Transcribed from the 1899 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by LesBowler.

A LIFE
of
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

by
SIDNEY LEE.

WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES

FOURTH EDITION

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1899

[All rights reserved]

p. ivPrinted November 1898 (FirstEdition).

Reprinted December 1898 (SecondEdition);  December 1898
(Third Edition);  February 1899 (FourthEdition).

p.vPREFACE

This work is based on the article on Shakespeare which I contributedlast year to the fifty-first volume of the ‘Dictionary of NationalBiography.’  But the changes and additions which the article hasundergone during my revision of it for separate publication are so numerousas to give the book a title to be regarded as an independent venture. In its general aims, however, the present life of Shakespeare endeavoursloyally to adhere to the principles that are inherent in the scheme of the‘Dictionary of National Biography.’  I have endeavoured toset before my readers a plain and practical narrative of the greatdramatist’s personal history as concisely as the needs of clearnessand completeness would permit.  I have sought to provide students ofShakespeare with a full record of the duly attested facts and dates oftheir master’s career.  I have avoided merely æstheticcriticism.  My estimates of the value of Shakespeare’s plays andpoems are intended solely to fulfil the obligation that lies on thebiographer of indicating p. visuccinctly the character of the successivelabours which were woven into the texture of his hero’s life. Æsthetic studies of Shakespeare abound, and to increase their numberis a work of supererogation.  But Shakespearean literature, as far asit is known to me, still lacks a book that shall supply within a briefcompass an exhaustive and well-arranged statement of the facts ofShakespeare’s career, achievement, and reputation, that shall reduceconjecture to the smallest dimensions consistent with coherence, and shallgive verifiable references to all the original sources ofinformation.  After studying Elizabethan literature, history, andbibliography for more than eighteen years, I believed that I might, withoutexposing myself to a charge of presumption, attempt something in the way offilling this gap, and that I might be able to supply, at least tentatively,a guide-book to Shakespeare’s life and work that should be, withinits limits, complete and trustworthy.  How far my belief was justifiedthe readers of this volume will decide.

I cannot promise my readers any startling revelations.  But myresearches have enabled me to remove some ambiguities which puzzled mypredecessors, and to throw light on one or two topics that have hithertoobscured the course of Shakespeare’s career.  Particulars thathave not been before incorporated in Shakespeare’s biography will befound in my treatment of the following subjects: the conditions under which‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ and the

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