Page:On Shakespeare, or, What You Will, Furness, 1908.djvu/11

1908.] tion of Marlowe calls to mind the narrow escape which England made from enacting a tragedy blacker than its neglect of Chatterton, “That marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride.” Marlowe’s alleged atheism (in reality, but little removed from the Unitarianism of to-day) became bruited abroad, and an order for his apprehension was issued from the Star Chamber on the 19th of May, 1593. The next day Marlowe entered his appearance, and was commanded to be ready when called for. There can hardly be a question that had Marlowe’s trial been only moderately pressed, he would have been condemned for heresy and have met the fate of, a Master of Arts from Marlowe’s own College in Cambridge, only four years before, for not unsimilar heresy. But eleven days after Marlowe appeared before the Star Chamber, he was killed at Deptford in a tavern brawl. The dagger of an ignoble servant saved England from the indelible and ineffable disgrace of burning alive one of her greatest writers of tragedy.

I have said that all the facts thus far discovered about Shakespeare’s life were harmless, “except one,” and this belongs to the very class which I have all along dreaded, and feared might be detected. ’T is a long story and if I told it at all, it would be assuredly in the words of Shakespeare’s latest biographer, Mr. Sidney Lee. You could not then see his blushes and, were I to tell the story circumstantially, you would see mine. In the fewest possible words it is, that two years before Shakespeare’s death, the lord of the manor attempted to inclose certain common fields belonging to Stratford. This would have resulted in pecuniary damage to Shakespeare. The town of Stratford resolved upon a stout resistance and drew up a letter imploring Shakespeare to help them. But Shakespeare secured from the lord’s steward a bond indemnifying him against all loss, and then, being safe himself, threw all his influence into the lord’s scale. Happily the scheme failed and the common lands remained uninclosed.

Alas! alas! I magnanimously refrain from saying “I told you so.” Can no Act of Parliament be passed forbidding, under pain of death, without benefit of clergy, all further research into Shake-