After all allowances have been made for the inaccuracies of oral tradition, we may safely gather from those concerning Shakespeare some inferences which help to clothe the naked skeleton of the documented facts. It is clear that, within a generation after Shakespeare's death, common opinion both in Stratford and London recognized that in the actor and dramatist a great man had passed away, that he had been in a worldly sense highly successful, though starting from unpropitious beginnings, that he wrote with great swiftness and ease, and that in his personal relations he was gentle, kindly, genial, and witty. That the Evidence of the Sonnetsbailiff's son who returned to his native town as a prosperous gentleman, is to be identified with the actor and shareholder of the London theaters, and with the author of the plays and poems, it is difficult to see how there can remain any reasonable doubt; and, though the facts which prove this identity contain little to illuminate the vast intellect and soaring imagination which created Hamlet and Lear, they contain nothing irreconcilable with the personality, which these creations imply rather than reveal.
One further source of information about Shakespeare's personality has figured largely in some biographies. The Sonnets were published in 1609, evidently without Shakespeare's coöperation or consent, with a dedication by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, to a Mr. W. H., "the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets." All attempts to identify this Mr. W. H. have failed. He may have been merely the person who procured the manuscript for Thorpe, though the language of the dedication seems to imply that he was the young gentleman who is the subject of a considerable number of the poems. Of this young gentleman and of a dark lady who seems to have been the occasion of other of the sonnets, much has been written, but no facts of Shakespeare's life have been established beyond those which are obvious to every reader: that Shakespeare wrote admiring and flattering sonnets to a young man who is urged to marry (and who may have been the Earl of Southampton, or an unknown Mr. W. H., or another); and that he treats of an intrigue with some unknown woman. The identification of the young man of the first seventeen sonnets with other friends who are praised in later sonnets is not certain, though in some cases probable; and much research and conjecture have entirely failed to make clear the relations between the poet, the rival poet, the lady, and the friend. The Sonnets furnish us with no knowledge of Shakespeare's personal affairs, and only a meager basis even for gossip as to some of his experiences with men and women.
Another kind of inquiry has sought to discover in the sonnets not facts or incidents of Shakespeare's life, but indications of his emotional experiences. The results of such inquiry are manifestly outside the scope of this chapter. For their discussion, the reader must be referred to Professor Alden's introduction to the Tudor edition of the Sonnets. Shakespeare's personality as it is reflected from his works will also be considered in the concluding chapter of this volume. So much stress, however, has been placed on interpretations of the sonnets, and these have so often occupied an exaggerated place in his biography, that it may be worth while to remark that whether these lyrical poems are genuine and personal or are conventional and literary, and whether they make the poet more clearly discernible or not, they must certainly be taken not alone by themselves, but in connection with the dramas as affording us an impression of the man who wrote them. Evidence of the SonnetsOf the sonnets, it may be said in almost the same words just now used of the documents and traditions, that whether they contain much or little to illuminate the vast intellect and soaring imagination which created Hamlet and Lear, they contain nothing irreconcilable with the personality which these creations imply rather than reveal.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I.e., profession, used especially at that time of the profession of acting.
[2] See frontispieces in the Tudor Shakespeare to editions of Henry V (Droeshout original), King Lear (Ely Palace), Romeo and Juliet (Chandos), Pericles (Garrick Club bust), and The Tempest (Death-mask). The Stratford Monument and the Droeshout engraving are reproduced in the present volume.