Stratford and the son of his friend Combe, who made an attempt to enclose the common field, which belonged to the corporation. The municipal authorities made vain efforts to enlist Shakespeare's sympathy on their side, but Shakespeare appears to have supported the rapacious landlord. The corporation was successful in the struggle. Shakespeare's health was failing at the beginning of 1616, and on 25th January he caused Francis Collins, a solicitor of Warwick, to draft his will, but the document was for the time left unsigned. According to a local tradition, a month or two later he entertained at his house two literary friends, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson. They had, it was reported, ‘a merry meeting,' but 'itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.' Whether this record be correct or not, there is little doubt that his illness recurred in March, and that, after revising the will which had been drafted in January, he then duly completed its execution. He died on Tuesday, April❘ 23, 1616, at the age of fifty-two. two days later, inside Stratford northern wall of the chancel. grave were inscribed the lines: He was buried, Church, near the Over the poet's Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare Before 1623 a monument by a London sculptor of Dutch birth, Gerard Johnson, was affixed to the wall overlooking the grave. It includes a halflength figure of the dramatist, whose hands are disposed as if in the act of writing. The inscription runs as follows: Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast? Aetatis 53. Die 23 Ap. Shakespeare was survived by his wife and two daughters. The widow died on August 6, 1623, at the age of sixty-seven, and was buried near the poet two days later. Both his daughters married. The younger, Judith, had become the wife of a neighbour's son, Thomas Quiney, two months before the poet's death (February 10, 1616). She was the mother of three sons, all of whom died young. Surviving husband, sons, and sister, she died at Stratford on February 9, 1662, in her seventy-seventh year. The elder daughter, Susanna, had married, in 1608, John Hall, a physician at Stratford. She was buried in Stratford Church, July 11, 1649, aged fifty-six. The inscription on her tombstone attests that she was endowed, in the opinion of her neighbours, with something of her father's wit and wisdom. Mrs Hall's only child, Elizabeth, was the last surviving descendant of the poet. She married twice, her first husband being Thomas Nash of Stratford (1593-1647); her second husband was Sir John Barnard (or Bernard) of Abington, Northamptonshire. Lady Barnard died childless at her husband's house at Abington, and was buried in the church there on February 17, 1670. Shakespeare's will was proved by John Hall, his son-in-law, and joint-executor with his daughter, Mrs Hall, in London on 22nd June following his death. It has been stated, on the strength of the religious exordium to the will, that Shakespeare died a Roman Catholic, but, in point of fact, the exordium was the conventional formula, and proves nothing respecting the testator's personal belief. Shakespeare's elder daughter, Susanna Hall, was made by the will mistress of New Place and practically of all the poet's property. To his wife, whose name did not appear in the original draft, Shakespeare left in the final draft only his second best bed and its furniture. There is some probability in the theory that his relations with her were not of a very cordial nature, but the slender bequest in the will cannot reasonably be taken as indicating a desire on the part of the poet to publish his indifference or dislike. It is likely that her age and ignorance of affairs unfitted her in the poet's eyes for the control of property, and she was accordingly committed to the care of his elder daughter. To his granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall, afterwards Lady Barnard, the poet bequeathed his plate, with the exception of a silver and gilt bowl, which went to his younger daughter Judith. The latter also received, with a tenement in Chapel Lane (in remainder to the elder daughter, £300. Among other legatees, each of the dramatist's fellow-actors, Heming, Burbage, and Condell, received a sum of 26s. 8d. wherewith to buy memorial rings. VIII. Of the thirty-seven plays of which Shakespeare was the author, only sixteen were published (in quarto) before his death. No less than twentyone remained in manuscript; but two of these, the second and third parts of Henry VI., had been issued in imperfect drafts, under the titles respectively of the Contention and the True Tragedy. Othello was the first of the unpublished plays to be issued after the poet's death; it appeared in 1622. In 1623 the first attempt was made to issue a complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. The two actor-friends of the dramatist, John Heming and Henry Condell, were mainly responsible for the venture, but the expenses were defrayed by a small syndicate of printers and publishers. Of these, the chief were the printers William Jaggard and his son Isaac. Their partners were the booksellers William Aspley, John Smethwick, and is The Edward Blount. Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard obtained on November 8, 1623, a license for the publication of sixteen of the twenty plays by Shakespeare that were not previously in print. The volume known as the First Folio seems to have been accessible to the public in the course of the same month. It included thirty-six plays; Pericles, though already in print, was omitted. On the titlepage was engraved the crude portrait by Martin Droeshout, which Ben Jonson, in lines printed on the fly-leaf, declared to hit the poet to the life. Commendatory verses included a splended eulogy by Ben Jonson and poems by Hugh Holland, Leonard Digges, and I. M.—perhaps Jasper Mayne. The dedication was signed by Heming and Condell, and was addressed to the brothers, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the Lord Chamberlain, and Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. In a succeeding address to the great variety of readers' the same writers declare that their object in undertaking the publication was solely to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.' The work is carelessly printed, and abounds in typographical errors. text, which in the case of twenty-one of the plays not accessible elsewhere, was drawn from more or less edited playhouse copies, and it is doubtful if in any instance the exact form in which a play came from Shakespeare's pen was presented in the volume. In the case of the fifteen plays that had previously appeared in quarto the folio text discloses numerous differences. The editors declared that the folio text was alone authentic, but this claim cannot be accepted without qualification. The imperfect quarto versions of the Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry V. are replaced in the folio by satisfactory texts; but the quarto texts of Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Richard II. are superior to those of the folio. Most of the great plays of which the sole version is preserved in the folio are defaced by corrupt passages. Such, notably, are Coriolanus, All's Well that Ends Well, and Macbeth. Nevertheless, the First Folio remains intrinsically the most valuable volume in English literature; perfect copies, which are rarely met with, fetch very high prices both in this country and America. The highest price paid at a public sale for a perfect copy is £1700; that sum was paid in London at Christie's salerooms, on July 11, 1899, by Mr B. B. Macgeorge of Glasgow. The folio was reprinted in 1632, and a third edition appeared in 1663 without serious change; but the third issue reappeared in the following year with an appendix of seven plays 'never before printed in folio.' The new pieces included Pericles, which had been published separately in quarto in Shakespeare's lifetime, and six other plays by other hands, which had also been published separately in Shakespeare's lifetime, and had been unjustifiably attributed to his pen by unscrupulous publishers, although it was obvious he had no hand in them. The names of the spurious plays were The London Prodigal, The History of Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, The Puritan Widow, A Yorkshire Tragedy, and The Tragedy of Locrine. A fourth edition of the folio appeared in 1685 with the spurious appendix. The editors of the First Folio anticipated the final and universal verdict of the character of Shakespeare's achievements when they wrote, 'These plays have had their trial already and stood out all appeals.' The laws of the classical drama, which Shakespeare's plays defied, still commanded respect in Shakespeare's day, but even lovers of the ancient ways acknowledged that the force of his genius had revealed new methods of dramatic art hitherto unsurpassed and unsuspected. Ben Jonson, a champion of classical theories of art, in commendatory verses prefixed to the First Folio, claimed that Shakespeare had put to shame the poets of Greece and Rome. Through the three centuries that have elapsed since the great dramatist reached the maturity of his powers, his reputation has steadily grown in volume. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were seasons of ebb or stagnation in the spread of his fame. After the Restoration public taste in England veered towards the French and classical dramatic models, and clumsy efforts were made to adapt Shakespeare's plays to the current vein of sentiment. Dryden, D'Avenant, Shadwell, Nathan Tate, and others boldly travestied Shakespeare's text in revised versions of his plays. But the eclipse of Shakespeare's vogue was partial and temporary, and the Restoration adaptations quickly sank into oblivion. On the continent of Europe a resolute endeavour was made in the eighteenth century to prove Shakespeare unworthy of the honour that was paid him by his fellow-countryVoltaire, the great French writer, who long dominated the taste of Europe, made desperate efforts to prove Shakespeare a barbarian, and his work a mass of indecency and incoherence, which was only occasionally illumined by the true spirit of poetry. But Voltaire's conclusions were powerfully disputed by the German critic Lessing, and when in course of time Shakespeare's works appeared in competent translations in the various languages of Europe, Voltaire's views ceased to influence European opinion. men. Throughout the nineteenth century Shakespeare's fame has steadily marched onwards as in triumphal progress, not only among his own countrymen, but among intelligent men and women of other countries. In Germany, Shakespeare's work is studied as closely and as enthusiastically as in England or America; and in France, Italy, and Russia reverence for it and him is increasing year by year. On the English stage the name of every actor and actress since Betterton, the great actor of the period of the Restoration, has been identified with Shakespearean parts, and for the last eighty years every actor or actress of ambition in Germany, France, or Italy has been well content to base his or her claim to reputation on the histrionic interpretation of Shakespearean rôles. It may consequently be asserted that in every quarter of the globe to which civilised life has penetrated Shakespeare's power is now recognised. It is universally allowed that in knowledge of human character, in wealth of humour, in depth of passion, in fertility of fancy, in command of all the force and felicity of language, and in soundness of judgment, he has no rival in the literature of any nation or epoch. His unassailable supremacy ultimately springs from the versatile working of his insight and intellect by virtue of which his pen limned with unerring precision almost every gradation of thought and emotion that animates the living stage of the world. His genius enabled him to give being in his pages to all the shapes of humanity that present themselves on the highway of life. So mighty a faculty thus sets at naught the common limitations of nationality and is acclaimed by the whole civilised world. SHAKESPEARE'S PORTRAITS.-According to Aubrey's account, Shakespeare was 'a handsome well-shaped man,' and it is to be regretted that no wholly satisfactory portrait of him exists. The rudely-carved bust on the monument in Stratford Church and the copperplate engraving on the title-page of the First Folio were honest endeavours to depict the poet's features, but are not remarkable as works of art. Both, moreover, were produced after the poet's death. Numerous paintings have from time to time during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries been claimed by owners or critics to be contemporary portraits of Shakespeare, but in no case has the claim been fully sustained. There is a likelihood, however, that the picture now in the Statford-on-Avon Memorial Gallery, and known as the Flower portrait' or the 'Droeshout painting,' may be the original painting on which Droeshout based his engraving in the First Folio. Of considerable interest, too, is the Chandos portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London (named after a former owner, the Duke of Chandos); this picture was painted in the first half of the seventeenth century, and was at one time in the possession of Sir William D'Avenant. The tradition that it was from the brush of Shakespeare's friend and fellow-actor, Richard Burbage, cannot be corroborated; it was doubtless painted for an admirer of the dramatist some years after his death, from somewhat fanciful verbal descriptions of his personal appearance. Dr BIBLIOGRAPHY.-In the eighteenth century Shakespeare was edited critically for the first time, and numerous efforts were made by a long succession of editors to free the text from the incoherences which disfigured the folio version. The earliest of the critical editors of Shakespeare was Nicolas Rowe, whose edition appeared in 1709. The poet Pope brought out an edition in 1725, and this was followed in 1733 by the work of Lewis Theobald, who proved himself a masterly emendator. Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition was published in 1744. Bishop Warburton revised Pope's edition in 1747. Johnson's edition appeared in 1765, and that of Edward Capell, the most industrious of all students of the text and contemporary literature, in 1768. The learned, although somewhat freakish, George Steevens greatly improved Dr Johnson's work in a reissue in 1773, which was often republished. In 1790 Edmund Malone completed an edition of high archæological value. In 1803 appeared the first variorum edition, in twenty-one volumes; this was prepared by Isaac Reed from notes made by George Steevens. The second variorum, mainly a reprint of the first, is dated in 1813; and the third and best, prepared by James Boswell the younger, the son of Dr Johnson's biographer, was published in 1821; it was largely based on material amassed by Malone. Of editions produced in the nineteenth century, the most valuable are those prepared by Alexander Dyce in 1857; by Nicolaus Delius, 1854-61; by Howard Staunton, 1868-70; and by the Cambridge editors, William George Clark and Dr Aldis Wright, 1863-66. The notes to the Cambridge edition deal, however, solely with textual variations. More recent complete annotated editions are The Temple Shakespeare, edited by Mr Israel Gollancz (40 vols. 12mo, 1894-96), and The Eversley Shakespeare, edited by Professor C. H. Herford, with good introductions (10 vols. 8vo, regul Elaborate materials for a biography were collected by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (7th ed. 1887). Mr F. G. Fleay, in his Shakespeare Manual (1876), in his Life of Shakespeare (1886), in his History of the Stage (1890), and in his Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama (1891), added for the first time much useful information respecting the history of the contemporary stage and Shakespeare's relations with fellow-dramatists. The latest general life of Shakespeare and account of his works is by the writer of the present article (1st ed. November 1898; illus. ed. December 1899; Students' ed. 1900). Wise For notices of Stratford, R. B. Wheler's History and Antiquities (1806), John R. Wise's Shakespeare, his Birthplace and its Neighbourhood (1861), the present writer's Stratford-on-Avon to the Death of Shakespeare (1890), and Mrs C. C. Stopes's Shakespeare s Warwickshire Contemporaries (1897) may be consulted. appends to his volume a tentative Glossary of Words still used in Warwickshire to be found in Shakespeare.' Nathan Drake's Shakespeare and his Times (1817) and G. W. Thornbury s Shakespeare's England (1856) collect much material respecting Shakespeare's social environment. Francis Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare (1807; new ed. 1839), Shakespeare's Library (ed. J. P. Collier and W. C. Hazlitt, 1875), Shakespeare's Plutarch (ed. Skeat, 1875), and Shakespeare's Holinshed (ed. W. G. BoswellStone, 1896) are of service in tracing the sources of Shakespeare's plots. Alexander Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon (1874) and Dr E. A. Abbott's Shakesperian Grammar (1869; new ed. 1893) are valuable aids to a study of the text. Useful concordances to the Plays have been prepared by Mrs Cowden-Clarke (1845), to the Poems by Mrs H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1875), and to Plays and Poems, in one volume, with references to numbered lines, by John Bartlett (London and New York, 1895). The publications of the (Old) Shakespeare Society (1841-53), of the New Shakspere Society (1874-93), and of the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft of Weimar (1865-1901) comprise many papers of value in the æsthetic, textual, historical, and biographical study of Shakespeare. The most important critical studies by Englishmen are Coleridge's Notes and Lectures (collected by T. Ashe, 1883), Hazlitt's Characters of Shakspere's Plays (1817), Professor Dowden's Shakspere, his Mind and Art (1875), Mr A. C. Swinburne's A Study of Shakespeare (1879). Reference may also be made with advantage to Thomas Spencer Baynes's Shakespeare Studies (1893), to Dr Ward's chapters on Shakespeare in his English Dramatic Literature (new ed. 1898), to Richard G. Moulton's Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1885), and to Mr F. S. Boas's Shakespeare and his Predecessors (1895). The essays on Shakespeare's heroines, respectively by Mrs Jameson in 1832 and Lady Martin in 1885, are pleasant reading. Among numerous German criticisms of Shakespeare, most interesting are the fragmentary notices in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and Wahrheit und Dichtung, Heine's Studies of Shakespeare's Heroines (Eng trans. 1895), and Kreyssig's Shakespeare-Fragen (Leipzig, 1871). Ulrici's Shakespeare's Dramatic Art and Gervinus's Commentaries, both of which are well known in English translations, are of comparatively smaller value. William Shakespeare, an attractive if somewhat fanciful treatise by the Danish writer Dr Georg Brandes, was published in an English translation (1898, 2 vols.). Among recent French critics of Shakespeare the most memorable are Guizot's Shakespeare et son Temps (1852); a rhapsody by the poet Victor Hugo (1864); and Alfred Mézières's Shakespeare, ses Œuvres et ses Critiques (1860), which is a saner appreciation. The latest and one of the best works on Shakespeare in Italian is Signior Federico Garlanda's Guglielmo Shakespeare: il Poeta e Uomo (Rome, 1900). Extensive bibliographies of Shakespeare's works and Shakespeariana are given in Lowndes's Library Manual (ed. Bohn), in Franz Thimm's Shakespeariana (1864 and 1871), in the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.; skilfully classified by Mr H. R. Tedder), in the Dictionary of National Biography (by the present writer), and in the British Museum Catalogue (the Shakespearean entries in which, comprising 3680 titles, were sepa rately published in 1897). SIDNEY LEE. His George Chapman, the translator of Homer, was born near Hitchin about 1559, is supposed to have studied at Oxford and at Cambridge, and died in 1634. Wood describes him as 'a person of most reverend aspect, religious and temperate, qualities rarely meeting in a poet.' He enjoyed the royal patronage of King James and Prince Henry, and the friendship of Spenser, Jonson, and Shakespeare. According to Oldys, he 'preserved in his conduct the true dignity of poetry, which he compared to the flower of the sun, that disdains to open its leaves to the eye of a smoking taper.' Chapman wrote early and copiously for the stage. first play, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, was produced in 1596. All Fools, a good comedy, probably belongs to 1599. In 1598 he completed Marlowe's Hero and Leander, but not with Marlowe's music. After some experiments on parts of the Iliad, the great and complete translation was produced in 1611 in fourteen-syllable rhyming couplets. Chapman's equivalents for the compound Homeric epithets, the far-shooting Phoebus, the ever-living gods, the many-headed hill, silverfooted Thetis, the triple-feathered helm, highwalled Thebes, the strong-winged lance, &c., were happily chosen: vigour, old-world majesty, and passion are not awanting; and though Pope's version put Chapman's out of fashion, though some of Chapman's merits are quite unhomeric, Charles Lamb, Coleridge, and Keats restored the older translation to favour, and spite of obscurities, conceits, harshnesses, and serious slips in Greek, the translation still ranks as a great achievement. The Odyssey (1616) followed in ten-syllable couplets (1616). The conclusion of Book xix. of the Iliad runs thus in Chapman : She thunder'd, feet of men and horse importun'd her Unsuffer'd grief and anger at the Trojans so combin'd. Which being on hills is seen far off; but being alone, To give it quench; at shore no neighbours, and at sea their friends Driven off with tempests; such a fire from his bright shield extends His ominous radiance; and in heaven impress'd his fervent blaze. [place His crested helmet, grave and high, had next triumphant On his curl'd head, and like a star it cast a spurry ray, About which a bright thick'ned bush of golden-hair did play, [arm'd, he tried Which Vulcan forg'd him for his plume. Thus compleete How fit they were, and if his motion could with ease abide Their brave instruction: and so far they were from hind'ring it, That to it they were nimble wings, and made so light his spirit, [to air. That from the earth the princely captain they took up Then from his armoury he drew his lance, his father's To great-soul'd men-of Peleus and Pelion, surnamed Then from the stable their bright horse Automedon withdraws, And Alcymus put poitrils on, and cast upon their jaws Their bridles; hurling back the reins, and hung them on the seat. [doth get The fair scourge then Automedon takes up, and up Our heart satiety, bring us off. Thus, since Achilles spake our care Shall bring thee off; but not far hence the fatal minutes are Of thy grave ruin. Nor shall we be then to be reprov'd, But mightiest fate, and the great God. Nor was thy best belov'd Spoil'd so of arms by our slow pace, or courage's empaire; The best of gods, Latona's son, that wears the golden hair, Gave him his death's wound, though the grace he gave to Hector's hand. We, like the spirit of the west, that all spirits can command [must go, For pow'r of wing, could run him off: but thou thyself So fate ordains, God and a man must give thee overthrow. This said, the Furies stopp'd his voice. Achilles, far in rage, [presage Thus answer'd him: It fits not thee thus proudly to My overthrow ; I know myself it is my fate to fall Thus far from Phthia; yet that fate shall fail to vent her gall [horrid deeds; Till mine vent thousands. These words us'd, he fell to Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his onehoof'd steeds. Curet or curets, an old form of cuirass; spurry, many-pointed; poitrils, harness for the breast; empaire, diminution. But however spirited and stately as a translator, Chapman proved rather an undramatic dramatist. He continued to supply the theatre with tragedies and comedies up to 1620, or later; yet of the dozen that have descended to us, not one possesses real vivifying dramatic power. In didactic observation and description he is sometimes happy, and hence he has been praised for possessing 'more thinking' than many of his contemporaries. His tendency to an epic method of narrative is frequently apparent and injurious to effect. But in many single passages he shows great poetic power and beauty, surpassing in this respect, in Professor Ward's judgment, all the Elizabethans but Shakespeare. Eastward Hoe was written in conjunction with Jonson and Marston, but is mainly Chapman's, according to Ward, who pronounces it one of the liveliest and healthiest, as it is one of the best-constructed comedies of the age.' As to the imprisonment of the authors for their political allusions, see below in the article on Jonson. The Gentleman Usher contains at least one fine scene (Act iv.). Its sequel, Monsieur d'Olive, is, Professor Ward thinks, one of our most diverting Elizabethan comedies.' Bussy d'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois give a striking picture of the intrigues at the court of Henry III. of France, and illustrate Chapman's love of similes and metaphors, as well as the of Hesiod. The first act of All Fools contains some of Chapman's most characteristic work; it opens thus with a conversation between the three friends, Rinaldo, Fortunio, and Valerio : Rinaldo. Can one self cause, in subjects so alike Only a temperate and most kindly warmth, GEORGE CHAPMAN. From a Print (Wm. Pass fecit) in the British Museum. power and beauty of his versification; occasionally bombast is mixed with true poetry, though not so as to justify Dryden's denunciations. The Conspiracie and the Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron are undramatic, but contain some fine things. In a sonnet prefixed to the comedy of All Fools (1605), Chapman says that he was 'marked with age for aims of greater weight.' Other plays are May Day (1611), The Widow's Tears (1612), and Cæsar and Pompey (1631). The posthumous tragedies, Alphonsus and Revenge for Honour, bear his name with doubtful right. The former, on the candidature of Richard of Cornwall for the imperial throne, is appallingly bloody in its incidents, and exhibits greater horrors than Kyd's worst passages. A peculiarity is, that the dialogue is freely interspersed with German words and lines, printed in German black letter, but so monstrously misspelt as at times to be barely intelligible. Ball, a comedy, and The Tragedie of Chabot were the joint work of Chapman and Shirley. The best of Chapman's dramatic works, Eastward Hoe and Chabot, were written in collaboration with others. Among Chapman's non-dramatic works are Enthymia Raptus, Petrarch's Seven Penitentiall Psalmes, The Divine Poem of Musaus, and The Georgicks The By strait guard of her father. Rin. I dare swear, Fortunio. O, brother, love rewards our With a most partial and injurious hand, If you consider well our different fortunes : Valerio loves, and joys the dame he loves; I love, and never can enjoy the sight Of her I love; so far from conquering In my desires' assault, that I can come To lay no battery to the fort I seek, All passages to it so strongly kept, If just desert in love measured reward, In vows, sighs, tears, and solitary watches. |