But, Shylock, impenetrable to the cries of mercy, says to the judge:

"I have told your grace of what I purpose; And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn, To have the due and forfeit of my bond. The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it; If you deny me, fye upon your law! I stand for judgment; shall I have it?"

A learned doctor of laws, Bellario, is expected to appear as the advocate for Antonio, and the Duke awaits him; but receives a letter saying that a young lawyer named Balthazar will represent him, as sickness prevents his presence.

Portia disguised like a doctor of laws appears in court.

The Duke asks: "Come you from old Bellario?"

Portia replies: "I did, my lord."

Antonio and Shylock stand up in court, and Portia, after surveying each, inquires:

"Is your name Shylock?"

He replies: "Shylock is my name."

She says to Antonio: "You stand within Shylock's control, do you not?"

He responds: "Ay, so he says."

Portia asks: "Do you confess the bond?"

Antonio replies: "I do."

Portia: "Then must the Jew be merciful?"

Shylock asks: "On what compulsion must I? Tell me that?"

Then Portia rises in court and makes this lofty, never to be forgotten speech:

"The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes; 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty: Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above his sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself, And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this,— That in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy, I have spoke this much To mitigate the justice of thy plea; Which, if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence against the merchant there."

Shylock, with unforgiving spirit, replies:

"My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, The penalty and forfeit of my bond!"

Portia asks:

"Is not Antonio able to discharge the money?"

Bassanio replies:

"Yes; here I tender it for him in the court; Yea, twice the sum,"

and still appealing to the Duke, says:

"To do a great right, do a little wrong, And curb this cruel devil of his will!"

Portia says:

"There is no power in Venice can altar a decree established."

And Shylock, lighting up with joy, replies:

"A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!"

Preparation is made to cut the pound of flesh from the breast of Antonio; and this brave old Christian merchant says to his dearest friend, Bassanio:

"Fare you well! Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you; For herein fortune shows herself more kind Than is her custom; it is still her use To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow, An age of poverty."

Portia, speaking to Shylock, says:

"Take thou thy pound of flesh; But, in the cutting, if thou dost shed One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscated Unto the State of Venice!"

The Jew finding himself absolutely blocked consents to take the money offered.

Yet, Portia tells him that his property and life are now at the mercy of the Duke because he has conspired against the life of a citizen of Venice, and bids him:

"Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke!"

Then the great Duke, judge of the court, speaks to Shylock:

"That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit, I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it; For half thy wealth, it is Antonio's, The other half comes to the general state!"

Shylock bravely replies:

"Take my life and all, pardon not that; You take my house, when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life When you do take the means whereby I live!"

Then Antonio says if the Jew will give up all his property to Lorenzo and his daughter Jessica, and become a Christian, he the "Merchant of Venice," will be content.

Portia then triumphantly asks:

"Art thou content, Jew, what dost thou say?"

And poor old Shylock gasps:

"I am content."

Thus ends one of the most barefaced swindles of the ages; and my friend William is responsible for the nefarious and systematic machinery of roguery and persecution injected into the play to satisfy Christian hate against the wandering Jew.

In looking around the world even to-day, we might truthfully exclaim:

"O, Christianity! Christianity! how many crimes are committed in thy name!"

The fifth act of the "Merchant of Venice" winds up with harmonious love and prosperity for all concerned.

At the beautiful home of "Belmont," Bassanio, Portia, Lorenzo and Jessica, as well as Gratiano and Nerissa are married and living in blissful association.

In the moonlit, lovelit conversation between Lorenzo and his Jewish wife, Jessica, Shakspere wings in some of his finest classical allusions, a word banquet for all passion struck lovers.

Lorenzo seated amid waving trees, trailing vines and perfumed flowers illuminated by the mystic rays of Luna, says to Jessica:

"The moon shines bright; in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise; in such a night, Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tents Where Cressid lay that night."

Jessica replies:

"In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew; And saw the lion's shadow ere himself, And ran dismayed away."

Then Lorenzo talks:

"In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea banks, and waved her love To come again to Carthage."

And Jessica:

"In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs That did renew old Aeson."

Lorenzo then triumphant speaks:

"In such a night Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew; And with an unthrifty love did run from Venice, As far as Belmont."

Jessica satirically replies:

"In such a night Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well; Stealing her soul with many vows of faith, And ne'er a true one."

Lorenzo fires back this answer:

"And in such a night Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew Slander her love, and he forgave it her."

Jessica gets in the last word, and says:

"I would outnight you, did nobody come; But hark, I hear the footing of a man."

Lorenzo declines to enter the house for rest or sleep, but still discourses of love and music:

"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night, Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica; look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; There's not the smallest orb, which thou beholdest But in his motion like an angel sings. Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But, whil'st this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot have it! By the sweet power of music; therefore, the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods. Since naught so stockish, hard and full of rage But music for the time doth change his nature, The man that hath no music in himself Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus; Let no such man be trusted."

Portia, Bassanio and friends arrive from the trial of Antonio at Venice, and at the brilliant home of Belmont all is peace and love.

Bassanio discovers that the young lawyer in disguise was Portia, and she twits him for giving away his ring to the young advocate, as a recompense for clearing Antonio from the toils of Shylock; and then she discourses to her friends about music by night:

"Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day; The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attuned; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season, seasoned are To their right praise and true perfection! Peace, there, the moon sleeps with Endymion And would not be awaked." (Music ceases and all retire.)

Music murmurs through the soul Hopes of a sweat heavenly goal, And enchants from pole to pole While the planets round us roll!



CHAPTER XVI.

THE SUPERNATURAL. "HAMLET."

"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right."

"Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all."

Shakspere, in January, 1600, was at the height of his dramatic renown, and at the age of thirty-six was the ripest philosopher in the world, knowing more about the secret impulses of the human heart than any other man.

I could see a great change in his life and thought; for a shade of settled melancholy characterized his action, since the death and burial of Spenser, and the downfall of Essex and Southampton, through the vengeance of Cecil and Bacon, jealous courtiers, who poisoned Queen Elizabeth against the most noted Lords of her court.

Shakspere's theatrical company became involved in the conspiracy of Essex, and an edict was issued against the Blackfriars and Globe playhouses performing their dramatic satires. Children players took their places.

Through the particular vengeance of Lord Bacon, charges of treason were trumped up against Essex, the former benefactor of Bacon, and in due course the head of Essex went to the block in February, 1601.

Thus perished one of the brightest, bravest and loftiest peers of England, a victim to the spleen, hate and tyranny of the ugly Elizabeth, a woman without conscience or morality, when her personal interest was involved. She shines out as one of the greatest and most infamous queens of history, and so long as lofty crime is remembered she will remain on the top pedestal of royal iniquity.

In the course of our classical and historical readings, William had become very much interested in the tragic story of Amleth or Hamlet as told by the Danish writer, Saxo—and Seneca, the great Roman, in his story of Cornelia gives the same tragic tale, while Garnier, the French dramatist, as well as Kyd, the friend of Shakspere, made plays out of the tragic history of the Prince of Denmark.

But it was left for my friend William to gather up the historical bones of the ancient story, and articulate them into a breathing, living, passionate, divine being, whose lofty words and phrases should go sounding down the centuries, thrilling and reverberating in the soul-lit memory of mankind.

The supernatural or spiritual part of creation had ever a fascinating influence upon the Bard of Avon, and all the outward manifestations of nature were infallible hints to him of the inward sources of the Divine, and an absolute belief in the immortality of the soul! His own mind was the best evidence of divinity!

Night after night in the winter of 1600, William would read over, and ponder upon "scraps of thought," that he had at various times put into the mouth of Hamlet, and in our new quarters, near Temple Bar, I assisted him in composing the dramatic story of the melancholy Dane.

That is, I blew the bellows, and when his thought was heated to a red rose hue he hammered out the play on the anvil of his genius, and made the sparks fly in a shower of pristine glory.

His literary blacksmith shop was richly furnished with all the rough iron bars and crude ingots of vanished centuries; and all the best dramatic writers of London filled his thought factory with contributions of their inventions. He worked many of their rough pieces of thought into his dramatic plots; but when the phrase, scene and act were finished and placed before the footlights for rendition, it sailed away, a full rigged ship of dramatic grandeur, showing nothing but the royal workmanship of a master builder, the Homer, Phidias and Angelo of artistic perfection.

Mankind cares but little for the various kinds of wheat that compose the loaf, the wool or cotton that's in the garment, the timber or stone in the house, or the kind of steel in the battleship or guns; all they look for is the perfect structure, as they may see to-day in Shakspere's greatest play—"Hamlet."

While Hamlet is the central figure of the play, old Polonius, the diplomatic double dealer, Laertes, his son, and Ophelia, his daughter, act prominently, while Horatio and the ghost of Hamlet's father express words of lasting remembrance.

Cruel Claudius, the king who murdered Hamlet's father, stole his throne and seduced his wife, is shown up as a first-class criminal villain, while Gertrude, the mother of the young prince, is one of the most sneaking, mild, incestuous queens in history. Such she devils, with heaven in their eyes and face, honeyed words on their lips, and gall and hell in their hearts, are the real seducers of infatuated, willing, ambitious man; and each should dangle at the end of the same rope or hemlock together!

Contrast Gertrude with Ophelia, and you have a fiend of chicanery and crime, with a sweet angel of innocence: "Too good, too fair to be cast among the briers of this working day world and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life. Like a strain of sad, sweet music which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms, like the snowflake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth; like the light surf, severed from the billow, which a breath disperses, such is the character of the delicate and sanctified Ophelia."

In December, 1601, the ban of disgrace was taken from the Globe Theatre, and Burbage and William were permitted to continue their dramatic exhibitions.

"Hamlet" was played the night before Christmas. The house was packed closer than grass on an English lawn, and the applause was almost continuous, like the moan or roar of a distant sea.

Shakspere played the Ghost, Burbage acted Hamlet, Jo Taylor played Horatio, Heminge played Ophelia, Peele played Polonius, Condell acted Claudius, Kempt played Gertrude, Cooke acted Laertes, and the other parts were taken by the best stock actors.

The play opens up on a platform before the castle at "Elsinore," Copenhagen, Denmark.

Bernardo and Francisco are soldiers on night duty. Bernardo says: "Who's there?" Francisco says: "Nay, answer me; stand and unfold yourself."

The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to the night officers, and also to Horatio and Marcellus, but will not speak. They reveal the wonderful story to Hamlet, who makes ready to see and talk to the Ghost the next night at twelve o'clock.

In the meantime, the king, queen and courtiers gather at the grand throne of the castle and talk of the late king.

Hamlet is moody and sad, and will not be comforted, although persuaded by King Claudius and his mother.

Claudius addressing Hamlet, says:

"But, now my nephew Hamlet, and my son How is it that the clouds still hang on you?"

Hamlet says (aside):

"A little more than kin and less than kind. Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun."

Hamlet's mother rebukes him about grieving for his father, and says:

"Do not forever with thy veiled lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust; Thou knowest 'tis common, all that live must die, Passing through nature to eternity!"

Hamlet says:

"Ay, madam, it is common."

Queen says:

"If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee?"

And then surcharged with suspicion of her secret villainy Hamlet exclaims:

"Seems, madam! Nay it is; I know not 'seems;' 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief That can denote me truly; these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play; But I have that within which passeth show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe."

Then, after the exit of the old murder-king and his particeps criminis queen—Hamlet ponders to himself on life and death in these lofty lines:

"O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon against self slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fye on't! O Fye! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two; So excellent a King, that was, to this Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the wind of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on; and yet, within a month— Let me not think on it—frailty, thy name is woman! A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father's body, Like Niobe all tears; why, she, even she— O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason Would have mourned longer,—married with my uncle, My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules; within a month; Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing of her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor can it come to good; But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!"

Laertes before his departure for France gives his sister Ophelia some advice and warns her against the blandishments of Hamlet. He says:

"Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister, And keep you in the rear of your affection, Out of the shot and danger of desire; Be wary then; best safety lies in fear, Youth to itself rebels, though none else near."

This innocent, beautiful girl gave this wise reply to her brother:

"I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother Do not as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whilst, like a puffed and wreckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own read!"

Then Polonius, the wise old father, comes in to hasten Laertes off to France, with this great advice:

"There, my blessing with thee! And these few precepts in thy memory Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue. Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel. But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear it that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man. And they in France of the best rank and station Are of a most select and generous chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all; to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man!"

Good advice is very fine, From those who think and make it; Only one in ninety-nine Will ever stop to take it!

Hamlet and his friends, Horatio and Marcellus, go to the passing place of the Ghost at midnight, and there, to the amazement of Hamlet, he sees the apparition of his father, and exclaims:

"Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou comest in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane; O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements; why thy sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned Hath opened his ponderous and marble jaws, To cast thee up again. What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel, Revisit thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous; and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?"

The Ghost passes across the stage and beckons Hamlet to follow, who frantically rushes after the apparition and says:

"Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I'll go no farther."

Ghost utters in sepulchral voice:

"Mark me! I am thy father's spirit; Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confined to fast in fires Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest words Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and confined locks to part And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porcupine. But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List! list, O list! If thou did'st ever thy dear father love,— 'Tis given out that sleeping in my orchard A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused; but know thou, noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown!"

Hamlet exclaims:

"O my prophetic soul! My uncle!"

The Ghost then makes this remarkable speech:

"Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce! won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen; O, Hamlet, what a falling off was there! From me, whose love was of that dignity That it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage; and to decline Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine! But virtue, as it never will be moved, Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, So lust, though to a radiant angel linked Will sate itself in a celestial bed And prey on garbage. But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air; Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, My custom always of the afternoon, Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches on my ears did pour The leperous distilment; whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man, That quick as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body; And with a sudden vigour, it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood: So did it mine; And a most instant tetter barked about, Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, All my smooth body. Thus was I sleeping, by a brother's hand, Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched; Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhoused, disappointed, unaneled; No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head; O, horrible! most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest. But, howsoever, thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And begins to pale his ineffectual fire! Adieu! adieu! adieu! remember me!"

As the Ghost ceased and passed off the stage a peculiar shivering cheer passed over the great audience, and revealed for the first time in London dramatic art, a supernatural being seemingly clothed in the habiliments of flesh, blood and bones, resurrected from the tomb.

Do spirits revisit this world again When they're released from this body of pain, And do they inhabit a realm afar Beyond the bright sun and sparkling star?

King Claudius, his queen and Polonius were anxious to get at the real cause of Hamlet's lunacy, and send him away from the castle to prevent future trouble. The guilty conscience of the king daily feared detection.

Hamlet brooded so intently upon the cruel murder of his father that he was constantly on the verge of insanity, devising plans to either slaughter himself or wreak a terrible vengeance upon his uncle and mother.

Treading the halls of his ancestral palace he uttered this transcendent soliloquy that has puzzled the ages:

"To be or not to be; that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause; there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns— That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But the dread of something after death The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turns awry And lose the name of action!"

Ophelia at the suggestion of her father and the other conspirators, comes in at this juncture and sounds Hamlet as to plighted love and gives back the gifts he gave her.

Hamlet pretending to madness still talks double and asks Ophelia if she be honest, fair and beautiful.

She says: "Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?"

Hamlet replies: "Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness; this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once."

Ophelia says: "Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so."

And then the fickle Hamlet says: "I loved you not," and with supercilious advice, exclaims:

"Get thee to a nunnery! Why would'st thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; But yet I could accuse me of such things That it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; With more offenses at my back Than I have thoughts to put them in; Imagination to give them shape, Or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do Crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us— Go thy ways to a nunnery! If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry.— Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow! Thou shall not escape calumny! If thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; For wise men know well enough what monsters women make of them! Go! get thee to a nunnery!"

Hamlet thus plays the madman to the eye and mind of Ophelia, that she may report his lunacy; and believing her former lover deranged, after his exit utters this wail of grief:

"O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword; The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observed of all observers, quite, quite down! And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; That unmatched form and feature of blown youth, Blasted with ecstacy: O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see."

The instruction of Hamlet to the players is the most conclusive evidence that William Shakspere was not only the greatest dramatic author, but an actor and orator of matchless mould.

There was no character that his soul conceived in any of his plays, fool or philosopher, that he could not act better than any man in his company.

In the first rehearsal of his plays he usually read the lines to his men and gave them the cue and philosophy of the character to be enacted.

A few days before the play of Hamlet I heard him deliver this speech for the edification of the whole troupe, that they might know how to render their lines in an effective and oratorical manner:

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced It to you, trippingly on the tongue; But if you mouth it, as many of your Players do, I had as lief the town-crier, Spoke my lines. Now do not saw the air too Much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; For in the very torrent, tempest, and, As I may say, whirlwind of your passion, You must acquire and beget a temperance, That may give it smoothness. O, it offends Me to the soul to hear a robustious Periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion To tatters, to very rags, to split the Ears of the groundlings, who for the most part Are capable of nothing, but inexplicable Dumb-shows and noise, I would have such a fellow Whipped for overdoing Termagant; It out-herods Herod; pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own Discretion be your tutor: suit the action To the word, the word to the action; With this special observance, that you o'erstep Not the modesty of nature; for anything So overdone is from the purpose of playing, Whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; To show virtue her own feature, scorn her Own image, and the very age and body Of the time his form and pressure. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, Though it make the unskilled laugh, cannot but Make the judicious grieve; the censure of The which one must in your allowance Overweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, And heard others praise, and that highly, Not to speak it profanely, that neither Having the accent of Christians nor the Gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so Strutted and bellowed, that I have thought Some of nature's journeymen had made men, And not made them well, they imitated Humanity so abominably!"

In all the troubles and vicissitudes of Hamlet's life, young Lord Horatio remained his unfaltering friend; and this tribute to friendship is one of the best in Shakspere. Hamlet says:

"Horatio, thou art even as just a man As e'er my conversation coped withal, Nay, do not think I flatter; For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast but thy good spirits, To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered? No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear? Since my dear soul was mistress of its choice And could of men distinguish, her election Hath sealed thee for herself; for thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; A man that fortune's buffets and rewards Hast taken with equal composure; and blest are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger To sound what stop she pleases. Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart As I do thee!"

In the dumb show murder play, before the King and Queen Shakspere puts these phrases in the mouths of the players and Hamlet:

"The great man down, you mark his favorite flies; The poor advanced makes friends of enemies; And hitherto doth love on fortune tend; For who not needs, shall never lack a friend."

"But what's that, your Majesty; And we that have free souls, it touches us not; Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung!"

King Claudius frightened at the mock play runs away, and Hamlet says to Horatio:

"Why let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, while some must sleep Thus runs the world away."

"'Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world; now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother; I will speak daggers to her, but use none!"

King Claudius the night before his death, after conspiring with Polonius for the exile of Hamlet utters this self-accusing, remorseful soliloquy:

"O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal, eldest curse upon it— A brother's murder. Pray can I not, Though inclination be as sharp as will; My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, And like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect. What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood? Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy But to confront the visage of offense? And what's in prayer but this twofold force, To be forestalled ere we come to fall, Or pardoned being down? Then I'll look up; My fault is past. But O, what form of prayer Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder? That cannot be, since I am still possessed Of those effects for which I did the murder, My crown, mine own ambition and my queen, May one be pardoned and retain the offense? In the corrupted currents of this world Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above; There, is no shuffling, there, the action lies In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults To give in evidence!"

In the midnight interview of Hamlet with his mother, Polonius hides behind a curtain to spy upon the words of the "melancholy Dane," and is killed by a sword thrust of Hamlet, who exclaims:

"How now! a rat, dead for a ducat."

Then Hamlet holds his mother to the talk and pours these lines of liquid gall into her trembling ear and frightened heart:

"Look here, upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man; This was your husband. Look you now, What follows: Here is your husband: like a mildewed ear, Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this foul moor? Your husband; a murderer and a villain; A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole And put it in his pocket! A king of shreds and patches!"

King Claudius, alarmed at the death of Polonius and his own guilty state, conspires with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to take Hamlet to England and get rid of him, saying:

"Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed abroad, Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night; Away! for everything is sealed and done That else leans on the affair; pray you, make haste!"

Hamlet before retiring thus bemoans his slowness in wreaking a just vengeance upon his murderer uncle:

"How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure, he that made us with such large discourse Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To rot in us unused. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument; But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor's at the stake. How stand I then, That have a father killed, a mother stained, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep, while to my shame I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men, That for a fantasy and trick of fame Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody or nothing worth!"

The beautiful Ophelia becomes insane after her father's death, and wanders about the castle singing disjointed love songs and uttering musings.

Queen Gertrude says:

"How now, Ophelia?"

She sings:

"How should I your true love know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff And his sandal shoon."

The king asks:

"How do you do, pretty lady?"

She replies:

"They say the owl was a banker's daughter; Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be."

Laertes returns from France and finds his sister insane from grief over the loss of her father, and viewing this innocent wreck parading palace halls, exclaims:

"Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia! O heavens! is it possible a young maid's wits Should be as mortal as an old man's life?"

Ophelia unconsciously sings:

"They bore him barefaced on the bier; Hey no nonny, nonny hey nonny; And in his grave rained many a tear— Fare you well, my dove!"

Holding a spray of flowers in her hands she fitfully plucks them and murmurs:

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; Pray you, love, remember; And there is pansies, that's for thoughts; There's fennel for you, and columbines; There's rue for you, and here's some for me; We may call it herb of grace on Sunday; O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy; I would give you some violets— But they withered all when my father died!"

Hamlet and his party in sailing for England encounter a war-like pirate ship, and in the fight and grapple Hamlet alone is taken prisoner and his keepers go to destruction.

He suddenly appears at Elsinore, and goes to the churchyard, where a grave is being prepared for Ophelia, who was drowned in a garden stream in her mad ramblings.

Hamlet converses philosophically with the grave diggers about the bones, skulls and greatness of a politician, courtier, lady, lawyer, tanner; and when the skull of the old king's jester is thrown out of the grave after a sleep of twenty-three years, Hamlet, speaking to Horatio, says:

"Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio; A fellow of infinite jest, of most Excellent fancy, he hath borne me On his back a thousand times, and now How abhorred in my imagination It is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung Those lips that I have kissed, I know not How oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, That were wont to set the table in a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning! Quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, And tell her, let her paint an inch thick, To this favor she must come; Make her laugh at that!"

The funeral procession with the corpse of Ophelia now appears, Laertes, King, Queen, train, and priests attending.

The priests tell Laertes that were it not for "great command" his sister's body "should in ground unsanctified have lodged till the last trumpet," because of alleged suicide.

Laertes peremptorily says:

"Lay her in the earth And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be When thou liest howling in perdition."

Laertes and Hamlet, both overpowered with frantic grief, leap into the new-made grave and struggle for precedence of affection, the former exclaiming:

"Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, Till of this flat a mountain you have made To o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head Of blue Olympus!"

Hamlet, replying to the King, Queen and Laertes, says:

"I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers, Could not, with all their quantity of love Make up my sum: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground Singeing his pate against the burning zone Make Ossa like a wart!"

Hamlet tells his friend, Horatio, how on his voyage to England he discovered that King Claudius gave commission to his enemies to send his head to the block. Hamlet says:

"Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."

King Claudius seeing no other way to get rid of Hamlet, consults his secret courtiers and brews up the passion existing between Laertes and himself, proposing that they fence with rapiers for a great prize, the King betting that in twelve passes of swords Laertes makes not three hits on Hamlet.

The grand contest for excellence in sword-play comes off in the main hall of the palace, while the King, Queen, lords and courtiers await the entrance of Hamlet.

The rapier point handed by the King to Laertes, was dipped in deadly poison, so that it but touch the flesh of Hamlet certain death prevailed, and even of the wine cups set on the table to quench the thirst of the artistic fencers, one was poisoned and intended for Hamlet's dissolution.

Laertes was in the poison plot, and Hamlet felt in his soul that foul play was intended, but in the general scramble and conclusion he hoped to wipe off the score of his vengeance from the slate of royal iniquity and slaughter.

Trumpet and cannon sound for beginning the sword contest.

First passes favored Hamlet, and the King, grasping the poison wine cup, says:

"Hamlet, this pearl is thine; Here's to thy health!" (Offering him the cup.)

Hamlet replies:

"Give Laertes the cup, I'll play this bout first; set it by a while."

Hamlet makes another pass and touches Laertes, and the Queen grasps the poison cup in her excitement and drinks to her son.

The King impulsively says:

"Gertrude, do not drink!" (Aside) "It is the poisoned cup!"

The Queen, as God and Fate would have it, says stubbornly:

"I will, my lord, I pray you pardon me!"

In the third round Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poisoned-pointed rapier, and in the struggle Hamlet grasps Laertes' rapier and in turn wounds his antagonist.

At this moment the Queen falls off her throne, and dying, says to Hamlet:

"O, my dear Hamlet; the drink, the drink; I am poisoned!"

Laertes then falls, and Hamlet, seeing through the plot, exclaims:

"O, villainy! Ho! let the door be locked; Treachery! seek it out!"

Laertes makes the dying confession of his treachery:

"It is here, Hamlet; Hamlet, thou art slain; No medicine in the world can do thee good, In thee there is not half an hour of life; The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenomed; the foul practice Hath turned itself on me, lo, here I lie, Never to rise again; thy mother's poisoned; I can no more; the King, the King is to blame!"

Then Hamlet, as a lion rushing on his prey, exclaims:

"The point envenomed too, Then, venom, to thy work." (Stabs the King.)

The King falls and says: "I am but hurt"; while Hamlet grasps the poisoned cup of wine and dashes it down the throat of the guilty monster, exclaiming:

"Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion: is thy union here?— Follow my mother!" (King dies.)

Laertes' last words:

"The King is justly served; Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet."

Hamlet replies:

"Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee. I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu! You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time,—as this fell sergeant—Death, Is strict in his arrest—O, I could tell you— But let it be. Horatio, I am dead! Thou livest; report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied. O, I die, Horatio; The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit, I cannot live to hear the news from England; But I do prophesy the election lights On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice; So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited. The rest is silence!" (Dies.)

And then to close the scene of slaughter, the noble and faithful Horatio, bending over the body of his princely friend, exclaims:

"Now cracks a noble heart; Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

Such tumultuous applause I never heard in a theatre, and shouts for "The Ghost" and "Hamlet" prevailed until William and Burbage came from behind the curtain and made a triple bow to the audience as the clock in the tower of Saint Paul struck the midnight hour.

The lesson in great Hamlet taught, Is that a throne is dearly bought By lawless love and bloody deeds, Which fester like corrupted weeds, And smell to heaven with poison breath Involving all in certain death. For fraud and murder can't be hid Since Eve and Cain did what they did And left us naked through the world, Like meteors in midnight hurled, To darkle in this trackless sphere, Not knowing what we're doing here!



CHAPTER XVII.

DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. CORONATION OF KING JAMES.

"All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity."

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

"What have kings that privates have not too, Save ceremony?"

The New Year of sixteen hundred and three brought no consolation or happiness to Queen Elizabeth. Her reign of forty-four years had been bloody, but patriotic; and while she had long since passed the noonday of her glory, her sunset of life hastened to its setting with a fevered brain and tortured heart, to think that she had not one real friend living, but surrounded by cunning courtiers, who were already manipulating for the favor and patronage of King James.

Like a blasted pine on a mountain peak, She moaned and sighed every day and week; Awaiting the deadly, stormy gust That laid her low in the crumbling dust.

To amuse her lingering hours of grief Lord Cecil desired the Shakspere Company to give its new version of "Love's Labor's Lost" before the Queen in the grand reception hall at Richmond.

Burbage went to the castle and made all the preliminary preparations for the play, and on the night of the second of February, 1603, the fantastic love play was given for the amusement of the Virgin Queen. She sat in regal solitude, and with mock laughter tried to enjoy the mimic show.

The royal audience was great in rank, beauty, wealth and intellect, yet through the various scenes of the light-hearted drama, Elizabeth only swung her head, muttered and sighed, while her courtiers evinced great amusement at the predicament of the various lovers in the play. Nothing can minister to a mind diseased.

The Queen professed great disappointment at the absence of Shakspere from the performance—"on account of sickness," as Burbage told her Royal Highness. But William and myself remained at our rooms at Temple Bar that evening working on the first draughts of "Macbeth" to catch the praise and patronage of King James, the Scotch-Englishman.

Since the execution of Essex and imprisonment of Southampton Shakspere never said a word in praise of Elizabeth, and when he heard of her death on the 26th of March, 1603, he betrayed no feeling of grief, but on the contrary, expressed delight that the way was now clear for the release of Southampton and other victims of Elizabeth from the Tower.

Several weeks before her death Elizabeth was afflicted with a choking sensation, and the ghosts of her murdered sister—Mary, Queen of Scots, and her former lover, the beheaded Earl of Essex, appeared nightly.

Cecil asked her a few days before she died how she felt, when she muttered, "My lord, I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck."

Thus a cruel, bloody conscience sat like a fiend over her dying sighs and groans, and though surrounded with the wealth and glory of the world, the Virgin Queen stepped into eternity with only the memory of a successful tyrant to light her to the Pluto realms of her father, King Henry the Eighth!

Her funeral procession and burial in Westminster Abbey was the grandest exhibition of royal pomp and magnificence. The whole population seemed to fill all the alleys, streets and parks of the great city, with the army and navy leading the funeral cortege, while the great bells from steeple, tower and temple rang out their periodical wail of sonorous sounds for twenty-four hours.

The body of Elizabeth had been scarcely cold in death when Lord Cecil and the Royal Council proclaimed James of Scotland, King of England, Ireland, Scotland and France, tumbling over each other in a mad race to throw themselves prostrate before the rising sun, forgetting in a day the honors and benefactions showered upon them for forty years by their late mistress.

And thus we see from age to age, The greed of man on every page; No matter whether young or old, His strife in life is search for gold!

King James left Edinburgh on the 5th of April with a royal escort for London, and by easy stage from town to town and castle to castle, made a triumphal march to London, where he arrived on the 7th of May, 1603, putting up at the Whitehall Palace. The lords of the realm and millions of faithful subjects gave James their loyal adhesion and support, lauding him to the skies as monarch of the realm and defender of the Faith. Hope had no thorns in her crown.

Protestants and Catholics alike, on their first rush of spontaneous patriotism, made a bid for the patronage of the new king, who, although reared a Protestant, was known to have sympathy for certain Catholic lords, who tried to save his mother—Mary, Queen of Scots, from the fatal block. James never forgave Elizabeth for the murder of his mother, and in his inmost heart despised his predecessor.

King James after his coronation and triumphal entry into London on the 15th of March, 1604, ordered a partial jail delivery, releasing hundreds of prisoners in Scotland, Ireland and England, exempting only highway and house robbers, murderers, and those who had committed overt acts of treason against the crown.

Many political prisoners had been immured in the Tower and other state prisons on trivial or trumped up charges, preferred by jealous courtiers on personal or religious grounds.

James was very friendly to the dramatic profession, and granted a charter to the Shakspere Company to play at the Blackfriars, Globe, Prince, Fortune and Curtain theatres.

In the coronation procession nine of the "Kings Company" appeared dressed out in fantastic array, wearing four yards and a half each of silk-scarlet cloth.

The nine chief actors thus honored by the King were William Shakspere, Augustine Phillips, Laurence Fletcher, John Hemmings, William Sley, Robert Armin, Henry Condell, Richard Cowley and Richard Burbage.

King James sent for Shakspere and Burbage and told them to be ever in readiness as the King's servants to perform at any of the palaces that he might entertain domestic or foreign guests, and assured them that the puritanical policy that had hounded them in the past should not prevail during his reign, believing that the stage, properly managed, was as great an educator for the people as the church.

When William told me of this interview with the King I expressed great delight, with the other literary bohemians that now there sat on the throne of old Albion, a patron of poetry, painting, music and sculpture.

The Church of Rome and the Church of England had been battling for nearly a hundred years in Britain for the mastery; and although the devotees of Luther's Reformation had cracked the creed of popes and princes, there was a general demand for a new version and translation of the Bible, cutting out the Catholicism of the old book and expurgating the vulgarity and superstition engrafted on the "Word of God" by the apostles and bishops of the first, second and third centuries, after Christ had been crucified for the sins of all mankind.

Curious kind of celestial justice, to kill any man for my sins and crimes? I prefer to suffer for my own sins and not fall back on a "scapegoat" to carry them off into the wilderness.

On the first of September, 1604, a great religious conclave was held at Hampton Court by the established church and the Puritans, and there it was determined to make a new, revised and complete edition of the Bible, by the royal authority of King James.

On the first of May, 1607, forty-seven of the most learned men of the British realm assembled in three parties at Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster to make a new Bible for the guidance of mankind. Hebrew, Greek and Latin scholars made up the great conclave; and after four years of detailed labor the King James edition of the Bible was published to the world, cutting loose forever from the power of Rome.

Although the "Word of God" has been revised several times since by man there are yet a large number of sentences and verses in the Old and New Testament that might be expurgated in the interest of decency, reason and science.

This electric age is too rapid and wise to gulp down the obsolete doctrine of ancient fanaticism, and the preachers of to-day are painfully alarmed at the decreasing number of pewholders and patrons, who once listened to their rigmarole platitudes or eloquent dissertations on the power and locution of an unknown God.

On Christmas Eve, 1607, the "King's Players," with Shakspere and Burbage in the respective roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, produced that great historical play at the grand reception room of Whitehall, in the presence of King James and the nobles of his court, surrounded by the ministers and diplomats from all the civilized nations of the world.

I never saw a grander audience, interspersed with the most beautiful ladies of the world, who shone in their jewels and diamonds like a field of variegated wild flowers, besprinkled with the morning dew.

The witches in the play seemed to startle the King, and more than ever convince him that these inhabitants of earth and air were all of a reality, and should be destroyed wherever found, believing that they held the destiny of man in the caldron of their incantations.

"Come, come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here; And fill me from the crown to the toe, top full Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse; That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief; come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell! That my keen knife see not the wound it makes; Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark!"

This speech of the devilish Lady Macbeth made a deep impression on the audience, and caused the King to squirm in his throne chair at the contemplation of the murder of Duncan, but when William entered as Macbeth and rendered the following speech James wished himself a million miles away, and yet applauded to the echo the murdering thoughts of the Scottish chieftain:

"If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, With his surcease, success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,— We'd jump the life to come; but, in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor. This evenhanded justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice, To our own lips. He's here in double trust; First as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife himself. Besides, this Duncan Hath born his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless coursers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind; I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, And falls on the other!"

Still brooding on the murder of Duncan, Macbeth says:

"Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee; I have thee not, and yet I see thee still, Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but A dagger of the mind; a false creation, Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain? I see thee yet in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools of the other senses, Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still; And on thy blade and handle, gouts of blood, Which was not so before, there's no such thing; It is the bloody business, which informs Thus to mine eyes, now o'er the one-half world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtained sleeper; now witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and withered murder Alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear The very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. While I threat, he lives, Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives; I go and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell!"

After the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth is constantly haunted with the ghost of her victim, and in midnight hours, sick at soul, walks in her sleep, talking of her bloody deed:

"Out damned spot! out I say! Here's the smell of the blood still; All the perfumes of Arabia Will not sweeten this little hand!"

And then retiring to her purple couch, amidst the cries of her waiting woman, she dies with insane groans echoing through her castle halls.

Macbeth, the pliant, cowardly, ambitious tool of his wicked wife, is at last surrounded by Macduff and his soldiers, and informed that his lady is dead.

And then soliloquizing on time and life, he utters these philosophic phrases:

"She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word; To-morrow; and to-morrow, and to-morrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury— Signifying nothing!"

And then, in the forest in front of the castle Macbeth is at last brought to bay and killed by Macduff; but the murderer of Duncan, brave to the last, exclaims:

"Yet I will try the last; before my body I throw my warlike shield; lay on Macduff, And damned be him that first cries, Hold, enough!"

A whirlwind of applause echoed through the royal halls at the conclusion of the great Scotch historical drama, and Shakspere was loudly called before the footlights, making a general bow to the audience, and paying deep, low courtesy to the King, who beckoned him to the throne chair, and placed about his neck a heavy golden chain with a miniature of His Majesty attached. William was glorified.

"Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ!"



CHAPTER XVIII.

SHAKSPERE AS MONOLOGIST. KING JAMES.

"He lives in fame that died in virtue's cause."

"The king-becoming graces Are justice, verity, temperance, stableness, Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude."

Shakspere became a prime favorite of King James, and occasionally he entertained the Bard at Whitehall Palace, introducing him to the bishops, cardinals and lords, who were interested in the revision of the Bible. They were astonished at the detailed knowledge of Shakspere, touching the "Word of God;" and when he entered into a dissertation of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin philosophers and "divines" who concocted the history of the ancients, they marveled at his native erudition.

These modern preachers had been educated and empurpled in the classical ruts of ancient superstitious divinity, while William communed with immediate nature, and taught lessons of virtue and vice on the dramatic stage that impresses the rushing world, far more than dictatorial dogmas or pulpit platitudes.

Shakspere was a constant searcher of all religious bibles, and particularly pondered on the Christian story of the creation, prophecies, crucifixion and revelation. Paganism was the advanced guard of Christianity!

Monks, priests, preachers, bishops, cardinals, popes, princes, kings, emperors and czars had exercised their minds and hands as commentators on the old philosophy of an unknown God; and William saw no reason why he should not extract from or paraphrase the best logical phrases and sentences of the Bible.

His sonnets and plays are filled with the hidden meaning of the scriptures, and those who read closely and delve deeply into the works of the Bard of Avon will need no better moral teacher. His axioms and epigrams are used to-day as the proverbial philosophy of practical life, and the whole world is indebted to the sons of a carpenter and a butcher for the greatest pleasure and philosophy that has ever been enunciated on the globe!

The years 1611, 1612 and 1613 found William at the pinnacle of his dramatic glory, and like a ripe philosopher he finished his most thoughtful plays, "Timon of Athens," "A Winter's Tale," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Pericles," "Cymbeline," "Henry the Eighth," and his cap sheaf in the grain field of thought, "The Tempest."

The constant intellectual labor of Shakspere began to tell on his body, but his mind like a slumbering volcano, emitted flashes of heat and light, irradiating the midnight of literary mediocrity and gilding his declining days with golden flashes of fame and fortune.

He sold his interest in the Blackfriars and Globe theatres, and purchased property in London and Stratford, making every preparation as a wise and thrifty man for himself and his children and family. William ever kept an eye on the glint and glory of gold, and while his bohemian theatrical companions were squandering their shillings at midnight taverns with "belles and beaux" he "put money in his purse," and kept it there.

Gold is power everywhere; Best of friends in toil and care; And it surely will outwear Royal purple here or there!

King James, in searching for an alliance to strengthen his throne by a marriage with his beautiful and brainy daughter, Elizabeth, finally hit upon the Elector Frederick, Count Palatine of Germany, and in the spring of 1613 all the loyal nobility of England were delighted that a matrimonial alliance had been made with a Protestant prince.

While King James lent his official power to the Protestant religion and aided the Reformation in its rapid encroachments upon the papal power of Rome, he socially and clandestinely gave ear to the priests, bishops and cardinals of the Catholic church.

The ceremonials incident to the marriage of Frederick and Elizabeth were splendid in the songs, dances, masques, parades, fireworks, and dramatic entertainments at Whitehall.



A dozen of the most appropriate plays of Shakspere were enacted before the nobility of the realm; and the diplomatic corps from foreign lands were greatly charmed by the magnificence of the theatrical displays.

The King spent one hundred thousand dollars in the palace and London festivities of the marriage of his beautiful daughter, and he secretly pawned his word and jewels to secure the ready cash.

As an intellectual climax to the splendid, royal nuptials, King James invited to the wedding banquet three thousand of the most noted men and women of the world and informed his guests that at the conclusion of the feast the most wonderful dramatic artist of the age—William Shakspere, would recite in monologue from his own plays rare bits of philosophic eloquence.

The benevolent reader will be glad to know and see that I have carefully preserved the following autographic note of His Majesty King James, inviting William to the wedding banquet:

"WHITEHALL, Feb. 14th, 1613.

"To WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, "Our Royal Dramatic Poet.

"GREAT SIR: You will appear this evening at seven o'clock, at Whitehall, to entertain by monologue, at nuptial banquet, three thousand guests.

"JAMES, Rex."

The Archbishop of Canterbury tied the nuptial knot. The bride and groom, arrayed in white satin and German purple, respectively, looked magnificent as they knelt at the palace altar to receive the final blessing of the Episcopal Church amid the glorious greetings of wealth and power.

Fourteen salutes from the royal artillery in honor of Frederick and Elizabeth and St. Valentine's Day, echoed from the heights of Whitehall, and carrier pigeons with love notes were sent flying over the temples, churches and towers of London to notify all loyal subjects that the throne of old Albion had been strengthened by an infusion of Germanic blood.

Promptly at seven o'clock St. Valentine's evening, Richard Burbage, Ben Jonson, Shakspere and myself drove up in our festooned carriage to the palace portals of Whitehall, and were ushered into the presence of the great assembly doing honor to the royal bride and groom, Frederick and Elizabeth.

The King sat on a throne chair at the head of the banquet board, with his daughter and son-in-law on his left, while the Queen sat on his right.

The other royal guests were seated according to their ancestral rank, while our dramatic quartette occupied a special table, William at the head on the right of the King and Queen, elevated as an improvised stage, with Shakspere, the most intellectual man of the world, "the observed of all observers!"

The play of knife and fork, laugh and jest, toast and talk lasted for two hours, and then as the foam on the brim of the beakers began to sparkle, the King, in his royal robes arose, and said:

"My loyal subjects, health and prosperity to Great Britain and Germany, and love and truth for Frederick and Elizabeth."

The three thousand guests standing responded with a storm of cheers, and then the King remarked:

"We are honored to-night by the presence of William Shakspere, our most loyal and intellectual subject, who will now address you in logic and philosophy from his own matchless plays."

(Lord Bacon looked as if he wanted to crawl under the table at the King's compliment to the Bard of Avon.)

Shakspere arose, dressed in a dark purple suit, knee breeches and short sword by his side, bowed majestically, and for two hours entranced the royal assembly with these eloquent pen pictures of humanity:

My good friends; I'll skip across the fields of thought And pluck for you the sweetest flowers, That I have from Dame Nature caught To cheer the lingering, leaden hours. While vice and virtue side by side Go hand in hand adown the years, Virtue alone, remains the bride To banish all our falling tears; And here to-night like stars above These flowers of beauty blush and bloom— Commanding honest human love,— Immortal o'er the voiceless tomb!

Othello thus defends himself against the charge of bewitching Desdemona:

"Most potent, grave and reverend signiors, My very noble and approved good masters, That I have taken away this old man's daughter, It is most true; true, I have married her; The very head and front of my offending Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in speech, And little blessed with the set phrase of peace; For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith, Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used Their dearest action in the tented field; And little of this great world can I speak, More than pertains to feats of broil and battle; And therefore, little shall I grace my cause In speaking for myself; yet, by your gracious patience I will a round unvarnished tale deliver Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms, What conjuration, and what mighty magic, (For such proceeding I am charged withal) I won his daughter with!"

* * * * *

"Her father loved me, oft invited me; Still questioned me the story of my life, From year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes That I have passed. I ran it through, even from my boyish days, To the very moment that he bade me tell it. Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances Of moving accidents, by food and field; Of hair-breadth 'scapes, the imminent deadly breach; Of being taken by the insolent foe, And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence And demeanor in my travel's history; Wherein of caverns vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak, such was the process And of the cannibals that each other eat, The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. These things to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline; But still the house affairs would draw her thence; Which ever as she could with haste despatch, She'd come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse; which I observing Took once a pliant hour; and found good means To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart, That I would all my pilgrimage dilate Whereof by parcels she had something heard, But not intentively; I did consent; And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffered. My story being done She gave me for my pains a world of sighs; She swore—in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange; 'Twas pitiful; 'twas wondrous pitiful; She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished, That heaven had made her such a man, she thanked me, And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. Upon this hint, I spake; She loved me for the dangers I had passed; And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used, Here comes the lady, let her witness it!"

Timon of Athens, a wealthy, spendthrift lord, becomes bankrupt by his generous entertainment of friends, but maddened by their ingratitude, retires to a forest cave by the sea, giving this parting curse to the people of Athens, and later scattering gold among a band of thieves. Hear the self-ruined epicure:

"Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall That girdlest in those wolves! Dive in the earth, And fence not Athens! Matrons turn incontinent! Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools, Pluck the grave, wrinkled senate from the bench And minister in their steads! To general filths Convert of the instant, green virginity! Do it in your parents' eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast; Rather than render back, out with your knives, And cut your trusters' throats! bound servants steal! Large-handed robbers your grave masters are; And kill by law! maid, to thy master's bed; Thy mistress is of the brothel! son of sixteen, Pluck the lined crutch from the old, limping sire; With it beat out his brains! piety, and fear Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth, Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighborhood, Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades, Decrees, observances, customs and laws, Decline to your confounding contraries, And yet confusion live! Plagues incident to men, Your potent and infectious fevers heap On Athens, ripe for stroke! thou cold sciatica, Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt As lamely as their manners! lust and liberty Creep in the minds and marrows of your youth; That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive, And drown themselves in riot! itches, blains, Sow all the Athenian blossoms; and their crop Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath; That their society, as their friendship, may Be merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee, But nakedness, thou detestable town!

* * * * *

You must eat men. Yet thanks I must you con, That you are thieves professed; that you work not In holier shapes; for there is boundless theft In legal professions. Rascal thieves; Here's gold; go, suck the subtle blood of the grape, Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth And so 'scape hanging; trust not the physician; His antidotes are poison, and he slays More than you rob; take wealth and lives together; Do villainy, do, since you profess to do it, Like workmen. I'll example you with thievery; The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun; The sea's a thief, whose liquid surges resolves The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief, That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen From general excrement; each thing's a thief; The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power Have unchecked theft! Love not yourselves; away— Rob one another! There's more gold; cut-throats; All that you meet are thieves! To Athens, go, Break open shops! Nothing can you steal But thieves do lose it!"

Jaques, in the forest of Arden, discourses to the exiled Duke of the fools of fortune, and the nature of man.

"A fool, a fool!—I met a fool in the forest A motley fool;—a miserable world! As I do live by food, I met a fool; Who laid him down and basked him in the sun, And railed on Lady Fortune in good terms. In good set terms,—and yet a motley fool. Good morrow, fool, quoth I. No, sir, quoth he, Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune; And then he drew a dial from his poke; And looking on it with lack-luster eye Says very wisely: It is ten o'clock; Thus may we see, quoth he, how the world wags; 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine; And after an hour more, 'twill be eleven; And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot, And thereby hangs a tale! When I did hear The motley fool thus moral on the time, My lungs began to crow like chanticleer, That fools should be so deep contemplative; And I did laugh sans intermission, An hour by his dial. O noble fool! A worthy fool! Motley is the only wear!"

* * * * *

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits, and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and pewking in the nurse's arms; And then the whining school boy, with his satchel, And shining, morning face, creeping like a snail Unwilling to school; and then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow; then a soldier; Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth; and then the justice; In fair, round belly, with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances, And so, he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon; With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side; His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big, manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound; Last scene of all That ends this strange, eventful history In second childishness, and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything!"

In "Measure for Measure" the brave Duke, the pure Isabella and cowardly Claudio discourse thus on death:

"Be absolute for death; either death or life, Shall thereby be sweeter. Reason thus with life,— If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing But none but fools would keep; a breath thou art, (Servile to all the skiey influences) That dost this habitation, where thou keepest, Hourly afflict; merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou laborest by thy flight to shun, And yet run'st toward him still; Thou art not noble; For all the accommodations that thou bear'st Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant: For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm! Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; For thou exist'st on many thousand grains That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not; For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get; And what thou hast forgett'st; Thou art not certain For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, After the moon. If thou art rich, thou art poor; For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And Death unloads thee! Friend hast thou none; For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire The mere effusion of thy proper loins, Do curse the gout, leprosy, and the rheum For ending thee no sooner; Thou hast nor youth, nor age, But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both; For all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty To make thy riches pleasant!"

* * * * *

"O, I do fear thy courage, Claudio; and I quake Lest thou a feverous life should'st entertain, And six or seven winters more respect Than a perpetual honor. Dar'st thou die? The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies! Ay, Isabella, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible, warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world; or to be worse than worst Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts Imagine howling! 'Tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death!"

King Henry the Fourth, on his deathbed thus bitterly rebukes Prince Hal for his heartless haste in taking the crown before the last breath leaves his father:

"Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought; I stay too long by thee, I weary thee. Dost thou so hunger for my empty chair, That thou wilt needs invest thee with mine honors Before thy hour be ripe? O, foolish youth! Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee. Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity Is held from falling with so weak a mind That it will quickly drop; my day is dim. Thou hast stolen that, which after some few hours, Were thine without offense; and at my death, Thou hast sealed up my expectation; Thou life did manifest, thou lov'st me not, And thou wilt have me die assured of it. Thou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts; Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart, To stab at half an hour of my life. What! can'st thou not forbear me half an hour? Then get thee gone; and dig my grave thyself; And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear; That thou art crowned, not that I am dead, Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse Be drops of balm, to sanctify thy head; Only compound me with begotten dust; Give that which gave thee life, unto the worms; Pluck down my officers, break my decrees; For now a time is come to mock at form. Harry the Fifth is crowned; up, vanity! Down royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence! And to the English Court assemble now, From every region, apes of idleness! Now, neighbor confines, purge you of your scum; Have you a ruffian, that will swear, drink, dance, Revel the night; rob, murder and commit The oldest sins, the newest kind of ways! Be happy, he will trouble you no more; England shall double gild his treble guilt; For the Fifth Harry from curbed license plucks The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog Shall flesh his tooth in every innocent. O, poor Kingdom, sick with civil blows! When that my care could not withhold thy riots What wilt thou do, when riot is thy care? O, thou wilt be a wilderness again, Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!"

King Lear, the generous old monarch of Britain, in a spasm of parental love, bequeathes his dominion to his two daughters, Goneril and Regan, and gave nothing to the beautiful Cordelia. Hear the old man rave at his ungrateful daughters and the corrupt world:

"Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous, when thou show'st in a child, Than the sea monster! Hear, nature, hear! Dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose, if Thou did'st intend to make this creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! Dry up in her the organs of increase; And from her degraded body never spring A babe to honor her! If she must teem, Create her a child of spleen; that it may live And be a thwart disnatured torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles on her brow of youth; With falling tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother's pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!"

* * * * *

Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts, and hurricanes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world! Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once, That make ingrateful men! Rumble thy belly full! Spit fire! Spout rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters; I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness, I never gave you kingdom, called you children, You owe me no obedience; why then let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand your slave, A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man; But yet I call you servile ministers, That have with two pernicious daughters joined Your high-engendered battles 'gainst a head So old as this! I am a man more sinned against Than sinning,...

Ay, every inch a King! When I do stare, see, how the subject quakes! I pardon that man's life; what was thy cause? Adultery;— Thou shalt not die; die for adultery! No! The wren goes to it; and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive, for Gloster's bastard son Was kinder to his father than my daughters Got between the lawful sheets; To it luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.— Behold yon simpering dame, Whose face between her forks presageth snow; That minceth virtue, and does shake the head To hear of pleasure's name; The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to it With more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, Though women all above; But to the girdle do the gods inherit, Beneath is all the fiends.

* * * * *

Through tattered clothes small vices do appear Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold And the strong lance of justice breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it!"

Prospero, the Duke philosopher and magician of the "Tempest," is my greatest conception, where I command invisible spirits to work out the fate of man, and show that love and forgiveness are the greatest attributes. Prospero is blessed with a pure and faithful daughter—Miranda, and an honorable son-in-law—Ferdinand.

"If I have too austerely punished you, Your compensation makes amends; for I Have given you here a thread of mine own life, Or that for which I live; whom once again I tender to thy hand; all thy vexations were but my trials of thy love, and thou Hast strangely stood the test; here afore heaven I ratify this my rich gift. O, Ferdinand, Do not smile at me, that I boost her off, For thou shall find she will outstrip all praise, And make it halt behind her. Then, as my gift, and thine own acquisition, Worthily purchased, take my daughter; But If thou dost break her virgin knot before All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rites be ministered, No sweet sprinkling shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow; but barren hate, Sour-eyed disdain, and discord, shall beshrew The union of your bed with weeds so loathly That you shall hate it both; therefore, take heed As Hymen's lamps shall light you!

* * * * *

You do look, my son, in a moved sort As if you were dismayed; be cheerful, Sir; Our revels now are ended; these our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and are Melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabrick of this vision The clod-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rock behind; We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep!

* * * * *

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves; And ye, that on the sands with fruitless feet Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid (Weak masters though you be), I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt; the strong based promontory Have I made shake; and by the spurs plucked up The pine and cedar; graves, at my command, Have waked their sleepers; gaped, and let them forth, By my so potent art; But this rough magic I here abjure; and when I have required Some heavenly music (which even now I do) To work mine end upon their senses, that This airy charm is for—I'll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my books!"

The fall of Cardinal Wolsey from the pinnacle of earthly power was the work of his own duplicity, greed and fraud, and all ministers of state may take warning from this great wreck of unholy ambition! King Henry the Eighth sacrificed everything for his physical and religious ambition. Listen and profit by the last words of the old, ruined Cardinal:

"O, Father Abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye; Give him a little earth for charity! I have touched the highest point of all my greatness And, from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting; I shall fall Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no man see me more!

* * * * *

"Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness! This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; The third day, comes a frost, a killing frost; And, when he thinks, good, easy man, full surely His greatness is a ripening—nips his root, And then he falls as I do. I have ventured Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders This many summers in a sea of glory; But far beyond my depth; my high blown pride At length broke under me; and now has left me Weary, and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream that must forever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye; I feel my heart new opened; O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors! There is betwixt that smile he would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; And when he falls he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again! The King has gone beyond me, all my glories In that one woman (Anne) I have lost forever; No sun shall ever usher forth mine honors, Or gild again the noble troops that waited Upon my smiles. Go, get thee from me, Cromwell, I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now To be thy lord and master; seek the King; That sun, I pray, may never set! I have told him What and how true thou art; he will advance thee; Some little memory of me will stir him (I know his noble nature) not to let Thy hopeful service perish too. Good Cromwell, Neglect him not, make use now, and provide For thine own future safety. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me Out of thy honest truth to play the woman. Let's dry our eyes; and thus far hear me, Cromwell; And when I am forgotten, as I shall be And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee; Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory, And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor Found thee a way out of his wreck to rise in; A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it! Mark but my fall, and that that ruined me, Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition, By that sin fell the angels; how can man then, The image of his own maker hope to win by it? Love thyself least; cherish those hearts that hate thee; Corruption wins not more than honesty! Still in thy right hand carry gentle place To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not! Let all the aims thou aim'st at be thy country's; Thy God's and Truth's; then if thou fall'st, O, Cromwell, Thou fall'st a blessed martyr; serve the King; And, pray thee, lead me in; There take an enventory of all I have To the last penny; 'tis the King's; my robe And my integrity to heaven, is all I dare now call my own. O, Cromwell, Cromwell, Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my King, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies!"

At the conclusion of this greatest of monologues King James arose at the head of the royal banquet board, and lifting a glass of sparkling champagne, proposed three cheers for Shakspere, which were given with intense feeling, echoed and re-echoed through those royal halls like thunder music from the realms of Jupiter.

The King beckoned William to approach the throne chair, and there, in the presence of the nobility of the realm, placed upon his lofty brow a wreath of oak leaves, with a monogram crown ring to decorate the digit finger of the brilliant Bard.

It was worth the gold and glory of all the ages to have heard the "Divine" William scatter his nuggets of eloquence; and until my pilgrimage of a thousand years reincarnates me again into the "Island of Immortality," I shall cherish that banquet night as the greatest milestone in the memory of my ruminating rambles.

Glory, like the sun on rushing river, Shines down the years, forever, and forever!



CHAPTER XIX.

STRATFORD. SHAKSPERE'S DEATH. PATRIOTISM DOWN THE AGES.

"The sands are numbered that make up my life; Here must I stay, and here my life must end."

"Time is the King of man, For he is their parent, and he is their grave, And gives them what he will, not what they crave."

During the years 1614, 1615 and 1616 Shakspere sauntered about for pleasure and business among the bohemians and nobility of London, Oxford and Stratford, piecing and renewing his personal and real estate for the benefit of his two daughters, Susannah and Judith, and thus making every preparation for that eternal sleep that never fails to shut down the pale and bloodless eyelids of meandering, melancholy man.

The spectacular play of "King Henry the Eighth" was given at the Globe Theatre on the evening of the 29th of June, 1613.

It had been largely advertised as a royal historical dramatic treat, and the nobility were there in great force.

William and myself before leaving London occupied a private box as spectators on the left of the great stage. The audience numbered nearly two thousand, pit, gallery and cockloft being filled to overflowing.

During the third act of the play a cannon was fired, giving a grand salute to the mimic King Henry and his royal train as they appeared before the assembled multitude.

Part of the gun wadding fired by the mock cannon was thrown on the open roof of the Globe, and immediately ignited the thatch, spreading flames around the top rim of the great octagonal playhouse.

Shakspere saw at once the danger of stampeding the audience through the two great, high doors, and with his natural calmness and imperial courage rushed in front of the footlights and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, there is no danger if you be calm and brave, and file out of the building in good order."

"Those near the right and left doors will please go out slowly, and all the actors will remain on the stage until the people disappear." At this juncture, at the suggestion of William, the actors were ordered to sing "God Save the King," and every mortal escaped unhurt from the building. Yet two hours after it was a mass of blazing cinders and ashes.

Burbage, Jonson, Fletcher, Drayton, Condell, Heming and Peele continued to furnish rare sports and masks for theatrical and court edification, but the brilliant star that had shone with undimmed luster for thirty years on the dramatic stage of London was only glowing with a lambent light, throwing its last rays over the world as it went down in crimson glory over the western hills of Warwickshire.

Yet, while the great poet and dramatist himself would never again tread the play platform, or throw his sonorous, magic voice over a London audience, the great children and characters of his matchless brain would hold the dramatic boards and thrill the heart and soul of mankind as long as human nature laughed and suffered on the globe.

Shakspere had more self-control than any man I ever met, and his reason was ever holding court in his conscience.

He, who reigns within himself, and rules His passions, desires and fears, is ever King!

After thirty years of a wandering battle with Dame Fortune, testing her griefs and glories, it was a sweet consolation for William and myself to drift back to the scenes of childhood and tread again the streets, roads, fields and hills that blessed our boyhood hours.

In the spring of 1614 William and myself wandered over the fields and ridges to Coventry, and visited Warwick Castle. The young Earl of Leicester gave us a hearty welcome; for the praise that William had received at court and the light that dazzled from his lamp of literary fame made him an honored guest in cot or palace, strewing about his pathway the flowers of faith and affection.

Returning to Stratford one evening in May we stood on the same old hill top beyond the Clopton Bridge, looking at the sparkling spires and steeples of the town; and all seemed as natural as when we left them in the morning of life.

The hills and fields were blooming as of old, the Avon wound its serpentine course to the sea, the song of the ploughman and shepherd swelled from the vale, the lowing of cattle, strolling homeward for the night echoed among the hills, the blackbird, thrush and vagrant crow sang and croaked as they hastened with their mates to their feathered families, and the daisies, wild roses, hedge rows, hawthorn bushes, and grand old elms and oaks bloomed in their everlasting garments of variegated beauty.

As the cardinal colors of the dying day threw their last rays over the placid bosom of the Avon, and the murmur of laughing voices floated up from the town to mingle, as it were, with the curling smoke from glistening chimney tops, William and I scampered down the hill, over the bridge, on by the old mill, and entered the open gate of "New Place," as Judith, his intellectual daughter, welcomed her famous father with exuberant affection.

Here was rest indeed. For like weather-beaten mariners or soldiers of fortune, each of us had been buffeted by the billows of Fate; and yet with all the scars she gave, we never knew a day, though cloudy and stormy, that we could not see rifts of sunshine breaking through the entanglements of adversity.

Our mind, a kingdom was, in every clime, With souls triumphant over tide and time; And though the world might frown upon our way We believed in God and sunshine every day!

The strolling players, literary guild and traveling nobles never failed in passing through Stratford to visit Shakspere at his beautiful and comfortable home at "New Place." It was Liberty Hall to every guest that passed the threshold of the retired Bard, where like a full-rigged ship on a summer sea, he moved down in peace, through the sunset beams of a brilliant life, accompanied by his friends and affectionate daughters into the harbor of rest beneath the walls of old Trinity Church.

Susannah, the oldest daughter, had married Dr. John Hall several years before the poet's death, and occupied the old Shakspere house on Henley street, and her mother lived with the family, a solace to her daughter and beautiful granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall.

Mrs. Shakspere, the buxom Anne Hathaway of vanished years, was entirely subdued and found consolation in her devoted daughters and religious duties. She could be found at every prayer meeting and Sunday sermon in the Shakspere pew of Trinity Church.

William seldom attended Puritan meetings, Episcopal conclaves, or Papist masses. He paid formal respect, at long range, to all sacerdotal ceremonies, not bothering himself about dogmas, creeds and bulls, put forth by little, cunning man for earthly power and financial benefit.