DEAR SISTERS:—You have heard of Mr. Shakespeare, a writer of old England, who died, years and years ago, in a little country place in England. He was celebrated for several things besides writing. Going to sleep under trees is one of them; shooting deer that belonged to somebody else—who took him up and made an awful time about it before a justice of the peace, who fined him, or something—is another. Then, again, he married an elderly girl, and forgot to live with her ever so long. While she stayed at home, he went up to London, and wrote plays and played them before her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, who ought to have reminded him of his married elderly girl, being her own royal self of that class, only not married. There is no reason to think she did have much influence in that direction though, for that particular queen was more celebrated for keeping husbands away from their wives than bringing them cosily together.
The truth is, from the very first—when she got up a series of romping platonics with Lord Seymour, her step-mother's husband, to her last, gray-headed old flirtation with the young Essex—her taste ran against the practical idea of husbands living with their own wives. That non-matrimonial creature may have tried her power on Shakespeare—who knows?
Sisters, there is one part of this man's life and character that may shock your religious feelings. He wrote plays; he acted plays too; and that female queen encouraged him in it. Now, ever since I went to see the "Black Crook," I scorn myself for ever having one mite of charity for such things, and I haven't the conscience to say one word in their favor to you, as a Society. Still, this Mr. Shakespeare did write some things that might have sounded tolerably well in a lecture or a sermon that wasn't too strictly doctrinal.
Last night I was talking with a lawyer from away "Out West," who spoke real kindly about Mr. Shakespeare's writings, and seemed to think if he had put off being born until now, and settled "Out West," where he could have given him a hint now and then, he might have made a first-rate literary man. "Even as it is," says he, "I do my best to make him popular, for he wrote some very readable things—very readable, indeed. For instance, not long since, in an exciting slander case, I quoted these lines, with a burning eloquence that lifted the judge right off from his bench:
"'He,' says I, 'that steals my purse, steals stuff;
'Twas something, t'aint nothing, t'was mine,
'Tis hisen, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that hooketh from me my good name,
Grabs that which don't do him no good,
But makes me feel very bad indeed.'"
"Is that the genuine old English that Mr. Shakespeare wrote in?" says I.
"Oh, that is the beauty of it," says he. "Shakspeare was no doubt a very respectable writer, but perfection is the watch-word of modern progress. Of course one doesn't introduce a quotation of his without all the modern improvements. Shakespeare—"
"Mr. Shakspeare," says I, determined to keep up the dignity of authorship with my last breath.
"Well, Mr. Shakspeare would have made a very superior writer if he had lived in this country and been fostered by an American Congress."
"An American Congress," says I. "What on earth did that ever do for writers?"