not far away from Stratford, where Leicester entertained the Queen with such pomp and magnificence.

Surrounding Stratford were other small villages, and one, called Shottery, was often visited by the youthful Shakespeare, for here lived the idol of his heart, Anne Hathaway.*

*ANNE HATHAWAY.

[Attributed to Shakespeare, and originally addressed, "To the idol of my eyes and delight of my heart."]

To shame bright gems Anne hath a way.

But were it to my fancy given

To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven;
For though a mortal made of clay,
Angels must love Anne Hathaway;

The authorship is not clearly ascertained.

† Anne is pronounced Ann.

When Shakespeare was eighteen and Anne Hathaway twentyfive they were married. Three children were born to them, Susannah, Hamnet, and Judith.

Shakespeare, four years after his marriage, went to London. Various stories are told of his life here, but for six years after he left Stratford there are no records of his actions. When he next flashes upon us he is dazzling the London world with his brilliant genius. The numerous play-writers who had before this been found sufficient to entertain the Queen and her courtiers now became jealous of this superior genius. Greene said to his fellow play-writers:

"There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country."

At this time Blackfriars was the only theatre in London, and of this Shakespeare soon became manager. When the Globe theatre was started on the opposite side of the Thames, Shakespeare became manager and proprietor of that also. He acquired wealth, and after a long connection with the stage he retired to Stratford, where he had purchased a large estate and built a stately mansion, known as "New Place." Hither he brought his parents to spend their declining days, and here, surrounded by his family, he wrote his last plays. He died on his fifty-second birthday, the 23d of April, 1616, and was buried at the little church in Stratford. As if to seal forever to an inquiring world all that was known of Shakespeare, over his grave was placed a tablet with the following forbidding inscription:

"Good friend, for Jesvs sake forbeare

To digg the dyst encloased heare;

Bleste be ye man yt spares these stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones."

"New Place," his last residence, is demolished, but the house

She hath a way so to control,

To rapture the imprisoned soul,

And sweetest heaven on earth display,
That to be heaven, Anne hath a way;
She hath a way,

Anne Hathaway;

To be heaven's self, Anne hath a way!

in which Shakespeare was born still stands in Stratford, with various relics of the daily life of its early occupants.

To Ben Jonson, a brother dramatist of Shakespeare's, we are indebted for many hints concerning the life of the great poet and dramatist. Jonson in his honest fashion says: "I loved the man, and do honor to his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature: had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary to 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 pardoned."

Spenser's praise of Shakespeare is even more appreciative of his intellectual qualities:

"And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made

To mock herself and Truth to imitate."

Jonson and Spenser are the only writers of Shakespeare's time who seemed to have in any degree appreciated the great genius among them. He lived too close upon the time for the mass of the people to appreciate or see his greatness.

His first poems were not dramatic, but, from the teeming imagination which they display, might, of themselves, have given him high rank in the literature of that day. But his wonderful dramas so far surpassed his poems that the latter have almost escaped the notice of the general reader. His sonnets, a hundred and fifty-four in number, seem to have been the receptacle of his more sacred personal feelings, but what phase of his life's history they express is unknown. Their tone is almost invariably sad.

His first dramatic writings were historic, or, rather, they consisted of the recasting of old plays of a historic nature, many of them taken from the less skilful hands of his brother dramatists.*

* Hence Greene's complaint of the "upstart crow" who had appeared among them "beautified with (their) feathers," though, in fact, Shakespeare had simply beautified their feathers. He cared little who should have the glory of the work, for none of all the exceedingly careless dramatists of that day were more careless of fame than he. Not a single original manuscript of any of his works remains; not a sonnet or a letter, even, in the handwriting of Shakespeare. Nothing but his will remains in manuscript,

Shakespeare's plays cannot be classed under the three distinct heads of Tragedies, Comedies, Histories. Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth are tragedies founded on semi-historical subjects; Much Ado About Nothing and Taming of the Shrew are distinctly comedies; others are a mingling of the tragic and comic elements. The plays founded upon purely historic subjects are King John, Richard II., Henry IV., Henry V., Henry VI., Richard III., and Henry VIII.

The sources from which Shakespeare obtained material for his plays are numerous. Holinshed and Hall seem to have furnished his historic information, while many of his plays derived from fictional sources are based upon old chronicles, Italian romances, and older plays.

The first edition of Shakespeare's works, known as the Folio edition, was made in 1623, by Heminge and Condell. In this edition is prefixed a tribute of praise from Ben Jonson, from which the following lines are quoted:

"Soule of the age,

The applause! delight! the wonder of the stage.

How far thou didst our Lily outshine

Or sporting Kid, or Marlowe's mighty line.

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,

From thence to honor thee, I would not seek

For names, but call forth thundering

Euripides, and Sophocles to us.

schilus,

Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life againe, to hear thy buskin treade
And Shake-a-stage, or when thy socks are on
Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe
To whom scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not for an age, but for all time,
And all the Muses still were in their pri::,

When, like Apollo, he came forth to warme
Our eares, or, like a Mercury, to charme!
Nature, herself, was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven to fit
As since she will vouchsafe no other Wit.
Yet must I not give Nature all. Thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part,
For though the poet's master Nature be,
His art doth give the fashion.

For a great Poet's made as well as borne.

And such wert thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well formed and true filed lines,

In each of which he seems to Shake-a-lance,
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James.

Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage

Or influence, chide or cheere the drooping stage,

Which since thy flight fro hence hath mourned like night
And despaires day, but for thy volume's light.

The death of Shakespeare left BEN JONSON (1573-1637) sovereign of the English stage. He had all the learning which Shakespeare is said to have lacked. He was, indeed, the most learned dramatist of the age, and did more than any other to give to the drama its proper direction. Without the genius of Shakespeare, he possessed a vigorous mind, and labored industriously in his vocation. A fine classical scholar, he tried to make the English drama conform to the rules of the Greek dramatists. His style is heavy, and shows study and labor. Nothing is spontaneous, as in Shakespeare or Beaumont and Fletcher.

His first original play, Every Man in His Humor, was at first pronounced a failure and rejected by the manager of the theatre. But Shakespeare, it is said, being present and noticing the disappointment