[Born at Stratford-on-Avon, 1564. Died there, 1616. Aged 52.]
William Shakspeare stands at the head of those whose intellectual
domain is the spirit of man. This is the master character of his mind,
to which poetry is in him an accidental direction. His insight into man
is his title to universal interest. He is the chief painter of humanity
that the world has seen, combining, at once, perfect intimate knowledge
of human nature, and perfect creative power of representation. The drama
had suddenly awakened in his country, and he obeyed the instinct of his
time, the poetic bent of which was created for him, as he for it. There
were with him, before him, and immediately after him, great poets, with
whom the dramatic elements existed in high native strength and beauty;
but in him alone are those elements mastered, so as to produce entire
works of art, complete in power, and in consistent, though not regular,
form. Sharing the intuition of Aristotle, which makes the action in the
play the root out of which the characters and all else grow, he directs
the stream of events as connectedly as it flows in the human world; and,
as in the world, so in his inspired writing--agents appear born for
their work, as the work to do seems to offer itself to the agents. All
beauties of language, all flights of poetry, all particular scenes and
speeches, powerful and impressive as they may be, are merely
subordinate. No character, how exquisitely or elaborately soever
conceived and finished, is drawn for itself; but one and all are
relative to the scope of the play and to one another. He seems to have
undertaken a great task, and to be seriously and solely intent upon
advancing to its fulfilment. No form of human life is foreign to him;
the most heroic and the humblest, the most illustrious and the most
obscure, of all times, in all places, are in presence before him. He
seizes the spirit of time, place, and theme. Natural, preternatural,
light, weighty, laughter, tears, terror, are all alike to him---all
under his mastery, and flung forth with free power. Grace and gigantic
strength, are spirits equally at his bidding. The learned and the
unlearned are both attracted by his spell. The ignorant feel the
fascination, the erudite have never exhausted the study. His country,
with her innumerable titles to renown, ranks amongst the highest his
great name. With school instruction of the most ordinary kind, by
universal and unerring observation, by profound and intense meditation
of men, with the creative power of the highest imagination, he gave out,
spontaneously, works of that kind whose study makes men learned: and
they are so viewed and studied by all civilized nations, every day more
and more, at home and abroad. In him England competes for the crown of
poetical glory with all other nations of old or modern fame. She has had
other great poets, but they all, besides their own natural offerings,
have brought poetry from other lands and languages, into their own. In
him alone she feels, that what she displays SHE has produced. Little is
known of the life of William Shakspeare.
[From the well-known monumental bust in the church at
Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakspeare lies buried. It was executed by an
artist named Gerard Johnson, very soon after the death of Shakspeare,
and erected between 1616 and 1620. The original is in common
limestone, and was painted to resemble life. The eyes were a light
hazel, the hair and beard auburn: the doublet was scarlet, and the
loose gown black. It was repainted precisely in the same manner in