Chapter Shakespeare to Shakespeare of S by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

perhaps most of sonnets published by 1595, when he was friend of Southampton and known at Court, purchases New Place at Stratford, falls into trouble circa 1600, having lost friends in Essex’s conspiracy, and has unfortunate love affair; emerges from this into honour and peace, retires to Stratford and died 1616. Productive period circa 1588-1613, 4 divisions, first (1588-96), second (1596-1601), third (1601- 1608), fourth (1608-1613). Of 37 plays usually attributed, only 16 published in his life.

As might have been expected, there is a copious literature devoted to Shakespeare and his works. Among those dealing with biography may be mentioned Halliwell Phillipps’s Outline of the Life of Shakespeare (7th ed., 1887), Fleay’s Shakespeare Manual (1876), and Life of Shakespeare (1886). Life by S. Lee (1898), Dowden’s Shakespeare his Mind and Art (1875), Drake’s Shakespeare and his Times (1817), Thornberry’s Shakespeare’s England (1856), Knight’s Shakespeare (1843). See also Works by Guizot, De Quincey, Fullom, Elze, and others. Criticisms by Coleridge, Hazlitt, Swinburne, T. S. Baynes, and others. Concordance by Mrs. Cowden Clarke. Ed., Rowe (1709), Pope (1725), Theobald (1733), Johnson (1765), Capell (1768), Steevens’s improved re-issue of Johnson (1773), Malone (1790), Reed’s 1st Variorum (1803), 2nd Variorum (1813), 3rd Variorum by Jas. Boswell the younger (1821), Dyce (1857), Staunton (1868-70), Cambridge by W. G. Clark and Dr. Aldis Wright (1863-66), Temple (ed. I. Gollancz, 1894- 96), Eversley Shakespeare (ed. Herford, 1899).