Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

by Charles G. Harper

In all this time the structure suffered many changes, the former woolshop being opened as an inn, the “Maidenhead,” even in Shakespeare’s own time, 1603. Later it became the “Swan and Maidenhead,” and had its front new-faced with brick in 1808. Meanwhile, the Birthplace had in 1784 become a butcher’s shop, hanging out the sign board “The immortal Shakespeare was born in this house.” In the course of these changes the dormer windows had disappeared, about 1800, and the whole was in a very dilapidated state. The restoration work of 1857–58, renewing the vanished dormers in the roof, pulling down the brick front and reinstating a timber-framed elevation, and generally placing the building again in a weather-proof condition, cost nearly a further £3000.

Photographs scarcely give a correct impression of the exterior as thus restored. They reproduce the form, but not the true tone and quality of the timber and plaster, and in truth they make the house look better than it is. The quality of the exterior materials is not convincing and makes the house look very unauthentically new. The timbers and the plaster may be even better than they were in John Shakespeare’s time, but we do not wish them to be, and there is a spruceness and a kind of parlourmaidenly neatness about the place which we feel quite sure the man who was fined for having a muck-heap in front of his house, and for not keeping his gutter clean never knew. Painted woodwork, mathematically true, and the kind of plaster facing we see here were unknown in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Roughly split oak formed both interior and exterior framing to John Shakespeare’s house, and the houses of his neighbours, and it was only in Victorian times that the neatness and the soullessness expressed here became the obsession of craftsmen. In short, they do these things much more convincingly to-day at Earl’s Court.

Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who is a very much greater person than Columbus and discovered America in the monetary sense, while Columbus only added to his geographical knowledge and not to his wealth, has also discovered Stratford-on-Avon, and has generously given the town a public library and the Trustees of the Birthplace two old cottages, all in Henley Street. At the offices you purchase tickets for the Birthplace and the Birthplace Museum, and may well, before doing so, look into that public library, formed out of one of those ancient timber-framed houses Stratford is fortunate enough to possess in profusion. It is a charmingly remodelled building, very well worth inspection.

But let us to the Birthplace. At the door we are met by a caretaker. If it be late in the day he will be a little, or possibly very, husky. In any case he is hurried. He hastens us into a stone-floored room in which a multitude of people are already waiting. They look as if they were attending an inquest, or, at the best of it, a seance, and expected every moment to be called upon to view the body, or to hear knockings or see ghostly shapes. He shuts the door. It is a solemn moment, and in the passing of it we do actually hear knockings, loud and impatient—but they are not spirits from the vasty deep: only other and impatient visitors who have paid their sixpences. But they must wait.

“This is the house where Shakespeare was born. You will be shown presently the actual room where he was born, upstairs.”

“It became a butcher’s shop afterwards, didn’t it?” asks some one. The showman looks grieved: the interruption throws him out of gear, like a bent penny in a slot machine. Besides, it isn’t in the programme. “You must excuse me, sir, and not keep people waiting. This was the living room. The chimney corner remains exactly as it was when Shakespeare was a boy. Have you tickets for the Museum? Those who have will go through that door to the right. This room at the back is the kitchen. If you will ascend the staircase, you will be shown the birth-room. Mind the step.”

A dark steep climb, and a narrow passage leads into the former front bedroom. It is almost entirely bare, only an old chair or two and an old coffer emphasising its nakedness. The rough plaster walls and the ceiling are appallingly dirty; Mrs. Shakespeare would be thoroughly ashamed of it, if she could but revisit her home. A plaster cast of the inevitable Shakespeare bust stands in the room, sometimes on the coffer, and sometimes on a spindly-legged table, and looks with serene amusement upon the proceedings. The old person who used to show the birth-room has apparently been superseded. She used to patronise the bust, and afforded some people much secret amusement. “Plenty room ’ere for the mighty brain,” she would say, drawing her hand across that broad and lofty brow; “there will never be more than one Shakespeare, sir.”

The present attendants have less time for that kind of thing, and hurry on with their mechanical tale. Why don’t the Trustees economise, and get a gramophone? “This is the room where Shakespeare was born. The furniture you see does not belong to his time. Some of the glass in the window is original; you can tell it by the green tint. Them laths, sir, in the ceiling? They’re iron, and put up to preserve the original ceiling. No one is allowed in the room above. The ceiling and the walls, as you will observe, are covered with names. Before visitors’ books were provided, visitors were invited to write their names here. You will see that they have fully availed themselves of the privilege, and those who had diamond rings have scratched theirs on the window-panes. Here you will see the signature of General Tom Thumb, who visited the Birthplace with his wife. His name was Stratton. Its position, not very much higher than the skirting-board, shows his height. Helen Faucit’s name appears on the beam overhead. Sir Walter Scott’s name, and Thomas Carlyle’s will be seen on the window.”