The Moral Character of Shakespeare. 35 appeals,' and assert that the author, as he was a as he was a happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together; and what he thought he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' * * * 'His wit can no more lie hid than it could be lost,' and the purchaser is advised to read him, therefore, again and again.' On the title there is a portrait by Martin Droeshout, a Dutch painter, who was naturalized by letters-patent nine years before Shakespeare's death, the correctness of which is vouched for by Ben Jonson as 'for Gentle Shakspeare cut.' 'O! could he but have drawn his wit As well in brass as he hath hit His face; the print would then surpass To these follow lines to the memory of my beloved author,' by Ben Jonson; 'Upon the lines and life of the famous Scenic Poet,' by Hugh Holland; and verses to his memory, by Leonard Digges and John Marston. Holland's lines seem to have been written shortly after Shakespeare's death. He says, Those hands which you so clapped go now and wring, You Britons brave; for done are Shakespeare's days, His days are gone that made the dainty plays Which made the Globe-of heaven and earth to ring.' * * Though his line of life went soon about, The life yet of his lines shall never out.' * Digges's lines show us that the monument was up in 1623: 'Shakespeare! at length thy pious fellows give The World thy works;-thy works, by which outlive When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look * * * * Till these, till any of thy volume's rest, Marston hints that the early death of the dramatist occasioned surprise : 'We wondered (Shakespeare) that thou went'st so soon Ben Jonson's poem is an elaborate critique. He confesses his book, his fame, and writings, To be such As neither man nor muse can praise too much.' Calls him the soul of the age,' 'my Shakespeare,' exalts him above the dramatists of former times and other countries, and says, disdaining the comparison, 'Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome * Shine forth thou star of poets; and with rage Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage, Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night, Ben Jonson's 'Works' were issued immediately after Shakespeare's death, in 1616. In Dec., 1623, Massinger's 'Bondman' was played at the Cockpit, Drury Lane, and it was printed early in 1624. W. Barkstead, author of 'Myrrha,' in a few commendatory lines, remarks:— And in the way of poetry now-a-days Of all that are called Works the best are plays.' And Joseph Taylor admits, in 1626, in his verses prefixed to Massinger's Roman Actor,' that of plays 'The old accepted are more than the new.' In 1630, John Taylor (the water poet) avers that— 'Spenser and Shakespeare did in art excel.' John Milton, then a student in Cambridge, aged 22, wrote, in 1630, an Epitaph of Shakespeare,' which must have attracted some attention, for it was prefixed to the second edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1632. It forms the first published verse of Milton, and runs thus : 'What needs, my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-y pointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such dull witness of thy name; Thou The Moral Character of Shakespeare. Thou-in our wonder and astoniment- That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.' 37 In 1632, as we have said, the second folio edition was issued, with these lines prefixed, and in the year after, Wm. Prynne published his 'Histrio-Mastix, the Player's Scourge,' in the Address' of which these words occur: 'Some play-books since I first undertook this subject are grown from quarto into folio, which yet bear so good a price and sale that I cannot but with grief relate it they are now new printed in far better paper than most octavo or quarto bibles, which hardly find such vent as they.' The only book to which this passage can allude is the Shakespeare second folio. In 1634 some visitors from Norwich to Stratford note, among things' worth observing,' 'A neat monument of that famous English poet, Mr. Wm. Shakespeare, who was born here.' On a tombstone not far from Shakespeare's we read, 'Here lyeth the body of John Hall, gent.; he married Susanna, daughter and coheir of Wm. Shakespeare, gent. He deceased Nov 25, Anno 1635, aged 60,' &c. On 6th August, 1637, Ben Jonson died. In his 'Discoveries,' published in 1640, we find him saying, in allusion to the preface to the first folio: 'I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted out a thousand, which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour. For I loved the man and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fantasy, brave notions and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.' 'His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. * But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.' * * * * * In 'A Banquet of Jests,' 1639, we find Stratford-uponAvon' mentioned as a town most remarkable for the birth of famous William Shakespeare.' In 1645 Milton, even after the closing of the theatres by his party, does not scruple to lead his L'Allegro' To the well-trode stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 'Susanna, 'Susanna, wife of John Hall, gent; the daughter of Wm. Shakespeare, gent. She deceased the 11th of July, A: 1649, aged 66,' and we read besides this, on her tombstone, 'Witty above her sex, but that's not all, In 1658 Sir Aston Cockaigne, born 1608, a friend of Massinger's, published his poems; in them there is an epigram on Dugdale's' Warwickshire,' 1656, in which, of course, Shakespeare was mentioned. Cockaigne's verse runs thus : 'Now Stratford-upon-Avon we would choose To our antiquary's merit some just praise,' &c. In 1662 Fuller's Worthies of England' were issued, a year after his decease, and therein we are told, 'Many were the wit-combats between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson: I behold them like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his performances; Shakespeare, like the latter, less in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all minds by the quickness of his wit and invention. His learning was very little. *So that Nature was all the art that was used on him.' * * * The Rev. John Ward, born 1629, was appointed vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon in 1662; in which year Shakespeare's daughter Judith (Quiney) died. He kept a diary, and the following jottings are copied from it :— 'Shakespeare had but two daughters, one whereof Mr. Hall, the physician, married, and by her had one daughter, to wit, the Lady Barnard, of Abingdon. I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all; he frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year; and for that had an allowance so large that he spent at the rate of 1,000l. a year, as I have heard. Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard; for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted. Remember to peruse Shakespeare's plays and be versed in them, that I may not be ignorant in that matter-whether Dr. Heylin [1660-1662] does well in reckoning up the dramatic poets which have been famous in England to omit Shakespeare.' John Aubrey, the gossip, about 1680, writes in his MSS. (Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford), 'Mr. Wm. Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon; his father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade, but when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style and make a speech. This William being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about 18, and was an actor at one of the playhouses and did act exceedingly well. He began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very low, and his plays took well. He was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit. He was wont to go to his native country once a year. I think I have been told that he left 2 or 3001. per ann. there and thereabout to a sister. The Moral Character of Shakespeare. 39 sister. Though as Ben Jonson says of him that he had but little Latin and less Greek, he understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country.-From Mr. Beeston.' The Rev. Wm. Fulman, who died June, 1688, bequeathed his MSS. to Rev. Richard Davies, rector, Sapperton, who made additions to them. He died June, 1708, and the MSS. were presented to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Under Shakespeare we find the following: 'Wm. S., born, &c., about 1563-4. *Much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir .. Lucy, who had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country to his great advancement, but his revenge was so great, that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man, and that in allusion to his name bore three louses rampant for his arms. From an actor of plays he became a composer. He died April 23, 1616, ætat 53, probably at Stratford, for there he is buried, and hath a monument (Dugdale, p. 520), on which he lays a heavy curse upon any one who shall remove his bones. He 'died a papist.' On April 10th, 1693, one Dowdall wrote to Mr. Edward Southwell a 'Description of several places in Warwickshire :' 'The first remarkable place,' he says, 'in this county that I visited was Stratford-super-Avon, where I saw the effigies of our English tragedian, Mr. Shakespeare, &c. The clerke that showed me this church is above 80 years old; he says that this Shakespeare was formerly in this town bound apprentice to a butcher, but that he run from his master to London, and there was received into the playhouse as a servitor, and by this means he had an opportunity to be what he afterwards proved. He was the best of his family, but the male line is extinguished; not one for fear of the curse abovesaid dare touch his grave stone, though his wife and daughters did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him.' About the year 1700, Betterton, the actor, made inquiries regarding the dramatist, and communicated the materials to Nicholas Rowe, who, in 1709, issued the first of that long line of constructive biographies which have so be-puzzled all searchers after the truth of the everyday life of Shakespeare, and that upon which, more or less, all the others are founded. With that work we shall not now concern ourselves, but shall only farther quote from the Oldys MSS. [1687-1761] the following other early notice of Shakespeare: Our poet was the son of Mr. John Shakespeare, woolstapler. He was the eldest of ten children, born April 23, 1563. Was brought up in his youth to his father's business; married very young the daughter of one Hathaway, a substantial yeoman in his own neighbourhood. 'Tis a tradition descended from old Betterton, that he was concerned with a parcel of deer-stealers in robbing Sir Thos. Lucy's park, at Charlecot, which drove him to London among the players. The Queen had his plays often acted before her, and showed him some most gracious marks of favour, and King James gave him and others a patent for a company in 1603. See it in Rymers Foedera. Thomas [Henry ?] Wriothesley, E. of Southampton, gave him 1,000l. to complete a purchase.' It has not been without a purpose that we have taken our readers by this wide detour through this maze of genealogical details, publications of books, registrations of births, marriages, and |