A Day with William Shakespeare Part 1

A Day with William Shakespeare.

by Maurice Clare.

A DAY WITH WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

It was early on a bright June morning of the year 1599. The household of Christopher Mountjoy, the wig-maker, at the corner of Silver Street in Cripplegate, was already up and astir. Mountjoy, his wife and daughter, and his apprentice, Stephen Bellott, were each refres.h.i.+ng themselves with a hasty mouthful--one could not term it breakfast--before beginning their day's work. For town wig-makers were busy folk, then as now. Every fas.h.i.+onable dame wore "transformations,"

and some n.o.ble ladies, like the late Queen of Scots and--breathe it low--the great Elizabeth herself, changed the colour of their tresses every day.

Breakfast, in 1599, was a rite "more honoured in the breach than in the observance." Most people, having supped with exceeding heartiness the previous night, ignored breakfast altogether: especially as dinner would occur some time between 10 and 12 a.m. Those who could not go long without food had no idea of a regular sit-down meal during that precious morning hour which "has a piece of gold in its mouth." They contented themselves with beaten-up eggs in muscadel wine, as now the Mountjoy family; who, being of French origin, boggled somewhat at the only alternative--a very English one--small ale and bread-and-b.u.t.ter.

To these good folk, standing up and swallowing their morning draught, entered their well-to-do lodger, Mr. William Shakespeare, up betimes like them--for he was a very busy person,--and shared their jug of eggs and muscadel. Mr. Shakespeare was thirty-five years of age, "a handsome, well-shap't man," in the words of his friend Aubrey,--his eyes light hazel, his hair and beard auburn. He still retained, in some degree, the complexion which accompanies auburn hair, and this imparted a tinge of delicacy to his sensitive and mobile face. He was already slightly inclined to _embonpoint_: for in the seventeenth century people aged soon, and thirty-five was much more like forty-five nowadays.

In all company, with all people, Shakespeare was charmingly pleasant-spoken. He had long since shed any provincial _gaucherie_, and was of an exquisite courtesy, "of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit,"--again to quote his intimates, "a good-natured man, of a great sweetness in his bearing, and a most agreeable company." Moreover, that indefinable ease of bearing, which accrues with success, was evident in the gracious _bonhomie_ of his mien. For, after many years of stress and struggle, many hard bouts with fortune, innumerable humiliations and adverse events, he was now prosperous, popular, possessed of this world's goods. Although a self-made man in every sense of the word,--although still a member of that despised theatrical profession against which the pulpit thundered, at which the decent citizen looked askance,--he was a distinctly marked personality, not to be ignored. He was part proprietor of the _Globe_ Theatre, the _Blackfriars_, and the _Rose_,--he had house property in Southwark and Blackfriars, lands and houses at Stratford-upon-Avon. He had obtained a coat-of-arms for his family from the College of Heralds, thus const.i.tuting himself legally a "gentleman"; he was the brilliant author of immensely popular plays. And he was reputed to earn at the rate of 600 per annum--which would be now worth nearly eight times as much.

Such was the man who presently sauntered out into the summer sunlight, this June morning, and went leisurely westward towards Holborn. He strolled along, thoughtfully ruminating the day's work before him, but courteously alert to every greeting from pa.s.sing acquaintances in the streets. He encountered, as he went, warm and invigorating scents, which floated round each corner--and rose, for the nonce, above the malodours of the open gutter--pleasant midsummer perfumes which were exhaled, in the clear and smokeless air of those days, from a multiplicity of blossoming London gardens. For every house had its private garden, large or small. Every householder garnished his dwelling-rooms with flowers, instead of ornaments of potter's ware or metal: the floors were still strewn with leaves and gra.s.ses, and the doorways often decked with boughs. Cherries and strawberries were ripening in the ancient monastery gardens, among the majestic precincts of ruined priories: blackbirds were singing in the trees. If the actual dewy freshness of the Warwicks.h.i.+re water-meadows were not present in the London air--if the wild roses of the Avon-side did not bloom in Holborn--yet Shakespeare had only to close his eyes one moment, to project himself back into his boyhood's scenes. For London was emphatically a "garden city," encircled by forests, and fields, and farms, and wooded hills; and the ecstatic sweetness of an English June was wafted over its cobbled thoroughfares.

Of all seasons, this was the most enjoyable to Shakespeare--because of his pa.s.sion for flowers. He delighted to make long luscious lists of flowers--their very names were a pleasure to him, each fraught with its own special significance. He loved to write of

Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath: pale primroses....

The crown-imperial,--lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one.

--to collect, in imagination,

Roses, their sharp spines being gone, Not royal in their scent alone, But in their hue.

Maiden pinks of odour faint, Daisies smell-less yet most quaint, And sweet thyme true;

"Carnations and streaked gillyflowers," and all the lovely company of the garden, were a joy to him; and equally so the wild flowers in woodlands where "the wild thyme grows, And oxlips and the nodding violet blows," over which the south wind breathes softly, "stealing and giving odour." Beneath the tangled woodbines and musk-roses, the poet could linger in fantasy, if not in fact,--in dream, if not in deed. A pa.s.sionate enjoyment of wild nature distinguished him pre-eminently above all his town-bred compeers. Trees and birds and forest brooks, but flowers especially, claimed an equal place with music in his affections. Beauty of sight and sound appealed, with magic power, to the man on whom the robuster joys failed to make any permanent mark. For towards all the salient characteristics of the Elizabethan age,--the volcanic vigour, the incandescent longing for adventure, the magnificent dare-devilry of seamans.h.i.+p, the fierce and splendid valour, inciting men to desperate deeds,--William Shakespeare was strangely impa.s.sive and unimpressionable. The wave of Elizabethan ardour surged past, and left him not even sprinkled by its spray. He was quite content to go on clothing with new flesh--glowing and Giorgione-like--the antique bones of old romances; to infuse new life into forgotten mediaeval episodes, crudely treated by his predecessors, the men who supplied stock plays for travelling companies. He preferred some ardent love-scene in the rich, dim gardens of Verona to all the opulent possibilities of the New World: some pageantry in Venice or in Athens to any present splendour of the Elizabethan court. He secretly revelled, with conscious and justifiable pride, in pouring forth imperial pa.s.sages of words, reverberant with rolling sound; but frequently, for the sheer pleasure of musical effect, as it would seem, he introduced those exquisite lyrics,--bird-like in their careless spontaneity, flower-like in their grace and daintiness,--which float like flakes of thistledown above his plays.

These songs say all that need be said: they condense into a few swift words the essential spirit of a whole drama. So in _Oth.e.l.lo_:

"My mother had a maid call'd Barbara," says Desdemona, standing unwittingly upon the threshold of death,

"She had a song of 'willow'; An old thing 'twas, _but it expressed the future_, And she died singing it. That song, to-night, Will not go from my head."

The most apparently casual and irrelevant ditties of Shakespeare's dramas, in like manner, "express the future" of the story.

"Come unto these yellow sands, And there take hands"....

So, eventually, Ferdinand and Miranda avow their mutual love beside the lapping of the long blue waves.

"Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me,"--

might be the very _leit-motiv_ of _As You Like It_.

"Sigh no more, ladies,--ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever: One foot on sea, and one on sh.o.r.e, To one thing constant never,"--

--here you have the treachery of Don John, and the vacillating mistrust of Claudio, succinctly summed up.

"Journeys end in lovers' meeting, Every wise man's son doth know,"--

thus the Clown in _Twelfth Night_ becomes mouthpiece of the _denouement_ which was never long in doubt.

To every man his _metier_: and that of William Shakespeare was not to be the mouthpiece of those "s.p.a.cious times," tingling with sensation, with excitement, with huge enterprise. Exhibiting, throughout, the curious patient persistence of the essential Midlander, he had worked his way right up from the bottom rung of the ladder. The ill-mated young man of twenty-three, who had left Stratford with a travelling company of players in 1587,--who had (whether conscious or unconscious of his genius) plodded industriously onward as a literary hack of drama--tinkering, adapting, re-shaping and re-writing the stale old stock plays, until they suffered a change "into something rich and strange,"--whose colossal greatness his contemporaries were not great enough to appreciate;--that same man was now arriving--like so many other Midlanders--at a point where criticism could not touch him. He had gained no giddy pinnacle of sudden success, but a safe and solid summit of a.s.sured position. That he should attain it in his own way, and after his own methods,--that, after all, was his business. There were plenty of other poets to utter _Arma virumque cano_. William Shakespeare preferred to link himself with thoughts of Italy, and fairy-folk, and "the sea-coast of Bohemia,"--with youth and palaces and forests, and fortunate or frustrate love. His range and scope were enormous, if he cared: his output astonis.h.i.+ng, if he chose....

Meanwhile, it was mid-summer and there were roses....

"Ferdinand and Miranda avow their mutual love, beside the lapping of the long blue waves."

_Ferdinand._ Here's my hand.

_Miranda._ And mine, with my heart in't.

(_The Tempest_).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FERDINAND AND MIRANDA. _Painting by Edmund Dulac_.]

Moving meditatively along Holborn, he presently encountered his old friend Gerard the botanist, whose _Herball_ had been published two years before,--who stood at the head of his profession for knowledge and achievement. He lived in Holborn, where he had not only a fine garden-ground, but a fruit-ground in Fetter Lane, which he superintended for the surgical society of which he was a member.

"Well met, Will!" said the grave and reverend herbalist, "no other man in London would I more gladly welcome: for that thou hast a most worthy apprehension of the seemliness of plants and herbs. Country blood, country blood, good sir! Come, now, into my poor enclosure and let me regale thee with new and marvellous things.... What! it is but eight o' the clock! The paltry playhouse shall not claim thee yet awhile. What are all Euripides his dramas, in comparison with that wherewith I shall rejoice thine eyes?"

And, seizing the poet's hand, Gerard drew him through a side-door into his beloved garden. "Behold!" he exclaimed, "the Apple of Love, _Pomum Aureum_!"--and, with ineffable pride, he pointed out some slowly-ripening tomatoes. "These grow in Spain, Italy and such hot countries, from whence myself have received seeds for my garden, where, as thou seest, they do grow and prosper.... Howbeit there be other golden apples, which the poets do fable growing in the gardens of the daughters of Hesperus. These,"--he added regretfully, "I have not."

"Master Gerard, there shall no golden apples ever come to England worthy to compare with yours," remarked the dramatist, luxuriously inhaling the warm June scents shut closely within sun-baked walls, and gazing down the coloured vistas and aisles of bloom. "Here's flowers for you!" he murmured to himself,

"Here's a plenty of sweet herbs!

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram, The marigold that goes to bed with the sun, And with him rises weeping: these are flowers Of middle summer. And I think they are given To men of middle age."

"Sithee here again," continued Gerard, well launched upon his favourite topic, "this plant, which is called of some Skyrrits of Peru, is generally called of us, Potatus or Potatoes,"--and he waved his hand towards a bed of sweet potatoes. "Of these roots may be made conserves, toothsome, wholesome and dainty, and many comfortable and restorative sweetmeats. Other potatoes there be, which some do use with salt,--but of these I have no present apprehension."

Shakespeare was not paying attention to the potatoes. On his knees beside a strawberry bed, he looked up with a laughing face. "Methinks I would rather fresh fruit than conserves," said he, filling his mouth with much satisfaction.

"Then, of the Indian pot-herb, tobacco," the botanist proceeded, "give me joy that I have had good fortune in three kinds thereof,--the Henbane of Peru, the Trinidada Tobacco, and the pigmy or dwarfish sort. But, indeed, this same tobacco is by no means to be commended as a fume or smoking-medicine. The juice, boiled with sugar into a syrup, is a sovereign cure for many maladies. I pray you, good Master Shakespeare," said he, earnestly seizing the other's arm and punctuating his words with a gentle see-saw movement, "believe me, that any other herb of hot temperature will suffice for pipe-smoking--rosemary, thyme, winter savory, sweet marjoram and such-like."

"Faith, I am no great smoker," replied Shakespeare, as with a dexterous jerk he eluded his friend and dived down an alley of damask roses. "Here," said he, "I shall play the robber,--" He gathered a rose and set it behind his ear in the most approved Court fas.h.i.+on. "I would fain linger all day among these manifold sweetnesses," he added, "but alack! I have need to hasten now. I pray you, therefore, give me leave to depart." The herbalist, talking volubly, accompanied him to the door.

The playwright turned down towards Blackfriars: on his way he entered an apothecary's shop, and, heedless of Master Gerard's warnings, purchased a "rich smoke" at sixpence a pipeful--(equivalent to, perhaps, four s.h.i.+llings of our money). This was no cheap and adulterated mixture, such as the "groundlings" used, but the very best procurable: and, to emphasise its _recherche_ quality, it was kept in a lily-pot, minced on a maple-block, served out with silver tongs, and lighted from a little fire of juniper shavings. Shakespeare, having thus filled his long clay pipe, proceeded to the Blackfriars sh.o.r.e, where he took a ferry-boat across to Bankside in Southwark and entered the _Globe_ Theatre, of which he was part proprietor. It may here be explained that, every theatre having recently been banished from the City as the very quintessence of disreputability and root of all evil, the exiled players had taken refuge south of the river, in Bankside: which, being a quarter singularly ill-famed, was considered by all reputable citizens a most appropriate situation for them. The _Globe_, like other public playhouses of the period, was roofless: three stories high, with boxes all round in tiers, the ground tier paled with oaken boards and fenced with strong iron pikes. The stage, which had a "shadow" or cover over it, was some 40 ft. wide and extended to the middle of the yard or pit. At the back of the stage was a balcony, over the entrance from the "tiring-house" or dressing-rooms. It was lighted, if necessary, by branched candlesticks, while "cressets"

(tarred ropes' ends in cages) were set in front of the boxes.

The _Globe_ company of about ten actors, Burbage, Heminge, Condell, Field and the rest, were entering by ones and twos, with the boys who played women's parts: last of all, the orchestra of ten performers, the largest in London, dawdled in, and took up their instruments--chiefly drums and trumpets. The rehearsal commenced--the play of _Hamlet_, with Burbage in the t.i.tle-role. Shakespeare, though necessarily present, paid but little attention to the business in hand. In studied and self-conscious acting he had no interest whatsoever. His theory was the same as Ben Jonson's, that a man should act "freely, carelessly, and capriciously, as if one's veins ran with quicksilver, and not utter a phrase but shall come forth in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire." But this was too high a criterion to impose upon his company. He therefore left them chiefly to their own devices, under the capable management of Burbage, and remained himself in the tiring-room, employed upon his usual morning's avocation, revising and revivifying old "stock" plays, and considering fresh MSS., which arrived in vast numbers--and accepting as much as he could. For he was incapable of jealousy: he "did his greatness easily," and was the kindest of friends, the most indulgent of critics, to would-be dramatic authors. His acquaintance with Ben Jonson had originated in "a remarkable piece of humanity and good-nature." Jonson, unknown and unaccredited, had offered a play to the theatre. "But the persons into whose hands it was put, after turning it carelessly and superficially over, were just upon returning it to him, with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company, when Shakespeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it, as to encourage him to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Ben Jonson and his writings to the public." (Rowe) Similar experiences befell many a budding stage writer: Shakespeare's singular sweetness of disposition led him to be lavish of praise as of money. He was "always willing to touch up this man's play, or write in an act for that one." And of no other man did he utter a cruel or an injurious word. "A kinder gentleman treads not the earth," his intimates might have said of him, as he of Antonio.

"The young gallants were glad when the Play-scene was over."

_Hamlet._ He poisons him in the garden for his estate. His name's Gonzago.