. William Shakespeare; poet, dramatist, and man . arCarfax, in Oxford, was the centre of many associa-tions, real or imaginary, with Shakespeares jour-neys from the Capital to his home in New beautiful university city was even then ven-erable with years and thronged with infinite wit and marvellous charm,to which there are many contemporary testimonies,made him later a welcome companion in one of themost brilliant groups of men in the history of litera-ture. The spell of Oxford must have been uponhim, and volumes of biography might well be ex-changed for a brief
. William Shakespeare; poet, dramatist, and man . arCarfax, in Oxford, was the centre of many associa-tions, real or imaginary, with Shakespeares jour-neys from the Capital to his home in New beautiful university city was even then ven-erable with years and thronged with infinite wit and marvellous charm,to which there are many contemporary testimonies,made him later a welcome companion in one of themost brilliant groups of men in the history of litera-ture. The spell of Oxford must have been uponhim, and volumes of biography might well be ex-changed for a brief account of one evening in thecommons room of some college when the greatestand most companionable of English men of geniuswas the guest of scholars who shared with himthe liberating power of the new age; for Shake-speare was loved by men of gentle breeding and ofripest culture. 94 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Dickens once said that if he sat in a room fiveminutes, without consciously taking note of hissurroundings, he found himself able, by the instinc-. THE ZOUST PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM in the possession of Sir John Lister-Kaye of the Grange, Wakefield. tive action of his mind, to describe the furnishingof the room to the smallest detail. This faculty ofwhat may be called instinctive observation Shake- MARRIAGE AND LONDON 95 speare possessed in rare degree ; he saw everythingwhen he seemed to be seeing nothing. It is notimpossible that, as Aubrey declares, he happenedto take the humour of the constable in Midsum-mer Nights Dream in a little town near is no constable in Shakespeares single fairy-play, and Aubrey was probably thinking of Dog-berry or Verges. Shakespeare was constantly taking the humour of men and women whereverhe found himself, and although Oxford is connectedwith his life only by a faint tradition, it may havefurnished him with more than one sketch which helater developed into a figure full of reality and sub-stance. It would have been quite in
Size: 1371px × 1822px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectshakesp, bookyear1901
