Yes, I know that Shakespeare made her his heiress, that she was clever and charitable, that in July of 1643 she entertained Queen Henrietta Maria at New Place, but I do not care at all for the confusion of her bones when "a person named Watts" intruded into her grave fifty-eight years after she had taken possession, and I believe she used her father's manuscripts for wrapping up her saffron pies.
We spent the earlier half of the afternoon in a drive among some of the outlying villages of Stratford,—first to Wilmcote, the birthplace of Shakespeare's mother. We dismissed a fleeting thought of "Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot," and sought only for "Mary Arden's Cottage." Gabled and dormer-windowed, of stout oak timbers and a light brown plaster, it stands pleasantly within its rustic greenery. Old stone barns and leaning sheds help to give it an aspect of homely kindliness. Robert Arden's will, dated 1556, is the will of a good Catholic, bequeathing his soul to God "and to our blessed Lady, Saint Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven." He directed that his body should be buried in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist in Aston-Cantlow. So we drove on, a little further to the northwest, and found an Early English church with a pinnacled west tower. The air was sweet with the roses and clematis that clambered up the walls. It is here, in all likelihood, that John Shakespeare and Mary Arden were married.
We still pressed on, splashing through a ford and traversing a surviving bit of the Forest of Arden, to one village more, Wootton-Wawen, with a wonderful old church whose every stone could tell a story. Somervile the poet, who loved Warwickshire so well, is buried in the chantry chapel, and the white-haired rector told us proudly that Shakespeare had often come to service there. Indeed, Wootton-Wawen may have meant more to the great dramatist and done more to shape his destinies than we shall ever know, though Shakespeare scholarship is beginning to turn its searchlight on John Somervile of Edstone Hall, whose wife was nearly related to Mary Arden. Papist, as the whole Arden connection seems to have been, John Somervile's brain may have given way under the political and religious troubles of those changeful Tudor times. At all events, he suddenly set out for London, declaring freely along the road that he was going to kill the Queen. Arrest, imprisonment, trial for high treason, conviction, and a mysterious death in his Newgate cell followed in terrible sequence. Nor did the tragedy stop with him, but his wife, sister, and priest were arrested on charge of complicity, and not these only, but that quiet and honourable gentleman, Edward Arden of Park Hall in Wilmcote, with his wife and brother. Francis Arden and the ladies were in course of time released, but Edward Arden, who had previously incurred the enmity of Leicester by refusing to wear his livery,—a flattery to which many of the Warwickshire gentlemen eagerly stooped,—suffered, on December 20, 1583, the brutal penalty of the law,—hanged and drawn and quartered, put to death with torture, for no other crime than that of having an excitable son-in-law and a sturdy English sense of self-respect. A sad and bitter Yule it must have been for his kinsfolk in Wilmcote and in Stratford. There was danger in the air, too; a hot word might give Sir Thomas Lucy or some zealous Protestant his chance; and there may well have been graver reasons than a poaching frolic why young Will Shakespeare should have disappeared from the county.
THE COTSWOLDS
Late in the afternoon we started out from Stratford for a peep at the Cotswolds, swelling downs that belong in the main to Oxfordshire, although, as our drive soon revealed to us, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire, and even Worcestershire all come in for a share of these pastoral uplands. It is in the Cotswolds, not far from the estuary of the Severn, that the Thames rises and flows modestly through Oxfordshire, which lies wholly within its upper valley, to become the commerce-laden river that takes majestic course through the heart of London.
We were still in the Shakespeare country, for his restless feet must often have roved these breezy wilds, famous since ancient days for hunts and races. "I am glad to see you, good Master Slender," says genial Master Page. And young Master Slender, with his customary tact, replies: "How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say he was outrun on Cotsol." Whereupon Master Page retorts a little stiffly: "It could not be judged, sir," and Slender chuckles: "You'll not confess; you'll not confess." Why could it not be judged? For one of the delights of the Cotswold hunt—so hunters say—is the clear view on this open tableland of the straining pack. Shakespeare knew well the "gallant chiding" of the hounds,—how, when they "spend their mouths,"
"Echo replies
As if another chase were in the skies."
Here he may have seen his death-pressed hare, "poor Wat," try to baffle his pursuers and confuse the scent by running among the sheep and deer and along the banks "where earth-delving conies keep."