The materials which we possess for the biography of Shakspeare are very unsatisfactory. The earliest life is that by the poet Rowe, who, as if aware of its scantiness, merely entitles it ‘Some Account.’ It contains what little the author could collect, when no sources of information were left open but the floating traditions of the theatre after the lapse of nearly a century. Mr. Malone prefixed a new life to his edition, extending to above 500 pages; but he only brings his author to London, and as to his professional progress, adds nothing to Rowe’s meagre tale, except some particles of information previously communicated in notes by himself and Steevens.

William Shakspeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, April 23, 1564. He was one of ten children. His father was a dealer in wool, as it is generally said, but according to Malone, a glover, and alderman in the corporation of Stratford. Our great poet received such education as the lower forms of the Grammar School at Stratford could give him; but he was removed from that establishment at an early age, to serve as clerk in a country attorney’s office. This anecdote of his boyhood receives confirmation from the frequent recurrence of technical law-phrases in his plays; and it has been remarked that he derives none of his allusions from other learned professions. Before he was eighteen years of age he contracted a marriage with Anne Hathaway, a woman some years older than himself, and the daughter of a substantial yeoman in his own neighbourhood. He went to London about 1586, when he was but twenty-two years of age, being obliged, as the common story goes, to fly the country, in consequence of being detected in deer-stealing. This tale is thought to be confirmed by the ridicule cast on his supposed prosecutor, Sir Thomas Lucy, in the character of Justice Shallow, pointed as it is by the

commendation of the “dozen white luces as a good coat.” But as this is the only lawless action which tradition has imputed to one of the most amiable and inoffensive of men, we may perhaps esteem the tale to be the mere gossip of the tiring-room: indeed, Malone has adduced several arguments to prove that it cannot be correctly told. It is not necessary to suppose that Shakspeare was compelled to fly his native town because he came to the metropolis; his emigration is sufficiently accounted for by his father’s falling into distressed circumstances, and being obliged in this very year, 1586, to resign his alderman’s gown on that account. Another traditional anecdote, that Shakspeare’s first employment was to wait at the play-house door, and hold the horses of those who had no servants, is discredited by Mr. Steevens, who says, “That it was once the general custom to ride on horseback to the play I am yet to learn. The most popular of the theatres were on the Bankside; and we are told by the satirical pamphleteers of that time that the usual mode of conveyance to those places of amusement was by water; but not a single writer so much as hints at the custom of riding to them, or at the practice of having horses held during the hours of exhibition. Let it be remembered too, that we receive this tale on no higher authority than that of Cibber’s ‘Lives of the Poets.’”

Nothing is authentically proved with respect to Shakspeare’s introduction to the stage. His first play is dated by Malone in 1589, three years after the time assigned for the author’s arrival in London. It appears from the dedication to ‘Venus and Adonis,’ published in 1593, in which he calls that poem “the first heir of his invention,” that his earliest essays were not in dramatic composition. The ‘Lucrece,’ published in 1594, and the collection of sonnets, entitled the ‘Passionate Pilgrim,’ published in 1599, also belong to an early period of his poetical life. The ‘Lover’s Complaint,’ and a larger collection of sonnets, were printed in 1609. It may be conjectured that he was led to write for the stage in consequence of the advice and introduction of Thomas Green, an eminent comedian of the day, who was his townsman, if not his relation. Shakspeare trod the boards himself, but he never rose to eminence as an actor: it is recorded that the Ghost in ‘Hamlet’ was his masterpiece. But the instructions to the players in ‘Hamlet’ exhibit a clear and delicate perception of what an actor ought to be, however incompetent the writer might be to furnish the example in his own person.

The extent of Shakspeare’s learning has been much controverted. Dr. Johnson speaks of it thus: “It is most likely that he had learned Latin sufficiently to make him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to an easy perusal of the Roman authors. Concerning his skill in modern languages, I can find no sufficient ground of determination; but as no imitations of French or Italian authors have been discovered, though the Italian poetry was then high in esteem, I am inclined to believe that he read little more than English, and chose for his fables only such tales as he found translated.” Other writers have contended that he must have been acquainted with the Greek and Roman classics: but Dr. Farmer, in his ‘Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare,’ has accounted in a very satisfactory manner for the frequent allusions to the facts and fables of antiquity to be met with in Shakspeare’s writings, without supposing that he read the classic authors in their original languages. The supposition indeed is at variance with his whole history. Dr. Farmer has particularly specified the English translations of the classics then extant, and concludes on the whole, that the studies of Shakspeare were confined to nature and his own language.

The merit of Shakspeare did not escape the notice of Queen Elizabeth. He evinced his gratitude for her patronage in that beautiful passage in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ where he speaks of her as “a fair vestal, throned in the west.”

Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, is the relater of an anecdote which shows the continuance of high favour to our author. It is expressed in these words: that “the most learned prince and great patron of learning, King James I., was pleased with his own hand to write an amicable letter to Mr. Shakspeare;” and Dr. Farmer supposes, with apparent probability, that this honour was conferred in return for the compliment paid to the monarch in ‘Macbeth.’ Shakspeare also possessed the esteem of, and was admitted to familiar intercourse with, the accomplished Earls of Southampton and Essex; and enjoyed the friendship of his great contemporary Ben Jonson.

Of the poet’s career before the London public nothing authentic has come down to us; and perhaps if more were known, it might not be worth recording. But his retirement in 1611 or 1612, about four years before his death, though it afford no story, furnishes a pleasing reflection. He had left his native place, poor and almost unknown: he returned to it, not rich, but with a competence and an unblemished character. His good-natured wit made him a welcome member of private society when he no longer set the theatre in a roar; and he ended his days in habits of intimacy, and in some cases in the bonds of friendship, with the leading gentlemen of the neighbourhood. He died on his birthday, April 23, 1616, when he had completed his fifty-second year. If we look merely at the state in which he left his productions, we should be apt to conclude that he was insensible of their value. To quote the words of Dr. Johnson, “It does not appear that Shakspeare thought his works worthy of posterity; that he levied any ideal tribute upon future times, or had any further prospect than that of present popularity and present profit.” But the imperfect form in which they came before the public is not necessarily to be accounted for by this extravagance of humility. It is clear that any publication of his plays by himself would have interfered at first with his own interest, and afterwards with the interest of those to whom he made over his share in them; besides which, such was the revulsion of the public taste, that the publication of his works by Hemings and Condell was accounted a doubtful speculation. For several years after his death the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were more frequently acted than those of Shakspeare; and the beautiful works of the joint dramatists afterwards gave place to the rhyming rhapsodies of Dryden and the bombast of Lee. Garrick brought back the public to Shakspeare and every-day nature; Kemble exhibited him in the more refined dress of classical taste and philosophy.

Mr. Malone has observed, that our author’s prose compositions, should they be discovered, would exhibit the same perspicuity, the same cadence, the same elegance and vigour, which we find in his plays. In 1751, an attempt was made to impose on the public by a book entitled ‘A Compendious or Brief Examination of certayne Ordinary Complaints of divers of our Countrymen in these our Days, &c., by William Shakspeare, Gentleman;’ the signature to which, in the original edition of 1581, was “W. S., Gent.;” and Dr. Farmer has clearly proved the initials to mean “William Stafford, Gent.” Another and more impudent forgery was attempted by Ireland, who published in 1795 a volume, entitled ‘Shakspeare’s Manuscripts.’ The fraud met with partial success, and the tragedy of ‘Vortigern’ was performed as one of Shakspeare’s, to the great disgust, it is said, of John Kemble, who had to act in it much against his will. Malone exposed the imposition in 1796, and Ireland himself ultimately acknowledged it. With respect to the probable character of Shakspeare’s prose compositions, it is needless to speculate on it, as we have no reason to believe that he ever wrote any prose, except for the stage.

Some interesting criticisms of Mrs. Siddons on the chief female characters of Shakspeare will be found in the life of that eminent actress in this volume. We may here introduce another observation of hers on Constance in ‘King John.’ She said that the intuition of Shakspeare in delineating that character struck her as all but supernatural: she could scarcely conceive the possibility of any man possessing himself so thoroughly with the most intense and most inward feelings of the other sex: had Shakspeare been a woman and a mother, he must have felt neither less nor more than as he wrote.

The two first folio editions are in great request among book-collectors, and, owing to their scarcity, fetch high prices at auctions. They have nothing to recommend them either as to accuracy or elegance of typography, but are really valuable for the various readings which they contain. The best modern editions are those of Johnson and Steevens, and Malone. The last edition is the posthumous one of Malone, edited by Boswell, and little room is left for any farther elucidation of our great dramatist, as far as verbal criticism is concerned. But for the higher branches of criticism, the works of such a poet are as inexhaustible as those of Homer; and if his fame be equally immortal, its fate is more singular. However ardent may be the admiration of Homer on the part of modern scholars, and however profound their investigation of his merits, far from pretending to discoveries unknown to the Grecian critics and philosophers, they support their own views by constant references to the ancients; but Shakspeare has found his most elaborate, and with certain drawbacks, his best critics, among foreigners. In England Shakspeare is the idol of those who read either for the amusement of the imagination, or as students not of poetical or metaphysical, but of every-day nature; and his English editors have rather criticised down to the level of such readers, than aimed at ripening their taste, or elevating their conceptions. We find eminent men among them, such as Pope, Warburton, and Johnson, yet none well qualified to perform the highest functions of a commentator. Johnson’s Preface is highly valued for the justness of his general criticism, and his vindication of the poet on the score of the unities is triumphantly conclusive. But his remarks at the end of each play are so jejune and superficial, that short as they are, no reader perhaps ever wished them longer. One cannot help wondering that the acute, and in many instances profound, though sometimes partial, critic of Cowley, Milton, Dryden, Pope and Gray, should have skimmed so lightly over the surface of Shakspeare. Not so his German translators and critics. No sooner did the Germans take up the study of English literature, than they selected Shakspeare on whom to try their powers; and they are thought to have dived deeper into his mind than have his own countrymen, with their apparently better opportunities. Nor is this wonderful: for they have regarded the poet not merely as the minister of amusement to an admiring audience, but as a metaphysical philosopher of nature’s forming, possessed of deepest insight into the complex motives which move the hearts, and stimulate the actions of mankind. And seeking with a reverent attention to trace the workings of the maker’s mind (for in this instance there is a peculiar propriety in translating the Greek word poet) they have succeeded in furnishing profound and satisfactory explanations of much that less intellectual critics had treated as instances of the author’s irregular and capricious genius. In this, as in other branches of German literature, GoËthe stands pre-eminent: and the translation of his ‘Wilhelm Meister’ has placed within the reach of all readers a series of original and masterly criticisms, especially on that stumbling-block of commentators, the character of Hamlet. We may quote as a specimen his exposition of the principle upon which the anomalies of the Prince of Denmark’s conduct are to be solved. “It is clear to me that Shakspeare’s intention was to exhibit the effects of a great action, imposed as a duty upon a mind too feeble for its accomplishment. In this case I find the character consistent throughout. Here is an oak tree planted in a china vase, proper only to receive the most delicate flowers. The roots strike out and the vessel flies to pieces. A pure, noble, highly moral disposition, but without that energy of soul which constitutes the hero, sinks under a load which it can neither support nor endure to abandon altogether. All his obligations are sacred to him; but this alone is above his powers! An impossibility is required at his hands; not an impossibility in itself, but that which is so to him. Observe, how he turns, shifts, hesitates, advances, and recedes;—how he is continually reminded and reminding himself of his real commission, which he nevertheless in the end seems almost entirely to lose sight of, and this without ever recovering his former tranquillity!” How different this from the praise of variety allowed to this tragedy by Johnson, to “the pretended madness, causing mirth,” without any adequate cause for feigning it, and the objection that through the whole piece he is “rather an instrument than an agent!”

Malone’s “attempt to ascertain the order in which the plays of Shakspeare were written” occupies 180 pages. Where so many words are necessary, the arrangement to be justified may not be very certain; but that of Malone is generally received. It runs thus: The First Part of King Henry VI., 1589. Second and Third Parts, Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1591. Comedy of Errors, 1592. King Richard II. and III., 1593. Love’s Labour’s Lost, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1594. Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, King John, 1596. First Part of King Henry IV., 1597. Second Part, All’s well that ends well, 1598. King Henry V., As You like it, 1599. Much ado about Nothing, Hamlet, 1600. Merry Wives of Windsor, 1601. Troilus and Cressida, 1602. Measure for Measure, King Henry VIII., 1603. Othello, 1604. King Lear, 1605. Macbeth, 1606. Twelfth Night, Julius CÆsar, 1607. Antony and Cleopatra, 1608. Cymbeline, 1609. Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, 1610. Winter’s Tale, 1611. Tempest, 1612. Except the placing of the historical plays in separate succession, the order of Malone’s edition follows the above dates. Previous editions arranged the plays as comedies, histories, and tragedies, beginning with the Tempest, the last written, and ending with Othello. We must add to the list of plays ascribed to Shakspeare, and included in the editions of his works, Pericles and Titus Andronicus, which are now acknowledged not to be the composition of Shakspeare, though perhaps retouched by him. The Yorkshire Tragedy, Lord Cromwell, and others, have still less right to bear the honour of his name.