Another diabolical conspiracy of the Jesuits had been discovered, and their designs frustrated. The news had just travelled to Warwick, and all was exultation, execration, and wild riot; whilst, added to this was a whispered rumour that the Queen of Scots was to be immediately brought to trial for participation in the plot. Sir Walter Mildmay, Sir Amias Paulet, and Edward Barker,—it was said at the Castle,—had waited upon Mary, informing her of the commission to try her, and also that Mary had refused to submit to an examination before subjects. Thus, then, all was excitement, stir, and bustle, as Shakespeare, unmarked by all, passed through the streets of Warwick and entered, the market-place,—a scene, perhaps, not quite so rude and riotous as in earlier times in that old town, yet still sufficiently characteristic of the period.
At one side of the market a company of fleshers, butchers, and half-clad hangers-on, reeking with the "uncleanly savours of the slaughter-house," threw up their sweaty night-caps, and urged their savage mastiffs to the charge, whilst an unlucky bear, tied to a strong stake, hugged and bit and bellowed with the agony of the attack. At another part a rout of fellows were to be seen wrestling and playing at quarter-staff; others, as they sprawled before a low hostel, were dicing and drinking, whilst a whole company danced and shouted around a bonfire, in which the effigies of Philip of Spain, tied back to back to a shaven monk, were being burnt. At another part of the market a considerable crowd was gathered around a sort of rhyming pedlar,—a tatterdemalion poet, who said, and shouted, and sang, the latest news, the newest ballad, and the last lampoon made upon Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote:—
"A Parliament member, a justice of peace—
At home a poor scarecrow, in London an ass."
Passing through this crowd, and gathering from several knots of the citizens much of the stirring news, Shakespeare entered a small tavern situate in the outskirts of the town, near the Priory walls, where, although he found less bustle, there was yet a decent assemblage of guests. Here again he had opportunity of hearing those events which at the moment interested the kingdom from one end to the other. Violent philippics were levelled against Mary of Scotland, Philip of Spain, the Pope, and all communicating and consorting with them. The Queen of Scots, it was asserted by one of the travellers, had been found guilty of writing a letter to Philip, in which she offered to transfer all England to the Spaniard should her son refuse to embrace the Catholic faith. Another guest affirmed she had entered into a conspiracy against her own son, and instigated agents to seize his person and deliver him into the hands of the Pope, or the King of Spain.
As the fugitive sat beneath the huge chimney, and listened to the noisy debate of these politicians, amidst the hum of voices, and with the names of Walsingham, Babington, Burleigh, Hatton, Leicester, and others, ringing in his ears, he fell asleep, and with his arms folded, his head dropping upon his breast, his feet stretched out upon the hearth, his quarter-staff fast clutched in his arms, in company with others snoring in different parts of the apartment, did he pass the first hours of the night on which he fled from Stratford.
It was by no means an uncommon occurrence in Elizabeth's day for guests and wayfarers at a hostel of this sort so to pass the night. Your traveller oft-times took his supper, folded his arms, drew his cloak around him, and slept in his boots and doublet when on a journey. The comfort of a good bed, as in our own day upon the road, was by no means thought so necessary. Nay, during the reign of Henry the Eighth, the peasant slept upon the floor with a log of wood for a pillow; and a comfortable bed to the hardy English peasant or the yeoman was a luxury indeed. The traveller, therefore, who meant to be early on the road, paid his shot over-night, and departed with "the first cock." Accordingly, the morning broke as Shakespeare brushed the dew from the grass some miles from Warwick, and the sun shone out brightly as he neared the towers of Kenilworth, then in all its pride and magnificence. The parks, and woods, and chase of this fortress were well known to the poet; and the beautiful little village, with its priory situated close to the walls, amidst verdant meadows, and surrounded with thick and massive foliage, had been a favourite haunt. Here, when a school-boy, he had accompanied his father, what time the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth for seventeen days, "with pomp, with triumph, and with revelling." And here he had taken his first impression of regal pride and power. At the same time he also got an inkling of the theatrical diversions then in vogue; for hither came the Coventry men, and acted an ancient play upon the green—a play long used or represented in their antique city, and called "Hock's Tuesday," and in which the Dane, after a formal engagement, was discomfited. Here, too, us he stood upon the margin of the castle-lake, he beheld another pageant, in which
"Arion,[18] on a dolphin's back,
Uttered such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude lake grew civil at her song."
Many other rough, sports, too, had he seen on this occasion and on this spot; the gracious Queen, sitting patiently the whilst, "kindly giving her thanks to the actors for nothing."
"Her sport to take what they mistook,
And what poor duty could not do,
Noble respect took it in might, not merit;
And where she saw them shiver and look pale,
Make periods in the midst of sentences,
Throttle their practis'd accents in their fears,
And in conclusion dumbly breaking off,
Out of their silence did she pick a welcome,
And in the modesty of fearful duty
She read as much, as from the rattling tongue
Of saucy and audacious eloquence."
As Shakespeare turned from the neighbourhood of Kenilworth, the scene was by no means new to him, yet still it made considerable impression upon his mind; the huge castle and its flanking walls and towers, and the buildings which had been added to it during various reigns, altogether made up a pile of feudal grandeur such as was hardly to be equalled in the kingdom. There stood the new and magnificent buildings of the favourite Leicester—the towers of old John of Gaunt, "time-honoured Lancaster,"—the lodgings of King Henry the Eighth—the old bower of Cæsar, (built by Geoffrey de Clinton,) the tilt-yard, the swan tower, the water tower, Lunn's tower, Fountain tower, Saintlow tower, and Mervyn's bower. There was the plaisance, the orchard, the huge court, the garden, the glassy lake, and the wild and magnificent chase. All these, much as they had been impressed upon the mind of Shakespeare in former rambles, seemed doubly interesting and impressive now that lie was leaving the scene, perhaps for ever, without purse, profession, or prospect. Nay, should he meet some outlaw or common robber on the road, he might have said, with his own Valentine—