THE BIRTHPLACE OF SHAKESPEARE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12650, 30 April 1903, Page 2

THE BIRTHPLACE OF SHAKESPEARE.

-e» At the Dunedin Shakespeare Club's recital on Thursday evening the President (Mr A. Wilson, M.A.) delivered the following addrcm: — On the anniversarj' of Shakespeare's birth it seems to me quite in place tat I fhoiUd soy something to you about Shakespeare's birthplace as I know it. It sentiment clings to a birthday, it may even more cling to a .birthplace. To jnost men tho day or month of their birth is of little moment; ■ April or October, what does it matter? But the place may mean everything. What sort of place, think you, .should have inspired the soul-travail of Hamlet? Some gloomy feudal castle h&liko, dungeoned and battlemsntocl, with store of subterranean space for unlaid eliosle—3ome grim fortress by tho Eea. for preference, though Warwick Castlo or Konilworth might-servo tho purpose. And the Histories, where should the writer nf theeo have been suckled but in the county of the King-maker, within hail of places famed in English stoiy—places like Coventry, Evcsham, Tewkesbury, and Bosworth? As for tho pastoral idyll-dramas—" Winter's Tale," " Midsummer Night's Dream," a\id " As You Like It "—these might find appropriate scenery in any English county, though Warwickshire will perve among the best. Assuredly birthplace means something, though bow much pxaetly it means it is not always easy to say. What place, for instance, ought to have reared the man whom the consentient criticism of, nations tends more and more to sot apart from other ma3tor-mindp, and above them? Some active centre of thought, one would say, where men for generations have, jostled one another, and sharpened their v.'its by rubbing; where learning is in high quest and fashion, and schools and univer3itiee bring , forth their broods of thinkers. So you might suppose. But Nature loves her paradox; and it ir. not where you are inosb likely to look for genius that you are most likely to find it. The benign mother ha 3 her own views of season and locality, raw material and manner of working. When she reeolvcs upon a ]>oet or a prophet, she does not always, or oven generally it would seem, choose her material in capitals, though she may in due course fend her genius rliiiher to bring him to' fruition. In Latin literature, for instance, you would say. that the bulk of tho great writers must surely have been natives of Rome. As a matter of fact it in very much otherwise. We do not know the birthplace of Lucretius or of Tacitus. But there are Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terenco, Catullus, Juvenal, Martial, Plnutiis, Cicero, Livy, Sallust, Ctcsar—whopo birthplaces wo do know. These are the floiver of Latin literature. Take these away and there is nothing left. And how many on tho list do you suppose were natives of Rorfio? Just one—Julius Ctesar, and ho not so much writer as man of action. Similarly' select 100 of the greatest names in English literature, and you will find that comparatively few of them belong by birth, to London, though sooner or later they are sure to find their way thither. If wo know surprisingly little with any ofirtainty about Shakespeare's life, having to conjecture oven the day of his birth, we do at least know for certain where he was born: and it was not in London, but in an obscure village, in one of the most bucolic and least actively intellectual districts of England. The sleepy little Knglirfi town of liis birth lias now become a place of note—the Mecca of the English-speaking race, with a yearly flow of some 30,000 pilgrims; and April is its month of llamadan, One April morning (to be exact, the 13th of April. 1893) I myself took scrip ami staff in hand and ?et out to fee what manner of place was that in which Shakespcaro was born, and in which he desired to die and be buried.

Along the south of the Comity ot Warwick, not far from the Rloumtenshiro border, a road, or street or str.it, runs eastward till it strikes the River Avon—a gently flowing, reedy stream that runs into tlio Severn some 30 milcfl further down. Just at the point where tho road crosses the river by a ford, and on the western or right bank, there grew up, at-what time I cannot tell, a small town whirl) called itsolf, for a very , good reason, f'tratford; . ami as towns are likely to place themselves I at fords, and Slratfords are- tlicroforu many, this particular locality came to bo known aa Stratford-on-Avon. It is now a quiet country town, with a population of over 8000; Init in tho sixteenth century it was

1 little bettor than a village with a population of 1500. Tho surrounding country is typically English, not hilly, yet not insipidly flat—a gently undulating country, allowing tho eye a considerable sweep over meadow and wood on to a distant and vaguo horizon that closes in with nothing in particular. Tho plan of Stratford is of tho simplest—roads and streets intersecting at right angles, with, occasional zig-zngs and curves, chiefly in the older parts of the town, near tho river. The principal streets are two, crossing each other, at right angles. One, tlio High street of the town, under five successive namci>, runs north and eouth, more or less parallel fertile river. The other is the road running cast and west, that apparently along which the embryo town first clustered. It pusses through the only equaro or open place tho town possesses, called the Pvother Market—that is, tho cattle market,—and takes a not very straight line Oiistward, with various names and breadths, to the old ford, now superseded by a- quaint old bridge of 14 arohro. At its widest part it calls itself Bridge street, and into Bridge street, just where it crosses , High street, runs Henley street, on the north side of which stands the old timber and plaster house where tradition says Shakespeare was horn.

Stratford, as I eaw it, in fine sunny weather; is an ideally clean and bright little town, and strikes ono generally as : having been specially got up for an old English fancy fair—a rambling, inconsequent town of old timbered, much gabled, capriciously projecting 'houses, with multi- ! tudinous casements, and a. studied aivtipa-bhy to pliunb linos. Some- part of Stratford no doubt remains much as Shakconrare saw it. ' Tho old timbered housee, the' narrow, pie- ' turtsquo and unwholesome cpurte, the Guildhall and abnEhouscs, the Guildhall Ohapel, Holy Trinity Church, and the Clopton Bridge, to sa-y nothing of Mm perennially beautiful- Avon and its grassy meadows, wo there as ho saw them ;'eo that were ho again to walk the earth ho might possibly find landmarks enough to guido him to the old house in Henley street. But if the modern pilgrim to Stratford sees something of what daily greeted Shakespeare's eyes, how much does ho inks of what hourly greeted Shake- , scare's nose. If by nothing else, Stratford would bo hopelessly disguised to Shakespeare's ghost by its eloimliucss, by the fragrant absence of fragrance in its atmoi sphere. In his time,, and for. a century ■ iater, the Stafford streets were recking qiiagmirca of filth, such as. could be- paralleled now only in the slums of somo eastern i city—scarcely in Cairo, but nerhaus in Bagdhad. in raspOTt of clceiili-nee; tho Sl.'-akespeares would appear to have been no better than Aeir neighbours, if indeed they ■ wore not a trifle worse; for we find that ; John Shakespeare, the poet'e . father, was i fined twice in successive years for having a fttorquinamum (which is decent uicdneval L:itin for a dunghill) before the door of his : house in Henley street. And if it ie.romcjn- : bered that, as part of John Snakeapwiro's i . stock-in-trade, there would be tanneries, ■piggeries, a-nd fo on attached to the Henky - ; residence, it must lie believed that whatever [ has remained unchanged in Stratford, its ! atmcaphcro at least has lost much of ite • ancient quality, Howovor, all is'now spick . and span; the Shakespeare sterquinarium, ' as I have myself -verified, has disappeared'; I and I daresay there are biographers pious enough to maintain that it nover was there. . - The, Shakespeare shrincrt in Stratford aro ! fivo in number—tho fcousa where ho wan j born,, tho school where he'wae educated,'the ' j eottago where he wont a-wooing, the sit-e I of tho house-where lit died, and the church • where he lies buried. Tho Birth-house, •, familiar to all from pictures, lias seen ■ strange vicissitudes. It scents beyond I question to have holonged to the Shake- . I spenroß, father and son, and to 'have re-

maincd in possession of members or. connections of the family until comparatively recent tames. Under various signs it served as an inn. Part of the premises 'were used as a butcher's shop;.'and it must bo eaid to the butcher's credit that, while not unmindful of business, ho had- sensibility enough to appreciate the clasfic importance of the spot on which he plied bis trade, tho legend in his ehbp front being to tho effect tlwit—" William Shakespeare was born in this House. N.B.—A Horse and Taxed Cart to Let!" What is called the Birth-homo consists of two homes under one- roof. Of these housce, which were bought by John Shakespeare at different times, one, that 'to tho east, next ' the rivor, was the wool etoro; tho other was tho dwelling. In this western half, there is a'certain , room on the first floor, tolerably spacious, irregular iu jilwpe, wit'h low oc.iling, and deon, square fireplace, and in this room Shakespeare was born—so tradition 1 . says, Without going mto the evidence for 1 and against this tradition, I may t-ay that, with -overv' wish to belicvo that I stood on 1 go interesting a spot, tho aecertainablc facts soomed to me to toll the wrong way. Speaking of the two housce the Mest and most authoritative biographer says that the- hoiiso 'to tho eaet " ots purchased by John Shakespcaro in 1556, but there is no evidenco that he owned or occupied the honso-to'thc west boforu 1575 "-that is, 11 years after William Shakespeare's birth. The Birth-house remained in possession of tlie Shakespeare family, direct or collateral, till tho beginning 1 of the nineteenth century, when it passed into the .hands of strangers. In 1846 n ! proposal of the enterprising Baraum to 1 transfer the building to America so shocked British sentiment that the house was bought ! by public subscription and handed over, as ! a, perpetual national trust, to tho Stratford r Corporation. The wobl-fltore end of John Shakespeare's house is now tho Shakespeare L museum, which it is well to enter, if you ■' can, in the spirit of a faith. In this i ' museum you find , yourself amidst a hotaro- ') goneoiw collection of brie-n-hrac, much of > which appeared to me as relevant to Shakes--1 poaro as to Christophor Columbus. A really ' genuine relic, and onp of tho most interesti ing. Mβ a loiter from Richard Quinoy to Shakespeare, an ingenuous letter, full of i human nature and sixteenth century spelling. • proposing to borrow £30, or, as we should , reckon it. allowing for changed values, a, ' ccol hundred, on whatever terms tho poet > .eltoso to dictate. There you sec also a I piece of furniture, more venerable than ; liandeomo, which was'brought hero from tho i> schoolroom above ■ the , Guildhall—tho desk, . no less, that Slißkespcare U6cd at school; > With some claim, however, to bo considered i a connoisseur in" this kind of rolie, I must i . confese that I was not entirely convinced, i To go the round of this museum is like > perusing a • Shakespeare biography, where ' you have a grain ot fact to a, bushel of eon- ; jecture. One object in tlie musoum serves i to exemplify at once the genuineness of '• many of the so-called relic 3 and the methods '' of the. modern biographer. This is a eomei what massive gold signet ring, inscribed ■ with tho letters W. S. It was found somei where in the neighbourhood of tho Stratford s Church, and might have belonged to Wil--1 Ham Smith, or Walter Samson, or W. Simp- ' son; but was assumed to belong to William i Shakespeare. This identification of tho ring > as Shakespeare's property was felt to he i confirmed by a phrase in Shakespeare's will, i where the word "scale" i 3 erased, and the. S word " hand "• substituted. And why sub- ■ Btituted? Because, it is argued, when i Shakespeare came to append his seal he s could not find his aignet-ring, having lost ; it near tho church, where it was subsequently ( found. By-iand-bye, towards the end of the \ nineteenth century, a Copenhagen savant , who sets himself to.write an exhaustive ) work on " William .Shakespeare" is thus t inspired by this relic:—"One sees him • walking with grave stateliness tliero [in ) i Now Place], clad in iscariet, with tho broad while collar falling over • the

sleeveless black tunic. We see the hand which lias written so • ninny ill-understood and insufficiently appreciated masterpieces, binding up branches or lopping off stray tendrils, while the sunlight sparkles on tho plain gold signet-ring with its initials W.S., which is still in our possession." Ono learns thiF, if nothing else, from tho' museum'in ■ fclie Shaicesneare House, that where relies arc desired relics will always be forth- , coming. 1 From Henley stroot,' some mile or two to the south-weat of Stratford, lies the villago of Sliottery, and from a spot near Shakespeare's house a footpath takes a bee line across the' meadows to Anno HaHiaway's cottage. Whether Shakospoaro was the first

to tread the footpath into shape, no biographer has yet decided; but ho may be presumed to havo discovered the shortestdistance between tho two points. That ho oflen mooned along the path, after a day's wool-stapling, is pretty certain. I seem to have met in the poems numerous references to the Sliottory meadows, though I cannot quote chapter and verse. In. earljr April tho throstle'and the ousel-cock were swelling their various quilte in fullestthsoated fashion. When I walked across those meadows the daisies, and the kingcups, and all the flowers that fell from Dis's waggon were just beginning to paint them with delight. Little children, sitting on tho stilea, nnd sagaciously inferring whither I was bound, shouted out the name of Anno Hathaway, as they may' have impudently shouted the same name after Shakespeare 300 years ago, sagaciously inferring also whither he was bound. Anne Hathawaj>'s cottage., like the Birthhouse, is now national property, and is held under the same trust. At the time of my visit to the cottage it was in the custody of a lineal descendant of the Katliaways, the last of the race,.Mrs Mary Baker, who was Ihen 6lose oli 90 years of age, and who is since, I believe, dead. .Everyone is familiar with the exterior of this picturesque

.roof, its quaiiit dormer windows, and its homely garden stocked with gillivers, rosemary, and other old-fashioned flowers, it is the ideal of peasant comfort, and looks probably at this day very much what it looked when Shakespeare made for it across the meadows, Onoo insido the enclosure that shuts in' this fragment of ancient' England, it is well to low tho sense of time, and let the old clock in tho kitchen tick you back into tho sixteenth oentury. The very air is Elizabethan. The House is cleaner, perhaps, and better pared for than it was in Anne Hatlmway's time, but otherwise it looks probably much the same. The flagged kitchen-parlour, with its casement window, low-beamed ceiling, and wide fireplace, must have Ixten, when the house was first built, much what you see it now. Tlio old Hathaway, sitting on tho settle by the fire and conning her Bible, might be Anne's grandam. If you look out into the garden you may almost expect to find an aubum-haired, hazel-eyed young wool-stapler sitting by tlio draw-well, ami inditing a ballad to his mistress's eyebrow. Poor Anno! let us hope she had a pre-nuptial ballad or two addreaed to her most pleasing feature, as a solace for those dreary London days when she sat waiting in this cottage, like Mariana in her Moated Grange. It is to he feared, however, that Shakespeare's Dallads were directed elsewhere. I have seen it stated by some biographer that Anne was a Puritan, with a EOul above the frivolities of verse—a sano.r guess, perhaps, than many of the biographical conjectures. But what gaint so severe as to take amies a ballad to her eyebrow? Shakespeare at least might have hazarded the venture, and possibly did; hut in that csso Anne kept her own counsel. The only roundel I know in praise of Anne— in praise of her voioe, not of her beauty—is not Shakespeare's, or even Shakespearean, though it may b9 Dibdin's: — Would ye be taught, ye feathered throng. With love's sweet notes to grace- your song, To pierce the heart with thrilling layListen to mine Ann Hathawny.

Ann hath a way to sing so Cicar, Phoebus might wondering stop to hesr, To melt the sad, mike blithe the gay, And Nature charm, Ann hath a way. She hath a way, Ann Hitha-.vay. To breathe delight, Ann hath a way.

From the living-room ot the house yon ascend by two or three steps to a part of the cottage on a slightly higher level, and there you find yourself in Anne's bedroom, in presence of Anne's four-post bed with appropriate "furniture." Having myself derived no inspiration from this venerable rolie, I must allow niiother to speak—that same learned Dane who, 'as in a- vision, saw Shakespeare walking iu his garden, clad in scarlet, nnd to whom this antique was a veritable apocalypse. Shakespeare, it must be (supposed, has returned k> Stratford for tlie last time, and is 'revisiting old rcenes. "Half an hour's walk would bring him to Anne Hailjaway's cottage with the mossgrown roof. He would enter, <ind look once moro upon the wooden bench in the chimney oomer on which he and she had sit in their ardent youth, How long ago it all seemed! There was the old fifteenth-century bed in which Anne's parents had slept, with her, as a child, at their feet. The mattrese was nothing but a. straw palliasse, liut the bedstead was beautifully carved with figures in' the old style. When, a year or two later, he bequeathed to his wife " the second-best bed," did he remember that this bed was already hers, I wonder?" In short, Shakespeare, when he made his will, nniet have remembered that Anne was already well provided in the matter of beds: hence the seeming hcartlessness of the bequest. From , the cottage another path across the meadows brings one to Chestnut Walk, in tho southern part of the town, within a minute's walk of tho various other Shakeapiearo shrine 3. New Place, where Shakespeare spent his last day.?, is a mere site. The house and the garden with the famous mulberry tree came into the possession of a rich clergyman named Oastrell about the middle of the eighteenth century; which Gastrell, annoyed by tho number of visitors who came to sob the Shakespeare mulberry, out down the tree, and subsequently, owing to some dispute with the corporation about taxes, pulled down the house, of which there remain now only tho foundations. • There is a second Shakespeare museum at New

Place, but.-having had of relics as much as my piety could digest, I did not visit it. On tlio opposite side of the road from Now Pla«o and flanking Hipth street is tlio old Guild Hall, where, in the pro-Puritan days, strolling players used to give- their entertainments, and where Shakespeare, no doubt, first caught hie stage fever. The upper storey of the Guild Hall is the. schoolroom where he learned his "small Latin," and bdside this building is the Guild Chapel, whither, no doubt, ho was knelled to church. The antiquity of .these buildings and their , intimate association with Shakespearo'e life

are beyond all- doubt; > and apart from thie association the buildings are in themselves

singularly picturesque and full of interest. Within a stonerhrow of the Guild Hall, close by tho Avon, .is tho Shakespeare Memorial Building, situated in well-kept, c pretty grounds, and comhining under one i t roof theatre, library, and picture gallery. j ( Here in the birth-week, .actors of nofco i j give representations of Shakespeare plays. • j At tlio time of • my- visit the theatre was in a bustle of preparation for tho produc- c tion of "The School for Scandal." (• A little further, south, I beside the river, | r is the Church of the Holy Trinity, in which J'j Shakespeare is buried. Here in the chan- \ ( eel, within' the coriimuaiion rail and beforo ; . the altar, ho lies side by eide.with his kith j J and kin. The sanctuary k dimmed by a ; great window of stained glass, the tribute ! r of; grateful America. There i-3 the fiat stono ! { with tho familiar doggerel lines, and there, ' j affixed to the wall, is the coloured bust; r with its Latin epitaph which equals Shake-; * apeure in wisdom with Nestor, in genius j with Socrates, in art with Virgil: Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,. Terra, tegit, popukis mwret, Olympus habet. l To stand before those graves is to be con- " vincedi of the high estimation in which the c player was held by tlic citizems of his native t town, where, if there is anything in pro- 1 verbs, he should have had little honour. ; Men do not bury an unhohoured prophet, ' with all his kin, in the most sacred part '' of Iheir most sacred building. 1 Iu this church you feel that you have j t come at last to a tangible verity in a M shadowy life. You may have reasonable i 1 doubta about the Birth-house, but Trinity ! ( Church k a fact, if not in Shakespeare's > t life, at least in his death; and a very bcauti- ; f ful fact it is, inside and out. The walk of | i the mossy churchyard aro lapr-ccl by the : '■ Avon, and its trees stretch their branches ; I above f-he river. If I must have seen those . ] trees at one time rather than another, I I am content it should havo been when they i 1 were not yet in leaf. Tho first Gothic arehi- j < tect, it seems to me, must, havo stolen his • i ideae from the winter branches of the elm and .the lime.' The arching curves of theso ; old troos aro so entirely in harmony with i the church round which they cluster that i their summer foliage can hardly add to their beauty. And there in the branches over- ■ , head were, rookn—which I had not seen for I 20 years—overhauling their last year's nests, I and, to judge by their noify indecision, ! holding an appeal court on some question of ownership. One Stratford-bird, however, I missed whoso ways Shakespeare most affee- , tionatoly and elaborately notes, the " tomple-haunting martlet "—best voucher for the sweet air of tho place it haunte. But by the evening even this last touch of beauty was added, for by that time the martlets had arrived. It was thsir first appearance, I b'blieye, in Stratford that season: in the morning' the sky . was empty—not so much as tho flutter of a wing,—and in

the evening the air was swimming with swallows. As they dipped and skimmed in the yellowing light along the surface of ,t-he Avon,'l had my.last look of Stratford. ♦ Seen, then and thus, tiro old.English church' by tlio gleaming river was scone of quiot and venerable beauty, none the less touching for the thought of what lay ■ within the- sanctuary.—(Applause.) [Note.—Translation of epitaph:—"A Nestor in wisdom, a Socratea in gonius, ,a Virgil in art; Mirth covers him, the nation mourns for him, heaven possesses him."] ( .