Shakspere, Personal Recollections | Page 8

consisted of three acts, showing the progress of courtship and
marriage at the altar, country and town life with growing children, work,
poverty, and final windup of the husband driven from home by the
scolding wife, bruised in an alehouse, dead and followed to the
graveyard by the Beadle, undertaker and a brindle dog.
The climax scene of the play exhibited the wife with a bundle of rods,
surrounded by ragged children, driving out into a midnight storm the
husband of her bosom, while peals of thunder and flashes of lightning
brought goose pimples and shivers to the frightened audience.
The impression made upon the mind of William and myself did not
give us a very hopeful view of married life, and while the haphazard
working, drinking habits of the husband seemed to deserve all the
punishment he received, the modesty, benevolence and beauty of
woman was shattered in our young souls.

On our way home from the country-tragedy performance we were
gladdened by the thought, that although the rude, vulgar, criminal
passions of mankind were portrayed and enacted day by day all over
the globe, we could look up into the star-lit heavens and see those
glittering lamps of night shining with reflected light on the murmuring
bosom of the Avon, as it flowed in peaceful ripples to the Severn and
from the Severn to the sea. Nature soothed our young hearts, and soon,
in the mysterious realms of sleep, we forgot the sorrows and poverty of
earth, tripping away with angelic companions through the golden fields
of celestial dreams.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt
of in our philosophy."
I shall never forget the great shows and pageants that took place in
Warwickshire County, in July, 1575. All England was alive to the
grand entrance of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle, as the royal
guest of her favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Proclamation
had gone forth that all work be suspended, while yeoman, trader,
merchant, doctor, lawyer, minister, lords and earls should pay a
pilgrimage to Kenilworth and pay tribute to the Virgin Queen.
Stratford and the surrounding villages were aflame with enthusiasm,
and as John Shakspere, the alderman and mayor, took great interest in
theatricals and particularly those festivities inaugurated for the
entertainment of royalty, he led a great concourse of devoted patriots
through the forests of Arden, blooming parks of Warwick Castle on to
the grand surroundings of Kenilworth, where the people en masse
camped, sang, danced, took part in country plays, feasted and went wild
for eighteen days, over the illustrious daughter of Henry the Eighth.
William and myself were among the enthusiastic revelers, and for boys
of twelve years of age, we felt more cheer than any of the lads and
lasses from Stratford, because our parents furnished us with milk white
ponies, to pay tribute, and typify the virtue and chastity of the "Virgin
Queen!" We did not particularly care about virtue or virginity, so we
shared in the cakes and ale that were lavished in profusion to the rural
multitude.

A high grand throne made out of evergreens and wild flowers was
erected in the central park of Kenilworth, rimmed in by lofty elms, oaks
and sycamores.
There, through the fleeting days and nights, the Queen and her royal
suite of a thousand purpled cavaliers and bejeweled maids of honor,
held court and viewed the ever-changing, living panorama evolved for
their entertainment. The Queen looked like a wilderness of lace and
variegated velvet, irrigated with a shower of diamonds.
On the 9th of July Queen "Bess" and her illuminated suite entered the
Castle of Kenilworth, and the hands of the clock in the great tower
pointed to the hour of two, where they remained until her departure, as
invitation to a continual banquet.
The Earl expended a thousand pounds a day for the fluid and food
entertainment of his guests, while woodland bowers and innumerable
tents were scattered through the royal domain generously donated to
man and maid by night and day. We boys and girls seldom went to bed.
Companies of circus performers, and theatrical artists, from London
and other towns were brought down to the heart of Old Albion to swell
the pleasure of the reigning Queen. Continual plays were going on,
while horn, fife, bugle and drum lent music to the kaleidoscopic revel.
Dancing, hunting, hawking and archery parties, through the day, lent
their antics to the scene, and when night came with bright Luna
showing her mystic face, forest fires, rockets and illuminated balloons
filled the air with celestial wonder, vieing with the stars in an effort to
do universal honor to the "Virgin Queen!" That's what they called
"Bess."
William and myself took part in several of the joint circus and
theatrical