A prominent feature of a collegiate church was the stalls, with their miserere seats, for the priests, and we have here stalls for twenty-six, still retaining their beautifully carved seats, little injured by time or violence. We do, in fact, frequently find the miserere carvings uninjured in cathedrals, abbeys and collegiate churches; largely because they are always on the underside of the seats and thus apt to be overlooked. Those at Stratford are well up to the general level of interest and amusement.
Amusement? Yes. The very broadest fun, sometimes particularly coarse, lurks in these often unsuspected places; and the greatest artistry of the wood-carver too, who will turn at random from the loving rendering of flower or foliage, to sacred symbols; then to the representation of birds and beasts and extraordinary chimeras that never existed outside the frontiers of Nightmare Land; and to queer domestic or social scenes. Here we find prime examples of such things. Under one seat a Crown of Thorns and the I.H.S. occur, on either side of a scene showing a man and wife fighting. He has a long beard which she is pulling with one hand, while with the other she bastes him with a ladle. She employs her feet, too, in kicking him.
Under the next seat we see this domestic strife resumed, but it is shown in two scenes, over which a central woman-headed beast presides. Here the termagant pulls her husband’s beard and tears his mouth open, while he retaliates by pulling her hair. The other scene represents the taming of the shrew. A naked woman is being thrashed by a man, and a dog completes the retribution by biting her leg.
Among the other carvings we note the favourite Bear and Ragged Staff of this district; a beggar’s monkey, with chained tin pot, or drinking-vessel, and a variety of minor subjects. Among the most interesting is that example illustrated here.
The subject is that of the once-popular legend of the unicorn, which was, according to mediæval story, an animal of the fiercest and most untamable kind, and only to be captured in one way. This way was to find a virgin, at once of great beauty and unquestioned virtue, and to conduct her to the unicorn’s haunts in the greenwood. Immediately the animal, tame only in the presence of a pure virgin, would come and lay its head gently and fearlessly in her lap; whereupon the hunter would steal forth and slay the confiding beast.
It is to be remarked here that the person who could invent such a story, whatever else he was, and however fearless his imagination, was, clearly enough, no sportsman. It is quite easy to imagine such an one shooting a sitting pheasant, or poisoning a fox.
Here, in the illustration, we perceive the maiden, not so beautiful as the carver intended her to be, caressing the confiding unicorn and apparently scratching him behind the ear, while an unsportsmanlike person digs him in the rump at leisure, with a spear-headed weapon.
CHAPTER XI
Shottery and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage.