SHAKESPEARE THE BOY

WITH SKETCHES OF

THE HOME AND SCHOOL LIFE THE GAMES AND SPORTS, THE MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE TIME

BY

WILLIAM JAMES ROLFE, Litt.D.

WITH FORTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

CHATTO & WINDUS

1897

Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers.

All rights reserved.

PREFACE

Two years ago, at the request of the editors of the Youth's Companion, I wrote for that periodical a series of four familiar articles on the boyhood of Shakespeare. It was understood at the time that I might afterwards expand them into a book, and this plan is carried out in the present volume. The papers have been carefully revised and enlarged to thrice their original compass, and a new fifth chapter has been added.

The sources from which I have drawn my material are often mentioned in the text and the notes. I have been particularly indebted to Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, Knight's Biography of Shakspere, Furnivall's Introduction to the "Leopold" edition of Shakespeare, his Babees Book, and his edition of Harrison's Description of England, Sidney Lee's Stratford-on-Avon, Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, Brand's Popular Antiquities, and Dyer's Folk-Lore of Shakespeare.

I hope that the book may serve to give the young folk some glimpses of rural life in England when Shakespeare was a boy, and also to help them—and possibly their elders—to a better understanding of many allusions in his works.

W. J. R.

Cambridge, June 10, 1896.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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SHAKESPEARE THE BOY

Part I HIS NATIVE TOWN AND NEIGHBORHOOD

[2] [3]

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[4] 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[5] 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. Cæsar's Tower, so called, though not built, as tradition alleged, by the mighty Julius, dated back to an unknown period; 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 embel[6]lished, 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,[7] 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, he 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," 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[8] 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?"

[9]

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 theory 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[10] 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,[11] 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[12] 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[13] 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 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[14] 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 £1000 ($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's 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[15] 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.