chronological order we find in them something far removed from the pristine confusion of the standard editions. Once for all, of course, we must admit to ourselves that what results we thus find are not incontestable. As our chronology is only conjectural, so must be any inferences which we may draw from it. If these inferences be plausible, however, if they help us to find in Shakspere not only the supreme genius of English literature, but also a normal human being, greater than others, but not different in kind, we are fairly warranted in accepting them as a matter of faith. At least we may believe, though we may never assert, that they can help us in our effort to see Shakspere as he saw himself; and so to understand, to appreciate, to enjoy him better than before.

Our purpose, then, is to obtain a coherent view of the generally accepted facts concerning the life and the work of Shakspere. To accomplish this, we may best begin by glancing at the known facts of Shakspere's life. Then we shall briefly consider the condition of English literature at the time when his literary activity began. Then we shall consider in chronological order, and with what detail proves possible, all the works commonly assigned to him. Finally, we shall endeavor to define the resulting impression of his individuality.

II

THE FACTS OF SHAKSPERE'S LIFE

[All the known documents concerning Shakspere are collected in Mr. Halliwell-Phillips's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. In Mr. F. G. Fleay's Life and Work of Shakespeare is a masterly discussion of them. Dowden's Primer, and Furnivall's Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere state the facts more compactly. In none of the authorities is it always easy to separate facts from inferences. If Wilder's Life, Boston, 1893, were a bit more careful in detail, it would be perhaps the most satisfactory, because the least complicated with conjecture.]

ON April 26th, 1564, William, son of John Shakspere, was baptized at Stratford-on-Avon. John Shakspere, the father, had come from the neighboring country to Stratford, where he was engaged in fairly prosperous trade. In 1557 he had married Mary Arden, a woman of social position somewhat better than his own. In 1568 he was High Bailiff, or Mayor of Stratford. Until 1577, indeed, the extant records indicate that he was constantly looking up in the world. In that year, they begin to indicate that his circumstances were declining; in 1578 they show that he had to put a mortgage for £40 on an estate called Asbies. Meanwhile he had become the father of five other children, of whom four survived.

1 Gilbert, b. 1566; Joan, b. 1569; Anne, b. 1571, d. 1579; Richard, b. 1573; Edmund, b. 1580. Two older daughters had died in infancy.

Of William Shakspere's youth, then, we may be sure that it began in a well-to-do family of Stratford, increasing in numbers and prosperity; and that when he was about thirteen years old the prosperity came to an end.

On November 28th, 1582, when he was half-way between eighteen and nineteen years old, comes the first record which directly concerns him. A bond was given for his marriage to Anne Hathaway, a woman then in her twenty-sixth year, and of social position in no way better than Shakspere's. On May 26th, 1583, their first child, Susanna, was baptized. What inferences may be drawn from these dates have given rise to much discussion. In all probability they indicate a practice still common among respectable country folk, in America sometimes called “ keeping company;" and are interesting chiefly as they throw light on the manners to which Shakspere was born. On February 2nd, 1585, his twin children, Hamnet and Judith, were baptized. In 1587, there is a record of his sanction, at Stratford, to a proposed arrangement concerning the Asbies mortgage which his father, who was now in prison for debt, had executed in 1578. This is literally all that is known of his early life at Stratford. Stories of how he went to school, how he saw plays, how he was at Kenilworth when Queen Elizabeth came there in 1575, how he was apprenticed to a local butcher, how he poached in Sir Thomas Lucy's park, have no authority. They are not impossible; there is nothing to prove them.

From the actual facts, however, certain inferences may be drawn. At the age of twenty-three, he was the eldest of the five surviving children of a ruined country tradesman; he was married to a woman already about thirty, who had borne him three children; and he had no recorded means of support.

Five years later comes the next reference to him. On September 3d, 1592, Robert Greene, the dramatist, died. His last book, Green's Groatsworth of Wit; bought with a Million of Repentaunce, speaks rather scurrilously of the theatres where he had rioted away his life. In the course of it occurs this passage:

"Base minded men al three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned: for unto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleave: those Puppits (I meane) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they al have beene beholding: is it not like that you, to whome they all have beene beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am now) be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide,1 supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his oune conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses: & let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions. . . . It is pittie

1 Cf. 3 Henry VI. Act I. Scene iv. 137.

men of such rare wits, should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes. For other new commers, I leave them to the mercie of these painted monsters, who (I doubt not) will drive the best minded to despise them; for the rest its skils not though they make a jeast at them." 1

From this passage, we may clearly infer that by the middle of 1592, Shakspere was a recognized writer of plays in London, that he was more or less involved in the theatrical squabbles of the time, that The Third Part of King Henry VI. was in existence, and that at least to the mind of Robert Greene

he had plagiarized.

Within the year, Henry Chettle, the publisher of this posthumous diatribe of Greene's, published an apology for it, in the course of which he writes. thus:

"With neither of them that did take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be: The other, at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, because my selfe have seen his demeanor no lesse civill than he exelent in the qualitie he professes: Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that aprooves his Art." 2

It has been generally inferred that the two persons

1 Shakspere's Centurie of Prayse. Second Edition, London. New Shakspere Society, 1879, p. 2.

2 Centurie of Prayse, p. 4.