ABSTRACT
How prone the English people are to kill off their great men! They raise them up to the loftiest pinnacle of fame, and then, like the eagle with the tortoise, or the monkey which mounts the highest tree with his cocoa-nut, they dash their victims “all to pieces” upon the rocks below. Shakspeare was born on 23d of April, 1564, and died on the 23d of April, 1616. His age was therefore 52 years at the time of his death. In 1589 he had been some time, it is supposed about four years, in London. In the latter year he was one of the 16 shareholders in the “Black-friars” Theatre, his name being the 12th on the list. The indifference of cotemporaries, and even the generations after his death, to the personal history of Shakspeare, has often been a matter of astonishment. Nobody, indeed, so much as cared for the knowledge.
