THE PERFECT BEAR GARDEN.

63

contemporary manners.

In his historical plays, however,

we have seen that he mentions the departure of Essex

to Ireland, and King John's defiance to the pope.

We have no room to comment on many of Shakspere's

more direct references to the manners of his

age;

but we

stop for a moment to instance the numerous similes he drew from that bear garden which lay so near his own theatre. He describes the bears crushing the heads of foolish curs like rotten apples, frightening the dogs by the very shaking of their chains, or at bay among a circle of mastiffs. He sketches the dogs biting at those who withheld them, and whining under the bear's paw. Slender's first belief when he hears the dogs bark, is that some bears had entered the town, and he declares he has taken the famous bear Saccarson by the chain twenty times amid the crying and shrieking of the women.

From Hawking too he draws many similes. Othello talks of the jesses that bind Desdemona to him. In Henry VI. the king and queen talk pure hunting language.

"Believe me, lords, for flying on the brook,
I saw not better sport than yesterday;
Yet by your leave the wind was very high,
And ten to one old Joan had not gone out.

King. But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,
And what a pitch she flew above the rest."

Warwick, too, boasts that he is a judge of a hawk's

flight, and says:

"The proudest he that holds up Lancaster

Dare stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells."

Of Painting he seems fond, but is no great judge of the art. In Hamlet he describes the earnest manner in which a painter views the face he is about to draw. In Timon of Athens he criticises a picture, and calls it a pretty mockery of the life. In Winter's Tale he speaks of that rare Italian master, Julio Romano. In Hamlet he mentions miniature painting. In Winter's Tale, he introduces the painted statue with the very life still warm upon the lip. To conclude, the Merchant of Venice contains a beautiful eulogy of a fair lady's portrait :

"But her eyes,

How could he see to do them, &c."

On Music he is always eloquent. In his sonnets he notices the very technicalities of an art which he must himself have practised. He notes the sadness of some when they hear sweet music, and he believes in the music of the spheres.

In Religion, though defiant of the pope, he draws his priests generally as pious, self-denying, and sincere; his Protestant ministers foolish, knavish, and servile. On the one side are Evans, Martext, and Holofernes; on the other, Friar Patrick, the simulated monk in Measure for Mea

SHAKSPERE'S PATRIOTISM.

65

sure; the holy father in All's Well that Ends Well; and Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet. He leans to Purgatory in Clarence's dream, Claudio's musings, and many scenes in Hamlet.

His patriotic allusions must have been duly appreciated by men just fresh from discussing the pope's last bull, or his violent threatenings of excommunication. When the Armada was in sight of England must have been the time when patriots could call their island, with a strange moisture about their eyes, —

"The precious stone set in the silver sea.

*

*

*

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise."

or, believe it

"Neptune's park ribbed and paled in,

With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters,

With sands that will not bear your enemy's boats,
But suck them up to the topmast."

The whole play of Henry V. is full of eulogies of English yeomen, with noble lustre in their eyes, and of the honest national contempt for Frenchmen, or Barbaroi, the Gentiles.

He makes Portia kneel at wayside crosses; the Puritans he derides; the monks' abuses he hardly touches on;

Othello talks of baptism as "the seal and symbol of redeemed love;" and Henry V. of regeneration; Hamlet's ghost mentions extreme unction; and in the Midsummer Night's Dream the poet speaks of nuns as thrice blessed, but less earthly happy than "the rose distilled;" a bold thing to say in a play to be acted before the Queen, and which, indeed, contains one of the most poetical eulogies ever pronounced upon her.

As might be expected, the discovery of the New World made much impression on the poet's mind, for it gave a spur to the imagination of the whole century. The Tempest is founded on an old voyage to the Bermudas: the scene is in the West Indies, and Caliban is an Indian savage. In Love's Labour Lost he sketches the Carib worshipping the sun, and in other places he speaks of islands far away, undreamed shores and regions all of gold.

Shakspere was a lover of flowers: every play is rich with allusions to them. He knows of the spots in the cup of the cowslip, the early daffodil, the sweet March violet, the bold oxlip, and all sorts of lilies.

The scenery of Shakspere, where it is individualised, as in Venus and Adonis, is Warwickshire scenery; his mountains and seas are abstractions, not drawn from observation; he describes the English lark, but not the northern eagle; his forest scenes are recollections of the Stratford Park.

SHAKSPERE'S FAMILY.

67

His allusions to his native country are frequent: Sly is a Warwickshire man, and several scenes in Henry VI. are laid at Coventry or Warwick; the neighbouring spots too, as the Cotswold and Daventry, are also mentioned ; Windsor he drew from life; and with London he was familiar enough.

The allusions to his father's trade are scarce; though he does in one place speak of the insurrection of the clothiers in Henry VIII.'s reign. We dare not trace his characters minutely into nature, but do we not feel assured that mad Lear is the giant shadow of some Warwickshire idiot; Ophelia's death, a village suicide; and Falstaff, a London landlord and personal acquaintance? Pistol was a bully, to be seen any day at a tavern, and Francis had many types.

The few remaining facts of this poet's family may be put in a small compass: his birth was of that great middle class, that has produced the greatest and the best of England; not so rich as to be mere loungers, not so poor as to be degraded by poverty. The poet's father, whose name was John, was of good but reduced family, and married Mary, the daughter of Robert Arden, a gentleman of fortune of Wylnecote in the same county, whose sire was Governor of the Chamber to Henry VII., and had received a grant of renewal of Arms for services done in a certain Leices