And when we cam' to the lower prison, But the feuds of the Scotch and English borderers were not the only causes of insecurity on the western frontier. If the great dramatic poet, who has painted so vividly the desolation of civil war in his own country, had passed through Annandale in 1601, he would have seen the traces of a petty civil war which was then raging between the clans of Maxwell and Johnstone, who a few years. before had met in deadly conflict on the very ground over which he would pass. The Lord of Maxwell, with a vast band of followers, had been slain without quarter. This was something different from the quiet security of England a state of comparative blessedness that Shakspere subsequently described in Cranmer's prophecy of the glories of Elizabeth : "In her days every man shall eat in safety, Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing : The penniless pilgrim travelled over this ground when the security of England had been extended to Scotland; and he found no greater dangers than wading through the Esk and the Annan, and no severer evils than sleeping in a poor hut upon the hard ground, with dirty pigeons roosting around him.§ Place the poet safely in Edinburgh, after he has made his solitary journey of three hundred miles, through unaccustomed scenery, partly amongst foreign people and strange manners. A new world has been opened to him. He has left behind him his old fertile midland counties, their woods, their corn-fields now ripe for the harvest, to pass over wild moorlands with solemn mountains shutting in the distance, now following the course of a brawling stream through a fertile valley, cultivated and populous, and then again climbing the summit of some gloomy fell, from which he looks around, and may dream he is in a land where man has never disturbed the wild deer and the eagle. He looks at one time upon and he may say with the Water Poet, "I thought myself in England still." He is presently in the gorge of the mountains, and there are fancies awakening in him which are to shape themselves not into description, but into the delineations of high passions which are to be created out of lofty moods of the mind. In Edinburgh he meets his fellows. The probability is that the Court * The snatch of melody in Lear, in all likelihood part of an English song, will occur to the reader: § Taylor tells several portions of his adventures in plain prose; and we know of no better picture of the country and its manners than his simple descriptions furnish. is not there, for it is the hunting season. Holyrood is a winter palace; and Edinburgh is not then a city particularly attractive to the Scottish King, who has not forgotten the perils and indignities he has endured through the influence of the stern and uncompromising ministers of religion, who would have made the temporal power wholly submissive to the spiritual. The timid man has conquered, but all his actions are there viewed with jealousy and malevolence; and the English players may afford him safer pleasures in other places than where their "unruliness and immodest behaviour" are uncharitably denounced duly from the pulpit. Shakspere may rest at Edinburgh a day or two; and the impressions of that city will not easily be forgotten:-a town in which the character of the architecture would seem to vie with the bold scenery in which it is placed, full of historical associations, the seat of Scottish learning and authority, built for strength and defence as much as for magnificence and comfort, whose mansions are fastnesses that would resist an assault from a rival chief or a lawless mob. He looks for a short space upon the halls where she who fell before the arbitrary power of his own Queen lived in her days of beauty and youthfulness, surrounded by false friends and desperate enemies, weak and miserable. He sees the pulpits from which Knox thundered, the University which James had founded, and the Castle for whose possession Scotch and English had fought with equal bravery, but varying success. He has gained materials. for future reflection. The country palaces of the Scottish Kings inhabited at that period were Linlithgow, Stirling, and Falkland. The gentle lake, the verdant park of Linlithgow were suited for a summer palace. It was the favourite residence of Mary of Guise, Queen of James V. "Gude Schir David Lindsay," Lion King at Arms under James V., here presented to the Court and people his Satyre of the Three Estaitis; and, whatever be his defects, no one can doubt that he possessed a strong vein of humour, and had the courage to speak out boldly of public vice and private immorality, as a poet ought to speak. The conclusion of the drama offers a pleasant sample of the freedom with which these old writers could address even a courtly audience "Now, let ilk man his way avance, Let sum ga drink, and sum ga dance: Let se quha hobbils best : To send you all gude rest. If the halls of Linlithgow had witnessed the performance of one of Shakspere comedies by the company of Lawrence Fletcher, no changes in taste during half a century could be more striking than such a contrast of the new drama of England with the old drama of Scotland. But we apprehend that Lawrence Fletcher went in another direction. The English comedians, servants to James VI., might have contributed to the solace and recreation of the King in the noble castle where he was born. Seven years before Stirling had been the scene of rare festivities, on the occa sion of the baptism of Prince Henry. It was a place fit for a monarch's residence. From these walls he could look at once upon the fertility and the grandeur of his dominions-its finest river, its boldest mountains, the vale of the Forth, and the summits of Ben Lomond. He could here cherish the proudest recollections of his country's independence. Stirling must have been dear to James as the residence of his boyhood, where he learnt to make Latin verses from Buchanan, the most elegant of pedagogues. He would, perhaps, be prouder of his school-room in the old castle than of its historical associations, and would look with greater delight upon the little valley where he had once seen a gentle tournament, than upon the battle-fields of Cambuskenneth and Bannockburn. Stirling was better fitted for the ceremonial displays of the Scottish Court than the quiet residence of a monarch like James VI. We have seen no record of such displays in the autumn of 1601. * Dunfermline was the jointure house of Anne of Denmark, and her son Charles was here born in November, 1600. It was a quiet occasional retreat from the 'turmoil of Edinburgh. But the favourite residence of James in the latter summer" and autumn was Falkland. The account published by authority of the Gowrie conspiracy opens with a distinct picture of the King's habits: "His Majesty having his residence at Falkland, and being daily at the buck-hunting (as his use is in that season), upon the fifth day of August, being Tuesday, he rode out to the park, between six and seven of the clock in the morning, the weather being wonderful pleasant and seasonable." A record in Melville's Diary, within three weeks of this period, gives us another picture of the King and the Court: "At that time, being in Falkland, I saw a fuscambulus Frenchman play strong and incredible praticks upon stented [stretched] tackle in the palace-close before the King, Queen, and whole Court. This was politicly done to mitigate the Queen and people for Gowrie's slaughter; even then was Henderson tried before us, and Gowrie's pedagogue who had been buted [booted, tortured]." In the great hall of the palace of Falkland, of which enough remains to show its extent and magnificence, we think it probable that Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows exhibited very different performances in the following autumn. They would have abundant novelties to present to the Scottish Court, for all would be new. At the second Christmas after James had ascended the English throne, the early plays of Shakspere were as much in Quoted in Pitcairn's 'Trials,' vol. ii., p. 23 |