May Byron

“ The rehearsal commenced—the play of Hamlet, with Burbage in the title-rôle. Shakespeare, though necessarily present, paid but little attention to the business in hand. In studied and self-conscious acting he had no interest whatsoever. His theory was the same as Ben Jonson's, that a man should act "freely, carelessly, and capriciously, as if one's veins ran with quicksilver, and not utter a phrase but shall come forth in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire." ”

“ Seventeen years ago, at the age of eighteen, Shakespeare had made a hasty and ill-assorted marriage. Anne Hathaway, his senior in years, his inferior in position, was no fit mate for the impetuous, ambitious youth. A father at nineteen, with neither employment nor source of income, he had chafed and fretted for five years against the consequences of his own rash folly: at twenty-three, he found the position intolerable. He quitted Stratford, and had never returned, save for brief and flying visits. ”

“ And he depicted various features of this woman, in various rôles, in play after play: he could not shut her out. Whether he pilloried her dark beauty as Cressida or Cleopatra—whether he masked her wit and spirit under the name of Beatrice or Rosalind—whether he alternately implored or inveighed against her in the Sonnets—he was enthralled by so magnetic a fascination that it influenced his art at all points. Shakespeare the man—Shakespeare the artist—was obsessed by—bound fast in—a hopeless infatuation for a woman whom he knew to be unworthy. ”

“ Here he could foregather with learned and literary friends; here he could sit and study the latest books; here, in short, he was no longer the actor, but the author. And it may be noted in passing, that Shakespeare's literary confrères respected him, not as the permanent dramatist of the Globe, the transmuter of old lead into gold of Ophir—but as a lyrical poet, an authentic "maker" of beautiful verse. "The Muses would speak Shakespeare's fine filed phrase if they could speak English," so ran the encomium of his admirers. ”

“ He was maintaining them in comfort, he was purchasing a fine house in Stratford, whither he would eventually retire and play the parts of husband and father. But—blame him or not, as you will—there are limits beyond which human nature cannot be forced: and the illiterate, ill-tempered, incompatible Anne Hathaway was the skeleton in Shakespeare's cupboard: not to be explained away—the thought of whom left a bitter taste at the bottom of every pleasure. ”

“ He was already slightly inclined to embonpoint: for in the seventeenth century people aged soon, and thirty-five was much more like forty-five nowadays.
In all company, with all people, Shakespeare was charmingly pleasant-spoken. He had long since shed any provincial gaucherie, and was of an exquisite courtesy, "of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit,"—again to quote his intimates, "a good-natured man, of a great sweetness in his bearing, and a most agreeable company." ”

“ Moving meditatively along Holborn, he presently encountered his old friend Gerard the botanist, whose Herball had been published two years before,—who stood at the head of his profession for knowledge and achievement. He lived in Holborn, where he had not only a fine garden-ground, but a fruit-ground in Fetter Lane, which he superintended for the surgical society of which he was a member.
"Well met, Will!" said the grave and reverend herbalist, "no other man in London would I more gladly welcome: for that thou hast a most worthy apprehension of the seemliness of plants and herbs. ”

“ The Globe was already crowded when he arrived, although the play did not begin till three (there were no evening performances in those days, except in noblemen's private theatres) . Burbage, the favourite tragedian, as Hamlet, drew a great following: but the humble part played by the author himself as Rosencrantz was a succès d'estime rather than a genuine one—for Mr. William Shakespeare was no very wonderful actor. "A fellowship in a cry of players" held little glamour for him. ”

“ Proud, high-spirited, vivacious—unquestionably beautiful, although "in the old age black was not counted fair"—aristocratic, grande dame to the finger-tips: in every respect the antithesis of countrified, shrewish, repellent Anne Hathaway—yet the "dark lady" was inherently wanton, false, and faithless. Shakespeare recognised this, but it made no difference to the strength and intensity of his passion:
So true a fool is love, that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.
In sonnet after sonnet he expressed his despair, his patience of contempt or injury. ”

“ Although a self-made man in every sense of the word,—although still a member of that despised theatrical profession against which the pulpit thundered, at which the decent citizen looked askance,—he was a distinctly marked personality, not to be ignored. He was part proprietor of the Globe Theatre, the Blackfriars, and the Rose,—he had house property in Southwark and Blackfriars, lands and houses at Stratford-upon-Avon. ”

“ For every house had its private garden, large or small. Every householder garnished his dwelling-rooms with flowers, instead of ornaments of potter's ware or metal: the floors were still strewn with leaves and grasses, and the doorways often decked with boughs. ”

“ By nature a poet pur et simple, of a delicate, fastidious, bookish temperament, one who continually corrected his best verses with endless pains and critical scrupulosity—he had been thrown into the rowdy pot-house company of second-rate actors, and was accused by jealous rivals of being "an upstart crow," swelled out with inordinate vanity—or gibed at, by those who professed themselves his friends, as a slovenly and careless writer—or openly contemned by the very lackeys and menials, should he receive a call to Court. ”

“ The Globe company of about ten actors, Burbage, Heminge, Condell, Field and the rest, were entering by ones and twos, with the boys who played women's parts: last of all, the orchestra of ten performers, the largest in London, dawdled in, and took up their instruments—chiefly drums and trumpets. ”

“ Everyone who could afford it, smoked: the "classes," rich authentic tobacco, and the "masses," men and women alike, an adulterated mixture of coltsfoot and other "hot" herbs. As for the middle classes, the merchant-folk, tradesmen, and bourgeoisie in general, they were chiefly conspicuous by their absence. Strongly pervaded by a growing flavour of Puritanism, and having a wholesome decent horror of "play-acting" as something undoubtedly congruous with all dissolute ways and ill-living, the middle classes avoided Bankside like the pestilence. ”

“ So far, things were bad enough; but there was even worse to follow. The lad whose calf-love had flung him into ill-considered matrimony was now a mature man—and two years ago he discovered, for the first time, what the love of mature manhood can be like. ”