Produced by Jim Adcock, Special Thanks to the Internet Archive, American Libraries. SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND BY WILLIAM WINTER New Edition, Revised, with Illustrations _New York_ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1898 _All rights reserved_ Copyright, 1892, BY MACMILLAN AND CO. ------ _Illustrated Edition,_ COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY MACMILLAN AND CO. ------ First published elsewhere. Set up and electrotyped by Macmillan & Co., April, 1892. Reprinted November, 1892; January, 1893. Illustrated edition, revised throughout, in crown 8v0, set up and Electrotyped June, 1893. Reprinted October, 1893; August, 1895; September, 1898. _Norwood Press_ J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. To _Whitelaw Reid_ IN HONOUR OF EXALTED VIRTUES ADORNING A LIFE OF NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT AND PATIENT KINDNESS AND IN REMEMBRANCE OF FAITHFUL AND GENTLE FRIENDSHIP I DEDICATE THIS BOOK ------ _"Tum meae, si quid loquar audiendum, Vocis accedet bona pars"_ PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND _The favour with which this book has been received, alike in Great Britain and America, is thought to warrant a reproduction of it with pictorial embellishment, and accordingly it is offered in the present form. I have revised the text for this reprint, and my friend Mr. George P. Brett, of the house of Messrs. Macmillan and Company,--at whose suggestion the pictorial edition was undertaken,--has supervised the choice of pictures for its adornment. The approval that the work has elicited is a source of deep gratification. It signifies that my endeavour to reflect the gentle sentiment of English landscape and the romantic character of English rural life has not proved altogether in vain. It also shows that an appeal may confidently be made,--irrespective of transitory literary fashions and of popular caprice,--to the love of the ideal, the taste for simplicity, and the sentiment of veneration. In these writings there is, I hope, a profound practical deference to the perfect standard of style that is represented by such illustrious exemplars as Addison, Goldsmith, Sterne, and Gray. This frail fabric may perish: that standard is immortal; and whatever merit this book may possess is due to an instinctive and passionate devotion to the ideal denoted by those shining names. These sketches were written out of love for the subject. The first book of them, called _The Trip to England, _reprinted, with changes, from the _New York Tribune, _was made for me, at the De Vinne Press. The subsequent growth of the work is traced in the earlier Preface, herewith reprinted. The title of _Shakespeare's England _was given to it when the first English edition was published, by Mr. David Douglas, of Edinburgh. It has been