UNIV. OF

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF.

CHAPTER I.

THE UNIVERSAL INTEREST IN THE PERSONALITY OF THE POET-WHAT THE WRITER INTENDS TO SHOW.

IT

T is said that ten thousand different essays, pamphlets and books have been printed and published concerning the life and writings of William Shakespeare. This is something unparalleled in the history of literature. No other name among men of letters has created such an interest. What an amazing attraction, what a boundless fascination, must people find in the life and character of this man! Men of every nation, of every rank, are captivated by him. All the world wish to know the antecedents, the family, the training, of the

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man who produced the most superb dramas in literature-whence he derived that marvellous power of dramatic presentation, that wonderful skill, knowledge, and wisdom, as poet, philosopher, and dramatist, which he displays in all his works. All men are amazed at the circumstance, that a man of the people, of no particular education, of no remarkable lineage, should have surpassed all other men in intellectual power, in the richness. and greatness of his productions ;-all men, I say, except a few erratic individuals in recent years, whose extraordinary views are not supported by any foundation worth a moment's consideration. People of foreign nations are so much. interested in him, that they learn English merely to read his works in the original; and there is hardly a language capable of literary expression into which these works have not been again and again translated. He is called the father of German literature, and even at the present day is more read and studied in Germany than any native author. His birthplace, now the

property of the English nation, has become a Mecca to which pilgrims from the four corners of the world resort; the relation and explanation of the events of his life form one of the great problems of modern times; and societies for the study and elucidation of his writings have been organized in every part of the civilized world. He is the glory of the English-speaking race, and every member of that race, from one end of the world to the other, is more or less indebted to him for what he is, for what culture or enlightenment he possesses, for what largeness of view, superior power of expression, or increased social and intellectual advantages, he enjoys; indeed, I may say that mankind is indebted to him for a richer and more copious speech, a larger social and intellectual life, and a more abundant fund of rational amusement, than it ever possessed before.

Such is the man whom I propose to unveil, as delineating his own character and career in the person of one of his dramatic heroes; such is the man whose

life I intend to unfold to my readers, without the aid of a cipher or any remarkable hocus-pocus, in such plain characters that all the world may read and perceive its truth. When the life and character of a literary man cannot be found in the records of his friends and acquaintances, and no personal memoirs of him are extant, the only proper place to look for him is in his works; and when the known incidents of his career, and the known traits of his character, agree in a remarkable manner with those of one, and only one, of his heroes, it is natural to infer that he delineated himself in that hero, and that that delineation must afford a better view of him than any other that can be obtained. I shall show that in the very plays in which that extraordinary gentleman, Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, has discovered a cipher showing that they were written by Lord Bacon, the real author, Shakespeare, reveals himself, his life, his character, as plainly and purposely as any author ever revealed himself in one of his works. I shall