1898.] The Early Life and Work of Shakespeare. 743 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 20, 1898. 



The Hon. Sir James Stirling, M.A. LL.D. Vice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



The Eight Hon. D. H. Madden, M.A. LL.D. 



The Early Life and Work of Shakespeare. 



In the year 1592 there was in London a moderate actor and 

 struggling dramatist named William Shakespeare. He had as yet 

 published nothing, and he was known chiefly as an adapter of the 

 work of popular authors to the uses of the company of players with 

 whom he was associated. As a dramatist, few would have thouo'ht of 

 comparing him with Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Lodge, or Nash ; and as 

 a poet he was known only to some private friends, to whom he had 

 shown certain sonnets and, it may be, the first heir of his invention, 

 a poem entitled * Venus and Adonis.' 



Had he then met the fate which shortly afterwards overtook his 

 great master, Marlowe, a tavern brawl might have dej^rived the world 

 not only of ' Hamlet,' ' Othello ' and ' As you like it,' but of all 

 knowledge of the man who was destined to be their author. It is 

 true that his genius had attained to the production of ' A Midsummer 

 Night's Dream ' and ' Romeo and Juliet ' ; but neither of these plays 

 was printed until some years after, when his later productions had 

 added to the reputation of their author. Had his fellows adventured 

 on the publication of a posthumous volume, containing, in addition 

 to these plays, * Titus Andronicus,' ' Henry VI,' ' Love's Labour's 

 Lost ' and ' The Comedy of Errors,' it is possible that the truer in- 

 stincts of the nineteenth century might have rescued the collection 

 from the indifference of the eighteenth century, and the contempt of 

 the seventeenth, when Pepys was not deterred by the fame of their 

 author from describing ' A Midsummer Night's Dream ' as the most 

 insipid, ridiculous play, and ' Eomeo and Juliet' as the worst, he had 

 ever seen. If Thomas Thorpe had thought it worth while to publish 

 the Sonnets at the instance of Mr. W. H. (which I greatly doubt), it 

 is possible that the discernment of an unheeded critic might discover 

 some of the finest poetry in the English language in the forgotten 

 volume — for forgotten it certainly would have been at a time when 

 Steevens deemed the sonnets unworthy of publication, as productions 

 which no one would read. 



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