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SHAKESPEARE'S TIME: 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE YORK INSTITUTE, 
 NOVEMBER 5, 1878; 
 
 "A PILaKIMAaE 
 TO STEATFOED-ON-AVON," 
 
 Reprinted from SlIABPE'S LONDON MAGAZINE, 
 
 EDWIN GOADBY, 
 
 EDITOR 01' THE " YOEK DAILY HEEALD.' 
 
 LONDON : 
 ARTHUR H. MOXON, 12, TAVISTOCK ST., COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 YORK : 
 JOHN SAMPSON. 
 
 PRICE SIXPENCE. 
 
^^ 
 
 0> \3^1C 
 
PEE FACE. 
 
 rpHE following lecture was not written with a view to 
 its publication, nor would the success which attended 
 its delivery have iaclined me to print it, had it not been 
 a first-thought with others and a second-thought with 
 myself, that it might usefully contribute to a clearer 
 popular understanding of the time- in which Shakespeare 
 lived and wrote. I am not vain enough to imagine that 
 thoughtful and cultivated persons will find much in the 
 paper that is either fresh in matter or novel -in present- 
 ment; but, nevertheless, there may be something to 
 interest them in a modest contribution to the study of 
 one of England's greatest men, and one of the most 
 creative periods in her history. An account of a visit I 
 made to Stratford-on-Avon, in 1859, has been re-printed 
 and added at the suggestion of a friend, who is a native 
 of the place, and whose kindly criticisms iaduced me to 
 disentomb the sketch for his perusal. It may, perhaps, 
 serve to give a certain amount of completeness, as well 
 as of contrast, lio the picture I have attempted. 
 
 16, Bootham, York. 
 
Triumph, my Britain, thou has one to show, 
 To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. 
 He was not of an age, but for all time ! 
 
 Ben Jonsox. 
 
SHAKESPEAEE'S TIME. 
 
 THE heritage a great man leaves the world is to force it to 
 explain him. So says the German philosopher, Hegel; and it 
 would seem that the world will never - weary of explaining 
 William Shakespeare. The characters of common mortals can 
 be written by a skilful penman in the space covered by a 
 sliilling ; but the great dead provoke so much thought in others 
 that to the making of books upon them there is no end, and in 
 the reading of many of them there is much weariness of the 
 flesh. They lie about like the moraines and movmg glaciers 
 which conceal from us for a time some entrancing Jungfrau, 
 pinnacled in solitary splendour. I believe I am not exceeding 
 the truth when I say that a thousand books have been written 
 about Shakespeare, and that there are nearly as many explana- 
 tions — French, German, Italian, American, and English. If the 
 natives of Central Africa should ever have a literature of their 
 own, they will give us another theory of Shakespeare, with 
 especial reference to Othello, the Moor of Venice. These ex- 
 planations of great men have reference sometimes to the stars 
 under which they were born, to their nurses and playmates, to 
 their bumps and biliary ducts, to their familiarity with good and 
 evil spirits, and to their enormous and unacknowledged appro- 
 priation of the oral and written works of others. I have no such 
 explanation to give concerning Shakespeare. I doubt my own 
 capacity to explain him at all. It is my intention to depict the 
 time in which he lived, and to let the time assist in explaining 
 the man. This may seem a paltry, evasive method, very like the 
 Tartar's swallowing of the prescription instead of the medicine ; 
 but it is next to impossible to understand any great man until 
 you have looked all round Jiim, held converse with his contem- 
 poraries, and walked by his side amidst the familiar scenes of his 
 every-day life. It -has been said of Shakespeare, however, that 
 he owed very little to his contemporaries or to the book-learning 
 of his time. Hume says Jie was " without any instruction either 
 
6 SHAKESPEABE'S TIME. 
 
 from the world or from books." But this is a transcendental 
 view of the matter, in direct conflict with fact. Poetical genius 
 clothes, transforms, and vivifies, but it borrows much of its raw 
 material ; and even when it revolts against the age in which it 
 lives, it owes to it the spring of disgust which sends it back 
 to classic times, or forward to some better era. 
 
 In reality, Shakespeare's genius owed more to external circum- 
 stances than is usual with great men. The love. of the drama 
 was in existence before he ministered unto it. There were 
 eminent dramatists before he had penned a line. Most of his 
 plays were founded upon novels, legends, and histories current in 
 his day. They are fuU of allusions to contemporary events, 
 manners, customs, and modes of thought. His classic heroes 
 are quite as familiar with English as with Greek and Eoman 
 customs. The whole bent of his mind towards the stage was 
 due to local and general influences; his style was, to a great 
 extent, moulded upon the best contemporary writings ; his plays 
 are full of satires upon the men and women of his day; and 
 many of his characters are as Elizabethan as are their ceremonies, 
 their articles of dress and food, their phrases and their weapons. 
 " Trinculo and Stephano," says Mr. G. W. Thornbury, " were 
 men to be met any day in St. Paul's, their clothes long since dry 
 from the surges of the Bermoothes, and their skins quite healed 
 from the lashes of the boatswain; quibbling Speed and Lance 
 and his dog might have lived at Charlecote ; Eobin, Simple, and 
 Eugby have been seen running up Bucklersbury ; Malvolio gaping 
 at the prisoners looking out of the grating at Ludgate; and 
 Lancelot, tricksome, at Bartholomew's Fair, intent on tawdry 
 ribbons as a present for the sprightly Maria, Sir Toby Belch's 
 widow, who is expectantly waiting at a roast-pig stall. Sir 
 Toby Belch, in his disreputable boots, ' good enough for drinking 
 in,' and Sir John Falstaff, wittiest of sinners, might, we dare 
 venture to say, have been found quaffing burnt sack together on 
 the snug bench of some ale-house at Hogsden. Abhorson and 
 Bernardino were common inmates of the Counter, with Shoe-Tie, 
 the great traveller, and Half-can who stabbed Pots. Costard 
 and Bottom might have been rustics of Stafford, and Sir 
 Nathaniel and Sir Oliver Martext hedge-priests not a mile from 
 Warwick. In the Tempest we find him talking of the 'Dead 
 Indian ' and such penny shows as were to be seen any day in 
 Fleet Street or the Strand ; the serenades in the Two Gentlemen 
 of Verona and Cymbeline were strains heard at a hundred terrace 
 windows any bright morning of the Elizabethan year ; the porter 
 
SHAKESPEABES TIME. 7 
 
 in Macbeth is just such a porter as whipped out Lance's dog 
 when he misbehaved himself in the Duke's chamber; Slender 
 brags of his feats at bear-baiting, and took Saccarson by the 
 chain ; Henry VI. is full of allusions drawn from the Paris garden, 
 adjoiniug Shakespeare's theatre ; Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek uses 
 the phrases of Saviolo and the fencing masters of the day ; Pistol 
 mouths scraps of plays just as the play-going bullies used at the 
 Three Cranes in the Vintry, or the Devil in Fleet Street; Dr. 
 Cains is the French physician of the day, just as Sir Armado is 
 the conventional Spaniard, Shylock the conventional Jew, and 
 Evans the conventional Welshman. Mother Pratt of Brentford 
 is a white witch, the mere fortune-teller of the age, just as the 
 Macbeth spirits are beings of the same family elevated into 
 poetry, but still working with the vulgar machinery of such 
 witches as Hopkins gave over to the flames, or James I. de- 
 nounced ; Autolycus, first a pedlar and then a cutpurse, might 
 have stood in a London pilloiy with Nym and Bardolph, who 
 were stealers of clocks at taverns ; the Windsor Fairies, like 
 those of the Midsummer Night, had not yet fled at the first 
 shriek of the railway whistle, and were still visible to the be- 
 lieving." Any obscure allusion, any misuse of a word, any 
 snatch of a song, is to be regarded as contemporary history, in 
 a fragmentary form, which would make his plays pointed to an 
 audience where they are but dull to us. But, amongst these 
 contemporary sketches and characters, were men of no age who 
 have been made by him men for all time. His genius breathed 
 upon them, and Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Timon are immortal ; 
 the possessions of the human race, and not the creatures of a 
 single age. 
 
 Europe was a strange medley in Shakespeare's time — that is, 
 from 1564 to 1616. In the East, the Turk was supreme, ruling 
 from Constantinople -to Buda-Pesth, from Podolia to the Morea ; 
 and his character, as Shakespeare judged him, may be found in 
 King Lear, where he is described as "false of heart, Ught of 
 ear, bloody of hand ; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greedi- 
 ness, dog in madness, lion in prey," which is pretty much what 
 he remains to the present day, though more veneered with 
 Western civilization. Eussia was just coming into prominence 
 and English merchants were trading there. Ivan the Terrible 
 the first Kussian who had assumed the title of Tsar, was bold 
 enough to offer his hand in marriage to Queen Elizabeth. The 
 German Empire stretched from the Baltic to the Adriatic, and 
 divided with Spain the supreme control of the Continent ; Italy 
 
8 SHAKESPI]ABE'S TIME. 
 
 was a geographical expression; Sweden and Norway had been re- 
 cently Protestantised; the Dutch Eepublic was coming into being; 
 and Prance, although relieved from the burden of English power, 
 groaned alike under Spanish domination and Papal intrigue. 
 The little Eepublic of Venice was beginning to languish and lose 
 its commerce and its Greek Islands. It lost Cyprus in 1573, 
 when Shakespeare was nine years old, and had been two years 
 at Stratford Free Grammar School. His Othello, as you know, 
 was Governor of Cyprus, and in the play tidings arrive that the 
 Turk, " with a most mightj' preparation, makes for Cyprus ;" 
 and then, later, when the scene of the play is changed from 
 Venice to Cyprus itself, every man is commanded "to put him- 
 self into triumph," because news had come " importing the mere 
 (or entire) perdition of the Tm-kish Fleet." The play was 
 written in 1604, when the Turks were in full possession of the 
 island. Continuing our survey, we may note that Scotland 
 was tied to the fortunes of the beautiful and passionate Mary, 
 thundered at by Knox, divided and tempted by France, but 
 finally won over to Calvin and the Reformation. Ireland was 
 the despair of everybody, of the Irish no less than the English. 
 The latter were settled in the Counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, 
 and Kildare, comprising what was called the English Pale, and 
 they took care to shave the upper lip, so as not to be mistaken 
 for the " wild Irish," who dwelt outside the Pale. Wales was 
 improving under justices, nominated by the Lord Chancellor, 
 who made short work of its rebels. And what of England? 
 She had ceased, in the sense of ownership, to be a Continental 
 Power ; but she was always interfering, impelled by religious 
 or dynastic sympathies, in Continental politics ; supporting the 
 Reformers in France and the Low Countries, braving the Pope, 
 defying the Spaniards; and sending forth her Drakes and Pro- 
 bishers, her Raleighs and Gilberts, to found new colonies, to 
 discover new continents and islands, and to pour into the lap of 
 trade the spoils of the Indies and the products of the New 
 World. 
 
 Historians usually make too much of dynastic troubles and 
 court intrigues ; of battles and sieges, and the larger movements 
 of the time. I shall reverse this method, and pay less attention 
 to the history of the time, as recorded in ordinary books, than to 
 the life and people of the time, and their customary doings and 
 pursuits. Though I cannot pass over in silence the great struggle 
 between the Popes and the kingly and popular power, I must 
 leave you to trace it out for yourselves at leisure, for time would 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 9 
 
 fail me to recount its religious and political be^nnings, the 
 .revolts it occasioned, the intrigues it developed, the_national 
 divisions it accentuated, the massacres which marked its course ; 
 the struggles of Henry VIII., the severities of Thomas Cromwell, 
 the Protector ; the restoration of Popery under Queen Mary ; the 
 persecutions of the martyrs ; the estabhshment of Protestantism 
 under Queen Elizabeth; the changes she made in the Church; 
 her quarrel with Spain ; and the destruction of that tremendous 
 Armada which was sent to conquer and wipe out England, in the 
 interests of Rome, but which ended in the annihilation of Spain 
 as a leading power in Europe. I cannot enter into the disputes 
 as to the lovers, the intrigues, or the death oi Mary Queen of 
 Scots. , I must be forgiven if I do not describe the invasion of 
 these islands by the Jesuits, and the plots in which they de- 
 lighted ; or the rebellions against EKzabeth,- and the fate of some 
 of her favourites. I wish to bring you face to face with the 
 English people, uncouquered alike by Pope or Spaniard. I desire 
 to make you familiar with the old land of which Shakespeare 
 says, in King John : 
 
 This England never did, nor never shall, 
 
 Lie at the proud ^oot of a conqueror. 
 
 Let us take a bird's eye view of the land itself. Its chief phy- 
 sical aspects were much the same as now, but vast tracts were 
 not under cultivation. There were fens and marshes in Lanca- 
 shire as well as in Lincolnshire ; woods of oak, hazel, and beech 
 covered extensive districts now turned over by the plough or 
 thickly set with houses arid factory chimneys. The woods were 
 decaying, however, as Harrison, an old writer, remarks, and no 
 wonder, seeing that coal, though in use here and there, was con- 
 sidered a nuisance; that wood was the principal fuel; and that 
 only occasionally were the poor people ingenious enough to plas- 
 ter their houses and walls with cow- dung in the summer, to peel 
 it off and use it for fuel in the winter — a practice continued in 
 some parts to the middle half of last century, and borrowed, I 
 suspect, from the Turks, through information afforded by Cru- 
 saders. These wild open lands, half wood, half common, were 
 the resort of thousands of gypsies, who then called themselves 
 Egyptians, and were unmistakably Indian in colour, dress, and 
 language. They were half bandits; and as they moved about 
 mostly by night, the common people called them moonmen. The 
 laws against them were severe, for it was a felony to be found 
 consorting with "roguish Egyptians." I have found many en- 
 tries of fines for this offeiice in unpublished contemporary re- 
 
10 SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 
 
 cords. The Peak of Derbyshire, as we gather from Ben Jonson, 
 was a place where they frequently met, at periodic intervals. 
 Travellmg was, of coui-se, terribly insecure — ^the roads unfenced, 
 tinditched, full of holes and ruts, and forcing travellers to have 
 teams of four and six horses to convey their wagons. Even 
 then they were sometimes stuck fast, and bullock-teams had to 
 be borrowed from friendly farmers by the roadside. So far as 
 any general idea prevailed in the construction of the roads, they 
 were made on the concave system, and not on the convex, as 
 now ; that is, they were lower in the middle than at the sides, 
 the idea being that rain would repair the roads by washing the 
 dirt into the middle. I have in my. possession a black letter 
 tract, in which the writer proposes a new method of mending 
 roads, by laying down frames of wood and wattled hurdles, 
 filling np the spaces and covering them over with stones, brick, 
 u-on-ore, slag, and rubbish. He provided for under-drainage 
 in this fashion, and he thought so well of the plan that he 
 brought it before King James, with many pretty diagrams and 
 a poetical preface. I mention this to show the primitive ideas 
 which prevailed. 
 
 Goods were carried about in heavy stage-wagons, costing 
 fifteen pence per ton per mile. Most travellers preferred to go 
 on horseback to running risks in hfeavy vehicles, and they were 
 frequently lost on the way, as sometimes happened between 
 York and Doncaster. The coach was just commg into use, 
 strong built for country travel, and for show in London some- 
 what dainty. When the latter kind was first introduced by the 
 wealthy, Taylor, the water-poet, says : " Some said it was a great 
 crab-shell, brought out of China, and some imagined it to be one 
 of the Pagan temples in which the cannibals adored the devil." 
 So common had these fantastic private coaches become — ^none. 
 were on hire, even in London, before 1630 — ^that, in 1601, a 
 Puritanic Lord endeavoured to obtain the sanction of Parliament 
 for an Act — " to restrain the excessive and superfluous use of 
 coaches in this realm." But his own coach was upset on the 
 second reading. Off the main roads pack-horses were used, as 
 can still be gathered from public-house signs, and they were 
 very common in Yorkshire, moving about in long strings, with 
 poor passengers riding between their paniers. North of York 
 and west of Exeter there were no stage wagons at all. There 
 was no regular postal service in Elizabeth's time, and all letters 
 were transmitted by mounted messengers, the cost including the 
 wages of the man and the keep of his horse. James I. intror 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME . 11 
 
 duced the first regular postal system. Naturally, wlien there 
 was so much heavy traffic, the roadside hostelries were immense 
 places, often able to accommodate three hundred guests and 
 their horses and servants. They - were like little villages in 
 otherwise sohtary wastes. Here you would meet a company of 
 strolling players, wearing the costumes of their characters, in 
 which they frequently travelled ; a member of Parliament on the 
 jog to London ; a justice of the peace and a posse of constables 
 in hot pursuit of a thief ; a fashionable highwayman, well known 
 to ostlers and landlords, and. getting news from them of empty 
 and well-filled purses; a poor scholar bound for Cambridge or 
 Oxford, his cob and himself a compound of leanness and learning ; 
 a grand country gentleman, with a whole retinue of inounted and 
 running servants ; and scores of foot-passengers ever on the 
 move, paying a penny a night for their beds ; the needy suitor on 
 his way to the Chancery Court at York, or with stern face 
 intent on battling with the rich lawyers in Westminster Hall; 
 pedlars, tinkers, broken-down soldiers, limping' home from the 
 Low Countries ; ear-ringed sailors full of yarns about the Indies 
 and the Turks ; the ballad-singer on his way to the nearest fair ; 
 and the cunning gamester, with his cards and his dice, who 
 would cheat you at tables in the tap-room, beat you at bowls in 
 the bowling alley, and rob you in the inn-yard, at dusk, before 
 you could draw your sword or cock your pistol. 
 
 The population of England at this time was much smaller than 
 we might expect to find it. It was a little over five millions 
 when a census 'was taken at the time of the Armada. That is, 
 it Was equal to the present united population of London, Liver- 
 pool, Manchester, Salford, Birmingham, and Leeds. Why it 
 was not larger is a considerable problem, because there is good 
 evidence to show that before the Black Death of 1348-9" there 
 were quite as many people in England as during Elizabeth's 
 reign. By the aid of some manuscripts in the Minster Library, 
 Mr. Seebohm has examined the question, and the curious may 
 find his arguments and conclusions in the second volume of the 
 Fortnightly Review. It may be taken as -proved that the Black 
 Death and the Sweating Sickness of 1551 had taken off fully half 
 of the population, saying nothing as to the drain of land and 
 naval campaigns. A check had also arisen to that Flemish or 
 Dutch immigration which affected the whole of the east coast of 
 England. Mr. Eroude thinks that the decaying towns, of which 
 we hear in the early part of Elizabeth's reign, were due to the 
 greater security of life and property, which induced the people to 
 
12 SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 
 
 leave the walled towns and settle in the villages, there to carry 
 on their trade. This may be a partial explanation, but it must 
 be supplemented by the causes I have already mentioned. In 
 the case of this city, then famous for its coverlets, it ia recorded 
 that it was once well inhabited, but in Edward VI.'s tune was 
 much reduced, the cause being " the decay of that woollen manu- 
 facture by which a great number of the inhabitants of the said 
 city and subm-bs, and other places in the county of York, had 
 formerly been daily set on work." It is not improbable that the 
 bad cloth made in England had something to do with this decay 
 of trade. " As we have the best wools in the world," says an 
 old writer, " so we ought to have the best cloth ; but," he adds, 
 "there is more false cloth and woollen made in this realm than 
 in all Europe besides. All countries be now trying to make their 
 own cloth in consequence." The population of York, estimated 
 at 30,000 prior to the Black Death, was 11,000 in 1377, and not 
 much more in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Leeds 
 contained a population of about 7,000, I may mention here that 
 the surname of Walker, very common in Yorkshire, is df Flemish 
 origin. A walker was a man who worked at the walche (wallce) 
 or fulling mill ; and in the earlier Manchester dii-ectories all the 
 fullers, or cloth-dressers, were called ivalkers. The city of Lon- 
 don had a population of about 100,000. Bristol, the second 
 English port — for Liverpool could only boast of 4,000 people — 
 contained about 30,000 souls, and was a rich, thriving city, noted 
 for its West Indian trade. Norwich was the chief manufacturing 
 centre in the kingdom, and had been enriched by successive emi- 
 gration's of persecuted Flemish Protestants, who brought with 
 them the knowledge of new arts and industries. Its population 
 had been 50,000 prior to the Black Death, but was now about 
 29,000. Its cloths, fustians, and silks were known all over Eng- 
 land. Manchester, an ill-built place of less than 6,000 people, 
 was commencing to work up cotton from Cyprus and Smyrna 
 in imitation of woollen goods. Its coatings, or cottons, were just 
 beginning to win a name. Birmingham was a town of 4,000, 
 ShefiSeld of 2,000 — our steel goods were then imported ; and iron 
 and glass had begun to be manufactured at Newcastle. Coven- 
 try manufactured blue thread, Worcester salt, Taunton, broad- 
 cloth, Buckingham lace, Fulham tapestry. Sandwich baizes; and 
 Yarmouth, no longer importing its salt herrings from Iceland, 
 was, under Flemish tuition, beginning that trade which has since 
 made it famous. Bath and Cheltenham were noted places ; Ply- 
 mouth a quaint seaport ; and the men of Devon, next to the men 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. iS 
 
 of Middlesex, were the most daring, the most loyal; the most 
 complete Englishmen o^ the day,, either as soldiers, sailors, 
 courtiers", or statesmen. 
 
 It is impossible I can give you a description of particular 
 towns, but you may fairly ask of me what was their general 
 appearance. The larger ones were surrounded by walls, and 
 dominated by castles and donjon-keeps. For the most part the 
 houses were common, built of timber where it was plentiful, of 
 " timber and stone where both were abundant, with overhanging 
 upper storeys; the outside walls plastered over vsdth cement, 
 sometimes, as Harrison notes, of " delectable whitenesse." Glass 
 windows were just beginning to replace windows of lattice-work, 
 made of wicker or of "rifts of oak, checker- wise." Fire-places 
 and chimneys were absent from the houses of the poor, even in 
 towns, and the roofs were made of reeds, not of straw-thatch, as 
 in later times. Eushes were used to cover the ea;rthen floors of 
 the lower rooms. So great, indeed, was the contrast between 
 the style of the buildings and the living of the people that a 
 Spaniard said of them^" These English have their houses made 
 of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonlie as well as the King." 
 The houses of the better class in the towns had parapetted fronts, 
 with quaint gable, ends, and were enclosed by walls. The rooms 
 were wainscotted, not with English but with Danish oak; the 
 staircases were massive and carved ; the furniture substantial 
 and costly. Glass windows were so common in the houses of 
 the rich that Lord Bacon complained that they were now " so full 
 of glass that we cannot tell where to come to be out of the sun 
 or the cold." Stoves were making their appearance in merchants' 
 houses and family mansions. In the country, the peasants' houses 
 were always of one storey, and consisted of two rooms. The farm 
 houses were larger and 'more substantial, though generally built 
 of timber. The same may be said of the manor-houses, in which 
 the smaller counlry gentlemen resided, with oflSces at the back 
 for servants. Three things, however, had been marvellously 
 altered in Harrison's time ; he says : first, " the multitude of 
 chimneys lately erected," whereas formerly " ech one made his 
 fire against the reredosse in the hall, where he dined and dressed 
 his meat;" secondly, the " great amendment of lodging," in the 
 substitution of feather-beds and pillows for straw pallets and 
 wooden bolsters ; and, thirdly, " the exchange of vesseU, as of 
 treene platters into pewter, and wodden spoones into silver or 
 tin." The mansions of the nobles and barons were built in 
 several styles, from the old castle of stone, of which there aro 
 
U SHAKBSPIlAEHS IIME. 
 
 several fine samples intact in Durham, able to resist falcon, 
 culverin, or cannon, to the red-brick or terra-cotta house, more' 
 especially associated with the Elizabethan period — a compound 
 of the Italian orders, with reminiscences of the Pointed style. 
 Numbers of delightful buildings were constracted in the period — 
 buildings pleasant to look at and to dwell in, suggesting a 
 transition from feudal dominance to domestic comfort, from 
 sieges and civil wars to seciirity and- freedom ; buildings with 
 fretted fronts and quadrangular courtyards, with picturesque 
 gables and chimneys, with jutting oriels and castellated gate- 
 ways ; buildings with Italian gardens about them, with shady 
 walks and bowling alleys, and brilliant aviaries, and pleasant 
 summer-houses, and plashing fountains — gardens that suggested 
 to Lord Bacon that it was God Almighty who planted the first 
 of them — gardens which Laneham said, referring to Kenilworth, 
 were " not so good as Paradise for want of the fair rivers, yet 
 better a great deal for the lack of so unhappy a tree." Some of 
 these mansions, as Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, Hunsdon House 
 in Herts., Holland House in Kensington, Knowle in Kent, 
 Longleat in Wiltshire, WoUaton Hall In Nottinghamshire, are 
 still standing, or have passed into decay in living memory. 
 Hesliagton Hall, near York, is a fair specimen of restored Eliza- 
 bethan architecture. * 
 
 It would occupy me too long to describe the interiors of these 
 commodious mansions, their common halls and chapels, their 
 ball-rooms and chambers, their coats of mail and tapestries, and 
 their costly plate and works of art. The age was growing in 
 luxury, despoiling the world, and living a bright unburdened life. 
 The ladies not averse to household duties, clever in the dairy, 
 dexterous with the needle, accomplished on the lute, the viol, and 
 the vu-glnal (a kind of piano) ; the gentlemen hunting with hawk 
 and hoimd, sldlled with bow and lance, fond of bowls, not too 
 religious for cards, and able to talk Latin and Greek with the 
 ladies, or cap verses and stories with the jester. Everybody rose 
 early and fasted until dinner-time, which was at half-past ten 
 in the country, and about noon in the tovms. Beverages or 
 " nuntions " were sometimes taken after dinner, with dessert and 
 a nap in "mine orchard" — in remote country districts refresh-, 
 ment between breakfast and dinner is still called nuution; but 
 the rule was for two meals a day — dinner and supper. The last 
 meal was lingered over, beginning at five and frequently lasting 
 until nine p.m. It was after the heavier part of the eating was 
 over — they had fine appetites in those days— that the fool used 
 
,mAK^SPEAR^'S TIME. 15 
 
 to make Ms appearance to divert the household. Touchstone, in 
 As You Like It, was evidently a portrait of the domestic clown, 
 taken from the life. "Poor Yorick," in Hamlet, was one of 
 these fellows " of infinite jest." But the custom was dying out, 
 because it was not easy to find m«n clever enough to play the 
 part. Shakespeare alludes to this discontinuance in As You Like 
 It, where it is said, " since the little wit that fools have was 
 silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes the greater 
 show." When foolery went out there was more elaboration in 
 eatiQg and drinkrag. Tea and coffee not being in use — coffee 
 and teetotalism both came from Turkey, the only good things 
 that ever did, long after Shakespeare was dead (1652) — ale, and 
 small beer, with wines of various kinds, were taken at all meals. 
 The common vme was sack, or sherry, from Spain, Galicia, or 
 the Canaries, into which, if at all raw, sugar was freely stirred. 
 Hence Sir John Palstaff's saying — "If sack and sugar be a fault, 
 God help the wicked!" Hence, too, the discoloured teeth so com- 
 mon during this period. For dinner the customary fare was 
 from four to six dishes, of divers kinds. Justice Shallow's order, 
 when he invites Falstail, is " Some pigeons, Davy ; a couple of 
 short-legged hens ; a joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny 
 kickshaws, tell William Cook." The common people had but two 
 courses ; a practice of which our meat and pudding are an un- 
 recognised " survival." Falstaff's supper at the Boar's Head, in 
 Eastcheap, was the supper of a tippler. Here was his bill : 
 " Item, a capon, 2s. 2d. ; item, sauce, 4d. ; item, sack, two gal- 
 lons, 5s. 8d. ; item, anchovies and sack after supper, 2s. 6d. ; 
 item, bread, ohf whereat Prince Henry exclaims, "0 monstrous! 
 but one halfpenny worth of bread to this intolerable deal of 
 sack." The best sack was not two shillings a gallon, so Fal- 
 staff was imposed upon. Ale was Id. per gallon, and "small 
 ale," or beer, ^d. a gallon; 
 
 The thirstiness of the English people at that time was pro- 
 verbial, lago says the English " are most potent in potting;" 
 nor is it to be wondered at when we remember how largely salt 
 provisions entered into their ordinary diet. The farmer always 
 had his flitches of ba,con and flitches of salt mutton on hand, in 
 addition to salt-beef and barreled-herrings from Yarmouth. In 
 all good houses there was an imposing array of salting tubs for 
 preserving meat. The art of stall-feeding was almost unknown 
 to the farmers and graziers, and fresh meat, if procurable in the 
 winter, was very lean. It was from a halfpenny to a penny a 
 pound, equ^l to about one penny or the two pence of our money. 
 
16 SttAKESPEARE'S TIME. 
 
 Fresh fish was the luxury of the rich, cither obtamed from the 
 ponds on their estates, or carried from the nearest ports by post- 
 horses. Pish, in the shape of salted herrings and salt-cod, was a 
 common article of food amongst the working classes ; and when 
 they began to obtain fresh meat in the place of it, or to live 
 upon bread and cheese, fish was commanded to be eaten by Act 
 of Parliament, on Fridays and Saturdays, and partially on Wed- 
 nesdays, not as a reUgious observance, but to encourage the 
 English fishing trade. Rye and barley bread was eaten by the 
 poor, with the frequent addition of ground beans and peas, for 
 wheat was sometimes three pounds a quarter — equal to about 
 six pounds of our money. The price of bread and beer was 
 regulated by local assize ofiicers. A learned physician of Buxton, 
 in Derbyshire, gives an account of the various forms of bread : 
 " Bred of dyvers graines, of divers forms, in divers places be 
 used. Some in form of manchet, used of the gentility ; some of 
 great loafs, as is usual amongst yeomanry ; some between both, 
 as with the franklins ; some in form of cakes, as at weddings ; 
 some rond of hogs, as at upsittings; some simnels, cracknels, as 
 in the Lent ; some in brode cakes, as the oten cakes in Lendall, 
 on yrons; some on slate stones, as in the high peke; some in 
 frying pans, as in Darbyshire; some between yrons and wapons ; 
 some in rond cakes, as bysket for the ships. But these and all 
 others the mayne bread of York excelleth, for that it is of the 
 fhaest flour of the wheate, well-tempered, best baked, a patterns 
 of all others the fineste." 
 
 Life LQ the towns was of a very jog-trot kind, except when 
 the town happened to be the county town and the neighbouring 
 nobles and squires came in for the season — London was a long 
 way off in those days — with their nimierous servants in blue 
 cloth, their Irish cobs and crab-shell coaches, and their fine 
 foreign manners; when there were balls, civic feasts, cock-fights, 
 bear-baitings, archery-contests, and meiTy-makings of all des- 
 criptions, including the performance of miracle-plays and dramas. 
 The miracle-plays were continued in ancient places Uke Coventry, 
 Chester, and probably York, long after they had served their 
 original purpose, and the chief actors were members of the 
 various trade-guilds, who vied with each other in dress and 
 dramatic talent. Here are a few titles of some of the miracle- 
 plays performed in Shakespeare's youth at Chester. He would 
 most likely see similar plays at Coventry : 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 17 
 
 Of the Creation of the Heavens, of Angels, and of Infernal Spirits. 
 
 By the Tanners. 
 On Noah's Deluge. By the Water-Drawers of the Dee. 
 On the Slaying of the Innocents. By the Goldsmiths. 
 On the Supper of our Lord. By the Bakers. 
 On the Descent of Christ into Hell. By the Cooks. 
 
 And so on. No irreverence was meant and none was felt. 
 Plays were performed by strolling companies in nearly all the 
 corporate towns, and generally on the Sunday, as provided by 
 A(St of Parliament, because there should be no interference with 
 the bear-baitings common on the Thursday. The Guildhall was 
 generally arranged for the entertainments, and, for the most 
 part, they were paid for, in a lump sum, out of the town- 
 moneys. A mayor, wishing to make himself popular, would hire 
 a company of players, send round the crier, and gather a 
 crowded house, we may be sure. The hint may be of service 
 for future Lord Mayors of York. It is known for a certainty 
 that there were several visits of players to Stratford-on-Avon 
 during Shakespeare's youth. He was probably present at the 
 Kenilworth revels and pageants in 1575, when EHzabeth was 
 grandly entertained there, and he was in his eleventh year. 
 Captaia Cox and a Coventry troupe performed there the Mas- 
 sacre of the Danes by the English on St. Bride's Night, 
 A.D. 1012. 
 
 Another town amusement was the practice of archery. Every 
 town had its two butts, by royal order, for the training of young 
 men in the English bow — " a most honest pastime in peace," 
 says Roger Ascham, " a most sure weapon in wdrre." The 
 bow was of yew, ash, or ,elm, three fingers thick and seven 
 feet long. The arrows of ash — the heavier ones for use at two 
 hundred and fifty yards, the lighter ones for distances beyond 
 that. In length, from two-and-a-half feet to four feet. It 
 , would take a very strong arm and wrist to' send the heavy 
 arrow two hundred and fifty yards, and no man could do 
 it at the present time without long training. The power to do 
 so had failed in our later French wars, for the enemy ridiculed 
 our archers as their arrows fell short. The Bowyers and 
 Fletchers of to-day are the descendants of the bow and arrow 
 makers of the ages before guns and rifles. The standing army 
 of Elizabeth's time was not large, but every male was trained 
 for a soldier, and there were a million men ready to serve in case 
 of invasion, though only one hundred thousand were under arms' 
 when the Spaniards were expected. Most persons habitually went 
 about armed, and even discreet magistrates and rotund bur- 
 
18 SHAKESPEABE'S TIME. 
 
 gesses carried the dagger in their belts. Schools for teaching 
 fencing became so notorious, indeed, that they had to be re- 
 strained, limited to the cities, and placed under the control of 
 the governors. Duels and constant acts of violence were the 
 result of this free use of swords, daggers, hangers, and pistols. 
 It was true in this matter, as in others, as Falstaff puts it : " It 
 was always yet the trick of our English, if they have a good 
 thing, to make it too common." The country amusements 
 chiefly consisted in the due celebration of all the feasts, in 
 wakes and fairs, in Maypole games, and in the finding of all 
 sorts of excuses to drink ale, in the churchyard or on the village 
 green. For example, there were Whitsuntide-ales, Leet-ales, 
 Lamb-ales, Bride-ales, Clerk-ales, and Ohurch-ales. 
 
 It was always possible to tell a man's class by his dress. 
 The general costume, then as uow, was hghter than that worn 
 by the Germans and the Dutch. It was modelled upon French 
 and Italian fashions. The male costume consisted of a close jer- 
 kin, or waistcoat, often reversible ; a doublet, long-breasted and 
 padded, sometimes peaked in front like a stomacher ; hose, or 
 trousers, puffed out over the thighs, known as trunk-hose ; a 
 short coat over all ; a flat cap, a ruff round the neck, a rapier 
 strapped to the waist, long stockings, and shoes of various sizes 
 and colours. This was the typical fashion, but it was much 
 altered in detail. The apprentices were compelled by statute to 
 wear round woollen caps, " plain statute caps," as Shakespeare 
 calls them ; as were all persons not of high station. Their 
 doublets were to be made of canvas, fustian, leather, or cloth, 
 without" ornaments ; their stockings and hose (the latter title 
 was afterwards limited to stockings) of white, blue, or russet ; 
 their overcoats, in place of the short cloak, of cloth, cotton, or 
 baize ; their shoes of unpinked English hide, their girdles of 
 leather, their ruffs plain, and their only weapon the knife. The 
 burgher, or citizen, displayed more ruff round the neck, and in- 
 dulged in gayer-coloured doublets. His coat or cloak was 
 usually of brown cloth. Satin sleeves and doublets, with scarlet 
 cloaks and gowns, were marlis of Aldermanic dignity. Lawyers 
 wore a loose black gown and a tight-fitting coif or cap. In- 
 deed, black cloth was wholly confined to law and divinity. The 
 yeoman dressed in home-spun russet in the smnmer, in frieze in 
 the winter ; the country gentleman in a brown or blue coat, with 
 a plain doublet, and no feather in his cap ; the rustic in grey 
 cloth ; the shepherd in a russet jacket, with red sleeves, and a 
 blue cap. As for the dandies, they affected silk and satin mate- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 19 
 
 fials, padded or wired out their hose, covered their cloaks with 
 lace, clothed their legs with silk stockings of various colours, 
 feathered their hats, gilded their rapiers, and coloured their ruffs 
 with tinted starches. Their' cloaks and rapiers grew so long 
 that BKzabeth placed two officers at the corners of the principal 
 London streets to cut them down to decency. Beards, too, de- 
 noted a man's class. The formally-cut beard denoted the jus- 
 tice and the judge; the spear or dagger-shaped beard, the 
 soldier; the dainty small beard, the wit ; the bristly beard, the 
 country clown. Ear-rings were not uncommon amongst the 
 more extravagant young men about town, nor the long ringlets 
 which became the mark of the Royalists in later times. One of 
 the orders issued by Burleigh, as Chancellor of Cambridge Uni- 
 versity, was, that " no scholar do wear any long locks of hair 
 upon his head, but that he be polled, after the manner of the 
 gravest scholars, under pain of six shillings and eightpence." 
 
 I feel myself quite unable to do justice to the subject of ladies' 
 costumes, to their stomachers, ruffs, and hats, to their kirtle"fe 
 and farthingales, to their partlets and tire-valiants, to their^ 
 cauls and minevers, their chopines and supertasses. The vanity 
 of these dear creatures was beyond belief. They painted their 
 faces, dyed their hair, wore " the golden tresses of the dead," as 
 Shakespeare says in one of his sonnets, to imitate the Queen's 
 reddish locks ; they steeped themselves in perfume, covered . 
 themselves in pearls and Venice gold, and made, the sweetest of 
 private confessions to the dainty Venice mirrors they carried at 
 their girdles. Gentlemen wore their ladies' gloves in their hats, 
 and the ladies themselves were proud to be so honoured. Now, 
 the fashion is for the ladies to be as much like the gentlemen as 
 possible ; then, it was the gentlemen who were scarcely to be 
 distinguished from the ladies. But there were still the ruff and 
 the farthingale to indicate the difference, as there are now the 
 smooth face and the back hair. Hear what Stubbs, the Puritan, 
 says about ladies' ruffs: " One arch or pillar wherewith the devil's 
 kingdom of great ruffs, is under-propped is a certain kind of 
 liquid matter which they call starche, wherein the devil hath 
 learned them to wash and die their ruffs, which being dry, will 
 stand stiff and inflexible about their necks. And this starch they 
 make of divers substances — all colours and hues, of white, red, 
 blue, purple, and the like." Another easily distinguishing mark 
 was the long sleeve, whose ends trailed on the ground, and were 
 cast over the shoulder, as Stubbs irreverently says, " like cow's- 
 tails." The ladies could shoot deer as well as practice that other 
 
20 SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 
 
 kind of archery mentioned in Romeo and Jvliet, where we read : 
 
 Alas poor Romeo he is already dead ; stabbed with a white wenoh'a 
 black eye | shot thorough the ear with a love-song ; the very pin of his 
 heart cleft with the blind bqw-boy's butt-shaft. 
 
 But they were not insipid beauties, of whom Pope might 
 have written some of his Epistles. To lovers like Biron, 
 in Love's Labour Lost, they were 
 
 the books, the arts, the academes, 
 
 That show, contain, and nourish all the world. 
 
 They were able to speak several languages ; they could retort 
 upon you with a passage from Plato, or one of Shakespeare's 
 " sugared sonnets,'' as Meres calls them ; and, above all, they 
 could " parley Euphuism " — an affected style of antithesis and 
 alliteration, named after Lily's Euphues, and of whic"h Shakes- 
 peare makes more than an occasional use in his plays. The 
 Queen set them a good example in these respects, for she prided 
 herself upon her literary tastes and her linguistic skill. She also 
 wrote some creditable poems and translations. Her courtiers 
 were equally cultivated. Indeed, her Court was the most learned 
 and polite in Europe, as it was the most magnificent in dress and 
 ceremonial. The Queen's Palaces at Greenwich, Eichmond, and 
 Hampton Court were the wonder of foreign ambassadors; and I 
 doubt if her royal progresses, her tournaments, revels, and 
 pageants were ever surpassed. The nobles complained that they 
 were impoverished by them, but the poor delighted in them, and 
 they had much to do with the Queen's unbounded popularity. 
 Spenser and Shakespeare were immensely mdebted to the9e 
 splendid displays for that warmth and picturesqueness of imagin- 
 ation which lend such a charm to their works. They un- 
 doubtedly fostered that love for spectacular display which found 
 in the drama its legitimate gratification. 
 
 The court fashions w^ere borrowed from France and Venice. 
 The Duke of York, in Richard II., complains of the King bemg 
 so engrossed with the 
 
 Report of fashions in proud Italy, » 
 
 Whose manners still our tardy apish nation 
 Limps after, in base imitation. 
 
 It was from Venice, also, came the external polish, the dazzling 
 magnificence, and the intellectual vivacity of the time. It was 
 the great centre of polite learning and manners. Of the ten 
 thousand books issued in Europe between 1470 and 1500, some 
 two thousand eight hundred and- thirty-five were published in 
 Venice, and only one hundred and forty-one in England. From its 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 21 
 
 numerous printing presses issued the novels and poems which 
 Shakespeare made such good use of in the construction of hie 
 plays, and which Ascham refers to as." the enchantments of 
 Circes, brought out of Italie to marre men's manners in England." 
 •Readers of the time, says the same authority, " have in more 
 reverence the triumphs of Petrarch than the Genesis of Moses. 
 They make more account of TuUies' ofiSces than St. Paule's 
 epistles ; of a tale in Bocace than a stone of the Bible." To the 
 varied attractions of Venice, its palaces, its festivities, and its 
 silent highways, went the rich and gallant youth of England, to 
 lounge and to study, to learn fencing, dancing, and singing. 
 RosaUnd undoubtedly refers to this custom of visiting Venice 
 when she says to Jacques : " Farewell, Monseur Traveller. Look 
 you lisp and wear strange suits ; disable all the benefits of your 
 own country; be out of love with your nativity; and almost 
 chide God for making you that countenance that you are ; or I 
 wiU scarce think you have swam in a gondola." Sir John 
 Eeresby, who was Member of Pariiament for York, in the 
 middle of the seventeenth century, writes in his diary, under 
 date of 1656 : "I passed this winter there (Padua), and at 
 Venice (where I went often) very pleasantly. The exercise I 
 followed was chiefly music ; my studies were the language ^ and 
 the mathematics, for which science there was an admirable 
 master, especially for fortification. I followed also fencing and 
 dancing, but in quite a different method from that of Prance." 
 The poUtical influence of the Italian Republics upon this country 
 was also considerable, as ]^r. Lecky points out ; for he says: "A 
 large proportion of the highest intellects acquired in Italy a 
 knowledge of the Italian writers on government, and an admira- 
 tion for the Italian constitutions, and especially that of Venice." 
 Harrington's Oceaim, published in Cromwell's time, bears many 
 traces of this influence, and we have since improved our consti- 
 tution in accordance, with the principles there laid down. Har- 
 rington was the first English writer, I believe, who advocated" 
 the ballot. If Puritanism came to us from sober Germany, we 
 caught the fire of liberty from the apparently frivolous Italian 
 Republics. It was not Presbyterianism only, but with it a kind 
 of intellectual Paganism, which made us tolerant and fond of 
 freedom. 
 
 About the year 1587, William Shakespeare, a handsome, well- 
 shaped man, with brown eyes and pensive benevolent face, 
 twenty-four years of age, left Stratford for London, with a por- 
 tion of the manuscript of Venus and Adonis in his pocket, and 
 
22 SHAKESPEARE'S TIME, 
 
 perhaps some sonnets and imperfect plays. We have fixed upon 
 that year because Burbage, the tragedian, with whom we subse- 
 quently find him associated at the Blackfriars Theatre, visited 
 Stratford that year with the Queen's Players. Full of energy 
 and genius, and believing that " home-keeping youth has ever 
 homely wits," he went to London to make his way in the world. 
 Traditions about his own deer-stealing and his father's poverty 
 may be dismissed from our view. Burbage was a -native of 
 Stratford, and there cannot be much doubt that he induced the 
 poet to seek a wider sphere for his gifts. Now, what was Lon- 
 don like — his greatest view of the world — when Shakespeare 
 visited it for the first tune ? I take this to be the most impor- 
 tant matter we have yet considered. London was a true mirror 
 of all the social and intellectual forces of the time; a gay, rich, 
 bustling, versatile city, in which a yoimg man's inind would 
 quickly expand,, and find something better to interest it than 
 " dead school-cram." As he trudges through Oxford and over 
 the Chiltern Hills to enter London by the New Gate, let us 
 briefly epitomise the national situation. The struggle against 
 the Papists was proceedmg briskly; Eobert Brown had com- 
 menced the foundations of Independency ; Queen Mary had been 
 tried and executed ; Newfoundland had been added "to England; 
 Virginia had been discovered by Drake, and- so named after the 
 Virgin Queen ; he had beaten the Spaniards in the West Indies 
 and at Cadiz ; Sir Philip Sidney had been killed at Zutphen ; 
 the Armada was being got ready to conquer England ; John 
 Fox, the martyrologist, had died; Marlowe had introduced blank 
 verse on the London stage in Tainburlane the Great; tobacco- 
 smoking was the last new fashion ; and Queen Elizabeth had 
 issued her proclamation against the further growth of London, 
 setting forth that no more houses should be built within three 
 miles of its walls, and that only one family should inhabit each 
 house. You have probably seen plans of ancient London, and 
 its gates, its narrow streets, its solitary bridge over the Thames, 
 its broad clear river, its churches, and its public buildings. 
 Islington, HoUoway, Chelsea, Marylebone, and the Borough 
 were either fields or suburbs ; Regent's Park was a tilting 
 ground ; Spitalfields was an open grassy place ; Smithfield was 
 planted with trees ; Piccadilly was famous for its wild fox- 
 gloves ; Cornhill market was surrounded by gardens ; the no- 
 bUity lived in the Strand and Drury Lane ; and the promiuent 
 buildings were the Tower, the Royal Exchange, Old St. Paul's, 
 and Wolsey's Palace at Whitehall. Though there were forty 
 
SHAKESPE ABE'S TIME. 23 
 
 thousand watermen living by work upon the Thames, it was a 
 pleasant river; its banks adorned hj gentlemen's villas, by 
 stately trees, and Italian gardens. The city had a population of 
 one hundred thousand souls, of whom some ten thousand were 
 foreigners, engaged in various industries; Flemings, Frenchmen, 
 Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese, with here and there, by the 
 riverside, a Greek, a negro, and a Turk. Here was an England 
 in a single scope ; here were hardy sailors and explorers, sol- 
 diers and buccaneers, trading merchants, politicians, lawyers, 
 dramatists, artists, poets, satirists,- gay cavaliers, and beautiful 
 ladies, with their various costumes, characters, and places of 
 resort. Here also were to be jostled against many of the lesser 
 characters in Shakespeare's plays — ^tavern-hunters and swag- 
 gerers, garrulous citizens, witty rogues, needy usurers, pedantic 
 parsons, running footmen, begging prisoners, ballad-singers, 
 watchmen, pretentious apothecaries, quarrelsome dandies, and 
 merry wives of Windsor. Shakespeare saw them all, and pho- 
 tographed them in his pages; mixing up town manners and 
 country allusions; tempering the hot blasts of city licentiousness 
 with flower-scented breezes from the rolling uplands of War- 
 wickshire. You , can discover he is not a town-bred poet by 
 the sincerity of his. love for nature and his familiarity, with 
 country life. 
 
 The narrow streets of London were constantly brightened by 
 some pageant or other. " The paths," says Thornbury, <' were 
 filled by jostling serving-men, French pages and watermen, and 
 wounded soldiers from the Dutch wars, Spanish gallants, Greek 
 merchants ; there were actors and bear- wards, masters of fence, 
 bullies, and gentlemen-pensioners, and gay citizens' wives and 
 hona robas, and falconers, all bright, coloured, shifting, motley, 
 and picturesque. There was no dull monotony and stereotype 
 of dress, face, and manners, but a never-ending variety, shifting 
 and brilliant as the dyes of a kaleidoscope. There were beards . 
 of all classes and professions : the spruce, the pointed, the 
 round, grey, black, and cream-coloured. All dress marked 
 class ; the 'prentice passed with his round cap and truncheon ; 
 the citizen with his trimmed gown and gold chain ; the noble 
 with his silk cloak and scented 'doublet, gold spurs and span- 
 gled feather ; the needy adventurer with his rusty sword and 
 greasy buff, or half Indian robe ; the scrivener with his rusty 
 black coat and unfailing bag ; the divine with his cassock and 
 his bands ; the yeoman with his unbarked staff ; and the court 
 lady rolling by in her ponderous gilded coach. At Smithfield 
 
24 SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 
 
 were the horsedealers ; at St. Paul's the discarded servants and 
 hungry spendthrifts ; in Southwark the bull-baiters ; at White- 
 'hall the courtiers; and at Westminster the lawyers. All the 
 merchants were to be seen at a certain hour round Gresham in 
 the Exchange, discussing the Muscovy trade, or the prospects 
 of Virginia. The players at night met in The Mermaid or The 
 Devil ; the courtiers at the ordinaries, or at the promenade at St. 
 Paul's, where politics and fashions were indifferently discussed. 
 The Ufe was more social and genial out of doors than now. Every 
 man met his friend daily at St. Paul's, the theatre, the ordinary, or 
 the court. The great men of the day were known to everybody, 
 and could be heard talking at the tilt-yard or -the pageant." 
 The middle aisle of the old edifice of St. Paul's was the Prado 
 of London. T*ice daily, at eleven and three, did it fill with 
 a motley crowd of young gallants, eager to display their new 
 fineries ; priests, soldiers, serving-men, newsmongers, pages, 
 players, country visitors, and quick-fingered thieves. The choris- 
 ters demanded spur-money of any one who entered with spurs 
 on his boots. " And thus doth my middle aisle," says Decker, 
 " shew like the Mediterranean Sea, in which as well the merchant 
 hoysts sailes to purchase wealth honestly, as the rover to Ught 
 upon prize unjustly. Thus am I like a common mart, where all 
 the commodities (both the good and the bad) are to be bought 
 and sold. Thus, whilst devotion kneels at her prayers, doth 
 profanation walk under her nose, in contempt of reUgion." The 
 taverns, too, were very numerous, and the resort of divers 
 characters, who smoked down the nose — the common method 
 then — ^whilst waiting for their ordinaries. After dinner, eaten 
 without a fork — for " the laudable use of forks," as Ben Jon- 
 son has it, did not come in until Shakespeare had left London 
 and was living in comparative wealth at Stratford ; after dinner, 
 playing at cards and dice, powdering their talk with strange 
 oaths, over their Bastard or Malmsey wine, and listening to 
 narratives such as Hakluyt has recorded, of adventures on the 
 sea, or fights with the Spaniards. 
 
 At night the streets were unlit, and very much at the mercy 
 of thieves and roysterers of every description. Of course there 
 were laws to restrain disorder, but they were easily evaded, and 
 never very rigorously enforced. To blow a horn or a whistle 
 in the streets after nine o'clock was an offence punishable by 
 imprisonment. There were constant fights in the streets, how- 
 ever, and the watchmen, who carried curved bills or halberts, a 
 lantern, and^sometimes a bell, were reinforced by the London ap- 
 
SHAKESPEABE'S tlMil. 25 
 
 prentices, who sallied out whenever the cry of " Clubs " was 
 raised. ' ' I'll call for clubs if you will not away," says the Mayor 
 of London, in the First Part of Henry V., when the partisans of 
 the Duke of Gloucester and the Cardinal of Winchester are 
 quarrelling. Perhaps nothing will more fully describe the 
 whims of the watch than Dogberry's advice in Much Ado About 
 Nothing : 
 
 Doi/berry. — This is your oliarge : You shall comprehend all vagrom 
 men ; you are to bid any man stand, in the Prince's name. 
 
 2nd Watch. — How if a' will not stand ? 
 
 Dogierry. — ^Why, then take no note of him, but let him go ; and pre- 
 sently call the rest of the watoh together, - and thank God you are rid 
 of a knave. 
 
 Verges. — If he will not stand when he is bidden, he is none of the 
 Prince's subjects. 
 
 Dogberry. — ^True, and they are to meddle with none but the Prince's 
 subjects. You shall also make no noise in the street ; for, for the watch 
 to babble and talk is mdst tolerable and not to be endured. 
 
 2nd Watch. — We will rather sleep than talk ; we know what belongs 
 to a watoh, 
 
 Dogberry. — Why, you speak tike- an ancient and most quiet watch- 
 man, for I cannot see how sleeping should offend ; only have a care that 
 your bills be not stolen. Well, you are to call at the ale houses, and bid 
 them that are drunk get them to bed. 
 
 2nd Watch.— 'H.ow if they will not ? 
 
 Dogberry. — Why, then let them alone tiU they are sober ; if they 
 make you not then the better answer, say they are not the men you 
 took them for. 
 
 2nd Watch.— "^Al, sir. 
 
 Dogberry. — If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue of 
 your office, to be no true man ; and, for such kind of men, the less you 
 meddle or make with them, why, the more is for your honesty. 
 
 2nd Watch. — If we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay hands 
 on him. 
 
 Dogberry. — Truly, by your ofifice you may ; but I think they that 
 touch pitch will be .defiled. The most peaceable way for you, if you do 
 take a thief, is to let hijn show himself^ what he is, and steal out of 
 your company. 
 
 I now pass on to describe the British Theatre in Shakespeare's 
 time, as seen in the Metropolis. During the height of his career 
 as an actor, a dramatist, and a theatre proprietor in London — for 
 the Swan of Avon was all three, if he never held the horses upon 
 which the gallants rode to the play, as some say he did — there 
 were ten theatres in London, divided into two classes, public and 
 private. The public theatres were, the Glob6, in Southwark ; 
 the Curtain, in Shoreditch ; the Red Bull, in St. John's Street ; 
 and the Fortune, in Whitecross Street. The private theatres 
 were Blackfriars, where Shakespeare played, and of which he 
 
26 SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 
 
 was part-proprietor, with Burbage and others ; the Cockpit, in 
 Drury Lane ; Whitefriars, on the Bankside ; and three smaller 
 ones, the Swan, the Eose, and the Hope. Shakespeare's 
 plays were only performed at the Globe and Blackfriars, which 
 belonged to the same company of players. The distinctions 
 between the public and the private theatres were, in the main, 
 that the first were open to the sky in the centre, and the per- 
 formances took place at or about two. in the afternoon, and 
 chiefly in the summer ; whereas, in the private theatres, every- 
 thing was architecturally much the same as in our day, candle- 
 light was used, and there were performances in the winter. 
 Plays were acted on Sundays as well as on other days, until the 
 year 1591 ; and at least two hundred persons, styhng themselves 
 players, were hving in the Metropolis. The Royal players wore 
 scarlet cloaks in public. The women parts were acted by boys, 
 and that fact, together with the absence of ladies of refinement 
 from the audience, will account for much of the coarseness of 
 many passages in Shakespeare's plays. The stage of the theatre 
 was ample, and strewn with green rushes ; a fact which may 
 account for the " tragic-stride " with which modern play-goers 
 will be familiar. Boys let out stools at sixpence the time for the 
 dandies to sit upon at the sides of the stage, in full view of the 
 audience. Or these gay gentlemen sprawled full length on the 
 rushes, making notes in their tablets of witty passages for 
 use in conversation. Many of the quotations from Shakespeare, 
 which are a part of our common talk, were passed into use in 
 this fashion, before his plays were printed and published. If the 
 performance were dull, the dandies played cards, or smoked their 
 pipes, under the melancholy visage of Timon or Hamlet, and 
 in defiance alike of Ajax, Antony, or bluff King Hal. The 
 '4 groundlings," as they were called in the open theatres, the 
 pittites in the roofed ones,jisually stood up during the perform- 
 ances, and were a disorderly, turbulent folk, whose behaviour 
 would not be tolerated for five minutes in a modern theatre. 
 The prices for admission were — one shilling to the boxes, sixpence 
 to the pit, and twopence to the galleries. The scenic arrange- 
 ments were primitive, very fe'tv painted scenes being used, and 
 labels, indicating the site of the scene, as "The Eoad to 
 Coventry," " A Port in Cyprus," and so on. The front scene 
 opened in the centre, and was drawn up from the side, not 
 rolled up. Nor was there much attention paid to correctness of 
 costume. Brutus and Cassius appeared in the Spanish cloak, and 
 were armed, in time of peace, contrary to the Roman custom. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME, 27 
 
 A performance generally lasted about two hours, and at its close 
 the players fell upon their knees to pray for their Sovereign. 
 The " God Save the Queen," which sometijnes figures at the 
 bottom of our play-bills, is " a survival " of this custom. The 
 wages of players varied from thirty to fifty shillings per- week. 
 Queen Elizabeth never visited any of the theatres, though she 
 frequently had pieces played before her, and she is said to have 
 suggested the Mei-ry Wives of Windsor, in order to see Falstaff in 
 love. Shakespeare himself played the Ghost in Hamlet, Adam 
 in As You Like It, and the English Kings he so masterly por- 
 trayed. John Davies, referring to the last, says : 
 
 Some Bay, good Will, which I in sport do sing, 
 Hadst thou not played some kingly parts in sport, 
 
 Thou hadst been a companion for a king. 
 And been a king among the meaner sort. 
 
 The purpose of playing he has set forth. in his own Hamlet: 
 
 To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature j to show virtue her own 
 feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his 
 form and pressure. 
 
 Shakespeare's general civility and uprightness are mentioned 
 by several contemporaries. Spenser styles him " pleasant 
 Willy," and sings of his " gentle spirit." Ben Jonson calls 
 him " gentle Shakespeare," " the applause, delight, and wonder 
 of our stage." But the subtle critics, who discover autobio- 
 graphic allusions in his sonnets, are full of mysterious intima- 
 tions as to his moral backslidings. His sonnets, I may say, 
 were circulated in MS. before publication, as Meres declares, 
 and only eighteen of his thirty-six or seven authenticated plays 
 were published during his lifetime. These were — Titus Andro- 
 nicus, Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labour Lost, A Midsummer Night's 
 Di'eam, Much Ado Ahout Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, King 
 Lear, Troilus and Ci^essida, Pericles, Richard II., Tlie First and 
 Second Parts of Henri/ IV., Riclmrd III., Hamlet, Tlie Merry 
 Wives of Windsor, Henry V., and The Second and Third Parts of 
 Henry VI. The first collected edition of his plays was pub- 
 lished in 1623, seven years after his death, from the prompter's 
 books in use at the two theatres I have named ; a fact which 
 vnll explain the disputes and contradictioris, the ingenious emen- 
 dations and audacious improvements of the hosts of critics who 
 have explained and exploited him ever since. Owing to the 
 non-publication of his plays as they were produced and acted, 
 it was next to impossible that the purely literary student of the 
 time should be able to form a fair estimate of the genius of the 
 
28 SHAKESPEARE^ S TIME. 
 
 man. It is not, therefore, at all surprising that we meet with 
 no references to him in the writings of Lord Bacon, in Sir 
 Thomas Browne, in Donne or Wotton, who may have been 
 unfamiliar with his more serious poems and plays, though he 
 had good patrons in Queen Elizabeth, in King James (who 
 wrote to him a letter of praise, which has been lost), in Lord 
 Essex, in Lord Pembroke, and the Earl of Southampton. He 
 was merely regarded as a popular player, and nobody suspected, 
 as Emerson finely puts it, " that he was the poet of the human 
 race." His felloW-townsman, Burbage, the tragedian, was of 
 greater repute; and Tarleton, the jester, who sometimes ap- 
 peared at the theatres between the acts of a play, was a 
 thousand times more popular, as abundant popular prints of him 
 attest. Sir Richard Baker, who was four years Shakespeare's 
 junior, and outlived him, wrote some Chronicles, of which he 
 himself says that, if all others were lost, his would be sufficient 
 to inform posterity. He makes the following reference to Shakes- 
 peare, which wiU illustrate what. I have said. He has men- 
 tioned all the men of learning and note in Elizabeth's reign, and 
 then he says : " After such men it might be thought ridiculous 
 to speak of stage players, but, seeing excellency in the meanest 
 things deserves remembring, and Roscius, the comedian, is re- 
 corded in history with such commendation, it may be allowed in 
 us to do the like with some of our nation. Richard Burbage 
 and Edward Allen, two such actors as no age must ever look to 
 see the like ; and to make their comedies compleat, Richard 
 Tarleton, who, for the part called the clown's part, never had 
 his match, never will have. For writers of plays and such as 
 had been players themselves, William Shakespeare and Ben- 
 jamin Jonson have specially left their names recommended to 
 posterity." 
 
 This inability to obtain a proper perspective whilst Shakes- 
 peare was a living man, or but recently buried in Stratford 
 Church, accounts also for the disputes as to his subsequent life, 
 and for his companionship with Homer and Plato in having 
 scarcely any accurate biography. It was not until he had been 
 dead a century or two, until he had been dug up, as it were, 
 like an antique ruin, that his genius was fully appreciated ; tliat 
 he acted upon German literature like the spring sun upon frost- 
 bound wood and field ; and that Englishmen, everywhere, found 
 in him the most perfect poet of pathos, the richest humourist, the 
 subtlest drawer of character, the truest interpreter of ancient 
 history this world has ever yet produced. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 29 
 
 Who were the contemporaries that overshadowed him? We 
 have mentioned two or three, but there were many others. 
 Amongst the dramatists there were mighty Marlowe, pathetic 
 Webster, rugged Jonson, voluminous Decker, Marston, Mas- 
 singer, and those " twin brothers in song," Beaumont and Flet- 
 cher. Amongst, the poets proper Spenser stands first, the poet 
 of chivalry, the sweetest of all songsters in the Elizabethan 
 nest of singing-birds. His Faerie Quern became, it has been 
 said, " the delight of every accomplished gentleman, the model 
 of every poet, the solace of every soldier." After him came 
 Chapman, the translator of Homer, "the proud full sail of 
 whose great verse " Shakespeare himself praises in his sonnets ; 
 Fulke Greville, the soldier-poet; Ealeigh and Sidney, who 
 Spenserised; Drayton, the rhyming chronicler; Daniel, the 
 sonneteer; Sackville, the allegorical. Amongst miscellaneous 
 authors were quaint Koger Ascham, the philosophical Bacon, the 
 prosing Camden, the learned Coke, the witty Donne, Fairfax, the 
 translator of Tasso, deistical Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Holin- 
 shed the chronicler, the judicious Hooker, and the painstaking 
 antiquaries. Speed, Spelman and Stowe. Of the men who com- 
 peted with him by their deeds, there was a host. There was 
 the brave Sir Humphrey Gilbert, whose dying speech should 
 be the sailor's motto in all seas : " Courage, my friends ! we 
 are as near heaven by sea as on the land." There was Raleigh, 
 who discovered El Dorado, and by his tobacco, as some 
 think, the fumes of another place ; there was the brave sea- 
 lion, Sir John Hawkins ; there was Sir Francis Drake, under 
 whose portrait in Plymouth Guildhall it is written : " The 
 sunne himself cannot forget his fellow traveller ; " with a host 
 of other naval heroes, whose brave deeds will never die. And 
 who can forget Leicester, the Queen's favourite, " with whom 
 England was too much occupied in his life time," says Proude ; 
 Burleigh her Chancellor; Bishop Jewel, the author of The 
 Apology ; Archbishop Parker, who stripped our churches of 
 their Papal ornaments ; or brave Peter Wentworth, who went 
 twice to the Tower for speaking too freely about " the griefs 
 of the Commonwealth," in the House of Commons ? Amidst 
 such a galaxy of stars, in the glare of so many cometary 
 bodies, with meteors flashing across the heavens in bewildering 
 splendour, is it any wonder that the dramatist, William Shakes- 
 peare, should have seemed a minor being, a man who frets his 
 little hour upon the stage; and that when his death had to be 
 recorded in the Parish Kegister, at Stratford-on-Avon, there 
 
30 SHAKESPEABE'S TIME. 
 
 should only be that detestable abbreviation " gent." put after 
 his name to mark the kind of man he was ? 
 
 In the list of -Shakespeare's rivals and compeers I have 
 omitted the greatest, Queen Elizabeth herself. The divinity 
 which is supposed to " hedge a King " transforms a Queen ; 
 and accordingly the daughter of Anne Boleyn has been painted 
 as a moral monster and an angel of light, as an elaborate 
 dissembler, and simply as " Good Queen Bess." We should 
 remember the nature of her sex when we read the flatteries of 
 her courtiers. We should decline to see wholly with the 
 eyes of the lovers who dangled about her, or the enemies who 
 failed to conquer her, or the Puritans whom she disdained to 
 satisfy. She was vain beyond all precedent, it is said, 
 appearing in gorgeous dresses, which were like illuminated 
 editions of ^sop's Fables. She left three thousand silk dresses 
 behind her when she died. She envied the ladies who outshone her 
 in beauty and jewels, and she made great men remain on their 
 knees in conversation with her, as if she were a Saba or a 
 I Semiramis. That she was naturally vain, I admit ; but may 
 not the excess be attributed in part to the direct and indirect 
 flatteries of the time? Foreign potentates sought her hand. 
 Pope Pius V. thought her likely enough to bewitch Western 
 Europe unless subdued, not by courtship, but by conquest. 
 The poets were lavish in her praise. Shakespeare referred to 
 her in Midsummer Night's Drecmi, written when she was forty -two, 
 as " a fair vestal throned by the West," against whom Cupid 
 aimed his shaft in vain: 
 
 And tlie Imperial Votaress passed on 
 In maiden meditation, fancy free. 
 
 In her forty-ninth year, Ealeigh, then in the Tower, wrote to 
 Cecil in a letter he hoped she might see, that he had been wont 
 to behold her " riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walk- 
 ing like -Venus, sometimes singing like an angel, sometime 
 playiijg like Orpheus." " To see her was heaven, the lack of 
 her was hell," Hutton told her to her face. All- the lesser 
 courtiers and poets chirruped in chorus the praise of the Virgin 
 Queen. You and I, superior as we may think ourselves to such 
 sickly adulation, would most likely be influenced by it ; for it 
 takes a most heroic mortal to stand firm against much praise. 
 Under the pressure of her vanity, Elizabeth carried coquetry 
 to an excess not becoming either a pure vestal or a pattern 
 queen. But still it is not just to use to her the language of 
 Cardinal Allen, which I will not shock you by quoting entire, 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 31 
 
 when he urged the EngUsh people to " follow no more the 
 broken fortunes of a mean and filthy woman." She had, it can- 
 not be denied, the roughness of fibre which has been noticed in 
 aU the Tudors. She could hate terribly. She was often a most 
 gifted dissembler. Her assent to the death of Mary Queen of 
 Scots, and her quibbling both before and after the fact, suflS- 
 ciently establish both points. She was self-willed beyond the 
 range of ordinary mortals, wishing to do apparently impossible 
 things. " As we track her through her tortuous mazes of lying 
 and intrigue," says Mr. Green, in his Slwrt History of the English 
 People, " the sense of her greatness is almost lost in a sense of 
 contempt." Yet, in sooth, she had many high qualities. She 
 had lien-like courage, though it was frequently hidden under 
 finessing irresolution. The envoy of Philip of Spain said she 
 was '■ possessed by a hundred thousand devils." Upon one 
 occasion she told the Bishop of St. Andrew's she was " more 
 afraid of making a mistake in Latin than of the King of Spain, 
 France, or Scotland." The Pope excommimicated her, but she 
 did not flinch a hair's breadth ; Philip sent an Armada against 
 her, and this is how she addressed her troops at Tilbury : " I 
 know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I 
 have the heart of a Mug, and of a King of England too." 
 Elizabeth was a clever woman of business, and displayed 
 great tact in selecting ministers arid managing the House of 
 Commons. Unlike the Stuarts and the Bourbons, she knew how 
 to yield gracefully. She really loved the English people and the 
 Protestant reUgion. " I have desired," she said, in one of her 
 many pulse-stirring addresses, " to have the obedience of my 
 subjects "by love, and not compulsion." In another she says : 
 " Never has a prince loved his subjects more than I do ; and no 
 jewel, no treasure, no happiness of any kind can counterbalance 
 the value of this affection. Xor do I wish to live any longer 
 than while my government is for the advantage of all." The 
 speech just quoted is one made in 1601, in yielding to the peti- 
 tion of the Commons to abolish the monopohes for trading in 
 certain goods and to certain ports, which she had bestowed 
 upon her favourites, or sold to pushing merchants. She had 
 been careless of English interests in this matter, though her 
 actions were strictly in accord with the customs of the Crown. 
 But she compensated for her largesses to her nobles by great 
 cautiousness in taxing the common people, whose poverty had 
 been marked in the early part of her reign. Burleigh had 
 taught her that the Treasury was not her own money, but com- 
 
32 SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 
 
 mitted to her for the safety of the people and the good of her 
 country, and she practised what he taught her only too well, 
 starving ahke the army and the fleet. The annual cost of the 
 navy was but £4,000, equal to £8,000 of our money. At the 
 present moment it would barely pay the salaries of our admirals, 
 and yet we do not always consider ourselves safe from invasion. 
 The ships which put to sea from Plymouth to attack the 
 Armada were short of provisions, short of gunpowder, and only 
 too well provided with sour beer. The largest sum she ever 
 drew from the people in one year was £280,000. It was to be 
 an exceptional sum, but when she found the people could com- 
 fortably pay it, like more modern governors, she did not 
 reduce it. 
 
 If we look at her various legislative acts, we shall say she 
 attempted too much rather than too little. A Commissioner, 
 who was sent to examine into the working of some of her enact- 
 ments in the country, wrote to Burleigh, her Secretary : " Sir, 
 would to God ye would not meddle so much as ye do, nor be so 
 earnest." Elizabeth had more than our current faith in an Act 
 of ParUament. She had beggars whipped under them until 
 their backs were bloody. She put tramping scholars of the 
 same ilk into the pillory. She tried to curb undue luxury by 
 law, and to promote English trade by altering the diet of the 
 people. She set herself the task of thwarting the economic 
 tendencies of the age by regulating wages, which were low 
 enough in all conscience (from twopence to sixpence a day), and 
 by amending the land-laws. Wealthy franklins from the towns 
 were buying up small farms, and turning the arable into pasture 
 for the sake of sheep and their wool. She insisted upon these 
 sheep-farms being broken up ; she forbad the exportation of 
 sheep ; she enacted that every cottage should have four acres of 
 land attached to it, under severe penalties. Of course, she failed 
 to effect any important changes. The " good yeomen," whom 
 Henry V. is made to address before Harfleur, " whose hmbs 
 were made in England," and who had shown " the mettle of 
 their pasture" in many a sturdy fight, were beginning to disap- 
 pear. Farm-labourers, hired by the day, were also beginning to 
 take the place of the labourers who used to hve in the farm- 
 houses, and take their meals below the salt at the common 
 table. Foreign trade was growing in British hands, but agri- 
 culture was dechning. Indeed, it is difficult to find an age, now 
 or in the past, when British agriculture was not only declining, 
 but about to die. But it never dies ; it suffers a transmigration 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 33 
 
 of souls — I had almost said, soils. The old common-lands were 
 being enclosed, to the detriment of the poor, -though to the 
 improvement of the land. Unenclosed land was rented at about 
 sixpence, newly enclosed land at eightpence and ninepence per 
 acre ; ordinary farms at from two shillings and sixpence to 
 three shillings and sixpence. Shakespeare resented this enclosur- 
 ing. He was not " able to bear " the intended enclosure of 
 Welcombe Common, near Stratford, we are told. No enact- 
 ments prevented enclosures elsewhere, however, and the Queen's 
 mind was not specially moved to the subject. But she was not 
 indifferent to the wants of the common people. She reformed 
 the coinage, restoring the tester from twopence-halfpenny and 
 fourpence-halfpenny to sixpence. She founded public schools at 
 Westminster, Harrow, and Eiigby. Above all, she established 
 the system of English Poor-law, upon the main lines on which it 
 exists at the present day, by ordering public workhouses to be 
 built, and contributions to be levied from each parish in, their 
 support. The power of the Crown was much greater then than, 
 it is now ; but Elizabeth did not greatly abuse it to the damage 
 of her people. She conferred votes upon thirty-two towns 
 during her reign, and her forty-five years of rale were, on the ' 
 whole, years of growing prosperity, of internal tranquillity, and 
 sleepless devotion to the public weal. She found England poor, 
 dejected, tormented, -humiliated; she left it proud, powerful, 
 prosperous, and unconquered. Cr'anmer's prophecies in Shakes- 
 peare's Henry VIII. had been fulfilled. 
 
 She shall be lov'd and f ear'd : Her own shall bless her : 
 Her foes shafee like a field of beaten corn 
 And hang their heads with sorrow : Good grows with her : 
 In her days every man shall eat in safety 
 Under his own vine, what he plants ; ■ and sing 
 The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours. 
 My task is nearly done. I have said little about Shakespeare^ 
 himself, and the range covered by his works, and despite what 
 I havd said about his time, it may still be as great a mystery 
 as ever how he could have written the plays and poems which 
 have miade his fame ; his genius may remain the final something 
 which cannot be accounted for. I have nothing to say as to 
 the reign of James I., which Shakespeare lived to see, for the 
 simple reason that it was either a continualtion or a caricature of 
 the- reign of Queen Elizabeth. Whatever made the Elizabethan 
 age is of importance in the understanding of Sha,kespeare ; it is 
 not for me to follow out its gaiety until it became the profligacy 
 of the Stuarts, or to show how its Protestantism flowered into 
 ' ■ 
 
34 SHAKESPEARE'S TIME. 
 
 the Puritanism of Cromwell, or how its personal loyalty to the 
 Sovereign, and its growth of liberty among the common people, 
 ended in a conflict between the kingly prerogative and the rights 
 of Parliament. These are matters of ordinary history ; and we 
 must take a final glance at the Elizabethan people. I have 
 described their manners and customs ; their lives and amusements ; 
 from which yOu will have inferred thoir general character. Let 
 me sum it up, in a few brief words. In the time in which 
 Shakespeare lived, as well as in the comedies and dramas 
 which he wrote, we cannot fail to notice a gaiety of spirit, a 
 freedom of manners, a terseness of language, a ripening of 
 intellect, a sensual energy, a consciousness of power, and a love 
 of enterprise, adveuture, and political freedom, which have been 
 continued to the present day. The Elizabethans, as M. Taine 
 says, had new senses given to them, and they were untroubled by 
 theories. Hamletj the metaphysician, is also Hamlet the irre- 
 solute, the half madman, in Shakespeare's conception of him. 
 The superstitions of the time were yielding to the intellectual 
 stimulus derived from Italy ; the discovery of the New World 
 gave them a wider horizon ; the growth of riches brought 
 leisure for cultivation ; the printing press increased the studies 
 of the scholarly, whilst the drama expanded the faculties of 
 the ignorant ; a fresh uprising of what was best in Paganism 
 braced their minds with science, and fortified their bodies with 
 physical training. An Englishman's courage was never doubted 
 the wide world over. Frenchmen said we were " as savage as 
 our own mastiffs ; " the Italians thought us " wild beasts ; " it 
 was only the Spaniards who said the Elizabethans were weak 
 and cowardly, and that was before the Armada. The morals of 
 the Elizabethans were none of the best, I am afraid. Swearing, 
 drinking, gaming, and cruel sports were wofiilly common. James 
 I., you know, paid a bigger salary to the man who had charge of 
 his fighting cocks, than he did to his principal Secretaries of 
 State. Duels and street brawls were of constant occurrence ; 
 highway robberies and murders were generally undetected ; and 
 bad characters of all kinds were extremely common. An excess 
 of coarse energy strikes us everywhere. But there were not 
 wanting the better elements of the chivalry Spenser described in 
 his romances and allegories. Men of letters were a power in the 
 land; newspapers, fluttering forth feebly after the Armada defeat, 
 were beginning to be a flock ; the pulpit was free ; science was 
 dawning ; and some of the superabundant vigour of the people 
 found vent in colonisation and geographical discovery. PoUtical 
 
SHAKESPEARES TIME. 35 
 
 parties, as they now exist amongst us, were coming into being ; 
 our maritime development received its plenary impulse ; and our 
 position as a Enropean Power was incontestably settled. In 
 short, the age of Elizabeth, the age of Shakespeare, fised our 
 language in its present form, and set '• the text of modem life 
 and modern manners."' ^-VCe must he free or die who speak the 
 tongue that Shakespeare spake," says Wordsworth. It was poor 
 Georg-e III., in his ignorant scorn, who asked, " Was there ever 
 such stuff as Shakespeare ? " It is to Shakespeare, however, 
 that we owe the glorification of the age in which he Kved, the 
 reflection of its vices, the record of its virtues, the embodiment 
 of its intellect. We have not vet got beyond his sayings, his 
 probings, his pathos, his passion, his colossal conceptions — they 
 are parts of an imperishable inheritance. He has made us proud 
 of the name and style of Englishmen, proud of living, working, 
 and dying for 
 
 This loyal throne of Mngs, this sceptied isle, 
 This earth of majesiy, this seat of Mars ; 
 This other Eden, demi Paradise ; 
 This fortress bnilt by nature for herself. 
 * * * * * * 
 
 This happy breed of men, this litUe world. 
 This xtrecions stone set in the silver sea. 
 » * * * » * 
 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this leahn, this England. 
 
If in your memories dwell 
 
 A thought which once was his, if on ye swell 
 
 A single recollection, not iu vain 
 
 He wore his sandal shoon and scallop-shell. 
 
 Bteon's Childii Harold. 
 
[Reprinted Jrwn ShABPE's LONDON MAGAZINE, January, 1861.] 
 
 A PILGEIMAGE 
 TO STEATFOED-ON-AVON. 
 
 A PILGRIM myself, I can readily pardon the enthusiasm of 
 ancient palmers, wandering to sacred shrines to erase from 
 their lives the sins of the past, and imbue them with a saintlier 
 holiness. Carp at it as one may, there is something of a hearty 
 sentiment beneath it all. We are stUl human, if we have dis- 
 carded staff, waUet, and scallop-shell. We are always placing 
 ourselves beneath certain influences, real or suppository, and 
 hoping to catch inspiring airs after the same mediaeval manner. 
 At Mecca, why should we not be Mahometized ? in Cappadocia, 
 why may we not expect to imbibe the dragon-HUing vigour of 
 Saint George ? and in Stratford-on-Avon, what doth hinder that 
 we, too, should not become writers of sonnets and dramas ? All 
 our ruin- visiting, our place-worshipping, our " Murray "-in-hand 
 galloping abroad, has something of this ancientness about it. 
 Whenever we can, we place ourselves hopefully in the matrix of 
 some kingly soul, and our pigmy glance wanders round, while 
 vanity whispers to us, " Go to ; why should not we also be 
 famous ?" 
 
 I stay not, after such an apologetic preamble, to refer to my 
 own feelings in the matter. I made my pilgrimage with what- 
 soever intention was uppermost ; I think there was reverence in 
 it. Here are the notes ; as for the rest, see ye to it. 
 
 The mbming train from Coventry to Warwick fills with the 
 usual collection of business and pleasure travellers ; and, taking our 
 seats, we are soon whirled through shrub-planted cuttings, with 
 here and there a primifose peering through the delicate green of 
 newly-tressed pines, whilst occasional long sweeps of country 
 
38 A PILGRIMAGE TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 
 
 opening to the view, besprent with flocks, relieve the dulness of 
 an April morning. Suddenly we are startled from our pastoral 
 reveries, by a stout porter's voice bawling out, " Kenilworth " — 
 awakening dim remembrances of Leicester, Amy Robsart, and 
 old Mervyn, and photographing on the mind a picture of ivied ' 
 ruin. The Castle, however, is a mile distant, and hidden by a 
 clump of trees. All we can see is part of the straggling town, 
 with rows of houses spreading out like the combs manufactured 
 by the inhabitants. A snort and a plunge, and we are off again, 
 and soon all eyes are turned to the river Avon as we cross it, for 
 the first time realiziag our propinquity to the great poet's birth- 
 place. Alighting at the station, which serves from its equi- 
 distance for both Warwick and Leamington, a walk of some two 
 or three hundred yards brings us to the Avon, with its quiet 
 waters reflecting the pollard- willows on either side; and its 
 green pleasure-boats swaying lazily to and fro, like the slug- 
 gard, whose voice still complains in song. The epithet Keats 
 applies to this river one can now fully understand. In its 
 quiet flow, and serene surface, with a sort of lonely witching 
 influence about it, well might this fanciful poet ask : 
 Did ye never cluster round 
 
 Delicious Avon, with a mournful sound, 
 
 And weep ? 
 
 The first impression's Warwick gives are pleasing ones. An 
 old Grammar-school, built of stone, and looking as crabbed as the 
 severest of pedagogues, and a tree impaled by the roadside, are 
 appropriate introductions to the old city. On every side a philo- 
 sophising spirit may observe an evident struggle between old and 
 new forms — a rich and venerable past contending manfully with 
 a plain but gigantic present. Every street is brimful of lessons 
 and homilies, and a modem Yankee and a thirteen century man 
 might each find matter for contemplation and sober conversation. 
 Passing the " Spade and Pick-axe," a sign sacred to the memory ' 
 of the first clown in the fifth act of " Hamlet, " who sings 
 
 A pick-axe and a spade — a spade ! 
 and where I am reminded by my companion that henceforth to . 
 quote anyone else but Shakespeare will entitle me to the stocks, 
 we are in a street leading down beneath the castle-keep, which is 
 the last strong hold of bygone days. Some enterprising in- 
 dividual has run up a row of modern houses, with painted pane- 
 work on the front to match the rest ; and these, with a few 
 smaller houses, are all that are modern in this quiet street. At 
 the bottom of it the view is a magnificent one. Here the Avon 
 
A PILGRIMAGE TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 39 
 
 spreads itself out triangularly, feeding a water-wheel and 
 running over the falls. The pillars of an old stone bridge, 
 covered with ivy, cross one of its arms, and huge trees all roimd, 
 robed ia the same greenery, fling their shadows athwart the 
 water, and sway in their branches the nests of cawing rooksj A. 
 solitary chestnut tree shakes its white catkins above the water, 
 and, ^ey arid grim, the donjon-keep looks down upon us with 
 imperial pride. We cannot resist a little reverie. A voice as of 
 an ancient grey-beard breaks on our ears, and the massive pile 
 looks at its image in the river, while it holds converse with the 
 ancient houses in the streets, and both exult in their strength and 
 age, and laugh, goblin-wise, at those mean, flimsy, contract-built 
 houses. A third voice now stirs the air dolefully, and we can 
 recognise the modulations of the tones. Hark ! " Mis-er-ere — 
 Dom-ine !" 
 
 Leaving behind us the castle, with its memorials of the famous 
 Sir Gruy, of Warwick — ^the huge punch-bowl, the terrible lance, 
 and the giant armour — ^we thread the aristocratic streets, admir- 
 ing their several beauties as we pass ; here a fine old mansion 
 with armorial griffins carved in oak above the portico, and 
 further on a quaint-looking hospital for poor men, founded by 
 Dudley, Earl of Leicester, as we are informed by a Latin inscrip- 
 tion over the gateway. We reach the highroad between War- 
 wick and Stratford, with eight miles before us, and a prospect of 
 raiu from sundry jagged and sullen clouds rising up from the 
 horizon. A few heavy drops descend upon us ; but, inculcating 
 upon my companion the philosophy of a stout resistance, and of a 
 determination to enjoy a thorough wetting as essentials in secur- 
 ing immunity from the angry heavens, we set forward manfully 
 along our M^ay. 
 
 About a mile from Warwick is Longbridge turnpike-house, 
 which must not be passed by unnoticed. This house is indeed one 
 of the prettiest of the kind we have ever seen. A carved gable- 
 end fronts the road, and there is an artistic oaken porch over the 
 door. The framework of the windows is also of oak, and adorned 
 with exquisitely carved and laughing SUeni, whose curls unite 
 over the window, and whose beards twine away beneath like 
 serpent-rings. Honeysuckle, woodbine, or clematis (emulating 
 around the porch these fantastic rings) were alone wanting to 
 complete this admirable picture. By the roadside here and there 
 are huge white-painted iron pumps, doubtless used in some way 
 for draining or irrigation, but irresistibly connected in one's 
 mind, spite of their modem air, with the giant form of. the 
 
40 A PILGRIMAGE TO STRATFOBD-ON-AVON. 
 
 famous Sir Guy, and seemingly used to quench the immense 
 thirst, or fill the small vat of this imbibing Bi;iton. Further on 
 our way, a bowlegged brewer's drayman, who seemed to have 
 passed his whole life astride a cask, attracted our attention, and 
 an examination of his barrels showing a- portrait of the great 
 bard affixed to each one near the bung, the well-Jknown Hues 
 suggested themselves : " As thus : Alexander died, Alexander 
 was buried, Alexander returneth unto dust ; the dust is earth ; 
 of earth we make loam : and why of that loam, whereto he 
 was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?" Shakespeare's 
 curse, however, would have turned all the beer sour in his case ; 
 and I myself can vouch for the prime mellowness and stingo of 
 the Stratford Brewery's " best. " 
 
 The scenery in Warwicksliire is eminently rich and wooded. 
 Short gnarled oaks, the remnants of primeval forests, appear on 
 every hand, and green rolling sand-slopes stretch for miles, with 
 waving corn and grass. It Was the month the great poet him- 
 self calls " proud-pied April," and every nook and banli was 
 covered with violets, enabling us to comprehend the frequency 
 \yith which he draws images from them, accusing this " sweet 
 thief" of having stolen his love's breath, and dyed her veins with 
 its purple pride. Here, too, in rich clusters the cowslip droops 
 , her delicate head, as when Ariel slept within her bell. We are 
 in the very centre and store-house of Shakespearian imagery, and 
 our conception is increased by the scenery around' us ; not bleak, 
 barren, nor gorgeous ; but rich, calm, and varied in aspect, with 
 an indefinite primeval quaintness about it, at once charming and 
 suggestive. There are no cloudy eminences, whence all the tints 
 of the landspape blend into haze, and the scenery is extended, 
 but diminutive ; each view is a near-lying picture, anharmonious 
 semblance of passive and active life. Yonder are the Edge Hills, 
 with their memories of Cavalier and Roundhead ; that of Bar 
 Beacon, near Birjningham, whence British and Roman bale-fires 
 have leapt in flames ; and nearer at hand are the thick-leafy groves 
 of Charlecote, the shallow brawling brook and deep and peaceful 
 river. A mile or two over Black Hill, and bosomed in the valley, 
 the thin spire of Stratford Church fixes our wandering gaze ; 
 whilst the river, conspicuous by its row of pollard willows on 
 either side, which had never been very distant, now comes closer 
 up to the highway, winding about like the fabulous sea-serpent. 
 It now commences raining, deluding not only ourselves, but crea- 
 tion generally it would seem. Daises are only half -folded, lambs 
 still skip in the meadows, and larks go up aloft, having evidently 
 
A PILGRIMAGE TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 41 
 
 with us made the most erroneous meteorological observations, and 
 determined to be jplly notwithstanding. 
 
 The entry into Stratford is very modern. A row" of clean 
 genteel houses with modern pointed roofs introduces you to the 
 main street. To your left is the memorable stone bridge of four- 
 teen arches, built— so Sir Kichard Baker tells us in his Chronicle, 
 than which I know few quainter — by Sir Hugh Clopton in the 
 seventh year of Henry the Seventh's reign, he being then Lord 
 Mayor of Londoh. Partly destroyed in the Parliamentary war, 
 it was re-built in 1652, and has since undergone some improve- 
 ments. A turn to our right, and we are in one of the main streets 
 of the town ; broad, open, and well-studded with shops and inns. 
 Here in particular we see the Red Horse, where Washington 
 Irving stayed on his memorable visit. The rain comes down 
 thick and fast, but cannot quench our glowing enthusiasm. One's 
 eyes run on before, galloping up every ancient house-front for the 
 well-known signs. . I forbore to ask my companion, who had 
 been here more than once, as to the locality of the house we were 
 making for, wishing to discover it myself, and receive a vivid 
 impression. At last, we get into a narrower street, and are con- 
 fronted by a very ancient house. This cannot be it ; but he may 
 have looked on it many times in passing, and a pathetic melan- 
 choly prevails in its aspect. 
 
 The veritable house is at length before us. Standing back 
 from the rest, with its nearest end new-beamed by the committee, 
 who have pulled down the contiguous houses, to restore it to its 
 original form as it stood in the fields J" an angular sign records, in 
 dingy yellow letters, that " the Immortal Shakspeare was born 
 in this house." The window of the bottom room, used in the late 
 Mrs. Hornby's husband's days to exhibit butchers' meat, is . now 
 filled with a pane of ground glass, and the whole house exteriorly 
 has that black grim look which books have, when they have 
 survived th^ ups and downs and thumbings of centuries. The 
 room once used as a shop has lost the stains upon the floor 
 formerly noticeable by travellers, but its slabs of slat'e are broken 
 and worn by the feet of pilgrims. Its whitewashed walls are 
 covered with strange names and verses, and its sunken chimney 
 cpmers give to the imagination the vision of a boy Shakespeare, 
 in the jambs by the fire. The second room on the ground-floor 
 is a larger one, and has the fire-place to your left immediately 
 you enter. And here we behold a sad memorial of curious 
 bickering in the shape of a board, which reads thus : 
 
 " About the year 1810, Lucien Buonaparte, brother of Napo- 
 
42 A PILGRIMAGE TO STBATFORD-ON-AVOIT 
 
 leon, passing through Stratford, visited this house, and inscribed 
 where this frame now hangs four Hnes in honour of the poet.. 
 These, the then owner of the house, a silly and capricious person, 
 ordered to be whitewashed over. As they are the composition 
 of one of the most distinguished foreigners who have done 
 homage to Shakespeare, a copy is here subjoined : * 
 
 'The eye of genius glistens to admire 
 How memory hails the sound of Shakespeare's lyre. 
 One tear I'll shed, to form a crystal shrine, 
 Of all that's grand, immortal and diyine.' " 
 
 This silly and capricious person was no less an individual than the 
 garrulous frosty-faced Mrs. Hornby, who, pretending to a portion 
 of Shakespearian inspiration, both by descent and locality, wrote 
 grotesque tragedies and poems. When she was ejected from the 
 house, she had all the walls whitewashed over, but fortunately 
 without any glue in the liquid, so that most of it was easily 
 brushed off again. 
 
 Looking on the right hand wall as you pass to the stairs, you 
 observe the neat signature of Harriet Beecher Stowe, already 
 dim and indistinct. A dozen or so broad oaken and worm-eaten 
 stairs lead you to the chambers. You ascend and turn into the 
 left, and from an opposite corner is a bust you know full well, 
 looking calmly at you from out its dim shadows. All is at first 
 disenchantment and disillusion, a melting of waxen wings, and a 
 coming down with a thump and thud against the solid common 
 earth. It is impossible at first to realize that so great a man 
 was born in so humble a chamber, and you listen to the remarks 
 Of the cicerone with a sort of dubious delight, a kind of " I 
 would it were all true." But that dubiousness will subside. Go 
 into the shadows of that dim corner, face-to-face with that 
 eloquent bust, lay your hand on that manly brow, and fill your 
 mind with a living form and soul like his, and the thickly written 
 walls shall gradually possess an irresistible witchery. Eun over 
 the names. On the low window opposite the door are the diamond- 
 written ones of Sir Walter Scott and his friend Lockhart ; on 
 the ceiling above, the neat autograph of Thackeray; on the 
 chimney to the left, ia entering, is the dashing signature of 
 Emerson ; and at the one corner, but undistinguishable, those of 
 Washington Irving and Lord Byron. By the side of the fire- 
 place is a list of actors, foremost in which you recognise the 
 
 *As a singular coincidence I may mention that deeply-earved on one 6f 
 the topmost stones in Mervyn's tow6r at Kenilworth, and almost worn 
 illegible, is the name of Jerome Buonaparte. There is no date. 
 
A PILGRIMAGE TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 43 
 
 round hand-writing of Edmund Kean, the father of the present 
 actor. There are also observable, the names of G. G. Norman, 
 Thomas Brindley, G. V. Brooke, J. 0. Pope, and Eliza Vestris. 
 Here are the names of enthusiastic Germans, forgetting their 
 GoSthe and Schiller, and there of those volatile Frenchmen, equally 
 oblivious to Oorneille and Racine ; here a soldier, and there a 
 clergyman some after-comer has denominated the " gibbet- 
 pafson ;" names written in drooping womanly lines, in bold manly 
 dash, in boyish fulness, and in clerk-like firmness and precision. 
 A verse here and there attracts your attention, the writers hover- 
 ing unsteadily between the sublime and the ridiculous. One 
 
 Tby praise, Shakespeare, vain tlie attempt to write, 
 Till angel minds -with, mortal pens unite. 
 
 Another does not forget himself ; but is anxious to leave an echo 
 behind : 
 
 Would I, great baid, like thee to thoughts 
 
 Sublime were given, 
 And could with words of iire the mind 
 
 Exalt to Heaven ! 
 But siaoe no pen can do thee justice but thine own, 
 111 simply write — 
 "Ventriloquist James Flemington. 
 
 Agaia, as a climax : 
 
 Though Shakespeare's bones (?) in this here place do lie, 
 Yet that tliere fame of his shall never die. 
 
 You pore amongst the books lying about to find what the room 
 was years gone by, whilst its interest and reality are visibly 
 deepening. The light illumiues a thousand names, until they 
 glimmer strangely and half-phosphorescently, and a meditative 
 mood falls upon you, like a twilight veil. The source of the Nile 
 and the centre of the earth, are nothing to this world-omphalos. 
 The dim outflowing and the broad inflowing tides lap around, 
 and you seem to stand in what Carlyle calls " the conflux of the 
 eternities." Here, in this dim low room, was born a povp^er 
 which has radiated to the ends of the earth, interpreting alike the 
 silence of primeval forests, and the mystery of magic islands in 
 the sea ; speaking audibly amidst the ruined palaces of Oarnac, 
 and the whirling streets of London. Blind thought gropes for 
 an analogy, and finds in the rays of the sun, reflected in the 
 flaunting tulip, the rich rhododendron, the delicate hyacinth, the 
 enamelled rose, and the modest violet, and in all the flowers that 
 mimic the colours of morn, and noon, and even, the aptest illustra- 
 tion of that mind which has inspired so many others, and 
 
44 A PILGRIMAGE TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 
 
 brought them here, in silent eloquence, to own his wisdom and 
 power and their gratitude and veneration. Our reverie is at 
 length broken by the melancholy drip and patter of the rain upon 
 the window, and, after a stay of two hours or more, we thread 
 our way towards the Church of the Holy Trinity .- 
 
 A sign over a house we pass upon our way informs us that 
 certain relics are exhibited there ; but having no inclination to 
 fritter away our enthusiasm upon the stock of the identical 
 matchlock with which young Shakespeare shot the deer, his 
 tobacco-box, Toledo blade, spy-glass, and other things, we do 
 not yield to the temptation. Three very interesting memorials 
 are passed in proceeding to the church. First, there is the Tus- 
 can Town Hall, with a figure of the poet, in a niche, in front, 
 leaning upon a pillar, and pointing to a scroll inscribed with the 
 lines commencing : 
 
 The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling. 
 Within this hall, the first year of its erection, the memorable 
 Jubilee was held in 1769. Next we come upon the Chapel of the 
 Guild of Holy Cross, a fine old building, with much of its 
 Gothic beauty rendered more conspicuous by age.- Above the 
 clock in the tower the sign of the Cross still exists, in all its 
 quaint and venerable suggestiveness. It was ancient in Shakes- 
 peare's time, having been built in 1443. Contiguous to this, and 
 of plain and modest exterior, is the Town Guildhall, built in the 
 thirteenth century, and originally possessed by the same frater- 
 nity. It consists of two long rooms, each rich with associations 
 of our bard. In the lesser one the business of the Corporation is 
 generally transacted. Here, as High-Bailiff, in 1568, having 
 previously passed through the offices of court-leet juryman, ale- 
 taster, burgess, constable, and chamberlain, and in 1571 as chief 
 alderman, the father of the poet sat in full civic dignity. In this 
 room, also, Shakespeare probably saw his first theatrical enter- 
 tainment. It was customary for the companies of players 
 (mostly noblemen's servants) to go through their first perform- 
 ance before the chief dignitary of the town, and there are entries 
 in the Stratford Borough accounts for payments to players 
 during Master John Shakespeare's official term. The end of the 
 room seems conveniently elevated for a stage, and has a small 
 room at liand for a tiring-room. Here the youthful poet no 
 doubt saw, in 1579 (being then about sixteen), the performance 
 of " my Lord Strange's men," on the 11th of February, for 
 which five shillings was paid, " at the commandement of Mr. 
 Bayliffe ;" and in the same year the " Countys of Essex plears," 
 
A PILGRIMAGE TO STRATFOED-ON-AVON. io 
 
 for which was awarded the liberal sum of fourteen shilling's and 
 sixpence. In the next year the Barl of Derby's players were 
 paid eight shillings and fourpence for their performance. In 
 this hall, too, an entry was made in the Town Books, in 1579, of 
 the election of WUliam Smythe and Richard Courte, to supersede 
 Mr. John Wheeler and the poet's father ; "for that Mr. Wheeler 
 doth desyer to be put out of the companye, and Mr. Shaxspere 
 doth not come to the hall when they be warned, nor hath not . 
 done of long tyme.". 
 
 The upper room of this building is the Grammar-school, where, 
 as a grammaticus, under the instructions of Thomas Hunt and 
 Thomas Jenkins, the young Shakespeare must have greedily 
 imbibed not only " a little Latin and less Greek," but a great 
 deal more than we wot of, with all our rummaging amongst 
 possible and impossible authors. 
 
 The aspect of the church is a pleasant one. The tower has 
 the appearance of great age, a,nd is reported to be coeval with 
 the Norman Conquest ; while the mixed Norman and Saxon 
 styles indicate it to have been built upon the site, and with part 
 of the materials of the old Saxon monastery, standing in the time 
 of St. Egwin, third bishop of Worcester. Its graveyard is quiet 
 and solemn, and with the Avon murmuring a mellow dirge by its 
 side. An avenue of fine limes leads up to the porch ; and, once 
 within the grim old walls, the reverie broken in his birth- 
 chamber is resumed. We have exulted in his fame and univer- 
 sality, and now we must be hushed and humbled to learn, even 
 from- him, life's last sad and sorrowful lesson. We had deemed 
 him before exhaled around us, like a Narcissus ; but every echo- 
 ing footfall and every monument proclaims a truth we cannot 
 escape from. 
 
 Our attention is first called to the Clopton monuments. An 
 uninscribed tomb is supposed 'to be that of the famous Sir Hugh 
 Clopton ; and on a second one are the recumbent eifigies of 
 William Clopton, Esq., and Anne his wife. Above them, in the 
 wall, are the bas-reliefs of their children ; one or two of them 
 swathed and bound, to denote their death in infancy. A third 
 monument, beneath an arch, is that of George Carew, Earl of 
 Totnes, Master of Ordnance in Queen Elizabeth's time, and Joyce, 
 his Countess, daughter of William and Anne Clopton. Over 
 them all is suspended a rusty and dinted helmet, and the rotten 
 tattered remains of some gay banner that once'perhaps streamed 
 before the gaze of the warrior-queen herself. There is a legend 
 which records that during the sweating-sickness, in some un- 
 
46 A PILGRIMAGE TO , STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 
 
 known period, when the Clopton vault was opened to admit a 
 second victim to its virulence, the form of the first one (that of- 
 a fair golden-tressed girl in her grave-clothes) was found droop- 
 ing against the wall, but seemingly asleep. The gHmmSr of tKe 
 torch, however, revealed a small wound she had bitten in her 
 own white shoulder, and the fact that she was dead, and had 
 been buried alive. A dusty, cobwebby room is still shown in 
 Clopton Hall, said to have belonged to this fair-haired but unfor- 
 tunate Charlotte. However such a, legend might have disposed 
 me to have remained in piteous contemplation in this chapel had 
 the sexton told it us, as I did not hear it until afterwards, I 
 passed impatiently onwards to the chancel. 
 
 The marble bust of the bard looks from its niche of black 
 marble Corinthian pillars, above the front of the altar-railing 
 over the remains of himself, his wife, and " wittie Mistress Hall." 
 A pen is in his right hand, and his left rests on a scroll upon 
 which he is supposed to be writing those grand lines of Prospero's: 
 
 The oloTid-oapp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces. 
 The countenance is calm and thoughtful, the lips slightly parted, 
 the elevation of the whole above the spectator giving the open 
 brow more height and massiveness'. A close-fitting doublet enve- 
 lopes his broad chest like a cuirass. When coloured, to represent 
 life, the eyes were hazel, the hair and beard of a fine auburn. 
 Sculptured about seven years after his death, it may be regarded 
 as representing him in the prime of life, a few years prior to his 
 decease, although it has not the repose of age about it visible in 
 the Earl of Bllesmere's Ghandos picture. As I stood underneath 
 it, I ran over, mentally, all thfe portraits I had seen of him, and 
 all- their phases were traceable in his countenance. There was 
 that of Martin Droeshout's famous print, with its horse-shoe 
 collar and contemplative cast ; also that of WiveU, and the one 
 prefixed to the 1640 edition of the Poems — all seemingly taken 
 one from the other. The head is bald, but more cliff -like than in 
 his bust ; the hair is long and lanky, and the upper lids drop lan- 
 guidly over the dreamy eyes. A slight moustache and imperial 
 adorn the lips ; and the broad and rather massive chin is well 
 thrown out by the large and rather awkward-looking collar. 
 The countenance is that of an amiable and intelligent youth of 
 about twenty-five ; and from this, one can easily go back and 
 imagine that of the ingenuous school-boy, emerging from his 
 father's house, or sitting amongst his companions in that long 
 upper-room. The second class of portraits picture him in about 
 his thirty-fifth year — I mean the Koubiliac bust and the designs 
 
A PILGRIMAGE TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 47 
 
 taken therefrom. He there approaches nearest the human ideal 
 of manly and vigorous inteUigenoe. A slight beard curls from 
 his chin ; his eyes have lost their languor, and beam softly 
 bright ; and his whole aspect is kingly and inspired. The words 
 of Aubrey are upon my tongue : " He was a handsome, well- 
 • shap't man ;" and we can easily believe the sequel, that he was 
 " very good company, and of a very ready and smooth witt." 
 The third series of portraits — as the picture of Cornelius Jansen, 
 the Chandos picture, and the one in the possession of Mr. Charles 
 Knight — are much later ones. A sweet serene aspect pervades 
 them all ; but, in aiming at repose, the lofty forehead that marked 
 the earlier pictures is lost in the general breadth. Looking up- 
 wards to his niche, and passing before me these visions, I seemed 
 to have secured a newer and more human interest in his life and 
 works, and to see him as he moved and mused in that retirement 
 and fellowship with nature so congenial to his mind, not long ere 
 he lay beneath that heavy slab. 
 
 Of the inscriptions underneath the bust, the Latin one is much 
 to be preferred, and may be roughly translated thus : 
 
 He liad the wisdom of Nestor, the wit of Socrates, and the 
 
 polish of Virgil. 
 The earth hides him ; the people mourn Mm ; Olympus has him. 
 
 The other, however, must be given, although it does no one 
 credit : , 
 
 Stay, Passenger ! Why goest thou by so fast ? 
 
 Ilead, if thou canst, whom envious Death has plast 
 
 Within this monument^-Shakspeare, with whom 
 
 Quick nature dide ; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
 
 Far more than cost ; sich all yt he hath writ 
 
 Leaves living art but page to save his wit. 
 
 Obiit Ano. Doi. 1616, aetatis 63, die 23 Ap. 
 
 A plain sandstone slab, with the memorable exhortation and curse 
 written across the middle, rests above his remains. The stones 
 of his wife and daughter, besides him, are of slate, with a much 
 primmer and preciser look about them. Beneath the niche, I 
 should also mention, is the door of the carnerie, or chancel-house, 
 into which loose bones were cast, and to the propinquity of which 
 many attribute the poet's curse. This, of course, makes him the 
 selector of his own burial-place. The monument to my "Johnny 
 o'Combe," and the gorgeous chancel-window, representing scenes 
 in the life of Christ, are passed over with very little interest, and 
 we shape our course to the vestry, to write our nam,es. The 
 sexton we find has prepared a rough index to his book, whereby 
 the names of several living celebrities are seen at a glance. An 
 
48 A PILGRIMAGE TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 
 
 ancient brass-embossed Bible, with its steel altar-chain attached, 
 also lies upon the table. Its interior is imperfect ; but its bind- 
 ing -will stand for centuries to come. An engraved brass-plate 
 on the cover- reads : 
 
 William Wrighte & John Noble, 
 
 Churcli wardens for ye Borough. 
 Stephen Borman & -Rich. Gibea, 
 
 Churchwardens for ye Parish. ' 
 Anno Dom. 1695. 
 
 In the parish register I find the entry of the poet's baptism, in 
 the Court-hand of the period : 
 
 "1564. '■*:, 
 
 April 26. Gulielmus filius Johannes Shal^pere." 
 
 This, however, is not the original entry. About 1600, orders 
 were issued for the better preservation of parish registers, which, 
 "iip to then, had been kept in loose leaves; and as the whole 
 character is in the same hand, up and subsequent to that time, 
 it has evidently been copied from a more ancient one. I did not 
 stay to look at the baptismal entries of his children, or the sor- 
 rowful one that records the death of his little son Hamnet, 
 but passed to that of his own burial — and plain and common- 
 place enough it seemed to read : 
 
 "1616. 
 April 23. Wm. Shakspere, Gent." 
 
 I closed the volume with a sweet sense of pleasure that his closing 
 days were spent in placid ease and rural retirement, with the 
 dignity of well-won honours to surround his noble brow. I 
 rejoiced, too, as an Englishman, that I could pay him the modest 
 tribute of a passionate pilgrim. 
 
 The clouds still shook down upon us their tears, as, emerging 
 from the church (our ramble back by Charlecote now impossible), 
 we sought refreshment in one of the many inns with which 
 Stratford abounds. An eight miles trudge in the drizzling rain 
 and dark might have been enough to have discomfited the most 
 enthusiastic pilgrim ; but, as the train rattled towards Coventry, 
 I still stood in that humble room and above that sacred dust, and 
 only when the bustle of arrival had shaken me, and Peeping Tom 
 was looking waggishly down upon me from his comer, did I 
 return to surrounding things. 
 
 JOgNSON AMD TESSEYMAN, PBINTEBS, YOEK.