hould be doubted is not so strange, for Homer is almost
prehistoric. But Shakspere was a modern Englishman, and at the time of
his death the first English colony in America was already nine years
old. The important known facts of his life can be told almost in a
sentence. He was born at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, married when he was
eighteen, went to London probably in 1587, and became an actor, play
writer, and stockholder in the company which owned the Blackfriars and
the Globe theaters. He seemingly prospered, and retired about 1609 to
Stratford, where he lived in the house that he had bought some years
before, and where he died in 1616. His _Venus and Adonis_ was printed in
1593, his _Rape of Lucrece_ in 1594, and his _Sonnets_ in 1609. So far
as is known, only eighteen of the thirty-seven plays generally
attributed to Shakspere were printed during his life-time. These were
printed singly, in quarto shape, and were little more than stage books,
or librettos. The first collected edition of his works was the so-called
"First Folio" of 1623, published by his fellow-actors, Heming and
Condell. No contemporary of Shakspere thought it worth while to write a
life of the stage-player. There is a number of references to him in the
literature of the time; some generous, as in Ben Jonson's well-known
verses; others singularly unappreciative, like Webster's mention of "the
right happy and copious industry of Master Shakspere." But all these
together do not begin to amount to the sum of what was said about
Spenser, or Sidney, or Raleigh, or Ben Jonson. There is, indeed, nothing
to show that his contemporaries understood what a man they had among
them in the person of "Our English Terence, Mr. Will Shakespeare." The
age, for the rest, was not a self-conscious one, nor greatly given to
review writing and literary biography. Nor is there enough of
self-revelation in Shakspere's plays to aid the reader in forming a
notion of the man. He lost his identity completely in the characters of
his plays, as it is the duty of a dramatic writer to do. His sonnets
have been examined carefully in search of internal evidence as to his
character and life, but the speculations founded upon them have been
more ingenious than convincing.

Shakspere probably began by touching up old plays. _Henry VI_. and the
bloody tragedy of _Titus Andronicus_, if Shakspere's at all, are
doubtless only his revision of pieces already on the stage. The _Taming
of the