Shakespeare drew up his will on the 25th of March. As we have already said, it is still in existence, and is reproduced in facsimile in the twenty-fourth volume of the German Shakespeare Year-book.

The fact that it was dictated, and the extreme shakiness of the signature at the foot of the three lengthily detailed folio pages, prove that Shakespeare was very ill when his will was made.

His daughter Susanna is the principal heiress. Judith receives £150 ready money and £150 more after the lapse of three years, under certain conditions. These are the principal bequests. Joan Hart, his sister, is remembered in various ways. She is to receive five pounds in ready money and all his clothes. Her three sons are separately mentioned, although Shakespeare cannot remember the baptismal name of the second, and are to have five pounds each. To his granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall, he leaves his silver plate. Ten pounds is to go to the poor of Stratford, and his sword to Thomas Combe. Various good burghers of the town, including Hamlet Sadler, after whom Shakespeare's son was named, are left twenty-six shillings and eightpence each, wherewith to buy a ring in memory of the deceased. A line inserted later bequeaths a similar sum for a similar purpose to the three actors with whom Shakespeare was most intimately associated in his late company, and whom he calls "my comrades"-John Heminge, Richard Burbage, and Henry Condell. As is well known, it is to the first and last of these three that we owe the first Folio edition, containing nineteen of Shakespeare's plays which would otherwise have been lost to us.

A peculiar psychological interest attaches to the following features of the will.

In the first place, the much discussed and remarkable fact that in making his last will Shakespeare apparently entirely forgot his wife. Not until it was completed and read aloud to him did he remember that she, who would receive, of course, the legal widow's share, should at least be named; and then, between the last lines, he has inserted: "Item, I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture." The poverty of the gift is the more obvious when we recall how Shakespeare's father-in-law remembered his wife in his will.

It is also significant, more especially as it was contrary to the custom of the times, that not a single member of Mrs. Shakespeare's family was mentioned in the will. The name Hathaway does not occur, although it is frequently mentioned in the wills of Shakespeare's descendants; in that of Thomas Nash, for instance, and of Susanna's daughter Elizabeth, who became Lady Barnard by her second marriage. The inference is plain, that Shakespeare was on very unfriendly terms with his wife's family.

The next peculiarity is that Shakespeare never refers to his position as a dramatic writer, nor makes any allusion to books,

manuscripts, or papers of any kind, as forming part of his property. This absence of all concern for his poetical reputation is in complete accord with the sovereign contempt for posthumous fame which we have already observed in him.

Finally, it is not without significance that there was neither poet nor author mentioned among those to whom Shakespeare left money for the purchase of that ordinary token of friendship, a ring to be worn as a memento. It would seem as though he felt himself under no obligation to any of his fellow-authors, and had nothing to thank them for. This neglect is quite in harmony with the contempt he always displayed for his brother craftsmen when he had occasion to represent them upon the stage. He may have been willing enough to drink in company with Ben Jonson, the honest and envious friend of so many years' standing, but he had no more depth of affection for him than for any other of the dramatists and lyric poets among whom his lot had been cast. As Byron says of Childe Harold-he was one among them, not of them.

He lingered on for four weeks, and then he died.

He had probably completed his fifty-second year the day before, thus dying at the same age as Molière and Napoleon. He had lived long enough to finish his work, and the mighty turbulent river of his life came to an end among the sands, in the daily drop, drop, drop.1

A monument was erected by his family in Stratford church before the year 1623. Below the bust is an inscription, probably of Dr. Hall's composition. The first two lines liken him, in badly constructed Latin, to a Nestor for judgment, a Socrates for genius, and a Virgil for art.2

We could imagine a more appropriate epitaph.

It is not altogether correct to say that Shakespeare died on the same day as Cervantes. True, they both died on the 23rd of April 1616, but the Gregorian calendar was then in use in Spain, while England was still reckoning by the Julian. there is an actual difference of ten days therefore.

2 "Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem arte Maronem,

Terra tegit, populus moeret, Olympus habet."

XXVII

CONCLUSION

EVEN a long human life is so brief and fugitive that it seems little short of a miracle that it can leave traces behind which endure through centuries. The millions die and sink into oblivion and their deeds die with them. A few thousands so far conquer death as to leave their names to be a burden to the memories of school-children, but convey little else to posterity. But some few master-minds remain, and among them Shakespeare ranks with Leonardo and Michael Angelo. He was hardly laid in his grave than he rose from it again. Of all the great names of this earth, none is more certain of immortality than that of Shakespeare.

An English poet of this century has written:

The monarch of mankind! they are proud words those, but they do not altogether over-estimate the truth. He is by no means the only king in the intellectual world, but his power is unlimited by time or space. From the moment his life's history ceases his far greater history begins. We find its first records in Great Britain, and consequently in North America; then it spread among the German-speaking peoples and the whole Teutonic race, on through the Scandinavian countries to the Finns and the Sclavonic races. We find his influence in France, Spain, and Italy; and now, in the nineteenth century, it may be traced over the whole civilised world.

His writings are translated into every tongue and all the languages of the earth do him honour.

Not only have his works influenced the minds of readers in every country, but they have moulded the spiritual lives of

thinkers, writers and poets; no mortal man, from the time of the Renaissance to our own day, has caused such upheavals and revivals in the literatures of different nations. Intellectual revolutions have emanated from his outspoken boldness and his eternal youth, and have been quelled again by his sanity, his moderation, and his eternal wisdom.

It would be far easier to enumerate the great men who have known him and owed him nothing than to reckon up the names of those who are far more indebted to him than they can say. All the real intellectual life of England since his day has been stamped by his genius, all her creative spirits have imbibed their life's nourishment from his works. Modern German intellectual life is based, through Lessing, upon him. Goethe and Schiller are unimaginable without him. His influence is felt in France through Voltaire, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Vigny. Ludovic Vitet and Alfred de Musset were from the very first inspired by him. Not only the drama in Russia and Poland felt his influence, but the inmost spiritual life of the Sclavonic story-tellers and brooders is fashioned after the pattern of his imperishable creations. From the moment of the regeneration of poetry in the North he was reverenced by Ewald, Oehlenschläger, Bredahl, and Hauch, and he is not without his influence upon Björnson and Ibsen.

This book was not written with the intention of describing Shakespeare's triumphant progress through the world, nor of telling the tale of his world-wide dominion. Its purpose was to declare and prove that Shakespeare is not thirty-six plays and a few poems jumbled together and read pêle-mêle, but a man who felt and thought, rejoiced and suffered, brooded, dreamed, and created.

Far too long has it been the custom to say, "We know nothing about Shakespeare;" or, "An octavo page would contain all our knowledge of him." Even Swinburne has written of the intangibility of his personality in his works. Such assertions have been carried so far that a wretched group of dilettanti has been bold enough, in Europe and America, to deny William Shakespeare the right to his own life-work, to give to another the honour due to his genius, and to bespatter him and his invulnerable name with an insane abuse which has re-echoed through every land.

It is to refute this idea of Shakespeare's impersonality, and to indignantly repel an ignorant and arrogant attack upon one of the greatest benefactors of the human race, that the present attempt has been made.

It is the author's opinion that, given the possession of fortyfive important works by any man, it is entirely our own fault if we know nothing whatever about him. The poet has incorporated his whole individuality in these writings, and there, if we can read aright, we shall find him.

The William Shakespeare who was born at Stratford-on-Avon in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who lived and wrote in London in her reign and that of James, who ascended into heaven in his comedies and descended into hell in his tragedies, and died at the age of fifty-two in his native town, rises a wonderful personality in grand and distinct outlines, with all the vivid colouring of life from the pages of his books, before the eyes of all who read them with an open, receptive mind, with sanity of judgment and simple susceptibility to the power of genius.