STORY-TELLING.
If books were scarce in the homes of the common people when Shakespeare was a boy, there was no lack of oral tales, legends, and folk-lore for the entertainment of the family of a winter evening. The store of this unwritten history and fiction was inexhaustible.
In Milton's L'Allegro we have a pleasant picture of a rustic group listening to fairy stories round the evening fire:—
"Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How fairy Mab the junkets eat.
She was pinch'd and pull'd, she said,
And he, by Friar's lantern led,
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep."
Of "fairy Mab" we have a graphic description from the merry Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (i. 4. 53–94); and the "drudging goblin," or Robin Goodfellow, is the Puck of the Midsummer-Night's Dream, to whom the Fairy says (ii. 1. 40):—
"Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck."
In the same scene Puck himself tells of the practical jokes he plays upon "the wisest aunt telling the saddest tale" to a fireside group, and of many another sportive trick with which he "frights the maidens" and vexes the housewives.
The children had their stories to tell, like their elders; and Shakespeare has pictured a home scene in The Winter's Tale (ii. 1. 21) which may have been suggested by his own experience as a boy. As Mr. Charles Knight asks, "may we not read for Hermione, Mary Shakespeare, and for Mamillius, William?"
"Hermione. What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now
I am for you again; pray you, sit by us,
And tell 's a tale.
Mamillius. Merry, or sad shall 't be?
Hermione. As merry as you will.
Mamillius. A sad tale 's best for winter. I have one
Of sprites and goblins.
Hermione. Let's have that, good sir.
Come on, sit down; come on, and do your best
To fright me with your sprites; you're powerful at it.
Mamillius. There was a man—
Hermione. Nay, come, sit down; then on.
Mamillius. Dwelt by a churchyard:—I will tell it softly;
Yond crickets shall not hear it.
Hermione. Come on, then,
And give 't me in mine ear."
Just then his father, Leontes, comes in, and the tale is interrupted, never to be resumed.
Mr. Knight assumes, with a good degree of probability, that William had access to some of the books from which he drew material for the story of his plays later in life, and that he may have told these tales, whether "merry or sad," to his brothers and sisters at home.
"He had," says this genial biographer, "a copy, well thumbed from his first reading days, of 'The Palace of Pleasure, beautified, adorned, and well furnished with pleasant histories and excellent novelles, selected out of divers good and commendable authors; by William Painter, Clarke of the Ordinaunce and Armarie.' In this book, according to the dedication of the translator to Ambrose Earl of Warwick, was set forth 'the great valiance of noble gentlemen, the terrible combats of courageous personages, the virtuous minds of noble dames, the chaste hearts of constant ladies, the wonderful patience of puissant princes, the mild sufferance of well-disposed gentlewomen, and, in divers, the quiet bearing of adverse fortune.' Pleasant little apothegms and short fables were there in the book; which the brothers and sisters of William Shakespeare had heard him tell with marvellous spirit, and they abided therefore in their memories. There was Æsop's fable of the old lark and her young ones, wherein 'he prettily and aptly doth premonish that hope and confidence of things attempted by man ought to be fixed and trusted in none other but himself.' There was the story, most delightful to a child, of the bondman at Rome, who was brought into the open place upon which a great multitude looked, to fight with a lion of a marvellous bigness; and the fierce lion, when he saw him, 'suddenly stood still, and afterwards by little and little, in gentle sort, he came unto the man as though he had known him,' and licked his hands and legs; and the bondman told that he had healed in former time the wounded foot of the lion, and the beast became his friend. These were for the younger children; but William had now a new tale, out of the same storehouse, upon which he had often pondered, the subject of which had shaped itself in his mind into dialogue that almost sounded like verse in his graceful and earnest recitation. It was a tale which Painter translated from the French of Pierre Boisteau.... It was 'The goodly history of the true and constant love between Romeo and Julietta.' ... From the same collection of tales had the youth before half dramatized the story of 'Giletta of Narbonne,' who cured the King of France of a painful malady, and the king gave her in marriage to the Count Beltramo, with whom she had been brought up, and her husband despised and forsook her, but at last they were united, and lived in great honor and felicity.
"There was another collection, too, which that youth had diligently read,—the 'Gesta Romanorum,' translated by R. Robinson in 1577,—old legends, come down to those latter days from monkish historians, who had embodied in their narratives all the wild traditions of the ancient and modern world. He could tell the story of the rich heiress who chose a husband by the machinery of a gold, a silver, and a leaden casket; and another story of the merchant whose inexorable creditor required the fulfilment of his bond in cutting a pound of flesh, nearest the merchant's heart, and by the skilful interpretation of the bond the cruel creditor was defeated.
"There was the story, too, in these legends, of the Emperor Theodosius, who had three daughters; and those two daughters who said they loved him more than themselves were unkind to him, but the youngest, who only said she loved him as much as he was worthy, succoured him in his need, and was his true daughter....
"Stories such as these, preserved amidst the wreck of time, were to that youth like the seeds that are found in the tombs of ruined cities, lying with the bones of forgotten generations, but which the genial influence of nature will call into life, and they shall become flowers, and trees, and food for man.
"But, beyond all these, our Mamillius had many a tale 'of sprites and goblins'.... Such appearances were above nature, but the commonest movements of the natural world had them in subjection:—
" 'I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day; and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine.'
"Powerful they were, but yet powerless. They came for benevolent purposes: to warn the guilty; to discover the guilt. The belief in them was not a debasing thing. It was associated with the enduring confidence that rested upon a world beyond this material world. Love hoped for such visitations; it had its dreams of such—where the loved one looked smilingly, and spoke of regions where change and separation were not. They might be talked of, even among children then, without terror. They lived in that corner of the soul which had trust in angel protections, which believed in celestial hierarchies, which listened to hear the stars moving in harmonious music....
"William Shakespeare could also tell to his greedy listeners, how in the old days of King Arthur
" 'The elf-queene, with her jolly compagnie,
Danced full oft in many a grene mede.'
"Here was something in his favorite old poet for the youth to work out into beautiful visions of a pleasant race of supernatural beings; who lived by day in the acorn cups of Arden, and by moonlight held their revels on the greensward of Avon-side, the ringlets of their dance being duly seen, 'whereof the ewe not bites'; who tasted the honey-bag of the bee, and held counsel by the light of the glowworm; who kept the cankers from the rosebuds, and silenced the hootings of the owl.... Some day would William make a little play of Fairies, and Joan should be their Queen, and he would be the King; for he had talked with the Fairies, and he knew their language and their manners, and they were 'good people,' and would not mind a boy's sport with them.
"But when the youth began to speak of witches there was fear and silence. For did not his mother recollect that in the year she was married Bishop Jewell had told the Queen that her subjects pined away, even unto the death, and that their affliction was owing to the increase of witches and sorcerers? Was it not known how there were three sorts of witches,—those that can hurt and not help, those that can help and not hurt, and those that can both help and hurt? It was unsafe even to talk of them.
"But the youth had met with the history of the murder of Duncan King of Scotland, in a chronicler older than Holinshed; and he told softly, so that 'yon crickets shall not hear it,' that, as Macbeth and Banquo journeyed from Forres, sporting by the way together, when the warriors came in the midst of a laund, three weird sisters suddenly appeared to them, in strange and wild apparel, resembling creatures of an elder world, and prophesied that Macbeth should be King of Scotland; and Macbeth from that hour desired to be king, and so killed the good king his liege lord.
"And then the story-teller would pass on to safer matters—to the calculations of learned men who could read the fates of mankind in the aspects of the stars; and of those more deeply learned, clothed in garments of white linen, who had command over the spirits of the earth, of the water, and of the air. Some of the children said that a horseshoe over the door, and vervain and dill, would preserve them, as they had been told, from the devices of sorcery. But their mother called to their mind that there was security far more to be relied on than charms of herb or horseshoe—that there was a Power that would preserve them from all evil, seen or unseen, if such were His gracious will, and if they humbly sought Him, and offered up their hearts to Him in all love and trust. And to that Power this household then addressed themselves; and the night was without fear, and their sleep was pleasant."