In My Vicarage Garden 



known many of them, and all the Royal palaces 

 were being changed from dark fortresses to 

 splendid and comfortable homes. But of all this 

 great change we learn nothing from Shakespeare. 

 Palaces are mentioned, and manor-houses, but 

 merely mentioned ; and the only descriptions we 

 get are that one house was a " moated grange,'' 

 and a clown talks foolishly of " bay windows 

 transparent as barricadoes, and the clearstores 

 towards the south north as lustrous as ebony " ; 

 and that is all. 



The omission is still more marked in the case 

 of ecclesiastical buildings. We can form some 

 idea of the riches of England in ecclesiastical 

 buildings in Shakespeare's time from what we 

 still have either entire or in ruins. Every town of 

 importance was crowded with fine churches ; while 

 many of them had grand cathedrals and abbeys, 

 and in every parish there was at least one church, 

 many of them such as we now almost despair of 

 excelling, and all of them, if not so beautiful as 

 his own church at Stratford, yet showing some 

 architectural beauty which no Englishman could 

 altogether have overlooked. But in the England 

 of Shakespeare's plays these find no place. In 

 one place only is Westminster spoken of and as a 

 cathedral church. St Paul's magnificent cathedral, 

 as it then was, is merely spoken of as " Paul's," and 

 as a place of ill resort ; a few abbeys are men- 

 tioned, but only named ; and, though he must 

 have passed through Oxford often on his way 



