His was the hero’s soul of fire,
And his the bard’s immortal name,
And his was love, exalted high
By all the glow of chivalry.”
Our fancies are stirred, as we gaze on proud Windsor, by the thought of Surrey.
What a view it is from the round and regal tower, over which, when our loved and honoured Queen is in state residence, floats our “glorious Semper Eadem, the banner of our pride!” Let us mount with our artist to the summit of the keep. The view is wide and winsome. Surely earth has not many things to show more fair, though the prospect is distinguished rather for soft beauty and placid loveliness than for grandeur or for wildness. I have stood on the summits of Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and of many another Alpine peak, and know well that there are outlooks in nature more sublime, more austere, more soul-stirring; but yet this English landscape (which includes twelve fair counties), so peaceful, soft, and smiling, has its own distinctive charm. The bright river, gleaming in sunlight, winds and stretches far through all the calm scene. There stand stately English trees; and the view includes broad green meadows, hedgerows, low, gentle hills in the far purple distance. It is a typical English landscape scene; and then over all there is to-day the splendour of a serene summer sky, and the glory of fantastic, sunlit cloud masses.
I took a great interest in finding out the exact sites of the imprisonment of those two noble and romantic captives who suffered imprisonment here. Kings John and David were, as we have seen, probably immured in the King John’s tower, which is a prison. The Round Tower, as Mr. Holmes points out, never was a prison, though a wooden pillar is (if you ask for it) absurdly shown as the one to which Prince James was chained. The prince chained! Why, his was an honourable and a most gentle captivity. He was rather guest and pupil than prisoner; and Mr. Holmes leads, with no uncertain step, to a chamber (now used as a bedroom) in the second floor of Edward III.’s tower, which was the room of the prince, and in which is still the window from which the poet-prince looked into the garden—not now existing in its former state—and saw the Lady Jane. This point may be considered as set at rest: and it is very pleasant to be able to identify James’s chamber, to look out of his window, and to see, with the eye of imagination, the fair sight that he saw in the garden beneath. Of the place of Surrey’s captivity no record or tradition remains, but the ambitious earl, who strained after the crown, was surely held in more rigid confinement than was James. Surrey was possibly immured in the King John tower. And now we leave the castle; but before we quit Windsor we will stroll into the park, and try to summon up some fair fancies connected with Shakspeare and with Elizabeth.
It is a charming legend—even if it be only a legend—which tells us that Queen Elizabeth (El Iza Beata) when at Windsor, commanded Shakspeare to write a play in which Falstaff would be shown in love—that is, in such “love” as he was capable of—and that the result of the royal order was the Merry Wives, surely the most genial, and the fullest of human humours, of all comedies. It seems certain that the first version of this “most pleasaunt and excellent conceited comedie” was written very rapidly, because the second version is so much longer, and differs so widely from the earlier play. In consequence of the prevalence of the Plague in London, the Court, in 1593, lay long at Windsor, and there can be little doubt that the first version of the play was commissioned and acted at Windsor in that year. It is a delightful theme for the imagination to picture a sunny morning on which the royal cavalcade rode through Windsor Park. Essex and Southampton were there; and Shakspeare, no doubt, rode, for a time at least, by the bridle of great Elizabeth. The words then spoken between queen and poet we cannot recall; but as we read the lovable Merry Wives, we enjoy some of the results of the conversation. So genial is the comedy that even Sir John’s base humours do not excite moral indignation. He fails so hugely. Beaten, baffled, and befooled, the merry but honest wives have the laugh of him, and we feel the spirit of the pleasant jest when Mrs. Page proposes to
“Laugh this sport o’er by a country fire;
Sir John and all.”