The Mentor: Shakespeare's Country 3

The Mentor: Shakespeare's Country 3

Shakespeare’s Country

 

THE VILLAGE OF SHOTTERY

 

Monograph Number Six in The Mentor Reading Course

 

 

Tradition has always fixed the house known as Anne Hathaway’s Cottage

in Shottery as the house where Shakespeare wooed and won his bride.

There is no doubt that the house belonged to a family named Hathaway,

but whether to those from whom Anne sprang cannot be said with

certainty.

 

The village of Shottery is about one mile from Stratford. It is a

prosperous little town with one or two industries and many substantial

cottages. Anne Hathaway’s Cottage stands on the outskirts. It is

a rather large building of the Elizabethan period and was once a

farmhouse. It stands today practically as it was in Shakespeare’s

time. In front of the cottage is a small garden gay with old-fashioned

flowers.

 

The house itself is built of wood and plaster and covered with a

thatched roof. The interior is low-ceilinged; and the main room has

a stone floor and wide fireplace with cozy chimney corner. The house

contains an old wooden settle on which Shakespeare may often have sat,

a carved bedstead, and other relics of three hundred years ago.

 

A bedroom which is said to have been that of Anne Hathaway, has a

sloping roof and contains some old pottery, chairs, and tables.

 

Anne Hathaway’s Cottage was purchased for the British nation in 1892

at a cost of about $15,000. It is now cared for by the “Shakespeare

Birthplace Trust.”

 

The Hathaways had lived in Shottery for forty years prior to

Shakespeare’s marriage. At this time the poet was just eighteen, while

Anne herself was nearly twenty-six. They were married in November, 1582.

 

It is not known exactly where Shakespeare and his wife lived during the

first years after their marriage. However, in 1585 he was obliged to

leave his wife and children and go to London to seek his fortune. It is

probable that Anne then returned beneath her parents’ roof. No one can

look upon this humble cottage without a thrill as he realizes that the

garret of the cottage in Shottery may often have welcomed the poet when

he came home from his labors in the great city.

 

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION

ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 4, No. 8, SERIAL No. 108

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

 

 

 

 

SHAKESPEARE’S COUNTRY

 

By WILLIAM WINTER

 

_Poet and Critic_

 

[Illustration: Warwick Castle

 

Cæsar’s Tower from the Lawn]

 

THE MENTOR · DEPARTMENT OF TRAVEL · JUNE 1, 1916

 

_MENTOR GRAVURES_--WARWICK CASTLE · KENILWORTH CASTLE ·

CHARLECOTE · THE CHURCH AND THE RIVER, STRATFORD · THE SOUTH

CHAPEL AND THE SITE OF NEW PLACE, STRATFORD · THE VILLAGE OF

SHOTTERY

 

Entered at the Post-office at New York, N. Y., as second-class

matter. Copyright, 1916, by The Mentor Association, Inc.

 

 

The Shakespeare[1] Country, Warwickshire, is situated nearly

in the center of England, and the birthplace of Shakespeare,

Stratford-upon-Avon, is situated in the southern part of Warwickshire.

A pleasant way in which to enter the Shakespeare Country is to travel

by rail from London to Warwick, and then drive from Warwick to

Stratford. There are two roads for the drive, one twelve miles long,

the other eight. Both are agreeable; but the longer is the better,

because more can be seen by the way. The traveler is wise who lodges

for a few days at Warwick, in order to visit Warwick Castle, St. Mary’s

Church, the ancient Gates, and the hospital for twelve aged men founded

in 1571 by Queen Elizabeth’s favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester

(the scene of Hawthorne’s singular posthumous romance, “Dr. Grimshawe’s

Secret”), and incidentally to make excursions northward to Kenilworth

and Coventry.

 

[1] There are 4,000 variations in the spelling of the name

“Shakespeare.” An entire book has been made up on the subject.

 

[Illustration: CLOPTON BRIDGE, STRATFORD]

 

All those places, in themselves interesting, are associated with

the Shakespeare Story, and a view of them gradually imparts to the

observer’s mind a sympathetic comprehension of the environment in

which Shakespeare was born and reared. The face of the country has,

of course, been changed since his time, because little villages,

fine villas, fertile farms, spacious parks, and blooming meadows now

exist where once there was a woodland called the Forest of Arden (the

indubitable forest, memories of which colored Shakespeare’s fancy when

he wrote “As You Like It”), extending for many miles northward and

westward from a point near Stratford and along the river Avon. Some

things survive, however, which can be seen much as the poet saw them

more than 300 years ago.

 

 

KENILWORTH AND WARWICK

 

[Illustration: THE MILL, GUY’S CLIFF NEAR WARWICK

 

The name is derived from Guy, Earl of Warwick, who once lived as a

hermit, in a cave below the house, and was buried there]

 

When Shakespeare saw Kenilworth Castle he did not, indeed, see it as

it now is, a picturesque mass of ruins,--the wreck made by Cromwell’s

soldiers about 1643-45,--but as a stately structure, at once a fortress

and a palace. Warwick Castle, on the contrary, was the same imposing

structure to him that it is to the observer of today. In the modern

part of that castle now the visitor is shown a sumptuous collection

of paintings, including Van Dyck’s famous equestrian portrait of King

Charles I, and such suggestive relics as the helmet and the death-mask

of Cromwell; but those things impress the mind much less than does the

building itself. That Shakespeare entered the Castle is not known; but

that he saw it cannot be doubted, for Cæsar’s Tower--one of the older

parts of it--which dominates the region around Warwick now has been

grandly conspicuous there for more than 400 years, and in the poet’s

time it must have been familiar to all inhabitants of Warwickshire.

Kenilworth, Coventry, and Warwick figure in some of his historical

plays, and his particular knowledge of all the surroundings of

Stratford, and, indeed, of the whole of central England, through which

the Wars of the Roses raged, is manifested in those dramas. He had

ample opportunity of acquiring that knowledge.

 

The first twenty-one or twenty-two years of his life were passed by him

in his native town. The next twenty-seven years he passed in London,

visiting Stratford once a year. In his closing years, from about 1613

to his death in 1616, he dwelt in Stratford, in his house called New

Place, bought by him in 1597, where he died. The traveler who visits

the Shakespeare Country, viewing it exclusively with reference to its

associations with the poet, should bear in mind these divisions of

time. The larger part of Shakespeare’s work was done in London. It is

mostly as a youth, though a little as a veteran, that personally he is

connected with Stratford.

 

[Illustration: THE RED HORSE HOTEL, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON]

 

[Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING PARLOR IN THE RED HORSE HOTEL]

 

 

BLACKLOW HILL AND GUY’S CLIFF

 

In the course of the drive from Warwick to Stratford (either way)

the traveler passes Ganerslie Heath and Blacklow Hill, places said

to be haunted. On Blacklow Hill the corrupt Piers Gaveston, Earl

of Cornwall, unworthy favorite of that weak king, Edward II, was

beheaded, June 20, 1312, by order of Guy, tenth Earl of Warwick, whom

he had opposed and maligned, calling him “the Black Dog of Arden,”

and some of the peasantry of the neighborhood entertain to this day

an old superstitious notion that dismal bells have been heard to toll

from that hill at midnight. The scene of Gaveston’s decapitation is

marked by a monument. Another place of interest to be seen in the

course of the drive is Guy’s Cliff, a secluded residence, beside the

Avon, traditionally associated with an ancient, fabled Guy, Earl of

Warwick, who, after performing prodigies of valor, retired to that

place and lived and died a hermit. Camden, the antiquary, Shakespeare’s

contemporary, whose “Britannia” (1586) he probably knew, thus happily

describes it:

 

“There have ye a shady little wood, cleere and cristall

springs, mossy bottomes and caves, medowes alwaies fresh and

greene, the river rumbling here and there among the stones with

his streame making a mild noise and gentle whispering, and

besides all this, solitary and still quietnesse, things most

grateful to the Muses.”

 

[Illustration: CHARLECOTE HOUSE]

 

[Illustration: STONELEIGH ABBEY

 

This fine mansion, the seat of Lord Leigh, was erected in the

eighteenth century, and occupies the site of a Cistercian Abbey, of

which a gateway still remains]

 

 

THE BEAUTY OF SHAKESPEARE’S COUNTRY

 

Those quaint words convey a just impression of the beauty of the

Shakespeare Country. Its physical aspects are charming; its inhabitants

and its products are characteristic; its historic associations are

diversified and impressive. It is entirely worth seeing for its

own sake, and it richly rewards the visitor who explores it in a

sympathetic spirit and a leisurely way. But the great glory of

Warwickshire consists in the fact that it was the birthplace of