Anne Hathaway's Cottage.
The old foot-path across the fields to Shottery remains accessible. Wild-flowers are blooming along its margin. The gardens and meadows through which it winds are sprinkled with the gorgeous scarlet of the poppy. The hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile from Stratford, stepping toward the sunset; and there, nestled beneath the elms, and almost embowered in vines and roses, stands the cottage in which Anne Hathaway was wooed and won. This is even more antiquated in appearance than the birthplace of Shakespeare, and more obviously a relic of the distant past. It is built of wood and plaster, ribbed with massive timbers, and covered with a thatch roof. It fronts southward, presenting its eastern end to the road. Under its eaves, peeping through embrasures cut in the thatch, are four tiny casements, round which the ivy twines and the roses wave softly in the wind of June. The western end of the structure is higher than the eastern, and the old building, originally divided into two tenements, is now divided into three. In front of it is a straggling garden. There is a comfortable air of wildness, yet not of neglect, in its appointments and surroundings. The place is still the abode of labour and lowliness. Entering its parlour you see a stone floor, a wide fireplace, a broad, hospitable hearth, with cosy chimney-corners, and near this an old wooden settle, much decayed but still serviceable, on which Shakespeare may often have sat, with Anne at his side. The plastered walls of this room here and there reveal portions of an oak wainscot. The ceiling is low. This evidently was the farm-house of a substantial yeoman, in the days of Henry the Eighth. The Hathaways had lived in Shottery for forty years prior to Shakespeare's marriage. The poet, then undistinguished, had just turned eighteen, while his bride was nearly twenty-six, and it has been foolishly said that she acted ill in wedding her boy-lover. They were married in November, 1582, and their first child, Susanna, came in the following May. Anne Hathaway must have been a wonderfully fascinating woman, or Shakespeare would not so have loved her; and she must have loved him dearly—as what woman, indeed, could help it?—or she would not thus have yielded to his passion. There is direct testimony to the beauty of his person; and in the light afforded by his writings it requires no extraordinary penetration to conjecture that his brilliant mind, sparkling humour, tender fancy, and impetuous spirit must have made him, in his youth, a paragon of enchanters. It is not known where they lived during the first years after their marriage. Perhaps in this cottage at Shottery. Perhaps with Hamnet and Judith Sadler, for whom their twins, born in 1585, were named Hamnet and Judith. Her father's house assuredly would have been chosen for Anne's refuge, when presently (in 1585-86), Shakespeare was obliged to leave his wife and children, and go away to London to seek his fortune. He did not buy New Place till 1597, but it is known that in the meantime he came to his native town once every year. It was in Stratford that his son Hamnet died, in 1596. Anne and her children probably had never left the town. They show a bedstead and other bits of furniture, together with certain homespun sheets of everlasting linen, that are kept as heirlooms in the garret of the Shottery cottage. Here is the room that may often have welcomed the poet when he came home from his labours in the great city. It is a homely and humble place, but the sight of it makes the heart thrill with a strange and incommunicable awe. You cannot wish to speak when you are standing there. You are scarcely conscious of the low rustling of the leaves outside, the far-off sleepy murmur of the brook, or the faint fragrance of woodbine and maiden's-blush that is wafted in at the open casement and that swathes in nature's incense a memory sweeter than itself.
Associations may be established by fable as well as by fact. There is but little reason to believe the legendary tale, first recorded by Rowe, that Shakespeare, having robbed the deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote (there was not a park at Charlecote then, but there was one at Fullbrooke), was so severely persecuted by that magistrate that he was compelled to quit Stratford and shelter himself in London. Yet the story has twisted itself into all the lives of Shakespeare, and whether received or rejected has clung to the house of Charlecote. That noble mansion—a genuine specimen, despite a few modern alterations, of the architecture of Queen Elizabeth's time—is found on the west bank of the Avon, about three miles north-east from Stratford. It is a long, rambling, three-storied palace—as finely quaint as old St. James's in London, and not altogether unlike that edifice, in general character—with octagon turrets, gables, balustrades, Tudor casements, and great stacks of chimneys, so closed in by elms of giant growth that you can scarce distinguish it, through the foliage, till you are close upon it.
Charlecote.
It was erected in 1558 by Thomas Lucy, who in 1578 was Sheriff of Warwickshire, who was elected to the Parliaments of 1571 and 1584, and who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1565. The porch to this building was designed by John of Padua. There is a silly ballad in existence, idly attributed to Shakespeare, which, it is said, was found affixed to Lucy's gate, and gave him great offence. He must have been more than commonly sensitive to low abuse if he could have been annoyed by such a manifestly scurrilous ebullition of the blackguard and the blockhead,—supposing, indeed, that he ever saw it. The ballad, proffered as the work of Shakespeare, is a forgery. There is but one existing reason to think that the poet ever cherished a grudge against the Lucy family, and that is the coarse allusion to the "luces" which is found in theMerry Wives of Windsor.There was apparently, a second Sir Thomas Lucy, later than the Sheriff, who was more of the Puritanic breed, while Shakespeare evidently was a Cavalier. It is possible that in a youthful frolic the poet may have poached on Sheriff Lucy's preserves. Even so, the affair was trivial. It is possible, too, that in after years he may have had reason to dislike the ultra-Puritanical neighbour. Some memory of the tradition will, of course, haunt the traveller's thoughts as he strolls by Hatton Rock and through the villages of Hampton and Charlecote. But this discordant recollection is soon smoothed away by the peaceful loveliness of the ramble—past aged hawthorns that Shakespeare himself may have seen, and under the boughs of beeches, limes, and drooping willows, where every footstep falls on wild-flowers, or on a cool green turf that is softer than Indian silk and as firm and elastic as the sand of the sea-beaten shore. Thought of Sir Thomas Lucy will not be otherwise than kind, either, when the stranger in Charlecote church reads the epitaph with which the old knight commemorated his wife: "All the time of her Lyfe a true and faithfull servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice; in religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithfull and true. In friendship most constant. To what in trust was committed to her most secret; in wisdom excelling; in governing her House and bringing up of Youth in the feare of God that did converse with her most rare and singular; a great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none unless the envious. When all is spoken that can be said, a Woman so furnished and garnished with Virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled of any; as she lived most virtuously, so she dyed most godly. Set down by him that best did know what hath been written to be true. Thomas Lucy." A narrow formalist he may have been, and a severe magistrate in his dealings with scapegrace youths, and perhaps a haughty and disagreeable neighbour; but there is a touch of manhood, high feeling, and virtuous and self-respecting character in those lines, that instantly wins the response of sympathy. If Shakespeare really shot the deer of Thomas Lucy the injured gentleman had a right to feel annoyed. Shakespeare, boy or man, was not a saint, and those who so account him can have read his works to but little purpose. He can bear the full brunt of his faults. He does not need to be canonised.
The ramble to Charlecote—one of the prettiest walks about Stratford—was, it may surely be supposed, often taken by Shakespeare. Many another ramble was possible to him and no doubt was made. He would cross the mill bridge (new in 1599), which spans the Avon a little way to the south of the church. A quaint, sleepy mill no doubt it was—necked with moss and ivy—and the gaze of Shakespeare assuredly dwelt on it with pleasure.
Meadow Walk by the Avon.
His footsteps may be traced, also, in fancy, to the region of the old college building, demolished in 1799, which stood in the southern part of Stratford, and was the home of his friend John Combe, factor of Fulke Greville, Earl of Warwick. Still another of his walks must have tended northward through Welcombe, where he was the owner of land, to the portly manor of Clopton, or to the home of William, nephew of John-a-Combe, which stood where the Phillips mansion stands now. On what is called the Ancient House, which stands on the west side of High Street, he may often have looked, as he strolled past to the Red Horse. That picturesque building, dated 1596, survives, notwithstanding some modern touches of rehabilitation, as a beautiful specimen of Tudor architecture in one at least of its most charming traits, the carved and timber-crossed gable. It is a house of three stories, containing parlour, sitting-room, kitchen, and several bedrooms, besides cellars and brew-shed; and when sold at auction, August 23, 1876, it brought £400. In that house was born John Harvard, who founded Harvard University. There are other dwellings fully as old in Stratford, but they have been covered with stucco and otherwise changed. This is a genuine piece of antiquity and it vies with the grammar-school and the hall of the Guild, under the pent-house of which the poet would pass whenever he went abroad from New Place. Julius Shaw, one of the five witnesses to his will, lived in the house next to the present New Place Museum, and there, it is reasonable to think, Shakespeare would often pause, for a word with his friend and neighbour. In the little streets by the riverside, which are ancient and redolent of the past, his image seems steadily familiar. In Dead Lane (once also called Walker Street, now called Chapel Lane) he owned a cottage, bought of Walter Getley in 1602, and only destroyed within the present century. These and kindred shreds of fact, suggesting the poet as a living man and connecting him, however vaguely, with our everyday experience, are seized with peculiar zest by the pilgrim in Stratford. Such a votary, for example, never doubts that Shakespeare was a frequenter, in leisure or convivial hours, of the ancient Red Horse inn. It stood there, in his day, as it stands now, on the north side of Bridge Street, westward from the Avon. There are many other taverns in the town—the Shakespeare, a delightful resort, the Falcon, the Rose and Crown, the old Red Lion, and the Swan's Nest, being a few of them,—-but the Red Horse takes precedence of all its kindred, in the fascinating because suggestive attribute of antiquity. Moreover it was the Red Horse that harboured Washington Irving, the pioneer of American worshippers at the shrine of Shakespeare; and the American explorer of Stratford would cruelly sacrifice his peace of mind if he were to repose under any other roof. The Red Horse is a rambling, three-story building, entered through an archway that leads into a long, straggling yard, adjacent to offices and stables. On one side of the entrance is found the smoking-room; on the other is the coffee-room. Above are the bed-rooms. It is a thoroughly old-fashioned inn—such a one as we may suppose the Boar's Head to have been, in the time of Prince Henry; such a one as untravelled Americans only know in the pages of Dickens. The rooms are furnished in neat, homelike style, and their associations readily deck them with the fragrant garlands of memory. When Drayton and Jonson came down to visit "gentle Will" at Stratford they could scarcely have omitted to quaff the humming ale of Warwickshire in that cosy parlour. When Queen Henrietta Maria was ensconced at New Place the general of the royal forces quartered himself at the Red Horse, and then doubtless there was enough and to spare of revelry within its walls. A little later the old house was soundly peppered by Roundhead bullets and the whole town was overrun with the close-cropped, psalm-singing soldiers of the Commonwealth. In 1742 Garrick and Macklin lodged in the Red Horse, and thither again came Garrick in 1769, to direct the Shakespeare Jubilee, which was then most dismally accomplished but which is always remembered to the great actor's credit and honour. Betterton, no doubt, lodged there when he came to Stratford in quest of reminiscences of Shakespeare. The visit of Washington Irving, supplemented with his delicious chronicle, has led to what might be called almost the consecration of the parlour in which he sat and the chamber (No. 15) in which he slept. They still keep the poker—now marked "Geoffrey Crayon's sceptre"—with which, as he sat there in long, silent, ecstatic meditation, he prodded the fire in the narrow, tiny grate. They keep also the chair in which he sat—a plain, straight-backed arm-chair, with a haircloth seat, marked, on a brass plate, with his renowned and treasured name. Thus genius can sanctify even the humblest objects,
"And shed a something of celestial lightRound the familiar face of every day."
To pass rapidly in review the little that is known of Shakespeare's life is, nevertheless, to be impressed not only by its incessant and amazing literary fertility but by the quick succession of its salient incidents. The vitality must have been enormous that created in so short a time such a number and variety of works of the first class. The same quick spirit would naturally have kept in agitation all the elements of his daily experience. Descended from an ancestor who had fought for the Red Rose on Bosworth Field, he was born to repute as well as competence, and during his early childhood he received instruction and training in a comfortable home. He escaped the plague that was raging in Stratford when he was an infant, and that took many victims. He went to school when seven years old and left it when about fourteen. He then had to work for his living—his once opulent father having fallen into misfortune—and he became an apprentice to a butcher, or else a lawyer's clerk (there were seven lawyers in Stratford at that time), or else a schoolteacher. Perhaps he was all three—and more. It is conjectured that he saw the players who from time to time acted in the Guildhall, under the auspices of the corporation of Stratford; that he attended the religious entertainments that were customarily given in the not distant city of Coventry; and that in particular he witnessed the elaborate and sumptuous pageants with which in 1575 the Earl of Leicester welcomed Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle. He married at eighteen; and, leaving a wife and three children in Stratford, he went up to London at twenty-two. His entrance into theatrical life followed—in what capacity it is impossible to say. One dubious account says that he held horses for the public at the theatre door; another that he got employment as a prompter to the actors. It is certain that he had not been in the theatrical business long before he began to make himself known. At twenty-eight he was a prosperous author. At twenty-nine he had acted with Burbage before Queen Elizabeth; and while Spenser had extolled him in the "Tears of the Muses," the hostile Greene had disparaged him in the "Groat's-worth of Wit." At thirty-three he had acquired wealth enough to purchase New Place, the principal residence in his native town, where now he placed his family and established his home,—himself remaining in London, but visiting Stratford at frequent intervals. At thirty-four he was heard of as the actor of Knowell in Ben Jonson's comedy ofEvery Man in his Humour† and he received the glowing encomium of Meres inWits Treasury.At thirty-eight he had writtenHamletandAs You Like It,and moreover he had now become the owner of more estate in Stratford, costing £320. At forty-one he made his largest purchase, buying for £440 the "unexpired term of a moiety of the interest in a lease granted in 1554 for ninety-two years of the tithes of Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe." In the meantime he had smoothed the declining years of his father and had followed him with love and duty to the grave. Other domestic bereavements likewise befell him, and other worldly cares and duties were laid upon his hands, but neither grief nor business could check the fertility of his brain. Within the next ten years he wrote, among other great plays,Othello, Lear, Macbeth,andCoriolanus.
† Jonson's famous comedy was first acted in 1598, "By the then Lord Chamberlain his servants." Knowell is designated as "an old gentleman." The Jonson Folio of 1692 names as follows the principal comedians who acted in that piece: "Will. Shakespeare. Aug. Philips. Hen. Condel. Will. Slye. Will. Kempe. Ric. Burbadge. Joh. Hemings. Tho. Pope. Chr. Beston. Joh. Duke."
At about forty-eight he seems to have disposed of his interest in the two London theatres with which he had been connected, the Blackfriars and the Globe, and shortly afterwards, his work as we possess it being well-nigh completed, he retired finally to his Stratford home. That he was the comrade of many bright spirits who glittered in "the spacious times" of Elizabeth several of them have left personal testimony. That he was the king of them all is shown in his works. The Sonnets seem to disclose that there was a mysterious, almost a tragical, passage in his life, and that he was called to bear the burden of a great and perhaps a calamitous personal grief—one of those griefs, which, being caused by sinful love, are endless in the punishment they entail. Happily, however, no antiquarian student of Shakespeare's time has yet succeeded in coming near to the man. While he was in London he used to frequent the Falcon Tavern, in Southwark, and the Mermaid, and he lived at one time in St. Helen's parish, Aldersgate, and at another time in Clink Street, Southwark. As an actor his name has been associated with his characters of Adam, Friar Lawrence, and the Ghost of King Hamlet, and a contemporary reference declared him "excellent in the quality he professes." Some of his manuscripts, it is possible, perished in the fire that consumed the Globe theatre in 1613. He passed his last days in his home at Stratford, and died there, somewhat suddenly, on his fifty-second birthday. That event, it may be worth while to observe, occurred within thirty-three years of the execution of Charles the First, under the Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. The Puritan spirit, intolerant of the play-house and of all its works, must then have been gaining formidable strength. His daughter Susanna, aged thirty-three at the time of his death, survived him thirty-three years. His daughter Judith, aged thirty-one at the time of his death, survived him forty-six years. The whisper of tradition says that both were Puritans. If so the strange and seemingly unaccountable disappearance of whatever play-house papers he may have left at Stratford should not be obscure. This suggestion is likely to have been made before; and also it is likely to have been supplemented with a reference to the great fire in London in 1666—(which in consuming St. Paul's cathedral burned an immense quantity of books and manuscripts that had been brought from all the threatened parts of the city and heaped beneath its arches for safety)—as probably the final and effectual holocaust of almost every piece of print or writing that might have served to illuminate the history of Shakespeare. In his personality no less than in the fathomless resources of his genius he baffles scrutiny and stands for ever alone.
"Others abide our question; thou art free:We ask, and ask; thou smilest and art still—Out-topping knowledge."
It is impossible to convey an adequate suggestion of the prodigious and overwhelming sense of peace that falls upon the soul of the pilgrim in Stratford church. All the cares and struggles and trials of mortal life, all its failures, and equally all its achievements, seem there to pass utterly out of remembrance. It is not now an idle reflection that "the paths of glory lead but to the grave." No power of human thought ever rose higher or went further than the thought of Shakespeare. No human being, using the best weapons of intellectual achievement, ever accomplished so much. Yet here he lies—who was once so great! And here also, gathered around him in death, lie his parents, his children, his descendants, and his friends. For him and for them the struggle has long since ended. Let no man fear to tread the dark pathway that Shakespeare has trodden before him. Let no man, standing at this grave, and seeing and feeling that all the vast labours of that celestial genius end here at last in a handful of dust, fret and grieve any more over the puny and evanescent toils of to-day, so soon to be buried in oblivion! In the simple performance of duty and in the life of the affections there may be permanence and solace. The rest is an "insubstantial pageant." It breaks, it changes, it dies, it passes away, it is forgotten; and though a great name be now and then for a little while remembered, what can the remembrance of mankind signify to him who once wore it? Shakespeare, there is reason to believe, set precisely the right value alike upon contemporary renown and the homage of posterity. Though he went forth, as the stormy impulses of his nature drove him, into the great world of London, and there laid the firm hand of conquest upon the spoils of wealth and power, he came back at last to the peaceful home of his childhood; he strove to garner up the comforts and everlasting treasures of love at his hearthstone; he sought an enduring monument in the hearts of friends and companions; and so he won for his stately sepulchre the garland not alone of glory but of affection. Through the high eastern window of the chancel of Holy Trinity church the morning sunshine, broken into many-coloured light, streams in upon the grave of Shakespeare and gilds his bust upon the wall above it. He lies close by the altar, and every circumstance of his place of burial is eloquent of his hold upon the affectionate esteem of his contemporaries. The line of graves beginning at the north wall of the chancel and extending across to the south seems devoted entirely to Shakespeare and his family, with but one exception.† The pavement that covers them is of that blue-gray slate or freestone which in England is sometimes called black marble. In the first grave under the north wall rests Shakespeare's wife. The next is that of the poet himself, bearing the world-famed words of blessing and imprecation. Then comes the grave of Thomas Nashe, husband to Elizabeth. Hall, the poet's granddaughter, who died April 4, 1647. Next is that of Dr. John Hall (obiit November 25, 1635), husband to his daughter Susanna, and close beside him rests Susanna herself, who was buried on July 11, 1649. The gravestones are laid east and west, and all but one present inscriptions. That one is under the south wall, and possibly it covers the dust of Judith—Mrs. Thomas Quiney—the youngest daughter of Shakespeare, who, surviving her three children and thus leaving no descendants, died in 1662. Upon the gravestone of Susanna an inscription has been intruded commemorative of Richard Watts, who is not, however, known to have had any relationship with either Shakespeare or his descendants.
† "The poet knew," says J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, "that as a tithe-owner he would necessarily be buried in the chancel."
Shakespeare's father, who died in 1601, and his mother, Mary Arden, who died in 1608, were buried in or near this church. (The register says, under Burials, "September 9, 1608, Mayry Shaxspere, wydowe.") His infant sisters Joan, Margaret, and Anne, and his brother Richard, who died, aged thirty-nine, in 1613, may also have been laid to rest in this place. Of the death and burial of his brother Gilbert there is no record. His sister Joan, the second—Mrs. Hart—would naturally have been placed with her relatives. His brother Edmund, dying in 1607, aged twenty-seven, is under the pavement of St. Saviour's church in Southwark. The boy Hamnet, dying before his father had risen into local eminence, rests, probably, in an undistinguished grave in the churchyard. (The register records his burial on August 11, 1596.) The family of Shakespeare seems to have been short-lived and it was soon extinguished. He himself died at fifty-two. Judith's children perished young. Susanna bore but one child—Elizabeth—who became successively Mrs. Nashe and Lady Barnard, and she, dying in 1670, was buried at Abingdon, near Oxford. She left no children by either husband, and in her the race of Shakespeare became extinct. That of Anne Hathaway also has nearly disappeared, the last living descendant of the Hathaways being Mrs. Baker, the present occupant of Anne's cottage at Shottery. Thus, one by one, from the pleasant gardened town of Stratford, they went to take up their long abode in that old church, which was ancient even in their infancy, and which, watching through the centuries in its monastic solitude on the shore of Avon, has seen their lands and houses devastated by flood and fire, the places that knew them changed by the tooth of time, and almost all the associations of their lives obliterated by the improving hand of destruction.
One of the oldest and most interesting Shakespearean documents in existence is the narrative, by a traveller named Dowdall, of his observations in Warwickshire, and of his visit, on April 10, 1693, to Stratford church. He describes therein the bust and the tombstone of Shakespeare, and he adds these remarkable words: "The clerk that showed me this church is above eighty years old. He says that not one, for fear of the curse above said, dare touch his gravestone, though his wife and daughter did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him." Writers in modern days have been pleased to disparage that inscription and to conjecture that it was the work of a sexton and not of the poet; but no one denies that it has accomplished its purpose in preserving the sanctity of Shakespeare's rest. Its rugged strength, its simple pathos, its fitness, and its sincerity make it felt as unquestionably the utterance of Shakespeare himself, when it is read upon the slab that covers him. There the musing traveller full well conceives how dearly the poet must have loved the beautiful scenes of his birthplace, and with what intense longing he must have desired to sleep undisturbed in the most sacred spot in their bosom. He doubtless had some premonition of his approaching death. Three months before it came he made his will. A little later he saw the marriage of his younger daughter. Within less than a month of his death he executed the will, and thus set his affairs in order. His handwriting in the three signatures to that paper conspicuously exhibits the uncertainty and lassitude of shattered nerves. He was probably quite worn out. Within the space, at the utmost, of twenty-five years, he had written thirty-seven plays, one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, and two or more long poems; had passed through much and painful toil and through bitter sorrow; had made his fortune as author and actor; and had superintended, to excellent advantage, his property in London and his large interests in Stratford and its neighbourhood. The proclamation of health with which the will begins was doubtless a formality of legal custom. The story that he died of drinking too hard at a merry meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson is idle gossip. If in those last days of fatigue and presentiment he wrote the epitaph that has ever since marked his grave, it would naturally have taken the plainest fashion of speech. Such is its character; and no pilgrim to the poet's shrine could wish to see it changed:—
"Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,To digg the dvst encloased heare;Blese be yeman ytspares thes stonesAnd cvrst be he ytmoves my bones."
It was once surmised that the poet's solicitude lest his bones might be disturbed in death grew out of his intention to take with him into the grave a confession that the works which now follow him were written by another hand. Persons have been found who actually believe that a man who was great enough to writeHamletcould be little enough to feel ashamed of it, and, accordingly, that Shakespeare was only hired to play at authorship, as a screen for the actual author. It might not, perhaps, be strange that a desire for singularity, which is one of the worst literary crazes of this capricious age, should prompt to the rejection of the conclusive and overwhelming testimony to Shakespeare's genius that has been left by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and that shines forth in all that is known of his life. It is strange that a doctrine should get itself asserted which is subversive of common reason and contradictory to every known law of the human mind. This conjectural confession of poetic imposture has never been exhumed. The grave is known to have been disturbed, in 1796, when alterations were made in the church,† and there came a time in the present century when, as they were making repairs in the chancel pavement (the chancel was renovated in 1835), a rift was accidently made in the Shakespeare vault. Through this, though not without misgiving, the sexton peeped in upon the poet's remains. He saw nothing but dust.
† It was the opinion—not conclusive but interesting—of the late J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps that at one or other of these "restorations" the original tombstone of Shakespeare was removed and another one, from the yard of a modern stone-mason, put in its place. Dr. Ingleby, in his book onShakespeare's Bones,1883, asserts that the original stone was removed. I have compared Shakespeare's tombstone with that of his wife, and with others in the chancel, but I have not found the discrepancy observed by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, and I think there is no reason to believe that the original tombstone has ever been disturbed. The letters upon it were, probably, cut deeper in 1835.
The antique font from which the infant Shakespeare may have received the water of Christian baptism is still preserved in this church. It was thrown aside and replaced by a new one about the middle of the seventeenth century. Many years afterward it was found in the charnel-house. When that was destroyed, in 1800, it was cast into the churchyard. In later times the parish clerk used it as a trough to his pump. It passed then through the hands of several successive owners, till at last, in days that had learned to value the past and the associations connected with its illustrious names, it found its way back again to the sanctuary from which it had suffered such a rude expulsion. It is still a handsome stone, though broken, soiled, and marred.
Remains of the Old Font at which, probably, Shakespeare was christened, now in the Nave of Stratford Church.
On the north wall of the chancel, above his grave and near to "the American window," is placed Shakespeare's monument. It is known to have been erected there within seven years after his death. It consists of a half-length effigy, placed beneath a fretted arch, with entablature and pedestal, between two Corinthian columns of black marble, gilded at base and top. Above the entablature appear the armorial bearings of Shakespeare—a pointed spear on a bend sable and a silver falcon on a tasselled helmet supporting a spear. Over this heraldic emblem is a death's-head, and on each side of it sits a carved cherub, one holding a spade, the other an inverted torch. In front of the effigy is a cushion, upon which both hands rest, holding a scroll and a pen. Beneath is an inscription in Latin and English, supposed to have been furnished by the poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall. The bust was cut by Gerard Jonson, a native of Amsterdam and by occupation a "tomb-maker," who lived in Southwark and possibly had seen the poet. The material is a soft stone, and the work, when first set up, was painted in the colours of life. Its peculiarities indicate that it was copied from a mask of the features taken after death. Some persons believe (upon slender and dubious testimony) that this mask has since been found, and busts of Shakespeare have been based upon it, by W. R. O'Donovan and by William Page. In September, 1764, John Ward, grandfather of Mrs. Siddons, having come to Stratford with a theatrical company, gave a performance ofOthello,in the Guildhall, and devoted its proceeds to reparation of the Gerard Jonson effigy, then somewhat damaged by time.
Shakespeare's Monument.
The original colours were then carefully restored and freshened. In 1793, under the direction of Malone, this bust, together with the image of John-a-Combe—a recumbent statue upon a tomb close to the east wall of the chancel—was coated with white paint. From that plight it was extricated, in 1861, by the assiduous skill of Simon Collins, who immersed it in a bath which took off the white paint and restored the colours. The eyes are painted light hazel, the hair and pointed beard auburn, the face and hands flesh-tint. The dress consists of a scarlet doublet, with a rolling collar, closely buttoned down the front, worn under a loose black gown without sleeves. The upper part of the cushion is green, the lower part crimson, and this object is ornamented with gilt tassels. The stone pen that used to be in the right hand of the bust was taken from it, toward the end of the last century, by a young Oxford student, and, being dropped by him upon the pavement, was broken. A quill pen has been put in its place. This is the inscription beneath the bust:—
Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,Terra tegit, popvlvs mæret, Olympvs habet.Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so fast?Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs Death hath plastWithin this monvment: SHAKSPEARE: with whomeQvick Natvre dide; whose name doth deck ystombeFar more than cost; sieth all ythe hath writtLeaves living art bvt page to serve his witt.Obiit Ano. Doi. 1616. Ætatis 53. Die. 23. Ap.
The erection of the old castles, cathedrals, monasteries, and churches of England was accomplished, little by little, with laborious toil protracted through many years. Stratford church, probably more than seven centuries old, presents a mixture of architectural styles, in which Saxon simplicity and Norman grace are beautifully mingled. Different parts of the structure were built at different times. It is fashioned in the customary crucial form, with a square tower, an octagon stone spire, (erected in 1764, to replace a more ancient one, made of oak and covered with lead), and a fretted battlement all around its roof. Its windows are diversified, but mostly Gothic. The approach to it is across a churchyard thickly sown with graves, through a lovely green avenue of lime-trees, leading to a porch on its north side. This avenue of foliage is said to be the copy of one that existed there in Shakespeare's day, through which he must often have walked, and through which at last he was carried to his grave. Time itself has fallen asleep in that ancient place. The low sob of the organ only deepens the awful sense of its silence and its dreamless repose. Yews and elms grow in the churchyard, and many a low tomb and many a leaning stone are there, in the shadow, gray with moss and mouldering with age. Birds have built their nests in many crevices in the timeworn tower, round which at sunset you may see them circle, with chirp of greeting or with call of anxious discontent. Near by flows the peaceful river, reflecting the gray spire in its dark, silent, shining waters. In the long and lonesome meadows beyond it the primroses stand in their golden ranks among the clover, and the frilled and fluted bell of the cowslip, hiding its single drop of blood in its bosom, closes its petals as the night comes down.
Northward, at a little distance from the Church of the Holy Trinity, stands, on the west bank of the Avon, the building that will always be famous as the Shakespeare Memorial. The idea of the Memorial was suggested in 1864, incidentally to the ceremonies which then commemorated the three-hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth. Ten years later the site for this structure was presented to the town by Charles Edward Flower, one of its most honoured inhabitants. Contributions of money were then asked, and were given. Americans as well as Englishmen contributed. On April 23, 1877, the first stone of the Memorial was laid. On April 23, 1880, the building was dedicated. The fabric comprises a theatre, a library, and a picture-gallery. In the theatre the plays of Shakespeare are annually represented, in a manner as nearly perfect as possible. In the library and picture-gallery are to be assembled all the books upon Shakespeare that have been published, and all the choice paintings that can be obtained to illustrate his life and his works. As the years pass this will naturally become a principal depository of Shakespearean objects. A dramatic college may grow up, in association with the Shakespeare theatre. The gardens that surround the Memorial will augment their loveliness in added expanse of foliage and in greater wealth of floral luxuriance. The mellow tinge of age will soften the bright tints of the red brick that mainly composes the building. On its cone-shaped turrets ivy will clamber and moss will nestle. When a few generations have passed, the old town of Stratford will have adopted this now youthful stranger into the race of her venerated antiquities. The same air of poetic mystery that rests now upon his cottage and his grave will diffuse itself around his Memorial; and a remote posterity, looking back to the men and the ideas of to-day, will remember with grateful pride that English-speaking people of the nineteenth century, although they could confer no honour upon the great name of Shakespeare, yet honoured themselves in consecrating this votive temple to his memory.
Gable Window
Victory with Paired Chargers Border
About the middle of the night the great ship comes to a pause, off the coast of Ireland, and, looking forth across the black waves and through the rifts in the rising mist, we see the low and lonesome verge of that land of trouble and misery. A beautiful white light flashes now and then from the shore, and at intervals the mournful booming of a solemn bell floats over the sea. Soon is heard the rolling click of oars, and then two or three dusky boats glide past the ship, and hoarse voices hail and answer. A few stars are visible in the hazy sky, and the breeze from the land brings off, in fitful puffs, the fragrant balm of grass and clover, mingled with the salt odours of sea-weed and slimy rocks. There is a sense of mystery over the whole wild scene; but we realise now that human companionship is near, and that the long and lonely ocean voyage is ended.
Peveril Peak.
Travellers who make the run from Liverpool to London by the Midland Railway pass through the vale of Derby and skirt around the stately Peak that Scott has commemorated in his novel of Peveril. It is a more rugged country than is seen in the transit by the Northwestern road, but not more beautiful. You see the storied mountain, in its delicacy of outline and its airy magnificence of poise, soaring into the sky—its summit almost lost in the smoky haze—and you wind through hillside pastures and meadow-lands that are curiously intersected with low, zigzag stone walls; and constantly, as the scene changes, you catch glimpses of green lane and shining river; of dense copses that cast their cool shadow on the moist and gleaming emerald sod; of long white roads that stretch away like cathedral aisles and are lost beneath the leafy arches of elm and oak; of little church towers embowered in ivy; of thatched cottages draped with roses; of dark ravines, luxuriant with a wild profusion of rocks and trees; and of golden grain that softly waves and whispers in the summer wind; while, all around, the grassy banks and glimmering meadows are radiant with yellow daisies, and with that wonderful scarlet of the poppy that gives an almost human glow of life and loveliness to the whole face of England. After some hours of such a pageant—so novel, so fascinating, so fleeting, so stimulative of eager curiosity and poetic desire—it is a relief at last to stand in the populous streets and among the grim houses of London, with its surging tides of life, and its turmoil of effort, conflict, exultation, and misery. How strange it seems—yet, at the same time, how homelike and familiar! There soars aloft the great dome of St. Paul's cathedral, with its golden cross that flashes in the sunset! There stands the Victoria tower—fit emblem of the true royalty of the sovereign whose name it bears. And there, more lowly but more august, rise the sacred turrets of the Abbey. It is the same old London—the great heart of the modern world—the great city of our reverence and love. As the wanderer writes these words he hears the plashing of the fountains in Trafalgar Square and the evening chimes that peal out from the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and he knows himself once more at the shrine of his youthful dreams.
St. Paul's from Maiden Lane.
To the observant stranger in London few sights can be more impressive than those that illustrate the singular manner in which the life of the present encroaches upon the memorials of the past. Old Temple Bar has gone,—a sculptured griffin, at the junction of Fleet Street and the Strand, denoting where once it stood. (It has been removed to Theobald's Park, near Waltham, and is now the lodge gate of the grounds of Sir Henry Meux.) The Midland Railway trains dash over what was once St. Pancras churchyard—the burial-place of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and of many other British worthies—and passengers looking from the carriages may see the children of the neighbourhood sporting among the few tombs that yet remain in that despoiled cemetery. Dolly's Chop-House, intimately associated with the wits of the reign of Queen Anne, has been destroyed. The ancient tavern of The Cock, immortalised by Tennyson, in his poem of Will Waterproof's Monologue, is soon to disappear,—with its singular wooden vestibule that existed before the time of the Plague and that escaped the great fire of 1666. On the site of Northumberland House stands the Grand Hotel. The gravestones that formerly paved the precinct of Westminster Abbey have been removed, to make way for grassy lawns intersected with pathways. In Southwark, across the Thames, the engine-room of the brewery of Messrs. Barclay & Perkins occupies the site of the Globe Theatre, in which most of Shakespeare's plays were first produced. One of the most venerable and beautiful churches in London, that of St. Bartholomew the Great,—a gray, mouldering temple, of the twelfth century, hidden away in a corner of Smithfield,—is desecrated by the irruption of an adjacent shop, the staircase hall of which breaks cruelly into the sacred edifice and impends above the altar. On July 12, 1882, the present writer, walking in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden,—the sepulchre of William Wycherley, Robert Wilks, Charles Macklin, Joseph Haines, Thomas King, Samuel Butler, Thomas Southerne, Edward Shuter, Dr. Arne, Thomas Davies, Edward Kynaston, Richard Estcourt, William Havard, and many other renowned votaries of literature and the stage,—found workmen building a new wall to sustain the enclosure, and almost every stone in the cemetery uprooted and leaning against the adjacent houses. Those monuments, it was said, would be replaced; but it was impossible not to consider the chances of error in a new mortuary deal—and the grim witticism of Rufus Choate, about dilating with the wrong emotion, came then into remembrance, and did not come amiss.
The Charter House.
Facts such as these, however, bid us remember that even the relics of the past are passing away, and that cities, unlike human creatures, may grow to be so old that at last they will become new. It is not wonderful that London should change its aspect from one decade to another, as the living surmount and obliterate the dead. Thomas Sutton's Charter-House School, founded in 1611, when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were still writing, was reared upon ground in which several thousand corses were buried, during the time of the Indian pestilence of 1348; and it still stands and nourishes—though not as vigorously now as might be wished. Nine thousand new houses, it is said, are built in the great capital every year, and twenty-eight miles of new street are thus added to it. On a Sunday I drove for three hours through the eastern part of London without coming upon a single trace of the open fields. On the west, all the region from Kensington to Richmond is settled for most part of the way; while northward the city is stretching its arms toward Hampstead, Highgate, and tranquil and blooming Finchley. Truly the spirit of this age is in strong contrast with that of the time of Henry the Eighth when (1530), to prevent the increasing size of London, all new buildings were forbidden to be erected "where no former hath been known to have been." The march of improvement nowadays carries everything before it: even British conservatism is at some points giving way: and, noting the changes that have occurred here within only five years, I am persuaded that those who would see what remains of the London of which they have read and dreamed—the London of Dryden and Pope, of Addison, Sheridan, and Byron, of Betterton, Garrick, and Edmund Kean—will, as time passes, find more and more difficulty both in tracing the footsteps of fame, and in finding that sympathetic, reverent spirit which hallows the relics of genius and renown.