Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

-The Guild Chapel, Guild Hall,

old inn of unusual design, the "Windmill." It is illustrated here, and so the effective frontage, with its row of singularly bold dormer windows need not be more particularly described. The interior is almost equally interesting, and has a deep ingle-nook with one of those bacon-cupboards that

s, ending with the imposing stone tower of the Guild Chapel. It is entirely right that these buildings should bulk so largely to the eye, for in them is centred the greater part of Stratford's history. They are the timeworn and venerable buildings of that ancient Guild of Hol

eatest service, but also the originator of the Grammar School, and an informal town council and local authority, which, strangely enough, in its later and almost wholly secularised character, withstood the exac

omewhat later the Guild espoused the cause of education, and certainly had a grammar school at the close of the fourteenth century, payments to the schoolmaster being the subject of allusion in the Guild's archives in 1402. Once a year the entire membership went in stately procession to church, and returning to the Guild Hall indulged in one of those gargantuan feasts whose records are the amazement of modern readers. Of the 103 pullets, and of the geese and the beef recorded to have been consumed at one of these feasts in the beginning of the fifteenth century we say nothing, but on the same occasion they drank "34 gallons of good beer,

s of local government, and strictly too, and its aldermen and proctors were officials not likely to be disregarded. The authority of the Guild was supported by its

the future of its members' souls, and had become in some of its developments much more like a Chamber of Commerce. But it had not forgotten t

mbers of that body had been also officials of the Guild. John Shakespeare, high Bailiff in 1569, was

ty in a book as in the affairs of life, and so it may at once be admitted that the interior of the Guild Chapel is extremely disappointing. It is coldly whitewashed, and the ancient frescoes discovered a hundred years ago have faded away. They included a fine, if alarming to some minds, representation of the doom, a fifteenth-century notion of the Judgment Day. Alarming to some minds because of the very high percentage of the damned disclosed at this awful balancing of accounts. Illustrations of this, among the other frescoes, survive, and have a fearful interest. It is pleasing to see the towering mansions of the Blest on the left hand, with St. Peter waiting at the open door welcoming that, ah

alicise that choice specimen of stupidity, not because it is unique or even rare, for it is found all over the country, and elsewhere in this very town of Stratford, and here and everywhere else it is at last being found out; but because the italics are needed somewhere, to drive home the peculiar dunderheadedness of it. I think perhaps, after all, plaster was coated over ol

se and to be abated and apologised for. The only time to apologise for a chimney is when it smokes inside the house instead of out; and it is pleasant to see that who

y the poorer brethren of the Guild and still housing the pensioners enjoying their share of the Clopton benefactions. They wear

the entertainments given by their successors, the earlier town councils, were acted. Here such travelling companies as those who called themselves "the Earl of Leicester's serv

the inner councils of the Guild, was re-panelled about 1619, when the door leading from the hall was built; and as a sign of rejoicing, the royal arms w

red roses painted on the west wall, the red countercharged with a white centre and the white with red, were placed there in 1485, marking the sa

om. Here we are on the scene of Shakespeare's schooldays, the schoolroom where he learnt that "small Latin and less Greek," with which Ben Jon

schoolboy, wi

ning face, cree

ngly to

schooling of those days. It was a twelve-hour day, begun extremely early in t

e scholars, and qualified to impart an excellent education. They were in fact men distinctly above the average of the schoolmasters of that age, and live for all time in the characters of Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost and Sir Hugh Evans in the Merry Wives of Windsor; the title "Sir," being one, not of knighthood, but of courtesy, given to a clergyman. Shakespeare's allusions to schools, masters and scholars, and his Latin conversations in the plays, modelled on the scho

n 1841. The half-timbered house standing in the courtyard was formerly the schoolmaster's residence; it

he himself had done. Not every one can be so fortunate. Perhaps the reigning schoolmaster of the time even held up the shining example of Mr. William Shakespeare, "who was a schoolboy here, like you, my boys," to his classes, and carefully omitting the factors of chance and opportunity, promised them as great success if they did but mind their books. Perhaps, on the other hand-for these were already puritan times-

heir destination-untimely were caused by the dirt and the vile odours of the place. Stratford of course, was not singular in this, and had its counterpart in most other towns and villages of that age. The town council, however, drew the line at the burgesses keeping pigs in part of the houses, or allowing them to wander in the streets; and enacted a fine of fourpence for every strayed porker. But the townsfolk regarded the authority's dislike of pigs as a curious eccentricity, and the swine had their st

some four or five feet across, choked with mud. All the filth o

age of picture-postcards, and never knew the joy of seeing illustrations of his house, "New Place; residence of Mr. William Shak

. Hall here entertained Queen Henrietta Maria for three weeks, at the beginning of the royalist troubles, when the Queen came to the town with 5000 men. In 1649 she died, two years after her son-in-law, Thomas Nash, whose house is next door. Somewhere about this time all the

old out of the Clopton family now came back to it by marriage, Sir Edward Walker who bought the property in 1675, leaving Barbara, an only child, who married Sir John Clopton. His son, Sir Hugh, came into possession of an entirely new-fronted house, for his father, careless of its associations, in 1703 had made great alt

e twelve months. His acrid humours were early stirred. He had no sooner moved in than he found numbers of people coming every day to see Shakespeare's mulberry-tree in the garden, so he promptly had it cut down, to save himself annoyance. Then he objected to the house being assessed for taxes all the year round, although he occupied it only a month or t

? Nash's house, odiously re-fronted about the beginning of the nineteenth century, showed a stuccoed front with pillared portico to the street until recently. This year (1912) the alterations have been completed by which the frontage is restored by the evidence of old prints to its appearance in Nash's time. The interior remains as of old. Among the relics in the Museum are chairs, tables, a writing-desk, and other articles rather doubtfully said to have belonged to Shakespeare; a trinket-box supposed to have been Anne Hathaway's, and an o