50 L. A. Sherman 



V 



The next lecture in this volume takes up As You Like It iot 

 discussion. The author speaks of sources, and of plot, then 

 in a third division contributes something substantial concerning 

 this most unsubstantial play: 



Some years ago, in hope to get a better understanding of Shakespeare, 

 a friend and I tracked the Warwickshire Avon together, from its source 

 on Naseby battlefield down to Tewkesbury, where, by a yet more ancient 

 battlefield, it is gathered to the greater Severn. From Naseby, where we 

 found its source among the " good cabbage " of an inn-garden, we followed 

 it afoot through " wide-skirted meads," past " poor pelting villages, sheep- 

 cotes and farms," to Rugby, ... At Rugby we took ship : that is to say, 

 we launched a canoe. . . . 



On the second day, after much pulling through reed beds and following 

 for many miles Avon's always leisurely meanders, we ported over Bubben- 

 hall weir, fetched northeast, then southeast, and came to the upper bridge 

 of Stoneleigh Deer Park. 



A line of swinging deer-fences hung from the arches of the bridge, the 

 river trailing through their bars. We, having permission, pushed cau- 

 tiously under these — which in a canoe is not easy. Beyond the barrier we 

 looked to right and left, amazed. We had passed from a sluggish brook, 

 twisting among water-plants and willows, to a pleasant river, expanding 

 down between wide lawns, by slopes of bracken, by the roots of gigantic 

 trees — oaks, Spanish oaks, wych-elms, stately firs, sweet chestnuts, backed 

 by filmy larch coppices. 



This was Arden, the forest of Arden, nominally to-day ' Stoneleigh-in- 

 Arden,' and, of old, Shakespeare's very Arden. 



As we rested on our paddles, down to a shallow ahead — their accustomed 

 ford, no doubt — a herd of deer came daintily and charged across, splash- 

 ing; first the bucks, in single file, then the does in a body. The very bed 

 of Avon changes just here: the river now brawling by a shallow, now 

 sliding over slabs of sandstone. . . . 



Now, in Stoneleigh Deer Park in Arden I saw the whole thing, as 

 though Corin's crook moved above the ferns and Orlando's ballads flut- 

 tered on the boles. There was the very oak beneath which Jaques moral- 

 ized on the deer — a monster oak, thirty-nine feet around (for I measured 

 it) — not far above the ford across which the herd had splashed, its "an- 

 tique roots " writhing over the red sandstone rock down to the water's 

 brim. And I saw the whole thing for what the four important Acts of it 

 really are — not as a drama, but as a dream, or rather a dreamy delicious 

 fantasy, and especially a fantasy in colour. 



152 



