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both well conceived and skilfully disposed, the one giving them a fair personal, the other a fair dramatic interest. The old Shepherd and his clown of a son are near, if not in, the Poet's happiest comic vein. Autolycus, the "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles," is the most amiable and ingenious rogue we should desire to see; who cheats almost as divinely as those about him love, and whose thieving tricks the very gods seem to crown with thrift in reward of his wit. His self-raillery and droll soliloquizing give us the feeling that his sins are committed not so much for lucre as for fun.—The Poet was perhaps a little too fond of placing his characters in situations where they have to be false in order to be the truer; which no doubt sometimes happens; yet, surely, in so delicate a point of morality, some care is needful, lest the exceptions become too much for the rule. And something too much of this there may be in the honest, upright, yet deceiving old lord, Camillo. I speak this under correction; for I know it is not safe to fault Shakespeare's morals; and that they who affect a better morality than his are very apt to turn out either hypocrites or moral coxcombs. As for the rest, this Camillo, though little more than a staff in the drama, is nevertheless a pillar of State; his integrity and wisdom making him a light to the counsels and a guide to the footsteps of the greatest around him. Fit to be the stay of princes, he is one of those venerable relics of the past which show us how beautiful age can be, and which, linking together different generations, format once the salt of society and the strength of government.

I have never seen this play on the stage; but I can well understand how the scene with the painted statue, if fairly delivered, might be surpassingly effective. The illusion is all on the understandings of the spectators; and they seem to feel the power without the fact of animation, or to have a sense of mobility in a vision of fixedness. And such is the magic of the scene, that we almost fancy them turning into marble, as they fancy the marble turning into flesh.

LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE by Sir Sidney Lee

Sir Sidney Lee (1859–1926) was an English biographer and critic. In 1882 he became assistant-editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. In 1890 he became joint editor, and on the retirement of Sir Leslie Stephen in 1891 succeeded him as editor. Lee himself contributed voluminously to the Dictionary, writing some 800 articles, mainly on Elizabethan authors or statesmen. While still at Balliol he had written two articles on Shakespearean questions, which were printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1884 he published a book about Stratford-on-Avon. His article on Shakespeare in the fifty-first volume (1897) of the Dictionary of National Biography formed the basis of his Life of William Shakespeare (1898), which reached its fifth edition in 1905.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

I—PARENTAGE AND BIRTH

II—CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE

III—THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD

IV—ON THE LONDON STAGE

V.—EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS

VI—THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC

VIII—THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS

IX—THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON

X—THE SUPPOSED STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS

XI—THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER

XII—THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE

XIII—MATURITY OF GENIUS

XIV—THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY

XV—THE LATEST PLAYS

XVI—THE CLOSE OF LIFE

XVII—SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS

XVIII—AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS

XIX—BIBLIOGRAPHY

XX—POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION

XXI—GENERAL ESTIMATE

APPENDIX

PREFACE

This work is based on the article on Shakespeare which I contributed last year to the fifty-first volume of the ‘Dictionary of National Biography.’ But the changes and additions which the article has undergone during my revision of it for separate publication are so numerous as to give the book a title to be regarded as an independent venture. In its general aims, however, the present life of Shakespeare endeavours loyally to adhere to the principles that are inherent