SHAKESPERE'S TOWN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16216, 29 April 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

SHAKESPERE'S TOWN.

IN AND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

BY MAURICE HURST.

During the next, few weeks the minds of all lovers of English literature will be turned towards a peaceful little town lying in the beautiful heart of England. The world-wide interest in Stratford-on-Avon is due not so much to the fact that it is Shakespere's birthplace, but that he retired there in middle life and remained until he passed away. Had his association with it been limited to his birth and youth, Stratford would still be famous; but the "return of the nativo " to an intimate connection with his old home, after spending a score of years in London society, gives to Stratford a unique fame. No other fact is so suggestive of Shakespere's deep love for England and the sturdy countryside that has ever been its chiefest glory and greatest strength. So staunch were the ties of affection with which Stratford endeared itself to Shakespero that, in his prime, crowned with honour, wealth, and success, he exchanged the allurements of the -capital for the peaceful nooks of leafy Warwickshire.

A-wheel in Warwickshire. After 300 years, the green Midland county is still delightfully attractive. Stratford and the Avon, even without Shakespere, would be well worth visiting. When I was there on a bright summer morning a few years ago, I had cycled nearly 1000 miles along English country roads, but the bea-ity of the district made an appeal all its own. The trim, white roads, bordered with turf and rows of stately elms, their rich foliage forming an emerald canopy high overhead —how fascinating was their beckoning call! Spinning slowly alqng the smooth highway, one had an ever-changing view between tho trees of verdant fields and slopes and hedgerows. Sometimes the road showed graceful curves; now and then it shone ahead between a straight half-mile avenue, dipping with gentle undulations, narrowing in the distance to a white ribbon amid the green. «■ Tho country about Stratford is interesting in appoarance. It is well wooded, and there are many brooks along the little valleys. Lovely old villages aro scattered about, and the district looks alive and prosperous. In every way the landscape is typically English, an ideal background for a personality so thoroughly English as Shakespere's.

Place a # nd Personality. Can it bo said that Nature carefully chose the birthplace of her darling genius? Masefield, the poet, seems to think so. "Lifo took thought for Shakespere," he has written. "She bred him, mind and bone, in a two-fold district of hill a\d valley, where country life was at its b it and the beauty of England at its bravest. Afterwards she placed him where there was the most and the best life of his time. Work so calm as his can only have come from a happy nature, happily fated. Life made a golden day for her golden soul."

In the Town. But it is time we reached Stratford. I happened to arrive there on a Sunday, and was pleasantly surprised to find how similar the town was to others of its class. Simply a quiet little market centre, with a moderate showing of fine old houses. On the .outskirts lie several streets of modern brick villas. At the edge of the town flows the gentle Avon, with trees along its banks and meadows beyond. Somehow ] expected to find a crowd of tourists—chiefly Americans— various evidences of popular hero-worship. But the streets slept the slumber of the typical British Sabbath. Trippers were not particularly noticeable, and one could have almost forgotten the noet but for the various souvenirs showing in some of the shop windows.

I stopped at a notice displayed. in a' quiet street. "Cycles Stored, Twopence." and there left my machine for the day. .Strolling through the town, I found that the Shakespere house was closed. It is .half-timbered dwelling, once the home •of'Shakespere'a father, but now a museum. I was not much disappointed to miss its contents; museums are dull, tiresome places at the best of times. Later on, when I reached Trinity Church, that was also locked up. t Inside its altar rails Shakespero, his wife, and little son are buried. Looked at from any direction, the church is a beautiful structure. It is ancient, and has a weathered appearance. I crossed the river over a nearby bridge, alongside a picturesque old mill and dam, and gained the fields on tho opposite bank. Hero one looks upon a! scene whoso tender loveliness acts like a spell. The- wide, smooth water of the pent-up stream . . . graceful swans, and a boat or two giving a splash of colour . . . grassy banks and luxuriant trees beyond . . . over them the old grey spiro piercing the bright summer blue. Surely the world cannot show a finer picture of tranquil beauty!

Across the Fields, Of course, there is ono little excursion that no visitor to Stratford ever forgets a visit to Anne Hathaway's cottage. The favourite route is to cross a stile at the edgo of the town, and 'follow a path between the fields to the village of Shottery. Sauntering along the road one cannot miss the pictures have mado it familiar to' all. It is an excellent specimen of a sixteenth century village home, with brick wall?, brown timbers, and thatched roof. There is a trim old-fashioned garden behind the neat hedge, and fine trees in the baok-ground. Strolling back in the late afternoon, one's thought* linger with the man who must have often walked'here as a. lover, whose eyes looked upon the self-same spiro over yonder trees. One realises how little the countryside hereabouts has changed in the past three centuries. Tho blossoms brigh tiling every lane and meadow, tho coil trees shading the homely houses, are tho flowers and trees that Shakespere knew and loved.

For among the few things we are certain of regarding him, we feel sure of his love of Nature. The first 21 years of his life, active and intelligent boy that be was. would have saturated his mind with pictures of Nature in every mood. He must often have fished in the Avon and hunted in the woods. Legend says ho was onco caught poaching in the neighbourhood, £

Shakespere the Nature-lover. At any rate, wo know that while he lived in London his memory often returned to the scenes of loveliness around it's birth-place. It may be of himself he wrote in the lines— I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows; Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine. It is one acquainted with birds v. ho wrote this song: The ousel-cock, so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill, The. throstle with his note so true, The wren with lit'do quill, The finch, tho sparrow, and the lark. The plain-song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay. Often must he have stood beside tho brook thaiMakes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedgo. Out in the open ho learned this song: Jog on, jog on. the footpath way, And merrily bent the stile-a, A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a.