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There are singers of carols even now at a Stratford Christmas. Warwickshire has retained some of its ancient carols. But the singers are wretched chorusmakers, according to the most unmusical style of all the generations from the time of the Commonwealth. There are no "three-man song-men" amongst them, no means and bases;" there is not even a Puritan" who sings psalms to hornpipes."* They have retained such of the carols as will most provoke mockery :

"Rise up, rise up, brother Dives,

And come along with me,

For you've a place provided in hell,
Upon a sarpant's knee."

And then the crowd laugh, and give their halfpennies.

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But in an age of music

we may believe that one young dweller in Stratford gladly woke out of his innocent sleep, after the evening bells had rung him to rest, when in the stillness of the night the psaltery was gently touched before his father's porch, and he heard, one voice under another, these simple and solemn strains :--

"As Joseph was a-walking

He heard an angel sing,

* This night shall be born
Our heavenly king.

He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall.

He neither shall be clothed

In purple nor in pall,

But all in fair linen,

As were babies all.

He neither shall be rock'd
In silver nor in gold,

But in a wooden cradle
That rocks on the mould."

London has perhaps this carol yet, amongst its halfpenny ballads. A man
whose real vocation was mistaken in his busy time, for he had a mind attuned
to the love of what was beautiful in the past, instead of being enamoured with
the ugly disputations of the present, has preserved it; but it was for another
age. It was for the age of William Shakspere. It was for the age when
superstition, as we call it, had its poetical faith :-
:-

"Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm :
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time."‡

Winter's Tale.

William Hone's 'Ancient Mysteries,' p. 92.

Hamlet, Act I., Scene 1.

Surely it is the poet himself, who adds, in the person of Horatio,

"So have I heard, and do in part believe it."

Such a night was a preparation for a "happy Christmas; "-the prayers of an earnest Church, the Anthem, the Hymn, the Homily. The cross of Stratford was garnished with the holly, the ivy, and the bay. Hospitality was in every house; but the hall of the great landlord of the parish was a scene of rare conviviality. The frost or the snow will not deter the principal friends and tenants from the welcome of Clopton. There is the old house, nestled in the woods, looking down upon the little town. Its chimneys are reeking; there is bustle in the offices; the sound of the trumpeters and the pipers is heard through the open door of the great entrance; the steward marshals the guests; the tables are fast filling. Then advance, courteously, the master and the mistress of the feast. The Boar's head is brought in with due solemnity; the winecup goes round; and perhaps the Saxon shout of Waes-hael and Drink-hael may still be shouted. The boy-guest who came with his father, the tenant of Ingon, has slid away from the rout; for the steward, who loves the boy, has a sight to make him merry. The Lord of Misrule, and his jovial attendants, are rehearsing their speeches; and the mummers from Stratford are at the porch. Very sparing are the cues required for the enactment of this short drama. A speech to the esquire, closed with a merry jest; something about ancestry and good Sir Hugh; the loud laugh; the song and the chorus,-and the Lord of Misrule is now master of the feast. The Hall is cleared. Away

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with the joint-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the plate."

There

is dancing till Curfew; and then a walk in the moonlight to Stratford, the pale beam shining equally upon the dark resting-place in the lonely aisle of the Clopton who is gone, and upon the festal hall of the Clopton who remains, where some loiterers of the old and the young still desire

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The

WAS William Shakspere at Kenilworth in that summer of 1575, when the great Dudley entertained Elizabeth with a splendour which annalists have delighted to record, and upon which one of our own days has bestowed a fame more imperishable than that of any annals? Percy, speaking of the old Coventry Hock-play, says, "Whatever this old play or storial show was at the time it was exhibited to Queen Elizabeth, it had probably our young Shakspere for a spectator, who was then in his twelfth year, and doubtless attended with all the inhabitants of the surrounding country at these 'princely pleasures of Kenilworth,' whence Stratford is only a few miles distant." * preparations for this celebrated entertainment were on so magnificent a scale, the purveyings must have been so enormous, the posts so unintermitting, that there had needed not the flourishings of paragraphs (for the age of paragraphs was not as yet) to have roused the curiosity of all mid-England. Elizabeth had visited Kenilworth on two previous occasions. In 1565, after she had created Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester, she bore her sunshine to the possessions she had given to her favourite; and passing through Coventry, "she was honourably received by the mayor and citizens with many fair shows and pageants." It was on this occasion that Humphrey Brownell, the Mayor, must have delighted the Queen with his impromptu speech, worth a hundred * 'On the Origin of the English Stage:'-Reliques, vol. i.

of the magnificent orations of John Throgmorton the Recorder. Elizabeth had a ready hand for the rich gifts of her subjects; and when on their knees the Corporation of Coventry presented her Majesty a heavy purse, her satisfaction broke out into the exclamation, “A good gift, a hundred pounds in gold! I have but few such gifts!" The words were addressed to her lords; but the honest Mayor boldly struck in, " If it please your grace, there is a great deal more in it." "What is that?" said the Queen. "The hearts of all your loving subjects," replied the Mayor.* Elizabeth on this occasion departed from Kenilworth offended with Leicester. Had he been too bold or too timid ? In the summer of 1572 the royal progress was again for Warwickshire. "The weather having been very foul long time before, and the way much stained with carriage," the Queen was conveyed into her good town of Warwick through bye-ways not quite so miry; but the bailiff and the burgesses knelt in the dirt, and her Majesty's coach was brought as near to the said kneelers as it could be. The long oration, and the heavy purse, of course followed. During this visit to Kenilworth in 1572 two important state affairs were despatched.. Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland was beheaded at York; and the offer of marriage of Francis Duke of Alençon was definitively rejected. In the previous June, Leicester wrote touching this proposal," It seems her Majesty meaneth to give good ear to it." There was a counsellor at Kenilworth in the following August who would possess the Queen's "good ear" in a more eminent degree than Montmorenci, the French Ambassador. In 1575, when Robert Dudley welcomed his sovereign with a more than regal magnificence, it is easy to believe that his ambition looked for a higher reward than that of continuing a queen's most favoured servant and counsellor. It is tolerably clear that the exquisite speech of Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream is associated with some of the poetical devices which the young Shakspere might have beheld at Kenilworth, or have heard described::

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