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SHAKESPEARE

1733

SHALER

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

and deacons and deaconesses. They are very neat and industrious, and are known for their flower-seeds and herbs which they raise for market. They make use of singing and dancing in their worship, which has given them their name, their own title being the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. They have 15 settlements in the United States, several of them called Lebanon, from New Lebanon, N. Y., which was the second established in the country. Their property is valued at $10,000,000, and they number i ,000 members. See LEE, ANN, and Evans's The Shakers.

Shake'speare, William, the world's greatest poet and dramatist, was born at Strat-ford-on-Avon, E n g -land, near the end of April, 1564, the oldest son and third child of John Shakespeare. He probably went to free school at Stratford. In 1578 his father, who could not sign his own name but had risen to be high bailiff of Stratford, began to lose money. It is thought that soon after this William was taken out of school, and either apprenticed to a butcher or else worked as a lawyer's clerk. In 1582 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. He had three children : a daughter, Susanna, and twins —• a boy, Hammet, who died when 12, and a girl, Judith. Both daughters outlived their father. A story has come to us, whether true or not is not known, that Shakespeare's first attempt at poetry was a ballad at the expense of Sir Thomas Lucy, whose deer-park the poet with some companions had robbed. The angry squire had prosecuted him, hence the satirical ballad. This unfortunate piece of poetry only made matters worse, and is said to have caused him to run off to London. Here, according to one account, he was employed holding at the playhouse-door the horses of those theatergoers who came without their servants. However, we know nothing certain of this part of his life. But in 1592 we find a reference to him in Henry Chettle's pamphlet, Kind-Harts Dream, which appeared in that year. Chettle speaks of him as "exelent in the qualitie he professes"— that is, acting — and praises his "uprightness of deeling" and 'his facetious grace in writing." In spite, though, of Chettle's approval, it is certain that Shakespeare was not great as an actor. He did, indeed, have the pleasure of playing several times before Queen Elizabeth, whom he compliments in Midsummer Night's Dream. However, the great poet was not himself a mere dreamer. He soon became a theatrical shareholder, by

1597 was able to buy a home at Stratford, and in 1602 purchased a place of 107 acres near by.

Probably in 1589-90 Shakespeare began his career as a playwright. Among nis earliest comedies were Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy of Errors and The Two Gentlemen of Verona; among his earliest historical dramas were the second and third parts of Henry VI, King Richard III and King Richard II; the first romantic tragedy was Romeo and Juliet. The other two early plays of Titus Andronicus and the First Part of Henry VIt were, it is thought, partly the work of other hands. This greatest of series of plays thus begun was ended by King Henry VIII (1612-13), which critics think was written in part by Fletcher.

While writing, Shakespeare still continued to act; he is known to have played a part in Jonson's Sejanus in 1603 or 1604, but it is not known when he left the stage. Shakespeare died at Stratford-on-Avon, April 23, 1616, which is supposed to have been the anniversary of his birthday. See Morley's English Literature; Brandes's Wm, Shakespeare; Moulton's and R. G. White's Studies; and Sidney Lee's Life.

Shale, a variety of sedimentary rock formed from beds of mud or clay. The mud or clay was originally deposited in lakes or in the sea. Compacted by its own weight or by the weight of sediments laid down above it, and cemented by mineral matter deposited from solution by the waters percolating through it, the mud or clay becomes shale. Shales are of various degrees of hardness according to the degree of cementation, compression etc. Some shale breaks into slabs appropriate for the construction of walks. Such shale is flagstone. Shale occurs in rock-systems of all ages later than Archean (See GEOLOGY.) Soft shale is often ground into clay for the manufacture of brick, tiles etc. When subjected to compression great enough to render it partially metamorphic, shale is converted into slate. If the meta-morphisrn go still further, shale may be converted into crystalline schist, as mica-schist.

Sha'ler, Nathaniel Southgate, American geologist and paleontologist, was born at Newport, Ky., Feb. 22, 1841, and graduated at Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, of which he was dean and professor of geology. After 1884 he also was geologist in charge of the Atlantic division of the United States geological survey and member of the National Academy of Sciences. For seven vears (1873-80) he had charge of the geological survey of Kentucky, devoting part of each year to that work, and publishing many volumes as the result of his labors. His writings embrace Nature and Man in North America; Aspects of the Earth; The Story of Our Continent; Sea and Land; A First Book in Geology; The Interpretation