"So have I heard, and do in part believe it."
Such a night was a preparation for a " happy Christmas ; " the prayers of an
earnest Church, the Anthem, the Hymn, the Homily. The cross of Stratford was
garnished with the holly, the ivy, and the bay. Hospitality was in every house ; but
the hall of the great landlord of the parish was a scene of rare conviviality. The
frost or the snow will not deter the principal friends and tenants from the welcome
of Clopton. There is the old house, nestled in the woods, looking down upon the
little town. Its chimneys are reeking ; there is bustle in the offices ; the sound of
the trumpeters and the pipers is heard through the open door of the great entrance ;
the steward marshals the guests ; the tables are fast filling. Then advance, courteously,
the master and the mistress of the feast. The Boar's head is brought in with due
solemnity ; the wine-cup goes round ; and perhaps the Saxon shout of Waes-hael and
Drink-hael may still be shouted. The Lord of Misrule and the Mummers from
Stratford are at the porch. Very sparing are the cues required for the enactment
of this short drama. A speech to the esquire, closed with a merry jest; something
about ancestry and good Sir Hugh ; the loud laugh ; the song and the chorus, and
the Lord of Misrule is now master of the feast.
* " Hamlet," Act I., Scene i.
[Clopton House.]
CHAP. VII.]
KENILWORTH.
51
CHAPTER VII.
KENILWORTH.
WAS William Shakspere at Kenil worth in that summer of 1575, when the great
Dudley entertained Elizabeth with a splendour which annalists have delighted to
record, and upon which one of our own days has bestowed a fame more imperish-
able than that of any annals ? Percy, speaking of the old Coventry Hock-play,
says, " Whatever this old play or storial show was at the time it was exhibited to
Queen Elizabeth, it had probably our young Shakspere for a spectator, who was then
in his twelfth year, and doubtless attended with all the inhabitants of the surround-
ing country at these ' princely pleasures of Kenilworth,' whence Stratford is only a
few miles distant."* The preparations for this celebrated entertainment were on
so magnificent a scale, the purveyings must have been so enormous, the posts so
unintermitting, that there had needed not the flourishings of paragraphs (for the
age of paragraphs was not as yet) to have roused the curiosity of aU mid-England.
Elizabeth had visited Kenilworth on two previous occasions, in 1565, and in
1572.
Whether the boy Shakspere was at Kenilworth in 1575, when Robert Dudley wel-
comed his sovereign with a more than regal magnificence, is not necessary to be
affirmed or denied. It is tolerably clear that the exquisite speech of Oberon in
" A Midsummer Night's Dream" is associated with some of the poetical devices
which he might have there beheld, or have heard described :
" Obe. My gentle Puck, come hither : Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song ;
* " On the Origin of the English Stage : " Reliques, vol. i.
E 2
52 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE ; A BIOGRAPHY. [BOOK I,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.
Puck I remember.
Obe. That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,)
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd ; a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the west ;
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts :
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon ;
And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation fancy-free."
[Elizabeth.]
The most remarkable of the shows of Kenilworth were associated with the mytho-
logy and the romance of lakes and seas. "Triton, in likeness of a mermaid,
came toward's the Queen's Majesty." "Arion appeared sitting on a dolphin's back."
So the quaint and really poetical George Gascoigne, in his " Brief Rehearsal, or
rather a true Copy of as much as was presented before her Majesty at Kenilworth."
But the diffuse and most entertaining coxcomb Laneham describes a song of Arion
with an ecstacy which may justify the belief that the " dulcet and harmonious
breath" of "the sea-maid's music" might be the echo of the melodies heard by
the young poet as he stood beside the lake at Kenilworth : " Now, Sir, the ditty
in metre so aptly endited to the matter, and after by voice deliciously delivered ;
the song, by a skilful artist into his parts so sweetly sorted ; each part in his instru-
ment so clean and sharply touched ; every instrument again in his kind so excel-
lently tunable ; and this in the evening of the day, resounding from the calm
CHAP. VII.]
KENILWORTH.
53
waters, where the presence of her Majesty, and longing to listen, had utterly
damped all noise and din, the who!? harmony conveyed in time, tune, and temper
thus incomparably melodious ; with what pleasure (Master Martin), with what
sharpness of conceit, with what lively delight this might pierce into the hearers'
hearts, I pray ye imagine yourself, as ye may." If Elizabeth be the " fair vestal
throned by the west," of which there can be no reasonable doubt, the most appro-
priate scene of the mermaid's song would be Kenilworth, and "that very time" the
summer of 1575. ^
Percy, believing that the boy Shakspere was at Kenilworth, has remarked, with
his usual taste and judgment, that "the dramatic cast of many parts of that
superb entertainment must have had a very great effect upon a young imagination,
whose dramatic powers were hereafter to astonish the world." Without assuming
with Percy that "our young bard gained admittance into the castle" on the evening
when " after supper was there a play of a very good theme presented ; but so set
forth, by the actors' well handling, that pleasure and mirth made it seem very short,
though it lasted two good hours and more ;"* yielding not our consent to Tieck's
fiction, that the boy performed the part of " Echo " in Gascoigne's address to the
Queen, and was allowed to see the whole of the performances by the especial favour
of her Majesty, we may believe there were parts of that entertainment, which, with-
out being a favoured spectator, William Shakspere with his friends might have
beheld ; and which " must have had a very great effect upon a young imagination,"
[Entrance to the Hall.]
* Lanehnm.
*
54 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : A BIOGRAPHY. [BOOK I.
assisting, too, in giving it that dramatic tendency which, as we have endeavoured
already to point out, was a peculiar characteristic of the simplest and the com-
monest festivals of his age.
And yet it is difficult to imagine anything more tedious than the fulsome praise,
the mythological pedantries, the obscure allusions to Constancy and Deep-Desire,
which were poured into the ears of Elizabeth during the nineteen days of Kenilworth.
There was not, according to the historians of this visit, one fragment of our real old
poetry produced, to gratify the Queen of a nation that had the songs and ballads of
the chivalrous times still fresh upon its lips. There were no Minstrels at Kenil-
worth ; the Harper was unbidden to its halls. The old English spirit of poetry was
dead in a scheming court. It was something higher that in a few years called up
Spenser and Shakspere. Yet there was one sport, emanating from the people, which
had heart and reality in it. Laneham describes this as a " good sport presented in
an historical cue by certain good-hearted men of Coventry, my lord's neighbours
there." They " made petition that they might renew now their old storial show :
of argument how the Danes, whilom here in a troublous season, were for quietness
borne withal and suffered in peace ; that anon, by outrage and unsupportable inso-
lency, abusing both Ethelred the King, then, and all estates everywhere beside, at
the grievous complaint and counsel of Huna, the King's chieftain in wars, on Saint
Brice's night Anno Dom. 1012 (as the book says, that falleth yearly on the thirteenth
of November), were all despatched, and the realm rid. And for because that the
matter mentioneth how valiantly our Englishwomen, for love of their country,
behaved themselves, expressed in action and rhymes after their manner, they
thought it might move some mirth to her Majesty the rather. The thing, said
they, is grounded in story, and for pastime wont to be played in our city yearly,
without ill example of manners, papistry, or any superstition ; and else did so
occupy the heads of a number, that likely enough would have had worse meditations ;
had an ancient beginning and a long continuance, till now of late laid down, they
knew no cause why, unless it was by the zeal of certain of their preachers, men very
commendable for their behaviour and learning, and sweet in their sermons, but
somewhat too sour in preaching away their pastime." The description by Laneham
is the only precise account which remains to us of the " old storial show," the "sport
presented in an historical cue." It was a show not to be despised ; for it told the
people how their Saxon ancestors had arisen to free themselves from " outrage and
unsupportable insolency," and " how valiantly our Englishwomen, for love of their
country, behaved themselves." Laneham, in his accustomed style, is more intent
upon describing " Captain Cox," an odd man of Coventry, " mason, ale-conner, who
hath great oversight in matters of story," than upon giving us a rational account of
this spectacle. We find, however, that there were the Danish lance-knights on
horseback, and then the English ; that they had furious encounters with spear and
shield, with sword and target ; that there were footmen, who fought in rank and
squadron ; and that " twice the Danes had the better, but at the last conflict beaten
down, overcome, and many led captive for triumph by our Englishwomen." The
court historian adds, " This was the effect of this show, that as it was handled
made much matter of good pastime, brought all indeed into the great court, even
under her Highness's window, to have seen." But her Highness, having pleasanter
occupation within, " saw but little of the Coventry play, and commanded it therefore
on the Tuesday following to have it full out, as accordingly it was presented." This
repetition of the Hock-play in its completeness, full out, necessarily leads to the
conclusion that the action was somewhat more complicated than the mere repetition
of a mock-combat. Laneham, in his general description of the play, says, " expressed
in action and rhymes." That he has preserved none of the rhymes, and has given
CHAP. VII.] KENILWORTH. 55
us a very insufficient account of the action, is characteristic of the man and of the
tone of the courtiers. The Coventry clowns came there, not to call up any patriotic
feeling by their old traditionary rhymes and dumb-show, but to be laughed at for
their awkward movement and their earnest declamation. It appears to us that the
conclusion is somewhat hasty which says of this play of Hock Tuesday, " It seems
to have been merely a dumb-show."* Percy, resting upon the authority of Lane-
ham, says that the performance " seems on that occasion to have been without reci-
tation or rhymes, and reduced to mere dumb-show." Even this we doubt. But
certainly it is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion than that of Percy, that the
play, as originally performed by the men of Coventry, " expressed in action and
rhymes after their manner," representing a complicated historical event, the
insolence of tyranny, the indignation of the oppressed, the grievous complaint of one
injured chieftain, the secret counsels, the plots, the conflicts, the triumph, must
have offered us " a regular model of a complete drama." If the young Shakspere
were a witness to the performance of this drama, his imagination would have been
more highly and more worthily excited than if he had been the favoured spectator
of all the shows of Tritons, and Dianas, and Ladies of the Lake that proceeded from
" the conceit so deep in casting the plot " of his lordship of Leicester. It would be
not too much to believe that this storial show might first suggest to him how English
history might be dramatized ; how a series of events, terminating in some remark-
able catastrophe, might be presented to the eye ; how fighting-men might be mar-
shalled on a mimic field ; how individual heroism might stand out from amongst
the mass, having its own fit expression of thought and passion ; how the wife or the
mother, the sister or the mistress, might be there to uphold the hero, even as the
Englishwomen assisted their warriors ; and how all this might be made to move the
hearts of the people, as the old ballads had once moved them. Such a result would
have repaid a visit to Kenilworth by William Shakspere. Without this, he, his
father, and their friends, might have retired from the scene of Dudley's magnificence,
as most thinking persons in all probability retired, with little satisfaction. There
was lavish expense ; but, according to the most credible accounts, the possessor of
Kenilworth was the oppressor of his district. We see him not delighting to show
his Queen a happy tenantry, such as the less haughty and ambitious nobles and
esquires were anxious to cultivate. The people came under the windows of Elizabeth
as objects of ridicule. Slavish homage would be there to Leicester from the gentle-
men of the county. They would replenish his butteries with their gifts ; they would
ride upon his errands ; they would wear his livery. There was one gentleman in
Warwickshire who would not thus do Leicester homage Edward Arden, the head
of the great house of Arden, the cousin of William Shakspere's mother. But the
mighty favourite was too powerful for him : " Which Edward, though a gentleman
not inferior to the rest of his ancestors in those virtues wherewith they were adorned,
had the hard hap to come to an untimely death in 27 Eliz., the charge laid against
him being no less than high treason against the Queen, as privy to some foul inten-
tions that Master Somerville, his son-in-law (a Roman Catholic), had towards her
person : For which he was prosecuted with so great rigour and violence, by the Earl
of Leicester's means, whom he had irritated in some particulars (as I have credibly
heard), partly in disdaining to wear his livery, which many in this county, of his
rank, thought, in those days, no small honour to them ; but chiefly for galling him
by certain harsh expressions, touching his private accesses to the Countess of Essex
before she was his wife ; that through the testimony of one Hall, a priest, he was
found guilty of the fact, and lost his life in Smithfield."t The Rev. N. J. Halpin,
* Collier : " Annals of the Stage," vol. i., p. 234.
f Dugdale's " Warwickshire," p. 681.
56
WILLIAM 8HAKSPERE : A BIOGRAPHY.
[BOOK I.
who has contributed a most interesting tract to the publications of " The Shakespeare
Society" on the subject of " Oberon's Vision in the Midsummer Night's Dream," has
explained the allusions in that exquisite passage with far more success than the
belief of Warburton that the Queen of Scots was pointed at, or of Mr. Boaden that
Amy Eobsart was the " little western flower." He considers that Edward Arden, a
spectator of those very entertainments at Kenilworth, discovered Leicester's guilty
" accesses to the Countess of Essex ; " that the expression of Oberon, " That very
time, I saw, but thou couldst not," referred to this discovery ; that when " the
Imperial Votaress passed on," he " marked where the bolt of Cupid fell ; " that " the
little western flower," pure, "milk-white" before that time, became spotted, "purple
with love's wound." We may add that there is bitter satire in what follows " that
flower," retaining the original influence, " will make or man or woman madly dote,"
as Lettice, Countess of Essex, was infatuated by Leicester. The discovery of
Edward Arden, and his " harsh expressions " concerning it, might be traditions in
Shakspere's family, and be safely allegorized by the poet in 1594 when Leicester was
gone to his account.
[Leicester.]
CHAP, vni.]
PAGEANTS.
57
CHAPTER VIII.
PAGEANTS.
IT is " the middle summer's spring." On
the day before the feast of Corpus Christi
all the roads leading to Coventry have far
more than their accustomed share of pedes-
trians and horsemen. The pageants are to
be acted to-morrow, and perhaps for the last
time. The preachers in their sermons
have denounced them again and again ; but
since the Queen's Majesty was graciously
pleased with the Hock-play at Kenilworth,
that ancient sport, so dear to the men of
Coventry, has been revived, and the Guilds
have struggled against the preachers to
prevent their old pageantis from being
suppressed. And why, say they, should
they be suppressed 1 Have not they, the
men of the Guilds, been accustomed to act
their own pageants long after the Gray
Friars had gone into obscurity ? Has not
the good city all that is needful for their
proper performance ? Do not they all
know their parts, as arranged by the town-
clerk ? Are not their robes in goodly order,
some new, and all untattered ? Moreover,
is not the trade of the city greatly declined
its blue thread thrust out by thread
brought from beyond sea its caps and
girdles superseded by gear from London ;*
and was not in the old time "the con-
fluence of people from far and near to see
this show extraordinary great, and yielded
no small advantage to this city?"t The
pageants shall be played in spite of the
preachers ; and so the bruit thereof goes
through the country, and Coventry is still
to see its accustomed crowds on the day of
Corpus Christi.
It requires not the imagination of the
romance-writer to assume that before
William Shakspere was sixteen, that is,
before the year 1580, when the pageants at Coventry, with one or two rare excep-
tions, were finally suppressed, he would be a spectator of one of these remarkable
See " A Briefe Conceipte of English Pollicye," 1581.
f Dugdale.
58 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE : A BIOGRAPHY. [BOOK I.
performances, which were hi a few years wholly to perish ; becoming, however, the
foundations of a drama more suited to the altered spirit of the people, more uni-
versal in its range, the drama of the laity, and not of the church. What a glorious
city must Coventry have been in the days when that youth first looked upon it
the " Prince's Chamber," as it was called, the " third city of the realm," a " shire-
town,"* full of stately buildings of great antiquity, unequalled once in the splendour
of its monastic institutions, full of associations of regal state, and chivalry, and high
events ! As he finally emerges from the rich woodlands and the elm-groves which
reach from Kenilworth, there would that splendid city lie before him, surrounded
by its high wall and its numerous gates, its three wondrous spires, which he had
often gazed upon from the hill of Welcombc, rising up in matchless height and
symmetry, its famous cross towering above the gabled roofs. At the other extre-
mity of the wall, gates more massive and defying a place of strength, even though
no conqueror of Cressy now dwelt therein a place of magnificence, though the
hand of spoliation had been there most busy. William Shakspere and his com-
pany ride through the gate of the Gray Friars, and they are presently in the heart
of that city. Eager crowding is there already in those streets on that eve of Corpus
Christi, for the waits are playing, and banners are hung out at the walls of the
different Guilds. The citizens gathered round the Cross are eagerly discussing the
particulars of to-morrow's show. Here and there one with a beetling brow indig-
nantly denounces the superstitious and papistical observance ; whilst the laughing
smith or shearman, who is to play one of the magi on the morrow, describes the
bravery of his new robe, and the lustre of his pasteboard crown that has been fresh
gilded. The inns are fun, " great and sumptuous inns," as Harrison describes those
of this very day, " able to lodge two hundred or three hundred persons, and their
horses, at ease, and thereto, with a very short warning, make such provision for
their diet as to him that is unacquainted withal may seem to be incredible : And
it is a world to see how each owner of them contendeth with other for goodness of
entertainment of their guests, as about fineness and change of linen, furniture of
bedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate, strength of drink,
variety of wines, or well using of horses." So there would be no lack of cheer ; and
the hundreds that have come into Coventry will be fed and lodged better even than
in London, whose inns, as the same authority tells us, are the worst in the kingdom.
Piping and dancing is there in the chambers, madrigals worth the listening. But
silence and sleep at last fitly prepare for a busy day. Perhaps, however, a stray
minstrel might find his way to this solemnity, and forget the hour in the exercise
of his vocation, like the very ancient anonymous poet of the Alliterative Metre,
whose manuscript, probably of the date of Henry V., has contrived to escape
destruction :
" Ones y me ordayned, as y have ofte doon,
With frendes, and felawes, frendemen, and other;
And caught me in a company on Corpus Christi even,
Six, other seven myle, oute of Suthampton,
To take melodye, and mirthes, among my makes ;
With redyng of romaunces, and revelyng among,
The dym of the darknesse drowe into the west,
And began for to spryng in the gray day." f
The morning of Corpus Christi comes, and soon after sunrise there is stir in the
streets of Coventry. The old ordinances for this solemnity required that the Guilds
* Coventry had altogether separate jurisdiction. It is called " a shire-town " by Dugdale, to
mark this distinction.
f See Percy's " Reliques :" On the Alliterative Metre. We give the lines as corrected in Sharp's
" Coventry Mysteries."
CHAP. VIII.] PAGEANTS. 59
should be at their posts at five o'clock. There is to be a solemn procession for-
merly, indeed, after the performance, of the pageant and then, with hundreds of
torches burning around the figures of our Lady and St. John, candlesticks and
chalices of silver, banners of velvet and canopies of silk, and the members of the
Trinity Guild and the Corpus Christi Guild bearing their crucifixes and candlesticks,
with personations of the angel Gabriel lifting up the lily, the twelve apostles, and
renowned virgins, especially St. Catherine and St. Margaret. The Keformation has,
of course destroyed much of this ceremonial ; and, indeed, the spirit of it has in
great part evaporated. But now, issuing from the many ways that lead to the
Cross, there is heard the melody of harpers and the voice of minstrelsy ; trumpets
sound, banners wave, riding-men come thick from their several halls ; the mayor and
aldermen in their robes, the city servants in proper liveries, St. George and the
Dragon, and Herod on horseback. The bells ring, boughs are strewed in the streets,
tapostry is hung out of the windows, officers in scarlet coats struggle in the crowd
while the procession is marshalling. The crafts are getting into their ancient
order, each craft with its streamer and its men in harness. There are " Fysshers
and Cokes, Baxters and Milners, Bochers, Whittawers and Glovers, Pynners,
Tylers, and Wrightes, Skynners, Barkers, Corvy sers, Smythes, We vers,
Wirdrawers, Cardemakers, Sadelers, Peyntours, and Masons, Gurdelers, Tay-
lours, Walkers, and Sherman, Deysters, Drapers, Mercers."* At length the
procession is arranged. It parades through the principal lines of the city, from
Bishopgate on the north to the Gray Friars' Gate on the south, and from Broadgate
on the west to Gosford Gate on the east. The crowd is thronging to the wide area
on the north of Trinity Church, and St. Michael's, for there is the pageant to be
first performed. There was a high house or carriage which stood upon six wheels ;
it was divided into two rooms, one above the other. In the lower room were the
performers ; the upper was the stage. This ponderous vehicle was painted and
gilt, surmounted with burnished vanes and streamers, and decorated with imagery ;
it was hung round with curtains, and a painted cloth presented a picture of the
subject that was to be performed. This simple stage had its machinery, too ; it