Labour is light, where love (quoth I) doth pay; (Saith he) Light burthens heavy, if far borne: (Quoth I) The maine lost, cast the by away; Y' have spun a faire thred, he replies in scorne. And having thus awhile each other thwarted, Fooles as we met, so fooles again we parted. TO HIMSELFE AND THE HARPE. AND why not I, as hee Th' old Lyrick kind revive? I will, yea, and I may ; Hee's heire of Helicon? Apollo, and the Nine, Forbid no man their shrine, That commeth with hands pure; Else they be so divine, They will him not indure. For they be such coy things, The Phocean it did prove, Those mayds unchaste to make, Fell, as with them he strove, His neck, and justly, brake. That instrument ne'r heard, And made Olympus quake. As those prophetike strings Drave fiends from their abode, So his, which women slue, Such sounds yet forth it sent, That by the tortoyse-shell, The most thereof no doubt, The wildest of the field, Which mov'd; that sturdy glebes, And massie oakes could weeld To rayse the pyles of Thebes. And diversly though strung, To it, that now scarce knowne, If first it did belong To Greece or if our owne. The Druydes imbrew'd With sacrifices crown'd Ador'd the trembling sound. Though we be all to seeke The soule with power to strike, Or him that Rome did grace, That scarcely found his peere, For strokes divinely cleere. The Irish I admire, And still cleave to that lyre, As Britons, that so long Southerne, I long thee spare, Who me so pleased'st greatly, To those that with despight It is a noble kind. Nor is't the verse doth make, Although in Skelton's ryme. AN ODE WRITTEN IN THE PEAKE, THIS while we are abroad, Shall we not touch our lyre? In us that strongly glow'd, Long since the summer layd Her lustie brav'ry downe, The autumne halfe is way'd, And Boreas 'gins to frowne, Since now I did behold Great Brute's first builded towne. Though in the utmost Peake What though bright Phœbus' beames Yet many rivers cleare Here glide in silver swathes, And what of all most deare, Buckston's delicious bathes, Strong ale and noble cheare, T'asswage breeme winter's scathes. Those grim and horrid caves, Wherein nice Nature saves What she would not bewray, Our better leisure craves, In places farre or neare, own. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, the son of a woolstapler, in Stratford-on-Avon, was born in that town on the 23d of April, 1564. In 1582, he married Anne Hathaway. In 1586, he left his home, his wife, and the three children she had borne him, and started alone for London. Until 1591 he passed the life of a player in the theatre at Blackfriars. About this time he began to write, but modestly occupied himself for two years in altering the plays of others. It was not until 1593 that he circulated his Thenceforward, through the space of twenty years, he realized the most wonderful destiny as a writer that has yet fallen to any of the sons of men. During half that period he continued a player. In 1603, having accomplished the purchase of a tolerably large share in the Globe theatre, he left the stage. In 1613, he disposed of his property, and retired to Stratford. He died on his fifty-second birth-day-on the 23d of April, 1616-ending life, as he began it, with the soft flowings of his native Avon murmuring near him. Such is the sum of our absolute knowledge of the public history of Shakspeare, for his genius was only rivalled by that wonderful modesty which kept him, through all the changes of his life, an unassuming and unobtrusive man. Unable as we are, however, to follow him through his great public career, we can pursue him into the solitude of his heart and home. His sonnets are altogether personal. A portion of those we have arranged illustrate, the reader will at once see, two passages in the life of Shakspeare, one of friendship and the other of love, and the story they tell is a strange one. It is only necessary here to make this reference to it. Of their characteristics, as poems, it is impossible to speak too highly. In the profoundest thought, the truest refinement, and the most exquisite feeling of natural loveliness, they have never been excelled. Moving through the two main springs of existence, Love and Sorrow, "Comfort and Despair;" to the one they add glory, and the other they redeem by beauty. Their versification is sweet and flowing. The rest of the sonnets we have quoted will be found to illustrate as many various characteristics in the life and personal thoughts of this greatest of writers, all of them inexpressibly interesting and touching, and all of them dashed with pathos the sweetest and most profound. It is unnecessary to request the reader to study them with this view. He will see with what a jealous self-watchfulness Shakspeare distrusted even his high gifts, with what a noble modesty he expresses his own defects, and how affectingly he alludes to his profession of a player, as one that had hurt his mind. His feelings on the question of fame possess deep interest. Struggling against the poverty and reproach of the present, he does not appear to have thought it worth his while to obtain for himself a more secure reversion in the future. He is conscious of his power, but careless of the personal glory it might associate with his name. Knowing himself the creator of immortal things, he does not care to survive along with them. In his moments of greatest despondency, to be the idol of posterity never struck him as a recompense for the slander of the living. Wooing love and the fortunes of the world unsuccessfully, he never rewarded his failure by taking immortality as a secret bride. The reason of this we believe to have been the extreme universality of his genius. No after personal consideration of any sort would mix itself with what belonged only to the great heart of the WORLD. Shakspeare died, as we have seen, when his life was what is usually considered a little past the prime. Thought, however, would seem to have done the work of years. He talks of his days as "past the best" a considerable time before he died; of his face as shown him in his glass, "bated and chopp'd by tann'd antiquity;" and of hours having "drained his blood and fill'd his brow with lines and wrinkles." The stanza which anticipates a "confin'd doom" will also be noticed, and that profoundly pathetic cry for restful death, which seems to us to fix the paternity of Hamlet. Of his general personal appearance we have no authentic account; but this may be gathered, perhaps, from some of these quotations. It is clear, we think, that he was afflicted with lameness, or at least a weakness in the legs. In proof of this we equally rely on the sonnets in which the circumstance itself is alluded to, as in those which so plainly intimate his frequent habit of riding on horseback. In connexion with the latter another anecdote will be observed, somewhat startling at first, but redeemed by a pretty touch of tenderness. |