kind-hearted man, we may presume was occa sioned by an excess of rigour and pertinacity on the part of Sir Thomas. The consequence of this youthful Imprudence drove him to London for shelter; and it is some proof that he had already imbibed a taste for the drama, that his first application was to the players, among whom, in one Thomas Green, a popular comedian of the day, he met a townsman and acquaintance. This removal is supposed to have taken place in 1586, when he was in his twenty-second year. If tradition may be depended upon, he was necessitated, in the first instance, to become the prompter's call-boy or attendant, while another less probable story describes him as holding the horses of those who attended the play without servants, a prevalent custom at that period. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, the most illustrious name in the history of English dramatic poetry, was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, on the 23d of April, 1564. His father, who sprang from a good family, was a considerable dealer in wool, and had been an officer and bailiff of Stratford, where he for some time acted as justice of the peace. His mother was of the ancient family of Arden, in the same county, one of undoubted gentility. William, who was the eldest of ten children, received the common education of a country free-school, where, it is probable, he acquired what little Latin he was master of. At an early age he was taken by his father to assist in his own business, and thus deprived of attaining any proficiency in classical literature: but whether a better acquaintance with ancient authors might not have restrained some of that fire, impetuosity, As an actor, the top of his performance is and even beautiful extravagance, which we ad- said to have been the Ghost in his own Hamlet. mire in Shakspeare, may well admit of a dis-"I should have been much more pleased," says pute. Be this as it may, he seems to have adopted the mode of life which his father proposed to him; and we find that in his eighteenth year he married Ann Hathaway, the daughter of a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood, who was eight years older than himself. Of his domestic establishment, or professional occupation, at this time, nothing determinate is recorded; but it appears that he was wild and irregular, from the fact of his connexion with a party who made a practice of stealing the deer of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. This imprudence brought upon him a prosecution, which he rendered more severe by a lampoon upon that gentleman, in the form of a ballad, which he had affixed to his park gates. He also indulges in a vein of splenetic drollery upon the same magistrate, in the character of Justice Shallow, in the opening scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor; which continued hostility, as he was indisputably a Mr. Rowe in his remarks on the genius and writings of Shakspeare, "to have learned from certain authority, which was the first play he wrote; it would be without doubt a pleasure to any man, curious in things of this kind, to see and know what was the first essay of a fancy like Shakspeare's. Perhaps we are not to look for his beginnings, like those of other authors, among their least perfect writings; art had so little, and nature so large a share in what he did, that for aught I know, the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, and had the most fire and strength of imagination in them, were the best. I would not be thought by this to mean, that his fancy was so loose and extravagant, as to be independent of the rule and government of judgment; but that what he thought was commonly so great, so justly and rightly conceived in itself, that it wanted little or no correction, and was immediately approved by an impartial judgment at the first sight. But, though the order of time in which the several pieces were written, be generally uncertain, yet there are passages in some few of then which seem to fix their dates. So the Chorus at the end of the fourth act of Henry the Fifth, by a compliment very handsomely turned to the Earl of Essex, shows the play to have been written when that lord was general for the queen in Ireland; and his eulogy upon Queen Elizabeth,and her successor King James, in the latter end of his Henry the Eighth, is a proof of that play's being written after the accession of the latter of these two princes to the crown of England. Whatever the particular times of his writings were, the people of his age, who began to grow wonderfully fond of diversions of this kind, could not but be highly pleased to see a genius arise amongst them of so pleasurable, so rich a vein, and so plentifully capable of furnishing their favourite entertainments. Besides the advantages of his wit, he was in himself a good-natured man, of great sweetness in his manners, and a most agreeable companion; so that it is no wonder, if, with so many good qualities, he made him self acquainted with the best conversation of those times. Queen Elizabeth had several of his plays acted before her; and, without a doubt, gave him many gracious marks of her favour: it is that maiden princess plainly whom he intends by "a fair vestal, throned by the west."A Midsummer Night's Dream. And that whole passage is a compliment very properly brought in, and very handsomely ap plied to her. She was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaf, in the Two Parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love. This is said to be the occasion of his writing The Merry Wives of Windsor. How well she was obeyed, the play itself is an admirable proof. Upon this occasion, it may not be improper to observe, that this part of Falstaff is said to have been written originally under the name of Oldcastle: some of that family being then remaining, the Queen was pleased to command him to alter it; upon which he made use of Falstaff. The present offence was indeed avoided; but I do not know whether the author may not have been somewhat to blame in his second choice, since it is certain that Sir John Falstaff, who was a knight of the garter, and a lieutenant-general, was a name of distinguished merit in the wars in France in Henry the Fifth's and Henry the Sixth's times. What grace soever the Queen conferred upon him, it was not to her only he owed the fortune which the reputation of his wit made. He had the honour to meet with many great and uncommon marks of favour and friendship from the Earl of Southampton, famous in the histories of that time for his friendship to the unfortu nate Earl of Essex. It was to that noble lord that he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis. There is one instance so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakspeare's, that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have asserted it; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to. A bounty very great, and very rare at any time, and almost equal to that profuse generosity the present age has shown to French dancers and Italian singers. "What particular habitude or friendships he contracted with private men, I have not been able to learn, more than that every one, who had a true taste of merit, aud could distinguish men, had generally a just value and esteem for him. His exceeding candour and good-nature must certainly have inclined all the gentler part of the world to love him, as the power of his wit obliged the men of the most delicate knowledge and polite learning to admire him. "His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remarkable piece of humanity and good-nature: Mr. Jonson, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were just about returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company; when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it, as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public. Jonson was certainly a very good scholar, and in that had the advantage of Shakspeare; though at the same time I believe it must be allowed, that what for what books had given the former; and the nature gave the latter, was more than a balance judgment of a great man upon this occasion was, I think, very just and proper. In a conversation between Sir John Suckling, Sir Hales, of Eyton, and Ben Jonson; Sir John William D'Avenant, Endymion Porter, Mr. Suckling, who was a professed admirer of Shakspeare, had undertaken his defence against Ben Jonson with some warmth; Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, told them, That if Mr. Shakspeare had not read the ancients, he had likewise not stolen any thing from them; and that, if he would produce any one topic finely show something upon the same subject at least as treated by any one of them, he would undertake to well written by Shakspeare." The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. His pleasurable wit and goodnature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Amongst them, it is a story, still remembered in that country, that he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and his usury: it happened, that in pleasant conversation amongst their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakspeare, tended to write his epitaph, if he happened to in laughing manner, that he fancied he inoutlive him; and since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately: upon which Shakspeare gave him these four verses: "Ten in the hundred lies here ingraved ; 'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved; If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb? Oh ho quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe."" afterwards to Sir John Barnard, of Abington. in Northamptonshire; but died without issue by either husband. Judith, Shakspeare's youngest daughter, was married February 10, 1615-16, to a Mr. Thomas Quiney, and died February, 1661-62, in her 77th year. By Mr. Quiney she had three sons, Shakspeare, Richard, and Thomas, who all died unmarried, and here the descendants of our poet became extinct. For some years before his death he resided at Stratford, in a house which he bought from the Clopton family, and which continued in the possession of his descendants until the Restoration, when it was repurchased by a member of the same family, the representative of which, Sir Hugh Clopton, entertained Garrick, Macklin, and others, in 1742, under the mulberry-tree, planted by Shakspeare. His executor sold the house to a clergyman of the name of Gastrel, who being rated for the poor higher than he conceived he had a right to pay, peevishly declared that the house should never pay again; and, in spite to the inhabitants of Stratford, who were benefited by the company it brought to the town, he pulled it down, and sold the materials. He had pre-one hundred and twenty-five years after the viously cut down the mulberry-tree for fuel, but an honest silversmith purchased the whole of it, which he profitably manufactured into memorials of the poet. Such was the fate of a residence in which Shakspeare exhibited so little solicitude for fame, or consciousness of his own merits, that a similar example of modesty is scarcely to be found. He died on his birth-day, April 23, 1616, having exactly completed his fifty-second year. He was interred on the north side of the chancel of the great church of Stratford, where a monument is placed on the wall, in which he is represented under an arch in a sitting posture, a cushion spread before him, with a pen in his right hand, and his left resting on a scroll of paper. The following Latin distich is engraved under the cushion: "Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, lines to be found underneath it: "Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast? This monument was erected within seven In the year 1741 a monument was erected to the memory of the "immortal bard" in Westminster Abbey, by the direction of the Earl of Burlington, Dr. Mead, Mr. Pope, and Mr. Martyn. It was the work of Scheemaker, (who received £300 for it,) after a design of Kent, and was opened in January of that year, death of him whom it commemorates, and whose genius appears to have been forgotten during almost the whole of that long period. The performers of each of the London theatres gave a benefit to defray the expenses, and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster took nothing for the ground. The money received by the performance at Drury-lane theatre amounted to above £200, but the receipts at Covent-garden did not exceed £100. From these imperfect notices, which are all we have been able to collect from the labours of biographers and commentators, the reader will perceive that less is known of Shakspeare than of almost any writer who has been considered as an object of landable curiosity. Nothing could be more highly gratifying than an account of the early studies of this wonderful man, the progress of his pen, his moral and social qualities, his friendships, his failings, and whatever else constitutes personal history. But on all these topics his contemporaries and his immediate successors have been equally silent; and if aught can be hereafter discovered, it must be by exploring sources which have hitherto escaped the anxious researches of those who have devoted their whole lives, and their most vigorous talents, to revive his memory, and illustrate his writings. Dr. Johnson, in his elaborate and just review of Shakspeare, observes, "he has scenes of undoubted and perpetual excellence, but perhaps not one play, which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a contemporary writer, "Good Friend for Iesus SAKE forbeare would be heard to the conclusion. I am To diGG T-E Dust Enclosed HERE indeed (says he,) far from thinking that his Blest be T-E man r-r spares T-Es Stones works were wrought to his own ideas of perAnd curst be He Y-T moves my Bones." fection; when they were such as would satisfy It is uncertain whether this request and im- the audience, they satisfied the writer. It is precation were written by Shakspeare, or by seldom that authors, though more studious of one of his friends. They probably allude to fame than Shakspeare, rise much above the the custom of removing skeletons after a cer- standard of their own age; to add a little to tain time, and depositing them in the charnel-what is best will always be sufficient for prehouses: and similar execrations are found in many Latin epitaphs. Shakspeare's remains, however, have been ever carefully protected from injury. His family consisted of two daughters, and a son named Hamnet, who died in his twelfth year. Susannah, the eldest daughter, and her father's favourite, was married June 5, 1607, to Dr. John Hall, a physician, who died November, 1635 aged 60. Mrs. Hall, died July 11, 1649, aged 66. They left only one child, Eliza beth, born 1607-8, and married April, 22, 1626, to Thomas Nashe, Esq. who died in 1647, and sent praise, and those who find themselves exalted into fame, are willing to credit their encomiasts, and to spare the labour of contending with themselves." The dramatic reputation of Shakspeare, although great in his own days, became partially obsolete during the period when French taste prevailed, and French models were studied, under the Second Charles; and rising again as it did on its own intrinsic pretension, until his productions established a national taste, the fact is still more honourable to his genius. That much of the admiration enter tained for him is national and conventional, may be freely allowed; but giving all due weight to the cold hints of this nature, which pervade criticism of a certain tone, a fair appeal may be made on the ground of positive qualification, and a knowledge of the human heart, which, in its diversity at least, has never been surpassed. To this faculty must be added that of an imagination powerful, poetical, and so felicitously creative, that presuming the existence of the vivid offspring of his fancy, the adopted feelings and manners seem to belong to them alone. Voltaire observes, that Shakspeare has been the favourite of the English nation for more than a century; and that that which has engrossed national admiration for a hundred years, will by prescription insure it for ever. But though there may be some truth in this remark, the obvious and undeniable fact is, that great native strength of genius can alone establish the prepossession. The Seven Ages. ALL the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: At first, THE INFANT, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms; And then, the whining SCHOOL-Boy, with his satchel, Unwillingly to school: And then the LOVER; Sighing like a furnace, with a woful ballad Then, a SOLDIER Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Even in the cannon's mouth: And then, the JUSTICE; In fair round belly, with good capon lined, The SIXTH AGE shifts Into the lean and slipper'd PANTALOON; LAST SCENE of all, That ends this strange, eventful history IS SECOND CHILDISHNESS, and mere oblivion; IN speaking of the particular beauties and powers of mind displayed by Shakspeare in the composition of The Tempest, Dr. Johnson and Warburton are very nearly agreed. The latter says "The Tempest and The Midsummer Night's Dream are the noblest efforts of that sublime and amazing imagination peculiar to Shakspeare, which soars above the bounds of nature without forsaking sense; or, more properly, carries nature along with him beyond her established limits." Taken at large, the magical part of it is founded on that sort of philosophy which was practised by John Dee and his associates, which has been called the Rosicrucian. It was, says Farmer, one of our author's last works. Theobald tells us it must have been written after 1609, because the Bermuda islands, which are mentioned in it, were unknown to the English till that year; but in this he erred: for in Hackluyt, 1600, folio, is a description of Bermuda, by Henry Hay, who was shipwrecked there in 1593. In 1598, Shakspeare played a part in the original Every Man in his Humour. Prospero and Stephano are two of the characters. Ben Jonson taught him the pronunciation of the latter word, which in The Tempest is always right, as-" Is not this Stephano ?"-but in The Merchant of Venice, which had been on the stage three years previously to its publication, in 1600, he falsely wrote 'My friend Stephano." THE PLOT. Prospero, the lawful Duke of Milan, more devoted to his studies than to the cares of state, reposes his confidence in his brother Antonio; who, leaguing himself with Sebastian, the brother of Alonzo, King of Naples, Prospero's enemy, despoils him of his dukedom, and induces Gonzalo, a Neapolitan, to embark him and his infant daughter Miranda on board a vessel; from which, when out at sea, they are transferred to a crazy boat, and left to their fate. The humanity of Gonzalo, however, contrary to the orders of Antonio, supplies them with food and raiment. In this deserted state they reach a desolate island, having but one inhabitant, a kind of half monster, called Caliban. Here Prospero philosophically devotes himself to the education of his daughter. After many years' residence, the King of Naples having been to marry his daughter to the King of Tunis, is, in consequence of a storm raised by Prospero, through the agency of a Spirit, shipwrecked on his return, near the island, with his party: amongst whom, are his son Ferdinand, the usurping Duke Antonio, and the traitors Sebastian and Gonzalo. Ferdinand, who is separated from the rest by dashing himself into the sea, reaches the shore, and finds the cell of Prospero, where he first beholds Miranda, and they become mutually enamoured. The others having also gained the shore, the King deplores the supposed loss of his son; and whilst he and Gonzalo sleep, Antonio persuades Sebastian to murder his brother, and assume the regal diadem. At the moment they are about to execute their diabolical purpose, Ariel awakens the sleepers. Caliban, who dislikes the servitude in which he is kept by Prospero, having met two of the King's party, Stephano and Trinculo, invites them to murder Prospero; but the Spirit Ariel again interrupts the work of blood. Finally, Prospero, with the assistance of Ariel, having enticed the King and his party near his cell, discovers himself, pardons his enemies, embraces the King (who accepts Miranda as the future wife of his son, to whom her father had previously betrothed her), and determines to visit his native country. MORAL. By the catastrophe of The Tempest, we behold the punishment of guilt accomplished by a concatenation of accidents, when it might be least expected; and the innocent may learn, that though they may for a time be the victims of oppression, if by a steady patience they endure the present, they shall ultimately triumph over the oppressor. |