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You remember that before Spenser appeared, the country was disturbed with civil wars; the times were out of joint, and all was darkness and ignorance. But with time came light, and the age of Queen Elizabeth, made famous by its many great men, is considered the most brilliant in English history. High above all other names that adorn this period stands that of SHAKESPEARE, the greatest literary genius the world has ever known.

Very little can be learned with any certainty of this wonderful man-so little, that some have tried to prove that no such person ever lived-and one or two books have been published lately, endeavoring to prove that what are called Shakespeare's plays were really written. by Lord Bacon. But we cannot believe this, and although it is indeed strange that few of his contemporaries ever mentioned him, and that he never alluded to any of the events which occurred during his lifetime, we still cling with faith to the few names, dates, traditions, and anecdotes, which may or may not be true, but are all we have to tell us of the personal Shakespeare we love to believe in.

Rev. James Freeman Clarke, in his address at the tercentenary celebration of Shakespeare's birth, shows us how easily critics might do away with the little evidence we have on this subject. He says: "If it should be thought desirable to treat Shakespeare as critics have treated Homer, Moses, and Christ, and deny his existence, they have an excellent opportunity and ample means for their destructive analysis. As they have proved to their satisfaction that the books of Moses are composed of innumerable independent historical fragments, carefully joined together, and so are a Mosaic work only in the artistic sense; as they have taken away Homer, and left in his place a company of anonymous ballad-singers, so that we are able to settle the dispute between the seven cities which claimed to be his birthplace by giving them a Homer apiece, and having several Homers left; as these able chemical critics have analyzed the Gospels, reducing them to their elements of legend, myth, and falsehood, with the smallest residuum of actual history, so much more easily can they dispose of the historic Shakespeare.

"See, for example, how they might proceed. They might say, How can Shakespeare have been a real per

son, when his very name is spelled at least in two different ways in manuscripts professing to be his own autograph, and when it is found in the manuscripts of the period. spelled in every form, and with every combination of letters which express its sound or the semblance thereof? One writer of his time calls him Shake-scene, showing plainly the mythical origin of the word.

"He is said to have married, at eighteen, a woman of twenty-six, which is not likely, and her name also has a mythical character-Anne Hathaway'-and was probably derived from a Shakespeare song, addressed to a lady named Anne, the first line of which is

'Anne hath a way, Anne hath a way.'

"If he were a living person, living in London in the midst of writers, poets, actors, and eminent men, is it credible that no allusion should be made to him by most of them? He was contemporary with Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, Lord Bacon, Coke, Burleigh, Hooker, Queen Elizabeth, Henry IV. of France, Montaigne, Tasso, Cervantes, Galileo, Grotius, and not one of these, though so many of them were voluminous writers, refers to any such person, and no allusion to any of them appears in all his plays. He is referred to, to be sure, with excessive admiration by the group of play-writers, among whom he is supposed to move, but as there is not in all his works the least allusion in return to any of them, we may presume that the name Shakespeare was a sort of nom de plume to which were referred all anonymous plays.

"If such a man existed, why did not others out of this circle say something about his circumstances and life? Milton was eight years old when Shakespeare died, and might have seen him, as he took pains to go and see Galileo, who was born in the same year with Shakespeare. Oliver Cromwell was seventeen years old when Shake

speare died; Descartes twenty years old; Rubens, the artist, thirty-nine years old. None of them have heard of him, though Rubens resided in England, and painted numerous portraits there.

"The critic might add that there is something quite suspicious in his being said to have been born and to have died on the same day of the month-April 23d-and in the fact that Cervantes was said to have died on the same day as Shakespeare, and Michael Angelo in the same year. The year of his birth, he might add, seems to have some mythical significance, since Calvin is said to have died, and Galileo to have been born, each in 1564.

"Many great events occurred in his supposed lifetime, to none of which he has alluded, as the battle of Lepanto, the Bartholomew massacre, the defeat of the Spanish armada, the first circumnavigation of the world, the gunpowder plot, the deliverance of Holland from Spain, the invention of the telescope, and the discovery thereby of Jupiter's satellites. In an era of the great controversy between the Román and Protestant religions, no one can tell from his works whether he was Catholic or Protestant. Unlike Dante, Milton, and Goethe, he left no trace on the political or even social life of his time."

I have quoted thus at length that you may gain, in a general way, some idea of the age, its great men and great events, and also see how plausible arguments can be brought to bear on the wrong side of any subject.

Whately reasons in this fallacious way (merely for the sake of the argument), and makes it very evident that such a man as Napoleon never existed; while Froude defends the character of Henry VIII. in good earnest, making him a high-toned patriot, a noble monarch, an exemplary father and husband, instead of the bloody tyrant, the modern Blue-beard, that he has appeared to our prejudiced minds, and De Quincey, going further yet, honestly

tries to prove that Judas Iscariot was a well-meaning man, a loyal, though mistaken, subject of his Divine Master. But, in spite of all this eloquent logic, the name of Judas Iscariot will still be the blackest upon the page of human history; Henry VIII. will still be branded as the bad husband, the pseudo-Protestant; Napoleon will still be the hero of Marengo and Austerlitz, and, with due deference to Miss Bacon and Judge Holmes, every one will still prefer to believe that Shakespeare was himself, and not somebody else.

He was born at Stratford-upon-Avon on the 23d of April, 1564, the oldest of six children. It has been discovered that his father's name was John, and that he was either a glover, a farmer, a butcher, or a dealer in wool! How little thought that rustic sire, whose business is such a matter of doubt, as he gazed upon his baby-boy,

"Mewling and puking in his mother's arms,"

that devotees from every clime, through every age, would make pilgrimages, as to a sacred shrine, to that homely chamber where "the sweet bard of Avon" first saw the light! Of his mother we only know that her name was Mary Arden, and that she possessed, when married, a pretty little fortune, which soon disappeared.

Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, says: "His family, as appears by the register and public writings relating to the town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen.'

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His father, up to the year 1574, was a man of considerable estate and position. But in 1578 he had by some misfortune become so poor that he was not obliged to pay taxes, and William, after the age of fourteen, was obliged to earn his own bread. We are told that he attended the grammar-school in his native town, and, as usual, there are various stories of his rank there. But alas! we know

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