It appears, too, from the Stratford records, and is therefore certain,
that as early as the year 1614 a preacher was entertained at New
Place--"Item, one quart of sack, and one quart of claret wine, given to
a preacher at the New Place, twenty pence." The Reverend John Ward, who
was vicar of Stratford, in a manuscript memorandum book written in the
year 1664, asserts that "Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Johnson had a
merie meeting, and itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a
feavour there contracted."
Shakespeare, as we have seen from "The Tempest," retired to
Stratford--"where every third thought shall be my grave"--in broken
health and in a mood of despairing penitence. I do not suppose the mood
lasted long; but the ill-health and persistent weakness explain to me as
nothing else could his retirement to Stratford. It is incredible to me
that Shakespeare should leave London at forty-seven or forty-eight years
of age, in good health, and retire to Stratford to live as a "prosperous
country gentleman"! What had Stratford to offer Shakespeare--village
Stratford with a midden in the chief street and the charms of the
village usurer's companionship tempered by the ministrations of a
wandering tub-thumper?
There is abundant evidence, even in "The Winter's Tale" and "Cymbeline,"
to prove that the storm which wrecked Shakespeare's life had not blown
itself out even when these last works were written in 1611-12; the
jealousy of Leontes is as wild and sensual as the jealousy of Othello;
the attitude of Posthumus towards women as bitter as anything to be
found in "Troilus and Cressida":
"Could I find out
The woman's part in me! For there's no motion
That tends to vice in man but I affirm
It is the woman's part: be it lying, note it,
The woman's; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;
Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
Nice longing, slanders, mutability,
All faults that may be named, nay, that hell knows,
Why, hers, in part or all, but rather all;
For even to vice
They are not constant, but are changing still
One vice, but of a minute old, for one
Not half so old as that.
Pages:
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571