Shakespeare the boy; with sketches of the home and school life, the games and sports, the manners, customs and folk-lore of the time

Part I HIS NATIVE TOWN AND NEIGHBORHOOD THE SHAKESPEARE BIRTHPLACE, ABOUT 1820

WARWICKSHIRE

The county of Warwick was called the heart of England as long ago as the time of Shakespeare. Indeed, it was his friend, Michael Drayton, born the year before himself, who first called it so. In his Poly-Olbion (1613) Drayton refers to his native county as "That shire which we the heart of England well may call." The form of the expression seems to imply that it was original with him. It was doubtless suggested by the central situation of the county, about equidistant from the eastern, western, and southern shores of the island ; but it is no less appropriate with reference to its historical, romantic, and poetical associations. Drayton, whose rhymed geography in the Poly-Olbion is rather prosaic and tedious, attains a kind of genuine inspiration when, in his 13th book, he comes to describe

" Brave Warwick that abroad so long advanced her Bear, By her illustrious Earls renowned everywhere ; Above her neighboring shires which always bore her head."

The verse catches something of the music of the throstle and the lark, of the woosel " with golden bill " and the nightingale with her tender strains, as he tells of these Warwickshire birds, and of the region with " flowery bosom brave " where they breed and warble ; but in Shakespeare the same birds sing with a finer music — more like that to which we may still listen in the fields and woodlands along the lazy-winding Avon.

WARWICK CASTLE AND SAINT MARY S CHURCH.

Warwickshire is the heart of England, and the country within ten miles or so of the town of Warwick may be called the heart of this heart. On one side of this circle are Stratford and Shottery and Wilmcote — the home of Shakespeare's mother — and on the other are Kenilworth and Coventry.

In Warwick itself is the famous castle of its Earls — "that fairest monument," as Scott calls it, "of ancient and chivalrous splendor which yet remains uninjured by time." The earlier description written by the veracious Dugdale almost two hundred and fifty years ago might be applied to it to-day. It is still " not only a place of great strength, but extraordinary delight ; with most pleasant gardens, walls, and thickets such as this part of England can hardly parallel ; so that now it is the most princely seat that is within the midland parts of this realm."

The castle was old in Shakespeare's day. Caesar's Tower, so called, though not built, as tradition alleged, by the mighty Julius, dated back to an unknown period ;

WARWICK CASTLE and Guy's Tower, named in honor of the redoubted Guy of Warwick, the hero of many legendary exploits, was built in 1394. No doubt the general appearance of the buildings was more ancient in the sixteenth century than it is to-day, for they had been allowed to become somewhat dilapidated ; and it was not until the reign of James I. that they were repaired and embellished, at enormous expense, and made the stately fortress and mansion that Dugdale describes.

But the castle would be no less beautiful for situation, though it were fallen to ruin like the neighboring Kenilworth. The rock on which it stands, washed at its base by the Avon, would still be there, the park would still stretch its woods and glades along the river, and all the natural attractions of the noble estate would remain.

We cannot doubt that the youthful Shakespeare was familiar with the locality. Warwick and Kenilworth were probably the only baronial castles he had seen before he went to London ; and, whatever others he may have seen later in life, these must have continued to be his ideal castles as in his boyhood.

It is not likely that he was ever in Scotland, and when he described the castle of Macbeth the picture in his mind's eye was doubtless Warwick or Kenilworth, and more likely the former than the latter ; for

" This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the air Smells wooingly here ; no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle. Where they most breed and haunt I have observed The air is delicate."

Saint Mary's church at Warwick was also standing then — the most interesting church in Warwickshire next to Holy Trinity at Stratford. It was burned in 1694, but the beautiful choir and the magnificent lady chapel, or Beauchamp Chapel, fortunately escaped the flames, and we see them to-day as Shakespeare doubtless saw them, except for the monuments that have since been added. He saw in the choir the splendid tomb of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and in the adjacent chapel the grander tomb of Richard Beauchamp, unsurpassed in the kingdom except by that of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey. He looked, as we do, on the full-length figure of the Earl, recumbent in armor of gilded brass, under the herse of brass hoops also gilt ; his hands elevated in prayer, the garter on his left knee, the swan at his head, the griffin and bear at his feet. He read, as we read, in the inscription on the cornice of the sepulchre, how this " most worshipful knight decessed full christenly the last day of April the year of oure Lord God 1439, ne being at that time lieutenant general and governor of the realm of Fraunce," and how his body was brought to Warwick, and " laid with full solemn exequies in a fair chest made of stone in this church " on the 4th day of October — " honoured be God therefor." And the young Shakespeare looked up, as we do, at the exquisitely carved stone ceiling, and at the great east window, which still contains the original glass, now almost four and a half centuries old, with the portrait of Earl Richard kneeling in armor with upraised hands.

The tomb of " the noble Impe, Robert of Dudley, 1 ' who died in 1584, with the lovely figure of a child seven or eight years old, may have been seen by Shakespeare when he returned to Stratford in his latter years, and also the splendid monument of the father of the " noble imp," Robert Dudley, the great Earl of Leicester, who died in 1588 ; but in the poet's youth this famous nobleman was living in the height of his renown and prosperity at the castle of Kenilworth five miles away, which we will visit later.

WARWICK IN HISTORY.

Only brief reference can be made here to the important part that Warwick, or its famous Earl, Richard Neville, the " King-maker," played in the English history on which Shakespeare founded several dramas, — the three Parts of Henry VI. and Richard III. He is the most conspicuous personage of those troublous times. He had already distinguished himself by deeds of bravery in the Scottish wars, before his marriage with Anne, daughter and heiress of Richard Beauchamp, made him the most powerful nobleman in the kingdom. By this alliance he acquired the vast estates of the Warwick family, and became Earl of Warwick, with the right to hand down the title to his descendants. The immense revenues from his patrimony were augmented by the income he derived from his various high offices in the state ; but his wealth was scattered with a royal liberality. It is said that he daily fed thirty thousand people at his numerous mansions.

The Lady Anne of Richard III, whom the hero of the play wooes in such novel fashion, was the youngest daughter of the King-maker, born at Warwick Castle in 1452. Richard says, in his soliloquy at the end of the first scene of the play : —

"I'll marry Warwick's youngest daughter. What though I kill'd her husband and her father?"

Her husband was Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI., and was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury.

The Earl of Warwick who figures in 2 Henry IV. was the Richard Beauchamp already mentioned as the father of Anne who became the wife of the King-maker. He appears again in the play of Henry V, and also in the first scene of Henry VI, though he has nothing to say; and, as some believe, he (and not his son) is the Earl of Warwick in the rest of the play, in spite of certain historical difficulties which that theorv involves. In 2 Henry IV. (iii. 1. 66) Shakespeare makes the mistake of calling him " Nevil " instead of Beauchamp.

The title of the Warwick earls became extinct with the death of the King-maker on the battle-field of Barnet. It was then bestowed on George, Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in the butt of wine by order of his loving brother Richard. It then passed to the young son of Clarence, who is another character in the play of Richard III. He, like his unfortunate father, was long imprisoned in the Tower, and ultimately murdered there after the farce of a trial on account of his alleged complicity in a plot against Henry VII. The subsequent vicissitudes of the earldom do not appear in the pages of Shakespeare, and we will not refer to them here.

GUY OF WARWICK.

The dramatist was evidently familiar with the legendary renown of Warwick as well as its authentic history. Doubtless he had heard the story of the famous Guy of Warwick in his boyhood; and later he probably visited " Guy's Cliff," on the edge of the town of Warwick, where the hero is said to have spent the closing years of his life. Learned antiquarians, in these latter days, have proved that his adventures are mythical, but the common people believe in him as of old. There is his " cave " in the side of the " cliff " on the bank of the Avon, and his gigantic statue in the so-called chapel; and can we not see his sword, shield, and breastplate, his helmet and walking-staff, in the great hall of Warwick Castle ? The breastplate alone weighs more than fifty pounds, and who but the mighty Guy could have worn it ? There too is his porridge-pot of metal, holding more than a hundred gallons, and the flesh-fork to match. We may likewise see a rib and other remains of the famous "dun cow," which he slew after the beast had long been the terror of the country round about. Unbelieving scientists doubt the bovine origin of these interesting relics, to be sure, as they doubt the existence of the stalwart destroyer of the animal; but the vulgar faith in them is not to be shaken.

Of Guy's many exploits the most noted was his conflict with a gigantic Saracen, Colbrand by name, who was fighting with the Danes against Athelstan in the tenth century, and was slain by Guy, as the old ballad narrates. Subsequently Guy went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, leaving his wife in charge of his castle. Years passed, and he did not return. Meanwhile his lady lived an exemplary life, and from time to time bestowed her alms on a poor pilgrim who had made his appearance at a secluded cell by the Avon, not far from the castle. She may sometimes have talked with him about her husband, whom she now gave up as lost, assuming that he had perished by the fever of the East or the sword of the infidel. At last she received a summons to visit the aged pilgrim on his death-bed, when,

SHAKESPEARE THE BOY u

to her astonishment, he revealed himself as the long-lost Guy. In his early days, when he was wooing the lady, she had refused to give him her hand unless he performed certain deeds of prowess. These had not been accomplished without sins that weighed upon his conscience during his absence in Palestine ; and he had made a vow to lead a monastic life after his return to his native land.

The legend, like others of the kind, was repeated in varied forms; and, according to one of these, when Guy came back to Warwick he begged alms at the gate of his castle. His wife did not recognize him, and he took this as a sign that the wrath of Heaven was not yet appeased. Thereupon he withdrew to the cell in the cliff, and did not make himself known to his wife until he was at the point of death.

Shakespeare refers to Guy in Henry VIII. (v. 4. 22), where a man exclaims, " I am not Samson, nor Sir Guy, nor Colbrand"; and Colbrand is mentioned again in King John (i. 1.225) as " Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man."

The scene of Guy's legendary retreat on the bank of the Avon is a charming spot, and there was certainly a hermitage here at a very early period. Richard Beauchamp founded a chantry for two priests in 1422, and left directions in his will for rebuilding the chapel and setting up the statue of Guy in it. At the dissolution of the monasteries in the time of Henry VIII. the chapel and its possessions were bestowed upon a gentleman named Flammock, and the place has been a private residence ever since, though the present mansion was not built until the beginning of the eighteenth century. There is an ancient mill on the Avon not far from the house, commanding a beautiful view of the river and the cliff. The celebrated actress, Mrs. Siddons, lived for some time at Guy's Cliff as waiting-maid to Lady Mary Greatheed, whose husband built the mansion.

KENILWORTH CASTLE.

But we must now go on to Kenilworth, though we cannot linger long within its dilapidated walls, majestic even in ruin. If, as Scott says, Warwick is the finest example of its kind yet uninjured by time and kept up as a noble residence, Kenilworth is the most stupendous of similar structures that have fallen to decay. It was ancient in Shakespeare's day, having been originally built at the end of the eleventh century. Two hundred years later, in 1266, it was held for six months by the rebellious barons against Henry III. After having passed through sundry hands and undergone divers vicissitudes of fortune, it was given by Elizabeth to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who spent, in enlarging and adorning it, the enormous sum of ,£60,000 — three hundred thousand dollars, equivalent to at least two millions now. Scott, in his novel of Kenilworth, describes it, with no exaggeration of romance — for exaggeration would hardly be possible — as it was then. Its very gate-house, still standing complete, was, as Scott says, "equal in extent and superior in architecture to the baronial castle of many a northern chief"; but this was the mere portal of the majestic structure, enclosing seven acres with its walls, equally impregnable as a fortress and magnificent as a palace.

There were great doings at this castle of Kenilworth in 1575, when Shakespeare was eleven years old, and the good people from all the country roundabout thronged to see them. Then it was that Queen Elizabeth was entertained by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and from July 9th to July 27th there was a succession of holiday pageants in the most sumptuous and elaborate

GATE-HOUSE OF KENILWORTH CASTLE style of the time. Master Robert Laneham, whose accuracy as a chronicler is not to be doubted, though he may have been, as Scott calls him, " as great a coxcomb as ever blotted paper," mentions, as a proof of the earl's hospitality, that "the clock bell rang not a note all the while her highness was there ; the clock stood also still withal ; the hands stood firm and fast, always pointing at two o'clock," the hour of banquet ! The quantity of beer drunk on the occasion was 320 hogsheads, and the total expense of the entertainments is said to have been ^"iooo ($5000) a day.

John Shakespeare, as a well-to-do citizen of Stratford, would be likely to see something of that stately show, and it is not improbable that he took his son William with him. The description in the Midsummer-Night V Dream (ii. 1. 150) of

"a mermaid on a dolphin's back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious sounds That the rude sea grew civil at her song,"

appears to be a reminiscence of certain features of the

Kenilworth pageant. The minstrel Arion figured there,

on a dolphin's back, singing of course ; and Triton, in

the likeness of a mermaid, commanded the waves to be

still ; and among the fireworks there were shooting-stars

that fell into the water, like the stars that, as Oberon

adds,

"shot madly from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid's music."

When Shakespeare was writing that early play, with its scenes in fairy-land, what more natural than that this youthful visit to what must then have seemed veritable fairy-land should recur to his memory and blend with the creations of his fancy ?

COVENTRY.

The road from Warwick to Kenilworth is one of the loveliest in England ; and that from Kenilworth five

COVENTRY CHURCHES AND PAGEANT miles further on to Coventry is acknowledged to be the most beautiful in the kingdom ; yet it is only a different kind of beauty from the other, as that is from the beauty of the road between Warwick and Stratford.

Till you reach Kenilworth you have all the varieties of charming rural scenery — hill and dale, field and forest, river-bank and village, hall and castle and church, grouping themselves in ever-changing pictures of beauty and grandeur; and now you come to a straight road for nearly five miles, bordered on both sides by a double line of stately elms and sycamores, as impressive in its regularity as the preceding stretch had been in its kaleidoscopic mutations.

This magnificent avenue with its over-arching foliage brings us to Coventry, no mean city in our day, but retaining only a remnant of its ancient glory. In the time of Shakespeare it was the third city in the realm — the "Prince's Chamber," as it was called — unrivalled in the splendor of its monastic institutions, "full of associations of regal state and chivalry and high events."

In 1397 it had been the scene of the famous hostile meeting between Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford (afterwards Henry IV.), and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, which Shakespeare has immortalized in Richard II. Later Henry IV* held more than one parliament here ; and the city was often visited and honored with many marks of favor by Henry VI. and his queen, as also by Richard III., Henry VII., Elizabeth, and James I.

Coventry, moreover, played an important part in the history of the English Drama. It was renowned for the religious plays performed by the Grey Friars of its great monastery, and kept up, though with diminished pomp, even after the dissolution of their establishment. It was not until 1580 that these pageants were entirely suppressed ; and Shakespeare, who was then sixteen years old, may have been an eye-witness of the latest of them. No doubt he heard stories of their attractions in former times, when, as we are told by Dugdale, they were " acted with mighty state and reverence by the friars of this house, had theatres for the several scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the city for the better advantage of spectators ; and contained the story of the New Testament composed into old English rhyme." There were forty-three of these ancient plays, performed by the monks until, as Tennyson puts it,

" Bluff Harry broke into the spence, And turned the cowls adrift."

When the boy Shakespeare saw them — if he did see them — they were played by the different guilds, or associations of tradespeople. Thus the Nativity and the Offering of the Magi, with the Flight into Egypt and the Slaughter of the Innocents, were rendered by the company of Shearmen and Tailors ; the Smiths' pageant was the Crucifixion ; that of the Cappers was the Resurrection ; and so on. The account-books of the guilds are still extant, with charges for helmets for Herod and gear for his wife, for a beard for Judas and the rope to hang him, etc. In the accounts of the Drapers, whose pageant was the Last Judgment, we find outlays for a "link to set the world on fire," " the barrel for the earthquake," and kindred stage "properties."

In the books of the Smiths or Armorers, some of the charges are as follows : —

"Item, paid for v. schepskens for gods cote and for makyng, \\\s.

Item, paid for mendyng of Herods hed and a myter and other thyngs, \\s.

Item, paid for dressyng of the devells hede, m\\d.

Item, paid for a pair of gloves for god, \\dT

The most elaborate and costly of the properties was " Hell-Mouth," which was used in several plays, but specially in the representation of the Last Judgment. This was a huge and grotesque head of canvas, with vast gaping mouth armed with fangs and vomiting flames. The jaws were made to open and shut, and through them the Devil made his entrance and the lost souls their exit. The making and repairing of this was a constant expense, and frequent entries like the following occur in the books of the guilds : —

" Paide for making and painting hell mouth, xii^/.

Paid for keping of fyer at hell mouthe, iiii^/."

Many curious details of the actors' dresses have come down to us. The representative of Christ wore a coat of white leather, painted and gilded, and a gilt wig. King Herod wore a mask and a helmet, sometimes of iron, adorned with gold and silver foil, and bore a sword and a sceptre. He was a very important character, and the manner in which he blustered and raged about the stage became proverbial. In Hamlet ( iii. 2. 16) we have the expression, "It out-herods Herod" ; and in the Merry Wives of Windsor (ii. 1. 20), "What a Herod of Jewry is this !"

All the actors were paid for their services, the amount varying with the importance of the part. The same actor, as in the theatres of Shakespeare's day, often played several parts. In addition to the payment of money, there was a plentiful supply of refreshments, especially of ale, for the actors. Pilate, who received the highest pay of the company, was moreover allowed wine instead of ale during the performance.

Reference has been made above to the " lost souls " in connection with Hell-Mouth. There were also " saved souls," who were dressed in white, as the lost were in black, or black and yellow. There is an allusion to the latter in Henry V. (ii. 3. 43), where the flea on Bardolph's rubicund nose is compared to " a black soul burning in hell-fire."

The Devil wore a dress of black leather, with a mask, and carried a club, with which he laid about him vigorously. His clothes were often covered with feathers or horsehair, to give him a shaggy appearance ; and the traditional horns, tail, and cloven feet were sometimes added.

The regular time for these religious pageants was Corpus Christi Day, or the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, but they were occasionally performed on other days, especially at the time of a royal visit to Coventry, like that of Queen Margaret in 1455. Prince Edward was thus greeted in 1474, Prince Arthur in 1498, Henry VIII. in 15 10, and Queen Elizabeth in

!5 6 5-

Shakespeare has other allusions to these old plays

besides those here mentioned, showing that he knew

them by report if he had not seen them.

Historical pageants, not Biblical in subject, were also

familiar to the good people of Coventry a century at

least before the dramatist was born. "The Nine Worthies," which he has burlesqued in Love V Labour 'j Lost, was acted there before Henry VI. and his queen in 1455. The original text of the play has been preserved, and portions of Shakespeare's travesty seem almost like a parody of it.

But we must not linger in the shadow of the "three tall spires" of Coventry, nor make more than a brief allusion to the legend of Godiva, the lady who rode naked through the town to save the people from a burdensome tax. It was an old story in Shakespeare's time, if, indeed, it had not been dramatized, like other chapters in the mythic annals of the venerable city. It has been proved to be without historical foundation, being mentioned by no writer before the fourteenth century, though the Earl who figures in the tale lived in the latter part of the eleventh century. The Benedictine Priory in Coventry, of which some fragments still remain, is said to have been founded by him in 1043. He died in 1057, and both he and his lady were buried in the porch of the monastery.

The effigy of " Peeping Tom " is still to be seen in the upper part of a house at the corner of Hertford Street in Coventry.

Shakespeare makes no reference to this story of Lady Godiva, though it was probably well known to him.

CHARLECOTE HALL.

Returning to Warwick, and travelling eight miles on the other side of the town, we come to Stratford. By one of the two roads we may take we pass Charlecote Hall and Park, associated with the tradition of Shakespeare's deer-poaching — a fine old mansion, seen across a breadth of fields dotted with tall elms.

The winding Avon skirts the enclosure to the west. The house, which has been in the possession of the Lucy family ever since the days of Shakespeare, stands at the water's edge. It has been enlarged in recent times, but the original structure has undergone no material change. It was begun in 1558, the year when

CHARLECOTE HALL

Elizabeth came to the throne, and was probably finished in 1559. It took the place of a much older mansion of which no trace remains, the ancestors of Sir Thomas Lucy having then held the estate for more than five centuries. The ground plan of the house is in the form of a capital letter E, being so arranged as a compliment to the Virgin Queen ; and only one out of many such tributes paid her by noble builders of the time

Over the main door are the royal arms, with the letters E. R., together with the initials of the owner, T. L.

Within there is little to remind one of the olden time, but some of the furniture of the library, — chairs, couch, and cabinet of coromandel-wood inlaid with ivory, — is said to have been presented by Elizabeth to Leicester in 1575, and to have been brought from Kenilworth in the seventeenth century. There is a modern bust of Shakespeare in the hall.

The tradition that the dramatist in his youth was guilty of deer-stealing in Sir Thomas's park is not improbable. Some critics have endeavored to prove that there was no deer-park at Charlecote at that time ; but Lucy had other estates in the neighborhood, on some of which he employed game-keepers, and in March, 1585, about the date of the alleged poaching, he introduced a bill into Parliament for the better preservation of game.

The strongest argument in favor of the tradition is to be based on the evidence furnished by the plays that Shakespeare had a grudge against Sir Thomas, and caricatured him as Justice Shallow in Henry IV. and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The reference in the latter play to the " dozen white luces " on Shallow's coat of arms is palpably meant to suggest the three luces, or pikes, in the arms of the Lucys. The manner in which the dialogue dwells on the device indicates that some personal satire was intended.

It should be understood that poaching was then regarded, except by the victims of it, as a venial offence. Sir Philip Sidney's May Lady calls deer- stealing "a prettie service." The students at Oxford were the most notorious poachers in the kingdom, in spite of laws making expulsion from the university the penalty of detection. Dr. Forman relates how two students in 1573 (one of whom afterwards became Bishop of Worcester) were more given to such pursuits than to study ; and one good man lamented in later life that he had missed the advantages that others had derived from entrance: to charlecote hall these exploits, which he believed to be an excellent kind of discipline for young men.

We must not assume that Sir Thomas was fairly represented in the character of Justice Shallow. On the contrary, he appears to have been an able man and magistrate, and very genial withal. The Stratford records bear frequent testimony to his judicial services; and his attendance on such occasions is generally coupled with a charge for claret and sack or similar beverages. It is rather amusing that these entries occur even when he is sitting in judgment on tipplers. In the records for 1558 we read: "Paid for wine and sugar when Sir Thomas Lucy sat in commission for tipplers, xx.d."

That he was a good husband we may infer from the long epitaph of his wife in Charlecote Church, which,

after stating that she died in 1595, at the age of 63, goes on thus : "all the time of her life a true and faithful servant of her good God ; never detected of any crime or vice ; in religion most sound ; in love to her husband most faithful and true ; in friendship most constant ; to what in trust was committed to her most secret; in wisdom excelling ; in governing of her house and bringing up of youth in the fear 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 of 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 by any. As she lived most virtuously, so she died most godly. Set down by him that best did know what hath been written to be true, Thomas Lucy"