FullReads

1709.

It seems 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 some account of themselves, as well as their works, to Posterity. For this reason, how fond do we see 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 shape, make, and features have been the subject of critical enquiries. How trifling soever this Curiosity may seem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly satisfy’d with an account of any remarkable person, ’till we have heard him describ’d even to the very cloaths he wears. As for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an Author may sometimes conduce to the better understanding his book: And tho’ the Works of Mr. Shakespear may seem to many not to want a comment, yet I fancy some little account of the man himself may not be thought improper to go along with them.

He was the son of Mr. John Shakespear, and was born at Stratford upon Avon, in Warwickshire, 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 mention’d as gentlemen. His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool, had so large a family, ten children in all, that tho’ he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, ’tis true, for some time at a Free-school, where ’tis probable he acquir’d that little Latin he was master of: But the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forc’d his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language. It is without controversie, that he had no knowledge of the writings of the antient poets, not only from this reason, but from his works themselves, where we find no traces of any thing that looks like an imitation of ’em; the delicacy of his taste, and the natural bent of his own great Genius, equal, if not superior to some of the best of theirs, would certainly have led him to read and study ’em with so much pleasure, that some of their fine images would naturally have insinuated themselves into, and been mix’d with his own writings; so that his not copying at least something from them, may be an argument of his never having read ’em. Whether his ignorance of the Antients were a disadvantage to him or no, may admit of a dispute: For tho’ the knowledge of ’em might have made him more correct, yet it is not improbable but that the regularity and deference for them, which would have attended that correctness, might have restrain’d some of that fire, impetuosity, and even beautiful extravagance which we admire in Shakespear : And I believe we are better pleas’d with those thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination supply’d him so abundantly 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 possible for a master of the English language to deliver ’em. Some Latin without question he did know, and one may see up and down in his Plays how far his reading that way went: In Love’s Labour lost, the Pedant comes out with a verse of Mantuan ; and in Titus Andronicus, one of the Gothick princes, upon reading