HELPS TO STUDY.
Biographical and Historical: William Shakespeare, the greatest of English poets, indeed one of the greatest of the world's poets, was born in 1564 at Stratford-on-Avon. As a young man of twenty-two, after his marriage with Anne Hathaway, he went up to London, where he became connected with theaters, first, tradition says, by holding horses at the doors. The next twenty years he spent in London as an actor, and in writing poems and plays, later becoming a shareholder as well as an actor. The last ten years of his life were spent at Stratford, where he died at the age of fifty-two. This was the time of Queen Elizabeth and is known as the Elizabethan Age. It was the age richest in genius of all kinds, but especially in the creation of dramatic literature.
In the foregoing selection, Portia, disguised as a lawyer, makes this famous speech in pleading the cause of Antonio against Shylock.
Notes
"strained"--restrained "shows"--is the emblem of
Words and Phrases for Discussion.
"temporal power"
"sceptered sway"
"Earthly power doth then show likest
God's When mercy seasons justice"
AS YOU LIKE IT, ACT II, SCENE 7.