It costs a shilling to visit the castle. A fine old soldier in spotless
uniform, with waxed white moustache and dangling sword, conducts the
visitors. He imparts full two shillings' worth of facts as we go, all
with a fierce roll of r's, as becomes a man of war.

The long line of battlements, the massive buttresses, the angular
entrance cut through solid rock, crooked, abrupt, with places where
fighting men can lie in ambush, all is as Shakespeare knew it.

There are the cedars of Lebanon, brought by Crusaders from the East, and
the screaming peacocks in the paved courtway: and in the Great Hall are
to be seen the sword and accouterments of the fabled Guy, the mace of the
"Kingmaker," the helmet of Cromwell, and the armor of Lord Brooke, killed
at Litchfield.

And that Shakespeare saw these things there is no doubt. But he saw them
as a countryman who came on certain fete-days, and stared with open
mouth. We know this, because he has covered all with the glamour of his
rich, boyish imagination that failed to perceive the cruel mockery of
such selfish pageantry. Had his view been from the inside he would not
have made his kings noble nor his princes generous; for the stress of
strife would have stilled his laughter, and from his brain the dazzling
pictures would have fled. Yet his fancies serve us better than the facts.

Shakespeare shows us many castles, but they are always different views of
Warwick or Kenilworth. When he pictures Macbeth's castle he has Warwick
in his inward eye:

"This castle hath a pleasant seat: the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
This guest of Summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle;
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate."

Five miles from Warwick (ten, if you believe the cab-drivers) are the
ruins of Kenilworth Castle.

In Fifteen Hundred Seventy-five, when Shakespeare was eleven years of
age, Queen Elizabeth came to Kenilworth. Whether her ticket was by way of
Leamington I do not know. But she remained from July Ninth to July
Twenty-seventh, and there were great doings 'most every day, to which the
yeomanry were oft invited. John Shakespeare was a worthy citizen of
Warwickshire, and it