Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times;
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass.”
And then the play begins and we see them all: Gloucester and the brave king, and Bedford, and Fluellen, and the pretty Kate of France (by some boy-player), and Nym, and Pistol, and Dame Quickly; and the drums beat, and the roar of battle breaks and rolls away—as only Shakespeare’s words can make battles rage; and the French Kate is made Queen, and so the end comes.
All this might have happened; I have tried to offend against no historic data of places, or men, or dates in this summing up. And from the doors of the Globe, where we are assailed by a clamor of watermen and linkboys, we go down to the river’s edge—scarce a stone’s-throw distant—and take our wherry, on the bow of which a light is now flaming, and float away in the murky twilight upon that great historic river—watching the red torch-fires, kindling one by one along the Strand shores, and catching the dim outline of London houses—the London of King James I.—looming through the mists behind them.
In our next chapter I shall have somewhat more to say of the Stratford man—specially of his personality; and more to say of King James, and of his English Bible.
CHAPTER II.
We have had our glimpse of the first (English) Stuart King, as he made his shambling way to the throne—beset by spoilsmen; we had our glimpse, too, of that haughty, high-souled, unfortunate Sir Walter Raleigh, whose memory all Americans should hold in honor. We had our little look through the magic-lantern of Scott at the toilet and the draggled feathers of the pedant King James, and upon all that hurly-burly of London where the Scotch Nigel adventured; and through the gossipy Harrison we set before ourselves a great many quaint figures of the time. We saw a bride whose silken dresses whisked along those balusters of Crosby Hall, which brides of our day may touch reverently now; we followed Ben Jonson, afoot, into Scotland, and among the pretty scenes of Eskdale; and thereafter we sauntered down Ludgate Hill, and so, by wherry, to Bankside and the Globe, where we paid our shilling, and passed the time o’ day with Ben Jonson; and saw young Francis Beaumont, and smelt the pipes; and had a glimpse of Shakespeare. But we must not, for this reason, think that all the world of London smoked, or all the world of London went to the Globe Theatre.