The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-17

love for him--oivine herself to him heart and
hand. The treasure of affection he hao
secured was like q vision of lost heaven
10 a soul in hell. But he could follow ms
own maxim, he could M ft
"Look ike the innocent aowes,
But be the serpent under II"
Before the world, therefore, and to his in
Inmates, he was the successful tdhce con-
scious all the while Of the deadly secret that
Law cold at the bottom of his heart
Not all ct once did the full knowledge OF
the dreadful reality into which she had en-
tered come upon the young wife. She knew
vaguely, from the wild avowals OF the hrst
hours Of their marriage, that there was q
dreadful secret of guilt; that Mr.. shake
speare's soul was torn with agonies oil re-
morse. In one of her moonlight walks
near the crab-tree, which, from Mr..
Shakespeare's being so frequently seen
near it, tradition, though unsus-
picious of the dreadful truth-has connected
with his name, there came an hour of revela-
tion--an hour when, in manner which lett
no kind of room for doubt, she behcld her
husband interring the corpse of one OF those
unfortunate minor playwrights whom he had
morbid passion for destroying, after purloin-
ing the plots of their inferior dramas, which
his genius then rendered immortal, and saw
the full depth of the abyss of infamy which
her marriage was expected to cover and un-
derstood that she was expected to be the
cloak and the accomplice of this yillany. 1t
was to their lonely country house in Warwick
shire that the victims were one by one enticed
by him, when he returned there from the wild
orgies of his tavern life in London; and there
can be no doubt that dark suspicion of the
dreadful truth had flashed across the mind of
the unhappy Robert Greene, when he wrote
his diving exhortation to his friends warning
them against the ''painted monsters" of whom
Shakespeare's troop was composed:-"Y
trust them not; for there is among them an
upstart crow, beautifed with our feathers,
that with his tigers heart wrapped in q
players hide" etc.; and even DR.. johnson,
though he appears TO have been too careless
or too obtuse TO penetrate farther into the
mystery, admits that ''he fed to London from
the terror of criminal prosecution" e
The hasty marriage of youth scarcely
nineteen with woman of twenty-six is thus
explained. He required an accomplics, q
cloak; gentle, accomplishing wife to dwell
in retirement in the lonely country house this
London roisterer was compelled to maintain
at distance from the scene of his dramatic
triumphs.
We have said that the young wife now be-
held the full depths of the infamy her mar
riage was to cover It was then that he
bade her in his own forcible and terrible
worlds -
And see fearful sight of blood and death.
All ON a heap like to a slaughtered lamb
In this detested, dark, blood. drinking pitt
. = - - this fell devouring receptacle
AS hateful as Cocytus' misty mouth. 'O'p
Look for thy reward
Among the nettles at the elder tree
Which overhangs the mouth Of this same pit"
The evidences of an agonized conscience
are SO thickly strewn throughout his works,
that we might almost quote at random
That should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself"
'Oh, my ofense is rank, it smells to Heaven,
1t hath the primal eldest curse upon it."
'Now doth he feel t
His secret murders sticking on his hands," eRs
s}ft 'sBetter be the dead
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace
u,,o ,oo,. ,,'d1 land all our yesterdays,
What If this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brothers blood"
'tOh wretched state,
Oh, bosom black as DEATH" etc. etc.
Any one who reads the tragedies of Nae
beth, Hamlet, Titus AndronScats, ETC., with
this story in his mind, will see that it is true
Many women would have been utterly
crushed by such disclosure: some would
have fed from him Immediately, and exposed
and denounced the crime. Mrs. Shakespeare
did neither. She would neither leave her
husband nor betray him; nor would she for
one moment justify his sin; and hence came
thirty-two years of convulsive struggle, in
which sometimes for time the good angel
appeared to gain ground, and then the evil
one returned with sevenfold vehemence tLat
His eldest daughter, Susanna, for whom his
preference is SO plainly shown in his will,
became the partner of his guilt. Mr.. Shake
speare argued his case with her, with his
noble wife, and with himself, with all the
sophistries of his powerful mind
t'Do what you WILL to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon Of self-doing crme.p
"'Tis better to be vile, than vile esteemed"
~ aciH acquaintance stra'gle, and look strange"
mo more be grieJed at that which thouhast done
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud
| Cloud and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
/ q And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud
AL men make faults, and even In this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting saving thy amiss,
1 Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are"
These devilish sophistries, though unable
to shake his lofty minded wife, were ruinous
TO the unfortunate child of sin, born with q
curse upon her, over whose wayward nature
Mrs. Shakespeare watched with mother s
tenderness though the task was difficult
one, from the strange, abnormal propensity
to murder inherited by the object of her
cares. But though he could thus warp this
young soul, his divine wife followed him
through all his sophistical reasonings with a
keener reason. She besought and implored
him in the name of his better nature and by
all the glorious things he was capable of being
and DOING and she had just power enough to
I. convulse and agonize, but not power enough
to subdue.
These thirty-two years, during which Mrs.