A Town of Long Ago

The Weekly Machen

What a wonderfully Machenalian title! This week, we explore a recreation of Shakespeare’s Old London. In terms of the ways of drama and the streets of the Great City, we have no better guide than Arthur Machen. Yet, despite the high quality of the illusion, the fantasy is shattered by a lamentable omission. But here is our reporter to explain…

A Town of Long Ago
by
Arthur Machen
May 4, 1912

It may not be generally known that there is a wonderful old town in the heart of London. Modern streets, grey and commonplace, surround it on all sides; there are underground stations at its very gates; the taxi-cab glides and fleets under its walls. But there it is, the ancient English City with its gabled houses, old market-place on wooden pillars, its carven cross, its over arched fountain, and the wooden O of its playhouse, and a brave high-decked ship is being built in its harbour, where massive machicolated towers and a strong portcullis guard the entrance into the town.

This ancient and comely city is at Earl’s Court, and they call it “Shakespeare’s England.” The sights of the town were pointed out to me by a courteous guide who declared that the harbour was Plymouth Harbour, that the ship was the famous Revenge, that the theatre was the Globe, that the marketplace belonged to Ledbury, and so forth, and so forth. But I prefer to disregard this information, accurate though it may be. I choose to forget all these specifications allotting church and cross and ancient street to this town or to that; I see this wonderful town as one, compact in itself, old England in epitome.

The illusion has been admirably accomplished. The mullions and transome and ogee cusps of the church windows are to the eye perfect and well-carven stone, fine work of the fifteenth century, a good deal more impressive than much of the modern Gothic that one sees in real churches. And cusps and mullions and walls are all plaster alike.

Then there are the half-timbered houses, with their rare carved barge-boards; you can see the grain of the oak; and again it is plaster.

The red tiles that cover the high pitched gables are of plaster, so are the brick walls; cross and fountain are fashioned of the same material; and yet the town looks all solid antiquity, and age and green lichens have stained some of the more ancient walls, and here and there the cornerstones of the reverend chantry are broken.

Fitting up the Revenge

I wandered aimlessly about the city, which would be most fitly called “The Town of Long Ago.”

Hammer and saw rasped and beat on the timbers of the Revenge; beam after beam was being laid in place, painters were at work on the hull, and men were busy in the rigging. As the workmen swarmed about the ship, I saw it finished and glowing with gold and colour, its emblazoned sails bellying in a mighty wind, the decks bright with armed men, and the music of “Fortune my foe” sounding as those confined waters widen, the Revenge plunges past the harbour-mouth into the vast, illimitable sea of the Elizabethan adventure.

A triumph of ringing bells sways the walls of the church tower, and sends the galleon on her voyage and travel; from the great towers of the gateway the rattle of the drums and pealing trumpets speak the same message, and the shouting of the crowd on the quays give heart to the seamen. The ship swells across the waters on the search of the unknown, of the wonderful, of El Dorado, lost golden land of the Incas.

There is a thrill, too, in the counterfeit Globe Theatre. They tell me it is being built exactly according to certain Elizabethan specifications, and in it Shakespeare’s plays and divers farces and interludes and dramas of Shakespeare’s day are to be presented in the right Elizabethan manner.

The stage is divided into two parts, the inner and the outer, by pillars and a gallery, the stage projects far into the unroofed pit, and beyond the pit rise the three half-circles of the covered seats. I noticed blocks of concrete used in the construction of the playhouse; it is probably far more solid building than its sixteenth century prototype.

An Old-World Theatre

But it is the aspect and show of the house that gives the thrill. Just as the high-decked galleon is eloquent with the great story of the seamen adventures of the Elizabethan age; as its beams and tops and its rigging sing the mighty saga of those wild voyages to the golden west, of plunging, flaming, Spanish ships, of the surf on the South American shores; so this oddly shaped theatre sings the chant of the great drama of Shakespeare’s day.

In such a place, we may say, with such scenic ornament and apparatus, were represented the plays that have possessed the whole world: that gallery was now Juliet’s balcony, now the enchanted ship of “The Tempest,” now the rostrum whence Brutus spoke to the foaming, swirling mob of Roman citizens, now the walls of Angiers in “King John.”

And this ring of the theatre, though it be all new made, is yet so curiously fashioned after the old show and semblance, that its walls are sonorous with ancient and mighty accents; upon such a square of stage moved the magic pageant of the heroic drama, and the noisy, struggling pit was hushed as the actors showed Agincourt, and hushed to a different sense as Ophelia’s burial was announced with wailing music.

And so with those winding, overhanging streets. The architect has worked wisely; he is not shown a town all of one period. Here are two heavy rounded Norman windows adorned with their characteristic “chevronuy” ornament; above on the high wall there is the tracery of the fifteenth century; a little to the right in the same house is a window of a late Elizabethan restoration; the Gothic cusp has vanished. And near at hand is a building gorgeous with Corinthian columns and Renaissance graces; the Town of long ago pictures Shakespeare’s age, going back to the massive arches of the Norman time, and already testing the fruit of the classic Renaissance. And the gables lean towards one another across the narrow streets, and somehow the builder has managed to get into some of his lines the dip and “sag” of old, old beams that are slowly bending down with the weight of centuries.

The Missing Tavern

But there is one grave defect, one piteous lack in this worthy show. The monk in Rabelais had exhibited to him the wonders and the splendours of the City of Florence and all its treasures of art. At last he spoke somewhat in this fashion:

“These statues are rarely cut, I have nothing against them; these marbles, these porphyries, these galleries are admirable, I deny it not. But in all this town of Florence I have not seen so much as one little street of roasting-cooks; whereas in my massive town of Lyons there are fourteen streets of roasting-cooks; all ancient, savoury, and aromatic.”

And so I wandered through all the ways of Shakespeare’s England without seeing so much as one tavern!

Where is the Boar’s Head Tavern? Where is the Garter Inn? What probable representation can you have of sixteenth century England without the presence of many goodly, galleried, an excellent taverns?

Let this matter be reformed, not indifferently, but altogether; and let the taverns be furnished not only with emblazoned signs, but with casks of real ale from the windmill at Stratford-on-Avon, where the strange and secret process of making beer, of malt and hops, not by chemical reactions, is still well understood.

The Weekly

Previous: The Nonsense of Shakespeare

Next: The Personal Element in Criticism 

Introduction and supplementary material – Copyright 2023 by Christopher Tompkins. All rights reserved.