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APPENDIX

I

THE SOURCES OF BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE

The scantiness of contemporary records of Shakespeare's career has been much exaggerated. Contemporary records abundant.An investigation extending over two centuries has brought together a mass of detail which far exceeds that accessible in the case of any other contemporary professional writer. Nevertheless, some important links are missing, and at some critical points appeal to conjecture is inevitable. But the fully ascertained facts are numerous enough to define sharply the general direction that Shakespeare's career followed. Although the clues are in some places faint, the trail never altogether eludes the patient investigator.

Fuller, in his 'Worthies' (1662), attempted the first biographical notice of Shakespeare, with poor results. First efforts in biography.Aubrey, in his gossiping 'Lives of Eminent Men,'[1] based his ampler information on reports communicated to him by William Beeston (d. 1682), an aged actor, whom Dryden called 'the chronicle of the stage,' and who was doubtless in the main a trustworthy witness. A few additional details were recorded in the seventeenth century by the Rev. John Ward (1629-1681), vicar of Stratford-on-Avon from 1662 to 1668, in a diary and memorandum-book written between 1661 and 1663 (ed. C. A. Severn, 1839); by the Rev. William

  1. ↑ Compiled between 1660 and 1606; first printed in Letters from the Bodleian Library, 1813, and admirably re-edited for the Clarendon Press in 1898 by the Rev. Andrew Clark (2 vols.).

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