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FOR WHOM SHAKESPEARE WROTE

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

Queen Elizabeth being dead about ten o'clock in the morning March 24
1603 Sir Robert Cary posted away unsent to King James of Scotland to
inform him of the "accident" and got made a baron of the realm for his
ride. On his way down to take possession of his new kingdom the king
distributed the honor of knighthood right and left liberally; at
Theobald's he created eight-and-twenty knights of whom Sir Richard
Baker afterwards the author of "A Chronicle of the Kings of England"
was one. "God knows how many hundreds he made the first year" says the
chronicler "but it was indeed fit to give vent to the passage of Honour
which during Queen Elizabeth's reign had been so stopped that scarce any
county of England had knights enow to make a jury."

Sir Richard Baker was born in 1568 and died in 1645; his "Chronicle"
appeared in 1641. It was brought down to the death of James in 1625
when he having written the introduction to the life of Charles I the
storm of the season caused him to "break off in amazement" for he had
thought the race of "Stewards" likely to continue to the "world's end";
and he never resumed his pen. In the reign of James two things lost
their lustre--the exercise of tilting which Elizabeth made a special
solemnity and the band of Yeomen of the Guard choicest persons both for
stature and other good parts who graced the court of Elizabeth; James
"was so intentive to Realities that he little regarded shows" and in his
time these came utterly to be neglected. The virgin queen was the last
ruler who seriously regarded the pomps and splendors of feudalism.

It was characteristic of the age that the death of James which occurred
in his fifty-ninth year should have been by rumor attributed to
"poyson"; but "being dead and his body opened there was no sign at all
of poyson his inward parts being all sound but that his Spleen was a
little faulty which might be cause enough to cast him into an Ague: the
ordinary high-way especially in old bo'dies to a natural death."

The chronicler records among the men of note of James's time Sir Francis
Vere "who as another Hannibal with his one eye could see more in the
Martial Discipline than common men can do with two"; Sir Edward Coke;
Sir Francis Bacon "who besides his profounder book of Novum Organum
hath written the reign of King Henry the Seventh in so sweet a style
that like Manna it pleaseth the tast of all palats"; William Camden
whose Description of Britain "seems to keep Queen Elizabeth alive after
death"; "and to speak it in a word the Trojan Horse was not fuller of
Heroick Grecians than King James his Reign was full of men excellent in
all kindes of Learning." Among these was an old university acquaintance
of Baker's "Mr. John Dunne who leaving Oxford lived at the Innes of
Court not dissolute but very neat; a great Visitor of Ladies a great
frequenter of Playes a great writer of conceited Verses; until such
times as King James taking notice of the pregnancy of his Wit was a
means that he betook him to the study of Divinity and thereupon
proceeding Doctor was made Dean of Pauls; and became so rare a Preacher
that he was not only commended but even admired by all who heard him."

The times of Elizabeth and James were visited by some awful casualties
and portents. From December 1602 to the December following the plague
destroyed 30518 persons in London; the same disease that in the sixth
year of Elizabeth killed 20500 and in the thirty-sixth year 17890
besides the lord mayor and three aldermen. In January 1606 a mighty
whale came up the Thames within eight miles of London whose body seen
divers times above water was judged to be longer than the largest ship
on the river; "but when she tasted the fresh water and scented the Land
she returned into the sea." Not so fortunate was a vast whale cast upon
the Isle of Thanet in Kent in 1575 which was "twenty Ells long and
thirteen foot broad from the belly to the backbone and eleven foot
between the eyes. One of his eyes being taken out of his head was more
than a cart with six horses could draw; the Oyl being boyled out of his
head was Parmacittee." Nor the monstrous fish cast ashore in
Lincolnshire in 1564 which measured six yards between the eyes and had a
tail fifteen feet broad; "twelve men stood upright in his mouth to get
the Oyl." In 1612 a comet appeared which in the opinion of
Dr. Bainbridge the great mathematician of Oxford was as far above the
moon as the moon is above the earth and the sequel of it was that
infinite slaughters and devastations followed it both in Germany and
other countries. In 1613 in Standish in Lancashire a maiden child was
born having four legs four arms and one head with two faces--the one
before the other behind like the picture of Janus. (One thinks of the
prodigies that presaged the birth of Glendower.) Also the same year
in Hampshire a carpenter lying in bed with his wife and a young child
"was himself and the childe both burned to death with a sudden lightning
no fire appearing outwardly upon him and yet lay burning for the space
of almost three days till he was quite consumed to ashes." This year the
Globe playhouse on the Bankside was burned and the year following the
new playhouse the Fortune in Golding Lane "was by negligence of a
candle clean burned down to the ground." In this year also 1614 the
town of Stratford-on-Avon was burned. One of the strangest events
however happened in the first year of Elizabeth (1558) when "dyed Sir
Thomas Cheney Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports of whom it is reported
for a certain that his pulse did beat more than three quarters of an
hour after he was dead as strongly as if he had been still alive." In
1580 a strange apparition happened in Somersetshire--three score
personages all clothed in black a furlong in distance from those that
beheld them; "and after their appearing and a little while tarrying
they vanished away but immediately another strange company in like
manner color and number appeared in the same place and they
encountered one another and so vanished away. And the third time
appeared that number again all in bright armour and encountered one
another and so vanished away. This was examined before Sir George
Norton and sworn by four honest men that saw it to be true." Equally
well substantiated probably was what happened in Herefordshire in 1571:
"A field of three acres in Blackmore with the Trees and Fences moved
from its place and passed over another field traveling in the highway
that goeth to Herne and there stayed." Herefordshire was a favorite
place for this sort of exercise of nature. In 1575 the little town of
Kinnaston was visited by an earthquake: "On the seventeenth of February
at six o'clock of the evening the earth began to open and a Hill with a
Rock under it (making at first a great bellowing noise which was heard a
great way off) lifted itself up a great height and began to travel
bearing along with it the Trees that grew upon it the Sheep-folds and
Flocks of Sheep abiding there at the same time. In the place from whence
it was first moved it left a gaping distance forty foot broad and
forescore Ells long; the whole Field was about twenty Acres. Passing
along it overthrew a Chappell standing in the way removed an Ewe-Tree
planted in the Churchyard from the West into the East; with the like
force it thrust before it High-wayes Sheep-folds Hedges and Trees
made Tilled ground Pasture and again turned Pasture into Tillage.
Having walked in this sort from Saturday in the evening till Monday
noon it then stood still." It seems not improbable that Birnam wood
should come to Dunsinane.
...

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