fensive wall, a moat, whose purpose was to shut off alien lands from
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house.’[1]
The England he apostrophizes is not the mistress of the ocean, but
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune.’[1]
What must one of Drake’s sea-dogs, whose home was on the billows, have thought if he blundered into a performance of Richard II and heard John of Gaunt discoursing in so land-lubberish a fashion? There is nothing that would justify us in assuming that Shakespeare’s heart e’er within him burned with desire to board a sea-going vessel, or that he ever cared to join the Elizabethan crowds which flocked down to Deptford to visit Drake’s Golden Hind. There is nothing to show that he caught the oceanic swell and surge which so resounds in the famous note that Drake and his colleagues sent ashore after the first days of the Armada fight (Aug. 1, 1588):
‘We whose names are hereunder written have determined and agreed in council to follow and pursue the Spanish fleet until we have cleared our own coast and brought the Frith[2] west of us, and then to return back again, as well to revictual our ships (which stand in extreme scarcity) as also to guard and defend our own coast at home. With further protestation that if our
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Richard II, II. i. 45 ff., 61 ff.
- ↑ Firth of Forth.
