Shakspere, Personal Recollections
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Title: Shakspere, Personal Recollections
Author: John A. Joyce
Release date: January 31, 2007 [eBook #20487]
Language: English
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SHAKSPERE
Personal Recollections
BY
COLONEL JOHN A. JOYCE
_Author of "Checkered Life," "Peculiar Poems," "Zig-Zag," "Jewels of
Memory," "Complete Poems," "Oliver Goldsmith," "Edgar Allan Poe,"
"Brick-bats and Bouquets," "Beautiful Washington," "Songs," etc._
Nations unborn, adown the tides of time
Shall keep thy name and fame and thought sublime,
And o'er the rolling world from age to age
Thy characters shall thrill the mimic stage!
--JOYCE.
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY BROADWAY
PUBLISHING COMPANY
835 BROADWAY, NEW YORK
Copyrighted, in 1904.
BY
COLONEL JOHN A. JOYCE
All Rights Reserved.
[Illustration]
_DEDICATION._
_I dedicate this book to the reader who has energy enough to borrow it,
bullion enough to buy it, and brains enough to understand its philosophy,
with the fervent hope that posterity may reap, thresh and consume the
golden grain of my literary harvest._
_J. A. J._
PREFACE.
It would be a flagrant presumption and a specimen of magnificent audacity
for any man, but myself, to attempt, to give anything new about the
personal and literary character of William Shakspere!
I speak of William as I knew him, child, boy and man, from a spiritual
standpoint, living with him in soul-lit love for three hundred and forty
years!
Those who doubt my dates, facts and veracity are to be pitied, and have
little appreciation of romantic poetry, comedy, tragedy and history!
It is well known among my intimate friends, that I sprang from the race of
Strulbugs, who live forever, originating on the island of Immortality, on
the coast of Japan--more than a million years ago.
I do not give the name of the play, act or scene, in head or foot lines, in
my numerous quotations from Shakspere, designedly leaving the reader to
trace and find for himself a liberal education by studying the wisdom of
the Divine Bard.
There are many things in this volume that the ordinary mind will not
understand, yet I only contract with the present and future generations to
give rare and rich food for thought, and cannot undertake to furnish the
reader brains with each book!
J. A. J.
CONTENTS.
Page
Sweepstakes ix
CHAPTER I.
Birth. School Days. Shows 1
CHAPTER II.
Launched. Apprentice Boy. Ambition 11
CHAPTER III.
Farm. Life. Sporting. Poaching on Lucy 19
CHAPTER IV.
In Search of Peace and Fortune 27
CHAPTER V.
London. Its Guilt and Glory 37
CHAPTER VI.
Taverns. Theatres. Variegated Society 45
CHAPTER VII.
Theatrical Drudgery. Compositions 53
CHAPTER VIII.
Growing Literary Renown. Royal Patrons 61
CHAPTER IX.
Bohemian Hours. Westminster Abbey. "Love's
Labor's Lost" 73
CHAPTER X.
Queen Elizabeth. War. Shakspere in Ireland 82
CHAPTER XI.
Rural England. "Romeo and Juliet" 91
CHAPTER XII.
"Julius Caesar" 110
CHAPTER XIII.
Two Tramps. By Land and Sea 130
CHAPTER XIV.
Windsor Park. "Midsummer Night's Dream" 156
CHAPTER XV.
The Jew. Shylock. "Merchant of Venice" 175
CHAPTER XVI.
The Supernatural. "Hamlet" 202
CHAPTER XVII.
Death of Queen Elizabeth. Coronation of King
James 233
CHAPTER XVIII.
Shakspere as Monologist. King James 244
CHAPTER XIX.
Stratford. Shakspere's Death. Patriotism Down
the Ages 270
* * * * *
FACSIMILE PAGES.
Autograph Letter of Shakspere xxiii
Autograph Poem of Shakspere 170
Autograph Letter of King James 248
Autograph Epitaph of Shakspere 280
SWEEPSTAKES.
Shakspere was the greatest delver into the mysterious mind of man and
Nature, and sunk his intellectual plummet deeper into the ocean of thought
than any mortal that ever lived, before or after his glorious advent upon
the earth. He was a universal ocean of knowledge, and the ebb and flow of
his thoughts pulsated on the shores of every human passion.
He was a mountain range of ideals, and has been a quarry of love, logic and
liberty for all writers and actors since his day and age, out of which they
have built fabrics of fame.
No matter how often and numerous have been the "blasts" set off in his
rocky foundations, the driller, stone mason and builder of books have
failed to lessen his mammoth resources, and every succeeding age has
borrowed rough ashlers, blocks of logic and pillars of philosophy from the
inexhaustible mine of his divine understanding.
He was an exemplification and consolidation of his own definition of
greatness:
_"Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness
thrust upon them."_
The poet finds in Shakspere a blooming garden of perennial roses, the
painter finds colors of heavenly hues, the musician finds seraphic songs
and celestial aspirations, the sculptor finds models of beauty and truth,
the doctor finds pills and powders of Providence, the lawyer finds suits
and briefs of right and reason, the preacher finds prophecies superior to
Isaiah or Jeremiah, the historian finds lofty romance more interesting than
facts and the actor "struts and frets" in the Shaksperian looking-glass of
to-day, in the mad whirl of the mimic stage, with all the pomp and glory of
departed warriors, statesmen, fools, princes and kings.
Shakspere was grand master of history, poetry and philosophy--tripartite
principles of memory, imagination and reason. He is credited with composing
thirty-seven plays, comedies, tragedies and histories, as well as Venus and
Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Lovers' Complaint, The Passionate Pilgrim
and one hundred and fifty-four classical sonnets, all poems of unrivaled
elegance.
What a royal troop of various and universal characters leaped from the
portals of his burning brain, to stalk forever down the center of the stage
of life, exemplifying every human passion!
Shakspere never composed a play or poem without a purpose, to satirize an
evil, correct a wrong or elevate the human soul into the lofty atmosphere
of the good and great. His villains and heroes are of royal mold, and while
he lashes with whips of scorn the sin of cupidity, hypocrisy and
ingratitude, he never forgets to glorify love, truth and patriotism.
Virtue and vice are exhibited in daily, homespun dress, and stalking abroad
through the centuries, the generous and brave nobility of King Lear, Caesar,
Othello, and Hamlet, will be seen in marked contrast to Shylock, Brutus,
Cassius, Iago, Gloster and Macbeth. His fools and wits were philosophers,
while many of his kings, queens, dukes, lords and ladies were sneaks,
frauds and murderers.
Vice in velvet, gold and diamonds, suffered under the X-rays of his divine
phrases, while virtue was winged with celestial plumes, soaring away into
the heaven of peace and bliss. He was the matchless champion of stern
morality, and the interpreter of universal reason.
Shakspere was a multifarious man, and every glinting passion of his soul
found rapid and eloquent expression in words that beam and burn with
eternal light. The stream of time washes away the fabrics of other poets,
but leaves the adamantine structure of Shakspere erect and uninjured.
Being surcharged, for three hundred and forty years, with the spirit and
imagination of Shakspere, I shall tell the world about his personal and
literary life, and although some curious and unreasonable people may not
entirely believe everything I relate in this volume, I can only excuse and
pity their judgment, for they must know that the _Ideal_ is the _Real_!
The intellectual pyramids of his thought still rise out of the desert
wastes of literary scavengers and loom above the horizon of all the great
writers and philosophers that preceded his advent on the globe.
The blunt, licentious Saxon words and sentences in the first text of
Shakspere, have been ruthlessly expurgated by his editorial commentators,
adding, no doubt, to the beauty and decency of the plays, but sadly
detracting from their original strength.
Pope, Jonson, Steevens and even Malone have made so many minute, technical
changes in the Folio Plays of 1623, printed seven years after the death of
Shakspere, that their presumptive elucidation often drivels into obscurity.
Editorial critics, with the best intention, have frequently edited the
blood, bone and sinews of the original thought out of the works of the
greatest authors. While attempting to simplify the text for common, rough
readers, they mystify the matter by their egotistical explanation, and
while showing their superior research and classical learning, they
eliminate the chunk logic force of the real author.
For thirty years Shakspere studied the variegated book of London life, with
all the human oddities, and when spring and summer covered the earth with
primroses, flowers and hawthorn blossoms, he rambled over domestic and
foreign lands, through fields, forests, mountains and stormy seas.
With the fun of Falstaff, the firmness of Caesar, the generosity of King
Lear and the imagination of Hamlet, Shakspere also possessed the love-lit
delicacy of Ophelia, Portia and Juliet, reveling familiarly with the
spirits of water, earth and air, in his kingdom of living ghosts. He
borrowed words and ideas from all the ancient philosophers, poets and story
tellers, and shoveling them, pell-mell, into the furnace fires of his
mammoth brain, fused their crude ore, by the forced draught of his fancy,
into the laminated steel of enduring form and household utility.
The rough and uncouth corn of others passed through the hoppers of
Shakspere's brain and came out fine flour, ready for use by the theatrical
bakers. With the pen of pleasure and brush of fancy he painted human life
in everlasting colors, that will not fade or tarnish with age or wither
with the winds of adversity. The celestial sunlight of his genius permeated
every object he touched and lifted even the vulgar vices of earth into the
realms of virtue and beauty.
Shakspere was an intellectual atmosphere that permeated and enlivened the
world of thought. His genius was as universal as the air, where zephyr and
storm moved at the imperial will of this Grand Master of human passions.
Principles, not people, absorbed the mammoth mind of Shakspere, who paid
little attention to the princes and philosophers of his day. Schools,
universities, monks, priests and popes were rungs in the ladder of his
mind, and only noticed to scar and satirize their hypocrisy, bigotry and
tyranny with his javelins of matchless wit. The flower and fruit of thought
sprang spontaneously from his seraphic soul.
He flung his phrases into the intellectual ocean of thought, and they still
shine and shower down the ages like meteors in a midnight sky. Like the
busy bee, he banqueted on all the blossoms of the globe and stored the
honey of his genius in the lofty crags of Parnassus.
Shakspere and Nature were confidential friends, and, while she gave a few
sheaves of knowledge to her other children, the old Dame bestowed upon the
"Divine" William the harvest of all the ages.
Shakspere's equipoise of mind, placidity of conduct and control of passion
rendered him invulnerable to the shafts of envy, malice and tyranny, making
him always master of the human midgets or vultures that circled about his
pathway.
One touch from the brush of his imagination on the rudest dramatic canvas
illuminated the murky scene and flashed on the eye of the beholder the
rainbow colors of his matchless genius.
Ben Jonson, Greene, Marlowe, Fletcher and Burbage gazed with astonishment
at the versatility of his poetic and dramatic creations, and while pangs of
jealousy shot athwart their envious souls, they knew that the Divine Bard
was soaring above the alpine crags of thought, leaving them at the
foothills of dramatic venture.
He played the role of policy before peasant, lord and king, and used the
applause and brain of each for his personal advancement, and yet he never
sacrificed principle for pelf or bedraggled the skirts of virtue in the
gutter of vice.
The Divine William knew more about everything than any other man knew about
anything! He had a carnivorous and omnivorous mind, with a judicial soul,
and controlled his temper with the same inflexible rule that Nature uses
when murmuring in zephyrs or shrieking in storms, receding or advancing in
dramatic thought, as peace or passion demanded.
He seemed at times to be a medley of contradictions, and while playing
virtue against vice, the reader and beholder are often left in doubt as to
the guilt or glory of the contending actors. He puts words of wisdom in the
mouth of a fool, and foolish phrases in the mouth of the wise, and
shuttlecocked integrity in the loom of imagination.
William was the only poet who ever had any money sense, and understood the
real value of copper, silver, gold, jewels and land. His early trials and
poverty at Stratford, with the example of his bankrupt father was always in
view, convincing him early in life that ready money was all-powerful,
purchasing rank, comfort and even so-called love.
Yet he only valued riches as a means of doing good, puncturing the bladder
of bloated wealth with this pin of thought:
_"If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
And Death unloads thee!"_
He noticed wherever he traveled that successful stupidity, although
secretly despised, was often the master of the people, while a genius with
the wisdom of the ages, starved at the castle gate, and like Mozart and
Otway, found rest in the Potter's field.
No Indian juggler could mystify the ear and eye and mind of an audience
like Shakspere, for, over the crude thoughts of other dramatic writers he
threw the glamour of his divine imagination, making the shrubs, vines and
briers of life bloom into perpetual flowers of pleasure and beauty.
_With his mystic wand he mesmerized all,
And peasants transformed to kings;
While age after age in cottage and hall,
He soars with imperial wings._
No one mind ever comprehended Shakspere, and even all the authors and
readers that sauntered over his wonderful garden of literary flowers and
fruits have but barely clipped at the hedge-rows of his philosophy, culling
a few fragmentary mementos from his immortal productions.
Shakspere's chirography was almost as variable as his mind, and when he sat
down to compose plays for the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, in his room
adjacent to the Miter Tavern, he dashed off chunks of thought for pressing
and waiting actors and managers, piecing them together like a cabinet
joiner or machinist.
In all his compositions he used, designedly, a pale blue ink that
evaporated in the course of a year, and the cunning actors and publishers,
who knew his secret, copied and memorized and printed his immortal
thoughts. He kept a small bottle of indelible ink for ideals on parchment
for posterity.
I have often found his room littered and covered with numbered sheets of
scenes and acts, ready for delivery to actors for recital, and many times
the sunset over London would run its round to sunrise and find William at
his desk in the rookery, hammering away on the anvil of thought, fusing
into shape his divine masterpieces.
Shakspere's bohemian life was but an enlarged edition of his rural vagabond
career through the fields and alehouses of Warwickshire. He only needed
about four hours' sleep in twenty-four, but when composition on occasion
demanded rapidity, he could work two days and rise from his labor as fresh
as a lark from the flowery bank of Avon.
Most of the great writers of antiquity patterned after greater than
themselves, but Shakspere evolved from the illuminated palace of his soul
the songs and sentiments that move the ages and make him the colossal
champion of beauty, mercy, charity, purity, courage, love and truth.
There are more numerous nuggets of thought in the works of Shakspere than
in all the combined mass of ancient and modern literature.
The various bibles, composed and manufactured by man, cannot compare in
variety, common sense and eloquence, with the productions of the Immortal
Bard.
All the preachers, bishops, popes, kings, and emperors that have ever
conjured up texts and creeds for dupes, devotees and designers to swallow
without question, have never yet sunk the plummet of reason so deep in the
human heart as the butcher boy of Stratford!
Shakspere was the most industrious literary prospector and miner of any
land or time, throwing his searchlight of reason into the crude mass of
Indian, Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Frank, German, Russian
and Briton lore, and forthwith appropriated the golden beauties of each
nation, leaving behind the dross of vice and vulgarity.
Marlowe, Burbage, Peele, Chapman, Greene and Jonson composed many fine
physical and licentious dramas, pandering to the London groundlings,
bloated wealth and accidental power; but Shakspere threw a spiritual
radiance over their brutal, sordid phrases and elevated stage characters
into the realm of romantic thought, pinioned with hope, love and truth. His
sublime imagination soared away into the flowery uplands of Divinity, and
plucked from the azure wings of angels brilliant feathers of fancy that
shall shine and flutter down the ages.
He flung his javelin of wit through the buckler of ignorance, bigotry and
tyranny, exposing their rotten bodies to the ridicule and hate of mankind.
In lordly language he swept over the harp strings of the heart with
infinite expression and comprehension of words, leaving in his intellectual
wake a multifarious heritage of brain jewels. He flew over the world like a
swarm of bees, robbing all the fields of literature of their secret sweets,
storing the rich booty of Nature in the honeycomb of his philosophic hive.
Through his brain the variegated paraphernalia of Nature, in field, forest,
vale, mount, river, sea and sky were illuminated with a divine radiance
that shall shine forever and grow greater as mankind grows wiser.
Shakspere has paid the greatest tribute of respect of any writer to women.
While he gives us a few scolding, licentious, cruel, criminal women, like
Dame Quickly, Katharina, Tamora, Gertrude and Lady Macbeth, he gives us the
beautiful, faithful, loving characters of Isabella, Juliet, Desdemona,
Perdita, Helena, Miranda, Imogen, Ophelia and Cordelia, whose love-lit
words and phrases shine out in the firmament of purity and devotion like
morning stars in tropic skies.
Shakspere studied all trades and professions he encountered in daily
contact with mankind. He thought what he was and was what he thought! To
him a sermon was a preacher, a writ a lawyer, a pill a doctor, a sail a
sailor, a sword a soldier, a button a tailor, a nail a carpenter, a hammer
a blacksmith, a trowel a stone mason, a pebble a geologist, a flower a
botanist, a ray of light an astronomer, and even a _word_ gave him ample
suggestion to build up an empire of thought.
He sailed upon the tides and currents of the human heart, and steered
through the cliffs and caverns of the brain with greater glory than those
who sought the golden "fleece" among the enchanting waters of Ionian isles.
Shakspere conjured the characters of his plays from elemental principles,
measures not men, breathing and acting in his divine atmosphere. It is
strange and marvelous that he never wrote a line about the great men that
lived and wrote in his day and age, although Cervantes, Rubens, Camoens,
Bruno, Drake, Raleigh, Calderon, Corneille, Rembrandt, Kepler, Galileo,
Montaigne, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sidney, Marlowe, Bacon and Ben Jonson
were contemporaneous authors, poets, dramatists, navigators, soldiers,
astronomers and philosophers.
Licentious phrases and actions were universal in Shakspere's time, and from
the corrupt courts of King Henry the Eighth, Elizabeth and King James, to
the cot of the peasant and trail of the tavern, morality hid her modest
head and only flourished among the puritans and philosophers who kept alive
the flame of love and liberty.
Dryden, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe and Jonson infected literature with a
species of eloquent vulgarity, and Shakspere, willing to please, readily
infused into his various plays sensuous phrases to catch the rabble cheers
and purpled applause. While he worshiped nature, he never failed to bend
the knee for ready cash, and often paid fulsome tribute to lords and
ladies, who flattered his vanity and ministered to his "itching palm."
Physical passion, mental license and social tyranny ruled in home, church
and state, where Rome and Reformation struggled viciously for the mastery.
There are nuggets of golden thought still scattered through the plays of
Shakspere that no author or actor has ever discovered, and although they
have read and repeated his lines, for more than three hundred years, there
has been no brain able and brilliant enough to delve into or explain the
secret caves of Shaksperian wit. Human sparrows cannot know the eagle
flights of divine philosophy.
The golden gilt of imagination decorated his phrases and the lambent light
of his philosophy shone like the rosy dawn upon a field of variegated wild
flowers. The hut and the cottage were transformed into lordly castles while
the rocks and the hills became ranges of mountain, whose icy pinnacles
reflected back the shimmering light of suns and stars.
Shakspere was a man of universal moods and like a chameleon took color and
force from every object he touched. The draughts he took from the deep
flowing wells of nature made no diminution in the volume of his thought,
that rushed through his seething brain like an underground cataract filled
from eternal springs.
Fresh from the mint of his mind fell the clinking, golden coin of universal
value, bearing the glowing stamp of his genius, unrivaled in the annals of
time. Since he wrote and acted, no man ever understood the depths of his
wit and logic, or the height of his imagination and philosophy. The human
mackerel cannot know the human whale.
Shallow, presumptive college bookworms, arrogant librarians and classical
compilers, have attempted to explain his plays and sonnets, in footnotes,
but they have only been entangled in the briers and flowers of his fancy,
finding themselves suffocated at last, in the luxurious fields of his
eloquent rhetoric and universal wisdom.
School-teachers, professors, priests, preachers, popes, and princes are
brushed aside by the cutting phrases of Shakspere and go down to earth like
grass before the scythe of this rustic reaper. They are dumfounded by his
matchless mysterious logic. Religion, law and medicine are pitchforked
about by the Divine William on the threshing floor of his literary granary,
where he separates wheat from chaff, instanter, leaving the beholder
mystified by the splendid result.
Viewing the great minds of the world from Homer to Humboldt, Shakspere
never had an equal or superior, standing on the pinnacle of the pyramid of
human renown, and lifting his mammoth mental form above the other
philosophers of the earth as Mount St. Elias soars above its brother peaks.
Distance lends a wizard enchantment to his lofty form and down the rolling
ages his glory will grow greater until the whole universe is luminous with
the dazzling lights of his eternal fame.
_Such god-like men shall never die;
They shine as suns in tropic sky,
And thrill the world with truth and love
Derived from nature far above._
Shakspere's mind was pinioned with celestial imagination, and his rushing
flight circled the shores of omnipotence. He taught us that ignorance was a
crime, a murky night without a single star to light the traveler on his
weary way.
Those who have attempted to fathom the depths of the Shaksperian ocean of
thought, have only rounded the rim or skimmed over the surface of its
illimitable magnificence. Tossed about by the billows of Shakspere's brain,
for three hundred and forty years mankind like a ship in a storm, still
wonders and runs on the reefs of his understanding, to be wrecked in their
vain calculation of his divine wisdom.
Leaving the beaten paths of oriental and middle age writers, he dashed deep
into the forest of nature and surveyed for himself a new dominion of
thought, that has never been occupied before or since his birth. Like a
comet of universal light, he shines over the world with the warm glow of
celestial knowledge.
With the tuning key of his matchless genius he struck the chords of sorrow
to their inmost tone and played on the heart strings of joy with the tender
vibrations of an aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the
wild flowers of ecstatic passion.
And to clap the climax and fathom the logic of love, he eloquently
exclaims:
"Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds!"
J. A. J.
[Illustration]
Shakspere: Personal Recollections
CHAPTER I.
BIRTH. SCHOOL DAYS. SHOWS.
_"One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin."_
William Shakspere was born on the 23d of April, 1564, at the town of
Stratford, on the river Avon, Warwickshire County, England; and died in the
same town on the 23d of April, 1616, exactly fifty-two years of age, the
date of his birth being the date of his death, a remarkable coincidence of
spiritual assimilation.
For several centuries, his ancestors served their king and crown in war and
peace; and were noted in their day and age as country "gentlemen," a term
much more significant then than now, when even dressed up "dandy" frauds
may lay claim to this much-abused title.
The grandfather of Shakspere fought on Bosworth Field with King Henry the
Seventh, and was rewarded for his military service, leaving to his son
John, the father of the "Divine" William, influence enough to secure the
position of a country squire and made him bailiff and mayor of the town of
Stratford.
John Shakspere, in addition to his judicial duties, dabbled in trade as a
wool dealer and glove maker, and when he lost influence and office he
resorted to the business of a butcher to secure bread, meat and shelter for
his large family.
He married the youngest daughter of Robert Arden, a very beautiful girl of
Wilmcote, a small village three miles from Stratford. When Arden died,
Mary, his favorite daughter, was bequeathed thirty-six dollars, and a small
farm of fifty acres, near the town of Snitterfield. Good inheritance for
that age.
The Arden family were strict Roman Catholics; and Edward Arden, high
sheriff of Warwickshire, was executed in 1583, for plotting against her
majesty, Queen Elizabeth. Those were lively days, when the followers of the
Pope and King Henry the Eighth, banished, burned and hung presumptive
heretics for opinion's sake! The lechery and greed of King Hal was the
primary cause of his separation from papal authority, augmenting the
Reformation by licentious royalty.
John Shakspere and Mary, his good wife, did not seem to have much of an
education, for in signing deeds of conveyance, they only made their mark
like thousands of the yeomanry of England.
Shakspere was a very common name in Warwickshire and the surrounding
counties, and while the "Divine" William glorified the whole race, there
were others of his name who fought for king and crown.
John Shakspere had ten children, with the affectionate assistance of Mary
Arden. Seven daughters and three boys, William being the third child and
the most active and robust. Several of the flock died, thereby reducing the
trials and expenses of the household; the "old man" seeming to be one of
those ancient "Mulberry Sellers," that was forever making "millions" in his
mind, and chasing gold bags at the west end of rainbows!
For many years he persistently applied to the College of Heralds for a
"coat of arms;" and finally in the year of 1599, a picture of a "shield"
with a "spear" and "falcon," rampant, was awarded to the Shakspere family,
all through the growing influence of the actor and author William, who had
become famous and wealthy. John Shakspere did not enjoy the glory of his
"coat of arms" very long, for we find that he died in September, 1601, and
was buried on the 8th of that month, at the old church in Stratford, and
his brave old wife, the mother of William Shakspere, followed him to the
tomb on the 9th of September, 1608.
I first met Will Shakspere on the 23d of April, 1571, at the old log and
board schoolhouse at the head of Henley street, Stratford, on the river
Avon. It was a bright, sunny day, and Mr. Walter Roche, the Latin master,
was the autocrat of the scholastic institution, afterwards succeeded by
Thomas Hunt.
Will Shakspere and myself happened to be born on the same day, and our
first entrance at the temple of knowledge marked exactly the seventh
milestone of our fleeting years.
Will was a very lusty, rollicking boy and was as full of innocent mischief
as a pomegranate is of seeds. He was handsome and bright, wearing a thick
suit of auburn curls, that rippled over his shoulders like a waterfall in
the sunshine. His eyes were very large, a light hazel hue, that glinted
into blue when his soul was stirred by passion. His forehead was broad and
high, even as a boy, rounding off into that "dome of thought" that in later
years, when a six-foot specimen of splendid manhood caused him to conjure
up such a universal group of immortal characters.
His nose was long and high, but symmetrical, and his distended nostrils,
when excited at play, would remind you of a Kentucky racehorse in motion.
His voice was sonorous and musical, and when stirred by passion or pleasure
it rose and fell like the sound of waves upon a stormy or summer sea. His
lips were red and full, marked by Nature, with the "bow of beauty," and
when his luminous countenance was flushed with celestial light, he shot the
arrows of love-lit glances around the schoolroom and fairly magnetized the
boys, and particularly the girls, with the radiant influence of his
unconscious genius.
Will was a constant source of anxiety and wonder to the teacher, who often
marked him as the scapegoat to carry off the surface sins of sneaking and
cowardly pupils. Corporal punishment was part of school discipline, and
William and myself got our share of the rule and rod.
Through all the centuries, in youth and age, private and public, the
scapegoat has been the real hero in all troubles and misfortunes. He seems
to be a necessary mortal, but while persecution relentlessly pursues him,
he almost invariably triumphs over his enemies, and when even devoted to
the prison, the stake or the scaffold, as a martyr, he triumphs over the
grave and is monumented in the memory of mankind for his bravery and
silent self-sacrifice!
For seven school years Will and myself were daily companions. Spring, with
its cowslips and primroses, and hawthorn blossoms, found us rambling
through the woods and fields, and angling for the finny tribe disporting in
the purling waters of the crystal Avon.
Summer brought its grain and fruits, with boys and girls scrambling over
hedges, fences, stiles and brooks, in search of berries and ripe apples;
autumn with its nuts, birds and hares, invited us to hunting grounds, along
the rolling ridges and the dense forest of Arden, even poaching on the
domain of Sir Thomas Lucy and the royal reaches of Warwick Castle, and old
winter with his snowy locks and whistling airs brought the roses to our
young cheeks, skipping and sporting through his fantastic realm like the
snow birds whirling in clumps of clouds across the withered world.
Looking back over the fields, forests and waters of the past through the
variegated realms of celestial imagination, I behold after the lapse of
more than three centuries of human wrecks, the brilliant boys and glorious
girls I played with in childhood years--still shining as bright and fresh
as the flowers and fruits of yesterday!
_"For we are the same our fathers have been,
We see the same sights our fathers have seen,
We drink the same streams and view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run!"_
I remember well the first time Will and myself attended a theatrical
performance. It was on the first of April, 1573, when we were about nine
years of age.
A strolling band of comic, and Punch and Judy players had made a sudden
invasion of Stratford and established themselves in the big barn of the old
Bear Tavern on Bridge street.
The town was alive with expectation and the school children were wild to
behold the great play of "The Scolding Wife," which was advertised through
the streets, in the daytime, by a cartload of bedizened harlequins,
belaboring each other with words and gestures, the wife with bare arms,
short dress and a bundle of rods, standing rampant over the prostrate form
of a drunken husband.
Fifes, drums and timbrels kept up a frantic noise, filling the bylanes and
streets of Stratford with astonished country louts and tradesmen, until the
fantastic parade ended in the wagon yard of the tavern.
The old barn had been rigged up as a rustic playhouse, the stage covering
one end, elevated about three feet from the threshing floor. Curtains with
daub pictures were strung across the stage, separated in the center and
shifted backward and forward, as the varying scenes of the family play were
presented for the hisses or cheers of the variegated audience.
The play consisted of three acts, showing the progress of courtship and
marriage at the altar, country and town life with growing children, work,
poverty, and final windup of the husband driven from home by the scolding
wife, bruised in an alehouse, dead and followed to the graveyard by the
Beadle, undertaker and a brindle dog.
The climax scene of the play exhibited the wife with a bundle of rods,
surrounded by ragged children, driving out into a midnight storm the
husband of her bosom, while peals of thunder and flashes of lightning
brought goose pimples and shivers to the frightened audience.
The impression made upon the mind of William and myself did not give us a
very hopeful view of married life, and while the haphazard working,
drinking habits of the husband seemed to deserve all the punishment he
received, the modesty, benevolence and beauty of woman was shattered in our
young souls.
On our way home from the country-tragedy performance we were gladdened by
the thought, that although the rude, vulgar, criminal passions of mankind
were portrayed and enacted day by day all over the globe, we could look up
into the star-lit heavens and see those glittering lamps of night shining
with reflected light on the murmuring bosom of the Avon, as it flowed in
peaceful ripples to the Severn and from the Severn to the sea. Nature
soothed our young hearts, and soon, in the mysterious realms of sleep, we
forgot the sorrows and poverty of earth, tripping away with angelic
companions through the golden fields of celestial dreams.
_"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."_
I shall never forget the great shows and pageants that took place in
Warwickshire County, in July, 1575. All England was alive to the grand
entrance of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle, as the royal guest of her
favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Proclamation had gone forth
that all work be suspended, while yeoman, trader, merchant, doctor, lawyer,
minister, lords and earls should pay a pilgrimage to Kenilworth and pay
tribute to the Virgin Queen.
Stratford and the surrounding villages were aflame with enthusiasm, and as
John Shakspere, the alderman and mayor, took great interest in theatricals
and particularly those festivities inaugurated for the entertainment of
royalty, he led a great concourse of devoted patriots through the forests
of Arden, blooming parks of Warwick Castle on to the grand surroundings of
Kenilworth, where the people _en masse_ camped, sang, danced, took part in
country plays, feasted and went wild for eighteen days, over the
illustrious daughter of Henry the Eighth.
William and myself were among the enthusiastic revelers, and for boys of
twelve years of age, we felt more cheer than any of the lads and lasses
from Stratford, because our parents furnished us with milk white ponies, to
pay tribute, and typify the virtue and chastity of the "Virgin Queen!" We
did not particularly care about virtue or virginity, so we shared in the
cakes and ale that were lavished in profusion to the rural multitude.
A high grand throne made out of evergreens and wild flowers was erected in
the central park of Kenilworth, rimmed in by lofty elms, oaks and
sycamores.
There, through the fleeting days and nights, the Queen and her royal suite
of a thousand purpled cavaliers and bejeweled maids of honor, held court
and viewed the ever-changing, living panorama evolved for their
entertainment. The Queen looked like a wilderness of lace and variegated
velvet, irrigated with a shower of diamonds.
On the 9th of July Queen "Bess" and her illuminated suite entered the
Castle of Kenilworth, and the hands of the clock in the great tower pointed
to the hour of two, where they remained until her departure, as invitation
to a continual banquet.
The Earl expended a thousand pounds a day for the fluid and food
entertainment of his guests, while woodland bowers and innumerable tents
were scattered through the royal domain generously donated to man and maid
by night and day. We boys and girls seldom went to bed.
Companies of circus performers, and theatrical artists, from London and
other towns were brought down to the heart of Old Albion to swell the
pleasure of the reigning Queen. Continual plays were going on, while horn,
fife, bugle and drum lent music to the kaleidoscopic revel.
Dancing, hunting, hawking and archery parties, through the day, lent their
antics to the scene, and when night came with bright Luna showing her
mystic face, forest fires, rockets and illuminated balloons filled the air
with celestial wonder, vieing with the stars in an effort to do universal
honor to the "Virgin Queen!" That's what they called "Bess."
William and myself took part in several of the joint circus and theatrical
performances, and at the conclusion of one of the plays--"Virtue
Victorious," Queen Elizabeth called up William and a purple page named
Francis Bacon, patted them on the head with her royal digits, and said they
would soon be great men!
I must acknowledge that I felt a little envious at the encomium, not so
much to William, as to the proud peacock, Bacon, who came in the train of
the Queen.
At sunrise of the 27th of July, 1575, the festivities closed, and the royal
cavalcade with a following of ten thousand loyal subjects, accompanied the
ruling monarch to the borders of Warwickshire, with universal shouts and
ovations on her triumphal march to London.
_"I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again."_
_"All that glitters is not gold,
Often you have heard that told;
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold!"_
CHAPTER II.
LAUNCHED. APPRENTICE BOY. AMBITION.
_"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our Stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings."_
Will Shakspere and myself left school when we were fourteen years of age.
Our parents being reduced in worldly circumstances, needed the financial
fruits of our labor.
Shakspere was bound to a butcher named John Bull, for a term of three
years, while I was put at the trade of stone-cutting with Sam Granite for
the same period.
Will was one of the finest looking boys in the town of Stratford,
aristocratic by nature, large and noble in appearance, and the pride of all
the girls in the county of Warwick; for his fame as a runner, boxer,
drinker, dancer, reciter, speaker, hunter, swimmer and singer was well
known in the surrounding farms and villages, where he had occasion to
drive, purchase and sell meat animals for his butcher boss, John Bull.
Shakspere's father assisted Bull in selling hides and buying wool.
In the winter of 1580, Will and myself joined a new thespian society,
organized by the boys and girls of Stratford, with a contingent of
theatrical talent from Shottery, Snitterfield, Leicester, Kenilworth and
Coventry.
Strolling players, chartered by Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester,
often visited Stratford and the surrounding towns, infusing into the young,
and even the old, a desire for that innocent fun of tragic or comic
philosophy that wandering minstrels and circus exhibitions generate in the
human heart.
Plays of Roman, Spanish and German origin, as well as those of Old Albion,
were enacted on our rural stage, and although we had not the paraphernalia
and scenery of the London actors, we made up in frantic enthusiasm what we
lacked in artistic finish, and often in our amateur exhibitions at balls,
fairs, races and May Day Morris dances, we "astonished the natives," who
paid from a penny to sixpence to see and hear the "Stratford Oriental
Theatrical Company."
Shakspere always took a leading part in every play, poem and declamation,
but when an encore was given and a demand for a recitation on love, Will
was in his natural element and gave the eager audience dashes from Ovid's
Metamorphoses or Petrarch's Sonnets.
The local company had a large assortment of poetic and theatrical
translations, and many of the boys and girls who had passed through the
Latin school, could "spout" the rhythmic lines of Ovid, Virgil, Horace or
Petrarch in the original language. And strange to say, the Warwickshire
audience would cheer the Latin more than the English rendition, on the
principle that the least you know about a thing the more you enjoy it!
Thus pretense and ignorance make a stagger at information, and while
fooling themselves, imagine that they fool their elbow neighbor!
Shakspere had a most marvelous memory, and his sense of taste, smell,
feeling, hearing and particularly seeing was abnormally developed, and
constant practice in talking and copying verses and philosophic sentences
made him almost perfect in his deductions and conclusions. He was a natural
orator, and impressed the beholder with his superiority.
He had a habit of copying the best verses, dramatic phrases and orations of
ancient authors, and then to show his superiority of epigrammatic, incisive
style, he could paraphrase the poems of other writers into his own divine
sentences, using the crude ore of Homeric and Platonic philosophy,
resolving their thoughts into the best form of classic English, lucid,
brave and blunt!
I have often tested his powers of lightning observation with each of us
running by shop windows in Stratford, Oxford or London, and betting a
dinner as to who could name the greatest number of objects, and he
invariably could name correctly three to my one. In visiting country
farmers in search of cattle, sheep or pigs he could mount a stone fence or
climb a hedge row gate, and by a glance over the field or meadow, give the
correct number of animals in sight.
He was a wonder to the yeomanry of Warwickshire and the surrounding
counties, and when he had occasion to rest for the night at farm houses or
taverns, he was the prime favorite of the rural flames or bouncing,
beaming barmaid. The girls went wild about him. The physical development of
Shakspere was as noticeable as his mental superiority. Often when he
ploughed the placid waters of the Avon, or buffeted the breakers of the
moaning sea, have I gazed in rapture at his manly, Adonis form, standing on
the sands, like a Grecian wrestler, waiting for the laurel crown of the
Olympic games.
_Great Shakspere was endowed with heavenly light;
He read the book of Nature day and night,
And delving through the strata of mankind
Divined the thoughts that thrilled the mystic mind,
And felt the pulse of all the human race,
While from their beating heart could surely trace
The various passions that inspire the soul
Around this breathing world from pole to pole!_
My family and the Hathaway household were on familiar terms, for my father
at times worked an adjoining estate at the edge of the village of Shottery,
a straggling community of farmers and tradesmen, with the usual
wheelwright, blacksmith shop, corn and meat store and alehouse attachments.
William, in his rural perambulations, often put up for the night at our
cottage, and as there was generally some fun going on in the neighborhood
after dark, I led him into many frolics with the boys and girls; and I can
assure you he was a rusher with the fair sex, capturing the plums that fell
from the tree of beauty and passion.
On a certain moonlight night, in the month of May, 1581, a large concourse
of rural belles and beaux assembled at the home of John Dryden, washed by
the waters of the Avon, and thrilled by the songs of the nightingales,
thrushes and larks lending enchantment to the flitting hours.
Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcote and Shottery sent their contingent of
roistering boys and girls to enjoy the moonlight lawn dance and rural feast
set out under flowery bowers by the generous Dryden.
It would have done your heart good to see the variegated dresses, antics
and faces of the happy rural belles. I see them as plain as ever in the
looking-glass of memory. There is Laura Combs, plump and intelligent, Mary
Scott, willowy and keen, Jennie Field, sedate and sterling, Mary Hall,
musical and handsome, Annie Condell, modest and benevolent, Joyce Acton,
witty and aristocratic, Lizzie Heminge, bouncing and beaming, Fannie Hunt,
stately and kind, while Anne Hathaway, the big girl of the party, seemed to
be the leader in all the innocent mischief of the evening.
William took a particular liking to the push and go of Anne, and she seemed
to concentrate her gaze on his robust form at first sight. William asked
me, as the friend of the family, to introduce him to Miss Hathaway, which I
did in my best words, and away they went, on a hop, step and a jump through
the Morris dance that was just then being enacted on the lawn.
The clarion notes of the farm cocks were saluting the rosy footsteps of the
dawn when the various parties dispersed for home.
The last I saw of William he was helping Miss Hathaway over the rustic
stile and hedge row that rimmed the old thatched cottage home of his new
found flame.
It was a frigid day or night when William could not find something fresh
and new among the fair sex, and like a king bee in a field of wild flowers,
he sipped the nectar of love and beauty, and tossed carking care to the
vagrant winds.
It was soon after this moonlight party that a picnic revel was given in the
domain of Sir Hugh Clopton, near the old mill and stone bridge erected by
that generous public benefactor.
The boys and girls of the town turned out _en masse_, and enjoyed the
hawking, hunting, swimming, dancing, archery and boating that prevailed
that day.
In the midst of the festivities, while a long line of rural beauties and
beaux were prancing and rollicking on the bridge, a scream, and a flash of
Dolly Varden dress in the river showed the struggling efforts of Anne
Hathaway to keep her head above water.
One glance at the pride of his heart struggling for her life determined the
soul of the athlete, when he plunged into the running stream, caught the
arm of his adored as she was going down for the third time, and then with a
few mighty sweeps of his brawny arm, he reached the shore and heaved her on
the sands in an almost lifeless condition. She was soon restored, however,
by her numerous companions, with only the loss of a few ribbons and bunches
of hawthorn blossoms that William had tied in her golden hair that morning.
William was the hero of the day, and his fame for bravery rung on the lips
of the Warwickshire yeomanry, while in the heart of Anne Hathaway devotion
reigned supreme.
_"There is no love broker in the world can more prevail in man's
commendation with woman than report of valor."_
The courtship of William and Anne was rapid, and although her father died
only a few months before the 27th of November, 1582, license to marry was
suddenly obtained through the insistence of the yeoman friends of the
Hathaway family, Fulke-Sandells and John Richardson, who convinced the Lord
Bishop of Worcester that one calling of the banns of matrimony was only
necessary.
William left his home in Stratford immediately and took charge of Anne's
cottage and farm, settling down as soon as one of his rollicking nature
could realize that he had been virtually forced into marrying a buxom girl,
eight years older than himself, and a woman of hot temper. _Six_ months
after marriage Susanna, his daughter was born, and about two years after,
February 2d, 1585, his twin children Hammet and Judith were ushered into
his cottage home, as new pledges of matrimonial felicity.
Things did not move on with William as happily after marriage as before,
and while his wife did most of the work, the Bard of Nature preferred to
shirk hard labor in field and wood, longing constantly to meet the "boys"
at the tavern, or fish, sing, hunt and poach along the Avon.
Yoking Pegasus to a Flanders mare would be about as reasonable as joining a
practical, honest woman with a poet!
Water and hot oil will not mix, and the fires of genius cannot be curbed or
subdued by material surroundings. Beef cannot appreciate brains!
Anne was constantly sand papering William about his vagabond life, and
holding up the picture of ruin for her ancestral estate, by his thoughtless
extravagance and determination to attend to other people's business instead
of his own. As the wife was senior and business boss, the Bard endured
these curtain lectures with meekness and surface sorrow and promises of
reformation, but, when out of her sight continued in the same old rut of
playing the clown and philosopher for the public amusement.
_"How hard it is to hide the spark of Nature!"_
CHAPTER III.
FARM LIFE. SPORTING. POACHING ON LUCY.
_"Hanging and wiving go by destiny!"_
The drudgery of farm work was not relished by Shakspere, and the spring of
1586 found the man of destiny more engaged in the sports of Stratford and
surrounding villages than in the production of corn, cabbage, turnips and
potatoes. Where fun was to be found William raised the auction and the
highest bidder at the booths of vanity fair. He was athletic in mind and
body, and forever like a cribbed lion or caged eagle, struggled to shake
off his rural environments and dash away into the world of thought and
action.
Home, with its practical, daily gad grind morality and responsibility, had
no charm for William, and his stalwart wife made matters worse by her
continual importunities to her vagabond husband to settle down with the
muttonhead clodhoppers and tradesmen of Warwickshire. He was not built that
way!
Her farm logic fell upon deaf ears, for while she was preaching hard work
he was reading the love-lit flights of Ovid and pondering over the sugared
sonnets of Petrarch and Sir Philip Sidney, living in the realms of Clio,
Euterpe and Terpsichore, preparing even then his pathway to the great
poems of Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, the sonnets and the immortal plays that
were incubating in the procreant soul of the Divine Bard. He was his own
schoolmaster, drawing daily draughts from the universal fountains of
Nature.
And what a blessing it is to the public to have even a social scapegrace
hatch out golden ideas for their education and amusement, notwithstanding
the neglect of farm and family!
The greatest good to the greatest number is best for all time.
_"God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform,
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm."_
On the first of September, 1586, the lord high sheriff of Coventry invited
the people to an archery and drinking contest.
Representatives from twenty-five villages and towns were selected, from the
various working guilds and professions, to conquer or die (drunk) in the
Queen's name for the honor of Old Albion.
Ceres, the Goddess of Harvest, had showered her riches on the fields and
forests of Warwickshire, and to glorify her abundance, a great athletic and
semimilitary carnival was thus given by the authorities to test the
bravery, endurance and greatness of the sons of Saint George and the
Dragon.
The beautiful, broad, undulating, winding highways, leading from Stratford,
Warwick, Kenilworth and Birmingham to the ancient town of Coventry were
filled with jolly pilgrims to pay devotion at the shrine of Hercules and
Bacchus, with the influence of Venus as an ever-present incentive to
passionate pleasure.
That bright September morning I well remember! Dame Nature was just donning
her variegated gown of rustic-brown, while fitful airs from the realms of
Jack Frost were painting the wild roses and forest leaves in cardinal hue,
and the blackbird, thrush and musical nightingale flew low and sang hoarse,
but continually, in their assemblages for migration to lands of sun and
flowers.
From Kenilworth to Coventry the rural scenery is as various and beautiful
as visions of a dream, and the undulating landscape by hill and dale, field
and forest, river, marge, cottage, hall, church and castle, grouping
themselves in shifting pictures of beauty and grandeur, where lofty elms
and sycamores rise and bend their willowy arms to the passing breeze,
indelibly impresses the beholder with a splendid kaleidoscopic view of
English hospitality and agricultural cultivation.
The tall turrets of monasteries, castles and soaring church spires of
Coventry looked luminous in the morning sunshine, while the brazen tongues
of century bells rolled their mellifluous matin tones in voluminous welcome
to the great multitude of revelers within her embattled walls and
hospitable homes.
Promptly at nine o'clock in the morning, in the Leicester Park, twenty-five
accoutered long bow men, in archery uniform, took their stand before the
bull's eye targets two hundred yards away.
At the words "draw," "aim" and "fly" the whizzing arrows centered and
shivered in the oak targets, and none hit the bull's but Will Shakspere of
Stratford, who was proclaimed winner of the first prize, an ox, a barrel of
sack and butt of wine, with the privilege of kissing every girl in the
county.
The entire day was spent in all kinds of sports, and with roasts, joints,
bread, pudding, sack, ale, gin, brandy and whiskey, the revelers did not
break up until daylight, when all were laid under the table but William and
his friends Burbage, Condell and Dick Field, who had come away from his
printing house in London to witness one of the greatest rural sports of
England.
Although Stratford was not a day's walk from Coventry, William and his
friends did not succeed in getting back for three days, and often they
traveled by the light of the moon believing it was the sun in midday
splendor.
Anne Hathaway heard of William's official and social victory, not in the
proud light of his Stratford and Shottery alehouse companions, but with a
tongue like a gad, she proposed to lash him into shame as a husband or
drive him from his cottage home to earn a living for his infant children.
William was a little dubious as to his reception, and in order to temper
the storm to the "ambling lamb," he earnestly requested me to accompany him
home, as a buffer to his contemplated reception, believing that Anne would
mellow her words and actions in the presence of an old friend.
I respectfully declined his pressing invitation and twitted him on being
afraid of a woman, when he plaintively exclaimed:
_Anne Hath-a-way that gives me pain,
She scolds both day and night;
Her tongue goes pattering like the rain
And speeds my outward flight;
I'll soon be gone to London town
And leave her house and land
Where I will gain some great renown
That she may understand._
I met William the next morning on his way to the Crown Tavern in search of
a "Martini Cocktail," a new drink that an Indian from America had invented
for Admiral Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh.
William bore the appearance of a man who had slept by a smoky chimney, or
encountered the butt end of a threshing flail. He seemed sombre and
muttered to himself:
_"When sorrows come they come not single
But in battalions!"_
I joined him in liquidation at the tavern, for, to tell the truth, my
throat felt like the rough edge of a buffalo robe, and my nerves trembled
like aspen leaves in July.
When our usual village sports filed around the table, and glee and song
once more prevailed, William began to soften in his statuesque attitude,
and laughingly proposed that we "go a poaching" on the imprisoned animals
and birds that Squire Lucy corraled for his special delectation, to the
detriment of honest apprentices and pure-minded yeomanry.
His proposition was agreed to unanimously, and just as the sun tipped the
treetops of the Charlecote domain, we had scared up a couple of fat deer,
and sent our arrows through their trembling anatomy, and the number of
hares, grouse and pigeons we slaughtered that evening kept the landlord of
the Crown Tavern busy for two days to dish up to his jolly revelers.
In this escapade we only imitated the aristocratic students of Oxford
College, who frequently made inroads into lordly domains and took some of
the treasures that God and Nature intended for all men, instead of being
hatched, bred and watched by impudent and cruel gamekeepers, employed by
tyrannical landlords, in defiance of the natural rights of the people.
Even the fish in the Avon, Severn and Bay were registered and claimed by
scrubs of royalty for their exclusive use, fine and imprisonment being
imposed for hunting on the land and fishing in the streams that God made
for all men.
These parliamentary laws should be voted or bulleted out of the statute
books, and the people again inherit their inalienable rights.
My friend William was arrested by the malicious Lucy, and the gamekeeper,
Tom Snap, swore to enough facts to exile, hang and quarter the Bard.
Through the influence of his father and John A. Combe, William, the chief
culprit, was not imprisoned, but compelled to pay a fine of one pound ten.
He did not have but three shillings, yet the boys secretly passed the hat
around in the court yard and tavern, and soon extricated our chum from the
toils of Sir Thomas Lucy.
William did not have the courage to face his wife after a week's absence,
and told me privately that he was going off instanter by the way of Oxford
to London and seek his fortune.
I applauded his spunk and determination, and, at his solicitation willingly
joined him in his eloquent rambles. My parents were both dead, and being of
a bohemian tendency, my home has ever been on any spot of the earth where
the sun rose or set. Pot luck suits me.
Natural freedom of body and mind has ever been my greatest delight and the
artificial fashions and tyrannical laws of society I despise and defy, and
shall to my dying day. My mind is my master.
Right is my religion and God is my instructor!
_"I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind
To blow on whom I please."_
The evening before we left Stratford William wrote a short note to his wife
and said that he would take her advice, leave the town, and seek his
fortune in the whirlpool of grand old London.
I imagine that Anne was delighted to receive his impromptu note, for it
left her one less mouth to feed; and William was equally satisfied to be
relieved of the role of playing husband without any of the practical moral
adjuncts.
In passing by the entrance gate to the lordly estate of Sir Thomas Lucy, or
Justice Shallow, William nailed up the following poetic shot to the
hot-headed old squire, which was read and copied the next morning, by all
the market men going to town, and the tavern lads going to their country
ploughs:
_"The tyrant Thomas Lucy
Lets no one go to mass,
He's a squire for Queen Bess,
And in Parliament an ass;
Fair Charlecote is ruined
By this bluffer of the state,
And only his dependents
Will dare to call him great.
The deer and hares and pidgeons
Are imprisoned for his use,
Yet, poaching lads from Stratford
Pluck this strutting, feathered goose."_
CHAPTER IV.
IN SEARCH OF PEACE AND FORTUNE.
_"Blessed are those whose blood
And judgment are so commingled,
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
'To sound what stop she pleases.'
'Give me that man that is not passion's slave,'
And I will wear him in my heart's core,
Ay, in my heart of heart as I do thee."_
Early on the morning of the 9th of September, 1586, William and myself took
our departure from the Crown Tavern. The landlord, Tom Gill, gave us a
bottle of his best gin and brandy to cheer us on our way to fame and
fortune. Fannie Hill, the barmaid, threw kisses at us until we rounded the
corner of the street leading to the old Grammar School. We carried
blackthorn cudgels to protect us from gamekeepers, lords and dogs.
As we passed the modest cottage where William's parents resided, he
impulsively broke away from my presence to bid a long farewell to his
angelic mother, and soon again he was at my side, flushed with pride and
tears, exclaiming in undertone:
_A mother's love and fervent hope
Are coined into our horoscope,
And to our latest dying breath
Her heart and soul are ours to death!_
In his clutched hand he held four gold "sovereigns" that his fond mother
had given him at parting to help him in the daily trials of life, when no
other friend could be so true and powerful. Gold gilds success.
"Here, Jack, keep two of these for yourself, and if I should ever be
penniless, and you have gold, I know you will aid me in a pinch. The wine
nature of your soul needs no bush."
_"We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,
And wherever we went like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled, and inseparable."_
"William," said I, "memory with her indelible signet shall long imprint
this generous act of yours upon my soul, and when hundreds of years have
passed, I shall tell of the undying friendship of two bohemians, who, day
and night, set their own fashion, created a world of their own, and lived
ecstatically, oscillating between the blunders of Bacchus and the vanity of
Venus!"
William's heart was heavy when turning his back on father, mother, brother,
sister, wife and children, at the age of twenty-two.
We passed along the Clopton stone bridge, and as we tramped over Primrose
Hill looking back at the roofs and spires of Stratford, glinting in the
morning light, the Bard uttered this impulsive dash of eloquence:
_Farewell, farewell! a sad farewell
To glowing scenes of boyhood.
Ye rocks, and rills and forests primeval
List to my sighing soul, trembling on the tongue
To vent its echoes in ambient air.
No more shall wild eyed deer,
Fretful hares, hawks and hounds
Entrance mine ear and vision,
Or frantically depart when
Stealthy footsteps disturb the lark,
Ere Phoebus' golden light
Illuminates the dawn.
Memory, many hued maiden,
Oft in midnight hours
Shall picture these eternal hills,
And purling streams, rimmed by
Vernal meadows;
And pillowed even in the lap of misery
Fantastic visions of thee
Shall lull deepest woe to repose.
And banqueting at yon alehouse,
Nestling near blooming hedge and snowy
Hawthorn, I shall live again
In blissful dreams among the enchanting
Precincts of the silver, serpentine Avon.
To thee I lift my hands in prayer
Disappearing, and pinioned with Hope;
Daughter of Love and sunrise--
Go forth to multitudinous London,
And, "buckle fortune on my back"
"To bear her burden," to successful,
Lofty heights of mind illimitable._
With this apostrophe, we took a last look at the glinting gables and
sparkling spires of Stratford, disappearing over the hill, our steps and
faces turned to London town, that seething whirlpool of human woe and
pleasure.
The air was cold and the country roads were rutty and muddy, but the autumn
landscape was beautiful, in its gray and purple garb, while the notes of
flitting wild birds chirped and sang from bush, hedge, field and forest, in
a mournful monotone to the fading glory of the year.
The various birds chattered in clumps along the highway, and then would
rise over our heads in flitting flocks, steering their course to the south
and seemingly accompanying us on our wandering way to the great metropolis.
In our zigzag course we passed through the towns of Ettington, Oxhill,
Wroxton, Woodstock, Eversham and Oxford.
It was near sunset when the lofty towers and steeples of ancient Oxford,
the great site of classic lore, met our view. In our haste to enter the
city before dark, we jumped a hedge fence, and stone wall, making a short
cross-cut over the lordly domain of the Earl of Norfolk, and just as we
were again emerging into the great road, a gamekeeper was seen approaching
with a huge mastiff, who rushed upon us like a lion.
We were near a rough wall, and it appeared to both of us that unless we
stood for immediate fight the dog would tear us to pieces.
The gamekeeper urged the dog in his barking, mad career, but just as he
made a grand leap at William's throat, his blackthorn cudgel came down with
a whirl and broke the forelegs of the mastiff, sending him to earth with a
growl and roar that could be heard over the castle walls that loomed up in
the evening gray. The gamekeeper aimed a blunderbuss at the Bard, but ere
he could fire the deadly weapon, I jumped on the petty tyrant whelp, and
cudgeled his face into a macerated beefsteak.
We then leaped the garden wall and rushed into the city crowd where the
curtains of night screened us from dogs and licentious lords.
We found our way to the Crown Tavern, kept by Richard Devanant and his
buxom black-eyed wife.
The old Boniface was jolly, but was in his physical and spiritual dotage,
yet "Nell," his second wife, was the life of the place, being immensely
popular with the Oxford students, who circled about the "Crown" in midnight
hours, with hilarious independence, that defied the raids of beadles,
watchmen and armed constabulary.
Those were gay and roystering days and nights when the greatest yeoman,
tradesman, student, or lord, was the one who "drank his comrade under the
table" and went away at sunrise like a lark, fluttering with dew from his
downy wing, and soaring into the sky of beauty and action.
It was Saturday night when we pulled up at the old tavern, and there seemed
to be a great crowd of town people celebrating some local event.
We soon found that the senior class of Oxonian students had conquered the
senior class of Cambridge at a great game of inter-college football and the
cheers and yells of Oxford bloods permeated the atmosphere until midnight.
A round table spread in the tavern hall was loaded with food and liquors,
while songs and speeches were given with a vim, all boasting of the prowess
and patriotism of Oxford.
A number of strolling players and boxers were introduced during the
evening.
A young lord named Bob Burleigh, was president of the club, while Mat
Monmouth was the spokesman, who called on the various students and actors
to entertain the town roysters who dropped in to see the free and easy
celebration of the football victory.
While drowning our grief and loneliness in pewter pots of ale at a side
table, in a snug corner, who should slap William on the shoulder but Ned
Sadler, our old schoolmate from Stratford. Ned was a jolly rake, and had
been in London sporting with theatrical companies, and, as a citizen of the
world, was perfectly at home wherever night overtook him.
At the height of the college banquet Mat Monmouth announced that the
president of the Cambridge Boxing Club had just challenged the president of
the Oxford Club to fight, under the King's rule, for a purse of twenty
guineas.
A wild cheer rent the room, and instanter the chairs and tables were pushed
aside, when Dick Milton and Jack Norfolk stepped into the improvised prize
ring, made by the circling arms of the students.
Five rounds with gloves were to be fought, and the champion who knocked out
his opponent three times, should be the victor.
Dick Milton, the Cambridge athlete, when "time" was called, rushed on Jack
Norfolk, the Oxford man, with a blow that sent him over the circling arms
and into the chairs.
Score one for Dick.
Time was called, and Jack, although a little dazed, leaped at his opponent,
who dodged the rush, and with a quick turn got in a left-hander on Jack's
neck, and pastured him again among the yelling bloods.
Score two for Dick.
When time was called for the third round, the Oxford man looked bleary and
tremulous, but with that bull-dog courage that never deserts an Englishman,
he threw himself on the Cambridge man with great force and both went down
with a crash.
Dick shook his opponent off like a terrier would a rat, and standing erect
at the end of the room, waited for the call of time.
Jack Norfolk did not respond to the call.
Score three for Dick. Victory!
Then the yell of the Cambridge students could be heard among the turrets
and gables of classic Oxford, a recompense for their defeat at the
afternoon football game.
Dick Milton, flushed with wine and victory, held aloft the purse of
guineas, and challenged any man in the room to fight him three rounds.
There seemed to be no immediate response, but I noticed a flush in the face
of William, who modestly rose in his six-foot form and asked if the
challenge included outside citizens?
Dick immediately replied, "You, or anybody in England." William said he did
not know much about fighting with gloves, but if the gentleman would
consent to three rounds with bare knuckles he would be pleased to
accommodate him at once.
"All right, toe the mark!"
Mat Monmouth called time.
Dick Milton made a tiger leap at William, and landed with his right eye on
the right knuckles of the Stratford citizen. The quickness and science of
the Bard was a great surprise to the Cambridge athlete, and when time was
called he came up groggy with a funeral eye, on the defense, and not on the
tiger attack.
Considerable sparring for place, and dodging about the human ring, was
indulged in by Dick, but William foiled each blow, and as the Cambridge man
inadvertently rubbed his swollen eye, the Bard landed a stinging blow on
the left optic of Milton and sent him into the arms of the landlord.
When time was called, no response from the Cambridge champion was heard,
and Mat Monmouth handed over the prize purse to William, when the Oxford
lads cheered the Stratford stranger to the echo, and made him an honorary
member of their athletic club.
_"Screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we will not fail."_
At the second crow of the cock William and myself bid good-bye to the jolly
Boniface and his fantastic spouse, who made a deep impression on the Bard.
In fact, he was easily impressed when youth, beauty and pleasure reigned
around, and had he been born in Kentucky, no blue ribbon stallion in the
commonwealth could match his form, spirit or gait.
Apollo with his rosy footsteps lit up hill, meadow and lawn, and kissed
away the sparkling dewdrops of bush and hedge, cheering us on our way
through the towns of Thane, over the Chilton Hills, on to Great Marlow,
Maidenhead and renowned Windsor, where forest and castle thrilled the
beholder with admiration for the works of Nature and Art.
It was late in the afternoon when we entered the broad highway to Windsor,
passing numerous yeomen and tradespeople on their way to and from the royal
domain of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
In striding along, with hearts light and airy, we were suddenly startled by
cries of frantic yells coming from the rear, and looking around beheld a
wild, runaway horse, and an open wagon with two young girls screaming for
help.
To see, think and act was always the way of William, and as the horse
rushed by with wagon and girls, nearly clipping our legs off, the Bard made
a leap for the tail board of the vehicle and landed in the midst of the
frightened girls. He then, as if inspired with the impulse of a tiger,
jumped on the back of the rushing animal, grabbed the trailing lines, and
neck of the horse, and steered him into a huge box hedge row that skirted
the castle walls of Windsor.
Every one went after the runaway to see the fate of the party; but strange
to say, the horse was lodged high and dry in the hedge row, while William
and the girls crawled out of the wreck without a scratch, soon recovering
from the fear, trepidation and danger that but a moment before reigned
supreme.
We put up for the night at the Red Lion Tavern, and you may be sure that
William was the hero of the town.
Rose and Bess Montagle were the young ladies whose lives had been
providentially saved, and their father was the head gamekeeper of Windsor.
William was invited for breakfast the next morning at the stone lodge to
receive hearty thanks and reward for his heroic action in risking his life
for the salvation of others; but the Bard excused himself, saying that he
must start by daylight for his last stretch to London, and only asked from
the young ladies a sprig of boxwood and lock of their golden hair.
At parting the father threw William a bag of gold, and the girls presented
him with the tokens desired, in addition to impulsive bashful kisses.
We were off promptly by sunrise, and steering our course to Houndslow,
Brentford, Kensington, and to the top of Primrose Hill, we first caught
sight of the spires, domes, turrets, temples and palaces of multitudinous,
universal London.
_"London, the needy villain's general home,
The common sewer of Paris and of Rome;
With eager thirst by folly or by fate,
Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state."_
CHAPTER V.
LONDON. ITS GUILT AND GLORY.
_"They say, best men are molded out of faults;
And for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad."_
It was on the 13th of September, 1586, that William and myself first
feasted our eyes on the variegated wilderness of wood, mortar, stone and
tile of wonderful London.
The evening was bright and clear, while a north-west wind blew away the
smoky clouds that hovered over the city like a funeral pall, displaying to
our view the silver sinuosities of old Father Thames, as he moved in
sluggish grandeur by Westminster, Blackfriars Bridge, the Tower, and to
Gravesend, on his way to the channel and the sea.
To get a grand view of the town, an old sexton advised us to climb the
steeple steps of crumbling Saint Mary's, that once felt the tread of the
Crusaders, and heard the chanting hymn of monks, nuns and friars five
hundred years before.
Standing on a broken column of the old steeple, three hundred feet above
Primrose Hill, William struck an attitude of theatrical fashion and uttered
the following oratorical flight:
_Glorious London! Leviathan of human greed;
Palpitating hot-bed of iniquity and joy,
Greek, Roman, Spanish, Saxon, Kelt, Scot,
Pict, Norman and Dane
Have swept over thee like winter storms;
And the mighty Caesar, Julius of old,
With a myriad of bucklered warriors
And one hundred galleons of sailors
Triple-oared mariners, defying wave and fate,
Have ploughed the placid face of Father Thames,
Startling the loud cry of hawk and bittern
As his royal prows grated on thy strand,
Or skimmed over the marshes of thy infancy.
Yet, amid all the wrecks of human ambition
Where Pagan, Jew, Buddhist, Turk and Christian
Struggled for the mastery of gold and power,
You still march forward, giant-like and brave,
Facing the morning of progress and liberty,
Carrying thy cross and crown to all lands--
And with thy grand flotilla, chartered by Neptune
Remain mistress of all the seas, defiant--
The roar of thy cannon and drum beats
Heard with pride and glory around the world!
Sad, how sad, to think that the day will come
When not a vestige of this wonderful mass
Of human energy shall remain;
Where the cry of the wolf, bat and bittern
Shall only be heard, and Nature again
Resume her rustic, splendid desolation!
Cities older and far greater than this,
Dreaming of everlasting endurance,
Have been long since buried in desert sands,
Or engulfed in the pitiless waves of ocean,
Lost forever from the rusty records
Of Time, the tyrant and tomb builder
Of man, vain insect of a moment,
Who promises himself immortality,
And then disappears like the mist of mountains,
Or wandering meteors that sparkle and darkle
In the midnight of oblivion!_
We quickly descended from the steeple, passed by Buckingham Palace, Regent
Park, British Museum, through Chancery Lane into Fleet street, by Ludgate
Hill, under the shadow of old battered Saint Paul's Church on to the
Devil's Tavern, near Blackfriars Bridge, where we found gay and comfortable
lodgings for the night, it being twelve o'clock when we shook hands with
Meg Mullen, the rubicund landlady.
The Devil's Tavern was a resort for actors, authors, bohemians, lords and
ladies, who did not retire early to their downy couches.
The night we arrived the tavern was crowded, as the Actors' Annual Ball was
in progress, and many fair women and brave men belated by Bacchus could not
find their way home, and were compelled to remain all night and be cared
for by the host of the Devil.
I told "Meg" we were Stratford boys, come up to London to seek our fortune,
and set the Thames afire with our genius.
Plucking the "rosy" dame aside, I informed her that William Shakspere was a
poet, author, actor and philosopher; and, while he was posing over the
counter, smiling at a blooming barmaid, he looked the picture of his own
immortal Romeo. Meg told me in a quizzical tone that the town was full of
poets and actors, and that the surrounding playhouses could hire them for
ten shillings a week, with sack and bread and cheese thrown in every
Saturday night.
After a hasty supper, I tossed Meg a golden guinea to pay score, as if it
were a shilling, to convince her that we were of the upper crust of
bohemians, not strollers from the Strand, or penny puppets from Eastcheap
or Smithfield.
After passing back the change, Meg sent a gay and festive porter to light
us to the top cock-loft of the tavern, five stairs up, among the windows
and angled gables of the tile roof.
A tallow dip and coach candle lit up the room, which was large, containing
two Roman couches with quilts, robes and blankets, a stout table, two oak
chairs, a pewter basin, and a large stone jug filled with water.
The tavern seemed to be on the banks of the Thames, for we could see
through the two large windows, flitting lights as if boats and ships were
moving on the water, while across the bridge old Southwark could be seen in
the midnight glare as if it were a field of Jack-o'-lanterns moving in
mystic parade.
William and myself soon found rest in deep slumber, and wafted away into a
dreamless realm, our tired bodies lay in the enfolding arms of Morpheus
until the porter knocked at our door the next morning as the clock of the
tower struck the hour of nine.
Our first sight of sunrise in London gave us great expectations of fame and
fortune--for surely all we had was glowing expectations.
_"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest and despair most fits."_
While William stood gazing out of the roof windows of the Devil's Tavern on
the moving, meandering population of London as they passed below on lane,
street and stream, by foot, car or boat, he heaved a long drawn sigh,
turned to me and said, "Jack, what do you think of London?"
"I like its whirl, dash and roar, far better than mingling with the rural
milk-sops and innocent maidens of Warwick. Here we can work and climb to
the top of the ladder of fame, while you, dear Will, will not be battered
in ear by crying kids and tongue-lashing spouse."
Brushing away a tear of sorrow, no doubt for the absence of loved ones at
Stratford, he dashed down the stairs, and was soon in the jolly whirlpool
of tavern loungers, where beaming Meg greeted us with a smiling face,
having prepared in advance a fine breakfast, smoking hot from the busy
kitchen of the Devil.
In passing out of the dining room, Meg led us through a back hall into a
low, long room, where a number of "ladies" and "gentlemen" were assembled
about a round table, playing "cut the card," "spring the top" and "throw
the dice;" small piles of silver and gold stacked in front of each player,
while the "King's Dealer," or fat Jack Stafford, lost or paid all bets on
"call."
William and myself were incidentally introduced to the motley gang as young
"bloods" from Warwick, who had just entered London for fame and fortune.
The conclave rose with extreme politeness, and Jack as spokesman welcomed
us to their bosoms (so to speak), and asked if we would not "sit up and
take a hand."
I respectfully declined, but William, surcharged with sorrow or flushed
with ambition, bethought of the guineas in his pocket and belt, and called
for the "dice box." "Deuces" won double and "sixes" treble coin.
William, to the great amazement of the dealer, flung a guinea in the center
pot, which was immediately tapped by Jack, while the others looked on in
silent expectation.
Grasping the dice box, he whirled it in his grasp, rattling the "bones" in
triumphant glee and threw on the table three "sixes," thus abstracting from
the inside pocket of the "Gentleman" at the head of the table, twenty-seven
guineas.
Pushing back the coin and dice box, William proposed another throw, which
was smilingly consented to by the "child of Fortune," and grasping the box,
the Bard clicked the "ivories" and flung on the table three aces, which by
the rule of the game, gave all the coin to the "Royal" dealer.
William never winced or hesitated, but pulling from his waist a buckskin
belt, threw it on the table, exclaiming, "There's fifteen guineas I wager
on the next throw."
The polite Jack replied, "All right, sir, take your word for it."
William frantically said:
_"I have set my life upon a cast,
And will stand the hazard of the die!"_
Then, with a round whirl, he threw three "aces" again, rose from the table
and bolted out of the room like a shot from a blunderbuss.
I immediately followed in his footsteps and found him joking with the
landlady about a couple of infant bull pups she was fondling in her
capacious lap.
At this juncture, who should appear on the scene but Dick Field, the first
cousin of William, who had been in London a few years engaged in the
printing and publishing business.
If he had dropped out of the clouds William could not have been more
pleased or surprised, and the feeling was reciprocal.
The printing shop of Field was only a short distance from the Devil's
Tavern, and we were invited to visit the establishment. On our way we
passed by the Blackfriars, Curtain, In Yard, Paris and Devil theatres,
interspersed with hurdy-gurdy concert hall, sailor and soldier, gin and
sack vaults, where blear-eyed belles and battered beaux vied with each
other in fantastic intoxication.
Field did a lot of rough printing for the various theatres, issuing bill
posters, announcing plays, and setting up type sheets for actors and
managers, in their daily concerts and dramas for the public amusement.
As luck would have it, old James Burbage and his son Dick were waiting for
Field, with a lot of dramatic manuscript that must be put in print at once.
We were casually introduced to the great theatrical magnate Burbage, as
relatives from Stratford who were just then in search of work.
James Burbage gazed for a moment on the manly form of William and blurted
out in his bluff manner, "What do you know?"
Quick as a flash William replied: "I know more than those who know less,
and know less than those who know more."
"Sharp answer, 'boy.' See me to-morrow at the Blackfriars at noon."
We turned aside and left Field and Burbage to their business; while Dick
Burbage, the gay theatrical rake, invited us across the way to the Bull's
Head, where we irrigated our anatomy, and then returned to the printing
shop.
Field informed me that he had given us a great setting up with old Burbage;
and would see his partner Greene, the playwright, and add to our
recommendation for energy and learning.
We were invited to dine with Field that evening at eight o'clock at the
Boar's Head Tavern, where Dame Quickly dispensed the best food and fluid of
the lower town, and where the wags and wits of all lands congregated in
security.
_"At the very witching time of night
When church yards yawn and hell itself
Breathes out contagion to this world."_
CHAPTER VI.
TAVERNS. THEATRES. VARIEGATED SOCIETY.
_"Man's evil manners live in brass;
Their virtues we write in water."_
The Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap was one of the oldest and best inns in
London for free and easy rollicking mood, where prince and peasant, king or
clown, papist or puritan were welcome night and day, provided they intended
no wrong and kept good nature aglow even in their cups. Magistrate and
convent prior would sometimes raid the tavern until their physical and
financial wants were satisfied.
Dame Quickly, with ruffled collar, was the master spirit of the house, and
had been its light and glory for thirty years. Her round, full face, fat
neck and robust form was a constant invitation for good cheer, and her
matchless wit was a marvel to the guests that nightly congregated through
her three-story gabled stone monastery.
A tavern is the best picture of human folly, nature wearing no garb of
hypocrisy.
You must know that the Boar's Head had once been the home of the
"Blackfriars," then a residence of a bishop, a convent, a brewery, and
finally fell into the hands of the grandfather of Dame Quickly, who
bequeathed it to his posterity and the public as a depot for plum pudding,
roast beef, lamb, birds, fish, ale, wine, brandy and universal pleasure. A
boar's head, with a red light in its mouth was kept constantly burning from
sunset to sunrise, where wandering humanity found welcome and rest.
Supper parties from the adjacent theatres filled the tavern in midnight
hours, where actors, authors, politicians, statesmen and ladies of all hue,
reveled in jolly, generous freedom, beneath the ever-present
superintendence of buxom Dame Quickly.
_"The gods are just, and oft our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us.
Boys, immature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure."_
The main bar, decorated with variegated lights and shining blue bottles and
glasses, with pewter and silver mugs in theatrical rows, lent a kind of
enchantment to the nightly scene. Round, square and octagonal oak tables
were scattered through the various rooms, and rough leather lounges skirted
the walls.
Promptly at eight o'clock William and myself passed the stony portals of
the Boar's Head, and were ushered into the back ground floor dining room
where we met our friend Field and a playwright named Christopher Marlowe,
standing before a great open chimney, with a blazing fire and a splendid
supper.
Field seemed to take great pride in making us acquainted with Marlowe, the
greatest actor and dramatist of his day, whose plays were even then the
talk and delight of London.
"Tamberlaine the Great" and "Dr. Faustus" had been successfully launched at
the Blackfriars, and young Marlowe was in his glory, the wit and toast of
the town. He was but twenty-five years of age, finely formed, a voluptuary,
high jutting forehead, dark hazel eye, and a typical image of a bohemian
poet. It was a toss up as to who was the handsomest man, William or
Marlowe, yet a stranger, on close inspection could see glinting out of
William's eye a divine light and flashing expression that ever commanded
respect and admiration. He was unlike any other mortal.
I, alone at that period, knew the bursting ability of William; and that his
granary of knowledge was full to the brim, needing only an opportunity to
flood the world with immortal sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and the incubating
passion plays that lay struggling in his burning brain for universal
recognition.
During the evening young actors, politicians, college students and
roystering lords, filled the house and by twelve o'clock Bacchanalian folly
ruled the madcaps of the town, while battered Venus with bedraggled hair
and skirts languished in sensuous display.
Field requested his friend Marlowe to recite a few lines from "Dr. Faustus"
for our instruction and pleasure, and forthwith he gave the soliloquy of
Faust, waiting at midnight for Lucifer to carry him to hell, the terrified
Doctor exclaiming to the devil:
_"Oh mercy! heaven, look not so fierce on me,
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile;
Ugly hell gape not; come not, Lucifer;
I'll burn my books; oh! Mephistopheles!"_
And then mellowing his sonorous voice, gives thus his classical apostrophe
to Helen of Greece:
_"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Illium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
Her lips suck forth my soul--see where it flies;
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again;
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
When he appeared to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!"_
A loud round of applause greeted the rendition of the classical poem, not
only at our own table, but through the entire hall and adjacent rooms.
At a table not far away sat a number of illustrious gentlemen, favorites of
Queen Elizabeth and greatly admired by the people.
There sat Sir Walter Raleigh, lately returned from discoveries in America;
Francis Bacon, Attorney-General to the Crown; Earl Essex, the court
favorite; Lord Southampton, the gayest in the realm; with young Burleigh,
Cecil and Leicester, making night melodious with their songs, speeches and
tinkling silver wine cups.
The young lords insisted that we give another recitation, pictorial of love
and passion. Marlowe declined to say more, but knowing that William had
hatched out his crude verses of Venus and Adonis, I insisted that he
deliver a few stanzas for the enthusiastic audience, particularly
describing the passionate pleadings of Venus to the stallion Adonis.
Without hesitation, trepidation or excuse, William arose in manly attitude
and drew a picture of beautiful Venus:
_"Sometimes she shakes her head and then his hand,
Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground;
Sometimes her arms infold him like a band;
She would, he will not in her arms be bound;
And when from thence he struggles to be gone
She locks her lily fingers one in one!_
_"'Fondling,' she saith, 'since I have hemmed thee here,
Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt on mountain or in dale;
Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower where the pleasant fountains lie._
_"'Within this limit is relief enough,
Sweet bottom grass and high delightful plain,
Round rising hillocks, brake obscure and rough
To shelter thee from tempest and from rain;
Then be my deer since I am such a park--
No dog shall rouse thee though a thousand bark!'"_
When he dropped in his chair the revelers went wild with enthusiasm, and
Marlowe and Southampton wished to know where the "Stratford Boy" got the
poem!
William smiled, tapped his forehead and tossed off a bumper of brandy to
the cheers that still demanded more mental food.
But as it was two by the clock, our friend Field suggested that we retire,
when Marlow and himself took us in a carriage to the Devil Tavern, where we
slept off our first spree in London.
_"O thou invisible spirit of wine,
If thou hast no name to be known by,
Let us call thee Devil!"_
We arose the next morning a little groggy, and William had a shade of
melancholy remorse flash over his usually bright countenance.
He abstractedly remarked: "Well, Jack, we are making a fine start for fame
and fortune. The stride we took last night, at the Boar's Head, will soon
land us in Newgate or Parliament!"
I replied that it made little difference to intellectual artists whether
they served their country in prison or in Parliament, for many a man was in
Newgate who might honor Parliament, and many secret scoundrels who had not
been caught should be inmates of Newgate, or, if equal justice prevailed,
their bodies be dangling on the heights of Tyburn!
_"A Daniel come to judgment; yea, a Daniel!
O wise young judge, how I do honor thee!"_
* * * * *
_Poise the cause in justice' equal scales,
Whose beam stands sure?_
It was ten o'clock when we stretched our weary legs under the breakfast
table of Meg Mullen, who had prepared for us a quartette of fat mutton
chops, with salt pork, baked potatoes, a huge omelet and a boiling pot of
black tea, sent, as she said, by the Emperor of China for the guests of the
Boar's Head Tavern!
Meg was a jolly wench, and garnished her food with pleasant words and witty
quips, believing that love and laughter aided digestion and cheered the
traveler in his journey of life.
I reminded William that he had a business engagement with the great
theatrical monarch, Richard Burbage, at noon at the Blackfriars.
The Bard was ready for a stroll, and after brushing our clothes and smiling
at the variegated guests, we sauntered into the street toward the Thames,
and soon found the entrance to the renowned Blackfriars Theatre.
A call-boy ushered us into the presence of the great actor and manager, who
greeted us with a snappish "Good morning!"
A number of authors and actors were waiting their turn to see the prince of
players, whose signet of approval or disapproval finished their
expectations. It was Saturday and pay day.
Turning abruptly to William, the proprietor said: "I understand you know
something about theatres and acting?"
"Try me; you shall be my judge."
"Then, sir, from this hour you are appointed assistant property man and
assistant prompter for the Blackfriars, at sixteen shillings a week, with
chance of promotion, if you deserve it!
"Your business hours shall be from noon, every week day, until five
o'clock; and from eight o'clock in the night until eleven o'clock, when you
are at liberty until the next day!
"Do you accept the work?"
William promptly replied:
"I accept with immeasurable thanks, and like Caesar of old, I cross the
dramatic Rubicon."
The Bard was then introduced to Bull Billings, the chief property man and
prompter, who at once initiated William into the machinery secrets of the
stage, with its scenes, ropes, chains, masks, moons, gods, swords,
bucklers, guns, pikes, torches, wheels, chairs, thrones, giants, wigs,
hats, bonnets, robes, brass jewels, kings, queens, dukes, lords, and all
the other paraphernalia of dramatic exhibition.
William was now launched upon the ocean of theatrical suns and storms, with
Nature for his guide and everlasting glory for his name.
_"Lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber turns his face;
But when he once attains the utmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend!"_
CHAPTER VII.
THEATRICAL DRUDGERY. COMPOSITIONS.
_"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in its head."_
Shakspere had now his foot firmly planted on the lower round of the ladder
of fame, whose top leaned against the skies of immortality!
The fermentation of composition began again to work within his seething
brain, and the daily demands of the Blackfriars spurred him on to emulate
if not surpass Kyd, Lodge, Greene and Marlowe.
During the time Shakspere had been a strolling player through the middle
towns of England he had studied the works of Ovid and Petrarch, and read
with pleasure the sonnets and Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney.
While playing at Kenilworth, the Lady Anne Manners, young and beautiful
cousin to the Earl of Leicester, honored the young actor with great praise
for his part in playing the Lover in "Love's Conquest." She presented the
Bard with a bunch of immortelles, that even when withered, he always kept
in an inside pocket, and at various times composed sonnets to his absent
admirer, playing Petrarch to another Laura.
The languishing, luscious, lascivious poem of "Venus and Adonis" was really
inspired by the remembrance of Miss Manners, and imagination pictured
himself and the lady as the principals in the sensuous situation!
William, like Dame Nature, was full of life-sap, that circled through his
body and brain with constant motion and sought an outlet for the surplus
volume of ideal knowledge, in theatrical action, teaching lessons of right
and wrong, with vice and virtue struggling forever for the mastery of
mankind.
The Bard worked night and day in his duties as theatrical drudge for the
Blackfriars, and made himself valuable and solid with old Burbage, who saw
in the young actor a marvelous development of new thought and force, that
had never before been seen on the British stage.
In a few weeks Bull Billings was discharged for tyranny and drunkenness,
and my friend William was given the place of chief property man and
prompter.
Various plays were put on and off the Blackfriars stage, through the hisses
or cheers of the motley audience, the autocrats of the "pit" seeming to be
the real umpires of the cessation or continuance of the most noted plays.
The last week in October, 1586, was a mournful time for London, as the
greatest favorite of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Philip Sidney, was to receive a
State funeral at Saint Paul's.
All England went in mourning for the handsome cavalier and poet, who lost
his life at the siege of Axel, in the Netherlands, while serving as chief
of cavalry under his uncle, the Earl of Leicester.
All business closed in honor of the young hero, and the celebrated military
organization, the "Ancient and Honorable Artillery," led more than thirty
thousand of the "train bands," who followed in the great procession to
Saint Paul's Church.
The sacerdotal service began at noon, and Queen Elizabeth rode in a golden
car on a dark purple throne to witness the last rites in honor of her court
favorite.
The bells of London churches, temples, turrets, and towers rang continually
until sundown, filling the air with a universal requiem of grief, while the
black clouds hanging over the metropolis shed showers of tears for the
untimely loss of a patriot and a poet.
William and myself saw the funeral car from the steps of St Paul, and as
the coffin was carried in on the shoulders of eight stalwart soldiers,
dressed in the golden garb of the Horse Battalions, we bowed our heads in
holy adoration to the memory and valor of the sonnet-maker--lost in eternal
sleep.
_"Come, sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release--
The indifferent judge between the high and low!"_
How truthful this extract from one of Sidney's sonnets!
He was a synonym of bravery and politeness; for being carried from the
field of battle, thirsty and bleeding, he called for a cup of water, and
just as he was lifting it to his lips a fatally wounded soldier was being
carried by who fixed his longing eyes eagerly on the cup--and instanter,
the gay and gallant Sidney delivered the drink to the poor soldier, saying:
"Thy necessity is greater than mine!"
Noble self-sacrifice, elemental generosity, imperial nature, sublime and
benevolent in thought and act!
On our return to the Devil Tavern for supper we found Manager Burbage, of
Blackfriars, awaiting us. He was in great haste and desired William to look
over a play that had been submitted by Greene and Lodge, who composed it
jointly.
It was a comedy-tragedy, entitled "Looking Glass of London," in three
rambling acts, and while Burbage was disposed to take the play and pay for
it, he desired that Shakspere should give it such ripping corrections as he
thought best.
This was surely showing great confidence in a young actor and author--to
criticise the play of acknowledged dramatists who had been the talk of the
town.
Shakspere modestly remarked: "I fear, sir, your friends, Lodge and Greene,
will not like or tolerate my cutting of their play."
"Care not for their opinion! Do as I say, and have the play ready for
staging Monday afternoon at two o'clock."
"Your command is law, and I obey," said the Bard--and out rushed the
bluffing, busy Burbage.
The constant circulation of bohemian customers, day and night about the
Devil's Tavern, was not conducive to careful composition of plays, and
William and myself moved to modest quarters near Paris Garden, kept by a
Miss Maggie Mellow, a blonde maiden of uncertain age.
William continued to perform his theatrical duties diligently, while I was
engaged at the printing shop of Field, translating historic, dramatic and
poetic works from Latin authors, thus piecing out the price of food,
clothes and shelter in the whirlpool of London joy and misery.
During my apprenticeship with Sam Granite, as a marble cutter, I spent my
nights with Master Hunt studying the intricate windings of the Latin
language, and became proficient in the translation of ancient authors,
delving also into the philosophy of Greek roots, with its Attic phrases and
Athenian eloquence.
My parents desired me to leave off the trade of stone cutting and prepare
for the priesthood, where I could make an easier living, working on the
fears, egotism and hopes of mankind.
I was always too blunt to play the velvet philosopher and saint-like
character of a sacerdotal vicaro of any church or creed, feeling full well
that the so-called divine teacher and pupil know just as much about the
"hereafter" as I do--and that's nothing! Put not thy faith in wind,
variable and inconstant.
So, a life of bohemian hack-work for printers, publishers and theatrical
managers seemed best suited to my nature, giving me perfect freedom of
thought and a disposition to express my honest opinion to prince or
peasant, in home, church or state.
God is God, and Nature is His representative!
_While man, vain creature of an hour,
Depressed by grief or blessed by power
Is but a shadow and a name--
A flash of evanescent fame!_
Most of the dramatic writers during the reigns of Henry the Eighth,
Elizabeth, James the First, and Charles the Second, were graduates of
Oxford, Cambridge or other classical halls of learning. They borrowed their
plots and characters from ancient history and endeavored to galvanize them
into English subjects, tickling the ears of the groundlings, as well as
their royal patrons with Grecian and Roman translations of lofty
allegorical and mythological conceptions.
AEschylus, Euripides, Sophocles and Homer, with Terence, Tacitus, Virgil,
Horace and Ovid, were constantly pillaged for thoughts to piece out the
theatrical robes and blank verse eloquence of playwrights who only received
for their best accepted works from five to twenty pounds; proprietors and
stage managers driving hard bargains with these brilliant, bacchanalian and
impecunious bohemians.
The winter and spring of 1587-8 was a busy time for William. In addition to
his prompting and casting the various plays for Burbage, he was engaged in
collecting his sonnets, putting finishing touches on "Venus and Adonis," as
well as composing the "Rape of Lucrece," a Roman epic, based on historic
truth.
He had also planned and mapped out the English play of "Henry the Fourth,"
taken from an old historical play, and was figuring on two
comedies--"Midsummer Night's Dream" and the "Merry Wives of Windsor."
Often when entering his workroom at twelve o'clock at night, or six o'clock
in the morning, I found him scratching, cutting, and delving away at his
literary bench and oak chest.
He could work at three or four plays alternately, and, from crude plots
taken out of ancient history, novels, religious or mythological tableaus,
devised his characters and put words in their mouths that burned in the
ears of British yeomen, tradesmen, professional sharpers and lords and
ladies who crowded the benches and boxes of the Blackfriars.
He reminded me of an expert cabinet-maker, who had piled up in a corner of
his shop a variety lot of rough timber, from which he fashioned and
manufactured the most exquisite dressers, sofas and bureaus, dovetailing
each piece of oak, rosewood or mahogany, with exact workmanship, and then
with the silken varnish of his genius, sending his wares out to the rushing
world to be admired, and transmitted to posterity, with perfect faith in
the endurance of his creations!
In putting the finishing touches on the fifth act of a play he would
quickly change to the composition of the first act of another, and, with
lightning rapidity embellish the characters in the third act of some
comedy, tragedy or history, that constantly occupied his multifarious
brain.
His working den at the Blackfriars was crowded with a mass of theatrical
literary productions, ancient and modern, while our lodging rooms were
piled up with Latin, Greek, Spanish and French translations.
Manager Burbage, Dick Field and even Chris Marlowe were constantly
patronizing the wonderful William, and supplied him with the iron ore
products of the ancient and middle ages, which he quickly fashioned into
the laminated steel of dramatic excellence.
_"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves."_
CHAPTER VIII.
GROWING LITERARY RENOWN. ROYAL PATRONS.
_"Follow your envious courses, men of malice;
You have Christian warrant for them, and, no doubt,
In time will find their fit rewards."_
* * * * *
_"O beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on."_
The literary and dramatic world of London in the years 1589 to 1592 was
stirred with pride and astonishment at the productions of William
Shakspere, and from the tavern and guilds of tradesmen to the crack clubs
of authors, lords and royalty itself, the Dramatic Magician of the
Blackfriars was praised to the skies and sought for by even Queen
Elizabeth, who saw more than another Edmund Spenser to glorify her reign
and flash her name down the ages with even finer, luminous colors than
bedecked the sylvan pathway of the Faerie Queen!
The Earl of Leicester was one of the first great men of England to
recognize the divine accomplishments of the Warwickshire boy who had made
his first theatrical adventures through the domain of the old Earl, and who
was ever the friend of old John Shakspere, the impecunious and agnostic
father of our brilliant Bard.
On the death of the old Earl in the autumn of 1588, his domain reverted to
his stepson, the young Earl of Essex, who continued to be the patron of
letters and often attended the Blackfriars, with his friend, the handsome
and intellectual Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, who took the
greatest interest in the plays of "Love's Labor's Lost," "Two Gentlemen of
Verona," "King John," "Henry the Fourth," "Henry the Fifth," and "Henry the
Sixth," that were then fermenting in the brain of William.
He had ransacked the history of Hollingshead and others to illustrate on
the stage the civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, known as
the war of the Red and White Roses, with canker and thorn to pester each
royal clan and bring misery on the British people because of a family
quarrel!
_"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."_
* * * * *
_"What have Kings that privates have not too,
Save ceremony?"_
The jealousy of Kyd, Lodge and Greene continued to secretly knife the
Stratford butcher boy, but the more they tried to cough him down the more
he rose in public estimation, until finally these little vipers of spite
and spleen gave up their secret scandal chase, when, like a roebuck from
the forest of Arden or Caledonian heather crags, he flashed out of sight
of all the dramatic and poetic hounds who pursued him, and ever after
looked down from the imperial heights of Parnassus at the dummies of
theatrical pretense.
They accused him of wholesale plagiarism and of robbing the archives of
every land for raw material to build up his comedies, tragedies and
histories.
He laughed and worked on, night and day, acknowledging the "soft
impeachment" of his literary integrity, but at the same time defied them to
equal or surpass the marvelous characters he created for the edification
and glory of mankind!
Yet, while he had a few envious literary, political and religious
detractors, he was building up constantly a bulwark of sentimental and
material friends in London that kept his name on the tongue of thinkers in
home, tavern, club and palace.
The keen and generous Burbage knew the intrinsic value of Shakspere, and to
tie him to the interest of the Blackfriars, he gradually increased the
Bard's salary and gave him an interest in the stock company. Yet, other
theatres staged his plays.
Edmund Spenser, the greatest rhythmic poet of his day, author of the
"Faerie Queen," and prime favorite of Sidney and Queen Elizabeth, was
lavish in his praise of the rising dramatist, while Michael Drayton and
Christopher Marlowe vied with each other in admiration of the newly
discovered star of intellectual brilliancy that glittered unceasingly in
the sky of poetic and philosophic letters.
Essex, Southampton, Raleigh, Bacon, Monmouth, Derby, Norfolk,
Northumberland, Percy, Burleigh, Cecil, Montague, and many other lords of
London club life, gave a ready adherence to Shakspere, and after his mighty
acting on the Blackfriars and other stages, struggled with each other as to
who should have the honor of entertaining him at the gay midnight suppers
that delighted the amusement world of London.
One of the most valuable friends William encountered in London was John
Florio, a Florentine, the greatest linguist of his day, who had traveled in
all lands and gathered nuggets of thought in every clime. He spoke Spanish,
Italian, French, German and Greek, with the accent of a native, and had but
recently translated the works of Montaigne, the great French philosopher.
The Herbert-Southampton family patronized him.
When not employed at the various theatres, the Stratford miracle could be
found at the rooms of his friend Florio, at the "Red Lion," across the
street from Temple Bar, where law students, bailiffs and barristers made
day and night merry with their professional antics.
William employed Florio to teach him the technical and philosophic merits
of the Greek and Latin languages, and at the same time furnish him with
ancient stories that he might dramatize into English classics, and astonish
the native writers by dressing up old subjects in new frocks, cloaks, robes
and crowns.
Florio would often read by the hour, gems of Latin, Greek and French
philosophy, and explain to us the intricate phrases of Virgil, Ovid,
Terence, Homer, AEschylus, Plutarch, Demosthenes, Plato, Petrarch and Dante,
while William drank up his imparted knowledge as freely and quickly as the
sun in his course inhales the sparkling dewdrops from garden, vale and
mountain.
In the spring of 1591 William and myself paid a flying visit to Stratford,
the Bard to pay up some family debts and bury a brother who had recently
migrated to the land of imagination.
The mother and father of William were delighted at the London success of
their son, and Anne Hathaway seemed to be mellowed and mollified by the
guineas William emptied into her lap, while Hammet and Judith, the
rollicking children, were rampant with delight at the toys, sweetmeats and
dresses presented as Easter offerings.
No matter what the incompatibility of temper between William and Anne, he
never forgot to send part of his wages for the support of herself and
children, and although he was a "free lance" among the ladies of London, he
maintained the "higher law" of family purity and morality.
When he violated any of the ten commandments, he did it with his eyes open,
and took the consequent mental or physical punishment with stoic
indifference. He never called on others to shoulder his sins, but on the
contrary he often bore the burden of cowardly "friends," who made him the
"scapegoat" for their own iniquity--a common class of scoundrels.
He never bothered himself about the religion manufacturers of mankind,
knowing that the whole scheme, from the Oriental sunworshipers to the
quarreling crowd of Pagans, Hebrews, Christians and Moslems, was nothing
but a keen financial syndicate or trust to keep sacerdotal sharpers in
place and power at the expense of plodding ignorance, hope and bigotry!
The night we started back for London, by jaunting car, on the road to
Oxford, the Bard was in a mood of lofty contemplation. He had stowed away
in the bottom of the car, a mass of school-day and strolling-player
compositions, evolved in the rush of vanished years.
"William," said I, "can you tell me anything about the silence of those
sparkling, eternal stars and planets?"
He instantly replied:
_I question the infinite silence,
And endeavor to fathom the deep
That rests in the ocean of knowledge
And dreams in the heaven of sleep;
And I soar with the wing of science,
Its mysterious realm to explore,
But the wail of the wild sea breakers
Drowns my soul in the Nevermore;
For the answer of finite wisdom
Is as fickle as ambient air,
And my wreckage of hopes are scattered
On the rocks and shores of despair!_
Arriving at the Crown Tavern, in Oxford, we were, as usual, received by the
old Boniface Devanant and his handsome wife, with warm words and luxurious
table cheer. After a day and night of reasonable revelry, we proceeded on
our way to London, and in due course found our sunny lodgings at the home
of Maggie Mellow.
The night after our arrival Sir Walter Raleigh gave a grand banquet at the
Mermaid Club to the principal wits of London.
Burbage, Florio, Field, William and myself were invited as special guests,
in honor of the poetic and dramatic association.
Representative authors and actors of the various theatrical companies were
present at the festive war of wits.
The Queen's men, and those who played under the patronage of Leicester,
Pembroke, Burleigh, and the Lord Admiral were there, while Henslowe, the
owner of the Rose Theatre on Bankside, with his son-in-law, Edward Alleyn,
the noted actor, shone in all their borrowed glory.
Spenser, Drayton, Marlowe, Kyd, Nash, Chettle, Peele, Greene, and a young
author, Ben Jonson, were a few of the literary luminaries present.
A contingent of London lords, patrons of authors and actors graced the
scene. Essex, Southampton, Pembroke, Cecil, Mortimer, Burleigh and Lord
Bacon occupied prominent places at the angle table of the club, where
Raleigh sat as master of ceremonies.
Promptly at eleven o'clock, the great courtier, sailor and discoverer arose
from his elevated chair and proposed a toast to the Virgin and Fairy Queen!
All stood to their tankards and drank unanimously to the Virgin Queen.
I thought I observed a flash of secret smiles pictured on the lips of
Essex, Spenser, Bacon and Raleigh when Elizabeth was toasted as the
_Virgin_ Queen; and William whispered in my ear:
_"Her virtues graced with eternal gifts,
Do breed love's settled passions in my heart!"_
After tremendous cheers were given for the Queen, Sir Walter, in his
blandest mood said: "We are glorified by having with us to-night the
greatest poet in the realm, and I trust Sir Edmund Spenser will be gracious
enough to give us a few lines from the 'Faerie Queen.'"
Sir Edmund arose in his place and said:
"In Una, the Fairy Queen, I beheld the purity and innocence of Elizabeth,
and in the lion of passion, hungry from the forest, I saw her conquer even
in her naked habiliments."
_"One day, nigh weary of the irksome way
From her unhasty beast she did alight;
And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay,
In secret shadow, far from all men's sight,
From her fair head her fillet she undight,
And laid her stole aside, her angel's face,
As the great Eye of Heaven, shone bright
And made a sunshine in the shady place--
Did never mortal eye behold such grace!
It fortuned, out of the thickest wood
A ramping Lion rushed suddenly,
Hunting full greedy after savage blood;
Soon as the Royal Virgin he did spy,
With gaping month at her ran greedily,
To have at once devoured her tender corse;
But to the prey when as he drew more nigh--
His bloody rage assuaged with remorse,
And with the sight amazed, forgot his furious force!"_
Spenser resumed his seat, while a whirl of echoing applause waved from
floor to rafter.
Then Sir Walter remarked:
"We are honored to-night by the presence of the counsel extraordinary of
Queen Elizabeth, the orator and philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon, who will, I
trust, give us a sentiment in honor of Her Majesty, the patron of art,
literature and liberty!"
Bacon, handsome, proud, but obsequious, then arose and addressed the jolly
banqueters as follows:
"Gentlemen: The toast of the evening to her gracious Majesty, Elizabeth,
the Virgin Queen, meets my soul-lit approval, and had I the wings of fancy,
instead of the plodding pedals of practical administration, I should raise
her virtuous statue to the skies until its pinnacle shone above the uplands
of omnipotence!
"Philosophy teaches us that vice and virtue are at eternal war, and that
whether married or single, the happiest state of man or woman is personal
independence!
_"Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,
Or pain his head;
Those that live single, take it for a curse,
Or do things worse;
Some would have children, those that have them mourn,
Or wish they were gone;
What is it then, to have or have no wife,
But single thraldom, or a double strife!_
"My friends: The ocean is the solitary handmaid of eternity. Cold and salt
cure alike!
"Men are like ants, crawling up and down.
"Some carry corn, some carry their young, and all go to and fro--at last a
little heap of dust!"
The states' attorney took his seat, with frantic applause rattling in his
ears.
Although the sentiments of Bacon were variable, mixed, foreign and
epigrammatic, they received great attention; for no matter who may be the
speaker at a banquet where royalty and power are the subjects at issue,
there will be great and tremendous cheering by little sycophants who expect
reward, and of course, by those patriots who have already received favors
from the administration pie counter.
Sir Walter at last arose and said "that although the hour was late, or,
more properly speaking, early, he earnestly desired the noble gentlemen
present to hear one whose fame, in the world of dramatic letters, like the
morning sun, had already flashed upon the horizon and rapidly approached
the high noon of earthly immortality--William Shakspere, of
Stratford-on-Avon!"
Then could be heard roof-lifting cheers by all present, who had often heard
the Bard in his lofty language and kingly strides at the Blackfriars.
William, in the flush of self-conscious, imperial, splendid manhood
exclaimed:
"Gentlemen:
_Your toast of glory to The Virgin Queen
Cracks high heaven with reverberation,
And through the ambient air, sonorous,
The echoing muses mingle the
Harmony of the spheres with celestial repetition!
Elizabeth, I lift my song to thee,
In holy adoration
To echo down the flowing tide of ages!_
_Within the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and gallant knights,
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I know their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked, but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing;
For me, which now behold these present days
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise._
_Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mark their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of the most balmy time,
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since spite of him I'll live in the poor rhyme
While he sweeps over dull and speechless tribes.
And thou, in this shall find thy monument,
When tyrant crests and tombs of brass are spent!"_
Rapturous and universal praise and applause greeted William and his
immortal sonnets; and if any critical reader or author will take pains to
delve into and scan the poetry and philosophy of Spenser and Bacon with
that of Shakspere, they will quickly and honestly come to the conclusion
that the former writers are merely rushlights to the flashing electric
lights of the Divine Bard!
To paraphrase the encomium of Shakspere to Cleopatra would fit the
greatness of himself:
_"Age cannot wither him, nor custom stale
His infinite variety; other men cloy
The appetites they feed; but he makes hungry
Where most he satisfies!"_
CHAPTER IX.
BOHEMIAN HOURS. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. "LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST."
_"I have ventured
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders
This many summers in a sea of glory."_
The literary bohemians of London three hundred years ago were an
impecunious and jealous lot of human pismires, who built their dens,
carried their loads, and were filled with vaulting ambition just the same
as we see them to-day.
The hack-writer for publishers, the actor for theatrical managers and the
author of growing renown belonged to clubs and tavern coteries, pushing
their way up the rocky heights of fame, and struggling, as now, for bread,
clothes and shelter, many of the Bacchanalian creatures dying from hunger
at the foothills of their ambition; and instead of winning a niche in the
columned aisles of Westminster Abbey, dropped dead in some back alley or
gloomy garret, to be carted away by the Beadle to the voracious Potter's
field.
They often courted Dame Suicide, who never fails to relieve the wicked,
wretched, insane or desperate from their intolerable situation.
_"Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
And fear'st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,
Content and beggary hang upon thy back;
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law!"_
How often at the Miter or Falcon taverns have I seen these little great
literary men swell like a toad or puff like a pigeon at the flattery
bestowed on them by fawning bohemians, meaner than themselves, who sought a
midnight snack and a tankard of foaming ale.
Of all the despicable and miserable creatures I have ever known it is the
poor starving devil, with latent genius, who attempts to pay court to a
cad, snob, or drunken lord around the refuse of literary or sporting clubs
in midnight hours.
William was always very kind to these threadbare wanderers, and although
they often gave him pen prods behind his back, he never betrayed any
recognition of their envious stings, but like the lion in his jungle,
brushed these busy bees away by the underbrush of his philosophy.
He mildly rebuked their pretense, but relieved their immediate wants,
impressing upon them the study of Nature and not the blandishments of art,
having the appearance of Oriental porcelain or Phoenician glass, when it
was really crude crockery painted to deceive the sight and auctioned off to
the unwary purchaser as genuine material.
How many authors, artists and actors of to-day follow in the path of their
London ancestors who blow, and brag, and strut in midnight clubs and
taverns to the pity and disgust of their table tooters.
Speaking one evening at the Red Lion, in the rooms of Florio, I asked
William how it was that his plays were so successful, while those of other
authors had almost been banished from the dramatic boards. He at once
replied:
_I draw my plots from Nature's law
To sound the depths of human life,
And through her realm I find no flaw
In all her seeming, varied strife;
The good and bad are near allied;
With sweet and sour forever blent,
While vice and virtue side by side
Exist in every continent.
The poison vine that climbs the tree,
Is just as great in Nature's plan
As every mount and every sea
Displayed below for little man.
And every ant and busy bee
Shall teach us how to build and toil
If we would mingle with the free,
Who plough the seas or till the soil._
I shall never forget the visit Shakspere and myself paid to the cloistered,
columned, pinnacled proportions of Westminster Abbey.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon of the 24th of December, 1592.
The living London world was rushing in great multitudes by alley, lane,
street and park preparing for the celebration of Christmas Eve.
Vanity Fair was decked off with palm, spruce, pine, myrtle, ivy and holly
to garnish home, hall and shop in honor of Jesus, who had been crucified
nearly sixteen hundred years before for telling the truth and tearing down
the vested arrogance of religious tyranny.
A bright winter sun was gilding the tall towers of the Abbey with golden
light, and the mullioned windows were blazing over the surrounding
buildings like flashes of fire.
We entered the court of Westminster through the old school by way of a
long, low passage, dimly lighted corridors, with glinting figures of old
teachers in black gowns, moving like specters from the neighboring tombs.
As we passed along by cloistered walls and mural monuments to vanished
glory, we were soon within the interior of the grand old Abbey.
Clustered columns of gigantic dimensions, with lofty arches springing from
wall to nave met the eye of the beholder, and stunned by the solemn
surroundings, vain man wonders at his own handiwork, trembling with doubt
amid the monumental glory of Old Albion.
The Abbey clock struck the hour of five as William and myself stood in deep
contemplation at Poets' corner.
The reverberating tones of time echoed from nave to floor, through
cloistered walls and columned aisles, noting the passing hour and ages,
like billows of sound rolling over the graves of vanished splendor.
Here crumble the dust and effigies of courtiers, warriors, statesmen,
lords, dukes, kings, queens and authors; and yet, there is no spot in the
Abbey that holds such an abiding interest for mankind as the modest corner
where lie the dust of noted poets and philosophers.
The great and the heroic of the world may be bravely admired in lofty
contemplation of nationality, but a feeling of fondness creeps over the
traveler or reader when he bows at the grave of buried genius, while tears
of remembrance even wash away the sensuous Bacchanalian escapades of
impulsive, poetic revelers.
The author, touched by the insanity of genius, must ever live in the mind
of the reader, and while posterity shall forget even warriors, kings and
queens, it never fails to preserve in marble, granite, bronze and song the
name and fame of great poets.
David, Solomon, Job, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Angelo, Dante and Plutarch are
deeply imbedded in the memory of mankind, and although great kingdoms,
empires and dynasties, have passed away to the rubbish heap of oblivion,
the poet, musician, painter, and sculptor still remain to thrill and
beautify life, and teach hope of immortality beyond the grave.
After gazing on the statues of abbots, Knights Templar, Knights of the
Bath, bishops, statesmen, kings and queens, many mutilated by time and
profane hands, William stood by the coffin of Edward the Confessor and
mournfully soliloquized:
_Westminster! lofty heir of Pagan Temple;
Imperial in stone; a thousand years
Crowns the record of thy inheritance,
Gilding the glory of thy ancient fame,
With imperishable deeds--
Liberty of thought and action, shall
Forever cluster about thy classic form;
While new men with new creeds, and reason,
Shall overturn the religions of to-day,
As thou hast invaded and destroyed
The Pagan, Roman rules of antiquity.
These marble hands and faces appealing
For remembrance, to animated dust
Appeal in vain, for we, whose footfalls
Only sound in marble ears, cold and listless,
Shall ourselves follow where they led, dying
Not knowing the mysterious secrets of the grave.
Here the victor and vanquished, side by side,
Sleep in dreamless rest, Kings and Queens in life,
Battling for power, all conquered by tyrant Death,
Whose universal edict, irrevocable,
Levels Prince and Peasant, in impalpable dust.
Crowns to-day, coffins to-morrow, with monuments
Mossed over, letter-cracked, undecipherable
As the mummied remains of Egyptian Kings.
Vain, vain, are all the monuments of man,
The greatest only live a little span;
We strut and shine our passing day, and then--
Depart from all the haunts of living men,
With only Hope to light us on the way
Where billions passed beneath the silent clay;
And, none have yet returned to tell us where
We'll bivouac beyond this world of care;
And these dumb mouths, with ghostly spirits near
Will not express a word into mine ear,
Or tell me when I leave this sinning sod
If I shall be transfigured with my God!_
In September, 1592, the second play of Shakspere, "Love's Labor's Lost,"
was given at the Blackfriars, to a fine audience.
He took the characters of the play from a French novel, based on an Italian
plot, and wove around the story a lot of glittering talk to please the
lords and ladies who listened to the silly gabble of their prototypes.
Ferdinand, King of Navarre, and his attendant lords are a set of silly
beaux who propose to retire from the world and leave women alone for the
space of three years.
The Princess of France and her ladies in waiting, with the assistance of a
gay lord named Boyet, made an incursion into the Kingdom of Navarre and
break into the solitude of the students.
Nathaniel, a parson, and Holofernes, a pedant schoolmaster, are introduced
into the play by William to illustrate the asinine pretensions of ministers
and pedagogues, who are constantly introducing Latin or French words in
their daily conversation, for the purpose of impressing common people with
their great learning, when, in fact, they only show ridiculous pretense and
expose themselves to the contempt of mankind.
There are very few noted philosophic sentiments in the play, and the
attempt at wit, of the clown, the constable and Holofernes, the
schoolmaster, fall very flat on the ear of an audience, while the rhymes
put in the mouth of the various characters are unworthy of a boy fourteen
years of age.
I remonstrated with William about injecting his alleged poetry into the
love letters sent by the lords and ladies, but he replied that young love
was such a fool that any kind of rhyme would suit passionate parties who
were playing "Jacks and straws" with each other.
Ferdinand, the King, opens up the play with a grand dash of thought:
_"Let fame that all hunt after in their lives,
Live registered upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death,
When, spite of cormorant devouring time,
The endeavor of this present breach may buy
That honor, which shall bait his scythe's keen edge
To make us heirs of all eternity."_
Lord Biron, who imagines himself in love with the beautiful Rosaline,
soliloquizes in this fashion:
_"What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman that is like a German clock,
Still a repairing; ever out of frame.
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watched that it may still go right!
Is not Love a Hercules
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as a sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony!"_
Holofernes, the Latin pedagogue, criticising Armado, exclaims:
_Novi hominem tanquam te._ His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory. He
draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his
argument.
And then Holofernes winds up the play with the Owl and Cuckoo song, a
rambling verse, Winter speaking:
_When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick, the shepherd, blows his wail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped and ways be foul,
When nightly sings the staring owl
To-who;
Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note
While greasy Joan doth scum the pot._
CHAPTER X.
QUEEN ELIZABETH. WAR. SHAKSPERE IN IRELAND.
_"Now all the youth of England are on fire
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thought
Hangs solely in the breast of every man._
* * * * *
_Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war!"_
The reign of Queen Elizabeth was a most glorious one for the material and
mental progress of England, but most disastrous for Philip of Spain, Louis
and Henry of France, Mary of Scotland, O'Neil, O'Brien, Desmond and Tyrone
of Ireland.
The Reformation of Martin Luther, a Catholic priest, against the faith and
financial exactions of the Pope of Rome, cracked from the Catholic sky like
a clap of thunder from the noonday sun, and reverberated over the globe
with startling detonation.
The cry of personal liberty and personal responsibility to God, went out
from the German cloister like a roaring storm and echoed in thunder tones
among the columned aisles of the Vatican.
Entrenched audacity and mental tyranny was broken from its ancient
pedestal, as if an earthquake had shivered the Roman dominions, leaving
sacerdotal precedents and papal bulls in the back-alley of bigotry and
bloated ignorance.
People began to think and wonder how they had been bamboozled for centuries
by a set of educated harlequins, who, in all lands and climes exhibited
their antics and nostrums for the delectation and digestion of infatuated
fools! Millions yet living!
Queen Elizabeth's elevation to the throne of England was a bid for the
banished and persecuted Protestants to return from foreign lands and again
pursue their puritanical philosophy.
Pope Paul demanded of Elizabeth that all the church lands, monasteries and
cathedrals confiscated by her father, Henry the Eighth, be restored to the
Roman hierarchy, and that she make confession and submission to the divine
authority of the Catholic Church.
Although religion and civil law was in a very chaotic state, Queen Bess was
not at all disturbed by the threats of the Vatican or the Armada of Spain.
With old Lord Cecil as her prime counsel, she never hesitated to believe in
her own destiny, and, like her opponents, the Jesuits, the end always
justified the means. When it was necessary to rob or kill anybody, the
Queen did so without any compunction of conscience.
She did not care for religion one way or the other, and flattered the
Catholic and Protestant lords alike, manipulating them for her personal and
official advantage. Victory at any price. Business Bessy!
She professed great love for her sister, Mary Queen of Scots, but to foil
the French Catholics and satisfy the Scotch and English Protestants, Lizzie
cut off the head of her beautiful sister. She professed great sorrow after
Mary's head was detached.
Essex and Raleigh, and many other royal courtiers were sent to the Tower
and the block by this red-headed, snaggle-tooth she devil, who only thought
of her own physical pleasures and official vanities, sacrificing everything
to her tyrannical ambition. She died in an insane, frantic fit.
Yet, with all her devilish conduct, she pushed the material interest of
Englishmen ahead for five hundred years, and by her patronage of sailors,
warriors, poets and philosophers, gave the British letters a boom that is
felt to the present day, and through Shakspere's lofty lines, shall
continue down the ages to tell mankind that nothing on earth is lasting but
honest work and eternal truth.
Contention and war is the natural condition of mankind; for all animated
nature, from birth to death, struggles for food and shelter.
The birds of the air, animals of the land and fishes of the sea, fight and
devour each other for food, while man, the great robber and murderer of
all, delights in destruction, and from his first appearance on earth to the
present day, has been earnestly engaged in emigrating from land to land,
seeking whom he may rob and kill for personal wealth and power! Doing it
to-day more than ever.
Civilization is only refined barbarism; and this very hour the unions of
the world are inventing and manufacturing powder, guns and terrible battle
ships for the purpose of robbing and killing each other in the next war,
nearly at hand. Japan and Russia will tear each other to pieces.
Peace is only a slight resting spell for the nations to trade with each
other and make secret preparations to finally kill and secure increased
dominion.
The minions of monarchy and lovers of liberty have invariably despised each
other, and waited only favorable opportunity to rob and murder. Even now,
they crouch like lions at bay, and fight to the death.
Liberty is forging ahead with ten league boots and monarchy is silently,
but surely being relegated to the tomb of defeat.
Of course, right is right in the abstract, but might is the winning card in
the lottery of Fate, and that nation having the most brave men, money and
guns will come out victorious!
Strong nations have become stronger by robbing and killing weaker nations,
and the British Government for a thousand years--particularly from the
bloody reigns of Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell--can boast that it has never
failed to rob and kill the weak, while truckling and fawning at the feet of
Russia and the Republic of the United States, which will soon extend from
Bering Sea and Baffin's Bay to the Isthmus of Panama--absorbing Canada,
Cuba, Mexico and Central America within its imperial jurisdiction. We
intend to, and shall rule the world!
Then, this vast Republic, looking over the globe from the dome of our
national Capitol, at Washington, can invite all lands to banquet at the
table of the Goddess of Liberty, and in mercy to the blind tyranny of
monarchy we may lay a wreath of myrtle on the graves of lords, earls,
dukes, kings, queens and emperors, to be only remembered as the nightmare
of tyranny, extirpated from the earth forever. God grant their speedy
official destruction!
The gentle reader (of course) will excuse this enthusiastic digression from
the story of Queen Bess and my soul friend William Shakspere.
If they were present at this moment, they would not dare deny the truth of
this memory narrative.
In the summer of 1595, the periodical plague of London was thinning out the
inhabitants of that dirty city. In the lower part of the city skirting the
Thames, the sewerage was very bad and but the poorest sanitary rules
existed. After a hard rain, the lanes, alleys and streets ran with a stream
of putrefaction, as the offal from many tenement houses was thrown in the
public highway, where the rays from the hot sun created malarial fever or
the black plague.
At such times the theatres and churches were closed, and those who could
get out of London, by land or water, fled to the inland shires of England,
the mountains of Scotland or to the heather hills of Ireland.
Edmund Spenser, the poet and Secretary of Lord Gray for Ireland, invited
William and myself to visit his Irish estate near the city of Cork.
One bright morning in May, we boarded the good ship Elizabeth, near the
Tower, passed out of Gravesend, then into the channel and steered our way
to Bantry Bay, until we landed in the cove of Cork, as the church bells
were ringing devotees to early mass.
The green fields and hills of Ireland were blooming in rustic beauty, the
thrush sang from every hawthorn bush, the blackbird was busy in the fields
filching grain from the ploughman, the lark, in his skyward flight poured a
stream of melody on the air, and all Nature seemed happy, but man.
He it is who makes the blooming productive earth miserable, with his
voracious greed for gold and power.
Elizabeth was then waging war with the various Irish chieftains, importing
cunning Scotchmen and brutal Englishmen as soldiers and traders to colonize
the lands and destroy the homes of what she was pleased to call "Barbarous,
rebellious, wild Irish."
Whenever any strong power invades a weaker one for the purpose of robbery
and official murder (war), the tyrant labels his victim--a "Rebel!"
That is, the original owner of the land destined to be robbed is regarded
as bigoted, barbarous and rebellious, unless he submits to be robbed,
banished and murdered for the edification and glory of freebooters,
thieves, tyrants, assassins and foreign man hunters.
Leinster, Munster, Ulster and Connaught, the four provinces of Ireland, had
been marked out for settlement by Henry the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth, and
hordes of English "carpetbaggers" and soldiers were turned loose on the
island to rob, burn and destroy the natives.
As soon as counties and provinces were conquered, the military and lordly
pets of the various monarchs were given large grants of the lands stolen
from the people.
O'Neil, O'Brien, Desmond, O'Donnell, O'Connor, Burke, Clanrickard and
Tyrone disputed every inch of ground with Pellam, Mountjoy, Gray, Essex,
Raleigh and Cromwell; and, although the original commanders and owners of
the soil have been virtually banished or killed, their posterity has the
proud satisfaction of knowing that more than a million of Englishmen and
Scotchmen have been killed by the "Wild Irish," and the battle for liberty
shall still go on till the Saxon robber relinquishes his blood sucking
tentacles on the Emerald Isle.
Poet Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh were rewarded by Queen Elizabeth with
thousands of acres, confiscated from the great estate of the Earl of
Desmond, who lived at the castle of Kilcolman, near the town of Doneraile.
Spenser paid for his stolen land by writing a dissertation on the way to
conquer and kill off the Irish race, regarding them no more than the wild
beasts of the forest. He also flattered Queen Bess by composing a lot of
flattering verse, called the "Faerie Queen," and made her believe she was
the beautiful, sweet, mild, chaste, angelic individual that had thrilled
his imagination in the royal realms of dreamland.
What infernal lies political courtiers, religious ministers and even poets
have told to flatter the vanity of governors, presidents, kings, queens,
popes and emperors!
Yet in all the grand sentiments Shakspere evolved out of his volcanic
brain, he never bent the knee to absolute vice, but pictured the horrors
of royalty in its most devilish attitudes. His pen was never purchased
against truth.
We remained at Kilcolman Castle with Spenser for about ten days riding and
sporting, and then with an escort of soldiers, were piloted through the
"Rebel" counties on to Dublin, where the head of O'Neil graced one of the
"Red" walls of that unlucky city.
On our route from Cork to Dublin we beheld misery and ruin in every form,
burned cabins, churches, monasteries and bridges, and starving women and
children on the roadside, crouching under bushes, straw stacks and leaking
sheds, with smouldering turf fires crackling on the ashes of despair!
We took shipping the next morning for Liverpool, as William was very
anxious to get away from the land of funeral wails, where the cry of the
"wake" over some dead peasant or defiant "Rebel" echoed on the air
continually.
_Where sorrow in her weeping form,
Shed tears in sunshine, and in storm,
While o'er the land, a reign of blood
Was running like a mountain flood!_
As we pushed away from the sight of the Irish hills, Shakspere, leaning
against the foremast, in pathetic tone exclaimed:
_Farewell, old Erin, land of nameless sorrow,
Albion crushes thee for opinion's sake;
'Twixt the Bulls of Rome and Laws of England
Thy children are robbed, banished and murdered.
And cast away from native land, like leaves
Bestrewing forest wilds, bleak and lone.
Merged in lands of Liberty, thy children
Shall rise again, a new born glorious race--
Triumphant in home, church and State, honored,
Masters of War, Wit, Eloquence and Poetry.
Move out and move on, like the rising sun
Whose face so oft is clouded with shadows,
Yet, shall burst forth again in noonday splendor--
Irradiating a bleak and cruel world!_
CHAPTER XI.
RURAL ENGLAND. "ROMEO AND JULIET"
_"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows;
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk roses and the eglantine."_
* * * * *
_"Stony limits cannot hold love out;
And what love can do, that dares love attempt."_
We remained in Liverpool three days, and then determined to return to
London by land, crossing through the inland shires, taking in Manchester,
Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick, and on to Stratford, where
clustered the dearest objects of our affection.
We were ten days walking, riding and resting at taverns, in our rural tour
of Old Albion. The fields were furrowed for the grain, the birds sang from
every hedge and forest domain, the cattle, sheep and swine grazed in
lowing, bleating, grunting security along winding streams, public fields or
on the velvet meadows of rich yeoman or lordly estates, while the men,
women, boys and girls that we encountered seemed to be infused with the
delights of May blossoms, forest wild flowers and refreshing showers, all
noting the practical prosperity of England.
How different these rural scenes to those we had recently encountered in
poor down-trodden Ireland, the Niobe of nations, besprinkled with the tears
of centuries for the loss of her crushed and exiled children.
_Yet, the world is moving upward
To the heights where Freedom reigns;
Where the sunshine of redemption
Shall give joy for all our pains,
When the cruel hands of tyrants
Shall be banished from the land
With our God the only Master
Of Dame Nature true and grand!_
We arrived in sight of Stratford as the sun set over the hills of Arden,
and as the pigeons and rooks sought their nests for the night, a golden
glow flashed over the evening landscape.
The last rays of Sol shone in dazzling splendor upon the pinnacle of old
Trinity Church as we gazed with ravished eyes on the winding, glistening
Avon, meandering through emerald meadows and whispering wild flowers to the
silvery Severn.
The old tavern was still there, but the old host slept in God's acre near
by, while the lads we knew ten years before, had, like ourselves, gone out
into the world for fame and fortune.
William sought out his father and mother, and then Anne Hathaway and the
children, who still resided at the old Hathaway cottage at Shottery. I
remained at the tavern for contemplation.
Time and age mellow the most violent spirits; and the temper of Anne had
become modified by family troubles, inducing an inward survey of self,
which brings a reasonable person to the realization of the fact that he or
she is not the only stubborn oak in the forest of humanity.
A practical stubborn wife and a lofty poet never can assimilate.
Shakspere had no equals or superiors. Shakspere was simply SHAKSPERE.
_At home he found a scolding wife,
Abroad he felt the joys of life,
While all his glory and renown
Were reaped at last in London town.
He looked for truth in crowds of men,
In field, in street, in tavern,
And mingled with the moving throng
To hear their story and their song,
He pictured life in colors true,
As brilliant as the rainbow hue,
And all his characters display
The pride and passion of to-day.
He cared not for the crowds of men--
As fierce as beasts within a den,
And looked alone to Nature's God
Displayed in heaven, in sea and sod,
And held the scales of justice high-
Uplifted to the sunlit sky,
Weighing the passions of mankind
With lofty and imperial mind.
The Puritan and Pope to him
Were overflowing to the brim
With bigotry and cruel spleen
That desolated every scene.
The midget minds of men in power
He satirized from hour to hour,
And on the stage portrayed the greed
Of those who live by crime and creed.
He tore the masks from royal brows
And showed their guilt and broken vows,
Exposing to the laughing throng
The horrid face of vice and wrong.
In every land and every clime,
He honored truth and punctured crime,
And down the years his god-like rhyme
Shall be synonymous with Time!_
We remained among relatives and friends in Warwickshire until the middle of
September, when we heard that the London plague had abated and the
theatrical profession were busy preparing for a winter campaign of dramatic
glory. Shakspere had several plays partly or nearly finished, and, as
Burbage and Henslowe desired our immediate services, we took our departure
from Stratford, with the friendship of the town echoing in our ears.
The flowers and growing fields, the leafy forests and circling and singing
birds seemed to say good-bye, good luck and God bless you!
We felt happy and hopeful ourselves, and consequently Dame Nature echoed
the feeling of our souls. All was joy, song, feasting and laughter.
William, on our way to Oxford, in one of his original flights taken from an
ode of Horace, impulsively exclaimed:
_Laugh and the world laughs with you;
Weep and you weep alone,
This grand old earth must borrow its mirth,
It has troubles enough of its own.
Sing and the hills will answer,
Sigh, it is lost on the air,
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care._
_Be glad and your friends are many;
Be sad and you lose them all;
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone we must drink life's gall.
There's room in the halls of pleasure,
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on;
Through the narrow aisles of pain._
_Feast, and your halls are crowded,
Fast, and the world goes by,
Succeed and give, 'twill help you live;
But no one can help you die!
Rejoice, and men will seek you,
Grieve, and they turn and go,
They want full measure of all your pleasure
But they do not want your woe!_
These lines impressed me very much at the time and from that day to this I
have never ceased to act on the philosophy of the poem.
It has been part of my nature, and during my wanderings for the past three
hundred and twenty years I have never failed to carry in my train of
thought and action--sunshine, beauty, song, love and laughter--advance
agents to secure welcome in all hearts and homes throughout the world.
We were beautifully entertained by Mrs. Daisy Davenant at the Crown Tavern
in Oxford, and many of the college "boys," who heard of our arrival in the
city, hurried to pay their classic friendship to the "Divine" William.
We arrived in London on the 20th of September, and found that our old maid
landlady had died of the plague, but had kindly sent all our literary and
wardrobe effects to Florio, who was still alive and well at the Red Lion.
In a couple of days William was up to his head and ears in theatrical
composition and stage structure.
A few years before the Bard had "dashed off" a love tragedy entitled "Romeo
and Juliet," taken from an Italian novel of the thirteenth century, and a
translation of the old family feud in poetry, by Walter Brooke, who had but
recently delighted London with the story.
Shakspere never hesitated to take crude ore and rough ashler from any
quarry of thought; and out of the dull, leaden material of others, produced
characters in living form to walk the stage of life forever, teaching the
lesson of virtue triumphant over vice.
The exemplification of true love, as pictured in the pure affection of
Juliet and the intense, heroic devotion of Romeo, have never been equaled
or surpassed by any other dramatic characters.
The lordly and wealthy gentry of Italy have been noted for their family
feuds for the past three thousand years, and the party followers of these
blood-stained rivals have desolated many happy homes in Rome, Florence,
Milan, Naples, Venice and Verona.
Shakspere showed the finished play of "Romeo and Juliet" to Burbage, and
the old manager fairly jumped with joy and astonishment at the eloquence of
the love and ruin drama.
The families of Capulet and Montague of Verona, stuffed with foolish pride
about the matrimonial choice of their daughters and sons, can be found in
every city in the world where a tyrant father or purse-proud mother insist
on selecting life partners for their children.
The story of Romeo and Juliet shows the utter failure of such parental
folly.
The play was largely advertised among the lights of London and announced to
come off in all its glory at the Blackfriars on the last Saturday of
December, 1595.
Queen Elizabeth, in a special box, was there incog, with a royal train of
lords and ladies; and such another audience for dress and stunning show was
never seen in London.
Burleigh, Bacon, Essex, Southampton, Derby, Raleigh, Spenser, Warwick,
Gray, Montague, Lancaster, Mountjoy, Blake, and all the great soldiers and
sailors of the realm then in London were boxed for a sight of the greatest
love tragedy ever enacted on the dramatic stage. All the dramatic authors
were present.
William himself took the part of Romeo, for he was a perfect
exemplification of the hero of the play. Jo Taylor took the part of Juliet,
and I can assure you that his makeup, in the form and dress of the
fourteen-year-old Italian beauty, was a great success.
Dick Burbage took the part of Friar Laurence, Condell played Mercutio,
Arnim the part of Paris, Field played old Capulet, and Florio played
Montague, Hemmings played Benvolio, and John Underwood played the part of
Tybalt, and Escalus, the Prince, was played by Phillips.
The curtain went up on a street scene in Verona, where the partisans of the
houses of Capulet and Montague quarreled, while Paris, Mercutio, Romeo and
Tybalt worked up their hot blood and came to blows.
Romeo and his friends, in mask, attended a ball at the home of Juliet, in a
clandestine fashion, and on first sight of this immaculate beauty Romeo
exclaims:
_"O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The dancing done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make happy my rude hand,
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight,
For I ne'er saw true beauty till to-night!"_
The poetic apostrophe of Romeo to his new discovered beauty elicited
universal applause, led by the "Virgin Queen," who imagined, no doubt, that
his tribute to beauty was intended for herself. She never lost an
opportunity to appropriate anything that came her way. An epigram of
strenuous audacity. A winner!
In the second act Romeo climbs the wall, hemming in his beautiful Juliet,
and in defiance of the family feud, locks and bars of old man Capulet, and
seeks a clandestine interview with his true love, although at the risk of
his life.
It was the evening of the twenty-first birthday of Romeo, and with love as
his guide and subject, he felt strong enough to attack a warring world.
Beneath the window of the fair Juliet, Romeo soliloquizes:
_"He jests at scars, that never felt a wound_--
(Juliet appears at an upper window.)
_But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks!
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she;
Be not her maid since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off--
It is my lady; O, it is my love;
O, that she knew she were!--
She speaks, yet she says nothing: What of that:
Her eye discourses, I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks;
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars.
As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!"_
Juliet speaks, and finally out of her fevered, love-lit mind says:
_"O, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet!"_
Romeo replies:
_"I take thee at thy word;
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized,
Henceforth I never will be Romeo."_
She says:
_"How cam'st thou hither?
The orchard walls are too high and hard to climb;
And the place death, considering who thou art."_
Romeo quickly responds:
_"With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls;
For stony limits cannot hold love out;
And what love can do, that dares love attempt,
Therefore thy kinsmen are no hindrance to me!
I am no pilot, yet wert thou as far
As that vast shore washed with the further sea
I would adventure for such merchandise!"_
Then Juliet, with her fine Italian cunning makes the following declaration
of her love; and considering that she is only fourteen years of age, yet in
the hands of a house nurse, older and wiser girls could not give a better
gush of affectionate eloquence:
"_Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek,
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night.
Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain, fain, deny
What I have spoke; But, farewell compliment!
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say, Ay;
And I will take thy word, yet if thou swear'st,
Thou may'st prove false; at lover's perjuries
They say Jove laughs. O, gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully;
Or, if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
I'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world,
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond;
And therefore thou may'st think my conduct light;
But, trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
I should have been more shy, I must confess,
But that thou overheard'st, ere I was aware,
My true love's passion; therefore, pardon me;
And not impute this yielding to light love,
Which the dark night hath so discovered,
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite!"_
The lovers part, promising eternal love and marriage "to-morrow" at the
cell of good Friar Laurence, the confessor of the fair Juliet.
The friar, priest, preacher and bishop have ever been great matrimonial
matchmakers, and when "Love's young dream" is foiled or withered by
parental tyranny, these velvet-handed philosophers find a way to tie the
hymeneal knot, even in personal and legal defiance of cruel, social
dictation.
Friar Laurence, in contemplation of tying love-knots soliloquizes in the
following lofty lines:
_"The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's pathway, made by Titan's wheels.
Now ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer, and night's dark dew to try,
I must fill up this osier cage of ours
With baleful needs and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth that's Nature's mother, is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb;
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None, but for some, and yet all different;
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones and their true qualities;
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower,
Poison hath residence and medicine power,
For, this being smelt, with that part cheers each part,
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed foes encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will,
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant!"_
Romeo implores the holy Friar:
_"Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then love devouring death do what he dare,
It is enough I may but call her mine!"_
Juliet addressing Romeo in the Friar's cell exclaims:
_"Imagination more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament;
They are but beggars that can count their worth;
But my true love is grown to such excess,
I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth."_
The good old Friar then says:
_"Come, come with me and we will make short work;
For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone
Till holy church incorporate two in one!"_
Mercutio and Tybalt fight, in faction of the Capulet and Montague houses.
Mercutio is killed, and then Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished from the
State by Prince Escalus.
Juliet awaits Romeo in her room the night after marriage, and with
passionate, impatient longing exclaims:
_"Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so bright
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possessed it; and, though I am sold;
Not yet enjoyed; so tedious is this day,
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes,
And may not wear them!"_
Although the verdict of banishment was pronounced against Romeo to go to
Mantua instanter, he found means through the old nurse and good Friar
Laurence to visit his new-made bride the night before his forced departure;
and in spite of locks, bars, law, parents and princes, plucked the ripe
fruit from the tree of virginity.
Romeo must be gone before the first crowing of the cock and ere the rosy
fingers of the dawn light up the bridal chamber, else death would be his
portion.
Juliet importunes him to stay, and says:
_"Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day;
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree;
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."_
Romeo replies:
_"It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale; look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East;
Night's candles are burnt, and jocund day,
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops;
I must be gone and live, or stay and die!"_
Juliet further implores him to stay:
_"Yon light is not daylight, I know it;
It is some meteor that the sun exhales;
To be to thee this night a torch bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua;
Therefore stay yet, thou need'st not be gone."_
Romeo willingly consents:
_"Let me be taken, let me be put to death;
I am content so thou wilt have it so;
I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow!
Nor that it is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads;
I have more care to stay than will to go;--
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so--
How is it, my soul? Let's talk, it is not day!"_
Juliet alarmed exclaims:
_"It is, it is, hie hence, begone away;
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us;
Some say, the lark and lothed toad change eyes;
O, now I would they had changed voices too;
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunts up to the day.
O, now begone; more light and light it grows."_
Romeo descends the ladder, saying his last words to the beautiful Juliet:
_"And trust me, love, in mine eye so do you,
Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu! Adieu!"_
After the banishment of Romeo, old Capulet and his wife insisted that
Juliet marry young Paris, a kinsman of Prince Escalus, and sorrows
unnumbered crowded on the new-made secret bride.
To escape marriage with Paris, Juliet consulted Friar Laurence, who gives
her a drug to be taken the night before the prearranged marriage, that will
dull all life and the body remain as dead for forty-two hours. This scheme
of the Friar works out favorably until Juliet is laid away with her
ancestors in the grand tomb of the Capulets.
But Romeo hears of the whole trouble and hurries back from banishment,
dashing his way through all impediments until he kills Paris, grieving at
midnight by the grave of Juliet.
Then, tearing his way into the tomb of Juliet throws himself upon the
gorgeous bier and exclaims:
_"Oh, my love! my wife!
Death that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty;
Thou art not conquered; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson on thy lips, and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there;
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favor can I do thee,
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain,
To sunder his that was thine enemy!
Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous;
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that I will still stay with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again; here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chambermaids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest;
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh; eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O, you,
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Come, bitter conductor, come, unsavory guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now and at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark!
Here's to my love!_ (Drinks poison.) _O, true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick; thus with a kiss I die!"_
Friar Laurence and Balthazar with dark lantern, at this moment approach the
tomb to extricate and save Juliet from the sleeping drug. She awakes with
the noise in the tomb and views the deadly situation.
The Friar implores her to come, depart at once, as the night watch
approach. She says:
_"Go, get thee hence, for I will not away;
What's here? a cup close in my true love's hand;
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end;
O churl! drink all; and leave me no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make me die with a restorative.
Thy lips are warm!
Yea, noise? Then I'll he brief. O happy dagger!_
(Snatches Romeo's dagger.)
_This is thy sheath, there rust and let me die!"_
(Stabs herself through the heart.)
The Prince, Capulet and Montague family soon discover all, and Friar
Laurence tells the true story, punishment follows, and the two contending
houses of Verona clasp hands over the ruin they have wrought, while the
Prince exclaims:
_"For, never was a story of more woe,
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo!"_
The drop curtain was rung down and up three times, and the storm of
applause that greeted Shakspere and Taylor, as the representatives of Romeo
and Juliet, was never equaled before at the Blackfriars.
The Queen called William and Jo to the royal box and by her own firm hand
presented a signet ring to Romeo and a lace handkerchief to Juliet!
_"What fates impose, that men must needs abide;
It boots not to resist both wind and tide!"_
CHAPTER XII.
"JULIUS CAESAR."
_"O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils
Shrunk to this little measure?"_
The assassination of Julius Caesar by Brutus, Cassius, Casca and twenty
other Roman Senators, in the capital of the Empire in broad daylight, was
one of the most cowardly and infamous crimes recorded in the annals of
time.
The historical and philosophical friends of Brutus and Cassius have tried
to justify the conspiracy and assassination by imputing the deep design of
tyranny to Caesar, who was bent on trampling down the rights of the people
and securing for himself a kingly crown.
They say the motive of the conspirators in the deep damnation of Caesar's
"taking off" was purely patriotism. Many murderers have used the same
argument.
The facts do not justify the excuse. For more than thirty years Julius
Caesar had been a star performer on the boards of the Roman Empire, and his
family had been illustrious for five hundred years. Sylla, Marius, Cicero,
Cato, Brutus and Pompey had crossed lances with this civil and military
genius, and had all become very jealous of his increasing fame.
From boyhood Caesar had been a mixer with the common people, and in midnight
hours in Rome, among tradesmen, merchants, students, authors, sailors and
soldiers, he became imbued with their wants and impulsive nature. He had no
reason to doubt or oppress the people.
As commander of invincible troops in Spain, Gaul, Germany and Britain,
Caesar had secured a world-wide reputation, for the eagles of his victorious
legions had swept across the mountains and seas to the shore end of Europe
and screamed in triumph among the palms and sands of Africa and Asia!
Caesar was a poet, orator, historian, warrior and statesman, and the
imperial families and politicians of Rome, who were forced to sit in the
shade of his triumphs and glory, felt a secret pang of jealousy at the
stride of this colossal character.
He was the pride and idol of his soldiers, and whether in the forests of
Gaul and Germany, the swamps of Britain, mountains of Spain, or among
Ionian isles, his presence was ever worth a thousand men in battle action.
His plans were mathematical, his soul sublime and his purpose eternal
victory!
Bravery and Caesar were synonymous terms, and the little, mean, pismire
ambitions of Roman politicians he despised, striding over their corrupt
schemes for pelf and office like a winter whirlwind.
Brutus, while professing horror at the contemplated assassination of his
friend and natural father Caesar, lent a willing ear and sympathetic voice
to the prime conspirator--Cassius; and although seemingly dragged into the
murderous plot, he was in heart the grand villain of the conspiracy,
believing he might rise to supreme control of the Roman Empire when Julius
the Great lay weltering in his heroic blood.
Brutus was a dastard, an ingrate, a coward and a murderer, and no pretense
of patriotism can save him from the contempt and condemnation of mankind.
There is no justification for assassination!
The death of Caesar was the first great blow in the final destruction of the
Roman Empire, for up to this time the people had a voice in electing their
tribunes, consuls and governors, and were consulted as to the burden of
taxation, although many of their previous rulers had been terrible tyrants.
Brutus and Cassius, and their coconspirators, city senators, who dipped
their hands in Caesar's sacred blood, were finally driven from all political
power, their estates confiscated, fleeing like frightened wolves to foreign
fields and forests and perishing in battle as enemies to their country.
When brought to bay at Philippi, Brutus and Cassius mustered up enough
courage to commit suicide, which is confession of guilt.
In the winter of 1597 William was deeply studying the new translation of
Petrarch, and Florio was nightly teaching us the lofty philosophy of
Grecian and Roman classics. The lives of noted ancient poets, orators,
warriors, statesmen, governors, kings and philosophers, as written or
compiled by the great Plutarch has furnished a mine of historic thought
for the dramatic artist, and Shakspere, above all the men who ever thought,
wrote or talked on the stage, took most advantage of the lines of Plutarch.
The British people were clamoring for grand historical plays, not only for
the actions of their own kings and queens, but demanded the enactment of
the reigns of great, ancient warriors and kings who had given glory to
Greece and Rome and left imperishable memories for posterity to avoid or
emulate.
Burbage, Henslowe and other theatrical managers, were ever on the lookout
for plays to suit cash customers, and of course, the Bard of Avon had first
call, because his plays went on the various stages like a torchlight
procession, while those of his so-called compeers, struggled through the
acts and scenes with only the flicker and sputter of tallow dips of
dramatic thought.
He knew, and I knew, that his plays would be enacted down the circling
centuries as long as vice and virtue, hate and love, cowardice and bravery,
fun, folly, wit and wisdom characterized humanity.
William told Essex and Southampton that he had just composed a play with
Julius Caesar as the central figure, and wished an opportunity to test its
merits before a private party of authors, students and lords at the Holborn
House, the grand castle of Southampton.
These noblemen were delighted with the suggestion, and on the night of the
first of March, 1597, Burbage, with his whole tribe of theatrical
"rounders," appeared in the grand banquet room of Southampton, and, under
the guidance of Shakspere, rendered for the first time "Julius Caesar."
Jo Taylor took the part of Caesar, Dick Burbage acted Brutus, Condell
represented Cassius and Shakspere played Marcus Antonius, while the other
characters were distributed among the "stock" as their various talents
justified.
Calphurnia, wife to Caesar, and Portia, wife to Brutus, were represented
respectively by Hemmings and Arnim.
The play opens with a street scene in Rome filled with working, rabble
citizens who have turned out to give Caesar a great triumph on his return
from successful war.
Flavius and Marullus, tribunes, enter and rebuke the people for greeting
Caesar.
Flavius twits the turncoat rabble in this style:
_"O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew ye not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climbed up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The livelong day, with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome;
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made a universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
To hear the replication of your sounds,
Made in her concave shores?
And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way,
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?"_
Brutus and Cassius witness the triumphal march of Caesar with jealous,
vengeful and dagger hearts, and Cassius, the old, desperate soldier, first
hints at blood conspiracy.
Brutus asks:
"_What is it that you would impart to me?
If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honor in eye and death in the other,
And I will look on both indifferently."_
Fine talk! Brutus is not the only political murderer that talks of "honor"
through the centuries, a cloak for devils in human shape to work a personal
purpose and not "the general good."
Cassius delivers this eloquent indictment against Caesar, the grandest of
its kind in all history:
"_Well, Honor is the subject of my story--
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief not to be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I, myself.
I was born free as Caesar; so were you.
We both have fed as well; and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he.
For once, upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,
Caesar said to me, 'Dar'st thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me, into this angry flood
And swim to yonder point?' Upon the word,
Accoutered as I was, I plunged in
And bade him follow; so, indeed, he did.
The torrent roared and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews; throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy.
But ere we could arrive at the point proposed,
Caesar cried, 'Help me, Cassius, or I sink!'
I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor,
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulders
The old Anchisas bear, so, from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Caesar; and this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body,
If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
He had a fever, when he was in Spain,
And when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake; 'tis true, this god did shake,
His coward lips did from their color fly;
And that same eye, whose bend doth awe the world
Did lose his lustre; I did hear him groan;
Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans
Mark him, and write his speeches in their books;
Alas! it cried, 'Give me some drink, Titinius,'
As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world
And bear the palm alone!
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar; what should be in that Caesar?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now in the name of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great?"_
Unanimous applause followed this cunning conspiracy speech, and Jonson,
Lodge and Drayton gave loud exclamations of approval.
Caesar, with his staff, returning from the games in his honor, sees Cassius
and remarks to Antonius:
_"Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep of nights;
Yonder Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous;
And are never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves!"_
Casca, one of the senatorial conspirators, tells Cassius that Caesar is to
be crowned king, and he replies thus, contemplating suicide:
_"I know where I will wear this dagger then;
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius;
Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat;
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
But life being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself;
That part of tyranny that I do bear
I can shake off at pleasure!"_
Brutus, contemplating assassination, says in soliloquy:
_"To speak the truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections swayed
More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend!"_
This ingratitude of the great to the people is often recompensed by defeat
and death.
After the senatorial conspirators decided that Caesar should die, Cassius
insisted wisely that Marcus Antonius should not outlive the great Julius,
and said:
"Let Antony and Caesar fall together!"
But Brutus would not consent to the death of Antony, believing that he was
not dangerous to their future, yet insisting that "Caesar must bleed for
it."
_"Let's kill him bodily, but not wrathfully;
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds;
And let our hearts as subtle masters do,
Stir up their servants to an act of rage,
And after seem to chide them!"_
And yet this is the sweet-scented assassin who prates of "honor," and is
sometimes known as "the noblest Roman of them all!"
Portia, the wife of Brutus, felt a strange alarm at his recent conduct, and
Calphurnia, the wife of Caesar, implored him not to attend the session of
the senate, reminding him of the soothsayer's warning--"Beware the ides of
March."
Yet, Caesar threw off all fear and suspicion and said:
_"What can be avoided,
Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?
Yet Caesar shall go forth, for these predictions
Are to the world in general, not to Caesar!
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once!"_
The hour of assassination has arrived, and Caesar, seated in the chair of
state, says:
_"What is now amiss
That Caesar and his senate must redress?"_
Senator Metellus, one of the chief conspirators, throws himself at the feet
of Caesar and implores pardon for his traitor brother.
Caesar says:
_"Be not fond,
To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood,
That will be thawed from the true quality,
With that which meeteth fools; I mean, sweet words,
Low, crooked courtesies, and base, spaniel fawning;
Thy brother by decree is banished;
If thou dost bend, and pray and fawn for him,
I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.
Know, Caesar doth not wrong; nor without cause
Will he be satisfied!
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament!"_
The conspirators at this moment crowd around the doomed hero with pretended
petitions--and, instanter, Casca stabs Caesar in the neck, while several
other murdering senators stab him through the body, and last Marcus Brutus
plunges a dagger in the heart of his benefactor and father, when with
glaring eyes and dying breath, the noble Caesar exclaims:
_"Et tu, Brute?"_ (And thou, Brutus?)
Thus tumbled down at the base of Pompey's statue the greatest man the world
has ever known!
Then the citizens of Rome--royal, rabble and conspirators, were filled with
consternation, while Brutus tried to stem the rising flood of indignation.
Mark Antony was allowed to weep and speak over the pulseless clay of his
official partner and friend.
Gazing on the cold, bloody form of the amazing Julius, he utters these
pathetic phrases:
_"O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well--
I know not, gentlemen, what you intend,
Who else must be let blood, who else is rank;
If I myself, there is no hour so fit
As Caesar's death-hour; nor no instrument
Of half that worth, as those your swords, made rich
With the most noble blood of all this world.
I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,
Now, while your purpled hands do reek and smoke,
Fulfill your pleasure. Live a thousand years,
I shall not find myself so apt to die;
No place will please me so, no mean of death
As here by Caesar, and by you cut off,
The choice and master spirit of this age!"_
Brutus gave orders for a grand funeral, turning the body of the dead lion
over to Antony, who might make the funeral oration to the people within
such bounds of discretion as the conspirators dictated.
Standing alone, by the dead body of Caesar in the Senate, Antony pours out
thus, the overflowing vengeance of his soul:
_"O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers;
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy--
Which like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue;
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds;
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side, come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines, with a monarch's voice,
Cry, 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war!"_
The wild citizens of Rome clamored for the reason of Caesar's death, and
Brutus mounted the rostrum in the Forum and delivered this cunning and bold
oration in defense of the conspirators:
"Romans, countrymen and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent that ye
may hear; believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine honor, that
you may believe; censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses that you
may the better judge.
"If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say
that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his.
"If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my
answer. Not that I loved Caesar less; but that I loved Rome more!
"Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than Caesar were
dead, to live all free men?
"As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it;
as he was valiant, I honor him, but as he was ambitious I slew him!
"There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honor for his valor, and
death for his ambition!
"Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I
offended. Who is here so rude that would be a Roman? If any, speak; for him
have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If
any, speak; for him have I offended.
"I pause for a reply."
And then the rabble, vacillating, fool citizens said, "None, Brutus, none,"
and continue to yell, "Live, Brutus, live! live!"
Brutus leaves the Forum and requests the human cattle to remain and hear
Antony relate the glories of Caesar!
Finally Antony is persuaded to take the rostrum, and delivers this greatest
funeral oration of all the ages:
_"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do live after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious;
If it were so it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honorable man,
So are they all, all honorable men);
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill;
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor hath cried, Caesar hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff;
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see, that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I know.
You all did love him once, not without cause;
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason! Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause until it come back to me.
But, yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world, now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.
O, Masters! If I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honorable men.
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you
Than I will wrong such honorable men.
But here's a parchment with the seal of Caesar;
I found it in his closet, 'tis his will;
Let but the commons hear this statement,
(Which pardon me, I do not mean to read),
And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds;
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood;
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.
If you have tears prepare to shed them now,
You all do know this mantle; I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on;
'Twas on a summer's evening in his tent;
That day he overcame the Nervii;
Look! in this place ran Cassius dagger through;
See what a rent the envious Casca made;
Through this the well beloved Brutus stabbed;
And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it;
As rushing out of doors to be resolved
If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no;
For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel:
Judge, O ye gods, how Caesar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms
Quite vanquished him, then burst his mighty heart;
And in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statue,
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I and you and all of us fell down
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.
O, now you weep; and I perceive you feel
The impression of pity; these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you, when you but behold
Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself marred, as you see, with traitors!
Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny;
They that have done this deed are honorable;
What private griefs they have, alas, I know not
That made them do it; they are wise and honorable
And will no doubt with reasons answer you.
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts;
I am no orator, as Brutus is:
But as you know me all, a plain, blunt man,
That love my friends, and that they know full well,
That gave me public leave to speak of him.
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech
To stir men's blood, I only speak right on;
I tell you that, which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me; but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Caesar, that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny!"_
This oration fired the Roman people to mutiny, and Brutus and Cassius with
their followers fled from the city and prepared for war with Antony and
Octavius, who had suddenly returned to Rome.
The passionate quarrel between Brutus and Cassius in their military camp at
Sardis was a natural outcome of conspirators.
Cassius accused Brutus of having wronged him, and Brutus twitted his
brother assassin thus:
_"Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
Are much condemned to have an itching palm,
To sell and mart your offices for gold
To undeservers!"_
Cassius fires back this reply:
_"I an itching palm?
You know that you are Brutus that speak this,
Or by the gods this speech were else your last!"_
The night before the battle of Philippi the spirit of Caesar appeared in the
tent of Brutus, who startles from a slumbering trance and exclaims:
_"Ha! who comes here?
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes,
That shapes this monstrous apparition.
It comes upon me! Art thou anything?
Art thou some god, some angel or some devil,
That makest my blood cold, and my hair to stare?
Speak to me, what thou art."_
The Ghost replies:
_"Thy evil spirit, Brutus!_
_Brutus: Why comest thou?_
_Ghost: To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi._
_Brutus: Well, then I shall see thee again?_
_Ghost: Ay, at Philippi!"_
The armies of Antony and Octavius and Brutus and Cassius meet in crash of
battle.
Cassius is hotly pursued by the enemy, and to prevent capture and
exhibition at Rome, craves the service of Pindrus to run him through with
his sword. He says:
_"Now be a freeman, and with this good sword
That ran through Caesar's bowels, search this bosom.
Stand not to answer; here, take thou the hilt;
And when my face is covered, as 'tis now,
Guide thou the sword; Caesar, thou art revenged,
Even with the sword that killed thee!"_ (Dies.)
Brutus is run to earth, and most of his generals dead or fled. He implores
Strato to assist him to suicide, and says:
_"I pray thee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord;
Thou art a fellow of good respect;
Thy life hath had some smack of honor in it;
Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face,
While I do run upon it!
Farewell, good Strato; Caesar now be still,
I killed not thee with half so good a will!"_
(Runs on his sword and dies.)
Antony and Octavius and his army soon find Brutus slain by his own sword,
and with a most magnificent and undeserved generosity Antony pronounces
this benediction over the dead body of the vilest and most intelligent
conspirator who ever lived!
_"This was the noblest Roman of them all;
All the conspirators, save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only in a general honest thought,
And common good to all made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, This was a man!"_
The whole audience, led by Southampton, Essex, Bacon and Drayton gave three
cheers and a lion roar for "Julius Caesar," the greatest historical and
classical play ever composed, and destined to run down the ages for a
million years!
CHAPTER XIII.
TWO TRAMPS. BY LAND AND SEA.
_"Travelers must be content."_
_"Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety."_
The translation of Petrarch, Plutarch, Tacitus, Terence, and particularly
Homer,
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