rant of the foolishness of his predecessors. These
inconveniences, however, must here be risked, and it may perhaps be thought
that the necessity of risking them is a salutary one. In no other case is
it so desirable that an author should be approached by students with the
minimum of apparatus.

The scanty facts and the abundant fancies as to Shakespere's life are a
commonplace of literature. He was baptized on the 26th of April 1564 at
Stratford-on-Avon, and must have been born either on the same day, or on
one of those immediately preceding. His father was John Shakespere, his
mother Mary Arden, both belonging to the lower middle class and connected,
personally and by their relations, with yeomanry and small landed gentry on
the one side, and with well-to-do tradesmen on the other. Nothing is known
of his youth and little of his education; but it was a constant tradition
of men of his own and the immediately succeeding generation that he had
little school learning. Before he was nineteen he was married, at the end
of November 1582, to Anne Hathaway, who was seven years his senior. Their
first child, Susannah, was baptized six months later. He is said to have
left Stratford for London in 1585, or thereabouts, and to have connected
himself at once with the theatre, first in humble and then in more
important positions. But all this is mist and myth. He is transparently
referred to by Robert Greene in the summer or autumn of 1592, and the terms
of the reference prove his prosperity. The same passage brought out a
complimentary reference to Shakespere's intellectual and moral character
from Chettle, Greene's editor. He published _Venus and Adonis_ in 1593, and
_Lucrece_ next year. His plays now began to appear rapidly, and brought him
money enough to buy, in 1597, the house of New Place at Stratford, and to
establish himself there after, it is supposed, twelve years' almost
complete absence from his birthplace and his family. Documentary references
to his business matters now become not infrequent, but, except as showing
that he was alive and prosperous, they are quite uninteresting. The same
may be said of the marriages and deaths of his children. In 1609 appeared
the _Sonnets_, some of which had previously been printed in unauthorised
and piratical publications. He died on the 23d of April (supposed generally
to be his birthday) 1616, and was buried at Stratford. His plays had been
only surreptitiously printed, the retenti