"And though thou had'st small Latin, and less Greek, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova, dead, To life again, to hear thy buskin tread And shake a stage: or, when thy socks were on. Of all that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome, -BEN JONSON. 1623. SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. DURING the past hundred years many attempts have been made at writing a life of Shakespeare. Patient research has brought to light much interesting material and many important facts which have greatly enlarged the limited knowledge of the poet's doings which was extant when Steevens wrote: "All that is known with any degree of certainty regarding Shakespeare, is-that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon,-married, and had children there, went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote poems and plays,-returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried." The facts which have been added have, however, merely increased the evidence of these plain outlines, without casting much new light upon that which would best enable us to understand his works and the spirit in which he wrote, that is-his actual personality. We do not grasp the full value of any literary work till we are enabled, by the knowledge which we have of the writer's personality, to put ourselves to some extent in his place. It is to this desire to understand thoroughly and enter into the spirit of a writer's work, and not to mere morbid curiosity, that we may impute the public demand for biographical details of popular authors. In the works of most writers the subjectivity of their material and style reveals their point of view and shows us their actual ideas. The highest canons of dramatic art, however, demand absolute objectivity of treatment. of treatment. An author's personality, introduced and plainly recognized by an audience in a drama, destroys the perspective and kills the illusion as surely as would the introduction of a Queen Anne cottage in the scenery of a Roman play. 66 Shakespeare, fully conscious of the demands of his art, has so effectually hidden his own personality and feelings in his work that it has come to be generally believed that they are not to be found there. Because his art is so exquisite shall we deem him an artificer who chisels puppets, instead of an artist who molds his heart and soul into form and figure? Because he does not wail like Heine and tell us that Out of my own great woes I make my little songs," may we not by searching find him out? I am convinced that we may, and that while the investigation of moldy records and parish registers has given us some idea of how he bought and sold property, sued his debtors, etc., the real man, the poet and philosopher, lover and hater, friend and foe, may be discerned only by a critical and sympathetic study of his own works. His dramas are so artistically objective, and his in dividuality so carefully hidden, that this would be an almost impossible task were it not for the great autobiographical value of the Sonnets, and the side lights which the story they contain throws upon his other works. In the Sonnets Shakespeare becomes entirely subjective; they were not meant for publication, and, looked at in a true light, are two series of poetic epistles: one to his friend, and one to his mis tress. The earliest mention we have of the Sonnets is in the year 1598, in Meres' " Palladis Tamia," where they are called, "his sugred sonnets amongst his private friends." There can be little doubt but that Meres refers to the Sonnets which we know, or, at least, to some portion of them. In 1599 two of the Sonnets, Nos. 138 and 144, appeared in a somewhat garbled form, in a collection of poems by various hands,-but all attributed to Shakespeare,-published by Wm. Jaggard, under the title of "The Passionate Pilgrim." We have no other record of any of the Sonnets till 1609, when the whole collection, as we know them, and a poem entitled "A Lover's Complaint," were published by Thomas Thorpe with the following title-page: "Shake-speares | sonnets. | Never before Imprinted. | At London | By G. Eld for T. T. and are to be solde by William Aspley. | 1609. " This edition was ushered to the world by Thorpe with the following dedication: "To the onlie Begetter of these insuing sonnets Mr. W. H. all happinesse and that eternitie promised by our |