Stratford lies just at the beginning of the fruit-growing country, which stretches right down the Vale of Evesham to Worcester and the Severn; and little Will Shakspere was well versed in the merits of all kinds of fruits. There were the plum-trees, that make you think in the spring-time that a snow-shower has fallen upon a sunny day all over the Stratford district; while in the autumn the branches are laden with "the mellow plum." Who can doubt that little Will climbed the damson-tree, "with danger of my life," as he said later that Simpcox did at his wife's bidding?[B] In the plays he mentions apples of many sorts—some of which, though rare or extinct in other parts of England, still grow about his native place—the bitter-sweetings and leather-coats, the apple-johns and the pomewaters. Many a time he must have stood with all the boys of the place watching, as we might do to-day, the cider-making on some village green, when the heaps of apples, red, green, and yellow, are brought in barrows and baskets and carts from the orchards, and ground up into a thick yellow pulp in the crushing-mill turned by a horse, and that pulp is put into presses from which the clear juice runs into tubs, while the dry cakes of pulp are carted away to fatten the pigs.
There were grapes, too, growing plentifully in Warwickshire in his day; and "apricocks," "ripe figs, and mulberries," like those with which the fairies were told to feed Bottom the weaver. Blackberries and the handsome purple dewberries grew then as now, by the hedges in the orchards and in the shade of the Weir-brake just below Stratford mill, where, so says tradition, the scene of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" was laid. In the Weir-brake, too, and in all the woods about their home, the Shakspere boys must have gone nutting—that most delightful harvest of the year, when you bend down "the hazel twig," so "straight and slender," and fill baskets and pockets with the sweet nuts in their rough, green husks, and crack them all the way home like so many happy squirrels.
THE GUILD COUNCIL-ROOM—NOW THE HEAD-MASTER'S CLASS-ROOM.
All the hedge-rows were full then, as they are to this day, of wild pear-trees, wild apples, and "crabs," as crab-apples are called in England. Roasted "crabs" served with hot ale were a favorite Christmas dish in Shakspere's time. And I doubt not that the boys rejoiced at the house in Henley street as the time of year came round "when roasted crabs hiss in the bowl."
How snug the "house-place" in the old home must have looked with its roaring fire of logs, on winter evenings, when the two little boys of nine and seven, and Joan and Anne, the little sisters, huddled up in the chimney-corner with baby Richard in his cradle, while the mother prepared hot ale and "roasted crabs" for her gossips. Will, I warrant, as with twinkling eyes he watched Mrs. Hart or Mrs. Sadler or Mrs. Hathaway, from Shottery, thought that it was Puck himself, the very spirit of mischief, who had got into the bowl "in very likeness of a roasted crab."
It must have been a recollection of those winter evenings that made little Will, in later years, write his delightful "Winter Song":
"When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
"When all aloud the wind doth blow
And coughing drowns the parson's saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."
Among the gossips there would be much talk of wonders, appearances, mysterious occurrences, and charms; and the children listened with all their ears, you may be sure. Perhaps one of Mistress Shakspere's friends possessed the power that some people in Warwickshire still are said to possess, of charming away warts by a touch and some murmured invocation; or curing toothache and all other aches and pains. There are plenty of people now who, after your second cup of tea is finished, will take the cup, twist the grounds around three times, turn it mouth downward in the saucer, and then, by looking at the tea-leaves which still stick to the bottom of the cup, will undertake to tell you what is going to happen—of presents you will receive, or people who are coming to see you. And many Warwickshire women still believe firmly that whooping-cough can be charmed away by the patient walking nine times over running water.