written in 1597, when the author was thirty-three years old; and Richard the Second, and Third, in the next year. The Chorus at the end of the fourth act of Henry the Fifth, by a compliment to the Earl of Essex, shews the play to have been written when that lord was general in Ireland: and his eulogy upon Queen Elizabeth, and her successor, King James, in the latter end of Henry the Eighth, is a proof of that play being written after the accession of James to the crown.

Queen Elizabeth had several of his plays acted before her; and gave him many gracious marks of her favour: it is that maiden princess plainly, whom he intends by-a fair vestal, throned by the west.(Midsummer-Night's Dream,) and that whole passage is applied to her. She was so well pleased with the admirable character of Falstaff, in The two Parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to shew him in love; and this is said to be the occasion of his writing The Merry Wives of Windsor. How well she was obeyed, the play itself is an admirable proof. This part of Falstaff is said to have been written originally under the name of Oldcastle and some of that family being then living, the queen was pleased to command him to alter it; upon which he made use of Falstaff. Offence was avoided; but the author was to blame in his second choice, since Sir John Falstaff, knight of the garter, and lieutenant-general, was a man of distinguished merit in the wars in France after Henry the V. and VI.

He met with many marks of favour and friendship from the Earl of Southampton, famous for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Essex. To that noble lord he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis. It is even said that Lord Southampton, at one time, gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go and complete a purchase. A bounty very great, and very rare at any time, and almost equal to the profuse generosity of the present age to French dancers and Italian singers. In truth, the sufferings of genius is a libel on all the contemporary rank of wealth of the same age; and in no age has the selfishness of nobility been more conspicuous than in the present.

His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remarkable piece of humanity and good nature: Jonson, was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the theatre, and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly over, were returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, read it through, and afterwards recommended Jonson and his writings to the public. Jonson and Shakspeare were two instances of the utter inutility of Latin and Greek education: Jonson was a proficient in them, and his plays are vulgar and forgotten; but Shakspeare knew neither, and his pieces are refined and classical.

In a conversation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William D'Avenant, Endymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eton, and Ben Jonson; Sir John Suckling, who was a professed admirer of Shakspeare, had undertaken his defence againg Ben Jonson with some warmth; Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, told them, That if Shakespeare had not read the ancients, he had likewise not stolen any thing from them; and that if he would produce any one topic finely treated by any one of them, he would undertake to shew something upon the same subject, at least as well written, by Shakspeare. Probably the learning of Latin and Greek would have stupified Shakspeare as it does all men. It would also have disgusted him with study and real knowledge. Latin and Greek schools, have for two hundred years been the bane of all native genius in Britain.

The latter part of his life was spent, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. He had the good fortune to realize an estate to his wishes; and spent some years before his death at his native town Stratford. His wit and good nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship, of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Amongst them, he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted for his wealth and usury. In a pleasant conversation among their common friends, Combe told Shakspeare, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph, if he out-lived him; and since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, desired it might be done immediately: upon which Shakspeare gave him these four lines.

Ten in the hundred lies here engrav'd,

"Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd:

If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?

Oh! oh! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe.

He died after a short illness, in the 53d year of his age, and was buried on the north-side of the chancel, in the great church at Stratford, where a monument is placed in the wall, and with this incription:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear

To dig the dust inclosed here.

Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

He had three daughters; Judith, the elder, was married to Mr. Thomas Quincy, by whom she had three sons, who all died without children; Susannah, who was his favourite, to Dr. John Hall, a physician of good reputation in that country. She left one child only, a daughter, who was married first to Thomas Nash, esq. and afterwards to Sir John Bernard, of Ab

bington, near Northampton, but died without issue. The other died in childhood.

Ben Jonson has made a sort of an essay upon Shakspeare, in his Discoveries: his words are

"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand! which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted: and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had been so too! Many times he fell into those things which could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, "Cæsar, thou dost me wrong. He replied: Cæsar did never wrong, but with just cause -and such-like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues: there was ever more in him to be praised than pardoned."

The passage which Jonson mentions as out of Shakspeare, is, however, not there; there is somewhat like it in Julius Cæsar, but without the absurdity.

Besides the plays in general editions, two or three are ascribed to him by Langbain. He wrote likewise Venus and Adonis, and Tarquin and Lucrece, in stanzas, which have been printed in several collections of his poems. His plays are properly to be distinguished only into COMEDIES and TRAGEDIES. Those which are called histories, and even some of his comedies, are really tragedies, with a mixture of comedy in them. The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew, are all pure comedy; the rest, however they are called, have something of both kinds. It is not easy to determine which way of writing he most excelled in. There is a great deal of entertainment in his comedies; and though they did not then strike at all ranks of people, yet there is a well-distinguished variety in his characters. Falstaff is allowed to be a master-piece; the character is always well sustained, though drawn out into three plays; and even the account of his death, given by his old landlady, Mrs. Quickly, in the first act of Henry the Fifth, though it is extremely natural, is as diverting as any part of his life. Amongst other extravagancies, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, he has made him a deer-stealer, that he might at the same time remember his Warwickshire prosecutor, under the name of Justice Shal

low; he has given him very nearly the same coat of arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county, describes for a family there, and makes the Welsh parson descant very pleasantly upon them. That whole play is admirable; the humour is various and well opposed; the main design, which is to cure Ford of his unreasonable jealousy, is extremely well conducted.

In Twelfth-Night there is something singularly ridiculous and pleasant in the fantastical steward Malvolio. The parasite and the vainglorious in Parolles, in All's Well that End's Well, is as good as any thing of that kind in Plautus or Terence. Petruchio, in The Taming of the Shrew, is an uncommon piece of humour. The conversation of Benedict and Beatrice, in Much Ado about Nothing, and of Rosalind in As You like It, have much wit and sprightliness all along.

His clowns, without which character there was hardly any play written in that time, are very entertaining: and Thersites, in Troilus and Cressida, and Apemantus, in Timon, are master-pieces of ill-nature, and satirical snarling. The incomparable character of Shylock the Jew, in The Merchant of Venice, exhibits so deadly a spirit of revenge, such savage fierceness, and such horrid cruelty and mischief, as are unequalled; and the play itself, is one of the most finished of Shakspeare's. The tale, indeed, in that part relating to the caskets, and the extravagant and unusual kind of bond given by Antonio, is too much removed from the rules of probability; but, taking the fact for granted, we must allow it to be very beautifully written. There is something in the friendship of Antonio to Bassanio very great, generous, and tender. The whole fourth act (supposing, the fact to be probable) is extremely fine. But there are two passages that deserve a particular notice. The first is, what Portia says in praise of mercy, and the other on the power of music. The melancholy of Jaques, in As You Like It, is as singular and odd as it is diverting. It will be a hard task for any one to go beyond him in the description of the several degrees and ages of man's life.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. First the infant
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms:
And then, the whining school-boy with his satchel,
And shining morning-face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then a soldier
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Ev'n in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances!

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again tow'rd childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

Speaking of a maid in love, he says,

She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,

Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought,

And sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.

The style of his comedy is, in general, natural in the characters, and easy in itself; and the wit is most commonly sprightly and pleasing, except in those places where he runs into doggrel rhymes, as in The Comedy of Errors, and some other plays. As for his jingling sometimes, and playing upon words, it was the vice of the age he lived in: we find it as an ornament to the sermons of some of the gravest divines of those times.

The greatness of this author's genius no where so much appears, as where he gives his imagination entire loose, and raises his fancy to a flight above mankind, and the limits of the visible world. Such are The Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet. His magic is very solemn and very poetical: and the extravagant character of Caliban is well sustained, shews a wonderful invention, and is one of the finest and most uncommon grotesques ever seen. Shakspeare not only found out a new character in his Caliban, but also devised and adapted a new manner of language for that character. It is the same magic that raises the Fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Witches in Macbeth, and the Ghost in Hamlet, with thoughts and language so proper to the parts they sustain, and so peculiar to the talent of this writer.

His tales were seldom invented, but taken either from true history, or novels and romances: and he commonly made use of them in that order, with those incidents and that extent of time in which he found them in the authors whence he borrowed them. Almost all his historical plays comprehend a great length of time, and very different and distinct