Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/53

* SHAKESFEAfiE. 39 SHAKESPEARE. read in school, and are such as a schoolboy might make. In one instance at least the form of the quotation shows that it was taken fi'oin Lillj'S Latin (Jramniar (then used in all English schools) and not from the original play of Ter- ence. He makes frequent mistakes in classical names, which a learned man like Bacon, for instance, could, never have been guilty of. Ba- con, indeed, gives some of these very names cor- rectly in passages that have been quoted to illustrate the resemblance between his works and Shakespeare's; they really show that the dramatist was ignorant of what the philosopher was familiar with. The training in the gram- mar school was, however, an insignificant part of Shakespeare's education in the broader sense. The poet is born, not made, says the ancient saw; but the development of his genius largely de- pends upon where and under what influences he lives in his cliildhood and in later years. Shake- speare's life was almost entirely spent in Strat- ford and London ; and in l)oth homes he was eminently fortunate. He was born and lived for twenty years in the country — in the heart of rural England. His manhood was passed in the city — in what was then, as now, the greatest of cities. Stratford was within the limits of the Forest of Arden, which still retained enough of its primitive character to render the youth famil- iar with woodland scenery and life and to culti- vate his love of nature, which was that of a child for its foster-mother. It was here also that he got the minule knowledge of the practical side of country life which appears in his works. Vol- umes have been written on the plant-lore and garden-craft .of the dramatist; and they prove his love of the country and his keen observation of natural phenomena and the agricultural prac- tice of the period. Others have shown that he understood hawking and hounds, and had a very wide and loving knowledge of many English birds and other animals. His acquaintance with angling is apparent in some of his works. For its historical associations Warwickshire was no less the fitting region for the education of a great national poet. From the time of the Roman occupation it had played an important part in the national history. Several Roman roads traversed the district, and Stratford got its name from the ford where one of these streets (as they were called) crossed the Avon. The sites of several Roman camps, or fortified sta- tions, were in the neighborliood. one of these, Alcester. being only five miles from Stratford. In Anglo-Saxon times W'arwickslure formed part of the Kingdom of Mercia. which was for a while the dominant power of the country. Later, from its central position, it was traversed and occu- pied by the rival .armies in the civil wars. The decisive battles that ended the Barons' War in the thirteenth century and the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth were fought on the bor- ders of Warwickshire, at Evesham and Bosworth Field. The castles of Kenihvorth and Warwick, both in the same county and within fifteen miles of Stratford, were, during these wars, the main centres of military and political interest in England. Queen Elizabeth's famous visit to Robert Dudley at Kenilworth in 1.575. and the holiday pageant in her honor, which lasted from July 3th to the 27th. occurred when Shakespeare was eleven years old. His father, as a well-to-do citizen and prominent magistrate of Stratford, probably saw something of the stately show, and may have taken William with him. Certain passages in the Midsummer Xight's Dream (ii. 1 ) appear to be reminiscences of the Kenilworth festival, of which the boy must have heard much, even if he saw notliing of it. The legendary lore of the district was equally stimulating and inspiring to a poet. Warwick- shire was eminently a field of romance and old heroic story and the scene of many an ancient ballad. Guy of Warwick was a foremost hero in this popular poetry, and his gigantic spectre still haunts the scenery of his traditional exploits. Shakespeare in his boyhood was familiar with the .stories about this half-mytliical personage, and he recalled them in later life when he put allusions to Colbrand, the big Saracen whom Guy conquered and slew, into the mouths of certain characters in his plays. Warwickshire was also prominent in the history of the English drama. Coventry was renowned for the religious plays performed liy the Grey Friars of its great monastery, and kept up, though with less pomp, even after the dissolution of their establish- ment. It was not until 1589 th,at these pageants were entirely suppressed ; and Shakespeare, who was then eleven years old. may have been an eye- witness of the latest of them. His allusions to characters in these old plays (as, for instance, to Herod in Hamlet and The Merry ^yives of U'ljirf- sor, and to the 'lost souls' in Henry V .) ])rove that he knew them by report, even if lie had not seen them. Historical plays, not biblical in sub- ject, were also common in Coventry before the dramatist was born. The Nine Worthies, which he burlesques in Love's Labour's Lost, was acted there before Henry VI. in 1455. The original text of the play has been preserved, and por- tions of Shakespeare's travesty seem almost like a parody of it. The play performed at Strat- ford in 1569, which must have been of this re- ligious or historical type, was the beginning, so far as the to«-n records show, of theatrical per- formances in Stratford, but in succeeding years they were frequent. Of course the young Shake- speare witnessed them ; and we can surmise how thej' fired his imagination and fostered his in- born taste for the drama. Wo see, then, that all outward conditions in Stratford and its neighborhood were peculiarly favorable to the aw,akening, stimulating, and de- veloping of Shakespeare's genius; and in his second home, where he spent more than twenty- five years, including his entire career as an actor and author, he was equally fortunate. London was then, as now, the metropolis of the kingdom, the capital of arts and letters, no less than of the National Government. It was the centre of the literary .activity and brilliancy that made 'the spacious times of great Elizabeth' forever mem- orable. What stimulus, what inspiration must Shakespeare have found in its life and society! We see then that, though so far as schooling properly so called was concerned Shakespeare's education was inferior to what a boy of thirteen or fourteen would get nowadays, it was in the liroader sense far from inadequate as a prepara- tion for the work he was to do as a poet and dramatist. For some time after leaving school the boy may have helped his father in his trade. In 1577 John .Shakespeare was beginning to have bad luck in his business, and William, then thirteen