poesy of the old ballads, which afterwards revealed their presence in his mind, just as the bee passes from flower to flower, and gleans many a fragrant garden and many a pleasant field before he yields his honey. Not a few of the old Prolusions which preceded the regular drama were founded on ballads, and several of these have been attributed to Shakespeare, particularly the two based on 'The Duke of Cornwall's Daughter' and 'King Edward the Third and the Fair Countess of Salisbury.' No one has yet remarked the traces of this ballad lore in his dioramic spectacle of The Wars of the Roses.' He may have heard from his mother's lips, as he stood at her knee, the pathetic strain of The Banishment of the Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk,' the incidents of which are, as far as they extend, the same as those of the play of King Richard II.' Or she may have recited the ballad as he walked by her side on the top of the neighbouring hills, within sight of the spires of Coventry "The king did grant this just request, And did therewith agree, At Coventry, in August next, The combat fought should be." An appointment not forgotten in the play "Be ready, as your lives shall answer it, At Coventry, upon St. Lambert's day; There shall your swords and lances arbitrate The swelling difference of your settled hate." The ballad told how the banished Hereford took leave of his native land - "O England! here I kiss the ground Upon my bended knee! Whereby to show to all the world How dearly I love thee." 1 'King Richard II.' And the farewell is remembered in the play "Then, England's ground, farewell! sweet soil, adieu ! Though banish'd, yet a true-born Englishman." 1 The tragic history was continued in another ballad,—‘A Song of the Deposing of King Richard II., and How, after many Miseries, he was Murdered in Pomfret Castle.' Here we catch the first faint whisper of "No man cried God save him: "2_ "Not one for his misery grieved, That late was in place Of royalest grace, Where still the distressed he kindly relieved." The fine strain of The Battle of Agincourt between the French and English' may have been committed to memory at the same period. It relates a colloquy between York and Henry, which is reproduced in the play of 'King Henry V.' "With that bespoke the Duke of York, "O noble King,' quoth he, 'The leading of this battle brave, "God a'mercy, cousin York,' quoth he, 'I grant thee thy request; Then march thou on courageously, And I will take the rest.' دو In the play York makes the same request :— "My lord, most humbly on my knee, I beg The leading of the vaward." And the King answers "Take it, brave York. Now, soldiers, march away." 3 16 King Richard II.' 2 Ibid., act v. 2. 3 King Henry V.,' act iv. 3. The old ditty of Cupid's Revenge,' composed in the fifteenth century, is supposed to describe the marriage of Henry VI. with Margaret of Anjou, which forms the leading theme of the First Part of King Henry VI.' The Second Part takes up the story of Eleanor of Gloucester, and this is all recited in the ballad of 'The Lamentable Fall of the Duchess of Gloucester, Wife to Good Duke Humphrey, With the Manner of her Doing Penance in London Streets, and of her Exile to the Isle of Man, where she Ended her Days.' There is a more than accidental resemblance between the speech of the good Duke in the play and the lament of the Duchess in the ballad. Thus Shakespeare speaks in the first : "This is the hour that was appointed me To watch the coming of my punished duchess, And thus the duchess in the ballad "My feet, that lately trod the steps of pleasure, Now flinty streets so sharp were forced to measure." All the elements of the play of King Richard III.' are found in three ballads, which were very popular in the midland counties in the sixteenth century. The Most Cruel Murder of Edward V. and his Brother the Duke of York in the Tower by their Uncle the Duke of Gloster,' is the significant title of one; the second embraces 'The Life and Death of the Great Duke of Buckingham;' and the third is A Song of the Life and Death of King Richard III., Who, after Many Murders by Him Committed upon the Princes and Nobles of this Land, was Slain at the Battle of Bosworth, in Leicestershire, by Henry VII., King of England.' The series concludes with a lay on 'The Union of the Red Rose and the White by a Marriage between Henry VII. and a Daughter of Edward IV.,' glancing at the cruel nature of the long struggle, and telling us how "Fathers unkind their children killed, And sons their fathers slew ;" incidents vividly recalled by Shakespeare— "Who's this? O God! it is my father's face, These faint footprints are not unimportant, since they guide us to the poetic influences which surrounded Shakespeare's childhood, and link it with his noblest productions. They show how his thoughts were coloured from the first, just as Walter Scott, at the same age, was impregnated with the old Border songs and his uncle's reminiscences of Preston Pans and the Pretender. We are left to conjecture whence Shakespeare derived this intellectual sustenance, but we seem to discern it rising with his nurture from the same living fountain, his mother's love. Though she lived to see its effect in his riper years, this is the last association of mother and son now traceable. The time had come when he was to enter the school-room, and she is left at the door. 1 'King Henry VI., Part III.,' act ii. 5. 43 IV. HIS SCHOOL DAYS. ALTHOUGH the Grammar School of Stratford is usually said to have been founded by Edward the Sixth, an establishment of the same character had existed in the town for half-a-century before, when Thomas Jolyffe granted to the guild of the Holy Cross, all his lands and tenements at Stratford and Dodwell, on condition that the masters, aldermen, and proctors, the executive of the body, should find a priest competent to teach grammar, which was to be imparted gratuitously to all boys in the town without distinction of rank. The guild of the Holy Cross was a voluntary association of the townsfolk for purposes of local administration, and curiously illustrates the antiquity of self-government in England. Guilds existed under a royal licence, which authorized their holding lands and revenues for the objects in view, and gave them a legal position. Though not free from abuses, they appear to have generally exercised their functions discreetly and in an efficient manner. Of course, one of their traditions was an annual feast, which was not forgotten by the guild of the Holy Cross; but all the good cheer was not monopolized by its chiefs, and there was no grumbling at such a practice, when the door of the banquet-hall was thrown wide, admitting the humblest member. In 1485, the date of William Jolyffe's bequest, the |
