About the year 1594, Spenser married a country girl, with whom he lived happily for some time. The sudden outbreak of the rebellion under Tyrone drove him. however, from his castle in the country. One of his children was consumed in the flames which destroyed his house, and he returned to London poorer than he left it, and died in destitution, a broken-hearted and impoverished fugitive. William Shakspeare towers above his fellows, and the light of his genius is shed all over the world. Shakspeare! how many hundred volumes have been written about this man and his compositions; how many speculations have been hazarded as to his character; how many contradictory opinions offered as to the facts of his life history; on his technical knowledge of the professions and trades; his religious convictions; his innate goodness of heart! And with all that has been said and written, where shall we read so well the character of the man as in his works? Authors, of all men, are those whose inner life is best known to the outer world! The materials for a biography of Shakspeare are comparatively scanty. From sundry public documents of the town of Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, it appears that the Shakspeares were a numerous family, people of respectability, but by no means esteemed as gentry in the neighbourhood. John Shakspeare, father of the bard, was first a glover, then a grazier, subsequently a woolstapler. At one period he was worth five hundred pounds; at another, when a distress was issued against him for five pounds, the answer was no effects." He had a family of eight children. William was born on St. George's Day, and was on this account regarded by the gossips as a prodigy. At the usual age he was placed at the Free Grammar School of Stratford. His stay there was short, on account of his father's increasing difficulties, yet long enough to gain that "little Latin and less Greek which envy afterwards described as the extent of his classical attainments. On leaving school Shakspeare was for a long time at home with his father, then carrying on the business of a grazier; but before he was eighteen, young Shakspeare forsook his father's trade, and became, according to various authorities, a school teacher, a lawyer's clerk, and lastly-probably in conjunction with his father again -a wool-stapler. Then he fell in with convivial companions, and one dark night-so goes the story-went poaching on the estate of Sir Thomas Lucy. By some means or other it was made known to the squire that Shakspeare was guilty, and forthwith Lucy the Irascible instituted a prosecution, and drove the deer-stealing youngster up to London, after the penning of some doggrel verses which he affixed to the gates of the baronet's park. London, the grand refuge of the necessitous-London, the hope of the endangered-the fairy city to those who know it not the place of wealth and power, where honour and glory wait but the coming of men who choose to have them,--London, with its thousand streams of life, its hopes and fears, and joys and sorrows, its battles, its tri umphs, its defeats,-London, the city whither every man goes to make his fortune, as if it were the great manufactory of honour aud success, and the very mint house of the world,-to London Shakspeare came, to begin his career of renown, driven into greatness by the deer-stalking prosecution of the Warwickshire squire. "The English drama was at that time in its infancy. Three years before, Queen Elizabeth had formed the first licensed company of players, among whom Burbage, the chief tragedian, and Greene the principal comedian, and a few others, were natives of Warwickshire. Greene, a dramatist as well as a player, was a native of Stratford, related to Shakspeare, and had probably been his early companion. On being obliged to quit Stratford, Shakspeare seems to have been invited by Greene to London, and to have been by him introduced as an actor at the Blackfriars Theatre. From these circumstances it is to be presumed that the genius of Shakspeare had begun to stir within him. The deer-stalking, the writing of the ballad, and the change of a humble profession for that of the stage, all appear to denote a mind that was not to be limited to a tame and ordinary career." With his mind already much inclined toward the stage, it was natural enough that Shakspeare, on arriving in London, without visible means of subsistence, and most probably with a purse by no means too plenteously stored, should turn his attention to the theatre as the place in which to earn the means of existence-at that time, very probably, his highest aim. Some of his biographers represent him as being, on his arrival in London, so extremely low in circumstances as to be fain to hold gentlemen's horses during the performance. Considering his former position, his predilection for the theatre, and his acquaintance with some of the performers, it is not likely that this is true. It is much more probable that he, in the first instance, attached himself to the theatre as a sort of underling of all work; now going on as a mute member of a pageant, anou acting the useful though not very dignified part of call-boy. The theatres were at that time far different places from what they now are. There were two or three on the Southwark side of the Thames-the Globe, the Rose, &c., and one at Blackfriars. They were generally circular buildings; the performance commenced at one o'clock in the day, and a flag was hoisted from the roof to give notice that the acting was going on. Thither came the lordlings from Westminster; thither came the citizens from the Chepe; thither came 'prentices, and the gallants of Paul's Walk; early, too, came they, to occupy the best benches which the place afforded; for, says an old writer of that period— They to theatres were pleased to come, Ere they had dined, to take up the best room." His Shakspeare was never anything more than a mere subordinate in the play-acting department. He could play such characters as the Ghost in his own Hamlet. nighest pay as an actor never exceeded six-and-eightpence a week-a sum equal to about seven-and-twenty shillings of our present money. But Shakspeare appears to have found a source of remunerative employment in adapting the plays of playwrights for the stage; and encouraged by the success which attended his labours in this respect, he gradually became a dramatic author on his own account. He also appeared as a writer of miscellaneous poetry, and found pastime for Lord Southampton, the Earl of Montgomery, many other noblemen, and the queen herself. The name of Shakspeare appears in a petition, which the proprietors and players of the Black Friars Theatre addressed, in 1599, to the Privy Council, for leave to rebuild that place of entertainment which had fallen into disrepair. Towards the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign, Shakspeare rose up to be a man of consequence, and in the first year of the reign of King James I. he obtained from that monarch a patent for playing at the Globe Theatre in summer, and at the Black Friars Theatre in the winter. About the same time he purchased a house in his native town for £50. In 1605, he paid £400 for the lease of a moiety of the great and small tithes of Stratford. Three years later, when the city proposed to buy up the Blackfriars Theatre, in order to put an end to what they considered a nuisance, Shakspeare is found to have asked £500 for the wardrobe and properties; and for his four shares, the same as his fellows Burbage and Fletcher, namely, £933. 6s. 8d. As the shares were twenty in number, Shakspeare must be presumed to have enjoyed a fifth of the property of the house. His whole income at that time is calculated to have been about £300 annually; a sum equal to about £1500 of our present money. In these latter years of his life, Shakspeare had conciliated the affection of his most estimable associates by the benevolent sociality of his disposition. Aubrey says, " he was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant and smooth wit." Ben Johnson says, "I loved the man. I do honour to his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." In 1613 or 1614, he withdrew from all connexion with the theatre, and retired to his native place. There he busied himself with the management of his lands; and it was probably at that period he planted with his own hands the mulberry tree, which was so long an object of reverent admiration to the kindred intellects, who crowded from all quarters to see it, and the other interesting objects connected with Shakspeare. He died on his fifty-second birthday, 1616. A flagstone covers his grave in the chancel of Stratford Church, and on it is inscribed:- "Good friend, for Jesu's sake forbear Blest be the man that spare these stones, What wonderful creations were these of his! They rise up before us a great host, 66 a local habitation and a name." to whom he has given Here is the melancholy |