We do not know when Shakespeare withdrew from his theatrical activities in London, but there is evidence that he sold out his shares in the theater and retired to his native town several years before his death. We have records of the marriage of his daughter Susanna to a Stratford physician, John Hall, of that of Judith to Thomas Quiney, and of the burial of his mother in 1608. His father was already dead. In January, 1616, he made his will, and on April 23 of the same year died and was buried in the chancel of Stratford Church. Seven years later, two of his fellow actors, Heminge and Condell, collected his plays and pub lished them with much prefatory lauda tory matter in the famous "First Folio." About half of them had previously been issued in separate small quarto volumes.
No autograph of any of his works is preserved, but we have six authentic sig natures. Our impression of his personal appearance is to be gathered from the crude bust over his grave, and the en graving prefixed to the First Folio. Nu merous oil paintings have been claimed as authentic likeness, with varying de grees of evidence.
These are the main established facts with reference to the life of the greatest of English writers, and considering the status of authorship in his time, they are surprisingly numerous. In the century of his death, many of these facts appear, along with much that is merely tradi tional or legendary, in biographical and critical collections such as those of Fuller, Aubrey, Phillips, and Langbaine. Among the most important corroborations are the passage in "Timber" by his friend and fellow-dramatist, Ben Jonson, who makes some discriminating criticisms but protests his friendliness, "for I loved the man, and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as well as any"; and the splendid eulogy from the same hand in the First Folio. In the light of all this, it is hard to see how men could have doubted the identity of the author of the plays.
To the poems already mentioned are to be added his collection of :sonnets. No part of his work has been subjected to so severe a scrutiny in the hope of ex tracting additional biographical facts. These poems are written in the first per son and contain many allusions to a young friend of high station and a "dark lady," but no general agreement has been arrived at about the identity of either. Indeed, it is by no means certain that the allusions in the poems are to be taken in a strictly historical sense at all, since many of them follow conventions rife in the numerous sonnet sequences produced in the end of the sixteenth cen tury in France and England. This
search for biographical data has tended to distract attention from the high poeti cal value of the sonnets, their superb and concentrated diction, and their splendid imaginative passion.
Shakespeare began his career as a dramatist with collaboration, and the re vision and rewriting of other men's work. The result is found in the three parts of "Henry VI.," in "Richard III.," "King John," and in "Titus Andronicus," all of which were completed by 1594. To the same period belong his first experiments in comedy, "Love's Labour's Lost," "The Comedy of Errors," and "The Two Gentle men of Verona." Of these, the first is a light piece, full of verbal fantasies, with a good deal of social satire. The second is based upon two comedies of situation by Plautus; and the third is a romantic play, the plot of which is founded upon an incident in the Spanish novel of "Diana" by George of Monte mayor. Thus in the first few years he tried his hand at all three kinds of drama, —history, tragedy, and comedy, not hesi tating to make use of what he could learn from predecessors like Marlowe, Greene, and Kyd.
The second period of his dramatic ac tivity may be regarded as extending from 1594 to 1601, and in it he carried to the height his achievement in history and comedy. The only tragedies are "Romeo and Juliet," at the beginning of the pe riod, and "Julius Cxsar" at the end. The former has much in common with his comedies, and in it he rises to a height of lyric fervor hardly equalled elsewhere. The latter is in comparison lacking in passion, but from the point of view of characterization, is one of his great plays.
The comedies of this period begin with the poetic "Midsummer Night's Dream" (1594-5) with its tangled love plot and abundance of delightful fancy and hu mor; followed by "The Merchant of Ven ice" (1595-6), in which the building of the plot, the drawing of the characters, and the richness of the dialogue show for the first time almost equal mastery. "The Taming of the Shrew" (1596-7), is a hilarious farce based on an older play. In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (1598) he deals with English provincial middle class life for the only time in his come dies, and uses as the central figure the Falstaff of the historical plays. In the three comedies written between 1599 and 1601, "Much Ado About Nothing," "As You Like It," and "Twelfth Night," Eng lish romantic comedy is found in its most brilliant and delightful form. It is hard to find in any literature so high a tech nical mastery of verse and characteriza tion yielding so much imaginative and intellectual pleasure.