The Man Shakespeare

The Man Shakespeare

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Title: The Man Shakespeare
Author: Frank Harris
Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9079] [Yes, we are more than
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SHAKESPEARE ***

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THE MAN SHAKESPEARE
AND
HIS TRAGIC LIFE STORY
BY
FRANK HARRIS

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY FRIEND, ERNEST BECKETT
(NOW LORD GRIMTHORPE), A MAN OF MOST EXCELLENT
DIFFERENCES, WHO UNITES TO A GENIUS FOR PRACTICAL
THINGS A PASSIONATE SYMPATHY FOR ALL HIGH
ENDEAVOUR IN LITERATURE AND ART

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
BOOK I SHAKESPEARE PAINTED BY HIMSELF

CHAPTER I.
Hamlet: Romeo-Jaques II. Hamlet-Macbeth III. Duke
Vincentio-Posthumus IV. Shakespeare's Men of Action: the Bastard,
Arthur, and King Richard II V. Shakespeare's Men of Action
(continued): Hotspur, Prince Henry, and Henry V VI.
Shakespeare's Men of Action (concluded): King Henry VI. and
Richard III VII. Shakespeare as Lyric Poet: "Twelfth Night" VIII.
Shakespeare's Humour: "Falstaff"
BOOK II
I. Shakespeare's early attempts to portray himself and his wife: Biron,
Adriana, Valentine II. Shakespeare as Antonio the Merchant III.
Shakespeare's Love-story: the Sonnets:
Part I IV. Shakespeare's Love-story: the
Sonnets: Part II
V. Shakespeare's Love-story: the Sonnets:
Part III VI. The First-fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge: Brutus
VII. Dramas of Revenge and Jealousy: Hamlet VIII. Dramas of
Revenge and Jealousy: Othello IX. Dramas of Lust:
Part I: Troilus and Cressida
X. Dramas of Lust:
Part II: Antony and Cleopatra
XI. The drama of Madness: Lear XII. The Drama of Despair: Timon of
Athens XIII. The Latest Works: All Copies: "Winter's Tale";

"Cymbeline"; "The Tempest" XIV. Shakespeare's Life:
Part I XV. Shakespeare's Life: Part II
INDEX

INTRODUCTION
This book has grown out of a series of articles contributed to "The
Saturday Review" some ten or twelve years ago. As they appeared they
were talked of and criticized in the usual way; a minority of readers
thought "the stuff" interesting; many held that my view of Shakespeare
was purely arbitrary; others said I had used a concordance to such
purpose that out of the mass of words I had managed, by virtue of some
unknown formula, to re-create the character of the man.
The truth is much simpler: I read Shakespeare's plays in boyhood,
chiefly for the stories; every few years later I was fain to re-read them;
for as I grew I always found new beauties in them which I had formerly
missed, and again and again I was lured back by tantalizing hints and
suggestions of a certain unity underlying the diversity of characters.
These suggestions gradually became more definite till at length, out of
the myriad voices in the plays, I began to hear more and more insistent
the accents of one voice, and out of the crowd of faces, began to
distinguish more and more clearly the features of the writer; for all the
world like some lovelorn girl, who, gazing with her soul in her eyes,
finds in the witch's cauldron the face of the belovèd.
I have tried in this book to trace the way I followed, step by step; for I
found it effective to rough in the chief features of the man first, and
afterwards, taking the plays in succession, to show how Shakespeare
painted himself at full-length not once, but twenty times, at as many
different periods of his life. This is one reason why he is more
interesting to us than the greatest men of the past, than Dante even, or
Homer; for Dante and Homer worked only at their best in the flower of
manhood. Shakespeare, on the other hand, has painted himself for us in

his green youth with hardly any knowledge of life or art, and then in his
eventful maturity, with growing experience