 INTRODUCTION of Shakespeare Personal Recollections. It would be a flagrant presumption and specimen of magnificent audacity for any man but myself to attempt to give anything new about the personal and literary character of William Shakespeare. I speak of William as I knew him, child, boy, and man, from a spiritual standpoint, living with him in so lit love for three hundred and forty years. Those who doubt my dates, facts, and veracity are to be pitied, and have little appreciation of romantic poetry, comedy, tragedy, and history. It is well known among my intimate friends that I sprang from the race of Strohbergs, who live forever, originating on the island of immortality, on the coast of Japan, more than a million years ago. I do not give the name of the play, act or scene, in head or foot lines, in my numerous quotations from Shakespeare, designedly leaving the reader to trace and find for himself a liberal education by studying the wisdom of the Divine Bard. There are many things in this volume that the ordinary mind will not understand, yet I only contract with the present and future generations to give rare and rich food for thought, and cannot undertake to furnish the reader with brains with each book. J.A.J. Sweepstakes Shakespeare was the greatest delver into the mysterious mind of man and nature, and sunk his intellectual plummet deeper into the ocean of thought than any mortal man that ever lived, before or after his glorious advent upon the earth. He was a universal ocean of knowledge, and the ebb and flow of his thoughts pulsated on the shores of every human passion. He was a mountain range of ideals, and has been a quarry of love, logic, and liberty for all writers and actors since his day and age, out of which they have built fabrics of fame. No matter how often enumerous have been the blast set off in his rocky foundations, the driller, stone mason, and builder of books have failed to lessen his mammoth resources, and every succeeding age has borrowed rough ashlers, blocks of logic, and pillars of philosophy from the inexhaustible mind of his divine understanding. He was an exemplification and consolidation of his own definition of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. The poet finds in Shakespeare a blooming garden of perennial roses. The painter finds colors of heavenly hues. The musician finds seraphic songs and celestial aspirations. The sculptor finds models of beauty and truth. The doctor finds pills and powders of providence. The lawyer finds sweets and briefs of right and reason. The preacher finds prophecies superior to Isaiah or Jeremiah. The historian finds lofty romance more interesting than facts and the actor struts and frets in the Shakespearean-looking glass of today in the mad whorl of the mimic stage with all the pomp and glory of departed warriors, statesmen, fools, princes, and kings. Shakespeare was grand master of history, poetry, and philosophy, tripartite principles of memory, imagination, and reason. He is credited with composing thirty-seven plays, comedies, tragedies, and histories, as well as Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrice, The Lovers' Complaint, The Passionate Pilgrim, and 154 Classical Sonnets, all poems of unrivalled elegance. What a royal troupe of various and universal characters leaped from the portals of his burning brain to stalk forever down the center of the stage of life, exemplifying every human passion. Shakespeare never composed a play or poem without a purpose, to satirize an evil, correct a wrong, or elevate the human soul into the lofty atmosphere of the good and great. His villains and heroes are of a royal mold, and while he lashes with whips of scorn the sin of cupidity, hypocrisy, and ingratitude, he never forgets to glorify love, truth, and patriotism. Even vise are exhibited in daily, homespun dress, and stalking abroad through the centuries, the generous and brave nobility of King Lear, Caesar, Othello, and Hamlet will be seen in marked contrast to Shylock, Brutus, Cassius, Iago, Gloucester, and Macbeth. His fools and wits were philosophers, while many of his kings, queens, dukes, lords and ladies were sneaks, frauds, and murderers. This enveloped gold and diamonds suffered under the x-rays of his divine phrases, while virtue was winged with celestial plumes, soaring away into the heaven of peace and bliss. He was the matchless champion of stern morality, and the interpreter of universal reason. Shakespeare was a multifarious man, and every glinting passion of his soul found rapid and eloquent expression in words that beam and burn with eternal light. The stream of time washes away the fabrics of other poets, but leaves the adamantine structure of Shakespeare erect and uninjured. Being surcharged for three hundred and forty years with the spirit and imagination of Shakespeare, I shall tell the world about his personal and literary life, and although some curious and unreasonable people may not entirely believe everything I relate in this volume, I can only excuse and pity their judgment, for they must know that the ideal is the real. The intellectual pyramids of his thought still rise out of the desert waste of literary scavengers, and loom above the horizon of all the great writers and philosophers that preceded his advent on the globe. The blunt, licentious Saxon words and sentences in the first text of Shakespeare have been ruthlessly expunged by his editorial commentators, adding, no doubt, to the beauty and decency of the plays, but sadly detracting from their original strength. Pope, Johnson, Stevens, and even Malone have made so many minute technical changes in the folio plays of 1623, printed seven years after the death of Shakespeare, that their presumptive elucidation often dribbles into obscurity. Editorial critics, with the best intention, have frequently edited the blood, bone, and sinew of the original thought out of the works of the greatest authors, while attempting to simplify the text for common, rough readers, they mystify the matter by their egotistical explanation, and while showing their superior research and classical learning, they eliminate the chunk-logic force of the real author. For thirty years Shakespeare studied the variegated book of London Life, with all the human oddities, and when spring and summer covered the earth with primroses, flowers, and hawthorn blossoms, he rambled over domestic and foreign lands, through fields, forests, mountains, and stormy seas. With the fun of Falstaff, the firmness of Caesar, the generosity of King Lear, and the imagination of Hamlet, Shakespeare also possessed the loveless delicacy of Ophelia, Portia, and Juliet, reveling familiarly with the spirits of water, earth, and air in his kingdom of living ghosts. He borrowed words and ideas from all the ancient philosophers, poets, and storytellers, and shoveled them pel-mel into the furnace of fires of his mammoth brain, fused their crude ore by the forced draught of his fancy into the laminated steel of enduring form and household utility. The rough and uncouth corn of others passed through the hoppers of Shakespeare's brain and came out fine flour, ready for use by the theatrical bakers. With the pen of pleasure and brush of fancy he painted human life in everlasting colors that will not fade or tarnish with age or wither with the winds of adversity. The celestial sunlight of his genius permeated every object he touched, and lifted even the vulgar vices of earth into the realms of virtue and beauty. Shakespeare was an intellectual atmosphere that permeated and enlivened the world of thought. His genius was as universal as the air, where Zephyr and Storm moved at the imperial will of this grand master of human passions. Schools, not people, absorbed the mammoth mind of Shakespeare, who paid little attention to the princes and philosophers of his day. Schools, universities, monks, priests, and popes were rungs in the ladder of his mind, and only noticed to scar and saturize their hypocrisy, bigotry, and tyranny with his javelins of matchless wit. The flower and fruit of thought sprang spontaneously from his seraphic soul. He flung his phrases into the intellectual ocean of thought, and they still shine and shower down the ages like meteors in a midnight sky. Like the busy bee he banqueted on all the blossoms of the globe, and stored the honey of his genius in the lofty crags of Parnassus. Shakespeare and nature were confidential friends, and while she gave a few sheaves of knowledge to her other children, the old dame bestowed upon the divine William the harvest of all the ages. Shakespeare's equipoise of mind, placidity of conduct, and control of passion rendered him invulnerable to the shafts of envy, malice, and tyranny, making him always master of the human midgets or vultures that circled about his pathway. One touch from the brush of his imagination on the rudest dramatic canvas illuminated the murky scene, and flashed on the eye of the beholder the rainbow colors of his matchless genius. Ben Johnson, Green, Marlowe, Fletcher, and Burbage gazed with astonishment at the versatility of his poetic and dramatic creations, and while pangs of jealousy shot a thwart their envious souls, they knew that the divine bard was soaring above the alpine crags of thought, leaving them at the foothills of dramatic venture. He played the role of policy before peasant, lord and king, and used the applause and brain of each for his personal advancement, and yet he never sacrificed principle for perf or bedraggled the skirts of virtue in the gutter of vice. The divine William knew more about everything than any other man knew about anything. He had a carnivorous and omnivorous mind, with a judicial soul, and controlled his temper with the same inflexible rule that nature uses when murmuring in zephyrs or shrieking in storms, receding or advancing in dramatic thought, as peace or passion demand. He seemed at times to be a medley of contradictions, and while playing virtue against vice the reader and beholder are often left in doubt as to the guilt or glory of the contending actors. He puts words of wisdom in the mouth of a fool, and foolish phrases in the mouth of the wise, and shuttle-clocked integrity on the loom of imagination. William was the only poet who ever had any money sense, and understood the real value of copper, silver, gold, jewels, and land. His early trials and poverty at Stratford, with the example of his bankrupt father, was always in view, convincing him early in life that ready money was all-powerful, purchasing rank, comfort, and even so-called love. Yet he only valued riches as a means of doing good, puncturing the bladder of bloated wealth with his pin of thought. If thou art rich, thou art poor, for like an ass whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee. He noticed wherever he traveled that successful stupidity, though secretly despised, was often the master of the people, while a genius with the wisdom of the ages starved at the castle gate, and like Mozart and Ottway found rest in the potter's field. No Indian juggler could mystify the ear and eye and mind of an audience like Shakespeare, for over the crude thoughts of other dramatic writers he threw the glamour of his divine imagination, making the shrubs, the vines, and briars of life bloom into perpetual flowers of pleasure and beauty. With his mystic wand he mesmerized all, and peasants transformed to kings, while age after age in cottage and hall he soars with imperial wings. No one mind, ever comprehended Shakespeare, and even all the authors and readers that sauntered over his wonderful garden of literary flowers and fruits, have but barely clipped at the hedge rows of his philosophy, culling a few fragmentary mementos from his immortal productions. Shakespeare's choreography was almost as variable as his mind, and when he sat down to compose plays for the globe and black fryer's theatres, in his room adjacent to the miter tavern, he dashed off chunks of thought for pressing and waiting actors and managers, piecing them together like a cabinet-joiner or machinist. In all his compositions he used, designedly, a pale blue ink that evaporated in the course of a year, and the cunning actors and publishers, who knew his secret, copied and memorized and printed his immortal thoughts. He kept a small bottle of indelible ink for ideals on parchment for posterity. I have often found his room littered and covered with numbered sheets of scenes and acts, ready for delivery to actors for recital, and many times the sunset over London would run its round to sunrise and find William at his desk in the rookery, hammering away on the anvil of thought, fusing into shape his divine masterpieces. Shakespeare's Bohemian life was but an enlarged edition of his rural vagabond's career through the fields and alehouses of Warwickshire. He only needed about four hours sleep in twenty-four, but when composition on occasion demanded rapidity he could work two days and rise from his labor as fresh as a lark from the flowery bank of Avon. Most of the great writers of antiquity patterned after greater than themselves, but Shakespeare evolved from the illuminated palace of his soul the songs and sentiments that moved the ages and make him the colossal champion of beauty, mercy, charity, purity, courage, love, and truth. There are more numerous nuggets of thought in the works of Shakespeare than in all the combined mass of ancient and modern literature. The various Bibles, composed and manufactured by man, cannot compare in variety, common sense, and eloquence with the productions of the immortal bard. All the preachers, bishops, popes, kings, and emperors that have ever conjured up texts and creeds for dupes, devotees, and designers to swallow without question have never yet sunk the plummet of reason so deep in the human heart as the butcher-boy of Stratford. Shakespeare was the most industrious literary prospector and miner of any land or time, throwing his searchlight of reason into the crude mass of Indian, Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Frank, German, Russian, and Britain lore, and forwith appropriated the golden beauties of each nation, leaving behind the dross of vice and vulgarity. Marlowe, Burbage, Peale, Chapman, Green, and Johnson composed many fine physical and licentious dramas, pandering to the London groundlings, bloated wealth and accidental power. But Shakespeare threw a spiritual radiance over their brutal sordid phrases, and elevated stage characters into the realm of romantic thought, pinioned with hope, love, and truth. His sublime imagination soared away into the flowery uplands of divinity, plucked from the azure wings of angels, brilliant feathers of fancy that shall shine and flutter down the ages. He flung his javelin of wit through the buckler of ignorance, bigotry, and tyranny, exposing their rotten bodies to the ridicule and hate of mankind. In lordly language he swept over the harp strings of the heart with infinite expression and comprehension of works, leaving in his intellectual wake a multifarious heritage of brain jewels. He flew over the world like a swarm of bees, robbing all the fields of literature of their sweet secrets, storing the rich beauty of nature in the honeycomb of his philosophic hive. Through his brain the variegated paraphernalia of nature in field, forest, veil, mount, river, sea, and sky were illuminated with the divine radiance that shall shine for ever and grow greater as mankind grows wiser. Shakespeare has paid the greatest tribute of respect of any writer to women. While he gives us a few scolding, Lysentia's cruel criminal women, like Dame Quicly, Catarina, Tamora, Gertrude, and Lady Macbeth, he gives us the beautiful, faithful, loving characters of Isabella, Juliet, Desdemona, Perdita, Helena, Miranda, Eugen, Ophelia, and Cordelia, whose love-lit words and phrases shine out in the firmament of purity and devotion, like morning stars in tropical skies. Shakespeare studied all trades and professions he encountered in daily contact with mankind. He thought what he was and was what he thought. To him a sermon was a preacher, a writ a lawyer, a pill a doctor, a sail a sailor, a sword a soldier, a button a tailor, a nail a carpenter, a hammer a blacksmith, a trowel a stone mason, a pebble a geologist, a flower a botanist, a ray of light an astronomer, and even a word gave him ample suggestion to build up an empire of thought. He sailed upon the tides and currents of the human heart, and steered through the cliffs and caverns of the brain with greater glory than those who sought the golden fleece among the enchanting waters of Ionian Isles. Shakespeare conjured the characters of his plays from elemental principles, measures, not men, breathing and acting in his divine atmosphere. It is strange and marvellous that he never wrote a line about the great men that lived and wrote in his day and age, although Cervantes, Rubens, Camuens, Bruno, Drake, Raleigh, Calderon, Cornel, Rembrandt, Kepler, Galileo, Montagna, Beaumont, and Fletcher, Sidney, Marlowe, Bacon, and Ben Johnson were contemporaneous authors, poets, dramatists, navigators, soldiers, astronomers, and philosophers. Lysentius' phrases and actions were universal in Shakespeare's time, and from the corrupt courts of King Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and King James, to the cot of the peasant and trail of the tavern, morality hid her modest head and only flourished among the Puritans and philosophers who kept alive the flame of love and liberty. Dryden, Spencer, Sidney, Marlowe, and Johnson infected literature with a species of eloquent vulgarity and Shakespeare willing to please, readily infused into his various plays sensuous phrases to catch the rabble cheers and purple applause. While he worshipped nature, he never failed to bend the knee for ready cash, and often paid fulsome tribute to lords and ladies who flattered his vanity and ministered to his itching palm. Physical passion, mental license, and social tyranny ruled in home, church, and state, where Rome and reformation struggled viciously for the mastery. There are nuggets of golden thought still scattered through the plays of Shakespeare that no author or actor has ever discovered, and although they have read and repeated his lines for more than three hundred years, there has been no brain able and brilliant enough to delve into or explain the secret caves of Shakespearean wit. Human sparrows cannot know the eagle flights of divine philosophy. The golden guilt of imagination decorated his phrases and the lambent light of his philosophy shone like the rosy dawn upon a field of variegated wildflowers. The hut and the cottage were transformed into lordly castles while the rocks and hills became ranges of mountain, whose icy pinnacles reflected back the shimmering light of suns and stars. Shakespeare was a man of universal moods, and like a chameleon took color and force from every object he touched. The drafts he took from the deep flowing wells of nature made no diminution in the volume of his thought that rushed through his seething brain like an underground cataract filled from eternal springs. Fresh from the mint of his mind fell the clinking golden coin of universal value, bearing the glowing stamp of his genius unrivaled in the annals of time. Since he wrote and acted, no man ever understood the depths of his wit and logic, or the height of his imagination and philosophy. The human mackerel cannot know the human whale. Shallow, presumptive college bookworms, arrogant librarians and classical compilers have attempted to explain his plays in sonnets, in footnotes, but they have only been entangled in the briars and flowers of his fancy, finding themselves suffocated at last in the luxurious fields of his eloquent rhetoric and universal wisdom. School teachers, professors, priests, preachers, popes and princes are brushed aside by the cutting phrases of Shakespeare and go down to earth like grass before the sith of this rustic reaper. They are dumbfounded by his matchless, mysterious logic. Religion, law, and medicine are pitchforked about by the divine William on the threshing floor of his literary granary, where he separates wheat from chaff, instantor, leaving the beholder mystified by the splendid result. Viewing the great minds of the world from Homer to Humboldt, Shakespeare never had an equal or superior, standing on the pinnacle of the pyramid or human renown, and lifting his mammoth mental form above the other philosophers of the earth, as Mount St. Elias soars above its brother peaks. Distance lends a wizard enchantment to his lofty form, and down the rolling ages his glory will glow greater till the whole universe is luminous with dazzling lights of his eternal fame. Such godlike men shall never die. They shine as suns in tropic sky, and thrill the world with truth and love, derived from nature far above. Shakespeare's mind was pinioned with celestial imagination, and his rushing flight circled the shores of omnipotence. He taught us that ignorance was a crime, a murky night without a single star to light the traveler on his weary way. Those who have attempted to fathom the depths of the Shakespearean ocean of thought have only rounded the rim or skimmed over the surface of its illimitable magnificence. Just about by the billows of Shakespeare's brain for three hundred and forty years mankind, like a ship in a storm, still wonders and runs on the reefs of his understanding, to be wrecked in their vain calculation of his divine wisdom. Leaving the beaten paths of Oriental and Middle-Age riders, he dashed deep into the forest of nature and surveyed for himself a new dominion of thought that has never been occupied before or since his birth. Like a comet of universal light he shines over the world with the warm glow of celestial knowledge. With the tuning key of his matchless genius he struck the cords of sorrow to their inmost tone and played on the heartstrings of joy with the tender vibrations of an Aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the wild flowers of ecstatic passion. And to clap the climax and fathom the logic of his love he eloquently exclaims, Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds. J.A.J. Stratford, April 1st, 1616 My dear schoolmate and soul-friend It is my will and testification that after three hundred and forty years from my birth you shall tell the world the true history of my personal and literary life. Above all men I have met you have the most love, truth, bravery, and imagination. Be just and fear not. CHAPTER I. Birth, School Days, Shows One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. William Shakespeare was born on the 23rd of April, 1564, at the town of Stratford on the River Avon, Warwickshire County, England, and died in the same town on the 23rd of April, 1616, exactly fifty-two years of age, the date of his birth being the date of his death, a remarkable coincidence of spiritual assimilation. For several centuries his ancestors served their king and crown in war and peace, and were noted in their day and age as country gentlemen, a term much more significant than, than now, when even dressed up dandy frauds may lay claim to this much abused title. The grandfather of Shakespeare fought on Bosworth Field with King Henry VII, and was rewarded for his military service, leaving to his son, John, the father of the Divine William, influence enough to secure the position of a country squire, and made him bailiff and mayor of the town of Stratford. John Shakespeare, in addition to his judicial duties, dabbled in trade as a wool-dealer and glove-maker, and when he lost influence in office he resorted to the business of a butcher to secure bread, meat, and shelter for his large family. He married the youngest daughter of Robert Arden, a very beautiful girl of Wilmcott, a small village three miles from Stratford. When Arden died, Mary, his favorite daughter, was bequeathed thirty-six dollars and a small farm of fifty acres near the town of Sinterfield—good inheritance for that age. The Arden family were strict Roman Catholics, and Edward Arden, high sheriff of Warwickshire, was executed in 1583 for plotting against Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Those were lively days, when the followers of the Pope and King Henry VIII banished, burned, and hung presumptive heretics for opinion's sake. The lechery and greed of King Howe was the primary cause of his separation from papal authority, augmenting the Reformation by Lysentius' royalty. John Shakespeare and Mary, his good wife, did not seem to have much of an education, for in signing deeds of conveyance they only made their mark, like thousands of the Yeomanry in England. Shakespeare was a very common name in Warwickshire in the surrounding counties, and while the Divine William glorified the whole race, there were others of his name who fought for King and Crown. John Shakespeare had ten children, with the affectionate assistance of Mary Arden, seven daughters and three boys, William being the third child and the most active and robust. Several of the flock died, thereby reducing the trials and expenses of the household, the old man seeming to be one of those ancient mulberry cellars that was forever making millions in his mind and chasing gold-bags at the west end of Rainbowes. For many years he persistently applied to the College of Haralds for a coat of arms, and finally, in the year 1599, a picture of a shield with a spear and falcon rampant was awarded to the Shakespeare family, all through the growing influence of the actor and author William, who had become famous and wealthy. John Shakespeare did not enjoy the glory of his coat of arms very long, for we find that he died in September 1601 and was buried on the eighth of that month at the Old Church in Stratford, and his brave old wife, the mother of William Shakespeare, followed him to the tomb on the ninth of September 1608. I first met Will Shakespeare on the twenty-third of April, fifteen-seventy-one, at the old log-and-board schoolhouse at the head of Henley Street, Stratford, on the River Avon. It was a bright, sunny day, and Mr. Walter Roach, the Latin master, was the autocrat of the scholastic institution, afterwards succeeded by Thomas Hunt. Will Shakespeare and myself happened to be born on the same day, and our first entrance at the Temple of Knowledge marked exactly the seventh milestone of our fleeting years. Will was a very lusty, rollicking boy, and was as full of innocent mischief as a pomegranate is of seeds. He was handsome and bright, wearing a thick suit of auburn curls that rippled over his shoulders like a waterfall in the sunshine. His eyes were very large, a light hazel hue that glinted into blue when his soul was stirred by passion. His forehead was broad and high, even as a boy rounding off into that dome of thought that in latter years, when a six-foot specimen of splendid manhood caused him to conjure up such a universal group of immortal characters. His nose was long and high, but symmetrical, and his distended nostrils, when excited at play, would remind you of a Kentucky racehorse in motion. His voice was sonorous and musical, and when stirred by passion or pleasure it rose and fell like the sound of waves upon a stormy or summer sea. His lips were red and full, marked by nature with the bow of beauty, and when his luminous countenance was flushed with celestial light, he shot arrows of love-lit glances around the school room and fairly magnetized the boys, and particularly the girls, with the radiant influence of his unconscious genius. Will was a constant source of anxiety and wonder to the teacher, who often marked him as the scapegoat to carry off the surface sins of sneaking and cowardly pupils. Corporal punishment was part of school discipline, and William and myself got our share of the rule and rod. Through all the centuries, in youth and age, private and public, the scapegoat has been the real hero in all troubles and misfortunes. He seems to be a necessary mortal, but while persecution relentlessly pursues him, he almost invariably triumphs over his enemies, and when even devoted to the prison, the state or the scaffold as a martyr, he triumphs over the grave and is monumented in the memory of mankind for his bravery and silent self-sacrifice. For seven years Will and myself were daily companions. Spring, with its castles and primreses and hawthorn blossoms, found us rambling through the woods and fields, and angling for the finny tribe desporting in the purling waters of the crystal avan. Summer brought its grain and fruits, with boys and girls scrambling over hedges, fences, stiles, and brooks, in search of berries and ripe apples. Autumn, with its nuts, birds, and hairs, invited us to hunting grounds along the rolling ridges and the dense forests of Arden, even poaching on the domain of Sir Thomas Lucy and the royal reaches of Warwick Castle. And old winter, with his snowy locks and whistling airs, brought the roses to our young cheeks, skipping and sporting through his fantastic realm like the snowbirds whirling in clumps of clouds across the withered world. Looking back over the fields, forests, and waters of the past, through the variegated realms of celestial imagination, I behold after the lapse of more than three centuries of human wrecks, the brilliant boys and glorious girls I played with in childhood years, still shining as bright and fresh as the flowers and fruits of yesterday. For we are the same as our fathers have been. We see the same sights our fathers have seen. We drink the same streams and view the same stun, and run the same course our fathers have run. I remember well the first time Will and myself attended a theatrical performance. It was on the first of April, 1573, when we were about nine years of age. A strolling band of comic and punch-and-duty players had made a sudden invasion of Stratford and established themselves in the big barn of the old Bear Tavern on Bridge Street. The town was alive with expectation, and the school children were wild to behold the great play of the scolding wife, which was advertised throughout the streets in the daytime by a cartload of bedisoned harlequins, belaboring each other with words and gestures, the wife with bare arms, short dress and a bundle of rods, standing rampant over the prostrate form of a drunken husband. Five strums and timbrels kept up a frantic noise, filling the by-lanes and streets of Stratford with astonished country louts and tradesmen, until the fantastic parade ended in the wagon-yard of the tavern. The old barn had been rigged up as a rustic playhouse. The stage covering one end elevated about three feet from the threshing floor. Curtains with dob pictures were strung across the stage, separated in the center and shifted backwards and forwards, as the varying scenes of the family play were presented for the hisses or cheers of the variegated audience. The play consisted of three acts, showing the progress of courtship and marriage at the altar, country and town life with growing children, work, poverty and finally wind-up of the husband, driven from home by the scolding wife, bruised in an ale-house, dead and followed the grave by the beetle, undertaker and a brindle-dog. The climax scene of the play exhibited the wife with a bundle of rods, surrounded by ragged children, driving out into a midnight storm the husband of her bosom, while peals of thunder and flashes of lightning brought goose-pimples and shivers to the frightened audience. The impression made upon the mind of William and myself did not give us a very hopeful view of married life, and while the haphazard working, drinking habits of the husband seemed to deserve all the punishment he received, the modesty, benevolence and beauty of woman was shattered in our young souls. On our way home from the country tragedy performance we were gladdened by the thought that although the rude, vulgar, criminal passions of mankind were portrayed and enacted day by day all over the globe, we could look up into the starlet heavens and see those glittering lamps of light shining with reflected light on the murmuring bosom of the Avon, as it flowed in peaceful ripples to the Severn and from the Severn to the Sea. Nature soothed our young hearts, and soon in the mysterious realms of sleep we forgot the sorrows and poverty of earth, tripping away with angelic companions through the golden fields of celestial dreams. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. I shall never forget the great shows and pageants that took place in Warwickshire County in July 1575. All England was alive to the grand entrance of clean Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle, as the royal guest of her favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Proclamation had gone forth that all work be suspended, while yeoman, traitor, merchant, doctor, lawyer, minister, lord and earls should pay a pilgrimage to Kenilworth and pay tribute to the Virgin Queen. Stratford and the surrounding villages were aflame with enthusiasm, and as John Shakespeare, the alderman and mayor, took great interest in theatricals, and particularly those festivities inaugurated for the entertainment of royalty, he led a great concourse of devoted patriots through the forests of Arden, blooming parks of Warwick Castle, on to the grand surroundings of Kenilworth, where the people, en masse, camped, sang, danced, took part in country plays, feasted and went wild for eighteen days over the illustrious daughter of Henry VIII. William and myself were among the enthusiastic revelwards, and for boys of twelve years of age we felt more cheer than any of the lads and lasses from Stratford, because our parents furnished us with milk-white ponies to pay tribute and typify the virtue and chastity of the Virgin Queen. We did not particularly care about virtue or virginity, so we shared the cakes and ale that were lavishly in perfusion to the rural multitude. A high grand throne made out of evergreens and wildflowers was erected in the central park of Kenilworth, rimmed in by lofty elms, oaks and sycamores. There through the fleeting days and nights the Queen and her royal suite of a thousand purple cavaliers and bejeweled maids of honour held court and viewed the ever-changing, living panorama evolved for their entertainment. The Queen looked like a wilderness of lace and variegated velvet, irrigated with a shower of diamonds. On the ninth of July, Queen Bess and her illuminated suite entered the castle of Kenilworth, and the hands of the clock in the Great Tower pointed to the hour of two, where they remained until her departure as an invitation to a continual banquet. The Earl expended a thousand pounds a day for the fluid and food entertainment of his guests, while woodland bowers and innumerable tents were scattered throughout the royal domain generously donated to man and maid by night and day. We boys and girls seldom went to bed. Companies of circus performers and theatrical artists from London and other towns were brought down to the heart of old Albion to swell the pleasures of the reigning Queen. Continual plays were going on, while horn, fife, bugle and drum lent music to the kaleidoscope breville. Dancing, hunting, hawking and archery parties, through the day, set their antics to the scene, and when night came with bright luna showing her mystic face, forest fires, rockets and illuminated balloons filled the air with celestial wonder, vying with the stars in an effort to do universal honour to the Virgin Queen. That's what they called Bess. William and myself took part in several of the joint circus and theatrical performances, and at the conclusion of one of the plays, Virtue Victorious, Queen Elizabeth called up William and a purple page named Francis Bacon, padded them on the head with her royal digits, and said they would soon be great men. I must acknowledge that I felt a little envious at the Ecomium, not so much to William, as to the proud peacock, Bacon, who came in train of the Queen. At sunrise on the twenty-seventh of July, fifteen-seventy-five, the festivities closed, and the royal cavalcade, with a following of ten thousand loyal subjects, accompanied the ruling monarch to the borders of Warwickshire, with universal shouts and ovations on her triumphant march to London. I would applaud thee to the very echo that should applaud again. All that glitters is not gold. Often you have heard that told. Many a man his life hath sold, but my outside to behold. CHAPTER II The Fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves that we are underlings. Will Shakespeare and myself left school when we were fourteen years of age. Our parents, being reduced in worldly circumstances, needed the financial fruits of our labour. Shakespeare was bound to a butcher named John Bull, for a term of three years, while I was put at the trade of stone cutting with Sam Granite for the same period. Will was one of the finest-looking boys in the town of Stratford, aristocratic by nature, large and noble in appearance, and the pride of all the girls in the country of Warwick, for his fame as a runner, boxer, drinker, dancer, reciter, speaker, hunter, swimmer, and singer was well known in the surrounding farms and villages, where he had occasion to drive, purchase, and sell meat animals for his butcher-boss, John Bull. Shakespeare's father assisted Bull in selling hides and buying wool. In the winter of fifteen-eighty, Will and myself joined a new Thespian society, organised by the boys and girls of Stratford, with a contingent of theatrical talent from Shottery, Sniderfield, Lester, Kenilworth, and Coventry. Strolling players, chartered by Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Lester, often visited Stratford and the surrounding towns, infusing into the young and even into the old, a desire for that innocent fun of tragic or comic philosophy that wandering minstrels and circus exhibitions generate in the human heart. Plays of Roman, Spanish, and German origin, as well as those of old Albion, were enacted on our rural stage, and although we had not the paraphernalia and scenery of the London actors, we made up in frantic enthusiasm what we lacked in artistic finish, and often in our amateur exhibitions at Balls, Fairs, Races, and May Day Morristances, we astonished the natives, who paid from a penny to a sixpence to see and hear the Stratford Oriental theatrical company. Shakespeare always took a leading part in every play, poem and declination, but when an encore was given and a demand for a recitation on love, Will was in his natural element and gave the eager audience dashes from Ovid's Metamorphosis or Petrarch Sonics. The local company had a large assortment of poetic and theatrical translations, and many of the boys and girls who had passed through the Latin school could spout the rhythmic lines of Ovid, Virgil, Horace, or Petrarch in the original language, and strange to say, the warwick's your audience would cheer the Latin more than the English rendition on the principle that the least you know about a thing, the more you enjoy it. Thus pretence and ignorance make a staggered information, and while fooling themselves, imagine that they fool their elbow neighbor. Shakespeare had a most marvelous memory, and his sense of taste, smell, feeling, hearing, and particularly seeing was abnormally developed, and constant practice in talking and copying verses and philosophic sentences made him almost perfect in his deductions and conclusions. He was a natural orator and impressed the beholder with his superiority. He had a habit of copying the best verses, dramatic phrases and orations of ancient authors, and then to show his superiority of epigrammatic, incisive style, he could paraphrase the poems of other writers into his own divine sentences, using the crude or of Homeric and Platonic philosophy, resolving their thoughts into the best form of classic English, lucid, brave, and blunt. I have often tested his powers of lightning observation with each of us, running by shop windows in Stratford, Oxford, or London, and betting a dinner as to who could name the greatest number of objects, and he invariably could name correctly three to my one. In visiting country farmers in search of cattle, sheep, or pigs, he could mount a stone fence or climb a hedgerow gate, and by a glance over the field or meadow give the correct number of animals in sight. He was a wonder to the yeomanry of Warwickshire and the surrounding counties, and when he had occasion to rest for the night at farmhouses or taverns, he was the prime favorite of the rural flames or bouncing, beaming barmaid. The girls went wild about him. The physical development of Shakespeare was as noticeable as his mental superiority. Often, when he plowed the placid waters of the Avon, or buffeted the moaning sea, I have gazed in rapture at his manly Adonis form, standing on the sands like a Grecian wrestler, waiting for the laurel crown of the Olympic games. Great Shakespeare was endowed with heavenly light. He read the Book of Nature day and night, and delving through the strata of mankind, divined the thoughts that thrilled the mystic mind, and felt the pulse of all the human race, while from their beating heart could surely trace the various passions that inspire the soul around this breathing world from pole to pole. My family and the Hathaway household were on familiar terms, for my father, at times, worked an adjoining estate at the edge of the village of Shottery, a straggling community of farmers and tradesmen, with the usual wheel-right, blacksmith shop, corn and meat store, and ale-house attachments. William, in his rural perambulations, often put up for the night at our cottage, and as there was generally some fun going on in the neighborhood after dark, I led him into many frolics with the boys and girls. I can assure you he was a rusher with a fair sex, capturing the plums that fell from the tree of beauty and passion. On a certain moonlight night, in the month of May 1581, a large concourse of rural bells and bows assembled at the home of John Dryden, washed by the waters of the Avon, and thrilled by the songs of the nightingales, thrushes and larks, lending enchantments to the flitting hours. Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcutt, and Shottery sent their contingent of Roy string boys and girls to enjoy the moonlight lawn dance and rural feast set out under flowery bowers by the generous Dryden. It would have done your heart good to see the variegated dresses, antics and faces of the happy rural bells. I see them as plain as ever in the looking-glass of memory. There is Laura Combs, Plump and Intelligent, Mary Scott, Willowy and Keane, Jenny Field, Sedate and Sterling, Mary Hall, Musical and Handsome, Annie Condol, Modest and Benevolent, Joyce Action, Whitty and Aristocratic, Lizzie Hemming, Bouncing and Beaming, Fanny Hunt, Stately and Kind, while Anne Hathaway, the big girl of the party, seemed to be the leader in all the innocent mischief of the evening. William took a particular liking to the push and go of Anne, and she seemed to concentrate her gaze on his robust form at first sight. William asked me, as the friend of the family, to introduce him to Miss Hathaway, which I did in my best words and away they went on a hop, step and a jump through the morris dance, that was just then being enacted on the lawn. The clarion notes of the farm-cocks were saluting the rosy footsteps of the dawn when the various parties dispersed for home. The last I saw of William he was helping Miss Hathaway over the rustic style and hedgerow that rimmed the old thatched cottage home of his newly found flame. It was a frigid day or night when William could not find something fresh and new among the fairer sex, and like a king bee in a field of wildflowers, he sipped the nectar of love and beauty, and tossed care-king care to the vagrant winds. It was soon after this moonlight party that a picnic revel was given in the domain of Sir Hugh Clapton near the old mill and stone bridge erected by that generous public benefactor. The boys and girls of the town turned out en masse, and enjoyed the hawking, hunting, swimming, dancing, archery, and boating that prevailed that day. In the midst of the festivities, while a long line of rural beauties and bows were prancing and rollicking on the bridge, a scream and a flash of Dollyvarden dress in the river showed the struggling efforts of Anne Hathaway to keep her head above water. One glance at the pride of his heart, struggling for her life, determined the soul of the athlete. When he plunged into the running stream, caught the arm of his adored as she was going down for the third time, and then, with a few mighty sweeps of his brawny arm, he reached the shore and heaved her on the sands in an almost lifeless condition. She was soon restored, however, by her numerous companions, with only the loss of a few ribbons and bunches of Hawthorne blossoms that William had tied in her golden hair that morning. William was the hero of the day, and his fame for bravery rung on the lips of the warwick sure yeoman tree, while in the heart of Anne Hathaway devotion reigns supreme. There is no love broker in the world can more prevail in man's commendation with woman than report of valor. The courtship of William and Anne was rapid, and although her father died only a few months before, on the twenty-seventh of November, fifteen eighty-two, license to marry was suddenly obtained through the insistence of the yeoman friends of the Hathaway family, Fuchs Sandals and John Richardson, who convinced the Lord Bishop of Worcester that one calling of the bands of matrimony was only necessary. William left his home in Stratford immediately and took charge of Anne's cottage and farm, settling down as soon as one of his rollicking nature could realize that he had been virtually forced into marrying a buxom girl, eight years older than himself, and a woman of hot temper. Six months after marriage Susanna, his daughter, was born, and about two years after, February 2, fifteen eighty-five, his twin children, Hemant and Judith, were ushered into his cottage home as new pledges of matrimonial felicity. Things did not move on with William as happily after marriage as before, and while his wife did most of the work, the bard of nature preferred to shirk hard labor in field and wood, longing constantly to meet the boys at the tavern, or fish, sing, hunt, and poach along the avon. Yoking Pegasus to a Flanders mare would be about as reasonable as joining a practical, honest woman with a poet. Water and hot oil will not mix, and the fires of genius cannot be curbed or subdued by material surroundings. Beef cannot appreciate brains. Anne was constantly sandpapering William about his vagabond life, and holding up the picture of ruin for her ancestral estate, by his thoughtless extravagance and determination to attend to other people's business instead of his own. As the wife was senior and business-boss, the bard endured these certain lectures with meekness and surface sorrow and promises of reformation, but went out of her sight continued in the same old rut of playing the clown and philosopher for the public amusement. How hard it is to hide the spark of nature. Chapter 3 of Shakespeare Personal Recollections. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ernst Patinama. Shakespeare Personal Recollections by John A. Joyce. Chapter 3. Farm Life, Sporting, Poaching on Lucy. Hanging and Wiving, Go by Destiny. The drudgery of farm work was not relished by Shakespeare, and the spring of 1586 found the man of destiny more engaged in the sports of Stratford and surrounding villages than in the production of corn, cabbage, turnips, and potatoes. Where fun was to be found, William raised the auction and the heist bidder at the booths of Vanity Fair. He was athletic in mind and body, and forever like a crypt line or caged eagle, struggled to shake off his rural environments and dash away into the world of thought and action. Home, with its practical, daily guide, grant morality and responsibility, had no chance for William, and his stalwart wife made matters worse by her continual importunities to her vagabond husband to settle down with the mutton-head cloth-hoppers and tradesmen of Warwickshire. He was not built that way. Her phonologic fell upon deaf ears. For while she was preaching hard work, he was reading the lovely flights of Ovid and pondering over the sugared sonnets of Petrarch and Sir Philip Sidney, living in the realms of Cleo, Utterpe, and Terpsicor. Preparing, even then, his pathway to the great poems of Venus and Adonis, Lucrice, the sonnets, and the immortal plays that were incubating in the procreate soul of the divine Bart. He was his own schoolmaster, drawing daily drafts from the universal fountains of nature. And what a blessing it is to the public to have even a social scapegrace hatch out golden ideas for the education and amusement, notwithstanding the neglect of farm and family. The greatest good to the greatest number is best for all time. God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. He plans his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. On the 1st of September 1586, the Lord High Sheriff of Coventry invited the people to an archery and drinking contest. Representatives from 25 villages and towns were selected from the various working guilds and professions to conquer or die, drunk, in the Queen's name for the honor of old Albion. Ceres, the goddess of harvest, had showered her riches on the fields and forests of Warwickshire. And to glorify her abundance, a great athletic and semi-military carnival was thus given by the authorities to test to bravery, endurance, and greatness of the sons of St George and to Dragon. The beautiful, broad, undulating, winding highways leading from Stratford, Warwick, Kenilworth, and Birmingham, to the ancient town of Coventry, were filled with jolly pilgrims to Bady Votion at the shrine of Hercules and Buccas, with the influence of Venus as an ever-present incentive to passionate pleasure. That bright September morning, I well remember. Dame Nature was just dawning her variegated gown of rustic brown, while fitful heirs from the realms of Jack Frost were painting the wild roses and forest leaves in cardinal hue, and the blackbird, thrush and musical nightingale, flew low and sang hoarse but continually in their assemblages for migration to lands of sun and flowers. From Kenilworth to Coventry, the rural scenery is as various and beautiful as visions of a dream and the undulating landscape by hill and dale, field and forest, river, marge, cottage, hole, dirge and castle, grouping themselves in shifting pictures of beauty and grandeur, where lofty elms and sycamores rise and bend their willowy arms to the passing breeze, indelibly impresses the beholder with a splendid kaleidoscopic view of English hospitality and agricultural cultivation. The tall turrets of monasteries, castles, and soaring church spires of Coventry, looked luminous in the morning sunshine, while the brazen tongues of sentry bells rolled their malifluous smat and tones in voluminous welcome to the great multitude of revelers within her embattled walls and hospitable homes. Promptly at nine o'clock in the morning, in the Lester Park, twenty-five acuted longbow men in archery uniform took their stand before the bullseye targets two hundred yards away. At the words draw, aim and fly, the whizzing arrows centered and shivered in the oak targets, and none hid the bulls but Will Shakespeare of Stratford, who was proclaimed winner of the first prize, an ox, a barrel of sack and butt of wine, with a privilege of kissing every girl in the county. The entire day was spent in all kinds of sports, and with roasts, joints, bread, pudding, sack, ale, gin, brandy and whisky, the revelers did not break up until daylight, when all were laid under the table, but William and his friends Burbage, Condell and Dick Field, who had come away from his printing house in London, to witness one of the greatest rural sports of England. Although Stratford was not a day's walk from Coventry, William and his friends did not succeed in getting back for three days, and often they travelled by the light of the moon, believing it was the sun in midday splendour. Unhother way hurt of William's official and social victory, not in the proud light of a Stratford and Shortery alehouse companions, but with a tongue like a gut, she proposed to lash him into shame as a husband, or drive him from his cottage home to earn a living for his infant children. William was a little dubious as to his reception, and in order to temper the storm to the ambling lamb, he earnestly requested to me to accompany him home as a buffer to his contemplated reception, believing that Anne would mellow her words and actions in the presence of an old friend. I respectfully declined his pressing invitation, and tweeted him on being afraid of a woman, when he plaintively exclaimed, Unhother way that gives me pain, she scolds both day and night, her tongue is pattering like the rain, and speeds my outward flight. I'll soon be gone to London town, and leave her house and land, for I will gain some great renown that she may understand. I met William the next morning on his way to the Crown Tavern in search of a martini cocktail, a new drink that an Indian from America had invented for Admiral Drake and Sir Walter Rolly. William bore the appearance of a man who had slept by his smoky chimney, or encountered the butthend of a threshing flail. He seemed somber, and muttered to himself, When sorrows come, they cannot single but in battalions. I joined him in liquidation at the tavern, for, to tell the truth, my throat felt like the rough edge of a buffalo robe, and my nerves trembled like aspen leaves in July. When our usual village sports filed around the table, and glee and song once more prevailed, William began to soften in his statuesque attitude, and lovingly proposed that we go approaching on the imprisoned animals and birds that squire Lucy corraled for his special delectation to the detriment of honest apprentices and pure-minded geometry. His proposition was agreed to unanimously, and just as the sun tipped the treetops of the Chalco domain, we had scared up a couple of fat deer and sent our arrows through their trembling anatomy, and a number of hares, growls and pigeons we slaughtered that evening, kept to landlord of the Crown Tavern busy for two days to dish up to his jolly revelers. In this escapade, we only imitated the aristocratic students of Oxford College, who frequently made inroads into lordly domains, and took some of the treasures that God and Nature intended for all men, instead of being hatched, bred and watched by impudent and cruel gamekeepers, employed by tyrannical landlords, in defiance of the natural rights of the people. Even the fish in the Avon seven and bay were registered and claimed by scrups of royalty for their exclusive use, fine and imprisonment being imposed for hunting on the land and fishing in the streams that God made for all men. These parliamentary laws should be voted or bulleted out of the statute books, and the people again inherit their inalienable rights. My friend William was arrested by the malicious Lucy, and the gamekeeper, Tom Snap, swore to enough facts to exile, hang and quarter the bar. Through the influence of his father and John A. Kung, William, the chief culprit, was not imprisoned, but compelled to pay a fine of one pound ten. He did not half but three shillings, yet the boys secretly passed the hat around in the courtyard and tavern, and soon extricated out Tom from the toils of Sir Thomas Lucy. William did not have the courage to face his wife after a week's absence, and told me privately that he was going off instant by the way of Oxford to London and seek his fortune. I applauded his spunk and determination, and at his solicitation, willingly joined him in his eloquent rambles. Her parents were both dead, and being of a Bohemian tendency, my home has ever been on any spot of the earth where the sun rose or set. Potluck suits me. Natural freedom of body and mind has ever been my greatest delight, and the artificial fashions and tyrannical laws of society I despise and defy and shall to my dying day. My mind is my master. Right is my religion, and God is my instructor. I must have liberty with all, as large a charter as the wind to blow and whom I please. The evening before we left Stratford, William wrote a short note to his wife and said that he would take her advice, leave the town, and seek his fortune in the whirlpool of Grand Old London. I imagined that Dan was delighted to receive his impromptu note, for it left her one less mouth to feed, and William was equally satisfied to be relieved of the role of playing husband without any of the practical moral adjuncts. In passing by the entrance gate to the lordly estate of Sir Thomas Lucy, or Justice Shallow, William nailed up the following poetic shot to the hot-headed old squire, which was read and copied the next morning by all the market men going to town, and the tavern lads going to the country plows. The tyrant Thomas Lucy lets no one go to mass. He is a squire for Queen Bess, and in Parliament an ass. Fair child code is ruined by this bluffer of the state, and only his dependents will dare to call him great. The deer and hares and pigeons are imprisoned for his use, yet poaching lads from Stratford pluck the strutting feathered goose. End of Chapter 3 Recording by Ernst Patinama August III, 2008 Amsterdam, The Netherlands Chapter 4 of Shakespeare Personal Recollections This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Madeira Shakespeare Personal Recollections by John A. Joyce In Search of Peace and Fortune Blessed are those whose blood and judgment are so commingled, that they are not pipe for Fortune's finger to sound what stops she pleases. Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, I, in my heart of heart, as I do thee. Early on the morning of the night of September 1586, William and myself took our departure from the crown tavern. The landlord, Tom Gill, gave us a bottle of his best gin in brandy to cheer us on our way to fame and fortune. Fanny Hill, the barmaid, threw kisses at us until we rounded the corner of the street leading to the old grammar school. We carried black-thorn cuddles to protect us from gamekeepers, lords, and dogs. As we passed, the modest cottage where William's parents resided, he impulsively broke away from my presence to bid a long farewell to his angelic mother, and soon again he was at my side, flushed with pride and tears, exclaiming in undertone. A mother's love and fervent hope are coined into our horoscope, and to our latest dying breath, her heart, and soul are ours to death. In his clutched hand he held four gold sovereigns that his fond mother had given him at parting to help in the daily trials of life when no other friend could be so true and powerful. Gold guilds success. Hey, Jack, keep two of these for yourself, and if I should ever be penniless and you have gold, I know you will aid me in a pinch. The wine-nature of your soul needs no bush. We still have slept together, rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together, and wherever we went, like Juneau Swan, still we went coupled and inseparable. William, said I, memory with her indelible signet shall long imprint this generous act of yours upon my soul, and when hundreds of years have passed, I shall tell of the undying friendship of two Bohemians who, day and night, set their own fashion, created a world of their own and lived ecstatically, oscillating between the blunders of Bacchus and the vanity of Venus. William's heart was heavy when turning his back on father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and children at the age of twenty-two. We passed along the Clockton Stone Bridge, and as we tramped over Primrose Hill, looking back at the rooftops, inspires of Stratford, glinting in the morning light. The bard uttered this impulsive dash of eloquence. Farewell, farewell, a sad farewell to glowing scenes of boyhood. Ye rocks and rills and forests, prime evil, list to my sighing soul, trembling on the tongue to vent its echoes in ambient air. No more shall wild I, dear, fretful hairs, hocks and hounds and trance mine ear and vision, or frantically depart when stealthy footsteps disturb the lark, air-feebuses golden light illuminates the dawn. Memory, many-hued maiden, often midnight hours, shall picture these eternal hills, and purling streams rimmed by vernal meadows, and pillowed, even in the lap of misery, fantastic visions of thee shall lull deepest woe to repose, and, banqueting at yarn ale-house, nestling near a blooming hedge and snowy hawthorne, I shall live again in blissful dreams among the enchanting precincts of the silver. Serpentine Avon, to thee I lift my hands in prayer, disappearing in pinioned with hope. Daughter of love and sunrise, go forth to multitudinous London, and buckle fortune upon my back, to bear her burden to successful lofty heights of mind illimitable. With this apostrophe, we took a last look at the glinting gables and sparkling spires of Stratford, disappearing over the hill, our steps and faces turned to London-town, that seething whirlpool of human woe and pleasure. The air was cold, and the country roads were rutty and muddy, but the autumn landscape was beautiful, in its gray and purple garb, while the notes of flitting wild birds chirped and sang from bush, hedge, field, and forest, in a mournful monotone to the fading glory of the year. The various birds chattered in clumps along the highway, and then would rise over our heads in flitting flocks, steering their course to the south and seemingly accompanying us on our wandering way to the great metropolis. In our zigzag course, we passed through the towns of Ettington, Oxhill, Rockston, Woodstock, Eversham, and Oxford. It was near sunset when the lofty towers and steeples of ancient Oxford, the great sight of classic lore, met our view. In our haze to enter the city before dark, we jumped a hedge fence and stone wall, making a short cross-cut over the lordly domain of the Earl of Norfolk, and just as we were again emerging into the great road, a gamekeeper was seen approaching with a huge mastiff who rushed upon us like a lion. We were near a rough wall, and it appeared to both of us that unless we stood for immediate fight, the dog would tear us to pieces. The gamekeeper urged the dog and his barking mad career, but just as he made a grand leap at William's throat, his black-thorn cuddle came down with a whirl and broke the forelegs of the mastiff, sending him to the earth with a growl and roar that could be heard over the castle walls that loomed up in the evening gray. The gamekeeper aimed a blunderbuss at the bard, but ere he could fire the deadly weapon. I jumped on the petty tithe and whelp, and cuddled his face into a macerated beef-stake. We then leaped the garden wall and rushed into the city crowd, where the curtains of night screened us from dogs and licentious lords. We found our way to the crown-tavoured kept by Richard Devonant and his buxom-black-eyed wife. The old Boniface was jolly, but was in his physical and spiritual dotage, yet Nell, his second wife, was the life of the place, being immensely popular with the Oxford students, who circled about the crown in midnight hours with hilarious independence that defied the raids of beetles, watchmen, and armed constabulary. Those were gay and roistering days and nights, when the greatest yeoman tradesmen student or lord was the one who drank his comrade under the table, and went away at sunrise like a lark, fluttering with dew from his downy wing, and soaring into the sky of beauty and action. It was Saturday night when we pulled up at the old tavern, and there seemed to be a great crowd of town people celebrating some local event. We soon found that the senior class of oxonian students had conquered the senior class of Cambridge at a great game of inter-college football, and the cheers and yells of Oxford bloods permeated the atmosphere until midnight. A round table spread in the tavern hall was loaded with food and liquors, while songs and speeches were given with a vim, all boasting of the prowess and patriotism of Oxford. A number of strolling players in boxes were introduced during the evening. A young lord named Bob Burley was president of the club, while Matt Monmouth was the spokesman, who called on the various students and actors to entertain the town roisters who dropped in to see the free and easy celebration of the football victory. While drowning our grief and loneliness in pewter parts of ale at a side table in a snug corner, who should slap William on the shoulder but Ned Sadler, our old schoolmate from Stratford? Ned was a jolly rake and had been in London sporting with theatrical companies, and as a citizen of the world, was perfectly at home wherever night overtook him. At the height of the college banquet, Matt Monmouth announced that the president of the Cambridge Boxing Club had just challenged the president of the Oxford Club to fight under the king's rule for a purse of twenty guineas. A wild cheer rent the room, and instant the chairs and tables were pushed aside, when Dick Milton and Jack Norfolk stepped into the improvised prize ring, made it by the circling arms of the students. Five rounds with gloves were to be fought, and the champion who knocked out his opponent three times should be the victor. Dick Milton, the Cambridge athlete, when time was called, rushed on Jack Norfolk, the Oxford man, with a blow that sent him over the circling arms and into the chairs. Score one for Dick. Time was called, and Jack, although a little daze, leaped at his opponent who dodged the rush, and with a quick turn, got in a left-hander on Jack's neck, and pastured him again among the yelling bloods. Score two for Dick. When time was called for the third round, the Oxford man looked bleary and tremulous, but with that bulldog courage, there never deserts an Englishman. He threw himself on the Cambridge man with great force, and both went down with the crash. Dick shook off his opponent, like a terrier would a rat, and standing erect at the end of the room waited for the call of time, and Jack Norfolk did not respond to the call. Score three for Dick. Victory! Then the yell of the Cambridge students could be heard among the turrets and gables of classic Oxford, a recompense for their defeat at the afternoon football game. Dick Milton, flushed with wine in victory, held aloft the purse of guineas and challenged any man in the room to fight him three rounds. There seemed to be no immediate response, but I noticed a flush in the face of William, who modestly rose in his six-foot form, and asked if the challenge included outside citizens. Dick immediately replied, You or anybody in England! William said he did not know much about fighting with gloves, but if the gentleman would consent to three rounds with bare knuckles, he would be pleased to accommodate him at once. All right, tell the mark! Matt Monmouth called time. Dick Milton made a tiger leap at William, and landed with his right eye on the right knuckles of the Stratford citizen. The quickness and science of the bard was a great surprise to the Cambridge athlete, and when time was called he came up groggy with a funeral eye on the defence and not on the tiger attack. Considerable sparring for place, and dodging about the human ring was indulged in by Dick, but William foiled each blow, and as the Cambridge man inadvertently rubbed his swollen eye, the bard landed a stinging blow to the left optic of Milton and sent him into the arms of the landlord. When time was called, no response from the Cambridge champion was heard, and Matt Monmouth handed over the prize purse to William when the Oxford lads cheered the Stratford stranger to the echo, and made him an honorary member of their athletic club. Screw your courage to the sticking place, and we will not fail! At the second crow of the cock, William and myself bid goodbye to the jolly Boniface and his fantastic spouse, who made a deep impression on the bard. In fact, he was easily impressed when youth, beauty, and pleasure reigned around, and had he been born in Kentucky, no blue ribbon stallion in the commonwealth could match his form, spirit, or gait. Apollo, with his rosy footsteps, lit up hill, meadow, and lawn, and kissed away the sparkling dew-drops of bush and hedge, cheering us on our way through the towns of Thane, over the Chilton Hills, on to Great Marlowe, Maidenhead, and Renown Windsor, where forest and castle thrilled the beholder with admiration for the works of nature and art. It was late in the afternoon when we entered the broad highway to Windsor, passing numerous yeoman and tradespeople on their way to and from the royal domain of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. In striding along, with heart's light and airy, we were suddenly startled by cries of frantic yells coming from the rear, and looking around, we held a wild, runaway horse, and an open wagon with two young girls screaming for help. To see, think, and act was always the way of William, and as the horse rushed by with wagoning girls nearly clipping our legs off, the bard made a leap for the tailboard of the vehicle, and landed in the midst of the frightened girls. He then, as if inspired with the impulse of a tiger, jumped on the back of the rushing animal, grabbed the trailing lines and neck of the horse, and steered him into a huge boxed hedgerow that skirted the castle walls of Windsor. Everyone went after the runaway to see the fate of the party, but strange to say, the horse was large, high, and dry in the hedgerow, while William and the girls crawled out of the wreck without a scratch, soon recovering from the fear, trepidation, and danger that but a moment before reigned supreme. We put up for the night at the Red Lion Tavern, and you may be sure that William was the hero of the town. Rose and Bess Montagall were the young ladies whose lives had been providentially saved, and their father was the head gamekeeper of Windsor. William was invited for breakfast the next morning at the Stone Lodge to receive hearty thanks and reward for his heroic action in risking his life for the salvation of others, but the bard excused himself, saying that he must start by daylight for his last stretch to London. And only asked from the young ladies a sprig of boxwood and lock of their golden hair, at parting the father through William a bag of gold, and the girls presented him with the tokens desired in addition to impulsive bashful kisses. We were off promptly by sunrise and steering our course to Hounslow, Branford, Kensington, and to the top of Primrose Hill. We first caught sight of the spires, domes, turrets, temples, and palaces of multitudinous universal London. London, the needy villains general home, the common sewer of Paris and of Rome, with eager thirst by folly or by fate sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state. They say best men are modded out of thoughts, and for the most become much more the better for being a little bad. It was on the 13th of September, 1586, that William and myself first visited our eyes on the variegated wideness of wood, a mortar, a stone, and tile of wonderful London. The evening was bright and clear, while a northwest wind blew away the smoky clouds that hovered over the city like a funeral pot. It is plain to our view that silver sinew cities are owed by the times. As he moved in sluggish grandeur by Westminster, Blackfriars Bridge, the Tower, and to Gray Vincent, on his way to the Channel and the Sea. To get a grand view of the town, an old sextant advised us to climb the steeple steps of crumbling St. Mary's. The ones felt the tread of the crusaders and heard the chanting hymns amongst nonce and friars 500 years before. Standing on the broken column of the old steeple, 300 feet above Prane Rose Hill, William struck an attitude of theatrical fashion and uttered the following oratorical flight. Glorious London, the vathing of human greed, palpitating hot bath of iniquity and joy, Greek, Roman, Spanish, Saxon, Cow, Scott, Pick, Norman and Day, have swept over thee like winged storms, and the mighty Caesar, Julius of Old, with the myriad buckered warriors, and one hundred galleons of sailors, triple-ord mariners, with fine wave and faith, have ploughed the placid face of Father Thames, startling the loud cry of Hock and Beaton as his royal prose graded on thy strand, have schemed over the marshes of thy infancy, yet amid all the racks of human vision, where pagan, Jew, Buddhist, Turk and Christian struggled for the mastery of gold and power, used to march forward, giant-like and brave, facing the mourning of progress and liberty, carrying thy cross and crown to all ends, and with thy grand flaw tailor, chatter by Neptune, remain mistress of all the seas, defiant. The raw of thy canal and drum-bits, heard with pride and glory around the word, sad, how sad to think that the day will come when not a vastage of this wonderful mass of human energy shall remain, where the cry of the waff, bat and beaton, shall only be heard, and nature again, resume her rustic, splendid desolation, sit as odor and far greater than this, dreaming of everlasting endurance, having long since spurred in desert sands, o'ingulfed in the powerless waves of ocean, lost forever from the rustic records of time, the tyrant and tomb-buter, of man, veining sack of a moment, who promises himself immortality, and then disappears like the mist of mountains, a wandering meteors, a spark when darker at the midnight of Olivia. We quickly desandered from the steeper, passed by Buckingham Palace, Regent Park, British Museum through Chance Relay into Flea Street, by Lodget Hill, under the shadow of Old Better St. Post Church onto the Devil's Tavern, near Blackfriars Bridge, where we found gay and comfortable lodgings for the night, even tough o'clock when shook hands with Mack Mullen, the robicant-landlady. The Devil's Tavern was a resort for actors, authors, behemians, floors, and ladies, who did not retire early to their downing to couches. The night we arrived, the tavern was crowded, as the actors' annual bar was in progress, and many fair women and brave men, belated by bankers, could not find their way home, and would compile to remain all night, and be cared for by the host of the Devil. I told Mack, who were stradford boys, come up to London, seek our fortune, and set the Thames afire with our genius. Plucking the rosy dame aside, I informed her that William Shakespeare was a poet, author, actor, and philosopher, while he was posing over the counter, smiling at the blooming barmaid. He looked at the picture of his song in modern Romeo. Mack told me in a quizzical tone that the town was full of poets and actors, and the surrounding playhouses could hire them for 10 shillings a week, with sack and bread and cheese thrown in every Saturday night. After hasty supper, I tossed Mack a golden genie to pay score, as if he were shilling, to convince her that we were of the upper crust of Bohemians, not strollers from Strand, old penny puppets from East Chip or Smithfield. After passing back the change, Mack sent a gag and fast reported to light us to the top cockloft of the tavern, five stairs up, among the windows and angled gables of the tire roof. A teller dip and couch candlelit up the room, which was large, containing two Roman couches with quotes, robes and blankets, a stout table, two oak chairs, a pewter basin, and a large stone jack filled with water. The tavern seemed to be on the banks of the Thames, for we could see through the two large windows, fleeting lights as if boats and ships were moving on the water, on the crust of the bridge of old Southwark, could be seen in the midnight glare, as if he were a fowl of Jacqueline's moving mystic parade. Willow and myself soon found rest in deep slumber, and wafted away into a dreamless rim. Our tight bodies lay in the enfolding arms and morphers, unto the potter knocked at our door next morning, as the clock of the tower struck the hour of nine. Our first sight of the sunrise in London gave us great expectations of fame and fortune, for surely all we had was glowing expectations. Aft expectation fells, and most aft there were most a promises, and aft a hits where hope is codest and despair most fits. While Willow was still gazing out of the roof windows of the devil's tavern on the morning, meandering population of London as they passed below, on lane, street and stream, by foot, car or boat, he hiffed along your sigh, turned to me and said, Jack, what do you think of London? I like his word dash and rough, rather than mingling with the rude milkshops and innocent maidens of Warwick. Here we can walk, work and climb on to the top of the ladder of fame, while you, dear Willow, would not be bettered in ear by crying kids and tongue-lashing spells. Brushing away a tear of sorrow, no doubt, for the absence of left-winded stratford, he dashed down the stairs, and was soon in a jolly whirlpool of tavern longers, where a beaming man greeted us with a smiling face, having prepared in advance a fine breakfast, smoking hot from the busy kitchen of the devil. In passing out of the dining-room, Mac let us through the back hall into a low-long room, where a number of ladies and gentlemen resembled about a round table, playing cut the card, spring the top, and throw the dice. Small piles of severing gold stacked in front of each player, while the king's dealer, oh, Fat Jack Stadford, lost or paid all bets and call. William and my salary incidentally introduced to the motley ganas young bloods from Warwick, who had just ended London from fame and fortune. The conclave rose with extreme blindness, and Jack the spokesman welcomed us to their bosoms, and asked if we would not sit up and take a hint. I respect for Lady Klein, but William, surcharged with sorrow and flushed with ambition, thought of the guineas in his pocket and bowed, hand-cut for the dice-box. Deuces won double when sixes trepocoined. William, to the great amazement of the dealer, flung a guinea in the cenopod, which was immediately tapped by Jack, while the others took it on in silent expectation. Grasping the dice-box, he worded it in his grasp, rattling the bones in triumphantly, and threw on the table three-sixes, thus abstracting from the inside pocket of the gentleman at the head of the table twenty-seven guineas. Pushing back the coin and dice-box, William proposed another throw, which was smilingly consented by the child of fortune, and grasping the box, the bard clicked the ivories and flung on the table three-aises, which, by the root of the game, gave William never wingsed or hesitated, but pulling from his waist a buck-skinned bow threw it on the table, exclaiming, There's fifteen guineas I wager the next throw. The plight Jack replied, All right, sir, take your word for it. William frantically said, I have set my life upon a cast. I will stand the hazard of the die. Then, with the round word, he threw three-aises again, rose from the table, and aborted out of the room like a shoot from the blonde busses. I immediately followed in his footsteps and found him joking with the landlady about a couple of infant boo-pabs she was fondling her capacious lap. At this juncture, who should appear on the same but dick-foul the first cousin of William, who had been London a few years engaged in the printing and publishing business. If he had dropped out of the clouds, William could not have been more pleased or surprised, and the feeling was reciprocal. The printing shop afoul was only a short distance from the devil's table, and we were invited to visit the establishment. On our way, we passed by the black friars, curtain, in-yard, Paris and the devil theaters, interspersed with the hurdy-gurdy concert hall, sailor and soldier, janging sac wads where blier-eyed bows and better boots filled with each other in fantastic intoxication. Founded a lot of reprinting for the various theaters, issuing bill posters, announcing plays, and setting up type sheets for actors and managers, in their daily concerts and dramas for the public amusement. As luck would have it, O. James Burbage and his son Dick was waiting for found, with a lot of dramatic manuscript, that must be put in praying at once. We were casually introduced to the great theatrical magnate Burbage's relatives from Stratford, who were just standing in search of work. James Burbage gazed for a moment on the manly former William and blurted out in his bluff manner. What do you know? Quick as a flash, William replied, I know more than those who know less, and know less than those who know more. Short pants, the boy. Same as tomorrow, the black fries anew. We turned our side and left Foud and Burbage their business. While Dick Burbage, the gay switched the way to the Bruce hat, we re-irrigated our anatomy, and then returned to the printing shop. Foud informed me that he had given us a gray setting up with old Burbage, and would see his partner Greeny, the playwright, and add to our recommendation for energy and learning. We were invited to dine with Foud the evening at eight o'clock at the Boris hat-table, where Dan quickly dispensed the best food and food of the lower town, and where the wax and weeds of all ends congregated in security. At the very witching time of night, when church yards yawn and howl itself, breathless art, contingent to this word. End of chapter 5 London, its goat and glory Chapter 6 of Shakespeare Personal Recollections This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Calenda Shakespeare Personal Recollections by John A. Joyce Chapter 6 Taverns, theaters, variegated society Man's evil manners live in brass, their virtues we write in water. The Boris head tavern in Eastchip was one of the oldest and best ends in London for free and easy rollicking mood, where prince and peasant, king or clown, papister puritan were welcome night and day, provided they intended no wrong and kept good nature aglow even in their cups. Magistrate and convent prior would sometimes raid the tavern until their physical and financial wants were satisfied. Dame quickly, with ruffle collar, was the master spirit of the house and had been its light and glory for thirty years. Her round full face, fat neck, and robust form was a constant invitation for good cheer and her matchless wit was a marvel to the guests that nightly congregated through her three-story gabled stone monastery. A tavern is the best picture of human folly, nature wearing no garb of hypocrisy. You must know that the boar's head had once been the home of the Blackfriars, then a residence of a bishop, a convent, a brewery, and finally fell into the hands of the grandfather of Dame quickly, who bequeathed to his posterity and the public as a depot for plum pudding, roast beef, lamb, birds, fish, ale, wine, brandy, and universal pleasure. A boar's head, with a red light in its mouth, was kept constantly burning from sunset to sunrise, where wandering humanity found welcome and rest. Supper parties from the adjacent theaters filled the tavern in midnight hours, where actors, authors, politicians, statesmen, and ladies of all hue, reveled in jolly, generous freedom, beneath the ever-present superintendents of Buxom Dame quickly. The gods are just, and oft-our-pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us. Boys immature in knowledge, pawn their experience to their present people, and in knowledge, pawn their experience to their present pleasure. The main bar decorated with variegated lights and shining blue bottles and glasses, with pewter and silver mugs and theatrical rows, lent to kind of enchantment to the nightly scene. Round, square, and octagonal oak tables were scattered through the various rooms, and rough leather lounges skirted the walls. Promptly at eight o'clock William and myself passed the stony portals of the boar's head, and were ushered into the background floor or dining room where we met our friend Field, and a playwright named Christopher Marlowe, standing before a great open chimney with a blazing fire and a splendid supper. Field seemed to take great pride in making us acquainted with Marlowe, the greatest actor and dramatist of his day, whose plays were even then the talk and delight of London. Tamberlay and the Great, and Dr. Faustus, had been successfully launched at the Black Fires, and young Marlowe was in his glory, the wit and toast of the town. He was but twenty-five years of age, finally formed of a luptuary, high jutting forehead, dark hazel eye, and a typical image of a bohemian poet. It was a toss-up as to who was the handsomest man, William or Marlowe, yet a stranger on close inspection could see glinting out of William's eye a divine light and flashing expression that ever commanded respect and admiration. He was unlike any other mortal. Eye alone at that period knew the bursting ability of William, and that his grainery of knowledge was full to the brim, needing only an opportunity to flood the world with immortal sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and the incubating passion plays that lay struggling in his burning brain for universal recognition. During the evening, young actors, politicians, college students and roistering lords filled the house, and by twelve o'clock, back in Allian Folly, ruled the magcaps of the town, while battered Venus with bedraggled hair and skirts languished in sensuous display. Field requested his friend Marlowe to recite a few lines from Dr. Faustus for our instruction and pleasure, and forthwith he gave the soliloquy of Faust, waiting at midnight for Lucifer to carry him to Hell, the terrified doctor exclaiming to the devil, Oh mercy! Heaven, look not so fierce on me! Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! Ugly Hell! Gabe not! Come not, Lucifer! I'll burn my books! Oh, Mephistopheles! And then, mellowing his sonorous voice, gives thus his classical apostrophe to Helen of Greece. Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Illium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss! Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again! Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, and all is dross that is not Helena. Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter, when he appeared to hapless semily. More lovely than the monarch of the sky, and wanton era thuzes azure arms, and none but thou shall be my paramour. A loud round of applause greeted the rendition of the classical poem, not only at our own table, but through the entire hall and adjacent rooms. At a table not far away sat a number of illustrious gentlemen, favorites of Queen Elizabeth, and greatly admired by the people. Their sets are Walter Raleigh, lately returned from discoveries in America. Frances Bacon, attorney general to the crown. Earl Essex, the court favorite. Lord Southampton, the gayest in the realm, with young Burley, Cecil, and Lysister, making night melodious with their songs, speeches, and tinkling silver wine cups. The young lords insisted that we give another recitation, pictorial of love and passion. Marlowe declined to say more, but knowing that William had hatched out his crude verses of Venus and Adonis, I insisted that he deliver a few stanzas for the enthusiastic audience, particularly describing the passionate pleadings of Venus to the stallion Adonis. Without hesitation, trepidation, or excuse, William arose in manly attitude and drew a picture of beautiful Venus. Sometimes she shakes her head and then his hand. Now gazeth she on him now on the ground. Sometimes her arms enfold him like a band, she would he will not in her arms be bound. And when from thence he struggles to be gone, she locks her lily fingers one in one. Fondling, she saith, Since I have hemmed thee here within the circuit of this ivory pale, I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer. Feed where thou wilt on mountain or in dale, graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, stray lower where the pleasant fountains lie. Within this limit is relief enough, sweet bottom grass and high delightful plain, round rising hillocks break obscure and rough to shelter thee from tempest and from rain. Then be my deer, since I am such a park. No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark. When he dropped in his chair the revelers went wild with enthusiasm, and Marlowe in Southampton wished to know where the Stratford boy got the poem. William smiled, tapped his forehead, and tossed off a bumper of brandy to the cheers that still demanded more mental food. But as it was two by the clock, our friend Field suggested that we retire, when Marlowe and himself took us in a carriage to the devil tavern, where we slept off our first spree in London. O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil. We arose the next morning a little groggy, and William had a shade of melancholy remorse flash over his usually bright countenance. He abstractly remarked, Well, Jack, we are making a fine start for fame and fortune. The stride we took last night at the boar's head will soon land us in Newgate or Parliament. I replied that it made little difference to intellectual artists, whether they serve their country in prison or in Parliament. For many a man was in Newgate who might honour Parliament, and many secret scoundrels who had not been caught should be inmates of Newgate, or if equal justice prevailed their bodies be dangling on the heights of Tibern. A Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel. O wise young judge, how do I honour thee? Poise the cause in justice equal scales, whose beam stands sure. It was ten o'clock when we stretched our weary legs under the breakfast table of Meg Mullin, who had prepared for us a quartet of fat mutton chops with salt pork, baked potatoes, a huge omelet, and a boiling pot of black tea, sent, as she said, by the Emperor of China for the guests of the boar's head tavern. Meg was a jolly wench, and garnished her food with pleasant words and witty quips, believing that love and laughter aided digestion and cheered the traveller in his journey of life. I reminded William that he had a business engagement with the great theatrical monarch, Richard Burbage, at noon at the Black Friars. The bard was ready for a stroll, and after brushing our clothes and smiling at the variegated guests, we sauntered into the street toward the Thames, and soon found the entrance to the renowned Black Friars Theatre. A callboy ushered us into the presence of the great actor and manager, who greeted us with a snappish, good morning. A number of authors and actors were waiting their turn to see the Prince of Players, whose signative approval or disapproval finished their expectations. It was Saturday, and payday. Turning abruptly to William, the proprietor said, I understand you know something about theatres and acting. Try me, you shall be my judge. Then, sir, from this hour you were appointed assistant property man and assistant prompter for the Black Friars at sixteen shillings a week, with chance of promotion if you deserve it. Your business hours shall be from noon every weekday until five o'clock, and from eight o'clock in the night until eleven o'clock, when you are at liberty until the next day. Do you accept the work? William promptly replied, I accept with a measurable thanks, and like Caesar Evold, I cross the dramatic Rubicon. The bard was then introduced to Bull Billings, the chief property man and prompter, who at once initiated William into the machinery secrets of the stage, with its scenes, ropes, chains, masks, moons, gods, swords, bucklers, guns, pikes, torches, wheels, chairs, thrones, giants, wigs, hats, bonnets, robes, brass jewels, kings, queens, dukes, lords, and all the other paraphernalia of dramatic exhibition. William was now launched upon the ocean of theatrical suns and storms, with nature for his guide, and everlasting glory for his name. Lowliness is young ambition's ladder, where too the climb returns his face, but when he once attains the utmost round he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend. End of Chapter 6 Recording by Kalinda in Lüneburg, Germany, on February 22nd, 2009 Chapter 7 Theatrical Drudgery Compositions Sweet are the users of adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head. Shakespeare had now his foot firmly planted, on the lower round of the ladder of fame, whose top leaned against the skies of immortality. The fermentation of composition began again to work within his seizing brain, and the daily demands of the blackfries spurred him on to emulate, if not so past, Kit, Lodge, Green and Marlowe. During the time Shakespeare had been a stalling play through the Middletowns of England, he had studied the works of Ovid and Petrug, and read with pleasure the summer's end Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney. While playing at Kennelworth, the Lady Anne Manners, young and beautiful cousin to the Earl of Leicester, honored the young actor with great praise for his part in playing the lover in Lost Conquest. She presented the bard with a bunch of immortals, that even when wizard, he always kept in an inside pocket, and at various times composed sonnets to his absent admirer, playing Petrug to another Laura. The languishing, luscious, lascivious poem of Venus and Onus was rarely inspired by the remembrance of Miss Manners, and imagination pictured himself in the Lady as a principles in the sentious situation. William, like Dame Nature, was full of life sap that circled through his body and brain with constant motion, and sought an outlet for the surplus volume of ideal knowledge in theatrical action, teaching lessons of right and wrong with a wise and virtue struggling forever for the mastery of mankind. The bard worked night and day in his duties as a theatrical judge for the blackfriars, and made himself valuable and solid with old Burbage, who saw in the young actor a marvellous development of new thought and force that had never before been seen on the British stage. In a few weeks bulb Billings was discharged for tyranny and drunkenness, and my friend William was given the place of chief property man and prompter. Barry's plays were put on and off the blackfriars' stage, through the hisses or cheers of the motley audience, the autocrats of the pit seeming to be the real empires of the cessation or continuance of the most noted plays. The last week in October 1586 was a mournful time for London, as the greatest favourite of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Philip Sidney, was to receive a stage funeral at St. Paul's. All England went in mourning for the handsome Cavalier in poet, who lost his life at the siege of Axel in the Netherlands, while serving as chief of cavalry and his uncle the Earl of Leicester. All business closed in honour of the young hero, and the celebrated military organisation, the ancient and honourable Artillery, led more than thirty thousand of the train bands who followed him the great procession to St. Paul's Church. The Ussesodotal service began at noon, and Queen Elizabeth rode in a golden car on a dark purple throne to witness the last rite in honour of her court favourite. The bells of London Church's temples, turrets and towers rang continually until sundown, filling the air with a universal requiem of grief, while the black clouds hanging over the metropolis shed showers of tears for the untimely loss of a patriot and a poet. William and myself saw the funeral car from the steps of St. Paul, and as the coffin was carried in on the shoulders of eight stalwart soldiers, dressed in the golden garb of the horse battalions, we bowed our heads in holy adoration to the mammary, and valor of the sonnet-maker lost in eternal sleep. Come sleep, oh sleep, the certain knot of peace, the baiting plays of wit, the balm of woe, the poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, the indifferent judge between the high and low. How truthful this extract from one of Sydney's sonnets! He was a synonym of bravery and politeness, for being carried from the field of battle, thirsty and bleeding, he called for a cup of water, and just as he was lifting it to his lips, a fatally wounded soldier was being carried by, who fixed his longing eyes eagerly on the cup, and instant the gay and gallant Sydney delivered the drink to the poor soldier, saying, thy necessity is greater than mine. Noble self-sacrifice, elemental generosity, imperial nature, sublime and benevolent in thought and act. On our return to the devil-taven for supper, we found manager Burbage of Blackfriars awaiting us. He was in great haste, and desired William to look over a play that had been submitted by Crane and Lodge, who composed it jointly. It was a comedy tragedy, entitled Looking Glass of London, a Three Rambling Acts, and while Burbage was disposed to take the play and pay for it, he desired that Shakespeare should give it such ripping corrections as he thought best. This was surely showing great confidence in young actor and also to criticise the play of acknowledged dramatists who had been the talk of the town. Shakespeare modestly remarked, I fear, sir, your friends Lodge and Green will not like or tolerate my cutting of their play. Care not for their opinion, do as I say, and have the play ready for staging Monday afternoon at two o'clock. Your command is law and I obey, said the Bard, and out rushed the bluffing busy Burbage. The constant circulation of behemoth customer, day and night about the devil's tavern, was not conductive to care for composition of plays, and William and myself moved to the modest quarters near Paris Garden, capped by Miss Mackie Mallow, a blonde maiden of uncertain age. William continued to perform his theatrical duties diligently, while I was engaged at the printing shop of Field, translating historic dramatic and poetic works from Latin authors, thus piecing out the prize of food, clothes and shelter in the whirlpool of London joy and misery. During my apprenticeship with Sam Grenad, as a marble cutter, I spent my night with Master Hunt, studying the inquirited windings of the Latin language, and became proficient in the translation of ancient authors, delving also into the philosophy of Greek roots, was its attic phrases and Athenian eloquence. My parents desired me to leave off the trade of stone cutting, and prepare for the priesthood, where I could make an easier living, working on the fears, egotism, and hopes of mankind. I was always too blunt to play the velvet philosopher and saint-like character of a sacerdote or vickery of any church or creed, feeling full-well that the so-called divine teacher and pupil know just as much about the hereafter as I do, and that's nothing, but not thy faith in wind, variable and inconstant. So a life of behemoth hack-work for printers, publishers, and theatrical managers seemed best suited to my nature, giving me perfect freedom of thought, and the disposition to express my honest opinion to print or peasant in home church or state. God is God, and nature is His representative. While man vain creature of an hour, the breast by grief, or blessed by power, is but a shadow and a name, a flesh of evanescent flame. Most of the dramatic writers during the reign of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, James I, and Charles II, were graduate of Oxford, Cambridge, or rather classical halls of learning. They borrowed their plots and characters from ancient history, and endeavored to galvanize them into English subjects, tickling the ears of the groundlings, as well as of their royal patrons with Cretian and Roman translations, of lofty allegorical and mythological conceptions. Asculas, Euripides, Sophocles, and Homer, with Terence, Tacitus, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, were constantly pillaged for thoughts to piece out these theatrical rows and blank verse eloquence of playwrights, who only received for their best accepted works from five to twenty pounds, proprietors, and stage managers driving hard bargains, with these brilliant Bacchanalian and Impecunus Bohemians. The winter and spring of 1587-8 was a busy time for William. In addition to his brunting and casting the various plays for Burbage, he was engaged in collecting his sonnets, putting finishing touches on Venus and Donors, as well as composing The Rape of Le Crease, a Roman epic based on historic truth. He had also planned and mapped out the English play of Henry IV, taking from an old historical play, and was figuring on two comedies, Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Often, when entering his workroom at twelve o'clock at night, or six o'clock in the morning, I found him scratching, cutting, and delving away at his literary bench and oak-chest. He could work at three or four plays alternately, and from crude plots taken out of ancient history, novels, religious or mythological tableaus, devised his characters and put words in their mouths, that burned in the ears of British yeoman, tradesmen, professional sharpers and lords and ladies who crowded the benches and boxes as the black friars. He reminded me of an expert cabinet-maker, where had piled up in a corner of his shop a variety lot of rough timber, for which he fashioned and manufactured the most exquisite dresses, sofas and bureaus, doftailing each piece of oak, rosewood or mahogany, with exact workmanship, and then with the silk and varnish of his genius, sending his words out to the rushing world to be admired, and transmitted to posterity with perfect faith in the endurance of his creations. In putting the finishing touches on the fifth act of a play, he would quickly change to the composition of the first act of another, and with lightning rapidity embellish the characters in the third act of some comedy, tragedy or history, that constantly occupied his multifarious brain. His working-done at the black friars was crowded with a mass of theatrical literary productions, ancient and modern, while our lodging-rooms were piled up with Latin, Greek, Spanish and French translations. Manager Burbage, Dick Field, and even Chris Marlow were constantly patronising the wonderful William, and supplied him with the iron ore-products of the ancient and Middle Ages, which he quickly fashioned into his laminated steel of dramatic excellence. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world, like a colossus. And we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves.