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To his mother the poet granted the life-rent of one of them, but she did not long survive her husband, and in 1608 she too passed away. In March 1603 Queen Elizabeth closed her long and glorious reign. Exactly a year later, i.e. in March 1604, James I. made his State entry into London, and on that occasion nine actors belonging to the King's Players walked in the procession, each clad in a scarlet robe. First on the list, stands the name of William Shakespeare. In 1605 William D'Avenant was christened, the son of John D'Avenant of the Crown Inn, and Shakespeare stood as godfather. This babe was afterwards to become celebrated in literature as a Restoration dramatist, under the name of Sir William D'Avenant.

Marriage of Susanna Shakespeare.-That Shakespeare was not only a capable but even a keen man of business has frequently been asserted. Of this no better proof is needed than the investments he chose for his money. Land or house property was invariably his preference. In one case, however, he deviated from his rule, when in 1605 he purchased the unexpired term of thirty-one years of a ninety-two years' lease of a portion of the tithes of Stratford and district. Susanna Shakespeare, the poet's eldest daughter, was married in June 1607 to Dr John Hall of Stratford, who was yet to achieve fame as a physician and as author of a medical work of note in its day-Select Observations. The poet was tenderly attached to her and to her husband. This is proved by the terms of his will. To them he left the bulk of his property and appointed them the executors of his estate, besides entrusting to them the care of his wife.

Shakespeare retires to Stratford.-In 1611 Shakespeare appears to have left London and retired to Stratford. His life had been a strenuously busy one, and he may have felt the approach of premature old age. Besides, his dramatic work was complete. With that calm, common-sense insight into the inmost soul of things native to him, he may have realised that his plays constituted "a full-orbed whole,” that his creative period was ended, and that any additions to his works might only weaken not strengthen his hold on the public. From 1611 to 1616 he lived the life of a Warwickshire country gentleman, attending to his property and paying

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periodical visits to London. In 1613 his third brother, Richard, died, followed eighteen months later by the poet's intimate friend, John Combe. Whether or not Shakespeare regarded these as warnings to set his house in order, whether or not he felt old age approaching, is unknown, but he seems to have had the idea that his life was not likely to reach the allotted span. Early in January 1616 he gave orders to prepare his will, just a week or two before his younger daughter Judith's marriage to Thomas Quiney, vintner, son of that Richard Quiney whose letter to the poet with respect to the loan of a sum of money is still extant. Almost before the will could be cngrossed and the legal formalities completed, he was stricken down, and on the 23rd April 1616 the light of life. for him went out, who more than any other son of man that ever lived has a prescriptive right to the title, "the intellectual monarch of the human race."

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Signature of Shakespeare from the deed mortgaging his house in Blackfriars, on March 11, 16123, now in the British Museum.

The Growth of Shakespeare's Genius.-The development of the genius of William Shakespeare should be traced altogether independent of the facts of his career. We have therefore

preferred to tell the story of his life first, thereafter to trace the growth of his many-sided mind in his dramas. Shakespeare is unquestionably the most extraordinary intellectual being the world has known. His genius consisted in the absolute equality or equipoise which existed between his imaginative and his intellectual natures. Had either been present in larger measure than the other, he might have become a profound philosopher or a great poet, but he never would have risen to the supreme heights of a Hamlet, an Othello, a Macbeth and a Lear.

Shakespeare's genius, therefore, developed with steady and equable persistence along the parallel lines of supreme imaginative

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Facsimile of a letter from Richard Quiney to Shakespeare, soliciting a loan, 1598.

faculty and supreme intellectual capacity. To the former we owe his marvellous works; to the latter his equally marvellous fund of knowledge.

Shakespeare's Productive Period may be said to have lasted about twenty years-in other words, from circa 1591-circa 1611— and falls naturally into four great epochs or divisions. These are:

CHRONOLOGY OF THE PLAYS.

I. THE EPOCH OF HIS EARLY WORK, 1591-1593.

When his touch was still to some extent uncertain, and his art was still susceptible to influence from such powerful writers as Marlowe and Lyly.

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II. THE EPOCH OF HIS MATURING ART-THE PERIOD of the

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GREAT "COMEDIES AND THE "HISTORIES," 1594-1601.

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III. THE EPOCH OF HIS MATURE ART-THE PERIOD OF THE GREAT PROBLEM PLAYS, 1602-1609.

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Intermediate Epoch of the Sonnets, 1608-1609.

IV. THE EPOCH OF REPOSEFUL CONTEMPLATION, 1610-1611. The Tempest, 1611.

Cymbeline, 1610.

The Winter's Tale, 1611.

Plays completed by Others after his Retirement.
Cardenio, 1611.

Henry VIII., 1612.

Two Noble Kinsmen, 1612.

Such is a sketch of the development of Shakespeare's genius as furnished to us by the internal evidence of the works themselves. Let us now proceed to the examination of that play to which our study is more especially to be devoted in this volume.

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