THE PHOENIX AND TURTLE. LET the bird of loudest lay, To whose sound chaste wings obey. But thou shrieking harbinger, Foul precurrer of the fiend, Augur of the fever's end, To this troop come thou not near! From this session interdict Let the priest in surplice white, And thou treble-dated crow, With the breath thou givest and takest, Here the anthem doth commence : So they loved, as love in twain Hearts remote, yet not asunder; So between them love did shine, Property was thus appalled, Reason, in itself confounded, That it cried, How true a twain THRENOS. Beauty, truth, and rarity, Here enclosed in cinders lie. Death is now the phoenix' nest; And the turtle's loyal breast Leaving no posterity: Truth may seem, but cannot be; Beauty brag, but 'tis not she; Truth and beauty buried be. To this urn let those repair WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. CHAPTER I. PARENTAGE; EARLY YEARS. MATERIALS: Register of Baptism: "1564, April 26, Gulielmus, filius Johannes Shakspere." Aubrey's account: "Mr. William Shakespear was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwick; his father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercis'd his father's trade; but when he kill'd a calf he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne, that was held not at all inferior to him for a natural witt, his acquaintance and coetanean, but died young. He understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster (query: under a schoolmaster) in the countrey." (Lives of Eminent Men, compiled after 1669.) Rowe's account: "His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool, had so large a family, ten children in all, that tho' he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, 'tis true, for some time at a free school, where 'tis probable he acquir'd that little Latin he was master of; but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forc'd his father to withdraw him from there, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language." (From traditions collected by Betterton at Stratford-on-Avon.) T HESE are the materials for the first chapter of William Shakespeare's biography. They may seem petty and dull, but they tell us more than is known of almost any Elizabethan poet or dramatist, excepting Ben Jonson and Shirley. Theirs was not the age of literary gossip; no one troubled to record details of Spenser's birth or childhood, and no one went to Canterbury to glean anecdotes of Marlowe. Of the great successors of Shakespeare we are specially ignorant, above all of Webster; and the majority of the lesser men are names only, not even the dates of birth and death being known. Milton knew Shakespeare's greatness, at least in part, and Dryden appreciated him to the full; but neither Milton nor Dryden thought it necessary to record the information then accessible, now for ever lost. The best instances of the neglect of literary biography may be found in the folio |