Part 37 (2/2)
He knew the times of the flowers. In spring he marked
”the daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty.”*
*Winter's Tale.
Of summer flowers he tells us
”Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram; The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun, And with him rises weeping; these are flowers Of middle summer.”*
*Winter's Tale.
He knew that ”a lapwing runs close by the ground,” that choughs are ”russet-pated.” He knew all the beauty that is to be found throughout the country year.
Sometimes in his country wanderings Shakespeare got into mischief too. He had a daring spirit, and on quiet dark nights he could creep silently about the woods snaring rabbits or hunting deer.
But we are told ”he was given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits.”* He was often caught, sometimes got a good beating, and sometimes was sent to prison.
*Archdeacon Davies.
So the years pa.s.sed on, and we know little of what happened in them. Some people like to think that Shakespeare was a schoolmaster for a time, others that he was a clerk in a lawyer's office. He may have been one or other, but we do not know. What we do know is that when he was eighteen he took a great step. He married. We can imagine him making love-songs then. Perhaps he sang:
”O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true-love's coming, That can sing both high and low: Trip no further, pretty sweeting; Journeys end in lovers' meeting; Every wise man's son doth know.
What is love? 'tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure.”*
*Twelfth Night.
The lady whom Shakespeare married was named Anne Hathaway. She came of farmer folk like Shakespeare's own mother. She was eight years older than her boyish lover, but beyond that we know little of Anne Hathaway, for Shakespeare never anywhere mentions his wife.
A little while after their marriage a daughter was born to Anne and William Shakespeare. Nearly two years later a little boy and girl came to them. The boy died when he was about eleven, and only the two little girls, Judith and Susanna, lived to grow up.
In spite of the fact that Shakespeare had now a wife and children to look after, he had not settled down. He was still wild, and being caught once more in stealing game he left Stratford and went to London.
Chapter XLVI SHAKESPEARE--THE MAN
WHEN Shakespeare first went to London he had a hard life. He found no better work to do than that of holding horses outside the theater doors. In those days the plays took place in the afternoon, and as many of the fine folk who came to watch them rode on horseback, some one was needed to look after the horses until the play was over. But poor though this work was, Shakespeare seems to have done it well, and he became such a favorite that he had several boys under him who were long known as ”Shakespeare's boys.” Their master, however, soon left work outside the theater for work inside. And now began the busiest years of his life, for he both acted and wrote. At first it may be he only altered and improved the plays of others. But soon he began to write plays that were all his own. Yet Shakespeare, like Chaucer, never invented any of his own stories. There is only one play of his, called Love's Labor's Lost, the story of which is not to be found in some earlier book. That, too, may have been founded on another story which is now lost.
When you come to know Shakespeare's plays well you will find it very interesting to follow his stories to their sources. That of King Lear, which is one of Shakespeare's great romantic historical plays, is, for instance, to be found in Geoffrey of Monmouth, in Wace's Brut, and in Layamon's Brut. But it was from none of these that Shakespeare took the story, but from the chronicle of a man named Holinshed who lived and wrote in the time of Queen Elizabeth, he in his turn having taken it from some one of the earlier sources.
For, after all, in spite of the thousands of books that have been written since the world began, there are only a certain number of stories which great writers have told again and again in varying ways. One instance of this we saw when in the beginning of this book we followed the story of Arthur.
But although Shakespeare borrowed his plots from others, when he had borrowed them he made them all his own. He made his people so vivid and so true that he makes us forget that they are not real people. We can hardly realize that they never lived, that they never walked and talked, and cried and laughed, loved and hated, in this world just as we do. And this is so because the stage to him is life and life a stage. ”All the world's a stage,” he says,
”And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances: And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.”*
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