SOME

ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE, &c.,

OF

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE:

WRITTEN BY MR. ROWE.

Iracems 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 some account
of themselves, as well as their works, to posterity. For this reason, how fond do
we see some people of discovering any little personal story of the great men of
antiquity! their families, the common accidents of their lives, and even their
shape, make, and features, have been the subject of critical inquiries. How
triding soever this curiosity 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
As for what relates to men of
him described even to the very clothes he wears.
letters, the knowledge of an author may sometimes conduce to the better under.
standing his book; and though the works of Mr. Shakspeare may seem to many
not to want a comment, yet
fancy some little account 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 register and public
writings relating to that town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are
mentioned as gentlemen. His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool, had
so large a family, ten children in all, that though he was his eldest son, he could
give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, it is
trae, for some time at a free-school, where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin
the was master of: but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his
assistance 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
genins, (equal, if not superior, to some of the best of theirs,) would certainly have
led him to read and study them with so much pleasure, that some of their fine
images would naturally have insinuated themselves into, and been mixed with, his
own writings so that his not copying at least something from them, may be an
argument of his never having read them. Whether his ignorance of the ancienta
were a disadvantage to him or no, may admit of a dispute: for though the know-
ledge 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 cor-
rectness, might have restrained some of that fire, impetuosity, and even beautiful
extravagance, which we admire in Shakspeare: and I believe we are better
pleased with those thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own ima
gination supplied him so abundantly with, than if he had given us the most beauti-
ful passages out of the Greek and Latin poets, and that in the most agreeable man-
ner that it was possible for a master of the English language to deliver them.

Upon his leaving school, he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed 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, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of settlement he continued for some 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 first to be a blemish upon bis good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occasion of exerting one of the greatest geniuses that ever He had by a misfortune, common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them, some that made a fre

was known in dramatic poetry.

a

gnent practice of deer stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against hitn, to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London.

It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is said to have made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. He was received into the company then in being, at first, in a very mean rank; but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. His name was printed as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of what sort of parts he used to play; and though I have inquired, I never could meet with any further account of him this way, than that the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet. I should have been much more pleased, to have learned from certain authority, which was the first play he wrote; it would be without doubt a pleasure to any man, curious in things of this kind, to see and know what was the firet essay of a fancy like Shakspeare's. Perhaps we are not to look for his beginnings, like those of other authors, among their least perfect writings; art had so little, and nature so large a share in what he did, that for aught I know, the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, and had the most fire and strength of imagination in them, were the best. I would not be thought by this to mean, that his fancy was so loose and extravagant, as to be independent on the rule and government of judgment; but that what he thought, was commonly so great, so justly and rightly conceived in itself, that it wanted little or no correction, and was immediately approved by an impartial judgment at the first sight. But though the order of time in which the several pieces were written be generally uncertain, yet there are passages in some few of them which seem to fix their dates. So the Chorus at the end of the fourth act of Henry the Fifth, by a compliment very handsoniely turned to the earl of Essex, shows the play to have been written when that lord was general for the queen in Ireland and his elogy upon queen Elizabeth, and her successor king James, in the latter end of his Henry the Eighth, is a proof of that play's being written after the accession of the latter of those two princes to the crown of England. Whatever the particular times of his writing were, the people of his age, who began to grow wonderfully fond of diversions of this kind, could not but be highly pleased to se a genius arise amongst them of so pleasurable, so rich a vein, and so plentifully capable of furnishing their favourite entertainments. Besides the advantages of his wit, he was in himself a good-natured man, of great sweetness in his manners, and a most agreeable companion; so that it is no wonder, if, with so many good qualities, he made himself acquainted with the best conversations of those times. Elizabeth had several of his plays acted before her, and without doubt gave him many gracious marks of her favour: it is that maiden princess plainly, whom he intends by

- a fair vestal, throned by the west,

Á MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

and that whole passage is a compliment very properly brought in, and very hand-
somely applied to her. She was so well pleased with that admirable character of
Falstaff, in the two parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him to
How well she was
continue it for one play more, and to show him in love. This is said to be the
occasion of his writing The Merry Wives of Windsor.

obeyed, the play itself is an admirable proof. Upon this occasion it may not be
improper to observe, that this part of Falstaff is said to have been written originally
under the name of Oldcastle: some of that family being then remaining, the
queen was pleased to command him to alter it; upon which he made use of Fal-
taff. The present offence was indeed avoided; but I do not know whether the
author may not have been somewhat to blame in his second choice, since it is
certain that Sir John Falstaff, who was a knight of the garter, and a lieutenant-
general, was a name of distinguished merit in the wars in France in Henry the
Pifth's and Henry the Sixth's times. What grace soever the queen conferred upon
him, it was not to her only he owed the fortune which the reputation of his wit
made. He had the honour to meet with many great and uncominon marks of
favour and friendship from the earl of Southampton, famous in the histories of that
ume, for his friendship to the unfortunate earl of Essex.
that he dedicated his puem of Venus and Adonis.

It was to that noble lord There is one instance so

LIFE OF SHAKSPEARE.

singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakspeare's, that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted, that my lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to. A bounty very great, and very rare at any time, and almost equal to that profuse generosity the present age has shown to French dancers and Italian singers."

What particular habitude or friendships he contracted with private men, I have not been able to learn, more than that every one, who had a true taste of merit, and could distinguish men, had generally a just value and esteem for him. His exceeding candour and good nature must certainly have inclined all the gentler part of the world to love him, as the power of his wit obliged the men of the most delicate knowledge and polite learning to admire him.

His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remarkable piece of humanity and good nature: Mr. Jonson, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company; when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it, as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public. Jonson was certainly a very good scholar, and in that had the advantage of Shakspeare; thongh at the same time I believe it must be allowed, that what nature gave the latter was more than a balance for what books had given the former; and the judgment of a great man upon this occasion was, I think, very just and proper. In a conversation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William D'Avenant, Pudymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eton, and Ben Jonson, Sir John Suckling, who as a professed admirer of Shakspeare, had undertaken his defence against Ben Jason with some warmth; Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time told them, That if Mr. Shakspeare had not read the ancients, he had likewise not stolen any thing from them; and that if he would produce any one topic finely treated by any one of them, he would undertake to shew something upon the same subject at least as well written by Shakspeare.

The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. He had the good fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasion, and, in that, to his wish; and is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford. His pleasurable wit and good-nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship, of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Amongst them, it is a story almost still remembered in that country that he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury: it happened that in a pleasant conversation amongst their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakspeare in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write bis epitaph, if he happened to out live him; and since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately; apon which Shakspeare gave him these four verses:

"TEN IN THE HUNDRED lies here engraved;

Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved;

If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?

Oh! oh! qnoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe."

Bat the sharpness of the satire is said to have stung the man so severely, that he

never forgave it.

He died in the 53d year of his age, and was buried on the north side of the chancel, in the

his grave-stone underneath is,

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."

He had three daughters, of which two lived to be married; Judith, the elder, to one Mr. Thomas Quiney, by whom she had three sons, who all died without children; and Susanna, who was his favourite, to Dr. John Hall, a physician of good reputation in that country. She left one child only, a daughter, who was married first to Thomas Nashe, Esq., and afterwards to Sir John Baruard, of

Abington, but died likewise without issue.

This is what I could learn of any note, either relating to himself or family: the