William Shakespeare as he lived Part 41

'Twas, however, all in vain. The conflagration rapidly increased; so that ere the boats neared her, she was on fire in many places; her ordnance thundering off as the flames reached them, rendering it impossible to approach near. That several escaped in their boats was likely; but the English sailors, in spite of Arderne's desire to keep near, rowed back to tho Falcon, whence they remained gazing upon the flaming craft--a terrific spectacle thus seen by night. The shape, cordage, masts, her high and towering p.o.o.p, and all her gilded furniture, displayed in the hot flames, as if some painter had drawn out every portion.

All night and part of the next day did the haughty-looking Spaniard burn, till she was consumed to the water's edge, and then, as the Falcon neared her, there arose ever and anon a column of smoke from the rolling sea, consequent upon the close decks, full of spices, exploding under water, and which the fire had not taken hold of.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

MORE MATTER FOR A MAY MORNING.

Stratford-upon-Avon, like most country towns, possessed at this period, amongst other and worthier inhabitants, a certain amount of fragments, who were indeed in themselves nothing, but who wished to make themselves, as they fancied themselves, something.

Those stuck-up portions of humanity, besides being extremely chaste in their ideas of propriety, were perhaps the most intolerant and unforgiving Christians in the world.

Brotherly love and charity were as often and as forcible in their mouths as real humanity was wanting in their hearts. Did a poor maiden err, and allowed her failing to be discovered, she was to be utterly cast out, abandoned, destroyed--no redemption allowed. Did a youth but shew the germs of a generous spirit, and fling out never so little, he was to be hunted down as one of the wild and wicked, irrecoverably disowned, and driven from society. Such folks are, as we have said, always to be found in a small community of citizens--the unwholesome impurity which circulates in its veins and arteries, and poisons by degrees the stream of its life.

Should any of these envious censors happen to observe one whom they consider of mark and likelihood beyond the common herd, they endeavour to make shipwreck of such superiority, by nipping it in the bud. They feel conscious of their own common-place inferiority. They know themselves in reality nothing, and they resolve to reduce, if they can, the superiority of others to their own level, or to trample and destroy it utterly, if possible.

"Such a commodity of warm slaves" in Stratford had for some time looked with evil eye upon young Shakespeare. There was a superiority about him which, as it was more observable to their envy, they could by no means behold with quietude. They regarded him with a rankling dislike, and received, invented, or promulgated with avidity any thing they could gather to his disadvantage.

Our readers will perhaps think it odd, that one so young should already have found enemies in his native town. They will, however, remember, that "Envy always dogs merit at the heels," and that Shakespeare, as he was no common person, was at the same time the most open, generous, and unsuspicious of mortals--a man likely to expose himself to censure, and care little about it either.

Back-wounding calumny, as he well knew, "the whitest virtue strikes."

With every aggravation of circ.u.mstance, therefore, the somewhat desultory life young Shakespeare led, became canva.s.sed by these good citizens of Stratford.

He was noted as one of irreclaimably wild and dissolute habits--"quoted and signed to do some deed of shame;" and through the industry of Grasp and Doubletongue, the Charlecote exploit got wind all over the neighbourhood.

No sooner did Grasp hear of the return of Sir Thomas Lucy from Kenilworth, and which happened a few days after the adventure, than he hastened over to Charlecote, and demanding audience of the stately knight, laid all he knew before him.

Our readers will readily picture to themselves the ire of Sir Thomas on hearing this piece of intelligence, and which, as Grasp related the conversation he had heard whilst lying in perdue at the hostel, plainly shewed the knight that his park had been broke, and his deer shot under his very nose.

"Ha!" he said, as he rose from his chair, and looked forth into the lovely chase; "and is it so? and are we bearded thus? Now, I will teach these knaves a lesson they shall not easily forget! The _outrecuidance_ of that wild young fellow--that young Shakespeare, it shall go hard, but I will punish. A slight touch of the whip would do much towards turning so fiery a spirit. Ah! and what then, nothing but my parks, my woods, and my forest-walks will suffice for the recreation of that young springald.

"Master Grasp, I am much bounden to you for this intelligence. At once we will proceed against the whole gang of desperadoes. Let me see your list again. Ah! I see. And now, with regard to the Lucy Arms, we will begin there first. No more shall that swaggering Host make mine own property the den in which these ruffians congregate, and lay their plots to rob and plunder me."

"Master Fillpot was soliciting a fresh lease of the Lucy Arms, was he not, honoured Sir?" inquired Grasp.

"He was so," said Sir Thomas. "His lease expired last Midsummer, and I was about to renew it. I will renew it with a vengeance, Master Grasp, as you shall see anon."

"Marry and amen," said Grasp. "The Lucy Arms, grieved am I to say it, since they are pertaining to so honourable a house, hath been for some time a sign of disrepute in the town, a rallying point for certain dissolute and shameless characters to a.s.semble at."

"They shall no longer be so," said. Sir Thomas, ringing a small bell on his table, "We will incontinently proceed there. Let the head keeper be sought immediately," he said to the domestic, who answered the summons.

"He awaits in the court with the hawks, Sir Thomas," said the domestic.

"Order him hither," said the knight, "and inform the ladies I shall not go to the marshes this morning. I have business at Stratford which will employ me till after noon."

The man bowed and withdrew, and immediately afterwards the head keeper, a tall, athletic-looking man, holding his falcon on his glove, entered the room.

"Your fellows keep good watch, Oswald," said the knight. "During my absence at Kenilworth, I have been again robbed; one of the best bucks in the park has been stolen."

"I heard not of it, Sir Thomas," returned the falconer.

"So it appears," returned the knight. "Nevertheless it hath been done; by the same token, this worthy, honest person saw the deer brought to the kitchen of the Lucy Arms at Stratford, where it was skinned, cut up, and actually some part of it eaten by William Shakespeare and his companions."

"You amaze me," said the keeper; "on that night some of those I left in charge of the park were scared by a horrible apparition, the same which has been sometimes seen in the chase of Kenilworth, and so alarmed Roger Watchum, the Earl's head keeper, that he took it as a warning of death, and never joyed after. It hath grievously scared our people too, and they are afraid to go out at night, except in couples."

"Let them quit my service in couples then," said Sir Thomas, "since they are such cowardly hounds, and do you put a bullet through that ghost wherever you find it. I am well served by fellows who, scared by a shadow, run scampering about the woods, and leave the deer to the mercy of caitiffs and common robbers the whilst."

The head keeper well knew the stern disposition of his master, he therefore only bowed and waited further orders, whilst Sir Thomas walked up and down the apartment for some minutes without speaking. After a while, however, he again addressed the keeper.

"Go, sirrah," he said, "get together half a score of my out-door serving-men with pick and crow-bar. Send them forward to the Town-end at Stratford; and do thou and half a dozen of thy fellows, prepare to attend _me_."

"And now, Master Grasp," he said, "we will take your's, and the depositions of the men you have brought with you, who saw this Shakespeare in the act of burying the buck's-hide in the orchard of the Lucy Arms."

Meantime whilst these transactions were taking place at Charlecote, the unconscious delinquents were again a.s.sembled at the hostel, where we fear, it must be confessed, more mischief was being plotted against the quieter portions of the community.

The spirit of mischief, and the love of sport, was, after all, the chief mover of the whole party. They enjoyed those stolen pleasures, and, indeed, doubly relished the banquets they furnished forth, from the very circ.u.mstances of their being so procured.

On the present occasion, the presiding genius of the tavern--the jovial Froth, with Pierce, Caliver, and Careless, were the parties a.s.sembled in the parlour of the Lucy Arms.

'Twas the time, according to the magnificent wight Armado, "when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper,"--about the sixth hour.

The meal was accompanied by sauce of the best quality, hunger, and savoured by good humour and hilarity. It consisted of a smoking haunch from the very buck we have already heard so much controversy about, and which was washed down by large draughts of liquor, various in kind, and exquisite in flavour.

It would have done the reader's heart good to have beheld mine host of the tavern, with the sleeves of his doublet tucked up, standing at the table to carve the savoury joint, and whilst he ever and anon partook of a morsel and pledged his guests in a b.u.mper, waiting upon them and uttering his quaint sayings.

William Shakespeare and Diccon Snare had promised to be of the party on this evening, but from some cause or other which was unexplained, neither had kept the appointment.

Meanwhile the supper was finished, the haunch devoured down to the very bone, the napkin was removed, and the sparkling liquors in their quaint-cut bottles and flasks being placed upon the board, the party sat in for a carouse. They had all been over to Warwick on that day, and pleasure and action gave a zest to the evening's entertainment and the enjoyment of the hour; still the absence of Shakespeare and Snare made the evening's enjoyment, after all, seem incomplete. There was a feeling of something wanting to crown the joy of the party; for those who had once been in the society of the delightful Will, would be likely, without knowing the extent of their feelings at the moment, to experience a terrible void if he disappointed them.

The a.s.semblage, however, were not men to allow the hours to hang on hand; and in the hope and expectation that their friends would join them, they carried on the war in jovial style. Their jests princ.i.p.ally were levelled against Sir Thomas Lucy, whose rude and overbearing keepers they were the more pleased at gaining a triumph over; inasmuch as one or two of their own party had before been severely punished for offences against the game laws--offences, which men of their sort looked upon in the light of no offence at all, and rather as a sort of feather in their caps, anything but a theft; or, if a theft, a species of stealing which those of spirit, and ranking as gentlemen, had a right to indulge in: for what says the old doggrel?

"Harry and I in youth long since Did doughty deeds, but some nonsense; We read our books, we sang our song, We stole a deer; nor thought it wrong; To cut a purse deserves but hanging, To steal a deer gets merely banging."

"Ha, ha!" said the Host. "Art thou there, bullies? Why, then, confusion to these Bohemian tartars! and we lads of mettle will still feast at their expense. What we must hedge, we must lurch. An we are borne down by the vile in spirit, we must resort to cozenage,--we must filch,--we must steal,--we must coney catch,--we must cozen the dappled deer from the fern."

"Truly thou art in the right, Host," said Froth; "but I most especially marvel what keepeth the jovial Will to-night. He struck the buck, and should be at the carving of the haunch. We lack him--we lack him much.

By my fay! the cup lacks flavour, whilst expectation is thus defeated.

Oh, 'tis a glorious boy! Come, lads, let us in his absence cheer our spirits with a catch. Give us Will's own song of the horns: an we have not himself, we'll have his verse." And the party sang,--

"1. What shall we have that kill the deer?

2. His leathern skin and horns to wear.

3. Then sing him home.

Take thou no scorn to wear the horn, It was a crest ere thou wast born."

The chorus was trolled out again and again, the singers applauding their own exertions vigorously, by repeated raps upon the table. Mine Host sat with his hands clasped before him, his head keeping time with drunken precision: