Public-domain ebook
A Day with William Shakespeare
by May Byron
Language: en373 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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In: Historical Novels·Novels·British Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #40441.
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Tennyson. Browning. E. B. Browning. Burns. Byron. Longfellow. Whittier. Rossetti. Shelley. Scott. Coleridge. Morris. Wordsworth. Whitman. Keats. Milton.
A DAY WITH WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
It was early on a bright June morning of the year 1599. The household of Christopher Mountjoy, the wig-maker, at the corner of Silver Street in Cripplegate, was already up and astir. Mountjoy, his wife and daughter, and his apprentice, Stephen Bellott, were each refreshing themselves with a hasty mouthful--one could not term it breakfast--before beginning their day's work. For town wig-makers were busy folk, then as now. Every fashionable dame wore "transformations," and some noble ladies, like the late Queen of Scots and--breathe it low--the great Elizabeth herself, changed the colour of their tresses every day.
Breakfast, in 1599, was a rite "more honoured in the breach than in the observance." Most people, having supped with exceeding heartiness the previous night, ignored breakfast altogether: especially as dinner would occur some time between 10 and 12 a.m. Those who could not go long without food had no idea of a regular sit-down meal during that precious morning hour which "has a piece of gold in its mouth." They contented themselves with beaten-up eggs in muscadel wine, as now the Mountjoy family; who, being of French origin, boggled somewhat at the only alternative--a very English one--small ale and bread-and-butter.
To these good folk, standing up and swallowing their morning draught, entered their well-to-do lodger, Mr. William Shakespeare, up betimes like them--for he was a very busy person,--and shared their jug of eggs and muscadel. Mr. Shakespeare was thirty-five years of age, "a handsome, well-shap't man," in the words of his friend Aubrey,--his eyes light hazel, his hair and beard auburn. He still retained, in some degree, the complexion which accompanies auburn hair, and this imparted a tinge of delicacy to his sensitive and mobile face. He was already slightly inclined to embonpoint: for in the seventeenth century people aged soon, and thirty-five was much more like forty-five nowadays.
In all company, with all people, Shakespeare was charmingly pleasant-spoken. He had long since shed any provincial gaucherie, and was of an exquisite courtesy, "of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit,"--again to quote his intimates, "a good-natured man, of a great sweetness in his bearing, and a most agreeable company." Moreover, that indefinable ease of bearing, which accrues with success, was evident in the gracious bonhomie of his mien. For, after many years of stress and struggle, many hard bouts with fortune, innumerable humiliations and adverse events, he was now prosperous, popular, possessed of this world's goods. Although a self-made man in every sense of the word,--although still a member of that despised theatrical profession against which the pulpit thundered, at which the decent citizen looked askance,--he was a distinctly marked personality, not to be ignored. He was part proprietor of the Globe Theatre, the Blackfriars, and the Rose,--he had house property in Southwark and Blackfriars, lands and houses at Stratford-upon-Avon. He had obtained a coat-of-arms for his family from the College of Heralds, thus constituting himself legally a "gentleman"; he was the brilliant author of immensely popular plays. And he was reputed to earn at the rate of £600 per annum--which would be now worth nearly eight times as much.
Such was the man who presently sauntered out into the summer sunlight, this June morning, and went leisurely westward towards Holborn. He strolled along, thoughtfully ruminating the day's work before him, but courteously alert to every greeting from passing acquaintances in the streets. He encountered, as he went, warm and invigorating scents, which floated round each corner--and rose, for the nonce, above the malodours of the open gutter--pleasant midsummer perfumes which were exhaled, in the clear and smokeless air of those days, from a multiplicity of blossoming London gardens. For every house had its private garden, large or small. Every householder garnished his dwelling-rooms with flowers, instead of ornaments of potter's ware or metal: the floors were still strewn with leaves and grasses, and the doorways often decked with boughs. Cherries and strawberries were ripening in the ancient monastery gardens, among the majestic precincts of ruined priories: blackbirds were singing in the trees. If the actual dewy freshness of the Warwickshire water-meadows were not present in the London air--if the wild roses of the Avon-side did not bloom in Holborn--yet Shakespeare had only to close his eyes one moment, to project himself back into his boyhood's scenes. For London was emphatically a "garden city," encircled by forests, and fields, and farms, and wooded hills; and the ecstatic sweetness of an English June was wafted over its cobbled thoroughfares.
Of all seasons, this was the most enjoyable to Shakespeare--because of his passion for flowers. He delighted to make long luscious lists of flowers--their very names were a pleasure to him, each fraught with its own special significance. He loved to write of
Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath: pale primroses.... The crown-imperial,--lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one.
"She had a song of 'willow'; An old thing 'twas, but it expressed the future, And she died singing it. That song, to-night, Will not go from my head."
The most apparently casual and irrelevant ditties of Shakespeare's dramas, in like manner, "express the future" of the story.
"Come unto these yellow sands, And there take hands"....
So, eventually, Ferdinand and Miranda avow their mutual love beside the lapping of the long blue waves.
"Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me,"--
might be the very leit-motiv of As You Like It.
"Sigh no more, ladies,--ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever: One foot on sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never,"--
--here you have the treachery of Don John, and the vacillating mistrust of Claudio, succinctly summed up.
"Journeys end in lovers' meeting, Every wise man's son doth know,"--
thus the Clown in Twelfth Night becomes mouthpiece of the dénouement which was never long in doubt.
To every man his métier: and that of William Shakespeare was not to be the mouthpiece of those "spacious times," tingling with sensation, with excitement, with huge enterprise. Exhibiting, throughout, the curious patient persistence of the essential Midlander, he had worked his way right up from the bottom rung of the ladder. The ill-mated young man of twenty-three, who had left Stratford with a travelling company of players in 1587,--who had (whether conscious or unconscious of his genius) plodded industriously onward as a literary hack of drama--tinkering, adapting, re-shaping and re-writing the stale old stock plays, until they suffered a change "into something rich and strange,"--whose colossal greatness his contemporaries were not great enough to appreciate;--that same man was now arriving--like so many other Midlanders--at a point where criticism could not touch him. He had gained no giddy pinnacle of sudden success, but a safe and solid summit of assured position. That he should attain it in his own way, and after his own methods,--that, after all, was his business. There were plenty of other poets to utter Arma virumque cano. William Shakespeare preferred to link himself with thoughts of Italy, and fairy-folk, and "the sea-coast of Bohemia,"--with youth and palaces and forests, and fortunate or frustrate love. His range and scope were enormous, if he cared: his output astonishing, if he chose.... Meanwhile, it was mid-summer and there were roses....
Moving meditatively along Holborn, he presently encountered his old friend Gerard the botanist, whose Herball had been published two years before,--who stood at the head of his profession for knowledge and achievement. He lived in Holborn, where he had not only a fine garden-ground, but a fruit-ground in Fetter Lane, which he superintended for the surgical society of which he was a member.
"Well met, Will!" said the grave and reverend herbalist, "no other man in London would I more gladly welcome: for that thou hast a most worthy apprehension of the seemliness of plants and herbs. Country blood, country blood, good sir! Come, now, into my poor enclosure and let me regale thee with new and marvellous things.... What! it is but eight o' the clock! The paltry playhouse shall not claim thee yet awhile. What are all Euripides his dramas, in comparison with that wherewith I shall rejoice thine eyes?"
And, seizing the poet's hand, Gerard drew him through a side-door into his beloved garden. "Behold!" he exclaimed, "the Apple of Love, Pomum Aureum!"--and, with ineffable pride, he pointed out some slowly-ripening tomatoes. "These grow in Spain, Italy and such hot countries, from whence myself have received seeds for my garden, where, as thou seest, they do grow and prosper.... Howbeit there be other golden apples, which the poets do fable growing in the gardens of the daughters of Hesperus. These,"--he added regretfully, "I have not."
"Master Gerard, there shall no golden apples ever come to England worthy to compare with yours," remarked the dramatist, luxuriously inhaling the warm June scents shut closely within sun-baked walls, and gazing down the coloured vistas and aisles of bloom. "Here's flowers for you!" he murmured to himself,
"Here's a plenty of sweet herbs! Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram, The marigold that goes to bed with the sun, And with him rises weeping: these are flowers Of middle summer. And I think they are given To men of middle age."
"Sithee here again," continued Gerard, well launched upon his favourite topic, "this plant, which is called of some Skyrrits of Peru, is generally called of us, Potatus or Potatoes,"--and he waved his hand towards a bed of sweet potatoes. "Of these roots may be made conserves, toothsome, wholesome and dainty, and many comfortable and restorative sweetmeats. Other potatoes there be, which some do use with salt,--but of these I have no present apprehension."
Shakespeare was not paying attention to the potatoes. On his knees beside a strawberry bed, he looked up with a laughing face. "Methinks I would rather fresh fruit than conserves," said he, filling his mouth with much satisfaction.
"Then, of the Indian pot-herb, tobacco," the botanist proceeded, "give me joy that I have had good fortune in three kinds thereof,--the Henbane of Peru, the Trinidada Tobacco, and the pigmy or dwarfish sort. But, indeed, this same tobacco is by no means to be commended as a fume or smoking-medicine. The juice, boiled with sugar into a syrup, is a sovereign cure for many maladies. I pray you, good Master Shakespeare," said he, earnestly seizing the other's arm and punctuating his words with a gentle see-saw movement, "believe me, that any other herb of hot temperature will suffice for pipe-smoking--rosemary, thyme, winter savory, sweet marjoram and such-like."
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![Cover of Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 1 of 2]
Including the Biography of the Poet; Criticisms on His Genius and Writings; A New Chronology of His Plays; A Disquisition on the on the Object of His Sonnets; And a History of the Manners, Customs, and Amusements, Superstitions, Poetry, and Elegant Literature of His Age](/covers/53625.jpg)
![Cover of Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 2 of 2]
Including the Biography of the Poet; Criticisms on His Genius and Writings; A New Chronology of His Plays; A Disquisition on the on the Object of His Sonnets; And a History of the Manners, Customs, and Amusements, Superstitions, Poetry, and Elegant Literature of His Age](/covers/53626.jpg)