and in phrase, instinctively so does his work that his work remains significant after the conditions which actually produced it are past. Throughout the Elizabethan drama there were flashes of genius; in general, however, the work of the Elizabethan dramatists was so adapted to the conditions of the Elizabethan stage that, after the lapse of three centuries, its flashes of genius have faded into the obscurity of book-shelves, where they serve now chiefly to lighten the drudgery of men who study the history of literature. In the case of Shakspere, the genius was so strong and permeating that his work, from beginning to end, has survived every vestige of the conditions for which it was made. We are apt now to forget that it was made for any other conditions than those amid which, generation by generation, we find it.

If we would sincerely try to see the man as he saw himself, we must resolutely put aside these commonplaces of posterity. In their stead we must substitute the normal commonplaces of human experience. Shakspere, we know, was an Elizabethan playwright; and we know enough of the Elizabethan drama to form, in the end, a pretty clear conception of the professional task which was thus constantly before him. By both temperament and profession, too, Shakspere was a creative artist; and those of us who have had much to do with people who try to create works of art learn to know that in general the artistic temperament, great or small, develops according to pretty

well fixed principles. Our effort to understand Shakspere, then, begins to define itself. We shall have done much if we can learn to see in him a man of normal artistic temperament, developing, in spite of its scale, in a normal way, under the known conditions which surrounded the Elizabethan theatre.

Such definite study of him as this has been possible only in recent years. Until rather lately one obstacle to it was insurmountable. To study the development of any artist, we must know something of the order in which his works were produced; and Shakspere's works have generally been presented to us in great chronological confusion. The first collection of his plays, a very carelessly printed folio, appeared in 1623. Here they were roughly classified as comedies, histories, and tragedies; under these heads, too, they were arranged in no sort of order. The book opens with the Tempest, for example, which is followed by the Two Gentlemen of Verona; yet nothing is now much better proved than that the Two Gentlemen of Verona is the earlier by above fifteen years. Again, the plays dealing with English history are printed in the order in which the sovereigns they deal with ascended the throne of England; yet, if we except Henry VIII., which stands by itself, nothing is more certain than that Henry VI. is chronologically the first of the series, and Henry V. the last, with an interval of at least nine years between them. The general arrangement of the plays in the first folio, fairly exemplified by these instances, is still followed

in standard editions of Shakspere. The resulting confusion of impression is almost ultimate.

During the past century or so, however, scholarship has gone far to reduce this chaos to order. On various grounds, a plausible chronology has arisen. Sixteen of the plays, and all of the poems, were published in quarto during Shakspere's lifetime. Entries in the Stationers' Register analogous to modern copyright -exist in many cases. Allusions in the works of contemporary writers are sometimes helpful; so are allusions to contemporary matters in the plays themselves. More subtle, less certain, but surprisingly suggestive chronological evidence has been collected by elaborate analysis of technical style. It has been discovered, for example, that end-stopped verse, and rhyme are far more frequent in Shakspere's earlier work than in his later, and that what are called light and weak endings to verses occur in constantly increasing proportion during the last six or eight years of his writing. The plays have been grouped accordingly.1 By some means or other, then, and in almost every case by means foreign to the actual substance of the works in question, foreign to the matters they deal with or to the mood in which they deal with them, a conjectural date as a rule provisionally accepted by scholars has been assigned to every work commonly ascribed to Shakspere.

Reading the plays and the poems in this conjecturally

1 An adequate discussion of this matter is accessible to everybody in Dowden's Primer of Shakspere, pp. 32-46

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.

[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