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THE autumn seems to have been a usual time for publishing new books, and Shakespeare having been in London, in November, 1614, as we have remarked, he was perhaps there when "The Ghost of Richard the Third" came out, and, like Ben Jonson, Chapman, and others, might be acquainted with the author. He probably returned home before the winter, and passed the rest of his days in tranquil retirement, and in the enjoyment of the society of his friends, whether residing in the country, or occasionally visiting him from the metropolis. "The latter part of his life," says Rowe, "was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the society of his friends;" and he adds what cannot be doubted, that "his pleasurable wit and good-nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood." He must have been of a lively and companionable disposition; and his long residence in London, amid the bustling and varied scenes connected with his public life, independently of his natural powers of conversation, could not fail to render his society most agreeable and desirable. We can readily believe that when any of his old associates of the stage, whether authors or actors, came to Stratford, they found a hearty welcome and free entertainment at his house; and that he would be the last man, in his prosperity, to treat with slight or indifference those with whom, in the earlier part of his career, he had been on terms of familiar intercourse. It could

not be in Shakespeare's nature to disregard the claims of ancient friendship, especially if it approached him in a garb of comparative poverty.

One of the latest acts of his life was bestowing, in February, 1616, the hand of his daughter Judith upon Thomas Quiney, a vintner and wine-merchant of Stratford, the son of Richard Quiney.' She must have been four years older than her husband, having been born on 2d February, 1585, while he was not born until 26th February, 1589. As there was this difference of years in the ages of Judith Shakespeare and her husband, (he being but twenty-seven and she thirty-one,) we may receive that fact as some testimony, that our great dramatist did not see sufficient evil in such a disproportion to induce him to oppose the union.

His will had been prepared as long before its actual date as 25th January, 1615-16, and this fact is apparent on the face of it: it originally began "Vicesimo quinto die Januarij," (not Februarij, as Malone erroneously read it,) but the word Januarij was subsequently struck through with a pen, and Martij substituted by inter1 The registration in the books of Stratford church is this:"1615-16 Feabruary 10. Tho Queeny tow Judith Shakspere." The fruits of this marriage were three sons; viz. Shakespeare, baptized 23d November, 1616, and buried May 8th, 1617; Richard. baptized 9th February, 1617-18, and buried 26th February, 1638-9; and Thomas, baptized 23d January, 1619-20, and buried 28th January, 1638-9. Judith Quiney, their mother, did not die until after the Restoration, and was buried 9th February, 1661-2. The Stratford registers contain no entry of the burial of her husband.

lineation. Possibly it was not thought necessary to alter vicesimo quinto, or the 25th March might be the very day the will was executed: if it were, the signatures of the testator, upon each of the three sheets of paper of which the will consists, bear evidence (from the want of firmness in the writing) that he was at that time suffering under sickness. It opens, it is true, by stating that he was "in perfect health and memory," and such was doubtless the case when the instrument was prepared, in January; but the execution of it might be deferred until he was attacked by serious indisposition, and then the date of the month only might be || altered, leaving the assertion as to health and memory as it had originally stood. What was the nature of Shakespeare's fatal illness, we have no satisfactory means of knowing,' but it was probably not of long duration; and if when he subscribed his will he had really been in health, we are persuaded that at the age of only fifty-two he would have signed his name with greater steadiness and distinctness. All three signatures are more or less infirm and illegible, especially the first two; but he seems to have made an effort to write his best when he affixed both his names at length at the end, "By me William Shakspeare."

We cannot doubt that he was attended in his last illness by his son-in-law, Dr. Hall, who had then been married to Susanna Shakespeare more than eight years: we have expressed our opinion that Dr. and Mrs. Hall lived in the same house with our Poet, and it is to be recollected that in his will he leaves New Place to his daughter Susanna. Hall must have been a man of considerable science for the time, and has left behind him proofs of his knowledge and skill in a number of cases which had come under his own eye, and which he described in Latin: these were afterwards translated from his manuscript, and published in 1657 by Jonas Cooke, with the title of "Select Observations on English Bodies," but the case of Dr. Hall's father-in-law is not found there, because unfortunately the "observations" only begin in 1617. One of the earliest of them shows that an epidemic, called "the new fever," then prevailed in Stratford and "invaded many." Possibly Shakespeare was one of these; though, had such been the fact, it seems likely that, when speaking of "the Lady Beaufou," who suffered under it on July 1st, 1617, Dr. Hall would have referred back to the earlier instance of his father-in-law. He does advert to a 'The Rev. John Ward's Diary, to which we have before referred, contains the following undated paragraph :

"Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson, had a merie meeting, and, itt seems, drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a fevour there contracted."

What credit may be due to this statement, preceded as it is by the words "it seems," implying a doubt on the subject in the writer's mind, we must leave the reader to determine. That Shakespeare was of sober, though of companionable habits, we are thoroughly convinced; he could not have written seven-andthirty plays (not reckoning alterations and additions now lost) in five-and-twenty years had he been otherwise, and we are sure also, that if Drayton and Ben Jonson visited him at Stratford, he would give them a free and hearty welcome. We have no reason to think that Drayton was at all given to intoxication, although it is certain that Ben Jonson was a bountiful liver.

* He several times speaks of sicknesses in his own family, and of the manner in which he had removed them: a case of his own, in which he mentions his age, accords with the statement in his inscription, and ascertains that he was thirty-two when he mar ried Susanna Shakespeare in 1607. "Mrs. Hall, of Stratford, my

tertian ague, of which, at a period not mentioned, he had cured Michael Drayton, (“an excellent poet," as Hall terms him,) when he was, perhaps, on a visit to Shakespeare. However, Drayton was a native of Warwickshire, and Dr. Hall may have been called in to attend him elsewhere.

We are left, therefore, in utter uncertainty as to the immediate cause of the death of Shakespeare at an age when he would be in full possession of his faculties, and when in the ordinary course of nature he might have lived many years in the enjoyment of the society of his family and friends, in that grateful and easy retirement which had been earned by his genius and industry, and to obtain which had apparently been the main object of many years of teil, anxiety, and deprivation.

Whatever doubt may prevail as to the day of the birth of Shakespeare, none can exist as to the day of his death. The inscription on his monument in Stratford church tells us

"Obiit Anno Domini 1616. Etatis 53, die 23 Apr."

And it is remarkable that he was born and died on the same day of the same month, supposing him, as we have every reason to believe, to have first seen the light on the 23d April, 1564. It was usual about that period to mention the day of death in inscriptions upon tomb-stones, tablets, and monuments; and such was the case with other members of the Shakespeare family. We are thus informed that his wife, Anne Shakespeare, departed this life the 6th day of Augu. 1623 :" Dr. Hall" deceased Nove. 25. A°. 1635:" Thomas Nash. who married Hall's daughter, "died April 4, A. 1647:"

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wife," is more than once introduced in the course of the volume, as well as "Elizabeth Hall, my only daughter." Mrs. Susanna Hall died in 1649, aged sixty-six, and was buried at Stratford. Elizabeth Hall, her daughter by Dr. Hall, (baptized on the 21st February, 1607-8,) and grand-daughter to our Poet, was married on the 224 April, 1626, to Mr. Thomas Nash, (who died in 1647,) and on 5th June, 1649, to Mr. John Bernard, of Abingdon, who was knighted after the Restoration. Lady Bernard died childless in 1670, and was buried, not at Stratford with her own family, but at Abingdon with that of her second husband. She was the last of the lineal descendants of William Shakespeare.

1 The inscription, upon a brass plate, let into a stone, is in these terms:-we have to thank Mr. Bruce for the use of his copies of them, with which we have compared our own,

"Heere lyeth interred the Body of Anne, Wife of William Shakespeare, who departed this life the 6th day of Augu. 1623. being of the age of 67 yeares.

Ubera, tu mater, tu lac, vitamq; dedisti.

Væ mihi: pro tanto munere saxa dabo.
Quam mallem amoveat lapidem bonus angel' ore'
Exeat ut Christi corpus imago tua.

Sed nil vota valent, venias cito Christe resurget
Clausa licet tumulo mater, et astra petit."

2 The following is the inscription commemorating him :"Heere lyeth the Body of Iohn Hall, Gent: Hee marr: Susanna ye daughter and coheire of Will: Shakespeare, Gent. Hee deceased Nove. 25. Ao. 1635, aged 60.

Hallius hic situs est, medica celeberrimus arte,
Expectans regni gaudia læta Dei.
Dignus erat meritis, qui Nestora vinceret annis,
In terris omnes, sed rapit æqua dies.
Ne tumulo quid desit, adest fidissima conjux,
Et vitæ comitem nunc quoq; mortis habet."

9 His inscription, in several places difficult to be deciphered, is this:

"Heere resteth ye Body of Thomas Nashe, Esq. He mar. Elizabeth the daug. and heire of John Halle, Gent. He died Aprill 4. A. 1647, Aged 53.

Susanna Hall "deceased the 11th of July, A°. 1649." Thus, though the Latin inscription on the monument of our great dramatist may, from its form and punctuation, appear not so decisive as those we have quoted in English, there is no ground for disputing that he died on 23d April, 1616. It is quite certain from the register of Stratford that he was interred on the 25th April, and the record of that event is placed among the burials in the following manner:

Christian name, although she had been married to Thomas Quiney more than a month anterior to the actual date of the will, and although his eldest daughter Susanna is mentioned by her husband's patronymic. It seems evident, from the tenor of the whole instrument, that when it was prepared Judith was not married,' although her speedy union was contemplated: the attorney or scrivener, who drew it, had first written son and daughter," (meaning Judith and her intended husband,) but erased the words "son and" afterwards. as the parties were not yet married, and were not “son and daughter" to the testator. Quiney might be designated Shakespeare's son, though only his son-in-law; as the degrees of consanguinity were not at that time

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"1616. April 25, Will' Shakspere, Gent.” Whether from the frequent prevalence of infectious disorders, or from any other cause, the custom of keeping the bodies of relatives unburied, for a week or more after death, seems comparatively of modern origin. strictly marked, and in the same will Elizabeth Hall is

Anne Shakespeare was buried two days after she died;" Dr. Hall and Thomas Nash were buried on the day after they died; and although there was an interval of five days between the death and burial of Mrs. Hall, in 1649, it is possible that her corpse was conveyed from some distance, to be interred among her relations at Stratford. Numerous similar instances prove that in the time of Shakespeare, as well as before and afterwards, the custom was to bury persons very shortly subsequent to their decease. In the case of our Poet, concluding that he expired on the 23d April, there was an interval of two days before his interment.

We have printed his will at the end of the memoir precisely as in the original, as it was filed in the Prerogative Court, probate having been granted on the 22d June, 1616. His daughter Judith is there called by her

Fata manent omnes hunc non virtute carentem,
Ut neque divitiis abstulit atra dies;

Abstulit, at referet lux ultima: siste, viator,

Si peritura paras per male parta peris."

1 The inscription to her runs thus :

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Heere lyeth ye body of Susanna, Wife to Iohn Hall, Gent: ye daughter of William Shakespeare, Gent. Shee deceased ye 11th of July, Ao. 1619, aged 66."

Dugdale has handed down the following verses upon her, which were originally engraved on the stone, but are not now to be found, half of it having been cut away to make room for an inscription to Richard Watts, who died in 1707.

"Witty above her sexe, but that's not all;
Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholly of him with whom she's now in blisse.
Then, passenger, hast ne're a teare

To weepe with her that wept for all?
That wept, yet set her selfe to cheere
Them up with comforts cordiall.
Her love shall live, her mercy spread,
When thou hast ne're a teare to shed."

The register informs us that she was buried on the 16th July, 1649.

2 The following is copied from the register :---
"1623. August 8. Mrs. Shakspeare."

Their registrations of burial are in these terms :—
"1635. Nov. 26. Johannes Hall, medicus peritissimus."
"1647. Aprill 5. Thomas Nash, Gent."

The register contains as follows:

"1649. July 16. Mrs. Susanna Hall, widow."
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called the testator's "niece," when she was, in fact, his grand-daughter.

The bequest which has attracted most attention is an interlineation in the following words, "Item I gyve vnto my wief my second best bed with the furniture." Upon this passage, Malone and others have founded a charge against Shakespeare, that he only remembered his wife as an afterthought, and then merely gave her "an old bed." As to the last part of the accusation, it may be answered, that the "second best bed" was probably that in which the husband and wife had slept, when he was in Stratford earlier in life, and every night since his retirement from the metropolis: the best bed was doubtless reserved for visitors: if, therefore, he were to leave his wife any express legacy of the kind. it was most natural and considerate that he should give her that piece of furniture, which for many years they had jointly occupied. As to the rest of the charge, the great dramatist has been relieved from the stigma, thus thrown upon him, by the mere remark, that Shakespeare's property being principally freehold, the widow. by the ordinary operation of the law of England, would be entitled to her third or dower. It is extraordinary that this explanation should never have occurred to Malone, who was educated to the legal profession; but that others should have followed him in his unjust imputation is not remarkable, recollecting how prone most of Shakespeare's biographers have been to repeat errors, rather than take the trouble to inquire for themselves, to sift out truth, and to balance probabilities.

1 Another trifling circumstance leading to the conclusion that the will was prepared in January, though not executed until March, is that Shakespeare's sister is called Jone Hart, and not Jone Hart, widow. Her husband had died a few days before Shakespeare, and was buried 17th April, 1616, as "Will. Hart, hatter." She was buried on 4th November, 1646. Both entries are contained in the parish registers of Stratford.

2 This vindication of Shakespeare's memory from the supposed neglect of his wife we owe to Mr. Knight, in his "Pictorial Shakspere." When the explanation is once given, it seems so easy, that we wonder it was never before mentioned; but like many discoveries of different kinds it is not less simple than important, and it is just that Mr. Knight should have full credit for it.

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A MONUMENT to Shakespeare was erected anterior to the publication of the folio edition of his "Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies" in 1623, because it is thus mentioned by Leonard Digges, in the earliest copy of commendatory verses prefixed to that volume:

-when that stone is rent,

And time dissolves thy Stratford Monument,
Here we alive shall view thee still."

This is the most ancient notice of it; but how long before 1623 it had been placed in the church of Stratford-upon-Avon, we have no means of deciding. It represents the Poet sitting under an arch, with a cushion before him, a pen in his right hand, and his left resting upon a sheet of paper: it has been the opinion of the best judges that it was cut by an English sculptor, (perhaps Thomas Stanton,) and it is every way probable that the artist was employed by Dr. Hall and his wife, and that the resemblance was as faithful as a bust, not modelled from the life, but under living instructions, from some picture or cast, could be expected to be. Shakespeare is there considerably fuller in the face, than in the engraving on the title-page of the folio of 623, which must have been made from a different

original. It seems likely that after he separated himself from the business and anxiety of a professional life, and withdrew permanently to his native air, he became more robust, as the half-length upon his monument conveys the notion of a cheerful, good-tempered, and somewhat jovial man. The expression, we apprehend, is less intellectual than it must have been in reality, and the forehead, though lofty and expansive, is not strongly marked with thought: on the whole, it has rather a look of gaiety and good humour than of thought and reflection, and the lips are full, and apparently in the act of giving utterance to some amiable pleasantry.

On a tablet below the bust are the following inscriptions:

"Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, popvlvs mæret. Olympvs habet.
Stay, Passenger, why goest thov by so fast?
Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs Death hath plast
Within this monvment: Shakspeare; with whome
Quick natvre dide: whose name doth deck y Tombe
Far more than cost; sieth all yt he hath writt
Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt

Obiit año Do, 1616. Ætatis. 53. die 23 Apr."

On a flat grave-stone in front of the monument, and not far from the wall against which it is fixed, we read these lines; and Southwell's correspondent (whose letter was printed in 1838, from the original manuscript dated 1693) informs us, speaking of course from tradition, that they were written by Shakespeare himself:

"Good frend, for Iesvs sake forbeare

To digg the dvst encloased heare:
Blese be ye man y' spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones."

The half-length on the title-page of the folio of 1623, engraved by Martin Droeshout, has certainly an expression of greater gravity than the bust on Shakespeare's monument; and, making some allowances, we can conceive the original of that resemblance more capable of producing the mighty works Shakespeare has left behind him, than the original of the bust: at all events, the first rather looks like the author of LEAR and MACBETH, and the last like the author of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING and the MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR: the one may be said to represent Shakespeare during his later years at Stratford, happy in the intercourse of his family and friends, and the cheerful companion of his neighbours and townsmen; and the other, Shakespeare in London, revolving the great works he had written or projected, and with his mind somewhat burdened by the the cares of his professional life. The last, therefore, is obviously the likeness which ought to accompany his plays, and which his "friends and fellows," Heminge and Condell, preferred to the head upon the "Stratford monument," of the erection of which they must have been aware.

There is one point in which both the engraving and the bust in a degree concur,—we mean in the length of the upper lip, although the peculiarity seems exaggerated in the bust. We have no such testimony in favour of the truth of the resemblance of the bust as of the engraving, opposite to which are the following lines, subscribed with the initials of Ben Jonson, and doubtless from his pen. Let the reader bear in mind that Ben Jonson was not a man who could be hired to commend, and that, taking it for granted he was sincere in his praise, he had the most unquestionable means of forming a judgment upon the subject of the likeness between the living man and the dead representation. We give Ben Jonson's testimonial exactly as it stands in the folio of 1623, for it afterwards went through various literal changes.

1 It was originally, like many other monuments of the time, and some in Stratford church, coloured after the life, and so it continued until Malone, in his mistaken zeal for classical taste and severity, and forgetting the practice of the period at which the work was produced, had it painted one uniform stone-colour. He thus exposed himself to much merited ridicule. It was afterwards found impossible to restore the original colours.

Besides, we may suppose that Jonson would be careful how he applauded the likeness, when there must have been so many persons living who could have contradicted him had the praise not been deserved. Jonson does not speak of the painter, but of the "graver," who we are inclined to think did full justice to the picture placed in his hands. Droeshout was a man of consider. able eminence in his branch of art, and has left behind him undoubted proofs of his skill-some of them so much superior to the head of Shakespeare in the folio of 1623, as to lead to the conviction, that the picture from which he worked was a very coarse specimen of art.

"TO THE READER.

"This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Grauer had a strife
With Nature, to out-doo the life:
O, could he but haue drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face; the Print would then surpasse
All, that was euer writ in brasse.
But since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

B. 1."

With this evidence before us, we do not hesitate to decide that the most authentic likeness of the great Poet is that in Droeshout's engraving; and although it may not be recommended by so high a style of art as some other imputed resemblances, there is certainly not one which has such undoubted claims to our notice on the grounds of fidelity and authenticity.

The fact that Droeshout was required to employ his skill upon a bad picture may confirm our reliance upon the likeness: had there been so many pictures of Shakespeare as some have contended, but as we are far from believing, Heminge and Condell, when they were seeking for an appropriate ornament for the title-page of their folio, would hardly have chosen one which was an unskilful painting, if it had not been a striking resemblance. If only half the pictures said, within the last century, to represent Shakespeare, were in fact from the life, the Poet must have possessed a vast stock of patience, if not a larger share of vanity, when he devoted so much time to sitting to the artists of the day; and the player-editors could have found no difficulty in procuring a picture, which had better pretensions to their approval. To us, therefore, the very defects of the engraving, which accompanies the folio of 1623, are a recommendation, since they show that it was both genuine and faithful.

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Aubrey is the only authority, beyond the inferences that may be drawn from the portraits, for the personal appearance of Shakespeare; and he thus sums up the Poet's physical and moral endowments:-" He was a handsome well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready, and pleasant, and smooth wit." We have every reason to suppose that this is a correct description of his personal appearance, but we are unable to add to it from any other source, unless indeed we were to rely upon a few equivocal passages in the Sonnets." Upon this authority it has been supposed by some that he was lame, and certainly the thirtyseventh and eighty-ninth Sonnets, without allowing for a figurative mode of expression, might be taken to import as much. If we were to consider the words literally, we should imagine that some accident had befallen him, which rendered it impossible that he should continue on the stage, and hence we could easily account for his early retirement from it. We know that such was the case with one of his most famous predecessors, Christopher Marlowe,' but we have no sufficient reason for believing it was the fact as regards Shakespeare: he is evidently speaking metaphorically in both places, where "lame" and "lameness" occur.

1 This circumstance, had he known it, would materially have aided the modern skeptic, who argued that Shakespeare and Marlowe were one and the same

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