A Life of William Shakespeare

A Life of William Shakespeare,
by Sidney Lee

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Sidney Lee
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Title: A Life of William Shakespeare with portraits and facsimiles
Author: Sidney Lee

Release Date: November 12, 2007 [eBook #23464]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LIFE OF
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE***
Transcribed from the 1899 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by Les Bowler.
[Picture: William Shakespeare]

A LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
BY SIDNEY LEE.
WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES
FOURTH EDITION
LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1899
[All rights reserved]
Printed November 1898 (First Edition).
Reprinted December 1898 (Second Edition); December 1898 (Third
Edition); February 1899 (Fourth Edition).

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 in the
scheme of the 'Dictionary of National Biography.' I have endeavoured
to set before my readers a plain and practical narrative of the great
dramatist's personal history as concisely as the needs of clearness and
completeness would permit. I have sought to provide students of
Shakespeare with a full record of the duly attested facts and dates of
their master's career. I have avoided merely aesthetic criticism. My
estimates of the value of Shakespeare's plays and poems are intended
solely to fulfil the obligation that lies on the biographer of indicating
succinctly the character of the successive labours which were woven
into the texture of his hero's life. AEsthetic studies of Shakespeare
abound, and to increase their number is a work of supererogation. But

Shakespearean literature, as far as it is known to me, still lacks a book
that shall supply within a brief compass an exhaustive and
well-arranged statement of the facts of Shakespeare's career,
achievement, and reputation, that shall reduce conjecture to the smallest
dimensions consistent with coherence, and shall give verifiable
references to all the original sources of information. After studying
Elizabethan literature, history, and bibliography for more than eighteen
years, I believed that I might, without exposing myself to a charge of
presumption, attempt something in the way of filling this gap, and that I
might be able to supply, at least tentatively, a guide-book to
Shakespeare's life and work that should be, within its limits, complete
and trustworthy. How far my belief was justified the readers of this
volume will decide.
I cannot promise my readers any startling revelations. But my
researches have enabled me to remove some ambiguities which puzzled
my predecessors, and to throw light on one or two topics that have
hitherto obscured the course of Shakespeare's career. Particulars that
have not been before incorporated in Shakespeare's biography will be
found in my treatment of the following subjects: the conditions under
which 'Love's Labour's Lost' and the 'Merchant of Venice' were written;
the references in Shakespeare's plays to his native town and county; his
father's applications to the Heralds' College for coat-armour; his
relations with Ben Jonson and the boy actors in 1601; the favour
extended to his work by James I and his Court; the circumstances
which led to the publication of the First Folio, and the history of the
dramatist's portraits. I have somewhat expanded the notices of
Shakespeare's financial affairs which have already appeared in the
article in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' and a few new facts
will be found in my revised estimate of the poet's pecuniary position.
In my treatment of the sonnets I have pursued what I believe to be an
original line of investigation. The strictly autobiographical
interpretation that critics have of late placed on these poems compelled
me, as Shakespeare's biographer, to submit them to a very narrow
scrutiny. My conclusion is adverse to the claim of the sonnets to rank
as autobiographical documents, but I have felt bound, out of respect to

writers from whose views I dissent, to give in detail the evidence on
which I base my judgment. Matthew Arnold sagaciously laid down the
maxim that 'the criticism which alone can much help us for the future is
a criticism which regards Europe as being, for intellectual and artistic
{vii} purposes, one great confederation, bound to a