1603, when a new patent was granted to the Blackfriars Company by King James, the poet's name appears second in the list; but the source of his unexampled success was his immortal dramas, the delight and wonder of his age—

That so did take Eliza and our James,

In 1852, Mr Collier published a volume of Notes and Emendations of the plays of Shakspeare, derived from a corrected copy of the second edition in 1632, which had apparently belonged to one Thomas Perkins. Certain other documents relating to the dramatist and his plays, purporting to be found in the library at Bridgewater House, in the Audit Office, and at Dulwich College, have also been published. But it seems to be satisfactorily proved that all these are modern fabrications, executed, in some respects, with ingenuity and skill.

Shakspeare." The militia bands were at that time-the agitated year of the Gunpowder Plotformed in order to repress an expected rising in the midland shires, and as the poet was then a considerable landholder in his native county, he may have been enrolled as one of its military defenders. To know positively that the 'gentle as Ben Jonson has recorded, and as is confirmed Shakspeare' had borne arms, and, like Ben by various authorities. Up to 1611, the whole Jonson, 'shouldered a pike,' as one of the Warof Shakspeare's plays-thirty-seven in number, wickshire public force, would be a curious and according to the first folio edition-are supposed suggestive fact in his personal history. In June to have been produced. With the nobles, the 1858, an autograph signature of the poet to a wits, and poets of his day, he was in familiar in- mortgage deed of a house in Blackfriars, dated tercourse. The 'gentle Shakspeare,' as he was March 11, 1612-13, was sold in London to the usually styled, was throned in all hearts. But curators of the British Museum for three hundred notwithstanding his brilliant success in the metro-guineas-unquestionably the largest sum ever given polis, the poet early looked forward to a permanent for a mere autograph. From none of the few retirement to the country. He visited Stratford signatures of the poet can we ascertain with any once a year; and when wealth flowed in upon degree of certainty how he spelled his surname. him, he purchased property in his native town and The three signatures in the will are all indistinct. its vicinity. In 1597, he paid £60 for New Place, Neither of his parents, it is now proved, could the principal house in Stratford; in 1602, he gave write, as deeds are extant to which John and Mary £320 for 107 acres of land adjoining to his pur- Shakspeare affix their marks. chase; and in 1605, he paid £440 for the lease of the tithes of Stratford. The produce of his lands he no doubt disposed of like the ordinary lords of the soil, and Mr Halliwell, in his life of Shakspeare (1848), shews that in 1604 the poet brought an action against Philip Rogers for £1, 15s. 1od. for malt sold and delivered to him. The latest entry of his name among the king's players is in 1604, but he was living in London in 1609. The year 1612 has been assigned as the date of his final retirement to the country. In the fulness of his fame, with a handsome competency, and before age had chilled the enjoyment of life, the poet Shakspeare, it is believed, like his contemporary returned to his native town, to spend the remainder dramatists, began his career as an author by of his days among the quiet scenes and the friends altering the works of others, and adapting them of his youth. His parents were both dead, but for the stage. The extract from Greene's Groat's their declining years had been gladdened by the Worth of Wit, which we have given in the life of prosperity of their illustrious son. His family that unhappy author, shews that he had been appears to have had a leaning towards the Puri- engaged in this subordinate literary labour before tans, and in the town-chamberlain's accounts for 1592. Three years previous to this, Nash had 1614, there is a record of a present of sack and published an address to the students of the two claret, given to a preacher at New Place.' universities, in which there is a remarkable passPreachers of all sects, if good men, would be wel- age: 'It is,' he says, 'a common practice now-acome to the poet's hospitality! Four years were days, among a sort of shifting companions, that spent by Shakspeare in this dignified retirement, run through every art, and thrive by none, to leave and the history of literature scarcely presents the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, another such picture of calm felicity and satisfied and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, ambition. He died on the 23d of April 1616, that could scarce Latinise their neck-verse if having just completed his fifty-second year. His they should have need; yet English Seneca, read widow survived him seven years. His two by candle-light, yields many good sentences, as daughters were both married-his only son Ham- blood is a beggar, and so forth; and if you entreat net had died in 1596-and one of them had three him far in a frosty morning, he will afford you sons; but all these died without issue, and there whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical now remains no lineal representative of the great speeches.' The term Noverint was applied to poet. lawyers' clerks, so called from the first word of a Latin deed of those times, equivalent to the modern commencement of' Know all men,' &c. It appears from the title-page to the first edition of Hamlet, in 1604, that, like Romeo and Juliet, and the Merry Wives of Windsor, it had been enlarged to almost twice its original size. It seems scarcely probable that the great dramatist should not have commenced writing before he was twenty-seven.

Of the recent Shakspearian researches, we must say with regret, in the words of Mr Hallam, 'no letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no character of him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary, has been produced.' The Calendars of the State Papers, published under the authority of the Master of the Rolls, shew that in the list of trained soldiers of the hundred of Barlichway, in Warwickshire, in September 1605, was a William

carved in stone.

The Avon, which winds through the park, makes a bend just at the foot of a gently sloping bank, which sweeps round the rear of the house. Large herds of deer were reposing upon its borders.'

* See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of James I. 1603 to 1610, preserved in the State Paper Department of H.M.'s Public Record Office. Edited by Mary Anne Everett Green (1857). The publication of these calendars will be invaluable to future historians and biographers.

interesting to consider the great poet watching the dawn of that mighty mind which was to eclipse all its contemporaries. A few years afterwards, in 1598, we meet with an important notice of Shakspeare by Francis Meres, a contemporary author. As Plautus and Seneca,' he says, 'are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakspeare, among the English, is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour Lost, his Love's Labour Won (or All's Well that Ends Well), his Midsummer Night's Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard II. Richard III. Henry IV. King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. This was indeed a brilliant contribution to the English drama, throwing Greene, Peele, and Marlowe immeasurably into shade, and far transcending all the previous productions of the English stage. The harvest, how

lect of Shakspeare was still forming, and his imagination nursing those magnificent conceptions which were afterwards embodied in the Lear, the Macbeth, Othello, and Tempest of his tragic

Some of his first drafts, as we have seen, he subsequently enlarged and completed; others may have sunk into oblivion, as being judged unworthy of resuscitation or improvement in his riper years. Pericles is supposed to be one of his earliest adaptations. Dryden, indeed, expressly states it to be the first birth of his muse; but two if not three styles are distinctly traceable in this play, and the first two acts look like the work of Greene or Peele. Titus Andronicus resembles the style of Marlowe, and if written by Shakspeare, as distinct contemporary testimony affirms, it must have been a very youthful production. The Taming of the Shrew is greatly indebted to an old play on the same subject, and must also be referred to the same period. It is doubtful whether Shakspeare wrote any of the first part of Henry VI. The second and third parts are modelled on two older plays, the Contention of York and Lancaster, and the True Tragedy of the Duke of York. Whether these old dramas were early sketches of Shak-ever, was not yet half reaped-the glorious intelspeare's own, cannot now be ascertained; they contain the death-scene of Cardinal Beaufort, the last speech of the Duke of York, and the germs of that vigorous delineation of character and passion completed in Richard III. We know no other dramatist of that early period, excepting Marlowe, who could have written those powerful sketches. From the old plays, Shakspeare borrowed no less than 1771 entire lines, and nearly double that number are merely alterations. Hence it has been supposed that Shakspeare's property in the second and third parts of Henry VI. was only in the additions and alterations he introduced. Whole lines in the old plays are identical with passages in Marlowe's Edward II.; and there seems no reason to doubt that Marlowe and Greene were the original authors, and that Shakspeare had remodelled their plays, to fit them for his theatre, retaining what was popular, and improving what was defective. Thus the charge of plagiarism brought by Greene against our great dramatist stands explained and reconciled with probability, if not with fact, though we must remember that it was Shakspeare's first editors, not himself, that claimed for him the sole authorship of Henry VI. as of the other plays.

muse.

The chronology of Shakspeare's plays has been arbitrarily fixed by Malone and others, without adequate authority. Macbeth is put down to 1606, though we only know that it existed in 1610. Henry VIII. is assigned to 1603, yet it is mentioned by Sir Henry Wotton as a new play in 1613, and we know that it was produced with unusual scenic decoration and splendour in that year. The Roman plays were undoubtedly among his latest works. The Tempest has been usually considered the last, but on no decisive authority. Adopting this popular belief, Campbell has remarked, that the Tempest has a 'sort of sacredness' as the last drama of the great poet, who, as if conscious that this was to be the case, has 'been inspired to typify himself as a wise, potent, and benevolent magician.'

There seems no good reason for believing that Shakspeare did not continue writing on to the period of his death in 1616; and such a supposition is countenanced by a tradition thus recorded The gradual progress of Shakspeare's genius is in the diary of the Rev. John Ward, A.M. vicar of supposed to have been not unobserved by Spenser. Stratford-on-Avon, extending from 1648 to 1679. In 1594 or 1595, the venerable poet wrote his 'I have heard,' says the careless and incurious pastoral, entitled Colin Clout's Come Home Again, vicar, who might have added largely to our stock in which he commemorates his brother-poets of Shakspearian facts, had he possessed taste, under feigned names. The gallant Raleigh is the acuteness, or industry-I have heard that Mr Shepherd of the Ocean, Sir Philip Sidney is Shakspeare was a natural wit, without any art at Astrophel, and other living authors are charac-all. He frequented the plays all his younger time, terised by fictitious appellations. He concludes

as follows:

And then, though last, not least, is Aëtion;
A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found,
Whose muse, full of high thoughts' invention,
Doth, like himself, heroically sound.

but in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for it had an allowance so large, that he spent at the rate of one thousand pounds a year, as I have heard. Shakspeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry-meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakspeare died of a fever there conThe sonorous and chivalrous-like name of Shak-tracted.' We place no great reliance on this testispeare seems here designated. The poet had then published his two classical poems, and probably most of his English historical plays had been acted. The supposition that Shakspeare was meant, is at least a pleasing one. We love to figure Spenser and Raleigh sitting under the 'shady alders' on the banks of Mulla, reading the manuscript of the Faery Queen; but it is not less

mony, either as to facts literary or personal. Those who have studied the works of the great dramatist, and marked his successive approaches to perfection, must see that he united the closest study to the keenest observation; that he attained to the highest pitch of dramatic art, and the most accurate philosophy of the human mind; and that he was, as Schlegel has happily remarked, 'a

volume, and a preface and dedication were supplied by the poet's fellow-comedians, Hemming and Condell.

The plots of Shakspeare's dramas were nearly all borrowed, some from novels and romances, others from legendary tales, and some from older plays. In his Roman subjects, he followed North's translation of Plutarch's Lives; his English historical plays are chiefly taken from Holinshed's Chronicle. From the latter source he also derived display the gradual progress and elevation of his In the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and the earlier comedies, we see the timidity and immaturity of youthful genius; a half-formed style, bearing frequent traces of that of his predecessors; fantastic quibbles and conceits-which he never wholly abandoned; only a partial development of character; a romantic and playful fancy; but no great strength of imagination, energy, or passion. In Richards II. and III. the creative and master mind are visible in the delineation of character. In the Midsummer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, &c. we find the ripened poetical imagination, prodigality of invention, and a searching, meditative spirit. These qualities, with a finer vein of morality and contemplative philosophy, pervade As You Like It and the Twelfth Night. In Henry IV. the Merry Wives, and Measure for Measure, we see his inimitable powers of comedy, full formed, revelling in an atmosphere of joyous life, and fresh as if from the hand of nature. He took a loftier flight in his classical dramas, conceived and finished with consummate taste and freedom. In his later tragedies-Lear, Hamlet (in its improved form), Othello, Macbeth, and the Tempest-all his wonderful faculties and acquirements are found combined

profound artist, and not a blind and wildly luxuriant genius.' Coleridge boasted of being the first in time who publicly demonstrated to the full extent of the position, that the supposed irregularity and extravagances of Shakspeare were 'the mere dreams of a pedantry that arraigned the eagle because it had not the dimensions of the swan.' He maintains, with his usual fine poetical appreciation and feeling, that that law of unity which has its foundations, not in the factitious necessity | of custom, but in nature itself, the unity of feeling, the plot of Macbeth. A very cursory perusal will is everywhere, and at all times, observed by Shakspeare in his plays. 'Read Romeo and Juliet-art. all is youth and spring; youth with its follies, its virtues, its precipitancies; spring with its odours, its flowers, and its transiency; it is one and the same feeling that commences, goes through, and ends the play.' This unity of action, or of character and interest, conspicuous in Shakspeare, Coleridge illustrates by an image drawn, with the taste of a poet, from external nature. 'Whence arises the harmony that strikes us in the wildest natural landscapes-in the relative shapes of rocks -the harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens-the leaves of the beech and the oak -the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning spring-compared with the visual effect from the greater number of artificial plantations? From this-that the natural landscape is effected, as it were, by a single energy modified ab intra in each component part.' In working out his conceptions, either of character or passion, we conceive Shakspeare to have laboured for ultimate and lasting fame, not immediate theatrical effect. His audiences must often have been unable to follow his philosophy, his subtile distinctions, and his imagery. The actors must have been equally unable to give his wit, pathos, passion, and sublimity—his proeffect to many of his personations. He was found knowledge and observation of mankind, apparently indifferent to both-at least in his mellowed by a refined humanity and benevolence great works-and wrote for the mind of the uni--his imagination richer from skilful culture and verse. There was, however, always enough of added stores of information-his unrivalled lanordinary nature, of pomp, or variety of action, for guage (like 'light from heaven ')—his imagery and the multitude; and the English historical plays, versification. connected with national pride and glory, must have rendered their author popular.

Eleven of the dramas were printed during Shakspeare's life, probably from copies piratically obtained. It was the interest of the managers that new and popular pieces should not be published; but we entertain the most perfect conviction, that the poet intended all his original works, as he had revised some, for publication. The Merry Wives of Windsor is said to have been written in fourteen days, by command of Queen Elizabeth, who wished to see Falstaff in love. Shakspeare, however, was anxious for his fame, as well as eager to gratify the queen: when the temporary occasion was served, he returned to his play, filled up his first imperfect outline, and heightened the humour of the dialogue and character. Let not the example of this greatest name in English literature be ever quoted to support the false opinion, that excellence can be attained without study and labour !

In 1623 appeared the first collected edition of Shakspeare's dramatic works-seven years after his own death, and six months after that of his widow, who may have had a life-interest in the plays. The whole were contained in one folio

That Shakspeare deviated from the dramatic unities of time, place, and action laid down by the ancients, and adopted by the French theatre, is well known, and needs no defence. In his tragedies, he amply fulfils what Aristotle admits to be the end and object of tragedy, to beget admiration, terror, or sympathy. His mixture of comic with tragic scenes is sometimes a blemish, but it was the fault of his age; and if he had lived to edit his works, some of these incongruities would doubtless have been expunged. But, on the whole, such blending of opposite qualities and characters is accordant with the actual experience and vicissitudes of life. No course of events, however tragic in its results, moves on in measured, unvaried solemnity, nor would the English taste tolerate this stately French style. The great preceptress of Shakspeare was Nature: he spoke from her inspired dictates, 'warm from the heart, and faithful to its fires;'and in his disregard of classic rules, pursued at will his winged way through all the labyrinths of fancy and of the human heart. These celestial flights, however, were regulated, as we have said, by knowledge and taste. Mere poetical imagination might have created a Caliban, or evoked the airy spirits of

be stopped, sufflimandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too! Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter, as when he said, in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him: "Cæsar, thou dost mé wrong," he replied: "Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause," and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.'

the enchanted island and the Midsummer Dream;
but to delineate a Desdemona or Imogen, a
Miranda or Viola, the influence of a pure and
refined spirit, cultivated and disciplined by 'gentle
arts,' and familiar by habit, thought, and example,
with the better parts of wisdom and humanity,
were indispensably requisite. Peele or Marlowe
might have drawn the forest of Arden, with its
woodland glades, but who but Shakspeare could
have supplied the moral beauty of the scene-virtues.
the refined simplicity and gaiety of Rosalind, the
philosophic meditations of Jaques, the true wis-
dom, tenderness, and grace, diffused over the
whole of that antique half-courtly and half-pastoral
drama. These and similar personations, such as
Benedict and Beatrice, Mercutio, &c. seem to us
even more wonderful than the loftier characters
of Shakspeare. No types of them could have
existed but in his own mind. The old drama and
the chroniclers furnished the outlines of his his-
torical personages, though destitute of the heroic
ardour and elevation which he breathed into them.
Plutarch and the poets kindled his classic enthu-
siasm and taste; old Chapman's Homer perhaps
rolled its majestic cadences over his ear and
imagination; but characters in which polished
manners and easy grace are as predominant as
wit, reflection, or fancy, were then unknown to
the stage, as to actual life. They are among the
most perfect creations of his genius, and, in refer-
ence to his taste and habits, they are valuable
materials for his biography.

The first edition of Shakspeare was published, as already stated, in 1623. A second edition was published in 1632, the same as the first, excepting that it was more disfigured with errors of the press. A third edition was published in 1644, and a fourth in 1685. The public admiration of this great English classic now demanded that he should receive the honours of a commentary; and Rowe, the poet, gave an improved edition in 1709. Pope, Warburton, Johnson, Chalmers, Steevens, and others successively published editions of the poet, with copious notes. In our own day, editions by Collier, Knight, Singer, Halliwell, Dyce, and others have appeared. The critics of the great poet are innumerable, and they bid fair, like Banquo's progeny, to 'stretch to the crack of doom.' The scholars of Germany have distinguished themselves by their philosophical and critical dissertations on the genius of Shakspeare. There never was an author, ancient or modern, whose works have been so carefully analysed and illustrated, so eloquently expounded, or so universally admired.

He so sepulchred in such pomp does lie,
That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die.
Milton on Shakspeare, 1630.

In judgment, Shakspeare excels his contemporary dramatists as much as in genius, but at the same time it must be confessed that he also partakes of their errors. To be unwilling to acknowledge any faults in his plays, is, as Hallam remarks, 'an extravagance rather derogatory to the critic than honourable to the poet.' Fresh The difficulty of making selections from Shakfrom the perusal of any of his works, and under speare must be obvious. If of character, his the immediate effects of his inspirations-walking, characters are as numerous and diversified as as it were, in a world of his creating, with beings those in human life; if of style, he has exhausted familiar to us almost from infancy-it seems like all styles, and has one for each description of sacrilege to breathe one word of censure. Yet poetry and action; if of wit, humour, satire, or truth must admit that some of his plays are hastily pathos, where shall our choice fall, where all are and ill constructed as to plot; that his proneness so abundant? We have felt our task to be someto quibble and play with words is brought forward thing like being deputed to search in some in scenes where this peculiarity constitutes a posi- magnificent forest for a handful of the finest tive defect; that he is sometimes indelicate where leaves or plants, and as if we were diligently indelicacy is least pardonable, and where it jars exploring the world of woodland beauty to accommost painfully with the associations of the scene; plish faithfully this hopeless adventure. Happily, and that his style is occasionally stiff, turgid, and Shakspeare is in all hands, and a single leaf obscure, chiefly because it is at once highly figura- will recall the fertile and majestic scenes of his tive and condensed in expression. Ben Jonson inspiration. has touched freely, but with manliness and fairness, on these defects:

'I remember,' he says, 'the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing-whatsoever he penned-he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand! which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted, and to justify mine own candour; for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should

Garden Scene in Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo. He jests at scars that never felt a wound.—
[Juliet appears above, at a window.
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks!
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!-
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she;

* Jonson's allusion is to the following line in the third act of
Julius Cæsar:
Know, Cæsar doth not wrong; nor without cause
Will he be satisfied.

The passage was probably altered by Ben's suggestion, or, still
more likely, it was corrupted by the blunder of the player. But
Mr Halliwell's remark on the point is worthy of notice: If wrong
is taken in the sense of injury or harm, as Shakspeare sometimes
uses it, there is no absurdity in the line.'

Rom. With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand, walls,