Читать книгу Shakespeare the Boy - W. J. Rolfe - Страница 18

Table of Contents

No map of Stratford made before the middle of the 18th century is known to exist. The one here given in fac-simile was executed about the year 1768, and, as Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps tells us, "it clearly appears from the local records that there had then been no material alteration in either the form or the extent of the town since the days of Elizabeth. It may therefore be accepted as a reliable guide to the locality as it existed in the poet's own time, when the number of inhabited houses, exclusive of mere hovels, could not have much exceeded five hundred."

The following is a copy of the references which are appended to the original map: "1. Moor Town's End;—2. Henley Lane;—3. Rother Market;—4. Henley Street;—5. Meer Pool Lane;—6. Wood Street;—7. Ely Street or Swine Street;—8. Scholar's Lane alias Tinker's Lane;—9. Bull Lane;—10. Street call'd Old Town;—11. Church Street;—12. Chapel Street;—13. High Street;—14. Market Cross;—15. Town Hall;—16. Place where died Shakespeare;—17. Chapel, Public Schools, &c.;—18. House where was Shakespeare born;—19. Back Bridge Street;—20. Fore Bridge Street;—21. Sheep Street;—22. Chapel Lane;—23. Buildings call'd Water Side;—24. Southam's Lane;—25. Dissenting Meeting;—26. White Lion."

Moor Town's End (1) is now Greenhill Street. The Town Hall (15) did not exist in Shakespeare's time, having been first erected in 1633, taken down in 1767, and rebuilt the following year. The "Place where died Shakespeare" (16) was New Place, the home of his later years. The "Dissenting Meeting" or Meeting-house (25) was built long after the poet's day. The "White Lion" (26) was also post-Shakespearian, the chief inns in the 16th century being the Swan, the Bear, and the Crown, all in Bridge Street. The Mill and Mill Bridge (built in 1590) are indicated on the river at the left-hand lower corner of the map; and the stone bridge, erected by Sir Hugh Clopton about 1500, is just outside the right-hand lower corner.

The only important change in the streets since the map was made is the removal of the row of small shops and stalls, known as Middle Row, between Fore Bridge Street (20); and Back Bridge Street (19); thus making the broad avenue now called Bridge Street.

The "Market Cross" (14) was "a stone monument covered by a low tiled shed, round which were benches for the accommodation of listeners to the sermons which, as at St. Paul's Cross in London, were sometimes preached there." Later a room was added above, and a clock above that. The open space about the Cross was the chief market-place of the town. Near by was a pump, at which housewives were frequently to be seen "washing of clothes" and hanging them on the cross to dry, and butchers sometimes hung meat there; but these practices were forbidden by the town council in 1608. The stocks, pillory, and whipping-post were in the same locality.

There was also a stone cross in the Rother Market (3), and near the Guild Chapel (17) was a second pump, which was removed by order of the council in 1595. The field on the river, near the foot of Chapel Lane (22), was known as the Bank-croft, or Bancroft, where drovers and farmers of the town were allowed to take their cattle to pasture for an hour daily. "All horses, geldings, mares, swine, geese, ducks, and other cattle," according to the regulation established by the council, if found there in violation of this restriction, were put by the beadle into the "pinfold," or pound, which was not far off. This Bancroft, as it is still called, is now part of the beautiful little park on the river-bank, adjacent to the grounds of the Shakespeare Memorial.

Chapel Lane, which bounded one side of the New Place estate, was one of the filthiest thoroughfares of the town, the general sanitary condition of which (see page 25 above) was bad enough. A streamlet ran through it, the water of which turned a mill, alluded to in town records of that period. This water-course gradually became "a shallow fetid ditch, an open receptacle of sewage and filth." It continued to be a nuisance for at least two centuries more. A letter written in 1807, in connection with a lawsuit, gives some interesting reminiscences of it. "I very well remember," says the writer, "the ditch you mention forty-five years, as after my sister was married, which was in October, 1760, I was very often at Stratford, and was very well acquainted both with the ditch and the road in question;—the ditch went from the Chapel, and extended to Smith's house;—I well remember there was a space of two or three feet from the wall in a descent to the ditch, and I do not think any part of the new wall was built on the ditch;—the ditch was the receptacle for all manner of filth that any person chose to put there, and was very obnoxious at times;—Mr. Hunt used to complain of it, and was determined to get it covered over, or he would do it at his own expense, and I do not know whether he did or not;—across, the road from the ditch to Shakespeare Garden was very hollow and always full of mud, which is now covered over, and in general there was only one wagon tract along the lane, which used to be very bad, in the winter particularly;—I do not know that the ditch was so deep as to overturn a carriage, and the road was very little used near it, unless it was to turn out for another, as there was always room enough." Thomas Cox, a carpenter, who lived in Chapel Lane from 1774, remembered that the open gutter from the Chapel to Smith's cottage "was a wide dirty ditch choked with mud, that all the filth of that part of the town ran into it, that it was four or five feet wide and more than a foot deep, and that the road sloped down to the ditch." According to other witnesses, the ditch extended to the end of the lane, where, between the roadway and the Bancroft, was a narrow creek or ditch through which the overflow from Chapel Lane no doubt found a way into the river.

Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps believes that the fever which proved fatal to Shakespeare was caused by the "wretched sanitary conditions surrounding his residence"—an explanation of it which would never have occurred even to medical men in that day.