144 XIII. SHAKESPEARE, THE PRISONER. IT is not difficult to imagine what must have been the feelings of poor John Shakespeare and his wife, when they heard of the situation of their son, whose first impulse might naturally lead him to fly to them for refuge, and confide to his mother that he was pursued by the officers of justice. There was nothing to be gained by concealment, which might delay his punishment, but could not avert it; and we may believe that the unhappy youth was soon again in custody, and on his way to the magistrate. It has been customary to represent the offence of which he was accused as one of a light character, but nobody can pretend that a raid on a deer-park would be considered a mere frolic in the present day; and our ancestors, with their strong feelings about game, were as little disposed as ourselves to look upon it with indulgence. Indeed, deer-stealing was for a long time felony, and, up to a recent period, punishable with death. The statute 5th of Elizabeth reduced the penalty to whipping and imprisonment, but offenders could also be brought before the Star Chamber, which was a sort of lay Holy Inquisition, exercising a rigour unknown to the ordinary tribunals. Its judges made a long arm of the law to reach beyond it; and anyone brought within their jurisdiction, might consider himself given over to the tormentors. He was not only made to pay his last farthing in fines and fees, but he might be kept in prison for any length of time, without an opening for appeal. Such a strain of authority at length became unendurable; the whole nation rose against it, and the destruction of this judicial bastille was the first act of the English revolution.1 It is clear that Shakespeare felt both the peril and the ignominy of his situation, though they elicit a smile from his biographers. His arrest was not accomplished without a mournful scene; and the shame of his father, the anguish of his mother, and the loud, accusing voice of his own conscience, awoke every better feeling of that gentle breast. He saw that he had brought reproach on his family, as well as on himself, and that no one could be connected with him without sharing his disgrace. This carried his thoughts to one dearer even than his parents; and it now seemed a duty to forego his engagement with Anne Hathaway, which he had pursued so eagerly, and which embraced all his hopes of happiness. With what bitter emotion must he have penned this surrender : "Let me confess that we two must be twain, So shall those blots that do with me remain, He declares that their affection will endure, though the spite of fortune compels them to separate, and that love itself will remain to them, though despoiled of its sweet hours of communion. Then he tenderly confesses that he has forfeited his claim to her hand, and leaves her free : "I may not evermore acknowledge thee, Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame ; But do not so: I love thee in such sort, As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report." 1 Not long after Shakespeare's adventure at Charlecote, Lord Berkeley instituted proceedings in the Star Chamber against twenty persons for stealing his deer; and a letter from the Earl of Derby, in the Talbot collection, dated only a few years later, 1589-90, mentions the conviction by his lordship of a Staffordshire deer-stealer, whom the earl declares that he will call "into the Star Chamber in the next term." 2 Sonnet xxxvi. Ꮮ But whatever his remorse-whatever the emotions swelling in his heart, it was with no faltering step that he entered the hall of Charlecote, where family tradition reports that he stood arraigned. Time and modern taste have made little alteration in this noble apartment, which, omitting the pictures on the walls, presents much the same aspect as when it beheld Shakespeare a prisoner. Then, as now, the wide recesswindow disclosed the garden without, extending to the gatehouse, and radiant with flowers, of which he could tell all the names. His eye glanced up at the same stained glass and the same richly-carved ceiling, winding round to the curiously-wrought chimney-piece, from which fine marble busts of Sir Thomas Lucy and Queen Elizabeth now, as they look down upon us, recall the very age and body of the time. Here is the stone floor, and here a long oaken table, such as tradition affirms stood on the self-same spot on that eventful morning. In the bust we recognize Justice Shallow himself, his sharply-cut face and beard-"such bearded hermit staves as Master Shallow." Falstaff, sawed into quantities, would make four dozen of him. It is the face of a very thin, almost emaciated man a man made after supper of a cheese-paring." 2 There is an impress of sober sadness on it, though, which makes us think that Sir Thomas Lucy had both sense in his head and the milk of human kindness in his heart. 66 : Such was the man whom we must imagine ringing out his rustic oath of "coek and pye, sir!" as Shakespeare is brought up to the lower end of the table; and, at the same time, threatening that "the council shall hear it it is a riot." This speech may be a hit, indeed, at a previous occurrence, connected with the right of pasture on commons -for such a cause had brought to grief thirty-five inhabitants of Stratford, as we learn from a paper in the Rolls ''King Henry IV., Part II.,' act v. 1. 2 Ibid., act iii. 2. Office, giving "the names of them that made the riot upon Master Thomas Lucy, esquire." But, however the proceedings might be opened, there can be no doubt that Sir Thomas Lucy was not in the sweetest temper. "You have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge." Shakespeare could not deny the indictment. The venison was there in court: there, too, we may believe, were the broken heads; the very lodge could be seen from the window. Of course, he had something to say for himself. It might be that he did not actually knock down the keeper till he felt his grasp on his throat; and, as for the deer, his worship was a woodman, and knew how naturally a bolt flew from a cross-bow when a fat buck was in view. But Sir Thomas refuses to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. He meets Shakespeare's appealing looks with a frown, and scoffs at his gentle speeches. "Tut, a pin! this shall be answered." He is a Daniel come to judgment—a Lord Angelo, who will follow the letter of the law, and not dilute justice with mercy. Good words-or, as Parson Evans has it, "good worts" weigh no more with him than with Falstaff-"good worts, good cabbage!" He is determined to put down these practices with a high hand, and Shakespeare is to be made an example. "Sir Hugh, persuade me not: I will make a Star-Chamber matter of it."4 Shakespeare was committed to prison-probably to the county gaol at Warwick; but on this point tradition is silent. He was confined in a cell by himself, if we may trust the His unspeakable misery welled up in tears. This was not the emotion of a milksop, but the agony of a manly heart, and indicated that sensibility which is an unfailing characteristic of genius. His tears flowed from the same fount as those of Burns, when Walter Scott saw him weep over the picture of a wounded soldier, and as those which were observed stealing down the cheek of Byron as he listened to a plaintive piece of music. They were the tears of sorrow, indeed-of repentance; but they were also the tears of sympathy. He was thinking of others—this poor, erring prodigal; and of the shame and grief he had brought upon them. His eye-his mind's eye-turned from the dark, narrow cell to his once happy home, and to the cottage garden at Shottery, bringing up before him the bent form of his mother and the saddened face of his mistress. But sympathy, as he tells us, is like mercy: it is twice blessed, blessing as well those that give as those to whom it is given; and it brought him comfort in the ties it recalled, and the images it conjured up. Anne Hathaway would not sever herself from him. In his misery and abasement, her faith in him was unshaken; and she found means to apprise him of her constancy. These are the revelations we educe from the Sonnet, which evidently applies to this passage of his life: "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state; Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising, In his despondency he cries out, like Job, against his own life. He weeps over his disgrace and isolation; he |