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SHAKESPEARE

WE who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spoke place him before all the other poets of the world, and no foreigner who has learned to read his works desires to place any other poet before him.

It is William Shakespeare died on the 23rd of April, 1616, and there is a tradition that he was also born on the same date. certain that he was christened on the 26th, but there is nothing to prove that his birth did or did not occur on the 23rd. The year of his birth was 1564, and the place Stratford-on-Avon.

His father, John Shakespeare, was bailiff, or chief magistrate, of Stratford in 1568, and his mother, Mary Arden, belonged to one of the oldest Warwickshire families, and she brought to her husband a tiny estate of arable and pasture land and a house. John Shakespeare had land of his own, and rented more, and he cultivated the land and sold the produce; and the stories of his being a butcher, or wool merchant, or glover, may be dismissed as worthless.

The boy William was sent to the Free Grammar School in Stratford, and when he was a man he was less learned than his brother authors in London, many of whom were university men. "He had small Latin and less Greek," says Ben Jonson. But he was receiving from Nature a higher teaching than any he could gain from books. The neighborhood of Stratford is a smiling pleasant country, through which the Avon flows peacefully

Making sweet music with the enamelled stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage.

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Pretty hamlets - Wilmcote, Binton, Shottery, Charlecote, and many others lie within easy distance, and we may be sure he knew them all. "Images of mead and grove, of dale and upland, of forest depths, of quiet walks by gentle rivers, spread themselves without an effort over all his writings. The sports, the festivals of the secluded hamlet are presented by him with all the charms of an Arcadian age, but with a truthfulness that is not found in Arcadia. He wreathes all the flowers of the field in his delicate chaplets."

In 1578, when William was fourteen years old, his father appears to have become greatly reduced in circumstances, for he mortgaged his wife's land, and he was unable to meet certain claims made upon him. There were then living five children, of whom William was the eldest boy, and probably for some years to come he worked with his father on the farm. There is also a tradition that he was engaged in a notary's office; and it is remarked that in his writings he makes use of many technical legal terms and expressions, and always with the nicest accuracy. But too much stress must not be laid upon this argument; for there is no art or profession which Shakespeare has not laid under contribution for his beautiful and expressive similes.

In November, 1582, while still a youth of eighteen, William married Anne Hathaway, from the village of Shottery; and a daughter, Susannah, was born to them the next year.

In 1585 two more children, twins, a boy and girl, Hamnet and Judith, were born to Shakespeare; and some time afterwards perhaps the next year- he went to seek his fortune in London, leaving his wife and children with his father and mother in Stratford. A very old tradition states, "This William, being naturally inclined to poetry and acting, came to London - I guess about

eighteen and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and did act exceedingly well." A later tradition runs, "He was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London," connecting his leaving with a story of deer-stealing at Charlecote. We know that three companies of players visited Stratford in 1584, and we may well believe that the young Shakespeare felt moved to follow their example. In 1587 the "Queen's Players" visited Stratford, and perhaps Shakespeare was already enrolled among them, and in 1589 his name appears in a list of sixteen who are described as "Her Majesty's poor players, and all of them sharers in the Blackfriars Playhouse."

This company of the "Queen's Players," which was known at first as the "Servants of the Earl of Leicester," received royal letters patent in 1574; and in 1576 they erected the Blackfriars Theatre, just outside the city walls; and here Shakespeare's earliest plays, his "Henry VI," "Love's Labor's Lost," and others, were exhibited.

In 1594 a second or summer theatre, the Globe on Bankside, was built for the "Queen's Players," and in the same year Shakespeare dedicated his poem of "Lucrece" to the young Earl of Southampton. In the previous year he had dedicated his "Venus and Adonis" to the same patron, who is reported to have given him "a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to."

While Shakespeare was thus prospering we are told that he went every year to Stratford. In 1597 he bought a house there called New Place, and in 1602 he made a purchase of land, and was looking forward to the time when he should retire and end his days in peace there.

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The closing years of Elizabeth's reign were times of trouble for Shakespeare's friend and patron, the Earl of Southampton, and the poet was doubtless saddened thereby. He had also his own domestic griefs: his only son had died, and in 1601 his father was taken from him. The works that probably belong to this period, "Hamlet," "Measure for Measure," "Timon," "As You Like It," "Lear," and others, are marked by an air of sadness and weariness of the world.

The accession of the new king, James I, brought new fame and dignity to Shakespeare. Southampton was released from prison; the "King's Players" were frequently called to the Court, and Shakespeare's plays were those most frequently performed. But the poet himself probably soon afterwards retired from London, though we do not know the exact year.

In 1607 his daughter Susannah was married to Dr. John Hall, a physician of Stratford, and in 1608 a daughter, Elizabeth, was born to them. In this year Mary Shakespeare, the poet's mother, died, having lived to see and enjoy her son's great fame. After a few quiet, uneventful years, spent with his wife and children among the scenes of his childhood, the great poet died on 23rd of April, 1616, and was buried in the church of his native town. His grave and the house where he was born are visited by tens of thousands of people every year.

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POLONIUS'S ADVICE TO LAERTES.

From Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3.

GIVE thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

Bear't that the opposèd may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

--

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

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