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Shakspere: Personal Recollections

<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2> <h4>BOHEMIAN HOURS. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. "LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST."</h4> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "I have ventured Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders This many summers in a sea of glory." </div> </div> The literary bohemians of London three hundred years ago were an impecunious and jealous lot of human pismires, who built their dens, carried their loads, and were filled with vaulting ambition just the same as we see them to-day. The hack-writer for publishers, the actor for theatrical managers and the author of growing renown belonged to clubs and tavern coteries, pushing their way up the rocky heights of fame, and struggling, as now, for bread, clothes and shelter, many of the Bacchanalian creatures dying from hunger at the foothills of their ambition; and instead of winning a niche in the columned aisles of Westminster Abbey, dropped dead in some back alley or gloomy garret, to be carted away by the Beadle to the voracious Potter's field. They often courted Dame Suicide, who never fails to relieve the wicked, wretched, insane or desperate from their intolerable situation. <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness, And fear'st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes, Content and beggary hang upon thy back; The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law!" </div> </div> How often at the Miter or Falcon taverns have I seen these little great literary men swell like a toad or puff like a pigeon at the flattery bestowed on them by fawning bohemians, meaner than themselves, who sought a midnight snack and a tankard of foaming ale. Of all the despicable and miserable creatures I have ever known it is the poor starving devil, with latent genius, who attempts to pay court to a cad, snob, or drunken lord around the refuse of literary or sporting clubs in midnight hours. William was always very kind to these threadbare wanderers, and although they often gave him pen prods behind his back, he never betrayed any recognition of their envious stings, but like the lion in his jungle, brushed these busy bees away by the underbrush of his philosophy. He mildly rebuked their pretense, but relieved their immediate wants, impressing upon them the study of Nature and not the blandishments of art, having the appearance of Oriental porcelain or Ph&oelig;nician glass, when it was really crude crockery painted to deceive the sight and auctioned off to the unwary purchaser as genuine material. How many authors, artists and actors of to-day follow in the path of their London ancestors who blow, and brag, and strut in midnight clubs and taverns to the pity and disgust of their table tooters. Speaking one evening at the Red Lion, in the rooms of Florio, I asked William how it was that his plays were so successful, while those of other authors had almost been banished from the dramatic boards. He at once replied: <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> I draw my plots from Nature's law To sound the depths of human life, And through her realm I find no flaw In all her seeming, varied strife; The good and bad are near allied; With sweet and sour forever blent, While vice and virtue side by side Exist in every continent. The poison vine that climbs the tree, Is just as great in Nature's plan As every mount and every sea Displayed below for little man. And every ant and busy bee Shall teach us how to build and toil If we would mingle with the free, Who plough the seas or till the soil. </div> </div> I shall never forget the visit Shakspere and myself paid to the cloistered, columned, pinnacled proportions of Westminster Abbey. It was three o'clock in the afternoon of the 24th of December, 1592. The living London world was rushing in great multitudes by alley, lane, street and park preparing for the celebration of Christmas Eve. Vanity Fair was decked off with palm, spruce, pine, myrtle, ivy and holly to garnish home, hall and shop in honor of Jesus, who had been crucified nearly sixteen hundred years before for telling the truth and tearing down the vested arrogance of religious tyranny. A bright winter sun was gilding the tall towers of the Abbey with golden light, and the mullioned windows were blazing over the surrounding buildings like flashes of fire. We entered the court of Westminster through the old school by way of a long, low passage, dimly lighted corridors, with glinting figures of old teachers in black gowns, moving like specters from the neighboring tombs. As we passed along by cloistered walls and mural monuments to vanished glory, we were soon within the interior of the grand old Abbey. Clustered columns of gigantic dimensions, with lofty arches springing from wall to nave met the eye of the beholder, and stunned by the solemn surroundings, vain man wonders at his own handiwork, trembling with doubt amid the monumental glory of Old Albion. The Abbey clock struck the hour of five as William and myself stood in deep contemplation at Poets' corner. The reverberating tones of time echoed from nave to floor, through cloistered walls and columned aisles, noting the passing hour and ages, like billows of sound rolling over the graves of vanished splendor. Here crumble the dust and effigies of courtiers, warriors, statesmen, lords, dukes, kings, queens and authors; and yet, there is no spot in the Abbey that holds such an abiding interest for mankind as the modest corner where lie the dust of noted poets and philosophers. The great and the heroic of the world may be bravely admired in lofty contemplation of nationality, but a feeling of fondness creeps over the traveler or reader when he bows at the grave of buried genius, while tears of remembrance even wash away the sensuous Bacchanalian escapades of impulsive, poetic revelers. The author, touched by the insanity of genius, must ever live in the mind of the reader, and while posterity shall forget even warriors, kings and queens, it never fails to preserve in marble, granite, bronze and song the name and fame of great poets. David, Solomon, Job, Homer, Horace, <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: changed a period into a comma">Ovid,</ins> Angelo, Dante and Plutarch are deeply imbedded in the memory of mankind, and although great kingdoms, empires and dynasties, have passed away to the rubbish heap of oblivion, the poet, musician, painter, and sculptor still remain to thrill and beautify life, and teach hope of immortality beyond the grave. After gazing on the statues of abbots, Knights Templar, Knights of the Bath, bishops, statesmen, kings and queens, many mutilated by time and profane hands, William stood by the coffin of Edward the Confessor and mournfully soliloquized: <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Westminster! lofty heir of Pagan Temple; Imperial in stone; a thousand years Crowns the record of thy inheritance, Gilding the glory of thy ancient fame, With imperishable deeds— Liberty of thought and action, <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: removed an extra comma after 'shall'">shall</ins> Forever cluster about thy classic form; While new men with new creeds, and reason, Shall overturn the religions of to-day, As thou hast invaded and destroyed The Pagan, Roman rules of antiquity. These marble hands and faces appealing For remembrance, to animated dust Appeal in vain, for we, whose footfalls Only sound in marble ears, cold and listless, Shall ourselves follow where they led, dying Not knowing the mysterious secrets of the grave. Here the victor and vanquished, side by side, Sleep in dreamless rest, Kings and Queens in life, Battling for power, all conquered by tyrant Death, Whose universal edict, irrevocable, Levels Prince and Peasant, in impalpable dust. Crowns to-day, coffins to-morrow, with monuments Mossed over, letter-cracked, undecipherable As the mummied remains of Egyptian Kings. Vain, vain, are all the monuments of man, The greatest only live a little span; We strut and shine our passing day, and then— Depart from all the haunts of living men, With only Hope to light us on the way Where billions passed beneath the silent clay; And, none have yet returned to tell us where We'll bivouac beyond this world of care; And these dumb mouths, with ghostly spirits near Will not express a word into mine ear, Or tell me when I leave this sinning sod If I shall be transfigured with my God! </div> </div> In September, 1592, the second play of Shakspere, "Love's Labor's Lost," was given at the Blackfriars, to a fine audience. He took the characters of the play from a French novel, based on an Italian plot, and wove around the story a lot of glittering talk to please the lords and ladies who listened to the silly gabble of their prototypes. Ferdinand, King of Navarre, and his attendant lords are a set of silly beaux who propose to retire from the world and leave women alone for the space of three years. The Princess of France and her ladies in waiting, with the assistance of a gay lord named Boyet, made an incursion into the Kingdom of Navarre and break into the solitude of the students. Nathaniel, a parson, and Holofernes, a pedant schoolmaster, are introduced into the play by William to illustrate the asinine pretensions of ministers and pedagogues, who are constantly introducing Latin or French words in their daily conversation, for the purpose of impressing common people with their great learning, when, in fact, they only show ridiculous pretense and expose themselves to the contempt of mankind. There are very few noted philosophic sentiments in the play, and the attempt at wit, of the clown, the constable and Holofernes, the schoolmaster, fall very flat on the ear of an audience, while the rhymes put in the mouth of the various characters are unworthy of a boy fourteen years of age. I remonstrated with William about injecting his alleged poetry into the love letters sent by the lords and ladies, but he replied that young love was such a fool that any kind of rhyme would suit passionate parties who were playing "Jacks and straws" with each other. Ferdinand, the King, opens up the play with a grand dash of thought: <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "Let fame that all hunt after in their lives, Live registered upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death, When, spite of cormorant devouring time, The endeavor of this present breach may buy That honor, which shall bait his scythe's keen edge To make us heirs of all eternity." </div> </div> Lord Biron, who imagines himself in love with the beautiful Rosaline, soliloquizes in this fashion: <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife! A woman that is like a German clock, Still a repairing; ever out of frame. And never going aright, being a watch, But being watched that it may still go right! Is not Love a Hercules Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as a sphinx; as sweet and musical As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony!" </div> </div> Holofernes, the Latin pedagogue, criticising Armado, exclaims: Novi hominem tanquam te. His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. And then Holofernes winds up the play with the Owl and Cuckoo song, a rambling verse, Winter speaking: <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick, the shepherd, blows his wail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipped and ways be foul, When nightly sings the staring owl To-who; Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note While greasy Joan doth scum the pot. </div> </div> <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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