kespeare alone, in
that infancy of our theatre when nothing proceeded from the crowd of
rival dramatists but rude and abortive efforts, ridiculed by the learned
and judicious of their own age and forgotten by posterity, to astonish
and enchant the nation with those inimitable works which form the
perpetual boast and immortal heritage of Englishmen.

By a strange kind of fatality, which excites at once our surprise and
our unavailing regrets, the domestic and the literary history of this
great luminary of his age are almost equally enveloped in doubt and
obscurity. Even of the few particulars of his origin and early
adventures which have reached us through various channels, the greater
number are either imperfectly attested, or exposed to objections of
different kinds which render them of little value; and respecting his
theatrical life the most important circumstances still remain matter of
conjecture, or at best of remote inference.

When Shakespeare first became a writer for the stage;--what was his
earliest production;--whether all the pieces usually ascribed to him be
really his, and whether there be any others of which he was in whole or
in part the author;--what degree of assistance he either received from
other dramatic writers or lent to them;--in what chronological order his
acknowledged pieces ought to be arranged, and what dates should be
assigned to their first representation;--are all questions on which the
ingenuity and indefatigable diligence of a crowd of editors, critics and
biographers have long been exerted, without producing any considerable
approximation to certainty or to general agreement.

On a subject so intricate, it will suffice for the purposes of the
present work to state a few of the leading facts which appear to rest on
the most satisfactory authorities. William Shakespeare, who was born in
1564, settled in London about 1586 or 1587, and seems to have almost
immediately adopted the profession of an actor. Yet his earliest effort
in composition was not of the dramatic kind; for in 1593 he dedicated to
his great patron the earl of Southampton, as "the first heir of his
invention," his Venus and Adonis, a narrative poem of considerable
length in the six-line stanza then popular. In the subsequent year he
also inscribed to the same noble friend his Rape of Lucrece, a still
longer poem of similar form in the stanza of seven lines, and containing
passages of vivid description, of exquisite ima