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Shakspere: Personal Recollections

<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2> <h4>QUEEN ELIZABETH. WAR. SHAKSPERE IN IRELAND.</h4> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "Now all the youth of England are on fire And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies; Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thought Hangs solely in the breast of every man. </div> <div class="stanza"> </div> <div class="stanza"> Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war!" </div> </div> The reign of Queen Elizabeth was a most glorious one for the material and mental progress of England, but most disastrous for Philip of Spain, Louis and Henry of France, Mary of Scotland, <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'O'Neill'">O'Neil</ins>, O'Brien, Desmond and Tyrone of Ireland. The Reformation of Martin Luther, a Catholic priest, against the faith and financial exactions of the Pope of Rome, cracked from the Catholic sky like a clap of thunder from the noonday sun, and reverberated over the globe with startling detonation. The cry of personal liberty and personal responsibility to God, went out from the German cloister like a roaring storm and echoed in thunder tones among the columned aisles of the Vatican. Entrenched audacity and mental tyranny was broken from its ancient pedestal, as if an earthquake had shivered the Roman dominions, leaving sacerdotal precedents and papal bulls in the back-alley of bigotry and bloated ignorance. People began to think and wonder how they had been bamboozled for centuries by a set of educated harlequins, who, in all lands and climes exhibited their antics and nostrums for the delectation and digestion of infatuated fools! Millions yet living! Queen Elizabeth's elevation to the throne of England was a bid for the banished and persecuted Protestants to return from foreign lands and again pursue their puritanical philosophy. Pope Paul demanded of Elizabeth that all the church lands, monasteries and cathedrals confiscated by her father, Henry the Eighth, be restored to the Roman hierarchy, and that she make confession and submission to the divine authority of the Catholic Church. Although religion and civil law was in a very chaotic state, Queen Bess was not at all disturbed by the threats of the Vatican or the Armada of Spain. With old Lord Cecil as her prime counsel, she never hesitated to believe in her own destiny, and, like her opponents, the Jesuits, the end always justified the means. When it was necessary to rob or kill anybody, the Queen did so without any compunction of conscience. She did not care for religion one way or the other, and flattered the Catholic and Protestant lords alike, manipulating them for her personal and official advantage. Victory at any price. Business Bessy! She professed great love for her sister, Mary Queen of Scots, but to foil the French Catholics and satisfy the Scotch and English Protestants, Lizzie cut off the head of her beautiful sister. She professed great sorrow after Mary's head was detached. Essex and Raleigh, and many other royal courtiers were sent to the Tower and the block by this red-headed, snaggle-tooth she devil, who only thought of her own physical pleasures and official vanities, sacrificing everything to her tyrannical ambition. She died in an insane, frantic fit. Yet, with all her devilish conduct, she pushed the material interest of Englishmen ahead for five hundred years, and by her patronage of sailors, warriors, poets and philosophers, gave the British letters a boom that is felt to the present day, and through Shakspere's lofty lines, shall continue down the ages to tell mankind that nothing on earth is lasting but honest work and eternal truth. Contention and war is the natural condition of mankind; for all animated nature, from birth to death, struggles for food and shelter. The birds of the air, animals of the land and fishes of the sea, fight and devour each other for food, while man, the great robber and murderer of all, delights in destruction, and from his first appearance on earth to the present day, has been earnestly engaged in emigrating from land to land, seeking whom he may rob and kill for personal wealth and power! Doing it to-day more than ever. Civilization is only refined barbarism; and this very hour the unions of the world are inventing and manufacturing powder, guns and terrible battle ships for the purpose of robbing and killing each other in the next war, nearly at hand. Japan and Russia will tear each other to pieces. Peace is only a slight resting spell for the nations to trade with each other and make secret preparations to finally kill and secure increased dominion. The minions of monarchy and lovers of liberty have invariably despised each other, and waited only favorable opportunity to rob and murder. Even now, they crouch like lions at bay, and fight to the death. Liberty is forging ahead with ten league boots and monarchy is silently, but surely being relegated to the tomb of defeat. Of course, right is right in the abstract, but might is the winning card in the lottery of Fate, and that nation having the most brave men, money and guns will come out victorious! Strong nations have become stronger by robbing and killing weaker nations, and the British Government for a thousand years—particularly from the bloody reigns of Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell—can boast that it has never failed to rob and kill the weak, while truckling and fawning at the feet of Russia and the Republic of the United States, which will soon extend from Bering Sea and Baffin's Bay to the Isthmus of Panama—absorbing Canada, Cuba, Mexico and Central America within its imperial jurisdiction. We intend to, and shall rule the world! Then, this vast Republic, looking over the globe from the dome of our national Capitol, at Washington, can invite all lands to banquet at the table of the Goddess of Liberty, and in mercy to the blind tyranny of monarchy we may lay a wreath of myrtle on the graves of lords, earls, dukes, kings, queens and emperors, to be only remembered as the nightmare of tyranny, extirpated from the earth forever. God grant their speedy official destruction! The gentle reader (of course) will excuse this enthusiastic digression from the story of Queen Bess and my soul friend William Shakspere. If they were present at this moment, they would not dare deny the truth of this memory narrative. In the summer of 1595, the periodical plague of London was thinning out the inhabitants of that dirty city. In the lower part of the city skirting the Thames, the sewerage was very bad and but the poorest sanitary rules existed. After a hard rain, the lanes, alleys and streets ran with a stream of putrefaction, as the offal from many tenement houses was thrown in the public highway, where the rays from the hot sun created malarial fever or the black plague. At such times the theatres and churches were closed, and those who could get out of London, by land or water, fled to the inland shires of England, the mountains of Scotland or to the heather hills of Ireland. Edmund Spenser, the poet and Secretary of Lord Gray for Ireland, invited William and myself to visit his Irish estate near the city of Cork. One bright morning in May, we boarded the good ship Elizabeth, near the Tower, passed out of Gravesend, then into the channel and steered our way to Bantry Bay, until we landed in the cove of Cork, as the church bells were ringing devotees to early mass. The green fields and hills of Ireland were blooming in rustic beauty, the thrush sang from every hawthorn bush, the blackbird was busy in the fields filching grain from the ploughman, the lark, in his skyward flight poured a stream of melody on the air, and all Nature seemed happy, but man. He it is who makes the blooming productive earth miserable, with his voracious greed for gold and power. Elizabeth was then waging war with the various Irish chieftains, importing cunning Scotchmen and brutal Englishmen as soldiers and traders to colonize the lands and destroy the homes of what she was pleased to call "Barbarous, rebellious, wild Irish." Whenever any strong power invades a weaker one for the purpose of robbery and official murder (war), the tyrant labels his victim—a "Rebel!" That is, the original owner of the land destined to be robbed is regarded as bigoted, barbarous and rebellious, unless he submits to be robbed, banished and murdered for the edification and glory of freebooters, thieves, tyrants, assassins and foreign man hunters. Leinster, Munster, Ulster and Connaught, the four provinces of Ireland, had been marked out for settlement by Henry the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth, and hordes of English "carpetbaggers" and soldiers were turned loose on the island to rob, burn and destroy the natives. As soon as counties and provinces were conquered, the military and lordly pets of the various monarchs were given large grants of the lands stolen from the people. O'Neil, O'Brien, Desmond, O'Donnell, O'Connor, Burke, Clanrickard and Tyrone disputed every inch of ground with Pellam, Mountjoy, Gray, Essex, Raleigh and Cromwell; and, although the original commanders and owners of the soil have been virtually banished or killed, their posterity has the proud satisfaction of knowing that more than a million of Englishmen and Scotchmen have been killed by the "Wild Irish," and the battle for liberty shall still go on till the Saxon robber relinquishes his blood sucking tentacles on the Emerald Isle. Poet Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh were rewarded by Queen Elizabeth with thousands of acres, confiscated from the great estate of the Earl of Desmond, who lived at the castle of Kilcolman, near the town of Doneraile. Spenser paid for his stolen land by writing a dissertation on the way to conquer and kill off the Irish race, regarding them no more than the wild beasts of the forest. He also flattered Queen Bess by composing a lot of flattering verse, called the "Faerie Queen," and made her believe she was the beautiful, sweet, mild, chaste, angelic individual that had thrilled his imagination in the royal realms of dreamland. What infernal lies political courtiers, religious ministers and even poets have told to flatter the vanity of governors, presidents, kings, queens, popes and emperors! Yet in all the grand sentiments Shakspere evolved out of his volcanic brain, he never bent the knee to absolute vice, but pictured the horrors of royalty in its most devilish attitudes. His pen was never purchased against truth. We remained at Kilcolman Castle with Spenser for about ten days riding and sporting, and then with an escort of soldiers, were piloted through the "Rebel" counties on to Dublin, where the head of O'Neil graced one of the "Red" walls of that unlucky city. On our route from Cork to Dublin we beheld misery and ruin in every form, burned cabins, churches, monasteries and bridges, and starving women and children on the roadside, crouching under bushes, straw stacks and leaking sheds, with smouldering turf fires crackling on the ashes of despair! We took shipping the next morning for Liverpool, as William was very anxious to get away from the land of funeral wails, where the cry of the "wake" over some dead peasant or defiant "Rebel" echoed on the air continually. <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Where sorrow in her weeping form, Shed tears in sunshine, and in storm, While o'er the land, a reign of blood Was running like a mountain flood! </div> </div> As we pushed away from the sight of the Irish hills, Shakspere, leaning against the foremast, in pathetic tone exclaimed: <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Farewell, old Erin, land of nameless sorrow, Albion crushes thee for opinion's sake; 'Twixt the Bulls of Rome and Laws of England Thy children are robbed, banished and murdered. And cast away from native land, like leaves Bestrewing forest wilds, bleak and lone. Merged in lands of Liberty, thy children Shall rise again, a new born glorious race— Triumphant in home, church and State, honored, Masters of War, Wit, Eloquence and Poetry. Move out and move on, like the rising sun Whose face so oft is clouded with shadows, Yet, shall burst forth again in noonday splendor— Irradiating a bleak and cruel world! </div> </div> <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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