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be juftly founded or not, every reader is left to his own imagination, on which will depend his cenfure or applause. I have not therefore the vanity to hope that all these obfervations will be generally approved of; fome of them, I confefs, are not thoroughly fatisfactory even to myself, and are hazarded, rather than relied on :-But there are others which I offer with fome degree of confidence, and I flatter myself that they will meet, upon the whole, with a favourable reception from the admirers of Shakspeare, as tending to elucidate a number of paffages which have hitherto been mifprinted or misunderstood.

In forming these comments, I have confined myfelf folely to the particular edition which is the object of them, without comparing it with any other, even with that of Johnfon: not doubting but the editors had faithfully ftated the various readings of the first editions, I refolved to avoid the labour of collating; but had I been inclined to undertake that task, it would not have been in my power, as few, if any, of the ancient copies can be had in the country where I refide.

I have felected from the Supplement, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, because it is fuppofed by fome of the commentators to have been the work of Shakspeare, and is at least as faulty as any of the reft. The remainder of the plays which Malone has published are neither, in my opinion, the production of our poet, or fufficiently incorrect to require any comment.

M. MASON.

SOME

SOME

ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE, &c.

OF

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE,

WRITTEN BY MR. ROWE.

Ir feems to be a kind of refpect due to the memory of excellent men, especially of thofe whom their wit and learning have made famous, to deliver fome account of themfelves, as well as their works, to pofterity. For this reafon, how fond do we fee fome people of difcovering any little perfonal story of the great men of antiquity! their families, the common accidents of their lives, and even their shape, make, and features, have been the fubject of critical inquiries. How trifling foever this curiosity may feem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly fatisfied with an account of any remarkable perfon, till we have heard him defcribed even to the very cloaths he wears. As for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an author may fometimes conduce to the better understanding his book; and though the works of Mr. Shak fpeare may feem to many not to want a comment, yet I fancy fome little account of the man himself may not be thought improper to go along

with them.

He was the fon of Mr. John Shakspeare, and was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, in April 1564. His family, as appears by the register and publick writings relating to that town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen. His father, who was a confiderable dealer in wool, had fo large a family, ten children

2 It appears that he had been officer and bailiff of Stratford-uponVOL. I.

Avon;

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children in all, that though he was his eldest fon, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, it is true, for fome time at a free-school,3 where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was master of: but the narrowness of his circumftances, and the want of his affiftance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language. It is without controverfy, that in his works we scarce find any traces of any thing that looks like an imitation of the ancients. The delicacy of his taste, and the natural bent of his own great genius, (equal, if not fu perior, to fome of the beft of theirs) would certainly have led him to read and ftudy them with fo much pleasure, that fome of their fine images would naturally have infinuated themselves into, and been mixed with his own writings; fo that his not copying at least something from them, may be an argument of his never having read them. Whether his ignorance of the ancients were a difadvantage to him or no, may admit of a difpute: for though the knowledge of them might have made him more correct, yet it is not im probable but that the regularity and deference for them, which would have attended that correctnefs, might have reftrained fome of that fire, impetuofity, and even beautiful

extrava

Avon; and that he enjoyed fome hereditary lands and tenements, the reward of his grandfather's faithful and approved fervices to King Henry VII. THEOBALD.

The chief magiftrate of the Body Corporate of Stratford, now diftinguifhed by the title of Mayor, was in the early charters called the High Bailiff. This office Mr. John Shakspeare filled in 1569.

It appears from a note to W. Dothick's Grant of Arms to him in 1596, now in the College of Arms, Vincent, Vol. 157, p. 24, that he was a juftice of the peace, and poffeffed of lands and tenements to the amount of 50cl.

Our poet's mother was the daughter and heir of Robert Arden of Wellingcote, in the county of Warwick, who, in the MS. above reftried to, is , called a gentleman of worship." The family of Arden is a very ancient one; Robert Arden of Bromwich, efq. being in the lift of the gentry of this county, returned by the commiflioners in the twelfth year of King Henry VI. A. D. 1433. Edward Arden was Sheriff of the *county in 1568.-The woodland part of this county was anciently called Arden; afterwards foftened to Arden. Hence the name. MALONE. 3 The free-fchool, I prefume, founded at Stratford. THEOBALD.

extravagance, which we admire in Shakspeare: and I believe we are better pleafed with thofe thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination fupplied him fo abundantly with, than if he had given us the most beautiful paffages out of the Greek and Latin poets, and that in the most agreeable manner that it was poffible for a mafter of the English language to deliver them.

Upon his leaving fchool, he feems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father propofed to him;4 and in order to fettle in the world after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, faid to have been a fubftantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of fettlement he continued for fome time, till an extravagance that he was guilty of forced him both out of his country, and that way of living which he had taken up; and though it feemed at firft to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occafion of exerting one of the greatest geniuses

that

4 I believe, that on leaving school Shakspeare was placed in the office of fome country attorney, or the fenefchal of fome manor court. See the Efay on the order of his plays, Article, Hamlet. MALONE.

5 It is certain he did fo; for by the monument in Stratford church erected to the memory of his daughter, Sufanna, the wife of John Hall, gentleman, it appears, that he died on the 2d of July, 1649, aged 66: fo that the was born in 1583, when her father could not be full 19 years THEOBALD.

old.

Sufanna, who was our poet's eldest child, was baptized, May 26, 1583. Shakspeare therefore, having been born in April 1564, was nineteen the month preceding her birth. Mr. Theobald was mistaken in supposing that a monument was erected to her in the church of Stratford. There is no memorial there in honour of either our poet's wife or daughter, excep flat tomb-itones, by which, however, the time of their refpective deaths is afcertained. His daughter Sufanna died, not on the fecond, but the eleventh of July 1649. Theobald was led into this error by Dugdale. MALONE.

She was eight years older than her husband, and died in 1623, at the of 67 years. THEOBALD.

age

The following is the infcription on her tomb-ftone in the church of Stratford :

"Here lyeth interred the body of ANNE, wife of William Shakespeare, who departed this life the 6th day of August, 1623, being of the age of 67 years, MALONE.

b 2

that ever was known in dramatick poetry. He had by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company and amongst them, fome that made a frequent practice of deer-ftealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was profecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, fomewhat too feverely; and in order to revenge that ill ufage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the firft effay of his poetry, be loft, yet it is faid to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the profecution againft him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his bufinefs and family in Warwickfhire, for fome time, and fhelter himself in London.

It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is faid to have made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. He was received into the company then in being, at first in a very mean rank, but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, foon diftinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. His name is printed, as the cuftem was in thofe times, amongst those of the other players, before fome old plays, but without any particular account of what fort of parts he ufed to play and though I have inquired, I could never meet with any further account of him this way, than that the top of his performance was the Ghoft in his own Hamlet. I should have been much more pleafed, to have learned from certain authority, which was the firft play he wrote; it would be without doubt a pleasure to any man, curious in things of this kind, to fee and know what was the first essay of a fancy like Shakspeare's. Perhaps we are not to look for his beginnings, like thofe of other authors, among their leaft perfect writings; art had fo little, and nature fo large a Thare in what he did, that, for aught I know, the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, and had the moft fire and ftrength of imagination in them, were the beft. I would not be thought by this to mean, that his fancy

7 There is a ftage tradition, that his first office in the theatre was that of Call-boy, or prompter's attendant; whofe employment it is to give the performers notice to be ready to enter, as often as the business of the play requires their appearance on the stage. MALONE.

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