Part 9

Strolling players were accustomed to give their performances in the court-yards of inns. The stage was erected in one corner, while the spectators occupied the remainder of the yard, standing, like the actors, in the open air; the lower rooms and the gallery which ran round the court, were doubtless opened to the public at a higher rate of admission. The London theatres were constructed upon this plan; and those which were called "public playhouses," in opposition to the "private theatres," kept up the custom of performing in the open air, without any other canopy than the sky. The Globe was a public theatre, and the Blackfriars a private one; these last establishments doubtless occupied a superior rank; and, at a later period, to frequent the Blackfriars theatre was regarded as a mark of elegant taste and superior discernment. But such distinctions are incapable of being clearly defined, and when Shakspeare appeared on the stage these shades of difference were probably very confused. In 1609, Decker wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Gul's Horne-booke," which contains a chapter, "How a gallant should behave himself in a play-house." We learn from this authority that a gentleman, on entering a public or private theatre, should walk at once on the stage, and sit down either on the ground or on a stool, as he found it convenient to pay for a seat or not. He must valiantly keep his post, in spite of the gibes and insults of the populace in the pit; because it becomes a gentleman to laugh at "the mews and hisses of the opposed rascality." However, if the multitude should begin to shout "Out with the fool!" the danger becomes sufficiently serious for good taste to permit the gentleman to withdraw. During the performance, the common people were supplied with beer and apples, of which the actors also frequently partook; while the gentlemen, on their side, smoked their pipes and played at cards; indeed, it was not at all unusual for the elegant _habitues_ of the theatre to begin a game at cards before the commencement of the play. {107} "The Gul's Horne-booke" recommends them to play with an appearance of great eagerness, even if they return the money to each other at supper-time; and nothing, says Decker, can give greater notoriety to a gentleman than to throw his cards on the stage, after having torn up three or four of them with every manifestation of rage. The duties of the spectators in possession of the honors of the stage were to speak, to laugh, and to turn their backs on the actors whenever they were displeased with either the author or the play. These pleasures of the gentlemen give a sufficient clue to those of the populace in the pit, whom contemporary writers usually designate by the name of "stinkards." The condition of the actors compelled to minister to the amusement of such an audience could not but be attended by more than one unpleasantness, and we may attribute to Shakspeare's experience of an actor's life that aversion for popular assemblies which is frequently displayed with great energy in his works.

Nor do the condition and habits of the poets who wrote for the stage give us a more honorable idea, in these two respects, of the actors with whom they associated; and, in order to suppose that Shakspeare, young, gay, and easy-tempered, could have escaped from the influence of his two-fold character of poet and actor, we need the assistance of that unshrinking faith which the commentators repose in their patron. Shakspeare himself leaves us little room to doubt that he fell into errors, which he at least has the merit of regretting. {108} In one of his sonnets, he inquires why Fortune, whom he calls

"The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,"

should alone bear the reproach of the "public means" to which he has been obliged to resort for his subsistence. And he adds:

"Thence 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 eysel [Footnote 18] 'gainst my strong infection; No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance to correct correction."

[Footnote 18: Vinegar.]

In the next sonnet, addressing the same person, still in the same tone of confident yet respectful affection, he says:

"Your love and pity doth th' impression fill Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow; For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?"

In another sonnet, he laments over the blot which had divided two lives united by affection, and says:

"I may not evermore acknowledge thee, Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame; Nor thou with public kindness honor me, Unless thou take that honor from my name."

And in another sonnet, he complains that he is, if not calumniated, at least wrongly judged; and that the "frailties of his sportive blood" are spied out by censors, who are frailer than himself. It is easy to divine the nature of Shakspeare's frailties; and several sonnets on the infidelities, and even on the vices, of the mistress whom he celebrates, give sufficient proof that his errors were not always caused by persons capable of excusing them. However, how can we suppose that, in the state of morals in the sixteenth century, public severity could have looked with great rigor on such disorders? {109} In order to explain the humiliation of the poet, we must suppose either that he had been guilty of some extraordinarily scandalous conduct, or that particular dishonor attached to the disorders and position of an actor. The latter hypothesis appears to me the most probable. No grave reproach can, at any time, have weighed upon a man whose contemporaries never speak of him without affection and esteem, and whom Ben Jonson declares to have been "truly honest," without deriving from this assertion either the opportunity or the right of relating some circumstance disgraceful to his memory, or some well-known error which the officious rival would not have failed to establish while excusing it.

Perhaps, on being brought into contact with the higher classes of society, struck by the display of a relative elegance of sentiments and manners of which he had previously had no idea, and becoming suddenly aware that his nature gave him a right to participate in these delicacies which had hitherto been foreign to his habits, Shakspeare felt himself oppressed, by his position, with painful shackles; perhaps even he was led to exaggerate his humiliation, by the natural disposition of a haughty soul, which feels itself all the more abased by an unequal condition, because it is conscious of its worthiness to enjoy equality. At all events, there can be no doubt that, with that measured circumspection which is as frequently the accompaniment of pride as of modesty, Shakspeare labored to overleap these humiliating differences of station, and succeeded in his attempt. His first dedication to Lord Southampton, that of "Venus and Adonis," is written with respectful timidity. {110} That of the poem of "Lucrece," which was published in the following year, expresses grateful attachment, which feels sure of being well received; and he vows to his protector "love without end." The resemblance of the tone of this preface to that of a great many of the sonnets, the repeated benefits in which the friendship of Lord Southampton enabled their recipient to glory, and the lively affection with which the sensitive and confident Shakspeare was naturally inspired by the amiable and generous protection of a young man of such brilliant rank and merit--all these circumstances have led some of the commentators to suppose that Lord Southampton may have been the object of the poet's inexplicable sonnets. Without inquiring to what extent the _euphuism_ then prevalent, the exaggeration of poetic language, and the false taste of the age, may have imparted to Lord Southampton the features of an adored mistress, we can not but admit that most of these sonnets are addressed to a person of superior rank, the devotion of the poet to whom bears the character of submissive but passionate respect. Several of them, also, seem to point to habitual and intimate literary connections. Sometimes Shakspeare congratulates himself on possessing the guidance and inspiration of his friend; and sometimes he complains that he has ceased to be the sole recipient of that inspiration, and says,

"I grant thou wert not married to my Muse;"

but yet the grief occasioned by this divided favor is expressed under all the forms of jealousy, sometimes resigned to its fate, and sometimes stimulated, by the bitterness of its feelings, to give utterance to strong reproaches, which, however, never transgress the bounds of respect. {111} Elsewhere he accuses himself, as it would appear, of infidelity to "an old friend;" he has too "frequent been with unknown minds," and "given to time" the "dear-purchased rights" of an affection

"Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;"

but he confesses his fault; and implores pardon in the name of the confidence with which he is always inspired by the affection he has neglected. Another sonnet speaks of mutual wrongs pardoned, but the sorrow of which is still present. If these are not mere forms of language, employed, perhaps, on occasions very different from those which they appear to indicate, the feeling which thus occupied the inner life of the poet must have been as tempestuous as it was passionate.

Externally, however, his existence seems to have pursued a tranquil course. His name is mixed up in no literary quarrel; and, but for the malicious allusions of the envious Ben Jonson, scarcely would a single criticism be associated with the panegyrics which bear witness to his superiority. All the documents which we possess exhibit Shakspeare to us placed at last in the position which he was rightfully entitled to occupy, and valued as much for the charm of his character as for the brilliancy of his talents, and the admiration due to his genius. A glance, too, at the affairs of the poet will prove that he was beginning to introduce into the details of his existence that order and regularity which are essential to respectability. We find him successively purchasing, in his native town, a house and various portions of land, which soon formed a sufficient estate to insure him a competent income. The profits which he derived from the theatre, in his double capacity of author and actor, have been estimated at two hundred pounds a year, a very considerable sum at that time; and if the liberalities of Lord Southampton were added to the economy of the poet, we may conclude that, at least, they were not unwisely employed. {112} Rowe, in his Life of Shakspeare, seems to think that the gifts of Queen Elizabeth also had some share in building up the fortune of her favorite poet. The grant of an escutcheon which was made, or rather confirmed to his father in 1599, proves a desire to bestow honor on his family. But there is nothing to indicate that Shakspeare obtained from Elizabeth and her court any marks of distinction superior, or even equal to those conferred by Louis XIV. upon Molière, like himself an actor and a poet. If we except his intimacy with Lord Southampton, Shakspeare, like Molière, chose his habitual acquaintance chiefly among men of letters, whose social condition he had probably contributed to elevate. The Mermaid Club, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, and of which Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and many others were members, was long celebrated for the brilliant "wit-combats," which took place there between Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, and in which the vivacity of the former gave him an immense advantage over the laborious slowness of his opponent. The anecdotes which are quoted on this point are not worthy of being collected at the present day. Few _bons-mots_ are sufficiently good to survive for two centuries.

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Who would not suppose that a life which had become so honorable and pleasant would long have retained Shakspeare in the midst of society conformable to the necessities of his mind, and upon the theatre of his glory? Nevertheless, in 1613, or 1614 at the latest, three or four years after having obtained from James I. the direction of the Blackfriars Theatre, without having apparently incurred the displeasure of the king to whom he was indebted for this new mark of favor, or of the public for whom he had just produced "Othello" and "The Tempest," Shakspeare left London and the stage to take up his residence at Stratford, in his house at New Place, in the midst of his fields. Had he become anxious to taste the joys of family life? He might have brought his wife and children to London. Nothing seems to indicate that he was greatly grieved at separation from them. During his residence in London, he used, it is said, to make frequent journeys to Stratford; but he has been accused of having found, on the road, pleasures of a kind which may have consoled him, at least, for the absence of his wife; and Sir William Davenant used loudly to boast of the poet's intimacy with his mother, the pretty and witty hostess of the Crown, at Oxford, where Shakspeare always stopped on his way to Stratford. If Shakspeare's sonnets were to be regarded as the expression of his dearest and most habitual feelings, we might reasonably be astonished at not finding in them a single allusion to his native place, to his children, or even to the son whom he lost at twelve years of age. And yet Shakspeare could not have been ignorant of the power of paternal love. He who, in "Macbeth," has described pity as "a naked, new-born babe;" he who has put these words into the mouth of Coriolanus,

"Not of a woman's tenderness to be, Requires nor child nor woman's face to see;"

he who has so well depicted the tender puerilities of maternal affection, could not have looked upon his own children without experiencing the fond emotions of a father's heart. {114} But Shakspeare, as his character presents itself to our mind, had long been able to find, in the distractions of the world, enough to occupy the place, in his soul and life, which he was capable of giving up to family affections. However this may be, it is more difficult to discern the causes which led to his departure from London, than to perceive those which might have tended to prolong his residence in that city. Perhaps the arrival of infirmities may have warned him of the necessity of repose; and perhaps, also, the very natural desire of showing himself in his native place, under circumstances so different from those in which he had left it, made him hasten the moment of renouncing labors which no longer had the pleasures of youth for their compensation.

New pleasures could not fail to spring up for Shakspeare in his retirement. A natural disposition to enjoy every thing heartily rendered him equally adapted to delight in the calm happiness of a tranquil life, and to find enjoyment in the vicissitudes of an agitated existence. The first mulberry-tree introduced into the neighborhood of Stratford was planted by Shakspeare's hands, in a corner of his garden at New Place, and attested for more than a century the gentle simplicity of the occupations in which his days were spent. A competent fortune seemed to unite with the esteem and friendship of his neighbors to promise him that best crown of a brilliant life, a tranquil and honored old age, when, on the 23d of April, 1616, the very day on which he attained his fifty-second year, death carried him off from that calm and pleasant position, the happy leisure of which he would doubtless not have consecrated to repose alone.

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We have no information regarding the nature of the disease to which he fell a victim. His will is dated on the 25th of March, 1616; but the date of February, effaced to make way for that of March, gives us reason to believe that he had commenced it a month previously. He declares that he had written it in perfect health; but the precaution taken thus opportunely, at an age still so distant from senility, leads to the presumption that some unpleasant symptom had awakened within him the idea of danger. There is no evidence either to confirm or to set aside this supposition; and Shakspeare's last days are surrounded by an obscurity even deeper, if possible, than that which enshrouds his life.

His will contains nothing very remarkable, with the exception of a new proof of the little estimation in which he held the wife whom he had so hastily married. After having appointed his daughter Susannah, who had married Mr. Hall, a physician at Stratford, his chief legatee, he bequeaths tokens of friendship to various persons, among whom he does not include his wife, but mentions her afterward, in an interlineation, merely to leave to her his "second best bed." A similar piece of forgetfulness, repaired in the same manner, is remarkable in reference to Burbage, Heminge, and Condell, the only ones of his theatrical friends of whom he makes mention; to each of these he bequeaths, also in an interlineation, thirty-six shillings, "to buy them rings." Burbage, the best actor of his time, had contributed greatly to the success of Shakspeare's plays; Heminge and Condell, seven years after his death, published the first complete edition of his dramatic works.

This singular omission of the name of Shakspeare's wife, repaired in so slight a manner, probably indicates something more than forgetfulness; and we are tempted to regard it as the sign of an aversion or dislike, the manifestation of which the poet was induced to modify, in a slight degree, by the approach of death alone.

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Shakspeare's second daughter, Judith, had married a vintner, and received a much smaller share of her father's inheritance than her sister, Mrs. Hall. Was it in her quality of eldest daughter, or in consequence of some special predilection, that Shakspeare thus distinguished Susannah? An epitaph engraved upon her tomb, at her death in 1649, represents her as "witty above her sex," in which she had "something of Shakspeare," hut more because she was "wise to salvation," and "wept for all." About Judith we know nothing, except that she could not write; which fact is established by a deed still existing, to which she has affixed a cross, or some analogous sign, indicated by a marginal note as "Judith Shakspeare, her mark." Judith left three sons, who died childless. Susannah had one daughter, who married, first, Thomas Nash, and afterward Sir John Barnard, of Abington. No child was born of either of these marriages, and thus Shakspeare's posterity became extinct in the second generation.

It is somewhat remarkable that Shakspeare died on the same day as his great contemporary, Cervantes.

Shakspeare was buried in Stratford church, in which his tomb still exists. It represents the poet of the size of life, sitting under an arch, with a cushion before him, and a pen in his right hand. Like many other monuments of the time, the figure was originally colored after the life; the eyes being painted light brown, with hair and beard of a deeper tinge. The doublet was scarlet, and the gown black. The colors having become faded by time, were restored, in 1748, by Mr. John Ward, the grandfather of Mrs. Siddons and of Kemble, out of the profits of a performance of "Othello." But in 1793, Mr. Malone, one of the principal commentators upon Shakspeare, covered the statue with a thick coat of white paint; being doubtless led to do this by that exclusive prejudice in favor of modern customs which has so frequently led him into error in his commentaries. {117} An indignant traveler, in some lines written in the Album of Stratford church, has called down the malediction of the poet upon Malone,

"Whose meddling zeal his barb'rous taste displays, And smears his tombstone, as he marred his plays."

Without giving an absolute assent to these harsh expressions of legitimate anger, we can not refrain from a smile at observing, in Mr. Malone's coat of white paint, a symbol of the spirit which dictated his commentaries, as well as a type of the general character of the eighteenth century, held in servitude by its own tastes, and incapable of comprehending any thing that did not enter into the sphere of its ordinary habits and ideas.

Although this injudicious reparation effected a great change in the physiognomy of the portrait of Shakspeare, it was not able altogether to efface that expression of gentle serenity which appears to have characterized the countenance as well as the soul of the poet. On the sepulchral stone below the monument, the following inscription is engraved:

"Good friend, for Jesus sake forbear To dig the dust inclosed here. Bless'd be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones."

These lines are said to have been composed by Shakspeare himself, and were the cause which prevented the transference of his tomb to Westminster, as had once been intended. Some years ago, an excavation by the wall of Stratford church exposed to view the grave in which his body had been laid; and the sexton, who, in order to prevent the sacrilegious depredations of curiosity or admiration, kept guard by the opening until the vault had been repaired, having attempted to look inside the tomb, saw neither bones nor coffin, but only dust. "It seems to me," says the traveler who relates this circumstance, "that it was something to have seen the dust of Shakspeare."

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This tomb now remains in sole possession of the honors which it once shared with Shakspeare's mulberry-tree. About the middle of last century, the Rev. Mr. Gastrell, a man of large fortune, became the proprietor of New Place. This house, which had remained for some time in the possession of the Nash family, had afterward passed through several hands, and undergone many alterations; but the mulberry-tree remained standing, the object of the veneration of the curious. Mr. Gastrell, annoyed at the number of visitors which it attracted, had it cut down, with a savage brutality in which indifference would probably not have indulged, but which frequently characterizes that furious pride of liberty and property which would deem itself compromised if it yielded in the slightest degree to public opinion. A few years afterward, this same Mr. Gastrell, in consequence of a dispute which he had had with the town of Stratford regarding a slight tax which he was required to pay on his house, swore that _that_ house should never be taxed again, and he therefore had it pulled down, and sold the materials. As for the mulberry-tree, part of it was saved from the fire to which it had been consigned by Mr. Gastrell, by a clock-maker of Stratford, a man of sense, who gained a great deal of money by making it into snuff-boxes, toys, and other articles. The house in which Shakspeare was born still exists at Stratford, and is still shown as an object of interest to travelers, who may always see, and, it is said, are constantly able to purchase, either the chair or the sword of the poet, the lantern which he used in performing the part of Friar Lawrence in "Romeo and Juliet," or pieces of the arquebuse with which he killed the deer in Sir Thomas Lucy's park.

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