"That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."
In shape the town of Stratford somewhat resembles a large cross, which is formed by High Street, running nearly north and south, and Bridge Street and Wood Street, running nearly east and west. From these, which are main avenues, radiate many and devious branches. A few of the streets are broad and straight but many of them are narrow and crooked. High and Bridge streets intersect each other at the centre of the town, and there stands the market house, an ugly building, of the period of George the Fourth, with belfry and illuminated clock, facing eastward toward the old stone bridge, with fourteen arches,—the bridge that Sir Hugh Clopton built across the Avon, in the reign of Henry the Seventh. A cross once stood at the corner of High Street and Wood Street, and near the cross was a pump and a well. From that central point a few steps will bring the traveller to the birthplace of Shakespeare.
It is a little, two-story cottage, of timber and plaster, on the north side of Henley Street, in the western part of the town. It must have been, in its pristine days, finer than most of the dwellings in its neighbourhood. The one-story house, with attic windows, was the almost invariable fashion of building, in English country towns, till the seventeenth century. This cottage, besides its two stories, had dormer-windows, a pent-house over its door, and altogether was built and appointed in a manner both luxurious and substantial. Its age is unknown; but the history of Stratford reaches back to a period three hundred years antecedent to William the Conqueror, and fancy, therefore, is allowed ample room to magnify its antiquity. It was bought, or occupied, by Shakespeare's father in 1555, and in it he resided till his death, in 1601, when it descended by inheritance to the poet. Such is the substance of the complex documentary evidence and of the emphatic tradition that consecrate this cottage as the house in which Shakespeare was born. The point has never been absolutely settled. John Shakespeare, the father, was the owner in 1564 not only of the house in Henley Street but of another in Greenhill Street. William Shakespeare might have been born at either of those dwellings. Tradition, however, has sanctified the Henley Street cottage; and this, accordingly, as Shakespeare's cradle, will be piously guarded to a late posterity. It has already survived serious perils and vicissitudes. By Shakespeare's will it was bequeathed to his sister Joan—Mrs. William Hart—to be held by her, under the yearly rent of twelvepence, during her life, and at her death to revert to his daughter Susanna and her descendants. His sister Joan appears to have been living there at the time of his decease, in 1616. She is known to have been living there in 1639—twenty-three years later,—and doubtless she resided there till her death, in 1646. The estate then passed to Susanna—Mrs. John Hall,—from whom in 1649 it descended to her grandchild, Lady Barnard, who left it to her kinsmen, Thomas and George Hart, grandsons of Joan. In this line of descent it continued—subject to many of those infringements which are incidental to poverty—till 1806, when William Shakespeare Hart, the seventh in collateral kinship from the poet, sold it to Thomas Court, from whose family it was at last purchased for the British nation. Meantime the property, which originally consisted of two tenements and a considerable tract of adjacent land, had, little by little, been curtailed of its fair proportions by the sale of its gardens and orchards. The two tenements—two in one, that is—had been subdivided. A part of the building became an inn—at first called "The Maidenhead," afterward "The Swan," and finally "The Swan and Maidenhead." Another part became a butcher's shop. The old dormer-windows and the pent-house disappeared. A new brick casing was foisted upon the tavern end of the structure. In front of the butcher's shop appeared a sign announcing "William Shakespeare was born in this house: N.B.—A Horse and Taxed Cart to Let." Still later appeared another legend, vouching that "the immortal Shakespeare was born in this house." From 1793 till 1820 Thomas and Mary Hornby, connections by marriage with the Harts, lived in the Shakespeare cottage—now at length become the resort of literary pilgrims,—and Mary Hornby, who set up to be a poet and wrote tragedy, comedy, and philosophy, took delight in exhibiting its rooms to visitors. During the reign of that eccentric custodian the low ceilings and whitewashed walls of its several chambers became covered with autographs, scrawled thereon by many enthusiasts, including some of the most famous persons in Europe. In 1820 Mary Hornby was requested to leave the premises. She did not wish to go. She could not endure the thought of a successor. "After me, the deluge!" She was obliged to abdicate; but she conveyed away all the furniture and relics alleged to be connected with Shakespeare's family, and she hastily whitewashed the cottage walls. Only a small part of the wall of the upper room, the chamber in which "nature's darling" first saw the light, escaped that act of spiteful sacrilege. On the space behind its door may still be read many names, with dates affixed, ranging back from 1820 to 1729. Among them is that of Dora Jordan, the beautiful and fascinating actress, who wrote it there June 2, 1809. Much of Mary Hornby's whitewash, which chanced to be unsized, was afterward removed, so that her work of obliteration proved only in part successful. Other names have been added to this singular, chaotic scroll of worship. Byron, Scott,† Rogers, Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, and Dickens are among the votaries there and thus recorded.
† Sir Walter Scott visited Shakespeare's birthplace in August, 1821, and at that time scratched his name on the window-pane. He had previously, in 1815, visited Kenilworth. He was in Stratford again in 1828, and on April 8 he went to Shakespeare's grave, and subsequently drove to Charlecote. The visit of Lord Byron has been incorrectly assigned to the year 1816. It occurred on August 28, possibly in 1812.
The successors of Mary Hornby guarded their charge with pious care. The precious value of the old Shakespeare cottage grew more and more evident to the English people. Washington Irving made his pilgrimage to Stratford and recounted it in his beautiful Sketch-Book. Yet it was not till P. T. Barnum, from the United States, arrived with a proposition to buy the Shakespeare house and convey it to America that the literary enthusiasm of Great Britain was made to take a practical shape, and this venerated and inestimable relic became, in 1847, a national possession. In 1856 John Shakespeare, of Worthington Field, near Ashby-de-la-Zouche, gave a large sum of money to restore it; and within the next two years, under the superintendence of Edward Gibbs and William Holtom of Stratford, it was isolated by the demolition of the cottages at its sides and in the rear, repaired wherever decay was visible, and set in perfect order.
The builders of this house must have done their work thoroughly well, for even after all these years of rough usage and of slow but incessant decline the great timbers remain solid, the plastered walls are firm, the huge chimney-stack is as permanent as a rock, and the ancient flooring only betrays by the channelled aspect of its boards, and the high polish on the heads of the nails which fasten them down, that it belongs to a period of remote antiquity. The cottage stands close upon the margin of the street, according to ancient custom of building throughout Stratford; and, entering through a little porch, the pilgrim stands at once in that low-ceiled, flag-stoned room, with its wide fire-place, so familiar in prints of the chimney-corner of Shakespeare's youthful days. Within the fire-place, on either side, is a seat fashioned in the brick-work; and here, as it is pleasant to imagine, the boy-poet often sat, on winter nights, gazing dreamily into the flames, and building castles in that fairyland of fancy which was his celestial inheritance. You presently pass from this room by a narrow, well-worn staircase to the chamber above, which is shown as the place of the poet's birth. An antiquated chair, of the sixteenth century, stands in the right-hand corner. At the left is a small fire-place. Around the walls are visible the great beams which are the framework of the building—beams of seasoned oak that will last forever. Opposite to the door of entrance is a threefold casement (the original window) full of narrow panes of glass scrawled all over with names that their worshipful owners have written with diamonds. The ceiling is so low that you can easily touch it with uplifted hand. A portion of it is held in place by a network of little iron laths. This room, and indeed the whole structure, is as polished and orderly as any waxen, royal hall in the Louvre, and it impresses observation much like old lace that has been treasured up, in lavender or jasmine. These walls, which no one is now permitted to mar, were naturally the favourite scroll of the Shakespeare votaries of long ago. Every inch of the plaster bears marks of the pencil of reverence. Hundreds of names are written there—some of them famous but most of them obscure, and all destined to perish where they stand. On the chimney-piece at the right of the fireplace, which is named The Actor's Pillar, many actors have inscribed their signatures. Edmund Kean wrote his name there—with what soulful veneration and spiritual sympathy it is awful even to try to imagine. Sir Walter Scott's name is scratched with a diamond on the window—"W. Scott." That of Thackeray appears on the ceiling, and upon the beam across the centre is that of Helen Faucit. The name of Eliza Vestris is written near the fireplace. Mark Lemon and Charles Dickens are together on the opposite wall. Byron wrote his name there, but it has disappeared. The list would include, among others, Elliston, Buckstone, G. V. Brooke, Charles Kean, Charles Mathews, and Fanny Fitzwilliam. But it is not of these offerings of fealty that you think when you sit and muse alone in that mysterious chamber. As once again I conjure up that strange and solemn scene, the sunshine rests in checkered squares upon the ancient floor, the motes swim in the sunbeams, the air is very cold, the place is hushed as death, and over it all there broods an atmosphere of grave suspense and mystical desolation—a sense of some tremendous energy stricken dumb and frozen into silence and past and gone forever.
Opposite to the birthchamber, at the rear, there is a small apartment, in which is displayed "the Stratford Portrait" of the poet. This painting is said to have been owned by the Clopton family, and to have fallen into the hands of William Hunt, town clerk of Stratford, who bought the mansion of the Cloptons in 1758. The adventures through which it passed can only be conjectured. It does not appear to have been valued, and although it remained in the house it was cast away among lumber and rubbish. In process of time it was painted over and changed into a different subject. Then it fell a prey to dirt and damp. There is a story that the little boys of the tribe of Hunt were accustomed to use it as a target for their arrows. At last, after the lapse of a century, the grandson of William Hunt showed it by chance to Simon Collins, an artist, who surmised that a valuable portrait might perhaps exist beneath its muddy surface. It was carefully cleaned. A thick beard was removed, and the face of Shakespeare emerged upon the canvas. It is not pretended that this portrait was painted in Shakespeare's time. The close resemblance that it bears,—in attitude, dress, colours, and other peculiarities,—to the painted bust of the poet in Stratford church seems to indicate that it is a modern copy of that work. Upon a brass plate affixed to it is the following inscription: "This portrait of Shakespeare, after being in the possession of Mr. William Oakes Hunt, town-clerk of Stratford, and his family, for upwards of a century, was restored to its original condition by Mr. Simon Collins of London, and, being considered a portrait of much interest and value, was given by Mr. Hunt to the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, to be preserved in Shakespeare's house, 23d April, 1862." There, accordingly, it remains, and, in association with several other dubious presentments of the poet, cheerfully adds to the mental confusion of the pilgrim who would form an accurate image of Shakespeare's appearance. Standing in its presence it was worth while to reflect that there are only two authentic representations of Shakespeare in existence—the Droeshout portrait and the Gerard Jonson bust. They may not be perfect works of art; they may not do justice to the original; but they were seen and accepted by persons to whom Shakespeare had been a living companion. The bust was sanctioned by his children; the portrait was sanctioned by his friend Ben Jonson, and by his brother actors Heminge and Condell, who prefixed it, in 1623, to the first folio of his works. Standing among the relics that have been gathered into a museum in an apartment on the ground-floor of the cottage it was essential also to remember how often "the wish is father to the thought" that sanctifies the uncertain memorials of the distant past. Several of the most suggestive documents, though, which bear upon the sparse and shadowy record of Shakespeare's life are preserved in this place. Here is a deed, made in 1596, which proves that this house was his father's residence. Here is the only letter addressed to him that is known to exist—the letter of Richard Quiney (1598) asking for the loan of thirty pounds. Here is a declaration in a suit, in 1604, to recover the price of some malt that he had sold to Philip Rogers. Here is a deed, dated 1609, on which is the autograph of his brother Gilbert, who represented him, at Stratford, in his business affairs, while he was absent in London, and who, surviving, it is dubiously said, almost till the period of the Restoration, talked, as a very old man, of the poet's impersonation of Adam in As You Like It. (Possibly the reference of that legend is not to Gilbert but to a son of his. Gilbert would have been nearly a century old when Charles the Second came to the throne.) Here likewise is shown a gold seal ring, found many years ago in a field near Stratford church, on which, delicately engraved, appear the letters W. S., entwined with a true lovers' knot. It may have belonged to Shakespeare. The conjecture is that it did, and that,—since on the last of the three sheets which contain his will the word "seal" is stricken out and the word "hand" substituted,—he did not seal that document because he had only just then lost this ring. The supposition is, at least, ingenious. It will not harm the visitor to accept it. Nor, as he stands poring over the ancient, decrepit school-desk which has been lodged in this museum, from the grammar-school, will it greatly tax his credulity to believe that the "shining morning face" of the boy Shakespeare once looked down upon it, in the irksome quest of his "small Latin and less Greek." They call it Shakespeare's desk. It is old, and it is known to have been in the school of the guild three hundred years ago. There are other relics, more or less indirectly connected with the great name that is here commemorated. The inspection of them all would consume many days; the description of them would occupy many pages. You write your name in the visitors' book at parting, and perhaps stroll forth into the garden of the cottage, which encloses it at the sides and in the rear, and there, beneath the leafy boughs of the English lime, while your footsteps press "the grassy carpet of this plain," behold growing all around you the rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, rue, daisies, and violets, which make the imperishable garland on Ophelia's grave, and which are the fragrance of her solemn and lovely memory.
Thousands of times the wonder must have been expressed that while the world knows so much about Shakespeare's mind it should know so little about his life. The date of his birth, even, is established by an inference. The register of Stratford church shows that he was baptised there in 1564, on April 26. It was customary to baptise infants on the third day after their birth. It is presumed that the custom was followed in this instance, and hence it is deduced that Shakespeare was born on April 23—a date which, making allowance for the difference between the old and new styles of reckoning time, corresponds to our third of May. Equally by an inference it is established that the boy was educated in the free grammar-school. The school was there; and any boy of the town, who was seven years old and able to read, could get admission to it. Shakespeare's father, an alderman of Stratford (elected chief alderman, October 10, 1571), and then a man of worldly substance, though afterward he became poor, would surely have wished that his children should grow up in knowledge. To the ancient school-house, accordingly, and the adjacent chapel of the guild—which are still extant, at the south-east corner of Chapel Lane and Church Street—the pilgrim confidently traces the footsteps of the poet. Those buildings are of singular, picturesque quaintness. The chapel dates back to about the middle of the thirteenth century. It was a Roman Catholic institution, founded in 1296, under the patronage of the Bishop of Worcester, and committed to the pious custody of the guild of Stratford. A hospital was connected with it in those days, and Robert de Stratford was its first master. New privileges and confirmation were granted to the guild by Henry the Sixth, in 1403 and 1429. The grammar-school, established on an endowment of lands and tenements by Thomas Jolyffe, was set up in association with it in 1482. Toward the end of the reign of Henry the Seventh the whole of the chapel, excepting the chancel, was torn down and rebuilt under the munificent direction of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London and Stratford's chief citizen and benefactor. Under Henry the Eighth, when came the stormy times of the Reformation, the priests were driven out, the guild was dissolved, and the chapel was despoiled. Edward the Sixth, however, granted a new charter to this ancient institution, and with especial precautions reinstated the school. The chapel itself was occasionally used as a schoolroom when Shakespeare was a boy, and until as late as the year 1595; and in case the lad did go thither (in 1571) as a pupil, he must have been from childhood familiar with the series of grotesque paintings upon its walls, presenting, in a pictorial panorama, the history of the Holy Cross, from its origin as a tree at the beginning of the world to its exaltation at Jerusalem. Those paintings were brought to light in 1804 in the course of a renovation of the chapel which then occurred, when the walls were relieved of thick coatings of whitewash, laid on them long before, in Puritan times, either to spoil or to hide from the spoiler. They are not visible now, but they were copied and have been engraved. The drawings of them, by Fisher, are in the collection of Shakespearean Rarities made by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps. This chapel and its contents constitute one of the few remaining spectacles at Stratford that bring us face to face with Shakespeare. During the last seven years of his life he dwelt almost continually in his house of New Place, on the corner immediately opposite to this church. The configuration of the excavated foundations of that house indicates what would now be called a deep bay-window in its southern front. There, probably, was Shakespeare's study; and through that casement, many and many a time, in storm and in sunshine, by night and by day, he must have looked out upon the grim, square tower, the embattled stone wall, and the four tall Gothic windows of that mysterious temple. The moment your gaze falls upon it, the low-breathed, horror-stricken words of Lady Macbeth murmur in your memory:—