69 VI. INCIDENTS OF HIS YOUTH. STRATFORD was the very spot for the cradle of a poet who, moulded by nature, was to be nursed by the Muse of History. The surrounding country is not more remarkable for its picturesque scenery than its historic associations, linking it with the greatest events of earlier and later times. Almost within view rose the spires of Coventry, from time immemorial a city of mark, and fruitful of legend and fable. Still nearer were the walls of Warwick, with its ancient castle, the eyry of the king-maker; and not far beyond were Guy's Cliff and Kenilworth,—the one a memorial of the past, the other uniting the past and present. In the adjoining shires of Gloucester and Leicester, the White Rose and the Red had fought their deadliest conflicts, and it was only a ride to Bosworth Field, where they finally intertwined in a nuptial wreath. Shakespeare displays a familiar acquaintance with Coventry, and whenever the subject permits, seems delighted to carry his imagination to this scene of his boyhood, where he first trod enchanted ground. He saw the fair town in its glory, when its abbeys and monasteries, though converted to other purposes, still clustered round its triad of spires, like a flock round its shepherds; and the whole was encircled by an embattled wall, renowned from time of old. It is before these ramparts that he parades the host of Edward, when he challenges Warwick to the field : "Go, trumpet, to the walls and sound a parle." King Henry VI., Part III.,' act v. 1. And, looking down from their summit, Warwick hurls taunts at his old favourite : "Confess who set thee up and pluck'd thee down,— Call Warwick patron, and be penitent ?— And thou shalt still remain the Duke of York." "A public road near Coventry" is selected by the poet for the introduction of Falstaff to his native county, where, of course, he is joined by Prince Hal-"How now, mad wag! what a devil dost thou in Warwickshire?" Here, also, the knight tricks his sharp lieutenant, and makes his first essay in campaigning :-"Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry: fill me a bottle of sack; our soldiers shall march through." But touching the "soldiers," Jack has too much regard for appearances to exhibit himself at their head; and having got rid of Bardolph, takes his famous resolution,-"I'll not march through Coventry with them: that's flat." Shakespeare's recollections of Coventry dated earlier than historic times. He had heard of it in the ballad of Lady Godiva, on whom her lord imposed a penance as the price of the remission of the city tolls: "If thou wilt but thy clothes strip off, And by me lay them down, And at noonday on horseback ride Stark naked through the town." The incident was commemorated in the city pageants, which Shakespeare saw as a child, when he was also a spectator of the old Mysteries,' for which Coventry was renowned. These performances were got up by the artisans of the city, and were thought worthy of being played before kings. The mystery of The Slaughter of the Innocents' was represented by the tailors and shearers of Coventry before Henry the Eighth in 1534, and the king may have 'King Henry IV., Part I.,' act iv. 2. taken a lesson from the hero of the piece, in whom he might recognize a kindred spirit. Herod is even himself sensible of his infirmity: "I stamp, I stare, I look all about." And this is emphasized by the stage directions,-" Here Herod rages again," an intimation which is quite superfluous. Shakespeare was much impressed with Herod's habit of swearing, and mentions it as characteristic of a tyrant : "This would make merey swear and play the tyrant." I Harry the Fifth remembers Herod's " bloody - hunting slaughter-men, and Hamlet does not forget his ragings, rebuking the players who "out-Herod Herod." 3 This recovery of the impressions of Shakespeare's boyhood in his works throws a light on the development of his genius, as well as on his early life. They look like the little dints in the steep sides of Parnassus by which he climbed to its summit. The Coventry Moralities' seem puerile to modern eyes, but were most ludicrous, when they attempted to be imposing, for their promoters saw nothing absurd in paying eightpence for a link to set the earth on fire, or, in the mystery of Doomsday,' making an old barrel do duty for the world. But Shakespeare drew his instruction from the antique dresses and the flaunting banners, the dialogue and the action. What turned men into children, helped to make this child a man-king of men. He caught from the exhibition its salient points—the picturesque and the dramatic; and even a fund of drollery from its trips. The Nine Worthies,' performed in his boyhood at Coventry, he has himself kept alive, and his version illustrates the fillip it gave to his humour no less than the 1 'Measure for Measure,' act iii. 2. 3 Hamlet,' act iii. 2. freshness of his memory. We understand all the arrangements of the old "Morality," when Holofernes says, "This swain, because of his great limb, or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great." Not that stature, any more than aptitude, regulated the distribution of parts, for it is no obstacle to the personation of Hercules by the page that he is, as Armado says, "not quantity enough for that worthy's thumb." The difficulty is got over by deciding that "he shall present Hercules in minority," and Holofernes undertakes to "have an apology for that purpose."1 Something was to be learnt by the observant boy in his native Stratford. The ancient festivals, the local usages, even the weekly market offered points to attract his eye and enlarge his experience. We know there was, as Luce says of Ephesus, "a pair of stocks in the town;" and to this humble fountain we may trace some of the coarse humour of Launce and Speed, Grumio and the Dromios. Scolds and termagants were provided with a cucking-stool, where, however, they did not sit "like Patience on a monument;" for it often broke down under their struggles. The repairs are duly registered by the Stratford chamberlains, and we find the stool debited with sixpence " for things to mend it withal," with eightpence for "a cuck," and the large item of eleven shillings for trees. Ladies may think treats would have been more to the purpose. But our ancestors never tried gentle means for the Taming of a Shrew; and he who knew how to manage scolds of every degree, from injurious Hermia and waspish Katherine to Dame Quickly and Doll Tearsheet, had not yet spoken. Once a year Stratford was the scene of a "great fair," as it is called in the chamberlain's accounts, which in the same entry record a payment of eleven shillings to four Stratford champions for excluding the "Coventry men," 1 'Love's Labour's Lost,' act v. 1. 2Comedy of Errors,' act iii. 1. who took advantage of the fair to make themselves disagreeable. It may be noted that the cost of keeping order at the fair, and keeping the fair themselves in order, was precisely the same-eleven shillings for the four champions, and eleven shillings for the cucking-stool. Probably we derive from "the great fair" the germ of Caliban. Certainly it was there, amidst the prodigies of the showmen, and in his boyish days, that Shakespeare learnt how his countrymen "will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar," when "they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian."1 So admirably did he catch up our smallest traits, that those he ascribes to our ancestors still crop out in ourselves. It is only a few months since that London found an attractive exhibition in a "talking fish," such as might provoke the rhapsody which Caliban drew from Trinculo:"A strange fish! Were I in England now, as I once was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man." The accounts of the Stratford chamberlains record that, in 1577, when Shakespeare was in his thirteenth year, the monster actually visited Stratford. The entry relates to four shillings "paid when the MONSTER WAS HERE for a gallon-and-a-half of sack." Shakespeare remembered this potation in the speech of Stephano:-"My man-monster hath drowned his tongue in sack." 2 Another feature of the fair was the mountebank doctor, who, we learn from Decker's Villanies Discovered,' announced his arrival in bills, posted in different parts of the town. The practice gives a sarcasm to Beatrice, when she accuses Benedick of blowing his own trumpet:-" He set up his bells here in Messina.' |
