SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE, &c. OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. WRITTEN BY MR. ROWE. IT of excellent men, especially of those whom their wit and learning have made famous, to deliver some account of themselves, as well as their works, to porterity. For this reason, how fond do we see some people of discovering any little personal story of the great men of antiquity! their families, the common accidents of their lives, and even their shape, make, and features, have been the subject of critical inquiries. How trifling soever this curiosity may seem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly satisfied with an account of any remarkable person, till we have heard him described even to the very clothes he wears. As for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an author may sometimes conduce to the better understanding his book; and though the works of Mr. Shakspeare may seem to many not to want a comment, yet I fancy some little account of the man himself may not be thought improper to go along with them. B He 3 39299 , 3 kil, et 17! ) (RECAP) He was the son of Mr. John Shakspeare, and was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickthire, in April 1564. His family, as appears by the register and publick writings relating to that town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen. His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool, had so large a family, ten children in all, that though he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his own employment, He had bred him, it is true, for some time at a free school, where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was matter of: but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his affiftance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language. It is without controverfy, that in his works we scarce find any traces of any thing that looks like an imitation of the ancients. The delicacy of his taste, and the natural bent of his own great" genius, (equal, if not superior, to some of the best of theirs,) would certainly have led him to read and study them with in much pleafure, that fome of their fine images would naturally have infinuated themselves into, and bern mixed with, his own writings; so that his not copying at least something from thens, may be an argument of his never having read them. Whether his ignorance of the ancients were a disadvantage to bim or po, may admit of a dispute: for though the knowledge of them might have made him more correct, yet it is not improbable but that the regularity and deference for them, which would have attended that correctness, might have restrained some of that fire, impetuosity, and even beautiful extravagance, which we admire in Shakspeare: and I believe we are better pleased with those thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination supplied him so abundantly with, than if he had given us the most beautiful paffages out of the Greek and Latin poets, and that in the most agreeable manner that it was possible for a master of the English language to deliver them. Upon his leaving school, he feenis to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed to him; and in order to settle in the world after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of set. tlement he continued for some time, till an extravagance that he was guilty of forced him both out of his country, and that way of living which he had taken up; and though it seemed at first to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occasion of exerting one of the greatest geniuses that ever was known in dramatick poetry. He bad, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage, he B 2 made made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire, for some time, and shelter himself in London. It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is said to have made his firft acquaintance in the playhouse. He was received into the company then in being, at first in a very mean rank, but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, soon diftinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. His name is printed, as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of what sort of parts be used to play; and though I have inquired, I could never meet with any further account of him this way, than that the top of his performance was the Ghoit in his own Ham. let. I should have been much more pleased, to have learned from certain authority, which was the first play he wrote; it would be without doubt a pleasure to any man, curious in things of this kind, to see and know what was the first essay of a faney like Shakspeare's. Perhaps we are not to look for his begin. nings, like those of other authors, among their least perfect writings; art had so little, and nature fo large a Mare in what he did, that, for augħt I know, the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, and had the most fire and strength of ima. gination in them, were the beft. I would not be thought |