" centuries and a half, and has again asserted its rights in England, in despite of waltz and quadrille. We all know, upon the most undoubted testimony, that the Sir Roger de Coverley who to the lasting regret of all mankind caught a cold at the County Sessions, and died, in 1712, was the great-grandson of the worthy knight of Coverley, or Cowley, who "was inventor of that famous country-dance which is called after him."* Who can doubt, then, that William Shakspere might have danced this famous dance, in hall or on greensward, with its graceful advancings and retirings, its bows and curtsies, its chain figures, its pretty knots unravelled in simultaneous movement? In vain for the young blood of 1580 might Stubbes denounce peril to body and mind in his outcry against the horrible vice of pestiferous dancing." The manner in which the first Puritans set about making people better, after the fashion of a harsh nurse to a froward child, was very remarkable. Stubbes threatens the dancers with lameness and broken legs, as well as with severer penalties; but, being constrained to acknowledge that dancing" is both ancient and general, having been used ever in all ages as well of the godly as of the wicked," he reconciles the matter upon the following principle: If it be used for man's comfort, recreation, and godly pleasure, privately (every sex distinct by themselves), whether with music or otherwise, it cannot be but a very tolerable exercise." We doubt if this arrangement would have been altogether satisfactory to the young men and maidens at the Welford Wake, even if Philip Stubbes had himself appeared amongst them, with his unpublished manuscript in his pocket, to take the place of the pipers, crying out to them-" Give over, therefore, your occupations, you pipers, you fiddlers, you minstrels, and you musicians, you drummers, you tabretters, you fluters, and all other of that wicked brood." Neither, when the flowing cup was going round amongst the elders to song and story, would he have been much heeded, had he himself lifted up his voice, exclaiming, "Wherefore should the whole town, parish, village, and country, keep one and the same day, and make such gluttonous feasts as they do?" One young man might have answered, "Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?"§ Crossing the Avon by the ancient mill of Welford, we descend the stream for about a mile, till we reach the rising ground upon which stands the hamlet of Hillborough. This is the "haunted Hillborough" of the lines which tradition ascribes to Shakspere. Assuredly the inhabitants of that fine old farm-house, still venerable in its massive walls and its mullioned windows, would be at the wake at Welford. They press the neighbours from Stratford to go a little out of their way homewards to accept their own hospitality. There is dance and merriment within the house, and shovel-board and tric-trac for the sedentary. But the evening is brilliant; for the sun is not yet setting behind Bardon Hill, and there is an early moon. There will be a game at Barley-Break in the field before the old House. The lots are cast; three damsels and three youths are * Spectator, Nos. 2 and 517. Anatomy of Abuses. Ibid. § Twelfth Night, Act II., Scene III. || See p. 69. chosen for the sport; a plot of ground is marked out into three compartments, in each of which a couple is placed,-the middle division bearing the name of hell. In that age the word was not used profanely nor vulgarly. Sidney and Browne and Massinger describe the sport. The couple who are in this condemned place try to catch those who advance from the other divisions, and we may imagine the noise and the laughter of the vigorous resistance and the coy yieldings that sounded on Hillborough, and scared the pigeons from their old dovecote. The difficulty of the game consisted in this-that the couple in the middle place were not to separate, whilst the others might loose hands whenever they pleased. Sidney alludes to this peculiarity of the game : But half a century after Sidney, the sprightliest of poets, Sir John Suckling, described the game of Barley-break with unequalled vivacity : 02 "Love, Reason, Hate, did once bespeak Three mates to play at barley-break; Love, Folly took; and Reason, Fancy; And Hate consorts with Pride; so dance they : Love coupled last, and so it fell That Love and Folly were in hell. They break, and Love would Reason meet, But Hate was nimbler on her feet; 196 Yet this new coupling still doth tell The rest do break again, and Pride The young Shakspere, whose mature writings touch lightly upon country sports, but who mentions them always as familiar things, would be the foremost in these diversions. He would ride the wild mare with the boys,' »* and play at quoits well," and "change places" at "handy-dandy,”‡ and put out all his strength in a jump, though he might not expect to "win a lady at leapfrog," and run the country-base" with "striplings," and be a "very good bowler." ¶ It was not in solitude only that he acquired his wisdom. knew "All qualities, with a learned spirit, Of human dealings," ** He through his intercourse with his fellows, and not by meditating upon abstractions. The meditation was to apply the experience and raise it into philosophy. There is a temptation for the young men to make another day's holiday, resting at Hillborough through the night. No sprites are there to disturb the rest which has been earned by exercise. Before the sun is up they are in the dewy fields, for there is to be an otter-hunt below Bidford. The owner of the Grange, who has succeeded to the monks of Evesham, has his pack of otterdogs. They are already under the marl-cliffs, busily seeking for the enemy of all anglers. "Look! down at the bottom of the hill there, in that meadow, checkered with water-lilies and lady-smocks; there you may see what work they make; look! look! you may see all busy; men and dogs; dogs and men ; all busy." Thus does honest Izaak Walton describe such an animated scene The otter-hunt is now rare in England; but in those days, when field-sports had the double justification of their exercise and of their usefulness, the otterhunt was the delight of the dwellers near rivers. Spear in hand, every root and hole in the bank is tried by watermen and landsmen. The water-dog, as the otter was called, is at length found in her fishy hole, near her whelps. She takes to the stream, amidst the barking of dogs and the shouts of men; horsemen dash into the fordable places; boatmen push hither and thither; the dogs have lost her, and there is a short silence; for one instant she comes up to the surface to breathe, and the dogs are after her. One dog has just seized her, but she bites him, and he swims away howling; she is under again, and they are at fault. Again she rises, or, in the technical language, vents. Now Sweetlips has her; hold her, Sweetlips! Now all the dogs have her; some above, and some under water: but now, now she is tired, and past losing." This is the catastrophe of the otter-hunt according to Walton. Somerville, in his grandiloquent blank verse, makes her die by the spears of the huntsmen. When Izaak Walton and his friends have killed the otter, they go to their sport of angling. Shakspere in three lines describes "the contemplative man's recreation" as if he had enjoyed it : "The pleasantest angling is to see the fish The oldest books upon angling have something of that half poetical, half devout enthusiasm about the art which Walton made so delightful. Even the author of the Treatise of Fishing with an Angle,' in the Book of St. Albans,' talks of "the sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead-flowers," and the "melodious harmony of fowls ;" and concludes the Treatise' thus:-"Ye shall not use this foresaid crafty disport for no covetyseness to the increasing and sparing of your money only, but principally for your solace, and to cause the health of your body, and specially of your soul; for when ye purpose to go on your disports in fishing ye will not desire greatly many persons with you, which might let * Much Ado about Nothing, Act III., Scene I. you of your game. And then ye may serve God devoutly in saying affectuously your customable prayer, and thus doing ye shall eschew and void many vices." According to this good advice, with which he was doubtless familiar, would the young poet go alone to fish in the quiet nooks of his Avon. With his merry companions about him he would not try the water at Bidford on this day of the otter-hunt. About a mile from the town of Bidford on the road to Stratford was, some twenty years ago, an ancient crab-tree well known to the country round as Shakspere's Crab-tree. The tradition which associates it with the name of Shakspere is, like many other traditions regarding the poet, an attempt to embody the general notion that his social qualities were as remarkable as his genius. In an age when excess of joviality was by some considered almost a virtue, the genial fancy of the dwellers at Stratford may have been pleased to confer upon this crab-tree the honour of sheltering Shakspere from the dews of night, on an occasion when his merrymakings had disqualified him from returning homeward, and he had laid down to sleep under its spreading branches. It is scarcely necessary to enter into an examination of this apocryphal story. But as the crab-tree is associated with Shakspere, it may fitly be made the scene of some of his youthful exercises. He may "cleave the pin" and strike the quintain in the neighbourhood of the crab-tree, as well as sleep heavily beneath its shade. We shall diminish no honest enthusiasm by changing the associa'The Treatyses perteynyng to Hawkynge, Huntynge, and Fisshynge with an Angle.' 1496 |