Fuller, in his ‘Worthies’ (1662), attempted the first biographical notice of Shakespeare, with poor results. Aubrey, in his gossiping ‘Lives of Eminent Men,’ [361] based his ampler information on reports communicated to him by William Beeston (d. 1682), an aged actor, whom Dryden called ‘the chronicle of the stage,’ and who was doubtless in the main a trustworthy witness. A few additional details were recorded in the seventeenth century by the Rev. John Ward (1629-1681), vicar of Stratford-on-Avon from 1662 to 1668, in a diary and memorandum-book written between 1661 and 1663 (ed. C. A. Severn, 1839); by the Rev. William
Fulman, whose manuscripts are at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (with valuable interpolations made before 1708 by the Rev. Richard Davies, vicar of Saperton, Gloucestershire); by John Dowdall, who recorded his experiences of travel through Warwickshire in 1693 (London, 1838); and by William Hall, who described a visit to Stratford in 1694 (London, 1884, from Hall’s letter among the Bodleian MSS.) Phillips in his ‘Theatrum Poetarum’ (1675), and Langbaine in his ‘English Dramatick Poets’ (1691), confined themselves to elementary criticism. In 1709 Nicholas Rowe prefixed to his edition of the plays a more ambitious memoir than had yet been attempted, and embodied some hitherto unrecorded Stratford and London traditions with which the actor Thomas Betterton supplied him. A little fresh gossip was collected by William Oldys, and was printed from his manuscript ‘Adversaria’ (now in the British Museum) as an appendix to Yeowell’s ‘Memoir of Oldys,’ 1862. Pope, Johnson, and Steevens, in the biographical prefaces to their editions, mainly repeated the narratives of their predecessor, Rowe.
Biographers of the nineteenth century. Stratford topography.
In the Prolegomena to the Variorum editions of 1803, 1813, and especially in that of 1821, there was embodied a mass of fresh information derived by Edmund Malone from systematic researches among the parochial records of Stratford, the manuscripts accumulated by the actor Alleyn at Dulwich, and official papers of state preserved in the public offices in London (now collected in the Public Record Office). The available knowledge of Elizabethan stage history, as well as of Shakespeare’s biography, was thus greatly extended. John Payne Collier, in his ‘History of English Dramatic Poetry’ (1831), in his ‘New Facts’ about Shakespeare (1835), his ‘New Particulars’ (1836), and his ‘Further Particulars’ (1839), and in his editions of Henslowe’s ‘Diary’ and the ‘Alleyn Papers’ for the Shakespeare Society, while occasionally throwing some further light on obscure places, foisted on Shakespeare’s biography a series of ingeniously forged documents which have greatly perplexed succeeding biographers. [362] Joseph Hunter in ‘New Illustrations of Shakespeare’ (1845) and George Russell French’s ‘Shakespeareana
Genealogica’ (1869) occasionally supplemented Malone’s researches. James Orchard Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell-Phillipps) printed separately, between 1850 and 1884, in various privately issued publications, all the Stratford archives and extant legal documents bearing on Shakespeare’s career, many of them for the first time. In 1881 Halliwell-Phillipps began the collective publication of materials for a full biography in his ‘Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare;’ this work was generously enlarged in successive editions until it acquired massive proportions; in the seventh and last edition of 1887 it numbered near 1,000 pages. Mr. Frederick Gard Fleay, in his ‘Shakespeare Manual’ (1876), in his ‘Life of Shakespeare’ (1886), in his ‘History of the Stage’ (1890), and his ‘Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama’ (1891), adds much useful information respecting stage history and Shakespeare’s relations with his fellow-dramatists, mainly derived from a study of the original editions of the plays of Shakespeare and of his contemporaries; but unfortunately many of Mr. Fleay’s statements and conjectures are unauthenticated. For notices of Stratford, R. B. Wheler’s ‘History and Antiquities’ (1806), John R. Wise’s ‘Shakespere, his Birthplace and its Neighbourhood’ (1861), the present writer’s ‘Stratford-on-Avon to the Death of Shakespeare’ (1890), and Mrs. C. C. Stopes’s ‘Shakespeare’s Warwickshire Contemporaries’ (1897), may be consulted. Wise appends to his volume a tentative ‘glossary of words still used in Warwickshire to be found in Shakspere.’ The parish registers of Stratford have been edited by Mr. Richard Savage for the Parish Registers Society (1898-9). Nathan Drake’s ‘Shakespeare and his Times’ (1817) and G. W. Thornbury’s ‘Shakespeare’s England’ (1856) collect much material respecting Shakespeare’s social environment.
Specialised studies in biography. Useful epitomes.
The chief monographs on special points in Shakespeare’s biography are Dr. Richard Farmer’s ‘Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare’ (1767), reprinted in the Variorum editions; Octavius Gilchrist’s ‘Examination of the Charges . . . . of Ben Jonson’s Enmity towards Shakespeare’ (1808); W. J. Thoms’s ‘Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier?’ (1849), a study based on an erroneous identification of the poet with another William Shakespeare; Lord Campbell’s
‘Shakespeare’s Legal Acquirements considered’ (1859); John Charles Bucknill’s ‘Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare’ (1860); C. F. Green’s’ ‘Shakespeare’s Crab-Tree, with its Legend’ (1862); C. H. Bracebridge’s ‘Shakespeare no Deer-stealer’ (1862); William Blades’s ‘Shakspere and Typography’ (1872); and D. H. Madden’s ‘Diary of Master William Silence (Shakespeare and Sport),’ 1897. A full epitome of the biographical information accessible at the date of publication is supplied in Karl Elze’s ‘Life of Shakespeare’ (Halle, 1876; English translation, 1888), with which Elze’s ‘Essays’ from the publications of the German Shakespeare Society (English translation, 1874) are worth studying. A less ambitious effort of the same kind by Samuel Neil (1861) is seriously injured by the writer’s acceptance of Collier’s forgeries. Professor Dowden’s ‘Shakspere Primer’ (1877) and his ‘Introduction to Shakspere’ (1893), and Dr. Furnivall’s ‘Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere,’ are all useful summaries of leading facts.
Aids to study of plots and text. Concordances. Bibliographies.
Francis Douce’s ‘Illustrations of Shakespeare’ (1807, new edit. 1839), ‘Shakespeare’s Library’ (ed. J. P. Collier and W. C. Hazlitt, 1875), ‘Shakespeare’s Plutarch’ (ed. Skeat, 1875), and ‘Shakespeare’s Holinshed’ (ed. W. G. Boswell-Stone, 1896) are of service in tracing the sources of Shakespeare’s plots. Alexander Schmidt’s ‘Shakespeare Lexicon’ (1874) and Dr. E. A. Abbott’s ‘Shakespearian Grammar’ (1869, new edit. 1893) are valuable aids to a study of the text. Useful concordances to the Plays have been prepared by Mrs. Cowden-Clarke (1845), to the Poems by Mrs. H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1875), and to Plays and Poems, in one volume, with references to numbered lines, by John Bartlett (London and New York, 1895). [364] A ‘Handbook Index’ by J. O. Halliwell (privately printed 1866) gives lists of obsolete words and phrases, songs, proverbs, and plants mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. An unprinted glossary prepared by Richard Warner between 1750 and 1770 is at the British Museum (Addit. MSS.