He strove with a noble
industry to obtain these and succeeded. He prospered, he bought New
Place at Stratford, he invested in land, in theatre shares and in
houses. During the last few years of his life he retired to New Place,
where he led the life of a country gentleman. He died there on the 23rd
April, 1616, aged fifty-two years. The cause of his death is not known.
His wife and daughters survived him.

Little is known of his human relationships. He is described as "gentle."
Had he been not gentle we should know more of him. Ben Jonson "loved
the man," and says that "he was, indeed, honest and of an open and free
nature." John Webster speaks of his "right happy and copious industry."
An actor who wrote more than thirty plays during twenty years of
rehearsing, acting, and theatre management, can have had little time for
mixing with the world.

That we know little of his human relationships is one of the blessed
facts about him. That we conjecture much is the penalty a nation pays
for failing to know her genius when he appears.

Three portraits--a bust, an engraving, and a painting--have some claim
to be considered as genuine portraits of Shakespeare. The first of these
is the coloured half-length bust on the chancel wall in Stratford
Church. This was made by one Gerard Janssen, a stonemason of some
repute. It was placed in the church within seven years of the poet's
death. It is a crude work of art; but it shows plainly that the artist
had before him (in vision or in the flesh) a man of unusual vivacity of
mind. The face is that of an aloof and sunny spirit, full of energy and
effectiveness. Another portrait is that engraved for the title page of
the first folio, published in 1623. The engraving is by Martin
Droeshout, who was fifteen years old when Shakespeare died, and
(perhaps) about twenty-two when he made the engraving. It is a crude
work of art, but it shows plainly that the artist had before him the
representation of an unusual man.

It is possible that the representation from which he engraved his plate
was a painting on panel, now at Stratford. This painting (discovered in
1840) is now called "the Droeshout portrait." It is supposed to
represent the Shakespeare of the year 1609. In the absence of proof, all
that can be said of it is that it is certainly a work of the early
seventeenth century, and that it looks as though it were the original of
the engraving. No other "portrait of Shakespeare" has any cla