From this long hall the room variously styled the “Armoury,” or the small Council Chamber or “’Greeing Room,” is entered. This Agreeing Room, perhaps for the inner councils of the Guild, was re-panelled about 1619, when the door leading from the hall was built; and as a sign of rejoicing, the royal arms were painted over the fireplace at the time of the Restoration of Charles the Second, in 1660. Here also at one time the arms of the town guard were kept.
The present School Library, overhead, occupies the room under the roof, formerly the large Council Chamber of the Guild. The heraldic white and red roses painted on the west wall, the red countercharged with a white centre and the white with red, were placed there in 1485, marking the satisfaction of the townsfolk at the marriage of Henry the Seventh with Elizabeth of York, and the union of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster.
Out of this room opens the Latin Schoolroom of the Grammar School. The first portion of it was once separate, and known as the Mathematical Room. Here we are on the scene of Shakespeare’s schooldays, the schoolroom where he learnt that “small Latin and less Greek,” with which Ben Jonson credited him; a roomstill used in the education of Stratford boys. He pictured the schoolboy of his own and every other time in the lines—
“The whining schoolboy, with his satchelAnd shining morning face, creeping like a snailUnwillingly to school.”
“The whining schoolboy, with his satchelAnd shining morning face, creeping like a snailUnwillingly to school.”
How unwillingly we do not fully comprehend until we look more closely into the schooling of those days. It was a twelve-hour day, begun extremely early in the morning, and continued through the weary hours with some exercise of the rod.
We know exactly who were the masters of the Grammar School in the years 1571 to 1580, when Shakespeare received his education here, in common with the other children of the town. They were Walter Roche, who was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and afterwards rector of Clifford Chambers; succeeded in 1572 by Thomas Hunt, afterwards curate-in-charge at Luddington; and in 1577 by Thomas Jenkins, of St. John’s College, Oxford. These may have been pedants, but they were scholars, and qualified to impart an excellent education. They were in fact men distinctly above the average of the schoolmasters of that age, and live for all time in the characters of Holofernes inLove’s Labour’s Lostand Sir Hugh Evans in theMerry Wives of Windsor; the title “Sir,” being one, not of knighthood, but of courtesy, given to a clergyman. Shakespeare’s allusions to schools, masters and scholars, and his Latin conversations in the plays, modelled on the school methods then in vogue, are much more numerous and illuminative than generally supposed. We find, indeed, an especially intimate touch with Shakespeare’s schooldays in the description of Malvolio inTwelfth Nightas “like a pedant that keeps school i’ the church”; a remark whose significance is not evident until we read that during Shakespeare’s own schooldays the buildings were extensively repaired and that for a time the master and pupils were housed in the Guild Chapel.
The Schoolmaster’s House and Guild Chapel
The Latin Schoolroom has an outside staircase built in recent years to replace the original, abolished in 1841. The half-timbered house standing in the courtyard was formerly the schoolmaster’s residence; it is now, with the need for accommodating the natural increase of scholars, used for additional class-rooms.
Shakespeare, retiring early from his interests in London and the playhouses, and coming home to Stratford a wealthy man, hoping to live many years in the enjoyment of his fortune, settled in the old mansion he had bought, adjoining the scene of his own schooldays. He must have looked with a kindly eye and with much satisfaction from the windows of New Place, upon the schoolboys coming and going along the street, as he himself had done. Not every one can be so fortunate. Perhaps the reigning schoolmaster of the time even held up the shining example of Mr. William Shakespeare, “who was a schoolboy here, like you, my boys,” to his classes, and carefully omitting the factors of chance and opportunity, promised them as great success if they did but mind their books. Perhaps, on the other hand—for these were already puritan times—their distinguished neighbour was an awful example: author of those shocking exhibitions called stage-plays, at this time forbidden in the town, under penalties, and an actor, “such as those rogues whom we but the other day sent packing from our streets. Beware, my lads, lest you become wealthy after the fashion of Mr. Shakespeare. ‘What profiteth it a man, if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’”
The Headmaster’s Desk, Stratford-on-Avon Grammar School
Shakespeare, although he had become a personage of great consideration, with a fine residence, many times removed from his father’s humble house in Henley Street, had not changed into a more salubrious neighbourhood. The Stratford of his day and for long after was a dirty and insanitary place, according to our notions, but the townsfolk did not seem to be troubled by these conditions, and it never occurred to them that the plagues and fevers that carried off many of their fellows to Heaven—or whatever their destination—untimely were caused by the dirt and the vile odours of the place. Stratford of course, was not singular in this, and had its counterpart in most other towns and villages of that age. The town council, however, drew the line at the burgesses keeping pigs in part of the houses, or allowing them to wander in the streets; and enacted a fine of fourpence for every strayed porker. But the townsfolk regarded the authority’s dislike of pigs as a curious eccentricity, and the swine had their styes and roamed the streets exactly as before. The biggest of the six municipal muckhills that raised their majestic crests in the streets all the year round was situated in Chapel Lane, opposite Shakespeare’s door, but there is no record of his having objected to it. It was this, however, and the deplorable condition of Chapel Lane in general, then notoriously the dirtiest thoroughfare in the town, which probably caused the poet’s death; for the opinion now generally held is that he died of typhoid fever.
Down Chapel Lane then ran an open gutter: a wide and dirty ditch some four or five feet across, choked with mud. All the filth of this part of the town ran into it and discharged into the river.
There is no pictorial record of New Place, as it was when Shakespeare resided in it. He was unfortunatein living long before the age of picture-postcards, and never knew the joy of seeing illustrations of his house, “New Place; residence of Mr. William Shakespeare” (with the tell-tale legend “Printed in Germany.” in ruby type on the back), for sale in all the shop windows. Poor devil!
New Place passed by Shakespeare’s will to his daughter Susanna and her husband Dr. Hall. They removed from their house “Hall’s Croft,” Old Stratford, shortly afterwards, Shakespeare’s widow probably living with them until her death in 1623. Dr. Hall died in 1635. In 1643, Mrs. Hall here entertained Queen Henrietta Maria for three weeks, at the beginning of the royalist troubles, when the Queen came to the town with 5000 men. In 1649 she died, two years after her son-in-law, Thomas Nash, whose house is next door. Somewhere about this time all the Shakespeare books and manuscripts would seem to have disappeared. The puritan Dr. Hall disapproved of stage-plays, and his wife, Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna, could neither write nor read; and thus the complete destruction of the dramatist’s records is easily accounted for.
Nash’s widow, Shakespeare’s granddaughter, married again, a John Barnard who was afterwards knighted. Lady Barnard died childless at her husband’s place at Abington, Northamptonshire, and was buried there, leaving New Place to her husband, who died four years later, in 1674. By a strange chance, the house that had been sold out of the Clopton family now came back to it by marriage, Sir Edward Walker who bought the property in 1675, leaving Barbara, an only child, who married Sir John Clopton. His son, Sir Hugh, came into possession of an entirely new-fronted house, for his father, careless of its associations, in 1703 had made great alterations here. Illustrations of this frontagewhich survived until 1759, show that it was not at all Shakespearean; being instead most distinctly and flagrantly Queen Annean, in the semi-classic taste of that day, with a pediment and other architectural details which we are convinced Shakespeare’s New Place never included.
The ill-tempered Rev. Francis Gastrell who bought New Place in 1753 completed the obliteration of the illustrious owner’s residence. There cannot, happily, be many people so black-tempered as this wealthy absentee vicar of Frodsham, in Cheshire, who, resident for the greater part of the year in Lichfield, yet found Stratford desirable at some time in the twelve months. His acrid humours were early stirred. He had no sooner moved in than he found numbers of people coming every day to see Shakespeare’s mulberry-tree in the garden, so he promptly had it cut down, to save himself annoyance. Then he objected to the house being assessed for taxes all the year round, although he occupied it only a month or two in the twelve; and when the authorities refused to accept his view, he had the place entirely demolished. Thus perished New Place. The site of it, after passing through several hands, was finally purchased, together with the adjoining Thomas Nash’s house, by public subscription in 1861; and both are now the property of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
The site of New Place is open to the view of all who pass along Church Street and Chapel Lane, a dwarf wall with ornamental railing alone dividing it and its gardens from the pavement. Sixpence, which is the key that unlocks many doors in Shakespeare land, admits to the foundations, all that remain of the house, and also to the “New Place Museum,” in the house of Thomas Nash. Strange to say, the Trustees do not charge foradmission to the gardens. Is this an oversight, or a kindly wish to leave the stranger an odd sixpence to get home with? Nash’s house, odiously re-fronted about the beginning of the nineteenth century, showed a stuccoed front with pillared portico to the street until recently. This year (1912) the alterations have been completed by which the frontage is restored by the evidence of old prints to its appearance in Nash’s time. The interior remains as of old. Among the relics in the Museum are chairs, tables, a writing-desk, and other articles rather doubtfully said to have belonged to Shakespeare; a trinket-box supposed to have been Anne Hathaway’s, and an old shuffle-board from the “Falcon” inn opposite, on which Shakespeare is said to have played a game with friends at nights, when he felt bored at home. Unfortunately for tradition and the authenticity of this “Shakespearean relic,” the “Falcon” was a private house in Shakespeare’s lifetime, and for long after. It is known to have become an inn only at some time between 1645 and 1668. The sign was chosen probably in allusion to the Shakespeare crest. Reproductions of portraits of Shakespeare’s friends complete the collections in Nash’s House.
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-on-Avon.
Theparish church of Stratford-on-Avon is a building larger, more lofty, and far more stately than most towns of this size can boast. There is reason for this exceptional importance, first in the patronage of the Bishops of Worcester, on whose manor it was situated, but chiefly in the benefactions of John of Stratford, one of three remarkable persons born here in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. John, Robert, and Ralph, who took their distinguishing name from the town of their birth, were all of one family; the first two were brothers, the third was their nephew. John, born in the closing years of the thirteenth century, became successively Bishop of Winchester and Archbishop of Canterbury, and was, like most of the great prelates of the age, a statesman as well, filling the State offices of ambassador to foreign powers and Lord Chancellor of the realm. He died in 1348. His brother Robert early became rector of Stratford-on-Avon, in 1319. He it was who first caused the town to be paved; not, of course, with pavements that would meet the approval of a modern town council or the inhabitants, but probably with something in the nature of cobbles roughly laid down in the deep mud in which, up to that time, the rude carts of the age had foundered. It was this mud that set a deep gulf between neighbours, and had led indirectly to the establishment in 1296 of the original Guild Chapel, a small building which stood on the site of theexisting larger structure. It was founded by Robert, the father of John and Robert, largely for the spiritual welfare of those old or infirm persons who were not able to attend service at the parish church, by reason of the distance! Not, we may be sure, the distance of actual measurement, for the church is at the end of the not very long street, and a leisurely walk brings you to it in two minutes; but a distance of miles reckoned in the hindrances and disabilities provided by the roads of that age. Nothing in the story of Stratford could more eloquently describe to us the condition of its streets and the then remoteness of the Old Town district.
But to return to Robert of Stratford, who eventually became Bishop of Chichester and died in 1362. He it was who supervised his brother John’s gifts to the church, which was then an incomplete building, languishing for want of means to complete it. Apparently it had long before been decided to replace the small original Norman church with a larger and much more ambitious building, in the Early English style, judging from traces of both those architectural periods discernable in the tower; but the Bishops of Worcester would not loosen their purse-strings sufficiently, and awaited the coming of that benefactor who, they were morally certain, was sure to appear sooner or later and compound with Heaven for his evil courses on earth by completing it. They did not, however, reckon on any of their own cloth doing so, for sheer joy of the work.
John of Stratford’s works included the widening of the north aisle and the rebuilding of the south; the remodelling of the central tower and the addition of a timber spire, which remained until the eighteenth century, when it was replaced (1764) by the present loftier stone spire, which rises eighty-three feet above the roof of the tower. In 1332 he founded the chantry chapel ofSt. Thomas the Martyr in the church. There five priests were appointed to sing masses “for ever,” for the good of the souls of founder and friends. John of Stratford was a great and wise man, but he did not know that “where the tree falls, there shall it lie”; nor could he foresee that his “for ever” would be commuted by the Reformation into a period of two hundred years.
He endowed his chantry chapel with liberality; almost extravagance, and even purchased the advowson of the church from the Bishop. This extremely liberal endowment was perhaps necessary, for he had considered the eternal welfare of a good many people besides himself and his relations, and included even the sovereigns of England, present and to be, and all future Bishops of Worcester. The priests, therefore, had their hands full, and shouldered some heavy responsibilities; for—not to go into individual cases, or specify some of the shocking examples—it does not need much imagination to perceive that a tremendous deal of intercession would be necessary for so unlimited a company as this. Perhaps, in the circumstances, he could not possibly endow his chantry too richly.
I do not know how his priests fared for lodgings. He seems to have omitted that important detail. But his nephew Ralph supplied the omission, and, in 1351, three years after his uncle’s death, built a house for them adjoining the churchyard. It was styled then and for centuries afterwards “the College.” Thus the church of Stratford-on-Avon became more richly endowed than the usual parish church, and was known as “collegiate.”
Many worthy folk followed the precedent set by the founder, and added to the beauties of the church; chief among them Thomas Balsall, Warden of the College in the second half of the fifteenth century, who built the present choir or chancel between the years 1465–1490.The last beautifier and benefactor was Dean Balsall’s successor, Ralph Collingwood. His is the north porch of the church, and he undertook and completed an important alteration in the nave; unroofing it, removing the low Decorated clerestory, probably of circular windows, and taking down the walls to the crown of the nave-arcades; then building upon them the light and lofty clerestory we see at this day. He added choir-boys to the establishment, and further endowed the College, for their maintenance. These were the last works in the long history of the church. In 1547 the Reformation came and swept away John of Stratford’s chantry and confiscated the endowments. The priests were scattered, and four years later their College was given by the king to John Dudley, the newly-created Earl of Warwick and lord of the manor in succession to the Bishops of Worcester. The College reverted to the Crown, and in 1576 it was let by Queen Elizabeth to one Richard Coningsby, who in turn let it to John Combe. It was a fine and picturesque residence, familiar enough to Shakespeare, who was on intimate terms with Combe, and received from him a bequest of £5 on his death in 1614. It was demolished in 1799.
The church is approached through the churchyard by a fine avenue of lime-trees leading up to the north porch, where a verger, or some such creature, habited in a hermaphrodite kind of garment, which is neither exactly clerical nor lay, waits for the visitor’s sixpences; for you may not enter for nothing, unless perhaps at times of divine service, and even then are allowed but grudgingly by these clerical entrepreneurs, who suspect you have come not so much for worship as with the idea of depriving them of a sixpence. I think, however, you would find it difficult to glimpse the chancel and the Shakespeare monument before the intention would besuspected and the enterprising person successfully headed off.
We will first encircle the exterior, where the many gravestones of departed Stratford worthies lean at every imaginable angle, the oldest of them, almost, or perhaps absolutely, contemporary with Shakespeare, grown or growing undecipherable. Some day Stratford will be sorry for neglecting them and their possible interest in the comparative study of Shakespeare and his fellow-townsmen. But everything connected, either intimately or remotely, with him has always been neglected until the record has almost perished. It is the singular fate of Shakespearean associations.
The exterior of the fabric, it will soon be noticed, is greatly weathered; more particularly the Perpendicular chancel, which must at no distant date be restored. It is surprising, and an excellent tribute to the security of the foundations of this work, built on the banks of the river over four hundred years ago, that its walls have not fallen seriously out of plumb, like that of the north nave-arcade; especially when the rather daring slightness of the design is considered, consisting of vast mullioned and transomed windows with but little wall-space between. The gargoyles leering down from the dripstones are a weird series of bat-winged creatures of nightmare-land. On the south side, however, is a very good Bear and Ragged Staff gargoyle, and next it, going westward, a nondescript Falstaffian monster, his legs amputated by time and weather.
The churchyard wall goes sheer down into the water of the Avon. The elms look down upon the stream, the rooks hold noisy parliaments in their boughs, and the swans float stately by.
Entering by the roomy north porch, where the person with the bisexual garments will take your sixpence andsell you picture-postcards, it is noticed that the good Late Perpendicular stone panelling is obscured, and the effect destroyed, by the extreme licence given in the placing of monumental tablets on the walls; a practice, judging from the dates upon them, still in existence. It is quite clear from this that the building might well be in better hands.
Ancient Knocker, Stratford-on-Avon Church
A very fine brazen knocker with grotesque head holding the ring in its mouth is a feature of the doorway. Although affixed to late fifteenth-century wood-work, the knocker would seem really to be nearly two hundred years earlier. It appears on picture-cards without number as the “Sanctuary Knocker,” and metal reproductions of it are to be had in the town; but there is nothing to show that this church was ever one of those that owned the privilege of sanctuary. In the inexact modern way, every curious old knocker on church doors is “sanctuary”; but in reality the ancient privilege was too valuable to begranted with the indiscriminate freedom this would argue.
Immediately within the church is seen the old register-book in a glass case, containing the entries recording the baptism and burial of Shakespeare, with the broken bow of the old font at which he was baptised. Many years ago it was removed from the church, to make room for a new, and lay neglected in a garden in the town. It has been re-lined with lead, and is used for baptisms, on request.
From the west end of the nave, where these relics are placed, the long view eastward shows this to be a very striking example of those churches whose chancels are not on the same axis with the rest of the building. The chancel in this instance inclines very markedly to the north. The symbolism of this feature in ancient churches is still matter for dispute; and it is really doubtful if it is symbolical and not the product of inexact planning, or caused by some old local conditions of the site which do not now appear; or whether it was thought to produce some acoustical advantages. It is thought that no example can be adduced of an inclination southwards, and that, therefore, the feature is a designed one. The favourite interpretation is that it repeats the inclination of the Saviour’s head upon the Cross.
Advancing up the nave, it will soon be noticed that the north nave-arcade is greatly out of plumb, and leans outwards; a result, no doubt, of Collingwood’s alterations and additions placing too heavy a weight upon it.
At the east end of the north aisle is the former Lady Chapel, now and for long past known as the Clopton Chapel, from the tombs of that family placed there. No structural difference, no variation in the plan of the church, marks the chapel from the rest of the building, from which it is screened very slightly by a low piercedrailing on one side, and on the south, looking into the nave, by the ornate stone screen erected by Sir Hugh Clopton, the founder of the family chapel and architect of his own fortunes. It is a part of the tomb intended for himself, and there can be no doubt but that he saw it rising to completion with the satisfaction of a man assured of being not only wealthy, but hoping to live in fame as the benefactor of his native town, for which he did so much.
The screen is crested with elaborate pierced conventional Tudor foliage, and fronted with his arms, and with those of the City of London, the Grocers’ Company, and the Merchants of the Staple. The brass inscribed plates have long since been torn away, and the tomb is entirely without inscription or effigy; as perhaps it is well it should be, for, in spite of all these elaborate preparations, and although directing that he should lie here, Sir Hugh Clopton was, after all, buried in the City of London, where he had made his fortune, and of which he was Lord Mayor in 1492, and in which he died in 1496. The church of St. Margaret, Lothbury, where he was buried, perished in the Great Fire of London, one hundred and seventy years later.
Sir Hugh Clopton died a bachelor, and the other tombs are those of his brother’s descendants. That of William Clopton, who died in 1592 and is described simply as “Esquire,” stands against the north wall of the Chapel. He was great-nephew of Sir Hugh. He is represented in armour, and his wife, who followed him four years later, lies beside him in effigy, both figures with prayerfully raised hands. Above them, on the wall, quite by themselves, are represented the interesting family of this worthy pair, seven in all, sculptured and painted in miniature, in the likeness of so many big-headed Dutch dolls, with the name of eachduly inscribed; Elizabeth, Lodowicke, Joyce, Margaret, William, Anne, and again William, the first of that name having died an infant, as did also Elizabeth and Lodowicke. These three are represented as little mummy-like creatures, swathed tightly in linen folds.
But the most gorgeous of all the Clopton tombs is the next in order of date. This is the lofty and extremely elaborate and costly monument of George Carew, Earl of Totnes and Baron Clopton, who married Joyce, eldest daughter of the already mentioned William Clopton. He died in 1629, and his wife in 1636. This costly memorial, together with that to her father and mother, was her handiwork, and she seems to have completely enjoyed herself in the progress of the commission. The Countess of Totnes and her husband are represented in full-length, recumbent effigies, sculptured in alabaster. The Earl is shown in armour and his wife is seen habited in a white fur robe, coloured red outside. A deep ruff is round her neck, and she wears a coronet. The Earl of Totnes was Master of the Ordnance to James the First; hence the symbolical sculptured implements of war in front of the monument; including two cannon, two kegs of powder and a pile of shot; one mortar, a gun, some halberds and a flag.
A later inscription records that Sir John Clopton caused these tombs to be repaired and beautified in 1714. In 1719 he died, aged 80; and in course of time his own tomb became a candidate for repair. No Cloptons then survived to perform that pious office, which was observed by Sir Arthur Hodgson, the owner of Clopton House, in 1892.
The monument of Sir Edward Walker, who died in 1676, is the memorial of a man who held some important positions. He was Charles the First’s Secretary of War, and afterwards Garter King-of-Arms and militaryeditor of Clarendon’sHistory of the Rebellion. He has some interest for the students of Shakespeare’s life, for it was he who bought New Place in 1675.
There are some smaller tablets on the walls, including one with a little effigy of a certain Amy Smith, who was for forty years “waiting-gentlewoman” to the Countess of Totnes. She is seen devoutly kneeling at aprie-Dieuchair.
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-on-Avon (continued)—The Shakespeare grave and monument.
Wenow pass beneath the arches of the central tower, under the organ and past the transepts, into the chancel. The chief interest is, quite frankly, the Shakespeare monument and the graves of his family; although even were it not for them, the building itself and the curious carvings of the miserere seats would attract many a visitor.
It is with feelings of something at last accomplished, some necessary pilgrimage made, that the cultured traveller stands before the monument on the north wall and looks upon it and on the row of ledger-stones on the floor. But the sentiments of Baconian mono-maniacs are not at all reverent and respectful. They come also, but with hostile criticism. I think they would like to tear down that monument, and I am quite sure they would desire nothing better than permission to open that grave and howk up whatever they found there. For to them Shakespeare is “the illiterate clown of Stratford”; a very disreputable person; an impostor who could neither write nor act, and yet assumed the authorship of works by the greatest genius of the age, Francis Bacon. Twenty-four years ago in his Great Cryptogram, Ignatius Donnelly exposed the fraud and unmasked Shakespeare. Some one at that time referred in conversation with one of Mr. Donnelly’s ingenious countrymen to “Shakespeare’s Bust.” “Yes,he is,” rejoined that free and enlightened citizen: “he is bust and you won’t mend him again.”
He referred to the alleged cryptogram said to be by Bacon, and purporting to be discovered in the First Folio edition of the play,Henry the Fourth. It is amusing reading, this deciphered cipher, and if we were to believe it and Bacon to be its author, we should have no need to revise the old estimate of Bacon, “The wisest, wittiest, meanest of mankind.” We should, however, find it necessary to emphasise “meanest,” because he is made to reveal himself as one who wrote treasonable plays, and, being afraid to admit their authorship, bribed Shakespeare in a heavy sum to take the risk and retire out of danger to Stratford-on-Avon. It is not a convincing tale; but it is printed with much elaboration; and Bacon is made to show an astonishingly intimate knowledge of Shakespeare’s family and affairs. He uses very ungentlemanly, not to say unphilosophical, language, and leaves Shakespeare without a shred of character. He shows how suddenly this misbegotten rogue, this whoreson knave, this gorbellied rascal with the wagging paunch and the many loathsome diseases which have made him old before his time leaves London, where he is in the midst of his fame as a dramatist, and retires to live upon his ill-gotten wealth as a country gentleman in his native town of Stratford-on-Avon. He was never an actor, and only succeeded in one part, that of Falstaff, for which he was peculiarly suited because of his great greasy stomach, at which, and not at the excellence of his acting, people came to laugh. Thus says Bacon; always according to Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, in the bi-literal cipher he persuaded himself he found. Here we see Bacon the philosopher, in very angry, unphilosophic mood, as abusive as any fish-fag or Sally Slapcabbage.
Shakespeare’s Monument
And then this cuckoo, this strutting jay, who sets up to be a gentleman with a brand-new coat of arms presently dies, untimely, at fifty-two years of age, just like your Shakespeares! He must have had some good reason of his own for it; probably the better to do Bacon out of his due fame with posterity. But Bacon was not to be outwitted. He heard early in 1616 that Shakespeare was in failing health, and sent down on that three days’ journey from London to Stratford-on-Avon two of Shakespeare’s friends, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson, who were in the secret of the authorship. They were instructed to see that if Shakespeare really insisted upon dying, the secret should not be divulged at the time. And Shakespeare, like the ungrateful wretch he was, did die. The diary of the Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, contains an entry in 1662, referring reminiscently to Shakespeare’s last days—
“Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merrie meeting, and it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.”
“Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merrie meeting, and it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.”
Donnelly suggests that Drayton and Jonson in Bacon’s interest duly saw Shakespeare buried, and so deeply that it would be for ever unlikely he should be exhumed, and Bacon’s secret revealed. He founds this upon a letter discovered in 1884 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, written in 1694 by one William Hall, of Queen’s College, to a friend, Edward Thwaites; in which, in the course of describing a visit to Stratford-on-Avon, he states that Shakespeare was buried “full seventeen feet deep—deep enough to secure him!” This recalls at once the reply of one of Mr. Donnelly’s irreverent countrymen before the tomb of Nelson in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The verger had pointed out that the Admiral’s body was enclosed in a leaden coffin and awooden outer covering, and then placed in a marble sarcophagus weighing 90 tons. “I guess you’ve got him!” exclaimed the contemplative stranger; “if ever he gets out of that, cable me, at my expense!” No doubt Ben Jonson and Drayton guessed they had got Shakespeare safe enough, but to make doubly sure (says Donnelly) they invented and had engraved the famous verse which appears on the gravestone, involving blessings upon the man who “spares these stones” and curses upon he who moves the poet’s bones. The world has always thought Shakespeare himself was the author of these lines. The reason for them is found in the horror felt by Shakespeare—and reflected inHamlet—at the disturbance of the remains of the dead. In his time it was the custom to rifle the older graves, in order to provide room for fresh burials, and then to throw the bones from them into the vaulted charnel-house beneath the chancel. This revolting irreverence, which, as a long-established custom at that time, seemed a natural enough thing to the average person, was horrific to one of Shakespeare’s exceptional sensibilities; and he adopted not only this deep burial but also the curse upon the sacrilegious hand that should dare disturb his rest. There is not the least room for objection to this story; but the Baconians know better. “There must have been some reason,” objects Donnelly, in italics. There was; the reason already shown. But in dealing with a fellow like Shakespeare you—if you are a Baconian—have to go behind the obvious and the palpable and seek the absurd and improbable. It does not appear what Shakespeare’s widow, his daughters, his sons-in-law and his executors were doing while Drayton and Ben Jonson were thus having their own Baconian way with Shakespeare’s body. They, according to this theory, simply looked on; which wemight think an absurd thing to suppose, except that nothing is too absurd for a Baconian, as we shall now see.
Inscription on Shakespeare’s Grave
Not only did Drayton and Jonson invent and get these verses engraved, they also—more amazing still—inserted Bacon’s bi-literal cipher into them. Now it is to be remarked here that the deeply-engraven lines upon which so many thousands of pilgrims gaze reverently are not, in their present form, so old as they appear to be, but were recut, and the lettering greatly modified, about 1831. Not one person in ten thousand of those who come to this spot is aware of the fact, and no illustration of the original lettering exists; but George Steevens, the Shakespearean scholar, wrote of it, about 1770, as an “uncouth mixture of small and capital letters.” He transcribed it, and so also in their turn did Knight and Malone. Some slight discrepancies exist between these transcriptions, in the exact dispositions of the letters, but the actual inscription appears to have been as under—
“Good Frend for Iesvs SAKE forbeareTo diGG T-E Dvst Enclo-Ased HE.Re.Bleste be T-E Man Ytspares T-Es StonesAnd cvrst be He Ytmoves my bones.”
“Good Frend for Iesvs SAKE forbeareTo diGG T-E Dvst Enclo-Ased HE.Re.Bleste be T-E Man Ytspares T-Es StonesAnd cvrst be He Ytmoves my bones.”
The hyphens between the words “the” and “thes” represent the old-time habit of engraving some of theletters conjoined, as seen repeated in the existing inscription illustrated here, in which the word “bleste” forms a prominent example. In that word the letters “ste” are in like manner conjoined, leading very many of the not fully-informed among the copyists of inscriptions to read it “blese.”
Halliwell-Phillipps, the foremost Shakespearean authority of his age (whom his arch-enemy, the emphatic F. J. Furnivall delighted, by the way, to style “Hell-P”) thus refers to the re-cut inscription in hisOutlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1881—
“The honours of repose, which have thus far been conceded to the poet’s remains, have not been extended to the tombstone. The latter had by the middle of the last century (i.e.about 1750) sunk below the level of the floor, and about fifty years ago (c.1831) had become so much decayed as to suggest a vandalic order for its removal, and in its steadto place a new slab, one which marks certainly the locality of Shakespeare’s grave, and continues the record of the farewell lines, but indicates nothing more. The original memorial has wandered from its allotted station no man can tell whither—a sacrifice to the insane worship of prosaic neatness, that mischievous demon whose votaries have practically destroyed so many of the priceless relics of ancient England and her gifted sons.”
“The honours of repose, which have thus far been conceded to the poet’s remains, have not been extended to the tombstone. The latter had by the middle of the last century (i.e.about 1750) sunk below the level of the floor, and about fifty years ago (c.1831) had become so much decayed as to suggest a vandalic order for its removal, and in its steadto place a new slab, one which marks certainly the locality of Shakespeare’s grave, and continues the record of the farewell lines, but indicates nothing more. The original memorial has wandered from its allotted station no man can tell whither—a sacrifice to the insane worship of prosaic neatness, that mischievous demon whose votaries have practically destroyed so many of the priceless relics of ancient England and her gifted sons.”
The cipher which Donnelly, the resourceful sleuthhound, pretends he has found in the older inscription, is destroyed by the re-arrangement in the new. It was not, he says, the sheer illiteracy of the local mason who cut the original letters that accounts for the eccentric appearance of capitals where they have no business to be; for the hyphen which so oddly divides the word “Enclo-Ased”; for the full-stops in “HE.Re.” or for the curious choice that writes “Iesvs” in small letters and “SAKE” in large capitals. No; it was the necessities of the cipher which accounted for this weird “derangement of epitaphs”; and Donnelly proceeds to emulate the conjurer who produces unexpected things from empty hats, and he finally arrives at this startling revelation—
“Francis Bacon wrote the Greene, Marlowe, and Shakespeare plays.”
“Francis Bacon wrote the Greene, Marlowe, and Shakespeare plays.”
As Mark Twain—another Baconian—says, “Bacon was a born worker.” Yes, indeed; but he understates it, if we were to believe this revelation. To have done all this he would need to have been a syndicate.
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-on-Avon (concluded)—The Shakespeare grave and monument—The Miserere Seats.
TheBaconians are so extravagant that it becomes scarce worth while to refute their wild statements; but when they are carried to these extremities we may well note them, for the enjoyment of a laugh. But perhaps Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence gives us the better entertainment when he tells us that Bacon wrote the preface to the Authorised Version of the Bible, and was in fact the literary editor of that translation and responsible for its style!
The Chancel, Holy Trinity Church, with Shakespeare’s Monument
With an ineffable serenity the portrait-figure of Shakespeare (generally called a “bust,” but it is a half-length) in the monument looks down from the north wall of the spacious chancel upon the graves of himself and his family. The monument itself is thoroughly characteristic of the Renascence taste of the period: in the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, in the city of London, you may see a not dissimilar example to John Stow, the historian, who died eleven years before Shakespeare. He also, like Shakespeare’s effigy, holds a quill pen in his hand. The accompanying illustration renders description scarce necessary, and it is only to the portrait that we need especially direct attention. In common with everything relating to Shakespeare, it has been the subject of great controversy: not altogether warranted, for it is certain that it was executed before 1623, seven years after the poet’s death, when his widow, daughtersand sons-in-law were yet living, and it seems beyond all reasonable argument to deny that a monument erected under their supervision should, and does, in fact, present as good a likeness of him as they could procure. The effigy was sculptured by one Gerard Johnson (or Janssen), son of a Dutch craftsman in this mortuary art, whose workshop being in Southwark near the “Globe” theatre, must have rendered Shakespeare’s personal appearance familiar to him, while the features are considered to be copied from a death-mask which was probably taken by Dr. John Hall, husband of Shakespeare’s elder daughter, Susanna.
The inscription runs—
“Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,Terra tegit, popvlvs mæret, Olympus habet.”
“Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,Terra tegit, popvlvs mæret, Olympus habet.”
which is translated thus—
“He was in judgment a Nestor, in genius a Socrates, and in art a Virgil; the earth covers, the people mourn, and heaven holds him.”
“He was in judgment a Nestor, in genius a Socrates, and in art a Virgil; the earth covers, the people mourn, and heaven holds him.”
There then follow the English lines—
“Stay, Passenger, why goest thov by so fast?Read if thov canst, when enviovs Death hath plastWithin this monvment, Shakespeare, with whomeQvick Natvre dide; whose name doth deck yeTombeFar more then coste, sith all ytHe hath writtLeaves living art but page to serve his witt,“Obiit ano doi 1616,Ætatis 53, Die 23 Ap.”
“Stay, Passenger, why goest thov by so fast?Read if thov canst, when enviovs Death hath plastWithin this monvment, Shakespeare, with whomeQvick Natvre dide; whose name doth deck yeTombeFar more then coste, sith all ytHe hath writtLeaves living art but page to serve his witt,
“Obiit ano doi 1616,Ætatis 53, Die 23 Ap.”
The author of Shakespeare’s epitaph is unknown. It would seem to have been some one who had not seen the monument, and knew nothing of its character; for he imagines his lines are to be inscribed upon a tomb within which the poet’s body is placed. But however little he knew of Shakespeare’s monument, he knew the worth of his plays and poems: “Shakespeare, with whom quick nature died.” It is the very summary, the quintessence, of Shakespearean appreciation.
Like everything else associated with Shakespeare, the monument has had its vicissitudes. The effigy, originally painted to resemble life, showed the poet to have had auburn hair and light hazel eyes. In 1748 a well-meaning Mr. John Ward repaired the monument and retouched the effigy with colour, and in 1793 Malone persuaded the vicar to have it painted white; an outrage satirised by the lines written in the church visitors’-book in 1810—
“Stranger, to whom this Monument is shewn,Invoke the Poet’s curse upon MaloneWhose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays,And smears his tombstone as he marr’d his plays.”
“Stranger, to whom this Monument is shewn,Invoke the Poet’s curse upon MaloneWhose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays,And smears his tombstone as he marr’d his plays.”
It was not until 1861 that the white paint was scraped off and the original colour restored, by the light of what traces remained.
Opinions have greatly varied as to the merits of the portrait, and many observers have been disappointed with it. Dr. Ingleby, for one, was distressed by its “painful stare, with goggle eyes and gaping mouth.” But the measure of this disappointment is exactly in proportion to the perhaps exaggerated expectations held. We must bear in mind that the sculptor worked from a death-mask, and that the expression was thus a conventional restoration.
Mark Twain, who, like the egregious Ignatius Donnelly, did not believe that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, founded a good deal of his disbelief on the unvexed serenity of this monumental bust. It troubled him greatly that it should be there, so serene and emotionless. “The bust, too, there in the Stratford church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust with the dandy moustache and the putty face, unseamed of care—that face which has looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years, and willstill down look upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder.” What, then, did he expect? A tragic mask, a laughing face of comedy? But Mark Twain hardly counts as a Shakespeare critic.
It is forgotten by most people that the painting and scraping have wrought some changes, not for the better, in the expression of the face, tending towards making it what Halliwell-Phillipps too extravagantly calls a “miserable travesty of an intellectual human being.” However lifeless the expression, we see the features are those of a man of affairs. They are good and in no way abnormal. The brow is broad and lofty; the jaw and chin, while not massive, perhaps more than a thought heavier than usual. This was a man, one thinks, who would have succeeded in whatever walk of life he chose, and that is exactly the impression derived from the known facts and the traditions of Shakespeare’s life.
There have been numerous arguments in recent times in favour of digging that dust which the poet’s curse has thus far kept inviolate, but the courage has been lacking to it; whether in view of the curse or in fear of public opinion seems to be uncertain.
The late J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps wrote, about 1885: “It is not many years since a phalanx of trouble-tombs, lanterns and spades in hand, assembled in the chancel at dead of night, intent on disobeying the solemn injunction that the bones of Shakespeare were not to be disturbed. But the supplicatory lines prevailed. There were some amongst the number who, at the last moment, refused to incur the warning condemnation and so the design was happily abandoned.”
Nor would it appear that the graves of his family have been disturbed. They lie in a row, with his own, before the altar, a position they occupy by right ofShakespeare having purchased the rectorial tithes, and thus becoming that curious anomaly, a “lay rector.” It matters little or nothing where one’s bones are laid, but the doing this, and thus acquiring the right of sepulture in the most honoured place in the church, seems to imply that Shakespeare expected to found a family, and to see that his name was honoured to future generations in his native town.
We are not to suppose that the clergy of that time welcomed Shakespeare’s burial in this honoured place, but they could not help themselves. He had acquired the right, and although he had lived well into a time when puritanism had banished plays and players from Stratford, and although as a playwright he must have been regarded by many as a lost soul—unless, indeed, he became a converted man in his last year or so—his rights had to be observed.
Immediately next the wall is the flat stone that marks the grave of Anne Shakespeare, who survived her husband, and died August 6th, 1623, aged sixty-seven. An eight-line Latin verse, probably by her son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, and couched in the most affectionate terms, is inscribed upon a small brass plate; it is thus rendered—
“Milk, life thou gavest. For a boon so great,Mother, alas! I give thee but a stone;O! might some angel blest remove its weight,Thy form should issue like thy Saviour’s own.But vain my prayers; O Christ, come quickly, come!And thou, my Mother, shalt from hence arise,Though closed as yet within this narrow tomb,To meet thy Saviour in the starry skies.”
“Milk, life thou gavest. For a boon so great,Mother, alas! I give thee but a stone;O! might some angel blest remove its weight,Thy form should issue like thy Saviour’s own.But vain my prayers; O Christ, come quickly, come!And thou, my Mother, shalt from hence arise,Though closed as yet within this narrow tomb,To meet thy Saviour in the starry skies.”
Next in order comes the slab covering the grave of Shakespeare himself, and following it that of Thomas Nash, husband of Elizabeth Hall, grand-daughter of the poet. He died in 1647, aged fifty-three, and is honoured in a four-line Latin verse. Fourthly comesthe grave of Dr. Hall, who died in 1635, aged sixty, with a six-line Latin verse, and next is that of Susanna, Shakespeare’s elder daughter, wife of Dr. Hall. She died in 1649, aged sixty-six, and has this poetic appreciation for epitaph—
“Witty above her sexe, but that’s not all,Wise to Salvation was good Mistris Hall,Something of Shakespeare was in that, but thisWholy of him with whom she’s now in blisse,Then, Passenger, ha’st ne’re a teareTo weepe with her that wept with all?That wept, yet set herselfe to chereThem up with comforts cordiall.Her Love shall live, her mercy spread,When thou hast ne’re a teare to shed.”
“Witty above her sexe, but that’s not all,Wise to Salvation was good Mistris Hall,Something of Shakespeare was in that, but thisWholy of him with whom she’s now in blisse,Then, Passenger, ha’st ne’re a teareTo weepe with her that wept with all?That wept, yet set herselfe to chereThem up with comforts cordiall.Her Love shall live, her mercy spread,When thou hast ne’re a teare to shed.”
This touching tribute was nearly lost in the gross outrage perpetrated in or about 1707, when it was erased for the purpose of providing room for an inscription to one Richard Watts. Happily Dugdale, in his monumental history of Warwickshire, had recorded it, and it was re-cut from that evidence in 1836.
It is gratifying to note that no monuments to self-advertising members of the theatrical profession, or others keen to obtain a reflected glory from association with Shakespeare, have been allowed here, although we have to thank an aroused public opinion, and not the clergy, the natural guardians of the spot, for that. It was proposed, a few years ago, to place a memorial to that entirely blameless actress, well versed in Shakespearean parts, Helen Faucit, Lady Martin, on the wall opposite Shakespeare’s monument, and it was nearly accomplished. The clergy blessed the project, the public were allowed to hear little or nothing about it, and the thing would have been done, except for protests raised at the eleventh hour. The monument eventually found its way to the Shakespeare Memorial, where it may now be found, but those responsible for the proposalwere not wholly to be baulked, and the evidence of their persistence is to be seen in the nave, where a very elaborate dark-green marble pulpit, in memory of Helen Faucit, and given by her husband, Sir Theodore Martin, attracts attention.
There has been a good deal of praise and admiration of the modern stained glass in the noble windows of the chancel and the windows of the church in general, including those given by American admirers of Shakespeare, but the truth is that there is no stained glass in Stratford church above the commercial level of the ordinary ecclesiastical furnisher, and the sooner the fact is recognised, the better for all concerned. The guidebooks will tell you nothing of this, but we have to see things for ourselves, and use our own judgment.
The tomb of the rebuilder of the chancel, Thomas Balsall, is little noticed. It is seen under the east window, on the north side, and is a greatly mutilated, but still beautiful, altar-tomb. Above it, on the wall, is the monument with fine portrait-busts of Richard Combe and his intended wife, Judith, who died 1649. The altar-tomb, with effigy, of John Combe, 1614, of the College, and of Welcombe, a friend of Shakespeare, is against the east wall. Combe was a man of wealth, who did not disdain the part of money-lender. He had the reputation of an usurer, although ten per cent. was his moderate rate, and, according to the tradition, hearing it said that Shakespeare had an epitaph waiting for him, begged to hear it. This, then, was what he heard—
“Ten in a hundred lies here engraved,’Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved.If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?Ho! ho! says the Devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.”
“Ten in a hundred lies here engraved,’Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved.If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?Ho! ho! says the Devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.”
It is an idle story, and the verse is adapted from an epigram in the jest-books of the age.
A prominent feature of a collegiate church was the stalls, with their miserere seats, for the priests, and we have here stalls for twenty-six, still retaining their beautifully carved seats, little injured by time or violence. We do, in fact, frequently find the miserere carvings uninjured in cathedrals, abbeys and collegiate churches; largely because they are always on the underside of the seats and thus apt to be overlooked. Those at Stratford are well up to the general level of interest and amusement.
Amusement? Yes. The very broadest fun, sometimes particularly coarse, lurks in these often unsuspected places; and the greatest artistry of the wood-carver too, who will turn at random from the loving rendering of flower or foliage, to sacred symbols; then to the representation of birds and beasts and extraordinary chimeras that never existed outside the frontiers of Nightmare Land; and to queer domestic or social scenes. Here we find prime examples of such things. Under one seat a Crown of Thorns and the I.H.S. occur, on either side of a scene showing a man and wife fighting. He has a long beard which she is pulling with one hand, while with the other she bastes him with a ladle. She employs her feet, too, in kicking him.
Under the next seat we see this domestic strife resumed, but it is shown in two scenes, over which a central woman-headed beast presides. Here the termagant pulls her husband’s beard and tears his mouth open, while he retaliates by pulling her hair. The other scene represents the taming of the shrew. A naked woman is being thrashed by a man, and a dog completes the retribution by biting her leg.
Among the other carvings we note the favourite Bear and Ragged Staff of this district; a beggar’s monkey, with chained tin pot, or drinking-vessel, and a varietyof minor subjects. Among the most interesting is that example illustrated here.
A Stratford Miserere: The Legend of the Unicorn
The subject is that of the once-popular legend of the unicorn, which was, according to mediæval story, an animal of the fiercest and most untamable kind, and only to be captured in one way. This way was to find a virgin, at once of great beauty and unquestioned virtue, and to conduct her to the unicorn’s haunts in the greenwood. Immediately the animal, tame only in the presence of a pure virgin, would come and lay its head gently and fearlessly in her lap; whereupon the hunter would steal forth and slay the confiding beast.
It is to be remarked here that the person who could invent such a story, whatever else he was, and however fearless his imagination, was, clearly enough, no sportsman. It is quite easy to imagine such an one shooting a sitting pheasant, or poisoning a fox.
Here, in the illustration, we perceive the maiden, not so beautiful as the carver intended her to be, caressing the confiding unicorn and apparently scratching him behind the ear, while an unsportsmanlike person digs him in the rump at leisure, with a spear-headed weapon.
Shottery and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage.
Thehamlet of Shottery, now growing a considerable village, is but one mile from the centre of Stratford. You come to it most easily by way of Rother Street, and at the end of that thoroughfare will observe a signpost marked “Footpath to Shottery.” The spot is not inspiring, and one could well wish Shottery, the home of Anne Hathaway and the scene of Shakespeare’s wooing, had not been so near the town. Stratford is a pleasant place, and as little bedevilled with modern unhistorical suburbs as any town of its size; but there is a red rash of new and quite typically suburban villas on these outskirts. I feel quite sure the sanitation is perfect and that there are baths and hot and cold water laid on to every one of these “desirable residences”; and no one would breathe upon the obvious respectability of the people who live in them. Respectable? Most certainly; why, by the evidence of one’s ears in passing, every house appears to have a piano; and the possession of one would seem in these times to be by far a better-accepted criterion of respectability than the ownership of a gig; which Carlyle in his day noted as the ideal. Now, it is quite certain that none of the houses Shakespeare ever dwelt in had any sanitation at all; if he ever took a bath, he was as exceptional in that matter as in most other things, and quite unlike his generation. New Place had neither hot nor cold water laid on, and never had a piano. Judgedby modern standards Shakespeare could scarcely have been respectable: his era did not even know the word in its present meaning, which is a terrible thought; let us pause to contemplate the deficiencies of our ancestors.
Well, we will not, at any rate, stay to look longer at these developments, but, like that rogue, Autolycus, “jog on the footpath way,” a little disillusioned perhaps, because it presently leads to a level railway-crossing which was not here when Shakespeare went across the fields in the summer evenings to see Anne Hathaway. Thence coming upon allotment gardens, where we more or less “merrily hent the stile-a,” we arrive at Shottery by way of some tapestry works and a book-bindery.
Shottery, it is at once seen, has been spoiled, utterly and irredeemably, unless the recent doings are levelled with the ground and wholly abolished—which we need not expect to be done. Deplorable activity has lately been manifested here, in the building of rows of small, cheap cottages. The bloom has been rudely rubbed off the peach, and the idyllic place which the hero-worshipper fondly expected has ceased to be. Yet parts of it are good. You may turn your back upon these things and see a very charming double row of old cottages, the Post Office among them, as ancient and rustic and half-timbered as the rest, with a very noble group of trees for background, and by way of foreground a red brick and timber barn belonging to Shottery manor-house, whose old stone dovecote stands yet in the garden. I have sketched these old cottages, in an attempt to show you how charming the scene really is.
Shottery
It has been suggested that the roomy loft beneath the roof of the manor-house was used as a secret Roman Catholic place of worship when that religion was proscribed, and that the mystery of Shakespeare’s marriage is to be explained by the ceremony having taken place here. But, ingenious although the suggestion may be, it has no shred of evidence to support it, nor would it appear from anything we know of Shakespeare’s religious beliefs, that he was a Roman Catholic at all, much less a fanatical one, as such a proceeding would argue.
Anne Hathaway’s cottage should certainly stand in this, the better part of the village, but it is situated at the extreme further end; and the hapless artist who seeks to sketch the scene already described will find himself acting as a kind of honorary signpost to it. The tragedy of his fate is that the best point of view happens to be from the middle of the road, and that the interruptions from motor-cars, largely carrying Americans, who invariably ask, “Saay, is this the waay to Anne Hathawaay’s cottuj?” are incessant.
The famous cottage, which is really more than a cottage and part of a farmhouse, comes into view as you round a corner and cross a small brick bridge over Shottery Brook. The bridge is so overhung and shut in by trees that you scarcely notice it to be a bridge at all; but if these be early summer days and the season not exceptionally dry, the brook can be heard hoarsely plunging beneath, over a quite respectably large weir. When Mistress Anne Hathaway lived at the farmhouse now called her cottage—which is an entirely wrong use of the possessive case, for it never belonged to her—Shottery Brook was to be crossed only by a watersplash for vehicles, and a plank footbridge for pedestrians; but progress and the prosperity of the county funds have changed all that. I wish they had not: it would be all the better if one came to the place just in the way Shakespeare used.
The rustic cottage, still heavily thatched, comes before one’s gaze with that complete familiarity which is the result of numberless illustrations. It stands atright-angles to the road, with a large garden in front of it. I would be enthusiastic about that garden if I honestly might, but truth forbids me to compete with the exaggerated praise of it commonly lavished by writers upon this scene. It is just a pleasant rustic garden, partly used for growing beans, cabbages, potatoes and the usual cottager’s produce; with the customary borders and beds of old-fashioned flowers. A stone-paved path leads up to the door. Hundreds of such gardens beautify the old cottages of the Warwickshire villages and hamlets; and many of them, I declare it, are very much better. The house itself is built in the customary local manner, on a rough blue lias foundation, with thick walls partly of the same material, here and there varied by red brick, and framed with ancient timbering. Latticed windows light the various rooms. It is a building of rather late in the fifteenth century, and appears to have been first tenanted by the Hathaways in 1556, when one John of that name, described as an archer, was living here. “Hewlands” was then the name of the farm. The Hathaway family did not actually possess it until 1610, when Bartholomew, Anne’s eldest brother, purchased the property.
Anne Hathaway was the eldest of the three daughters of Richard, who died in June 1582. His four sons, Bartholomew, Thomas, John, and William, were provided for, and the daughters were left £6 13s.4d.each. Anne, or “Agnes,” as she is described in the will, the names being in those times interchangeable, was to receive hers on the day of her marriage; her sister Catherine on the like occasion; and Margaret was to receive her share at the age of seventeen. Anne was married in a hurry to William Shakespeare at the close of November in the same year. The Shakespearean connection with the cottage at Shottery is thus not altogether so intimate or so continuous as would at first be supposed.
Anne Hathaway’s Cottage
The Hathaways would appear to have executed numerous repairs to the farmhouse which Bartholomew had acquired, and to this day we may see a stone tablet let into one of the chimneys, bearing the initials “I H” (for John Hathaway) and the date 1697; while the same initials and date, together with those of “E H” which doubtless stand for Elizabeth Hathaway, his wife, occur on the bacon-cupboard in the ingle-nook of the living-room. The last of the Hathaways was another John, who died in 1746, but the house remained in the hands of descendants until 1838. At last it came into possession of one Alderman Thompson, of Stratford-on-Avon, who in 1892 sold it to the Trustees of Shakespeare’s Birthplace, for £3000. The furniture was bought for a further £500. The Alderman is said to have made a very good thing out of it, but he would probably have done still better if he had waited a few years longer. The average number of visitors, who pay sixpence each to view the cottage, is 40,000 a year. The simplest calculation shows that to mean an income of £1000, and the upkeep cannot be very expensive. But the heavy thatch will soon again have to be renewed. The plentiful lack of understanding among many of the visitors is such that they frequently appear to think the thatch as old as Shakespeare’s day. It must, of course, have been many times re-covered, and at the present time it is again in a dilapidated condition, sodden through with the weather of many years, and precariously held together by wire netting stretched over it. A very garden of weeds grows there: shepherds’ purse, groundsel, candy-tuft and dandelion; and poppies wave their red banners on the roof-ridge.
There are twelve rooms in the house, and of theseseven are shown. The showing is a very business-like proceeding nowadays. At the garden gate you read the strict rules of the Trust, and then, having paid your sixpence, receive a printed and numbered ticket. A party of four hundred and fifty persons from Sheffield was expected on the last occasion the present writer visited the place, and exactly how much mental sustenance or what clear impression that half-battalion of excursionists could have received, it would be difficult to say. “We have to put ’em through quick,” said one in charge. Obviously it must needs be so, else how would all see the house before day was done?
Entering by a low-browed doorway, a stone-paved passage opens into rooms right and left. On the left, down two steps, is the living-room, also, like all these ground-floor rooms, stone-floored. Overhead are old oaken beams and joists, and the rough walls are partly panelled. There are pictures without number of this old-world interior, the most characteristic of them that showing Mrs. Baker, who for many years received visitors, sitting by the fireside, in company with her old family Bible, in which the births, marriages and deaths of many Hathaways are recorded. She proved her descent from them by way of a niece of Anne Hathaway; whom, it is rather curious to reflect, no one ever thinks of styling by her married name, “Mrs. Shakespeare.” I cannot help thinking she would have resented it, if addressed by her maiden name.
But Mrs. Baker, who lived in the cottage for seventy years and appeared to be almost as permanent a feature of it as the very walls and roof-tree, died in September 1899, at the age of eighty-seven. Still, however, the photographic view of the old lady sitting there is easily first favourite among all the interior views of the cottage; and many are those visitors who, coming here and not seeing the familiar figure, miss it as keenly as they would any intimate article of furniture.
The Living-Room, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage
An old and time-worn wooden settle stands beside the ingle-nook. One may still sit in the corner seats, but a modern grate occupies the hearth on which the logs were burnt in the Hathaways’ time. Little square recesses in the wall show where the tinder-box was kept, and where those who sat here in olden times set down their jug and glass. The brightly-burnished copper warming-pan that hangs here, together with the bellows, is not, I think, credited with a Hathaway lineage. These once necessary, but now obsolete, household articles are simply placed here for the purpose of giving a more convincing air to this old home; but one suspects that some day, when the critical attitude relaxes, they will acquire a kind of brevet rank, and perhaps eventually even fully qualify as genuine heirlooms.
The spacious bacon-cupboard, where the flour was also stored, in the thickness of the wall on the left-hand side of the ingle-nook, is a very fine specimen. The neighbourhood of Stratford is particularly rich in these old bacon-cupboards, which indeed seem to be almost a peculiar feature of the district. There is one at Shakespeare’s Birthplace, in the town, and another at the “Windmill” inn, in Church Street, and numerous other examples exist in private houses; but this is the best specimen I have yet seen, and the better kept; the open lattice-work oaken door, bearing the initials “I. H., E. H, I. B., 1697,” being well polished. A further storage place for bacon is the cratch (otherwise the “rack”) in the roof-joists. You see it in the accompanying illustration.
The long, broad mantel-shelf bears the usual collection of candlesticks and “chimney ornaments.” Under a window is an old table, with the visitors’-book, and onthe opposite side of the room stands an equally old dresser, with a display of blue and white plates and dishes: a grandfather’s clock between it and the door. Gaping visitors are usually shown, by partial demonstration, with flint-and-steel, how our long-suffering and patient ancestors struck a light, but the process is not demonstrated in its entirety. To strike a spark off a flint with a piece of steel is an easy matter, but if the whole process of directing the sparks upon the tinder in the tinder-box and then blowing the tinder into a flame were gone through, visitors would be very much more astonished at the inconveniences endured by our forbears before the invention of matches. To get a light in this way was the most chancy thing in the world. The tinder might possibly catch with the first spark, or again it might take a quarter of an hour. I think Job must have taken his first lessons in patience with flint-and-steel and tinder on a cold winter’s morning. We see, from these fire-raising difficulties, a reason why our ancestors very rarely allowed the fires on their hearthstones to go out. Fuel was cheap in the country, and commonly to be had for the mere gathering of it, while if you let your fire burn out, it could only be lighted again at considerable pains. These seem altogether tales of an olden time, and they do actually strike the visitors to Shottery as very remote indeed; but there are yet many persons living to whom flint-and-steel and the tinder-box were as matter-of-course and necessary articles as the match-box is now.
The room to the right of the entrance-passage is the kitchen. Here again is an ingle-nook, and heavy beams support the floor above. A very tall man could not walk upright in this room, for these timbers are only about 5 ft. 11 inches from the floor. The ancient hearth remains here, and the oven runs deep into the masonry:a considerable space—almost large enough to be called a room—running round to the back of it. The little window seen rather high up in the wall of the house as you enter by the garden-gate lights this space.
Returning across the passage and through the living-room, the dairy, a little stone-flagged room is seen at the back. The door here, like most of the others, has the old English wooden latch known as the “Drunkard’s latch” because its cumbrous woodwork affords so good a hold for fumbling fingers.
Anne Hathaway’s Bedroom
Upstairs, on the left, is “Anne Hathaway’s bedroom,” where the chief object is a beautiful, but decrepit as to its lower legs, four-post sixteenth-century bedstead. The legs have assumed a permanently knock-kneed position, which humorous visitors affect to believe was caused by the bed having been used, something after the fashion of the Great Bed of Ware, not only for oneperson, but in common. It is indeed a very large bedstead. Apart from its size, it is certainly the finest article of furniture in the house, the headboard being beautifully carved with grotesque figures in the Renascence style then in vogue. The sheets are of old hand-spun flax, and a glass-covered case displayed on the bed contains a pillow-case of fine linen and beautiful needlework, traditionally the work of Anne. The mattresses of this bedstead and of the plainer one in the next bedroom are of plaited rushes. Here rough bed-curtains, dyed a dull yellow by a vegetable dye, are obviously of great age. A small slip room of no interest is shown, opening out of this second bedroom, and with that the exploration of the house is concluded.