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INTRODUCTION

I

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORKS

William Shakespeare-the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden his wife-was baptized at Stratford-onAvon in Warwickshire, April 26, 1564. His father was a yeoman or farmer, and prosperous enough at one time to hold office as the head alderman and bailiff of his borough. Later in life, however, he fell into debt and was for a time financially embarrassed. Shakespeare probably attended the Stratford Grammar School, where he learned that amount of Latin which Ben Jonson afterwards described as "little". It was doubtless quite sufficient for the ready use which we find him making of it where necessary; though to a scholar it must have seemed hardly more than his Greek, which the same authority describes as "less" than his Latin. Much has been written as to the education of Shakespeare, but his works alone attest its quality and amount. Whatever the deficiencies in this respect of Stratford and Shakespeare's youth, he contrived to become a very accomplished man, although his learning must have come less through books than by that best of methods, the daily contact of "an experiencing nature" with men and their ways.

His

When Shakespeare was scarcely nineteen years of age he married Anne Hathaway, a woman of his own station in life, somewhat his senior, and a resident of the neighboring hamlet of Shottery. Three children were born to him; and it is clear that he went up to London because of the need of making a living for himself and his family. At what time he took this decided step we cannot say, nor can we tell just why he should have chosen the stage in preference to some other career. It has been thought by some that Shakespeare's taste for the drama was whetted while he was a boy at Stratford. father, in his capacity as chief burgess of his town, received and approved more than one company of players; and it is impossible to believe that his son was not alive to their doings while in Stratford. In London Shakespeare is lost to our view for several years; but at last, in 1592, we hear of him definitely in a famous allusion of the dramatist, Robert Greene, who feared him as a rival, and wrote of him with jealousy. In the next year, however, another fellow-dramatist, Henry Chettle, spoke highly of Shakespeare, both as a man and as an actor, so that we may feel that his character and his abilities as a poet were soon appreciated in the quick and understanding age in which he was so happy to live.

When Shakespeare began to write plays the drama had already become a passion with the Elizabethan people. Not only did it flourish at court in the stately and graceful prose comedies of John Lyly and his poetical follower, George Peele, but the popular playhouses were already ringing with the fame of powerful tragedies

by Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe. The former had already written The Spanish Tragedy, a tremendous drama of revenge, stiff and artificial according to our ideas, but remarkable as it was prodigiously effective and popular in its day and for long after. Marlowe, a greater genius, also attempted heroic and exaggerated subjects, telling in Tamburlaine the story of a shepherd who became a king and the conqueror of kings, and lusted after the empire of the world, in The Jew of Malta, of a merchant that sought for an unparalleled revenge, and in Faustus, of a scholar who thirsted after knowledge forbidden and accurst and who lost his soul in his unholy endeavor. Shakespeare learned of both of these, as he learned of lesser men; and, although we can not affirm with certainty the exact steps of his apprenticeship, we can see by a comparison of passages of his early work with plays of his fellow dramatists that Shakespeare took Lyly for his earliest model in comedy, and paid Marlowe the tribute of imitation in tragedy and historical drama.

In the year 1593 Shakespeare first appeared as an author in print, dedicating a poem of his called Venus and Adonis to the Earl of Southampton. From this time onward there are many mentions of Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, we know far more of him than we do of almost anyone similarly situated in life, and the evidence is of such a character that it would be accepted to-day in any court of record. Shakespeare was for many years a part owner or “sharer”, as it was called, in a company of actors, variously known as Lord Strange's, Lord Chamberlain's, and the King's. This company acted at the

Theater, the first structure to be erected for theatrical purposes in London, and later at the Globe, Shakespeare's well-known playhouse on the Bankside across London bridge. Shakespeare was also associated with Richard Burbage, the greatest actor of his time, in another theater called the Blackfriars, frequently described as a private theater from the circumstance that it was within a room instead of constructed about an open courtyard. Moreover we know that Shakespeare was an actor as well as a writer and manager of plays; for his name occurs in two of the lists of players affixed to printed plays of Jonson, one of them a tragedy, the other a comedy.

A complete list of the plays of Shakespeare is given in the bibliography. Thirty-six of them were printed in the Folio of 1623, which was the first collected edition of his works. Nearly half of these had previously appeared in what is known as quarto form,—that is, in separate and individual plays,—and some of these plays were so popular that they went through a number of editions within his lifetime. It has often been a matter of wonder to those who have looked at the old editions of Shakespeare that they were so carelessly printed. But Shakespeare sold his plays to the theater and appears to have given little attention to them thereafter. Besides this, the theatrical companies tried to protect themselves against the publication of plays in their playing lists. Notwithstanding, more plays of Shakespeare were published within his lifetime than of any other dramatist of the age; and it may be affirmed that in a career extending over more than twenty years, Shakespeare enjoyed the

greatest success of all his fellows, and retired from the stage a short time prior to his death substantially a rich

man.

The plays of Shakespeare are, roughly speaking, of three kinds: tragedies, comedies, and chronicle histories. This last group comprises Shakespeare's plays on the history of his own country, such as King John, Richard III, Henry V, and Henry VIII. Almost all of these chronicle plays were written within the reign of Elizabeth. Prior to this time, Shakespeare had written, however, both tragedies and comedies. Amongst his early comedies may be mentioned The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, and Love's Labour's Lost. Two early tragedies are Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, both of which were revised later. The most notable comedies of Shakespeare's maturity are The Merchant of Venice, 1594, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, between 1598 and 1601; and Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida between 1603 and 1607. Towards the end of his life he wrote several beautiful plays known as "dramatic romances," Cymbeline, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale. These range from 1608 to 1611. The greater tragedies of Shakespeare belong to the closing years of Elizabeth and the earlier years of King James: Julius Cæsar, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Coriolanus, between 1601 and 1608, and a little later the fine play of Antony and Cleopatra.

Besides his dramatic works, Shakespeare wrote two narrative poems, the one on Venus and Adonis, and the

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