Produced by Delphine Lettau, Matthew Wheaton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
"Some ardent love-scene in the rich dim gardens of Verona."
_Juliet._ This bud of love, by summer's ripening heat, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. (_Romeo and Juliet_).
[Illustration: ROMEO AND JULIET. _Painting by W. Hatherill, R.I._]
A DAY WITH WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE BY MAURICE CLARE
_Tennyson._ _Browning._ _E. B. Browning._ _Burns._ _Byron._ _Longfellow._ _Whittier._ _Rossetti._ _Shelley._ _Scott._ _Coleridge._ _Morris._ _Wordsworth._ _Whitman._ _Keats._ _Milton._
It was early on a bright June morning of the year 1599. The household of Christopher Mountjoy, the wig-maker, at the corner of Silver Street in Cripplegate, was already up and astir. Mountjoy, his wife and daughter, and his apprentice, Stephen Bellott, were each refreshing themselves with a hasty mouthful--one could not term it breakfast--before beginning their day's work. For town wig-makers were busy folk, then as now. Every fashionable dame wore "transformations," and some noble ladies, like the late Queen of Scots and--breathe it low--the great Elizabeth herself, changed the colour of their tresses every day.
Breakfast, in 1599, was a rite "more honoured in the breach than in the observance." Most people, having supped with exceeding heartiness the previous night, ignored breakfast altogether: especially as dinner would occur some time between 10 and 12 a.m. Those who could not go long without food had no idea of a regular sit-down meal during that precious morning hour which "has a piece of gold in its mouth." They contented themselves with beaten-up eggs in muscadel wine, as now the Mountjoy family; who, being of French origin, boggled somewhat at the only alternative--a very English one--small ale and bread-and-butter.
To these good folk, standing up and swallowing their morning draught, entered their well-to-do lodger, Mr. William Shakespeare, up betimes like them--for he was a very busy person,--and shared their jug of eggs and muscadel. Mr. Shakespeare was thirty-five years of age, "a handsome, well-shap't man," in the words of his friend Aubrey,--his eyes light hazel, his hair and beard auburn. He still retained, in some degree, the complexion which accompanies auburn hair, and this imparted a tinge of delicacy to his sensitive and mobile face. He was already slightly inclined to _embonpoint_: for in the seventeenth century people aged soon, and thirty-five was much more like forty-five nowadays.