SHAKESPEARE'S HOME.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 173, 9 October 1886, Page 7

SHAKESPEARE'S HOME.

A letter from the vicar of Stratford-on-Aron appears in at other column inrtting fresh subscriptions for the repair of the church where the relics of Shakespeare lie interred. Hie reverence has already obtained neirly £4,000, but seems to be in need of more to carry out what is necessary. Of course nobody would b6 backward in doing honour to Shakespeare, but restorations 1 are not always judicioup, and at any rate all perpons inclined to be generous will abstain, we hope, from standing a word of the dreadful things which are now being said and written with regard to various sacred spots connected with Shakespeare's mortal existence. Just at the moment of this demand upon public liberality it is deplorable to have doubts started as to whether the Shakespeare raußeum contains a single genuine relic ; whether Anne Hathaway 's cottage is not, after all, a simple fraud, and Mary Arden'a farm a disreputably unhistorical building Anne Hathaway's cottage is a place which every Shakespeare-loving visitor to his native town makea a point of inspecting, It has been good enough for all the myriad tourists of all nationalities that have flocked to see it ; yet recently a dark rumour has been going about seriously affecting its bona fides as a genuine article. Mr Halliwell-Phillipps, the Shakespearean critic, we are told, is of opinion that the probabilities are decidedly against the so-called cottage ever having contained the woman who, at the age of 27, married William Shakespeare when the latter waB only 19. Here is a pleasing illusion dissipated at once. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and the colonials who lately visited the spot can no longer, as they recall that lowly cot nestling among its trees and ascend again in fancy the creaking wooden staircase, picture to themselves the May mornings w hen the Bard of All Time must have gone the same round on a courting expedition, and probably pat under the eaves with his arm round his future bride 1 The sighing tourist will whisper, What next ? Well, the next surprise in store for him

is the disestablishment and dieendowmenfr of the old farmhouse still shown as that in which the poet'a pother, Mary Arden, lived. Its history^is now said to be alto* gether inconsistent, with the theory that? any of the castors />f the Shakepeare stock ever- resided there. In addition tor. the attack on the bard's wife, his mother, too, meets with this tragic fate. We are on the high road to having proved that no such person a^ Mnry Arden ever lived j that, in fact, Shakespeare was such a wondertul man that he never had a mother at all. This about the cottage and farmhouße is distinctly bad news for those who some time ago &pent their money on the " Shskeeper© fund," which went to purchasing for the good of the nation all the spots considered to be traditionally connected with the life ot the master poet. It is also dreadfullybad news for tho foreigners now in London* and for the party of modern pilgrims from threat Britain who are booked to "do" their Stratford in the courßO of this month. Have they come to England only to find that Shakeßpeare's fame is Dead-Sea fruit ? They bavei probably heard all about the theory of the» Shakespearian plays, and have laughed heartily at the newly started notion imported from America that a signaling system* exists in fahakespeore's works which reveals to the student of hieroglyphics all that can. ever happen to himself, or to Bacon, or toboth. But will they care to go to the shrine of the great poeu if a cloud of doubt surrounds some of its most cherished monuments ?— " London Telegraph,"