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LEFT SHAKESPEARE 368 SHAKESPEARE and other investments in Stratford and London from this time till 1615. He not infrequently engaged in lawsuits, and let- ters of townsmen in the Stratford ar- chives contain allusions to him as a man of means with money to lend. The source of this money was the theater with which he was connected not only as author and actor, but also as shareholder. In 1598 two plays were issued with his name on the title page, and in the same year Fran- cis Meres published his "Palladis Tamia," in which he speaks of the "mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare" whom he compares to Ovid, Plautus, and Sen- eca, mentioning the two poems already described, and the titles of twelve plays. Meres is only one of many contempo- raries to praise the sweetness of Shake- speare's verse, and to show by reference or quotation the growing popularity of his dramas. Writing alone, however, would never have made him a rich man. During his first decade of playwriting be turned out about two plays a year on the average, for which at current rates he would receive about £10 each, equiva- lent to some $400 in modern values. Prices rose later, so that in his second decade it is calculated he gained from this source about the equivalent of $1,600 a year. From what is known of the pay of actors at that time, Shakespeare would earn about £100 a year, and a single share in the theater brought in more than £200. It is therefore easy to see how a keen business man, such as the dramatist is shown to have been from the records of his lawsuits, could acquire the comfortable fortune which Shake- speare possessed at his death. 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,