Biographical Essays | Page 2

3] We must
presume, therefore, that William Shakspeare was born on some day
very little anterior to that of his baptism; and the more so because the
season of the year was lovely and genial, the 23d of April in 1564,
corresponding in fact with what we now call the 3d of May, so that,
whether the child was to be carried abroad, or the clergyman to be
summoned, no hindrance would arise from the weather. One only
argument has sometimes struck us for supposing that the 22d might be
the day, and not the 23d; which is, that Shakspeare's sole granddaughter,
Lady Barnard, was married on the 22d of April, 1626, ten years exactly
from the poet's death; and the reason for choosing this day might have
had a reference to her illustrious grandfather's birthday, which, there is
good reason for thinking, would be celebrated as a festival in the family
for generations. Still this choice may have been an accident, or
governed merely by reason of convenience. And, on the whole, it is as
well perhaps to acquiesce in the old belief, that Shakspeare was born
and died on the 23d of April. We cannot do wrong if we drink to his
memory on both 22d and 23d.
On a first review of the circumstances, we have reason to feel no little
perplexity in finding the materials for a life of this transcendent writer
so meagre and so few; and amongst them the larger part of doubtful
authority. All the energy of curiosity directed upon this subject, through
a period of one hundred and fifty years, (for so long it is since Betterton
the actor began to make researches,) has availed us little or nothing.
Neither the local traditions of his provincial birthplace, though sharing
with London through half a century the honor of his familiar presence,
nor the recollections of that brilliant literary circle with whom he lived
in the metropolis, have yielded much more than such an outline of his
history, as is oftentimes to be gathered from the penurious records of a

grave-stone. That he lived, and that he died, and that he was "a little
lower than the angels;"--these make up pretty nearly the amount of our
undisputed report. It may be doubted, indeed, whether at this day we
arc as accurately acquainted with the life of Shakspeare as with that of
Chaucer, though divided from each other by an interval of two
centuries, and (what should have been more effectual towards oblivion)
by the wars of the two roses. And yet the traditional memory of a rural
and a sylvan region, such as Warwickshire at that time was, is usually
exact as well as tenacious; and, with respect to Shakspeare in particular,
we may presume it to have been full and circumstantial through the
generation succeeding to his own, not only from the curiosity, and
perhaps something of a scandalous interest, which would pursue the
motions of one living so large a part of his life at a distance from his
wife, but also from the final reverence and honor which would settle
upon the memory of a poet so predominently successful; of one who, in
a space of five and twenty years, after running a bright career in the
capital city of his native land, and challenging notice from the throne,
had retired with an ample fortune, created by his personal efforts, and
by labors purely intellectual.
How are we to account, then, for that deluge, as if from Lethe, which
has swept away so entirely the traditional memorials of one so
illustrious? Such is the fatality of error which overclouds every
question connected with Shakspeare, that two of his principal critics,
Steevens and Malone, have endeavored to solve the difficulty by
cutting it with a falsehood. They deny in effect that he was illustrious in
the century succeeding to his own, however much he has since become
so. We shall first produce their statements in their own words, and we
shall then briefly review them.
Steevens delivers his opinion in the following terms: "How little
Shakspeare was once read, may be understood from Tate, who, in his
dedication to the altered play of King Lear, speaks of the original as an
obscure piece, recommended to his notice by a friend; and the author of
the Tatler, having occasion to quote a few lines out of Macbeth, was
content to receive them from Davenant's alteration of that celebrated
drama, in which almost every original beauty is either awkwardly

disguised or arbitrarily omitted." Another critic, who cites this passage
from Steevens, pursues the hypothesis as follows: "In fifty years after
his death, Dryden mentions that he was then become a little obsolete.
In the beginning of the last century, Lord Shaftesbury complains of his
rude