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To the

many thousands

of students still using my annotated texts or who during

the last forty years have listened patiently to my talks on the higher

English Literature

this little book is

affectionately
dedicated

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What need of adding another book on Shakespeare to the thousands that already cumber our library shelves? None indeed, unless something should be stated or emphasized that is either not well enough known or not sufficiently appreciated. Both considerations move the present author to offer these four Studies.

1. Of the foundations of Shakespeare's greatness we cannot claim that there have been new discoveries; but a careful grouping of the ascertained facts in regard to his father's family and his own early environment warrants the assertion that the first twelve or fifteen years of the boy's life were passed in the midst of influences calculated to awaken and foster his ambition. Reasoning from effect to cause, we have a right to infer that he was from childhood an intense worker, and soon a book student of extraordinary diligence.

2. Such a youth-a mind omnivorous and allassimilating — impelled by a threefold motive of knowledge, culture, and expression — moving in a realm of the highest ideals — is especially liable to be fascinated by female beauty. Hence his marriage to a woman seven or eight years his senior, a step proper enough provided either had the means of supporting a family. Incidentally a law student,

good evidence is given that he became a sort of schoolmaster. The suggestion is made that Anne was his private pupil, matrimonial 'conjugation' supervening as naturally as when Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew taught the beautiful Bianca. No myth nor miracle nor external aid needed in the solution of the Shakespeare problem.

3. The soldier stage comes next after the lover's. The evidence that young Shakespeare was clerk at headquarters and otherwise saw much of military life is cumulative, and the documentary proof is almost if not quite conclusive.

4. The study of the plays reveals the fact that his superiority consists not at all in the originality of the plots, but largely, if not chiefly, in the creation of characters. His skill in making many of these originate or color for themselves a sympathetic environment is unequaled. He appears the keenest, broadest, wisest, best-informed of observers. Few if any are so tolerant as he. Spontaneity and splendor mark his earlier plays; depth and strength his later. Matchless language-form — blended truth, imagery, sentiment, personification

are claimed for him. Vividness and frequency of prosopopoeia are a superlative excellence. Superadded to these and perhaps other instances of preeminence, are his wit and humor, his philosophic insight, practical wisdom, and power of portraying deep and varied emotion. Milton's eulogium is decisive.

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