The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
the walls, keeps up a low perpetual murmur. A flat stone marks the spot
where the bard is buried. There are four lines inscribed on it, said to
have been written by himself, and which have in them something extremely
awful. If they are indeed his own, they show that solicitude about
the quiet of the grave which seems natural to fine sensibilities and
thoughtful minds:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake, forbeare
To dig the dust inclosed here.
Blessed be he that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
Just over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of Shakespeare,
put up shortly after his death and considered as a resemblance. The
aspect is pleasant and serene, with a finely-arched forehead; and I
thought I could read in it clear indications of that cheerful,
social disposition by which he was as much characterized among his
contemporaries as by the vastness of his genius. The inscription
mentions his age at the time of his decease, fifty-three years--an
untimely death for the world, for what fruit might not have been
expected from the golden autumn of such a mind, sheltered as it was
from the stormy vicissitudes of life, and flourishing in the sunshine of
popular and royal favor?
The inscription on the tombstone has not been without its effect. It has
prevented the removal of his remains from the bosom of his native place
to Westminster Abbey, which was at one time contemplated. A few years
since also, as some laborers were digging to make an adjoining vault,
the earth caved in, so as to leave a vacant space almost like an arch,
through which one might have reached into his grave. No one, however,
presumed to meddle with his remains so awfully guarded by a malediction;
and lest any of the idle or the curious or any collector of relics
should be tempted to commit depredations, the old sexton kept watch over
the place for two days, until the vault was finished and the aperture
closed again. He told me that he had made bold to look in at the
hole, but could see neither coffin nor bones--nothing but dust. It was
something, I thought, to have seen the dust of Shakespeare.
Next to this grave are those of his wife, his favorite daughter,
Mrs. Hall, and others of his family. On a tomb close by, also, is a
full-length effigy of his old friend John Combe, of usurious memory,
on whom he is said to have written a ludicrous epitaph. There are other
monuments around, but the mind refuses to dwell on anything that is not
connected with Shakespeare. His idea pervades the place; the whole pile
seems but as his mausoleum. The feelings, no longer checked and thwarted
by doubt, here indulge in perfect confidence: other traces of him may be
false or dubious, but here is palpable evidence and absolute certainty.
As I trod the sounding pavement there was something intense and
thrilling in the idea that in very truth the remains of Shakespeare were
mouldering beneath my feet. It was a long time before I could prevail
upon myself to leave the place; and as I passed through the churchyard
I plucked a branch from one of the yew trees, the only relic that I have
brought from Stratford.
I had now visited the usual objects of a pilgrim’s devotion, but I had
a desire to see the old family seat of the Lucys at Charlecot, and to
ramble through the park where Shakespeare, in company with some of
the roisterers of Stratford, committed his youthful offence of
deer-stealing. In this harebrained exploit we are told that he was taken
prisoner and carried to the keeper’s lodge, where he remained all night
in doleful captivity. When brought into the presence of Sir Thomas Lucy
his treatment must have been galling and humiliating; for it so wrought
upon his spirit as to produce a rough pasquinade which was affixed to
the park gate at Charlecot.*
This flagitious attack upon the dignity of the knight so incensed him
that he applied to a lawyer at Warwick to put the severity of the laws
in force against the rhyming deer-stalker. Shakespeare did not wait
to brave the united puissance of a knight of the shire and a country
attorney. He forthwith abandoned the pleasant banks of the Avon and
his paternal trade; wandered away to London; became a hanger-on to the
theatres; then an actor; and finally wrote for the stage; and
thus, through the persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy, Stratford lost an
indifferent wool-comber and the world gained an immortal poet. He
retained, however, for a long time, a sense of the harsh treatment of
the lord of Charlecot, and revenged himself in his writings, but in
the sportive way of a good-natured mind. Sir Thomas is said to be the
original of Justice Shallow, and the satire is slyly fixed upon him by
the justice’s armorial bearings, which, like those of the knight, had
white luces+ in the quarterings.
* The following is the only stanza extant of this lampoon:
A parliament member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scarecrow, at London an asse,
If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it,
Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it.
He thinks himself great;
Yet an asse in his state,
We allow by his ears but with asses to mate,
If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it,
Then sing lowsie Lucy whatever befall it.
+ The luce is a pike or jack, and abounds in the Avon about
Charlecot.
Various attempts have been made by his biographers to soften and explain
away this early transgression of the poet; but I look upon it as one of
those thoughtless exploits natural to his situation and turn of mind.
Shakespeare, when young, had doubtless all the wildness and irregularity
of an ardent, undisciplined, and undirected genius. The poetic
temperament has naturally something in it of the vagabond. When left to
itself it runs loosely and wildly, and delights in everything eccentric
and licentious. It is often a turn up of a die, in the gambling freaks
of fate, whether a natural genius shall turn out a great rogue or a
great poet; and had not Shakespeare’s mind fortunately taken a literary
bias, he might have as daringly transcended all civil as he has all
dramatic laws.
I have little doubt that, in early life, when running like an unbroken
colt about the neighborbood of Stratford, he was to be found in the
company of all kinds of odd anomalous characters, that he associated
with all the madcaps of the place, and was one of those unlucky urchins
at mention of whom old men shake their heads and predict that they will
one day come to the gallows. To him the poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy’s
park was doubtless like a foray to a Scottish knight, and struck
his eager, and as yet untamed, imagination as something delightfully
adventurous.*
* A proof of Shakespeare’s random habits and associates in
his youthful days may be found in a traditionary anecdote,
picked up at Stratford by the elder Ireland, and mentioned
in his “Picturesque Views on the Avon.”
About seven miles from Stratford lies the thirsty little market-town of
Bedford, famous for its ale. Two societies of the village yeomanry used
to meet, under the appellation of the Bedford topers, and to challenge
the lovers of good ale of the neighboring villages to a contest of
drinking. Among others, the people of Stratford were called out to prove
the strength of their heads; and in the number of the champions was
Shakespeare, who, in spite of the proverb that “they who drink beer
will think beer,” was as true to his ale as Falstaff to his sack. The
chivalry of Stratford was staggered at the first onset, and sounded a
retreat while they had yet the legs to carry them off the field. They
had scarcely marched a mile when, their legs failing them, they were
forced to lie down under a crab tree, where they passed the night. It
was still standing, and goes by the name of Shakespeare’s tree.
In the morning his companions awaked the bard, and proposed returning to
Bedford, but he declined, saying he had enough, having drank with
“Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,
Haunted Hilbro’, Hungry Grafton,
Dudging Exhall, Papist Wicksford,
Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bedford.”
“The villages here alluded to,” says Ireland, “still bear the epithets
thus given them: the people of Pebworth are still famed for their skill
on the pipe and tabor; Hilborough is now called Haunted Hilborough; and
Grafton is famous for the poverty of its soil.”
The old mansion of Charlecot and its surrounding park still remain in
the possession of the Lucy family, and are peculiarly interesting front
being connected with this whimsical but eventful circumstance in the
scanty history of the bard. As the house stood at little more than three
miles’ distance from Stratford, I resolved to pay it a pedestrian visit,
that I might stroll leisurely through some of those scenes from which
Shakespeare must have derived his earliest ideas of rural imagery.
The country was yet naked and leafless, but English scenery is always
verdant, and the sudden change in the temperature of the weather
was surprising in its quickening effects upon the landscape. It was
inspiring and animating to witness this first awakening of spring; to
feel its warm breath stealing over the senses; to see the moist mellow
earth beginning to put forth the green sprout and the tender blade, and
the trees and shrubs, in their reviving tints and bursting buds, giving
the promise of returning foliage and flower. The cold snow-drop, that
little borderer on the skirts of winter, was to be seen with its chaste
white blossoms in the small gardens before the cottages. The bleating
of the new-dropt lambs was faintly heard from the fields. The sparrow
twittered about the thatched eaves and budding hedges; the robin threw
a livelier note into his late querulous wintry strain; and the lark,
springing up from the reeking bosom of the meadow, towered away into the
bright fleecy cloud, pouring forth torrents of melody. As I watched the
little songster mounting up higher and higher, until his body was a mere
speck on the white bosom of the cloud, while the ear was still filled
with his music, it called to mind Shakespeare’s exquisite little song in
Cymbeline:
Hark! hark! the lark at heav’n’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ‘gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs,
On chaliced flowers that lies.
And winking mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With every thing that pretty bin,
My lady sweet arise!
Indeed, the whole country about here is poetic ground: everything is
associated with the idea of Shakespeare. Every old cottage that I saw
I fancied into some resort of his boyhood, where he had acquired his
intimate knowledge of rustic life and manners, and heard those legendary
tales and wild superstitions which he has woven like witchcraft into
his dramas. For in his time, we are told, it was a popular amusement in
winter evenings “to sit round the fire, and tell merry tales of errant
knights, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves,
cheaters, witches, fairies, goblins, and friars.” *
* Scot, in his “Discoverie of Witchcraft,” enumerates a of
these fireside fancies: “And they have so fraid us with host
bull-beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags,
fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens, kit with the can
sticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giantes, imps, calcars,
conjurors, nymphes, changelings, incubus, Robin-goodfellow,
the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell-waine,
the fier drake, the puckle, Tom Thombe, hobgoblins, Tom
Tumbler, boneless, and such other bugs, that we were afraid
of our own shadowes.”
My route for a part of the way lay in sight of the Avon, which made