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avenue, which leads obliquely across the park from the great gateway to the porch of the parish-church. It is an avenue too narrow for carriages, if carriages then had been common; and the knight and his lady walk in stately guise along that grassy pathway, as the Sunday bells summon them to meet their humble neighbours in a place where all are equal. Charlcote is full of rich woodland scenery. The lime-tree avenue, may, perhaps, be of a later date than the age of Elizabeth; and one elm has evidently succeeded another from century to century. But there are old gnarled oaks and beeches dotted about the park. Its little knolls and valleys are the same as they were two centuries ago. The same Avon flows beneath the gentle elevation on which the house stands, sparkling in the sunshine as brightly as when that house was first built. There may we still lie

"All the time of her life a true and faithful servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice; in religion, most sound; in love to her husband, most faithful and true; in friendship, most constant; to what in trust was committed to her, most secret: in wisdom, excelling; in governing her house, and bringing up of youth in the fear of God, that did converse with her, most rare and singular. A great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none unless of the envious. When all is spoken that can be said, a woman so furnished and garnished with virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled of any. As she lived most virtuously, so she died most godly.

"Set down by him that best did know what hath been written to be true, Thomas Lucy."

"Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along his wood,"

and doubt not that there was the place to which

"A poor sequester'd stag, That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,

Did come to languish." *

There may we still see

"A careless herd,

Full of the pasture,"

leaping gaily along, or crossing the river at their own will in search of fresh fields and low branches whereon to browse.

We must associate Charlcote with

happy circumstances. Let us make it the scene of a troth-plight.

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The village of Charlcote is now one of the prettiest of objects. Whatever is new about it-and most of the cottages are new-looks like a restoration of what was old. The same character prevails in the neighbouring village of Hampton Lucy; and it may not be too much to assume that the memory of him who walked in these pleasant places in his younger days, long before the sound of his greatness had gone forth to the ends of the earth, has led to the desire to preserve here something of the architectural character of the age in which he lived. There are a few old houses still left in Charlcote; but the more im

* As You Like It, Act II., Scene 1.

portant have probably been swept away. In one such house, then, about a year we will say before William Shakspere's own marriage, we may picture a small party assembled to be present at a solemn rite. There can be little doubt that the ancient ceremony of betrothing had not fallen into disuse at that period. Shakspere himself, who always, upon his great principle of presenting his audiences with matters familiar to them, introduces the manners of his own country in his own times, has several remarkable passages upon the subject of the troth-plight. In Measure for Measure we learn that the misery of the "poor dejected Ma riana" was caused by a violation of the troth-plight :

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"Duke. She should this Angelo have married; was affianced to her by oath, and the nuptial appointed: between which time of the contract and limit of the solemnity, her brother Frederick was wracked at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his sister. But mark, how heavily this befel to the poor gentlewoman: there she lost a noble and renowned brother, in his love toward her ever most kind and natural; with him the portion and sinew of her fortune, her marriage-dowry; with both, her combinate husband, this well-seeming Angelo.

Isabella. Can this be so? Did Angelo so leave her?

Duke. Left her in tears, and dried not one of them with his comfort; swallowed his vows whole, pretending, in her, discoveries of dishonour; in few, bestowed her on her own lamentation, which she yet wears for his sake; and he, a marble to her tears, is washed with them, but relents not."

Angelo and Mariana were bound then "by oath;" the nuptial was appointed; there was a prescribed time between the contract and the performance of the solemnity of the Church. But, the lady having lost her dowry, the contract was violated by her "combinate" or affianced husband. The oath which Angelo violated was taken before witnesses; was probably tendered by a minister of the Church. In Twelfth Night we have a minute description of such a ceremonial. When Olivia is hastily espoused to Sebastian, she says,

"Now go with me, and with this holy man,
Into the chantry by: there, before him,
And underneath that consecrated roof,
Plight me the full assurance of your faith;
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul
May live at peace: He shall conceal it

Whiles you are willing it shall come to note,
What time we will our celebration keep
According to my birth."

This was a private ceremony before a single witness, who would conceal it till the proper period of the public ceremonial. Olivia, fancying she has thus espoused the page, repeatedly calls him "husband;" and, being rejected, she summons the priest to declare

"What thou dost know

Hath newly pass'd between this youth and me."

The priest answers,

"A contract of eternal bond of love,

Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands,

Attested by the holy close of lips,

Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings;

And all the ceremony of this compact

Seal'd in my function, by my testimony:

Since when, my watch has told me, toward my grave

I have travell'd but two hours."

But from another passage in Shakspere it is evident that the troth-plight was exchanged without the presence of a priest, but that witnesses were essential to the ceremony.* The scene in the Winter's Tale where tbis occurs is altogether so perfect a picture of rustic life, that we may fairly assume that Shakspere had in view the scenes with which his own youth was familiar, where there was mirth without grossness, and simplicity without ignorance :

"Flo.

O, hear me breathe my life

Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem,
Hath sometime lov'd: I take thy hand; this hand,

As soft as dove's down, and as white as it;

Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow,

That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er.

Pol. What follows this?—

How prettily the young swain seems to wash

The hand was fair before !-I have put you out : ---
But to your protestation; let me hear

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Holinshed states that at a synod held at Westminster, in the reign of Henry L., it was decreed "that contracts made between man and woman, without witnesses, concerning marriage, should be void if either of them denied it."

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To the argument of Polixenes that the father of Florizel ought to know of his proceeding, the young man answers,

"Flo.

Come, come, he must not :

Mark our contract."

And then the father, discovering himself, exclaims,-

"Mark your divorce, young sir."

Here, then, in the publicity of a village festival, the hand of the loved one is solemnly taken by her "servant;" he breathes his life before the ancient stranger who is accidentally present. The stranger is called to be witness to the protestation; and so is the neighbour who has come with him. The maiden. is called upon by her father to speak, and then the old man adds,—

"Take hands, a bargain."

The friends are to bear witness to it :

"I give my daughter to him, and will make

Her portion equal his."

The impatient lover then again exclaims,

"Contract us 'fore these witnesses.".

The shepherd takes the hands of the youth and the maiden. Again the lover exclaims,―

"Mark our contract."

The ceremony is left incomplete, for the princely father discovers himself with,

"Mark your divorce, young sir."

We have thus shown, by implication, that in the time of Shakspere betroth ment was not an obsolete rite. Previous to the Reformation it was in all probability that civil contract derived from the Roman law, which was confirmed indeed by the sacrament of marriage, but which usually preceded it for a definite period,—some say forty days,—having perhaps too frequently the effect of the marriage of the Church as regarded the unrestrained intercourse of those so espoused. In a work published in 1543. The Christian State of Matrimony,' we find this passage: Yet in this thing also must I warn every rea

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