MORE LIGHT ON SHAKESPEARE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 84, 6 October 1909, Page 6

MORE LIGHT ON SHAKESPEARE.

Tho discovery in London, recorded in yesterday's cable news, of a deed nearly three hundred years old, lias set the antiquarian world agog, and with reason. For this quite unlooked-for "find" gives in some detail the history of The Globe and Blackfriars Theatres for the seventeen years from 1599 onwards — that is to say, the years representing the period described by Dr. Fumival as that of Shakespeare's "triumph and assured success." It is not exactly known when he left London for his native town of Stratford, but 1609 is supposed to be approximately the date, and 1613, three years before his death, when he sold his shares in the theatres. It covers, .therefore, the precise period when early stress and struggle had ceased, and the most illustrious literary genius in our national history was quietly enjoying the fruits of his talent, his industry, and his business capacity. That he was in comfortable circumstances was known; his actual income is now revealed as having been £600 per annum —a much t larger sum than the same nominal value would represent in our own day. But with Shakespeare, as with most successful men, the period of "well-earned rest" so long awaited had its countervailing trials. He seems ,to have had the family ambition; but the same year, 1596, in which John Shakespeare, gentleman, his father, secured a grant of arms from the Herald's College (as is commonly assumed, at his son's desire and cost), the poet's only son, Hamet, died. John and Haniet Shakespeare are to us but names, busy as biographers and fictionists have been with their suggestions; but we may reasonably infer that many bright hopes were buried with the only boy, and that the fruits of fame and worldly success lost much of their sweetness. To us, the interest of this discovery lies not so much in the value of the facts it reveals —though we can understand how antiquaries will revel in them —'as in the possibilities it suggests of future treasure-trove. It is more than a hundred and sixty years since the last important Shakespeare document, his will, came to light, and the world had ceased to look for more original data. And though the smallest details have a certain significance, it is not such information as the poet's income at any given date that we actually want. We have practically nothing of the man beyond his immortal book. Of no great figure in literature have we less autographic trace. Compare, for example, the wealth of personal memoirs that remain of John Bunyan —the still unexhausted materials for his biography. His introductions and notes never lack the personal element j Shakespeare is beyond all other writers, excepting certain of the inspired writers, impersonal. It is idle to read, as so many of his editors do, autobiography into his plays or his sonnets. The practice has led hiß injudicious worshippers into many blind alleys. But did he never keep a diary or even book of accounts in his own autograph? Didi a man with so supreme a gift of expression never embody his thoughts or narrate passing incidents of life in letters written with the freedom of personal friendship? Did he never discuss matters of art or criticism in. writing with literary friends? If so, all has vanished, vanished so completely that even his claim to the authorship of his own works is continually being called in question, and still to those who know him best and love him most, he is something of an enigma. Forgers have tried to fill the gaps; but they have not been clever enough to escape detection. Is it too much to hope that some day, somewhere —it may be in some neglected library^ or the stored-up lecords of- some old English ancestral horne — there may be found Shakespeare letters ! —Shakespeare memoirs: letters to and from friends on the subjects of his ordinary life and work, which will for ever clear up points now in mystery, and give us some notion of what Shakespeare really was, how influenced by environment, and with whom he intimately associated? It is a faint ■ possibility, but who shall declare it impossible? Nay, when one remembers how mounds in Egypt and in Greece have yielded up their papyri thousands of years old —how the waste-paper baskets of the past, "tipped" and sand-buried, have been unearthed to solve questions in fierce debate at the very hour of their discovery —how two records vitally concerning our poet have come to light at successive intervals of 130 and 160 years —may we not admit the possibility of a keen-eyed searcher of old manuscripts chancing upon some intimate personal record of our greatest poet, which will reveal him, not as the mythical demigod of Arnold and' the later company of adorers, but as tho man. Shakespeare ill his ljabit as he lived, perhaps the most thoroughly human of all those who have undartaken to depict humanity. 1 [ : i i

Eighty-five emigrants from Great Britain, by the s.s. Fiie&hire, wero in Wellington yesterday. Thirty-one of the number are booked for this port, twentyteven fur Lyllelton, fourteen for Duneilin, ten for Grcymoulh, two for Weslport, and one for Nelson. Thirteen of the emigrant!) wero tent out through tho High Commissioner's office, •their capita' umountiau to fiIGIL