Church Street—The “Castle” inn—The Guild Chapel, Guild Hall, and Grammar School—New Place.

Church Street is the most likeable of all the streets of Stratford. There you do not, in point of fact, actually see the church, which is out away beyond the end of it. The features of this quiet and yet not dull thoroughfare are the few and scattered shops in among private houses, and a quaint 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 are so numerously found in the town and district. It is a house that attracts and holds the observant man’s attention, and it has been so greatly admired by an American visitor that a complete set of architectural drawings was made for him and an exact replica built in Chicago a few years ago.

Opposite the “Windmill” inn is a fine Georgian mansion called “Mason Croft,” obviously once occupied by a person of importance, many years since. But the chief feature of Church Street is the long range of half-timbered buildings with its striking row of massive chimney-stacks, 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 Holy Cross whose beginnings are in the dim past and have never been definitely fixed. The earliest facts relating to the Guild take the story of it back to 1269, when its first Chapel was begun, and when the semi-religious character of the fraternity was its more important half.

The “Windmill” Inn

The Guild may be likened to a mutual benefit society of modern times, with the addition of the religious element. It was founded in superstition, but lived that down and became not only an institution of the greatest 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 exactions of the Bishops of Worcester, the old-time lords of the manor and their stewards, and finally, after being dissolved in 1547, was re-constituted as the town council of the newly incorporated borough in 1553.

The original form of the Guild was that of a subscription society for men and women. Its benefits, unlike those of the Foresters and the Oddfellows of to-day, were chiefly spiritual. It employed priests to look after the religious needs of its members during life and to pray for the health of their souls after death. It secured these then greatly desired benefits at a reduced rate, just as the modern benefit society employs the club doctor. It also in many ways promoted kindliness and good-fellowship, helped the poor, and often found husbands for unappropriated spinsters by the simple process of endowing them. This was all to the good. Somewhat 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,” and “39 gallons of small ale,” perhaps on the well-known old principle that “good eating deserveth good drinking.” The 73 gallons of ale not being enough they sent out and had some more in by the cistern, a method which seems determined and heroic. The account thus includes “1 cestern of penyale,” for which they paid the equivalent of eight shillings, and “2 cesterns of good beer bought from Agnes Iremonger for 3s.”; that is to say, about twenty-four shillings’ worth. They seem to have had enough, “’Tis merry in hall when beards wag all,” and there can be no doubt that the company who on this occasion drank pottle-deep were merry enough.

The Guild also added morality plays to its entertainments; but all these lively proceedings formed but one side to its activities. It fulfilled many of the functions 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 wealth, contributed by the benefactions of the members, which rendered it in course of time, after the lord of the manor, the largest landowner in and about the town.

It was not so great a change when the old Guild was reconstructed and became the town council. By that time it had ceased its early care for 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 to make merry and its love-feasts continued, and its morality plays with them, although they had become a little more after the secular model.

These traditions were continued into the town council, as they could scarcely fail to be, for the members of that body had been also officials of the Guild. John Shakespeare, high Bailiff in 1569, was responsible for inviting a company of actors to perform in the Guild Hall, and others did the like.

The Guild Chapel, founded in 1296 and largely rebuilt by the generosity of Sir Hugh Clopton in the fifteenth century, is the chief of the Guild’s old buildings. It is not now of much practical use, but of venerable aspect and considerable beauty. The tower, porch and nave are Clopton’s work, the beautiful porch still displaying his shield of arms and that of the City of London, although greatly weathered and defaced. He did not touch the chancel, which had already been restored; and the exterior still shows by force of contrast the greatness of Clopton’s gift; his nave entirely overshadowing in its comparative bulk the humble proportions of the chancel. Frankness is at least as desirable a quality 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! so small band; but on the right, where green, pink and blue pig-faced devils with asses’ ears are tormenting their prey, whanging them with bludgeons and raking them in with three-pronged prokers, casting them into Hell’s Mouth, and finally roasting them in a furnace, the prospect is vile. Shakespeare must have been perfectly familiar with these horrific things, and Falstaff’s likening of a flea on Bardolph’s fiery nose to a “black soul burning in hell fire,” looks very like a vivid recollection of them. Some day, perhaps, when the Shakespearean cult at Stratford is more advanced (it is only in its youth yet) these frescoes will be renewed, from the careful records of them that have been kept.

Guild Chapel, Guild Hall, Grammar School and AlmshousesThe lengthy line of the Guild Hall and the almshouses of the Guild is one of the most effective things in the town. It dates from 1417. For many years, until 1894, the stout timbering was hidden away beneath plaster, and few suspected the simple beauty of the honest old oak framing hidden beneath. The plaster was spread over it to preserve the oak from the weather. Let us italicise 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 old timbering, not so much for the preservation of it as because generations had been born who could not endure the uneven lines of the old work. The woodwork of those later heirs of time was true to a hair’s breadth and planed down to an orderly smoothness: not riven anyhow from the logs. A conflict of ideals had arisen, and the new era was ashamed of the handiwork of the old.

There have been times when architects were also ashamed of their chimneys, and disguised them and hid them away, as though a chimney were an unnatural thing for a house 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 whoever designed and built the long and lofty range of chimneys that rises, almost like a series of towers, from this roof ridge, had not the least idea of excusing them.

The hall of the Guild occupies almost half the length of the lower floor. The remainder forms the almshouses formerly occupied by the poorer brethren of the Guild and still housing the pensioners enjoying their share of the Clopton benefactions. They wear on the right arm a silver badge displaying the Clopton cross, a cross heraldically described as a “cross pattÉe fitchÉe at foot.”

The interior of the Guild Hall displays firstly that long ground-floor hall in which the Guild members met and feasted or transacted business, and where their morality plays and 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 servants,” and other troupes of actors, occasionally performed. Shakespeare as a boy must have seen them, and thus probably had his attention first directed to the stage as a career.

From this long hall the room variously styled the “Armoury,” or the small Council Chamber or “’Greeing Room,” is entered. This Agreeing Room, perhaps for 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 were painted over the fireplace at the time of the Restoration of Charles the Second, in 1660. Here also at one time the arms of the town guard were kept.

The present School Library, overhead, occupies the room under the roof, formerly the large Council Chamber of the Guild. The heraldic white and 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 satisfaction of the townsfolk at the marriage of Henry the Seventh with Elizabeth of York, and the union of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster.

Out of this room opens the Latin Schoolroom of the Grammar School. The first portion of it was once separate, and known as the Mathematical Room. Here we are on the scene of Shakespeare’s schooldays, the schoolroom where he learnt that “small Latin and less Greek,” with which Ben Jonson credited him; a room still used in the education of Stratford boys. He pictured the schoolboy of his own and every other time in the lines—

“The whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwillingly to school.”

How unwillingly we do not fully comprehend until we look more closely into the schooling of those days. It was a twelve-hour day, begun extremely early in the morning, and continued through the weary hours with some exercise of the rod.

We know exactly who were the masters of the Grammar School in the years 1571 to 1580, when Shakespeare received his education here, in common with the other children of the town. They were Walter Roche, who was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and afterwards rector of Clifford Chambers; succeeded in 1572 by Thomas Hunt, afterwards curate-in-charge at Luddington; and in 1577 by Thomas Jenkins, of St. John’s College, Oxford. These may have been pedants, but they were 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 school methods then in vogue, are much more numerous and illuminative than generally supposed. We find, indeed, an especially intimate touch with Shakespeare’s schooldays in the description of Malvolio in Twelfth Night as “like a pedant that keeps school i’ the church”; a remark whose significance is not evident until we read that during Shakespeare’s own schooldays the buildings were extensively repaired and that for a time the master and pupils were housed in the Guild Chapel.

The Schoolmaster’s House and Guild ChapelThe Latin Schoolroom has an outside staircase built in recent years to replace the original, abolished in 1841. The half-timbered house standing in the courtyard was formerly the schoolmaster’s residence; it is now, with the need for accommodating the natural increase of scholars, used for additional class-rooms.

Shakespeare, retiring early from his interests in London and the playhouses, and coming home to Stratford a wealthy man, hoping to live many years in the enjoyment of his fortune, settled in the old mansion he had bought, adjoining the scene of his own schooldays. He must have looked with a kindly eye and with much satisfaction from the windows of New Place, upon the schoolboys coming and going along the street, as 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—their distinguished neighbour was an awful example: author of those shocking exhibitions called stage-plays, at this time forbidden in the town, under penalties, and an actor, “such as those rogues whom we but the other day sent packing from our streets. Beware, my lads, lest you become wealthy after the fashion of Mr. Shakespeare. ‘What profiteth it a man, if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’”

The Headmaster’s Desk, Stratford-on-Avon Grammar SchoolShakespeare, although he had become a personage of great consideration, with a fine residence, many times removed from his father’s humble house in Henley Street, had not changed into a more salubrious neighbourhood. The Stratford of his day and for long after was a dirty and insanitary place, according to our notions, but the townsfolk did not seem to be troubled by these conditions, and it never occurred to them that the plagues and fevers that carried off many of their fellows to Heaven—or whatever their 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 styes and roamed the streets exactly as before. The biggest of the six municipal muckhills that raised their majestic crests in the streets all the year round was situated in Chapel Lane, opposite Shakespeare’s door, but there is no record of his having objected to it. It was this, however, and the deplorable condition of Chapel Lane in general, then notoriously the dirtiest thoroughfare in the town, which probably caused the poet’s death; for the opinion now generally held is that he died of typhoid fever.

Down Chapel Lane then ran an open gutter: a wide and dirty ditch some four or five feet across, choked with mud. All the filth of this part of the town ran into it and discharged into the river.

There is no pictorial record of New Place, as it was when Shakespeare resided in it. He was unfortunate in living long before the age of picture-postcards, and never knew the joy of seeing illustrations of his house, “New Place; residence of Mr. William Shakespeare” (with the tell-tale legend “Printed in Germany.” in ruby type on the back), for sale in all the shop windows. Poor devil!

New Place passed by Shakespeare’s will to his daughter Susanna and her husband Dr. Hall. They removed from their house “Hall’s Croft,” Old Stratford, shortly afterwards, Shakespeare’s widow probably living with them until her death in 1623. Dr. Hall died in 1635. In 1643, Mrs. 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 Shakespeare books and manuscripts would seem to have disappeared. The puritan Dr. Hall disapproved of stage-plays, and his wife, Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna, could neither write nor read; and thus the complete destruction of the dramatist’s records is easily accounted for.

Nash’s widow, Shakespeare’s granddaughter, married again, a John Barnard who was afterwards knighted. Lady Barnard died childless at her husband’s place at Abington, Northamptonshire, and was buried there, leaving New Place to her husband, who died four years later, in 1674. By a strange chance, the house that had been sold 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 alterations here. Illustrations of this frontage which survived until 1759, show that it was not at all Shakespearean; being instead most distinctly and flagrantly Queen Annean, in the semi-classic taste of that day, with a pediment and other architectural details which we are convinced Shakespeare’s New Place never included.

The ill-tempered Rev. Francis Gastrell who bought New Place in 1753 completed the obliteration of the illustrious owner’s residence. There cannot, happily, be many people so black-tempered as this wealthy absentee vicar of Frodsham, in Cheshire, who, resident for the greater part of the year in Lichfield, yet found Stratford desirable at some time in the 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 two in the twelve; and when the authorities refused to accept his view, he had the place entirely demolished. Thus perished New Place. The site of it, after passing through several hands, was finally purchased, together with the adjoining Thomas Nash’s house, by public subscription in 1861; and both are now the property of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

The site of New Place is open to the view of all who pass along Church Street and Chapel Lane, a dwarf wall with ornamental railing alone dividing it and its gardens from the pavement. Sixpence, which is the key that unlocks many doors in Shakespeare land, admits to the foundations, all that remain of the house, and also to the “New Place Museum,” in the house of Thomas Nash. Strange to say, the Trustees do not charge for admission to the gardens. Is this an oversight, or a kindly wish to leave the stranger an odd sixpence to get home with? 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 old shuffle-board from the “Falcon” inn opposite, on which Shakespeare is said to have played a game with friends at nights, when he felt bored at home. Unfortunately for tradition and the authenticity of this “Shakespearean relic,” the “Falcon” was a private house in Shakespeare’s lifetime, and for long after. It is known to have become an inn only at some time between 1645 and 1668. The sign was chosen probably in allusion to the Shakespeare crest. Reproductions of portraits of Shakespeare’s friends complete the collections in Nash’s House.