A few weeks roll on, and the bells of Hampton Lucy are ringing for a wedding. The out-door ceremonials are not quite so rude as those which Ben Jonson has delineated; but they are founded on the same primitive customs. There are " ribands, rosemary, and bay for the bridemen;" and some the rustics may exclaim-

"Look! an the wenches ha' not found 'un out,
And do parzent 'un with a van of rosemary,

And bays, to vill a bow-pot, trim the head

Of my best vore-horse! we shall all ha' bride laces,
Or points, I zee."

one of

Like the father in Jonson's play, the happy yeoman of Charlcote might say to his dame

"To let no music go afore his child

To church, to cheer her heart up."*

On the other hand, there are no court ceremonials here to be seen,

"As running at the ring, plays, masks, and tilting.” ↑

There would be the bride-cup and the wheaten garlands; the bride led by fairhaired boys, and the bridegroom following with his chosen neighbours :

Glide by the banks of virgins then, and pass
The showers of roses, lucky four-leav'd grass;
The while the cloud of younglings sing,
And drown ye with a flow'ry spring;
While some repeat

Your praise, and bless you, sprinkling you with wheat,
While that others do divine

'Blest is the bride on whom the sun doth shine.'"

:

The procession enters the body of the church; for, after the Reformation, the knot was no longer tied, as, at the five weddings of the Wife of Bath, at "church-door." The blessing is pronounced, the bride-cup is called for the accustomed kiss is given to the bride. But neither custom is performed after the fashion of Petrucio :

"He calls for wine :- A health,' quoth he; as it

He had been aboard, carousing to his mates
After a storm-quaff'd off the muscadel,
And threw the sops all in the sexton's face;
Having no other reason,-

But that his beard grew thin and hungerly,
And seem'd to ask him sops as he was drinking.
This done, he took the bride about the neck,
And kiss'd her lips with such a clamorous smack,
That, at the parting, all the church did echo." §

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They drink out of the bride-cup with as much earnestness (however less the formality) as the great folks at the marriage of the Elector Palatine to the daughter of James I. :-"In conclusion, a joy pronounced by the King and Queen, and seconded with congratulation of the lords there present, which crowned with draughts of Ippocras out of a great golden bowl, as an health to the prosperity of the marriage, began by the Prince Palatine, and answered by the Princess."||

We will not think that when they come home from church then beginneth

*Tale of a Tub, Act II., Scene 1.

+ A New Way to pay Old Debts, Act IV., Scene III.

Herrick's Hesperides.'

§ Taming of the Shrew, Act III., Scene II.
Quoted in Reed's Shakspeare, from Finet's Philoxenis.'

excess of eating and drinking, and as much is wasted in one day as were sufficient for the two new-married folks half a year to live upon.' "* The dance follows the banquet:

THERE is a book with which William Shakspere would unquestionably be familiar, the delightful Scholemaster' of Roger Ascham, first printed in 1570, which would sufficiently encourage him, if encouragement were wanting, in the common pursuit of serious study and manly exercises. "I do not mean," says this fine genial old scholar, "by all this my talk, that young gentlemen should always be poring on a book, and, by using good studies, should lose honest pleasure and haunt no good pastime; I mean nothing less: for it is well known that I both like and love, and have always and do yet still use, all exercises and pastimes that be fit for my nature and ability. And beside natural disposition, in judgment also, I was never either stoic in doctrine, or Anabaptist in religion, to mislike a merry, pleasant, and playful nature, if no outrage be committed against law, measure, and good order. Therefore to

ride comely; to run fair at the tilt or ring; to play at all weapons; to shoot fair in bow or surely in gun; to vault lustily; to run; to leap; to wrestle; to swim; to dance comely; to sing, and play of instruments cunningly; to hawk; to hunt; to play at tennis; and all pastimes generally which be joined with labour, used in open place, and in the daylight, containing either some fit exercise for war, or some pleasant pastime for peace, be not only comely and decent, but also very necessary for a courtly gentleman to use."

Toride comely," to "shoot fairly in bow, or surely in gun," "to hawk, to hunt," were pastimes in which William Shakspere would heartily engage. His plays abound with the most exact descriptions of matters connected with field sports. In these exercises, "in open place and in the daylight," would he meet his neighbours; and we may assume that those social qualities which won for him the love of the wisest and the wittiest in his mature years, would be prominent in the frankness and fearlessness of youth. Learned men had despised hunting and hawking-had railed against these sports. Surely Sir Thomas More, he would think, never had hawk on fist, or chased the destructive vermin whose furs he wore, when he wrote, "What delight can there be, and not rather displeasure, in hearing the barking and howling of dogs?"* Erasmus, too, was a secluded scholar. Ascham appreciated these things, because he liked, and loved, and used them. With his stone-bow" in hand would the boy go forth in search of quail or partridge. It was a difficult weapon-a random shot might hit a man "in the eye," but it was not so easy when the small bullet flew from the string to bring down the blackbird from the bush. There is abundant game in Fulbrooke. Ever since the attainder of John Dudley it had been disparked; granted by the Crown to a favourite, and again seized upon. A lovely woodland scene was this in the days when Elizabeth took into her own hands the property which her sister had granted to Sir Henry Englefield, now a proscribed wanderer. The boysportsman is on Daisy Hill with his "birding-bow;" but the birds are for a while unheeded. He stops to gaze upon that glorious view of Warwick which here is unfolded. There, bright in the sunshine, at the distance of four or five miles, are the noble towers of the Beauchamps; and there is the lofty church beneath whose roof their pride and their ambition lie low. Behind him is his own Stratford, with its humbler spire. All around is laund and bush, a spot which might have furnished the scene of the Keepers in Henry VI. :

"1 Keep. Under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves;

For through this laund anon the deer will come;

And in this covert will we make our stand,

Culling the principal of all the deer.

2 Keep. I'll stay above the hill, so both may shoot.

1 Keep. That cannot be; the noise of thy cross-bow

Will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost.

Here stand we both, and aim we at the best;"-‡

spot to which many a fair dame had been led by gallant forester, with bow bent, and " quarrel" fitted :

"Prin. Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush

That we must stand and play the murtherer in f

For. Here by, upon the edge of yonder coppice;

A stand, where you may make the fairest shoot." §

* Utopia, book ii. chap. 7.

+ "O, for a stone-bow! to hit him in the eye."-Twelfth Night.

Henry VI., Part III., Act III., Scene 1.

§ Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV., Sorne I.