صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

extravagancies, which our author has given to his Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windfor, he has made him a deer-stealer; and that he might at the fame time remember his Warwickshire profecutor, under the name of Justice Shallow, he has given him very near the fame coat of arms, which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county, defcribes for a family there. There are two coats, I observe, in Dugdale, where three filver fishes are borne in the name of Lucy; and another coat, to the monument of Thomas Lucy, fon of Sir William Lucy, in which are quartered in four feveral divifions, twelve little fishes, three in each divifion, probably Luces. This very coat, indeed, feems alluded to in Shallow's giving the dozen white Luces, and in Slender faying he may quarter. When I confider the exceeding candour and good nature of our author (which inclined all the gentler part of the world to love him; as the power of his wit obliged the men of the most delicate knowledge and po, lite learning to admire him); and that he fhould throw this humourous piece of fatire at his profecutor, at least twenty years after the provocation given; I am confidently perfuaded it must be owing to an unforgiving rancour on the pro fecutor's fide: and if this was the cafe, it were pity but the difgrace of fuch an inveteracy should remain as a lafting reproach, and Shallow stand as a mark of ridicule to stigmatize his malice.

It is faid, our author spent fome years before his death, in eafe, retirement, and the converfation of his friends, at his native Stratford. I could never pick up any certain intelligence, when he relinquished the stage. I know, it has been mistakenly thought by fome, that Spenfer's Thalia, in his Tears of his Mufes, where the laments the lofs of her Willy in the comick scene, has been applied to our author's quitting the ftage. But Spenfer himfelf, it is well known, quitted the stage of life in the year 1598; and, five years after this, we find Shakespeare's name among the actors in Ben Jonfon's Sejanus, which firft made its appearance in the year 1603. Nor, furely, could he then have any thoughts of retiring, fince, that very year, a licence under the privy-feal was granted by K. James I. to him and Fletcher, Burbage, Phillippes, Hemings, Condel, &c. authorizing them to exercife the art of playing comedies, tragedies, &c. as well at their ufual house called The Globe on the other fide of the water, as in any other parts of the kingdom, during -his majefty's pleafure (a copy of which licence is preferved

in Rymer's Fœdera). Again, it is certain, that Shakespeare did not exhibit his Macbeth, till after the union was brought about, and till after K. James I. had begun to touch for the evil; for it is plain, he has inferted compliments, on both those accounts, upon his royal mafter in that tragedy. Nor, indeed, could the number of the dramatick pieces, he produced, admit of his retiring near fo early as that period. So that what Spenfer there fays, if it relate at all to Shakefpeare, must hint at fome occafional recefs he made for a time upon a difguft taken: or the Willy, there mentioned, muft relate to fome other favourite poet. I believe, we may fafely determine, that he had not quitted in the year 1610. For in his Tempest, our author makes mention of the Bermuda islands, which were unknown to the English, till, in 1609, Sir John Summers made a voyage to North-America, and difcovered them: and afterwards invited fome of his countrymen to fettle a plantation there. That he became the private gentleman, at least three years before his decease, is pretty obvious from another circumftance: I mean, from that remarkable and well-known ftory, which Mr. Rowe has given us of our author's intimacy with Mr. John Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and ufury and upon whom Shakespeare made the following facetious epitaph.

Ten in the hundred lies here ingrav'd,
'Tis a hundred to ten his foul is not fav'd;
If any man afk, who lies in this tomb,

Oh! oh! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe.

This farcaftical piece of wit was, at the gentleman's own request, thrown out extemporally in his company. And this Mr. John Combe I take to be the fame, who, by Dugdale in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, is faid to have died in the year 1614, and for whom, at the upper end of the quire of the Guild of the Holy Crofs at Stratford, a fair monument is erected, having a ftatue thereon cut in alabaster, and in a gown, with this epitaph." Here lieth interred the body

of John Combe, efq; who died the 10th of July, 1614, "who bequeathed feveral annual charities to the parish of "Stratford, and 100l. to be lent to fifteen poor tradesmen "from three years to three years, changing the parties every "third year, at the rate of fifty fhillings per annum, the inVOL. I.

[ocr errors]

"crease

"creafe to be diftributed to the almes-poor there."-The donation has all the air of a rich and fagacious ufurer.

Shakespeare himself did not furvive Mr. Combe long, for he died in the year 1616, the 53d of his age. He lies buried on the north fide of the chancel in the great church at Stratford; where a monument, decent enough for the time, is erected to him, and placed against the wall. He is reprefented under an arch in a fitting posture, a cushion spread before him, with a pen in his right hand, and his left refted on a fcrowl of paper. The Latin diftich, which is placed under the cushion, has been given us by Mr. Pope, or his graver, in this manner.

INGENIO Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,

Terra tegit, populus mæret, Olympus habet.

I confefs, I do not conceive the difference betwixt ingenis and genio in the first verse. They seem to me intirely fynonymous terms; nor was the Pylian fage Neftor celebrated for his ingenuity, but for an experience and judgment owing to his long age. Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, has copied this diftich with a diftinction which Mr. Rowe has followed, and which certainly restores us the true meaning of the epitaph.

JUDICIO Pylium, genio Socratem, &c.

In

* The first fyllable in Socratem is here made fhort, which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we should read Sophoclem. Shakespeare is then appofitely compared with a dramatic author among the ancients: but fill it fhould be remembered that the elogium is leffen'd while the metre is reform'd; and it is well known that fome of our early writers of Latin poetry were uncommonly negligent in their profody, efpecially in proper names. The thought of this diftich, as Mr. Tollet obferves, might have been taken from the Faery Queene of Spenfer, b. ii. c. 9. ft. 48, and c. 10. ft. 3. To this Latin infeription on Shakespeare fhould be added the lines which are found underneath it on his monument.

Stay, paffenger, why doft thou go fo faft?

Read, if thou canft, whom envious death hath plac'd
Within this monument; Shakespeare, with whom
Quick nature dy'd, whofe name doth deck the tomb
Far more than coft; fince all that he hath writ
Leaves living art but page to ferve his wit.

In 1614, the greater part of the town of Stratford was confumed by fire; but our Shakespeare's house, among fome others, efcaped the flames. This houfe was first built by Sir Hugh Clopton, a younger brother of an ancient family in that neighbourhood, who took their name from the manor of Clopton. Sir Hugh was Sheriff of London, in the reign of Richard III. and lord-mayor in the reign of king Henry VII. To this gentleman the town of Stratford is indebted for the fine ftonebridge, confifting of fourteen arches, which, at an extraordinary expence, he built over the Avon, together with a causeway running at the weft-end thereof; as alfo for rebuilding the chapel adjoining to his house, and the cross-ifle in the church there. It is remarkable of him, that, though he lived and died a batchelor, among the other extenfive charities which he left both to the city of London and town of Stratford, he bequeathed confiderable legacies for the marriage of poor maidens of good name and fame both in London and at Stratford. Notwithstanding which large donations in his life, and bequests at his death, as he had purchased the manor of Clopton, and all the eftate of the family, fo he left the fame again to his elder brother's fon with a very great addition (a proof how.well beneficence and economy may walk hand in had in wife families): good part of which eftate is yet in the poffeffion of Edward Clopton, efq; and Sir Hugh Clopton, knt. lineally defcended from the elder brother of the first Sir Hugh: who particularly bequeathed to his nephew, by his will, his house, by the name of his Great Houfe in Stratford.

The eftate had now been fold out of the Clopton family for above a century, at the time when Shakespeare became the purchaser: who, having repaired and modelled it to his own mind, changed the name to New-place; which the manfion-house, fince erected upon the fame spot, at this day retains. The house and lands, which attended it, continued in Shakespeare's defcendants to the time of the Refloration: when they were repurchased by the Clopton family, and the mansion now belongs to Sir Hugh Clopton, knt. Again, near the wall on which this monument is erected, is a plain free-ftone, under which his body is buried, with another epitaph, expreffed in the following uncouth mixture of small and capital letters:

Good Frend for Iefus SAKE forbeare
To diGG FE Duft EncloAfed HERe

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

To the favour of this worthy gentleman I owe the knowledge of one particular, in honour of our poet's once dwellinghoufe, of which, I prefume, Mr. Rowe never was apprized. When the civil war raged in England, and king Charles the Firft's queen was driven by the neceffity of affairs to make a recefs in Warwickshire, the kept her court for three weeks in New-place. We may reafonably fuppofe it then the best private house in the town; and her majefty preferred it to the college, which was in the poffeffion of the Combe family, who did not fo ftrongly favour the king's party.

How much our author employed himself in poetry, after his retirement from the ftage, does not fo evidently appear: very few pofthumous sketches of his pen have been recovered to afcertain that point. We have been told, indeed, in print, but not till very lately, that two large chefts full of this great man's loofe papers and manufcripts, in the hands. of an ignorant baker of Warwick (who married one of the defcendants from our Shakespeare) were carelessly scattered and thrown about as garret-lumber and litter, to the particular knowledge of the late Sir William Bifhop, till they were all confumed in the general fire and destruction of that town. I cannot help being a little apt to diftruft the authority of this tradition: because his wife furvived him feven years, and as his favourite daughter Sufanna furvived her twenty-fix years, it is very improbable they fhould fuffer fuch a treasure to be removed, and tranflated into a remoter branch of the family, without a ferutiny firft made into the value of it. This, I fay, inclines me to diftraft the authority of the relation: but, notwithstanding fuch an apparent improbability, if we really loft fuch a treasure, by whatever fatality or caprice of fortune they came into fuch ignorant and neglectful hands, I agree with the relater, the misfortune is wholly irreparable.

To thefe particulars, which regard his perfon and private life, fome few more are to be gleaned from Mr. Rowe's Account of his Life and Writings: let us now take a short view of him in his publick capacity as a writer: and, from thence, the tranfition will be eafy to the ftate in which his writings have been handed down to us.

No age, perhaps, can produce an author more various from himself, than Shakespeare has been universally acknowledged to be. The diverfity in ftile, and other parts of compofition, fo obvious in him, is as variously to be accounted for. His education, we find, was at best but begun; and

he

« السابقةمتابعة »