poetry, there is the stamp of living and homely truth. It shows that the great Shakspere was once a Warwickshire lad, that he mingled amid the rural merry-makings of his hobnailed neighbours, that he was fond of warden-pies, and knew the best ingredients for making custards and cheese-cakes. Look at the motto at the head of our chapter—was there ever a painting to equal its simple truthfulness? What busy, bustling, good-natured farmer's wife stood before him for this picture? What life, what stir, what happiness, what a hearty welcome does she give her guests! We see her moving about, "now here at the upper end of the table, now in the middle; on his shoulder, then on his." We hear her talking,-"Why, neighbour, you eat nothing; do try this ham: that beef lay in corn for a fortnight; I cured it myself. And how does my god-daughter, Margery; why did you not bring her? And so poor neighbour Hathaway is no better? Well-a-day! last sheep-shearing feast we danced Green Sleeves' together. That pie is overmuch baked; try the cheesecake : neighbour, I drink to thee. But I must go peep at the fowls I left roasting. Just a small glass to cool me; a welcome to you all." Then she is lost for a few moments, for she was cook, butler, dame, servant. No doubt she was well known about Stratford, and that, on a future day, when the Warwickshire lad's works were printed, some old man, as he stumbled upon the passage would exclaim,— Why that was old Dame So-and-so; I knew her well: her daughter was Billy's sweeting when he was a boy. Hey, he's right. 'She was the prettiest lowborn lass That ever ran on the green sward.' I've seen her dance with Master William, as we used to call him, many a time." For we can scarcely think other 66 wise, than that Perdita was some beautiful rustic maiden; or, it might be, one of the proud daughters from the hall, who had for once descended from her dignity to play the queen of the feast:" for we have seen such condescension in our day at a pastoral May-day game. It might be that her image became clothed in after years with the matured richness and immortal poetry which he has thrown around her; and from her he shadowed forth a form too pure, and too ethereal, to belong to earth, and threw around the memory of his youth a divinity that belongs to heaven. * * * He might have heard the busy housewife give her orders to some country lout; and, listening behind a shading hedge, overheard the Clown talking to himself, and saying,- "Let me see, what I am to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants-rice. What will this sister of. mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers; three men, song-men all, and very good ones. I must have saffron to colour the warden-pies; mace, dates, none; that's out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pounds of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun." This also must have been a copy from the life. Then the Clown "cannot reckon without counters." How often have we seen an illiterate countryman sitting by the roadside, with the contents of his basket emptied upon the ground, and a number of pebbles for "counters" placed beside each article, with the change in his hand trying to make the balance right, and puzzled with the figures the hasty shopman had scribbled upon each of the packets. Sometimes he would undo a parcel, to make sure of what it contained; and then, for the life of him, he could not fold it up again-no, not if the paper had been twice the size; so he would be compelled to tie it up in his neckerchief, knot it well, and make it into a bundle. What a minuteness is there about the whole of this description! What visions of furmity and cheesecakes, and all those good old country dainties, which are found at the rustic feasts of the present day. Another character, that of the pedlar, shows how true the picture of sheep-shearing feast is to nature. Although, in the play, Shakspere lays the scene in Bohemia, yet almost every line tells us that it was beside the Avon, near his father's homestead, amongst the cottagers, with whom he had many a time mingled when a boy. Whenever was there a feast without pedlars, gipsies, fortune-tellers, or beggars being present? We never remember one in our day, although we have visited some scores, such as Maygames, harvest-homes, statutes, sheep-shearings, villagewakes, feasts, tuttings, potations, and merry-makings, with such names as are not to be found in "Hone's Every-day Book." They never could have done without Autolychus: he who hath "songs for man or woman of all sizes; no milliner can so fit his customers with gloves: he has the prettiest love-songs for maids; he hath ribands of all the colours i' the rainbow; cambric, lawns; and he sings them over as if they were gods and goddesses." How rich, in point of improbability, are the ballads the pedlar disposes of: "The old usurer's wife brought to bed of twenty money-bags, and longing to eat adders' heads and toads carbonadoed; the fish that appeared upon the coast, and sung a ballad against the hard hearts of maids." And Mopsa's simple confession, that she loves a ballad in print, "for then we are sure they are true:" and when the subject soars beyond all probability, and staggers her capricious belief, how easily does she become reconciled by the pedlar asserting that it is signed by "five justices, and witnesses more than his pack will hold." How a merry youth like young Shakspere must have enjoyed such a scene! what a good understanding would there soon be between him and the pedlar, who no doubt would apply to him, with a knowing look, to give countenance to any subject which was too outrageous for even their belief. We can almost fancy we see him. What a quiet humour lurks in his eye, whilst he gravely quotes Holinshed, or some old chronicler, to show that wonderful fish have often appeared on our coast-that Mrs. Taleporter, the midwife, was too particular a woman to sign her name to anything that was not true: and one or two of the old men, with whom the immortal boy was a favourite (for who would not love him?) would nudge each other, and laugh at his wit; and perhaps call Shakspere and the pedlar aside, and oh! who would not wish to have heard the jokes cracked at that merry sheep-shearing? Then the old men would perhaps banter the youth, because he had not bought something for his shepherd-queen of the pedlar. There may be more than we know of in his reply, when he says, "I know "She prizes not such trifles as these are; The gifts she looks from me are packed and locked But not delivered." It might be that the poet had not the wherewithal to treat his " queen of curds and cream," and that the remembrance of his poverty struck upon some old scene, while shadowing out, in future years, his "Winter's Tale." Who can tell but what his father, or some meddling relative, stepped in and marred his love for "the prettiest low-born lass that ever ran on the greensward?" or that she, far wealthier, had mercenary friends, who looked upon her union with him as beneath "her pride of place:" or that, whichever way it might chance to be, it called forth, in after years, that splendid burst, wherein he says, "I was not much afeard; for once or twice I was about to speak, and tell him plainly, What Who ever saw a rural feast without flowers? gay nosegays do the villagers wear on such occasions!yet whenever were they before presented in such language as is uttered by Perdita? What would we not give to have preserved a true old English picture of a sheep-shearing feast by England's greatest poet,-if, instead of a princess, the shepherd queen had really been a peasant?—that the sheep-shearing scene had been a portion of the "Merry Wives of Windsor:" "sweet Anne Page," the "mistress of the feast;" Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page, the purveyors; Slender there, the butt of Falstaff; and neither king nor prince guests on the occasion: that the scene had been England instead of Bohemia? What a picture should we have had of the manners of our forefathers! It might have lacked the matchless poetry in which the "Winter's Tale" is steeped; but, oh! what a light it would have thrown upon the characters amongst whom Shakspere mingled? We should have had a few more such sketches, as the living, bustling housewife, whose portrait stands painted at the head of our chapter! What he has done is unequalled; what he could have done can never be known. How flat, dead, and colourless, will appear any painting of our own, after the few masterly touches Shakspere has thrown upon the canvas, and still left unfinished the great picture! |