# Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Shakespeare, William

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SHAKESPEARE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616), the national poet of England, the greatest dramatist that modern Europe has produced, was born in April, in the year 1564, at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick. The known facts of the poet’s personal history are comparatively few, and before giving them in order we purpose considering in some detail the larger educational influences which helped to stimulate his latent powers, to evoke and strengthen his poetical and patriotic sympathies, and thus prepare and qualify him for his future work. In dealing with these influences we are on firm and fruitful ground. We know, for example, that Shakespeare was born and lived for twenty years at Stratford-upon-Avon; and we can say therefore with certainty that all the physical and moral influences of that picturesque and richly-storied Midland district melted as years went by into the full current of his ardent blood, became indeed the vital element, the very breath of life his expanding spirit breathed. We know a good deal about his home, his parents, and his domestic surroundings; and these powerful factors in the development of any mind gifted with insight and sensibility must have acted with redoubled force on a nature so richly and harmoniously endowed as that of the Stratford poet. It would be difficult indeed to overestimate the combined effect of these vital elements on his capacious and retentive mind, a mind in which the receptive and creative powers were so equally poised and of such unrivalled strength. This review of the larger influences operating with concentrated force during the critical years of youth and early manhood will help to connect and interpret the few and scattered particulars of Shakespeare’s personal history. These particulars must indeed be to some extent connected and interpreted in order to be clearly understood, and any intelligible account of Shakespeare’s life must therefore take the shape of a biographical essay, rather than of a biography proper. We may add that the sketch will be confined to the points connected with Shakespeare’s local surroundings and personal history. The large literary questions connected with his works, such as the classification, the chronology, and analysis of the plays, could not of course be adequately dealt with in such a sketch. It is the less necessary that this wider task should be attempted as the main points it embraces have recently been well handled by competent Shakespearian scholars. The best and most convenient manuals embodying the results of recent criticism and research will be referred to at the close of the article. Meanwhile we have first to look at the locality of Shakespeare’s birth, both in its material and moral aspects.
WarwickshireWarwickshire was known to Shakespeare’s contemporaries as the central county or heart of England. It was the middle shire of the Midlands, where the two great Roman roads crossing the island from east to west and west to east met,—forming at their point of junction the centre of an irregular St Andrew’s cross, of which the arms extended from Dover to Chester on the one side and from Totnes to Lincoln and the north on the other. The centre in which these roads—Watling Street and the Fosse Way—thus met was early known from this circumstance as the High Cross. Being the most important Midland position during the Roman occupation of the country, several Roman stations were formed in the neighbourhood of this venerable Quatre Bras. Of these Camden specifies the ancient and flourishing city of Clychester, represented in part by the modern Clybrook, and Manduessidum, the memory of which is probably retained in the modern Mancettar. Important Roman remains have also been found within a few miles of Stratford, at Alcester, a central station on the third great Roman road, Ricknild Street, which runs from south to north across the western side of the county. In later times, when means of communication were multiplied, the great roads to the north-west still ​738 SHAKESPEARE division. passed through the county, and one of them, the mail road from London through Oxford to Birmingham, Stafford, and Chester, was the "streete" or public way that crossed the Avon at the celebrated ford spanned in 1483 by Sir Hugh Clopton's magnificent bridge of fourteen arches. Immediately beyond the bridge rose the homely gables and wide thoroughfares of Shakespeare's native place. The In Shakespeare's time Warwickshire was divided by the irregular line of the Avon into two unequal but well-marked divisions, known respectively, from their main character- istics, as the woodland and the open country, or more technically as the districts of Arden and Feldon. The former included the thickly- wooded region north of the Avon, of which the celebrated forest of Arden was the centre, and the latter the champaign country, the rich and fertile pasture-lands between the Avon and the line of hills separating Warwick from the shires of Oxford and North- ampton. Shakespeare himself was of course familiar with this division of his native shire, and he has well expressed it in Lear's description of the section of the kingdom assigned to his eldest daughter Goneril, " Of all these bounds, even from this line to this, With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd, With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, We make thee lady." No better general description of Warwickshire could indeed be given than is contained in these lines. Taking the Roman roads, Watling and Ricknild Streets, as boundaries, they vividly depict the characteristic features of the county, including its plenteous rivers and wide- skirted meads. The old and central division of Arden and Feldon is clearly embodied in the second line, "with shadowy forests and with champains rich'd." This distinction, practically effaced in modern times by agricultural and mining progress, was partially affected by these causes even in Shakespeare's own day. The wide Arden, or belt of forest territory which had once extended not only across the county but from the Trent to the Severn, was then very much restricted to the centre of the shire, the line of low hills and undulating country which stretched away for upwards of twenty miles to the north of Stratford. The whole of the northern district was, it is true, still densely wooded, but the intervening patches of arable and pasture land gradually encroached more and more upon the bracken and brushwood, and every year larger areas were cleared and prepared for tillage by the axe and the plough. In the second half of the 16th century, however, the Arden district still retained enough of its primitive character to fill the poet's imagination with the exhilarating breadth and sweetness of woodland haunts, the beauty, variety, and freedom of sylvan life, and thus to impart to the scenery of As You Like It the vivid fresh- ness and reality of a living experience. In this delightful comedy the details of forest-life are touched with so light but at the same time so sure a hand as to prove the writer's familiarity with the whole art of venery, his thorough knowledge of that " highest franchise of noble and princely pleasure " which the royal demesnes of wood and park afforded. In referring to the marches or wide margins on the outskirts of the forest, legally known as purlieus, Shakespeare indeed displays a minute technical accuracy which would seem to indicate that in his early rambles about the forest and casual talks with its keepers and woodmen he had picked up the legal incidents of sylvan economy, as well as enjoyed the freedom and charm of forest-life. Throughout the purlieus, for instance, the forest laws were only partially in force, while the more important rights of individual owners were fullyrecognizad and established. Hence it happened that Corin's master, dwelling, as Rosalind puts it in a quaint but characteristic simile that betrays her sex, "here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat," could sell " his cote, his flock, and bounds of feed," and that Celia and Rosalind were able to purchase " the cottage, the pasture, and the flock." It may be noted, too, that, in exchange for the independence the dwellers in the purlieus acquired as private owners, they had to relinquish their common right or customary privilege of pasturing their cattle in the forest. Sheep, indeed, were not usually included in this right of common, their presence in the forest being regarded as inimical to the deer. When kept in the purlieus, there- fore, they had to be strictly limited to their bounds of feed, shepherded during the day and carefully folded every night, and these points are faithfully reflected by Shake- speare. Again, only those specially privileged could hunt venison within the forest. But if the deer strayed beyond the forest bounds they could be freely followed by the dwellers in the purlieus, and these happy hunting grounds outside the forest precincts were in many cases spacious and extensive. The special office of a forest ranger was indeed to drive back the deer straying in the purlieus. The banished duke evidently has this in mind when, as a casual denizen of the forest, he proposes to make war on its native citizens : "Come, shall we go and kill us venison ? And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools, Being native burghers or this desert city, Should, in their own confines, with forked heads, Have their round haunches gor'd." And the melancholy Jaques, refining as usual with cynical sentimentalism on every way of life and every kind of action, thinks it would be a special outrage " To fright the animals, and to kill them up, In their assign'd and native dwelling place." Not only in As You Like It, but in Love's Labour's Lost, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, and indeed throughout his dramatic works, Shakespeare displays the most intimate knowledge of the aspects and incidents of forest life ; and it is certain that in the first instance this knowledge must have been gained from his early familiarity with the Arden district. This, as we have seen, stretched to the north of Stratford in all its amplitude and variety of hill and dale, leafy covert and sunny glade, giant oaks and tangled thickets, the wood- land stillness being broken at intervals not only by the noise of brawling brooks below and of feathered outcries and flutterings overhead, but by dappled herds sweeping across the open lawns or twinkling in the shadowy bracken, as well as by scattered groups of timid conies feeding, at matins and vespers, on the tender shoots and sweet herbage of the forest side. The deer-stealing tradition is sufficient evidence of the popular belief in the poet's love of daring exploits in the regions of vert and venison, and of his devotion, although in a somewhat irregular way perhaps, to the attractive woodcraft of the park, the warren, and the chase. The traditional scene of this adventure was Charlecote Park, a few miles north-east of Stratford ; but the poet's early wanderings in Arden extended, no doubt, much further afield. Stirred by the natural desire of visiting at leisure the more celebrated places of his native district, he would pass from Stratford to Henley and Hampton, to Wroxall Priory and Kenilworth Castle, to Stoneleigh Abbey and Leamington Priors, to Warwick Keep and Guy's Cliffe. The remarkable beauty of this last storied spot stirs the learned and tranquil pens of the antiquaries Camden and Dugdale to an unwonted effort of description, even in the pre-descriptive era. " Under this hill," says Camden, " hard by the river Avon, standeth Guy-cliffe, others call it Gib-cliffe, the dwelling house at this day of Sir Thomas Beau-foe, descended from ​SHAKESPEARE 739 the ancient Normans line, and the very seate itselfe of pleasantnesse. There have yee a shady little wood, cleere and cristall springs, mossy bottomes and caves, medowes alwaies fresh and greene, the river rumbling here and there among the stones with his stream making a milde noise and gentle whispering, and besides all this, solitary and still quietnesse, things most grateful to the Muses." But the whole of the circuit was richly wooded, the towns, as the names indicate, being forest towns, Henley- in-Arden, Hampton-in-Arden, while the castles and secularized religious houses were paled off within their own parks and bounds from the sylvan wilderness around them. Some, like the celebrated castle of the Mountfords, called from its pleasant situation amongst the woods Beaudesert, having been dismantled during the Wars of the Roses were already abandoned, and had in Shake- speare's day relapsed from the stately revelry that once filled their halls into the silence of the surrounding woods. At every point of the journey, indeed, as the poet's eager and meditative eye embraced new vistas, it might be said, "Towers and battlements it sees Bosomed high in tufted trees. " On the southern margin of the Arden division, towards the Avon, small farms were indeed already numerous, and cultivation had become tolerably general. But the region as a whole still retained its distinctive character as the Arden or wooded division of the county. Even now, indeed, it includes probably more woods and parks than are to be found over the same area in any other English shire. While parts of the Arden district were in this way
L0n ' champaign or open country to the south of the Avon, the Feldon division of the county, was destitute of wood ; on the contrary its extensive pastures were not only well watered by local streams overshadowed by willow and alder, but well wooded at intervals by groups of more stately trees. The numerous flocks and herds that grazed throughout the valley of the Red Horse found welcome shelter from the noonday heat and the driving wind under the green roofs and leafy screens that lined and dotted their bounds of feed. And, although even the grazing farms were comparatively small, almost every homestead had its group of protecting elms, its outlying patch of hanging beech and ash, or straggling copse of oak and hazel. This is still reflected in such local names as Wood Park, Shrub Lands, Ockley Wood, Furze Hill, Oakham, Ashborne, Alcott Wood, Berecote Wood, and Radland Gorse. These features gave interest and variety to the Feldon district, and justified the characteristic epithet which for centuries was popularly applied to the county as a whole, that of " woody Warwickshire." And Shakespeare, in passing out of the county on his London journeys, would quickly feel the difference, as beyond its borders he came upon stretches of less clothed and cultivated scenery. As his stout gelding mounted Edgehill, and he turned in the saddle to take a parting look at the familiar landscape he was leaving, he would behold what Speed, in his enthusiasm, calls "another Eden, as Lot the plain of Jordan." While the general aspect would be that of green pastures and grassy levels, there would be at the same time the picturesque intermingling of wood and water, of mill and grange and manor house, which gives light and shade, colour and movement, interest and animation, to the plainer sweeps and more monotonous objects of pastoral scenery. story. On the historical side Warwickshire has points of interest as striking and distinctive as its physical features. During the Roman occupation of the country it was, as we have seen, the site of several central Roman stations, of which, besides those already noticed, the fortified camps of Tripontium and Presidium on the line of the Avon were' the most important. A Roman road crossed the Avon at Stratford, and radiating north and south soon reached some of the larger Roman towns of the west, such as Uriconium and Corinium. Between these towns were country villas or mansions, many of them being, like that at Woodchester, " magnificent palaces covering as much ground as a whole town." The entire district must in this way have been powerfully affected by the higher forms of social life and material splendour which the wealthier provincials had introduced. The immediate effect of this Roman influence on the native populations was, as we know, to divide them into opposed groups whose conflicts helped directly to produce the disastrous results which followed the withdrawal of the Romans from the island. But the more permanent and more important effect is probably to be traced in the far less obstinate resistance offered by the Celtic tribes of Mid Britain to the invading Angles from the north and Saxons from the south, by whom themselves and their district were eventually absorbed. Instead of the fierce conflicts and wrathful withdrawal or extermination of the conquered Britons which prevailed further east, and for a time perhaps further west also, the intervening tribes appear to have accepted the overlordship of their Teutonic neighbours and united with them in the cultivation and defence of their common territory. The fact that no record of any early Early Angle conquest remains seems to indicate that, after at union of most a brief resistance, there was a gradual coalescence of , 1C the invading with the native tribes rather than any fierce Teutonic or memorable struggle between them. Even the more races, independent and warlike tribes about the Severn repeatedly joined the Saxon Hwiccas, whose northern frontier was the forest of Arden, in resisting the advance of Wessex from the south. And for more than a hundred years after the establishment of the central kingdom of the Angles, the neighbouring Welsh princes are found acting in friendly alliance with the Mercian rulers. It was thus the very district where from an early period the two race elements that have gone to the making of the nation were most ' nearly balanced and most completely blended. The union of a strong Celtic element with the dominant Angles is still reflected in the local nomenclature, not only in the names of the chief natural features, such as rivers and heights, Arden and Avon, Lickey, Alne, and Thame, but in the numerous combes and cotes or cots, as in the reduplica- tive Cotswold, in the duns, dons, and dens, and in such distinctively Celtic elements as man, pol, try, in names of places scattered through the district. The cotes are, it is true, ambiguous, being in a majority of cases perhaps Saxon rather than Celtic, but in a forest country near the old Welsh marches many must still represent the Celtic coet or coed, and-in some cases this is clear from the word itself, as in Kingscot, a variation of Kingswood, and even Charlecote exists in the alternative form of Charlewood. This union of the two races, combined with the stirring conditions of life in a wild and picturesque border country, gave a vigorous impulse and distinctive character to the population, the influence of which may be clearly traced in the subsequent literary as well as in the political history of the country. As early as the 9th century, when the ravages of the Danes had desolated the homes and scattered the representatives of learning in Wessex, it was to western Mercia that King Alfred sent for scholars and churchmen to unite with him in helping to restore the fallen fortunes of religion and letters. And after the long blank in the native literature produced by the Norman Conquest the authentic signs of its indestructible vitality first appeared on the banks of the Severn. Layamon's spirited poem dealing with the legendary history of Britain, and written ​740 SHAKESPEARE at Redstone near Arley, within sight of the river's majestic sweep amidst its bordering woods and hills, is by far the most important literary monument of semi-Saxon. And, while the poem as a whole displays a Saxon tenacity of purpose in working out a comprehensive scheme of memorial verse, its more original parts have touches of passion and picturesqueness, as well as of dramatic vivacity, that recall the patriotic fire of the Celtic bards. A hundred and fifty years later the first great period of English literature was inaugurated by another poem of marked originality and power, written under the shadow of the Malvern Hills. The writer of the striking series of allegories known as Piers Plowman's Visions was a Shrop- shire man, and, notwithstanding his occasional visits to London and official employments there, appears to have spent his best and most productive years on the western border between the Severn and the Malvern Hills. In many points both of substance and form the poem may, it is true, be described as almost typically Saxon. But it has at the same time a power of vivid portraiture, a sense of colour, with an intense and penetrating if not exag- gerated feeling for local grievances which are probably due to the strain of Celtic blood in the writer's veins. Two centuries later, from the same district, from a small town on an affluent of the Severn, a few miles to the west of the river, came the national poet, who not only inherited the patriotic fire and keen sensibility of Layamon and Langland, but who combined in the most perfect form and carried to the highest point of development the best qualities of the two great races represented in the blood and history of the English nation. Mr J. R. Green, in referring to the moral effects arising from the mixture of races in the Midland district, has noted this fact in one of those sagacious side-glances that make his history so instructive. " It is not without significance," he says, " that the highest type of the race, the one Englishman who has combined in their largest measure the mobility and fancy of the Celt with the depth and energy of the Teutonic temper, was born on the old Welsh and English borderland, in the forest of Arden." And from the purely critical side Mr Matthew Arnold has clearly brought out the same point. He traces some of the finest qualities of Shake- speare's poetry to the Celtic spirit which touched his imagination as with an enchanter's wand, and thus helped to brighten and enrich the profounder elements of his creative genius. The history of Warwickshire in Anglo-Saxon times is identified with the kingdom of Mercia, which, under a scries of able rulers, was for a time the dominant power of the country. In later times, from its central position, the county was liable to be crossed by military forces if rebellion made head in the north or west, as well as to be traversed and occupied by the rival armies during the Wars periods of civil war. The most important events, indeed, con- cf the nected with the shire before Shakespeare's time occurred during Roses. the two greatest civil conflicts in the earlier national annals the Barons' War in the 13th century, and the Wars of the Roses in the loth. The decisive battles that closed these long and bitter struggles, and thus became turning points in our constitutional history, were both fought on the borders of Warwickshire, the battle of Evesham on the south-western and the battle of Bosworth Field on the north-eastern boundary. The great leaders in each conflict the founder of the Commons House of Parliament and the " setter up and puller down of kings" were directly connected with Warwickshire. Kcnilworth belonged to Simon de Montfort, and its siege and surrender constituted the last act in the Barons' War. During the Wars of the Roses the county was naturally promi- nent in public affairs, as its local carl, the last and greatest of the lawless, prodigal, and ambitious barons of mediaeval times, was for more than twenty years the leading figure in the struggle. But notwithstanding this powerful influence the county was, like the country itself, very much divided in its political sympathies and activities. The weakness and vacillation of Henry VI. had stimulated the rival house of York to assert its claims, and, as the trading and mercantile classes were always in favour of a strong government, London, with the eastern counties and the chief ports and commercial towns, favoured the house of York. On the other hand, South Wales, some of the Midland and most of the western shires, under the leadership of the Bcauforts, and the northern counties, under the leaders-hip of Clifford and Northumberland, supported the house of Lancaster. Political feeling in the Princi- pality itself was a good deal divided. The duke of York still Eossessed Ludlow Castle, and, the Welsh of the northern border eing devoted to the houses of March and Mortimer, Prince Edward, the young earl of March, after the defeat and death of his father at Wakefield, was able to rally on the border a "mighty power of marchmen," and, after uniting his forces with those of Warwick, to secure the decisive victory of Towton which placed him securely on the throne. Still, during the earlier stages of tha struggle the Beauforts, with the earls of Pembroke, Devon, and Wiltshire, were able to muster in the south and west forces sufficient to keep the Yorkists in check. And when the final struggle came, when Henry of Richmond landed at Milford Haven, the Welsh blood in his veins rallied to his standard so powerful a contingent of the southern marchmen that he was able at once to cross the Severn, and, traversing north Warwickshire, to confront the forces of Richard, with the assurance that in the hour of need he would be supported by Stanley and Northumberland. Warwickshire itself was, as already intimated, considerably divided even in the more active stages of the conflict, Coventry being strongly in favour of the Red Rose, while Warwick, under the influence of the earl, was for a while devoted to the cause of the White Rose. Kenilwofth was still held by the house of Lancaster, and Henry VI. at the outset of the conquest had more than once taken refuge there. On the other hand Edward IV^ud Richard III. both visited Warwick, the latter being so interestemin the castle that he is said to have laid the foundation of a new* and " mighty fayre " tower on the north side, afterwards known as the Bear s Tower. Edward IV., in harmony with his strong instinct for popularity, and command of the arts that secure it, tried to conciliate the people of Coventry by visiting the town and witnessing its celebrated pageants more than once at Christmas in 1465 and at the festival of St George in 1474. Although ho was accompanied by his queen the efforts to win the town from its attachment to the rival house do not appear to have been very successful. Under Edward's rule the manifesta- tion of active partisanship was naturally in abeyance, and no doubt the feeling may to some extent have declined. Indeed, in the latei stages of the struggle Warwickshire, like, so many other counties, was comparatively weary and quiescent. When Richard III. advanced to the north the sheriff of the shire had, it is true, in obedience to the royal mandate levied a force on behalf of the king, but as this force never actually joined the royal standard it is naturally assumed that it was either intercepted by Henry on his march to Bosworth Field or had voluntarily joined him on the eve of the battle. In view of the strong Lancasterian sympathies in the north and east of the shire the latter is by far the more probable supposition. In this case, or indeed on either alternative, it may be true, as asserted in the patent of arms subsequently granted to Shakespeare's father, that his ancestors had fought on behalf of Henry VII. in the great battle that placed the crown on his head. Many families bearing the name of Shakespeare were scattered through Warwickshire in the 15th century, and it is therefore not at all unlikely that some of their members had wielded a spear with effect in the battle that, to the immense relief of the country, happily closed the most miserable civil conflict in its annals. But, whether any of his ancestors fought at Bosworth Field Influ< or not, Shakespeare would be sure in his youth to hear, almost of la at first hand, a multitude of exciting stories and stirring inci- tradi dents connected with so memorable and far-reaching a victory, tions After the battle Henry VII. had slept at Coventry, and was entertained by the citizens and presented with handsome gifts. He seems there also to have first exercised his royal power by con- ferring knighthood on the mayor of the town. The battle was fought only eighty years before Shakespeare's birth, and public events of importance are vividly transmitted by local tradition for more than double that length of time. At this hour the quiet farmsteads of Mid Somerset abound with stories and traditions of Monmouth and his soldiers, and of the events that preceded and followed the battle of Sedgemoor. And a century earlier local traditions possessed still more vitality and power. In the 16th century, indeed, the great events of the nation's life, as well as more important local incidents, were popularly preserved and transmitted by means of oral tradition and scenic display. Only a small and cultured class could acquire their knowledge of them through literary chronicles and learned records. The popular mind was of necessity largely fed and stimulated by the spoken narratives of the rustic festival and the winter fireside. And a quiet settled neighbourhood like Stratford, out of the crush, but near the great centres of national activity, would be peculiarly rich in these stored-up materials of unwritten history. The very fact that within eight miles of Shakespeare's birthplace arose from their cedared slopes the halls and towers of the great earl who for more than a quarter of a century wielded a political and ​SHAKESPEARE tford. military power mightier than any subject had wielded before would give the district an exceptional prominence in the national annals, which would be locally reflected in an answering wealth of historic tradition. In Shakespeare's day Warwickshire thus sup- plied the materials of a liberal elementary training in the heroic annals of the past, and especially in the great events of the recent past that had established the Tudors on the throne, consolidated the permanent interests of the Government and the country, and helped directly to promote the growing unity and strength, pro- sperity and renown, of the kingdom. The special value of Shakespeare's dramatic interpretation of this period, arising from his early familiarity with the rich and pregnant materials of unwritten history, has recently been insisted on afresh by one of our most careful and learned authorities. In the preface to his work on The Houses of Lancaster and York, Mr James Gairdner says : " For this period of English history we are fortunate in pos- sessing an unrivalled interpreter in our great dramatic poet Shakespeare. A regular sequence of historical plays exhibits to us, not only the general character of each successive reign, but nearly the whole chain of leading events from the days of Richard II. to the death of Richard III. at Bosworth. Following the guidance of such a master mind, we realize for ourselves the men and actions of the period in a way we cannot do in any other epoch. And this is the more important as the age itself, especially towards the close, is one of the most obscure in English history. During the period of the "Wars of the Roses we have, comparatively speak- ing, very few contemporary narratives of what took place, and anything like a general history of the times was not written till a much later date. But the doings of that stormy age, the sad calamities endured by kings the sudden changes of fortune in great men the glitter of chivalry and the horrors of civil war, all left a deep impression upon the mind of the nation, which was kept alive by vivid traditions of the past at the time that our great dramatist wrote. Hence, not Avithstan ding the scantiness of records and the meagreness of ancient chronicles, we have singularly little difficulty in understanding the spirit and character of the times." Familiar as he must have been in his youth with the materials that enabled him to interpret so stirring a period, it is not surpris- ing that even amidst the quiet hedgerows and meadows of Strat- ford Shakespeare's pulse should have beat high with patriotic enthusiasm, or that when launched on his new career in the metropolis lie should have sympathized to the full extent on his larger powers with the glow of loyal feeling that, under Elizabeth's rule, and especially in the conflict with Spain, thrilled the nation's heart with an exulting sense of full political life, realized national power, and gathering European fame. In the interval that elapsed between the battle of Bosworth Field and the birth of Shakespeare Warwickshire continued to be visited by the reigning monarch and members of the royal family. The year after his accession to the crown Henry VIII., with Queen Catherine, visited Coventry in state, and witnessed there a series of magnificent pageants. In 1525 the Princess Mary spent two days at the priory, being entertained with the usual sports and shows, and presented by the citizens on her departure with hand- some presents. The year after Shakespeare's birth Queen Elizabeth made a state visit to Coventry, Kenilworth, and Warwick, the young queen being received at every point of her progress with unusually splendid demonstrations of loyalty and devotion. And nine years before Shakespeare's birth King Edward VI., in the last months of his reign, had specially interested himself in the re- establishment by royal charter of the free grammar school of the guild at Stratford, which had been suppressed at the dissolution of religious houses during his father's reign. The town of Stratford lies on the north bank of the Avon, at a point about midway in its course from its rise in Northamptonshire hills to its junction with the Severn at Tewkesbury. On entering the town, across Sir Hugh Clopton's noble bridge, the road from the south-east fans out in three main directions, on the right to Warwick and Coventry, on the left to Alcester, while between runs the central street, the modern representative of the old Roman way to Birmingham, Chester, and the north. Further to the left a fourth and less important road leaves the town beyond the church, and, keeping in the main the line of the river, goes to Bidford, Salford Priors, and Evesham. It is a picturesque country road connecting a string of undulating villages and hamlets with Stratford. The town itself consisted in the 16th century of the low gable- roofed wood-and-plaster houses dotted at intervals along these roads and down the cross streets that connected them with each other and with the river. Most of the houses in Shakespeare's time had gardens at the back, and many at the sides also ; and the space between the houses, combined with the unusual width of the streets, gave the town an open cheerful look which enabled it to retain pleasant touches of its earlier rural state. As its prosperity increased the scattered dwellings naturally tended to close up their ranks, and present a more united front of exposed wares and convenient hostelries to the yeomen and graziers, who with their wives and families frequented the place on fair and market days. But in Shakespeare's time the irregular line of gables and porches, of penthouse walls and garden palings, with patches of flowers and overarching foliage between, still varied the view and refreshed the eye in looking down the leading thoroughfares. These thoroughfares took the shape of a central cross, of which Church, Chapel, and High Streets, running in a continuous line north and south, constituted the shaft or stem, while Bridge and Wood Streets, running in another line east and west, were the transverse beam or bar. At the point of intersection stood the High Cross, a solid stone building with steps below and open arches above, from which public proclamations were made, and, as in London and other large towns, sermons sometimes delivered. The open space around the High Cross was the centre of trade and merchandise on market days, and from the force of custom it naturally became the site on which at a later period the market-house was built. Oppo- site the High Cross the main road, carried over Sir Hugh Clopton's arches and along Bridge Street, turns to the left through Henley Street on its way to Henley-in-Arden and the more distant northerly towns. At the western end of Wood Street was a large and open space called. Rother Market, whence Rother Street running parallel with High Street led through narrower lanes into the Evesham Road. This open ground was, as the name indicates, the great cattle The market of Stratford, one of the most important features of its Rother industrial history from very early times. In the later Middle Market. Ages most of the wealthier inhabitants were engaged in farming operations, and the growth and prosperity of the place resulted from its position as a market town in the midst of an agricultural and grazing district. In the 13th century a number of charters were obtained from the early Plantagenet kings, empowering the town to hold a weekly market and no fewer than five annual fairs, four of which were mainly for cattle. In later times a series of great cattle markets, one for each month in the year, was added to the list. The name of the Stratford cattle market embodies this feature of its history, "rother " being a good Saxon word for horned cattle, a word freely employed in Early English, both alone and in composition. In the 16th century it was still in familiar use, not only in literature but in official documents and especially in statutes of the realm. Thus Cowell, in his law dictionary, under the heading "Rother-beasts," explains that "the name compre- hends oxen, cows, steers, heifers, and such like horned beasts," and refers to statutes of Elizabeth and James in support of the usage. And Arthur Golding in 1567 translates Ovid's lines "Mille gregcs illi totidemque armenta per herbas Errabant " " A thousand flocks of sheep, A thousand herds of r other-beasts, he in his fields did keep." The word seems to have been longer retained and more freely used in the Midland counties than elsewhere, and Shakespeare himself employs it with colloquial precision in the restored line of Timon of Athens: "It is the pasture lards the rother's sides." Many a time, no doubt, as a boy, during the spring and summer fairs, he had risen with the sun, and, making his way from Henley Street to the bridge, watched the first arrivals of the " large-eyed kine " slowly driven in from the rich pastures of the " Red Horse Valley." There would be some variety and excitement in the spec- tacle as the droves of meditative oxjen were invaded from time to time by groups of Herefordshire cows lowing anxiously after their skittish calves, as well as by the presence and disconcerting activity of still smaller deer. And the boy would be sure to follow the crowding cattle to the Rother Market and observe at leisure the humours of the ploughmen and drovers from the Feldon district, whose heavy intermittent talk would be in perfect keeping with the bovine stolidity of the steers and heifers around them. There was a market-cross at the head of the Rother expanse, and this was the chief gathering place for the cattle-dealers, as the High Cross was the rallying point of the dealers in corn and country produce. In ​742 SHAKESPEARE modem Stratford Rothcr Market retains its place as the busiest centre at the annual fairs, during one of which it is still customary to roast an ox in the open street, often amidst a good deal of popular excitement and convivial uproar. Chief The cross ways going from Rother Street to the river side, which streets cut the central line, dividing it into three sections, are Ely Street and and Sheep Street in a continuous line, and Scholar's Lane and Chapel suburbs. Lane in another line. They run parallel with the head line of Bridge and Wood Streets, and like them traverse from east to west the northern shaft of the cross that constituted the ground plan of the town. Starting down this line from the market house at the top, the first division, the High Street, is now, as it was in Shake- speare's day, the busiest part for shops and shopping, the solid building at the further corner to the left being the Corn Exchange. At the first corner of the second division, called Chapel Street, stands the town-hall, while at the further corner are the site and railed : in gardens of New Place, the large mansion purchased by Shakespeare in 1597. Opposite New Place, at the corner of the third and last division, known as Church Street, is the grey mass of Gothic buildings belonging to the guild of the Holy Cross, and consisting of the chapel, the hall, the grammar school, and the almshouses of the ancient guild. Turning to the left at the bottom of Church Street, you enter upon what was in Shakespeare's day a well-wooded suburb, with a few good houses scattered among the ancient elms, and surrounded by ornamental gardens and extensive private grounds. In one of these houses, with a sunny expanse oflawn and shrubbery, lived in the early years of the 17th century Shakespeare's eldest daughter Susanna with her husband, Dr John Hall, and here in spring mornings and summer afternoons the great poet must have often strolled, either alone or accom- panied by nis favourite daughter, realizing to the full the quiet enjoyment of the sylvan scene and its social surroundings. This pleasant suburb, called then as now Old Town, leads directly to the church of the Holy Trinity, near the river side. The church, a fine specimen of Decorated and Perpendicular Gothic with a lofty spire, is approached on the northern side through an avenue of limes, and sneltered on the east and south by an irregular but massive group of elms towering above the churchway path between the transepts, the chancel, and the river. Below the church, on the margin of the river, were the mill, the mill-bridge, and the weir, half hidden by grey willows, green alders, and tall beds of rustling sedge. And, beyond the church, the college, and the line of streets already described, the suburbs stretched away into gardens, orchards, meadows, and cultivated fields, divided by rustic lanes with mossy banks, flowering hedgerows, and luminous vistas of bewildering beauty. These cross and country roads were dotted at intervals with cottage homesteads, isolated farms, and the small groups of both which constituted the villages and hamlets included within the wide sweep of old Stratford parish. Amongst these were the villages and hamlets of Welcombe, Ingon, Drayton, Shottery, Luddington, Little Wilmcote, and Bishopston. The town was thus girdled in the spring by daisied meadows and blos- soming orchards, and enriched during the later months by the orange and gold of harvest fields and autumn foliage, mingled with the coral and purple clusters of elder, hawthorn, and moun- tain ash r and, around the farms and cottages, with the glow of ripening fruit for the winter's store. Forest But perhaps the most characteristic feature of the survivals. scen ery in the neighbourhood of Stratford is to be found in the union of this rich and varied cultivation with picturesque survivals of the primeval forest territory. The low hills that rise at intervals above the well-turned soil still carry on their serrated crests the lingering glories of the ancient woodland. Though the once mighty forest of Arden has disappeared, the after-glow of its sylvan beauty rests on the neighbouring heights formerly enclosed within its ample margin. These traces of the forest wildness and freedom were of course far more striking and abundant in Shakespeare's day than now. At that time many of the farms had only recently been reclaimed from the forest, and most of them still had their bosky acres " of tooth'd briars, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns," their broom groves, hazel copses, and outlying patches of unshrubbad down. And the hills that rose above the chief villages of the neighbourhood were still clothed and crowned with the green and mystic mantle of the leafy Arden. But, though much of the ancient woodland has disappeared since Shakespeare's day, many traces of it still remain. Any of the roads out of Stratford will soon bring the pedestrian to some of these picturesque sur- vivals of the old forest wilderness. On the Warwick road, at the distance of about a mile from the town, there are on the left the Welcombe Woods, and just beyond the woods the well-known Dingles, a belt of straggling ash and hawthorn winding irregularly through blue-bell depths and briery hollows from the pathway below to the crest of the hill above, while immediately around rise the Welcombe Hills, from the top of which is obtained the finest local view of Stratford and the adjacent country. Looking south-west and facing the central line of the town, you see below you, above the mass of roofs, the square tower of the guild chapel, the graceful spire of the more distant church, the sweep of the winding river, arid beyond the river the undulating valley of the Red Horse shut in by the blue range of the Cotswold Hills. A couple of miles to the east of the Welcombe Hills is the village of Snitterfield, where Shakespeare's grandfather, Richard Shakespeare, lived and cultivated to the end of his days the acres around his rustic dwelling. Beyond the village on its western side there is an upland reach of wilderness in the shape of a hill, covered with shrub and copsewood, and known as the Snitterfield Bushes. Here Shakespeare as a boy must have often rambled, enjoying the freedom of the unfenced downs, and enlarging his knowledge of nature's exuberant vitality. On the opposite side of the town, about a mile on the Eveshaui road, or rather between the Evesham and Alcester roads, lies the hamlet of Shottery, half concealed by ancestral elms and nestling amongst its homestead fruits and flowers. From one of these homesteads Shakespeare obtained his bride Anne Hathaway. A mile or two on the central road, passing out of the town through Henley Street, is the village of Bearley, and above the village another sweep of wooded upland known as Bearley Bushes. And at various more distant points between these roads the marl and sandstone heights, fringed with woods or covered with wilding growths, still bear eloquent testimony to the time when Guy of Warwick and his tutor in chivalry, Heraud of Arden, still roamed the forest in search of the wild ox and savage boar that frayed the infrequent travellers and devastated at intervals the slender cultivation of the district. The subtle power of this order of scenery, arising from the union of all that is rich and careful in cultivation with all that is wild and free in natural beauty, is exactly of the kind best fitted to attract and delight imaginative and emotional minds. It possesses the peculiar charm that in character arises from the union of refined culture with the bright and exhilarating spontaneity of a free and generous nature. On its 1 moral side such scenery has an expanding illuminating Moral power which links it to the wider and deeper interests of humanity infla- as a whole. Nature seems to put forth her vital energies expressly ences i for the relief of man's estate, appearing as his friend and helper scene? and consoler. Instead of being absorbed in her own inaccessible grandeurs and solitary sublimities, she exerts her benign influences expressly as it were for his good, to cheer and brighten his evanescent days, and beautify his temporary home. Bolder and more rugged landscapes, gloomy glens, and thunder-scarred peaks may excite more passionate feelings, may rouse and strengthen by reaction the individualistic elements of mind and character, and thus produce the hardy, daring type of mountaineer, the intense self-centred and defiant local patriot or hero, the chieftain and his clansmen, contra mundum. No doubt it is also true that the vaster and loftier mountain ranges have a unique power of exciting in susceptible minds the emotions of awe, wonder, and sublimity. But the very power and permanence of these mighty solitudes, the grandeur and immobility of their measureless strength and imperial repose, dwarf by comparison all merely human interests ; and to the meditative mind swept by the spirit of such immensities the moments of our mortal life seem to melt as dew-drops into the silence of their eternal years. The feelings thus excited, being in themselves of the essence of poetry, may indeed find expression in verse and in verse of a noble kind, but the poetry will be lyrical and reflective, not dramatic, or if dramatic in form it will be lyrical in substance. As Mr Ruskin has pointed out, the overmastering- effect of mountain scenery tends to absorb and preoccupy the ​SHAKESPEARE 743 mind, and thus to disturb the impartial view, the universal vision of nature and human nature as a complex whole, or rather of nature as the theatre and scene of human life, which the dramatist must preserve in order to secure success in his higher work. Mountain scenery is, however, not only rare and exacting in the range and intensity of feeling it excites, but locally remote in its separation from the interests and occupations of men. It is thus removed from the vital element in which the dramatist works, if not in its higher influence antagonistic to that element. Mr Hamerton, who discusses the question on a wider basis of knowledge and experience than perhaps any living authority except Mr Ruskin, supports this view. "As a general rule," he says, "I should say there; is an antagonism between the love of mountains and the knowledge of mankind, that the lover of mountains will often be satisfied with their appearances of power and passion, their splendour and gloom, their seeming cheerfulness or melancholy, when a mind indifferent to this class of scenery might study the analogous phases of human character." Where, indeed, the influence of nature is overpowering, as in the East, wonder, the wonder excited by mere physical vastness, power, and infinitude, takes the place of intelligent interest in individual life and character. But the dramatic poet has to deal primarily with human power and passion; and not for him therefore is the life of lonely raptures and awful delights realized by the moun- tain wanderer or the Alp-inspired bard. His work lies nearer the homes and ways of men, and his choicest scenery will be found in the forms of natural beauty most directly associated with their habitual activities, most completely blended with their more vivid emotional experiences. A wooded undulating country, watered by memorable streams, its ruder features relieved by the graces of cultivation, and its whole circuit rich in histori- cal remains and associations, is outside the domain of cities, the natural stage and theatre of the dramatist and story-teller. This was the kind of scenery that fascinated Scott's imagination, amidst which he fixed his chosen home, and where he sleeps his last sleep. It is a border country of grey waving hills, divided by streams renowned in song, and enriched by the monuments of the piety, splendour, and martial power of the leaders whose fierce raids and patriotic conflicts filled with romantic tale and minstrelsy the whole district from the Lammermoors to the Cheviots, and from the Leader and the Tweed to the |e old Solway Firth. In earlier times Shakespeare's own dis- elsh trict had been virtually a border country also. The er> mediaeval tide of intermittent but savage warfare, between the unsubdued Welsh and the Anglo-Normans under the feudal lords of the marches, ebbed and flowed across the Severn, inundating at times the whole of Powis-land, and sweeping on to the very verge of Warwickshire. In the 12th and 13th centuries the policy of intermarriage between their own families and the Welsh princes was tried by the English monarchs, and King John, on betroth- ing his daughter Joan to the Welsh prince Llewelyn, gave the manor of Bidford, six miles from Stratford-on-Avon, as part of her dower. The fact of this English princess being thus identified with South Warwickshire may help to explain the prevalence of the name Joan in the county, but the early impulse towards the giving of this royal name would no doubt be strengthened by the knowledge that John of Gaunt's daughter, the mother of the great earl of Warwick, had also borne the favourite local name. Shakespeare himself it will be remembered had two sisters of this name, the elder Joan, born some time before him, the firstborn of the family indeed, who died in infancy, and the younger Joan, who survived him. But the local popularity of a name, familiarly associated with the kitchen and the scullery rather than with the court or the palace, is no doubt due to one of the more striking incidents of the long conflict between the English and the Welsh on the western border. As we have seen, during the Barons' War and the Wars of the Roses the western border was the scene of active conflict, each party seeking Welsh support, and each being able in turn to rally a power of hardy marchmen to its banner. And that the insurgent Welsh were not idle during the interval between these civil conflicts we have the emphatic testimony of Glendower : " Three times hath Henry Bolingbrooke made head Against my power : thrice from the banks of Wye And sedgy-bottomed Severn have I sent him Bootless home, and weather-beaten back." The Hotspur and Mortimer revolt against Henry IV. well illustrates, indeed, the kind of support which English disaffection found for centuries in the Welsh marches. A rich heritage of stirring border life and heroic martial story was thus transmitted from the stormy ages of faith and feudalism to the more settled Tudor times. Apart from the border warfare there were also the multiplied associations connected with the struggles between the nobles and the crown, and the rise of the Commons as a distinctive power in the country. The whole local record of great names and signal deeds was in Shakespeare's day so far withdrawn into the past and mellowed by secular distance as to be capable of exerting its full enchantment over the feelings and the imagination. The historical associations thus connected with the hills and streams, the abbeys and castles, of .Warwickshire added elements of striking moral interest to the natural beauty of the scenery. To the penetrating imagination of poetic natures these elements reflected the continuity of national life as well as the greatness and splendour of the per- sonalities and achievements by which it was developed from age to age. They also helped to kindle within them a genuine enthusiasm for the fortunes and the fame of their native land. And scenery beautiful in itself acquired a tenfold charm from the power it thus possessed of bring- ing vividly before the mind the wide and moving panorama of the heroic past. The facts sufficiently prove that scenery endowed with this multiplied charm takes, if a calmer, still a deeper and firmer hold of the affections than any isolated and remote natural features, however beautiful and sublime, have power to do. This general truth is illustrated with even exceptional force in the lives of Scott and Shakespeare. Both were passionately attached to their native district, and the memorable scenes amidst which their early years were passed. So intense was Scott's feeling that he told Washington Irving that if he did not see the grey hills and the heather once a year he thought he should die. And one of the few traditions preserved of Shakespeare is that even in the most active period of his London career he always visited Stratford at least once every year. We know indeed from other sources that during his absence Shakespeare continued to take the liveliest interest in the affairs of his native place, and that, although London was for some years his profes- sional residence, he never ceased to regard Stratford as his home. Amongst other illustrations of this strong feeling of Feeling local attachment that might be given there is one that of lo al has recently excited a good deal of attention and is worth " noticing in some detail. Mr Hallam, in a well-known passage, has stated that "no letter of Shakespeare's writ- ing, no record of his conversation, has been preserved." But we certainly have at least one conversation reported at first hand, and it turns directly on the point in question. It relates to a proposal made in 1614 by some of the local proprietors for the enclosure of certain common lands at Welcombe and Old Stratford. The corporation of Strat- ford strongly opposed the project on the ground that it would be a hardship to the poorer members of the com- munity, and their clerk Mr Thomas Greene, who was related to Shakespeare, was in London about the business in November of the same year. Under date November ​17th Greene says, in notes which still exist, "My cosen Shakespear comyng yesterdy to town, I went to see him how he did. He told me that they assured him they ment to inclose no further than to Gospell Bush, and so upp straight (leavyng out part of the Dyngles to the ffield) to the gate in Clopton hedg, and take in Salis- buryes peece ; and that they mean in Aprill to survey the land, and then to gyve satisfaction, and not before ; and he and Mr Hall say they think ther will be nothyng done at all." This proves that the agents of the scheme had seen Shakespeare on the subject, that he had gone care- fully into the details of their plan, consulted his son-in- law Dr John Hall about them, and arrived at the conclu- sion that for the present they need take no decided action in the matter. There is evidently on Shakespeare's part a strong feeling against the proposed enclosure, and the agents of the scheme had clearly done their best to remove his objections, promising amongst other things that if it went forward he should suffer no pecuniary loss, a pro- mise already confirmed by a legal instrument. But nine months later, when the local proprietors seemed bent on pushing the scheme, Shakespeare takes a more decided stand, and pronounces strongly against the whole business. We have a notice, dated September 1, 1615, to the effect that Mr Shakespeare had on that day told the agent of the corporation "that he was not able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe." As his proprietary rights and pecuniary interests were not to be affected by the pro- posed enclosure, this strong expression of feeling must refer to the public advantages of the Welcombe common fields, and especially to what in Scotland would be called their " amenity," the element of value arising from their freedom and beauty, their local history and associations. Welcombe, as we have seen, was the most picturesque suburb of Stratford. The hills divided by the leafy Dingles afforded the finest panoramic view of the whole neighbourhood. On their eastern slope they led to Ful- broke Park, the probable scene of the deer-stealing adven- ture, and towards the north-west to the village of Snitter- field with its wooded sweep of upland "bushes." Every acre of the ground was associated with the happiest days of Shakespeare's youth. In his boyish holidays he had repeatedly crossed and recrossed the unfenced fields at the foot of the Welcombe Hills on his ways to the rustic scenes and occupations of his uncle Henry's farm in the outlying forest village. He knew by heart every boundary tree and stone and bank, every pond and sheep- pool, every barn and cattle-shed, throughout the whole well- frequented circuit. And in his later years, when after the turmoil and excitement of his London life he came to reside at Stratford, and could visit at leisure the scenes of his youth, it was perfectly natural that he should shrink from the prospect of having these scenes partially destroyed and their associations broken up by the rash hand of needless innovation. In his own emphatic language, " he could not bear the enclosing of Welcombe," and the only authoritative fragment of his conversation preserved to us thus brings vividly out one of the best known and most distinctive features of his personal character and history his deep and life-long attachment to his native place. Another illustration of the same feeling, common both to Scott and Shakespeare, is supplied by the prudence and foresight they both displayed in husbanding their early gains in order to provide, amidst the scenery they loved, a permanent home for themselves and their families. Shakespeare, the more careful and sharp-sighted of the two, ran no such risks and experienced no such reverses of fortune as those which saddened Scott's later days. Both, however, spent the last years of their lives in the home which their energy and affection had provided, and both sleep their last sleep under the changing skies and amidst the fields and streams that gave light and music to their earliest years. Hence, of all great authors, they are the two most habitually thought of in connexion with their native haunts and homesteads. Even to his contempo- raries Shakespeare was known as the Swan of Avon. The two spots on British ground most completely identified with the noblest energies of genius, consecrated by life- long associations, and hallowed by sacred dust are the banks of the Tweed from Abbotsford to Dryburgh Abbey, and the sweep of the Avon from Charlecote Park to Strat- ford church. To all lovers of literature, to all whose spirits have been touched to finer issues by its regenerating influence, these spots, and above all the abbey grave and the chancel tomb, are holy ground, national shrines visited by pilgrims from every land, who breathe with pride and gratitude and affection the household names of Shakespeare and of Scott. The name Shakespeare is found in the Midland counties two centuries before the birth of the poet, scattered so widely that it is not easy at first sight to fix the locality of its rise or trace the lines of its progress. Several facts, however, would seem to indicate that those who first bore it entered Warwickshire from the north and west, and may therefore have migrated in early times from the neighbour- ing marches. The name itself is of course thoroughly English, and it is given by Camden and Verstegan as an illustration of the way in which surnames were fabricated when first introduced into England in the 13th century. But it is by no means improbable that some hardy borderers who had fought successfully in the English ranks may have received or assumed a significant and sounding designation that would help to perpetuate the memory of their martial prowess. We have indeed a distinct and authoritative assertion that some of Shake- speare's ancestors had served their country in this way. However this may be, families bearing the name are found during the 15th and 16th centuries in the Arden district, especially at Wroxhall and Rowington, some being connected with the priory of Wroxhall, while during the 15th century the names of more than twenty are enumerated as belonging to the guild of St Ann, at Knoll near Rowington. In the roll of this guild or college are also found the representatives of some of the best families in the county, such as the Ferrerses of Tamworth and the Clintons of Coleshill. Among the members of the guild the poet's ancestors are to be looked for, and it is not improbable, as Mr French suggests, that John and Joan Shakespeare, entered on the Knoll register in 1527, may have been the parents of Richard Shakespeare of Snitterfield, whose sons gave each to his children the favourite family names. Richard Shakespeare, the poet's grand father, occupied a substantial dwelling and culti- vated a forest farm at Snitterfield, between 3 and 4 miles from Stratford. He was the tenant of Robert Arden of Wilmcote, "a gentleman of worship," who farmed his own estate, situated a few miles to the west of Snitterfield. Richard Shakespeare was settled at the latter hamlet and doing well as early as 1543, Thomas Atwood of Stratford having in that year bequeathed to him four oxen which were then in his keeping; and he continued to reside there certainly till 1560, and probably till his death. He appears to have had two sons, John and Henry, of whom John, the eldest, early broke through the contracted circle of rustic life at Snitterfield, made his way to Stratford, and established himself as a trader in one of the leading thoroughfares of the town. This movement to the town probably took place in 1551, as in 1552 John Shakespeare is described in an official document as residing in Henley Street, where the poet was subsequently born. As to the Shaki-- speare name a family. ​SHAKESPEARE 745 precise nature of his occupation, the kind of wares in which he principally dealt, there are various and conflict- ing statements that have given rise to a good deal of dis- cussion. The earliest official statement on the subject occurs in the register of the bailiff's court for the year 1556. He is there described as a "glover," which, according to the verbal usage of the time, included deal- ing in skins, as well as in the various leather-made articles of farming gear, such as rough gauntlets and leggings for hedging and ditching, white leather gloves for chopping wood, and the like. But in addition to the trade of glover and fell-monger tradition assigns to John Shakespeare the functions of butcher, wool-stapler, corn- dealer, and timber-merchant. These occupations are not incompatible, and together they represent the main lines some of which at least a young farmer going into the town for trading purposes would be likely to pursue. He would naturally deal with the things he knew most about, such as corn, wool, timber, skins, and leather-made articles used in farm work in a word, he would deal in farm conveniences and farm products. In a town that was the centre and chief market of an agricultural and grazing district, and as the member of a family whose wide connexions were nearly all engaged in farming operations, his prospects were certainly rather favourable than otherwise. And he soon began to turn his country connexion to account. There is distinct evidence that he early dealt in corn and wood as well as gloves and leather, for in 1556 he sues a neighbour for eighteen quarters of barley, and a few years later is paid three shillings by the corporation for a load of timber. The poet's father was evidently a man of energy, ambition, and public spirit, with the knowledge and ability requisite for pushing his fortune with fair success in his new career. His youthful vigour and intelligence soon told in his favour, and in a short time we find him taking an active part in public affairs. He made way so rapidly indeed amongst his fellow-townsmen, that within five years after entering Stratford he is recognized as a fitting recipient of municipal honours ; and his official appointments steadily rise in dignity and value through the various gradations of leet- juror, ale-taster, constable, affeeror, burgess, chamberlain, and alderman, until in 1568 he gains the most distinguished post of official dignity, that of high-bailiff or mayor of the town. Within twenty years after starting in business in Henley Street he thus rises to the highest place in the direction of municipal affairs, presiding as their head over the deliberations of bis fellow aldermen and burgesses, and as chief magistrate over the local court of record. Three years later, in 1571, he was again elected as chief alderman. There is ample evidence, too, that during these years he advanced in material prosperity as well as in municipal dignities and honours. As early as 1556 he had means at his command which enabled him to purchase two houses in the town, one in Henley Street with a considerable garden, and another in Greenhili Street with a garden and croft attached to it. In the following year he married an heiress of gentle birth, Mary Arden of the Asbies, who had recently inherited under her father's will a substantial sum of ready money, an estate at Wilmcote, consisting of nearly 60 acres of land with two or three houses, and a reversionary interest in houses and lands at Snitterfield, including the farm tenanted by Richard Shakespeare, her husband's father. Being now a landed proprietor and a man of rising position and influence, John Shakespeare would be able to extend his business opera- tions, and it is clear that he did so, though whether always with due prudence and foresight may be fairly questioned. To a man of his sanguine and somewhat impetuous temper the sudden increase of wealth was probably by no means an unmixed good. But for some years, at all events, he was able to maintain his more prosperous state, and his new ventures appear for a time to have turned out well. He is designated in official documents as yeoman, freeholder, and gentleman, and has the epithet "master" prefixed to his name; this, being equivalent to esquire, was rarely used except in relation to men of means and station, possessing landed property of their own. In a note to another official document it is stated that about the time of his becoming chief magis- trate of Stratford John Shakespeare had " lands and tene- ments of good worth and substance" estimated in value at <500, and though there may be some exaggeration in this estimate his property from various sources must have been worth nearly that sum. And in 1575 he increased the total amount by purchasing two houses in Henley Street, the two that still remain identified with the name and are consecrated by tradition as the birthplace of the poet. But this was his last purchase, the tide of his hitherto pro- sperous fortunes being but too clearly already on the turn. Having passed the highest point of social and commercial success, he was now facing the downward slope, and the descent once begun was for some years continuous, and at times alarmingly and almost inscrutably rapid. It seems clear indeed from the facts of the case that, notwith- Reverse of standing John Shakespeare's intelligence, activity, and early fortune, success, there was some defect of character which introduced an element of instability into his career, and in the end very much neutralized the working of his nobler powers. Faintly discernible perhaps from the first, and overpowered only for a time by the access of prosperity that followed his fortunate marriage, this vital flaw ultimately produced its natural fruit in the serious embarrass- ments that clouded his later years. The precise nature of the defect can only be indicated in general terms, but it seems to have consisted very much in a want of measure and balance, of adequate care and foresight, in his business dealings and calcula- tions. He seems to have possessed the eager sanguine tempera- ment which, absorbed in the immediate object of pursuit, overlooks difficulties and neglects the wider considerations on which lasting success depends. Even in his early years at Stratford there are signs of this ardent, impatient, somewhat unheedful temper. He is not only active and pushing, but too restless and excitable to pay proper attention to necessary details, or discharge with punctuality the minor duties of his position. The first recorded fact in his local history illustrates this feature of his character. In April 1552 John Shakespeare is fined twelve pence, equal to between eight and ten shillings of our English money now, for not remov- ing the heap of household dirt and refuse that had accumulated in front of his own door. Another illustration of his want of thorough method and system in the management of his affairs is supplied by the fact that in the years 1556-57 he allowed himself to be sued in the bailiffs court for comparatively small debts. This could not have arisen from any want of means, as during the same period, in October 1556, he made the purchase already referred to of two houses with extensive gardens. The actions for debt must there- fore have been the result of negligence or temper on John Shakespeare's part, and either alternative tells almost equally against his habits of business coolness and regularity. Another illustration of his restless, ill-considered, and unbalanced energy may be found in the number and variety of occupations which he seems to have added to his early trade of glover and leather-dealer. As his prospects improved he appears to have seized on fresh branches of business, until he had included within his grasp the whole circle of agricultural products that could in any way bo brought to market. It would seem also that he added farming, to a not inconsiderable extent, to his expanding retail business in Stratford. But it is equally clear that he lacked the orderly method, the comprehensive outlook, and the vigilant care for details essential for holding well in hand the threads of so com- plicated a commercial web. Other disturbing forces may probably be discovered in the pride and ambition, the love of social excite- ment and display, which appear to be among the ground notes of John Shakespeare's character so far as it is revealed to us in the few facts of his history. His strong social feeling and love of pleasurable excitement are illustrated by the fact that during the year of his mayoralty he brought companies of players into the town, and inaugurated dramatic performances in the guild hall. It is during the year of his filling the post of high-bailiff that we first hear of stage plays at Stratford, and the players must have visited the town, if not, as is most likely, at the invitation and desire of the poet's father, at least with his sanction and support. XXI. 94 ​746 SHAKESPEARE In such cases the players could not act at all without the per- mission of the mayor and council, and their first performance was usually a free entertainment, patronized and paid for by the corpora- tion, and called the mayor's play. In all this John Shakespeare took the initiative, and in so doing probably helped to decide the future career of his son. The notes of personal pride and social ambition are equally apparent. It is on record, for example, that soon after reaching the highest post of municipal distinction the poet's father applied to the heralds' college for a grant of arms. This application was not at the time successful, but it seems to have been so far seriously entertained that official inquiries were made into the family history and social standing of the Shake- speares. But the remarkable fact is that such an application should have been made at all by a Stratford burgess whose position and prospects were so unstable and precarious as the events of the next few years showed those of John Shakespeare to be. At the time of the application his increasing family must have enlarged his household expenses, while his official position, combined with his open and generous nature, his love of social sympathy, distinc- tion, and support, would probably have led him into habits of free- handed hospitality and inconsiderate expenditure. All this must have helped to introduce a scale of lavish domestic outlay that would tend directly to hasten the financial collapse in his affairs that speedily followed. And on finding things going against him John Shakespeare was just the man to discount his available resources, and, as the pressure increased, mortgage his future and adopt any possible expedient for maintaining the increased port and social consequence he had imprudently assumed. Moral This seems to have been the course actually pursued when pecu- effects. niary difficulties arose. During the three years that elapsed after his last purchase of house property his affairs became so seriously embar- rassed that it was found necessary, if not to sacrifice, at least to jeo- pardize the most cherished future of the family in order to meet the exigencies of the moment. In 1578 John and Mary Shakespeare mortgaged for forty pounds their most Considerable . piece of landed property, the estate of the Asbies. The mortgagee was a family connexion of their own, Edmund Lambert, who had married Mary Shakespeare's sister Joan. The subsequent history of this transac- tion shows how bitter must have been the need that induced the Shakespeares to surrender, even for a time, their full control over the ancestral estate. The next year, however, the pressure, instead of being relieved by the sacrifice, had become still more urgent, and the only outlying property that remained to meet it was the reversionary interest in the Snitterfield estate. Under a family settlement Mary Shakespeare, on the death of her stepmother, would come into the possession of houses and land at Snitterfield almost equal in value to the Asbies estate. But in 1579 the Shakespeares found it necessary to dispose altogether of this reversionary interest. In that year it was sold to Robert Webb for the sum of forty pounds. The buyer was a nephew of Mary Shakespeare, being the son of Alexander Webb, who had married her sister Margaret. In thus applying to relatives or family con- nexions in their need, and disposing of their property to them, the Shakespeares may have hoped it would be more 'easily regained should times of prosperity return. The sacrifice of the remaining interests in the Smtterfield property afforded, however, only a temporary relief, quite insufficient to remove the accumulating burden of debt and difficulty which now weighed the Shakespeares down. The notes of the proceedings of the Stratford corporation and of the local court of record sufficiently show that John Shake- speare's adverse fortune continued through a series of years, and they also enable us in part to understand how he bore himself under the changes in his social position that followed. These changes begin in the critical year 1578. In January of that year, when his brother aldermen were called upon to pay a considerable sum each as a contribution to the military equipment to be provided by the town, John Shakespeare is so far relieved that only one half the amount is required from him. Later in the year we find him wholly exempted from the weekly tax paid by his fellow- aldermen for the relief of the poor. In the spring of the follow- ing year, on a further tax for military purposes being laid on the town, he is unable to contribute anything, and is accordingly reported as a defaulter. A few years later, in an action for a debt, a verdict is recorded against him, with the official report that he had no goods on which distraint could be made. About the same time he appears to have been under some restraint, if not actually imprisoned for debt. And as late as 1592 it is officially stated, as a result of an inquiry into the number who fail to attend the church service once a month according to the statutory require- ment, that John Shakespeare with some others, two of whom, curiously enough, are named Fluellen and Bardolph, " come not to church for fear of process for debt." In the year 1586 another alderman had at length been chosen in his place, the reason given being expressly because " John Shakespeare doth not come to the halles when they are warned, nor hath not done for a long time." From this brief official record it would seem that under his reverse of fortune he was treated with marked sympathy and consideration by his fellow townsmen. For at least seven years after his troubles first began his fellow-burgesses persist in keeping his name in its place of honour on their roll, partly no doubt as a mark of respect for his character and past services, and partly it may be in the hope that his fortunes might improve and prosperous days return. And, when at length he is superseded by the appoint- ment of another in his place, this is done, not on the ground of his reduced circumstances, but simply because he voluntarily absents himself from the council, never attends its meetings or takes any part in its affaire. This is a noteworthy fact illustrating still further John Shakespeare's character. The statement clearly indicates the kind of moral collapse that had followed the con- tinuous pressure of material reverses. The eager sanguine nature that had so genially expanded in prosperity was, it is clear, sorely chilled and depressed by adversity. He abandons the usual places of resort, withdraws himself from the meetings of the corporation, and ceases to associate with his fellow-burgesses. And, what is perhaps still more noticeable, he gives up attending church, and no longer even worships with his fellow-townsmen. All this is the more significant because his circumstances, though seriously embarrassed, and for some years much reduced, were never so desperate as to compel him to part with his freehold property in Henley Street. In the darkest hours of his clouded fortune he still retained the now world-famous houses associated with the poet's birth and early years. There was no adequate reason there- fore why John Shakespeare should have so completely forsaken the usual haunts and regular assemblies of his fellow-townsmen and friends. But it seems clear, as already intimated, that, while gifted with a good deal of native energy and intelligence, and yossessing a temper that was proud, sensitive, and even passionate, ohn Shakespeare lacked the kind of fortitude and moral courage which enables men to meet serious reverses of fortune with dignity and reserve, if not with cheerfulness and hope. With the instinct of a wounded animal he seems to have left the prosperous herd and retired apart to bear his pain and loss in solitude and alone. Nor apparently did he hold up his head again until the efficient support of his prosperous son enabled him to take active measures for the recoverv of his alienated estate and lost position in the town. By the middle of the last decade of the 16th century the poet's success iu his profession was thoroughly assured, and he was on the high road to wealth and fame. As actor, dramatist, and probably also as sharer in the Blackfriars theatre, he was in the receipt of a large income, and according to tradition received a considerable sum from the young earl of Southampton, to whom his poems were dedicated. The son was now therefore as able as he had always been willing to help his father to regain the position of comfort and dignity he had formerly occupied. We find accord- ingly that in 1597 John and Mary Shakespeare filed a bill in Chancery against John Lambert for the recovery of the Asbies estate, which had been mortgaged to his father nearly twenty years before. There had indeed been some movement in the matter ten years earlier, on the death of Edward Lambert the mortgagee. His son John being apparently anxious to settle the dispute, it was proposed that he should pay an additional sum of twenty pounds iu order to convert the mortgage into a sale, and that he should then receive from the Shakespeares an absolute title to the estate. The arrangement was not, however, carried out, and in 1589 John Shakespeare brought a bill of complaint against Lambert in the Court of Queen's Bench. Nothing further, how- ever, seems to have been done, probably because Lambert may have felt that in the low state of the Shakespeares' fortune the action could not be pressed. In 1597, however, there was a change in the relative position of the litigants, John Shakespeare having now the purse of his son at his command, and a bUl in Chancery was accordingly filed against John Lambert. The plea in support of the Shakespeares' claim was that the original con- ditions of the mortgage had been fulfilled, the money in discharge having been offered to Edward Lambert at the proper date, but refused by him on the ground that other sums were owing which must also be repaid at the same time. To this plea John Lambert replied, and there is a still further " replication " on the part of the Shakespeares. How the matter was eventually decided is not known, no decree of the court in the case having been discovered. But the probabilities are that it was settled out of court, and, as the estate did not return to the Shakespeares, probably on the basis of the proposal already made, that of the payment of an additional sum by John Lambert. About the same date, or rather earlier, in 1596, John Shakespeare also renewed his application to the heralds' college for a grant of arms, and this time with success. The grant was made on the ground that the history and position of the Shakespeare and Arden families fully entitled the applicant to receive coat armour. There can be no doubt that the means required for supporting these applications were supplied by the poet, and he would be well rewarded by the knowledge that in the evening of his days his father had at length realized the desire of his heart, being officially recognized as a "gentleman of worship." And, what would now perhaps please his father still better, ho ​SHAKESPEAEE 747 would be able to hand on the distinction to his son, whose pro- fession prevented him at the time from gaining it on his own account. John Shakespeare died in 1601, having through the affectionate care of his son spent the last years of his life in the ease and comfort befitting one who had not only been a prosperous burgess, but chief alderman and mayor of Stratford, e Of Mary Arden, the poet's mother, we know little, et>s hardly anything directly indeed ; but the little known is wholly in her favour. From the provisions of her father's will it is clear that of his seven daughters she was his favour- ite; and the links of evidence are now complete connecting her father Robert Arden with the great Warwickshire family of Arden, whose members had more than once filled the posts of high-sheriff and lord-lieutenant of the county. She was thus descended from an old county family, the oldest in Warwickshire, and had inherited the traditions of gentle birth and good breeding. Her ancestors are traced back, not only to Norman, but to Anglo-Saxon times, mily of Alwin, an early representative of the family, and himself deo- connected with the royal house of Athelstane, having been vice-comes or sheriff of Warwickshire in the time of Edward the Confessor. His son Turchill retained his extensive possessions under the Conqueror; and, when they were divided on the marriage of his daughter Margaret to a Norman noble created by William Rufus earl of Warwick, Turchill betook himself to his numerous lordships in the Arden district of the county, and assumed the name of De Ardern or Arden. His descendants, who retained the name, multiplied in the shire, and were united in marriage from time to time with the best Norman blood of the kingdom. The family of Arden thus represented the union, under somewhat rare conditions of original distinction and equality, of the two great race elements that have gone to the making of the typical modern Englishman. The immediate ancestors of Mary Shakespeare were the Ardens of Parkhall, near Aston in the north-western part of the shire. During the Wars of the Roses Robert Arden of Parkhall, being at the outset of the quarrel a devoted Yorkist, was seized by the Lancastrians, attached for high treason, and executed at Ludlowin 1452. He left an only son, Walter Arden, who was restored by Edward IV. to his position in the country, and received back his hereditary lordships and lands. At his death in 1502 he was buried with great state in Aston church, where three separate monuments were erected to his memory. He had married Eleanor, second daughter of John Hampden of Bucks, and by her had eight children, six sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Sir John Arden of Parkhall, having been for some years esquire of the body of Henry VII., was knighted and rewarded by that monarch. Sir John was the great-uncle of Mary Shakespeare, his brother Thomas, the second son of -Walter Arden, being her grandfather. Thomas Arden is found residing at Aston Cantlowe during the first half of the 16th century, and in the year 1501 he united with his son Robert Arden, Mary Shakespeare's father, in the purchase of the Snitterfield estate. Mary Shakespeare was thus directly connected by birth and lineage with those who had taken, and were to take, a foremost part in the great conflicts which constitute turning- points in the history of the country. On her father's side she was related to Robert Arden, who in the 15th century lost his life while engaged in rallying local forces on behalf of the White Rose, and on her mother's side to John Hampden, who took a still more distinguished part in the momentous civil struggles of the 17th century. A very needless and abortive attempt has been made to call in question Robert Arden's social and family position on the ground that in a contemporary deed he is called a husbandman (agricola), the assumption being that a husbandman is simply a farm-labourer. But the term husbandman was often used in Shakespeare's day to desig- nate a landed proprietor who farmed one of his own estates. The fact of his being spoken of in official documents as a husbandman does not therefore in the least affect Robert Arden's social position, or his relation to the great house of Arden, which is now established on the clearest evidence. He was, however, a younger member of the house, and would naturally share in the diminished fortune and obscurer career of such a position. But, even as a cadet of so old and distinguished a family, he would tenaciously preserve the generous traditions of birth and breeding he had inherited. Mary Arden was thus a gentlewoman in Mary the truest sense of the term,, and she would bring into her Arden husband's household elements of character and culture ch * racter that would be of priceless value to the family, and espe- mfl uence . cially to the eldest son, who naturally had the first place in her care and love. A good mother is to an imagina- tive boy his earliest ideal of womanhood, and in her for him are gathered up, in all their vital fulness, the ten- derness, sympathy, and truth, the infinite love, patient watchfulness, and self-abnegation of the whole sex. And the experience of his mother's bearing and example during the vicissitudes of their home life must have been for the future dramatist a vivid revelation of the more sprightly and gracious, as well as of the profounder elements, of female character. In the earlier and prosperous days at Stratford, when all within the home circle was bright and happy, and in her intercourse with her boy Mary Shake- speare could freely unfold the attractive qualities that had so endeared her to her father's heart, the delightful image of the young mother would melt unconsciously into the boy's mind, fill his imagination, and become a storehouse whence in after years he would draw some of the finest lines in his matchless portraiture of women. In the darker days that followed he would learn something of the vast possibilities of suffering, personal and sympathetic, be- longing to a deep and sensitive nature, and as the troubles made head he would gain some insight intp the quiet courage and self-possession, the unwearied fortitude, sweet- ness, and dignity which such a nature reveals when stirred to its depths by adversity, and rallying all its resources to meet the inevitable storms of fate. These storms were not simply the ever -deepening pecuniary embarrassments and consequent loss of social position. In the very crisis of the troubles, in the spring of 1579, death entered the straitened household, carrying off Ann, the younger of the only two remaining daughters of John and Mary Shake- speare. A characteristic trait of the father's grief and pride is afforded by the entry in the church books that a somewhat excessive sum was paid on this occasion for the tolling of the bell. Even with ruin staring him in the face John Shakespeare would forego no point of customary respect nor abate one jot of the ceremonial usage proper to the family of an eminent burgess, although the observ- ance might involve a very needless outlay. In passing through these chequered domestic scenes and vividly realizing the alternations of grief and hope, the eldest son, even in his early years, would gain a fund of memorable experiences. From his native sensibility and strong family affection he would passionately sympathize with his parents in their apparently hopeless struggle against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Above all he would cherish the memory of his mother's noble bear- ing alike under serene and clouded skies, and learn to estimate at their true worth the refined strength of inherited courage, the dignified grace and silent helpful- ness of inherited courtesy and genuine kindness of heart. These recollections were vitalized in the sprightly intelli- gence, quick sympathy, and loving truthfulness belonging to the female characters of his early comedies, as well as in the profounder notes of womanly grief and suffering, ​748 SHAKESPEARE struck with so sure a hand and with such depth and intensity of tone, in the early tragedies. Qualities But in addition to her constant influence and example the was probably indebted to his mother for certain ele- inherited men t s f hi 3 owa mm( l an d character directly inherited from her. This position may be maintained without accepting the vague and comparatively empty dictum that Shakespeare derived his genius from his mother, as many eminent men are loosely said to have done. The sacred gift of genius has ever been, and perhaps always will be, inexplicable. No analysis, however complete, of the forces acting on the individual mind can avail to extract this vital secret. The elements of race, country, parentage, and education, though all powerful factors in its development, fail ade- quately to account for the mystery involved in pre-eminent poetical genius. Like the unseen wind from heaven it bloweth where it listeth, and the inspired voice is gladly heard of men, but none can tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. While, however, genius is thus without ancestry or lineage, there are elements of character and qualities of mind that, like the features of the countenance and the lines of the bodily frame, appear to be clearly transmissible from parent to child. Shakespeare not unfrequently recognizes this general truth, especially in relation to moral qualities ; and it is mainly qualities of this kind that he himself appears to have inherited from his gently born and nurtured mother, Mary Arden of the Asbies. At least it is hardly fanciful to say that in the life and character of the poet we may trace ele- ments of higher feeling and conduct derived from the hereditary culture and courtesy, the social insight and refinement, of the Ardens. Amongst such elements may be reckoned his strong sense of independence and self- respect, his delicate feeling of honour, his habitual con- sideration for others, and, above all perhaps, his deep instinctive regard for all family interests and relationships, for everything indeed connected with family character and position. The two epithets which those who knew Shakespeare personally most habitually applied to him appear to embody some of these characteristics. Thsy unite in describing him as "gentle" and "honest" in character, and of an open and free, a frank and generous disposition. The epithet " gentle " may be taken to repre- sent the innate courtesy, the delicate consideration for the feelings of others, which belongs in a marked degree to the best representatives of gentle birth, although happily it is by no means confined to them. The second epithet, "honest," which in the usage of the time meant honourable, may be taken to express the high spirit of independence and self-respect which carefully respects the just claims and rights of others. One point of the truest gentle breeding, which, if not inherited from his mother, must have been derived from her teaching and example, is the cardinal maxim, which Shakespeare seems to have faith- fully observed, as to nice exactness in money matters the maxim not lightly to incur pecuniary obligations, and if incurred to meet them with scrupulous precision and punctuality. This he could not have learnt from his father, who, though an honest man enough, was too eager and careless to be very particular on the point. Indeed, carelessness in money matters seems rather to have belonged to the Snitterfield family, the poet's uncle Henry having been often in the courts for debt, and, as we have seen, this was true of his father also. But, while his father was often prosecuted for debt, no trace of any such action against the poet himself, for any amount however small, has been discovered. He sued others for money due to him 'and at times for sums comparatively small, but he never appears as a debtor himself. Indeed, his whole life contradicts the supposition that he would ever have rendered himself liable to such a humiliation. The family troubles must have very early developed and strengthened the high feeling of honour on this vital point he had inherited. He must obviously have taken to heart the lesson his father's imprudence could hardly fail to impress on a mind so capacious and reflective. John Shakespeare was no doubt a warm-hearted lovable man, who would carry the sympathy and affection of his family with him through all his troubles, but his eldest son, who early understood the secret springs as well as the open issues of life, must have realized vividly the rock on which their domestic prosperity had been wrecked, and before he left home he had evidently formed an invincible resolution to avoid it at all hazards. This helps to explain what has often excited surprise in relation to his future career his business industry, financial skill, and steady progress to what may be called worldly success. Few things are more remarkable in Shakespeare's personal history than the resolute spirit of independence he seems to have displayed from the moment he left his straitened household to seek his fortunes in the world to the time when he returned to live at Stratford as a man of wealth and position in the town. While many of his fellow dramatists were spendthrifts, in constant difficulties, lead- ing disorderly lives, and sinking into unhonoured graves, he must have husbanded his early resources with a rare amount of quiet firmness and self-control. Chettle's testi- mony as to Shakespeare's character and standing during his first years in London is decisive on this head. Having published a posthumous work by Greene, in which Mar- lowe and Shakespeare were somewhat sharply referred to, Chettle expressed his regret in a preface to a work of his own issued a few months later, in December 1592; he intimates that at the time of publishing Greene's Groats- worth of Wit he knew neither Marlowe nor Shakespeare, and that he does not care to become acquainted with the former. But having made Shakespeare's acquaintance in the interval he expresses his regret that he should, even as editor, have published a word to his disparage- ment, adding this remarkable testimony : " Because myself have seen his demeanour, no less civil than he excellent in the qualities he professes ; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, which approves his art." So that Shakespeare, during his earliest and most anxious years in London, had not only kept himself out of debt and difficulty, but had estab- lished a reputation of strictly honourable conduct, " divers of worship," i.e., men of position and authority entitled to speak on such a point, " having reported his upright- ness of dealing, which argued his honesty." Now, consider- ing the poet's associates, occupations, and surround- ings, this is significant testimony, and conclusively proves that, although fond of social life and its enjoyments, and without a touch of harshness or severity in his temper, he yet held himself thoroughly in hand, that amidst the ocean of new experiences and desires on which he was suddenly launched he never abandoned the helm, never lost command over his course, never sacrificed the larger interests of the future to the clamorous or excessive demands of the hour. And this no doubt indicates the direction in which he was most indebted to his mother. From his father he might have derived ambitious desires, energetic impulses, and an excitable temper capable of rushing to the verge of passionate excess, but, if so, it is clear that he inherited from his mother the firmness of nerve and fibre as well as the ethical strength required for regulating these violent and explosive elements. If he received as a paternal heritage a very tempest and whirl- wind of passion, the maternal gift of temperance and ​SHAKESPEAKE 749 measure would help to give it smoothness and finish in the working, would supply in some degree at least the power of concentration and self-control indispensable for moulding the extremes of exuberant sensibility and pas- sionate impulse into forms of intense and varied dramatic portraiture ; and of course all the finer and regulative elements of character and disposition derived from the spindle side of the house would, throughout the poet's early years, be strengthened and developed by his mother's constant presence, influence, and example. John and Mary Shakespeare had eight children, four sons and four daughters. Of the latter, two, the first Joan and Margaret, died in infancy, before the birth of the poet, and a third, Anne, in early childhood. In addition to the poet, three sons, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and one daughter, the second Joan, lived to maturity and will be referred to again. William Shakespeare was christened in Stratford church on April 26, 1564, having most probably been born, according to tradition, on the 23d. In July of the same year the town was visited by a severe outbreak of the plague, which in the course of a few months carried off one-sixth of the inhab- itants. Fortunately, however, the family of the Shake- speares wholly escaped the contagion, their exemption being probably due to the fact that they lived in the healthiest part of the town, away from the river side, on a dry and porous soil. At the back of Henley Street, indeed, were the gravel pits of the guild, which were in frequent use for repairing the inundated pathways near the river after its periodical overflows. For two years and a half William, their first-born son, remained the only child of his parents, and all his mother's love and care would naturally be lavished upon him. A special bond would in this way be established between mother and child, and, his father's affairs being at the time in a highly prosperous state, Mary Shakespeare would see to it that the boy had all the pleasures and advantages suitable to his age, and which the family of a foremost Stratford burgess could easily command. Healthy outdoor enjoyment is not the least valuable part of a boy's education, and the chief recreations available for the future dramatist in those early years would be the sports and pastimes, the recur- ring festivals, spectacles, and festivities, of the town and neighbourhood, especially the varying round of rural occupations and the celebration in the forest farms and villages of the chief incidents of the agricultural year. Seed time and harvest, summer and winter, each brought its own group of picturesque merry-makings, including some more important festivals that evoked a good deal of rustic pride, enthusiasm, and display. There were, during these years, at least three of the forest farms where the poet's parents would be always welcome, and where the boy must have spent many a happy day amidst the free- dom and delights of outdoor country life. At Snitterfield his grandfather would be proud enough of the curly- headed youngster with the fine hazel eyes, and his uncle Henry would be charmed at the boy's interest in all he saw and heard as he trotted with him through the byres and barns, the poultry yard and steading, or, from a safe nook on the bushy margin of the pool, enjoyed the fun and excitement of sheep-washing, or later on watched the mysteries of the shearing and saw the heavy fleece fall from the sides of the palpitating victim before the sure and rapid furrowing of the shears. He would no doubt also be present at the shearing feast and see the queen of the festival receive her rustic guests and distribute amongst them her floral gifts. At Wilmecote, in the solid oak- timbered dwelling of the Asbies, with its well-stocked garden and orchard, the boy would be received with cordial hospitality, as well as with the attention and respect due to his parents as the proprietors and to himself as the heir of the maternal estate. At Shottery the welcome of the Shakespeares would not be less cordial or friendly, as there is evidence to show that as early as 1566 the families were known to each other, John Shakespeare having in that year rendered Richard Hathaway an im- portant personal service. Here the poet met his future bride, Anne Hathaway, in all the charm of her sunny girl- hood, and they may be said to have grown up together, except that from the difference of their ages she would reach early womanhood while he was yet a stripling. In his later youthful years he would thus be far more fre- quently at the Hathaway farm than at Snitterfield or the Asbies. There were, however, family connexions of the Shakespeares occupying farms further afield, Hills and Webbs at Bearley and Lamberts at Barton-on-the-Heath. There was thus an exceptionally wide circle of country life open to the poet during his growing years. And in those years he must have repeatedly gone the whole picturesque round with the fresh senses and eager feeling, the observant eye and open mind, that left every detail, from the scarlet hips by the wayside to the proud tops of the eastern pines, imprinted indelibly upon his heart and brain. Hence the apt and vivid references to the scenes and scenery of his youth, the intense and penetrating glances at the most vital aspects as well as the minutest beauties of nature, with which his dramas abound. These glances are so penetrating, the result of such intimate knowledge and enjoyment, that they often seem to reveal in a moment, and by a single touch as it were, all the loveliness and charm of the objects thus rapidly flashed on the inward eye. In relation to the scenes of his youth what fresh and delightful hours at the farms are reflected in the full summer beauty and motley humours of a sheep-shearing festival in the Winter's Tale ; in the autumn glow of the " sun-burnt sicklemen and sedge-crowned nymphs " of the masque in the Tempest ; and in the vivid pictures of rural sights and sounds in spring and winter so musically rendered in the owl and cuckoo songs of Love's Labour 's Lost ! But, in addition to the festivities and merry-makings of the forest farms, it is clear that, in his early years, the poet had some experience of country sports proper, such as hunting, hawking, coursing, wild- duck shooting, and the like. Many of these sports were pursued by the local gentry and the yeomen together, and the poet, as the son of a well-connected burgess of Strat- ford, who had recently been mayor of the town and possessed estates in the county, would be well entitled to share in them, while his handsome presence and courteous bearing would be likely to ensure him a hearty welcome. If any of the stiffer local magnates looked coldly upon the high-spirited youth, or resented in any way his presence amongst them, their conduct would be likely enough to provoke the kind of sportive retaliations that might naturally culminate in the deer-stealing adventure. How- ever this may be, it is clear from internal evidence that the poet was practically familiar with the field sports of his day. In the town the chief holiday spectacles and entertain- Holiday ments were those connected with the Christmas, New spectacles Year, and Easter festivals, the May-day rites and games, f e n stivit j eSt the pageants of delight of Whitsuntide, the beating of the bounds during Rogation week, and the occasional repre- sentation of mysteries, moralities, and stage-plays. In relation to the main bent of the poet's mind, and the future development of his powers, the latter constituted probably the most important educational influence and stimulus which the social activities and public entertain- ments of the place could have supplied. Most of these recurring celebrations involved, it is true, a dramatic ​750 SHAKESPEARE element, some hero or exploit, some emblem or allegory, being represented by means of costumed personations, pantomime, and dumb show, while in many cases songs, dances, and brief dialogues were interposed as part of a May- performance. There were masques and morris-dancing day. on May-day, as well as mummers and waits at Christmas. In a number of towns and villages the exploits of Robin Hood and his associates were also celebrated on May-day, often amidst a picturesque confusion of floral emblems and forestry devices. In Shakespeare's time the May-day rites and games thus included a variety of elements charged with legendary, historical, and emblematical significance. But, notwithstanding this mixture of festive elements, the celebration as a whole retained its leading character and purpose. It was still the spontaneous meeting of town and country to welcome the fresh beauty of the spring, the welcome being reflected in the open spaces of the sports by tall painted masts decked with garlands, streamers, and flowery crowns, and in the public thoroughfares by the leafy screens and arches, the bright diffused blossoms and fragrant spoils brought from the forest by rejoicing youths and maidens at the dawn. May-day was thus well fitted to be used, as it often is by Shakespeare, as the comprehensive symbol of all that is delightful and exhilarating in the renewed life and vernal freshness of the opening year. Whit- After May-day, Whitsuntide was at Stratford perhaps sontide. the most important season of festive pageantry and scenic display. In addition to the procession of the guild and trades and the usual holiday ales and sports, it involved a distinct and somewhat noteworthy element of dramatic representation. And, as in the case of the regular stage- plays, the high-bailiff and council appear to have patron- ized and supported the performances. We find in the chamberlain's accounts entries of sums paid " for exhibit- ing a pastyme at Whitsuntide." Shakespeare himself refers to these dramatic features of the celebration, and in a manner that almost suggests he may in his youth have taken part in them. However this may be, the popular celebrations of Shakespeare's youth must have supplied a kind of training in the simpler forms of poetry and dramatic art, and have afforded some scope for the early exercise of his own powers in both directions. This view is indirectly confirmed by a passage in the early scenes of The Return from Parnassus, where the academic speakers sneer at the poets who come up from the country without any university training. The sneer is evidently the more bitter as it implies that some of these poets had been successful, more successful than the college-bred wits. The academic critics suggest that the nurseries of these poets were the country ale-house and the country green, the special stimulus to their powers being the May-day celebrations, the morris-dances, the hobby-horse, and the like. Inter- But the moralities, interludes, and stage-plays proper afforded the most direct and varied dramatic instruc- tion available in Shakespeare's youth. The earliest ludes and stage- plays. popular form of the drama was the mystery or miracle play, dealing in the main with Biblical subjects; and, Coventry being one of the chief centres for the production and exhibition of the mysteries, Shakespeare had ample opportunities of becoming well acquainted with them. Some of the acting companies formed from the numerous trade guilds of the "shire-town" were moreover in the habit of visiting the neighbouring cities for the purpose of exhibiting their plays and pageants. There is evidence of their having performed at Leicester and Bristol in Shakespeare's youth, and on returning from the latter city they would most probably have stopped at Stratford and given some performances there. And in any case, Coventry being so near to Stratford, the fame of the multiplied pageants presented during the holiday weeks of Easter and Whitsuntide, and especially of the brilliant concourse that came to witness the grand series of Corpus Christi plays, would have early attracted the young poet ; and he must have become familiar with the precincts of the Grey Friars at Coventry during the celebration of these great ecclesiastical festivals. The indirect evidence of this is supplied by Shakespeare's references to the well- known characters of the mysteries, such as Herod and Pilate, Cain and Judas, Termagaunt with his turbaned Turks and infidels, black-burning souls, grim and gaping hell, and the like. The moralities and interludes that gradually took the place of the Biblical mysteries were also acted by companies of strolling players over a wide area in the towns and cities of the Midland and western counties. Malone gives from an eye-witness a detailed and graphic account of the public acting of one of these companies at Gloucester in 1569, the year during which the poet's father as high-bailiff had brought the stage- players into Stratford and inaugurated a series of per- formances in the guild hall. The play acted at Gloucester was The Cradle of Security, one of the most striking and popular of the early moralities or interludes. Willis, the writer of the account, was just Shakespeare's age, having been born in 1564. As a boy of five years old he had been taken by his father to see the play, and, standing between his father's knees, watched the whole performance with such intense interest that, writing about it seventy years afterwards, he says, " the subject took such an im- pression upon me that when I came afterwards towards man's estate it was as fresh in my memory as if I had seen it newly enacted." In proof of this he gives a clear and detailed outline of the play. Willis was evidently a man of no special gifts, and, if the witnessing a play when a child could produce on an ordinary mind so memorable an impression, we may imagine what the effect would be on the mind of the marvellous boy who, about the same time and under like circumstances, was taken by his father to see the performances at Stratford. The com- pany that first visited Stratford being a distinguished one, their plays were probably of a higher type and better acted than The Cradle of Security at Gloucester ; and their effect on the young poet would be the more vivid and stimulating from the keener sensibilities and latent dramatic power to which in his case they appealed. These early impressions would be renewed and deepened with the boy's advancing years. During the decade of Shakespeare's active youth from 1573 to 1584 the best companies in the kingdom constantly visited Stratford, and he would thus have the advantage of seeing the finest dramas yet produced acted by the best players of the time. This would be for him a rich and fruitful experience of the flexible and impressive form of art which at a moment of exuberant national vitality was attracting to itself the scattered forces of poetic genius, and soon gained a position of unrivalled supremacy. As he watched the performance in turn of the various kinds of interlude, comedy, and pastoral, of chronicle and biographical plays, of historical, domestic, or realistic tragedy, he would gain in instructive insight into the wide scope and vast resources of the rising drama. And he would have opportunities of acquiring some knowledge of stage business, management, and effects, as well as of dramatic form. Amongst the com- panies that visited Stratford were those of the powerful local earls of Leicester, Warwick, and Worcester, whose members were largely recruited from the Midland counties. The earl of Leicester's company, the most eminent of all, included several Warwickshire men, while some of the leading members, like the elder Burbage, appear to have ​SHAKESPEARE 751 been natives of Stratford or the immediate neighbourhood. And the poet's father being, as we have seen, so great a friend of the players, and during his most prosperous years inconstant communication with them, his son would have every facility for studying their art. Curiosity and in- terest and the like would prompt him to find out all he could about the use of the stage " books," the distribution of the parts, the cues and exits, the management of voice and gesture, the graduated passion and controlled power of the leading actors in the play, the just subordination of the less important parts, and the measure and finish of each on which the success of the whole so largely depended. It is not improbable, too, that in connexion with some of the companies Shakespeare may have tried his hand both as poet and actor even before leaving Stratford. His poetical powers could hardly be unknown, and he may have written scenes and passages to fill out an imperfect or complete a defective play ; and from his known interest in their work he may have been pressed by the actors to appear in some secondary part on the stage. In any case he would be acquainted with some of the leading players in the best companies, so that when he decided to adopt their profession he might reasonably hope on going to London to find occupation amongst them without much difficulty or delay. ool Shakespeare received the technical part or scholastic luca- elements of his education in the grammar school of his on< native town. The school was an old foundation dating from the second half of the 15th century and connected with the guild of the Holy Cross. But, having shared the fate of the guild at the suppression of religious houses, it was restored by Edward VI. in 1553, a few weeks before his death. The "King's New School," as it was now called, thus represented the fresh impulse given to educa- tion throughout the kingdom during the reign of Henry VIII. 's earnest-minded son, and well sustained under the enlightened rule of his sister, the learned virgin queen. What the course of instruction was in these country schools during the second half of the 16th century has recently been ascertained by special research, 1 and may be stated, at least in outline, with some degree of certainty and precision. As might have been expected, Latin was the chief scholastic drill, the thorough teaching of the Koman tongue being, as the name implies, the very purpose for which the grammar schools were originally founded. The regular teaching of Greek was indeed hardly introduced into the country schools until a somewhat later period. But the knowledge of Latin, as the language of all the learned professions, still largely used in literature, was regarded as quite indispensable. Whatever else might be neglected, the business of "gerund-grinding" was vigorously carried on, and the methods of teaching, the expedients and helps devised for enabling the pupils to read, write, and talk Latin, if rather complex and operose, were at the same time ingenious and effective. As a rule the pupil entered the grammar school at seven years old, having already acquired either at home or at the petty school the rudiments of reading and writing. During the first year the pupils were occupied with the elements of Latin grammar, the accidence, and lists of common words which were committed to memory and repeated two or three times a week, as well as further impressed upon their minds by varied exercises. In the second year the grammar was fully mastered, and the boys were drilled in short phrase-books, such as the Sententiae Pueriles, to increase their familiarity with the structure and idioms of the language. In the third year the books used were yEsop's Fables, Cato's Maxims, and some good manual of 1 ' ' What Shakespeare learnt at School," Fraser's Magazine, Nov. 1879, Jan. and May, 1880. school conversation, such as the Confabulationes Pueriles. The most popular of these manuals in Shakespeare's day was that by the eminent scholar and still more eminent teacher Corderius. His celebrated Colloquies were prob- ably used in almost every school in the kingdom ; and Hoole, writing in 1652, says that the worth of the book had been proved " by scores if not hundreds of impressions in this and foreign countries." Bayle, indeed, says that from its universal use in the schools the editions of the book might be counted by thousands. This helps to illustrate the colloquial use of Latin, which was so essential a feature of grammar school discipline in the 16th and 17th centuries. The evidence of Brinsley, who was Shakespeare's contemporary, conclusively proves that the constant speaking of Latin by all the boys of the more advanced forms was indispensable even in the smallest and poorest of the country grammar schools. The same holds true of letter-writing in Latin ; and this, as we know from the result, was diligently and successfully practised in the Stratford grammar school. During his school days, there- fore, Shakespeare would be thoroughly trained in the conversational and epistolary use of Latin, and several well- known passages in his dramas show that he did not forget this early experience, but that like everything else he acquired it turned to fruitful uses in his hands. The books read in the more advanced forms of the school were the Eclogues of Mantuanus, the Tristia and Metamorphoses of Ovid, Cicero's Offices, Orations, and Epistles, the Georgics and ^Eneid of Virgil, and in the highest form parts of Juvenal, of the comedies of Terence and Plautus, and of the tragedies of Seneca. Shakespeare, having remained at school for at least six years, must have gone through a greater part of this course, and, being a pupil of unusual quickness and ability, endowed with rare strength of mental grip and firmness of moral purpose, he must during those years have acquired a fair mastery of Latin, both colloquial and classical. After the difficulties of the grammar had been overcome, his early intellectual cravings and poetic sensibilities would be alike quickened and gratified by the new world of heroic life and adventure opened to him in reading such authors as Ovid and Virgil. Unless the teaching at Stratford was very exceptionally poor he must have become so far familiar with the favourite school authors, such as Ovid, Tully, and Virgil, as to read them intelligently and with comparative ease. And there is no reason whatever for supposing that the instruc- tion at the Stratford grammar school was less efficient than in the grammar schools of other provincial towns of about the same size. There is abundant evidence to show that, with the fresh impulse given to education under energetic Protestant auspices in the second half of the 16th century, the teaching even in the country grammar schools was as a rule painstaking, intelligent, and fruitful. Brinsley himself was for many years an eminent and successful teacher in the grammar school of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, a small town on the borders of Warwickshire, only a few miles indeed from Coventry ; and in his Ludus Literarius, referring to a book of exercises on the Latin accidence and grammar he had prepared, he says that he had chiefly followed the order of the questions " of that ancient schoolmaster Master Brunsword of Maxfield (Maccles- field) in Cheshire, so much commended for his order and schollers ; who, of all other, commeth therein the neerest unto the marke." Another provincial schoolmaster, Mr Robert Doughty, a contem- porary of Shakespeare, who was for nearly fifty years at the head of the Wakefield grammar school, is celebrated by Hoole, not only as an eminent teacher who had constantly sent out good scholars, but as one who had produced a class of teachers emulating his own educational zeal and intelligence. The masters of the Stratford grammar school in Shakespeare's time seem to have been men of a similar stamp. One of them, John Brunsword, who held the post for three years during the poet's childhood, was almost certainly a relative, probably a son, of the eminent Macclesfield master whose character and work Brinsley praises so highly. At least, Bruns- word being an uncommon name, when we find it borne by two grammar-school masters in neighbouring counties who flourished either together or in close succession to each other, it is natural to conclude that there must have been some relationship between ​752 SHAKESPEAKE them, and if so we may be sure that the Stratford master, who was evidently the younger man, had been well trained and must have proved an efficient teacher. The masters who followed Hrunsword were university men of at least average attainments and ability, as they rapidly gained promotion in the church. Thomas Hunt, who was head-master during the most important years of Shakespeare's school course, became incumbent of the neighbouring village of Luddington ; and, if there is any truth in the tradition that the poet's marriage was celebrated there, it is not improbable that, from having been a favourite pupil, he may have become the personal friend of his former master. In any case, during the years of his school attendance the poet must have gained sufficient knowledge of Latin to read for his own instruc- tion and delight the authors included in the school curriculum who had struck his fancy and stimulated his awakening powers. While his writings supply clear evidence in support of this general position, they also bring out vividly the fact that Ovid was a special favourite with Shakespeare at the outset of his career. The influence of this romantic and elegiac Roman poet is indeed strongly marked and clearly traceable in the poems as well as in the early plays. Home According to Howe's account, Shakespeare was with- life on drawn from school about 1578, a year or two before he had leaving com pi e t e( j the usual course for boys going into business or passing on to the universities. The immediate cause of the withdrawal seems to have been the growing embarrass- ments of John Shakespeare's affairs, the boy being wanted at home to help in the various departments of his father's business. The poet had just entered on his fifteenth year, and his school attainments and turn for affairs, no less than his native energy and ability, fitted him for efficient action in almost any fairly open career. But open careers were not numerous at Stratford, and John Shakespeare's once prosperous way of life was now hampered by actual and threatening difficulties which the zeal and affection of his son were powerless to remove or avert. No doubt the boy did his best, trying to understand his father's position, and discharging with prompt alacrity any duties that came to be done. But he would soon discover how hopeless such efforts were, and with this deepening conviction there would come upon him the reaction of weariness and disappointment, which is the true inferno of ardent youthful minds. His father's difficulties were evidently of the chronic and complicated kind against which the generous and impulsive forces of youth and inexperience are of little avail. And, after his son had done his utmost to relieve the sinking fortunes of the family, the aching sense of failure would be among the bitterest experiences of his early years, would be indeed a sharp awakening to the realities and responsibilities of life. Within the narrow circle of his own domestic relationships and dearest interests he would feel with Hamlet that the times were out of joint, and in his gloomier moods be ready to curse the destiny that seemed to lay upon him, in part at least, the burden of setting the obstinately crooked straight. As a relief from such moods and a distraction from the fruitless toils of home affairs, he would naturally plunge with keener zest into such outlets for youthful energy and adventure as the town and neighbourhood afforded. What the young poet's actual occupations were during the four years and a half that elapsed between his leaving school and his marriage we have no adequate materials for deciding in any detail. But the local traditions on the subject would seem to indicate that after the adverse turn in his fortunes John Shakespeare had considerably contracted the area of his commercial transactions. Having virtually alienated his wife's patrimony by the mortgage of the Asbies and the disposal of all interest in the Snitterfield property, he seems to have given up the agricultural branches of his business, retaining only his original occupation of dealer in leather, skins, and sometimes carcases as well. His wider speculations had probably turned out ill, and having no longer any land of his own he apparently relinquished the corn and timber business, restricting himself to the town trades of fellmonger, wool-stapler, and butcher. Aubrey at least had heard that Shakespeare after leaving school assisted his father in these branches, and at times with a deal of youthful extravagance indicative of irre- pressible energy and spirit. Aubrey also reports, on the authority of Beeston, and as incidentally proving he knew Latin fairly well, that for a time the poet was a teacher in a country school ; while Malone believed from the internal evidence of his writings that he had spent two or three years in a lawyer's office. These stories may be taken to indicate, what is no doubt true, that at a time of domestic need the poet was ready to turn his hand to anything that offered. It is no doubt also true that he would prefer the comparative retirement and regularity of teaching or clerk's work to the intermittent drudgery and indolence of a retail shop in a small market-town. There is, however, no direct evidence in favour of either supposi- tion ; and the indirect evidence for the lawyer's office theory which has found favour with several recent critics is by no means decisive. Whether engaged in a lawyer's office or not, we may be quite sure that during the years of adolescence he was actively occupied in work of some kind or other. He was far too sensible and energetic to remain without employment; shapeless idleness had no attraction for his healthy nature, and his strong family feeling is certainly in favour of the tradition that for a time he did his best to help his father in his business. But, however he may have been employed, this interval of home life was for the poet a time of active growth and development, and no kind of business routine could avail to absorb his expanding powers or repress the exuberant vitality of his nature. During these critical years, to a vigorous and healthy mind such as Shakespeare possessed, action action of an adventurous and recreative kind, in which the spirit is quickened and refreshed by new experiences must have become an absolute necessity of existence. The necessity was all the more urgent in Shakespeare's case from the narrower circle within which the once prosperous and expanding home life was now confined. We have seen that the poet occasionally shared the orthodox field sports organized by the country gentle- men, where landlords and tenants, yeomen and squires, animated by a kindred sentiment, meet to a certain extent on common ground. But this long-drawn pursuit of pleasure as an isolated unit in a local crowd would hardly satisfy the thirst for passionate excitement and personal adventure which is so dominant an impulse in the hey-day of youthful blood. It is doubtful, too, whether in the decline of his father's fortunes Shakespeare would have cared to join the prosperous concourse of local sportsmen. He would probably be thrown a good deal amongst a somewhat lower, though no doubt energetic and intelli- gent, class of town companions. And they would devise together exploits which, if somewhat irregular, possessed the inspiring charm of freedom and novelty, and would thus be congenial to an ardent nature with a passionate interest in life and action. Such a nature would eagerly welcome enterprises with a dash of hazard and daring in them, fitted to bring the more resolute virtues into play, and develop in moments of emergency the manly qualities of vigilance and promptitude, courage and endurance, dexterity and skill. It would seem indeed at first sight as though a quiet neighbourhood like Stratford could afford little scope for such adventures. But even at Stratford there were always the forest and the river, the outlying farms with adjacent parks and manor houses, the wide circle of picturesque towns and villages with their guilds and clubs, their local Shallows and Slenders, Dogberries and Verges; and in the most quiet neigh​SHAKESPEARE 753 bourhoods it still remains true that adventures are to the adventurous. That this dictum was verified in Shake- speare's experience seems clear alike from the internal evidence of his writings and the concurrent testimony of local tradition. In its modern form the story of the Bidford challenge exploit may indeed be little better than a myth. But in substance it is by no means incredible, and if we knew all about the incident we should probably find there were other points to be tested between the rival companies besides strength of head to resist the effects of the well-known Bidford beer. The prompt re- fusal to return with his companions and renew the contest on the following day, a decision playfully ex- pressed and emphasized in the well-known doggrel lines, implies that in Shakespeare's view such forms of good fellowship were to be accepted on social not self-indulgent grounds, that they were not to be resorted to for the sake of the lower accessories only, or allowed to grow into evil habits from being unduly repeated or prolonged. It is clear that this general principle of recreative and adventur- ous enterprise, announced more than once in his writings, guided his own conduct even in the excitable and impulsive season of youth and early manhood. If he let himself go, as he no doubt sometimes did, it was only as a good rider on coming to the turf gives the horse his head in order to enjoy the exhilaration of a gallop, having the bridle well in hand the while, and able to rein in the excited steed at a moment's notice. It may be said of Shakespeare at such seasons, as of his own Prince Hal, that he " Obscur'd his contemplation Under the veil of wilduess ; which, no doubt, Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty. " The deer-stealing tradition illustrates the same point ; and though belonging perhaps to a rather later period it tion - may be conveniently noticed here. This fragment of Shakespeare's personal history rests on a much surer basis than the Bidford incident, being supported not only by early multiplied and constant traditions, but by evidence which the poet himself has supplied. Rowe's somewhat formal version of the narrative is to the effect that Shake- speare in his youth was guilty of an extravagance which, though unfortunate at the time, had the happy result of helping to develop his dramatic genius. This misfortune was that of being engaged with some of his companions more than once in robbing a park belonging to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. Sir Thomas, it is said, prosecuted him sharply for the offence, and in retaliation he wrote a satirical ballad upon him, which so incensed the baronet that Shakespeare thought it prudent to leave Stratford and join his old friends and associates the players in London. Other versions of the tradition exist giving fresh details, some of which are on the face of them later additions of a fictitious and fanciful kind. But it would be useless to discuss the accretions incident to any narrative, however true, orally transmitted through two or three generations before being reduced to a written shape. All that can be required or expected of such traditions is that they should contain a kernel of biographical fact, and be true in substance although possibly not in form. And tried by this test the tradition in question must certainly be accepted as a genuine contribution to our knowledge of the poet's early years. Indeed it could hardly have been repeated again and again by inhabitants of Stratford within a few years of Shakespeare's death if it did not embody a characteristic feature of his early life which was well known in the town. This feature was no doubt the poet's love of woodland life, and the woodland sports through which it is realized in the most animated and vigorous form. The neighbourhood of Stratford in Shakespeare's day afforded considerable scope for this kind of healthy recreation. There was the remnant of the old Ardeu forest, which, though still nominally a royal domain, was virtually free for many kinds of sport. Indeed, the observance of the forest laws had fallen into such neglect iu the early years of Elizabeth's reign that even unlicensed deer- hunting in the royal domains was common enough. And hardly any attempt was made to prevent the pursuit of the smaller game belonging to the warren and the chase. Then, three or four miles to the east of Stratford, between the Warwick road and the river, stretched the romantic park of Fulbroke, which, as the property of aii attainted exile, sequestered though not seized by the crown, was virtually open to all comers. There can be little doubt that when Shakespeare and his companions wished a day's outing in the woods they usually resorted to some part of the Arden forest still available for sporting purposes. But sometimes, probably on account of its greater convenience, they seem to have changed the venue to Fulbroke Park, and there they might easily come into collision with Sir Thomas Lucy's keepers. There has been a good deal of discussion as to the scene of the traditional adventure, but the probabilities of the case are strongly in favour of Fulbroke. When Sir Walter Scott visited Sir Thomas Lucy at Charlecote in 1828, Sir Thomas told him that the park from which Shakespeare stole the deer was not Charlecote, but one belonging to a mansion at some distance, the context indicating Fulbroke as the scene of the exploit. And Mr Bracebridge, in his interesting pamphlet Shakespeare no Deer-Stealcr, has thrown fresh light on the sub- ject, and made the whole incident more intelligible by marshalling the reasons in favour of this view. The park had, it seems, been held by the Lucys under the crown in the time of Henry VIII., but was afterwards granted by Queen Mary to one of her privy council- lors, Sir Francis Engelh'eld. Being a devoted Romanist, he fled to Spain on the accession of Elizabeth and was subsequently ad- judged a traitor, the Fulbroke estate being sequestered though not administered by the crown. The park being thus without a legal custodian for more than a quarter of a century became disparked, the palings having fallen into decay and the fences being in many places broken down. The deer with which it abounded were thus left without any legal protection, and might be hunted at will by enterprising sportsmen. The only person likely to check this freedom or to attempt to do so was Sir Thomas Lucy, whose own park of Charlecote ran for a mile along the other side of the river just below Fulbroke. As the nearest large landed proprietor, having a direct interest in the state of the neighbouring park, he might naturally think himself entitled to act as a kind of ad interim custodian of Fulbroke. And with his aristocratic feeling, his severe and exacting temper, he would be likely enough to push his temporary guardianship of custom or courtesy into an exclusive right, at least so far as the venison of the park was concerned. In any case Sir Thomas's keepers would occasionally perambulate Fulbroke Park as a protection to Charlecote, and in doing so they probably came upon Shakespeare and his companions after they had brought down a buck and were about to break it up for removal. Or the hunted deer may have crossed the river at the shallow ford between the two parks, and, pursued by the eager sportsmen, have been brought down within the Charlecote grounds. In either case the keepers would denounce the trespass, and possibly with menacing and abusive words demand the buck for their master. On being treated in this insulting way, Shake- speare, who had pride and personal dignity as well as courage, would deny any intentional or actual trespass, refuse to give up the venison, and plainly tell the keepers that they might report the matter to Sir Thomas Lucy and he would answer for himself and his companions. On finding what had happened, Sir Thomas would be all the more incensed and indignant from the conscious- ness that he had pushed his claims beyond the point at which they could legally be enforced. And, being to some extent in a false position, he would be proportionately wrathful and vindictive against the youthful sportsmen, and especially against their leader who had dared to resist and defy his authority. Sir Thomas was the great man of Stratford, who came periodically to the town on magistrate's business, was appealed to as arbitrator in special cases, and entertained by the corporation during his visits. In character he seems to have combined aristocratic pride and narrowness with the harshness and severity of the Puritan temper. As a landed proprietor and local magnate he was exacting and exclusive, looking with a kind of Puritanical sourness on all youthful frolics, merri- ment, and recreation. He would thus have a natural antipathy to young Shakespeare's free, generous, and enjoying nature, and would resent as an unpardonable outrage his high-spirited conduct in attempting to resist any claims he chose to make. Sir Thomas would no doubt vent his indignation to the authorities at Strat- ford, and try to set the law in motion, and failing in this might have threatened, as Justice Shallow does, to make a Star-Chamber matter of it. This was the kind of extreme course which a man in his position might take where there was no available local redress for any wrong he imagined himself to have suffered. And XXI. 95 ​754 SHAKESPEARE the Stratford authorities, being naturally anxious to propitiate the givat man, may have suggested that it would be well if young Shakespeare co'uld be out of the way for a time. This would help him to decide on the adoption of a plan already seriously entertained of going to London to push bis fortune among the players. There is, however, another aspect in which this traditional incident may be looked at, which seems at least worthy Sir of consideration. It is possible that Sir Thomas Lucy may Thomas have been prejudiced against the Shakespeares on religious Lucy * grounds, and that this feeling may have prompted him to a display of exceptional severity against their eldest son. As we have seen, he was a narrow and extreme, a persecuting and almost fanatical Protestant, and several events had recently happened calculated to intensify his bitterness against the Romanists. In particular, Mary Shakespeare's family connexions the Ardeus of Parkhall had been convicted of conspiracy against the queen's life. The son-in-law of Edward Arden, John Somerville, a rash and "hot-spirited young gentleman," instigated by Hall, the family priest, had formed the design of going to London and assassinating Queen Elizabeth with his own hand. He started on his journey in November 1583, but talked so incautiously by the way that he was arrested, conveyed to the Tower, and under a threat of the rack confessed everything, accusing his father-in-law as an accomplice and the priest as the instigator of the crime. All three were tried and convicted, their fate being probably hastened, as Dugdale states, by the animosity of Leicester against the Ardens. Somerville strangled himself in prison, and Edward Arden was hanged at Tyburn. These events produced a deep impression in Warwickshire, and no one in the locality would be more excited by them than Sir Thomas Lucy. His intensely vindictive feeling against the Romanists was exemplified a little later by his bringing forward a motion in parlia- ment in favour of devising some new and lingering tortures for the execution of the Romanist conspirator Parry. As Mr Froude puts it, " Sir Thomas Lucy, Shakespeare's Lucy, the original perhaps of Justice Shallow, with an English fierceness at the bottom of his stupid nature, having studied the details of the execution of Gerard, proposed in the House of Commons 'that some new law should be devised for Parry's execution, such as might be thought fittest for his extraordinary and horrible treason.'" The Ardens were devoted Romanists; the terrible calamity that had befallen the family occurred only a short time before the deer-stealing adventure ; and the Shakespeares themselves, so far from being Puritans, were suspected by many of being but indifferent Protestants. John Shakespeare was an irregular attendant at church, and soon ceased to appear there at all, so that Sir Thomas Lucy probably regarded him as little better than a recusant. In any case Sir Thomas would be likely to resent the elder Shakespeare's convivial turn and profuse hospitality as alderman and bailiff, and especially his official patronage of the players and active encouragement of their dramatic representations in the guild hall. The Puritans had a rooted antipathy to the stage, and to the jaundiced eye of the local justice the reverses of the Shakespeares would probably appear as a judgment on their way of life. He would all the more eagerly seize any chance of humiliating their eldest son, who still held up his head and dared to look upon life as a scene of cheerful activity and occasional enjoyment. The young poet, indeed, embodied the very characteristics most opposed to Sir Thomas's dark and narrow conceptions of life and duty. His notions of public duty were very much restricted to persecuting the Romanists and preserving the game on Protestant estates. And Shakespeare probably took no pains to conceal his want of sympathy with these supreme objects of aristocratic and Puritanical zeal. And Sir Thomas, having at length caught him, as he imagined, in a technical trespass, would be sure to pursue the culprit with the unrelenting rigour of his hard and gloomy nature. But, whatever may have been the actual or aggravating circumstances of the original offence, there can be no doubt that an element of truth is contained in the deer- stealiug tradition. The substantial facts in the story are that Shakespeare in his youth was fond of woodland sport, and that in one of his hunting adventures he came into collision with Sir Thomas Lucy's keepers, and fell under the severe ban of that local potentate. The latter point is indirectly confirmed by Shakespeare's inimitable sketch of the formal country justice in the Second Part of Henry IV. and the Merry Wives of Windsor, Robert Shallow, Esq., being sufficiently identified with Sir Thomas Lucy by the pointed allusion to the coat of arms, as well as by other allusions of a more indirect but hardly less deci.sh u kind. To talk of the sketch as an act of revenge is to treat it too seriously, or rather in too didactic and pedestrian a spirit. Having been brought into close relations with the justice, Shakespeare could hardly be expected to resist the temptation of turning to dramatic account so admirable a subject for humorous portraiture. The other point of the tradition, Shakespeare's fondness for woodland life, is supported by the internal evidence of his writings, and especially by the numerous allusions to the subject in his poems and earlier plays. The many refer- ences to woods and sports in the poems are well known ; and in the early plays the allusions are not less frequent and in some respects even more striking. Having no space, however, to give these in detail, a general reference must suffice. The entire action of Love's Labour ' Lost takes place in a royal park, while the scene of the most critical events of the Two Gentlemen of Verona is a forest inhabited by generous outlaws whose offences appear to have been youthful follies., and who on being pardoned by the duke become his loyal followers. In these early plays it seems as though Shakespeare could hardly conceive of a royal palace or capital city without a forest close at hand as the scene of princely sport, criminal intrigue, or fairy enchant- ment. Outside the gates of Athens swept over hill and dale the wonderful forest which is the scene of the Midsummer Night's Dream and in Titus Andronicus imperial Rome seems to be almost surrounded by the brightness and terror, the inspiring charm and sombre shades of rolling forest lawns and ravines, the " ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods." There can be no doubt, therefore, that during the years Shak of home life at Stratford Shakespeare was often in the 8 P eai forest. But in the latter part of the time he would be 1U ' found still more frequently hastening through the fields to Shottery, paying long visits at the Hathaway farm, followed by late and reluctant leave-takings. For the next important fact in Shakespeare's history is his marriage with Anne Hathaway. This event, or rather the formal and ecclesiastical part of it, took place in the end of November 1 582, the bond for the licence from the consistory court being dated on the 28th of the month. Mr Halliwell-Phillipps has, however, sufficiently proved by detailed instances that the formal and public part of the ceremony would, according to the usage of the time, have been preceded some months earlier by the betrothal or pre-contract, which was in itself of legal validity. Shake- speare's marriage may therefore be dated from the summer of 1582, he being then in his nineteenth year, while his bride was between seven and eight years older. Many of the poet's biographers have assumed that the marriage was a hasty, unsuitable, and in its results an unhappy one. It is necessary therefore to repeat Avith all possible ​SHAKESPEARE 755 emphasis the well-founded statement of Mr Halliwell- Phillipps that " there is not a particle of direct evidence " for either of these suppositions. The marriage could hardly have been a hasty one, for, as we have seen, the two families had been intimate for fifteen years, and Shakespeare had knovn Anne Hathaway from his early boyhood. As to Avhether it was suitable or not Shake- speare himself was the best and only adequate judge, and there is not, in the whole literature of the subject, even the shadow of a successful appeal against his decision. And, so far from the marriage having been unhappy, all the evidence within our reach goes to show that it was not only a union of mutual affection but a most fortunate event for the poet himself, as well as for the wife and mother who remained at the head of his family, venerated and loved by her children, and a devoted helpmate to her husband to the very end. Looking at the matter in its wider aspects, and especially in relation to his future career, it may be said that Shakespeare's early marriage gave him at the most emotional and unsettled period of life a fixed centre of affection and a supreme motive to prompt and fruitful exertion. This would have a salutary and steadying effect on a nature so richly en- dowed with plastic fancy and passionate impulse, com- bined with rare powers of reflective foresight and self- control. If Shakespeare's range and depth of emotional and imaginative genius had not been combined with unusual force of character and strength of ethical and artistic purpose, and these elements had not been early stimulated to sustained activity, he could never have had so great and uninterrupted a career. And nothing perhaps is a more direct proof of Shakespeare's m-anly character than the prompt and serious way in which, from the first, he assumed the full responsibility of his acts, and unflinch- ingly faced the wider range of duties they entailed. He himself has told us that " Love is too youug to know what conscience is : Yet who knows not conscience is born of love ? " and it remains true that conscience, courage, simplicity, and nobleness of conduct are all, in generous natures, evoked and strengthened by the vital touch of that regenerating power. Shakespeare's whole course was changed by the new influence ; and with his growing responsibilities his character seems to have rapidly matured, and his powers to have found fresh and more effective development. His first child Susanna was born in May 1583, and, as she was baptized on the 26th, the day of her birth may have been the 23d, which would be exactly a mouth after her father completed his nineteenth year. In February 1585 the family was unexpectedly enlarged by the birth of twins, a boy and a girl, who were named re- spectively Hamnet and Judith, after Hamnet and Judith Sadler, inhabitants of Stratford, who were lifelong friends of Shakespeare. Before he had attained his majority the poet had thus a wife and three children dependent upon him, with little opportunity or means apparently of ad- vancing his fortunes in Stratford. The situation was in itself sufficiently serious. But it was complicated by his father's increasing embarrassments and multiplied family claims. Four children still remained in Henley Street to be provided for, the youngest, Edmund, born in May 1580, being scarcely five years old. John Shakespeare, too, was being sued by various creditors, and apparently in some danger of being arrested for debt. All this was enough to make a much older man than the poet look anxiously about him. But, with the unfailing sense and sagacity he displayed in practical affairs, he seems to have formed a sober and just estimate of his own powers, and made a careful survey of the various fields available for their remunerative exercise. As the result of his delibera- tions he decided in favour of trying the metropolitan stage and theatre. He had already tested his faculty of acting by occasional essays on the provincial stage ; and, once in London amongst the players, where new pieces were constantly required, he would have full scope for the exercise of his higher powers as a dramatic poet. At the outset he could indeed only expect to discharge the lower function, but. with the growing popular demand for dramatic representations, the actor's calling, though not without its social drawbacks, was in the closing decades of the 16th century a lucrative one. Greene, in his autobio- graphical sketch Never Too Late, one of the most interest- ing of his prose tracts, illustrates this point in the account he gives of his early dealings with the players and experiences as a writer for the stage. Speaking through his hero Francesco, he says that " when his fortunes were at the lowest ebb he fell in amongst a company of players who persuaded him to try his wit in writing of comedies, tragedies, or pastorals, and if he could perform anything worth the stage, then they would largely reward him for his pains." Succeeding in the work, he was so well paid that he soon became comparatively wealthy, and went about with a well-filled purse. Although writing from the author's rather than the actor's point of view, Greene intimates that the players grew rapidly rich and were entitled both to praise and profit so long as they were " neither covetous nor insolent." In the Return from Pamassm (1601) the large sums, fortunes indeed, realized by good actors are referred to as matter of notoriety. One of the disappointed academic scholars, indeed, moralizing on the fact with some bitterness, exclaims, "England affords those glorious vagabonds, That carried erst their i'ardles on their backs, Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets, Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits, And pages to attend their masterships : "With mouthing words that better wits have framed They purchase lands, and now esquires are made." And in a humorous sketch entitled Ratseis Ghost, and published in the first decade of the 17th century, an apparent reference to Shakespeare himself brings out the same point. The hero of the tract, Katsey, a highwayman, having compelled a set of strolling players to act before him, advised their leader to leave the country and get to London, where, having a good presence for the stage and a turn for the work, he would soon fill his pockets, adding, " When thou feelest thy purse well-lined, buy thee some place of lordship in the country, that, growing weary of playing, thy money may bring thee dignity and reputa- tion." The player, thanking him for his advice, replies, "I have heard indeed of some that have gone to London very meanly, who have in time become exceedingly wealthy." The movement to the London stage was there- fore from a worldly point of view a prudent one, and for the higher purposes of Shakespeare's life it was equally wise and necessary. For besides the economic and practi- cal considerations in favour of the step there must have pressed on the poet's mind the importance of a wider sphere of life and action for the enlargement of his inward horizon, and the effective development of his poetical and dramatic gifts. The exact date of this event of Shakespeare's leaving Goes to Stratford for London cannot be fixed with any certainty. Lo ' 1( J;' All the probabilities of the case, however, indicate that it *"* _ . r i *" o " 1 i-l~ com Co cUL must have taken place between the spring of 1585 and the acton autumn of 1587. In the latter year three of the leading companies visited Stratford, those belonging to the queen, Lord Leicester, and Lord Essex ; and, as Lord Leicester's included three of Shakespeare's fellow townsmen, Bur- bage, Heminge, and Greene, it is not improbable that he may then have decided on trying his fortune in London, ​756 SHAKESPEARE At the same time it is quite possible, and on some grounds even likely, that the step may have been taken somewhat earlier. But for the five years between 1587 and 1592 we have no direct knowledge of Shakespeare's movements at all, the period being a complete biographical blank, dimly illuminated at the outset by one or two doubtful traditions. We have indeed the assurance that after leav- ing Stratford he continued to visit his native town at least once every year; and if he had left in 1586 we may con- fidently assume that he returned the next year for the purpose, amongst others, of consulting with his father and mother about the Asbies mortgage and of taking part with them in their action against John Lambert. His uniting with them in this action deserves special notice, as showing that he continued to take the keenest personal interest in all home affairs, and, although living mainly in London, was still looked upon, not only as the eldest son, but as the adviser and friend of the family. The anec- dotes of Shakespeare's occupations on going to London are, that at first he was employed in a comparatively humble capacity about the theatre, and that for a time he took charge of the horses of those who rode to see the plays, and was so successful in this work that he soon had a number of juvenile assistants who were known as Shakespeare's boys. Even in their crude form these traditions embody a tribute to Shakespeare's business promptitude and skill. If there is any truth in them they may be taken to indicate that while filling some subordinate post in the theatre Shakespeare perceived a defective point in the local arrangements, or heard the complaints of the mounted gallants as to the difficulty of putting up their horses. His provisions for meeting the difficulty seem to have been completely and even notori- ously successful. There were open sheds or temporary stables in connexion with the theatre in Shoreditch, and Shakespeare's boys, if the tradition is true, probably each took charge of a horse in these stables while its owner was at the play. But in any case this would be simply a brief episode in Shakespeare's multifarious employments when he first reached the scene of his active labours in London. He must soon have had more serious and absorbing professional occupations in the green room, on the stage, and in the laboratory of his own teeming brain, " the quick forge and working house of thought." Continues But his leisure hours during his first years in London his edu- W ould naturally be devoted to continuing his education and equipping himself as fully as possible for his future work. It was probably during this time, as Mr Halliwell- Phillipps suggests, that he acquired the working knowledge of French and Italian that his writings show he must have possessed. And it is perhaps now possible to point out the sources whence his knowledge of these languages was derived, or at least the master under whom he chiefly studied them. The most celebrated and accomplished teacher of French and Italian in Shakespeare's day was the resolute John Florio, who, after leaving Magdalen College, Oxford, lived for years in London, engaged in tutorial and literary work and intimately associated with eminent men of letters and their noble patrons. After the accession of James I., Florio was made tutor to Prince Henry, received an appointment about the court, became the friend and personal favourite of Queen Anne (to whom he dedicated the second edition of his Italian dictionary, entitled the World of Words), and died full of years and honours in 1625, having survived Shakespeare nine years. Florio had married the sister of Daniel the poet, and Ben Jonson presented a copy of The Fox to him, with the inscription, " To his loving father and worthy friend Master John Florio, Ben Jonson seals this testi- mony of his friendship and love." Daniel writes a poem cation. of some length in praise of his translation of Montaigne, while other contemporary poets contribute commendatory verses which are prefixed to his other publications. There Con- are substantial reasons for believing that Shakespeare was "exio also one of Florio's friends, and that during his early ! th years in London he evinced his friendship by yielding for once to the fashion of writing this kind of eulogistic verse. Prefixed to Florio's Second Fmits, Prof. Minto discovered a sonnet so superior and characteristic that he was impressed with the conviction that Shakespeare must have written it. The internal evidence is in favour of this conclusion, while Mr Minto's critical analysis and com- parison of its thought and diction with Shakespeare's early work tends strongly to support the reality and value of the discovery. In his next work, produced four years later, Florio claims the sonnet as the work of a friend " who loved better to be a poet than to be called one," and vindicates it from the indirect attack of a hostile critic, H. S., who had also disparaged the work in which it appeared. There are other points of connexion between Florio and Shakespeare. The only known volume that certainly belonged to Shakespeare and contains his auto- graph is Florio's version of Montaigne's Essays in the British Museum ; and critics have from time to time produced evidence to show that Shakespeare must have read it carefully and was well acquainted with its con- tents. Victor Hugo in a powerful critical passage strongly supports this view. The most striking single proof of the point is Gonzalo's ideal republic in the Tempest, which is simply a passage from Florio's version turned into blank verse. Florio and Shakespeare were both, moreover, intimate personal friends of the young earl of Southampton, who, in harmony with his generous character and strong literary tastes, was the munificent patron of each. Shakespeare, it will be remembered, dedi- cated his Venus and Adonis and his Lucrece to this young nobleman ; and three years later, in 1598, Florio dedicated the first edition of his Italian dictionary to the earl in terms that almost recall Shakespeare's words. Shake- speare had said in addressing the earl, " What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have devoted yours." And Florio says, "In truth I ac- knowledge an entire debt, not only of my best knowledge, but of all, yea of more than I know or can to your bounte- ous lordship, most noble, most virtuous, and most honour- able earl of Southampton, in whose pay and patronage I have lived some years, to whom I owe and vow the years I have to live." Shakespeare was also familiar with Florio's earlier works, his First Fruits and Second Fruits, which were simply carefully prepared manuals for the study of Italian, containing an outline of the grammar, a selection of dialogues in parallel columns of Italian and English, and longer extracts from classical Italian writers in prose and verse. We have collected various points of indirect evidence showing Shakespeare's familiarity with these manuals, but these being numerous and minute cannot be given here. It must suffice to refer in illustra- tion of this point to a single instance the lines in praise of Venice which Holofernes gives forth with so much unction in Love's Labour's Lost. The First Fruits was published in 1578, and was for some years the most popular manual for the study of Italian. It is the book that Shakespeare would naturally have used in attempting to acquire a knowledge of the language after his arrival in London ; and on finding that the author was the friend of some of his literary associates he would probably have sought his acquaintance and secured his personal help. As Florio was also a French scholar and habitually taught both languages, Shakespeare probably owed to him his knowledge of French as well as of Italian. . If the sonnet ​SHAKESPEARE 757 is accepted as Shakespeare's work he must have made Florio's acquaintance within a year or two after going to London, as in 1591 he appears in the character of a personal friend and well-wisher. In any case Shakespeare would almost certainly have met Florio a few years later at the house of Lord Southampton, with whom the Italian scholar seems to have occasionally resided. It also appears that he was in the habit of visiting at several titled houses, amongst others those of the earl of Bedford and Sir John Harrington. It seems also probable that he may have assisted Harrington in his translation of Ariosto. Another and perhaps even more direct link connecting Shakespeare with Florio during his early years in London is found in their common relation to the family of Lord Derby. In the year 1585 Florio translated a letter of news from Rome, giving an account of the sudden death of Pope Gregory XIII. and the election of his successor. This translation, published in July 1585, was dedicated "To the Right Excellent and Honourable Lord, Henry Earl of Derby," in terms expressive of Florio's strong personal obligations to the earl and devotion to his service. Three years later, on the death of Leicester in 1588, Lord Derby's eldest son Ferdinando Lord Strange became the patron of Leicester's company of players, which Shakespeare had recently joined. The new patron must have taken special interest in the company, as they soon became (chiefly through his influ- ence) great favourites at court, superseding the Queen's players, and enjoying something like a practical monopoly of royal representations. Shakespeare would thus have the opportunity of making Florio's acquaintance at the outset of his London career, and everything tends to show that he did not miss the chance of numbering amongst his personal friends so accomplished a scholar, so alert, ener- getic, and original a man of letters, as the resolute John Florio. Warburton, it is well-known, had coupled Florio's name with Shakespeare in the last century. He sug- gested, or rather asserted, that Florio was the original of Holofernes in Love's Labour 's Lost. Of all Warburton's arbitrary conjectures and dogmatic assumptions this is perhaps the most infelicitous. That a scholar and man of the world like Florio, with marked literary powers of his own, the intimate friend and associate of some of the most eminent poets of the day, living in princely and noble circles, honoured by royal personages and welcomed at noble houses, that such a man should be selected as the original of a rustic pedant and dominie like Holofernes, is surely the climax of reckless guesswork and absurd suggestion. There is, it is true, a distant connexion between Holofernes and Italy the pedant being a well- known figure in the Italian comedies that obviously affected Shakespeare's early work. This usage calls forth a kind of sigh from the easy-going and tolerant Montaigne as he thinks of his early tutors and youthful interest in knowledge. " I have in my youth," he tells us, " often- times been vexed to see a pedant brought in in most of Italian comedies for a vice or sport-maker, and the nick- name of magister (dominie) to be of no better significa- tion amongst us." We may be sure that, if Shakespeare knew Florio before he produced Love's Labour 's Lost, it was not as a sport-maker to be mocked at, but as a friend and literary associate to whom he felt personally indebted. But, whatever his actual relation to the Italian scholar ies> may have been, Shakespeare, on reaching London and beginning to breathe its literary atmosphere, would nat- urally betake himself to the study of Italian. At various altitudes the English Parnassus was at that time fanned by soft airs, swept by invigorating breezes, or darkened by gloomy and infected vapours from the south. In other words, the influence of Italian literature, so dominant in England during the second half of the 16th century, may be said to have reached its highest point at the very time when Shakespeare entered on his poetic and dramatic labours. This influence was in part a revival of the strong impulse communicated to English literature from Italy in Chaucer's day. The note of the revival was struck in the title of Thomas's excellent Italian manual, " Principal rules of Italian grammar, with a dictionarie for the better understandyng of Boccace, Petrarcha, and Dante " (1550). The first fruits of the revival were the lyrical poems of Surrey and Wyatt, written somewhat earlier, but published for the first time in Tottle's Miscellany (1557). The sonnets of these poets the first ever written in English produced in a few years the whole musical choir of Elizabethan sonneteers. Surrey and Wyatt were sym- pathetic students of Petrarch, and, as Puttenham says, reproduced in their sonnets and love poems much of the musical sweetness, the tender and refined sentiment, of the Petrarchian lyric. This perhaps can hardly in strictness of speech be called a revival, for, strong as was the influ- ence of Boccaccio, and in a less degree of Dante, during the first period of English literature, the lyrical poetry of the south, as represented by Petrarch, affected English poetry almost for the first time in the 16th century. This influence, as subsequently developed by Lyly in his prose comedies and romances, indirectly affected the drama, and clear traces of it are to be found in Shakespeare's own work. Surrey, however, rendered the Elizabethans a still greater service by introducing from Italy the unrhymed verse, which, with the truest instinct, was adopted by the great dramatists as the metrical vehicle best fitted to meet the requirements of the most flexible and expressive form of the poetic art. But, although in part the revival of a previous impulse, the Italian literature that most power- fully affected English poetry during the Elizabethan period was in the main new. During the interval the prolific genius of the south had put forth fresh efforts which combined, in new and characteristic products, the forms of classical poetry and the substance of southern thought and feeling with the spirit of mediaeval romance. The chivalrous and martial epics of Ariosto and Tasso repre- sented a new school of poetry which embraced within its expanding range every department of imaginative activity. There appeared in rapid succession romantic pastorals, romantic elegies, romantic satires, and romantic dramas, as well as romantic epics. The epics were occupied with marvels of knightly daring and chivalrous adventure, expressed in flowing and melodious numbers ; while the literature as a whole dealt largely in the favourite elements of ideal sentiment, learned allusion, and elaborate ornament, and was brightened at intervals by grave and sportive, by highly wrought but fanciful, pictures of courtly and Arcadian life. While Sidney and Spenser represented in England the new school of allegorical and romantic pastoral and epic, Shakespeare and his associates betook themselves to the study of the romantic drama and the whole dramatic element in recent and contempor- ary southern literature. The Italian drama proper, so far as it affected the form adopted by English playwrights, had indeed virtually done its work before any of Shake- speare's characteristic pieces were produced. His imme- diate predecessors, Greene, Pecle, and Lodge, Nash, Kyd, and Marlowe, had all probably studied Italian models more carefully than Shakespeare himself ever did; and the result is seen in the appearance among these later Elizabethans of the romantic drama, which united the better elements of the English academic and popular plays with features of diction and fancy, incident and structure, that were virtually new. Many members of this dramatic group were, like Greene, good Italian scholars, had them- selves travelled in Italy, knew the Italian stage at first ​758 hand, and, as their writings show, were well acquainted with recent Italian literature. But the dramatic element in that literature extended far beyond the circle of regular plays, whether tragedies, comedies, or pastorals. It in- cluded the collections of short prose stories which appeared, or were published for the first time, in such numbers during the 16th century, the novels or novelettes of Ser Giovanni, Cinthio, Bandello, and their associates. These stories, consisting of the humorous and tragic incidents of actual life, told in a vivid and direct way, naturally attracted the attention of the dramatists. We know from the result that Shakespeare must have studied them with some care, as he derived from this source the plots and incidents of at least a dozen of his plays. Many of the stories, it is true, had already been translated, either directly from the Italian, or indirectly from French and Latin versions. Of Cinthio's hundred tales, however, only two or three are known to have been rendered into English ; and Shakespeare derived the story of Othello from the untranslated part of this collection. Many of the Italian stories touched on darker crimes or more aggra- vated forms of violence than those naturally prompted by jealousy and revenge, and are indeed revolting from the atrocities of savage cruelty and lust related so calmly as to betray a kind of cynical insensibility to their true character. Shakespeare, however, with the sound judg- ment and strong ethical sense that guided the working of his dramatic genius, chose the better and healthier materials of this literature, leaving the morbid excesses of criminal passion to Webster and Ford. But the Italian influence on Shakespeare's work is not to be estimated merely by the outlines of plot and incident he borrowed from southern sources and used as a kind of canvas for his matchless portraiture of human character and action. It is apparent also in points of structure and diction, in types of character and shades of local colouring, which realize and express in a concentrated form the bright and lurid, the brilliant and passionate, features of southern life. The great majority of the dramatic personse in his comedies, as well as in some of the tragedies, have Italian names, and many of them, such as Mercutio and Gratiano on the one hand, lachimo and lago on the other, are as Italian in nature as in name. The moonlight scene in the Merchant of Venice is Southern in every detail and incident. And, as M. Philarete Chasles justly points out, Romeo and Juliet is Italian throughout, alike in colouring, incident, and passion. The distinctive influence is further traceable in Shakespeare's use of Italian words, phrases, and pro- verbs, some of which, such as "tranect" (from tranare), or possibly, as Rowe suggested, " traject " (traghetto), are of special local significance. In the person of Hamlet Shakespeare even appears as a critic of Italian style. Referring to the murderer who in the players' tragedy poisons the sleeping duke, Hamlet exclaims, " He poisons him in the garden for his estate. His name 's Gonzago : the story is extant and written in very choice Italian." [n further illustration of this point Mr Grant White has noted some striking turns of thought and phrase which seem to show that Shakespeare must have read parts of Berni and Ariosto in the original. No doubt in the case of Italian poets, as in the case of Latin authors like Ovid, whose works ho was familiar with in the original, Shakespeare would also diligently read the translations, especially the translations into English verse. For in reading such works as Golding's Ovid, Harrington's Ariosto, and Fairfax's Tasso, he would be increasing his command over the elements of expressive phrase and diction which were the verbal instruments, the material vehicle, of his art. But, besides studying the translations of the Italian poets and prose writers made available for English readers, effort he would naturally desire to possess, and no doubt acquired for himself, the key that would unlock the whole treasure-house of Italian literature. The evidence of Shakespeare's knowledge of French is more abundant and decisive, so much so as hardly to need express illustration. There can be little doubt therefore that, during his early years in London, he acquired a fair knowledge both of French and Italian. But, while pursuing these collateral aids to his higher Early work, there is abundant evidence that Shakespeare also' 1 devoted himself to that work itself. As early as 1592 he r is publicly recognized, not only as an actor of distinction, but as a dramatist whose work had excited the envy and indignation of his contemporaries, and especially of one so accomplished and so eminent, so good a scholar and master of the playwright's craft, as Robert Greene. Greene had, it is true, a good deal of the irritability and excitable temper often found in the subordinate ranks of poetical genius, and he often talks of himself, his doings, and associates in a highly -coloured and extravagant way. But his reference to Shakespeare is specially deliberate, being in the form of a solemn and last appeal to his friends amongst the scholarly dramatists to relinquish their connexion with the presumptuous and ungrateful stage. In his Groatsworth of Wit, published by his friend Chettle a few weeks after his death, Greene urges three of his friends, apparently Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele, to give up writing for the players. " Base-minded men, all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned ; for unto none of you like me sought those burs to cleave ; those puppets, I mean, who speak from our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they have all been beholding ; is it not like that you, to whom they have all been beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am now) be both of them at once forsaken ? Yes, trust them not ; for there is an upstart Crow, beautified in our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart, wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in a country. Oh that I might intreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions." This curious passage tells us indirectly a good deal about Shakespeare. It bears decisive testimony to his assured position and rapid advance in his profession. The very term of reproach applied to him, "Johannes Factotum," is a tribute to Shakespeare's industry and practical ability. From the beginning of his career he must have been in the widest and best sense a utility man, ready to do any work con- nected with the theatre and stage, and eminently successful in anything he undertook. In the first instance he had evidently made his mark as an actor, as it is in that character he is referred to by Greene, and denounced for going beyond his province and usurping the functions of the dramatist. Greene's words imply that Shakespeare not only held a foremost place as an actor, but that ho was already distinguished by his dramatic success in revising and rewriting existing plays. This is confirmed by the parodied line from the Third Part of Henry VI., recently revised if not originally written by Shakespeare. This must have been produced before Greene's death, which took place in September 1592. Indeed, all the three parts of Henry VI. in the revised form appear to have been acted during the spring and summer of that year. It is not improbable that two or three of Shake- speare's early comedies may also have been produced before Greene's death. And if so, his resentment, ns an academic scholar, against the country actor who had not ​SHAKESPEARE 759 only become a dramatist but had excelled Greene himself in his chosen field of romantic comedy becomes intelligible enough. Even in his wrath, however, Greene bears eloquent witness to Shakespeare's diligence, ability, and marked success, both as actor and playwright. All this is fully confirmed by the more deliberate and detailed language of Chettle's apology, already quoted. Of Shake- speare's amazing industry and conspicuous success the next few years supply ample evidence. Within six or seven years ho not only produced the brilliant reflective and descriptive poems of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, but at least fifteen of his dramas, including tragedies, comedies, and historical plays. Having found his true vocation, Shakespeare works during these years as a master, having full command over the materials and resources of his art. The dramas produced have a fulness of life and a richness of imagery, a sense of joyousness and power, that speak of the writer's exultant absorption and conscious triumph in his chosen work. The sparkling comedies and great historical plays belonging to this period evince the ease and delight of an exuberant mind realizing its matured creations. Nor after all is this result so very surprising. Shake- speare entered on his London career at the very moment best fitted for the full development of his dramatic s . genius. From the accession of Elizabeth all the domi- nant impulses and leading events of her reign had pre- pared the way for the splendid triumph of policy and arms that closed its third decade, and for the yet more splendid literary triumph of the full-orbed drama that followed. After the gloom and terror of Mary's reign the coming of Elizabeth to the crown was hailed with exultation by the people, and seemed in itself to open a new and brighter page of the nation's history. Elizabeth's personal charms and mental gifts, her high spirit and dauntless courage, her unfailing political tact and judgment, her frank bearing and popular address, combined with her unaffected love for her people and devotion to their interests, awakened the strongest feelings of personal loyalty, and kindled into passionate ardour the spirit of national pride and patriotism that made the whole kingdom one. The most powerful movements of the time directly tended to reinforce and concentrate these awakened energies. While the Eeformation and Renais- sance impulses had liberalized men's minds and enlarged their moral horizon, the effect of both was at first of a political and practical rather than of a purely religious or literary kind. The strong and exhilarating sense of civil and religious freedom realized through the Reformation was inseparably associated with the exultant spirit of nationality it helped to stimulate and diffuse. The pope, and his emissaries the Jesuits, were looked upon far more as foreign enemies menacing the independence of the kingdom than as religious foes and firebrands seeking to destroy the newly established faith. The conspiracies, fomented from abroad, that gathered around the captive queen of Scots, the plots successively formed for the assassination of Elizabeth, were regarded as murderous assaults on the nation's life, and the Englishmen who organized them abroad or aided them at home were denounced and prosecuted with pitiless severity as traitors to their country. Protestantism thus came to be largely identified with patriotism, and all the active forces of the kingdom, its rising wealth, energy, and intelligence, were concentrated to defend the rights of the liberated empire against the assaults of despotic Europe represented by Rome and Spain. These forces gained volume and impetus as the nation was thrilled by the details of Alva's ruthless butcheries, and the awful massacre of St Bar- tholomew, until at length they were organized and hurled with resistless effect against the grandest naval and military armament ever equipped by a Continental power, an arma- ment that had been sent forth with the assurance of victory by the wealthiest, most absolute, and most determined monarch of the time. There was a vigorous moral element in that national struggle and triumph. It was the spirit of freedom, of the energies liberated by the revolt from Rome, and illuminated by the fair humanities of Greece and Italy, that nerved the arm of that happy breed of men in the day of battle, and enabled them to strike with fatal effect against the abettors of despotic rule in church and state. The material results of the victory were at once apparent. England became mistress of the seas, and rose to an assured position in Europe as a political and maritime power of the first order. The literary results at home were equally striking. The whole conflict reacted powerfully on the genius of the race, quickening into life its latent seeds of reflective knowledge and wisdom, of poetical and dramatic art. Of these effects the rapid growth and develop- Growth ment of the national drama was the most brilliant of the and characteristic. There was indeed at the time a n ative unique stimulus in this direction. The greater num- f ber of the eager excited listeners who crowded the rude theatres from floor to roof had shared in the adventurous exploits of the age, while all felt the keenest interest in life and action. And the stage represented with admirable breadth and fidelity the struggling forces, the mingled elements, humorous and tragic, the passionate hopes, deep-rooted animosities, and fitful misgivings of those eventful years. The spirit of the time had made personal daring a common heritage : with noble and commoner, gentle and simple, alike, love of queen and country was a romantic passion, and heroic self-devotion at the call of either a beaten way of ordinary life. To act with energy and decision in the face of danger, to strike at once against any odds in the cause of freedom and independence, was the desire and ambition of all. This complete unity of national sentiment and action became the great characteristic of the time. The dangers threatening the newly liberated kingdom were too real and pressing to admit of anything like seriously divided councils, or bitterly hostile parties within the realm. Everything thus conspired to give an extraordinary degree of concentration and brilliancy to the national life. For the twenty years that followed the destruction of the Armada London was the centre and focus of that life. Here gathered the soldiers and officers who had fought against Spain in the Low Countries, against France in Scotland, and against Rome in Ireland. Along the river side, and in noble houses about the Strand, were the hardy mariners and adventurous sea captains, such as Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, who had driven their dauntless keels into unknown seas, who had visited strange lands and alien races in order to enlarge the knowledge, increase the dominions, and augment the wealth of their fellow- countrymen. Here assembled ' the noble councillors, scholars, and cavaliers whose foresight and skill guided the helm of state, whose accomplishment in letters and arms gave refinement and distinction to court pageants and ceremonials, and whose patronage and support of the rising drama helped to make the metropolitan theatre the great centre of genius and art, the great school of historical teaching, the great mirror of human nature in all the breadth and emphasis of its interests, convictions, and activities. The theatre was indeed the living organ through which all the marvellous and mingled experiences of a time incomparably rich in vital elements found expression. There was no other, no organized or adequate means, of popular expression at all. Bcoks were a solitary ​760 SHAKESPEARE entertainment in the hands of few; newspapers did not exist ; and the modern relief of incessant public meetings was, fortunately perhaps, an unknown luxury. And yet, amidst the plenitude of national life centred in London, the need for some common organ of expression was never more urgent or imperious. New and almost inexhaustible springs from the well-heads of intellectual life had for years been gradually fertilizing the productive English mind, The heroic life of the past, in clear outline and stately movement, had been revealed in the recovered masterpieces of Greece and Rome. The stores of more recent wisdom and knowledge, discovery and invention, science and art, were poured continually into the literary exchequer of the nation, and widely diffused amongst eager and open-minded recipients. Under this combined stimulus the national intellect and imagination had already reacted fruitfully in ways that were full of higher promise. The material results of these newly awakened energies were, as we have seen, not less signal or momentous. The number, variety, and power of the new forces thus acting on society effected in a short period a complete moral revolution. The barriers against the spread of knowledge and the spirit of free inquiry erected and long maintained by mediaeval ignorance and pre- judice were now thrown down. The bonds of feudal authority and Romish domination that had hitherto forcibly repressed the expanding national life were effectu- ally broken. Men opened their eyes upon a new world which it was an absorbing interest and endless delight to explore, a new world physically, where the old geo- graphical limits had melted into the blue haze of distant horizons a new world morally, where the abolition of alien dogma and priestly rule gave free play to fresh and vigorous social energies; and, above all, more surprising and mysterious than all, they opened their eyes with a strange sense of wonder and exultation on the new world of the emancipated human spirit. At no previous period had the popular curiosity about human life and human affairs been so vivid and intense. In an age of deeds so memorable, man naturally became the centre of interest, and the whole world of human action and passion, character and conduct, was invested with irresistible attraction. All ranks and classes had the keenest desire to penetrate the mysterious depths, explore the unknown regions, and realize as fully as might be the actual achievements and ideal possibilities of the nature throbbing with so full a pulse within themselves and reflected so powerfully in the world around them. Human nature, released from the oppression and darkness of the ages, and emerging with all its infinite faculties and latent powers into the radiant light of a secular day, was the new world that excited an admiration more profound and hopes far more ardent than any recently discovered lands beyond the sinking sun. At the critical moment Shakespeare appeared as the Columbus of that new world. Pioneers had indeed gone before and in a measure prepared the way, but Shakespeare still remains the great discoverer, occupying a position of almost lonely grandeur in the isolation and completeness of his work. The Never before, except perhaps in the Athens of Pericles,had theatres, all the elements and conditions of a great national drama met in such perfect union. As we have seen, the popular conditions supplied by the stir of great public events and the stimulus of an appreciative audience were present in exceptional force. With regard to the stage conditions, the means of adequate dramatic representation, public theatres had for the first time been recently established in London on a permanent basis. In 1574 a royal licence had been granted by the queen to the earl of Leicester's company " to use, exercise, and occupy the art and faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Interludes, and Stage Plays, and such other like as they have been already used and studied, as well for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure when we shall think good to see them " ; and, although the civil authorities resisted the attempt to establish a public theatre within the city, two or three were speedily erected just outside its boundaries, in the most convenient and accessible suburbs, the Curtain and the Theatre in Shoreditch, beyond the northern boundary, and the Blackfriars theatre within the precincts of the dissolved monastery, just beyond the civic jurisdic- tion on the western side. A few years later other houses were built on the southern side of the river, the Rose near the foot of London Bridge, and the Hope and Swan further afield. There was also at Newington Butts a place of recreation and entertainment for the archers and holiday people, with a central building which, like the circus at Paris Garden, was used during the summer months for dramatic purposes. These theatres were occupied by different companies in turn, and Shakespeare during his early years in London appears to have acted at several of them. But from his first coming up it seems clear that he was more identified with the earl of Leicester's players, of whom his energetic fellow townsman, James Burbage, was the head, than with any other group of actors. To Burbage indeed be- longs the distinction of having first established public theatres as a characteristic feature of metropolitan life. His spirit and enterprise first relieved the leading com- panies from the stigma of being strolling players, and transferred their dramatic exhibitions, hitherto restricted to temporary scaffolds in the court-yards of inns and hostelries, to the more reputable stage and convenient appliances of a permanent theatre. In 1575 Burbage, having secured the lease of a piece of land at Shoreditch, erected there the house which proved so successful, and was known for twenty years as the Theatre, from the fact that it was the first ever erected in the metropolis. He seems also to have been concerned in the erection of a second theatre in the same locality called the Curtain ; and later on, in spite of many difficulties, and a great deal of local opposition, he provided the more celebrated home of the rising drama known as the Blackfriars theatre. When Shakespeare went to London there were thus theatres on both sides of the water the outlying houses being chiefly used during the summer and autumn months, while the Blackfriars, being roofed in and pro- tected from the weather, was specially used for perform- ances during the winter season. In spite of the persistent opposition of the lord mayor and city aldermen, the denunciations of Puritan preachers and their allies in the press, and difficulties arising from intermittent attacks of the plague and the occasional intervention of the court authorities, the theatres had now taken firm root in the metropolis ; and, strong in royal favour, in noble patron- age, and above all in popular support, the stage had already begun to assume its higher functions as the living organ of the national voice, the many-coloured mirror and reflexion of the national life. A few years later the com- panies of players and the theatres they occupied were consolidated and placed on a still firmer public basis. For some years past, in addition to the actors really or nominally attached to noble houses, there had existed a body of twelve performers, selected by royal authority (in 1583) from different companies and known as the Queen's players. The earl of Leicester's, being the leading company, had naturally furnished a number of recruits to the Queen's players, whose duty it was to act at special seasons before Her Majesty and the court. But within a few years after Shakespeare arrived in London the chief ​SHAKESPEARE 761 groups of actors were divided into two great companies, specially licensed and belonging respectively to the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Admiral. Under the new arrangement the earl of Leicester's actors (who, as already stated, after the earl's death in 1588 found for a time a new patron in Lord Strange 1 ) became the servants of the Lord Chamberlain. James Burbage had already retired from the company, his place being taken by his more cele- brated son Richard Burbage, the Garrick of the Eliza- bethan stage, who acted with so much distinction and success all the great parts in Shakespeare's leading plays. In order that the Lord Chamberlain's company might have houses of their own both for summer and winter use, Richard Burbage, his brother Cuthbert, and their associates, including Shakespeare, undertook in 1599 to build a new theatre on the bank side, not far from the old Paris Garden circus. We know from a subsequent document, which refers incidentally to the building of this theatre,, that the Burbages had originally introduced Shakespeare to the Blackfriars company. He had indeed proved himself so useful, both as actor and poet, that they were evidently glad to secure his future services by giving him a share as part proprietor in the Blackfriars property. The new theatre now built by the company was that known as the Globe, and it was for fifteen years, during the summer and autumn months, the popular and highly successful home of the Shakespearian drama. Three years earlier Richard Burbage and his associates had rebuilt the Blackfriars theatre on a more extended scale ; and this well-known house divided with the Globe the honour of producing Shakespeare's later and more important plays. Shakespeare's position indeed of actor and dramatist is identified with these houses and with the Lord Chamberlain's company to which they belonged. On the accession of James I., this company, being specially favoured by the new monarch, received a fresh royal charter, and the members of it were henceforth known as the King's servants. In the early years of Shakespeare's career the national drama had thus a permanent home in theatres conveniently central on either side of the river, and crowded during the summer and winter months by eager and excited audiences. Even before the building of the Globe, the house at New- ington where three of Marlowe's most important plays and some of Shakespeare's early tragedies were produced was often crowded to the doors. In the summer of 1592, when the First Part of Henry VI., as revised by Shake- speare, was acted, the performance was so popular that, we are told by Nash, ten thousand spectators witnessed it in the course of a few weeks. It is true that even in the best theatres the appliances in the way of scenes and stage machinery were of the simplest description, change of scene being often indicated by the primitive device of a board with the name painted upon it. But players and play- wrights, both arts being often combined in the same person, knew their business thoroughly well, and justly relied for success on the more vital attractions of powerful acting, vigorous writing, and practised skill in the construction of their pieces. In the presence of strong passions expressed in kindling words and powerfully realized in living action, gesture, and incident, the absence of canvas sunlight and painted gloom was hardly felt. Or, as the stirring choruses in Henry V. show, the want of more elaborate and realistic scenery was abundantly supplied by the excited fancy, active imagination, and concentrated interest of the spectators. 1 This is maintained by Mr Fleay in Iris recent Life and Work of Shakespeare. But the history of the early dramatic companies is so obscure that it is difficult to trace their changing fortunes with absolute certainty. The dramatic conditions of a national theatre were New indeed, at the outset of Shakespeare's career, more com- school of plete, or rather in a more advanced state of development, Dramatic than the playhouses themselves or their stage accessories. If Shakespeare was fortunate in entering on his London work amidst the full tide of awakened patriotism and public spirit, he was equally fortunate in finding ready to his hand the forms of art in which the rich and complex life of the time could be adequately expressed. During the decade in which Shakespeare left Stratford the play- wright's art had undergone changes so important as to constitute a revolution in the form and spirit of the national drama. For twenty years after the accession of Elizabeth the two roots whence the English drama sprung the academic or classical, and the popular, devel- oped spontaneously in the line of mysteries, moralities, and interludes continued to exist apart, and to produce their accustomed fruit independently of each other. The popular drama, it is true, becoming more secular and realistic, enlarged its area by collecting its materials from all sources, from novels, tales, ballads, and histories, as well as from fairy mythology, local superstitions, and folk- lore. But the incongruous materials were, for the most part, handled in a crude and semi-barbarous way, with just sufficient art to satisfy the cravings and clamours of unlettered audiences. The academic plays, on the other hand, were written by scholars for courtly and cultivated circles, were acted at the universities, the inns of court, and at special public ceremonials, and followed for the most part the recognized and restricted rules of the classic drama. But in the third decade of Elizabeth's reign another dramatic school arose intermediate between the two elder ones, which sought to combine in a newer and higher form the best elements of both. The main impulse guiding the efforts of the new school may be traced in- directly to a classical source. It was due, not immediately to the masterpieces of Greece and Rome, but to the form which classical art had assumed in the contemporary drama of Italy, France, and Spain, especially of Italy, which was that earliest developed and best known to the new school of poets and dramatists. This southern drama, while academic in its leading features, had nevertheless modern elements blended with the ancient form. As the Italian epics, followinp in the main the older examgles, were still charged with romantic and realistic elements unknown to the classical epic, so the Italian drama, con- structed on the lines of Seneca and Plautus, blended with the severer form essentially romantic features. With the choice of heroic subjects, the orderly development of the plot, the free use of the chorus, the observance of the unities, and constant substitution of narrative for action were united the vivid colouring of poetic fancy and diction, and the use of materials and incidents derived from recent history and contemporary life. The influence of the Italian drama on the new school of English play- wrights was, however, very much restricted to points of style and diction of rhetorical and poetical effect. It helped to produce among them the sense of artistic treat- ment, the conscious effort after higher and more elaborate forms and vehicles of imaginative and passionate expres- sion. For the rest, the rising English drama, in spite of the efforts made by academic critics to narrow its rang* and limit its interests, retained and thoroughly vindicated its freedom and independence. The central character- istics of the new school are sufficiently explained by the fact that its leading representatives were all of them scholars and poets, living by their wits and gaining a somewhat precarious livelihood amidst the stir and bustle, the temptations and excitement, of concentrated London life. The distinctive note of their work is the reflex of XXI. 96 ​762 SHAKESPEAKE school their position as academic scholars working under poetic and popular impulses for the public theatres. The new and striking combination in their dramas of elements hitherto wholly separated is but the natural result of their attainments and literary activities. From their univer- sity training and knowledge of the ancients they would be familiar with the technical requirements of dramatic art, the deliberate handling of plot, incident, and char- acter, and the due subordination of parts essential for producing the effect of an artistic whole. Their imagina- tive and emotional sensibility, stimulated by their studies in Southern literature, would naturally prompt them to combine features of poetic beauty and rhetorical finish with the evolution of character and action ; while from the popular native drama they derived the breadth of sympathy, sense of humour, and vivid contact with actual life which gave reality and power to their representations. Leading The leading members of this group or school were Kyd, members G re ene, Lodge, Nash, Peele, and Marlowe, of whom, in station to the future development of the drama, Greene, Peele, and Marlowe are the most important and influential They were almost the first poets and nen of genius who devoted themselves to the production of dramatic pieces for the public theatres. But they all helped to redeem the common stages from the reproach their rude and boisterous pieces had brought upon them, and make the plays represented poetical and artistic as well as lively, bustling, and popular. Some did this rather from a necessity of nature and stress of circumstance than from any higher aim or deliberately formed resolve. But Marlowe, the greatest of them, avowed the redemption of the common stage as the settled purpose of his labours at the outset of his dramatic career. And during his brief and stormy life he nobly discharged the self-imposed task. His first play, Tamburline the Great, struck the authentic note of artistic and romantic tragedy. With all its extra- vagance, and over-straining after vocal and rhetorical effects, the play throbs with true passion and true poetry, and has throughout the stamp of emotional intensity and intellectual power. His later tragedies, while marked by the same features, bring into fuller relief the higher characteristics of his passionate and poetical genius. Alike in the choice of subject and method of treatment Marlowe is thoroughly independent, deriving little, except in the way of general stimulus, either from the classical or popular drama of his day. The signal and far-reaching reform he effected in dramatic metre by the introduction of modulated blank verse illustrates the striking originality of his genius. Gifted with a fine ear for the music of English numbers, and impatient of " the gigging veins of rhyming mother wits," he introduced the noble metre which was at once adopted by his contemporaries and became the vehicle of the great Elizabethan drama. The new metre quickly abolished the rhyming couplets and stanzas that had hitherto prevailed on the popular stage. The rapidity and completeness of this metrical revolution is in itself a powerful tribute to Marlowe's rare insight and feeling as a master of musical expression. The originality and importance of Marlowe's innovation are not materially affected by the fact that one or two classical plays, such as Gorloduc and Jocasta, had been already written in unrhymed verso. In any case these were private plays, and the monotony of cadence and structure in the verse excludes them from anything like serious comparison with the richness and variety of vocal effect produced by the skilful pauses and musical interlinking of Marlowe's heroic metre. Greene and Peele did almost as much for romantic comedy as Marlowe had done for romantic tragedy. Greene's ease and lightness of touch, his freshness of feeling and play of fancy, his vivid sense of the pathos and beauty of homely scenes and thorough enjoyment of English rural life, give to his dramatic sketches the blended charm of romance and reality hardly to be found elsewhere except in Shakespeare's early comedies. In special points of lyrical beauty and dramatic portraiture, such as his sketches of pure and devoted women and of witty and amusing clowns, Greene anticipated some of the more delightful and characteristic features of Shakespearian comedy. Peele's lighter pieces and Lyly's prose comedies helped in the same direction. Although not written for the public stage, Lyly's court comedies were very popular, and Shakespeare evidently gained from their light and easy if somewhat artificial tone, their constant play of witty banter and spark- ling repartee, valuable hints for the prose of his own comedies. Marlowe again prepared the way for another characteristic development of Shakespeare's dramatic art. His Edivard II. marks the rise of the historical drama, as distinguished from the older chronicle play, in which the annals of a reign or period were thrown into a series of loose and irregular metrical scenes. Peele's Edward /., Marlowe's Edward II., and the fine anonymous play of Edward II I., in which many critics think Shakespeare's hand may be traced, show how thoroughly the new school had felt the rising national pulse, and how promptly it responded to the popular demand for the dramatic treat- ment of history. The greatness of contemporary events had created a new sense of the grandeur and continuity of the nation's life, and excited amongst all classes a vivid interest in the leading personalities and critical struggles that had marked its progress. There was a strong and general feeling in favour of historical subjects, and especially historical subjects having in them elements of tragical depth and intensity. Shakespeare's own early plays dealing with the distracted reign of King John, the Wars of the Roses, and the tragical lives of Richard II. and Richard III. illustrate this bent of popular feeling. The demand being met by men of poetical and dramatic genius reacted powerfully on the spirit of the age, helping in turn to illuminate and strengthen its loyal and patriotic sympathies. This is in fact the key-note of the English stage Superi in the great period of its development. It was its (1 " t T breadth of national interest and intensity of tragic power p, n .? that made the English drama so immeasurably superior to stage. every other contemporary drama in Europe. The Italian drama languished because, though carefully elaborated in point of form, it had no fulness of national life, no common elements of ethical conviction or aspiration, to vitalize and ennoble it. Even tragedy, in the hands of Italian dramatists, had no depth of human passion, no energy of heroic purpose, to give higher meaning and power to its evolution. In Spain the dominant courtly and ecclesi- astical influences limited the development of the national drama, while in France it remained from the outset under the artificial restrictions of classical and pseudo-classical traditions. Shakespeare's predecessors and contemporaries, in elevating the common stages, and filling them with poetry, music, and passion, had attracted to the theatre all classes, including the more cultivated and refined ; and the intelligent interest, energetic patriotism, and robust life of so representative an English audience supplied the strongest stimulus to the more perfect development of the great organ of national expression. The forms of dramatic art, in the three main departments of comedy, tragedy, and historical drama, had been, as we have seen, clearly discriminated and evolved in their earlier stages. It was a moment of supreme promise and expectation, and in the accidents of earth, or, as we may more appropriately and gratefully say, in the ordinances of heaven, the supreme ​SHAKESPEARE 763 poet and dramatist appeared to more than fulfil the utmost promise of the time. By right of imperial command over all the resources of imaginative insight and expression Shakespeare combined the rich dramatic materials already prepared into more perfect forms, and carried them to the highest point of ideal development. He quickly surpassed Marlowe in passion, music, and intellectual power ; Greene in lyrical beauty, elegiac grace, and narrative interest ; Peele in picturesque touch and pastoral sweetness ; and Lyly in bright and sparkling dialogue. And having distanced the utmost efforts of his predecessors and contemporaries he took his own higher way, and reigned to the end without a rival in the new world of supreme dramatic art he had created. It is .a new world, because Shakespeare's work alone can be said to possess the organic strength and infinite variety, the throbbing fulness, vital complexity, and breathing truth, of nature herself. In points of artistic resource and technical ability such as copious and expressive diction, freshness and pregnancy of verbal combination, richly modulated verse, and structural skill in the handling of incident and action Shakespeare's supremacy is indeed sufficiently assured. Bat, after all, it is of course in the spirit and substance of his work, his power of piercing to the hidden centres of character, of touch- ing the deepest springs of impulse and passion, out of which are the issues of life, and of evolving those issues dramatically with a flawless strength, subtlety, and truth, which raises him so immensely above and beyond not only the best of the playwrights who went before him, but the whole line of illustrious dramatists that came after him. It is Shakespeare's unique distinction that he has an absolute command over all the complexities of thought and feeling that prompt to action and bring out the dividing lines of character. He sweeps with the hand of a master the whole gamut of human experience, from the lowest note to the very top of its compass, from the sportive childish treble of Mamilius and the pleading boyish tones of Prince Arthur, up to the spectre-haunted terrors of Macbeth, the tropical passion of Othello, the agonized sense and tortured spirit of Hamlet, the sustained elemental grandeur, the Titanic force and utterly tragical pathos, of Lear. Shakespeare's active dramatic career in London lasted. s . about twenty years, and may be divided into three ^. 1 J_ C tolerably symmetrical periods. The first extends from the year 1587 to about 1593-94; the second from this date to d. the end of the century ; and the third from 1600 to about 1608, soon after which time Shakespeare ceased to write regularly for the stage, was less in London and more and more at Stratford. Some modern critics add to these a fourth period, including the few plays which from internal as well as external evidence must have been among the poet's latest productions. As the exact dates of these plays are unknown, this period may be taken to extend from 1608 to about 1612. The three dramas produced during these years are, however, hardly entitled to be ranked as a separate period. They may rather be regarded as supplementary to the grand series of dramas belonging to the third and greatest epoch of Shakespeare's pro- ductive power. To the first period belong Shakespeare's early tentative efforts in revising and partially rewriting plays produced by others that already had possession of the stage. These efforts are illustrated in the three parts of Henry VI., especially the second and third parts, which bear decisive marks of Shakespeare's hand, and were to a great extent recast and rewritten by him. It is clear from the internal evidence thus supplied that Shakespeare was at first powerfully affected by "Marlowe's mighty line." This influence is so marked in the revised second and third parts of Henry VI. as to induce some critics to believe Marlowe must have had a hand in the revision. These passages are, however, sufficiently explained by the fact of Marlowe's influence during the first period of Shakespeare's career. To the same period also belong the earliest tragedy, that of Titus Andronicus, and the three comedies Love's Labour } s Lost, The Comedy of Errors, and the Two Gentlemen of Verona. These dramas are all marked by the dominant literary influences of the time. They present features obviously due to the revived and widespread knowledge of classical literature, as well as to the active interest in the literature of Italy and the South. Titus Andronicus, in many of its characteristic features, reflects the form of Roman tragedy almost universally accepted and followed in the earlier period of the drama. This form was supplied by the Latin plays of Seneca, their darker colours being deepened by the moral effect of the judicial tragedies and military conflicts of the time. The execution of the Scottish queen and the Catholic con- spirators who had acted in her name, and the destruction of the Spanish Armada, had given an impulse to tragic representations of an extreme type. This was undoubtedly rather fostered than otherwise by the favourite exemplars of Roman tragedy. The Medea and Thyestes of Seneca are crowded with pagan horrors of the most revolting kind. It is true these horrors are usually related, not represented, although in the Medea the maddened heroine kills her children on the stage. But from these tragedies the conception of the physically horrible as an element of tragedy was imported into the early English drama, and intensified by the realistic tendency which the events of the time and the taste of their ruder audiences had impressed upon the common stages. This tendency is exemplified in Titus Andronicus, obviously a very early work, the signs of youthful effort being apparent not only in the acceptance of so coarse a type of tragedy but in the crude handling of character and motive, and the want of har- mony in working out the details of the dramatic concep- tion. Kyd was the most popular contemporary repre- sentative of the bloody school, and in the leading motives of treachery, concealment, and revenge there are points of likeness between Titus Andronicus and the Spanish Tragedy. But how promptly and completely Shake- speare's nobler nature turned from this lower type is apparent from the fact that he not only never reverted to it but indirectly ridicules the piled-up horrors and extra- vagant language of Kyd's plays. The early comedies in the same way are marked by the dominant literary influences of the time, partly classic partly Italian. In the Comedy of Errors, for example, Shakespeare attempted a humorous play of the old classi- cal type, the general plan and many details being derived directly from Plautus. In Love's Labour 's Lost many characteristic features of Italian comedy are freely intro- duced : the pedant Holofernes, the curate Sir Nathaniel, the fantastic braggadocio soldier Armado, are all well-known characters of the contemporary -Italian drama. Of this comedy, indeed, Gervinus says, "the tone of the Italian school prevails here more than in any other play. The redundance of wit is only to be compared with a similar redundance of conceit in Shakespeare's narrative poems, and with the Italian style which he had early adopted." These comedies display another sign of early work in the mechanical exactness of the plan and a studied symmetry in the grouping of the chief personages of the drama. In the Two Gentlemen of Verona, as Prof. Dowden points out, " Proteus the fickle is set against Valentine the faithful, Silvia the light and intellectual against Julia the ardent and tender, Lance the humourist against Speed the wit." So in Love's Labour 's Lost, the king and his three fellow​764 SHAKESPEARE students balance the princess and her three ladies, and there is a symmetrical play of incident between the two groups. The arrangement is obviously more artificial than spontaneous, more mechanical than vital and organic. But towards the close of the first period Shakespeare had fully realized his own power and was able to dispense with these artificial supports. Indeed, having rapidly gained knowledge and experience, he had before the close written plays of a far higher character than any which even the ablest of his contemporaries had produced. He had firmly laid the foundation of his future fame in the direction both of comedy and tragedy, for, besides the comedies already referred to, the first sketches of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, and the tragedy of Richard III., may probably be referred to this period. Another mark of early work belonging to these dramas is the lyrical and elegiac tone and treatment associated with the use of rhyme, of rhyming couplets and stanzas. Spenser's musical verse had for the time elevated the character of rhyming metres by identifying them with the highest kinds of poetry, and Shakespeare was evidently at first affected by this powerful impulse. He rhymed with great facility, and delighted in the gratification of his lyrical fancy and feeling which the more musical rhyming metres afforded. Rhyme accordingly has a considerable and not inappropriate place in the earlier romantic comedies. The Comedy of Errors has indeed been de- scribed as a kind of lyrical farce in which the opposite qualities of elegiac beauty and comic effect are happily blended. Rhyme, however, at this period of the poet's work is not restricted to the comedies. It is largely used in the tragedies and histories as well, and plays even an important part in historical drama so late as Richard II. Shakespeare appears, however, to have worked out this favourite vein, and very much taken leave of it, by the publication of his descriptive and narrative poems, the Venus and Adonis and the Lucrece, although the enormous popularity of these poems might almost have tempted him to return again to the abandoned metrical form. The only considerable exception to the disuse of rhyming metres and lyrical treatment is supplied by the Sonnets, which, though not published till 1609, were probably begun early, soon after the poems, and written at intervals during eight or ten of the intervening years. Into the many vexed questions connected with the history and meaning of these poems it is impossible to enter. The attempts recently made by the Rev. W. A. Harrison and Mr T. Tyler to identify the " dark lady " of the later sonnets, while of some historical interest, cannot be regarded as successful. And the identification, even if rendered more probable by the discovery of fresh evidence, would not clear up the difficulties, biographical, literary, and historical, con- nected with these exquisite poems. It is perhaps enough to say with Prof. Dowden that in Shakespeare's case the most natural interpretation is the best, and that, so far as they throw light on his personal character, the sonnets show that "he was capable of measureless personal devotion; that he was tenderly sensitive, sensitive above all to every diminution or alteration of that love his heart so eagerly craved ; and that, when wronged, although he suffered anguish, he transcended his private injury and learned to forgive." Second Whatever question may be raised with regard to the period, superiority of some of the plays belonging to the first period of Shakespeare's dramatic career, there can be no question at all as to any of the pieces belonging to the second period, which extends to the end of the century. During these years Shakespeare works as a master, having complete command over the materials and resources of the most mature and flexible dramatic art. " To this stage," says Mr Swinburne, " belongs the special faculty of fault- less, joyous, facile command upon each faculty required of the presiding genius for service or for sport. It is in the middle period of his work that the language of Shake- speare is most limpid in its fulness, the style most pure, the thought most transparent through the close and luminous raiment of perfect expression." This period includes the magnificent series of historical plays Richard II., the two parts of Henry IV., and Henry V. and a double series of brilliant comedies. The Midsummer Nights Dream, All 's Well that ends Well, and the Mer- chant of Venice were produced before 1598, and during the next three years there appeared a still more complete and characteristic group including Much ado about No- thing, As you Like it, and Twelfth Night. These comedies and historical plays are all marked by a rare harmony of reflective and imaginative insight, perfection of creative art, and completeness of dramatic effect. Before the close of this period, in 1598, Francis Meres paid his cele- brated tribute to Shakespeare's superiority in lyrical, descriptive, and dramatic poetry, emphasizing his un- rivalled distinction in the three main departments of the drama, comedy, tragedy, and historical play. And from this time onwards the contemporary recognitions of Shakespeare's eminence as a poet and dramatist rapidly multiply, the critics and eulogists being in most cases well entitled to speak with authority on the subject. In the third period of Shakespeare's dramatic career Thh years had evidently brought enlarged vision, wider P 6 thoughts, and deeper experiences. While the old mastery of art remains, the works belonging to this period seem to bear traces of more intense moral struggles, larger and less joyous views of human life, more troubled, complex, and profound conceptions and emotions. Comparatively few marks of the lightness and animation of the earlier works remain, but at the same time the dramas of this period display an unrivalled power of piercing the deepest mysteries and sounding the most tremendous and perplex- ing problems of human life and human destiny. To this period belong the four great tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Lear ; the three Roman plays Coriolanus, Julius Cassar, Anthony and Cleopatra ; the two singular plays whose scene and personages are Greek but whose action and meaning are wider and deeper than either Greek or Roman life Troilus and Cressida and Timon of A thens ; and one comedy Measure for Measure, which is almost tragic in the depth and intensity of its characters and incidents. The four great tragedies represent the highest reach of Shakespeare's dramatic power, and they sufficiently illustrate the range and complexity of the deeper problems that now occupied his mind. Timon and Measure for Measure, however, exemplify the same tendency to brood with meditative intensity over the wrongs and miseries that afflict humanity. These works sufficiently prove that during this period Shakespeare gained a disturbing insight into the deeper evils of the world, arising from the darker passions, such as treachery and revenge. But it is also clear that, with the larger vision of a noble, well-poised nature, he at the same time gained a fuller perception of the deeper springs of goodness in human nature, of the great virtues of invincible fidelity and unwearied love, and he evidently received not only consolation and calm but new stimulus and power from the fuller realization of these virtues. The typical plays of this period thus embody Shakespeare's ripest experience of the great issues of life. In the four grand tragedies the central problem is a profoundly moral one. It is the supreme internal conflict of good and evil amongst the central forces and higher elements of human nature, as appealed to and developed by sudden and powerful temptation, smitten by accumu​SHAKESPEARE 765 lated wrongs, or plunged in overwhelming calamities. As the result, we learn that there is something infinitely more precious in life than social ease or worldly success noble- ness of soul, fidelity to truth and honour, human love and loyalty, strength and tenderness, and trust to the very end. In the most tragic experiences this fidelity to all that is best in life is only possible through the loss of life itself. But when Desdemona expires with a sigh and Cordelia's loving eyes are closed, when Hamlet no more draws his breath in pain and the tempest-tossed Lear is at last liberated from the rack of this tough world, we feel that, death having set his sacred seal on their great sorrows and greater love, they remain with us as possessions for ever. In the three dramas belonging to Shakespeare's last period, or rather which may be said to close his dramatic career, the same feeling of severe but consolatory calm is still more apparent. If the deeper discords of life are not finally resolved, the virtues which soothe their perplexities and give us courage and endurance to wait, as well as confidence to trust the final issues, the virtues of forgive- ness and generosity, of forbearance and self-control, are largely illustrated. This is a characteristic feature in each of these closing dramas, in the Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and the Tempest. The Tempest is supposed, on tolerably good grounds, to be Shakespeare's last work, and in it we see the great magician, having gained by the wonderful experience of life, and the no less wonderful practice of his art, serene wisdom, clear and enlarged vision, and beneficent self-control, break his magical wand and retire from the scene of his triumphs to the home he had chosen amidst the woods and meadows of the Avon, and surrounded by the family and friends he loved. We must now briefly summarize the few remaining sonal f ac t s O f t ne poet's personal history. The year 1596 was lory> marked by considerable family losses. In August Shake- speare's only son Hamnet died in the twelfth year of his age. With his strong domestic affections and cherished hopes of founding a family, the early death of his only boy must have been for his father a severe blow. It was followed in December by the death of Shakespeare's uncle Henry, the friend of his childhood and youth, the protector and encourager of his boyish sports and enterprises at Bearley, Snitterfield, and Fulbroke. A few months later the Shake- speare household at Snitterfield, so intimately associated for more than half a century with the family in Henley Street, was finally broken up by ine death of the poet's aunt Margaret, his uncle Henry's widow. Although the death of his son and heir had diminished the poet's hope of founding a family, he did not in any way relax his efforts to secure a permanent and comfortable home for his wife and daughters at Stratford. As early as 1597, when he had pursued his London career for little more than ten years, he had saved enough to purchase the considerable dwelling- house in New Place, Stratford, to which he afterwards retired. This house, originally built by Sir Hugh Clop- ton and called the " Great House," was one of the largest mansions in the town, and the fact of Shakespeare having acquired such a place as his family residence would at once increase his local importance. From time to time he made additional purchases of land about the house and in the neighbourhood. In 1602 he largely increased the property by acquiring 107 acres of arable land, and later on he added to this 20 acres of pasture land, with a convenient cottage and garden in Chapel Lane, oppo- site the lower grounds of the house. Within a few years his property thus comprised a substantial dwelling-house with large garden and extensive outbuildings, a cottage fronting the lower road, and about 137 acres of arable and pasture land. During these years Shakespeare made another important purchase that added considerably to his income. From the letter of a Stratford burgess to a friend in London, it appears that as early as 1597 Shakespeare had been making inquiry about the purchase of tithes in the town and neighbourhood. And in 1605 he bought the unexpired lease of tithes, great and small, in Stratford and two adjoining hamlets, the lease having still thirty years to run. This purchase yielded him an annual income of 38 a year, equal to upwards of 350 a year of our present money. The last purchase of property made by Shakespeare of which we have any definite record is at once so interesting and so perplexing as to have stimulated various conjectures on the part of his biographers. This purchase carries us away from Stratford back to London, to the immediate neighbourhood of Shakespeare's dramatic labours and triumphs. It seems that in March 1613 he bought a house with a piece of ground attached to it a little to the south-west of St Paul's cathedral, and not far from the Blackfriars theatre. The purchase of this house in London after he had been for some years settled ut Stratford has led some critics to suppose that Shakespeare had not given up all thought of returning to the metropolis, or at least of spending part of the year there with his family in the neighbourhood he best knew and where he was best known. The ground of this supposition is, however, a good deal destroyed by the fact that soon after acquiring this town house Shakespeare let it for a lease of ten years. He may possibly have bought the property as a convenience to some of his old friends who were associated with him in the purchase. In view of future contingencies it would obviously be an advantage to have a substantial dwelling so near the theatre in the hands of a friend. It was indeed by means of a similar purchase that James Burbage had originally started and established the Blackfriars theatre. The year 1607-8 would be noted in Shakespeare's family calendar as one of vivid and chequered domestic experiences. On the 5th of June his eldest daughter Susanna, who seems to have inherited something of her father's genius, was married to Dr John Hall, a medical man of more than average knowledge and ability, who had a considerable practice in the neighbourhood of Stratford, and who was deservedly held in high repute. The newly married couple settled in one of the picturesque houses of the wooded suburb between the town and the church known as Old Stratford. But before the end of the year the midsummer marriage bells had changed to sadder music. In December Shakespeare lost his youngest brother, Edmund, at the early age of twenty-seven. He had become an actor, most probably through his brother's help and influence, and was, at the time of his death, living in London. He was buried at Southwark on the last day of the year. Two months later there was family rejoicing in Dr Hall's house at the birth of a daughter, christened Elizabeth, the only offspring of the union, and the only grandchild Shakespeare lived to see. The rejoicing at this event would be fully shared by the house- hold in New Place, and especially by Shakespeare himself, whose cherished family hopes would thus be strengthened and renewed. Six months later in this eventful year, fortune again turned her wheel. Early in September Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden of the Asbies, died, having lived long enough to see and welcome her great- grandchild as a fresh bond of family life. She was buried at Stratford on the 9th of September, having survived her husband, who was buried on the 8th of September 1601, exactly seven years. Mary Shakespeare died full of years and honour and coveted rewards. For more than a decade she had witnessed and shared the growing pro- sperity of her eldest son, and felt the mother's thrill of joy and pride in the success that had crowned his brilliant ​766 SHAKESPEARE career. The loss of his mother would be deeply felt by her favourite son, but there was no bitterness in the bereave- ment, and it even seems to have exerted a tranquillizing, elevating effect on the poet's mind and character. As he laid her in the grave he would recall and realize afresh the early years during which her loving presence and influence were the light and guide of his boyish life. With these vivid and varied family experiences a strong wave of home- yearning seems to have set in, which gradually drew the poet wholly back to Stratford. During the autumn visit connected with his mother's death Shakespeare must have remained several weeks at the New Place, for on the 16th of October he acted as godfather to the infant son of an old personal friend, Henry Walker, who was an alderman of the borough. The child was called William after his godfather, and the poet must have taken a special interest in the boy, as he remembered him in his will. Retires to It seems most probable that soon after the chequered atratford. domestic events of this year, as soon as he could con- veniently terminate his London engagements, Shake- speare decided on retiring to his native place. He had gained all he cared for in the way of wealth and fame, and his strongest interests, personal and relative, were now centred in Stratford. But on retiring to settle in his native town he had nothing of the dreamer, the sentiment- alist, or the recluse about him. His healthy natural feeling was far too strong, his character too manly and well-balanced, to admit of any of the so-called eccentricities of genius. He retired as a successful professional man who had gained a competence by his own exertions and wished to enjoy it at leisure in a simple, social, rational way. He knew that the competence he had gained, the lands and wealth he possessed, could only be preserved, like other valuable possessions, by good management and careful husbandry. And, taught by the sad experience of his earlier years, he evidently guided the business details of his property with a firm and skilful hand, was vigilant and scrupulously just in his dealings, respecting the rights of others, and, if need be, enforcing his own. He sued his careless and negligent debtors in the local court of record, had various commercial transactions with the corporation, and took an active interest in the affairs of the borough. And he went now and then to London, partly on business connected with the town, partly no doubt to look after the administration and ultimate dis- posal of his own theatrical property, and partly it may be assumed for the pleasure of seeing his old friends and fellow dramatists. Even at Stratford, however, Shake- speare was not entirely cut off from his old associates in arts and letters, his hospitable board being brightened at intervals by the presence, and animated by the wit, humour, and kindly gossip, of one or more of his chosen friends. Two amongst the most cherished of his com- panions and fellow poets, Drayton and Ben Jonson, had paid a visit of this kind to Stratford, and been entertained by Shakespeare only a few days before his death, which occurred almost suddenly on the 23d of April 1616. After three days' illness the great poet was carried off by a sharp attack of fever, at that time one of the commonest scourges, even of country towns, and often arising then as now, only more frequently then than now, from the neglect of proper sanitary precautions. According to tradition the 23d of April was Shakespeare's- birthday, so that he died on the completion of the 52d year of his age. Three days later he was laid in the chancel of Stratford church, on the north wall of which his monument, contain- ing his bust and epitaph, was soon afterwards placed, most probably by the poet's son-in-law, Dr John Hall. Shake- speare's widow, the Anne Hathaway of his youth, died in 1623, having survived the poet seven years, exactly the [ same length of time that his mother Mary Arden had out- lived her husband. Elizabeth Hall, the poet's grandchild, was married twice, first to Mr Thos. Nash of Stratford, and in 1649, when she had been two years a widow, to Mr afterwards Sir John Barnard of Abington in North- amptonshire. Lady Barnard had no family by either husband, and the three children of the poet's second daughter Judith (who had married Richard Quiney of Stratford, two months before her father's death) all died comparatively young. At Lady Barnard's death in 1670 the family of the poet thus become extinct. By his will made a few weeks before his death Shakespeare left his landed property, the whole of his real estate indeed, to his eldest daughter Mrs Susanna Hall, under strict entail to her heirs. He left also a substantial legacy to his second daughter and only remaining child Mrs Judith Quiney, and a remembrance to several of his friends, including his old associates at the Blackf riars theatre, Burbage,-Heminge, and Condell, the two latter of whom edited the first col- lection of his dramas published in 1623. The will also included a bequest to the poor of Stratford. From this short sketch it will be seen that all the best Sumr known facts of Shakespeare's personal history bring into of 1U vivid relief the simplicity and naturalness of his tastes, his love of the country, the strength of his domestic affec- tions, and the singularly firm hold which the conception of family life had upon his imagination, his sympathies, and his schemes of active labour. He had loved the country with ardent enthusiasm in his youth, when all nature was lighted with the dawn of rising passion and kindled imagination ; and after his varied London experi- ence we may well believe that he loved it still more with a deeper and calmer love of one who had looked through and through the brilliant forms of wealthy display, public magnificence, and courtly ceremonial, who had scanned the heights and sounded the depths of existence, and who felt that for the king and beggar alike this little life of feverish joys and sorrows is soothed by natural influences, cheered by sunlight and green shadows, softened by the perennial charm of hill and dale and rippling stream, and when the spring returns no more is rounded with a sleep. In the more intimate circle of human relationships ho seems clearly to have realized that the sovereign elixir against the ills of life, the one antidote of its struggles and difficulties, its emptiness and unrest, is vigilant charity, faithful love in all its forms, love of home, love of kindred, love of friends, love of everything simple, just, and true. The larger and more sacred group of those serene and abiding influences flowing from well-centred affections was naturally identified with family ties, and it is clear that the unity and continuity of family life pos- sessed Shakespeare's imagination with the strength of a dominant passion and largely determined the scope and direction of his practical activities. As we have seen, he displayed from the first the utmost prudence and foresight in securing a comfortable home for his family, and provid- ing for the future welfare of his children. The desire of his heart evidently was to take a good position and found a family in his native place. And if this was a weakness he shares it with other eminent names in the republic of letters. In Shakespeare's case the desire may have been inherited, not only from his father, who had pride, energy, and ambition, but especially from his gently descended mother, Mary Arden of the Asbies. But, whatever its source, the evidence in favour of this cherished desire is unusually full, clear, and decisive. While the poet had no doubt previously assisted his father to retrieve his position in the world, the first important step in building up the family name was the grant of arms or armorial bearings to John Shakespeare in the year 1596. The ​SHAKESPEARE 767 father. It may be assumed, Lad applied to the heralds' college for the grant at the instance and by the help of his son. In this document, the draft of which is still preserved, the grounds on which the arms are given are stated as two : (1) because John Shakespeare's ancestors had rendered valuable services to Henry VII. ; and (2) that he had married Mary, daughter and one of the heirs of Robert Arden of Wilmcote, iu the said county, gentle- man. In the legal conveyances of property to Shake- speare himself after the grant of arms he is uniformly described as "William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon- Avon, gentleman." He is so described in the midst of his London career, and this sufficiently indicates that Stratford was even then regarded as his permanent resid- ence or home. In the following year another important step was taken towards establishing the position of the family. This was an application by John and Mary Shakespeare to the Court of Chancery for the recovery of the estate of the Asbies, which, under the pressure of family difficulties, had been mortgaged in 1578 to Edward Lambert. The issue of the suit is not known, but, as we have seen, the pleadings on either side occupy a consider- able space and show how resolutely John Shakespeare was bent on recovering his wife's family estate. Turning to the poet himself, we have the significant fact that during the next ten years he continued, with steady persistency, to build up the family fortunes by investing all his savings in real property, in houses and land at Stratford. While many of his associates and partners in the Blackfriars company remained on in London, living and dying there, Shakespeare seems to have early realized his theatrical property for the sake of increasing the acreage of his arable and pasture land in the neighbourhood of Strat- ford. In 1598, the year after the purchase of New Place, his family are not only settled there, but he is publicly ranked among the most prosperous and well-to-do citizens of Stratford. In that year, there being some anticipation of a scarcity of corn, an official statement was drawn up as to the amount of wheat in the town. From the list con- tained in this document of the chief householders in Chapel Ward, where New Place was situated, we find that out of twenty holders of corn enumerated only two have more in stock than William Shakespeare. Other facts belonging to the same year, such as the successful appeal of a fellow-townsman for important pecuniary help, and the suggestion from an alderman of the borough that, for the sake of securing certain private and public benefits, he should be encouraged to complete a contemplated purchase of land at Shottery, show that Shakespeare was now recognized as a local proprietor of wealth and influence, and that he had so far realized his early desire of taking a good position in the town and neighbourhood. It will be noted, too, that all the leading provisions of Shakespeare's will embody the same cherished family purpose. Instead of dividing his property between his two daughters, he left, as we have seen, the whole of his estate, the whole of his real property indeed, to his eldest daughter Mrs Susanna Hall, with a strict entail to the heirs of her- body. This indicates in the strongest manner the fixed desire of his heart to take a permanent position in the locality, and, if possible, strike the family roots deeply into their native soil. That this purpose was realized in his own case seems clear from the special respect paid to his memory. He was buried, as we have seen, in the chancel of the parish church, where as a rule only persons of family and position could be interred. His monument, one of the most considerable in the church, holds a place of honour on the north wall of the chancel, just above the altar railing. While this tribute of marked official respect may be due in part, as the epitaph intimates, to his eminence as a poet, it was no doubt, in a country district like Stratford, due still more to his local importance as a landed proprietor of wealth and position. Indeed, as a holder of the great tithes he was by custom and courtesy entitled to burial in the chancel. If there is truth in the early tradition that Shakespeare originally left Stratford in consequence of the sharp prose- cution of Sir Thomas Lucy, who resented with narrow bitterness and pride the presumption and audacity of the high-spirited youth found trespassing on his grounds, the victim of his petty wrath was in the end amply avenged. After a career of unexampled success in London Shake- speare returned to his native town crowned with wealth and honours, and, having spent the last years of his life in cordial intercourse with his old friends and fellow towns- men, was followed to the grave with the affectionate respect and regret of the whole Stratford community. This feeling was indeed, we may justly assume, fully shared by all who had ever known the great poet. His con- temporaries and associates unanimously bear witness to Shakespeare's frank, honourable, loving nature. Perhaps the most striking expression of this common feeling conies from one who in character, disposition, and culture was so different from Shakespeare as his friend and fellow- dramatist Ben Jonson. Even his rough and cynical temper could not resist the charm of Shakespeare's genial character and gracious ways. "I loved the man," he says, "and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions." As the genius of Shakespeare united the most opposite gifts, so amongst his friends are found the widest diversity of character, endowment, and disposition. This is only another way of indicating the breadth of his sympathies, the variety of his interests, the largeness and exuberant vitality of his whole nature. He touched life at so many points, and responded so in- stinctively to every movement in the complex web of its throbbing activities, that nothing affecting humanity was alien either to his heart or brain. To one so gifted with the power of looking below the surface of custom and con- vention, and perceiving, not only the deeper elements of rapture and anguish to which ordinary eyes are blind, but the picturesque, humorous, or pathetic varieties of the common lot, every form of human experience, every type of character, would have an attraction of its own. In the view of such a mind nothing would be common or unclean. To Shakespeare all aspects of life, even the humblest, had points of contact with his own. He could talk simply and naturally without a touch of patronage or condescen- sion to a hodman on his ladder, a costermonger at his stall, the tailor on his board, the cobbler in his combe, the hen-wife in her poultry-yard, the ploughman in his furrow, or the base mechanicals at the wayside country inn. He could watch with full and humorous appreciation the various forms of brief authority and petty officialism, the bovine stolidity and empty consequence of the local Dogberries and Shallows, the strange oaths and martial swagger of a Pistol, a Bardolph, or a Parolles, the pedantic talk of a Holofernes, the pragmatical saws of a Polonius, or the solemn absurdities of a self-conceited Malvolio. On the other hand he could seize from the inner side by links of vital affinity every form of higher character, pas- sionate, reflective, or executive, lover and prince, duke and captain, legislator and judge, counsellor and king, and portray with almost equal ease and with vivid truth- fulness men and women of distant ages, of different races, and widely sundered nationalities. As in his dramatic world he embraces the widest variety of human experience, so in his personal character he may ​768 SHAKESPEARE be aaid to have combined in harmonious union the widest range of qualities, inHndf"g some apparently the moat opposed. He was a vigilant and acute man of business, of great executive ability, with a power of looking into affairs which included a thorough mastery of tedious legal details. Bat with all his worldly prudence and foresight he was at the same time the most generous and affectionate of 12mo - Hovefl, Sele* Pirn*. IMS, honoured and loved by all who knew him, with the irre- sistible charm that belongs to simplicity and directness of fknmrtfr t combined with thoughtful sympathy and real lriwinAE of heart. AnH, while displaying unrivalled skill, sagacity, and firmneaa in buaineas transactions and practical affairs, he could promptly throw the whole burden aside, and in the exercise of his noble art pierce with an eagle's wing the very highest heaven of invention. That indeed was his native air, his true home, his permanent sphere, where he still rules with undisputed sway. He occupies a throne apart in the ideal and immortal kingdom of supreme creative art, poetical genius, and dramatic truth. (T. s. B.) BIBLIOGRAPHY." L Ptxtrsrju. Coiaxcrrrs EMTMKS. Jor Cirfa. isn. 8 ; H. S. Hndaon. Plam^*eltttoM,JSattoa, 1872, rob, am. Sro; 8. tamtam, Sriortal Pirn**, all iaj imjor oW fomnm f 1882. mi. Sro. m PEDCTTAI TaxAssLanoss ot WOBUL Gfi man.C. X. Wlrbal. 1762-6, 8 rate. Sro; J. J. Tutumltmt 1~n '. 13 rob. Sro; A. W. T. SeUoeLlTO-lSML vote. *o ; J. H. and H. and A. TOM, 1818-2*, t rob. Sro; J. W. O. Benda, 1825-6, I* rob. Mtno; J. Meyer and BL Nkm. 1824-34, a pta. ISmo; Sehlegel-Tieek, 1825-33, ft rob. 12mo ; P. Kanfman, 1830-6, 4 rob. 12mo; E. Ottlepn, 1838-0, IS rob, 12mo; Sckbtl- peek-nnei, 1867-71, IX vote. Sro; F. BodoMtedt, 1867-71, 38 rote. sm. Sro; ItafdL mm, ax., 1778-82, S rob. Sro; A. 8. Kak, 1372-80, 7 rob. Sro. Foersos. and P. F. WnhT, 1807-25. 18S7-5LL2 rob. Spa.
F p. 170
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1866 1807 1818 i = 1623 P. i latfoBo. J
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1864
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18724
1974
1ST) 1877 1979
ami tLCmamtn U aggard A Bloaat) [rcarisaed
redaeed by J. O. 24 faaa (Cotes). "* Miftmm Ut 8o, Bowe (Toosoo). 7 A. tapt (TonsoaX 7 rob. 4to. L. Theobald (TonsonX 7 rob. Sro, plates. Sb- T. Hammer (Oxford), 4 rob, **. fkamm, Bp. Warbartoa, 8 rob. Sro. Dr S. Johnson (TonsoaX rob, Sro. ..' aad G. minimi 10 rote. STO. . Stage ed." (BellX 8 rob. Umo, plates. E. Malone (BaldwinX *rst " Variorum ed.," 10 vob. am. Sro. Johnson and Steeren** 4th ed^ by L Keed, If Tab. Sro. 1st American ed., S. Johnson (PhibdelpbU), S rote. 12mo. 1st CanHii i allied. (Branawiek), 8 rob. Sro; repr. of 1793 ed. Basel, 1799-180*. 23 rols. Sro. BoTdell. mas. ed. (Burner). 9 rob. foL, pbte*, and 2 addidonal rt A. Chalmers, 9 rob. ftro, FnselT* pbtes. Heath's engiailags, C rote. imp. 4to. T. Bowdler'* " Family ed_" complete, 10 rob. ISmo. . Makwe, by J. Boswell, " Varionun ed.," 21 rob. 8m Ber. W. Harness. 8 rob. Sro. S. W. Singer (Ptcke:ine), 10 rob. ISmo, woodcuts. 1st French ed. (Baodry), Sro. L. Tieck (LeipsieX roy. Sro. J. Valpr, " Cabinet Pictorial ed.,- 15 rob. cm. STO. C. Knight. " Pictorial ed^" 8 rob. imp. Sro. B. Cornwall, 3 rob. imp. Sro, woodcut* by Keny Meadows. J. P. Collier, 8 rote. Sro. C. Knight, " Library ed.," 12 rota. Sro. woodcut*. O. W. Peabody (Boston, C.S.X 7 rob. Sro. Dr G. C. Vervlanck (X.Y.X 3 rota. roy. 8ro, woodcuts. " Laaadowne ed.," (WhiteX *">. Ber. H. N. Hudson (Boston, U.S.), 11 rob. 12mo. J. P. Collier (*ee Pawn Collier Controvert j, p. 771X Sro. J. O. HaOiwen. 16 rob, folio, pbtes. X. Delia* (KberfeldX 8 rob. STO. Stager and W. W. Lloyd (BellX 10 rob. 12mo. Ber. A. Dyce (Mown), 6 rob. STO, 2d ed., le*4-67. B. O. White (Boston, U.S.X 12 rob. cr. STO. H. Stannton, 3 rob. roy. 8ro, ninstrated by Sir J. Gilbert. Mr* Cowden Clarke (X.Y.X 2 rob. roy. Sro. W. G. Clark, J. Glorer, and W. A. Wright, "Cambridge ed. rob. Sro. J. B. Marsh, " Reference ed_" brge Sro. C. and M. C. Clarke (Casstll), fllnstrated by H. C. Selons. 3 rob. b. Sro. C. Knight, " Imperial," 4 rob. bop. 4u>, plate*. A. A. Paton, " Hmrnnet ed.," Sro, in progress (18861 H. H. Fumes*, " Varionun ed." (Phil.), rob. 1-6, Sro, W G. CUik snd W. A. Wright. " Globe," sm. STO. . . , . ., , . er. H. X. Hndaon, " Harrard ed. "(Boaton, U^.X JO rob, lima L Wrt*wort*, " Hbtorictl Pbr,," 3rob7aai. bJo ' " " Ee CL , , Rolfe'* " Friendly ed.," 20 rob. ISmo (X.Y.X [G. Steeren*, flMtfy of lite Playt, 1766, 4 rob. Sro, contain* Hfflfcili of the eariy editions. 48 rob. of the quartos were facsimiled by E. W. Ashbee (1S66-71X voder the tnperintend- ence of HaffiweH ; photo-lithographic reprodoct ion* of earlr f*t*i by Grlggs and Prartorin*. with introduction* by Farnirall, Ac.. 1878, *c.. are now being poblbbed: 28 out of 38 rob. 4to bare been Usued.] > This b an attempt to supply the want of a select classified bibliography of the literature connected with Shakespeare. Great compf essioolW beat IV. M78, Sro, aad A Shaft Ffaar of on Mr firmer" (in Mitat- ,TheTr ,1693, Sro; Leetmrc*. 1694, Sro); i. Den&b, The Impartial Critic, 1692. 4to, and the Gent** ami Writimat 0/8., 1712, Sro; Z. Grey, Word or Two -- to W. Warottrton, 1746, STO, Free and FamOiar Letter to W. War- Hutaritmt, mmd Sue*, 17S4, " "f ^" ^rwmm m,i *ir*r, vw, Acwpy V*v, A*. ^x^aBmsvasaw ^*mmmmf andVarioMfSemdayttoS., 1756, 4U> a779-86X 3rob, 4to; P. Xkhob, The Cattrated Utter of Sir T. Hammer, 1763, Sro; Prince* *y Dr Johnoan, Pope, Theobald, a*., 1765, Sro; W. Kenrick, Jtoic^ of Dr J Anton' * Sew B^tmSS. 1765, Sro, ami Defence, 1766; G. Steeroaa, .Pua.asfi for Prmti Edition, 1766. Sro; Mr* BHt Montagu, Ettay on Writinat and 8., 1769. 8ro, freqaenUy reprinted ; W. Kenriek, - -^= S., 1773, 8ro; Mrs Biz. Grimth, Morality of 8.*
ntttitm, /'ruaiasfi for Printing a Sew ntaga, Ettay on Writing* and Gent** of

## W. Kenrick, fntrrdvrtrim to the School if

.,.-, -~. _ .__, Morality of 8 .'* Drama, 1775, Sro ; Voltaire, 4Ere a rAcadtmie, 1776. Sro, on Letownen'k translation; J. Baretti, Diteomnma-8. et VoUaire, 1777, Sro; E. Malone, 9*pplrmfnt to the Edition of 1778, 1780, 2 rob. Sro, Second Appendix, 1783, Sro; J. Kitson, Remark* on the Text and XoU* oflSUevenS* 1778] a(im, 1783. STO ; T. Daries, Dramatic MitedUme*. 1783-t, 3 rob. Sro : J. ML Maaon, CoammnsttMt the La* Edition, 1785. Sro ; T. Whatety, Remark* on tome of the Character*, 1785, 8ro, new edition by Archbishop Wnately , 1839, 12mo ; J J Kacbenbarg,r>rn>dk .
j>er/ee( JJiarf* toward* a Sew Edition of 8., 1787-8. 2 pta. to; A. Ecelea, llbutration* and Vmrtarmm Comment* on Lear, Cymhtiint, and Merchant of Venice, 1792-1805, 3 rob. 12mo; B. Malone, Letter to R. Farmer, 1792, Sro; J. Kimott, Cvrmy Critidtm on Malone"* Edition, 1792, STO; Malone, Protpecrn* of am, Edition in U tot*, row. Ma, 1792, 4to ; Pfcmnf Percy, OrMn / Oe JnoiMft SbyK. 1793, Sro; E. Malone. pTopotaUjZTan Intended Edition in K tol*. roy. 8vo, 1795, folio; W. Richardson, JSM* o anae of 8.'* Dramatic Character*, 1797, 1812, Sro, reprint of separate pieces; Lord Chedworth, Sole* on tome Otoatre Pottage*, 1805, Sro, pri- ratery printed ; B. B. Sermovr, Bemarkt on the Play* of &, 1805, 2 Tob, 8ro ; F. Donee, llhutration* of 8. and Ancient Manners, 1807, 2 Tob. STO, new edition 1839, Sro; H. J. Pye, Comment* on the Commentator*, 1807, STO ; J. M. Maaon, Comment* on the oeweral Edition*. 1807. 8ro; C. (and M.) Lamb, Tale* from , 1807, 2 rob. 12mo, pbtes, frequemUy translated and reprinted ; A. Beca^& Malayan. 1815, 2 rob. Sro; W. **&&, Character* of 8.'* Play*, 1817, STO, new edition 1873 ; X. Drake, 8. and hi* Time*, 1817, 2 Tob. 4to, and Memorial* of 8., 1838 ; Z. Jackson, 8.'* Genim* Jmttijied, Example* '00 Error* in hit Play*, 1819, Sro ; [Variorum] Annotation* JUtutrative of Play* of 8., 1819. 2 Tob 12mo. published with Scboley'* edition; W. 8ro; IL Beyle, Ratine et 8., 1823-5, 2 pta. Sro ; T. Bowdler, LeOfr U Editor ofBritith Critic, IsS. STO, defends omissions; T. P. Conrtenar, Com***- tarie* upon the Bietorieal Play* of 8., 1840, 2 rob. am. STO ; K. Sybrandi, Verhandeling goer YondA en 8., HaarVm. 1841. 4to ; ReT. A. Dree, Remark* on Collier-* and Knight* Edition*, 1844, Sro; J. Hunter, Sew l&utration* of 8., 1845, 2Tob. STO; G. Fletcher, Stwdie* of 8., 1847, STO; L. Tieck. Dra- ence of 8.'* Play*, 1850, STO ; V. E. P. Chasles, tude* tvrW.8.. Mori* Stmart, et tAretin, 1851, ISmo; F. A. T. Kreymig, rorle*uge* n. &, 1838-60, 3rob., 2d ed. 1874, 2 rob. STO, and 8. Prayen, Lapoc, 1871, STO ; [O Council!, Sew Exegetit of 8., 1859, Sro ; 8. Jerrb, PnytotdEmrndati*** of 8., 2d ed. 1861, STO; R. Cartwright, The Footttept of 8-, 1862, STO, Sew Reading* in 8., 1866, STO, and Paper* &, 1877, STO; G.G. Gerrinus, 4*. Cvmmentanet trandated, 1863, 2 rofcv, new edition rerbed 1875, 8ro ; S. Bailey. Thereeeittd Text of 8.'* Dramatic Writing*, 1862-6, 2 rob. STO; C. C. Clarke. 8. Character*, ehiejly thaae Subordinate, IMS, Sro ; H. Marggraff. W. 8. at* Lehrer der MentchheX, Leipaie, 1864, Ifimo; J. H.Hackett, J Vote* and Comment*, X. T., 1864, am. Sro; , v*A*v , v A*~ *B.afc J .ai > ^.T V !* V WM CM-*, < J. -. A^aVK, OBU, O* V p . ., *et ctmrret et *** critique*, 1865, Sro; EL Wellesley, Stray Sotetonthe Text 0/8., 1865, 4to; A. . L. de !. 8. et ton aemtrc, 1865, STO ; W. L. Rashton, 8. llhatrated by old Author*, 1867-& 2 pis. STO; T. Keigbtley, The 8. Exporter, 1867, am. STO ; B. Tschbchwitz, 8. Ponthnngen, 1868, 3 rob. Sro; G. K. French, Sha*e*peareana Geneatoyia*, 1868, Sro; f. Jacox, 8. Divertio**, 1873-7, 2 rob. STO; H. T. Friesen. Da* B*ch: S. f. Oermm**, Leipsic, 186D, STO, & Stmdien, Vienna, 1874-6, 2 rob. Sro, and K. Elze't W. 8., Leipaie. 1876, STO ; H. T. HalL ShaketftarianPly Leaiet, 174, 8ro; K. R. Proelat, ErlavUntngen, Leipsic, 1874-8, pta. 1-6, am. STO, inclod- necesaary. Articles in periodicab not baaed separately, and modern critical editions of stogie plays, are not included ; and only those of the play* usually contained in the collectire editions are noticed. The name, in its rarioos sare, Shakvpeare, Shakespear, Snakcpere, Ac.), is usaally initial & ​SHAKESPEARE 769 ing Hamlet. Julias Caesar, Merchant of Venice, Much Ado, Ac., Richard II Komeo and Juliet ; C. W. H. G.r. Eumelin, 8. Studien, 3d ed., Stutt - STO : X. A. C. Hebler, Aitftatzf . 8., 2d ed., Bern, 1674, STO ; F. J. Furnivall The Succession *8.'t Works and the Utet / Metrical Tat*, 1874, STO: O. Ludwig, 8. Studien, 1874, STO; E. Dowden, 8.: a Critical Study of kit Mind mm* Art, 1875, 8ro; C. 31. Ingleby, $. Hermeneutiet, 1875, 4to, S., t* Ifan and tte Boot, 1877-81. 2 pts. 4to. mod Occasional Paper* on 5., 1881, sq. ICmo ; F. EL Elze, ^UMdhmpeM zw 8- 1877, 8ro, and noy on 8., trans- lated. 1874, STO ; E. Hermann. Drei S. Studien, Eriangen, 1877-0, 4 pts. SB. STO, V>&r Beitraye, fl>., 1881, sm. Svo : H. H Vanghan, Ae Reading* and Mm Renderings of 8.'* Tragediet, 1878-S6, 3 Tola. 8ro; F. G. f}e*j, 8. Manual, 1878, sm. STO ; J. O. Halliwell Phillipps. SoUt and Memoranda [on 4 Plays! 18*8-80, 4 pts., 8ro, and Memoranda [on 12 Plays], 1S79-&0, 7 pte. 8vo ; A. C. Swinburne, A Study of S., 1S80, STO ; D. J. Snider, System & &'* Dramas, new edition, 1880, STO ; F. A. KenT.le, Xotet on om of S.'t Plain, 1882. Svo ; H. Giles, Hitman Life in 8., Bfston, 1882, 12mo ; B. G. Kinnear, Crucet Shakespearian*, 1883, am. STO ; C. C. Hense. 8. Studien, Halle. 1883, Svo ; X S. G. Canning, Thoughtt on S.'t Historical Playt, 1884, STO; Seie Study of S., 1884, STO ; J. W. Hales, Sotet and Ettmyt on S., 18S4, cm. STO ; J. Feis, S. and Montaigne, 1884, sm. 8ro ; Sir P. Perring, Hard Knot* in 8., 1885, Svo ; E. Bossi, Studitn ub. 8. u. d. Modeme Theater, 1885, 8ro ; F. A. Leo, S. Sotet, 1885, STO ; E. G. Moulton, S. at a Dramatic Artist, 1885, STO ; E. G. White, Studies in S., Boston, 1885, 8ro. S. Special Work* on Separate Play*, *c., wit* Date* of Early Quarto*. ALL'S WELL THAI Eros WELL (lit ed. in F.l, 1623): H. T. Hagen, Ueb. die altframot. Vorttufe det Lustspielet, Halle, 1879, STO. ASTOJTT AJTD CLEOPATRA (1st ed. in F.l). As Yoc LIKE IT flat ed. in F.l) : W. Whiter, Specimen of a Commentary, 1794, STO ; A. O. Kellogg, Jacques, Utfca, 1665, STO ; a Sheldon, Sate*, 1877, 8ro; T. Stothard, 8.'* Seren Ages lUuttrated, 1799, folio ; J. ETans, 8.'* Seven Age*, 3d ed. 1834, 12mo ; J. W. Jones, Origin tf the Division of Man'* Life into Stage*, 1861, 4to. COXKDT OF ERRORS (1st ed. in F.I). CORIOLASCS (1st ed. to F.I): F. A. Leo, Di* Deliut'tcheAutgabekrititchbeleuehtet, Berlin, 1961, fro. CntBELISE (1st ed. in F.I). HAXLET (Q.L, 1603 ; Q.2, 1804 ; Q^, 1605 ; Q.4, 1608 : QJ, 1611 ; Q.6, luL ; Q.7, 1637) : L. Theobald, 8. Restored, 1736, 4to, devoted to Hamlet ; Sir T. Hanmer, Some Remark* an Hamlet, 1736, 8ro, reprinted 1863, sm. 8ro ; J. I'lumptre, Obierwttion* on Hamlet, and Append**, 1796-7, 2 pts. STO ; F. L. Schmidt, Sammluny der betten UrtheUe Aer Hamlet, QnedL, 1808, STO; A. G. Barante, Sur Hamlet, 1824, 8ro; P. MacdonnelL, Essay on Hamlet, 1843, -L- E. Strachey, 8.'* Hamlet, 1848, STO; H. K. S. Canston, Essay on Mr Singer-* Wormwood, 1851, STO ; L. Noire 1 , Hamlet, zvei Vortrage, Mainz, 1&56, 16mo; M. W. Sooner, Hamlet, First Edition (1603), 1856, 8ro; 8.'* Hamlet, <O5and MM, with Bibliographical Preface, by & Tiramins, I860, STO; A. Gerth, Der Hamlet r. 8^ Leip., 1861, STO ; J. Conolly, A Study of Hamlet, 1863, Em. Svo ; H. T. Friesen, Brief e ub. S.'t Hamlet, Le ipsic, 1865, STO ; A. Flir, Briefc rt. S.'i Hamlet, Innsbruck, 1865, STO ; W. D. Wood, Hamlet from a Psycho- logical Point of View, 1870, STO; E. H. Home (editor), Wat Hamlet Mad t a Serict of Critique*, 1871, STO; G. F. Stedefeld, Hamlet ein Tendenzdrama, Berlin, 1S71, STO ; A. Meadows, Hamlet: an Ettay, 1871, STO ; B. G. Latham, The Hamlet of Sazo Grammatieuf and 8., 1872, 8ro ; F. A. Marshall, Study of Hamlet, 1875, 6vo ; H. T. Strove, Hamlet eine Charakterstudie, Weimar, 1576, STO ; H. Baumgart, Die Hamlet Tragodie u. ihre.KritOc, Konigsb., 1S77, STO; A. Zinzow, Die Hamlet Sage, Halle, 1877, STO ; A. Buchner, Hamlet le Hanoi*, 1878, 8ro ; M. Moltke, 8. 1 * Hamlet QueUen, 1881, STO ; E. P. Vining, The Myttery of Hamlet, Philad., 1881, sm. STO [Hamlet a woman] ; H. Better, Zvr Hamlet Fraae, 1882, 8ro ; E. Stenger, Der Hamlet Charakter, 1883, STO ; A. Breneton t &wie^Mo*flaailee^l884,8ro. HJB3ST IV. (Pt L:Q.L,15fl8; Q.2, 1539; Q.3, 1604; Q.4, M08; Q.5, 1613; Q.6, 1622; Q.7, 1632; Q.8, 1639. PL iL: Q.1 and Q.2, 1600): E. A. Strare, Studien z* 8.'* Henn, IV., KJel, 1851, 4to, HBntT V. (Q.1, i; Q.2, 1602; Q.3, 16OS): G. A. Schmeding, Eaayt on 8.'* Henry V., 1874, STO. HEXET VL (PL L 1st ed. in F.L Pt. iL 1st ed. in Vlli. (1st ed. in F.I). JCLITS CXSAK (1st ed. in F.I): G. L. Craik, The EitffUA of 8. Itbutrated, 3d ed. 1866, sm. Svo ; H. Gomont, Le Cetar de 8., 1874, 8ro; W. G. Moberly, Hint* for 8. Study exemplified t Juliu* Caetar, 1881, STO. KDG JOBS (1st authentic ed. in F.I. 'TrmMesome, Baigne, spurious : Q.1, 1591 ; Q.J, 1611 ; Q.3, 1622). EJSO LlAE (Q.1, Q.2, Q.3, 108 ; Q.4, M55): [a Jennens], King Lear Vindicated, 1772, STO ; H. Xeamann, Ueber Lear u. Ophelia, Breda, W86, 8ro L /. E. Seeley, W. Yoong, and E. A. Hart, ys. LOVE'S LABOCE 'a (Dr S. Johnson], Kemble, Macbeth Amst U64, 8ro: 6. Baton,' Psychokgy of Macbeth, 1869, STO ; J. G. Eitter, Aitrd^zvrli.dMjraeb<a,Leer,1871,2pts.4to; V. Kaiser, Macbeth und Lady Macbeth, Basel, 1875, STO ; E. E. BusselL, The True Macbeth, 1875, Svo ; T. Han Caine, Richard III. and Macbeth, 1877, STO ; A. Horst, Konig Xaebetk. erne Muttnehe Sage, Bremen, 1876, 16mo. MEASURE FOR MEASTEE (1st ed. in F.l). MEETHIWT or Ymo (Q.1, Q.2, 1600 ; Q.3, 1637 ; Q.4, 1652) : G. Farren, Euay on Shylock, 1833, STO; F. V. Hugo, Commentary on the Merchant tf Venice, tnnttnted, WO, STO; H. Graetz, Shylock in d. Sage, 1880, 8*0; A. Pietecber, Vernuh einer Studie ub. 8.'* Kaufman* v. V., 1881, STO ; C. H. C. Plath, S.'t Kaufmann . F., 1882, STO. MZXXT Wms or Wm0om(Q.l, 1602; Q.2, 1619: Q.3, 1630): J.O.Halliwen Phfflipps, Account fthe only known MS. of S.'t Play*, 1843, 8ro. Mn>srjf MER KreHTB DEZAJC (Q.I, Q.2, 1600) : X. J. Hatpin, Oberon'* Vitianand LyKe"* Endymion (Shake- speare Society), 1843, STO ; J. O. HalliweD PhOlipps, Introduction to 8.'* Mid- - ' mtmn Drei 8. Studien, Eriangen, 1877-9, 4 pU. sm. STO ; L. E. A. Proescboldt, On the Source* of 8.'* Midsummer Sights Dream, 1878, STO. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHUKJ (Q.L, 1600) : W. W. Lloyd. Much Ado, <te., with essay, 1884, STO, to prore repoted prose to be metricaL OTHELLO (Q.1, 1622 ; Q.2, 1630 ; Q.3, 1655) : W. Parr, The Story of the Moor of Venice, 1795, 8ro ; E. G. Macgregor, OtheUos Character, 1852, 8ro; J. E. Taylor. The Moor of Venice, Caahio-s Tale and S.'t Tragedy, 1896, 8ro. PERICLES (Q.1 [Pavier, n. d.] ; Q.2, Q-VMW; Q.4, 1611; Q^, 1619; Q.6. M; Q.7, 1635) : E. Boyle, On WiOnnf* Share in Pericles, 1882, 8ro. BiCHAEJ> IL (Q.1, L597; Q.2, 1598; Q.3, Q.4, W08; Q.5, 1615; Q.6, 1634): Eiecbelmann, Zu Richard II. 8. u Holinthed, Planeii, 1860, 8ro. BJCHARD LTL (Q.1, 1597; Q.2, 1SW; Q^, 1602; Q.4, M05; 0-5, 1612; QA, 1622 ; Q.7, 1624; Q8, 1629; Q.9, 16S4) : M. Beale, Lecture on the Times and Play of Richard III., 1844, 8ro; I. F. Schoene, Ueber den Charakter Richard III. bei 8., 1856, 8ro; L Moser, Observation! on S.'t
1S; QJ, MOB; Q.4, a. d.; Q.5, 1637) : J. C. Walker, Historical Memoir on Italian trmaed*, 1798. 4to ; G. Pace iMf The Original Story tf Rtmt* er. Die Komfotition S.'t I. . : ^.-.: ami JuKet, by L. da Porto, 1868, 8*0; X.
- vo, a critical essay ; M. F. Guenther, Defence of S.'t Romeo and Juliet, vo ; E. Gericke, Romeo u. Julia nach S.'s MS., 1880, STO. TAMQG OF THE SHREW (1st ed. in F.l). TEMPEST (1st ed. in F.l) : J. Holt, Remark* on the Tempett, 1750, STO; E. Malone, Incident* from, which S.'s Tempest wot dented, 1808-9, 2 pts. STO ; G. Chalmers, Another Account, Jkc^ 1815, STO ; Eer. J. Hunter, DitquitUion on the Tempett, 1839, STO; P. MacdonnelL Ettay on the Tempett, 1840, Svo ; Sote* of Studies on the Taming of the Sfcrw*& Society of Philadelphia. 1866. 4to, with bibliography of the Tempest J. MeJsener, Untertuehungen ub. S.'t Sturm, Dessau, 1872, STO; D. WiUon, Ca/don, the Mating Link, 1873, STO; C. C. Hense, Dot Antikt in S/* Dramen:D Sturm, 1879, STO. TTMOS OF Annas (1st ed. in F.l): A. Mueller, Ueber die QueUen aus denen S. den Timon v. Athen entnommen hat, Jena, 1873, STO. Tirrs AXDROXICUS (Q.I, 1594, no copy known ; Q.2. 1600 y^ 1611) TROILUS AJTD CRESSIDA (Q.L, Q.2, 1609): Annotations by S. Johntan, G. Steevent, Ac., upon TroUus and Crettida, 1787, 12mo ; L. ""fa'e. De S.f-tbula quse Troilus et Crettida inscribitvr, 1870, STO. TWELFTH >~IGHT THE Two GESTLEMZS OF VEROSA, and THE WISTER'S TALE (all three first printed in F.l)u SOSHETS (Q.1, 1609): J. Boaden, On the Sonnett of 8., 1837, STO ; C. A. Brown, S.'t Autobiographical Poems, 1838, Svo ; L Donnelly, The Sonnets of 8., 1859, STO ; Dr Karnstorff, Key to S.'t Sonnets, translated, 1862, STO B Corney, The Sonnett of 8^ 1862, STO ; [E. A. Hitchcock], Remarks on the Sonnett of 8., J'.Y., 1865, 12mo ; B, Simpson, Introduction to the Philosophy ofS t Sonnett, 1868, 8ro ; H. Brown, The Sonnets of 8. tolvcd, 1870, STO ; C. M. Ingleby, The Soule arrayed, Sonnet cxlri., 1872, STO ; G. Massey, The Secret Drama of S.'t Sonnett unfolded, 2d ed. 1872, STO. VESTS ASD ADOXIS (Q.L 1593; Q.2, 1594; sm. STO, 1596, 1599, 1600(?X 1602, 1617, 1620, 1627, 1630, 1636 ; Svo, 1675) : A. Morgan, Venus and Adonis, Study in Warwickshire Dialect, X. V., 1S85, STO. LCCRECE (Q.I, 1594 ; sm. STO, 1598, 1600 1607 1616 : 16mo, 1624 ; 12mo, 1632 ; 16mo, 1B55). PASSIO5ATE PILGRIM (16mo, 1509 - 2d ed. not known ; 3d ed. 16mo, 1612) : A. Hoehnen, 8.'i Pattionate Pilgrim 1867, STO, dissertation. FALSTAFF : C. Morris, True Standard of Wit, vith Character of Sir J FalHaff, 1744, Svo ; W. Eichardson, Essay* on Character of Sir J. Falttaf -- ; M. Morgan, Ettay on Sir J. Falsta/, 1777, new edition 1825, STO, vindicates his courage ; J. H. Hackett, Falsta/, 1840, STO ; J. O. Halliwell Phillipps, On the Character of Falttaf in Henry IV., 1841, STO ; E. Schneller Don Quixote und Falttaf, Berlin, 1858, STO ; G. W. Eusden, Character o/ Falttaf, Melbourne, 1870, STO. FEMALE CHARACTERS: W. Eichardson On S.'t Female Characters, <fre., 1788, STO; A. M. Jameson, Characteristics of JTomen, 1&32, 2 vols. I2mo. illustrated; C. Heath. The Heroine* of 8., 1848. large 4to, illustrated, and The 8. Gallery, containing the Principal Female Charaetert, 1836, large 8ro, plates reproduced in H. L. Palmer's Stratford GaUery, X.T., 1858, large STO ; M. C. Clarke, Girlhood of S.'t Heroines, 1850-2, 3 rota. 8ro ; H. Heine, Englitche Fragmente und S.'s Madehen und Frauen, Hamburg, 1861, sm. STO ; F. A. Leo, S.'t Frauenideale, Halle, 1868, STO; F. M. T. Bodenstedt, S.'t Frauencharaktere, 2d ed., Berlin, 1876, STO; M. Summer, Let Heroines de Kalidasa et let Heroine* de S., 1879, sm. STO ; Lady Martin, On tome of S.'s Female Characters, 1885, STO ; Mrs M. L. Elliott, S.'t Garden of Girls, 1S85, STO. HUMOUR : J. Weiss, Wit, Humour, and 8., Boston, 1876, 16mo ; J. E. Ehrlich. Der Humor S.'t, Vienna, 1878, 8ro. V. LASGUAGE, rscLUDnrc GRAMMARS ASD GLOSSARIES. T. Mwards, Supplement to Mr Warburton's Edition, being the Canon* of Criticism and Glossary, 1748, STO, 7th ed. 1765 ; E. Warner, Letter on a Glossary to 8., 1763, Svo ; E. Nares, Glossary, 1822, 4to, new edition 1&59, 2 Tols. STO ; J. M. Jost, ErkL Worterbuch, Berttn, 1830, sm. STO ; J. O. Halliwell Phillipps, Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1846-7, 2 Tola, STO, and Hand-Book Index to the Work*, 1866, Svo, phrases, manners, Ac. ; J. L. Hilgers, Sind meht in 8. noch manche Verse mederherzutteSen in Prosal Aix-la-Chapelle, 1852, 4to; N. Delias, 8. Lexikon, Bonn, 1852, STO; W. S. Walker, S.'s Versification, 1854, STO, and Examination of the Text of 8., vith Remark* on hi* Language, 1860, 3 vols. STO ; C. Bathurst, S.'t Versification at diferent Periods, 1857, sm. STO ; 8. Jerris, Dictionary of the Language of 8., 1868, 4to ; G. Hehnes, The English Adjeetire in 8., Bremen, 1868, STO ; A. J. Ellis, On Early Englixh Pronunciation, 1869-75, 4 Tols. STO ; W. L. Enshton, S.'s Euphuism, 1871, STO ; D. Eobde, Die Hiilftzeitwort " To do" bei 8., Gottin- gen, 1872, 8ro; E. A. Abbott, Shakespearian Grammar, new edition 1873, sm. STO; K. Seitz, Die Alliteration im Engl. nor u. bei 8., 1875, 4to; F. Pfeffer, Die Anredepronomina bei 8^ 1877, STO. ; P. A. Bronisch, Das neutrale Pottettivpromn* bei 8., 1878, STO ; O. W. F. Lohmann, Die Auslattung det Relatirpronomens, &c., 1879, STO ; A. Dyce, Glossary, new edition, 1880, STO ; C. Deutschbein, 8. Grammatik f. Deuttehe, 1882, STO A. Lummert, Die Orthographic der erxtcn Folioautgabe, 1883, STO ; C. Mackay, Obscure Words and-Phratft in 8., 18S4, STO ; G. H. Browne, S.'s Vertijieation, Boston, 18S4, 12mo, includes bibliography ; L. Kellner, Zur Syntax det Engl. Verbumt, Vienna, 1885, STO; J. H. Siddons, Shakespearian Referee, Washington, 1886, STO, encyclopaedic glossary. VL QUOTATIOSS. C. Gildon, Shakespeariana, in his Complete Art of Poetry, 1718, 12mo, the first of the class ; Dr W. Dodd, The Beauties of 8., 1752, 2 vola. 12mo, reprinted (in various forms) more frequently than any similar work ; C. Lofft, Aphorisms frvm 8., 1812, 12mo ; T. Dolby, The Shakespearian Dictionary, 1832, STO, and A Thousand Shakespearian Mottoes, 1856, 32mo ; Mrs M. C. Clarke, 8. Proverbs, 1847, sm. 8ro, reprinted ; J. B. Marsh, Familiar, Proverbial, and Select Say- ing* from 8., 1864, 8ro ; E. Eoutledge, Quotations from 8., 1867, Svo ; C. W. Steams, The 8. Treasury, y.f., 1869, 12mo ; Capt. A. F. P. Harconrt, The 8. Argosy, 1874, sm. STO ; G. 8. Bellamy, Ji'ew Shakespearian Dictionary, 1877, STO ; A. A. Morgan, The Mind of 8., 1880, STO, quotations in alphabetical order; C. Arnold, Index to Shakespearian Thought, 1880, STO VTL CO5CORDA5CES. A. Becket, Concordance, 1787, STO, the earliest ; S. Ayscongh, Index, 1790, large STO, 2d ed. enlarged, 1827, useful ; F. Twias, Complete Verbal Index, 1805, 2 Tota. Svo ; M. Cowden Clarke, Complete Concordance, 1844, 8ro, deals only with the plays (no complete one exists); Mrs H. H. Furness, Concord- ance to Poems, Philadelphia, 1874, STO. completing Mrs C. Clarke's; A. Schmidt, 8. LexOcon, Berlin, 1874-5, 2 Tols. large STO, in English, both concordance and dictionary ; C. and M. C. Clarke, The 8. Key, 1879, STO, companion to the Concordance; J. Bartlett, The 8. Phrase Book, 1881, STO; W. H. D. Adams, Concordance to Playt, 1886, &TO. VLTI. PROBABLE SOURCES. Mrs C. Lennox, 8. lUuttrated, 1753-4, 3 Tols. L2mo, dedication by Johnson, nmmr of the observations also said to be by him ; T. Hawkins, The Origin oj the gngtith Drama, 1773, S rot*. Svo; J. Mebols, The Six Old Playt on which 8. Jbmminl Measure for Measure, tc., 1779, 2 Tola. 12mo ; T. Echtermeyer L'HeiHeheL tmdf. Sfawoek, Quellen det 8^ Berlin, 1831, 3 Tola. 16mo; L. I '* Vorsehule Leiptic, 1823-9, 2 Tohv 8ro; J. P. Coffier, S.'t Library ri&43L 2 rote. 8ro, 2d ed. [by W. C. Hazlitt] 1875, 6 Tols. 8ro ; W. C. Hazlitt, Mfe* Boofa, 1864, 3 Tols. 8ro : W. W. Skeat, S.'t Plutarch, 1875. STO ; F. XXL 97 ​770 SHAKESPEARE A. Leo, Four Chapters of North's Plutarch, 1878, folio ; R. Simpson, The School ofS., 1878, 2 vols. 8vo. IX. SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE. AHGLING : H. N. EUacombe, S. as an Angler, 1883, 8vo. BIBLE : T. R. Eaton, 8. and the Bible, 1858, 8vo ; J. Brown, Bible Truths urith Shakespearian Parallels, 3d ed. 1872, 8vo ; J. Rees, S. and the Bible, Phil., 1876, am. 8vo ; Bp. C. Wordsworth, S.'s knowledge and Use of the Bible, 1864, 8vo; C. Bullock, S.'s Debt to the Bible, 1879, 8vo. BOTANY : J. E. Giraud, Flowers of S., 1847, 4to, plates ; S. Beisly, S.'s Garden, 1864, 8vo ; H. N. Ellacombe, Plant-lnre and Garden-craft of 8., 2d ed. 1884, sm. 8vo ; L. H. Griudon, S.'s Flora, 1883, 8vo. EMBLEMS : H. Green, S. and the Emblem Writers, 1870, 4to. FOLK- LORE : W. Bell, S.'s Puck and his Folks-lore, 1852-64, 3 vols. sm. 8vo ; W. J. Thorns. "The Folk-lore of Shakespeare," in Three Kotelets, 1865, 8vo, re- printed from Athenteum, 1847 ; B. Tschischwitz, Nachklange Germanischer Mi/the in S., Halle, 1868, Svo ; [W. C. Hazlitt, editor], Fairy Tales, Legend*, and Romances illustrating S., <Sec., 1875, 8vo ; T. F. T. Dyer, Folk-lore of S., 1884, 8vo. LEARNING: P. Whalley, Enquiry into the Learning of S., 1748, 8vo; R. Farmer, Essay on the Learning of 8., 1767, 8vo, reprinted in the variorum (1821) and other editions, criticized by W. Maginn, see S. Papers, annotated by S. Mackenzie. If. Y., 1856, sm. 8vo ; [K. Prescot], Essay on the Learning ofS., 1774, 4to; E. Capell, The School of S., 1780, 4to (vol. iii. of his Note* and Various Readings to S., 1779-83, 3 vols. 4to); P. Stapfer, S. et I'antiquite, Paris, 1879, 8vo, translated 1880, 8vo. LEGAL : W. L. Rushton, S. a Lawyer, 1858, 8vo, S.'s Legal Maxims, 1859, 8vo, S.'s Testamentary Language, 1869, 8vo, and S. illustrated by the Lex Scripta, 1870, 8vo ; Lord Campbell, S.'s Legal Acquirements, 1859, 8vo; H. T., Was S. a Lawyer f 1871, Svo ; J. Kohler, S. vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz, und Nachwort, 1883-4, 2 pts. 8vo; F. F. Heard, S. as a Lawyer, Boston, 1884, Ifimo ; C. K. Davis, The Law in S., St Paul, U.S., 1884, 8vo. MEDICINE : G. Fan-en, Essays on Mania exhibited in Hamlet, Ophelia, Ac., 1833, 8vo ; J. C. Bucknill, The Medical Knowledge ofS., 1860, 8vo, and The Mad Folk ofS., 1867, sm. 8vo ; C. W. Stearns, S.'s Medical Knowledge, N.Y., 1865, am. 8vo; G. Cless, Medicinische Blumenlese aus S., Stuttgart, 1865, 8vo ; A. O. Kellogg, S.'s Deliiieations of Insanity, <fcc., N.Y., 1806, IGmo ; H. R. Aubert, S. ate Mediciner, Rostock, 1873, 8vo ; J. P. Chesney, S. as a Physician, St Louis, 1884, 8vo; B. R. Field, Medical Thoughts of S., 2d ed., Boston, U.S., 1885, 8vo. MILITARY: W. J. Thorns, "Was S. ever a Soldier?" in his Three Notelets, 1865, 8vo. NATURAL HISTORY : R. Patterson, Insects mentioned in S.'s Plays, 1838, 8vo ; J. H. Fennell. S. Cyclopxdia, 1862, 8vo, pt. i. Zoology, Man (all published) ; J. E. Harting, Ornithology of S., 1871, 8vo ; C. R. Smith, The Rural Life QfS., 1874, 8vo ; J. Walter, S.'s llome and Rural Life, 1874, 4to, illustrated ; R Mayou, Natural History of S., 1877, 8vo, quotations ; E. 1'hipson, Animal Lore of S.'s Time, 1883, sm. 8vo. PHILO- SOPHY: W. J. Birch, Philosophy and Religion of S., 1848, sm. 8vo; V. Knauer, W. S., der PhiUutoph, Innsbruck, 1879, 8vo. PRINTING: W. Blades, S. and Typography, 1872, 8vo. PSYCHOLOGY: J^C. Bucknill, The Psychology/ of S., 1859, 8vo ; E. Onimus, La Psychologic dans les Drames de S., 1876, 8vo. SEA : J. Schuemann, See u. Seefahrt in S.'s Dramen, 1876, 4to. X. PERIODICALS. S. Mutevm, edited by M. L. Moltke, Leipsic, 23d April 1870 to 23d February 1874, 20 Nos. (all published) ; Shakespeariana t 1883, sm. 8vo, in progress. From the commencement of Notes and Queries in 1856, a special Shakespeare department (see Indexes) has been carried on. See also W. F. Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, Boston, 1882, and supplements. XI. SHAKESPEARE SOCIETIES AMD THEIR PUBLICATIONS. Proceedings of the Sheffield S. Club (1819-29), 1829, 8vo; Shakespeare Society, various publications, 1841-53, 48 vols. 8vo ; New Shakspere Society, Transactions and other publications, reprints of quartos, &c., 1874, &c., 8vo, in progress; Deutsche S. Gesellschaft, Jahrbuch, Weimar, 1865, &c., in pro- gress. The S. Societies of New York and Philadelphia publish transactions. XII. Music. W. Linley, S.'t Dramatic Songs, n. d., 2 vols. folio ; The S. Album, or Warwickshire Garland (C. Lonsdale), 1862, folio ; G. G. Gervinus, Handel u. S., Leipsic, 1868, 8vo ; H. Lavoix, Les Traducteurs de S. en Mugiaue, 1869, 8vo ; A. Rotfe, Handbook of 8. Music, 1878, 4to ; Lwt of Songs and Passages set to Music (N. S. Soc.), 1884, 8vo. See also the musical works of J. Addison, T. A. Arne, C. H. Berlioz^ Sir H. R. Bishop, C. Dibdin, W. Linley, M. Locke, G. A. Macfarren, F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, H. Purcell, G. Verdi, &c. XIII. PICTORIAL ILLUSTRATIONS. C. Taylor, Picturesque Beauties of S., after Smirke, Stothard, <fec., 1783-7, 2 vols. 4to ; W. H. Bunbury, Series of Prints Illustrative of S., 1792-6, oblong folio ; S. Harding, S. Illustrated, 1793, 4to ; S. Ireland, Picturesque Scenes upon the Avon, 1795, 8vo ; J. and J. Boydell, Collection of Prints from Pictures Illustrating the Dramatic Works of S., 1802-3, 2 vols. atlas folio, 100 plates, forms supplement to Boydell's edition ; reproduced by photography, 1864, 4to, reduced, and edited by J. P. Norris, Philadelphia, 1874, 4to; 8. Portfolio, 1821-9, roy. 8vo; Stothard, Illustrations of S., 1826, 8vo ; F. A. M. Retzsch, Gallerie zu S.'s dramat. Werken in Umrissen, Leipsic, 1828-46, 8 vols., obi. 4to ; J. Thurston, Illustrations of S., 1830, 8vo ; F. Howard, The Spirit of the Plays ofS., 1833, 5 vols. 8vo ; L. S. Ruhl, Skizzen zu S.'s dram. Werken, Frankfort, 1827-31, Cassel, 1838-40, 6 vols. oblong folio ; G. F. Sargent, S. Illustrated in a Series of Landscape and Archt- tectural Designs, 1842, Svo. reproduced as The Book of S. Gems, 1846, 8vo ; W. v. Kaulbach, S. Gallene, Berlin, 1857-8, 3 pts. folio ; P. Konewka. Efn Sommernachtstrauin, Heidelb., 1868, 4to, and Falsta/u. seine Gesellen, Stras- burg, 1872, 8vo ; E. Dowden, S. Scenes and Characters, 1876, 4to, illustrations from A. F. Pecht's S. Gallerie, Leipsic, 1876, 4to ; J. O. Halliwell Phillipps, Hand List of Drawings and Engravings Illustrative of the Life ofS., 1884, 8vo. XIV. BIOGRAPHY. A. General Works. N. Rowe, The Life of tlr W. 8., 1743, 8vo, the first separate life ; N. Drake, S. and his Times, 1817, 2 vote. 4to ; J. Britton, Remarks on the Life and Writings of S., revised edition, 1818, sm. 8vo ; A. Skottowe. Life ofS., 1824, 2 vols. 8vo ; J. P. Collier, New Facts, 1835, 8vo, Kew Particulars, 1836, 8vo, Further Particulars, 1839, 8vo, and Traditionary Anecdotes ofS. collected in 167S, 1838, 8vo ; T. Campbell, Life and Writings of W. S., 1838, 8vo ; C. Knight, S., a Biography, 1843, 8vo, reprinted in Studies, 1850, 2 vols. 8vo ; J. O. Halliwell Phillipps, The Life of W. 8., 184S, 8vo, S. Facsimiles, 1863, folio, Illustrations of the Life ofS., 1874, folio, and Outlines of the Life ofS., 1881, 8vo, 6th ed. 1886, 2 vols. 8vo ; F. P. G. Guizot. S. et son temps, 1852, 8vo, translated into English, 1852, 8vo ; G. M. Tweddoll, S., hi* Times and Con- temporaries, 1852, 12mo, 2d ed. 1861-3, unfinished ; W. W. Lloyd, Essays on Life and Plays of 8., 1858, 8vo ; S. Neil, S., a Critical Biography, 1861, 8vo ; T. De Quincey, S., a Biography, 1864, 8vo; T. Kenny, Life and Genius ofS., 1864, 8vo ; W. Bekk, W. S., eine biogr. Studie, Munich, 1864, sm. 8vo ; S. W. Fullom, The History of W. S., 2d ed. 1864, 8vo ; Victor M. Hugo, W. S., 1864, 8vo, translated into Dutch, German, and English ; H..G. Bohn, Biography and Bibliography of S. (Philobiblon Soc., 1863), 8vo, illustrations: J. Jordan. Original Collections on S. and Stratford, 1780, edited by J. O. Halliwell Phillipps, 1864, 4to ; J. A. Heraud, S.'s inner Life as intimated in his Works, 1865, 8vo; R. G. White, Memoirs of the Life of W. S., Boston, 18C5, 8vo ; S. A. Allibone. Biography of S. (in Dictionary, vol. 2, 1870) ; U. N. Hudson, S.his Life, Art, and Characters, Boston, 187:2, 4th oil. 1883, a vols. 12ino ; R. Gene'e, S., sein Leben u. s. Werke, Hildburghauseu, 1872, 8vo ; F. K. Elze, W. S., Halle, 1876, large Svo ; G. H. Calvept, S. a Biographic, AtUutio Stud ii, Boston, 1879, lOmo ; W. Tegg, S. and his Contemporaries, 1879, Svo ; W. Henty, S., with some Notes on hi* early Biography, 1882, sm. Svo ; E. Hermann, Ergtinzungen u. Berichtiifungen der hergebrachten S. Biograph.. Erl., 1884, 2 vols. Svo; F. G. Fleay, Chronicle History of the Life and Work, of W. 8., 1886, Svo. B. Special Work*. AUTOGRAPH: Sir F. Madden, Autograph and Orthography qf S., 1837, 4to ; S.'s Autograph, copied and enlarged by J. Harris, Ar. (Ko<M), 1843; J. O. Halliwell Phillipps, S.'s Will, 1851, 4to ; H. Staunton, Memorials of S. Photographed, 1864, folio; J. H. Friswell, Photogr. Reprod. of S.'s Will, 1864, 4to. BIRTHDAY : B. Corney, Argument on the Assumed Birthday, 1864, Svo. BONES : C. M. Ingleby, S.'s Bones, 18S3, sm. 4to ; W. Hall, S.'s Grave, Notat of Traditions, 1884, Svo. CRAB TREE : C. F. Green, Legend of S.'s Crab Tree, 1857, 4to, illustrated. DEER STEALING: C. H. Bracehridge, S. no Deer Stealer, 1862, Svo, illustrated. GENEALOGY : J. Jordan, Pedigree of the Family of S., 1796, in vol. iii. of R. Ryan's Dramatic Table Talk, 1825-30, 3 vols. Svo ; Memoirs of the Families of S. and Hart, 1790, ed. Halliwell, 1865, 4to ; G. R. French, Shakspeareana Genealogica, 1869, Svo ; J. O. Hallhvell Phillipps, Entries respecting S., hw Family and Connexions. 1864, 4to. GHOST-BELIEF : A. Rolfe, The Ghost Belief of S., 1851, Svo; T. A. Spudlng, Elizabethan Demonology, 1880, Svo. NAME : J.' O. Halliwell Phillipps, Neva Lamps or Oldi 1880, Svo, advocates "Shakespeare." OCCUPATION: see Special Knowledge, above. RELIGION : F. Kriuiirt, War S. ein Christ t Heidelberg, 1832, Svo; W. J. Birch, Philosophy ami Religion ofS., 1848, sm. Svo.thinks him a sceptic ; E. Vehse, S. als Protestant, foNttttr, J'xi/cholog, u. Dichter, Hamburg, 1851, 2 vols. sni. Svo; J. J. Rietmauu, Ueber S.'s religiose u. ethische Bedeutung, St Gallen, 1853, 12mo ; A. F. Rio, S., 1864, Svo (S. Roman Catholic); W. Koenig, S. als Dichter, Weltweiser, u. Christ, Leipsic, 1873, Svo; A. Gilman, S.'s Morals, N.Y., 1880, Svo; J. M. Raich, S.'s Stcllimg zur Kathol. Religion, 1884, Svo. STRATFORD-UPON-AVON : R. B. Wheler, History and Antiquities of Stratford, 1806, Svo, Account of the Birth- place, new edition 1863, Svo, and Collectanea, 1865, 4to ; F. W. Fairholt, The Home of S., 1847, Svo, engravings reproduced in S. Neil's Home of S., 1871, 8vo ; J. 0. Halliwell Phillipps, New Boke about S. and Stratford, 1850, 4to, Brief Hand List of the Borough Records, 1862, Svo, Descriptive Calendar, 1863, folio, Brief Guide to the Gardens, 1863, Svo, Historical Account of the New Place, 1864, folio illustrated, and Stratford in the Times of the S.s, 1864, folio; E. Lees, Stratford as connected with S., 1854, Svo ; J. R. Wise, S., hits Birthplace ana its Neighbourhood, 1861, Svo ; J. C. M. Bellew, S.'s Home at New Place, 1863, sm. Svo, illustrated, with pedigrees ; R. E. Hunter, S. and Stratford, 1864, Svo ; J. M. Jephson, S., his Birthplace, Home, and Grave, 1864, 4to, illustrated; J. Walter, S.'s Home and Rural Life, 1874, 4to, illustrative of localities ; C. M. Ingleby, S. and the Welcombe Enclosures, 1883, folio ; S. L. Lee, Stratford-on-Avon, 1884, folio, illustrated. XV. PORTRAITS. G. Steevens, Proposals for Publishing the Felton Portrait, 1794, 8vo ; J. Britton, On the Monumental Bust, 1816, Svo ; J. Boaden, Authenticity of Various Pictures and Prints offered as Portraits of S., 1824, 4to ; A. ivi-11, The Monumental Bust, 1827, Svo, and Inquiry into the S. Portraits, 1840, Svo ; H. Rodd, The Chandos Portrait [1849], Svo ; R. H. Forster, Remarks on the Chandos Portrait, 1849, Svo ; J. P. Collier, Dissertation upon the Imputed Portraits, 1861, Svo; J. H. Friswell. Life Portraits of W. S., 1864, 8vo ; G. Scharf, On the Principal Portraits of S., 1864, 12mo ; E. T. Craig, S. and his Portraits, Bust, and Monument, 2d ed. 1864, Svo, and S.'s Portraits phreno- logically considered, Philadelphia, 1875, Svo ; G. Harrison, The Stratford Bust, Brooklyn, 1865, 4to ; W. Page, Study of S.'s Portraits. 1876, sm. 4to ; J. P. Norris, Bibliography of Worts on the Portraits ofS., Philadelphia, 1879, Svo, 44 titles, The Death Mask of 8., 1884, and The Portraits of S., Phil., 1SS5, 4to, with bibliography of 111 references,and illustrations. An elaborate account by A. M. Knapp of the portraits in the Barton collection, Boston Public Library, may be found in the S. Catalogue, 1880, large Svo. XVI. LITERARY AND DRAMATIC HISTORY. E. Malone, Historical Account of the Englinh Stage, 1790, enlarged in Boswell's edition, 1821; J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic /'"./,-,/, 1831, new ed. 1879, 3 vols. 8vo, Memoirs of Edw. Alleyne (Shakusj nan- Society), 1841, Svo, The AUeyne Papers (Shakespeare Society), 1843, 8vo [see G. F. Warner's catalogue of the Dulwich MSS., 1881, Svo], and Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of S. (Shakespeare Society), 1846, Svo ; S. J. Halpin, The Dramatic Unities ofS., 1849, Svo, ed. by C. M. Ingleby (N.S. Soc., series L, 1875-6); N. Delius, Ueber das Englische Theaterwesen zu S.'s /.eit, Bremen, 1853, Svo ; A. Mezieres, Pre'decesseurs et Contemporains de S., 1863, 3d ed. 1881, 8vo, and Contemporains et succexseurs de S., 3d ed. 1881 ; Rev. W. R. Arrowsmith, S.'s Editors and Commentators, 1865, Svo ; W. Kelly, Notices of the Drama and Popular Amusements of the 16th and 17th Centuries, 1865, Svo ; C. M. Ingleby, Traces of the Authorship of the Works attributed to S., 1868, Svo, S.'s Centurie of Pray se. culled from Writers of the First Centura after his Rise, 1874, 4to (enlarged by Miss Toulmin Smith for N. S. Soc., 1879), and S. Allusion Books(X. B. Soc.), 1874 ; H. I. Ruggles, The Method qfS. as an Artist, N.Y., 1870, Svo; A. H. Paget, S.'s Plays, a Chapter of Stage Higtory, 1875, Svo ; H. Ulrici, S.'s Dramatic Art, translated by L. D. Schinitz, 1876, 2 vols. Svo ; H. P. Stokes, The Chronological Order of S.'s Plays, 1878, Svo ; C. Knortz, S. in Amerika, Berlin, 1882, Svo ; C. Muerer, Synchronise Zusammenstelluny der wichtigsten Notizen iib. S.' Leben u. Werke, 1882, 4to ; J. A. Symonds, S.'s Predecessors in the English Drama, 1884, Svo ; A. R. Frey, S. and the alleged Spanish Prototypes, N.Y., 1886, sm. 4to. GERMANY : S.'s Scltauspiele erliiutert von F. Horn, Leipsic, 1823-31, 5 vols. Svo; E. A. Hagcn, S.'g erstes Erscheinen auf den Buhnen Deutschlands, KSnigs., 1832, Svo ; K. Assman, S. und seine deutschen Uebcrsetzer, Liegnitz, 1843. 4to; N. Delius, Die Sclilegel-Tiecksche S. Uebersetz., Bonn, 1846, l'2mo; F. K. Elze, Die Englische Sprache in Deutschland, Dresden, 1864, 12mo; F. A. T. Kreyssig, S. Cultus, Elbing. 1864, Svo ; L. G. Leineke, S. in neinem Verh&ltnisse zu Deutschland, Leipsic, 1864, Svo ; W. J. Thorns, " S. in Germany," in Three Notelets, 1865, 8vo ; A. Cohn, 8. in Germany in thr 16th and 17th Centuries, 1865, 4to ; C. Humbert, Moliere, S., und d. deutsche Kritii; Leipsic, 1869, Svo ; W. Oechelhauser, Die- H'iirtiiyttny S.'s in Engl. u. Deutech- land, 1869, Svo; R. Genee, Geschichte d. S.'schen Dramen in Deiitsctdnntl, Leipsic, 1870, Svo; M. Beruays, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Schlegelschen S., Leipsic, 1872. Svo ; R. J. Benedix, Die S.omame, Stuttgart, 1873, Svo ; W. Wagner, S. und die neueste Kritik, Hamburg, 1874, 8vo; J. Meissner, Die englischen Comodianten in Oesterreich, Vienna, 1884, Svo. ​FRANCE : J. B. M. A. Lacroix, Histoire de Vinfluence de 5. sur IK theatre franfais, Brussels, 1856, 8vo ; W. Reymond, Corneille, S., et Goethe, Berlin, 1864, Svo ; A. Schmidt, Voltaire's Verdienste urn. die Einfuhrung S., 1864, 4to.
XVII. SHAKESPEARE JUBILEES. Essay on the Jubilee at Stratford, 1769, Svo ; S.'s Garland, 1769, Svo, second edition 1826, Svo ; Concise Account of Garrick's Jubilee, 1769, and the Festivals qf 1827 and 1S30, 1830, 8vo ; Descriptive Account of the Second Gala, 1830, Svo ; K. F. Gutzkow, Fine S. Feier an der Ilm, Leipsic, 1S64, Svo ; P. H. A. Mobius, Die Deu.sche S. Feier, Leipsic, 1864, Svo ; Ter- centenary Celebration by the New England Historic-Genealogical Society at Boston, 1864, 8vo ; Official Programme at the Tercentenary Festival at Stratford, with Life, Guide, <bc., 1864, Svo.
XVIII. IRELAND CONTROVERSY. Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of W. S., 1795, imp. folio, 2d ed. 1796, Svo (W. H. Ireland's forgeries) ; Vortigern, an Historical Tragedy, 1796, sin. 8vo, 2d ed. 1832, 8vo (forgery) ; E. Malone, Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Papers and Legal Instruments, 1796, Svo; W. H. Ireland, Authentic Account of the'Shake- spearian MSS., 1796, Svo ; S. Ireland, Investigation of Mr Malone, 1797, Svo ; J. J. Eschenbnrg, Ueber den vorgeblichen Fund S.schen Handschriften, Leipsic, 1797, sm. Svo ; G. Chalmers, Apology for the Believers in the S. Paj>"i-s, c., 1797-1SOO, 3 pts. Svo ; [G. Hardinge], Chalmeriana, 1800, Svo ; W. H. Ireland, Confessions, 1805, sm. Svo, new edition, with introduction by R. G. White, 1S74, 12mo.
XIX. PAYNE COLLIER CONTROVERSY. J. P. Collier, Neio Facts regarding the Life of S., 1S35, Svo, New Particu- lars, 1836, Svo, Further Particulars, 1839, Svo, Reasons for a New Edition of S.'s Works, 1841, 2d ed. 1842, Svo, and Notes and Emendations to the Text (Shakespeare Society), 1852, 2d ed. 1853, Svo, translated into German by Dr Leo, 1853, also in J. Frese's Erganzungsband zu S.'s Dramen, 1853, Svo ; S. W. Singor, The Text of S. Vindicated, 1853, Svo (anti-Collier) ; J. O. Halliwell Phillipps, Curiosities of Modern Shakespearian Criticism, 1853, Svo (anti-Collier), Observations on the MS. Emendations, 1853, Svo (anti-Collier), and Observations on the Shakespearian Forgeries at Bridgewater House, 1853, 4to (anti-Collier) ; C. Knight, Old Lamps or New ? 1853, 12mo (pro-Collier) ; Rev. A. Dyce, A Few Notes on S., 1853, Svo ; N. Delius, Collier's alte handschr. Emendationen, Bonn, 1853, Svo (anti-Collier); F. A. Leo, Die Delius'sche Kritit, Berlin, 1853, Svo (pro- Collier); R. G. White, S.'s Scholar, 1854, Svo (anti-Collier) ; J. T. Mommsen, Der Perkins S., Berlin, 1854, Svo (anti-Collier) ; A. E. Brae, Literary Cookery, 1855, Svo (anti-Collier), and Collier, Coleridge, and S., 1860, Svo, disputes authenticity of following lectures ; S. T. Coleridge, Seven Lectures on S. and Milton, edited by J. P. Collier, 1856 ; Rev. A. Dyce, Strictures on Mr Collier's New Edition [1858], 1859, Svo (anti-Collier); C. M. Ingleby, The S. Fabrications, 1859, sm. Svo, and Complete View of the S. Controversy, 1861, with bibliography (anti-Collier) ; N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Inquiry into the Genuineness of the MS. Corrections, 1860, 4to (anti-Collier) ; Collier's Reply to Hamilton, 1860, Svo; Sir T. D. Hardy, Review of the Present State of the S. Controversy, I860, Svo ; J. P. Collier, Trilogy : Conversations, 1S74, 3 pts. 4to.
XX. SHAKESPEARE-BACON CONTROVERSY. J. C. Hart, The Romance of Yachting, N.Y., 1848, 12mo, first work con- taining doubt of Shakespeare's authorship ; W. H. Smith, Was Bacon the Author of S.'s Plays? 1856, Svo, extended as Bacon and S., 1857, 12mo (anti- Shakespeare); D. Bacon, The Philosophy of the Plays ofS. unfolded, 1857, Svo (anti-Shakespeare); N. Holmes, Authorship of S., 1866, new ed. 1886, 2 vols. 12rao (anti-Shakespeare); Bacon's Promus, edited by Mrs H. Pott, 1883, Svo (anti-Shakespeare); W. H. Wyman, Bibliography of the Bacon-S. Contro- versy, Cincinnati, 1884, Svo, 255 entries (of which 117 pro-Shakespeare, 73 anti-, and 65 unclassified).
XXI. BIBLIOGRAPHY. F. Meres, Palladis Tamia : . Witts Treasury, 1598, 12mo, contains the earliest list of Shakespeare's works ; J. Wilson, Shakespeariana, Catalogue of all the Books, &c., relating to S., 1827, sm. Svo ; W. T. Lowndes, S. and his Commentators, 1831, Svo, reprinted from the Manual ; J. 0. Halliwell Phillipps, Shakespeariana : Catalogue of Early Editions, Commentaries, <kc., 1841, Syo, Some Account of Antiq. Books, MSS., &c.. illust. of S., in his possession, 1852, 4to, illustrated, Garland of Shakespeariana, 1854, 4to, Early Editions of S., 1857, Svo (notices of 14 early quartos), Brief Hand List of Books, &c., illustrative of S., 1859, Svo, Skeleton Hand List of the Early Quartos, 1860, Svo, Hand List of Shakespeariana, 1862, Svo, List of Works Illustrative of S. 1867, Svo, Catalogue of the S. Library and Museum at Stratford-on-Avon, 1868, Svo, Hand List of Early Editions, 1867, Svo, Cata- logue of Warehouse Library, 1876, Svo, Brief Hand List of Selected Parcels, 1876, and Catalogue ofS. Study Books, 1876, Svo ; J. Moulin, Omtrekken eener algemeene Literatuur over W. S., Kampen, 1845, Svo (only part 2 published); S. Literatur in Deutschland, 1762-1851, by P. H., Cassel, 1852, sm. Svo; P. H. Sillig, Die S. Literatur bis Mitte ISlJlt, eingefiihrt v. H. Ulrici, Leipsic, 1854, Svo ; L[enox], S.'s Plays in Folio, 1861, 4to, bibliographical notice ; H. G. Bohn, Biography and Bibliography ofS., Philobiblon Soc., 1863, sm. Svo, bibliography with some additions from his edition of Lowndes; Shakespeareana: VerzeicAm'ss, Vienna, 1864, Svo ; F. Thimm, Shakespeariana from 156lt, 2d edition containing the literature to 1871, 1872, Svo, continued in Transactions of N. S. Soc. ; bibliographies of Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, may be found in H. H. Furness's New Variorum edition, Philadelphia, 1873, &c. ; Catalogue of the S. Memorial Library at the Cambridge Free Public Library, 1881. nearly all presented by H. T. Hall; S. A. Allibone, Shakespeare Bibliography (see his Dictionary, v. 2, 1870), based on Bohn with additional Americana ; A. Colin, S. Biblio- graphie, 1871, &c., contributed to S. Jahrbuch ; H. T. Hall, Shakespearian Statistics, new edition 1874, Svo; J. D. Mullins, Catalogue of the S. Memorial Library, Binninghain Free Libraries, 1872-6, 3 pts. Svo, a magnificent col- lection of 7000 vols. destroyed by fire in 1879, now fully replaced ; Katalog d. Bibliothek der Deutschcn S. Ges., Weimar, 1876, Svo ; K. Knortz, An American S. Bibliography, 1876, 12mo ; J. Winsor, Bibliography of the Original Quartos and Folios, Cambridge, U.S., 1876.' 4to (with facsimiles), and S.'x Poems, a Bibliography oj the Early Editions, 1879, Svo ; Catalogue of Works of, and relating to, W. S., Barton Coll., Boston Pub. Lib., by J. M. Hubbard, 1878-80, 2 vols. la. Svo, the largest collection in U.S. ; H. H. Morgan, A. Morgan, Topical Shakespeariana, arranged under Headings, St Louis, 1879, Svo ; Topical Index Shakespeareanas (sic) in Shakespeariana, 1885-6, pts. xv.-xxii., toor. as Digest Shakespearean^ (sic), pt. 1 (A-F), N.Y., 1886, Svo ; T. J. I. pold, S. Bibliography in the Netherlands, The Hague, 1879, sm. Svo ; L. Unflad, Die S. Literatur in Deutschland, 1880, Svo ; fl. T. Hall, The Separate Editions of S.'s Plays, with the Alterations by various Hands, 1880, Svo ; J. Jeremiah, Aid to Shakespearean Study, 1880, 8vo ; S. Timmins, Books on S., 1886, sm. Svo. (H. R. T.)