"Essay on Milton" (VIII, 347).—Macaulay.
"The Age of Milton" ("Handbooks of English Literature ").—Masterman.
Masson's annotated edition of Milton's poems is invaluable for the student's use.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
(1564–1616)
Comparatively little is known of Shakespeare's life. His education was slight, with but "small Latin and less Greek," as his friend Ben Jonson puts it. There is little doubt that the financial depression of the times brought poverty upon his family, that he was charged with deer-stealing by a local landlord, Sir Thomas Lucy, and that he soon after went to London to seek his fortune, at the age of twenty-one, in 1585. There he seems to have held horses at the theater entrances, then to have served as "call-boy" for the players, and by 1592 had begun to patch and revise plays. By 1594 he was an actor, and made more money than by play-writing, although he is nowhere mentioned as more than passable on the stage. Original plays had already appeared from his pen, comedies and historical drama first, followed by the tragedies, and ending with "A Winter's Tale," and "The Tempest"; the order of appearance as usually accepted is given in X, 424. What with the success of his dramatic work, his acting, and the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," he was able to take shares in the Globe theater, invest in land and houses at Stratford, and at last retire, as he long had wished, to New Place, his Stratford residence, there to spend his last years as a prosperous landlord. He died in 1616 and was buried in the chancel of Trinity Church, on the banks of the Avon. On the stone floor over his grave is the familiar inscription:
"Good friend, for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare;
Blest be the man that spares thes stones,