A Life of William Shakespeare / with portraits and facsimiles
Transcribed from the 1899 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by Les Bowler.
by SIDNEY LEE.
WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES
FOURTH EDITION
LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1899
Printed November 1898 ( First Edition ).
Reprinted December 1898 ( Second Edition ); December 1898 ( Third Edition ); February 1899 ( Fourth Edition ).
This work is based on the article on Shakespeare which I contributed last year to the fifty-first volume of the ‘Dictionary of National Biography.’ But the changes and additions which the article has undergone during my revision of it for separate publication are so numerous as to give the book a title to be regarded as an independent venture. In its general aims, however, the present life of Shakespeare endeavours loyally to adhere to the principles that are inherent in the scheme of the ‘Dictionary of National Biography.’ I have endeavoured to set before my readers a plain and practical narrative of the great dramatist’s personal history as concisely as the needs of clearness and completeness would permit. I have sought to provide students of Shakespeare with a full record of the duly attested facts and dates of their master’s career. I have avoided merely æsthetic criticism. My estimates of the value of Shakespeare’s plays and poems are intended solely to fulfil the obligation that lies on the biographer of indicating
succinctly the character of the successive labours which were woven into the texture of his hero’s life. Æsthetic studies of Shakespeare abound, and to increase their number is a work of supererogation. But Shakespearean literature, as far as it is known to me, still lacks a book that shall supply within a brief compass an exhaustive and well-arranged statement of the facts of Shakespeare’s career, achievement, and reputation, that shall reduce conjecture to the smallest dimensions consistent with coherence, and shall give verifiable references to all the original sources of information. After studying Elizabethan literature, history, and bibliography for more than eighteen years, I believed that I might, without exposing myself to a charge of presumption, attempt something in the way of filling this gap, and that I might be able to supply, at least tentatively, a guide-book to Shakespeare’s life and work that should be, within its limits, complete and trustworthy. How far my belief was justified the readers of this volume will decide.
Sir Sidney Lee
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Distribution of the name.
The poet’s ancestry.
The poet’s father.
His settlement at Stratford.
The poet’s mother.
The poet’s birth and baptism.
Alleged birthplace.
The father in municipal office.
Brothers and sisters.
The father’s financial difficulties.
The poet’s classical equipment.
Shakespeare and the Bible.
Withdrawal from school.
The poet’s marriage.
Richard Hathaway of Shottery. Anne Hathaway.
Anne Hathaway’s cottage.
The bond against impediments.
Birth of a daughter.
Formal betrothal probably dispensed with.
Poaching at Charlecote.
Unwarranted doubts of the tradition.
Justice Shallow
The flight from Stratford.
The journey to London.
Richard Field, his townsman.
Theatrical employment.
A playhouse servitor.
The acting companies.
The Lord Chamberlain’s company.
A member of the Lord Chamberlain’s.
The London theatres.
Place of residence in London.
Shakespeare’s alleged travels. In Scotland.
In Italy.
Shakespeare’s rôles.
Alleged scorn of an actor’s calling.
Dramatic work.
His borrowed plots.
The revision of plays.
Chronology of the plays. Metrical tests.
‘Love’s Labour’s Lost.’
‘Two Gentlemen of Verona.’
‘Comedy of Errors.’
‘Romeo and Juliet.’
‘Henry VI.’
Greene’s attack. Chettle’s apology.
Divided authorship of ‘Henry VI.’
Shakespeare’s coadjutors.
Shakespeare’s assimilative power.
Lyly’s influence in comedy.
Marlowe’s influence in tragedy. ‘Richard III.’
‘Richard II.’
Acknowledgments to Marlowe.
‘Titus Andronicus.’
‘Merchant of Venice.’
Shylock and Roderigo Lopez.
‘King John.’
‘Comedy of Errors’ in Gray’s Inn Hall.
Early plays doubtfully assigned to Shakespeare.
‘Mucedorus.’
‘Faire Em.’
Publication of ‘Venus and Adonis.’
‘Lucrece.’
Enthusiastic reception of the poems.
Shakespeare and Spenser.
Patrons at court.
The vogue of the Elizabethan sonnet.
Shakespeare’s first experiments.
Majority of Shakespeare’s sonnets composed in 1594.
Their literary value.
Circulation in manuscript.
Their piratical publication in 1609. ‘A Lover’s Complaint.’
Thomas Thorpe and ‘Mr. W. H.’
The form of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Want of continuity. The two ‘groups.’
Main topics of the first ‘group.’
Main topics of the second ‘group.’
Lack of genuine sentiment in Elizabethan sonnets. Their dependence on French and Italian models.
Sonnetteers’ admission of insincerity.
Shakespeare’s scornful allusion to sonnets in his plays.
Shakespeare’s claims of immortality for his sonnets a borrowed conceit.
Conceits in sonnets addressed to a woman.
The praise of ‘blackness.’
The sonnets of vituperation.
Gabriel Harvey’s ‘Amorous Odious Sonnet.’
Jodelle’s ‘Contr’ Amours.’
Biographic fact in the ‘dedicatory’ sonnets.
The Earl of Southampton the poet’s sole patron.
Rivals in Southampton’s favour.
Shakespeare’s fear of a rival poet.
Barnabe Barnes probably the rival.
Other theories as to the rival’s identity.
Sonnets of friendship.
Direct references to Southampton in the sonnets of friendship.
His youthfulness.
The evidence of portraits.
Allusion to Elizabeth’s death.
Allusions to Southampton’s release from prison.
The youth’s relations with the poet’s mistress.
‘Willobie his Avisa.’
Summary of conclusions respecting the sonnets.
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’
‘All’s Well.’
‘Taming of the Shrew.’
Stratford allusions in the Induction.
Wincot.
‘Henry IV.’
Falstaff.
‘Merry Wives of Windsor.’
‘Henry V.’
Essex and the rebellion of 1601.
Shakespeare’s popularity and influence.
The Mermaid meetings.
Mere’s eulogy, 1598.
Value of his name to publishers.
‘The Passionate Pilgrim.’
‘The Phœnix and the Turtle.’
Shakespeare’s practical temperament.
His father’s difficulties.
His wife’s debt.
The coat-of-arms.
Purchase of New Place.
Appeals for aid from his fellow-townsmen.
Financial position before 1599.
Financial position after 1599.
Later income.
Incomes of fellow-actors.
Formation of the estate at Stratford 1601-10.
The Stratford tithes.
Recovery of small debts.
Literary work in 1599.
‘Much Ado.’
‘As You Like It.’
‘Twelfth Night.’
‘Julius Cæsar,’ 1601.
The strife between adult and boy actors.
Shakespeare’s references to the struggle.
Jonson’s ‘Poetaster.’
Shakespeare’s alleged partisanship.
‘Hamlet,’ 1602.
The Second Quarto, 1604.
The Folio Version.
Popularity of ‘Hamlet.’
‘Troilus and Cressida.’
Treatment of the theme.
Queen Elizabeth’s death, March 26, 1603.
James I’s patronage.
‘Othello’ and ‘Measure for Measure.’
‘Macbeth.’
‘King Lear.’
‘Timon of Athens.’
‘Pericles.’
‘Antony and Cleopatra.’
‘Coriolanus.’
The latest plays.
‘Cymbeline.’
‘A Winter’s Tale.’
‘Tempest.’
Fanciful interpretations of ‘The Tempest.’
Unfinished plays. The lost play of ‘Cardenio.’
‘Two Noble Kinsmen.’
‘Henry VIII.’
Plays at Court in 1613. Actor-friends.
Final settlement at Stratford.
Domestic affairs.
Purchase of a house in Blackfriars.
Attempt to enclose the Stratford common fields.
Death. Burial.
The will. Bequest to his wife.
His heiress. Legacies to friends.
The tomb.
Personal character.
The survivors. Mistress Judith Quiney.
Mistress Susannah Hall.
The last descendant.
Shakespeare’s brothers.
Spelling of the poet’s surname. Autograph signatures.
Shakespeare’s portraits. The Stratford bust. The ‘Stratford’ portrait.
Droeshout’s engraving.
The ‘Droeshout’ painting.
Later portraits.
The ‘Chandos’ portrait.
The ‘Jansen’ portrait.
The ‘Felton’ portrait.
The ‘Soest’ portrait.
Miniatures.
The Garrick Club bust.
Alleged death-mask.
Memorials in sculpture.
Quartos of the poems in the poet’s lifetime.
Posthumous quartos of the poems.
The ‘Poems’ of 1640.
Quartos of the plays in the poet’s lifetime.
Posthumous quartos of the plays.
The First Folio. The publishing syndicate.
The prefatory matter.
The value of the text.
The order of the plays.
The typography.
Unique copies.
The Sheldon copy.
Estimated number of extant copies.
Reprints of the First Folio.
The Second Folio. The Third Folio. The Fourth Folio.
Eighteenth-century editors.
Nicholas Rowe, 1674-1718.
Alexander Pope, 1688-1744.
Lewis Theobald, 1688-1744.
Sir Thomas Hanmer, 1677-1746.
Bishop Warburton, 1698-1779.
Dr. Johnson, 1709-1783.
Edward Capell, 1713-1781.
George Steevens, 1736-1800.
Edmund Malone, 1741-1812.
Variorum editions.
Nineteenth-century editors.
Alexander Dyce, 1798-1869. Howard Staunton, 1810-1874. The Cambridge edition, 1863-6.
Other nineteenth-century editions.
Ben Jonson’s tribute.
1660-1702. Dryden’s view.
Restoration adaptations.
From 1702 onwards.
Stratford festivals.
On the English stage. The first appearance of actresses in Shakespearean parts. David Garrick, 1717-1779.
John Philip Kemble, 1757-1823. Mrs. Sarah Siddons, 1755-1831.
Edmund Kean, 1787-1833.
William Charles Macready, 1793-1873.
Recent revivals.
In music and art.
In America.
Translations. In Germany. German translations.
Modern German writers on Shakespeare.
On the German stage.
In France. Voltaire’s strictures.
French critics’ gradual emancipation from Voltairean influence.
On the French stage.
In Italy.
In Holland.
In Russia.
In Poland.
In Hungary.
In other countries.
General estimate.
Character of Shakespeare’s achievement.
Its universal recognition.
I.—THE SOURCES OF BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.
Education.
INDEX.
FOOTNOTES.