feels instinctively that these supernatural entities could not speak, feel, or act otherwise than ShakeThe creative power of speare represents them. poetry was never manifested to such effect as in the corporeal semblances in which Shakespeare clad the spirits of the air. Its universal recognition. So mighty a faculty sets at naught the common limitations of nationality, and in every quarter of the globe to which civilised life has penetrated Shakespeare's power is recognised. All the world over, language is applied to his creations that ordinarily applies to beings of flesh and blood. Hamlet and Othello, Lear and Macbeth, Falstaff and Shylock, Brutus and Romeo, Ariel and Caliban are studied in almost every civilised tongue as if they were historic personalities, and the chief of the impressive phrases that fall from their lips are rooted in the speech of civilised humanity. To Shakespeare the intellect of the world, speaking in divers accents, applies with one accord his own words: How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in apprehension how like a god!' APPENDIX I. THE SOURCEs of BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE. THE scantiness of contemporary records of Shakespeare's career has been much exaggerated. An investigation extending over two centuries has brought together a mass of detail Contempo. rary records which far exceeds that accessible in the case of any abundant. other contemporary professional writer. Nevertheless, some important links are missing, and at some critical points appeal to conjecture is inevitable. But the fully ascertained facts are numerous enough to define sharply the general direction that Shakespeare's career followed. Although the clues are in some places faint, the trail never altogether eludes the patient investigator. First efforts in 1 Fuller, in his 'Worthies' (1662), attempted the first biographical notice of Shakespeare, with poor results. Aubrey, in his gossiping 'Lives of Eminent Men,' 1 based his ampler information on reports communicated to him biography. 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 'Compiled between 1669 and 1696; first printed in Letters from the Bodleian Library, 1813, and admirably re-edited for the Clarendon Press during the present year by the Rev. Andrew Clark (2 vols.) |