SHAKESPEARE

EVERY age has its own difficulties in the appreciation
of Shakespeare. The age in which he lived was too
near to him to see him truly. From his contem-
poraries, and those rare and curious inquirers who
collected the remnants of their talk, we learn that
"his Plays took well"; and that he was "a handsome,
well shaped man; very good company, and of a very
ready and pleasant smooth wit." The easy-going and
casual critics who were privileged to know him in life
regarded him chiefly as a successful member of his
own class, a prosperous actor-dramatist, whose energy
and skill were given to the business of the theatre and
the amusement of the play-going public. There was no
one to make an idol of him while he lived. The newly
sprung class to which he belonged was despised and
disliked by the majority of the decent burgesses of
the City of London; and though the players found
substantial favour at the hands of the Court, and
were applauded and imitated by a large following of
young law-students and fashionable gallants, yet this
favour and support brought them none the nearer to
social consideration or worshipful esteem. In the City
they were enemies, "the caterpillars of a common-
wealth"; at the Court they were servants, and service
is no heritage. It was not until the appearance of

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