Shakespeare Commentaries

red as an actor, and wrote poems and plays; that he returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried." If good fortune have not preserved for us somewhere the Lives of all poets, over which Thomas Heywood, a prolific poet, contemporary and acquaintance of Shakespeare, worked more than twenty years, our curiosity on this point will most probably be left unsatisfied. For this inadequacy of our knowledge of Shakespeare's outer life, we are sometimes consoled with the idea, that the history of his mind on the other hand is all the more complete. This is true; but we must at the same time acknowledge, that notwithstanding we must seek the necessary starting point for the history of this mind in the scanty information concerning Shakespeare's life. With this intention we select from the few touches of his outer history only that which could have influenced the inner character and the formation of the poet's mind. In this matter we shall not too pedantically disdain to take into consideration even that which in the uncertain myths and traditions is only possible and probable; for even a mere supposition, though it only casts a doubtful twilight upon the history of Shakespeare's development, is for our aims far more important, than the most certain statements as to his goods and chattels, upon which in England so much industry has been bestowed. The Shakespeare family ever since the 14th century had spread and multiplied in Warwickshire. It was not originally...