“Men
of free born race arise! Gird on the sword,
be swift, be strong.”
“The highest duties oft are found lying upon the
lowliest ground.”
“Arm
and prepare to quit yourselves like men, for the time of your ordeal has come.”
-
Lord Roberts[1]
Lord Roberts[1]
“There is no path of escape known in all the world of
God, but performance.”
- Emerson [2]
“A
great library contains the diary of the human race.”
- Dawson [3]
There
are many justifications of silence; there can be none of insincerity.
- Lewes[4]
There
is a music in the affairs of men, in which one may take one’s due part, or which one may
spoil.
- Walter Pater [5]
“Man’s
inhumanity to man makes countless
thousands mourn.”
- Burns [6]
“Measure thy life by loss
instead of gain;
Not by the wine drunk, but the
wine poured forth;
For love’s strength standeth
in love’s sacrifice,
And who so suffers most hath
most to give.”
-
J.
R. Miller [7]
If
a man is right, his goods are right.
- Andrew Whiteford
“’Tis not the man who has the
most
Who gives the most away;
Nor yet the man who knows the
most
Who has the most to say.”
“Every
noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven
forever in the work of the world.”
-
Ruskin[8]
“The primal duties shine aloft
like stars;
The charities that soothe and
heal and bless,
Are scattered at the feet of
man like flowers.”
-
Wordsworth[9]
“There are very few friends
with whom you can be equally intimate on all
subjects. Discover the range of your
intimacy with each friend, and never go beyond it.”
-
J.
A. Spencer[10]
A great integrity makes us
immortal; an inspiration, and
admiration, a deep love, a strong will, lifts us above fear. It makes a day memorable. We say we lived years in that hour.
- Emerson[11]
In various degrees all cordial human intercourse is a liberation and an enhancement of our personality; it is a
channel of revelation.
Constancy
Constancy
and faithfulness mean something else besides doing
what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves.
They mean honoring whatever is opposite to the reliance others have in
us—whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made
dependent on us.
-
Eliot[12]
“Work”
Blessed
is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness; he has a life purpose.
-
Thomas
Carlyle[13]
“Let the ends thou aim’st at
be
Thy country’s, thy God’s and
truth’s.”[14]
- Shakespeare[15]
[1] Earl Frederick Sleigh
Roberts was born at Cawnpore, India, on the 30th of
September 1832. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and Addiscombe, he obtained a
commission in the Bengal Artillery on 12th December 1851. In the following year
he was posted to a field battery at Peshawar, where he also acted as
aide-de-camp to his father, who commanded the Peshawar division. He commanded
the British forces in Afghanistan during Baden-Powell’s service in 1881-1882.
He was later to become the Commander-in-Chief in India (1885-1893), in the
South African War (1899-1902) and, finally Commander-in-Chief of the British
Army (1901-1904).
His life was jeweled and upheld by those ideals the
poet himself sought to glorify—courage, faith and honor. But to Kipling’s
Tommy Atkins he was just “Bobs,” a well-loved commander who had been with them
since most of them were recruits, a shrewd tactician, yet careful of his men’s
lives and solicitous of their welfare. Nothing endears a leader to his men more
than sparing them needless hardship, and for this reason his men would follow
Bobs through all necessary perils, partly for their belief in him, and partly
to see that no harm befell him.
Beset by Sir Garnet Wolesley’s jealousy of all Indian officers, though the Indian Command was by far the most enlightened and experienced, Bobs still succeeded in rising, being first C-in-C Ireland (He was himself was an Irishman) and finally, the last C-in-C of the whole army before the post was abolished. Sent to reprieve the disasters of the early stages of the Boer War, his energy and decision saved the situation and caused the Boers never to take the field again as an organized army. Characteristically, Bobs died while visiting his beloved soldiers on the Western Front in 1914. (Source: W. H. Hannah’s Bobs, Kipling’s General. The Life of Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar, 1972.)
[2] Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston,
Massachusetts in 1803, son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a
Unitarian minister. He was named after his mother’s brother Ralph and his
father’s great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo. When Ralph was nearly eight, his
father died from stomach cancer. He was raised by his mother, and was
influenced greatly by his aunt Mary Moody Emerson, who lived with the family
off and on and corresponded with Emerson until her death in 1863.
Emerson’s schooling began
at the Boston Latin School in 1812. At 14, he went to Harvard College. To cover
school expenses, he worked as a waiter and as an occasional teacher. After
Harvard, Emerson spent several years as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard
Divinity School. Boston’s Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior
pastor and he was ordained in 1829. Later that year, Emerson married Ellen
Louisa Tucker. The couple moved to Boston. Ellen developed tuberculosis, and
died in early 1831. Emerson was devastated. He began to disagree with the
church’s methods, and resigned in 1832.
Emerson toured Europe in
1832. During the trip, he met William Wordsworth (see footnote 46), Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (footnote 134), John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle (footnote
21). Carlyle in particular was a strong influence on Emerson; the two were
correspondents until Carlyle’s death in 1881. Emerson returned home in 1833,
and soon moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where in 1835 he bought a house.
Later in the year he married again, to Lydia. They eventually had five children
together.
Emerson and other
like-minded intellectuals soon founded the Transcendental Club, which served as
a center for the new movement. He anonymously published his first essay, Nature,
in 1836. A year later he delivered his now-famous The American Scholar at the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. In
it, he declared literary independence for the United States. In 1837, Emerson
befriended Henry David Thoreau (see footnote 108). He asked Thoreau if he kept
a journal, spurring him to a life of writing.
In 1838 Emerson was
invited to Harvard Divinity School for the school’s graduation address. His
speech discounted Biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a
great man, he was not God. Emerson was denounced as an atheist, and was not
re-invited to Harvard for 30 years. Emerson oversaw the first publication of
the Transcendentalist journal The Dial in 1840. He made a good living as a
lecturer—he was in high demand—and was able to buy eleven acres of land near
Walden Pond, where Thoreau would famously spend time. In
1862, Thoreau died of tuberculosis at the age of 44. Emerson delivered his
eulogy. He referred to Thoreau as his best friend, despite a falling out they
had had. Another friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, died two years later; he served
as a pall-bearer.
In the early 1870s, Emerson began losing his memory. His
Concord home caught fire in 1872; Emerson called for help from neighbors and,
giving up on putting out the flames, all attempted to save as many objects as
possible. The fire marked an end to Emerson’s serious lecturing career; from
then on, he would lecture only on special occasions and only in front of
familiar audiences. While the house was being rebuilt, Emerson took a trip to England,
the main European continent, and Egypt. The problems with his memory
increased—he could no longer remember his name.
Embarrassed, he ceased his public appearances by 1879. In 1882, he went
walking despite having an apparent cold and was caught in a sudden rain shower.
Two days later, he was diagnosed with pneumonia. He died soon after, and was
buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
(Source: Wikipedia)
[3] Christopher Henry Dawson was born in 1889 at Hay
Castle in Wales, and brought up at Hartlington Hall, in Yorkshire, England. He
was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Oxford. Christopher’s
background was Anglo-Catholic, but he became a Roman Catholic convert in 1914.
As a post-graduate student, he studied economics, and then at Oxford history
and sociology. He also read in the work of the German theologian Ernst
Troeltsch. In 1916, Dawson married Valery Mills.
Dawson began publishing articles in The Sociological Review in 1920.
His starting point was close to that of Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee,
others who were also interested in grand narratives conducted at the level of a
civilisation. His first book, The Age of the Gods (1928), was apparently
intended as the first of a set of five tracing European civilisation down to
the twentieth century; this schematic plan was not followed to a conclusion.
His general point of view is as a proponent of an “Old West” theory, the later
term of David Gress, who cites Dawson in his From Plato to NATO (1998).
That is, Dawson rejected the blanket assumption that the Middle Ages in Europe
failed to contribute any essential characteristics. He argued that the medieval
Catholic Church was an essential factor in the rise of European civilisation,
and wrote extensively in support of that thesis.
Dawson received a measure of academic recognition, and was considered a leading Catholic historian. From 1940 for a period he was editor of the Dublin Review. He was Chauncey Stillman Chair of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard University from 1958-1962. He died in 1970. (Source: Wikipedia)
Dawson received a measure of academic recognition, and was considered a leading Catholic historian. From 1940 for a period he was editor of the Dublin Review. He was Chauncey Stillman Chair of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard University from 1958-1962. He died in 1970. (Source: Wikipedia)
[4] George Henry Lewes was born in London in 1817, the
illegitimate son of minor poet John Lee Lewes and Elizabeth Ashweek. He had two
elder brothers by his parents’ extramarital union and four half siblings from
John Lee Lewes’ marriage to Elizabeth Pownell. Lewes was aware neither of his
own illegitimacy nor of his “natural” father’s legitimate family in Liverpool
that had been abandoned in 1811. He had the false impression that John Lee
Lewes had died when he was two, whereas he had in fact migrated to Bermuda.
Lewes, and his brothers Edgar James and Edward Charles, grew up with their
mother Elizabeth Ashweek and, following her marriage in 1823, their
much-disliked stepfather John Gurens Willim. The family struggled to make ends
meet; Lewes’ schooling took place at a number of schools since the family moved
often.
Lewes’
first major and most enduring literary friendship was with Leigh Hunt, Percy
Shelley’s Bohemian friend, who published his early articles. Hunt introduced
Lewes to established men of letters like Thomas Carlyle (see footnote 21) who
were impressed with his wit and intelligence and helped him establish his
career as a writer. Dickens (see footnote 130) was another early friend, made
through Lewes’ 1837 review of Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Sketches by
Boz in the National Magazine and Monthly Critic.
Lewes went on to have a successful career as a
philosopher, literary critic, dramatist, actor, scientist, and editor. He may
be best remembered for his decades-long liaison with the novelist Mary Ann
Evans, better known by her pseudonym, George Eliot (see footnote 28). His 1855 Life of Goethe is probably his most
widely known writing. A versatile writer and thinker in many fields, Lewes
contributed most significantly to the development of empirical metaphysics; his
treatment of mental phenomena as related to social and historical conditions
was a major advance in psychological thought. He died in 1878. (Sources: Wikipedia; The Literary
Encyclopedia – litencyc.com)
[5] Born in Stepney, England, in 1839, Walter Horatio Pater
was a son of Richard Glode Pater, a doctor, who had moved there in the early
1800s to practice medicine among the poor. His father died while Walter was an
infant; the family moved to Enfield, where Walter attended Grammar School. In
1853 he was sent to The King’s School, Canterbury. As a schoolboy he read John
Ruskin’s (see footnote 92) Modern Painters and was for a while attracted
to the study of art. He went in 1858 to Queen’s College, Oxford.
Pater’s undergraduate life was uneventful. He was a shy “reading man,” making few friends. After graduating, he settled in at Oxford and taught private pupils. As a boy he had cherished the idea of entering the Anglican Church, but at Oxford his faith in Christianity was shaken. He thought of graduating as a Unitarian minister, but in spite of his inclination towards the aesthetic, ritual elements of the church, he decided against it. Offered a fellowship at Brasenose in 1864, he settled down into a university career.
As he began his career, Pater’s sphere of interests widened rapidly; he became acutely interested in literature, and started to write articles and criticism. The first of these to be printed was a brief essay on Coleridge (see footnote 134) in the Westminster Review. He followed this with essays that were collected in 1873 in his Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Pater, now at the centre of a small but interesting circle in Oxford, gained respect in London and elsewhere, numbering the Pre-Raphaelites among his friends. In 1874 his promising academic career was halted by his homosexual affair with a 19-year-old undergraduate student. This cost him a promised proctorship, and, as public criticism grew—fanned W. H. Mallock’s unflattering portrayal of him The New Republic—consideration for a professorship at Oxford.
Despite this setback, by the time his philosophical novel Marius the Epicurean appeared in 1885, Pater had gathered quite a following. In it he fully and elaborately set forth his ideal of the cult of beauty. This helped lay the foundation of the Aesthetic movement, later championed by his former Oxford student, Oscar Wilde. Pater continued to publish, but his life was cut short by rheumatic fever; he died at age 55. A collected edition of his works was issued in 1901.
Pater’s undergraduate life was uneventful. He was a shy “reading man,” making few friends. After graduating, he settled in at Oxford and taught private pupils. As a boy he had cherished the idea of entering the Anglican Church, but at Oxford his faith in Christianity was shaken. He thought of graduating as a Unitarian minister, but in spite of his inclination towards the aesthetic, ritual elements of the church, he decided against it. Offered a fellowship at Brasenose in 1864, he settled down into a university career.
As he began his career, Pater’s sphere of interests widened rapidly; he became acutely interested in literature, and started to write articles and criticism. The first of these to be printed was a brief essay on Coleridge (see footnote 134) in the Westminster Review. He followed this with essays that were collected in 1873 in his Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Pater, now at the centre of a small but interesting circle in Oxford, gained respect in London and elsewhere, numbering the Pre-Raphaelites among his friends. In 1874 his promising academic career was halted by his homosexual affair with a 19-year-old undergraduate student. This cost him a promised proctorship, and, as public criticism grew—fanned W. H. Mallock’s unflattering portrayal of him The New Republic—consideration for a professorship at Oxford.
Despite this setback, by the time his philosophical novel Marius the Epicurean appeared in 1885, Pater had gathered quite a following. In it he fully and elaborately set forth his ideal of the cult of beauty. This helped lay the foundation of the Aesthetic movement, later championed by his former Oxford student, Oscar Wilde. Pater continued to publish, but his life was cut short by rheumatic fever; he died at age 55. A collected edition of his works was issued in 1901.
[6]
At the age of fifteen, Burns had fallen in love written
his first poem. As a young man, he pursued both love and poetry with uncommon
zeal. In 1785, he fathered the first of his fourteen children. His biographer,
DeLancey Ferguson, said “it was not so much that he was conspicuously sinful as
that he sinned conspicuously.” Between 1784 and 1785, Burns wrote many of the
poems collected in his first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,
printed in 1786 and paid for by subscriptions. It was an immediate success;
Robert was celebrated throughout England and Scotland as a great “peasant-poet.”
In 1788, he and his wife, Jean Armour, settled in
Ellisland, where Burns was given a commission as an excise officer. He also
began to assist James Johnson in collecting folk songs for an anthology
entitled The Scots Musical Museum. He spent the final twelve years of
his life editing and imitating traditional folk songs for this volume and for Select
Collection of Original Scottish Airs. These volumes were essential in
preserving parts of Scotland’s cultural heritage and include such well-known
songs as My Luve is Like a Red Red Rose and Auld
Land Syne. He died from heart disease at the age of thirty-seven. On the
day of his death, his wife gave birth to his last son, Maxwell.
Most of Burns’ poems were written in Scots. They
document and celebrate traditional Scottish culture, expressions of farm life,
and class and religious distinctions. He wrote in a variety of forms: epistles
to friends, ballads, and songs. His best-known poem is the mock-heroic Tam o’
Shanter. He is also well known for the over three hundred songs he wrote
which celebrate love, friendship, work, and drink with often hilarious and
tender sympathy. Even today, he is often referred to as the National Bard of
Scotland. (Source: poets.org)
[7] James Russell Miller was born in 1840 at Frankfort
Springs, Pennsylvania. The crucible of his education was his service with the
United States Christian Commission, an agency set up to minister to the troops
during the Civil War. When the war ended Miller completed his theological
studies and was ordained and installed in 1867. In 1870, when he was thirty, he
married Miss Louise E. King. Besides authoring over 80 books, booklets, and
pamphlets, Dr. Miller was the Editorial Superintendent of the Presbyterian
Board of Publication and a very active pastor in a succession of churches. The
end of life on earth came without warning in 1912; one moment he seemed to be
resting quietly; the next he was at rest.
(Source: jr-miller.com)
Dr. Miller was one of the best selling Christian authors of his era, but he may not have written the lines attributed to him in Clare’s book. As the editor of the website “jr-miller.com” explains:
Dr. Miller was one of the best selling Christian authors of his era, but he may not have written the lines attributed to him in Clare’s book. As the editor of the website “jr-miller.com” explains:
J.R. Miller’s works are
interspersed by many short poems. So far I have been unable to identify any
poem that he wrote himself. We know that he did write poetry because he
contributed to Missionary Tidings, the official publication of the Christian
Woman’s Board of Missions. Regrettably Dr. Miller is casual about crediting
authorship….
[8]
In 1848, he married Effie Gray. Their marriage was notoriously unhappy, eventually being annulled in 1854 on grounds of his “incurable impotency,” a charge he later disputed, even offering to prove his virility at the court’s request. But he did not argue the point that the marriage had not been consumated. Effie later married the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais, who had been John’s protegé.
In the late 1850s, Ruskin had a crisis of religious belief. Under the influence of his great friend Thomas Carlyle (see footnote 21) he abandoned art criticism to focus on social issues. In Unto this Last he expounded theories which led to the formation of the British Labour party and Christian socialism.
In 1866, Ruskin proposed to 18 year old Rose La Touche, with whom he had been infatuated since meeting her when she was a child. She eventually refused him, in 1872, and died soon after. He fell into despair and bouts of mental illness. This accelerated a trend of decreasing popularity in the art world as the public shifted to new ideas. A successful libel suit brought by painter James Whistler further hurt his prestige. He spent much of his later life in England’s Lake District. He died in 1900.
[9] William
Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in the Lake District of England, in 1770. His
boyhood was full of adventure among the hills, and he says of himself that he
showed “a stiff, moody, and violent temper.” He lost his mother when he was 8
and his father at age 13. With the help of his uncles, he and his siblings were
well educated and started in life. In 1787 went to St. John’s College,
Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1791. William’s uncles wanted him to
enter the Church, but to this he was averse; indeed, his dislike for any regular
employment offended his uncles. The beginning of his friendship with Coleridge in 1795 comfirmed in him his resolution to devote himself to
poetry; and a legacy of £900 from a friend allowed him to do it, at least
temporarily.
In 1813 Wordsworth migrated to Rydal Mount, his home for the rest of his life; there a benefactor helped him be appointed Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland, with a salary of £400. He had now come to his own, and was regarded by the great majority of the lovers of poetry as, notwithstanding certain limitations and flaws, a truly great and original poet. In 1843, he succeeded Southey (see footnote 34) as England’s Poet Laureate. His long, tranquil, and fruitful life ended in 1850. He lies buried in the churchyard of Grasmere. (Source: Poet Seers – poetseers.org)
[10] Jesse Ames Spencer was born in Hyde Park, Duchess
County, New York, in 1816. His family moved in 1826 to New York City, where he
entered a printing-office in 1830, and in two and a half years mastered the
compositor’s art. For several years he was assistant to his father, who was a
city surveyor. He was graduated at Columbia in 1837 and at the Episcopal
general theological seminary in 1840. He was ordained a deacon upon graduating and
elected rector of the church in Goshen. The next year, he was made a priest.
After two years’ labor in his parish Spencer’s
health failed; he sought recuperation by wintering in Nice, on the
Mediterranean. A relapse led to a second trip abroad; he toured Europe, Egypt,
and the Holy Land. He was chosen to be secretary and editor of the General
Protestant Episcopal Sunday-school union and Church book society in 1851, and
served in that capacity until 1857. He accepted the rectorship of St. Paul’s
church, Flatbush, New York, in 1863, which post he held for two years. He was
elected professor of the Greek language and literature in the College of the
city of New York in 1869, and discharged the duties of this department for ten
years of active service.
In 1883 Spencer was appointed custodian of the
Standard Bible. He received the degree of S.T.D. from Columbia in 1852, and
from Trinity in 1872. Dr. Spencer wrote extensively; among his many books are History of the Reformation in England
(1846) and a four-volume History of the
United States (1856-69). He was married and had seven children, but
outlived all his family except one son. Dr. Spencer died in Passaic, New Jersey
in 1898. (Source: obituary, The New York
Times, September 3, 1898)
In 1883 Spencer was appointed custodian of the
Standard Bible. He received the degree of S.T.D. from Columbia in 1852, and
from Trinity in 1872. Dr. Spencer wrote extensively; among his many books are History of the Reformation in England
(1846) and a four-volume History of the
United States (1856-69). He was married and had seven children, but
outlived all his family except one son. Dr. Spencer died in Passaic, New Jersey
in 1898. (Source: obituary, The New York
Times, September 3, 1898)
[11] Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston,
Massachusetts in 1803, son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a
Unitarian minister. He was named after his mother’s brother Ralph and his
father’s great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo. When Ralph was nearly eight, his
father died from stomach cancer. He was raised by his mother, and was
influenced greatly by his aunt Mary Moody Emerson, who lived with the family
off and on and corresponded with Emerson until her death in 1863.
Emerson’s schooling began
at the Boston Latin School in 1812. At 14, he went to Harvard College. To cover
school expenses, he worked as a waiter and as an occasional teacher. After
Harvard, Emerson spent several years as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard
Divinity School. Boston’s Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior
pastor and he was ordained in 1829. Later that year, Emerson married Ellen
Louisa Tucker. The couple moved to Boston. Ellen developed tuberculosis, and
died in early 1831. Emerson was devastated. He began to disagree with the
church’s methods, and resigned in 1832.
Emerson toured Europe in
1832. During the trip, he met William Wordsworth (see footnote 46), Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (footnote 134), John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle (footnote
21). Carlyle in particular was a strong influence on Emerson; the two were
correspondents until Carlyle’s death in 1881. Emerson returned home in 1833,
and soon moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where in 1835 he bought a house.
Later in the year he married again, to Lydia. They eventually had five children
together.
Emerson and other
like-minded intellectuals soon founded the Transcendental Club, which served as
a center for the new movement. He anonymously published his first essay, Nature,
in 1836. A year later he delivered his now-famous The American Scholar at the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. In
it, he declared literary independence for the United States. In 1837, Emerson
befriended Henry David Thoreau. He asked Thoreau if he kept
a journal, spurring him to a life of writing.
In 1838 Emerson was
invited to Harvard Divinity School for the school’s graduation address. His
speech discounted Biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a
great man, he was not God. Emerson was denounced as an atheist, and was not
re-invited to Harvard for 30 years. Emerson oversaw the first publication of
the Transcendentalist journal The Dial in 1840. He made a good living as a
lecturer—he was in high demand—and was able to buy eleven acres of land near
Walden Pond, where Thoreau would famously spend time. In
1862, Thoreau died of tuberculosis at the age of 44. Emerson delivered his
eulogy. He referred to Thoreau as his best friend, despite a falling out they
had had. Another friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, died two years later; he served
as a pall-bearer.
[12]
She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken
seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot
wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An
additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public
scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her open relationship with the
married George Henry Lewes. (Source:
Wikipedia)
[13]
[14] From Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 2; part of
Wolsey’s famous lament to Cromwell.
[15] William Shakespeare was born in 1564, in Stratford,
England to John and Mary Arden Shakespeare. His father was a glove-maker. He no
doubt attended the local grammar school, and would have studied primarily Latin
rhetoric, logic, and literature. He probably left school at 15, which was the
norm, and took some sort of job. Numerous references in his plays suggest he
had special insight to his father’s trade, so he may have worked for him. At
age 18 he married Anne Hathaway, a local farmer’s daughter eight years his
senior. Their first daughter (Susanna) was born six months later (1583), and
twins Judith and Hamnet were born in 1585.
Shakespeare’s life
can be divided into three periods: the first 20 years in Stratford, which
include his schooling, early marriage, and fatherhood; the next 25 years as an
actor and playwright in London; and the last five in retirement back in
Stratford where he enjoyed moderate wealth gained from his theatrical
successes. The years linking the first two periods are marked by a lack of
information about Shakespeare, and are often referred to as the “dark years”;
the transition from active work into retirement was gradual and cannot be
precisely dated. At some point during the dark years, Shakespeare began his
career with a London theatrical company—perhaps in 1589, for he was already an
actor and playwright of some note in 1592. Shakespeare apparently wrote and
acted for Pembroke’s Men, as well as numerous others, in particular Strange’s
Men, which later became the Chamberlain’s Men, with whom he remained for the
rest of his career.
In 1592 the Plague
closed the theaters for about two years. Shakespeare turned to writing
book-length narrative poetry. Most notable were Venus and Adonis and The Rape
of Lucrece. During this same period, Shakespeare was writing his sonnets,
which are more likely signs of the time’s fashion rather than actual love poems
detailing any particular relationship. He returned to play writing when
theaters reopened in 1594, and published no more poetry. His sonnets were
published without his consent in 1609, shortly before his retirement.
In 1596 Shakespeare
suffered the loss of his only son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11. But his
career continued unabated, and in London in 1599, he became one of the partners
in the new Globe Theater built by the Chamberlain’s Men. When Queen Elizabeth
died in 1603 and was succeeded by her cousin King James of Scotland, the
Chamberlain’s Men was renamed the King’s Men, and Shakespeare’s productivity
and popularity continued uninterrupted. He invested in London real estate and,
one year away from retirement, purchased a second theater, the Blackfriars Gatehouse,
in partnership with his fellow actors. His final play was the above-cited Henry
VIII, two years before his death. William Shakespeare died in 1616, and was
buried two days later in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church where he had been
baptized 52 years earlier. (Source:
enotes.com)
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