arraigns Heaven; he curses his fate; he would be anyone but himself: and then comes a change : 66 Haply I think on thee; and then my state- From sullen earth-sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, Heaven is no longer unjust; the vaulted roof of his cell becomes the vaulted sky; he bursts forth in hymns of thankfulness and praise; and thrones seem as nothing to the place he occupies in his mistress's heart. Nor was he forgotten in his captivity. The note by Ward in the manuscript pedigree of the Lucys, informs us that his friends interested in his behalf the most important man in Warwickshire, no less a person than Robert, Earl of Leicester; and this great magnate now interceded with Sir Thomas Lucy, and prevailed on him to abandon the prosecution. We know not how this powerful friend was secured. It could not be through the Ardens; for the wealthy branch of that family must have been on bad terms with the earl, as Dugdale asserts that Edward Arden, who was executed in Smithfield for treason in 1583, was condemned to death at Leicester's suggestion. We are left to suppose that John Shakespeare may have been brought in communication with the earl in his municipal character, probably when he was High Bailiff of Stratford ;—for he is then found patronizing his players; and the connection which we shall show to have long existed with Leicester may have sprung from that time. At any rate, the earl stepped between Shakespeare and ruin. And strange it is that an act so honourable to him should be now first mentioned, after his character has undergone three centuries of criticism, no one ever suspecting that he was any way associated with our great poet, much less that he was his earliest benefactor. The service was afterwards to be requited. Here Leicester steps forward to rescue Shakespeare from Sir Thomas Lucy: by-and-by we shall see Shakespeare tilting at Sir Thomas Lucy in the quarrel of Leicester. But now the prison-door is open, the penitent scapegrace steps forth free; and as kindly faces and loving hands. gather round him, we almost hear him exclaim,-"In Warwickshire I have true-hearted friends."1 1 'King Henry VI., Part III.,' act iv. 8. 151 XIV. REVENGE AND FLIGHT. In SHAKESPEARE was once more in the streets of Stratford, but found that he was not in the same fair odour. such a community his misadventure left a mark upon him, almost as deep as Cain's; and, indeed, those watching his course might well think that he was in no good way. Such expressions of opinion possibly reached his ear as he passed along; and he may have seen some avert their heads, and some shake them. Whatever his disposition, he could now have no companions but such as were under a cloud, like himself; for as it would be thought that all seen in his company were tarred with the same brush, everybody whose character was untarnished gave him a wide berth. There can be no doubt that he bitterly felt his position, which, in the Sonnet we have just quoted, he calls "my outcast state." We may fear that he was met by cold looks wherever he went. The fallen condition of his family, the increasing difficulties of his parents, and his own wild courses, had been enough to alienate friends before, but they were now kept aloof by his disgrace. Even the cottage-door at Shottery was shut against him; for we shall presently show that there was a breach between Anne Hathaway and her father, and this is explained by her persistence at this time in her attachment to Shakespeare. Whatever happened, Shakespeare looked upon Sir Thomas Lucy as the author of all his misery. It was by him that he had been committed to prison, by which he had been brought into such odium; and the abandonment of the prosecution did not, exasperated as he was, atone to him for previous severity. In truth, he was enduring the punishment still-feeling it in the look of every familiar face, and the altered tone of every friendly voice. He carried his prison about with him-in his own shame and the public report, which made it as plain to the eye as a convict's chain. But, as he felt the extent of his abasement, his breast swelled against the oppressor, and the crushing heel, which provokes the worm, stirred up the little venom of gentle Will Shakespeare. Sir Thomas Lucy was to learn that this worm could sting. The poet determined on revenge, a revenge worthy of a poet, had he not made his resentment his inspiration. But he was now in the eddy of his passion, swept round and round by it, by his wounded love, his sullied honour, and the thousand agonies of a humbled spirit. The landless French troubadour made Henry Beauclere wince on his throne under his satirical rhymes; and Shakespeare felt that he possessed the same power over Sir Thomas Lucy. Stripling though he was, he would go forth against this giant, sheathed in the panoply of authority, and whose staff of the law was like a weaver's beam, and strike him down with a ballad. It was a brave resolve, and not more brave than memorable; for but for the incidents that quickly followed, Shakespeare might have remained a rustic, and the world never have heard of its greatest poet. He was not led on by Revenge as he thought, but by Destiny. The note by Ward agrees with Rowe as to the course he pursued. The ballad was nailed on the park-gates at Charlecote, on the very gatehouse in which he had been confined, and from which he had broken forth. No one has done justice to the spirit of this exploit-for not only was it poetic in its conception, but it presents something heroic,— for heroic it was in this poor country lad, a butcher's apprentice, daring to come to the manorial hall, and nail his defiance on the very door, a door that had so lately closed on him, a prisoner. The deed belongs as much to chivalry as the ballad to literature; and the past could give us no welcomer relic than those boyish rhymes. We may rejoice that they are not wholly lost. After a long interval, chance recovered two stanzas, which have floated down to us like a fragment of a wrecked ship-fortunately that part of the vessel which shows whence it came. The verses are indeed regarded with suspicion, as being unworthy of his genius, but, though their literary merit is small, they reveal the Shakesperian touch, such as those who have studied his works cannot mistake. This touch he describes himself, when he says: "That almost every word doth tell my name." "1 As the production of a lad of eighteen, they are not to be measured by the standard of later compositions, although they display sufficient familiarity with versification to disprove the conjecture of Rowe that this was "probably the first essay of his poetry"-a probability which few will admit, since it would hardly have occurred to Shakespeare to seek vengeance by such means without previous experience of his strength. From the fragment preserved, the ballad appears to have been a defence of himself, as well as an attack on Sir Thomas, reciting the case, and, perhaps, concluding with the two surviving stanzas :— "Sir Thomas was too covetous, To covet so much deer, When horns enough upon his head Most plainly do appear. 1 Sonnet lxxvi. |