all, since the internal evidence fully bears out the tradition, we think the genuineness of it can scarcely be questioned.' If Shakspeare did not assist Fletcher, who then did? None of the plays which Fletcher alone wrote are composed in the same style, or exhibit the same lofty imagination, and if there were any other dramatist save Shakspeare, who could attain to such a height of excellence, he has certainly handed down none of his compositions to posterity. If Shakspeare did not write part of it, all we can say is, that his imitators went very near to rival himself. Our readers will excuse us for extracting the following simile :— In conclusion, we can only say, that he who has not perused Beaumont and Fletcher, can have no complete idea of the riches of English poetry; and that they are the only English dramatists whose distance from Shakspeare, in his more peculiar excellencies, is not so immense as to make the descent painful. Their works were printed in 10 vols. 8vo. in 1751, with the notes of Seward and others; in 10 vols. 8vo. 1778, edited by Colman; in 10 vols. 8vo. London, 1780, edited by Theobald; and at Edinburgh, in 12 vols. 8vo. in 1812, edited by Weber. The following plays were undoubtedly the joint composition of Beaumont and Fletcher. Philaster, The Maid's Tragedy, The King and No King, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Cupid's Revenge, The Coxcomb, The Captain, The Honest Man's Fortune, and The Scornful Lady. Shakspeare. BORN A. D. 1564.—died a. D. 1616. We are informed by the most recent biographer of our mighty dramatist, that a family variously named Shaxper, Shakespeare, Slakspere, and Shakspeare, was spread over the woodland part of Warwickshire in the 16th century. They were chiefly devoted to trade and agriculture, and had little or no connexion with the upper ranks of society. The immediate ancestor of him whose name has filled the earth far beyond that of any titled or untitled contemporary, was John Shakspeare, originally a glover, subsequently a butcher, and finally a It is worthy of notice, that Langbaine says decidedly that Shakspeare was one of the authors. The inquiry is a very interesting one, but our limits prevent us from pursuing it at length. dealer in wool in the town of Stratford,' where he attained the supreme honours of the borough by being elected to the office of high-bailiff in 1568. It would appear, however, that whatever respectability the corporation of Stratford possessed in their own eyes and that of their fellow-burgesses, their claims to erudition were very humble: for out of nineteen members of that body whose signatures are attached to a document bearing date 1564, only seven could write their names, and among the twelve who affixed their mark only, was John Shakspeare. The original position of the bard of Avon was little favourable certainly to the developement of mental powers. In 1574 his father's affairs began to fall into decay, and in 1585-6 a distress having been issued against his goods, it was returned unexecuted with this notification, "Joh'es Shackspere nihil habet unde distr. potest levari." The ex-bailiff of Stratford died in 1601. He had married Mary, the youngest daughter of Robert Arden of Wilmecote in Warwickshire, by whom he had eight children: Jone, Margaret, William, Gilbert, Jone, Ann, Richard, and Edmund. Of this family some died in infancy; Edmund embraced the calling of an actor, and died in 1607; Jone, the second daughter of that name, married William Hart, a hatter in Stratford, whose descendants still exist in that town. William Shakspeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, on the 23d of April, 1564,—“ a fact," says Skottowe, "which comprises the whole of the poet's history till he is found, for some time,' at the free grammar-school of his native town, where he doubtless acquired the Latin, the small Latin,' that his friend Ben Jonson assures us he was master of." Gildon, Sewell, Upton, and others, have strenuously contended for young Shakspeare's scholarship and erudition; there is little evidence, however, that he ever enjoyed much of school-discipline; what learning he possessed was won for himself by his own strong and active understanding. The narrowness of his father's circumstances sufficiently account for his neglected education; but, after all, what occasion is there afforded us, while perusing his immortal pages, to regret his scantiness of school-learning? At the youthful age of eighteen, our poet entered into the connubial state. The wife he selected for himself was some eight years older than her husband; and the attachment -if any such ever existed-appears to have had little influence either on his mind or his fortunes. Shortly after the birth of his youngest child, Shakspeare quitted Stratford, and came up to the metropolis: his motive for taking this step is involved in obscurity. Rowe says that it was in consequence of his having got into a poaching scrape, and incurred the bitter resentment of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, by his ungracious behaviour during the legal proceedings which were instituted against him; but Malone throws discredit on the whole story, and contends that Shakspeare was induced to visit London by some actors who persuaded him to engage in the profession of a player. He was at this time about twenty-two years of age, and the first office which he filled on the stage was one of the lowest class. He soon rose, however, to a more elevated station among his Thespian brethren, although he does not appear ever to have sustained a leading part on the stage. The ghost in his own Hamlet was one of his best efforts; and he is known to have been the representative of Adam in As You Like It.' If the names of the actors prefixed to Every Man in his Humour,' were arranged in the same order as the persons of the drama, he must have performed the part of Old Knowell' in that comedy. Whatever Shakspeare may have been in the practical part of his art, the speech which he has put into Hamlet's mouth, in his directions to the players, affords sufficient evidence that he understood the theory of the histrionic art perfectly well. It is now impossible to fix the date of Shakspeare's first appearance as a dramatic writer. When he appeared in this character he had many illustrious cotemporaries, but no rival; at one bound he placed himself foremost and alone in the race of fame. "The cotemporaries of Shakspeare were great and remarkable men. They had winged imaginations, and made lofty flights. They saw above, below, or around; but they had not the taste or discrimination which he possessed, nor the same extensive vision. They drew correctly and vividly for particular aspects, while he towered above his subject, and surveyed it on all sides, from top to toe.' If some saw farther than others, they were dazzled at the riches before them, and grasped hastily, and with little care. They were perplexed with that variety which he made subservient to the general effect. They painted a portrait, or two, or three only, as though afraid of confusion. He, on the other hand, managed and marshalled all. His characters lie, like strata of earth, one under another; or, to use his own expression, matched in mouth like bells, each under each.' We need only look at the plays of Falstaff, where there are wits, and rogues, and simpletons, of a dozen shades, Falstaff, Hal, Poins, Bardolph, Nym, Pistol, Hostess, Shallow, Silence, Slender, to say nothing of those rich recruits, equal only to a civil war. Now, no one else has done this, and it must be presumed that none have been able to do it; Marlow, Marston, Webster, Decker, Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher,—a strong phalanx, yet none have proved themselves competent to so difficult a task." Besides his thirty-six plays, commencing with the first part of Henry VI. and ending with the Tempest, all of which were certainly produced betwixt the years 1589 and 1613, Shakspeare wrote some poetical pieces which were published separately: viz. Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, and a volume of Sonnets. These pieces have indeed been entirely eclipsed by the unrivalled splendour of dramas from the same pen, but they are noble compositions nevertheless, and worthy in all respects of the golden age of our literature. The Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, appeared in 1593-4, and were both dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. That young nobleman proved a munificent patron. Rowe relates, that on one occasion he presented the poet with a thousand pounds, a sum equivalent to at least five thousand pounds in our own day. The earls of Pembroke and Montgomery also vied with each other, and with Southampton, in the patronage of the rising dramatist, who was also soon still more highly Яattered by the special notice and favour of Queen Elizabeth, at whose desire he is said to have composed his Merry Wives of Windsor,' with the view of exhibiting Falstaff in the character of a lover. How well Shakspeare knew to compliment royal vanity, the following lines in the Midsummer Night's Dream,' testify: "That very time I saw (but thou could'st not) But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon; In maiden meditation, fancy free." With such patronage, and such skill to avail himself of it, it is not matter of surprise that our poet, unlike too many of his gifted contemporaries, should have quickly improved his finances and risen in the world. So early as the year 1596, he possessed a share in the Blackfriar's theatre, and the next year he purchased one of the best houses in his native town, to which, in 1602, he added a small estate of one hundred and seven acres of land in the neighbourhood. Nor did this flow of worldly prosperity interrupt his friendly connexions with his less fortunate and probably less prudent brethren, although one at least of the gifted circle had been exalted by the public voice into the place of a rival. Much has been written about the secret enmity which is supposed to have existed between Jonson and Shakspeare, but the story has been amply disproved by Mr Gifford, who expresses his fixed persuasion that the two great dramatists were friends and associates till one of them finally retired from public notice; that no feud, no jealousy, ever disturbed their connexion; that Shakspeare was pleased with Jonson, and that Jonson loved and admired Shakspeare. The profession of a player was certainly not congenial to our poet's inclinations. That he regarded himself as dishonoured by it appears from his CX. and CXI. sonnets, in which he expresses regret that he had "Made himself a motley to the view;" and bids his friend upbraid Fortune "That did not better for his life provide Than public means, which public manners breed." He seems to have finally quitted the metropolis and retired to his beloved Stratford about the year 1613. Henceforward even tradition is silent regarding him. We only know that he died on the 23d of April 1616, the anniversary of his birth, and the same day on which expired, in Spain, his great contemporary Cervantes. On the 25th of April, his body was interred on the north side of the chancel of the parish church, where a monument was subsequently erected to his memory. In the year 1741, a very noble and beautiful monument was raised to him in Westminster abbey. His wife survived him eight years. He left two daughters who were both married, and from one of whom sprung Lady Barnard, our poet's last lineal descendant, who died in 1670. The powers of language have been exhausted in dissertations upon the genius, and criticisms on the dramas of Shakspeare. The following masterly and eloquent encomium on our great dramatist, as coming from the pen of a foreign critic, ought to be impartial at least: "The distinguishing property," says Schlegel, "of the dramatic poet is the capability of transporting himself so completely into every situation, even the most unusual, that he is enabled, as plenipotentiary of the whole human race, without particular instructions for each separate case, to act and speak in the name of every individual. It is the power of endowing the creatures of his imagination with such self-existent energy, that they afterwards act in each conjuncture according to general laws of nature: the poet institutes, as it were, experiments, which are received with as much authority as if they had been made on real objects. Never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive a talent for the delineation of character as Shakspeare's. It not only grasps the diversities of rank, sex, and age, down to the dawnings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truth; not only does he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and portray in the most accurate manner, with only a few apparent violations of costume, the spirit of the ancient Romans, of the French in their wars with the English, of the English themselves during a great part of their history, of the Southern Europeans (in the serious part of many comedies), the cultivated society of that time, and the former rude and barbarous state of the North; his human characters have not only such depth and precision that they cannot be arranged under classes, and are inexhaustible, even in conception :-no-this Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits; calls up the midnight ghost; exhibits before us his witches amidst their unhallowed mysteries; peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs :-and, these beings existing only in imagination, possess such truth and consistency, that, even when deformed monsters like Caliban, he extorts the conviction, that if there should be such beings, they would so conduct themselves. In a word, as he carried with him the most fruitful and daring fancy into the kingdom of nature, on the other hand, he carries nature into the regions of fancy, lying beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at seeing the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard of, in such intimate nearness. "If Shakspeare deserves our admiration for his characters, he is equally deserving it for his exhibition of passion, taking this word in its widest signification, as including every mental condition, every tone from indifference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. He gives us the history of minds; he lays open to us, in a single word, a whole series of preceding conditions. His passions do not at first stand displayed to us in all their height, as is the case with so many tragic poets, who, in the language of Lessing, are thorough masters of the legal style of love. He paints in a most inimitable manner, the gradual progress from the first origin. He gives,' as Lessing says, 'a living picture of all the most minute and secret artifices by which a feeling steals into our souls; of all the imperceptible advantages which it there gains; of all the stratagems by which every other passion is made subservient to it, till it becomes the sole tyrant of our desires and our aversions.' Of all poets, perhaps, he alone has portrayed the mental diseases, melancholy, delirium, lunacy, with such inexpressible, and, in every respect, definite truth, that the physician may enrich his observations from them in the same manner as from real cases. II. 3 F |