STRATFORD OLD AND NEW
The Stratford of the sixteenth century, though then nearly 300 years old, was merely a village. The houses were chiefly of the one-story kind, made of timber. The inhabitants were in number about 1,400: indeed, the whole population of England was not so numerous as that of London is now. If Shakespeare could revisit his old haunts, though he would see the same green, rose-decked, and poppy-spangled countryside that once he knew, and hear the ripple of the Avon softly flowing between its grassy banks, he would miss many objects once familiar to him, and he would be conscious of much change,—in many ways for the better. Yet there are the paths in which he often trod; there is the school in which he was taught; there is the garden of the mansion that he once owned, and in which he died and there is the ancient church that enshrines his tomb.
THOMAS NASH’S HOUSE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON
Nash was the husband of Shakespeare’s only granddaughter. The house stands next to New Place
The Birthplace, as it is now designated, is a two-story cottage made of timber and plaster, with dormer windows in its sloping, attic roof. It was originally a finer house than most of its neighbors. Its age is unknown. John Shakespeare, William’s father, bought it in 1556 and occupied it till his death, in 1601, when it became William’s property by inheritance. By him it was bequeathed to his sister, Joan, Mrs. William Hart. It has passed through many ownerships and has been materially changed; but parts of it remain as originally they were, particularly the room on the ground floor, in which there is a large fireplace, with seats in the brick chimney jambs, and also the one immediately above it, the best room in the house, in which, according to ancient tradition, the poet was born. In that room there is a chair, of the sixteenth century.
ROOM IN WHICH, ACCORDING TO TRADITION, SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN
The original window remains, a threefold casement, containing sixty panes of glass, on which many visitors have scratched their names with diamonds. No writing, on window or walls, is permitted now; but in earlier times it was allowed, and it was customary. Sir Walter Scott scratched his name on the window,—“W. Scott.” Byron wrote on the ceiling, which is low, as also did Thackeray. Byron’s name has disappeared. Dickens wrote on one of the walls. The names of many actors, including those of Edmund Kean and Edwin Booth, are inscribed on the chimney-jamb at the right of the fireplace. Booth was specially requested to write his name there, “high up.” That jamb is called “The Actors’ Pillar.”
The Birthplace was purchased for the nation in 1847—the American museum and circus manager P. T. Barnum having alarmed England by proposing to buy and remove it to America. New Place and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, at Shottery, about a mile west of Stratford, have since then been purchased, and those properties are now administered as a trust for the public.
THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE’S MOTHER
The Mary Arden Cottage at Wilmcote, a little village near Stratford
New Place, the finest mansion in the town when Shakespeare bought it, was destroyed in 1759 by order of Rev. Thomas Gastrell, its owner at that time, who had been annoyed by many visitors, thronging to see his house and to sit under a mulberry tree in his garden, believed to have been planted and reared by Shakespeare. The tree was cut down by Mr. Gastrell; but a reputed “grandson” of it is growing there now. Nothing remains of the building except its foundation, long buried, but later exhumed, and now carefully preserved. The house was situated directly opposite the Guild Chapel, a relic of the thirteenth century, and one of the most venerable and pictorial of the towered churches of England. Shakespeare hired two sittings in that church, and when he lived in New Place he must have seen it almost continually. Next to the church is the Grammar School, established in 1482, which there is every reason to believe he attended in his boyhood. The building has been tastefully “restored” to its original condition: the schoolroom has not been altered.