SHAKESPEARE 



Nowhere ia Shakespeare a greater dramatic rhetori- 

 cian than in some of the misanthropist's declama- 

 tory speeches. The story was taken from Paynter's 

 Palace of Pleasure, and certain gleanings were 

 added from Plutarch and. from Lucian. 



At this point once again a change shows itself 

 in the spirit of Shakespeare. After passion comes ; 

 peace ; after the poetry of revolt comes the poetry 

 "f reconciliation ; after the breaking of bonds the 

 bonds of the family, of the state, and even of 

 humanity itself come the knitting of human 

 bonds, the meeting of parted kinsfolk, the recon- 

 ciliation of alienated friends. The last plays of 

 Shakespeare are comedies, but they might be aptly 

 named romances, for romantic beauty presides over 

 them rather than mirth, they have in them ele- 

 ments of wonder and delight, their gladness is 

 purified and rarefied, as the happiness might be of 

 one who has had a great experience of sorrow ; the 

 characters move amid lovely, natural surround- 

 ings ; mountain and sea, the inland meadows, the 

 island shores lend their glory or their grace to 

 these exquisite plays. Pericles (1608), or rather 

 Shakespeare's part of that play (Acts III. IV. V., 

 omitting perhaps III. sc. ii. v. vL), might better 

 be named the romance of Marina, tlie lost daughter 

 of Pericles. The description of the sea-storm could 

 have come from no other hand than Shakespeare's ; 

 the scenes which tell of the recovery by Pericles 

 of wife and child anticipate like scenes in The 

 Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and Cymbeline. The 

 story of Pericles had been told by Gower, who is 

 introduced as 'presenter' of the play, and by 

 Lawrence Twine in his Patterne of Painfull 

 Adventures (1607) ; and there is a novel by George 

 Wilkins (1608) founded upon the play. Cymbeline 

 (1609) is also a tale of lost children at length 

 recovered, and of a wife separated from her husband, 

 Vut finally reunited to him. Something is derived 

 from Hohnshed, but with the historical matter is 

 connected a story which in a different form may 

 be found in Boccaccio's Decameron. The Tempest 

 may have been written late in the year 1610 ; but 

 it has been ingeniously argued by Dr. Garnett that 

 Shakespeare produced it as a court-play on the 

 occasion of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth 

 to the Elector Palatine, 1613, and that the en- 

 chanter Prospero is an idealised and complimentary 

 representation of the 'wisest fool in Christendom,' 

 King James I. No source of the play has been 

 ascertained, but some of the characters and inci- 

 dents resemble those of Jacob Ayrer's Die Schime 

 Sidea, and it is believed that this German play and 

 The Tempest must have had some common original. 

 The Wtnter's Tale (1610-11) dramatises a novel 

 by Robert Greene named Pandosto (1588) ; that 

 most delightful of roving rogues, Autolycus, is 

 however a creation of Shakespeare. In Hermione 

 and Perdita we have examples of two contrasted 

 groups of characters represented in Shakespeare's 

 last plays the aged and experienced sufferers, 

 who have been ennobled by sorrow, and the young 

 who are ennobled by their innocence and pure joy 

 of life. 



Apart from the other historical English plays 

 both in subject and in date stands King JJenry 

 VIII. (1612-13). The play is certainly in part 

 by Fletcher, and an attempt has been made to 

 prove that the remainder is from the hand of 

 Massingvr. But we may perhaps accept it as 

 most likely that Shakespeare wrote the following 

 portions . Acts I. i. ii. ; II. iii. iv. ; III. ii. (to 

 exit king) ; V. i. The play lacks unity ; it has 

 not altogether unaptly been described by Hertz- 

 berg a* 'a chronicle-history with three and a half 

 catastrophes, varied by a marriage and a corona- 

 tion pageant, ending abruptly with a child's 

 baptism. Bat there is no lack of unity in the 



conception of those dramatis persona 1 who inter- 

 -I,-.! Shakespeare the king, Wolsey, and above 

 all Queen Katharine, a noble and patient sufferer. 

 \Vhcther we have work by Shakespeare in another 

 play partly written by Hetcher The Two NobU 

 A-,. !,! \-~ inc. n- ilniiliii'.il. I li-Ii'lic-r'- ri-Malxtr- 



ator may here have been Massinger, hut there are 

 passages whii'h seem beyond MaxMiiger's reach. 

 The play is founded on Chaucer's Knightes Tale. 

 If Shakespeare had a hand in The Tw> Noble 

 Kinsmen it was during the last period of his 

 dramatic career. Not so with Edward III., in 

 parts of which some critics believe that they can 

 trace the handiwork of Shakespeare (from king's 

 entrance, I. ii. , to end of Act II.) ; if he was at all 

 concerned with that play it must have been before 

 UK. 



At what date Shakespeare ceased to appear on 

 the stage as an actor we cannot certainly say. He 

 took a part in the representation of .lonson's 

 Sejanus at the Globe in 1603 or 1604. In 1610 the 

 Burlmges speak of placing him with others as an 

 actor at Blackf riars Theatre ; but there are grounds 

 for supposing that he had withdrawn from the 

 stage at that date. In 1607 his elder daughter, 

 Susanna, married a prosperous physician of Strat- 

 ford, Mr John Hall, 1LA., and early next year 

 Shakespeare's grandchild Elizabeth Ha"ll was born. 

 He sold his shares in the Globe probably between 

 1611 and 1613 ; but while residing chiefly at Strat- 

 ford it seems likely that he desired to possess a 

 town residence, for in March 1613 he bought for 

 140 a house near the Blackfriars Theatre. In 

 the same year the Globe Theatre was burned down 

 while the play of Henry VIII. was lieing enacted, 

 and it may be that stage copies of Shakespeare's 

 plays were destroyed on tins occasion. 'The 

 latter part of his life,' says his first biographer 

 Kowe, speaking of his Stratford days, ' was spent 

 as all men of sense may wish theirs may be, in 

 ease, retirement, and the conversation of his 

 friends. . . . His pleasurable wit and good-nature 

 engaged him in the acquaintance ami cut it led him 

 to the friendship of the gentlemen of the neigh- 

 bourhood." In tebraary 1616 his younger daughter, 

 Judith, was married to Thomas Quiney, a vintner 

 of Stratford. She bore three children, two of 

 whom lived to manhood, but both died childless. 

 Their mother lived on to the days of the Restora- 

 tion of Charles II. Elizabeth Hall, Shakespeare's 

 first-born grandchild, married Thomas Nash (Ki-Jtil, 

 and secondly, Sir John Barnard (1649). She died 

 without issue in 1670, the last descendant of the 

 poet. 



In March 1616 Shakespeare became seriously 

 ill. A draft of his will had recently lieen made, 

 and now he attached his signature to the several 

 pages of the draft. The hulk of his worldly goods 

 he left to his elder daughter, but Judith was given 

 a considerable sum ot money. His sister, Joan 

 Hart, received a legacy of 50 and a life-interest 

 in her house in Stratford. His friends in the 

 country, certain fellow-actors, liis nephews, his 

 godson, and the Stratford poor were all remem- 

 bered. To his wife he left, by an interlineation in 

 the will, and perhaps to indulge some fancy of 

 hers, his second-best bed ; she was sufficiently 

 provided for, without special mention, by free 

 bench and dower. On April 23, 1616, which is 

 supposed to be the anniversary of his birthday, 

 Shakespeare died. According to a tradition 

 handed down by Ward, the vicar of Stratford, his 

 last illness was a fever contracted after a merry 

 meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson. Halliwcll 

 Phillipps supposes that it is as likely to have ln-en 

 caused by the poison of filth and ill-drainage which 

 hung about New Place. 



On April 25 the body was laid at rest in the 



