"As in the sweetest bud
The eating canker dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all."
We fear it must be acknowledged that the youthful poet, at this period of his life, was of a most untamed and wandering disposition; that his life and his employments were rather desultory; and that when once his steps turned towards the wild scenery which so abounded around his native town, all was forgotten of home duties, and engagements pertaining thereto.
This must, however, be excused in one whose mind was of so extraordinary a character.
Amongst other haunts which young Shakespeare loved to frequent at times, and even when the shadows of night gave a more solemn feeling to its precincts, was the churchyard of his native town. And perhaps those who have lingered, and looked upon that sweet scene during night's silent reign, whilst the moon has silvered the tops of the surrounding trees, and the waters of the Avon mirrored the beautiful structure on its banks, will better understand the feelings of young Shakespeare in such a place. Things more than mortal seem to steal upon the heart, and thoughts of early and shadowy recollection to haunt the mind.
Let those who have not visited this locality at "the witching hour," take a stroll into the ancient churchyard of Stratford. Let them feel the influence of the man everywhere around them, and imagine him at such a time. Let them look up at those demoniac heads which the cunning architects of the Norman period have carved on every coigne of vantage, together with the shadowy grandeur of the walls and buttresses.
Let them glance over the verdant mounds and the mossy tombstones of the silent tenants around, and then ask themselves what were the thoughts engendered in such locality? Have they not some dark and shadowy conceptions of Elsineur? Doth not the postern of the old churchyard wall open to admit the Monkish procession for the obsequies of the fair Ophelia, with all the pomp and circumstance of the times? Do they not see before them the whole scene, and hear the words of the distracted Laertes as he stands beside the open grave of his sister:—
"Lay her i' the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A minist'ring angel shall my sister be,
When thou liest howling."
Or, in that moonlight scene of beauty, and whilst the reverential awe it engenders steals upon the heart, doth not some remembrance of Juliet's tomb, the hour, and the deeds therein performed, float over the mind, and the words of him who sleeps so near recur?
Those, we say, who can feel this impression, can best imagine the influence the hour, and the hallowed spot, had upon the youthful mind of him who in after-life was to draw upon such feelings in order to produce the scenes we have mentioned. At the present time, and whilst young Shakespeare took his way through the churchyard, the feeling of awe which is sure to pervade the mind, more or less, in such a place, was peculiarly impressed upon him. It seemed a presentiment of some evil to come, which he could not shake off. He stopped and gazed around, and a chaos of wild thoughts and imaginings coursed one another through his brain as he did so. Within that sacred pile the knightly and the noble, the soldier of the cross, the fierce Norman, and the proud Churchman were entombed—"hearsed in death,"—the very men who had lived in the days he was so fond of dwelling on; those fierce times of contention and civil butchery.
The associations connected with such a scene are indeed peculiar; the beings of a former age in all the panoply of war re-appear, and (as we gaze upon the architectural beauty of the holy edifices they have left behind them) we love to imagine their steel-clad forms—their deep devotion; whilst remembrance of their heroic acts in the field is mixed up with the superstition and feelings of their day.
Whilst the youthful Shakespeare gazed upon the mounds, and the mossy tombstones, and the soft flowing river; as he listened to the dreary whisper of the breeze through the trees, a feeling of awe crept over him, and his imagination reverted to the world of spirits—
"When churchyards yawned and graves stood tenantless."
The living stood alone amongst the dead. Slowly he took his way, that extraordinary youth: his thoughts and conceptions seemed a wonder to himself; at one moment he gazed upwards at the o'erhanging firmament, "that majestical roof, fretted with golden fire;" then he stood upon the margin of the flowing river, and watched its waves, as they passed onwards and were lost in the distance, like the hours passing into eternity, and mingling with those before the flood. What were those thoughts at that hour and period of his life? who could write them, or could he himself have described them? We think not—perhaps he may have himself given us something nearly akin. He may have then thought with his own Prospero—
"The cloud capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
Man holds strange communion with himself in such a sanctuary. "The present horror of the time suits with it." There is even a sort of fascination to the spot, and a longing, a yearning after something supernatural. Even the hoot of the owl, or the cloistered flight of the bat, hath a charm in character.
Such, perhaps, were the thoughts of this youth, for he lingered long in the churchyard wrapt in his own imaginings. At length, as he heard an approaching footstep along the path, he slowly turned from the sacred edifice, leaped the wall, and sought the woods of Charlecote.
As young Shakespeare left the churchyard, the person whose approach had interrupted his meditations slowly walked up to the porch of the church.
As the new comer turned, on reaching the porch, the clock from the tower sounded the first hour after midnight; a deep and clanking note which swam over the adjoining fields and was lost in fainter replications. "'Tis the hour," said he, "and now for the man."
The midnight visitor was apparently a tall figure, wearing the long riding cloak of the period, and which completely enveloped his form, whilst his broad-brimmed hat, and the sable plumes with which it was ornamented, as effectually shadowed his features.
"'Tis the hour," he said, as the iron tongue sounded from the tower. "And now for this unsafe partisan." A low whistle (as if from some person lying perdue without the wall of the churchyard) was almost immediately heard, and in a few minutes another footstep was also to be distinguished as if from the town.
The figure in the cloak immediately advanced towards the approaching sounds, and as he did so he freed his right arm from his cloak, and, pulling it more completely over the left shoulder, felt that his rapier was easy in the sheath, that his other weapons were free to his hand, and also that the dagger in his girdle was handy to his grasp.
Readiness in the use of the various weapons (at that time a part of the costume of a completely dressed cavalier) was one of the accomplishments of a gentleman, and the steps and bearing of the person we have described (although but partially distinguishable in the shade of the tall trees of the churchyard) proclaimed that he was a person of some condition.
He walked slowly and deliberately down the path towards the gate, so that by the time he had traversed half