“this rough magic
I here abjure; and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, (which even now I do,)
. . . I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I’ll drown my book.”
The retirement of Shakespeare rather curiously synchronises with the spread of Puritanism, that slowly accumulating yet irresistible force which, before it had expended its vigour and its wrath was destined to abolish for many years the theatre and the actor’s calling, and even to behead a king and work a political revolution. The puritan leaven was working even in Stratford, and in 1602 the town council solemnly decided that stage-plays were no longer to be allowed, and that any one who permitted them in the town should be fined ten shillings. This edict apparently became a dead letter, but in 1612 it was re-enacted and the penalty raised to £10.
We may perhaps here pertinently inquire: Did Shakespeare himself become a Puritan? Probably so moderate and equable a man as he seems to have been belonged to no extreme party; but it is to be noted that Dr. John Hall, husband of his eldest daughter, was a Puritan, and that Susanna herself is described in her epitaph as “wise to salvation,” which means that she also had found the like grace.
In 1614 Shakespeare seems to have entertained a Puritan divine at New Place, according to a somewhat ambiguous account in the Stratford chamberlain’s accounts, in which occurs the odd item: “One quart of sack and one quart of claret wine given to the preacher at New Place.” If we may measure his preaching by his drinking, he must have delivered poisonously long sermons. But the town council were connoisseurs in sermons, just as the council of forty years earlier had been patrons of the drama; and they sought out and welcomed preachers, just as their forbears had done with the actors. Only those divines do not seem to have been paid for their services, except in drink. They were all thirsty men, and the council rewarded their orations with the same measure as given to the preacher at New Place.
In January 1616, William Shakespeare instructed his solicitor to draft his will. No especial reason for this settlement of his worldly affairs appears to be recorded. In February his daughter Judith was married to Thomas Quincy, vintner, son of that Richard who eighteen years earlier had sought to borrow the £30. In March he was taken ill and the draft will was amended without being fair-copied, a sign, it may be argued, of urgency. It bears date March 25th, and has three of the poet’s signatures; one on each sheet. But he lingered on until April 23rd, dying on the anniversary of his birthday.
CHAPTER V
Stratford-on-Avon—It has its own life, quite apart from Shakespearean associations—Its people and its streets—Shakespeare Memorials.
Stratford-on-Avon would be an extremely interesting town, both historically and scenically, even without its Shakespearean interest. It does not need association with its greatest son to stand forth easily among other towns of its size and command admiration. It is remarkably unlike the mind’s eye picture formed of it by almost every stranger. You expect to see a town of very narrow streets, rather dull perhaps and with little legitimate trade, apart from the sale of picture-postcards, fancy china, guide-books, miniature reproductions of the inevitable Shakespeare bust, and the hundred-and-one small articles that tourists buy; but Stratford-on-Avon is not in the least like that. It is true that with a singular lack of humour there is a “Shakespeare Garage,” while we all know that Shakespeare never owned a motor-car; that the bust is represented in mosaic over the entrance to the Old Bank, founded in 1810, upon which Shakespeare could never, therefore, have drawn a cheque; and that the Shakespeare Hotel not only bears the honoured name, but also a very large copy of the bust over its porch, and names all its rooms after the plays. Honeymoon couples, I believe, have been given the room called Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Cymbeline, Midsummer Night’s Dream and many another will astonish the guest at that really very fine and ancient hotel. I forget if there be a bedroom named after Two Gentlemen of Verona. If so, it must obviously be one of the double rooms mentioned in the tariff.
They gave me As you Like It, and it was sufficiently comfortable: I liked it much. On the other hand, Macbeth makes one fearful of insomnia. “Macbeth does murder sleep.” Not poppy nor mandragora—well, let it be.
It is also true that the old market-house, a quaint isolated building of late eighteenth or early nineteenth century standing at the junction of Wood and Henley Streets with Bridge Street, and now a Bank, has for weather-vane the Shakespeare arms and crest of falcon and spear; and it is no less undeniable that the presiding genius of the place has his manifestations in many other directions; but all these things, together with the several antique furniture and curio shops where the unique articles—of which there is but one each in the world—you purchase to-day are infallibly replaced to-morrow, are for the benefit of the visitor, the stranger and pilgrim. “I was a stranger and ye took me in,” I murmured when the absolute replica of the unmatched article I had purchased was unblushingly exposed for sale within a day or two.