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 one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 3, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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 and new powers, in masterpiece after masterpiece; and at length in his decline with weakened grasp and fading colours, so that in him we can study the growth and fruiting and decay of the finest spirit that has yet been born among men.