Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

SHAKESPEARE
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modern Stratford Rother Market retains its place as the busiest
centre at the annual fairs, during one of which it is still customary
to roast an ox in the open street, often amidst a good deal of
popular excitement and convivial uproar.
Chief The cross ways going from Rother Street to the river side, which
streets cut the central line, dividing it into three sections, are Ely Street
and and Sheep Street in a continuous line, and Scholar’s Lane and Chapel
suburbs. Lane in another line. They run parallel with the head line of
Bridge and Wood Streets, and like them traverse from east to west
the northern shaft of the cross that constituted the ground plan of
the town. Starting down this line from the market house at the
top, the first division, the High Street, is now, as it was in Shake¬
speare’s day, the busiest part for shops and shopping, the solid
building at the further corner to the left being the Corn Exchange.
At the first corner of the second division, called Chapel Street,
stands the town-hall, while at the further corner are the site and
railed-in gardens of New Place, the large mansion purchased by
Shakespeare in 1597. Opposite New Place, at the corner of the
third and last division, known as Church Street, is the grey mass
of Gothic buildings belonging to the guild of the Holy Cross, and
consisting of the chapel, the hall, the grammar school, and the
almshouses of the ancient guild. Turning to the left at the bottom
of Church Street, you enter upon what was in Shakespeare’s
day a well-wooded suburb, with a few good houses scattered among
the ancient elms, and surrounded by ornamental gardens and
extensive private grounds. In one of these houses, with a sunny
expanse of lawn and shrubbery, lived in the early years of the 17th
century Shakespeare’s eldest daughter Susanna with her husband,
Dr John Hall, and here in spring mornings and summer afternoons
the great poet must have often strolled, either alone or accom¬
panied by his favourite daughter, realizing to the full the quiet
enjoyment of the sylvan scene and its social surroundings. This
pleasant suburb, called then as now Old Town, leads directly to the
church of the Holy Trinity, near the river side. The church, a fine
specimen of Decorated and Perpendicular Gothic with a lofty spire,
is approached on the northern side through an avenue of limes,
and sheltered on the east and south by an irregular but massive
group of elms towering above the churchway path between the
transepts, the chancel, and the river. Below the church, on the
margin of the river, were the mill, the mill-bridge, and the weir,
half hidden by grey willows, green alders, and tall beds of rustling
sedge. And, beyond the church, the college, and the line of streets
already described, the suburbs stretched away into gardens,
orchards, meadows, and cultivated fields, divided by rustic lanes
with mossy banks, flowering hedgerows, and luminous vistas of
bewildering beauty. These cross and country roads were dotted
at intervals with cottage homesteads, isolated farms, and the
small groups of both which constituted the villages and hamlets
included within the wide sweep of old Stratford parish. Amongst
these were the villages and hamlets of Welcombe, Ingon, Drayton,
Shottery, Luddington, Little Wilmcote, and Bishopston. The
town was thus girdled in the spring by daisied meadows and blos¬
soming orchards, and enriched during the later months by the
orange and gold of harvest fields and autumn foliage, mingled
with the coral and purple clusters of elder, hawthorn, and moun¬
tain ash, and, around the farms and cottages, with the glow of
ripening fruit for the winter’s store.
Forest But perhaps the most characteristic feature of the
survivals. sceiiery in the neighbourhood of Stratford is to be found
in the union of this rich and varied cultivation with
picturesque survivals of the primeval forest territory. The
low hills that rise at intervals above the well-turned soil
still carry on their serrated crests the lingering glories of
the ancient woodland. Though the once mighty forest of
Arden has disappeared, the after-glow of its sylvan beauty
rests on the neighbouring heights formerly enclosed within
its ample margin. These traces of the forest wildness and
freedom were of course far more striking and abundant in
Shakespeare’s day than now. At that time many of the
farms had only recently been reclaimed from the forest,
and most of them still had their bosky acres 11 of tooth’d
briars, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns,” their
broom groves, hazel copses, and outlying patches of
unshrubbed down. And the hills that rose above the
chief villages of the neighbourhood were still clothed and
crowned with the green and mystic mantle of the leafy
Arden. But, though much of the ancient woodland has
disappeared since Shakespeare’s day, many traces of it
still remain. Any of the roads out of Stratford will soon
bring the pedestrian to some of these picturesque sur¬
vivals of the old forest wilderness. On the Warwick
road, at the distance of about a mile from the town, there
are on the left the Welcombe Woods, and just beyond the
woods the well-known Dingles, a belt of straggling ash
and hawthorn winding irregularly through blue-bell depths
and briery hollows from the pathway below to the crest
of the hill above, while immediately around rise the
Welcombe Hills, from the top of which is obtained the
finest local view of Stratford and the adjacent country.
Looking south-west and facing the central line of the
town, you see below you, above the mass of roofs, the
square tower of the guild chapel, the graceful spire of the
more distant church, the sweep of the winding river, and
beyond the river the undulating valley of the Bed Horse
shut in by the blue range of the Cotswold Hills. A
couple of miles to the east of the Welcombe Hills is the
village of Snitterfield, where Shakespeare’s grandfather,
Richard Shakespeare, lived and cultivated to the end of
his days the acres around his rustic dwelling. Beyond
the village on its western side there is an upland reach of
wilderness in the shape of a hill, covered with shrub and
copsewood, and known as the Snitterfield Bushes. Here
Shakespeare as a boy must have often rambled, enjoying
the freedom of the unfenced downs, and enlarging his
knowledge of nature’s exuberant vitality. On the
opposite side of the town, about a mile on the Evesham
road, or rather between the Evesham and Alcester roads,
lies the hamlet of Shottery, half concealed by ancestral
elms and nestling amongst its homestead fruits and
flowers. From one of these homesteads Shakespeare
obtained his bride Anne Hathaway. A mile or two on
the central road, passing out of the town through Henley
Street, is the village of Bearley, and above the village
another sweep of wooded upland known as Bearley
Bushes. And at various more distant points between
these roads the marl and sandstone heights, fringed with
woods or covered with wilding growths, still bear eloquent
testimony to the time when Guy of Warwick and his
tutor in chivalry, Heraud of Arden, still roamed the forest
in search of the wild ox and savage boar that frayed the
infrequent travellers and devastated at intervals the
slender cultivation of the district. The subtle power of
this order of scenery, arising from the union of all that is
rich and careful in cultivation with all that is wild and
free in natural beauty, is exactly of the kind best fitted to
attract and delight imaginative and emotional minds. It
possesses the peculiar charm that in character arises from
the union of refined culture with the bright and exhilarating
spontaneity of a free and generous nature.
On its moral side such scenery has an expanding illuminating Moral
power which links it to the wider and deeper interests of humanity influ-
as a whole. Nature seems to put forth her vital energies expressly ences of
for the relief of man’s estate, appearing as his friend and helper scenery,
and consoler. Instead of being absorbed in her own inaccessible
grandeurs and solitary sublimities, she exerts her benign influences
expressly as it were for his good, to cheer and brighten his
evanescent days, and beautify his temporary home. Bolder and
more rugged landscapes, gloomy glens, and thunder-scarred peaks
may excite more passionate feelings, may rouse and strengthen by
reaction the individualistic elements of mind and character, and
thus produce the hardy, daring type of mountaineer, the intense
self-centred and defiant local patriot or hero, the chieftain and
his clansmen, contra mundum. No doubt it is also true that the
vaster and loftier mountain ranges have a unique pow'er of exciting
in susceptible minds the emotions of awe, wonder, and sublimity.
But the very power and permanence of these mighty solitudes, the
grandeur and immobility of their measureless strength and imperial
repose, dwarf by comparison all merely human interests ; and to
the meditative mind swept by the spirit of such immensities the
moments of our mortal life seem to melt as dew-drops into the
silence of their eternal years. The feelings thus excited, being in
themselves of the essence of poetry, may indeed find expression in
verse and in verse of a noble kind, but the poetry will be lyrical
and reflective, not dramatic, or if dramatic in form it will be lyrical
in substance. As Mr Ruskin has pointed out, the overmastering
effect of mountain scenery tends to absorb and preoccupy the