Part 5

When the two monarchs under whom Shakspeare lived admired and patronized him, we may be sure that Shakspeare's great merits were perceived, and that vividly, though the age had not that intellectual expansion which could enable it to rise above its prejudices against a player, and comprehend that Shakspeare's dramas were not merely the most wonderful dramas, but the most wonderful expositions of human life and nature that had ever appeared. People were too busy enjoying the splendid scenes presented to them by this great genius, to note down for the gratification of posterity the dayly doings, connections, and whereabouts of the man with whom they were so familiar. He grew rich, however, by their flocking to his theater, and disappeared from among them.

In this theater of Blackfriars he rose to great popularity both as an actor and dramatic author, and became a proprietor. It was under the management of Richard Burbage, who was also a shareholder in the Globe Theater at Bankside. To the theater at Bankside Shakspeare also transferred himself, and there he became, in 1603, the lessee. There he seems to have continued about ten years, or till 1613; having, however, so early as 1597, purchased one of the best houses in his native town of Stratford, repaired and improved it, and that so much that he named it New Place. To this, as his proper home, he yearly retired when the theatrical season closed; and having made a comfortable fortune, when the theater was burned down in 1613, retired from public life altogether.

Bankside is a spot of interest, because Shakspeare lived there many years during the time he was in London. It is that portion of Southwark lying on the river side between the bridges of Blackfriars and Southwark. This ground was then wholly devoted to public amusements, such as they were. It was a place of public gardens, play-houses, and worse places. Paris Garden was one of the most famous resorts of the metropolis. There were the bear-gardens, where Elizabeth, her nobles, and ladies used to go and solace themselves with that elegant sport, bear-baiting. There, also, was the Globe Theater, of which Shakspeare became licensed proprietor, and near which he lived. The theater was an octagon wooden building, which has been made familiar by many engravings of it. In Henry the Fifth, Shakspeare alludes to its shape and material:

"Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this _wooden_ O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?"

It was not much to be wondered at that this wooden globe should get consumed with fire, which it did, as I have already stated, in 1613. Shakspeare's play of Henry VIII. was acting, a crowded and brilliant company was present, and among the rest Ben Jonson, when in the very first act, where, according to the stage directions, "drums and trumpets, chambers discharged," cannons were fired, the ignited wadding flew into the thatch of the building, and the whole place was soon in flames. Sir Henry Wotton thus describes the scene in a letter to his nephew: "Now, to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at present with what happened this week at the Bankside. The king's players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces from the reign of Henry VIII., which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order, with their Georges and garters; the guards, with their embroidered coats, and the like; sufficient, in truth, within a while, to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now, King Henry making a mask at Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where, being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, consuming within an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that perhaps had broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale."

Fires seem to have menaced Shakspeare on all sides, and he had narrow escapes. As there is no mention of his name in the accounts of the Globe Theater in 1613, nor any in his will, it is pretty clear that he had retired from the proprietorship of the Globe before, and escaped that loss; but in the very year after it was burned down, there was a dreadful fire in Stratford, which consumed a good part of the town, and put his own house into extreme danger.

These were the scenes where Shakspeare acted, for which he wrote his dramas, and where, like a careful and thriving man as he was, he made a fortune before he was forty, calculated to be equal to £1000 a year at present. He had a brother, also, on the stage at the same time with himself, who died in 1607, and was buried in St. Savior's Church, Southwark, where his name is entered in the parish register as "Edmund Shakspeare, a player."

The place where he was accustomed particularly to resort for social recreation was the Mermaid Tavern, Friday street, Cheapside. This was the wits' house for a long period. There a club for _beaux esprits_ was established by Sir Walter Raleigh, and here came, in their several days and times, Spenser, Shakspeare, Philip Sidney, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Marlowe, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, Wotton, and all the brave spirits of those ages. Here Jonson and Shakspeare used to shine out by the brilliancy of their powers, and in their "wit combats," in which Fuller describes Jonson as a _Spanish great galleon_, and Shakspeare as the _English man-of-war_. "Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and his invention." Enough has been said of this celebrated club by a variety of writers. There can be no doubt that there wit and merriment abounded to that degree, that, as Beaumont has said in his epistle to Jonson, one of their meetings was enough to make up for all the stupidity of the city for three days past, and supply it for long to come; to make the worst companions right witty, and "downright fools more wise." There is as little doubt, however, that, with Jonson in the chair, drinking would be as pre-eminent as the wit. The verses which he had inscribed over the door of the Apollo room, at the Devil Tavern, another of their resorts, are, spite of all vindications by ingenious pens, too indicative of that.

"Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo: Here he speaks out of his pottle, Or the tin-pot, his tower bottle: All his answers are divine; Truth itself doth flow like wine. Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, Cries old Sam, the king of skinkers. He the half of life abuses That sits watering with the Muses, Those dull gods no good can mean us: Wine--it is the cream of Venus, And the poet's horse accounted: Ply it, and you all are mounted. 'Tis the true Phoebian liquor, Cheers the brain, makes it the quicker; Pays all debts, cures all diseases, And at once the senses pleases. Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo."

There is not any reason to believe that Shakspeare, lover of wit and jollity as he was, was a practical upholder of this pernicious doctrine. He may often make his characters speak in this manner, but personally he retired as soon as he could from this bacchanal life to his own quiet hearth at Stratford; and if we are to believe his sonnets addressed to his wife, and they possess the tone of a deep and real sentiment, he seriously rued the orgies in which he had participated.

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds: Hence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand; Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed. While, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eysell,[1] 'gainst my strong infection. No bitterness that I will bitter think, No double penance to correct correction. Pity me, then, dear friend, and I assure ye Even that your pity is enough to cure me."

We can not read these and many other portions of his sonnets, we can not see Shakspeare retiring every year, and as soon as able, altogether from the bacchanalian and dissipated habits of the literary men of the day, to the peaceful place of his birth, and the purity of his wedded home, without respecting his moral character as much as we admire his genius. The praises and the practice of drunkenness by literary men, and poets especially, have entailed infinite mischief on themselves and on their followers. What woes and degradations are connected with the history of brilliant men about town, which have tended to stamp the general literary character with the brand of improvidence and disrespect--jails, deaths, picking out of gutters, sponging-houses, and domestic misery--how thickly do all these rise on our view as we look back through the history of men of genius, the direct result of the absurd rant about drinking and debauch! With what a beautiful purity do the names of the greatest geniuses of all rise above these details, like the calm spires of churches through the fogs and smokes of London! How cheering is it to see the number of these grow with the growth of years! Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Milton, Cowper, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley, have all been sober and domestic men; and the sanction which they have given by their practice to the proprieties of life, will confer on all future ages blessings as ample as the public truths of their teaching. The Mermaid Tavern, like the other haunts of Shakspeare, has disappeared. It was swept away by the fire. If any traces of his haunts remain, they must be in the houses of the great, where he was accustomed to visit, as those of the Lords Southampton, Leicester, Pembroke, Montgomery, and others. These are, however, now all either gone, or so cut up and metamorphosed that it were vain to look for them as abodes hallowed by the footsteps of Shakspeare. If it be true that he was commanded to read his play of Falstaff in love--the Merry Wives of Windsor--to Queen Elizabeth, it would probably be at Whitehall or St. James's, for Somerset House was comparatively little occupied by her.

The very places in London more particularly illustrated by his genius have too much followed the fate of those in which he lived. It is true, the Tower, Westminster Palace, and some other of those public buildings and old localities where the scenes of his national dramas are laid, still remain, spite of time and change; and the sites of others, though now covered with wildernesses of fresh houses, may be identified. But The Boar's Head in East Cheap is annihilated; it, too, fell in the great fire, and the modern improvements thereabout, the erection of new London Bridge, and the cutting of King William-street, have swept away nearly all remaining marks of the neighborhood. It is supposed that the present statue of William IV. stands not very far from the spot where Hal reveled and Sir John swaggered and drank sack.

Over London, and many a spot in and about it, as well as over a thousand later towns, forests, and mountains, of this and other countries, wherever civilized man has played his part, will the genius of Shakspeare cast an undying glory; but to see the actual traces of his existence we must resort to the place of his nativity and death. There still stand the house and the room in which he was born; there stands the house in which he wooed his Ann Hathaway, and the old garden in which he walked with her. There stands his tomb, to which the great, and the wise, and the gifted from all regions of the world have made pilgrimage, followed by millions of those who would be thought so, the frivolous and the empty; but all paying homage, by the force of reason, or the force of fashion, vanity and imitation, to the universal interpreter of humanity. It is well that the slow change of a country town has permitted the spirit of veneration to alight there, and cast its protecting wings over the earthly traces of that existence which diffused itself as a second life through all the realms of intellect.

There is nothing missing of Shakspeare's there but the house which he built, and the mulberry-tree which he planted. The tree was hewn down, the house was pulled down and dispersed piecemeal, by the infamous parson Gastrell, who thus "damned himself to eternal fame" more thoroughly than the fool who fired the Temple of Diana. There, only a few miles distant, is the stately hall of Charlecote, whither the youthful poacher of Parnassus was carried before the unlucky knight. There, too, and, oh shame! shame to England, shame to the lovers of Shakspeare, shame to those who annually turn Stratford and their club into a regular "Eatanswill," on pretense of honoring Shakspeare; there, too, live the descendants of the nearest relative of Shakspeare--of his sister Joan--in unnoticed and unmitigated poverty! Seven years ago, on my visit to this place, I pointed out this fact; and now, that the disgraceful fact still remains, I will once more record the words I then wrote.

"As I went to Shottry, I met with a little incident, which interested me greatly by its unexpectedness. As I was about to pass over a stile, at the end of Stratford, into the fields leading to that village, I saw the master of the national school mustering his scholars to their tasks. I stopped, being pleased with the look of the old man, and said, 'You seem to have a considerable number of lads here; shall you raise another Shakspeare from among them, think you?' 'Why,' replied the master, 'I have a Shakspeare now in the school.' I knew that Shakspeare had no descendants beyond the second generation, and I was not aware that there was any of his family remaining. But it seems that the posterity of his sister, Joan Hart, who is mentioned in his will, yet exist; part under her marriage name of Hart, at Tewkesbury, and a family in Stratford, of the name of Smith.

"'I have a Shakspeare here,' said the master, with evident pride and pleasure. 'Here, boys, here!' He quickly mustered his laddish troop in a row, and said to me, 'There now, sir, can you tell which is a Shakspeare?' I glanced my eye along the line, and instantly fixing it on one boy, said, 'That is the Shakspeare.' 'You are right,' said the master, 'that is the Shakspeare; the Shakspeare cast of countenance is there. That is William Shakspeare Smith, a lineal descendant of the poet's sister.'

"The lad was a fine lad of, perhaps, ten years of age; and, certainly, the resemblance to the bust of Shakspeare in the church at Stratford is wonderful, considering he is not descended from Shakspeare himself, but from his sister; and that the seventh in descent. What is odd enough is, whether it be mere accident or not, that the color of the lad's eyes, a light hazel, is the very same as that given to those of the Shakspeare bust, which, it is well known, was originally colored, and of which exact copies remain.

"I gave the boy sixpence, telling him I hoped he would make as great a man as his ancestor--the best term I could lay hold of for the relationship, though not the true one. The boy's eyes sparkled at the sight of the money, and the healthful, joyous color rushed into his cheeks; his fingers continued making acquaintance with so large a piece of money in his pocket, and the sensation created by so great an event in the school was evident. It sounded oddly enough, as I was passing along the street in the evening, to hear some of the same schoolboys say one to another, 'That is the gentleman who gave Bill Shakspeare sixpence.'

"Which of all the host of admirers of Shakspeare, who has plenty of money, and does not know what to do with it, will think of giving that lad, one of the nearest representatives of the great poet, an education, and a fair chance to raise himself in the world? The boy's father is a poor man; if I be not fanciful, partaking somewhat of the Shakspeare physiognomy,[2] but also keeps a small shop, and ekes out his profits by making his house a 'Tom-and-Jerry.' He has other children, and complained of misfortune. He said that some years ago Sir Richard Phillips had been there, and promised to interest the public about him, but that he never heard any more of it. Of the man's merits or demerits I know nothing: I only know that in the place of Shakspeare's birth, and where the town is full of the 'signs' of his glory; and where Garrick made that pompous jubilee, hailing Shakspeare as a demi-god, and calling him 'the god of our idolatry;' and where thousands, and even millions, flock to do homage to the shrine of this demi-god, and pour out deluges of verse, of the most extravagant and sentimental nature, in the public albums; there, as is usual in such cases, the nearest of blood to the object of such vast enthusiasm are poor and despised: the flood of public admiration, at its most towering height, in its most vehement current, never for a moment winds its course in the slightest degree to visit them with its refreshment; nor, of the thousands of pounds spent in the practice of this devotion, does one bodle drop into their pockets.

"Garrick, as I have observed, once

'Called the world to worship on the banks Of Avon, famed in song. Ah, pleasant proof That piety has still in human hearts Some place--a spark or two not yet extinct. The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths, The mulberry-tree stood center of the dance, The mulberry-tree was hymn'd with dulcet airs, And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree Supplied such relics as devotion holds Still sacred, and preserves with pious care. So 'twas an hallowed time. Decorum reign'd, And mirth without offense. No few return'd Doubtless much edified, and all refresh'd.'

_Cowper's Task_, b. vi.

"But it does not appear that Garrick and his fellow-worshipers troubled themselves at all about the descendants of the poet's sister; the object, in fact, seemed at the moment to be rather to worship Garrick than Shakspeare; how, then, could any ray of sympathy diverge from two 'demi-gods' to the humble relatives of one of them? And why should it? I hear honest utilitarians asking, why? What should lead the ragged descendants of poets and philosophers to forsake self-dependence, and look to the admirers of their ancestors for benefit? What a shocking thing, if they should, especially in a nation which ennobles whole lines forever, and grants immense estates in perpetuity for the exploit of some man who has won a battle that had better never have been fought! What! shall such men, and shall troops of lawyers, who have truckled to the government of the day, and become the tools of despotism in a country dreaming that it is free--shall men who have merely piled up heaps of coin, and purchased large tracts of earth, by plodding in the city dens of gain, or dodging on the Stock Exchange--shall such men be ennobled, and their line forever, and shall men who have left a legacy of immortal mind to their country leave also to their families an exclusive poverty and neglect? Will our very philosophical utilitarian tell us why this should be?

"It might, also, be whispered, that it would not be much more irrational to extend some of that enthusiasm and money, which are now wasted on empty rooms and spurious musty relics, to at least trying to benefit and raise in the scale of society beings who have the national honor to be relics and mementos of the person worshiped, as well as to old chairs, and whitewashed butchers' shops. Does it never occur to the votaries of Shakspeare, that these are _the only sentient, conscious, and rational things connected with his memory_ which can feel a living sense of the honor conferred on him, and possess a grateful knowledge that the mighty poet of their house has not sung for them in vain, and that they only, in a world overshadowed with his glory, are not unsoothed by its visitings?"[3]

Seven years have gone over since this was written, and what has been the effect? The Shakspeare Club have gone down to Stratford, and feasted and guzzled _in honor of Shakspeare_, and the _representatives_ of Shakspeare in the place have been left in their poverty. There seems to be some odd association of ideas in the minds of Englishmen on the subject of doing honor to genius. To reward warriors, and lawyers, and politicians, places, titles, and estates are given. To reward poets and philosophers, the property which they honestly, and with _the toil of their whole lives_, create, is taken from them, and that which should form an estate for their descendants to all posterity, and become a monument of fame to the nation, is conferred on booksellers. The copyright of authors, or, in other words, the right to the property which they made, was taken away in the reign of Queen Anne, "_for the benefit of literature_;" so says the act. Let the same principle, in God's name, be carried out into all other professions, and we shall soon come to an understanding on the subject. Take a lord's or a squire's land from him and his family forever, after a given number of years, _for the benefit of aristocracy_; take the farmer's plow and team, his harrows and his corn, _for the benefit of agriculture_; take the mill-owner's mills, with all their spinning-jennies, and their cotton, and their wool, and their silk, and their own new inventions, for the benefit of manufacturing; take the merchant's ships and their cargoes, the shopkeeper's shop and his stores, the lawyer's parchment and his fees, the physician's and surgeon's physic and fees, for the benefit of commerce, trade, law, and physic: and let the clergy suffer no injury of neglect in this respect; let their churches, and their glebes, and tithes, be taken for the benefit of religion; let them all go shares with the authors in this beautiful system of justice and encouragement, and then the whole posse will soon put their heads together, and give back to the author his rights, while they take care of their own.

But till this be done--so long as the children and descendants, and nearest successors of the author are robbed by the state, while the poet and philosopher crown their country with glory, and fill it with happiness, and their country in return brands their children with disgrace, and fills them with emptiness--while they go in rags, and the bookseller in broad-cloth--in leanness, and the bookseller, endowed by the state with the riches of their ancestors, in jollity and fat--so long let those who are anxious to do honor to the glorious names of our literature, honor them with some show of common sense and common feeling. Honor Shakspeare, indeed! Has he not honored himself sufficiently? What says John Milton, another glorious son of the Muse?