The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1884-03-04 00:00:00

DORCHESTER LECTURE 80CIETY.

LiCITILI BY Till ItiV. LA. 111110L•1ID.

The able new Rent er of Wyk. Regle gave • lecture
at the Town Hall on Timothy evening on "Th.
Life mci Home of Shakespeare." There was • fairly
god audience, the chair being taken by the Rev. T.
tiumell Wright (the Presided.)
The Caalanaa, In his op_ening remark., spoke of
the high opinion wide* Mr. Ragland had gained as •
lecturer in Weymouth, end twinkling him for the
Betakes, on Cacti Castle, had. the Chairman announced,
readies*e with which he had emptied with the invite
lion of the Society. A proposed lacturslby Mr. Albert
base postponed till next season.
The Um/an appears to hold Shakespeare,
his works, sad everything relating to him, in the high-
est veneration—for instance, Thomas Carlyle said
Shakespeare was the grandest thing Kaglared has
seen as yet, whereas Mr. Eogland goes further, and
says, after One in Gallia" be is the greatest thing
humanity has done yet. He mast have been • hero to
his vslet Tits run must have shone brighter the day
he well born. The moon must have been at the full
when that mind', tide roes at Stratford. He thanked
the plays of Shakespeare for affording the brightest
pleasure of his sohool clam sad • few years ago he
tinted Stratfordran•Avon, • longing haring
seized him to ear the spot which, if the
Jews thought Jerusalem the oentre of the
world, must be the mitre of the world of literature,
He described the Imam in which Shakespeare wag
born, in Henley-street--a trne Rlizabethian erection.
Whets history this house has bad I As late as 1817
It was advertised to be sold. He believed the
Americans were planning to carry it off and roll it on
wheels through the realms of Yankee Doodle as a
profitable investment, and • Frenchman was specu-
lating Ii cut it up iota a million snuff-boxes—one
pound a piece. At last the nation was roused, The
late Princes Consort acted ash, ever di I as • true lover
of all that wee noble in his adopted country; he gave
f:250 to buy the house of the man who was even more
beloved in Germany than in his own native land.
The house was bought and kept for the nation for
0,000. Then he (the lecturer) stood in the church—
& et pile for Shakespeare from the font to the funeral,
yet the very font had been maltreated, turned into
the churchyard. and wee once used as a pimp trough.
Few country churches are in many points more
interesting. It is worthy to have been Shakespeare's
House of God. He also saw the Free School where
Shakespeare we' educated, and he strayed over the
fields to Ann Hathaway's cottage—a thatched timber
house, where it was said its wooed and won his wife
How did they talk in Shakespeare'. time? It wee
like coming suddenly in one geolog.cal formation on
some survival from an earlier period, but If they
wanted to learn something of bow they talked then
in Stratford, and even in London, they must go, and
I in DOM. out of the way corners of the land, where
school bawds bad not pierced, listen to what they
called uneducated people. If they read, as all did,
those graphic works in which a Dermot author with a
pen which made him (the speaker) often panes and
say" How Shakespearian I Why Shakespeare would
hare written like that "—lf the, read "Far from the
Madding Crowd," and "The Trumpet alvjor,' they
were reading the style in which the wits, c niftier",
stalemate, and •oldiers of the Court of Queen
Blizibeth conversed. The lecturer then discussed
the charscter of Shakespeare as indicated by his
handwriting and portrait.. He dilated upon the
great events with which his youth WM fed, and
alluding to the Great Qoeen's visit to Kenil-
worth when Shakeup are wee eleven years old,
said he must have walked over there with his
father, and the masques, shows, and plays must have
awakened the dramatic instinct in hie breast. lie
touched upon the decline of his father's Unions., in
consequepos of which he had to leave school when he
was between 13 and 14 years of age, and had to work
to keep the wolf from the door. The speaker referred
In graceful, graphic language to the early court.hip
and marriage of Shakespeare and Ann Hathaway,
daughter of Richard Hathaway, one of his father's
=editors. As to the charge of cousines. which the
Amu moralist brings against Shakespeare, the lure be
lived in was coarse, but he of MI the men of his age
was load comes. The lecturer dealt with the gradual
decline in the fortunes of Shakespeare's father, cal-
minatino in his being taken off to the debtor's prison,
and, having del died some of the stirring incidents of
his career, proceeded to dilate on the influence of
Shakespeare's plays on literature generally.
The lecture was a highly instructive one.