town the river becomes a much more important stream; and the left bank for several miles will appear bold and romantic even to those who are familiar with the Wye. This is especially the case under the Marl Cliff Hill. Here the Arrow contributes its rapid waters to swell the stream. We have now quitted Warwickshire. As we approach Evesham the town with its noble tower and ancient spires forms a most interesting termination to such a walk of three days as we have now briefly traced. THE hospitality of our ancestors was founded upon their sympathies with each other's joys and sorrows. The festivals of the church, the celebrations of sheep-shearing and harvest-home, the Mayings, were occasions of general glad ness. But upon the marriage of a son or of a daughter, at the christening of a child, the humblest assembled their neighbours to partake of their particular rejoicing. So was it also with their sorrows. Death visited a family, and its neighbours came to mourn. To be absent from the house of mourning would have seemed as if there was not a fellowship in sorrow as well as in joy. Christian neighbours in those times looked upon each other as members of the same family. Their intimacy was much more constant and complete than in days that are thought more refined. Privacy was not looked upon as a desirable thing. The latch of every door was lifted without knocking, and the dance in the hall was arranged the instant some young taborer struck a note; or the gossip's bowl was passed around the winter fire-side, to jest and song : "And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe, A merrier hour was never wasted there." * Young men married early. In the middle ranks there was little outfit required to begin housekeeping. A few articles of useful furniture satisfied their simple tastes; and we doubt not there was as much happiness seated on the wooden bench as now on the silken ottoman, and as light hearts tripped over the green rushes as upon the Persian carpet. A silver bowl or two, a few spoons, constituted the display of the more ambitious; but for use the treen platter was at once clean and substantial, though the pewter dish sometimes graced a solemn merry-making. Employment, especially agricultural, was easily obtained by the industrious; and the sons of the yeomen, whose ambition did not drive them into the towns to pursue commerce, or to the universities to try for the prizes of professions, walked humbly and contentedly in the same road as their fathers had walked before them. They tilled a little land with indifferent skill, and their herds and flocks gave food and raiment to their household. Surrounded by the cordial intimacies of the class to which he belonged, it is not difficult to understand how William Shakspere married early; and the very circumstance of his so marrying is tolerably clear evidence of the course of life in which he was brought up. It has been a sort of fashion of late years to consider that Shakspere was clerk to an attorney. Thomas Nash in 1589 published this sentence: "It is a common practice now-a-days, among a sort of shifting companions, that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinize their neck-verse if they should have need; yet English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as Bloud is a Beggar, and so forth and, if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches.† This quotation is held to furnish the external evidence that Shakspere had been an attorney, by the connection here implied of "the trade of Noverint" and "whole Hamlets.' Noverint was the technical beginning of a bond. It is imputed, then, by Nash, to a sort of shifting companions, that, running through every art and thriving by none, they attempt dramatic composition, drawing their tragical speeches from English Seneca. Does this description apply to Shakspere? Was he thriving by no art? In 1589 he was established in life as a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre. Does the use of the term "whole Hamlets" fix the allusion upon him? It appears to us only to show that some tragedy called 'Hamlet,' it may be Shakspere's was then in existence; and that it was a play * A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act II., Scene 1. + Epistle prefixed to Greene's 'Arcadia,' by Thomas Nash. ↑ See Shakspere's Marriage-Bond: Note to this Chapter. was also at which Nash might sneer as abounding with tragical speeches. But it does not seem to us that there is any absolute connection between the Noverint and the Hamlet. Suppose, for example, that the Hamlet alluded to written by Marlowe, who was educated at Cambridge, and was certainly not a lawyer's clerk. The sentence will read as well; the sarcasm upon the tragical speeches of the Hamlet will be as pointed; the shifting companion who has thriven by no art, and has left the calling to which he was born, may study English Seneca till he produces "whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches." In the same way Nash might have said whole Tamburlaines of tragical speeches, without attempting to infer that the author of Tamburlaine had left the trade of Noverint. We believe that the allusion was to Shakspere's Hamlet, but that the first part of the sentence had no allusion to Shakspere's occupation. The context of the passage renders the matter even clearer. Nash begins,-"I will turn back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators." Nash aspired to the reputation of a scholar; and he directs his satire against those who attempted the labours of scholarship without the requisite qualifications. The trivial translators could scarcely latinize their neck-verse-they could scarcely repeat the verse of Scripture which was the ancient form of praying the benefit of clergy. Seneca, however, might be read in English. We have then to ask was Hamlet a translation or an adaptation from Seneca ? Did Shakspere ever attempt to found a play upon the model of Seneca; to be a trivial translator of him; even to transfuse his sentences into a dramatic composition? If this imputation does not hold good against Shakspere, the mention of Hamlet has no connection with the shifting companion who is thus talked to as a trivial translator. Nash does not impute these qualities to Hamlet, but to those who busy themselves with the endeavours of art in adapting sentences from Seneca which should rival whole Hamlets in tragical speeches. And then he immediately says, "But, O grief! Tempus edax rerum;-what is it that will last always? The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be dry; and Seneca, let blood line by line, and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage." The external evidence of this passage (and it is the only evidence of such a character that has been found) wholly fails, we think, in showing that Shakspere was in 1589 reputed to have been an attorney. But had he pursued this occupation, either at Stratford or in London, it is tolerably clear that there would have been ample external evidence for the establishment of the fact. In those times an attorney was employed in almost every transaction between man and man of any importance. Deeds, bonds, indentures, were much more common when legal documents were untaxed, and legal assistance was comparatively cheap. To every document attesting witnesses were numerous; and the attorney's clerk, as a matter of course, was amongst the number. Such papers and parchments are better secured against the ravages of time than any other manuscripts. It is scarcely possible that, if Shakspere had been an attorney's clerk, his name would not have appeared in some such document, as a subscribing witness.* No such signature has ever been found. This fact appears to us to dispose of Malone's confident belief that upon Shakspere leaving school he was placed for two or three years in the office of one of the seven attorneys who practised in the Court of Record in Stratford. Malone adds, "The comprehensive mind of our poet, it must be owned, embraced almost every object of nature, every trade, and every art, the manners of every description of men, and the general language of almost every profession: but his knowledge and application of legal terms seem to me not merely such as might have been acquired by the casual observation of his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical skill; and he is so fond of displaying it on all occasions, that there is, I think, some ground for supposing that he was early initiated in at least the forms of law."t Malone then cites a number of passages exemplifying Shakspere's knowledge and application of legal terms. The theory was originally propounded by Malone in his edition of 1790; and it gave rise to many subsequent notes of the commentators, pointing out these technical allusions. The frequency of their occurrence, and the accuracy of their use, are, however, no proof to us that Shakspere was professionally a lawyer. There is every reason to believe that the principles of law, especially the law of real property, were much more generally understood in those days than in our own. Educated men, especially those who possessed property, looked upon law as a science instead of a mystery; and its terms were used in familiar speech instead of being regarded as a technical jargon. When Hamlet says, "" This fellow might be in his time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizancies his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries," he employs terms with which every gentleman was familiar, because the owner of property was often engaged in a practical acquaintance with them. This is one of the examples given by Malone. 'No writer," again says Malone, "but one who had been conversant with the technical language of leases and other conveyances, would have used determination as synonymous to end.” He refers to a passage in the 13th Sonnet,- We may "So should that beauty which you hold in lease add that Coriolanus uses the verb in the same way : "Shall I be charg'd no further than this present Must all determine here?" The word is used as a term of law, with a full knowledge of its primary meaning; and so Shakspere uses it. The chroniclers use it in the same way. Upon the passage in the Sonnets to which we have just referred, Malone has a note, with a parallel passage from Daniel : * Mr. Wheler, of Stratford, having taken up the opinion many years ago, upon the suggestion of Malone, that Shakspere might have been in an attorney's office, has availed himself of his opportunities as a solicitor to examine hundreds of documents of Shakspere's time, in the hope of discovering his signature. The examination was altogether fruitless. + Posthumous 'Life.' |