Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

apart from Shakespearean associations-Its p

na, guide-books, miniature reproductions of the inevitable Shakespeare bust, and the hundred-and-one small articles that tourists buy; but Stratford-on-Avon is not in the least like that. It is true that with a singular lack of humour there is a "Shakespeare Garage," while we all know that Shakespeare never owned a motor-car; that the bust is represented in mosaic over the entrance to the Old Bank, founded in 1810, upon which Shakespeare could never, therefore, have drawn a cheque; and that the

ked it much. On the other hand, Macbeth makes one fearful of insomnia.

and it is no less undeniable that the presiding genius of the place has his manifestations in many other directions; but all these things, together with the several antique furniture and curio shops where the unique articles-of which there is but one each in the world-you purch

hem into the Guildhall or other convenient room and set them an examination paper on Shakespeare, no one would pass with honours. Why should any of them? They have grown up with Shakespeare; they accept him as a fact, just as they do the rising and setting of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon; but they are not interested in him any more than they are in the courses of those

e, ever will be. All around in the Avon valley stretch those rich pastures that still "lard the rother's sides," and on market days there come crawling into the streets, among the cattle and the sheep, carriers' carts from many an obscure village, with curious specimens of countryfolk who have not lost t

op." This annual event is held somewhat too late for the average visitor's convenience; on October 12th, when the tourists have mostly gone home. It is the great hiring-fair for farm servants and others: perhaps we had b

streets; a loathly spectacle, and not one calculated to increase respect for our ancestors, whose great idea of fit merry-making for very special occasions was this same roasting of cattle whole and

uesome in the spectacle. Special trains run from numerous places, and

erations have caused to be thus hidden. There is in this way a speculative interest always attaching to structural alterations in the town. In this chance fashion the fine timbering of the so-called "Tudor House" was uncovered in 1903, and other instances might be given. Recently, also, Nash's House has been completely refronted, in fifteenth century style, wholly in oak. In fact, we might almost declare that

ws go wandering up and down its emptiness, seeking rest in the Avon over the Clopton Bridge, but always blown back. Now Bridge Street was not always like this. In Shakespeare's time, and until 1858, when the last of it was cleared away, a kind of island of old houses occupied part of this roadway. It was called "Middle Row." Such a collection of houses was t

se, to do her n

say, her soul

lled that horse,

give to get t

spiriting with the best intentions. Unfortunately, go

out its sign; and perhaps, in these times of reconstructions, i

he sitting-room he occupied is kept somewhat as a shrine to his memory, and the chair he fancifully called his "throne" is still there, but you may not sit in it. It is kept under lock and key, in a cupboard with glass doors. The poker he likened to his sceptre is kept jealously in the bar. Citizens of the United States ask to s

Hugh Clopton aforesaid made also the great and sumptuous Bridge upon Avon, at the East ende of the Towne, which hath 14 great Arches of stone and a long Causey made of Stone, lowe walled on each syde, at the West Ende of the Bridge. Afor the tyme of Hugh Clopton there was but a poore Bridge of Tymbre, and no Causey to come to it; whereby many poore Folkes and others refused to come to Stratford when Avon was up, or comminge thither, stood in jeopardye of Lyfe. The Bridge ther of late tyme," he proceeds to say, "was very s

e charged for passing over his bridge, but in the course of time, such charges were made, and the very large a

g. Katharine Rogers, daughter of the builders of this house, married Robert Harvard of Southwark, butcher, in 1605. Almost everything in Stratford pivots upon Shakespeare, or is made to do so, and it is therefore not difficult to imagine Rogers' beautiful little dwelling being erected here at the very time when Shakespeare was contemplating purchasing New Place, and the dramatist's interest in it. Rogers, being, like John Shakespeare on the town council, must have been very closely acquainted with the family. The Rev. John Harvard, son of Robert and Katharine, emigrated to the New England States of America in 1637 and di

d for sale by auction. The biddings failed to reach the reserve price and the property was withdrawn at ￡950. Chicago, in the person of a wealthy native of that place, came to the rescue, and it was privately bought for t

ck the Americans in Stratford, you must go to the Shakespeare Hotel, anyway, or to the "Red Horse." The house was in the occupation of a firm of auctioneers and land agents un

ornate gothic drinking-fountain and clock-tower, the "American Memorial Fountain," given in 1887 by that wealthy Shakespearean collector, George W. Childs, proprietor of the Philadelphia Ledger. It incl

like your beer, you can set against this the equally Shak

ith. Amity is the note of Mr. Childs' fountain, and the "merry songs of peace" are the subject of one of the carved quotations: that is why the British Lion and the American Eagle alternate in effigy at the angles

rial, to include a school of acting: possibly with Shakespeare's own very excellent advice to actors, which he placed in the mouth of Hamlet, set up in gilded words of wisdom in its halls. The school for actors has not y

ly determined by that of the original Globe Theatre of Shakespeare's own time in Southwark. It is of red brick and stone, and a distinct ornament to the town and the riverside, although its gothic appears to have here and there a rather Continental flavour. A little more pronounced, it might seem almost Rhenish. But let us be sufficiently thankful the Memorial did not take shape in Garrick's day, when it would certainly have assumed some terrible neo-classic form. There are some particularly good and charming gargoyles over the entrance, notably th

rial is being rapidly obscured by them. It looks its best from the Clopton Bridge, and combines with Holy Trinit

r we may equally well cross the river by the long and narrow red brick tramway bridge, built in 1826 for the purposes of the Stratford-on-Avon and Shipston-on-Stour Tramway: an ill-fated but heroic project that immediately

ecomes much narrower, and the navigation down stream is a thing of the past. The Avon down to Binton and up beyond Charlecote is, in fact, rendered impassable by difficulties created by the Lucy family of Charlecote, and by the Earl of Warwick. Private ownership in navigable or semi-navigable streams is an ancient and complicated affair concerned with rights of fishing, of weirs and mill-leets, and other

over a thousand years ago, and belonged then and long afterwards to the Bishops of Worcester. The exquisite humour of the manorial law ordained not only that the people of Stratford were under obligation to have their corn ground here, but that they were also made to pay for it. And as co

this mill: the astonishing high-water marks of floods for a century past being marked. Scanning them

is Hall's Croft, the home of Dr. John Hall, Susanna Shakespeare's husband, before they removed to New Place following upon Sh