William Shakespeare; poet, dramatist, and man . s, which take one awayfrom the highroads into the heart of the country,are nowhere more alluring to the eye and the im-agination than in Warwickshire. They makechances for intimacy with the landscape which thehighways cannot offer. The long-travelled roadsare old and ripe with that quiet richness of settingwhich comes with age; they rise and fall with thegentle movement of the country; they are oftenarched with venerable trees; they wind up hill anddown in leisurely, picturesque curves and lines;they cross slow-moving streams ; they often loiteri
William Shakespeare; poet, dramatist, and man . s, which take one awayfrom the highroads into the heart of the country,are nowhere more alluring to the eye and the im-agination than in Warwickshire. They makechances for intimacy with the landscape which thehighways cannot offer. The long-travelled roadsare old and ripe with that quiet richness of settingwhich comes with age; they rise and fall with thegentle movement of the country; they are oftenarched with venerable trees; they wind up hill anddown in leisurely, picturesque curves and lines;they cross slow-moving streams ; they often loiterin recesses of shade which centuries have conspiredto dee^Den and widen. 6o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE But it is along the quiet by-paths that one comesupon all that is essential and characteristic in War-wickshire. These immemorial ways put any manwho chooses to follow them in possession of thelandscape; they cross the most carefully tendedfields, they penetrate the most jealously guardedestates, they offer access to ancient places of silence and se-. elusion. The narrow path between the hedges i is one of those righ ts of the E Inglish people which evidence their THE EARL OF LEICESTER, 1588. sovereigntyover posses-sions the titlesto which havebeen lodged forcenturies in pri- vate hands. They silently affirm that, though theacres may be private property, the landscape is theinalienable possession of the English people. InMay, when the hawthorn is in bloom and the night-ingale is in full song, a Warwickshire foot-path leadsone into a world as ideal as the island in TheTempest or the fairy-haunted country of the Mid-summer Nights Dream. That Shakespeare knew SHAKESPEARES COUNTRY 61 these pathways into the reahii of the imaginationthere is ample evidence; that he was famihar withthese byways about Stratford is beyond a not one of them still lead to Shottery ? Kenilworth, which was a noble and impressivestronghold in Shakespeares boyhood, ample enoughto entertain a court with l
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