Mr. THEOBAL D's *PREFACE. T HE attempt to write upon SHAKESPEARE IS like going into a large, a spacious, and a fplendid dome through the conveyance of a narrow and obscure entry. A glare of light fuddenly breaks upon you beyond what the avenue at first promised: and a thousand beauties of genius and character, like so many gaudy apartments pouring at once upon the eye, diffuse and throw themselves out to the mind. The profpect is too wide to come within the compass of a fingle view: it is a gay confusion of pleasing objects, too various to be enjoyed but in a general admiration; and they must be separated, and eyed distinctly, in order to give the proper entertainment. And as in great piles of building, fome parts are often finished up to hit the taste of the connoiffeur others more negligently put together, to strike the fancy of a common and unlearned beholder: fome parts are made stupendously magnificent and grand, to furprize with the vast design and execution of the architect; others are contracted, to amuse you with his neatness and elegance in little. So, in Shakespeare, we may find traits that will stand the test of the severest judgment; and strokes as carelesly hit off, to the level of the more ordinary capacities: some de * This is Mr. Theobald's preface to his second edition in 1740, and was a good deal curtailed by himself after its first appearance before the impression in 1733. scriptions scriptions raised to that pitch of grandeur, as to astonish you with the compass and elevation of his thought: and others copying nature within so narrow, fo confined a circle, as if the author's talent lay only at drawing in miniature. In how many points of light must we be obliged to gaze at this great poet! In how many branches of excellence to confider and admire him! Whether we view him on the side of art or nature, he ought equally to engage our attention : whether we respect the force and greatness of his genius, the extent of his knowledge and reading, the power and address with which he throws out and applies either nature or learning, there is ample scope both for our wonder and pleasure. If his diction, and the cloathing of his thoughts attract us, how much more must we be charmed with the richness and variety of his images and ideas! If his images and ideas steal into our fouls, and strike upon our fancy, how much are they improved in price, when we come to reflect with what propriety and justness they are applied to character! If we look into his characters, and how they are furnished and proportioned to the employment he cuts out for them, how are we taken up with the mastery of his portraits! What draughts of nature! What variety of originals, and how differing each from the other! How are they dressed from the stores of his own luxurious imagination; without being the apes of mode, or borrowing from any foreign wardrobe ! Each of them are the standards of fashion for themselves: like gentlemen that are above the direction of their taylors, and can adorn themselves without the aid of imitation. If other poets draw more than one fool or coxcomb, there is the fame resemblance in them, as in that painter's draughts, who was happy only at forming a rofe: you find them all younger brothers of the fame family, and all of them have a pretence to give the fame crest: but Shakespeare's clowns [G4] : clowns and fops come all of a different houfe: they are no farther allied to one another than as man to man, members of the same species; but as different in features and lineaments of character, as we are from one another in face or complexion. But I am unawares lanching into his character as a writer, before I have faid what I intended of him as a private member of the republick. Mr. Rowe has very justly observed, that people are fond of discovering any little personal story of the great men of antiquity; and that the common accidents of their lives naturally become the subject of our critical enquiries: that however trifling such a curiosity at the first view may appear, yet, as for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an author may, perhaps, sometimes conduce to the better understanding his works: and, indeed, this author's works, from the bad treatment he has met with from copyifts and editors, have so long wanted a comment, that one would zealously embrace every method of information that could contribute to recover them from the injuries with which they have so long lain overwhelmed. It is certain, that if we have first admired the man in his writings, his cafe is so circumstanced, that we must naturally admire the writings in the man: that if we go back to take a view of his education, and the employment in life which fortune had cut out for him, we shall retain the stronger ideas of his extensive genius. His father, we are told, was a confiderable dealer in wool; but having no fewer than ten children, of whom our Shakespeare was the eldest, the best education he could afford him was no better than to qualify him for his own business and employment. I cannot affirm with any certainty how long his father lived; but I take him to be the fame Mr. John Shakespeare who was living in the year 1599, and who then, in honour honour of his fon, took out an extract of his family. arms from the herald's office; by which it appears, that he had been officer and bailiff of Stratford upon Avon in Warwickshire; and that he enjoyed fome hereditary lands and tenements, the reward of his great grandfather's faithful and approved service to king Henry VII. Be this as it will, our Shakespeare, it feems, was bred for fome time at a free-school; the very freeschool, I prefume, founded at Stratford: where, we are told, he acquired what Latin he was master of: but that his father being obliged, through narrowness of circumftance, to withdraw him too foon from thence, he was thereby unhappily prevented from making any proficiency in the dead languages: a point that will deserve some little difcuffion in the sequel of this differtation. How long he continued in his father's way of business, either as an assistant to him, or on his own proper account, no notices are left to inform us: nor have I been able to learn precisely at what period of life he quitted his native Stratford, and began his acquaintance with London and the stage. In order to fettle in the world after a family-manner, he thought fit, Mr. Rowe acquaints us, to marry while he was yet very young. It is certain, he did fo: for by the monument in Stratford church, erected to the memory of his daughter Susanna, the wife of John Hall, gentleman, it appears, that she died on the 2d day of July, in the year 1649, aged 66. So that she was born in 1583, when her father could not be full 19 years old; who was himself born in the year 1564. Nor was she his eldest child, for he had another daughter, Judith, who was born before her, and who was married to one Mr. Thomas Quiney. So that Shakespeare must have entered into wedlock by that time he was turned of seventeen years. Whether Whether the force of inclination merely, or fome concurring circumstances of convenience in the match, prompted him to marry so early, is not easy to be determined at this distance: but it is probable, a view of interest might partly fway his conduct in this point: for he married the daughter of one Hathaway, a fubstantial yeoman in his neighbourhood, and she had the start of him in age no less than eight years. She furvived him notwithstanding, seven seasons, and died that very year in which the players published the first. edition of his works in folio, anno Dom. 1623, at the age of 67 years, as we likewife learn from her monument in Stratford church. How long he continued in this kind of fettlement, upon his own native spot, is not more easily to be determined. But if the tradition be true, of that extravagance which forced him both to quit his country and way of living; to wit, his being engaged, with a knot of young deer-stealers, to rob the park of Sir Thomas Lucy of Cherlecot near Stratford: the enterprize favours so much of youth and levity, we may reasonably fsuppose it was before he could write full man. Befides, confidering he has left us fix and thirty plays at least, avowed to be genuine; and considering too, that he had retired from the stage, to spend the latter part of his days at his own native Stratford; the interval of time necessarily required for the finishing so many dramatick pieces, obliges us to suppose he threw himself very early upon the play-house. And as he could, probably, contract no acquaintance with the drama, while he was driving on the affair of wool at home; some time must be loft, even after he had commenced player, before he could attain knowledge enough in the science to qualify himself for turning author. It has been observed by Mr. Rowe, that, amongst other extravagancies which our author has given to his Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, he |