The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859

"You know, Madam," he said,—"if, indeed, you are so unfortunate as to know anything about us,—that we players are an impulsive, unconventional class of beings, lawless and irresponsible, the Gypsies of Art."

Here Zelma flushed and drew herself up, while a suspicious glance shot from her eyes;—but the stranger seemed not to understand or perceive it, for he went on quite innocently, and with increasing earnestness of tone and manner:—

"I know I have been presuming, impertinent, audacious, in thus intruding myself upon you, and acknowledge that you would be but severely just in banishing me instantly from your bright presence, and in withdrawing from me forever the light of your adorable eyes. Oh, those eyes!" he continued, clasping his hands in an ecstasy of lover-like enthusiasm, —"those wild, sweet orbs!—bewildering lights of love, dear as life, but cruel as death!—can they not quicken, even as they slay? Oh, gentle lady, be like her of Verona!—be gracious, be kind, or, at least, be merciful, and do not banish me!—

'For exile hath more terror in his look,
Much more, than death; do not say banishment!'"

He paused, but did not remove his passionate looks from the young girl's face,—looks which, though cast down, for he was much the taller of the two, had the effect of most lowly and deprecating entreaty;—and then there happened an event,—a very slight, common, natural event,—the result more of girlish embarrassment than of any conscious emotion or purpose, yet of incalculable importance at that moment, and, perhaps, decisive of the fate of two human hearts,—Zelma smiled. It was a quick, involuntary smile, which seemed to escape from the firm lips and half-averted eyes, flashed over the face, touched the cold features with strange radiance, and then was gone,—and, in its place, the old shadow of reserve and distrust, for the moment, darker than ever.

But to the adventurous lover that brief light had revealed his doubtful way clear before him. He saw, with a thrill of exultation, that henceforth he had really nothing to fear from such womanly defences as he had counted on,—coldness, prejudice, disdain,—that all he had taken for these were but unsubstantial shadows. Still he showed no premature triumph in word or look, but remained silent and humble, waiting the reply to his passionate appeal, as though life or death, in very truth, were depending upon it. And Zelma spoke at last,—briefly and coldly, but in a manner neither suspicious nor unfriendly. She herself, she said, was unconventional, in her instincts, at least,—so could afford to pardon somewhat of lawlessness in another,—especially, she added, with a shy smile, in one whom Melpomene, rather than Cupid, had made mad. Still she was not a Juliet, though he, for all she knew, might be a Romeo; and only in lands verging on the tropics, or in the soul of a poet, could a passion like that of the gentle Veronese spring up, bud, and blossom, in a single night. As for her, the fogs of England, the heavy chill of its social atmosphere, had obstructed the ripening sunshine of romance and repressed the flowering of the heart—

"And kept your beautiful nature all the more pure and fresh!" exclaimed Mr. Lawrence Bury, with real or well-assumed enthusiasm; but Zelma, replying to his interruption only by a slight blush, went on to say, that she had been taught that poetry, art, and romances were all idle pastimes and perilous lures, unbecoming and unwholesome to a young English gentlewoman, whose manifest destiny it was to tread the dull, beaten track of domestic duty, with spirit chastened and conformed. She had had, she would acknowledge, some aspirations and rebellious repinings, some wild day-dreams of life of another sort; but it was best that she should put these down,—yes, doubtless, best that she should fall into her place in the ranks of duty and staid respectability, and be a mere gentlewoman, like the rest.—Here a slight shrug of the shoulders and curl of the lip contradicted her words,—yet, with a tone of rigid determination, she added, that it was also best she should cherish no tastes and form no associations which might distract her imagination and further turn her heart from this virtuous resolution; and therefore must she say farewell, firmly and finally, to the, she doubted not, most worthy gentleman who had done her the honor to entertain for her sentiments of such high consideration and romantic devotion. She would not deny that his intrusion on her privacy had, at first, startled and displeased her,—but she already accepted it as an eccentricity of dramatic genius, a thoughtless offence, and, being, as she trusted, at once the first and the last, pardonable. She wished him happiness, fame, fortune,—and a very good morning! Then, with a wave of the hand which would have done honor to Oldfield herself, she turned and walked proudly up the lane.

Mr. Bury saw her depart silently, standing in a submissive, dejected attitude, but with a quiet, supercilious smile lightly curling his finely-cut lips; for did he not know that she would return to her haunt the next day, and that he would be there to see?

And Zelma did return the next day,—persuading herself that she was only acting naturally, and with proper dignity and independence. She argued with herself that to abandon her favorite walk or avoid her usual resting-place would be to confess, if not a fear of the stranger's presuming and persistent suit, at least, a disturbing consciousness of his proximity, and of the possibility of his braving her displeasure by a second and unpardonable intrusion. No, she would live as she had lived, freely, carelessly; she would go and come, ride and walk, just as though nothing had happened,—for, indeed, nothing had happened that a woman of sense and pride should take cognizance of. So, after a half-hour's strange hesitation, she took her book and went to the old place. Longer than usual she sat there, idly and abstractedly turning over the leaves of her Shakspeare, starting and flushing with every chance sound that broke on the still, sweet air; yet no presumptuous intruder disturbed her maiden meditations, and she rose wearily at last, and walked slowly homeward, saying to herself, "It is well. I have conquered," but feeling that nothing was well in life, or her own heart, and that she was miserably defeated. Ah, little did she suspect that her clouded, dissatisfied face had been keenly scanned by the very eyes she dreaded, yet secretly longed to meet,—that her most unconscious sigh of disappointment had been heard by her Romeo of the previous day, now lying just behind the hedge, buried in the long brook-side grass, and laughing to himself a very pleasant laugh of gratulation and triumph.

That night, the good Squire of Burleigh Grange relented from his virtuous resolve, and took his wife, daughter, and niece to the play.

The piece was Howe's tragedy of "Tamerlane." Mr. Bury personated the imperial Tartar, a noble rôle, which so well became him, costumes and all, and brought him so much applause, that Zelma's heart was effectually softened, and she even felt a regretful pride in having received and rejected the homage of a man of such parts.

The next day, as the hour for her stroll arrived, she said to herself, "I can surely take my walks in safety now,—he will never come near me more." So she went,—but, to her unspeakable confusion, she found him, quietly seated in her little rustic bower, his head bared to the sunshine, and his "Hyperion curls" tossed and tumbled about by a frolicsome wind. He rose when the lady appeared, stammered out an apology, bowed respectfully, and would have retired, but that Zelma, feeling that she was the intruder this time, begged him to remain. She thought herself, simple child! merely courteous and duly hospitable, in giving this invitation; but the quick, eager ear of the actor and lover heard, quivering through the assumed indifference and cold politeness of her tones, the genuine impulse and ardent wish of her heart. So he yielded and lingered, proffering apologies and exchanging polite commonplaces.

After a little time, Zelma, to prove her freedom from embarrassment or suspicion, quietly seated herself on the rustic bench, giving, as she did so, a regal spread to her ample skirts, that there might be no vacant place beside her. The actor stood for a while before her, just going, but never gone, talking gayly, but respectfully, on indifferent topics,—till, at last, touching on some theme of deeper interest, and apparently forgetting everything but it and the fair lady, who neither expressed nor looked a desire to shorten the interview, he flung himself, with what seemed a boy's natural impulse, upon the soft, inviting turf, under the shade of the willow. There, reclining in the attitude of Hamlet at the feet of Ophelia, he rambled on from subject to subject, in a careless, graceful way, plucking up grass and picking daisies to pieces, as he talked, giving every now and then, from beneath the languid sweep of his heavy eyelashes, quick flashes of tender meaning, as fitful and beautiful as the "heat-lightnings" of summer twilights, and apparently as harmless.

There was something so magnetic and contagious in this frank, confiding manner, that Zelma, ere she was aware, grew unrestrained and communicative in turn. One by one, the icicles of pride and reserve, which a strange and ungenial atmosphere had hung around her affluent and spontaneous nature, melted in the unwanted sunshine, dropped away from her, and the quick bloom of a Southern heart revealed itself in smiles and blushes. The divine poet whose volume she now held clasped caressingly in both hands had prepared the way for this, by sending through every vein and fibre of her being the sweet, subtile essence of passionate thought,—the spring-tide of youth and love, which makes the story of Romeo and Juliet glow and throb with immortal freshness and vitality.

So, at length, those two talked freely and pleasantly together. They discussed the quiet rural scenery around them, the deep green valley of Arden, shut in by an almost unbroken circle of hills, and Zelma told of a peculiar silvery mist which sometimes floated over it, like the ghost of the lake which, it was said, once filled it; they spoke of wood, stream, moor, and waterfall, sunsets and moonlight and stars, poetry and—love; floating slowly, and almost unconsciously, down the smooth current of summer talk and youthful fancies, toward the ocean of all their thoughts, whose mysterious murmurs already filled one heart at least with a tender awe and a vague longing, which was yet half fear.

The next day, and the next, and every day while the players remained at Arden, the two friends met by tacit agreement in the lane of Burleigh Grange, and, gradually, Lawrence Bury became less the actor and more the man, in the presence of a genuine woman, without affectation or artifice, stage-rant or art-cant,—one from whose face the glare of the foot-lights had not stricken the natural bloom, whose heart had never burned with the feverish excitement of the stage, its insatiable ambition, its animosities and exceeding fierce jealousies. For Zelma, she grew more humble and simple and less exacting, the more she bestowed from a "bounty boundless as the sea."

It was but a brief while, scarcely the lifetime of a rose,—the fragrant snow of the hawthorn blossoms had not melted from the hedges since they met,—and yet, in that little season, the deepest, divinest mystery of human life had grown clear and familiar to their hearts, and was conned as the simplest lesson of Nature.

To Zelma the romance and secrecy of this love had an inexpressible charm. The Zincala in her nature revelled in its wildness and adventure, in its crime against the respectable conventionalities she despised. She had a keen pleasure in the very management and concealment to which she was compelled;—her imagination, even more than her heart, was engaged in hiding and guarding this charming mystery.

On the day succeeding her first interview with the young actor in the lane, she had tried to beguile her ennui, while lingering in her lonely bower, by curiously peering into the nest of a blackbird, deeply hidden in the long grass at the foot of the hedge, and which she had before discovered by the prophetic murmurs of the mother-bird. She found five eggs in the nest. She took the little blue wonders in her hand, and thought what lives of sinless joy, what raptures and loves, what exultations of song and soaring slept in those tiny shells! Suddenly, there was an alarmed cry and an anxious flutter of wings in the hedge above her! She turned, and saw the mother-bird eyeing her askance. From that day the lowly nest with its profaned treasures was forsaken, and the world was the poorer in gladness and melody by five bird-lives of joy and song that might have been.

So, had any luckless intruder chanced to discover Zelma's trysting-place, thrown open to the world the hidden romance in which she took such shy and secret delight, and handled in idle gossip the delicate joys and fragile hopes of young love, it is more than likely that she would have been frightened away from bower and lane, shocked and disenchanted. But the preoccupation of her cousin and her own eccentric and solitary habits prevented suspicion and inquiry,—no unfriendly spy, no rude, untoward event, disturbed the quiet and seclusion of this charmed scene of her wooing, where Nature, Romance, and Poetry were in league with Love.

The players played out their engagement at Arden, with the usual supplement, "A few nights only by special request," and were off to a neighboring town. On their last night, after the play, Zelma met her lover by moonlight, at the trysting-place in the lane, for a parting interview.

It was there that the actor, doffing the jaunty hat which usually crowned his "comely head," and, flinging himself on his knees before his fair mistress, entreated her to rule his wayward heart, share his precarious fortunes, and bear his humble name.

Poor Zelma, when in imagination she had rehearsed her betrothal scene, had made her part something like this:—"And then will I extend my hand with stately grace, and say to my kneeling knight, 'Arise!'—and after, in such brief, gracious words as queens may use, (for is not every woman beloved a queen?) pronounce his happy doom."

But when that scene in her life-drama came on, it was the woman, not the tragedy-queen, that acted. Naturally and tenderly, like any simple girl, she bent over her lover, laid her hand upon his head, and caressingly smoothed back from his brow the straggling curls, damp with night-dew. As she did so, every lock seemed to thrill to her touch, and to wake in her soft, timorous fingers a thousand exquisite nerves that had never stirred before. And then, with broken words and tears, and probing questions and solemn adjurations, she plighted her vows, and sought to bind to her heart forever a faith to which she trusted herself, alas! too tremblingly.

The melodramatic lover was not content with a simple promise, though wrung from the heart with sobs. "Swear it to me!" he said, in a hoarse stage-whisper; and Zelma, again laying her hand upon his head, and looking starward, swore to be his, to command, to call, to hold,—in life, in death, here, hereafter, evermore.

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

ATTORNEY AT LAW AND SOLICITOR IN CHANCERY

Somewhat more than three-quarters of a century ago, George Steevens, the acutest, and, perhaps, the most accomplished, but certainly the most perverse and unreliable of Shakespeare's commentators and critics, wrote thus of Shakespeare's life: "All that is known, with any degree of certainty, concerning Shakespeare, is, that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon; married and had children there; went to London, where he commenced actor,[2 - Commenced actor, commenced author, commenced tinker, commenced tailor, commenced candlestick-maker:—Elegant phraseology, though we venture to think, hardly idiomatic or logical, which came into vogue in England in the early part of the last century, and which, as it is never uttered here by cultivated people, it may be proper to remark, is there used by the best writers. Akin to it is another mode of expression as commonly met with in English books and periodicals, e.g., "immediately he arrived at London he went upon the stage," meaning, as soon as he arrived, etc., or, when he arrived at London, he immediately went upon the stage. As far as our observation extends, Lord Macaulay, alone of all Great-Britons, has neglected to add the latter lucid construction to the graces of his style.] and wrote poems and plays; returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried." From 1780, when this was written, to the present day, the search after well-authenticated particulars of Shakespeare's life has been kept up with a faithfulness equal to that of Sir Palomides after the beast glatisaunt, and by as many devotees and with as much hope of glory as in the quest for the Sangreal. But the fortune of the paynim, rather than the virgin knight, has fallen to all the members of the self-devoted band, and we know little more of the man Shakespeare than was known by our great-grandfathers. For, although there have been issued to us of the present generation pamphlets professing to give new particulars of the life of Shakespeare, and tomes with even more pretentious titles, from all these there has been small satisfaction, save to those who can persuade themselves, that, by knowing what Shakespeare might have done, they know what he did, or that the reflex of his daily life is to be found in documents inscribed on parchment, and beginning, "This indenture made," etc., or "Noverint universi per presentes." It is with no disrespect for the enthusiasm of Mr. Knight, and as little disposition to underrate the laborious researches of Mr. Collier and Mr. Halliwell, that we thus reiterate the assertion of the world's ignorance of Shakespeare's life: nay, it is with a mingled thankfulness and sorrowful sympathy that we contemplate them wasting the light of the blessed sun (when it shines in England) and wearing out good eyes (or better barnacles) in poring over sentences as musty as the parchments on which they are written and as dry as the dust that covers them. But although we gladly concede that these labors have resulted in the diffusion of a knowledge of the times and the circumstances in which Shakespeare lived, and in the unearthing of much interesting illustration of his works from the mould of antiquity, we cannot accept the documents which have been so plentifully produced and so pitilessly printed,—the extracts from parish-registers and old account-books,—not Shakespeare's,—the inventories, the last wills and testaments, the leases, the deeds, the bonds, the declarations, pleas, replications, rejoinders, surrejoinders, rebutters, and surrebutters,—as having aught to do with the life of such a man as William Shakespeare. We hunger, and we receive these husks; we open our months for bread, and break our teeth against these stones. As to the law-pleadings, what have their discords, in linked harshness long drawn out, to do with the life of him whom his friends delighted to call Sweet Will? We wish that they at least had been allowed to rest. Those who were parties to them have been more than two centuries in their graves,—

"Secure from worldly chances and mishaps. There lurks no treason, there no envy swells, There grow no damned grudges; there no storms, No noise, but silence and eternal sleep."

Why awaken the slumbering echoes of their living strife?

Yet these very law-papers, in the reduplicated folds of which dead quarrels lie embalmed in hideous and grotesque semblance of their living shapes, their lifeblood dried that lent them all their little dignity, their action and their glow, and exhaling only a faint, sickening odor of the venom that has kept them from crumbling into forgetfulness,—these law-papers are now held by some to have special interest Shakespeare-ward, as having to do with a profession for which he made preparatory studies, even if he did not enter upon its practice. Yes, in spite of our alleged ignorance of Shakespeare's life, and especially of the utter darkness which has been thought to rest upon the years which intervened between his marriage in Stratford and his joining the Lord Chamberlain's company of players in London, the question is, now, whether the next historical novel may not begin in this wise:—

CHAPTER I

THE FUGITIVE

At the close of a lovely summer's day, two horsemen might have been seen slowly pacing through the main street of Stratford-on-Avon. Attracting no little attention from the group of loiterers around the market-cross, they passed the White-Lion Inn, and, turning into Henley Street, soon drew their bridles before a goodly cottage built of heavy timbers and standing with one of its peaked gables to the street. On the door was a shingle upon which was painted,

Willm. Shakspere,

Attornei at Lawe and Solicitor in Chancere.

One of the travellers—a grave man, whose head was sprinkled with the snows of fifty winters—dismounted, and, approaching the door, knocked at it with the steel hilt of his sword. He received no answer; but presently the lattice opened above his head, and a sharp voice sharply asked,—

"Who knocks?"

"'Tis I, good wife!" replied the horseman. "Where is thy husband? I would see him!"

"Oh, Master John a Combe, is it you? I knew you not. Neither know I where that unthrift William is these two days. It was but three nights gone that he went with Will Squele and Dick Burbage, one of the player folk, to take a deer out of Sir Thomas Lucy's park, and, as Will's ill-luck would have it, they were taken, as well as the deer, and there was great ado. But Will—that's my Will—and Dick Burbage, brake from the keepers in Sir Thomas' very hall, and got off; and that's the last that has been heard of them; and here be I left a lone woman with these three children, and–Be quiet, Hamnet! Would ye pour my supper ale upon the hat of the worshipful Master John a Combe?"

"What! deer-stealing?" exclaimed John a Combe. "Is it thus that he apes the follies of his betters? I had more hope of the lad, for he hath a good heart and a quick engine; and I trusted that ere now he had drawn the lease of my Wilmecote farm to Master Tilney here. But deer-stealing!—like a lord's son, or a knight's at the least. Could not the rifling of a rabbit-warren serve his turn? Deer-stealing! I fear me he will come to nought!"

The speaker remounted, and soon the two horsemen might again have been seen wending their way back through the deepening twilight.

* * * * *

There are several points that would be novel in such a passage. Among others, we would modestly indicate the incident of the two horsemen as evincing some ingenuity, and as likely to charm the reader by its freshness and originality. But one point, we must confess, is not new, and that is the representation of Shakespeare as a lawyer. The supposition, that the author of "Macbeth," "Hamlet," and "King Lear," was a bustling young attorney, is of respectable age, and has years enough upon its beard, if not discretion. It has been brought forward afresh by two members of the profession for which is claimed the honor of having Shakespeare's name upon its roll,—William L. Rushton, Esquire, a London Barrister, and John Campbell, Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench.[3 - Shakespeare a Lawyer. By William L. Rushton. 16mo. pp. 50. London: 1858. Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements Considered. By John Lord Campbell, LL.D., F.R.S.E. 12mo. pp. 117. London: 1859.] Lord Campbell, indeed, addressing himself to Mr. John Payne Collier, says, (p. 21,) that this is a notion "first suggested by Chalmers, and since countenanced by Malone, yourself, and others." An assertion this which savors little of legal accuracy. For Chalmers, so far from being the first to suggest that Shakespeare passed his adolescent years in an attorney's office, was the first to sneer at Malone for bringing forward that conjecture.[4 - Into the trap so innocently set the London Athenaeum thus plunges headlong:—"Chalmers, we believe, first put Shakespeare in an attorney's office. Malone accepted the hint."] Malone, in his first edition of Shakespeare's works, published in 1790, has this passage, in the course of a discussion of the period when "Hamlet" was produced:—

"The comprehensive mind of our poet embraced almost every object of Nature, every trade, every art, the manners of every description of men, and the general language of almost every profession: but his knowledge of legal terms is not such as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical skill; and he is so fond of displaying it, on all occasions, that I suspect he was early initiated in at least the forms of law, and was employed, while he remained at Stratford, in the office of some country attorney, who was at the same time a petty conveyancer, and perhaps, also, the seneschal of some manor court."—Vol. I. Part I. p. 307.

To this, Chalmers, some years after, (1797,) in his "Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare Papers which were exhibited in Norfolk Street," (some contemptible forgeries, by a young scapegrace named William Ireland, which should not have deceived an English scholar of six months' standing,) made the following reply:—

"Mr. Malone places the aspiring poet 'in the office of some country attorney, or the seneschal of some manor court'; and for this violation of probability he produces many passages from his dramas to evince Shakespeare's technical skill in the forms of law. …But was it not the practice of the times, for other makers, like the bees tolling from every flower the virtuous sweets, to gather from the thistles of the law the sweetest honey? Does not Spenser gather many a metaphor from these weeds, that are most apt to grow in fattest soil? Has not Spenser his law-terms: his capias, defeasance, and duresse; his emparlance; his enure, essoyn, and escheat; his folkmote, forestall and gage; his livery and seasin, wage and waif? It will be said, however, that, whatever the learning of Spenser may have gleaned, the law-books of that age were impervious to the illiterature of Shakespeare. No: such an intellect, when employed on the drudgery of a wool-stapler, who had been high-bailiff of Stratford-upon-Avon, might have derived all that was necessary from a very few books; from Totell's 'Presidents,' 1572; from Pulton's 'Statutes,' 1578; and from the 'Lawier's Logike,' 1588. It is one of the axioms of the 'Flores Regii,' that, To answer an improbable imagination is to fight against a vanishing shadow."—p. 553.