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 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 2894.D42 1864 
 
 Shakspeare, a biography, by Thomas De Quin 
 
 3 1924 013 147 891 
 

Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013147891 
 
SHAKSPEAEE 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 THOMAS BE QUINOEY 
 
 THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 EDINBUEGH 
 ADAM AND CHAELES BLACK, 
 
 MDCCCLXIV 
 
6/A'/4^ 
 
 PRINTED BY NEIU. AND COMPAST, EDINBUBGH. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 In issuing this Biography in a separate form and at the 
 present time, it is perhaps only necessary to mention, 
 in justice to the author, that it was written in the year 
 1838, and had not the henefit of any revision before 
 his lamented death, which occurred in the year 1859. 
 
 Edinbuegh, April 1864. 
 
William Shakspbare, tke protagonist on the great arena 
 of modem poetry, and the glory of the human intellect, 
 was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of War- 
 wick, in the year 1564, and upon some day not precisely 
 ascertained, in the month of ApriL It is certain that he 
 was baptized on the 25th ; and from that fact, combined 
 with some shadow of a tradition, Malone has inferred that 
 he was born on the 23d, There is doubtless, on the one 
 hand, no absolute necessity deducible from law or custom, 
 as either operated in those times, which obliges us to 
 adopt such a conclusion ; for children might be baptized, 
 and were baptized, at various distances from their birth : 
 yet, on the other hand, the 23d is as likely to have been 
 the day as any other ; and more likely than any earlier 
 day, upon two arguments. First, because there was pro- 
 bably a tradition floating in the seventeenth century, that 
 Shakspeare died upon his birth-day : now it is beyond 
 a doubt that he died upon the 23d of ApriL Secondly, 
 because it is a reasonable presumption, that no parents, 
 living in a simple community, tenderly alive to the pieties 
 
2 SHAKSPBABB. 
 
 of household duty, and in an age still clinging reverentially 
 to the ceremonial ordinances of religion, would much delay 
 the adoption of their child into the great family of Christ. 
 Considering the extreme frailty of an infant's life during 
 its two earhest years, to delay would often he to disin- 
 herit the child of its Christian privileges ; privileges not 
 the less eloquent to the feelings from heing profoundly 
 mysterious, and, in the English church, forced not only 
 upon the attention, but even upon the eye, of the most 
 thoughtless. According to the discipUne of the English 
 church, the unhaptized are buried with " maimed rites," 
 shorn of their obsequies, and sternly denied that "sweet 
 and solemn farewell" by which otherwise the church ex- 
 presses her final charity with all men ; and not only so, 
 but they are even locally separated and sequestrated. 
 Ground the most hallowed, and populous with Christian 
 burials of households, 
 
 That died in peace with one another, 
 Father, sister, son, and brother, 
 
 opens to receive the vilest malefactor ; by which the 
 church symbolically expresses her maternal willingness to 
 gather back into her fold those even of her flock who 
 have strayed from her by the most memorable- aberrations ; 
 and yet, with all this indulgence, she banishes to unhal- 
 lowed ground the innocent bodies of the unhaptized. To 
 them and to suicides she turns a feice of wrath. With 
 this gloomy fact offered to the very external senses, it is 
 difficult to suppose that any parents would risk their own 
 reproaches by putting the fulfilment of so grave a duty 
 on the hazard of a convulsion fit. The case of royal 
 
8HAKSPBAEB. d 
 
 chfldren is different ; their baptisms, it is trae, were 
 often delayed for weeks ; but the lioxisehold chaplains 
 of the palace were always at hand, night and day, to 
 baptize them in the very agonies of death.* We must 
 presume, therefore, that William Shakspeare was bom on 
 some day very little anterior to that of his baptism ; and 
 the more so because the season of the year was lovely 
 and genial, the 23d of April in 1564 correspondiug in 
 fact with what we now call the 3d of May, so that, 
 whether the child was to be carried abroad, or the clergy- 
 man to be summoned, no hindrance would arise from the 
 weather. One only argument has sometimes struck us 
 for supposing that the 2 2d might be the day, and not 
 the 23d ; which is, that Shakspeare's sole grand-daughter, 
 Lady Barnard, was married on the 22d of April 1626, 
 ten years exactly from the poet's death ; and the reason 
 for choosing this day might have had a reference to her 
 illustrious grandfather's birthday ; which, there is good 
 
 * But, a3 a proof that, even in the case of royal christenings, it 
 was not thought pious to " tempt God," as it were, by delay, 
 Edward VI., the only son of Henry VIII., was bom on the 12th 
 day of October in the year 1537. And there was a delay on 
 account of the sponsors, since the birth was not in London. Tet 
 how little that delay was made, may be seen by this fact : The 
 birth took place in the dead of the night, the day was Friday ; and 
 yet, in spite of all delay, the christening was most pompously 
 celebrated on the succeeding Monday. And Prince Arthur, the 
 elder brother of Henry VIII., was christened on the very next 
 Sunday succeeding to his birth, notwithstanding an inevitable 
 delay, occasioned by the distance of Lord Oxford, his godfather, 
 and the excessive rains, which prevented the earl being reached 
 by couriers, or himself reaching ■Winchester, without extraordinary 
 exertions. 
 
4 SHAKSFEABE. 
 
 reason for tliinking, woidd be celebrated as a festival in 
 the family for generations. Still tMs choice may have 
 been an accident, or governed merely by reason of con- 
 venience. And, on the whole, it is as •weU perhaps to 
 acquiesce in the old belief, that Shakspeare was bom and 
 died on the 23d of April "We cannot do wrong if we 
 drinlc to his memory on both 22d and 23d. 
 
 On a first review of the circumstances, we have reason 
 to feel no little perplexity id finding the materials for a 
 life of this transcendent writer so meagre and so few ; 
 and amongst them the larger part of doubtful authority. 
 All the energy of curiosity directed upon this subject, 
 through a period of one hundred and fifty years (for so 
 long it is since Betterton the actor began to make re- 
 searches) has availed us little or nothing. Neither the 
 local traditions of his provincial birth-place, though sharing 
 with London through haK a century the honour of his 
 familiar presence, nor the recollections of that brilliant 
 literary circle with whom he lived in the metropolis, 
 liave yielded much more than such an outline of his 
 history as is oftentimes to be gathered from the penurious 
 records of a grave-stone. That he Uved, and that he 
 died, and that he was " a little lower than the angels ;" 
 — these make up pretty nearly the amount of our undis- 
 l)uted report. It may be doubted indeed whether at this 
 day we are as accurately acquainted with the life of 
 Shakspeare as with that of Chaucer, though divided from 
 each other by an interval of two centuries, and (what 
 should have been more eifeotual towards oblivion) by the 
 wars of the two roses. And yet the traditional memory 
 of a riiral and a sylvan region, such as Warwickshire at 
 
SHAKSFEABK 
 
 that time was, is usually exact as well as tenacious; and, 
 ■with respect to Shakspeare in particular, we may presume 
 it to have been fuU and circumstantial through the gene- 
 ration succeeding to his own, not only from the curiosity, 
 and perhaps something of a scandalous interest, which 
 would pursue the motions of one Hving so large a part of 
 his life at a distance from his wife, hut also from the 
 final reverence and honour which would settle upon the 
 memory of a poet so pre-eminently successful ; of one 
 who, ia a space of five-and-twenty years, after running a 
 bright career in the capital city of his native land, and 
 challenging notice from the throne, had retired with an 
 ample fortune, created by his personal efforts, and by 
 labours purely iatellectuaL 
 
 How are we to account, then, for that deluge, as if from 
 Lethe, which has swept away so entirely the traditional 
 memorials of one so illustrious 1 Such is the fetality of 
 error which overclouds every question connected with 
 Shakspeare, • that two of his principal critics, Steevens, 
 and Malone, have endeavoured to solve the difficulty by 
 cutting it with a falsehood. They deny in effect that he 
 was Ulustrious in the century succeeding to his own, 
 however much he has since become so. We shall first 
 produce their statements in their own words, and we 
 shall then briefly review them. 
 
 Steevens delivers his opinion in the following terms : — 
 " How little Shakspeare was once read, may be understood 
 from Tate, who, in his dedication to the altered play of 
 King Lear, speaks of the original as an obscure piece, re- 
 commended to his notice by a friend ; and the author of 
 the Tatler, having occasion to quote a few lines out of 
 
6 8HAKSPEABE. 
 
 Macbeth, was content to receive them from Davenant's 
 alteration of that celebrated drama, in which almost every 
 original beauty is either awkwardly disguised or arbitKtrily 
 omitted" Another critic, who cites this passage from 
 Steevens, pursues the hypothesis as foUows : — " In fifty 
 years after his death, Dryden mentions that he was then 
 become a little obsolete. In the beginning of the last cen- 
 tury, Lord Shaftesbury complains of his rvde unpolished 
 style, and his antiquated phrase and vdt. It is certain that, 
 for nearly a hundred years after his death, partly owing 
 to the immediate revolution and rebellion, and partly to 
 the licentious taste encouraged in Charles IL's time, and 
 perhaps partly to the incorrect state of his works, he was 
 
 ALMOST ENTIEBLT NEGLECTED." This crftic then gOCS On 
 
 to quote with approbation the opinion of Malone, — " that 
 if he had been read, admired, studied, and imitated, in 
 the same degree aa he is now, the enthusiasm of some 
 one or other of his admirers in the last age would have 
 induced him to mate some inquiries concerning the 
 history of his theatrical career, and the anecdotes of his 
 private Hfe.'' After which this enlightened writer re- 
 affirms and clenches the judgment he has quoted by 
 saying, — " His admirers, however, if he had admirers in 
 that age, possessed no portion of such enthusiasm." 
 
 It may perhaps be an instructive lesson to young readers, 
 if we now show them, by a short sifting of these confident 
 dogmatists, how easy it is for a careless or a half-read man 
 to circulate the most absolute falsehoods under the sem- 
 blance of truth; falsehoods which impose upon himself aa 
 much as they do upon others. We believe that not one 
 word or illustration is uttered in the sentences cited from 
 
BHAK8PBABK / 
 
 the^e three critics wMci. is not virtiially in th.e very teeth 
 of the truth. 
 
 To hegin with Mr Nahum Tate : — ^This poor grub of 
 literature, if he did really speak of Lear as " an obscure 
 piece, recommended to his notice hy a friend," of which 
 we must he allowed to doubt, was then uttering a con- 
 scious Msehood. It happens that Lear was one of the 
 few Shakspearian dramas which had kept the stage un- 
 altered. But it is easy to see a mercenary motive in such 
 an artifice as this. Mr If ahum Tate is not of a class of 
 whom it can be safe to say that they are " well known :" 
 they and their desperate tricks are essentially obscure, and 
 good reason he has to exult in the felicity of such ob- 
 scurity; for else this same vilest of travesties, Mr Nahum's 
 Lear, would consecrate his name to everlasting scorn. For 
 himseK, he belonged to the age of Dryden rather than of 
 Pope; he " flourished," if we can use such a phrase of one 
 who was always withering, about the era of the Eevolu- 
 tion; and his Lear, we beheve, was arranged in the year 
 1682. But the family to which he belongs is abundantly 
 recorded in the Dunciad; and his own name wiU be found 
 amongst its catalogues of heroes. 
 
 With respect to the author of the " Tatler,'' a very diffe- 
 rent explanation is requisite. Steevens means the reader 
 to understand Addison; but it does not foUow that the 
 particular paper in question was from his pen. Nothing, 
 however, could be more natural than to quote from the 
 common form of the play as then in possession of the 
 stage. It was tJiere, beyond a doubt, that a fine gentle- 
 man living upon town, and not professing any deep scho- 
 lastic knowledge of literature (a light in which we we 
 
8 SHAKSPEASE. 
 
 always to regard the writers of the Spectator, Guardian, 
 &o.), would he likely to have learned anything he quoted 
 from Maoheth. This we say generally of the writers in 
 those periodical papers; hut, with reference to Addison in 
 particular, it is time to correct the popular notion of his 
 literary character, or at least to mark it hy severer luies of 
 distinction. It is already pretty well known, that Addi- 
 son had no very intimate acquaintance with the literature 
 of his own country. It is known also, that he did not 
 think such an acquaintance any ways essential to the 
 character of an elegant scholar and litterateur. Quite 
 enough he found it, and more than enough for the time 
 he had to spare, if he could maintain a tolerable famili- 
 arity with the foremost Latin poets, and a very slender 
 onfi iadeed with the Grecian. Sow slender, we can see 
 in his " Travels." Of modem authors, none as yet had 
 been published with notes, commentaries, or critical col- 
 lations of the text J and, accordingly, Addison looked upon 
 all of them, except those few who professed themselves 
 followers in the retinue and equipage of the ancients, as 
 creatures of a lower race. Boileau, as a mere imitator and 
 propagator of Horace, he read, and probably little else, 
 amongst the French classics. Hence it arose that he took 
 upon himself to speak sneeiingly of Tasso. To this, which 
 w^s a bold act for his timid mind, he was emboldened by 
 the countenance of BoUeau.' Of the elder Italian authors, 
 such as Ariosto, and, a fortiori, Dante, he knew abso- 
 lutely nothing. Passing to our own literature, it is cer- 
 tain that Addison was profoundly ignorant of Chaucer 
 and of Spenser. Milton only, — and why 1 simply be- 
 cause he was a brilliant scholar, and stands like a bridge 
 
SHAKSPBAEK. U 
 
 between tlie Christian literature and the Pagan, — Addison 
 had read and esteemed. There was also ia the reiy con- 
 . stitution of Milton's mind, in the majestic regularity and 
 planetary solemnity of its epic moTements, something 
 which, he could understand and appreciate: as to the 
 meteoric and incalculable eccentricities of the dramatic 
 mind, as it displayed itself in the heroic age of our drama, 
 amongst the Titans of 1590—1630, they confounded and 
 overwhelmed him. 
 
 In particular, with regard to Shakspeare, we shall now 
 proclaim a discovery which we made some twenty years 
 ago. We, like others, from seeing frequent references to 
 Shakspeare in the " Spectator," had acquiesced in the 
 common belief, that, although Addison was no doubt pro- 
 foundly unlearned in Shakspeare's language, and thor- 
 oughly unable to do him justice (and this we might well 
 assume, since his great rival Pope, who had expressly 
 studied Shakspeare, was, after all, so memorably deficient 
 in the appropriate knowledge), — yet, that of course he 
 had a vague popular knowledge of the mighty poet's 
 cardinal dramas. Accident only led us into a discovery 
 of our mistake. Twice or thrice we had observed, that 
 if Shakspeare were quoted, that paper turned out not to 
 be Addison's; and at length, by express examination, we 
 ascertained the curious fact, that Addison has never iu 
 one instance quoted or made any reference to Shakspeare. 
 But was this, as Steevens most disingenuously pretends, 
 to be taken as an exponent of the public feeling towards 
 Shakspeare? "Was Addison's neglect representative of 
 a general neglect? If so, whence came Eowe's edition. 
 Pope's, Theobald's, Sir Thomas Hanmei's, Bishop War- 
 
10 SHAKSPBARB. 
 
 burton's, all upon tlie heels of one another! With such 
 facts staring him in the face, how shameless must he that 
 critic who could, in support of such a thesis, refer to 
 " the author of the ' Tatter,'" contemporary with all these 
 editors. The truth is, Addison was well aware of Shak- 
 speare's hold on the popular mind; too well aware of it. 
 The feehle constitution of the poetic faculty, as existiag 
 in himself, forbade his sympathising with Shakspeare j the 
 proportions were too colossal for his delicate vision; and 
 yet, as one who sought popularity himself, he durst not 
 shock what perhaps he Tiewed as a national prejudice. 
 Those who have happened, Kke ourselves, to see the 
 effect of passionate music and "deep-inwoven harmonics" 
 upon the feeling of an idiot,* may conceive what we mean. 
 Such music does not utterly revolt the idiot; on the con- 
 trary, it has a strange but a horrid fescination for him ; 
 it alarms, irritates, disturbs, makes him profoundly un- 
 happy; and chiefly by unlocking imperfect glimpses of 
 thoughts and slumbering instincts, which it is for his 
 peace to have entirely obscured, because for him they can 
 be revealed only partially, and with the sad effect of 
 throwing a baleful gleam upon his blighted condition. 
 Do we mean, then, to compare Addison with an idiot 1 
 Not generally, by any means. Nobody can more sin- 
 cerely admire him where he was a man of real genius, — 
 viz., in his delineations of character and manners, or in 
 the exquisite delicacies of his humour. But assuredly 
 
 * A great modem poet refers to this very case of musio entering 
 " the mouldy chambers of the dull idiot's brain ;" but in support 
 of what seems to us a baseless hypothesis. 
 
8HAKBPEABE. 1 1 
 
 Addison, as a poet, was amongst the sons of the feeble ; 
 and between the authors of Cato and of King Lear there 
 was a gulf never to be bridged over.* 
 
 But Dryden, we are told, pronounced Shakspeare 
 abeady in his day "a little obsolete.'' Here, now, we have 
 wilful, deliberate falsehood. Obsolete, ia Dryden's mean- 
 ing, does not imply that he was so with regard to 
 his popularity (the question then at issue), but with 
 regard to his diction and choice of words. To cite 
 Dryden as a witness for any purpose against Shakspeare, 
 ■ — Dryden, who of aU men had the most ransacked wit 
 and exhausted language in celebratiag the supremacy of 
 Shakspeare's genius, does indeed require as much shame- 
 lessness in feeling as mendacity in pria'ciple. 
 
 But then Lord Shaftesbury, who may be taken as half 
 way between Dryden and Pope (Dryden died in 1700, 
 Pope was then twelve years old, and Lord S. wrote 
 chiefly, we believe, between 1700 and 1710), "com- 
 plains," it seems, " of his rude unpolished style, and his 
 antiquated phrase and wit." "What if he does 1 Let the 
 whole truth be told, and then we shall see how much 
 stress is to be laid upon such a judgment. The second 
 Lord Shaftesbury, the author of the "Characteristics,'' 
 was the grandson of that famous political agitator, the 
 Chancellor Shaftesbury, who passed his whole life ia 
 
 * Probably Addison's fear of tbe national feeling was a good 
 deal strengthened by his awe of Milton and of Dryden, both of 
 whom had expressed a homage towards Shakspeare which lan- 
 guage cannot transcend. Amongst his political friends, also, 
 were many intense admirers of Shakspeare. 
 
1 2 SHAKSPBIARE. 
 
 storms of his own creation. The second Lord Shaftes- 
 bury was a man of crazy constitution, querulous from ill 
 health, and had received an eccentric education from his 
 eccentric grandfather. He was practised daUy in talJdng 
 Latia, to which afterwards he added a competent study 
 of the Greek ; and finally, he became unusually learned 
 for his rank, but the most absolute and undistinguishiag 
 pedant that perhaps literature has to show. He sneers 
 continually at the regular-bmlt academic pedant ; but he 
 himself, though no academic, was essentially the very 
 impersonation of pedantry. No thought however beau- 
 tiful, no image however magnificent, could conciliate his 
 praise as long as it was clothed in English; but present 
 him with the most trivial common-places in Greek, and 
 he unaffectedly fancied them diviae; mistaking the plea- 
 surable sense of his own power in a difficult and rare 
 accomplishment for some peculiar force or beauty in the 
 passage. Such was the outhne of his literary taste. And 
 was it upon Shakspeare only, or upon him chiefly, that 
 he lavished his pedantry? Par from it. He attacked 
 Milton with no less fervour; he attacked Dryden with a 
 thousand times more. Jeremy Taylor he quoted only to 
 ridicule ; and even Locke, the confidential friend of his 
 grandfather, he never alludes to without a sneer. As to 
 Shakspeare, so far from Lord Shaftesbury's censures 
 arguing his deficient reputation, the very fact of his 
 noticing him at all proves his enormous popularity; for 
 upon system he noticed those only who ruled the public 
 taste. The insipidity of his objections to Shakspeare may 
 be judged from this, that he comments in a spirit of 
 absolute puerility upon the name Desdemona, as though 
 
SHAKSPBARK 1 3 
 
 intentionally formed feom tie Greek word for superstition. 
 In fact, he liad evidently read little beyond the list of 
 names in Shakspeare; yet there is proof enough that the 
 irresistible beauty of what little he had read was too 
 much for aU his pedantry, and startled him exceedingly; 
 for ever afterwards he speaks of Shakspeare as one who, 
 with a little aid from Grecian sources, really had some- 
 thing great and promising about him. As to modem 
 authors, neither this Lord Shaftesbury nor Addison read 
 anything for the latter years of their life but Bayle's 
 Dictionary. And most of the little scintillations of eru- 
 dition which may be found in the notes to the " Charac- 
 teristics," and in the Essays of Addison, are derived, 
 almost without exception, and uniformly without acknow- 
 ledgment, from Bayle.* 
 
 Finally, with regard to the sweeping assertion, that 
 " for nearly a hundred years after his death Shakspeare 
 was almost entirely neglected," we shall meet this scan- 
 dalous falsehood by a rapid view of his fortunes during 
 the century in question. The tradition has always been, 
 that Shakspeare was honoured by the especial notice of 
 Queen Elizabeth, as well as by that of James I. At one 
 time we were disposed to question the truth of this tra- 
 
 * He who is weak enough to kick and spurn his own native 
 literature, even if it were done with more knowledge than is 
 shown by Lord Shaftesbury, will usually be kicked and spumed 
 in his turn; and accordingly it has been often remarked, that the 
 "Characteristics" are unjustly neglected in our days. For Lord 
 Shaftesbury, with all his pedantry, was a man of great talents. 
 Leibnitz had the sagacity to see this through the mists of a trans ■ 
 latinn. 
 
1 4: SHAKSPEAEB. 
 
 dition; but that was for want of having read attentively 
 the lines of Ben Jonson to the memory of Shakspeare, — 
 those generous lines which, have so absurdly been taxed 
 with, faint praise. Jonson could malie no mistake on 
 this point : he, as one of Shakspeare's familiar companions, 
 must have witnessed at the very time, and accompanied 
 with friendly sympathy every motion of royal favour to- 
 wards Shakspeare. Now he, in words which leave no 
 room for doubt, exclaims — 
 
 Sweet swan of Avon ! what a sight it were 
 
 To see thee in our waters yet appear, 
 
 And make those flights upon the banks of Thames 
 
 That so did take Eliza and our James. 
 
 These princes, then, were taken, were fascinated, with 
 some of Shakspeare's dramas. In Elizabeth the approba- 
 tion would probably be sincere. In James we can readily 
 suppose it to have been assumed ; for he was a pedant in 
 a different sense from Lord Shaftesbury; notfirom under- 
 valuing modem poetry, but from caring little or nothing 
 for any poetry, although he wrote about its mechanic 
 rules. Still the royal imprimatur would be influential 
 and serviceable no less when offered hypocritically than 
 in full sincerity. Next let us consider, at the very mo- 
 ment of Shakspeare's death, who were the leaders of the 
 British youth, the prindpes juventutis, in the two fields, 
 equally important to a great poet's fame, of rank and of 
 genius 1 The Prince of "Wales and John Milton ; the 
 first being then about sixteen years old, the other about 
 eight. Now these two great powers, as we may call 
 them, these presiding stars over all that was English, in 
 thought and action, were both impassioned admirers of 
 
8HAKSPBAKE. 1 5 
 
 Shakspeare. Each of them counts for many thousands. 
 The Prince of Wales* had learned to appreciate Shak- 
 speare, not originally from reading him, but from witness- 
 ing the court representations of his plays at Whitehall. 
 Afterwards we know that he made Shakspeare his closet 
 companion, for he was reproached with doing so by 
 Milton. And we know also, from the just criticism pro- 
 nounced upon the character and diction of Caliban by 
 one of Charles's confidential counsellors. Lord Falkland, 
 that the king's admiration of Shakspeare had impressed 
 a determination upon the court reading. As to Milton, 
 by double prejudices, puritanical and classical, his mind 
 had been preoccupied against the fuR impressions of 
 Shakspeare. And we know that there is such a thing 
 as keeping the sympathies of love and admiration in a 
 dormant state, or state of abeyance ; an effort of self- 
 conquest realized in more cases than one by the ancient 
 
 * Perhaps the most bitter political enemy of Charles I. will have 
 the candour to allow that, for a prince of those times, he was truly 
 and eminently accomplished. His knowledge of the arts was con- 
 siderable ; and, as a patron of art, he stands foremost amongst all 
 British soTereigus to this hour. He said truly of himself, and 
 wisely as to the principle, that he understood English law as well 
 as a gentleman ought to understand it; meaning that an attor- 
 ney's minute knowledge of forms and technical niceties was illi- 
 beral. Speaking of him as an author, we must remember that the 
 Eikan BasiliM is still unappropriated ; that question is still open. 
 But supposing the king's claim negatived, still, in his controversy 
 with Henderson, in his negotiations at the Isle of "Wight and else- 
 where, he discovered a power of argument, a learning, and a 
 strength of memory, which are truly admirable, whilst the whole 
 of his accomplishments are recommended by a modesty and a 
 humility as rare as they are unaffected. 
 
1 6 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 fathers, both. Greek and Latin, with regard to the pro- 
 fane classics. Intellectually they admired, and ■would 
 not helie theii admiration; but they did not give their 
 hearts cordially, they did not abandon themselves to their 
 natural impidses. They averted their eyes and weaned 
 their attention from the dazzling object. Such, probably, 
 was Milton's state of feeling towards Shakspeare after 
 1642, when the theatres were suppressed, and the fanatical 
 fervour in its noontide heat. Yet even then he did not 
 belie his reverence intellectually for Shakspeare ; and in 
 Ms younger days we know that he had spoken more en- 
 thusiastically of Shakspeare than he ever did again of any 
 uninspired author. Not only did he address a sonnet to 
 his memory, in which he declares that kings would wish 
 to die, if by dying they could obtain such a monument 
 in the hearts of men ; but he also speaks of him. in his 
 II Penseroso as the tutelary genius of the English stage. 
 In this transmission of the torch (Xa/itB-aSopo^/a) Diyden 
 succeeds to Milton ; he was born nearly thirty years 
 later; about thirty years they were contemporaries; and 
 by thirty years, or nearly, Dryden survived his great 
 leader. Dryden, in fact, lived out the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. And we have now arrived within nine years of the 
 era when the critical editions started in hot succession to 
 one another. The names we have mentioned were the 
 great influential names of the century. But of inferior 
 homage there was no end. How came Betterton the 
 actor, how came Davenant, how came Howe, or Pope, 
 by their intense (if not always sound) admiration for 
 Shakspeare, unless they had found it fuming upwards 
 ince incense to the Pagan deities in ancient times from 
 
SHAKSPBAEE. 1 7 
 
 altars erected at every turmng upon all tlie paths of 
 men? 
 
 But it is objected that inferior dramatists were some- 
 trtnes preferred to Shakspeare ; and again, that "vile tra- 
 vesties of Shakspeare were preferred to the authentic 
 dramas. As to the first argument, let it be remembered, 
 that if the saints of the chapel are always in the same 
 honour, because there men are simply discharging a duty, 
 which once due will be due for ever ; the saints of the 
 theatre, on the other hand, must bend to the local genius, 
 and to the very reasons for having a theatre at alL Men 
 go thither for amusement : this is the paramount pur- 
 pose ; and even acknowledged merit or absolute supe- 
 riority must give way to it. Does a man at Paris expect 
 to see Moliere reproduced in proportion to his admitted 
 precedency lq the French drama ? On the contrary, that 
 very precedency argues such a familiarisation with his 
 works, that those who are iu quest of relaxation will 
 reasonably prefer any recent drama to that which, having 
 lost all its novelty, has lost much of its excitement. We 
 speak of ordinary minds ; but in cases of public enter- 
 taimnents, deriving part of their power from scenery and 
 stage pomp, novelty is for all minds an essential condition 
 of attraction. Moreover, in some departments of the 
 comic, Beaumont and Fletcher, when writing in combina- 
 tion, really had a freedom and breadth of maimer which 
 excels the comedy of Shakspeare. As to the altered Shak- 
 speare as taking precedency of the genuine .Shakspeare, no 
 argument can be so frivolous. The public were never 
 allowed a choice ; the great majority of an audience even 
 now cannot be expected to carry the real Shakspeare iu 
 A 2 B 
 
1 8 BHAKSFEABE. 
 
 their mind, so as to pursue a comparison between that 
 and the alteration. Their comparisons must be exclu- 
 sively amongst what they have opportunities of seeing ; 
 that is, between the various pieces presented to them by 
 the managers of theatres. Further than this it is impos- 
 sible for them to extend their office of judging and col- 
 lating; and the degenerate taste which substituted the 
 caprices of Davenant, the rants of Dryden, or the filth of 
 Tate, for the jewellery of Shakspeare, cannot with any 
 justice be charged upon the public, not one in a thousand 
 of whom was furnished with any means of comparing, but 
 exclusively upon those (viz., theatrical managers) who had 
 the very amplest. Yet even in excuse for them much 
 may be said. The very length of some plays compelled 
 them to make alterations. The best of Shakspeare' s 
 dramas. King Lear, is the least fitted for representation ; 
 and, even for the vilest alteration, it ought in candour to 
 be considered that possession is nine points of the law. 
 He who would not have introduced, was often obliged to 
 retain. 
 
 Finally, it is urged, that the small number of editions 
 through which Shakspeare passed in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, furnishes a separate argument, and a conclusive one, 
 against his popularity. We answer, that, considering the 
 bulk of his plays collectively, the editions were not few : 
 compared with any known case, the copies sold of Shak- 
 speare were quite as many as could be expected under the 
 circumstances. Ten or fifteen times as much considera- 
 tion went to the purchase of one great folio like Shak- 
 speare, as would attend the purchase of a little volume 
 like Waller or Donne. Without reviews, or newspapers. 
 
BHAK8PEAEB. 1 9 
 
 or advertisements to diffuse the kaowledge of books, the 
 progress of literatuie was necessarily slow, and its expan- 
 sion narrow. But this is a topic which has always been 
 treated unfairly, not with regard to Shakspeare only, hut 
 to Milton, as well as many others. The truth is, we have 
 not facts enough to guide us; for the number of editions 
 often teUs nothing accurately as to the number of copies. 
 With respect to Shakspeare it is certain, that, had his 
 masterpieces been gathered into small volumes, Shakspeare 
 would have had a most extensive sale. As it was, there 
 can be no doubt, that from his own generation, through- 
 out the seventeenth century, and until the eighteenth 
 began to accommodate, not any greater popularity in him, 
 but a greater taste for reading in the public, his fame 
 never ceased to be viewed as a national trophy of honour; 
 and the most illustrious men of the seventeenth century 
 were no whit less fervent ia their admiration than those 
 of the eighteenth and the nineteenth, either as respected its 
 strength and sincerity, or as respected its open profession.* 
 It is therefore a false notion, that the general sympathy 
 with the merits of Shakspeare ever beat with a languid 
 or iatermitting pulse. Undoubtedly, in times when the 
 functions of critical journals and of newspapers were not 
 at hand to diffuse or to strengthen the impressions which 
 emanated from the capital, all opinions must have travelled 
 slowly into the provinces. But even then, whilst the per- 
 fect organs of communication were wanting, indirect sub- 
 stitutes were supplied by the necessities of the times, or 
 by the instiacts of political zeal Two channels especially 
 
 * See note, p. 93 
 
20 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 lay open 'between tlie great central organ of the national 
 mind, and tlie remotest proTinces. Parliaments were oc- 
 casionally summoned (for the jndges' circuits were too brief 
 to produce much effect); and during their longest suspen- 
 sions, the nobility, with large retinues, continually resorted 
 to the court. But an intercourse more constant and more 
 comprehensive was maiatained through the agency of the 
 two universities. Already, ia the time of James I., the 
 growing importance of the gentry, and the consequent 
 birth of a new interest in political questions, had begun 
 to express itself at Oxford, and still more so at Cam- 
 bridge. Academic persons stationed themselves as sen- 
 tinels at London, for the purpose of watching the court 
 and the course of public affairs. These persons wrote 
 letters, lite those of the celebrated Joseph Mede, which 
 we find in EUis's Historical Collections, reporting to their 
 feUoW-coUegians all the novelties of pubKc life as they 
 arose, or personally carried down such reports, and thus 
 conducted the general feeHngs at the centre into lesser 
 centres, from which again they were diffused into the 
 ten thousand parishes of England; for (with a very few 
 exceptions in favour of poor benefices, Welch or Cum- 
 brian), every parish priest must unavoidably have spent 
 his three years at one or other of the English universities. 
 And by this mode of diffusion it is that we can explain 
 the strength with which Shakspeare's thoughts and dic- 
 tion impressed themselves from a very early period upon 
 the national literature, and even more generally upon the 
 national thinking and conversation.* 
 
 * One of the profoundest tests by which we can measure the con- 
 geniality of an author with the national genius and temper, is the 
 
SHAKSPEAEE. 21 
 
 The question therefore revolyes upon us in threefold 
 difficulty. How, having stepped thus prematurely iuto 
 this inheritance of fame, leaping, as it were, thus abruptly 
 into the favour aKke of princes and the enemies of princes, 
 had it become possible that in his native place (honoured 
 still more in the final testimonies of his preference when 
 founding a family mansion), such a man's history, and the 
 personal recollections which cling so affectionately to the 
 great intellectual potentates who have recommended them- 
 selves by gracious manners, could so soon and so utterly 
 have been obliterated ? 
 
 Malone, with childish iraeflection, ascribes the loss of 
 such memorials to the want of enthusiasm in his ad- 
 mirers. Local researches into private history had not 
 then commenced. Such a taste, often petty enough in 
 its management, was the growth of after-ages. Else how 
 came Spenser's life and fortunes to be so utterly over- 
 whelmed ia oblivion 1 No poet of a high order could be 
 more popular. 
 
 The answer we believe to be this : Twenty-six years 
 after Shakspeare's death commenced the great parliamen- 
 
 degree in which his thoughts or his phrases interweave themselves 
 with our daily conversation, and pass into the currency of the 
 language. Feia French authors, if any, have imparted one phrase to the 
 colloquial idiom; with respect to Shakspeare, a, large dictionary 
 might be made of such phrases as " win golden opinions," " in my 
 mind's eye," "patience on a monument," "o'erstep the modesty 
 of nature," " more honour'd in the breach than in the observance," 
 " palmy state," " my poverty and not my will consents," and so 
 forth, without end. This reinforcement of the general language, 
 by aids from the mintage of Shakspeare, had already commenced 
 in the seventeenth century. 
 
22 8HAKSPBAEB. 
 
 * 
 
 ^ary war : this it was, and the local feuds arising to divide 
 family from family, trottier from trother, upon which, we 
 must charge the extinction of traditions and memorials, 
 doubtless abundant up to that era. The parliamentary 
 contest, it wiU be said, did not last above three years ; 
 the king's standard having been first raised at Nottingham 
 in August 1642, and the battle of Naseby (which ter- 
 minated the open warfare) having been fought in June 
 1645. Or even if we extend its duration to the surrender 
 of the last garrison, that war terminated in the spring 
 of 1646. And the brief explosions of insurrection or of 
 Scottish invasion which occurred on subsequent occasions 
 were all locally confined; and none came near to Warwick- 
 shire, except the battle of Worcester, more than five years 
 after. This is true; but a short war wiH do much to 
 efface recent and merely personal memorials. And the 
 following circumstances of the war were even more im- 
 portant than the general fact. 
 
 First of all, the very mansion founded by Shakspeare 
 became the military head-quaiters for the queen in 1 644, 
 when marching from the eastern coast of England to join 
 the king in Oxford; and one 3uch special visitation would 
 be likely to do more serious mischief in the way of extinc- 
 tion than many years of general warfare. Secondly, as a 
 fact, perhaps, equally important, Birmingham, the chief 
 town of Warwickshire, and the adjacent district, the seat 
 of our hardware manufactures, was the very focus of dis- 
 affection towards the royal cause. Not only, therefore, 
 would this whole region suffer more from internal and 
 spontaneous agitation, but it would be the more frequently 
 traversed vindictively from without, and harassed by fly- 
 
SHAESPEABE. 23 
 
 ing parties from Oxford, or otliers of tlie king's garrisons. 
 Thirdly, even apart from the political aspects of Warwick- 
 shire, this comity happens to be the central one of Eng- 
 land, as regards the roads between the north and south; 
 and Birmingham has long been the great central axis,* in 
 which all the radii from the four angles of England proper 
 meet and iuterseot. Mere accident, therefore, of local posi- 
 tion, much more when united with, that avowed inveteracy 
 of malignant feeling, which was bitter enough to rouse a 
 reaction of bitterness ia the mind of Lord Clarendon, would 
 go far to account for the wreck of many memorials relating 
 to Shakspeare, as well as for the subversion of that quiet 
 and security for humble life, in which the traditional 
 memory finds its best nidus. Thus we obtaia one solu- 
 tion, and perhaps the main one, of the otherwise myste- 
 rious oblivion which had swept away aU traces of the 
 mighty poet, by the time when those quiet days revolved 
 upon England, in which again the solitary agent of learned 
 research might roam in security from house to house, 
 gleaning those personal remembrances which, even in the 
 fury of civil strife, might long have lingered by the chim- 
 ney corner. But the fierce furnace of war had probably, 
 by its local ravages, scorched this field of natural tradi- 
 tion, and thinned the gleaner's inheritance by three parts 
 
 * In fact, by way of repreeenting to himself the system or scheme 
 of the English roads, the reader has only to imagine one great 
 letter X, or a St Andrew's cross, laid down from north to south, 
 and decussating at Birmingham. Even Coventry, which makes a 
 slight variation for one or two roads, and so far disturbs this decus- 
 sation, by shifting it eastwards, is still in Warwickshire. 
 
24 ?HAKSPEABB. 
 
 out of four. This, we repeat, may be one part of the 
 solution to this difficult problem. 
 
 And if another is stiU demanded, possibly it may be 
 found in the fact, hostile to the perfect consecration of 
 Shatspeare's memory, that after aU he was a player. 
 Many a coarse-minded country gentleman, or village pastor, 
 who would have held his town glorified by the distinction 
 of having sent forth a great judge or an eminent bishop, 
 might disdain to cherish the personal recollections which 
 surrounded one whom custom regarded as little above a 
 mountebank, and the Uliberal law as a vagaboijid. The 
 same degrading appreciation attached both to the actor 
 in plays and to their author. The contemptuous appella- 
 tion of "play-book," served as readily to degrade the 
 mighty volume which contained Lear and Hamlet, as that 
 of " play-actor," or " player-man," has always served with 
 the iUiberal or the fanatical to dishonour the persons of 
 Eoscius or of Garrick, of Talma or of Siddons. Nobody, 
 indeed, was better aware of this than the noble-minded 
 Shakspeare ; and feelingly he has breathed forth in his 
 sonnets this conscious oppression under which he lay of 
 public opinion, unfavourable by a double title to his own 
 pretensions ; for, being both dramatic author and dramatic 
 performer, he found himself heir to a twofold opprobrium, 
 and at an era of English society when the weight of that 
 opprobrium was heaviest. In reality, there was at this 
 period a collision of forces acting in opposite directions 
 upon the estimation of the stage and scenical art, and 
 therefore of aU the ministers in its equipage. Puritanism 
 frowned upon these pursuits, as ruinous to public morals ; 
 on the other hand, loyalty could not but tolerate what 
 
BHAE8FEABE. 25 
 
 was patronized by the sovereign ; and it happened that 
 Elizabeth, James, and Charles I., were all alike lovers and 
 promoters of theatrical amusements, which were indeed' 
 more indispensable to the relief of cotut ceremony, and 
 the monotony of aulic pomp, than in any other region of 
 Hfe. This royal support, and the consciousness that any 
 brilliant success in these arts implied an imusual share of 
 natural endowments, did something in mitigation of a 
 scorn which must else have been intolerable to all generous 
 natm-es. 
 
 But whatever prejudice might thus operate against the 
 perfect sanctity of Shakspeaxe's posthumous reputation, it 
 is certain that the splendour of his worldly success must 
 have done much to obliterate that effect ; his admirable 
 coUoquial talents a good deal, and his gracious affability 
 still more. The wonder therefore will still remain, that 
 Betterton, in less than a century from his death, should 
 have been able to glean so little. And for the solution of 
 this wonder we must throw ourselves chiefly upon the 
 explanations we have made as to the paxliamentary war, 
 and the local ravages of its progress in the very district, 
 of the very town, and the very house. 
 
 If further arguments are stiU wanted to explain this 
 mysterious abolition, we may refer the reader to the follow- 
 ing succession of disastrous events, by which it should 
 seem that a perfect malice of misfortune pursued the 
 vestiges of the mighty poet's steps. In 1613, the Globe 
 Theatre, with which he had been so long connected, was 
 burned to the ground. Soon afterwards a great fire 
 occurred in Stratford ; and next (without counting upon 
 the fire of London, just fifty years after his death, which. 
 
26 SHAKflPEABK 
 
 however, •would oonstune many an important record from 
 periods far more remote), the house of Ben Jonson, in 
 ■which probably, as Mr Campbell suggests, might be parts 
 of his correspondence, was also burned. Finally, there 
 was an old tradition that Lady Barnard, the sole grand- 
 daughter of Shaispeare, had carried off many of his papers 
 from Stratford ; and these papers have never since been 
 traced. 
 
 In many of the elder Lives it has been asserted, that 
 John Shakspeare, the father of the poet, was a butcher, 
 and ia others that he was a woolstapler. It is now settled 
 beyond dispute that he was a glover. This was his pro- 
 fessed occupation in Stratford, though it is ceitaia that, 
 with this leading trade, from which he took his denomina- 
 tion, he combiaed some collateral pursuits ; and it is pos- 
 sible enough that, as openings offered, he may have 
 meddled with many. In that age, and in a provincial 
 town, nothing Kke the exquisite subdivision of labour was 
 attempted which we now see realized in the great cities 
 of Christendom. And one trade is often found to play 
 into another with so much reciprocal advantage, that even 
 in our own days we do not much wonder at an enterprising 
 man, in country places, who combines several in his own 
 person. Accordingly, John Shakspeare is known to have 
 united with his town calling the rural and miscellaneous 
 occupations of a farmer. 
 
 Meantime his avowed busiaess stood upon a very differ- 
 ent footing from the same trade as it is exercised in 
 modem times. Gloves were in that age an article of dress 
 more costly by much, and more elaborately decorated, than 
 in our own. They were a customary present from some 
 
SHAKSPBARB. 27 
 
 cities to the judges of assize, and to otlier official persons 
 — a custom of ancient standing, and in some places, we 
 believe, still subsisting ; and in sucli cases it is reasonable 
 to suppose tliat tbe gloves must originally have been more 
 valuable tlian the trivial modern article of tbe same name. 
 So also, perhaps, in their origin, of the gloves given at 
 funerals. In reality, whenever the simplicity of an age 
 makes it difficult to renew the parts of a wardrobe except 
 in capital towns of difficult access, prudence suggests that 
 such wares should be manufactured of more durable 
 materials ; and, being so, they become obviously susceptible 
 of more lavish ornament. But it wiU not follow, from 
 this essential difference in the gloves of Shakspeare's age, 
 that the glover's occupation was more lucrative. Doubt- 
 less he sold more costly gloves, and upon each pair had a 
 larger profit; but for that very reason he sold fewer. Two 
 or three gentlemen " of worship" in the neighbourhood 
 might occasionally require a pair of gloves, but it is very 
 doubtful whether any inhabitant of Stratford would ever 
 call for so mere a luxury. 
 
 The practical result, at aU events, of John Shakspeare's 
 various pursuits does not appear permanently to have met 
 the demands of his establishment ; and in his maturer 
 years there are indications stUl surviving that he was 
 under a cloud of embarrassment. He certainly lost at 
 one time his social position in the town of Stratford; 
 but there is a strong presumption, in mir construction of 
 the case, that he finally retrieved it ; and for this retrieval 
 of a station which he had forfeited by personal misfor- 
 tunes or neglect, he was altogether indebted to the filial 
 piety of his immortal son. 
 
28 SHAKSPBAEB. 
 
 Meantime tlie earlier years of tlie elder Shakspeare 
 wore the aspect of rising prosperity, however unsound 
 might be the hasis on which it rested. There can be 
 little doubt that William Shakspeare, from his birth 'up 
 to his tenth or perhaps his eleventh year, lived in careless 
 plenty, and saw nothing in his father's house but tha,t 
 style of liberal housekeeping which has ever distinguished 
 the upper yeomanry and the rural gentry of England, 
 Probable enough it is that the resources for meeting this 
 HberaKty were not strictly commensurate with the fanaily 
 income, but were sometimes allowed to entrench, by 
 means of loans or mortgages, upon capital funds. ' The 
 stress upon the family finances was perhaps at times 
 severe ; and that it was borne at aU, must be imputed to 
 the large and even splendid portion which John Shak- 
 speare received with his wife. 
 
 This lady, for such she reaUy was in an eminent sense, 
 by birth as well as by connections, bore the beautifiil 
 nsune of Mary Arden, a name derived from the ancient 
 forest district* of the county; and doubtless she merits 
 a more elaborate notice than our slender materials will 
 furnish. To have been fhe mother of Shakspeare, — ^how 
 august a title to the reverence of infinite generations, and 
 of centiu'ies beyond the vision of prophecy. A plausible 
 hypothesis has been started in. modem times, that the 
 facial structure, and that the intellectual conformation. 
 
 * And probably so called by some remote ancestor who had 
 emigrated from the forest of Ardennes, in the Netherlands, and 
 now for ever memorable to English ears from its proximity to 
 Waterloo. 
 
SHAKSPEABE. 29 
 
 may be deduced more frequently from the corresponding 
 characteristics in the mother than in the fether. It is 
 certain that no very great man has ever existed, hut that 
 his greatness has been rehearsed and predicted in one or 
 other of his parents. And it cannot be denied, that in 
 the most eminent men, where we have had the means of 
 pursuiug the investigation, the mother has more fre- 
 quently been repeated and reproduced than the father. 
 "We have known cases where the mother has furnished 
 aU the intellect, and the father all the moral sensibility ; 
 upon which assumption, the wonder ceases that Cicero, 
 Lord Chesterfield, and other hriUiant men, who took the 
 utmost pains with their sons, should have failed so con- 
 spicuously ; for possibly the mothers had been women of 
 excessive and even exemplary stupidity. In the case of 
 Shakspeare, each parent, if we had any means of recover- 
 ing their characteristics, could not fail to furnish a study 
 of the most profound interest ; and with regard to his 
 mother in particular, if the modern hypothesis be true, 
 and if we are indeed to deduce from her the stupendous 
 intellect of her son, in that case she must have been a 
 benefactress to her husband's family beyond the promises 
 of fairyland or the dreams of romance ; for it is certain 
 that to her chiefly this family was also indebted for their 
 worldly comfort. 
 
 Mary Arden was the youngest daughter and the heiress 
 of Eobert Arden of WUmecote, Esq., in the county of 
 "Warwick. The family of Arden was even then of great 
 antiquity. About one century and a quarter before the 
 birth of William Shakspeare, a person hearing the same 
 name as his maternal grandfather had been returned by 
 
30 
 
 SHAKSPEAHE. 
 
 the conmussioners in their list of the "Warwickshire 
 gentry ; he was there styled Eohert Aiden, Esq. of 
 Bromich. This was ia 1433, or the 12th year of Henry 
 VL In Henry VIL'a reign, the Ardens received a grant 
 of lands from the crown; and in 1568, four years after 
 the birth of "William Shakspeare, Edward Arden, of the 
 same family, was sherrfif of the county. Mary Arden was 
 therefore a young lady of excellent descent and connec- 
 tions, and an heiress of considerable wealth. She brought 
 to her husband, as a marriage portion, the landed estate 
 of Asbies, which, upon any just valuation, must be con- 
 sidered as a handsome dowry for a woman of her station. 
 As this poiut has been contested, and as it goes a 
 great way towards determining the exact social posi- 
 tion of the poet's parents, let us be excused for sifting 
 it a little more narrowly than might else seem warranted 
 by the proportions of our present Hfe. Every question 
 which it can be reasonable to raise at all, it must be 
 reasonable to treat with at least so much of minute 
 research as may justify the conclusions which it is made 
 to support. 
 
 The estate of Asbies contained fifty acres of arable 
 land, six of meadow, and a right of commonage. "What 
 may we assume to have been the value of its fee-simple ? 
 Malone, who allows the total fortune of Mary Arden to 
 have been L.110, 13s. 4d., is sure that the value of 
 Asbies could not have been more than one hundred 
 pounds. But why ? Because, says he, the " average" 
 rent of land at that time was no more than three shillings 
 per acre. This we deny ; but upon that assumption, the 
 total yearly rent of fifty-six acres would be exactly eight 
 
SHAKSPEABK 31 
 
 guineas.* And therefore, in assigning the value of Ashies 
 at one hundred pounds, it appears that Malone must have 
 estimated the land at no more than twelve yeai's' pur- 
 chase, which would carry the value to L. 1 00, 16 s. " Even 
 at this estimate," as the latest annotator"f* on this subject 
 jiistly observes, " Mary Arden's portion was a larger one 
 than was usually given to a landed gentleman's daughter." 
 But this writer objects to Malone's principle of valuation. 
 " "We find," says he, " that John Shakspeare also farmed 
 the meadow of Tugton, containing sixteen acres, at the 
 rate of eleven shiUings per acre. Now, what proof has 
 Mr Malone adduced that the acres of Asbies were not as 
 valuable as those of Tugton ? And if they were so, the 
 former estate must have been worth between three and 
 
 * Let not the reader impute to ns the gross anachronism of 
 making an estimate for Shakspeare's days in a coin which did not 
 exist until a century, within a couple of years, after Shakspeare's 
 birth, and did not settle to the value of twenty-one shillings until 
 a century after his death. The nerve of such an anachronism 
 would lie in putting the estimate into a mouth of that age. And 
 this is precisely the blunder into which the foolish forger of 
 Vortigern, &c., has fallen. He does not indeed directly mention 
 guineas ; but indirectly and virtually he does, by repeatedly giving 
 us accounts imputed to Shakspearian contemporaries, in which 
 the sum-total amounts to L.5, 5s, ; or to L.26, Ss. ; or, again, to 
 L.17, 17s. 6d. A man is careful to subscribe L.14, 14s., and so 
 forth. But how could such amounts have arisen unless under a 
 secret reference to guineas, which were not in existence until 
 Charles II.'s reign ; and, moreover, to guineas at their final settle- 
 ment by law into twenty-one shillings each, which did not take 
 place until George I.'s reign. 
 
 t Thomas Campbell the poet, in his eloquent Eemarks on the 
 Life and Writings of "William Shakspeare, prefixed to a popular 
 edition of the poet's dramatic works. London, 1838. 
 
32 SnAKSPEARK 
 
 four himdred pounds." In the main drift of liis objec- 
 tions we concur -with Mr CampbelL But as they are 
 liable to some criticism, let us clear the ground of all 
 plausible caidls, and then see what wlH be the result. 
 Malone, had he been alive, would probably have answered, 
 that Tugton was a farm specially privileged by nature ; 
 and that if any man contended for so unusual a rent as 
 eleven shillings an acre for land not known to him, the 
 onvs proiandi would lie upon him. Be it so ; eleven 
 shillings is certainly above the ordinary level of rent, but 
 three shillings is below it. We contend, that for toler- 
 ably good land, situated advantageously, that is, with a 
 ready access to good markets and good fairs, such as those 
 of Coventry, Birmingham, Gloucester, Worcester, Shrews- 
 bury, &c., one noble might be assumed as the annual 
 rent ; and that in such situations twenty years' purchase 
 was not a valuation, even in Elizabeth's reign, very 
 imusual Let us, however, assume the rent at only five 
 shillings, and land at sixteen years' purchase : upon this 
 basis, the rent would be L.14, and the value of the fee- 
 simple L.224. Now, if it were required to equate that 
 sum with its present value, a very operose* calculation 
 might be requisite. But contenting ourselves with the 
 gross method of making such equations between 1560 
 and the current century, that is, multiplying by five, we 
 shall find the capital value of the estate to be eleven 
 hundred and twenty pounds, whilst the annual rent would 
 be exactly seventy. But if the estate had been sold, and 
 the purchase-money lent upon mortgage (the only safe 
 
 • See Note, p 95. 
 
SHAKSPEAEE. 33 
 
 mode of investing money at tliat time), the annual interest 
 wonld liave reached L.28, equal to L.140 of modern 
 money ; for mortgages in Elizabetli's age readily produced 
 ten per cent. 
 
 A woman -who should bring at tliis day an annual 
 income of L.140 to a provincial tradesman, living in a 
 sort of nis in urbe, according to the simple fashions of 
 rustic life, would assuredly he considered as an excellent 
 match. And there can he Httle douht that Mary Aiden's 
 dowry it was which, for some ten or a dozen years suc- 
 ceeding to his marriage, raised her husband to so much 
 social consideration in Stratford. In 1550 John Shak- 
 speare is supposed to have first settled in Stratford, hav- 
 ing migrated from some other part of "Warwickshire. In 
 1557 he married Mary Arden; in 1565, the year subse- 
 quent to the birth of his son William, his third child, he 
 was elected one of the aldermen; and in the year 1568 
 he became first magistrate of the town, by the title of 
 high bailiff. This year we may assume to have been that 
 in which the prosperity of this family reached its zenith; 
 for in this year it was, over and above the presumptions 
 furnished by his civic honours, that he obtained a grant 
 of arms from Clarencieux of the Heralds' CoUege. On 
 this occasion he declared himseK worth five himdred 
 pounds derived from his .ancestors. And we really can- 
 not understand the right by which critics, living nearly 
 three centuries from his time, undertake to know his 
 affairs better than himself, and to tax biin with either 
 inaccuracy or falsehood. No man would be at leisure to 
 court heraldic honours when he knew himseK to be em- 
 barrassed, or apprehended that he soon might be so. A 
 
34 8HAKSPEABE. 
 
 man whose anxieties had been fixed at all upon liis daily 
 livelihood would, hj this chase after the aerial honours of 
 heraldry, have made hitnseK a hutt for ridicule such as no 
 fortitude could enable him to sustain. 
 
 In 1568, therefore, when his son William would be 
 moving through his fifth year, John Shakspeare (now 
 honoured by the designation of Master) would be found 
 at times in the society of the neighbouring gentry. Ten 
 years in advance of this period he was abeady in difficul- 
 ties. But there is no proof that these difficulties had 
 then reached a point of degradation, or of memorable dis- 
 tress. The sole positive indications of his decaying con- 
 dition are, that ia 1578 he received an exemption from 
 the small weekly assessment levied upon the aldermen of 
 Stratford for the relief of the poor; and that in the fol- 
 lowing year, 1579, he is found enioUed amongst the 
 defaulters in the payment of taxes. The latter fact un- 
 doubtedly goes to prove that, like every man who is 
 falliag back in the world, he was occasionally in arrears. 
 Paying taxes is not like the honours awarded or the pro- 
 cessions regulated by Clarencieux : no man is ambitious 
 of precedency there; and if a laggard pace in that duty 
 is to be received as evidence of pauperism, nine-tenths of 
 the English people might occasionally be classed as 
 paupers. With respect to his liberation from the weekly 
 assessment, that may bear a construction different from 
 the one which it has received. This payment, which 
 could never have been regarded as a burthen, not amount- 
 ing to five pounds annually of our present money, may 
 have been held up as an exponent of wealth and con- 
 sideration ; and John Shakspeare may have been required 
 
SHAKSPEABE. 35 
 
 to resign it as an tonoraable distinction, not suitable to 
 the ciicttmstances of an enij)arrassed. man. Finally, the 
 fact of his being indebted to Eobert Sadler, a baker, in 
 the sum of five pounds, and his being under the necessity 
 of bringing a friend as security for the payment, proves 
 nothing at alL There is not a town in Europe in which 
 opulent men cannot be found that are backward in the 
 payment of their debts. And the probability is, that 
 Master Sadler acted Kke most people who, when they 
 suppose a man to be going down in the world, feel their 
 respect for him sensibly decaying, and think it wise to 
 trample him under foot, provided only in that act of 
 tiiimpling they can squeeze out of him their own indi- 
 vidual debt. Like that terrific chorus in Spohi's oratorio 
 of St Paul, " Stone him to death" is the cry of the selfish 
 and the illiberal amongst creditors, alike towards the just 
 and the unjust amongst debtors. 
 
 It was the wise and beautiful prayer of Agar, " Give 
 me neither poverty nor riches;'' and, doubtless, for quiet, 
 for peace, and the latentis semita vitcB, that is the happiest 
 dispensation. But, perhaps, with a view to a school of 
 discipline and of moral fortitude, it might be a more salu- 
 tary prayer, " Give me riches and poverty, and afterwards 
 neither." For the transitional state between riches and 
 poverty will teach a lesson both as to the baseness and 
 the goodness of human nature, and wiU impress that 
 lesson with a searching force, such as no borrowed ex- 
 perience ever can approach. Most probable it is that 
 Shakspeare drew some of his powerful scenes in the 
 Timon of Athens, those which exhibit the vileness of 
 ingratitude and the impassioned fren2y of misanthropy, 
 
36 SHAKSPBAEE. 
 
 from his personal recollections connected with the case of 
 his own father. Possibly, tl^ough a cloud of 270 years 
 now veils it, this very Master Sadler, who was so urgent 
 for his five pounds, and who so little apprehended that he 
 should be called over the coals for it in the " Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica," may have sate for the portrait of that 
 Lucullus who says of Timon — 
 
 Alas, good lord I a noble gentleman 
 'tis, if he would not keep so good a house. Many a time and 
 often I have dined with him, and told him on't ; and come again 
 to supper to him, of purpose to have him spend less : and yet he 
 would embrace no counsel, take no warning by my coming. Every 
 man has his fault, and honesty is his ; I have told him on't, but I 
 could never get him from it. • 
 
 For certain years, perhaps, John Shakspeare moved on 
 in darkness and sorrow — 
 
 His familiars from his buried fortunes 
 Slunk all away ; left their false vows with him, 
 Like empty purses pick'd : and his poor self, 
 A dedicated beggar to the air. 
 With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, 
 "Walk'd, like contempt, alone. 
 
 "We, however, at this day are chiefly interested in the 
 case as it bears upon the education and youthful happi- 
 ness of the poet. Now if we suppose that from 1568, 
 the high noon of the family prosperity, to 1578, the first 
 year of their mature embarrassments, one half the interval 
 was passed in stationary sunshine, and the latter half in 
 the gradual twilight of declension, it wiH follow that the 
 young WiUiani had completed his tenth year before he 
 heard the first signals of distress; and for so long a period 
 his education would probably be conducted on as liberal 
 
SHAKSPBARE. 37 
 
 a scale as the resources of Stratford would allow. Thiough 
 this earliest section of Ids life lie would undoubtedly rardc 
 as a gentleman's son, possibly as the leader of his class 
 in Stratford. But what rank he held through the next 
 ten years, or, more generally, what was the standing iu 
 society of Shaispeare until he had created a new station 
 for himself by his own exertions ia the metropolis, is a 
 question yet unsettled, but which has been debated as 
 keenly as if it had some great dependencies. Upon this 
 we shall observe, that could we by possibility be called 
 to settle beforehand what rank were best for fayouring 
 the development of iateUectual powers, the question might 
 wear a face of deep practical importance; but when the 
 question is simply as to a matter of fact, what was the 
 rank held by a man whose intellectual development has 
 long ago been completed, this becomes a mere question of 
 curiosity. The tree has fallen; it is confessedly the 
 noblest of all the forest; and we must therefore conclude 
 that the soU m which it flourished was either the best 
 possible, or, if not so, that anything bad in its properties 
 had been disarmed and neutralized by the vital forces of 
 the plant, or by the benignity of nature. If any future 
 Shakspeare were likely to arise, it might be a problem of 
 great interest to agitate, whether the condition of a poor 
 man or of a gentleman were best fitted to nurse and stimu- 
 late his faculties. But for the actual Shakspeare, siuce 
 what he was he was, and siuce nothing greater can be 
 imagiued, it is now become a matter of little moment 
 whether his course lay for fifteen or twenty years through 
 the humilities of absolute poverty, or through the che- 
 quered paths of gentry lying in the shade. Whatever 
 
38 SHAKSPEAEE. 
 
 was, must, in this case at least, have heen the best, since 
 it terminated in producing Shakspeare; and thus far we 
 must aE be optimists. 
 
 Yet still, it ■will be urged, the curiosity is not illiberal 
 which would seek to ascertain, the precise career through 
 which Shakspeare ran. This we readily concede; and 
 we are anxious ourselves to contribute anything in our 
 power to the settlement of a point so obscure. What we 
 have wished to protest against is the spirit of partisanship 
 in which this question has too generally been discussed. 
 For, whilst some, with a foolish affectation of plebeian 
 sympathies, overwhelm us with the insipid commonplaces 
 about birth and ancient descent, as honours containing 
 nothing meritorious, and rush eagerly into an ostentatious 
 exhibition of aU the circumstances which favour the 
 notion of a humble station and humble connections ; 
 others, with equal forgetfulness of true dignity, plead 
 with the intemperance and partiality of a legal advocate 
 for the pretensions of Shakspeare to the hereditary rank 
 of gentleman. Both parties violate the majesty of the 
 subject. When we are seeking for the sources of the 
 Euphrates or the St Lawrence, we look for no proportions 
 to the mighty volume of waters in that particular summit 
 amongst the chain of mountains which embosoms its ear- 
 liest fountains, nor are we shocked at the obscurity of 
 these fountains. Pursuing the career of 1Vra.hn TnTn p.rlj or 
 of any man who has memorably impressed his own mind 
 or agency upon the revolutions of mankind, we feel solici- 
 tude about the circumstances which might surround his 
 cradle to be altogether unseasonable and impertinent. 
 Whether he were born in a hovel or a palace, whether he 
 
SHAKSPBABK 39 
 
 passed his infancy in squalid poverty, or hedged aroiind 
 by the glittering spears of body-guards, as mere questions 
 of fact may be interesting, but, in the light of either 
 accessories or counter-agencies to the native majesty of the 
 subject, are trivial and below aU. philosophic valuation. 
 So Tvith regard to the creator of Lear and Hamlet, of 
 Othello and Macbeth; to Tnim from whose golden urns 
 the nations beyond the far Atlantic, the multitude of the 
 isles, and the generations unborn in Australian climes, 
 even to the realms of the rising sun (the dvaroXa/ ^jeX/o/o), 
 must in every age draw perennial streams of intellectual 
 life, we feel that the little accidents of birth and social 
 condition are so unspeakably below the grandeur of the 
 theme, are so irrelevant and disproportioned to the real 
 interest at issue, so incommensurable with any of its rela- 
 tions, that a biographer of Shaispeare at once denounces 
 himself as below his subject if he can entertain such a 
 question as seriously affecting the glory of the poet. In 
 some legends of saints, we find that they were bom with 
 a lambent circle or golden areola about their heads. This 
 angelic coronet shed light alike upon the chambers of a 
 cottage or a palace, upon the gloomy limits of a dungeon 
 or the vast expansion of a cathedral ; but the cottage, the 
 palace, the dungeon, the cathedral, were all equally incap- 
 able of adding one ray of colour or one pencil of light to 
 the supernatural halo. 
 
 Having therefore thus pointedly guarded ourselves from 
 misconstruction, and consenting to entertain the question 
 as one in which we, the worshippers of Shakspeare, have 
 an interest of curiosity, but in which he, the object of 
 our worship, has no interest of glory, we proceed to state 
 
40 SHAKSPEAEE. 
 
 what appears to us the result of the scanty facts surviving 
 when collated with each other. 
 
 By his mother's side, Shakspeare was an authentic gen- 
 tleman. By his father's he would have stood ia a more 
 duhious position; but the effect of municipal honours to 
 raise and illustrate an equivocal rank has always been 
 acknowledged under the popular tendencies of our Eng- 
 lish political system. From the sort of lead, therefore, 
 which John Shakspeare took at one time amongst his 
 feUow-townsmen, and from his rank of first magistrate, 
 we may presume that, about the year 1568, he had placed 
 himself at the head of the Stratford community. After- 
 wards he continued for some years to descend from this 
 altitude ; and the question is, at what point this gradual 
 degradation may be supposed to have settled. Now we 
 shall avow it as our opinion, that the composition of 
 society in Stratford was such that, even had the Shak- 
 speare family maintained their superiority, the main body 
 of their daily associates must still have been found 
 amongst persons below the rank of gentry. The poet 
 must inevitably have mixed chiefly with mechanics and 
 humble tradesmen, for such people composed perhaps the 
 total community. But had there even been a gentry in 
 Stratford, since they would have marked the distinctions 
 of their rank chiefly by greater reserve of manners, it is 
 probable that, after all, Shakspeare, with his enormity of 
 delight in exhibitions of human nature, would have 
 mostly cultivated that class of society in which the feel- 
 ings are more elementary and simple, in which the 
 thoughts speak a plainer language, and in which the re- 
 straints of factitious or conventional decorum are exchanged 
 
SHAKSPEiEE. 41 
 
 for tte restraints of mere sexual decency. It is a notice- 
 able fact to aU who liave looked upon human life with an 
 eye of strict attention, that the abstract image of woman- 
 hood, in its loveliness, its delicacy, and its modesty, no- 
 where makes itself more impressive or more advantageously 
 felt than in the humblest cottages, because it is there 
 brought into immediate juxtaposition with the grossness 
 of manners and the careless license of language incident 
 to the fathers and brothers of the house. And this is 
 more especially true in a nation of unaffected sexual gal- 
 lantry,* such as the English and the Gothic races id 
 general ; siace, under the immunity which their women 
 enjoy from all servile labours of a coarse or out-of-doors 
 order, by as much lower as they descend in the scale of 
 rank, by so much more do they benefit under the force of 
 contrast with the men of their own level A young man 
 of that class, however noble in appearance, is somewhat 
 degraded in the eyes of women, by the necessity which 
 his indigence imposes of working under a master ; but a 
 beautiful young woman, in the very poorest family, unless 
 she enters upon a life of domestic servitude (in which 
 case her labours are Hght, suited to her sex, and with- 
 drawn from the public eye), so long in fact as she stays 
 under her father's roof, is as perfectly her own mistress 
 and sui juris as the daughter of an earL This personal 
 dignity, brought into stronger relief by the mercenary 
 employments of her male connections, and the feminine 
 gentleness of her voice and manners, exhibited under the 
 same advantages of contrast, oftentimes combine to make 
 
 • See Note, p. 96. 
 
42 SHAKSPBAKE. 
 
 a young cottage beauty as fascinating an object as any 
 woman of any station. 
 
 Hence -we may in part account for the great event of 
 Sbakspeare's early manbood. — ^bis premature marriage. It 
 bas always been known, or at least traditionally received 
 for a fact, tbat Sbakspeare bad married wMlst yet a boy ; 
 and tbat bis wife was unaccountably older tban bimself. 
 In tbe very earliest biograpbical sketcb of tbe poet, com- 
 piled by Eowe, from' materials collected by Betterton tbe 
 actor, it was stated (and tbat statement is now ascertained 
 to bave been correct), tbat be bad married Anne Hatbaway, 
 " tbe daughter of a substantial yeoman." Furtber tban 
 tliis notbing was known. But in September 1836 was 
 published a very remarkable document, wbiob gives tbe 
 assurance of law to tbe time and fact of this event, yet 
 still, unless collated witb another record, does nothing to 
 lessen the mystery which had previously surrounded its 
 circumstances. This document consists of two parts : the 
 first, and principal, according to the logic of the case, 
 though second according to tbe arrangement, being a 
 license for the marriage of WiUiam Sbakspeare with Anne 
 Hatbaway, under the condition "of once asking of the 
 bannes of matrimony,'' tbat is, in effect, dispensing with 
 two out of the three customary askings ; the second or 
 subordinate part of the document being a bond entered 
 into by two sureties, viz., Fulke Sandells and John 
 Eychardson, both described as agriaolm or yeomen, and 
 both marksmen (that is, incapable of writing, and therefore 
 subscribing by means of marks), for tbe payment of forty 
 pounds sterling, in the event of Sbakspeare, yet a minor, 
 and incapable of binding bimself, failing to fulfil tbe con- 
 
SHAKSPBAKE. 43 
 
 ditions of tlie license. In the bond, drawn up in Latin, 
 there is no mention of Shakspeare's name ; but in the 
 license, which is altogether English, Ms name, of course, 
 stands foremost ; and as it may gratify the reader to see 
 the very words and orthography of the original, we here 
 extract the operative part of this document, prefacing only, 
 that the hcense is attached by way of explanation to the 
 bond. " The condition of this obhgation is suche, that if 
 heraffcer there shall not appere any lawfull lett or impedi- 
 ment, by reason of any precontract, &c., but that Villm. 
 Shagspere, one thone ptie" [on the one party], " and 
 Anne Hathwey of Stratford, in the diocess of Worcester, 
 maiden, may lawfully solemnize matrimony together ; and 
 in the same afterwards remaiae and contiuew hke man 
 and wiffe. And, moreover, if the said "WiEm. Shagspere 
 do not proceed to solemnization of mariadg with the said 
 Anne Hathwey, without the consent of hir friads ; — ^then 
 the said obligation" [viz., to pay forty pounds] "to be 
 voyd and of none effect, or els to stand & abide iu full 
 force and vertue." 
 
 "What are we to think of this document ? Trepidation 
 and anxiety are written upon its face. The parties are 
 not to be married by a special Hcense ; not even by an 
 ordiuary license ; ia that case no proclamation of banns, 
 no public asking at all, would have been requisite. Econo- 
 mical scruples are consulted ; and yet the regular move- 
 ment of the marriage " through the bell-ropes" * is dis- 
 
 * Amongst people of humble rank in England, who only were 
 ever asked in church, until the new-fangled systems of marriage 
 came up within the last ten or fifteen years, during the currency 
 of the three Sundays on which the banns were proclaimed by the 
 
44 SHAKSPEAEE. 
 
 turbed. Economy, which retards the marriage, is here 
 evidently in collision with some opposite principle which 
 precipitates it. How is aU this to be explained 1 Much 
 light is afforded by the date when illustrated by another 
 document. The bond bears date on the 28th day of 
 November in the 25th year of our lady the queen; that 
 is, in 1582. Now the baptism of Shakspeare's eldest 
 child, Susanna, is registered on the 26th of May in the 
 year following. Suppose, therefore, that his marriage was 
 solemnized on the 1st day of December : it was barely 
 possible that it could be earlier, considering that the 
 sureties, drinking, perhaps, at Worcester throughout the 
 28th of November, would require the 29th, iu so dreary 
 a season, for their return to Stratford ; after which some 
 preparation might be requisite to the bride, since the 
 marriage was not celebrated at Stratford. Next suppose 
 the birth of Miss Susanna to have occurred, Hke her 
 father's, two days before her baptism, viz., on the 24th of 
 May. From December the 1st to May the 24th, both 
 days inclusively, are 175 days; which, divided by seven, 
 gives precisely twenty-five weeks, that is to say, six 
 months short by one week. Oh, fie. Miss Susanna ! you 
 came rather before you were wanted. 
 
 Mr Campbell's comment upon the affair is, that "if 
 this was the case,'' Adz., if the baptism were reaUy solem- 
 nized on the 26th of May, "the poet's first child would 
 appear to have been born only six months and eleven 
 days after the bond was entered into." And he then 
 
 clergyman from the reading-desk, the young couple elect were said 
 jocosely to be "hanging in the bell-ropes;" alluding perhaps to 
 the joyous peal contingent on the final completion of the marriage. 
 
SHAKSPEAEE. 45 
 
 concludes tliat, on this assumption, "Miss Susanna Sliak- 
 speare came into the world a little prematurely." But 
 this is to douht where there never was any ground for 
 douhting; the haptism was certainly on the 26th of May; 
 and, in the next place, the calculation of sIk months and 
 eleven days is sustaiaed hy suhstitutiag limar months for 
 calendar, and then only by supposing the marriage to 
 have been celebrated on the very day of subscribing the 
 bond in "Worcester, and the baptism to have been coin- 
 cident with the birth ; of which suppositions the latter is 
 improbable, and the former, considering the situation of 
 Worcester, impossible. 
 
 Strange it is, that, whilst all biographers have worked 
 with so much zeal upon the most barren dates or most 
 baseless traditions in the great poet's life, reaHsing in a 
 manner the chimeras of Laputa, and endeavouring "to 
 extract sunbeams fi:om cucumbers," such a story with re- 
 gard to such an event, no fiction of village scandal, but 
 involved in legal documents, a story so significant and 
 so eloquent to the intelligent, should formerly have been 
 dismissed without notice of any kind, and even now, after 
 the discovery of 1836, with nothing beyond a slight con- 
 jectural insinuation. For our parts, we should have been 
 the last amongst the biographers to unearth any forgotten 
 scandal, or, after so vast a lapse of time, and when the 
 grave had shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point 
 any moral censures at a simple case of natural fraUty, 
 youthful precipitancy of passion, of all trespasses the most 
 venial, where the final intentions are honourable. But in 
 this case there seems to have been something more in 
 motion than passion or the ardour of youth. "I like 
 
46 SHAKSPBAilE. 
 
 not," says Parson Evans (alluding to Falstaff in mas- 
 querade), " I like not wlien a woman has a great peard ; 
 I spy a great peaid under her muffler." Neither do we 
 like the spectacle of a mature young woman, five years 
 past her majority, wearing the semblance of having heen 
 led astray by a boy who had stUl two years and a half to 
 run of his minority. Shakspeare himself, looking back 
 on this part of his youthful history from his maturest 
 years, breathes forth pathetic counsels against the errors 
 iato which his own iuexperience had been ensnared. 
 The disparity of years between himself and his wife he 
 notices iu a beautiful scene of the Twelfth Night. The 
 Duke Orsino, observing the sensibiEty which the pre- 
 tended Cesario had betrayed on hearing some touching 
 old snatches of a love strain, swears that his beardless 
 page must have felt the passion of love, which the other 
 admits. Upon this the dialogue proceeds thus : — 
 
 Dvke. What kind of woman is't ? 
 Viola. Of your complexion. 
 
 DuTte. She is not worth thee then : — What years ? 
 Viola. V faith, 
 
 About your years, my lord. 
 Duke. Too old, by heaven. Let still the woman take 
 
 An elder than herself: so wears she to him, 
 
 So sways she level in her husband's heart. 
 
 For, boy, however we do praise ourselves. 
 
 Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm. 
 
 More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, 
 
 Than women's are. 
 Viola. I think it well, my lord. 
 
 Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself. 
 
 Or thy affection cannot hold the bent; 
 
 For women are as roses, whose fair flower, 
 
 Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour. 
 
SHAKSPBARB. 47 
 
 Ttese counsels were uttered nearly twenty years after 
 the event in his own life to which they prohahly look 
 back; for this play is supposed to have been written in 
 Shakspeare's thirty-eighth year. And we may read an 
 earnestness in pressiag the poiat as to the inverted dis- 
 parity of years, which indicates pretty clearly an appeal 
 to the lessons of his personal experience. But his other 
 indiscretion, ia having yielded so fai' to passion and oppor- 
 tunity as to crop by prelibation, and before they were 
 hallowed, those flowers of paradise which belonged to his 
 marriage-day; this he adverts to with even more solem- 
 nity of sorrow, and with, more pointed energy of moral 
 reproof, in the very last drama which is supposed to have 
 proceeded from his pen, and therefore with the force and 
 sanctity of testamentary counsel. The Tempest is aU 
 but ascertained to have been composed in 1611, that is, 
 about five years before the poet's death; and indeed could 
 not have been composed much earlier; for the very inci- 
 dent which suggested the basis of the plot, and of the 
 local scene, viz., the shipwreck of Sir George Somers on 
 the Bermudas (which were in consequence denominated the 
 Somers' Islands), did not occur until the year 1609. In 
 the opening of the fourth act, Prospero formally betrothes 
 his daughter to Ferdinand; and in doing so he pays the 
 prince a well-merited comphment of having "worthily 
 purohas'd" this rich jewel, by the patience with which, 
 for her sake, he had supported harsh usage, and other 
 painful circumstances of his trial But, he adds solemnly. 
 
 If thou dost break her virgin knot before 
 All sanctimonious ceremonies may 
 With full and holy rite be minister 'd; 
 
48 SHAESPEAnE. 
 
 in that case what would follow ! 
 
 No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall, 
 To make this contract grow; but barren hate, 
 SaUT-ey'd disdain and discord shall bestrew 
 The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
 That you shall hate it loth. Therefore take heed, 
 As Hymen's lamps shall light you. 
 
 The young prince assures him in reply, that no strength 
 of opportunity, concurring with the uttermost temptation, 
 not 
 
 the murkiest den 
 The most opportune place„the strong'st suggestion 
 Our worser genius can 
 
 should ever prevail to lay asleep his jealousy of self- 
 control, so as to take any advantage of Miranda's irino- 
 cence. And he adds an argument for this abstinence, by 
 way of reminding Prospero, that not honour only, hut 
 even prudential care of his own happiness, is interested 
 in the observance of his promise. Any unhallowed antici- 
 pation would, as he insinuates, 
 
 Take away 
 The edge of that day's celebration, 
 When I shall think, or Phcebus' steeds are founder'd, 
 Or night kept ohain'd below ; 
 
 that is, when even the winged hours would seem to 
 move too slowly. Even thus Prospero is not quite 
 satisfied : during his subsequent dialogue with Ariel, we 
 are to suppose that Perdinand, in conversing apart with 
 Miranda, betrays more impassioned ardour than the 
 wise magician altogether approves. The prince's caresse.<! 
 
8HA.KSFEABE. 49 
 
 have not been unobserved; and thus Prospero renewa 
 his ■warning : 
 
 Look thou be true : do not give dalliance 
 Too much the rein : the strongest oaths are straw 
 To the fire i' the blood : be more abstemious, 
 Or else — good night your tow. 
 
 The royal lover re-assures him of his loyalty to his engage- 
 ments; and again the ■wise father, so honourably jealous 
 for his daughter, professes himself satisfied ■with the 
 prince's pledges. 
 
 Now in all these emphatic ■warnings, uttering the lan- 
 guage " of that sad ■wisdom folly leaves behind," ■who can, 
 avoid reading, as in subtile hieroglyphics, the secret record 
 of Shakspeare's o^wn nuptial disappointments ? We, in- 
 deed, that is, universal posterity through every age, hav6 
 reason to rejoice in these disappointments ; for to them, 
 past all doubt, ■we are indebted for Shakspeare's subse- 
 quent migration to London, and his public occupation, 
 which, giving him a deep pecuniary interest in the pro- 
 ductions of his pen, such as no other literary application 
 of his po^wers could have approached in that day, ■were 
 eventua.lly the means of dra^wing forth those divine ■works 
 ■which have survived their author for our everlasting 
 benefit. 
 
 Our own readinig and deciphering of the •whole case is 
 as follows. The Shakspeares ■were a handsome family, 
 both father and sons. This we assume upon the follow- 
 ing grounds : — ^First, on the presumption arising out of 
 John, Shakspeare's having ■won the favour of a young 
 heiress higher in rank than himself ; secondly, on the 
 presumption involved in the fact of three amongst his 
 
50 8HAKSPEARB. 
 
 four sons having gone upon the stage, to which the most 
 obvious (and perhaps in those days a sine qua non) recom- 
 mendation vrould be a good person and a pleasing coun- 
 tenance ; thirdly, on the direct evidence of Aubrey, who 
 assures us that WiUiam Shakspeare was a handsome and 
 a well-shaped man ; fourthly, on the implicit evidence of 
 the Stratford monument, which exhibits a man of good 
 figure and noble countenance ; fifthly, on the confirma- 
 tion of this evidence by the Chandos portrait, -which 
 exhibits noble features, illustrated by the utmost sweet- 
 ness of expression ; sixthly, on the sele'ction of theatrical 
 parts, which it is known that Shakspeare personated, 
 most of them being such as required some dignity of 
 form, viz., kings, the athletic (though aged) follower of an 
 athletic young man, and supernatural beings. On these 
 grounds, direct or circumstantial, we believe ourselves 
 warranted in assuming that "William Shakspeare was a 
 handsome and even noble-looking boy. Miss Anne Hath- 
 away had herself probably some personal attractions ; and, 
 if an indigent girl, who looked for no pecuniary advan- 
 tages, would probably have been early sought in marriage. 
 But as the daughter of "a substantial yeoman," who 
 would expect some fortune in his daughter's suitors, she 
 had, to speak coarsely, a little outKved her market. Time 
 she had none to lose. WiUiam Shakspeare pleased her 
 eye ; and the gentleness of his nature made him an apt 
 subject for female blandishments, possibly for female arts. 
 "Without imputing, however, to this Anne Hathaway any- 
 thing so hateful as a settled plot for ensnaring him, it 
 was easy enough for a mature woman, armed with such 
 inevitable advantages of experience and of seK-possession, 
 
8HAKSPEAEB. 51 
 
 to draw onward a blushiiig novice ; and, without directly 
 creating opportunities, to place Mm ia the way of turning 
 to account such, as naturally offered Young boys are 
 generally flattered by the condescending notice of grown* 
 up women ; and perhaps Shakspeare's own lines upon a 
 similar situation, to a young hoy adorned with the same 
 natural gifts as himself, may give us the key to the 
 result : — 
 
 Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won ; 
 Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd ; 
 And, when a woman woos, what woman's son 
 Will sourly leave her till he have prevail'd? 
 
 Once, indeed, entangled in such a pursuit, any person of 
 manly feelings would be sensible that he had no retreat ; 
 that would be — to insult a woman, grievously to wound 
 her sexual pride, and to insure her lasting scorn and 
 hatred. These were consequences which the gentle- 
 minded Shakspeare could not face ; he pursued his good 
 fortunes, half perhaps in heedlessness, half in desperation, 
 until he was roused by the clamorous displeasure of her 
 family upon first discovering the situation of their kins- 
 woman. For such a situation there could be but one 
 atonement, and that was hurried forward by both parties ; 
 whilst, out of deHcacy towards the bride, the wedding was 
 not celebrated in Stratford (where the register contains 
 no notice of such an event) ; nor, as Malone imagined, in 
 Weston-upon-Avon, that being in the diocese of Glou- 
 cester ; but in some parish, as yet undiscovered, in the 
 diocese of Worcester. 
 
 But now arose a serious question as to the future main- 
 tenance of the young people. John Shakspeare was de- 
 
52 SHAESFEABE. 
 
 pressed in his ciicmnstaiiceB, and he had other children 
 besides William, viz., three sons and a daughter. The 
 elder Lives have represented him as burdened mth ten ; 
 but this was an error, arising out of the confusion between 
 John Shakspeare the glover and John Shakspeare a shoe- 
 maker. This error has been thus far of use, that, by 
 exposing the fact of two John Shakspeares (not kinsmen) 
 residing in Stratford-upon-Avon, it has satisfactorily proved 
 the name to be amongst those which are locally indigenous 
 to "Warwickshire. Meantime it is now ascertained that 
 John Shakspeare the glover had only eight chUdren, viz., 
 four daughters and four sons. The order of their succes- 
 sion was this : — Joan, Margaret, William, Gilbert, a 
 second Joan, Anne, Eichard, and Edmund. Three of 
 the daughters, viz., the two eldest of the family, Joan and 
 Margaret, together with Anne, died in childhood : aU the 
 rest attained mature ages, and of these WiUiam was the 
 eldest. This might give him some advantage in his 
 father's regard ; but in a question of pecuniary provision 
 precedency amongst the children of an insolvent is nearly 
 nominaL For the present John Shakspeare could do 
 little for his son ; and, under these circumstances, per- 
 haps the father of Anne Hathaway would come forward 
 to assist the new-married couple. This condition of de- 
 pendency would famish matter for painful feelings and 
 irritating words : the youthful husband, whose mind 
 would be expanding as rapidly as the leaves and blossoms 
 of spring-time in polar latitudes, would soon come to 
 appreciate the sort of wiles by which he had been caught. 
 The female mind is quick, and almost gifted with the 
 power of witchcraft, to decipher what is passing in the 
 
SHAESFBABS. 53 
 
 thoughts of familiar companions. Silent and forbearing 
 4s "William Shakspeare might be, Anne, his staid wife, 
 ■would read his secret reproaches ; iU would she dissemble 
 her wrath, and the less so from the consciousness of hav- 
 ing deserved them. It is no uncommon case for women 
 to feel anger in connection with one subject, and to ex 
 ^ress it in connection with another ; which other, per- 
 haps (except as a serviceable mask), would have been a 
 matter of indifference to their feeHngs. Anne would 
 therefore reply to those inevitable reproaches which h^r 
 own sense must presume to be lurking in her husband's 
 heart, by others equally stinging, on his inability to sup- 
 port his family, and on his obligations to her father's 
 purse. Shakspeare, we may be sure, would be ruminating 
 every hour on the means of his deliverance from so padn- 
 ful a dependency; and at length, after four years' conjugal 
 discord, he would resolve upon that plan of soHtary emi- 
 gration to the metropolis, which, at the same time that it 
 released him from the humiliation of domestic feuds, suc- 
 ceeded so splendidly for his worldly prosperity, and with 
 a train of consequences so vast for all future ages. 
 
 Such, we are persuaded, was the real course of Shak- 
 speaie's transition from school-boy pursuits to his public 
 career : and upon the known temperament of Shakspeare, 
 his genial disposition to enjoy hfe without disturbing his 
 enjoyment by fretting anxieties, we build the conclusion, 
 that had his friends furnished him with ampler funds, 
 and had his marriage been well assorted or happy, we — 
 the world of posterity — ^should have lost the whole 
 benefit and delight which we have since reaped from his 
 matchless faculties. The motives which drove biTn ftom 
 
54 SHAKSPBARE. 
 
 Stratford are clear enough ; but what motives determined 
 his course to London, and especially to the stage, still 
 remains to be explained. Stratford-upon-Avon, lying in 
 the high road from London through Oxford to Birming- 
 ham (or more genei-ally to the north), had been con- 
 tinually visited by some of the best comedians during 
 Shakspeare's childhood. One or two of the most respect- 
 able metropolitan actors were natives of Stratford. These 
 would be weU known to the elder Shakspeare. But, 
 apart from that accident, it is notorious that mere legal 
 necessity and usage would compel aU companies of actors, 
 upon coming into any town, to seek, in the first place, 
 from the chief magistrate, a license for opening a theatre, 
 and next, over and above this pubKo sanction, to seek his 
 personal favour and patronage. As an alderman, there- 
 fore, but stiU more whilst clothed with the ofiS.cial powers 
 of chief magistrate, the poet's father would have oppor- 
 tunities of doing essential services to many persons con- 
 nected with the London stage. The conversation of 
 comedians acquainted with books, fresh from the keen 
 and sparkling circles of the metropolis, and filled with 
 racy anecdotes of the court, as weU as of public life gene- 
 rally, could not but have been fascinating by comparison 
 with the stagnant society of Stratford. Hospitalities on a 
 Kberal scale woidd be offered to these men : not impos- 
 sibly this fact might be one principal key to those dila- 
 pidations which the family estate had suffered. These 
 actors, on their part, would retain a grateful sense of the 
 kindness they had received, and would seek to repay it 
 to John Shakspeare, now that he was depressed in his 
 fortunes, as opportunities might offer. His eldest Son, 
 
SHAK8FEABE. 65 
 
 growing up a handsome young man, and lieyond all dolibt 
 from his earliest days of most splendid coUoquial powers 
 (for assuredly of Mm it may be taken for granted, 
 Nee licuit populis parvum te, Nile, vidtire), 
 
 would he often reproached in a friendly way for buiying 
 himself iu a country Ufe. These overtures, prompted 
 alike by gratitude to the father, and a real selfish interest 
 in the talents of the son, would at length take a definite 
 shape; and, upon some clear understanding as to the 
 terms of such an arrangement, WiUiam Shakspeare would 
 at length (about 1586, according to the received account, 
 that is, in the fifth year of his married Hfe, and the 
 twenty-third or twenty-fourth of his age), unaccompanied 
 by wife or children, translate himself to London. Later 
 than 1586 it could not weU be; for already ia 1589 it 
 has been recently ascertained that he held a share in the 
 property of a leading theatre. 
 
 We must here stop to notice, and the reader wiU allow 
 us to notice with summary indignation, the slanderous 
 and idle tale which represents Shakspeare as having fled 
 to London in the character of a criminal, from the perse- 
 cutions of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot. This tale has 
 long been propagated under two separate impulses : 
 chiefly, perhaps, under the vulgar love of pointed and 
 glaring contrasts ; the splendour of the man was in this 
 instance brought into a sort of epigrammatic antithesis 
 with the humility of his fortunes ; secondly, under a 
 baser impulse, the malicious pleasure of seeing a great 
 man degraded. Accordingly, as in the case of MUton,* 
 
 • See Note, p. 97. 
 
56 SHAKSFEABE. 
 
 it has been a£Simed that Shakspeaie had suffered corpoial 
 chastisement ; in fact (we ahhor to utter such words), that 
 he had heen judicially whipped. Now, first of all, let us 
 mark the inconsistency of this tale : the poet was whipped, 
 that is, he was punished most disproportionately, and yet 
 Jie fled to avoid punishment. Next, we are informed 
 that his offence was deer-steaUng, and from the park of 
 Sir Thomas Lucy. And it has heen well ascertained that 
 Sir Thomas had no deer, and had no park. Moreover, 
 deer-stealing was regarded by our ancestors exactly as 
 poaching is regarded by us. Deer ran wild in aU the 
 great forests ; and no offence was looked upon as so 
 venial, none so compatible with a noble Eobin-Hood style 
 of character, as this very trespass upon what were regarded 
 as /ercB naturm, and not at all as domestic property. But 
 had it been otherwise, a trespass was not punishable with 
 whipping; nor had Sir Thomas Lucy the power to irritate 
 a whole community like Stratford-upon-Avon, by brand- 
 ing with permanent disgrace a young man so closely 
 connected with three at least of the best families in the 
 neighbourhood. Besides, had Shakspeare suffered any 
 dishonoui' of that kind, the scandal would infallibly have 
 pursued him at his very heels to London ; and in that 
 case Greene, who has left on record, in a posthumous 
 work of 1592, his malicious feehngs towards Shakspeare, 
 could not have failed to notice it. For, be it remembered, 
 that a judicial flagellation contains a twofold ignominy : 
 flagellation is ignominious in its own nature, even though 
 unjustly inflicted, and by a ruffian ; secondly, any judi- 
 cial punishment is ignominious, even though not wearing 
 a shade of personal degradation. Now a judicial flagellar 
 
BHAK8PEABE. 57 
 
 tion includes Botli features of dishonour. Ani is it to 
 be imagined that an enemy, searching with the diligence 
 of nu^lice for matter against Shafespeare, should have 
 failed, six years after the event, to hear of that very 
 memorahle disgrace which had exiled him fi'om Stratford, 
 and was the very occasion of his first resortiag to London; 
 or that a leading company of players in the metropolis, 
 one of whom, and a chief one, was his own toiensman, 
 should cheerfully adopt into their society, as an honoured 
 partner, a young man yet flagrant from the lash of the 
 executioner or the headle ] 
 
 This tale is fahulous, and rotten to its, core; yet even 
 this does less dishonour to Skakspear^'s memory than the 
 sequel attached to it. A sort of scurrilous rondeau, con- 
 sistiag of niae lines, so loathsome in its hrutal stupidity 
 and so vulgai in its expression that we shall not pollute 
 our pages hy transcrihing it, has heen imputed to Shat- 
 speare ever since the days of the credulous Eowe. The 
 total point of this idiot's drivel consists in caUing Sir 
 Thomas "an asse;" and well it justifies the poet's own 
 remark, — " Let there be gaU enough iu thy ink, no matter 
 though thou write with a goose pen." Our own belief is, 
 that these lines were a production of Charles IL's reign, 
 and applied to a Sir Thomas Lucy, not very far removed, 
 if at all, from the age of him who first picked up the 
 precious filth : the phrase " parliament member," we 
 believe to be quite unknown in the coUoquial use of 
 Queen Elizabeth's reign. 
 
 But, that we may rid ourselves once and for ever of 
 this outrageous calumny upon Shakspeare's memory, we 
 shall pxusue the story to its final stage. Even Malono 
 
58 SHAKSPEABE. 
 
 has been thoughtless enough to accredit this closing 
 chapter, Trhich contains, in fact, such a superfetation of 
 foUy as the annals of human dulness do not exceed. Let 
 us recapitulate the points of the story. A haronet, 'vrho 
 has no deer and no park, is supposed to persecute a poet 
 for stealing these aerial deer out of this aerial park, hoth 
 lying in nephelococcygia. The poet sleeps upon this 
 wrong for eighteen years ; hut at length, hearing that his 
 persecutor is dead and buried, he conceives bloody 
 thoughts of revenge. And this revenge he purposes to 
 execute by picking a hole in his dead enemy's coat-of- 
 arms. Is this coat-of-arms, then, Sir Thomas Luc/s ? 
 Why, no : Malone admits that it is not. For the poet, 
 suddenly recollecting that this ridicule would settle upon 
 the son of his enemy, selects another coat-of-arms, with 
 which his dead enemy never had any connection, and he 
 spends his thunder and lightning upon this irrelevant 
 object; and, after aU, the ridicule itself lies in a Welch- 
 man's mispronouncing one single heraldic term — a Welch- 
 man who mispronounces all words. The last act of the 
 poef s raaMce, recalls to us a sort of jest-book stoiy of an 
 Irishman, the vulgarity of which the reader wiU pardon 
 in consideration of its relevancy. The Irishman having 
 lost a pair of silk stockings, mentions to a friend that he 
 has taken steps for recovering them by an advertisement, 
 offering a reward to the finder. TTia friend objects that 
 the costs of advertising, and the reward, would eat out 
 the full value of the silk stockings. But to this the 
 Irishman replies, with a knowing air, that he is not so 
 green as to have overlooked that; and that, to keep 
 down the reward, he had advertised the stockings as 
 
SHAKSFEABE. 59 
 
 ■worsted Not at all less flagrant is the bull ascribed to 
 Shakspeare, -when he is made to punish a dead man by 
 personalities meant for his exclusive ear, through his 
 coat-of-arms, but at the same time, with the express 
 purpose of blunting ajid defeating the edge of his own 
 scurrility, is made to substitute for the real arms some 
 others which had no more relation to the dead enemy 
 than they had to the poet himself. This is the very 
 aublune of folly, beyond which human dotage cannot 
 advance. 
 
 It is painful, indeed, and dishonourable to human 
 nature, that whenever men of vulgar habits and of poor 
 education wish to impress us with a feeling of respect for 
 a man's talents, they are sure to cite, by way of evidence, 
 som.e gross instance of malignity. Power, in their minds, 
 is best illustrated by malice or by the infliction of pain. 
 To this unwelcome fact we have some evidence in the 
 wretched tale which we have just dismissed; and there 
 is another of the same description to be found in all Lives 
 of Shakspeare, which we will expose to the contempt of 
 the reader whilst we are in this field of discussion, that 
 we may not afterwards have to resume so disgusting a 
 subject. 
 
 This poet, who was a model of gracious benignity in 
 his manners, and of whom, amidst our general ignorance, 
 thus much is perfectly established, that the term gentle 
 was almost as generally and by prescriptive right asso- 
 ciated with his name as the affix of venerable with Bede, 
 or judicious with Hooker, is alleged to have insulted a 
 friend by an imaginary epitaph beginning " Ten in tlie 
 Hundred" and supposing him to be damned, yet without 
 
60 8HAESFEARE. 
 
 wit enough (which surely the Stratford beUman could 
 have furnished) for devisiug any, even fanciful, reason for 
 such a supposition! upon which the comment of some 
 foolish critic is, — " The sharpness of the satire is said to 
 have stung the man so much that he never forgave it." 
 We have heard of the sting in the tail atoning for the 
 brainless head; but in this doggerel the tail is surely as 
 stingless as the head is brainless. For, \st, Ten in the 
 Hundred could be no reproach in Shakspeare's time, any 
 more than to call a man Three-and-a-half-^er-eent. in this 
 present year 1838; except, indeed, amongst those foolish 
 persons who built their morality upon the Jewish cere- 
 monial law. Shakspeaxe himself took ten per cent. 2dly, 
 It happens that John Combe, so far from being the object 
 of the poet's scurriUty, or viewing the poet as an object 
 of implacable resentment, was a Stratford friend; that one 
 of his family was affectionately remembered in Shak- 
 speare's wiU by the bequest of his sword; and that John 
 Combe himseK recorded his perfect charity with Shak- 
 speare by leaving him a legacy of L.5 sterling. And in 
 this lies the key to the whole story. For, 3dly, the four- 
 lines were written and printed before Shakspeare was 
 born. The name Combe is a common one; and some 
 stupid feUow, who had seen the name in Shakspeare's 
 wiU, and happened also to have seen the lines in a col- 
 lection of epigrams, chose to connect the cases by attri- 
 buting an identity to the two John Combes, though at 
 war with chronology. 
 
 Finally, there is another specimen of doggerel attri- 
 buted to Shakspeare, which is not equally unworthy of 
 him, because not equally malignant, but otherwise equally 
 
SHASSFEABB. 61 
 
 below his intellect, no less than his scholarship ; we mean 
 the inscription on his grave-stone. This, as a sort of 
 giste viator appeal to future sextons, is worthy of the 
 grave-digger or the parish-clerk, who was prohahly its 
 author. Or it may have been an antique formula, like 
 the vulgar record of ownership iu books — 
 
 Anthony Timothy Dolthead's book, 
 God give him grace theiein to look. 
 
 Thus far the matter is of little importance; and it 
 Tilight have been supposed that malignity itself could 
 haidly have imputed such trash to Shakspeare. But 
 wlien we find, even in this short compass, scarcely wider 
 than the posy of a ring, room found for traducing the 
 poeSt's memory, it becomes important to say, that the 
 leading sentiment, the horror expressed at any disturbance 
 offered to his bones, is not one to which Shakspeare could 
 have attached the slightest weight; far less could have 
 outraged the sanctities of place and subject, by affixing 
 to any sentiment whatever (and, according to the fiction 
 of the case, his &rewell sentiment) the sanction of a 
 curse. 
 
 Filial veneration and piety towards the memory of this 
 great man have led us into a digression that might have 
 been unseasonable in any cause less weighty than one 
 having for its object to deKver his honoured name from a 
 load of the most brutal malignity. Never more, we hope 
 and venture to believe, will any thoughtless biographer 
 impute to Shakspeare the asinine doggerel with which the 
 tmcritical blundering of his earliest biographer has caused 
 his name to be dishonoured. We now resume the thread 
 
62 8HAKSPEABK 
 
 of our 'biograpliy. The stream of history is centuries in 
 working itself clear of any calumny with which it has 
 once been polluted. 
 
 Most readers wUl be aware of an old story, according 
 to which Shakspeare gained his livelihood for some time 
 after coming to London, by holding the horses of those 
 who rode to the play. This legend is as idle as any one 
 of those which we have just exposed. No custom ever 
 existed of riding on horseback to the play. Gentlemen, 
 who rode valuable horses, would assuredly not expose 
 them systematically to the injury of standing exposed to 
 cold for two or even four hours ; and persons of inferior 
 rank would not ride on horseback in the town. Besides, 
 had such a custom ever existed, stables (or sheds at least) 
 would soon have arisen to meet the public wants ; and in 
 some of the dramatic sketches of the day, which noticed 
 every fashion as it arose, this would not have been over- 
 looked. The story is traced originally to Sir "WiUiam 
 Davenant. Betterton the actor, who professed to have 
 received it from him, passed it onwards to Eowe, he to 
 Pope, Pope to Bishop Newton, the editor of Milton, and 
 Newton to Dr Johnson. This pedigree of the fable, 
 however, adds nothing to its credit, and multiplies the 
 chances of some mistake. Another fable, not much less 
 absurd, represents Shakspeare as having from the very 
 first been borne upon the establishment of the theatre, 
 and so far contradicts the other fable, but originally in 
 the veiy humble character of call-boy or deputy prompter, 
 whose business it was to summon each performer accord- 
 ing to his order of coming upon the stage. This story, 
 however, quite as much as the other, is irreconuileable 
 
SHAKSPEAEB. 63 
 
 ■with, the discovery recently made by Mr Collier, that in 
 1589 Shakspeare was a shareholder in the important 
 property of a principal London theatre. It seems destined 
 that aU the undoubted facts of Shakspeare's life should 
 come to us through the channel of legal documents, ■which 
 are better e'vidence even than imperial medals ; ■whilst, 
 on the other hand, all the fabulous anecdotes, not ha-raig 
 an attorney's seal to them, seem to hare been the fictions 
 of the wonder-maker. The plain presumption from the 
 record of Shakspeare's situation in 1589, coupled ■with 
 the fact that his first arrival in London was possibly not 
 until 1587, but, according to the earliest account, not 
 before 1586, a space of time which leaves but little room 
 for any remarkable changes of situation, seems to be, that, 
 either ia requital of services done to the players by the 
 poet's family, or ia consideration of money advanced by 
 his father-in-law, or on account of Shakspeare's personal 
 accomplishments as an actor, and as an adapter of dra- 
 matic works to the stage ; for one of these reasons, or for 
 all of them united, William Shakspeare, about the twenty- 
 third ye^ of his age, was adopted into the partnership of 
 a respectable histrionic company, possessing a first-rate 
 theatre in the metropolis. If 1586 were the year in 
 which he came up to London, it seems probable enough 
 that his immediate motive to that step was the increasing 
 distress of his father ; for in that year John Shakspeare 
 resigned the of&ce of alderman. There is, however, a bare 
 possibility that Shakspeare might have gone to London 
 about the time when he completed his twenty-first year, 
 that is, in the spring of 1585, but not earlier. Nearly 
 two years after the birth of his eldest daughter Susanna, 
 
64 SHAESPEABK 
 
 Ms •wife lay in for a second and a last time ; but she then 
 brought her husband twins, a son and a daughter. These 
 children were baptized in February of the year 1585 ; so 
 that Shakspeare's ■whole family of three children ■were 
 bom and baptized two months before he completed his 
 majority. The twins were baptized by the names of 
 Hamnet and Judith, those being the names of two 
 amongst their sponsors, viz., Mr Sadler and his wife. 
 Hamnet, which is a remarkable name in itself, becomes 
 still more so from its resemblance to the immortal name 
 of Hamlet* the Dane ; it was, however, the real baptis- 
 mal name of Mr Sadler, a friend of Shakspeare's, about 
 fourteen years older than himself. Shakspeare's son must 
 then have been most interesting to his heart, both as a 
 twin-child and as his only boy. He died in 1596, when 
 he was about eleven years old. Both daughters survived 
 their father ; both married ; both left issue, and thus 
 gave a chance for continuing the succession from the great 
 poet. But aU the four grandchildren died without 
 offspring. 
 
 Of Shakspeare personally, at least of Shakspeare the 
 man, as distinguished from the author, there remains 
 little more to record. Already in 1592, Greene, in his 
 posthumous " Groat's-worth of Wit," had expressed the 
 earliest vocation of Shakspeare in the following sentence : 
 
 • And singular enough it is, as well as interesting, that Shak- 
 speare had so entirely superseded to his own ear and memory the 
 name Hamnet by the dramatic name of Hamlet, that in writing 
 his will, he actually mis-spells the name of his friend Sadler, and 
 calls him Hamlet. His son, however, who should have familiarized 
 the true name to his ear, had then been dead for twenty years. 
 
8HAKSPEARE. 65 
 
 — " Ttere is an upstart croiv, beautified -with, oui feathers ; 
 in his own conceit the only Shakseene in a country!" 
 This alludes to Shakspeare's of&ce of re-oasting, and even 
 re-composing, dramatic works, so as to fit them for repre- 
 sentation ; and Master Greene, it is probable, had suffered 
 in his seK-estimation, or in his purse, by the alterations 
 in some piece of his own which the duty of Shakspeare 
 to the general interests of the theatre had obliged him to 
 make. 
 
 In 1591 it has been supposed that Shakspeare wrote 
 his first drama, the "Two Gentlemen of Verona;" the least 
 characteristically marked of aU his plays, and, with the 
 exception of " Love's Labour's Lost," the least interesting, 
 From this year, 1591 to that of 1611, are just twenty 
 years, within which space Ue the whole dramatic creations 
 of Shakspeare, averaging nearly one for every six months. 
 In 1611 was written the "Tempest," which is supposed 
 to have been the last of all Shakspeare's works. Even 
 on that account, as Mr Campbell feelingly observes, it has 
 " a sort of sacredness ;" and it is a most remarkable fact, 
 and one calculated to make a man superstitious, that in 
 this play the great enchanter Prospero, in whom, " as if 
 amsciousi' says Mr Campbell, " that this would he Ms last 
 work, the poet has been inspired to typify himself as a 
 wise, potent, and benevolent magician," of whom, indeed, 
 as of Shakspeare himself, it may be said, that " within 
 that circle" (the circle of his own art) " none durst tread 
 but he," solemnly and for ever renounces his mysterious 
 functions, symboHcaUy breaks his enchanter's wand, and de- 
 clares that he wiU bury his books, his science, and his secrets 
 Deeper than did ever plummet sound. 
 
66 SHAKBPEAUK 
 
 Nay, it is even ominous, that in thjs play, and from the 
 voice of Prospero, issues that magnificent prophecy of the 
 total destruction which should one day swallow up 
 
 The solemn temples, the great glohe itself, 
 Tea all which it inherit. 
 
 And this prophecy is followed immediately hy a most pro- 
 found ejaculation, gathering into one pathetic abstraction 
 the total philosophy of life : 
 
 We are snch stuff 
 As dreams are made of ; and our little life 
 Is rounded by a sleep ; 
 
 that is, in effect, our life is a little tract of feverish vigils, 
 surrounded and islanded by a shoreless ocean of sleep — 
 sleep before birth, sleep after death. 
 
 These remarkable passages were probably not unde- 
 signed ; but if we suppose them to have been thrown off 
 without conscious notice of their tendencies, then, accord- 
 ing to the superstition of the ancient Grecians, they would 
 have been regarded as prefiguring words, prompted by the 
 secret genius that accompanies every man, such as insure 
 along with them their own accomplishment. With or 
 without intention, however, it is believed that Shakspeare 
 wrote nothing more after this exquisite romantic drama. 
 With respect to the remainder of his personal history, Dr 
 Drake and others have supposed, that during the twenty 
 years from 1591 to 1611, he visited Stratford often, and 
 latterly once a-year. 
 
 In 1589 he had possessed some share in a theatre ; in 
 1596 he had a considerable share. Through Lord South- 
 ampton, as a surviving fiiend of Lord Essex, who was viewed 
 
8HAKSPBAEB. 67 
 
 as the martyr to his Scottish pohtics, there can be no 
 douht that Shakspeare had acquired the favour of James I. ; 
 and accordingly, on the 29th of May 1603, about two 
 months after the king's accession to the throne of England, 
 a patent was granted to the company of players who pos- 
 sessed the Globe Theatre ; in which patent Shakspeare' s 
 name stands second. This patent raised the company to 
 the rank of his majesty's servants, whereas previously they 
 are supposed to have been simply the servants of the Lord 
 Chamberlain. Perhaps it was in grateful acknowledgment 
 of this royal favour that Shakspeare afterwards, in 1606, 
 paid that sublime compliment to the house of Stuart which 
 is involved in the vision shown to Macbeth. This vision 
 is managed with exquisite skiU : it was impossible to dis- 
 play the whole series of princes from Macbeth to James I. ; 
 but he beholds the posterity of Banquo, one " gold-bound 
 brow" succeeding to another, until he comes to an eighth 
 apparition of a Scottish king, 
 
 tV^ho bears a glass 
 Which shows him many more ; and some he sees 
 Who twofold balls and treble sceptres carry ; 
 
 thus bringing down without tedium the long succession to 
 the very person of James I. by the symbolic image of the 
 two crowns united on one head. 
 
 About the beginning of the century Shakspeare had 
 become rich enough to purchase the best house in Strat- 
 ford, called The Great House, which name he altered to 
 New Place; and in 1602 he bought 107 acres adjacent to 
 this house for a sum (L.320) corresponding to about 1500 
 guineas of modern money. Malone thinks that he pur- 
 Chased the house as early as 1597 ; and it is certain that 
 
68 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 about that time ke was able to assist his father in obtain- 
 ing 'a renewed grant of arms from the Heralds' CoUege, 
 and therefore, of course, to re-establish his father's fortunes. 
 Ten years of weU-directed industry, viz., from 1591 to 
 1601, and the prosperity of the theatre in which he was 
 a proprietor, had raised him to affluence ; and after another 
 ten years, improved with the same success, he was able to 
 retire with an income of L.300, or (according to the 
 customary computations) in modem money of L.1500, per 
 annum. Shakspeare was in fact the first man of letters, 
 Pope the second, and Sir "Walter Scott the thii'd, who, in 
 Great Britain, has ever realized a large fortune by litera- 
 ture ; or in Christendom, if we except Voltaire, and two 
 dubious cases in Italy. The four or five latter years of 
 his life Shakspeare passed in dignified ease, in profound 
 meditation, we may be sure, and in universal respect, at 
 his native town of Stratford ; and there he died, on the 
 23dof AprH 1616.* 
 
 His daughter Susanna had been married on the 5th of 
 June of the year 1607, to Dr John HaU,"!* a physician in 
 
 * " I have heard that Mr Shakspeare was a natural wit, without 
 any art at all. Hee frequented the plays all his younger time, but 
 in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with 
 two plays every year; and for itt had an allowance so large, that 
 he spent at the rate of l,000i. a-year, as I have heard. Shake- 
 speare, Urayton, and Ben Jonson, had a merie meeting, and it 
 seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour there con- 
 tracted." ■ (Diary of the Rev. John "Ward, A.M., Vicar of Stratford- 
 upon-Avon, extending from 1648 to 1679, p. 183. Lond. 1839, 8vo.) 
 
 t It is naturally to be supposed that Dr Hall would attend the 
 sick-bed of his father-in-law; and the discovery of this gentle- 
 man's medical diary promised some gratification to our curiosity. 
 
SHAKSPEARE, f)9 
 
 Stratford. The doctor died in November 1635, aged 
 sixty ; his mfe, at the age of sixty-six, on July 11, 1640. 
 They had one child, a daughter, named Elizabeth, born in 
 1608, married April 22, 1626, to Thomas Nashe, Esq., 
 left a widow ia 1647, and subsequently re-married to Sir 
 John Barnard ; but this Lady Barnard, the sole grand- 
 daughter of the poet, had no children by either marriage. 
 The other daughter Judith, on February 10, 1616 (about 
 can weeks before her father's death) married Mr Thomas 
 Quiney of Stratford, by whom she had three sons, Shak- 
 speare, Eichard, and Thomas. Judith was about thirty- 
 one years old at the time of her marriage ; and living just 
 forty-six years afterwards, she died in February 1662, at 
 the age of seventy-seven. Her three sons died without 
 issue ; and thus, in the direct lineal descent, it is certain 
 that no representative has survived of this transcendent 
 poet, the most august amongst created intellects. 
 
 After this review of Shakspeare's life, it becomes our 
 duty to take a summary survey of his works, of his intel- 
 lectual powers, and of his station in hterature, — a station 
 which is now irrevocably settled, not so much (which 
 happens in other cases) by a vast overbalance of favour- 
 able suffrages, as by acclamation; not so much by the 
 voices of those who admire him up to the verge of idolatry, 
 as by the acts of those who everywhere seek for his works 
 among the primal necessities of life, demand them, and 
 crave them as they do their daily bread ; not so much by 
 etdogy openly proclaiming itself, as by the silent homage 
 
 as to the cause of Shakspeare's death. Unfortunately, it does not 
 commence until the year 1617. 
 
70 SHAKSPEAKK 
 
 recorded in the endless midtiplication of what he has 
 bequeathed ns; not so much hy his own compatriots, 
 who, with regard to almost every other author,* compose 
 the total amount of his effective audience, as hy the unani- 
 mous " AU hail !" of intellectual Christendom ; finally, not 
 by the hasty partisanship of his own generation, nor by 
 the biassed judgment of an age trained in the same modes 
 of feeling and of thinking with himself, but by the solemn 
 award of generation succeeding to generation, of one age 
 correcting the obliquities or pecuharities of another; by 
 the verdict of two hundred and thirty years, which have 
 now elapsed since the very latest of his creations, or of 
 two hundred and forty-seven years if we date from the 
 earliest; a verdict which has been continually revived 
 and re-opened, probed, searched, vexed, by criticism in 
 every spirit, from the most genial and intelligent, down 
 to the most malignant and scuirilously hostile which 
 feeble heads and great ignorance could suggest when co- 
 operating with impure hearts and narrow sensibilities; a 
 verdict, in short, sustained and coi^ersigned by a longer 
 series of writers, many of them eminent for wit or learn- 
 ing, than were ever before congregated upon any inquest 
 
 * An exception ought perhaps to be made for Sir Walter Scott 
 and for Cervantes ; but with regard to all other writers, Dante, 
 suppose, or Ariosto amongst Italians, Gamoens amongst those of 
 Portugal, Schiller amongst Germans, however ably they may have 
 been naturalised in foreign languages, as all of those here men- 
 tioned (excepting only Ariosto) have in one part of their works 
 been most powerfully naturalised in English, it still remains true 
 (and the very sale of the books is proof sufiScient) that an alien 
 author never does take root in the general sympathies out of his 
 own country; he takes his station in libraries, he is read by the 
 
SHAKSPBARB. 71 
 
 relating to any author, be he who he might, ancient* or 
 modem, Pagan or Ckristian- It was a most -witty saying 
 ■with respect to a piratical and knavish publisher, who 
 made a trade of insulting the memories of deceased authors 
 hy forged ■writings, that he was " among the new terrors 
 of death-" But in the gravest sense it may he affirmed 
 of Shakspeare, that he is among the modem luxuries of 
 life ; that hfe, in fact, is a new thing, and one more to be 
 coveted, since Shakspeare has extended the domains of 
 human consciousness, and pushed its dark frontiers into 
 regions not so much as dimly descried or even suspected 
 before his time, far less illuminated (as now they are) by 
 beauty and tropical luxuriance of life. For instance, — a 
 single instance, indeed one which in itself is a world of 
 new revelation, — ^the possible beauty of the female char- 
 acter had not been seen as in a dream before Shakspeare 
 called into perfect life the radiant shapes of Desdemona, 
 of Imogene, of Hermione, of Perdita, of Ophelia, of Mir- 
 anda, and many others. The Una of Spenser, earlier by 
 ten or fifteen year&|ithan most of these, was an idealised 
 portrait of female innocence and ■virgin purity, but too 
 shado^wy and unreal for a dramatic reality. And as to 
 the Grecian classics, let not the reader imagine for an 
 instant that any prototype in this field of Shakspearian 
 power can be looked for there. The Antigone and the 
 Electra of the tragic poets are the two leading female 
 
 man of learned leisure, he is known and valued by the refined and 
 the elegant, but he is not (what Shakspeare is for Germany and 
 America) in any proper sense a popular favourite. 
 
 * It will occur to many readers, that perhaps Homer may furnish 
 the sole exception to this sweeping assertion. See Note, p. 98 
 
72 SHAESFEABE. 
 
 characters that classical antiquity offers to our respect, 
 but assuredly not to our impassioned love, as disciplined 
 and exalted in the school of Shakspeare. They challenge 
 our admiration, severe, and even stem, as impersonations 
 of filial duty, cleaving to the steps of a desolate and 
 afflicted old man; or of sisterly affection, maintaining the 
 rights of a brother under circumstances of peril, of deser- 
 tion, and consequently of perfect self-reliance. Iphigenia, 
 again, though not dramatically coming before ns in her 
 own person, but according to the beautiful report of a 
 spectator, presents us -with, a fine statuesque model oi 
 heroic fortitude, and of one whose young heart, even in 
 the very agonies of her cruel immolation, refused to forget, 
 by a single indecorous gesture, or so much as a moment's 
 neglect of her own princely descent, that she herself 
 was " a lady in the land." These are fine marble groups, 
 but they are not the warm breathing realities of Shak- 
 speare; there is "no speculation" in their cold marble 
 eyes; the breath of life is not in their nostrils; the fine 
 pulses of womanly sensibilities are not throbbing in their 
 bosoms. And besides this immeasurable difference be- 
 tween the cold moony reflexes of life, as exhibited by the 
 power of Grecian art, and the true sunny life of Shak- 
 speare, it must be observed that the Antigones, &c., of the 
 antique put forward but one single trait of character, like . 
 the aloe with its single blossom : this solitary feature is 
 presented to us as an abstraction, and as an iasulated 
 quality; whereas in Shakspeare all is presented in the 
 concrete; that is to say, not brought forward in relief, as 
 by some effort of an anatomical artist ; but embodied and 
 imbedded, so to speak, as by the force of a creative nature, 
 
8HAKSPBAKB. 73 
 
 in the complex system of a human life ; a life in ■which 
 all the elements move and play simultaneotisly, and -with 
 something more than mere simultaneity or co-existence, 
 acting and re-acting each upon the other — nay, even act- 
 ing by each other and through each other. In Shak- 
 speare's characters is felt for ever a real organie life, -where 
 each is for the whole and in the whole, and where the 
 whole is for each and in each. They only are real incar- 
 nations. 
 
 The Greek poets could not exhibit any approximations 
 to female character, without violating the truth of Grecian 
 hfe, and shocking the feelings of the audience. The 
 drama with the Greeks, as with us, though much less than 
 with us, was a picture of human Hfe; and that which 
 could not occur in life could not wisely be exhibited on 
 the stage. Now, in ancient Greece, women were secluded 
 from the society of men. The conventual sequestration 
 of the yuvamuMiTii, or female apartment* of the house, 
 and the Mahommedan consecration of its threshold against 
 the ingress of males, had been transplanted from Asia 
 into Greece thousands of years perhaps before either con- 
 vents or Mahommed existed. Thus barred feom all open 
 social intercourse, women could not develop or express 
 any character by word or action. Even to have a cha- 
 racter, violated, to a Grecian mind, the ideal portrait of 
 feminine excellence ; whence, perhaps, partly the too 
 
 • Apartment is here used, as the reader will observe, in its true 
 and continental acceptation, as a division or compartment of a house 
 including many rooms ; a suite of chambers, but a suite which is 
 partitioned. off (as in palaces), not a single chamber ; a sense so 
 commonly and so erroneously given to this word in England. 
 
74 SHAKSPEAKE. 
 
 generic, too little individualized, style of Grecian beauty. 
 But prominently to express a character was impossible 
 under the common tenor of Grecian life, unless when high 
 tragical catastrophes transcended the decorums of that 
 tenor, or for a brief interval raised the curtain which 
 veiled it. Hence the subordinate part which women play 
 upon the Greek stage in all but some half dozen cases. 
 In the paramount tragedy on that stage, the model tragedy, 
 the CEdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, there is virtually no 
 woman at all ; for Jocasta is a party to the story merely 
 as the dead Laius or the self-murdered Sphinx was a 
 party, — ^viz., by her contributions to the fatalities of the 
 event, not by anything she does or says spontaneously. 
 In fact, the Greek poet, if a wise poet, could not address 
 himself genially to a task in which he must begin by 
 shocking the sensibilities of his countrymen. And hence 
 followed, not only the dearth of female characters in the 
 Grecian drama, but also a second result still more favour- 
 able to the sense of a new power evolved by Shakspeare. 
 Whenever the common law of Grecian life did give way, 
 it was, as we have observed, to the suspending force of 
 some great convulsion or tragical catastrophe. This for 
 a moment (like an earthquake in a nunnery) would set 
 at liberty even the timid, fluttering Grecian women, those 
 doves of the dove-cot, and would call some of them into 
 action. But which 1 Precisely those of energetic and 
 masculine minds ; the timid and feminine would but 
 shrink the more from public gaze and from tumult. 
 Thus it happened, that such female characters as were 
 exhibited in Greece, could not but be the harsh and the 
 severe. If a gentle Ismene appeared for a moment in 
 
SHAK8PEABE. 75 
 
 contest with some energetic sister Antigone (and chiefly, 
 perhaps, hy way of drawing out the fiercer character of 
 that sister), she was soon dismissed as unfit for scenical 
 effect. So that not only were female characters few, but, 
 moreover, of these few the majority were but repetitions 
 of masculine quahties in female persons. Female agency 
 being seldom summoned on the stage except when it had 
 received a sort of special dispensation from its sexual 
 character, by some terrific convulsions of the house or the 
 city, naturally it assumed the style of action suited to 
 these circumstances. And hence it arose, that not woman 
 as she differed from man, but woman as she resembled 
 man — woman, in short, seen under circumstances so 
 dreadful as to abolish the effect of sexual distinction, was 
 the woman of the Greek tragedy.* And hence generally 
 arose for Shakspeare the wider field, and the more 
 astonishing by its perfect novelty, when he first intro- 
 duced female characters, not as mere varieties or echoes 
 of masculine characters, a Medea or Clyteronestra, or a 
 vindictive Hecuba, the mere tigress of the tragic tiger, 
 but female characters that had the appropriate beauty of 
 female nature; woman no longer grand, terrific, and repul- 
 sive, but woman " after her kind" — the other hemisphere 
 of the dramatic world.; woman running through the vast 
 gamut of womanly loveliness; woman as emancipated, 
 
 * And hence, by parity of reason, under the opposite circum- 
 stances, under the circumstancea which, instead of abolishing, 
 most emphatically drew forth the sexual distinctions, viz., in the 
 comic aspects of social intercourse, the reason that we see no women 
 on the Greek stage ; the Greek comedy, unless when it affects the 
 extravagant fun of farce, rejects women. 
 
76 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 exalted, ennobled, under a new law of Christian morality; 
 woman th.e sister and co-equal of man, no longer lus slave, 
 his prisoner, and sometimes his rebeL " It is a far cry 
 to Loch Awe;'' and from the Athenian stage to the stage 
 of Shakspeare, it may be said, is a prodigious interval 
 True ; but prodigious as it is, there is really nothing 
 between them, The Eoman stage, at least the tragic 
 stage, as is weK known, was put out, as by an extin- 
 guisher, by the cruel amphitheatre, just as a candle is 
 made pale and ridiculous by daylight. Those who were 
 fresh from the real murders of the bloody amphitheatre 
 regarded with contempt the mimic murders of the stage. 
 Stimulation too coarse and too intense had its usual 
 effect in making the sensibUities callous. Christian 
 emperors arose at length, who abolished the amphitheatre 
 in its bloodier features. But by that time the genius of 
 the tragic muse had long slept the sleep of death. And 
 that muse had no resurrection until the age of Shakspeare. 
 So that, notwithstanding a gulf of nineteen centuries and 
 upwards separates Shakspeare &om Euripides, the last of 
 the surviving Greek tragedians, the one is stiU the nearest 
 successor of the other, just as Connaught and the islands 
 in Clew Bay are next neighbours to America, although 
 three thousand watery columns, each of a cubic mUe in 
 dimensions, divide them from each other. 
 
 A second reason, which lends an emphasis of novelty 
 and effective power to Shakspeare' s female world, is > 
 peculiar fact of contrast which exists between that and 
 his corresponding world of men. Let us explain. The 
 purpose and the intention of the Grecian stage was not 
 primarily to develop human character, whether in men 
 
SHAKSPBAJBB. 77 
 
 or in women ; iimnan fates were its object ; great tragic 
 situations under tlie migMy control of a vast cloudy 
 destiny, dimly descried at intervals, and brooding over 
 human life by mysterious agencies, and for mysterious 
 ends. Man, no longer tbe representative of an august 
 wi7Z,^-man, the passion-puppet of fate, could not with any 
 effect display what we call a character, which is a dis- 
 tinction between man and man, emanating origiaaUy from 
 the will, and expressing its determinations, moving under 
 the large variety of human impulses. The will is the 
 central pivot of character; and this was obliterated, 
 thwarted, cancelled, by the dark fatalism which brooded 
 over the Grecian stage. That explanation will sufficiently 
 clear up the reason why marked or complex variety of 
 character was sHghted by the great principles of the 
 Greek tragedy. And every scholar who has studied that 
 grand drama of Greece with feeKng, — that drama, sc 
 magnificent, so regal, so stately, — and who has thought- 
 fully investigated its principles, and its difference from the 
 English drama, wiU. acknowledge that powerful and elabo- 
 rate character, — character, for instance, that could employ 
 the fiftieth part of that profound analysis which has been 
 applied to Hamlet, to Falstafi', to Lear, to Othello, and 
 applied by Mrs Jamieson so admirably to the fuU develop- 
 ment of the Shakspearian heroiaes, would have been as 
 much wasted, nay, would have been defeated, and inter- 
 rupted the blind agencies of fate, just iu the same way as 
 it would injure the shadowy grandeur of a ghost to indi- 
 •viduaUze it too much. Milton's angels are slightly 
 touched, superficially touched, with differences of char- 
 acter ; but they are such differences, so simple and general, 
 
78 SHAKSPEAKB. 
 
 as are just sufficient to rescue them from the reproach 
 applied to Virgil's "fortemque Gyan, foriemque Cloan- 
 them ;" just sufficient to make them knowahle apart. 
 Pliay speaks of painters who painted in one or two 
 colours ; and, as respects the angelic characters, Milton 
 does so ; he is monochromatic. So, and for reasons rest- 
 ing upon the same ultimate philosophy, were the mighty 
 architects of the Greek tragedy. They also were mono- 
 chromatic ; they also, as to the characters of their persons, 
 painted in one colour. And so far there might have been 
 the same novelty iu Shakspeare's men as in his women. 
 There might have been ; but the reason why there is not, 
 must be sought iu the fact, that History, the muse of 
 History, had there even been no such muse as Mel- 
 pomene, would have forced us iuto an acquaintance with 
 human character. History, as the represental-ive of actual 
 life, of real man, gives us powerful deliaeations of char- 
 acter in its chief agents, that is, in men ; and therefore it 
 is that Shakspeare, the absolute creator of female char- 
 acter, was but the mightiest of aU painters with regard to 
 male character. Take a single instance. The Antony of 
 Shakspeare, immortal for its execution, is found, after all, 
 as regards the primary conception, in history : Shakspeare's 
 delineation is but the expansion of the germ already 
 pre-existing, by way of scattered fragments, in Cicero's 
 Philippics, in Cicero's Letters, in Appian, &c. But 
 Cleopatra, equally fine, is a pure creation of art : the 
 situation and the scenic circumstances belong to history, 
 but the character belongs to Shakspeare. 
 
 In the great world therefore of woman, as the inter- 
 preter of the shifting phases and the lunar varieties, of 
 
SHAKSPEARB. 79 
 
 that miglity changeable planet, that loTely satellite of 
 man, Shakspeare stands not the first only, not the original 
 only, but is yet the sole authentic oracle of truth. Woman, 
 therefore, the beauty of the female mind, this is one great 
 field of his power. The supernatural world, the world of 
 apparitions, that is another : for reasons which it would 
 be easy to give, reasons emanating from the gross mjrtho- 
 logy of the ancients, no Grecian,* no Eoman, could have 
 conceived a ghost. That shadowy conception, the pro 
 testing apparition, the awful projection of the human 
 conscience, belongs to the Christian mind : and in all 
 Christendom, who, let us ask, who, but Shakspeare, has 
 found the power for effectually working this myste- 
 rious mode of being? In summoning back to earth 
 " the majesty of buried Denmark," how hke an awful 
 necromancer does Shakspeare appear ! All the pomps 
 and grandeurs which religion, which the grave, which 
 the popular superstition had gathered about the sub- 
 ject of apparitions, are here converted to his purpose, 
 and bend to one awful effect. The wormy grave brought 
 
 • It may be thought, however, by some readers, that ^schylus, 
 in his fine phantom of Darius, has approached the English ghost. 
 As a foreign ghost, we would wish (and we are sure that our ex- 
 cellent readers would wish) to show every courtesy and attention 
 to this apparition of Darius. It has the advantage of being royal, 
 an advantage which it shares with the ghost of the royal Dane. 
 Yet how different, how removed by a total world, from that or any 
 of Shakspeare 's ghosts! Take that of Banquo, for instance: how 
 shadowy, how unreal, yet how real ! Darius is a mere state ghost 
 — a diplomatic ghost. But Banquo — ^he exists only for Macbeth : 
 the guests do not see him, yet how solemn, how real, how heart- 
 searching he is ! 
 
80 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 into antagonism with the scenting of the early dawn ; 
 the trumpet of resurrection suggested, and agaia as an 
 antagonist idea to the crowing of the cock (a bird en- 
 nobled LQ the Christian mjrthus by the part he is made 
 to play at the Crucifixion) ; its starting " as a guilty 
 thing" placed in opposition to its majestic expression of 
 offended dignity when struck at by the partisans of the 
 sentinels ; its awful allusions to the secrets of its prison- 
 house ; its ubiquity, contrasted with its local presence ; 
 its aerial substance, yet clothed in palpable armour ; the 
 heart-shaking solemnity of its language, and the appro- 
 priate scenery of its haunt, viz., the ramparts of a capital 
 fortress, with no witnesses but a few gentlemen mounting 
 guard at the dead of night, — what a mist, what a mirage 
 of vapour, is here accumulated, through which the dread- 
 ful being in the centre looms upon us in far larger pro- 
 portions than could have happened had it been insulated 
 and left naked of this circumstantial pomp ! In the 
 Temped, again, what new modes of life, preternatural, yet 
 far as the poles from the spiritualities of religion. Ariel 
 in antithesis to Caliban ! * What is most ethereal to what 
 is most animal ! A phantom of air, an abstraction of the 
 dawn and of vesper sun-Ughts, a bodiless sylph on the 
 one hand ; on the other a gross carnal monster, like the 
 Miltonic Asmodai, "the fleshliest incubus'' among the 
 fiends, and yet so far ennobled into interest by his intel- 
 lectual power, and by the grandeur of misanthropy ! 
 
 * Caliban has not yet been thoroughly fathomed. For all 
 Shalcspeaie's great creations are like works of nature, subjects of 
 uncxhaustible study. — See Note, p. 99. 
 
BHAESFEARE. 81 
 
 In the Midsummer-NigM s Dream, again, we have the 
 old traditional fairy, a lovely mode of preternatural life, 
 remodiiied by Shakspeare's eternal talisman. Oberon and 
 Titania remind us at first glance of Ariel ; they approach, 
 but how far they recede : they are like — " like, but oh, 
 how different !" And in no other exhibition of this 
 dreamy population of the moonlight forests and forest- 
 lawns are the circumstantial proprieties of fairy life 
 so exquisitely imagined, sustained, or expressed. The 
 dialogue between Oberon and Titania is, of itself and 
 taken separately from its connection, one of the most 
 delightful poetic scenes that literature affords. The 
 witches in Macbeth are another variety of supernatural 
 life, in which Shakspeare's power to enchant and to 
 disenchant are alike portentous. The circumstances of 
 the blasted heath, the army at a distance, the withered 
 attire of the mysterious hags, and the choral Ktanies of 
 their fiendish Sabbath, are as finely imagined in their kind 
 as those which herald and which suiroij&d! the ghost in 
 Hamlet. There we see the positive of Shakspeare's supe- 
 rior power. But now turn and look to the negative. At 
 a time when the trials of witches, the royal book on 
 demonology, and popular superstition (all so far useful, as 
 they prepared a basis of undoubting feith for the poet's 
 serious use of such agencies) had degraded and poHuted 
 the ideas of these mysterious beings by many mean asso- 
 ciations, Shakspeare does not fear to employ them in high 
 tragedy (a tragedy moreover which, though not the very 
 greatest of his efforts as an intellectual whole, nor as a 
 struggle of passion, is among the greatest in any view, 
 and positively the greatest for scenical grandeur, and in 
 
 F 
 
82 SHAKSPEABE. 
 
 that respect makes the nearest approach of all English 
 tragedies to the Grecian model) ; he does not fear to 
 introduce, for the same appalling effect as that for which 
 ^schylus introduced the Eumenides, a triad of old 
 women, concerning whom an English wit has remarked 
 this grotesque peculiarity in the popular creed of that 
 day, — ^that although potent over winds and storms, in 
 league with powers of darkness, they yet stood in awe of 
 the constahle, — ^yet relying on his own supreme power to 
 disenchant as well as to enchant, to create and to uncreate, 
 he mixes these women and their dark machineries with 
 the power of armies, with the agencies of kings, and the 
 fortunes of martial kingdoms. Such was the sovereignty 
 of this poet, so mighty its compass ! 
 
 A third fund of Shakspeare's peculiar power lies ia his 
 teeming fertUity of fine thoughts and sentiments. From 
 his works alone might be gathered a golden bead-roll of 
 thoughts the deepest, subtlest, most pathetic, and yet 
 most catholic and universally intelligible ; the most char- 
 acteristic, also, and appropriate to the particular person, 
 the situation, and the case, yet, at the same time, apph- 
 cable to the circumstances of every human being, under 
 all the accidents of life, and all vicissitudes of fortune. 
 But this subject offers so vast a field of observation, it 
 being so eminently the prerogative of Shakspeare to have 
 thought more finely and more extensively than all other 
 poets combined, that we cannot wrong the dignity of such 
 a theme by doing more, in our narrow limits, than simply 
 noticing it as one of the emblazonries upon Shakspeare's 
 shield. 
 
 Fourthly, we shall indicate (and, as in the last case, 
 
SHAKSPEABB. 83 
 
 harely indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to 
 offer any inadequate illustrations) one mode of Stak- 
 speare's dramatic excellence whicli hitherto has not 
 attracted any special or separate notice. We allude to 
 the forms of life, and natural human passion, as apparent 
 in the structure of his dialogue. Among the many defects 
 and infirmities of the French and of the Italian drama, 
 indeed -we may say of the Greek, the dialogue proceeds 
 always hy independent speeches, replying indeed to each 
 other, but never modified in its several openings hy the 
 momentary effect of its several terminal forms immediately 
 preceding. ]S"ow, in Shakspeare, who first set an exam- 
 ple of that most important innovation, in all his impas- 
 sioned dialogues, each reply or rejoinder seems the mere 
 rebound of the previous speecL Every form of natural 
 interruption, breaking through the restraints of ceremony 
 under the impulses of tempestuous passion ; every form 
 of hasty interrogative, ardent reiteration when a question 
 has been evaded ; every form of scornful repetition of the 
 hostile words ; every impatient continuation of the hostile 
 statement; in short, all modes and formulae by which 
 anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, impatience, or excitement 
 under any movement whatever, can disturb or modify or 
 dislocate the formal bookish style of commencement, — 
 these are as rife in Shakspeare's dialogue as in hfe itself ; 
 and how much vivacity, how profound a verisimilitude, 
 they add to the scenic efiect as an imitation of human 
 passion and real hfe, we need not say. A volume might 
 be written illustrating the vast varieties of Shakspeare's 
 art and power in this one field of improvement ; another 
 volume might be dedicated to the exposure of the 
 
84 SHAKSPEARB. 
 
 lifeless and mmatural result from the opposite practice 
 in the foreign stages of France and Italy. And we 
 may truly say, that were Shakspeare distinguished from 
 them by this singla feature of nature and propriety, 
 he would on that account alone have merited a great 
 immortality. 
 
0^ THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE 
 
 IN MACBETH. 
 
 Prom my boyish days I had always felt a great per- 
 plexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this : the 
 knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of 
 Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I 
 never could account. The efifect was, that it reflected 
 back upon the murderer a peculiar awfulness and a depth 
 of solemnity ; yet, however obstinately I endeavoured with 
 my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I 
 never could see why it should produce such am effect. 
 
 Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader 
 never to pay any attention to his understanding, when it 
 stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. 
 The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, 
 is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to 
 be distrusted ; and yet the great majority of people trust 
 to nothing else, which may do for ordinary life, but not 
 for philosophical purposes. Of this out of ten thousand 
 instances that I might produce, I will cite one. Ask of 
 any person whatsoever, who is not previously prepared for 
 the demand by a knowledge of the perspective, to draw in 
 the rudest way the commonest appearance which depends 
 
gg MACBETH. 
 
 upon the laws of that science ; as, for instance, to represent 
 the effect of two walls standing at right angles to each 
 other, or the appearance of the houses on each side of a 
 street, as seen by a person looking down the street from 
 one extremity. Now in all cases, unless the person has 
 happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists pro- 
 duce these effects, he will be utterly unable to make the 
 smallest approximation to it. Yet why ? For he has 
 actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason 
 is — that he allows his understanding to overrule his eyes. 
 His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge 
 of the laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why 
 a line which is known and can be proved to be a horizontal 
 line, should not appear a horizontal line ; a line that made 
 any angle with the perpendicular, less than a right angle, 
 would seem to him to indicate that his houses were all 
 tumbling down together. Accordingly, he makes the line 
 of his houses a horizontal line, and fails, of course, to pro- 
 duce the effect demanded. Here, then, is ore instance out 
 of many, in which not only the understanding is allowed 
 to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is posi- 
 tively allowed to obliterate the eyes, as it were ; for not 
 only does the man believe the evidence of his understanding 
 in opposition to that of his eyes, but (what is monstrous !) 
 the idiot is not aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. 
 He does not know that he has seen (and therefore quoad 
 his consciousness has not seen) that which he has seen 
 every day of his life. 
 
 But to return from this digression, my understanding 
 could furnish no reason why the knocking at the gate in 
 Macbeth should produce any effect, direct or reflected. In 
 fact, my understanding said positively that it could not 
 produce any effect. But I knew better ; I felt that it 
 
MACBETH. 87 
 
 did ; and I waited and clung to the problem until further 
 knowledge should enable me to solve it. At length, in 
 1812, Mr. Williams made his debut on the stage of Rat- 
 clifife Highway, and executed those unparalleled murders 
 which have procured for him such a brilliant and undying 
 reputation. On which murders, by the way, I must 
 observe, that in one respect they have had an iU effect, by 
 making the connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his 
 taste, and dissatisfied by anything that has been since done 
 in that line. All other murders look pale by the deep 
 crimson of his ; and, as an amateur once said to nie in a 
 querulous tone, " There has been absolutely nothing doing 
 since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking of" But 
 this is wrong ; for it is unreasonable to expect all men to 
 be great artists, and bom with the genius of Mr. Williams. 
 Now it wUl be remembered, that in the first of these mur- 
 'ders (that of the Marrs), the same incident (of a knocking 
 at the door, soon after the work of extermination was com- 
 plete) did actually occur, which the genius of Shalispeie 
 has invented ; and all good judges, and the most eminent 
 dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakspere's sugges- 
 tion, as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then, was 
 a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feeling, 
 in opposition to my understanding ; and I again set myself 
 to study the problem ; at length I solved it to my own 
 satisfaction, and my solution is this. Murder, in ordinary 
 cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case 
 of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and 
 vulgar horror ; and for this reason, that it flings the 
 interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct 
 by which we cleave to life ; an instinct which, as being 
 indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the 
 same in kind (though diflterent in degree) amongst all 
 
living creatures : this instinct, therefore, because it anni- 
 hilates all distinctions, and degrades the gi-eatest of men to 
 the level of " the poor beetle that we tread on," exhibits 
 human nature in its most abject and humiliating attitude. 
 Such an attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet. 
 What then must he do ? He must throw the interest 
 on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with him (pi 
 course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a sympathy 
 by which we enter into his feelings, and are made to un- 
 derstand thera, — not a sympathy of pity or approbation*). 
 In the murdered person, aH strife of thought, all flux and 
 reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by one over- 
 whelming panic ; the fear of instant death smites him 
 " with its petrifie mace." But in the murderer, such a 
 murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be 
 raging some great storm of passion — jealousy, ambition, 
 vengeance, hatred — ^which will create a hell within him ; 
 and into this heU we are to look. 
 
 In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enormous 
 and teeming faculty of creation, Shakspere has introduced 
 two murderers : and, as usual in his hands, they are re- 
 markably discriminated : but, though in Macbeth the strife 
 of mind is greater than in his wife, the tiger spirit not so 
 awake, and his feelings caught chiefly by contagion from 
 her, — yet, as both were finally involved in the guilt of 
 
 * It seems almost ludicrous to guard and explain my use of a 
 word, in a situation where it would naturally explain itself. But it 
 has become necessary to do so, in consequence of the unscholarlikc 
 use of the word sympathy, at present so general, by which, instead 
 of taking it in its proper sense, as the act of reproducing in our 
 minds the feelings of another, whether for hatred, indignation, love, 
 pity, or approbation, it is made a mere synonyme of the word pity; 
 and hence, instead of saying " sympathy i«j(A another," many writers 
 :kdopt tho monstrons barbarism of " sympathy /or another." 
 
MACBETH. 89 
 
 murder, the murderous mind of necessity is finally to he 
 presumed in both. This was to be expressed ; and on its 
 own account, as well as to make it a more proportionable 
 antagonist to the unoffending nature of their victim, " the 
 gracious Duncan,'' and adequately to expound " the deep 
 damnation of his taking ofiF," this was to be expressed with 
 peculiar energy. We were to be made to feel that the 
 human nature, i.e., the divine nature of love and mercy, 
 spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly 
 withdrawn from man — was gone, vanished, extinct ; and 
 that the fiendish nature had taken its place. And, as this 
 effect is marvellously accomplished in the dialogues and 
 soliloquies themselves, so it is finally consummated by the 
 expedient under consideration ; and it is to this that I now 
 solicit the reader's attention. If the reader has ever wit- 
 nessed a wife, daughter, or sister in a fainting fit, he may 
 chance to have observed that the most affecting moment in 
 such a spectacle is that in which a sigh and a stirring 
 announce the recommencement of suspended life. Or, if 
 the reader has ever been present in a vast metropolis, on 
 the day when some great national idol was carried in 
 funeral pomp to his grave, and chancing to walk near the 
 course through which it passed, has felt powerfully in the 
 silence and desertion of the streets, and in the stagnation 
 of ordinary business, the deep interest which at that moment 
 was possessing the heart of man — if all at once he should 
 hear the death-like stillness broken up by the sound of 
 wheels rattling away from the scene, and making known 
 that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware 
 that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension 
 and pause iu ordinary human concerns so fuU and affecting, 
 as at that moment when the suspension ceases, and the 
 goings-on of human life are suddenly resumed. AU action 
 
90 
 
 MACBETH. 
 
 in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made 
 apprehensible, by reaction. Now apply this to the case in 
 Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human 
 heart, and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be ex- 
 pressed and made sensible. Another world has stept in ; 
 and the murderers are taken out of the region of human 
 things, human purposes, human desires. They are trans- 
 figured : Lady Macbeth is " unsexed ;'' Macbeth has forgot 
 that he was bom of woman ; both are conformed to the 
 image of devils ; and the world of devils is suddenly re- 
 vealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made palpable 1 
 In order that a new world may step in, this world must for 
 a time disappear. The murderers, and the murder must be 
 insulated — cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordi- 
 nary tide and succession of human affairs — locked up and 
 sequestered in some deep recess ; we must be made sensible 
 that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested — laid 
 asleep — tranced — racked into a dread armistice ; time must 
 be annihilated ; relation to things without abolished ; and 
 all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and sus- 
 pension of earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the 
 deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then 
 the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the 
 clouds : the knocking at the gate is heard ; and it makes 
 known audibly that the reaction has commenced ; the 
 human has made its reflux upon the fiendish ; the pulses 
 of life are beginning to beat again ; and the re-establish- 
 ment of the goings-on of the world in which we live, first 
 makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that 
 had suspended them. 
 
 mighty poet ! Thy works are not as those of other 
 men, simply and merely great works of art ; but are also 
 like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the 
 
MACBETH. 91 
 
 stars and the flowers ; like frost and snow, rain and dewj 
 haU-storm and thunder, which are to he studied with entire 
 submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith 
 that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing 
 useless or inert — but that, the farther we press in our dis- 
 coveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self- 
 supporting arrangement where the careless eye had spen 
 nothing but accident ! 
 
JNOTES TO SHAKSPEAEK 
 
 The Name Shakspeaee. — Page 1. 
 
 Mb Campbell, the latest editor of Shakspeare's dramatic works, 
 observes that the " poet's name has been variously written Shax- 
 peare, Shackspeare, Sbakspeare, and Shakspere ;" to which va- 
 rieties might be added Shagspere, from the Worcester Marriage 
 License, published in 1836. But tlie fact is, that by combining 
 with all the differences in spelling the first syllable, all those in 
 spelling the second, more than twenty-five distinct varieties of the 
 name may be expanded (like an algebraic series), for the choice of 
 the curious in mis-spelling. Above all things, those varieties which 
 arise from the intercalation of the middle e (that is, the e imme- 
 diately before the final syllable spear), can never be overlooked by 
 those who remember, at the opening of the Dunciad, the note upon 
 this very question about the orthography of Shakspeare's name, as 
 also upon the other great question about the title of the immortal 
 Satire. Whether it ought not to have been the Dunceiade, seeing 
 that Dunce, its gi'eat author and progenitor, cannot possibly dis- 
 pense with the letter e. Meantime we must remai-k, that the first 
 
NOTES TO BHAKSPEAEB. 93 
 
 three of Mr Campbell's variations are mere caprices of the press ; 
 as is Shagspere ; or, more probably, this last euphonious variety 
 arose out of the gross clownish pronunciation of the two hiccuping 
 " marksmen" who rode over to Worcester for the license: and one 
 cannot forbear laughing at the bishop's secretary for having been 
 so misled by two varlets, professedly incapable of signing their 
 own names. The same drunken villains had cut down the bride's 
 name Hathaway into Haihwey. Finally, to treat the matter with 
 seriousness, Sir Frederick Madden has shown, in his recent letter 
 to the Society of Antiquaries, that the poet himself in all proba^ 
 bility wrote the name uniformly Shakspere. Orthography, both 
 of proper names, of appellatives, and of words universally, was very 
 unsettled up to a period long subsequent to that of Shakspeare. 
 Still it must usually have happened, that names written variously 
 and laxly by others would be written uniformly by the owners ; 
 especially by those owners who had occasion to sign their names 
 frequently, and by literary people, whose attention was often, as 
 well as consciously, directed to the proprieties of spelling. Shak- 
 speare is now too familiar to the eye for any alteration to be at- 
 tempted; but' it is pretty certain that Sir Frederick Madden is 
 right in stating the poet's own signature to have been uniformly 
 Shakspere. It is so written twice in the course of his will, and it 
 is so written on a blank leaf of Florio's English translation of 
 Montaigne's Essays; a book recently discovered, and sold, on 
 account of its autograph, for a hundred guineas. 
 
 Shakspbaeb's Reputatioh. — Page 19. 
 
 The necessity of compression obliges us to omit many arguments 
 and references by which we could demonstrate the fact, that Shak- 
 speare's reputation was always in a progressive state ; allowing only 
 for the interruption of about seventeen years, which this poet, in 
 common with all others, sustained, not so much from the state of 
 war (which did not fully occupy four of those years), as from the 
 triumph of a gloomy fanaticism. Deduct the twenty-three years 
 
94 NOTES TO SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 of the seventeenth century which had elapsed before the first folia 
 appeared, to this space add seventeen years of fanatical madness, 
 during fourteen of which all dramatic entertainments were sup- 
 pressed, the remainder is sixty years. And surely the sale of four 
 editions of a vast folio in that space of time was an expression of 
 an abiding interest. No other poet, except Spenser, continued to 
 sell throughout the century. Besides, in arguing the case of a 
 dramatic poet, we must bear in mind, that although readers of 
 learned books might be diffused over the face of the land, the 
 readers of poetry would be chiefly concentrated in the metropolis, 
 and such persons would have no need to buy what they heard at 
 the theatres. But then comes the question, whether Shakspeare 
 kept possession of the theatres. And we are really humiliated by 
 the gross want of sense which has been shown, by Malone chiefly, 
 but also by many others, in discussing this question. From the re- 
 storation to 1682, says Malone, no more than four plays of Shak- 
 speare's were performed by a principal company in London. " Such 
 was the lamentable taste of those times, that the plays of Fletcher, 
 Jonson, and Shirley, were much oftener exhibited than those of 
 our author." What eant is this ! K that taste were '" lamentable," 
 what are we to think of our own times, when plays a thousand 
 times below those of Fletcher, or even of Shirley, continually dis- 
 place Shakspeare ? Shakspeare would himself have exulted in 
 finding that he gave way only to dramatists so excellent. And, as 
 we have before observed, both then and now, it is the very fami- 
 liarity with Shakspeare which often banishes him from audiences 
 honestly in quest of relaxation and amusement. Kovelty is the 
 very soul of such relaxation ; but in our closets, when we are not 
 unbending, when our minds are in a state of tension from intellec- 
 tual cravings, then it is that we resort to Shakspeare; and often'- 
 times those who honour him most, like ourselves, are the most im- 
 patient of seeing his divine scenes disfigiu-ed by unequal represen- 
 tation (good, perhaps, in a single personation, bad in all the rest) ; 
 or to hear his divine thoughts mangled in the recitation ; or (which 
 is worst, of all) to hear them dishonom-ed and defeated by im- 
 
NOTES TO SHAKSPEARE. 95 
 
 perfect apprehension in the audience, or by defectiye sympathy. 
 Meantime, if one theatre played only four of Shakspeare's dramas, 
 another played at least seven. But the grossest folJy of Malone is, 
 in fancying the numerous alterations so many insults to Shak- 
 speare, whereas they expressed as much homage to his memory as 
 if the unaltered dramas had been retained. The substance was 
 retained. The changes were merely concessions to the changing 
 views of scenical propriety; sometimes, no doubt, made with .a 
 simple view to the revolution effected by Davenant at the restora- 
 tion, in bringing scenes (in the painter's sense) upon the stage; 
 sometimes also with a view to the altered fashions of the audience 
 during the suspensions of the action, or perhaps to the introduc- 
 tion of after-pieces, by which, of course, the time was abridged for 
 the main performance. A volume might be written upon this sub- 
 ject. Meantime let us never be told, that a poet was losing, or 
 had lost his ground, who found in his lowest depression, amongst 
 his almost idolatrous supporters, a great king distracted by civil 
 wars, a mighty republican poet distracted by puritanical fanati- 
 cism, the greatest successor by far of that great poet, a papist and 
 a bigoted royalist, and finally, the leading actor of the century, who 
 gave and reflected the ruling impulses of his age. 
 
 Value of Asbies. — Page 32. 
 
 After all the assistance given to such equations between different 
 times or different places by Sir George Shuckborough's tables, and 
 other similar investigations, it is still a very diflScult problem, 
 complex, and,* after all, merely tentative in the results, to assign 
 the true value in such cases ; not only for the obvious reason, that 
 the powers of money have varied in different directions with regard 
 to different objects, and in different degrees where the direction 
 has on the whole continued the same, but because the very objects 
 to be taken into computation are so indeterminate, and vary so 
 much, not only as regards century and century, kingdom and king- 
 dom, but also, even in the same century and the same kingdom, a» 
 
96 NOTES TO BHAKSPBARE. 
 
 regards rank and rank. That which is a mere necessary to one, is 
 a luxurious superfluity to another. And, in order to ascertain 
 these differences, it is an indispensable qualification to have studied 
 the habits and customs of the several classes concerned, together 
 with the variations of those habits and customs. 
 
 Reqaed fob Womanhood in Ekqlakd. — Page 41. 
 
 Never was the esse quam videri in any point more strongly dis- 
 criminated than ill this veiy point of gallantry to the female sex, 
 as between England and France. In France, the verbal homage 
 to woman is so excessive as to betray its real purpose, — ^viz. that 
 it is a mask for secret contempt. In England, little is said; but, 
 in the mean time, we allow our sovereign ruler to be a woman ; 
 which in France is impossible. Even that fact is of some import- 
 ance, but less so than what follows. In every country whatsoever, 
 if any principle has a deep root in the moral feelings of the people, 
 we may rely upon its showing itself, by a thousand evidences, 
 amongst the very lowest ranks, and in their daily intercourse, and 
 their undress manners. Now in England there is, and always has 
 been, a manly feeling, most widely diffused, of unwillingness to see 
 labours of a coarse order, or requiring muscular exertions, thrown 
 upon women. Pauperism, amongst other evil effects, has some- 
 times locally disturbed this predominating sentiment of English- 
 men ; but never at any time with such depth as to kill the root of 
 the old hereditary manliness. Sometimes at this day a gentleman, 
 either from carelessness, or from over-ruling force of convenience, 
 or from real defect of gallantry, will allow a female servant to carry 
 his portmanteau for him; though, after all, that spectacle is a rare 
 one. And everywhere women of all ages engage in the pleasant, 
 nay elegant, labours of the hay field ; but in Great Britain women 
 are never suffered to mow, which is a most athletic and exhausting 
 laboiir, nor to load a cart, nor to drive a plough or hold it. In 
 France, on the other hand, before the Revolution (at which period 
 tlie pseudo-homage, the lip-honour, was far more ostentatiously 
 
NOTES TO SHAK8PBAEB. t) ( 
 
 professed towards the female sex than at present), a Frenchman of 
 credit, and vouchii^ for his statement by the whole weight of his 
 name and personal responsibility (M. Simond, now an American 
 citizen), records the following abominable scene as one of no un- 
 common occurrence : A woman was in some provinces yoked side 
 by side with an ass to the plough or the harrow; and M. Simond 
 protests that it excited no horror to see the driver distributing his 
 lashes impartially between the woman and her brute yoke-feUow. 
 So much for the wordy pomps of French gallantry. In England, 
 we trust, and we believe, that any man, caught in such a situation, 
 and in such an abuse of his power (supposing the case otherwise a 
 possible one), would be kiUed on the spot. 
 
 Slander op Corporal Punishmbnt.^ — Page 55. 
 
 In a little memoir of Milton, which the author of this article 
 drew up some years ago for a public society, and which is printed 
 in an abridged shape,* he took occasion to remark, that Dr Johnson, 
 who was meanly anxious to revive the slander against Milton, as 
 well as some others, had supposed Milton himself to have this 
 flagellation in his mind, and indirectly to confess it, in one of his 
 Latin poems, where, speaking of Cambridge, and declaring that he 
 has no longer any pleasure in the thoughts of revisiting that uni- 
 versity, he says, — 
 
 " Nee duri Hbet usque minas perferre maglstrl, 
 Cseteraque ingenio non subeunda mco." 
 
 This last line the malicious critic would translate — " And other 
 things insufferable to a man of my temper." * But as we then ob- 
 served, ingeniwm is properly expressive of the intellectual consti- 
 tution, whilst it is the moral constitution that suffers degradation 
 from personal chastisement — the sense of honour, of personal dig- 
 nity, of justice, &c. Indoles is the proper term for this latter idea, 
 and in using the word ingenium, there cannot be a doubt that 
 Milton alluded to the dry scholastic disputations, which were 
 
 * Works, VOL X, p. 79. 
 
 G 
 
98 NOTES TO SHAKSPEABE. 
 
 shocking .and odious to his fine poetical genius. If, therefore, the 
 vile story is still to be kept up in order to dishonour a great man, 
 at any rate let it not in future be pretended that any countenance 
 to such a slander can be drawn from the confessions of the poet 
 himself. 
 
 Shakspeaee's Station in Litekatube. — Page 71. 
 
 It will occur to many readers, that perhaps Homer may furnish 
 the sole exception to this sweeping assertion: any bvi Homer is 
 clearly and ludicrously below the level of the competition; but even 
 Homer, " with his tail on (as the Scottish Highlanders say of their 
 chieftains when belted by their ceremonial retinues), musters no- 
 thing like the force which already follows Shakspeare ; and be it 
 remembered, that Homer sleeps, and has long slept as a subject of 
 criticism or commentary, while in Germany as well as England, 
 and now even in France, the gathering of wits to the vast equipage 
 of Shakspeare is advancing in an accelerated ratio. There is, in 
 fact, a great delusion current upon this subject. Innumerable re- 
 ferences to Homer, and brief critical remarks on this or that pre- 
 tension of Homer, this or that scene, this or that passage, lie scat- 
 tered over literature ancient and modem ; but the express works 
 dedicated to the separate service of Homer are, after all, not many_ 
 In Greek we have only the large Commentary of Eustathius, and 
 the Scholia of Didymus, &c.; in French little or nothing before the 
 prose translation of the seventeenth century, which Pope esteemed 
 "elegant," and the skirmishings of Madame Dacier, La Motte, 
 &c.; in English, besides the various translations and their prefaces 
 (which, by the way, began as early as 1555), nothing of much im- 
 portance until the elaborate preface of Pope to the Iliad, and his 
 elaborate postscript to the Odyssey — ^nothing certainly before that, 
 and very little indeed since that, except Wood's Essay on the Life 
 and Genius of Homer. On the other band, of the books written 
 in illustration or investigation of Shakspeare, a very considerable 
 library might be formed in England, and another in Germany. 
 
KOTES TO SHAKSPEARB. 99 
 
 Caliban.- - Page 80 
 
 Caliban has not yet been thoroughly fethomed. For ail Shak- 
 speare's great creations are like works of nature, subjects of unex- 
 haustible study. It was this character of whom Charles I. and some 
 of his ministers expressed such fervent admiration ; and, among 
 other circumstances, most justly they admired the new language 
 a,lmost with which he is endowed, for the purpose of expressing his 
 fiendish and yet carnal thoughts of hatred to his master. Caliban 
 is evidently not meant for scorn, but for abomination mixed with 
 fear and partial respect. He is purposely brought into contrast 
 with the drunken Trinculo and Stephano, with an advantageous 
 result. He is much more inteUeotual than either, uses a more 
 elevated language, not disiigured by vulgarisms, and is not liable 
 to the low passion for plunder as they are. He is mortal, doubt- 
 less, as his "dam" (for Shakspeare will not call her mother) 
 Sycorax. But he inherits from her such qualities of power as a 
 witch could be supposed to bequeath. He trembles indeed before 
 Prospero ; but that is, as we are to understand, through the moral 
 superiority of Prospero in Christian wisdom ; for when he finds 
 himself in the presence of dissolute and unprincipled men, he rises 
 at once into the dignity of intellectual power. 
 
 PItlSTED BY NEILL ASD OOMPANT, RDraBrUGlI. 
 
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