University of Virginia Library

Scene II.

—Interior of Shakespeare's School. Shakespeare and Six Scholars.
First Scholar.
O master, lay we now these books aside,
And listen cheerly to a tale of hunting.

Shakespeare.
'Twas not for this your parents sent you here.

First Scholar
Beshrew our parents, speak to us of foxes.

Second Scholar.
Or hares.

Third Scholar.
Or harts.

Fourth Scholar.
Or hawks.

Fifth Scholar.
Or hounds.

Sixth Scholar.
Or horses.

Shakespeare.
Scholars, I doubt not you will bear me witness
I have not plagued you overmuch with study,
Addled your hatching brains in any fashion,
Disfigured your young flesh with rod and ferule,
Drilled you to grave and reverent deportment,
Or done, as most would deem, my duty by you.

First Scholar.
The gods forbid! You evermore have been
Our very noble and approved good master,
For whom the eloquent divinity
Untwines the serpents from his golden rod,
And Pallas stills the hooting of her owl.
Unsanguined hangs the birch where first I saw it,
Nor have I known it taken down, unless
To whip a stray dog forth. What is a ferule?

Second Scholar.
Rather your gentleness by genial lures
Did woo our wayward wills, according us
Practise of liberal arts. Myself have learned
To make gunpowder.

Third Scholar.
I have skill in fencing.

Fourth Scholar.
I know a score of tricks upon the cards.

Fifth Scholar.
I can a kettle mend.

Sixth Scholar.
I cook a hedgehog.

First Scholar.
But most do we applaud the vast reform
Made in our classical curriculum.
Your worship liketh Master Ovid well,
Yet have not thrust his Latin down our throats,
But given us the pith of him in English.

Second Scholar.
And how the hours have flown in listening tales
Of dwarfs and giants, magic swords and rings,
Paladins, princely captives, mermaids, ghosts
Freighted with airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Saracens, dragons, necromancers, fairies
That on the beached margent of the sea
Do dance their ringlets to the whistling wind!

Third Scholar.
Aye, and that huge old volume in the window,
What tales thou drewest from its tattered page!
Reading to our rapt silence histories
Of steeled and steeded war, of ruth and ruin,
Grief of high dames, and dooms of kings and princes,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,
Or massacred in rage of mutiny.

Fourth Scholar.
You eke have mightily endeared yourself
By wondrous feats at leapfrog.

Fifth Scholar.
Blindman's buff.

Sixth Scholar.
By raisins, almonds, ginger, sugarplums.

Shakespeare.
With you, dear boys, I've lived my boyhood over,
And frisked with you like a twinnéd lamb,
Or if an elder brother, not a better.
But Time speeds on, and in his train Occasion
Dishevels to the wind her golden tress,
Now to be grasped, or forfeit evermore.
The hour sounds for our parting.

The Scholars.
Parting, Master?

Shakespeare.
Yes, boys, I must to London: part by choice,
Compulsion part: yet be my Ann unchided,
Perchance but instrument of Heaven to urge
My unwilling foot, and spur me on to greatness.
Can keep a secret, boys?

The Scholars.
Most sacredly.

Shakespeare.
Know then that I have ta'en my fireside fiend,
And decked him out in motley, making him
An antic spirit, and a merry goblin,
And errand have assigned him at stage doors
To knock in likeness of a comedy,
And, winning entrance there, for me he'll win it.
But if he miss, I none the less will follow,
And stand at doors of theatres, and hold horses,
Till one acceding saith, Friend, come up higher.
Yet more, I feel that what my brain affords,
That can my tongue deliver from the boards.

First Scholar.
O master, never a play-actor!

Second Scholar.
Sooner
May I learn Latin!

Third Scholar.
Ignomy and thou
Be ne'er acquainted!

Fourth Scholar.
Birch us all round rather!

Shakespeare.
'Tis true, the actor's name is a derision,
His calling smirched and smutted; and how else
While Tragedy is rant, and Comedy
Through a horse collar grins? But come the Poet
And occupy the stage with men and women
Real as they who come to look upon them;
Or bidden from the realms of phantasy,
Yet true unto the law of their own being;
Or raised from ancient tombs, yet warm with life:
And let each in his various degree
Use an apt parlance that becomes the part:
If prose, the phrase that should have fallen from him,
Being the man he doth but represent:
If metrical his speech, his metre music.
Then, as the bark by mounting tides is lifted,
Needs must the actor rise, sundering the cordage
Which now unto the muddy shore confines him.
And urging blasts of emulation
With his own fellows and his play's creator,
To whom he can disclose things unsurmised
Even by themselves, for art is infinite,
Shall swell his sails and give him to the ocean—
Forgive me, boys, if I do weary you.
From hoarded fuel flashes the young fire;
And, like a wind-stirred tree, my mind casts down
The ripened fruit of meditation.

First Scholar.
I partly apprehend thee, yet would fain
Be told in what recess the Poet lurks
Without whom players must continue clowns.

Shakespeare.
He stands among you.

The Scholars.
Thou?

Shakespeare.
You disbelieve?

First Scholar.
'Tis but amazement, master. Had'st thou told us
Thou could'st hold water in a witch's sieve,
We had not blinked, but this is somewhat sudden.
And yet in taking back my memory,
All things that thou hast spoken of the Poet
I do perceive said aptly of thyself.

Shakespeare.
Thy honest witness cheers, for few will credit
That ever Muse came down from Castaly
To rock the cradle of a butcher's son.

Sixth Scholar.
Dear master, did you ever kill a pig?

Shakespeare.
Aye, boy, and thou dost mind me that, when once
A daughter of swart Egypt scanned my palm,
This was the sibyl's rede. Beware of bacon.
Dark speech! which the far future shall unriddle.
Yet trust me, blood hath gushed from nobler veins
To smoke upon my steel. The calf hath found
In me its slayer and its orator
In phrase attuned, for natural to my tongue
Came verse, from sighing wind or rustling leaf
Or murmuring lapse of gentle streams imbibed.
Et quod tentabam dicere, versus erat.
So is it yet. I oft must bite my tongue,
Lest she move laughter, clothing daily chares
In language of immortal poetry.
But see what gift is mine. I do but take
The speech familiar of uncivil men,
And that which had offended in their mouth
In mine is music, losing not at all
The grace of truthful semblance, even as silver
Purged of its dross, is silver all the more.
And though my pen not yet hath laboured much,
No thing it could not render to the life
This narrow spot hath yielded it. My cage,
I've made a quire, as doth the imprisoned bird,
And sung my bondage freely. But mere music
Discourses, not depicts. I'd see, not hearken,
And school Imagination's ignorance.
The palace I must view to limn the monarch;
The court, the camp, for courtier and for soldier;
Cities for concourse; marts for merchandise;
The sea for navies, argosies, and tempests;
The bower for ladies' eyes; the hermitage
For old Religion's cord and rosary.
Masques I must know, jousts, triumphs, prisons, scaffolds,
And him who fattens by usurious ducats,
And him who gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
And whatso else is lacking to my Stratford.
Stratford! I praise thee for thy constables,
For sexton, pedlar, hostler, clown and squire.
But now my soul, no more content with such,
Must seek out spirits liker to itself,
And travel make me happy in the tongues,
Without which I were often miserable.
Wherefore, as oft a dwarf precedes a champion,
A quaint capricious farce, not gross but homely,
Such as may well win laughter from the crowd,
And toleration from the better sort,
I penned, and did despatch to Master Field,
Vendor of books and intimate with players,
My old companion and my now ally.
And it and I and he shall win me London,
And winning London I have won the world.

The Scholars.
O master, canst thou quit us?

Shakespeare.
Yea, my boys.
'Tis better for us all. Our lives have been
In outward things astir, within a slumber.
But now must we arise and get us wisdom,
You studying your book and I the world.
Such the condition Destiny lays on us.
We part, but ever in my breast I bear you,
And, some time in the days to come, my pen
Shall furnish forth the story of our lives
In figure of a martial veteran
Schooling a monarch's valiant progeny
To practise of the chase. This very night,
By heaven! the play shall be rehearsed. Come strike
The deer with me!

First Scholar.
We strike a deer!

Second Scholar.
A deer!

Third Scholar.
O what is rabbiting to this?

Fourth Scholar.
'Tis heaven
Come down to earth.

Shakespeare.
In sooth 'tis pious deed.
“For their great numbers are deemed prejudicial,
And therefore highly disapproved of many.”
(So testifies good Master Turbervile.)
To see them at this very season trooping
From wood to field, and stand serenely munching
Young coleworts and green corn, the food of the peasant,
Who fends his crop with clamour, at the most
Daring no missile deadlier than a stone!
Deer! locusts rather! cankers! palmer-worms!
These in their wilderness disquieting,
We but requite their trespass, and do carry
War into Africa. I see you fire
For the adventure, but be wise and wary.
Bright things come quickly to confusion.
Sly Moles, ratcatcher to the house of Lucy,
Came here to egg me on. I much mistrust him.
But now or never 'tis. O pitcher, faring
Once more unto the spring, if thou unbroken,
Do yet this time return, farewell deer-stealing!
Now to your homes, where wait the moon's uprise,
And half an hour past curfew steal away.
If any meet you, say you're rabbiting,
And carry an authenticating ferret.
There, where the slow stream issues from the wood,
Will I encounter you, and, knowing well
Where the stags couch, will lead you to their lairs.
Crossbows and shafts I'll bring, and he who strikes
The venison first shall be the lord of the feast.