. Shakespere: his birthplace and its neighborhood. sorrows as life is now. I hardly like to hazard a con-jecture on a subject about which the best commentatorscannot agree ; but perhaps the date of this flood may helpto fix the date of the Midsummer Nights Dream, and thatwhen Shakspere wrote,— The winds, piping to us in vain,As in revenge, have suckd up from the seaContagious fogs; which falling in the land,Have every pelting river made so proud,That they have overborne their continents :The ox has therefore stretchd his yoke in vain,The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green cornHath rotted,
. Shakespere: his birthplace and its neighborhood. sorrows as life is now. I hardly like to hazard a con-jecture on a subject about which the best commentatorscannot agree ; but perhaps the date of this flood may helpto fix the date of the Midsummer Nights Dream, and thatwhen Shakspere wrote,— The winds, piping to us in vain,As in revenge, have suckd up from the seaContagious fogs; which falling in the land,Have every pelting river made so proud,That they have overborne their continents :The ox has therefore stretchd his yoke in vain,The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green cornHath rotted, ere his youth attained a beard :The fold stands empty in the drowned field:The crows are fatted with the murrain flock. He may have had this flood and its disastrous conse-quences in his mind. The Midsummer NigMs Dream,though not amongst the earliest series of Shaksperes plays,is, from the internal evidence of style, an early work, andthe first draft of it may have been produced soon after1588, when Shakspere would be in his twenty-fifth Bidford Bridge. CHAPTER X. PIPING PEBWORTH—DANCING MARSTON. I suppose there is no one who does not know the storythat Shakspere having gone over to Bidford, on a drinkingbout, was overcome with the Bidford ale, and spent thenight on his road home under a crab-tree, and in the PIPING PEBWORTH—DANCING MARSTON. 87 morning, being asked to renew the contest, refused, sayingthat he had drunk with— Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,Haunted Hillborough, and hungry Grafton;With dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford,Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford. I suppose the story, with different variations, will betold wherever Shaksperes name is mentioned. We hearso little about him authentic, that we make up for it bybelieving in the silliest tradition. It may, or may not,have been true. Drinking bouts or contests were veryfrequent in those days, and there is no reason for sup-posing that Shakspere, when a young man, should havebeen proof against their
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