by Dr. Lee's investigations.
+
+Despite an infinity of research, the figure of William Shakespeare in
+London remains very dim. He is reputed to have been a good actor; but
+Richard Burbage the tragedian and William Kemp the comedian were greater
+actors than he. He played with them before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich
+Palace, in a couple of scenes designed to celebrate Christmas. We are
+told that he took the part of the Ghost in a performance of his own
+"Hamlet" and the part of old Adam in "As You Like It." These very brief
+glimpses into his life as an actor are the more unsatisfactory because
+he remained a player long after he had achieved greatness as a
+playwright. When he left the boards it was to return to
+Stratford-on-Avon and live the retired life. It may be taken for
+granted, then, that his talents as an actor were not in any way
+extraordinary, or those who witnessed his rising fame as a dramatist
+would have left some record of his other work. His advice to the players
+in "Hamlet" is often and justly quoted in evidence of the attention he
+had given to the theory of the acting art, but there is evidence to be
+found in the Sonnets to show that he did not admire himself as an actor.
+Some very recent research in the Record Office shows that the poet
+lodged with a family of French Huguenots named Mountjoy, at the corner
+of Monkwell Street and Silver Street, in the City of London, where a
+public-house called the Coopers' Arms now stands.
+
+
+=HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND THE AVON--STRATFORD=
+
+
+As far as we can tell, the poet had been five years in London before he
+started upon his life-work, and he entered the arena of the playwright
+at the age of twenty-seven. His methods were his own. The stories and
+legends that other men had set down, often crudely, in form of
+chronicle, or even of a play, he melted in the crucible of his own brain
+and gave back in a new and beautiful form. The play can be traced to its
+source, whether that source be a _novellino_ of Masuccio, or Holinshed's
+"Chronicles," or Plutarch's Lives in North's translation, from which
+some passages are copied _in extenso_. The poet himself would seem to
+have had but little consciousness of the worth of his own work. In his
+time plays were not published. Publication was supposed to destroy the
+playgoer's interest in the work presented, and many Elizabethan plays
+owe their survival to the happy accident that enabled some unscrupulous
+person to collect a set of the actors' parts and print them, in order
+either to dispose of the acting rights for private use, or to derive the
+ordinary profits of the sale. When a play was written for and bought by
+a manager, it became his absolute property. He could request the author
+to rewrite or modify passages deemed ineffective; he could even call in
+another man to tinker the work, unrestrained and unrebuked. It is
+supposed that Shakespeare first showed his great parts as a dramatist in
+improving other men's work for Manager Burbage, and that this constant
+exercise of talent upon reproductions, the most of which are absolutely
+unknown to us, paved the way for the development of his gift upon
+original or quasi-original work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY PLAYS
+
+
+The poet is credited with the authorship of some thirty-seven plays,
+though modern criticism has endeavoured to show that he took but a small
+part in the making of a few of these, and of the whole thirty-seven
+little more than a dozen were published during his life. It is supposed
+that his first play was the comedy "Love's Labour's Lost," in which he
+would appear to have gone to his own brain for the plot. Here we find a
+certain broad outlook upon contemporary life, with many a passing
+reference to matters of topical interest, while vivid recollections of
+life in Warwickshire among slow-witted rustics account for some of the
+humorous episodes. Historians can trace many of the references in the
+play, which is supposed to have been written in 1591, five years after
+the author left Stratford, revised in 1597, and published a year later.
+Cuthbert Burbie, who, like Shakespeare's earliest London friend, Richard
+Field, was a member of the Stationers' Company, was the publisher, and
+the printer was one William White of "Cow Lane near Holborn Conduit."
+
+"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" came next, adapted from a Spanish source,
+and not published until the author was dead.
+
+"The Comedy of Errors" is borrowed from Plautus; and then came "Romeo
+and Juliet," founded upon a _novellino_ by Masuccio, who had taken the
+story from the Greek. It has served for many countries, but nowhere has
+the plot found such a magical handling as Shakespeare gave it. There is
+internal evidence to suggest 1591 or 1592 as the date, and Shakespeare
+was still a young man then, on the sunny side of thirty, and with the
+currents of his life no longer turned awry. There is here a ring of
+confidence and enthusiasm that three centuries have proved powerless to
+dull. After due revision, the play was printed in 1597 by John Danter, a
+publisher of rather evil repute. Two years later Burbie published an
+authorised edition.
+
+Oddly enough, the success of "Romeo and Juliet" would appear to have
+been eclipsed by that of "King Henry VI." The events set out in the
+trilogy were sufficiently familiar to the people to give the work an
+interest that is almost fictitious. Criticism has shown that the poet's
+part in these productions was but small. Some say that Greene and Peele
+were the authors of the plays, that Shakespeare rewrote them perhaps
+with a little aid from Marlowe. Certain it is that Greene attacked the
+poet furiously when the remodelled work was produced, calling upon his
+brother dramatists of repute to beware of upstart puppets and "rude
+groomes." But Shakespeare was serenely unmoved by these abusive
+epithets, for which Greene's publisher apologised later. He was in
+the historical vein, and proceeded to write "Richard III.," in which
+Richard Burbage is said to have made a great sensation; the following
+play was "Richard II.," and the poet was clearly responsive to the
+influence of Marlowe in each of these works.
+
+
+=BEN JONSON
+From Painting in the National Portrait Gallery=
+
+
+Shortly after "Richard II." was written and produced the plague visited
+London, and the poet sought the country. He may have written a small
+part, a very small part, of the "Titus Andronicus," and after that he
+picked the stage Jew of Marlowe and the rest out of the gutter, and gave
+the world in "The Merchant of Venice" a figure that commands keen
+interest not untouched with sympathy. "King John," bearing date 1594, is
+another piece of inimitable adaptation. By this time the "Venus and
+Adonis" had been published with a dedication to the third Earl of
+Southampton, and the poet followed it a year later with "The Rape of
+Lucrece," dedicated to the same patron.
+
+These works created a sensation. Shakespeare the actor was already a
+familiar figure, Shakespeare the dramatist was known and admired, but
+Shakespeare the poet seems to have taken literary London by surprise. It
+is hard to say why, for there are passages in the plays he had already
+written that challenge comparison with anything in the poems; but praise
+from the great Elizabethans was not to be lightly won, and no poet could
+have sought to wear a worthier garland than theirs. Shakespeare was
+admitted at once to the most select circles. Queen Elizabeth became his
+patron. Greenwich, Whitehall, and Richmond Palaces witnessed
+performances of his plays, with their author taking some small part in
+them. "The Palace of Nonsuch," a private purchase of Queen Elizabeth's
+situated near Richmond, may still be seen in old prints--a charming
+place enough. The palace at Greenwich, coming right up to the banks of
+the Thames, is also to be seen in old prints, and it says all that is
+needed for the state of Father Thames in the poet's time that a royal
+palace could be lapped by our great river below London Bridge.
+
+Shakespeare's capacity for writing makes us realise that the quantity
+was almost as remarkable as the worth. He wrote his plays at the rate of
+two in a year, with his work as manager and actor thrown in, and his
+poems as a thing apart. The quality of "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape
+of Lucrece" brought him into the company of the country's great
+sonneteers; he was inspired to give attention to the sonnet form and
+made it one of the vehicles for the expression of his most beautiful
+thoughts. The most were written about the year with which we are now
+dealing, 1594. In accordance with the custom of the time, they were not
+printed immediately, but were written by the poet and given to his
+friends. But by this time the interest aroused by new work from
+Shakespeare's pen extended throughout literary circles, and the sonnets
+must have been copied and quoted extensively before they were published
+by a literary pirate named Thorpe in 1609.
+
+The dedication of these sonnets to "Mr. W. H." has roused an enormous
+controversy, into which there is no need to venture far, as it lies
+outside the scope of a brief biography. It should never be forgotten
+that the sonnet in the days of Elizabeth was a form overladen with the
+conceits of many countries, and that few men would have regarded
+seriously the sentiments to which they committed themselves. Suffice it
+that many of the sonnets are of a haunting loveliness that defies
+praise, and gives to the best-intentioned expressions of admiration a
+quality of impertinence. If for W. H. we read H. W. and forget the
+prefix "Mr.," the troubles that have agitated generations of critics are
+seen to evaporate. H. W. would become Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of
+Southampton, to whom in the sonnets constant references occur. A pirated
+edition might well have been handled either carelessly or with a view to
+suggesting what could not be said openly.
+
+Next in order of the plays we come to that exquisite fantasy "A
+Midsummer Night's Dream," in which we find references to Shakespeare's
+supreme patron, Queen Elizabeth, and to the pageants he had seen as a
+little lad when the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth at
+Kenilworth (1575). In 1595 or 1596 came "All's Well that Ends Well,"
+taken from an Italian source, and "The Taming of the Shrew," with an
+introduction dealing boldly with the Stratford country and some of its
+worthies, contemporaries of the poet. In the two-part play of "Henry
+IV." that followed we have further references to Shakespeare's
+birthplace, and he introduces us to Mr. Justice Shallow, who was to come
+into prominence again in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." Clearly the
+dramatist was closely concerned at this period of his life with certain
+happenings in the place of his birth. These references help us, in place
+of authenticated records, to show that Shakespeare still kept in fairly
+close touch with his early home. "Henry IV." is famous for its scenes in
+the Boar's Head at Eastcheap, and lest the enumeration of plays should
+become a little tiresome, let us turn aside for a brief space to
+consider the taverns of Queen Elizabeth's day and the company to be met
+in them.
+
+
+=CHARLECOTE HALL=
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ELIZABETHAN TAVERNS
+
+
+The London taverns were the clubs of London's literary men, and in
+Shakespeare's time the most famous houses were "The Mermaid" in Bread
+Street, "The Boar's Head" in Eastcheap, "The Devil" at Temple Bar, "The
+Falcon," "The Tabard," "The George," and some few others, situated on
+the south side of the river. In the days when he lived by the river-side
+at Southwark, Shakespeare would have counted among the members of his
+tavern club Edmund Spenser, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, "rare
+Ben Jonson," who wrote of his great rival, "I loved the man, and do
+honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any"; tribute over
+which the mind loves to linger. Fuller tells of the contests of wit that
+used to ensue when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson met, "which two I beheld
+like a great Spanish galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson,
+like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in
+his performances; Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in
+bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and
+take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention."
+We see in this simile that the lesson of the Spanish Armada had not been
+forgotten, and that its appearance was still vividly present in men's
+minds.
+
+Although the taverns were open to all comers, it was easy for small
+companies of men, banded together by common interests and devoted to
+similar aims, to keep aloof from casual patrons. Strangers who had no
+literary interests would not find any excuse for intrusion, and the
+landlord, proud of the special patronage of those who claimed respect
+outside the tavern, would doubtless grant them such privileges as the
+house afforded. At a time when the news of the day was brought to the
+taverns, while men of affairs and those who had some _locus standi_ at
+Court did not disdain the attractions of a favoured house, there must
+have been a certain high standard of conversation, and many a friendly
+battle of wits. The ready tongue and fluent pen might make a mark in the
+tavern and all London hear of it. Ben Jonson established the Apollo room
+at the "Devil Tavern" by Temple Bar and drew up his famous "Convivial
+Laws," which, while granting admittance to "learned, urbane merry
+goodfellows" and "choice women," forbade horseplay, and concluded "focus
+perennis esto."
+
+Sir Walter Raleigh founded a club at the "Mermaid Tavern," where, in
+addition to Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, together
+with many other dramatists of note, spent their leisure hours. In
+Southwark the "Tabard Inn" enjoyed the fame conferred upon it by
+Geoffrey Chaucer, as well as the additional honour of his patronage,
+before Shakespeare arrived. "The Bell," "The George," and "The White
+Hart" were among the "Tabard's" leading competitors; it is likely that
+the poet knew them all. We have no record that he spent too much time in
+taverns, as poor Ben Jonson did; but he knew them well enough to enter
+into the spirit of those who served and those who gave orders, those who
+paid promptly, and those who could say with Ancient Pistol, "Base is the
+slave that pays."
+
+Some of Shakespeare's biographers, who, because of their own virtues,
+would abolish cakes and ale and forbid ginger to be hot in the mouth,
+resent the mere suggestion that Shakespeare used the taverns as his
+contemporaries did. There is no reason to suppose that he misused them
+after the fashion of Robert Greene, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, but at the
+same time the temperance advocate will need to go very carefully through
+plays and poems if he is searching for praise of water as opposed to
+wine. The power of the Puritan was rising in Shakespeare's time, but the
+Puritans did not number the poet among their supporters. A certain
+spirit of conviviality marked the Elizabethan age, which enjoyed, among
+other advantages, the benefit of wine and spirits that had not been
+systematically adulterated. Then again, no playwright could remain
+wholly indifferent to the taverns, for it was in the yards of the inns
+that the drama was first nourished. The inn yard was to some extent the
+forerunner of the theatre. When the companies left London in the summer
+and went on tour, they found no small part of their audience in the
+country hostelries. The place of the tavern in literary history has not
+yet been written. From the "Tabard" of Chaucer to the "Mermaid" of
+Shakespeare, through the coffee-houses of a later date, to the "Bohemia"
+of Soho, where the free-lances of literature meet to-day, there is a
+thread of connection well worth examining.
+
+Our ubiquitous press tends to restrict the feast of reason and the flow
+of soul; men do not care to express themselves too freely, or the
+cleverest may wake one morning to find he has made some silent auditor
+famous. A very notorious case of this kind occurred in the last decade
+of the nineteenth century. But in Shakespeare's time wit seemed to
+receive its guinea stamp from the tavern, and we have the records of
+many men to show that when Shakespeare was one of the company the
+audience had good reason to be content. There are many tributes to the
+standard of the conversation. Beaumont, the dramatist, Francis Meres,
+the clergyman schoolmaster, Richard Barnfield, the poet, Michael
+Drayton, the intimate friend, all testify on behalf of Shakespeare; and
+there are many others who must have seen and heard him. The attraction
+of the tavern must have been increased to a great extent when their
+patrons stood a chance of catching the crumbs that fell from the wit's
+table. "To give you total reckoning of it," says Erle, "it is the busy
+man's recreation, the idle man's business, the melancholy man's
+sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the inns a court man's entertainment,
+the scholar's kindness, and the citizen's courtesy. It is the study
+of sparkling wits, and a cup of canary their book, whence we leave
+them."
+
+
+=INTERIOR OF ST. SAVIOUR'S AT SOUTHWARK
+(Edmund Shakespeare's Burial-place)=
+
+
+All have passed--the spacious taverns, those who served, and those who
+patronised them have gone, never to return. Where great writers and
+poets assembled and marked the arrival of travellers from the country,
+and listened to stories of "nine men in buckram," where the horseman saw
+to the ease of his weary nag before his own, we see crowded
+thoroughfares in which the pulse of traffic beats furiously for six long
+days out of seven. Of the many changes London has known in the three
+centuries that have passed since Shakespeare's time few have been more
+drastic. Perhaps the Great Fire destroyed many of the taverns; the
+growth of commerce and the coming of new means of locomotion did the
+rest. Only in old prints may we find some pleasing recollection of
+red-tiled or thatched houses with half timber and half plaster walls,
+their ingle nooks, dormer windows, or many gables. Here the men to whom
+we still pay tribute spent their hours of ease, unconscious that their
+lightest words would be sought for eagerly in generations to come--and
+be sought in vain. But the knowledge that the old houses had their
+being, and that the great poets of the Elizabethan era frequented them,
+hallows many a dusty, dingy street in the city's by-ways now given over
+to feverish activity from dawn to dusk, and to silence from dusk to
+dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE MIDDLE PERIOD
+
+
+Turning again to the plays, there is reason to believe that "The Merry
+Wives of Windsor" followed "Henry IV." The character of Falstaff, first
+known as Oldcastle, had taken the town, but the name had been changed at
+the instance of the eighth Lord Cobham, a descendant of the great
+Lollard, Sir John Oldcastle. Falstaff's humour made ample atonement for
+his faults, and the desire to improve his acquaintance is said by
+several authorities to have been expressed by Queen Elizabeth herself.
+We are told that her Majesty requested the poet to present the fat
+knight in love, and that he obeyed instructions in a few weeks. There is
+no mistaking the high spirits in which the work is written; they are
+still ringing through every line. The poet remembered the old days of
+Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, and gave the knight's arms to Mr. Justice
+Shallow openly and unrebuked. Under the ægis of royalty, he could afford
+to let himself go and hit back at the astonished game-preserver. "The
+Merry Wives" was no more to its author than a merry jest, made in
+fulfilment of a royal request, a payment of long-standing scores in the
+best humour possible, and as soon as it was off his hands the poet
+turned to another historical subject and wrote "Henry V."
+
+With the close of "Henry V." Shakespeare left the arena of English
+history, never to enter it again on his own initiative; for, as will be
+seen, his share in "Henry VIII." was small. Comedy was for the moment in
+his heart. Perhaps it was a relief to him, after the strenuous time he
+had passed through, to pass to his lighter muse and express himself in
+the brightest vein that could not bear misinterpretation. He turned to
+an Italian author, probably Ariosto, for a part of "Much Ado about
+Nothing," but he drew the least vital part from the foreign source; the
+most of the comedy ran sparkling from his own brain. "As You Like It"
+followed "Much Ado," and the date must be about 1600. It is another
+clear case of adaptation, and the scenes of the play given to the Forest
+of Arden breathe the pastoral spirit in a fashion that we look for in
+vain elsewhere. "Twelfth Night" would appear to have been the third
+comedy following the sequence of historical plays, and the date would
+seem to be 1601.
+
+About this time the poet found himself in a very delicate situation. He
+had referred to the expedition of the Earl of Essex in terms of eulogy,
+and when that enterprise failed, Essex revolted against his sovereign,
+aided and abetted by the poet's patron, the Earl of Southampton. Part of
+the preliminary arrangements for the conspiracy consisted in arranging
+for performances of Shakespeare's "Richard II.," in which, of course,
+the king is murdered, the object being to show that regicide was of no
+very distant date. Shakespeare's company was persuaded to revive the
+play at the "Globe" just before the abortive rising in favour of Essex,
+who, having lost his head metaphorically, was now to lose it literally.
+Happily for England, Shakespeare himself was not involved in the
+trouble. Oddly enough, he published in the year of Essex's death and
+Southampton's imprisonment a curious poem, "The Phoenix and the
+Turtle." Nobody has been able to fathom its meaning, though it may be
+that those who connect it with the Essex _débâcle_ may yet find a clue
+to the mystery.
+
+After this year even comedy would seem to have lost its appeal and
+savour for a time. The poet had received a shock that we cannot quite
+estimate or understand, and turning to Plutarch's Lives for inspiration,
+he wrote the famous tragedy "Julius Cæsar," in many respects a work that
+must always defy adequate representation on the stage. How it could have
+passed muster on the bare Elizabethan boards is a puzzle. Next in order
+came the masterpiece by which his name is known to the widest circle of
+his followers, "Hamlet," yet another adaptation of a work that had
+enjoyed popularity for some years in London and the country. There are
+many references in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" to contemporary events,
+including the triumph of the company of boy actors known as "The
+Children of the Chapel," who in a few years had advanced in popular
+favour, and were now threatening the receipts of the established houses
+and companies. History repeats itself. Then as now there was a demand
+for novelty, sensation, and the infant prodigy was in demand. In
+"Hamlet," too, Shakespeare shows that technical knowledge of his art to
+which reference has been made earlier in this little survey. Richard
+Burbage was the first Hamlet, and the tragedy was played in
+Shakespeare's time both at Oxford and Cambridge.
+
+
+=THE FIRST GLOBE THEATRE=
+
+
+Dr. Sidney Lee, than whom no greater authority is needed, is inclined to
+set "Troilus and Cressida" next in the list of plays, and to give it
+date 1603. Some hold that the play hides a satire upon some of the
+poet's contemporaries, but there is insufficient evidence to justify the
+rather laboured conclusions that uphold the contention, which at least
+is of no more than momentary interest. It is easy to find, and difficult
+to deny, these hidden meanings in the work of one who left no clue to
+any suggestion or satire embodied in his plays.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE LATEST PLAYS
+
+
+At this point in Shakespeare's career he lost his first royal patron.
+Queen Elizabeth, whose long and fateful reign drew to its appointed
+close on March 24, 1603. The poet gave to the world no expression of
+grief at her loss. Perhaps he could not do so in loyalty to his first
+and well-beloved patron, Henry Wriothesley, who still languished in
+prison for his complicity in the Essex rising of two years before. There
+had been times in his career when, through no fault of his own,
+Shakespeare had been looked upon with suspicion, and it may have been
+that the path to royal patronage had been at times a thorny and
+difficult one. In any case Elizabeth's generosity had been limited; she
+had not intervened to check the attack upon the theatres by the "unco
+guid" of London in 1601, when, but for the supineness of the Surrey and
+Middlesex magistrates, the poet's financial prosperity might have met
+with a serious set-back. Here, as in so many other places, we are too
+far from the time to see the truth clearly, and those who seek to fill
+in the shadowy outline of the poet's life must rely upon such conjecture
+as may have been put forward in good faith by the people who were
+nearer to him. King James loved the theatre; Queen Elizabeth tolerated
+it; nor must it be forgotten that in the days when the poet's star was
+in the ascendant his royal mistress had seen the greater glories of her
+reign and was entering upon her declining years, not without many
+troubles and much sorrow to mark the last milestones of the road.
+
+One of the first acts of King James's reign was to confer special rights
+upon the Lord Chamberlain's company, of which the poet was a prominent
+member. Henceforward he was one of "The King's Servants," and the King
+took a special interest in Shakespeare's plays, which were often
+performed before him. Unhappily the plague drove the Court from London
+in the autumn of 1603 to the Earl of Pembroke's seat at Wilton; but in
+1604, when the Court returned to London, Shakespeare was first of the
+nine actors who walked in the royal procession, and received a gift of
+scarlet cloth for the making of a cloak worthy the occasion. Many other
+honours followed. Great State occasions called for plays; Shakespeare's
+were chosen, and his company acted them. The scenic art began to receive
+a rather belated attention--in short, there was all the requisite
+stimulus for a man of genius, and the poet responded to it nobly.
+
+"Othello" was the first play written by Shakespeare in the reign of King
+James, but he seems to have had "Measure for Measure" on the stocks at
+the same time, for each was produced at Whitehall towards the close of
+1604. "Macbeth," written in 1605 and 1606, was clearly intended as a
+compliment to the king, who was a descendant of the unfortunate Banquo
+whose royal line Macbeth saw "stretch to the crack of doom." Dr. Lee
+makes the shrewd suggestion that inasmuch as this is the shortest of
+Shakespeare's tragedies, we may have no more than an abbreviated acting
+version. Other critics of note find certain corrupt passages in the text
+that go far to justify this contention. We may be sure that Shakespeare,
+then at the zenith of his power, would not have stinted the measure of a
+work which seems to have taken more of his time than any previous play.
+Following closely upon "Macbeth" came "King Lear," produced at Whitehall
+for the Christmas festivities of 1606, and founded, like several of its
+predecessors, upon Holinshed's Chronicles.
+
+After this supreme effort the pace of genius faltered for a while.
+"Timon of Athens" and "Pericles" are not pure Shakespeare; they do not
+show us the master at his best--though the first named is fine enough to
+have given enduring reputation to a lesser man. The question of his
+collaboration is a difficult one to settle, but leading critics have
+picked out the gold and rejected the dross, and their analyses prove
+that Shakespeare's part in these works was not predominant.
+
+
+=MICHAEL DRAYTON
+In the National Portrait Gallery. (Painter unknown)=
+
+
+It is no function of a simple record like the present to inquire into
+this critical question closely; a dozen editions of Shakespeare's plays
+published in the last ten years set down the latest researches of
+scholars. To not a few of us the tragedy that followed "Pericles" is
+among the finest of all that carry Shakespeare's name; surely, in some
+passages of sheer undying beauty, "Antony and Cleopatra" stands
+well-nigh alone. It dates from 1608, and, like "Coriolanus," the play
+that followed (1609), is taken largely from Plutarch (North's
+translation). "Cymbeline" is founded on Holinshed, and probably may be
+dated 1610. "The Winter's Tale" belongs to 1611, and to this year may be
+assigned the poet's moderate part in "Henry VIII."--he is far from being
+responsible for the whole play. "The Tempest" belongs, at latest, to
+1612. This, the latest and last work of the master-hand, was given with
+all its beautiful songs set to music by Robert Johnson, a player and
+composer of renown.
+
+So, leaving Miranda and Prospero to console us, the greatest dramatist
+of all time laid down his pen. Many a critic and lover of the poet has
+seen in the last words of Prospero, spoken when he gives up his magic
+wand, a reflection of the poet's mind. His life-work, too, was done.
+Unaided, save by his own genius, he had moved from the obscurity of
+Warwickshire's by-ways to a place by the side of the Immortals. In all
+the firmament of poetry there was no star to outshine his. It may be he
+knew that the years still left to him were likely to be few, and that
+his heart turned more from the bustle of a great city's ways to the
+quiet fields and lanes wherein his earliest inspiration had come to him.
+He had written a few scenes of plays that other men would seem to have
+designed and completed, but these fragments are of small importance and
+may be passed over here. Whatever he had given to lend a lustre to the
+work of his contemporaries would seem to have afforded him little
+concern. Henceforward his life was to be spent far from the busy centre
+of theatrical life, though he was compelled to come to town at short
+intervals in the first two or three years following his retirement, and
+there must have been ample atonement for the trouble, in the way of
+association with old friends who still laboured in the metropolis.
+
+When the poet passed into voluntary retirement he had but five years to
+live, but his genius was still ripe. Did he elect deliberately to end
+his labours before the first touch of weakness could reach them? Had he
+realised his ambition, even as Prospero, who moves with such supreme
+dignity through the last play? Was he content to have restored the
+family fortunes? Was it to do this, to take full rank among the
+gentlemen of Warwickshire, that he had striven so long? There is no
+satisfactory answer to these questions. The records are silent as the
+grave itself, and if the past has proved so silent on all points that
+relate to the growth and trend of the poet's mind outside the domain of
+his work, what may we hope from the future?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+BACK AGAIN IN STRATFORD
+
+
+In the foregoing review of the poet's life-work, the progress of his
+fortunes on the material side has been of necessity overlooked. It would
+have been confusing to deal with the two interests side by side, and now
+it is time to look for the signs that mark William Shakespeare's
+prosperity. We know that he came to London poor and left it
+comparatively wealthy, and the change of his state has some very
+definite landmarks. No man passes easily from the duties of an ostler to
+the position of part proprietor of prosperous theatres, and the first
+few years of Shakespeare's sojourn in the metropolis bore but little
+fruit. We know that in those lean times his own purse would have been
+but ill-lined, and both his father's household and his own were
+suffering from the pinch of poverty. His wife was forced to borrow
+money; his father's affairs went steadily from bad to worse. Nor was
+there in all Stratford any help for a family that had fallen from
+comparative affluence into the slough of financial troubles.
+
+We may presume, from the scanty evidence which records have left and
+diligent scholarship has discovered, that the poet himself made no
+effort to "fling away ambition." In the early years of his sojourn in
+London, when visits to Stratford were few and far between and the fear
+of the Squire of Charlecote may have compelled him to lie very low
+within the boundaries of Warwickshire, he would have seen or heard of
+his father's affairs going from bad to worse. The parental honours were
+stripped off one by one, debts accumulated, duns were incessant in their
+attendance. To a proud and sensitive man this condition of things must
+needs have been very galling; but it was not destined to last long.
+Quite apart from his considerable receipts as a playwright, the poet's
+earnings as an actor were substantial. The purchasing value of a
+sovereign in Elizabeth's time would be equal to the value of nearly
+eight pounds of our money, and Shakespeare's most learned biographers
+are of opinion that he was a careful and a saving man. Member of a
+leading company, enjoying the patronage of noblemen and the regard of
+his Sovereign, frequently summoned to take part in special performances
+at Court, it is likely that the poet's income as an actor was, within
+comparatively few years of the start of his career, equal in our modern
+currency to a sum nearer a thousand than five hundred a year. In later
+years it was still higher. For revising other men's work his fees would
+have varied between thirty and forty pounds, modern currency, and for
+his own plays he may well have averaged twice as much, or even more. The
+"benefit" system was already in vogue, and a dramatist could command an
+extra fee if the first-night audience proved very appreciative of his
+efforts. Shakespeare wrote his plays at the rate of two a year, and he
+would have had something in the way of a royalty on the sale of his
+poems, even though the plays brought him nothing as published work. We
+may presume, then, that after a year or two he was able to maintain his
+wife and children with some approach to comfort, and as the years passed
+and reputation grew he found himself able to revisit his birthplace in
+security, and to take definite steps to re-establish the family
+fortunes, then at so low an ebb.
+
+We read that after 1596, when the poet returned to Stratford with
+London's honours thick upon him and plenty of money in his purse, his
+father's debts were no longer the subject of proceedings at the local
+court. We may presume, then, that his son had paid them and cleared the
+way for John Shakespeare's strange application to the College of Heralds
+for a coat of arms. Strange at first thought, but less remarkable if, as
+is generally supposed, the father was acting for the son. It was and is
+the custom for a coat of arms to be applied for by the eldest male of
+the house, and the poet could not have made application in his father's
+lifetime. The application may have received some initial support in
+London, for arms were assigned with the least possible delay. Garter
+King-of-Arms referred to certain (and probably apocryphal) services
+rendered "to that most prudent prince King Henry the Seventh of famous
+memory," and stated, without any recorded blush, that the Shakespeare
+family had continued since those days to live in Warwickshire, in good
+reputation and credit! He went on to record the undoubted fact that the
+applicant had married Mary Arden, daughter and heiress of Robert Arden
+of Wilmcote, who is described as a gentleman. In view of these
+qualifications, arms were assigned to the applicant, a shield described
+in the quaint jargon of heraldry, "Gold, on a bend sable, a spear of the
+first, and for crest or cognizance a falcon, his wings displayed argent
+standing on a wreath of his colours, supporting a spear gold steeled as
+aforesaid." The motto chosen was "Non Sans Droict."
+
+But though the grant was assigned, the assignment was not completed for
+three years, the claim to relationship with the Ardens of Park Hall,
+through John Shakespeare's wife, being disallowed, as was indeed
+inevitable. Even then the grant was criticised in many quarters, but
+William Shakespeare's eminence tended to render all criticism nugatory;
+nor was he the first eminent actor to enjoy a coat of arms. It is quite
+easy to understand the significance of the application if we turn to
+regard the poet as a purchaser of real estate. Some two years before the
+assignment was completed, he had impressed upon his fellow townsmen of
+Stratford the truth that the period of strained finances had passed.
+
+New Place, the century-old seat of Sir Hugh Clopton, a man who had done
+much for Stratford, his birthplace, and had thriven in London, was now
+dismantled and in bad repair; but remained the most imposing house in
+the town. It was on the market, and William Shakespeare bought it, with
+outbuildings and garden, for the equivalent of about four hundred and
+fifty pounds, a large sum in that place and in those days. Some years
+passed before the transaction was completed, and then the poet planted
+an orchard which contained a famous mulberry tree, that flourished for
+more than a hundred and fifty years, and was cut down by the Rev.
+Francis Gastrell, whose name and memory are anathema to lovers of
+Shakespeare. The poet did not take up his residence at New Place until
+he had retired from London, and by that time the repairs were completed
+and the place was in good order. It is at least highly probable that the
+poet conducted some farming operations in and round New Place, though we
+know nothing of his special qualifications for this work. There is a
+record that in time of a local famine he had a good store of corn, and
+he is known to have bought several lots of arable land. From the date of
+the purchase of New Place there could have been none to dispute the
+poet's claim to the description of William Shakespeare of Stratford,
+Gentleman, and from first to last the total amount of his purchases of
+real estate in and round his native town would amount to more than £7000
+modern currency, if we value the Elizabethan pound at eight times our
+own.
+
+At the corner of Chapel Street, Stratford, where it turns into Chapel
+Lane, there is an ugly modern house that enjoys the title of New Place
+and receives the sixpences of the faithful. The trustees of
+Shakespeare's birthplace own New Place and Anne Hathaway's cottage. The
+house in which Shakespeare passed his last years does not exist, but
+there is not a little about Stratford that calls for sixpences more
+readily than it can justify the receipt of them. All that New Place can
+offer of true Shakespearian interest is some venerable timbers, a shovel
+board, from the old Falcon Inn that rose close by soon after
+Shakespeare's death and still stands in receipt of custom, a circular
+table inlaid with wood from the mulberry tree that the poet is said to
+have planted, and a stone mullion from his own house. There is little
+else that can recall the past, although the site of the ancient Clopton
+mansion that Shakespeare purchased is undeniably here. The history of
+the house that has passed and that of its successors has a very definite
+interest.
+
+Shakespeare left New Place to his favourite daughter, Susanna, and to
+her daughter, Elizabeth Nash, in second marriage Lady Barnard. On her
+death Sir John Barnard kept the place as a residence until he sold it to
+Sir Edward Walker, whose daughter Barbara married Sir John Clopton,
+descendant of the man who built the first house at the end of the
+fifteenth century. Sir John pulled down the old house, rebuilt it, and
+was succeeded by Sir Hugh Clopton. From him in an evil hour it passed
+into the hands of a clerical Vandal, Francis Gastrell by name. He was a
+wealthy man and mean, so he quarrelled with the Stratford rating
+authorities, who assessed him too heavily, or so he said, for the
+relief of the poor. He had already cut down the great mulberry tree in
+the garden, because his privacy was disturbed by the early pilgrims to
+the poet's shrine, and for this act alone his name was an offence to the
+lads of Stratford, who broke his windows when opportunity afforded. But
+the town had not finished with the reverend gentleman. When the
+assessors refused to listen to his claim that he should not pay full
+rates to Stratford because he resided for a part of the year at
+Lichfield, he vowed that New Place should never be assessed again. He
+pulled the place down. Boswell described the cutting down of the
+mulberry tree as a piece of "Gothic barbarity," but was silent about the
+other act of vandalism. The mulberry, sold for firewood, was bought by
+a local clockmaker, who made solemn affidavit that the toys he made of
+it were from the genuine sacred tree. When the Rev. Mr. Gastrell had
+gone to where he may have met the poet, though this is unlikely, his
+widow sold the remains of the estate to a Mr. Wm. Hunt, who in time sold
+it to a firm of bankers. In 1827 Miss Smith purchased the site of New
+Place with the adjacent house, now the museum. Mr. Edward Leyton and his
+daughter, Mrs. Loggin, were the next holders, and in 1861 Mr. J. O.
+Halliwell-Phillipps, an enthusiastic student of the poet's history,
+established the existing Trust after raising the necessary money by
+public subscription. But as far as New Place, so called, is concerned,
+it must be remarked, with deference to those whom the reminder may
+offend, that the Falcon Hotel, which can be seen from the house, is the
+older establishment by centuries--indeed the billiard-room is panelled
+with some of the old oak from the New Place that Shakespeare knew. New
+Place Museum is really the house adjoining Shakespeare's, and was the
+property of Thomas Nash, first husband of Elizabeth, daughter of Susanna
+Hall.
+
+Shortly after his purchase of New Place, the poet found himself in a
+better position than ever for increasing his property and gratifying his
+passion for real estate. Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, sons of that
+James Burbage who owned "The Theatre" in which the poet is said to have
+been a servitor, had built the "Globe Theatre" on Bankside. It was an
+octagonal wooden building, in which Shakespeare's company was to be seen
+year after year; the poet refers to it in the opening part of "Henry V."
+The two brothers, from motives of prudence or generosity or both issued
+twenty-one-year leases of shares in the profits of the venture.
+Shakespeare had a share; so had Condell and Phillips and others of the
+company; and later the poet acquired an interest in the "Blackfriar's
+Theatre." Each share was proved, in the course of long subsequent
+litigation, to have been worth two hundred pounds a year. Setting down
+the poet's salary at a like amount, and his author's fees at about a
+hundred, we find that he must have been worth nearly £4000 a year, in
+our modern currency, from the time when he bought New Place to the year
+of his retirement. "The Globe" was burnt down in 1613 during a
+performance of "Henry VIII.," and was rebuilt a year later, but before
+the disaster occurred Shakespeare's financial position had long been
+assured, and it is unlikely that he held his shares when the theatre
+suffered. There is a story, unauthenticated but seemingly credited by
+many good judges, to the effect that at a moment when Shakespeare was
+desirous of making investments either in Stratford or London, his friend
+and patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, came very generously
+to his assistance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE POET'S DOMESTIC LIFE
+
+
+In 1601 John Shakespeare's arduous life came to an end. Fifty years had
+passed since he left Snitterfield for Stratford, to venture into several
+business undertakings with temporary success, and achieve municipal
+honours for a few years. His decline had been more rapid than his rise,
+and, but for his son's success, his ending had been less peaceful. As
+far as we can tell, the last four or five years were free from grave
+financial trouble, but when he died the houses in Henley Street were the
+sole remains of his fortune; the rest had passed to creditors. These
+William Shakespeare inherited as eldest son--he let one, and left his
+mother in peaceful enjoyment of the other. In the following year he made
+more purchases, rather more than one hundred acres of farm-land at three
+pounds per acre--a price that would be quite good to-day if we consider
+the relative values of money--and a cottage with garden on the boundary
+of the New Place grounds. In 1605 he bought the unexpired term of a long
+lease of half the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and
+Welcombe, the price being £440, which may be taken to stand for more
+than £3000 of our money, and a considerable part of a full year's
+income in his most prosperous time. It was an unfortunate investment,
+and one which led to his frequent recourse to the lawyers. Shakespeare's
+knowledge of the law has often puzzled his biographers, and the
+correctness of his phraseology has been advanced by upholders of the
+grotesque Baconian heresy as one of the reasons why he could not have
+written the plays attributed to him. But it is impossible for the plain
+man to follow the arguments that the Baconians adduce and affect to
+support.
+
+
+=THE MERMAID INN=
+
+
+In later years the poet bought another twenty acres of arable land to
+add to his already considerable holding. All these purchases were made
+while he was a very busy man--actor, playwright, and manager. Doubtless
+he had other investments and interests, of which we may some day know a
+little more than we do now. Fresh documents relating to his investments
+in the theatrical world were published as recently as the closing months
+of 1909, and the records of the reign of Elizabeth and James I. are by
+no means fully examined. One truth stands out clearly through the
+interesting story of Shakespeare's investments, and that is his love for
+the town in which he was born. With so large a share of the world to
+choose from, with countless associations that might well have kept him
+in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, with friends in Court circles
+and acting circles who would scarcely be accessible in a town three,
+four, or even five days' journey from London, he seems to have had the
+fixed intent of spending his years of ease at home. There is too much
+reason to believe that with him marriage was a failure. Reference has
+been made already to the birth of his daughter Susanna, who became Mrs.
+Hall, and we know that in 1585 his wife bore twins, boy and girl, Hamnet
+and Judith, named after Hamnet and Judith Sadler, friends of John
+Shakespeare. But the poet saw little of his family or of the three
+children of his union, and at the time of his public return to Stratford
+little Hamnet Shakespeare died, in his twelfth year. Susanna married, in
+1607, the Puritan physician John Hall. Judith the twin married Mr.
+Thomas Quiney in the year of her father's death. The poet seems to have
+lived on excellent terms with his daughters, but there must be some
+justification for the generally accepted story of unhappy married life.
+Had he been devoted to his wife, Shakespeare could have sent for her
+when he had been a very few years in London; the fact that he did not go
+back to her for eleven years has a significance that takes a great deal
+of explaining away, nor are the laboured explanations of the people who
+assume that the life of genius is perfect, worth the ink and paper
+devoted to them. The estrangement might have been the fault of the man,
+or his wife, or both; it is a matter that ceased to be important when
+one or both had died. We make our conjectures and pass on; others come
+to do the same; but the first is likely to be as far from the truth as
+the last. We do not find any reliable information that can clear the
+darkness enshrouding the poet's life; even Aubrey's "Lives of Eminent
+Men," in which the poet is described as "handsome and well shaped," was
+written more than fifty years after his death, and was founded upon the
+gossip of an old actor.
+
+There is hardly more than one portrait that may be supposed to show the
+poet as he was. This was discovered by Mr. Edgar Flower in 1892; it is
+painted on an elm panel, with "Wm. Shakespeare, 1609," in the left-hand
+corner. Several leading authorities have agreed that it may be the
+original from which Martin Droeshout engraved his half-length portrait
+for the folio of 1623, a likeness that was accepted as satisfactory by
+Ben Jonson, though it was clearly a second-hand work, because the
+engraver was no more than fifteen when Shakespeare died. The portrait is
+now in the Memorial Gallery at Stratford. Dr. Sidney Lee, in his
+fascinating "Life of William Shakespeare," a work that has run into many
+editions, tells us that upwards of sixty portraits of Shakespeare have
+been offered to the National Gallery since 1856, and that not one of
+these has been shown to be authentic. How fortunate, then, that the
+deeds and signatures quite beyond suspicion have told the world so much
+about the business side of the poet's life. Just as the forgery of
+portraits has been of common occurrence, so the forgery of deeds has
+been a source of amusement, if not of profit, to many; but happily there
+is always a strong critical faculty waiting to deal with startling
+discoveries, and those that survive the sifting of the keen intellects
+that examine them may be accepted in perfect good faith.
+
+We have the safe material upon which to base the conclusion that the
+poet left Stratford penniless, or well-nigh penniless, in 1585; that
+after eleven years of hard work in London, in the course of which he
+probably paid brief visits to his home, travelling by way of Oxford and
+stopping at the Crown Inn, he returned to restore the family fortunes
+and build up his own estate. We know that he bought the best house in
+the town, that he planted an orchard, developed his gardens, and made
+extensive purchase of farm-lands, some years before he could hope to
+settle down in comfort to their enjoyment. It may be that the knowledge
+that the new home was ready for him helped to put a period to the London
+labours. He did not give any sign of appreciating the full significance
+of his own work, or appear to know that he had made a position that
+placed him side by side with Geoffrey Chaucer in merit, and still higher
+in world renown. He never pushed the advantages that a connection at
+Court and the favour of King James might have given him--he was only too
+pleased to retire, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," while he
+was yet on the sunny side of fifty. Man of affairs sufficiently to seek
+the law-courts on the smallest provocation, idealist to the extent of
+preferring a simple country life to all the glamour of London, a man
+seemingly endowed with all the ambitions of the most sober and
+unimaginative middle class--truly he presents strange and baffling
+contrasts.
+
+In the absence of direct evidence to the contrary, we may presume that
+Shakespeare retired from the actor's profession in 1611, on or before
+the completion of "The Tempest," into the closing act of which he would
+seem to have put a reflection of his own inmost thought. Of all the rich
+and varied emotions to which such a mind must have responded, there
+could have been none more stirring than the thought that his life-work
+had brought the reward he most desired. To the town from which he had
+fled as an outcast he was returning a man of substance and repute; to
+the failing fortunes of those he had left behind he had become a sure
+support. Father, mother, one brother, Edmund, and the little son Hamnet
+had gone before him "to that bourn from which no traveller returns," but
+there were two loving daughters and a granddaughter waiting to welcome
+him home, one sister, Joan, and two brothers, Gilbert and Richard. There
+was Michael Drayton, author of the "Shepherd's Garland," the man after
+his own heart, to whose charming sonnets he was indebted for some of the
+beauty of his own, and it may be that some of his old companions of the
+stage could be lured to New Place in the intervals of their touring. For
+one who knew as well as Shakespeare the changes and uncertainties of
+life, there must have been a keen consciousness that balance of fortune
+was in his favour when he rode out from London on to the
+Oxford-Stratford road, only to return to look after his vested interests
+as occasion should demand.
+
+The poet would appear to have taken an active part in developing the
+prosperity of his native town, and to have found in that work
+sufficient consolation, if any was needed, for his absence from the
+scenes of greater activity. In 1611, the year of his retirement, he
+supported with his purse and influence a Bill before Parliament for the
+better repair of the highways. He had suffered first-hand acquaintance
+with their wretched state. Doubtless he took part in much unrecorded
+work for the betterment of his own estate, and he was frequently found
+indulging in his undeniable passion for litigation. The purchase of a
+house in Blackfriars is recorded in 1613, and it led to the seemingly
+inevitable lawsuit some two years later. Nicholas Rowe, poet-laureate to
+King George I., wrote a life of Shakespeare in the early years of the
+eighteenth century, and we owe to him a statement, founded upon such
+information as a lapse of a century could validate, that Shakespeare
+spent the last years of his life enjoying "ease, retirement, and the
+conversation of his friends." We know that Michael Drayton and Ben
+Jonson visited him at New Place, and it is a tradition that their visits
+were celebrated in convivial fashion. At the same time there would have
+been certain restraints upon a very free life, even had the poet been
+disposed to lead one. Society in small country towns is notoriously
+inclined to be intolerant, and Shakespeare's son-in-law, Dr. Hall, was
+one of the great and growing body of Puritans that looked askance at
+sensual indulgence in any form. Moreover, there was a strong feeling
+against the stage in Stratford; it found expression only a year after
+Shakespeare's return, when the Town Council passed a resolution that
+stage plays were unlawful, and increased the penalties to which players
+might be subjected. It would be a matter of great interest to know how
+Shakespeare regarded a resolution that so wantonly decried the
+profession by which he had lived and thriven. There is no evidence to
+show that the action of the city fathers was symptomatic of any ill-will
+towards him, or that he resented it openly. Yet he was a man who could
+and would stand up for his rights in and out of season. Perhaps in the
+most of his moods he was gentle and affectionate, for more than once in
+his career we find his friends leaving him small legacies or gifts or
+tokens of their affection. These came alike from actors who had shared
+with him the traffic of the stage, and from fellow-townsmen of
+Stratford. Even if the recorded references are scanty enough, there is
+none that may be held unflattering if we except the attack by Greene,
+for which his publisher went out of his way to apologise. It is hard, if
+not impossible, to estimate the value of any form of art-work in the
+lifetime of the worker, and it may well be that of the thousands who
+applauded Shakespeare's plays there were very few who saw them as we do
+to-day. The mere fact that they were for the most part new versions of
+works that were then quite familiar to playgoers would have told against
+them. Theme rather than treatment was best calculated to "tickle the
+groundlings."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+STRATFORD AS IT WAS
+
+
+Stratford in Shakespeare's time administered its own affairs in very
+complete fashion through the medium of a Guild, which was turned into a
+Municipal Corporation by Edward VI. It boasted bailiff, aldermen,
+burgesses and chamberlains, and the council met every month in the Guild
+Hall. Those who accepted office were liable to be heavily mulcted for
+non-attendance, for attending in mufti, for declining promotion to a
+more responsible office, or for telling the secrets of the council
+chamber to those who had no place in it. The Chapel of the Guild, the
+Guild Hall, and the Grammar School, in which boys were taught and
+disciplined in fashion that would shock our humanitarian instincts
+to-day, still exist. The bailiff or warden of Stratford was at one time
+John Shakespeare himself, and at another a subordinate colleague, who
+would have sat in judgment upon him in the days when the old man's
+liabilities were beginning to get the better of his assets, and he
+himself was no longer a man of importance. The rule of the City Guild or
+Corporation was paternal in an Elizabethan sense. Just as the
+schoolmaster did not spare the rod lest he should spoil the child, so
+the magnates of the corporation regarded their fellow-citizens as men
+and women to be admonished or encouraged, punished or praised, according
+to their behaviour. Food prices were fixed by the corporation; the
+adulteration of the people's supplies was made exceedingly difficult and
+dangerous. Men who lived ill were fined or expelled from Stratford's
+boundaries; scolding wives were sentenced to have their tempers
+sweetened by immersion from the ducking-stool in the clear, cold waters
+of Avon. Publicans were forced to conform to the local laws carefully
+framed to abolish public drunkenness. The stocks were waiting for the
+feet of drunkards, brawlers, and offenders against municipal
+regulations, and the whipping-post was always in evidence where the
+Market House now stands. Apprentices might not be out after nine o'clock
+at night. Attendance at church was obligatory, and he who blasphemed or
+used foul language found ample reason to regret his indiscretion. In
+short, the conduct of Stratford was of a kind more in keeping with the
+Puritan tradition than anything we can find in England to-day, but it
+was associated with real brotherly love, and a feeling of common
+citizenship, that held the town together. Those who have studied the
+early records of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in England
+in the years following the successful intercession of Manasseh ben
+Israel with Oliver Cromwell, will hardly fail to note the striking
+similarity between the rules that governed Elizabethan corporations and
+those that governed those Jews who returned to England and lived their
+prosperous but dignified lives in the east end of London when the
+eighteenth century was as young as our own.
+
+
+=SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE--STRATFORD-ON-AVON=
+
+
+There was much to hold communities together in Elizabeth's time, much to
+encourage strength of purpose and resignation to troubles that were
+regarded as the manifestation of Divine Will, though in truth they were
+fruits of the people's ignorance. Unfortunately there was no real
+attempt to control them. Sanitation was unknown. The ground floors of
+the houses were of hard clay, covered with rushes; chimneys were not
+common. Refuse and garbage were placed in the open roads, not always in
+the special places appointed by the corporation. Pigs were kept close to
+the houses, and though the butchers were supposed to take the refuse of
+the slaughter-houses beyond the town, a strong wind would doubtless
+bring back infection. The corporation kept certain public places clean,
+and doubtless the citizens, or the most of them, did their best; but
+they had no knowledge of the price of uncleanliness, and in a town that
+was unpaved, undrained, and seldom cleaned, microbes must have enjoyed
+their life under conditions only familiar to those of us who have
+travelled through some of the remote cities of Africa and Asia, and
+known what it is to be literally unable to dismount from a horse. Street
+lighting was in its early infancy. In Shakespeare's time every man of
+substance was compelled to hang a lighted lantern outside his house
+from dusk to curfew, during a few weeks of midwinter, and that was all.
+
+Of all these defects the lack of cleanliness was the vital one, and the
+consequences of the neglect or ignorance of the first laws of sanitation
+may be imagined. Plague was never far away. Every few years there would
+be a visitation, mild or severe, and there was no effective remedy known
+to the people. As in the time of the great plague of London, herbs and
+cooling drinks were employed, fresh air was in demand, and there was
+much burning of spices. Shakespeare was a baby in arms when a visitation
+of the plague gave nearly fifteen per cent. of the town's population to
+the graveyard or its substitute, the plague pit.
+
+Now and again the Avon would overflow its banks and flood the
+surrounding country. Not only would such a disaster increase the ague
+and rheumatism that are never far removed from dwellers by the
+river-side, but a late summer flood might damage the crops on low-lying
+lands, or carry away corn that had been cut but not carted, and then, as
+Stratford was not readily accessible, the prices of food stuff would
+rise despite the corporation's efforts, and actual famine was not
+unknown.
+
+Fires, too, were common. Doubtless a few arose from the overheating of
+corn in barns and stacks, and some from the absence of chimneys to so
+many houses. The corporation did what it could, but there were no
+resources adequate to deal with a conflagration, for all that the Avon
+ran at the foot of the town. They came to the conclusion in 1582 that
+the absence of chimneys was a fruitful source of disaster, and ordered
+every householder to build one. They also ordered every burgess to
+provide himself with a bucket. Looking back to the times, it is not easy
+to say that the corporation of Stratford was really backward; its
+members did all that the people of a little town in the heart of
+Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to
+have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous
+endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do
+in the public service, and those who failed were punished.
+
+When we look round at our busy manufacturing towns in this year of
+grace, and remember how much we know of the best tradition of municipal
+work, can we say that, _mutatis mutandis_, the advantage is altogether
+with us? Plague and fire and flood have been overcome, but men and women
+live lives entirely undisciplined. Little or nothing binds the citizen
+to the State, and the adulteration of food has become so common that
+pure bread and pure beer are the exception, and the supervision of those
+who prepare the necessities of our daily life is much less strict than
+it was when old John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was Stratford's
+ale-taster, empowered to see, _inter alia_, that every baker sold a
+whole loaf of true weight for one penny.
+
+But if the corporation ruled Stratford strictly in Elizabethan times,
+it encouraged all kinds of sport, to some of which the poet makes
+reference in his plays. Young and old knew the Maypole. Nine Men's
+Morris was another popular game, and Falstaff, referring to his
+treatment when he escaped from Ford's house disguised as the fat woman
+of Brentford, says, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipp'd
+top, I knew not what it was to be beaten, since lately." Goose-plucking
+was a particularly barbarous pastime. We know that hockey and football
+were played in Elizabethan England, and that the corporation of
+Stratford kept a bowling-alley at the municipality's expense for the
+free use of the town. Cock-fights were among the less reputable sports
+of the time, and bears or bulls were baited. Hunting, hawking, coursing,
+fishing, and the rest beguiled the leisure hours of those who had any,
+and the harvest festivals would have played their part. There were great
+fairs and open markets held at certain seasons of spring and summer.
+Within doors, cards and shovel-board would seem to have been the only
+kind of amusement that were not directly associated with social
+ceremonies.
+
+Christening, marriage, and burial were all allied in the poet's time to
+more public exhibitions than obtain to-day, the wedding being preceded
+by a public betrothal ceremony, and the marriage itself being associated
+with a great many quaint customs if the contracting parties had the
+money wherewith to carry them out. Removed from touch with the outside
+world, seeing little of the life of big cities for themselves, the
+citizens of Stratford managed to get no small measure of simple and
+harmless enjoyment out of life, though even among the town council there
+were men whose liking for sack and good ale was notorious.
+
+Players from London brought some added amusement in the summer, but as
+Stratford grew more and more puritanical, a very deliberate effort,
+already referred to in the preceding chapter, was made to penalise
+actors, and some years after Shakespeare's death it is recorded that the
+king's players were bribed by the corporation to leave the town without
+giving any performances. The gardens of Stratford were very productive.
+They were separated from each other by mud walls, and were carefully
+cultivated. Shakespeare delighted in his gardens and his plays speak of
+his sound knowledge of the gardener's craft. People who could afford to
+plant orchards took a pride in doing so; the poorer folk generally
+boasted a few fruit-trees, and gave no small part of their garden plot
+to raising herbs and simples for use against the various ailments that
+troubled them from time to time. The furniture in the house was
+primitive. Table, stools, a chair or two, and a bench would furnish a
+living-room. Carpets were not often met with; mattresses, bolsters, and
+pillows were stuffed with feathers. Sheets and table-cloths were of flax
+or hemp; dishes were of brass or pewter. Wooden trenchers and pewter
+spoons were in common use, and most houses held the necessary equipment
+for baking bread, brewing ale, and weaving wool. Cooking was primitive;
+good cooks were not required unless the occasion was an extraordinary
+one. People rose early and retired early; there was no temptation to be
+out late in filthy, ill-lighted streets, and bed was the only
+comfortable place in a house after nightfall. Doubtless the conditions
+were favourable to deep drinking among those who were not limited to the
+ale-house, and consequently could escape from the vigilant eye of
+authority.
+
+The apprentice system was in vogue at Stratford in Shakespeare's time,
+and though the condition of apprentices was not always creditable to
+their employers, the system ensured a thorough knowledge of any business
+that a man sought to establish. The apprenticeship was a legal
+condition, precedent to setting up in business, and until a lad had
+fulfilled his indentures he could not open a shop on his own account or
+claim the rights of a freeman. Apprentices had their rights and
+privileges, including certain holidays, but they might not carry arms,
+might not visit ale-houses, and might not stay out after nine o'clock.
+For lads who did not care to settle down in business, or had not the
+means to establish themselves in one, there were other ways of securing
+a living. They could seek military service--there was always a demand
+for strong, athletic young men--or they could enter the big
+establishments of the great landowners, who employed scores of
+retainers, and, in peaceful times, did not overwork them. The wealthier
+lads went to the universities or to the metropolis, where no small
+proportion, freed from all restraint, went hopelessly to the bad. In
+Shakespeare's time, the Earl of Leicester, Lord Compton, Sir Thomas Lucy
+of Charlecote, and a few others, were the chief men in the neighbourhood
+of Stratford to keep retainers in large numbers.
+
+
+=SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON=
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CLOSE OF LIFE
+
+
+When Shakespeare settled down in Stratford to spend the last years of
+his life amid its familiar surroundings, he could without a doubt have
+aspired to the highest honours in the corporation's gift. He had
+restored his father's good name, and John Shakespeare in his palmy days
+had been Stratford's chief alderman. The early history of his escapades
+had apparently been forgotten; he was on friendly terms with the then
+owner of Charlecote Park, while other great landowners who passed a part
+of their time at Court were to be found among his acquaintances if not
+his friends. But he had not retired from the stress and strife of London
+to seek responsibilities that entailed heavy penalties for neglect. It
+sufficed him to take a friendly interest in the affairs of the
+corporation, and to remain right outside the council chamber. His own
+obligations might call him to town at any moment, and his own local
+affairs would have taken so much of the rest of his time as he would be
+disposed to give to business. Clearly he wished to enjoy his life, and
+from the scanty records in our possession there is reason to believe
+that he did so. Doubtless he added much to his ample stores of
+observation; the few last years could hardly have been wasted; but
+apparently he had no wish to set pen to paper when he had left the stage
+behind him. It may be that, had he been disposed to work in the later
+years, the Gunpowder Plot might have afforded him material for a
+stirring play. Ambrose Rookwood, who was closely associated with the
+conspiracy, lived in Clopton House near Stratford.
+
+The Clopton family was closely identified with Stratford's history. Sir
+Hugh, of that family, had been Lord Mayor of London in 1492. He it was
+who built New Place, the house in which the poet was living. He built
+the stone bridge over Avon at Stratford, to take the place of a
+worthless wooden structure. He founded exhibitions at Oxford and
+Cambridge Universities. In short, Sir Hugh made the reputation of the
+family for all time, and the scandal of Rookwood's residence in Clopton
+House, which is within easy reach of Stratford, must have been a
+considerable one.
+
+There is a suggestion that the poet had not only given up his work, but
+that the taint of landowning under the existing conditions had corrupted
+him. As late as 1614 he was assisting one William Combe, a landowner and
+son of his old friend John Combe--who had left him five pounds by
+will--in an attempt to enclose the common lands round his estate at
+Welcombe. In the early days the poet had been a foe of those who
+attempted to rob the people, but it may be that by 1614 he was growing a
+little intolerant of the Puritans on the corporation council, and quite
+ready to vex them if he could. The Clerk to the Council followed
+Shakespeare to London, apparently in order to discuss the case against
+William Combe, and the corporation in council drew up a letter to the
+poet, begging him to aid them against the guilty landowner; but
+Shakespeare did not do so, and it was left for the London courts to
+settle the matter in favour of the corporation, after much litigation
+and long delays.
+
+The opening days of 1616 saw the marriage of Judith Shakespeare, the
+poet's daughter, born with little Hamnet who had died twenty years
+before. Two months later the poet entertained Michael Drayton and Ben
+Jonson at New Place. Some biographers say that the meeting was
+associated with a drinking bout--there is no reason to believe that
+either of his distinguished visitors would have been averse from one.
+Others believe that the poet fell a victim to the prevailing lack of
+sanitation; his house was at the corner of a very dirty lane. Whatever
+the cause, there can be no doubt about the result. On the 23rd of April
+1616, England's greatest dramatist died in the prime of life--he was
+just fifty-two years of age. Two days later he was buried in Stratford
+Church, near the north wall of the chancel. Fearful lest his bones
+should be added to the grisly burden of the charnel-house close by, he
+penned a curse upon those who should disturb his remains.
+
+The corporation's leading members joined the funeral procession, and a
+banquet consoled the mourners. A monument was put up in the chancel a
+few years later, the work of a London sculptor living near the "Globe
+Theatre." It is not a very pleasing piece of work. By his will, the poet
+left substantial legacies to his daughters, a gift to Stratford's poor,
+and mementoes to many friends, but to his wife he left his "second best
+bedstead" and nothing more. Anne Shakespeare died seven years later, and
+was buried close to her husband. His neglect of her by will does not
+imply indifference to her future; doubtless he had expressed his wish
+that one or other of his daughters should look after her, but it is
+clear that he did not hold her in great affection.
+
+So passed a great man from his world, leaving an imperishable monument
+for generations yet to come. The London he knew has passed beyond our
+ken; it is a buried city that will never be unearthed. But time has
+dealt more gently with Stratford and Shottery, Wilmcote and
+Snitterfield, and a large part of the surrounding country that made our
+national poet articulate. Much that he loved returns with the yearly
+pageant of the seasons, and with this we must be perforce content.
+
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Aberdeen, 32
+
+  "All's Well that Ends Well," 39
+
+  Ancient Pistol, 43
+
+  "Antony and Cleopatra," 53
+
+  Arden, Forest of, 47
+    "  Mary, 9, 58
+    "  Robert, 58
+
+  Ariosto, 47
+
+  Arnold, Matthew, 7
+
+  "As You Like It," 32, 47
+
+  Aston Clinton, 7, 9
+
+  Aubrey's "Lives of Eminent Men," 66
+
+  Avon, 5, 73, 75, 82
+
+
+  Barnard, Lady, 60
+    "  Sir John, 60
+
+  Barnfield, Richard, 44
+
+  Bath, 30
+
+  "Bear's House," 25, 26
+
+  Beaumont, 41, 42, 44
+
+  "Bell, The," 43
+
+  "Bell Inn," 17
+
+  Bishopgate, 26, 27
+
+  Bishopton, 64
+
+  Blackfriars, 21, 70
+    "  Theatre, 22, 62
+
+  Boar's Head, 40, 41
+
+  "Bohemia," 44
+
+  Boswell, 61
+
+  Brentford, 77
+
+  "Bull Inn," 27
+
+  Burbage, Cuthbert 62
+    "  James, 22, 62
+    "  Richard, 22, 32, 37, 49, 62
+
+  Burbie, Cuthbert, 35, 36
+
+
+  Cambridge University, 82
+
+  Chapel of the Guild, 72
+
+  Charlecote, 7, 12, 46, 56, 80
+    "  Park, 81
+
+  Charles II., 29
+
+  Chaucer, Geoffrey, 43, 44, 68
+
+  "Children of the Chapel, The," 48
+
+  Clopton, Sir Hugh, 58, 60, 82
+    "  Sir John, 60
+    "  House, 82
+
+  Cobham, Lord, 46
+
+  College of Heralds, 57
+
+  Combe, John, 82
+    "  William, 82, 83
+
+  "Comedy of Errors, The," 36
+
+  Compton, Lord, 80
+
+  Condell, 62
+
+  "Convivial Laws," 42
+
+  Coopers' Arms, 33
+
+  "Coriolanus," 53
+
+  Coventry, 30
+
+  "Cow Lane," 35
+
+  Cromwell, Oliver, 73
+
+  "Crosby Hall," 27
+
+  Crown Inn, 68
+
+  "Curtain, The," 21
+
+  "Cymbeline," 53
+
+
+  Danter, John, 36
+
+  Derby, Earl of, 22
+
+  "Devil Tavern," 41, 42
+
+  Drayton, Michael, 7, 44, 69, 70, 83
+
+  Droeshout, Martin, 67
+
+
+  Eastcheap, 40
+
+  Edward VI., 72
+
+  Elizabeth, Queen, 13, 32, 37, 39, 46, 50, 51
+
+  Essex, Earl of, 47, 48
+
+
+  "Falcon, The," 41, 60, 62
+
+  Falstaff, Sir John, 13, 46, 77
+
+  Faversham, 30
+
+  "Feverel, Richard," 16
+
+  Field, Richard, 20, 21, 35
+
+  Fletcher, 41, 42
+
+  Florence, 26
+
+  Flower, Edgar, 67
+
+  Folkestone, 30
+
+  Fulbroke Parks, 12
+
+  Fuller, 41
+
+
+  Gastrell, Rev. Francis, 59, 60, 61
+
+  "George, The," 41, 43
+      "    I., 70
+
+  "Globe, The," 22, 48, 62, 84
+
+  Gower, 25
+
+  Grammar School, Stratford, 72
+
+  Gray's "Elegy," 1
+
+  Greene, Robert, 27, 36, 43, 71
+
+  Greenwich, 32, 38
+
+  Guild Hall, 72
+
+  Gunpowder Plot, 82
+
+
+  Hall, John, 66, 70
+    "   Susanna, 62, 66
+
+  Halliwell-Phillipps, Mr. J. O., 61
+
+  "Hamlet," 31, 32, 48, 49
+
+  Hathaway, Anne, 11, 17, 18, 60
+
+  "Henry IV.," 13, 14, 39, 40, 46
+    "    V.," 14, 47, 62
+    "    VI., King," 36
+    "    the Seventh, King, 57
+    "    VIII.," 47, 53, 63
+
+  High Wycombe, 20
+
+  Holinshed's "Chronicles," 33, 52, 53
+
+  Hunt, Wm., 61
+
+  Hythe, 30
+
+
+  James I., King, 22, 24, 29, 51, 77
+
+  Johnson, Robert, 53
+
+  Jones, Inigo, 29
+
+  Jonson, Ben, 7, 41, 42, 43, 67, 70, 83
+
+  "Julius Cæsar," 48
+
+
+  Keere, Peter Van den, 24, 25
+
+  Kemp, William, 32
+
+  Kenilworth, 39
+
+  "King John," 37
+    "   Lear," 52
+
+  "King's Servants, The," 51
+
+
+  "Lambeth Marsh," 25
+
+  Lee, Dr. Sidney, 10, 31, 32, 49, 52, 67
+
+  Leicester, Earl of, 13, 21, 39, 80
+
+  Leyton, Edward, 61
+
+  Lichfield, 61
+
+  Loggin, Mrs., 61
+
+  Lollard, 46
+
+  "Love's Labour's Lost," 35
+
+  Lucy, Sir Thomas, 12, 13, 46, 80
+
+
+  "Macbeth," 51, 52
+
+  Manasseh ben Israel, 73
+
+  Marlborough, 30
+
+  Marlowe, Christopher, 27, 36, 37, 43
+
+  Masuccio, 33, 36
+
+  "Measure for Measure," 51
+
+  "Merchant of Venice, The," 37
+
+  Meredith, George, 16
+
+  Meres, Francis, 44
+
+  "Mermaid, The," 41, 42, 44
+
+  "Merry Wives of Windsor," 13, 40, 46
+
+  "Midsummer Night's Dream, A," 13, 39
+
+  Milton, 7
+
+  Miranda, 53
+
+  Moorfields, 21
+
+  "More Feyldes," 25
+
+  Mountjoy, 33
+
+  "Much Ado about Nothing," 47
+
+
+  Naseby, 5
+
+  Nash, Elizabeth, 60
+    "   Thomas, 62
+
+  Newington Butts, 22
+
+  New Place, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 69, 70, 82, 83
+
+  New Place Museum, 62
+
+  New Romney, 30
+
+  Nimrod, 13
+
+  Norman William, 5
+
+
+  Oldcastle, Sir John, 46
+
+  Old Stratford, 11, 64
+
+  "Othello," 51
+
+  Oxford, 20, 30, 68
+
+  Oxford University, 82
+
+
+  "Palace of Nonsuch, The," 38
+
+  Peele, 36
+
+  Pembroke, Earl of, 51
+
+  "Pericles," 52, 53
+
+  Phillips, Augustus, 22, 62
+
+  "Phoenix and the Turtle, The," 48
+
+  Plautus, 36
+
+  "Play House," 25
+
+  Plutarch's "Lives," 33, 48, 53
+
+  Ponte Vecchio, 26
+
+  Prospero, 53, 54
+
+
+  Quiney, Mr. Thomas, 66
+
+
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 42
+
+  "Rape of Lucrece, The," 37, 38
+
+  Rhodes, Cecil John, 2
+
+  "Richard II.," 37, 47
+
+  "Richard III.," 27, 37
+
+  Richmond, 38
+
+  "Romeo and Juliet," 36
+
+  Rookwood, Ambrose, 82
+
+  "Rose, The," 22
+
+  Rowe, Nicholas, 70
+
+  Rye, 30
+
+
+  Saffron Walden, 30
+
+  Saxon Harold, 6
+
+  Senlac, 5
+
+  Severn, 5
+
+  Shakespeare, Edmond, 24, 69
+    "  Gilbert, 69
+    "  Hamnet, 66, 69
+    "  Joan, 69
+    "  John, 9, 10, 57, 58, 64, 66, 72, 76, 81
+    "  Judith, 66, 83
+    "  Richard, 69
+    "  Susanna, 12, 60, 66
+
+  Shallow, Mr. Justice, 13, 40, 46
+
+  "Shepherd's Garland," 69
+
+  Shoreditch, 21
+
+  Shottery, 7, 11, 16, 17, 18, 84
+
+  Sidney, Sir Philip, 29
+
+  Smith, Miss, 61
+
+  Snitterfield, 6, 9, 10, 64, 84
+
+  Southampton, Earl of, 37, 39, 47, 48, 63
+
+  Southwark, 22, 26, 27, 42
+
+  Spanish Armada, 42
+
+  Spenser, Edmund, 41
+
+  "Spittlefeyldes," 25
+
+  St. Helen's, 26, 27
+
+  "St. Marye Overyes," 24, 25
+
+  St. Saviour's, Church of, 24, 25
+
+  Stratford Church, 83
+
+
+  "Tabard, The," 41, 42, 43, 44
+
+  "Taming of the Shrew, The," 39
+
+  "The Tempest," 53, 69
+
+  "Theatre, The," 21, 22, 62
+
+  Thorpe, 38
+
+  "Timon of Athens," 52
+
+  "Titus Andronicus," 37
+
+  "Troilus and Cressida, 49
+
+  "Twelfth Night," 47
+
+  "Two Gentlemen of Verona, The," 35
+
+
+  "Venus and Adonis," 37, 38
+
+
+  Walker, Sir Edward, 60
+
+  Welcombe, 64, 82
+
+  Westminster Abbey, 24
+
+  White, William, 35
+
+  Whitehall, 38, 51, 52
+
+  "White Hart, The," 43
+
+  Wilmcote, 6, 9, 10, 18, 58, 84
+
+  Wilton, 51
+
+  "Winter's Tale, The," 53
+
+  Wotton Wawens, 7
+
+  Wriothesley, Henry, 39, 50, 63
+
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  Edinburgh & London
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+  Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+  Illustration captions are indicated by =caption=.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's William Shakespeare, by Samuel Levy Bensusan
+
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of William Shakespeare: His Homes and Haunts, by S.L. Bensusan.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Shakespeare, by Samuel Levy Bensusan
+
+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: William Shakespeare
+       His Homes and Haunts
+
+Author: Samuel Levy Bensusan
+
+Illustrator: A. Forrestier
+
+Release Date: August 5, 2009 [EBook #29611]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Florian Hofmann, Stephanie Eason and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(Illustration images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="SHAKESPEARE" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/pilgrim.jpg" alt="The Pilgrim Books" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>THE<br /> PILGRIM BOOKS</h3>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><i>General Editor</i>&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">S. L. BENSUSAN</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>1.</td><td>SHAKESPEARE</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2.</td><td>LAMB</td></tr>
+<tr><td>3.</td><td>WORDSWORTH</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><i>Others in Preparation</i></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><a name="front" id="front"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/shakes.jpg" alt="THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT AT SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE" /></div>
+<div class="caption">THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT AT SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table summary="Title Page">
+<tr><td align="left"><img src="images/title.jpg" alt="border" /></td>
+<td><h1>WILLIAM<br />
+SHAKESPEARE</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h3>S.L. BENSUSAN</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>WITH TWELVE DRAWINGS IN CRAYON BY<br />
+A. FORRESTIER<br />
+AND FOUR PORTRAITS</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>LONDON: T. C. &amp; E. C. JACK<br />
+16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.<br />
+AND EDINBURGH</h4></td>
+<td align="right"><img src="images/titler.jpg" alt="border" /></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h4>HUNC LIBELLUM</h4>
+<h4>REVERENDISSIMO</h4>
+<h3>M. GASTER, <span class="smcap">Ph.D.</span></h3>
+<h4>VIRO ERUDITISSIMO</h4>
+<h4>PRAECEPTORI PERITISSIMO</h4>
+<h4>AMICO FIDELISSIMO</h4>
+<h4>MAGNA CUM REVERENTIA</h4>
+<h4>D.D.D.</h4>
+<h4>OLIM DICIPULUS</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td align="right">CHAP.</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_I">STRATFORD-ON-AVON</a></td><td align="right">1</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_II">THE POET'S YOUTH</a></td><td align="right">8</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_III">NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY</a></td><td align="right">15</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">FIRST DAYS IN LONDON</a></td><td align="right">20</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_V">SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON</a></td><td align="right">24</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">THE STAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY</a></td><td align="right">28</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY PLAYS</a></td><td align="right">35</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VIII.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">THE ELIZABETHAN TAVERNS</a></td><td align="right">41</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IX.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">THE MIDDLE PERIOD</a></td><td align="right">46</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">X.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_X">THE LATEST PLAYS</a></td><td align="right">50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XI.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">BACK AGAIN IN STRATFORD</a></td><td align="right">55</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XII.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">THE POET'S DOMESTIC LIFE</a></td><td align="right">64</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIII.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">STRATFORD AS IT WAS</a></td><td align="right">72</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIV.</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">THE CLOSE OF LIFE</a></td><td align="right">81</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="xxx">
+<tr><td>THE ELY PORTRAIT AT SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE</td><td colspan="2" align="right"><a href="#front"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>THE HOME OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE, SNITTERFIELD</td><td><i>Facing p.</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE&mdash;INTERIOR</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>MARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>GUILD CHAPEL AND SCHOOL</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND THE AVON, STRATFORD</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>BEN JONSON</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>CHARLECOTE HALL</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>INTERIOR OF ST. SAVIOUR'S AT SOUTHWARK</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>THE FIRST GLOBE THEATRE</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>MICHAEL DRAYTON</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>THE MERMAID INN</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON</td><td align="center">"</td><td><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>In telling the story of Shakespeare's life and work within strict limits
+of space, an attempt has been made to keep closely to essential matters.
+There is no period of the poet's life, there is no branch of his
+marvellous work, that has not been the subject of long and learned
+volumes, no single play that has not been discussed at greater length
+than serves here to cover the chief incidents of work and life together.
+If the Homes and Haunts do not claim the greater part of the following
+pages, it is because nobody knows where to find them to-day. Stratford
+derives much of its patronage from unsupported traditions, the face of
+London has changed, and though we owe to the painstaking researches of
+Dr. Chas. Wm. Wallace the very recent discovery that the poet lodged
+with a wig-maker named Mountjoy at the corner of Silver and Monkwell
+Streets in the City of London, much labour must be accomplished before
+we shall be able to follow his wanderings between the time of his
+arrival in and departure from the metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>For the purposes of this little book many authorities have been
+consulted, and the writer is specially indebted to the researches of Dr.
+Sidney Lee, the leading authority of our time on Shakespeare, and the
+late Professor Churton Collins.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h3>
+<h3>STRATFORD-ON-AVON</h3>
+
+<p>To read the works of a great master of letters, or to study the art of a
+great painter, without some first-hand knowledge of the country in which
+each lived and from which each gathered his earliest inspiration, is to
+court an incomplete impression. It is in the light of a life story and
+its setting, however slight our knowledge, that creative work tends to
+assume proper proportions. It is in the surroundings of the author that
+we find the key to the creation. For, as Gray has pointed out in his
+"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," there are many in the dust and
+silence whose hands "the rod of Empire might have swayed, or waked to
+ecstasy the living lyre."</p>
+
+<p>We know that it is not enough to have the creative force dormant in the
+mind; environment must be favourable to its development, or it will
+sleep too long. We see in the briefest survey of the lives of the poet,
+the statesman, the soldier and the artist, that there are many great
+ones who would have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> greater still were it not that then, as now,
+"man is one and the fates are three."</p>
+
+<p>To study the life history of a man and to consider its setting is to
+understand why he succeeded and how he came to fail, and our wonder at
+his success will not be lessened when we find that some simple event,
+favourable or untoward, was the deciding factor in a great life. The
+hour brings the man, but circumstances mould him and chance leads him to
+the fore, unless it be true that "there's a Divinity that shapes our
+ends, rough hew them how we will." In our own time we have seen how the
+greatest empire-builder of Victorian history, Cecil John Rhodes, came
+into prominence because he was sent to South Africa for the cure of weak
+lungs. And, looking back to the life and times of William Shakespeare,
+who has summed up for so many of his fellow-countrymen, and still more
+strangers, the whole philosophy of life, we shall see that he became
+articulate through what he may have reasonably regarded as mischance.</p>
+
+<p>Out in the autumn fields, the pigeon and the squirrel, to say nothing of
+other birds and beasts, hunt for acorns to eat or store. On the road to
+roost or storehouse many are dropped. Of these no small number fall on
+waste ground; a few take root, only to be overgrown or destroyed before
+they reach the beginnings of strength. But here and there an acorn drops
+on favourable soil; the rich earth nourishes it; the germ, when it has
+lived on all the store within the shell, can gather its future needs
+from the ground.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> Little roots and fibres pierce the soil; a green twig
+rises to seek the sun; there are long years of silent precarious growth,
+and then the sapling stage is passed and a young tree sends countless
+leaves to draw nourishment from air and sky. Following this comes the
+time when no storm can uproot the tree that a hungry rabbit might have
+destroyed in days past&mdash;something has come to complete maturity and has
+developed all the possibilities that were equally latent in so many
+million acorns to which growth was denied. As it is with plants, so it
+is with men, and thus it becomes permissible to compare literature with
+a forest wherein are so many trees, so many saplings, and so much dense
+undergrowth, from which trees of worth and beauty may one day spring. In
+our national forest there is an oak that first saw life in the year
+1564. There are many older trees of splendid worth, but this is the one
+which stands alone. What manner of soil nourished it? Whence came its
+strength? This little work is a brief attempt to set the well-known
+answer down again in a form that may offer a certain convenience in
+point of size and selection to lovers of a great poet.</p>
+
+<p>When we read Shakespeare's plays for the first time, it is at once
+apparent that the poet was a countryman. He has the knowledge, founded
+upon close observation, that we associate with the highly intelligent
+dweller in the countryside, the man or woman from whom the poet differs
+merely in his supreme capacity for expression. We turn again to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> his
+scenes of city life to find he is no less at home there. It is quite
+another world, but he has fathomed it; quite another company of men, but
+he has gauged their strength and weakness, the pathos and humour of
+their lives. He deals with rulers and courts, and his touch is as sure
+and faithful as before; his genius has taught him that kings and queens
+are men and women like the rest of us, that environment cannot alter
+fundamental characteristics, that royalty is swayed by the same forces
+that rule the lives of lesser men.</p>
+
+<p>Only when he deals with foreigners the poet of Avon is often an
+unconscious humorist, for his store of geography is inadequate to meet
+the small demands upon it, and some of his simple errors, such as "the
+seashore of Bohemia," excite our kindly laughter now. But it is easy to
+see that the poet's habit of accurate observation was established in the
+country and that he applied to the larger life of London the self-taught
+methods he had acquired in the little town of his birth.</p>
+
+<p>It is on this account that the minds of his admirers turn to
+Stratford-on-Avon, and the footsteps of enthusiasts are directed, year
+in, year out, to the pleasant county of Warwickshire. In and around
+Stratford we can keep company with the poet in his earliest and latest
+days; nor can the bustling crowds of tourists from all parts, the
+clamour of innkeepers and coach-drivers, the ever-present determination
+to turn a national genius to profitable account, stir our deep content.
+Men and public places have changed, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> the country is as it was when
+William Shakespeare, poor and little known, was gathering the stores of
+knowledge and habit of thought that were to lift him to heights no
+following Englishman has scaled.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/jshahome.jpg" alt="THE HOME OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE&mdash;SNITTERFIELD" /></div>
+<div class="caption">THE HOME OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE&mdash;SNITTERFIELD</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The wayfarer coming into Stratford for the first time to pay his mute
+tribute to the poet who seems destined to live as long as our
+civilisation, will enjoy a pleasant impression if he chance to have
+chosen a fine day and to have reached the town by the road. Stratford
+lies on the right bank of the river Avon, a beautiful river whose waters
+flow peacefully over the level land on their way from Naseby to the
+Severn. The town was happily planned of old time, and owed its inception
+to the establishment of a monastery shortly after the Anglo-Saxon began
+to take an interest in Christianity. It is clear that Stratford enjoyed
+three centuries of comparative peace, if not of substantial progress,
+before Norman William and Saxon Harold met at Senlac; echoes of that
+fray could not have pierced to the little town on Avon's banks. Nor have
+the subsequent centuries done much to disturb its natural seclusion.</p>
+
+<p>The hand of the builder has raised streets of prosperous shops and
+new-built villas; small hotels abound; there is a bustling railway and a
+sleepy canal. A Memorial Theatre overlooks the river, and cyclists pass,
+not singly but in battalions, along peaceful roads leading to Birmingham
+or Warwick. Throughout the summer season Stratford-on-Avon becomes a
+metropolis "whereunto the tribes of men assemble." To "do Stratford"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> is
+an article of faith with American visitors, even if they have no more
+than a week in which to master the wonders of Great Britain and Ireland.
+Germany sends many admirers, for nowhere is Shakespeare's genius more
+widely recognised, more highly esteemed, than in that country. London
+and the big midland towns of England send visitors daily.</p>
+
+<p>Let it be suggested, with all due respect to those who think otherwise,
+that there is no reward for those who seek to discover Shakespeare's
+land in the course of a few hours' hurried travel. They will see
+Shakespeare's alleged birthplace, and the room in which he is said,
+without much authority, to have been born. They will pass through the
+Museum, Library, and Picture Gallery; they may even admire the rather
+poor monument in Holy Trinity Church, and perhaps a few other sights
+that the town affords; and then, with a welter of confused impressions,
+will return whence they came. There is no reward for this frenzied
+exercise; it is impossible to gather any impression of the scenes in
+which the poet passed his early and later days, from a hurried scamper
+through the town and a frank acceptance of local traditions, concerning
+which some of our leading Shakespearian scholars have much destructive
+critical comment to offer. He who wishes to establish some manner of
+association with the poet must enter Stratford as the poet left it&mdash;by
+the road. He should leave the railway and walk in from Warwick, find
+quiet lodgings, of which there is no lack, in the town, and visit in
+turn the highways and by-ways of Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>cote,
+Aston Clinton, Shottery, Wotten Wawens, Charlecote, and a dozen other
+points of interest, of which he will learn when he has definitely left
+the ranks of excursionists and has made friends among the people of
+Shakespeare's countryside. He will not add a jot to our knowledge of
+country or people&mdash;a hundred pens have said all there is to say&mdash;but he
+will come away with a measure of appreciation and recognition that will
+make the significance of the poet, as an interpreter of a life that
+never changes, far more vital and true. Here is no small reward for a
+truly delightful holiday in country full of the best traditions of rural
+England. And the intelligent visitor will be one with the great lovers
+of Shakespeare, living and dead, from Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, and
+Milton down to Matthew Arnold and our own contemporaries, even though
+his contribution to the poet's praise be no more than a little note in a
+private diary. His journey will open a fresh field of literary research,
+if he be not already a student of Elizabethan literature. He will be
+enrolled on the long and unexhausted list of pilgrims to the shrine of
+the country's greatest poet, the man whose thoughts have lost nothing of
+their depth and beauty in the slow passage of three eventful centuries.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h3>
+<h3>THE POET'S YOUTH</h3>
+
+<p>In these days, when biographies of nobody in particular are as the sand
+upon the seashore for multitude, and the demand for personal paragraphs
+is seemingly well-nigh as great as the supply, we have some occasion to
+regret the absence of similar craving in the spacious times of Queen
+Elizabeth. If there had been a daily, weekly, or monthly publication
+that submitted famous men to the ordeal of the interview, we might
+pardon the glut of our latter day. Unhappily for our desire to know what
+manner of man Shakespeare was, the available records are exceedingly
+scanty, or are at least insufficient for our legitimate needs, and we
+are face to face with the initial difficulty that in the sixteenth
+century Shakespeare's name was quite common. From Cumberland down to
+Warwickshire there was probably no county in which a William Shakespeare
+could not have been found for the searching, and this fact is
+accountable for many curious mistakes that have been made by students
+and biographers. In Warwickshire alone there were more than a score of
+families bearing the surname in the sixteenth century, and half as many
+again in the following century, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> the name was one to conjure with.
+The poet's father, John Shakespeare, who was a native of Snitterfield
+and moved to Stratford in the middle of the sixteenth century, to carry
+on what would seem to have been the business of a big store-keeper,
+applied for a right to bear arms towards the century's close, and made
+certain claims on behalf of ancestors. But the opinion of competent
+critics is that John Shakespeare was as capable of drawing the long-bow
+as he was of selling general stores, and that he was closely connected,
+from a mental standpoint, with the successful tradesmen of our day who,
+having proved fortunate business men, seek to confer upon themselves
+such advantage as a dubious pedigree may assure. We cannot, then, accept
+the version of his family history that satisfied the complaisant
+Heralds' College.</p>
+
+<p>The chief difference between our modern Arms-seekers and John
+Shakespeare is that they are moneyed tradesmen and he was not. The early
+days of his commercial career were comparatively prosperous, and he
+found time to serve the borough of Stratford in many offices, including
+those of ale-taster, burgess, petty constable, borough chamberlain, and
+chief alderman. He married Mary Arden of Wilmcote near Stratford, the
+marriage taking place in Wilmcote's parish church at Aston Clinton, and
+William was the third child of the union. The poet's registration in the
+parish records at Stratford is dated April 26, 1564. The place of his
+birth is generally assumed to be the house in Henley Street purchased by
+John<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> Shakespeare a year before his marriage, and we are told that he
+was born in a certain room on the first floor. Here again contemporary
+criticism may make some people regret the loss of the sixpence that was
+demanded before the scene of the birth could be surveyed; but, after
+all, there is much saving grace in a tradition, and whether the place be
+all it is alleged to be or less, little harm is done. Suffice it that
+thousands, gifted with faith and sixpences, have visited the room,
+ceilings and windows bear countless traces of the desire that besets the
+most commonplace people to deface walls with their uninteresting names.
+Shakespeare's alleged birthplace is a charming little residence enough,
+with dormered roof and penthouse entrance, and sixpence is a small price
+to pay for a pleasant illusion.</p>
+
+<p>In the very early days of the poet's life the <i>res angusta domi</i> had not
+yet begun to trouble his father, who was appointed Bailiff of the
+Stratford Corporation in 1568, and Chief Alderman three years later. In
+1575 he bought a house in Henley Street, and no less an authority than
+Dr. Sidney Lee, whose researches command the respect of all, believes
+that this house is the one in which the poet is now said to have been
+born. It would seem that John Shakespeare's prosperity received a rude
+shock soon after the date of their purchase, for in 1578 and 1579 he was
+mortgaging his wife's property at Wilmcote and Snitterfield, and
+gradually the once wealthy man fell from power and place. Creditors
+pursued him, and he lost his standing in the Corporation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>In the meantime William was receiving his early training at Stratford
+Grammar School, and picked up more than a smattering of French and
+Latin, with perhaps a little Italian as well. That his school life or
+home life was closely associated with Bible reading and study is proved
+by the readiness with which he turns to Scripture for graphic and
+concise expression of a thought, or for the purpose of an apt
+comparison. But he was destined to learn in a larger and rougher school
+than that of King Edward's foundation at Stratford. His leisure came to
+an abrupt end when he had just entered his teens and his father told him
+to look after one of his failing businesses. So the brightest genius of
+English poetry became, while yet a boy, a butcher or a butcher's
+assistant, and for some four or five years passed an uneventful life in
+Stratford under conditions that might well have coarsened and spoilt
+him. Happily the exquisite surroundings of the little town, and his own
+response to them, made a somewhat sordid occupation possible; but of his
+daily life and steady growth in the most impressionable period of his
+career no reliable details have reached us.</p>
+
+<p>To his associates in the old Warwickshire home he was no more than the
+clever, precocious eldest son of an alderman who had seen better days.
+He went his own way, and may be supposed to have lived a somewhat free
+life, for before he was nineteen he appears to have found himself
+compelled to marry one Anne Hathaway of Shottery in the parish of Old
+Stratford. Her father had died rather more than a year before her
+marriage;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> she was twenty-six years of age, and had inherited by will a
+sum amounting in the currency of the day to a little less than &pound;7,
+rather more than &pound;50 of our money. The marriage would seem to have been
+hurried and irregular, and though it may have followed a formal and
+binding betrothal of a kind that had more sanction then than now, the
+poet's first child&mdash;his daughter Susanna&mdash;was born less than six months
+later. It was not a fortunate union. Twins were born to William and Anne
+Shakespeare in 1585, and then all record of the home life closes for a
+long period. Some of Shakespeare's biographers think that the poet had
+run away to London before the year closed, and that for more than a
+decade he did not return to the town without taking care that his
+presence should not be noticed. We do not know how strained his marital
+relations had become, but we may assume that his home was not a happy
+one, for in the early days of his union he ran risks that most young
+married men would avoid for the sake of wife and family.</p>
+
+<p>It seems clear that the story of his poaching expeditions in Charlecote
+or Fulbroke Parks is not a mere legend unsupported by facts. Sir Thomas
+Lucy, the owner of Charlecote Park, was of course a game preserver, and
+Shakespeare must have thought that poaching was a reasonable pastime
+enough. He dared "do all that may become a man," and the penalty of
+exciting the wrath of a great landowner and game preserver was no less
+then than now. Sir Thomas was angry; the poet is said to have written a
+vulgar, bitter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> lampoon, still preserved, and affixed a copy to the
+gates of Charlecote. The response was a persecution that made Stratford
+too hot to hold a greater man than all the big sportsmen from Nimrod's
+day to ours, and William Shakespeare left wife and children and vanished
+from the old town's ken. Some think he lived in neighbouring towns or
+villages awhile, and found work as a schoolmaster. There was an idea
+that he went for a time as a soldier to the Low Countries under the Earl
+of Leicester, whose splendid pageants in honour of a visit from Queen
+Elizabeth may have inspired some of the fantasy of "A Midsummer Night's
+Dream."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/interior.jpg" alt="ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE&mdash;INTERIOR" /></div>
+<div class="caption">ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE&mdash;INTERIOR</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless there was a Shakespeare or two in Lord Leicester's regiment;
+the name was a common one enough; but it was no part of the poet's
+experience "to trail a pike in Flanders." Directly or indirectly, he was
+on the high road to London, and Sir Thomas Lucy was to find his claim to
+immortality in the pursuit of a young poacher and in the poacher's
+creation of Mr. Justice Shallow of Gloucestershire, whose foolishness,
+suggested in "Henry IV." (Part II., Act iii. sc. 2), is still further
+emphasised in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," where he figures as one who
+has come to make a Star Chamber matter out of Sir John Falstaff's
+poaching. His complaint will be remembered. "Knight, you have beaten my
+men, killed my deer, and broken open my lodge ... the council shall know
+this."</p>
+
+<p>There has been no lack of determined effort among the poet's countless
+biographers to give the lie direct to every story that does not cast
+credit upon his youth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> Because he was a great man, many people require
+his history to be written in a fashion that shall lessen, ignore, or
+deny his weaknesses. There can be no valid reason for pursuing such a
+course, for we know that the rule of art is not the rule of morals, and
+that while a very good poet may be a very bad man, a very worthy man may
+be a vile poet. The apologists have picked out the finest moral thoughts
+in the plays and poems and declared that he who could conceive them
+could not have been less than a saint. They might as well pick out the
+countless villains of the tragedies and declare that he who presented
+them must have been a sinner. Truth to tell, the question is one of no
+importance. Shakespeare was in some respects a man like the majority of
+men; in other regards he stands alone. Only in this latter aspect have
+we any occasion to consider him. We have neither the right, the
+capacity, nor the data by which to sit in judgment; but it is hardly
+honest to withhold reports, that seem to be well founded, because they
+do not flatter the youthful career of a great man. In his own "Henry
+IV." and "Henry V." Shakespeare shows how the recklessness of youth is
+not incompatible with sound living and a high standard of morality and
+common sense in the days of responsibility.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h3>
+<h3>NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY</h3>
+
+<p>We find Shakespeare, just out of his teens, travelling on the road to
+London, and it is worth while to see what equipment and what resources
+he is taking to the metropolis. It is safe to assume that he has no
+money, and that his local reputation is not one of the very best, though
+the worst to be urged against him is that he has loved not wisely but
+too well&mdash;and this fault has not been too clearly substantiated&mdash;and
+that he has ignored the game laws, as so many men had done before, have
+done since, and will do as long as these laws exist.</p>
+
+<p>The early life of a truly imaginative man had been passed in the most
+beautiful surroundings that rural England can provide, and by reason,
+perhaps, of the lack of restrictions, had helped him to enlarge his
+experiences and develop all the facets of a luminous mind. The
+expression is chosen deliberately. Man's mind is like a diamond, and
+experience is the lapidary. Every action, every stroke of good fortune
+or of bad, leaves its definite mark; every association does the same. As
+a boy Shakespeare lived in close touch with Nature. His father's
+business would have brought him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> into contact with farmers, given him
+the freedom of their fields, taught him the significance of the seasons.
+Even now, when glimpses of Elizabethan England are few and far between,
+we are touched by the supreme peace that still broods over land on which
+the old-time houses, with their thatched roofs or well-worn tiles, their
+ingle nooks, their dormer windows, their oak rafters and their many
+gables, tell of a time when the jerry-builder was not and the suburban
+villa had not yet come into being. It was an age of beauty, and the
+walks round Stratford remain beautiful to this hour, despite the growth
+of villadom and the advent of the railway line.</p>
+
+<p>We can follow the roads that Shakespeare knew, to the woods of his
+poaching exploits, and the meadows over which he passed to thatched,
+half-timbered Shottery, where the village inn was still standing when
+men, now middle-aged, were born. Rustic gardens, white-blossomed
+orchards, tiny brooks beloved by the kingfisher, trees that may have
+seen the courting of the poet and his wife, still remain to tell the
+story of England's unchanging charm. In the spring and early summer
+there is such an atmosphere about the countryside as George Meredith has
+created in his "Richard Feverel" when Richard and Lucy meet in "the very
+spring-tide of their youth." Doubtless there are other regions in
+plenty, scattered through the length and breadth of our fascinating
+English country, wherein the attractions are hardly less than here; but
+Shakespeare's genius has hallowed Stratford for us, because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> that
+particular countryside made him a poet and sent him to London, full of
+such inspiration as has not fallen to any other Englishman even in times
+when the literary activity of the age has been at its highest point.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/arden.jpg" alt="ARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE" /></div>
+<div class="caption">MARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It may be suggested in passing that much of the early romance associated
+with Anne Hathaway's cottage is spurious, and the worthy people who tell
+of the poet's courtship there overlook the fact that his relations with
+his wife were clandestine and his marriage almost a secret union. But
+the cottage itself is beautiful enough to account for the enthusiastic
+departure from the path of truth, if not to justify it.</p>
+
+<p>Lying on the left as you come out of Stratford to Shottery, past the
+post-office, to the "Bell Inn," where the road has crossed a stream, we
+see the cottage, and, <i>horribile dictu!</i> a row of modern brick-built
+cottages for background! Long, thatched and creeper-covered, built upon
+slabs of stone, with timber and plaster above, with tiny windows under
+the thatch, surrounded by a well-filled and carefully tended garden, the
+place makes a quick and enduring appeal to the imagination, even though
+the legends associated with it are, for the most part, legends and
+nothing more. It is easy to realise the supreme beauty of the scene that
+Shakespeare knew, to understand how the lovers' secret meetings were
+made all the more memorable by reason of their surroundings. The scene
+and the associations went to the making of the poet; they were among the
+treasures he carried up to London when he was compelled to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> leave
+Stratford behind him and time and distance were smoothing all the little
+troubles that had beset his short and uneventful life. He must have
+heard Stratford and Shottery calling to him in the heart of the town,
+for when his name was made and his future assured, he came back to home,
+wife, and little ones to enjoy the "poor remains" of life.</p>
+
+<p>On his road to and from Shottery, he would have passed "under the shade
+of melancholy boughs" and watched the "guest of summer, the
+Temple-haunting martlet," that built under the eaves of Anne Hathaway's
+house. Doubtless to his mood of elation or depression, and to his quick
+and intimate response to the wild life round him, we owe those clear
+impressions that connect certain scenes and phases of our life with his
+more familiar utterances. To hear the cuckoo and the nightingale to-day
+in the woods round Shottery and Wilmcote is to recall some of the poet's
+most inspired moods. But it is not the familiar birds alone that caught
+the poet's eye and stimulated his imagination. In the days of his youth,
+before he went to London, he must have studied bird life closely and
+accurately. Nearly fifty wild birds find mention in his plays and poems,
+and for the most part they are birds he would not have seen in London,
+though in his day the metropolis was small enough, and the outer London
+of his time was well-nigh as wild and wooded as the least frequented
+parts of Warwickshire to-day. The halcyon or kingfisher, the
+white-breasted water-ouzel, the skylark, the "ruddock" or
+robin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>-redbreast, the wren, the green plover, the woodcock&mdash;these serve
+for some of his moods; but he mentions eagle, kite, hawk, buzzard, owl,
+falcon, cormorant, and a number of others, always with discretion and
+with the full measure of knowledge vouchsafed to his time. Classical
+lore and country superstitions are sometimes found in his references,
+but the most of them point to the poet's own loving observation at a
+time when there was no widespread interest in birds or beasts, unless
+they had a part to play in hunting. Shakespeare's references to the
+chase are accurate and suggest first-hand observation, coupled with the
+keen instincts of the sportsman, and it is easy to see that the
+extraordinary receptivity of his mind enabled him to take impressions
+from every aspect of life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+<h3>FIRST DAYS IN LONDON</h3>
+
+<p>Three hundred and twenty-four years have passed since William
+Shakespeare set out to prove his fortune in London, and in those
+far-away days that his genius makes so real for us the journey was long
+and at times dangerous. Three days would suffice in fine summer weather,
+while four or five might be required in winter time, when rivers were
+swollen and fords were dangerous. Not only were roads bad, but bridges
+were conspicuous by their absence. To send a letter from Stratford to
+London and receive a reply to it would occupy nearly a fortnight, and
+if, as some writers believe, Shakespeare had already made a certain name
+by his skilled handling of other men's work when touring companies came
+to his town, it is quite clear that his best chance of establishing
+himself as a playwright would be found in the metropolis. Even if he had
+not found trouble in his native place, he could not hope to thrive
+there. It is thought that he travelled to town on foot by way of Oxford
+and High Wycombe, and that once in the metropolis he sought a friend of
+the family, one Richard Field of Stratford, who had left Warwickshire
+seven years before, and after serving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> his apprenticeship to a
+printer, had set up an office of his own in Blackfriars.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/south.jpg" alt="THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON" /></div>
+<div class="caption">THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON<br />In the National Portrait Gallery</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that he owed his introduction to the world of the London
+theatre to Field, and that at one of the only two houses in the
+metropolis, "The Theatre" in Shoreditch or "The Curtain" in Moorfields,
+he served for a time in a very humble capacity, looking after the horses
+of the men of fashion who rode to the play. The keen relish with which
+he deals with the moods and thoughts of ostlers, stable-boys, and the
+lower classes that frequented the stable and the theatre, lends a
+certain countenance to the legend. A year later, when his friend Field
+had been admitted a member of the Stationers' Company, Shakespeare found
+his employment inside one of the two theatres&mdash;probably the house in
+Shoreditch; some writers have said that his first work there was that of
+a call-boy. It is certain, at least, that his apprenticeship was a hard
+one, and that in those early days his contributions to the support of
+the Warwickshire home must have been few and scanty.</p>
+
+<p>When Shakespeare came to town there were some half-dozen companies of
+licensed actors, that is to say, companies that enjoyed and exercised
+their rights under an Act of Parliament (14 Eliz. c. 2). It said that
+all actors, save those who held the licence of a peer of the realm or
+other person of importance, were to be treated as rogues and vagabonds.
+The company to which Shakespeare was admitted derived its rights from
+the Earl of Leicester, and soon after he joined, if not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> before, it
+passed under the support of the Earl of Derby, and in later years under
+the supreme patronage of King James I., whose admiration for the poet
+and his works was very large and real. James Burbage was owner of "The
+Theatre," and it was in his time, we may presume, that Shakespeare acted
+as ostler and call-boy. But he must have risen up from the ranks at no
+small pace when his gifts became well known, for not only do we find him
+a regular member of the company, but a friend of the leading members,
+men like Richard Burbage, son of the proprietor, and Augustus Phillips.
+And at "The Theatre" in Shoreditch he won some fame as a playwright,
+though it was not at "The Theatre" but at "The Rose," a new house on the
+Bankside at Southwark, that the poet's genius was to "blossom and bud
+and fill the face of the world with fruit."</p>
+
+<p>The close of the sixteenth century was a season of considerable activity
+among actors; the destruction of the "galleons of Spain" had relieved
+the country of a very real danger. Some of the leading companies
+amalgamated for a time when in town; new houses were springing up. In
+addition to "The Rose" there was one at Newington Butts, and in 1599 the
+Burbages transplanted "The Theatre" to Bankside and called it "The
+Globe." Here Shakespeare did the most of his work and made the most of
+his reputation, acquiring considerable wealth the while.</p>
+
+<p>James Burbage built the Blackfriars Theatre, to which Shakespeare
+brought his company shortly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> before he retired to Stratford. He
+gradually acquired certain interests in the theatres, so his profits
+were not only those of actor and playwright. The wealth that was to be
+his was drawn from three sources.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h3>
+<h3>SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON</h3>
+
+<p>Of the landmarks that Shakespeare knew, the Great Fire of London
+destroyed many, and Time, dealing in rather gentler fashion, has effaced
+the most of those that the fire spared. A map made by Peter Van den
+Keere in 1593 shows us the old London Bridge, with the Church of St.
+Saviour's, then known as "St. Marye Overyes," facing the river on the
+Southwark side. This church, which would have been well known to the
+poet, is, with the exception of Westminster Abbey, the only ancient
+example of pure Gothic architecture in London. Its earliest name would
+have been St. Mary Over Rye, rye being perhaps the old name for ferry.
+When it was built there could have been no London Bridge, and St. Mary's
+was built upon the site of a still older priory founded by two Norman
+knights. In this church one finds a stone in the centre aisle marked
+"Edmond Shakespeare. Died December 1607."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/hathaway.jpg" alt="ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE" /></div>
+<div class="caption">ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>This marks the mortal remains of a brother of the poet, said by some to
+have been concerned with the business side of his undertakings, and
+certainly his companion in London for some time. In St. Mary Over Rye or
+St. Saviour's, King James I. of Scotland<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> was married; here the poet
+Gower, with whose works Shakespeare was undoubtedly familiar, was
+buried, and his monument is a fine one with many inscriptions, including
+one that describes him as "Anglorum Poeta celeberrimus." Beyond "St.
+Marye Overyes" on Van den Keere's map one sees the famous "Bears House,"
+and below that the "Play House," and beyond this the town merges into
+gardens stretching up to "Lambeth Marsh." Across the river we see "More
+Feyldes" and "Spittlefeyldes," big open spaces, and then Islington, but
+there is no sign of another theatre. Had the worthy cartographer known
+what was to give his map an abiding interest three centuries after its
+making, he would doubtless have given more thought to the playhouses.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the Church of St. Saviour's stands well-nigh smothered by
+factories, shops, and small houses. London, a muddy stream, has
+overflown its banks and spread on that side far into regions where birds
+and beasts of the chase flew or ran in the poet's day. Tradition tells
+us that the Thames sometimes rose above its boundaries and flooded the
+graveyard of St. Mary's, and in like fashion the town itself has spread
+beyond all limits, until the south side, within a very restricted area,
+holds more than all London held in the poet's day. Doubtless the old
+church fared better at the hands of the river than the town does now,
+for three hundred years ago the hands of Father Thames were clean; the
+river still ran sparkling under London Bridge, then a comparatively low
+structure,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> with houses on either side of it, like the Ponte Vecchio in
+Florence.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare's London held about a quarter of a million souls, on
+generous computation, and it is said that about 15 per cent. of the
+number found employment and their means of livelihood on the river. The
+writ of the civic authorities did not run on the south side of the
+Thames, and it is to this that we owe the existence of so many houses of
+amusement in Southwark. Nor were they the only ones to be placed for
+choice beyond the eye of authority. The river Thames brought foreigners
+by the thousand to London, adventurers from all lands, men who said with
+ancient Pistol, "The world's my oyster, that I with sword will open."
+London held dangerous riverside slums.</p>
+
+<p>Many associations whose members were banded together for protection
+against the lawful authorities throve on the south side of the Thames,
+and the numbers increased as the years went past. It is a fascinating
+chapter in London's life, this organised revolt against ever-growing
+authority, but one with which in this place there is no lawful occasion
+to deal at length. We know that when Shakespeare had settled in the
+metropolis he lived for a time in Southwark, near the "Bears House"
+marked on the map to which reference has been made. But he is also
+assessed as the owner of property in St. Helen's, Bishopgate, where a
+window given by some anonymous lover of the poet to St. Helen's Church
+records the association. It is likely that Shakespeare in his acting
+days took part in some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> of the plays given in the yard of the "Bull
+Inn," then the most important hostelry in Bishopgate Street. Old "Crosby
+Hall," the subject of such a prolonged discussion in the press a year or
+so back, was in Bishopgate Street, and Shakespeare lays one of the
+scenes there in his "Richard III." The poet's activity unites Southwark
+with St. Helen's, though in his day the distance between the two must
+have been regarded as considerable.</p>
+
+<p>Many attempts have been made to find out what manner of life the poet
+lived in London, but the material for a reliable opinion is quite
+wanting. Some have imagined that he was a free liver and roysterer,
+after the fashion of his time, that he lived as Robert Greene and
+Christopher Marlowe and other dissipated writers. There is no more
+authority for such a suggestion than there is for the statements on the
+other side telling us that William Shakespeare was the personification
+of every virtue. We simply do not know; there is no record extant. We
+grope with dim eyes through the London of Shakespeare's time, glad to
+find any trace of his presence in some favoured spot, and content to
+make it a place of pilgrimage for his sake. It is to the history of the
+stage itself that we must turn in order to piece together some
+fragmentary record of his life in a city so changed by time and
+prosperity that if the poet could revisit the glimpses of the moon, and
+were to be set down in Bishopgate or Southwark to-day, he would not know
+where to turn, and the metropolis of which we are so proud would be no
+more to him than "the monstrous fabric of a vision."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+<h3>THE STAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY</h3>
+
+<p>When Shakespeare was at work the women of the plays were represented by
+men or boys. In the highest society the Elizabethan women might take
+some part in masques or pageants without rebuke, but the appearance of a
+woman on the public stage in Shakespeare's day would have aroused
+something like the emotion that would be caused by the appearance of a
+Moslem woman unveiled in the chief thoroughfare of a fanatical
+Mohammedan city, or a suffragist in the House of Commons. Costumes were
+those of the day. Just as the great painters of Italy dressed the heroes
+and heroines of Bible story in the contemporary costume, so the actor of
+Shakespeare's time did no more than wear the best Elizabethan clothes he
+could assume. Scenery was unknown. The front curtain, opening in the
+middle, revealed a bare stage with perhaps a balcony at the back. This
+was sometimes used by the actors, but where the play did not require a
+balcony, visitors to the play would find their places there, just as at
+the Queen's Hall, when a piano or violin recital is given, the orchestra
+is sometimes added to the auditorium. A trumpet flourish warned
+playgoers that the curtain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> was about to rise, and between the acts a
+small company of musicians helped the interval to pass.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/guild.jpg" alt="GUILD CHAPEL AND SCHOOL" /></div>
+<div class="caption">GUILD CHAPEL AND SCHOOL</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the celebrated Inigo Jones designed scenery for certain
+masques given at the Court of King James that the traditional bareness
+of the boards was covered, and it was not until the time of Charles II.
+that women began to make their appearance upon the boards and unite the
+stage with the second estate. Many writers have emphasised the
+difficulties besetting the Elizabethan dramatist; Sir Philip Sidney
+himself has apologised to the spectator for the heavy overdraft on his
+imagination, and we have but to consider some of the most striking
+moments in our poet's work to realise what they must have lost under the
+Elizabethan tradition. How could bare boards conjure up a vision of
+Juliet's garden, of the wood "outside Athens" in which Titania and
+Oberon met, of Prospero's island, of the Forest of Arden? How could any
+boy, however smoothly spoken, present a Rosalind, a Juliet, a Miranda,
+or Cordelia? While we wonder at these things, it is well to remember
+that to those who have never eaten wheat, acorns may prove very
+satisfactory fare. The tradition of the theatre being so strictly
+circumscribed, nobody could imagine anything better than bare boards,
+boy heroines, and modern costumes. There are many sound judges of stage
+matters to-day who are very strongly of the opinion that we have
+travelled too far in the opposite direction, that by reason of costly
+mounting, extravagant costumes, alluring music, and the rest, we are no
+longer able to maintain that "the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> play's the thing." Doubtless the need
+for the finest possible expression of thought, and the knowledge that
+his words must carry the full burden of success, stimulated not only
+Shakespeare, but every dramatist of the great Elizabethan age.</p>
+
+<p>There was one special advantage attaching to the limitation of stage
+equipment&mdash;touring was a simple matter. When we remember that three or
+even four days were required to travel on horseback from London to
+Stratford-on-Avon, owing to the bad tracks that enjoyed the courtesy
+title of roads, and the fords that must be crossed out of flood time, it
+is easy to see that no part of the cumbersome equipment of the modern
+stage could have been taken far out of London without vast and
+unremunerative labour. But the Elizabethan actor travelled light, and as
+soon as the fine weather came he would leave London for the country, and
+tour in all manner of unexpected places until autumn warned him home,
+because it was no longer possible to pass from town to town.</p>
+
+<p>To turn up the old touring list of the Elizabethan companies is to find
+special attention given to towns of which no town is on the first
+touring list to-day. Saffron Walden (the quaint market-town in Essex,
+that opposed the coming of the Great Eastern Railway, and is now served
+by a little branch line), Rye in Sussex (then probably a seaport of some
+dimensions), Marlborough, Coventry, Oxford, Faversham, Hythe, Bath, New
+Romney, Folkestone&mdash;here are some of the cities or towns that the
+touring companies delighted to honour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> in the best season of the year.
+There is ample evidence to show that some companies crossed the border
+into Scotland, and that others went still farther afield&mdash;to France,
+Germany, Austria, and other countries. Probably these companies were
+sent abroad by their patrons and supporters, and were consequently
+assured of a hearing and adequate remuneration. It is hardly probable
+that the conditions of continental travel would have been favourable
+enough, or the security for life and property great enough, to tempt
+even third-rate English actors oversea unless they had a definite
+programme and an assured welcome.</p>
+
+<p>Some have thought that Shakespeare in his acting days travelled on the
+Continent, or at least into Scotland, but modern expert opinion does not
+accept the suggestion; it rather inclines to the belief that the poet
+did no more than make a small provincial tour. As far as the Continent
+is concerned, his quaint ideas of French pronunciation and European
+geography should do much to settle the question with regard to these
+countries. His references to Denmark in "Hamlet" are no more than he
+could have founded on a brief chat with actors who had been there. Then,
+again, the period of his active and sole association with the actor's
+profession was brief; he soon became playwright and manager as well, too
+busy to stir far beyond the boundaries of London until the time came
+when he could enjoy his brief period of well-earned ease. Dr. Sidney Lee
+says that the name of Shakespeare does not appear in any known list of
+the actors who travelled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> from England between 1580 and 1630, a period
+more than sufficient to cover the debatable years. Against this must be
+set the fact that the name appears in certain records of the town of
+Aberdeen as that of a member of a travelling company visiting the city
+in the period covered by Dr. Lee's investigations.</p>
+
+<p>Despite an infinity of research, the figure of William Shakespeare in
+London remains very dim. He is reputed to have been a good actor; but
+Richard Burbage the tragedian and William Kemp the comedian were greater
+actors than he. He played with them before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich
+Palace, in a couple of scenes designed to celebrate Christmas. We are
+told that he took the part of the Ghost in a performance of his own
+"Hamlet" and the part of old Adam in "As You Like It." These very brief
+glimpses into his life as an actor are the more unsatisfactory because
+he remained a player long after he had achieved greatness as a
+playwright. When he left the boards it was to return to
+Stratford-on-Avon and live the retired life. It may be taken for
+granted, then, that his talents as an actor were not in any way
+extraordinary, or those who witnessed his rising fame as a dramatist
+would have left some record of his other work. His advice to the players
+in "Hamlet" is often and justly quoted in evidence of the attention he
+had given to the theory of the acting art, but there is evidence to be
+found in the Sonnets to show that he did not admire himself as an actor.
+Some very recent re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>search in the Record Office shows that the poet
+lodged with a family of French Huguenots named Mountjoy, at the corner
+of Monkwell Street and Silver Street, in the City of London, where a
+public-house called the Coopers' Arms now stands.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/trinity.jpg" alt="HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND THE AVON&mdash;STRATFORD" /></div>
+<div class="caption">HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND THE AVON&mdash;STRATFORD</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>As far as we can tell, the poet had been five years in London before he
+started upon his life-work, and he entered the arena of the playwright
+at the age of twenty-seven. His methods were his own. The stories and
+legends that other men had set down, often crudely, in form of
+chronicle, or even of a play, he melted in the crucible of his own brain
+and gave back in a new and beautiful form. The play can be traced to its
+source, whether that source be a <i>novellino</i> of Masuccio, or Holinshed's
+"Chronicles," or Plutarch's Lives in North's translation, from which
+some passages are copied <i>in extenso</i>. The poet himself would seem to
+have had but little consciousness of the worth of his own work. In his
+time plays were not published. Publication was supposed to destroy the
+playgoer's interest in the work presented, and many Elizabethan plays
+owe their survival to the happy accident that enabled some unscrupulous
+person to collect a set of the actors' parts and print them, in order
+either to dispose of the acting rights for private use, or to derive the
+ordinary profits of the sale. When a play was written for and bought by
+a manager, it became his absolute property. He could request the author
+to rewrite or modify passages deemed ineffective; he could even call in
+another man to tinker the work,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> unrestrained and unrebuked. It is
+supposed that Shakespeare first showed his great parts as a dramatist in
+improving other men's work for Manager Burbage, and that this constant
+exercise of talent upon reproductions, the most of which are absolutely
+unknown to us, paved the way for the development of his gift upon
+original or quasi-original work.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+<h3>SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY PLAYS</h3>
+
+<p>The poet is credited with the authorship of some thirty-seven plays,
+though modern criticism has endeavoured to show that he took but a small
+part in the making of a few of these, and of the whole thirty-seven
+little more than a dozen were published during his life. It is supposed
+that his first play was the comedy "Love's Labour's Lost," in which he
+would appear to have gone to his own brain for the plot. Here we find a
+certain broad outlook upon contemporary life, with many a passing
+reference to matters of topical interest, while vivid recollections of
+life in Warwickshire among slow-witted rustics account for some of the
+humorous episodes. Historians can trace many of the references in the
+play, which is supposed to have been written in 1591, five years after
+the author left Stratford, revised in 1597, and published a year later.
+Cuthbert Burbie, who, like Shakespeare's earliest London friend, Richard
+Field, was a member of the Stationers' Company, was the publisher, and
+the printer was one William White of "Cow Lane near Holborn Conduit."</p>
+
+<p>"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" came next,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> adapted from a Spanish source,
+and not published until the author was dead.</p>
+
+<p>"The Comedy of Errors" is borrowed from Plautus; and then came "Romeo
+and Juliet," founded upon a <i>novellino</i> by Masuccio, who had taken the
+story from the Greek. It has served for many countries, but nowhere has
+the plot found such a magical handling as Shakespeare gave it. There is
+internal evidence to suggest 1591 or 1592 as the date, and Shakespeare
+was still a young man then, on the sunny side of thirty, and with the
+currents of his life no longer turned awry. There is here a ring of
+confidence and enthusiasm that three centuries have proved powerless to
+dull. After due revision, the play was printed in 1597 by John Danter, a
+publisher of rather evil repute. Two years later Burbie published an
+authorised edition.</p>
+
+<p>Oddly enough, the success of "Romeo and Juliet" would appear to have
+been eclipsed by that of "King Henry VI." The events set out in the
+trilogy were sufficiently familiar to the people to give the work an
+interest that is almost fictitious. Criticism has shown that the poet's
+part in these productions was but small. Some say that Greene and Peele
+were the authors of the plays, that Shakespeare rewrote them perhaps
+with a little aid from Marlowe. Certain it is that Greene attacked the
+poet furiously when the remodelled work was produced, calling upon his
+brother dramatists of repute to beware of upstart puppets and "rude
+groomes." But Shakespeare was serenely unmoved by these abusive
+epithets, for which Greene's publisher<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> apologised later. He was in
+the historical vein, and proceeded to write "Richard III.," in which
+Richard Burbage is said to have made a great sensation; the following
+play was "Richard II.," and the poet was clearly responsive to the
+influence of Marlowe in each of these works.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/jonson.jpg" alt="BEN JONSON" /></div>
+<div class="caption">BEN JONSON<br />From Painting in the National Portrait Gallery</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after "Richard II." was written and produced the plague visited
+London, and the poet sought the country. He may have written a small
+part, a very small part, of the "Titus Andronicus," and after that he
+picked the stage Jew of Marlowe and the rest out of the gutter, and gave
+the world in "The Merchant of Venice" a figure that commands keen
+interest not untouched with sympathy. "King John," bearing date 1594, is
+another piece of inimitable adaptation. By this time the "Venus and
+Adonis" had been published with a dedication to the third Earl of
+Southampton, and the poet followed it a year later with "The Rape of
+Lucrece," dedicated to the same patron.</p>
+
+<p>These works created a sensation. Shakespeare the actor was already a
+familiar figure, Shakespeare the dramatist was known and admired, but
+Shakespeare the poet seems to have taken literary London by surprise. It
+is hard to say why, for there are passages in the plays he had already
+written that challenge comparison with anything in the poems; but praise
+from the great Elizabethans was not to be lightly won, and no poet could
+have sought to wear a worthier garland than theirs. Shakespeare was
+admitted at once to the most select circles. Queen Elizabeth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> became his
+patron. Greenwich, Whitehall, and Richmond Palaces witnessed
+performances of his plays, with their author taking some small part in
+them. "The Palace of Nonsuch," a private purchase of Queen Elizabeth's
+situated near Richmond, may still be seen in old prints&mdash;a charming
+place enough. The palace at Greenwich, coming right up to the banks of
+the Thames, is also to be seen in old prints, and it says all that is
+needed for the state of Father Thames in the poet's time that a royal
+palace could be lapped by our great river below London Bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare's capacity for writing makes us realise that the quantity
+was almost as remarkable as the worth. He wrote his plays at the rate of
+two in a year, with his work as manager and actor thrown in, and his
+poems as a thing apart. The quality of "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape
+of Lucrece" brought him into the company of the country's great
+sonneteers; he was inspired to give attention to the sonnet form and
+made it one of the vehicles for the expression of his most beautiful
+thoughts. The most were written about the year with which we are now
+dealing, 1594. In accordance with the custom of the time, they were not
+printed immediately, but were written by the poet and given to his
+friends. But by this time the interest aroused by new work from
+Shakespeare's pen extended throughout literary circles, and the sonnets
+must have been copied and quoted extensively before they were published
+by a literary pirate named Thorpe in 1609.</p>
+
+<p>The dedication of these sonnets to "Mr. W. H."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> has roused an enormous
+controversy, into which there is no need to venture far, as it lies
+outside the scope of a brief biography. It should never be forgotten
+that the sonnet in the days of Elizabeth was a form overladen with the
+conceits of many countries, and that few men would have regarded
+seriously the sentiments to which they committed themselves. Suffice it
+that many of the sonnets are of a haunting loveliness that defies
+praise, and gives to the best-intentioned expressions of admiration a
+quality of impertinence. If for W. H. we read H. W. and forget the
+prefix "Mr.," the troubles that have agitated generations of critics are
+seen to evaporate. H. W. would become Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of
+Southampton, to whom in the sonnets constant references occur. A pirated
+edition might well have been handled either carelessly or with a view to
+suggesting what could not be said openly.</p>
+
+<p>Next in order of the plays we come to that exquisite fantasy "A
+Midsummer Night's Dream," in which we find references to Shakespeare's
+supreme patron, Queen Elizabeth, and to the pageants he had seen as a
+little lad when the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth at
+Kenilworth (1575). In 1595 or 1596 came "All's Well that Ends Well,"
+taken from an Italian source, and "The Taming of the Shrew," with an
+introduction dealing boldly with the Stratford country and some of its
+worthies, contemporaries of the poet. In the two-part play of "Henry
+IV." that followed we have further references to Shake<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>speare's
+birthplace, and he introduces us to Mr. Justice Shallow, who was to come
+into prominence again in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." Clearly the
+dramatist was closely concerned at this period of his life with certain
+happenings in the place of his birth. These references help us, in place
+of authenticated records, to show that Shakespeare still kept in fairly
+close touch with his early home. "Henry IV." is famous for its scenes in
+the Boar's Head at Eastcheap, and lest the enumeration of plays should
+become a little tiresome, let us turn aside for a brief space to
+consider the taverns of Queen Elizabeth's day and the company to be met
+in them.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/charl.jpg" alt="CHARLECOTE HALL" /></div>
+<div class="caption">CHARLECOTE HALL</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+<h3>THE ELIZABETHAN TAVERNS</h3>
+
+<p>The London taverns were the clubs of London's literary men, and in
+Shakespeare's time the most famous houses were "The Mermaid" in Bread
+Street, "The Boar's Head" in Eastcheap, "The Devil" at Temple Bar, "The
+Falcon," "The Tabard," "The George," and some few others, situated on
+the south side of the river. In the days when he lived by the river-side
+at Southwark, Shakespeare would have counted among the members of his
+tavern club Edmund Spenser, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, "rare
+Ben Jonson," who wrote of his great rival, "I loved the man, and do
+honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any"; tribute over
+which the mind loves to linger. Fuller tells of the contests of wit that
+used to ensue when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson met, "which two I beheld
+like a great Spanish galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson,
+like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in
+his performances; Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in
+bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and
+take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> and invention."
+We see in this simile that the lesson of the Spanish Armada had not been
+forgotten, and that its appearance was still vividly present in men's
+minds.</p>
+
+<p>Although the taverns were open to all comers, it was easy for small
+companies of men, banded together by common interests and devoted to
+similar aims, to keep aloof from casual patrons. Strangers who had no
+literary interests would not find any excuse for intrusion, and the
+landlord, proud of the special patronage of those who claimed respect
+outside the tavern, would doubtless grant them such privileges as the
+house afforded. At a time when the news of the day was brought to the
+taverns, while men of affairs and those who had some <i>locus standi</i> at
+Court did not disdain the attractions of a favoured house, there must
+have been a certain high standard of conversation, and many a friendly
+battle of wits. The ready tongue and fluent pen might make a mark in the
+tavern and all London hear of it. Ben Jonson established the Apollo room
+at the "Devil Tavern" by Temple Bar and drew up his famous "Convivial
+Laws," which, while granting admittance to "learned, urbane merry
+goodfellows" and "choice women," forbade horseplay, and concluded "focus
+perennis esto."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Walter Raleigh founded a club at the "Mermaid Tavern," where, in
+addition to Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, together
+with many other dramatists of note, spent their leisure hours. In
+Southwark the "Tabard Inn" enjoyed the fame con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>ferred upon it by
+Geoffrey Chaucer, as well as the additional honour of his patronage,
+before Shakespeare arrived. "The Bell," "The George," and "The White
+Hart" were among the "Tabard's" leading competitors; it is likely that
+the poet knew them all. We have no record that he spent too much time in
+taverns, as poor Ben Jonson did; but he knew them well enough to enter
+into the spirit of those who served and those who gave orders, those who
+paid promptly, and those who could say with Ancient Pistol, "Base is the
+slave that pays."</p>
+
+<p>Some of Shakespeare's biographers, who, because of their own virtues,
+would abolish cakes and ale and forbid ginger to be hot in the mouth,
+resent the mere suggestion that Shakespeare used the taverns as his
+contemporaries did. There is no reason to suppose that he misused them
+after the fashion of Robert Greene, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, but at the
+same time the temperance advocate will need to go very carefully through
+plays and poems if he is searching for praise of water as opposed to
+wine. The power of the Puritan was rising in Shakespeare's time, but the
+Puritans did not number the poet among their supporters. A certain
+spirit of conviviality marked the Elizabethan age, which enjoyed, among
+other advantages, the benefit of wine and spirits that had not been
+systematically adulterated. Then again, no playwright could remain
+wholly indifferent to the taverns, for it was in the yards of the inns
+that the drama was first nourished. The inn yard was to some extent the
+forerunner of the theatre. When the companies left London in the summer
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> went on tour, they found no small part of their audience in the
+country hostelries. The place of the tavern in literary history has not
+yet been written. From the "Tabard" of Chaucer to the "Mermaid" of
+Shakespeare, through the coffee-houses of a later date, to the "Bohemia"
+of Soho, where the free-lances of literature meet to-day, there is a
+thread of connection well worth examining.</p>
+
+<p>Our ubiquitous press tends to restrict the feast of reason and the flow
+of soul; men do not care to express themselves too freely, or the
+cleverest may wake one morning to find he has made some silent auditor
+famous. A very notorious case of this kind occurred in the last decade
+of the nineteenth century. But in Shakespeare's time wit seemed to
+receive its guinea stamp from the tavern, and we have the records of
+many men to show that when Shakespeare was one of the company the
+audience had good reason to be content. There are many tributes to the
+standard of the conversation. Beaumont, the dramatist, Francis Meres,
+the clergyman schoolmaster, Richard Barnfield, the poet, Michael
+Drayton, the intimate friend, all testify on behalf of Shakespeare; and
+there are many others who must have seen and heard him. The attraction
+of the tavern must have been increased to a great extent when their
+patrons stood a chance of catching the crumbs that fell from the wit's
+table. "To give you total reckoning of it," says Erle, "it is the busy
+man's recreation, the idle man's business, the melancholy man's
+sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the inns a court man's entertainment,
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> scholar's kindness, and the citizen's courtesy. It is the study
+of sparkling wits, and a cup of canary their book, whence we leave
+them."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/saviour.jpg" alt="INTERIOR OF ST. SAVIOUR'S AT SOUTHWARK" /></div>
+<div class="caption">INTERIOR OF ST. SAVIOUR'S AT SOUTHWARK<br />(Edmund Shakespeare's Burial-place)</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>All have passed&mdash;the spacious taverns, those who served, and those who
+patronised them have gone, never to return. Where great writers and
+poets assembled and marked the arrival of travellers from the country,
+and listened to stories of "nine men in buckram," where the horseman saw
+to the ease of his weary nag before his own, we see crowded
+thoroughfares in which the pulse of traffic beats furiously for six long
+days out of seven. Of the many changes London has known in the three
+centuries that have passed since Shakespeare's time few have been more
+drastic. Perhaps the Great Fire destroyed many of the taverns; the
+growth of commerce and the coming of new means of locomotion did the
+rest. Only in old prints may we find some pleasing recollection of
+red-tiled or thatched houses with half timber and half plaster walls,
+their ingle nooks, dormer windows, or many gables. Here the men to whom
+we still pay tribute spent their hours of ease, unconscious that their
+lightest words would be sought for eagerly in generations to come&mdash;and
+be sought in vain. But the knowledge that the old houses had their
+being, and that the great poets of the Elizabethan era frequented them,
+hallows many a dusty, dingy street in the city's by-ways now given over
+to feverish activity from dawn to dusk, and to silence from dusk to dawn.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+<h3>THE MIDDLE PERIOD</h3>
+
+<p>Turning again to the plays, there is reason to believe that "The Merry
+Wives of Windsor" followed "Henry IV." The character of Falstaff, first
+known as Oldcastle, had taken the town, but the name had been changed at
+the instance of the eighth Lord Cobham, a descendant of the great
+Lollard, Sir John Oldcastle. Falstaff's humour made ample atonement for
+his faults, and the desire to improve his acquaintance is said by
+several authorities to have been expressed by Queen Elizabeth herself.
+We are told that her Majesty requested the poet to present the fat
+knight in love, and that he obeyed instructions in a few weeks. There is
+no mistaking the high spirits in which the work is written; they are
+still ringing through every line. The poet remembered the old days of
+Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, and gave the knight's arms to Mr. Justice
+Shallow openly and unrebuked. Under the &aelig;gis of royalty, he could afford
+to let himself go and hit back at the astonished game-preserver. "The
+Merry Wives" was no more to its author than a merry jest, made in
+fulfilment of a royal request, a payment of long-standing scores in the
+best humour possible, and as soon as it was off his hands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> the poet
+turned to another historical subject and wrote "Henry V."</p>
+
+<p>With the close of "Henry V." Shakespeare left the arena of English
+history, never to enter it again on his own initiative; for, as will be
+seen, his share in "Henry VIII." was small. Comedy was for the moment in
+his heart. Perhaps it was a relief to him, after the strenuous time he
+had passed through, to pass to his lighter muse and express himself in
+the brightest vein that could not bear misinterpretation. He turned to
+an Italian author, probably Ariosto, for a part of "Much Ado about
+Nothing," but he drew the least vital part from the foreign source; the
+most of the comedy ran sparkling from his own brain. "As You Like It"
+followed "Much Ado," and the date must be about 1600. It is another
+clear case of adaptation, and the scenes of the play given to the Forest
+of Arden breathe the pastoral spirit in a fashion that we look for in
+vain elsewhere. "Twelfth Night" would appear to have been the third
+comedy following the sequence of historical plays, and the date would
+seem to be 1601.</p>
+
+<p>About this time the poet found himself in a very delicate situation. He
+had referred to the expedition of the Earl of Essex in terms of eulogy,
+and when that enterprise failed, Essex revolted against his sovereign,
+aided and abetted by the poet's patron, the Earl of Southampton. Part of
+the preliminary arrangements for the conspiracy consisted in arranging
+for performances of Shakespeare's "Richard II.," in which, of course,
+the king is murdered, the object being to show<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> that regicide was of no
+very distant date. Shakespeare's company was persuaded to revive the
+play at the "Globe" just before the abortive rising in favour of Essex,
+who, having lost his head metaphorically, was now to lose it literally.
+Happily for England, Shakespeare himself was not involved in the
+trouble. Oddly enough, he published in the year of Essex's death and
+Southampton's imprisonment a curious poem, "The Ph&oelig;nix and the
+Turtle." Nobody has been able to fathom its meaning, though it may be
+that those who connect it with the Essex <i>d&eacute;b&acirc;cle</i> may yet find a clue
+to the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>After this year even comedy would seem to have lost its appeal and
+savour for a time. The poet had received a shock that we cannot quite
+estimate or understand, and turning to Plutarch's Lives for inspiration,
+he wrote the famous tragedy "Julius C&aelig;sar," in many respects a work that
+must always defy adequate representation on the stage. How it could have
+passed muster on the bare Elizabethan boards is a puzzle. Next in order
+came the masterpiece by which his name is known to the widest circle of
+his followers, "Hamlet," yet another adaptation of a work that had
+enjoyed popularity for some years in London and the country. There are
+many references in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" to contemporary events,
+including the triumph of the company of boy actors known as "The
+Children of the Chapel," who in a few years had advanced in popular
+favour, and were now threatening the receipts of the established houses
+and companies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> History repeats itself. Then as now there was a demand
+for novelty, sensation, and the infant prodigy was in demand. In
+"Hamlet," too, Shakespeare shows that technical knowledge of his art to
+which reference has been made earlier in this little survey. Richard
+Burbage was the first Hamlet, and the tragedy was played in
+Shakespeare's time both at Oxford and Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/globe.jpg" alt="THE FIRST GLOBE THEATRE" /></div>
+<div class="caption">THE FIRST GLOBE THEATRE</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Sidney Lee, than whom no greater authority is needed, is inclined to
+set "Troilus and Cressida" next in the list of plays, and to give it
+date 1603. Some hold that the play hides a satire upon some of the
+poet's contemporaries, but there is insufficient evidence to justify the
+rather laboured conclusions that uphold the contention, which at least
+is of no more than momentary interest. It is easy to find, and difficult
+to deny, these hidden meanings in the work of one who left no clue to
+any suggestion or satire embodied in his plays.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h3>
+<h3>THE LATEST PLAYS</h3>
+
+<p>At this point in Shakespeare's career he lost his first royal patron.
+Queen Elizabeth, whose long and fateful reign drew to its appointed
+close on March 24, 1603. The poet gave to the world no expression of
+grief at her loss. Perhaps he could not do so in loyalty to his first
+and well-beloved patron, Henry Wriothesley, who still languished in
+prison for his complicity in the Essex rising of two years before. There
+had been times in his career when, through no fault of his own,
+Shakespeare had been looked upon with suspicion, and it may have been
+that the path to royal patronage had been at times a thorny and
+difficult one. In any case Elizabeth's generosity had been limited; she
+had not intervened to check the attack upon the theatres by the "unco
+guid" of London in 1601, when, but for the supineness of the Surrey and
+Middlesex magistrates, the poet's financial prosperity might have met
+with a serious set-back. Here, as in so many other places, we are too
+far from the time to see the truth clearly, and those who seek to fill
+in the shadowy outline of the poet's life must rely upon such conjecture
+as may have been put forward in good faith by the people who were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+nearer to him. King James loved the theatre; Queen Elizabeth tolerated
+it; nor must it be forgotten that in the days when the poet's star was
+in the ascendant his royal mistress had seen the greater glories of her
+reign and was entering upon her declining years, not without many
+troubles and much sorrow to mark the last milestones of the road.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first acts of King James's reign was to confer special rights
+upon the Lord Chamberlain's company, of which the poet was a prominent
+member. Henceforward he was one of "The King's Servants," and the King
+took a special interest in Shakespeare's plays, which were often
+performed before him. Unhappily the plague drove the Court from London
+in the autumn of 1603 to the Earl of Pembroke's seat at Wilton; but in
+1604, when the Court returned to London, Shakespeare was first of the
+nine actors who walked in the royal procession, and received a gift of
+scarlet cloth for the making of a cloak worthy the occasion. Many other
+honours followed. Great State occasions called for plays; Shakespeare's
+were chosen, and his company acted them. The scenic art began to receive
+a rather belated attention&mdash;in short, there was all the requisite
+stimulus for a man of genius, and the poet responded to it nobly.</p>
+
+<p>"Othello" was the first play written by Shakespeare in the reign of King
+James, but he seems to have had "Measure for Measure" on the stocks at
+the same time, for each was produced at Whitehall towards the close of
+1604. "Macbeth," written in 1605 and 1606,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> was clearly intended as a
+compliment to the king, who was a descendant of the unfortunate Banquo
+whose royal line Macbeth saw "stretch to the crack of doom." Dr. Lee
+makes the shrewd suggestion that inasmuch as this is the shortest of
+Shakespeare's tragedies, we may have no more than an abbreviated acting
+version. Other critics of note find certain corrupt passages in the text
+that go far to justify this contention. We may be sure that Shakespeare,
+then at the zenith of his power, would not have stinted the measure of a
+work which seems to have taken more of his time than any previous play.
+Following closely upon "Macbeth" came "King Lear," produced at Whitehall
+for the Christmas festivities of 1606, and founded, like several of its
+predecessors, upon Holinshed's Chronicles.</p>
+
+<p>After this supreme effort the pace of genius faltered for a while.
+"Timon of Athens" and "Pericles" are not pure Shakespeare; they do not
+show us the master at his best&mdash;though the first named is fine enough to
+have given enduring reputation to a lesser man. The question of his
+collaboration is a difficult one to settle, but leading critics have
+picked out the gold and rejected the dross, and their analyses prove
+that Shakespeare's part in these works was not predominant.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/drayton.jpg" alt="MICHAEL DRAYTON" /></div>
+<div class="caption">MICHAEL DRAYTON<br />In the National Portrait Gallery. (Painter unknown)</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It is no function of a simple record like the present to inquire into
+this critical question closely; a dozen editions of Shakespeare's plays
+published in the last ten years set down the latest researches of
+scholars. To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> not a few of us the tragedy that followed "Pericles" is
+among the finest of all that carry Shakespeare's name; surely, in some
+passages of sheer undying beauty, "Antony and Cleopatra" stands
+well-nigh alone. It dates from 1608, and, like "Coriolanus," the play
+that followed (1609), is taken largely from Plutarch (North's
+translation). "Cymbeline" is founded on Holinshed, and probably may be
+dated 1610. "The Winter's Tale" belongs to 1611, and to this year may be
+assigned the poet's moderate part in "Henry VIII."&mdash;he is far from being
+responsible for the whole play. "The Tempest" belongs, at latest, to
+1612. This, the latest and last work of the master-hand, was given with
+all its beautiful songs set to music by Robert Johnson, a player and
+composer of renown.</p>
+
+<p>So, leaving Miranda and Prospero to console us, the greatest dramatist
+of all time laid down his pen. Many a critic and lover of the poet has
+seen in the last words of Prospero, spoken when he gives up his magic
+wand, a reflection of the poet's mind. His life-work, too, was done.
+Unaided, save by his own genius, he had moved from the obscurity of
+Warwickshire's by-ways to a place by the side of the Immortals. In all
+the firmament of poetry there was no star to outshine his. It may be he
+knew that the years still left to him were likely to be few, and that
+his heart turned more from the bustle of a great city's ways to the
+quiet fields and lanes wherein his earliest inspiration had come to him.
+He had written a few scenes of plays that other men would seem to have
+designed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> and completed, but these fragments are of small importance and
+may be passed over here. Whatever he had given to lend a lustre to the
+work of his contemporaries would seem to have afforded him little
+concern. Henceforward his life was to be spent far from the busy centre
+of theatrical life, though he was compelled to come to town at short
+intervals in the first two or three years following his retirement, and
+there must have been ample atonement for the trouble, in the way of
+association with old friends who still laboured in the metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>When the poet passed into voluntary retirement he had but five years to
+live, but his genius was still ripe. Did he elect deliberately to end
+his labours before the first touch of weakness could reach them? Had he
+realised his ambition, even as Prospero, who moves with such supreme
+dignity through the last play? Was he content to have restored the
+family fortunes? Was it to do this, to take full rank among the
+gentlemen of Warwickshire, that he had striven so long? There is no
+satisfactory answer to these questions. The records are silent as the
+grave itself, and if the past has proved so silent on all points that
+relate to the growth and trend of the poet's mind outside the domain of
+his work, what may we hope from the future?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3>
+<h3>BACK AGAIN IN STRATFORD</h3>
+
+<p>In the foregoing review of the poet's life-work, the progress of his
+fortunes on the material side has been of necessity overlooked. It would
+have been confusing to deal with the two interests side by side, and now
+it is time to look for the signs that mark William Shakespeare's
+prosperity. We know that he came to London poor and left it
+comparatively wealthy, and the change of his state has some very
+definite landmarks. No man passes easily from the duties of an ostler to
+the position of part proprietor of prosperous theatres, and the first
+few years of Shakespeare's sojourn in the metropolis bore but little
+fruit. We know that in those lean times his own purse would have been
+but ill-lined, and both his father's household and his own were
+suffering from the pinch of poverty. His wife was forced to borrow
+money; his father's affairs went steadily from bad to worse. Nor was
+there in all Stratford any help for a family that had fallen from
+comparative affluence into the slough of financial troubles.</p>
+
+<p>We may presume, from the scanty evidence which records have left and
+diligent scholarship has dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>covered, that the poet himself made no
+effort to "fling away ambition." In the early years of his sojourn in
+London, when visits to Stratford were few and far between and the fear
+of the Squire of Charlecote may have compelled him to lie very low
+within the boundaries of Warwickshire, he would have seen or heard of
+his father's affairs going from bad to worse. The parental honours were
+stripped off one by one, debts accumulated, duns were incessant in their
+attendance. To a proud and sensitive man this condition of things must
+needs have been very galling; but it was not destined to last long.
+Quite apart from his considerable receipts as a playwright, the poet's
+earnings as an actor were substantial. The purchasing value of a
+sovereign in Elizabeth's time would be equal to the value of nearly
+eight pounds of our money, and Shakespeare's most learned biographers
+are of opinion that he was a careful and a saving man. Member of a
+leading company, enjoying the patronage of noblemen and the regard of
+his Sovereign, frequently summoned to take part in special performances
+at Court, it is likely that the poet's income as an actor was, within
+comparatively few years of the start of his career, equal in our modern
+currency to a sum nearer a thousand than five hundred a year. In later
+years it was still higher. For revising other men's work his fees would
+have varied between thirty and forty pounds, modern currency, and for
+his own plays he may well have averaged twice as much, or even more. The
+"benefit" system was already in vogue, and a dramatist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> could command an
+extra fee if the first-night audience proved very appreciative of his
+efforts. Shakespeare wrote his plays at the rate of two a year, and he
+would have had something in the way of a royalty on the sale of his
+poems, even though the plays brought him nothing as published work. We
+may presume, then, that after a year or two he was able to maintain his
+wife and children with some approach to comfort, and as the years passed
+and reputation grew he found himself able to revisit his birthplace in
+security, and to take definite steps to re-establish the family
+fortunes, then at so low an ebb.</p>
+
+<p>We read that after 1596, when the poet returned to Stratford with
+London's honours thick upon him and plenty of money in his purse, his
+father's debts were no longer the subject of proceedings at the local
+court. We may presume, then, that his son had paid them and cleared the
+way for John Shakespeare's strange application to the College of Heralds
+for a coat of arms. Strange at first thought, but less remarkable if, as
+is generally supposed, the father was acting for the son. It was and is
+the custom for a coat of arms to be applied for by the eldest male of
+the house, and the poet could not have made application in his father's
+lifetime. The application may have received some initial support in
+London, for arms were assigned with the least possible delay. Garter
+King-of-Arms referred to certain (and probably apocryphal) services
+rendered "to that most prudent prince King Henry the Seventh of famous
+memory," and stated, without any recorded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> blush, that the Shakespeare
+family had continued since those days to live in Warwickshire, in good
+reputation and credit! He went on to record the undoubted fact that the
+applicant had married Mary Arden, daughter and heiress of Robert Arden
+of Wilmcote, who is described as a gentleman. In view of these
+qualifications, arms were assigned to the applicant, a shield described
+in the quaint jargon of heraldry, "Gold, on a bend sable, a spear of the
+first, and for crest or cognizance a falcon, his wings displayed argent
+standing on a wreath of his colours, supporting a spear gold steeled as
+aforesaid." The motto chosen was "Non Sans Droict."</p>
+
+<p>But though the grant was assigned, the assignment was not completed for
+three years, the claim to relationship with the Ardens of Park Hall,
+through John Shakespeare's wife, being disallowed, as was indeed
+inevitable. Even then the grant was criticised in many quarters, but
+William Shakespeare's eminence tended to render all criticism nugatory;
+nor was he the first eminent actor to enjoy a coat of arms. It is quite
+easy to understand the significance of the application if we turn to
+regard the poet as a purchaser of real estate. Some two years before the
+assignment was completed, he had impressed upon his fellow townsmen of
+Stratford the truth that the period of strained finances had passed.</p>
+
+<p>New Place, the century-old seat of Sir Hugh Clopton, a man who had done
+much for Stratford, his birthplace, and had thriven in London, was now
+dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>mantled and in bad repair; but remained the most imposing house in
+the town. It was on the market, and William Shakespeare bought it, with
+outbuildings and garden, for the equivalent of about four hundred and
+fifty pounds, a large sum in that place and in those days. Some years
+passed before the transaction was completed, and then the poet planted
+an orchard which contained a famous mulberry tree, that flourished for
+more than a hundred and fifty years, and was cut down by the Rev.
+Francis Gastrell, whose name and memory are anathema to lovers of
+Shakespeare. The poet did not take up his residence at New Place until
+he had retired from London, and by that time the repairs were completed
+and the place was in good order. It is at least highly probable that the
+poet conducted some farming operations in and round New Place, though we
+know nothing of his special qualifications for this work. There is a
+record that in time of a local famine he had a good store of corn, and
+he is known to have bought several lots of arable land. From the date of
+the purchase of New Place there could have been none to dispute the
+poet's claim to the description of William Shakespeare of Stratford,
+Gentleman, and from first to last the total amount of his purchases of
+real estate in and round his native town would amount to more than &pound;7000
+modern currency, if we value the Elizabethan pound at eight times our
+own.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of Chapel Street, Stratford, where it turns into Chapel
+Lane, there is an ugly modern house<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> that enjoys the title of New Place
+and receives the sixpences of the faithful. The trustees of
+Shakespeare's birthplace own New Place and Anne Hathaway's cottage. The
+house in which Shakespeare passed his last years does not exist, but
+there is not a little about Stratford that calls for sixpences more
+readily than it can justify the receipt of them. All that New Place can
+offer of true Shakespearian interest is some venerable timbers, a shovel
+board, from the old Falcon Inn that rose close by soon after
+Shakespeare's death and still stands in receipt of custom, a circular
+table inlaid with wood from the mulberry tree that the poet is said to
+have planted, and a stone mullion from his own house. There is little
+else that can recall the past, although the site of the ancient Clopton
+mansion that Shakespeare purchased is undeniably here. The history of
+the house that has passed and that of its successors has a very definite
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare left New Place to his favourite daughter, Susanna, and to
+her daughter, Elizabeth Nash, in second marriage Lady Barnard. On her
+death Sir John Barnard kept the place as a residence until he sold it to
+Sir Edward Walker, whose daughter Barbara married Sir John Clopton,
+descendant of the man who built the first house at the end of the
+fifteenth century. Sir John pulled down the old house, rebuilt it, and
+was succeeded by Sir Hugh Clopton. From him in an evil hour it passed
+into the hands of a clerical Vandal, Francis Gastrell by name. He was a
+wealthy man and mean, so he quarrelled with the Stratford rating
+autho<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>rities, who assessed him too heavily, or so he said, for the
+relief of the poor. He had already cut down the great mulberry tree in
+the garden, because his privacy was disturbed by the early pilgrims to
+the poet's shrine, and for this act alone his name was an offence to the
+lads of Stratford, who broke his windows when opportunity afforded. But
+the town had not finished with the reverend gentleman. When the
+assessors refused to listen to his claim that he should not pay full
+rates to Stratford because he resided for a part of the year at
+Lichfield, he vowed that New Place should never be assessed again. He
+pulled the place down. Boswell described the cutting down of the
+mulberry tree as a piece of "Gothic barbarity," but was silent about the
+other act of vandalism. The mulberry, sold for firewood, was bought by
+a local clockmaker, who made solemn affidavit that the toys he made of
+it were from the genuine sacred tree. When the Rev. Mr. Gastrell had
+gone to where he may have met the poet, though this is unlikely, his
+widow sold the remains of the estate to a Mr. Wm. Hunt, who in time sold
+it to a firm of bankers. In 1827 Miss Smith purchased the site of New
+Place with the adjacent house, now the museum. Mr. Edward Leyton and his
+daughter, Mrs. Loggin, were the next holders, and in 1861 Mr. J. O.
+Halliwell-Phillipps, an enthusiastic student of the poet's history,
+established the existing Trust after raising the necessary money by
+public subscription. But as far as New Place, so called, is concerned,
+it must be remarked, with deference to those whom the reminder may
+offend,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> that the Falcon Hotel, which can be seen from the house, is the
+older establishment by centuries&mdash;indeed the billiard-room is panelled
+with some of the old oak from the New Place that Shakespeare knew. New
+Place Museum is really the house adjoining Shakespeare's, and was the
+property of Thomas Nash, first husband of Elizabeth, daughter of Susanna
+Hall.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after his purchase of New Place, the poet found himself in a
+better position than ever for increasing his property and gratifying his
+passion for real estate. Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, sons of that
+James Burbage who owned "The Theatre" in which the poet is said to have
+been a servitor, had built the "Globe Theatre" on Bankside. It was an
+octagonal wooden building, in which Shakespeare's company was to be seen
+year after year; the poet refers to it in the opening part of "Henry V."
+The two brothers, from motives of prudence or generosity or both issued
+twenty-one-year leases of shares in the profits of the venture.
+Shakespeare had a share; so had Condell and Phillips and others of the
+company; and later the poet acquired an interest in the "Blackfriar's
+Theatre." Each share was proved, in the course of long subsequent
+litigation, to have been worth two hundred pounds a year. Setting down
+the poet's salary at a like amount, and his author's fees at about a
+hundred, we find that he must have been worth nearly &pound;4000 a year, in
+our modern currency, from the time when he bought New Place to the year
+of his retirement. "The Globe" was burnt down in 1613 during a
+performance of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> "Henry VIII.," and was rebuilt a year later, but before
+the disaster occurred Shakespeare's financial position had long been
+assured, and it is unlikely that he held his shares when the theatre
+suffered. There is a story, unauthenticated but seemingly credited by
+many good judges, to the effect that at a moment when Shakespeare was
+desirous of making investments either in Stratford or London, his friend
+and patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, came very generously
+to his assistance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h3>
+<h3>THE POET'S DOMESTIC LIFE</h3>
+
+<p>In 1601 John Shakespeare's arduous life came to an end. Fifty years had
+passed since he left Snitterfield for Stratford, to venture into several
+business undertakings with temporary success, and achieve municipal
+honours for a few years. His decline had been more rapid than his rise,
+and, but for his son's success, his ending had been less peaceful. As
+far as we can tell, the last four or five years were free from grave
+financial trouble, but when he died the houses in Henley Street were the
+sole remains of his fortune; the rest had passed to creditors. These
+William Shakespeare inherited as eldest son&mdash;he let one, and left his
+mother in peaceful enjoyment of the other. In the following year he made
+more purchases, rather more than one hundred acres of farm-land at three
+pounds per acre&mdash;a price that would be quite good to-day if we consider
+the relative values of money&mdash;and a cottage with garden on the boundary
+of the New Place grounds. In 1605 he bought the unexpired term of a long
+lease of half the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and
+Welcombe, the price being &pound;440, which may be taken to stand for more
+than &pound;3000 of our money, and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> considerable part of a full year's
+income in his most prosperous time. It was an unfortunate investment,
+and one which led to his frequent recourse to the lawyers. Shakespeare's
+knowledge of the law has often puzzled his biographers, and the
+correctness of his phraseology has been advanced by upholders of the
+grotesque Baconian heresy as one of the reasons why he could not have
+written the plays attributed to him. But it is impossible for the plain
+man to follow the arguments that the Baconians adduce and affect to
+support.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/mermaid.jpg" alt="THE MERMAID INN" /></div>
+<div class="caption">THE MERMAID INN</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In later years the poet bought another twenty acres of arable land to
+add to his already considerable holding. All these purchases were made
+while he was a very busy man&mdash;actor, playwright, and manager. Doubtless
+he had other investments and interests, of which we may some day know a
+little more than we do now. Fresh documents relating to his investments
+in the theatrical world were published as recently as the closing months
+of 1909, and the records of the reign of Elizabeth and James I. are by
+no means fully examined. One truth stands out clearly through the
+interesting story of Shakespeare's investments, and that is his love for
+the town in which he was born. With so large a share of the world to
+choose from, with countless associations that might well have kept him
+in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, with friends in Court circles
+and acting circles who would scarcely be accessible in a town three,
+four, or even five days' journey from London, he seems to have had the
+fixed intent of spending his years of ease at home. There is too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> much
+reason to believe that with him marriage was a failure. Reference has
+been made already to the birth of his daughter Susanna, who became Mrs.
+Hall, and we know that in 1585 his wife bore twins, boy and girl, Hamnet
+and Judith, named after Hamnet and Judith Sadler, friends of John
+Shakespeare. But the poet saw little of his family or of the three
+children of his union, and at the time of his public return to Stratford
+little Hamnet Shakespeare died, in his twelfth year. Susanna married, in
+1607, the Puritan physician John Hall. Judith the twin married Mr.
+Thomas Quiney in the year of her father's death. The poet seems to have
+lived on excellent terms with his daughters, but there must be some
+justification for the generally accepted story of unhappy married life.
+Had he been devoted to his wife, Shakespeare could have sent for her
+when he had been a very few years in London; the fact that he did not go
+back to her for eleven years has a significance that takes a great deal
+of explaining away, nor are the laboured explanations of the people who
+assume that the life of genius is perfect, worth the ink and paper
+devoted to them. The estrangement might have been the fault of the man,
+or his wife, or both; it is a matter that ceased to be important when
+one or both had died. We make our conjectures and pass on; others come
+to do the same; but the first is likely to be as far from the truth as
+the last. We do not find any reliable information that can clear the
+darkness enshrouding the poet's life; even Aubrey's "Lives of Eminent
+Men," in which the poet is described as "hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>some and well shaped," was
+written more than fifty years after his death, and was founded upon the
+gossip of an old actor.</p>
+
+<p>There is hardly more than one portrait that may be supposed to show the
+poet as he was. This was discovered by Mr. Edgar Flower in 1892; it is
+painted on an elm panel, with "Wm. Shakespeare, 1609," in the left-hand
+corner. Several leading authorities have agreed that it may be the
+original from which Martin Droeshout engraved his half-length portrait
+for the folio of 1623, a likeness that was accepted as satisfactory by
+Ben Jonson, though it was clearly a second-hand work, because the
+engraver was no more than fifteen when Shakespeare died. The portrait is
+now in the Memorial Gallery at Stratford. Dr. Sidney Lee, in his
+fascinating "Life of William Shakespeare," a work that has run into many
+editions, tells us that upwards of sixty portraits of Shakespeare have
+been offered to the National Gallery since 1856, and that not one of
+these has been shown to be authentic. How fortunate, then, that the
+deeds and signatures quite beyond suspicion have told the world so much
+about the business side of the poet's life. Just as the forgery of
+portraits has been of common occurrence, so the forgery of deeds has
+been a source of amusement, if not of profit, to many; but happily there
+is always a strong critical faculty waiting to deal with startling
+discoveries, and those that survive the sifting of the keen intellects
+that examine them may be accepted in perfect good faith.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>We have the safe material upon which to base the conclusion that the
+poet left Stratford penniless, or well-nigh penniless, in 1585; that
+after eleven years of hard work in London, in the course of which he
+probably paid brief visits to his home, travelling by way of Oxford and
+stopping at the Crown Inn, he returned to restore the family fortunes
+and build up his own estate. We know that he bought the best house in
+the town, that he planted an orchard, developed his gardens, and made
+extensive purchase of farm-lands, some years before he could hope to
+settle down in comfort to their enjoyment. It may be that the knowledge
+that the new home was ready for him helped to put a period to the London
+labours. He did not give any sign of appreciating the full significance
+of his own work, or appear to know that he had made a position that
+placed him side by side with Geoffrey Chaucer in merit, and still higher
+in world renown. He never pushed the advantages that a connection at
+Court and the favour of King James might have given him&mdash;he was only too
+pleased to retire, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," while he
+was yet on the sunny side of fifty. Man of affairs sufficiently to seek
+the law-courts on the smallest provocation, idealist to the extent of
+preferring a simple country life to all the glamour of London, a man
+seemingly endowed with all the ambitions of the most sober and
+unimaginative middle class&mdash;truly he presents strange and baffling
+contrasts.</p>
+
+<p>In the absence of direct evidence to the contrary,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> we may presume that
+Shakespeare retired from the actor's profession in 1611, on or before
+the completion of "The Tempest," into the closing act of which he would
+seem to have put a reflection of his own inmost thought. Of all the rich
+and varied emotions to which such a mind must have responded, there
+could have been none more stirring than the thought that his life-work
+had brought the reward he most desired. To the town from which he had
+fled as an outcast he was returning a man of substance and repute; to
+the failing fortunes of those he had left behind he had become a sure
+support. Father, mother, one brother, Edmund, and the little son Hamnet
+had gone before him "to that bourn from which no traveller returns," but
+there were two loving daughters and a granddaughter waiting to welcome
+him home, one sister, Joan, and two brothers, Gilbert and Richard. There
+was Michael Drayton, author of the "Shepherd's Garland," the man after
+his own heart, to whose charming sonnets he was indebted for some of the
+beauty of his own, and it may be that some of his old companions of the
+stage could be lured to New Place in the intervals of their touring. For
+one who knew as well as Shakespeare the changes and uncertainties of
+life, there must have been a keen consciousness that balance of fortune
+was in his favour when he rode out from London on to the
+Oxford-Stratford road, only to return to look after his vested interests
+as occasion should demand.</p>
+
+<p>The poet would appear to have taken an active part in developing the
+prosperity of his native town, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> to have found in that work
+sufficient consolation, if any was needed, for his absence from the
+scenes of greater activity. In 1611, the year of his retirement, he
+supported with his purse and influence a Bill before Parliament for the
+better repair of the highways. He had suffered first-hand acquaintance
+with their wretched state. Doubtless he took part in much unrecorded
+work for the betterment of his own estate, and he was frequently found
+indulging in his undeniable passion for litigation. The purchase of a
+house in Blackfriars is recorded in 1613, and it led to the seemingly
+inevitable lawsuit some two years later. Nicholas Rowe, poet-laureate to
+King George I., wrote a life of Shakespeare in the early years of the
+eighteenth century, and we owe to him a statement, founded upon such
+information as a lapse of a century could validate, that Shakespeare
+spent the last years of his life enjoying "ease, retirement, and the
+conversation of his friends." We know that Michael Drayton and Ben
+Jonson visited him at New Place, and it is a tradition that their visits
+were celebrated in convivial fashion. At the same time there would have
+been certain restraints upon a very free life, even had the poet been
+disposed to lead one. Society in small country towns is notoriously
+inclined to be intolerant, and Shakespeare's son-in-law, Dr. Hall, was
+one of the great and growing body of Puritans that looked askance at
+sensual indulgence in any form. Moreover, there was a strong feeling
+against the stage in Stratford; it found expression only a year after
+Shakespeare's return, when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> Town Council passed a resolution that
+stage plays were unlawful, and increased the penalties to which players
+might be subjected. It would be a matter of great interest to know how
+Shakespeare regarded a resolution that so wantonly decried the
+profession by which he had lived and thriven. There is no evidence to
+show that the action of the city fathers was symptomatic of any ill-will
+towards him, or that he resented it openly. Yet he was a man who could
+and would stand up for his rights in and out of season. Perhaps in the
+most of his moods he was gentle and affectionate, for more than once in
+his career we find his friends leaving him small legacies or gifts or
+tokens of their affection. These came alike from actors who had shared
+with him the traffic of the stage, and from fellow-townsmen of
+Stratford. Even if the recorded references are scanty enough, there is
+none that may be held unflattering if we except the attack by Greene,
+for which his publisher went out of his way to apologise. It is hard, if
+not impossible, to estimate the value of any form of art-work in the
+lifetime of the worker, and it may well be that of the thousands who
+applauded Shakespeare's plays there were very few who saw them as we do
+to-day. The mere fact that they were for the most part new versions of
+works that were then quite familiar to playgoers would have told against
+them. Theme rather than treatment was best calculated to "tickle the
+groundlings."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+<h3>STRATFORD AS IT WAS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Stratford in Shakespeare's time administered its own affairs in very
+complete fashion through the medium of a Guild, which was turned into a
+Municipal Corporation by Edward VI. It boasted bailiff, aldermen,
+burgesses and chamberlains, and the council met every month in the Guild
+Hall. Those who accepted office were liable to be heavily mulcted for
+non-attendance, for attending in mufti, for declining promotion to a
+more responsible office, or for telling the secrets of the council
+chamber to those who had no place in it. The Chapel of the Guild, the
+Guild Hall, and the Grammar School, in which boys were taught and
+disciplined in fashion that would shock our humanitarian instincts
+to-day, still exist. The bailiff or warden of Stratford was at one time
+John Shakespeare himself, and at another a subordinate colleague, who
+would have sat in judgment upon him in the days when the old man's
+liabilities were beginning to get the better of his assets, and he
+himself was no longer a man of importance. The rule of the City Guild or
+Corporation was paternal in an Elizabethan sense. Just as the
+schoolmaster did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> not spare the rod lest he should spoil the child, so
+the magnates of the corporation regarded their fellow-citizens as men
+and women to be admonished or encouraged, punished or praised, according
+to their behaviour. Food prices were fixed by the corporation; the
+adulteration of the people's supplies was made exceedingly difficult and
+dangerous. Men who lived ill were fined or expelled from Stratford's
+boundaries; scolding wives were sentenced to have their tempers
+sweetened by immersion from the ducking-stool in the clear, cold waters
+of Avon. Publicans were forced to conform to the local laws carefully
+framed to abolish public drunkenness. The stocks were waiting for the
+feet of drunkards, brawlers, and offenders against municipal
+regulations, and the whipping-post was always in evidence where the
+Market House now stands. Apprentices might not be out after nine o'clock
+at night. Attendance at church was obligatory, and he who blasphemed or
+used foul language found ample reason to regret his indiscretion. In
+short, the conduct of Stratford was of a kind more in keeping with the
+Puritan tradition than anything we can find in England to-day, but it
+was associated with real brotherly love, and a feeling of common
+citizenship, that held the town together. Those who have studied the
+early records of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in England
+in the years following the successful intercession of Manasseh ben
+Israel with Oliver Cromwell, will hardly fail to note the striking
+similarity between the rules that governed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> Elizabethan corporations and
+those that governed those Jews who returned to England and lived their
+prosperous but dignified lives in the east end of London when the
+eighteenth century was as young as our own.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/strat.jpg" alt="SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE&mdash;STRATFORD-ON-AVON" /></div>
+<div class="caption">SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE&mdash;STRATFORD-ON-AVON</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>There was much to hold communities together in Elizabeth's time, much to
+encourage strength of purpose and resignation to troubles that were
+regarded as the manifestation of Divine Will, though in truth they were
+fruits of the people's ignorance. Unfortunately there was no real
+attempt to control them. Sanitation was unknown. The ground floors of
+the houses were of hard clay, covered with rushes; chimneys were not
+common. Refuse and garbage were placed in the open roads, not always in
+the special places appointed by the corporation. Pigs were kept close to
+the houses, and though the butchers were supposed to take the refuse of
+the slaughter-houses beyond the town, a strong wind would doubtless
+bring back infection. The corporation kept certain public places clean,
+and doubtless the citizens, or the most of them, did their best; but
+they had no knowledge of the price of uncleanliness, and in a town that
+was unpaved, undrained, and seldom cleaned, microbes must have enjoyed
+their life under conditions only familiar to those of us who have
+travelled through some of the remote cities of Africa and Asia, and
+known what it is to be literally unable to dismount from a horse. Street
+lighting was in its early infancy. In Shakespeare's time every man of
+substance was compelled to hang a lighted lantern outside his house<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+from dusk to curfew, during a few weeks of midwinter, and that was all.</p>
+
+<p>Of all these defects the lack of cleanliness was the vital one, and the
+consequences of the neglect or ignorance of the first laws of sanitation
+may be imagined. Plague was never far away. Every few years there would
+be a visitation, mild or severe, and there was no effective remedy known
+to the people. As in the time of the great plague of London, herbs and
+cooling drinks were employed, fresh air was in demand, and there was
+much burning of spices. Shakespeare was a baby in arms when a visitation
+of the plague gave nearly fifteen per cent. of the town's population to
+the graveyard or its substitute, the plague pit.</p>
+
+<p>Now and again the Avon would overflow its banks and flood the
+surrounding country. Not only would such a disaster increase the ague
+and rheumatism that are never far removed from dwellers by the
+river-side, but a late summer flood might damage the crops on low-lying
+lands, or carry away corn that had been cut but not carted, and then, as
+Stratford was not readily accessible, the prices of food stuff would
+rise despite the corporation's efforts, and actual famine was not
+unknown.</p>
+
+<p>Fires, too, were common. Doubtless a few arose from the overheating of
+corn in barns and stacks, and some from the absence of chimneys to so
+many houses. The corporation did what it could, but there were no
+resources adequate to deal with a conflagration, for all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> that the Avon
+ran at the foot of the town. They came to the conclusion in 1582 that
+the absence of chimneys was a fruitful source of disaster, and ordered
+every householder to build one. They also ordered every burgess to
+provide himself with a bucket. Looking back to the times, it is not easy
+to say that the corporation of Stratford was really backward; its
+members did all that the people of a little town in the heart of
+Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to
+have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous
+endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do
+in the public service, and those who failed were punished.</p>
+
+<p>When we look round at our busy manufacturing towns in this year of
+grace, and remember how much we know of the best tradition of municipal
+work, can we say that, <i>mutatis mutandis</i>, the advantage is altogether
+with us? Plague and fire and flood have been overcome, but men and women
+live lives entirely undisciplined. Little or nothing binds the citizen
+to the State, and the adulteration of food has become so common that
+pure bread and pure beer are the exception, and the supervision of those
+who prepare the necessities of our daily life is much less strict than
+it was when old John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was Stratford's
+ale-taster, empowered to see, <i>inter alia</i>, that every baker sold a
+whole loaf of true weight for one penny.</p>
+
+<p>But if the corporation ruled Stratford strictly in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> Elizabethan times,
+it encouraged all kinds of sport, to some of which the poet makes
+reference in his plays. Young and old knew the Maypole. Nine Men's
+Morris was another popular game, and Falstaff, referring to his
+treatment when he escaped from Ford's house disguised as the fat woman
+of Brentford, says, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipp'd
+top, I knew not what it was to be beaten, since lately." Goose-plucking
+was a particularly barbarous pastime. We know that hockey and football
+were played in Elizabethan England, and that the corporation of
+Stratford kept a bowling-alley at the municipality's expense for the
+free use of the town. Cock-fights were among the less reputable sports
+of the time, and bears or bulls were baited. Hunting, hawking, coursing,
+fishing, and the rest beguiled the leisure hours of those who had any,
+and the harvest festivals would have played their part. There were great
+fairs and open markets held at certain seasons of spring and summer.
+Within doors, cards and shovel-board would seem to have been the only
+kind of amusement that were not directly associated with social
+ceremonies.</p>
+
+<p>Christening, marriage, and burial were all allied in the poet's time to
+more public exhibitions than obtain to-day, the wedding being preceded
+by a public betrothal ceremony, and the marriage itself being associated
+with a great many quaint customs if the contracting parties had the
+money wherewith to carry them out. Removed from touch with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> outside
+world, seeing little of the life of big cities for themselves, the
+citizens of Stratford managed to get no small measure of simple and
+harmless enjoyment out of life, though even among the town council there
+were men whose liking for sack and good ale was notorious.</p>
+
+<p>Players from London brought some added amusement in the summer, but as
+Stratford grew more and more puritanical, a very deliberate effort,
+already referred to in the preceding chapter, was made to penalise
+actors, and some years after Shakespeare's death it is recorded that the
+king's players were bribed by the corporation to leave the town without
+giving any performances. The gardens of Stratford were very productive.
+They were separated from each other by mud walls, and were carefully
+cultivated. Shakespeare delighted in his gardens and his plays speak of
+his sound knowledge of the gardener's craft. People who could afford to
+plant orchards took a pride in doing so; the poorer folk generally
+boasted a few fruit-trees, and gave no small part of their garden plot
+to raising herbs and simples for use against the various ailments that
+troubled them from time to time. The furniture in the house was
+primitive. Table, stools, a chair or two, and a bench would furnish a
+living-room. Carpets were not often met with; mattresses, bolsters, and
+pillows were stuffed with feathers. Sheets and table-cloths were of flax
+or hemp; dishes were of brass or pewter. Wooden trenchers and pewter
+spoons were in common use, and most houses held the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> necessary equipment
+for baking bread, brewing ale, and weaving wool. Cooking was primitive;
+good cooks were not required unless the occasion was an extraordinary
+one. People rose early and retired early; there was no temptation to be
+out late in filthy, ill-lighted streets, and bed was the only
+comfortable place in a house after nightfall. Doubtless the conditions
+were favourable to deep drinking among those who were not limited to the
+ale-house, and consequently could escape from the vigilant eye of
+authority.</p>
+
+<p>The apprentice system was in vogue at Stratford in Shakespeare's time,
+and though the condition of apprentices was not always creditable to
+their employers, the system ensured a thorough knowledge of any business
+that a man sought to establish. The apprenticeship was a legal
+condition, precedent to setting up in business, and until a lad had
+fulfilled his indentures he could not open a shop on his own account or
+claim the rights of a freeman. Apprentices had their rights and
+privileges, including certain holidays, but they might not carry arms,
+might not visit ale-houses, and might not stay out after nine o'clock.
+For lads who did not care to settle down in business, or had not the
+means to establish themselves in one, there were other ways of securing
+a living. They could seek military service&mdash;there was always a demand
+for strong, athletic young men&mdash;or they could enter the big
+establishments of the great landowners, who employed scores of
+retainers, and, in peaceful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> times, did not overwork them. The wealthier
+lads went to the universities or to the metropolis, where no small
+proportion, freed from all restraint, went hopelessly to the bad. In
+Shakespeare's time, the Earl of Leicester, Lord Compton, Sir Thomas Lucy
+of Charlecote, and a few others, were the chief men in the neighbourhood
+of Stratford to keep retainers in large numbers.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/memorial.jpg" alt="SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATER, STRATFORD-ON-AVON" /></div>
+<div class="caption">SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+<h3>THE CLOSE OF LIFE</h3>
+
+<p>When Shakespeare settled down in Stratford to spend the last years of
+his life amid its familiar surroundings, he could without a doubt have
+aspired to the highest honours in the corporation's gift. He had
+restored his father's good name, and John Shakespeare in his palmy days
+had been Stratford's chief alderman. The early history of his escapades
+had apparently been forgotten; he was on friendly terms with the then
+owner of Charlecote Park, while other great landowners who passed a part
+of their time at Court were to be found among his acquaintances if not
+his friends. But he had not retired from the stress and strife of London
+to seek responsibilities that entailed heavy penalties for neglect. It
+sufficed him to take a friendly interest in the affairs of the
+corporation, and to remain right outside the council chamber. His own
+obligations might call him to town at any moment, and his own local
+affairs would have taken so much of the rest of his time as he would be
+disposed to give to business. Clearly he wished to enjoy his life, and
+from the scanty records in our possession there is reason to believe
+that he did so. Doubtless he added much to his ample stores of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+observation; the few last years could hardly have been wasted; but
+apparently he had no wish to set pen to paper when he had left the stage
+behind him. It may be that, had he been disposed to work in the later
+years, the Gunpowder Plot might have afforded him material for a
+stirring play. Ambrose Rookwood, who was closely associated with the
+conspiracy, lived in Clopton House near Stratford.</p>
+
+<p>The Clopton family was closely identified with Stratford's history. Sir
+Hugh, of that family, had been Lord Mayor of London in 1492. He it was
+who built New Place, the house in which the poet was living. He built
+the stone bridge over Avon at Stratford, to take the place of a
+worthless wooden structure. He founded exhibitions at Oxford and
+Cambridge Universities. In short, Sir Hugh made the reputation of the
+family for all time, and the scandal of Rookwood's residence in Clopton
+House, which is within easy reach of Stratford, must have been a
+considerable one.</p>
+
+<p>There is a suggestion that the poet had not only given up his work, but
+that the taint of landowning under the existing conditions had corrupted
+him. As late as 1614 he was assisting one William Combe, a landowner and
+son of his old friend John Combe&mdash;who had left him five pounds by
+will&mdash;in an attempt to enclose the common lands round his estate at
+Welcombe. In the early days the poet had been a foe of those who
+attempted to rob the people, but it may be that by 1614 he was growing a
+little intolerant of the Puritans on the corporation council, and quite
+ready to vex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> them if he could. The Clerk to the Council followed
+Shakespeare to London, apparently in order to discuss the case against
+William Combe, and the corporation in council drew up a letter to the
+poet, begging him to aid them against the guilty landowner; but
+Shakespeare did not do so, and it was left for the London courts to
+settle the matter in favour of the corporation, after much litigation
+and long delays.</p>
+
+<p>The opening days of 1616 saw the marriage of Judith Shakespeare, the
+poet's daughter, born with little Hamnet who had died twenty years
+before. Two months later the poet entertained Michael Drayton and Ben
+Jonson at New Place. Some biographers say that the meeting was
+associated with a drinking bout&mdash;there is no reason to believe that
+either of his distinguished visitors would have been averse from one.
+Others believe that the poet fell a victim to the prevailing lack of
+sanitation; his house was at the corner of a very dirty lane. Whatever
+the cause, there can be no doubt about the result. On the 23rd of April
+1616, England's greatest dramatist died in the prime of life&mdash;he was
+just fifty-two years of age. Two days later he was buried in Stratford
+Church, near the north wall of the chancel. Fearful lest his bones
+should be added to the grisly burden of the charnel-house close by, he
+penned a curse upon those who should disturb his remains.</p>
+
+<p>The corporation's leading members joined the funeral procession, and a
+banquet consoled the mourners. A monument was put up in the chancel a
+few years later,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the work of a London sculptor living near the "Globe
+Theatre." It is not a very pleasing piece of work. By his will, the poet
+left substantial legacies to his daughters, a gift to Stratford's poor,
+and mementoes to many friends, but to his wife he left his "second best
+bedstead" and nothing more. Anne Shakespeare died seven years later, and
+was buried close to her husband. His neglect of her by will does not
+imply indifference to her future; doubtless he had expressed his wish
+that one or other of his daughters should look after her, but it is
+clear that he did not hold her in great affection.</p>
+
+<p>So passed a great man from his world, leaving an imperishable monument
+for generations yet to come. The London he knew has passed beyond our
+ken; it is a buried city that will never be unearthed. But time has
+dealt more gently with Stratford and Shottery, Wilmcote and
+Snitterfield, and a large part of the surrounding country that made our
+national poet articulate. Much that he loved returns with the yearly
+pageant of the seasons, and with this we must be perforce content.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+Aberdeen, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br />
+<br />
+"All's Well that Ends Well,"  <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Ancient Pistol,  <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br />
+<br />
+"Antony and Cleopatra,"  <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+Arden, Forest of,  <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span> Mary,  <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span> Robert, <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
+<br />
+Ariosto, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<br />
+"As You Like It," <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Aston Clinton, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+Aubrey's "Lives of Eminent Men," <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
+<br />
+Avon, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Barnard, Lady, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<span class="spacer2">"</span> Sir John, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<br />
+Barnfield, Richard, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+Bath, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+"Bear's House," <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
+<br />
+Beaumont, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+"Bell, The," <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br />
+<br />
+"Bell Inn," <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+<br />
+Bishopgate, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
+<br />
+Bishopton, <a href="#Page_64">64</a><br />
+<br />
+Blackfriars, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<span class="spacer3">"</span> Theatre, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+Boar's Head, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
+<br />
+"Bohemia," <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+Boswell, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+Brentford, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
+<br />
+"Bull Inn," <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
+<br />
+Burbage, Cuthbert <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<span class="spacer2">"</span> James, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<span class="spacer2">"</span> Richard, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+Burbie, Cuthbert, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Cambridge University, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+Chapel of the Guild, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+<br />
+Charlecote, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
+<span class="spacer3">"</span> Park, <a href="#Page_81">81</a><br />
+<br />
+Charles II., <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+Chaucer, Geoffrey, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
+<br />
+"Children of the Chapel, The," <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
+<br />
+Clopton, Sir Hugh, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<span class="spacer2">"</span> Sir John, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<span class="spacer2">"</span> House, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+Cobham, Lord, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<br />
+College of Heralds, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+<br />
+Combe, John, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span> William, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<br />
+"Comedy of Errors, The," <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Compton, Lord, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
+<br />
+Condell, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+"Convivial Laws," <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+Coopers' Arms, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+"Coriolanus," <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+Coventry, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+"Cow Lane," <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Cromwell, Oliver, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
+<br />
+"Crosby Hall," <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
+<br />
+Crown Inn, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
+<br />
+"Curtain, The," <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+"Cymbeline," <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Danter, John, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Derby, Earl of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+"Devil Tavern," <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+Drayton, Michael, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<br />
+Droeshout, Martin, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Eastcheap, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
+<br />
+Edward VI., <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+<br />
+Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Essex, Earl of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+"Falcon, The," <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+Falstaff, Sir John, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
+<br />
+Faversham, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+"Feverel, Richard," <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+Field, Richard, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Fletcher, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+Florence, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
+<br />
+Flower, Edgar, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+Folkestone, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+Fulbroke Parks, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br />
+<br />
+Fuller, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Gastrell, Rev. Francis, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+"George, The," <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="spacer2">"</span> I., <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<br />
+"Globe, The," <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br />
+<br />
+Gower, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+Grammar School, Stratford, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+<br />
+Gray's "Elegy," <a href="#Page_1">1</a><br />
+<br />
+Greene, Robert, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br />
+<br />
+Greenwich, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+Guild Hall, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+<br />
+Gunpowder Plot, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Hall, John, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span> Susanna, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
+<br />
+Halliwell-Phillipps, Mr. J. O., <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+"Hamlet," <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br />
+<br />
+Hathaway, Anne, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<br />
+"Henry IV.," <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span> V.," <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span> VI., King," <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span> the Seventh, King, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span> VIII.," <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+High Wycombe, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Holinshed's "Chronicles," <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+Hunt, Wm., <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+Hythe, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+James I., King, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson, Robert, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+Jones, Inigo, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+Jonson, Ben, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<br />
+"Julius C&aelig;sar," <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Keere, Peter Van den, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+Kemp, William, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br />
+<br />
+Kenilworth, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+"King John," <a href="#Page_37">37</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span> Lear," <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<br />
+"King's Servants, The," <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+"Lambeth Marsh," <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+Lee, Dr. Sidney, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+Leicester, Earl of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
+<br />
+Leyton, Edward, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+Lichfield, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+Loggin, Mrs., <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+Lollard, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<br />
+"Love's Labour's Lost," <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Lucy, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+"Macbeth," <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<br />
+Manasseh ben Israel, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
+<br />
+Marlborough, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+Marlowe, Christopher, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br />
+<br />
+Masuccio, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+"Measure for Measure," <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+"Merchant of Venice, The," <a href="#Page_37">37</a><br />
+<br />
+Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+Meres, Francis, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+"Mermaid, The," <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+"Merry Wives of Windsor," <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<br />
+"Midsummer Night's Dream, A," <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Milton, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<br />
+Miranda, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+Moorfields, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+"More Feyldes," <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+Mountjoy, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+"Much Ado about Nothing," <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Naseby, <a href="#Page_5">5</a><br />
+<br />
+Nash, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<span class="spacer">"</span>  Thomas, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+Newington Butts, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+New Place, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<br />
+New Place Museum, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+New Romney, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+Nimrod, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Norman William, <a href="#Page_5">5</a><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Oldcastle, Sir John, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<br />
+Old Stratford, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a><br />
+<br />
+"Othello," <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Oxford, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
+<br />
+Oxford University, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+"Palace of Nonsuch, The," <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+Peele, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Pembroke, Earl of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+"Pericles," <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+Phillips, Augustus, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+"Ph&oelig;nix and the Turtle, The," <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
+<br />
+Plautus, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+"Play House," <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+Plutarch's "Lives," <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+Ponte Vecchio, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
+<br />
+Prospero, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Quiney, Mr. Thomas, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+"Rape of Lucrece, The," <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+Rhodes, Cecil John, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+"Richard II.," <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+"Richard III.," <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a><br />
+<br />
+Richmond, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+"Romeo and Juliet," <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Rookwood, Ambrose, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+"Rose, The," <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+Rowe, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<br />
+Rye, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Saffron Walden, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+Saxon Harold, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Senlac, <a href="#Page_5">5</a><br />
+<br />
+Severn, <a href="#Page_5">5</a><br />
+<br />
+Shakespeare, Edmond, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<span class="spacer3">"</span> Gilbert, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<span class="spacer3">"</span> Hamnet, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<span class="spacer3">"</span> Joan, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<span class="spacer3">"</span> John, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a><br />
+<span class="spacer3">"</span> Judith, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<span class="spacer3">"</span> Richard, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<span class="spacer3">"</span> Susanna, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
+<br />
+Shallow, Mr. Justice, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<br />
+"Shepherd's Garland," <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<br />
+Shoreditch, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+Shottery, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br />
+<br />
+Sidney, Sir Philip, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Miss, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+Snitterfield, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br />
+<br />
+Southampton, Earl of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Southwark, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+Spanish Armada, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
+<br />
+"Spittlefeyldes," <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Helen's, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
+<br />
+"St. Marye Overyes," <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Saviour's, Church of, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+Stratford Church, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+"Tabard, The," <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+"Taming of the Shrew, The," <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+"The Tempest," <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<br />
+"Theatre, The," <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+Thorpe, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+"Timon of Athens," <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<br />
+"Titus Andronicus," <a href="#Page_37">37</a><br />
+<br />
+"Troilus and Cressida, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br />
+<br />
+"Twelfth Night," <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+"Two Gentlemen of Verona, The," <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+"Venus and Adonis," <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Walker, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<br />
+Welcombe, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+Westminster Abbey, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+White, William, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Whitehall, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<br />
+"White Hart, The," <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilmcote, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilton, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+"Winter's Tale, The," <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+Wotton Wawens, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<br />
+Wriothesley, Henry, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h4>Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson &amp; Co.</span></h4>
+<h4>Edinburgh &amp; London</h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's William Shakespeare, by Samuel Levy Bensusan
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Shakespeare, by Samuel Levy Bensusan
+
+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: William Shakespeare
+       His Homes and Haunts
+
+Author: Samuel Levy Bensusan
+
+Illustrator: A. Forrestier
+
+Release Date: August 5, 2009 [EBook #29611]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Florian Hofmann, Stephanie Eason and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(Illustration images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+THE PILGRIM BOOKS
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+
+  THE PILGRIM BOOKS
+
+  _General Editor_--
+
+  S. L. BENSUSAN
+
+  1. SHAKESPEARE
+  2. LAMB
+  3. WORDSWORTH
+
+  _Others in Preparation_
+
+
+
+=THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT AT SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE=
+
+
+
+
+  WILLIAM
+  SHAKESPEARE
+
+  HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS
+
+
+  BY
+  S.L. BENSUSAN
+
+  WITH TWELVE DRAWINGS IN CRAYON BY
+  A. FORRESTIER
+  AND FOUR PORTRAITS
+
+  LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+  16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
+  AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+  HUNC LIBELLUM
+
+  REVERENDISSIMO
+
+  M. GASTER, PH.D.
+
+  VIRO ERUDITISSIMO
+
+  PRAECEPTORI PERITISSIMO
+
+  AMICO FIDELISSIMO
+
+  MAGNA CUM REVERENTIA
+
+  D.D.D.
+
+  OLIM DICIPULUS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAP.                                                            PAGE
+
+     I. STRATFORD-ON-AVON                                             1
+
+    II. THE POET'S YOUTH                                              8
+
+   III. NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY                          15
+
+    IV. FIRST DAYS IN LONDON                                         20
+
+     V. SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON                                         24
+
+    VI. THE STAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY                               28
+
+   VII. SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY PLAYS                                    35
+
+  VIII. THE ELIZABETHAN TAVERNS                                      41
+
+    IX. THE MIDDLE PERIOD                                            46
+
+     X. THE LATEST PLAYS                                             50
+
+    XI. BACK AGAIN IN STRATFORD                                      55
+
+   XII. THE POET'S DOMESTIC LIFE                                     64
+
+  XIII. STRATFORD AS IT WAS                                          72
+
+   XIV. THE CLOSE OF LIFE                                            81
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  THE ELY PORTRAIT AT SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE      _Frontispiece_
+
+  THE HOME OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE, SNITTERFIELD         _Facing p._      4
+
+  ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE--INTERIOR                        "         12
+
+  MARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE                                     "         16
+
+  THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON                                  "         20
+
+  ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE                                  "         24
+
+  GUILD CHAPEL AND SCHOOL                                  "         28
+
+  HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND THE AVON, STRATFORD              "         32
+
+  BEN JONSON                                               "         36
+
+  CHARLECOTE HALL                                          "         40
+
+  INTERIOR OF ST. SAVIOUR'S AT SOUTHWARK                   "         44
+
+  THE FIRST GLOBE THEATRE                                  "         48
+
+  MICHAEL DRAYTON                                          "         52
+
+  THE MERMAID INN                                          "         64
+
+  SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON                   "         72
+
+  SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON          "         80
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In telling the story of Shakespeare's life and work within strict limits
+of space, an attempt has been made to keep closely to essential matters.
+There is no period of the poet's life, there is no branch of his
+marvellous work, that has not been the subject of long and learned
+volumes, no single play that has not been discussed at greater length
+than serves here to cover the chief incidents of work and life together.
+If the Homes and Haunts do not claim the greater part of the following
+pages, it is because nobody knows where to find them to-day. Stratford
+derives much of its patronage from unsupported traditions, the face of
+London has changed, and though we owe to the painstaking researches of
+Dr. Chas. Wm. Wallace the very recent discovery that the poet lodged
+with a wig-maker named Mountjoy at the corner of Silver and Monkwell
+Streets in the City of London, much labour must be accomplished before
+we shall be able to follow his wanderings between the time of his
+arrival in and departure from the metropolis.
+
+For the purposes of this little book many authorities have been
+consulted, and the writer is specially indebted to the researches of Dr.
+Sidney Lee, the leading authority of our time on Shakespeare, and the
+late Professor Churton Collins.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+STRATFORD-ON-AVON
+
+
+To read the works of a great master of letters, or to study the art of a
+great painter, without some first-hand knowledge of the country in which
+each lived and from which each gathered his earliest inspiration, is to
+court an incomplete impression. It is in the light of a life story and
+its setting, however slight our knowledge, that creative work tends to
+assume proper proportions. It is in the surroundings of the author that
+we find the key to the creation. For, as Gray has pointed out in his
+"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," there are many in the dust and
+silence whose hands "the rod of Empire might have swayed, or waked to
+ecstasy the living lyre."
+
+We know that it is not enough to have the creative force dormant in the
+mind; environment must be favourable to its development, or it will
+sleep too long. We see in the briefest survey of the lives of the poet,
+the statesman, the soldier and the artist, that there are many great
+ones who would have been greater still were it not that then, as now,
+"man is one and the fates are three."
+
+To study the life history of a man and to consider its setting is to
+understand why he succeeded and how he came to fail, and our wonder at
+his success will not be lessened when we find that some simple event,
+favourable or untoward, was the deciding factor in a great life. The
+hour brings the man, but circumstances mould him and chance leads him to
+the fore, unless it be true that "there's a Divinity that shapes our
+ends, rough hew them how we will." In our own time we have seen how the
+greatest empire-builder of Victorian history, Cecil John Rhodes, came
+into prominence because he was sent to South Africa for the cure of weak
+lungs. And, looking back to the life and times of William Shakespeare,
+who has summed up for so many of his fellow-countrymen, and still more
+strangers, the whole philosophy of life, we shall see that he became
+articulate through what he may have reasonably regarded as mischance.
+
+Out in the autumn fields, the pigeon and the squirrel, to say nothing of
+other birds and beasts, hunt for acorns to eat or store. On the road to
+roost or storehouse many are dropped. Of these no small number fall on
+waste ground; a few take root, only to be overgrown or destroyed before
+they reach the beginnings of strength. But here and there an acorn drops
+on favourable soil; the rich earth nourishes it; the germ, when it has
+lived on all the store within the shell, can gather its future needs
+from the ground. Little roots and fibres pierce the soil; a green twig
+rises to seek the sun; there are long years of silent precarious growth,
+and then the sapling stage is passed and a young tree sends countless
+leaves to draw nourishment from air and sky. Following this comes the
+time when no storm can uproot the tree that a hungry rabbit might have
+destroyed in days past--something has come to complete maturity and has
+developed all the possibilities that were equally latent in so many
+million acorns to which growth was denied. As it is with plants, so it
+is with men, and thus it becomes permissible to compare literature with
+a forest wherein are so many trees, so many saplings, and so much dense
+undergrowth, from which trees of worth and beauty may one day spring. In
+our national forest there is an oak that first saw life in the year
+1564. There are many older trees of splendid worth, but this is the one
+which stands alone. What manner of soil nourished it? Whence came its
+strength? This little work is a brief attempt to set the well-known
+answer down again in a form that may offer a certain convenience in
+point of size and selection to lovers of a great poet.
+
+When we read Shakespeare's plays for the first time, it is at once
+apparent that the poet was a countryman. He has the knowledge, founded
+upon close observation, that we associate with the highly intelligent
+dweller in the countryside, the man or woman from whom the poet differs
+merely in his supreme capacity for expression. We turn again to his
+scenes of city life to find he is no less at home there. It is quite
+another world, but he has fathomed it; quite another company of men, but
+he has gauged their strength and weakness, the pathos and humour of
+their lives. He deals with rulers and courts, and his touch is as sure
+and faithful as before; his genius has taught him that kings and queens
+are men and women like the rest of us, that environment cannot alter
+fundamental characteristics, that royalty is swayed by the same forces
+that rule the lives of lesser men.
+
+Only when he deals with foreigners the poet of Avon is often an
+unconscious humorist, for his store of geography is inadequate to meet
+the small demands upon it, and some of his simple errors, such as "the
+seashore of Bohemia," excite our kindly laughter now. But it is easy to
+see that the poet's habit of accurate observation was established in the
+country and that he applied to the larger life of London the self-taught
+methods he had acquired in the little town of his birth.
+
+It is on this account that the minds of his admirers turn to
+Stratford-on-Avon, and the footsteps of enthusiasts are directed, year
+in, year out, to the pleasant county of Warwickshire. In and around
+Stratford we can keep company with the poet in his earliest and latest
+days; nor can the bustling crowds of tourists from all parts, the
+clamour of innkeepers and coach-drivers, the ever-present determination
+to turn a national genius to profitable account, stir our deep content.
+Men and public places have changed, but the country is as it was when
+William Shakespeare, poor and little known, was gathering the stores of
+knowledge and habit of thought that were to lift him to heights no
+following Englishman has scaled.
+
+
+=THE HOME OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE--SNITTERFIELD=
+
+
+The wayfarer coming into Stratford for the first time to pay his mute
+tribute to the poet who seems destined to live as long as our
+civilisation, will enjoy a pleasant impression if he chance to have
+chosen a fine day and to have reached the town by the road. Stratford
+lies on the right bank of the river Avon, a beautiful river whose waters
+flow peacefully over the level land on their way from Naseby to the
+Severn. The town was happily planned of old time, and owed its inception
+to the establishment of a monastery shortly after the Anglo-Saxon began
+to take an interest in Christianity. It is clear that Stratford enjoyed
+three centuries of comparative peace, if not of substantial progress,
+before Norman William and Saxon Harold met at Senlac; echoes of that
+fray could not have pierced to the little town on Avon's banks. Nor have
+the subsequent centuries done much to disturb its natural seclusion.
+
+The hand of the builder has raised streets of prosperous shops and
+new-built villas; small hotels abound; there is a bustling railway and a
+sleepy canal. A Memorial Theatre overlooks the river, and cyclists pass,
+not singly but in battalions, along peaceful roads leading to Birmingham
+or Warwick. Throughout the summer season Stratford-on-Avon becomes a
+metropolis "whereunto the tribes of men assemble." To "do Stratford" is
+an article of faith with American visitors, even if they have no more
+than a week in which to master the wonders of Great Britain and Ireland.
+Germany sends many admirers, for nowhere is Shakespeare's genius more
+widely recognised, more highly esteemed, than in that country. London
+and the big midland towns of England send visitors daily.
+
+Let it be suggested, with all due respect to those who think otherwise,
+that there is no reward for those who seek to discover Shakespeare's
+land in the course of a few hours' hurried travel. They will see
+Shakespeare's alleged birthplace, and the room in which he is said,
+without much authority, to have been born. They will pass through the
+Museum, Library, and Picture Gallery; they may even admire the rather
+poor monument in Holy Trinity Church, and perhaps a few other sights
+that the town affords; and then, with a welter of confused impressions,
+will return whence they came. There is no reward for this frenzied
+exercise; it is impossible to gather any impression of the scenes in
+which the poet passed his early and later days, from a hurried scamper
+through the town and a frank acceptance of local traditions, concerning
+which some of our leading Shakespearian scholars have much destructive
+critical comment to offer. He who wishes to establish some manner of
+association with the poet must enter Stratford as the poet left it--by
+the road. He should leave the railway and walk in from Warwick, find
+quiet lodgings, of which there is no lack, in the town, and visit in
+turn the highways and by-ways of Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcote,
+Aston Clinton, Shottery, Wotten Wawens, Charlecote, and a dozen other
+points of interest, of which he will learn when he has definitely left
+the ranks of excursionists and has made friends among the people of
+Shakespeare's countryside. He will not add a jot to our knowledge of
+country or people--a hundred pens have said all there is to say--but he
+will come away with a measure of appreciation and recognition that will
+make the significance of the poet, as an interpreter of a life that
+never changes, far more vital and true. Here is no small reward for a
+truly delightful holiday in country full of the best traditions of rural
+England. And the intelligent visitor will be one with the great lovers
+of Shakespeare, living and dead, from Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, and
+Milton down to Matthew Arnold and our own contemporaries, even though
+his contribution to the poet's praise be no more than a little note in a
+private diary. His journey will open a fresh field of literary research,
+if he be not already a student of Elizabethan literature. He will be
+enrolled on the long and unexhausted list of pilgrims to the shrine of
+the country's greatest poet, the man whose thoughts have lost nothing of
+their depth and beauty in the slow passage of three eventful centuries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE POET'S YOUTH
+
+
+In these days, when biographies of nobody in particular are as the sand
+upon the seashore for multitude, and the demand for personal paragraphs
+is seemingly well-nigh as great as the supply, we have some occasion to
+regret the absence of similar craving in the spacious times of Queen
+Elizabeth. If there had been a daily, weekly, or monthly publication
+that submitted famous men to the ordeal of the interview, we might
+pardon the glut of our latter day. Unhappily for our desire to know what
+manner of man Shakespeare was, the available records are exceedingly
+scanty, or are at least insufficient for our legitimate needs, and we
+are face to face with the initial difficulty that in the sixteenth
+century Shakespeare's name was quite common. From Cumberland down to
+Warwickshire there was probably no county in which a William Shakespeare
+could not have been found for the searching, and this fact is
+accountable for many curious mistakes that have been made by students
+and biographers. In Warwickshire alone there were more than a score of
+families bearing the surname in the sixteenth century, and half as many
+again in the following century, when the name was one to conjure with.
+The poet's father, John Shakespeare, who was a native of Snitterfield
+and moved to Stratford in the middle of the sixteenth century, to carry
+on what would seem to have been the business of a big store-keeper,
+applied for a right to bear arms towards the century's close, and made
+certain claims on behalf of ancestors. But the opinion of competent
+critics is that John Shakespeare was as capable of drawing the long-bow
+as he was of selling general stores, and that he was closely connected,
+from a mental standpoint, with the successful tradesmen of our day who,
+having proved fortunate business men, seek to confer upon themselves
+such advantage as a dubious pedigree may assure. We cannot, then, accept
+the version of his family history that satisfied the complaisant
+Heralds' College.
+
+The chief difference between our modern Arms-seekers and John
+Shakespeare is that they are moneyed tradesmen and he was not. The early
+days of his commercial career were comparatively prosperous, and he
+found time to serve the borough of Stratford in many offices, including
+those of ale-taster, burgess, petty constable, borough chamberlain, and
+chief alderman. He married Mary Arden of Wilmcote near Stratford, the
+marriage taking place in Wilmcote's parish church at Aston Clinton, and
+William was the third child of the union. The poet's registration in the
+parish records at Stratford is dated April 26, 1564. The place of his
+birth is generally assumed to be the house in Henley Street purchased by
+John Shakespeare a year before his marriage, and we are told that he
+was born in a certain room on the first floor. Here again contemporary
+criticism may make some people regret the loss of the sixpence that was
+demanded before the scene of the birth could be surveyed; but, after
+all, there is much saving grace in a tradition, and whether the place be
+all it is alleged to be or less, little harm is done. Suffice it that
+thousands, gifted with faith and sixpences, have visited the room,
+ceilings and windows bear countless traces of the desire that besets the
+most commonplace people to deface walls with their uninteresting names.
+Shakespeare's alleged birthplace is a charming little residence enough,
+with dormered roof and penthouse entrance, and sixpence is a small price
+to pay for a pleasant illusion.
+
+In the very early days of the poet's life the _res angusta domi_ had not
+yet begun to trouble his father, who was appointed Bailiff of the
+Stratford Corporation in 1568, and Chief Alderman three years later. In
+1575 he bought a house in Henley Street, and no less an authority than
+Dr. Sidney Lee, whose researches command the respect of all, believes
+that this house is the one in which the poet is now said to have been
+born. It would seem that John Shakespeare's prosperity received a rude
+shock soon after the date of their purchase, for in 1578 and 1579 he was
+mortgaging his wife's property at Wilmcote and Snitterfield, and
+gradually the once wealthy man fell from power and place. Creditors
+pursued him, and he lost his standing in the Corporation.
+
+In the meantime William was receiving his early training at Stratford
+Grammar School, and picked up more than a smattering of French and
+Latin, with perhaps a little Italian as well. That his school life or
+home life was closely associated with Bible reading and study is proved
+by the readiness with which he turns to Scripture for graphic and
+concise expression of a thought, or for the purpose of an apt
+comparison. But he was destined to learn in a larger and rougher school
+than that of King Edward's foundation at Stratford. His leisure came to
+an abrupt end when he had just entered his teens and his father told him
+to look after one of his failing businesses. So the brightest genius of
+English poetry became, while yet a boy, a butcher or a butcher's
+assistant, and for some four or five years passed an uneventful life in
+Stratford under conditions that might well have coarsened and spoilt
+him. Happily the exquisite surroundings of the little town, and his own
+response to them, made a somewhat sordid occupation possible; but of his
+daily life and steady growth in the most impressionable period of his
+career no reliable details have reached us.
+
+To his associates in the old Warwickshire home he was no more than the
+clever, precocious eldest son of an alderman who had seen better days.
+He went his own way, and may be supposed to have lived a somewhat free
+life, for before he was nineteen he appears to have found himself
+compelled to marry one Anne Hathaway of Shottery in the parish of Old
+Stratford. Her father had died rather more than a year before her
+marriage; she was twenty-six years of age, and had inherited by will a
+sum amounting in the currency of the day to a little less than L7,
+rather more than L50 of our money. The marriage would seem to have been
+hurried and irregular, and though it may have followed a formal and
+binding betrothal of a kind that had more sanction then than now, the
+poet's first child--his daughter Susanna--was born less than six months
+later. It was not a fortunate union. Twins were born to William and Anne
+Shakespeare in 1585, and then all record of the home life closes for a
+long period. Some of Shakespeare's biographers think that the poet had
+run away to London before the year closed, and that for more than a
+decade he did not return to the town without taking care that his
+presence should not be noticed. We do not know how strained his marital
+relations had become, but we may assume that his home was not a happy
+one, for in the early days of his union he ran risks that most young
+married men would avoid for the sake of wife and family.
+
+It seems clear that the story of his poaching expeditions in Charlecote
+or Fulbroke Parks is not a mere legend unsupported by facts. Sir Thomas
+Lucy, the owner of Charlecote Park, was of course a game preserver, and
+Shakespeare must have thought that poaching was a reasonable pastime
+enough. He dared "do all that may become a man," and the penalty of
+exciting the wrath of a great landowner and game preserver was no less
+then than now. Sir Thomas was angry; the poet is said to have written a
+vulgar, bitter lampoon, still preserved, and affixed a copy to the
+gates of Charlecote. The response was a persecution that made Stratford
+too hot to hold a greater man than all the big sportsmen from Nimrod's
+day to ours, and William Shakespeare left wife and children and vanished
+from the old town's ken. Some think he lived in neighbouring towns or
+villages awhile, and found work as a schoolmaster. There was an idea
+that he went for a time as a soldier to the Low Countries under the Earl
+of Leicester, whose splendid pageants in honour of a visit from Queen
+Elizabeth may have inspired some of the fantasy of "A Midsummer Night's
+Dream."
+
+
+=ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE--INTERIOR=
+
+
+Doubtless there was a Shakespeare or two in Lord Leicester's regiment;
+the name was a common one enough; but it was no part of the poet's
+experience "to trail a pike in Flanders." Directly or indirectly, he was
+on the high road to London, and Sir Thomas Lucy was to find his claim to
+immortality in the pursuit of a young poacher and in the poacher's
+creation of Mr. Justice Shallow of Gloucestershire, whose foolishness,
+suggested in "Henry IV." (Part II., Act iii. sc. 2), is still further
+emphasised in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," where he figures as one who
+has come to make a Star Chamber matter out of Sir John Falstaff's
+poaching. His complaint will be remembered. "Knight, you have beaten my
+men, killed my deer, and broken open my lodge ... the council shall know
+this."
+
+There has been no lack of determined effort among the poet's countless
+biographers to give the lie direct to every story that does not cast
+credit upon his youth. Because he was a great man, many people require
+his history to be written in a fashion that shall lessen, ignore, or
+deny his weaknesses. There can be no valid reason for pursuing such a
+course, for we know that the rule of art is not the rule of morals, and
+that while a very good poet may be a very bad man, a very worthy man may
+be a vile poet. The apologists have picked out the finest moral thoughts
+in the plays and poems and declared that he who could conceive them
+could not have been less than a saint. They might as well pick out the
+countless villains of the tragedies and declare that he who presented
+them must have been a sinner. Truth to tell, the question is one of no
+importance. Shakespeare was in some respects a man like the majority of
+men; in other regards he stands alone. Only in this latter aspect have
+we any occasion to consider him. We have neither the right, the
+capacity, nor the data by which to sit in judgment; but it is hardly
+honest to withhold reports, that seem to be well founded, because they
+do not flatter the youthful career of a great man. In his own "Henry
+IV." and "Henry V." Shakespeare shows how the recklessness of youth is
+not incompatible with sound living and a high standard of morality and
+common sense in the days of responsibility.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY
+
+
+We find Shakespeare, just out of his teens, travelling on the road to
+London, and it is worth while to see what equipment and what resources
+he is taking to the metropolis. It is safe to assume that he has no
+money, and that his local reputation is not one of the very best, though
+the worst to be urged against him is that he has loved not wisely but
+too well--and this fault has not been too clearly substantiated--and
+that he has ignored the game laws, as so many men had done before, have
+done since, and will do as long as these laws exist.
+
+The early life of a truly imaginative man had been passed in the most
+beautiful surroundings that rural England can provide, and by reason,
+perhaps, of the lack of restrictions, had helped him to enlarge his
+experiences and develop all the facets of a luminous mind. The
+expression is chosen deliberately. Man's mind is like a diamond, and
+experience is the lapidary. Every action, every stroke of good fortune
+or of bad, leaves its definite mark; every association does the same. As
+a boy Shakespeare lived in close touch with Nature. His father's
+business would have brought him into contact with farmers, given him
+the freedom of their fields, taught him the significance of the seasons.
+Even now, when glimpses of Elizabethan England are few and far between,
+we are touched by the supreme peace that still broods over land on which
+the old-time houses, with their thatched roofs or well-worn tiles, their
+ingle nooks, their dormer windows, their oak rafters and their many
+gables, tell of a time when the jerry-builder was not and the suburban
+villa had not yet come into being. It was an age of beauty, and the
+walks round Stratford remain beautiful to this hour, despite the growth
+of villadom and the advent of the railway line.
+
+We can follow the roads that Shakespeare knew, to the woods of his
+poaching exploits, and the meadows over which he passed to thatched,
+half-timbered Shottery, where the village inn was still standing when
+men, now middle-aged, were born. Rustic gardens, white-blossomed
+orchards, tiny brooks beloved by the kingfisher, trees that may have
+seen the courting of the poet and his wife, still remain to tell the
+story of England's unchanging charm. In the spring and early summer
+there is such an atmosphere about the countryside as George Meredith has
+created in his "Richard Feverel" when Richard and Lucy meet in "the very
+spring-tide of their youth." Doubtless there are other regions in
+plenty, scattered through the length and breadth of our fascinating
+English country, wherein the attractions are hardly less than here; but
+Shakespeare's genius has hallowed Stratford for us, because that
+particular countryside made him a poet and sent him to London, full of
+such inspiration as has not fallen to any other Englishman even in times
+when the literary activity of the age has been at its highest point.
+
+
+=MARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE=
+
+
+It may be suggested in passing that much of the early romance associated
+with Anne Hathaway's cottage is spurious, and the worthy people who tell
+of the poet's courtship there overlook the fact that his relations with
+his wife were clandestine and his marriage almost a secret union. But
+the cottage itself is beautiful enough to account for the enthusiastic
+departure from the path of truth, if not to justify it.
+
+Lying on the left as you come out of Stratford to Shottery, past the
+post-office, to the "Bell Inn," where the road has crossed a stream, we
+see the cottage, and, _horribile dictu!_ a row of modern brick-built
+cottages for background! Long, thatched and creeper-covered, built upon
+slabs of stone, with timber and plaster above, with tiny windows under
+the thatch, surrounded by a well-filled and carefully tended garden, the
+place makes a quick and enduring appeal to the imagination, even though
+the legends associated with it are, for the most part, legends and
+nothing more. It is easy to realise the supreme beauty of the scene that
+Shakespeare knew, to understand how the lovers' secret meetings were
+made all the more memorable by reason of their surroundings. The scene
+and the associations went to the making of the poet; they were among the
+treasures he carried up to London when he was compelled to leave
+Stratford behind him and time and distance were smoothing all the little
+troubles that had beset his short and uneventful life. He must have
+heard Stratford and Shottery calling to him in the heart of the town,
+for when his name was made and his future assured, he came back to home,
+wife, and little ones to enjoy the "poor remains" of life.
+
+On his road to and from Shottery, he would have passed "under the shade
+of melancholy boughs" and watched the "guest of summer, the
+Temple-haunting martlet," that built under the eaves of Anne Hathaway's
+house. Doubtless to his mood of elation or depression, and to his quick
+and intimate response to the wild life round him, we owe those clear
+impressions that connect certain scenes and phases of our life with his
+more familiar utterances. To hear the cuckoo and the nightingale to-day
+in the woods round Shottery and Wilmcote is to recall some of the poet's
+most inspired moods. But it is not the familiar birds alone that caught
+the poet's eye and stimulated his imagination. In the days of his youth,
+before he went to London, he must have studied bird life closely and
+accurately. Nearly fifty wild birds find mention in his plays and poems,
+and for the most part they are birds he would not have seen in London,
+though in his day the metropolis was small enough, and the outer London
+of his time was well-nigh as wild and wooded as the least frequented
+parts of Warwickshire to-day. The halcyon or kingfisher, the
+white-breasted water-ouzel, the skylark, the "ruddock" or
+robin-redbreast, the wren, the green plover, the woodcock--these serve
+for some of his moods; but he mentions eagle, kite, hawk, buzzard, owl,
+falcon, cormorant, and a number of others, always with discretion and
+with the full measure of knowledge vouchsafed to his time. Classical
+lore and country superstitions are sometimes found in his references,
+but the most of them point to the poet's own loving observation at a
+time when there was no widespread interest in birds or beasts, unless
+they had a part to play in hunting. Shakespeare's references to the
+chase are accurate and suggest first-hand observation, coupled with the
+keen instincts of the sportsman, and it is easy to see that the
+extraordinary receptivity of his mind enabled him to take impressions
+from every aspect of life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FIRST DAYS IN LONDON
+
+
+Three hundred and twenty-four years have passed since William
+Shakespeare set out to prove his fortune in London, and in those
+far-away days that his genius makes so real for us the journey was long
+and at times dangerous. Three days would suffice in fine summer weather,
+while four or five might be required in winter time, when rivers were
+swollen and fords were dangerous. Not only were roads bad, but bridges
+were conspicuous by their absence. To send a letter from Stratford to
+London and receive a reply to it would occupy nearly a fortnight, and
+if, as some writers believe, Shakespeare had already made a certain name
+by his skilled handling of other men's work when touring companies came
+to his town, it is quite clear that his best chance of establishing
+himself as a playwright would be found in the metropolis. Even if he had
+not found trouble in his native place, he could not hope to thrive
+there. It is thought that he travelled to town on foot by way of Oxford
+and High Wycombe, and that once in the metropolis he sought a friend of
+the family, one Richard Field of Stratford, who had left Warwickshire
+seven years before, and after serving his apprenticeship to a
+printer, had set up an office of his own in Blackfriars.
+
+
+=THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON
+In the National Portrait Gallery=
+
+
+It is possible that he owed his introduction to the world of the London
+theatre to Field, and that at one of the only two houses in the
+metropolis, "The Theatre" in Shoreditch or "The Curtain" in Moorfields,
+he served for a time in a very humble capacity, looking after the horses
+of the men of fashion who rode to the play. The keen relish with which
+he deals with the moods and thoughts of ostlers, stable-boys, and the
+lower classes that frequented the stable and the theatre, lends a
+certain countenance to the legend. A year later, when his friend Field
+had been admitted a member of the Stationers' Company, Shakespeare found
+his employment inside one of the two theatres--probably the house in
+Shoreditch; some writers have said that his first work there was that of
+a call-boy. It is certain, at least, that his apprenticeship was a hard
+one, and that in those early days his contributions to the support of
+the Warwickshire home must have been few and scanty.
+
+When Shakespeare came to town there were some half-dozen companies of
+licensed actors, that is to say, companies that enjoyed and exercised
+their rights under an Act of Parliament (14 Eliz. c. 2). It said that
+all actors, save those who held the licence of a peer of the realm or
+other person of importance, were to be treated as rogues and vagabonds.
+The company to which Shakespeare was admitted derived its rights from
+the Earl of Leicester, and soon after he joined, if not before, it
+passed under the support of the Earl of Derby, and in later years under
+the supreme patronage of King James I., whose admiration for the poet
+and his works was very large and real. James Burbage was owner of "The
+Theatre," and it was in his time, we may presume, that Shakespeare acted
+as ostler and call-boy. But he must have risen up from the ranks at no
+small pace when his gifts became well known, for not only do we find him
+a regular member of the company, but a friend of the leading members,
+men like Richard Burbage, son of the proprietor, and Augustus Phillips.
+And at "The Theatre" in Shoreditch he won some fame as a playwright,
+though it was not at "The Theatre" but at "The Rose," a new house on the
+Bankside at Southwark, that the poet's genius was to "blossom and bud
+and fill the face of the world with fruit."
+
+The close of the sixteenth century was a season of considerable activity
+among actors; the destruction of the "galleons of Spain" had relieved
+the country of a very real danger. Some of the leading companies
+amalgamated for a time when in town; new houses were springing up. In
+addition to "The Rose" there was one at Newington Butts, and in 1599 the
+Burbages transplanted "The Theatre" to Bankside and called it "The
+Globe." Here Shakespeare did the most of his work and made the most of
+his reputation, acquiring considerable wealth the while.
+
+James Burbage built the Blackfriars Theatre, to which Shakespeare
+brought his company shortly before he retired to Stratford. He
+gradually acquired certain interests in the theatres, so his profits
+were not only those of actor and playwright. The wealth that was to be
+his was drawn from three sources.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON
+
+
+Of the landmarks that Shakespeare knew, the Great Fire of London
+destroyed many, and Time, dealing in rather gentler fashion, has effaced
+the most of those that the fire spared. A map made by Peter Van den
+Keere in 1593 shows us the old London Bridge, with the Church of St.
+Saviour's, then known as "St. Marye Overyes," facing the river on the
+Southwark side. This church, which would have been well known to the
+poet, is, with the exception of Westminster Abbey, the only ancient
+example of pure Gothic architecture in London. Its earliest name would
+have been St. Mary Over Rye, rye being perhaps the old name for ferry.
+When it was built there could have been no London Bridge, and St. Mary's
+was built upon the site of a still older priory founded by two Norman
+knights. In this church one finds a stone in the centre aisle marked
+"Edmond Shakespeare. Died December 1607."
+
+
+=ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE=
+
+
+This marks the mortal remains of a brother of the poet, said by some to
+have been concerned with the business side of his undertakings, and
+certainly his companion in London for some time. In St. Mary Over Rye or
+St. Saviour's, King James I. of Scotland was married; here the poet
+Gower, with whose works Shakespeare was undoubtedly familiar, was
+buried, and his monument is a fine one with many inscriptions, including
+one that describes him as "Anglorum Poeta celeberrimus." Beyond "St.
+Marye Overyes" on Van den Keere's map one sees the famous "Bears House,"
+and below that the "Play House," and beyond this the town merges into
+gardens stretching up to "Lambeth Marsh." Across the river we see "More
+Feyldes" and "Spittlefeyldes," big open spaces, and then Islington, but
+there is no sign of another theatre. Had the worthy cartographer known
+what was to give his map an abiding interest three centuries after its
+making, he would doubtless have given more thought to the playhouses.
+
+To-day the Church of St. Saviour's stands well-nigh smothered by
+factories, shops, and small houses. London, a muddy stream, has
+overflown its banks and spread on that side far into regions where birds
+and beasts of the chase flew or ran in the poet's day. Tradition tells
+us that the Thames sometimes rose above its boundaries and flooded the
+graveyard of St. Mary's, and in like fashion the town itself has spread
+beyond all limits, until the south side, within a very restricted area,
+holds more than all London held in the poet's day. Doubtless the old
+church fared better at the hands of the river than the town does now,
+for three hundred years ago the hands of Father Thames were clean; the
+river still ran sparkling under London Bridge, then a comparatively low
+structure, with houses on either side of it, like the Ponte Vecchio in
+Florence.
+
+Shakespeare's London held about a quarter of a million souls, on
+generous computation, and it is said that about 15 per cent. of the
+number found employment and their means of livelihood on the river. The
+writ of the civic authorities did not run on the south side of the
+Thames, and it is to this that we owe the existence of so many houses of
+amusement in Southwark. Nor were they the only ones to be placed for
+choice beyond the eye of authority. The river Thames brought foreigners
+by the thousand to London, adventurers from all lands, men who said with
+ancient Pistol, "The world's my oyster, that I with sword will open."
+London held dangerous riverside slums.
+
+Many associations whose members were banded together for protection
+against the lawful authorities throve on the south side of the Thames,
+and the numbers increased as the years went past. It is a fascinating
+chapter in London's life, this organised revolt against ever-growing
+authority, but one with which in this place there is no lawful occasion
+to deal at length. We know that when Shakespeare had settled in the
+metropolis he lived for a time in Southwark, near the "Bears House"
+marked on the map to which reference has been made. But he is also
+assessed as the owner of property in St. Helen's, Bishopgate, where a
+window given by some anonymous lover of the poet to St. Helen's Church
+records the association. It is likely that Shakespeare in his acting
+days took part in some of the plays given in the yard of the "Bull
+Inn," then the most important hostelry in Bishopgate Street. Old "Crosby
+Hall," the subject of such a prolonged discussion in the press a year or
+so back, was in Bishopgate Street, and Shakespeare lays one of the
+scenes there in his "Richard III." The poet's activity unites Southwark
+with St. Helen's, though in his day the distance between the two must
+have been regarded as considerable.
+
+Many attempts have been made to find out what manner of life the poet
+lived in London, but the material for a reliable opinion is quite
+wanting. Some have imagined that he was a free liver and roysterer,
+after the fashion of his time, that he lived as Robert Greene and
+Christopher Marlowe and other dissipated writers. There is no more
+authority for such a suggestion than there is for the statements on the
+other side telling us that William Shakespeare was the personification
+of every virtue. We simply do not know; there is no record extant. We
+grope with dim eyes through the London of Shakespeare's time, glad to
+find any trace of his presence in some favoured spot, and content to
+make it a place of pilgrimage for his sake. It is to the history of the
+stage itself that we must turn in order to piece together some
+fragmentary record of his life in a city so changed by time and
+prosperity that if the poet could revisit the glimpses of the moon, and
+were to be set down in Bishopgate or Southwark to-day, he would not know
+where to turn, and the metropolis of which we are so proud would be no
+more to him than "the monstrous fabric of a vision."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE STAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY
+
+
+When Shakespeare was at work the women of the plays were represented by
+men or boys. In the highest society the Elizabethan women might take
+some part in masques or pageants without rebuke, but the appearance of a
+woman on the public stage in Shakespeare's day would have aroused
+something like the emotion that would be caused by the appearance of a
+Moslem woman unveiled in the chief thoroughfare of a fanatical
+Mohammedan city, or a suffragist in the House of Commons. Costumes were
+those of the day. Just as the great painters of Italy dressed the heroes
+and heroines of Bible story in the contemporary costume, so the actor of
+Shakespeare's time did no more than wear the best Elizabethan clothes he
+could assume. Scenery was unknown. The front curtain, opening in the
+middle, revealed a bare stage with perhaps a balcony at the back. This
+was sometimes used by the actors, but where the play did not require a
+balcony, visitors to the play would find their places there, just as at
+the Queen's Hall, when a piano or violin recital is given, the orchestra
+is sometimes added to the auditorium. A trumpet flourish warned
+playgoers that the curtain was about to rise, and between the acts a
+small company of musicians helped the interval to pass.
+
+
+=GUILD CHAPEL AND SCHOOL=
+
+
+It was not until the celebrated Inigo Jones designed scenery for certain
+masques given at the Court of King James that the traditional bareness
+of the boards was covered, and it was not until the time of Charles II.
+that women began to make their appearance upon the boards and unite the
+stage with the second estate. Many writers have emphasised the
+difficulties besetting the Elizabethan dramatist; Sir Philip Sidney
+himself has apologised to the spectator for the heavy overdraft on his
+imagination, and we have but to consider some of the most striking
+moments in our poet's work to realise what they must have lost under the
+Elizabethan tradition. How could bare boards conjure up a vision of
+Juliet's garden, of the wood "outside Athens" in which Titania and
+Oberon met, of Prospero's island, of the Forest of Arden? How could any
+boy, however smoothly spoken, present a Rosalind, a Juliet, a Miranda,
+or Cordelia? While we wonder at these things, it is well to remember
+that to those who have never eaten wheat, acorns may prove very
+satisfactory fare. The tradition of the theatre being so strictly
+circumscribed, nobody could imagine anything better than bare boards,
+boy heroines, and modern costumes. There are many sound judges of stage
+matters to-day who are very strongly of the opinion that we have
+travelled too far in the opposite direction, that by reason of costly
+mounting, extravagant costumes, alluring music, and the rest, we are no
+longer able to maintain that "the play's the thing." Doubtless the need
+for the finest possible expression of thought, and the knowledge that
+his words must carry the full burden of success, stimulated not only
+Shakespeare, but every dramatist of the great Elizabethan age.
+
+There was one special advantage attaching to the limitation of stage
+equipment--touring was a simple matter. When we remember that three or
+even four days were required to travel on horseback from London to
+Stratford-on-Avon, owing to the bad tracks that enjoyed the courtesy
+title of roads, and the fords that must be crossed out of flood time, it
+is easy to see that no part of the cumbersome equipment of the modern
+stage could have been taken far out of London without vast and
+unremunerative labour. But the Elizabethan actor travelled light, and as
+soon as the fine weather came he would leave London for the country, and
+tour in all manner of unexpected places until autumn warned him home,
+because it was no longer possible to pass from town to town.
+
+To turn up the old touring list of the Elizabethan companies is to find
+special attention given to towns of which no town is on the first
+touring list to-day. Saffron Walden (the quaint market-town in Essex,
+that opposed the coming of the Great Eastern Railway, and is now served
+by a little branch line), Rye in Sussex (then probably a seaport of some
+dimensions), Marlborough, Coventry, Oxford, Faversham, Hythe, Bath, New
+Romney, Folkestone--here are some of the cities or towns that the
+touring companies delighted to honour in the best season of the year.
+There is ample evidence to show that some companies crossed the border
+into Scotland, and that others went still farther afield--to France,
+Germany, Austria, and other countries. Probably these companies were
+sent abroad by their patrons and supporters, and were consequently
+assured of a hearing and adequate remuneration. It is hardly probable
+that the conditions of continental travel would have been favourable
+enough, or the security for life and property great enough, to tempt
+even third-rate English actors oversea unless they had a definite
+programme and an assured welcome.
+
+Some have thought that Shakespeare in his acting days travelled on the
+Continent, or at least into Scotland, but modern expert opinion does not
+accept the suggestion; it rather inclines to the belief that the poet
+did no more than make a small provincial tour. As far as the Continent
+is concerned, his quaint ideas of French pronunciation and European
+geography should do much to settle the question with regard to these
+countries. His references to Denmark in "Hamlet" are no more than he
+could have founded on a brief chat with actors who had been there. Then,
+again, the period of his active and sole association with the actor's
+profession was brief; he soon became playwright and manager as well, too
+busy to stir far beyond the boundaries of London until the time came
+when he could enjoy his brief period of well-earned ease. Dr. Sidney Lee
+says that the name of Shakespeare does not appear in any known list of
+the actors who travelled from England between 1580 and 1630, a period
+more than sufficient to cover the debatable years. Against this must be
+set the fact that the name appears in certain records of the town of
+Aberdeen as that of a member of a travelling company visiting the city
+in the period covered by Dr. Lee's investigations.
+
+Despite an infinity of research, the figure of William Shakespeare in
+London remains very dim. He is reputed to have been a good actor; but
+Richard Burbage the tragedian and William Kemp the comedian were greater
+actors than he. He played with them before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich
+Palace, in a couple of scenes designed to celebrate Christmas. We are
+told that he took the part of the Ghost in a performance of his own
+"Hamlet" and the part of old Adam in "As You Like It." These very brief
+glimpses into his life as an actor are the more unsatisfactory because
+he remained a player long after he had achieved greatness as a
+playwright. When he left the boards it was to return to
+Stratford-on-Avon and live the retired life. It may be taken for
+granted, then, that his talents as an actor were not in any way
+extraordinary, or those who witnessed his rising fame as a dramatist
+would have left some record of his other work. His advice to the players
+in "Hamlet" is often and justly quoted in evidence of the attention he
+had given to the theory of the acting art, but there is evidence to be
+found in the Sonnets to show that he did not admire himself as an actor.
+Some very recent research in the Record Office shows that the poet
+lodged with a family of French Huguenots named Mountjoy, at the corner
+of Monkwell Street and Silver Street, in the City of London, where a
+public-house called the Coopers' Arms now stands.
+
+
+=HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND THE AVON--STRATFORD=
+
+
+As far as we can tell, the poet had been five years in London before he
+started upon his life-work, and he entered the arena of the playwright
+at the age of twenty-seven. His methods were his own. The stories and
+legends that other men had set down, often crudely, in form of
+chronicle, or even of a play, he melted in the crucible of his own brain
+and gave back in a new and beautiful form. The play can be traced to its
+source, whether that source be a _novellino_ of Masuccio, or Holinshed's
+"Chronicles," or Plutarch's Lives in North's translation, from which
+some passages are copied _in extenso_. The poet himself would seem to
+have had but little consciousness of the worth of his own work. In his
+time plays were not published. Publication was supposed to destroy the
+playgoer's interest in the work presented, and many Elizabethan plays
+owe their survival to the happy accident that enabled some unscrupulous
+person to collect a set of the actors' parts and print them, in order
+either to dispose of the acting rights for private use, or to derive the
+ordinary profits of the sale. When a play was written for and bought by
+a manager, it became his absolute property. He could request the author
+to rewrite or modify passages deemed ineffective; he could even call in
+another man to tinker the work, unrestrained and unrebuked. It is
+supposed that Shakespeare first showed his great parts as a dramatist in
+improving other men's work for Manager Burbage, and that this constant
+exercise of talent upon reproductions, the most of which are absolutely
+unknown to us, paved the way for the development of his gift upon
+original or quasi-original work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY PLAYS
+
+
+The poet is credited with the authorship of some thirty-seven plays,
+though modern criticism has endeavoured to show that he took but a small
+part in the making of a few of these, and of the whole thirty-seven
+little more than a dozen were published during his life. It is supposed
+that his first play was the comedy "Love's Labour's Lost," in which he
+would appear to have gone to his own brain for the plot. Here we find a
+certain broad outlook upon contemporary life, with many a passing
+reference to matters of topical interest, while vivid recollections of
+life in Warwickshire among slow-witted rustics account for some of the
+humorous episodes. Historians can trace many of the references in the
+play, which is supposed to have been written in 1591, five years after
+the author left Stratford, revised in 1597, and published a year later.
+Cuthbert Burbie, who, like Shakespeare's earliest London friend, Richard
+Field, was a member of the Stationers' Company, was the publisher, and
+the printer was one William White of "Cow Lane near Holborn Conduit."
+
+"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" came next, adapted from a Spanish source,
+and not published until the author was dead.
+
+"The Comedy of Errors" is borrowed from Plautus; and then came "Romeo
+and Juliet," founded upon a _novellino_ by Masuccio, who had taken the
+story from the Greek. It has served for many countries, but nowhere has
+the plot found such a magical handling as Shakespeare gave it. There is
+internal evidence to suggest 1591 or 1592 as the date, and Shakespeare
+was still a young man then, on the sunny side of thirty, and with the
+currents of his life no longer turned awry. There is here a ring of
+confidence and enthusiasm that three centuries have proved powerless to
+dull. After due revision, the play was printed in 1597 by John Danter, a
+publisher of rather evil repute. Two years later Burbie published an
+authorised edition.
+
+Oddly enough, the success of "Romeo and Juliet" would appear to have
+been eclipsed by that of "King Henry VI." The events set out in the
+trilogy were sufficiently familiar to the people to give the work an
+interest that is almost fictitious. Criticism has shown that the poet's
+part in these productions was but small. Some say that Greene and Peele
+were the authors of the plays, that Shakespeare rewrote them perhaps
+with a little aid from Marlowe. Certain it is that Greene attacked the
+poet furiously when the remodelled work was produced, calling upon his
+brother dramatists of repute to beware of upstart puppets and "rude
+groomes." But Shakespeare was serenely unmoved by these abusive
+epithets, for which Greene's publisher apologised later. He was in
+the historical vein, and proceeded to write "Richard III.," in which
+Richard Burbage is said to have made a great sensation; the following
+play was "Richard II.," and the poet was clearly responsive to the
+influence of Marlowe in each of these works.
+
+
+=BEN JONSON
+From Painting in the National Portrait Gallery=
+
+
+Shortly after "Richard II." was written and produced the plague visited
+London, and the poet sought the country. He may have written a small
+part, a very small part, of the "Titus Andronicus," and after that he
+picked the stage Jew of Marlowe and the rest out of the gutter, and gave
+the world in "The Merchant of Venice" a figure that commands keen
+interest not untouched with sympathy. "King John," bearing date 1594, is
+another piece of inimitable adaptation. By this time the "Venus and
+Adonis" had been published with a dedication to the third Earl of
+Southampton, and the poet followed it a year later with "The Rape of
+Lucrece," dedicated to the same patron.
+
+These works created a sensation. Shakespeare the actor was already a
+familiar figure, Shakespeare the dramatist was known and admired, but
+Shakespeare the poet seems to have taken literary London by surprise. It
+is hard to say why, for there are passages in the plays he had already
+written that challenge comparison with anything in the poems; but praise
+from the great Elizabethans was not to be lightly won, and no poet could
+have sought to wear a worthier garland than theirs. Shakespeare was
+admitted at once to the most select circles. Queen Elizabeth became his
+patron. Greenwich, Whitehall, and Richmond Palaces witnessed
+performances of his plays, with their author taking some small part in
+them. "The Palace of Nonsuch," a private purchase of Queen Elizabeth's
+situated near Richmond, may still be seen in old prints--a charming
+place enough. The palace at Greenwich, coming right up to the banks of
+the Thames, is also to be seen in old prints, and it says all that is
+needed for the state of Father Thames in the poet's time that a royal
+palace could be lapped by our great river below London Bridge.
+
+Shakespeare's capacity for writing makes us realise that the quantity
+was almost as remarkable as the worth. He wrote his plays at the rate of
+two in a year, with his work as manager and actor thrown in, and his
+poems as a thing apart. The quality of "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape
+of Lucrece" brought him into the company of the country's great
+sonneteers; he was inspired to give attention to the sonnet form and
+made it one of the vehicles for the expression of his most beautiful
+thoughts. The most were written about the year with which we are now
+dealing, 1594. In accordance with the custom of the time, they were not
+printed immediately, but were written by the poet and given to his
+friends. But by this time the interest aroused by new work from
+Shakespeare's pen extended throughout literary circles, and the sonnets
+must have been copied and quoted extensively before they were published
+by a literary pirate named Thorpe in 1609.
+
+The dedication of these sonnets to "Mr. W. H." has roused an enormous
+controversy, into which there is no need to venture far, as it lies
+outside the scope of a brief biography. It should never be forgotten
+that the sonnet in the days of Elizabeth was a form overladen with the
+conceits of many countries, and that few men would have regarded
+seriously the sentiments to which they committed themselves. Suffice it
+that many of the sonnets are of a haunting loveliness that defies
+praise, and gives to the best-intentioned expressions of admiration a
+quality of impertinence. If for W. H. we read H. W. and forget the
+prefix "Mr.," the troubles that have agitated generations of critics are
+seen to evaporate. H. W. would become Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of
+Southampton, to whom in the sonnets constant references occur. A pirated
+edition might well have been handled either carelessly or with a view to
+suggesting what could not be said openly.
+
+Next in order of the plays we come to that exquisite fantasy "A
+Midsummer Night's Dream," in which we find references to Shakespeare's
+supreme patron, Queen Elizabeth, and to the pageants he had seen as a
+little lad when the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth at
+Kenilworth (1575). In 1595 or 1596 came "All's Well that Ends Well,"
+taken from an Italian source, and "The Taming of the Shrew," with an
+introduction dealing boldly with the Stratford country and some of its
+worthies, contemporaries of the poet. In the two-part play of "Henry
+IV." that followed we have further references to Shakespeare's
+birthplace, and he introduces us to Mr. Justice Shallow, who was to come
+into prominence again in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." Clearly the
+dramatist was closely concerned at this period of his life with certain
+happenings in the place of his birth. These references help us, in place
+of authenticated records, to show that Shakespeare still kept in fairly
+close touch with his early home. "Henry IV." is famous for its scenes in
+the Boar's Head at Eastcheap, and lest the enumeration of plays should
+become a little tiresome, let us turn aside for a brief space to
+consider the taverns of Queen Elizabeth's day and the company to be met
+in them.
+
+
+=CHARLECOTE HALL=
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ELIZABETHAN TAVERNS
+
+
+The London taverns were the clubs of London's literary men, and in
+Shakespeare's time the most famous houses were "The Mermaid" in Bread
+Street, "The Boar's Head" in Eastcheap, "The Devil" at Temple Bar, "The
+Falcon," "The Tabard," "The George," and some few others, situated on
+the south side of the river. In the days when he lived by the river-side
+at Southwark, Shakespeare would have counted among the members of his
+tavern club Edmund Spenser, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, "rare
+Ben Jonson," who wrote of his great rival, "I loved the man, and do
+honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any"; tribute over
+which the mind loves to linger. Fuller tells of the contests of wit that
+used to ensue when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson met, "which two I beheld
+like a great Spanish galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson,
+like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in
+his performances; Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in
+bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and
+take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention."
+We see in this simile that the lesson of the Spanish Armada had not been
+forgotten, and that its appearance was still vividly present in men's
+minds.
+
+Although the taverns were open to all comers, it was easy for small
+companies of men, banded together by common interests and devoted to
+similar aims, to keep aloof from casual patrons. Strangers who had no
+literary interests would not find any excuse for intrusion, and the
+landlord, proud of the special patronage of those who claimed respect
+outside the tavern, would doubtless grant them such privileges as the
+house afforded. At a time when the news of the day was brought to the
+taverns, while men of affairs and those who had some _locus standi_ at
+Court did not disdain the attractions of a favoured house, there must
+have been a certain high standard of conversation, and many a friendly
+battle of wits. The ready tongue and fluent pen might make a mark in the
+tavern and all London hear of it. Ben Jonson established the Apollo room
+at the "Devil Tavern" by Temple Bar and drew up his famous "Convivial
+Laws," which, while granting admittance to "learned, urbane merry
+goodfellows" and "choice women," forbade horseplay, and concluded "focus
+perennis esto."
+
+Sir Walter Raleigh founded a club at the "Mermaid Tavern," where, in
+addition to Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, together
+with many other dramatists of note, spent their leisure hours. In
+Southwark the "Tabard Inn" enjoyed the fame conferred upon it by
+Geoffrey Chaucer, as well as the additional honour of his patronage,
+before Shakespeare arrived. "The Bell," "The George," and "The White
+Hart" were among the "Tabard's" leading competitors; it is likely that
+the poet knew them all. We have no record that he spent too much time in
+taverns, as poor Ben Jonson did; but he knew them well enough to enter
+into the spirit of those who served and those who gave orders, those who
+paid promptly, and those who could say with Ancient Pistol, "Base is the
+slave that pays."
+
+Some of Shakespeare's biographers, who, because of their own virtues,
+would abolish cakes and ale and forbid ginger to be hot in the mouth,
+resent the mere suggestion that Shakespeare used the taverns as his
+contemporaries did. There is no reason to suppose that he misused them
+after the fashion of Robert Greene, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, but at the
+same time the temperance advocate will need to go very carefully through
+plays and poems if he is searching for praise of water as opposed to
+wine. The power of the Puritan was rising in Shakespeare's time, but the
+Puritans did not number the poet among their supporters. A certain
+spirit of conviviality marked the Elizabethan age, which enjoyed, among
+other advantages, the benefit of wine and spirits that had not been
+systematically adulterated. Then again, no playwright could remain
+wholly indifferent to the taverns, for it was in the yards of the inns
+that the drama was first nourished. The inn yard was to some extent the
+forerunner of the theatre. When the companies left London in the summer
+and went on tour, they found no small part of their audience in the
+country hostelries. The place of the tavern in literary history has not
+yet been written. From the "Tabard" of Chaucer to the "Mermaid" of
+Shakespeare, through the coffee-houses of a later date, to the "Bohemia"
+of Soho, where the free-lances of literature meet to-day, there is a
+thread of connection well worth examining.
+
+Our ubiquitous press tends to restrict the feast of reason and the flow
+of soul; men do not care to express themselves too freely, or the
+cleverest may wake one morning to find he has made some silent auditor
+famous. A very notorious case of this kind occurred in the last decade
+of the nineteenth century. But in Shakespeare's time wit seemed to
+receive its guinea stamp from the tavern, and we have the records of
+many men to show that when Shakespeare was one of the company the
+audience had good reason to be content. There are many tributes to the
+standard of the conversation. Beaumont, the dramatist, Francis Meres,
+the clergyman schoolmaster, Richard Barnfield, the poet, Michael
+Drayton, the intimate friend, all testify on behalf of Shakespeare; and
+there are many others who must have seen and heard him. The attraction
+of the tavern must have been increased to a great extent when their
+patrons stood a chance of catching the crumbs that fell from the wit's
+table. "To give you total reckoning of it," says Erle, "it is the busy
+man's recreation, the idle man's business, the melancholy man's
+sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the inns a court man's entertainment,
+the scholar's kindness, and the citizen's courtesy. It is the study
+of sparkling wits, and a cup of canary their book, whence we leave
+them."
+
+
+=INTERIOR OF ST. SAVIOUR'S AT SOUTHWARK
+(Edmund Shakespeare's Burial-place)=
+
+
+All have passed--the spacious taverns, those who served, and those who
+patronised them have gone, never to return. Where great writers and
+poets assembled and marked the arrival of travellers from the country,
+and listened to stories of "nine men in buckram," where the horseman saw
+to the ease of his weary nag before his own, we see crowded
+thoroughfares in which the pulse of traffic beats furiously for six long
+days out of seven. Of the many changes London has known in the three
+centuries that have passed since Shakespeare's time few have been more
+drastic. Perhaps the Great Fire destroyed many of the taverns; the
+growth of commerce and the coming of new means of locomotion did the
+rest. Only in old prints may we find some pleasing recollection of
+red-tiled or thatched houses with half timber and half plaster walls,
+their ingle nooks, dormer windows, or many gables. Here the men to whom
+we still pay tribute spent their hours of ease, unconscious that their
+lightest words would be sought for eagerly in generations to come--and
+be sought in vain. But the knowledge that the old houses had their
+being, and that the great poets of the Elizabethan era frequented them,
+hallows many a dusty, dingy street in the city's by-ways now given over
+to feverish activity from dawn to dusk, and to silence from dusk to
+dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE MIDDLE PERIOD
+
+
+Turning again to the plays, there is reason to believe that "The Merry
+Wives of Windsor" followed "Henry IV." The character of Falstaff, first
+known as Oldcastle, had taken the town, but the name had been changed at
+the instance of the eighth Lord Cobham, a descendant of the great
+Lollard, Sir John Oldcastle. Falstaff's humour made ample atonement for
+his faults, and the desire to improve his acquaintance is said by
+several authorities to have been expressed by Queen Elizabeth herself.
+We are told that her Majesty requested the poet to present the fat
+knight in love, and that he obeyed instructions in a few weeks. There is
+no mistaking the high spirits in which the work is written; they are
+still ringing through every line. The poet remembered the old days of
+Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, and gave the knight's arms to Mr. Justice
+Shallow openly and unrebuked. Under the aegis of royalty, he could afford
+to let himself go and hit back at the astonished game-preserver. "The
+Merry Wives" was no more to its author than a merry jest, made in
+fulfilment of a royal request, a payment of long-standing scores in the
+best humour possible, and as soon as it was off his hands the poet
+turned to another historical subject and wrote "Henry V."
+
+With the close of "Henry V." Shakespeare left the arena of English
+history, never to enter it again on his own initiative; for, as will be
+seen, his share in "Henry VIII." was small. Comedy was for the moment in
+his heart. Perhaps it was a relief to him, after the strenuous time he
+had passed through, to pass to his lighter muse and express himself in
+the brightest vein that could not bear misinterpretation. He turned to
+an Italian author, probably Ariosto, for a part of "Much Ado about
+Nothing," but he drew the least vital part from the foreign source; the
+most of the comedy ran sparkling from his own brain. "As You Like It"
+followed "Much Ado," and the date must be about 1600. It is another
+clear case of adaptation, and the scenes of the play given to the Forest
+of Arden breathe the pastoral spirit in a fashion that we look for in
+vain elsewhere. "Twelfth Night" would appear to have been the third
+comedy following the sequence of historical plays, and the date would
+seem to be 1601.
+
+About this time the poet found himself in a very delicate situation. He
+had referred to the expedition of the Earl of Essex in terms of eulogy,
+and when that enterprise failed, Essex revolted against his sovereign,
+aided and abetted by the poet's patron, the Earl of Southampton. Part of
+the preliminary arrangements for the conspiracy consisted in arranging
+for performances of Shakespeare's "Richard II.," in which, of course,
+the king is murdered, the object being to show that regicide was of no
+very distant date. Shakespeare's company was persuaded to revive the
+play at the "Globe" just before the abortive rising in favour of Essex,
+who, having lost his head metaphorically, was now to lose it literally.
+Happily for England, Shakespeare himself was not involved in the
+trouble. Oddly enough, he published in the year of Essex's death and
+Southampton's imprisonment a curious poem, "The Phoenix and the
+Turtle." Nobody has been able to fathom its meaning, though it may be
+that those who connect it with the Essex _debacle_ may yet find a clue
+to the mystery.
+
+After this year even comedy would seem to have lost its appeal and
+savour for a time. The poet had received a shock that we cannot quite
+estimate or understand, and turning to Plutarch's Lives for inspiration,
+he wrote the famous tragedy "Julius Caesar," in many respects a work that
+must always defy adequate representation on the stage. How it could have
+passed muster on the bare Elizabethan boards is a puzzle. Next in order
+came the masterpiece by which his name is known to the widest circle of
+his followers, "Hamlet," yet another adaptation of a work that had
+enjoyed popularity for some years in London and the country. There are
+many references in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" to contemporary events,
+including the triumph of the company of boy actors known as "The
+Children of the Chapel," who in a few years had advanced in popular
+favour, and were now threatening the receipts of the established houses
+and companies. History repeats itself. Then as now there was a demand
+for novelty, sensation, and the infant prodigy was in demand. In
+"Hamlet," too, Shakespeare shows that technical knowledge of his art to
+which reference has been made earlier in this little survey. Richard
+Burbage was the first Hamlet, and the tragedy was played in
+Shakespeare's time both at Oxford and Cambridge.
+
+
+=THE FIRST GLOBE THEATRE=
+
+
+Dr. Sidney Lee, than whom no greater authority is needed, is inclined to
+set "Troilus and Cressida" next in the list of plays, and to give it
+date 1603. Some hold that the play hides a satire upon some of the
+poet's contemporaries, but there is insufficient evidence to justify the
+rather laboured conclusions that uphold the contention, which at least
+is of no more than momentary interest. It is easy to find, and difficult
+to deny, these hidden meanings in the work of one who left no clue to
+any suggestion or satire embodied in his plays.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE LATEST PLAYS
+
+
+At this point in Shakespeare's career he lost his first royal patron.
+Queen Elizabeth, whose long and fateful reign drew to its appointed
+close on March 24, 1603. The poet gave to the world no expression of
+grief at her loss. Perhaps he could not do so in loyalty to his first
+and well-beloved patron, Henry Wriothesley, who still languished in
+prison for his complicity in the Essex rising of two years before. There
+had been times in his career when, through no fault of his own,
+Shakespeare had been looked upon with suspicion, and it may have been
+that the path to royal patronage had been at times a thorny and
+difficult one. In any case Elizabeth's generosity had been limited; she
+had not intervened to check the attack upon the theatres by the "unco
+guid" of London in 1601, when, but for the supineness of the Surrey and
+Middlesex magistrates, the poet's financial prosperity might have met
+with a serious set-back. Here, as in so many other places, we are too
+far from the time to see the truth clearly, and those who seek to fill
+in the shadowy outline of the poet's life must rely upon such conjecture
+as may have been put forward in good faith by the people who were
+nearer to him. King James loved the theatre; Queen Elizabeth tolerated
+it; nor must it be forgotten that in the days when the poet's star was
+in the ascendant his royal mistress had seen the greater glories of her
+reign and was entering upon her declining years, not without many
+troubles and much sorrow to mark the last milestones of the road.
+
+One of the first acts of King James's reign was to confer special rights
+upon the Lord Chamberlain's company, of which the poet was a prominent
+member. Henceforward he was one of "The King's Servants," and the King
+took a special interest in Shakespeare's plays, which were often
+performed before him. Unhappily the plague drove the Court from London
+in the autumn of 1603 to the Earl of Pembroke's seat at Wilton; but in
+1604, when the Court returned to London, Shakespeare was first of the
+nine actors who walked in the royal procession, and received a gift of
+scarlet cloth for the making of a cloak worthy the occasion. Many other
+honours followed. Great State occasions called for plays; Shakespeare's
+were chosen, and his company acted them. The scenic art began to receive
+a rather belated attention--in short, there was all the requisite
+stimulus for a man of genius, and the poet responded to it nobly.
+
+"Othello" was the first play written by Shakespeare in the reign of King
+James, but he seems to have had "Measure for Measure" on the stocks at
+the same time, for each was produced at Whitehall towards the close of
+1604. "Macbeth," written in 1605 and 1606, was clearly intended as a
+compliment to the king, who was a descendant of the unfortunate Banquo
+whose royal line Macbeth saw "stretch to the crack of doom." Dr. Lee
+makes the shrewd suggestion that inasmuch as this is the shortest of
+Shakespeare's tragedies, we may have no more than an abbreviated acting
+version. Other critics of note find certain corrupt passages in the text
+that go far to justify this contention. We may be sure that Shakespeare,
+then at the zenith of his power, would not have stinted the measure of a
+work which seems to have taken more of his time than any previous play.
+Following closely upon "Macbeth" came "King Lear," produced at Whitehall
+for the Christmas festivities of 1606, and founded, like several of its
+predecessors, upon Holinshed's Chronicles.
+
+After this supreme effort the pace of genius faltered for a while.
+"Timon of Athens" and "Pericles" are not pure Shakespeare; they do not
+show us the master at his best--though the first named is fine enough to
+have given enduring reputation to a lesser man. The question of his
+collaboration is a difficult one to settle, but leading critics have
+picked out the gold and rejected the dross, and their analyses prove
+that Shakespeare's part in these works was not predominant.
+
+
+=MICHAEL DRAYTON
+In the National Portrait Gallery. (Painter unknown)=
+
+
+It is no function of a simple record like the present to inquire into
+this critical question closely; a dozen editions of Shakespeare's plays
+published in the last ten years set down the latest researches of
+scholars. To not a few of us the tragedy that followed "Pericles" is
+among the finest of all that carry Shakespeare's name; surely, in some
+passages of sheer undying beauty, "Antony and Cleopatra" stands
+well-nigh alone. It dates from 1608, and, like "Coriolanus," the play
+that followed (1609), is taken largely from Plutarch (North's
+translation). "Cymbeline" is founded on Holinshed, and probably may be
+dated 1610. "The Winter's Tale" belongs to 1611, and to this year may be
+assigned the poet's moderate part in "Henry VIII."--he is far from being
+responsible for the whole play. "The Tempest" belongs, at latest, to
+1612. This, the latest and last work of the master-hand, was given with
+all its beautiful songs set to music by Robert Johnson, a player and
+composer of renown.
+
+So, leaving Miranda and Prospero to console us, the greatest dramatist
+of all time laid down his pen. Many a critic and lover of the poet has
+seen in the last words of Prospero, spoken when he gives up his magic
+wand, a reflection of the poet's mind. His life-work, too, was done.
+Unaided, save by his own genius, he had moved from the obscurity of
+Warwickshire's by-ways to a place by the side of the Immortals. In all
+the firmament of poetry there was no star to outshine his. It may be he
+knew that the years still left to him were likely to be few, and that
+his heart turned more from the bustle of a great city's ways to the
+quiet fields and lanes wherein his earliest inspiration had come to him.
+He had written a few scenes of plays that other men would seem to have
+designed and completed, but these fragments are of small importance and
+may be passed over here. Whatever he had given to lend a lustre to the
+work of his contemporaries would seem to have afforded him little
+concern. Henceforward his life was to be spent far from the busy centre
+of theatrical life, though he was compelled to come to town at short
+intervals in the first two or three years following his retirement, and
+there must have been ample atonement for the trouble, in the way of
+association with old friends who still laboured in the metropolis.
+
+When the poet passed into voluntary retirement he had but five years to
+live, but his genius was still ripe. Did he elect deliberately to end
+his labours before the first touch of weakness could reach them? Had he
+realised his ambition, even as Prospero, who moves with such supreme
+dignity through the last play? Was he content to have restored the
+family fortunes? Was it to do this, to take full rank among the
+gentlemen of Warwickshire, that he had striven so long? There is no
+satisfactory answer to these questions. The records are silent as the
+grave itself, and if the past has proved so silent on all points that
+relate to the growth and trend of the poet's mind outside the domain of
+his work, what may we hope from the future?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+BACK AGAIN IN STRATFORD
+
+
+In the foregoing review of the poet's life-work, the progress of his
+fortunes on the material side has been of necessity overlooked. It would
+have been confusing to deal with the two interests side by side, and now
+it is time to look for the signs that mark William Shakespeare's
+prosperity. We know that he came to London poor and left it
+comparatively wealthy, and the change of his state has some very
+definite landmarks. No man passes easily from the duties of an ostler to
+the position of part proprietor of prosperous theatres, and the first
+few years of Shakespeare's sojourn in the metropolis bore but little
+fruit. We know that in those lean times his own purse would have been
+but ill-lined, and both his father's household and his own were
+suffering from the pinch of poverty. His wife was forced to borrow
+money; his father's affairs went steadily from bad to worse. Nor was
+there in all Stratford any help for a family that had fallen from
+comparative affluence into the slough of financial troubles.
+
+We may presume, from the scanty evidence which records have left and
+diligent scholarship has discovered, that the poet himself made no
+effort to "fling away ambition." In the early years of his sojourn in
+London, when visits to Stratford were few and far between and the fear
+of the Squire of Charlecote may have compelled him to lie very low
+within the boundaries of Warwickshire, he would have seen or heard of
+his father's affairs going from bad to worse. The parental honours were
+stripped off one by one, debts accumulated, duns were incessant in their
+attendance. To a proud and sensitive man this condition of things must
+needs have been very galling; but it was not destined to last long.
+Quite apart from his considerable receipts as a playwright, the poet's
+earnings as an actor were substantial. The purchasing value of a
+sovereign in Elizabeth's time would be equal to the value of nearly
+eight pounds of our money, and Shakespeare's most learned biographers
+are of opinion that he was a careful and a saving man. Member of a
+leading company, enjoying the patronage of noblemen and the regard of
+his Sovereign, frequently summoned to take part in special performances
+at Court, it is likely that the poet's income as an actor was, within
+comparatively few years of the start of his career, equal in our modern
+currency to a sum nearer a thousand than five hundred a year. In later
+years it was still higher. For revising other men's work his fees would
+have varied between thirty and forty pounds, modern currency, and for
+his own plays he may well have averaged twice as much, or even more. The
+"benefit" system was already in vogue, and a dramatist could command an
+extra fee if the first-night audience proved very appreciative of his
+efforts. Shakespeare wrote his plays at the rate of two a year, and he
+would have had something in the way of a royalty on the sale of his
+poems, even though the plays brought him nothing as published work. We
+may presume, then, that after a year or two he was able to maintain his
+wife and children with some approach to comfort, and as the years passed
+and reputation grew he found himself able to revisit his birthplace in
+security, and to take definite steps to re-establish the family
+fortunes, then at so low an ebb.
+
+We read that after 1596, when the poet returned to Stratford with
+London's honours thick upon him and plenty of money in his purse, his
+father's debts were no longer the subject of proceedings at the local
+court. We may presume, then, that his son had paid them and cleared the
+way for John Shakespeare's strange application to the College of Heralds
+for a coat of arms. Strange at first thought, but less remarkable if, as
+is generally supposed, the father was acting for the son. It was and is
+the custom for a coat of arms to be applied for by the eldest male of
+the house, and the poet could not have made application in his father's
+lifetime. The application may have received some initial support in
+London, for arms were assigned with the least possible delay. Garter
+King-of-Arms referred to certain (and probably apocryphal) services
+rendered "to that most prudent prince King Henry the Seventh of famous
+memory," and stated, without any recorded blush, that the Shakespeare
+family had continued since those days to live in Warwickshire, in good
+reputation and credit! He went on to record the undoubted fact that the
+applicant had married Mary Arden, daughter and heiress of Robert Arden
+of Wilmcote, who is described as a gentleman. In view of these
+qualifications, arms were assigned to the applicant, a shield described
+in the quaint jargon of heraldry, "Gold, on a bend sable, a spear of the
+first, and for crest or cognizance a falcon, his wings displayed argent
+standing on a wreath of his colours, supporting a spear gold steeled as
+aforesaid." The motto chosen was "Non Sans Droict."
+
+But though the grant was assigned, the assignment was not completed for
+three years, the claim to relationship with the Ardens of Park Hall,
+through John Shakespeare's wife, being disallowed, as was indeed
+inevitable. Even then the grant was criticised in many quarters, but
+William Shakespeare's eminence tended to render all criticism nugatory;
+nor was he the first eminent actor to enjoy a coat of arms. It is quite
+easy to understand the significance of the application if we turn to
+regard the poet as a purchaser of real estate. Some two years before the
+assignment was completed, he had impressed upon his fellow townsmen of
+Stratford the truth that the period of strained finances had passed.
+
+New Place, the century-old seat of Sir Hugh Clopton, a man who had done
+much for Stratford, his birthplace, and had thriven in London, was now
+dismantled and in bad repair; but remained the most imposing house in
+the town. It was on the market, and William Shakespeare bought it, with
+outbuildings and garden, for the equivalent of about four hundred and
+fifty pounds, a large sum in that place and in those days. Some years
+passed before the transaction was completed, and then the poet planted
+an orchard which contained a famous mulberry tree, that flourished for
+more than a hundred and fifty years, and was cut down by the Rev.
+Francis Gastrell, whose name and memory are anathema to lovers of
+Shakespeare. The poet did not take up his residence at New Place until
+he had retired from London, and by that time the repairs were completed
+and the place was in good order. It is at least highly probable that the
+poet conducted some farming operations in and round New Place, though we
+know nothing of his special qualifications for this work. There is a
+record that in time of a local famine he had a good store of corn, and
+he is known to have bought several lots of arable land. From the date of
+the purchase of New Place there could have been none to dispute the
+poet's claim to the description of William Shakespeare of Stratford,
+Gentleman, and from first to last the total amount of his purchases of
+real estate in and round his native town would amount to more than L7000
+modern currency, if we value the Elizabethan pound at eight times our
+own.
+
+At the corner of Chapel Street, Stratford, where it turns into Chapel
+Lane, there is an ugly modern house that enjoys the title of New Place
+and receives the sixpences of the faithful. The trustees of
+Shakespeare's birthplace own New Place and Anne Hathaway's cottage. The
+house in which Shakespeare passed his last years does not exist, but
+there is not a little about Stratford that calls for sixpences more
+readily than it can justify the receipt of them. All that New Place can
+offer of true Shakespearian interest is some venerable timbers, a shovel
+board, from the old Falcon Inn that rose close by soon after
+Shakespeare's death and still stands in receipt of custom, a circular
+table inlaid with wood from the mulberry tree that the poet is said to
+have planted, and a stone mullion from his own house. There is little
+else that can recall the past, although the site of the ancient Clopton
+mansion that Shakespeare purchased is undeniably here. The history of
+the house that has passed and that of its successors has a very definite
+interest.
+
+Shakespeare left New Place to his favourite daughter, Susanna, and to
+her daughter, Elizabeth Nash, in second marriage Lady Barnard. On her
+death Sir John Barnard kept the place as a residence until he sold it to
+Sir Edward Walker, whose daughter Barbara married Sir John Clopton,
+descendant of the man who built the first house at the end of the
+fifteenth century. Sir John pulled down the old house, rebuilt it, and
+was succeeded by Sir Hugh Clopton. From him in an evil hour it passed
+into the hands of a clerical Vandal, Francis Gastrell by name. He was a
+wealthy man and mean, so he quarrelled with the Stratford rating
+authorities, who assessed him too heavily, or so he said, for the
+relief of the poor. He had already cut down the great mulberry tree in
+the garden, because his privacy was disturbed by the early pilgrims to
+the poet's shrine, and for this act alone his name was an offence to the
+lads of Stratford, who broke his windows when opportunity afforded. But
+the town had not finished with the reverend gentleman. When the
+assessors refused to listen to his claim that he should not pay full
+rates to Stratford because he resided for a part of the year at
+Lichfield, he vowed that New Place should never be assessed again. He
+pulled the place down. Boswell described the cutting down of the
+mulberry tree as a piece of "Gothic barbarity," but was silent about the
+other act of vandalism. The mulberry, sold for firewood, was bought by
+a local clockmaker, who made solemn affidavit that the toys he made of
+it were from the genuine sacred tree. When the Rev. Mr. Gastrell had
+gone to where he may have met the poet, though this is unlikely, his
+widow sold the remains of the estate to a Mr. Wm. Hunt, who in time sold
+it to a firm of bankers. In 1827 Miss Smith purchased the site of New
+Place with the adjacent house, now the museum. Mr. Edward Leyton and his
+daughter, Mrs. Loggin, were the next holders, and in 1861 Mr. J. O.
+Halliwell-Phillipps, an enthusiastic student of the poet's history,
+established the existing Trust after raising the necessary money by
+public subscription. But as far as New Place, so called, is concerned,
+it must be remarked, with deference to those whom the reminder may
+offend, that the Falcon Hotel, which can be seen from the house, is the
+older establishment by centuries--indeed the billiard-room is panelled
+with some of the old oak from the New Place that Shakespeare knew. New
+Place Museum is really the house adjoining Shakespeare's, and was the
+property of Thomas Nash, first husband of Elizabeth, daughter of Susanna
+Hall.
+
+Shortly after his purchase of New Place, the poet found himself in a
+better position than ever for increasing his property and gratifying his
+passion for real estate. Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, sons of that
+James Burbage who owned "The Theatre" in which the poet is said to have
+been a servitor, had built the "Globe Theatre" on Bankside. It was an
+octagonal wooden building, in which Shakespeare's company was to be seen
+year after year; the poet refers to it in the opening part of "Henry V."
+The two brothers, from motives of prudence or generosity or both issued
+twenty-one-year leases of shares in the profits of the venture.
+Shakespeare had a share; so had Condell and Phillips and others of the
+company; and later the poet acquired an interest in the "Blackfriar's
+Theatre." Each share was proved, in the course of long subsequent
+litigation, to have been worth two hundred pounds a year. Setting down
+the poet's salary at a like amount, and his author's fees at about a
+hundred, we find that he must have been worth nearly L4000 a year, in
+our modern currency, from the time when he bought New Place to the year
+of his retirement. "The Globe" was burnt down in 1613 during a
+performance of "Henry VIII.," and was rebuilt a year later, but before
+the disaster occurred Shakespeare's financial position had long been
+assured, and it is unlikely that he held his shares when the theatre
+suffered. There is a story, unauthenticated but seemingly credited by
+many good judges, to the effect that at a moment when Shakespeare was
+desirous of making investments either in Stratford or London, his friend
+and patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, came very generously
+to his assistance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE POET'S DOMESTIC LIFE
+
+
+In 1601 John Shakespeare's arduous life came to an end. Fifty years had
+passed since he left Snitterfield for Stratford, to venture into several
+business undertakings with temporary success, and achieve municipal
+honours for a few years. His decline had been more rapid than his rise,
+and, but for his son's success, his ending had been less peaceful. As
+far as we can tell, the last four or five years were free from grave
+financial trouble, but when he died the houses in Henley Street were the
+sole remains of his fortune; the rest had passed to creditors. These
+William Shakespeare inherited as eldest son--he let one, and left his
+mother in peaceful enjoyment of the other. In the following year he made
+more purchases, rather more than one hundred acres of farm-land at three
+pounds per acre--a price that would be quite good to-day if we consider
+the relative values of money--and a cottage with garden on the boundary
+of the New Place grounds. In 1605 he bought the unexpired term of a long
+lease of half the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and
+Welcombe, the price being L440, which may be taken to stand for more
+than L3000 of our money, and a considerable part of a full year's
+income in his most prosperous time. It was an unfortunate investment,
+and one which led to his frequent recourse to the lawyers. Shakespeare's
+knowledge of the law has often puzzled his biographers, and the
+correctness of his phraseology has been advanced by upholders of the
+grotesque Baconian heresy as one of the reasons why he could not have
+written the plays attributed to him. But it is impossible for the plain
+man to follow the arguments that the Baconians adduce and affect to
+support.
+
+
+=THE MERMAID INN=
+
+
+In later years the poet bought another twenty acres of arable land to
+add to his already considerable holding. All these purchases were made
+while he was a very busy man--actor, playwright, and manager. Doubtless
+he had other investments and interests, of which we may some day know a
+little more than we do now. Fresh documents relating to his investments
+in the theatrical world were published as recently as the closing months
+of 1909, and the records of the reign of Elizabeth and James I. are by
+no means fully examined. One truth stands out clearly through the
+interesting story of Shakespeare's investments, and that is his love for
+the town in which he was born. With so large a share of the world to
+choose from, with countless associations that might well have kept him
+in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, with friends in Court circles
+and acting circles who would scarcely be accessible in a town three,
+four, or even five days' journey from London, he seems to have had the
+fixed intent of spending his years of ease at home. There is too much
+reason to believe that with him marriage was a failure. Reference has
+been made already to the birth of his daughter Susanna, who became Mrs.
+Hall, and we know that in 1585 his wife bore twins, boy and girl, Hamnet
+and Judith, named after Hamnet and Judith Sadler, friends of John
+Shakespeare. But the poet saw little of his family or of the three
+children of his union, and at the time of his public return to Stratford
+little Hamnet Shakespeare died, in his twelfth year. Susanna married, in
+1607, the Puritan physician John Hall. Judith the twin married Mr.
+Thomas Quiney in the year of her father's death. The poet seems to have
+lived on excellent terms with his daughters, but there must be some
+justification for the generally accepted story of unhappy married life.
+Had he been devoted to his wife, Shakespeare could have sent for her
+when he had been a very few years in London; the fact that he did not go
+back to her for eleven years has a significance that takes a great deal
+of explaining away, nor are the laboured explanations of the people who
+assume that the life of genius is perfect, worth the ink and paper
+devoted to them. The estrangement might have been the fault of the man,
+or his wife, or both; it is a matter that ceased to be important when
+one or both had died. We make our conjectures and pass on; others come
+to do the same; but the first is likely to be as far from the truth as
+the last. We do not find any reliable information that can clear the
+darkness enshrouding the poet's life; even Aubrey's "Lives of Eminent
+Men," in which the poet is described as "handsome and well shaped," was
+written more than fifty years after his death, and was founded upon the
+gossip of an old actor.
+
+There is hardly more than one portrait that may be supposed to show the
+poet as he was. This was discovered by Mr. Edgar Flower in 1892; it is
+painted on an elm panel, with "Wm. Shakespeare, 1609," in the left-hand
+corner. Several leading authorities have agreed that it may be the
+original from which Martin Droeshout engraved his half-length portrait
+for the folio of 1623, a likeness that was accepted as satisfactory by
+Ben Jonson, though it was clearly a second-hand work, because the
+engraver was no more than fifteen when Shakespeare died. The portrait is
+now in the Memorial Gallery at Stratford. Dr. Sidney Lee, in his
+fascinating "Life of William Shakespeare," a work that has run into many
+editions, tells us that upwards of sixty portraits of Shakespeare have
+been offered to the National Gallery since 1856, and that not one of
+these has been shown to be authentic. How fortunate, then, that the
+deeds and signatures quite beyond suspicion have told the world so much
+about the business side of the poet's life. Just as the forgery of
+portraits has been of common occurrence, so the forgery of deeds has
+been a source of amusement, if not of profit, to many; but happily there
+is always a strong critical faculty waiting to deal with startling
+discoveries, and those that survive the sifting of the keen intellects
+that examine them may be accepted in perfect good faith.
+
+We have the safe material upon which to base the conclusion that the
+poet left Stratford penniless, or well-nigh penniless, in 1585; that
+after eleven years of hard work in London, in the course of which he
+probably paid brief visits to his home, travelling by way of Oxford and
+stopping at the Crown Inn, he returned to restore the family fortunes
+and build up his own estate. We know that he bought the best house in
+the town, that he planted an orchard, developed his gardens, and made
+extensive purchase of farm-lands, some years before he could hope to
+settle down in comfort to their enjoyment. It may be that the knowledge
+that the new home was ready for him helped to put a period to the London
+labours. He did not give any sign of appreciating the full significance
+of his own work, or appear to know that he had made a position that
+placed him side by side with Geoffrey Chaucer in merit, and still higher
+in world renown. He never pushed the advantages that a connection at
+Court and the favour of King James might have given him--he was only too
+pleased to retire, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," while he
+was yet on the sunny side of fifty. Man of affairs sufficiently to seek
+the law-courts on the smallest provocation, idealist to the extent of
+preferring a simple country life to all the glamour of London, a man
+seemingly endowed with all the ambitions of the most sober and
+unimaginative middle class--truly he presents strange and baffling
+contrasts.
+
+In the absence of direct evidence to the contrary, we may presume that
+Shakespeare retired from the actor's profession in 1611, on or before
+the completion of "The Tempest," into the closing act of which he would
+seem to have put a reflection of his own inmost thought. Of all the rich
+and varied emotions to which such a mind must have responded, there
+could have been none more stirring than the thought that his life-work
+had brought the reward he most desired. To the town from which he had
+fled as an outcast he was returning a man of substance and repute; to
+the failing fortunes of those he had left behind he had become a sure
+support. Father, mother, one brother, Edmund, and the little son Hamnet
+had gone before him "to that bourn from which no traveller returns," but
+there were two loving daughters and a granddaughter waiting to welcome
+him home, one sister, Joan, and two brothers, Gilbert and Richard. There
+was Michael Drayton, author of the "Shepherd's Garland," the man after
+his own heart, to whose charming sonnets he was indebted for some of the
+beauty of his own, and it may be that some of his old companions of the
+stage could be lured to New Place in the intervals of their touring. For
+one who knew as well as Shakespeare the changes and uncertainties of
+life, there must have been a keen consciousness that balance of fortune
+was in his favour when he rode out from London on to the
+Oxford-Stratford road, only to return to look after his vested interests
+as occasion should demand.
+
+The poet would appear to have taken an active part in developing the
+prosperity of his native town, and to have found in that work
+sufficient consolation, if any was needed, for his absence from the
+scenes of greater activity. In 1611, the year of his retirement, he
+supported with his purse and influence a Bill before Parliament for the
+better repair of the highways. He had suffered first-hand acquaintance
+with their wretched state. Doubtless he took part in much unrecorded
+work for the betterment of his own estate, and he was frequently found
+indulging in his undeniable passion for litigation. The purchase of a
+house in Blackfriars is recorded in 1613, and it led to the seemingly
+inevitable lawsuit some two years later. Nicholas Rowe, poet-laureate to
+King George I., wrote a life of Shakespeare in the early years of the
+eighteenth century, and we owe to him a statement, founded upon such
+information as a lapse of a century could validate, that Shakespeare
+spent the last years of his life enjoying "ease, retirement, and the
+conversation of his friends." We know that Michael Drayton and Ben
+Jonson visited him at New Place, and it is a tradition that their visits
+were celebrated in convivial fashion. At the same time there would have
+been certain restraints upon a very free life, even had the poet been
+disposed to lead one. Society in small country towns is notoriously
+inclined to be intolerant, and Shakespeare's son-in-law, Dr. Hall, was
+one of the great and growing body of Puritans that looked askance at
+sensual indulgence in any form. Moreover, there was a strong feeling
+against the stage in Stratford; it found expression only a year after
+Shakespeare's return, when the Town Council passed a resolution that
+stage plays were unlawful, and increased the penalties to which players
+might be subjected. It would be a matter of great interest to know how
+Shakespeare regarded a resolution that so wantonly decried the
+profession by which he had lived and thriven. There is no evidence to
+show that the action of the city fathers was symptomatic of any ill-will
+towards him, or that he resented it openly. Yet he was a man who could
+and would stand up for his rights in and out of season. Perhaps in the
+most of his moods he was gentle and affectionate, for more than once in
+his career we find his friends leaving him small legacies or gifts or
+tokens of their affection. These came alike from actors who had shared
+with him the traffic of the stage, and from fellow-townsmen of
+Stratford. Even if the recorded references are scanty enough, there is
+none that may be held unflattering if we except the attack by Greene,
+for which his publisher went out of his way to apologise. It is hard, if
+not impossible, to estimate the value of any form of art-work in the
+lifetime of the worker, and it may well be that of the thousands who
+applauded Shakespeare's plays there were very few who saw them as we do
+to-day. The mere fact that they were for the most part new versions of
+works that were then quite familiar to playgoers would have told against
+them. Theme rather than treatment was best calculated to "tickle the
+groundlings."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+STRATFORD AS IT WAS
+
+
+Stratford in Shakespeare's time administered its own affairs in very
+complete fashion through the medium of a Guild, which was turned into a
+Municipal Corporation by Edward VI. It boasted bailiff, aldermen,
+burgesses and chamberlains, and the council met every month in the Guild
+Hall. Those who accepted office were liable to be heavily mulcted for
+non-attendance, for attending in mufti, for declining promotion to a
+more responsible office, or for telling the secrets of the council
+chamber to those who had no place in it. The Chapel of the Guild, the
+Guild Hall, and the Grammar School, in which boys were taught and
+disciplined in fashion that would shock our humanitarian instincts
+to-day, still exist. The bailiff or warden of Stratford was at one time
+John Shakespeare himself, and at another a subordinate colleague, who
+would have sat in judgment upon him in the days when the old man's
+liabilities were beginning to get the better of his assets, and he
+himself was no longer a man of importance. The rule of the City Guild or
+Corporation was paternal in an Elizabethan sense. Just as the
+schoolmaster did not spare the rod lest he should spoil the child, so
+the magnates of the corporation regarded their fellow-citizens as men
+and women to be admonished or encouraged, punished or praised, according
+to their behaviour. Food prices were fixed by the corporation; the
+adulteration of the people's supplies was made exceedingly difficult and
+dangerous. Men who lived ill were fined or expelled from Stratford's
+boundaries; scolding wives were sentenced to have their tempers
+sweetened by immersion from the ducking-stool in the clear, cold waters
+of Avon. Publicans were forced to conform to the local laws carefully
+framed to abolish public drunkenness. The stocks were waiting for the
+feet of drunkards, brawlers, and offenders against municipal
+regulations, and the whipping-post was always in evidence where the
+Market House now stands. Apprentices might not be out after nine o'clock
+at night. Attendance at church was obligatory, and he who blasphemed or
+used foul language found ample reason to regret his indiscretion. In
+short, the conduct of Stratford was of a kind more in keeping with the
+Puritan tradition than anything we can find in England to-day, but it
+was associated with real brotherly love, and a feeling of common
+citizenship, that held the town together. Those who have studied the
+early records of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in England
+in the years following the successful intercession of Manasseh ben
+Israel with Oliver Cromwell, will hardly fail to note the striking
+similarity between the rules that governed Elizabethan corporations and
+those that governed those Jews who returned to England and lived their
+prosperous but dignified lives in the east end of London when the
+eighteenth century was as young as our own.
+
+
+=SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE--STRATFORD-ON-AVON=
+
+
+There was much to hold communities together in Elizabeth's time, much to
+encourage strength of purpose and resignation to troubles that were
+regarded as the manifestation of Divine Will, though in truth they were
+fruits of the people's ignorance. Unfortunately there was no real
+attempt to control them. Sanitation was unknown. The ground floors of
+the houses were of hard clay, covered with rushes; chimneys were not
+common. Refuse and garbage were placed in the open roads, not always in
+the special places appointed by the corporation. Pigs were kept close to
+the houses, and though the butchers were supposed to take the refuse of
+the slaughter-houses beyond the town, a strong wind would doubtless
+bring back infection. The corporation kept certain public places clean,
+and doubtless the citizens, or the most of them, did their best; but
+they had no knowledge of the price of uncleanliness, and in a town that
+was unpaved, undrained, and seldom cleaned, microbes must have enjoyed
+their life under conditions only familiar to those of us who have
+travelled through some of the remote cities of Africa and Asia, and
+known what it is to be literally unable to dismount from a horse. Street
+lighting was in its early infancy. In Shakespeare's time every man of
+substance was compelled to hang a lighted lantern outside his house
+from dusk to curfew, during a few weeks of midwinter, and that was all.
+
+Of all these defects the lack of cleanliness was the vital one, and the
+consequences of the neglect or ignorance of the first laws of sanitation
+may be imagined. Plague was never far away. Every few years there would
+be a visitation, mild or severe, and there was no effective remedy known
+to the people. As in the time of the great plague of London, herbs and
+cooling drinks were employed, fresh air was in demand, and there was
+much burning of spices. Shakespeare was a baby in arms when a visitation
+of the plague gave nearly fifteen per cent. of the town's population to
+the graveyard or its substitute, the plague pit.
+
+Now and again the Avon would overflow its banks and flood the
+surrounding country. Not only would such a disaster increase the ague
+and rheumatism that are never far removed from dwellers by the
+river-side, but a late summer flood might damage the crops on low-lying
+lands, or carry away corn that had been cut but not carted, and then, as
+Stratford was not readily accessible, the prices of food stuff would
+rise despite the corporation's efforts, and actual famine was not
+unknown.
+
+Fires, too, were common. Doubtless a few arose from the overheating of
+corn in barns and stacks, and some from the absence of chimneys to so
+many houses. The corporation did what it could, but there were no
+resources adequate to deal with a conflagration, for all that the Avon
+ran at the foot of the town. They came to the conclusion in 1582 that
+the absence of chimneys was a fruitful source of disaster, and ordered
+every householder to build one. They also ordered every burgess to
+provide himself with a bucket. Looking back to the times, it is not easy
+to say that the corporation of Stratford was really backward; its
+members did all that the people of a little town in the heart of
+Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to
+have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous
+endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do
+in the public service, and those who failed were punished.
+
+When we look round at our busy manufacturing towns in this year of
+grace, and remember how much we know of the best tradition of municipal
+work, can we say that, _mutatis mutandis_, the advantage is altogether
+with us? Plague and fire and flood have been overcome, but men and women
+live lives entirely undisciplined. Little or nothing binds the citizen
+to the State, and the adulteration of food has become so common that
+pure bread and pure beer are the exception, and the supervision of those
+who prepare the necessities of our daily life is much less strict than
+it was when old John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was Stratford's
+ale-taster, empowered to see, _inter alia_, that every baker sold a
+whole loaf of true weight for one penny.
+
+But if the corporation ruled Stratford strictly in Elizabethan times,
+it encouraged all kinds of sport, to some of which the poet makes
+reference in his plays. Young and old knew the Maypole. Nine Men's
+Morris was another popular game, and Falstaff, referring to his
+treatment when he escaped from Ford's house disguised as the fat woman
+of Brentford, says, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipp'd
+top, I knew not what it was to be beaten, since lately." Goose-plucking
+was a particularly barbarous pastime. We know that hockey and football
+were played in Elizabethan England, and that the corporation of
+Stratford kept a bowling-alley at the municipality's expense for the
+free use of the town. Cock-fights were among the less reputable sports
+of the time, and bears or bulls were baited. Hunting, hawking, coursing,
+fishing, and the rest beguiled the leisure hours of those who had any,
+and the harvest festivals would have played their part. There were great
+fairs and open markets held at certain seasons of spring and summer.
+Within doors, cards and shovel-board would seem to have been the only
+kind of amusement that were not directly associated with social
+ceremonies.
+
+Christening, marriage, and burial were all allied in the poet's time to
+more public exhibitions than obtain to-day, the wedding being preceded
+by a public betrothal ceremony, and the marriage itself being associated
+with a great many quaint customs if the contracting parties had the
+money wherewith to carry them out. Removed from touch with the outside
+world, seeing little of the life of big cities for themselves, the
+citizens of Stratford managed to get no small measure of simple and
+harmless enjoyment out of life, though even among the town council there
+were men whose liking for sack and good ale was notorious.
+
+Players from London brought some added amusement in the summer, but as
+Stratford grew more and more puritanical, a very deliberate effort,
+already referred to in the preceding chapter, was made to penalise
+actors, and some years after Shakespeare's death it is recorded that the
+king's players were bribed by the corporation to leave the town without
+giving any performances. The gardens of Stratford were very productive.
+They were separated from each other by mud walls, and were carefully
+cultivated. Shakespeare delighted in his gardens and his plays speak of
+his sound knowledge of the gardener's craft. People who could afford to
+plant orchards took a pride in doing so; the poorer folk generally
+boasted a few fruit-trees, and gave no small part of their garden plot
+to raising herbs and simples for use against the various ailments that
+troubled them from time to time. The furniture in the house was
+primitive. Table, stools, a chair or two, and a bench would furnish a
+living-room. Carpets were not often met with; mattresses, bolsters, and
+pillows were stuffed with feathers. Sheets and table-cloths were of flax
+or hemp; dishes were of brass or pewter. Wooden trenchers and pewter
+spoons were in common use, and most houses held the necessary equipment
+for baking bread, brewing ale, and weaving wool. Cooking was primitive;
+good cooks were not required unless the occasion was an extraordinary
+one. People rose early and retired early; there was no temptation to be
+out late in filthy, ill-lighted streets, and bed was the only
+comfortable place in a house after nightfall. Doubtless the conditions
+were favourable to deep drinking among those who were not limited to the
+ale-house, and consequently could escape from the vigilant eye of
+authority.
+
+The apprentice system was in vogue at Stratford in Shakespeare's time,
+and though the condition of apprentices was not always creditable to
+their employers, the system ensured a thorough knowledge of any business
+that a man sought to establish. The apprenticeship was a legal
+condition, precedent to setting up in business, and until a lad had
+fulfilled his indentures he could not open a shop on his own account or
+claim the rights of a freeman. Apprentices had their rights and
+privileges, including certain holidays, but they might not carry arms,
+might not visit ale-houses, and might not stay out after nine o'clock.
+For lads who did not care to settle down in business, or had not the
+means to establish themselves in one, there were other ways of securing
+a living. They could seek military service--there was always a demand
+for strong, athletic young men--or they could enter the big
+establishments of the great landowners, who employed scores of
+retainers, and, in peaceful times, did not overwork them. The wealthier
+lads went to the universities or to the metropolis, where no small
+proportion, freed from all restraint, went hopelessly to the bad. In
+Shakespeare's time, the Earl of Leicester, Lord Compton, Sir Thomas Lucy
+of Charlecote, and a few others, were the chief men in the neighbourhood
+of Stratford to keep retainers in large numbers.
+
+
+=SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON=
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CLOSE OF LIFE
+
+
+When Shakespeare settled down in Stratford to spend the last years of
+his life amid its familiar surroundings, he could without a doubt have
+aspired to the highest honours in the corporation's gift. He had
+restored his father's good name, and John Shakespeare in his palmy days
+had been Stratford's chief alderman. The early history of his escapades
+had apparently been forgotten; he was on friendly terms with the then
+owner of Charlecote Park, while other great landowners who passed a part
+of their time at Court were to be found among his acquaintances if not
+his friends. But he had not retired from the stress and strife of London
+to seek responsibilities that entailed heavy penalties for neglect. It
+sufficed him to take a friendly interest in the affairs of the
+corporation, and to remain right outside the council chamber. His own
+obligations might call him to town at any moment, and his own local
+affairs would have taken so much of the rest of his time as he would be
+disposed to give to business. Clearly he wished to enjoy his life, and
+from the scanty records in our possession there is reason to believe
+that he did so. Doubtless he added much to his ample stores of
+observation; the few last years could hardly have been wasted; but
+apparently he had no wish to set pen to paper when he had left the stage
+behind him. It may be that, had he been disposed to work in the later
+years, the Gunpowder Plot might have afforded him material for a
+stirring play. Ambrose Rookwood, who was closely associated with the
+conspiracy, lived in Clopton House near Stratford.
+
+The Clopton family was closely identified with Stratford's history. Sir
+Hugh, of that family, had been Lord Mayor of London in 1492. He it was
+who built New Place, the house in which the poet was living. He built
+the stone bridge over Avon at Stratford, to take the place of a
+worthless wooden structure. He founded exhibitions at Oxford and
+Cambridge Universities. In short, Sir Hugh made the reputation of the
+family for all time, and the scandal of Rookwood's residence in Clopton
+House, which is within easy reach of Stratford, must have been a
+considerable one.
+
+There is a suggestion that the poet had not only given up his work, but
+that the taint of landowning under the existing conditions had corrupted
+him. As late as 1614 he was assisting one William Combe, a landowner and
+son of his old friend John Combe--who had left him five pounds by
+will--in an attempt to enclose the common lands round his estate at
+Welcombe. In the early days the poet had been a foe of those who
+attempted to rob the people, but it may be that by 1614 he was growing a
+little intolerant of the Puritans on the corporation council, and quite
+ready to vex them if he could. The Clerk to the Council followed
+Shakespeare to London, apparently in order to discuss the case against
+William Combe, and the corporation in council drew up a letter to the
+poet, begging him to aid them against the guilty landowner; but
+Shakespeare did not do so, and it was left for the London courts to
+settle the matter in favour of the corporation, after much litigation
+and long delays.
+
+The opening days of 1616 saw the marriage of Judith Shakespeare, the
+poet's daughter, born with little Hamnet who had died twenty years
+before. Two months later the poet entertained Michael Drayton and Ben
+Jonson at New Place. Some biographers say that the meeting was
+associated with a drinking bout--there is no reason to believe that
+either of his distinguished visitors would have been averse from one.
+Others believe that the poet fell a victim to the prevailing lack of
+sanitation; his house was at the corner of a very dirty lane. Whatever
+the cause, there can be no doubt about the result. On the 23rd of April
+1616, England's greatest dramatist died in the prime of life--he was
+just fifty-two years of age. Two days later he was buried in Stratford
+Church, near the north wall of the chancel. Fearful lest his bones
+should be added to the grisly burden of the charnel-house close by, he
+penned a curse upon those who should disturb his remains.
+
+The corporation's leading members joined the funeral procession, and a
+banquet consoled the mourners. A monument was put up in the chancel a
+few years later, the work of a London sculptor living near the "Globe
+Theatre." It is not a very pleasing piece of work. By his will, the poet
+left substantial legacies to his daughters, a gift to Stratford's poor,
+and mementoes to many friends, but to his wife he left his "second best
+bedstead" and nothing more. Anne Shakespeare died seven years later, and
+was buried close to her husband. His neglect of her by will does not
+imply indifference to her future; doubtless he had expressed his wish
+that one or other of his daughters should look after her, but it is
+clear that he did not hold her in great affection.
+
+So passed a great man from his world, leaving an imperishable monument
+for generations yet to come. The London he knew has passed beyond our
+ken; it is a buried city that will never be unearthed. But time has
+dealt more gently with Stratford and Shottery, Wilmcote and
+Snitterfield, and a large part of the surrounding country that made our
+national poet articulate. Much that he loved returns with the yearly
+pageant of the seasons, and with this we must be perforce content.
+
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Aberdeen, 32
+
+  "All's Well that Ends Well," 39
+
+  Ancient Pistol, 43
+
+  "Antony and Cleopatra," 53
+
+  Arden, Forest of, 47
+    "  Mary, 9, 58
+    "  Robert, 58
+
+  Ariosto, 47
+
+  Arnold, Matthew, 7
+
+  "As You Like It," 32, 47
+
+  Aston Clinton, 7, 9
+
+  Aubrey's "Lives of Eminent Men," 66
+
+  Avon, 5, 73, 75, 82
+
+
+  Barnard, Lady, 60
+    "  Sir John, 60
+
+  Barnfield, Richard, 44
+
+  Bath, 30
+
+  "Bear's House," 25, 26
+
+  Beaumont, 41, 42, 44
+
+  "Bell, The," 43
+
+  "Bell Inn," 17
+
+  Bishopgate, 26, 27
+
+  Bishopton, 64
+
+  Blackfriars, 21, 70
+    "  Theatre, 22, 62
+
+  Boar's Head, 40, 41
+
+  "Bohemia," 44
+
+  Boswell, 61
+
+  Brentford, 77
+
+  "Bull Inn," 27
+
+  Burbage, Cuthbert 62
+    "  James, 22, 62
+    "  Richard, 22, 32, 37, 49, 62
+
+  Burbie, Cuthbert, 35, 36
+
+
+  Cambridge University, 82
+
+  Chapel of the Guild, 72
+
+  Charlecote, 7, 12, 46, 56, 80
+    "  Park, 81
+
+  Charles II., 29
+
+  Chaucer, Geoffrey, 43, 44, 68
+
+  "Children of the Chapel, The," 48
+
+  Clopton, Sir Hugh, 58, 60, 82
+    "  Sir John, 60
+    "  House, 82
+
+  Cobham, Lord, 46
+
+  College of Heralds, 57
+
+  Combe, John, 82
+    "  William, 82, 83
+
+  "Comedy of Errors, The," 36
+
+  Compton, Lord, 80
+
+  Condell, 62
+
+  "Convivial Laws," 42
+
+  Coopers' Arms, 33
+
+  "Coriolanus," 53
+
+  Coventry, 30
+
+  "Cow Lane," 35
+
+  Cromwell, Oliver, 73
+
+  "Crosby Hall," 27
+
+  Crown Inn, 68
+
+  "Curtain, The," 21
+
+  "Cymbeline," 53
+
+
+  Danter, John, 36
+
+  Derby, Earl of, 22
+
+  "Devil Tavern," 41, 42
+
+  Drayton, Michael, 7, 44, 69, 70, 83
+
+  Droeshout, Martin, 67
+
+
+  Eastcheap, 40
+
+  Edward VI., 72
+
+  Elizabeth, Queen, 13, 32, 37, 39, 46, 50, 51
+
+  Essex, Earl of, 47, 48
+
+
+  "Falcon, The," 41, 60, 62
+
+  Falstaff, Sir John, 13, 46, 77
+
+  Faversham, 30
+
+  "Feverel, Richard," 16
+
+  Field, Richard, 20, 21, 35
+
+  Fletcher, 41, 42
+
+  Florence, 26
+
+  Flower, Edgar, 67
+
+  Folkestone, 30
+
+  Fulbroke Parks, 12
+
+  Fuller, 41
+
+
+  Gastrell, Rev. Francis, 59, 60, 61
+
+  "George, The," 41, 43
+      "    I., 70
+
+  "Globe, The," 22, 48, 62, 84
+
+  Gower, 25
+
+  Grammar School, Stratford, 72
+
+  Gray's "Elegy," 1
+
+  Greene, Robert, 27, 36, 43, 71
+
+  Greenwich, 32, 38
+
+  Guild Hall, 72
+
+  Gunpowder Plot, 82
+
+
+  Hall, John, 66, 70
+    "   Susanna, 62, 66
+
+  Halliwell-Phillipps, Mr. J. O., 61
+
+  "Hamlet," 31, 32, 48, 49
+
+  Hathaway, Anne, 11, 17, 18, 60
+
+  "Henry IV.," 13, 14, 39, 40, 46
+    "    V.," 14, 47, 62
+    "    VI., King," 36
+    "    the Seventh, King, 57
+    "    VIII.," 47, 53, 63
+
+  High Wycombe, 20
+
+  Holinshed's "Chronicles," 33, 52, 53
+
+  Hunt, Wm., 61
+
+  Hythe, 30
+
+
+  James I., King, 22, 24, 29, 51, 77
+
+  Johnson, Robert, 53
+
+  Jones, Inigo, 29
+
+  Jonson, Ben, 7, 41, 42, 43, 67, 70, 83
+
+  "Julius Caesar," 48
+
+
+  Keere, Peter Van den, 24, 25
+
+  Kemp, William, 32
+
+  Kenilworth, 39
+
+  "King John," 37
+    "   Lear," 52
+
+  "King's Servants, The," 51
+
+
+  "Lambeth Marsh," 25
+
+  Lee, Dr. Sidney, 10, 31, 32, 49, 52, 67
+
+  Leicester, Earl of, 13, 21, 39, 80
+
+  Leyton, Edward, 61
+
+  Lichfield, 61
+
+  Loggin, Mrs., 61
+
+  Lollard, 46
+
+  "Love's Labour's Lost," 35
+
+  Lucy, Sir Thomas, 12, 13, 46, 80
+
+
+  "Macbeth," 51, 52
+
+  Manasseh ben Israel, 73
+
+  Marlborough, 30
+
+  Marlowe, Christopher, 27, 36, 37, 43
+
+  Masuccio, 33, 36
+
+  "Measure for Measure," 51
+
+  "Merchant of Venice, The," 37
+
+  Meredith, George, 16
+
+  Meres, Francis, 44
+
+  "Mermaid, The," 41, 42, 44
+
+  "Merry Wives of Windsor," 13, 40, 46
+
+  "Midsummer Night's Dream, A," 13, 39
+
+  Milton, 7
+
+  Miranda, 53
+
+  Moorfields, 21
+
+  "More Feyldes," 25
+
+  Mountjoy, 33
+
+  "Much Ado about Nothing," 47
+
+
+  Naseby, 5
+
+  Nash, Elizabeth, 60
+    "   Thomas, 62
+
+  Newington Butts, 22
+
+  New Place, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 69, 70, 82, 83
+
+  New Place Museum, 62
+
+  New Romney, 30
+
+  Nimrod, 13
+
+  Norman William, 5
+
+
+  Oldcastle, Sir John, 46
+
+  Old Stratford, 11, 64
+
+  "Othello," 51
+
+  Oxford, 20, 30, 68
+
+  Oxford University, 82
+
+
+  "Palace of Nonsuch, The," 38
+
+  Peele, 36
+
+  Pembroke, Earl of, 51
+
+  "Pericles," 52, 53
+
+  Phillips, Augustus, 22, 62
+
+  "Phoenix and the Turtle, The," 48
+
+  Plautus, 36
+
+  "Play House," 25
+
+  Plutarch's "Lives," 33, 48, 53
+
+  Ponte Vecchio, 26
+
+  Prospero, 53, 54
+
+
+  Quiney, Mr. Thomas, 66
+
+
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 42
+
+  "Rape of Lucrece, The," 37, 38
+
+  Rhodes, Cecil John, 2
+
+  "Richard II.," 37, 47
+
+  "Richard III.," 27, 37
+
+  Richmond, 38
+
+  "Romeo and Juliet," 36
+
+  Rookwood, Ambrose, 82
+
+  "Rose, The," 22
+
+  Rowe, Nicholas, 70
+
+  Rye, 30
+
+
+  Saffron Walden, 30
+
+  Saxon Harold, 6
+
+  Senlac, 5
+
+  Severn, 5
+
+  Shakespeare, Edmond, 24, 69
+    "  Gilbert, 69
+    "  Hamnet, 66, 69
+    "  Joan, 69
+    "  John, 9, 10, 57, 58, 64, 66, 72, 76, 81
+    "  Judith, 66, 83
+    "  Richard, 69
+    "  Susanna, 12, 60, 66
+
+  Shallow, Mr. Justice, 13, 40, 46
+
+  "Shepherd's Garland," 69
+
+  Shoreditch, 21
+
+  Shottery, 7, 11, 16, 17, 18, 84
+
+  Sidney, Sir Philip, 29
+
+  Smith, Miss, 61
+
+  Snitterfield, 6, 9, 10, 64, 84
+
+  Southampton, Earl of, 37, 39, 47, 48, 63
+
+  Southwark, 22, 26, 27, 42
+
+  Spanish Armada, 42
+
+  Spenser, Edmund, 41
+
+  "Spittlefeyldes," 25
+
+  St. Helen's, 26, 27
+
+  "St. Marye Overyes," 24, 25
+
+  St. Saviour's, Church of, 24, 25
+
+  Stratford Church, 83
+
+
+  "Tabard, The," 41, 42, 43, 44
+
+  "Taming of the Shrew, The," 39
+
+  "The Tempest," 53, 69
+
+  "Theatre, The," 21, 22, 62
+
+  Thorpe, 38
+
+  "Timon of Athens," 52
+
+  "Titus Andronicus," 37
+
+  "Troilus and Cressida, 49
+
+  "Twelfth Night," 47
+
+  "Two Gentlemen of Verona, The," 35
+
+
+  "Venus and Adonis," 37, 38
+
+
+  Walker, Sir Edward, 60
+
+  Welcombe, 64, 82
+
+  Westminster Abbey, 24
+
+  White, William, 35
+
+  Whitehall, 38, 51, 52
+
+  "White Hart, The," 43
+
+  Wilmcote, 6, 9, 10, 18, 58, 84
+
+  Wilton, 51
+
+  "Winter's Tale, The," 53
+
+  Wotton Wawens, 7
+
+  Wriothesley, Henry, 39, 50, 63
+
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  Edinburgh & London
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+  Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+  Illustration captions are indicated by =caption=.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's William Shakespeare, by Samuel Levy Bensusan
+
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