THE HOUSE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN.
We arrive now at the last name which we intend to introduce in our review of the literature of England at this period, and it is the greatest; perhaps the greatest which has yet diffused its glory over this or any other country. The genius of Shakespeare appears to penetrate into all departments of human knowledge, and his instincts possess a universal accuracy. Whether he describes the beauties of Nature at large, or enters the haunts of busy life, high or low, royal, noble, or plebeian, or sends his all-searching glance into the depths of the human mind, or the strange intricacies of human nature, we are equally astonished at the clearness of his perceptive faculties, and the justness of his conclusions. We shall not here discuss the various guesses, for such to a great degree they are, which have been indulged in by his host of critics and biographers, regarding his little known life. It is sufficient that we know that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564; that his father was in the Town Council, and a man of property; that William was said to have been apprenticed to a butcher, or that one of his father's trades was that of a butcher; that at the age of nineteen he married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior; that at the age of twenty-two he was driven by increasing poverty, and it is said through a disturbance about poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy's park, to London, where he became connected with the theatre, and so early as 1589 we find that he had written "Hamlet," if no other of his dramas, though none of them seem to have been published till 1597, eight years afterwards. The first of his poems, "Venus and Adonis," was printed in 1593, four years earlier, and the "Rape of Lucrece" in the following year. From that time to 1603, the year of the death of Elizabeth, a great number of his dramas was published, but "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Cymbeline," "The Winter's Tale," the "Tempest," "Troilus and Cressida," "Henry VIII.," "Coriolanus," "Julius Cæsar," and "Antony and Cleopatra," would appear to have been the glorious products of his ten or thirteen years of leisure in his native town. One of the first labours of his retirement seems to have been the collection of his Sonnets, for they were published in 1609.
We mention these facts here merely as historical data; because it will be necessary to notice his plays in the next centennial period of our history, in connection with the drama at large; but we shall confine our notice of Shakespeare on this occasion solely to his poetical character.
The poems of Shakespeare are "Venus and Adonis," "The Rape of Lucrece," "Sonnets," "A Lover's Complaint," and "The Passionate Pilgrim." The poems for the most part, if not altogether—"The Passionate Pilgrim" and some of the sonnets excepted—would appear to have been his earliest productions. He dedicates "Venus and Adonis" to Lord Southampton, and styles it "the first heir of my invention." This poem, "The Rape of Lucrece," and the "Lover's Complaint," bear marks of youthful passion. They burn with a voluptuous fire, yet they are at the same time equally prodigal of a masterly vigour, imagination, and the faculty of entering into and depicting the souls of others. They as clearly herald the great poet of the age, as a morning sun in July announces what will be its intensity at noon. The language, in its purity and eloquence, is so perfect that it might have been written, not in the days of Elizabeth, but in those of Victoria, and presents a singular contrast to that of Spenser. "The Passionate Pilgrim" is an extraordinary production; it has no thread, not even the slightest, of story or connection, and seems to be merely a stringing together of various passages of poetry, which he had struck off at different moments of inspiration, and intended to use in his dramas. Some of them indeed we find there. It opens with a commencement of the legend of "Venus and Adonis," apparently his first rude sketch of the poem he afterwards wrote more to his mind. It then breaks suddenly off with those well-known lines, beginning—
"Crabbed age and youth
Cannot live together;"
soon after as suddenly changes into—
"It was a lording's daughter, the fairest one of three;"
as abruptly gives us those charming stanzas opening with—