Lives of English authors Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Born 1564—Died 1616. 1. " The name of Shakespeare," wrote Henry Hallam, the historian, " is the greatest in our literature: it is the ... more »greatest in all literature." Yet of the man William Shakespeare—of his personal history, of his early life, of his education, even of his professional career—we know very little indeed,—much less than we know about hundreds of second-rate authors. Shakespeare kept no diary. He was not a letter-writer. He did not mix in society as Spenser did, though he had a few friends who loved him well; nor did he concern himself with politics as Milton did. He stuck to his business, which was that of an actor, and which brought him before the public in other characters and not in his own. Hallam says, " No letter of Shakespeare's writing, no record of his conversation, has been preserved." The few facts that are known about Shakespeare's life and his family may soon be told. Many biographers have mixed these up with traditions and mere guesses to which no importance should be attached. 2. In the early part of the sixteenth century, a farm at Snitterfield, three or four miles from Stratford-on- Avon, on the Warwick road, was tenanted by a worthy yeoman named Richard Shakespeare. The farm was on the property of Robert Arden, Esq., of Wilmecote, and to him the tenant paid his yearly rent. Richard Shakespeare had two sons—John and Henry. Both boyswere brought up at the farm, and in the ordinary course John, the elder, would have looked forward to his succeeding his father in the farm as his natural settlement in life. John, however, had other views for himself. In 1551, or thereabouts, he broke away from the rustic life in which he had been reared, and migrated to Stratford, where he settled as a trader in Henley Street, one of the lead...« less