Nor is the utility of the present publication confined to perfons of the rank already described. It will be found serviceable even to those whose situation in life hath enabled them to purchase all the expensive editions of our great dramatist. The book now offered to the public may commodiously be taken into a coach or a poft-chaife, for amusement in a journey. Or if a company of gentlemen should happen, in conversation, to mention Shakspeare, or to dispute concerning any particular passage, a volume containing the whole of his plays may, with great convenience, be fetched by a fervant out of a library or a closet. In short, any particular passage may at all times and with ease be recurred to. It is a compendium, not an abridgement, of the noblest of our poets, and a library in a fingle volume.

The editor hath endeavoured to give all the perfection to this work which the nature of it can admit. The account of his life, which is taken from Rowe, and his last will, in reality comprehend almost every thing that is known with regard to the personal history of Shakspeare. The anxious researches of his admirers have scarcely been able to collect any farther information concerning him.

The text, in the present edition, is given as it has been fettled by the most approved commentators. It does not confift with the limits of the defign, that the notes should be large, or very numerous. They have not, however, been wholly neglected. The notes which are fubjoined are fuch as were necessary for the purpose of illuftrating and explaining obsolete words, unusual phrafes, old customs, and obfcure or distant allusions. In short, it has been the editor's aim to omit nothing which may ferve to render Shakspeare intelligible to every capacity, and to every class of readers.

Having this view, he cannot avoid expreffing his hope, that an undertaking the utility of which is so apparent, will be encouraged by the public; and his confidence of a favourable reception is increased by the confciousness that he is not doing an injury to any one. The success of the present volume will not impede the fale of the larger editions of Shakspeare, which will still be equally fought for by those to whom the purchase of them may be convenient.

SOME

T feems

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Written by Mr. ROWE.

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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 count of themselves, as well as their works, to pofterity. For this reason, how fond do we fee 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 fhape, make, and features have been the subject of critical enquiries. How trifling foever this curiofity may feem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly fuisfied with an account of any remarkable person, till we have heard him defcribed even to the very clothes 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 of the man himself may not be thought improper to go along with them.

He was the fon of Mr. John Shakspeare, and was born at Stratford upon Avon, in Warwickihire, in April 1564. His family, as appears by the register 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 kim 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 matter of: but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his affistance 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 tafte, and the natural bent of his own great genius (equal, if not fuperior, to fome 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 infinuated themselves into, and been mixed with his own writings; to that his not copying at least something 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: for though the knowledge of them might have made him more correct, yet it is not improbable but that the regularity

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and deference for them, which would have attended that correctness, 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 imagination fupplied him fo abun dantly with, than if he had given us the most beautiful passages 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 seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed to him; and in order to fettle 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 substantial 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 first 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 misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deerft ealing engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Cherlecot, near Stratford. For this he was profecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, fomewhat too feverely; and in order to revenge that ill ufage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first effay of his poetry, be loft, yet it is faid to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the profecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire, for fome time, and shelter himself in London.

It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is faid 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, foon diftinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. His name is printed, as the custom was in those times, amongit those of the other players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of what fort of parts he used to play; and though I have enquired, I could never 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 firit play he wrote *; it would be without doubt a pleasure to any man, curious in things of this kind, to fce and know what was the first 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 fo 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 fo loose and extravagant, as to be independent on the rule and government of judgment; but, that what he thought was commonly fo great, so justly and rightly conceived in itself, that it wanted little or no correction, and was immediately ap proved 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 fome few of them which feem to fix their dates. So the Chorus at the end of the fourth act of Henry Henry the Fifth, by a compliment very handsomely turned to the earl of Effex, shews the play to have been written when that lord was general for the queen in Ireland: and his elogy upon queen Elizabeth, and her fucceffor king James, in the latter end of his Henry the Eighth, is a proof of that play's being written after the acceffion 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 diverfions of this kind, could not but be highly pleased

* The highest date of any I can yet find, is Romeo and Juliet in 1597, when the author was 38 years old; and Richard the Second, and Third, in the next year, viz. the 34th of his age.

to

to fee a genius arife from 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 moit agreeable companion; so that it is no wonder, if, with fo many good qualities, he made himself acquainted with the best conversations of those times. Queen Elizabeth had feveral 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 aweft.

Midsummer-Night's Dream.

And that whole passage is a compliment very properly brought in, and very hand formely applied to her. She was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falitaff, in The Tavo Parts of Henry the Fourth, that the commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to shew him in love. This is faid to be the occafion of his writing The Merry Wives of Windfor. How well she was obeyed, the play itself is an admirable proof. Upon this occafion it may not be improper to observe, that this part of Falstaff is said to have been written orginally under the name of Oldcaffle: fome of that family being then remaining, the queen was pleased to command him to alter it; upon which he made use of Falstaff. The present offence was indeed avoided; but I do not know whether the author may not have been somewhat to blame in his fecond choice, since it is certain that Sir John Falstaff, who was a knight of the garter, and a lieutenant-general, was a name of diftinguished merit in the wars in France in Henry the Fifth'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 uncommon marks of favour and friendship from the eart of Southampton, famous in the histories of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate earl of Effex. It was to that noble lord that he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis. There is one instance so fingular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakfpeare's, that if I had not been affured 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 inferted, 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 profufe generofity the present age has shewn to French dancers and Italian fingers.

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 diftinguish 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. Jonfon, 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 perfons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and fuperciBouily over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no fervice to their company; when Shakspeare luckily caft his eye upon it, and found fomething so well in it, as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonfon and his writings to the publick. Jonfon W43 certainly very good scholar, and in that had the advantage of Shakspeare; though at the fame 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 judgmeat of a great man upon this occafion was, I think, very just and proper. In a con erfation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William D'Avenant, Endymion Por

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* See the Epilogue to Henry the Fourth.
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ter, Mr. Hales of Eton, and Ben Jonson; Sir John Suckling, who was a professed admirer of Shakspeare, had undertaken his defence against Ben Jonson with fome warmth; Mr. Hales, who had fat still for fome time, told them, That if Mr. Shakspeare had not read the ancients, be bad likewise not stolen any thing from them; and that if he would produce any one topick finely treated by any one of them, he would undertake to show something upon the fame 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 with; and is faid to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford. His pleasurcable 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 ufury: 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 his epitaph, if he happened to out-live him; and fince he could not know what might be faid of him when he was dead, he defired it might be done immediately: upon which Shakspeare gave him these four verses :

Ten in the hundred lies bere engrav'd,

'Tis a hundred to ten bis foul is not fav'd:

If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb ?

Oh! oh! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe*.

But the sharpness of the fatire is faid to have stung the man so severely, that he never forgave it.

He died in the 53d year of his aget, and was buried on the north-fide of the chancel, in the great church at Stratford, where a monument is placed in the wall. On his grave-stone underneath is,

Good friend, for Jesus' fake forbear
To dig the dust inclosed here.
Bleft be the man that spares these stones,
And curft be be 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 fons, who all died without children; and Susannah, 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 Nash, efq. and afterwards to Sir John Bernard of Abbington, but died likewife without iffue.

This is what I could learn of any note, either relating to himself or family: the character of the man is best seen in his writings. But since Ben Jonfon has made a fort of an effay towards it in his Discoveries, I will give it in his words:

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I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, " that in writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My anfwer " hath been, Would be bad blotted a thousand! which they thought a malevolent

* The Rev. Francis Pack, in his Memoirs of the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, 410. 1740, p. 223. has introduced another epitaph imputed (on what authority is unknown) to ShakIpeare It is on Tom-a-Combe, aitas Thin-beard, brother to this John who is mentioned by Mr. Rowe.

"Thin in beard, and thick in purse;

"Never man beloved worse;

"Ile went to the grave with many a curse:

"The devil and he had both one nurse."

† Mr. Malone fays, that he died on his birth-day, April 23, 1616, and had exactly completed

his fifty-fecond year.

" speech.