sense, the nonpersonal knowledge obtained not from the experience of one life, but from the experiences of hundreds of thousands of lives. Religious persons in western countries do not like these suggestions of science; and I do not think that I should be allowed to say in many western universities what now I wish to say about Shakespeare's genius. You need not accept my opinions if you do not like them; I offer them only suggestively. I shall say therefore that the faculty of Shakespeare represents something very much resembling the memory of thousands of experiences in hundreds of anterior lives, as man and woman, in different conditions of civilisation, and different parts of the earth. Remember, however, that I am speaking symbolically. I am trying to explain the nature of a faculty which can only be suggested by symbolism, because no science can yet furnish a detailed explanation of it.

This is what differentiates Shakespeare from all other dramatists; and, without attempting illustration, let us now turn to the subject of the man himself. One thing we know, through the help of modern psychology, which previous generations did not know about Shakespeare. This is that he was certainly a man of a most extraordinary and exceptional physical organisation. From his work we can discover that his nervous organisation must have been superior to almost any now existing; and, as I said before, unless this development is in one direction only, it presupposes a magnificent physical constitution. In the case of Shakespeare, we have proof absolute that his faculties were not one-sided; and that a more perfectly balanced character is not possible even to imagine. The first chapters of his life give us, indeed, the contrary impression; but the higher faculties of a man are not developed in early youth. When we study Shakespeare's life in the years of his maturity, we discover the unusual phenomenon of a supreme artist who is also a supremely good man of business, who achieved al

most without effort a position and a respectability that no actor could have obtained before him.

I need scarcely say to you that all the stories and theories about Shakespeare's plays having been written by Bacon or by somebody else are silly nonsense, and that no sensible man now pays any attention to them. I shall not refer to them again. On the other hand, although we know very little about Shakespeare's life, the little that we do know is very important, and the documents concerning it are very exact. I shall speak about the facts of his career, however, only in relation to the study of his personality. He was born at Stratford-on-Avon in April, 1564. He was the son of a merchant named John Shakespeare, who appears to have been a man of some influence in the little town, and who held the office of high bailiff-an office corresponding to that of mayor-in 1568. When a boy, Shakespeare was apparently distinguished from other boys chiefly by his greater activity and mischievousness, but we can judge of this only from the general tone of a number of anecdotes and traditions. He was sent to a grammar school at Stratford, and there may have obtained the rudiments of an education, but nothing more. At the age of eighteen Shakespeare was married to a girl of twenty-six. It would seem that the marriage was forced upon him by his own fault, and also by a sentiment which every honourable man must respect. At the early age of twenty-one he had already three children, and no occupation—a very heavy burden for a young man to start through life with. About 1586 his father appears to have lost all his money and all his possessions. The family was utterly ruined. A more unfortunate position for the young man of twenty-one with a family of three children, as well as his own father's family to take care of, could scarcely be imagined. The next year he probably went to London. We hear nothing about him of importance for about five years. Then, in 1592, we sud

denly hear the complaints from dramatists and actors that a new-comer is beginning to crowd them out, to dominate them, to do as he pleases with their dramas, and to monopolise public attention. In 1594 we find him playing before Queen Elizabeth at Christmas time. Thereafter his success begins. It is quite evident that from the time he entered London, Shakespeare, although a stranger, very soon obtained the mastery in the career which he had chosen, and that his domination over smaller minds and characters was founded not only upon some dim recognition of his intellectual superiority, but also upon the recognition of a character of immense force. No weak man, nobody not of a very masterful disposition, could have accomplished so much in so short a time. Very soon the murmurs against him were hushed. They were hushed simply because they had become useless. He had dominated not only those jealous of him, but also the English public. The great mass of the people who support the theatres were carried away by him; never before had such an actor been seen. The higherclass people, the gentry, the nobility, even the great lords about Queen Elizabeth, recognised Shakespeare, and gave him their friendship. Shakespeare did not appeal to them merely as an actor; he appealed to them as a poet. In the age of poetry, the age of new culture, the age of the Renaissance, this country boy without education presumed to enter the lists as a poet, and produced immediately the finest poetry of the period. Before that astonishing talent all opposition naturally broke down. In 1593 appeared his "Venus and Adonis," a poem in the richest and most voluptuous tone of the Renaissance; and even in that time it went rapidly through a number of editions, and was to be found in almost every lady's chamber. He thus achieved at once what ordinary poets must work for half a lifetime to obtain,-literary recognition. This was followed the next year by the poem, also successful, on the rape of Lucretia. But the finest parts of Shakespeare's poetical work, those

matchless sonnets which place him in the first rank of English poets, were not so quickly composed. They were written during a period of about sixteen years, portions only appearing at a time. The truth is that Shakespeare had very little time to write poetry, and wrote it chiefly for amusement or relaxation; his real business was the writing of plays by day and the acting of plays by night. He was doing, and doing easily, the work of ten or twelve men, but doing it infinitely better than twelve men could have done it.

No less than thirty-seven plays constitute his known work; besides which we have reason to suppose that he had some share in the writing or shaping of other plays. But of these thirty-seven, each is a masterpiece which still excites the world's admiration, and must continue so to do for hundreds of years to come. Sometimes we find him producing plays at the rate of three in one year. I do not know that this rate of production could be considered a very high one in the case of an ordinary playwright. Dryden, for example, afterwards willingly undertook to produce three plays a year, and did it for a short time; while, in our own day, the productivity of some eminent French playwrights has certainly been astonishing. But no playwright ever produced in one year three plays of really classic merit, much less anything approaching to a play of Shakespeare. What makes it particularly difficult to understand Shakespeare's productivity in this line, as I have suggested before, is the fact that Shakespeare was acting and teaching actors at the same time that he was writing; and this dramatic activity is the severest of possible strains upon the nervous nature of any man. Shakespeare does not seem to have felt it in the time of his youth and strength; he even seems to have found plenty of leisure to talk with various noblemen, to visit numerous friends, to attend banquets and parties, and to have sharply attended also to business. As early as 1597 he had made enough money to purchase land in his native town of Stratford, with the purpose of retrieving the

family fortunes, and of making a comfortable home for his family. Besides this he was soon able to make himself absolutely independent in London; he bought a theatre, became its manager, and employed those who had previously been his employers or comrades on the stage. In 1609 he had built himself a comfortable home at Stratford, and made an independent fortune and retired from the theatre, except as a writer of plays.

Now this means a very extraordinary life and still more extraordinary force of character. You can imagine for yourselves the obstacles which this man had to encounter, and you can appreciate the wonderful way in which he almost immediately broke them down, and rapidly made himself rich. But you must not forget another very important revelation which the story of this life makes for usI mean the moral revelation. The difficulties in the way of success are not so much those which men are accustomed to think about, as they are those which men are not accustomed to think about until it is too late-as in the case of Marlowe and his companions. The first obstacle which a man really encounters in the world is the most dangerous and least perceived,—I mean Pleasure. Everywhere about a man of handsome presence and kindly character temptations swarm. Women favour him; drinking and gambling companions debauch him. In this respect the world is not at all different now from what it was in the time of Shakespeare. Pleasure is the real danger, and nowhere is this danger so extreme as in the world of the drama, where the conventions have always been more or less relaxed. Now there are two ways in which a young man can face this danger successfully. One is to impose upon himself habits of absolute austerity, to deny himself everything, to pursue one purpose only and never to swerve from a single rule of settled conduct. Such a man must, of course, expect to become unpopular-in other words, to get himself disliked, and to bear a good deal of suffering in consequence. The