Five miles from Warwick (ten, if you believe the cab-drivers) are the ruins of Kenilworth Castle.
In Fifteen Hundred Seventy-five, when Shakespeare was eleven years of age, Queen Elizabeth came to Kenilworth. Whether her ticket was by way of Leamington I do not know. But she remained from July Ninth to July Twenty-seventh, and there were great doings 'most every day, to which the yeomanry were oft invited. John Shakespeare was a worthy citizen of Warwickshire, and it is very probable that he received an invitation, and that he drove over with Mary Arden, his wife, sitting on the front seat holding the baby, and all the other seven children sitting on the straw behind. And we may be sure that the eldest boy in that brood never forgot the day. In fact, in "Midsummer Night's Dream" he has called on his memory for certain features of the show. Elizabeth was forty-one years old then, but apparently very attractive and glib of tongue. No doubt Kenilworth was stupendous in its magnificence, and it will pay you to take down from its shelf Sir Walter's novel and read about it. But today it is all a crumbling heap; ivy, rooks and daws hold the place in fee, each pushing hard for sole possession.
It is eight miles from Warwick to Stratford by the direct road, but ten by the river. I have walked both routes and consider the latter the shorter.
Two miles down the river is Barford, and a mile farther is Wasperton, with its quaint old stone church. It is a good place to rest: for nothing is so soothing as a cool church where the dim light streams through colored windows, and out of sight somewhere an organ softly plays. Soon after leaving the church a rustic swain hailed me and asked for a match. The pipe and the Virginia weed—they mean amity the world over. If I had questions to ask, now was the time! So I asked, and Rusticus informed me that Hampton Lucy was only a mile beyond and that Shakespeare never stole deer at all; so I hope we shall hear no more of that libelous accusation.
"But did Shakespeare run away?" I demanded.
"Ave coorse he deed, sir; 'most all good men 'ave roon away sometime!"
And come to think of it Rusticus is right.
Most great men have at some time departed hastily without leaving orders where to forward their mail. Indeed, it seems necessary that a man should have "run away" at least once, in order afterward to attain eminence. Moses, Lot, Tarquin, Pericles, Demosthenes, Saint Paul, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Voltaire, Goldsmith, Hugo—but the list is too long to give.
But just suppose that Shakespeare had not run away! And to whom do we owe it that he did leave—Justice Shallow or Ann Hathaway, or both? I should say to Ann first and His Honor second. I think if Shakespeare could write an article for "The Ladies' Home Journal" on "Women Who Have Helped Me," and tell the whole truth (as no man ever will in print), he would put Ann Hathaway first.
He signed a bond when eighteen years old agreeing to marry her; she was twenty-six. No record is found of the marriage. But we should think of her gratefully, for no doubt it was she who started the lad off for London.