ws.
Creatures of the imagination--fairies, ghosts, witches--are delineated
with a like potency, and the reader or spectator feels instinctively that
these supernatural entities could not speak, feel, or act otherwise than
Shakespeare represents them. The creative power of poetry was never
manifested to such effect as in the corporeal semblances in which
Shakespeare clad the spirits of the air.

Its universal recognition.

So mighty a faculty sets at naught the common limitations of nationality,
and in every quarter of the globe to which civilised life has penetrated
Shakespeare's power is recognised. All the world over, language is
applied to his creations that ordinarily applies to beings of flesh and
blood. Hamlet and Othello, Lear and Macbeth, Falstaff and Shylock,
Brutus and Romeo, Ariel and Caliban are studied in almost every civilised
tongue as if they were historic personalities, and the chief of the
impressive phrases that fall from their lips are rooted in the speech of
civilised humanity. To Shakespeare the intellect of the world, speaking
in divers accents, applies with one accord his own words: 'How noble in
reason! how infinite in faculty! in apprehension how like a god!'

APPENDIX

I.--THE SOURCES OF BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.

Contemporary records abundant.

The scantiness of contemporary records of Shakespeare's career has been
much exaggerated. An investigation extending over two centuries has
brought together a mass of detail which far exceeds that accessible in
the case of any other contemporary professional writer. Nevertheless,
some important links are missing, and at some critical points appeal to
conjecture is inevitable. But the fully ascertained facts are numerous
enough to define sharply the general direction that Shakespeare's career
followed. Although the clues are in some places faint, the trail never
altogether eludes the patient investigator.

First efforts in biography.

Fuller, in his 'Worthies' (1662), attempted the first biographical notice
of Shakespeare, with poor results. Aubrey, in his gossiping 'Lives of
Eminent Men,' {361} based his ampler information on reports communicated
to him by William Beeston (_d._ 1682), an aged actor, whom Dryden called
'the chronicle of the stage,' and who was doubtless in the main a
trustworthy witness. A few additional details were recorded in the
seventeenth century by the Rev. John Ward (1629-1681), vicar of
S