V ^ 'vi^>'Wi^3" ^v x xxV-^V._ c^^ . > ■ 1 o 0^ ^'. "^, c^ :^ ,^:^ -7; x^^' H •T'-i • 0' ^.-. v^'^ ,A ^ ..#v4%- ^v .^ '0 0^ ^.,^' "^''■' -- ^- .^^"'^. ^A ■- ^ a\ ' n\ ':0 •-r o vv ■•■ _r^-<.. •:; '"-^l \' ^ ^ ^N"- .*'"<• z/ 00, 00^ -7^ A A^ 5 V ' fi ^ >. A\' .J xC^ -<;- .^" ''>. ^^' ■^x>. '■iiJ'-0^ \ '^c^ % i^^ ^-^ V -i-- .- .-N X>. fy C- /• .n\^ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS BY THE LATE CHARLES ISAAC ELTON ONE OF HER LATE MAJESTY'S COUNSEL AUTHOR OF THE TENURES OF KENT THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH HISTORY &c. EDITED BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR BY ANDREW LANG NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 1904 ^-R»«W .t^ l^^oH-"^ Printed in Great Britain PREFATORY NOTE THE following chapters have been formed from the greater portion of a series of papers, which the author evidently intended to be the nucleus of an ex- haustive work upon Shakespeare. This series dealt with two special subjects. One part of it concerned the biography and family-history of Shakespeare, and the various places with which his name can be con- nected. The other division embraced several historical studies, relating to the sources and production of The Tempest. The shape in which these papers were left by Mr. Elton was incomplete and disconnected. Some had undergone revision : in some cases, two almost parallel versions, apparently of the same chapter, existed, testi- fying to the scholarly care with which the work had been undertaken and planned. There was no definite indication, however, of the final shape which it had been intended to assume. To the state of completeness at which the various parts had arrived, inference was the only guide ; their purposed order was matter for pure conjecture. A number of representative chapters, therefore, have been selected from the papers, which may define, in some measure, the scope and character of the book thus begun. By a collation of all the existing versions vi PREFATORY NOTE of chapters and separate details, the editor has en- deavoured to retain everything that seemed to him ready for publication, while giving each chapter com- pleteness and continuity, so far as was possible, within itself. Almost all the matter in the first of the divisions mentioned above has been included. Much of the portion relating to The Tempest was in so unfinished a condition that it could not have been inserted with- out fundamental alteration. Fortunately, three of the existing chapters on that subject were in such a state that they could be printed, to all intents and purposes, as they were left : the fourth is the result of a collation of two parallel chapters, in which Mr. Elton's text, with a few necessary changes, has been carefully pre- served. The chief portion of the editor's task has lain in verifying the quotations with which the book abounds, and supplying the footnotes and references. As the papers supplied few clues, beyond the names of the authors, to these quotations and references, this task has involved some time ; and the publication of the book has been delayed unavoidably thereby. It has been the one object of the editor, in under- taking his part in the work, to present these papers in their true light as a sound and weighty contribution to Shakespearean scholarship. If, in many cases, they deal with familiar aspects of the subject, their attitude seems to him to be distinguished by singular independ- ence of view, and by a characteristic ability to produce and handle the complex details of evidence, often of a confusing and contrary nature. They bear convincing witness to the learning and wide research of their accomplished author. A. H. T. Chichester, January, 1904. CONTENTS PAGE Charles Isaac Elton . . . ... 3 Facts and Traditions Relating to Shakespeare's Early Life 21 Stratford-on-Avon . . . ... 63 I. origin of name— prehistoric remains : PATHLOW AND THE liberty — roman roads in warwickshire — ryknield street in "cymbeline" . . ... 63 11. medieval stratford : its connection with the bishops of worcester — growth of the town — the fairs and markets— episcopal rights in stratford— officers of the medieval borough . . , . . ^j iii. the parish church — college of priests — leland and loveday : their accounts of the church and monu- MENTS . . . . ... 80 IV. THE GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS : EARLY RULES AND CUSTOMS — RE-FOUNDATION BY HENRY IV. — THE CHAPEL . . 83 V. INTERIOR OF THE GUILD CHAPEL — THE DANCE OF DEATH: . SHAKESPEARE'S PICTURES OF DEATH — DESCRIPTION OF OTHER FRESCOES . . . . ... 86 VI. THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL— THE GUILD-HALL : PERFORMANCES OF PLAYS THEREIN — THE SCHOOLROOMS — THE NEW CORPORA- TION (1553) . . . ... 97 SNITTERFIELD, WiLMCOTE, AND THE MANOR OF ROWINGTON . I07 Midland Agriculture and Natural History in Shake- speare's Plays . . . . . . 139 viii CONTENTS PAGE Landmarks on the Stratford Road and in London, 1586-1616 179 I. Shakespeare's journey to London {e. 1586) . . .179 II, the road to LONDON— ROLLRIGHT STONES— GRENDON UNDER- WOOD — AYLESBURY TO UXBRIDGE . ... 182 III. UXBRIDGE TO TYBURN— ST. GILES' , ... 19O IV. gray's inn — THE REVELS OF 1594 AND "THE COMEDY OF errors" — "twelfth night" AT THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, 160I-2 . . . . ... 193 V. THE GARDENS OF GRAY'S INN — JOHN GERARD's GARDEN IN HOLBORN . . . . ... 201 VI. SHAKESPEARE A HOUSEHOLDER IN BISHOPSGATE — CROSBY PLACE 205 VII. THE PARISH OF ST. HELEN'S— DESCRIPTION IN STOW'S "survey" 2IO Shakespeare's Descendants — His Death and Will . . 223 I. Shakespeare's family — marriage of susanna shakespeare TO JOHN HALL— disposal OF SHAKESPEARE'S REAL PROPERTY — THE poet's legacy TO HIS WIFE . . . . 223 II. Shakespeare's death — description of the stratford MONUMENT — DETAILED NOTES ON THE EPITAPH — JOHN hall : ITS POSSIBLE AUTHOR . ... 23O III. JOHN hall's CASE-BOOKS — INFORMATION WITH REGARD TO HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER — HIS WIDOW . ... 239 IV. JUDITH SHAKESPEARE — HER MARRIAGE TO THOMAS QUINEY — HER PLACE IN HER FATHER'S WILL — THE QUINEY FAMILY — ALLUSIONS TO GROCERS AND DRUGGISTS IN SHAKESPEARE . 252 V. ELIZABETH HALL — HER MARRIAGES — HER WILL — SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES OF SHAKESPEAJIE's STRATFORD PROPERTY . . 265 Illustrations of Shakespeare in the Seventeenth Century 277 I. Howell's Letters : I. Howell's relations with ben jonson — his lines on DAVIES' welsh GRAMMAR — LONG MELFORD IN SHAKESPEARE AND IN Howell's letters . . ... 277 II. HOWELL ON TRADE AND COMMERCE — WINES AND ALES . . 282 III. HOWELL AT VENICE — ILLUSTRATIONS OF "THE TEMPEST," " OTHELLO," ETC. . . . ... 286 IV. ANECDOTES AND LEGENDS IN HOWELL'S LETTERS — IRISH FOLK- LORE—JOAN OF ARC . . ... 293 CONTENTS ix II. Ward's Diary: I, THE REV. JOHN WARD — HIS MEDICAL TRAINING — HIS REMARKS page ON CLERGY AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION . . . 298 II. WARD AT STRATFORD — HIS NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH — SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EPIDEMICS— CONVIVIAL HABITS OF THE DAY . . . . ... 304 III. ward's MEMORANDA ON SHAKESPEARE'S ART — ILLUSTRATIVE PHRASES IN THE DIARY . . . . . 3II IV. HISTORICAL REFERENCES — WARD ON THE HISTORY AND AN- TIQUITIES OF STRATFORD AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD — HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH SHAKESPEARE'S RELATIONS . • 317 III. DowDALL, Aubrey, Etc. : I. DOWDALL's letter to SOUTHWELL, 1693 — RODD's PREFACE — DOWDALL AT KINETON — HIS VISIT TO STRATFORD . . 327 II. DOWDALL's visit to WARWICK — THE BEAUCHAMPS AND NE- VILLES IN SHAKESPEARE — THE GREVILLES . . . 334 III. WILLIAM hall's LETTER TO EDWARD THWAITES, 1694 . . 339 IV. A NOTE BY GILDON — AUBREY — MR. BEESTON's INFORMATION IN Aubrey's mss. — the "butcher-boy" and davenant LEGENDS . . . . ... 343 V. ALLUSIONS BY SHAKESPEARE TO THE BUTCHER's TRADE — inconsistency of evidence on the point . . . 348 The Production of "The Tempest" . ... 357 I. Hunter's Theories, 1839: I. hunter's "disquisition on 'the tempest'" — ralegh's "description of GUIANA " — DEWLAPPED MOUNTAINEERS AND HEADLESS MEN . . ... 357 II. "the tempest" AND JONSON'S " EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR" — FLORIO'S "MONTAIGNE" — " LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" . 368 III. LAMPEDUSA — A SUPPOSED ORIGINAL FOR "THE TEMPEST" — THE MAGIC OF "THE TEMPEST " — SHAKESPEARE AND ARIOSTO 374 II. The Marriage of the Earl of Essex, and Jonson's "Masque of Hymen," 1606: I. Essex's marriage — errors as to exact nature of cere- mony — MARRIAGE OF LADY ESSEX TO ROCHESTER, 1613 — ACCOUNT OF THE CEREMONIES AND MASQUES . . 395 II. SHAKESPEARE'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS MASQUES — JONSON's "masque of hymen" — PARALLELS WITH "THE TEMPEST" 4IO X CONTENTS III. The Marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, 1613 : page I. ACCOUNT OF THE MARRIAGE CEREMONIES . . . 423 II. PLAYS ACTED AT WHITEHALL AND HAMPTON COURT, 1613 — STORY OF THE " VERTUE MSS." . ... 434 IV. On A Possible Performance at the Blackfriars, c. 1606 : The Blackfriars Theatre and the Companies of Boy Actors . . , ... 450 I. blackfriars — history of the theatre . . . 451 II. construction of the theatre — its probable appearance AND SCENIC arrangements . ... 457 III. CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIVATE THEATRES — SITTING ON THE STAGE — THE INDUCTION TO JONSON's " CYNTHIA'S REVELS " 463 IV, THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL — NATHANIEL FIELD — THE PART OF ARIEL IN "THE TEMPEST" . ... 469 V. THE CHILDREN OF THE QUEEN'S REVELS AT BLACKFRIARS . 475 vi. the dispute of 1655 between proprietors and actors at the globe and blackfriars . ... 481 Index . . . . . ... 485 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON CHARLES ISAAC ELTON THE author of the following studies, a man of many- unusual accomplishments, of numerous interests, and of the kindest nature, Mr. Charles Elton, was born at Southampton, on December 6th, 1839. He was the eldest son of Mr. Frederick Bayard Elton, his mother being a daughter of Sir Charles Elton, Bart., of Clevedon Court, on the Bristol Channel. Hard by the ancient and beautiful house is the church where Arthur Hallam sleeps, and the place is full of memories of Tennyson and Thackeray. It was not the privilege of the writer to have any acquaintance with Mr. Elton till he met him in London, about 1878-80, and he is obliged to the kindness of Mr.' John White, c.b., for the following reminiscences of earlier years, and of a companionship more intimate. Mr. White writes: "Charles Elton was in the head class at Cheltenham College along with me for, I think, about two years, before we both went up, almost at the same time, to Oxford. There we were again together, at Balliol, until Elton was elected to an open Fellowship at Queen's ; and as, very shortly afterwards, I also became a Fellow of Queen's, we were, throughout our school and college lives, very much thrown together, 4 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON and, indeed, at the University were almost inseparable companions. ^' Neither at school nor college was Elton studious in the ordinary sense of the term. At Cheltenham he sat contentedly low down in his class; but I believe that if any class-mate capable of judging had been asked to point to a boy of genius, he would have been apt to point straight to Elton. In fact, only one other boy among us would, I think, have had a chance against Elton in such a competition — the late Frederick Myers. These two had several points in common. Both were wonderful boy-poets. Nothing produced by Elton, perhaps, equalled the marvellous three poems, all differing from each other totally in metre, style, and treatment of subject, which were sent in by Myers for a school prize on ' Belisarius,' and of which two were bracketed 'equal first,' while a second prize, specially awarded in that year, was only lost by the third through some curiously defective rhymes. But Elton also won our English verse prize, for two or three years in succession, with very beautiful compositions, richly eloquent in language, elegant in finish, harmonious in cadence, often exhibiting a certain gorgeousness of imagination which was distinctive of him, and rising sometimes into bursts of very genuine poetry. ''Old Cheltonians may still recall what was, perhaps, his greatest effort of this kind — a poem written during the Crimean war on av8pu)v yap e-TricpavSiv iraara yfj Ta(po?, and the fine rendering of its Greek subject in its last lines — " ' Far other monuments their praise rehearse — The grave of heroes is the universe ! ' "Apart from their poetic rivalry, Elton and Myers resembled each other in being alike the despair of our headmaster, the Rev. William Dobson, that great scholar and remarkable man, who created Cheltenham SCHOOL-DAYS 5 College, and had in Elton's day already made it a school of nearly seven hundred boys. For a youth of manifest power and yet complete indifference to success in the ordinary routine work of the school, Dobson had no toleration ; and accordingly these two, sitting at the bottom of the class, moved his ire not a little, especially Elton. That Elton, however careless of the daily set task, was reading omnivorously all the time, would not have consoled Dobson if he knew it. We boys knew it, and it impressed us much. I remember an account of Spinoza's philosophy given me by Elton long before we left school, and made so interesting by him that, though I was hearing the philosopher's name absolutely for the first time, I recalled, years afterwards at Oxford when reading of Spinoza, what Elton had then told me about him, and was amazed at the masterly grasp got by a schoolboy of a system of philosophy so difficult and obscure. But a vague pursuit of knowledge for its own sake was not encouraged by our headmaster, and Elton showed no promise or desire of attaining what to Dobson seemed the schoolboy's true goal — a scholarship at Balliol. Indeed, even in the kind of acquaintance he displayed with Latin and Greek — almost our sole subjects of study — Elton diverged very widely from our teacher's ideal. Dobson loved composition which imitated with an absolutely slavish fidelity a correctly chosen classical model, and he was capable of chuckling with delight over an exact reproduction of a Thucy- didean ' anacoluthon.' Elton, who had wandered through all sorts of Silver Age and mediseval Latin, wrote a Latin style certainly not Augustan, but as certainly his own. Such composition was not likely to win applause in our class, but to have produced it there at all showed, I think, original power. " As a freshman at Balliol I remember being handed by Jowett a piece of English to be put into Latin. Straight from the school of Dobson, I, seeing it was 6 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON historical, asked whether I should ' try to do it into the style of Livy or of Tacitus.' After the characteristic pause, and with a characteristic smile, ' Do it into good Latin,' said Jowett ; and his words were a sort of revelation to me. Elton needed no such revelation. He was proof against the imitative system of classical composition which was inculcated at Cheltenham, and in nothing written by him do I ever remember to have detected the slightest copying of any other man's style. "In personal appearance, Elton as a schoolboy and undergraduate was a strong contrast to what he after- wards became. The slim youth, whom I recall, with his pale, grave, interesting face and deep-blue, poetic eyes, had an air of languor strikingly different from the mien of that man of very full figure and exuberant vitality, who in later life impressed all who saw him with an idea of masterful force and energy. Elton's early taste for studies beyond his years has been men- tioned, but it probably never occurred to anybody to call him 'precocious.' He looked in boyhood much older than he was, and the maturity of his mind was what you would have expected from his looks. That his youthful languor gave place to higher spirits and more self-assertive activity was, no doubt, the result of a distinct improvement in health, and this in turn was undoubtedly a result of a life of quite singularly happy and suitable conditions. In youth, even more than most lads, he was careless of his health, and he certainly never seemed strong. At no outdoor game was he expert, though he could enjoy fives and racquets, and sometimes at school joined in football. But at indoor games he was always good. From boyhood he was a capital billiard player and he had a great knowledge of whist. When towards middle age he grew more robust, he took keen pleasure in shooting and lawn tennis ; but when at school and college, he AT OXFORD 7 never joined at all in the commonest open-air amuse- ments — the cricket and rowing. *'To the pursuit of university honours Elton never really applied himself with any devotion. His first- classes in Moderations and the Final School of Law and History, his Vinerian Scholarship, and his fellowship at Queen's were got without effort. At Balliol he con- tinued to be the wide and somewhat random rover through many kinds of literature he had begun to be at school, and his scholarship remained of a doubtfully classical kind, ill suited for winning ' Hertfords ' or 'Irelands.' His later love of archaeology had not yet shown itself, and to philology — just commencing to be regarded at Oxford as an essential part of good scholar- ship—he paid small attention. The only prize exercise he tried for was, I think, the Newdigate, and it was an open secret that his poem on ' The Vikings ' was placed first for that prize by certainly not the least eminent of the judges — Matthew Arnold. When odes in honour of the present Queen were called for by the University, on her visit to Oxford soon after her marriage, Elton's English ode was, with one other, selected for recitation out of numerous competitors. In the Final School of Literas Humaniores, Elton had not studied the set books carefully enough to give himself a fair chance of a first class ; but he nearly got one, not- withstanding ; and when he heard of his second, said at once that he had time to cover it by getting a first in. Law and History, which he proceeded to do in remarkably brilliant style. '' But however desultory was his pursuit of honours, and however devious and undisciplined his reading, I believe that Elton educated himself very effectively at Oxford, and left it a remarkably well-informed man. Of standard books, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and Shelley's poems were, I think, those I oftenest saw him take up ; but it was by his rare acquaintance with 8 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON the less generally well-known periods of history and of literature that he kept constantly astonishing even his most intimate friends. He had a genius, we used to say, for prying into nooks and corners, and that love of leaving the beaten track and exploring for himself, which afterwards made him, as a lawyer, specially erudite in curious and out-of-the-way branches of the law, displayed itself early. Whether he was ever a great historian in the common sense I am not sure, but he could describe delightfully the periods which par- ticularly took his fancy. He cared little for registering facts about them, but he imbibed their spirit, and his powerful, pictorial imagination revelled in making them alive again. All ballad-literature had a peculiar charm for him, and to him was rich in instruction in regard to the peoples among whom it had grown up. But even the lightest literature of the day did not escape his notice, and he had a broad and human tolerance of rubbish. Literally, he devoured books by the roomful. Once, when he was laid up by a tooth- ache, I remember his asking me to bring him ' some novels.' I brought him a three-volume novel from the library. 'What's that?' said he, pointing contemp- tuously at the three fat volumes. ' I shall have finished that thing before you can turn round. Tell them to send me the full of a hand-truck.' And though he ran so rapidly through what he read, he seldom missed a point in it. In an examination undergone by him (I think it was for a ' Jenkyns' Exhibition,' won by the present master of Balliol, Dr. Caird), the subject for the English essay was (in effect — I am not sure of the precise wording), 'Nationality as a basis of political division.' Elton wrote an essay which so exacting a critic as the late Archdeacon Edwin Palmer pronounced to me ' excellent — a complete synopsis of the way the whole thing would work out.' Repeating this compliment to Elton, I remarked that I did not know he had ever HIS SENSE OF HUMOUR 9 given a thought to the subject or had read a line upon it. 'Neither had I,' said he, 'till a few nights ago, at the Union, I chanced to run my eyes over some magazine articles, of which two or three bore straight on this subject. They were rather good, and I think I got all the plums out of them into my essay — along with a little make-believe padding of my own. Fancy my having taken in the Dons so !' The 'Dons' he had ' taken in ' were the Fellows of Balliol, as compe- tent examiners as could be found. Elton might be trusted to pick the plums out of whatever he glanced over. He was the most keen-eyed and unerring of critics,' and any ' padding ' put in by him was sure to consist of acute and interesting observations, only ' make-believe ' in the sense that, very possibly, they left an impression of a more thorough and painstaking mastery of the subject than he had really acquired, a trick of style few writers would not covet. "Socially, Elton did not aim in youth at a very large acquaintance, but he was distinctly popular in his own set. To be so widely known and such a general favour- ite as he was subsequently in London, and especially in the House of Commons, would not have seemed to be in store for him. His manner was quieter and more subdued than it afterwards became, and he was as little given to laughter as Mr. Disraeli himself. But he had in full measure that quality which I suppose is, among the young, the most attractive of all — sense of humour. Indeed, I think he had it in the most ' all-round ' form I ever met it. No kind of joke was lost upon him, and, among those who knew him well, I am by no means alone in thinking that he had a singular power of estimating at their right values all the manifold varieties of wit and of humour. "And one other quality I think he also showed in the most ' all-round ' form I have met it— courage. In regard to this quality boys gauge each other with an lo CHARLES ISAAC ELTON exactness unattainable in the more artificial later life, and, having been able to apply their tests to Elton, I confidently pronounce his to have been as fearless a nature as I have known. I do not of course refer merely to the courage which faces personal danger. In that I believe Elton to have abounded ; but he was strangely free, too, from the subtler timidities, which, making men shrink from risk of incurring ridicule or of being convicted of wrong judgment, frighten them into self- suppressions and pretences. Elton always dared to be himself. I never knew him afraid of anybody or of anything. ''Of Elton's maturer years and the more serious work of his life it will be for another and abler pen to render account. It has been my privilege to be allowed to record these few memories of the youth of one who, for nearly half a century, was, perhaps, my most intimate friend. And certainly I had full opportunity not only of observing Elton's own early years, but of comparing him, during them, with others, who have since been tried by the world and have not been found wanting. In Elton's class at Cheltenham College were Mr. John Morley and Dr. Henry Jackson of Cambridge. Con- temporary with him at Balliol were, among those now gone from us, leaving great reputations, Lord Bowen, Mr. T. H. Green and Sir Henry Jenkyns, and very many men, still living, who have attained the highest and most varied distinctions. Indeed, I doubt whether even Balliol ever saw a generation more remarkable than Elton's. To it belonged one living poet, who has written most finely ; it has given eminent judges to the Bench ; at the head of several Oxford Colleges, and of our two greatest public schools, are members of it ; in both branches of the Legislature it has achieved distinction, and among the officers of Parliament it can claim a curiously large number of the most prominent. In the Civil Service it has made its mark, and even in the Army, although LITERARY WORK ii it sent but some half-dozen recruits, it has scored a signal success with almost every one of them. Well, as I look back over all these men with the critical insight which comes of experience, it is easy to see how, in the practical qualities leading to fame and fortune, the tricks of manner which win the world and the steady un- swerving pursuit of single objects which attains them, this and that man may have excelled the man of whom I write ; but, among them all, I do not really think there was anyone of richer and rarer intellectual powers, of talents more brilliant and various and original, or of more interesting character and personality, than Charles Elton." I cannot hope to add to Mr. White's account any- thing of equal interest. It was plain to all who knew Mr. Elton well that he had one attribute of genius, the power of doing well, rapidly, and en se jouant (as gentle King Jamie said of himself), whatever he under- took. What he undertook, after his college days, was not often poetical, though he published some charming verses in Once a Week, at that time adorned by the genius of the great artists, Millais, Charles Keene, Frederick Walker, Sandys, Leech, with one little re- membered, but well worth remembering, M. J. Lawless, and of George du Maurier. A serial, to which Charles Reade and Mr. George Meredith contributed novels, and' Mr. Swinburne a remarkable tale of the Armagnac wars, gave hospitality to Mr. Elton's verse. But his main literary interest was in the borderland of history, archaeology, law, and the study of institutions. Though he did everything easily, he did nothing in- dolently, and I remember how often he sometimes rewrote passages in his valuable Origins of English History, throwing away page after page of manuscript, till he had satisfied himself. In his humour, his good- 12 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON ness of heart, his large facility, and wealth of out-of- the-way lore, he somewhat reminded one of Dr. John- son. A fragment of his Oxford career may be recalled. When he won his fellowship at Queen's College, in 1862, among the competitors was Mr. John Addington Symonds. In 1863 he married Miss Mary Augusta Strachey, his fellow-worker in literature and in the collection of books and of works of art. In 1864, after a tour in Norway, he published Norway, the Road and the Fell. He was called to the Bar in Michaelmas Term, 1865, and at once adopted the line in which he was pre- eminent, the study of early English land laws and institutions. Of this work the first-fruits was The Tenures of Kent (1867). But before the publication of this book, Mr. Elton's love of hunting in the dusty corners of history, and his loyalty to his friends, had led him to a discovery of practical moment. His old friend, Mr. Jowett, of Balliol, was then Regius Professor of Greek, on a salary of £4.0 a year. Christ Church, it was believed, owned the lands in Worcestershire, which were burdened by the salary of the Chair. But this burden appears to have been a point rather of tradition than of knowledge. Mr. E. A. Freeman had been in correspondence with Dean Liddell on the subject, and had called his attention, in a pamphlet, to the point as to the lands in Worcestershire. Dean Liddell, in a letter to The Times, challenged anyone to produce the deed to which Mr. Freeman had referred. For what follows we are indebted to a letter by Mr. Elton to Mr. Free- man. That historian's statement, and the Dean's challenge, were the points whence Mr. Elton began his researches. He thought that he found a flaw in the Dean's account of the titles of "the House" — a flaw of which the Dean was unconscious. The House possessed one deed, in which nothing was said of the lands and the burden on them. But the tradition as to the HIS HAPPY DISCOVERY 13 burden was mentioned in Wedmore's History. Wed- more knew, vaguely, of another deed. No trace or memory of it was discovered by Mr. Elton at the British Museum. At the Record Office the authorities were sceptical. There was only the first deed, already familiar to Christ Church. Mr. Elton persevered. If the second deed of Wedmore's tradition could be found, there was money provided for a suit in Chancery. Assisted by Dr. Brewer, the eminent historian of Henry VIII., Mr. Elton continued to pursue the chase, and at last was rewarded by the discovery of a roll which was to the purpose, a roll of which, apparently, no copy existed anywhere. The roll attested the burden on the lands for the Regius Professorship held by Mr. Jowett. By Dean Stanley's desire, Mr. Elton com- municated his discovery to The Times, and Christ Church fulfilled Dean Liddell's promise, and paid the salary to Mr. Jowett. Mr. Elton must have greatly enjoyed a search so congenial, and a discovery which so happily ended a disagreeable controversy. But I cannot remember having heard him allude to his triumphant pursuit of the missing roll. The delights of research in manu- script are poignant, but are known to few. Mr. Elton never wearied of them at a period when seekers were even more rare, and when the dark corners of history were less frequently explored than they are at present. " Most men," said a Saturday reviewer (Feb. 9th, 1867) "would find it as terrible to be alone in a big room with a Disgavelling Act as to be alone in a railway carriage with a man who thinks he understands the currency." To the vulgar eye, gavelkind seems to be a peculiarly Kentish custom, whereby, a landowner dying intestate, his land is equally divided among his sons. ''Gavel," it seems, is really nothing but rent (usually in kind or in services) paid by free tenants. Mr. Elton proved that much land, supposed to be held 14 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON in "gavelkind" (according to the popular sense of the term), was, in fact, not so held ; either it was not so held at the time of the Norman Conquest, or it has subsequently been *'disgavelled " by Royal Preroga- tive, or by Act of Parliament. Mr. Elton's work, of which a brief and clear account cannot here be given, is lucidity itself, and manifests a remarkable power of dealing with original records, and with complicated customs. Mr. Elton's practice at the Bar was mainly concerned with the laws of Real Property, a strange historical palimpsest. Mr. Elton's interest in his favourite themes was in- creased, and the spur to that dormant quality, his ambition, was blunted, when, in 1869, he succeeded to his uncle's estate of Whitestaunton, in Somerset. From his boyhood he had been devoid of ambition ; the work which he did he undertook because he liked it. Quite probably, had he not become the squire of Whitestaunton, he would have risen to the higher honours of his profession. But these were, to him, by no means a thing to be snatched at, and Whitestaunton made him extremely happy. The ancient house lies in a deep green hollow of the Somerset hills, below it are the fish-ponds of the old Chantry, and beneath these the foundations of a small Roman villa excavated by the squire. The estate contains a miniature history of Southern Britain ; neolithic implements and tools of bronze are occasionally found ; then comes the villa, with its traces of the Roman occupation, while the name, Whitestaunton, speaks of St. White, an early saint of the English conquerors of the native Celts. The church is dedicated to St. Andrew, and was ministered to, of old, by the Guild of St. Mary of Whitestaunton. At the Reformation the Guild was confiscated, and the Lady Anne Brett, who declined to believe in the shifting creeds of Henry VIIL, lost her lands, and her "fair old stone mansion." These were MULTIFARIOUS STUDIES 15 later restored to her family, and remained in the hands of the Bretts till 1723, when they were acquired by the Eltons. The house had been partly remodelled in the Tudor times, but is essentially a very ancient structure, lacking nothing but a ghost to add a pleas- ing terror. The fish-ponds still contain large and highly educated trout, which have ascended from a burn flowing into the Yarty, ''the roaring Yarty " of Drayton. The scene is typically English, and an ideal home for an historian and archaeologist. The little stream, and the changes of the floods and frosts of centuries, have broken up the baths and hypo- causts and mosaic flooring of the Roman villa, which Mr. Elton described in a paper published by The Academy (September ist, 1883). Not many relics were found, mainly a few coins of the fourth century and fragments of the red " Samian " ware. Probably the villa was the home of a Roman official connected with the ironworks of the period ; and, judging from the amount of ashes, the house may have been burned in a rising of the British workers, or by the English conquerors. Here Mr. Elton lived a hospitable and learned life, and the writer has many pleasant recollec- tions of fishing in the Yarty and the ponds, of delving for undiscovered treasures in the villa, and of lawn tennis on the lawn. Mr. Elton was much more addicted to shooting than to the contemplative man's recreation, and was an active, nay, an indefatigable, player at lawn tennis. He was indeed an ideal squire of the old school, and in his dominions was the ''Good Tyrant" of Plato's dream — ^just, generous, and always accessible to his rural neighbours. In an obituary notice it is said that he had been regarded as the model of the squire in Mrs. Ward's Robert Elsmere — a most im- probable suggestion, as he did not concern himself with the criticism of the Book of Daniel, and was incapable of shaking the faith of the most innocent clergyman. i6 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON His studies were multifarious, but not in the field of biblical conjecture. Doubtless the best representative of his work is The Origins of English History^ a rich repository of ancient geographical lore and a valuable exploration of the dim hints of classical knowledge about our island. Perhaps not less interesting is his essay on Market Rights and Tolls, contributed in a Royal Commission of 1888. In working at the early history of Scotland the present writer found Mr. Elton's essay on Markets and Burghs invaluable, and his orally communicated criticism of the greatest service. He was, indeed, an encyclopaedia of knowledge on all manner of topics — classical, archaeological, biblio- graphical, artistic, geographical. " Reading makes a full man," and his reading was as wide as his criticism of evidence was keen. His Career of Columbus (1892) is full of the misty legends of " isles indiscover- able in the unheard-of West," while the thin vein of historic gold is acutely disengaged and displayed. In the matter of art he was fond, chiefly, of the faience of Rhodes, Persia, and Anatolia. A beautiful and varied collection decorated the large studio, converted into a drawing-room, of his house in Cranley Place ; here, too, were some of the finest of his books and illuminated manuscripts. The rest had no idle life on the shelves of his study and his library at Whitestaunton. The pottery is catalogued (1901), as is the library, in a volume dear to book collectors. His own work on great book collectors (1893) was undertaken in collaboration with Mrs. Elton. Indeed, there was none of his work in which she had not her part ; and it is at once im- possible to write about their long companionship, and to give any fair idea of Mr. Elton's life, without entering on a subject too sacred. Happy nations, they say, have no history, and there is little biography in the prosperous life of a happy man. Mr. Elton's politics were of no extreme com- IN AND OUT OF PARLIAMENT 17 plexion. If his ideas were Liberal in early youth, and if in 1883 he consented to stand as Conservative candi- date for West Somerset, the change was only due to the usual effect of years. He defeated his opponent, Lord Kilcoursie, in February, 1884, and in March of that year made four '< maiden speeches" on the same afternoon. Punch observed humorously on this novel performance, but the subjects of the speeches were legal Bills, concerned with matters in which Mr. Elton was an expert. As a rule he seldom spoke, only when he had something useful to say, which perhaps no one else could have said. He was unseated by Sir Thomas Acland in 1885, was returned again in 1886, and re- tired at the General Election of 1892. For him the House had none of the strange fascination which it exercises over so many men, victory did not elate nor defeat depress him. He had been heard to say that "the Age of the Antonines" — the age of peace and prosperity — '' is ended," but history had taught him to acquiesce in the vicissitudes of national fortunes. When he spoke it was without nervousness, and with- out rhetoric, but with lucid and genial humour. His interests in the past, in sport, in literature, in law, and in the happiness of his tenants and neighbours, re- mained what they had ever been till his death, after a brief illness, caused by a chill, in April 1900. The loss to all who knew him in any capacity, as landlord, friend, or neighbour, was great ; he had not chosen the path of any ambition, but had modestly and effect- ually done his duty, and the work which he found to his hand. That his powers might have carried him to higher place is certain, but ambition is not a duty, and no man can be justly styled "indolent" who did the laborious tasks that were his pleasure, and who communicated the pleasure and the knowledge of which he was so liberal. If he "warmed both hands at the fire of life," he diffused the radiance and the i8 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON glow ; and is remembered as a man just, kind, genial, and generous would desire to be. One recalls him, and his friendly welcome, with his pipe among his books and papers, in his London study ; or on the low hills, and among the ancient trees of his rural home, one remembers the happiness afforded by his hospi- tality, his wisdom, and his wit, his fragments of for- gotten lore ; for to him, as to Tom Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. Time might have said, "Whatever I forget you learn." Of his Shakespearean studies, this is not the place for criticism ; but the book seems likely to be the most widely appreciated of his works. For once his erudi- tion and acuteness are expended on a theme which does, not interest special students alone, but all lovers of English literature. I ANDREW LANG January, 1904 FACTS AND TRADITIONS RELATING TO SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE FACTS AND TRADITIONS RELATING TO SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE I WHEN Oldys began annotating his '^ Langbaine," very little was known of the Stratford records, which are now so familiar to the world. Hardly any- thing had been done towards distinguishing the several William Shakespeares and Anne Hathaways who appear in the local documents, or to separate the history of the poet's parents from that of the shoemaker, John Shakespeare, and his wives. We will give an example of the prevailing confusion of thought from a bio- graphical notice of the poet written by John Britton, F.S.A., early in the present century,^ observing that the John Shakespeares in question are treated as one person, married in due turns to all the Mrs. Shakespeares in the register. Here, says the antiquary, some doubts arise ; for if the father of William Shakespeare married a third wife, that ceremony must have occurred within seven months after the decease of the second ; and when he applied for the grant of the Arden arms, he is stated in the register to have had those children by the third wife ; yet these children are not alluded to by the College 1 Remarks on the Life and Writings of William Shakespeare in Whit- tingham's edition of the plays, 1814; revised and enlarged, i8i8. 22 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE record, nor does it contain any reference to a second or third marriage. We here see the real origin of Better- ton's account of the '' woolstapler with ten children," which Oldys copied in his early note. There was also a great dispute as to the exact date of Shakespeare's birth, and consequently of his age when he died. Langbaine, whose book was printed in 1691, took a copy of the Stratford epitaph from Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire to the effect that the poet died on the 23rd of April, "in the year of our Lord 1616, and of his age fifty-three." Both Langbaine and Oldys took this as meaning that he was fifty-three years of age ; whereas, if they had seen the baptismal certificate, they would have known that he had just completed the fifty-second, and was beginning the fifty- third year of his age. The effect was to antedate his birth by a twelvemonth. The words of Oldys are taken with little alteration from Rowe and Betterton ; and in describing the poet he says: "The son of Mr. John Shakespeare, woolstapler ; was the eldest of ten children, born 23 of April, 1563 ; was brought up in his youth to his father's business," etc. Opposite to the " Aet. 53 " in the text he wrote the words, "Consequently born in 1563." On this, however, Malone remarked : "He was born in 1564. This inscription led Oldys into the mistake. He died on his birthday and had exactly closed his fifty-second year." Mr. Bolton Corney> showed in an essay on the assumed birthday of Shake- speare, that Malone was entirely depending on Joseph Greene, the master of the free school at Stratford from 1735 to 1 77 1, and afterwards Vicar of Welford. Mr. Greene, a sufficiently learned man, took an extract from the baptismal register, stating that William, son of John Shakespeare, was baptised the 26th of April, 1564, and added in his own handwriting that the birth was on the 23rd. " He was born three days before," says Malone ; "I have said this on the faith of Mr. Greene, HIS BIRTHDAY 23 who I find made the extract from the register which Mr. West gave to Mr. Steevens ; but qu^re, how did Mr. Greene ascertain this fact ? " ^ It has often been said that there was a practice in those days of christening infants three days after birth ; and Mr. Knight even maintained that infancy was surrounded with such perils, when medical science was imperfect, that we might well believe in Shakespeare's first seeing the light ''only a day or two previous to this legal record of his existence, "^ There are probably as many exceptions as examples to be found of this rule, if it ever existed. It was occasionally of great importance that a child should be christened without delay.^ But in the absence of special circumstances, we should go by the rule in the Prayer-book. Parents are now admonished to bring the child to church on the first or second Sunday after its birth, or some other holy-day falling between, unless there is grave cause to the contrary. This rule, though hard of enforcement in our rigorous climate, is less severe than that which prevailed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The admonition of the Prayer-book of 1559 was that baptism should not be deferred any longer than the Sunday or other holy-day next after the birth, "unlesse upon a great and reasonable cause, to be declared to the Curate, and by hym approved." Let us apply this doctrine to Shakespeare's case. Taking the 1 See Malone, Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, 1821, ii, 610; also Bolton Corney, An Argument on the assumed Birthday of Shakspere reduced to shape, A.D. 1864, pp. 16. 2 Charles Knight, William Shakspere, a Biography, 1843, p. 26. 5 A husband's rights, for instance, over his wife's land depended in some districts on the fact that issue was born alive. There is an ancient inquisition about lands at Boughton-Aluph, in Kent, set forth in the Calendarium Genealogictim (ed. C. Roberts, 1865, ii. 469; 21 Edw. I.), where the jury found " that one Joanna de Laverton bore a daughter at dawn on the day of her death, which daughter the rector baptised at the daybreak, alive and crying, and she lived from the time of her birth unti sunrise of the same day, when she died,' 24 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE ordinary tables for finding Easter, we see that Easter Sunday fell on April 9th, in the Julian year 1564, or 1564-5 old style. The next holy-day is Wednesday, April 19th, the festival of Archbishop Alphege. The next is Sunday, April 23rd, St. George's Day ; the next again is Tuesday, April 25th, St. Mark's Day ; and there are no other festivals during the rest of the month. The following table will show the state of the calendar. April, 1 564, Julian; 1564-5, English. Golden Number, 7. Sunday Letter, BA. Day. 16 Letter. Week- day. Festivals, A Sun. First Sunday after Easter. (Low Sunday.) 17 b Mon. 18 c Tues. 19 d Wed. Alphege, Archbishop and Martyr. 20 e Thurs. 21 f Fri. 22 g Sat. Inventio Sti Dionysii. 23 A Sun. Second Sunday after Easter. St. George, Martyr. 24 b Mon. St. Mark's Eve. 25 c Tues. St. Mark, Evangelist. (Black Crosses.) 26 d Wed. Morrow of St. Mark. (Baptism of Shakespeare.) 27 e Thurs. 28 f Fri. Vitalis, Martyr. 29 g Sat. 30 A Sun. Third Sunday after Easter. Erkenwald, Bp. The christening would actually have taken place on the Sunday, St. George's Day, if the child were born on any day between the i6th and 20th inclusive. If the birth was on the Friday or Saturday, the strict letter of the rule would fix the baptism for St. Mark's Day ; but who would have chosen for such a purpose the day of the ''Great Litany," when all the crosses and altars used to be draped in black, the festival itself being commonly known as " Black Crosses "? It may be said that these observances had been abolished at the Reformation ; but we should answer that it was only six years since Protestantism had been re-estab- HIS BIRTHDAY 25 lished, that Mary Shakespeare herself was almost certainly a Roman Catholic during the period from 1553 to 1558, and that her father, Robert Arden, showed the sincerity of his own belief by the bequest of his soul to God ''and to our blessed Lady, Saint Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven."^ But as a matter of fact, any history of the Calendar will show that St. Mark's Day continued to be "prolific in superstitions " long after the Reformation was com- plete. Brand collected a vast quantity of folk-lore about the ghostly company of those who were to die within the year walking through the churchyard as soon as that fatal day began. ^ Hampson made a similar collection in his account of the Medieval Calendar. 3 Pennant said that in North Wales no farmer would "hold his team" on that day, for fear of losing one of the oxen. " In the year of our Lord 1589," says Vaughan in his Golden Grove, "I being as then but a boy, do remember that an ale-wife, making no exception of days, would needs brew upon St. Mark's days ; but lo, the marvellous work of God ! while she was thus labouring, the top of the chimney took fire, and, before it could be quenched, her house was quite burnt. Surely, a gentle warning to them that violate and profane forbidden days ! " The same ob- jection, of course, would have applied if the boy were born on St. George's Day, with the additional grave cause for postponement of the baptism, that there was only one clear day between the Sunday and the un- lucky or forbidden festival. The result is that we are left in some uncertainty ; but it seems clear, at least, that Shakespeare was born either on Friday, April 2ist, 1564, or on the Saturday or Sunday following. 1 See copy of will in Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 53. 2 Brand, Popular Antiquities, ed. Sir H. Ellis, i. 192-6 ; where the references to Pennant and Vaughan will likewise be found. •^ Hampson, Medii ^vi Kaletidarium, i. 219-25. 26 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE II The first great event in Shakespeare's Hfe was his marriage, which (as it must be presumed) was solemn- ised in the year 1582. The place of marriage is unknown. The Christian name of his wife and her age — more than seven years in advance of his own — are known only by the inscription on her tomb. That her surname was Hathway or Hathaway is inferred from a vague phrase or two in her granddaughter's will. But the early biographers all agreed that Anne Shakespeare was the daughter of one Hathaway, a sub- stantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford ; and the original statement is supported by the evidence which has been since collected. The only dispute remaining open is whether she belonged to the Hatha- ways of Stratford, or to those whose home was in the adjoining parish of Weston, on the left side of the Avon. Malone at one time thought that she was that Anne Hathaway of Shottery who had married William Wilson in 1580,^ but soon found the idea was erroneous. The coincidence between the names continued, never- theless, to be the source of mistakes. Mr. Greene " imagined that our poet's wife was of Shottery " ; and he was induced to this belief, as Malone supposed, by finding notices in the register about '' Richard Hatha- way, otherwise Gardner, of Shottery " and his descend- ants. If he had looked nearer home, he would have found Hathaways in Luddington or Weston-on-Avon, both almost within sight of his vicarage. Mr. Greene jumped to the conclusion that the "cottage," or farm- house, in Shottery belonging to the Misses Tyler, and before them to an old Mr. Quiney, might have been 1 Stratford marriage register, 1579-80, in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii, 187 ; see Malone's Shakespeare, u.s., ii. 113, note 7. ANNE HATHAWAY 27 settled on Judith Shakespeare as part of her mother's property upon her marriage with Tom Quiney ; all which , things were easily disproved, but soon took a new lease of life among the roots of the local traditions.^ At one time Malone thought that Anne Hathaway was the child of the other Richard Hathaway, of Shottery, though the evidence was necessarily defi- cient. ''There is no entry of her baptism, the register not commencing till 1558, two years after she was born." He came round, however, to the opinion that she was not of Shottery at all, but of the family that held lands in Luddington, one of the Stratford hamlets, and owned a small freehold patrimony in the adjoining parish of Weston, across the Gloucestershire boundary. There were persons of the name of Hathaway farming Sir John Conway's lands at Luddington in the reign of Elizabeth, and the name continued upon the estate rolls till about the year 1775. Here then, says Malone, as a final decision, it is not improbable that Shakespeare found his wife. The suggestion has been improved by "a so-called tradition" that their marriage took place at Luddington, for which there is no evidence of any kind. And Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps^ was of opinion that the notion of Anne's residence at Ludding- ton should be summarily dismissed. There can be no doubt, however, that she came from a yeoman's family at Weston ; and whether her family held a farmhouse on Sir John Conway's property across the river or not is a matter of very little importance. Great efforts have been made to connect her with the last-mentioned Richard Hathaway of Shottery. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps quotes an unpublished version of Rowe's Life of Shakespeare {ante 1766), now in the ^ See quotations from Greene's unpublished version of Rowe's bio- graphy, in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 189-90. •^ Id., 183. 28 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE British Museum, for the statement that her father's name was John, and says that Jordan described her as "a daughter of Samuel Hathaway."^ It is not likely, he adds, that there was any satisfactory evidence in favour of either of these "nominal ascriptions," and we shall find the same remark applicable to the case of the various Hathaways of Shottery. Richard Hathaway's wilP contained a legacy to his daughter Agnes, besides a gift to another Agnes, daughter of Thomas Hathaway, whose relationship to the testator is unknown. It is pointed out, moreover, that Anne Hathaway was a common name in Shottery ; a person of that name was married, as we have seen, to William Wilson ; and Bartholomew, Richard Hatha- way's eldest son, had a daughter Anne, who married Richard Edwardes. The poet's wife, said Malone, might have been Bartholomew's sister, though he did not mention her in his will ; but the suggestion was admitted to be improbable. It has been surmised that she was the same person as Richard Hathaway's daughter Agnes, for whom a marriage portion was provided by his will. That would account, it is said, for her father's friend taking part in the application for a licence before her marriage, for his using a seal with Richard Hathaway's initials upon the same occasion, and for her acquaintance with Hathaway's shepherd, Thomas Whittington, who said in his will (i6oi)that Mrs. Shakespeare owed him forty shillings.^ But these are only subsidiary details. The point to be proved is that Agnes and Anne were used as two forms of one name. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps* 1 Id., 1 86. ^ Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 195-6, with other extracts from wills and reg^isters relating to the Hathaway families. ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 186, note 10. See also Richard Hathaway's will, "Item, I owe unto Thomas Whitting-ton, my sheepherd, fower poundes sixe shillinges eight pence." * Id., 184-S, note 5. HIS MARRIAGE 29 thought they were "sometimes convertible." He shows that the pet name Annice (Annys, Annes) was used for both without much distinction ; that the person called "Agnes, daughter of Thomas Hathaway" in the yeoman's will is named Anne in the parish register; and that Philip Henslowe spoke of his wife as Agnes in his will, but that she appeared as Anne in the Dul- wich register, and also in the inscription on her tomb- stone. The names in reality appear to be quite distinct. Agnes, or Agneta, was one of the earliest English names ; it was used in honour of the saint whose martyrdom and "second appearance" were com- memorated on the 2ist of January and the octave following. The other name was not much in use before the Reformation. It is supposed to refer, not to the festival of July 26th, but to an Eastern saint very little known here till the arrival of Queen Anne of Bohemia. Mr. Chandler noticed, in his edition of the Cressingham Court-rolls, that Alice, Agnes, and Margaret were anciently the favourite names for women. Agnes occurs fourteen times in the rolls, and Alice sixteen times, but there is only one Anne in the whole series. Moreover, the subject of "mis- nomer" was so important in our early law that it is easy to bring together authorities on the point. There are several relevant cases in the Year-Books and Abridg- ments. As early as the thirty-third of Henry VI. it was decided that Anne and Agnes are distinct baptismal names and not convertible, so that if an action was brought against John and his wife Agnes, and the wife's name was Anne, the variance was essential and could not be amended. Two other cases are reported by Croke. In King v. King, decided in the forty-second Elizabeth, the Court resolved that Agnes and Anne are several names, and that a mistake between them could not be amended after a verdict. In Griffith v. 30 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE Sir Hugh Middleton, in the fifteenth year of James L, the Chief Justice said that '^ Joan and Jane are both one name, but Agnes and Anne, Gillian and Julian, are different."^ The suggestion may therefore be dismissed that the poet married, under the name of Anne, an Agnes Hathaway of Shottery. It would, indeed, have been somewhat difficult to prove that his wife was a Hath- away at all, if it were not for the bond relating to their marriage which Sir Thomas Phillipps found at Worcester, and for the recognition by Lady Barnard of the Weston Hathaways as her kinsfolk. There is, we may say, no reasonable doubt that Anne belonged to a Gloucestershire family, but whether she was remotely connected with the great Gloucestershire Hathaways is a very different question. There are many records showing that the Hathaways were im- portant people in the Forest of Dean from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. A William Hathaway held a manor in Lydney in the tenth year of Henry II. The Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester in 1221 show that Gilbert Hathaway and others beat and maimed a certain Hugo Chark, who was probably a disturber of the Forest. A William Hathaway was one of the two owners of the parish of Ruardean in the reign of Edward I. A Ralf Hathaway owned the manor of Hathaways at Minsterworth in the next reign. Another Hathaway was appointed Keeper of the Forest ; and several instances of the same kind might be added. But when we consider that nothing was heard of this family in later times, and that the Forest of Dean was at the other end of the county, we must admit that there is at present no means of connecting them with the family at Weston-on-Avon. It should also be re- membered that Weston is close to Stratford, and ^ Croke's Reports, ed. Leach, 1790-2, i. 776 ; ii. 425. HIS MARRIAGE 31 therefore not far from the old Heath-way, which, as we suspect, gave a surname to the various Hathaways in that neighbourhood. The questions raised about the licence and bond relating to the poet's marriage are interesting in them- selves ; but it must be remembered that they do not relate to the time at which the marriage was contracted, but only to a detail of the ceremony at which it was solemnised. We may say at once that there is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare and his wife had made an irregular or clandestine marriage, though they appear to have been united by a civil marriage con- tract some time before the ceremony was performed in face of the Church. We should distinguish between regular and irregular contracts. A contract of future espousals was regular, but it did not amount to marriage, being nothing more in reality than a mutual covenant to be married at a future time. A contract of present espousals, on the contrary, was a legal marriage. The man said, "I take thee for my wife," and the woman answered, "I take thee for my husband," or to that effect, before witnesses, and with the gift of a ring or some other symbolical object. A contract of this kind might legally be made by a boy over fourteen or a girl over twelve ; but it was provided by the looth canon that infants under twenty-one required the express consent of their parents and guardians. As Shakespeare was only eighteen years old, though his bride was twenty- six, it follows that John Shakespeare's consent was obtained. The congregation was frequently warned that such civil marriages ought to be contracted publicly, and before several witnesses. If these rules were broken, the offenders were liable to the punish- ments for clandestine marriage, such as fine, im- prisonment, or excommunication ; and the victim might be condemned to walk, like the Duchess of 32 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE Gloucester, in a white sheet, with bare feet and a taper alight : — '* Metbinks I should not thus be led along", Mail'd up in shame, with papers on my back ; And follow'd with a rabble that rejoice To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans." ^ The civil marriage required the religious solemnity to give the parties their legal status as to property ; but otherwise it was both valid and regular. The clandes- tine marriage was valid, but all parties could be punished for their offence against the law. It was of that kind which has been made familiar to us by the Fleet Street registers. A bankrupt parson who dreaded no fine or fall, or some irregular practitioner like Sir Oliver Martext, would unite a couple of runaways, "as they join wainscot."- "Thou saw'st them married?" asks the Host in Jonson's play of the New Inn.^ "I do think I did, and heard the words, / Philip, take thee Lettice . . . and heard the priest do his part." " Where were they married ? " " In the new stable. ..." " Had they a licence?" "Licence of love, I saw no other." It may be asked why marriages were not always solemnised in church after banns published or special licence obtained. "Get you to church," said Jaques, "and have a good priest that can tell you what mar- riage is."^ The answer is that it was difficult to get married, especially with due publication of banns, except in the latter half of the year, between Trinity and Advent. The ancient prohibitions had been relaxed by the Council of Trent ; but the decrees of that assembly were not accepted in England. In our own country the ancient rules prevailed. The banns could not be published, nor marriages solemnised, 1 2 Henry VI. , ii. 4, 30-3. - As You Like It, iii. 3, 88. ^ Act v., scene i. ^ As You Like It, u.s,, 86-7. LAWFUL TIMES OF MARRIAGE 33 although they might certainly be legally contracted, during any of the periods of prohibition, unless, indeed, a special licence were obtained. The periods extended from Advent to the Octave of the Epiphany, or January the 13th, exclusive ; from Septuagesima to the end of Easter Week ; and from the first Rogation Day, three days before the Feast of the Ascension, to Trinity Sunday, inclusive. These restrictions are described in certain old Latin verses, which are thus translated in the Termes de la Ley : — "Advent all marriage forbids, Hilary's feast to nuptials tends, And Septuagint no wedding rids, Yet Easter's Octaves that amends. Rogation hinders hasty loves. But Trinity that let removes,"^ " It is also certain," says Burn, ''that a distinction of times hath been observed as the law of our Reformed Church, not only from the clause in several licences which we may observe in our books, Quocunque anni tempore, but also from a remarkable dispute which happened in Archbishop Parker's time between the Master of the Faculties and the Vicar-General, whether the first only, or the second in conjunction with him, had a right to grant licences on that particular head. And after that, in Archbishop Whitgift's table of fees, there is first a fee for a licence to solemnise matrimony •without bamis, and afterwards a fee for a licence to solemnise matrimony in the time of prohibition ofhanns to be published." Several attempts were made to remove these disabilities, both in Parliament and in Convocation. In the seventeenth of Elizabeth a Bill was introduced to declare marriages after banns to be lawful at all times of the year, with the exception of nine days specially mentioned. In the Convocation of ^ Les Termes de la Ley (by J. Rastell), 1641, pp. 13, 14, s,v. Advent, D 34 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 1575) the Queen rejected an article proposing that marriages might be solemnised on any day in the year; "but these distinctions, being invented only at first as a fund (among many others) for dispensations, and being built upon no rational foundation, nor upon any law of the Church of England, have vanished of themselves."^ These dispensations were of different kinds. In some cases the publication of banns was required once and no more ; in others, one of the three publications was forborne ; and there were faculties, or licences, "expressly requiring all the three publications, and dispensing only with time or place." Instances of all these kinds, we are told, are very common in our ecclesiastical records, especially before the Reformation. On Thursday, the 28th of November, 1582, William Shakespeare went to the Bishop's Registry at Wor- cester with his two friends, Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, the two farmers from Shottery, and ob- tained a licence to be married to Anne Hathaway with only one publication of banns. Advent Sunday fell on December ist, so that there was only just time to get the banns called on the last day of November — St. Andrew's Day. Even then, however, in the absence of another dispensation, the wedding in church could not take place until the 13th of January, being the Octave of the Epiphany, when the period of prohibi- tion came to an end. There has been some discussion of an entry made in the book on the preceding day. There is a minute as to an application for a marriage licence "for William Shakespeare and Anne Whately of Temple Grafton in the County of Warwick." The licence to dispense with 1 Burn, Ecclesiastical Law, 9th ed., ii. 467-8. The words, "It is also certain . , . head," are quoted by Burn from Gibson's Codex, 430. The prohibited times are g-iven by Lyndwood (see Gibson's Codex, u.s., and Ayliffe's Parergon, 364). HIS MARRIAGE-LICENCE 35 banns was given in favour of ''William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway of Stratford." Temple Grafton is not one of the hamlets of Stratford. There is a curious coincidence in the name ; but we cannot attach much importance to it when we find that the objects of the application were quite different, not to mention the differences in the surnames and residences of the two intended brides. Anne Hathaway was not present when the application was made. This involved the necessity of proof that she had no parents living, and was beyond the age of wardship. We know that it was not very easy to prove her age, owing to the neglect in keeping a parochial register ; and it is probable that there were no certifi- cates produced to prove that her parents were dead, especially if they had died at Weston, in another diocese. Time, however, was very pressing, and an expedient was devised to meet the difficulty. The bond of indemnity was drawn in a somewhat unusual form — with a condition that Anne Hathaway should not be married "without the consent of her friends." It was necessary under the circumstances that the intended bridegroom should attend the office in person. On being presented to the Ordinary, a lawyer exercising the Bishop's jurisdiction at the Registry, he had to state his age and to show, as a minor, that he was furnished with his father's consent. One of the two friends would doubtless produce a letter or document bearing John Shakespeare's signature or attested mark. Then William Shakespeare had to testify on oath that to the best of his knowledge and belief there was no impedi- ment by way of precontract, kindred, or alliance, or by reason of any suit in the Ecclesiastical Court, and, in short, that he knew of no lawful cause why the licence should not be given. In the next place formal proof had to be offered that the parties were ''of good estate and quality " ; a point as to which no question 36 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE was likely to arise. The bonds-men being ready to give security in the usual way, the licence was accordingly granted, permitting the parties to be married ''with once asking of the banns of matrimony between them," subject, of course, to the ordinary rules as to marrying in the canonical hours and in the church or chapel of the place where one of the parties was in residence. The bond was executed in favour of Mr. Richard Cosin, a lawyer of Worcester, and Mr. Robert Warmstry, notary, and principal Registrar for the diocese, an office which was long hereditary in his family. The instrument was drawn up according to the precise directions provided by the Canon Law. The date was the 28th of November, in the twenty-fifth year of Elizabeth, the regnal year having commenced on the 17th of November, 1582. Fulk Sandells and John Richardson bound themselves in the sum of £^0, the obligation to be void if there was no impediment of the kind mentioned, if Anne obtained the consent of her friends, and if William Shakespeare duly indemni- fied the Lord Bishop of Worcester, John Whitgift, "for licensing them to be married together with once asking of the banns of matrimony between them." We do not know where the marriage took place. If it had been at Stratford, it would have been entered in the paper book then used as a register, and would have been copied into the existing parchment book, besides being recorded in the transcripts from time to time forwarded 'to Worcester. As Shakespeare's place of residence is not mentioned in the bond, it is possible that he was living for the time at Weston, or some other place in the neighbourhood. The wedding ceremony may have been actually performed at Weston ; but there are no registers of that parish for the date in question, and no transcripts for the same period have as yet been discovered at Gloucester. There is no doubt, however, that the ceremony was fully performed in accordance ANNE SHAKESPEARE 37 with the episcopal authority. Malone had an idea that Shakespeare was married at Billesley ; but this seems to be a mere conjecture, based on the fact that Elizabeth, the poet's grandchild, chose Billesley as the place for her second marriage. The world was all before her ; and yet she went for no apparent reason, but doubtless led by sentiment or affection, to the obscure little church.^ But at Billesley, as at Weston, the early registers are lost; and, unless transcripts be found, any further discussion of the question will be unprofitable. We know nothing about the appearance of Anne Shakespeare, though it might be possible to show what she was not like by comparing various passages in the plays and sonnets. We may be sure that she was not of the complexion despised in poor Phebe, that she had not those " inky brows," that " black silk hair," or the "bugle eyeballs" of Robin Redbreast. 2 There are, of course, many passages in the sonnets which would hardly have been circulated if Anne had been pale- lipped and of a dun complexion, and with "black wires" for curls on her head.^ Oldys thought that he had found out something more definite, and was con- vinced that Mrs. Shakespeare was lovely, cold, and frail. He was misled, as Malone has shown, by taking an incomplete view of the ninety-third sonnet, as if it had been an isolated statement and not part of an intricate series of arguments.^ He seems also to have been much struck with the poet's quotation from Edward III., as if it had been intended as an imputa- tion against Mrs. Shakespeare's character : — " For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds ; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. "^ ^ See Malone, op. cit, ii. 117, 118. Billesley was about four miles north-west of Stratford on the Alcester road. ^ As You Like It, iii. 5, 46, 47. ^ Sonnet cxxx., 1. 4. * "So shall I live, supposing thou art true, Like a deceived husband." ^ Sonnet xciv., 13-14. Cf. Edward III. (in "Leopold Shakespeare") ii. 2, 455. 38 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE In the next sonnet, however, it is admitted that all faults are hidden by "beauty's veil."i The comments of Steevens on the suggestion afford us an amusing specimen of his style. ' ' Whether the wife of our author was beautiful, or otherwise, was a circumstance beyond the investigation of Oldys . . . yet surely it was natural to impute charms to one who could engage and fix the heart of a young man of such uncommon elegance of fancy. "2 It may be assumed that the young couple lived with Mr. John Shakespeare, and that Anne Shakespeare helped in the housework, while her husband found something to da, either in teaching at school or copy- ing papers in a lawyer's office. Ill In or about 1586, Shakespeare came to London to seek his fortune, and it was not long before he was well known as an actor and playwright. About a century afterwards, someone invented the story of his robbing a park. Not once, but several times, was he guilty of this "extravagance," to borrow the discreet phrase of Mr. Nicholas Rowe;^ "and though it seemed at first to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occasion of exercising one of the greatest geniuses that ever was known in dramatic poetry." The park, in process of time, was identified with Charlecote, and the owner with Sir Thomas Lucy. Malone showed, however, by reference to the Records, that the Lucys had no park either at Charlecote or Fulbrooke.^ Part ^ Sonnet xcv., ii, " Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot." 2 Quoted m Malone, op. cit., xx. 307, note. ^ Accoutit of the Life of Shakespeare, 1709. ■* Malone, op. cit., ii. 145-9. See the note in Halliwell-Phillipps, ti.s., ii. 385- THE DEER-STEALING LEGEND 39 of the Fulbrooke estate, before the Hampton woods were inclosed, had been a park till the reign of Philip and Mary. The privileges of park and warren had been abolished before the property came to the Lucy family, but the name of Fulbrooke Park was still used as a title of courtesy.^ But it must be confessed that taking deer from any inclosed ground, even without any riotous conduct, was an offence within the Act of Elizabeth. After the lapse of centuries, the offence, if it hap- pened, may fairly be condoned. Many people, more- over, are pleased at thinking how valiantly the keepers would be encountered '^on a shiny night." But the poaching romance seems to have been unknown in 1693, when Mr. Dowdall left his club or ''knot of friends " at Kineton, and stayed at Stratford on the ^ The estate of Fulbrooke was granted, early in the fifteenth century, to the Regent Duke of Bedford, with leave to impale a park ; it is re- corded that he despoiled a nunnery, and pulled down a church and a whole village, to effect his purpose. After his death it was granted to John Talbot, Lord Lisle of Kingston Lisle, From him it passed to the great Earl of Warwick ; and after his death to his son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, who allowed the park and castle to fall into decay. Ful- brooke came into the possession of the Lucy family for a few years in 1510; it passed to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, when lord of the borough of Stratford ; on his attainder, it was bestowed on Sir Francis Englefield, who was convicted of treason and fled to Spain. The tract of open land, the park being dispaled and having no legal existence, was granted to Sir Francis' nephew, who sold the property in 1615 to the third Sir Thomas Lucy. "This Sir Thomas renewed the park, and by the addition of Hampton Woods thereto enlarged it" (Dugdale, A^ii. War., ed. Thomas, ii. 668-70). Leland (Itin., ed. Hearne, iv. 51-2) says, "Here (at Barford Bridge) I saw half a mile lower upon Avon on the right Ripe a fair park called Fulbroke. In this park was a pretty castle made of stone and brick, and, as one told me, a Duke of Bereford (Bedford) lay in it. . . . This castle of Fulbroke was an eyesore to the Earls that lay in Warwick-Castle, and was cause of displeasure between each lord. Sir William Compton, Keeper of Fulbroke Park and Castle, seeing it go to ruin helped it for- ward, taking part of it (as some say) for the building of his house at Compton (Wynyates), by Brailes in Warwickshire, and gave or per- mitted others to take pieces of it down." Mr. C. H. Bracebridge, of Stratford, published an account of the park in 1862. 40 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE way to the Warwick Assizes.^ The clerk, or old guide, who showed young Dowdall round the monu- ments, had clearly never heard the story, and did not mention buck or doe in his little biography : ''This Shakespear was formerly in this towne bound apprentice to a butcher, but . . . run from his master to London, and there was received into the Play-house as a serviture, and by this meanes had an opportunity to be what he afterwards prov'd. He was the best of his family, but the male line is extinguishd." The story first appeared in a private memorandum made by the Rev. Richard Davies, Vicar of Sapperton, in Gloucestershire, and at one time Archdeacon of Lichfield. He was the friend of a well-known antiquary, the Rev. William Fulman, who bequeathed all his MSS. and papers to him in 1688. Mr. Davies died in 1708, and left them to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, enriched in some cases with his own additions. These emendations do not add much credit to his literary character. Mr. Fulman had written a few words of a note on Shakespeare : — "William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire about 1563-4. From an actor of playes he became a composer. He died Apr. 23, 1616, aetat 53, prob- ably at Stratford, for there he is buried, and hath a monu- ment, Dugd. , p. 520." Mr. Davies filled up the gaps in a livelier strain, adding, between the first and second sentences — *'Much given to all unluckinesse in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sr. — Lucy, who had him oft whipt, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country to his great advancement ; but his reveng was so great that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man." We omit his coarse variation of the quibble on the ^ Vide infra, p. 327. ALLEGED BALLAD ON SIR T. LUCY 41 Lucy arms. After the reference to Dugdale and the Stratford monument, he added, ''on which he lays a heavy curse upon any one who shal remoove his bones. He dyed a papist." Davies made no reference to the ''bitter ballad," of which Rowe had heard some account in 1709, though it was supposed to be lost ; nor can we trace much likeness between the Archdeacon's foolish talk and the passages between Falstaff and Shallow. Rowe seems to have thought that Shakespeare was prosecuted for a libel. In the young man's opinion, we are told, he was somewhat too severely treated by Sir Thomas Lucy, and in order to revenge that ill-usage made a ba!lad upon him; "this, probably the first essay of his poetry ... is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that ho was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London." 1 The first stanza of the libel made a semi-public appearance in 1753, when Oldys was a prisoner for debt in the Fleet, and Capell was preparing his edition of the plays. A common interest led to friendly meetings between them ; and Capell was able to introduce the antiquary to a Mr. Wilkes, grandson of Mr. Thomas Wilkes, who had known Mr. Thomas Jones of Tarbick,2 a village about eighteen miles from Stratford. Mr. Jones had died in 1703, aged about ninety years. Their visitor told Capell and Oldys that Mr. Jones remembered hearing from old people at Stratford the story of Shakespeare's robbing Sir Thomas Lucy's park, and that the ballad was stuck upon the park gate, "which exasperated the knight to apply to a lawyer at Warwick to proceed against him." "Mr. Jones," says Capell, "had put down in writing ^ Rowe, op. cit. See Hallhvell-Phillipps, «.5. , ii. 380-3. ^ i.e. Tardebigge, three miles from Bromsgrove. 42 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE the first stanza of this ballad, which was all he re- membered of it " ; he seems to be quoting the words of the visitor, when he adds, ''Mr. Thomas Wilkes (my grandfather) transmitted it to my father by memory, who also took it down in writing." Oldys gave a less confused account of the matter, in a note first published by Steevens in 1778. He said that old Mr. Jones could remember the first stanza, "which, repeating to one of his acquaintance, he preserved it in writing, and here it is, neither better nor worse, but faithfully transcribed from the copy, which his relation very courteously communicated to me."^ Such a story Would naturally grow, as soon as any portion of it was pub- lished ; and we accordingly find Mr. A. Chalmers, in his edition of the plays, in 181 1, describing the poet as '*a man who was degrading the commonest rank of life, and had, at this time, bespoke no indulgence by superior talents." The ballad, he considered, must have made some noise at the knight's expense, "as the author took care it should be affixed to his park- gates, and liberally circulated among his neighbours." Malone, in 1790, was furnished with the entire song, found in a chest of drawers that probably belonged to Mrs. Dorothy Tyler, of Shottery. She died in 1778, aged about eighty years, in a house formerly belonging to Mr. Richard Quiney. Malone printed the lampoon in his appendix, " being fully persuaded that one part of this ballad is just as genuine as the other ; that is, that the whole is a forgery." Most people will now agree with his opinion that the song was made up from the opening scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor. He went so far as to see an allusion to Sir Thomas himself, and not merely to the Lucy coat-of-arms, in Slender's words: "They may give the dozen white luces in their coat."^ A line in the forged ballad refers ^ See note in Malone, Shakespeare, u.s., ii. 140, 141. ■" Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i. 16, 17. THE LUCYS IN THE PLAYS 43 to the same idea : ' ' Though luces a dozen he paints in his coat." This might have been written by a comedian on tour, but not by a Stratford man ; for everyone there knew that the Lucy coat showed ''three silver pikes gasping," and that coat is displayed on, or might be seen on, Sir Thomas Lucy's tomb. He also used an old device of three luces intertwined or fretted in a triangle. On one of the Lucy tombs, it is said, the same device was set in each of four corners ; but this, of course, is no proof that there were a dozen '' pikefishes " in the family coat.^ Putting aside the question whether Sir Thomas was caricatured as Shallow, one must admit that Shake- speare showed a certain respect for the Lucys and such persons bearing their names as he met with in the English chronicles. He follows Hall and Sir Thomas More in the matter of the pretended private marriage between Edward IV. and Dame Elizabeth Lucy, on which Richard III. rested his title for a time, though the story was afterwards told of Lady Elizabeth Butler. Dr. Robert Shaw was ordered to preach on the subject at Paul's Cross, and delivered a " shameful sermon " to prove that Edward V. and his brother were illegitimate by reason of a marriage of precontract with Elizabeth Lucy. But the people, we are told, stood as if they had been turned into stones. And "the preacher gat him home and never after durst look out for shame, but kept him out of sight as an owl." And when he was told that he was an object of scorn, "it so strake him to the heart that in few days after he withered away."^ The usurping Gloucester inquires of the Duke of Buckingham if he had spoken at the Guildhall about the blot on his nephew's title. "I did," is the reply, " with his contract with Lady Lucy, And his contract by deputy in France." ^ 1 The "dozen," however, need not have been intended literally. "^ Hall's Chronicle, ed. 1809, p. 368. '^ Richard III., iii. 7, 4. 44 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE Once more Gloucester comes in "between two bishops," and Buckingham repeats the story : — " You say that Edward is your brother's son : So say we too, but not by Edward's wife : For first he was contract to Lady Lucy — Your mother lives a witness to that vow."^ Sir William Lucy, who takes a prominent part in the first part of Henry VI., ^ is only once mentioned in Hall's Chronicle. In describing the Battle of North- ampton, fought upon the gth July, 1460, in which the Yorkists were victorious, the historian says that Sir William "made great haste to come to part of the fight, and at his first approach was stricken in the head with an axe."^ He is represented in the play as taking a leading part in the French war. We find him first coming to the Duke of York from the camp before Bordeaux, where old Talbot is beleaguered. The English are " park'd and bounded in a pale," like a herd of deer. "If we be English deer," says Talbot, " be then in blood ; Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch. "^ Lucy is sent to get assistance from Richard of York, and pleads for the rescue of the brave general and valiant John : " his son young John, who two hours since I met in travel toward his warlike father. " ^ "Thou princely leader of our English strength, Never so needful on the earth of France, Spur to the rescue of the noble Talbot, Who now is girdled with a waist of iron And hemmed about with grim destruction."^ 1 Ihid., 177-80. ^ The part which Shakespeare took in this play is, of course, one of the moot points of Shakespearean criticism. Beside the importance given to Sir WilHam Lucy, there are, however, one or two possible references to Stratford-on-Avon. The lines in the first act (i, 154) about " keeping our great Saint George's feast," and the comparison (i. 2, 142) of Joan of Arc to *' Helen, mother of great Constantine," may be reminis- cences of the paintings in the Guild Chapel. •' Hall, U.S.-, p. 244. ■* I Henry VI. iv. 2, 45-9. ■'' Id., 3, 35-6. '^ Ibid., 17-21. SIR WILLIAM LUCY 45 In the next scene he is introduced to Somerset by one of Talbot's captains — *' How now, Sir William, whither were you sent? " Both the question and the answer, we may observe, are in false English. *' Whither, my Lord? from bought and sold Lord Talbot ; Who, ring'd about with bold adversity, Cries out for noble York and Somerset."^ "If he be dead," says the general, "brave Talbot, then adieu." "His fame lives in the world," retorts Lucy, "his shame in you."^ The bold knight is very formal in speech ; his comparison of the generals to Prometheus, with the "vulture of sedition" feeding in the bosom, is pedantic f and Joan of Arc is forced to laugh at his "silly stately style" when he enumerates his commander's titles.* " I think this upstart is old Talbot's ghost, He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit," and the Englishman, pragmatical to the last, warns the Dauphin that from their ashes shall be reared "a phcenix that shall make all France afeared."^ IV Almost all the personal anecdotes about Shake- speare have come down to us from Sir William Davenant, the author of Gondihert. He was proud of having seen Shakespeare on his occasional visits to Oxford, and he admired, above everything known in the past, the English drama, whose traditions he hoped to perpetuate. In Dryden's preface to the altered Tempest^ he tells us that Sir William first taught him to admire ^ Id., iv. 4, 12-15. ^ Ihid., 45-6. ^ Id., iv. 3, 47-8. * Id., 7, 72. The "silly stately style" is characteristic, however, of the whole play, and not merely of Lucy's speeches. ^ Ibid., 87-93. 46 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE Shakespeare, ''a poet for whom he had particularly high veneration."^ If we could evoke some shadow of the living Shakespeare, it could only be with the help of Davenant's recollections. We shall find little help from painting or sculpture ; but we can compare what was said by those who knew the poet, or had talked with his friends ; seeking, in his own phrase, the image *'in some antique book, since mind at first in character was done." Sir William was the son of Mr. John Davenant, an Oxford vintner, who kept a tavern afterwards known as the "Crown." Mr. Davenant was a grave and discreet man, *' yet an admirer and lover of plays and play-makers, especially Shakespeare, who frequented his house in his journeys between Warwickshire and London." His wife was good-looking and clever, and apparently of unblemished reputation to the end of her days. The eldest boy, Robert, took after his father, "who was seldom or never seen to laugh." The next brother, William, was full of high spirits ; his genius led him "in the pleasant paths of poetry," though he picked up some smattering of logic at Lincoln College.^ "Parson Robert" used to meet Aubrey at St. John's, and told him how kind Shakespeare had been.^ Aubrey saw his way to a scandal at Mrs. Davenant's expense. "Now Sir William would sometimes, when he was pleasant over a glass of wine with his most intimate friends, e.g. Sam Butler (author of Hudibras), &c., say that it seemed to him that he writt with the very spirit that Shakespeare, and seemed contented enough to be thought his son."^ There was an old story told ^ Works of Dryden, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, iii. io6. 2 Anthony h. Wood, Ath. Oxon. (1692), ii. 292. This, with other pertinent extracts, was printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, ti.s., ii. 49. * See Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, 1898, i. 204. "I have heard Parson Robert say that Mr. W. Shakespeare has given him a hundred kisses." These words were crossed out in Aubrey's MS. ^ Ihid. Aubrey omitted a verb after " Shakespeare." THE DAVENANT STORY 47 by Taylor the water-poet in 1629,^ which in process of time was applied to Davenant. "A boy, whose mother was noted to be one not overloden with honesty, went to seeke his godfather, and enquiring for him, quoth one to him, Who is thy godfather ? The boy reply'd, his name is goodman Digland the gardiner. Oh, said the man, if he be thy godfather, he is at the next alehouse, but I feare thou takest God's name in vain." . The quip was ascribed to a townsman. When applied to Davenant, it was transferred to a doctor of divinity,^ and at last to one of the heads of houses.^ Betterton passed it on to Pope, who be- stowed it upon Oldys at the Earl of Oxford's table, about 1 740-1 ;* but the antiquary records in his ''second annotated Langbaine " that he had found the story in its original form among Taylor's collections from the taverns. The relationship at which Aubrey sneered was son- ship of a literary kind. Those who shared in the help of the same Genius were regarded as fathers and sons, or as brothers, according to their dignity. Chapman, for instance, wrote to Nathaniel Field as his 'Moved son,"^ and some of Howell's letters were addressed to "my father, Mr. Ben Jonson." Sergeant Hoskyns, said Aubrey, was Jonson's "father"; and his son, Sir Bennet Hoskyns, asked Jonson to adopt him. " No," said Ben, "I dare not; 'tis honour enough for me to be your brother : I was your father's son, and 'twas he that polished me."^ ^ Extract in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 43, from Taylor's pamphlet, Wit and Mirth chargeahly collected out of Tavernes, etc., 1629 (in fol. 1630), 2 Hearne's MS. pocket-book for 1709, in Bodleian ; extract printed U.S., ii. 44. ^ Spence's Anecdotes, extract printed 7(.s. * Oldys' MS. Collections, printed by Steevens, 1778. The story here assumes the "old townsman" version. Extract printed u.s., ii. 45. ^ Commendatory verses prefixed to A Wotnan is a Weathercock, (published 1612), in Mermaid ed., p. 339. •^ Aubrey, ^^.s., i. 417-8. 48 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE Something of Shakespeare's life came through Davenant to William Beeston, an actor at Drury Lane. His mother, Elizabeth Beeston, was the widow of Christopher Beeston, apprentice to Augustine Phillips, of the King's Company. When Phillips died in 1605, he left bequests in these words: ''To my fellow, William Shakespeare, a thirty shillings piece in gold ; to my servant Christopher Beeston thirty shillings in gold." We may attribute to this Christo- pher the best of all the word-portraits, or pictures "in character," as the poet expressed it : " He was a hand- some, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready smooth wit." On Christopher Beeston's death, his widow and her son William were employed in the management of *'The King's and Queen's Young Company " at the Phoenix ; and when the post was given to Davenant, in June, 1640, he accepted the young man as his deputy. ^ We know from Aubrey that William Beeston was his informant about Shake- speare teaching Latin grammar. Shakespeare "under- stood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country — from Mr. . . . Beeston." 2 The story of Shakespeare's organising the horse- boys' brigade came down from Davenant to Dr. Johnson, who had it first from Bishop Newton, the editor of Milton. Pope got it from Rowe, who quite refused to believe it ; but his friend Betterton had received the details from Sir William direct. Dr. ^ The particulars are recorded in Collier's Atmals, ii. 99-102. See also id., 78, 83, 91. The company seems to have borne familiarly the name of " Beeston's Boys," and was established about 1636. Collier, id., p. 91, makes no mention of Christopher Beeston's widow, and says that William Beeston was probably his brother. 2 Aubrey, u.s., ii. 227, See also i. 97, stib William Beeston, " W. Shakespeare — quaere Mr. Beeston, who knows most of him from Mr. Lacy. . . . Quaere etiam for Ben Jonson. Old Mr. Beeston, whom Mr. (John) Dryden calls 'the chronicle of the stage,' died at his house in Bishopsgate Street without, about Bartholomew-tide, 1682." THE HORSE-BOYS' BRIGADE 49 Johnson gave it to Robert Shiels, then helping as a copyist at the Dictionary ; and Shiels printed it in the Lives of the Poets, which Theophilus Gibber was trying to pass off as his father's work, in 1753. When Shakespeare came first to London, it was the custom to go to the play on horseback. Shakespeare's expedient to get a living was to hold the horses of those that rode to the playhouse ; and he was so careful that everyone called for Will Shakespeare ! This was the dawn of better fortune. Finding more horses put into his hand than he could hold, he hired boys to wait under his inspection, who, when Will Shakespeare was summoned, were immediately to present themselves with the formula, *' I am Shake- speare's boy. Sir ! " As long as the practice of riding to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the horses continued to be known as "Shakespeare's Boys." Such a story would naturally give offence to the more elegant biographers. Mr. Rowe would not soil his biography with anything so menial. To Malone, the idea of a gentleman "holding horses" was offen- sive in the highest degree. Surely, it is urged, Mr. John Shakespeare would have helped his prodigal son, or Mrs. Anne, poor young creature, would have raised money from her farming friends. "We have no reason to suppose that he had forfeited the protection of his father who was engaged in a lucrative business, or the love of his wife who had already brought him two children, and was herself the daughter of a substantial yeoman." Were not, it was suggested, all the popular theatres on Bank-side approached by water, with sculls, or a smart pair of oars, and not a-horseback or " a-footback " ? 1 Malone seems to have forgotten that the only regular playhouses, when Shakespeare first came to town, were in a comfortable corner, half a mile from the city ^ See Malone, Shakespeare, u.s,, i. 462, note. E 50 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE wall, and outside the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. The '' Theatre," so called par excellence^ was an open-air amphitheatre, built by James Burbage on a site be- longing to the Nunnery of Holywell. It had an opening into Finsbury Fields, across which a path led to the postern at Moorgate ; or one could ride to it from High Street, Shoreditch, down Holywell Lane. The "Curtain" was a building on the other side of the lane, near the great sewer called Moor-ditch. Its site is approximately shown by the line of Curtain Road. The playgoers might put their horses up at the '' Lion," in Shoreditch, or go down past the orchard towards the playhouses.^ Sir John Davies wrote before 1599 an '^epigram to Faustus,"^ which shows that the playhouses adjoined Finsbury Fields ; but the riding to them across the grass, or over the citizen's footpaths, was meant only as a point in the satire : — " Faustus, nor lord, nor knight, nor wise, nor old, To every place about the town doth ride ; He rides into the fields, plays to behold ; He rides, to take boat at the water-side." Hired coaches were rare in Elizabeth's reign, though not unknown. Mr. G. Chalmers cited the Lords' Journals for 1601 as to a bill restraining "the excessive and superfluous use of coaches," and a line about " a badged coach" from Marston's Cy7iic Satire, I599- Aubrey heard that in Sir Philip Sidney's time it was as disgraceful for a young gentleman to be seen in a coach as if he were found walking " in a petticoat and waistcoat."^ Hired coaches became common about 1605. In Dekker and Webster's Weshvard-Ho'^ one ^ There is a sketch of the ride from Bishopsgate in Northward-Ho, by Dekker and Webster, acted in 1607 by the children of St. Paul's. '■^ Reprinted in Malone, Shakespeare, 11. s., iii. 152, note. •^ Aubrey, u.s., ii. 249. * Act ii. sc. 3. Dr. A. W. Ward, £ng. Dram. Lit., ii. 469, says that Westward-Ho was certainly written by 1605. ON THE STAGE 51 of the citizens says, "We'll take a coach and ride to Ham or so." " O, fie upon't, a coach ! I cannot abide to be jolted." In Middleton and Dekker's Roaring Girl (161 1 ), a hack-driver appeared on the stage, with cape and whip, ready to take his fare from Gray's Inn Fields to the other end of Marylebone Park.^ V Mr. Jones, of "Tarbick," who has been mentioned in connection with the Lucy legend, took part in handing down another story told to him by one of Shakespeare's relations at Stratford. This, at least, is the account received by Capell from Mr. Wilkes. ''My grandfather heard it from Mr. Jones," was his formula ; but he also relied on the witness of his friend, Mr. Oldys, "a late stage-antiquarian." The story was to the effect that Shakespeare played Adam in AsYouLike It, when his relative went to see him at the Globe. Oldys, in his own person, told quite a different story. For some unknown reason he fathered it on Gilbert Shakespeare, the poet's youngest brother.^ The date of Gilbert's baptism was the 13th of October, 1566. The time of his death is unknown ; but if Oldys were correct in his guess, he would have been about a century old before he gave up his visits to the theatre. " One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, who lived to a good old age, even some years, as I compute, after the restoration of King Charles the Second, would in his younger days come to London to visit his brother Will, as he called him, and be a spectator of him as an actor in some of his own plays." As Shakespeare's fame increased, Oldys seems to have believed wrongly that ^ Roaring Girl, iii. i. '^ Richard and Edmund, the intermediate brothers, both died in Shakespeare's ifetime. 52 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE ^'his dramatick entertainments grew the greatest sup- port of our principal, if not of all our theatres." When the stage revived after the Civil War, old Gilbert began to attend the plays at Drury Lane. Among the actors there he might have met his own great-nephew ; for Charles Hart, the great tragedian, was the grandson of Shakespeare's sister Joan. According to our anti- quary, this rendered the most noted actors greedy for some personal anecdotes at first hand ; but the strange visitor seemed to be ''a man of weak intellects," or at any rate so infirm that he could tell them very little. "All that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song." It seems that neither Davenant nor Betterton knew of this tradition, or of the more trustworthy anecdote from Stratford ; for Betterton expressly said he could never meet with any public account of Shakespeare's acting, except that "the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own HaviletJ*'' He knew that his acting was praised in the preface to Chettle's Kind-hartes Dreame, in 1592-3. Greene had attacked Shakespeare, not for his acting, but for being a factotum, stealing the trade from the university play-writers, and fancying himself at the same time to be the best actor, "the only Shake- scene." A comedian writing plays seemed shocking to this poor Ragged Robin: " Here is a peasant, or rude groom, turned ape or painted monster." Chettle apologised for the abuse which he had ventured to publish: "I am as sory as if the originall fault had HIS PARTS ON THE STAGE 53 beene my fault, because my selfe have seen his de- meanor no lesse civill, than he exelent in the quahtie he professes."^ In 1598, Shakespeare acted in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour ; and, as he was the chief comedian, we may fairly suppose that he took the leading part. The name of "Mr. Knowell " heads the dramatis personce ; and that trivial circumstance led to the story that Shakespeare selected the part of the nervous old citizen. It is far more probable that he acted the part in which Garrick attained a success. "Kitely," says Thomas Davies, "though not equal to Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor^ who can plead a more justifiable cause of jealousy, is yet well con- ceived, and is placed so artfully in situation, as to draw forth a considerable share of comic distress." Burbage, in this case, was clearly marked down for Captain Bobadill ; and Cob, the merry water-carrier, belonged to Will Kemp, in preference to Phillips and Pope, whose clowning was a little worn-out. In 1603, Shakespeare acted in Sejanus, under Burbage as the principal tragedian ; but the play died in its birth, and we know nothing about the cast of the characters.^ It seems probable that Shakespeare acted the part of William Rufus in Dekker's Satiro-mastix. In 1601, Ben Jonson had given great offence to the minor poets in his Poetaster ^^ produced by the children of the Chapel Royal: "Thou hast arraigned two poets against all ^ See reprints of Greene's and Chettle's pamphlets in Shakspeare Allusion-Books, ed. C. M. Ingleby, pt. i, 1874. '■^ Shakespeare's part may have been that of Tiberius : the title-ro/e would naturally fall to Burbage. ^ The original offence, as is well known, came from Cynthia's Revels (1600). Marston and Dekker recognised themselves in the Hedon and Anaides of the play. Jonson forestalled any really effective reply by writing The Poetaster — a task which, he says in his prologue, occupied him fifteen weeks. The Demetrius of this satiric play was Dekker ; Crispinus is usually supposed to be Marston. The actual cause of the quarrel is unknown. 54 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE law and conscience, and not content with that, hast turned them amongst a company of horrible Black- Friars." Dekker seems to have been chosen as the champion against the common foe ; and in 1602 his Satiro-mastix^ or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet was acted by the children of Paul's, and afterwards by the Lord Chamberlain's company at the Globe.^ In a farce called The Return from Parnassus, written at Cambridge about that time, we are shown Burbage and Kempe instructing the students : ^ " Few of the Univer- sity pen plays well ; they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, ay, and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow ! He brought up Horace giving the poets a pill : but our fellow Shakespeare had given him a purge ! " Jonson referred to "the players" in the dialogue appended to The Poetaster^ as it appeared in the folio of 1616 ; in his opinion, he had touched them very lightly, and they ought not to have taken offence : — '* What they have done 'gainst me, I am not moved with : if it gave them meat, Or got them clothes, 'tis well ; that was their end. Only amongst them, I am sorry for Some better natures, by the rest so drawn, To run in that vile line," ^ The plot of Satiro - mastix lies in the marriage of Walter Tyrrel and the love of King William for the bride. It is just possible that '* Rufus " was introduced 1 Marston seems previously to have attempted a reply to Cynthia's Revels in \i\sjack Drum's Entertainment. ^ Return from Parnassus, iv. 5, 14-20 (ed. Arber). The farce was acted in January, 1602, at St. John's College, Cambridge. It was printed 1606. ^ Poetaster, "Apologetical Dialogue," 11. 134-9. This dialogue was written in 1601, but was not allowed to be printed (Ward, op. cit., ii. 360). HIS PART IN SATIRO-MASTIX 55 by way of reference to the poet's auburn hair. The picture of Rufus is given thus ; — " Suppose who enters now, A King, whose eyes are set in silver, one That blusheth gold, speaks music, dancing walks. Now gathers nearer, takes thee by the hand. When straight thou think'st, the very Orb of Heaven Moves round about thy fingers, then he speaks, Thus — thus — I know not how."^ If this were Shakespeare's own part, as seems likely, it would be a good field for displaying his "brave notions" and "excellent phantasy." His genius, in- deed, as Fuller had heard, was "jocular and inclined to festivity." There is no reason to believe that he always played the " heavy father," as Old Knowell, or Duncan, or Henry IV., as many have supposed. Rufus was a part just suited to his nimble discourse. We all remember Fuller's fancy of what the fights at the "Mermaid" were like. Drake's frigate could run round La Santissima Trinidad^ as Shakespeare could tack about and outsail Father Ben, "and take advan- tage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and inven- tion." A poor epigram "to our English Terence" was printed by Malone, from The Scourge of Folly, by John Davies ; where the Hereford schoolmaster warned "good Will" that he might have been a courtier or "companion for a king," if he had not played " some kingly parts in sport." The lines, at any rate, refer to characters played by Shakespeare before the accession of King James. Mr. John Downes, the prompter, preserved one or two stage traditions about Shakespeare. He was for many years bookkeeper to the Duke's company, first under Davenant in the old house, and afterwards at Salisbury Court, in Whitefriars. In Roscius Anglicanus, a historical review of the stage, he received assistance ^ Dekker's Dramatic Works, ed. Pearson, 1S73, i. 249. 56 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE from Charles Booth, prompter to the company under Killigrew's patent at Drury Lane. But most of the work was compiled from his own journals ; for he was familiar with every play in the stock, had written out the parts, attended all the rehearsals, and prompted out of his own book in the afternoons. On May 28th, 1663, Davenant produced Hamlet, with Betterton as the Prince. We must remember that the play was very much cut down, the main plot retained, and most of the digressions and "side- shows " left out. Mr. Pepys and his wife were there, having tried for "a room " at the Royal Theatre in vain; "and so to the Duke's house; and there saw 'Hamlett' done, giving us fresh reason never to think enough of Betterton." This was the first performance of Hamlet by Betterton, then a young man of between twenty-five and thirty years of age. "And he con- tinued to act it," says Downes, "with great spirit and with much applause till the last year of his life." Sir William Davenant, so runs the prompter's note, had seen the part taken by Joseph Taylor, of the Blackfriars Company, and Taylor had been "instructed by the author, Mr. Shakespeare." "Sir William taught Mr. Betterton in every particle of it, which by the exact performance of it gained him esteem and reputation superlative to all other players."^ We cannot be sure that Taylor was taught by Shakespeare himself. He is believed to have been a member of the King's Com- pany before 161 3, and to have left it for a time before Shakespeare's death. He was, in any event, the first actor who can be identified as having played the Prince of Denmark ; and Wright, in the Historia Histrionica (1699), said "he performed that part incomparably well." If it be true that Shakespeare had acted the Ghost, and that Betterton received the tradition of his methods, we should recall that evening at Drury Lane, ^ Roscius Anglicamcs, pp. 29, 30. TRADITIONS OF HIS FELLOW-ACTORS 57 when Addison sat by Steele, and asked if it was necessary for Hamlet to rant and rave at his father's spirit. Steele afterwards showed, in the Tatler, into what light Betterton had thrown the scene. His voice never rose with a " wild defiance " of what he naturally revered. There was first a pause of mute amazement ; "then, rising slowly to a solemn, trembling voice, he made the ghost equally terrible to the spectators as to himself." On December 23rd, in the same year, Pepys makes this note : "I perceive the King and Duke and all the Court was going to the Duke's Playhouse to see ' Henry the Eighth ' acted, which is said to be an admirable Play."^ He was unfortunately under a vow not to go inside a theatre for six months ; and it was very irksome indeed to be told by one of his friends of the goodness of the new piece, ''which made me think it long till my time is out." On New Year's Day he was free, and went off at once to Portugal Row, with what result appears from his diary: "My wife and I rose from table, pretending business, and went to the Duke's house . . . and there saw the so much cried-up play of 'Henry the Eighth'; which, though I went with reso- lution to like it, is so simple a thing made up of a great many patches, that, besides the shows and processions in it, there is nothing in the world good or well done." Some years afterwards his tastes changed, for he notes on December 30th, 1668, that he took his wife to the same play, "and was mightily pleased, better than I ever expected, with the history and shows of it." Downes described it as seen from the prompter's box. "King Henry the 8th. This Play, by order of Sir William Davenant, was all new cloathed in proper habits : the King's was new, and all the Lords, ^ See also under Dec. loth. "A rare play, to be acted this week of Sir William Davenant's. The story of Henry the Eighth with all his wives." 58 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE the Cardinals, the Bishops, the Doctors, Proctors, Lawyers, Tipstaves, new Scenes. The part of the King was so right and justly done by Mr. Betterton^ he being instructed in it by Sir William, who had it from old Mr. Lowen^ that had his instructions from Mr, Shakespear hirnself that I dare and will aver, none can, or ever will come near him in this age, in the performance of this part."^ Downes, the prompter, credited Shakespeare with the whole play and" all the stage directions, and was thus led to think that the poet took the most ''indefatigable pains to feed the eye." For the vision of Spirits, Shake- speare's "little Pantomime," he had no praise, except that it showed some fancy. The grave congees and stately courtesies put him in mind of Bayes' grand dance. Perhaps the Duke of Buckingham borrowed a hint of it from the Queen's vision. "Enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six personages, clad in white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays, and golden vizards on their faces " : they wave a spare garland over the sleeper, "and so in their dancing they vanish, carrying the garland with them. The music continues."^ We should compare the stage-direction in The Tevipest^ where the airy dancers are suddenly disturbed when Prospero starts and speaks; "after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish."^ The Duke of Buckingham laughs at them all alike, when he makes Mr. Bayes chide the players : " You dance worse than the Angels in Harry the Eight, or the fat Spirits in The Tempest.''"^ We need not believe that Taylor was selected by Shakespeare for the Prince of Denmark, or Lowin for his fat Knight. Lowin joined the King's Company in ^ Roscius Anglicanus, p. 34. ^ Hertry VIII., iv. 2. ^ Tem-pest, iv. i. * The Rehearsal, ii. 5. The gfrand dance mentioned above will be found ibid,, V. I. ALLEGED LETTER FROM THE KING 59 1604,^ and Ben Jonson had already (1599) spoken of Sir John in his Every Man out of his Humour. Burbage took the part of Macilente, which suited his spare figure very well. Jonson would not beg of the audience "a plaiidite for God's sake : but if you, out of the bounty of your good liking, will bestow it, why, you may make lean Macilente as fat as Sir John Falstaff." ^ He appears to include both parts of Henry IV. in his reference to the popular favourite. Lowin doubtless succeeded to the post very early after joining the company, and would know how Shakespeare wished it to be played ; and Taylor in the same way learned what the poet meant by the distinction between the whirlwind of passion, with smoothness, and the same passion torn into tatters. 2 VI William Oldys showed in a note on his Fuller's Worthies^ now in the British Museum, that the story of the King writing to Shakespeare came through Davenant to John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, an authority of some distinction in literature. In his commonplace book the Duke wrote: "King James the First honoured Shakespeare with an epistolary correspondence, and I think Sir William Davenant had either seen or was possessed of His Majesty's letter to him." Oldys, who referred to the preface in Lintot's edition of Shakespeare's Poems (1709), where ^ A. W, Ward, u.s., ii. 137, says: "There is ... no proof that he (Lowin) was the original performer of the part, and it is hardly likely to have been allotted to so young a man (he was born in 1576). " This opinion is further confirmed by the words of Roberts, the actor, in 1729, quoted by Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 243: "I am apt to think, he (Lowin) did not rise to his perfection and most exalted state in the theatre till after Burbage, tho' he play'd what we call second and third characters in his time, and particularly Henry the Eighth originally ; from an observation of whose acting it in his later days Sir William Davenant conveyed his instructions to Mr. Betterton," '^ Every Man out of his Humour, v. 7. ^ See Hamlet, iii. 2, 1-16. 6o SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE it was said that "King James the First was pleased with his own hand to write an amicable letter to Mr. Shakespeare ; which letter, though now lost, re- mained long in the hands of Sir William Davenant, as a credible person, now living, can testify." This person was doubtless the Duke of Buckinghamshire, who died in 1721. Dr. Farmer tried to guess what was in the letter — something such as thanks for compHments in Macbeth; but all such attempts are useless. As to the custody of the document, we may fairly suppose that it belonged to Lady Barnard about the time of Davenant's death in 1668. It would have passed under Shakespeare's will to Mr. and Mrs. Hall, remaining with Mrs. Hall on her husband's death. Mr. Hall tried to make a verbal will, but did not name an executor ; he intended Thomas Nash to have his pro- fessional manuscripts: "I would have given them to Mr. Boles," he said, "if hee had been here; but forasmuch as hee is not heere present, yow may, son Nash, burne them, or doe with them what yow please."^ Mrs. Hall administered the estate, with a record of the imperfect gift as part of her authority ; but there is no reason to think that she gave up the letter in question. Elizabeth Nash, two years after her hus- band's death, married Mr. Barnard, afterwards knighted, and on succeeding to her mother's property, lived at New Place for a time. In 1742, Sir Hugh Clopton told Mr. Macklin, the actor, when he visited Stratford in company with Garrick, that Lady Barnard, on leaving the town, "carried away many of her grandfather's papers." Others remained at Stratford, and came with the probate of Lady Barnard's will into the possession of Mr. R. B. Wheler, who printed some of them in the appendix to his History. ^ Nuncupative will of John Hall, printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 6i. STRATFORD-ON-AVON STRATrORD-ON-AYON ORIGIN OF NAME — PREHISTORIC REMAINS; PATHLOW AND THE LIBERTY — ROMAN ROADS IN WARWICKSHIRE — RYKNIELD STREET IN " CYMBELINE " STRATFORD, as its name implies, marks the point where a ''street," or paved Roman road, led down to a passage across the Avon. At first there was only a ford ; in later ages, as Leland ^ tells us, a poor wooden bridge was set up, which must have spoiled the old access, and yet was a danger in itself. "There was no causeway to come to it," says the historian, "where- by many poor folks either refused to come to Stratford when the river was up, or coming thither stood in jeopardy of life " ; until at last Lord Mayor Clopton, in the reign of Henry VII., made "the great and sumptuous bridge" with "fourteen great arches and a long causeway, made of stone, well walled on each side, at the west end of the bridge." The neighbourhood had been inhabited in prehistoric times by the tribes that made the barrows and stone circles. Several of the great "lowes," or "graves," ^ See Leland's Itinerary, ed. Hearne, 1710-12, vol. iv. part ii. pp. 52-3, for notices of Stratford quoted in these pages. 63 64 STRATFORD-ON-AVON were adopted in later ages as meeting-places for the open-air Courts, at which the Sheriff or owner of a Liberty transacted the affairs of a district. The Hundred of Knightlow, for instance, took its name from Knightlow Hill, on the road from Coventry to London ; on the summit was a British tumulus, on which a wayside cross had been erected.^ The Hundred of Barlichway, in which Stratford is included, held its Court in Barlichway Grove, described as ''a little plot of ground, about eight yards square, now inclosed with a hedge and situate upon the top of a hill."- The town was in earlier times comprised in the Liberty of Pathlow, or ^* Pate's Grave"; here the Bishops of Worcester had a Hundred Court of their own, with a jurisdiction extending over many towns and villages, among which were Bishopton, Luddington, and Wilm- cote, though most of them, according to Dugdale, were almost lost by neglect or the corruption of bailiffs. The place, it was added, that gave its name to this Hundred ''is an heap of earth ... in the very way betwixt Warwick and Alcester . . . near unto it are certain enclosed grounds . . . bearing the name of Pathlows," where Courts were held twice a year. ^ If we refer to The Taming of the Shrew, and what Lang- baine's editor calls "the story of the tinker, so divert- ing," we should note that it was to one of these Courts that the ale-wife was to be summoned for serving the ^ Murray's Handbook of Warwickshire, 1899, p. 18. Knightlow is the most easterly of the four Hundreds — Hemlingford, Barlichway, Kineton, Knig-htlow — into which Warwickshire is divided. It comprises four sub- divisions — Kenilworth, Southam, Rug-by, and Kirby, called after the chief towns and villages included in it. ^ Dug-dale, Antiquities of Warwickshire, ed. Thomas, 1730, vol. ii. p. 641. Barlichway Hundred is the south-western portion of the county, including a tract of land almost square in shape. Its subdivisions are, on the west, Henley-in-Arden and Alcester ; on the east, Snitterfield and Stratford. '^ Dugdale, ii.s., vol. ii. 641-2. Pathlow is three miles north-west of Stratford, on the road to Wootton Wawen and Henley-in-Arden. EARLY HISTORY OF DISTRICT 65 drink in "unsealed quarts."^ The Bishops also held a three-weeks Court called ''Gilpit"; and the name evidently referred to the high-road from Stratford to Birmingham, which was commonly known as Guild- pits, from some right of digging stones or gravel on land belonging to the Stratford Guild. The choice of Stratford as a Roman station was due to the course and disposition of the various military roads. Any map of the Roman province will show that the place lies at the lower entrance of a wedge- shaped district inclosed on three sides by the Watling Street, the Fosse Way, and the road between Gloucester and Doncaster, which is now called the Ryknield Street. The last-named road passed along the western side of Warwickshire, from Alcester to the neighbourhood of Birmingham. It was often called the Icknield Way by the older antiquarians; but it is more convenient to keep that name for the better-known road which passed across the eastern part of the districts between the Wash and Southampton Water,^ and so westward into Devon and Cornwall. We shall say a word or two as to each of the great highways, which by their intersections and branches completely inclosed the woodlands of Arden. The first to be made was the Watling Street, which passed obliquely from the Kentish coast to the Thames at the Westminster Ford, and so to Verulam and the Temple of Diana in the market-place at Dunstable. On the border of Leicestershire and Warwickshire it passed a place now called High Cross, where its course was intersected, as time went on, by the Fosse Way.^ ^ Taming of the Shrew, Ind., 2, 89-90 : — " You would present her at the leet, Because she brought stone jugs and no seal'd quarts." ^ Icknield Street, and Icknield Port Road, in the western portion of Birmingham, indicate, under the more familiar form, the course of the Ryknield Way through the city. ^ High Cross (Benonce, or Venonce) lies in Great Copstone Parish, F 66 STRATFORD-ON-AVON Near Wall (Letocetum), two miles south of Lichfield, it was similarly intersected by the Ryknield Street. We need not trace minutely the rest of its course ; turning due west at Wall, it passed to Uriconium or Viro- conium (Wroxeter), ''the White Town by the Wrekin," and eventually, taking a north-westerly course, met the sacred waters of the Dee at Deva (Chester). Its branches were in North Wales and Mid-Britain, and ran toward each extremity of the Roman Wall. When the English invaders saw it, lying like a beam of light across the land, they gave it the name of Watling Street, which was their legendary title for the "path of souls " along the Galaxy, or Milky Way. The Fosse Way connected the military hospitals at Bath with the colony of veterans at Lincoln, where it joined other roads from the south by which supplies and reliefs were sent to the fortresses by the wall. The mediaeval chroniclers were fond of a jingling phrase about the road running "from Totnes to Caithness," which Drayton adopted in those lines of the Poly-Olbion that tell us of the passing of the Fosse : — " From where rich Cornwall points to the Iherian seas, Till colder Cathnes tells the scattered Orcades.^ between Lutterworth and Nuneaton, 440 feet above sea-level. A pillar, erected in 171 1 by the neighbouring gentry, to commemorate the restora- tion of peace, bears a Latin inscription (translated in Murray's Warwick- shire, p. 8): "If, traveller, you search for the footsteps of the ancient Romans, you may here behold them. For here their most celebrated ways, crossing one another, extend to the utmost boundaries of Britain ; here the Vennones kept their quarters ; and, at the distance of one mile from here, Claudius, a certain commander of a cohort, seems to have had a camp towards the street: and towards the fosse, a tomb." See Drayton, Poly-Olbion, 13th song, 311-13 : — "that Cross Where those two mighty ways, the Watling and the Fosse, Our centre seem to cut." Watling Street continues its progress W.N.W. to Mancetter (Mandues- sedum), ten miles distant ; the Fosse Wa)^ proceeds N.N.E. to Leicester (Ratse) thirteen miles. ^ Poly-Olbion, song xvi. 105-6. Cf. id., xiii. 315-16, "from Michael's utmost Mount, to Cathnesse." ROMAN ROADS IN WARWICKSHIRE 67 About ten miles south of Stratford its route is marked by Stretton-on-the-Foss, and six miles north of Stretton, by the site of a station that guarded the Stour at Halford. "Through all this county," says Gale in his essay on the Four Great Ways, ''the course of it is very plain and conspicuous " ; near Street-Ashton and Monk's Kirby, he adds, ''part of it lies open like a ditch, having not been filled with stones and gravel as in most other places."^ The third side of our oblong or coffin-shaped figure was formed by the road from South Wales and Gloucester. Where it enters Warwickshire we trace it from ford to ford, all occupied as military stations. Of these we have Bidford-on-Avon, and Wixford, and the Roman station at Alcester (Alauna), where there is a confluence of rivers. Dugdale thought that " Ickle Street," in this town, must have been named after the old military way ; and, at any rate, Roman tiles and other antiquities, including many gold and silver coins, have been found there at different times. The Ryknield Street passed through Coughton, and thence to a point near Birmingham,^ where it entered Staffordshire, and "there running thro' Sutton Park and by Shenston, cutts the Watting Street scarce a mile East from Wall and Litchfield.''''^ Drayton seems to have felt a patriotic affection for this Warwickshire road, watching it from its birth on the shore of the Irish Sea to its final resting-stage at the foot of the Roman wall. In Poly-Olhion he is so bold as to personify the Watling Street, or the Spirit of the Road, as a kind of genius •^ See Gale's essay, printed in Hearne's Leland, vi. 99, Street Ashton is in Monk's Kirby parish, some four miles south of the junction with Watling Street at High Cross. A mile south-west, nearer the actual course of the street, is Stretton-under-Fosse, not to be confused with Stretton-on-the-Foss. The progress of the street over Dunsmore Heath, further south again, is marked by Stretton-on-Dunsmore. ^ Near Perry-Bar, in the northern suburbs of the city. ^ Gale's essay, in Leland, tc.s., vol. vi. 68 STRATFORD-ON-AVON loci,^ who tells the tale of the Ryknield struggling northwards after Fosse Way : — " Then in his oblique course the lusty straggling Street Soon overtook the Fosse ; and toward the fall of Tine^ Into the German Sea dissolv'd at his decline. " The neck of the oblong figure was the narrow space between the fort at Bidford-on-Avon and the post at Halford, where the Fosse Way crossed the Stour.^ If the wild tribes of Arden were to be kept in place, it was necessary to occupy their passage of the Avon at Strat- ford and to make a junction between the two northward lines ; and this object was attained by driving a road from Bidford and Alcester to Stratford, and thence across the ford to the station on the Stour. This, we suppose, must have been the time when Stratford first began to exist as a village, with a guard-house, a posting-station, and such other subsidiary dwelling- places as would be required. Shakespeare has made repeated allusions in Cymbe- line to the Ryknield Street. It will be remembered that in a large sense the name was given to the whole route from the extremity of South Wales to the Tyne. The portions west of Gloucester were also known as the Julia Strata, a term which may have some connec- tion with Julius Caesar, or with Julius Frontinus, who subdued the valley of the Severn ; but it seems to be, in reality, a late fabrication, the name being derived from Striguil, from which the De Clares, Earls of Pembroke and Striguil, and their successors, the Marshals, took their second title.^ It need not be supposed that the poet gave any ■^ Poly-Olbion, xvi. 20-219. ^ As the crow flies, this is about ten miles' distance. ^ Striguil, or Strigul (Strigulia), was a castle some four miles from Chepstow on the road to Abergfavenny. The name, however, became applied in common usage to the greater castle at Chepstow, in the same lordship. See note in Bohn's Giraldus Cambrensis (ed. Forester and Wright), p. r86. RYKNIELD STREET 69 credit to the Romans for the construction of the mili- tary roads. It was in his time an article of popular belief that the Britons had been more or less civilised ever since the arrival of ''Brutus the Trojan," long before King Bladud had found the seething springs of Bath, or King Lear had set up his throne in Leicester ; and Lear and Cordelia, as the chroniclers said,^ were dead and gone before the first stone had been cut for the walls of Rome. The great highways, it was thought, were placed under the King's peace by Mulmutius, who first reunited ''the five kingdoms of Britain"; he was said to have passed a code of laws, of which fragments are still reputed to exist in Wales ; and we are told that after a prosperous reign of forty years he died in "London, or New Troy," and was buried near the Temple of Concord. Another name for the capital is used at the end of the play, where Cymbeline proposes to set the seal on his victory in London : " So through Lud's-town march : And in the temple of great Jupiter Our peace we'll ratify. "^ Shakespeare follows Holinshed in the main, and does not seem to have been acquainted with the romance of GeoJEfrey of Monmouth ; otherwise, instead of the lines about " giglot fortune," and the lost chance of capturing Csesar's sword, ^ we must have had the legend of the slain Prince Nennius actually carrying to his grave that "Yellow Death," so called because none could recover from a blow with its brassy blade. " You must know," says the King in the play, "Till the Injurious Romans did extort This tribute from us, we were free."^ ^ See Geoffrey of Monmouth, lihh. i. ii., for the early source of these mythical histories. ° Cymheline, v. 5, 481-3; also iii. i, 32. ' Id., iii. I, 30-1 : " Cassibelan, who was once at point — O giglot fortune ! — to master Csesar's sword." The story of Nennius will be found in Geoffrey of Monmouth, lih, iv. cap. 4, ■* Cymheline, iii. i, 48-50. 70 STRATFORD-ON-AVON ' * Britain is A world by itself," says rough Prince Cloten, in a highly classical phrase, * ' and we will nothing" pay For wearing" our own noses. "^ The King's speech to the Roman ambassador is full of reverence for the royal road-maker : — " Our ancestor was that Mulmutius which Ordain'd our laws, whose use the sword of Ceesar Hath too much mangled ; whose repair and franchise Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed. Though Rome be therefore angry : Mulmutius made our laws. Who was the first of Britain which did put His brows within a golden crown and call'd Himself a king,"^ The Queen speaks bravely of Julius Csesar, and his brag of "'Came' and 'saw' and 'overcame'"; but here in Britain, " ribbed and paled in With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters," and the Goodwin Sands to suck in his ships to the topmast, Caesar, she said, was carried off from our coast twice beaten.^ This accounts for the selection of Milford Haven, on the western extension of the Ryknield Street, as the port from which the voyages to Italy were made, and as the landing-place for the "legions garrison'd in Gallia."* It was apparently from Milford that Posthumus set forth to "that drug- damn'd Italy, "^ and here, when his mind was poisoned, he appointed a treacherous ambush for fair Imogen. ^ Ibid., 12-14. ^ Ibid., 55-62. See Poly-Olbio7i, xvi. 97 : "Since us, his kingly Ways, Muhmitius first beg-an," and Selden's note on the passage. Mulmutius, Molmutius, or Malmutius, is said to be commemorated in the name of Malmesbury. Etymologists, however, prefer a more historical derivation. ^ Cymheline, u.s., 14-33. * -^'^•i iv. 2, 333-6. '^ Id., iii. 4, 15. RYKNIELD STREET IN CYMBELINE 71 The lady reads his letter: "Take notice, that I am in Cambria, at Milford Haven." She cries : " O for a horse with wings ! Hear'st thou, Pisanio? He is at Milford Haven : read, and tell me How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs May plod it in a week, why may not I Glide thither in a day ? ... by the way, Tell me how Wales was made so happy as To inherit such a haven. "^ II MEDIEVAL STRATFORD : ITS CONNECTION WITH THE BISHOPS OF WORCESTER — GROWTH OF THE TOWN — THE FAIRS AND MARKETS — EPISCOPAL RIGHTS IN STRATFORD— OFFICERS OF THE MEDIEVAL BOROUGH We now pass onward to a time when Stratford formed part of a large agricultural domain belonging to the Crown of Mercia. The chronicler tells us that the details of the English conquests in these parts were never recorded in history. " Many and frequent were the expeditions from Germany, and many the lords who strove against each other ; but the names of the chieftains are unknown by reason of their very multitude." Mercia, we suppose, was at one time composed of a number of independent states, which were gradually fused into a single monarchy. In the middle of the ninth century it was still in form a kingdom by itself; but in fact it had become a de- pendency of Wessex under Ethelwulf, the father of Alfred. Shortly before the year 840, King Bertulf of Mercia had deprived the Bishop of Worcester of several valuable estates, and the injured prelate deter- mined to make an appeal to the " Witan," or Council. 1 Id. , iii. 2, 44-63. 72 STRATFORD-ON-AVON Accordingly at Easter in that year he attended the Court which Bertulf and his Queen Sedrida were holding in their royal town of Tamworth. The Bishop pleaded before the solemn assembly, and gained his cause, but not without a grievous ransom ; for the King demanded four warhorses, and a fine ring, and heavy silver dishes and goblets ; and the avaricious Sedrida claimed two palfreys, and a parcel-gilt cup, and silver wine-stoups, and other valuable offerings. On these terms the Church recovered the estates, freed from all burdens of royal exaction. The Bishop found a way of recouping himself a few years afterwards, when the King of Wessex was away on a pilgrimage to Rome, and his people were discontented at his project of raising his "child- wife" Judith to the throne. It was an opportunity for bringing the power of the Church to bear on the tyrant of Mercia. Bishop Eadbert, or Heabert, therefore went in the year 845 to the Yule Feast at Tamworth, and asked the King to give up to his Church at Worcester the estate which had once belonged to an old monastery at Stratford-on- Avon, comprising twenty farms of arable land in the common fields, besides the pastures and woodlands. A copy of the King's deed of gift, duly confirmed by the Council, is preserved among the Cottonian Manu- scripts.^ It is composed in a very inflated style, as was usual in the charters of that age, and is written in a somewhat Mercian kind of Latin. It somewhat re- sembles those Kentish deeds, which were called "Humana Mens," because they gave as much free- dom as the human mind could conceive, or, to quote from Jack Cade, who was learned in Kentish law, they were "as free as heart can wish or tongue can tell."^ The deed began with a pious exordium, showing that ^ Dug-dale gives an abbreviated copy, op. cit., ii. 680, at the beginning of his account of Stratford. ^ 2 He7iry VI., iv. 7, 131-2. GRANT TO BISHOPS OF WORCESTER 73 Bertulf wished to purchase an eternal reward by giving up a share of his ''transitory wealth." " /;? nomine Domini!'''' he begins, "so fading and fleeting is this world's state, while all things that we see are rushing swifter than the wind to their end." " Therefore, with the consent of my Bishops and Nobles and Elders, I give to the venerable Bishop Heabert and his house at Worcester all my rights in the monastery by the Avon called Over-Stratford, with twenty farms, for which I have accepted ten pounds' weight of silver in consideration of the land being made free for ever. Be it therefore free from all burdens of human servitude and all secular tributes and taxes, the Church taking her rightful profits in wood and field, in meadows and pastures, in waters and fisheries," and so forth. Then follows a list of the special exactions to which the lands of the Crown were liable, such as forced labour and purveyance of food for the King and his retinue, pro- viding meals for casual guests and huntsmen, and food for the horses and hawks, and for the boys that led the hounds. In fine, "Let the land be free," declared the King, "from all exactions great or small, known or as yet unknown, so long as the Christian religion shall remain among the English in this island of Britain." The charter was marked with the sign of the cross by Bertulf and Sedrida and their eldest son Bertric, by several bishops, an abbot, and a priest, by Earl Humbert and the rest of the nobles present, and by a few untitled witnesses who may be taken as representing the Commons of Mercia. The Stratford estate remained in much the same con- dition till the reign of Edward the Confessor. It appears by the Domesday Survey that the extent of the arable land had somewhat increased. There was enough corn-land to occupy thirty-one ploughs, which would represent about 5,000 acres, or a little more or less according to the system of rotation of crops adopted 74 STRATFORD-ON-AVON in cultivating plough-lands. There were three farms in hand, as part of the demesne, and the priest had another for his glebe : there were about half a dozen labourers with allotments belonging to their cottages ; and the rest of the parish was worked in common-field by twenty-one men of the township. We hear besides of the mill, rented of the Bishop for ten shillings in money and a thousand of eels, and of a great meadow by the river more than half a mile long, and about two furlongs in breadth. Stratford did not assume the appearance of a town till the beginning of the twelfth century. The improve- ment was due to John de Coutances, Bishop of Wor- cester (i 195-8), who, in the seventh year of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, laid out the fields east of Trinity Church in street and building sites. Each plot, according to his design, consisted of a strip of land with nearly 57 feet of frontage, and 195 feet in depth. They were all to be freeholds, being held of the Bishop in burgage- tenure, at a ground-rent of a shilling a plot. It will, however, be remembered that their size would be altered as new streets were made from time to time, and that the ground-rents would be apportioned when the land was in any way subdivided. Mr. J. Hill, of Stratford, in his essay on Shakespeare's birthplace, showed that an alteration of this kind was made in the fourteenth century, when Henley Street grew out of a short cut to the Market Cross, and the Guildpits highway, on which the frontages had been set, fell into the state of a back road. Some notion of the change thus effected may be gained from the discussions about John Shake- speare's property ; and the cutting-down in the length of the holdings between the two streets will become especially plain by the documents relating to a strip of land half a yard wide, which John Shakespeare sold to a neighbour called George Badger. This strip was only twenty-eight yards long, and yet it reached from GROWTH OF THE TOWN 75 the old highway to the frontage on Henley Street. ^ In the survey taken in October, 1590, when, by the death of Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, in 1589, the lordship of the borough had reverted to the Crown, there are passages which show how carefully the original ground- rents were maintained. We quote from the extracts as to Henley Street selected by Mr. Hill in his essay : ''The Bailiff and Burgesses of the town of Stratford are free tenants of one tenement with the appurtenances by the annual rent to the lord of three-pence . . . John Shakespeare, free tenant of one tenement with the ap- purtenances of the annual rent of six-pence : the same John, free tenant of a tenement, etc., by the annual rent of thirteen-pence : George Badger, free tenant of one tenement, etc., by the annual rent to the lord of ten-pence," and so forth. Very full extracts from this survey have also been published by Mr. Halliwell- Phillipps.^ It will be remembered that Shakespeare left part of his Henley Street property to his sister, Joan Hart, for her life, subject to a burden of the same kind : "I doe will and devise unto her the house with the appurtenances in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her natural lief, under the yeaerlie rent of xij*^," and the amount, says Mr. Hill, may have been in- tended as a mere nominal rent, "but more likely the rent payable to the lord, reduced from thirteen-pence by the apportionment of one penny in respect of the strip sold to Badger." Bishop John de Coutances obtained the grant of a Thursday market for his new town, and Bishop Walter de Grey, in the sixteenth year of King John, got a charter for a yearly fair, "beginning on the Even of the Holy Trinity, and to continue the two next days ensuing."^ This Trinity fair was confirmed in the following reign, and the circumstances are remarkable, ^ See conveyance, printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 13. 2 Id., \. 377. ^ Dugdale, u.s. 76 STRATFORD-ON-AVON not only as giving an instance of a movable fair, de- pending on the date of Easter, but as showing a persistence in the system of Sunday trading which was in most parts repugnant to public feeling. The dislike to Sunday fairs and markets appears to have been due in a great measure to the preaching of Eustace, Abbot of Flay, who in the year 1 200-1 made a pilgrimage through England, exhorting the people in every city and town to abstain from the evil practice.^ The dispute ended in a kind of compromise ; for, though Sunday markets were not forbidden by the law till long afterwards, the judge usually sanctioned a change from Sunday to a weekday, in case it was generally desired. The town of Stratford seems to have been quite remarkable for the number of its fairs. Bishop William de Blois (1218-36) set up St. Augustine's Fair, which began on May 25th, the eve of the commem- oration of the English apostle, and lasted for four days. Bishop Walter de Cantelupe (1237-66) established the Holyrood Fair, beginning on September 14th, the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and continuing for two days afterwards. Bishop Giffard (1268-1301) ob- tained leave to found another, to be held on the eve, day, and morrow of the Ascension ; and Bishop Walter de Maydenston (1313-17), in the reign of Edward II., ''added another Fair, to be kept on the day of St. Peter and St. Paul, the 29th of June, and fifteen days after. "^ The nature of the Bishop's privileges appears by the proceedings before the Royal Commission, which sat at Warwick in 1277, to inquire into illegal exactions and encroachments on the King's prerogative. The subjects of inquiry were much the same as those which came before the judges in their septennial visits ; but the country had been thrown into confusion by the rebellion of Simon de Montfort and the absence of the 1 Id., 681. 2 /^_^ 68^_ EPISCOPAL PRIVILEGES 77 new King upon a crusade, and it was thought necessary to hold those special inquiries, with a view to im- mediate reform, which are recorded in the Hundred Rolls. Stratford still seems to have been treated as a portion of the Liberty of Pathlow. It is doubtful, indeed, whether the Bishop had any authority to allow the townsmen any separate Court, though some arrangement was afterwards made by which they trans- acted their own affairs before the Bailiff. Throughout the whole district the Bishop had a certain criminal jurisdiction, the return of writs, and the regulation of the sale of bread and ale. He had a gallows for the execution of thieves, and a prison in the town, as to which the jury remarked that John the Bailiff had let a prisoner from Wilmcote escape for a bribe of ten shillings. They found also that the Bishop had a right of free-warren over his lands in the parish of Stratford. This implies the ownership of the pheasants and partridges, and hares and rabbits found in his demesnes ; and that he also had rights over the deer appears by a later trial, in which some of the townsmen of Stratford were indicted for a riotous assembly. The jury also presented the existence of a market at Strat- ford from the time of King Richard I., and went on to give an account of a singular quarrel about the sale of beer and ale. The dispute no doubt had arisen out of a doubt as to the Bishop's powers. He certainly had the management of such matters in the district of Pathlow as a whole, and in the Manor of Stratford as a portion of the district ; but when he assumed the right of setting up a borough, it became doubtful whether the royal authority would not prevail within its limits. Towards the end of the preceding reign the judges had visited Stratford, and had appointed a standard set of measures for the sale of beer in the borough. The new gallons and quarts had been used for a time, but after the battle of Evesham the 78 STRATFORD-ON-AVON steward of the manor had forbidden the practice ; and the men of Stratford still persisted in using their local pottles, and stone jugs, and unsealed quarts, in despite of the King, his Crown, and dignity. The supervision of the Assize of Bread and Ale, as the franchise in question was called, was always delegated to an official known as the Ale-taster, or Ale-conner, whose business it was to see that the brewers and bakers furnished wholesome provisions at or under the statutory price. The loaf always pre- served the same nominal value according to its quality, as ''household bread," or "white bread," or fancy loaves, such as ''wastels" and "simnels"; but the weight varied according to the value of a quarter of wheat, and the gallon of beer changed its price accord- ing to the market value of barley. It will be re- membered that John Shakespeare was appointed one of the ale-tasters for the borough in 1557. The nature of his duties will best appear by the common form of the oath, which is found in all the descriptions of the Court-leet. "You shall well and truly serve our Lord the King and the Lord of this Court in the office of Ale-taster and Assizer for the year to come : you shall truly and duly see that all bread be weighed and do contain such weight according to the price of wheat as by the Statute in that case is provided : you are to take care that all brewers do brew good and whole- some ale and beer, and that the same shall not be sold until it is essayed by you, and at such prices as shall be limited by the Justice of the Peace : and all offences committed by brewers, bakers, and tipplers, you shall present to this Court, and in everything else you shall well and truly behave yourself," etc. The steward explained in his charge to the jury how the price was to be fixed. "They which brew to sell shall make good ale and beer, and wholesome for man's body, and when it is ready they shall send after the Tasters, ALE-TASTER AND CONSTABLE 79 who shall taste it and set the assize." The latter term is explained as being the top price allowed : ''if it be not worth that assize, they shall sell at a lower price after their discretion." When the ale-wife, or ''tippler," had got a store of " nappy ale," clear and sheer, to use the tinker's phrase,^ a signal was made by setting up a bush, or an ale-stake, or a wooden hand. "When the assize is set, they should out a sign and sell by measures ensealed, but not by cups and bowls." Inasmuch as John Shakespeare also served as con- stable, it may be as well to extract some short account of that office, though the duties are far better described in the conversation of Dogberry and Verges. We need hardly say that these duties are now superseded by the Acts for maintaining the police. Constables were or- dained, we are told, to keep the peace, to apprehend felons, and to take surety from persons making an affray ; they might arrest night-walkers and vagabonds, and put beggars and vagrant labourers into the stocks ; they were to encourage archery, and to prevent un- lawful games, such as "bowling, dicing, tabling, carding, or tennis," unless it were at Christmas, or excepting a game of bowls in a man's own garden or orchard ; but it was always to be remembered that noblemen, and people with ;^ioo a year in land, might give licences to all who came to their houses to play at bowls, cards, dice, or any other of the unlawful games. The watch, said the old Acts, ought to be kept all night between Ascension and Michaelmas, and in every town twelve men should watch, and in every village six, or four at least ; and if any stranger be arrested he shall be kept until the morning, and then if there is no " suspicion " in him, he shall go free ; "and if any will not obey the arrest, they ought to raise Hue and Cry." Everyone might arrest night-walkers found ^ Taming of the Shrew, Ind. 2, 25 : "If she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale." 8o STRATFORD-ON-AVON lurking or going out of the way. ''Ifyou meet the Prince in the night," says Dogberry, ''you may stay him. . . . Marry, not without the Prince be willing ; for, indeed the watch ought to offend no man ; and it is an offence to stay a man against his will ! " ^ III THE PARISH CHURCH — COLLEGE OF PRIESTS — LELAND AND LOVEDAY : THEIR ACCOUNTS OF THE CHURCH AND MONU- MENTS The Parish Church is believed to have been built about the beginning of the thirteenth century ; ^ but it was much altered and improved by John de Strat- ford, Archbishop of Canterbury, about the year 1332.^ He built the south aisle and the Chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury, in which he established a chantry served by five priests ; and the local devotion to the Martyr may account for the large fresco, formerly existing in the Guild Chapel, which showed the murder of the Saint by the four knights before St. Benedict's altar in the transept at Canterbury. When this chantry was turned into a College in the reign of Henry VI., the Warden and Priests were endowed with an estate of about £']o a year. Ralph de Stratford, Bishop of London (1340-54), another eminent towns- man,* built the college-house or mansion for the priests, which Leland described as ''an ancient piece of work of square-stone hard by the cemetery." Dr. 1 Much Ado ahout Nothing, iii. 3, 80-1, 85-8. 2 Short and accurately written summaries of the architectural features of the church will be found in Murray's Warwickshire, pp. 1 10-12, and in Windle, Shakespeare s Country, pp. 30-1. 3 John of Stratford, in 1332, was Bishop of Winchester. He was translated to Canterbury in 1333, and died in 1348. He is buried on the south side of the sanctuary in Canterbury Cathedral. * Ralph de Stratford was a nephew of the brothers John and Robert. During his episcopate he rented a house in Bridge Street, Stratford. THE PARISH CHURCH 8i Thomas Balshall, says Dugdale,^ Warden in the reign of Edward IV., helped to improve the church, rebuild- ing the "fair and beautiful Quire " entirely at his own expense. Dr. Ralph Collingwood, who was Dean of Lichfield in the reign of Henry VIII., " pursuing the pious intent of the said Dr. Balshall," provided an endowment for four children who were to assist as choristers in the daily service. Some of the rules for their management are quoted by Dugdale in his history.^ Their home in the daytime was the College, where they waited on the priests and read aloud at mealtime ; they were forbidden to go to the buttery to draw beer for themselves or anyone else ; and after their evening lessons they were conducted to the " bed- chamber in the Church," which seems to have been part of the building afterwards used as a bone-house. "But it was not long after," said the historian, "this College, thus completed, came to ruin with the rest" of the religious foundations. The Priests' House, or College, is no longer in existence. It was granted to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and afterwards Duke of Northumberland, but went back to the Crown after his execution for taking part with Lady Jane Grey. It was afterwards purchased by Mr. John Combe, whom Shakespeare was supposed to have lampooned. The lines preserved by Aubrey were probably the composi- tion of Richard Braithwaite : "Ten in the hundred the Devil allows, but Combe will have twelve he swears and vows " ; ^ it is only certain that they were fixed upon " the usurer's tomb " soon after his death in 1614. The College-house passed on his death to the poet's friend, Thomas Combe, to whom he bequeathed his sword. It may still be of use to quote one or two of the early notices of the monuments near Shakespeare's ^ U.S., 692. Balshall was a Warwickshire man, from Temple Balshall, or Balsall, about midway between Warwick and Birmingham. ^ Ibid., 692-3. ^ Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 226, G 82 STRATFORD-ON-AVON grave. Leland, writing in the preceding generation, had described Stratford as a town "reasonable well builded of timber," with two or three very large streets, besides back lanes. "The Parish Church is a fair large piece of work, and standeth at the south end of the town. . . . The Quire of the Church was of late time re-edified by one Thomas Balshall, Doctor of Divinity and Guardian of the College there. He died 1491, and lieth in the north-side of the Presbytery in a fair tomb." Dugdale^ tells us of other monuments in honour of Mr. John Combe, whose long list of town charities is duly set forth, of the poet's own grave and monument, and the tablet to the memory of Anne, the wife of William Shakespeare, who died in 1623, the tomb of Agnes Paget, Mistress of the Guild, of Thomas Clopton and Eglantine his wife, who died, she in 1642, he in 1643, of George Carew, Lord Clopton and Earl of Totnes, and his wife Joyce^ and others. From Mr. Loveday's journal^ we may learn the condition of the church in 1732, long before the stone spire was erected. He calls it a very large structure in the form of a cross, "though the north and south length, built by the executors of H. Clop- ton, is by no means equal to the east and west." The middle aisle, he adds, is very lofty, and the steeple stands almost in it ; it was a tower with a shingled spire, standing "cathedral-wise" between the middle aisle and the long chancel. "Fine monu- ments of the Cloptons here. Shakespear in the Chancel ; A stone also for Susanna his daughter, widow of John Hall, gent." "Within the rails, an high-rais'd tomb for a Doctor of the College (as they call him) Warden Balshal . . . the brass-plates at top of the tomb torn off; stone-work, small figures on the sides, as Christ crucify'd, — laid in the Sepulchre, &c. . . . The charnel-house here is full of sculls and ^ zi.s., 685-92. 2 Ed. for Roxburghe Club, 1890, pp. 5, 6. GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS 83 bones, a room over it. The stalls still remain in the Chancel of this (once) Collegiate-Church ; the College- house west of the Church, is Sir William Keyt's." IV THE GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS: EARLY RULES AND CUSTOMS — RE-FOUNDATION BY HENRY IV. — THE CHAPEL We now come to the story of the little benefit society, known as the Guild of the Holy Cross, which has played such an important part in connection with the develop- ment of the town. Its origin was doubtless irregular. The Bishops seem to have considered that they could do what they pleased in their new borough ; but it was decided in later times that none but " they of London " could set up "fellowships" and fraternities without licence from the Crown. This Guild, however, seems actually to have been founded as early as the reign of King John ; and the Corporation of Stratford are in possession of hundreds of charters, grants, agreements, and Papal briefs and indulgences relating to this foundation, through the whole period between the reign of Henry III. and the creation of a new guild under the patronage of Henry IV. Mr. Toulmin Smith^ has printed the rules of the old Holy Cross Guild, by which it appears the brothers had to provide a wax-light to be lit before the Rood and to be carried, with eight smaller ones, at funerals, and that every brother and sister had to contribute towards the expenses of a love-feast at Easter. To this feast every brother and sister brought a great tankard, and all the tankards were filled with ale and given to the poor. Soon after Henry IV. came to the throne, a general inquiry was instituted as to evasions of the mortmain ^ Documentary History of English Guilds (Early English Text Society), 1870, pp. 211-25. 84 STRATFORD-ON-AVON laws. There was an obvious defect in the title of the Stratford Guild, though Edward III. had protected their estates as far as he could by granting them a dispensa- tion. But when the whole subject was investigated, the brethren and sisters could not show any regular licence ; and the Crown seized upon eight houses and a yard- land in the fields, given by one Richard Fille, and various other properties ; but upon an earnest petition, representing the antiquity of the Guild and the piety of its founders and benefactors, the King allowed a new Fraternity to be instituted in honour of the Holy Cross and St. John the Baptist, with power to choose a master and proctors, and to appoint two or more priests to celebrate Divine Service, and to pray for the souls of the King and Queen and the benefactors and brethren generally. From that time, according to Dugdale, it appears that *' King Henry the 4th was esteemed the founder of the Guild." ^ Robert de Stratford,^ the celebrated parson of the town, showed the same energy in small surroundings as when in later days he managed the University Chest, and composed the feuds of the '' Northern and Southern Nations " as Chancellor of Oxford. His ^ See Dugdale, tt-.s., 695-6. It is just possible that Shakespeare may have noticed the connection between Henry IV. and the Holy Cross Guild. His allusions to the King's intention of going- on a Crusade are numerous {e.g. Richard II., v. 6, 47-50; 2 Henry IV., iii. i, 108-9, etc.). At the very opening of i Henry IV. (i. i, 24-7) the King declares at length his purpose to make an expedition to " those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd For our advantage on the bitter cross." These words were spoken (1. 52) soon after Holyrood day and the battle of Homildon. Shakespeare, in writing the scene, cannot but have remembered the Stratford Guild and its history, and it is not irrational to imagine that the reminiscence helped to contribute to the beauty of the lines quoted above. ^ Robert de Stratford became Bishop of Chichester 1337-62. He was twice Chancellor of England. His elder brother, the Archbishop, also filled this office. THE GUILD AND ITS CHAPEL 85 brother, the Archbishop, had taken the parish church in hand. Robert, with the help of a rate for a short term, undertook the paving of the town. He obtained many privileges for the original Guild, and, among other things, he prevailed on the Bishop to include the brethren in the Augustinian rule, and to allow them the dress of that order. ^ Leave was also obtained to build a chapel and almshouse ; and the brotherhood, indeed, was generally known after Robert de Stratford's time as the Hospital of the Holy Cross. His chapel remained unaltered for nearly two centuries. The original chancel was found, however, to be too small for the needs of the new foundation. In or about the year 1443, therefore, the existing chancel was erected ; the nave was rebuilt by Sir Hugh Clopton, who lived in the " Great House " opposite. Leland mentions the building, as it appeared about the year 1540. "There is a right goodly Chapel," he says, " in a fair street towards the south end of the town. It was re-edified," he adds, "by one Hugh Clopton, Mayor of London. This Hugh Clopton builded also by the north side of this Chapel a pretty house of brick and timber, wherein he lived in his latter days and died." The last remark is incorrect, as may be seen by a reference to Stow, who was much interested in the man, as being the only example then known of an unmarried Lord Mayor. Sir Hugh Clopton, Alderman and Mercer, was elected to the higher office in 1491. Stow says that he was "all his life time a bachelor," remarking that there never was a bachelor Mayor before. ^ He died in 1496, and was buried at St. Margaret's, Lothbury, with a handsome monument, mentioned in the Survey of London.^ He had intended, indeed, to spend his latter days at Stratford ; but his mansion there had been let upon a lease for life to Dr. Thomas Bentley, a former ^ Dugdale, u.s. ^ See Stow, Sxcrvey, ed. Strype, 1754, ii. 261. 3 Id., i. 573. 86 STRATFORD-ON-AVON President of the College of Physicians, and this lease was still subsisting at the time of Sir Hugh Clopton's death. Leland has also described some of the charities administered in his time by the Stratford Guild. ^ There was an almshouse in which ten poor brethren were maintained. The report of the Commissioners who surveyed the Guild in 1546 showed that these alms- people had 63^". 4^. a year for their maintenance, of which lO-r. was to be spent in coals, "and besides there was ;^5 or £'^ given them of the good provision of the Master of the Guild." Little or nothing appears about the sisters ; but we must suppose from the inscription upon Agnes Paget's grave that there was work for a Mistress of the Guild.^ V interior of the guild chapel — the dance of death : Shakespeare's pictures of death — description of OTHER frescoes Leland, who described the exterior of the chapel, did not mention the interior in the Itinerary which he presented to the King as a New Year's gift, but one of his notes, containing a curious piece of information, has been accidentally preserved. It is known that Stow had many of Leland's papers in his possession during the preparation of his Survey of London; and Hearne, who edited Leland's Itinerary, saw Stow's own copy of that work, with a marginal note, evidently derived from Leland's memoranda, written opposite to the account of the Guild Chapel.^ The note was 1 See also Dugdale, u.s. 2 The inscription, as given by Dugfdale {u.s. 685), was as follows : — "Anno milleno C. quater LX. quatriplato Unicus eximitur annus Pagete obit Agnes Et nonas Junii, gylde fuit ilia magistra Annis undenis, cuius mansio sit modo celis." '^ See Hearne's Leland, ix. 185. THE GUILD CHAPEL 87 as follows: "About the body of this Chapel was curiously painted the Dance of Death commonly called the Dance of Paul's, because the same was sometime there painted about the cloisters on the north-west side of Paul's Church, pulled down by the Duke of Somer- set tempore Edward the 6th." The latter part of the note is later than Leland's time, and is inserted on Stow's own authority. He gives a fuller account of the matter in the Survey,^ where he tells us that the cloister used to go round a plot of open ground called the Pardon Churchyard, or Pardon Church Haugh, now part of a garden belonging to the Minor Canons of St. Paul's. Here Jenken Carpenter, Town Clerk, who was one of Richard Whittington's executors, had caused to be set up on large panels "a picture of Death leading all Estates," with the speeches of Death and the answer of every Estate, all "artificially and richly painted"; and this, he says, was called the Dance of St. Paul's, or the "Dance of Machabray." The verses were composed by John Lydgate, the Monk of Bury, in imitation of the quatrains upon the Innocents' Cloister in the Church of Notre Dame in Paris, where paintings of the same kind had existed since 1423, or thereabouts, under the name at first of "La Danse Maratre," and afterwards of " La Danse Macabre." But " in the year 1549, on the loth of April," he tells us, "the said chapel, by command of the Duke of Somerset, was begun to be pulled down, with the whole cloister, the Dance of Death, the tombs and monuments, so that nothing thereof was left, but the bare plot of ground." The "Dance of Death" seems to have originated in a contempt for the human race caused by the shock of the great plagues which devastated the world. It is mentioned in a poem of 1379, containing the line — "Jefis de Macabre la danse " ; and Petrarch had before that time written in a letter to Francesco Bruni, ^ Stow, U.S., i. 640. 88 STRATFORD-ON-AVON " Imperious Death joins in a funeral dance, and Fortune marks the tune." We hear of a painting of this kind at Minden in 1383, and M. Jubinal collected the history of many later examples.^ Each country had its own way of treating the subject. In France and England, the " Dance" was usually a stately pro- cession like a Polonaise, the Deaths walking in couples with all sorts and conditions of men. Besides the examples already mentioned, Mr. Douce alluded to remains of these Dances at Salisbury and on the rood-screen at Hexham, in the Archbishop's Palace at Croydon, and at Wortley Hall in Gloucestershire, be- sides a series of similar designs on certain tapestries long preserved in the Tower.^ We cannot tell when the figures of Death and his victims were erased from the nave of the Guild chapel. They may have been destroyed as a relic of Popery in the Protector Somerset's time ; they may have lasted till the year of Shakespeare's birth, and have been broken up when the chancel was desecrated. An entry has been found among the Borough records of a pay- ment made in 1564 "for defacing images in the Chapel"; and this might have covered the destruction of ^'Paul's Dance " as well as the mutilation of the paintings concerned with the elevation of the Cross. To understand what the figures were like, we should disregard the vulgar tragi-comic pictures remaining at Basel or on the Mill-bridge at Lucerne, where Death is shown intervening in the common affairs of life after the satirical style introduced by Holbein. One should rather compare the carved procession in the church at Fecamp with the copies of the paintings in the Hunger- ^ Achille Jubinal, Explication de la Danse des Moris de la Chaise- Dieu, 1841. ^ See Douce, Holbein's Dance of Death, chap. iv. In the south aisle of the choir at St. Mary Magdalene's, Newark-on-Trent, is a single painting- which probably formed part of a Dance of Death. It is in the panel of the screen of a small chant rj'-chapel. DANCE OF DEATH IN GUILD CHAPEL 89 ford Chapel at Salisbury, published in 1748, and the reproductions of the Danse Macabre in the Abbey of La Chaise-Dieu in Auvergne, issued by M. Jubinal in his monograph of 1841, and by Baron Taylor in the Voyages Pittoresques dans VAncienne France. The copy of the " Dance of Macaber," in Dugdale's History of St. PaiiVsj was shown by Mr. Douce to be only an emblematic woodcut prefixed to Lydgate's tract of that name, printed by Tottel in 1554, as an appendix to the " Bochas on the falls of Princes." The work itself is a translation from Boccaccio made at the instance of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester ; and the appendix contains the verses written by Lydgate in imitation of the French original, which were usually set below the series of "Death and all Estates," as represented in English churches. We have no evidence that Shakespeare ever saw these old designs ; but we may be sure that he was familiar with that representation of a similar subject which was known as " Holbein's Dance." The ironical pictures of the intervention of Death were commonly used in alphabets of initial letters and in the woodcuts on service-books and such well-known religious works as the " Book of Christian Prayer." But Holbein him- self had painted a Dance of Death in fresco in a gallery of the Palace at Whitehall, which perished in the fire of 1697. This curious fact, said Mr. Douce, was ascertained from certain etchings by a Dutch artist named Nieuhoff Piccard, which were privately circu- lated in the Court of William III. The book had the following title, engraved in a border : Imagines Mortis, or the Dead Dance of Hans Holbeyn, painter of King Henry the VIII. The author states in one of his dedi- cations that he has met with the scarce little work of H. Holbein in wood, which he himself had painted as large as life in fresco on the walls of Whitehall.^ 1 Id., pp. 1 15-16, 124-6. go STRATFORD-ON-AVON One would suppose that the satire in these drawings would be too simple to take Shakespeare's fancy. His pictures of Death are for the most part crowded with emblematic figures and full of complex design. We see Death in his gloomy forest, exulting in the rank of his captives, or pining over those whom he has lost : — " But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest ; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest."^ Death does not come alone, but stands plotting with " wasteful Time, "2 or casts insults, like some swagger- ing conqueror, over his "dull and speechless tribes."^ Once or twice the poet seems to make some slight reference to the famous Dance. Taking his thirty- second Sonnet, for example, by the reference to the well-contented day, "when that churl Death with dust my bones shall cover," we are reminded of Holbein's drawing of the Counsellor : he stands advising a rich client, and Death crouches in front holding an hour- glass and a sexton's shovel. There was another picture of an Unjust Judge, arrested in his bribery by the grim messenger, who tears his staff away and gripes him by the throat, and we think of the commencement of Sonnet Ixxiv. : — ' ' when that fell arrest Without all bail shall carry me away," and of the words of the dying Hamlet : — " Had I but time — as this fell sergeant, death, Is strict in his arrest — O, I could tell you — But let it be.""^ The instance commonly quoted to show Holbein's influence on Shakespeare seems on examination to be ^ Sonnet xviii. 9-12. ^ Sonnet xv. 11 : "Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay." ^ Sonnet cvii. * Hamlet, v. 2, 346-8. SHAKESPEARE'S PICTURES OF DEATH 91 of a very ambiguous kind. ''Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs," says poor King Richard ; " Let's choose executors and talk of wills ; And yet not so, for what can we bequeath Save our deposed bodies to the ground ? " " For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground," he breaks out again, "And tell sad stories of the death of kings." They have met with death in many forms, some slain in war, some poisoned. Shakespeare seems to be think- ing of plots and plays yet unborn, of the ghosts that may haunt the usurper, of the murder of a sleeping king in an orchard. "All murder'd," moans the weak and pining monarch : " For within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp."^ The tiny mask allows the king whom he haunts "a breath, a little scene." The monarch struts through the comedy, and strikes the rest with awe, and kills with looks, while the Antic mocks and jeers. " Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus Comes at the last and with a little pin Bores through his castle- wall, and farewell king ! " ^ ^ The phrase reappears in Romeo and Juliet, i. 5, 57-9 : — " What dares the slave Come hither, cover'd with an antic face, To fleer and scorn at our solemnity ? " In the preceding scene (i. 4, 55-6), Mercutio's picture of Queen Mab — " In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman " — possibly contains a kindred idea to that of the miniature Death in a mask sitting among the jewels of the crown. As Shakespeare found in the Indian agate, of whose marvels he could have read in his English Pliny, Mab's waggon-spokes, filmy traces, and collars "of the moon- shine's watery beams," so he shows us the presence of Death as in the carving of an old gem, or as the Destroyer might appear in the miniature sphere of Fairyland. '^ Richard II., iii. 2, 145-70. 92 STRATFORD-ON-AVON The nearest approach to this imagery in Holbein's work is found in his drawing of the Emperor, under the text, ''There shalt thou die, and there the Chariots of thy Glory shall be." Maximilian is sitting on his throne, administering justice to his petitioners, and Death in the canopy behind his seat is at that moment twisting the crown from his brow ; there is a certain humour- ous alacrity about the workman, which may remind us of Shakespeare's picture, though the ideas of the mask and the figures of gem-like delicacy are altogether absent. The chapel at Stratford contained many other paint- ings of various dates. They are now almost entirely obliterated, and the early series which formerly covered the chancel walls was probably defaced in Shake- speare's infancy. After being long concealed and forgotten, they came to light again when the church was restored in 1804. The frescoes in the choir were destroyed in the removal of the plaster, and those in the nave were covered up again, being much decayed by damp ; but Mr. Fisher succeeded in making accurate copies of all that were left ; and these copies are carefully reproduced as coloured prints in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, after appearing in a separate volume. They are well described in Neil's Home of Shakespeare, and in Charles Knight's bio- graphy of the poet ; and one of the best accounts of their discovery is to be found in a Guide published by Mr. Merridew of Coventry, from which the following extract is taken. "The walls were formerly orna- mented with a series of ancient, allegorical, historical, and legendary paintings in fresco, which were dis- covered during the reparation of the Chapel in the summer of 1804; and upon carefully scraping off the whitewash and paint with which they were covered, many parts were found to be nearly in a perfect state. The most ancient were those in the Chancel, which FRESCOES IN THE GUILD CHAPEL 93 were apparently coceval with this part of the Chapel. Of these, many parts, especially the Crosses, had been evidently mutilated by some sharp instrument through the ill-directed zeal of our early Reformers. The ravages of time had also so much contributed to in- jure them that the plaster upon which they were painted was necessarily taken down before the repairs could be completed ; so that those which were in the Chancel, with a small exception, are now destroyed ; the rest, in the Nave and what is now a small Ante-Chapel at the West end, being painted on the stone itself, still remain, though again covered over." Taking the chancel first, as containing the oldest series of frescoes, we find that the side-walls were decorated with scenes from the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Golden Legend, relating to the Invention of the Cross, celebrated on the 3rd of May, and the Exaltation, to which the 14th of September, or Holy- rood Day, was consecrated. Over the Vicar's door was a spirited design of dragons, and near it a record of the old legend of the Host being insulted in a synagogue.^ The side devoted to the Invention of the Cross displayed the tree of life and showed how it was preserved for long ages near Jerusalem ; the Queen of Sheba, a popular figure in Guild-processions, has come with all her train to admire it, and King Solomon appears in his glory. Next in order came the dream of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine ; and we may remember that she was specially venerated in this country as being a British Princess, the daughter of King Coel of Colchester, as the legend ran, and the patroness of some of the holy wells in Craven at which the peasantry had paid rustic sacrifices. The anti- quarians used to fight hard for her insular descent in ^ The same subject occurs in the interesting' series of medieval frescoes, illustrating the history of the Blessed Sacrament, at Friskney Church, between Boston and Wainfleet, Lincolnshire. 94 STRATFORD-ON-AVON order to maintain the dignity of the British Church. Camden, for instance, says in writing of Constantius Chlorus, that he "took to wife Helena, daughter of Ccelus or Coelius, a British prince, on whom he begat that noble Constantine the Great, in Britain. For so, together with that great historiographer Baronius, the common opinion of all other writers with one consent beareth witness : unless it be one or two Greek authors of later time and those dissenting one from the other, and a right learned man grounding upon a corrupt place of Jul. Firmicus."^ Gibbon took the trouble to investigate the story, and showed how Mr. Carte "transports the kingdom of Coil, the imaginary father of Helena, from Essex to the Wall of Antoninus."^ It should be remembered that the Helen of the Welsh traditions, who made the Roman roads ' ' from castle to castle in Britain," belongs to a totally different legend. The frescoes were continued in a picture of the Raising of the Cross, which some confused with the later feast of the Exaltation. Constantine the Great makes his public entry into Jerusalem ; he is welcomed by a choir of angels, and the occasion is marked by a miracle of healing. On the opposite wall were shown the loss and recovery of the holy relics, and the first Festival of the Exaltation as instituted by the Emperor Heraclius. The artist has followed the story in the Golden Legend. When Chosroes the Persian carried away the Cross, it had seemed incredible that he should ever yield to the power of Rome ; but the Emperor, through a fortunate alliance with the Turks, won a victory that ranked with the highest feats of antiquity ; ^ Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, 1610, p. 74. ^ Gibbon, Decline and Fall, etc., chap. xiv. , note. His reference is to Carte's "ponderous History of England," vol. i. p. 147. The industry of Gibbon destroyed the legend of " Coel, duke of Kaercolvin, or Colchester " (Geoffrey of Monmouth, lih. 5, cap. 6) ; but St. Helena's statue forms the very conspicuous apex to the tower of the new town- hall at Colchester, completed in 1901. FRESCOES IN THE GUILD CHAPEL 95 and his triumphal return and pious pilgrimage to Jerusalem were regarded as more important than all the conquests of Alexander the Great. The frescoes showed the details of the war with the heathen, the rout of Chosroes, and the return of Heraclius "in his great pride," as well as the origin of the Church's feast, which had a special significance at Stratford on account of the great Holyrood Fair. The paintings in the nave were of a somewhat later date, having been executed towards the end of the fifteenth century, when Clopton restored the fabric. Above the chancel arch was a huge picture of the Day of Judgment, in the style of Orcagna's terrible painting in the Campo Santo at Pisa. On the right side, to the spectator's left, one saw the trumpeter, a choir of angels, and the Saints passing into the heavenly mansions ; there were satirical figures of a Pope and a Bishop, and others were shown as saved by wearing the robe of St. Francis.^ On the other side was exhibited the doom of the wicked, the Deadly Sins with their victims, a legion of fiends, and the traditionary form of the Mouth of the Pit. The wall at the west end was covered by four pic- tures. On the one hand was seen the Murder of Becket, as mentioned above ; Tracy and Fitz-Urse were hacking at his head, Hugh de Moreville swung a double-handed sword, and Richard Brito, with a distorted face, was dragging at a broad, ponderous blade. Beneath was seen an allegorical design of the soul ascending from a tomb. The limbs were covered with a pink and white plumage, and the figure wore a scarlet Phrygian cap. All round this design were inscribed stanzas of the poem called "Earth upon Earth " :— " Earth goeth upon earth as glistening gold, Yet shall Earth unto earth rather than he wold." ^ Cf. Dante, Infertio, xvi. 106-8. 96 STRATFORD-ON-AVON For a variation of the familiar words we may quote the epitaph on Florens Caldwell and his first wife, set up about 1590 in the Church of St. Martin's, Ludgate : — " Earth goes to earth as mold to mold, Earth treads on earth glitteringf in gold, Earth as to earth return nere should, Earth shall to earth goe ere he would. Earth upon earth consider may, Earth goes to earth naked away. Earth though on earth be stout and gay. Earth shall from earth passe poore away."^ There is a certain literary interest about these lines owing to Shakespeare having used similar metaphors in the Sonnets, as in the seventy-fourth, where the fell sergeant makes his arrest — '* The earth can have but earth which is his due " ; or, as in Sonnet cxlvi., where the soul is rebuked for painting her outward walls so costly gay — " Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth. Fooled by these rebel powers that thee array." The wall on the other side of the doorway contained a picture of St. George and the Dragon. The Prin- cess of Egypt was there, with her little white "com- forter dog " ; the hero's horse was barbed in steel, and had transfixed the monster's neck with a thrust from the frontlet-spike. Beneath this again was another mystical design, of Babylon, and the woman clothed with the sun, and the messengers with sharp sickles making ready for the harvest. In the niches on the south wall were the figures of various Saints, almost destroyed by time ; but it is thought that one of them, from some remaining letters of the name, and from its special emblems, was intended to represent St. Mod- wenna, a British saint who lived in the ninth century, ^ Stow, ed. Strype, «.5., bk. 3, p. 176. THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 97 and whose memory seems to have been preserved on two festivals, the one beginning on July 5th and the other held on September 9th. VI THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL — THE GUILDHALL : PERFORMANCES OF PLAYS THEREIN — THE SCHOOLROOMS — THE NEW CORPORA- TION (1553) In the return of chantries and fraternities made in 1546, King Henry IV. alone is mentioned as the founder and patron of the Guild, and its connection with the numerous local charities was evidently regarded as accidental. The chapel itself would have been de- stroyed, as dedicated to a superstitious use, if the Royal Commissioners had not reported that it was of value for the great quietness and comfort of parishioners ; *'and in time of sickness, as the plague and such-like diseases doth chance within the said town, then all such infective persons, with many other impotent and poor people, doth to the said chapel resort for their daily service." Leland has left us a brief description of the whole charity as it existed not long before this date. ''There is a grammar-school on the south side of this Chapel, of the foundation of one Jolepe {i.e. Jolyffe), Master of Arts, born in Stratford, where- about he had some patrimony ; and that he gave to this school. There is also an alms-house of ten poor folks at the south side of the Chapel of the Trinity, maintained by a Fraternity of the Holy Cross." The founder's name is spelt "Jolif" in Stow's transcript. He is better known as Thomas Jolyffe, a member of the Guild, who by his will in February, 1482, gave certain lands in Stratford and Dodwell to the brethren on trusts " for finding a priest fit and able in knowledge to teach grammar freely to all scholars coming to him, H 98 STRATFORD-ON-AVON taking nothing for their teaching." It seems to have been treated as a Free School in the proper sense of the word, the teacher being free to teach grammar, without dependence upon the leave of the Ordinary ; and the founder's liberal endowment made it possible to secure an income for the master by deed, the children being taught gratuitously, or "freely," as the phrase ran in common parlance. When Somerset's Commis- sioners paid their visit they found that one of the five priests was the " school-master of grammar" ; " upon the premises is one Free School, and one William Dalam, schoolmaster there, hath yearly for teaching ;^io by patent." A marginal note in the Report shows that the school was thought to be well conducted, and was therefore excepted from confiscation. The alms- houses at that time maintained twenty-four inmates ; and the number was not altered when the trusts on the property were transferred to the new corporation. The old house by the chapel, where the brethren held the Easter Feasts and the five priests had their chambers, was turned into a town-hall, or a "guildhall," in the wide sense of the term ; it ceased to be the home of the religious Guild, and was used thenceforth as if it belonged to a borough where the public affairs had been managed by a Merchant-guild. The house has often been altered, both inside and out ; but it has not lost its identity with the building described by Leland, and it may even claim to be the actual home of Robert de Stratford's original foundation. In the time of Edward VI. there was a large hall on the ground-floor, which was the only place for public deliberations until a new town-hall was built in 1633. In this hall theatrical performances took place when some noble- man's " cry of players" came on tour. It will be re- membered that the strolling actors were liable to be whipped as vagrants, unless they had some nobleman's licence to perform interludes in his service, even PLAYS IN THE GUILDHALL 99 before the punishment was rendered more savage by the Act of 39 Elizabeth against fencers, bear- wards, common players, and minstrels, not having an authority under some great person's hand and seal of arms. When the plague burst out in London, or stage-plays were for some other reason inhibited, the City tragedians set forth in little bands to make what they could in moot-halls, inn-yards, and barns. They got little enough for their pains, if the municipal records are correct. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps showed that the Lord Chamberlain's players, among whom Shakespeare was enrolled, paid visits to Bath and Bristol in 1597, and received as much as 306'. at a time in one fee.^ But the extracts from the Municipal Records of Bath, lately printed under the authority of the Town Council, show that much smaller amounts were occasionally accepted, leave being given in that case to make a collection from the benches or stalls. Payments of this kind were made by the Council to the '' Bearwardens of the Queen," and those of Lord Warwick and Lord Dudley, and to Her Majesty's and Lord Warwick's Tumblers. Lord Worcester's players received half-a-crown in 1577 ; but Lord Leicester's company were paid a fee of 14^. in the following season. Mr. Charles E. Davis, in his work on the Mineral Baths of Bath, quotes the Chamber Roll of expenses for 1567 : '' Given to the Earl of Bath's players, "js. 4^." ; and five or six years later, "To my Lord of Worcester's players, 6^-. 2d.: for frieze to make the musicians' coats, iSs. 9^. : to my Lord of Sussex his players, 4^. 2^." We have the pictures of these little travelling bands in Hamlet (ii. 2 ; iii. 2) and The Taviing of the Shrew (Induction, sc. i). Four or five of them share the waggon that carries their humble properties : there is the old man ^ Visits of Shakespeare s Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of £ngla?id (iSSy). L.ofC. loo STRATFORD-ON-AVON with a bearded " valanced " face, and the boy who plays her ladyship's parts, and the robustious man in a periwig. They are engaged, as they go, to act at the country-houses, or are announced by the town- criers to act in public on market-days. The Stratford records contain entries of several performances during Shakespeare's childhood and youth. The first is under the year 1569, when his father was High Bailiff. The Chamberlain's company and Lord Worcester's players were both at Stratford in that year, and there is a note that Lord Worcester's men were well bestowed. ''Good my Lord," said Hamlet, ''will you see the players well bestowed ? Do you hear, let them be well used."^ They were treated so kindly, indeed, in the case before us, that they returned in the following year. Lord Leicester's men, in the same way, played in 1573 "and received a gratuity," and paid another visit four years afterwards. In 1576, Lord Warwick's troupe appeared ; and within the next few seasons the Cor- poration allowed performances by the companies of Lord Strange and Lady Essex and the "dramatic servants " of the Earl of Derby. In the year 1587 there seems to have been no less than six companies in the town. Above the hall was a room used for council-meetings and as a place for storing documents ; and here Mr. Fisher found that vast mass of records relating to the older and later Guilds, of which he published copies and abstracts in his book upon the Guild Chapel. Next to this chamber were the schoolrooms, approached until comparatively recent times by a tiled staircase from out- side, opening into the yard where the clock was once set up, which in the last days of the Guild one Oliver Baker used to keep in order for a yearly fee. The Latin School is shown, with a ceiling crossed by Tudor beams 1 Hamlet, ii. 2, 546-8. THE LATIN SCHOOL loi having carved bosses at their juncture in the middle. The high timber roof lately opened above the Latin School was found to be ornamented with a pair of curious paintings, having reference to the ending of the Wars of the Roses. There are two of the symbolical flowers, set side by side ; the red flower shows a white heart, and the pale rose of York a red heart. The metaphor of a change of hearts was a favourite with the Amorettists and even with Sir Philip Sidney, and with Shakespeare himself. '* My true love hath my heart," sang fair Charita to the Arcadian swain, " and I have his, By just exchange . . . He loves my heart, for once it was his own : I cherish his, because in me it bides. "^ Or again, let us look at the way of touching the subject in Richard II. and the twenty-second Sonnet. " Thus give I mine," says Richard, "and thus take I thy heart." "Give me mine own again," sobs the Queen, " 'twere no good part. To take on me to keep and kill thy heart." ^ Modern opinion is on the side of Elia, who despised the " bestuck and bleeding heart," as an anatomical symbol of aff"ection ; the midriff, he thought, would have been as suitable ; ^ or we might choose that liver-vein of Biron which makes flesh into a deity and a "green goose a goddess."* The best illustration is Shake- speare's own picture of the hearts exchanged like babies in long clothes. "The beauty that doth cover thee," he sings, " Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me. . . . ^ Arcadia^ lib, 3 (loLh ed., 1655, pp. 357-8). ^ Richard II., v. i, 96-8. ^ Essays of Elia, "Valentine's Day." ^ love's Labour s Lost, iv. 3, 74-6. I02 STRATFORD-ON-AVON O therefore, Love, be of thyself so wary As I, not for myself, but for thee will ; Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring- ill. " ^ With reference to the place where the school was originally kept, we ought to notice another entry in the Corporation Book, under the date of the i8th of Febru- ary, 1594-5 : ''At this Hall it was agreed by the Bailiff and the greater part of the company now present that there shall be no school kept in the Chapel from this time forth." The Bath records furnish us with a similar instance, the church of St. Mary by the North-gate having been used for divine service till 1588, but after- wards transferred to secular purposes, " the Tower used as a prison, and the Nave for the Free Grammar- school." We must suppose that Shakespeare was sent to the Free School at Stratford, as his parents were unlearned persons, and there was no other public educa- tion available.2 Under these circumstances, it becomes interesting to consider whether the chapel was used for school pur- poses in Shakespeare's time, and if so, whether there is any allusion to the subject in his works. It has been reasonably suggested that there may have been some temporary necessity for the practice, while the rooms above the Guildhall were being repaired or altered, and that this may perhaps have happened on ^ Sonnet xxii. - References to Lilly's Grammar^ as used in such schools, are to be found in Titus Andronicus, iv. 2, 22-3, where Chiron, hearing- Demetrius read the lines from " Integ-er vitse," says :— " O, 'tis a verse in Horace ; I know it well : I read it in the g-rammar long ago." See also the amusing' catechism of the little scholar in Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. i. Two phrases are borrowed by Holofernes {Love's Labour s Lost, V. i) from Erasmus's Latin and English dialogues, composed for schoolboys; viz. " Priscian a little scratched" (11, 31-2) and "I smell false Latin" (1. 83). Erasmus's phrases are " Diminuit Prisciani caput" and " Barbariem olet." THE CHARTER OF 1553 103 several distinct occasions. Mr. Neil, indeed, has gone so far as to suggest in his Home of Shakespeare that the poet may have seen Mr. Aspinall the vicar, or Mr. Thomas Jenkins the schoolmaster, teaching the grammar or sentences in Malvolio's costume : *' strange, stout, in yellow stockings, and cross-gartered." ''And cross-gartered?" "Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i' the church . . . You have not seen such a thing as 'tis. I can hardly forbear hurling things at him."^ We need not examine minutely the transfer of pro- perty to the new Corporation. They got the Guild estate, including the lands left for the maintenance of the school, and the College estate carrying with it the Rectory of Stratford and the seven hamlets, the great tithes and a huge tithe-barn in Chapel Lane, and "altarages and oblations" and other ecclesiastical perquisites. It may, however, be useful to notice that there are several certificates among the Exchequer Records which describe the property in detail ; two of these are returns to Special Commissions in the nine- teenth year of Elizabeth, and relate to property at Luddington, Greenborough, Hardwick, and elsewhere, part of the possessions of the Stratford Guild ; and there are others made in the seventh or eighth years of James I., relating to the tithes and tithe-barn and to lands at Luddington and elsewhere which had formerly belonged to the College. It should be observed that the governing body established by Edward VI., about a fortnight before his death, was not headed by a Mayor as in ordinary cases. It was not till the re- newal of the charter in 1674 that Stratford had full local self-government under its own Mayor and Cor- poration. The Corporation as at first established was headed by the Bailiff, who was still in theory a servant of the lord of the borough, and was in fact responsible ^ Twelfth Night, iii. 2, 79-87; see Neil, Home of Shakespeare, p. 34. 104 STRATFORD-ON-AVON for the collection of quit-rents and maintenance of seignorial privileges. The lordship belonged to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, when the charter was first granted in 1553, but was forfeited to the Crown on his attainder a few weeks afterwards. Queen Mary gave up her rights to the Hospital of the Savoy, which had been suppressed at the end of the late reign. This Hospital, says Stow, was again new founded and endowed by Queen Mary ; and whereas the beds, bedding, and furniture had been given to the Bridewell workhouse, ''the Court Ladies," says the chronicler, "and Maids of Honour, in imitation of the Queen's charity, stored the Hospital anew with sufficient beds, bedding, and other furniture." ^ It was not long, however, before the lordship of the borough was vested once more in the Crown ; so that, when John Shake- speare was chosen as High Bailiff in 1568-9, he be- came not only a local official, but also a servant of the Queen. Without an explanation of the Bailiff's posi- tion, it would have been difficult to understand why Camden and Dethick, when granting the coat-of-arms in 1599, should have referred to the pattern of the arms assigned to him at Stratford ''whilest he was her Majestie's officer and baylefe of that towne."^ ^ Stow, U.S., i. 236. ^ See grant printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 60-1. SNITTERFIELD, WILMCOTE, AND THE MANOR OF ROWINGTON SNITTERFIELD, WILMCOTE, AND THE MANOR OF ROWINGTON I JOHN SHAKESPEARE was the son of a yeoman living at Snitterfield,. a village lying a little to the north-east of Stratford, not far from Wilmcote.^ The parish appears to have belonged to the famous Turquil the Saxon, whose earldom and lands were bestowed by William Rufus on Henry de Newburgh, Earl of Warwick. His son, Earl Roger, who died in the reign of King Stephen, is said to have given a fourth part of all the arable lands and a right of feed- ing swine in the woods to the Collegiate Church of Warwick. The rest of the estate came down to one William Cummin, or Commin, who was described as Lord of Snitterfield in the time of King Henry H. His successor, Walter Commin, gave some of the land to the monastery of Bordesley. Dugdale traces the descent of the property, through an heiress of the Commins, to John de Cantilupe, who had a seat here described as "one knight's fee," of which the Earl of Warwick was the feudal lord. John de Cantilupe, however, had, as vassal, a complete title to ^ See Dugdale, Anf. War., ed. Thomas, sub "Snitfield," ii. 661-4. 107 io8 SNITTERFIELD the estate, allowing for what had been given away to the church and monastery. The village became almost equal in dignity to a little town ; for John de Cantilupe is said to have procured a charter for a Wednesday market and a yearly fair, commencing July the 15th, on the eve, day, and morrow of the feast of St. Kenelm, the martyred King of Mercia. In the seventeenth year of Edward II., one Thomas West, who had married the heiress of Cantilupe, obtained another charter changing the market to Tuesday and ''enlarging the fair five days more after St. Kenelm." The estate afterwards passed under an exchange to William Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, and descended to his son Richard, Baron Abergavenny and Earl of Worcester. About the year 1490 it belonged to Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who probably derived his title under an entail through his grand- mother, Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick. He was beheaded in 1499 for high treason, and on his attainder this estate, among a number of others, known as "Warwick's Lands," became vested in King Henry VII. The property remained in the Crown, subject to various gifts, exchanges, and other transactions, until nearly the end of the next reign. Henry VIII. granted the manor of Snitterfield to Mr. Richard Morrison, a great dealer in abbey-lands and confiscated estates ; and among the records of the Court of Augmentations we find a request, dated June 15th, 1545, for leave to exchange for other lands the manor of Snitterfield, late of the Earl of Warwick, which had been appointed to Morrison by the King. The request being granted, the estate was conveyed by Morrison to Mr. John Hales of Coventry, Clerk of the Hanaper, a man of great wealth, who is chiefly remembered as the generous founder of the Free School at Coventry. He died on the 5th of January, 1572, in London, and was buried at the Church of St. Peter the Poor, in Broadstreet Ward, SHAKESPEARES OF SNITTERFIELD 109 near Gresham House, where his learning and piety were commemorated ''on a faire ancient plate in the Wall North the Quire. "^ Nothing is known at present as to the date when the Shakespeares established themselves at Snitterfield ; but it may be worth observing that a certain Roger Shakespeare was one of the monks of Bordesley at the time when their monastery was suppressed ; and we have already noticed the statement that the monks had lands in this parish. This Roger Shakespeare must have been a person of some importance, since it appears that he was granted, by way of compensation, an annuity of "a hundred shillings for his life." It is clear that the best chance of ascertaining the lands given to Shakespeare's ancestor by Henry VII., to which the Heralds referred in their grant of arms, lies in an ex- amination of such of the records of " Warwick's Lands " as relate to the manor of Snitterfield. Mr. Hunter made diligent inquiries about all the Warwickshire families using the surname of Shake- speare, or other names substantially the same, though there may have been variations in the spelling. His instances are very numerous ; but we may sum them up by saying that he regarded Coventry as the home of the race, the family making offshoots into South Warwick- shire and the adjacent parts of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. 2 The few examples from London, Derby, and Mansfield might be disregarded, in his opinion, as far as respects the principal argument. His attention was not turned to Snitterfield ; but he selects three branches of the stock with which, and with which alone, as he thought, the poet's ancestor might have been connected. These were, first, the Shakespeares ^ Stow's Survey, ed. Strype, bk. 2, p. 113. - Halliwell-Phillipps, Otdlines, ii. 252, gives a long- list of Warwickshire towns and villages, in whose records the name of Shakespeare occurs between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. no SNITTERFIELD of Warwick, a series of persons living in that town from the end of the reign of Henry VIII. to the twenty- second year of James I. The head of the family was always named Thomas : there was a Thomas Shake- speare, gentleman, who was Bailiff of the town of Warwick in 1614 ; and another Thomas Shakespeare, a shoemaker in the same place, is believed to have been the father of William Shakespeare, who was drowned in the Avon in 1579, and of the John Shakespeare who followed the shoemaking trade at Stratford. This last Thomas Shakespeare made his will in 1577, by which it appeared that he held copyhold lands in the manor of Balsall in Warwickshire. Here it is important to observe that the Shakespeares of Warwick appear to have been related to the Shakespeares of Wroxall ; at any rate, John Shakespeare of Wroxall, by his will in 1574, selected " his cousin Laurence Shakespeare of Balshall " to be his executor. We may for the present disregard the Shakespeares of Rowington ; and we are left with the Shakespeares of Wroxall, from whom, in Mr. Hunter's opinion, the poet himself was descended. He was able indeed to bring forward very little in support of his theory, except that there was a well- known Richard Shakespeare of Wroxall, who might be the same person as Richard Shakespeare of Snitter- field.i We must now consider what is known about the stock selected by Mr. Hunter as ''the progenitors of the Shakespeares of Stratford." Wroxall - is a village in Warwickshire formerly belonging to a priory of Bene- dictine nuns, whose estate in this place was granted to Sir Robert Burgoine, when the monasteries were suppressed. There were curious legends about the foundation of this nunnery. It was said that the whole place had belonged to one Richard, a Norman, who ^ Hunter, New Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shakespeare, 1845, i. 10-13. ^ Dugdale, u.s., ii. 645-7, 649-50. WROXALL AND THE SHAKESPEARES iii was vassal to Henry, Earl of Warwick, soon after the Conquest. His son, Hugh Fitzrichard, the lord of the manor, being ''a person of great stature," joined the first Crusade ; who, having been taken prisoner in the Holy Land, '*so continued in great hardship there for the space of seven years " ; but, at length, by praying to St. Leonard, to whom the church was dedicated, was taken up with his chains on him and set down in a wood in this his lordship of Wroxall ; where when he found himself, he remembered St. Leonard's injunction given him in two apparitions while he was in prison, that he should build a monastery of St. Benet's Order, and accordingly made directions where to build it, and, having erected it, made two of his daughters nuns in it. Whatever might be the origin of the legend, it appears that some person of that name gave the nuns ''the whole manor with a quantity of lands and woods," and that many other benefactions of the same kind were added '' by persons of quality and of inferior condition." The court-rolls of the manor of Wroxall do not throw much light upon the matter. There is an entry for the year 1508, near the close of the reign of Henry VH., relating to a manorial court held by Isabella Shake- spere, prioress, and lady of the manor : '' To this court came John Shakespere, and took of the said lady a messuage with three crofts and a grove in Cross-field at Wroxhall, to hold the same to the said John and Ellen his wife, and Antony their son, according to the custom of the manor, at a rent of ijs. 2d., and a heriot on death or withdrawal, and for a fine upon entry he gave two capons, and was admitted, and did fealty." Under the year 1531 we find entries showing that John Shakespere had died, and that his widow, then called Ellen Baker, and her son Antony Shakespeare sur- rendered the property just above described to the use of John Rabon, who had become the purchaser. At the same court it was presented that Alice Love had 112 SNITTERFIELD surrendered out of court a property consisting of five crofts at Wroxall, for which a black cow had been seized for the lady as a heriot, and that now in court came one William Shakespere and Agnes his wife, and took the same five crofts for a customary estate at a rent of ioj-., with a heriot, and fine for entry, and so forth. The name of Richard Shakespere occurs in the list of jurymen at this court, and also at the court of 1532. It appears by the minister's accounts, preserved in the Augmentation Office, and by the Valor Ecclesi- asticus of 1534, that this Richard Shakespeare was bailiff to the nuns at a salary of Aps. a year, and that he held a copyhold cottage, besides certain leasehold lands, in their manor of Wroxall. Mr. Hunter shows by extracts from the Subsidy Rolls that he was dead before the year 1546. It may also be observed that there was a Guild of St. Anne in the college of priests at Knowle, near Hampton-in-Arden, founded under a licence from King Henry IV., "to which so many persons, and those many of them of quality, were admitted, that it maintained by their benefactions three priests continually singing."^ The register of this Guild for the period between 1460 and 1527 shows that several of these gifts had been made by the Shakespeares of Wroxall, the names of the Lady prioress Isabel, and of Richard, John, and William Shakespeare being specially kept in remembrance. But, so far as the inquiries have as yet proceeded, it cannot be said that there is any evidence of the poet's ancestors having come from Wroxall. All that seems to be really known about Richard Shakespeare of Snitterfield is that he was a franklin, or yeoman, with land of his own, with another farm held on lease from Robert Arden of Wilmcote, and that he had two sons called Henry and John. Henry, as the elder son, succeeded to his father's land and remained ^ Dugdale, u.s., ii. 959-60. FARMING IN ENGLAND 113 in business as a farmer ; John, as we know, preferred to take up a trade, and moved about the year 1551 into a shop at Stratford-upon-Avon. II Sir Thomas Overbury^ drew an excellent picture of an English yeoman of his time, who "says not to his servants, ^ Go to field,' but 'Let us go'; and with his own eye doth both fatten his flock and set forward all manner of husbandry. . . . He never sits up late but when he hunts the badger, the vowed foe of his lambs ; nor uses he any cruelty but when he hunts the hare ; nor subtilty but when he setteth snares for the snipe or pitfalls for the blackbird ; nor oppression but when, in the month of July, he goes to the next river and shears his sheep. He allows of honest pastime, and thinks not the bones of the dead anything bruised or the worse for it though the country lasses dance in the church- yard after evensong. Rock Monday, and the wake in summer, Shrovings, the wakeful catches on Christmas Eve, the hockey or seed-cake, these he yearly keeps, yet holds them no relics of popery. He is not so in- quisitive after news derived from the privy closet, when the finding an eyry of hawks in his own ground, or the foaling of a colt come of a good strain, are tidings more pleasant, more profitable. . . . Lastly, to end him, he cares not when his end comes, he needs not fear his audit, for his quietus is in heaven." Farming at the beginning of the sixteenth century was in an extremely prosperous condition, wherever the land had been freed from "the miseries of common- field." If the farmer was allowed to adopt a mixed husbandry, with a little arable, something of a dairy, ^ Characters; or, Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons (1614) in Character Writings of the I'jth Cetitiiry, ed. Henry Morley, 1891, pp. 87-8, under heading " A Franklin." I 114 WILMCOTE and separate inclosures for cattle and sheep, he was able to get a profit out of the great rise in prices. The influx of the precious metals from America had altered the prices offered for hides and wool in a surprising degree. Some saw only the uncomfortable side of affairs, and lamented the terrible prices caused by the depreciation of gold and silver. Strype quotes a com- plaint of this kind from a tract called The Jewel of Joy. " How swarme they with aboundaunce flockes of shepe, and yet when was wooll ever so dere, or mutton of so great pryce. Oh what a diversitie is thys in the sale of wolles, a stone of woU sometime to be sold at eight grots, and now for eight shillings, and so likewise of the shepe, God have mercy on us ! "^ We should notice too that a farmer and his sons, if allowed to have " several " or separate fields, could effect a great saving under the head of labour. Fitzherbert, in his treatise upon Husbandry, reckons up some of the charges, when a farm lay open with all the rest of the parish : " The herdman will have for every beast ii.d. a quarter, or there about : And the swineherd will have for every swine i.d. at the least. Then he must have a shepherd of his own, or else he shall never thrive. Then reckon meat, drink, and wages for his shepherd, the herd- man's hire, and the swine-herd's hire, these charges will double his rent or nigh it, except his farm be above xl.s. by year. "2 And besides all this, he remarks that an inclosed farm can be constantly watched, for a man always wandering about finds what is amiss. As soon as he sees the defaults he can note them in his table- book, "and if he can not write, let him nick the defaults upon a stick. "^ Holinshed used to talk to old men who remembered the farmers sleeping on straw pallets, with a good ■' The Jewel of Joye, 1553, sig. G, iii. , back. ^ Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry, ed. Skeat, 1882 (English Dialect Society), § 123, p. 77. '^ Id.,l 141, pp. 91-2. HISTORY OF THE HAMLET 115 round log for a bolster, using wooden platters and spoons, and yet hardly able to pay their rent; but, when he wrote his description of England, a good farmer would have six or seven years' rent lying by, to pur- chase a new lease, with a "fair garnish of pewter" on his side-table or "cupboard," three or four feather- beds, as many coverlets and carpets of tapestry, a silver salt-cellar, "a bowl for wine (if not an whole nest), and a dozen of spoons, to furnish up the suit."^ These statements are borne out by what we are told of the household of Robert Arden, Wilmcote," where his homestead and most of his lands were situated, was a hamlet of the parish of Aston Cantlow ; for some purposes of petty jurisdiction it was a member of the Liberty of Pathlow, for which the Bishops of Worcester formerly held courts at a barrow by the roadside beyond Stratford. ^ Most of the hamlet be- longed to the Clopton family. Lord Mayor Clopton having purchased the manor in the reign of Henry Vn. The church, or rather the chapel of ease, was dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen ; * and it had been conveyed to the Stratford Guild, while Thomas Clop- ton was Warden. The ancient title of " Wilmunde- cote " probably indicates the name of the thane, serving a King of Mercia or a Bishop of Worcester, who had first made the clearing in the forest. Shortly before the Norman Conquest, one Lewin Dodda worked the estate with the help of two farmers and a couple of slaves. Domesday Book shows that no alteration was made at the Conquest in the way of laying out the estate. The new lord of the manor, Urso d'Habetot, two farmers, two cottagers, and two bondsmen, held among them sixteen "yardlands" in the arable fields, ^ Holinshed, "Description of England," part ii. chap. x. (in Chronicles, vol. i., 1577, pp. 85-6). 2 Dugdale, u.s., ii. 838. ^ Vid. sup., p. 64. ■* The modern church is dedicated to St. Andrew. ii6 WILMCOTE and a few acres of water-meadow, besides woodland and waste. As time went on the manor became divided between the families of co-heiresses : one part came to a certain Robert de Vale, and another to Ralph de Lodington, who owned two of the eight freehold '' yardlands" and five of the eight copyhold yardlands, then in the occupation of his customary tenants. Nearly the whole estate became united again in an heiress who married Henry de Lisle, from whom the Clopton family derived their title. But, at the time of which we are now speaking, Robert Arden, the father of Mary Shakespeare, was the owner of one of the freehold portions and tenant of one of the copy- hold portions, besides certain separate fields and the usual rights of common. The freehold portion con- sisted of about thirty acres of land scattered about in little strips through the three common fields, with a farmhouse, homestead, and other inclosures, with con- veniences and privileges, known collectively as Asbies Farm, or simply as "Asbies." He was also the owner of lands at Snitterfield, rented by Richard Shake- speare, as mentioned above ; and Mr. Halliwell- Phillipps discovered evidence showing that he had also purchased some interest in a property then called Warde Barnes, near Wilmcote. Robert Arden was twice married. By his first wife he appears to have had four daughters, of whom one married Mr. Edmund Lambert of Barton-on-the-Heath, the two younger children, Alice and Mary, being un- married at his death, as appears by the provisions of his will. His second wife was Agnes Hill, a widow,^ formerly Agnes Webb, for whose benefit he secured a jointure out of the lands at Snitterfield. 1 Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 368-9, gives a copy of her first husband's will. He was John Hill, of Bearley, four miles N.N.E. of Stratford. " Item, I give unto Agnes, my wife, the lease of my farm in Bearley during her life, and after her decease John, my son, to have it." ROBERT ARDEN'S FARM OF ASBIES 117 In the treatise upon Husbandry, to which reference has already been made, we find several passages that describe the domestic life on farms of this kind. We confine ourselves here to the work which would usually fall upon the farmer's wife and daughters. ''When thou art up and ready, then first sweep thy house," says Fitzherbert, addressing the industrious housewife, "dress up thy dishboard, and set all things in good order within thy house." She is then to milk the cows, feed the calves, skim the milk, and so on, before "arraying" the children, and getting the meals ready for the household.^ We may notice that the Ardens kept seven cows, and that at Robert's death he had eight oxen for the plough, two bullocks, and four wean- ing calves, intended "to uphold the stock. "^ The list of the housewives' duties includes putting aside the corn and malt for the miller, and measuring it before it goes to the mill and after it returns, and seeing that the measures duly correspond, allowing for the toll, "or else the miller dealeth not truly with thee, or else the corn is not dry as it should be."^ Then comes the making of butter and cheese, and serving of pigs twice a day and the poultry once ; and when the proper time comes, the housewife must "take heed how thy hens, ducks, and geese do lay, and to gather up their eggs, and when they wax broody, to set them there as no beasts, swine, nor other vermin hurt them. . . . And when they have brought forth their birds, to see that they be well kept from the gledes, crows, foulmarts, and other vermin.""^ About March, or a little before, it is time for the wife to make her garden, not forgetting to keep it free from weeds, and to plant the flax and hemp ; the flax and hemp, as every house- ^ Fitzherbert, u.s., § 146, p. 95. ^ See Inventory of Robert Arden's goods, 1556, in Halliwell-Phillipps, zcs., ii. 53-4. ^ Fitzherbert, u.s. * Fitzherbert writes "gleyds," " fuUymarts," u.s., p. 96. ii8 WILMCOTE wife well knew, had to be sown, weeded, pulled, re- peeled, watered, washed, dried, beaten, braked, tawed, heckled, spun, wound, wrapped, and woven; "and thereof may they make sheets, boardcloths, towels, shirts, smocks, and such other necessaries, and there- fore let thy distaff be alway ready for a pastime, that thou be not idle. And undoubted a woman cannot get her living honestly with spinning on the distaff, but it stoppeth a gap, and must needs be had."i He ac- knowledges, indeed, that it might sometimes happen that the housewife had so many things to do that she could hardly know where to begin. She had, for instance, to make coats and gowns for her husband and herself.^ It is convenient, says Fitzherbert, for the husbandman to have sheep of his own, and in the instance before us fifty-two sheep w^e kept on the farm. "Then may his wife have part of the wool, to make her husband and herself some clothes. And at the least way, she may have the locks of the sheep, either to make clothes or blankets and coverlets, or both. And if she have no wool of her own she may take wool to spin of clothmakers, and by that means she may have a convenient living, and many times to do other works." There follows a terrible list of extra duties. It is a wife's occupation, we are told, to winnow the corn, to make malt, to wash and wring, to make hay, reap corn, "and in time of need to help her husband to fill the muck-wain . . . drive the plough, to load hay, corn, and such other," besides walking or riding to market to sell "butter, cheese, milk, eggs, chickens, capons, hens, pigs, geese, and all manner of corns." ^ Fitzherbert, ibid. - Id., p. 98, with the two quotations followitigf. ROBERT ARDEN'S WILL 119 III Robert Arden's will was dated the 24th of November, 1556, and he died about the beginning of the following month, the inventory of his goods ''moveable and un- moveable," taken by his daughters Alice and Mary, bearing date the 9th of December in the same year. He left his soul to Almighty God and the Saints, as mentioned above, and his body to be buried in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist in Aston ; in an- other part of the will he appointed certain friends to "over-see" its execution.^ The details acquire a cer- tain interest from the lines in Lucrece^ which suggest the idea that Shakespeare was familiar with the phras- ing of his grandfather's will. Thus Lucrece exclaims : " This brief abridgment of my will I make : My soul and body to the skies and ground ; My resolution, husband, do thou take ; Mine honour be the knife's that makes my wound. "^ and (1. 1205) "Thou, Collatine, shalt oversee this will." The gift to his daughter Mary was as follows, the spelling being modernised: "Also I give and bequeath to my youngest daughter Mary all my land in Wilmcote called Asbies, and the crop upon the ground, sown and tilled as it is, and £6. 13. 4 of money, to be paid or ere my goods be divided." It appeared, by the proceed- ings in the subsequent Chancery suit, that this little estate consisted of a farmhouse and farm, comprising a yard-land of about fifty acres in the common fields, with four odd acres over, and certain rights of pasture. The testator left his wife the sum of £,^. 13. 4, upon con- dition that she allowed his daughter to share the copy- hold yard-land at Wilmcote, to which the widow was entitled during her life, according to the custom of ■^ "Adam Palmer, Hugh Porter of Snytterfylde, and Jhon Skerlett." ^ Lucrece, 11. 1198-1201. I20 WILMCOTE the manor; and he continued, "if she will not suffer my daughter Alice quietly to occupy half with her, then I will that my wife shall have but £2,. 6. 8, and her jointure in Snitterfield." His other bequest to Alice Arden ran as follows: "I give and bequeath to my daughter Alice the third part of all my goods, move- able and unmoveable, in field and town, after my debts and legacies be performed, besides that good she hath of her own at this time." There were gifts of groats "to every house that hath no team in the Parish of Aston," and twenty shillings apiece to his "over-seers." The residue of his goods he left to his children other than Alice, to be divided equally. He appointed his daughters Alice and Mary to be his "full executors" ; and the will was witnessed by ' ' Sir William Boughton "^ the curate, Adam Palmer, John Scarlet, Thomas Jenks, William Pitt, and others. The inventory^ taken immediately after his death is interesting as showing the way of living in a yeoman's family, and as describing the actual goods in which Mary Shakespeare had a share. She was married to John Shakespeare a short time afterwards, and may be supposed to have taken her furniture with her to the new house in Stratford. Arden's house contained a hall or parlour, a kitchen, a great chamber, and pos- sibly other small rooms. In the hall were two dining- tables, or table-boards, and a sideboard, three chairs, two forms with cushions, three benches, and a little table with shelves. The great chamber contained the household linen, stored in coffers, including seven pairs of sheets, and a few table-cloths and towels, bedsteads and bedding, among which may be noticed a feather bed with coverlet and pillow, two mattresses, three bolsters, and eight "canvasses"; and there were no doubt articles of clothing and necessary use which belonged to other members of the family. In the " ^ In the will " Borton." ^ ggg p_ jjy^ ^^^^ 2, INVENTORY OF ARDEN'S GOODS 121 kitchen, beside the usual pots and pans and domestic ware, we may notice the pair of cupboards, a churn and four milkpails, and a kneading-trough. A hus- bandman, says Fitzherbert, ought to have an axe, a hatchet, a hedging-bill, a pin-auger, a rest-auger, a flail, a spade, and a shovel ;^ ajid we find that Robert Arden had an axe, bill, two hatchets, an adze, a mat- tock and iron crow, a longsaw, a handsaw, and "four nagares," or augers, as they are properly called. The horned cattle were valued at ^^24, and four horses, with three colts, at ;^8. The flock of fifty-two sheep was worth £"]. The pigs were taken at nearly 3^. apiece, ^ and the bees and poultry together at a crown. The stackyard and barns contained wheat, barley, hay, peas, oats, and straw, worth together £21. 6. 8. The cart and plough with their gear, and the harrows, stood at £2. The wood in the yard and the battens in the roof were priced at 30J. ; the value of the wheat in the ground was taken at £^. 13. 4, and the whole valua- tion came to the sum of ;^77. 11. 10. It should be stated, moreover, that the list included no less than eleven of the " painted cloths," which took the place of tapestry in families of the middle class, though they began to be superseded during Shakespeare's lifetime by the more elegant panels in water-colour. '' For thy walls," says Falstaff, "a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or the German hunting in water- work, is worth a thousand of these bed-hangings and these fly-bitten tapestries."^ These painted cloths appear to have been rude representations of classical or religious subjects, with explanatory verses below. **You are full of pretty answers," said Jaques, in As You Like It. "Have you not been acquainted with ^ Fitzherbert, u.s.., §5, pp. H-'tS- ^ "ix swyne, prisid at xxvis. viijd." 3 2 Henry IV., ii. i, 156-9. Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle, iii. 5, "What story is that painted on the cloth? the confutation of St. Paul?" 122 WILMCOTE goldsmiths' wives, and conned them out of rings?" " Not so," answered Orlando, " but I answer you right painted cloth, from whence you have studied your questions." 1 It is to be supposed that the great chamber in Arden's house contained some of those "fly-bitten tapestries." Agnes Arden, as we know, continued to live at the farm, and evidently had a share of the furniture ; for in the inventory of her goods made in 1581,^ we find a mention of bed-steads with '' apreeware," i.e. ware or needle-work of Ypres, standing in the upper rooms. It may be observed also that the same inventory contains a valuation of the table-boards, a sideboard, shelves, cushions, forms, and benches, which, by their descrip- tion and value, seem to be the same as those mentioned in Robert Arden's will. Mrs. Arden had only one of the painted cloths ; and it may therefore be assumed that the rest were divided between Mary Shakespeare and her sisters, in accordance with the provisions of their father's will. This may account in some degree for Shakespeare's constant reference to objects of this kind, as in Macbeth for instance, where we hear of the ''eye of childhood that fears a painted devil, "^ or as when Falstaff marched his ragged regiment to Sutton Coldfield, and compared them to "Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores. "* Other references to pictures of this class may be found in some of the numerous descriptions of Hercules, and perhaps in Pistol's garbled allusion to a classical story in the words, "Sir Act^eon, with Ringwood at thy heels." ^ The most striking reference is to be found in the poem of Lucrece, where the lady looks on the face of despairing Hecuba in the picture of the taking of 1 As You Like It, iii. 2, 287-92. ^ Printed in Halliwell-Piiillipps, u.s., ii. 55. * Macbeth, ii. 2, 54-5. * i Henry IV., iv. 2, 27-9. ^ Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. i, 122. THE PAINTED CLOTHS AT ASBIES 123 Troy ; 1 to a thousand lamentable objects ''a lifeless life " was given and ''the red blood reeked, to show the painter's strife " : — "There might you see the labouring- pioneer Begrimed with sweat, and smeared all with dust ; And from the towers of Troy there would appear The very eyes of men through loopholes thrust, Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust : Such sweet observance in this work was had, That one might see those far-off eyes look sad." ^ We may pause here for a moment to notice Shake- speare's own fondness for the village where his mother was born. There was some local tradition that he used to go down to the old mill at Wilmcote to talk with a half-witted fellow, or natural fool, who was employed there in some menial capacity. He might have been pleased no doubt to meet "a fool in the Forest" ; but there is no evidence that the legend was true.^ We observe, however, that he goes out of his way on more than one occasion to bring little points about Wilmcote before his London audience. Take, for instance, his alterations of the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew. There was an odd kind of village constable, represent- ing the system of keeping the peace that prevailed before the Norman Conquest, with titles that varied in different parts of the country. In Kent and Essex he was called the Borsholder, which seems to be derived from " borrows-elder " ; and in one of the rural bor- rows or tithings there was a staff with an iron ring called "the dumb Borsholder," appearing in court by the help of the village blacksmith, whose duty it 1 Lucrece, 11. 1 366-1442. ^ Ibid,, 11. 1380-6. ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 233. For evidence see illustrative note, id., ii. 308. 124 WILMCOTE was to lift the staff in the air. In many parts he was known as the Headborough, and elsewhere as the Tithing-man : and we may remember how poor Tom in K'tng Lear wsLS whipped "from tithing to tithing," and put in the stocks by these rural officers. ^ It appeared by a trial in the Exchequer, about the middle of the last century, that the duties of the Tithing-man at Dray- cot, in Wiltshire, were divided between himself and his dog. The holder of a certain farm had to undertake the office and attend the court with his trusty companion : "and when he is called, and is asked how he appears, he answers 'My dog and I appears,' and produces the dog." The Tithing-man of Coombe Keynes in Dorset came into the court of Winfrith Hundred, and paid threepence with an incoherent speech beginning, "with my white rod, and I am a fourth post ; that threepence makes three." ^ In the neighbourhood of Stratford the officer was called a ' ' Tharborough, "or " Thirdborough, " which is evidently a corruption of "the headborough." Shakespeare seems to have felt some amusement at the title and duties of the office. "I am his Grace's Tharborough,"^ says good Antony Dull, "a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation."^ He was not of much account among the wits of Lovers Labour's Lost. He spoke not a word, " nor understood none, neither. Sir ! "^ But dull, honest Dull was a great man when he took his place among the lads of the village ; " I'll make one in a dance, or so ; or I will play on the tabor to the Worthies and let them dance the Hay ! " ^ Then there is the scene between the drunken ■* King Lear, iii. 4, 139-41. - Hutchins, History of Dorset, i. 127 : " On default of any one of these particulars, the court-leet of Coombe is forfeited." The remaining lines are :— " God bless the king and the lord of the franchise. Our weights and our measures are lawful and true, Good morrow, Mr. Steward, I have no more to say to you." * Love s Labour s Lost, i. i, 185. ^ Ibid., 271-2. 5 Id.,v. I, 158. ^ Ibid., 160-1. THE HEADBOROUGH 125 tinker and fat Marian Hacket at her ale-house on Wilmcote Heath. She wants to be paid for her glasses, and she can only get monnaie de singe, or cold scraps from The Spanish Tragedy. '*I know my remedy, I must go fetch the third-borough," cries old Marian ; ''Third or fourth or fifth borough, I'll answer him by law : I'll not budge an inch, boy : let him come, and kindly," says Christopher Sly. ^ The story of the beggar transformed had nothing to do with Warwick- shire, and is in fact as old as the Arabian Nights or the "golden prime" of Haroun Alraschid. Robert Burton was a schoolboy at Sutton Coldfield,^ and served as curate in several Warwickshire parishes ; he was a great lover of the theatre and loved Shakespeare "as an elegant poet " ; ^ but Burton tells the tinker's story out of Ludovic Vives and H enter 's History of Burgundy. Ludovic Vives was well known in England, but spent the latter part of his life as a Professor of the Belles Lettres at Bruges ; and he may have located the story in his adopted country, just as Shakespeare in the following generation found room for it at his favourite Wilmcote. The continental version thus appears in the Anatomy of Melancholy.'^ When ^^ Philippus Bonus, that Good Duke of Burgundy," went to Bruges to attend the wedding of Leonora of Portugal, the wintry weather was so bad, as the chroniclers say, that he could find no means ^ TaTning of the Shrew, Induction, i, 11-15. ^ Anai. of Mel., ii. sect. ii. mem. iii, (ed. Shilleto, ii. 73): '^ Stifton Coldfield in Warwickshire (where I was once a Grammar Scholar) may be a sufficient witness, which stands, as Camden notes, loco ingrato et sterili, but in an excellent air, and full of all manner of pleasures." See Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, 1610, p. 567 B, ^'■Suttoti Colfeild, stand- ings in a woddy and on a churlish hard soile, glorieth of John Voisy Bishop of Excester there born and bred ; who in the reigne of King Henrie the Eighth, when this little town had lien a great while as dead, raised it up againe with buildings, priviledges, and a Grammar schoole." " Anat. of Mel,, iii. sect. ii. mem. ii. subs. ii. (u.s., iii. 79): "When Venus ran to meet her rose-cheeked Adonis, as an elegant Poet of ours sets her out." * Id., part ii. sect. ii. mem. iv. {u.s., ii. 99). 126 WILMCOTE of amusement. Hawking and hunting were forbidden by the snow, and the Duke was "tired with cards, dice, &c., and such other domestical sports, or to see Ladies dance." He would therefore disguise himself with certain of his courtiers and look for adventures about the town. " It so fortuned, as he was walking late one night, that he found a country-fellow dead-drunk, snort- ing on a bulk ; ^ he caused his followers to bring him. to his Palace, and there stripped him of his old clothes, and attiring him after the Court fashion, when he waked, he and they were ready to attend upon his Excellency, persuading him he was some great Duke. The poor fellow, admiring how he came there, was served in state all the day long ; after supper he saw them dance, heard Musick, and the rest of those Court-like pleasures : but late at night, when he was well tippled, and again fast asleep, they put on his old robes, and so conveyed him to the place where they first found him," etc. " What's here? one dead, or drunk?" says the lord at the hedge-corner on Wilmcote Heath : ^ " Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man ; What think you, if he were convey'd to bed, Wrapp'd in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers, A most delicious banquet by his bed, And brave attendants near him when he wakes, Would not the beggar then forget himself? " ^ Then begins the scene in the bed-chamber.* " Will't please your lordship drink a cup of sack?" "What raiment will your honour wear to-day?" says another, dressed up as a servant. "I am Christophero Sly: call not me ' honour ' nor ' lordship.' " We may notice Shakespeare's fondness for putting the old law- ^ Shilleto notes, u.s., " Bulk here is probably a bench." ^ Taming of the Shrew, u.s., 1. 31. ^ Ibid., 11. 36-41, •• Id., sc. 2. STORY OF CHRISTOPHER SLY 127 phrases into the mouth of a ruffian like Sly or Jack Cade. "Am I not Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton- heath, by birth a pedler, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profes- sion a tinker ? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not : if she say I am not four- teen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying-est knave in Christendom. "^ At last he is persuaded that he has been befooled by some strange lunacy.^ " Upon my life I am a lord indeed. And not a tinker nor Christophero Sly." *'0 how we joy," says the servant with basin and napkin, " to see your wit restor'd! O that once more you knew but what you are ! " and the chief player tells him about the ale in stone jugs and threats of presentment at the leet. ''Some- times you would call out for Cicely Hacket." "Ay, the woman's maid of the house," returns the tinker. " But then," cries another, " Why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid, Nor no such men as you have reckoned up. As Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece And Peter Turph and Henry Pimpernell And twenty more such names and men as these Which never were nor no man ever saw. "^ The name of Stephen Sly was a reminiscence of Stratford. It was borne by a very respectable towns- man, once servant to Mr. Combe, and afterwards a householder on his own account. He took a promi- nent part in resisting the inclosure at Welcombe, to which Shakespeare himself raised a successful objec- ^ Ibid., 18-26. 2 Ihid., 74 et seqq. 3 Ihid,, 93-8. 128 WILMCOTE tion.^ It was quite in accordance with the poet's habit to introduce a real name, by way of a jest reminding him of home. " Naps of Greece " is a name that may refer to some hill-farm, where a "knapp," or knoll, was mounted by steps, or 'Agrees" ; but the other per- sonages appear to be altogether imaginary. We ought to compare the passage with the list of prisoners in Measure for Measure^ headed by young Master Rash and Mr. Caper in his peach-coloured satin : — "Then we have young Dizy, and young Master Deep- vow, and Master Copperspur, and Master Starvelackey the rapier and dagger man, and young Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shooty the great traveller, and wild Half-can that stabbed Pots, and I think forty more."^ Brave Shooty (Shoe-tie) surely must have been Tom Coryat, who wrote the book of "Crudities hastily gobled up in 5 moneth travells newly digested in the hungry air of Odcombe," and hung up his only pair of shoes as a trophy at Odcombe Church in Somerset ; and there may have been one or two other personal allusions that might be caught up by a London audience. We catch another glimpse of the Wilmcote people in the second part of King Henry IV. The scene is laid at Shallow's house in Gloucestershire, but the allusions point to the neighbourhood of Stratford. ^ Davy. " I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor of Woncot against Clement Perkes of the hill. Shal. There is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor : that Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge. Davy. I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir ; but yet, God forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his friend's request." ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 308. ^ Measure for Measure, iv. 3, 14-21. ^ 2 Henry IV., v. i, 41-9. MANOR OF ROWINGTON 129 V The manor of Rowington has belonged to the Crown ever since the death of Ambrose Dudley, Earl of War- wick. Queen Elizabeth had entailed the place upon her favourite;^ but he died without issue in 1589, and so the entail was at an end. The ancient manor had been confined to the parish of Rowington, which lies at some distance from Stratford.^ It was the pro- perty of the Abbey of Reading, to which house also belonged a large farm at Tiddington, lying south of the Avon on the Banbury road, some little bits of land in Stratford itself, and an estate in Leicestershire called Everkeston, which all passed together under the name of the manor of Rowington at the time when Shake- speare became a tenant. Lord Coke once explained how it often happened, *'in the time of the Abbots," that, for the sake of convenience, one court was held for several neighbouring properties, and a number of detached parcels were treated as being in one manor, for the sake of simplicity in the accounts. A survey of the manor of Rowington, in this extended sense of the term, was taken at the accession of James L, and there is also among the Public Records a document entitled, **A Survey of the Manor of Rowington ... in the County of Warwick, late parcel of the possessions of Henrietta Maria, the relict and late Queen of Charles Stuart, deceased." We shall make extracts from both ^ See Camden, Britannia, xi.s., p. 571 A.B.: '■'■Ambrose, a most worthy- personage, both for warlike prowesse and sweetnesse of nature, through the fauour of Queene Elizabeth received in our remembrance, the honour of Earle of Warwiche to him and his heires males, and for defect of them to Robert his brother, and the heires males of his body lawfully begotten. This honour Ambrose bare with great commendation, and died without children in the yeere one thousand fiue hundred eighty nine, shortly after his brother Robert Earle of Leicester." 2 Dugdale, ti.s., ii. 793-4. Rowington is about six miles N. N.W. of Warwick, on the main road to Birmingham, and is in the Henley division of Barlichway Hundred. K I30 MANOR OF ROWINGTON these documents, with respect to the customs prevailing in Shakespeare's time, and with respect also to certain properties, other than his copyhold, that belonged to various persons of the same name. As to the parish of Rowington itself, all the Abbey- lands belonged to permanent tenants, either freeholders by ancient right, or customary tenants holding "to them and theirs " in a security hardly inferior to free- hold. They paid among them about £^2 of perpetual rent. The Leicestershire tenants paid £6. 13^-. ^d., and the two little copyholds in the borough of Stratford were assessed at 4-r. 6d. These small holdings are thus described in the earlier survey: "Customary rents in Stratford, parcel of the said manor : Stephen Burman holdeth . . . according to the custom one messuage and one orchard, by estimation half an acre, and payeth rent yearly two shillings. William Shakespeare hold- eth there one cottage and a garden, by estimation a quarter of an acre, and payeth rent yearly two shillings and sixpence." Now as to the other Shakespeares, who seem to have been in no way related to the poet.^ Thomas Shakespeare of Rowington is the freeholder of a house and yard-land, about thirty-two acres in all, and is also the customary tenant of a field, and the site of an old house and sixteen acres that went with it, and another copyhold house and yard-land of eleven acres. George Shakespeare, his brother, as it seems, had a cottage and a couple of acres, worth 2^. a year. Richard Shakespeare had a messuage, and half a yard- land containing about fourteen acres, for 13^-. a year, and this seems to correspond to the normal kind of holding, the house being thrown in, and less than a shilling an acre charged for the arable in the village fields. There was a John Shakespeare who held a cottage and a quarter of land, of about nine acres, who paid six and eightpence per annum. ^ See the long note in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 253-7. LOCAL CUSTOMS 131 The list of the local customs is full of curious details. We learn that the words " to him and his " gave a full and formal inheritance ; that a widow retained her husband's estate for her life on paying a penny for admission ; that the rule of primogeniture prevailed among females as well as males ; that the tenants might lop and shred the trees "for tinsel and fire- making"; and that the custody of all idiots was left to the discretion of the steward. There is a note in the earlier document that one John Rogers, an idiot, had been committed to a Mr. Blount by Queen Elizabeth's own letters-patent; "but that Clement Griswold then governed him by virtue of a grant from the High Steward of Rowington." There is an allusion to these beggings for idiots in the clown's part in Love's Labour's Lost. Costard is laughing at the notion that three threes make nine, which he vows that only an idiot would believe : " Not so, sir ; under correction, sir ; I hope it is not so. You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir ; we know what we know."^ Something has been said as to Shakespeare's ignor- ance of the Rowington customs as shown by the provisions of his will. There seems, however, to have been a very good reason for what he did. In dealing with his copyhold cottage and garden near New Place, he gave his daughter Judith an additional legacy of ;^5o on condition that she should give up all her estate and interest therein to her elder sister Susanna. But, by the Rowington custom, the eldest daughter was the heir, in case there were no male issue ; so that the condition, it is said, was evidently not required ; and it is stated that, as a matter of fact, the eldest daughter was accepted and admitted as heiress. But, from what has been said about the early history of the manor, it ^ Loves Labour s Lost, v. 2, 489-90, 132 MANOR OF ROWINGTON is obvious that there might well be doubts whether the custom would apply to the outlying portions, dragged into the manor for the convenience of the abbots. Tiddington Farm^ was originally part of the Alveston estate belonging to the Bishopric of Worcester before the Conquest. In course of time it was acquired by the Abbots of Reading, and was annexed to Rowington in some informal way ; and in the surveys now before us it is treated as having been a portion of their de- mesne. We shall take the description of the farm from the Parliamentary Survey of 1649. The farm is stated to be situate in the parish of Aston Cantlow.^ The farmhouse contained six rooms below and five above stairs ; it stood with its outbuildings in about an acre of ground, bounded on one side by the common field and on another by the Lucys' estate. We shall only mention those pieces of land belonging to the farm which are specially connected with our subject. The form of the entries will show both the situation of the lands and the methods of agriculture which then prevailed. There was a little pasture-field called Avon Close, between Mr. Challoner's lands on the south and the river of Avon on the north, a Home Close abutting on the open field, and another known as the Crofts fronting the highway leading to Banbury ; we find a meadow called the Lots, which we suppose to have been originally a lot-meadow divided among the tenants, and " a parcel of meadow-ground lying in the common mead called Tiddington Meadow," with various other entries of the same kind. The next series of descriptions related to pastures in the unin- closed fields : ''All those several pastures or leys lying in the common fields called the Cow-pastures, con- taining 84 leys lying intermixed with the lands of ^ Dugdale, n.s., ii. 676-7. " It is now in Alveston parish, where it is locally situated. Aston Cantlow is six or seven miles away by the nearest road. FARM OF TIDDINGTON 133 the rest of the inhabitants, viz. four leys, Thomas Higgens, lying on the north, and the lands of William Challoner in the south . . . one ley, William Alcock's, lying on the west and Ridges Furlong on the east. . . one ley, Mr, Lucey, lying on the west, and John Edwards on the east," and so forth, the whole of the eighty-four leys containing about twenty-eight acres. The next part of the survey relates to the land kept for wheat, barley, oats, and peas: "All those several parcels of arable land lying in a common field called the West Field, containing 120 lands lying intermixed with the lands of the rest of the inhabitants, viz. seven lands, lying between those of William Challoner on the east and of William Alcock on the west . . . three ridges, W. Challoner, lying on the north and the headland on the south . . . six lands, a furlong lying on the west and the lands of Thomas Townsend on the east . . . one headland abutting upon the lands of John Edwards on the south and the furlong on the north . . . one butt, John Duley, lying on the east and Thomas Lovel on the west," etc. Next follows a similar account of 135 lands in the ley-field, lying intermixed as in the former case, including "One half-land, William Challoner, lying on the east and Thomas Lords on the west . . . half a land, William Hine, lying on the north and John Edwards on the south . . . three half-lands, William Challoner, on the south and William Alcock on the north . . . nine small lands abutting on the way leading to Wilborne^ on the north and a furlong called Hanging Furlong on the south, fifteen lands called Connegrey's Piece, Mr. Lucy, lying on the east and the Heathway on the west," etc., the whole 135 lands making up about thirty-five acres. The next entry refers to nine lands in Rowley Piece, and the next to 1 1 1 lands in the Heath-field, mostly lying near the Heathway Furlong and the Connegrey Furlong, where ^ i.e. Wellesbourne Mountford. 134 MANOR OF ROWINGTON the lord's " coney-gree," or rabbit-warren, must have been a dangerous neighbour to the corn.^ In New- bridge Field there were twenty-one and a half lands, each strip, as in the other cases, being about the third part of an acre in size ; in Crabtree Field were twenty- nine more strips, lying intermixed like the rest ; in the Craston Hades Field, nineteen lands ; and in the common field, called Hinde Ridge, twenty-eight lands, intermixed as before. These surveys help us to realise the condition of the country under the open-field system, when a whole parish was often laid out like a single farm. The yard- lands consisted mainly of a number of little strips set in some customary order about the uninclosed field, so that each owner might be supposed to have the benefit of different qualities in the soil.^ The system was absurd from an agricultural point of view ; and it has been stated by competent observers that the land in many places was better cultivated under Edward the Confessor than in the reign of George III. The accuracy of this opinion is confirmed by what we know of some of the fields which became well known in con- nection with battles in the Civil wars. We hear, for instance, of the "sad roads and bad husbandry" in Chalgrove field ; as to Naseby field, we are told that, even in this century, it was in much the same state as on the day of the battle. The lower parts were covered with furze, rushes, and fern ; the field, in fact, was almost in a state of nature, the avenues zigzagging as chance directed, and the hollows being unfilled, except with mire. The Stratford fields extended for miles in ^ The word is met with in various forms ; e.g. Conyg-ar Hill in Somer- set, between Dunster and Minehead. The derivation is Coney-Garth. " In Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and other counties in the West of England, this word, variously spelt ... is often met with as the name of a field, and sometimes of a street, as in the town of Trowbridge" (Wright, Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, i. 336). '^ See the drawing in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 245. SHOTTERY 135 one open tract through Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe. In the same neighbourhood was Shottery field, occupied almost entirely by the several families of Hathaway. It will be remembered that when Mr. Abraham Sturley of Stratford wrote to Richard Quiney in London, on January 24th, 1597-8, on the subject of the Stratford tithes, he mentioned a report that Shake- speare intended to buy land at Shottery : ** This is one special remembrance from your father's motion. It seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. Shakespeare, is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yard land or other at Shottery or near about us ; he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter of our tithes." ^ The first notices of Shottery appear in the records of the see of Worcester.^ Between the years 704 and 709, Offa, King of Mercia, appears to have granted to the Bishop thirty-three "cassates," or homesteads, in ''Scottarit," the estate being described as bounded by the stream of the Avon. When Domesday Book was compiled, Shottery seems to have been included in the general description of Stratford ; but it was not long before it appeared again as a separate estate. In the reign of Edward III. it belonged to the energetic Robert de Stratford, who did so much in the way of paving and improving the town where he was incum- bent, and by him it was entailed on Sir John Streeche and Isabel his wife, whose son, Sir John Streeche, sold the manor to the Dean and Canons of St. Martin-le- Grand. Dugdale tells a curious story about the owner- ship of the property in the next reign. Shottery at that time belonged to one Thomas Newnham, a priest in the King's service. This man was by birth a bondman belonging to the monastery of Evesham, and every- thing that he had could therefore have been taken by ^ See copy in Halliwell-Phillipps, ti,s., ii. 57. ^ Dugdale, it.s., ii. 702-3. 136 MANOR OF ROWINGTON his masters, if it were not for his employment under the Crown. In 1394 the monks seized the estate, with- out getting a royal licence ; the property was therefore forfeited to the Crown, and was granted by the King to Sir William Arundel ''to hold so long as it con- tinued in the Crown for the reason aforesaid." No regard, it appears, was paid to the equitable claims of the unfortunate bondman. The state of Shottery in Shakespeare's time may be conjectured from the later description in the private Act for its inclosure in 1786. That Act recites that in Shottery were certain common fields, meadows, and pastures, called Shottery field, containing about 1,600 acres; this tract was divided among thirty-nine and three-quarter yard-lands, with a few strips or "odd lands" over. All these lands, the Act proceeds, ''lie intermixed and dispersed in small parcels, subject to frequent trespass and much incon- venience, and in their present state are incapable of any considerable improvement," and it was pointed out how much benefit would result from dividing them into separate portions. MIDLAND AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL HISTORY IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS MIDLAND AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL HISTORY IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS I EARLY in 1602, Shakespeare was negotiating with William and John Combe for a farm scattered in the Stratford common fields, with a view of improving his position in the parish and making it easier to pur- chase the tithes. Something occurred which postponed the sale, though the conveyance was ready for execu- tion. The document was printed by Mr. R. B. Wheler in 1806, with the following heading: ''Copies of several documents relating to Shakspeare, and his family, never before printed; which, with the Probate of Lady Barnard's Will, are now in my possession. The first (unfortunately not executed, though a seal is appended to it) I have thought proper, it being an authentic deed of the time, to preserve ; as with the subsequent ones it shews the extent and value of some parts of Shakspeare's property."^ Mr. Halliwell- Phillipps printed the " original conveyance " of the 107 acres, ^ with the signatures and seals of William and John Combe, and a note of delivery of the deed to ^ V^\i€i&v, History and Antiquities of Stratford 1 1806^ p. 139. 2 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 17-19. 139 I40 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE Gilbert Shakespeare on behalf of William Shake- speare ; but these may be later additions, made when Shakespeare was able to pay the price, amounting to ;^320 for about 321 strips of arable, with rights of common. We know from another document printed in the Outlines'^ that in 1610 Shakespeare had pur- chased this property, with an additional twenty acres of meadow, and that he had paid the Combes an additional ;^ioo for confirming the conveyance. In Lady Barnard's will this meadow was described as " half a yard-land," ^ as if it had been originally under tillage. It appears that meadows were often formed by developing fallow-lands into permanent pasture ; but it was found convenient to retain the old descrip- tions, to show what property was comprised in the title. The Stratford Common Fields were good examples of the Midland husbandry. The Stratford Inclosure Act, 1774, shows that they consisted of three arable fields, with pastures adjoining, known as Stratford field, Bishopton field, and Welcombe field, in the hamlets of Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, contain- ing altogether about 1,600 acres. It appears from prior inclosure proceedings that Welcombe field con- tained about 400 acres. Shakespeare's 127 acres are shown by a conveyance to have been in Stratford field, partly in the hamlet, and partly in the borough. ^ The whole extent of the three fields was estimated at "fifty yard-lands with some odd lands," Shakespeare's part being taken at " four yard-lands and a half." Each yard-land, on the average, contained ninety "lands," each ridge, or "land," containing about one-third of an acre. There were also "small lands," and " half- lands," and "head-lands." It should be remembered 1 Ibid., 25. 2 iii^_^ 62. ^ Ibid., 17: "Scytuate, lyinge and being-e within the parrishe, feildes or towne of Old Stretford aforesaid." COMMON FIELDS 141 that a "yard-land" was a small holding measured out by the yard or rod, and distributed in little strips about the fields, so that each farmer might have his shares of good and bad soil. The field, taken as the unit, apart from the customs about yard-lands, was laid out in oblong blocks known as ''furlongs"; these were divided by long '^ balks," or grassy spaces, used as lanes. The word balk was applied to the main tracks leading across the field, and in some cases to the little oblong ridges, or seed-beds, themselves. Minsheu gives "to Balke, or make a balke in earing of land " ; ^ and this may be illustrated out of Shakespeare's dedication of his Ve^ius and Adonis. "But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land^ for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest." The tillage-lands and cow-pastures were protected by banks and fences called meers ; and the name in time came to mean a "marking-off" for any special purpose. Enobarbus applied it to Antony in describing the sea- fight :— "When half to half the world opposed, he being The meered question." ^ At Stratford there was another kind of boundary called "free-boards," as mentioned in the Stratford Inclosure Act, 1774. The "free-board" is more usually found as the ancient boundary of a forest. "Frith" meant a tract of common, ^ and the "free- board " was a band of grass-land marking its extent. The "free-board" of Stratford field is shown in ^ Minsheu, Ductor in Linguas, 1617, p. 27. ^ Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 13, 9-10. ^ "Frith" meant orig-inally a wood or coppice (Wright, Dictionary, ti.s., 483), and so came to be applied to any tract covered with under- growth. English Dialect Dictionary, ii. 501, quotes the Cumberland and Lancashire use of the word in the sense of "unused pasture-land," 142 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE Winter's plan of Stratford, 1768, behind the Henley- Street houses.^ It was traversed by the Guildpits Road, leading to the place where the Bishops held a petty manorial court within their Liberty of Path- low. The larger court-leet was held twice a year at the barrow called Pathlow or '^Pate's grave." When the arable lay in fallow it was used as a common pasture, except in certain places where a separate right had been acquiesced. In the Rowing- ton Survey we read of eighty-four leys intermixed, and of a ley-field of 135 "lands," lately restored to tillage ; and we find another illustration in Timon's speech to Mother Earth: "Dry up thy marrows, vines, and plough-torn leas."^ The rights incidental to Shakespeare's "yard-lands" comprised privileges on other persons' fallows, called "hades, leys, and tyings."^ Little is known as to the meaning of "hades," except they must have been rights on very small pieces of land, relating probably to turning the plough on the neighbour's " head-land." Cowell's Interpreter quotes a document from Orleton in Herefordshire, where a tenant surrendered two acres, containing ten ridges, or seed-beds, and two hades.^ The Rowington Survey, as we noticed in the preceding essay, describes a small common-field by the name of Craston Hades. The head-lands were pieces at each end of a furrow, where the plough ^ Reproduced in Halliwell-Phillipps, ii.s., i. 202. - Timo?t of Athens, iv. 3, 193, ^ In conveyance of May, 1602, ti.s.i "And also all hades, leys, tying-es, proffittes, advantages and commodities whatsoever." Cf. Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry, ed. Skeat, 1882, §6, p. 15: "The horses may be tethered or tied upon leys, balks, or hades, where as oxen may notbe kept." * Cowell, A Law Dictionary , etc., 1627, s.v., Hades of lattd. New Eng. Diet., vol. v., p. 13, gives "Hade. ... A strip of land left unploughed . . . between two ploughed portions of a field." The sense connecting- it with the head-lands of the field is "perhaps a mistake arising from the identification of hade with head." CULTIVATION OF YARD-LANDS 143 turned ; they were sometimes mere cart-ways, but by management they might be cropped ; as in the second part of Henry IV. the servant asks Shallow, "Again, sir, shall we sow the head-land with wheat? Shal. With red wheat, Davy."i Shakespeare also mentions the early "white wheat," mildewed by the foul fiend, Flibbertigibbet.2 It was often mixed with rye in a "blend"; and this was said to be "the surest corn for growing." But very little rye was ever sown near Stratford, the soil being heavy and more adapted to wheat and beans. "Some ground," says Fitzherbert, "is good for wheat, some for rye, and some is good for both." The song of the two pages in As You Like It^ may be a true sketch of one side of the "green corn-field," laid out in the "acres of the rye." The lover and his lass are in one of the grassy balks be- tween the "lands," chattering about the furrow-weeds, and the corn-cockles, and wild-mustard, and pink cuckoo-flowers : — "This carol they began that hour, With a hey and a ho., and a hey 7ionino, How that a life was but a flower, In the Spring-time. . . Sweet lovers love the Spring." The "rank fumitory"** was the worst enemy of the rye. It appeared in June or at the end of spring in a very wet season. "It groweth like vetches," says the Book of Husbandry , " but it is much smaller, and it will grow as high as the corn, and with the weight thereof it pulleth the corn flat to the earth, and fretteth the ears away."° Shakespeare refers in The Tempest to the long blocks, 1 2 Henry IV., \. r, 15-17. ^ King Lear, iii, 4, 123. ^ As You Like It, v. 3, 17-34. * Henry V., v. 2, 45. Also see King Lear, iv. 4, 3. ^ Fitzherbert, u.s., §20, p, 30. He calls it "terre," i.e. tares. His form of "vetches" is "fytches." 144 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE called "furlongs," in the common fields. Gonzal© makes a whimsical comparison between the vast tracts of foam and a little waste corner in the village field. "Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any- thing. The wills above be done ! but I would fain die a dry death." ^ We may suppose also that Hermione referred to the arable furlongs in the Winter's Tale : '* You may ride's With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere With spur we heat an acre."^ The word "tyings" meant the right of tethering a horse, hobbled with a "tye" or chain, so as to graze on the neighbour's herbage. A good illustration occurs in Fitzherbert's treatise on Husbandry, in a discussion on the saying, "Eat within your tether." "Take thy horse, and go tether him upon thine own leys, flit him as oft as thou wilt, no man will say ' wrong thou dost ' ; but make thy horse too long a tether . . . so . . . that it reacheth to the midst of another man's leys or corn : now hast thou given him too much liberty." ^ The farmers as a rule enjoyed rights of pastures on the corn-lands in fallow, the weeds providing an abund- ance of coarse food for the town-herd or common-flock. But in some districts portions of the fallow were ex- 1 Tempest, i. i, 67-70. Cf. Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. i, 158, where the messenger is safe from wreck, "being destined to a drier death on shore." It is interesting to refer to Rabelais, Pantagruel, iv. 18: "O que troys et quatre foys heureux sont ceulx qui plantent choulx ! O Faroes, que ne me fillastes vous pour planteur de choulx ! O que petit est le nombre de ceulx a qui lupiter ha telle faueur ported qu'il- les ha destinez a planter choulx ! Car ilz ont tousiours en terre ung pied, I'aultre n'en est pas loing." And ibid., 20, where Panurge continues his seasick lamentations : ' ' Pleust la digne vertus de Dieu qua heure presente ie feusse dedans le clous de Sevilli^, ou chez Innocent le pastissier, deuant la caue paincte a Chinon . . . Ie vous donne tout Salmiguondinoys et ma grande cacquerolliere, si par vostre Industrie ie trouue une foys terre ferme " (ed. Bibliophile Jacob, pp. 368, 372). 2 Winter's Tale, i. 2, 94-6. ^ Fitzherbert, u,s., §148, p. 100. RIGHTS OF PASTURE 145 empted from the general right, and were kept as "severals," or " sunder-lands," for the owner's pri- vate use. Shakespeare refers to this practice in Love's Lahotir's Lost, where Boyet offers Maria a kiss. "Not so, gentle beast," she cries ; '* My lips are no common, though several they be." "Belonging to whom?" " To my fortunes and me."^ The Masque in The Tempest contains several allu- sions to the ancient methods of husbandry. It opens with a picture of a lovely island, the treasure-house of the Goddess of Plenty.^ Ceres herself guards the rampart of cliffs that shut in her vines in cluster on their poles, her plough-torn leas, and the grassy banks that "catch flower" in the spring. The sketch of the vines in their ranks seems to be meant as a sign of antiquity, indicating that the scene was laid as far back as the Roman times. It was almost a commonplace in Shakespeare's time that there had been a store of vines in this country, since their cultivation had been allowed by the Emperor Probus.^ There can hardly be a doubt, when the various phrases of the Masque are examined in this light, that its island of Ceres was " Britannia." The landscape shows the girls picking flowers for their garlands, from banks and pastures, " When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him."^ The ploughing of a hillside drew the soil down, till it was checked by terraces, or natural platforms, which soon became covered with coppices and underwood. This explains the word of Ceres as to her "bosky acres," below the " unshrubb'd down," and the laugh- ^ Love s Labour's Lost, ii. i, 222-4. '^ Tempest, iv. i, 60-117. ^ See Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, p. 269 D. E. , of the Vine, Lord Sands' house at Basing : " The vines , . . which wee have had in Britaine, since Probus the Emperours time, rather for shade than fruit," etc. * Sonnet xcviii. 2-4. L 146 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE ing talk of Iris about lass-lorn bachelors in the shade of the broom. The Yorkshire broom-groves are often twelve feet high, and a "grove" is presumed to con- sist of underwood ; this was laid down in the case of Robert Barret against his mother.^ We owe the sketch of *'the banks with pioned . . . brims" to a kindly reminiscence of Spenser's ''painefull pyon- ings " in the second book of The Faerie Queene ;^ and the lass-lorn love may be recognised in his Shepheards Calender for January : — " I love thilke lasse (alas ! why doe I love ?) And am forlorne (alas ! why am I lorne ? ) " ^ And in the April eclogue, good Hobbinol is asked : "Or is thy Bagpype broke, that soundes so sweete? , Or art thou of thy loved lasse forlorne ? " * The brims of the banks were "pioned," or raised by the spade, like mounds in war cast up by the labouring "pioners."^ The banks were also said to be "twilled," a term which has caused a great discussion. It seems to be an allusion to the diagonal pattern on "twilled cloth," the bank being marked with parallel lines of "binders," pegged down when the hedges were plashed, to protect quick-sets, or boughs split and "laid down," against the bite of cattle. We find an illustrative passage in Covel's Diary for October, 1675. At Malaga, said Dr. Covel, some spread their twills on the bedsteads, "but I, with one or two more, had the fortune to put our twills for coolness into the middle of the floor." ^ Theobald's suggestion, that the ^ Sir Thos. Hetley, Reports and Cases, 1657, p. 35: "A Grove ordinarily is Under-wood." ^ Faerie Queejie, ii. 10, stanza 63. ® Shepheards Caleyider, Januarie, stanza 11. * Id., April, stanza i. ^ Hamlet, i. 5, 163 ; Henry V., iii. 2, 92. ^ Extracts from the Diaries of Dr. John Covel, 1670-9, ed. J. T. Bent for Hakluyt Society, 1893, p. 115. "Twilled," in the disputed passage, has been interpreted without alteration as "covered with sedge." This view takes "twill" as another form of "quill," through the French equivalent ttiyau. See Appendix iii. (pp. 180-2) to Mr. Morton Luce's edition of The Te77ipest (Methuen, 1902). MASQUE IN THE TEMPEST 147 passage referred to the banks of a stream, " pseonied and lilied," brings Shakespeare's Masque down to the level of The Arraignment of Paris ; for in Peele's sketch of a brook, " The watery flowers and lilies on the banks, Like blazing- comets burg'eon all in ranks. "^ As for peonies, one should remember Gerard's saying, ''that the male Peionie groweth wilde upon a conie berrie in Betsome;"-^ but his editor. Dr. T. Johnson, added a note in 1633: "I have been told that our Author himselfe planted that Peionie there, and after- wards seemed to finde it there by accident ; and I do beleeve it was so, because none before or since have ever seen or heard of it growing wild since in any part of this Kingdome." ^ In quoting the speech of Iris, we may also note that stover is used for rough hay, kept to fodder the sheep in winter. The lines of herbage and frondage are compared by way of metaphor to the bays of a roof thatched with reeds or straw. " Reed " is now a name in the western counties for wheat-straw made ready for thatching ; but in former times the com- mon rushes and reeds were used for covering roofs, even in large towns. In 1619 the Privy Council ordered that the houses "thatched with reed and straw" at Cambridge, should for the future be slated or tiled ; and in the same year another order was made to the same effect about the thatched houses in Stratford, though one sturdy burgess seems to have refused to buy slates "to save his neighbour's apricot-tree." Shakespeare mentions the reed-thatching in describing the grief of Gonzalo : — ** His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops From eaves of reeds. ""^ ^ Peele, Arraigninent of Paris, i. 3. " Gerard, Herbal, 1597, lib, 2, c. 364, p. 831. ^ Id., ed. T. Johnson, 1633, lib. 2, c. 380, p. 983. * Tempest, v. i, 16-17. 148 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE In 1614, Mr. William Combe and his son John formed a project of inclosing Welcombe field, by agreement with the majority of the proprietors. They relied, no doubt, upon a sudden change of policy in the Court of Chancery, under Lord Ellesmere, who in that very year had decreed inclosures of wastes and com- monable lands as being for the public advantage. Various instances of this kind were collected by ''that famous lawyer, William Tothill," in his Transactions of the High Court of Chancery, 1649. "The Court," for instance, " compells certain men, that would not agree to Inclosures, to yeild unto the same, and binds a Colledge that would not consent."^ But after a few years there was another change, and inclosure was no longer compelled, but was regarded as contrary to the plain words of the Acts against the population and decay of tillage. Shakespeare's land was not in Welcombe field, but he would naturally object to anything that would injure his tithes, having special regard to the very high prices for corn in the neighbourhood of Stratford. Mr. Thomas Greene, Town Clerk of Stratford, made notes upon the proposed inclosure, which have now been separately published by Dr. Ingleby.^ The ex- tracts from these notes are given in modern spelling for the reader's convenience. "Jovis: 17 No: [vembris, 1614]. My cousin Shakespeare coming- yesterday to town {i.e. Stratford), I went to see him how he did. He told me that they assured him they meant to inclose no further than to Gospel Bush . . . and he and Mr. Hall say, they think there will be nothing done at all." The Town Council met on the 23rd of December : '* A Hall.^ Letters written, one to Mr. Malnwaring, another to Mr. Shakespeare, with almost all the company's hands to either. I also writ of myself to my cousin Shake- •^ Tothill, as in text, ed. 1671, p. 174. ^ Birming-ham, 1885. ^ i.e. a council-meeting. INCLOSURE OF WELCOMBE FIELD 149 speare the copies of all our oaths made,^ and then also a note of the inconveniences would grow by the inclosure." A few days afterwards there is a note of an agree- ment with Mr. Replingham, providing an indemnity for Shakespeare against loss on tithes, Mr. Greene being now added as a party : ''9 Jan^., 1614. Mr. Rep- lingham, 28 Ocf. , articled with Mr. Shakespeare, and then I was put in by T. Lucas." Greene evidently had acquired some interest in the tithes. The next entry runs as follows: "11 Jan^., 1614. Mr. Mainwaring and his agreement for me with my cousin Shake- speare." The final entry has been the subject of some discussion : ''Sept. Mr. Shakespeare telling J. Greene that I was not able to bear the inclosing of Welcombe." As Thomas Greene and Shakespeare were acting as partners, it does not much matter which of them made the objection. Some read the passage, however, as if / were used for he or «, which in the local dialects were almost equivalent."^ Shortly before Shakespeare's death in 1616, the Cor- poration agreed to petition against the inclosure, as an injury to the Church, charities, and tithes ; and it was ordered during the Lent Assizes at Warwick that no inclosure to the decay of tillage should take place without leave of the justices in open Assizes ; and this order was confirmed on the same circuit two years afterwards. Mr. Combe proceeded in the teeth of these orders to throw down the banks, and to cut up the 400 acres of corn-land into pasture-fields. The Cor- poration appealing to the Privy Council, Sir Richard Verney and others were commissioned to view the place and report; and early in 1618 the cause was •^ The handwriting is difficult to read, and the phrase " oaths made " is Dr. Ingleby's conjecture. Others read simply "acts." 2 S&& Henry V., ii. 3, 9: "'A made a finer end"; and id., iii. 2, 28: "Lest 'a should be thought a coward. " The obvious explanation in this case is that Thomas Greene quoted Shakespeare's words in oratio recta. I50 NATURAL HISTORY sent for arbitration to Sir Julius C^sar, Master of the Rolls, and Sir Edward Coke, late Lord Chief Justice. On the 1 2th of March the Privy Council wrote to Mr. Combe about his disobedience, and ordered that his inclosures should be forthwith laid open, that the pasture should be turned back into arable, and the banks and meers restored, at his peril if he made any- further resistance. II There are allusions to the system of common-field husbandry, both in the plays and the sonnets, which indicate that Shakespeare had in his mind the un- drained corn-field and " water furlongs " extending by the stream of the Avon. The open fallows on which the sheep were turned appear, as we have noted, in the interchange of repartee between Boyet and Maria in Love's Labour's Lost; a common belongs to several, but all several things are not common.^ With this we may compare the lines in the 137th Sonnet: — " Why should my heart think that a several plot Which my heart knows the wide world's common place? "^ Another passage in the same play refers to the breed- ing of wild-fowl in the riverside fields. Longaville is rebuking Berowne for an illogical remark : *' He weeds the corn and still lets grow the weeding " ; and his friend retorts, with a reference to the marshy fields, ''The Spring is near when green geese are a-breed- ing."^ Then in A Midsummer Night's Di'eam we have a picture of "wild geese that the creeping fowler eye " ; * and we find from early books on sporting that the gray-lags and barnacle geese used often to be seen feeding in the furlongs, and that the fowlers caught ^ S^Lp., p. 145. 2 11. 9-10. ^ Love's Labour s Lost, i, i , 96-7 . •* Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2, 20. WILD-FOWL 151 them there with limed rods, or used the stalking-horse to get within shot. Instructions on these points will be found in The Experienc' d Fowler. " In Winter time when no Snow lies, the Wild-geese and Barnacles re- sort to the green Wheat to Grase, here you must prick down large Rods in the Furrows, as near the colour of the Earth as may be, and chuse those Furrows where there is Water. "^ For stalking the sportsman required a canvas screen, cut into the shape of a tree with twigs and branches, or a cow or stag, or any other large creature with which the wild-fowl were familiar ; but the best plan was to have "an old staid horse" that would not mind the firing ; "and you must guide him with nothing but a String of a Grass-colour, or in Snowy Weather white, about his nether Chap, about two or three Yards long : teach him to walk gently on the Banks of Brooks and Rivers, or in open Fields, in a grazing posture." The fowler needed a good fire- lock, about as large as a harquebuss ; "it is not so discernable to the Fowl as a Match-lock, neither so troublesome ; and then again in Rain, Snow, Fogs, or windy weather there is no fear of extinguishing, as a Match often is, when you are many Miles from a House, perhaps, and then if you have not a Tinder- box at hand, your Sport for a time is marred."^ We must not forget the " russet-pated chough" that swarmed in the open fields, " many in sort, rising and cawing at the gun's report."^ These generally have been taken for the Cornish choughs, the epithet "russet-pated" being supposed to refer to their red beaks and eyes; if "russet-patted" be taken as the true reading, according to Professor Newton's sugges- tion, the word would refer to their red legs and feet. ^ The Experienc d Fowler: or, The Gentleman s Recreation, etc., printed for G. Conyers at the Golden Ring, and J. Sprint at the Bell in Little Britain, p, 66. '^ Id., pp. 49, 41. -^ Midsummer Night^s Dj'cam, iii. 2, 21-2. 152 NATURAL HISTORY For an accurate description of the bird we may refer to Mr. Cecil Smith's Birds of Somersetshire. The beak, legs, and toes, he says, are all of a sealing-wax red ; the claws are black; "the irides are of two colours, the inner ring being red and the outer blue ; the eyelids are red ; the whole of the plumage is of a beautiful black shot with purple."^ The Cornish chough is a frequenter of sea-cliffs, and always has been kept from occupying the inland parts by "his enemy, the jack- daw." The acts for the destruction of crows and choughs, passed by Henry VIII. and renewed by Elizabeth, appear to relate to jackdaws, as distin- guished from Cornish choughs. Parliament declared that "an innumerable number of rooks, crows, and choughs, do daily breed and increase throughout this realm, which yearly do destroy and consume a wonder- ful and marvellous great quantity of corn and grain " ; and it was enacted that the noxious fowl should be destroyed by means of birds-nesting, and by crow-nets to be kept in every parish and to be used with a bait described as "a sharp made of chaff." The word " russet-pated " seems to refer to the mingled black and ash-coloured plumage of the jackdaw's neck. We hear in one of Captain Marryat's novels of " a dandy gray-russet cap " ; and it is well known that russet was used not long ago as being the name of a grey material. We cannot be quite sure, of course, what the drapers may have meant by the word in Shake- speare's day ; but there is a passage in Stow's Survey which seems to show that it implied a mixture of colours. Stow quoted the household accounts of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, for the seventh year of Edward II., and noticed that among the liveries pro- vided for Christmas was a cloth of russet for the Bishop of Anjou, and stuff of the same colour for certain poor men ; on which he adds the note : ^ C. Smith, The Birds of Somersetshire, 1869, p. 221. ''RUSSET-PATED" CHOUGHS 153 '•'■ Northern russet ... I have seen sold for Four Pence the Yard, and was good Cloth of a mingled Colour."^ The description of the Shepherd in Greene's Menaphon shows, at any rate, that it was not an ordinary red. Menaphon, we are told, was attired in a " russet jacket, red sleeves of camlet, a blue bonnet and round slop of country cloth." ^ There are passages in Shakespeare's plays showing that the word was used as relating rather to the quality of a stuff than to any colour with which it might have been dyed ; as, for example, when Biron talks of taffeta phrases in contrast with ''russet Yeas and honest kersey Noes,"^ or when Hamlet's friend points to the breaking of the dawn : — ** But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill."* Let us now examine a few of the passages in which Shakespeare seems to be distinctly referring to the scenery and natural products of the corn-fields and meadows near the Avon. We might include the river itself and the willows reflected in its "glassy stream," ^ remembering the poet's way of describing the flight of the wild geese,^ or the "doting mallard,"" the wounded duck in the sedge, ^ and the little grebe, or dive-dapper, "peering through a wave."'' He re- membered how the larks were caught in the great stubbles about harvest -time, just before the wild hobbies, or lark-hawks, began migrating. Some much delight, said Robert Burton, to take larks with day- nets and other small birds with chaff-nets ;^*' decoy birds ^ Stow, Survey, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. i. pp. 243-4. "Anjou" is used here, as in many other instances, as equivalent to Angers. ^ Greene, Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 35. ^ Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2, 406,412-3. ^ Hamlet, i. i, 166-7. 5 Hamlet, iv. 7, 167-8. ^ Midsummer Night's Dream, u.s. '' Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 10, 20. 8 Miich Ado about Nothing, ii. i, 209-10. " Venus and Adonis, 86. ^° Atiat. 0/ Mel., ii. §2, mem. 4 (ed. Shilleto, ii. 84). 154 NATURAL HISTORY being set, as Ariel baited his trap with frippery, for a ''stale" to catch these thieves.^ As to the larks, we have the railing attack upon Wolsey : — "If we live thus tamely, To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet, Farewell nobility ; let his grace go forv/ard, And dare us with his cap like larks." ^ The fowler took a little trammel of green thread, like a landing-net, and a hobby on a long pole ; and creep- ing up to the place where the flock alighted, he suddenly held up the hawk, which cowed the birds so that they could be netted or taken by hand, "they are so fearful of the Hobby, which preys on them about this Season."^ We should remember also the fluttering of the young Adonis, ''Look how a bird lies tangled in a net";^ and the jest about "bat- fowling " in The Tempest.^ As to the latter sport, "Have a Wicker," says the Experienced Fowler, "with a handle to hold on high, in which you can place three or four Links." *^ We hear of superstitious fancies about the birds of night, and not merely as to hooting and screeching owls, but of dismal night-ravens and night- crows that throttle out a kind of croaking voice like one that is strangled. When the wicked King Richard was born, the "night-crow cried, aboding luckless time."'' When the singer in Much Ado about Nothing sings, "Sigh no more," and "Sing no more ditties, sing no mo," what says the mocking Benedick? "An ill singer, my lord," — in itself a bold jest against the sweet musician. Jack Wilson, who took the part of ^ Tempest, iv. i, 187. '^ Henry VII/., iii. 2, 279-82. ^ Experienc'd Foivler, u. s. , p. 55. * Venus and Adonis, 67. ^ Tempest, ii. i, 185. ^ Experienc'd Fowler, zi.s., p. 89. One man beats the hedge with a pole, and one or two more carry long- bushes, walking near the light : when the birds are "unroosted," they flutter about the links, so that the men with the bushes easily beat them down. ^ 3 He7iry VI., v. 6, 45. RAVENS AND CROWS 155 Baltasar — ''and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief; I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it."^ The myths about this grim raven come down from the remotest antiquity ; they appear in the Greek romances about Alexander ; they reappeared in our time in Edgar Poe's vision of the ominous bird of yore. "Tell me, tell me I implore," sighs the haunted wretch, "tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore." John Ray, the great botanist, is one of the best witnesses in any question about Shakespeare's country. He paid special atten- tion to the natural history of the Midlands during his visits to Mr. Willughby at Sutton Coldfield ; and a passage in his travels shows that the night-raven of Shakespeare's time was the squacco heron, which roosts by streams and makes a groaning or gobbling in the dark. He made a bye-journey from Leyden to Sevenhuys to see "a remarkable grove where, in time of year, several sorts of wildfowl build and breed." He observed there, in great numbers, shags and spoon- bills, and the Quack or lesser heron, and "the Germans call this bird the Night-raven, because it makes a noise in the night. "^ The same writer's list of northern words explains another allusion to " Night's black agents," as they appeared in the fevered imagination of Macbeth :— *' Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood."^ This has nothing to do with Tennyson's "black re- public" on the elms,* or the crow "that leads the clanging rookery home."^ It is rather the night-crow preparing for deeds of rapine in the misty woods, 1 Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 3, 83-5. ^ J. Ray, Travels through the Loiii-Countries , etc., 2nd ed., 1738, i. 2Z' ^ Macbeth, Hi. 2, 50-1. '^ Ayhners Field, 529. ■^ Locksley Hall, stanza 34. 156 NATURAL HISTORY since '' rooky" in Shakespeare's home meant vaporous, or reeking, and the epithet implies no more than such phrases as the reek of sighs, or a lover's breath, the smoke of the lime-kiln,^ or "reek o' the rotten fens."^ Ray also explained another difficult phrase, which Shakespeare transferred from the milking-shed into the domain of magic and witchcraft. The Stratford Records show that there was once an altercation be- tween two old women, in which Goody Bromlie crushed Goody Holder ''with the execration, Arent the, wich ! " Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps^ remarks that the phrase is shown by this entry to have been commonly used by the lower classes in Stratford. The words assume a mystical form as they appear in Macbeth and King Lear: "Aroint thee, witch! the rump-fed ronyon cries." '^ We observe how the snarling note comes in, and we are reminded of Romeo and the Nurse. " Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter? Ay, nurse, what of that ? both with an R. Ah, mocker ! that's the dog's name ! "^ In the fish-fag quarrel the sting lay in the epithet "Witch." Aroint thee, or " rynt thee," was a milk- maid's word, telling her cow to stand away from the pail. *■*■ Rynt ye," said Ray, is " By your leave, stand handsomely." There was also a proverb about an impudent maid who had treated her mother like one of the cows. " Rynt you Witch, quoth Besse Locket to her Mother." The jest had become a proverb in Cheshire and the neighbouring districts. *^ 1 Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 3, 86. ^ Coriolanus, iii. 12, 13. ^ op. «'/. , i. 142. ^ Macheth, i. i, 6. See also King Lear, iii. 4, 129. ^ Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4, 219-23. '° Ray, Collection of English Words, 3rd ed. , 1737, p. 52. MEADOW-FLOWERS 157 III The country round Stratford appears as we read the Masque in The Tempests The vineyards, indeed, and the tall broom-groves have a foreign appearance ; but we are at home in the ''rich leas" of corn, the sheep downs, and flat meads thatched with stover for winter-keep. It should be noticed that "leas" are meant for lands in tillage, as in the Ley-field at Row- ington, and not for fallows, which the word would technically denote.^ This appears by Fitzherbert's instructions how to amend lea-ground "the whiche hath ben errable lande of late": "Ye must take hede howe the leyse lye, and specially that they lye nat to hyghe, for an they do, it is more profit to the husbande to caste it downe agayne, and sowe it with otes."^ There is sometimes a difficulty in understanding the references to meadow-flowers, owing chiefly to the fact that the same name is used for different plants, accord- ing to the fancy of the nurses and children in various districts ; the names themselves, it may be added, being so vague that there is no reason why they should not be used for plants that are totally unlike in appear- ance. Ophelia's crow-flowers, '^ for instance, may be buttercups, or bluebells, or any other flower that blows when the rooks are nesting. Her "long-purples" are the orchids called "dead man's thumbs"; but Tennyson was thinking of the great willowy loose-strife, when he described the "long purples" creeping towards the bramble-roses in a country churchyard.^ Shakespeare's crow-flower was the ragged robin, or meadow-pink, ^ Tempest, iv. i, 60-75. ^ As in Henry V., v. 2, 44, "her fallow leas." In Ttmon of Athens, iv. 3, 192, on the other hand, we have "plough-torn leas," u.s., p. 142. ^ Fitzherbert, Book of Surveying, 1523, cap. xxvii., fol. 44, back. * Hajyilet, iv. 7, 170. Glossary to "Globe" Shakespeare explains as "the commoner kinds of ranunculus." ^ "A Dirge" \n Juvenilia, stanza v. L58 NATURAL HISTORY which some called the "cuckoo gilliflower," and this led at once to its being confused with the red campion of the hedges and fields, which is more regularly known as Flos cuculi or cuckoo-flower. Even in Shakespeare's time, however, there was a third com- petitor for the name. We learn from Gerard that people were beginning to think that the pale meadow-cress was the real cuckoo-flower, because it bloomed in April and May, "when the Cuckow doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering "; ^ and Tennyson brought sufficient authority from Lincolnshire to estab- lish the name among us, as witness his pale Margaret's " melancholy sweet and frail as perfume of the cuckoo- flower," while the May Queen's song tells us how the honeysuckle " round the porch has wov'n its wavy bowers, And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo- flowers." Shakespeare preferred to use the name for the red flowers in the high-grown wheat, as when old King Lear passes, " singing aloud ; Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn."^ For the children's buttercups, or butter-flowers, Shake- speare had the old name of the cuckoo-bud, but for the pale meadow-cress he used the Warwickshire word. Gerard claimed to have been the person who taught the Londoners that the "faint bloom" was the lady- smock: " They are commonly called ... in North- folke, Caunterburie bels : at the Namptwich in Cheshire where I had my beginning, Ladie smocks, which hath given me cause to christen it after my countrie fashion. " ^ ^ Gerard, m.s., 1597, lib. 2, cap. 18, p. 203. ^ King Lear, iv. 4, 2-6. ^ Gerard, u.s. CUCKOO-FLOWERS AND MARIGOLDS 159 But Shakespeare was beforehand with him, and taught his public their rustic lesson in Love's Labour's Lost. " Will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight."^ The poets have always loved the wild marigold as the true "heliotrope" or "girasol," and faithful fol- lower of the sun. Her petals droop and close as his steeds reach their western meadows ; then Aurora throws open her red-rose gate, "And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes." ^ The legend was prettily used in The Spanish Gipsy, written in part by that William Rowley who was said to have been Shakespeare's friend. A tawny chieftain is blessing a young pair who make vows on a garland of flowers ; the gipsy-man is to be the sun and his bride the obsequious flower : — " She to you the Marigold, To none but you her leaves unfold."^ Shakespeare has compared the sensitive blossoms to court-favours that bask in a smile, and are frozen in a moment by cold looks : — " Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread But as the marigold at the sun's eye, And in themselves their pride lies buried, For at a frown they in their glory die."* Another writer of that time protested that the sweet "Caltha" of the poets stands up and braves "Sir ^ Love's Labot(rs Lost, U.S. ,8g^-6,goL[-'j. ^ Cymbeline, ii. 3, 25-6. ■'^ Spanish Gipsy, 1653, act iv. sc. i. ^ Sonnet xxv, 5-8. i6o NATURAL HISTORY Phoebus," and "seconds him" as a rival both at morn- ing and night, "setting the silly sun-burnt god at scorn " : "Who in the morning spreads her yellow hair Like to the blaze of golden Phcebus bright : That makes the heavenly climes to shine so clear, Illuminating all the world with light, So shines my Marygold so fair in sight ; Till in the dark when as the day is done, She closeth up and setteth with the Sun."^ Thus far sings Thomas Cutwode, or " Cutwode Lyte," as some called him, from his imitations of Mr. Lyte of Lyte's Gary, the eminent botanist. The marigold, in fact, was one of the commonest of weeds, and was flaunted by the early ballad-writers, because' it met their eyes in every corn-field. " Golds " was the common name, and it was the farmer's task in June to clear the ground of the branching growth that threatened the life of his crop. "Golds hath a short jagged leaf, and groweth half a yard high, and hath a yellow flower as broad as a groat, and is an ill weed, and groweth commonly in barley and peas."^ We may quote a passage from Mr. Loveday's Tour, as printed by the Roxburghe Club. Writing in 1732, he says of the Scottish farmers: "Their country cannot reproach them for lack of culture : the cold North produces extreme good oats, and that chiefly : Gule, a yellow flower, grows among their corn and in above a double proportion to it : they pretend that 'tis im- possible to clear the ground of this incroaching weed." ^ The darnel, another of Shakespeare's idle weeds,* ^ Thomas Cutwode, Caltha Poetantm, 1599, stt. 19-20. In the orig-inal text the reading- is, "when as the day is dun," which may be an amiable conceit of the poet, playfully allying " dun " with " dark." ^ Fitzherbert, Booke of Husbandrie, §20, p. 30. •* Diary of a Tour in iyj2, by John Loveday, ed. J. E. T. Loveday, Edinburgh, 1890, p. 162. ^ King Lear, u.s. Henry V., v. 2, 45. WEEDS i6i was also a parasite of the barley, abounding in the fields, "especially in a moist and dankish soil."^ Some thought that it was a kind of degenerate barley, and like the cockle, it possessed a redeeming virtue in the fact that there was "much flour in that seed." 2 The " rank fumiter," or fumitory,^ is another of the migrant weeds that follow the plough. As Linn^us said of the deadly henbane, the darnel and nettle and fumitory have lived as the companions of man since houses and fields were invented. The corn-field fumi- tory, with red waxy flowers, came probably with seed- corn from Sicily. Ray found a yellow-flowered kind, supposed to have been introduced by the Crusaders. It grew in several parts of Warwickshire, "ramping over walls and hedges," and by some of the roadsides he noticed a smaller variety with blossoms a greenish white. Among these gaudy weeds the "pale bleak pansy" makes little show; but it was always a favourite in Warwickshire, and Shakespeare has given it a place among the immortals. It is " a little western flower," King Oberon tells us, "and maidens call it "love-in- idleness."^ Mr. Ellacombe says that the name "love- in-idle " is said to be still used among Warwickshire rustics, with the meaning of " love in vain," or wasted affection.^ In Gerard's time the flower was known as " Harts ease, Pansies, Liue in Idlenes, Cull me to you, and three faces in a hood." ^ The name " heartsease " properly belonged to the yellow wall-flower, which was used as a cordial against melancholy. As for pansies, "that's for thoughts," said Ophelia;^ but "pansy" and "fancy" are not unlike in sound, and it was prob- ^ Gerard, u.s., 1597, lib. i, cap. 51, p. 71. "^ Fitzherbert, u.s. ' King Lear a.nd Henry V., u.s., p. 143. * Midswnnier Night' s Dream, ii. i, 166-8. ^ H. N. Ellacombe, Plant Lore of Shakespeare, p. 151. " Gerard, ?/.s. , 1597, lib. 2, c. 299, p. 705. '^ Hamlet, iv. 5, 176-7. M i62 NATURAL HISTORY ably to this accident that the *' pretty Paunce " owed its " amatory character." Without following him too closely in his constant allusions to the fields and woods, we may note that Shakespeare evidently loved strength and brightness in his trees and flowers. He prefers the bold oxlip to the pale-faced company in the primrose path ; ^ the dim violets are loved for their marvellous sweetness, ''sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes";^ his daffodils^ are not the twin-belled flowers of the south, but the old Crusader's daffodils, "white as the sun, though pale as a lily," which Ray found growing in crowds on his journeys through Arden. If we looked with the poet into the cottage gardens, we should find among the favourites the bright and jewelled Crown Imperial, the great Mary-lilies in sheaves, and the golden Flower-de- luce.* We pass with a brief reference to Caltha: — ** Here could I set you down the honeysuckle, The pretty pink and purple pianet, The bugles, borage, and the bluebottle, The bonny belamour and violet."^ We might mention the pied gillyflowers, of which Perdita would have none in her garden,^ for the sake of Shakespeare's allusion to an odd fashion of his time. It was the rage to grow pinks and carnations in all sizes and colours. Gerard speaks in his Herbal of a violet " Gilloflower," of purple and yellow blooms,' and of " Pagiants or Pagion colour. Horse-flesh, blunket,"^ with a bewildering profusion of epithets. The gardeners, as Shakespeare has shown, professed to create all their varieties by grafting and change of soil ; but Ray learned in the next generation, from a 1 Winter's Tale, iv. 4, 122-7. " Ibid., 120-2. 3 Ibid., 119-20. * Ibid., 126-7. 5 Caltha Poetarum, u.s., st. 24. ® Winters Tale, ii.s., 84-5. 7 Gerard, tc.s., lib. 2, cap. 114, p. 373 (of Stocke Gilloflowers). ^ Id., cap. 172, p. 472 (of Clove Gilloflowers). FOREST OF ARDEN 163 Dutch farmer named Lauremberg, that the flowers were coloured red and green by watering the plants with certain chemicals for a month and preventing exposure to the dew. IV Warwickshire, according to the old topographers, was divided into the Fielden and the Wealden. South of Avon, said Speed, the land was tractable under cultivation, so "that the husbandman smileth in be- holding his paines, and the medowing pastures with their green mantles so imbrodered with flowers, that from Edg-hill wee may behold another Eden."'^ The Wealden was the woodland tract which is better known as Arden. "I learned at Warwick," wrote Leland, *'that the most part of the shire of Warwick, that lieth as Avon River descendeth on the right hand or ripe of it, is in Arden (for so is ancient name of that part of the shire)."'' It was a tradition in those parts that a squirrel might once have skipped from bough to bough across the whole breath of the county. But Leland, writing about 1540, noticed a rapid shrink- ing of the woods near Stratford.^ When he was exploring the country round Droitwich he remarked that '^ making of salt is a great and notable destruction of wood, and hath been, and shall be hereafter, except men use much coppices of young wood."^ The Act against the destruction of woods was passed soon afterwards ; but Leland remarks that the salt-boilers were fetching their wood from Arden, their wonted supplies having failed.^ He spoke about it to one of ^ speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, 1611, bk. i. , fol. 53. ^ Leland, Itin., ed. Hearne, 1710-12, vol. iv. part ii. p. 51 (fol. 166 a). ^ Leland, id.^ p, 53 (fol. 167b): "Little wood near in sight about Stratford." ^ Id., p. 87 (fol. 185 b). ^ Ibid.: "They be forced to seek wood as far as Worcester, and all the parts about Bromsgrove, Alvechurch, and Alcester." i64 NATURAL HISTORY the salters at the pans.^ "I asked him how much wood he supposed yearly to be spent at the furnaces, and he answered that by estimate there was spent 6,000 loads yearly. It is young pole-wood easy to be cloven." There were, after all, plenty of woods remaining a few years afterwards, when Shakespeare was young ; and we can see by many passages in the plays how fond he was of the high woods, and the open moors, and the rough sheep-farms set ''in the skirts of the forest, like fringe on a petticoat," Looking at certain words of Caliban, ^ we can perceive that the English landscape was in the background of the poet's mind, even as he wove a mirage of strange forms from Africa or the Atlantic Islands.^ The find- ; ing a jay's nest shows that we are in the heart of some 1 Midland wood. "Let me bring thee where crabs I grow," the monster whines; and the mind's eye sees I the wilding crab trees bowed down with red and I yellow fruit by the side of a glade in the forest. f "And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts"; I and the phrase at least takes us far from the Atlantic, I and into the old English pastures on a sandy soil where the " kipper-nuts" grew. These were the roots I of the drooping plant, looking like large parsley, which I is still esteemed a treasure by schoolboys. The root I was once considered a delicacy when boiled, or served \ with pepper in hot gravy. In Shakespeare's time, we \ are told, these plants grew in pastures and corn-fields \ "almost everywhere";* but we may observe that the "earth-nut" of the chalk soils belonged to a separate \ variety. "There is a field," says Gerard, "adjoining 1 Ibid..- "The people that be about the furnaces be very ill coloured." ^ Tempest, ii. 2, 171-6. 3 So Mr. Morton Luce, ti.s., Introduction, p. xvii : "There is the smallest possible proportion of local ' fauna and flora,' just enough to place the spot somewhere beyond seas, and the rest is Stratford-on-Avon, or at most England." ■* Gerard, ti.s., lib. 2, cap. 415, p. 906. SHAKESPEARE'S ARDEN 165 to Highgate, on the right side of the middle of the village, covered over with the same : and likewise in the next field unto the conduit heads by Maribone, neer the way that leadeth to Paddington by London, and in divers other places." ^ The " Arden "of As You Like It was a mere region of romance, belonging to King Oberon's friend, the good Sir Huon of Bordeaux. The name was derived from the Belgian Ardennes, and it might no doubt be connected in some slight degree with our Warwick- shire Arden. We may fairly suppose in each case that the title of the district was given by its Celtic occupants, and that the tribes were equally devoted to the cult of the huntress Arduinna, or "Diana of Arden." But there is little historical precision in the play, or in Lodge's novel of Rosalynde, on which its incidents were based. In Lodge's version the scene is transferred to the hot south ; the lovers hang their scrolls upon stone- pines, and sing madrigals under fig trees and pome- granates. But Shakespeare is always thinking of his English Arden, and brings the merry company back to the fern-brakes and the shade of the greenwood tree. The Duke is like the Earl in Lincoln green whose mates were Scarlet and Little John. "There they live like the old Robin Hood of England : they say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." 2 The scenery, indeed, is mixed up in a perplexing way. A painted snake slips into the bush by the sleeping Orlando : — " under which bush's shade A lioness, with udders all drawn dry, Lay couching, head on ground."^ 1 Gerard, ibid, (of Earth Nut, Earth Chestnut, or Kipper Nut). ^ As You Like It, i. i, 122-5. ^ ■^'^•j i^* 3> 109-16. i66 NATURAL HISTORY When Oliver loses his way, he mixes the terms of English woodcraft with the description of an Italian farm : — " Pray you, if you know, Where in the purlieus of this forest stands A sheep-cote fenced about with olive-trees ? " ^ Rosalind finds her copy of verses hung on a palm, instead of being carved on a pine, as in the older story. ''Look here what I found on a palm tree!"^ But this is no palm tree of the south ; it is the satiny palm or sallow, which decked the Warwickshire churches and "made the country-houses gay." In the tract called The Supplication of the Poor Commons, there is a delightful picture of river scenery which, with slight alterations, might have been applied to Shakespeare's home. A traveller is supposed to have espied a fair church, standing in this case on a hill, and pleasantly set round with groves and fields : "the goodly green meadows lying beneath, by the banks of a crystalline river, garnished with willows, poplars, palm trees, and alders, most beautiful to behold." Shakespeare showed his thorough knowledge of the woodlands by his accurate rendering of the terms of the chace. If we consult the great work on Forest Law, we shall find that he gives them the exact mean- ing in which they were used by the Forest-judge at his Justice-seat. No purlieu-man, for example, was allowed to circumvent or "fore-stall" the deer:^ "they may not fore-stall, but only let slip at the tail " ; but it was a common practice to get the wind of the game and drive it back to some gap where the nets and toils 1 Id., iv. 3, 76-8. 2 Id., iii. 2, 185-6. See Rosalynde, ed. H. Morley, 1893, p. 49: "Where they found carved in the bark of a phie tree this passion." p. 50: "Yonder be characters graven upon the bark of the tall beech tree." p. 82 : " He engraved with his knife on the bark of a myrrh tree, this pretty estimate of his mistress's perfection." ^ Manwood, Treatise of the Forest Laivs^ ed. Nelson, 1717. SPORTING TERMS IN SHAKESPEARE 167 had been pitched. Just so the King of Denmark speaks of being ''fore-stalled ere we come to fall:"^ and Hamlet himself cries to Guildenstern, " Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?"^ Again, in Love's Labour's Lost, we find a more complicated allusion to the practice : — "The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing myself: they have pitched a toil : I am toiling in a pitch, — pitch that defiles." 3 Serjeant Manwood gave lists of the "apt and meet terms" belonging to the beasts of the chace. "You shall say," he teaches us, "Dislodge the Buck!" Turning to Shakespeare we read : — " The Volscians are dislodged, and Marcius gone : A merrier day did never yet greet Rome." ^ Again, "You shall say Bolt the Cony!" In Cymbe- line we find the "bolt of nothing, shot at nothing, which the brain makes of fumes." ^ One might either uncape or unkennel the fox : and Hamlet speaks of occulted guilt unkenneling itself in a speech ; ^ and there is Mr. Ford of Windsor, with his "Search, seek, find out : I'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox. Let me stop this way first. So now, uncape." '' When the chace is over, said the learned Serjeant, you shall say, "the Deer is broken," or "the Fox is cased." We might add a reference to the famous maxim of " First case your hare" ; and when Parolles has been "smoked" by old Lafeu, the French lords vow "You shall see his fall to-night. . . . We'll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him."^ ^ Hamlet, iii. 3, 49. ^ Id., iii. 2, 361-2. ^ Love's Labour s Lost, iv. 3, 1-3. ■* Coriolamis, v. 4, 44-5. ^ Cymheline, iv. 2, 300-1. ^ Hamlet, iii. 2, 85-6. ^ Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 3, 173-6. 8 All's Well that Ends Well, iii. 6, 108, iio-ii : see Manwood, u,s,, suh Buck, Fox, etc. i68 NATURAL HISTORY It is clear that Shakespeare was familiar with the Cotswold sports, which were founded, indeed, by Robert Dover, a lawyer of Barton-on-the-Heath. Young Slender seems to know something about grey- hounds : "How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say he was outrun on Cotsall." "Sir, he's a good dog and a fair dog : can there be more said ? he is good and fair." ^ Anyone again who lived within sound and smell of Paris Garden, and had "seen Sackerson loose "^ and held him by the chain, would know all about the "robustious and rough coming on" of the mastiff,^ and bulldogs that "run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear, and have their heads crushed like rotten apples."* Among the Royal Archives of Denmark is a volume of travels by Jean Fontaine and Louis Schonbub, written in 1630, which contains passages illustrating the history of public amusements. They seem to be as applicable to Shakespeare's friends at the Globe as to the House at Blackfriars, with which they chiefly deal. The travellers write to the effect that everyone ought to see the theatres kept up for comedies, bears, bulls, dogs, and cock-fights: "in all these places fine tragedies and comedies are played, and the beast-fights are agreeable spectacles : and there are men and women who for a penny will bring one tobacco and beer." V But we must return to the woodlands of Arden and Shakespeare's own knowledge of the hunter's craft. One may notice how Prince Hal uses a technical phrase in rating Bardolph : "O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner."^ To be taken with the manner, or ^ Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i, 91-2, 98-9. ^ Ibid., 307. ^ Henry V., iii. 7, 159. * Ibid., 153-5. * i Henry IV., ii. 4, 345-7. SHAKESPEARE AND THE CHACE 169 "mainour," meant that a trespasser was caught in an offence against the vert or venison of the forest. With respect to the deer in particular, it implied that the offender was guilty in woodland language of "back- bare, bloody-hand, or dog-draw or stable-stand." Dog-draw was the charge when a man had shot at a deer and had a dog drawing after the wounded game. The last-named offence consisted in standing by a tree with bow bent or greyhounds in leash. ^ The legitimate way of shooting from the stand is described in the last part oi Henry VI., where Sinklow and Humphrey come on dressed as Keepers of a Chace with cross-bows in hand.^^ Their talk shows them not to have been much better shots than the sportsmen in As You Like It, who, as the Duke said, gored the haunches of the dappled fools with their fork-headed arrows.^ Sinklow, who appears by the First Folio to have taken the part of the Head-keeper, proposes that they shall both shoot at the same buck : " And In this covert will we make our stand. Culling the principal of all the deer." ^ "That cannot be," says the other, "the noise of thy cross-bow will scare the herd " ; and so they talk till the quondmn King comes in, "a deer whose skin is a keeper's fee.""^ We turn to the gayer scene in Love's Labow^s Lost, when the Princess gained such "credit in the shoot. "^ " Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush That we must stand and play the murderer in ? " ^ We know how the poor little animal was knocked over, and what a discussion arose about his age.^ The argu- ment seems to be taken from Manwood, whose firstsketch of a work on Forest Law was passing about in manuscript ^ Manwood, ti.s., sub Hunting. ^ As You Like It, ii. i, 22-5. '^ 3 Henry VI,, iii. i, 3-7. ^ Ibid., 22-3. •^ Love's Labour's Lost, iv. i, 26. ^ Ibid., 7, 8. ^ Ibid., iv. sc. 2. lyo NATURAL HISTORY long before the first appearance of his treatise in 1598. As concerning Beasts of Chace, said the learned Serjeant, the Buck, being the first, is called as followeth : the first year a Fawn, the second year a Pricket, the third a Sorel, the fourth year a Sore, the fifth year a Buck of the first head, the sixth a Buck or a Great Buck. ^ "Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least : but, sir, I assure ye, it was a buck of the first head." "Sir Nathaniel," says the Schoolmaster, '■'■ Haud credo'''' \ but honest Dull, the constable, breaks in, "'Twas not a Hand credo; 'twas a pricket" j^ and again, later on, he insists again that it was a pricket that the Princess had killed. 3 " Will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, call I the deer the princess killed a pricket."^ The solemn sentences of Manwood are built into a rude kind of rhyme : — "The preyful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket ; Some say a sore ; but not a sore, till now made sore with shooting. The dogs did yell : put L to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket ; Or pricket, sore, or else sorel ; the people fall a-hooting. If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores, one sorel, Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more It has been said that Shakespeare can have had little affection for dogs, and allows his characters to rate them as curs and mongrels on very slight provocation, as if they were all "creatures vile," and dogs of no esteem. We may enter a protest in favour of " Crab my dog " ; ^ and one might point out that old Lear talked of the house-pets with some slight show of affection: "the ^ Manwood, ii.s., sub Buck, '^ Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2, 8-12. ^ Ibid., 21-2. ** Ibid., 50-3, et seqq. ^ Two Gentlemeii of Verona, ii. 3 ; iv. 4. DOGS IN SHAKESPEARE 171 little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweet-heart, see, they bark at me ! "^ But whether Shakespeare's likings extended to '' Lady, the brach," ^ and the toy-terriers, or was confined to the generous hound, we must acknow- ledge that no writer of that time surpassed him in knowledge of the subject. In the year 1536, Dr. Caius published his Latin tract about British Dogs in the form of a letter to Gesner the naturalist.^ There are passages in the work, chiefly in the notices of foreign breeds, which may be useful to students of Shakespeare : such, for instance, is his account of the Maltese lapdogs, which might, he thought, be carried for warmth, instead of a muff or waistcoat ; and such is his picture of the Icelandic and Pomeranian dogs with face and body all covered with hair. We hear something about these last when the ruffians fall out in Henry F. : " Pish ! " said Nym. '' Pish for thee, Iceland dog ! thou prick- ear'd cur of Iceland!"^ is the retort of Ancient Pistol. Dr. Caius divided the British varieties into three principal kinds.^ He takes first the generous breeds used in the chace. The harrier comes first, he says ; but he used the word in a wide sense, for his "harriers" will hunt the fox, the red and fallow deer, the badger, and the marten ; next come terriers, and then the blood- hound, flap-eared and with lips in deep flews. Among the bloodhounds he places otter-hounds and ordinary fox-hounds, and is particular to keep the word " brach " for the female, contrary to the usage adopted by Shakespeare. Next we come to the greyhound class, in which may be set lym-hounds^ and gaze-hounds, ^ Khig Lear, iii. 6, 65-6. "^ Id., i. 4, 125. Also I Henry IV., iii. i, 240. ^ English translation (1576) by Abraham Fleming, printed in Arber's English Garner, iii. 225-68. ■* Hejiry V., ii. i, 43-4. ^ The tract is divided into five sections ; viz. §§ 1-3, Gentle dogs, serving the game; §4, Homely dogs, apt for sundry necessary uses; § 5, Currish dogs, meet for many toys. '° " Leviner or Lyemmer ; in Latin, Lorarius." 172 NATURAL HISTORY Irish deer-hounds, lurchers, and the miniature tumblers. Of the dogs used in fowling we have hern-dogs, and spaniels, setters, and water-spaniels or retrievers, which used to be shaved like French poodles. His second class takes in the rustic sheep-dogs and house-dogs, the mastiff, sometimes used in hunting "wild swine," the butcher's bull-dog, the useful creatures that drew water, pulled little carts, or carried the tinker's stock, and the farmer's dog, that barks at beggars, with other ''defend- ing dogs " ; he even takes care to describe the " moon- dog," which does nothing but " bay the moon."^ The third and last class takes in the useful turnspits and dancing-dogs, with a crowd of mongrels of all kinds. With this curious list we should compare the catalogue of dogs in Macbeth, adding for the sake of completeness the bob-tail tyke and trundletail, from Edgar's song in King Lear. ^ ''We are men, my liege," says the first murderer in Macbeth, and this is the tyrant's reply : — "Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men ; As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves are clept All by the name of dogs : the valued file Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle, j The housekeeper, the hunter, every one 1 According to the gift which bounteous nature Hath in him closed, whereby he does receive Particular addition, from the bill That writes them all alike. "^ There are hunting scenes in Venus and Adonis and in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew which are so lifelike, that one might almost describe the look of the pack and name the country where it was running. The very names of the hounds will in some cases indi- ^ "He doth nothing- else but watch and ward at an ynche, wasting the wearisome night season without slumbering' or sleeping ; bawing and wawing at the moon (that I may use the word of Nonius) ; a quality in mine opinion strange to consider." 2 King Lear., iii. 6, 69-76. ^ Macbeth, iii. i, 91-101. SHAKESPEARE'S HUNTING SCENES 173 cate their breed, and the sound of their "gallant chiding " ; ^ and we shall find, as in the hunt described by Sidney in the Arcadia^ that ''their cry was com- posed of so well sorted mouths, that any man would perceive therein some kind of proportion, but the skilful woodmen did find a musick."^ " Every region near Seemed all one mutual cry,"^ says the Amazon Queen, who had bayed the bear with Hercules and Cadmus. "The Wood," wrote Sidney, "seemed to conspire with them against his own citizens, dispensing their noise through all his quarters, and even the Nymph Echo left to bewail the loss of Nar- cissus, and became a hunter."^ Shakespeare uses the same image in his description of the fate of "poor Wat,"^ or "wily Wat," or "gentle Wat with long ears," as various ballad-writers had called him. The hunted hare has "cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles"; his "many musets" "are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes " ; he runs among the sheep and the deer, and the banks "where earth-delving conies keep," and the scent-snuffing hounds run silent, " till they have singled With much ado the cold fault cleanly out ; Then do they spend their mouths : Echo replies, As if another chase were in the skies. "^ "Tender well my hounds," the hunting lord calls out to his whips on Wilmcote Heath : " Brach Merriman, the poor cur is emboss'd ; And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach."''' He uses a word more appropriate to a blown stag or wild-boar than to a footsore hound ; the old sporting ^ Midsumvier Night' s Dream, iv. i, 119. ^ Arcadia, bk. i. (loth ed., 1655, p. 34). ^ Midsummer Night's Dream, iv. i, 120-1. ■* Arcadia, u.s. ^ Venus and Adonis, 697. ® Ibid., 679-96. "^ Tayning of the Shrew , Ind. i, 16-18. 174 NATURAL HISTORY books tell us that the deer is said to be *' embossed" when he creeps into holes and lies down, or when he runs "stiff and lumbering," and slavers and foams at the mouth, with other signs of fatigue. Looking through the park at Wilmcote with the "hunting lord" and his whips, we notice that "Silver" is especially praised : — '* Saw'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good, At the hedge-corner, in the coldest fault? " ^ "Silver" appears again in The Tempest, when Ariel hunts the rascals with his visionary pack. "Silver! there it goes. Silver! Fury, Fury! there, Tyrant, there ! " 2 These latter we take as representing the black, or black-and-tan hounds, like the western slow-hounds, which were valued not only for their keen scent, but for giving tongue in a deep, bell-like note : as when the Goddess knows that some rough beast is found, from the cry remaining in one place, and finds a favourite hound of Adonis howling by himself in a brake. When he has ceased his din, " Another flap-mouth'd mourner, black and grim. Against the welkin volleys out his voice ; Another and another answer him."^ But "Silver" was, of course, one of the slender, short hounds, white in colour, with black ears and a black spot on the back, which were the direct descendants of the old milk-white English talbot. The rule for the Midland counties, according to the School of Recreation, was to use a middle-sized hound, " of a more nimble Composure than" the slow-hound "and fitter for Chase." For strength of cry the huntsman was told to choose "the Loud Clanging (redoubling as it ^ Ibid., 19-20. ^ Tempest, iv. i, 257-8. ^ Venus and Adonis, 920-2. VARIETIES OF HOUNDS 175 were) Mouth, and to this put the roaring, spending, and whining Mouth, which will be loud, smart, and pleasant " ; and such, said the writer, were the Wor- cestershire packs in his day. Some men loved most to watch "cunning hunting" ; others thought of little but the "musical discord" and "sweet thunder" of the hounds. For sweetness of cry they "compounded the kennel" of a few large hounds "of deep solemn Mouths, and swift in spending, as the Base in the Consort"; then for a Counter-tenor, twice as many "roaring, loud, ringing Mouths" ; add some "hollow plain, sweet Mouths " for the Mean ; and so shall your Cry be perfect. Moreover, let the deep-mouthed hounds be swift of their kind, the middle-sized ones rather slow, like " Echo " in the Wilmcote pack ; when " Belman " is praised as better than "Silver," the lord cries, "Thou art a fool: if Echo were as fleet I would esteem him worth a dozen such."^ Lastly, the white, sweet-tongued hounds were to be as slender and short-legged as might be ; and by taking care of these points, says the instructor, the pack will be made to " run even together." ' In Cheshire and some other districts, where the coun- try was nearly covered with woods, it was necessary to use large and heavy hounds, with hardly any im- provement upon the old slow-hound stock from which they were originally derived. This seems to be the breed which Theseus praised to Hippolyta when they rode after a great hart on the first morning in May. We see the influence of Chaucer in the reference to Cadmus and to the joy of Duke Theseus in his hounds. Hunting, as the Knight's Tale has it, was "all his joye and appetyt " ; ^ and Shakespeare seems to rejoice ^ Taming of the Shrew, Ind. i, 22-7. ^ The School of Recreation ; or, a Gniide to the Most Ingenious Exercises of Hunting, etc., by R. H., 1732, pp. 9-11. •* Chaucer, Knightes Tale, 822 \Cant. Tales, A. 1680]. 176 NATURAL HISTORY with him, as he traces the pedigree from the famous pack that " found the bear " for Hercules : — '* My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung With ears, that sweep away the morning dew ; Crook-knee'd, and dewlapp'd Hke Thessalian bulls ; Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells. Each under each." ^ If we look at Robert Greene's Menaphon, we shall find a youngster of Thessaly debating with the Ar- cadian shepherds. They are talking of a ewe, " whose fleece was as white as the hairs that grow on father Boreas' chin, or as the dangling dewlap of the silver bull."^ On so slight a framework of materials Shake- speare raised his marvellous work ; and so easily were all kinds of knowledge taken up by him, that we might easily believe, in reference to the passage quoted above, that he used the old anecdote of Queen Elizabeth, which was preserved by Anthony Wood. Richard Edwards, we are told, produced his Palamon and Arcyte in 1566,^ though the comedy was not published till 1585. The comedy was acted before the Queen, in Christchurch Hall, at Oxford. In the play was acted a cry of hounds in the *' quadrant," "upon the train of a fox," during the hunting of Theseus, "with which the young scholars who stood in the windows were so much taken (supposing it was real) that they cried out, ' Now now — there there — he's caught, he's caught.' All which the Queen merrily beholding said, ' O excellent ! those boys in very troth are ready to leap out of the windows to follow the hounds ! ' " * 1 Midsummer Night's Dreani^'w, i, 123-8. ^ GveQne, Menaphon, u.s., p. 74. ^ Collier, Annals, i. 191 (ed. 1831), g-ives date September 3rd, 1566. ^ Anthony Wood, Hist, and Ant. of the University of Oxford, ed. J. Gutch, 1796, ii. 160. LANDMARKS ON THE STRATFORD ROAD AND IN LONDON 1586-1616 LANDMAHKS ON THE STRATFORD ROAD AND IN LONDON 1586-1616 I Shakespeare's journey to London (c. 1586) WE have no precise information as to Shake- speare's first settlement in London ; but the evidence, as a whole, is in favour of his having left Stratford in the year 1586. We may fairly suppose that his journey would be made during the spring so as to avoid the difficulties of winter travelling, and to secure employment for the busy time of the year. In the region of conjecture, Malone's speculations are not without interest.^ He seems to have felt a shock at the notion that the son of Mr. Shakespeare, Alderman and sometime High Bailiff of the Borough, might have made but a poor appearance when he first offered himself at the playhouse door. He thought that the poet might have been helped by his friend, Richard Quiney, who wrote in such an affectionate strain from the " Bell," when he came to town on a later occasion. Was not this Richard, his schoolfellow, remarkably ^ Malone, Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, 1821, ii. 164-7. 179 i8o LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD clever and forward in his Latin, and did he not after- wards serve in the shop where Mrs. Mary Shakespeare dealt for her groceries? Malone supposed that Richard or his father, Adrian Quiney, would have supplied young Shakespeare with an introduction to Mr. Bartholomew Quiney, who kept a draper's store near the carved stone conduit in Fleet Street. So far as we know, however, there was no connection between the Stratford tradesman and the London merchant, except, indeed, that they may both have derived their descent from the stock of Quineys in the Isle of Man. Malone returns to the charge with a second argu- ment. Richard Field, the son of Mr. Field, a tanner at Stratford, had established himself as a printer in London. He it was who brought out Venus and Adonis in 1593, and Lucrece in the following year; his friend and collaborator, Harrison, published the •little books at the sign of the '* White Greyhound," near St. Paul's. Are we to suppose, suggests Malone, that Mr. Richard Field would not have rescued Shakespeare from poverty, or would have allowed "an amiable and worthy youth " to remain in so degraded a state? He is referring, of course, to the story about holding the horses. It was for Malone to find evi- dence for his own suggestion. We can neither affirm nor deny that the poet brought a letter of introduction to the printer. The critic himself rather preferred the notion that Shakespeare's movements were governed by his having formed some acquaintance with Lord Warwick's or Lord Leicester's servants, or the Queen's company of comedians. "It is, I think, much more probable that his own lively disposition made him acquainted with some of the principal performers who visited Stratford, the elder Burbage, or Knell, or Bentley." James Burbage was the builder and manager of the chief London theatre, where Lord Leicester's players were then engaged. Shakespeare, we are told. SHAKESPEARE'S JOURNEY TO LONDON i8i might have enrolled himself among the players, and may have arrived at his new home in company with the "tragedians of the City." Malone also said that the Sadlers would have been sure to help a friend. Hamnet Sadler, as Mr. Hunter showed, was connected with Hamlet Smith, whose sister Helen was settled in London.^ She was married to Mr. Stephen Scudamore, otherwise Skidmore, a vintner at St. Stephen's, Coleman Street. Mr. Scuda- more was rich himself, and was said to be related to Sir Clement Scudamore, one of the wealthiest of the City merchants. But, unfortunately for the theory, it is plain from the Vintners' records that *' Stephen Skidmore" died in 1584, leaving property at St. Anne's, Blackfriars, to his Company on various chari- table trusts. Mr. Hunter also examined the story of John Sadler, who became partner with Richard Quiney in the grocer's shop at Bucklersbury.^ John Sadler seems to have been a nephew of Hamnet and Judith. His father had become impoverished by good living and hospitality, and he hoped to restore the family by marrying his son John to a good fortune. Hunter found the details in a book, published in 1690, upon ''The Holy Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Walker, late wife of A. W[alker], d.d., rector of Fyfield in Essex." Mrs. Walker, he says, was John Sadler's daughter, and a great part of the book consists of extracts "from her old manuscript remains."^ Young John was romantic, or attached elsewhere, and contrived to make his escape. His father, as Mrs. Walker told the story, "provided him good clothes, a good horse, and money in his purse, and sent him to make his ad- dresses to the gentlewoman in the country. But he, considering well how difficult a married condition was ^ Joseph Hunter, f.s.a., Neio Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shake- speare, 1845, i. 52, note. His authority was the will of Helen Scudamore, 1606. 2 jj){(i_^ 69. 2 Ibid., 69-70, note. i82 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD like to prove, instead of going awooing joined himself to the carrier and came to London, where he had never been before, and sold his horse in Smithfield." If we follow the teaching of Sir John Falstaff, one would buy a rogue like Bardolph at Paul's, and he would buy his master a nag on a Friday morning at Smith- field Market ; if he could add a wife from Bankside, then were one "manned, horsed, and wived." ^ John Sadler had no acquaintance in London "to recommend or assist him." We may observe that Mrs. Helen Scudamore did not die before 1606 ; but her relationship to the young adventurer may have been too remote for his purpose. He wandered from street to street and house to house, asking if they wanted an apprentice; "and though he met with many discouraging scorns and a thousand denials, he went till he light on Mr. Brooksbank, a grocer in Bucklersbury."^ II THE ROAD TO LONDON — ROLLRIGHT STONES — GRENDON UNDER- WOOD— AYLESBURY TO UXBRIDGE. Shakespeare, it has been suggested, may have gone through a similar experience. It is not improbable, at any rate, that he would hang on to the Stratford carriers for security against the Clerks of St. Nicholas, like the rich yeoman in Henry IV., and the travellers who breakfasted off eggs and butter. ^ The road by which he journeyed to London has been described by many travellers before and since his day. The direct way lay S.S.E. of Stratford, through Shipston-on- Stour. After passing through this almost isolated ^ 2 Henry IV., i. 2, 58-61. See Nares' Glossary, ed. Halliwell and Wright, s.v. PAUL'S, ST. ^ Hunter, u.s. ^ I Henry IV., ii. i. An alternative route to the road hereafter de- scribed lay through Kineton and Banbury, joining the road from Shipston and Chipping Norton at Bicester. ROLLRIGHT STONES 183 piece of Worcestershire, it recrossed the Stour into the southern corner of Warwickshire, and finally left the county for Oxfordshire a little beyond Long Compton. Just across the border, in Little Rollright parish, stood the famous stone-circle known as ''Roll- rich stones." Mr. Loveday, to whose English travels in the middle of the eighteenth century we already have referred,^ on his way from Oxford to Stratford, visited the stones. He and his companions went down hill from Chipping Norton to Long Comp- ton, a "truly long village," and made a detour to the circle. This, he writes, is "of no very regular figure " ; the tallest of the stones was about seven feet high, the others not above four and a half feet. A single stone on the other side of the hedge in War- wickshire, nine feet high and upwards, was called the King-stone, and was believed to mark the spot where Rollo the Norwegian had been crowned. About a fur- long to the east were five other large stones called the Knights which stood "rounding, as close together as can be without touching."^ Camden had given his high authority to the tradition about Rollo, which was in truth almost as absurd as the theory of the rustics in Shakespeare's day who believed that the monument consisted of men turned into stones, and gave the name of King to the tallest, " because he should have beene King of England (forsooth) if he had once seene Long Compton, a little towne so called lying beneath, and which a man, if he go some few pases forward, may see."^ 1 Diary of a Tour in 1782, made by John Loveday of Caversham, ed. J. E. T. Loveday, 1890, p. 4. ^ Hence known as the "Whispering Circle" (Virtue's National Gazetteer, iii. 339), or the "Whispering Knights" (Murray's Warwick- shire, 1899, p. 102.) ^ Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, 1610, p. 374. He continues, " Other five standing at the other side, touching as it were, one another, they imagine to have beene Knights mounted on horsebacke ; and the rest the army." He connected the Rollo tradition with the battle between i84 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD From Long Compton it was a distance of four miles into Chipping Norton, where Mr. Loveday on his way- northward stayed at the "Talbot." The town, we are \ told, stands on the side of a somewhat steep hill. The ^ church is a large building in the bottom ; the middle aisle is almost all window ; there was a charnel-house at the north-east end of the church like the famous bonehouse at Stratford, which extended under the aisle and was entered from outside. Thence the road crossed Oxfordshire, keeping slightly to the south-east to Bicester. In Church-Enstone parish, some five miles out of Chipping Norton, a road forked off S.S.E. to Woodstock and Oxford ; this, in its turn, divided into branches in Kiddington parish, half-way to Woodstock. The left-hand branch kept to the east of Woodstock, and joined the direct road from Oxford to London, near Wheatley. The main road passed into Buckinghamshire a few miles beyond Bicester. Two or three miles across the border, on a side road, was a village which a slight tradition connects with the name of Shakespeare. Aubrey, in his casual notes on Shakespeare's life, writes: "The humour of . . . the constable, in Mzd- somernighfs Dreamey he happened to take at Grendon in Bucks — I thinke it was Midsomer night that he happened to lye there — which is the roade from London to Stratford, and there was living that constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon : Mr. Josias Howe is of that parish, and knew him."^ The Rev. Josias Eng-lish and Danes at Hook Norton in 917, and the subsequent battle at the Four-Shire-Stone not far distant. Long- Compton is situated about midway between these two battlefields. ^ Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, 1898, ii. 226 {s.v. Shakespear). In connection with Josias Howe, we may notice Aubrey's story in his notes on Dr. Ralph Kettell, President of Trinity (id., ii. 23): " Mrls. Howe, of Grendon " — doubtless Josias' mother — " sent him (the president) a present of hippocris, and some fine cheese-cakes, by a plain countrey fellow, her servant. The Dr. tastes the wine : — ' What,' sayd he, ' didst thou take this drinke out of a ditch ? ' and when he saw the cheese- GRENDON UNDERWOOD 185 Howe was a tutor at Trinity College, where he had been elected to a fellowship in 1637, about five years before Aubrey came up. He was a native of Grendon Underwood. The name of the village is sometimes written Crendon, and care should be taken not to confuse it with Long Crendon, near Thame, which lies a little north of the road from Aylesbury to Oxford, and is described in the life of Anthony Wood. The rector of Grendon, about the time of Aubrey's boy- hood, was the Rev. Thomas Howe, at whose house the tutor of Trinity was brought up. Josias was the rector's son, and would know the village well. He was a person of some culture and authority on matters of literature, having been introduced to Ben Jonson, and being the friend of Denham, Waller, and Shirley. When William Cartwright's plays and poems were published in 165 1, Howe's commendatory verses ap- peared in company with those of James Howell, Henry Vaughan the Silurist, and other distinguished Oxford men. Aubrey introduces his parenthesis about " Mid- somer night" with some hesitation. The journey to Stratford on Midsummer Day would have no relevance to the title of the play. It was the first of May when Theseus and Hippolyta rode hunting, as everyone had known since Chaucer's day ; and it was only by a magical glamour that Titania could sphere herself in summer weather, and call up pictures of the vintage and of the time of apricots and dew-berries. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is only a title for a story told on velvet lawns and under the greenwood tree. Just in the same way, a "Winter's Tale" is one that might be told at Christmas in the blaze of the logs, about witches and cakes : — ' What have we here, crhiku^n, cranhum ? ' The poor fellow stared on him, and wondered at such a rough reception of such a hand- some present ; but he shortly made him amends with a good dinner and halfe-a-crowne. " i86 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD ghosts, and "sad stories of the death of kings"; as Mr. Booth speaks, in his preface to Diodorus, of the children hearing a Winter Tale "and strange stories of this brave Hero and that mighty Giant, who did wonders in the Land of Utopia." Aubrey, at any rate, says that there was a constable, to whom something hap- pened which appears again in the story of the "hempen home-spuns " playing their interlude at Athens. The manuscript is imperfect, and the story, such as it was, is defaced. The Grendon people might find allusions to their church porch in Much Ado about Nothing: "Well, masters, we hear our charge: let us go sit here upon the church-bench till two, and then all to bed."^ Bernwood Forest may supply the original of Titania's bank "where the wild thyme blows. "- The taproom at the old Ship Inn, as we learn from an amusing essay on "Shakespeare in Bucks," may have been frequented by the originals of Quince the Carpenter and Nick Bottom, and the two who danced the Bergomask.^ The Grendon tradition, arising we know not whence, makes the poet say that there were " only two people worth talking to in the place," and that these were the breeches-maker and the tinker ; the suggestion is that they were no other •^ Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3, 94-6. ^ Midsummer Night's Dream, ii, i, 249. Camden, ^l.s., p. 395, speak- ing of the vale of Aylesbury, says : " It is all naked and bare of woods, unlesse it be on the West side, where among others is Bernewood whose Forresters surnamed de Borstall were famous in former times. About this forrest the yeere after Christ's nativity 914, the Danes furiously raged: and then happily it was, that the ancient Burgh was destroied, whose antiquity Romane coined peeces of mony there found doe testifie ; which afterwards became the roiall house of King Edward the Confessor. But now it is a Country Village, and in stead of Buri-Hill, they call it short, Brill." Brill is four or five miles south of Grendon. Bicester, written by Camden " Burcester," has been supposed to derive its name (Burenceaster, or Bernaceaster) from its neighbourhood to Bernwood Forest. Cf. with Camden's account of the bareness of the vale of Aylesbury, Leland's words quoted below, p. 188. ^ Midsummer Night's Dvea^n, v. i, 360-1. THE CONSTABLE OF GRENDON 187 in the flesh than Robert Starveling, the tailor, that played Thisbe's mother,^ and Tom Snout, who pre- sented a ''sweet and lovely Wall."" But then, for the constable, we are taken back to Much Ado about Nothing. Might not Dogberry be the man, it is asked, with his "two gowns, and everything handsome about him"?^ Dogberry is somewhat too majestical to be copied from a rustic watchman ; and Goodman Verges is too old, and "speaks a little off the matter."* There is a wise officer in Measure for Measure who comes nearer to the point : — "If it please your honour, I am the poor duke's constable, and my name is Elbow : I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors."^ On the whole, however, if there was such an officer at Grendon to whom the poet intended to refer, "the most desartless man to be constable " would be either Hugh Otecake or George Seacole, to whom writing and reading came by nature.^ George Seacole was also a well-favoured man by gift of fortune. " You are thought here," says Master Dogberry, "to be the most senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch ; therefore bear you the lantern." We know nothing for certain about the matter. It is just possible that a part of this kind may have got into the farces constructed out of the episode of Pyramus and Thisbe. These popular versions would naturally be filled with "gag." The droll, composed on this theme and called The Merry Conceited Humours of Bottom the ^Id.,i,2, 62-3. 2 Id., V. I, 157, " I, one Snout by name, present a wall." '^ Much Ado about Nothing, v. 2, 88-9. ^ Id., iii. 5, lo-ii. ^ Measure for Measure, ii. i, 47-50. ^ Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, i. 189, remarks that unless the Grendon constable " had attained an in- credible age in the year 1642, he would have been too young for the prototype." i88 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD Weaver, was described by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in the Shakespeare Society's Papers; it seems to have been a popular farce acted by small companies at Bartlemy Fair and country revels and gatherings.-^ Aylesbury was some nine miles further on. Leland, on his way from Oxford into Warwickshire, came by way of Thame to Aylesbury, and so on to Bicester, Banbury, and Warwick. On his way back to London, he writes : "Or ever I passed into Aylesbury, I rode over a little bridge of stone called Woman's Bridge . . . and from this bridge to the town is a stone cause- way. . . . The town's self of Aylesbury standeth on a hill in respect of all the ground thereabout, a three-miles flat north from Chiltern Hills. The town is neetly well builded with timber, and in it is a celebrate market." ^ It may be noticed that a Dane called Jacobsen, travelling in this country about 1677, mentions this market as showing the largest oxen in England ; his travels are preserved among the manu- scripts in the Royal Library at Copenhagen. From Aylesbury it was a distance of three miles to Wen- dover, " a pretty thorough-fare town."^ "There is a caxiseway made almost through to pass betwixt Ayles- bury and it, else the way in wet time as in a low stiff clay were tedious and ill to pass." Wendover, said Leland, stood partly on the cliffs of the Chilterns and partly in the roots of the hills. " Look as the country of the Vale of Aylesbury for the most part is clean barren of wood, and is champaign ; so is all the Chiltern well-wooded, and full of enclosures." After ^ Shakespeare Society's Papers, 1844-9, ^^* I3°> "ote ; (^ Fe-w Observa- tions on the Composition of '■^ the Midsummer Night's Dream") ^ Leland, Itinerary, ed. Hearne, 1710-12, iv. 100. ^ Leland, ihid., loi. Five miles is nearer the mark, according" to our modern reckoning. Leland's mile corresponds to about a mile and a half in the present day. Thus, in counting up distances from Warwick, he reckons the five miles to Barford Bridge as three, and the eighteen miles to Banbury as twelve. FROM AYLESBURY TO UXBRIDGE 189 another stage of three ^ miles the travellers reached Great Missenden, a thoroughfare village not yet digni- fied with a market; and here was a ''pretty" brick chapel ; and there was in Leland's time a Priory of Black Canons standing at the bottom of the hill among goodly grounds.^ The library of this monas- tery, consisting chiefly of manuscript romances of chivalry, was purchased in Queen Elizabeth's reign by Serjeant Fletewode, otherwise Fleetwood, Recorder of London ; it was sold by his descendant in 1774 under the name of " Bibliotheca Monastico-Flete- wodiana." Little Missenden was hardly to be ranked as a village, consisting as it did at that time of a few houses on each side of the road. Amersham had only one street, but the buildings were larger and newer, with clean timber and plaster, and it was "a right pretty market-town on Friday."^ Uxbridge, again, had but one long street, with excellent timbered houses; "the Church," we are told, "is almost a mile out of the town, in the very highway to London " ; and this showed that it was not a very ancient town.* It was not a parish of itself, but was a member of Great Hillingdon, governed at that time by bailiffs and constables "and two tything-men, who were also called headboroughs." There was a market, however, of a considerable antiquity ; and the townsmen had ^ i.e. five (see above). ^ Tanner, Notitia Monastica, 1787, Buckinghamshire, No. xvi. Dug- dale, Monasticon, ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, 1830, vi. 547. Camden, U.S., p. 394: "A religious house that acknowledged the D'Oilies their founders and certaine Gentlemen surnamed De Missenden their especiall benefactours upon a vow for escaping a ship-wracke." ^ Leland, ibid. He gives the name its old form, Hagmondesham, or Homersham. In Johnson's Life of Waller, we find the form Agmondes- ham. Camden, u.s., p. 394, has "And then in the Vale Aniershavi, in the Saxon tongue Agmundesham, which vaunteth it selfe not for faire buildings, nor multitude of inhabitants, but for their late Lord Francis Russell Earle of Bedford, who being the expresse paterne of true piety and noblenesse lived most deerely beloved of all good men. " * Leland, ibid., 102. igo LANDMARKS IN LONDON subscribed to build a chapel-of-ease as early as the reign of Henry VL An account of the place will be found in Norden's Speculum BritannicE, first published in 1593.' Ill UXBRIDGE TO TYBURN — ST. GILES' After crossing the long bridges over the Colne and passing through Uxbridge, the road went on to SouthaU and the thoroughfare at Acton. After pass- ing the Gravel Pits at Kensington, the traveller rode under the great brick wall of Hyde Park, crossing the Westbourne Brook, ''the original source of the Ser- pentine," 2 and so to the place of execution at Tyburn, and the banqueting-house near the Marylebone Con- duits. Mr. Loftie's History of London contains a full account of the changes by which the odious name of Tyburn was shifted from the village of Marylebone to the triangular piece of waste land near the Marble Arch. 2 It may be to the shape of the ground that Shakespeare refers in a passage of Love's Labour's Lost : — " Thou mak'st the trlumviry, the corner-cap of society, The shape of Love's Tyburn that hangs up simplicity." ^ That a gallows was at one time left standing there is shown by Aubrey's anecdote about Sir Miles Fleetwood of Missenden, who was Recorder of London about the accession of James I. '' He was a very severe hanger of highwaymen, so that the fraternity were resolved to make an example of him : which they ^ Spec, Brit, ed. of 1723, p. 41 : "They have a Chappell of Ease buylt by Ro. Oliuer, Thomas Mandin, lolni Pahiier and lohn Barforde of the same towne. In the sixth and twentith yeere of Henry the sixt." Sub Vxbridge or Woxbridg^e. ^ W. J. Loftie, History of London, 1883-4; "• 236. ^ Id., ii. 217-20. * Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3, 53-4. TYBURN AND MARYLEBONE CONDUITS 191 executed in this manner : They lay in wait for him not far from Tyburn, as he was to come from his house at (Missenden) in Bucks ; had a halter in readi- ness, brought him under the gallows, fastened the rope about his neck, his hands tied behind him (and servants bound), and then left him to the mercy of his horse, which he called Ball. So he cried, ' Ho, Ball ! Ho ! Ball ! ' and it pleased God that his horse stood still, till somebody came along, which was half a quarter of an hour or more ; He ordered that this horse should be kept as long as he would live, and it was so, — he lived till 1646."^ Mr. Loftie describes the annual festival at which the conduits were in- spected, and quotes Strype's account of the merry- making of the i8th of September, 1562, when the Lord Mayor and Aldermen visited the Conduit-heads : they hunted a hare before dinner, and after dinner a fox: '* there was great cry for a mile, and at length the hounds killed him at the end of St. Giles's, with great hollowing and blowing of horns at his death." ^ Leland counts his stage from Acton to " Maryburne Brooke and Parke" as four miles. "This brook," he writes, "runneth by the Park-wall of St. James"; ^ he is here referring to the Tyburn Stream, which in his time ran across the high-road, passing from Mary- lebone Lane to a village now included in Mayfair. It is now carried beneath the Green Park and under the front portion of Buckingham Palace. At Tyburn Tree there was a parting of the ways. For Westminster and Charing Cross one turned down by the fields and lanes. We have letters written in the next generation which must be applicable to those earlier times. Going through the park was "as pretty a piece of road as ever a crow flew over." From the lane outside the wall there was "a far distant prospect of ' Aubrey, i/.s., i. 253. ^ Loftie, u.s., ii. 220. '^ Leland, 71. s., iv. 102. 192 LANDMARKS IN LONDON hills and dales," meadows full of cattle, 'Mittle wilder- nesses of blackbirds and nightingales." Gerard made notes about several rare plants which he found not far from the roadside, of which a few examples may be mentioned. The Great Burnet, for example, was found by Gerard " upon the side of a cawsey " leading out of the road between Paddington and Lisson Green. ^ He found plenty of Pig-nuts near the Marylebone Conduit- heads.^ His editor also talks of seeing the Bugloss *'upon the drie ditch bankes about Pickadilla."^ The wild Clary grew in the fields of Holborn, " neere unto Graies Inne, in the high way by the end of a bricke wall " ; the purple Clary grew in his own garden.* Gerard found Rue-leaved Whitlow-grass "up on the bricke wall in Chauncerie lane, belonging to the Earle of Southampton, in the suburbes of London, and sundrie other places."^ The road ran through the fields to Lord Lisle's at St. Giles', where the old Leper Hospital had formerly stood ; and here generations of poor prisoners had rested on their way to Tyburn, and had been allowed great draughts of ale from St. Giles' Bowl, "thereof to drink at their pleasure, as to be their last refreshing in this life."^ The custom survived in a squalid gin- drinking way until the place of execution was altered. "At the Dragon I take my gill," was the song of the dismal highwayman ; or, if he pleased, he might take his parting-glass at the door of the "Bow" or the " Angel." ^ St. Giles in the Fields was a country village when Shakespeare came to town. The map attributed to Ralph Aggas shows an open road as far ^ Gerard, Herhall, 1597, lih. ii. cap. 403, p. 889. ^ Id., lib. ii, cap. 415, p. 906. ^ Id., ed, T. Johnson, 1633, lih. ii. cap. 283, p. 799. ^ Id., 1597, lih. ii. cap. 255, p. 628. ^ Id., lih. ii. cap. 186, p. 500. ® Stow, Survey of London, 1598, ed. H. Morley, p. 399. '' See W. H. Ainsworth's lyric in Jack Sheppard, epoch i. chap, v., "Where Saint Giles's church stands, once a lazar-house stood." ST. GILES' AND GRAY'S INN 193 as Gray's Inn, with a few buildings about Holborn Bars, and down as far as the Gateway in Gray's Inn Lane. But notwithstanding the proclamations against building near the City, the thin lines of houses were always creeping westwards on both sides of the way. " On the high street," says the Smvey in the edition of 1618, '* have ye many fair houses builded, and lodgings for Gentlemen, Innes for Travellers, and such like, up almost (for it lacketh but little) to St. Giles in the Fields." 1 IV gray's inn — THE REVELS OF 1 594 AND ' ' THE COMEDY OF ERRORS " — " TWELFTH NIGHT " AT THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, 160I-2 The Gray's Inn Fields extended over a wide tract from the Inn Gateway to Kentish Town and Islington. Henry, Lord Berkeley, who died as late as 1613, used when young to hunt in Gray's Inn Fields ''and in all those parts towards Islington and Heygate " while living with his mother at Kentish Town and at the family mansion in Shoe Lane ; and his biographer states that he was always accompanied by a crowd of Inns-of-Court men, as well as by the hundred and fifty liveried retainers, "that daily then attended him in their Tawny coates."^ •^ Mr. Douthwaite, in his learned history of Gray's Inn, has given an interesting account of the Masques for which the Society was famous.^ These Masques, or " disguisings," were usually performed for the 1 Stow, U.S., ed. 1618, p, 823. " John Smyth, The Lives of the Berkeleys . . . from 1066 to 1618, ed. Sir John Maclean, f.s.a. , 1883, ii. 281-2. ^ W. R. Douthwaite, Gray's Inn, its History and Associations, 1886, chap. X. pp. 222-46. O 194 LANDMARKS IN LONDON amusement of visitors during the period allotted for Revels. The old dictionaries define Revels and revelling as being noisy pastimes, or (as we might say) old-fashioned Christmas sports, such as dancing, dice-playing, round games, '* used in Princes' Courts, noblemen's houses, or Inns of Court, and commonly performed at night. 'V^|i We are told that at "Grand Christmas," as celebrated in the Inner Temple, the Master of the Game summoned his huntsman into the Hall, who came with a purse-net, and a cat and a fox, bound to a staff; "and with them nine or ten Couple of Hounds, with the blowing of Hunting-Hornes. And the Fox and Cat are by the Hounds set upon, and killed beneath the Fire."^ Mr. Douthwaite describes the last occasion on which the Solemn Revels took place at the Inner Temple Hall.^ This was the feast held on the 2nd of February, 1733-4, to celebrate the promotion of Mr. Talbot to the Woolsack. After dinner, we are told, every member of a mess was supplied with a flask of claret, besides the usual allowance of port and sack: "the master of the revels took the Lord Chancellor by the right hand, who with his left took Mr. Justice Page, and, the other Serjeants and benchers being joined together, all danced about the coal fire three times, according to the old ceremony (or rather round the fire-place, for no fire nor embers were in it), while the ancient song, accompanied with music, was sung by one Tony Aston, dressed as a barrister." "Dancing to song," said Bacon, "is a thing of great state and pleasure"; ^ Minsheu, Dicctor in Linguas, 1617, gives the definition " Revels seemeth to be derived from the French word Reveiller. ... It signifieth with us sports of dancing, masking, comedies, tragedies, and such like used in the King's house, the houses of Court, or of other great person- ages. The reason whereof is, because they are most used by night, when otherwise men commonly sleepe and be at rest." " Dug-dale, Origines Juridiciales, 1666, cap. 57, p. 154. ■* Douthwaite, u.s., p. 244-6. REVELS AT GRAY'S INN 195 but he added in the same essay that "dancing in song " was a mean and vulgar thing ; whereas " acting in song, especially in dialogues," seemed to him to have "an extreme good grace." ^ Bacon, it will be remembered, was often engaged in managing the Revels at Gray's Inn ; his kindness in matters of this " lighter and less serious kind " is fully acknowledged in the dedication to the Masque of Flowers, first re- presented in 1613-14, "by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn," at the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and reproduced in our own time at Gray's Inn and the Middle Temple on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee.'^ Besides the "Solemn Revels "above-mentioned, there were certain " Post Revels," performed by the " better sort" of young Templars "with Galliards, Corrantoes, and other dances ; or else with stage plays"; " but of late years," said Dugdale, "these Post Revells have been dis-used, both here and in the other Innes of Court, "=^ -y.. Mr. Douthwaite mentions the representation of a comedy at Gray's Inn on the i6th of January, 1587-8, at which Lord Burghley and other dignitaries were present.'^ He shows also that on the 28th of February following eight members of the Society were engaged in producing a tragedy on the " Misfortunes of Arthur," to be represented before the Queen at Greenwich.^ Thomas Hughes was the author, and it is said that Bacon, who was then a reader, took part in devising the dumb shows. Mr. Spedding has shown in his Biography that Bacon must also have been the author of some of the speeches of the " Prince of Purpoole," ^ Bacon, Essay xxxvii., "Of Masques and Triumphs." (Works, ed. Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, 1858, vi. 467). ^ See quotations in Douthwaite, u.s., p. 223. ■^ Dugdale, u.s., cap. 61, "The Middle Temple," p. 205. ■* Douthwaite, u.s., p. 225. ^ Id., pp. 226-7. 196 LANDMARKS IN LONDON prepared for the Revels of 1594.^ As to the play, we may observe that, though King Arthur was several times shown on the stage, the Gray's Inn version may very possibly have suggested some of the reminiscences of Justice Shallow^. "When I lay at Clement's Inn — I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show."- *'I do remember him," says Sir John, "at Clement's Inn like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring. "^ The Revels of 1594 are described in a rare book called Gesta Grayorum ; or, the History of Henry, Prince of Purpoole,^ from which extracts have been made by Mr. Spedding and Mr. Douthwaite.^ The "Prince" was the lord of misrule at Gray's Inn, his duties answering to those of the Constable Marshal at the Temple, and the Prince de la Grange at Lincoln's Inn. The volume in question was not published till 1688, but it contains a contemporary account of the perform- ance of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. "Besides the daily Revels and suchlike Sports, which were usual, there was intended divers Grand nights for the Entertainment of Strangers." What the crowd would be like we may judge by a story in Webster and Dek- ker's Westiaard Ho! "This last Christmas a citizen and his wife, as it might be one of you, were invited to ^ spedding;, Letters and Life of Francis Baco7i, 1861, i. 342-3. " That the speeches of the six councillors were written by him, and by him alone, no one who is at all familiar with his style either of thoug-ht or expression will for a moment doubt." ^ 2 Henry IV., iii. 2, 299-300. The reference to "Arthur's show," however, has a distinct and recognised origin which has nothing to do with stage-plays. ^ Ibid., 331-3. ■* Printed by Nichols in Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (ed. 1823), iii. 262. The " prince's " full style is " The High and Mighty Prince Henry, Prince of Purpoole, Arch Duke of Stapulia and Bernardia, Duke of High and Nether Holborn, Marquis of St. Giles and Tottenham, Count Palatine of Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell, Great Lord of the Cantons of Islington, Kentish Town, Paddington, and Knights-Bridge, Knight of the Most Heroical Order of the Helmet, and Sovereign of the same : who reigned and died A.D. 1594. " ^ Spedding, u.s., pp. 332-41 ; Douthwaite, u.s., pp. 227-30. REVELS OF 1594 197 the Revels one night at one of the Inns-o'-court : the husband, having business, trusts his wife thither to take up a room for him before."^ This looks as if there were reserved seats in stages or galleries, if not boxes, like the ''rooms" in the theatre. We are told of the torchmen at the gate, and the "whifflers" who kept the road clear, and of the clamorous crowd ''able to drown the throats of a shoal of fishwives." On December 28th, the second of the Grand Nights, the actors came over from Shoreditch to entertain the guests with a play ; but the beholders were so nu- merous that there was no space for the performers. The guests from the Temple retired in displeasure, and the "throngs and tumults," as we are told, "did somewhat cease, although so much of them continued, as was able to disorder and confound any good Inven- tions whatsoever." We can imagine the dismay of the actors at all this noise. The scene recalls the words : "By my troth, your town is troubled with unruly boys." ^ "In regard whereof," the narration continues, "as also for that the sports intended were especially for the gracing the Templarians , it was thought good not to offer anything of Account, saving Dancing and Revelling with Gentlewomen." We now learn what the managers included in their idea of poor inventions of no account. " After such sports, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the Players, so that night was begun and continued to the end, in nothing but Confusion and Errors ; whereupon it was ever afterwards called The Night of Errors^ ^ It was, in truth, a wild "Tartar limbo," ^ if we borrow ^ Westward Ho ! (ed. Dyce, 1857) act v. sc. 4. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, ii. 269-70, ascribes "nearly all" acts iv. and v. to Dekker "in Dec, 1604," the rest to Webster "in the sum- mer of 1603. . . . Dekker's part is personally satiric." ^ Cotnedy of Errors, iii. i, 62. ■' Gesta Grayorum, ti.s. ■* Comedy of Errors, iv. 2, 32. 198 LANDMARKS IN LONDON the phrases of the comedy, full of sirens and wizards,^ enough to make a man "as mad as a buck":^ " This is the fair}' land : O spite of spites ! We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites ; If we obey them not, this will ensue, They'll suck our breath or pinch us black and blue. "^ Next night was held one of those burlesque Courts of which the lawyers were so fond ; ^ and it was pleaded that some sorcerer had interfered, the in- nuendo being evidently directed against Bacon, and that he had foisted in "a company of base and common fellows," who had made the disorder worse by their "play of Errors and Confusions." The company thus rudely described most probably in- cluded Shakespeare. The selection of his comedy is in favour of this idea ; and that he was one of the leading actors appears by the fact that he went with Burbage and Kempe to act before the Queen at Greenwich on the 26th and 28th of December, 1594, a few days after the performance at Gray's Inn. It may be assumed from the whole scope of the narrative that The Comedy of Errors was not presented as a new piece. It was obviously put on as a makeshift ; and there are other circumstances which have led the commentators to suppose that it was produced before 1594. The MencBchmi of Plautus in an English version was not published before the following year ; but Malone showed from the printer's own advertisement that the book had been for a long time circulating in manu- script. ^ The joke in the play about France "making war against her heir " ^ would not have been very appropriate after the 25th of July, 1593, when Henry IV. of France made his peace with the Parisians. ^ Id., iii. 2, 47 ; iv. 4, 61. ^ Id., iii. i, 72. ■^ Id., ii. 2, 191-4. '' Gesta Grayorum, 11. s. ^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 322. ^ Comedy of Errors, iii. 2, 126-7. THE COMEDY OF ERRORS 199 The use of the name Menaphon may show that the play was subsequent to the publication of Greene's novel of that title in 1589.^ Nell the kitchen-maid, again, is called Dowsabel,^ with reference apparently to Drayton's " Dowsabel of Arden," who wore "a frock of frolic green " in his pastoral of 1593 : — " This maiden in a morn betime, Went forth when May was in the prime, To get sweet setywall, The honeysuckle, the harlock, The lily, and the lady-smock, To deck her summer hall. "^ But here again we must remember that the poems in the Shepherd's Garland may have been handed about for some time in manuscript, and we must be content with the general statement that the play probably appeared between 1591 and the beginning of 1593. " On the 3rd of January following there was another Grand Night at Gray's Inn, at which the players again attended and went through their performance with great success.* The list of guests invited by "our Prince" included Lord Burghley, "foremost in aught that concerned the welfare of his chosen inn,"^ the Earl of Essex, "the Queen's great general," Lord Compton, Sir Robert Cecil, the young Earl of South- ampton, "with a great number of knights, ladies, and very worshipful personages : all which had con- venient places, and very good entertainment, to their good liking and contentment." The next day the Prince of Purpoole dined in state with the Lord Mayor at Crosby Place, "attended by eighty gentlemen of Gray's Inn and the Temple, each of them wearing a on his head." -x ^ Id., V. I, 367-8 : — " That most famous warrior, Duke Menaphon." - Id., \\\ I, no. ■' Drayton, Pastorals, eclogue iv. ■* Gesta Grayoruvi, 71. s, ^ Douthwaite, 11. s., p. 225. 200 LANDMARKS IN LONDON Another allusion to revels of this kind was found in a letter written by a barrister named Manningham, in February, 1601-2.^ The writer is describing certain revels at the Middle Temple, and he compares Shake- speare's new comedy to an old Italian play called GV Ingannati, which had appeared as early as 1542. *' At our feast wee had a play called Twelve Night, or what you will, much like the Commedy of Errores, or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the steward beleeve his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a letter as from his lady in general termes, telling him what shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparraile, &c., and then, when he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad." This entertainment took place at the Candlemas Feast held on February 2nd, 1601, O.S., when the Judges and Serjeants were entertained. Dugdale has left some account of this festivity. There were two such feasts in the year, appointed for All Saints' Day and the Purification of our Lady, or Candlemas Day. The invitations were at first confined to the members of the profession ; '' but of later time, divers Noblemen have been mixed with them, and solemnly invited as Guests to the Dinner, in regard they were formerly of the Society." When the company was assembled "two antient Utter-Baristers " brought basons and ewers of sweet water for washing their hands, "and two other like antient barristers with Towells.""- ^ Printed and in facsimile in Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 82. ^ Dugdale, u.s., cap. 61, p. 205. GRAY'S INN GARDENS 201 V THE GARDENS OF GRAy's INN — ^JOHN GERARD'S GARDEN IN HOLBORN It appears from the records of the Society that the gardens of Gray's Inn were laid out under the direc- tion of Bacon about the year 1597. Mr. Douthwaite quotes an order of the 29th of April, 1600, in which allowance was made for money disbursed by him "about the Garnishing of the walkes ; " ^ and men- tions a summer-house upon a small hillock, "open on all sides, and the roof supported by slender pillars," which bore an inscription showing that it had been erected by Bacon in memory of Jeremy Bettenham, formerly Reader of Gray's Inn.^ The same records show that a considerable number of elms, with three walnut-trees, " and one young ash near the seat," had been planted as early as 1583.^ The walks after- wards became a place of public resort, much visited "by the gentry of both sexes," especially after the Restoration. We need here only refer to two passages in letters written from Venice by James Howell to his friend Richard Altham at Gray's Inn. "Did you know all," says Howell, "you would wish your Person here a-while ; did you know the rare beauty of this Virgin City, you would quickly make love to her, and change your Royal Exchange for the RialtOy and your Gray's-Inn-Walks for St. Mark' s-Place for a time. Farewell, dear Child of Vertue, and Minion of the Muses, and love still — Yours, J. H."* In the other letter he addresses his friend as "dear ^ Douthwaite, it.s., p. 183. ^ Id., pp. 184-5, quoted from London mid its Environs described, 1761, iii. 58. ^ Id., pp. 185-6. "* Howell, Epp. Ho-Elia7ice, ed. Joseph Jacobs, 1892, p. 73 (bk. i. § 1, letter 32, dated i July, 1621). 202 LANDMARKS IN LONDON Dick," and says: ''I would I had you here with a wish, and you would not desire in haste to be at Gray's- Inn, tho' I hold your Walks to be the pleasant'st place about London^ and that you have there the choicest Society." i These letters appear to have been written about five years after Shakespeare's death. There was a garden on the other side of the street, which must also have been familiarly known to the poet. John Gerard, the botanist and author of the celebrated Herbal, lived in Holborn, just inside the City Liberties, between Chancery Lane and Staple Inn. We shall select a few specimens from his herb- garden, before going through the rose-walks and orchards. We take the tomato first, of which the red kind was already well known in London, and the yellow had just been introduced. "Apples of Love," says Gerard, "grow in Spaine, Italic, and such hot countries, from whence my selfe have received seedes for my garden, where they do increase and prosper . . . the apple of Love is called in Latine Pomum Aureum ... in English apples of Love, and golden apples . . . howbeit there be other golden apples whereof the poets do fable growing in the gardens of the daughters of Hesperits .'^ '^ Shake- speare's allusions to golden apples are confined to the Ovidian fable : there is Cupid, a little Hercules, "still climbing trees, in the Hesperides : " ^ and in a passage of more doubtful authorship is the picture of a Lady apparelled like the Spring : — " Before thee stands this fair Hesperides, With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched ; For death-like dragons here affright thee hard." ^ Something should be said of potatoes, including in ^ Id., p. 69 (bk. i. § I, letter 30, dated 5 June, 162 1). ^ Gerard, op. cit., lib. ii. cap, 55, p. 275. ^ Love's Labour s Lost, iv. 3, 340-1 : " For valour, is not Love a Hercules," etc. ■* Pericles, i. i, 12, 27-9. GERARD'S GARDEN 203 the term the yams, or sweet-potatoes, twice mentioned in the plays, as well as the more familiar "Potatoes of Virginia," which were brought to this country by Sir Walter Ralegh. Of the first kind Gerard writes as follows : " This plant which is called of some . . . Skyrrits of Peru, is generally of us called Potatus or Potatoes. It hath long rough flexible branches trail- ing upon the ground, like unto Pompions; whereupon are set rough hairie leaves, very like unto those of the wilde Cucumber."^ The flower, he adds, remained unknown : " yet have I had in my garden divers roots that have florished unto the first approch of winter, & have growen unto a great length of branches, but they brought not foorth any flowers at all." Again, he tells us that the potatoes grow in India (by which he means the West Indies and South America), in Barbary, and in Spain: "of which I planted divers rootes (that I bought at the exchange in London) in my garden, where they flourished untill winter, at which time they perished and rotted." Among the Spaniards, Italians, and "Indians," these yams or batatas were valued, as being "a meane betweene flesh and fruit." " Of these rootes may be made con- serves, no less toothsome, wholesome, and daintie, than of the flesh of Quinces. And likewise these comfortable and delicate meates, called in shops Morselli, Placentulae, and divers other such like. These rootes may serve as a ground or foundation, whereon the cunning confectioner or Sugar baker may worke and frame many comfortable delicate conserves, and restorative sweete meates." Of the Sea-holly, coupled by Falstafl" with these sweetmeats, when he challenged the sky to rain "potatoes,"^ Gerard says ^ Gerard, op, cit., lib. ii. cap. 334, p. 780. The skirwort, or skirret proper, was the water-parsnip (sm?n sisarum). See Nares' Glossary, s. v. ^ Merry Wives of Windsor, v. 5, 20-4 : " Let the sky raui potatoes . . . hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes." 204 LANDMARKS IN LONDON that he had both kinds in his London garden, and "that the rootes condited or preserved with sugar . . . are exceeding good to be given unto old and aged people that are consumed and withered with age." ^ The root naturalised in this country was called Pap- pus, or Potato of America, or of Virginia, because it had not only the shape, but something of the taste and virtue of the better-known yam from Peru. '^It groweth naturally in America," says the Herbalist, "where it was first discovered, as reporteth C. Clusius, since which time I have received rootes hereof from Virginia, otherwise called Norembega, which growe and prosper in my garden, as in their own native countrie."^ Of tobacco, "the Indian pot-herb," Gerard had three kinds under cultivation, distinguished as the Henbane of Peru, the Trinidada Tobacco, and the dwarf variety.^ Tobacco "was first brought into Europe out of the prouinces of America, which is called the west Indies . . . but being now planted in the gardens of Europe, it prospereth very well.""* Gerard recommended the juice boiled with sugar into a syrup; but "some use to drinke it (as it is tearmed) for wantonnesse or rather custome, and cannot forbeare it, no, not in the middest of their dinner "; and he earnestly commends the syrup "above this fume or smokie medicine."^ The Yellow Henbane, or English tobacco, was often used instead of the Indian herb, and it was even imported from Trinidad and Virginia under the names of "Petum," or " Petun," and " Nicosiana," that belonged of right to the true tobacco. We are told that many preferred to use this "doubtful Henbane/' and that it produced the desired effects: "which any other herbe of hot temperature will do," says Gerard, "as rosemarie, ^ Gerard, op. cit.. Jib. ii. cap. 469, p. 1,000. ^ Id., lib. ii. cap. 335, p. 781. ■' Id., lib. ii. cap. 63, p. 286. ■* Ibid., pp. 2S7-8. ' Id., lib. ii. cap. 62, pp. 284-5, GERARD'S TOBACCO-PLANTS 205 time, winter sauorie, sweet marierome, and such like."^ He might have included colt's-foot, though it was con- sidered to be of a colder temperature ; this was used at Bartholomew Fair to adulterate the rank Mundungus. "Three-pence a pipe-full I will have made," says Ursula, "of all my whole half-pound of tobacco, and a quarter of pound of colt's-foot mixt with it too, to [eke] it out."- We may read in another play how the "rich smoke," at sixpence a pipe-full, was served in a smart druggist's shop. The herb is kept in a lily-pot, and minced on a maple-block ; there are " Winchester pipes," and silver tongs, and a fire from shavings of juniper.^ VI SHAKESPEARE A HOUSEHOLDER IN BISHOPSGATE — CROSBY PLACE We find Shakespeare, towards the end of his life, purchasing an old house in the Liberty of Blackfriars, nearly opposite the Church of St. Andrew by the ^ Ihid., p. 285. ^ Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, ii. i. The editors of Nares, op. cit, quote Poor Robin (1713) : "Since the man persuaded his master . . . that he should not put so much colt's-foot in his tobacco." Cf. also Beaumont and Fletcher, Nice Valour, iii. 2 : — " Our modern kick, Which has been mightily in use of late Since our young men drank colt's-foot." ^ The Alchemist, i. i : — " He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not Sophisticate it with sack-lees or oil, Nor washes it in muscadel and grains. Nor buries it in gravel, under ground, Wrapp'd up in greasy leather . . . But keeps it in fine lily pots, that, open'd. Smell like conserve of roses, or French beans. He has his maple block, his silver tongs, Winchester pipes, and fire of Juniper." 2o6 LANDMARKS IN LONDON Wardrobe ; but we have no evidence that he lived in that neighbourhood at any earlier date. His biog- raphers have relied on slight indications to show that he may have resided at one time near Shoreditch, at another time near the new Blackfriars Theatre, and afterwards near the Globe upon Bankside. There seems, however, to be nothing that can be treated as good evidence upon the matter until we come to Mr. Hunter's discovery that Shakespeare was a house- holder in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street, when a sub- sidy was assessed under an Act of Parliament in the year 1598.^ There were, however, events which called his atten- tion to that neighbourhood about the time of his first arrival in London ; and it may be that we owe to them the allusions to Crosby Place in St. Helen's Parish which Shakespeare brings into his version of the tragedy of Richard III. On the 8th of May, 1586, says Stow, Henry Ramel, or Ramelius, ''Chancellor of Denmark, ambassador unto the queen's majesty of England from Frederick the Second, the king of Den- mark," was received by Gilbert Lord Talbot at Black- wall, and conducted to Greenwich and thence to the Tower Wharf ; at the Tower he was received by Lord Cobham and other noblemen, and was escorted through Fenchurch Street to Crosby Place, where he was lodged till he had finished his embassy at the Queen's expense.^ Crosby Place house, says Stow, was built by Sir John Crosby under a lease for ninety-nine years from 1466 granted to him by Alice Ashfeld,^ prioress of St. Helen's: "This house he built of stone and timber, very large and beautiful, and the highest at that time in London." He was one of the sheriffs and an alder- ^ Hunter, op. cit., pp, 76-80. ^ Stow, Survey (1598), jc.s., p. 187. •^ Ashfed is the reading in the early editions of Stow ; it was altered by Strype. CROSBY PLACE 207 man in 1470, and was knighted during the next year for helping to repel the Bastard of Faulconbridge when he attacked the city.^ We may remember how Queen Margaret complains when Warwick becomes Lord of Calais, and ''stern Falconbridge commands the narrow seas."- It is by a poetic licence that Richard of Gloucester is made to take up his abode in the house before the date of Sir John Crosby's death. He might be sup- posed to have made appointments for meetings there, just as he bade King Henry's pall-bearers attend him at Whitefriars,^ or summoned Dr. Shaw to the palace of Baynard's Castle ; ^ but Crosby Place seems to be treated as his own, and to be regarded as a place offering special facilities for his plots and secret under- takings. Here Catesby and the murderers of Clarence are summoned,^ and here is carried on the wooing of the princess, whose husband Richard had stabbed in his " angry mood " at Tewkesbury : — " That it may please you leave these sad designs To him that hath more cause to be a mourner, And presently repair to Crosby Place."*' Sir John, says Stow, died in the year 1475, "so short a time enjoyed he that his large and sumptuous building."^ His tomb in St. Helen's Church bears his figure in armour, with an alderman's cloak and a collar of Yorkist badges. It appeared by the picture of Alderman Darby, who lived in Fenchurch Street at the time when the tomb was set up, that the official costume was "a gown of scarlet on his back, and a hood on his head " and shoulders.® Sir John Crosby left five hundred marks as a gift for restoring the church, which was very well bestowed, "as appeareth ^ Stow, op. cit, p. 186. See also pp. 60, 88, etc. ^ 3 Henry VL, i. i, 238-9. ^ Richard III, , i. 2, 227. ■* Id., iii. 5, 105. ^ Id., iii. i, 190. ^ Id., i. 2, 211-3. "^ Stow, op. cit., p. 1 85. ^ Id., p. 445. 2o8 LANDMARKS IN LONDON by his arms, both in the stonework, roof of timber, and glazing. "1 His widow. Dame Anne Crosby, whose figure appears on her husband's tomb, let the house in 1476 to Richard of Gloucester, then Lord Protector, and afterwards King. The young King was for all practical purposes a State prisoner. "The dealing itselfe," says the historian, "made men to muse on the matter, though the counsell were close ; For by little and little all men with-drew from the Tower, and repaired to Croshies in Bishopgate streete, where the Protector kept his house in great state. ""^ Sir Thomas More lived at Crosby Place between the years 15 16 and 1523, and wrote the Utopia there after his embassy to Flanders.^ We learn something of his family life from his own introduction to the romance ; for he tells us that it was part of his daily business to talk with his wife, to chatter with the children, and to consider affairs with his servants.* " He's a learned man," says Wolsey : " May he continue Longf in his highness' favour, and do justice For truth's sake and his conscience ; that his bones, When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings, May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em. "^ It is not known how long More actually lived at Crosby Place before removing to Chelsea. It appears, however, that when he became Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, he sold the lease to his dear friend Antonio Bonvisi, a merchant from the little principality of Lucca; and in 1542, Bonvisi bought 1 Id., p. 186. ^ Speed, Historie of Great Britaine, 3rd ed. , 1632, p. S96. ^ Arber, in the introduction to Utopia in "English Reprints" series, says that the second book was written probably at Antwerp, November, 1515, the first in London early in 1516. ^ Utopia, U.S., p. 22 (introductory letter to Peter Giles): "For when I am come home, I must converse with my wife, chatte with my children, and talke wyth my seruauntes." ^ Henry VIII., iii. 2, 395-9. INHABITANTS OF CROSBY PLACE 209 from the Crown the freehold of the mansion, with its *' Solars, Cellars, Gardens . . . void Places of Land" thereto belonging.^ We shall not follow the title minutely. The estate was confiscated when the mer- chant went home without leave, was restored by Mary, hired by Elizabeth. After the death of More's ''dear- est friend " the place belonged to another foreigner, German Cioll, or German Sciol, as the name is variously written. His wife Cecilia was one of the parish benefactors. "I find," says Stow, "... is. also in Bread every Sunday given by Mrs. Sciol." ^ We may mention one or two more of the famous persons who owned or lived in the palace. First, of course, is Sidney's sister, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, who lived here for a time when Pem- broke House, in Aldersgate Street, was used for another purpose.^ Next came William Bond, ^^ Flos Merca- toruni, quos terra Britanna creavtt," as we read on a goodly monument upon the north wall of St, Helen's choir. He was " Argolico Mercator lasone major," and the winner of a richer prize. The epitaph of 1576 says that he was a ''Merchant Venturer, and most famous (in his Age) for his great Adventures both by Sea and Land."* Crosby Place was purchased some time afterwards by the rich Sir John Spencer, who made great repara- tions and improvements, and kept his mayoralty there after his election to the office in 1594. He also added a great warehouse at the back to receive East Indian goods, being one of the merchants interested in the voyage of the three ships to India and China, from which came the East India Company.^ We learn ^ Stow, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. io6. - Id., p. 103. On p. 106 the spelling- is Cioll. ^ Loftie, op. cit., i. p. 293. ■* Stow, U.S., bk. ii. p. 106. For epitaph see id., p. loi. Bond died 30th May, 1576. ^ Stow, ed. 1603, p. 187. P 2IO LANDMARKS IN LONDON from Stow of an entertainment given to the great Sully, who brought over the French King's congratula- tions on the accession of James L ''The eight of June, arrived at London, Moimsieitr de Rosny, great Treasurer of Fraunce : accompanied with Noblemen and gallant Gentlemen in great number, the same night they in thirty coaches, rode to the French Ambassadours leager, then lodged at the Barbicane by Redcross streete, they supped with him, and returned to Crosby place, now beelonging to Sir John Spencer in Bishops-gate streete, where the prin- cipal! was lodged, and the other in places neere adjoyning."^ Sir John died in 1609, and was laid in a fair goodly tomb in the south aisle of St. Helen's choir, "as in a Chapel by itself." His epitaph tells us that by his wife Alice Bromefield he had one daughter, Elizabeth, his sole heiress ; that she was married to William, Lord Compton, who erected the monument to his most worthy father-in-law,^ VII THE PARISH OF ST. HELEN's — DESCRIPTION IN STOW'S " SURVEY " The Parish of St. Helen's is part of the Ward of Bishopsgate Within, which also comprises St. Ethel- burga's, towards the gate, St. Martin's Outwich, and St. Peter's, crossed by Gracechurch Street. Stow's careful description, with his editor's notes, will show us what the neighbourhood was like in Shakespeare's time.^ At the Gate itself was a conduit, leading on the right hand to several large inns. He is speaking of the inns near Gresham College, the " Four Swans," the "Green Dragon," and the "Black Bull," all in ^ Stow, Annals, continued by Howes, 1615, p. 825. ^ Stow, Survey, ed. Strype, bk, ii. p. loi. ^ Id., bk. i. ch. 6, p. 90. ST. HELEN'S PARISH 211 St. Ethelburga's ; the "Vine," the "Angel," and the "Wrestlers," all in the same parish, were on the other side of Bishopsgate Street.^ We hear of plays occasionally performed in the courtyard of the " Black Bull"; but the theatre known as the "Bull" was set up at the "Red Bull," in St. John's Street, Clerkenwell. Next came Sir Thomas Gresham's great mansion, almost all in St. Helen's, the parish ending near the Church of St. Martin's Outwich. At its west corner, opposite to the church, was "a fair well with two buckets, so fastened that the drawing up of the one let down the other " ; but the edition of the Survey issued in 1603 tells us how "of late this well is turned into a pump. "2 The same volume contains a description of the boundaries of St. Helen's, verified by John Harvey, the Parish Clerk, in or about the year 161 2. -^ The house at the south-east corner was occupied by Thomas Child, who was one of the persons assessed at the minimum rate, in 1598, as not being worth more than i^3 in the world. His house abutted on a tenement occupied by James Austen in the Parish of St. Martin Outwich. Taking a line from this point to the other side of Bishopsgate Street, we reach the western boundary, which, according to the extracts already given, must have been close to the new pump that had replaced the well with its chain and buckets. The furthest house in this south-west angle of St. Helen's was occupied by Thomas Goodson. It abutted on a gate leading into a tenement in the Parish of St. Martin's Outwich, "wherein Mr. Richard Foxe, Alderman's Deputy, now dwelleth." This Mr. Foxe was in charge of so much of the ward as lay within the Gate, another Deputy being appointed by the Alderman for the district ^ Id., bk. ii. p. 107. 2 /^_^ 1603, p. 188. ^ Id., 161S, p. 331. In Strype's Stow, bk. ii. p. 105, Jo. Warner, Parish Clerk, verified the statement. 212 LANDMARKS IN LONDON between the Gate and the Bars near Shoreditch. Officials of this kind are sometimes mentioned in the plays. The City Records inform us that there was a single Deputy for the Ward of Cheap, and Sir John Falstaff talked of "the deputy's wife of the ward."^ The worthy hostess again was warned by the officer against entertaining swaggerers, when she came before Mr. Tisick the Deputy (and Mr. Dumbe the Minister was standing by): "'Neighbour Quickly,' says he, 'receive those that are civil, for,' said he, 'you are in an ill name.' "^ From Thomas Child's house the boundary ran up in a zigzag line to the opening of that winding passage which connects Great St. Helen's and St. Mary Axe. The Parish, said John Harvey, takes in Great St. Helen's Close, wherein is the Parish Church, "with a Thorough fare to the back Gate leading into St. Mary at the Axe ; and the utmost House belonging to the said Parish, is next adjoining to the said Gate towards the South, and openeth into the Street there, com- monly called St. Mary at Axe." ^ Stow has a still more detailed account. There is a Court, he says, with a winding lane, coming out against the west end of St. Andrew Undershaft's Church : " In this Court standeth the fair Church of St. Helen, sometime a priory of black nuns, and in the same a parish church of St. Helen." 4 The Priory had been founded before the reign of Henry III. by William Basing, Dean of St. Paul's. On its dissolution the partition between the nuns' church and the parish church was taken down, so that the parishioners had the whole; it "is a fair parish church," says the Annalist, "but wanteth such a steeple as Sir Thomas Gresham promised to have built " to make up for the great space filled by his "painted Alderman's tomb." ^ I Henry IV., iii. 3, 130. ^ 2 Henry IV., ii. 4, 90-104. ^ Stow, 1618, p. 331. ■* Stow, 1603, p. 1S5. BOUNDARIES OF ST. HELEN'S 213 Passing up on the eastern side, the boundary took in Little St. Helen's Close, formerly belonging to the same Priory, where at the time of the survey stood the old Leathersellers' Hall formed out of the nuns' refectory, with various small tenements and six "alms-rooms," or houses for the poor, maintained at the charges of the Company.^ The furthest house within the parish at the north-east angle belonged to Mr. Edward Higges the sadler, and abutted on the Parsonage House of St. Ethelburga's. The line now proceeds westwards by St. Ethelburga's Church, cross- ing Bishopsgate Street nearly opposite to the old entrance of the ''Green Dragon," and turning so as to leave out the " Black Bull." The furthest house at the north-west corner was occupied by Nathaniel Wright, and it "abutteth," says Harvey, "upon the Messuage or Tenement Inne, called the Blacke Bull in the . . . Parish of St. Ethelburge."" A few other parishioners are mentioned by the old Parish Clerk : we may notice the minister, the Rev. Richard Ball, the churchwardens, Mr. William Robinson and Richard Westney, Thomas Edwards and Abraham Gramer, the sidesmen, and Richard Atkinson, one of the seven scavengers of the ward, who found the un- fortunate infant "Job Cinere-Extractus" in the Crosby- Place ashpit, and brought him into the light on his wheelbarrow. We shall now deal with the assessment of 1598.^ The Parliament of the thirty-ninth and fortieth years of Elizabeth was dissolved on the 9th of February, having first granted as supplies for the defence of the realm "three Subsidies of d^s. in the pound for lands, and 2S. 8d. in the pound for goods," and six Fifteens. The Fifteens were taxes upon personalty, levied after an accustomed rate, which, as far as the Bishopsgate ^ Stow, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. 107. ^ Id., 1618, p. 331. ^ See p. 206, note i. 214 LANDMARKS IN LONDON people were concerned, were of a very unimportant amount. Stow tells us that in his time the ward was only ''taxed to the Fifteen" at ;^i3 in the whole. ^ The Subsidy was a very different matter. It was levied on all kinds of property within the realm or without, the case of aliens and strangers being met by charging them at a double rate, or by the imposition of a poll-tax, if they had no property within the realm. It should be observed, however, that the tax was charged either on lands or on goods, at the discretion of the Commissioners, but not on both. Persons who had not property to the value of £^ altogether were exempt ; and persons taxed in their usual place of residence received certificates exempting them from being charged elsewhere. The clergy taxed them- selves in Convocation. As regards laymen, subject to what has been said above, the following rules applied. Land was taken as including fees of ofBce, annuities, pensions, and other yearly profits of a fixed kind. In the instance with which we are now to deal, Shakespeare did not claim to possess any land or fixed yearly profits, and we shall therefore consider more closely the principles on which personalty was assessed. Everyone, as we have shown, was to pay on his property, if from all sources together he was worth £^. The taxable amount was made up as follows : the list included coin, and what might be valued in coin, as plate, corn and grain, stock of merchandise, household stuff, and movable goods, "and all such sums of money as shall be owing whereof he trusts in his conscience ^ Stow, 1603, p. 188. On p. 208 of his reprint Professor Morley notes: "The tax of a fifteenth of all movables was first granted to Henry III. in February, 1225, by the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, knights, freeholders, and all persons of the realm, on condition of a confirmation of Charters. The Fifteenth had become under Elizabeth a recognised standard of taxation for the service of the country." ASSESSMENT OF ST. HELEN'S PARISH 215 surely to be paid " ; the deductions included reason- able apparel for the person assessed and his wife and children, other than jewels, gold, silver, stone, and pearl, and he might also deduct from the capital account all sums that he lawfully owed, ''and in his conscience intended truly to pay." The Commis- sioners had stringent powers for compelling payment ; but the person charged, if dissatisfied, might have an appeal or second inquiry, at which he was examined upon oath. The first of the three Subsidies granted by Parlia- ment was to be paid at the beginning of October, 1598. The Commissioners for the City included the Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and three of his predecessors in office — Sir John Hart, Sir Henry Billingsley, and Sir John Spencer. The Commis- sioners appointed various deputies, or petty col- lectors, the persons selected for Bishopsgate Ward being Ferdinando Clutterbuck, draper, and Thomas Symons, skinner. The deputies made their final report on the ist of October, their certificates for St. Helen's and the other parishes in the ward being appended to an indenture of that date made between themselves and the Commissioners. The mode of proceeding is shown by the Act that authorised the Subsidy. The Commissioners in the first place issued a precept to the most substantial householders and inhabitants to meet them at some convenient spot. This in the case before us would probably be Crosby Place, since the larger house may have been occupied by the widowed Lady Gresham, and the Leather- sellers' Hall was very much out of the way. We know the names of several persons who must have been summoned to the meeting, and who doubtless made out a preliminary list after hearing the Com- missioners' charge. Sir John Spencer would be there, as a matter of course ; and it was known that 2i6 LANDMARKS IN LONDON he would pay on merchandise, in lieu of land, £/\.o on a total value of i^300, according to the statutory rate. Lady Gresham was assessed in another district. Mr. William Reade chose to be charged on his lands, the value ;^i5o, the rate £30, at four shillings in the pound. Mr. John Allsoppe owned lands to one-third of that value, and was charged accordingly. Mr. John Robinson the elder was one of the most important parishioners. He and his son of the same name both chose to be assessed on personalty. Mr. Robinson's tomb is in St. Helen's Church, and the language of its inscription is worth considering in relation to some of the discussions about the epitaphs in Stratford Church. 1 The monument is described as being "be- neath the body of the Church in the North Wall." Within it, we are told, lie the earthly parts of John Robinson, " Merchant of the Staple in England, free of the Merchant Taylors, and sometime Alderman of London," and of Christian his wife. She died in 1592, her husband following her in February, 1599. ''Both much beloved in their Lives, and more lamented at their Deaths ; especially by the poor, to whom their good Deeds (being alive) begot many Prayers, now (being dead) many Tears. The Glass of his Life held Seventy Years, and then ran out. To live long, and happy, is an Honour ; but to die happy, a greater Glory. But these aspired to both. Heaven (no doubt) hath their Souls, and this House of Stone their Bodies, where they sleep in Peace, till the summons of a glorious Resurrection wakens them." The duty of the Commissioners was to acquaint the meeting with the object and provisions of the Act, and to direct the persons there present to prepare a certifi- cate of all the assessments that ought to be made in the locality, after making the best inquiry in their ^ Stow, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. loi. ASSESSMENT OF ST. HELEN'S, 1598 217 power ; and the meeting was then adjourned to a future day, when the certificate was to be produced. The Committee, as we may call them, duly prepared and presented their list at the adjourned meeting. It con- tained forty names of householders, besides aliens and strangers. There were seven appeals by residents, and, as might perhaps have been expected, almost all the foreigners disputed the assessment. We will take the foreigners first. Mr. Leven Vander- stylt made no objection ; it is probable that he was placed on the committee to give information about the Flemings and Dutchmen. He pays the double rate on £^0, with eightpence for his wife, and a similar poll- tax for his servants, '' Esay Mislonde, Matthew Stilton, and Barbery Capon." Dr. Cullymore, from Ireland, paid on £$ after some dispute. Sherrett Bawkes, 10s. 8d. on 40^-., and Joyce his wife, and Agnes his servant, per poll, i6d. together. Laurence Bassel's was the most singular case. He swore that he was not worth ;^5 ; and his son Peter, and three servants, "Peter Greade, Davye Fayrecook, and Frauncis Dynne," all swore that they could not pay the eightpenny poll- tax. The Committee, it would seem, arranged the resident householders in classes, taking a merciful view in some cases, though they were forbidden to consider past assessments or anything except the present values. Out of the original forty no less than seventeen, includ- ing two widows, were assessed on the minimum value of £S' Of the richer inhabitants, besides those already mentioned, we notice that three were taxed on goods worth ^^30, and five at ^20. Mr. Robert Honywood disputed the Commissioners' decision, and was finally charged for lands worth ^^40 a year. Dr. Richard Taylor, Dr. Peter Turnor, and Mr. Edward Swayne, were each assessed for ;^io in land and official fees, very probably in respect of appointments at Bethlehem 2i8 LANDMARKS IN LONDON Hospital. Mr. Snoade, Mr. Peole, and the younger Mr. Robinson were each charged on the value of ;«^io in goods and merchandise, and Edward Jorden paid at the same rate on ;^8. There were only three persons in the remaining class, where the whole value was taken at ;^5. Of these, Walter Briggen paid with- out dispute, and Thomas Morley and William Shakespeare appealed. The note on the final cer- tificate in Shakespeare's case was as follows: ^'Affid. William Shakespeare. V^- XIII'- IV'^- " ; or in other words, the entries being in tabular form, ''Appell- ant sworn : name, William Shakespeare : amount in goods, £^ : assessment, 13^-. 4^. at 2s. 8d. in the pound." If we refer to the Act of Parliament we shall see what took place. It was provided in the case of any person complaining of the rate before it was certified into the Exchequer, that two Commissioners at least should " examine particularly and distinctly the person so complaining upon his oath, and his neighbours by their discretions," as to his real and personal property of every kind ; and, after due examination of all the circumstances, the Commissioners were empowered either to diminish or increase the assessment as might seem just. If it were proved within a year that a false declaration had been made, the person offending was to forfeit the amount at which he had originally been assessed. We have, of course, no reason to doubt that Shake- speare's appeal and the Commissioners' decision were based upon just grounds. We must suppose that for the purposes of that inquiry the appellant proved his case. Yet what are we to say about the purchase of the mansion at New Place, which was completed in the year 1597? What, again, is to be said as to the return of owners of grain at Stratford, coiAfpiled in February, 1598, considering that Shakespeare was APPEAL AGAINST ASSESSMENT 219 entered in it as holding ten quarters of corn?^ The price of wheat in London had fallen a few months previously from 104^-. to 80s. a quarter; "but then," says Stow, ''it arose again to the late greatest price." It should be observed, however, that Mr. Sturley's letter of the 24th of January, 1597-8,- valued a quantity of wheat delivered in Stratford at no more than 6^". 8^. a strike, which would come to only 26>r. 8d. a quarter. He speaks in the same letter of Shakespeare's desire to buy "some odd yard-land or other at Shottery or near about us," or to make a bargain about the Strat- ford tithes. We remember, too, how Richard Quiney the elder wrote in the October following from the ' ' Bell" to ask Shakespeare for a loan of £t,o without much doubt as to the result.^ Mr. Quiney, it may be said, was certainly sent to London "as a deputation," carrying a request that the borough might be relieved from the Subsidy. There were many reasons, besides the occurrence of two disastrous fires, which might induce Burghley, as Lord Treasurer, to give a favour- able answer to the request. There was a regular machinery for excusing the poorer towns from the payment of "Fifteens," and there was nothing un- reasonable in asking that the same principle might be applied to a subsidy. It may be that this would be taken into account by the London Commissioners, and that they would not charge Shakespeare in respect of his property at Stratford. But even as regards his possessions in London, we must consider that he was one of the Lord Chamberlain's company acting regu- larly at Blackfriars, that he had produced at least eighteen successful plays, and had quite lately sold the copyright of his popular Richard III. If the difficulty can be explained at all, it will prob- ^ Facsimile in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., i. 137. ^ Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., ii. 57-8. ^ Printed and in facsimile, id., i. 166-7. 220 LANDMARKS IN LONDON ably be found that the poet had quite recently fallen into debt, lawful debt which in truth and conscience he intended to pay. We may observe, in this connec- tion, that the time when he was assessed towards the Subsidy was also the time when his parents were deep in their unfortunate Chancery suit.^ ^ For particulars of the above assessment, see Hunter, op. cit. , i. 77-80. SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS HIS DEATH AND WILL SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS— HIS DEATH AND WILL I SHAKESPEARE S FAMILY — MARRIAGE OF SUSANNA SHAKESPEARE TO JOHN HALL — DISPOSAL OF SHAKESPEARE'S REAL PRO- PERTY — THE poet's LEGACY TO HIS WIFE SHAKESPEARE'S eldest child, Susanna, was baptised at Stratford Parish Church, on Trinity Sunday, May 26th, 1583. The twins, Hamnet and Judith, were born about the end of January, 1585, by modern reckoning. Their baptism took place on Tuesday, the 2nd of February, 1584-5, being the Festival of the Purification. It is generally supposed that the children were named after some of the god- parents, and that the twins must have had Mr. Hamnet Sadler and his wife Judith among their sponsors. The name Hamnet seems to have been accepted as equiva- lent to Hamlet, and Mr. Sadler himself appears under the latter name in Shakespeare's will. Malone points out that in the entry of his burial, in 1624, he is called " Hamlet Sadler." " The name of Hamlet," he adds, ''occurs in several other entries in the register." He instances an entry as to the death of Catharina, wife of Hamoletus Hassal, in 1564, and another as to 223 224 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS Hamlet, son of Humphry Holdar, who was buried in 1576, and points out that Mr. Hamlet Smith was one of the benefactors publicly commemorated at Strat- ford. The legend of the Prince of Denmark is shown to have been commonly known by Nash's reference in his preface to Greene's Menaphon : "English Seneca read by candle-light yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar^ and so forth ; and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Ha77ilets, 1 should say handfuls of tragical speeches."^ It is possible, however, that the names of Susanna and Judith Shakespeare were chosen from the Apocrypha, to which the poet made constant references. We have the picture of "god Bel's priests in the old church- window,"- and Holofernes choosing the part of Judas Maccabasus ; ^ and Sir Toby is made to sing a line from a dull song about Joachim and his wife, "There dwelt a man in Babylon, lady, lady ! " ^ A bare entry in the register tells us that Hamnet died before he was twelve years old, the date of his burial being the nth of August, 1596. Mr. John Shakespeare died in 1601, his funeral taking place on September 8th. It is not known whether he left a will, but it appears that his eldest son inherited the dwelling-house in Henley Street. Mrs. Mary Shake- speare probably lived on there till her death in 1608, and the residence was afterwards occupied by Mr. Hart, who had married Joan Shakespeare. His death oc- curred only a few days before that of Shakespeare, whose will contained the following provisions in his sister's favour: "I give and bequeath unto my said sister Joan ;^20 and all my wearing apparel, to be paid and delivered within one year after my decease ; and I ^ Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. g. ^ Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3, 143-4. ^ Love's Labour's Lost, v. i , 1 33-4. ^ Twelfth Night, ii. 2, 84. SUSANNA SHAKESPEARE'S MARRIAGE 225 do will and devise unto her the house with the appur- tenances in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her natural life, under the yearly rent of twelve-pence." In an earlier part of the will he had also given her a contingent legacy in case his daughter Judith died without issue during the term of three years from his decease. He also gave ^^5 apiece to her three sons William, Thomas, and Michael, then aged about fifteen, eleven, and eight years old respectively. The Christian name of the second boy was accidentally omitted in the will. Susanna Shakespeare was married to Mr. John Hall on the 5th of June, 1607 ; their daughter Elizabeth was baptised on the 21st of February following. They lived in a street called Old Town, not far from the church. Mr. Hall was a gentleman by birth, bear- ing the "three talbots" in his shield ; but the coat of arms on his tomb is not so accurately displayed as to show the particular family of Halls to which he be- longed.^ It is thought that he came from Acton, in Middlesex, where he owned a house which he left to his daughter. We first hear of him as a medical practitioner at Stratford, where he attained a great reputation ; and it appears that he was usually known as Doctor Hall, though he had not taken a medical degree. How easily a diploma might have been ob- tained is shown by a passage in Ward's Diary : " Mr. Burnet had a letter out of the Low Countries of the charge of a doctor's degree, which is at Leyden about sixteen pounds, besides feasting the professors, at Angers, in France, not above nine pounds, and feast- ing not necessary neither." ^ Mr. and Mrs. Hall and their daughter were the chief beneficiaries under Shakespeare's will. The residue ^ Mrs. C. C. Stopes, Shakespeare's Family, 1901, p. 97, gives the coat as " Sable three talbots' heads erased or." - Ward's Diary, ed. Severn, 1839, p. 12. Q 226 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS of the personalty", after certain specific legacies, was given in these words: "All the rest of my goods, chattels, leases, etc., I give, devise, and bequeath to my son-in-law, John Hall, gent., and my daughter Susanna, his wife, whom I ordain and make executors of my last will and testament." The superintendence of the trusts was given to Mr. Thomas Russell, of Stratford, and Mr. Francis Collins, the lawyer from Warwick by whom the will was prepared. The list of legacies included £^ to Mr. Russell, and ;^I3. 6^. 8^., or forty nobles, to Mr. Collins. Elizabeth Hall, whom the testator calls his "niece," was to have all the plate belonging to him at the date of the will, except the broad silver-gilt bowl, left to his daughter Judith. Mr. Thomas Combe had the poet's sword, and money for mourning rings was given to " Hamlett Sadler," William Raynoldes, Antony Nashe, John Nashe, and to "my fellows" John "Hemynges," Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell, each receiving four nobles, or 26s. Sd. : and twenty shillings in gold to the poet's godson, William Walker. His daughter Judith had legacies amounting to ;^300 in all, with interest at ten per cent, until payment. Her marriage- portion accounted for a third part of the amount. Fifty pounds was given on condition that she gave up all her interest in the Rowington copyhold. The re- maining payment of ^^150 was to be held in suspense for a term of three years ; if she survived that period, she had it settled on her and her children, unless and until her husband should settle land of a correspond- ing value ; if she died without issue during that period, the money was to be given to Elizabeth Hall and Joan Hart and her children in the shares and under the provisions mentioned in the will. The real estate consisted of the residence in Henley Street and the inn adjoining, the mansion and grounds at New Place, with the copyhold cottage, the "four HIS LEGACIES TO THE HALLS 227 and a half yard-lands " in the open fields of Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcorabe, and the house near the King's Wardrobe at Blackfriars, then in the occupa- tion of John Robinson. Nothing was said about Mrs. Anne Shakespeare's right to dower, or her right to keep the copyhold during her life ; but subject to her rights, and subject to the devise in favour of Joan Hart, all this real estate was settled upon Mrs. Hall for her life, with an entail in favour of her sons, down to the seventh, which never took effect: "and for default of such issue," the will proceeds, "the said premises to be and remain to my said niece Hall, and the heirs males of her body lawfully issuing." This entail was afterwards barred, and a new settlement executed ; but as the will stood, Judith had the next place in the entail, with a final gift to the testator's heirs. The gift to Mrs. Shakespeare was inserted as an interlineation, as if it were an afterthought. "I give unto my wife my second best bed, with the furniture." The omission to notice his wife in any other way need not be attributed to any want of respect or affection on the testator's part. It has been pointed out that the gifts of mourning-rings to his three "fellows" were also interlined, and that he certainly intended no mark of disrespect as far as they were concerned. The true explanation is probably that which was suggested by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps. He speaks of the possibility of Mrs. Shakespeare having been afflicted with some "chronic infirmity of a nature that precluded all hope of recovery." He proceeds: "In such a case, to relieve her from household anxieties and select a comfortable apartment at New Place, where she would be under the care of an affectionate daughter and an experienced physician, would have been the wisest and kindest measure that could have been adopted." ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, i. 261. 228 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS If Mrs. Shakespeare was incompetent to manage her own affairs, there would be no formal assignment of dower, or claim to a widow's estate, in the copyhold ; and the legacy itself would in such case be no mere formality, but rather a gift of some importance to one whose wealth consisted of "the bed and the cup and the fire."^ Mrs. Hall placed a strange inscription over her mother's grave a few years afterwards. "Here lieth interred the body of Anne, wife of William Shake- speare, who departed this life the 6th day of August, 1623, being of the age of 67 years." The inscription proceeds with six lines of Latin verse, to the effect that the spirit as well as the body was held in the sepulchre. " Ubera tu, mater," it commences: "A mother's bosom thou gavest, and milk, and life ; for such bounty, alas ! can I only render stones ! Rather would I pray the good angel to roll away the stone from the mouth of the tomb, that thy spirit, even as the body of Christ, should go forth " ; and the hope is expressed that Christ may quickly come, so that the imprisoned soul may be able "to seek the stars." ^ ^ There was no question here of the heirlooms or prdciputs, which were so well known in Wales, Brittany, and Flanders. In the district of Archenfield, south-west of Hereford, the lands were inherited by all the sons; but the eldest had certain customary "principals," such as the best table, the best bed and furniture, and so forth. This custom was found to be a relic of certain Welsh laws, referred to in Domesday Book. A similar origin was found for the custom of the Hundred of Stretford, on the opposite side of the Wye, where the eldest son was entitled to keep as "principals" the best waggon and plough, the best table or chair, the best bed, the best of the chests, cups, and platters, and other classes of chattels. There is no indication that any such custom ever prevailed at Stratford-upon-Avon, or in the manor, liberty, and hundred in which the borough was comprised. ^ The lines, read at length, but with the original stopping, are as tollows : (1 vbera, tu mater, tu lac, vitamque dedisti. Vce mihi. pro tanto munere saxa dabo? Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem, bonus angelus ore Exeat ut, Christi corpus imago tua. Sed nil vota valent venias cito Christe ; resurget Clausa licet tumulo mater et astra petet," MRS. SHAKESPEARE 229 Mr. Ward may have been much struck with this epitaph. His Diary contains religious meditations upon the Angels at the Sepulchre : in another passage he reflects that Heaven has verbera as well as ubera, and can punish as well as show mercy.^ The first part of the inscription is certainly in a very unusual form. The mother's care for her infant is treated as a matter of high importance, but nothing is said about the rest of her life. In this respect it may, perhaps, have been modelled upon an epitaph at Lucca, to be found in the Hortus Inscriptionum of Otto Aicher. A son asks his father to accept a funeral in return for the gift of life: '*Tu mihi das lucem vitas, do mortis honores."^ But the exclusive reference to the earliest cares of motherhood may very well point to a subse- quent incapacity for later duties as the mother of a household. Returning to the subject of Shakespeare's will, it is to be observed that it was made up from an earlier draft, as appears by the erasures and interlineations. It has been supposed that it was drawn up in the January preceding the poet's death, owing to the title having contained the word "Januarii," altered to '' Martii." The heading as it now stands, when trans- lated, is to the effect that the date of the document was the 25th of March, in the fourteenth year of King James' reign in England, and its forty-ninth year in Scotland, and in the year of our Lord 1616. The 25th of March was the first day of the legal year 1616, and the second day of the fourteenth regnal year of King James ; so that if it had ever been intended to execute the will on the 25th of January, the whole frame of the heading would have been different. ^ Ward's Diary, u.s., pp. 214-5 ' P* ^^o. To tlie latter passage is added the reflection, " Subito tollitur, qui diu toleratur. " ^ Aicher, Hortus Variarum Inscriptionum, etc., Salisburgi, 1676, i. 403-4. {Licccz in S. Salvatore, Filius Patri.) 230 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS The will was duly signed and published on the 25th of March, the witnesses to the publication, as then required by law, being Mr. Collins, the lawyer from Warwick, and Julius Shaw, John Robinson, Hamnet Sadler, and Robert Whatcot,^ all of Stratford. It was duly proved in London by Mr. Hall, on the 2nd of June following, power being reserved for his wife to come in and prove, if necessary. n Shakespeare's death — description of the stratford monument — detailed notes on the epitaph — ^john hall : its possible author On the 23rd of April, Shakespeare died of the fever mentioned by Mr. Ward. Of ''low typhoid fever," says Dr. Severn in his edition of the vicar's Diary, "which clings to the sickening heart, and fastens on the pallid brow for days and weeks, and sometimes for months together."- It is plain that it was thought to be contagious, since the funeral took place on the 25th. The grave was in the chancel, but there was no vault or brickwork — nothing, indeed, but his male- diction to protect his "house of clay." He lay close to the door that led to the bone-vault, and he dreaded, no doubt, that his place would be required for another tithe-owner and his remains be cast aside: "Not a friend, not a friend greet my poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown."^ We know that his hope was fulfilled ; but it was only because no one dared "to move the maladictive stones." A tradition arose among the clerks and sextons that, to carry out his wishes, he was buried seventeen ^ "Whattcott" in original signature. ^ Ward's Diary, u.s., p. 68. ^ Twelfth Night, ii. 4, 63. HIS DEATH 231 feet deep. It is all but a hundred years ago that the workmen building a vault were able to look through an opening into his grave, and saw nothing but a hollow space, with no signs of the earth having been touched. We know, however, that his appre- hensions were justified by what happened afterwards to the grave of his daughter Susanna and the plun- dered vault of his little " niece Elisabeth." The monument in Stratford Church was erected either in or before 1623. The reference by Leonard Digges, in his commendatory verses prefixed to the first Folio, although very general, shows that he knew of such a work by November in that year.^ There is no reason to doubt Dugdale's statement that the whole monument was the work of Gerard Johnson of Southwark, the son of a tomb-cutter from Amsterdam. ^ Johnson had been employed in 1614 to erect the monument, in the east wall of the chancel, to Mr. John Combe. It seems probable, from the date and lettering of the inscription on Mrs. Shakespeare's brass plate, that this sculptor came to set up Shakespeare's me- morial in the autumn of 1623, and added the lines in honour of his wife. Her grave was interposed between the north wall of the chancel and the grave of her husband, so that the blessing and the curse inscribed on his place of burial protected her remains as well. The bust on the monument, in its present state, can hardly be regarded as a portrait, although Mr. Halli- well-Phillipps held that a copy of the whitened figure was the best memorial of Shakespeare that the public could then possess, "being so much superior in 1 " When that stone is rent, And Time dissolves thy Stratford moniment, Here we alive shall view thee still." 2 Dugdale, Diary, ed. W. Hamper, F.S.A., 1827, p. 99. "Gerard Johnson" is, of course, merely the Ang-licised form of Geraert Janssen. See Diet. Nat. Biog., vol. xxix. , s.v. Janssen. 232 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS authenticity to any other resemblance."^ The white- washing, he said, "did not altogether obliterate the semblance of an intellectual human being," but when it was coloured again in 1861, he considered that it became ''a miserable travesty." "This bust was originally coloured to resemble life . . . the eyes being of a light hazel, and the hair and beard auburn. The dress consisted of a scarlet doublet, over which was a loose black gown without sleeves." ^ It was repainted in 1748 by John Hall of Stratford, at the expense of John Ward, the actor, grandfather of the Kembles and their sister, Mrs. Siddons. Ward gave the pro- ceeds of a performance of Othello at the Town Hall to this object in September, 1746. In 1793 it was painted white, at the suggestion of Malone. "Stranger, to whom this Monument is shown," runs the famous inscription (1810) in the visitor's book, " Invoke the Poet's curse upon Malone." In 1861 little retouching was found necessary, for when the bust was immersed in a carefully prepared bath, the old colours reappeared with some distinctness. The bust is so unlike the Droeshout print in the first Folio, or the portrait, now at Stratford, from which that print was probably copied, that the presentments might well belong to different persons. The great surgeon, John Bell, when he saw the coloured bust, and Sir Francis Chantrey, who examined it when coated with white paint, both said ^ Notes and Queries^ 25th October, 1851. In Outlines, i. 297, the same statement of authenticity is repeated on behalf of this and the Droeshout frontispiece of the first Folio. '^ R. B. Wheler, History and Antiquities of Stratford-on-Avon, 1806, p. 71. Severn (Ward's Diary, pp. 71-2) thus describes the form of the monument. The bust is "inarched between two Corinthian columns of black marble, with gilded bases and capitals, with a cushion before him, a pen in his right hand, and his left resting- on a scroll. Above the entablature are his armorial bearings," etc. A young Oxonian, about a century ago, while on a visit to Dr. Davenport at the vicarage, took the original stone pen from the poet's hand ; while trifling with it he let it fall, and it was shivered to atoms. A quill pen now occupies the place. HISTORY OF HIS MONUMENT 233 that they saw traces of the use of a mask. Some man's face had been mechanically copied; but they expressed no opinion as to whether that man was Shakespeare. Not many years after the bust was set up the church was subjected to a course of vile injury, which must have lessened the value of the memorial as a portrait. The vicarage of Stratford was held from 1619 to 1638 — or, according to Wheler's list, till 1640 — by the Rev. Thomas Wilson, b. d. In 1635, Archbishop Laud's vicar- general visited Warwickshire. The Commissioners suspended Mr. Wilson of Stratford ''for grossly par- ticularising in his sermons, for suffering his poultry to roost, and his hogs to lodge in the Chancel, for walking in the church to con his sermon in time of Divine Service," etc. The suspension was to last, subject to Laud's agreement, for only three months, since Mr. Wilson promised amendment, and was said "to be a very good scholar, and was the son of a very grave conformable Doctor of Divinity."^ The English inscription below the bust is of a very conventional type. This and the Latin couplet above, '^ may be ascribed to Mr. Hall, Shakespeare's son-in- law, whose Latin style is known to have been concise and fairly correct. ^ The preliminary couplet, it must ^ Calendar of Domestic State Papers for 1635, ed. Bruce. See tran- script in preface, p. xl. The abstract itself, made by Sir Natlianiel Brent as vicar-g"eneral, bears date i6th July (Dom. Car. i. ccxciii. , No. 128). - Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, popvlvs mseret, Olympvs habet. Stay Passenger, why goest thou by so fast ? Read if thou canst, whom envious Death hath plast. With in this monument Shakspeare : with whome, Quick nature dide : whose name, doth deck this Tombe, Far more, then cost : Sith all, that He hath writt, Leaves living art, but page, to serve his witt. ^ Elze, Williatn Shakespeare, Eng. trans. , 508-9 ; Brandes, WiUiajn Shakespeare, Eng. trans., ii. 410, consider Hall's authorship probable. Halliwell-Phillipps, it.s,, i. 285, says : " It is not likely that these verses were composed either by a Stratfordian, or by any one acquainted with their destined position." 234 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS be confessed, has somewhat of a Dutch complexion. The phrase "Olympus habet" is remarkably like the wording of an inscription once in the church of St. Vitus at Leeuwarden. The church has been de- stroyed ; but the epitaphs are probably preserved in the old tower that formed the belfry. The capital of Friesland was famous for quaint epitaphs, and was reported, indeed, to possess no other attractions. Father Aicher was a monk at Leeuwarden before he became a Professor at Salzburg, and we find in his collection a Frisian epitaph on one Peter Tyara, whose body lay in the earth, while " Olympus " had taken his soul. The verses may also be found in the Itinerary of Gotfried Hegenitius, printed at Leyden in 1630 by the Elzevirs.^ To come nearer home, there was a tomb in the Church of St. Martin's Outwich, at the junction of Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate Street, set up in memory of Jacob Falck, Treasurer of Zealand, and Ambassador from the United Provinces to King James ; he died in 1603, and in one of his epitaphs, composed by A. Hunter, we find the same phrase about Olympus.^ This church was close to Crosby Hall, and to the house in which Shakespeare may have resided. We might go abroad, however, and still find the idea recurring. Welcker, for instance, published a collection of Greek inscriptions in 1828, and among others he copied an epitaph found on a sarcophagus in the square by the Great Mosque at Nicosia ; ^ and in this instance also we find something ^ Aicher, op. cit,, i. 414, Leovardice hi cede S. Viii {No. 4): "Corpus habet terram, Sibi mentem sumpsit Olympus." G. Hegeniti Itinerarium Frisio-Hollmidicuvi, Lugd. Batavor. , 1630, p. 32. 2 Stow, Survey of London, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. ii. p. 118: " QuEe natat Oceano Zelandia corpus, Olympus Ipse aiiimam, peregr^ hoc viscera marmor habet." A. Hunterus. ^ F. T. Welcker, Sylloge Epigramtnatum Grcecorum, Bonnae, 1828, p. 41, No. 34 : " ^av Tpoxa-Srjv ^alpris, wapodlra, ^mov eiricrxov," ete. HIS EPITAPH 235 about the soul being caught into Olympus, and an opening almost identical with the Shakespearean "Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast?" Was it then from London, or from Friesland, or, with far less likelihood, from the isle of Cyprus, that Mr. Hall derived his Olympian metaphor? It probably came from none of these sources by any course that could be directly traced. Mr. Ward quotes an epitaph from Warwick to the effect that death takes not all, "for his heavenly part hath sought the heavens, and his fame lives immortal on earth " ; ^ and there was an- other old epitaph of the same class in Stratford Church itself. We should take these into account, with what has been stated about St. Martin's Outwich, and with what Hall may probably have read in the works of a Puritan poet. Some of the classical writers had chosen Olympus, instead of Parnassus, as the Muses' home ; and Francis Rous had revived the idea in his Spenserian monody. One of the concluding stanzas of his Thiile represents a mourner left on earth by the envious Fates to weep alone after a poet's departure ; and it is probable that the phrase on Shakespeare's tomb was directly taken from this source : — " here to remaine, Where with lamenting noyse she plaineth still, Yet never can her plaints bring back againe That soul which mounted on Olympus hill, In sacred spirits and the Muses traine. Singing soule-pleasing tunes her dayes doth spend, Whose musick and whose dayes have never end."^ "The earth covers him, the people mourns him." " Populus m^ret" ; the whole nation is in grief. Mr. Ward moralised on the populus : "One says thus, ^ Ward's Diary, p. 286 : " Sed non totus obit, petiit pars cselica Ccelum, Vivit et in terris, nescia fama mori." ^ Thule, or Vertues Historic, by Francis Rons, printed for the Spenser Society, 1S78, p. 151 (bk. ii. canto 8.). 236 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS from the populus, that is, the people, what can bee ex- pected but uncertaintie? as in the populus, or aspen tree, there is no shade, but the leaves are allways playing."^ The first line of the couplet has been hardly treated by the commentators. Even Pope was so careless as to read "ingenio" instead of ''judicio" at its com- mencement. " Judicio Pylium " refers to the wisdom of the Pylian chieftain, or "sage Nestor's counsels," if we borrow Ben Jonson's phrase. The epithet of "Pylian" comes from Ovid,^ and was thereby the more appropriate to the poet who made such faithful use of the Metamorphoses that "the sweet, witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shake- speare."^ He had the skill of Maro, of Virgil, "the master of the Epic," and the "genius," or inborn power, of Socrates. " Genio Socratem " : the proper name contains an evident false quantity, for no one will deny that the first vowel was originally long. Proper names, however, were constantly altered to suit the hard rules of prosody, long syllables being made short, and short sounds lengthened, for greater ease in poetry. The " Danaides " could never have appeared in a hexameter if their first vowel had not received an extra weight ; and Silius Italicus was allowed a similar licence when he was forced to mention "^tolides." We may find a great number of such cases by referring to the old grammarians, as Urban of Belluno or the Patronymica of Father Spadafora, published at Palermo in 1668.* In the last ^ Ward's Diary, p. 291. 2 Ovid, A7n. iii. 7, 41 : " Illius ad tactum Pylius iuvenescere possit"; id., Ex Ponto, i. 4, 10: "Pylio Nestore maior ero." See also the more familiar passage in Horace, Carm., i. 15, 22: " Non Pylium Nestora respicis ? " '^ F. Meres, Palladis Tamia (in Arber, English Garner, ii. 97). ■* Spadafora, Patronymica Grceca, et Latina, etc. , a P. Placido Spatha- fora {S. J.), Panormi, 1668. See preface ex Urbani Bellunensis Gravi- fuatica, and p. 1S3 (DSnaides, vel prima ob necessitatem producta). For ^teiides, see id,, p. 8. WORDING OF HIS EPITAPH 237 instance we get very near the solecism of the Stratford monument, for in speaking of the philosopher's son as ''Socratides," the author indicates by a special mark that the first vowel might be used as long or short at pleasure.^ The point is so far important that it caused Steevens and some other commentators to propose the insertion of Sophocles into the epitaph, in place of Socrates ; though the result of the suggestion, if adopted, would have a mere triumph of sound over sense. We should, of course, lose the whole force of the allusion to the familiar oracle by which the Greek philosopher had been guided in the path of wisdom. Yet it is obvious that the author of the couplet was thinking of such a "genius" or familiar, as is so often mentioned in the plays. '' The Genius and the mortal instruments are then in council," as Brutus said ; and Troilus talks of the genius that cries " Come," when one must die.^ Have we not "the affably familiar ghost" in the eighty-sixth Sonnet? We might almost say that there is hardly a sonnet that does not indicate the influence of such a spiritual agency. We may take another illustration from Gabriel Harvey's Letters : " And yet have I on suer frende as harde as the world goith (I meane my familiar, the Pheere of that which attendid uppon M. Phaer in Kylgarran Forest when he translatid Virgils -^neidos) . . . that never yet faylid me at a pinche."^ The " Daemon " of Socrates was described as being in the nature of an oracle or divine monition, giving warning of evil. ' * I should like to tell you of a wonderful circumstance," said the phil- osopher in the Apology of Plato. "Hitherto the familiar oracle within me has constantly been in the ^ Id., p. 96. 2 Julius Ccesar, ii. i , 66-7 ; Troilus and Cressida, iv. 4. ^' Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, ed. E. J. L. Scott (Camden Society), 1884, pp. 72-3. 238 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS habit of opposing me, even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error about anything : and now, as you see, there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be the last and worst end. But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either as I was leaving my house and going out in the morning, or when I was going up into this court, or while I was speaking, at anything I was going to say ; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech, but now in nothing I either said or did touching this matter has the oracle opposed me."^ The actual ending of the epitaph is faulty. It seems to be modelled on the inscription from Warwick : " Still lives on earth the undying fame."^ The words ''living art" are taken from Love's Labour's Lost, but there is a curious change in their application. When the King of Navarre vowed that his Court should be a little Academe, " still and contemplative in living art," he was referring his young Lords to the contemplation of an Ars Vivendi, which might be called the science of right action, or the true ''living art."^ When we are told that "quick Nature died," we recognise a true Shakespearean idea. The poet had imagined the slaying of Death : " Death once dead, there's no more dying then."* In Venus and Adonis he foretold the same fate for Nature ; she is condemned for forging the moulds divine; she is to perish "as mountain- snow melts with the midday sun : — ^ "As burning fevers, agues pale and faint, Life-poisoning- pestilence and frenzies wood, The marrow-eating- sickness, whose attaint Disorder breeds by heating of the blood : Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn'd despair, Swear Nature's death for framing thee so fair."*' ^ Plato, Apologia Socratis, 40 A. ^ See p. 235, note i. ^ Love s Labour's Lost, i. i, 13-14. ■* Sonnet cxlvi. ® Venus and Adonis, 750. " Id. , 739-44." JOHN HALL 239 ''Quick" means more than living ; it rather imports vigour and liveliness, as of the "quick freshes" in Prospero's island,^ or "so green, so quick, so fair an eye as Paris hath."'" We read in old receipt-books of "quick oranges" and mixtures that taste "quick of the fruit." We may compare this mention of "quick Nature " with the personification of Nature in Jonson's poem : — " Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines ! Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit." ^ HI JOHN hall's case-books — INFORMATION WITH REGARD TO HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER — HIS WIDOW Mr. Hall's eminence as a physician is shown by the records of remarkable cures, selected by himself and afterwards published by James Cooke, as will appear later. The extracts following will be found in Mr. Fennell's Shakespeare Repository.^ Dr. Bird, at one time Linacre Professor at Cambridge, made a careful examination of Mr. Hall's professional papers. "This learned author," he said, "lived in our time in the County of Warwick, where he practised physic many years, in great fame for his skill far and near ; those who seemed highly to esteem him, and whom by God's blessing he wrought these cures .upon, you shall find to be amongst others persons noble, rich, and learned ; and this I take to be a great sign of his ability." Mr. ^ Tempest, iii. 2, 75. ^ Romeo and Juliet , iii. 5, 222-3. ^ Jonson, Underwoods, xii. : " To the Memory of . . . William Shakespeare." ■* 1853, No. 2. The article is contained in a few columns, so that specific references are needless. 240 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS Cooke adds in his preface to the select observations : "It seems the author had the happiness (if I may so style it) to lead the way to that practice almost gener- ally used by the most knowing, of mixing Scorbutics in most remedies : It was then, and I know for some time after thought so strange that it was cast as a reproach upon him by those most famous in his pro- fession." We suppose that he learned his new methods at Paris or Montpellier ; Mr. Cooke remarked that he had been a traveller, and was acquainted with the French language, "as appeared by part of some Observations, which I got help to make English." Mr. Hall was a Puritan, and many of his patients were Roman Catholics; but even "such as hated his religion " were glad to avail themselves of his medical science. His case-books begin in 1617 with entries as to William, Lord Compton, who became Earl of North- ampton in the following year. Among the names of the patients we find " Mr. Drayton, an excellent poet," Dr. Thomas Holyoake, son of "the Mr. Holy- oake who framed the Dictionary,"^ and Mr. George Quiney, the curate, "of a good wit, expert in tongues and very learned." Among entries possessing a local interest we may notice the Stratford goodwives, " Goodywife Bets " and Goody Brown ; and the respect- able character of the title may be illustrated by Ward's notice of Goody Roberts, etc.,^ and by Queen Anne of Denmark's ironical habit of calling her daughter "Goody Palsgrave." There are entries as to Grace Court, "wife to my apothecary," Mr. Nash's servant lying at the Bear, "Browne, a Romish priest," with ^ Francis Holyoake (1567-1653), rector of Southam, Warwickshire, 1604-42, published his Dictionarium Etyniologicu77i Laiinum in 1633. This was enlarged in 1677 by his son, Thomas Holyoake (d. 1675), chaplain of Queen's College, Oxford, and prebendary of St. Peter's in Wolver- hampton. The son was himself in practice as a doctor for a time, and might have been cited by John Ward in his memorandum of clerical physicians, ^ s-g-i " Goodie Southerne," Ward's Diary, p." 249. JOHN HALL'S CASE-BOOKS 241 • a memorandum "the Catholic was cured." There are several entries about Nonconformist divines, as Mr. Walker at Ilmington, Mr. Fossettand Mr. Wilson of Stratford, and the Rev, John Trap, "for his piety and learning second to none, and by much study fallen into hypochondriac melancholy." It appears that Mr. Hall used to send his convales- cents to Bath or the Hotwells near Bristol. Mrs. Delabarr, for example, "came to be so much better that she could walk and ride, and then would to the Bath" ; Mrs. Wilson "cooled her body" too much by drinking at St. Vincent's Well at the Hotwells, and had to be sent off to Bath in the same way. Shake- speare must have been quite familiar with the practice. The two Sonnets on "Cupid and his brand "^ were partly modelled on Spenser's picture of the boiling baths "which seethe with sacred fire,"^ and partly on an epigram in the Anthology then in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg, and now among the manu- scripts in the Vatican.^ But the Sonnets in question also show a real knowledge of the virtues of the " Bathonian King's Bath." The little love-god falls asleep with his torch at his side, which a votaress of Diana extinguishes in the bubbling spring : " And his love-kindling- fire did quickly steep In a cold valley-fountain of that ground ; Which borrow'd from this holy fire of love A dateless lively heat, still to endure, And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove Against strange maladies a sovereign cure." The best account of the place as it existed about the time when these Sonnets were written is to be found in ^ Sonnets cliii. , cliv. ■■^ Faerie Queene, ii. canto x. st. 26 : " Behold the boyling- bathes at Cairbadon, which seeth with secret fire eternally." ^ Anth. Pal., ix. ep. 627 (Maptdyoi' I.xo^^'^'T'.kov) Ta5' UTTO Tots TrAardi'oi'S kivciXi^ rerpvixivo's virvo3 evdev "Epws, Nvfi(pais Xa/XTrdda irapdefievos, etc. R 242 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS Dr. Venner's Baths of Bathe ^ whereto is annexed '*a Censure of the medicinable faculties of the water of St. Vincent's Rocks near the City of Bristol.'''' Bath, he says, "is a little well-compacted citie . . . for goodnesse of ayre, neernesse of a sweet and delect- able River, &c. It is pleasant and happie enough ; but for the hot waters that boyle up even in the middest thereof, it is more delectable and happier, than any other of the Kingdome." ^ There were four public baths, besides the little bath for lepers, differing in their temperature or effects; "the Kings Bath is the hottest, and it is for beauty, largenesse, and efficacy of heat, a Kingly Bath indeed, being so hot as can be well suffered."^ Venner is very severe on the mounte- banks "quacking for patients," and when the season was over "quacking away to some other place" for work, "as Crowes seek for Carrion."^ In the course of his attack upon purse-milkers, he incidentally explains a difficult Shakespearean phrase. In the list of omens which heralded the birth of Richard III., when the owl shrieked and the night-crow cried, "the raven rook'd her on the chimney's top " ; * and Dr. Venner says of his bath-side mountebank : " You may also discerne him by his rooking up and downe, now here, now there, crooching unto one, insinuating with another, bragging and vainely boasting of his owne worth and skill ; as though he had monopolized to himselfe Artis arcana, or that u^sculapius were only included in his dishonest pate."° Dr. Hall's case-books contained various notes as to the health of his wife and daughter, which Mrs. Hall probably forgot when she sold the manuscripts. With- out entering into unnecessary details, we may observe ^ Venner, Baths of Bathe, supplementary to Via Recta ad Vitam Longam, 1638, p. 310. ■^ Id., p. 311. 3 Id., enlarged edition, 1650, p. 352. •* 3 Henry VI., v. 6, 47. ^ Venner, u.s., 1650, pp. 361-2. " THE HALLS' VISIT TO LONDON 243 that in 1630 she is said to have had terrible pains in her joints, *'so that she could not lie in her bed, insomuch as when any helped her, she cried out miserably." Elizabeth Flail was in delicate health as a girl. "Elisabeth Hall, my only daughter," writes the Doctor, "vexed with tortura oi'is, or convulsion of the mouth. . . . The former form of her mouth and face was restored 5 January, 1624." He soon after- wards took her with him on a journey to London, where he had a house, which he wanted to inspect. " In the beginning of April, she went to London, and returning homewards the 22nd of the same month she took cold, and fell into the same distemper on the contrary side of the face, before it was on the left side, now on the right ; and although she was grievously afflicted with it, yet by the blessing of God she was cured in sixten days." "The Halls appear to have chosen a very unhealthy time for their excursion. All through the summer of 1624 there was a prevalence of ague and fevers of an especially virulent type. There seemed to be every chance of an outbreak of a more dangerous kind : — " As a planetary plague, when Jove Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison In the sick air," ^ Dr. Chamberlain of Westminster wrote from his house in the Abbey Churchyard that there was no great epidemic as far as the summer had gone : " God keep it from among us, for we are in danger. But this spotted fever is cousin-german to it, at least, and makes as quick riddance almost."'^ It will be remem- bered that King James died of the prevalent " tertian " a few months afterwards, though Dr. George Eglisham ^ Tivion of Athens, iv. 3, 108-10. '^ Letter of August 21st, 1624, quoted by C. Creigfhton, History of Epidemics, 1891, i. 504. See Dom. State Papers, vol. clxxi. , no. 66. 244 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS and others accused the Duke of Buckingham and his mother of administering arsenic and a poisonous ointment.^ The King himself expected to die of his natural complaint, if Ward's entry is correct. He says that he heard from Mr. Brace that the King was lying on a couch shortly before his death, and his servants thought that he was asleep. "But hee starts up and tels them that hee was not, but was thinking that hee was an old man and must shortly die, and must leave behind him three fools, the King of Spaine, the King of France, and his owne sonne."^ Elizabeth Hall's health broke down soon after her return from London. "In the same year May the 24th (1624), she was afflicted with an erratic fever; sometimes she was hot, by and by sweating, again cold, all in the space of half-an-hour, and thus she was vexed oft in a day." The old-fashioned doctors would have bled her nearly to death, before administering snake-root and jelly of vipers' skins, and tips of crabs' claws taken when the sun was in the sign of Cancer. Mr. Hall was of the French school, following Dr. Pons of Lyons, who had written against indis- criminate bleeding,^ and the learned Sir Theodore de Mayerne, who left the French Court to become phy- sician to King James. Elizabeth was saved by her father's skill and patience ; and we find him making a note long afterwards, "thus was she delivered from death and deadly diseases, and was well for many years." On the 22nd of April, 1626, she was married to Mr. Thomas Nash, eldest son of Mr. Anthony Nash of ^ See Eglisham, Prodromiis vindictce in Diicein BucMnghaviice, pro vindenta ccede MagficB BritatmicB Regis Jacohi, nee non Marchionis Hamiltonii ac aIioru?n viror2t?n principuvi, 1626. '^ Ward's Diary, p. 1 19. ^ Jacobus Pons, De nimis licentiosa ac liheraliore intempestativaqtie sajiguinis missione, qua hodie plerique abutuntur, brevis tractatio. Lvgdiini, 1596. MARRIAGE OF ELIZABETH HALL 245 Welcombe, to whom Shakespeare had left money for a mourning-ring. In the entry upon the register she was called "Mistress Elisabeth Hall," the title being at that time given to young girls, as may be seen by Mr. Hall's own note of his attendance upon "Mrs. Mary Comb, of Stratford, aged about thirteen." Mr. Thomas Nash was about thirty-one years of age. He had studied law at Lincoln's Inn, just enough to in- volve his widow in a Chancery suit. He was entitled after his father's death to a dwelling-house in Chapel Street, close to New Place, to certain meadows by the Stone Bridge and the riverside, and to the tithes within the hamlet of Shottery. It seems to have been a great object to him to acquire the Shakespeare estates and to add them to what he held in the neigh- bourhood after his wife's decease.^ In 1632, Mr. Hall was in great danger. " I fell into a most cruel torture of my teeth, and then into a deadly burning fever, which then raged very much, killing almost all that it did infect, for which I used the following method, which by the help of God succeeded. ... I was not only much maciated but weakened, so that I could not move myself &c. Then my wife sent for two physicians [my friends] . . . and I became perfectly well, praised be God ! " Three years afterwards the malignant fever appeared in many parts of the country. Dr. Creighton regards it as having been the precursor of the Plague which raged so violently in the following year.^ Even in 1635, we are told, the Plague carried off 3,000 persons at Hull,^ and there were outbreaks in Kent and the eastern counties, where the infection lingered for a year or more. Mr. Hall seems to have been struck down very suddenly. He only had time to make a verbal will ^ See Halliwell-PhilliiDps, ti.s., ii. 91-3. '^ C. Creighton, op. cit, i. 506-7. ^ The actual number was 2,730 {id., i. 52S). 246 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS before his death, and the malignancy of the fever is shown by his being buried the next day. For a "nuncupative" will, as it was called, hardly any ceremonies were at that time required. Malone gives a copy of the transcript, dated the 25th of November, 1635.^ " Imprimis, I give unto my wife my house in London. Item, I give unto my daughter Nash my house in Acton. Item, I give unto my daughter Nash my meadow. Item, I give my goods and money unto my wife and my daughter Nash, to be equally divided betwixt them. Item, concerning my study of books, I leave them, said he, to you, my son Nash, to dispose of them as you see good. As for my manuscripts, I would have given them to Mr. Boles, if he had been here ; but forasmuch he is not here present, you may, son Nash, burn them or do with them what you please." The will was witnessed by Thomas Nash, and Mr. Simon Trapp, the curate ; and no executor having been appointed, administration was granted to his widow in the November following. Although Mr. Hall had sold the lease of the Strat- ford tithes in 1625, his relations were allowed to bury him in the chancel, as though he still enjoyed a rectorial privilege. The tombstone lies between those of his wife and son-in-law. The arms of Hall and Shakespeare are rudely displayed on a shield, with the inscription : ''Here lyeth the body of John Hall, Gent. : he marr : Susanna, ye daughter and coheire of Will. Shakespeare, Gent. : hee deceased Nover 25, Ao. 1635 aged 60." The Latin epitaph is not without interest. Its effect in English is as follows : " Here lies Hall, most renowned for his medical skill, expect- ing the glad joys of the Heavenly Kingdom : he was worthy for his deserts to rival Nestor in length of years, but those on earth are carried off by one day alike for all. Lest aught should be wanting to his ^ Also in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 6i. DEATH OF JOHN HALL 247 tomb, his faithful wife is at hand, and he has the companion of his life as a comrade in death." 1 The verses, in Malone's opinion, could not have been inscribed before Mrs. Hall's own death in 1649, unless the last couplet was added at that time ; but there seems to be no reason why the epitaph should not have been written with a view to the future event. We know hardly anything about Shakespeare's books, except that they must have passed to Mr. Nash, and afterwards to his widow, as his residuary legatee. The poet had a Florio's Montaigne, if the autograph in the British Museum is genuine, and the Bodleian library has an Aldine Oirid with his signature, and a note : *' This little booke of Ovid was given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will. Shakespeare's." There is no list of the contents of the " study of books"; but it appears by several authorities that the phrase means a collection or library. The learned Elias Ashmole, for example, notes how he bought Mr. John Booker's study of books for £\\o.'^ Mr. Ward uses the phrase in the same way when quoting a story from one of the Russells : "An auncient minister in their country, a very good schollar . . . affirmd, that a divine could not handsomely furnish a studie for his use under 700 li. ; and he reckond itt upp to him, so much for such a sort of books, and so much for another ; as I remember, hee told mee 30 li. for bibles." 2 At the time of Mr. Hall's death, the Nashes were ^ " Hallius hie situs est mediea celeberrinius arte, Expeetans reg'ni g"audia l^ta Dei. Dignus erat meritis qui Nestora vinceret annis In terris omnes sed rapit sequa dies ; Ne tumulo quid desit, adest fidissima coujux, Et vitje comitein, nunc quoque mortis habet." '■^ Alenioirs of the Life of . . . Elias Ashmole, Esq. ; Drawn up by himself by way of Diary, London, 1717, p. 41 (21st May, 1667). ^ Ward's Diary, p. 2S5. 248 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS living in their own house, next door to New Place ; but, in accordance with Mrs. Hall's wish, they gave up their establishment and kept house with her until Mr. Nash's death. While they were all living together. New Place was sometimes called " Mr. Nash's house," even by himself; but it appears clearly by the parish- books that Mrs. Hall was both owner and rateable occupier.^ In 1636 they became intimate with some of Mrs. Shakespeare's relations. William Hathaway, who, according to Malone, was the poet's grandnephew, was farming the estate at Weston -upon -Avon. His brother Thomas came in that year to Stratford, when he was admitted into the Joiner's Company, and made a freeman of the Borough, paying fees as a " foreigner, " though the amount was reduced as a matter of grace. The brothers became trustees of the New Place estate upon a settlement being made in 1647, and they seem to have been accepted without any hesitation as mem- bers of the family. Thomas Hathaway had a son named William, who is believed to have died in youth, and there were five daughters : Rose, the eldest, was baptised at Stratford in 1640 ; Joanna married a Mr. Edward Kent ; and we hear of Judith, of Elizabeth, born in 1647, and Susanna, born in the following year.^ Mrs. Hall was living in New Place in July, 1643, when Queen Henrietta Maria made her triumphant entry into the town, and held her gay Court in the poet's old home.^ A few months afterwards Stratford was occupied by the Parliamentary forces, and it was on this occasion that Mr. James Cooke, a surgeon and general practitioner of high repute at Warwick, ^ See Stopes, op. cit.^ p. 97. 2 Malone, op. cit., ii. 1 15-16, where the date of Rose's baptism is given as 6th November, 1642. ^ See Halliwell-PhilHpps, u.s., ii. loS-io. JAMES COOKE AND HALL'S NOTES 249 obtained the medical notes prepared by Mr. Hall, and published a few years afterwards.^ Mr. Cooke was the author of Mellificium ChirurgicB^ which appeared in 1655. It was republished with a supplement as a duodecimo in 1662, and was enlarged into an octavo and a quarto in later issues. William Oldys had two portraits of Cooke in his collection, both by Robert White, the one taken at the age of sixty-four in an oval frame "with hair, and a short neck-cloth," and the other engraved about seven years afterwards. The cases selected by Mr. Hall were published some years after Cooke bought the manuscript. The full title is given by Mr. Fennell as follows: " Select observations on English Bodies, or Cures both Empericall and Historicall performed upon very eminent persons in desperate Diseases. First written in Latine by Mr. John Hall, physician, living at Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, where he was very famous, as also in the counties adjacent, as appears by these Observa- tions drawn out of severall hundreds of his, as choy- sest ; Now put into English for common benefit by James Cooke Practitioner in Physick and Chirurgery : London, printed for John Sherley, at the Golden Pelican, in Little-Britain, 1657." An address to the friendly reader contains an ac- count of the editor's interview with Mrs. Hall about the year 1644." "Being in my art an attendant to parts of some regiments to keep the pass at the bridge of Stratford-upon-Avon, there being then with me a mate allied to the gentleman that writ the following observations in Latin, he invited me to the house of Mrs. Hall, wife to the deceased, to see the books left by Mr. Hall. After a view of them, she told me she had some books left by one that professed physic, with 1 Halliwell-Phillipps, id., i. 276, puts the date of Cooke's examination of tiie papers earlier, " about the year 1642." " See preceding note. 250 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS her husband, for some money. I told her, if I liked them, I would give her the money again ; she brought them forth, amongst which there was this with another of the Author's, both intended for the press. I being acquainted with Mr. Hall's hand, told her that one or two of them were her husband's, and showed them her ; she denied, I affirmed, till I perceived she begun to be offended. At last I returned her the money. After some time of trial of what had been observed, I resolved to put it to suffer according to perceived in- tentions, to which end I sent it to London, which after [being] viewed by an able Doctor, he returned answer that it might be useful, but the Latin was so abbre- viated or false, that it would require the like pains as to write a new one. After which, having some spare hours (it being returned to me), I put it into this garb, being somewhat acquainted with the author's conciseness, especially in the Receipts, having had some acquaintance with his apothecary." In a post- script he adds: "I had almost forgot to tell ye that these Observations were chosen by him from all the rest of his own, which I conjectured could be no less than a thousand, as fittest for public view." Mrs. Hall died at Stratford on the nth of July, 1649, and was buried in the chancel of the Parish Church five days afterwards. The date of her death is given by Dugdale as July the 2nd, but this shown by the register to be only a clerical error. The inscription on her tombstone was to the following effect : " Heere lyeth ye body of Svsanna, wife to John Hall Gent : ye davghter of William Shakespeare Gent. She deceased ye nth of Jvly, a.d. 1649, aged 66: Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall, Something of Shakespere was in that, but this Wholy of Him with whom she's now in blisse. DEATH AND EPITAPH OF MRS. HALL 251 Then, passeng^er, has't ne're a teare To weepe with her that wept with all ? That wept yet set herselfe to chere Them up with comforts cordiall. Her Love shall live, her mercy spread, When thou ha'st ne're a teare to shed," The whole inscription was erased when her grave was disturbed at the beginning of the last century. There was a person named Watts living at Rhyon- Clifford on a property which is said once to have belonged to Mr. Hall. He appears to have acquired some interest in the Stratford tithes, and his relations, no doubt, put in the usual claim for a grave in the chancel. He was accordingly buried in Mrs. Hall's grave, her epitaph being erased. Malone has pre- served the form of the substituted inscription, which ran as follows: "Here lyeth the body of Richard Watts of Ryhon-Clifford, in the parish of old Strat- ford, Gent, who departed this life the 23d of May, Anno Dom. 1707, and in the 46th year of his age."^ The story of the restoration of Mrs. Hall's memorial is told by Mr. Neil in his Home of Shakespeare. The intruding lines were erased in 1844 ; the original in- scription was restored " by lowering the surface of the stone and re-cutting the letters " ; and the tombs of John Hall and Thomas Nash were also improved " by deepening the letters and re-cutting the armorial bearings."^ ^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 618, note. ^ Neil, Home of Shakespeare, 1871, p. 49. 252 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS IV JUDITH SHAKESPEARE — HER MARRIAGE TO THOMAS QUINEY HER PLACE IN HER FATHER'S WILL — THE QUINEY FAMILY — ALLUSIONS TO GROCERS AND DRUGGISTS IN SHAKESPEARE Before following the later fortunes of Mrs. Hall's daughter Elizabeth we must return to the story of Judith Shakespeare and her relations with the family of Quiney. Very little seems to be known about her life, though it was hoped at one time that something would be found out about her in Mr. Ward's diaries. The vicar had made a memorandum, of which the exact date does not appear, about several matters that required immediate attention. Among other things, he owed a letter to his brother in Gloucestershire ; he was to send to his friend, Tom Smith, for a certain acknowledgment, and, in between the two, he meant "to see Mrs. Queeny." This entry has been taken to refer to Shakespeare's younger daughter, but an examination of the circumstances will show that this can hardly be correct.^ Judith Shakespeare lived at home till her marriage in the February before her father's death, when she was just past thirty-one years of age. The marriage- entry in the register is as follows: "1615.^ Feab- ruary 10. Tho. Queeny tow Judith Shakespeare." Her husband was considerably younger than herself, having been baptised on the 26th of February, 1589-90. He was the son of Mr. Richard Quiney, High Bailiff of Stratford, who died in 1602.^ The correspondence between this Richard Quiney and his brother-in-law, Abraham Sturley, about Strat- ford business, is printed in an appendix to the Life ^ Ward's^ Z>?«rK, p. 184. ^ 1616, N.S. ^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 613-14. THE QUINEY FAMILY 253 by Malone ; but it may be convenient to extract one or two passages directly relating to Shakespeare, with a change into modern spelling to render them more generally intelligible. The letter from Sturley, dated the 24th of January, 1597-8, contains a reference to the tithes: "This is one special remembrance from your father's motion : it seemeth by him that our country- man, Mr. Shakespeare, is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yard-land or other at Shottery or near about us ; he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the instructions you can give him thereof, and by the friends he can make therefor, we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and not unpossible to hit. If obtained, would advance him indeed, and would do us much good." The Borough was in great want of funds, and he writes in November of the same year that he has received the message importing that this countryman, Mr. William Shakespeare, would procure the money, "which I will like of as I shall hear when, and where, and how, and I pray let not go that occasion if it may sort to any indifferent con- ditions."^ Mr. Quiney's letter to Shakespeare was dated the 25th of October, 1598. The important passages run in modern English as follows: "Loving countryman, I am bold of you, as of a friend, craving your help with ;^30 upon Mr. Bushell's and my security, or Mr. Mytten's with me. Mr. Rosswell is not come to London as yet, and I have especial cause. You shall friend me much in helping me out of all the debts I owe in London, I thank God, and much quiet my mind, which would not be indebted . . . My time bids me hasten to an end, and so I commit this [to] your care and hope of your help. I fear I shall not be back this night from the Court. Haste. The Lord ^ Id., ii. 566. See also transcripts in Halliwell-Phillipps, n.s., ii. 57-60. 254 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS be with you and with us all, Amen ! from the Bell in Carter Lane. . . . Yours in all kindness, Rye. Quyney." ^ This gentleman had eight children : the three daughters were named Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary ; Adrian, the eldest son, named after his uncle, a former High Bailiff, was born in 1586; Richard, who became a grocer in London, was born in the following year ; Thomas, as we have seen, was twenty-seven when he married Shakespeare's daughter ; William was born in 1593, according to Boswell's note on Malone, John in 1597, and George in April, 1600. The last became the Curate of Stratford, and died in 1624 of a consump- tion.^ We have already mentioned his illness, and we need only add Mr. Hall's concluding note to the effect that his patient was a person of good parts, and for so young a man was very learned in every subject. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps considered that the Quineys must have been anxious to hasten their marriage : "they were married," he says, "without a licence, an irregularity for which a few weeks afterwards they were fined and threatened with excommunication by the ecclesiastical court at Worcester."^ There is something obscure about the statement. The usual course was to have banns instead of any licence, except during prohibited periods. Even the Princess Eliza- beth had followed the customary rule. The Vicar of Stratford heard from Mr. Washburn how "King James would have his daughter askt three times in the church, which accordingly shee was, in St. Margaret's, Westminster.""^ It is most improbable that the incumbent would have wilfully incurred the punishment due for omitting the banns, in the absence of a dispensation ; but it has already been shown that ^ See facsimile and transcript in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., i. 166-7. ^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 613. ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, li.s., i. 255. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 172. JUDITH SHAKESPEARE'S MARRIAGE 255 there were great differences of opinion about the necessity of a licence to marry within the periods of prohibition. In the year of Judith Shakespeare's marriage, Septuagesi ma Sunday fell on January 7th, old style ; the 7th of April following was the First Sunday after Easter, when the marriage season commenced again. It is clear that Thomas and Judith ought to have bought a dispensation, if only to give the officials their ancient fee. From Falstaff's mouth we learn of another rule that was rapidly becoming obsolete. "Marry, there is another indictment upon thee, for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law, for the which I think thou wilt howl " ; and "All victuallers do so," is all that can be urged in reply." ^ It was held to be no answer in Judith's case. No doubt the biographer is right in saying that they were actually sued ; the important point for us to con- sider is the effect which these proceedings had upon Shakespeare. There is no occasion to suppose that the younger daughter would have stood in her sister's place if the marriage had been canonically correct ; but it certainly looks as if Shakespeare apprehended that the marriage might be declared void. Every care apparently was taken to meet the danger. The term of three years was fixed from the date of the will, during which certain events were to happen, according as Judith had or had not a child or children ; Thomas Quiney is not mentioned by name, and, in fact, is only vaguely indicated as the person who might be Judith's husband after the expiration of the three-years period. To make the point clear, it may be convenient to take the exact words of that part of the will, the words struck out and inserted in the clauses being indicated by italics and brackets. The title and heading are written out at length ; but the pious exordium, dis- posing of soul and body, is omitted. ^ 2 Henry IV., ii. 4, 371. 256 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS " Vicesimo Quinto Die { Januarii ersised) Martii (Inserted) anno reg-ni domini nostri Jacobi, nunc regis Anglie, &c. decimo quarto, et Scotiae xlix'^ annoque Domini 1616, T. {TestamentiLm) Wmi Shackspeare. In the name of God, amen ! I William Shackspeare of Stratford-upon-Avon in the countie of Warr, gent., in perfect health and memorie, God be praysed, doe make and ordayne this my last will and testament in manner and forme foUoweing. . . . Item I gyve and bequeath unto my {sonne in L erased) daughter Judyth one hundred and fyftie pounds of lawfull English money, to be paied unto her in manner and forme followeing, that ys to saye, one hundred pounds in discharge of her 7narriage porcion (inserted) within one yeare after my deceas, with consideracion after the rate of twoe shillinges in the pound for soe long tyme as the same shal be unpaied unto her after my deceas, and the fyftie pounds residewe thereof upon her surrendring 0/ (inserted) or gyving of such sufficient securitie as the overseers of this my will shall like of to surrender or graunte &c. (the Rowington copyhold). Item I gyve and bequeath unto my saied Daughter Judith one hundred and fyftie pounds more, if shee or anie issue of her bodie be lyvinge att thend of three yeares next ensueing the daie of the date of this my will, during which tyme my executours to paie her consideracion from my deceas according to the rate aforesaied ; and if she dye within the saied terme with- out issue of her bodye, then my will ys, and I doe gyve and bequeath one hundred poundes thereof to my neece Eliza- beth Hall, and the fiftie poundes to be sett fourth by my executours during the lief of my sister Johane Harte, and the use and profhtt thereof cominge shal be payed to my saied sister Jone, and after her deceas the saied 1. li. shall remaine amongst the children of my saied sister equallie to be devided amongst them ; but if my saied daughter Judith be lyving att thend of the saied three yeares, or anie yssue of her bodye, then my will ys and soe I devise and bequeath the saied hundred and fyftie poundes to be sett out by my executours and overseers (inserted) for the best benefitt of her and her issue, and the stock (inserted) not to he (Inserted) paied unto her soe long as she shal be marryed and covert baron {by my executours and overseers erased) ; but my will ys that she shall have the consideracion yearelie paied unto HIS LEGACIES TO JUDITH 257 her during her lief, and, after her deceas, the saied stock and consideracion to be paied to her children, if she have anie, and if not, to her executours or assignes, she lyving the saied terme after my deceas, Provided that if such husbond as she shall att thend of the saied three yeares be marryed unto, or att anie after, ^ doe suflficientle assure unto her and thissue of her bodie lands awnswereable to the porcion by this my will gyven unto her, and to be adjudged soe by my executours and overseers, then my will ys that the saied cl. li. shal be paied to such husbond as shall make such assurance, to his owne use. Item, I gyve and bequeath unto my saied sister Jone xx /z, and all my wearing apparell, to be paied and delivered within one yeare after my deceas ; and I doe will and devise unto her the house (inserted) with thappurtenaunces in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her naturall lief, under the yearelie rent of xii^. Item, I gyve and bequeath unto her three sonns, William Harte, (blank) Hart, and Michaell Harte, fyve poundes a peece, to be payed within one yeare after my deceas {to he sett otUfor her within one yeare after my deceas by my executours, with thadvise and direccions of my overseers, for her best proffitt untill her m^arriage, and then the same with the increase thereof to be paied unto her, all but the last word erased). Item, I gyve and bequeath unto {her erased) the saied Elizabeth Hall (inserted) All my plate except my brod silver and gilt bole (inserted), that I now have att the date of this my will. Item, I gyve and bequeath unto the poore of Stratford afore- saied tenn poundes &c. Item, I gyve and bequeath to my saied daughter Judith my broad silver gilt bole. ... In witnes whereof I have hereunto put my {scale erased) hand (inserted) the dale and yeare first above written. — By me, William Shakespeare." Some of the erasures in the portions of the document here extracted might lead the reader to infer that the original draft contained provisions far more beneficial to Judith and her husband than those which the will contained as finally executed. The position and circumstances of Mr. Thomas 1 i.e. at any (time) after. 258 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS Quiney, at the time of his marriage and afterwards, appear by the extracts from the Corporation Books collected and published by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps.^ He was living, when he married, in a house on the west side of the High Street, but after a few months he moved into a larger house, called the Cage, on the opposite side, ''at the corner of Fore Bridge Street," where he had set up a vintner's shop. His mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Quiney, had kept a tavern ever since Richard Quiney's death ; and we may suppose that the newly married couple obtained a transfer or a renewal of her licence. Thomas Quiney is shown to have had a good education by his fine penmanship, and by his use of a French motto used in one of his accounts for 1623. ^ We are told that he was admitted to the freedom of the Borough in 161 7, and acted as Chamberlain for two years after his first election in 162 1. He did not retire from the Town Council till 1630, when his affairs were in an unfortunate position, since "in that year's annals" it is recorded that he was fined a shilling for swearing, the amount showing that he was treated as a person of low station ; and that he was also fined a like amount for allowing townsmen to tipple in his house. The proceedings in the last case were under the Tippling Acts of the first and fourth years of James I., by which inquiry was to be made before the Justices of Assize and in every court-leet as to persons being drunk and continu- ing drinking or tippling, or suffering persons to continue drinking or tippling. The keepers of ale- houses and victuallers were in like manner bound by their recognisances not to allow idle persons to remain in their houses long to sit singing, trifling, or drinking, to the maintenance of idleness. Judith Quiney was unfortunate in her marriage. All ^ See Halliwell-Phillips, op. cit., i. 305-7. ^ See facsimiles, id., i. 256. THOMAS QUINEY'S MISFORTUNES 259 her children died young, and her husband left her about 1652 to get support from his brother in London. Shakespeare Quiney, their first child, was baptised on the 23rd of November, 1616, and died in the following May. In the entries as to his baptism and burial his father is styled ''gentleman" ; but the epithet is dis- continued afterwards, in consequence, perhaps, of his trading as a vintner. ''Richard, son of Thomas Quiney," was baptised the 9th of February, 161 7-18, and Thomas, the third and last child, on the 23rd of January, 1619-20. Thomas died first, at the end of January, 1638-9, and Richard within five weeks after- wards.^ It appears from the local records that Mr. Quiney was at one time in danger of a prosecution for selling unwholesome and adulterated wine. The practice, no doubt, was common ; but a conviction made the offender liable to very formidable penalties. Mr. Quiney's excuse was that he had dealt for years with Mr. Francis Creswick, of Bristol, who had always supplied him with good wine, and in quantities of several hogsheads at a time, and that on this particular occasion someone must have tampered with the stock during its transit from Bristol to Stratford. One may suspect, however, that he had become too expert in the mystery of making artificial wines and restoring pricked and musty vintages. There were plenty of tavern-keepers who could make claret or alicant out of cider and mul- berries, and malmsey or a pint of "brown bastard"^ with thin white wine and a few raisins of the sun. Mr. Quiney would probably not get any Rhenish at Bristol, but he would find plenty of ordinary red wine, "of an austere sharp taste," ^ which it was customary ^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 615-19. Malone gives date of Thomas Quiney the younger's baptism as 29th August, 1619 ; but see Halliwell-PhiUipps, op, cit., ii. 52, ^ I Henry IV., ii. 4, 82 ; Measure for Measure, iii. 2, 4. ^ Venner, Via Recta ad Vitam Longani, 1638, p. 34. 26o SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS to roughen and make still more astringent with sloe juice ; he could buy claret, a pure, quick wine, as Venner says, "scarcely inferiour to any of the regall wines of France," and white wine of Orleans, hardly inferior to muscadel, and the usual sacks and canaries.^ The spirits, cordials, and vinegar would probably be made at home. The extracts from the same records show that the Quineys also dealt in tobacco, which had come rapidly into fashion in spite of the royal counter- blasts. Times had changed since Quiney's uncle had written to warn his father of the dangers of the town — "Take heed of tobacco whereof we hear per William Perry" — and had recommended instead "some good burned wine or aquavita and ale strongly mingled without bread for a toast. "^ Bristol supplied the jovial weed in all the varieties of " ball, leaf, cane, and pudding-packs," described by the smoke-hating Josuah Sylvester.^ Aubrey thus describes its introduc- tion into Wiltshire. "In our part of North Wilts, e.g. Malmesbury hundred, it came first into fashion by Sir Walter Long. I have heard my grandfather Lyte say that one pipe was handed from man to man round about the table. They had first silver pipes ; the ordinary sort made use of a walnut shell and a straw. It was sold then for it's wayte in silver. I have heard some of our old yeomen neighbours say that when they went to Malmesbury or Chippenham market, they culled out their biggest shillings to lay in the scales against the tobacco."* Another novelty was caviare, a proverbial object of dislike, which became a fashionable provoker of thirst after Shakespeare's 1 Id., pp. 29-33. 2 See Abraham Sturley's letter of 4th November, 1598, in Malone, op. cit, ii. 569-72. ^ Sylvester, Tobacco Battered, and the Pipes Shattered . . by a Volley oj Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon, in Works, 1641, p. 579, col. 2. * Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, 1898, ii. 181, sub Sir Walter Raleigh, THOMAS QUINEY'S TRADE 261 time. Beaumont and Fletcher had their jest against a simpering novice, as ''one that ne'er tasted caveare, nor knows the smack of dear anchovies."^ All the accounts of its introduction are derived from the anonymous Nowveait Voyage du Nord; it appears to have been exported from the Obi and Volga by Armenian merchants, and to have found its way to England through Genoa or Venice. ''There is an Italian sauce," says Venner, "called Camaro, which begins to be in use with us, such vaine affectors are we of novelties. It is prepared of the Spawne of Sturgion : the very name doth well expresse its nature, that it is good to beware of it." ^ The date of Thomas Quiney's death is unknown. He survived his brother Richard, and received an annuity of £^ charged by his will on the family lands at Shottery. He does not seem to have returned to Stratford. The tavern was taken over by a Thomas Quiney the younger, one of the London grocer's sons, and Mrs. Judith lived on alone ; she died at the age of seventy-seven, and was buried at Stratford on the 9th of February, 1662, according to our way of reckoning. It is suggested in Dr. Severn's preface to the Diary that Mr. Ward may have been appointed vicar by the King early in 1662, Mr. Alexander Bean, the Presby- terian minister, having been removed soon after the Restoration. 3 If the appointment had been made at the beginning of the year, the note as to "Mrs. Queeny " might, of course, be taken as referring to Shakespeare's daughter. But it appears that this view is incorrect, and that Mr. Bean was only dismissed ^ Beaumont and Fletcher, Nice Valour, act v. sc. i. Nares' Glossary, s. V. , refers also to Randolph, Mnse's Looking Glass, act ii, sc. 4 : " To feed on caveare, and eat anchovies." See Cartwrig-ht, The Ordinary, act ii. sc. I, in Dodsley's Old Plays, 1826, vol. x. , and the note thereon. ^ Venner, Via Recta, 1650, p. 142. •^ Ward's Diary, p. 16. Severn's statement is positive. 262 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS under the provisions of the Act of Uniformity, which came into operation upon the 24th of August, 1662, known as "Black Bartholomew's Day." Mr. Bean would not be reordained or take the oaths of obedience and non-resistance. Ward tells us how his neighbour, Mr. Burges of Sutton Coldfield, submitted and then bitterly repented; "for the leaving of his ministrie he took much comfort in itt, since itt could not bee injoyed but uppon the terms wherein now itt is."^ Ward's own appointment is to be found in the Book of Entries for the diocese, which shows that he was inducted on the loth of December, 1662, under the patronage of King Charles II. The Mrs. Quiney whom Mr. Ward visited may have been the wife of one of Judith's nephews. William Quiney had left the London business, and had been established at Shottery since 1656 ; and Thomas, his brother, as we have seen, was living at the Cage. The grocer's and druggist's business had been carried on in partnership with John Sadler, another Stratford man. The shop was at the sign of the " Red Lion " in Bucklersbury, at the end of the Poultry, and close to the Royal Exchange. Mr. Ward notes that "the Exchange kept in Lumbard Street before itt came to Cornhill."^ This removal, however, had taken place long before Quiney and Sadler sold Italian goods at the "Red Lion," or Shakespeare himself had come to town. It was on the 23rd of January, 1570 (old style), that the Queen dined with Sir Thomas Gresham, and afterwards paid a State visit to the "Burse." She inspected all the principal rooms, and especially the magazine called the Pawne, which was "richly fur- nished with all sorts of the finest wares," and was pleased to proclaim that the place should for ever after- 1 Id., p. 99. 2 /^_^ p_ 297. THE QUINEYS OF BUCKLERSBURY 263 wards be known as the Royal Exchange.^ The Poultry and Bucklersbury both opened into the wide market- place of West Cheap, nearly opposite to the Great Conduit, to which fresh water was brought in pipes underground from Paddington. The whole street called Bucklersbury, said Stow, was in his time possessed on both sides throughout by grocers and apothecaries ; but a great part of the business carried on by them would now be considered to belong to the herbalist, the perfumer, and the chemist.^ Shakespeare must have known the place well, if he lived in the immediate neighbourhood. He was fond of referring to drugs and tinctures. We are told, for instance, of a life in love '*as luscious as locusts," that shall turn "as bitter as coloquintida."^ When the heart wants some great cordial it is bidden, ''Get you some of this distilled Cardials Benedictus, and lay it to your heart : it is the only thing for a qualm. "^ When the summer's sweet- ness is preserved by art, we have beauty's child remain- ing as a prisoner or hostage — ''a liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass " : — ^ " O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem By that sweet ornament which truth doth give ! The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses : But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade, Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so ; Of their sweet breath are sweetest odours made."^ ^ Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, i. 275. Stow, Survey, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. 135. 2 Stow, U.S., bk. iii. p. 27. In ii. 200, he speaks of its inhabitants as principally Drugsters and Furriers. ^ Othello, i. 3, 354-5. * Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 4, 73-5. '' Sonnet v. ^ Sonnet liv. 264 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS We have a mention of the very place in question from Falstaff in the Merry Wives of Windsor: — *' I cannot cog and say thou art this and that, Uke a many of these Hsping hawthorn-buds, that come Hke women in man's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple- time. "^ Another indication of Shakespeare's interest in the subject lies in the fact that he employed a separate druggist of his own. His son-in-law Hall tells us that he himself employed Mr. Court, of Stratford, but that John Nason was Shakespeare's apothecary. He has an entry in his case-book about attendance upon John Nason, there described as a barber ; but Mr. Fennell pointed to the undoubted fact that barbers in those days were not confined to shaving and wig- making, but let blood and drew teeth, and generally undertook the lower branches of medicine. There may have been some economy in having a drugster to one- self, since Ward tells us that "some doctors had a noble out of the pound of their apothecaries ; many a crowne, as an apothecarie in London told mee."^ There was less need of any intervention in those days, when everyone knew the virtues of herbs, and could send out for powdered eye-bright to freshen the bread and butter, or a pipefull of sage, rosemary, and betony for "rheumatism in the brain," as might be required. Ward's diaries are full of information on such points, which he perhaps got from the Quineys. Liquorice, for instance, was much used in the stillroom. He tells us of a white juice, as well as the black ; the latter is made "by juicing the little strings of the roots." "Liquorish (is) planted much about Pontefract, in Yorkshire. The white juice is deer, about 4 shillings a pound, as I was certainly informed."^ Dr. Venner ^ Merry Wives of Windsor, iii, 3, 76-9. ■■^ Ward's Diary, p. 278. ^ Id., p. 290. DRUGGISTS AND HERBALISTS 265 was very great upon the excellent virtues of burnet, now mostly remembered as occurring in a Shakespearean landscape : — *' The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover."^ It is very effectual against the Plague, said the old Doctor, and against other affections of the heart ; "for the leaves being put into wine, especially Claret, yeeld unto it not only an excellent relish in drinking, but also maketh it much more comfortable to the heart and spirits."^ It was, in fact, much the same as bugloss or borage in its effects, and its use marks the chief stage in the evolution of claret-cup. But the prescription seems to have been unknown at Stratford, where, according to the Vicar, one came to a tavern, and asked for a pint of claret and burnet; and "the vintner, instead thereof, went and really burnt itt."^ Ising-glass, again, was usually described in the dictionaries as "a kind offish- glue used in medicine, and brought from Iceland " ; but Mr. Ward was always asking questions about his friends' business; and "isinglasse," he writes, "is made of the caul or omentum of sturgeon, as Mr. Quiny told mee."^. V ELIZABETH HALL — HER MARRIAGES — HER WILL — SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES OF SHAKESPEARE's STRATFORD PROPERTY We now return to the story of the elder branch of the family. When Judith Quiney's sons died in 1638-9, it became necessary to consider the way in which the family estates were settled. There might be no diffi- culty if Mrs. Nash should have male issue, which ^ Henry V,, v. 2, 48-9. ^ Venner, op. cit,, p. 199. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 103. ** Id., p. 303. 266 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS seemed, indeed, to be unlikely ; but if she had no such issue, then after her mother and herself were dead, the whole property would be in Mrs. Quiney's power. Mrs. Quiney might leave it all to her husband or his family ; but in such a matter it might fairly be pre- sumed that Shakespeare himself would have wished his ** niece Elisabeth" to have the last word. The property was accordingly resettled in 1639. The entail was barred, and Judith Quiney's reversionary estate brought to an end. The property was settled, subject to Mrs. Hall's life estate, upon Elizabeth for life, and her husband, Thomas Nash, for life, if he survived her ; after their deaths it was entailed upon her issue by that marriage ; in default, upon her issue by any marriage, with a remainder to Mr. Nash and his heirs. Should the entail be barred, his rights would disappear.^ He seems, however, to have regarded it all as his own. They had no child ; and he evidently thought it impossible 'that Elizabeth should marry again. His will was dated in 1642 ; but he added a verbal codicil when he died five years afterwards.^ His epitaph, omitting the somewhat trite Latin couplets, is to this effect: " Heere resteth the body of Thomas Nashe Esq. he mar : Elizabeth, the davg : and heire of lohn Halle gent. He died Aprill 4, A. 1647, aged 53." By his will, as it originally stood, he gave certain legacies, and made his wife residuary legatee and executrix ; and as to the real property, he gave her a life-interest in his house in Chapel Street, his meadows at Stratford, and his tithes in Shottery ; and he devised the Shakespeare estate in Stratford and London, by a very imperfect description, to his cousin, Edward Nash, and his heirs. By the transcript of his verbal codicil he is shown to have made several other bequests, among which were the following : ^ Deed of 27th May, 1639, •" Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 108. ^ See id., 114. WILL OF THOMAS NASH 267 **To his mother Mrs. Hall ;^50 : to Elizabeth Hatha- way ;^5o : to Thomas Hathaway ;^50 : to Judith Hathaway ;^io : to his Uncle and Aunt Nash, each twenty shillings to buy them rings : to his cousin Sadler and his wife the same : to his cousin Richard Quiney and his wife the same : to his cousin Thomas Quiney and his wife (Judith) the same." The altera- tions made in the disposition of his real estate show that he must have forgotten the main provisions of his will. Taking the words of the codicil as they appear in Malone's Appendix, we find that he devised his meadows to his wife and her heirs absolutely "to the end that they may hot be severed from her own land"; and he further declared "that the inheritance of his land given to his cousin, Edward Nash, should be by him settled, after his decease, upon his son, Thomas Nash, and his heirs. "^ The will was duly proved, but Mrs. Nash declined to carry out the provisions that purported to deal with Shakespeare's estate. She took the precaution of barring the existing entails and making a new settlement, of which, among others, William Hathaway of Weston-upon-Avon and Thomas Hathaway of Stratford were trustees. Its effect was to place the whole property at her own disposal, subject to her mother's life-estate. These proceedings led to a Chancery suit, which Mrs. Nash was able to compromise upon favourable terms, her grandfather's estate at Stratford being secured to her and her heirs, subject to a promise that Edward Nash should have an option of purchase at her death. ^ On the 5th of June, 1649, Elizabeth Nash was married to John Barnard, son of Mr. Baldwin Barnard of Abington, near Northampton. The manor of Abington had been in the Barnard family for more ^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 620. ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 1 15-16. 268 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS than two hundred years.^ Mr. John Barnard was a widower with a large family. He had married a daughter of Sir Clement Edmonds, of Preston, a village close to Abington ; ^ and his wife had died in 1642, leaving four sons and as many daughters. At the time of Mr. Barnard's second marriage, three of the girls were still in the schoolroom. Within a short time after her marriage, Mrs. Barnard was summoned to attend her mother in her last illness, which, as we have already noticed, ended fatally on the nth of July in the same year. On her death, Mr. and Mrs. Barnard took possession of New Place and the rest of the Stratford property ; and they seem to have remained there at least until 1653, when a certain settlement made by them is known to have been witnessed by persons residing at Stratford. It may have been a few months afterwards that they moved to the family place at Abington, not, we may suppose, without some regret ; for Mr. Ward has preserved a Stratford saying that ''Northamptonshire wants three f s ; that is, fish, fowl, and fuel."^ Abington Hall was in a somewhat dreary situation, fronting upon the road from Northampton to Cambridge, which at that time ran between great tracts of common-field on either side. We hear of no traditions about the house, except a ^ Bridges, History and Antiquities of Northants, ed. Whalley, 1791, i. 401. Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Lyllyng, lord of the manor temp. Henry V., married Robert Bernard, who became possessed of the manor and advowson in the right of his wife. " In this family they re- mained for upwards of two hundred years, till purchased of Sir John Bernard m 1671, by William Thursiy, Esquire." ^ Commonly called Preston-Deanery, about 6 miles away, and 4J miles south of Northampton, in Wimersley Hundred. See Bridges, op. cit., i. 381. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 133. Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 117, says: " How long after their marriage they occupied New Place does not appear, but it is mentioned as in his (John Barnard's) tenure in 1652, and, from the names of the witnesses, it may perhaps be assumed that Mrs. Barnard was living at Stratford when she executed the deed of 1653." SECOND MARRIAGE OF MRS. NASH 269 few suggestions preserved by Malone. "If any of Shakespeare's manuscripts remained in his grand- daughter's custody at the time of her second marriage (and some letters^ at least, she surely must have had), they probably were then removed to the house of her new husband at Abington." This does not allow for their residence at Stratford, but the point does not very much affect his argument. "Sir Hugh Clopton, who was born two years after her death, mentioned to Mr. Macklin, in the year 1742, an old tradition that she had carried away with her from Stratford many of her grandfather's papers." Mr. Barnard was created a Baronet by King Charles II. on the 25th of November, 1661, though he is generally called "Sir John Barnard, knight." As to the papers, Malone continued, "on the death of Sir John Barnard they must have fallen into the hands of Mr. Edward Bagley, Lady Barnard's executor ; and if any descendant of that gentleman be now living, in his custody they probably remain."^ Most of Sir John Barnard's children died in his life- time without living issue. The survivors were three of his daughters — Elizabeth, wife of Henry Gilbert of Locko in Derbyshire ; Mary, widow of Thomas Higgs of Colesborne, Gloucestershire ; and Eleanor, wife of Samuel Cotton of Henwick in the county of Bedford.^ Elizabeth Barnard died at Abington Hall about the middle of February, 1669-70. The entry in the register is as follows: "Madam Elizabeth Bernard, wife of Sir John Bernard kt., was buried 17*^ Febr., 1669." It is believed that she and her husband were both laid in a vault under the chancel of the parish church at Abington, though their remains have since been re- moved. A tombstone still bears a pompous epitaph in memory of Sir John. " Here rest the remains," as we may translate it, "of a man of most noble race, illustrious 1 Malone, op. cit., ii. 623, note. ^ Ibid., 625, note. 270 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS through his father, grandfather, great - grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and other ancestors having been lords of this town of Abington for more than 200 years : he yielded to Fate in the 69th year of his age, on the 5th day before the Nones of March in the year of the Nativity 1673." The date in modern parlance was the 3rd of March, 1673-4. Lady Barnard's hus- band, it was complained, did not show his respect for her memory by a monument or inscription of any kind: "he seems not to have been sensible of the honourable alliance he had made." "Shakespeare's granddaughter," said Malone, with a somewhat pathetic incongruity, "would not, at this day, go to her grave without a memorial."^ It seems, however, that Sir John sold the property very soon after his wife's death. Dame Elizabeth's will was dated the 29th of January, 1669-70, and was proved in London "at Exeter House in the Strand " on the 4th of March following.^ Its effect was as follows, omitting the formal introduction. Whereas by a settlement made in 1653 the estate at New Place and the common-field land was given upon trust for sale, after the deaths of Sir John and Dame Elizabeth Barnard, the surviving trustee being Henry Smith of Stratford, now it was directed that such sale was to take place as speedily as possible after Sir John's decease, the testatrix adding, "that my loving cousin Edward Nash, esq. shall have the first offer or refusall thereof according to my promise formerly made to him." Some of the legacies are worth mentioning. An annuity of ;^5, to be redeemed by a capital sum of ^^"40 in certain events, was given to Judith Hathaway, one of the daughters of Lady Barnard's kinsman, Thomas Hathaway, late of Stratford, and then de- ceased ; a sum of ^^50 was secured to Mrs. Joan Kent, wife of Edward Kent, another daughter of Thomas ^ Ibid., 624, note. '^ Copy in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit, ii. 62-3. LADY BARNARD'S WILL 271 Hathaway, with provisions in certain events for paying it to her son Edward ; another sum of ^^30 was given to the child Edward Kent ''towards putting him out as an apprentice " ; the sum of ^^40 apiece was given to Rose, Elizabeth, and Susanna, three other of the daughters of Thomas Hathaway. The trustee was to have ;^5 for his pains, and all the rest of the money produced by the sale was to go to Lady Barnard's loving kinsman, Mr. Edward Bagley, citizen of London, who was appointed executor. If Mr. Nash did not accept the option of purchase, the trustee was to make the same offer to Mr. Bagley. The houses in Henley Street were left to the family of the Harts, the inn and the house next adjoining, with the barn thereto belong- ing, being entailed upon Thomas Hart and the heirs of his body, and in default of such issue, upon his brother George for a similar estate. The clause as to the occupation of New Place was as follows: "That the executors or administrators of my said husband Sir John Barnard shall have and enjoy the use and benefit of my said house in Stratford called the New Place, with the orchard, garden, &c., for and during the space of six months next after the decease of him the said Sir John Barnard." Sir John died intestate, and administration of his effects was granted on the 7th of November, 1674, to Mr. Gilbert, Mrs. Higgs, and Mrs. Cotton. "I know not," said Malone, "whether any descendant of these be now living : but if that should be the case, among their papers may probably be found some fragment or other relating to Shakespeare. ^ Neither Mr. Nash nor Mr. Bagley appears to have exercised the option of pur- chase given by the will ; and the property was accord- ingly sold by the trustee in 1675 to Sir Edward Walker of Clopton. He was a member of an ancient family of Walkers, long settled at Nether Stowey in Somerset, ^ Malone, n.s. 272 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS where they held the old castle and a red-deer park, with other property in various parts of the county. Sir Edward gave the Shakespeare estate to his daugh- ter Barbara, wife of Sir John Clopton, with remainder after death to her son Edward ; but the settlement was altered after Sir Edward Walker's death in 1677. Sir John Clopton, by some family arrangement, obtained the complete power of disposal ; and when his son Hugh was engaged to Miss Millward in 1702, he chose to pull down the old mansion, and to rebuild it on a different plan, in order to provide a good modern house for the bride. ^ Mr. Ward seems to have felt much interest in the earlier changes of ownership, and he has preserved several stories about the new purchaser and his family. " Sir Edward Walker," he says, '' was secretarie to the Earl of Arundel, when hee went embassador to the Emperor about restitution of the palatinate. Hee was secretarie to the same Earl when hee was general of the King's forces against the Scots. "^ Of the employ- ment of secretaries upon such missions it was said : *' As in a chimney the brazen andirons stand for state, while the dogs do the service, so in embassies it was usual formerly to have a Civilian employed with a Lord, the one for state, and the other for transactions." Mr. Ward adds that the same gentleman, by the King's command, "wrote the actions of the warre in 1644": " I saw itt (the book), and King Charles the First his correcting of itt, with his owne hand-writing ; for Sir Edward's maner was to bring itt to the King every Saturday, after diner, and then the King putt out and putt in, with his owne hand, what hee pleased."^ The work was first published under the title of Iter Caro- linum, and appeared in 1705 as Historical Discourses ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. ciL, ii. 119. The subsequent history of New Place is carefully traced, ibid., 120-135. 2 Ward's Diary, p. 180, ^ Ibid, SIR EDWARD WALKER OF CLOPTON 273 in folio, with a large print of Charles I. and of the author writing on a drum.^ Its author was regarded as being Secretary of State for War. According to Symonds' Diary he was knighted by the King at his winter-quarters in Oxford on Sunday, the 9th of Feb- ruary, 1644-5 ; 2 and he was soon afterwards appointed Garter King at Arms. Returning to Ward's conver- sations, we learn how the Queen Mother of France died at "Agrippina," or Cologne, in 1642, and her son Louis XIII. soon afterwards, " for whom King Charles mourned in Oxford in purple, which is prince's mourn- ing."^ "Sir Edward Walker went to the King im- mediately after King Charles the First had his head cut off; hee carried but forty pound along with him, and one twenty pound, which hee received from England in all the twelve years. Hee sales the Duke of Ormond and my Lord Chancellor kept but two men apeece when they were beyond sea with the King."'' Lady Clopton talked about foreign convents, and how the nuns had "two yeers' time to make trial," even though they wore the habits of their order in the second twelvemonth. ^ Her father declaimed against the French noblemen, who only took up religion for fashion's sake,^ but praised the Dutch for their con- tinual charity : "In Holland, every Sunday, there is a collection in their churches for the poor, and in such a church as ours att Stratford, five or ten pounds may bee gatherd ; every one gives something."'^ "He told mee hee carried the garter to the Marquis of Bran- denburg, and had 125 pound for itt ; that hee had a stately palace at Berline ; that hee is not such a drinker as people say. Sir Edward said hee dined with him, ^ See description in Lowndes, Bibliog. Manual, 1864, v. p. 2,811. ^ Symonds' Diary, ed. C. E. Long, 1859, p. 162. •^ Ward's Z>/arj', p. 177. ^ Id., p. 137. ^ Id., p. 130. ^ Id., p. 131. " Id., p. 151. He adds: "Wee in Engfland give only at the Sacra- ment." 274 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS and protested that hee had risen from the table thirstie."^ Something, too, was said about the Great Fire, which, according to the vicar, began " in Pudding Lane, in one Mr. Farmer's house " ; but the name was really *'Farryner," as it appears in the depositions.^ "Almanack-makers doe bring their almanacks to Roger le Estrange, and hee licenses them. Sir Edward Walker told mee hee askt him, and hee confest that most of them did foretel the fire of London last year, but hee caused itt to bee put out ! " ^ 1 Id., p. 137. ■^ S^ee hX\e.n,Hist, and Ant. of Lojidofi, 1827, i. 403. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 94. ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY L HOWELL'S LETTERS HOWELL S RELATIONS WITH BEN JONSON HIS LINES ON DAVIES WELSH GRAMMAR — LONG MELFORD IN SHAKESPEARE AND IN HOWELL's LETTERS IN our examination of various anecdotes preserved by those who had special facilities for knowing about Shakespeare and his friends, we shall begin with James Howell, who must still be considered the prince of letter-writers in his age, though many attempts have been made from time to time to discredit his accuracy in particular statements. He may fairly be counted among the poet's contemporaries, since he was born in 1594; ^^^ ^^ should also be observed that he had left Oxford, and was well known in London society for some time before Shakespeare's death. ^ He was a loving "son and servitor" to Ben Jonson, with whom he kept up a delightful correspondence, and on whose ^ Jesus College, Oxford, b.a. , 17th December, 1613. Ho-EliancE — The Familiar Letters of James Howell . . Joseph Jacobs, 1892, introduction, pp, xxvi.-xxviii. 277 See EpistolcE edited . . by 278 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE death he composed a manly decastich of verse.^ We quote a few sentences from one or two of these letters : " Fa[ther] Ben, ... I thank you for the last regalo you gave me at your Musoewm, and for the good com- pany. I heard you censured lately at Court, that you have lighted too foul upon Sir Inigo, and that you write with a Porcupine's quill dipt in too much gall. Excuse me that I am so free with you ; it is because I am, in no common way of Friendship — Yours, J.H."^ In a similar strain he writes once more: ''The Fangs of a Bear, and the Tusks of a wild Boar, do not bite worse, and make deeper gashes, than a Goose-quill, sometimes . . . Your quill hath prov'd so to Mr. Jones ; but the Pen wherewith you have so gash'd him, it seems, was made rather of a Porcupine than a Goose-quill, it is so keen and firm."^ In a letter addressed "to my Father Mr. Ben. Johnson," he criticised "the strong sinewy labours" that had produced such strenuous lines. We omit the Latin quotations with which the letters were larded according to the taste of the age. "There's no great Wit without some mixture of madness ; so saith the Philosopher : Nor was he a fool who answer'd . . . nor small wit without some allay of foolishness. Touching the first, it is verify 'd in you, for I find that you have been oftentimes mad ; you were mad when you writ your Fox, and madder when you writ your Alchymist ; you were mad when you writ Catilin, and stark mad when you writ Sejanus ; but when you writ your Epigrams, and the Magnetick Lady, you were not so mad : Insomuch that I perceive there be degrees of madness in you. Excuse me that I am so free with ^ upon the Poet of his Time, Benjamin Jonson, his honoured Friend and Father, being- the twelfth elegy in Jonsonus Virbius. (Works of Jonson, ed. Gifford, 183S, p. 796.) '^ Epp. Ho-EL, U.S., p. 324 (bk. i. § 6, let. 20, dated Westm[mster], 3 of May 1635). ^ Id., p. 376 (bk. ii. let. 2 : Westm., zJuly 1635). HOWELL AND BEN JONSON 279 you. The madness I mean is that divine Fury, that heating and heightning spirit which Ovid speaks of . . . I cannot yet light upon Dr. Davies's Welsh Grammar, before Christmas I am promis'd one."^ When the book arrived, Howell thought it better than any of the '' Accidences" used for teaching Irish and Basque ; he makes no mention of the famous Grammar published by Griffith Roberts at Milan, in 1567. ^^ Father Ben, you desir'd me lately to procure you Dr. Davies's Welsh Grammar, to add to those many you have ; I have lighted upon one at last, and I am glad I have it in so seasonable a time that it may serve for a New-year's-gift, in which quality I send it you : . . . " ' 'Twas a tough task, believe it, thus to tame A wild and wealthy Language, and to frame Grammatic toils to curb her, so that she Now speaks by Rules, and sings by Prosody : Such is the strength of Art rough things to shape, And of rude Commons rich Inclosures make.' "^ In a letter to "Sir Tho. Hawk "[ins] he tells us of a meeting with his "Father" which has a peculiar interest in connection with the current story about the causes of Shakespeare's death. " I was invited yester- night to a solemn Supper, by B.J., where you were deeply remember'd ; there was good company, excellent cheer, choice wines, and jovial welcome : One thing intervened, which almost spoil'd the relish of the rest, that B. began to engross all the discourse, to vapour extremely of himself, and, by vilifying others, to magnify his own Muse. T. Ca.^ buzz'd me in the ear, that tho' Ben. had barrell'd up a great deal of know- ^ Id., p. 267 (i, §5, let, 16; Westm.y 2^ June 1629). ^ Id., p. 276 (i. § 5, let. 26 : Cal. Apr. 1629). The lines proclaiming- Davies' superiority to the Irish and " Bascuence " Accidences, occur in the middle of this effusion. ^ i.e. Thomas Carew. See Carew's Poems, ed. Vincent, 1899, introd. pp. xxiv.-xxv. 28o ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE ledge, yet it seems he had not read the Ethiques, which, among other precepts of Morality, forbid self-commen- dation. . . . But for my part, I am content to dispense with this Roman infirmity of B.^ now that time hath snowed upon his pericranium.''^'^ Howell's reference to the "rude commons" and "rich inclosures," in the poem on Davies' Grammar above cited, may very well have been suggested by a Shakespearean instance. It will be remembered that in the second part of Henry VI. a certain petition is presented to the Lord Protector. '■^ Suf, What's yours ? What's here? {Reads.) 'Against the Duke of Suffolk, for enclosing the commons of Melford.' How now, sir knave ! '■^Petitioner. Alas, sir, I am but a poor petitioner of our whole township. "2 We do not know what the circumstances may have been to which the petition related ; but Shakespeare may have been familiar with the old local history through the Cloptons, some of the family having long been established at Melford and others at Cockfield, in Suffolk. Mr. Ward notes in his Diary that Walter Clopton became owner of the Manor of Cockfield, in Essex, (j/c), "and assumed the name of itt."^ Long ^ Epp. Ho-El, pp. 403-4 (ii. let. 13 : Westm., 5 Apr. 1636). "^ 2 Henry VI., 1. 3, 23-7. ^ Diary of the Rev. John Ward, ed. C. Severn, 1839, p. 186. The church of the Holy Trinity, Long- Melford, was rebuilt by Sir William Clopton (d. 1446), of Kentwell Hall, and other rich laymen of the parish. William's son John (d. 1497) continued his father's work, and added the beautiful and unique Lady Chapel at the east end of the building. The ornamental "flushwork" of the parapets of the Lady Chapel, south side of the church, and south porch, takes the form of inscriptions asking prayers for the benefactors of the church. Among these are the Cloptons and their wives, and a butler in their family. In the north aisle of the choir is the altar-tomb, with effigy, of the elder Clopton, hard by which are the handsome brasses of his two wives, and of other members of the family. East of William Clopton's tomb, and north of the chancel, is the mortuary chapel of the Cloptons, containing some later monuments and incised slabs ; it is separated by a wall, in HOWELL AT LONG MELFORD 281 Melford was described as "one of the biggest towns in England that is not a market-town." "The Lady Rivers," says Cox in his history of the county, "had a house in this town in the time of the rebellion." Fuller says it was the first-fruits of plundering in England, and Floyd adds that she lost the value of ;^20,ooo. The house had belonged to Sir Thomas Savage, created Lord Savage in 1626 ; he was suc- ceeded in 1635 by his son Thomas, the second Lord, who inherited the Earldom of Rivers four years after- wards. Howell was employed for a short time as tutor in the family, and he has left a very interesting description of the house as it stood in its perfection, before it became the first-fruits of violence. He says that he never saw a great mansion so neatly kept: "the Kitchen and . . . other Offices of noise and drudgery are at the fag-end ; there's a Back-gate for the Beggars and the meaner sort of Swains to come in at." The gardens were full of "costly choice flowers," and fruits of many kinds: "here you have your Bon Christian Pear and Bergamot in perfection, your Mitscadell Grapes in such plenty, that there are some Bottles of Wine sent every year to the King " ; and Mr. Daniel, a worthy neighbour, made "good store in his Vintage." The park had once belonged to the Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, and had probably been inclosed out of the commons. The park, "for a chearful rising which is a small lychnoscope, from the aisle of which it is the termina- tion. Between it and the High Altar is the tomb of Sir John Clopton under a very depressed og-ee arch : it has no effigy, and is supposed to have served the purpose of an Easter sepulchre. The arms of Clop- ton occur in the stained glass at the west end of the aisles. Sir John Clopton was a Lancastrian, and was implicated in the charge for which John, twelfth earl of Oxford, and his son Aubrey, were executed in 1462. Kentwell Hall, the residence of the Cloptons, is about a quarter of a mile north-west of the church ; Melford Hall, where Howell lived for a time, is about the same distance south-east. See the late Sir William Parker's History of Long Melford, 1 873 ; Murray's Handbook to the Eastern Counties, 1892, pp. 125-6. 282 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE Ground, for Groves and Browsings for the Deer, for rivulets of Water, may compare with any for its high- ness in the whole Land ; it is opposite to the front of the great House, whence from the Gallery one may see much of the Game when they are a-hunting."^ It is somewhat singular that when the Abbey was dis- solved, the profits of the park were valued at no more than ten shillings a year. II HOWELL ON TRADE AND COMMERCE — WINES AND ALES Howell is one of the chief authorities on the trade and commerce of his time. We can learn from him, for example, the meaning of all the Shakespearean references to small ale and good double beer, to sack and sherris and cups of Canary. Of the first he says jestingly : " In this Island the old drink was Ale, . . . But since Beer hath hopp'd in among us. Ale is thought to be much adulterated, and nothing so good as Sir /o/in Oldcastle and Smug the Smith was us'd to drink." 2 He is referring to his visits to the theatre on Bank-side, for he writes to Mr. Caldwall from York, ''I am the same to you this side Trent, as I was the last time we cross'd the Thames together to see Smug the Smith, and so back to the Still-yard.''^ When he had been ill in Paris, he tells his father on another occasion, the doctors and surgeons who attended him came to pay him a visit on his recovery, and among other things, they began talking about wine ; *' and so ^ Epp. Ho-EL, pp. 106-7 ('• § 2, let. 8: ^^ From the Lord Savage's House in Long-Melford," 20 3fay 1619. The words "the Lord Savage" show that Howell re-dated the letter for publication, as they could not have been written in 16 19. ^ Id., p. 451 (ii. let. 54: Westm., 17 Oct. 1634). ^ Id., p. 247 (i. § 5, let. I : York, 13 July 1627). Smug the Smith is here used as the name of a character in The Merry Devil of Ed?nonton. John Taylor, Pennyles Pilgrimage, uses the phrase "a mad smuggy smith" (ed. Hindley, 1872, p. 11). ALE AND BEER 283 by degrees they fell upon other beverages ; and one Doctor in the company who had been in England, told me that we have a Drink in England call'd Ale, which he thought was the wholsomest liquor ... for while the Englishmen drank only Ale, they were strong, brawny, able Men, and could draw an arrow an ell long ; but when they fell to wine and beer, they are found to be much impair'd in their strength and age : so the Ale bore away the bell among the Doctors." ^ In Low Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, etc., he tells us, beer was almost the universal drink.^ We may note, however, that the Dutch were wine-drinkers, the Rhine-wines being the sole staple of the town of Dort ; Middelburg was the centre of the trade in French and Spanish wines. ^ We might make another exception for the Court at Elsinore, where the King the "swaggering up-spring" reeled, and drained down huge cups of Rhenish.* "In the Duke of Saxe's Country there is Beer as yellow as Gold, made of Wheat ";^ and Holinshed tells us that "yellow as a gold noble " was a phrase of the English topers.^ This Saxon beer, it should be observed, was the same as the Brunswick mum, for which a brewery was at one time set up in Stratford ; the promoters hoped that their town would become the head of the mum-trade, and might even be known as " New Brunswick." The Vicar of Stratford complains in his Diary that "we have utterly lost what was the thing that preserved beer so long, before hops were found out in England." ^ Sir Hugh Piatt of Lincoln's Inn thought that it might have been done by using wormwood, centaury, hepatic ^ Epp. Ho-El., pp. 136-7 (i. § 2, let. 21, from Paris, 10 Dec. 1622). ^ Id. , p. 45 1 , as note. ^ Id., pp. 126-7 (•• § 2, let. 15 : Antwerp, i May 1622). ■* Hamlet, i. 4, 9-10. ^ Epp. Ho-El., p. 451, as note. ^ Holinshed, The Description of England, chap. vi. , in Chronicles, ed. Hooker, 1586, vol. i. p. 170. "^ Ward's Diary, u.s. 284 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE aloes, or artichoke-leaves/ and it is well known that ivy- was a common substitute when hops were prohibited by Henry VIII. According to Holinshed it was only the nobility that drank beer of "two years' tunning" ; it was often brewed in the spring, and was then known as March-beer ; and in an ordinary household it was usually about a month old, " ech one coveting to have the same stale as he may, so that it be not sowre."^ It was probably from his Chronicle that Shakespeare took the phrase "pink eyne " in the song which the boy sang on Pompey's galley.^ Some have thought that he referred to colour, since "pink" in the old Dictionaries is explained as "a kind of yellow used in painting." The verb "to pink" signified winking, and people "with eyes like pigs" were often called pink-eyed.^ Pliny had said that a man with both eyes very small would be nicknamed Ocella, and in Holland's version this appears as "Also them that were pinke-eied and had verie small eies, they tearmed OcellcB.^^^ Holinshed, however, shows us that Bacchus was accused in the song of a tipsy blinking ; for in his sketch of the pot-knights he makes them afraid to stir from the alehouse-bench, where they sit half-asleep, "still pinking with their narrow eyes," until the fume of their adversary passes away.*^ We should add a few words about wine. Shakespeare barely refers to claret and other "small red wines" ; it is sufficient to notice that the Scotch had the preference and pick of the market at Bordeaux,^ and that Portugal as yet pro- duced nothing worth bringing to England.^ The best 1 Sir Hugh Piatt, The Jewell House of Art and Nature, 1594, pp. 15-19, under heading "How to brew good and wholsom Beere without anie Hoppes at all." ^ Holinshed, op. cit., i. p. 167. ^ Ajttony and Cleopatra, ii. 7, 121. ■* See instances in Nares' Glossary, s.v, s Pliny, Nat. Hist., tr. Holland, 1601, bk. xi. ch. 37. (vol. i. p. 335 E.) " Holinshed, op. cit., i. 170. ^ Epp. Ho-El., p. 456, as note. 8 Id., p. 455. FOREIGN WINES 285 Hock, said Howell, came from Bacharach, or "Bach- rag" as he called it,^ and the worst never saw the Rhine at all, but was "stummed up" out of a hard green wine from Rochelle.^ The Rhenish grape was "the father of Canary." From Bacharach came the first stock of vines for the island of Grand Canary. "I think there's more Canary brought into England than to all the World besides. I think also there is a hundred times more drunk under the name of Canary Wine than is brought in ; for Sherries and Malagas well mingled pass for Canaries in most Taverns, more often than Canary itself."^ It was even said that with a spoonful of Spirit of Clary, that could be bought of any apothecary, a bottle of cider might be made to resemble Canary so nearly that an experienced palate could not tell the difference. The best account of Sack is to be found in Dr. Venner's Via Recta ad Vitam longam, of which editions were issued in 1638 and 1650.* " Some affect," he says, "to drink with sugar, and some without, as is best pleasing to their palates." On this matter, he concluded, everyone must be his own director, according to his state of health; "but what I have spoken of mixing Sugar with Sack, must be understood of Sherrie Sack, for to mix Sugar with other wines, that in a common appellation are called Sack, and are sweeter in taste, makes it unpleasant to the palat." Malaga Sack, he said, was neither pleasant nor wholesome, being nauseous and fulsomely sweet. " Canarie-wine ... is also termed a Sack ... it is not so white in colour as Sherrie Sack, nor so thinne in substance."^ The truest kind of Sack was exported 1 Id., p. 457. ' Id., p. 456 : " This is called stooming of Wines." Stum = strong new wine. See Nares, s.v. ^ Id., pp. 457-8. ^ The earliest edition belongs to 1620. The edition of 1650 contains many additions. Both the 1638 and 1650 volumes contain, as an appendix, The Bathes of Bathe and the treatise on tobacco-taking. ^ Venner, u.s., ed. 1650, pp. 33-4. 286 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE from Santa Cruz in the isle of Palma ; it was a thin, dry wine of a very pale colour. This was Ben Jonson's favourite, according to a saying ascribed to him : " I laid the plot of my Volpone, and wrote most of it, after a present of ten dozen of Palm Sack from my very good Lord."^ We get an idea about these wines from Venner's use of sweet Muscadel as a standard. Muscadel was, in his opinion, exactly equal to sweet Malmsey or Malvaria ; and Bastard was somewhat like Muscadel, "and may also instead thereof be used." ^ We should remember, however, that the sugared Sherries, and all the quarts and gallons of Sack which went to Falstaff's reckonings were in reality not stronger than negus. Howell says of these white wines in general, that ''when Sacks and Canaries were brought in first among us, they were us'd to be drank in Aqua vitce measures," and were regarded as liqueurs for old people and invalids ; " but now they go down every one's throat, both young and old, like milk."^ Ill HOWELL AT VENICE— ILLUSTRATIONS OF "THE TEMPEST," ** OTHELLO," ETC, We find several passages which throw some light upon allusions in The Tempest to King Alonso "upon the Mediterranean flote, bound sadly home for Naples,"^ and the foul witch, Sycorax, who for "sorceries terrible" was banished from Argier : "for one thing she did, they would not take her life."^ "I know," writes ^ Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 12, says : " Canarie was his beloved liquour." ^ Venner, u.s. ^ Epp. Ho-EL, p. 458, as note. His phrase is: " 'Twas held fit only for those to drink of them who were us'd to carry their legs in their hands, their eyes upo?i their noses, and an Ahnanack in their bones." * Tempest, i. 2, 234-5. ° Ibid., 263-7. HOWELL AT ALGIERS 287 Howell, "the Lightness and Nimbleness of ^/^z'er ships; when I liv'd lately in Alicant and other places upon the Mediterranean^ we should every Week hear some of them chas'd, but very seldom taken ; for a great Ship following one of them, may be said to be as a Mastiff Dog running after a Hare."^ When the light pirate-ship was in chase of a great merchant-man another figure was required ; and in Sandys' Travels we accordingly read of "a little frigot" venturing "on an Argosie," which ran ashore before the pursuer, as if a whale should fly from a dolphin.^ Howell is writing to his friend. Captain Thomas Porter, upon his return from an attempt upon the galleys in Algiers Roads, which had failed through the spells of the Demon and his Hadjis and Marabouts ; "it was one of the bravest Enterprizes, and had prov'd such a glorious Exploit that no Story could have parallel'd ; but it seems their Hoggies, Magicians^ and Maribots were tampering with the ill Spirits of the Air all the while, which brought down such a still Cataract of Rain-waters suddenly upon you, to hinder the working of your Fire-works ; such a Disaster the Story tells us, befell Charles the Emperor, but far worse than yours, for he lost Ships and multitudes of Men, who were made Slaves, but you came off with loss of eight Men only, and Algier is anotherghess thing now than she was then, being I believe an hundred degrees stronger by Land and Sea."^ When Howell was quite a young man, he was sent to Venice to learn the secrets of glass-making. William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, in partnership with Sir Robert Mansell and a few others, had obtained a monopoly for making glass with pit-coal at Swansea, "to save those huge Proportions of Wood which were 1 Epp. Ho-El., p. no (i., § 2, let. ii : St. Osith, Dec. 1622). ^ Sandys' Relation of a Jo^irney, etc., 1615, p. 2. ^ Epp. Ho-El., as note i. 288 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE consumed formerly in the Glass Furnaces : And this Business," he continues, "being of that nature, that the Workmen are to had from Italy, and the chief Materials from Spain, France, and other foreign Countries ; there is need of an Agent abroad for this Use." ^ At Alicante, on his way to Venice, he embarked with a " lusty Dutchman " who despised the Algerines. There had been a sad misfortune with the pirates a short time before : "had I come time enough to have taken the Opportunity, I might have been made either Food for Haddocks, or turn'd to Cinders, or have been by this time a Slave in the Bannier at Algier, or tugging at a Oar." They arrived quite safely at Malamocco, but were nearly forty days at sea. "We passed by Majorca and Minorca ... by some Ports of Barhary, by Sardinia, Corsica, and all the Islands of the Mediterranean! Sea. We were at the Mouth of Tyber, and thence fetch'd our Course for Sicily ; we pass'd by those sulphureous fiery Islands, Mongihel and Stronibolo, and about the Dawn of the Day we shot thro' Scylla and Charyhdis, and so into the Phare of Messina; thence we touch'd upon some of the Greek Islands, and so came to our first intended Course, into the Venetian Gitlph, and are now here at Malamocco.'''' "^ This is like the voyage from Naples to Tunis, where Queen Claribel dwelt ten leagues beyond man's life : — " She that from Naples Can have no note, unless the sun were post — The man i' th' moon's too slow — till new-born chins Be rough and razorable."^ "Now," says our traveller, "we are in the Adrian Sea, in the Mouth whereof Venice stands, like a gold Ring in a Bear's Muzzle."^ In considering Shake- ^ Id., p. 20 (i. § I, let. 2 : Broad Street, Londo7i, 1 March 161 8). ^ Id., p. 62 (i. § I, let. 26 : Malamocco, 30 April 1621). ^ TeTnpest, ii. i, 247-50. * Epp. Ho-El., p. 63 (i. \\y let. 27 : '■'•From on Shipboard before Venice," 5 May 162 1). HOWELL AT VENICE 289 speare's references to Venice, it must always be remem- bered that the republic was the mistress of a vast dominion. Mr. Rawdon Brown has some apposite remarks on this point. We find an account of a series of letters written from London by the Venetian Am- bassadors in Shakespeare's time in his Catalogue of Manuscripts preserved among the Venetian State Papers. In one of the letters, dated the i8th of February, 1610, Arabella Stuart is mentioned as com- plaining that certain comici publici intended to bring her into a play. Mr. Rawdon Brown takes these for the King's players, "who, by turning Arabella into ridicule, expected to please their chief patron." Lady Braybrooke, he adds, spoke of "Venetian Players" acting in London in 1608, and also of Lord Suffolk's players in 1610. "I wonder whether either of these two companies had any hand in bringing Arabella Stuart on the stage, and I should also like to know whether the fact of there having been ' Venice Players ' in England in Shakespeare's time had been noted by his commentators, when alluding to the Venetian origin of so many of his plays ; for we must consider as Venetian not merely scenes actually laid in Venice, but also all such as relate to the Signory's dependencies, whether on the mainland as at Padua and Verona, or in Cyprus, or in Dalmatia." With reference to this point we should consult Howell's letter to Sir James Crofts and the Survey of the Signorie of Venice^ which he published as a separate work in 165 1. " Tho' this City be thus hem'd in with the Sea, yet she spreads her Wings far and wide upon the Shore ; she hath in Lomhardy six considerable Towns, Padua, Verona, Vicenza, Brescia, Crema, and Bergamo: she hath in the Marquisat, Bassan and Castelfranco ; she hath all Friuli and Istria; she commands the Shores of Dalmatia and Sclavonia; she keeps under the Power of St. Mark the Islands of Corfu (anciently Corcyra), 290 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE Cephalonia, Zant, Cerigo, Lucerigo, and Candy. ^^"^ In 1488 she had received the kingdom of Cyprus from "Kate the Queen," ^ otherwise "La Regina Caterina Cornaro Lusignana," and had only lost it in 1571 after a desperate struggle with the " Ottomites." "It was quite rent from her by the Turk : which made that high-spirited Bassa, being taken Prisoner at the Battle of Lepanto, where the Grand Signior lost above 200 Gallies, to say, That that Defeat to his great Master was but like the shaving of his Beard, or the paring of his Nails ; but the taking of Cyprus was like the cutting off of a Limb, which will never grow again. This mighty Potentate being so near a Neighbour to her, she is forced to comply with him, and give him an annual Present in Gold.''^ We see the misfortune coming, even when Othello brings Cyprus comfort and assistance. " The desperate tempest hath so bang'd the Turks, that their design- ment halts " ; "^ but still the Turk with a most mighty preparation makes for Cyprus. All that the Venetians can do is to bear a brave heart, and so steal something from the thief : " So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile ; We lose it not, so long as we can smile. He bears the sentence well that nothing bears But the free comfort which from thence he hears, But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow."^ Shakespeare evidently knew as much about Venice as many a traveller who had "swam in a gondola." To take another point from Othello, we may note that the ship in which Cassio sailed to Cyprus is described as "a Veronesa " ; ^ and if one looks at the list of ships that ^ Epp. Ho-EL, p. 77 (i. § I, let. 35: Ven., i Aug. 162 1). ^ See R. Browning-, Pippa Passes. 3 Epp. Ho-EL, u.'s. * Othello, ii. i, 21-2. ^ Id., i. 3, 210-15. ^ Id., ii. I, 26. VENICE 291 took part in the battle of Lepanto, it will be seen at once that the inland towns were credited with the ships built at their expense, such as the '' Royalty " of Padua, the ''Alessandrica" of Bergamo, and the " Tower " and '* Sea-man" of Vicenza. It is in one of the earliest plays that the proverb is quoted which said that ^'the eye is the best judge of Venice," or ''Who sees not Venice, loves her not." Howell adds the line which the young "Italianate signors" were apt to leave out: — " Venetia, Venetia, chinon te vede non te Pregia, Ma chi f ha troppo veduto te Dispreggia " — "Venice, Venice, woweThee tmseen can prise ; Who hath seen [thee] too tnuch 'mill Thee despise. " Such was the "common Saying that is used of this dainty City of Venice.''''^ Howell takes the liberty of borrowing the celebrated metaphors of the "pool" and the "girdle" in Cyvibeline. "You shall find us," laughed Prince Cloten, "in our salt-water girdle : if you beat us out of it, it is yours " ; ^ and Imogen argues in a classical phrase that Britain is outside the world, " in a great pool a swan's nest."^ Venice, said Howell, may be said to be walled with water: "it is the water, wherein she lies like a swan's nest, that doth both fence and feed her." * He says of the Venetian ladies that they wore bright colours and went unveiled. " They are low and of small statures for the most part, which makes them to raise their bodies upon high shooes called Chapins."^ We ^ Epp. Ho-EL, p. 79 (i. ^ I, let. 36: Ven., 12 A^lg. 162 1). Cf. Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2, 99-100. 2 Cymheline, iii. 1,80-2. ^ Id., iii. 4, 142. "* See also Howell's Instructions for Forraine Travell, 1642, sect. vlii. : "A rich magnificent City seated in the very jaws oi Neptune." ® Survey of the Signorie of Venice, p. 39. See Nares' Glossary, s.v. Chioppine, where numerous references to this Venetian custom are brought together. " The derivation is Spanish, (chapiyi)." New English Dictionary, s.v. Chopine, Chopin, says, " Identical with obs. F. chapins, chappins . . . mod. Sp. chapin . . Portuguese chapim. The Eng. writers c. 1600 persistently treated the word as Italian." 292 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE remember the boy who played the female characters at Elsinore : "What, my young lady and mistress! By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine."^ The Venetian Senate often endeavoured to put down these pattens and wooden shoes, "but all women," said the traveller, "are so passionately delighted with this kind of state that no Law can wean them from it."^ He tells a story of a great lady who found a new use for the chopine. " Not long before her death, the late Queen of Spain took off one of her Chapines, and clowted Olivares about the noddle with it . . . telling him, that he should know, she was Sister to a King of France, as well as Wife to a King of Spain.^^^ The commoner kind of people used to walk shrouded in black veils, whereas in Rome or Naples all faces wore a "Celestial hue," according to Howell's valentine on Lady Robinson.* This shows incidentally how ac- curately the reproach of Imogen was directed against the Roman Bettina or Saltarella, whom Posthumus was supposed to have admired: "Some jay of Italy," she cries, "whose mother was her painting! " ^ The phrase itself seems borrowed from Roger Ascham's Toxophilus, in the passage where he inveighs against his country- men as being more Turkish than the Turks: "Our unfaithful sinful living, which is the Turk's mother, and hath brought him up hitherto, must needs turn God from us, because sin and He hath no fellowship together. If we banished ill-living out of Christen- dom, I am sure the Turk should not only, not overcome us, but scarce have a hole to run into, in his own country." ^ ^ Hamlet, ii. 2, 444-7. ^ Howell, Survey, ic.s. ^ Epp. Ho-El., p. 437 (ii. let. 43 : Fleet, i Dec. 1643). * Id., p. 271 (i. § 5, between lett. 21 and 22). ^ Cymbeline, iii. 4, 51-2. ® Ascham, Toxophi us, ed. Arber, p. 81. SYRIAN WOLVES 293 IV ANECDOTES AND LEGENDS IN HOWELL's LETTERS — IRISH FOLK-LORE — JOAN OF ARC Howell has also preserved an anecdote which may- throw light on a passage in ^^ You Like It. The comedy is based upon Lodge's Rosalynde as a ground- work, but the witty scene of the chorus of lovers is Shakespeare's own : — '■'■ Phe. Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love. Sil. It is to be all made of sighs and tears ; And so am I for Phebe : Phe. And I for Ganymede : Orl. And I for Rosalind : " and so on again and again. But what says Rosalind ? "Pray you, no more of this; 'tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon." ^ His hearers would expect ''Syrian," not "Irish," wolves — a common- place among writers of the day. When Samela turned out to be a king's daughter, poor Menaphon returned to his rustic loves. "Seeing his passions were too aspiring, and that with the Syrian wolves he barked against the Moon, he left such lettuce as were too fine for his lips."^ And so in Lodge's novel, where Gany- mede sits under the pomegranate bough and condoles with the shepherd : " I tell thee, Montanus, in courting Phoebe, thou barkest with the wolves of Syria against the moon, and rovest at such a mark with thy thoughts, as is beyond the pitch of the bow."^ The lovers in the comedy were all aiming too high and crying for the ^ As You Like It, v. 2. ^ Greene, Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 92. Cf. id., p. 53 ; there Melicertus says to Samela : "Therefore I fear with the Syrian wolves to bark against the moon." ^ Lodge, Rosalynde, ed. H. Morley, 1893, p. 163. 294 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE moon ; but why like Irish wolves? The answer is that the Irish, like other northern nations, had been sus- pected of changing shapes with wolves when they pleased, or at a certain time of year. We should add that some of the peasantry were accused of worshipping the moon. ''In Ireland^'''' said Howell, "the Kerns of the mountains, with some of the Scotch Isles, use a fashion of adoring the new Moon to this very day, praying she would leave them in as good Health as she found them."i Camden had written a strange account of these mountaineers, declaring that they took ''unto them Wolves to bee their Godsibs : whom they tearme Chari Christ, praying for them and wishing them well." 2 Spenser traced elaborately the legendary con- nection between the native Irish and the Scythians as described by Herodotus. "The Scythians said, that they were once every year turned into wolves, and so it is written of the Irish : though Mr Camden in a better sense doth suppose it was a disease, called Lycanthropia, so named of the wolf. And yet some of the Irish do use to make the wolf their gossip."^ Howell tells a story of "two huge Wolves" that stared at him while he was at luncheon under a tree in Biscay, but had the good manners to go away. "It put me in mind of a pleasant Tale I heard Sir Tho. Fairfax relate of a Soldier in Ireland.'''' The soldier being tired sat down under a tree to eat: "but on a sudden he was surpriz'd with two or three Wolves, who coming towards him, he threw them scraps of bread and cheese, till all was gone ; then the Wolves making a nearer Ap- proach to him, he knew not what shift to make, but by ^ Epp. Ho-El., pp. 397-8 (ii. let. 11 : Westm., 25 A2ig. 1635). ^ Camden, Scotia, Hibernia, etc., tr. Holland, 1610, p. 146. Camden was copying from I. Good : "A Priest . . . who about the yeere of our Lord 1566 taught the Schoole at Liynirick." ^ View of present state of Ireland, 1596, in Works, ed, Morris, p. 634. IRISH TRADITIONS 295 taking a pair of Bag-pipes which he had, and as soon as he began to play upon them the Wolves ran all away as if they had been scar'd out of their wits." But the soldier only said, " If I had known you had lov'd Musick so well, you should have had it before dinner."^ When As You Like It came out in the year 1599,^ any topical allusion to Ireland was sure of success. The arch-rebel, Hugh O'Neill, was leading a crusade against the English ; it was popularly believed that the Pope had sent him a plume of Phoenix feathers ; and he had been so far successful that he had crushed Bagenal at the Blackwater, and was maintaining a bold front against the wavering forces of Essex. It is not surprising therefore that the ichneumon of Egypt, or "Indian Rat," should be transferred to Ireland with the Syrian wolves. For what says Rosalind when she found the poem on the palm-tree? "I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember."^ There is a reference, of course, to the idea that rats had been ex- pelled for many ages from the Isle of Saints. The historian, Gerald de Barry, had told the world how St. Yvor with bell, book, and candle had driven away all the rats in the Bishopric of Ferns, and the very words used in such exorcisms were well known. The rats, we learn, ''were so entirely expelled by the curse of St. Yvorus, the bishop, whose books they had probably gnawed, that none were afterwards bred there, or could exist if they were introduced."^ Shakespeare, we may add, seems to have been fond of a quip about Pytha- goras ; we have the case of the crocodile's transmigra- 1 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 211 (i. § 3, let. 39: "from Bilboa," 6 Sept. 1624). ^ 1599, at all events, is the date commonly agreed upon ; the evidence is indirect. See A. W. Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit., ii. 128-9. ^ As You Like It, iii., 2, 186-8. ^ Gir. Camb., Topographia Hibernica, Dist. ii. Cap. xxxii. (tr. Forester, p. 96). See id., cap. xix. for " Irish wolves." 296 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE tion,i and the argument about Malvolio's grandmother in the shape of a woodcock.^ There is no reason, however, to suppose that he had studied the Italian philosophy, or Lucian's burlesque in the dialogue between the Cock and the Cobbler. He probably went no further than to Holinshed's Chronicle, where he could learn the dogma that an unworthy soul might be "shut up in the bodie of a slave, begger, cocke, owle, dog, ape, horsse, asse, worme or monster, there to remaine as in a place of purgation and punish- ment,"^ as indeed it was once said of the Trojan War : ''How should Homer know anything about it, when he was himself at that very time a camel in Bactria?" We shall take leave of James Howell for the present after one more extract, which may serve to show how little even cultivated people knew or cared in his time about writing with historical accuracy. He writes to Sir John North from the fair town of Orleans, where he had seen a civil and military procession in honour of "La pauvre Pucelle " : "Jehanne la bonne Lorraine, qu'Anglois bruslerent a Rouen."* She was praised by the poets of her time as being very sweet and gracious: "Tres-douce, aimable, mouton sans orgeuil," is her character from Martial de Paris. She won at Patay in 1429 and was executed two years later ; yet Shakespeare allows her to beat Talbot at Chatillon in 1453, in the shape of a ranting Fury, perhaps imagined as restored to some diabolic or magical kind of life.^ Howell's words show how little was known about the matter. "Her Statue stands upon the Bridge, and her Clothes are preserv'd to this day, which a young Man wore in the Procession ; which makes me think ^ Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 7, 46-51. ^ Twelfth Night, iv. 2, 54-65. ^ Holinshed, The Description of Britaine, chap, ix., in Chronicles, U.S., i. 20. ■* Villon, Ballade des Dames dii Temps j'ad is. ^ I Henry VI., iv. 7. HOWELL ON JOAN OF ARC 297 that her Story, tho' it sound like a Romance^ is very true." The English had driven Charles VIL to Bourges in Berry, *' Which made him to be call'd, for the time. King of Berry." ''There came to his Army a Shepherdess, one Anne de Arque, who with a con- fident look and language told the King, that she was design'd by Heaven to beat the English, and drive them out of France. . . . The Siege was rais'd from before Orleans, and the English were pursu'd to Paris, and forced to quit that, and driven to Normandy : She us'd to go on with marvellous courage and resolution, and her word was Hara /za."^ 1 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 140 (i. § 2, let. 23 : Orleans, 3 Mar. 1622). II. WARD'S DIARY THE REV. JOHN WARD — HIS MEDICAL TRAINING — HIS REMARKS ON CLERGY AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 7"^ HE Rev. John Ward came to Stratford in 1662, and resided there until his death in 1681. He was always a literary man ; but he also took an active part in local affairs, not only as vicar, but also as a practising physician. Seventeen of his commonplace books came eventually into the possession of Dr. James Sims, an eminent writer upon medical subjects, who graduated at Leyden in 1764, and died in 1820. His library, including the commonplace books in question, became the property of the Medical Society of London ; and an important volume of extracts was issued in 1839 by Dr. Charles Severn, then Registrar to the Society, under the title of the Diary of the Rev. John Ward, A.M., Vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon, extending from 16^8 to id'^g. Dr. Severn states in his preface that on perusing the first volume, the series being in no regular order of date, he found that it was begun in the early part of 1661 and was completed ''at Mr. Brooks his house, Stratford-upon-Avon, April 25, 1663." Most of the entries related to theological and medical matters ; but he hoped that entries might be found in the other volumes relating, perhaps, to Shakespeare himself, or at least to his family and friends. He felt that the great precision of Ward's writing, and the generous way in which opponents were treated throughout the Diary, showed that dependence might justly be placed on a JOHN WARD 299 person of so much learning, observation, and candour. ''In this . . . search," he said, " I was fortunately not entirely disappointed ; and though the notices of Shakespeare made by Mr. Ward are, alas ! very few and brief, as they supply information at once novel, interesting, and of strict authenticity, they are of great value." ^ Mr. Ward was the son of a Northamptonshire land- owner, who fought as a lieutenant in Appleyard's Regi- ment, and was imprisoned by the Republicans after Naseby fight. John Ward was born in 1629, and took his Bachelor's degree at Oxford at the age of nine- teen, about the time when his series of Table-books begins. He remained at the University until he proceeded to the degree of M.A., in 1652. He studied divinity at the Bodleian, and made some progress in the Oriental languages, as well as in Anglo-Saxon literature, which was beginning to be a favourite subject ; but the bent of his mind was towards medicine, and he appears to have spent a great part of his time among the doctors and their apothe- caries, or with old Mr. Jacob Bobart, who kept the Physic Garden by Magdalen Bridge. Bobart's son, who succeeded to his post, was the ingenious fabricator of a dragon, made from a dead rat, which took in Magliabecchi and caused a great stir in the scientific world; it was kept in the Ashmolean Museum as "a masterpiece of art," and perhaps is still upon the shelves.^ Dr. Sydenham used to maintain that medicine could not be learned at the Universities, and that "one had as good send a man to Oxford to learn shoemaking as practicing physic";^ but Sydenham was all for more ^ Ward's Diary, ed. Severn, preface, pp. xi.-xii, 2 Gray, Notes on '■'■ Hudihras," quoted by Mr. B. D. Jackson in Diet. Nat. Biography, vol. v., s.v. Bobart, Jacob. The dates of the elder Bobart are 1599- 1680, of the younger, 1641-1719. ^ Ward's Diary, u.s., p. 242. Thomas Sydenham (1624-89) was fellow of All Souls. 300 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE anatomy, and for students learning their profession practically as apprentices ; and he was bitterly attacked by doctors of the old school as a decrier of natural philosophy. But there was no lack of surgery at Oxford, if one of Ward's friends is to be believed. A young surgeon named Gill told stories about " his Mr. Day," who had cut off plenty of limbs, and only two patients had died ; and of the German who killed a Balliol man by pricking a tendon, and even of a woman who was to be ''trepanned " on the ribs. Ward doubts, and asks " Whether it canne be?" and he sagely adds, " I suspected itt to be a ly."^ He tells us of a woman at the "Blew Bore," with three physicians in attend- ance, who could have saved her if a surgeon had been there to open a vein.^ There is another story about young Punter, who kept a tame viper, "which stung a dog of Bobarts, so that his head was twice as bigg as formerly, and Jacob gave him white horehound and aristolochia ^ in butter, and cured him presently."^ Some of the information comes from Stephen Toon, the apothecary, and Flexon, the barber, whose father kept the Chequers Inn, much used by the country carriers. Flexon said that he remembered Mrs. Kirk, a Court beauty, coming up in one of the waggons, in very mean attire, though she soon had a lodging at All Souls ; he also told Ward of a Cornet in the Guards who used to wash his face in sack and be shaved in half a pint of the same.^ We are told something of the "Antelope," where the landlord had such an in- firmity of sleep upon him "that if one yawned hee could not chuse but yawne " ; ^ something, indeed, about all the inns, except the "Crown," where Shake- speare lay. When Mr. Ward went up to London, he ^ Id., pp. 280, 265-6. ^ Id., pp. 266-7. ^ i.e. birthwort. Cf. Cicero, De Div., i. 10: "Quid aristolochia ad morsus serpentum possit." ■* Ward's Diary, p. 277. •^ Id., pp. 143, 162. ^ Id., p. 122. WARD AT OXFORD AND IN LONDON 301 took lodgings at the "Bell," in Aldersgate Street, so as to be near ''Barber Surgeons' Hall." Lord Petre had a house in the same street,^ occupied at that time by the Marquess of Dorchester, "the pride and glory of the Society of Physicians. "^ Ward had much to say about the medical lectures, the skeleton in a frame above the table, and the wooden man showing the muscles, for which Dr. Charles Scarborough had paid ;^io.3 The Doctor, who was afterwards knighted by Charles IL, had been a soldier, marching up and down with the army, as Aubrey records, until Dr. Harvey saw his merits, and said, " Prithee leave off thy gun- ning, and stay here: I will bring thee into practice."* Ward devoted himself chiefly to the study of domestic medicine, with a view to the necessities of a country living ; for he had made up his mind to settle down in some secluded place, where he could keep up his medical knowledge in the hours spared from Hebrew and Arabic. He appears to have been chiefly intimate with old Mr. Sampson and another chemist, George Hartman, who had served with Sir Kenelm Digby "for many years across the seas." Ward pronounced Sir Kenelm Digby to be " as great an empirick as any in Europe " ;^ but he was not above using some of his receipts. When "Goodie Tomlins" fell into some un- known disease at Stratford, we find him applying " Lucatella's Balsam," which Hartman prepared after his master's own receipt. " Mark what comes of itt,"^ says Ward ; but as it was chiefly composed of oil, wine, and wax, with St. John's wort and Venice-turpentine,'^ 1 Id., p. 167. '^ Henry Pierrepont, first Marquess of Dorchester, second Earl of Kingston (1608-80), F.R.C.P., 1658. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 9. •* Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, 1898, i. 299, sub William Harvey. 5 Ward's Diary, p. 173. ^ Id., p. 248. The symptoms of the disease were asthmatic, accom- panied by bleeding from the lungs. ■^ G. Hartman, True Preserver a^id Restorer of Health, 1682, pp. 241-5. 302 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE it was not likely to do much harm. "Mr. Hartman," says Ward, "had a piece of unicorn's horn, which one Mr. Godeski gave him ; hee had itt at some foraine prince's court. I had the piece in my hand. ... It approved itself as a true one, as hee said, by this : iff one drew a circle with itt about a spider, shee would not move out of itt." ^ " A living drollery. Now I will believe That there are unicorns, that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix' throne " ; so vows Sebastian in The Tempest, and so agrees Antonio.^ But the story was upset by Shakespeare's little godson, when he was made page to the first Duchess of Richmond. Aubrey remembered hearing from Davenant how the Duchess "sent him to a famous apothecary for some Unicornes-horne, which he was resolved to try with a spider which he encircled in it, but without the expected successe ; the spider would goe over, and thorough and thorough, unconcerned."^ Before Mr. Ward went to Stratford, he tried to obtain permission from the Archbishop to practise medicine in all parts of England ; but he could only obtain a licence for the province of Canterbury. It will be remembered that the Bishops or Archbishops had power to allow their clergy to practise, whether they had taken a medical degree or not. The form of the permission appears by one of Ward's memoranda. "A licens granted to practice by Dr. Chaworth to Mr. Francis throughout the archbishop's province, itt did not cost him full out thirty shillings : there were some clauses in itt as ' quamdiu se bene gesserit,' and ' accord- ing to the laws of England,' but I suppose itt was the proper form which is used in such a case.""^ The ^ Ward's Diary, pp. 171-2. ^ Tempest, iv. i, 21-3. ^ Aubrey, op. cit. , i. 205, sub Sir William Davenant. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 14. THE CLERGY AND MEDICINE 303 diocesan officials seem to have given a good deal of trouble in the matter. " Mr. Burnet said of Mr. Francis his licens, that itt must bee renewed every year ; the apparitor would dunne him else, that his father never was nor never would be doctor ; and the apparitor used constantly to ply him, but he laughed him out of it."^ Mr. Ward collected evidence to show that physic had been practised by the clergy ever since the Conquest. He makes special mention of Nicholas de Farnham, the chief English physician, and Bishop of Durham ; Hugh of Evesham, physician and Cardinal ; Tideman de Winchcomb, Bishop of Llandaff, and afterwards of Worcester, who was chief physician to Richard II. ; John Chambers, Doctor of Physic, last head of Peterborough Abbey, and first Bishop of the new see; and Paul Bush, ''an Oxford B.D.," well read both in physic and theology, whose work on ''Certayne Gostly Medycynes necessary to be used among wel disposed people to eschew and avoid the comen plague of pestilence," was printed by Redman. ^ 1 Id., pp. 13-14. ^ Id., pp. 117, 160. Nicholas of Farnham died in 1248; Ward writes his surname as Ternham (sic). Hugh of Evesham (d. 1287) was physician to Pope Martin IV. , and wrote Canones Medicinales. Ward is guilty, with Bishop Godwin (de Prcesulibus, ii. 138), of con- fusing Abbot (afterwards Bishop) John Chambers (d. 1556), whose de- grees were merely M.A. and B.D. of Cambridge, with John Chambre (1470- 1 549) dean of St. Stephen's, Westminster, and holder of various preferments at Lincoln and in other cathedral bodies. Chambre was a fellow of Merton, and warden from 1525 to 1544; he became M.D. of Padua in 1506, and of Oxford in 1531. He was physician to Henry VH. and Henry VHI. , and in the famous picture of Henry VHI. and the company of Barber-Surgeons he occupies a conspicuous place. The late Precentor Venables pointed out Godwin's error in Diet. Nat. Biog. , vol. X., sub Chambers, John, Ward probably borrowed it from God- win's work. See article by Dr. Norman Moore on John Chambre in Diet. Nat. Biog ti.s. " Syr Paull Busshe, prest and bonhomme of the good house Edynden " (^i.e. Edingdon), as he describes himself in the work mentioned in the text, was the first Bishop of Bristol in 1542. He married Edith Ashley, and resigned his see in 1554, from which time to his death in 1558 he was rector of Winterbourne, near Bristol. He and his wife are buried in the 304 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE We may add to this list such names as those of the Rev. Charles Evelegh, M.D., vicar of Harberton, Devon, in 1678 ; the Rev. Hamnett Ward, D. Med. of Angers, rector of Porlock, Somerset, in 1662 ; and the Rev. William Stukely, M.D., rector of St. George's, Queen Square, in 1747, F.R.C.P., F.R.S., and F.S.A. II WARD AT STRATFORD — HIS NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE's DEATH — SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EPIDEMICS — CONVIVIAL HABITS OF THE DAY When Mr. Ward came to Stratford in the winter of 1662, he seems to have embarked without delay upon a course of medical experiments. The church bone- house, divided only by a door from the chancel, con- tained in itself a whole treasury of relics. He was interested in some question about the cranium, and there were plenty of skulls "knocked about the mazzard,"^ and piled on a shelf. "I searched thirty- four skulls, or thereabouts, and of them all I found but four which had the suture downe the forehead to the very nose ; another which seemed to have a squami- forme suture uppon the vertex, which I admird very much at."^ "Here's fine revolution, an we had the north aisle of the choir of Bristol Cathedral, It is to be noted that his "medycynes" against the pestilence were merely "gostly," Ward, between the names of Hugh of Evesham and Tideman, adds " Grysant, physician and pope." The reference is not obvious at first sight ; but he doubtless meant Guillaume de Grimoard, born at Grisac in Languedoc in 1309, a Benedictine, and abbot of St. Victor at Mar- seilles. He was for a time professor at Montpellier, the chief medical school of France. In 1362, on the death of Innocent VI., he was chosen pope at Avignon, and took the name of Urban V. See Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rovi (English translation, vi. 407). He is famous for his temporary transfer of the papacy from Avignon to Rome, 1367-70. He died in 1370, soon after his return from Rome. ^ Hainlet, v. i, 97. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 238. WARD'S MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS 305 trick to see't."^ Mr. Ward seems to have been a bold experimenter, perhaps not much averse from damaging a patient in the cause of science. '* Remember to hire some fellow or other to have a caustick made uppon him, that I may see the manner of itts operation." ^ When Goody Roberts caught the small-pox, he under- took the case, for, ''apothecaries in . . . suchlike diseases which are infectious, charge for attendance."^ He tried antimony for its action on the skin, quoting the authority of Dr. Sabel of Warwick, who gave a drachm at a time."* We observe that it was the chief ingredient in one of Hartman's receipts, invented by Dr. Cornachine of Pisa, who "made a great com- mentary on it," and strongly recommended by Digby. ''The Diaphoretick Antimony you may buy for six- pence an ounce," says Hartman ;^ so that it had also the merit of cheapness. Ward said that it succeeded very well with his patient: "so that in short, I think diaphoreticks canne do no hurt in feavours, practice itt constantly." "^ On another occasion he says: "Can- not you use a loving violence? That expression was Phipps his, of giving nature a fillip. . . . He used in desperate cases to give many cordials ; and when he gave any thing that was desperate say, ' With itt they may die, but without itt they will die.' " '' Mr. Ward paid particular attention to fevers, as being especially prevalent at Stratford. He distrusted the ordinary methods of cure, and especially hated the doctors' fondness for bleeding, as if it must be the "prologue to the play."^ He laughed at their " Chaldcean charms," and could see little to admire in viper-broth, a mole's liver, or the foot of a tortoise.^ 1 Hamlet, ti.s., 98-9. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 274. * Id., pp. 236, 106. * Id., p. 236. ■' Hartman, True Preserver and Restorer of Health, 16S2, pp. 275-6. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 236. '^ Id., p. 250. ® Id., p. 252. 9 /g^_^ pp_ 242-3. X 3o6 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE He was, in fact, remarkably free from the superstitions of his time ; but he would never open a vein when the moon was new or at the full.^ Most of the clerical practitioners in those parts seem to have hankered after the occult. Dr. Napier and his friend Mr. Marsh, both holding livings in Buckinghamshire, were astrologers as well as physicians.^ Mr. Marsh told a friend of Aubrey's that he worked under the direct guidance of certain "blessed Spirits"; and Nick Culpepper told Ward himself that "a physitian without astrologie is like a pudden without fat."^ The notes upon various local maladies have an interest in connection with Shakespeare's last illness. Ward remarked, for ex- ample, that after a cold winter and spring there was a great outbreak of measles, and *'men, about July, had agues and feavours in abundance " ; and most people were strangely disordered, "some with coughs, some with headach, some with one thing, some with an- other."^ Again, towards August, 1668, after a warm winter and spring and "a strange moist summer," there was a prevalence of throat disease and such-like distempers.^ All these feverish disorders were caused in Ward's opinion by " sootie vapours," or foul air.*^ Frogs and serpents could less live in Ireland, "foxes in Crete, stagges in Africa, horses in Ithaca, and fishes in warme water, than the heart of man abide with impure smels, or live long in infected air."^ His note on Shakespeare's illness is as follows: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson, had a merie meeting, and itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour 1 Id., p. 253. '^ Richard Napier or Napper, 1559-1634, was rector of Great Linford, near Newport Pagnell. See Aubrey, op. cit., i. 91. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 95. ■* Id., pp. 270-1 : "After a cold winter, a cool spring, and a very hot summer." ^ Id., p. 272; see also p. 160. "In the heat of sumer, about July and August (1668), wee had in Stratford fewer burials than ordinary." « Id., p. 254, 1 Id., p. 255. WARD ON SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH 307 there contracted."^ We need not dispute the existence of the fever. The question is why Mr. Ward should have put it down to "drinking too hard." The story- may have come from one of the Harts or Mrs. Hatha- way of Chapel Street. The Vicar might have heard it at the "Bear," among the gentlemen's servants, or at the new "Falcon," with the poet's crest on the sign- board, or the "George," where, as we know from his Diary, he dropped in to take a flagon of ale.^ We learn nothing from Dr. Hall's case-books, which as we have seen, contained no memoranda of the year in which his father-in-law died. But we are not without the means of forming some opinion on the matter. The first quarter of the seventeenth century was marked by the appearance of epidemic fevers more malignant in type than the old-fashioned tertians and agues. There was a "new disease " in 1612, to which Henry, Prince of Wales, fell a victim. It seems to have been of a typhoid nature, to judge by the official reports and the discussion of the symptoms by Dr. Norman Moore in the volume printed for St. Bartholo- mew's Hospital in 1882.^ The epidemic of 1615-16 was more like some kind of influenza. The signs are described by Ben Jonson in Every Man in his Htimour. " My head aches extremely on a sudden," says Kitely. "Alas, how it burns," cries his wife. She thinks that her "good mouse" must have caught the fever, though it is only jealousy. " Keep you warm : good truth it is this new disease, there's a number are troubled withal." ^ The more virulent typhus was of rare occurrence, except the occasional visitations of gaol-fever, as to which Ward's Diary contains some useful remarks : " Within these eight or nine years there happened the like in Southwark, which did in King James' time, ^ Id., p. 1S3. '^ Id., p. 141. ^ The Illness and Death of Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1612, 1882. * Every Man in his Humour, ii. i. 3o8 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE which Bacon mentions as killing the judges by the scent of the prisoners ; one speedie way to bring the plague." ^ War-typhus was not known in this country before 1643, and Shakespeare himself called England a " fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war."^ It raged as a pestilence during the Civil War. "Wounds of the body," says Ward, *^are more diffi- cultly cured when the air is corrupt, as appeared at Wallingford, in the time of the late warre, where, because the air was infected, allmost all wounds were mortall."^ "Mr. Swanne told mee a storie of the experience they had in feavours, in letting their men doe what they would ; their chyrurgions did keep them to a strict diet, as broaths and the like, in feavours, and they all died ; after, by permitting them to eat what they pleased in moderation, they lost not a man ; which argues the methodical doctors to bee infinitely out in their pretended way of cure."^ The "inch dyet," he concluded, "wherein wee eat by drammes and drink by spoonfuls, more perplexeth the mind than cureth the bodie."^ The Vicar described another "new dis- ease" which appeared at Stratford in his time, and commonly cloked itself "under the ague, so much the more dangerous." ^ Some thought that Prince Henry died of the ague ; but the more usual opinion was that he brought on his illness by an irregularity in melons or some such watery fruit. He had been bathing at Richmond too often. He was always taking oysters, like Lord Shaftesbury's friend, who had a full oyster-table at one end of the hall. The King himself had laughed at such a habit, saying, " Hee was a valiant man that 1 Id. , p. 256. '■^ Richard II. , ii. i , 43-4. 3 Ward's Diary, p. 235. ^ Id. , p. 253. ^ Id., p. 254. ^ Id., p. 256. FEVERS AND EPIDEMICS 309 durst first eat oysters," as Ward has noted. ^ Some said that the Prince played tennis too violently in a summer "excessive in degree and continuance of heat beyond the memory of living man " ; and yet people who got hot by exercise were not usually troubled with fevers **in regard that itt [the heat] evaporates the sootie vapours which cause them."^ Everyone was ready with some personal detail to account for the disease, like the gossips who talked to Mr. Ward about Shake- speare's case ; and they quite forgot that thousands of similar instances, to which these personalities could not be applied, were being registered in all parts of the country. Dr. Creighton has shown us in his work on Epidemics that the year in which Shakespeare died was extremely unhealthy. It was, indeed, a worse season than had been known since 1605, when there had been a bad outbreak of fever and plague ; and the mortality was not so great again until the fever-stricken summer of 1623. The winter that preceded the poet's death was of a very exceptional character. "Warm and tempestuous . . . winds prevailed from November to February." The storms came from the west and south-west, and there were East-Indian ships anchored for ten weeks in the Downs, unable to proceed down Channel. "The warm winds brought ' perpetual weep- ing-weather, foul ways and great floods.' " The spring came much too early, and we hear of blackbirds hatch- ing out their young in Archbishop Abbot's garden at Lambeth before the end of February. Altogether, though we do not know that any single type of disease predominated, it is clearly made out that there was in fact an extraordinary mortality.^ With regard to the Vicar's suggestion that the three poets held a convivial party, we should remember that at that time the subject of drunkenness was generally 1 Id., p. in. - Id., p. 254. •" C. Creighton, History of Epidemics, i. 513. 3IO ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE treated as a joke. "One Mr. Cutler, of our house," says the worthy Vicar, "when hee was allmost drunk, used to say, * Now, gentlemen, wee beginne to come to ourselves.'"^ He tells a story of a Dutchman who visited Oxford in his time, where "they did so liquor his hide " that he made an entry in his table-book of their Modus Bibendi called Once againe, "qui fecit me pernoctare in Bagley Wood."^ Burton was writing his book on Melancholy about the time of Shake- speare's death, though it was not published till about five years afterwards ; and according to him^ things were at such a pass "that he is no Gentleman, a very milksop, a clown, of no bringing up, that will not drink." Of the tradesmen he says that drinking was their ''' summuvi bonum . . . their felicity, life, and soul," and "their chief comfort, to be merry together in an Alehouse or Tavern, as our modern Musco- vites do in their Mede-inns, and Turks in their Coffee- houses." Their favourite proverb taught that there was as much valour in feasting as in fighting ; and so they "wilfully pervert the good temperature of their bodies, stifle their wits, strangle nature, and degenerate into beasts."^ If the meeting of the three poets took place at all, London would seem to be the likeliest place of rendezvous. Ben Jonson was employed there in 1616 in bringing out the collected edition of his works, and it was in the same year that he produced his comedy called The Devil is an Ass. His conversations with Drummond at Hawthornden took place only three years afterwards. They talked about the merits of the English poets, including Drayton and Shakespeare, and about Jonson's own knowledge of their characters and his behaviour towards them. If the meeting had taken place, it would be strange indeed that it should ^ Ward's Diary, p. 1 20. ^ Id. , p. 1 24. ■^ Burton, Anato7ny of Melancholy, part i. § 2, memb. 2, subs. 2 (ed. Shilleto, vol. i. 261-3). WARD ON SHAKESPEARE 311 not have been discussed on that occasion, especially as Jonson spoke of his dislike of Drayton. The visitor allowed that Michael Drayton's 'Mong verses pleased him not," and that he ** esteemed not of" Drayton; and he boasted that Drayton was afraid of him. At Strat- ford, however, it would seem the most natural of all things to suppose that Shakespeare would consort with the two great poets with whose names the townsmen were most familiar.^ Ill ward's memoranda on Shakespeare's art — illustrative phrases in the diary, Mr. Ward had something to say about Shakespeare's plays, though he seems to have known little about the poems. "I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all."^ Jonson was known to have said that Shakespeare "wanted art,"^ though he expressed a very different opinion in his introduction to the collected plays. Mr. Ward was perhaps referring to the ''Virgilian art," which was claimed for the poet on his monument. " Hee fre- quented the plays," continues the Vicar, "all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for itt had an allowance so large, that hee spent att the rate of ;^iooo a-year, as I have heard." Others put the amount at ^^300 ; but even the latter opinion may have been exaggerated. " Remember," says Ward, "to peruse Shakespeare's plays, and bee much versed in them, that I may not be ignorant in that ^ Notes of Ben Jonson s Conversations with William Drummond, ed. Lang (Shakespeare Soc. , 1842), p. 2. On p. 10 : " Drayton feared him ; and he esteemed not of him." ^ Ward's Diary, p. 183. •^ Notes oj Ben Jonson s Conversations , u.s., p. 3. 312 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE matter." He already doubts in his own mind, "whether Dr. HeyHn does well, in reckoning up the dramatick poets which have been famous in England, to omit Shakespeare." 1 Dr. Peter Heylyn of Mag- dalen College, Oxford, wrote a celebrated Description of the Worlds first published in 1621, and afterwards expanded into the folio Cosmography.'^ The Puritans hated him for his opinions, and one of their preachers pointed out Heylyn to the congregation as the ''geo- graphical knave " that went to and fro and compassed the earth. The King ordered his book to be sup- pressed, because France and the French King were given precedence over England ; but the author got out of it by saying that the printer had changed "was" into "is," and that he took the rest of the sentence out of Camden, and was besides only speaking of England before it was "augmented by Scotland."^ Mr. Thorns quotes Aubrey as saying that Dr. Heylyn wrote the History of St. George of Cappadocia, "which is a very blind business ... I don't thinke Dr. Heylin con- sulted so much Greeke."* He also wrote an account of the Presbyterians, the famous life of Archbishop Laud called Cyprianus Angliciis (1668), and a curious work called A Help to English History, which became the foundation of Collins' Peerage and Baronetage.^ His opinions on Shakespeare as a dramatist seem to have been "a very blind business," to borrow Aubrey's phrase. ■' Ward's Diary, pp. 183-4. ^ The title of the original work was Mt/c/joKocTjUos, A little description of the Great World, expanded into Cosniographie in four bookes, contain- ing the horographie and historic of the whole world, etc. , 4 pt. , London, 1652, fol. ^ W. J. Thorns, Anecdotes and Traditions, illustrative of Early English History and Literature (Camden Society), 1839, pp. 2-33 (No. Ivii. , from Sir R. L'Estrange, No, 274). ■* Id., 102-3 (No. clxxiv. ). •'' "HpwoXo7ta Atiglorum ; or, an Help to English History co7itaining a sttccession of all the Ki^igs of England, etc., 164 1, i2mo. GILDON ON SHAKESPEARE 313 Gildon has a better account of the matter, though he was very ignorant about the " smaller pieces." Shake- speare, he says, wrote many plays, such as The Tempest, brought much into esteem by Mr. Dryden, and Pericles, '* much admired in the Author's Lifetime and published before his Death " ; but, after his list of genuine and doubtful plays, he adds, "Our author writ little else, we find in print only two small pieces of Poetry pub- lish'd by Mr. Quarles, viz ; Venus and Adonis, Svo, 1602, and The Rape of Lucrece, 8vo, 1655." '^He was both Player and Poet ; but the greatest Poet that ever trod the stage. "^ Such, no doubt, was Mr. Ward's opinion. At any rate, he carried out his design of perusing the plays, since a folio Shakespeare appeared among the effects bequeathed by him in 1681 to his brother, the Rev. Thomas Ward, rector of Stow-on- the-Wold in Gloucestershire. The editor of his papers tells us that there was a slip of paper pasted into the volume with " W. Shakespeare" inscribed on it, and suggests that this may have been a genuine autograph obained at Stratford. ^ There are a few odd phrases in the Diary which show how constantly the compiler bore Shakespeare in mind. Of the May-weed, or wild camomile, Lyly had said in Euphues, that "the more it is trodden and pressed down, the more it spreadeth."^ Old Falstaff had repeated the metaphor : "The Camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows."* It was indeed a regular say- ing among the farmers, who hated the straggling "mathes" which infested every pathway through the corn. Ward probably knew nothing about Euphues ; but he may, perhaps, have had Falstaff in his mind when he pressed the metaphor into his service. "The ^ Langbaine, Account of English Dramatic Poets, continued by Gildon, 1699, pp. 126-9. ^ Ward's Diary, pp. 33, 24. ^ Euphues, 1579, ed. Arber, p. 46. "• I Henry IV., ii. 4, 441-2. 314 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE Church of God," he writes, "is like camomill, the more you tread itt, the more you spread itt."^ We may find another example in Shakespeare's sonnet upon changeful weather : *' Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day And make me travel forth without my cloak? "^ The motive of the poem is shown by the words of Sir Proteus when he rhapsodises in the Two Gentlemen of Verona " : *' O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away. " ^ In the second quatrain of the sonnet we are reminded that a half-cure is no cure at all ; it is not enough to wipe the rain-drops from the storm-beaten face : '* For no man well of such a salve can speak That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace." Mr. Ward may have had this in his thoughts when he wrote the memorandum in his book: " Hee that is branded with anie hainious crime, when the wound is cured, his credit will bee killed with the scarre.""^ He meditates upon death thus: "Wee poor men steal into our graves with no greater noise than can bee made by a sprigg of rosemary or a black ribband . . . no comet or prodigie tolls us the bell of our departure."^ We remember the "fires in the element" that boded ^ Ward's Diary, p. 211. 2 Sonnet xxxiv. ^ Tiijo Gentlemen of Verona, i. 3, 84-7. ^ Ward's Diary, p, 229. ^ It is not unlikely that Ward may have remembered the prodigies related in Macbeth, act ii. sc. 4. His phrase "tolls the bell of our departure" echoes the characteristic accent of the most striking- pas- sages in that tragedy. His sentiment, in a more violent form, occurs in Webster's White Devil, with a strong similarity of phrase. " O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twan To sweetest slumber ! no rough-bearded comet Stares on thy mild departure. ..." etc. SHAKESPEAREAN PHRASES IN WARD 315 CcBsar's death, and spirits running up and down in the night/ and how Shakespeare improved Plutarch's story by adding the "exhalations whizzing in the air," and all the phenomena of a great meteor-shower : '* Never till to-night, never till now, Did I go through a tempest dropping fire."^ For a more modern example we may cite Howell, tell- ing his father of the Queen's death at Denmark House: ''which is held to be one of the fatal Events that follow'd the last fearful Comet that rose in the Tail of the Constellation of Virgo.^^^ Mr, Ward found as many prodigies and omens in his own experience as had been observed during the siege of Jerusalem. "The Stars to do their duty did not fail ; the elements have often spoke already." So sang George Wither un- melodiously in his Sighs for the Pitchers;'^ and the Vicar adds, "Wee had two comets succeeding each other in few months before the late devouring pestilence and consuming fire, visibly seen in and over London, not to bee paralleld in any age."^ But the star-gazers, as Howell said, were always obtruding their predic- tions, and were so familiar with the heavenly bodies " that Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe were Ninnies to them." 6 In the same letter of Howell we have a Shakespearean phrase, of which Ward afterwards made a singular use in describing the Gunpowder Plot. " I fear, that while France sets all wheels a-going, and stirs all the Caco- dcEmons of Hell to pull down the House of Austria^ ^ North, Phitarch, ed. Rouse, vol. vii. pp. 202-3. ^ Julius CcBsar, ii. i, 44 ; i. 3, 9-10. 3 Epp. Ho-EL, ed. Jacobs, p. 105 (i. § 2, let. 7 : 20 Mar. 1618, O.S.). Mr. Jacobs points out {id., p. 719) that Anne's death took place at Hampton Court, not Denmark House, on 2 March, 1618-19. ■* Sigh[s\for the Pitchers : Breathed out in a Personal Contribution to the National Humiliation, etc. 1666, p. 16. " Ward's Diary, p. 309. '^ Epp. Ho-EL, p. 506(11. let. 76: Fleet, 3 Feb. 1646). 3i6 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE she may chance at last to pull it upon her own head."^ The last words seem to refer to what Henry VIII. said about the Supplication of the Beggars: " If a man should pull down an old stone wall and begin at the lower part, the upper part might chance to fall upon his head." 2 As to the cacodsemons, their very name implies that they were the worst of fiends. In Greek, the word is an adjective implying subjection to a bad angel or evil genius.^ In the science of astrology it was a term of deep meaning, and signified the '' twelfth House" in a figure of the heavens, ''because of its baleful signification."* Shakespeare, however, uses the word as if it only meant a demon. Queen Mar- garet applies it with great force to Richard III. : — '* Hie thee to hell for shame and leave this world, Thou Cacodaemon ! there thy kingdom is." ^ To understand further Ward's use of the phrase, we must turn to the dialogue between Duke Humphrey and his wife in the second part of Henry VI. " Nay, Eleanor," he chides; and "Ill-nurtured Eleanor," and "wilt thou still be hammering treachery?"^ When Ward describes the Gunpowder Plot, we see that he is combining two or three Shakespearean phrases, and is not borrowing from letter-writer or astrologer: "It is said of the gunpowder plott, that itt seemd a piece rather hammerd in hell by a conventicle of caco- demons, than tracd by humane invention."^ 1 Id., p. 505, U.S. ^ Fox, Acts mid Monuments, 3rd ed., 1576, p. 896. See Fish's Suppli- cation, ed. Arber, pp. xv.-xvi. ^ Liddell and Scott cite Aristophanes, Eq., 112, for the substantival use of Ka/coSaf/ttwj' = an evil genius, as in Shakespeare. ^ In this sense cf. Fletcher, The Bloody Brother, iv. 2 : " The twelfth the Cacodemon" (cited by New Eng. Diet. s.v.\ ^ Richard III., i. , 3, 143-4. ^ ^ Henry VI., i. 2, 41 50. "^ Ward's Diary, p. 163. WARD AND THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 317 IV HISTORICAL REFERENCES — WARD ON THE HISTORY AND AN- TIQUITIES OF STRATFORD AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD — HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH SHAKESPEARE'S RELATIONS Let US now consider some of the historical memo- randa, which are scattered without order through the Diary, though they all seem to have a direct bearing on the subject of the Vicar's studies. The first relates to one who, like his master, assumed ''the port of Mars," one of " the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt. " ^ *' Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick," says Ward, "was a roaring housekeeper, six oxen being usually eaten att a breakfast att his house in London, and every taverne full of his meate : and any who had acquaint- ance with the familie might have as much sodden and roost as hee could carrie on a dagger." ^ We next have a picture of "impious Beaufort, that false priest," who "limed bushes to betray the wings" of Humphrey of Gloucester : — " Beaufort's red sparkling" eyes blab his heart's malice, And Suffolk's cloudy brow his stormy hate."^ This Beaufort, said Ward, was the great Cardinal "who was reported to say on his deathbed, ' Iff all Eng- land could save his life, he was able, either by monie or policie, to procure itt.'"^ '■'■ King. How fares my Lord, speak, Beaufort, to thy sovereign. ^ Henry V., prologue, 11. 6, 13-14. '^ Ward's Diary, p. 139. =* 2 Henry VI., ii. 4, 53-4; iii. i, 154-5. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 177. 3i8 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE Cardinal. If thou be'st death, I'll give thee England's treasure, Enough to purchase such another island. So thou wilt let me live, and feel no pain." ^ In another passage he discusses the policy of Arch- bishop Chichele, who was accused, perhaps unjustly, of having promoted war with France in order to stave off an attack upon the Church. The opening scene in Henry V. explains the situation. The Commons were eager for a Bill, which had already passed their House in ''the Ignorant Parliament" : *' If it pass against us, We lose the better half of our possession." "Thus runs the bill," says Canterbury, and "This would drink deep," says Ely. " 'Twould drink the cup and all ! " " But what prevention ? " The conversation must be supposed to take place in the second year of Henry's reign, Chichele having been translated from St. David's to the primacy on the 27th of April, 1414. He explains to the Bishop of Ely that young Harry seems indifferent, or rather swaying somewhat towards the Church : " I have made an offer to his majesty . . . Which I have opened to his grace at large, As touching France, to give a greater sum Than ever at one time the clergy yet Did to his predecessors part withal." Harry of Monmouth, he maintains, is the heir of Phara- mond and Charlemagne, and of the Lady Ermengarde, from whom the fair Queen Isabel, otherwise the "French she- wolf," derived her title, the heir of Pepin and " Bertha Broadfoot," so that, as the learned prelate con- cludes in the next scene : *' As clear as is the summer's sun, King Pepin's title and Hugh Capet's claim. King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear To hold in right and title of the female."^ ^ 2 Henry VL, iii. 3, 1-4. '^ Henry F., i. 2, 86-9, ARCHBISHOP CHICHELE 319 The Bishop of Ely makes an excellent remark about the King's virtues having been hidden under the veil of wildness : "The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality " ; and the audience would naturally be pleased with the allusion to the great strawberry-banks, the saffron-beds, and the rose-thickets of Hatton House. " My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there. "^ Ward remarks with some acuteness that Hergry V. was not called ''his majesty." "The titles of kings have much alterd. Grace was the title of Henry the 4th, ex- cellent grace of Henry the 6th, and majestic of Henry the 8th ; before, they were usualy calld soveraigne lord, leige lord, and highnes." ^ "Archbishop Chichly," he says, "having persuaded King Henry the 5th to a warre with France, built a colledg in Oxon, to pray for the souls of those who were killed in the warres of France. He called it All soulls, as intended to pray for all, but more especialy for those killed in the warrs." " King Henry the 5th . . . again had a great mind to the clergie's revenues in England, and had probably effected itt, had not Chickley advisd him to warrs in Fraunce."^ The Vicar has left us a very interesting account of the town and its immediate neighbourhood. "Wee are ignorant," he writes, " of the reason of the names of ^ Henry V.,i. i, 60-2 ; Richard III. ^ iii. 4, 32-4. The Bishop of Ely in Henry V, would be John de Fordham (d. 1425) ; in Richard HI. John Morton, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1500). ^ Ward's Z)?arj/, p. 311. The title of "majesty" was assumed first in Spain by Charles V. after his election as Emperor. " The vanity of other courts soon led them to imitate the example of the Spanish " (Robertson, Charles V., bk. i. p. 116, in one vol. ed.). In Richard III., for example, Shakespeare alternates between the use of "grace" and " majesty." ^ Ward's Diary, pp. 172, 310. 320 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE many townes and places in England, they being of Saxon original ; for the Romans first, and the Saxons afterwards, did without doubt give names to most places."^ " Stratford is so called from a street passing over a ford." "Avon a British word, aufona with them signifying as much as fluvius with us." "Arden signifies a woody place, and was so used by the Galls and the old Britons."^ We place his scattered notes in some order of date, ^i Stratford superr Avon belonged to the Bishop of Worcester, three hundred years before the conquest. . . . Our church is of auncient structure, and little lesse than the conqueror's time. Robert de Stratford, who afterwards was bishop, was parson of Stratford. . . . Our Thursday mercate att Stratford was graunted to the towne in King Richard the First's time, through the meanes of John de Constantiis, Bishop of Worcester. ... A fair procurd for Stratford by Walter de Maydenstone, made Bishop of Worcester in Edward the Second's time, which should last fifteen days, beginning on the eve of St. Peter and St. Paul. . . . John de Chesterton, a lawyer in Edward the Third's time, hadd the mannor of Stratford, in lease of the Bishop of Worcestor ; but in the third of Edward the 6, Nicholas Heath passd itt to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, for lands in Worcestershire. Stratford was made a corporation in the seventh of Edward the sixth. In the eighteenth of Elizabeth, the mannor was graunted to Ralph Coningsby, by lease for twenty-one years. "^ He gives Sir Hugh Clopton the credit of having built the transept, or '* north and south crosse," of Stratford Church. He has a notice also of the arms on Sir Hugh's cenotaph : " Itt was a usage in auncient time, where they could hitt of anything that sounded neer or like their names, to bear itt in their armes, as 1 Id., p. 291. 2 /^^^ pp_ 18^^ 1^8^ j^^_ 3 Id., pp. 185-7. THE CLOPTONS AND ARDENS 321 Clopton hath a tunne."^ No doubt he was thinking of Shakespeare with the De Mauley falcon and lance, and Lucy with his fishes hauriant ; and the Cloptons might have given him an example from Suffolk, where Mr. Abel, a great clothworker, had a monument in Nayland Church : "and to signify his name, as also to make up his coat-armour, the letter A. and the picture of a bell are cast upon the monument. "^ His notice of the old Arden stock is not quite in accordance with the received opinion. Mr. Hunter, for instance, taking Edward Arden's execution as a starting-point, gives the following account of his de- scendants. By his wife, a daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton, he had three daughters, who married into the great Warwickshire families of Devereux, Somerville, and Shuckborough ; "he had also a son, Robert Arden, who recovered Park -hall, and was living there in 162 1. From him several Ardens de- scended ; and in the female line the persons are in- numerable who descend from these Ardens."^ But as to the male line, Mr. Ward only says : "The last of the Ardens, which was Robert, dyed at Oxford, unmarried, an. 1643."^ The list of Warwickshire gentlemen on the King's side printed in Symonds' Diary for 1645, contains no mention of any Arden, though it notices Sir Richard Shuckborough and Mr. Devereux of Shustoke as having taken an active part, and "Justice Combes of Stratford-upon-Avon," who "sitts at home."^ 1 Id., p. 140. A similar case in point is the tun in tlie punning coat-of- arms of Taunton. On p. 187 Ward notes : " Sir John Clopton's sonne buried in the vault under his seat, by mee on Saturday night, Aug, 11, 1666." 2 There is now no monument of the kind remaining at Nayland — unless one of the brasses whose matrices remain in the floor of the church may have displayed this coat. ^ Joseph Hunter, Ne-w Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shakespeare, 1845, i. 33-43. * Ward's Diary, p. 147. ^ Symonds, Diary of Marches kept by the Royal Army (Camden Society), 1859, pp. 191-2. "Shistock" is his form of "Shustoke." Y 322 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE Mr. Ward's account of the Charlecote family is for the most part derived from Dugdale. "The Lucies are descended of the Montforts : William de Lucy was heir to Walter de Cherlcote. . . . The Lucies great lovers of horses aunciently, proved by one of them giving forty mark to a London merchant for one in King Edward the First's time, which was then a vast summe." Sir Thomas Lucy the first much enlarged Charlecote Park ' ' by the addition of Hampton Woods. " ^ Of Sir Thomas Lucy, his grandson, we hear some- thing in Howell's correspondence. He was supposed, at any rate, to be in Venice, and received jovial messages from friends at home: "My Lady Miller commends her kindly to you, and she desires you to send her a compleat Cupboard of the best Christal Glasses Murano can afford by the next shipping ; besides she intreats you to send her a pot of the best Mithridate, and so much of Treacle. . . . Farewell, my dear Tom^ have a care of your courses, and con- tinue to love him who is — Yours to the Altar, J.H."^ Mithridate and Venice -treacle were supposed to be antidotes to all kinds of poison ; and so Love, by Diella's poet, was called the " Mithridate to overcome the venom of disdain."^ We suppose that the Vicar's friend, Mr. Russell,* was the son or near relation of Mr, Thomas Russell, who knew the poet very well and acted as supervisor of his will. Mr. Ward has one or two anecdotes about them which shows that they belonged to the celebrated ^ Ward's Diary, p. 187. The order of the citations is slightly altered. See Dugdale, Aiitiquities of Warwickshire, ed. Thomas, 1730, i. 502, etc. Ward adds to the words " Hampton Woods," the note " (Dugdale)." 2 Epp. Ho-El., U.S., pp. 419-20 (ii. let. 27 : Westm., x^Jan. 1635). ^ R. L. , Diella, Sonnet xii. 9-10, in Arber, Eng. Garner, vii. 195. So in Taylor's Pennyles Pilgriviage, 1618 : " Mithridate, that vigrous health preserves." * Ward's Diary, p. 285 : " Mr. Russell told me of an auncient minister in their country," etc. THE LUCIES AND THE RUSSELLS 323 west-country stock. *' I have heard this account of the rise of the family of the Russels. About the time when Philip, King of Castile, father to Charles the Fifth, was forcd by foul weather into the harbour of Weymouth, Sir Thomas Trenchard bountifully enter- taind this royal guest ; and Mr. Russel, a gentleman or esquire of Kingston Russel, in the countie of Dorset, who had travaild beyond seas, and was much accomplisht himself, was sent for to compleat the enter- tainment. King Philip took such delight in his com- panie, that when hee went home, hee recommended him to Henry the 7th, as a person of abilities to stand before princes. King Henry the 8th much favoured him, making him controller of his house, privy counseller, and made him Lord Russel. Edward the 6th, (made him) Earl of Bedford. Two rich Abbeys, Tavistock and Thorne, in Cambridgeshire, fell to him att the dissolution."^ There are other entries bearing on the domestic affairs of Shakespeare's family. We hear of a Stratford tradesman called Thomas Rogers, a relation of the Philip Rogers whom Shakespeare sued for debt in the Borough Court. ^ He left two sons, Joseph and Thomas ; and when administration was granted to Thomas Rogers the younger, ^'Joseph was, as itt were, distracted. Witness Goody Hathaway and Mr. Burnet."^ This "Good-wife" is thought to have been Mrs. Joan Hathaway, widow of Thomas Hathaway of Weston and afterwards of Stratford, who lived as a widow in a shop at Chapel Street from 1655 ^o her death in 1696. Her death, it is generally agreed, "terminated the connection of the poet's Hathaways with Stratford and its neighbourhood."* It may be ^ Id., 175. Thorne is usually spelt Thorney. Woburn also was granted him in 1550. '-^ See Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 77-8. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 187. ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 189. 324 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE mentioned, however, that Mrs. Baker, while in charge of the " Hathaway Cottage," in 1866, wrote a letter, in the writer's possession, in which she claimed to be a member of the family. "My great-grand- mother," she said, "was the last of the Hathaway name, it having been since lost by marriage " ; and she appears to have been under the impression that she might be described as being in some sense "a descend- ant of Anne Hathaway." Mr. William Hart, the hatter, who married Shake- speare's sister Joan, died in the same year and month as the poet ; but his widow lived on at the house in Henley Street, next to the Swan Inn, for about thirty years afterwards.^ The Vicar has something to say about their trade ; and it seems, indeed, as if he had been ready with a remark before every window and penthouse. "Hats," he notes, "invented since the reign of Queen Elizabeth." ^ He may have had the Stratford Register in mind, where the epithet "hatter" is given to William Hart for the first time in 1605.^ He was talking, at any rate, of high hats. There were hats as well as hosen, we suppose, from a period of remote antiquity. The rustic in Lydgate's London Lyckpeny saw hats enough near Westminster Hall, ' ' Where flemynges began on me for to cry, Master, what will you copen or by? Fyne felt hatts, or spectacles to reede, Lay down your sylver, and here you may speede."^ We find all kinds of delicate fine hats in the plays, the "thrummed hat,"^ the rye-straw,*^ the "copatain," that went with velvet hose and a scarlet cloak,^ besides the pilgrim's cockle hat as shabby as his clouted ^ Id., i. 387. She died in 1646. ^ Ward's Diary, pp. 296-7. ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 52. * St. vii. , as reprinted in Skeat's Specimens of English Literature^ 779^-7579. ® Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 2, 80. ^ Tempest, iv. i, 136. ' Taming of the Shrew, v. i, 69-70. HATTERS AND BARBERS 325 shoon.i There was a Statute of Hats and Caps which prescribed the height and quality of the head-gear for the various grades of society ; it had been passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth to check the sudden luxury of the steeple-like and bell-shaped structures, and the threatened collapse of square-caps and round-caps and old English bonnets of blue. " Round knitt caps were the ancient mode," says Mr. Ward, '' before hatts came upp, and a capper of Bewdley then was a very good trade. "2 Before the barber's shop he muses on ^'crisped locks," and tresses that live *'a second life on second head."^ The poet had compared dark hair to wires, and waving curls to a golden mesh, that entrapped the hearts of men ''faster than gnats in cobwebs."* "Fair hair, as the poets say, is the prison of Cupid; that is the cause, I suppose," the Vicar continues, "the ladies make rings and brooches, and lovelocks to send to their lovers, and why men curl and powder their hair, and prune their pickatevants."^ The last term is taken by his editor as referring to mustachios, but it is more likely that Ward meant the pointed beards, peaked a la Pique-devant. He had something to say about the tithes which figure so largely in the list of Shakespeare's possessions. It appears that they might have been abolished under the Commonwealth, though "warranted by an Act of State as high as Offa's time," had it not been for the interference of Francis Rouse. " The buisnes of tithes in the Protector's time being once hotly agitated in the council, Mr. Rouse stood upp and bespake them thus: 'Gentlemen,' says he, 'I'll tell you a storie ; being travelling in Germany, my boot in a place being ^ Hamlet, iv. 5, 25. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 297. ^ Merchant of Venice, iii. 2 ; Sonnet Ixviii. ^ Sonnet cxxx. ; Merchant of Venice, u.s. ® Ward's Diary, p. 103. 326 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE torne, I staid to have itt mended, and then came to mee a very ingenious man and mended itt ; I staying the Lord's day in that place, saw one who came upp to preach who was very like the man who mended my boot ; I inquired and found itt was he, itt grievd mee much ; they told me they had tithes formerly, but now being taken away, the minister was faine to take any imployment on him to get a living.' I heard," said Ward, "this storie turnd the Protector, and hee presently cried out, ' Well, they shall never mend shoes while I live.'"^ ^ Id., p. 121. III. DOWDALL, AUBREY, ETC. I DOWDALL's letter to SOUTHWELL, 1693 — RODD's PREFACE — DOWDALL AT KINETON — HIS VISIT TO STRATFORD WE shall now examine the statements of persons who visited Stratford before the close of the seventeenth century, either with a view of inspecting the monuments or of picking up anecdotes about Shakespeare's life. We shall begin with the account of Stratford given by a barrister named Dowdall, who visited the town in 1693 on his way to the Assizes at Warwick. Some of his recollections are cited by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps under the heading of "Anecdotes respecting Shakespeare, from a little manuscript account of places in Warwickshire by a person named Dow- dall, "^ and the whole work was published in 1838 by Mr. Rodd, "the learned bookseller, "^ in a pamphlet entitled Traditionary Anecdotes of Shakespeare. The manuscript had come into his possession about four years previously at the sale in which Lord de Clifford's papers were dispersed. It is in the form of a letter, dated the loth of April, 1693, and written from Butler's " Merston,"^ "which is eight miles from Warwick, six miles from Stratford-super-Avon, and one mile from Kineton," not far from the main London road, which 1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 71-2 (being No. vii. of the extracts grouped under the general heading of " Biographical Notices "). 2 Thomas Rodd the younger (1796-1849), who carried on his father's (d. 1822) business from 1821. The pamphlet is so small that references in the footnotes would be superfluous. ^ Usually " Marston." 327 328 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE led to Stratford by Kineton Field and Edgehill. " The Assize, "says the writer, " begins at Warwick to-morrow morning, and in order to be there to hear the charge &c. from Mr. Justice Clodpate, viz. Justice Ne — 1, my friend and I ride thither this afternoon ; we shall stay there till thursday." The letter has no formal signature, but ends with a jocular message "from your very faith- full Kinsman and most affte humble servt till death, John at Stiles." It is addressed to the writer's cousin, Mr. Edward Southwell, and was endorsed by him, ''From Mr. Dowdall, Description of several places in Warwickshire." "Brief as the notice of the poet is," said Mr. Rodd in his interesting preface, "it is nevertheless of great curiosity and importance, since it appears to indicate the source of much of the information which has been handed down to us by Aubrey ; and to point out one of the persons who have invented, or perpetuated, the few anecdotes of his early life that have reached us." He quotes Malone for the statement that Aubrey col- lected his materials about 1680, and adds that, from the coincidences in the two sets of anecdotes, there can be no doubt that both received them from the clerk who is mentioned in the letter. He expresses his own opinion that the reports of "the vagrant tenor" of the poet's youth are no more entitled to credit than the later fables which have been thrust into the biographies. "The most monstrous conjectures respecting him," he complains, "have been boldly advanced, many of them at total variance with each other." He quotes the old poaching story as an example of the effect produced by naming a well-known locality as the scene of a legendary occurrence. A visit to the supposed place of an imaginary event "hallows the deception," till even the most incredulous yield to the delusion. When Malone, he says, proved that there was no park at Charlecote, "the Lucys . . . shifted the locality,". being THOMAS RODD ON SHAKESPEARE 329 determined not to lose the honour of being robbed by Shakespeare. An amusing illustration is added from the Life of Sir Walter Scott. The incident is taken from a letter written by Miss Scott to Mrs. Lockhart from Carlisle. "We went to the Castle, where a new showman went through the old trick of pointing out Fergus Maclvor's very dungeon. Peveril said — ' Indeed — are you quite sure, sir?' And on being told there could be no doubt, was troubled with a fit of coughing, which ended in a laugh. The man seemed exceeding indignant : so when papa moved on, I whispered who it was. I wish you had seen the man's start, and how he stared and bowed as he parted from us ; and then rammed his keys into his pocket and went off at a hand-gallop to warn the rest of the garrison. But the carriage was ready, and we escaped a row."^ Mr. Rodd next referred to the absurd suggestion that the ''well-made and graceful" Shakespeare was lame of one leg, because in the thirty- seventh Sonnet he compared himself to a decrepit father, and complained of being "made lame by fortune's dearest spite " ; while, of course, no attention is paid to the other half of the metaphor : — " So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give That I in thy abundance am sufficed And by a part of all thy glory live." In his Macbeth again, and in Henry VIII., he has left us, says Mr. Rodd, complete evidence of his being a Protestant; "yet, because there are in his Hamlet some allusions to the rites of the Roman church, he has been set down as a Catholic." The reference is to Ophelia's "maimed rites," and the death of Hamlet's father " unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled " ; ^ but it ^ Lockhart, Life of Scott, i vol. ed., 1845, pp. 687-8. - Hamlet, v. i, 242 ; i. 5, 77. 330 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE should have been stated that there is a definite asser- tion by the Rev. Richard Davies, made at some time before 1708, that Shakespeare "died a papist." ^ Nothing, however, has been adduced that is worthy of the name of evidence, and the statement may now be disregarded. "It would appear," says Mr. Rodd, "from the practice of some recent writers, that where the great dramatist is the subject, each conceives him- self at liberty to add whatever his fancy may dictate to those already apocryphal accounts of him " ; and as a climax he points out that someone had the hardihood to doubt the poet's identity, "having laboured to prove that he was one and the same person with Christopher Marlowe ! " In reading the young barrister's sprightly effusion one must regret that he only cast a glance towards "our English tragedian," though he was rapt in admiration of the Beauchamp tombs at Warwick, being to his mind such a fair and stately assembly " which . . . will afford matter enough to feed the most hungry pen in Europe for a considerable time." He rebukes his dear cousin for the brevity of his news from home. " But 'tis folly to expect a fee-farm of joys in this world ; we must down on our marrow-bones, and thank heaven for affording us one single glance. This epistle (I suppose) you may justly call Mr. D — ll's travels into Warwickshire, for herein you shall have such par- ticulars as I can at present call to mind, and by this prolix relation I shall partly (tho' not designedly) re- venge the brevity of yours. On Friday, the loth of March last, I set out from London, and lay that night at Aylesbury. The next day I came hither to Butler's- Merston." He then proceeds to describe his friend's ancient mansion with its demesnes, the noble fishponds and great dovehouse, "and in the stables there be as ^ Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., li. 71. See full discussion, id., i. 263-6, and supra, pp. 40-1. WARWICK GENTLEMEN AT KINETON 331 stately a number of horses as a man can wish or desire to ride on." ^ ^' Having come so far, I may now venture to inform you of our advances abroad ; and in order to that, I must acquaint you first that there is a knott in these parts that meet at Kineton every Saturday in the after- noon, who are one and All, of which number my friend is one ; and they are as true and sincere as they are generous and hospitable." This looks like a reference to the Merry Wives of Windsor: ''Shallow, etc. Well met, Master Ford. ''Ford. Trust me, a good knot: I have good cheer at home, and I pray you all go with me." Then Ford becomes afraid that some tough knot might be knit, ''a knot, a ging, a pack, a conspiracy," against him ; ^ and we find something like it in Mr. Pepys' Diary, when he notes that ''all do conclude Mr. Coventry, and Pett, and me, to be of a knot ; and that we do now carry all things before us." ^ The chief person in the Warwickshire society was Mr. Charles Newsham of Chadshunt,^ a good scholar and historian, ''a great admirer of your Royal-Society- learning, but not to be infatuated with the itch of experi- mental discoveries, &c." Next came his son-in-law, Mr. Peeres, who lived at his manor of Alveston on the Avon.^ ''Another of the fraternity is Justice Bentley, an honest true-hearted gentleman," living at Kineton. 1 " The Manor House has belonged to descendants of the Woodward family since the time of Queen Mary. Richard Woodward and his brother, who supported King- Charles, were both slain at the battle of Edge Hill." — Murray's Warwickshire, p. 105. 2 Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 2, 51-3; iv. 2, 123. ^ 16 Dec. 1662, in Diary, ed. Braybrooke, 3rd ed., 1848, ii. 79. ■* A mile and a half N.N.E of Kineton. " Chadshunt House was formerly the seat of the Newsham family, in the park is the well of St. Chad, in which pilgrims used to bathe," etc. Murray's Warwickshire, p. 104. '" Two miles N.E. of Stratford, close to the road from Kineton. 332 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE Mr. Loggins of Butler's - Marston, was the fourth : ''excellent company, and keeps as excellent cyder." From all these gentlemen Mr. Dowdall received oblig- ing civilities ; "and, as a mark of their kindness and esteem, they have admitted me of their society. . . . Now I proceed to inform you what antiquities I have observed, and now and then, if I should prove tedious by telling stories relating to these matters, you will, I hope, excuse it, for 'tis what I thought worthy my remembrance, and by consequence my friends. The first remarkable place in this county that I visited, was Stratford-super-Avon, where I saw the effigies of our English tragedian, Mr. Shakespeare : part of his epitaph I sent Mr. Lowther, and desired he would impart it to you, which I find by his last letter he has done ; but here I send you the whole inscription. Just under his effigies in the wall of the chancell is this written. Judicio Pylium &c."^ The visitor does not describe the "effigies." "Near the wall," continued Mr. Dowdall, "where his monument is erected, lieth a plain freestone, underneath which his body is buried, with his epitaph made by himself a little before his death : — " ' Good friend, for Jesus sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.' "The clerk that showed me this church was above eighty years old. He says that this Shakespeare was formerly in this town bound apprentice to a butcher, but that he ran from his master to London, and there was received into the playhouse as a servitour, and by this means had an opportunity to be what he afterwards proved. He was the best of his family ; but the male •^ Halliwell-Phillipps printed " Pylum," and the sentence "Just . . . written." Rodd probably altered the error, but omitted to transcribe the sentence. THE STRATFORD TOMBS 333 line, is extinguished. Not one, for fear of the curse above said, dare touch his grave-stone, tho' his wife and daughters did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him." The Parish-books show that one William Castle, born in 1628, was clerk and sexton at the time of Mr. Dowdall's visit, and throughout all the latter part of the century. It has been frequently assumed that it was he who gave the curious informa- tion about the poet and his family; but it is very unlikely that a clever young barrister should have taken a person of about sixty-five for a man ''above eighty years old," more especially as on that theory he would have been talking to one who was born in Shakespeare's lifetime. The visitor made no special remark upon Mr. John Combe's tomb, which is generally admired as Gerard Johnson's best piece of work ; he merely said that there were some fine monuments, including one in memory of George Carew, Lord Carew of Clopton, created Earl of Totnes in 1626.^ He was *' a considerable man in Ireland in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and also in the time of King James, both there and in England. He died tempor. Car i. His brave actions and titles of honour are here upon his monument enumerated, which are too tedious to be here inserted. There is also the monument of the Cloptons here, who are an ancient family : there are some of them still remaining in this town." ^ In 1605 he had been created Baron Carew of Clopton House. The date of his death on the monument is 27 March 1629. He married Joyce, daughter and heiress of William Clopton and Anne his wife. His father was George Carew, Dean of Exeter (d. 1583). 334 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE II DOWDALL's visit to WARWICK — THE BEAUCHAMPS AND NEVILLES IN SHAKESPEARE — THE GREVILLES " I shan't trouble you any more in this place," Dow- dall continues, ''but my next stage shall be to the Church of Warwicke." He begins his description of that church with an account of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who fought at Crecy and Poitiers, and of his son Thomas, the thirteenth Earl, whose honours were forfeited under Richard II., but restored when the new reign began. " I made my next step to the monument of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, son to the last mentioned Earl Thomas : he died at Roan,^ anno 1439, and lies buried in a vault here ; in memory of whom stands the noblest monument that ever my eyes beheld ; 'tis in my judgment, much beyond Henry the seventh's. His statue in brass, double gilt, is the most exact and lively representation that hitherto I ere met with." Then follows the in- scription, showing how the said " Richard Beauchamp, late Earl of Warwicke, Lord Despenser of Bergavenny, and of mony greate other Lordships," died in 1439, " he being at the time Lieutenant Generall and Govern- our of the Roialme of France and of the Dutchy of Normandy by sufficient authority of our soveraign lord the King Harry the VI." Round the main effigy were fourteen statues of gilt copper representing the great man's kindred. "To recount the many noble exploits of this man would require a treatise of itself — nay, the stories of him which still continue fresh in this town of Warwick would be very tedious," says Mr. Dowdall. The autobiography of Thomas Hearne the antiquary shows that there was such a separate ^ i.e. Rouen. BEAUCHAMP iMONUMENTS 335 treatise, and gives a clue to the source of the traditions current in Warwick. It was compiled by John Ross the Hermit, who wrote the history of Warwick Castle, and is catalogued by Hearne among the works which he had edited as ''The contents or Arguments of John Ross's book (in the Cottonian Library) of the story of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. From a MS. of Sir William Dugdale in Museo Ashmol. Oxon. pag. 359."^ Might we not presume that Shakespeare would be familiar with the history of the Beauchamp line, and made some reference to all these local glories? Perhaps, indeed, this may be the origin of his "brass eternal" and the "tombs of brass" in the sonnets,^ and the opening words of Love's Labour's Lost : — " Let fame,, that all hunt after in their lives. Live register'd upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death. "^ But on turning to the historical plays the great Earl's portraiture is found to be strangely distorted. Let us take the first part of Henry VI. The scene in the Temple Garden is ascribed by most competent critics to Shakespeare,** though many other passages may have been written by Marlowe or another. Its date is fixed, by the entry of Edmund Mortimer, to some time between Henry the Sixth's accession in 1422 and ^ The Life of Mr. Thomas Hearne , . . from his own MS. copy, 1762, p. 100, in appendix relating to his edition of the Monk of Eveshan's History. No. i of the same series of appendices describes his own edition of "John Ross's historical account of the Earle of Warwick, from an eminent MS. in the hands of Tho. Ward, of Warwick, Esqr., p. 217." ^ Sonnets Ixv., cvii. ; also Iv., "the gilded monuments of princes"; ci., "a gilded tomb." The phrase in Hamlet, i. 4, 48-50 (quoted below, p. 343), is admirably descriptive of many contemporary monuments that Shakespeare must have seen, e.g. William Clopton's tomb at Stratford or the Hunsdon tomb in Westminster Abbey — both erected about 1596, before the date oi Hamlet, ^ Love s Lahours Lost, i. i, 1-3. •* e.g. Dr. Furnivall and Dr. A. W. Ward (a cautious assent). 336 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE Mortimer's death in 1425, and the "Warwick" of that time was, therefore, the high and puissant Prince who died at Rouen and was laid at Warwick " in a fair chest of stone. "^ He was standing in the garden when the debate between Plantagenet and Somerset began. "Judge you, my Lord of Warwick, then between us." As we all know, he plucked the White Rose of York, loving no colours, as he said, and showing no "colour of flattery." But what a picture he draws of his own position and character. His mind is given up to hawks and hounds. He can judge between a couple of Toledos " which bears the better temper " : " Between two horses, which doth bear him best ; Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye ; I have, perhaps, some shallow spirit of judgment. But, in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw."^ The great Earl was succeeded by his son Henry, Earl and Duke of Warwick, crowned "King of the Isle of Wight" shortly before his death in 1445. His sister, Anne Beauchamp, was permitted to carry the earldom with her on her marriage with Richard Neville, eldest son of the Earl of Salisbury ; ^ he was Earl of Salis- bury himself before he died at Barnet, but will always be best remembered as Warwick the Kingmaker. The second part of Henry VI. confuses the valiant Beauchamp with his son-in-law, the more popular hero. Beauchamp had helped to conquer Anjou and Maine and our other possessions in France. But the credit ^ Richard Beauchamp had succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father in 1401. ^ i Henry VI., ii. 4. 3 Dug-dale, Ant. War., ed. Thomas, 1730, i. 414-15. The widow of Earl Richard, Isabelle le Despenser, who died 27th Dec, 1439, was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, where, in 1422, she had erected the beau- tiful chantry-chapel to the memory of her first husband, the Earl of Abergavenny and Worcester — another Richard Beauchamp, and cousin to her second husband. Hence the Earl of Warwick's title, u.s., " Lord Despenser of Bergavenny." THE EARLS OF WARWICK 337 of his actions is claimed for his successor, Richard Neville, when the provinces were yielded up in 1445 : " Anjou and Maine ! myself did win them both ; Those provinces these arms of mine did conquer : And are the cities that I got with wounds, Deliver'd up again with peaceful words ? Mort Dieu! "i Even if we go back to the times before Agincourt, we find the same confusion. There is a ''Warwick" in the second part of Henry IV. He is, of course, no other than the great Earl entombed among the double- gilt statues. But the King is made nevertheless to call him "Cousin Nevil," as if he must have belonged to the blood of ''the setter-up and plucker-down of Kings." '^ Mr. Dowdall evidently followed all the lineal changes with interest. " There be severall other large and fine monuments belonging to the family of the Nevilles, that after the Beauchamps came to be Earls of Warwick, and also many noble monuments in memory of the family of the Dudleys, who were Earls of Warwick after the extinguishment of the Nevilles." "Besides this, there is the monument of Sir Foulke Greville, which, as I am informed by the learned in the orders of building, is for its architecture inferior to none in the kingdom. The epitaph on the tomb is in my mind worth your knowing, which is this, viz : — ' Fulke Grevil, servant to Queene Elizabeth, Councellour to King James, and Friend to Sr Phillip Sidney : Trophceum peccati:'' Now I will bid adieu to monuments and cast my eye on Kenilworth." The same thought appears in the title of the biography, "The Life of the re- nowned Sir Philip Sidney. With the true interest of England, &c : Written by Sir Fulke Grevil, knight, lord Brook, a servant to Queen Elisabeth, and his ^ 2 Henry VI., i. i, 119-23. '- 2 Henry IV.-, iii. i, 66. 338 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE companion and friend."^ Lord Brooke died in 1628, and was succeeded by his cousin, Robert Greville, who was killed at Lichfield in 1643, upon St. Chad's Day, by a shot from a deaf and dumb boy among the de- fenders of St. Chad's Cathedral.^ Lord Brooke, says Aubrey, "was armed cap a pied; only his bever was open. I was then at Trinity College in Oxon. and doe perfectly rememember the story. "^ The first Lord Brooke has earned a title for devoted friendship, as Eusebius was content to take the name *' Pamphili," as the friend of his master, St. Pamphilus. But Aubrey, who loved the memory of Lord Bacon, has left a bitter paragraph about Greville, which cannot properly be omitted. "In his lordship's prosperity. Sir Fulke Grevil, lord Brookes {sic) was his great friend and acquaintance ; but when he (Bacon) was in disgrace and want, he was so unworthy as to forbid his butler to let him have any more small beer, which he had often sent for, his stomach being nice, and the small beere of Grayes Inne not liking his pallet. This has donne his memory more dishonour then Sir Philip Sydney's friendship engraven on his monument hath donne him honour. "^ 1 Published in 1652. Title in Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, i. 275. ^ There is a good account of the legend of Lord Brooke's death at the hands of "Dumb Dyott " in Mr. A. B. Clifton's Cathedral Church of Lichfield, 1898, pp. 12-15. The shot was said to have been fired from the central tower, the spire of which was destroyed in the ensuing siege. Lord Brooke took Stratford-upon-Avon before his death. •^ Aubrey, op. cit., i. 275, sub Greville. * Id., i. 67, sub Francis Bacon. Aubrey's citation of authorities which he intended to verify some day is very characteristic. " Vide . . . History, and (I thinke) Sir Anthony Weldon." HALL'S LETTER TO THWAITES 339 III WILLIAM hall's LETTER TO EDWARD THWAITES, 1 694 Mr. Dowdall's account of his visit should be read in connection with the letter by William Hall found at the Bodleian in 1884 and published in the papers of June the 24th in that year ; a copy was also printed by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps.^ William Hall was a young gradu- ate of Queen's College, Oxford, and his letter was addressed to his friend, Edward Thwaites, who was already a Fellow of that College. It must have been written after the end of the autumn term, or about Christmas, in the year 1694, the date being approxi- mately fixed by a reference to a promised list of Stafford- shire words, which duly arrived in Oxford on the 2nd of January. Mr. Thwaites was a great philologist. He lectured on Anglo-Saxon and helped Hickes in his Treasury of the Northern Languages ; "a very beautiful transcript of Somner's (Anglo-Saxon) Dictionary, with Thwaites' additions, is now among the Ballard MSS. in the Bodleian, written by himself with the greatest accuracy and neatness."^ He was beloved by all his contemporaries. Mr. Brome, in writing to Ballard, gives us an anecdote about him on the authority of Dr. Bernard, who was a great book collector, as well as being Serjeant-Surgeon to Queen Anne. **Mr. Thwaites I was most intimately acquainted with and have by me several of his letters. He was certainly one ^ Shakespeare's Grave. Notes of Traditions that were current at Stratford-on-Avon in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century, privately printed, 1884. '^ Thwaites' various accomplishments are recorded in Diet. Nat. Biog., vol. Ivi. In 1698 he became Fellow and "Anglo-Saxon Preceptor" of Queen's College ; it was during this period that Hickes' Treasury appeared (1703-5). In 1708 he became Regius Professor of Greek and Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy. He died at Iffley in 171 1. 340 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE of the greatest geniuses of the age : much a gentleman, a good-natured man. His patience and magnanimity in his sufferings from lameness was beyond compare : so great that it was not impertinent in Serjeant Bernard, his surgeon, to acquaint Queen Anne therewith, who ordered him ;^ioo, and made him Greek Professor in Oxford." Some say that the Queen gave double that amount. His friend, William Hall, was the son of an inn- keeper at Lichfield. He was educated at the Cathedral Grammar School, and at the age of seventeen was nominated one of the Batlers, or servitors, at Queen's College. His friend Thwaites had been a Batler, one of these Pueri Pmiperes, at St. Edmund's Hall ; Humphrey Wanley,^ the Earl of Oxford's learned librarian, occupied the same position ; and we read in Hearne's autobiography how his patron, Mr. Cherry, had him entered as "a Battelar of Edmund-Hall," in Michaelmas Term, 1695.^ The word is, of course, derived from the "battels," or rations, from the buttery- hatch ; at Cambridge they are called "sizings," which Ray derived from "size," a cant word for half a loaf. In the diverting play of The Puritan, so long ascribed to Shakespeare, an adventurer is made to say: " I am a poor gentleman, and a scholar ; I have been matricu- lated in the university, wore out six gowns there . . . went bareheaded over the quadrangle, ate my commons with a good stomach, and battled with dis- cretion."^ Shakespeare really used the Cambridge phrase, as might be expected from the friend of Frank Beaumont and "Jack Fletcher": "No, Regan," says King Lear, " Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give Thee o'er to harshness ... ^ 1672-1726. ^ Life of Mr. Thomas Hearne, u.s., p. 4. ^ The Puritan, i. 2 {Suppletnentary Works of Shakespeare, ed. W. Hazlitt, 1852). WILLIAM HALL OF LICHFIELD 341 'Tis not in thee To grudge my pleasures, to cut oflF my train, To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes." ^ Mr. Hall matriculated in 1690, and "put on his gown" in October, 1694. His letter to Thwaites was written a few weeks later from the ''White Hart," at Lichfield, kept by his father, Mr. William Hall, the vintner. "Dear Neddy," he begins, " I very greedily embrace this occasion of acquainting you with something which I found at Stratford-upon-Avon. That place I came unto on Thursday night, and the next day went to visit the ashes of the great Shakespear which lye interr'd in that church. The verses which, in his life- time, he ordered to be cut upon his tombstone, for his monument have others, are these which follow, — Reader, for Jesus's sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here ; Blessed be he that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones. The little learning these verses contain would be a very strong argument of the want of it in the author, did not they carry something in them which stands in need of a comment. There is in this church a place which they call the bone-house, a repository for all bones they dig up, which are so many that they would load a great number of waggons. The Poet, being willing to pre- serve his bones unmoved, lays a curse upon him that moves them, and haveing to do with clerks and sextons, for the most part a very ignorant sort of people, he descends to the meanest of their capacitys, and dis- robes himself of that art which none of his co-tempor- aries wore in greater perfection. Nor has the design mist of its effect, for, lest they should not only draw ^ King Lear, ii. 4, 173-8. Mr. W. J. Craig, in his edition of the play (1901), quotes Sherwood's English-French Dictionary (1622) : " To Size, En rUniversite de Cambridge, c'est la mesme chose, comma to battle en Oxford." 342 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE this curse upon themselves, but also entail it upon their posterity, they have laid him full seventeen foot deep, deep enough to secure him. And so much for Strat- ford, within a mile of which Sir Robinson lives, but it was so late before I knew, that I had not time to make him a visit. Mr. Allen Hammond, the bearer hereof, my particular acquaintance and schoolfellow, upon Mr. Dean's recommendation designs for Queen's, and in- tends to have Mr. Waugh for his tutor. I desire that you would assist him in what you can as to a study, and make use of your interest with the senior poor children to be kind to him in what concerns the going about the fires. My bed, which is in Pennington's chamber, I have ordered him to make use of, if he need one, and do desire you to help him to it. Pray give my service to Jacky White, Harry Bird, and to all my Lichfield acquaintance, when you see them, and to all those also that shall ask after me. As for the Staffordshire words we talked of, I will take notice of them and send them. Pray let me hear from you at Mr. Hammond's man's return, wherein you will greatly oblige your friend and servant, Wm. Hall. Direct your letter for Wm. Hall, junr., at the White-hart in Lichfield. For Mr. Edward Thwaites in Queen's College in Oxon." Mr. Hall took his M.A. degree in July, 1697. He was afterwards collated to the rectory of Acton, Middlesex, and in the spring of 1708 became Pre- bendary of Chiswick in St. Paul's Cathedral.^ He finished building the parsonage house at Acton just before his death in December, 1726; which caused Mr. Edward Cobden, his successor, to inscribe on one of the windows a set of verses on the time-honoured theme, '' Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves."^ ^ Le Neve, Fasti Ecc. Ang., ii. 379. ^ See E. Walford, Greater London, i. 18. GILDON ON SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE 343 IV A NOTE BY GILDON — AUBREY — MR. BEESTON's INFORMATION IN Aubrey's mss, — the "butcher-boy" and davenant legends Gildon is our authority for another piece of gossip. He says of Shakespeare, in his edition of Langbaine, that he was buried with his wife and daughter in Strat- ford Church, under a monument with the inscription " Ingenio Pylum," etc., showing a carelessness even greater than Pope's in the matter of quotation.^ "I have been told that he writ the Scene of the Ghost in Hamlet, at his House which bordered on the Charnel- House and Churchyard." ^ He may have been thinking of the College ; but he ought to have known that New Place was not near the church. The Ghost in Hamlet reminded Gildon of churchyards, in the absence of any precise ideas about the high platform at Elsinore. ''What may this mean? That thou, dead corse" — we know the Prince's thought : — " Let me not burst in ignorance ; but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements ; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, To cast thee up again. "^ We must now quote some of the information which Aubrey derived from Dr. William Beeston or from his papers. It is in the form of a contrast between Shake- speare and Jonson. Beeston recollected the sturdy laureate very well, but had very dim recollections of what he had heard in his boyhood about "that Greater Spirit." The wonder is that Aubrey himself had not ^ Cf. supra, p. 332, note i. ^ Langbaine, Account of English Dramatic Authors, ed, Gildon, 1699, p. 126. ^ Hamlet, i. 4, 46-51. 344 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE made inquiries when he was an undergraduate in Dr. Ralph Kettell's time. Mr. Howe, as we have seen, was a tutor, fond of talking about the poets. Dr. Kettell was a contemporary of Shakespeare, being in his seventy-ninth year in 1642, when young Beeston and Aubrey came up. Aubrey says that he spoke much about the Articles, "and the rood-loft, and of the wafers," and remembered "those times. "^ His brain, says the biographer, was "like a hasty pudding," where memory and judgment and fancy were "all stirred together. "^ He hated a periwig-pated fellow, and periwigs had gone out of fashion since the poet's time; "he beleeved them to be the scalpes of men cutt off after they were hang'd, and so tanned and dressed for use."^ We already have noticed the story of his reception of the kindly meant present which Mr. Howe's mother sent from Grendon Underwood.^ It is probable, said Aubrey, that the doctor would have "finisht his century," if it had not been for the Civil War; but all discipline and learning began to disappear when the army came in. " I remember, being at the Rhetorique lecture in the hall, a foot-soldier came in and brake his hower-glasse. . . . Our grove was the Daphne for the ladies and their gallants to walke in, and many times my lady Isabella Thynne would make her entrey with a theorbo or lute played before her. I have heard her play on it in the grove myselfe, which she did rarely ; for which Mr. Edmund Waller hath in his Poems for ever made her famous."^ The under- graduates seem to have got completely out of hand. ^ Aubrey, op. cit, ii. i8, sub Ralph Kettell. Aubrey wrote "36" Articles, with ^' quaere " in the marg-in. ^ Ibid., p. 19. Aubrey was quoting from one of the fellows of Trinity. ^ Ibid., p. 21. '^ Supra, pp. 184-5. s Aubrey, ti.s., p. 24. He notes that Lady Isabella Thynne "lay at Balliol College"; her friend, Mrs. Fanshawe "lay at our college." See Waller's poems, ed. G. Thorn Drury, 1893, p. 90: Of my Lady Isabella, playing upon a Lute. AUBREY AT OXFORD 345 The President used to call them '' Tarrarags (these were the worst sort, rude rakells), Rascal-Jacks^ Blindcinqiies^ Scohherlotchers (these did no hurt, were sober, but went idleing about the grove with their hands in their pocketts, and telling the number of the trees there, or so)."^ We cannot tell which class was affected by young Mr. Beeston, but it is pretty clear that Aubrey himself was a Scobberlotcher. Aubrey doubtless obtained from "old Mr." Beeston a tradition of Shakespeare which he wrongly attributed to another poet, ''Michael Drayton, esq., natus in Warwickshire at Atherston upon Stower (quaere Thomas Mariett). He was a butcher's sonne. Was a squire ; viz. one of the esquires to Sir Walter Aston, Knight of the Bath. . . . He lived at the bay-windowe house next the east end of St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street."^ "From Mr. Beeston" he heard a similar story in the other case. ^ "Mr. William Shakespear was borne at Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade, but when he kill'd a calfe he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne that was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall witt, his acquaintance and coetanean, but dyed young. This William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guesse, about 18 ; and ^ Aubrey, m.5. , p. 26. ^ Id., i. 239, suh Michael Drayton, ^ "From Mr. . , . Beeston" is the note with which Aubrey ends his account of Shakespeare. That most, if not all, of his account was derived from this source appears from a note in vol. i. p. 97. " W. Shakespeare — quaere Mr. Beeston, who knows most of him from Mr. Lacy. He lives in Shoreditch at Hog-lane within 6 dores north of Folgate. Quaere etiam for Ben Jonson." Also id., p. 96. "Old Mr. [Beeston], who knew all the old English poets, whose lives I am taking from him ; his father was master of the . . . playhouse." 346 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act exceedingly well."^ Aubrey has a note about Ben Jonson, received from Mr. J. Greenhill, that when he came home from the Low Countries he "acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure playhouse, somewhere in the suburbes (I think towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell). . . . Then," Aubrey continues, "he undertooke again to write a playe, and did hitt it admirably well."^ " Now B. Johnson," to return to the account of Shake- speare, "was never a good actor, but an admirable instructor."^ Then of Shakespeare again : " He began early to make essayes at dramatique poetry, which at that time was very lowe ; and his playes took well. He was a handsome, well-shap't man : very good company, and of a very readie and pleasant smooth witt." We omit the anecdotes about Grendon, and the epitaphs on "Combes, an old rich usurer." "Ben Johnson and he did gather humours of men dayly where ever they came. . . . He was wont to goe to his native countrey once a yeare. I thinke I have been told that he left 2 or 300 li per annum there and thereabout to a sister. ... I have heard Sir William Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best comoedian we have now) say that he had a most pro- digious witt, and did admire his naturall parts beyond all other dramaticall writers. He was wont to say* that he 'never blotted out a line in his life'; said Ben: Johnson, ' I wish he had blotted-out a thousand.' His comoedies will remaine witt as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum. Now our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and Coxcombeities, that twenty yeares hence they will not be understood. Though, as ■^ Aubrey, u.s., ii. 225-6. - /(/. , ii. 12. ^ Parenthesis following the words " did act exceedingly well," m.5. ^ Aubrey adds the parenthesis (" B, Johnson's Underwoods."^ AUBREY'S ANECDOTES 347 Ben: Johnson sayes of him, that he had but little Latine and lesse Greek, he understood Latine pretty well, for he had been in his younger yeares a schoolmaster in the countrey." ^ Aubrey gives a very full version of the story about Mr. and Mrs. Davenant, which seems to have been based on the idea of a literary relationship, of which instances have been given above.^ It should be added that in a sentence which has been erased from his manu- script he seems to have been tempted to make the insinuation against Mrs. Davenant, which Oldys re- futed, when he traced its original to an ancient jest- book.^ Davenant's father was a vintner at the Crown Inn at Oxford, or the '^Crowne taverne," as Aubrey calls it. His mother was beautiful, "and of conversa- tion extremely agreable. They had three sons, viz. i, Robert, 2, William, and 3, Nicholas (an attorney). Robert was a fellow of St. John's College in Oxford, then preferred to the vicarage of West Kington by Bishop Davenant, whose chaplain he was. They also had two handsome daughters — one married to Gabriel Bridges (B.D., fellow of C.C. Coll., beneficed in the Vale of White Horse), another to Dr. Sherburne (minister of Pembridge in Hereford, and a canon of that church). Mr. William Shakespeare was wont to goe into Warwickshire once a yeare, and did commonly in his journey lye at this house in Oxon. where he was exceedingly respected. I have heard Parson Robert say that Mr. W. Shakespeare haz given him a hundred kisses." The last sentence is not in the printed Lives, but was added from the manuscript at the Bodleian by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, who said that it had been ^ Aubrey, i^.s., ii. 226-7. ^ See stip. p. 47 (Jonson and Serjeant Hoskyns) ; p. 47 and inf. p. 473 (Field and Chapman). '* See the documentary evidence printed in HalUwell-Phillipps, op. cit. , pp. 43-50. 348 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE erased in the last century, but could still be distinctly read when placed under a magnifying-glass. "Now Sir William would sometimes, when he was pleasant over a glasse of wine with his most intimate friends — e.g, Sam Butler (author of Hudibras) &c. — say, that it seemed to him that he writt with the very spirit that Shakespeare, and seemed contented enough to be thought his son."^ Samuel Butler seems to have been quite of Dr. Beeston's opinion about the affectations and coxcombry of the fashionable writers, for in talking of Waller, who was also very intimate with Davenant, he remarked that Waller's way of ''quibling with sence " would soon grow out of fashion and be "as ridicule as quibling with words. "^ V ALLUSIONS BY SHAKESPEARE TO THE BUTCHER's TRADE — INCONSISTENCY OF EVIDENCE ON THE POINT On the question whether Shakespeare was a butcher- boy, it will be observed that the stories told to Aubrey's informant and to Dowdall in no way coincide. Beeston had heard that John Shakespeare was a butcher, one of two in that trade who supplied the town, and that his little son helped in the shop and shambles. But Dow- dall was informed by his aged guide that the boy had been bound apprentice to a master-butcher, obviously not his father.^ According to the Corporation books, Mr. Ralf Cawdrey was a butcher at Stratford during the poet's childhood. He was twice High Bailiff, and served in other municipal offices. He seems to have been much ^ Aubrey, u.s., i. 204, sub Sir William Davenant; Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 43. ■^ Aubrey, u.s., i. 136, sub. Samuel Butler. To this Aubrey adds, " quod N.B. " ■* Vide supra, p. 332. WAS SHAKESPEARE A BUTCHER? 349 respected in his day ; and he may still be regarded with interest as the father, if the story is believed, of the 'Mittle boy blue" who helped to carry the trays of meat round the town. But Mr. John Shakespeare, by the same books, is shown not to have been a butcher, but a glover. He was ''gloving" in 1556, and was still in the same trade thirty years afterwards. Shake- speare seems to allude to the business in The Merry Wives of Windsor: — ** Quidkly, And Master Slander's your master? '■'■Simple. Ay, forsooth. " Quickly. Does he not wear a great round beard, like a glover's paring-knife ? ^'■Simple. No, forsooth."^ People have talked of John Shakespeare's multifarious pursuits, suggesting that he farmed in the common-field at Asbies, and made up the wool and butchered the stock at Stratford ; but, in fact, the farm was under lease to a tenant, and he would never have been allowed in any case to join such incongruous trades as those of a butcher and a glover. He could not keep a regular meat-shop while trading in skins, and no one has seriously suggested that he worked about as a slaughter- man, though such people were classed among butchers. The meat trade was stringently regulated by statute, and nothing was allowed to interfere with the regular official inspection. The killing of calves was the subject of constant restrictions, and it is certain that the in- spectors would put a stop to anything that might injure the veal ; it is almost inconceivable, indeed, that a boy would be allowed to play such pranks in the shambles as the gossips described. A butcher's business was to sell wholesome meat and suet at a profit not exceeding a penny in the shilling, not taking his veal too young, nor keeping the calf so long that its meat might encroach ^ Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 4, 18-22. 350 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE on the steer-beef, and not selling any lean meat as if he had got it from the fat stock. He was bound, moreover, to keep the horns and hide of every beast till all the beef was sold, so that in case of theft the owner might identify his property. The Tanners' Act was passed in 1530, and was continually renewed; and although it became obsolete of late years, it was not formally repealed till 1863. The butchers were for- bidden by that Act to intermeddle in any way with the craft of curriers and tanners, partly because they had taken to issuing *' untrue and deceivable leather," and partly to prevent them from buying stolen cattle and making away with the hides. If we do not believe in the killing of calves '4n a high style," we need not trouble much about the ''speech"; but it is easy to imagine the townsfolk might make up the story out of the good Duke Humphrey's fate : "And as the butcher takes away the calf And binds the wretch and beats it when it strays, Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house, Even so remorseless have they borne him hence ; And as the dam runs lowing up and down, Looking the way her harmless young one went, And can do naught but wail her darling's loss, Even so myself bewails good Gloucester's case With sad unhelpful tears." ^ There are a few allusions to the trade which require some slight explanation. We have Dick, the butcher, who works in his shirt : "Then is sin struck down like an ox, and iniquity's throat cut like a calf." " Where's Dick, the Butcher of Ashford," asks Jack Cade. " They fell before thee like sheep and oxen," he proceeds: '* . . . therefore thus will I reward thee, the Lent shall be as long again as it is ; and thou shalt have a licence to kill for a hundred lacking one."- The English, in ^ 2 Henry VI. , iii. i, 210-18 ; cf. id., iii. 2, 188-90. ^ Id., iv. 9, 28-9; iv. 3, 1-9. ALLUSIONS TO BUTCHERS' TRADE 351 their own way, were strict observers of Lent. They were very particular about the Friday fast throughout the year, and in Lent they abstained from meat on alternate days. Even when meat was taken, Mercutio's song about the "old hare" shows that some had to shift with a mouldy Lenten pie. ^ There is a ballad called "Woe worth thee, Lenten," in the volume edited by Mr. Wright for the Roxburghe Club, which shows how the butcher's trade suffered.'^ It was written by some unknown poet about the beginning of Queen Mary's reign, and there is some reason to think that it had come under Shakespeare's notice. In Twelfth Night, for example, Olivia sings : " I am as mad as he, If sad and merry madness equal be " ; ^ and the ballad-writer complains that Lent has exiled "jentill Cristimas, with his myrry madnes." In Measure for Measure, again, we hear of a beggar that smelt " brown bread and garlic," * and of Lent the song complains : " He wyll mayk many to pyll a garlyke hede, Syt dowen and eat hit with a pece off brownie brede, Such sorrow ! " The butcher, the poulter, and partridger may take to their beds or go on a pilgrimage. Farewell to the mutton and beef, farewell the bustard and brawn ; " Far well, jentill Wat, with thy longe ears." But rich people could obtain dispensations, and might deal with a butcher duly licensed to sell. "I desire no more," says Dick of Ashford : "And, to speak truth," answers Jack Cade, "thou deservest no less."^ Most of the poet's references to the trade are of a ^ Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4, 141-6. ^ Songs and Ballads . . . chiefly of the Reign of Philip a7id Mary, ed. Wright, i860, p. 12, No. v., [W]o worthe the, Lenttone. "^ Twelfth Night, iii. 4, 15-16. * Measure for Measure, iii. 2, 194-5. ^ 2 Henry VI.,u.s., lo-ii. 352 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE disparaging kind. What says the Hostess? *'Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? . . . And didst thou not . . . desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people?"^ Launce, again, when he addresses his cruel-hearted cur, vows that "he is a stone, a very pebble-stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog." ^ This looks like a reference to Cock Lorell's Boat, with its crew of rascals that supplied the tag about ''swearing and staring." Among the brigands who sail "from Tyburn to Chelsea" is a butcher with two bulldogs at his tail : " In his hande he bare a flap for flyes His hosen gresy upon his thyes On his necke he bare a cole tre logge He had as moche pyte as a dog-ge. " ^ It has been suggested that Shakespeare showed more technical knowledge than a boy would have gained by peeping into the shambles or watching his mother in the kitchen. The instance chosen is Rosalind's metaphor : " This way will I take upon me to wash 5^our liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love In't. "^ But this is only another jest upon the "liver vein," the "pure idolatry" of which we have heard in Love's Labour'' s Lost, with a further suggestion that the lover was as silly as a sheep ; ^ and, indeed, Biron himself had said : "This love is as mad as Ajax : it kills sheep; it kills me, I a sheep : well proved again o' my side. " ^ Here we will leave the question whether the boy Shakespeare was ever employed in a butcher's busi- ^ 2 Henry IV., ii. i, 101-8. " Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 3, 10-12. ^ Cock Lorell's Boat, ed. H. Drury, 1S17, Sig. B. i. ^ As You Like It, iii. 2, 441-4. ® Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3, 74-5. ^ Ibid, y 6-8. THE BUTCHER-BOY STORY 35: ness, feeling that the safe course would be to adopt Rowe's cautious style, and to say that ''upon his leaving school, he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed to him ; and, in order to settle in the world after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young." ^ ^ Rowe, in Malone, ed. Boswell, i. 437-8. See also J. O. Halliwell, Was Nicholas ap Roberts that butcher's son . . . mho is recorded by Aubrey as having- been an acquaintance of Shakespeare . . . and was Shakespeare an apprentice to Griffin ap Roberts? Privately printed, 1864. 2 A THE PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" THE PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" I. HUNTER'S THEORIES, 1839 I (( HUNTER S " DISQUISITION ON "description of GUIANA AND HEADLESS MEN THE TEMPEST — RALEGH S — DEWLAPPED MOUNTAINEERS MR. HUNTER contended that Shakespeare pro- duced The Tempest in 1596, as a counterblast to Ralegh's description of Guiana.^ The book con- tained exaggerated accounts of what the explorers had seen and heard. The title was, in Mr. Hunter's opinion, " enough to condemn it, boastful and ridiculous": "The discoverie of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a Relation of the great and golden City of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the Provinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, and other ^ Joseph Hunter, F.S.A., A Disqtiisiiion on the Scene, Origin, Date, etc. etc., of Shakespeare's Tempest, in a letter to Benjamhi Heywood Brigll, Esq., 1839, '^^e substance of this tract was reprinted as part of the New Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shakespeare, 1845, vol. i. pp. 123-89. 357 358 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST countries, with their rivers, adjoining ; performed in the year 1595 by Sir W. Ralegh, Knight." The book is printed in Hakluyt's collection of voyages, and was well summarised by William Oldys in his Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, from his birth to his death on the scaffold.^ The main object of the expedition was to reach the White Lake and the golden-roofed city of Manoa, in which all the world at that time believed ; and there were hopes of finding gold and silver in the lower valley of the Orinoco. Ralegh did not go further than the mouth of the Caroli River in Arromaia ; and here he was told of certain inland tribes who were very rich in gold, and of a great silver-mine further up the river. He marched over- land to see the "strange over-fals of the river of Caroli," described by him as a '' wonderfull breach of waters," with ten or twelve steep cataracts, every one as high over the other as a church tower. Here Ralegh and his friends picked free gold out of the quartz with their daggers ; ^ and in later days there was much con- troversy at home about the value of the specimens. Mr. Ward of Stratford noted in his Diary that Mr. Sampson, a chemist living in Great Alley Street about East Smithfield, told him many things about Sir Walter ; on the 4th of January, 1661, he added : " Old Sampson, the chymist, told me that he made the aqua- fortis with which Sir W. Raleigh did precipitate gold to inrich an oar, which he presented to King James, proffering to bring the same from beyond sea, but could not perform his promise. "^ Howell described Sir Walter's last attempt to fulfil his design, in a letter to Sir James Crofts: "The news that keeps greatest ^ Hakluyt, Vojages, etc., i6oo, iii., 627-66, contains Ralegh's Guiana. Oldys' life of Ralegh occupies pp. Ixxvi.-cix. of the 1736 ed. of the History of the World. ^ Ralegh, Discovery, etc., in Hakluyt, u.s.., iii. 652. ** Ward's Diary, pp. 168-9. RALEGH'S VOYAGE TO GUIANA 359 noise here now, is the return of Sir Walter Raleigh from his Mine of Gold in Guiana, the South parts of America, which at first was like to be such a hopeful boon Voyage, but it seems that that Golden Mine is proved a mere Chimera, an imaginary airy Mine . . . 'tis pity such a knowing well-weigh'd Knight had not had a better fortune."^ But he acknowledged in a subsequent letter to Mr. Carew Ralegh that there was a real mine: "for you write of divers pieces of Gold brought thence by Sir Walter himself and Captain Kemys, and of some Ingots that were found in the Governor's Closet at St. Thomas's, with divers Crucibles and other refining Instruments."^ The travellers had never seen "a more beautiful country, nor more lively prospects" than in Arromaia : "The deere crossing in every path, the birds towards the evening singing on every tree with a thousand severall tunes, cranes and herons of white, crimson, and carnation pearching in the rivers side, the aire fresh with a gentle Easterly winde : and every stone that we stouped to take up, promised either golde or silver by his complexion." Prince Gualtero, the son of an old chief, went back with Ralegh as a pledge of friendship.^ On the return voyage towards Emeria other gold mines were dis- covered, and from one of the branches of the Orinoco they saw what was called the Mountain of Crystal ; it looked at a distance "like a white Church-tower of an exceeding height," over the top of which a mighty river rushed down with "so terrible a noyse and clamor, as if a thousand great bels were knockt one against another." Antonio Berreo told Ralegh that there were diamonds and other stones of great value there, "and that they shined very farre off."* At Curiapan they ^ Epp. Ho-EL, ed. J. Jacobs, 1892, p. 23 (bk. i. § i. let. 4: Lo7idon, 28 March 1618). 2 Id., p. 480 (ii. let. 61 : Fleet, 5 May 1645). ^ Ralegh, 2i.s., pp. 652-6. ■* Id,, p. 657. 36o PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" found their ships at anchor; "there was never to us a more joyfull sight," says Ralegh. They had struggled against "the fury of Orinoco," and had suffered the extremes of wet and heat, and hunger and pain, they had fed on "all sorts of corrupt fruits and made meales of fresh fish without seasoning, of Tor- tiigas, of Lagartos or Crocodiles^ and of all sorts good and bad," and yet no Calentura befell them, "or other of those pestilent diseases which dwell in all hot regions, and so neere the Equinoctiall line."^ The old chieftain had showed Ralegh great plates of gold, shaped like eagles, and said that the tribes of the interior found the metal in the Lake of Manoa and in the beds of several rivers ; "they gathered it in graines of perfect gold . . . and that they put to it a part of copper, otherwise they could not work it, and that they used a great earthen pot with holes round about it, and when they had mingled the gold and copper together, they fastened canes to the holes, and so with the breath of men they increased the fire till the metall ran, and then they cast it into moulds of stone and clay, and so made those plates and images."^ The same chief confirmed the story of the Amazons, with whom Orellana had fought on the "River of Maraiion," or the Amazons' River, saying that there was a nation of female warriors in the provinces of Topago^ within the Empire of Guiana : and that, like the bordering nations, these women wore plates of gold, which they obtained in barter for the "spleen-stones," made of the green jade called Saussiirite. "Of these," says Ralegh, "I saw divers in Guiana, for every King or Casique hath one, which their wives for the most part weare, and they esteem them as great jewels."^ La Condamine, in the last century, found the same legend prevailing, the Indians saying that they inherited the "divine stones " 1 Id., pp. 659, 660. ^ Id., p. 656. 3/rf.,p. 638. AMAZONS OF GUIANA 361 from their fathers, who received them from the ''Women- living-alone." ^ Later travellers confirmed his report, and Humboldt was inclined to believe that a society of women might have acquired some power "in one part of Guiana. "2 Sir Walter Ralegh had an object in view ; *'he sought to fix the attention of Queen Elizabeth on the great Empire of Guiana, the conquest of which he proposed " ; but the influence of such motives would not warrant us in entirely rejecting the tradition. The treatise on Guiana concluded with a prayer that the King of kings might put it into her heart, who is Lady of ladies, to possess it ; " if not," says he, " I will judge these men worthy to be Kings thereof, that by her grace and leave will undertake it of themselves."^ " Had I plantation of this isle, my Lord," says old Gonzalo in the play, "... and were the King on't, what would I do ? " * The phrase is obscure ; but the notion certainly resembles Ralegh's proposal that the Queen should allow Guiana to be planted and held by her subjects as " under-kings."*" A stanza in the Faerie Queene seems to be inspired with Ralegh's spirit, when he sought to force England into the acceptance of " glory and endless gain " : "Joy on those warlike women, which so long Can from all men so rich a king^dome hold ! And shame on you, O men, which boast your strong And valiant hearts, in thoughts less hard and bold, Yet quaile in conquest of that land of gold." ^ ^ C. M. de la Condamine, Rilation abrdgie d'lcn Voyage fait dans I'interieur de I Anidrique Mdridionale, 1745, p. 104. ^ A. V. Humboldt, Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, tr. Thomasina Ross, vol. ii., 1852, p. 401. ^ Ralegh, u.s., p. 662. * Tempest, ii. i, 143-5. ^ On the system of the encomienda, by which villages "were made over as fiefs to the colonists " in the Spanish West Indies, " who stood to them in the position of the king, and received their tribute," see E. Arm- strong-, The Emperor Charles V., 1902, vol. ii. chap. iv. ; also E. J. Payne in Cambridge Modern History, vol. i. , 1902, p. 46. ^ Spenser, Faerie Qiteene, iv. canto 11, st. 22. 362 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" We have a glimpse of Eldorado in the picture of bright- eyed Mrs. Page. "Here's another letter to her: she bears the purse, too; she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be cheater to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me ; they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both " ; and Falstaff bids Robin take care : " Hold, sirrah, bear you these letters tightly ; Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores."^ Ralegh's book, argued Mr. Hunter, must have afforded conversation for half London. He felt sure that Shakespeare at once seized upon it, either because the subject was so popular, or because he wished to warn his countrymen against a dangerous delusion. "He made this pamphlet," we are told, ''the object of his satire, introducing beside general girds at the wonders told by travellers, and the absurdities of schemes of new settlements, a special attack on what, after all, is really the weakest point in Ralegh's pam- phlet. "^ We turn at once to the famous passage : — " When we were boys, Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em Wallets of flesh ? or that there were such men. Whose heads stood out in their breasts ? which now we find Each putter-out of five for one will bring us Good warrant of."^ We shall deal first with the headless, or high- shouldered men. Ralegh was informed that to the west of the Caroli were "divers nations of Cannibals, and of those Ewaipanoma without heads. " He described the monsters in a passage, distinguishing the various forms of the story. "Next unto Afvi there are two ^ Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 3, 75-80, 88-9. ^ Hunter, Ne-w Illustrations, u.s., i. 140. ^ Tempest,- in. 3, 43-9. THE HEADLESS MEN 363 rivers, Atoica and Caora, and on that branch which is called Caora, are a nation of people, whose heads appeare not above their shoulders ; which though it may be thought a meere fable, yet for mine owne part I am re- solved it is true, because every childe in the provinces of Arromaia and Canuri affirme the same; they are called Ewaipanoma, they are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders and their mouthes in the middle of their breasts." He was also assured that one of them had been taken prisoner, and taken to the old chief of Arromaia, a few months before. In talking over the matter with Prince Gualtero, Ralegh expressed doubts about the story and called it ''a wonder" ; but the Prince said they were no *' wonder" in his country, for they had lately slain many hundreds of his father's people. When Ralegh visited Cumana, he met a Spanish merchant who had been far up the Orinoco; and on hearing that the English had reached the Caroli, he asked if Ralegh had seen those Indians, and declared that he had seen many of them himself. "Whether it be true or no," said Sir Walter, "the matter is not great, neither can there bee any profit in the imagina- tion : for mine own part I saw them not, but I am resolved that so many people did not all combine, or forethinke to make the report."^ He professed great reliance upon a passage in " Mandevile," which came originally out of Pliny's Natural History, and had found its way into the col- lections of Vincent de Beauvais and Isidore of Seville. In modern spelling it runs as follows: "In another isle are foul men without heads, and they have eyes in either shoulder one, and their mouths are round-shaped, like a horse-shoe, amidst their breasts ; in one other isle are men without heads, and their eyes are behind in their shoulders."^ Ralegh had a special reason for ^ Ralegh, u.s.^ pp. 652-3. 2 Mandevile, ed. Halliwell, r866, ch. xix. p. 203. 364 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" maintaining the authority of the old volume of won- ders. "Such a nation," he said, "was written of by Mandevile, whose reports were holden for fables many yeeres, and yet since the East Indies were discovered, we find his relations true of such things as heretofore were held incredible."^ Now " Mandevile " had found a connection between the occurrence of gold and crystal ; and Ralegh had found a great quantity of crystal and a little gold. " Upon the rocks of crystal," we read, "grow the good diamonds that be of treble colour . . . and albeit men find good diamonds in India, yet nevertheless men find them more commonly upon the rocks in the sea, and upon hills where the mine of gold is."^ The question was whether the abundance of crystal in Guiana might not be taken as a sign of the presence of gold. Just before Ralegh's book appeared. Captain Popham had found letters in a Spanish prize, describing the advance of Berreo's forces to the country of the head- less men. We ought to adopt the ambiguous words of Othello by calling them " men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders."^ The Spaniards arrived at the foot of the range where they lived, and sent up messengers with a quantity of Jews'-harps to barter for poultry and gold eagles. There was no suggestion in the letters that the Indians had not mouths of the ordinary kind. The guides sus- pected treachery, because the King, called "El Dorado," was drinking with his warriors, and was smeared with balsam and powdered with gold. In the middle of the night a message arrived that the high-shouldered men were on the march ; and the Spaniards at once broke up their camp and escaped at full speed. These letters ^ Ralegh, u.s. ^ Mandevile, u.s., ch. xiv. pp. 157-S. ^ Othello, i. 3, 144-5. THE RAYA INDIANS 365 were printed at the end of Ralegh's book by Order of the Council.^ M. de Pauw, writing about 1767, ex- plained the matter thus: *'In Caribane there are savages with hardly any necks, and their shoulders as high as their ears ; this is an artificial monstrosity, the children's heads being loaded with heavy weights, so that the vertebrce of the neck seem to be almost pressed into the shoulder-bones ; they look at a distance as if they had their mouths in their breasts ; and it is just the occasion for an excitable or ignorant traveller to bring out once more the story of the headless men."^ The Spanish missionaries compared these men to skates and rays, with broad mouths across their bodies ; they called them Rayas, and placed them at the mouth of the Sipapo, a branch of the Upper Orinoco, in a forest-region that has hardly been explored. Humboldt tells us of his meeting an old man at Carichana, who boasted of having been a cannibal, and of having seen the Raya Indians 'with his own eyes.'"^ We now come to the mountaineers adorned with '' dangling dewlaps" like the snow-white bull in Mena- phon.^ They had fleshy pockets below their necks, on the model of the pedlar's ''sow-skin bowget." A budget was "a pouch or bag," according to the old Dictionaries ; and Nash, in Pierce Pennilesse^ talked of churls who should be "constrained to carry their flesh-budgets from place to place on foot."^ Some think that the " flesh - pockets " were copied from animals, and Mr. Furness refers us to the description of the "pouched Ape."^ It would be quite as easy to connect them with Drake's account of the Californian ^ In Hakluyt, xi.s,, iii. 663-6. ^ C. de Pauw, Richerches Philosophiques sur les Amdricains, 1768-9, i. 152-3. * V. Humboldt, u.s., ii. 317. ^ Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 74: "The dangling- dewlap of the silver bull." ' Nash, Pierce Penniless' Supplication, ed. Collier, 1842, p. 48. ^ Furness, New Variorum Shakespeare, ix. 179. 366 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" marmot, or " prairie-dog " : "A strange kind of Conies . . . under her chinne on either side a bagge, into the which shee gathereth her meate."^ Other writers cited in the Variorum edition go back to Pliny and Solinus, or the History of Quadrupeds , by Conrad Gesner, ''the German Pliny," best known in English as Topsell's Natural History. These authorities deal with the satyrs of mythology, described by Pliny and his follower, Solinus, as "having nothing of human-kind about them except the shape." These ancient writers did not write of "satyrs" as men, though Gesner attributed the opinion to Solinus ; but as time went on the "satyr" was counted among the savages that dwell in the clefts of rocks. Isidore of Seville reminds his readers of St. Anthony holding a conversation with a poor goat-legged "satyr" in the wilderness, and such creatures were sometimes represented as having bags of flesh at their throats.^ There is nothing to show that Shakespeare was referring to any South American fable when he men- tioned his "dewlapped mountaineers." Ralegh does not speak of any such people. Acarete crossed the continent from Paraguay to the Cordilleras, and noticed the prevalence of " Goto,'' a slight thickening of the throat attributed to snow-water or stagnant air in the valleys ; but this was hardly considered a blemish.^ M. de Pauw compared the coto to the European goitre, known in England as "Derbyshire neck," and men- tioned several instances of "spurious rumination " and other abnormal effects of the disease observed in Switzerland.^ It seems probable that Shakespeare re- ferred to a special form of the malady called "the Bavarian pouch," which had broken out in the neigh- bourhood of Salzburg, and had caused a great migra- ^ Drake, in Hakluyt, ^l.s., iii. 442. ^ Furness, u.s. ^ Acarete de Biscay, Voyage up the River de la Plata, etc., Eng. trans. 1698, p. :^2- ^ '^^ Pauw, u.s., i. 154-5- DEWLAPPED MOUNTAINEERS 367 tion from the Tyrol and Styria into Germany. Burton mentioned the outbreak in his Anatomy of Melancholy as follows : " /. Aubanus Bohemus refers that struma, or poke, of the Bavarians and Styrians, to the nature of their waters, as Munster doth that of the Valesians in the Alps.^^'^ The learned John Ray, in his tract on The Wisdom of God, considered the effect of great numbers of people being born "with a Bavarian poke under our chins." ^ And in his Travels through the Low -Countries, Germany, etc., he says of the Valley of the Mur, in Styria : "We saw in these parts many men and women with large swellings under their chins or on their throats, called, in Latin, or rather in Greek, Bronchocele, by some in English, Bavarian Pokes. Some of them were single, others double and treble."^ Mr. Hunter proposed to alter the text by reading "Each putter-out on five for one" in place of "Each putter-out of five for one " / but the change was hardly required. The meaning is that every traveller who had taken out a five-for-one insurance would warrant the existence of headless Indians and pouched mountain- eers. Mr. Hunter illustrated the nature of such a contract by the case of Mr. Henry Moryson, who paid ;^400 to receive three times as much if he returned safely from Constantinople and Jerusalem ; and another example is taken from the confused mass of memoranda known as the Commonplace Book of John Sanderson, a Turkey Merchant, preserved among the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum.* The details of such an insurance will be found in William West's collection of precedents, entitled Symboleographie. The traveller paid down a sum of money which the assuring party might invest for his own benefit, and the latter gave ^ Burton, Anat. of Mel. , part i. sect. ii. mem. 2, sub. i (ed. Shilleto, vol. i. p. 257). '^ Ray, Wisdom of God, 3rd ed., 1701, p. 236. ^ Ray, Travels through the Low-Countries, etc., 2nd ed., 1738, i. 121. * Hunter, AVw Illustrations, i. 140-1, note. 368 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" a bond to pay the traveller a larger sum on his return, within a stated time, and with proper evidence that he had made the voyag^.^ Such wagering contracts were fashionable in the time of Elizabeth and James I., but died out in the following reign. There is usually some humorous exaggeration in the literary references to this practice. Thus John Davies, in his forty-second Epigram, writes of the dangers of Italy : " Lycus who lately hath to Venice gone, Shall if he do return have three for one." The ^^five-for-one'' in The Tempest may be intended as a reference to Every Man out of his Humour^ where Jonson's ingenious knight said, "I am determined to put forth some five thousand pound, to be paid me five for one, upon the return of myself, my wife, and my dog from the Turk's Court in Constantinople. ... If we be successful, why, there will be five-and- twenty thousand pound to entertain time withal."^ II " THE TEMPEST " AND JONSON's '* EVERY MAN IN mS HUMOUR " — FLORIO'S "MONTAIGNE" — " LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" Mr. Hunter argued that The Tempest was older than Jonson's Every Man in his Htwiottr, and that the last- named play was acted in 1597. Jonson's own statement was as follows : ''This Comedy was first acted in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's Servants : the principal Comedians were Will. Shakespeare, Ric. Burbage, etc." It appears by Henslowe's note-books at Dulwich, that a play called Humovirs was acted in 1597 at the Rose, by the Lord Admiral's Servants, and it is now ^ Symholeographie, 1605. See Halliwell-Phillipps, Memoranda on Shakespeare's Tempest. ^ Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, ii. i. JONSON'S SUPPOSED ATTACK 369 allowed on all hands that this was a poor play by Chap- man, called The Humorous Day^s Mirth.^ Mr. Gifford had made the mistake in his Memoirs of Jonson,'^ and Mr. Hunter did not profess to have found any better authority ; he maintained that The Tempest was plainly satirised in the prologue to Jonson's play, though it is difficult to imagine that an author would attack one of his principal comedians.^ But there is no proof that the prologue was as old as the play. It did not appear in the surreptitious quarto of 1601, but was printed in the authorised Works of 1616. It contains a reference to the Chorus in King Henry V., as "wafting" of the audience across the sea ; and it appears to have been proved by Mr. Fleay, in his Life and Work of Shake- speare, that this historical play was first acted in 1599.^ The prologue, moreover, so arrogantly claims to show a pattern for all other comedies, that we must suppose Jonson to have earned a success before he added his self-praise. The squibs, rolled bullets, and "tempestu- ous drum " would suit many other tempests beside that storm which Shakespeare "taught to roar."^ It was 1 Henslowe's Diary, ed. Collier, See F. G. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, i. 55. ^ Memoirs of Jonson, prefatory to one volume edition of plays (1838), p. 8. ^ Hunter, Disquisition on " Tempest," p. 81 ; New Illustrations, i. 136-9. ^ F. G. Flea)', Chronicle History of . . . Shakespeare, pp. 204-6. See also Biographical Chronicle, u.s., i. 358, in which the date of the revised play is taken as April, 1601. ^ The lines referred to are as follows. Jonson blames the " ill customs of the age " : " To make a child now swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed. Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords, And help of some few foot and half-foot words Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars, And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars. He rather prays you will be pleased to see One such to-day, as other plays should be ; Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please, Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard The gentlewomen ; nor roU'd bullet heard 2 B 370 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" urged, however, that two passages in the prologue must have been intended as attacks upon Shakespeare.^ The first was the line which, in Mr. Hunter's view, must have referred to the ''descent of Juno ": "Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please." We do not know that this device was employed in the miniature masque of The Tempest; but it is arguable that the "creaking throne" was Jonson's description of the chariot drawn by peacocks ; it is clear, however, that the occurrence of the phrase in Jonson's prologue does not in any way determine the date of The Tempest. The other passage related to " monsters," and therefore, it was urged, could be nothing but an allusion to Prospero's "servant-monster." "You that have so grac'd monsters, may like men." "Who but Caliban can be intended?" asked the critic. An answer might be found in Jonson's own comedy ; for young Knowell says, "Here within this place is to be seen the true, rare, and accomplished monster, or miracle of nature, which is all one."^ In the book of Mandevile we find a definition: "A monster is a thing deformed against kind both of man or of beast, or of anything else."^ The word was used in a very general way, to signify any birth or living creature degenerating from the proper form of its species ; it was used for any large To say, it thunders ; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come ; But deeds, and language, such as men do use. And persons, such as comedy would choose, When she would show an image of the times. And sport with human follies, not with crimes. Except we make them such, by loving still Our popular errors, when we know they're ill. I mean such errors as you'll all confess. By laughing at them, they deserve no less : Which, when you heartily do, there's hope left then You, that have so grac'd monsters, may like men." ^ The reference to " York and Lancaster's long jars " is more to the point than either reference in question. ' Every Man i7i his Humour, i. 2. ^ Mandevile, u.s., ch, v. p. 47. SHAKESPEARE AND FLORIO 371 wild beast, and for the tame beasts shown by the '^ master of the monsters" at a fair. In the Histoire Naturelle des lies Antilles, published by Leers of Rotterdam in 1658, we are told to distinguish whales from sea-monsters, the latter term taking in all ugly and dangerous creatures such as porpoises, manatees, sharks, saw-fish, and sword-fish.^ We are therefore at liberty to conjecture that Jonson's line referred to mon- strosities in general, and was not specially directed against Caliban. One of Mr. Hunter's chief difficulties lay in the fact that Shakespeare had quoted freely from Florio's Montaigne. Hardly any of the Essays had been trans- lated by John Florio in 1600, and his book was not published till 1603. Mr. Hunter suggested that the passages used in The Tempest might have been cir- culated in manuscript for several years before they were published. He supposed that Shakespeare was Florio's pupil in French and Italian, or, at any rate, knew Florio personally.^ He did not explain why Shakespeare should be allowed to ornament his play with long extracts from the unpublished work. Mr. Hunter quoted the Essays of Sir William Cornwallis as direct proof that the whole or part of Florio's trans- lation was known some years before 1600. These Essays were printed in that year, but had been in private circulation for some years previously. We are told that Cornwallis was "a pupil of Florio's," but this seems to be a matter of inference. He did not name Florio, but said that he had seen various passages from Mon- taigne translated: ''they that understand both lan- guages say very well done"; "it is done by a fellow less beholding to nature for his fortune than his wit, yet lesser for his face than his fortune. The truth is, he looks more like a good fellow than a wise man ; and ^ L. de Poincy, Histoire naturelle et morale des lies Antilles, 2nd ed. 1665, p. 190. ^ Hunter, New Illustrations, i. 146. 372 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" yet he is wise beyond either his fortune or education."^ Florio's portrait, by Hole, taken at the age of fifty- eight, is prefixed to the second edition of his Italian Dictionary, 1 6 1 1 . Another difficulty lay in the omission of The Tempest from the well-known lists of Shakespeare's plays in the " noted school-book" by Meres, called Palladis Tamia; or, Wifs Treasury, This book was published in 1598. For Shakespeare's excellence in comedy Meres called to witness The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Lovers Labour's Lost, and another play called Lovers Labour's Won.^ Meres seems to have been careless about the titles, writing " Errors," '' Love Labours Lost," and ''Love Labours Won"; but it is only as to the last name that controversy has arisen. It is commonly supposed that Dr. Farmer was right in identifying this play with AlPs Well that Ends Well; but many arguments have been adduced to show that it was The Taming of the Shrew, or Much Ado about Nothing. Mr. Fleay, in his Life and Work of Shake- speare, adopts the view that Love's Labour's Won appeared in its first form in 1590, and was altered for a Court performance at Christmas, 1596 ; and that in the following year, or early in 1598, the play, as finally altered, was produced as Much Ado About Nothing.^ Mr. Hunter, however, was compelled by his theory to assert that Love's Labour's Won was The Tempest under another title. According to his argument, however, the title should be "Love-labours win," or "Love- labours have won." Prospero, it is said, makes trial of Ferdinand's love by imposing certain labours. " The particular kind of labour is the placing in a pile logs of firewood. He serves in this as Jacob did for Rachel, ^ Cornwallis, Essays, p. 99, quoted by Hunter, u.s., pp. 145-6. ^ See reprint by Arber, English Garner, (ed. 1897), ii. 98. ^ ¥\Qa.y, ■^Chronicle History of . . . Shakespeare, 1886, pp. 104, 134, 204-5. ''LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" 373 winning his bride from her austere father by them . . . and thus his love labours win the consent of Prospero to their union." ^ He quotes the speech of the " patient log-man," and Miranda's tender offers of help. "There be some sports are painful"; but then the hard work is part of the amusement, or the player may trim the balance by setting off the work against the pleasure. But this mean slavery would be as heavy as it is odious. "But The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead And makes my labours pleasures : . . . My sweet mistress Weeps when she sees me work, and says, such baseness Had never like executor. I forget : But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours, Most busy, lest when I do it. "^ In the First Folio there is a comma after bitsy, which seems to be a mere clerical error. The Second reads ^^ least'' for ^^ lest'' : but these forms are sometimes treated as equivalent ; in the Charge of a Court-leet, for instance, written about 1572, and now in the writer's possession, one paragraph begins: "Least that easy forgiveness do give other occasion to do evil." Theobald's invention of "busy-less" for "not- busy " is chiefly remarkable as having been accepted by Dr. Johnson, who even printed the word in his Dictionary. The meaning of the much-disputed pass- age may be that Ferdinand's labours and thoughts are personified. The labours are cheered and refreshed by the sweet thoughts, and work best in their presence ; but they do least when Ferdinand turns from his thoughts and resumes the control of the work.^ ■^ Hunter, u.s., p. 133. He adds: "Not win the willing consent of Miranda, as I have been foolishly represented as contending-." - See Tempest, iii. i, 1-15. ^ But see Mr. Morton Luce's useful note in his edition of The Tempest, 1902, where ample evidence is given on behalf of the First Folio reading. 374 PRODUCTION OF '^THE TEMPEST" III LAMPEDUSA — A SUPPOSED ORIGINAL FOR '* THE TEMPEST " — THE MAGIC OF "the tempest" — SHAKESPEARE AND ARIOSTO Mr. Hunter was convinced that the labours in the woodyard indicated the exact situation of Prospero's island. The scene of the action, he believed, was Lampedusa, a rocky island between Malta and the African coast, "not far from the track of a vessel sail- ing from Tunis to Naples." The official surveys show that it is long, narrow in shape, and about 13I miles in circuit; on which Mr. Hunter declared that "in its dimensions Lampedusa is just what we may imagine Prospero's Island to have been."^ The idea that Lampedusa was in Shakespeare's mind may be fairly called ridiculous. Mr. Hunter, indeed, attributed the "discovery" to Mr. Francis Douce; but Mr. Douce is known to have received it from Mr. Rodd, known as "the learned bookseller," soon after the appearance in 1824 of Sicily and its Islands, by Admiral Smyth, then Captain W. H. Smyth, r.n. Mr. Douce may have accepted the suggestion provisionally, for future con- sideration.^ Lampedusa had been mentioned by Crusius, other- wise Martin Kraus, a Professor at Tubingen, in his Tiirco-GrcBcia, published at Basel in 1584. He said that the nights at Lampedusa were full of a rabble of spectres ; ^ but it has not been suggested that Shake- speare was acquainted with his work. Mr. Hunter prefers to rely on the sailors' tradition that Lampedusa was an enchanted island. Vincenzo Coronelli, Geogra- pher to Louis XIV., gave some account of the place in ^ Hunter, u.s,, p. 160. 2 Hunter, u.s., ii. 343, in "Corrections and Additions." ^ Hunter, u.s., i. 161 : " Noctes ibi spectris tumultucsse. " HUNTER'S LAMPEDUSA THEORY 375 his Specchio del Mare Mediterraneo. ^ Alfonso of the Two Sicilies gave the island, then only the haunt of a few smugglers and vagrants, to his page, Di Caro, with the right to build a castle and to exercise baronial jurisdic- tion ; and a tower was built, but was never occupied, the smugglers having raised enough ''horrible spectres" to frighten away this Baron of opera-houffe. The Turks were the owners for some time, but were turned out in 161 1 by the Spaniards, as appears by Sir Ralph Winwood's correspondence.^ Lampedusa belonged to the Tommasi family of Palermo from 1667 till the time of Captain Smyth's last visit, and afterwards. About the year 181 2, Mr. Fernandez, a British subject, took a lease of the island, intending to set up a trade in cattle and "refreshments" with Malta and Barbary ; but when Captain Smyth saw him last, he was living with his family near the Grotto in the ravine by Cala Croce ; a few labourers, hiding about in the other " troglodytic caves," made up the rest of the popula- tion. " From the harbour," wrote Captain Smyth, "a stout wall, erected at the expense of Mr. Fernandez, runs over in a north-west direction to the opposite coast, entirely separating the broadest part of the eastern end, which is under cultivation, from the rest of the island. The western parts are covered with dwarf olives, and a great variety of plants, so that a great deal of firewood is cut and sent to Tripoli and Malta ; and among this profusion there are plenty of wild goats, that used to annoy the farm considerably, until the erection of the above-mentioned wall ; they still find a destructive enemy in the Numidian crane, called from its graceful gait, the damsel ; these birds arrive ^ Venice, 1698, part i. p. 70, quoted by Hunter, ibid. The details fol- lowing were borrowed from various sources by Captain W. H. Smyth, Memoir descriptive of the resources of Sicily and its islands, 1824. ^ Carleton to Turnbull, 18 October, 161 1, in Winwood, Memorials, etc. iii. 298. 376 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" in great numbers in May, and delight to revel among the legumes."^ Mr. Hunter admits that " Lampedusa is a deserted island or nearly so, and was so in the time of Shakespeare . . . the Earl of Sandwich, who visited the island in 1737, found only one person living upon it ; and, going backward to the time of Shake- speare, earlier voyagers and geographers give the same account."^ He appears to have believed, nevertheless, that there was an important trade in pine-logs between this deserted island and Malta at the time when The Tempest was written. They must have been pine-logs, though there are now no pine woods, because Ariel was shut by Sycorax into a cloven pine ; and by the same reasoning there must have been other timber, because Prospero threatened to peg the sprite into the cleft of a knotty oak.^ The trade in pine-logs is to be inferred from the labours imposed upon the Prince, and more especially from the tender words of Miranda : *' Alas, now, pray you, Work not so hard : I would the lightning had Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin'd to pile ! Pray, set it down and rest you : when this burns, 'Twill weep for having wearied you." * "The coincidence," we are told, "is very extra- ordinary," and the point of resemblance "too peculiar to have existed at all," if there was no connection between Lampedusa and the island in the play.^ There is proof, however, that no fuel trade in dwarf-olives, or canes and brushwood, or in pine-logs or other hard wood, was carried on between Malta and Lampedusa in Shakespeare's time, and certainly not within the half-dozen years before or after the production of The Tempest. Mr. George Sandys, the traveller, at one time Treasurer of Virginia, began a journey to the Levant ^ Smyth, op. cit., quoted at length by Hunter, Disquisition, p. 24. ^ Hunter, New Illustrations, i. 160. ^ Tempest, i. 2, 277, 294-5. * Id., Hi. I. ^ Hunter, u.s., p. 163. THE ISLAND OF LAMPEDUSA 377 in the year 1610, and arrived at Malta on his return in the following year. In 161 5 he published an interest- ing volume, entitled A Relation of a Journey begun An : Dom : 1610. Foure Bookes, containing a description of the Turkish Empire^ etc. The countryfolk in Malta, he said, had a kind of Carline, or great thistle, used with farmyard manure, which served them for fuel : ''who need not much in a Clime so exceeding hote." For the rest, he says, "A country altogether champion, being no other then a rocke couered ouer with earth, but two feete deepe where the deepest; hauing few trees but such as beare fruite, whereof of all sorts plentifully furnished. So that their wood they haue from Sicilia.'"'^ We ought to take some brief notice of the other alleged coincidences. Captain Smyth said that there had been a celebrated recluse, who lived in the grotto, "up a ravine in some degree picturesque."^ "The Cell of Prospero is made by Shakespeare, perhaps accidentally, picturesque, by shading it with line-trees"; and these line-trees, or lindens, are described by Hunter a little later as a grove in which we may imagine "alcoves and bowers of delight in unison with the character of the young and susceptible Miranda."^ The Sicilians used to call a man who was ready to serve any faith by the nickname "Hermit of Lampe- dusa." The notion was that the recluse served both a chapel and a mosque in his grotto, and lit up for Cross or Crescent, according to the flag shown by a ship entering the harbour. In this hermit Mr. Hunter found "a faint prototype of Prospero." Captain Smyth had heard of another legend ; and this, too, according to Mr. Hunter, "bears a slight resemblance to the subject of this Play." It is, as he points out, the subject of Wieland's poem of Klelia und Sinibald. ■^ Sandys, A Relation, etc, u.s., p. 228. ^ Smyth, quoted by Hunter, Disquisition, p. 24. ** Hunter, New Illustratio7is, i. 162, 177. 378 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" Rosina and Clelia, two ladies of Palermo, were washed ashore from a wreck, and on the island they found two hermits — Guido and Sinibald — who were glad to re- nounce their vows for a double wedding.^ Caliban, we are reminded, lived in a cave, like one of the labourers engaged by Mr. Fernandez. We have another allusion to these caves in the conversation between the clowns concerning the wine : " Trinculo. O Stephano, hast any more of this? " Stephano. The whole butt, man ; my cellar is in a rock by the seaside where my wine is hid." ^ Coronelli asserted that the Turks, if they found the place empty, always left a present. "They are governed by a ridiculous superstitious idea that no one would be able to go out of the island who did not leave some- thing there, or who had the hardihood to take away the merest trifle " ; and he added that the Knights of Malta went every year with their galleys, and took back to Malta the offerings from the chapel for the support of their ''Hospital for the Infirm."^ Mr. Hunter compares with this "one mode of the operations of Prospero." Ariel was asked how fared the King and his followers, and he replies : " All prisoners, sir, In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell ; They cannot budge till your release. The King, His brother and yours, abide all three distracted And the remainder mourning over them, Brimful of sorrow and dismay.^'* A good account of the grotto was given by Jean de Thevenot in the second part of his Voyages au Levant^ ^ Hunter, u.s., p. 163. " Id., p. 162 ; Tempest, ii. 2, 136-S. ^ Coronelli, Specchio del Mare. Cf. Crusius, as quoted by Hunter, Disquisition, p. 20 : " Eodem modo in altera templi parte a Turcis obla- tiones fiunt. Aiunt qui non ofFerat aut aliquod oblati auferat, nee restituit, non posse ab insula abire." ■* Hunter, New Illustrations, i. 161 ; Tempest, v. i, 9-14. TRAVELLERS ON LAMPEDUSA 379 translated into English by D. Lovell in 1687. His vessel passed close to Lampedusa in February, 1659. They did not land, because the only inhabitants were the rabbits: ^' N^est hahitee que de connilsJ''' Some on board had been in the harbour and had seen the statue and the shrine. There was a little chapel with an image of Our Lady of the Grotto, venerated by Christians and Turks alike. In front of the image stood an altar with money on it, but the remaining space was like a marine store. Any visitor might deposit money or goods, and he would find what he wanted — arms and ammunition, biscuit, wine, or oil, anything that he required "down to a little needle-case."^ Once a year came the Malta galley and took the money from the altar to the church of Our Lady at Trapani. Both Trapani and its little dependency were under the Archbishop of Palermo.^ We may remember how Ariosto confesses in the forty-second book of his Orlando that he had quite misdescribed the island, as Archbishop Fulgoso had justly complained, and that the tournament could not have taken place, because there was not " one level foot of ground," unless in the course of centuries nature might have caused some great change by earthquake or flood. ^ Thevenot al^o heard a story about a "Christian vessel " that could not for a long time be got out of the harbour, until at last it was found that a sailor had taken stores without leaving the value ; and when restitution was made the ship was able to depart.* ^ J. de Thevenot, Voyage fait a%i Levant, 1664, vol. i. part ii., pp. 537-8. ^ Trapani was raised to the rank of a bishopric (suffragan to Palermo) 31st May, 1844 (Gams, Series Episcoporum, 1873, p. 956). Before the Saracen conquest there had been a bishop of Drepanum. ^ Orlando Fur. , canto xlii. 20-1 : " I'isola si fiera, Montuosa e inegual ritrovi tanto, Che non h, dice, in tutto il luogo strano, Ove un sol pi^ si possa metter piano," etc. ^ J. de Thevenot, u.s., p. 538. 38o PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" These legends of the grotto look like a survival from ancient folk-lore. The Scholiast in Apollonius Rhodius preserved a story told by Pytheas of Marseilles, in the fourth century B.C., to the following effect: "In Lipari and Stromboli the God of Fire seems to dwell, for one hears the roar of flame and a terrible bellowing, and it was said from old times that any- one might leave unwrought iron there, with some money, and next day he would find a sword or any implement that he desired."^ In Dr. Thurnam's tract on Wayland Smith we find a similar legend about the great cromlech at Ashbury : "At this place lived formerly an invisible smith, and if a traveller's horse had lost a shoe upon the road, he had no more to do than to bring the horse to this place, with a piece of money, and leaving both there for a time, he might come again and find the money gone, but the horse shod." A similar story was current in Oldenburg, where the smith was known as "the Hiller.'''' Many instances of a somewhat similar nature have been collected by M. Dupont in H Homme pendant les Ages de la Pierre, Behren in Hercynia Curiosa, Professor Boyd-Dawkins in Cave-hunting, and Keightley in his Fairy Mythology, under Frensham, Surrey, as to leaving money at the mouth of a cave, and finding what was wanted spread out a short time after. Mr. Hunter endeavoured to show how Shakespeare became acquainted with Lampedusa. In the first place, he pointed out that all the romantic plays, with two exceptions, were known to be based on existing stories, which in several cases were not of home growth, but the work of foreign invention. These exceptions were Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest ; and the fact was the more remarkable, because both of them seemed to ^ Scholia ex Codice Parisiensi in Apollonii Argonauticis iv. 761 (ed. Brunck, 1813, ii. 299-300). The scholiast adds : " TaOra ^Tjcri 'Q.vdia.% iv 7t5s Tr€pi,68i{i^ \4yiov Kai tt)v OdXaaaav ^/ce? ^eiv," HISTORICAL REFERENCES 381 be '* offshoots from a stock of genuine history." The discussion of the French King's contract in the former play reads as if it were some vague reminiscence of a chronicle, and in Mr. Hunter's opinion the story of The Tevipest showed some distorted reference to the history of Naples and Milan. "But still," he said, "through the mist we can discern the real persons who were in the mind of the author, and some of the real events which are the basis of his fable." ^ One proof is ad- duced to show that The Tempest is "a translated, not an original, composition." Mr. Hunter refers us to Antonio's exaggerated speech about Queen Claribel : *' She that is queen of Tunis ; she that dwells Ten leag-ues beyond man's life ; she that from Naples Can have no note, unless the sun were post — The man-i'-the-moon's too slow — till new-born chins Be rough and razorable."^ " Man's-life," he suggested, was the name of an African city which was turned into English by an " erroneous principle of translation" ; adding that Leo Africanus wrote of a city south of Tunis, known by the name of Zod^ which was probably the place in question.^ The illustration was somewhat unfortunate, because Leo does not mention any town or city called either Zoa or Zoe ; but the place at which Mr. Hunter pointed was called Zoara, or Zuagha, a coast town in Tripoli, nowhere near the city of Tunis, but distant about twelve miles from the present capital, and close to the ruins of old Tripoli. The other examples of his "principle of translation" are equally unimportant. He found a place called "Evil-town" in the Travels of Mandevile. Then we have "Mars-hill" for the Areopagus in the Acts of the Apostles ; but Shake- speare, one may observe, would have been more familiar with another form ; the reading of the Geneva ^ Hunter, u.s., p. 167. ^ Tempest, ii. i, 246-50. ^ Hunter, u.s., p. 166. 382 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" version being, They ''broght hym into Mars strete," with a note, ''This was a place called, as you would say, Mars Hill, where the Judges sate."^ Another example was taken from The Comedy of Errors, where "the Place of Depth " is put forward as a translation of Barathrum; but the context is in favour of the accepted reading, "place of death and sorry execution, behind the ditches of the abbey here."- The last example is the most appropriate ; for Villafranca was evidently the original of " Old Free-town, our common judgement-place," to which the Prince summoned Capulet and Montague.^ The Tempest, then, is alleged to contain a distorted kind of history ; and the same may be said of Love's Labour's Lost; and therefore, said Mr. Hunter, "there is great reason to conclude that the stories on which Shakespeare wrought in both are in one and the same book.""* This seems to be the essential fallacy on which the whole argument depends. He assumes the existence of a single volume without a vestige of proof or of any presumption of probability. The imaginary book is only a mirage of the brain. Shakespeare made mistakes, if he was trying to copy the real history of Milan ; he always copied something ; and therefore there must have been a prototype con- taining the same mistakes. He was quite as much at sea in his history of France and Navarre ; and therefore he must have taken it from the same source. It follows that the volume containing all these blunders, or an English translation of it, must have been in Shakespeare's possession as early as 1585, or whenever Love's Labour's Lost was first produced. No such translation is men- ■^ Acts xvii. 19. Tyndale, 1534, has " Marsestrete " ; Cranmer, 1539, " Marce strete " (texts in English Hexapla, Bag-ster, 1841). 2 Comedy of Errors, v. i, 12 1-2. ^ Romeo a7id Juliet, i. i, 109. See Hunter, u.s., p. 166. * Hunter, ibid. ORIGIN OF THE PLAY 383 tioned in the Stationer's Registers or elsewhere ; nor, indeed, has any proof been found that the original ever existed. "In England," said the critic, "it is in vain now to hope to find such a volume." He wished that those who had access to the popular literature of France, Navarre, and Italy would exert themselves to find the original volume: "That such a book once existed there cannot be a reasonable doubt : that every copy of an English translation should have perished, is a possibility which the history of the popular literature of England will forbid any person from doubting. In its native language, however, such a book may still, I trust, be existing."^ Mr. William Collins, the poet, was next cited as a witness to prove that the magic of The Tevipest^ apart from the storm, was derived from an Italian romance. Now Collins, said Dr. Johnson, was "a man of ex- tensive literature." He knew "the learned tongues," French, Italian, and Spanish, and had studied all the fiction that he could find in those languages. "He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters ; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the water-falls of Elysian gardens." The latter part of his life, says Dr. Johnson, "cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness." For some years before his death in 1756 his mind became oppressed by "a general laxity and feebleness" ; and, after being some time in a lunatic asylum, he was placed under the care of his sister at Chichester, where he lived in a very depressed condition. Mr. Thomas Warton and some other friends used to visit him there ; and they reported that "what he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit, but a few minutes exhausted him."' Among other things, Collins told Mr. Thomas Warton that he had seen the novel ^ Hunter, ^l.s., p. 169. "^ Johnson, Lives of Poets, ed. Cunninefham, 1854, iii. 283-5. 384 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" ''which principallyappeared to have suggested the magi- cal part of The Tempest.'''' He thought that it was in a book, printed in four languages, and entitled Aurelio and Isabella; but this, says Mr. Hunter, turns out to be a mistake ; " the Aurelio and Isabella I now possess, and it has no resemblance whatever to the story of The Tempest.'''''^ This romance was written by Juan de Flores. The full title, according to Lowndes, ran as follows: "The History of Aurelio and of Isabell, Daughter of the Kinge of Schotlande, nyewly trans- latede in foure languages, Frenche, Italien, Spanishe, and Inglishe. Impressa en Anuers, 1556, i2mo."^ Mr. Thomas Warton gave some account of the matter in his History of English Poetry. He concluded that Shakespeare's story was to be found in some old Italian novel, or, at any rate, in some book preceding the date of The Tempest. " Mr. Collins," he says, " had searched this subject with no less fidelity than judgment and in- dustry : but his memory failing in his last calamitous indisposition, he probably gave me the name of one novel for another." Moreover, Mr. Collins had said something, had "added a circumstance," leading us to think that the novel was about "a chemical necro- mancer " with a demon at his call : it might be con- jectured that his name was " Aurelio," because alchemy dealt with the making of gold.^ Malone rejected the conclusion altogether. He had his own theory about the storm, and he thought that the story of Prospero might owe something to Greene's story of Alphonsus ; but the limits were so slight that Shake- speare was left in full possession of "the highest praise that the most original and transcendent genius can claim." Mr. James Boswell, however, reverted to Mr. Thomas Warton's opinion, when he edited theVariorttm ^ Hunter, u.s.^ p. 167. ^ Lowndes, Bibliographer s Manual^ ed. Bohn, 1864, i. 88. ^ Warton, History of English Poetry, sect. Ix. (ed. 1840,- iii. 386). THE "LOST ORIGINAL" 385 of Malone ; for Collins, he considered, ''was much more likely to have confounded in his memory two books which he had met with nearly at the same time, than to have fancied that he had read what existed only in his own imagination."^ Mr. Hunter called this "a just remark";^ but we cannot help agreeing with Malone, who had been pressed with the same argu- ment, that there is no evidence of the two books having been read about the same time. Collins, in short, made a mistake, owing to the weakness of his mind, and it is impossible to build up a positive argument on what he left out or what he might have intended to say. Mr. Hunter not only believed in the lost book, but felt himself able to describe its authorship and its principal contents. It was, he believed, the production of a French, Spanish, or Italian writer, but most probably the work of an Italian, "to whom the attri- butes, physical and metaphysical, of the island of Lampedusa were familiarly known, as easily as they might be." By the term "metaphysical attributes" he may have meant the apparitions and dreams that were believed to haunt visitors to the enchanted island.^ The unnamed writer was shown to be singularly weak in his Italian history; but "through the mist," we are told, we can discern the persons who were in his mind, "and some of the real events which are the basis of his family." It would be more correct to say that The Tempest has nothing to do with the history of Naples or Milan, except in its use of the familiar names of Alonzo and Ferdinand. Massimiliano Sforza, elder son of Ludovico il Moro, was turned out of Milan ^ Malone, ed. Boswell, xv. 6, etc. On p. i6 Malone also mentions tentatively Dent's translation of Commines, 1596, pp. 293-4, where Alfonso II. of Naples is mentioned in connection with the designs of the Sforzas against his house. He suggests that Prospero Colonna may have furnished the suggestion for " Prospero," while Miranda may have arisen from the mention of a lord of Mirandola. ^ Hunter, u.s.^ p. 167. ^ Hunter, Ne'w Illustrations, p. 165. 2 C 386 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" by the French after the battle of Marignano in 151 5 ; his brother, Francesco Sforza, after the battle of Bicocca in 1522, began his disturbed career as Duke of Milan. There is nothing like this in The Tempest, except the bare old news of Charles the Wrestler in As You Like It: — " There is no news at the court, sir, but the old news : that is, the old duke is banished by his younger brother the new duke."^ Alfonso of Naples gave up his kingdom to his natural son Ferdinand and retired to Sicily, where he gave himself up to "study and religion," but died after a few months. We find nothing in the story to remind us of King Alonzo and the wily Sebastian. The anonymous novelist is presented to us as an adept in the "Chaldean Philosophy." Mr. Hunter con- sidered that this philosophy came "from the very depths of human civilization." He appears to have been ignorant of the history of Chaldean magic and the Grccco-Egyptian magic, which have become familiar subjects since the essay was written. His list included in one class "Jannes and Jambres, who withstood Moses," King Solomon, the Three Kings from the East, Simon Magus, and those that used "curious books" at Ephesus. He refers to the mediaeval fancies about the enchanter Virgil ; but it is difficult to follow the track of the argument. "There are then," he summed it up, "a crowd of persons of obscure name in the countries of modern Europe, and especially about the shores of the Mediterranean, who were professors of this so- called philosophy. . . . The Adepts in this philosophy were supposed to hold communication with the spiritual world, and they had their servant-spirits, whom they ^ As You Like It, i. i, 103-5. -^ ^^^s fanciful, if equally inconclusive, correlation of fact with fiction would be to recall the usurpation of Ludovico il Moro in 1494 and its sanction by the King of the Romans, Maximilian I. HUNTER ON CHALDEAN PHILOSOPHY 387 bound in stones or stocks, from which they knew how to evoke them when their services were needed. Fallen Angels they were who had lost their first estate." Prospero, of course, is taken as an impersonation of the true adept, and Ariel as the chief of the ''servant- spirits " under his command.^ We are informed that The Tempest contains a good deal that is Hebraistic, "as might be expected when there was so much of the Chaldee philosophy." "The measure of time, 'till new-born chins are rough and razorable,' is quite Hebraistic."^ In one case we gain a direct insight into the novelist's mind, if we can only accept these Babylonian reasonings. Caliban's form, not his words or acts, but his shape and figure, was of "Oriental origin," whether Philistine, Hebraist, or Chaldee. As to form, we are told, Caliban is the god of the Philistines, Dagon the Fish-god, who had the body of a fish, and the head, hands, and feet of a man. " Nothing can be more precise than the resemblance : the two are, in fact, one, as far as form is concerned. Caliban is thus a kind of tortoise, the paddles expand- ing in arms and hands, legs and feet." Does not Prospero himself say, "Come forth, thou tortoise"? This form, Mr. Hunter assures us, is consistent with everything that Caliban says or does; but "it was a difficult figure to manage on the stage," as Shakespeare must have known full well. Why, then, should he have chosen it, if he were not "under constraint"; in other words, the figure was "prescribed" by the novelist, whose mind had been occupied by that Fish- god whose head and hands were cut off upon the threshold at Ashdod.^ Mr. Hunter referred his readers to Origines Hebrcece, the Antiquities of the Hebrew Republic, by Thomas Lewis, 1724-5, and to Selden's ^ Hunter, u.s., pp. 179-81. '■^ Id., p. 183. Ariel (p. 181) is connected with the Hebrew name given by Isaiah (xxix. i) to Jerusalem ! ^ Hunter, u.s., pp. 183-5. 388 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" treatise on the Syrian gods in the second volume of his works; the latter was published separately in 1617 under the title De Diis Syriis. An extract is added from Selden's letter to Jonson, written in 161 5, on the rule against men wearing women's apparel, in which the shape of Dagon was discussed, and legends from Berosus added, about " Oannes," the Fish-god of the Euphrates, ''with the body of a fish, and one of the heads like a man's head, and feet in its tail."^ Mr. Hunter's conclusion from these vague traditions appears in the sentences following. "The similarity of Caliban and Dagon is confined to form. I hold it to be certain, first, that the form was not an invention of the English poet ; secondly, that he found it in the story on which he wrought in this play ; and thirdly, that the original constructor of the story was versed in Chaldee an- tiquities, and thence drew this strange and unnatural and eminently undramatic compound." ^ Mr. Hunter ascribed all Prospero's magical powers to the influences derived from Babylon : " He calls up splendid visions : at his command the air is filled with sweet music, or with the sounds of hound and horn."^ But one may remember that charms of this kind were given to brave Owen Glendower, without reference to any Eastern philosophy : — " Those musicians that shall play to you Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence, And straight they shall be here : sit, and attend."* Prospero raises or quells the storm, and plucks up great trees ; << Graves at my command Have waked their sleepers " ; ^ but Mr. Hunter acknowledged that this "rough magic" was borrowed from the Medea of Golding's translations from Ovid.^ The Roman had addressed the spirits of •* Hunter, ibid. (note). ^ Ibid. ^ Id., pp. 180-1. ^ I Henry IV., iii. i, 226-8. ° Tempest, v. i, 48-9. '^ Hunter, n.s., ii. 162 (in essay on Macbeth). PROSPERO'S MAGIC POWERS 389 the night, of the mountains, woods, and waters ; Golding could not understand that to every object corresponded a spiritual essence, or genius ; and he solved the difficulty by addressing the incantation to the familiar fairies, or elves. ''Ye aires and winds, yee elues of hilles, of brooks, of woods alone. Of standing lakes, and of the night approch ye euerichone."^ Shakespeare added the fairies dancing at the margin of the shore, the tiny forms that tread the grass into "green sour ringlets," or after curfew steal out to set mushrooms for their midnight crop. By the help of such frail creatures, ''weak Masters of elemental force," Prospero had performed his mighty tasks : — " I have bedlmmed The noon-tide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt ; the strong-based promontory Have I made shake and by the spurs plucked up The pine and cedar : graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, oped and let 'em forth, By my so potent art. "^ The witchcraft of Sycorax is derived from an equally classical source. The witch of Algiers is a copy of the Mussylian sorceress who came at Queen Dido's call. Shakespeare found her attributes in the translation of the fourth ^neid by Thomas Phaer. She could shift the trees of the forest, or turn the flow of the rivers, and alter the courses of the stars ; and Sycorax was as strong a witch : "That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs. And deal in her command without her power. "^ The meaning appears to be that Sycorax, like the witches of Thessaly, could make the moon come down, ^ A. Golding, The xv. Bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, etc., 1584, bk. vii. p. 90. ^ Tempest, v. i, 33-50. ^ Id,, v. 1, 270-1. 390 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" and fill the estuaries, and by authority from below could do feats beyond any human power. The office of Ariel was treated by Mr. Hunter as if the airy spirit were an ordinary ''familiar." There was a common superstition that a witch or conjurer was attended by a demon in the form of a fly, or some such creature ; and Paracelsus used to boast that he carried a devil in the pommel of his sword. Mr. Hunter discusses the nature of the call by which the "familiar" was summoned. He found several instances in The Tempest, "The words," he said, "are such as Lesbia might have used to her sparrow, or an Eastern beauty to a bird of paradise : ' Come, away. Servant, come . . . approach, my Ariel, come.' " In the fourth act we have it again : " Now come, my Ariel, appear ; and pertly"; and again, "Come with a thought: Ariel, come ! " " The call," he adds, " is introduced on other occasions, and is always in harmony with the delicate form of Ariel, in which the idea of a bee perhaps rather predominates than that of any other living thing." ^ This may be founded on some notion that Ariel was to live "under the blossom," like the elf in his "Bee- song," instead of returning to his elemental home.^ But in the play itself the situation was far more compli- cated. When Prospero arrived, the sprite was an exile from those airy confines. Sycorax had fitted him with a body with nerves susceptible of pain ; and had thrust him, thus materialised, into the rift of a cloven pine. The air was full of shrieks and groans, repeated "as fast as mill-wheels strike " : " Thy groans Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts Of ever angry bears : it was a torment To lay upon the damned, which Sycorax Could not again undo : it was mine art, When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape The pine and let thee out." ^ Hunter, u.s., pp. 182-3. ^ Tempest, v. i, 93-4. THE CHARACTER OF ARIEL 391 Sycorax could only perform the feat by the help of her "potent ministers," and when she died they could not undo their work. But Prospero's power was of a higher rate. "Mine art," he says, "let thee out. Ariel, I thank thee. Master " : " Pros. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak And peg" thee in his knotty entrails till Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters."^ It was in a lost Italian story, as Mr. Hunter imagined, that Shakespeare found his isle of Lampedusa ; and being thus "carried there," must have cast about for more information, and was thus, perhaps, led to Ariosto. The Orlando Furioso had been turned into English verse by Sir John Harington in 1591 : and in it Shakespeare might find the description of a ship- wreck "in the seas about the very group of islands of which Lampedusa is one." Mr. Hunter proposed to show that the passage had been read by Shakespeare shortly before preparing the opening scene of The Tempest. His object was to show that this scene was designed to exhibit in dramatic action "the same spectacle which Ariosto had presented in his epic."^ There is nothing strange in the general idea, though it is difficult to accept some of the so-called coincidences. Some of them are explained by the fact that Harington had served at sea, and tried to explain Italian terms of art by English phrases. Mr. Hunter had found similarities which he would not have expected " in two perfectly independent compositions."^ In both storms we read of the master and the master's whistle ; and it seemed to him improbable that the "whistle" would occur to the minds of independent writers.* In both narratives the sails are struck, and in both there is a " falling to prayer " at the end. Ariosto's ship sprang ^ Id.t i. 2, 274-96. ^ Hunter, u.s., pp. 169-70, 173. ^ Id.^ p. 173. * See Tempest, i. i, and Orlando Ficrioso, tr. Harington, 1591, bk. xli. stt. 8-18. 392 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" a leak ; and old Gonzalo made a jest about leakiness. Even more remarkable, it is said, was the contempt of rank and royalty in both ; " What care I for the name of King : get out of my way, I say." But this is only a paraphrase of the Boatswain's, who will be patient when the sea is so : " Hence ! What care these roarers for the name of King-? To cabin ! silence ! trouble us not." In the Orlando we are told that "of King nor Prince no man takes heed or note " ; but the " roarers " in The Tempest are only the noisy waves. Some of the verbal "coincidences" deserve very little attention. The "cry," when the ship was dashed to pieces, did knock against Miranda's "very heart"; the comment is that the words of Ariosto seem to have been ringing in the poet's ears : " 'Twas lamentable then to hear the cries, Of companies of every sort confused, In vain to heaven they lift their hands and eyes, Making" late vows, as in such case is used," ^ When Miranda was told the story of her father's exile, " O the heavens! " she cried, "What foul play had we, that we came from thence. Or blessed was't we did ! " And her father answers : " Both, both, my g-irl : By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heaved thence. But blessedly holp hither. "^ Mr. Hunter suggested that Shakespeare got these phrases from the fortieth book of the Orlando, where Agramant was driven by another storm to a harbour where he found an ally who promised assistance : "Agramant praised much this offer kind. And called it a g^ood and blessed storm. That caused him such a friend as this to find. And thanks him for his offer. "^ ^ Tempest, i. 2, 8-9; Harington, xli. 20. ^ Tempest, i. 2, 59-63. ^ Harington, xl. 47. Hunter quoted the first line inaccurately. SHAKESPEARE AND HARINGTON 393 The hermit, again, who helped Ruggiero to climb the rock, could "allay " the waves with the sign of the cross; and Miranda begged her father to ''allay" the wild waters, if he had caused them to roar.^ There is nothing singular in the word, which was often used by Shakespeare in a similar sense ; but Mr. Hunter argued that a word need not be peculiar to serve " as an index " to a later author's train of thought : " A peculiarity in its use, or an application of it to the same or similar circumstances, may do as well." ^ The nearest approach to a real coincidence is to be found by comparing the flames in Ariosto's storm with the fires of Ariel in The Tempest; but Shakespeare was probably familiar with an account of Magellan's voyage, which would supply him with all the necessary information.^ The slightest part of the argument lies in the com- parison of passages from Shakespeare and Harington, very much to the disadvantage of the former. When the young lord-in-waiting was consoling King Alonzo, he gave a minute account of the prince's escape from drowning : — " I saw him beat the surges under him, And ride upon their backs ; he trod the water, Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted The surge most swoln that met him ; his bold head 'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke To the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd, As stooping to receive him." ^ What is called the ''corresponding passage," in the ^ Tempest, i. 2, 2 ; Haring-ton, xliii. 178, where the word is "still," not "allay." "^ Hunter, u.s., p. 173. ^ Pig-afetta, Primo Viaggio intorno al Gloho, included in Ramusio, Raccolta delle Navigazioni e Viaggi, 1588. A French summary of Piga- fetta's description had appeared in 1534. A translation of this was added by Richard Willes to his edition of Richard Eden's Historie of Travayle in the West and East Indies, 1 577. ■^ Tempest, ii. i, 114-21. 394 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" forty-first book of the Orlando, shows us how Ruggiero '* above the water keeps his head " : *' With legs and arms he doth him so behave, That still he kept upon the floods aloft, He blows out from his face the boistrous wave That ready vii'as to overwhelm him oft."^ According to Mr. Hunter, the passage in The Tempest is laboured, "and betrays marks of effort," as if the writer was attempting "to rival a great originaL"^ "We have," he said, "a similar correspondence in another of the laboured passages in The Tempest, in which he opens to view the guiltiness of the conscience of Alonzo " : '* Methought the billows spoke and told me of it ; The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced The name of Prosper : it did bass my trespass. Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded And with him there lie mudded." ^ This, again, is said to be written with the same strained effort, " produced, perhaps, by the attempt to rival and surpass the earlier poet." * 1 Harington, xli, 22. ^ Hunter, w.5. , 175. ^ Tempest, iii. 3, 96-102, ^ Hunter, u.s. The passage which called forth this "attempt" on Shakespeare's part is singularlyweak in comparison with the "attempt" itself. II. THE MARRIAGE OF THE EARL OF ESSEX, AND JONSON'S ^'MASQUE OF HYMEN," 1606 I Essex's marriage — errors as to exact nature of cere- mony — marriage of lady ESSEX TO ROCHESTER, 1613 — ACCOUNT OF THE CEREMONIES AND MASQUES ON Sunday, the 5th of January, 1606, a strange wedding was celebrated in the palace of White- hall. The King and Queen, and all the great people of the court, were assembled to see two children united in holy matrimony. The bride was a girl under thirteen, and the bridegroom about a twelvemonth older. The object of the alliance was to make some amends for the judicial murder of Queen Elizabeth's favourite, and for the imprisonment of his friend. Lord Southampton, to attach the remaining ** Essex faction " to the King's side, and incidentally to please more than one powerful minister. The bride. Lady Frances Howard, was the younger daughter of Thomas, Earl of Suffolk, then Lord Chamberlain and afterwards Lord High Treasurer. She was a pretty child, and became renowned for her good looks before she was seventeen. Arthur Wilson, her husband's ** gentleman," wrote a history of the reign, and said that she grew to be "a beauty of the greatest magnitude in that horizon . . . and every tongue grew an orator at that shrine."^ 1 Life and Reign of James I. , printed in Kennett's Compleat History of England {i']o6), vol. ii. p. 686, col. 2. 395 396 PRODUCTION OF '- * Rimbault, op. cit, p. 160. 398 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" and Earl of Montgomery on the 4th of May, 1605, and succeeded his brother, William Herbert, in the Earldom of Pembroke in 1630. Mr. Pory next proceeds to describe the "Masque of Hymen," presented on the evening of the wedding, but we postpone that part of his letter till we come to Ben Jonson's own stage- directions. Another notice of the marriage is found in the title of the Masque of Hymen, as published by Ben Jonson in its first edition: ''Hymenaei, or the Solemnities of Masque and Barriers, Magnificently performed on the Eleventh and Twelfth Nights from Christmas, at Court : to the auspicious celebrating of the Marriage- union betweene Robert Earle of Essex and the Lady Frances, second daughter of the most noble Earle of Suffolke, 1605-6. The Author, B.J." After the con- viction of the Earl and Countess of Somerset for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1613, the title was changed, and the piece appears in Jonson's collected works as Hymenaei, or the Solemnities of Masque and Barriers at a Marriage. It has been supposed that The Te7npest was connected in some way with this marriage, ever since Holt pub- lished his essay on the play in 1749.-^ Its miniature masque was obviously written in honour of some noble alliance ; that appears from the love-scene in the wood- yard, the promise of a royal wedding at Naples, the chanted blessings of the great goddesses, united, as we are twice told, ''a contract of true love to celebrate." ^ The Masque, said Holt, was "a compliment intended by the poet, on some particular solemnity of that kind ; and if so, none more likely, than the contracting the ^ An Attenipte to rescue that aunciente, English poet, and play-'wrighte, Maister Williau?>ie Shakespere ; from the maney errours, faulsely charged on him, by certaine new-fangled wittes . . . by a Gentleman formerly of Greys-Inn, 1749. '^ Tempest, iii. i ; v. i, 306-9; iv. i, 84 and 132-3. HOLT'S ESSAY ON THE PLAY 399 young Earl of Essex, in 1606, with the Lady Frances Howard." Holt was of opinion that the play was a testimony of Shakespeare's gratitude to Lord South- ampton, "a warm patron of the Author's, and as zealous a friend to the Essex family." It is true that Holt continually wavered between the ideas of a be- trothal and an actual marriage. He selected the year 1610 as the time when the union was complete. Then he gave his readers leave to accept the theory that The Tempest was written for the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth to the Prince Palatine on Valentine's Day, 1613. Next he seems to have forgotten all about ''the Palsgrave and our Lady Bess " ; for he ascribes the play to some time in the year 1614, before the produc- tion of Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, though the play was known, at any rate, to have been acted before the Princess in the previous year.^ Malone followed Holt in his mistake about betrothal and marriage. The bride and bridegroom were of lawful age and their matrimony was duly solemnised. ^ Lord Essex and his child-wife were too young to set up a home, and it was arranged that she should live with her mother, while he travelled with *'a guide or tutor" through France and Germany. He stayed abroad for about four years. Malone believed that he came home in 1609, on the authority of some of the depositions in the divorce proceedings ;^ but most of the biographers agreed with Holt in thinking that he returned in the following year. In writing on the chronological order of the plays, Malone explained his views as follows : ^ Holt, op. cit., pp. 17, 62, 67. ^ In a pamphlet containing the divorce proceedings, published by Curll in 171 1, the first declaration of the Lady Frances Howard is "that she and Robert Earle of Essex were Maried by Publicke Rites and Ceremonies in January 1606 " (p. i). To this the Earl of Essex an- swered in the affirmative (p. 5). Arthur Wilson, u.s., amply bears out the fact of marriage as opposed to betrothal. " Malone's Shakespeare, ed, Boswell, 1821, xv. 418. 400 PRODUCTION OF *'THE TEMPEST" ''Mr. Holt conjectured, that the masque in the fifth (sic) Act of this comedy was intended by the poet as a compliment to the Earl of Essex, on his being united in wedlock, in 1611, to Lady Frances Howard, to whom he had been contracted some years before. Even if this had been the case, the date which that commen- tator has assigned to this play (1614,) is certainly too late : for it appears from the MSS. of Mr. Vertue that the Tempest was acted by John Heminge and the rest of the King's Company, before prince Charles, the lady Elizabeth, and the prince Palatine elector, in the beginning of the year 1613." Mr. Boswell, in his notes to the Varwrttm edition, added for himself : "Mr. Holt {Obsewatmis on ^ The Tempest,'' p. 67) im- agined that Lord Essex was united to Lady Frances Howard in 1610 ; but he was mistaken : for their union did not take place till the next year." In his next note he refers again to the words "contracted some years before." He gives the date as "January the 5th, 1606-7," which must be wrong, whatever style of reckoning be adopted; and proceeds to say, "The Earl continued abroad four years from that time ; so that he did not cohabit with his wife till 1611."^ In his Essay on the origin and date of The Tempest, printed in 1808, and appended to the play in the Variorum edition, Malone once more spoke of the marriage of the Earl and Lady Frances, "to whom he had been betrothed in 1606."^ The marriage, as we have seen, was solemnised in 1606. It was annulled on the 25th of September, 1613, by a Commission of Delegates, after various scandalous and collusive proceedings. When Essex returned from the Continent, he found his wife entangled in an in- trigue with Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, the all- powerful favourite. On the 4th of November, Carr was created Earl of Somerset, and was married to Lady ^ Id. , ii. 466 and note, - ^ Id. , as note REMARRIAGE OF LADY ESSEX 401 Frances on December 26th. The ''Old Cheque-book" contains the form of the banns published on the 19th of December, the 21st of December, and Christmas Day: "I aske the banes of matrimony betweene the Right Honorable personages, Roberte Earle of Somer- sett, of the on[e] partie, and the Ladie Francis Howard, of the other part : if any man can shewe any just cause why these may not lawfully be joyned together, lett him speake." Among the entries of royal and noble marriages we find the following note : ''After that the Earle of Essex and his Wiffe, the Ladie Frauncis Howard had byn maryed eight yeares, ther was by a Commission of Delegates an anullity found to be in that maryage . . . wheruppon they beinge sundered, ther was a maryage solemnized betweene the Earle of Somersett and her upon the 26th of December, 1613, at Whithall, in the Chappell, being St. Steeven's dale, at which maryage was present the Kinges Majestic and the Queene, with the Prince and all the Lordes and Ladies of the Court and about London. The Bride was given by the Earle of Suffolke, Lord Chamberlaine, her Father. And the gentlemen of the Chappell had for their fee as before had been used, the somme of five poundes."^ John Chamberlain described the scene in a letter to Miss Carleton. " The Marriage was on Sunday, without any such bravery as was looked for. Only some of the Earl's followers bestowed cost upon themselves ; the rest exceeded not either in number or expence. The Bride was married in her hair " (that is, Mr. Nichols explains, with her hair hanging loosely down, as the Princess Elizabeth had worn it at her wedding) "... The Dean of the Chapel coupled them ; which fell out strangely that the same man should marry the same person in the same place, upon the self-same day (after eight years), the former party yet living. All the difference was, the King ^ Rimbault, op. cit, pp. 162, 166. 2 D 402 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" gave her the last time, and now her father. The King and Queen were both present, and tasted wafers and ypocrass, as at ordinary weddings."^ On the same evening a Masque by Thomas Campion was presented in the Banqueting-House at Whitehall ; it was pub- lished in 1614, and is reprinted by Mr. Nichols in his Progresses of King James I. The author gave an interesting account of the way in which his stage was prepared. The upper part, or "dais," of the great hall "was theatred with pillars, scaffolds," etc. ; "at the lower end of the Hall, before the sceane, was made an arch tryumphall, passing beautifull, which enclosed the whole workes." The scene itself was in several compartments, the upper part showing a sky cut off by clouds, and the lower part a garden ; there were side-pieces showing two promontories, one running in rocks into the sea and the other covered with wood ; " in the midst betweene them appeared a sea in per- spective with ships, some cunningly painted, some arteficially sayling." Campion explained that the figures of mythology were out of fashion: "Our modern writers have rather transferd their fictions to the persons of Enchaunters and Commaunders of Spirits, as that excellent Poet Torquato Tasso hath done, and many others."^ It seems reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare was intended to be one of that class, more especially as Campion makes pointed reference to the dispersal of the fleet : " A storm confused against our tackle beat, Severing the ships." And Shakespeare's master "capering" to see the gallant vessel in safety^ may have suggested Campion's ^ Chamberlain to Mrs. Alice Carleton, 30 Dec. 1613, in Dom. State Papers, vol. Ixxv. no. 53. Text in Nichols, Progresses of James I., ii. 725. '^ Text in Nichols, id., pp. 707-8. ^ Tempest, v.. i, 238. MASQUES AT SOMERSET'S MARRIAGE 403 skippers "shouting and tryumphing after their manner." ''Twelve Skippers in red capps, with* short cassocks and long slopps wide at the knees of white canvass striped with crimson, white gloves and pomps, and red stockings."^ On the day after the wedding, Jonson produced his entertainment, printed in his collected Works as A Challenge at Tilt at a Marriage.^ Two Cupids came in wrangling : " I serve the Man, and the nobler creature." "But I the woman, and the purer; and therefore the worthier." It is agreed that the question shall be fought out at another time by the ten knights on each side in the tiltyard. On Wednesday, the 29th of December, some of the King's servants, or gentlemen about the Court, per- formed Jonson's comical Irish Masque? "Out ran a fellow," says Jonson, "attired like a citizen," and after him several Irish footmen. There was Dennis, the King's Costermonger's Boy, and Donnell, Dermock, and Patrick, and others, whose masters had brought them from Ireland. There was " a great news of a great bridal," and they had come over to see the show. "Ty man, Robyne, tey shay": " Marry ty man Toumaish hish daughter, tey shay" : " Ay, ty good man Toumaish o' Shuffolke." Their masters had come to dance "fading and te fadow," country dances in the style of "Sir Roger de Coverley"; but they had lost their fine clothes in a storm, and found no great fish or "devoish vit a clowd " to help them. "Tey will fight for tee. King Yamish, and for my Mistresh tere " : "and my little Maishter" : " And te vfrow, ty Daugh- ter, tat is in Tuchland." The footman and as many boys danced "to the bagpipe, and other rude music" ; and then the gentlemen danced in their great Irish ^ See stage directions in Nichols, u.s., p. 713. ^ Jonson, Worlts, ed. Gifford, 1S38, pp. 591-2. 2 Id., pp. 593-4. 404 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" mantles "to a solemn music of harps" ; and a "civil gentleman " of that nation brought in a bard whose singing of charms to two harps reminds us of the "harmonious sphere" of the Masque of Hymen and Ferdinand's "harmonious charmingly" in The Tem- pests Ariel's business "in the veins o' the earth, when it is baked with frost," ^ may have influenced the form of the bard's last song, when he sang of "Earth's ragged chains, wherein rude winter bound her veins." A letter, before quoted, from Chamberlain to Mrs. Alice Carleton contains an account of the enter- tainment : "Yesterday there was a medley Masque of five English and five Scots, which are called the high Dancers, among whom Sergeant Boyd, one Aber- crombie, and Auchmouty, that was at Padua and Venice, are esteemed the most principal and lofty. "^ Mr. Nichols identified the first of these high-steppers with "Sergeant Bowy," a clerk in the Royal cellars, who appears in the roll of New Year's gifts for 1605-6 as giving his Majesty "a botle of ypocras."^ Mr. Patrick Abercrombie appears in the lists of persons to whom the King gave orders on the Exchequer. Mr. John Auchmuty was one of the Grooms of the King's Bedchamber, who obtained in 1607-8 a grant of i^2,ooo at once, out of "Recusants'" lands and goods.^ Chamberlain writes again on the 5th of January, this time to Sir Dudley Carleton, and has more to say ^ Tempest, iv. i, 119. For the "harmonious sphere of love," vide infra, p. 417. 2 Tetnpest, i. 2, 255-6. ^ Vide sup., p. 402, note i. "* Nichols, 11. s., i. 598. •' Id., i. 599, note. Taylor, in his Peymyles Pilgrimage (1618), tells us how, on his way back to London, he was entertained by Master John " Acmootye," one of the grooms of His Majesty's bed-chamber, at his house in East Lothian. John Auchmuty went with Taylor to Dunbar, "where ten Scottish pints of wine were consumed," and James Auchmuty, a brother, and a g-room of the privy chamber, accompanied him on his road as far as Topcliffe in Yorkshire, where they parted ways. SOMERSET'S MARRIAGE 405 about the medley : "The lofty Maskers were so well liked at Court the last week, that they are appointed to perform it again on Monday ; yet this Device, which was a mimical imitation of the Irish, was not so pleasing to many, which think it no time, as the case stands, to exasperate that nation by making it ridiculous." ^ We now return to the Cupids and their challenge at tilt. On the New Year's day, at the time fixed for trying the match, twenty knights rode into the tilt-yard, in splendid doublets and ' ' bases, " like petticoats from waist to knee. '' On the New Year's day," said Chamberlain, "was the tiltings of ten against ten. The bases, trap- pings, and all other furniture of the one party was murrey and white, which were the Bride's colours ; the other green and yellow for the Bridegroom. There were two handsome chariots or pageants that brought in two Cupids, whose contention was, whether were the truer, his or hers, each maintained by their champions." Among the bride's combatants we notice the names of the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery ; the Bridegroom's party was commanded by the Earl of Rutland, with whom rode the bride's brother and several others of her family. The part of umpire was taken by "Hymen," who charged both sides to lay down their weapons: "The contention is not, who is the true Love, but, being both true, who loves most ; cleaving the bow between you, and dividing the palm." "The Lord Mayor," continues Chamberlain, "was sent to by the King, to entertain this new-married couple. ... It was resolved to do it at the charge of the City in the Merchant Taylors' Hall upon four days' warning, and thither they went yesternight about six o'clock, in through Cheapside, all by torch-light, ^ In Doni. State Papers, vol. Ixxvi. no. 2. Text in Nichols, v.s.,n. 732-3- 4o6 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" accompanied by the Father and Mother of the Bride, and all the Lords and ladies about the Court. The Men were all mounted and richly arrayed, making a goodly shew ; the women all in coaches. ... I understand that after supper they had a Play and a Masque, and after that a Banquet. . . . Mr. Attorney's Masque is for tomorrow, and for a conclusion of Christmas and their shews together, for the King says he will be gone towards Royston upon Friday."^ The full title of Bacon's Masque was as follows: "The Maske of Flowers, by the Gentlemen of Graie's Inn, at the Court of Whitehall, in the Banquetting House, upon Twelfe Night, 1613-14. Being the last of the solemnities and magnificences which were performed at the marriage of the Right Honourable the Earle of Somerset and the Lady Frances, daughter of the Earle of Suffolke, Lord Chamberlaine."^ In a letter written a few days before, Chamberlain mentions the same entertainment : " Sir Francis Bacon prepares a Maske which will stand him in above i^2,ooo, and though he has been offered some help . . . yet he would not accept it, but offers them the whole charge with the honour."^ The idea, or "device," was this. The Sun, wishing to do honour to the marriage, orders the Winter and the Spring to go to Court and there present sports, such as are called " Christmasse sportes, or Carnavall sportes," as Winter's gift, and shows of greater pomp and splen- dour on the part of Spring. Moreover, the Winter was to take notice of a challenge between Silenus, the champion of wine, and Kawasha, an Indian god, who claimed the greater merit for tobacco. The contrast to be settled by anti-masques, or " anticke-maskes " of dance and song. The Lady Primavera, or Spring, 1 Nichols, ibid. '^ Text in Nichols, id.^ p. 735, etc. ^ Letter of gth Dec. Text in Nichols, op. cit., ii. 705. BACON'S MASQUE 407 was to inquire as to certain youths, such as Adonis and Narcissus, who had been transformed into flowers, and were now to return to human life. The "fabric" showed a garden on a slope, with an arbour arched on pillars at the top ; at the lower end of the Hall was a "travers," or screen, painted in perspective, and showing a city wall, a gate, temples, and the roofs of houses. Out of the great gate entered Winter " in a short gowne of silke shagge, like withered grasse, all frosted and snowed over, and his cap, gown, gamashes " (or spatterdashes), ''and mittens, furred crimson." Primavera enters, and claps the old man on the shoulder. "See where she comes, apparell'd like the spring. "1 Imagine a wood-nymph, her neck swathed in pearls; her bodice of embroidered satin, a short kirtle of cloth of gold, worked with branches and leaves ; she wore a mantle of green and silver, and white buskins tied with green ribbons and adorned with flowers. Now enters Chanticleer (Callus), a smart postman, with a message from the Sun, and almost immediately follows the " Anticke-Maske of the Song." Silenus wears a crimson satin doublet, "without wings, collar, or skirts," with "sleeves of cloth of golde, bases and gamashaes of the same " ; his Sergeant bears a copper mace ; his singers were a miller, a cooper, a brewer, and a vintner's boy ; and their music the tabor and pipe, a sackbut, viols treble and bass, and a little mandora lute. Kawasha, in snuff-colour, is carried on a pole by two Floridans ; his Sergeant holds a tobacco-pipe "as big as a caliver " ; his shabby band is headed by a blind harper and his boy. Kawasha is nicknamed " Potan," after Powhatan, Emperor of Virginia and father of the Princess Pocohontas. Mr. Strachey may have been the authority for the name; for in his Travails into Virginia he confessed himself ^ Pericles^ i. i, it. 4o8 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" bound to Lord Bacon "by being one of the Graies Inne Societe."^ The Singers of Silenus began their catch with this allusion : "Ahay for and a hoe, Let's make this great Potan Drinke off Silenus' kan ; And when that he well drunke is, Returne him to his munkies From whence he came." The songs are followed by an " Anticke-masque of the Dance." Sixteen favourite characters linked hands and leaped in a madcap round. We can distinguish Smug the Smith, two Switzers, a Roaring Boy, Maid Marian with her Sweep, and a Jewess of Portugal. Loud music sounded and the screens were withdrawn, and Primavera appeared in a garden "of a glorious and strange beauty." The Flowers were transformed into Masquers, magnificent in white satin, with carna- tion and silver embroidery, and with egret-plumes in their caps, who performed their set figures and sang their Flower-song. They selected their partners and trod a measure or so even before the masque was over ; and when their vizards were ofi^, they danced in the regular Suite, the grave Pavane, or a Saraband, and then the vigorous Galliards and Courantes, and at the end something gay and brisk like a Morris, when the dancer shook his bells, "capering upright like a wild Morisco." "They took their ladies," according to the composer's note, "with whom they danced Measures, corantoes, duret- toes, morascoes, galliards " ; and we find a similar phrase in Beaumont's masque, when the knights take out their ladies "to dance with them galliards, durets, corantoes, &c." The nature of the Duret, or Duretto, is unknown. The Galliard, or Cinquepace, was a swift and wandering 1 W. Strachey, Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, etc., ed. R. H. Major, i84q. Dedication to Bacon. DANCES AT SOMERSET'S MARRIAGE 409 dance, according to Sir John Davies, whose Orchestra was printed in 1596. *' Five was the number of the Music's feet ; Which still the Dance did with five paces meet."^ ''What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?" asked Sir Toby in Twelfth Night: '* Faith, I can cut a caper : . . . I think I have the back- trick simply as strong as any man in Illyria. "^ We find an allusion to the Galliard in the Boatswain's speech at the end of The Tempest : " Where we, in all her trim, freshly beheld Our royal, good and gallant ship, our master Capering to eye her. "^ There is another allusion to the dance in Howell's letter to Lady Sunderland on the murder of Bucking- ham : "The Duke did rise up in a well-dispos'd humour out of his bed, and cut a Caper or two."* The Courante, or Coranto, was a kind of devious glissade. The dancer, said Davies, must range, "and turn, and wind, with unexpected change " : " What shall I name those current travases. That on a triple Dactyl foot, do run Close by the ground, with sliding passages ; Wherein that dancer greatest praise hath won. Which with best order can all orders shun ? " ^ Amid all these marriage festivities there was an uneasy suspicion of crime. Sir Thomas Overbury had been sent to the Tower early in the year, and had died there on the 15th of September, before the marriage. It was known that Overbury's real offence was his attempt to thwart the divorce proceedings. His death was ascribed to natural causes, but it was thought that Mrs. Turner was concerned in the case ; and Mrs. ^ Davies, Orchestra, st. 67. ^ Twelfth Night, i. 3, 127-32. •' Tempest, v. i, 236-8. ■* Epp Ho-Eh, ed. Jacobs, 1892, p. 253 (i. § 5, let. 7 : Stamford, 5 Aug. 1628). ^ Orchestra, st. 69. 4IO PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" Turner not only professed to be a witch, but was believed to be a dealer in philtres and poisons. It was not proved till October, 1615, that Overbury had been cruelly murdered. The Earl and Countess of Somerset, Mrs. Turner, and several of their aiders and abetters, were convicted of murder. Mrs. Turner made a good end at the three-cornered Tyburn tree ; her good looks and gold ringlets were accepted by the crowd as suffi- cient proof of her repentance. The Earl and Countess were pardoned, but dismissed from Court. Somerset got a new lease for life, as James Howell wrote to his father about that time, and so had the "articulate Lady," as they called the Countess, from her "Articles " against Essex. "She was afraid," says Howell, "that Coke the Lord Chief-Justice . ... would have made white Broth of them, but that the Prerogative kept them from the Pot : yet the subservient Instruments, the lesser Flies could not break thorow, but lay entangled in the Cobweb ; amongst others Mistress Turner, the first inventress oiyelloTO Starch, was executed in a Cob- web Lawn Ruff of that colour at Tyburn, and with her I believe that yellow Starch, which so much disfigured our Nation, and rendered them so ridiculous and fan- tastic, will receive its Funeral."^ II Shakespeare's attitude towards masques — jonson's " masque of hymen " — parallels with " the tempest " We return to the wedding of 1606, with the object of comparing The Tempest with the regular Court-Masques, and more especially with the " Masque of Hymen and Festivity at Barriers." Anne of Denmark was glad of any excuse for a masque. ^ Epp. Ho-EL, U.S., pp. 20, 21 (i. § I, let. 2: Broad Street, London, I March 1618). MASQUES 411 Her Court, according to Arthur Wilson's history, was "a continued Maskarado^'''' where she and her ladies appeared in splendid attire, " like so many Sea-nymphs . . . to the ravishment of the beholders."^ The essence of the masque was ''pomp and glory": so said Lord Bacon, who understood the business as well as the best professional: "These things are but toys . . . but yet, since princes will have such things, it is better they should be graced with elegancy than daubed with cost. "2 Mr. Isaac D'Israeli described some of these festivities in his Curiosities of Literature, and praised them for their "fairy-like magnificence and lyrical spirit."^ Mr. Gifford, in the Memoirs of Jonson, goes deep into the subject.* The masque, he thought, was a combination of dialogue, singing, and dancing, har- moniously blended by the use of some slight plot or fable ; the scenery was costly and splendid ; " the most celebrated Masters were employed on the songs and dances " ; and the dresses, on which the ultimate success depended, were always new and strange, rich to ex- travagance, all gold and jewels : " Now this mask Was cried incomparable ; and the ensuing night Made it a fool and beggar."^ Mr. D'Israeli quotes Warburton's odd saying : "Shakespeare was an enemy to these fooleries, as appears by his writing none." This was a hit at Jonson, who was thought to have classed The Tempest among common fooleries ; but the word used by him was "drolleries," a common name for the puppet- show.*^ Malone was scornful at "the wretched taste of such bungling performances." 1 Wilson, U.S., p. 685, col. 2. "^ Essays, xxxvii. ^ Curiosities of Literature, 12th ed. , 1840, pp. 375-8. * Preface to Works of Jonson, u.s., p. 65. ^ King Henry VI II., i. i, 26-8. •^ Jonson, Induction to Bart. Fair: "If there be never a servant- monster in the fair, who can help it, he says . . . ? he is loth to make 412 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" But Shakespeare himself was not averse from "revels, dances, and Masques." There was a masque at York Place in his Henry VIII, ; in Timon of Athens ^ Cupid enters " with a mask of Ladies as Amazons, with lutes in their hands, dancing and playing " ; and each of the Lords singled out an Amazon, "and all dance, men with women, a lofty strain or two to the haut- boys" ; and in Love's Labour's Lost, when the trumpet sounds, the masquers enter, some as blackamoors and some in Russian habits, to tread a measure with the Ladies on the grass. ^ In The Tempest we have the sketch of a Court-masque, as well as a little anti- masque, or "antic masque," as some used to call it. Dr. Hurd was a cautious critic ; but he seems to have fallen into a mistake about this "masque" in The Tempest. He affirmed that the spectacle of Iris and the goddesses and the dancing nymphs and husband- men put to shame all the masques of Jonson, not only in construction, but in the splendour of its show.^ Gifford went to the opposite extreme, in saying that the little interlude was danced and sung in the ordinary course "to a couple of fiddles, perhaps, in the balcony of the stage." The costumes of Shakespeare's goddesses were prob- ably copied from Samuel Daniel's Royal masque, performed at Hampton Court in 1604. The stage directions for dresses and dances were written by Daniel himself, and are further explained by Mr. Ernest Law in his reprint. It appears that Queen nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempests, and such like drolleries." ^ Henry VIII., i. 4 ; Timon of Athens, i. 2 ; Love's Labour s Lost, v. 2. ^ Hurd, Dissertation iv. , On the Marks of I?nitation, in Collected Works, 181 1, vol. ii. p. 251. His actual words are : " The knowledge of antiquity requisite to succeed in them was, I imagine, the reason that Shakespeare was not over fond to try his hand at these elaborate trifles. Once, indeed, he did, and with such success as to disgrace the very best things of this kind we find in Jonson." SHAKESPEARE'S DEBT TO MASQUES 413 Anne supplied herself out of Queen Elizabeth's ward- robe ; and at the Tower '* there were found no less than 500 robes, all of the greatest magnificence."^ Some of them, as altered for the masque, were minutely- described by the composer. Venus appeared in a dove-coloured and silver mantle, embroidered with doves ; Ceres in straw-colour and silver embroidery, with ears of corn in her hair ; Tethys in a sea-green mantle, "with a silver embroidery of waves, and a dressing of reeds" (for her hair).^ Lord Bacon, we may observe, preferred spangles: " Oes or spangs, as they are of no great cost, so they are of most glory : as for rich Embroidery, it is lost and not discerned."^ Juno took the chief place in the masque. Daniel de- scribed her as wearing a gold crown and a sky-coloured mantle, embroidered with gold, and figured with pea- cocks' feathers : " First here Imperiall y^^wo in her Chayre, With Scepter of command for Kingdomes large : Descends, all clad in colours of the Ayre, Crown'd with bright Starres, to signifie her charge."^ Jonson brought out his Masque of Hymen on the wedding-day, January 5th, 1606, with the help of Inigo Jones, as contriver of the machines. We con- tinue our extracts from Pory's letter to Cotton.^ " But to return to the Mask ; both Inigo, Ben, and the Actors, men and women, did their parts with great commenda- tion. The concert or soul of the Mask was Hymen bringing in a bride, and Juno Pronuba's priest, a bridegroom, proclaiming that these two should be sacrificed to Nuptial Union. And here the Poet made apostrophe to the Union of the Kingdoms. But before the sacrifice could be performed, Ben Jonson turned the globe of the earth, standing behind the altar, and ^ Law, Introd. to The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, 1880, p. 13. 2 Id., 59-61. * Essays, xxxvii. , ti.s. * Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, p. 68. ^ See sup., p. 397, note 3. 414 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" within the concave sat the eight men-Maskers repre- senting the four Humours and the four Affections, who leapt forth to disturb the sacrifice to Union. But, amidst their fury, Reason, that sat above all, crowned with burning tapers, came down and silenced them. These Eight, together with Reason their moderatress, mounted above their heads, sat somewhat like the Ladies in the scallop-shell the last year." This was a reminiscence of Jonson's Masque of Blackness^ per- formed on Twelfth-night, 1605, i" which the Queen, Lady Suffolk, and ten other ladies, appeared as blacka- moors, daughters of Niger. ^ The masquers were placed in a shell of mother-o'-pearl, curiously made to move "and rise with the billow." The machine was described, in a letter, by Sir Dudley Carleton:^ "There was a great engine at the lower end of the room, which had motion, and in it were the images of sea-horses, with other terrible fishes, which were ridden by the Moors ; the indecorum was that there was all fish, and no water. At the further end was a great shell in form of a skallop, wherein were four seats." Earlier in the letter he describes the wedding of Sir Philip Herbert, afterwards Earl of Montgomery, and Lady Susan Vere, "performed at Whitehall, with all the honour could be done a great favourite." ^ The phrase serves to illustrate Prospero's complaint of the plot to confer fair Milan on his brother, " with all the honours."^ Mr Pory continues as follows : "About the Globe of Earth hovered a middle region of clouds, in the centre whereof stood a grand concert of musicians, and upon the cantons or horns sat the Ladies, four at one corner and four at another, who descended upon the stage, not after the stale, downright perpendicular fashion, ^ Jonson, Works, u.s., pp. 544-7. ^ To Sir Ralph Winwood, Jan., 1605. Text in Winwood, Memorials, etc., 1725, ii. 43-5; Nichols, 11, s., ii. 470-6. ^ Vide sup. , pp. 397-8. * Tempest, i. 2, 126-7. PORY'S LETTER TO COTTON 415 like a bucket into a well, but came gently sloping down."^ These eight represented the nuptial powers of Juno, such as ^^Juga,'' "who made one, of twain," and ^^ Curis,'' whose office was to deck the "fair tresses" of the bride. "The men were clad in crimson, and the women in white." Mr. Pory is only describing the general effect. " They had every one a white plume of the richest hern's feathers, and were so rich in jewels upon their heads as was most glorious. I think they hired and borrowed all the principal jewels and ropes of pearl both in Court and City. The Spanish Ambassador seemed but poor to the meanest of them. They danced all the variety of dances both severally and promiscue ; and then the women and men, as namely, the Prince, who danced with as great perfection and as settled a majesty as could be devised, the Spanish Ambassador . . . &c. And the men gleaned out of the Queen, the bride, and the greatest of the Ladies." The dancers performed several intricate figures, ending with a Ladies' Chain, when all took other partners to dance Measures, GalHards, and Corantoes. The whole "scene" being drawn again, and covered with clouds, they left off these "intermixed dances," and danced in figures again, ending up with a circle or inner ring round the altar of sacrifice. " Up, youths ! hold up your lig-hts in air, And shake abroad their flaming hair. Now move united, and in gait, As you, in pairs, do front the state." The writer of the masque had ransacked antiquity for his marriage-lore. He was familiar with every detail of the Athenian and Roman weddings ; and the piece was printed with an apparatus of notes from the gram- marians and poets. "^ It was a nourishing and sound 1 A canton, in heraldry, is the eighth part of the escutcheon, cut off by cross lines. '^ In Jonson's Works, n.s., pp. 552-61. 4i6 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" meat, said Father Ben, though some were too squeamish to enjoy it ; let them take on their empty trenchers "a few Italian herbs, picked up and made into a salad." "It is not my fault, if I fill them out nectar, and they run to metheglin."^ The opening is full of the ceremonies described by Varro and Festus. The scene or curtains being "drawn," an altar was discovered, to which advanced five pages with waxen tapers: "behind them, one representing a Bridegroom : his hair short, and bound with party-coloured ribands and gold twist : his gar- ments purple and white." On the other side entered Hymen in a saffron-coloured robe, "his head crowned with roses and marjoram, in his right hand a torch of pine-tree." After him a youth in white, carrying a torch of white-thorn, and under his arm "a little wicker flasket," and then two men in white, with distaff and spindle. Now one enters personating the bride, her hair flow- ing and loose and lightly dusted with grey; "on her head a garland of roses, like a turret " ; her garments white ; on her back a fleece hanging down ; " her zone, or girdle about her waist of white wool, fastened with the Herculean knot." Next marched the two " hand- fasters," or joiners of hands,^ and two that sang and carried the water and fire, and the musicians crowned with roses. Near the altar stood the globe, or micro- cosm, called the "huge body" and "little world of man," from which rushed out the men-masquers "with a kind of contentious music." Hymen is alarmed and cries to his torch-bearers : " Save, save the virgins ; keep your hallow'd lights Untouch'd ; and with their flame defend our rites," When Reason has restored peace, she describes the 1 Preface to Masque. ^ Called in the text "Auspices." JONSON'S MASQUE OF HYMEN 417 ceremonies, the meaning of the flask, the distaff and spindle, and the mystical dress of the bride ; her hair shed with grey, the fleece and the utensils of spinning, imply that she is now a matron : " The Zone of wool about her waist, Which, in contrary circles cast, Doth meet in one strong knot, that binds, Tells you, so should all married minds. And lastly, these five waxen lights Imply perfection in the rites." The speech of Reason concludes the ''first masque " ; we are now to see the entrance of the "women-mas- quers," and the vision of Juno, Queen of Heaven, the Dispenser and Governor of Marriages. The upper part of ''the scene " was all of clouds, "made artifici- ally to swell and ride like the rack" ; "the air clearing, in the top thereof was discovered Juno, sitting in a chair, supported by two beautiful peacocks"; she wore a white diadem and a veil tied with "several coloured silks," and crowned with a garland of lilies and roses." At her feet stood Iris, her messenger, and on either side the ladies that were to act in "the second masque " : " And see where Juno, whose great name Is Unio, in the anagram, Displays her glittering state and chair, As she enlightened all the air ! Hark how the charming tunes do beat In sacred concords 'bout her seat ! " The ladies descend, in clouds that stoop gently down to earth, and begin their dances in circles round "the harmonious sphere of Love." "Such was the exquisite performance," said Ben Jonson ; "... nor was there wanting whatsoever might give to the furniture or complement ; either in riches, or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of dances, magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of music." 2 E 4i8 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" The costumes of the eight lords were copied from ancient statues, "with some modern additions: which made it both graceful and strange." They wore Persian crowns and tight coats of "carnation cloth of silver," with streamers, or "labels," of white satin, sleeves of "watchet cloth of silver," capes of several- coloured silks, and silver greaves. Jonson considered that the ladies' attire was "full of glory" ; "the upper part of white cloth of silver, wrought with Juno's birds and fruits " ; a loose garment of carnation and silver, and a golden zone ; another flowing robe of watchet and gold ; all made " round and swelling," with a look of the "farthingale" fashion; "their shoes were azure and gold, set with rubies and diamonds ; so were all their garments ; and every part abounding in orna- ment." "No less to be admired," said Jonson, was "the whole machine of the spectacle," the first part consist- ing of the globe, "filled with countries, and those gilded ; where the sea was exprest, heightened with silver waves." The upper part was crowned with a statue of Jupiter the Thunderer, above a sphere of fire moving so swiftly that no eye could distinguish its colour. In this high region, between painted clouds, sat Juno on her golden throne, encircled with meteors and blazing stars ; below her a rainbow in which sat musicians in costumes of varied colours, to represent "Airy Spirits." ^ In the masque of The Fortunate Isles and their Union, produced in January, 1625-6,^ Jonson described the proper dress of one of these companions of Ariel. "His Majesty being set, enter, running, Jophiel, an airy spirit . . . attired in light silks of several colours, with wings of the same, a bright yellow hair, ^ Jonson's notes, at end of Masque. '^ Jonson's Works, u.s., pp. 648-52. THE MASQUE AND BARRIERS 419 a chaplet of flowers, blue silk stockings, and pumps, and gloves, with a silver fan in his hand " : " Sir, my name is Jophiel, Intelligence unto the sphere of Jupiter, An airy jocular Spirit, employed to you From Father Outis." The sketch of an "Aery Spirit" by Inigo Jones is pre- served in the Duke of Devonshire's Library. It was copied in facsimile in the volume upon Inigo Jones, printed for the Shakespeare Society ; ^ but so far as we can judge, it was intended neither for Ariel nor for Jophiel. We see no chaplet on the yellow curls, no gloves or fan, and the silk stockings and dancing- pumps are replaced by buskins of an ancient fashion. There is no reason for doubting the accuracy of Jonson's description. We suppose that he was present at the masque of The Fortunate Isles ; and we have his own note on the earlier occasion that his " airy Spirits " appeared "in habits various," and in dresses of "several colours." The Monday evening was devoted to the sports of the barriers, a kind of military masque combined with an assault of arms. A dispute about marriage was to arise between "Truth," in a blue dress and a wreath of palm, and her rival " Opinion," an impostor who had chosen the same costume. This dispute could only be decided by arms ; and two sets of champions advanced with pikes and swords to the bar set across the hall. The Duke of Lennox commanded fifteen "Knights in carnation and white " for Truth ; the Earl of Sussex led as many in watchet and white for her rival. They were all led to the dais by the Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Constable for that night, supported by the Earl of Worcester as Earl-Marshal; and the champions then fought, at first in pairs, and afterwards three to ^ Edited by Peter Cunningham, J. R. Planche, and J. P. Collier, 1848. 420 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" three ; "and performed it with that alacrity and vigour, as if Mars himself had been to triumph before Venus, and invented a new Masque."^ The military entertainment has little connection with The Tempest, except as being an appendix or "corol- lary " to the actual wedding-masque ; but there are lines and phrases in it which will be found useful in explaining certain difficult passages in the play. "You look wearily," says Miranda ; '* No, noble mistress ; 'tis fresh morning with me When you are by at night. "^ This seems to mean that Miranda's eyes were the heavens in which his sunlight dawned. Calderon has the same thought in his play Bien vengas, Maly where the bright sun rises in the lady's eyes; ^^ En tus ojos, Senora^ madrugaha el claro Sol" ;^ and in the speech of Truth at the barriers we find the couplet : '* Marriage Love's object is ; at whose bright eyes He lights his torches, and calls them his skies." The same speech contains a reference to "mirrors decked with diamonds." This affords an illustration of Prospero's words: "When I have decked the sea with drops full salt," and Caliban's talk of "brave utensils for so he calls them, which, when he has a house, he'll deck withal."^ In the Two Gentlemen of Verona the lady's glove is called "Sweet ornament that decks a thing divine."^ Shakespeare may have thought of the be-diamonded mirror, or of the sea as personified as Tethys. We perceive that the word, as used by him, always implies the idea of adornment. We take ^ Jonson's notes on the Masque, among- the stage-directions. " Tejnpest, iii. i, 32-4. ^ Bien vengas, Mai, Jornada i. Escena 5, in Hartzenbusch's ed. of Calderon, vol. iv. p. 310, col. 3. * Tempest, i. 2, 155 ; iii. 2, 104-5. ^ Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii, i, 4. ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES 421 another instance from the first scene in the Midsummer Night's Dream : •' When Phoebe doth behold Her silver visag-e in the watery g"lass, Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass." ^ Dr. Johnson thought it absurd to suppose that the sea could be adorned with teardrops. Decking, he thought, was "covering," as a deck covers the ship. *'In some parts," he added, "they yet say deck the tabled Yet here again we can surely detect the idea of display and adornment. Malone introduced a new idea, which received a very general approval. ' ' To deck, I am told, signifies in the North, to sprinkle.''''^ He cited Mr. John Ray's Collection of English Words, not generally used, first printed in 1674, and afterwards in 1691. Among the north-country words we find " deg " and "leek," in the sense of sprinkling.^ In many glossaries, "deg" is specially used for sprinkling linen before ironing in the laundry ; and the servants in Holderness are bidden to sprinkle the pavement before sweeping it: "Dag causey, afoor thoo sweeps it." Among Ray's South and East Country Words we find the following definition : ^^ Dag; Dew upon the Grass. Hence Daggle-tail is spoken of a Woman that hath dabbled her Coats with Dew, Wet, or Dirt." It seems almost certain that Shakespeare's phrase bore the mean- ing belonging to it in literary English. There is also a difficulty about the drops being "full salt," as salt as the waves. Why, it may be asked, should Prospero make a point about salt tears and salt seas ? There is certainly an obscurity about the argument ; but perhaps we may take it as an instance of the " pathetic fallacy " by which external nature is treated as being in ^ Midsummer Night's Dream, i. i, 209-11. ^ Johnson and Malone on Tempest, i. 2, 155, in Boswell's Malone, vol. XV. ■^ p. 4, "to Deg, V. Leek ; p. 26, Leek on, pour on more, Liquor, v.g." 422 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" harmony with human feelings. Prospero himself, a few lines earlier in his speech, had found mercy and protection in the waves and winds : " There they hoist us, To cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sig-h To the winds whose pity, sig-hing back again, Did us but loving wrong. " 1 For a modern example we might take the stanza from Lord Tennyson's Maud on the wind in the mead : " From the meadow your walks have left so sweet That whenever a March-wind sighs He sets the jewel-print of your feet In violets blue as your eyes." ^ •^ Tempest, i. 2, 148-51. '^ Tennyson, Maud, part i. xxii. III. THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH, 1613 I ACCOUNT OF THE MARRIAGE CEREMONIES n^HE TEMPEST was certainly acted at Court shortly before the Princess Elizabeth's wedding. It may have been on the list of plays ordered for performance during the preceding autumn, but its production, in that case, was considerably delayed by the illness and death of the Prince of Wales in November, 1612. Prince Frederick, the accepted suitor, arrived in London about the middle of October. He was the object of great popular interest, the nation regarding him as a pillar of the Protestant cause. He was usually known as the Palsgrave, as being Count of the Pfalz, the Palatinate of the Rhine. He was also an Elector of the Empire, and held the nominal dignity of Arch-server, or ''Arch-sewer of the Dishes," at the imperial banquets. The " Sewer " was an official who placed the dishes on the table, as we learn from Over- bury's character of "a Puny Clerk" : " he practices to make the words in his declaration spread as a sewer doth the dishes of a niggard's table. "^ His other titles were enumerated by the kings-at-arms, "the high and mighty Prince Frederick, by the grace of God, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Arch-sewer and Prince ■^ Overbury, Characters^ in Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century i ed. Henry Morley, 1891, p. 67. 423 424 PRODUCTION OF '^THE TEMPEST" Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, Duke of Bavaria, and Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter."^ Before his marriage he was lower in rank than the Lady Elizabeth, "sole daughter of the Crown of England." After the marriage she took the place next below her husband — a circumstance of great use in fixing the order in which the plays were performed. It was on this point of precedence that the Queen opposed the match, and threatened not to go to the wedding. James Howell, who knew the gossip of Denmark House, heard that Queen Anne's affection for her daughter had diminished, "so that she would often call her Goody Palsgrave.'''''^ He writes later on, when Frederick had lost his crown at the battle of Prague, that the Duke of Brunswick was going to help the Lady Elizabeth, "who, in the Zow Countries and some parts of Germany^ is called the Queen of Boheme, and for her winning princely comportment, The Queen of Hearts."^ Ben Jonson had praised her as a girl in the speeches at Prince Henry's barriers in a stately passage : "... That most princely maid, whose form might call The world to war, and make it hazard all His valour for her beauty ; she shall be Mother of nations, and her princes see Rivals almost to these. "^ Nor can it be said that these matters have lost all savour of political interest, since the Crown was settled by authority of Parliament upon the heirs, being Pro- testants, of the Electress Sophia, daughter of Eliza- beth, late Queen of Bohemia. On the 25th of October, 161 2, Prince Henry was seized with a fever. Some attributed it to a chill after ^ Nichols, Progresses of James I. , ii. 523. 2 Epp. Ho-El., ed. J. Jacobs, 1892, p. 105 (bk. i. § 2, let. 7 : 30 March 1618). ^ Id., p. 112 (bk. i. § 2, let, 12 : ig March 1622). ■* Jonson, WorliSy ed. Gifford, 1838, p. 580. DEATH OF PRINCE HENRY 425 tennis at Hampton Court and a long swim in the river, and others to carelessness in diet. Sir Simonds D'Ewes preserved a tradition that the Prince was bewitched by Mrs. Turner, at the instigation of Overbury, who advised "removing out of the way and world that royal youth by fascination, and was himself afterwards in part an instrument for the effecting of it."^ Even Sir Theodore de Mayerne, the King's physician, was in dread of some planetary influence, for on the 29th he saw a double rainbow, with one end in the fields and the other resting on a room at St. James' where a lady had lately died.^ A doctor at that time required to know something of the occult, or, as Nick Culpepper told Mr. Ward of Stratford, ''a physitian without astrologie " was "like a pudden without fat."^ John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, said that it was a case of "the ordinary ague," but others put it down to "the New Disease," which was breaking out in all parts of the country.* Dr. C. Creighton considered that the symptoms pointed to typhus,^ and Dr. Norman Moore discussed it in the Reports of St. Bartholomew's Hospital as "the earliest case of typhoid fever on record."^ The Hallowmas plays and revels had been com- manded for the November festivities ; but on the ist of the month all the announcements were postponed on account of a bad bulletin from St. James' House. The next morning's report was more favourable: "His Highness was never so well as on this the 8th day, throughout the disease." But the improvement was followed by a relapse, and on the 6th of November the Prince died. ^ Sir Simonds D'Ewes' Autobiography, ed. Halliwell, 1845, i. 91. ^ Nichols, U.S., ii. 477. ^ Vide supra, p. 306. * Text in Nichols, u.s., ii. 487. ^ Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain, 1891, i. 536. " The Illness and Death of Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1612, 1882. See elaborate account by Sir Charles Cornwallis, in Nichols, u.s., ii. 469-87. 426 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" A public mourning of nearly six months was ordered. The Court was to wear black till the 29th of March, and the wedding was fixed for May-day. ''It would be thought absurd," writes Chamberlain, ''that foreign ambassadors, coming to condole the Prince's death, should find us feasting and dancing : so that it is de- ferred till May-day. "1 The lying in state lasted till the 7th of December, when the Prince was buried in West- minster Abbey. The espousals or "affiancing of the royal pair" took place on the 27th. The mourning was interrupted for the occasion, and the Children of the Revels from Whitefriars were allowed to act The Coxcomb at the palace. 2 The service was conducted in French, but according to the English ritual. The Princess wore black velvet, ^^ semee of crosslets or quatrefoils silver," and a white aigrette in her hair. The Prince was also in black, and wore a velvet cloak " caped with gold lace." The Archbishop presided at the espousals; Sir Thomas Lake gave out the " vJ/oz, Frederic,'' and ^^ Moi, Elisabeth": "I, Frederick, take thee, Elizabeth, to my wedded wife," etc., "and thereto I plight thee my troth"; "I, Elizabeth, take thee, Fre- derick, to my wedded husband," and so forth. The translation was so bad, and the responses were so gabbled over and badly pronounced, that the Princess began to laugh, and then broke into a '■^fou rire,'' in which the company joined, until the Archbishop ended the scene by reading the blessing.^ The contract pro- vided that these espousals should be followed by "a true and lawful marriage," because the betrothal of the ^ Chamberlain to Carleton, 19 Nov. 1612, in Doni. State Papers, vol. Ixxi. no. 38. Text in Nichols, u.s., ii. 489. ^ See F. G. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, i. 185-6. ^ See Chamberlain to Carleton, 31 Dec. 1612, in Dorti. State Papers, U.S., no. 70; Chamberlain to Winwood, 23 Feb. 1612-13, in Winwood, U.S., iii. 434-5; Nichols, u.s, ii. 513-16. ESPOUSALS OF THE PRINCESS 427 Princess did not amount to a marriage under the ''family law," or "Law of the Crown," though the effect might have been different in the case of an ordinary subject. As soon as the betrothal was over, the Palsgrave's counsellors began to press for an advancement of the marriage, the Prince being anxious to return to Heidel- berg, and hoping to start about the middle of April. The Court mourning barely lasted over Twelfth-night. On the 5th of January the children from Whitefriars acted Cupid's Revenge before Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine, the Princess still retaining her relative rank.^ After the play Sir Thomas Lake wrote to his friend Carleton : "The black is wearing out, and the marriage pomps preparing."^ The household was subscribing for a masque, and the Inns of Court were busy at magnificent shows. The river sports at Shrovetide formed the people's share of the festivities. They began on the nth of February with a show of fireworks in front of the galleries at Whitehall. The artillery roared from Lambeth while St. George fought the dragon, and the deer was chased by flaming hounds; "and as the culverins played upon the Earth, the fire-works danced in the air." When the smoke cleared off, a Christian fleet was seen advancing against a Turkish fortress, "ships and gallies bravely rigd with top and top- gallant, their flagges and streamers waving like men- of-warr." On the Saturday there was a sea-fight off Whitehall Stairs between Christian and Turkish fleets rigged out by Mr. Bettis, the chief shipwright at Chatham. A fort called the Castle of Argier had been set up at Stangate, in Lambeth, "environed with craggie rocks as the Castle is now situate in Turkic." ^ Fleay, u.s,, i. 186-7. ^ Lake to Carleton, 6 Jan. 1613, in Dom. State Papers, vol. Ixxii. no. 6. 428 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" The Algerine pirates first captured a Spanish argosy and two Venetian ships, and then an English fleet was seen "with their red crost streamers most gallantly waving in the ayre." The English Admiral took the pirate's galleys and the castle itself, and the Turkish Commander, "attired in a red jacket with blue sleeves," and all his bashaws and officers, were taken to the private stairs, where the Prince Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth were stationed.^ On Shrove Sunday, being St. Valentine's Day, the marriage took place in the Chapel-Royal at Whitehall. From Henry Peacham's Period of Mourning, ^fc, -with Nuptiall Hynines, we learn that it was a "sunshine wedding " : ** Heaven, the first, hath throwne away Her weary weede of mourning hew, And waites Eliza's Wedding-day In starry-spangled gown of blew." The ceremonies are described in the " Old Cheque-book of the Chapel," and in a tract by William Burley, which has been quoted already. The procession started from the council chamber, on the river-side of Holbein's gate, and passed through the presence-room and guard-chamber to a banqueting-house erected for the occasion, and then crossed the courtyard by a plat- form set up near the north gate, and thence to the great chamber near the tilt-yard, and through the lobby, and downstairs to the chapel, "into which this Royal troupe marched in this order " ; first came the bridegroom, arrayed in cloth of silver (called "white satin " in some accounts), richly embroidered with silver, with all the young gallants and gentlemen of the Court ; but there entered the chapel only sixteen young bachelors, so many as the bridegroom was years old. When he was seated, the bride was intro- duced : "the Lady Elizabeth," says Burley, "in her ^ Tract by William Burley, printed in Nichols, u.s,, H. 539-41. THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 429 virgin-robes, clothed in a gowne of white sattin . . . upon her head a crown of refined golde, made Imperiall by the pearls and diamonds thereupon placed, which were so thicke beset that they stood like shining pinnacles upon her amber-coloured haire, dependantly hanging playted downe over her shoulders to her waste." ^ The description in the official record is even more picturesque : '' She was supported or ledd by the Prince Charles on the righte hand, and the Earl of Northampton, Lord Privie Seale, on the left hand, attended with 16 younge Ladies and Gentlewomen of honor bearinge her traine, which was of cloth of silver as her gowne was, her hayre hanginge doune at length dressed with ropes of pearle, and a Coronett uppon her head richly dect with precious stones."^ Opinions differed about the appearance of the King and Queen. The official report described them as gloriously arrayed. The King wore the great diamond in his felt hat ; but John Chamberlain wrote: "The King, me thought, was somewhat strangely attired, in a cap and feathers, with a Spanish cope and a long stocking." The Queen wore all her jewels, "a Lady walled about with diamonds " ; and it was agreed on all sides that their Majesties must have carried at least a million's worth of jewels between them.^ The form of the banns is preserved in the Old Cheque- book of the Chapel-Royal at Whitehall. The first asking was in these terms, and they were all in a similar form: "I aske the banes of matrimonie be- tween the two great Princes, Fredericke Prince Elector Count Palatine of Reine of the one partie, and the Lady Elizabethe her Grace, the only daughter of the highe and mightie King of Great Brittany of the other 1 Id., pp. 541-9. ^ Old Cheque-hook of the Chapel Royal, ed. Rimbault, p. 164. ^ Chamberlain to Alice Carleton, 18 Feb. 1613, in Dom. State Papers, Ixxii. no. 30. Text in Nichols, ^i.s., ii. 588. 430 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" partie. If any man can shew any cause why these two Princes may not be lawfully joyned in matrimony, let him speake, for this is [the first time of asking]." The memorandum continues : " First asked in the Chappell at Whithall the last daye of Januarie, 1612, (1613, New Style), and there also the second of Februarie next followinge the second tyme, and the third tyme at Winsore the 7th daie of the foresaid Februarie. The Prince Palatine beinge installed Knight of the Garter the same daie."^ Mention is made in Ward's Diary of a double calling of the banns ; Mr. Washburn, of Oriel, was the Vicar's authority: " I have heard that King James would have his daughter askt three times in the church, which accordingly shee was, in St. Margaret's, Westminster." ^ The whole assembly being settled in their places, the service began with an anthem, followed by a sermon by the Dean (James Montague, Bishop of Bath and Wells) ; while another anthem was in sing- ing, the Archbishop and Dean put on their "rich copes," and after the singing was over ascended the steps of the throne, "where these Two great Princes were married by the Archbishop of Canter- bury, in all points according to the Book of Common Prayer ; the Prince Palatine speaking the words of marriage in English after the Archbishop."^ Their Majesties retired after the wedding, the bride and bridegroom dining in state in the new banqueting- hall ; * and after dinner the household presented The Masque of Frantics, composed by Dr. Campion, with scenery by Inigo Jones. ^ There was a revolving firma- ment, and stars moving in their spheres. " I suppose," said Campion, "fewe have ever seene more neate arti- fice than Master Innigoe Jones showed in contriving" '1 Old Cheque-Book, u.s., p. 163. ^ Vide supra, p. 254. 3 Tract in Nichols, ti.s., ii. 546-7. ^ Id., 548. ^ The Lords' Mas ke, printed in Nichols, u.s., ii. 554765. SHROVE SUNDAY AND MONDAY, 1613 431 this '' motion." 1 The argument was dull, and wanting in light and shade ; all the characters were mad, and the ladies complained that *'it was more like a Play than a Masque." " Shrove Monday was devoted to sports in the tilt- yard. The tilting itself was arranged like a scene in a comedy. The King took the ring on his spear three times, and the trumpets sounded, and the people shouted for joy. The Palatine took it twice, and the crowd roared again, and his own silver trumpets saluted the Prince of the Rhine. Little Prince Charles rode five times and scored four rings, "a sight of much admiration, and an exceeding comfort to all the land."^ The glory of such sports, said Lord Bacon, depended on the '* bravery" of the liveries, and the ''goodly furniture " of the horses and armour,^ so that perhaps we should mention some of the tradesmen, whose bills are preserved to this day. The Guards wore scarlet, with velvet facings, provided by Mr. Danson, His Majesty's tailor ; the spangles and circles came from Mr. Giles Simpson, the Court goldsmith ; and all the embroidery was supplied by Mr. William Broderick, successor to Mr. Parr of Blackfriars, who had been for twenty-five years embroiderer to Queen Elizabeth and the reigning King. In the evening, the gentlemen of Lincoln's Inn and the Middle Temple rode in procession through the Strand to Whitehall. They started from the Rolls House in Chancery Lane, Sir Edward Phelips leading the way, with witty Dick Martin, whom the King delighted to honour. Sixty gentlemen rode after them upon armoured chargers, with torch-bearers and pages at their sides. Then came a rabble-rout of boys on ponies and donkeys, with monkey-faces for the anti- masque ; they wore Italian hats and cart-wheel ruffs, ^ Id., p. 558. '^ Chamberlain to Winwood, u.s., p. 426, note 3. ^ Tract in Nichols, u.s., ii. 549-50. ■* Bacon, Essays, xxxvii. 432 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" or starched '* pickadills," and as they rode they tossed handfuls of " cockle-demoys " among the crowd. After them came the cars and pageants. In one of them the musicians sat, disguised as Virginian conjurers, in turbans lit up with fireflies and bright with plumes ; in another sat the Emperor Powhatan and his Indian lords ; and in a third the Goddess of Honour was en- throned, arrayed in welkin-blue, and her fair tresses **in tucks braided up with silver." On reaching the Palace the cortege passed through the gateway by Scotland Yard, and so through the tilt-yard into the park, riding round the buildings till they came to the banqueting-hall ; and here they performed the masque, written by George Chapman, and sang the nuptial ode, which appears in the printed book.^ On Shrove Tuesday the King held a grand recep- tion. "In the evening," wrote Chamberlain, ''there was much expectation of a Play, to be acted in the Great Hall by the King's Players, and many hundreds of people were taking up their positions for it. But it had been arranged that the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn should present a Masque called The Marriage of the Thames and Rhine, devised by Sir Francis Bacon, with words by Frank Beaumont."^ This entertainment brought in many witty allusions to The Tempest. The procession came by water, from Win- chester House upon Bank-side up the river to White- hall Stairs, and the gateway between the crowded long windows of the galleries. The dresses, it was agreed, were magnificent, Sir Francis and the poet in velvet, the masqueraders in cloth of gold, "with other robes," said the ladies, "of much delight and pleasure." All went well at first, John Chamberlain reports in a letter of gossip to Miss Alice Carleton ; but when they ^ Tract in Nichols, u.s., ii. 550- i. See Chamberlain's letter of 18 Feb., U.S., and full account of procession and masque in Nichols, ii. 566-86. ^ Printed in Nichols, u.s., ii. 591-600. MASQUE OF THE TWO INNS 433 reached the hall, " O, spite of spites," there was nothing but a new Comedy of Errors, "By what ill planet it fell out I know not ; they came home as they went without doing anything." The King was tired out and dazed with sleep. Bacon remembered what His Majesty had said when the Prince was becoming too popular. ''They are trying to bury me quick," said King James. They tried to rouse him with an echo of his royal wit: "Nay, your Majesty, do not bury us quick!" "Well then," said the King, "you must bury me quick, for I can last no longer." The masque was perforce adjourned until the Saturday evening ; and the gentlemen went sadly back to their barges, having shown all their new dresses for nothing. When they returned on the Saturday, they were shown into the banqueting-hall, where noisy revels were going on, and there was a terrible squeezing and jostling.^ "All is nothing," Lord Bacon notes in his Essay, "except the room be kept clear and neat."^ The Lady Bess came in to see the masque, though she had been laughing all the afternoon over The Dutch Courtesan^ as presented by her own players in the Cock-pit. The show passed off very well, amid showers of compliments ; and Sir Francis Bacon and his friend Beaumont, with forty other " Inns-of-Court Men," were invited to a solemn banquet in the same pavilion next night. The King won the expenses of the banquet from the Palatine and his German knights in a Sunday morning tilt. The winners had all the amusement, for the room was so small that there was no space for the losers to sit down ; and a letter from young Lady Rich is still preserved among the State Papers, complaining that her husband "had to pay ;^30, and could not even have a drink for his money." ^ Id., pp. 589-90. ■^ Bacon, u.s. 2 F 434 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" II PLAYS ACTED AT WHITEHALL AND HAMPTON COURT, 1613 — STORY OF THE " VERTUE MSS. " It is possible to get near the exact date at which The Tempest was performed in the pretty Court-theatre at Whitehall. We have the list of plays shown before Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Pals- grave, who was styled "Prince Palatine" after the espousals ; and since that contract, said Chamberlain, was "usually prayed for in the Church among the King's Children."^ After the wedding he was com- monly called "His Highness, Count Palatine." We have seen that the Princess had precedence, till she was married, so that we know which plays were acted before February the 14th ; but after that day there was an immediate change, which may be illustrated by the following examples. On the 20th of February her company were paid the usual £^. 13^-. 4^. for acting Cockle-demoy , before Bacon and Beaumont presented their masque, the comedy being played "before the Prince's Highness Count Palatine Elector and the Lady Elizabeth " ; and on June the 7th, William Rowley was paid on behalf of the Prince's Company for performing the first and second parts of The Knaves on the 2nd and the 5th of March, "before His High- ness Count Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth."^ We know that from the 9th of January the Court-mourning had been relaxed, so that it became allowable to enjoy the sorrows of the stage. The King left London for Royston and Newmarket on January the i ith, the Prince Palatine remaining in town. John Chamberlain ^ Chamberlain to Winwood, 9 Jan. 161 2-13. Text in Winwood, U.S., ii. 421 ; Nichols, ti.s., ii. 515. ^ P. Cunningfham, Plays acted at Court Anno i6jj (Shakespeare Society's Papers, 1844-9, "• 124). PLAYS AT WHITEHALL 435 wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood on the subject. ''The day of the King's departure hence, the Lord Arch- bishop feasted the Palsgrave's followers, which he took so kindly that, when they were ready to sit down, himself came, though he were neither invited nor ex- pected. The Entertainment was very great, and such as became the giver and receiver. The Prince Palatine goes to be installed at Windsor the seventh of the next month. . . , Yesternight (the 28th of January), the Prince Palatine feasted all the Councill at Essex House, where, in regard of the good entertainment he found with the Archbishop, he showed more kindness and caresses to him and his followers than to all the rest put together. "1 We may fairly suppose that soon after the King's de- parture the Royal Company were ordered to attend with their repertoire. We take an early date for convenience, and reckon that the Royal Company began their set of fourteen plays for the Princess about the 15th January. The King returned to Whitehall on the 2nd of February and left again on the 5th. There is a separate list of plays presented before him on a different scale of payments ; and it is possible that in the short stay in London he may have seen "one play called A had beginning makes a good ending" perhaps a shorter version of All's Well that ends Well, Fletcher's Captain, or Jonson's Alchemist. The Palatine's absence at Windsor and his attendance at the public sports when he returned fill up the period so closely that we may suppose the fourteen plays to have been acted during the last sixteen days of January, omitting the 28th, on account of the entertainment at Essex House. The Tempest was sixth on the list, so that it was prob- ably performed on the 21st of January, or close upon that time.^ 1 Chamberlain to Winwood, 29 Jan. 1612-13. Text in Winwood, U.S., ii. 428-30; Nichols, u.s., ii. 517. ^ Cunningham, w.s., p. 125. 436 PRODUCTION OF *'THE TEMPEST" The Palatine was installed in St. George's Chapel on the 7th of February. Mr. Nichols gives us an account of the ceremony from the relation of Mr. Howes: "The Palsgrave in person, and the Grave Maurice by his deputie Count Lodowic of Nassau, his cousin, were installed as Knights of the Garter at Windsor, in the presence of the King, Prince, and Nobility."^ We learn from a letter from Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton that the King and the Princes came back to London on Tuesday, the gth of February.^ We may allow two days for the journey to Windsor, for the preparations and unpacking, and perhaps a day's rest after a long, cold ride. We can imagine the bustle and tumult through the whole countryside by reading what the Welsh parson said of all the hosts '' of Readins, of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, of horses and money," and remembering from the same Merry Wives of Windsor how Dr. Caius bawled in French-English for the host of the Garter: "Here, Master Doctor, in perplexity and doleful dilemma." "I cannot tell vat is dat ; but it is tell-a me dat you make grand prepara- tion for a duke de Jamany." ^ The lists of plays acted at Court, as it appears in the Shakespeare Society^s Papers^ was said to be taken "from the accounts of Lord Harrington, Treasurer of the Chamber to King James L" Mr. Cunningham, who edited the article, intended perhaps to refer to John, Lord Harington of Exton, cousin of Sir John Haring- ton, translator of the Orlando^ The list is to be ascribed in reality to John, Lord Stanhope of Harring- ton, who was Lord Treasurer of the King's chamber 1 Nichols, U.S., ii. 522-3. 2 Chamberlain to Carleton, 11 Feb. 1613, Dom. State Papers, Ixxii. no. 26. Text in Nichols, ^l.s., ii. 524. 3 ][ferr;y Wives of Windsor, iv. 5, 80-9. ■* Lord Harington of Exton had been guardian of the Princess in 1605 ; he escorted her to Germany after her marriage, and died at Worms as he returned. LORD STANHOPE OF HARRINGTON 437 in 1613, and held the office till 1618. The reversion to his place had at one time been procured for the unfortunate Overbury ; but it was purchased by Sir William Uvedale soon after "the poisoning business."^ The Treasurer of the Chamber was in effect the director of the King's amusements. As King James loved outdoor sports, Lord Stanhope's business was chiefly concerned with hunting and hawking at Theo- balds Park. There are numerous entries on the sub- ject among the Domestic State Papers and the copies of Danish Archives at the Public Record Office. We may read of the gerfalcons from Iceland, a herd of great stags from Denmark, tame elks brought from the forests between Norway and Sweden, and a cheetah, or hunting-leopard, which we assume to have been "a present from the Sophy." The Treasurer accounted for the expense of the never-ending progresses, the hunting at Royston, the tennis at Hampton Court, the plays, masques, and Court entertainments. By the list before us we find that The Tempest must have been acted at Whitehall about the 22nd of January, 1612, Old Style, or 1613, by the "historical reckoning." The accounts show a payment to Mr. John Heminge of ;^93. 6>r. 8^. for presenting fourteen several plays. This was the correct amount, according to the ancient scale of fees ; but in some copies, and among others in Mr. Cunningham's paper, the amount was stated as £<^\. 6j. 8^., perhaps merely a copyist's error. The Privy Council records show that John Heminge, as Treasurer to the King's Players, received ;^8o on a warrant of the 19th of May, 161 3, for eight perform- ances before His Majesty. Some of them may have taken place at Whitehall ; but Steevens puts down six of them, at any rate, as having been shown at 1 See Dom. State Papers, i July 1615 (vol. Ixxxi.), and letter from Chamberlain to Carleton, 13 July {ibid., no. 15). 438 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" Hampton Court. ^ The amount of i^8o was made up as follows. The official fee for a play was ten marks, or £^. \2,s. \d. ; when the King was present, he added a gift of ten nobles, or ^^3. 6^". 8^. The mark and noble were "monies of account," the one taken at 13^-. 4^. and the other at 6s. 8d. The King's gift of ten nobles made the ten marks into ten pounds. Six of these plays are mentioned in the Lord Treasurer's account, under the titles of A Bad Begin- ning makes a Good Endings The Captain^ The A Ichemist, "one other, Cardano, one other. Hotspur, and one other called Benedicite and Betteris " ; the account ending, "paid fortie poundes, and by way of his Majestie's rewarde twenty pounds more, in all ;^6o." Cardenno, or Cardema, was also acted, according to the Lord Treasurer's accounts, on the 8th of June, 1613, before the Duke of Savoy's Ambassador. It was one of these plays, not even included in the "spurious list," which was attributed to Shakespeare by audacious booksellers long after his death. ^ The fourteen plays were acted before Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and Frederick, Prince Palatine, with their lords and ladies in attendance. The titles of the plays are given in the order of their per- formance on those leaves of Lord Stanhope's office- book, which are often called "the Vertue MSS." The memoranda run as follows: ^^ Item, paid to John Heminges uppon the Cowncell's warrant dated att Whitehall XX° die Maii, 1613, for presentinge before the Princes Highnes, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Prince Pallatyne Elector, fowerteene severalle playes, viz., one playe called Pilaster, one other called the Knott of Fooles, one other Much Adoe abowte nothinge, the Mayed's Tragedy, the vierye dyvell of Edmonton, ^ Steevens, Shakespeare, ed. Reed, 1803, vi. 182. ^ Cunning'ham, ti-.s., p. 125. See New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1895-6, part ii. p. 419. ''THE MAID'S TRAGEDY," ETC. 439 the Tempest, A Kinge and no kinge, the Twins Tragedie, the Winters Tale, Sir John Falstafe, the Moore of Venice, the Nobleman, Caesar's Tragedye, and one other called Love lyes a bleedinge, all which playes weare played within the time of this accompte, viz., iiij^x xiij li, vis. viij d." The full title of the first play was Philaster ; or, Love lies a-bleeding. It has been supposed that this master- piece of Beaumont and Fletcher was twice commanded by the Princess ; but the list, on the other hand, was announced as containing "fourteen several Plays," and it seems likely that the last entry referred to some short interlude adapted from the famous original. Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy long continued to be the objects of universal admiration ; and Waller expressed the popular verdict, though his neat mind was shocked at their vigour of thought and language : " Of all our elder plays This and Philaster have the loudest fame ; Great are their faults, and glorious is their flame. In both our English genius is expressed ; Lofty and bold, but negligently dressed. "^ The plot of The Maid's Tragedy is flat regicide, and it was not surprising that Charles II. was disposed to prohibit its performance ; but Waller retouched the piece with such zeal that everyone was killed except the King, and it was found necessary in a still later version to despatch the King after all.^ "It was agreeable," said his editor, "to the sweetness of Mr. Waller's temper, to soften the rigor of the Tragedy . . . but, whether it be so agreeable to the nature of Tragedy it self, to make everything come off easily, I leave to the Critics."^ ^ Prologue to The Maid's Tragedy in Waller's Poems, ed. G. Thorn Drury, 1893, p. 224. 2 See A. W. Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit, 1893, ii. 673, where the doubtful reason of the impending- prohibition is discussed in a note. ^ Elijah Fenton, Preface to the second part of Waller's Poems, 1729, pp. 446-7. 440 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" A King and 7io King of Beaumont and Fletcher was a fine piece, "always received with applause." Rymer made a severe attack upon it in his letter on the Tragedies of the Last Age. He seemed to forget that the plays in Shakespeare's time were not tragedies or comedies on the strict classical model, but scenes from human life, which you might call tragi-comedies, or interludes, or what one pleased. A King and no King was licensed in 1611. The plot, it was admitted, had proportion or shape, and '*(at the first sight) an outside fair enough." But the characters were not like Rymer's classical favourites. They were "all improbable and improper in the highest degree," he said, and ran quite wide of the design ; " nothing could be imagined more contrary." "We blunder along without the least streak of life, till in the last act we stumble on the Plot, lying all in a lump together." The Queen is nothing but a Patient Grissel, and Panthea must have had "a knock in her cradle ; so soft she is at all points, and so silly. No Linsey-woolsey Shepherdess but must have more soul in her, and more sense of decency (not to say) honour."^ The Merry Devil of Edmonton, the next piece of im- portance, was a stock piece at the Globe, where the prentices rejoiced in the tavern-wit and the merry knight who reminded them of Falstaff.^ The author- ship of the piece is unknown. It was printed in the volume labelled Shakespeare's Plays , vol. ii., which belonged to Charles the Second's library. It was even licensed as "by Shakespeare" in the Stationer's Register for 1653 ; and after the Restoration it was sold by Kirk- man, the bookseller, with Shakespeare's name on the ^ Rymer, Tragedies of the Last Age., 1678, pp. 56-70. ^ Howell mentions the play under the name of '■^ Smug the Smith," from one of its popular characters, in Epp. Ho-El. , p. 247 (i. § 5, let. i. : York, 13 July 1627). See id., p. 451 (ii. let. 54: Westm., 17 Oct. 1634). Mr. Jacobs, in his notes, apparently has overlooked the fact that this is a synonym for The Merry Devil. *^A KING AND NO KING," ETC. 441 title. ^ Charles Lamb quoted certain passages to show, by way of excuse, that the play had something of Shakespeare's sweetness and good nature. *' It seems written to make the reader happy. Few of our drama- tists or novelists have attended enough to this. They torture and wound us abundantly. They are econom- ists only in delight." He wished that Michael Drayton could be shown to have written the piece, ^ but for this there was no evidence, except a story of Mr. Coxeter, the bookseller, who had seen a copy with a memor- andum that it was '* by Michael Drayton." William Oldys had heard the same thing, but did not lend his authority to the suggestion ; and on the subject of Drayton's works the judgment of Oldys is supreme.^ Hazlitt ascribed the play to Thomas Heywood,* but in this case also there is a complete absence of proof. The Knot of Fools may have been Chapman's All Fools, though the word ''knot" implies a limit of number.^ There was also a ''comical-moral" piece, called Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools, ^ but as it was in seven long acts we can hardly suppose that it was included in the performances "by Command." Little or nothing is known of the other plays on the list. The Nobleman suggests the title of Fletcher's Noble Gentleman^ but this was not licensed till 3rd February, 1626.^ As to The Twins, there was a tragi-comedy of that name, by William Rider, acted by Davenant's Company at Salisbury Court,^ but nothing seems to be ^ Langfbaine, Acct, Eng. Dram. Poets, 1691, p. 541. ^ Lamb, Specimens of Eiiglish Dramatic Poets, (Bohn's ed.), p. 48, note. ^ Oldys' MS., note to Lang-baine u.s.,^. 541 : "It has been said too that Michael Drayton was the Author." ^ Hazlitt, Lecttires on Literature of Age of Elizabeth (Bohn's ed.), p. 169. ^ Vide supra, p. 331. ® See Fleay, ti.s., ii. 333-4. ''' Sir H. Herbert's Office Book, quoted in Collier, Annals of the Stage, 1831, i. 437, note. ^ Fleay, ti.s., ii., 149, states that The Twins, by R. Niccols (entered Stat. Reg. 15 Feb. 1612) was the play acted at Court. Rider's pla)'^ (id., 170) was probably a revival. 442 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" known about the author or his play, except that he called himself a Master of Arts, and that Langbaine judged from the style that the play was an old one.^ Shakespeare and Fletcher divide the honours of the list. Jonson's name only appeared when the King gave a supplemental ''command." Shakespeare was still regarded as supreme ; Fletcher was almost too witty, and he offended against "the decorum of the stage." But his raillery was "so dressed," says Langbaine, that it rather pleased than disgusted ;^ and the list of plays, if closely scrutinised, seems to show a preference for comedy in a court costume. CcBsar's Tragedy we take as being Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar, sometimes called "Julius Caesar his tragedy," or simply "Csesar," as in the encomium of Leonard Digges : " So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare, And on the stag^e at halfe-sword parley were, Brutus and Cassias, how the audience Were ravish'd ! with what wonder they went thence."^ Malone and G. Chalmers took their information from Vertue, through a transcript made by Oldys : "It appears from the papers of the late Mr. George Vertue, that a Play called Cesar's Tragedy was acted at court before the loth of April, in the year 1613. This was probably Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, it being much the fashion at that time to alter the titles of his Plays."* There were, of course, several pieces on the same sub- ^ Langbaine, u.s., p. 427 : " Of which University or Colledge, is to me unknown. . . . This Play is not contemptible, either as to the Lang-uag-e, Oeconomy of it, tho" I judge it older far than the Date of it imports." Oldys altered Langbaine's ascription of Rider's date from Charles the Second's reign to "James the First," confusing Rider and Niccols. ^ Langbaine, u.s., p. 204. See Dryden, Essay on Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age, in Works, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, iv. 229. '' Verses prefixed to Shakespeare's poems, 1640. Printed in Halliwell- Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 89 ^ Malone's Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, ii. 450-1. ''CESAR'S TRAGEDY," ETC. 443 ject; but none of them were likely to have been selected for the occasion. The JtUius Ccesar oi W. Alexander (afterwards Earl of ''Sterline") was one of his four Monarchicke Tragedies, intended only for reading in the library. ^ We learn something about the first appearance of the Winter's Tale from the old Office-book quoted by Malone and Collier. ^ This book had been kept by Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to Charles I. Nothing had been heard of it for nearly a century, when it was found by a curious accident. Horace Walpole was editing the Life of Lord Herbert of Cher- bury from a stained and torn MS. at Lymore, and had made vain inquiries about a duplicate once belong- ing to Lord Herbert's brother, Sir Henry Herbert of Ribbisford. At last, in the year 1727, this duplicate was sent to Lord Powis by a gentleman who had bought the estate at Ribbisford ; it appeared that a great oak chest had been allowed to go with the house, and in this chest were found the duplicate *' Life," and various books and papers, including the Office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, with notes from August, 1623, onwards. On the 19th of August, 1623, Sir Henry made a note of a visit from old Mr. Heminge : "For the king's players. An olde playe called Winter's Tale, formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke, and likewise by mee on Mr. Hemmings his worde that there was nothing profane added or reformed, thogh the allowed booke was missing ; and therefore I returned it without a fee."^ The play seems to have been popular, but in 1741 it was announced, during the Shakespearean revival, that The Merchant of Venice and the Winter's Tale had not been performed for a ^ Printed in Scotland, 1604 ; in London, 1607. See A. W. Ward, op. cit., ii. 138, 140, on this and other plays bearing on the subject. ^ See Malone's long- note on Sir Henry Herbert's Office-Book, op. cit., iii. 57-9. ^ Id., iii. 229. 444 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" century, and that AlVs Well that Ends Well had been last acted in Shakespeare's time. With respect to the boatswain's curses in The Tempest^ we should note that the Master of the Revels took a very stringent view of " profaneness." On January 9th, 1633, we have a note about Davenant's play of The Wits. Herbert had crossed out "faith," ''slight," and similar ex- pressions ; but the King took him to the window, and showed the play with the words reinserted: "The kinge is pleased to take faith^ death, slight, for asseverations, and no oaths, to which I doe humbly submit as my master's judgment ; but under favour conceive them to be oaths, and enter them here, to declare my opinion and submission. The 10 of January, 1633, I returned unto Mr. Davenant his playe-booke of The Wits, corrected by the king."^ Mr. Steevens had a misleading note on the perform- ances in the Supplemental List. ^^ Much ado about Nothing,'''' he says, "(as I understand from one of Mr. Vertue's MSS.) formerly passed under the title of Benedick and Beatrix. Heming the player received, on the 20th of May, 1613, the sum of forty pounds, and twenty pounds more as his Majesty's gratuity, for ex- hibiting six Plays at Hampton Court, among which was this comedy. "2 Steevens had taken a copy of a transcript by Oldys, which came to Sir S. Egerton Brydges, and was bought by Dr. Birch at the Lee Priory sale, and afterwards deposited in the British Museum. Mr. Cunningham's statement in the Shake- speare Society Papers seems to be incorrect. He said that the list of plays as there printed was taken from the copy by Steevens,^ but it probably came from the annotated Langbaine, described in Heber's Catalogue as "Langbaine, with many important additions by 1 Id., iii. 235. ■^ Steevens in Variorum Shakespeare, 1803, vi. 182. •^ Cunningham, us., p. 123. ''MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING," ETC. 445 Oldys, Steevens, and Reed," which is also in the British Museum. Seeing the difference in the titles, one might rather expect that Benedict and Beatrix was not the same as Mtich Ado about Nothing. It may well have been an abridgement, with the addition of characters from out- side. It is common knowledge that this practice was adopted when required. A Midsummer Nighfs Dream is an example in point. When plays were forbidden, it appeared as an interlude of clowns and strolling players. During the Commonwealth it was acted as Bottom's Dream at the fairs. ^ Benedict and Beatrix may have been a travesty of the same kind. For this we have the testimony of Leonard Digges in the verses pre- fixed to Shakespeare's Poems in 1640. It is clear that Malvolio had been brought in from Twelfth Night to pad out the witty scenes between Signior Benedick and Lady Beatrice : *' Let but Beatrice And Benedicke be seen, loe, in a trice The cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full To hear Malvoglio, that crosse-garter'd gull."^ The Hotspur^ again, as acted at Hampton Court, may have been made up of extracts from the first part of King Henry IV. A separate play was put together for Falstaff, composed of scenes from both parts of King Henry IV. and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Something may have been borrowed from the death- scene in Henry V, so pitifully described by Mistress Nell Pistol, better known as Dame Quickly of East- cheap and Staines, or the "Quondam Quickley."^ These were hints useful for expansion in the epilogue to Henry IV., where a promise was made which the Cobhams would never allow to be fulfilled: "Our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in ^ Vzde supra, pp. 187-8, and Ward, op. cit, ii. 86. '^ Vide supra, p. 442, note 3. '^ Henry V., ii. 3. 446 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France : where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions ; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." Fuller's words would be appropriate to a made-up *' Falstaff," but he can hardly be suspected of an attack upon the memory of Shakespeare: "Sir John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his place ; but it matters as little what petulant poets, as what malicious papists have written against him."^ He added in his Worthies of England: " Now as I am glad that Sir John Oldcastle is put out, so I am sorry that Sir John Fastolfe is put in, to relieve his memory in this base service, to be the anvil for every dull wit to strike on."^ It appears from an entry in Sir Henry Herbert's note-book that Sir John Falstaff was in two parts, the first part having been acted on New Year's Eve, 1624-5, by the King's Company in the Cockpit at Whitehall.^ We learn also from the verses by Digges that the "wild Prince" and Poins were both in the play. He was noticing the dislike of the public for tedious " Catiline " and irksome " Seganus" : ' ' And though the Fox and subtill Alchimist, Long intermitted, could not quite be mist, Though these have sham'd all the ancients, and might raise Their authour's merit with a crowne of bayes, Yet Jhese sometimes, even at a friends desire Acted, have scarce defrai'd the sea coale fire And doore-keepers : when, let but Falstaffe come. Hall, Poines, the rest, you scarce shall have a roome, All is so pester'd. " Steevens gave the title of "the Vertue MSS." to the leaf from Lord Stanhope's book. But the name properly ^ Fuller, Church History of Britain (ed. Nichols, 1868), iii. 568. 2 Fuller, Worthies of England (ed. Nuttall, 1840), ii. 455. Sub Worthies of Norfolk ; Soldiers. ^ Malone, u.s.y iii. 228. THE VERTUE MSS. 447 belonged to the whole collection of miscellaneous papers got together by George Vertue, the celebrated engraver. He began to gather materials for a History of Art as early as the year 17 13. He paid great attention to the archi- tecture of London, and his library included the plans used in Rocque's Survey, and the note-books of Nicholas Stone, the master-mason, who put up Spenser's monu- ment in the Abbey, and built the existing banqueting- house at Whitehall. In the Memoir of W. Oldys, by Mr. Yeowell, we find an extract from the antiquary's note-book, dated the 27th of September, 1749: "Mr. Vertue sent me a transcript of King Charles his Patent to Ben Jonson for ;^ioo per annum. Also extracts from the accounts of Lord Stanhope, Treasurer of the Cham- ber to King James, from the Year 1613 to 1616, relating to the payment of the Players for acting of Plays in and between those Years at Court. "^ Mr. G. Chalmers used the term "Vertue MSS." in the same careless way when he wrote about a point in his Supplemental Apology: "There is a note subjoined to the Manuscripts of Vertue, which about thirty years ago were lent to Mr. Steevens by Mr. Garrick." The great actor may have got much information from Steevens when they were arranging the Stratford Jubilee of 1769 ; but it is well known that the engraver's general collection was purchased en bloc by Horace Walpole for the library at Strawberry Hill. Vertue's notes on the history of Art became, in fact, the foundation of Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England. To show how difficult it would be to trace the paper copied for Oldys and Garrick, we may refer to a correspondence mentioned in Prior's Life of Malone. The critic first inquired, without success, about a docu- ment connected with Shakespeare, supposed to be with Mrs. Eva Garrick at Hampton ; and he then inquired about the history of a painting by Carlo Maratti. Walpole replied that he thought it came from some ^ A Literary Antiquary : Memoir of William Oldys, 1862, p. 32. 448 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" note by Vertue, but could not be sure : ''All Vertue's memorandums were indigested, and written down suc- cessively as he made them in forty volumes, often on loose scraps of paper, so it is next to impossible to find the note."^ The paper sent by Vertue to W. Oldys was doubtless thrown into the bag of clippings which he called his " Shakespeare Budget," which was lost in the confusion of his sale ; but he transcribed the contents into his Second Annotated Langhaine, in the form of marginal notes ; and this copy was purchased by Dr. Birch, and was bequeathed by him to the British Museum. The notes in this volume were highly esteemed for their minute learning, and were several times copied. Bishop Percy, for instance, borrowed the book from Dr. Birch, and wrote out the ''marginalia" in four interleaved vol- umes; "His Lordship," said Mr. Joseph Haslewood, " was so kind as to favour me with the loan of this book, with a generous permission to make what use of it I might think proper, and when he went to Ireland he left it with Mr. Nichols for the benefit of the new edition of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian." ^ Malone's copy seems to have been taken from these interleaved volumes, though he had access to all the papers that were inspected by Bishop Percy ; it is now among the " Malone MSS. " at the Bodleian Library. The original leaves from the Treasurer's Ofiice-book were saved from destruction by Samuel Pepys, who not only loved his library, but treasured everything relating to stage-plays, and to The Tempest above all other plays. He studied to the best of his power the con- ditions of London life in the past, with special reference to the development of the English Drama. So great ^ Prior, Life of Malone, i860, pp. 126-7. 2 Haslewood's Langhaine : MS. notes by Joseph Haslewood, vol. i. extra leaf 9. He tells us that Bishop Percy's interleaved copy "very narrowly escaped the flames, and was much injured by the water thrown in to quench the fire at Northumberland House." PEPYS AND LORD STANHOPE'S MS. 449 were his accumulations of plays and ballads that some called him the Father of Black-letter Collectors. Dr. Dibdin, the arbiter of such matters, would not class him with ''the Black-letter Dogs"; but he said that Mr. Secretary Pepys was a Bibliomaniac "of the very first order and celebrity." He kept his books and papers till his death in that "very noble house and sweet place " at Clapham, which John Evelyn so affec- tionately described.^ The library was left en bloc to Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the hope of keep- ing it entire ; and there, to borrow a phrase from Oldys, among the folios peeped out his black-letter ballads, "and penny merriments, penny witticisms, penny compliments, and penny godlinesses." This was the critical moment for our ^^ Tempest manu- script " ; for, as a matter of fact, the list of plays performed at Whitehall did not go to Cambridge with the rest. Dr. Richard Rawlinson, "a Bishop among the Nonjurors," collected everything in the shape of a book or the semblance of a manuscript. He laid more than thirty great libraries under contribution, and was not above purchasing " ships' logs and the pickings of chandlers' and grocers' shops." In 1741, he wrote : " My agent met with some papers of Archbishop Wake at a Chandler's shop ; this is unpardonable in his executors, as all his MSS. were left to Christ Church : but quaere whether these did not fall into some servant's hands, who was ordered to burn them ; and Mr. Martin Follets ought to have seen this done." In much the same way he acquired the Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, in twenty-five volumes, which in- cluded the list of plays in question, as well as other "Treasurer's Accounts." All these were bequeathed by him to the Bodleian Library, where they now form part of the " Rawlinson MSS." ^ Evelyn, Diary, May 26, 1703; also Sept. 23, 1700 (ed. Bray, 1879, Hi. 165, 154). 2 G IV. ON A POSSIBLE PERFORMANCE AT THE BLACKFRIARS, C. 1606. THE BLACKFRIARS THEATRE AND THE COMPANIES OF BOY ACTORS 'J^HE TEMPEST, as we learn from Dryden/ was brought out with success at the private theatre in Blackfriars. There was too much music in the piece to make it suitable for the Globe. It was a work of such airy and delicate fancy as to require an educated audi- ence ; and at the private houses the prices were kept high, in order to drive away the Copper Captains and Nuns of Alsatia, the sailors, the flat-capped prentices, and "youths that thunder at a playhouse and fight for bitten apples."^ K fantasia like The Tempest wsiS better suited to boys than to grown-up actors ; and to young boys, whose voices had not broken, such as the choris- ters of St. Paul's, or the children of the Chapel-Royal at Whitehall. ^ Preface to The Tempest ; or, the Eyichanted Islmid (1670), in Works, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, iii. 106. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 309, says : " It is not at all improbable that the conspicuous position assigned to this comedy in the first folio is a testimony to its popularity." 2 King Henry VIII,, v. 4, 63-4. 450 THE LIBERTY OF BLACKFRIARS 451 BLACKFRIARS — HISTORY OF THE THEATRE There were three of these private theatres in London ; the Whitefriars house, constructed in the hall of the Carmelites, near the Temple ; ^ the Phoenix, or Cockpit, in Drury Lane, built on the site of a dis- used cockpit, and bearing the Phoenix on its sign ; ^ and the house built by James Burbage in the precinct of Blackfriars. This third house we are now about to describe. The liberty of Blackfriars was a district outside the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, though set within the walls of the city. Before the suppression of the monasteries it belonged to the Dominican order of friars ; and the powers given by charter to the prior were for a long time regarded as having passed to his lay successors.^ The ancient boundaries are well known, though the walls and gateways are gone, and the lines of division have been altered by the building of the Blackfriars and Ludgate Hill railway stations and the opening of Queen Victoria Street above the Embankment. There were once four great gates : one was in Carter Lane, nearly opposite to Creed Lane ; another opened into the old Pilgrims' Way, leading through Pilgrim Street and the Broadway into Water Lane by the city wall, and as far as the prior's water-gate. The fourth gate- ^ See notice in Collier, Annals of the stage, ist ed., 1831, iii. 289-95. In 1629 a new theatre in Salisbury Court took the place of the old Whitefriars theatre, "on or near the site of the old edifice." ^ Collier, id., 328-32. This theatre does not seem to have existed until Shakespeare had left London. ^ Dug-dale, Monasticon, ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, 1830, vi. 1487, quoting- from Stevens : " Neither the Mayor nor the Sheriffs, nor any other Officers of the City of London, had the least jurisdiction or authority therein. All which liberties the inhabitants preserved some time after the suppression of the Monastery." 452 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" way opened on the timber bridge leading through Union Street towards Bridewell, across that ancient " river of wells," better known afterwards as the filthy ditch of the Fleet. ^ If we could carry back our mental vision to the days of Henry VIII., we might call up the picture of the precinct in its time of magnificence. On the place now occupied by the Times office and Printing-house Square stood the conventual church, richly furnished with hangings and ornaments, and containing, on the side near Bridewell, a great hall called the parliament- chamber. Here the marriage of Queen Katharine was annulled ; '-^ and, sitting in this chamber, the Parlia- ment declared the ruin of Wolsey. The cloisters stood behind the church, towards Ludgate, their old site being indicated by the name of Cloister Court. The priory buildings were next to the cloisters ; their site was taken at one time for the King's printing- house, and is now covered by the Times printing office. Just within the precinct and at the back of Carter Lane was the little church of St. Anne, Blackfriars, where two open spaces still remain to show the site of the church and churchyard in the lane now called Church Entry. On the city side the friars' quarters were bounded by St. Andrew's Hill, leading from Carter Lane to Puddle Dock. At the top of the hill was the King's wardrobe, a fine building, used as a museum of royal costumes, and as a place of custody for confidential documents relating to the estates of the Crown ; lower down the church of St. Andrew met the eastern limit of the precinct. King Henry lodged, on his visits to the prior, in a fine tower built near the water-gate ; and on one great occasion, when Charles V. visited London, a flying 1 See topography in Stow, Survey of London, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. iii. pp. 193-4. 2 The stage directions in King Henry VIII. , ii. 4, give some sugges- tion of the historical surroundings of the scene. THE PRIORY IN BLACKFRIARS 453 bridge was set up from the Emperor's lodging in the Blackfriars to the new palace at Bridewell.^ The precinct was then a busy place, what with the friars and librarians, the prior's justices and their retinue, the pilgrims trooping from the "Bell" in Carter Lane to Chaucer's hostelry in Southwark "with full devout corage." A few years passed ; the priory was sup- pressed, and the precinct became as bare as a wilder- ness. Part of the house itself was turned into the Pipe office, where they kept the great rolls of the Pipe, huge sheepskins looking like drain-pipes of the largest size. Several houses and gardens were given or sold to courtiers, as Sir Thomas Cheyney, a mighty hunter of abbey-lands ; Mary Lady Kingston, the dowager, and Sir Francis Bryan. ^ In the fourth year of Edward VI., the site of the monastery, including the great church and what remained of the other buildings, was granted to Sir Thomas Cawarden, then Master of the Revels. He destroyed the church, and had the assur- ance to pull down also St. Anne's parish church, on the excuse that it was part of the monastery. The priory buildings were divided into chambers, flats, and tenements. On Queen Mary's accession, Cawarden was ordered to find a church for the parishioners. He allowed them the use of a lodging on a first floor, with an outside flight of steps ; but the stairs and lodging- room having fallen down in 1597, a collection was made, and the church was rebuilt with an enlargement, and was dedicated in November of that year.^ On February 4th, 1596, James Burbage, actor and builder, bought a house formerly included in the priory from Sir William More, Cawarden's surviving trustee. His object was to set up a private theatre, for the amusement of a select audience of visitors and licensees, and certainly not open to any customer who might 1 Stow, 2i.s., bk. iii. p. 264. ^ Dug-dale, u.s. ^ Stow, u.s,, bk. iii. p. 180. 454 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" come with his penny in hand. The new population of the precinct belonged to a quiet race ; they were chiefly Puritans, Calvinists, or Huguenots, with shops for embroidery, lawns, and cambrics, "confections," and dressmaking. They were celebrated for fans and feather-work ; and the most popular sign in the liberty was the Fool laughing at a Feather. Ben Jonson gibes at the poor, hard-working Puritans in his confutation of Zeal-of-the-land Busy by "puppet Dionysius." "Yea ! what say you to your tire- women then? . . . Or feather-makers in the Friars, that are of your faction of faith? are not they, with their perukes, and their puffs, their fans, and their huffs, as much pages of Pride, and waiters upon Vanity? What say you, what say you, what say you?" "I will not answer for them," replies Zeal-of-the-land. The puppet retorts, " Because you cannot, because you cannot. Is a bugle-maker a lawful calling? or the confect-makers ? such as you have there ; or your French fashioner? You would have all the sin within yourselves, would you not, would you not?"i When a fine periwig was required, people went to the milliners in the Strand ; but Black- friars was the place for a hand-glass, an ornamental comb, smoky lawn, yellow starch, or crape from Cyprus. ^ The shopkeepers of Blackfriars got up a strong ^ Bartholome'w Fair, act v. sc. 3. Cf. The Alchemist, \. i, where Dol. Common abuses Face as an "apocryphal captain, Whom not a Puritan in Blackfriars will trust So much as for a feather." Webster's induction to The Malcontent contains the words, " This play hath beaten all young gallants out of the feathers. Black-friars hath almost spoiled Black- friars for feathers." For other references, see Nares' Glossary, ed. Halliwell-Phillipps and Wright, s.v. "Black-friars." Randolph's The Muses Looking- Glass (printed 1638) has two characters, Bird the feather- man, and Mrs. Flowerdew, a haberdasher of smallwares, described as "two of the sanctify'd fraternity of Black-friars." Bird (i. i) says: "We dwell by Black-friars college, where I wonder How that profane nest of pernicious birds Dare roost themselves there in the midst of us, So many good and well-disposed persons. O impudence ! " ^ It was a common saying that Blackfriars was right for a mouse- skin eyebrow, but the Strand for a ringlet or a periwig. The word BURBAGE'S PURCHASE 455 petition to the Privy Council in November, 1596, when the new house was nearly completed.^ They urged the proximity of the theatre to the houses of the nobility and gentry ; it was close to Lord Hunsdon's mansion, and touched on a house under lease to Lord Cobham.^ The crowds coming to the plays might spread disease through the district, already too tightly packed, especi- ally if the pestilence should return.^ "And besides," they said, ". . . the same playhouse is so neere the Church that the noyse of the drummes and trumpetts will greatly disturbe and hinder both the ministers and parishioners in tyme of devine service and sermons." In this paragraph they are shown by the date to be referring to Cawarden's temporary church, up one pair of stairs ; but the theatre was in fact at the lower end of a large yard, extending as far as the churchyard and the site of the church, as soon afterwards restored. The paper was signed by some of the great people who owned houses in the precinct. The list was headed millmer meant a dealer in articles from Milan ; and, while the Italian mode lasted, the Strand shops were full of doublets worked with gold thread, gilt-leather gloves called "Milan skins," and Milan silk stockings, "twice as strong as ours," said an English traveller, "and very massive." Beaumont and Fletcher, Valentinia7i, ii. 2, couple "gilded doublets And Milan skins." The commodities of Blackfriars were also to be found in that part of the Exchange known as the Pawn, "which was richly furnished with all sorts of the finest wares in the city," on Queen Elizabeth's memorable visit, Jan. 23, 1570 (Stow, Survey, Cornhill Ward). See Sylvester's lines on London, inserted in his translation of Du Bartas (week ii., day 2, part 3) : " For costly Toys, silk Stockings, Cambrick, Lawn, Here's choice-full Plenty in the curious PAWN." ^ The petition is printed (from a transcript c. 1631), in Halliwell- Phillipps, t(.s., i. 304. ^ This appears from the deed of feoffment, printed ibid. , 299-304 : " All that little yard or peice of void grounde . . . enclosed with the same bricke wall and with a pale, next adjoyneinge to the house of the said Sir William More, nowe in thoccupacyon of the right honorable the Lord Cobham." ^ " And allso to the greate pestring and filling up of the same precinct, yf it should please God to send any visitation of sicknesse as heretofore hath been, for that the same precinct is allready growne very populous." 456 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" by Elizabeth, dowager Lady Russell, and Sir George Carey, eldest son of Lord Hunsdon, the chamberlain of the Household. The Hunsdon family had an ancient mansion in the parish, and usually were buried at St. Anne's. Within a few weeks Lord Hunsdon died,^ and was succeeded by his son George, in his office as well as his estates and dignities ; but by that time it was too late to object. Among the other names we notice William de Lavine,^ Robert Baheire, John Le Mere, and Ascanio de Renialmire, all apparently, by their names, foreign Protestant refugees, and John '' Robbinson," who afterwards became Shakespeare's tenant of the dwelling-house occupied by William Ireland, right opposite to the King's wardrobe on St. Andrew's Hill, and built in part upon a great gateway at the entrance to Ireland Yard. The dispute went on for about half a century, perhaps till the theatre was pulled down. The Lord Mayor and the parishioners made repeated complaints about the private house; the Lords of the Council as repeatedly evaded the question by making regulations only for the public theatres. Queen Anne's juvenile company played at Blackfriars for some years ; Queen Henrietta loved everything that savoured of the stage. Then came an ordinance of 1642, prohibiting the acting of plays ; ^ and, five years later, another which provided for the whipping of contumacious players, and the breaking-up of the platforms, boxes, and galleries, and whirled away all the rags and properties into the limbo of vanity.* ^ He was buried, not in St. Anne's, Blackfriars, but in Westminster Abbey, His immense monument, in St. John Baptist's Chapel, north of the apse, was erected by his son. Sir George Carey signs the petition "G. Hunsdon." ^ Also named in the deed of feoffment, u.s., as "William de Lawne, Doctor of Physick." ^ Sept. 2, 1642, printed in Collier, op. cit., ii. 105. * Feb. II, 1647-8, printed ibid., pp. 1 14-17, note, from text in Scobell's Collection of Acts and Ordiriances. For the history of the ordinance in PETITIONS AGAINST THE THEATRE 457 One of the petitions, on which the Lord Mayor founded an order — an order disregarded, as usual — has still some interest, as showing the dislike of the shop- keepers to carriages. In 163 1, the churchwardens and parishioners asked Bishop Laud to remove the players from Blackfriars : but his endorsement, "to the council Table," indicates that the matter was shelved or laid by. By reason of the great resort of coaches, it was urged, the shopkeepers' wares were broken and beaten off their stalls. This crowd of coaches was so thick that the inhabitants could not fetch in afternoon beer, or coals, or get water to put out a fire : persons of quality, living in Blackfriars, could not get out of their houses : ordinary folk were much disturbed at christenings and burials, and could not take their walks to Ludgate or down to the river. ^ II CONSTRUCTION OF THE THEATRE — ITS PROBABLE APPEARANCE AND SCENIC ARRANGEMENTS The conveyance to Burbage, printed by Halliwell- Phillipps,^ helps us to realise the look of the old house in the priory, converted by him into what is now called a "bijou" theatre. It must have been like a Dutch question, see ibid., pp. 1 10-19 '■> ^- W. Ward, Eng. Drain. Lit., iii. 278-9. See also Collier, u.s., iii. 273-8, on the Blackfriars Theatre. He quotes Sir Aston Cokain's "Prseludium" to Richard Brome's plays, 1653: " Black, and Whitefriars too, shall flourish again. Though there have been none since Queen Mary's reign." " But," he adds, " on the revival of the drama, we never hear of its employment, and as it was then an old building, it was probably pulled down." Shirley, in a prologue printed also in 1653, among his Six Newe Playes, and quoted by Nares, U.S., s.v. Black-friars, writes: "But you that can contract yourselves, and sit As you were now in the Blacli-Fryers pit." ^ The petitions are all abstracted in the Cale?idar of State Papers (Domestic), ed. Bruce, 1631-3, pp. 219-21 (also see 1633-4, PP- 266-90). The petition made in 1631 (no date) was renewed in 1633, "but the petitioners obtained no redress" (Collier, op. cit, iii. 277). The petition was debated at the Council Table, Oct.-Nov. , 1633. ^ Vide sup., p. 455, note i. 458 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" house, of an oblong shape, three-storied, with a high- pitched roof and dormer windows. It stood near Water Lane, looking into it from the west side of the north end : one of the yards was divided from the street only by a brick wall.^ On the same side it touched the Pipe office, the covered passage leading to the main entrance (afterwards the theatre door), and a winding stone stair- case open to the air. At other points it touched several houses looking on the street — Sir George Carey's man- sion. Sir William More's house on the Cawarden estate, and another which we have mentioned as being under lease from Sir William to Lord Cobham. The house having been divided into flats, the descrip- tion of the interior was somewhat complicated. The general effect was as follows, if we omit such small matters as entries, cellars, and coal-holes. The ground- floor had been let in four rooms as chambers, a little contracted in breadth by the passage along the wall of the Pipe office. The first floor^ had been occupied by one Rocco Bonnetto. Its dimensions were only 52 x 37 feet ; and from this we may calculate the size of the theatre. The second floor contained seven rooms, which, in the days of the friars, had been all in one, and two more rooms beyond, with a buttery, certain garrets, and a stone staircase leading to the roof. The "seaven greate upper romes" were described as lately occupied by Dr. William "de Lawne" or Lavine, who afterwards joined in the petition against the theatre. The amount of alterations required appears by various scattered descriptions of the private houses, and by the contract, preserved at Dulwich, under which the For- tune Theatre was built in 1600.^ We know that plays ^ "lyeing-e and being- nexte the Queenes highewaye leadinge unto the ryver of Thamis." 2 In the language of the deed, "the Midle Romes or Midle Stories." ^ Printed in Halliwell Philhpps, u.s., 304-6. CoUier, Annals, iii. 304-6, gives a good abstract. "This document," notes HalHwell- Phillipps, "incidentally reveals to some extent the nature of the con- struction of the Globe Theatre." CONSTRUCTION OF THE THEATRE 459 were at first acted in the coachyards of inns. The Globe and the Fortune were modified imitations of the yards at the Bell or the Belle Sauvage ; and the Red Bull, in St. John Street, was nothing more than an inn- yard converted into a permanent theatre.^ The stage was a platform in the open air, fenced off by strong palings from the ground where the crowd found stand- ing-room. The lower boxes replaced the rooms looking out into the yard : the scaffolding was copied from the gallery leading to the bedrooms ; but in a theatre it was necessary to cut off portions for '^gentlemen's rooms" and *' twopenny rooms" in double tiers. Part of the ground tier was taken for a stage-box, which was re- placed at some theatres, after a time, by private rooms at the back of the stage, close to the music gallery. The contracts for building the Globe and the Fortune provided that the house should be in a timber frame, three stories high, with divisions for the boxes, "a stadge and tyreing-howse . . . with a shadowe or cover over the said stadge." The stage was to be forty- three feet wide, " and in breadth to extend to the middle of the yarde," or the pit, as it afterwards was called. The platform and the ground-tier boxes were to be paled in with ''good stronge and sufficyent newe oken bourdes," and "fenced with stronge yron pykes." We find no mention of a balcony in the contract for building the Fortune ; but we know that there was usually such a fabric at the back, over the entrance ^ See the account in Collier, ti.s., 324-8. Among the literary refer- ences which he gives is one to Randolph's The Muse's Lookmg- Glass {sup., p. 454, note i), which is of interest in connection with the Puritan hostility to the theatres. Mrs. Flowerdew (act i. sc. 2) says : " It was a zealous prayer I heard a brother make, concerning playhouses. Bird. For charity, what is't? Mrs. F. That the Globe, Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice. Had been consum'd : the Phoenix burnt to ashes : . . . Black-Friars, He wonders how it 'scap'd demolishing F th' time of reformation : Lastly, he wished The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear-garden, And there be soundly baited. Bird. A good prayer." (Dodsley, Old Plays, 1825, vol. ix.) 46o PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" from the dressing-rooms. Juliet's balcony is proof enough for the Globe ; Marston's Fawn climbs a tree and is received "above" by Dulcimel ;^ and the Queen of Cyprus in The Dumb Knight^ by Lewis Machin and Gervase Markham, plays Mount-saint, or Piquet, "aloft" with Philocles, while the King, disguised as one of the guard, watches them from the side of the stage. ^ In the private houses the balcony was freely used. In The Tempest^ Prospero stood there invisible, when the lovers met in the yard. He must have mounted the upper stage while they talked ; when they departed, he came forward and spoke down to the audience.^ And again, in the scene with the three villains, when the trumpery from the house is brought "for stale to catch these thieves," we must suppose that, while Caliban and his friends groped about near the entrance and the curtain that was supposed to hide the cell, Prospero and Ariel ensconced themselves un- seen in the fabric above.* The principal entrance must have been under the balcony. It was generally covered by a large curtain ; but, if that were "knocked up,"^ the opening would serve to show the interior of a room or a cavern. In The Tempest there is a famous example. "This cell's my court," says Prospero — " here have I few attendants And subjects none abroad : pray you, look in." He lifts the tapestry, and so "discovers" Ferdinand playing at chess with Miranda.*^ On each side of the entrance and along one breadth of the platform there were rods and rings for side-curtains, where the actors took unseen parts, or sang, or made a "confused ^ Act V. sc. I, in Bullen's ed. of Marston, 1885, etc., vol. ii. p. 210. ^ Act iv. sc. I in Dodsley, u.s., vol. iv. "* Tempest, iii. i. ■* Id,, iv. i. ^ Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, act v. (Dodsley, u.s., vol. iii.) ; *' Enter Hieronimo, he knocks up the curtain." ^ Tempest, v. i. ARRANGEMENT OF THEATRE 461 noise," as might be required ; and, on occasion, a screen, or "traverse," was set near the tapestry, so that a speech might be given without the figure being seen. We have some hint of this in The Tempest. Antonio, his brother's substitute, persuaded himself that he was the actual Duke, ''out of the substitution," and as wearing the face royal by prerogative right. Says Prospero : *' To have no screen between this part he played And him he played it for, he needs will be Absolute Milan. "1 There was no scenery in the modern sense of the term. 2 "Before the Wars," says the Cavalier in Wright's i^z^/on^^ j^2>zfnbwzc« (about 1699), "... tho' the town was not much more than half so populous as now, yet then the prices were small (there being no scenes)."^ Davenant brought the fashion from France when acting was still forbidden, and gave The Siege of Rhodes, Sir Francis Drake, and other recitations and private theatricals, "made a presentation by the Art of Prospective in Scenes, and the Story sung in Recita- tive Musick."* After the Restoration he began again to use scenery at the Duke of York's house in Portugal Row,^ and the King's Players followed suit, when, in 1663, they moved from the Tennis Court by Clare Market to Drury Lane. The accounts of the Lord ^ Id,, i. 2, 107-9. ^ In The Spanish Tragedy, u.s., we have a passage illustrating' the primitive character of contemporary " scenery." "Well done, Balthazar, hang up the title : Our scene is Rhodes." The passage in Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie is familiar : "What childe is there, that coming to a play and seeing Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth believ that it is Thebes?" ^ In Dodsley, u.s., vol. i. p. cxlviii. * Title-page of The Siege of Rhodes, 1656, in Dramatic Works of Sir W. D'Avettant, Edinburgh, 1873, ^°^' •'•• P- ^3^- ^■^^ Siege of Rhodes (1656) was produced at Rutland House in Aldersgate Street; The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659), at the Cockpit in Drury Lane. See A. W. Ward, op. cit., iii. 280-5. ^ The Portugal Row theatre was opened in 1661, closed in 1673. 462 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" Admiral's company, among the Henslowe MSS. at Dulwich, show that the actors used properties almost fit to be classed among ''scenes," such as a "hell's mouth," after Orcagna's style, a city of Rome, castles and villages, the tomb of Dido, "pageants" in wood- work and canvas, and "a cloth of the Sun and Moon," which, in Boswell's opinion, was "the Ne plus ultra'''' of those days. It is very possible that a rude mast and tackling were used in The Tempest y when the play opened on a ship at sea. The cabins were behind the side-hangings ; the master would naturally mount the balcony. "Where is the master, boatswain?" asks Antonio. "Do you not hear him?" is the answer. "You mar our labour: keep your cabins: you do assist the storm. "^ The stage-covering, or "shadow," in the public theatres was sometimes known as the "heavens." Malone inferred, from Heywood's words in the Apology for Actors, that this was painted a sky-colour or welkin blue.^ But the phrase may have been a mere copy of the Italian cielo; and in a tragedy, we know, by familiar examples, that "the heavens " were hung with black.^ A private theatre had a proper ceiling instead of a painted canvas ; but there was nothing to prevent the use of "property" clouds and draperies. This would suit Trinculo's storm, which sang in the wind, while a cloud arose like a black-jack full of muddy beer. " Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head : yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls." ^ The bombards at the court buttery were the huge pails in which the maids and pages received their ^ Tempest, i. i, 12-14. ^ Malone's Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, iii. 108. ^ I Henry VI., i. i. So Northward Ho, iv. i : "As I was saying, the stage all hung with black velvet," where the reference is to Chapman's Conspiracy of Byron. •* Tempest, ii. 2, 20-5. SCENERY AND STAGE-COVERING 463 '* broken beer."'^ The bombard in The Tempest is the shadow of a cloud on the ceiling, or a drapery with a similar effect, in shape like the stumpy cannon that were used as pieces for bombardment, or like a magnified *' leather bottel," or a huge boot, or the largest of the shiny pails which slopped the floor near the butler's hatch. ^ III CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIVATE THEATRES — SITTING ON THE STAGE — THE INDUCTION TO JONSON's "CYNTHIA'S REVELS " The differences between a private theatre and a common playhouse may be classified as follows.^ The prices at the former were high, but the standard of comfort was totally different. The roof was covered in with a ceiling ; the windows were glazed ; and there were comfortable, though narrow, seats throughout the pit and the galleries. The stage was small ; for even ^ The daily allowance of meat and drink was called " bouge {i.e. Fr. bouche) of court." So Jonson, Masque of Augurs, acted at court on Twelfth-Night, 1621-2 ; Groom . , . I am an officer, groom of the revels, that is my place. Notch, To fetch bouge of court, a parcel of invisible bread and beer for the players." In Skelton's allegorical poem of this name, Bouge of Courte is the name of the ship of Fortune. In Jonson's masque of Mercury Vindicated fro7n the Alchemists, acted at court 1614, Mercury describes a bargain he has concluded with the alchemists : "One day I am to deliver the buttery in, so many firkins of atiium potahile as it delivers out bombards of houge to them between this and that." ^ In another passage of Shakespeare {Henry VIII., v. 4, 82-6), a "jack" of this kind is compared to the uncouth form of a bear tied to the post, and attacked by thirsty enemies on all sides at once. The Lord Chamberlain rebukes the noisy servants in the palace-yard. "Ye are lazy knaves ; And here ye lie baiting of bombards, when Ye should do service." John Taylor, the water-poet, in the argument of Farewel, to the Tower Bottles, Dort, 1622, relates the history of the gift of " two black Leather Bottles, or Bombards of wine," granted to the Tower " from every ship that brought wine into the river of Thames." ^ Collier, op. cit., iii, 335-40. In addition to those tabulated here, we learn that "the boxes or rooms at private theatres were enclosed and locked, and the key given to the individual engaging them." 464 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" the forty-three foot platform at the Fortune was called "vast" in comparison with the boards at Blackfriars. The house was lighted with chandeliers and wax candles ; but where the yard was open to the weather, as at the Globe or Fortune, they could use only branched candlesticks on the stage, with "cressets" or cages for tarred ropes' ends to flare in front of the boxes. The plays in the private houses were acted usually by boys, some of whom belonged to the choir of St. Paul's ; others, the Queen's Children of the Revels, belonged to the Chapel Royal. This led to the "throwing about of brains" in the quarrel rebuked by Hamlet. 1 The poets, for their own purposes, stirred up the "aery of children" to " berattle the common stages," and so draw the public to Blackfriars or the singing-room of Paul's. These "little eyases" de- clined to follow the actors' reading, or " cry in the top of" their argument. The judgment of Hamlet's friends had cried in the top of his own, when he praised a play that displeased the million ; but these boys went quite beyond the proper limits of discussion: "they cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't." 1 Hamlet, ii. 2. About 1599 or 1600 (see Fleay, Biog. Chron. Eng. Drama, 1891, ii, 30, 78) the boys of Blackfriars most audaciously invaded the acting rights of the Globe company by performing Kyd's famous Spanish Tragedy. The King's company, in 1604, annexed Marston's Malcontent, a stock piece at Blackfriars, which probably had been pro- duced about 1601 (see A. W. Ward, op. cit., ii. 483; iii. 52). Two editions of the play were printed in 1604 ; the second is prefaced by Webster's comical induction, "Why not," says Burbage to Sly on his three-legged stool, "why not Malevole in folio with us as well as Jeronimo in decimo sexto with them? They taught us a name for our play, we call it. One for another." Burbage, Sly, Condell, Lowin, and Sinklow took various parts in the induction ; but it is clear that Shake- speare himself was not playing at the time. There are respectful references to his works, as when Sly quotes from Osric's part in Hatnlet, V. 2, 109, refusing to put on his hat with " No, in good faith for mine ease," and again, when he offers to compose an ending, and, with a bow and a scrape, throws off a passable imitation of the epilogue to As You Like It. THE PRIVATE THEATRES 465 The custom of sitting on the stage, either on stools or among the rushes on the floor, prevailed in all the private houses among the visitors : we may perhaps regard the row of stools by the arras as a rough equiva- lent for our modern stalls.^ The town-fops smoked and cracked nuts on the platform, and sometimes slapped down their cards in a game, just as the third trumpet was sounding, and the Prologue stood quaking in his black velvet cloak at the entrance.^ The excuse was made that it was necessary to judge of the acting very closely, as appears by the preface to the first folio of Shakespeare's plays. "Censure," wrote the editors, "will not drive a trade or make the jacke go. And though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage of Black-Friers or the Cock-pit to arraigne playes dailie, know, these playes have had their triall alreadie, and stood out all appeales." A gallant sometimes would ^ Allusions to this custom are innumerable. Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass (acted by the King's men at Blackfriars, 1616), i. 3, has a passage to the point. Fitzdottrel has a new cloak, to be seen in which he purposes to " go to the Blackfriars playhouse" ; self-display, he tells his wife, is " a special end why we go thither, All that pretend to stand fort on the stage." Collier, op. cit., iii. 339, quotes] Francis Lenton's Young Gallant's Whirligig, 1629 : " The Cockpit heretofore would serve his wit. But now iipon the Friars stage he'll sit." The epilogue to Chapman's All Fools, a Blackfriars play, contains an allusion to the critics and their tripods: "We can but bring you meat, and set you stools " ; and, in the prologue, the self-appointed judges are prayed not to spoil the performance by leaving their places too soon : " If our other audience see You on the stage depart before we end ; Our wits go with you all, and we are fools." ^ Prologue to Heywood's Four Prentices of London (in Dodsley, u.s., vol. vi.). Three rival prologues meet at the entrance ; the first ex- postulates : "What mean you, my masters, to appear thus before your times ? Do you not know that I am the Prologue ? Do you not see this long black velvet cloak upon my back? Have you not sounded thrice ? Do I not look pale as fearing to be out in my speech ? Nay have I not all the signs of a Prologue about me?" In the prolog'ue to Fletcher's Wo7nan-Hater, acted by the children of Paul's probably about Easter, 1607, we read: "Gentlemen, inductions are out of date; and a Prologue in verse is as stale as a black velvet cloak and a bay garland." 2 H 466 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" propose to sit on the stage at one of the larger theatres; but he would generally be turned off amid a shower of bitten apples, with yells and catcalls and shouts of *' Away with the fool ! " In the induction to The Mal- co7itent, William Sly, the actor, disguised as a fop, mounts the platform at the Globe, and asks one of the dressers for a three-legged stool. "Sir," is the answer, *'the gentlemen will be angry if you sit here." Sly retorts: "Why we may sit upon the stage at the private house. Thou do'st not take me for a country gentleman, do'st? do'st thou fear hissing? " Ben Jonson brought out in the year 1600 his Cynthia's Revels, which was acted by the children of the Chapel, at Blackfriars. Before the play opened, the author sent on three of the boys for an induction, in which the practice of smoking on the stage was satirised. The chief parts were taken by Nathaniel Field, the Mercury of the play, John Underwood, who seems to have been the traveller Amorphus, and probably by Salathiel Pavy, who played Cupid. John Underwood is addressed as " Resolute Jack" by way of an allusion to " resolute " John Florio. Field, who appears as "number three," gives an imitation of a genteel auditor with clay pipe alight : "I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin." Mixtures not being invented, he must bring three kinds in his pouch, "cane, pudding, and right Trinidado,"and was lucky if his herb were not mostly yellow henbane, or a quarter of a pound of colt's-foot to every half-pound that had crossed the Atlantic. He smokes and puffs between his sen- tences. " By this light, I wonder that any man is so mad, to come to see these rascally tits play here. They do act like so many wrens or pismires not the fifth part of a good face amongst them all. And then their music is abominable able to stretch a man's ears worse than ten pillories, and their ditties most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make "CYNTHIA'S REVELS" 467 them poets." The object of these precocious child- players is far from that of ''berattling the common stages " as " little eyases." Field was only thirteen at this time ; the others younger : yet, later in the same play, these words are made to describe their aim and ambition. " Since we are turn'd cracks," says Mercury to Cupid, "let's study to be like cracks ; practise their language and behaviours, and not with a dead imitation : Act freely, carelessly, and capriciously, as if our veins ran with quicksilver, and not utter a phrase, but what shall come forth steep'd in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire." ^ In the next "turn," Jack Underwood is lounging about, dressed ready to come on, and Field is a sober "garter-gathered" squire, unused to the ways of the town. Underwood steps forth ' ' like one of the children. " " Would you have a stool, sir ? " "A stool, boy!" "Ay, sir, if you'll give me sixpence I'll fetch you one." " For what, I pray thee? what shall I do with it?" "O Lord, sir ! will you betray your ignorance so much ? why, throne yourself in state on the stage, as other gentlemen use, sir." The next answer is full of information about the stage decorations. "Away, wag; what, would'st thou make an implement of me ? 'Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some silk curtain, come to hang the stage here ! Sir crack, I am none of your fresh pictures, that use to beautify the decayed dead arras in a public theatre." Underwood next gives a sketch in which Jonson himself is contrasted with the ordinary playwright at rehearsal, the officious poet who is always in the tiring- house. He begs the visitor to leave the stage, as the play is about to begin. ' ' Most willingly, my good wag ; ^ Cynthia's Revels, ii. i. For the use of "crack" (defined in Nares' Glossary as "a boy . . . that cracks or boasts) cf. 2 Henry IV., iii, 2, 32-4, " I saw him break Skogan's head at the court-gate, when a' was a crack not thus high." 468 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" but I would speak with your author : where is he ? " "Not this way, I assure you, sir; we are not so officiously befriended by him, as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit. ... If you please to confer with our author, by attorney you may, sir ; our proper self here, stands for him." The visitor rails at the authors who stuff their plays with stories out of old books, or from the mouths of laundresses and hackney men, or the common stages. Towards the end he gives his interlocutor a warning. " O, (I had almost forgot it too,) they say the umbrce or ghosts of some three or four plays departed a dozen years since, have been seen walking on your stage here ; take heed, boy, if your house be haunted with such hobgoblins, 'twill fright away all your spectators quickly." "Good, sir; but what will you say now, if a poet, untouched with any breath of this disease, find the tokens upon you, that are of the auditory?" This is an allusion to the pesti- lence of 1593, to which Shakespeare had alluded in Lovers Labour'' s Lost.^ ^ Loves Labour s Lost, v. 2, 418-23. " Soft, let us see : Write ' Lord have mercy on us ' on those three ; They are infected, in their hearts it lies ; They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes ; These lords are visited ; you are not free, For the Lord's tokens on you do I see." There is not enough in Jonson's allusion to show that he was thinking of Shakespeare. All that he actually says is that a poet, v^'ith no tokens of staleness about him, might find ghosts enovigh among the audience, who talked of twenty years since, and the fashions "when Monsieur was here," or swore "that the old Hieronimo, as it was first penned, was the only best and judiciously penned play of Europe." Allusions to the "tokens" of pestilence in Shakespeare are not un- common after the great outbreak of plague in the winter of 1602, which, between Christmas and Christmas, killed in London and its liberties more than 30,000 people. The tokens were redder than in former pesti- lences : hard spots of a bright flaming red were accounted a fatal THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL 469 IV THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL — NATHANIEL FIELD — THE PART OF ARIEL IN "the TEMPEST " From its opening in 1597 till the spring of 1603 the Blackfriars theatre was served by the "Children of the Chapel," or, in other words, by the choristers of the Chapel Royal at Whitehall. They were under the orders of Dr. Nathaniel Giles, Master in Song,^ and after- wards organist, and they received instructions in acting from Mr. Henry Evans, the lessee and manager. Dr. symptom. When Cleopatra spread her sails in flight, the battle, says the Roman, looked "like the tokened pestilence, where death is sure (AnL and Cleopatra, iii. lo, 9-10). Volumnia {Coriolanus, iv. i, 13) called down the "red pestilence" on "all the trades in Rome." Caliban's curse {Tempest, i. 2, 363) was "the red plague rid you," or, as Davenant altered the reading, the "red botch." The writer possessed a receipt- book written out in 1627 by " Elizabeth Bulkley," showing how the red plague required red medicine— ivy berries, red sage, and red bramble leaves. Hartman, in his Preserve}' of Health, 1682, pp. 69, 75, 12S-30, gives numerous receipts of a similar kind for plague-waters and cordials ; and Dr. Creighton tells us, in his History of Epidemics (i. 676), that the nurses in the last plague used to say that "cochineal is a fine thing to bring out the tokens. " The end of the induction to Cynthia's Revels contains a phrase which illustrates All's Well that Ends Well, iv. i, 22 : "chough's language, gabble enough, and good enough." "Here, take your cloak," says Field to Pavy, "and promise some satisfaction in your prologue, or, I'll be sworn we have marr'd all." "Tut, fear not, child," adds Under- wood, "this will never distaste a true sense: be not out, and good enough." 1 The history of the Children of the Chapel was traced by Dr. Rim- bault In the edition of the Old Cheque-book, or Book of Remembrance, of the Chapel Royal from 1561 to 1744, printed for the Camden Society in 1882. His list of "Masters of the Song" begins with Henry Abingdon and Gilbert Banister, mentioned in acts of resumption of the 13th and 22nd Ed. iv. Under William Cornish, who followed Banister, the gentle- men of the Chapel acted before the King, and received rewards as players of the Chapel: "When the Children took part in a dramatic performance under Cornish, they received a gratuity of ^6. 13. 4." (pp. iv., v.). This was the equivalent of ten marks or twenty nobles in the old money of account, the mark being taken at 135. ^d. and the noble at 65. Sd, 470 PRODUCTION OF '^THE TEMPEST" Giles was deputed to exercise the prerogative right of impressing boys with good voices for service in the Chapel Royal and for taking part in entertainments at Court. The custom of pressing boys for service in the choir existed as far back as the time of Richard III., and probably grew out of a still older claim to enrol minstrels for the King's service. It was part of the children's duty to act plays at Court, and it became the practice to train them at one of the smaller theatres. The choristers of St. Paul's were taught in their own singing-room, behind the convocation-house and near the library, until the cathedral was burned. Out of the eight Chapel Royal choristers it was usual to send six at one time to be trained at Blackfriars ; but an order was made in 1626, while Dr. Giles was still master, to pacify the Puritans, ''that none of the Choristers or Children of the Chappell, soe to be taken by force of this Commission, shalbe used or imployed as Come- dians or Stage players, or to exercise or acte any Stage plaies, interludes. Comedies or Tragedies."^ Besides their singing and acting, the choristers were obliged to attend classes in their grammar school. When their time was out, two of them had a claim to be appointed "epistlers," or readers of the epistle, and to take rank among the yeomen of the Chapel. If any of the children reached eighteen years of age, and his voice was changed, then, in case there were no vacancy in the Chapel, the King would send him to a college of his foundation at Oxford or Cambridge, "there to be at fynding and studye both suffytyently, tylle the King may otherwise advaunse them." ^ While engaged as choristers, they were expected to lodge and take their meals at Whitehall ; and the royal accounts show that they had daily among them "two loaves, one 1 Printed in Collier, op. cit., ii. i6 ; Rimbault, u.s., pp. viii. , ix. The stag-e-plays are reckoned in this document among "lascivious and pro- phane exercises. " '^ Rimbault, u.s., ■p. iv. BOY COMEDIANS 471 messe of greate meate, ij galones of ale," with the addition, in the winter season, of four candles of pitch, three faggots of cleft wood, and litter for their pallets.^ We already have referred to the children who took the chief parts in the performance of Cynthia's Revels. ''This comical satire," we read in Jonson's description of the cast, "was first acted in the year 1600 by the then children of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel ; the principal comedians were Nat Field, John Underwood, Sal Pavy, Robert Baxter, Thomas Day, and John Frost." Baxter and Frost were replaced by William Ostler and Thomas Marton, a junior chorister, before The Poetaster was brought out in the next season. Pavy acted in the last- named play, but died early in 1603, at the age of thirteen, having acted for three years at the Blackfriars, chiefly in old men's characters. So much we gather from Jonson's well-known epitaph on "S.P. a child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel."^ Underwood probably left the house at Blackfriars and the company of children who then acted in it about 1608, when, as we shall see, they had to leave the theatre. His name is not in the list of Children of the Revels who acted Jonson's Silent Woman at White- friars in that year; and the cast of The Alchemist in 1610 shows that he had joined the King's players at the Globe. About the same time he acquired shares and interests in the Globe itself, in the Blackfriars house, and in the Curtain Theatre at Shoreditch. By his will in 1624 he disposed of these shares on trusts in favour of his children, describing them as "the part or share, that I have and enjoy at this present by lease or otherwise . . . within the Blackfriars, London, or in the company of His Majesty's servants, my loving and kind fellows, in their house there, or at the Globe, on the Bankside ; and also that my part and share or ^ Rimbault, id., p. iii. The word used for "fag-gots of cleft wood" is "talsheids." '^ Jonson, Epigrams^ cxx. 472 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" due in or out of the playhouse called the Curtaine, situate in or near Holloway, in the parish of St. Leonard, London."^ William Ostler's name appears among the principal comedians in The Alchemist^ described by Jonson as "first acted in 1610 by the King's Majesty's Servants," He was called the " Roscius of these times" and ''the King of actors " in a short poem by John Davies, the schoolmaster of Hereford.^ It was admitted on all hands that Burbage came first ; but, among the younger men, Ostler and Field were perhaps the best pair of actors in England.^ Both Field and Ostler appear in the first folio among the principal actors in Shakespeare's plays. Ostler had left the stage, or was dead, before the volume appeared. Field was among those who signed the actors' prefatory address ; and it is conjectured that he had then been a member of the company for about four years. Mr. Payne Collier points out that he was engaged at Paris Garden for some time after 1614, and that his name does not occur before 1619 in any extant patent. As we have seen, he was a chorister of the Chapel Royal ; but, about 1606, we find him taking the leading part in Biissy d'Ambois, presented by the Children of Paul's.* 1 Printed by Collier, Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare, 1846, pp. 229-30, ^ Collier, id. 202-3 > Davies, Scourge of Folly, ep. 205. ^ The celebrity of Field is, at any rate, beyond any question. There was a puppet-show in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, v. 3, kept by one Lanthorn Leatherhead, the "master of the monsters," identified by Fleay {Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, i. 378) and others with Inigo Jones — a doubtful, but plausible conjecture. Leatherhead is asked a question about his " small players." " Which is your Burbage now ? " "What mean you by that, sir?" "Your best actor, your Field?" * The date of performance of Chapman's drama is uncertain. Fleay, U.S., i. 60, inclines to 1605. It may have been performed much earlier, since Tucca in Satiromastix , i6oi (Dekker's Dram. Works, 1873, i. 230), quotes a line from the tragedy, as if it were well known : " Go not out farthing candle, go not out. For trusty Damboys now the deed is done." The tragedy was one of the stock plays of the Children of Paul's. The NATHANIEL FIELD 473 As he was certainly not a chorister in the cathedral, we must suppose that he was just then free of engagements, or lent for the occasion by his manager. He soon returned to Blackfriars, where he acted among the Queen's Children of the Revels, and afterwards as a grown-up actor, when the King's Company took over the house in addition to the Globe. This may explain a disputed passage in Wright's Historia Histrionica of 1699. ''Some of those Chapel boys, when they grew men, became actors at the Black-friers, such were Nathan. Field, and John Underwood."^ Field became a dramatist of some note. Gerard Langbaine gave him a kindly notice in his gossiping account of the dramatic poets.2 "Not only a Lover of the Muses, but belov'd by them, and the Poets his Contemporaries. He was adopted by Mr. Chapman for his Son {i.e. in literature), and call'd in by Old Massinger to his Assistance, in the play call'd The Fatal Dowry. '' ^ Field, he added, "writ himself two plays which will still bear reading." The first of these was written in Field's youth ; it was called A Woma7i is a Weathercock, and was brought out at the private house in Whitefriars in or before 1610. Very soon afterwards he produced another comedy, intended as an apology for the first, and entitled Amends for Ladies. To this title, in 1639, were added the words, "with the merry pranks of Moll Cutpurse, or the Humour of Roaring."* prologue to the edition of 1641, in which a new supporter of the \SS\&-r6le is introduced, contains the lines " Field is gone, Whose action first did give it name." The new actor is supposed by some to be Sv/anston, one of the petitioners in the lawsuit {vide infra), against the proprietors of the Globe Theatre, 1635. See W. L. Phelps, Best Plays of George Chapman, 1895, p. 125, note. ^ Printed in Dodsley, u.s., p. clvi. '•^ Langbaine, Account of English Dramatick Poets, i(i<)i, p. 198. ^ Fleay, u.s., i. 208, gives the date of performance of The Fatal Dowry as " 1619, about Shrovetide." It was published in 1632. One passage, ii. 2, was transferred by Field from Amends for Ladies. •* A. W. Ward, op. cit., iii. 49, assumes, from internal evidence, the date of composition of both plays to be 1610, of their production 1610 or 161 1. See Fleay, u.s., i. 185, 201-2. Mr. A. W. Verity, in his preface to 474 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" There are some faint indications that Nathaniel Field may have acted Ariel in The Te^npest. Mr. Payne Collier^ quoted an epigram on "Fuscus" from The Furies of Richard Nichols (1614). Fuscus had left his business for the stage "in hopes to outact Roscius in a scene." " Players do now as plentifully grow As spawn of frogs in March ; yet evermore The great devour the less. Be wise, therefore ; Procure thou some commendatory letter For the Burmoothe's — 'tis a course far better." As we know from the history of the Summer Islands that the colonists were then at the extremity of their misery, it is clear that the advice was merely sarcastic. Mr. Collier thought that this "Roscius" must have been Burbage ; but at that date the title might as easily have been given to Field. The mention of the " Bur- moothes " instinctively recalls Ariel's words in The Tempest^ where he speaks of the creek : " Where once Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew From the still-vex'd Bermoothes."^ The same biographer quotes an epigram from the Ashmolean Library, copied into many commonplace books of the seventeenth century, which was jocosely ascribed to Field. It was headed, "Field, the Player, on his mistress, the Lady May," and began : " It is the fair and merry month of May, That clothes the Field in all his rich array. "^ The zephyrs are invoked for a cool breeze, and the clouds so kind are prayed to " distil their honey drops." the plays in the "Mermaid" edition (1888) assigns the production of the first to 1609, of the second to 1612. In 1609-10 Field would have been twenty-two years old : he was baptised at St. Giles without Cripplegate, Oct. 17, 1587. ■* Collier, Memoirs of Actors, p. 40, note 2. - Tempest, i. 2, 227-9, ' The epigram will be found on p. 217 of Collier's Memoirs of Principal Actors, FIELD AS A POSSIBLE ARIEL 475 This, of course, was Ariel's phrase when he presented Queen Ceres in the masque. Phaer, in his translation of Virgil, had spoken of "Dame Rainbow with saffron wings of dropping showers " ; but Shakespeare seems to have altered the phrase to the more delicate form : '* Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers Diffusest honey-drops." ^ These coincidences of phrase may suggest a reference to Field's assumption of the part of Ariel, but are too slight to be in any sense conclusive. V THE CHILDREN OF THE QUEEN'S REVELS AT BLACKFRIARS There is no evidence that the Children of the Chapel acted at Blackfriars after Queen Elizabeth's death on the 24th of March, 1603. It is clear, at all events, that their connection with that theatre ceased at the end of the year. Queen Anne wished for a juvenile company of her own ; and on the 30th January, 1604, a licence was granted to Edward Kirkham and his three partners to procure and train boys in a company to be called "The Children of the Revels to the Queen," and to exercise them in playing at the theatre of Blackfriars and elsewhere.^ The children were to be engaged by contract, as the Queen could not exercise the preroga- tive of impressment. About the same time it was pro- vided that every play should be submitted to Mr. Samuel Daniel, Groom of the Chambers to the Queen, and by a fresh appointment Master of Her Majesty's Children of the Revels. Daniel was not an official court-poet ; but he was universally respected as a poet and historian, and, in the popular estimation, without ^ Tempest^ iv, i, 78-9. ^ Printed in Collier, Anjials^ i. 353. 476 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" any salary or butt of sack, he took rank after Spenser *'as the best of the laureates."^ He entered on his duty without a moment's delay ; for, according to the treasurer's accounts among the Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian Library, the council of the 24th of February, 1605, issued a warrant for the payment of twenty marks, " and by way of his Highnesses reward 20 nobles ; in all the sum of ^20," to Samuel Daniel and Henry Evans for a play performed before the King on New Year's Day, and for another performed two evenings later by the "Queen's Majesties Children of the Revels." We have no list of the Queen's company at Black- friars. It is conjectured that Nat. Field was retained ; but Ostler, Day, and Underwood migrated in course of time to the Globe — Underwood, as we have seen, in or before 1609. The boys still serving in the choir of the Chapel Royal were debarred from attendance. Mr. G. Chalmers, in his Farther Account of the Early English Stage, was positive that Field became a mem- ber of the Revels company when he left the chapel,^ and when that company was formed, he was in his seventeenth year. It is also reasonable to suppose that William Barkstead belonged to the same house. We first hear of him in 1609, as an actor in Jonson's Silent Woman at Whitefriars, after the Blackfriars Theatre had been taken over by the King's men, and some of the children had been dismissed from the Queen's first company. Field and Barkstead took the leading parts. Field, then about twenty-two years old, probably play- ^ His " laureateship " was, as Malone first suggested, an informal office. Alexander Chalmers, in the life prefixed to his edition of Daniel in The Works of the English Poets, vol. iii., quotes an epigram by Charles FitzGeffrey (i575?-i638), the author of Drake (1596), beginning " Spenserum si quis nostrum velit esse Maronem, Tu, Daniele, mihi Naso Britannus eris." Fuller bears testimony to his twofold excellence as an " exquisite poet . . . also a judicious historian." '^ Chalmers, in Boswell's Malone, iii. 510. CHILDREN OF THE QUEEN'S REVELS 477 ing the title character of Epicoene, the Silent Woman. Barkstead, called "a young gentleman almost of age," must have been nearly two years younger, though he had published his poem of Mirrha in 1607.^ He worked with Lewis Machin, some of whose eclogues were appended to the poem. Four years afterwards Barkstead brought out another poem on the popular subject of Irene — Hiren ; or, the Faire Greeke. He has been credited with at least a share in The Insatiate Countess, ascribed to Marston in the editions of 1613 and 163 1, but not included in his collected works of 1633.^ Mr. Payne Collier traced some of Barkstead's engagements from entries in the Dulwich MSS., show- ing that he joined Prince Henry's players, afterwards known as the Prince Palatine's company, and in 161 5 joined a partnership at Alleyne's Rose on Bankside, a house which up to that time had been devoted to bear- baiting and similar sports.^ Among the principal comedians in The Silent Woman were also Giles Cary and William Penn, and next to them Hugh Atwell ; the list also containing the names of Richard Allen, John Smith, and John Blaney.* William Penn was a player of some distinction. He was one of the Prince's company at the Fortune, and joined the new company at the Hope on Bankside, where room was found for a stage alongside of the bear-pit and bull-ring. He was promoted into the King's service in 1629, the Lord Chamberlain's accounts ^ Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis, or Lust's Prodigies, Stationers' Register, 12 Nov. 1607. 2 Mr. Kemble, according to i^QBiographia Dramatica, possessed a copy with the name of Barkstead, as the author, on the title page ; and Mr. Payne CoUier mentions other copies inscribed with memoranda to the same effect {Memoirs of Actors, p. xxx. note i). See A. W. Ward, op. cit., ii. 481. Fleay, ti.s., ii. 80-1, supposes that Barkstead condensed The Insatiate Countess from a tragedy and comedy already existing. '^ Collier, u.s., p. xxx. note 2. * In the list: "Gil. Carie ; Will. Pen; Hug. Attawel ; Ric. AUin," etc. 478 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" showing that he received the usual two years' livery : "four yards of bastard scarlet for a cloak, and a quarter yard of crimson velvet for the capes." Of Smith and Allen little seems to be known. Blaney was one of the actors at the Red Bull, before the old-fashioned house in the inn-yard was taken over by the Queen's servants. Gary, and probably Atwell, were members of the Prince Palatine's company, and were both engaged by Alleyne as members of his new troupe at the Rose. The boys who acted in The Silent Woman, with possible exceptions one way or the other, may be taken as representing the Children of Her Majesty's Revels, who continued the traditions of the Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars. They occupied the theatre from 1603 till 1608. In the winter of 1604 took place their un- lucky performance of Jonson, Chapman, and Marston's Eastward' Ho, which was printed in the following spring.^ The King, as is well known, ordered certain passages to be cancelled, at the complaint of Sir James Murray, as libels on the Scottish nobility. The joint authors were brought before the Star Chamber : there was a likelihood, as Jonson told Drummond, "that they should then have had their ears cut and noses " ; and it was only upon their submission that His Majesty granted a pardon. The play, with the necessary omissions, was acted before James I. in 1614.^ About the same time, the children presented a play by Marston, Cocledenioy ; or, the Dutch Courtesan. This was one of the plays selected in 1613 for the entertain- ment of the Princess Elizabeth at Whitehall. Lang- ^ Fleay, «.5., ii. 81 : "The date of production lies between that of Westward-Ho, ist Nov. 1604, and of Northivard-Ho, early in 1605." See also Collier, Annals, i. 356. ^ The play is printed as modified in Dodsley, Old Plays, ed. 1825, iv. 183-280. For the story of Jonson's imprisonment, with its legendary details, see id., p. 189, note, and Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, 1898, ii. 12, PLAYS ACTED AT BLACKFRIARS, 1603-8 479 baine describes it as a comedy several times presented at the Blackfriars, by the Children of the Queen's Majesty's Revels, and printed in quarto in 1605.^ He thought that the collection called Les Contes du Monde was the origin of the light-fingered heroine's pranks, "and cheating Mrs. Mulligrub, the Vintner's wife, of the goblet and salmon." Another version of the same story is to be found in the little novel of the Doctor of Laws, in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Marston supplied the house with popular plays, such as Parasitaster, better known as The Fawn, ^ About the same time he gave them The Wonder of Women, or the Tragedy of Sophonisba, a musical piece, from which Malone collected many valuable directions. ^ Chapman supplied the Children with the classical piece known as All Fools, * which may have appeared, in the list of pieces acted at Whitehall in 1613, as A Knot of Fools ; and later, they acted his Conspiracy of Charles Duke of Byron. ^ In the introductory note to the present chapter we have hinted that The Tempest possibly may have been produced at Blackfriars during the boys' tenancy of the theatre. The date has always been a matter of dispute, and is not in itself of great importance. But the occasion of the play is of real interest, as showing some glimpse of the poet's own design. We may ^ Fleay, ic.s., ii. 77, thinks that The Dutch Courtesan "was produced orig-inally" by the Children "when they were the Chapel children of Queen Elizabeth" {sic). 2 Fleay, id., ii. 79, acted "undoubtedly in 1604." ^ Fleay, ibid., thinks that 'this play (printed 1606) was acted by the Chapel Children before the plague and change of company, ■* The title is " Al Fooles. A Comedy; presented at the Black Fryers and lately before his Majestie . . . 1605." ^ Norihivard-Ho, in which Chapman was satirised under the name of Bellamont, and his French tragedies alluded to, has a reference to stage music, and possibly to the performance of this play at the Black- friars. " I . . . shall take some occasion, about the music of the fourth act, to step to the French king" (iv. i). See also supra, p. 462, note 3. 48o PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" connect it with the marriage of Lord Essex in January, 1606, and the fame at once accorded to Jonson's Masque of Hymen, as well as with the recent discoveries in New England, and the hope of restoring the lost colony in Virginia. If this be granted, we may assume that the production of The Tempest at Blackfriars, alluded to by Dryden, took place in 1606. If the boys, to whom the piece would be entirely suitable, produced it, it could not have been acted by them at Blackfriars later than the early part of 1608. We already have referred to the migration to Whitefriars. Early in 1608, the Queen's company at Blackfriars was broken up, and the boys dismissed, by Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, as Chamberlain of the Household. This appears from a letter from Sir Thomas Lake to the Earl of Salisbury, dated the nth of March, 1607-8, now among the domestic state papers in the Public Record Office.^ This document dealt with various cases of misconduct which had occurred in the theatres, more especially in connection with Welsh mines. "His Majesty was pleased with what your lordship adverteth concerning the committal of the players that have offended in the matter of France, and commands me to signify to your lordship that for the others who have offended in the matter of the Mines, and other lewd words, which is the children of Blackfriars, then though he signified his mind to your lordship by my lord of Montgomery, yet I should repeat it again : that his lordship had vowed they should never play more, but should for it beg their bread, and he would have his vow performed : and therefore my lord Chamberlain by himself, or your lordship at this table, should take order to dissolve them, and to punish the matter besides." In the sequel, another company was formed under the old title, as "the Children of her Majesty's Revels," sometimes called the "Children of Whitefriars," from 1 Dom. State Papers (Jas. I.), vol. xxxi., no, 73. THE CHILDREN OF THE REVELS 481 their occupation of the private house near the Temple. ^ We cannot tell how many of the Blackfriars boys were dismissed *'to beg their bread"; but, from the cast of The Silent Woman, we have seen that several new names appeared at once in the list of the Queen's Children of the Revels. The Blackfriars theatre was given over to the King's company, who acted there when the Globe happened to be closed. VI THE DISPUTE OF 1635 BETWEEN PROPRIETORS AND ACTORS AT THE GLOBE AND BLACKFRIARS Mr. HalHwell-Phillipps printed a curious series of documents about Blackfriars,^ embodying a statement which gained no credit at the time when it was made, and bears upon its face a number of obvious errors. In 1635 there was a dispute about the profits of the Globe and Blackfriars. There was a lease of the former made in 1619, with about five years still to run, and another lease of the private house made about 1620, with four years to run. There was no lawsuit, or anything in the nature of litigation. The matter was referred to the summary decision of the Earl of Pembroke and Mont- gomery, as Chamberlain of the Household. The peti- tions and answers were kept among the official MSS. of the Lord Chamberlain's office at St. James' Palace, but are now preserved among the domestic state papers at the Public Record Office. Robert Benfield, with other actors in the King's company,^ petitioned for a share of the profits, which they wished to buy from some of the lessees who were neither actors nor em- ployed in His Majesty's service. As far as the Black- ^ Patent granted to Philip Rosseter, Jan. 4, 1609-10. See Collier, Annals, i. 372. 2 „_^^ ;_ 212-19. ^ The co-petitioners were Heliard Swanston and Thomas Pollard. 2 I 482 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" friars house was concerned, they wished only to pur- chase at a fair price an extra one-eighth share belong- ing to the actor John Shanks. Another eighth share belonged at that time to Cuthbert Burbage, brother of Richard ; the remaining fractions belonged to Mrs. Winifred Burbage, Richard's widow,^ and William, son of Richard and Winifred. The five other shares belonged to Robinson, Taylor, Lowin, Condell, and Underwood respectively. The complaint was that the lessees or housekeepers were only six in number to the actors' nine ; but the minority had a full half of the receipts for boxes and galleries in both houses, and of the tiring-house door at the Globe. The actors had the other half, with the outer doors : yet out of their frac- tional profits they had to find the wages of hired men and boys, the music, lights, and so forth, beside the extraordinary charge ''which the actors are wholly at for apparel and poets." John Shanks, in reply, made out a good case for himself, as having spent much money in finding boys as apprentices.^ Cuthbert Bur- bage joined with his sister-in-law Winifred and her son William in a rambling statement, to which the Lord Chamberlain seems to have paid little regard. There were evidently several mistakes in the old stories, which Cuthbert tried to recollect, about what his father had done under Queen Elizabeth and early in the reign of King James. The elder Burbage, they said, had been a player when young, and became the first builder of ^ Mrs. Richard Burbage had married a second time, and was now Mrs. Robinson. Her husband is mentioned by the actors in their second petition (printed by Collier, u.s., i. 313) as a housekeeper in rig-ht of his wife. He has been identified conjecturally with the actor Richard Robinson, mentioned by Ben Jonson, The Devil is att Ass, ii. 3. 2 Printed zi.s., i. 316. Shanks speaks of himself as one "who hath still of his owne purse supplyed the company for the service of his Majesty with boyes, as Thomas Pollard, John Thompson deceased (for whome hee payed 40 li) . . . and at this time maintaines three more for the sayd service." As Pollard was one of the complainants, there was some additional point in this apology. DISPUTE AMONG KING'S PLAYERS 483 playhouses. He built the Theatre at Shoreditch, and afterwards the Globe on Bankside. " Now for the Blackfriers," wrote Cuthbert, "that is our inheritance; our father purchased it at extreame rates, and made it into a playhouse with great charge and treble ; which after was leased out to one Evans, that first sett up the boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chapell. In process of time, the boyes growing up to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were taken to strengthen the King's service ; and the more to strengthen the service, the boyes dayly wear- ing out, it was considered that house would bee as fitt for ourselves, and soe purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare &c. And Richard Burbage, who for thirty-five yeeres paines, cost and labour, made meenes to leave his wife and children some estate, and out of whose estate soe many of other players and their families have beene mayntained, these new men, that were never bred from children in the King's service, would take away with oathes and menaces that wee shall be forced and that they will not thank us for it ; soe that it seemes they would not pay us for what they would have or wee can spare, which, more to satisfie your honour then their threatening pride, wee are for ourselves willing to part with a part betweene us, they paying according as ever hath beene the custome and the number of yeeres the lease is made for." The document concludes with a reiteration of the deserts of the Burbages, and an appeal that Richard Burbage's widow should not be left to starve in her old age, which, in face of the fact that she was married again, loses a little of its pathos. It is obvious that there are gaps in the wording as well as the sense ; ^ but the statements are preserved ^ e.g. the sentence beg-inning- "And Richard Burbage," in which the words "whose estate" are governed by "out of," and at the same time are transferred Kara (j\iv^(jiv as an object to the verb in the next sentence. 484 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" only in what appears to be a clerk's transcript. Cuth- bert Burbage evidently confused two separate leases, one, relating to the Blackfriars house, for a term of twenty-one years from 1597, and another, relating to the Globe, for twenty-one years from 1598. To the renewal of these leases we already have alluded.^ The statement that one Evans ''first set up" the Children of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel can easily be shown to be a mistake ; but one Henry Evans seems to have been the lessee from the building of the theatre until 1604, when the Children of the Queen's Revels were formed into a company. Mr. Shanks, however, proved that he had offered to sell his part of the shares on fair terms ; and the Lord Chamberlain ordered Sir John Firett, Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, and his own solicitor, Mr. Bedingfield, to fix an equitable price for the shares and to make a final agreement. ^ In Lord Pembroke's decision, printed u.s., i. 313, we read "for the fower yeeres remayning of the lease of the house in Blackfriers, and for five yeeres in that of the Globe." INDEX N.B. — The italicised figures refer to pages where the person, place, or other subject is mentioned in the footnotes alone. Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canter- bury, 309, 426, 430, 435 Abel, Mr., of Nayland, Suffolk, 321 Abergavenny, Baron. See Beau- champ, William, etc. Abingdon, Henry, of the Chapel Royal, 46g Abington, Northants, 267, and see Barnard, Baldwin, etc. Acarete da Biscay, Voyage of, quoted, 366 Acton, Middlesex, 190, 191, 225, 342, and see Hslll, John (2), and Rev. William Acts of the Apostles, quoted, 381-2 Addison, Joseph, anecdote of, 57 Adepts in magic, 386-7 Admiral, the Lord : his players. See Howard, Sir Charles Aggas or Agas, Ralph : his map of London, 192-3 Agnes, the name and its variants, 28-30 Agrippina. See Cologne Ague in seventeenth century, 308 Aicher, Otto, Hortus Inscriptionunt of, quoted, 229, 234 Ainsworth, William Harrison, Jack Sheppard, quoted, ig2 Albans, Viscount St. See Bacon, Sir Francis Alcester, Warwickshire, 67, 68, 163 Alchemist, The. See Jonson, Ben Alcock, William, of Tiddington, 133 Aldersgate Street, E.C., 209, 301, and see Bell Inn and Pembroke House Ale-Conner or Ale -Taster, office of, 78-9 Ale, English, 282, 283 Alexander, Sir William, Earl of Stirling, his plays, 443 Alfonso L, King of Naples and the Two SiciHes, 375, 386 Alfonso II. , King of Naples, etc. , j8j Algiers, pirate-ships of, 287, 288 Alicante, Howell's visit to, 287, 288 ; wine of, 259 Allen, Richard, actor, 477, 478 Allen, Thomas, History of London referred to, 274 Alleyne, Edward, actor - manager, 477, 478 All Fools. See Chapman, George Allsoppe, John, of St. Helen's parish, 216 All's Well that Ends Well. See Shakespeare, William (i) Almshouse of Stratford Guild, 86 Altham, Richard, of Gray's Inn, 201 Alvechurch, Worcestershire, 163 Alveston, Warwickshire, 331, 1^2 Amapaia, Province of, 357 Amazons, legends concerning, 360-1 Ame7ids for Ladies. See Field, Nathaniel Amersham, Bucks, 189 Andrew by the Wardrobe, Church of St., E.G., 205, 452 485 486 INDEX Andrew's Hill, St., E.G., 452 Andrew Undershaft, Church of St., E.G., 212 Angel Inn, Bishopsgate, E.G., 211 Angers, Bishop of. See Le Maire, Guillaume Anjou, English conquest of, 336-7 Anjou, equivalent for Angers, 152, /jj Anne, Ghurch of St., Blackfriars, E.G., 452, 453, 456; parish of, 181 Anne, Guild of St., at Knowle, Warwicks., 112 Anne of Denmark, Queen-Gonsort of James I., 240, 401, 402, 403, 410, 411, 413. 414, 424, 429, 456, 475 Antelope Inn at Oxford, 300 Anthologia Palatina, quoted, 241 Anthony, legend of St. , 366 Antilles, Histoire Naturelle des lies. See Poincy, L. de Anti-Masques, 407, 408, 412 Antimony, medical uses of, 305 Antony and Cleopatra. See Shake- speare, William (i) Antwerp, Sir Thomas More at, 208 Apocrypha, Shakespeare's references to the, 224 Apollonius Rhodius, Scholiast on Argonautica of, quoted, 380 "Apples of Love," synonym for tomatoes, 202 Appleyard, Sir Mathew, his regiment, 299 " Apreeware," 122, and see Ypres Aquafortis, used by Sir W. Ralegh, 358 Arber, Prof. Edward, f.s.a., quoted, 208 Archenfield, Herefordshire, local cus- toms of bequest, 228 Arch-Sewer, title of Elector Palatine, 423 Arden, Agnes, second wife of Robert (i), 116, 119, 120, 122 Arden, Alice, daughter of Robert (l), 116, 119, 120 Arden, Edward, 321 Arden, Forest of, 163-4 ; derivation of name, 165, 320 Arden, Mary, daughter of Robert (i). See Shakespeare, Mary Arden, Robert (i), grandfather of Shakespeare, 25, 112, 115, 116, 117; his will, 1 19-20 ; inventory of his property, 120-2 Arden, Robert (i), of Park Hall, son of Edward, 321 Argier, old form of Algiers, 286 ; Gastle of, sham sea-fight of, at Lambeth, 427-8 Ariel, Joseph Hunter's theories as to, 390-1 ; part of, on stage, 474-5 Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso of, quoted, 379, and see Harington, Sir John Aristolochia (birthwort), medical em- ployment of, 300 Armstrong, Edward, Charles V., by, referred to, 361 "Aroint thee," meaning of, 156 Arraignment of Paris, The. See Peele, George Arromaia, Province of, 357, 358, 359, 363 "Arthur's Show," 196 "Articulate Lady," the, 410, and see Devereux, Frances Arundel, Earl of. See Howard, Thomas (i) Arundel, Sir William, 136 Arvi River, in Guiana, 362 Asbies, Robert Arden's farm of, 116, 119, 349 Ascham, Roger, Toxophilus of, quoted, 292 Ashbury, Berks, Gromlech at, 3S0 Ashfeld, Alice, prioress of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 206 Ashmole, Elias, m.d., quoted, 247 Ashmolean Museum, artificial dragon in, 299 Assessment of St. Helen's parish, E.G., in 1598, 213-20 Assize of Bread and Ale at Stratford, 77-9 Aston Gantlow, Warwickshire,'' parish of, 115, 119, 120, 132 Aston, Tony, 194 Astrology in medical profession, 306 As You Like It. See Shakespeare, William (I) Atherstone-on-Stour, Warwickshire, 345 Atoica, River, in Guiana, 363 Atwell, Hugh, actor, 477, 478 Aubrey, John, quotations from, 46, 47, 48, 50, 184, 185, 190-1, 260, 286, 301, 302, 306, 312, 338, 343-8 passim; references to, 81, 478; Rodd on, 328 Auchmuty, James and John, 404 Atirea Legenda. See Voragine, Jaco- bus de Aurelio and Isabella, romance of, 384 Austen, James, of St. Martin Out- wich, E.G., 211 INDEX 487 Avon, River, in Warwickshire, 150, 153 ; meaning of name, 320 Aylesbury, Bucks., 185, 188, 330; vale of, i8b B Bacharach, wines of, 285 " Back-bare," sporting term, 169 Bacon, Sir Francis, Viscount St. Albans, 195, 198, 201, 338, 432, 433) 434; Essays quoted, 194-S, 411, 413, 431, 433 ; his Masque of Flowers, 406-8 Bad beginning makes a good ending. A, anonymous play, 435, 438 Badger, George, of Stratford, 74, 75 Bagenal or Bagnal, Sir Henry, 295 Bagley, Edward, citizen of London, 269, 271 Bagley Wood, Berks., story of Dutch- man in, 310 Bagpipes, story of their effect on wolves, 294-5 Baheire, Robert, of Blackfriars, 456 Bailiff, office of, at Stratford, 103-4 Baker, Ellen. See Shakespeare, Ellen Baker, Mrs., of Shottery, 324 Baker, Oliver, of Stratford, 100 Balcony in private theatres, 459-60 "Balk," substantive and verb, mean- ing of, 141 Ball, Rev. Richard, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213 Ballard, George, letter of Mr. Brome to, quoted, 339-40 Balsall, Temple, Warwickshire, 81, no Balshall, Thomas, d.d. , Dean of Stratford, 81, 82 Banbury, Oxon., 182, 188 Banister, Gilbert, of the Chapel Royal, 4.bg Barbary, potatoes in, 203 Barber Surgeons' Hall, E.G., 301 Barford Bridge, Warwickshire, 188 Barkstead, William, actor-dramatist, 476-7 ; his Hiren referred to, 477 Barlichway, Hundred of, Warwick- shire, 64, I2g Barnacle geese, 150 Barnard, Baldwin, Esq., of Abington, Northants, 267 Barnard, Dame Elizabeth, grand- daughter of Shakespeare, 30, 60, 139, 140, 225, 226, 227, 231, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 256, 257, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 ; and see Barnard, Sir John ; Hall, John and Susanna ; and Nash, Thomas Barnard, Eleanor. See Cotton, Elea- nor Barnard, Elizabeth. See Gilbert, Elizabeth Barnard, Mary. See Higgs, Mary Barnard, Sir John, Bart., of Abing- ton, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 Barriers at Earl of Essex's wedding, 419-20, and je^ Jonson, Ben Bartholomew Fair. See Jonson, Ben "Bartholomew's Day, Black," 262 Barton-on-the-Heath, Warwickshire, 116, 168 Basel, Dance of Death at, 88 Basing, William, Dean of St. Paul's, 212 Bassel, Laurence and Peter, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 217 Bastard wine, 259, 286 Bath, Earl of, his players, 99 Bath, Lord Chamberlain's players at, 99 Bath, Municipal Records, quoted, 99, 102 Batlers at Oxford colleges, 340 "Bavarian pouch," 366-7 Bawkes, Sherrett, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 217 Baxter, Robert, actor, 471 Bean, Alexander, intruded minister at Stratford, 261, 262 Bear Inn at Stratford, 240, 307 Bearley, Warwickshire, 116 Bearwardens, companies of, 99 Beauchamp, Anne, Countess of War- wick. See Neville, Anne Beauchamp, Henry, Duke of War- wick, 336 Beauchamp, Richard (i), K.G., 14th Earl of Warwick, 317, 334, 335-6, 337 Beauchamp, Richard (2), Earl of Worcester, 108, jj6 Beauchamp, Thomas (l), 12th Earl of Warwick, 334 Beauchamp, Thomas (2), 13th Earl of Warwick, 334 Beauchamp, William, Baron Aber- gavenny, 108 Beauchamps, monuments of the, at Warwick, 330, 334-7 Beaufort, Henry, Cardinal, Bishop of Winchester, 317-18 Beaumont, Francis, Masque by, 432, 433, and see Fletcher, John Bedford, Duke of. See John 488 INDEX Bedford, Earl of. See Russell, Sir John Bedingfield, Mr., solicitor to the Lord Chamberlain, 484 Beer in England and Germany, 282, 283 Beeston, Christopher, actor, 48 Beeston, Elizabeth, wife of Christo- pher, 48 Beeston, William, son of Christopher and Elizabeth, 48, 343-8 passim Behren's Hercynia Curiosa referred to, 380 Belle Sauvage Inn, 459 Bell Inn, Aldersgate Street, E.C., 301 Bell Inn, Carter Lane, E.C., 453, 459 Bell, John, f.r.c.s. Edin., his visit to Stratford, 232 Benedick and Beatrix, probable equiv- alent of Much Ado, 438, 444-5 Benfield, Robert, actor, 481 Bentley, actor, 180 Bentley, Justice, of Kineton, 331 Bentley, Thomas, M.D., President R.C.P., 85-6 Bergamot at Long Melford, 281 Berkeley, Henry, Baron, 193 Bermudas, trials of colonists in, 474 Bernard, Charles, serjeant-surgeon to Queen Anne, 339, 340 Bernard or Barnard, Elizabeth, wife of Robert, of Abington, 268 Bernwood Forest, Bucks., 186 Berreo, Antonio, Spanish explorer, 359, 364 Bertulf, King of Mercia, 71, 72, 73 Betony, medical uses of, 264 Bettenham, Jeremy, formerly Reader of Gray's Inn, 201 Betterton, Thomas, actor, 22, 47, 48, 56, 57 Bettis, Mr. , chief shipwright at Chat- ham, 427 Bewdley, Worcestershire, cap-making at, 325 Bicester, Oxon. , 182, 184, 186, 188 Bicocca, Battle of, 386 Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, 67, 68 Billesley, Warwickshire, 37 Billingsley, Sir Henry, Lord Mayor of London, 215 Biographia Dramatica, quoted, 477 Birch, Samuel, ll.d., D.C.L., 444, 448 Bird, Dr., Linacre Professor at Cam- bridge, 239 Birmingham, Roman road at, 65, 67 Biscay, Howell's adventure in, 294 Bishopsgate Within, Ward of, 210 Bishopton, Warwickshire, 64, 135, 140 Black Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street, E.C., 210, 213 "Black Crosses," old name for St. Mark's Day, 24 Blackfriars, Liberty of, description of, 451-3 Blackfriars Theatre, 168, 206, 219, 450-84 passim Blackness, Masque of. See Jonson, Ben Blackwater, Battle of the, 295 Blaney, John, actor, 477, 478 " Blindcinques," nickname for class of undergraduates, 345 Blois, William de, Bishop of Worces- ter, 76 Bloodhounds, varieties of, 171 Bloody Brother, The. See Fletcher, John "Bloody hand," sporting term, 169 Blue Boar Inn at Oxford, 300 Bobart, Jacob, of the Oxford Physic Garden, 299, 300 Bobart, Jacob, jun., 299 Bohemia, King and Queen of. See Frederick and Elizabeth (i) " Bolt," sporting term, 167 Bombards, 462-3 Bon Chretien pears at Long Melford, 281 Bond, William, of Crosby Place, his monument, 209 Bone-house at Chipping Norton, 184; at Stratford, 81, 230, 304, 341 Bonnetto, Rocco, of Blackfriars, 458 Bonvisi, Antonio, of Lucca, 208-9 Booker, John, his "study of books," 247 Book of Common Prayer, 1559, quoted, 23 Booth, Charles, prompter at Drury Lane, 56 Bordeaux, Scottish wine-merchants at, 284 Bordesley, Warwickshire, priory of, 107, 109 Borsholder, traditional duties of the, 123-4 Boswell, James, jun., quoted, 384-5, 400, 462 Bottom, Drolls on the subject of, 187-8, 445 " Bouge of Court," meaning of, 463 Boughton or Borton, William, curate of Aston Cantlow, 120. INDEX 489 Boyd or Bowy, Sergeant, 404 "Brach," Shakespeare's use of word, 171, 173 Brackley, Viscount. See Egerton, Sir Thomas Braithwaite, Richard, 81 Brand, John, F.S.A., Popular An- tiquities of, referred to, 25 Brandenburg, Sir Edward Walker's mission to, 273-4 Brandes, Georg, William Shakespeare, by, referred to, 233 Brent, Sir Nathaniel, Vicar-General to Abp. of Canterbury, 233 Bridewell, 452 ; palace at, 453 Bridges, Rev. Gabriel, B.D. , 347 Bridges, John, F.s.A. , History of Northants, quoted, 268 Briggen, Walter, of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 218 Brill, Bucks., 186 Bristol, Lord Chamberlain's players at, 99 ; Tobacco trade at, 260 Britton, John, F.S.A., quoted, 21-2 Broadway, E.C., 451 Broderick, William, embroiderer to James I., 431 Bromefield, Alice. 5£i5 Spencer, Dame Alice Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, 163 Bronchoceles, 367, and see Bavarian pouch Brooke, Baron. See Greville, Sir Fulke and Robert Brooke, Henry; K.G., Baron Cobham, 206, 455, 458 Brooksbank, Mr.,of Bucklersbury, 182 Broom-groves, 146 Brown, Raw don L., Catalogue of MSS., etc., quoted, 289 Browne, Father, mentioned by Ward, 240 Browning, Robert, his Pippa Passes quoted, 290 Bruni, Francesco. See Petrarca, Fran- cesco Brunswick, Duke of, 424 Bryan, Sir Francis, 453 Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton, 444 Buc, Buck, or Bucke, Sir George, Master of Revels, 443 Buck, varieties of, 170 Buckingham, Duke of. See Villiers, Sir George Buckinghamshire, Duke of. See Shef- field, John Buckinghamshire, Shakespeare in, essay on, referred to, 186 Bucklersbury, 181, 182, 262, 263, 264 "Budget," meaning of, 365 Bulkley, Elizabeth, receipt-book of, quoted, 46g Bull-dogs, 172 Bull Theatre. See Red Bull Inn Burbage, Cuthbert, son of James, 482, 483, 484 Burbage, James, 50, 180, 451, 453, 457, 482, 483 Burbage, Richard, son of James, 53, 198, 226, 464, 472, 474, 482, 483 Burbage, William, son of Richard, 482 Burbage, Winifred, wife of Richard. See Robinson, Winifred Burges, Rev. Mr., of Sutton Cold- field, 262 Burghley, Baron. See Cecil, Sir William Burgoine, Sir Robert, of Wroxall, 1 10 Burley, William, tract on Princess Elizabeth's wedding, by, quoted, 427-32 Burman, Stephen, of Rowington, 130 Burn, Rev. Richard, D.C.L,, Eccle- siastical Law, quoted, 33-4 Burnet, Great, plant, where found, 192 ; curative virtues of, 265 Burnet, Mr., of Stratford, 303, 323 Burse, the. See Exchange, Royal Burton, Robert, Anatomy of Melan- choly, by, quoted, 125-6, 153, 310, 367 Bury St. Edmunds, Abbey of, 281, 282 Bush, Paul, Bishop of Bristol, 303, 304 Bussy d^Ambois. See Chapman, George "Busy-less," 373 Butcher, trade of, 349-50 Butler, James, K.G., 1st Duke of Ormonde, 273 Butler, Samuel, author of Hudibras, 348 Butler's Marston, Warwickshire, 327, 330-1, 332 Byron, Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of. See Chapman, George. Cacodsemon, use of word in Shake- speare, etc., 315-16 Csesar, Sir Julius, Master of Rolls, 150 Ccesar's Tragedye, probably old form oi Julius CcEsar, 439, 442-3 490 INDEX Cage, the, house of Thomas Quiney in Stratford, 258 Caius, John, M.D,, tract on British Dogs, quoted, 17 1-2 Cala Croce, in island of Lampedusa, 375 Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, Bien vengas, Mai of, quoted, 420 Caldwall, Daniel, letter of Howell to, 282 Caldwell, Florens, epitaph on. See Martin's, St., Ludgate, Church of Calendarium Genealogicuin, quoted, 23 Caliban, Joseph Hunter on, 387-8 Caltha, See Cutwode, Thomas Cambridge, Privy Council order con- cerning thatched roofs at, 147 Camden, William, Clarenceux king- of-arms, 104 ; his Britannia (in Holland's translation), quoted, 94, I2S, I2g, 14s, 183, 1S6, i8g, 294 Camomile, legend concerning, 313 Campion, Thomas, poet and phy- sician. Masque by, 402-3 ; his Masque of Frantics or Lords' Masque, 430-1 Canary wine, 285 Cane tobacco, 260, 466 Cannibals, reference by Ralegh to, 362 Cantelupe, Walter de. Bishop of Worcester, 76 Canterbury bells, synonym for "lady- smock," 158 Cantilupe, John de, of Snitterfield, 107-8 Canton, heraldic term, 414, 41^ Canuri, Province of, 363 Caora, River, in Guiana, 363 Capell, Edward, editor of Shake- speare, 41, 51 Capon, Barbery, of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 217 Captain, The. See Fletcher, John Cardano, Cardema, or Cardenno, anonymous play, 438 Carduus Benedictus , reference to, by Shakespeare, 263 Carew, Sir George, Earl of Totnes, 333 Carew, Joyce, Countess of Totnes, 333 Carew, Thomas, poet, 279 Carey, Sir George, 2nd Baron Huns- don, son of Sir Henry, 456, 458 Carey, Sir Henry, K.G., 1st Baron Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain, 455, 456 ; his monument, 335, 4S(> ', his players, 99, 100 Caribane, 365 Carichana, Humboldt at, 365 Carleton, Alice, sister of Sir Dudley, 401, 404, 429, 432 Carleton, Sir Dudley, Viscount Dor- chester, letters by, quoted, 375, 414 ; letters to, quoted, 404-6, 425, 426, 427, 436, 437 ; and see Chamberlain, John ; Lake, Sir Thomas ; and Winwood, Sir Ralph Carline, Maltese thistle, 377 Carlo Emanuele, Duke of Savoy, 438 Carnations, varieties and treatment of, 162 Caro, Di, page of Alfonso I. of Naples, 375_ Caroli, River, in Guiana, and its falls, 358, 362, 363 Carpenter, Jenken, town clerk of London, 87 Carr, Frances. See Devereux, Frances Carr, Robert, Earl of Somerset, 398, 400, 401 Carte, Thomas, historian, referred to, 94 Carter Lane, E.C., 451, 452, 453 Cartwright, Rev. William, dramatist, 185 ; his Ordinary referred to, 261 Cary, Giles, actor, 477, 478 " Case, to," sporting term, 167 Castle, William, clerk of Stratford parish church, 328, 332-3 Caterina, Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, 290 Catiline, his Conspiracy. See Jonson, Ben Caviare, references to, 260-1 Cawarden, Sir Thomas, Master of the Revels, 453, 455, 458 Cawdrey, Ralf, butcher at Stratford, 348-9 Cecil, Sir Robert, k.b., ist Earl of Salisbury, 199 ; letter to, quoted, 480 ; and see Lake, Sir Thomas Cecil, Sir William, Baron Burghley, 195, 199, 219 Chadshunt, Warwickshire, 331, and see Newsham, Charles Chaise-Dieu, La, Haute-Loire, Danse Macabre at, 89 "Chaldsean Philosophy," Hunter on, 386-7 Chalgrove field, Beds., 134 Challenge at Tilt. See Jonson, Ben Challoner, William, of Tiddington, 132, 133 INDEX 491 Chalmers, Alexander, F.s.A., quoted, 42 ; referred to, 4^6 Chalmers, George, quoted, 50, 442 ; referred to, 447, 476 Chamberlain, Dr., of Westminster, quoted, 243 Chamberlain, John, letters of, quoted, 401-2, 404, 405, 406, 425, 426, 429, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437 Chamberlain, the Lord : his company of players. See Carey, Sir Henry Chambers, John, Bishop of Peter- borough, 303 Chambre, John, m.d.. Dean of St. Stephen's, Westminster, 303 Chancery Lane, wild flowers in, 192 Chantrey, Sir Francis L., sculptor, at Stratford, 232 Chantries, Return of, 1546, referred to, 97 Chapel Royal, Children of the, 450, 464, 469-75. 478 Chapel Royal, Old Cheque-Book of, quoted, 396, 397, 401, 428, 429-30, 4bg, 470-1 Chapman, George, dramatist, 47, 432, 473 ; his All Fools, 441, 463, 479 5 Bussy d^Ambois, 472 ; Byron, Con- spiracy of Charles, Duke of, 462 ; 479 ; Eastward- Ho, see Jonson, Ben ; Humorous Day's Mirth, 368-9 ; Masque by, performed, 432 Chari Christ, Irish euphemism for wolves, 294 Charing Cross, 191 Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon, 38, 322, 328 Charles L, King of England, 272, 444; as heir-apparent, 400, 401, 427, 429. 431. 434. 436, 438 Charles IL, King of England, 439 ; plays in his library, 440 Charles V., Emperor, and King of Spain, 287, 3ig ; his visit to London, 453 Charles VIL, King of France, 297 Chitillon, Battle of, 296 Chaucer, Geoffrey, quoted, 1 75) 453 Chaworth, Dr., 302 Cheap, Ward of, 212 Cheap, West, 263 Cheetah sent to James L, 437 Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire, .^^c? Cherry, Francis, benefactor of Thos. Hearne, 340 Cheshire, hunting in, 175 ; proverb used in, 156 Chester, termination of Watling Street, 66 Chesterton, John de, lord of manor of Stratford, 320 Chettle, Henry, Kind-hartes Dreame, by, quoted, 52-3 Cheyney, Sir Thomas, K.G., Treasurer of the Household, 453 Chichele, Henry, Archbishop of Can- terbury, 318 Chichester, Collins the poet at, 383 Child, Thomas, of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 211-12 Children of the Revels, the Queen's, 426, 427, 464.. 471, 473. 475-81, and see Blackfriars and Whitefriars Theatres Chiltern Hills, Bucks., 188 Chioppines or Chapins at Venice and elsewhere, 291-2 Chippenham, Wilts., 260 Chipping Norton, Oxon., 182, 183, 184 Choristers of Stratford Church : their order of life, 81 Choughs, 151-2; Act of Parliament for destruction of, 152 Christ Church, Oxon., performance of Palamon and Arcyte in, 176 Church-Enstone, Oxon., 184 Church Entry, E.C., 452 Cibber, Theophilus, 49 Cicero, de Divinatione, quoted, 300 Cinquepace, 408, and see Galliard Cioll or Sciol, Cecilia and German, of Crosby Place, E.C., 209 City of London Records, referred to, 212 Clapham, Surrey, Samuel Pepys' house at, 449 Clare Market. See Tennis Court Theatre Clarence, Duke of. See George Clarendon, Earl of. See Hyde, Ed- ward Claret, 259, 260, 265, 284, and see Bordeaux Clary, purple and wild, 192 Clary, spirit of, used in manufacturing wines, 285 Clerkenwell, Middlesex, 211, 346, and see Red Bull Inn. Clifton, A. B., Cathedral Church of Lichfield, by, ref. to, 338 " Clodpate, Mr. Justice," 328 Cloister Court, Blackfriars, E. C, 452 Clopton, Anne, wife of William, 333 492 INDEX Clopton, Dame Barbara, wife of Sir John ( I), 272, 273 Clopton, Eglantine, wife of Thomas (2), 82 Clopton family, 116; their coat-of- arms, 320-1 ; their monuments, 82, 333 ; their Suffolk collaterals, 280. Clopton House, rebuilding of, 272 Clopton, Sir Hugh (i), of Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, 63, 82, 85, 95, 115, 320 Clopton, Sir Hugh (2), of Clopton (fl. 1742), 60, 269, 272 Clopton, Sir John (i), of Clopton, 272, 321 Clopton, Sir John (2), of Kentwell, Suffolk, 280-1 Clopton, Joyce, daughter of William and Anne. See Carew, Joyce. Clopton, Thomas (i), brother of Sir Hugh(i), 115 Clopton, Thomas (2), of Clopton (d. 1643), 82 Clopton, Walter, of Cockfield, Suffolk, 280 Clopton, William, of Clopton, jjj Clopton, Sir William, of Kentwell, 280 Clutterbuck, Ferdinando, draper, of Bishopsgate ward, 215 Cobden, Rev. Edward, Vicar of Acton, Middlesex, 242 Cobham, Baron. See Brooke, Henry, and Oldcastle, Sir John Cockfield, Suffolk. See Clopton, Walter Cockle, 161 Cockle-demoys, small coins, 432 Cock LorelPs Boat, quoted, 352 Cockpit Theatre, ^^if Phoenix Theatre Cockpit at Whitehall, 433, 446 Cocledemoy. See Marston, John Coel, early British king, 93, 94 Cokain, Sir Aston, quoted, 437 Coke, Sir Edward, Lord Chief Justice, 129, 150, 410 Colchester, legendary origin of, 93, g4 Colesborne, Gloucestershire. See Higgs, Thomas. College-house at Stratford, 80, 343 Collier, John Payne, f.s.a., 776, 443, 451, 457, 45S, 459, 463, 4^5, 472, 474, 477, etc. CoUingwood, Ralph, Dean of Lich- field, 81 Collins, Arthur, his Peerage referred to, 412 Collins, Francis, lawyer, of Warwick, 226, 230 Collins, William, poet, 383, 384, 385 Cologne (Agrippina), death of Maria de' Medici at, 273 Colonna, Prospero, 38^ Coloquintida, 263 Colt's-foot, used to adulterate tobacco, 205, 466 Comb, Mary, of Stratford, 245 Combe, John, of Stratford, 81, 82, 127, 139, 148, 231, 333, 346 Combe, Thomas, of Stratford, 81, 226 Combe, William, of Stratford, 139, 148, 149, 150 " Combes," Justice, of Stratford, 321 Comedy of Errors. 6'^if Shakespeare, William (i) Commin, Walter, of Snitterfield, 107 Commin, William, father of Walter, 107 Commines, Philippe de. Dent's trans- lation of, 38^ Common-fields at Stratford, 134-5, 140 Compton - by - Brailes, Warwickshire, 39 Compton, Elizabeth, wife of William, 210 Compton, William, k.g., Earl of Northampton, 199, 210, 240 Compton, Sir William, of Compton- by-Brailes, Warwickshire, jp Condamine, C. M. de la, Voyage of, quoted, 360-1 Condell, Henry, actor, 226, 464, 482, 483 Conduit, the Great, near West Cheap, 263 Conduit-heads at Marylebone, 165, 190, 191, 192 " Coney-gree," meaning and uses of, 134 Coningsby, Ralph, lord of manor of Stratford, 320 Constable, Legend of, at Grendon Underwood, Bucks., 184-8 Constable, Office of, at Stratford, 79 Constable Marshal at the Temple, 196 Constantius Chlorus, 94 Contes du Monde, Les, referred to, 479 Conway, Sir John, of Luddington, 27 Cooke, James, surgeon, of Warwick, 239, 240, 248, 249, 250 Coombe Keynes, Dorset, Tithing-man of, 124 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury, 308 Coranto, The, 195, 408, 409, 415 INDEX 493 Coriolanus. See Shakespeare, William (I) Cornachine, Dr., of Pisa, 305 Corney, Bolton, essay on Shake- speare's birthday, quoted, 22 Cornish, William, of the Chapel Royal, 4bg Cornwallis, Sir Charles, referred to, 425 Cornwallis, Sir William, son of Sir Charles, Essays by, quoted, 371-2 Coronelli, Vincenzo, his Specchio del Mare referred to, 374, 375, 378 Coryat, Thomas, his Crudities re- ferred to, 128 Cosin, Richard, lawyer, of Worcester, 36 Coto, ailment prevalent in South America, 366 Cots wold sports, 168 Cotton, Eleanor, wife of Samuel, 269, 271 Cotton, Sir Robert. See Pory, John Cotton, Samuel, of Henwick, Beds., 269 Coughton, Warwickshire, 67 Courante. See Coranto Court, Grace, daughter of following, 240 Court, Mr., apothecary, of Stratford, 240, 264 Court-leet, Charge of, quoted, 373 Coutances, John de. Bishop of Wor- cester, 320 Covel, Rev. John, D. D. , Z>mryquoted, 146 Coventry, Free School at, 108 ; Hunter on Shakespeares of, 109 Coventry, Sir William, Commissioner of the Navy, 331 Cowell, John, ll.d.. Interpreter of, quoted, 142 Cox, on history of Long Melford, quoted, 281 Coxcomb, The. See Fletcher, John Coxeter, Thomas, bookseller and antiquary, 441 ' ' Crack," meaning and use of word, 467 Craig, Mr. W. J., his edition of King Lear referred to, 341 Cranmer, Thomas, his version of the Bible referred to, 382 Craven, Holy Weils in, 93 Creed Lane, E.G., 451 Creighton, Charles, M.D., \i\% History of Epidemics referred to, 243, 245, 309, 425, 46g Crendon. See Grendon Underwood, Long Crendon Cressingham Court-rolls, referred to, 29 Creswick, Francis, wine-merchant, of Bristol, 259 Crofts, Sir James, friend of Howell, 289, 358 Croke, Sir George, judge. Reports quoted, 29-30 Cromwell, Oliver, story of, 325-6 Crosby, Dame Anne, wife of Sir John, 208 Crosby, Sir John, of Crosby Place, 206-8 Crosby Place, Bishopsgate, E.G., 199, 206-10, 213, 215, 234 Crow-flowers, 157-8 "Crown Imperial," flower, 162 Crown Inn, Oxon., 346, 347 Croydon, Surrey, Dance of Death in Archbishops' palace at, 88 Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, The. See Davenant, Sir William Crusius, Martinus. See Kraus, Martin Crystal in Guiana, 364; Mountain of. 359 Cuckoo-buds, 158-9 Cuckoo-flowers, 158 Cullymore, Dr., of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 217 Culpeper or Culpepper, Nicholas, 306, 425 Cumana, Ralegh at, 363 Cunningham, Peter, paper by, re- ferred to, 434 Cupid's Revenge. See Fletcher, John Curiapan, Ralegh at, 359 Curll, pamphlet on Essex divorce published by, referred to, jgg Curtain in theatres, use of, 460 Curtain Theatre, Shoreditch, E., 50, 471 Cutler, Mr., story of, 310 Cutwode, Thomas, Caltha, by, quoted, 160, 162 Cymbeline. See Shakespeare, William (I) Cynthia's Revels. See Jonson, Ben Cyprus, crape from, 454 ; and Venice, 290 D Daffodils in Shakespeare, 162 Dagon, Hunter's theories as to Caliban and, 387-8 Dalam, William, schoolmaster of Stratford, 98 494 INDEX Dance of Death at Stratford and elsewhere, 87-92 Dancers, the High, at Somerset's marriage, 404-5 Daniel, Mr., of Long Melford, 281 Daniel, Samuel, and the Children of the Revels, 475-6 ; his Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, 412-13 Danish Archives at Record Office, referred to, 437 Danson, Mr., tailor to James I., 431 Darby, Alderman, of Fenchurch Street, E.G., 207 Darnel, 160-I Davenant, John (i), Bishop of Salis- bury, 347 Davenant, John (2), vintner, of Ox- ford, 46, 347 Davenant, Mrs., wife of John (2), 46, 347- Davenant, Nicholas, son of John (2), 347. Davenant, Rev. Robert, son of John (2), 46, 347 Davenant, Sir William, 45-8, 59, 302, 346, 347, 348, 441, 444, 461 ; his Shakespearean revivals, 56-8 ; his Siege of Rhodes, etc., 461 ; his Wits, 444 Davenport, Rev. James, d.d., Vicar of Stratford, 232 Davies, John, of Hereford, epigrams by, quoted, 55, 368, 472 Davies, Rev. John, D.D., of Mallwyd, Merionethshire, his Welsh Gram- mar, 279 Davies, Sir John, epigram by, quoted, 50 ; his Orchestra quoted, 409 Davies, Rev. Richard, Vicar of Sapperton, Gloucestershire, quoted, 40-1, 330. Davies, Thomas, prompter, quoted, S3. 58 Davis, Mr. C. E. , Mineral Baths of Bath, by, referred to, 99 Dawkins, Prof. W. Boyd, Cave Hunting, by, referred to, 380 Day, Mr. , surgeon at Oxford, 300 Day, Thomas, actor, 471, 476 De Clifford, Lord, sale of family papers belonging to, 327 "Deck, to," dispute as to meaning of, 420-1. Deer-hounds, Irish, 172 Dekker or Decker,Thomas, dramatist, his Satiro-Mastix, 53-5 ; quoted, 55. 472- Dekker, Thomas, and Middleton, Thomas, ^€\x Roaring 6^zWquoted, 51 Dekker, Thomas, and Webster, John, their Northward- Ho, j'o ; their Westward-Ho, quoted, etc., 50-1, 196-7, 4.78 Delabarr, Mrs., patient of John Hall, 241 Denham, Sir John, 185 Deputies, Alderman's, for City Wards, 211-12 Derby, Earl of. See Stanley, Henry Derby, Shakespeares of, 109 "Derbyshire neck," synonym for goitre, 366 Dethick, Sir William, Garter king- of-arms, 104 Devereux, Frances, Countess of Essex, 395-422, passim Devereux, Lettice, Countess of Essex (afterwardsofLeicester),her players, 100 Devereux, Robert, k.g., 2nd Earl of Essex, 199, 395, 397 Devereux, Robert, 3rd Earl of Essex, 395-422, passim, 480 Devereux family, of Shustoke, War- wickshire, 321 Devil is an Ass, The. See Jonson, Ben. D'Ewes, Sir Simonds, quoted, 425 " Dewlapped mountaineers," origin of phrase, 365-7 Dialect Dictionary, English, referred to, 141 Diamonds in Guiana, 364 Diaphoretics, use of, in medicine, 305 Dibdin, Rev. Thomas Frognall, D. D. , quoted, 449 Dictionary of National Biography, referred to, 231, 2gg, joj, 339 Diella, book of sonnets by R. L., quoted, 322 Digby, Sir Kenelm, 301, 305 Digges, Leonard, verses by, quoted, 231, 442, 445, 446 Diplomas, medical, how obtained, 225 " Dislodge," sporting term, 167 D'Israeli, Isaac, Curiosities of Liter- ature, quoted, 411 Dive - dapper, the, mentioned by Shakespeare, 153 Dodda, Lewin, pre-Conquest farmer of Wilmcote, 115 Dodwell, Warwickshire, 97 "Dog-draw," sporting term, 169 Dogs in Shakespeare, 170-6 INDEX 495 Dogs, tract on English. See Caius, John Domesday Book, referred to, 73, 115, 135, 228 Domestic State Papers, Calendar of, quoted, 233, etc. Dominicans at Blackfriars, 451 Dorado, El, king of the headless men, 364 Dorchester, Marquess of. See Pierre- pont, Henry Dorchester, Viscount. See Carleton, Sir Dudley Dort, wine-trade at, 283 Douce, Francis, 374 ; his Dance of Death referred to, 88, 8g Douthwaite, W. R. , Gray's Inn, by, quoted, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 201 Dover, Robert, of Barton -on -the - Heath, 168 Dowdall, Mr., his letter to Edward Southwell, 39-40, 327-38, 348. Downes, John, his Roscitis Angli- caniis, quoted, 55, 56, 57-8 "Dowsabel," Shakespeare's use of name, 199 Drake, Sir Francis, quoted, 365-6 Draycot, Wilts., Tithing-man at, 124 Drayton, Michael, 240, 306, 310, 311, 345, 441 ; his Pastorals quoted, 199; his Poly-Olbion quoted, 66, 67-8, 70 Droeshout, Martin, his portrait of Shakespeare, 232 Droitwich, Worcestershire, Leland at, 163 " Drolleries," use of word, 411 Drummond, William, of Hawthorn- den. See Jonson, Ben Drunkenness in 17th century, 309-IO Drury Lane Theatre, 461 Dryden, John, his Essay on Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age referred to, 442 ; his alteration of The Tempest referred to, 313, 480; its preface quoted, 45-6, 450 Duck, Wild, mentioned in Shake- speare, 153 Dudley, Sir, Ambrose, Earl of War- wick, 75, 129 ; his bearwardens and tumblers, 99 ; his plavers, 100, 180 Dudley, Sir Edward, 4th Baron Dud- ley ; his bearwardens, 99 Dudley family, Earls of Warwick, 337 Dudley, John, Duke of Northumber- land and Earl of Warwick, ^g, 81, 104, 320 Dudley, Sir Robert, k.g., Earl of Leicester, his players, 99, 100, 180 Dugdale, Sir William, Garter king- of-arms, his Antiquities of War- wickshire, quoted, 64, 67, 75, 76, 81, 82, 84, 85, 107-8, 112, 115-16, 129, 132, 135-6, 250, 322; referred to, 72, 86, 336 ; Diary referred to, 23 1 ; History of St. PauVs referred to, 89 ; Monasticon Anglicanwn referred to, i8g, 451, 4^3; Origines Jtiridiciales quoted, 194, 195, 200 Duley, John, of Tiddington, 133 Dulwich, MSS. preserved at, 458, 462 Dumb Night, The. See Machin, Lewis ; Markham, Gervase. Dunbar, John Taylor at, 404 Dunsmore Heath, Warwickshire, 67 Dunstable, Temple of Diana at, 65 Dupont, M., L' Homme pendant les Ages de la Pierre, referred to, 380 Duret or Duretto, the, species of dance, 408 Dutch Courtesan, or Cocledemoy. See Marston, John Dutchman at Oxford, story of, 310 Dynne, Francis, servant to Laurence Bassel, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 217 E Eadbert, Bishop of Worcester, 72, 73 Earth-nuts, 164 " Earth upon earth," poems and epitaphs on subject, 95-6 East India Company, Early be- ginnings of, 209 Eastward-Ho. See Jonson, Ben Eden, Richard, his Historic of Tra- vayle referred to, j^j" Edgehill, Warwickshire, 163, 328 ; Battle of, 331 Edingdon, Wilts., house of Bon- hommes at, 303 Edmonds, Sir Clement, of Preston, Northants, 268 Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence, 108 Edwards, John, of Tiddington, 133 Edwards, Richard, of the Chapel Royal, his Palamon and Arcyte, 176 Edwards, Thomas, sydesman of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213 Egerton, Sir Thomas, Baron EUes- mere and Viscount Brackley, 148 Eglisham, George, M.D. , his Pro- dromus Vindicice referred to, 243-4 496 INDEX Eldorado, Region and city of, 357, 362 Elizabeth (i). Princess of England, Countess Palatine of the Rhine, and Queen of Bohemia, 240, 254, 399. 400, 423-49 /am'OT Elizabeth (2), Queen of England, 129, 176, 262, 361, 4S5> 475; her company of players, 180 ; of tumblers, 99 Elizabeth (3) de Bourbon, Queen- Consort of Philip IV. of Spain, 292 Elks brought to England, 437 Ellacombe, Rev. H. N., Vicar of Bitton, Gloucestershire, his Plant- lore of Shakespeare, quoted, 161 Ellesmere, Baron. See Egerton, Sir Thomas Elze, Karl, his William Shakespeare referred to, 233 "Embossed," meaning of, 173-4 Emeria, Province of, 357, 359 Encomienda, system of, in Spanish colonies, 361 Englefield, Sir Francis, J9 Entrance to stage in early theatres, 460 Entries, Book of, for Worcester diocese, referred to, 262 Epigrams. See Davies, John and Sir John ; FitzGeffrey, Charles ; Jonson, Ben "Epistlers," chosen from boys of Chapel Royal, 470 Erasmus, his Latin and English dialogues, referred to, 102 Espousals, Contracts of, 31-2; royal, 426-7 Essex, Countess of. See Devereux, Frances and Lettice Essex, Earl of. See Devereux, Robert Essex House, banquet at, 435 Ethelburga, St., Bishopsgate, church and parish of, 210, 213 Ethelwulf, King of Wessex, 71, 72 Eusebius, 338 Eustace, Abbot of Flay, his preaching- tour in England, 76 Evans, Henry, theatrical manager, 469, 476, 483, 484 Evelegh, Rev. Charles, m.d., of Harberton, Devon, 304 Evelyn, John, Diary, quoted, 449 Everkeston, Leicestershire, 129 Every Man in His Humour. See Jonson, Ben Every Man out of His Humour . See Jonson, Ben Evesham, Abbey of, connection with Shottery, 135-6 Evesham, Hugh of, cardinal and physician, 303 "Evil-town," 381 Ewaipanoma, the headless nation, 362 Exchange, Royal, Queen Elizabeth's visit to, 262, ^55 Exchequer Records, referred to, 103 Exeter House, will of Lady Barnard proved at, 270 Experienced Fowler, The, quoted, I5i> 154 Exton, Lord Harington of. See Har- ington, John Eye-bright, powdered, 264 "Fading" and "fadow," country dances, 403 Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 3rd Baron Fairfax of Cameron, 294 Fairs at Stratford, 75, 76, 95 Falck, Jacob, Dutch ambassador, monument of, 234 Falcon Inn at Stratford, 307 Falstafe, Sir John, play of, 439, 44576 Familiar spirits, 390 Fanshawe, Mrs., 344 Farmer, Rev. Richard, d.d., f.s.a., master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, referred to, 60, 372 Farnham, Nicholas de. Bishop of Durham, 303 Farryner, baker in Pudding Lane, E.C.,274 Fastolf, Sir John, K.G., 446 Fatal Dowjy, The. See Massinger, Philip Faulconbridge or Fauconberg, Thos., his attack on London, 207 Fawn, buck of first year, 170 Fawn, The. See Marston, John Fayrecook, Davye, servant to Laurence Bassel, 217 Feather-workers of Blackfriars, 454 Fecamp, Dance of Death at, 88 Fee for performance of play, official, 438 Fennell, J., Shakespeare Repository referred to, 239^ 249, 264 Fenton, Elijah, his edition of Waller, quoted, 439 Ferdinand I. (Ferrante), King of Naples, 386 INDEX 497 Fernandez, Mr., of Lampedusa, 375, 378 _ Ferns, expulsion of rats from bishopric of, 29s Festus, Sext. Pompeius, Jonson's debt to, 416 Fevers, varieties of, 243, 305-9 Field, Mr., tanner, of Stratford, father of Richard, 180 Field, Nathaniel, actor- dramatist, 47, 466, 467, 469, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475. 476, 477, 483 ; his plays, 473 Field, Richard, printer, 180 Fielden of Warwickshire, 163 Fifteen, tax of the, 213, 219 Pilaster. See Philaster and Fletcher, John Fille, Richard, benefactor of Strat- ford guild, 84 Fire of London, Great, 274 Firett, Sir John, 484 Fish, Simon : his Supplication of the Beggars, 316 Fisher's Antiquities of Warwickshire, referred to, 92, 100 FitzGeffrey, Charles, epigram by, quoted, .5^76 Fitzherbert, Sir Anthony, judge, his Book of Husbandry quoted, 114, 117, 118, 121, 142, 143, 144, 161 ; his Book of Surveying quoted, 157, 160 Fitzrichard, Hugh, of Snitterfield, 1 1 1 Fleay, F. G., his Chronicle of Drama quoted, etc., igy, sbg, 426, 441, 464, 472, 473, 477, 478, 479 ; his Chronicle- History of Shakespeare quoted, 369, 372 Fleet Ditch, 452 Fleetwood, Sir Miles, Recorder of London, 189, 190, 191 Fleming, Abraham, translator of Caius' tract on dogs, 171 Fletcher, John, dramatist, 340, 342 Fletcher, John, and Francis Beaumont, plays by, quoted or referred to ; Bloody Brother, The, 316; Captain, The, 435, 438; Coxcomb, The, 426; Cupid'' s Revenge, 427 ; King and no King, A, 439, 440 ; Knight of the Burning Pestle, 121 ; Maid's Tragedy, The, 438, 439 ; Nice Valour, The, 20J, 261 ; Noble Gentleman, The, 441 ; Philaster, or. Love lies a- bleeding, 438, 439 ; Vale7ttiniatt, 4^j ; Womati-Hater, The, 465 Flexon, Mr., barber, of Oxford, 300 Flores, Juan de, author of Aurelio atid Isabella, 384 Floridans in Bacon's Masque of Flowers, 407 Florio, John, 466 ; his Italian dic- tionary, 372 ; his translation of Montaigne, 247, 371 Flower-de-Luce, 162 Floyd, quoted, 281 Folio of Shakespeare's plays, first, preface to, quoted, 465 ; referred to, 472 Fontaine, Jean, and L. Schonbub, Travels of, quoted, 468 Fordham, John de. Bishop of Ely, in Shakespeare, 318, 319 "Fore-stall, to," sporting term, 166-7 Fortunate Isles, Masque of the. See Jonson, Ben Fortune Theatre, 458, 459, 464, 477 Fosse Way, Roman road from Bath to Lincoln, 65, 66-7, 68 Fossett, Mr., Nonconformist divine at Stratford, 241 Four Prentices of London, The. See Heywood, Thomas Four-Shire-Stone, near Chipping Nor- ton, Battle of the, 184 Four Swans Inn, Bishopsgate, 210 Fox, The. See jonson, Ben Fox or Foxe, John, his Acts and Monuments referred to, 316 Foxe, Richard, Alderman's deputy for ward of Bishopsgate Within, 211 Fox-hounds, 171 Fox-hunting at Marylebone conduit- heads, 191 Francis, Mr., Archbishop's medical licence granted to, 302-3 Frederick, Count Palatine of the Rhine, King of Bohemia, K.G., 399, 400, 423-49 passim ; his company of players, 477 " Free-board," agricultural term at Stratford, 141-2 Frensham, Surrey, 380 Friskney, Lincolnshire, frescoes in church of, gs "Frith," agricultural term, meaning of, 141 Frost, John, actor, 471 Fulbrooke, Warwickshire, 38, 39 Fuller, Rev. Thomas, quoted, 55, 281, 446, 47b Fulman, Rev. William, of Meysey Hampton, Gloucestershire, 40. Fumitory, 143, 161 2 K 498 INDEX "Furlongs," divisions of common field, 141, 143-4 Furness, Mr. H. H., his Variorum edition of The Te77tpest quoted, 365-6 Furnivall, Dr. F. J., referred to, $35 Gale, Roger, F.s.A., his Four Great Ways quoted, 67 Galliards, 195, 408-9, 415 Gams, Series Episcoportwi, referred to, 379 Gaol-fever, visitations of, 307-8 Garrick, David, 53, 60, 447 Garrick, Eva, wife of David, 447 Gaze-hounds, 171 Geneva version of Bible, quoted, 381-2 Genius, personified use of word, 237 Geoffrey of Monmouth, his Historia Britonum referred to, 69, 94 George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV., 3g George Inn at Stratford, 307 George, St., Queen Square, W., Church of, 304, and see Stukely, Rev. William Gerard, John, his garden, 202-5 5 his ZTiJ^-^a// quoted, 147, 158, 161, 162, 164, 165, 192, 202, 203, 204, 205 Gerfalcons, imported from Iceland, 437 Gesner, Conrad, his History of Quad- rupeds referred to, 366 ; letter of John Caius to, concerning dogs. See Caius, John Gesta Grayorum, quoted, 196-9 Gibbon, Edward, his History, etc., quoted, 94 Giffard, Godfrey, Bishop of Worcester, 76 Gifford, William, his life of Jonson referred to, 369, 411, 412 Gilbert, Elizabeth, nie Barnard, wife of following, 269 Gilbert, Henry, of Locko, Derby- shire, 269, 271 Gildon, Charles, his edition of Lang- baine, 312, 343, and see Langbaine, Gerard Giles, Nathaniel, Mos. Doc, of the Chapel Royal, 469, 470 Giles'-in-the-Fields, parish of St., 191, 192 Gill, Dr., surgeon at Oxford, 300 Gillyflower, varieties of, 162-3 Gilpit, court of, at Stratford, 65, and see Guildpits Giraldus Cambrensis, his Itinerarium Cambrice referred to, 68; his Topographia Hibernica, 295 " Globe " Shakespeare, glossary to, quoted, i^J Globe Theatre, 168, 206, 440, 450, 459, 464, 466, 471, 473, 481, 482, 483, 484 Gloucester, Roman roads at, 67, 68 Glover, trade of, 349 Godeski, Mr., friend of George Hart- man, 302 Godwin, Francis, Bishop of Hereford, his De PrcBsulibus referred to, 303 Goitre. See " Bavarian pouch," Goto, " Derbyshire neck " Gold, found in Guiana, 360 Golden Legend. See Voragine, Jacobus de Golding, Arthur, his translation of Ovid quoted, 388-9 " Golds," popular name for marigold, 160 Gondomar, Diego de Acuiia, Conde de, Spanish ambassador, 415 Good, Isaac, of Limerick, quoted by Camden, 2g4 Goodson, Thomas, of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 211 " Goodwife, Goody," title of, 240 Gracechurch Street, E.G., 210 Grain, Return of owners of, at Strat- ford, referred to, 218-19 Gramer, Abraham, sidesman of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213 Grand Christmas at Inner Temple, 194 Grange, Prince de la, at Lincoln's Inn, 196 Gravel Pits, Kensington, 190 Gray, Thomas, notes on Hudibras, referred to, 2gg Gray-lags, 150 Gray's Inn Fields, 193 ; gardens, 201, 202 ; masques performed by gentle- men of, 406-8, 432-3 ; revels at, 193-9 Greade, Peter, servant to Laurence Bassel, 217 Grebe. See Dive-dapper Greenborough, Warwickshire, 102 Green Curtain play-house, 346 Green Dragon Inn, Bishopsgate, E. C. , 210, 213 Greene, Rev. Joseph, of Welford, near Stratford, 22, 26, .27 • INDEX 499 Greene, Robert, his Alphonsus re- ferred to, 384 ; his Groatsworth of Wit quoted, 52 ; his Menaphon quoted, 153, 176, 293, 365, referred to, 199, 224 Greene, Thomas, tdwn-clerk of Strat- ford, 148, 149 Greenhill, J., friend of Aubrey, 346 Greenwich, Lord Chamberlain's players at, 198 Gregorovius, Ferdinand, his Ge- schichie der Stadt Rovi referred to, 304 Grendon Underwood, Bucks., 184-7 Gresham College, 210 Gresham, Lady, wife of Sir Thomas, 215, 216 Gresham, Sir Thomas, 211, 212, 262 Greville, Sir Fulke, K.B., 1st Baron Brooke, 337-8 Greville, Robert, 2nd Baron Brooke, 338 Grey, Walter de. Archbishop of York (formerly Bishop of Worcester), 75 Griswold, Clement, 131 "Grove," technical meaning of, 146 " Grysant, physician and pope." See Urban V. Gualtero, Prince, 359, 360 Guards, Uniform of, at wedding of Princess Elizabeth, 431 Guiana, Ralegh's visit to, 357-68 Guild of Holy Cross at Stratford, 83- 97 ; its chapel, 80, 85-97 Guildhall at Stratford, 98-104; plays in, 98 Guildpits, name of road at Stratford, 65, 74, 142 Gunpowder Plot, Ward's remarks on, 315-16 H Hades, agricultural term, 142 Hadjis and Marabouts, magic spells of, 287 Hakluyt, Richard, Archdeacon of Westminster, 397 ; his Voyages re- ferred to, s^S, 36b Hales, John, of Coventry, Clerk of the Hanaper, 108-9 Halford, Warwickshire, 67, 68 " Hall," in sense of council-meeting, 148 Hall, Edward, his 6^m/(7«, etc., quoted, 43, 44 Hall, Elizabeth. See Barnard, Dame Elizabeth Hall, John (1), painter, of Stratford, 232 Hall, John (2), physician, Shake- speare's son-in-law, 60, 225, 226, 227, 230, 233, 235, 239-51 passim, 254, 264, 307 Hall, Susanna, nie Shakespeare, wife of John, 60, I3t, 22^-^0 passim, 231, 242-^1 passim, 266, 268 Hall, Rev. William, of Acton, Middle- sex, letter of, to Edward Thwaites, 339-42 Hall, William, vintner, of Lichfield, father of Rev. William, 341 Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell-Phil- lipps, James Orchard, F.R.s.jF.S. A.; his Outlines x&iexxed to, etc., 27, 28, 29, 75> ^og, 123, /JO, 134, 139, 140, 156, 187, 227, 231-2, 233, 254, 258, 268, 327, 332, 347-8, and frequently in notes. Other tracts referred to, 99, 187-8, 339, JJj-, J^c? Hamlet. See Shakespeare, William ( i ) Hamlet, legend of, 224 Hampson, Medii ^vi Kalendarium, referred to, 25 Hampton Court, Masque performed at. See Daniel, Samuel ; tennis at, 425, 437.; plays at, 437-8, 444 Hampton- in -Arden, Warwickshire, 112 Hampton Woods, near Charlecote,322 " Hara ha," Jeanne d'Arc's watch- word, 297 Harberton, Devon. See Evelegh, Rev. Charles Hardwick, Warwickshire, 103 Harington, John, Baron Harington of Exton, 436 Harington, Sir John, 436 ; his trans- lation of Ariosto, 391-4 Harley, Robert, Earl of Oxford, 340 Harriers, 171 Harrington, Baron Stanhope of See Stanhope, Sir John Harrison, John, publisher, 180 Hart, Charles, actor, grandson of William (i), 52 Hart, George, 271 Hart, Joan, nie Shakespeare, wife of William (i), 52, 75, 224, 226, 227, 256, 257, 324 Hart, Sir John, Lord Mayor of London, 215 Hart, Michael, son of Wilham (l), 225, 257 Hart, Thomas ( I ), son of William (i), 225, 257 500 INDEX Hart, Thomas (2), of Stratford, 271 Hart, William ( I ), hatter, of Stratford, 224, 324 Hart, William (2), son of William (i), 225, 257 Hartman, George, 302, his True Preserver quoted, 301, 305, ^69 Harvey, Gabriel, quoted, 237 Harvey, John, parish clerk of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 211, 212, 213 Harvey, William, M.D., 301 Haslewood, Joseph, f.s.a., quoted, 448 Hassal, Catharina, wifeof Hamoletus, 223 Hassal, Hamoletus, 223 Hathaway, Agnes, persons of the name, 28, 29 Hathaway, Anne. See Edwardes, Anne ; Shakespeare, Anne ; and Wilson, Anne Hathaway, Bartholomew, of Shottery, 28 Hathaway, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas (i), 248, 267, 271 Hathaway, families of, in Forest of Dean, 30 ; at Luddington, 26, 27, 29 ; at Shottery, 28, 1 35 ; at Weston- on-Avon, 26, 30-1 Hathaway, Gilbert, of Forest of Dean, 30 Hathaway, Joan, wife of Thomas (i), 307. 323 Hathaway, Joanna, daughter of Thomas (i). See Kent, Joanna Hathaway, John, supposed father of Anne Shakespeare, 27-8 Hathaway, Judith, daughter of Thomas (i), 248, 267, 270 Hathaway, Ralf, of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire, 30 Hathaway, Richard, of Shottery, 27, 28 Hathaway, Richard, alias Gardner, of Shottery, 26 Hathaway, Rose, daughter of Thomas (I), 248, 271 Hathaway, Samuel, supposed father of Anne Shakespeare, 28 Hathaway, Susanna, daughter of Thomas (l), 248, 271 Hathaway or Hathway, Thomas (i), of Stratford, 248, 267, 270, 271, 323 Hathaway, Thomas (2), father of Agnes, 28 Hathaway, William (i), of Lydney, Gloucestershire, 30 Hathaway, William (2), of Ruardean, Gloucestershire, 30 Hathaway, William (3), of Stratford, son of Thomas (i), 248 Hathaway, William (4), of Weston- on-Avon, brother of Thomas (i), 248, 267 Hats and hatters, 324, 325 Hatton House, Holborn, W.C., 519 Hawkins, Sir Thomas, letter of Howell to, 279 Hazlitt, William, referred to, 441 Headborough, or Tithing-man, office of, 124; at Great Hillingdon, Middlesex, 189 Head-lands, agricultural term, I42-3 Headless men, legend of, 362-5 Hearne, Thomas, 4'j, 86, 334-5 ; his Autobiography quoted, 335, 340 Heartsease, 161 "Hearts, Queen of," complimentary name given to Princess Elizabeth, 424 Heath, Nicholas, Archbishop of York (formerly Bishop of Worcester), 320 "Heavens," technical meaning of term on stage, 462 Heber, Richard, D.C.L., catalogue of his library, 444 Hebraisms in Tempest, Hunter's dis- covery of, 387 Hegenitius, Gotfried, his Itinerariimi referred to, 234 Helen, Welsh legends of, and Roman roads, 94 Helena, St., 93-4 Helen's, St. , Bishopsgate, E.G. , church and parish of, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211,212,213; priory of, 206,212-13 Helen's Close, Great St., E.G., 212; Little St., 213 Heliotrope or Girasol. See Marigold Heming (also Heminge, Heminges, Hemings, Hemmings, Hemynges, etc.), John, actor, 226, 400, 437, 438, 443, 444, 483 Henbane, yellow, substitute for to- bacco, 204, 466 Henrietta Maria, Queen-Consort of Charles I., 466 ; her visit to Strat- ford, 248 Henry IV., King, parts i. and ii. See Shakespeare, William (i) Henry IV., King of France, 198 Henry V., ICing. See Shakespeare, William (I) Henry VI., King, parts i., ii. , and iii. .S^e Shakespeare, 'William (i) INDEX 501 Henry VIII., King, 108 Henry VIII., King. See Shake- speare, William (i) Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I., 415, 433; his death, 307-9, 423-6 ; his players, 477 Henslowe MSS. at Dulwich, 368, 462 Henslowe, Agnes or Anne, wife of Philip, 29 Henslowe, Philip, 29 Henwick Beds. See Cotton, Samuel Heraclius, Emperor of the East, 94-5 Herbert, Edward, Baron Herbert of Cherbury, Walpole's edition of Life of, 443 Herbert, Sir Henry, Master of the Revels, 484 ; his Office- B 00k , 441, 443. 444, 446 Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pem- broke, mother of William (i), 209 Herbert, Sir Philip, K.G., 4th Earl of Pembroke and ist Earl of Mont- gomery, 397, 398, 405, 414, 480, 481, 482, 484 Herbert, Susan, Countess of Pem- broke and Montgomery, 397 Herbert, William (i), 3rd Earl of Pembroke, 287, 397, 398, 405 Herbert, William (2), 2nd Marquess and titular Duke of Powis, 443 Hern-dogs, 172 Hetley, Sir Thomas, Reports of, quoted, 146 Heuter, Pontus, his History of Bur- gundy, referred to, 125 Hexham Abbey, Northumberland, Dance of Death at, 88 Heylyn, Rev. Peter, D.D., 312 Hey wood, Thomas, 441 ; his Apology for Actors referred to, 462 ; his Four Prentices of London quoted, Hickes, George, Bishop-suffragan of Thetford, his Linguarum veterum septentrionaliuni thesaurus referred to, 339 Higgens, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133 Higges, Edward, saddler, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213 Higgs, Mary, nie Barnard, wife of Thomas, 269, 271 Higgs, Thomas, of Colesborne, Glou- cestershire, 269 High Cross, near Nuneaton, 65-6 Highgate, Middlesex, 165, 193 Hill, Agnes, widow of John. See Arden, Agnes Hill, J., of Stratford, his essay on Shakespeare's birthplace referred to, 74, 75 Hill, John, of Bearley, Warwick- shire, 116 " Hiller, The," legend of, 380 Hillingdon, Great, Middlesex, 189 Hine, William, of Tiddington, 133 Hiren, or the Faire Greeke, See Barkstead, William Historia Histrionica. See Wright, James Hobbies, or lark-hawks, 153, 154 Hock, varieties of, 285 Holbein, Hans, his "Dance of Death," 88, 89, 90, 92 Holborn, wild-flowers in, 192 Holborn Bars, 193 Holdar, Hamlet, son of Humphry, 224 Holdar, Humphry, of Stratford, 224 Holderness, phrase used in, 421 Hole or Holle, William, portrait of Florio by, 372 Holinshed, Raphael, his Description of Britaine quoted, 1 14-15, 283, 284, 296 Holland, Philemon, see Camden, William ; his translation of Pliny, quoted, 284 Holt, J., his essay on The Tempest, 398-9 Holyoake, Rev. Francis, of Southam, Warwickshire, 240 Holyoake, Rev. Thomas, son of Rev. Francis, 240 Honywood, Robert, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 217 Hook Norton, Oxon., 184 Hope Theatre, 477 Horace, Carmina, quoted, 2^6 Horehound, white, medical use of, 300 Hotspur, The, anonymous play, 438, 445-6 Hotwells, the, near Bristol, 241 Howard, Sir Charles, ist Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, 419; his players, 368, 461-2 Howard, Frances. See Devereux, Frances Howard, Henry, K.G., ist Earl of Northampton, 429 Howard, Thomas (i), K.G., 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey, 272 Howard, Thomas (2), K.G., ist Earl of Suffolk, 395, 401 ; his players, 289 502 INDEX Howe, Mrs., wife of Rev. Thomas, 1S4, 344 Howe, Rev. Josias, b.d., of Trinity Coll., Oxon., son of Rev. Thomas, 184, 185, 344 Howe, Rev. Thomas, of Grendon Underwood, Bucks., 185 Howell, James, Epistol ''C" ferred to, 278, 435, 438, 47 1, 472 Augurs, Masque of, quoted, 463 Barriers at a Wedding, described, 419-20 Bartholomew Fair, quoted, 205, 411-J2, 454, 473; referred to, 399 Blackness, Masque of, described, 414 Catiline his Conspiracy, referred to, 278 Challenge at Tilt, described, 403, 40s Conversations with Drummond, quoted, 310-11 Cynthids Revels, quoted, 466-8, 47 1 ; referred to, 33 Devil is an Ass, quoted, 465 ; re- ferred to, 310 Eastward-Ho, referred to, 478 Epigrams, 278, 471 Every Man in his Humour, 36g-'jo Every Man out of his Humour, 368 Fortunate Isles, Masque of the, 418-19 Fox, or Volpone, 278, 286 Hymen, Masque of, quoted, etc., 398, 404, 410, 480 ; described, 413-18 Irish Masque, described, 403-4 Magnetic Lady, 278 Mercury Vindicated from the Al- chemists, 463 New Inn, quoted, 32 Poetaster, The, 471 ; quoted, 53-4 Prince Henry's Barriers, quoted, 424 Sejanus his Fall, 278 Silent Woman, 471, 476, 477, 478, 481 Underwoods, quoted, 239 Jonsonus Virbiiis, Howell's elegy in, referred to, 278 Jorden, Edward, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 218 Jubilee at Stratford in 1769, 447 Jubilee of Queen Victoria (1887), Masque at Middle Temple during, 195 Jubinal, Achille, his essay on La Chaise-Dieu referred to, 88 Julia Strata. See Ryknield Street Julius Ccesar. See Shakespeare, William (i) K Kawasha, Indian god represented in masque, 406, 407 Katharine of Aragon, Queen-Consort of Henry VHL, 452 Keightley, Thomas, his Fairy Myth- ology referred to, 380 Kemble, Charles, actor, 232, 477 Kemble, John Philip and Stephen, 232 Kemp, William, actor, 53, 198 Kemys, Captain Lawrence, 359 Kensington. See Gravel Pits Kent, Edward, 248, 270 Kent, Edward, jun. , son of Edward, 271 Kent, Joanna, wife of Eldward, 248, 270 Kent, plague in, 245 Kentish Town, Middlesex, 193 Kentwell Hall, Suffolk, 280, 281 Kerns of Ireland, 294 Kettell, Rev. Ralph, D.D., President of Trin. Coll., Oxon., 184-S, 344-S Kiddington, Oxon., 184 Kineton, Warwickshire, 182, 327, 328; informal club at, 331-2; hundred of, 64 King and No King, A. ^is^ Fletcher, John Kingston, Mary Lady, 453 Kingston Russel, Dorset, 323 King-stone, near Long Compton, Warwickshire, 183 Kington, West, Wilts., 347 Kipper-nuts, 164 Kirby, Monk's, Warwickshire, 67 Kirk, Mrs., 300 Kirkham, Edward, 475 Kirkman, Francis, bookseller, 440 Klelia and Sinibald. See Wieland Kiaves, The. See Rowley, William Knell, actor, 180 Knight, Charles, quoted, 23 Knight of the Burning Pestle, The. See Fletcher, John Knightlow Hill and Hundred, War- wickshire, 64 " Knot," meaning of, 331 Knot of Fools, A, unidentified play, 438, 441, 479, and see Chapman, George 504 INDEX Knowle, Warwickshire, Collegiate Church of, II2 Kraus orCrusius, Martin, of Tubingen, Turco-GrcEcia, referred to, 374, 378 Kyd, Thomas, his Spanish Tragedy, quoted, etc., 125, 460, 461, 464. Lacy, John, actor and dramatist, 34S Lady-smocks, 158-9 Lagartos, i.e. alligators, 360 Lake, Sir Thomas, 426 ; letters by, quoted, 427, 480 Lamb, Charles, quoted, lOi, 441 Lambert, Edmund, of Barton-on-the- Heath, Warwickshire, 1 16 Lambeth, Surrey, river-sports at, 427 ; palace-garden at, 309 Lampedusa, island of, its supposed connection with Tempest, 374-94 Lancaster, Earl of. See Thomas "Lands" in husbandry, 140-I Langbaine, Gerard, his Accotmt of English Dramatic Poets, quoted, etc., 22, 442, 444, 473, 478-9, and see Gildon, Charles ; Oldys, William Larks, methods of catching, 153-4 Latin School at Stratford, loo-i Laud, William, D.D., Archbishop of Canterbury, 233, 312, 457 Lauremberg, Dutch farmer, 163 Lavine or Lawne, William de, Doctor of Physic, 456, 458 Law, Mr., his edition of Daniel's Vision, etc., quoted, 412-3 Lear, King, See Shakespeare, William (I) Leatherhead, Lanthorn, character in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, 4^2 Leathersellers' Hall, 213, 215 "Leek," provincial word, 421 Lee Priory, Kent, 444 Leeuwarden, Holland, epitaph at, quoted, 234 Leicester, Earl of. See Dudley, Sir Robert ; Sidney, Robert Leland, John, his Itinerary quoted, J9, 63, 80, 82, 85, 86, 87, 97, 163, 164, 188, 189, i9i,and^£iJ Hearne, Thomas ; Stow, John Le Maire, Guillaume, Bishop of Angers, 152 Le Neve, Rev. John, his Fasti referred to, 342 Lennox, Duke of. See Stuart, Ludo- vick Lenten observances in England, 350-1 Lenton, Francis, of Lincoln's Inn, his Whirligig quoted, 46^ Leo Africanus, 381 ; Pory's transla- tion of, 397 Lepanto, Ships at Battle of, 291 Lepers, bath for, at Bath, 242 ; hospital for, at St. Giles', 192 L'Estrange, Sir Roger, 274 Lewis, Thomas, his Origines Hebrcea referred to, 387 Leyden, John Ray at, 155 " Leys," agricultural term, 142 Licences, Archbishops', issued to doctors, 302 ; marriage, 31-6, 254-5 Lichfield, Staffordshire, 66, 67, 340, 341, 342; siege of, 338 Liddell, H. G. , d.d., and Scott, Robert, D,D., their Greek Lexicon cited, 316 Lilly or Lily, William, his Gram- malices Rtidimenta referred to, 102 Limerick. See Good, I. Lincoln's Inn, 196, 245 ; gentlemen .of, 431 Line-trees, 377 Linnjeus, Carolus, referred to, l6l Lintot, Barnaby Bernard, his edition of Shakespeare's poems quoted, 59-60 Lipari, Islands of, 380 Liquorice, used by druggists, 264 Lisle, Henry de, of Clopton, War- wickshire, 116 Lisle, Baron. See Talbot, John Lisle, Viscount. See Sidney, Robert Lisson Green, Middlesex, 192 Livery of King's players, described, 478 Locket, Besse, in Cheshire tradition, 156 Lockhart, J. G., his Life of Scott quoted, 329 Locko, Derbyshire, 269 Lodge, Thomas,hisi?wa/;'M^e, quoted, 165, 166, 293 Lodington (Luddington), Ralph de, 116 Loftie, Rev. W. J., f.s.a., his History of London quoted, 190, 191, 209 Loggins, Mr., of Butler's Marston, Warwickshire, 332 Lombard Street, Royal Exchange in, 262 Long, Sir Walter, 260 Long Compton, Warwickshire, 183, 184 Long Crendon, Oxon., 185 INDEX 505 Long Melford, Suffolk, 280-2 ; church of, 280-1 Long-purples, 157 Lords, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133 Louis XIII., King of France, death of, 273 Love, Alice, of Wroxall, Warwick- shire, 111-12 Loveday, John, his Tour quoted, 82-3, 160, 183, 184 " Love-in-Idleness," 161 Lovel, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133 Love lyes a bleedinge. See Fletcher, John Lovell, D. , translator of J. de The- venot's Voyages, 379 Love's Labours Lost, See Shake- speare, William (i) Love's Labour's Won, question of identity of, 372-3 Lowin, John, actor, 58, 59, 464, 482 Lowndes, W. T., his Bibliographer's Manual referred to, ^/j, 384 Lucas, T. , of Stratford, 149 Lucatella's Balsam, 301 Lucca. See Bonvisi, Antonio ; epitaph at, 229 Luce, Mr. Morton, his edition of The Tempest, referred to, 146, 164, 373 Lucerne, Dance of Death at, 88 Lucian, referred to, 296 Lucrece. See Shakespeare, William (2) Lucy, Dame Elizabeth, 43-4 Lucy family, 39, 322, 328 ; coat-of- arms of, 40-1, 42-3, 321 Lucy, Mr., of Tiddington, 132, 133 Lucy, Sir Thomas, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43. 322 Lucy, Sir Thomas III., jp, 322 Lucy, Sir William, 44-5 Luddington, Warwickshire, 26, 27, 64, 102 Ludgate, 452, 457, and see Martin, St., church of Ludgate Hill Railway Station, E.G., 451 Lud's-town, name for London, 69 Ludwig of Nassau, Count, 436 Lurchers, 172 Lydgate, John, his verses on the Dance of Death referred to, 87, 89 ; his London Lyckpeny quoted, 324 Lyllyng, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas. See Bernard, Elizabeth Lyllyng, Sir Nicholas, of Abington, Northants, 268 Lyly, John, his Euphues quoted, 313 Lym-hounds, 171 Lymore, 443 Lyte, Henry, of Lyte's Gary, Somer- set, 160 Lyte, Isaac, of Easton Piers, Wilts., 260 M Macbeth. See Shakespeare, William Machabray, Dance of. See Dance of Death Machin, Lewis, 477 ; his Dumb Knight referred to, 460, and see Markham, Gervase Macklin, Gharles, actor, 60, 269 Magdalene ■ GoUege, Cambridge, Pepysian Library at, 449 Magellan (Fernao de Magalhaes), Voyage of, 393, and see Pigafetta, Antonio Magi, cited by Hunter, 386 Magliabecchi, 299 Magnetic Lady, The, See Jonson, Ben Maid's Tragedy, The. See Fletcher, John "Mainour." 5"e(J Manner Mainwaring, Mr., of Stratford, 148, 149 "Majesty," title of, 319 Malaga Sack or Wine, 285 Malcontent, The. See Marston, John ; Webster, John Mallard, references to in Shakespeare, 153 Malmesbury, Wilts., 70 ; hundred of, 260 Malmsey wine, 259, 286 Malone, Edmund, 232 ; his Variorum Shakespeare quoted, etc., 22, 22-3, 26, 27, 28, 37, 38, 42, 49, 179, 180, 181, 198, 223, 224, 246, 247, 248, 251, 253, 2S9, 267, 269, 270, 271, 328, 384, 385, 399, 400, 421, 442, 443, 448, 462, and frequently in notes Malta, George Sandys at, 376-7 ; Knights of, 378 ; supposed trade with Lampedusa, 376 Maltese lapdogs, 171 Mandeville, Travels of Sir John, quoted, 363, 364, 370, 381 " Manner," term in forest-law, 168-9 Manners, Francis, K.G., sixth Earl of Rutland, 405 Manningham, John, of Middle Tem- ple, 200 5o6 INDEX Manoa, city and lake of, 357, 358, 360 Mansell, Sir Robert, Vice-Admiral of England, 287 Mansfield, Notts, Shakespeares at, 109 " Man's life," Hunter's suggestion as to, 381 Manwood, John, of Lincoln's Inn, his Lawes of the Forest qnotei^, 166, 167, 169, 170 Marabouts. See Hadjis Maraiion, river, 360 Maratti, Carlo, 447 Marble Arch, W., 190 Maria de' Medici, Queen-Consort of Henry IV. of France, death of, 273 Marian, Maid, and Sweep, characters in anti-masque, 408 Marignano, Battle of, 386 Marigold, varieties of, 159-60 Markham, Gervase, part author of The Dtunb Knight, 460, and see Machin, Lewis Mark's Day, St., medieval beliefs concerning, 24-5 Marlowe, Christopher, his part in I Henry VI., 335 Marmot, Californian, 365-6 Marriage of Thames and Rhine, The, See Beaumont, Francis, Masque by Marryat, Frederick, c.B., f.r.s., captain R.N,, quoted, 152 Mars hill. Mars strete, 381-2 Marsh, Mr., parson and astrologer, 306 Marston, John, Jj, his Cynic Satire quoted, 50 ; Dutch Courtesan, or Cocledemoy, 478-9 ; Eastward-Ho. See Jonson, Ben ; Insatiate Coun- tess, The, referred to, 477 ; Jack Drum^s Entertainment referred to, 34 ; Malcontent, The, 464, and see Webster John ; Parasitaster, or the Fawn, referred to, 460, 479 ; his Wonder of Women, or Sophonisha, 479 Martial de Paris, quoted, 296 Martin, Richard, Recorder of Lon- don, 431 Martin - le - Grand, St. , Collegiate church of, 135 Martin, St., Ludgate, E.C., church of, epitaph in, 96 Martin, Outwich, St., E.C., church of, epitaph in, 234, 235 ; parish of, 210, 211 Marton, Thomas, of the Chapel Royal, 471 Mary Axe, St., E.C., church and lane, 212 Marylebone, St., Middlesex, 190, and see Conduit-heads Mary-lihes, 162 Mary, Queen of England, her bene- factions to Savoy Hospital, 104 Masques. See Bacon, Francis ; Beau- mont, Francis ; Campion, Thomas ; Chapman, George; Daniel, Samuel; Gray's Inn ; Jonson, Ben. Masques, Shakespeare's attitude to, 41 1 -1 2; his masque in The Tem- pest, 145-7, 157 Massinger, Philip, his Fatal Dowry mentioned, 473, and see Field, Nathaniel Master of the Game at Inner Temple, 194 Mastiffs, 172 " Mathes," weeds in corn, 313 Mauley, family of de, their coat-of- arms, 321 Maurice, Count Palatine, K.G., 436 Maximilian I., King of the Romans, Emperor-elect, 92 Maydenstone or Maydestone, Walter de, Bishop of Worcester, 76, 320 Mayerne, Sir Theodore Turquet de, M.D., 244, 425 Meadow-cress, 158 Measure for Measure. See Shake- speare, William (l) Medical Society of London, 298 " Meers," agricultural term, 141 Melford. See Long Melford Mellificium Chirurgicz, by James Cooke, referred to, 249 MencEchmi. See Plautus. Alenaphon. See Greene, Robert ; Shakespeare's use of name, 199 Merchant of Venice, The. See Shake- speare, William (l) Merchant Taylors' Hall, Entertain- ment in, described 405-6 Mercia, 71 Mercury Vindicated from the Al- chemists. See Jonson, Ben Mere, John le, of Blackfriars, 456 Meres, Rev. Francis, his Palladis Tamia quoted, 236, 372 Merridew, Mr., of Coventry, Guide by, quoted, 92-3 Merry Devil of Edmonton , The, re- ferred to, 282, 438, 440-1 INDEX 507 Merry Wives of Windsor, The. See Shakespeare, William (i) Middelburg, wine-trade at, 283 Middleton, Thomas. See Dekker, Thomas Midsutumer-Nighf s Dream, A. See Shakespeare, William (1) Milan, history of, supposed allusions to, in The Tempest, 381, 385-6 " Milan skins," 4SS Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, 70-1 Milliners in the Strand, 4S4-5 Minden, Dance of Death at, 88 Mines in Wales, 480 Minsheu, John, his Ductorin Linguas quoted, 141, ig4 Mirandola, Miranda and, jSj Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis, by William Barkstead, 477 Misfortunes of Arthur, The. See Hughes, Thomas Mislonde, Esay, servant to Leven Vanderstylt, 217 Missenden, Great and Little, 189 ; priory at Great, 189 " Mistress," title of, 245 Mithridate, 322 Modwenna, St., 96 Monarchicke Tragedies. See Alexan- der, Sir William " Monster," special use of word, 370-1 Montagu, James, Bishop of Win- chester (formerly Bath and Wells), 430 Montague, John, f.r.s., 4th Earl of Sandwich, 376 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de, his Essays. See Florio, John Montgomery, Earl of. See Herbert, Sir PhiHp Montpellier, medical school at, 240, 304 "Moon-dog," 172 Moore, Norman, m.d., his essay on Prince Henry's death referred to, 307. 425 Moore of Venice, The, play, probably Othello, 439 More, Sir Thomas, at Crosby Place, Bishopsgate, 208, 209 ; his Utopia quoted, 2og More, Sir William, 453, 458 Morley, Professor Henry, quoted, 214 Morley, Thomas, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 218 Morris-dancing, 408 Morrison, Richard, lord of the manor of Snitterfield, 108 Morselli, "comfortable and delicate meates," 203 Mortimer, Edmund, 5th Earl of March, 335-6 Morton, John, Cardinal, D.C.L., Arch- bishop of Canterbury, 319 Moryson, Henry, referred to by Hunter, 367 Much Ado about Nothing. See Shake- speare, William (i) Mulmutius, British king, 69, 70 Mum, Brunswick, 283 Mundungus, in tobacco, 205 Mur, river in Styria, 367 Murano, glass from, 322 Murray's Handbook to Eastern Coun- ties, referred to, 281 ; Handbook to Warwickshire, quoted, etc. , 64, 66, So, 183, 331 Murray, Sir James, 478 Muscadel wine, 281, 286 Muses' Looking - Glass, The, See Randolph, Rev. Thomas N Nantwich, Cheshire, 158 Napier or Napper, Rev. Richard, of Great Linford, Bucks., 306 Naples, history of, supposed references to in The Tempest, 381, 3S5 "Naps of Greece, old John," 127, 128 Nares, Robert, Archdeacon of Staf- ford, his Glossary referred to, 182, 20s, 261, 284, 28s, 2gi, 4S4, 457, 467 Naseby.Northants, 134; Battle of, 299 Nash or Nashe, Anthony, of Wel- combe, Warwickshire, father of Thomas (2), 226, 244 Nash, Edward, cousin of Thomas (2), 266, 267, 270, 271 Nash, Elizabeth. See Barnard, Dame Elizabeth Nash or Nashe, John, mentioned in Shakespeare's will, 226 Nash or Nashe, Thomas (i), of St. John's Coll. , Cambridge, his preface to Menaphon quoted, 224, and see Greene, Robert ; his Pierce Penni- lesse quoted, 365 Nash, Thomas (2), of Stratford, first husband of Elizabeth, 60, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 251, 266 Nash, Thomas (3), son of Edward, 267 Nason, John, apothecary, of Strat- ford, 264 5o8 INDEX Nay land, Suffolk, monument at, 321 Neil, Samuel, his Home of Shake- speare quoted, 92, 103, 251 Nennius, British prince, legend of, 69 Nether Stowey, Somerset, 271, and see Walker, Sir Edward Neville, Anne, Countess of Warwick, wife of Richard, 336 Neville, Richard, K.G., Earl of War- wick and Salisbury, jp, 336, 337 Newark-on-Trent, remains of Dance of Death at, 88 Newburgh, Henry de, 1st Earl of Warwick, 107, iii Newburgh, Roger de, 2nd Earl of Warwick, 107 " New Disease," the, 425 New English Dictionary^ referred to, 142, 2gi-2, 31b Newmarket, King James I. at, 434 Newnham, Thomas, priest, of Shot- tery, story of, 135-6 New Place, Shakespeare's house at Stratford, 218, 226, 227, 245, 248, 268, 270, 271, 272 Newsham, Charles, of Chadshunt, Warwickshire, 331 Newton, Prof. Alfred, referred to, 151 Newton, Thomas, d.d., Bishop of Bristol, 48 Niocols, Richard, his Twynnes Trage- die mentioned, 441, 442 Nice Valour, The. See Fletcher, John Nichols, John, 448 ; his Progresses of Queen Elizabeth referred to, iip6, 262-3 ; his Progresses of James I. referred to, jgy, 401, and in notes, 401-36 passim Nichols (? Niccols), Richard, The Furies, by, quoted, 474 Nicodemus, Gospel of, 93 Nicosia, Cyprus, epitaph at, quoted, 234-5 " Nicosiana," name for tobacco, 204 Night-crow, Night-raven, 154-6 "Night of Errors, the," 197-8 Noble Gentleman, The, See Fletcher, John Nobleman, The, unidentified play, 439, 441 Norden, John, his Speculum Britan- nice, quoted, 190 Norembega, name of Virginia, 204 North, Sir John, letter of Howell to, 296-7 North, Sir Thomas, his translation of Plutarch, quoted, 314-15 Northampton, Earl of. See Compton, William ; Howard, Henry Northamptonshire, proverb concern- ing, 268 Northumberland House, fire at, 448 Northward- Ho. See Dekker, Thomas Nottingham, Earl of. See Howard, Sir Charles Numidian crane, the, 375 Nuncupative will, its character, 246 O Cannes, fish-god of the Euphrates, 388 Oar, golden, presented by Raleigh to James I., 358 Ocellce, nickname for small-eyed men, 284 Odcombe, Somerset, 128, and see Coryat, Thomas Offa, King of Mercia, 135 Oldcastle, Sir John, styled Baron Cobham, 282, 446 Oldenburg, invisilDle smith of. See Hiller, the "Old Free-town," 382 Old Town, street in Stratford, 225 Oldys, William, Norroy king-of-arms, 21, 22, 37, 41, 42, 47, 51, 59, 358, 441. 442, 444, 445, 448, 449 ; and see Yeowell, James Olivares, Caspar de Guzman, Conde- Duque de, 292 " Once againe," modus bibendi, 310 O'Neill, Hugh, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, 295 Open - field system of agriculture, 134-5 Orchestra. See Davies, Sir John Ordinances against play-acting, 456 Orellana, Francisco, 360 Orford, Earl of. See Walpole, Horace Origines Hebrcece. See Lewis, Thomas Orinoco, River, 358, 359, 360, 363, 365 Orleans, Howell at, 296 ; white wine of, 260 Orleton, Herefordshire, 142 Ormonde, Duke of. See Butler, James Ostler, William, actor, 471, 472, 476, 483 Othello. See Shakespeare, William ( i ) Otter-hounds, 171 Overbury, Sir Thomas, 398, 409-10, 425, 437 ; his Characters quoted, "3.423 INDEX 509 Ovid, quoted, 236, 279 ; copy of, possibly Shakespeare's, 247 ; and see Golding, Arthur Oxford, 184 ; James I. at, 396 Oxford, Earl of. See Harley ; Vere, de Oysters, fondness of Prince Henry for, 308 Paddington, Middlesex, 165, 192, 263 Page, Sir Francis, judge, 194 Paget, Agnes, Mistress of the Strat- ford guild, her tomb, 83, 86 " Painted cloths," 121-2 Painter, William, his Palace of Pleasure, 479 Palamon and Arcyte. See Edwards, Richard Palladis Tamia. See Meres, Rev. Francis Palma, Sack from, 286 Palmer, Adam, witness of Robert Arden's will, iig, 120 Palsgrave. See Frederick, Count Palatine Pamphilus, St., 338 Pansies, 161-2 Pappus (potato), 204 Paracelsus, Philippus Aureolus, legend of, 390 Parasitaster. See Marston, John Paris, Dance of Death at Notre Dame, 87 ; medical school at, 240 Paris Garden, bear-pit and theatre, 168, 472 Parker, Sir William, his History of Long Melford referred to, 281 Parliament-chamber, in Blackfriars, 452 Parr, Mr., of Blackfriars, embroiderer to Elizabeth and James I., 431 Pasture, rights of, 144-S Patay, Battle of, 296 Pathetic fallacy in Shakespeare, 421-2 Pathlow, liberty of, Warwickshire, 64, 77, 115. 142 Paul's St., children of, 464, 470, 472 ; Dance of Death at, 87 Pauw, C. de, his Richerches quoted, 365. 366 Pavane, 408 Pavy, Salathiel, child of the Chapel Royal, 466, 469, 471 Pawn, the, part of the Royal Ex- change, 262, 42S Payne, Mr. E. J., referred to, 361 Peacham, Henry, of Wymondham, Norfolk, 428 Peele, George, his Arraignment of Paris quoted, 147 Peeres, Mr., of Alveston, Warwick- shire, 331 Pembridge, Hereford. See Sher- burne, Rev. Dr. Pembroke, Countess, Earl of. See Herbert, Mary, Sir Philip, etc. Pembroke and Striguil, medieval Earls of, 68 Pembroke House, Aldersgate Street, E.G., 209 Penn, William, actor, 477-8 Pennant, Thomas, referred to, 25 Peole, Mr., of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 218 Pepys, Samuel, his Diary quoted, 56, 57, 331 ; his library, 448-9 Percy, Thomas, D.D., Bishop of Dromore, 448 Pericles, Prince of Tyre. See Shake- speare, William (i) Periwigs, Dr. Kettell's opinion of, 344 Pestilence of 1593, 468 Peter the Poor, St., 210 ; monument in, 108 Petitions against Blackfriars Theatre, 455-7 Petrarca, Francesco, letter to Fran- cesco Bruni by, quoted, 87-8 Petre, William ; 4th Baron Petre, his house in Aldersgate Street, 301 Pett, Peter, commissioner of the navy, 331 "Petum" or "Petun,' name of to- bacco, 204 Phaer, Thomas, M.D., 237 ; his trans- lation of Virgil quoted, 389, 475 Phelips, Sir Edward, Master of the Rolls, 431 Philaster. See Fletcher, John Philip I., Archduke of Austria and King of Castile, 323 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 125-6 Phillipps, Sir Thomas, Bart., 30 Phillips, Augustine, actor, 48, 53 Phipps, Mr., surgeon, 305 Phoenix Theatre, or Cockpit, 451 Physic Garden at Oxford, 299 Piccard, Nieuhoff, Dutch artist, 89 " Pickadill," form of ruff, 432 Pierce Penniless' Supplication. See Nash or Nashe, Thomas (i) Pierrepont, Henry, ist Marquess of Dorchester, 301 5IO INDEX Pigafetta, Antonio, his Prima Viaggio, referred to, ^gj Pig-nuts, 164, 192 Pilgrim Street, e.g., and the Pilgrims' Way, 451 "Pink-eyed," meaning of, 284 Pinks, 162 " Pioned," meaning of, 146-7 Pipe office and rolls, 453, 458 Piqiie-devant beards, 325 Pitt, William, witness of Robert Arden's will, 120 PlacentulcB, "comfortable and deli- cate meates," 203 Plague, epidemics of, 245 Plato, Apologia Socratis quoted, 237-8 Piatt, Sir Hugh, his Jewell House quoted, 283-4 Plautus, MencBchmi of, 197 ; English translation of referred to, 198 Players, Acts of Elizabeth against strolling, 98-9 Pliny, Historia Naturalis referred to, 363, 366 ; and see Holland, Phile- mon Pocohontas, Virginian princess, daugh- ter of Powhatan, 407 Poe, Edgar Allan, quoted, 155 Poetaster^ The. See Jonson, Ben. Poincy, L. de, his Histoiredes Antilles quoted, 371 Pollard, Thomas, actor, 4.81, 4.82 Pomeranian dogs, 171 Pons, Dr. Jacques, of Lyons, his work on bleeding, 244 Pontefract, Yorkshire, liquorice grown at, 264 Pope, actor, 53 Pope, Alexander, referred to, 47, 48, 236, 343 Popham, Captain, letters discovered by, 364-5 Porlock, Somerset. See Ward, Rev. Hamnett Porter, Hugh, of Snitterfield, War- wickshire, iig Porter, Captain Thomas, letter from Howell to, 287 Portugal Row, W.C, Duke of York's Theatre in, 461 Portugal, wine trade of, 284 Pory, John, letter by, to Sir Robert Cotton, quoted, 397, 398, 413-15 Post Revels, 195 "Potan." i'^i? Powhatan Potatoes, 202-3 Poultry, E.C., 262-3 Powhatan, Emperor of Virginia, 407, 432 Powis, Marquess of. See Herbert, William (2) Prague, Battle of (1620), 424 Priciputs, custom of, 228 Preston Deanery, Northants, 268 Pricket, buck of second year, 170 Printing-House Square, E.C., 452 Prior, Life of Malone, quoted, 447-8 Private theatres, 451 ; their pecu- liarities, 463-4 Probus, Emperor, 14$ Profanity in plays, 444 Prologue, customs of, 465 Prospero, Hunter's theories as to, 388-9 Ptolemy, astronomer, 315 Pudding Lane, E.C., 274 Puddle Dock, E.G., 452 Pueri Pauperes at Oxford, 340 Puj-itan, The, anonymous play, quoted, 340 "Purpoole, Prince of," 195, 196, 199 Pylius, i.e. Nestor, 236 Pythagoras, Shakespearean allusions to, 295-6 Pytheas of Marseilles, 380 "Quack," the lesser heron, 155 Quarles, publisher, 313 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. See George, St., church of Queen Victoria Street, E.G., 451 "Queeny" (Quiney), Mrs., of Strat- ford, perhaps wife of Thomas (2) Quiney, 252, 261, 262 Quiney, Adrian (i), 180 Quiney, Adrian (2), Bailiff of Strat- ford, son of Adrian (i), 254 Quiney, Adrian (3),sonof Richard (i), 254 Quiney, Anne, daughter of Richard (i), 254 Quiney, Bartholomew, draper, of Fleet Street, 180 Quiney, Elizabeth (i), wife of Richard (i), 258 Quiney, Elizabeth (2), daughter of Richard (i), 254 Quiney family in Isle of Man, 180 Quiney, Rev. George, curate, of Stratford, son of Richard (i), 240, 254, 265 Quiney, Judith, nee Shakespeare, wife of Thomas (i), 27, 131, 223-7 passim, 252-67 passim INDEX 511 Quiney, Mary, daughter of Richard ( i ) , , 2.54 Quiney, Richard (i). Bailiff of Strat- ford, son of Adrian (i), 42, 135, 179, 180, 219, 252, 253, 254, 258 Quiney, Richard (2), grocer in Buck- lersbury, son of Richard (i), 181, 254, 259, 261, 267 Quiney, Richard (3), son of Thomas (I). 259 Quiney, Shakespeare, son of Thomas (I), 259 Quiney, Thomas (i), vintner, of Strat- ford, son of Richard (i), 27, 252-67 passim Quiney, Thomas (2), son of Richard (2), 261, 262 Quiney, Thomas (3), son of Thomas (I). 259 Quiney, William (i), son of Richard (I). 254 Quiney, William (2), of Shottery, son of Richard (2), 262 "Quiny," Mr., probably Rev. George Quiney, 265 R Rabelais, Francois, his Pantagruel quoted, 144 Rabon, John, of Wroxall, iii Radcliffe, Sir Robert, 5th Earl of Sussex, nephew of Sir Thomas, 419 Radcliffe, Sir Thomas, 3rd Earl of Sussex, his players, 99 Ragged robin, 157 Ralegh, Carew, son of Sir Walter, letter of Howell to, 359 Ralegh, Sir Walter, his voyage to Guiana, 357-8 Ralph. See Stratford, Ralph de Ramel, Henry, Chancellor of Den- mark, his visit to London, 206 Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, his Raccolta, etc., referred to, jpj Randolph, Rev. Thomas, his Aluses' Lookijtg- Glass quoted, 261, 4^4, 459 " Rascal Jacks," nickname for a class of undergraduates, 345 Rastell, John, his Termes de la Ley quoted, 33 Rawlinson, Rt. Rev. Richard, D.C.L. , 449; his MSS., 449, 476 Ray, John, of Trinity Coll., Cam- bridge, his Collection of English Words quoted, 156, 421 ; his Travels quoted, 155, 161, 162,163; his Wisdom Sforza, Massimiliano, Duke of Milan, son of Ludovico, 385 "Shadow" in theatres, 462-3 Shadwell, Thomas, 346 Shaftesbury, Earl of. See Cooper, Anthony Ashley Shakespeare, Agnes, wife of William (3), "2 Shakespeare, Anne, wife of William (i), 26-38 passim, 227, 231 ; her grave, 82 ; inscription on tomb quoted, etc., 228-9 Shakespeare, Antony, of Wroxall, son of John (4), 1 1 1 Shakespeare, Ellen (afterwards Baker), wife of John (4), iii Shakespeare, Gilbert, son of John (2), SI, 52, 140 Shakespeare, George, of Rowington, 130 Shakespeare, Hamnet, son of William (i), 223, 224 Shakespeare, Henry, of Snitterfield, son of Richard (2), 112 Shakespeare, Isabella, prioress of Wroxall, III Shakespeare, Joan, daughter of John (2). See Hart, Joan Shakespeare, John (i), of Rowington, 130 Shakespeare, John (2), son of Richard (2), Bailiff of Stratford, 22, 31, 74, 7S> 78, 79, 104, 107, 112, 113, 120, 179, 224, 348, 349 Shakespeare, John (3), of Stratford, shoemaker, 21, no Shakespeare, John (4), of Wroxall, III, 112 Shakespeare, John (5), of Wroxall, no Shakespeare, Judith, daughter of WiUiam (l). See Quiney, Judith Shakespeare, Laurence, of Balsall, no Shakespeare, Mary (,7iee Arden), wife of John (2), 25, 116, 120, 122, 224 Shakespeare, Richard (i), of Rowing- ton, 130 Shakespeare, Richard (2), of Snitter- field, 107, no, 112, 116 Shakespeare, Richard (3), of Wroxall, no, 112 2 L 514 INDEX Shakespeare, Roger, monk of Bordes- ley, 109 Shakespeare, Susanna, daughter of William (i). See Hall, Susanna Shakespeare, Thomas (i), of Rowing- ton, 130 Shakespeare, Thomas (2), Bailiff, of Warwick, iio Shakespeare, Thomas (3), shoemaker, of Warwick, no Shakespeare, William (i), son of John (2), his birth and baptism, 22-5 ; his marriage, 26-38 ; deer- stealing legend, 38-45 ; the Dave- nant legend, 45-7, 347-8 ; journey to and arrival in London, 38, 179-82 ; his traditional brigade of horse-boys, 48-51 ; as an actor, traditions of, 51-9; a member of James Burbage's company, 483 ; alleged letter to, from James I., 59-60 ; his connection with Wilm- cote, 123-8; his copyhold in manor of Rowington, 130, 131, 226, 256; his interest in the Stratford tithes, I3S> 253 ; his interest in the Strat- ford common-fields, 139-40, 142 ; his protest against inclosure of Welcombe field, 148-9 ; probably present at Comedy of Errors in Gray's Inn (i594), 198; with actors at Greenwich Palace, 198; possibly a householder in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 205-6, 214, 218-20 ; a householder in Blackfriars, 205, 227, 456; his will, 131-2, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 255-7 ; his death and burial, 230-1 ; his grave and monument, 82, 230-9, 332-3, 341-2 ; Ward's notes on and stories of, 306-13; Aubrey's stories of, 345-8 ; Aubrey's butcher- boy story, 348-53 ; subsequent reputation of, 442 Shakespeare, William (i), plays and poems of, references to and quota- tions from — All's Well that E7ids Well, 167, 372, 435, 444, ^69, and see Bad Beginning makes a Good Ending, A, and Love's Labour's Won Antony and Cleopatra, 141, 153, 284, 295-6, 4bg As You Like Lt, 32, 37, 12 1-2, 123, 143, 165, 166, 293, 295, 352, 386, 464 Comedy of Errors, 196, 197, 198, 199. 372, 382, 433 Coriolanusy 156, 167, 46^ Cymbeline, 68, 69, 70, 71, 159, 167, 291, 292 Hamlet, 56-7, 58, 59, 90, 99, 100, 146,153. 157,161, 167,283,292, 304, 30s. 324-S. 329) 333, 343, 464 Henry IV., King, part i, , 84, 122, 168, lyi, 182, 212, 259, 313, 388, 445 Henry IV., King, part ii., 84, 121, 128, 143, 182, 196, 212, 255, 286, 337, 352, 445-6, ^67 Henry V, King, 143, 146, I4g, r^y, 160, 161, 168, 171, 265, 317, 318, 319, 369,445 Henry VI., King, part i., 44, 45, 296, 335. 336, 462 Henry Vl., King, part ii., 32, 72, 280, 316, 317, 318, 336, 337, 350, 351 Henry VI. , King, part iii., 154, 169, 207, 242 Henry VIIL, King, 57, 58, 154, 208, 329, 411, 450, 4^2, 463 Julius Ccesar, 237, 315, 442-3 Lear, King, 124, 143, 156, 158, 160, 161, 170-1, 172, 340-1 Loves Labour's Lost, loi, 102, 124, 131, 145, 150, 153, 158, 159, 167, 169, 170, 190, 202, 224, 238, 2gi, 335> 352, 372, 380, 382, 412,468 Lucrece, 119, 123, 180, 313 Macbeth, 122, 155, 156, 1^2, 314, 329 Measure for Measure, 128, 187,259, 351 Merchant of Vemce, The, 325, 443 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 42, 102, 122, 156, 167, 168, 203, 264, 324, 331, 349, 362, 436, 445 Midsummer- N ight' s Dream, A, 150,151,153,161,173, 176,184, 185, 186, 372, 421, 445 Much Ado about Nothing, 79, 80, I53» 154-5, 186, 187, 224, 263, 372, 438, 444-5 Othello, 232, 263, 290, 364 Pericles, 202, 313, 407 Richard I I ., King, 84, 91, 10 1, 186, 308 Richard III., King, 43, 44, 207, 219, 316, 319 Romeo and Juliet, gi, 156, 239, 351, 382, 460 Sonnets, 37, 38, 90, 96, 101-2, 145, 150, 159. 237, 238, 241, 263, 314, 325, 329, 335 INDEX 515 Taming of the Shrew, 64-5, 79, 99, 125, 126, 127, 128, 173, 174, 175, 324 Tempest, 58, 144, 145, 146, 147, 154, 157, 164, 239, 286, 288, 302, 313, 324, 357, 361, 362, 370, 373> 376, 378, 381, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393. 394, 398, 402, 404, 409, 410, 41 1, 414, 420, 421, 422, 423, 432, 434, 435, 437, 439, 444, 448, 450, 460, 461, 462, 463, 4bg, 474, 475 Timon of Athens, 142, 757, 243, 412 Titus Andronicus, 102 Troilus and Cressida, 237 Twelfth Night, 103, 200, 224, 230, 296, 351, 409, 445 Two Gentlemen of Verona, 144, 1 70, 314, 352, 372, 420 Venus and Adonis, 141, 153, 154, 174, 180, 238, 313 Winter's Tale, 144, 162, 185-6, 439. 443 Shakespeare, William (2), of Temple Grafton, Warwickshire, 34 Shakespeare, William (3), of War- wick, probably son of Thomas (3), no Shakespeare, William (4), of Wroxall, 112 Shanks, John, actor, 482, 483, 484 Shaw, Julius, of Stratford, 230 Sheffield, John, ist Duke of Bucking- hamshire, 59, 60 Shenstone, Staffordshire, 67 Sherburne, Rev. Dr., of Pembridge, Herefordshire, 347 Sherley, John, printer, 249 Sherry, 285, 286 Shiels, Robert, 49 Shilleto, A. R. , his edition of Burton's Anatomy quoted, 146 Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, 182 Shirley, James, dramatist, 185 ; quoted, 4S7 Shoe Lane, Berkeley Mansion in, 193 " Shooty, brave Master," meaning of allusion, 128 Shoreditch. See Curtain Theatre, Green Curtain play-house. Theatre, the ; tradition of Shakespeare's residence near, 206 Shottery, 135, 136, 245, 261, 266, and see Hathaway, Anne, etc. Shrewsbury, Earl of. See Talbot, Gilbert Shuckborough or Shuckburgh, Sir Richard, of Shuckburgh, Warwick- shire, 321 Sicily and its Islands. See Smyth, Admiral W. H. Sicily, origin of fumitory in, 161 Siddons, Sarah, nee Kemble, actress, 232 Sidney, Mary. See Herbert, Mary Sidney, Sir Philip, 50, 209, 337, 338; his Apologiefor Poetrie quoted, 461 ; his Arcadia quoted, loi, 173 Sidney, Robert, Earl of Leicester and Viscount Lisle, 192 Siege of Rhodes, The. See Davenant, Sir William Silent Woman, The. 6'ise Jonson, Ben Silius Italicus, his Tunica referred to, 236 Simpson, Giles, court goldsmith, 431 Sims, James, m.d., 297 Sinklow, actor, 169, 464 Sipapo, River, 365 Sir Francis Drake. See Davenant, Sir William " Sizings," word in use at Cambridge, 340 Skeat, Prof. W. W., Litt. D., his Specimens of Efiglish Literature referred to, 324 Skelton, John, his Bouge of Courie referred to, 46J Skerlett, John. See Scarlet, John Skidmore. See Scudamore " Skyrrits of Peru," synonym for potatoes, 203 Sly, Stephen, of Stratford, 127 Sly, William, actor, 464, 466 Smith, Cecil, his Birds of Somerset- shire quoted, 152 Smith, E. Toulmin, English Guilds, referred to, 83 Smith, Hamlet, of Stratford, 181, 224 Smith, Helen, sister of Hamlet. See Scudamore, Helen Smith, Henry, of Stratford, 270 Smith, John, actor, 477, 478 Smithfield, 182 Smug the Smith, 282, 408 ; synonym for Merry Devil of Edmonton, 440 Smyth, John, his Lives of the Berkeley s quoted, 193 Smyth, Admiral W. H., his Sicily and its Islands quoted, 374, 375, 376, 377 Snitterfield, Warwickshire, 107-16 Snoade, Mr., of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 218 5i6 INDEX Socrates, 236, 237-8 Solinus, referred to, 366 Somerset, Duke of. See Seymour, Sir Edward Somerset, Earl of. See Carr, Robert Somerset, Edward, K.G. , 4th Earl of Worcester, son of William, 419 Somerset, William, k.g., 3rd Earl of Worcester, his players, 99, 100 Somerville, family of, 321 Somner, William, his Dictionarium referred to, 339 Sonnets, See Shakespeare, William ( I ) Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 424 Sophonisba^ Tragedy of. See Marston, John Sore, Sorel, names given to bucks, 170 Southall, Middlesex, 190 Southampton,Earlof. ^'tf^Wriothesley, Henry Southwell, Edward, letter by Dowdall addressed to, 328 Spadafora, Placido, his Patronymica referred to, 236-7 Spain, Potatoes in, 203 Spain, Queen of. See Elizabeth (3) Spaniels, water-spaniels, 172 Spanish Gipsy, The. See Rowley, William Spanish Tragedy, The. See Kyd, Thomas Specchio del Mare, See Coronelli, Vincenzo Spedding, James, /^j", 196 ; his Life of Bacon quoted, ig6 Speed, John, his Historie, etc. , quoted, 208; his T'/^^a^r^, etc. , quoted, 163 Spence, Joseph, his Anecdotes re- ferred to, 47 Spencer, Dame Alice, wife of Sir John, 210 Spencer, Elizabeth. See Compton, Elizabeth Spencer, Sir John, Lord Mayor of London, 209, 210, 215 Spenser, Edmund, 447, 47() ; his Faerie Queene quoted, 146, 241, 361 ; Shepheards Calender, 146 ; View of Ireland, 294 Spider, legend of, and unicorn's horn, 302 Spirit, sketch of, as represented on stage, 419 Spleen-stones, 360 Squacco heron, 155 "Stable-stand," term in forest-law, 169 Stage, in private theatres, 459 ; covering of. See " Heavens," Shadow ; custom of sitting on, 465-8 Stags from Denmark, 437 Stand, shooting from the, 169 Stangate, in Lambeth, 427 Stanhope, Sir John, 1st Baron Stan- hope of Harrington, 436, 437, 438, 446, 447, 448 Stanley, Ferdinando, 5th Earl of Derby and Baron Strange, his players, 100 Stanley, Henry, K.G., 4th Earl of Derby, his players, lOO Starch, yellow, 410, 454 Stationers' Register, referred to, 440 Steele, Sir Richard, 57 Steelyard, 282 Steevens, George, f.r.s. , f.s.a., quoted, etc., 38, 237, 437-8, 444, 445. 447 Stephen, St., Coleman Street, parish of, 181 Stilton, Matthew, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 217 Stirling, Earl of. See Alexander, Sir William Stone, Nicholas, master-mason, 447 "Stooming" of wine, 285 Stopes, Mrs. C. Q.,\itx. Shakespeare^ s Family referred to, 225, 248 Stour, River, in Warwickshire, 67, 68, 183 " Stover," meaning of, 147 Stow, John, \i\% Annals o^o\.&A, 210; his Survey of London quoted, etc. , 85, 86, 87, 96, 104, 109, 152-3, 192, 193, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 219, 263, 4S2, 453. 45S Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire. See Ward, Rev. Thomas Strachey, William, of Gray's Inn, his Virgitiia quoted, 407-8 Strange, Baron. See Stanley, Fer- dinando Stratford - on - Avon, Warwickshire, 63-104 ; account of, by Dowdall, 332-3 ; meaning of name, 320 ; records referred to, 100, 102, 156, 258 ; register referred to, 324 Stratford, John de. Archbishop of Canterbury, 80, 84, 85 Stratford, Old, Warwickshire, 135, 140 Stratford, Ralph de. Bishop of Lon- don, 80 INDEX 517 Stratford, Robert de, Bishop of Chichester, 80, 84, 85, 135 Strawberry Hill, Walpole's library at, 447 Streeche, Dame Isabel, wife of Sir John (I), 13s Streeche, Sir John (i), of Shottery, 135 Streeche, Sir John (2), son of Sir John (I), 135 Street-Ashton, Warwickshire, 67 Stretford, hundred of, Herefordshire, 228 Stretton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire, 67 Stretton-on-the-Foss, Warwickshire, Stretton-under-Fosse, Warwickshire, 67 Striguil, castle of, Monmouthshire, 08 Stromboli, island of, 380 Struma, or goitre, 367 Stype, John, referred to, 114, 191 Stuart, Arabella, 289 Stuart, Frances, Duchess of Rich- mond and Lennox, 302 Stuart, Ludovick, 2nd Duke of Lennox, 405. 419 " Study of books," use of phrase, 247 Stukely, Rev, William, m.d. , etc., of St. George's, Queen Square, 304 Sturley, Abraham, of Stratford, letter by, quoted, 135, 219, 252-3, 260 Subsidy of 1598, assessment of, 206, and see Assessment Suffolk, Earl of. See Howard, Thomas Sugar, mixed with sack, 285, 286 Sully, Maximilian de Bethune, Due de, in London, 210 Sunderland, Countess of. .S^^Scrope — Supplication of the Poor Commons, quoted, 166 Sussex, Earl of. See Radcliffe, Sir Robert and Sir Thomas Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, 67, 122, 125, 15s, 262 Swan Inn at Stratford, 324 Swanne, Mr., surgeon, 308 Swansea, Glamorganshire, 287 Swanston, Heliard, actor, 473, 481 Swayne, Edward, of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 217 Sycorax, Hunter's theories concern- ing, 389-90 Sydenham, Thomas, M.D., 299-300 Sylvester, Josuah, his translation of Du Bartas quoted, 4^^ ; his Tobacco Battered quoted, 260 Symboleograpkie. See West, William Symonds, Ralph, his Diary quoted, 273. 321 Symons, Thomas, skinner, alderman's deputy for Bishopsgate ward, 215 Syrian wolves, 293 Tabard Inn, Southwark, 453 Talbot, Charles, Baron Talbot of Hensol, Lord Chancellor, 194 Talbot, Gilbert, 7th Earl of Shrews- bury, 206 Talbot, John, Baron Lisle of King- ston Lisle, jp Talbots, English dogs, 174 •' Talsheids," equivalent to faggots, Tamworth, 72 Tanner, Thomas, D.D., Bishop of St. Asaph, his Notitia Monastica re- ferred to, 189 Tanners' Act of 1530, 350 Tardebigge, Worcestershire, 41 " Tarrarags," nickname for a class of undergraduates, 345 Taunton, coat-of-arms of, 321 Tavistock Abbey, Devon, 323 Taylor, Joseph, actor, 56, 58, 59, 482 Taylor, Baron, his Voyages referred to, 89 Taylor, John, the water-poet, quoted, 47, 282, 322, 404, 463 Taylor, Dr. Richard, of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 217 Tempest, The. See Shakespeare, William (i) Temple Grafton, Warwickshire, 34, 35 Temple, Inner, solemn revels at, 194 ; masque of, and Gray's Inn. See Beaumont, Francis. Temple, Middle, masques and revels at, 195, 200 ; gentlemen of, 43 1 Tennis Court Theatre, 461 Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron Tenny- son, quoted, 155, 157, 158, 422 Terriers, 171 Thame, Oxon., 185 " Tharborough " or " thirdborough," meaning of, 124 Theatre, The, Shoreditch, 50, 180, 483 Theobald, Lewis, 146-7, 373 Theobalds Park, Herts., 437 Thevenot, Jean de, his Voyages au Levant quoted, 378-9 5i8 INDEX Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, brother of Edward I., 152 Thompson, John, actor, 482 Thorns, W. J., F.S.A., his Anecdotes quoted, 312 Thorney Abbey, Cambridgeshire, 323 Threadneedle Street, E.G., 234 Throckmorton, Sir Robert, 321 Thurnam, John, m.d., f.r.c.p., his tract on Waylatid Smith referred to, 380 Thwaites, Rev, Edward, of Queen's Coll., Oxon., letter by, quoted, 339 Thynne, Lady Isabella, 344 Tiddington, Warwickshire, farm of, 129, 132-4 Titnon of Athens. See Shakespeare, William (l) Tippling Acts, 258 Tithe-barn at Stratford, 102 Tithes, story concerning, 325-6 ; the Stratford, 135 Tithing-man. See Headborough Titus Andronicus. See Shakespeare, William (i) Tobacco, varieties of, 204 " Toil," sporting term, 167 ' ' Tokens " of pestilence, 468, ^69 Tomatoes, 202 Tomlins, Goody, of Stratford, 301 Tommasi family of Palermo, 375 Toon, Stephen, apothecary, of Oxford, 300 Topago, Provinces of, 360 Topcliffe, Yorkshire, 404 Topsell, Rev. Edward, his Historie of Foure-footed Beastes referred to, 366 Tortugas, turtles, mentioned by Ralegh, 360 Tortura oris, Elizabeth Hall's attack of, 243 Tothill, William, his Transactions of Chancery quoted, 148 Totnes, Earl and Countess of. See Carew, Sir George and Joyce Tottel, Richard, publisher, 89 Tower of London, Dance of Death in, 88 Town-hall at Stratford, New, 98 Townsend, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133 Trapani, in Sicily, 379 Trapp, Rev. John, of Weston-on-Avon and Welford, Warwickshire, 241 Trapp, Rev. Simon, of Stratford, 246 Travaile into Virginia. See Strachey, William " Traverse" on stage of theatres, 461 Treacle, Venice, 322 Treasurer of the Chamber, office of, 437 Trenchard, Sir Thomas, 323 Trinidada tobacco, or Trinidado, 204, 466 " Troglodytic " caves at Lampedusa, 375 Trowbridge, Wilts., 134 Tumbler dogs, 1 72 Tumblers, companies of, 99 Ttirco-GrcEcia. See Kraus, Martin Turner, Mrs. Anne, 409-10, 425 Turnor, Dr. Peter, of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 217 Turnspit dogs, 172 Turpentine, Venice, 301 Turquil the Saxon, 107 Twelfth Night. See Shakespeare, William (I) " Twilled," meaning of, 146 Twins, The. See Niccols, Richard ; Rider, William Two Gentlemen of Verona. See Shakespeare, William (l) Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools, anon3'mous play, 441 Tyara, Peter, epitaph of, at Leeu- warden, 234 Tyburn, Middlesex, 190, 191, 410 Tycho Brahe, 315 " Tyings," agricultural term, 142, 144 Tyler, Dorothy, of Shottery, 42 Tyndale, William, his version of the Bible referred to, 382 Typhoid fever and typhus, varieties of, 307. 308, 425 U " Uncape," sporting term, 167 Underwood, John, actor, 466, 467, 469, 471-2, 473, 476, 482, 483 Unicorn's horn, legends concerning, 302 Uniformity, Act of (1662), 262 Union Street, E.G., 452 " Unkennel," sporting term, 167 Urban V., Pope, 304 Urban of Belluno, 236 Urso d'Habetot, Lord of Wilmcote, Warwickshire, 115 Utopia. See More, Sir Thomas "Utter-barristers" of the Middle Temple, 200 Uvedale, Sir William, 437 Uxbridge, Middlesex, 189-790 INDEX 519 Vale, Robert de, of Wilmcote, 116 Valentinian. See Fletcher, John Valor Ecclesiasticus (1534), 112 Vanderstylt, Leven, of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 217 Varro, M. Terentius, Jonson's ob- ligations to, 416 Vaughan, Henry, "Silurist," 185 Vaughan, William, LL.D., his Golden Grove quoted, 25 Venables, Rev. Edmund, precentor of Lincoln, referred to, 30J Venice, Howell at, 201, 287-92; players from, in England, 289 Venner, Tobias, m.d., his Baths of Bathe quoted, etc., 242, sS^^ ; his Via Recta quoted, 259, 260, 261, 264-S, 285, 286 Venus and Adonis. See Shakespeare, William (i) Vere, Aubrey de, son of John, 281 Vere, John de, 12th Earl of Oxford, 281 Vere, Lady Susan de, daughter of Edward, 17th Earl of Oxford, 397 Verity, Mr. A. W., referred to, 473-4 Verney, Sir Richard, 149 " Veronesa," ship of Verona, 290 Vertue, George, engraver, his MSS. , 400, 438, 442, 444, 446-9 Verulam, Roman road at, 65 Villafranca. ^^e " Old Free-Town " Villiers, Sir George, K.G., ist Duke of Buckingham, 244, 409 Villiers, George, 2nd Duke of Buck- ingham, The Rehearsal, chiefly by, quoted, 58 Villon, Franfois, quoted, 296 Vincent of Beauvais, his Speculum referred to, 363 Vincent's Well, St., near Bristol, 241 Vine Inn, in Bishopsgate Street, 211 Vine, The, near Basing, Hants., 143 Vines in England, 145 Vintners' Company, records of, re- ferred to, 181 Violets in Shakespeare's plays, 162 Virgil, legends concerning, 386 Virgil, translation of, quoted. See Phaer, Thomas Virginia, tobacco from, 204 Virtue, George, National Gazetteer, published by, referred to, i8j Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. See Daniel, Samuel Vives, Johannes Ludovicus, d.c.l., of C.C.C., Oxon., 125 Voisy, Veysey, Voysey, or Harman, John, LL.D., Bishop of Exeter, 125 Voragine, Jacobus de, Archbishop of Genoa, his Aurea Legenda, 93, 94 W Wake, William, D.D., Archbishop of Canterbury, 449 Walford, Edward, his Greater London referred to, 342 Walker, Barbara. See Clopton, Dame Barbara Walker, Sir Edward, Garter King-of- Arms, 271, 272, 273, 274 Walker, Elizabeth, 7^^£ Sadler, 181 Walker, Mr., Nonconformist divine at Ilmington, Warwickshire, 241 Walker, William, godson of Shake- speare, 226 Wall (Letocetum), near Lichfield, 66 Waller, Edmund, 185, 344, 348; quoted, 439 Wallingford, Berks., pestilence at, 308 Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford, 443> 447 Walter. See Cantelupe, Grey, May- denstone, Walter de Wanley, Humphrey, 340 Warburton, William, D.D., Bishop of Gloucester, quoted, 411 Ward, A. W., Litt. D., his English Dramatic Literature referred to, 50,54,59, 295, 335 > 439, 443, 445, 457, ^6/, 464, 473, 477 Ward, Rev. Hamnett, M.D., of Por- lock, Somerset, 304 Ward, Rev. John, Vicar, of Stratford- on-Avon, his Diary quoted, 225, 229, 235, 236, 240, 244, 247, 252, 254, 261, 262, 264, 265, 268, 272, 273, 274, 280, 283, 2(^2,-2,26 passim, 358, 425, 430 Ward, John, actor, 232 Ward, Rev. Thomas, of Stow-on-the- Wold, Gloucestershire, 313 Warde Barnes, near Wilmcote, War- wickshire, 116 Wardrobe, King's, St. Andrew's Hill, E.G., 452, 456 Warmstry, Robert, notary, of Wor- cester, 36 Warner, John, parish clerk of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 211 520 INDEX Warton, Rev. Thomas, b.d., 383-4; his History of English Poetry quoted, 384 Warwick, 188 ; assizes at, 149, 328 ; collegiate church of St. Mary at, io7> 334 ; Earls of. See Beauchamp, Dudley, Edward, Greville, Neville, Newburgh, Rich ; epitaph at, quoted, 235, 238 ; "Warwick's Lands," 108 Warwickshire, its divisions, 64, 163 ; Laud's visitation of, 233 Washburn, Mr. , of Oriel Coll. , Oxon., quoted by Ward, 254, 430 Water Lane, E.G., 451, 458 Watling Street, course of Roman road, 65-6 Watts, Richard, of Rhyon-ClifFord, Warwickshire, 251 Waugh, John, tutor of Queen's Coll., Oxon., 342 Wayland Smith, legend of, 380 Wealden of Warwickshire, 163 Webb, Agnes. See Arden, Agnes Webster, John, his induction to The Malcontent quoted, 4S4, 464, 466, and see Marston, John ; his White Devil quoted, J14 ; his Northward- Ho and Westward- Ho. See Dekker, Thomas Welcker, F. T., his Sylloge Epi- grarnmatum quoted, 234, 235 Welcombe, Warwickshire, 127, 135, 140, 148 Wellesbourne Mountford, Warwick- shire, 133 Wendover, Bucks., 188 West, Thomas, of Snitterfield, War- wickshire, 108 West, William, of the Middle Temple, his Symboleographie referred to, 367-8 Westbourne Brook, Middlesex, 190 Westminster, roads from Tyburn to, 191 Westney, Richard, churchwarden of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213 Weston-on- Avon, Gloucestershire, 26, 27, 36 Westward-Ho. See Dekker, Thomas Whatcot, Robert, of Stratford, 230 Whately, Anne, of Temple Grafton, Warwickshire, 34 Wheat, price of, in 1598, 219 Wheatley, Oxon., 184 Wheler, R. B., his History of Strat- ford xQiQXXQA to, etc., 60, 139, 232, 233 " Whifflers" at theatres, 197 "Whispering Knights," the, at Roll- right, Oxon., 183 White Lake, the, in Guiana, 358 White, Robert, portraits of James Cooke by, 249 Whitefriars Theatre, 426, 427, 451, 471, 476, 480, 481 Whitehall Palace, Dance of Death at, 89 ; Masque of Flowers performed at, 195 ; weddings, masques, and plays at, 395-449 passim, 478 Whitehall Stairs, sham sea-fight off, 427-8 ; procession at, 432 White Hart Inn, at Lichfield, 34I Whitgift, John, D.D. , Archbishop of Canterbury (formerly Bishop of Worcester), 33, 36 Whitlow-grass, 192 Wieland, Christoph Martin, Klelia and Sinibald of, referred to, 377-8 Wild-fowl, breeding of, etc., 150-1 Wilkes, Mr., interview of Capell with, 41, 51 Willes, Richard, his translation of Pigafetta's Viaggio, jgj William IL, 107 William. See Blois, William de Willughby, Francis, F.R.S., 155 Wilmcote, Warwickshire, 64, 77, I15-16, 119, 123-8, 173, 174 Wilson, Anne, n^e Hathaway, wife of William, 26 Wilson, Arthur, his History quoted, etc., 395, 396, 399, 411 Wilson, Mrs., of Stratford, 241 Wilson, Rev. Thomas, b.d.. Vicar, of Stratford, 233 Wilson, Mr., Nonconformist divine at Stratford, 241 Winchcomb, Tideman de. Bishop of Worcester, 303 Winchester House, 432 Winchester pipes, 205 Wincote. See Wilmcote Windle, Prof. B. C. A., m.d., f.s.a., etc., his Shakespeare's Country re- ferred to, 80 Windsor, installation of the Elector Frederick in St. George's Chapel at, 436 Winfrith, hundred of, Dorset, 124 Winter's plan of Stratford, referred to, 142 Winterbourne, Gloucestershire, ^03 Winter's Tale. See Shakespeare, William (i) Winwood, Sir Ralph, lettei; of Sir D. INDEX 521 Carleton to, 414 ; letters of Cham- berlain to, 426, 431, 434, 435 Wither, George, his Sighs for the Pitchers quoted, 315 Wits, The. See Davenant, Sir William Wixford, Warwickshire, 67 Woburn Abbey, Beds., 323 Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal, Arch- bishop of York, 452 Wolves, legends of, 293-5 Woman's Bridge at Aylesbury, Bucks. , 188 Woman-Hater, The. See Fletcher, John Woman is a Weathercock, A. See Field, Nathaniel Woncot. See Wilmcote Wonder of Women, The. i'^.s Marston, John Wood, Anthony k, his Athence quoted, 46, 176, 185,^96 Woodstock, Oxon., 184 Woodward familyof Butler's Marston, Warwickshire, 3J1 Worcester, i6j ; Bishops of, their privileges at Stratford, 71-8 ; Earls of, see Beauchamp, Richard (2) ; Somerset, Edward and William Worcestershire, hunting in, 175 Worms, death of Lord Harington of Exton at, 4j6 Wortley Hall, Gloucestershire, Dance of Death at, 88 " Wo worthe the, Lenttone," ballad, quoted, 351 Wrestlers Inn, Bishopsgate Street, 211 Wright, James, his Historia His- trionica quoted, 56, 461, 473 Wright, Nathaniel, of St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, 213 Wright, Thomas, F.S.A., 351 ; his Dictionary quoted, 134, 141 Wriothesley, Henry, K.G., 3rd Earl of Southampton, 192, 199, 399 Wroxall, Warwickshire, 1 10-12 Wroxeter (Viroconium), Shropshire, 66 Yams, 203 Yeowell, James, his Memoir of Oldys referred to, 447 York, James, Duke of, his theatre. 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