Happy rustics, best content
With the cheapest merriment;
And possess no other fear
Than to want the wake next year;"
that is, to miss or lack it.
RURAL OUTINGS.
Much of the recreation, as of the education, of William Shakespeare was in the fields. "He is rarely a descriptive poet, distinctively so called; but images of mead and grove, of dale and upland, of forest depths, of quiet walks by gentle rivers,—reflections of his own native scenery,—spread themselves without an effort over all his writings. All the occupations of a rural life are glanced at or embodied in his characters. He wreathes all the flowers of the field in his delicate chaplets; and even the nicest mysteries of the gardener's art can be expounded by him. His poetry in this, as in all other great essentials, is like the operations of nature itself; we see not its workings. But we may be assured, from the very circumstance of its appearing so accidental, so spontaneous in its relations to all external nature and to the country life, that it had its foundation in very early and very accurate observation. Stratford was especially fitted to have been the 'green lap' in which the boy-poet was 'laid.' The whole face of creation here wore an aspect of quiet loveliness."
The surrounding country was no less beautiful; and William would naturally become familiar with it in his boyish rambles and in his visits to his relatives. The village of Wilmcote, the home of his mother, was within walking distance; and so was Snitterfield, where his father lived before he came to Stratford, and where his uncle Henry still resided. All through the wooded district of Arden the name of Shakespeare was very common, and among those who bore it were probably other families more or less closely related to John Shakespeare's.