The Seen and Unseen at Stratford-On-Avon - A Fantasy — William Dean Howells / W.D. Howells

Shakespeare has been accused of many sins because he analyzed sin with such penetrating insight and uncovered its tragedy with such masterly power. He has been accused also of being a lawyer, a physician, a musician; he has been charged with being a play-writing syndicate: it has even been said that he never existed! Before a jury of owls the skylark would not have a chance for his life; in the hands of the literal-minded, an author such as Shakespeare could be torn limb from limb.The Seen and the Unseen at Stratford-on-Avon is a gentle book in a rude and barbarous moment, a quiet book in an age resounding with the clash of arms and hoarse with shouts of defiance and curses. It is a million miles away from the savagery of war; it makes the English village even more beautiful than one can imagine in contrast to stricken fields and burning towns. The world of fantasy, framed by the ancient loveliness of the English landscape, is as alluring as Prospero's island in a furious ocean.It has to do with an poet/playwright, such as Shakespeare, who, as a skylark, possess a poetic ease of winged flight and magical song which may remind one of the beauty that rises out of a country meadow and pours out a flood of unpremeditated music as it ascends the invisible stairways of the sky.There is no sign of toil in this story offered by W. D. Howells, but there is evidence of ample knowledge and of that insight which is the golden key in the search for the secret of genius. A guide in Stratford would make the old town one of those historical museums in which the eager but ill-advised tourist feels the weariness but misses the joy of the centuries that packed life with achievement; but the companionship of a man who knows Shakespeare makes it as young as it was when its great man went to the Grammar School on the corner of Church Street and Chapel Lane.Howells takes a great risk when bringing the ghosts of Shakespeare and Bacon to the banks of the Avon, but he did not overtax his skill; the shadowy figures bring no ghostly chill, and their talk is happily compounded of wit and knowledge. The story of Shakespeare's life is told with such an air of casual reference that one is not conscious that he is reading one of the most intelligent biographies of the poet that has appeared.This novel, wonderfully tender and human in its temper, gives us many charming glimpses of Stratford in festive mood, but it is in reality a book about the poet who has made the little English town one of the capitals of the world; as Goethe and Schiller made Weimar.There are always flowers on the burial sites of great authors; and every year thousands do homage to Shakespeare in the place of his birth: being dead, he still rules us from the grave.