If nothing else Of Lyly's existed his
Cupid and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses—Cupid payed,
would keep his memory green.
Lodge has been blamed as a common plagiary because he translated so many of his lyrics, not always or often with due acknowledgment, from Des Portes and Ronsard. But in some cases he improved the land which he conquered, and his "Love in my bosom like a bee," "Down a down!" "Thus Phyllis sung," and "Pluck the fruit and taste the pleasures," are genuine additions to English song, and prelude to Shakespeare's, and the music of the coming generation.
All of the treasures of his predecessors are not equivalent or nearly equivalent to the small change of Shakespeare's genius. But the best things in his predecessors' work indicate that, in a favourite phrase of Aristotle, "Nature was wishing to make" a Shakespeare. Yet was the birth of his genius none the less a miracle. He did much more than combine all that was good in all the others. He added that which is universal and eternal.
Shakespeare.
Concerning the life of William Shakspere (as he signed it), or Shakespeare (as his name was usually spelled), only a few essential facts are known from records of his own time, mainly documents concerning the legal affairs of himself, his family, and the theatrical company with which he was connected. Unlike many of the contemporary playwrights he was not a member of either University, and so college records about him are necessarily absent: and there is no contemporary roll of names of pupils at the school of his native place, Stratford-on-Avon.
Again, he was not a pamphleteer or journalist, like Nash, Greene, and others, and so he left no account of his friendships and enmities; no prose books about his opinions on art and literature, like Ben Jonson; he wrote no satirical plays, as Ben did, full of angry, contemptuous, and envious attacks on his rivals, and on the actors. As he was no learned scholar, the Universities never dreamed of making him, like Ben Jonson, a Master of Arts. People who wrote criticisms of poetry in prose or verse always spoke highly of him: one, John Davies, remarks that, in the opinion of some, had he not been an actor, he would have been fit company for Kings. But anecdotes of him were not sought for till all who had known him had long been dead. His own dramas contain a few topical allusions, and his sonnets appear to be more or less autobiographical, though to what degree, as in the case of Sidney's sonnets, is matter of dispute. He took almost no part in any public services, and in these circumstances little is known of his life, despite the painful researches of many learned students, and the wildest modern conjectures.
Concerning even the paternal grandfather of the poet, presumed to have been Richard Shakespeare, a farmer at Snitterfield, within four miles of Stratford-on-Avon, we have little more than probable presumptions. Richard's son John, father of the poet, in 1551 set up in business at Stratford-on-Avon, then a town of some 1500 inhabitants. He was a dealer in agricultural commodities; Aubrey, the antiquary, a century later, heard that he was a butcher. But the trade of a butcher in a tiny town is not lucrative, yet by 1556 he could buy two tenements, one in Henley Street, next door to the so-called "Birthplace". He held a succession of municipal offices, and was one of two chamberlains of town accounts. In 1557 (?) he married Mary Arden, a daughter of a far away branch of a good family; she inherited fifty acres of land and a house at Wilmcote, and other property. After the birth of children who died young, came William, baptized on 26 April, 1564. His father, still prospering, was chief magistrate in 1568: that year came licensed play-actors to Stratford—"The Queen's," and "The Earl of Worcester's". But after 1572 the affairs of the father turned gradually to the worse; he mortgaged the property near Wilmcote in 1578; he fell into debt, and in 1586 ceased to be an alderman. His family had increased while his fortunes declined.