S. L. Bensusan

“ Three hundred and twenty-four years have passed since William Shakespeare set out to prove his fortune in London, and in those far-away days that his genius makes so real for us the journey was long and at times dangerous. ”

“ There was Michael Drayton, author of the "Shepherd's Garland," the man after his own heart, to whose charming sonnets he was indebted for some of the beauty of his own, and it may be that some of his old companions of the stage could be lured to New Place in the intervals of their touring. For one who knew as well as Shakespeare the changes and uncertainties of life, there must have been a keen consciousness that balance of fortune was in his favour when he rode out from London on to the Oxford-Stratford road, only to return to look after his vested interests as occasion should demand. ”

“ Plague and fire and flood have been overcome, but men and women live lives entirely undisciplined. Little or nothing binds the citizen to the State, and the adulteration of food has become so common that pure bread and pure beer are the exception, and the supervision of those who prepare the necessities of our daily life is much less strict than it was when old John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was Stratford's ale-taster, empowered to see, inter alia, that every baker sold a whole loaf of true weight for one penny. ”

“ Saviour's stands well-nigh smothered by factories, shops, and small houses. London, a muddy stream, has overflown its banks and spread on that side far into regions where birds and beasts of the chase flew or ran in the poet's day. Tradition tells us that the Thames sometimes rose above its boundaries and flooded the graveyard of St. Mary's, and in like fashion the town itself has spread beyond all limits, until the south side, within a very restricted area, holds more than all London held in the poet's day. ”

“ Even now, when glimpses of Elizabethan England are few and far between, we are touched by the supreme peace that still broods over land on which the old-time houses, with their thatched roofs or well-worn tiles, their ingle nooks, their dormer windows, their oak rafters and their many gables, tell of a time when the jerry-builder was not and the suburban villa had not yet come into being. ”

“ There has been no lack of determined effort among the poet's countless biographers to give the lie direct to every story that does not cast credit upon his youth. [Pg 14] Because he was a great man, many people require his history to be written in a fashion that shall lessen, ignore, or deny his weaknesses. There can be no valid reason for pursuing such a course, for we know that the rule of art is not the rule of morals, and that while a very good poet may be a very bad man, a very worthy man may be a vile poet. ”

“ No man passes easily from the duties of an ostler to the position of part proprietor of prosperous theatres, and the first few years of Shakespeare's sojourn in the metropolis bore but little fruit. We know that in those lean times his own purse would have been but ill-lined, and both his father's household and his own were suffering from the pinch of poverty. His wife was forced to borrow money; his father's affairs went steadily from bad to worse. Nor was there in all Stratford any help for a family that had fallen from comparative affluence into the slough of financial troubles. ”

“ When we read Shakespeare's plays for the first time, it is at once apparent that the poet was a countryman. He has the knowledge, founded upon close observation, that we associate with the highly intelligent dweller in the countryside, the man or woman from whom the poet differs merely in his supreme capacity for expression. ”

“ Suffice it that thousands, gifted with faith and sixpences, have visited the room, ceilings and windows bear countless traces of the desire that besets the most commonplace people to deface walls with their uninteresting names. Shakespeare's alleged birthplace is a charming little residence enough, with dormered roof and penthouse entrance, and sixpence is a small price to pay for a pleasant illusion. ”

“ The purchasing value of a sovereign in Elizabeth's time would be equal to the value of nearly eight pounds of our money, and Shakespeare's most learned biographers are of opinion that he was a careful and a saving man. Member of a leading company, enjoying the patronage of noblemen and the regard of his Sovereign, frequently summoned to take part in special performances at Court, it is likely that the poet's income as an actor was, within comparatively few years of the start of his career, equal in our modern currency to a sum nearer a thousand than five hundred a year. ”

“ Shakespeare delighted in his gardens and his plays speak of his sound knowledge of the gardener's craft. People who could afford to plant orchards took a pride in doing so; the poorer folk generally boasted a few fruit-trees, and gave no small part of their garden plot to raising herbs and simples for use against the various ailments that troubled them from time to time. ”

“ People rose early and retired early; there was no temptation to be out late in filthy, ill-lighted streets, and bed was the only comfortable place in a house after nightfall. Doubtless the conditions were favourable to deep drinking among those who were not limited to the ale-house, and consequently could escape from the vigilant eye of authority.
The apprentice system was in vogue at Stratford in Shakespeare's time, and though the condition of apprentices was not always creditable to their employers, the system ensured a thorough knowledge of any business that a man sought to establish. ”

“ The apologists have picked out the finest moral thoughts in the plays and poems and declared that he who could conceive them could not have been less than a saint. They might as well pick out the countless villains of the tragedies and declare that he who presented them must have been a sinner. Truth to tell, the question is one of no importance. Shakespeare was in some respects a man like the majority of men; in other regards he stands alone. Only in this latter aspect have we any occasion to consider him. We have neither the right, the capacity, nor the data by which to sit in judgment ”

“ And the intelligent visitor will be one with the great lovers of Shakespeare, living and dead, from Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, and Milton down to Matthew Arnold and our own contemporaries, even though his contribution to the poet's praise be no more than a little note in a private diary. ”

“ Sidney Lee, in his fascinating "Life of William Shakespeare," a work that has run into many editions, tells us that upwards of sixty portraits of Shakespeare have been offered to the National Gallery since 1856, and that not one of these has been shown to be authentic. How fortunate, then, that the deeds and signatures quite beyond suspicion have told the world so much about the business side of the poet's life. Just as the forgery of portraits has been of common occurrence, so the forgery of deeds has been a source of amusement, if not of profit, to many ”

“ But it is not the familiar birds alone that caught the poet's eye and stimulated his imagination. In the days of his youth, before he went to London, he must have studied bird life closely and accurately. Nearly fifty wild birds find mention in his plays and poems, and for the most part they are birds he would not have seen in London, though in his day the metropolis was small enough, and the outer London of his time was well-nigh as wild and wooded as the least frequented parts of Warwickshire to-day. ”

“ But the opinion of competent critics is that John Shakespeare was as capable of drawing the long-bow as he was of selling general stores, and that he was closely connected, from a mental standpoint, with the successful tradesmen of our day who, having proved fortunate business men, seek to confer upon themselves such advantage as a dubious pedigree may assure. ”

“ Many attempts have been made to find out what manner of life the poet lived in London, but the material for a reliable opinion is quite wanting. Some have imagined that he was a free liver and roysterer, after the fashion of his time, that he lived as Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe and other dissipated writers. There is no more authority for such a suggestion than there is for the statements on the other side telling us that William Shakespeare was the personification of every virtue. We simply do not know ”

“ In the highest society the Elizabethan women might take some part in masques or pageants without rebuke, but the appearance of a woman on the public stage in Shakespeare's day would have aroused something like the emotion that would be caused by the appearance of a Moslem woman unveiled in the chief thoroughfare of a fanatical Mohammedan city, or a suffragist in the House of Commons. ”

“ Throughout the summer season Stratford-on-Avon becomes a metropolis "whereunto the tribes of men assemble." To "do Stratford" [Pg 6] is an article of faith with American visitors, even if they have no more than a week in which to master the wonders of Great Britain and Ireland. Germany sends many admirers, for nowhere is Shakespeare's genius more widely recognised, more highly esteemed, than in that country. London and the big midland towns of England send visitors daily. ”

“ New Place Museum is really the house adjoining Shakespeare's, and was the property of Thomas Nash, first husband of Elizabeth, daughter of Susanna Hall.
Shortly after his purchase of New Place, the poet found himself in a better position than ever for increasing his property and gratifying his passion for real estate. Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, sons of that James Burbage who owned "The Theatre" in which the poet is said to have been a servitor, had built the "Globe Theatre" on Bankside. It was an octagonal wooden building, in which Shakespeare's company was to be seen year after year ”

“ Following this comes the time when no storm can uproot the tree that a hungry rabbit might have destroyed in days past—something has come to complete maturity and has developed all the possibilities that were equally latent in so many million acorns to which growth was denied. As it is with plants, so it is with men, and thus it becomes permissible to compare literature with a forest wherein are so many trees, so many saplings, and so much dense undergrowth, from which trees of worth and beauty may one day spring. ”

“ Little roots and fibres pierce the soil; a green twig rises to seek the sun; there are long years of silent precarious growth, and then the sapling stage is passed and a young tree sends countless leaves to draw nourishment from air and sky. ”

“ These came alike from actors who had shared with him the traffic of the stage, and from fellow-townsmen of Stratford. Even if the recorded references are scanty enough, there is none that may be held unflattering if we except the attack by Greene, for which his publisher went out of his way to apologise. It is hard, if not impossible, to estimate the value of any form of art-work in the lifetime of the worker, and it may well be that of the thousands who applauded Shakespeare's plays there were very few who saw them as we do to-day. ”

“ It seems clear that the story of his poaching expeditions in Charlecote or Fulbroke Parks is not a mere legend unsupported by facts. Sir Thomas Lucy, the owner of Charlecote Park, was of course a game preserver, and Shakespeare must have thought that poaching was a reasonable pastime enough. He dared "do all that may become a man," and the penalty of exciting the wrath of a great landowner and game preserver was no less then than now. Sir Thomas was angry; the poet is said to have written a vulgar, bitter [Pg 13] lampoon, still preserved, and affixed a copy to the gates of Charlecote. ”

“ He will not add a jot to our knowledge of country or people—a hundred pens have said all there is to say—but he will come away with a measure of appreciation and recognition that will make the significance of the poet, as an interpreter of a life that never changes, far more vital and true. ”

“ He will be enrolled on the long and unexhausted list of pilgrims to the shrine of the country's greatest poet, the man whose thoughts have lost nothing of their depth and beauty in the slow passage of three eventful centuries. ”