Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

James Brebord Halliwell

A March 1842.

SELECT COLLECTION

OF THE

BEAUTIES of SHAKSPEARE,

WITH

SOME ACCOUNT, &c.

OF THE

LIFE of SHAKSPEARE.

YORK:

Printed in the Year 1792.

presented to the Bodleian
Library, Out 4th 1842

J. Dr Halliwell

1

SOME

ACCOUNT of the LIFE, &c.

O F

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

IT

Written by Mr. Ro w E.

T feems to be a kind of respect due to the memory of excellent men, especially of those whom their wit and learning have made famous, to deliver fome Account of themselves, as well as their works, to pofterity. For this reason, how fond do we fee fome people of discovering any little personal story of the great men of antiquity! their families, the common accidents of their lives, and even their fhape, make, and features, have been the fubject of critical enquiries. How trifling foever this curiofity may seem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly satisfied with an account of any remarkable person, till we have heard him defcribed even to the very cloaths he wears. As for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an author may fometimes conduce to the better understanding his book; and though the works of Mr. Shakspeare may feem to many not to want a comment, yet I fancy fome little account

[blocks in formation]

of the man himself may not be thought improper to go along with them.

He was the son of Mr. John Shakspeare, and was born at Stratford upon Avon, in Warwickshire, in April 1564. His family, as appears by the Regifter and publick writings relating to that town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen. His father, who was a confiderable dealer in wool, had fo large a family, ten children in all, that though he was his eldest fon, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, it is true, for fome time at a free-school, where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was mafter of: but the narrowness of his circumftances, and the want of his af fiftance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language. It is without controversy, that in his works we scarce find any traces of any thing that looks like an imitation of the ancients. The delicacy of his taste, and the natural bent of his own great genius (equal, if not fuperior, to fome of the beft of theirs), would certainly have led him to read and study them with fo much pleasure, that fome of their fine images would naturally have infinuated themfelves into, and been mixed with, his own writings; fo that his not copying at least fomething from them may be an argument of his never having read them. Whether his ignorance of the ancients were a difadvantage to him or no, may admit of a

difpute:

:

difpute for though the knowledge of them might have made him more correct, yet it is not improbable but that the regularity and deference for them, which would have attended that correctnefs, might have reftrained fome of that fire, impetuofity, and even beautiful extravagance, which we admire in Shakspeare: and I believe we are better pleafed with thofe thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination fupplied 'him fo abundantly with, than if he had given us the most beautiful paffages out of the Greek and Latin poets, and that in the most agreeable manner that it was poffible for a master of the English language to deliver them.

Upon his leaving school, he feems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father propofed to him; and, in order to settle in the world after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, faid to have been a fubftantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of fettlement he continued for fome time, till an extravagance that he was guilty of forced him both out of his country, and that way of living which he had taken up; and though it seemed at firft to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occafion of exerting one of the greatest geniuses that ever was known in dramatick poetry. He had by a miffortune, common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill

[blocks in formation]
« ПредишнаНапред »