d"), fifth of the Mogul emperors of
Delhi; succeeded his father in 1627; a man of great administrative
ability and a skilled warrior; conquered the Deccan and the kingdom of
Golconda, and generally raised the Mogul Empire to its zenith; his court
was truly Eastern in its sumptuous magnificence; the "Peacock Throne"
alone cost L7,000,000; died in prison, a victim to the perfidy of his
usurping son Aurungzebe; _d_. 1666.

SHAKERS, a fanatical sect founded by one Ann Lee, so called from
their extravagant gestures in worship; they are agamists and communists.

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, great world-poet and dramatist, born in
Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire; his father, John Shakespeare, a
respected burgess; his mother, Mary Arden, the daughter of a well-to-do
farmer, through whom the family acquired some property; was at school at
Stratford, married Anne Hathaway, a yeoman's daughter, at 18, she eight
years older, and had by her three daughters; left for London somewhere
between 1585 and 1587, in consequence, it is said, of some deer-stealing
frolic; took charge of horses at the theatre door, and by-and-by became
an actor. His first work, "Venus and Adonis," appeared in 1593, and
"Lucrece" the year after; became connected with different theatres, and a
shareholder in certain of them, in some of which he took part as actor,
with the result, in a pecuniary point of view, that he bought a house in
his native place, extended it afterwards, where he chiefly resided for
the ten years preceding his death. Not much more than this is known of
the poet's external history, and what there is contributes nothing
towards accounting for either him or the genius revealed in his dramas.
Of the man, says Carlyle, "the best judgment not of this country, but of
Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion that he is the
chief of all poets hitherto--the greatest intellect, in our recorded
world, that has left record of himself in the way of literature. On the
whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if
we take all the characters of it, in any other man--such a calmness of
depth, placid, joyous strength, all things in that great soul of his so
true and clear, as in a tranquil, unfathomable sea.... It is not a
transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is a deliberate
illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly _seeing_ eye--a great
intellect, in short.... It is in delineating of men and things