A Day with William Shakespeare

What was saddening and silencing him? Had a sudden distaste for his occupation seized upon his sensitive mind? Had some slight been put upon him by careless young nobles, such as my lords Pembroke or Southampton, who take up a man one day and drop him the next? Had he received ill news from Stratford, as when the tidings arrived, three years ago, of the death of his only little son? Or was he simply cogitating one of his "sugared sonnets"?

Thus the quidnuncs of the Mermaid questioned among themselves: and there was much surmising, and putting of heads together, and wagering upon the thoughts of Master Shakespeare's melancholy: for of a surety he had lost his wonted flow of spirits. But only one or two men guessed truly at the secret troubles that sat heavy on his cheerful, mercurial mind.

Seventeen years ago, at the age of eighteen, Shakespeare had made a hasty and ill-assorted marriage. Anne Hathaway, his senior in years, his inferior in position, was no fit mate for the impetuous, ambitious youth. A father at nineteen, with neither employment nor source of income, he had chafed and fretted for five years against the consequences of his own rash folly: at twenty-three, he found the position intolerable. He quitted Stratford, and had never returned, save for brief and flying visits. Nor had he ever brought up his wife and children to London. He was maintaining them in comfort, he was purchasing a fine house in Stratford, whither he would eventually retire and play the parts of husband and father. But – blame him or not, as you will – there are limits beyond which human nature cannot be forced: and the illiterate, ill-tempered, incompatible Anne Hathaway was the skeleton in Shakespeare's cupboard: not to be explained away – the thought of whom left a bitter taste at the bottom of every pleasure.

So far, things were bad enough; but there was even worse to follow. The lad whose calf-love had flung him into ill-considered matrimony was now a mature man – and two years ago he discovered, for the first time, what the love of mature manhood can be like. With equal folly, equal recklessness, to his first affair, he had conceived a desperate and hopeless affection for a woman who exactly reversed the previous conditions – for she was very much younger than himself, better educated, and of much superior rank. The "dark lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets, upon whom he lavished all his golden wealth of phrase, laying open the most intimate secrets of human love, and scorn, and anguish – was (in all probability) Mary Fitton, a girl of nineteen, maid of honour to the Queen. Proud, high-spirited, vivacious – unquestionably beautiful, although "in the old age black was not counted fair" – aristocratic, grande dame to the finger-tips: in every respect the antithesis of countrified, shrewish, repellent Anne Hathaway – yet the "dark lady" was inherently wanton, false, and faithless. Shakespeare recognised this, but it made no difference to the strength and intensity of his passion:

So true a fool is love, that in your will,Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

In sonnet after sonnet he expressed his despair, his patience of contempt or injury. No such sounding of the whole diapason of love – no such revealing of a tortured human heart – has ever been put before the world.

Not marble, nor the gilded monumentsOf princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.

And he depicted various features of this woman, in various rôles, in play after play: he could not shut her out. Whether he pilloried her dark beauty as Cressida or Cleopatra – whether he masked her wit and spirit under the name of Beatrice or Rosalind – whether he alternately implored or inveighed against her in the Sonnets – he was enthralled by so magnetic a fascination that it influenced his art at all points. Shakespeare the man – Shakespeare the artist – was obsessed by – bound fast in – a hopeless infatuation for a woman whom he knew to be unworthy.

Here, indeed, was sufficient matter for musing. But the poet's unhappy reveries were cut short by the appearance of a young man – his brother Edmund, who had recently arrived in London and obtained a small acting post at the Blackfriars Theatre. He addressed the older man with a mixture of respect and boyish naïveté. "Good Will, lend me a groat or so – ere I perish of sheer hunger. Six long hours have I laboured at their plaguy rehearsal, and I have not a penny to my pocket. In faith, I never starved like this in Stratford. I swear I will repay thee two days hence!"

The elder brother, with his easy, tolerant air waved the lad to a seat, and shouted for the drawer, or waiter. "Anon, anon, Sir!" and that functionary hastened up. The Mermaid was emptying now, and the attendants were less hurried and flurried. Shakespeare ordered in a second dinner – for, little though he had eaten, the food was cold: and, patting his brother affectionately on the shoulder, slipped a handful of money into his hand. "Ay, marry, thou hast a good Warwickshire hunger and thirst, Ned," said he, "let it not cry out upon thee in vain. For me, I am away to the Globe. They play Hamlet there to-day, and needs must I be present." He did not wait for thanks, but, with his peculiarly pleasant smile, slipped out of the Mermaid, and made haste towards his theatre.

"Like the three wanderers in Arden, against the bole of a huge oak."

Touchstone. The more fool I, to be in Arden!(As You Like It).

The Globe was already crowded when he arrived, although the play did not begin till three (there were no evening performances in those days, except in noblemen's private theatres). Burbage, the favourite tragedian, as Hamlet, drew a great following: but the humble part played by the author himself as Rosencrantz was a succès d'estime rather than a genuine one – for Mr. William Shakespeare was no very wonderful actor. "A fellowship in a cry of players" held little glamour for him. The man who could imagine, with every vivid circumstance of detail, the sinister and foreboding atmosphere of Elsinore, had little admiration for the "strutting and bellowing" of the players who interpreted his visions…

On either side of the stage sat the young noblemen, the poetasters, and the shorthand writers who worked for private publishers. In the boxes – priced up to half-a-crown (about £1 of our present money) were various aristocratic and wealthy patrons of the play. The "groundlings" obtained standing room in the pit for a penny (say 6d.) and were vociferous in their applause of the sanguinary scenes, of the Gravediggers, and of the grosser jests. Everyone who could afford it, smoked: the "classes," rich authentic tobacco, and the "masses," men and women alike, an adulterated mixture of coltsfoot and other "hot" herbs. As for the middle classes, the merchant-folk, tradesmen, and bourgeoisie in general, they were chiefly conspicuous by their absence. Strongly pervaded by a growing flavour of Puritanism, and having a wholesome decent horror of "play-acting" as something undoubtedly congruous with all dissolute ways and ill-living, the middle classes avoided Bankside like the pestilence. Had they been present, they would have been sorely put to it to understand what in the world Mr. Shakespeare, through the mouth of Hamlet, was gibing at. Was he decrying actors? Was he contemning audiences? Was he scorching, with bitter disdain, all who wrote for, or acted in, or crowded into playhouses?.. The young gallants, uncomfortable and uncertain, were glad when the Play-scene was over, and one arrived at more familiar matters of battle, murder, and sudden death. Too much metaphysics about this Hamlet fellow, so they held. A dramatist should stick to his last, and not drag his hearers into deep waters of conjecture, where a man might well flounder for ever…

The play was over. Some few adventurous spirits from the audience approached the tire-room door: Heminge held it warily ajar. "I would speak with your author: where is he?" – "I would have a word with Mr. Shakespeare: is he within?" "Not this way, I assure you, sir: we are not so officiously befriended by him, as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of time, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit." – "Was it not Mr. Shakespeare, then, that played the part of Rosencrantz?" enquired the bewildered ones. "Close the door!" thundered Burbage from within. Followed a sound of bolts and bars… Meanwhile, Mr. Shakespeare had disappeared from the malodorous precincts of the Globe– for the adjacent bear-gardens were notorious for evil effluvia – had crossed the river, and was making his way to the Mermaid, where he arrived about six. A plentiful supper was already being partaken of: the rooms were full of steam and savoury smells. Supper was a smaller meal than dinner, but in no way stinted. Lettuces and radishes were usually served first, and afterwards a variety of highly flavoured dishes. Pigeons stuffed with green gooseberries, fiercely-seasoned herring-pies, roast pork with green sorrel sauce – mustard, horseradish, ginger, and honey ad lib, and sweet dishes innumerable. Shakespeare did justice to his food, and took copious draughts of light sweet wine: the morning's melancholy had passed away, and was succeeded by an almost feverish gaiety. The artificial stimulus of the theatre had produced a temporary excitement in him – he was flushed, brilliant, loquacious. As his repartees flashed rapier-like across the room, Ben Jonson smiled grimly, seated at the head of the table, and a score of kindred souls, who surrounded it, relished the verve and sparkle of their favourite comrade. Jonson was a man of great size, of immense strength and personal courage – masterful, domineering, jealous. He recognised and allowed the extraordinary genius of Shakespeare – but always with many detractions, "insinuating his incorrectness, or a careless manner of writing, and a want of judgment." That the Stratford shopkeeper's son, utterly unequipped in scholarship or training, should stand so high in popular estimation above himself – the University graduate of great learning – was acutely annoying to Jonson: it may be, too, that, with the littleness of certain minds, he had never forgiven Shakespeare for doing him a good turn in the matter of his comedies. At any rate he resented the Warwickshire man's unparalleled quickness, brightness, and flexibility of tongue; and every evening he inaugurated a duel of words, which almost invariably resulted in a "draw," and which was the delight of those privileged to be present. "At the Mermaid," says Fuller, one of these favoured auditors, "many were the wit-combats between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and English man of war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performance. Shakespeare, like the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all sides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." And thus it befell that the frequenters of the Mermaid– such notabilities as Raleigh, Fletcher, Marlowe, Beaumont, Greene, – were accustomed to hear these two great poets disputing, and to join the tournament, in words (as Beaumont put it)

So nimble and so full of subtle flame,As if that everyone from whence they cameHad meant to put his whole wit in a jest,And had resolved to live a fool the restOf his dull life.

Hours passed swiftly away in this congenial manner. The amazing fluency and readiness of Shakespeare showed no sign of flagging: the whimsical, delightful, happy-go-lucky humour, which he has put into the mouths of so many merry folk, was still at its most laughter-provoking stage, – when suddenly, by one of his customary revulsions of feeling, he was seized by a great distaste for the heated apartment, the flaring light, the stale odours of wine and ale. Like Cassius, he had "poor, unhappy brains for drinking," and the endless potations due at a city tavern were singularly unsuited to his taste. He felt that he would give a thousand bursts of Mermaid applause, "for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze," anything that was out in the clean pure air. Though he was a thorough townsman outwardly, the ineradicable instincts of a countryman tore at his heart. He hankered after rural doings and the rough deep speech of the shires. He did not pause to explain the cause of this sudden yearning to men who could hardly be expected to understand it. He simply followed his own immediate inclination. Making a hasty and inadequate excuse, he escaped into the street; and, setting off northward and alone, he struck up across the fields. The delicate scent of hay was wafted warmly round him. Every hedgerow was a blaze of blossom, roses, honeysuckle, elder; every brook was fringed with meadowsweet and loosestrife. Among these exquisitely calm surroundings, what worth had the sordid and squalid matters of the stage, with its petty ambitions, its puny failures or successes? The boisterous conviviality of the Mermaid, the dazzling interchange of thrust and parry, his own reputation as a "fellow of infinite jest," and a nobly-endowed poet, all sank away into nothing, as the midsummer twilight, a glimmering grey translucence, slowly replaced the splendours of the day.

"O Jupiter, how weary are my spirits!" sighed Shakespeare, like his own Rosalind, as, flinging himself beneath the broad and leafy boughs, he became submerged in the infinite, the maternal peace of Nature. Shortly, as darkness deepened, he would return to his lonely room in Silver Street, challenged by the watch and replying in some gay jest: shortly he would toss upon a sleepless bed, consumed by violent and varied emotions, until the cooler wind that comes with dawn should soothe him into rest. But now he lay, like the three wanderers in Arden, against the bole of a huge oak, watching the glow-worms gleaming around and the stars stealing forth above him: until the floor of Heaven was "all o'erlaid with patines of bright gold," and the day, by that celestial sign, was ended.