They might as well pick out the countless villains of the tragedies and declare that he who presented them must have been a sinner. Truth to tell, the question is one of no importance. Shakespeare was in some respects a man like the majority of men; in other regards he stands alone. Only in this latter aspect have we any occasion to consider him. We have neither the right, the capacity, nor the data by which to sit in judgment; but it is hardly honest to withhold reports, that seem to be well founded, because they do not flatter the youthful career of a great man. In his own "Henry IV." and "Henry V." Shakespeare shows how the recklessness of youth is not incompatible with sound living and a high standard of morality and common sense in the days of responsibility.

CHAPTER III

NATURE ROUND STRATFORD AND SHOTTERY

We find Shakespeare, just out of his teens, travelling on the road to London, and it is worth while to see what equipment and what resources he is taking to the metropolis. It is safe to assume that he has no money, and that his local reputation is not one of the very best, though the worst to be urged against him is that he has loved not wisely but too well—and this fault has not been too clearly substantiated—and that he has ignored the game laws, as so many men had done before, have done since, and will do as long as these laws exist.

The early life of a truly imaginative man had been passed in the most beautiful surroundings that rural England can provide, and by reason, perhaps, of the lack of restrictions, had helped him to enlarge his experiences and develop all the facets of a luminous mind. The expression is chosen deliberately. Man's mind is like a diamond, and experience is the lapidary. Every action, every stroke of good fortune or of bad, leaves its definite mark; every association does the same. As a boy Shakespeare lived in close touch with Nature. His father's business would have brought him into contact with farmers, given him the freedom of their fields, taught him the significance of the seasons. Even now, when glimpses of Elizabethan England are few and far between, we are touched by the supreme peace that still broods over land on which the old-time houses, with their thatched roofs or well-worn tiles, their ingle nooks, their dormer windows, their oak rafters and their many gables, tell of a time when the jerry-builder was not and the suburban villa had not yet come into being. It was an age of beauty, and the walks round Stratford remain beautiful to this hour, despite the growth of villadom and the advent of the railway line.

We can follow the roads that Shakespeare knew, to the woods of his poaching exploits, and the meadows over which he passed to thatched, half-timbered Shottery, where the village inn was still standing when men, now middle-aged, were born. Rustic gardens, white-blossomed orchards, tiny brooks beloved by the kingfisher, trees that may have seen the courting of the poet and his wife, still remain to tell the story of England's unchanging charm. In the spring and early summer there is such an atmosphere about the countryside as George Meredith has created in his "Richard Feverel" when Richard and Lucy meet in "the very spring-tide of their youth." Doubtless there are other regions in plenty, scattered through the length and breadth of our fascinating English country, wherein the attractions are hardly less than here; but Shakespeare's genius has hallowed Stratford for us, because that particular countryside made him a poet and sent him to London, full of such inspiration as has not fallen to any other Englishman even in times when the literary activity of the age has been at its highest point.

It may be suggested in passing that much of the early romance associated with Anne Hathaway's cottage is spurious, and the worthy people who tell of the poet's courtship there overlook the fact that his relations with his wife were clandestine and his marriage almost a secret union. But the cottage itself is beautiful enough to account for the enthusiastic departure from the path of truth, if not to justify it.

Lying on the left as you come out of Stratford to Shottery, past the post-office, to the "Bell Inn," where the road has crossed a stream, we see the cottage, and, horribile dictu! a row of modern brick-built cottages for background! Long, thatched and creeper-covered, built upon slabs of stone, with timber and plaster above, with tiny windows under the thatch, surrounded by a well-filled and carefully tended garden, the place makes a quick and enduring appeal to the imagination, even though the legends associated with it are, for the most part, legends and nothing more. It is easy to realise the supreme beauty of the scene that Shakespeare knew, to understand how the lovers' secret meetings were made all the more memorable by reason of their surroundings. The scene and the associations went to the making of the poet; they were among the treasures he carried up to London when he was compelled to leave Stratford behind him and time and distance were smoothing all the little troubles that had beset his short and uneventful life. He must have heard Stratford and Shottery calling to him in the heart of the town, for when his name was made and his future assured, he came back to home, wife, and little ones to enjoy the "poor remains" of life.

On his road to and from Shottery, he would have passed "under the shade of melancholy boughs" and watched the "guest of summer, the Temple-haunting martlet," that built under the eaves of Anne Hathaway's house. Doubtless to his mood of elation or depression, and to his quick and intimate response to the wild life round him, we owe those clear impressions that connect certain scenes and phases of our life with his more familiar utterances. To hear the cuckoo and the nightingale to-day in the woods round Shottery and Wilmcote is to recall some of the poet's most inspired moods. But it is not the familiar birds alone that caught the poet's eye and stimulated his imagination. In the days of his youth, before he went to London, he must have studied bird life closely and accurately. Nearly fifty wild birds find mention in his plays and poems, and for the most part they are birds he would not have seen in London, though in his day the metropolis was small enough, and the outer London of his time was well-nigh as wild and wooded as the least frequented parts of Warwickshire to-day. The halcyon or kingfisher, the white-breasted water-ouzel, the skylark, the "ruddock" or robin-redbreast, the wren, the green plover, the woodcock—these serve for some of his moods; but he mentions eagle, kite, hawk, buzzard, owl, falcon, cormorant, and a number of others, always with discretion and with the full measure of knowledge vouchsafed to his time. Classical lore and country superstitions are sometimes found in his references, but the most of them point to the poet's own loving observation at a time when there was no widespread interest in birds or beasts, unless they had a part to play in hunting. Shakespeare's references to the chase are accurate and suggest first-hand observation, coupled with the keen instincts of the sportsman, and it is easy to see that the extraordinary receptivity of his mind enabled him to take impressions from every aspect of life.