E

V.

SHAKESPEARE-RIPE MANHOOD

VERY person who reaches mature age contracts habits. These taken

in the fullest sense are the man himself. He is known as the combination of certain methods of conduct. He is the embodiment of certain holdings, for this is what habit means, and that which one holds, holds at command and for service, -is that by which he impresses his fellowmen. These holdings may be natural endowments brought into service or they may be acquired forms of activity. Not only is habit second nature, but nature passes into habit and combines with acquirements that become spontaneously effective through practice.

Our topic now is, Shakespeare as the man of habits,—the man as known to the world through those characteristics that acted out themselves. We ask then,

How did he appear to his contemporaries? how did he impress them? His endowments, we may safely say, were much to his advantage. He was graceful in form and manners, winning in his address, com

panionable among his fellows, able and ready to enter into the amusements of such company as he might be in. He abhorred quarreling, was inclined to forgive wrong rather than resent it. He was a master of ridicule and pungent wit, but these were brought into service against public wrongs and popular defects. He has left no trace of malice or desire of revenge. The adjectives gentle and sweet have come down to us from his companions as descriptive of his character, though there have been some charges, perhaps some indications, of jealousy and wounded ambition. With his delicate and refined nature he was very susceptible to influences from without. He had exquisite delight in music. Nature addressed him in manifold ways. The purple of the morning, the blaze of sunlight, the alternation of light and shadow, birds, the young of animals, flowers and trees brought to him their daily messages of cheer. His love of nature was inborn and developed by its own inherent energy, greatly fostered, however, by his early habits. He was not educated to the appreciation of rural scenes by plotted lawns and landscape gardening, but by the fields over which he roamed, by the woodlands

where he watched the birds, the habitants of hollow trees and the shy burrowers of the ground. He became familiar with the ways of the wild world by his own observations. His poetry puts in words what he saw with his own eyes. Until he was twenty years of age he must have lived in intimate converse, not with books that described the habits of the pigeon and the ground-hog, but with the animals themselves in their chosen haunts. In the Venus and Adonis he begins the description of the hunted hare thus:

"And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, "Mark the blind wretch, to overshoot his troubles "How he outruns the wind, and with what care "He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles; "The many musits through which he goes "Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.''

The poet's minute observation of particulars is illustrated by the dialogue of Duncan with Banquo, wholly unconscious of the fate awaiting them.

Duncan says:

"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air "Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself "Unto our gentle senses.

Banquo responds:

"This guest of summer,

"The temple-haunting martlet does approve. "By this loved maisonery, that the heaven's breath "Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze, buttress, "Nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made "His pendent bed, and procreant cradle; where they "Most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air "Is delicate."

Sir Joshua Reynolds remarks of this passage: "This short dialogue between Duncan and Banquo has always appeared to me a striking instance of what in painting is termed repose."

He was equally susceptible to social influences and must have enjoyed the sodality of boon companions. The creator of Falstaff had certainly witnessed revelry and carousing. Brandes remarks that the hilarities in which he had part opened the way for some of the scenes in Henry V and Henry IV. "He drew the character of young English aristocrats under the names Mercutio, Benedek, Gratiano, Lorenzo, etc. These he had met and conversed with at such taverns as The Mitre, Boar's Head, The Mermaid." Such resorts were much patronized at that day. Brandes says: "There were never so many kinds of drink in England as in 1600." I