"Ay, I have heard of him," I added. "He was an Englishman, and the Irish burned him out of the castle, and he fled to England."
"Oh no! nothing of the kind. He lived and died there, and was buried just below the castle, which used to be a church-yard. Bones are often dug up, and on the western side of the mound there had been a nunnery."
In fact, they knew nothing accurately, but, like the people at Lissoy, by Goldsmith, would insist on his death and burial on the spot.
But the desolated spot possesses an interest stronger than the possession of the poet's dust. It was the scene of his happiest hours—hours of love and of inspiration. Here the Faërie Queene grew in heavenly zeal, and here it was suddenly arrested by the howl of savage vengeance, and the flames which wrapped the poet's heart in ruin.
"Ah! what a warning for a thoughtless man,
Could field or grove, or any spot of earth,
Show to his eye an image of the pangs
Which it hath witnessed; render back the echo
Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod."
Wordsworth.
SHAKSPEARE.
There are two reasons why I proposed to omit the homes and haunts of Shakspeare from the present volumes; the first, because I have found it impossible to include the dramatic poets in the compass of these two, and must reserve them for a third; and the second, because I have already, in my Visits to Remarkable Places (vol. i.), devoted a considerable article to almost the only place where his homes and haunts still remain, Stratford-upon-Avon. A very little reflection, however, convinced me that an entire omission of the haunts of this great national poet from these first two volumes would be received as a disappointment by a numerous class of readers. Shakspeare is not merely a dramatic poet. Great and peerless as is his dramatic fame, the very elements, not of dramatic art and fame alone, but of universal poetry, and that of the highest order, are so diffused throughout all his works, that the character of poet soars above the character of dramatist in him, like some heaven-climbing tower above a glorious church. Every line, almost every word, is a living mass of poetry; these are scattered through the works of all authors as such exponents of their deepest sentiments as they can not command themselves. They are like the branches, the buds, the flowers and leaves of a great tree of poetry, making a magnificent whole, and rich and beautiful as nature itself, down to its minutest portions. To leave out Shakspeare were, indeed, to play Hamlet with the part of Hamlet himself omitted; it were to invite guests, and get the host to absent himself. In the Walhalla of British poetry, the statue of Shakspeare must be first admitted and placed in the center, before gradations and classifications are thought of. He is the universal genius, whose presence and spirit must and will pervade the whole place.
And yet, where are the homes and haunts of Shakspeare in London? Like those of a thousand other remarkable men, in the accidents and the growth of this great city they are swept away. Fires and renovation have carried every thing before them. If the fame of men depended on bricks and mortar, what reputations would have been extinguished within the last two centuries in London! In no place in the world have the violent necessities of a rapid and immense development paid so little respect to the "local habitations" of great names. The very resting-places and tombs of many are destroyed, and their bones, like those of Chatterton, have been scattered by the spades of the unlettered laborer.
We may suppose that Shakspeare, on his coming up to London, would reside near the theaters where he sought his livelihood. The first appears to have been that of Blackfriars. It has long been clean gone, and its locality is now occupied by Play-house-yard, near Apothecaries' Hall, and the dense buildings around. Play-house-yard derives its name from the old play-house. In Knight's London, it is suggested that this theater might be pulled down soon after the permanent close of the theaters during the Commonwealth, by the Puritans; but the real old theater of Shakspeare must, had that not been the case, have perished entirely in the fire of London, which cleared all this ground, from Tower-street to the Temple. If Shakspeare ever held horses at the theater door on his first coming to town, it would be here, for here he seems to have been first engaged. The idea of his holding horses at a theater door, bold and active fellow as he had shown himself in his deer-stealing exploits, and with friends and acquaintances in town, has been scouted, especially as he was then a full-grown man of twenty-three. The thing, however, is by no means improbable. Shakspeare was most likely as independent as he was clever and active. On arriving in town, and seeing an old acquaintance, Thomas Green, at this theater, he might, like other remarkable men who have made their way to eminence in London, be ready to turn his hand to any thing till something better turned up. Green, who was a player, might be quite willing to introduce Shakspeare into that character and the theater; but it had yet to be proved that Shakspeare could make an actor of himself, and, till opportunity offered, what so likely to seize the attention of a hanger about the theater as the want of a careful horse-holder for those who came there in such style, which appears was then common enough. We have the statement from Sir William Davenant, and therefore from a cotemporary, admirer, and assumed relative. We are told that the speculation was not a bad one. Shakspeare, by his superior age and carefulness, soon engrossed all this business, and had to employ those boys, who had before been acting on their own account, as his subordinates; whence they acquired and retained, long after he had mounted into an actor himself, within the theater, the name of Shakspeare's boys. That he became "an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act exceedingly well," Aubrey tells us. He is supposed to have acted Old Knowell in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humor;" and Oldys tells us that a relative of Shakspeare, then in advanced age, but who in his youth had been in the habit of visiting London for the purpose of seeing him act in some of his own plays, told Mr. Jones, of Tarbeck, that "he had a faint recollection of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported, and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song." This is supposed to have been in the character of Adam, in "As You Like It," and hence it has been inferred, in connection with his acting the Ghost in Hamlet, and Old Knowell, that he took chiefly old or elderly characters.
Every glimpse of this extraordinary man, who, however much he might have been acknowledged and estimated in his own day, certainly lived long before his time, is deeply interesting. That he was estimated highly we know from Jonson himself:
"Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That did so take Eliza and our James."
When the two monarchs under whom Shakspeare lived admired and patronized him, we may be sure that Shakspeare's great merits were perceived, and that vividly, though the age had not that intellectual expansion which could enable it to rise above its prejudices against a player, and comprehend that Shakspeare's dramas were not merely the most wonderful dramas, but the most wonderful expositions of human life and nature that had ever appeared. People were too busy enjoying the splendid scenes presented to them by this great genius, to note down for the gratification of posterity the dayly doings, connections, and whereabouts of the man with whom they were so familiar. He grew rich, however, by their flocking to his theater, and disappeared from among them.
In this theater of Blackfriars he rose to great popularity both as an actor and dramatic author, and became a proprietor. It was under the management of Richard Burbage, who was also a shareholder in the Globe Theater at Bankside. To the theater at Bankside Shakspeare also transferred himself, and there he became, in 1603, the lessee. There