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CHAPTER III.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE PLAYS.

Dear earth! I do salute thee with my hand.

Richard II., iii, 2.

GENIUS, though its branches reach to the heavens and cover

the continents, yet has its roots in the earth; and its leaves, its fruit, its flowers, its texture and its fibers, bespeak the soil in which it was nurtured. Hence in the writings of every great master we find more or less association with the scenes in which his youth and manhood were passed-reflections, as it were, on the camera of the imagination of those landscapes with which destiny had surrounded him.

In the work of the peasant-poet, Robert Burns, we cannot separate his writings from the localities in which he lived. Take away

"Bonnie Doon;"

"Auld Alloway's witch-haunted kirk;"

"Ye banks and braes and streams around,
The castle of Montgomery;"

"Auld Ayr, which ne er a town surpasses

For honest men and bonny lasses;"

"Sweet Afton,

Ataid its green braes,"

and the thousand and one other references to localities with which his life was associated, and there is very little left which bears the impress of his genius.

If we turn to Byron, we find the same thing to be true. We have his "Elegy on Newstead Abbey;" his poem "On Leaving Newstead Abbey;" his lines on "Lachin y Gair" in the Highlands, where "my footsteps in infancy wandered;" his verses upon "Movren of Snow;" his "Lines written beneath an Elm in the Churchyard of Harrow on the Hill;" his verses "On Revisiting Harrow," and his poem addressed "To an Oak at Newstead;" while "Childe Harold" is full of allusions to scenes with which his life-history was associated.

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The same is true, to a greater or less extent, of all great writers who deal with the emotions of the human heart.

I. STRATFORD-ON-AVON IS NOT NAMED IN The Plays.

In view of these things it will scarcely be believed that in all the voluminous writings of Shakespeare there is not a single allusion to Stratford, or to the river Avon. His failure to remember the dirty little town of his birth might be excused, but it would seem most natural that in some place, in some way, in drama or sonnet or fugitive poem, he should remember the beautiful and romantic river, along whose banks he had wandered so often in his youth, and whose natural beauties must have entered deeply into his soul, if he was indeed the poet who wrote the Plays. He does, it is true, refer to Stony-Stratford,' a village in the County of Bucks, and this makes the omission of his own Stratford of Warwickshire the more surprising.

II. St. ALBans ReferrED TO MANY TIMES.

On the other hand, we find repeated references to St. Albans, Bacon's home, a village of not much more consequence, so far as numbers were concerned, than Stratford.

Falstaff says:

There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; the truth, stolen from my host of Saint Albans.

In the 2d Henry IV. we have this reference:

Prince Henry. This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road.

and the shirt, to say

Poins. I warrant you, as common as the road between Saint Albans and London.3

In The Contention between the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster, which is conceded to be the original form of some of the Shakespeare Plays, we have:

For now the King is riding to Saint Albans.*

My lord, I pray you let me go post unto the King,

Unto Saint Albans, to tell this news."

Come, uncle Gloster, now let's have our horse,

For we will to Saint Albans presently."

In the same scene (in The Contention), of the miracle at Saint Albans:

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Come, my lords, this night we'll lodge in Saint Albans '

In the play of Richard III. we have this allusion to Bacon's country seat:

Was not your husband

In Margaret's battle at Saint Albans slain?"

We have numerous references to St. Albans in the 2d Henry VI

Messenger. My Lord Protector, 'tis his Highness' pleasur

You do prepare to ride unto Saint Albans.3

And again:

Duchess. It is enough; I'll think upon the questions:
When from Saint Albans we do make return.

And again:

York. The King is now in progress toward Saint Albans.

III. THREE SCENES IN THE PLAYS LAID AT ST. ALBANS

Scene 1, act ii, 2d Henry VI., is laid at Saint Albans, scene 2 act v, of the same is also laid at Saint Albans; scene 3, act v, is laid in Fields, near Saint Albans.

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Simpcox. Yes, master, clear as day; I thank God and Saint Alban."

Again:

Gloster. My lord, Saint Alban here hath done a miracle."

Gloster. My masters of Saint Albans, have you not beadles in your town?""

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Now by my hand, lords, 'twas a glorious day,

Saint Albans' battle, won by famous York,

Shall be eternized in all age to come.'

In the 3d Henry VI. we find St. Albans referred to as follows:

Marched toward Saint Albans to intercept the Queen.'

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This lady's husband, Sir John Grey, was slain."

Here is St. Albans referred to in the Shakespeare Plays twenty-three times, and Stratford not once!

Is not this extraordinary? What tie connected the Stratford man with the little village of Hertfordshire, that he should drag it into his writings so often?

We are told that he loved the village of Stratford, and returned, when rich and famous, to end his days there. We have glowing pictures, in the books of the enthusiastic commentators, of his wanderings along the banks of the lovely Avon. Why did he utterly blot them both out of his writings?

IV. WARWICKSHIRE IGNORED IN THE PLAYS.

But he ignored the county of Warwickshire-his own beautiful county of Warwickshire-in like fashion.

Michael Drayton, poet and dramatist, a contemporary of Shakspere, was, like him, born in Warwickshire, but he did not forget his native shire. He thus invocates the place of his birth:

My native country, then, which so brave spirits hath bred,

If there be virtues yet remaining in thy earth,

Or any good of thine thou bred'st into my birth,
Accept it as thine own, whilst now I sing of thee,
Of all thy later brood th' unworthiest though I bc.

The county of Warwickshire is only referred to once in the Plays (1st Henry IV., iv, 2), and "the lord of Warwickshire" is mentioned twice. The only reference that I know of to localities in Warwickshire is in the introduction to The Taming of the Shrew, where Wincot is named. It is assumed that this is Wilmecote, three Ibid., ii, 2. * Ibid., iii, 3.

1ad Henry VI., v, 2. 3d Henry VI., ii, 1. Ibid.

miles distant from Stratford-on-Avon. But of this there is no certainty.

There is a Woncot mentioned in 2d Henry IV.—

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and so eager have the Shakspereans been to sustain the Warwickshire origin of the Plays that they have converted this into Wincot. As, however, Master Robert Shallow, Esquire, dwelt in Gloucestershire

[Ile through Gloucestershire, and there will I visit Master Robert Shallow Esquire,]

and William Visor was one of his tenants or underlings, this Woncot could not have been Wincot, near Stratford, in Warwickshire.

ས.

ST. ALBANS THE CENTRAL POINT OF THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. Mrs. Pott has pointed out how much of the action of the Shakespeare Plays finds its turning-point and center in St. Albans:

To any one who sees in it one of the inciting causes for the composition of the historical plays called Shakespeare's, and especially the second part of Henry VI. and Richard III., St. Albans and its neighborhood are in the highest degree suggestive and instructive. Gorhambury was one of the boyish homes of Francis Bacon. When, at the age of nineteen, he was recalled from his gay life at the court of the French embassador on account of the sudden death of his father, it was to Gorhambury that he retired with his widowed mother. Thus he found himself on the very scene of the main events which form the plot of the second part of Henry VI. . . . The play culminates in the great battle of St. Albans, which took place in a field about one and a half miles from Gorhambury. As a boy, Francis must have heard the battle described by old men whose fathers may even have witnessed it. He must frequently have passed "the alehouse' paltry sign" beneath which Somerset was killed by Richard Plantagenet (ad Henry VI., v, 2). He must have trodden the Key Field where the battle was fought, and in which the last scene of the play is laid. It was a scene not likely to be forgotten. The Lancastrians lost five thousand men, including the detested Duke of Somerset and other nobles, and the poor, weak King, Henry VI., was taken prisoner by the Yorkists. Considering the mildness and moderation which was invariably exercised by the Duke of York, and the violent and bloodthirsty course pursued by Queen Margaret, it is no wonder that this, the first Yorkist victory of the Wars of the Roses, should be kept green on the spot where it took place.

'Twas a glorious day.

Saint Albans' battle, won by famous York,
Shall be eternis'd in all age to come.

Before entering the abbey, let the visitor glance around. To the north of the town stands the old church of St. Peter, and in its graveyard lie the bodies of many of those who were slain in the great battles between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. To the left is Bernard's heath, the scene of the second battle of St.

1 Act v, scene 1.

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