SHAKESPEARE 



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SHAKESPEARE 



fitness in the scantiness of the knowledge about 

 him. It seems to confirm his right to the place 

 apart from and above the world of petty affairs 

 to which his genius has elevated him. 



Others abide our question. Thou art free. 



We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, 



Out-topping knowledge, 



wrote Matthew Arnold; and while books with- 



out end have been written about Shakespeare 

 and his works, no critic has ever felt that he 

 has exhausted his richness or solved the mys- 

 tery of his genius. For he was but a poor 

 country boy, not well educated according to the 

 standards of his day; yet he produced plays 

 in great number which each generation of read- 

 ers finds more wonderful than the last. 



His Life Story 



Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon- 

 Avon, Warwickshire, in April, 1564. The exact 

 date of his birth is unknown, but since it was 

 customary to baptize babies when they were 

 three days old, and he was baptized on April 26, 

 there is reason for regarding April 23 as his 

 probable birthday. His father, John Shake- 

 speare, was a glover, but he seems also to have 

 carried on a prosperous trade in meat, leather, 

 corn and other agricultural produce ; his mother 

 Mary Arden, was a farmer's daughter of Wilm- 

 cote, and it seems probable, from certain docu- 

 ments to which she affixed her "marke" instead 

 of her signature, that she could not write her 

 own name. 



Youth and Training. Of such a family, in a 

 village which lies in the center of one of Eng- 

 land's most beautiful regions, William Shake- 

 speare was born, the third child and eldest son 

 in a family of four sons and four daughters. 

 Since his father was well-to-do, it is probable 

 that the boy attended, between the ages of 

 seven and fourteen, the grammar school of 

 Stratford; somewhere, certainly, he picked up 

 that "small Latin and less Greek" which Ben 

 Jonson declared him to have possessed. But 

 books were not his best teachers. 'The men and 

 women around him, whether they were of high 

 or of low estate, were to him volumes of ab- 

 sorbing interest, which he read eagerly and in- 

 telligently. For how else could he have made 

 himself, what he undoubtedly was, the greatest 

 master of the mysteries of human nature that 

 has ever lived? The beauties of the world 

 about him, too, he saw with observant eyes; 

 and every "winking Mary-bud," every "morn in 

 russet mantel clad" which left its picture on his 

 heart and brain lives for his readers in his 

 works. 



It seems probable that when William was 

 about fourteen his father lost his property and 

 his official position, and that the boy had to 

 leave school and help support the family. 

 *What his occupation was is unknown, but it 

 seems to have been lucrative enough to have 



warranted him, at the age of eighteen, in marry- 

 ing Anne Hathaway, a women eight years older 

 than himself. A daughter, Susanna, was born 

 to them in the next year (1583), and two years 

 later twin children were christened Hamnet 

 and Judith. 



His London Years. In 1585, or thereabouts, 

 Shakespeare quitted Stratford, leaving his 

 family there. Various theories have been in- 

 vented to account for this move. Some critics 



SHAKESPEARE 



What point of morals, of manners, of economy, 

 of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct 

 of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he 

 not signified his knowledge of? What office, or 

 function, or district of man's work, has he not re- 

 membered? What king has he not taught state, 

 as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not 

 found him finer than her delicacy? What lover 

 has he not outloved? What sage has he not out- 

 seen? What gentleman has he not instructed in 

 the rudeness of his behavior? 



EMERSON : Representative Men. 



believe, because there are numerous ironic ref- 

 erences to marriage in the plays, that Shake- 

 speare's own marriage was an unhappy one; 

 but in just the same method, it might be proved 

 that his marriage was singularly happy, for he 

 paints more than one picture of happy married 

 life. The most plausible theory is that Shake- 



