Shakspere, Personal Recollections

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And to clap the climax and fathom the logic of love, he eloquently
exclaims:

"Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds!"

J. A. J.

[Illustration]

Shakspere: Personal Recollections

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH. SCHOOL DAYS. SHOWS.

_"One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin."_

William Shakspere was born on the 23d of April, 1564, at the town of
Stratford, on the river Avon, Warwickshire County, England; and died in the
same town on the 23d of April, 1616, exactly fifty-two years of age, the
date of his birth being the date of his death, a remarkable coincidence of
spiritual assimilation.

For several centuries, his ancestors served their king and crown in war and
peace; and were noted in their day and age as country "gentlemen," a term
much more significant then than now, when even dressed up "dandy" frauds
may lay claim to this much-abused title.

The grandfather of Shakspere fought on Bosworth Field with King Henry the
Seventh, and was rewarded for his military service, leaving to his son
John, the father of the "Divine" William, influence enough to secure the
position of a country squire and made him bailiff and mayor of the town of
Stratford.

John Shakspere, in addition to his judicial duties, dabbled in trade as a
wool dealer and glove maker, and when he lost influence and office he
resorted to the business of a butcher to secure bread, meat and shelter for
his large family.

He married the youngest daughter of Robert Arden, a very beautiful girl of
Wilmcote, a small village three miles from Stratford. When Arden died,
Mary, his favorite daughter, was bequeathed thirty-six dollars, and a small
farm of fifty acres, near the town of Snitterfield. Good inheritance for
that age.

The Arden family were strict Roman Catholics; and Edward Arden, high
sheriff of Warwickshire, was executed in 1583, for plotting against her
majesty, Queen Elizabeth. Those were lively days, when the followers of the
Pope and King Henry the Eighth, banished, burned and hung presumptive
heretics for opinion's sake! The lechery and greed of King Hal was the
primary cause of his separation from papal authority, augmenting the
Reformation by licentious royalty.

John Shakspere and Mary, his good wife, did not seem to have much of an
education, for in signing deeds of conveyance, they only made their mark
like thousands of the yeomanry of England.

Shakspere was a very common name in Warwickshire and the surrounding
counties, and while the "Divine" William glorified the whole race, there
were others of his name who fought for king and crown.

John Shakspere had ten children, with the affectionate assistance of Mary
Arden. Seven daughters and three boys, William being the third child and
the most active and robust. Several of the flock died, thereby reducing the
trials and expenses of the household; the "old man" seeming to be one of
those ancient "Mulberry Sellers," that was forever making "millions" in his
mind, and chasing gold bags at the west end of rainbows!

For many years he persistently applied to the College of Heralds for a
"coat of arms;" and finally in the year of 1599, a picture of a "shield"
with a "spear" and "falcon," rampant, was awarded to the Shakspere family,
all through the growing influence of the actor and author William, who had
become famous and wealthy. John Shakspere did not enjoy the glory of his
"coat of arms" very long, for we find that he died in September, 1601, and
was buried on the 8th of that month, at the old church in Stratford, and
his brave old wife, the mother of William Shakspere, followed him to the
tomb on the 9th of September, 1608.

I first met Will Shakspere on the 23d of April, 1571, at the old log and
board schoolhouse at the head of Henley street, Stratford, on the river
Avon. It was a bright, sunny day, and Mr. Walter Roche, the Latin master,
was the autocrat of the scholastic institution, afterwards succeeded by
Thomas Hunt.

Will Shakspere and myself happened to be born on the same day, and our
first entrance at the temple of knowledge marked exactly the seventh
milestone of our fleeting years.

Will was a very lusty, rollicking boy and was as full of innocent mischief
as a pomegranate is of seeds. He was handsome and bright, wearing a thick
suit of auburn curls, that rippled over his shoulders like a waterfall in
the sunshine. His eyes were very large, a light hazel hue, that glinted
into blue when his soul was stirred by passion. His forehead was broad and
high, even as a boy, rounding off into that "dome of thought" that in later
years, when a six-foot specimen of splendid manhood caused him to conjure
up such a universal group of immortal characters.

His nose was long and high, but symmetrical, and his distended nostrils,
when excited at play, would remind you of a Kentucky racehorse in motion.
His voice was sonorous and musical, and when stirred by passion or pleasure
it rose and fell like the sound of waves upon a stormy or summer sea. His
lips were red and full, marked by Nature, with the "bow of beauty," and
when his luminous countenance was flushed with celestial light, he shot the
arrows of love-lit glances around the schoolroom and fairly magnetized the
boys, and particularly the girls, with the radiant influence of his
unconscious genius.

Will was a constant source of anxiety and wonder to the teacher, who often
marked him as the scapegoat to carry off the surface sins of sneaking and
cowardly pupils. Corporal punishment was part of school discipline, and
William and myself got our share of the rule and rod.

Through all the centuries, in youth and age, private and public, the
scapegoat has been the real hero in all troubles and misfortunes. He seems
to be a necessary mortal, but while persecution relentlessly pursues him,
he almost invariably triumphs over his enemies, and when even devoted to
the prison, the stake or the scaffold, as a martyr, he triumphs over the
grave and is monumented in the memory of mankind for his bravery and
silent self-sacrifice!

For seven school years Will and myself were daily companions. Spring, with
its cowslips and primroses, and hawthorn blossoms, found us rambling
through the woods and fields, and angling for the finny tribe disporting in
the purling waters of the crystal Avon.

Summer brought its grain and fruits, with boys and girls scrambling over
hedges, fences, stiles and brooks, in search of berries and ripe apples;
autumn with its nuts, birds and hares, invited us to hunting grounds, along
the rolling ridges and the dense forest of Arden, even poaching on the
domain of Sir Thomas Lucy and the royal reaches of Warwick Castle, and old
winter with his snowy locks and whistling airs brought the roses to our
young cheeks, skipping and sporting through his fantastic realm like the
snow birds whirling in clumps of clouds across the withered world.

Looking back over the fields, forests and waters of the past through the
variegated realms of celestial imagination, I behold after the lapse of
more than three centuries of human wrecks, the brilliant boys and glorious
girls I played with in childhood years--still shining as bright and fresh
as the flowers and fruits of yesterday!

_"For we are the same our fathers have been,
We see the same sights our fathers have seen,
We drink the same streams and view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run!"_

I remember well the first time Will and myself attended a theatrical
performance. It was on the first of April, 1573, when we were about nine
years of age.

A strolling band of comic, and Punch and Judy players had made a sudden
invasion of Stratford and established themselves in the big barn of the old
Bear Tavern on Bridge street.

The town was alive with expectation and the school children were wild to
behold the great play of "The Scolding Wife," which was advertised through
the streets, in the daytime, by a cartload of bedizened harlequins,
belaboring each other with words and gestures, the wife with bare arms,
short dress and a bundle of rods, standing rampant over the prostrate form
of a drunken husband.

Fifes, drums and timbrels kept up a frantic noise, filling the bylanes and
streets of Stratford with astonished country louts and tradesmen, until the
fantastic parade ended in the wagon yard of the tavern.

The old barn had been rigged up as a rustic playhouse, the stage covering
one end, elevated about three feet from the threshing floor. Curtains with
daub pictures were strung across the stage, separated in the center and
shifted backward and forward, as the varying scenes of the family play were
presented for the hisses or cheers of the variegated audience.

The play consisted of three acts, showing the progress of courtship and
marriage at the altar, country and town life with growing children, work,
poverty, and final windup of the husband driven from home by the scolding
wife, bruised in an alehouse, dead and followed to the graveyard by the
Beadle, undertaker and a brindle dog.

The climax scene of the play exhibited the wife with a bundle of rods,
surrounded by ragged children, driving out into a midnight storm the
husband of her bosom, while peals of thunder and flashes of lightning
brought goose pimples and shivers to the frightened audience.

The impression made upon the mind of William and myself did not give us a
very hopeful view of married life, and while the haphazard working,
drinking habits of the husband seemed to deserve all the punishment he
received, the modesty, benevolence and beauty of woman was shattered in our
young souls.

On our way home from the country-tragedy performance we were gladdened by
the thought, that although the rude, vulgar, criminal passions of mankind
were portrayed and enacted day by day all over the globe, we could look up
into the star-lit heavens and see those glittering lamps of night shining
with reflected light on the murmuring bosom of the Avon, as it flowed in
peaceful ripples to the Severn and from the Severn to the sea. Nature
soothed our young hearts, and soon, in the mysterious realms of sleep, we
forgot the sorrows and poverty of earth, tripping away with angelic
companions through the golden fields of celestial dreams.

_"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."_

I shall never forget the great shows and pageants that took place in
Warwickshire County, in July, 1575. All England was alive to the grand
entrance of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle, as the royal guest of her
favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Proclamation had gone forth
that all work be suspended, while yeoman, trader, merchant, doctor, lawyer,
minister, lords and earls should pay a pilgrimage to Kenilworth and pay
tribute to the Virgin Queen.

Stratford and the surrounding villages were aflame with enthusiasm, and as
John Shakspere, the alderman and mayor, took great interest in theatricals
and particularly those festivities inaugurated for the entertainment of
royalty, he led a great concourse of devoted patriots through the forests
of Arden, blooming parks of Warwick Castle on to the grand surroundings of
Kenilworth, where the people _en masse_ camped, sang, danced, took part in
country plays, feasted and went wild for eighteen days, over the
illustrious daughter of Henry the Eighth.

William and myself were among the enthusiastic revelers, and for boys of
twelve years of age, we felt more cheer than any of the lads and lasses
from Stratford, because our parents furnished us with milk white ponies, to
pay tribute, and typify the virtue and chastity of the "Virgin Queen!" We
did not particularly care about virtue or virginity, so we shared in the
cakes and ale that were lavished in profusion to the rural multitude.

A high grand throne made out of evergreens and wild flowers was erected in
the central park of Kenilworth, rimmed in by lofty elms, oaks and
sycamores.

There, through the fleeting days and nights, the Queen and her royal suite
of a thousand purpled cavaliers and bejeweled maids of honor, held court
and viewed the ever-changing, living panorama evolved for their
entertainment. The Queen looked like a wilderness of lace and variegated
velvet, irrigated with a shower of diamonds.

On the 9th of July Queen "Bess" and her illuminated suite entered the
Castle of Kenilworth, and the hands of the clock in the great tower pointed
to the hour of two, where they remained until her departure, as invitation
to a continual banquet.

The Earl expended a thousand pounds a day for the fluid and food
entertainment of his guests, while woodland bowers and innumerable tents
were scattered through the royal domain generously donated to man and maid
by night and day. We boys and girls seldom went to bed.

Companies of circus performers, and theatrical artists, from London and
other towns were brought down to the heart of Old Albion to swell the
pleasure of the reigning Queen. Continual plays were going on, while horn,
fife, bugle and drum lent music to the kaleidoscopic revel.

Dancing, hunting, hawking and archery parties, through the day, lent their
antics to the scene, and when night came with bright Luna showing her
mystic face, forest fires, rockets and illuminated balloons filled the air
with celestial wonder, vieing with the stars in an effort to do universal
honor to the "Virgin Queen!" That's what they called "Bess."

William and myself took part in several of the joint circus and theatrical
performances, and at the conclusion of one of the plays--"Virtue
Victorious," Queen Elizabeth called up William and a purple page named
Francis Bacon, patted them on the head with her royal digits, and said they
would soon be great men!

I must acknowledge that I felt a little envious at the encomium, not so
much to William, as to the proud peacock, Bacon, who came in the train of
the Queen.

At sunrise of the 27th of July, 1575, the festivities closed, and the royal
cavalcade with a following of ten thousand loyal subjects, accompanied the
ruling monarch to the borders of Warwickshire, with universal shouts and
ovations on her triumphal march to London.

_"I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again."_

_"All that glitters is not gold,
Often you have heard that told;
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold!"_

CHAPTER II.

LAUNCHED. APPRENTICE BOY. AMBITION.

_"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our Stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings."_

Will Shakspere and myself left school when we were fourteen years of age.
Our parents being reduced in worldly circumstances, needed the financial
fruits of our labor.

Shakspere was bound to a butcher named John Bull, for a term of three
years, while I was put at the trade of stone-cutting with Sam Granite for
the same period.

Will was one of the finest looking boys in the town of Stratford,
aristocratic by nature, large and noble in appearance, and the pride of all
the girls in the county of Warwick; for his fame as a runner, boxer,
drinker, dancer, reciter, speaker, hunter, swimmer and singer was well
known in the surrounding farms and villages, where he had occasion to
drive, purchase and sell meat animals for his butcher boss, John Bull.
Shakspere's father assisted Bull in selling hides and buying wool.

In the winter of 1580, Will and myself joined a new thespian society,
organized by the boys and girls of Stratford, with a contingent of
theatrical talent from Shottery, Snitterfield, Leicester, Kenilworth and
Coventry.

Strolling players, chartered by Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester,
often visited Stratford and the surrounding towns, infusing into the young,
and even the old, a desire for that innocent fun of tragic or comic
philosophy that wandering minstrels and circus exhibitions generate in the
human heart.

Plays of Roman, Spanish and German origin, as well as those of Old Albion,
were enacted on our rural stage, and although we had not the paraphernalia
and scenery of the London actors, we made up in frantic enthusiasm what we
lacked in artistic finish, and often in our amateur exhibitions at balls,
fairs, races and May Day Morris dances, we "astonished the natives," who
paid from a penny to sixpence to see and hear the "Stratford Oriental
Theatrical Company."

Shakspere always took a leading part in every play, poem and declamation,
but when an encore was given and a demand for a recitation on love, Will
was in his natural element and gave the eager audience dashes from Ovid's
Metamorphoses or Petrarch's Sonnets.

The local company had a large assortment of poetic and theatrical
translations, and many of the boys and girls who had passed through the
Latin school, could "spout" the rhythmic lines of Ovid, Virgil, Horace or
Petrarch in the original language. And strange to say, the Warwickshire
audience would cheer the Latin more than the English rendition, on the
principle that the least you know about a thing the more you enjoy it!
Thus pretense and ignorance make a stagger at information, and while
fooling themselves, imagine that they fool their elbow neighbor!

Shakspere had a most marvelous memory, and his sense of taste, smell,
feeling, hearing and particularly seeing was abnormally developed, and
constant practice in talking and copying verses and philosophic sentences
made him almost perfect in his deductions and conclusions. He was a natural
orator, and impressed the beholder with his superiority.

He had a habit of copying the best verses, dramatic phrases and orations of
ancient authors, and then to show his superiority of epigrammatic, incisive
style, he could paraphrase the poems of other writers into his own divine
sentences, using the crude ore of Homeric and Platonic philosophy,
resolving their thoughts into the best form of classic English, lucid,
brave and blunt!

I have often tested his powers of lightning observation with each of us
running by shop windows in Stratford, Oxford or London, and betting a
dinner as to who could name the greatest number of objects, and he
invariably could name correctly three to my one. In visiting country
farmers in search of cattle, sheep or pigs he could mount a stone fence or
climb a hedge row gate, and by a glance over the field or meadow, give the
correct number of animals in sight.

He was a wonder to the yeomanry of Warwickshire and the surrounding
counties, and when he had occasion to rest for the night at farm houses or
taverns, he was the prime favorite of the rural flames or bouncing,
beaming barmaid. The girls went wild about him. The physical development of
Shakspere was as noticeable as his mental superiority. Often when he
ploughed the placid waters of the Avon, or buffeted the breakers of the
moaning sea, have I gazed in rapture at his manly, Adonis form, standing on
the sands, like a Grecian wrestler, waiting for the laurel crown of the
Olympic games.

_Great Shakspere was endowed with heavenly light;
He read the book of Nature day and night,
And delving through the strata of mankind
Divined the thoughts that thrilled the mystic mind,
And felt the pulse of all the human race,
While from their beating heart could surely trace
The various passions that inspire the soul
Around this breathing world from pole to pole!_

My family and the Hathaway household were on familiar terms, for my father
at times worked an adjoining estate at the edge of the village of Shottery,
a straggling community of farmers and tradesmen, with the usual
wheelwright, blacksmith shop, corn and meat store and alehouse attachments.

William, in his rural perambulations, often put up for the night at our
cottage, and as there was generally some fun going on in the neighborhood
after dark, I led him into many frolics with the boys and girls; and I can
assure you he was a rusher with the fair sex, capturing the plums that fell
from the tree of beauty and passion.

On a certain moonlight night, in the month of May, 1581, a large concourse
of rural belles and beaux assembled at the home of John Dryden, washed by
the waters of the Avon, and thrilled by the songs of the nightingales,
thrushes and larks lending enchantment to the flitting hours.

Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcote and Shottery sent their contingent of
roistering boys and girls to enjoy the moonlight lawn dance and rural feast
set out under flowery bowers by the generous Dryden.

It would have done your heart good to see the variegated dresses, antics
and faces of the happy rural belles. I see them as plain as ever in the
looking-glass of memory. There is Laura Combs, plump and intelligent, Mary
Scott, willowy and keen, Jennie Field, sedate and sterling, Mary Hall,
musical and handsome, Annie Condell, modest and benevolent, Joyce Acton,
witty and aristocratic, Lizzie Heminge, bouncing and beaming, Fannie Hunt,
stately and kind, while Anne Hathaway, the big girl of the party, seemed to
be the leader in all the innocent mischief of the evening.

William took a particular liking to the push and go of Anne, and she seemed
to concentrate her gaze on his robust form at first sight. William asked
me, as the friend of the family, to introduce him to Miss Hathaway, which I
did in my best words, and away they went, on a hop, step and a jump through
the Morris dance that was just then being enacted on the lawn.

The clarion notes of the farm cocks were saluting the rosy footsteps of the
dawn when the various parties dispersed for home.

The last I saw of William he was helping Miss Hathaway over the rustic
stile and hedge row that rimmed the old thatched cottage home of his new
found flame.

It was a frigid day or night when William could not find something fresh
and new among the fair sex, and like a king bee in a field of wild flowers,
he sipped the nectar of love and beauty, and tossed carking care to the
vagrant winds.

It was soon after this moonlight party that a picnic revel was given in the
domain of Sir Hugh Clopton, near the old mill and stone bridge erected by
that generous public benefactor.

The boys and girls of the town turned out _en masse_, and enjoyed the
hawking, hunting, swimming, dancing, archery and boating that prevailed
that day.

In the midst of the festivities, while a long line of rural beauties and
beaux were prancing and rollicking on the bridge, a scream, and a flash of
Dolly Varden dress in the river showed the struggling efforts of Anne
Hathaway to keep her head above water.

One glance at the pride of his heart struggling for her life determined the
soul of the athlete, when he plunged into the running stream, caught the
arm of his adored as she was going down for the third time, and then with a
few mighty sweeps of his brawny arm, he reached the shore and heaved her on
the sands in an almost lifeless condition. She was soon restored, however,
by her numerous companions, with only the loss of a few ribbons and bunches
of hawthorn blossoms that William had tied in her golden hair that morning.

William was the hero of the day, and his fame for bravery rung on the lips
of the Warwickshire yeomanry, while in the heart of Anne Hathaway devotion
reigned supreme.

_"There is no love broker in the world can more prevail in man's
commendation with woman than report of valor."_

The courtship of William and Anne was rapid, and although her father died
only a few months before the 27th of November, 1582, license to marry was
suddenly obtained through the insistence of the yeoman friends of the
Hathaway family, Fulke-Sandells and John Richardson, who convinced the Lord
Bishop of Worcester that one calling of the banns of matrimony was only
necessary.

William left his home in Stratford immediately and took charge of Anne's
cottage and farm, settling down as soon as one of his rollicking nature
could realize that he had been virtually forced into marrying a buxom girl,
eight years older than himself, and a woman of hot temper. _Six_ months
after marriage Susanna, his daughter was born, and about two years after,
February 2d, 1585, his twin children Hammet and Judith were ushered into
his cottage home, as new pledges of matrimonial felicity.

Things did not move on with William as happily after marriage as before,
and while his wife did most of the work, the Bard of Nature preferred to
shirk hard labor in field and wood, longing constantly to meet the "boys"
at the tavern, or fish, sing, hunt and poach along the Avon.

Yoking Pegasus to a Flanders mare would be about as reasonable as joining a
practical, honest woman with a poet!

Water and hot oil will not mix, and the fires of genius cannot be curbed or
subdued by material surroundings. Beef cannot appreciate brains!

Anne was constantly sand papering William about his vagabond life, and
holding up the picture of ruin for her ancestral estate, by his thoughtless
extravagance and determination to attend to other people's business instead
of his own. As the wife was senior and business boss, the Bard endured
these curtain lectures with meekness and surface sorrow and promises of
reformation, but, when out of her sight continued in the same old rut of
playing the clown and philosopher for the public amusement.

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