TASK 4:
- Escritora: Sidney Lee
- Fecha de publicación: November 12, 2007
Escritora: Sidney Lee
Fecha de publicación: November 12, 2007
PREFACE
This
work is based on the article on Shakespeare
which I contributed last year to the fifty-first volume of the
‘Dictionary of National Biography.’ But the changes and
additions which the article has undergone during my revision of it
for separate publication are so numerous as to give the book a title
to be regarded as an independent venture. In its general aims,
however, the present life of Shakespeare
endeavours loyally to adhere to the principles that are inherent in
the scheme of the ‘Dictionary of National Biography.’ I
have endeavoured to set before my readers a plain and practical
narrative of the great dramatist’s personal history as concisely as
the needs of clearness and completeness would permit. I have
sought to provide students of Shakespeare
with a full record of the duly attested facts and dates of their
master’s career. I have avoided merely æsthetic criticism.
My estimates of the value of Shakespeare’s plays and poems are
intended solely to fulfil the obligation that lies on the biographer
of indicating p.
visuccinctly
the character of the successive labours which were woven into the
texture of his hero’s life. Æsthetic studies of Shakespeare
abound, and to increase their number is a work of supererogation.
But Shakespearean literature, as far as it is known to me, still
lacks a book that shall supply within a brief compass an exhaustive
and well-arranged statement of the facts of Shakespeare’s career,
achievement, and reputation, that shall reduce conjecture to the
smallest dimensions consistent with coherence, and shall give
verifiable references to all the original sources of information.
After studying Elizabethan literature, history, and bibliography for
more than eighteen years, I believed that I might, without exposing
myself to a charge of presumption, attempt something in the way of
filling this gap, and that I might be able to supply, at least
tentatively, a guide-book to Shakespeare’s
life and work that should be, within its limits, complete and
trustworthy. How far my belief was justified the readers of
this volume will decide.
I
cannot promise my readers any startling revelations. But my
researches have enabled me to remove some ambiguities which puzzled
my predecessors, and to throw light on one or two topics that have
hitherto obscured the course of Shakespeare’s career.
Particulars that have not been before incorporated in Shakespeare’s
biography will be found in my treatment of the following subjects:
the conditions under which ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ and the p.
vii‘Merchant
of Venice’ were written; the references in Shakespeare’s plays to
his native town and county; his father’s applications to the
Heralds’ College for coat-armour; his relations with Ben
Jonson
and the boy actors in 1601;
the favour extended to his work by James I and his Court; the
circumstances which led to the publication of the First Folio, and
the history of the dramatist’s portraits. I have somewhat
expanded the notices of Shakespeare’s
financial affairs which have already appeared in the article in the
‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ and a few new facts will be
found in my revised estimate of the poet’s pecuniary position.
In
my treatment of the sonnets I have pursued what I believe to be an
original line of investigation. The strictly autobiographical
interpretation that critics have of late placed on these poems
compelled me, as Shakespeare’s biographer, to submit them to a very
narrow scrutiny. My conclusion is adverse to the claim of the
sonnets to rank as autobiographical documents, but I have felt bound,
out of respect to writers from whose views I dissent, to give in
detail the evidence on which I base my judgment. Matthew
Arnold
sagaciously laid down the maxim that ‘the criticism which alone can
much help us for the future is a criticism which regards Europe as
being, for intellectual and artistic purposes,
one great confederation, p.
viiibound
to a joint action and working to a common result.’ It is
criticism inspired by this liberalising principle that is especially
applicable to the vast sonnet-literature which was produced by
Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It is criticism of the type
that Arnold
recommended that can alone lead to any accurate and profitable
conclusion respecting the intention of the vast sonnet-literature of
the Elizabethan era. In accordance with Arnold’s
suggestion, I have studied Shakespeare’s sonnets comparatively with
those in vogue in England, France, and Italy at the time he wrote.
I have endeavoured to learn the view that was taken of such literary
endeavours by contemporary critics and readers throughout Europe.
My researches have covered a very small portion of the wide field.
But I have gone far enough, I think, to justify the conviction that
Shakespeare’s collection of sonnets has no reasonable title to be
regarded as a personal or autobiographical narrative.
In
the Appendix (Sections III. and IV.) I have supplied a memoir of
Shakespeare’s
patron, the Earl
of Southampton,
and an account of the Earl’s
relations with the contemporary world of letters. Apart from
Southampton’s association with the sonnets, he promoted
Shakespeare’s
welfare at an early stage of the dramatist’s career, and I can
quote the authority of Malone, who appended a sketch of Southampton’s
history to his biography of Shakespeare (in the p.
ix‘Variorum’
edition of 1821),
for treating a knowledge of Southampton’s life as essential to a
full knowledge of Shakespeare’s. I have also printed in the
Appendix a detailed statement of the precise circumstances under
which Shakespeare’s
sonnets were published by Thomas
Thorpe
in 1609
(Section V.), and a review of the facts that seem to me to confute
the popular theory that Shakespeare
was a friend and protégé of
William
Herbert,
third Earl of Pembroke, who has been put forward quite unwarrantably
as the hero of the sonnets (Sections VI., VII., VIII.)
I have also included in the Appendix (Sections IX. and X.) a survey
of the voluminous sonnet-literature of the Elizabethan poets between
1591
and 1597,
with which Shakespeare’s
sonnetteering efforts were very closely allied, as well as a
bibliographical note on a corresponding feature of French and Italian
literature between 1550
and 1600.
Since
the publication of the article on Shakespeare
in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ I have received from
correspondents many criticisms and suggestions which have enabled me
to correct some errors. But a few of my correspondents have
exhibited so ingenuous a faith in those forged p.
xdocuments
relating to Shakespeare
and forged references to his works, which were promulgated chiefly by
John
Payne
Collier
more than half a century ago, that I have attached a list of the
misleading records to my chapter on ‘The Sources of Biographical
Information’ in the Appendix (Section I.) I believe the list
to be fuller than any to be met with elsewhere.
The
six illustrations which appear in this volume have been chosen on
grounds of practical utility rather than of artistic merit. My
reasons for selecting as the frontispiece the newly discovered
‘Droeshout’ painting of Shakespeare
(now in the Shakespeare
Memorial Gallery at Stratford-on-Avon) can be gathered from the
history of the painting and of its discovery which I give on pages
288-90. I have to thank Mr.
Edgar Flower
and the other members of the Council of the Shakespeare Memorial at
Stratford for permission to reproduce the picture. The portrait
of Southampton
in early life is now at Welbeck Abbey, and the Duke of Portland not
only permitted the portrait to be engraved for this volume, but lent
me the negative from which the plate has been prepared. The
Committee of the Garrick Club gave permission to photograph the
interesting bust of Shakespeare
in their possession, but,
owing to the fact that it is moulded in black terra-cotta no
satisfactory negative could be obtained; the p.
xiengraving
I have used is from a photograph of a white plaster cast of the
original bust, now in the Memorial Gallery at Stratford. The
five autographs of Shakespeare’s
signature—all that exist of unquestioned authenticity—appear in
the three remaining plates. The three signatures on the will
have been photographed from the original document at Somerset House,
by permission of Sir
Francis Jenne,
President of the Probate Court; the autograph on the deed of purchase
by Shakespeare
in 1613
of the house in Blackfriars has been photographed from the original
document in the Guildhall Library, by permission of the Library
Committee of the City of London; and the autograph on the deed of
mortgage relating to the same property, also dated in 1613,
has been photographed from the original document in the British
Museum, by permission of the Trustees. Shakespeare’s
coat-of-arms and motto, which are stamped on the cover of this
volume, are copied from the trickings in the margin of the
draft-grants of arms now in the Heralds’ College.
The
Baroness Burdett-Coutts
has kindly given me ample opportunities of examining the two
peculiarly interesting and valuable copies of the First Folio in
her possession. Mr. Richard
Savage,
of Stratford-on-Avon, the Secretary of the Birthplace Trustees, and
Mr. W. Salt
Brassington,
the Librarian of the Shakespeare
Memorial at Stratford, have courteously replied p.
xiito
the many inquiries that I have addressed to them verbally or by
letter. Mr.
Lionel Cust,
the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, has helped me to
estimate the authenticity of Shakespeare’s
portraits. I have also benefited, while the work has been
passing through the press, by the valuable suggestions of my friends
the Rev.
H. C. Beeching
and Mr.
W. J. Craig,
and I have to thank Mr. Thomas
Seccombe
for the zealous aid he has rendered me while correcting the final
proofs.
October 12,
1898.
Extraìdo el 26-08-2014, 17:29 hs http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23464/23464-h/23464-h.htm
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