WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.
—As You Like It
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I have on several occasions been to the Shakespeare country, approaching it from different directions, but each time I am set down at Leamington. Perhaps this is by some Act of Parliament—I really do not know; anyway, I have ceased to kick against the pricks and now meekly accept my fate.
Leamington seems largely under subjection to that triumvirate of despots—the Butler, the Coachman and the Gardener. You hear the jingle of keys, the flick of the whip and the rattle of the lawnmower; and a cold, secret fear takes possession of you—a sort of half-frenzied impulse to flee, before smug modernity takes you captive and whisks you off to play tiddledywinks or to dance the racquet.
But the tram is at the door—the outside fare is a penny, inside it's two—and we are soon safe, for we have reached the point where the Leam and the Avon meet.
Warwick is worth our while. For here we see scenes such as Shakespeare saw, and our delight is in the things that his eyes beheld.