Shakespeares Christmas Gift to Queen Bess | Page 2

but not so on this occasion. For now the
successful candidate is one of the youngest and best beloved of this
jolly coterie, and their pride in him is shown by the eagerness with
which they await his coming to read to them the changes in the
manuscript of his play since its former presentation. Ah! hear the burst
of applause that greets his late arrival--a high-browed, sandy-haired

man of thirty-two, lithe in figure, of middle height, with a smile of
great sweetness, yet sad withal. On his face, one may read the lines of
recent sorrow, and all know that he has returned but recently to London
from the mournful errand which took him to his Stratford home--the
burial of his dearly beloved and only son, Hamnet. The plaudits for the
author of the most successful play of the season--"Romeo and Juliet,"
which was then taking the town by storm at the Curtain Theatre--were
little heeded by the grief-stricken father as he urged his horse over the
rough roads of the four days' journey, arriving just too late for a parting
word from dying lips. But private sorrows are not for those who are
called to public duties; a writer must trim his pen not to his own mood,
but to the mood of the hour. And Queen Elizabeth, old in years, but
ever young in her love of fun and frolic and flattery, must be made to
forget the heaviness of time and the infirmities of age. If she may no
longer take part in out-door sports--the hunting, the hawking, the
bear-baiting,--she still may command processions, fêtes, masques, and
stage-plays. It pleases her now to see this wonderful fairy piece, of
which she has heard so much since, two years ago, it graced the
nuptials of the Earl of Derby. Does she not remember also that pretty
impromptu verse of the author when acting the part of King in another
man's play, two years ago at Greenwich? Did she not twice drop her
glove near his feet in crossing the stage? And how happily had he
responded to the challenge! True to the character as well as to the metre
of his part, he had picked up the glove, presenting it to its owner with
the words:--
"And though now bent on this high embassy, Yet stoop we to take up
our cousin's glove."
[Illustration: Old Graves in Trinity Churchyard, Stratford]
Seats are taken, the manuscript is opened, and the club becomes a
green-room conference. The play is not to be recast entirely, the
changes from the early version being mainly to introduce certain
touches to flatter the royal ears, and to suit it to the more elaborate
equipment of the Whitehall stage. Quill in hand, the reader as he
proceeds crosses out from his manuscript everything that clogs the

movement or detracts from the playfulness; giving free rein to his
luxuriant imagination, he scatters the choicest flowers of fancy to create
a vivid and animated picture. The lovers meet and part with pretty
rhymes and repartee; the hard-handed men--the tradesmen and
tinkers--bring their clumsy efforts to serve the wedding-feast; the
fairies, graceful, lovely, enchanting, dance amidst the fragrance of
enameled meadows.
[Illustration: Old Warwickshire Cottages
"And all things shall be peace." ]
His fellow writers feel the charm. No one of them can do work in so
many kinds nor of such kind in each. They recognise their master, they
are under his magic spell; the familiar stories from Plutarch and
Chaucer and Ovid take on a new meaning; the very holly on the walls
seems alive with the fairy folk, as indeed it should be, according to the
pretty, old superstition that elves and fairies hover about all Christmas
fêtes. Hence, branches are hanging in hall and bower in order that these
invisible guests may "hang in each leaf and cling on every bough." The
holly, its prickly leaves symbolic of the crown of thorns, and its red
berries of the blood of Christ, banishes the ivy and other greens, and
becomes the popular favourite that it has since remained, for Christmas
decoration.
[Illustration: A Group of Morris Dancers
"The quaint-mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread, are
undistinguishable." ]
A responsive audience truly. Roars of laughter greet the rollicking
humour of the clowns and their rude burlesque of things theatrical. But
longest and loudest is the applause over the new touches--those
portions that have been written in to please the court and the Queen. To
remodel a play written for a marriage celebration so that it shall seem to
praise the virginity of the Queen were surely no slight task, but it has
been accomplished.

Though the scene is laid in Greece, yet the play is full of the English
life that all know so well.