P. G.

Wodehouse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir P. G. Wodehouse

Wodehouse in 1904 (aged 23).

Born 15 October 1881

Guildford, Surrey, England, UK

Died 14 February 1975 (aged 93)

Southampton, New York, U.S.

Pen name Henry William-Jones

P Brooke-Haven

Pelham Grenville

Melrose Grainger

J Walker Williams

C P West

Occupation novelist, playwright and lyricist

Nationality British
 United States (naturalized in 1955, aged 74)

Period 1902–75

Genres comedy, romantic comedy

Sir Pelham G renville Wodehouse, KBE ( /ˈwʊdhaʊs/; 15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an
English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous
pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and
his many writings continue to be widely read. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his
life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that
of pre-war English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.

An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such
as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Stephen Fry, Douglas
Adams, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Terry Pratchett. Journalist and writer Christopher
Hitchens commented, "there is not, and never will be, anything to touch him."[1]

Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a
playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of 15 plays and of 250 lyrics for some 30 musical
comedies, many of them produced in collaboration with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He worked with Cole
Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934), wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Bill" in Kern's Show Boat (1927),
wrote lyrics to Sigmund Romberg's music for theGershwin – Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and
collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Early life

• 2 Life beyond Britain

• 3 Later life

• 4 Writing style

○ 4.1 Literary tastes

and influence

○ 4.2 Characters

○ 4.3 Plots
 • 5 Writings

• 6 Adaptations

• 7 Major characters

• 8 Notes

• 9 References

• 10 External links

[ edit]Early life
Wodehouse, called "Plum"[2] by most family and friends, was born prematurely to Eleanor Wodehouse (née
Deane; daughter of John Bathurst Deane) while she was visiting Guildford and he was baptised at St. Nicolas'
Church, Guildford.[3] His aunt Mary Deane was the author of the novel Mr. Zinzan of Bath; or, Seen in an Old
Mirror.[4] His father, Henry Ernest Wodehouse[5] (1845–1929), was a British judge in Hong Kong. The
Wodehouse family had been settled in Norfolk for many centuries. Wodehouse's great-grandfather Reverend
Philip Wodehouse was the second son of Sir Armine Wodehouse, 5th Baronet, whose eldest son John
Wodehouse, 1st Baron Wodehouse, was the ancestor of the Earls of Kimberley. His godfather was Pelham von
Donop, after whom he was named.[6]

When he was just three years old, Wodehouse was brought back to England and placed in the care of a nanny.
He attended various boarding schools and, between the ages of three and 15 years, saw his parents for barely
six months in total.[7] Wodehouse grew very close to his brother, who shared his love for art. Wodehouse filled
the voids in his life by writing relentlessly. He spent quite a few of his school holidays with one aunt or another;
it has been speculated that this gave him a healthy horror of the "gaggle of aunts", reflected in Bertie Wooster's
formidable aunts Agatha and Dahlia, as well as Lady Constance Keeble's tyranny over her many nieces and
nephews in the Blandings Castleseries.

Wodehouse's first school was The Chalet School, Croydon (now Elmhurst School for Boys), which he attended
between 1886 and 1889, together with his two older brothers. (Richard, the youngest of the four Wodehouse
brothers, was much younger and became somewhat noteworthy as a cricketer in Asia.) In 1889, the oldest
brother, Peveril, was diagnosed as having a weak chest, and the three brothers were sent to Elizabeth College,
Guernsey, where Peveril could benefit from the sea air. Wodehouse remained at Elizabeth College for two
years, until, at age 10, it became time for him to move to a preparatory school. Wodehouse's first prep school
was Malvern House, at Kearsney, near Dover, which specialised in preparing boys for entry to the Royal Naval
College at Dartmouth. Wodehouse spent two unhappy years at Malvern House before finally persuading his
father to send him to Dulwich College, where his elder brother Armine was already a student.
He enjoyed his time at Dulwich, where he was successful both as a student and as a sportsman: he was a
member of the Classics VIth Form (traditionally, the preserve of the brightest students) and a School prefect,
he edited the college magazine, The Alleynian, sang and acted leading roles in musical and theatrical
productions, and gained his school colours as a member of the cricket First XI and rugby footballFirst XV; he
also represented the school at boxing (until barred by poor eyesight) and his house at athletics. The library at
Dulwich is now named after him.

Wodehouse's elder brother, Armine, had won a classics scholarship to Oxford University (where he gained
a first class degree) and Pelham was widely expected to follow in his brother's footsteps, but a fall in the value
of the Indian rupee (in which currency his father's pension was expressed) forced him to abandon such plans.
His father found him a position with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (now known asHSBC), where, after two
years' training in London, he would have been posted to an overseas branch. However, Wodehouse was never
interested in banking as a career and "never learned a thing about banking". (Some of his experiences in the
bank were recounted in Psmith in the City.) He wrote part-time while working in the bank, and in 1902 became
a journalist with The Globe (a now defunct newspaper), taking over the comic column from a friend who had
resigned.

Wodehouse contributed items to Punch,[8] Vanity Fair (1903–1906), Daily Express (1904) and The World: A
Journal for Men and Women(1906/1907). He also wrote stories for schoolboy's magazines (The
Captain and Public School Magazine) that were compiled to form his first published novels and four playlets
with his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson.[9] During 1909, Wodehouse stayed in Greenwich Village and "sold
two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier's for a total of $500 – much more than I had ever earned before."
He then resigned fromThe Globe and stayed in New York, where he became a regular contributor (under a
variety of pseudonyms) to the newly-founded American Vanity Fair (1913). However "the wolf was always at
the door", and it was not until The Saturday Evening Post serialised Something New in 1915 that he had his
"first break". Around this time he began collaborating with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern on (eventually
eighteen) musical comedies, including the innovative Princess Theatre musicals.[10]

In 1914, Wodehouse married Ethel Wayman and gained a stepdaughter called Leonora. He had no biological
children, and it is possible that he was rendered sterile after contracting mumps as an adolescent.[11]

During the 1930s, he had two brief stints as a screenwriter in Hollywood, where he claimed he was greatly
overpaid. Many of his novels were also serialised in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and The
Strand, which also paid well.

[ edit]Life beyond Britain

Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1914 onward he split his
time between England and the United States. In 1934, he took up residence in France, to avoid double
taxation on his earnings by the tax authorities in Britain and the U.S. He was also profoundly uninterested in
politics and world affairs. When World War II broke out in 1939 he remained at his seaside home in Le
Touquet, France, instead of returning to England, apparently failing to recognise the seriousness of the conflict.
(One version says that his wife couldn't bear to leave their dog, Wonder).[12] Subsequently, the German military
authorities in occupied France, interned him with several other Englishmen in the same condition, as an
"enemy alien" according to the definition of such by the Geneva Convention, first in Belgium, then at Tost,
now Toszek, in Upper Silesia, now in Poland. Of the latter, he is recorded as having said, "If this is Upper
Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be like…"[13]

While at Tost, he entertained his fellow prisoners with witty dialogues. He was released from internment
because of having reached the limit of age (60 years) stated by the mentioned Convention of Geneva
(Wodehouse's version) or because of a deal with the German Ministry of Propaganda. He then proceeded to
broadcast through the German radio services and with the full cooperation of the German propaganda services
several humoristic autobiographical commentaries as a basis for a series of radio broadcasts aimed at America
(then not at war with Germany). He lived then for a time at Hotel Adlon in Berlin and then in Paris (still under
German occupation). When the text of his commentaries was published in England many years later, several
short sentences of the commentaries had been suppressed, probably by Wodehouse himself, for showing him
being relatively friendly to the German military men when they arrived at Le Touquet. Wodehouse believed he
would be admired as showing himself to have "kept a stiff upper lip" during his internment.[14] Wartime England
was in no mood for light-hearted banter,[citation needed] however, and the broadcasts led to many accusations
of collaborationism with the Germans and eventreason. Some libraries banned his books. Foremost among his
critics was A. A. Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh books; Wodehouse took revenge in a short story
parody, Rodney Has a Relapse (1949), in which a character based on Milne writes about his son, a ridiculous
character named "Timothy Bobbin".[15][16] Another critic was the playwright Sean O'Casey who, in a letter to The
Daily Telegraph in July 1941, wrote: "If England has any dignity left in the way of literature, she will forget for
ever the pitiful antics of English literature's performing flea." Wodehouse deflected the insult by giving the
title Performing Flea to a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend. Among Wodehouse's defenders
were Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell.[17] An investigation by the British security service MI5 concurred with
Orwell's opinion, concluding that Wodehouse was naïve and foolish but not a traitor.[18] Documents declassified
in the 1980s revealed that while living in Paris, his living expenses were paid by the Nazis.[19] However, papers
released by the British Public Record Office in 1999 showed these had been accounted for by MI5 investigators
when establishing Wodehouse's innocence.[14]

The criticism led Wodehouse and his wife to move permanently to New York. Apart from Leonora, who died
during Wodehouse's internment in Germany, they had no children. He became a United States citizen in 1955,
spending the remainder of his life in Remsenburg, New York, never to visit his homeland again.
[ edit]Later life
He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the 1975 New Year
Honours, six weeks before his death at age 93.[20]

It is widely believed that the honour was not given earlier because of lingering resentment about the German
broadcasts. In a BBC interview shortly before his death, Wodehouse said that he had no ambitions left as he
had been knighted and created as a wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. His doctor advised him not to travel to
London for the investiture, His wife later received the award on his behalf from the British consul.[21]

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, given annually for the finest example of comic writing in the UK,
was established and named in his honour in 2000.

[ edit]Writing style
Wodehouse took a modest attitude to his own works. In Over Seventy (1957) he wrote: "I go in for what is
known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that – humorists they are sometimes called – are looked
down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at."

However, he also lightly taunted his critics, as in the introduction to Summer Lightning.[22]

"A certain critic—for such men, I regret to say, do exist—made the nasty
remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse
characters under different names'. He has probably by now been eaten by
bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha; but if he
still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer
Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this
time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same
names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy."

His writing style is notable for its unique blend of contemporary London
clubroom slang with elegant, classically-informed drawing-room English; for
example:[23]

"I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit
who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and
rockbound coast."[24]
[edit]Literary tastes and influence
In the above-mentioned article, Wodehouse names some
contemporary humorists whom he held in high regard. These include
Frank Sullivan,A. P. Herbert, W. S. Gilbert[25] and Alex Atkinson. Two
essays in Tales of St. Austin’s satirise modern literary criticism:
"The Tom BrownQuestion" is a parody of Homeric analysts, and
"Notes" criticises both classical and English critics, with an ironic
exception for those explicating the meaning of Browning. In "Work",
Wodehouse calls the claim that "Virgil is hard" "a shallow falsehood",
but notes that "Aeschylus, on the other hand, is
a demon". Shakespeare and Tennyson were also obvious influences;
their works were the only books Wodehouse took with him in his
internment.[26] He frequently quoted Kipling and Omar Khayyam.
Wodehouse enjoyed the traditional Englishthriller: one of his characters
declares that "It is impossible not to be thrilled by Edgar Wallace",
[27]
and he dedicated Sam the Sudden to Wallace, while Agatha
Christie dedicated her Hallowe'en Party "To P G Wodehouse — whose
books and stories have brightened my life for many years. Also, to
show my pleasure in his having been kind enough to tell me he
enjoyed my books." In the 1960s he gave important praise for the
debut novels of Gavin Lyall[28] and George MacDonald Fraser.[29] In
later life, he read mysteries by Ngaio Marsh and Rex Stout, and
unfailingly watched the soap opera The Edge of Night.[30]

[edit]Characters

Wodehouse's characters, however, were not always popular with the

establishment, notably the foppish foolishness of Bertie Wooster.
Papers released by the Public Record Office have disclosed that when
Wodehouse was recommended in 1967 for the Order of the
Companions of Honour, Sir Patrick Dean, the British ambassador in
Washington, argued that it "would also give currency to a Bertie
Wooster image of the British character which we are doing our best to
eradicate."[31]

Wodehouse's characters are often eccentric, with peculiar

attachments, such as to pigs (Lord Emsworth), newts (Gussie Fink-
Nottle), antique silver (Bertie's Uncle Tom Travers), golf-collectables
(numerous characters) or socks (Archibald Mulliner). His "mentally
negligible" good-natured characters invariably make their lot worse by
their half-witted schemes to improve a bad situation. In many cases the
classic eccentricities of Wodehouse's upper class give rise to plot
complications. The very first Jeeves story ("Jeeves Takes Charge")
concerns an attempt to prevent publication of an old man's memoirs,
which contain embarrassing stories about aristocrats and other
prestigious persons in their youth.[32]

Relatives, especially aunts and uncles, are commonly depicted with an

exaggerated power to help or impede marriage or financial prospects,
or simply to make life miserable. (Bertie speaks of "Aunt Agatha getting
after [someone] with her hatchet".) Several of the Jeeves stories
involve helping a pal deceive a wealthy relative on whom the pal
depends financially ("The Aunt and the Sluggard", "Comrade Bingo").
When Bertie Wooster is first introduced ("Jeeves Takes Charge"), he is
himself dependent upon his Uncle Willoughby, and only when this
unclehands in his dinner pail (dies) does Bertram become
independently wealthy.

Children of both genders are invariably troublesome, annoying, and

malicious. The most egregious is Edwin the Boy Scout, whose
attempts at "acts of kindness" cause disasters of widely varying
severity in several Jeeves novels and short stories. Friends are often
more a trouble than a comfort in Wodehouse stories: Bertie Wooster in
particular is often obliged to put himself to trouble, and sometimes to
endure considerable suffering, in order to help a friend. (The Code of
the Woosters, in the novel of the same name, is "Never let a pal
down.") Antagonists (particularly rivals in love) are frequently terrifying
and just as often get their comeuppance in a gratifying fashion.

Policemen and magistrates are typically portrayed as threatening, yet

easy to fool, often through the simple expedient of giving a false name.
A recurring motif is the theft of policemen's helmets. One of the most
dislikeable characters in the entire opus is a magistrate, Sir Watkyn
Bassett.

In a manner going back to the stock characters of Roman

comedy (such as Plautus), Wodehouse's servants are frequently far
cleverer than their masters. This is quintessentially true with Jeeves,
who always pulls Bertie Wooster out of the direst scrapes by means of
cunning and resource, often by deceptively manipulating him
(e.g. "Bertie Changes his Mind", Right Ho, Jeeves) or by convincing
him to sacrifice himself. It recurs elsewhere, such as with the efficient
(though despised) Baxter, secretary to the befogged Lord Emsworth.

Another recurring type is the successful, square-jawed, ruthless

American business executive, most notably in Thank You, Jeeves and
in the golf story "The Heel of Achilles" but also in later stories about
the Mulliners in Hollywood.

Big bruisers who come and go unexpectedly, muttering threats, abound

in Wodehouse, including first and foremost Roderick Spode andTuppy
Glossop but also any number of bookies' henchmen, jealous lovers,
nosy neighbours, burglars, and what would now be called animal-rights
activists.

Many stories involve a strong-willed, independent, middle-aged (or

older) female troublemaker. Examples include Bertie Wooster's Aunt
Agatha; Lord Emsworth's many sisters, notably Lady Constance
Keeble; Headmistress Mapleton in "Jeeves and the Kid Clementina";
Lady Bassett in the Mulliner short story "Strychnine in the Soup"; and
the poisonous Princess von und zu Dworniczek in Summer Moonshine.
Even Aunt Dahlia, the exceptional aunt who is a "good egg", makes
plenty of troublesome demands on Bertie. Most abhorrent are the
female writers, young and old, such as Ukridge's Aunt Julia, Bertie
Wooster's cousin (and sometime fiancée) Florence Craye, and, when
the evil fit is upon her, Bingo Little's wife Rosie M. Banks.

[edit]Plots

Wodehouse was known for his consummate skill at their detailed

construction and development. This did not come immediately to him;
in the early Psmith novels Psmith in the City and Psmith, Journalist, the
device by which the author rescues the protagonists from their
mounting difficulties is a simple infusion of cash from Psmith's father.
This would soon change, and by the 1920s his novels were already
showing off his genius for creating multiple layers of comedic
complications that the characters must endure to reach the invariable
happy ending. Typically, a relative or friend makes some demand that
forces a character into a bizarre situation from which it seems
impossible to recover, only to resolve itself in a clever and satisfying
finale. The layers pile up thickly in the longer works, with a character
getting into multiple dangerous situations by mid-story. An outstanding
example of this is The Code of the Woosters where most of the
chapters have an essential plot point reversed in the last sentence,
catapulting the characters forward into greater diplomatic disasters. A
key figure in most Wodehouse stories is a "fixer" whose genius soars
above the incompetent blather and crude bluster of most of the other
characters, Jeeves being the best known example. Other characters in
this vein are Lord Ickenham ("Uncle Fred") and Galahad Threepwood,
who perform much the same role in the Blandings Castle stories—
though never both at the same time—and Psmith, who does the same
thing in the stories that bear his name.[citation needed]

Engagements are a common theme in Wodehouse stories. A man may

be unable to become engaged to the woman he loves due to some
impediment such as poverty, feelings of inferiority, or a relative's
objection. Just as often, a protagonist unwillingly or unwittingly gets
engaged to a woman he does not love, and must find some back-door
way out other than breaking it off directly (which goes against a
gentleman'scode of honour and renders him vulnerable to a lawsuit
for breach of promise). The most widely-read case in point is Bertie
Wooster's engagement to the objectionable Madeline Bassett in Right
Ho, Jeeves, which recurs in several subsequent novels.

Impersonations, and resulting confusion, are particularly common in

the Blandings books, but also occur in other works. Often the
impersonation is discovered, but the impersonator is able to silence the
discoverer by means of bribery or blackmail, as in Leave it to
Psmithand Uncle Fred in the Springtime.

Gambling often plays a large role in Wodehouse plots, typically with

someone manipulating the outcome of the wager.

Another subject which features strongly in Wodehouse's plots

is alcohol, and many plots revolve around the tipsiness of a major
character. InThe Mating Season, he enumerated what many people
consider as the definitive list of hangovers: the Broken Compass, the
Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the
Gremlin Boogie. Furthermore, he makes several references to a drink
called the "May Queen",[33] described by Uncle Fred as "any good
dry champagne, to which is added brandy, armagnac, kümmel,
yellow chartreuse, and old stout, to taste", which inspires several
characters to acts of daring, such as proposing to their true loves.
Sometimes, other psychoactive substances are featured, for instance
in Laughing Gas and the short story "Mulliner's Buck-U-Uppo".

[ edit]Writings
Main articles: List of books by P. G. Wodehouse and List of short
stories by P. G. Wodehouse

Wodehouse was a prolific author, writing 96 books in his remarkable

seventy-three year long career (1902 to 1975). His works include
novels, collections of short stories, and musical comedies. Many
characters and locations appear repeatedly throughout his short stories
and novels, leading readers to classify his work by "series":

 The Blandings Castle stories (later dubbed "the Blandings Castle

Saga" by Wodehouse[34]), about the upper-class inhabitants of the
fictional rural Blandings Castle. Includes the eccentric Lord
Emsworth, obsessed by his prize-winning pig, the "Empress of
Blandings", and at one point by his equally prize-winning pumpkin
("Hope of Blandings", but, mockingly, "Percy" to Emsworth's
unappreciative second son Freddie Threepwood).

 The Drones Club stories, about the mishaps of certain members of

a raucous social club for London's idle rich. Drones Club stories
always involve unnamed club members known as "Eggs", "Beans"
and "Crumpets" (after the habit of addressing each other as "old
egg", "old bean" or "old crumpet"); in each story, a well-informed
Crumpet will endeavour to tell an Egg or Bean of the latest exploits
of another Drones Club member, most frequently Freddie Widgeon
or Bingo Little. Also featured are a cast of recurrent bit players
such as Club millionaire Oofy Prosser.
 The Golf and Oldest Member stories. They are built around one of
Wodehouse's passions, the sport of golf, which all characters
involved consider the only important pursuit in life. The Oldest
Member of the golf course clubhouse tells most of them, usually to
unwilling listeners who would prefer to be elsewhere.

 The Jeeves and Wooster stories, narrated by the wealthy,

scatterbrained Bertie Wooster. A number of stories and novels that
recount the improbable and unfortunate situations in which he and
his friends find themselves and the manner in which his ingenious
valet Jeeves is always able to extricate them. Collectively called
"the Jeeves stories", or "Jeeves and Wooster", they are
Wodehouse's most famous. The Jeeves stories are a valuable
compendium of pre–World War II English slang in use. One of the
Jeeves and Wooster stories, "Bertie Changes His Mind" (originally
published in 1922) is narrated by Jeeves instead of by Bertie.

 The Mr Mulliner stories, narrated by a genial pub raconteur who

can take any topic of conversation and turn it into an involved,
implausible story about a member of his family. Most of Mr.
Mulliner's stories involve one or another of his innumerable
nephews. His listeners are always identified solely by their drinks,
e.g., a "Hot Scotch and Lemon" or a "Double Whisky and Splash".

 The School stories, which launched Wodehouse's career with their

comparative realism. They are often located at the fictional public
schools of St. Austin's or Wrykyn.

 The Psmith stories, about an ingenious jack-of-all-trades with a

charming, exaggeratedly refined manner. The final Psmith
story, Leave it to Psmith, overlaps the Blandings stories in that
Psmith works for Lord Emsworth, lives for a time at Blandings
Castle, and becomes a friend of Freddie Threepwood. Psmith first
appeared in the school novel Mike.

 The Ukridge stories, about the charming but unprincipled Stanley

Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, always looking to enlarge his income
through the reluctant assistance of his friend in his schemes.
 Besides the short stories, there is one novel about him: Love
Among the Chickens.

 The Uncle Fred stories, about the eccentric Earl of Ickenham.

Whenever he can escape his wife's chaperonage, he likes to
spread what he calls "sweetness and light" and others are likely to
call chaos. His escapades, always involving impersonations of
some sort, are usually told from the viewpoint of his nephew and
reluctant companion Reginald "Pongo" Twistleton. Several times
he performs his "art" atBlandings Castle.

 The stand-alone stories. Stories which are not part of a series

(although they may contain overlapping minor characters), such
asPiccadilly Jim, Quick Service, Summer Moonshine, Sam the
Sudden, and Laughing Gas.

Almost all of these series overlap: Psmith appears in a "School" story

and a Blandings novel; Bertie Wooster is a member of the Drones
Club; Uncle Fred and Pongo Twistleton appear in both the Blandings
Saga and the Drones club stories; Bingo Little is a regular character in
the Jeeves Stories and the Drones Club stories, etc.

[ edit]Adaptations
See also: Category:Works derived from P. G. Wodehouse

Considering the extent of his success, there have been comparatively

few adaptations of Wodehouse's works. He was reluctant to allow
others to adapt the Jeeves stories:

One great advantage in being a historian to a man like Jeeves

is that his mere personality prevents one selling one's artistic
soul for gold. In recent years I have had lucrative offers for his
services from theatrical managers, motion-picture magnates,
the proprietors of one or two widely advertised commodities,
and even the editor of the comic supplement of an American
newspaper, who wanted him for a "comic strip". But, tempting
though the terms were, it only needed Jeeves' deprecating
cough and his murmured "I would scarcely advocate it, sir," to
put the jack under my better nature. Jeeves knows his place,
 and it is between the covers of a book." (from Wodehouse's
introduction to the compilation The World of Jeeves, 1967)

Doing his own adaptations for film did not attract him either. He had
been retained by MGM in 1930 but little used: "They paid me $2,000 a
week.... Yet apparently they had the greatest difficulty in finding
anything for me to do."[35] He returned to MGM in 1937 to work on the
screenplay of Rosalie, but even though he was now being paid $2,500
a week and living luxuriously in Hollywood, he said "I'm not enjoying life
much just now. I don't like doing pictures."[36]

However, he formed a warm working relationship with Ian Hay, who

adapted A Damsel in Distress as a stage play in 1928, with Hay,
Wodehouse and A. A. Milne all investing in the production.
[37]
Wodehouse and Hay holidayed together in Scotland, finding "a lot of
interests in common". Wodehouse went on to help dramatise Hay's
story Baa Baa Black Sheep in 1929, and in 1930 they co-wrote the
stage version of Leave It to Psmith.[38]

Wodehouse wrote the screenplay for the musical film A Damsel in

Distress released in 1937, starring Fred Astaire, George Burns, Gracie
Allen, and Joan Fontaine, with music and lyrics by George and Ira
Gershwin. A 1962 film adaptation of The Girl On The
Boat starredNorman Wisdom, Millicent Martin and Richard Briers.

The Blandings, Jeeves, Ukridge and Mulliner stories have all been
adapted for television. The Jeeves series has been adapted for
television twice, once in the 1960s (by the BBC), with the title The
World of Wooster, starring Ian Carmichael as Bertie Wooster,
and Dennis Price as Jeeves, and again in the 1990s (by Granada
Television for ITV), with the title Jeeves and Wooster, starring Hugh
Laurie as Bertie andStephen Fry as Jeeves. David Niven and Arthur
Treacher also starred as Bertie and Jeeves, respectively, in a short
1930s film that had the title Thank You, Jeeves!, though neither this nor
the sequel, Step Lively, Jeeves, also starring Treacher as Jeeves but
without Bertie, bears any relation to a Wodehouse story.

In 1975, Andrew Lloyd Webber made a musical, originally

titled Jeeves. In 1996, it was rewritten as the more successful By
Jeeves, which made it to Broadway, and a performance recorded as a
video film, also shown on TV.

A version of Heavy Weather was filmed by the BBC in 1995

starring Peter O'Toole as Lord Emsworth and Richard Briers, again, as
Lord Emsworth's brother, Galahad Threepwood.

Piccadilly Jim was first filmed in 1919, and again in 1936,

starring Robert Montgomery. In 2004, Julian Fellowes wrote another
screen adaptation which starred Sam Rockwell, but this version was
unsuccessful.

There was also a series of BBC adaptations of various short works,

mostly from the Mulliner series, under the title of Wodehouse
Playhousestarring John Alderton and Pauline Collins, which aired
starting in 1975. The first series was introduced by Wodehouse himself
in the last year of his life.

Wodehouse's involvement with film and television from around the

world is chronicled in Brian Taves, P.G. Wodehouse and Hollywood:
Screenwriting, Satires, and Adaptations (McFarland, 2006).

Czech author Zdeněk Jirotka based his Saturnin novel largely on the
character of Jeeves.

The FX animated series Archer has a butler character named

Wodehouse, as a tribute to the author.

[ edit]Major characters
Lists of P. G. Wodehouse characters

Characters in all Wodehouse stories

Characters in the Blandings stories

Characters in the Drones Club stories

Characters in the Jeeves stories

Characters in the Mulliner stories

Characters in the Ukridge stories

Characters in other stories

v·d·e

Major characters of primary importance

Wodehouse's work contains a number of recurring protagonists,
narrators and principal characters, including:

 Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves; his Aunt Dahlia and his Aunt
Agatha

 Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle, and his large family

 Mr Mulliner, irrepressible pub raconteur of family stories

 The Oldest Member, irrepressible nineteenth hole raconteur of golf

stories

 Psmith, monocled dandy and practical socialist

 Ukridge, irrepressible entrepreneur and cheerful opportunist

 Uncle Fred (Frederick Cornwallis, Fifth Earl of Ickenham),

considered, in some circles, a disgrace to the Peerage. Spreading
"sweetness and light" through impersonation

Major characters of secondary importance

Certain of Wodehouse's less central characters are particularly well-

known, despite being less critical elements of his works as a whole.

 Anatole, French chef extraordinaire, very temperamental

 Galahad Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's brother, lifelong bachelor

with a mis-spent youth and a kind heart

 Sebastian Beach, Lord Emsworth's butler

 Rupert Baxter, Lord Emsworth's efficient but annoying secretary

 Major Brabazon-Plank, Amazon explorer, afraid of bonnie babies

 Sir Roderick Glossop, intimidating psychiatrist

 Honoria Glossop, Sir Roderick's daughter and sometime fiancée of

Bertie Wooster, demanding, imperious, athletic

 Tuppy Glossop, Sir Roderick's nephew, muscular rugby-player

 Roderick Spode, later 7th Earl of Sidcup, amateur dictator, very tall
and muscular, based on British fascist Oswald Mosley

 Pongo Twistleton, Uncle Fred's nephew

 Oofy Prosser, millionaire member of the Drones Club

 Monty Bodkin, second richest member of the Drones Club (second
to Oofy Prosser)

 Bingo Little, friend of Bertie Wooster, with a complicated love-life

 Sidney McMurdo, big, muscular golfer, inclined to jealousy

 Agnes Flack, big, muscular, female golfer

 Freddie Widgeon, member of the Drones Club

 Gussie Fink-Nottle, fish-faced, socially awkward newt-fancier who

cannot hold his liquor

 Sir Watkyn Bassett, owner of Totleigh Towers

 Madeline Bassett, daughter of Sir Watkyn, very pretty but

disturbingly drippy and poetical; often voices conviction that "the
stars are God's daisy-chain" and other goofy sentiments

 Bobbie Wickham, attractive but ruthless red-haired girl, very

demanding and fond of practical jokes

 Florence Craye, Bertie Wooster's cousin and sometimes fiancee,

and author of the novel Spindrift

 Lord Uffenham, owner and butler of Shipley Hall

 Mike Jackson, Psmith's steadfast, cricket-playing friend

 Archibald Mulliner, sock collector who can mimic a hen laying an

egg

Extremely minor, but ubiquitous, character

 Lord Knubble of Knopp, mentioned in Mulliner stories and Golf

Stories and other stories as well; references to him are always so
brief and inconsequential that they may not be fully catalogued.
Most often mentioned in connection with other characters, without
actually appearing. A thin, well-dressed, "horse-faced" man, who
occasionally appears at house parties and loses at cards. Very
wealthy in spite of this.

[ edit]Notes
1. ^ Collision Movie

2. ^ Try saying "Pelham" fast

3. ^ The Russian Wodehouse Society Born at 1 Vale Place, now 59
Epsom Road.

4. ^ Deane, Mary (1891). Mr. Zinzan of Bath; or, Seen in an Old

Mirror. London: A. D. Innes and Co..

5. ^ Addison, Henry Robert; Oakes, Charles Henry; Lawson,

William John; Sladen, Douglas Brooke Wheelton

(1907). "WODEHOUSE, Henry Ernest". Who's Who, 59: p.

1922.

6. ^ Jasen (2002), p. 14.

7. ^ McCrum (2004), pp. 14–15

8. ^ Punch, or the London Charivari, volume 127 (July–December

1904), Index, page 468

9. ^ – Book Review,– The Living Literature Society, – The

Observer (26 July 2009),– Mid Devon Advertiser (21 August

2009), Western Morning News (15 September 2009), – The P G

Wodehouse Society (UK)

10. ^ "The Art of Fiction – P.G. Wodehouse" (pdf). The Paris Review.
2005 (reprint). pp. 20–21. Archived from the original on 29 May

2008. Retrieved 9 June 2008.

11. ^ Thornton, Jim, "The sex life of P G Wodehouse", iGreens.org,

12 November 2005.

12. ^ von Bodenhausen, Baroness Reihild. P. G. Wodehouse: The

Unknown Years. Stamford Lake (PVT) LTD.

13. ^ David Langton (4 June 2007). "Letter reveals Wodehouse's

pain at being branded a collaborator". The Independent.

14. ^ a b Iain Sproat, "Wodehouse, Sir Pelham Grenville (1881–

1975)",Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University

Press, September 2004; online edn, October 2007.

15. ^ Simpson, John (31 August 1996). "Why AA had it in for

PG".The Daily Telegraph (London).

16. ^ Wodehouse (1950) Nothing Serious (short stories)

17. ^ Orwell, George, In defence of PG Wodehouse.

18. ^ Weale, Adrian (1994), Renegades: Hitler's Englishmen, ISBN
0-297-81488-5.

19. ^ Higham, Charles (1985), American Swastika. Garden City, NY:

Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-17874-7

20. ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 46444, p. 8, 31 December

1974.

21. ^ McCrum (2004), p. 414

22. ^ Arrow Books 2008 edition

23. ^ Stephen Fry's essay on Wodehouse

24. ^ P. G. Wodehouse, "Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit" in Very

Good, Jeeves, 1930

25. ^ PG Wodehouse(1881–1975). Guardian.co.uk, retrieved on 21

May 2007

26. ^ McCrum (2004), p. 276.

27. ^ Very Good, Jeeves!, "The Spot of Art"

28. ^ Williams, John, "Gavin Lyall: Thriller writer who really knew
about the wrong side of the sky", The Guardian, London, 21

January 2003.

29. ^ Hitchens, Christopher. "Farewell to Flashman: The singular

creation of George MacDonald Fraser, 1925–2008", The Weekly

Standard, Washington DC, 21 January 2008.

30. ^ McCrum (2004), p. 405.

31. ^ Reynolds, Paul (15 August 2002). "Officials blocked

Wodehouse honour". BBC News. Retrieved 1 February 2011.

32. ^ "Jeeves Takes Charge", in Carry On, Jeeves

33. ^ or more fully: "Tomorrow'll be of all the year the maddest,

merriest day, for I'm to be the Queen of the May, mother, the

Queen of the May"

34. ^ Wodehouse, P. G. (1969). "Preface [new since the 1969

edition]".Something Fresh. ISBN 0140050353. "Something
 Fresh was the first of what I might call – in fact, I will call – the

Blandings Castle Saga."

35. ^ Jasen (2002), p. 127.

36. ^ Jasen (2002), p. 155.

37. ^ Jasen (2002), p. 114.

38. ^ Jasen (2002), p. 279.

[ edit]References
 Davis, Lee (1993). Bolton & Wodehouse & Kern: The Men Who
Made Musical Comedy. James H. Heineman. ISBN 0-87008-145-
4.

 Day, Barry (2004). The Complete Lyrics of P. G. Wodehouse. The

Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-4994-1.

 Jasen, David A. (2002). P.G. Wodehouse: A portrait of a master.

New York: Schirmer. ISBN 0825672759.

 McCrum, Robert (2004). Wodehouse: A Life. London:

Viking. ISBN 0-670-89692-6.

 Spiring, Paul R. (2009). Bobbles & Plum: Four Satirical Playlets by

Bertram Fletcher Robinson and P.G. Wodehouse. London: MX
Publishing. ISBN 1-90431-258-1.

 Usborne, Richard (2003). Plum Sauce: A P. G. Wodehouse

Companion. New York: The Overlook Press. pp. 137–207. ISBN 1-
58567-441-9.

[ edit]External links
Wikisource has original
works written by or about: P.
G. Wodehouse

Wikiquote has a collection of

quotations related to: P. G.
Wodehouse
Wikimedia Commons has
media related to: P.G.
Wodehouse

Wodehouse societies

 P G Wodehouse Society.org.uk – The P G Wodehouse Society

(UK): events, Tony Ring's Information Sheets, quiz

 Wodehouse.org – TWS, The Wodehouse Society (North America):

events, links to essays

 Other Wodehouse Societies (Australia, Belgium, Finland, India,

Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden)

Wodehouse info

 A Celebration of P G Wodehouse – Annotated bibliography,

characters index, text annotations

 Biblia Wodehousiana - Inventory of biblical quotations and

allusions

 "Zeroing in on Blandings" by Alex Kirby, BBC News Online, 4

September 2003 – Blandings Castle located?

About Wodehouse

 1958 BBC interview

 "In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse" by George Orwell, 1945 –

Defending PGW accused of treason

 Essay by Orwell on Wodehouse and correspondence letters

between them. (1945–51)

 "Why A.A. had it in for P.G." by John Simpson, The Daily

Telegraph, 31 August 1996 – Winnie-the-Pooh creator A. A.
Milne vs. PGW

 "What ho! My hero, PG Wodehouse" by Stephen Fry (Jeeves

actor), The Independent, 18 January 2000 – Recollections and
appreciation

 Wodehouse Saved my Life by Hugh Laurie, The Daily

Telegraph 27 May 99
 "P. G. Wodehouse interview" by Gerald Clarke, The Paris Review,
Winter 1975 (PDF format, 386 kB)

 PGW's ancestry – parents Henry Ernest Wodehouse and Eleanor

Deane, links to ancestors (no PGW as of 2007)

 P. G. Wodehouse at Find a Grave – grave location and

photography

Online works in the public domain in the United States

 Works by P. G. Wodehouse at Project Gutenberg – about 40

books in English as of 2007

 Works by P. G. Wodehouse at EveryAuthor.com – subset of

Gutenberg (about 30 books) but broken by chapters and
searchable

 "Wodehouse Quotations" – searchable index of quotes from books

and articles (OCR, some typos)

 Free audiobook of A Man of Means (1914) at LibriVox (3h, Ogg-

Vorbis or MP3 formats, ZIP of whole book MP3 86 MB)

 Free audiobook of Three Men and a Maid (US title)/The Girl on the
Boat (UK title) (1922) at LibriVox (5h 40m, Ogg-
Vorbis or MP3formats, ZIP of whole book MP3 164 MB)

 Free audiobook of Psmith in the City (1910) at LibriVox (5h

48min, Ogg-Vorbis or MP3 formats, 168 or 336 MB)

 Free audiobook of Something New (1915) at LibriVox (7h

34min, Ogg-Vorbis or MP3 formats, 218 or 436 MB)

 Free audiobook of Uneasy Money (1915) at LibriVox (6h

41min, Ogg-Vorbis or MP3 formats, 184 MB)

 The Poems of P G "Plum" Wodehouse – About 40 PGW poems

 Transcripts of the five controversial Berlin broadcasts

Other links

 Works by or about P. G. Wodehouse in libraries

(WorldCat catalog)
  Wodehouse-related discussion groups (book of the month, TV
series, etc.) at Yahoo! Groups – Blandings (420+ members),
WodehouseIndia (220+ members), TheDrones (140+ members),
etc. as of 2007

 Filming a Comedy Master's Life in Wantagh (BBC films segments

of a TV special on the life of P.G. Wodehouse)
[hide]v · d · eThe Works of P. G. Wodehouse and their adaptations

Aunts Aren't Gentlemen · Carry On, Jeeves · The Code of the Woosters · The Inimitable Jeeves · Jeeves and
Jeeves and Wooster Offing · Joy in the Morning · The Mating Season · My Man Jeeves · Much Obliged, Jeeves · Right Ho, Jeev
Upper Lip, Jeeves · Thank You, Jeeves · Very Good, Jeeves

Blandings Castle and Elsewhere · Heavy Weather · Full Moon · Galahad at Blandings · Leave It to Psmith
Blandings Castle Pelican at Blandings · Pigs Have Wings · Service with a Smile · Something Fresh ·Summer Lightning · Sun
the Springtime

Psmith Leave It to Psmith · Mike · Psmith in the City · Psmith, Journalist

School stories The Gold Bat · The Head of Kay's · Mike · The Pothunters · A Prefect's Uncle · Tales of St. Austin's · The W

Semi-autobiographical Bring on the Girls! · Performing Flea · Over Seventy

The Adventures of Sally · Bachelors Anonymous · Barmy in Wonderland · Big Money · Bill the Conqueror
Cuthbert · Cocktail Time · The Coming of Bill · Company for Henry · A Damsel in Distress ·Do Butlers Bu
Sally · Eggs, Beans and Crumpets · A Few Quick Ones · French Leave · Frozen Assets ·A Gentleman of Le
Girl on the Boat · The Globe By the Way Book · The Heart of a Goof · Hot Water · Ice in the Bedroom · If I
Archie · Jill the Reckless · Laughing Gas · The Little Nugget ·Louder and Funnier · Love Among the Chick
Other books and stories
Bodkins · The Luck Stone · The Man with Two Left Feet ·The Man Upstairs · Meet Mr Mulliner · Money fo
Bank · Mr Mulliner Speaking · Mulliner Nights ·Not George Washington · Nothing Serious · The Old Relia
Bodkin · Piccadilly Jim · Plum Pie ·The Prince and Betty · Quick Service · Sam the Sudden · The Small Ba
Fishy · Spring Fever ·Summer Moonshine · The Swoop! · Ukridge · Uncle Dynamite · Uneasy Money · Wi
Men in Spats

Radio What Ho, Jeeves · The Code of the Woosters

Sergeant Brue (1904) · The Beauty of Bath (1906) · My Darling (1907) · The Gay Gordons (1907) · Nuts an
Springtime (1916) · Have a Heart (1917) · Oh, Boy! (1917) · Leave It to Jane (1917) · Kitty Darlin' (1917)
1917 (1917) · Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918) · See You Later (1918) · The Girl Behind the Gun (1918) · The Cana
Stage Dear! (1918) · Kissing Time (1919) · The Rose of China (1919) · Sally (1920) · The Golden Moth (1921) ·T
Beauty Prize (1923) · Sitting Pretty (1924) · Hearts and Diamonds (1926) · Oh, Kay! (1926) · The Nighting
· Rosalie (1928) · The Three Musketeers (1928) · Anything Goes (1934) ·Leave It to Psmith · Ring for Jeeve
Jeeves · Jeeves · By Jeeves

A Gentleman of Leisure (1915) · A Damsel in Distress (1919) · Piccadilly Jim (1919) · Summer Lightning (1
Films · Thank You, Jeeves! (1936) · Step Lively, Jeeves (1937) · Piccadilly Jim (1936) · A Damsel in Distress(193
· By Jeeves (2001) · Piccadilly Jim (2006)

The World of Wooster (1965-67) · The World of Wodehouse (1967-68) · Wodehouse Playhouse (1975-78) ·
Television
· Heavy Weather (1995)

Songs List of songs with lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse

 Categories: P. G. Wodehouse characters | 1881 births | 1975
deaths | P. G. Wodehouse | P. G. Wodehouse-related
articles | Disease-related deaths in New York | English
novelists | English humorists | English immigrants to the United
States | Knights Commander of the Order of the British
Empire | Naturalized citizens of the United States | Old
Alleynians | World War II civilian prisoners | People from
Guildford | People from Long Island | 19th-century English
people | Wodehouse family | English lyricists | English dramatists and
playwrights | English musical theatre lyricists

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Sir P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), English playwright and author created the fictional characters
Bertie Wooster and Reginald Jeeves, starring in such works as The Inimitable Jeeves (1923), Carry On
Jeeves (1925), Right Ho Jeeves (1934), Thank You, Jeeves (1934), Ring For Jeeves (1953), How Right
You Are Jeeves (1960), and My Man Jeeves (1919);
Jeeves--my man, you know--is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable. Honestly, I shouldn't
know what to do without him. On broader lines he's like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the
marble battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know the
Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train for Melonsquashville,
Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San
Francisco." And they're right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of
omniscience.--Ch. 1

Wooster is the amiable and naive man-of-leisure, while Jeeves as quintessential British gentleman,
older and wiser, is friend and valet to him. Their tales usually involve Wooster getting into some sort
of "scrape" with a woman, an Aunt, or the Law. Jeeves always comes to the rescue in his inimitably
modest, no-nonsense style."He moves from point to point with as little uproar as a jelly fish." (Ch.
3, My Man Jeeves). The duo became popular literary icons, embodying the dry acerbic wit and humour
of the English, "Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a
caterpillar out of his salad." (The Inimitable Jeeves) and have gone on to inspire numerous
adaptations for television, stage, and the screen. Their first appearance was in Wodehouse's short
story "Extricating Young Gussie" printed in 1915 in The Saturday Evening Post.
Many of Wodehouse's stories were first published in such magazines
as Punch,Cosmopolitan, Collier's, The New Yorker, The Strand, and Vanity Fair before being published
as collections. Other popular characters of Wodehouse's are Wooster's Aunt Dahlia "My Aunt Dahlia
has a carrying voice... If all other sources of income failed, she could make a good living calling the
cattle home across the Sands of Dee". (Very Good, Jeeves (1930), his domineering Aunt Agatha "the
curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all." (Right Ho, Jeeves), dandy Rupert Psmith,
and the absent-minded Lord Emsworth of Wodehouse's "Blandings Castle" series. While Wodehouse is
a master of parody and prose, he also worked as theatre critic, and collaborated on a number of
musical comedies and their lyrics including Cole Porter's Anything Goes(1934).
Pelham "Plum" Grenville Wodehouse was born on 15 October 1881 in Guildford, Surrey, England, the
third of four sons born to Eleanor and Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845-1929), who at the time of his
birth was working as a judge in Hong Kong. After living there with his parents for a time, young Plum
was back in England to attend boarding school. In 1894 he entered Dulwich College, graduating in
1900. For the next two years he was employed with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in London, but
soon realised he had little interest in the banking world and started to write. He would now spend
much time between England the United States. While in New York, he obtained his first position as
journalist. His first novel The Pothunters was published in 1902. It was followed by A Prefect's
Uncle (1903), Love Among the Chickens (1906), The Swoop (1909), Psmith In The
City (1910), Psmith, Journalist(1915), and The Prince and Betty (1914). While writing for various
magazines, he also started to collaborate on musicals. Also while in New York, in 1914 Wodehouse
married Ethel née Newton; the couple had no children of their own but Ethel had a daughter, Leonora.
In 1930 Wodehouse began his first stint as screenwriter with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood, of
which he is said to have joked about how much he got paid for doing so little. A few years later the
Wodehouses settled in Le Touquet, France. During World War II they were interned by the Germans
for just under a year; Wodehouse later spoke of his experience in radio broadcasts from Berlin to his
fans in America. This caused a furore at the British Broadcasting Corporation, his books to be removed
from shelves, and many false accusations to be landed against him including treason and collaborating
with the Nazis. George Orwell wrote "In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse" (1946);
"In the desperate circumstances of the time, it was excusable to be angry at what Wodehouse did, but
to go on denouncing him three or four years later--and more, to let an impression remain that he
acted with conscious treachery--is not excusable."

Back in America and away from the controversy, Wodehouse continued to write and collaborate on
plays. He and Ethel settled in Remsenburg, Long Island, New York State. In 1955 he became a US
citizen and continued his prodigious output of stories and novels including Meet Mr.
Milliner (1927), Doctor Sally (1932), Quick Service (1940),The Old Reliable (1951), Uneasy
Money (1917), A Damsel In Distress (1919), Jill The Reckless (1920), The Adventures of
Sally (1923), A Pelican at Blandings (1969), The Girl In Blue (1971), and his last novel Aunts Aren't
Gentlemen (1974). Wodehouse's posthumous autobiographical publication Performing Flea: a self-
portrait in letters(1953) is titled after Irish playwright Sean O'Casey's reference to Wodehouse
as"English literature's performing flea"; the series of letters contained in it were revised in 1962 and
re-titled Author! Author!
After years of being blocked by the British Foreign Office for his war time radio broadcasts and
ensuing controversy, and mere weeks before his death, in 1975 Wodehouse was Knighted Commander
of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. P. G. Wodehouse died on 14 February 1975.
Ethel died in 1984 and now rests with him in the Remsenberg Cemetery in New York State, USA.
"Precisely, sir," said Jeeves. "If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should not continue to wear your
present tie. The green shade gives you a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue with
the red domino pattern instead, sir."
"All right, Jeeves." I said humbly. "You know!"--"The Aunt and the Sluggard", My Man Jeeves
 Biography written by C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.
The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission.

• Fiction
○ A Damsel in Distress
○ A Man of Means
○ A Prefect's Uncle
○ Indiscretions of Archie
○ Jill the Reckless
○ Love Among the Chickens
○ Mike and Psmith
○ Mike: A Public School Story
○ My Man Jeeves
○ Not George Washington
○ Piccadilly Jim
○ Psmith in the City
○ Psmith, Journalist
○ Right Ho, Jeeves
○ Something New
○ The Adventures of Sally
○ The Clicking of Cuthbert
○ The Coming of Bill
○ The Gem Collector
○ The Gold Bat
○ The Head of Kay's
○ The Intrusion of Jimmy
○ The Little Nugget
○ The Little Warrior
○ The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
○ The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories
○ The Pothunters
○ The Prince and Betty
○ The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England
○ The White Feather
○ Three Men and a Maid
○ Uneasy Money
○ William Tell Told Again
• Short Stories
○ 'The Tabby Terror'
○ A Shocking Affair
○ Author!
○ Bradshaw's Little Story
○ Concealed Art
○ Death at the Excelsior
○ Harrison's Slight Error
○ How Payne Bucked Up
○ How Pillingshot Scored
○ Jeeves and the Chump Cyril
○ Jeeves in the Springtime
○ L'Affaire Uncle John (A Story in Letters)
○ Misunderstood
○ Notes
○ Now, Talking About Cricket--
○ The Babe and the Dragon
○ The Best Sauce
○ The Manoeuvres of Charteris
○ The Odd Trick
○ The Prize Poem
○ The Test Case
○ The Tom Brown Question
○ Work

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[SHAKESPEARE BIOG

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William Shakespeare Biography

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM (1564—1616), English poet, player and playwright, was baptized in the parish church of Stratford-upon
1564. The exact date of his birth is not known. 18th-century antiquaries, William Oldys and Joseph Greene, gave it as April 23, but w
fact that April 23 was the day of Shakespeare’s death in 1616 suggests a possible source of error. In any case his birthday cannot have
his monument is evidence that on April 23, 1616, he had already begun his fifty-third year. His father, John Shakespeare, was a burge
Stratford, and had already filled certain minor municipal offices. From 1561 to 1563 he had been one of the two chamberlains to who
occupation he was a glover, but he also appears to have dealt from time to time in various kinds of agricultural produce, such as barle
him as a butcher, and it is quite possible that he bred and even killed the calves whose skins he manipulated. He is sometimes describe
probable that he combined a certain amount of farming with the practice of his trade. He was living in Stratford as early as 1552, in w
Henley Street, but he does not appear to have been a native of the town, in whose records the name is not found before his time; and b
Shakespeare of Snitterfield, who administered the goods of his father, Richard Shakespeare, in 1561. Snitterfield is a village in the im
Richard Shakespeare had been settled as a farmer since 1529. It is possible that John Shakespeare carried on the farm for some time a
acquired a small holding called Ingon in Hampton Lucy, the next village to Snitterfield. But both of these seem to have passed subseq
Snitterfield in. 1596. There was also at Snitterfield a Thomas Shakespeare and an Anthony Shakespeare, who afterwards moved to Ha
same family. A John Shakespeare, -who dwelt at Clifford Chambers, another village close to Stratford, is clearly distinct. Strenuous e
genealogy beyond Richard of Snitterfield, but so far without success. Certain drafts of heraldic exemplifications of the Shakespeare ar
grandfather, in another of his great-grandfather, as having been rewarded with lands and tenements in Warwickshire for service to He
and even in the 16th-century statements as to” antiquity and service “ in heraldic preambles were looked upon with suspicion.

The name Shakespeare is extremely widespread, and is spelt in an astonishing variety of ways. That of John Shakespeare occurs 166 t
corporation, and appears to take 16 different forms. The verdict, not altogether unanimous, of competent palaeographers is to the effe
of his signature, always wrote “Shakspere.” In the printed signatures to the dedications of his poems, on the title-pages of nearly all th
name, and in many formal documents it appears as Shakespeare.

This may be in part due to the martial derivation which the poet’s literary contemporaries were fond of assigning to his name, and wh
forms in use at Stratford, however, such as Shaxpeare, by far the commonest, suggest a short pronunciation of the first syllable, and th
from the Anglo-Saxon personal name, Seaxberht. It is interesting, and even amusing, to’ record that in 1487 Hugh Shakspere of Merto
because his former name vile reputatum est. The earliest record of a Shakespeare that has yet been traced is in 1248 at Clapton in G]o
The name also occurs during the ,3th century in Kent, Essex and Surrey, and durin~ the I4th in Cumberland, Yorkshire, Nottinghamsh
Yougbal in Ireland. Thereafter it is found in London and most of the English counties, particularly those of the midlands; and nowher
Shakespeares in Warwick and in Coventry, as well as around Stratford; and the clan appears to have been very numerous in a group o
which includes Baddesley Clinton, Wroxall, Rowington, I{aseley, Hatton, Lapworth, Packwood, Balsall and Knowle. William was in
from more than one other family have from time to time been confounded with the dramatist. Many Shakespeares are upon the registe
to about 1526. Amongst these were Isabella Shakespeare, prioress of the Benedictine convent of Wroxall, and Jane Shakespeare, a nu
as tenants on the manors belonging to the convent, and at the time of the Dissolution in 1534 one Richard Shakespeare was its bailiff
been made on the one hand to connect the ancestors of this Richard Shakespeare with ‘a family of the same name who held land by m
15th centuries, and on usc other to ideniify him with the poet’s grandfather, Richard Shakespeare of’ Snitterfield. But Shakespeares ar
Baddesley Clinton, and there is no reason to suppose that Richard the bailiff, who was certainly still a tenant of Wroxall in 1556, had
Snitterfield.

With the breaking of this link, the hope of giving Shakespeare anything more than a grandfather on the father’s side must be laid aside
connected with a family of some distinction. Part at least of Richard Shakespeare’s land at Snitterfield was held from Robert Arden o
Cantlow, a cadet of the Ardens of Parkhall, who counted amongst the leading gentry of Warwickshire. Robert Arden married his seco
had then no less than. eight daughters by his first wife. To the youngest of these, Mary Arden, he left in 1556 a freehold in Aston Can
in extent, known as Asbies. At some date later than November 1556, and probably before the end of 1557, Mary Arden became the w
Shakespeare had bought two freehold houses, one in Greenhill Street, the other in Henley Street. The latter, known as the wool shop,
combined in the so-called Shakespeare’s birthplace. The western tenement, the birthplace proper, was probably already in John Shake
Henley Street in 1552. It has sometimes been thought to have been one of two houses which formed a later purchase in 1575, but ther
all.

William Shakespeare was not the first child. A Joan was baptized in 1558 and a Margaret in 1562. The latter was buried in 1563 and t
burial is not recorded, as a second Joan was baptized in 1569. A Gilbert was baptized in 1566, an Anne in 1571, a Richard in ~ and a~
Edmund,who like his brother became an actor, in 1607; Richard in 1613. Tradition has it that one of Shakespeare’s brothers used to v
If so, this can only have been Gilbert.

During the years that followed his marriage, John Shakespeare became prominent in Stratford life. In 1565 he was chosen as an alderm
that of high bailiff. This carried with it the dignity of justice of the peace. John Shakespeare seems to have assumed arms, and thencef
documents as “Mr” Shakespeare, whereby he may be distinguished from another John Shakespeare, a “corviser” or shoemaker, who d
ex-bailiff be began another year of office as chief alderman

. One may think, therefore, of Shakespeare in his boyhood as the son of one of the leading citizens of a not unimportant Youth provin
which in spite of the dunghills was probably not much unlike the life of a similar town to-day, and with constant reminders of its past
belonging to its college and its gild, both of which had been suppressed at the Reformation. Stratford stands on the Avon, in the midst
those days enclosed orchards and meadows alternated with open fields for tillage, and not far from the wilder and wooded district kno
it an heritage in the shape of a free grammar-school, and here it is natural to suppose that William Shakespeare obtained a sound enou
“Mantuan”2 and Ovid in the original, even though to such a thorough scholar as Ben Jonson it might seem no more than “small Latin
about thirteen, his father’s fortunes began to take a turn for the worse. He became irregular in his contributions to town levies, and had
Asbies as security for a loan from her brother-in-law, Edmund Lambert. Money was raised to pay this off, partly by the sale of a smal
Mary Shakespeare from her sisters, partly perhaps by that of the Greenhill Street house and other property in Stratford outside Henley
William Shakespeare’s hands. Lambert, however, refused to surrender the mortgage on the plea of older debts, and an attempt to reco
Shakespeare’s difficulties increased. An action for debt was sustained against him in the local court, but no personal property could b
attend the meetings of the corporation, and as a consequence he was removed in 2586 from the list of aldermen. In this state of domes
life was unduly prolonged. The chances are that he was apprenticed to some local trade. Aubrey says that he killed calves for his fathe
speech.”

Whatever his circumstances, they did not deter him at the early age of eighteen from the adventure of marriage. Rowe Marriage recor
and Joseph Greene succeeded in tracing her to a family of that name dwelling in Shottery, one of the hamlets of Stratford. Her monum
sixty-seven in 1623. She must, therefore, have been about eight years older than Shakespeare. Various small trains of evidence point t
mentioned in the will of a Richard Hathaway of Shottery, who died in 1581, being then in possession of the farm-house now known a
distinct name from Anne, but there can be no doubt that ordinary custom treated them as identical. The principal record of the i It is w
fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was master of the school in 1570—1572, so that its standard must have been good.

2 Baptista Mantuanus (1448—1516), whose Latin Eclogues were translated by Turberville in 1567.

marriage is a bond dated on November 28, 2582, and executed by Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, two yeomen of Stratford who a
to the bishop for the issue of a licence for the marriage of William Shakespeare and “Anne Hathwey of Stratford,” upon the consent o
no reason to suppose, as has been suggested, that the procedure adopted was due to dislike of the marriage dn the part of John Shakes
not have been in accordance with the practice of the bishop’s officials to issue the licence without evidence of the father’s consent. Th
was already with child, and in the near neighbourhood of Advent within which marriages were prohibited, so that the ordinary proced
Christmas. A kindly sentiment has suggested that some form of civil marriage, or at least contract of espousals, had already taken plac
required in order to enable Anne to secure the legacy left her by her father “at the day of her marriage.” But such a theory is not rigidl
day before that on which the bond was executed, an entry was made in the bishop’s register of the issue of a licence for a marriage be
de Temple Grafton.” Of this it can only be said that the bond, as an original document, is infinitely the better authority, and that a scri
possible solution. Temple Grafton may have been the nominal place of marriage indicated in the licence, which was not always the ac
bridegroom. There are no contemporary registers for Temple Grafton, and there is no entry of the marriage in those for Stratford-upon
seen during the I9th century in the registers for Luddirigton, a chapelry within the parish, which are now destroyed. Shakespeare’s fir
1583, and was followed on the 2nd of February 1585 by twins, Hamnet and Judith.

In or after 1584 Shakespeare’s career in Stratford seems to have come to a tempestuous close. An 18th-century story of a drinking-bo
importance, except as indicating a local impression years, that a distinguished citizen had had a wildish youth. 1584 But there is a trad
which there is no reason to reject in substance, to the effect that Shakespeare got into trouble through poaching on the estates of a con
and found it necessary to leave Stratford in order to escape the results of his misdemeanour. It is added that he afterwards took his rev
Shallow, with the dozen white louses in his old coat, of The Merry Wives of Windsor. From this event until he emerges as an actor an
and it is impossible to say what experience may not have helped to fill it. Much might indeed be done in eight years of crowded Eliza
assigned him in turns during this or some other period to the occupations of a scrivener, an apothecary, a dyer, a printer, a soldier, and
service rests largely on a confusion with another William Shakespeare of Rowington. Aubrey had heard that “he had been in his youn
mention in Henry IV. of certain obscure yeomen families, Visor of Woncote and Perkes of Stinchcombe Hill, near Dursley in Glouce
that district, where indeed Shakespeares were to be found from an early date. Ultimately, of course, he drifted to London and the thea
employment in a menial capacity, perhaps even as a holder of horses at the doors, before he was admitted into a company as an actor
of plays. Malone thought that he might have left Stratford with one of the travelling companies of players which from time to time vis
Leicester’s men, who were at Stratford in 1587, and have held that Shakespeare remained to the end in the same company, passing wi
patronage of Ferdinando, Lord Strange and afterwards earl of Derby, and on Derby’s death in 1594 under that of the lord chamberlain
hardly takes sufficient account of the shifting combinations and recombinations of actors, especially during the disastrous plague year
company with Leicester’s is very disputable, and while the names of many members of Strange’s company in and about 1593 are on r
least possible, as will be seen later, that he had about this time relations with the earl of Pembroke’s men, or with the earl of Sussex’s

What is clear is that by the summer of 1592, when. he was twenty-eight, he had begun to emerge as a playwright, and had evoked the
poets who in recent years had claimed a f1, monopoly of the stage. This was Robert Greene, who, in an invective on behalf of the play
his Groats-worth of Wit, speaks of” an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, s
verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac jotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.” The p
line from Henry VI. make the reference unmistakable.i The London theatres were closed, first through riots and then through plague,
about a month at each Christmas during that period; and the companies were dissolved or driven to the provinces. Even if Shakespear
their London seasons of 1592 and 1593, it does not seem that he travelled with them. Other activities may have been sufficient to occu
probably an attempt to win a reputation in the world of non-dramatic poetry. Venus and Adonis was published about April 1593, and
by Richard Field, in whom Shakespeare would have found an old Stratford acquaintance; and each has a dedication to Henry Wriothe
accomplished favourite of the court, still in his nonage. A possibly super-subtle criticism discerns an increased warmth in the tone of
marked growth of intimacy. The fact of this intimacy is vouched for by the story handed down from Sir William Davenant to Rowe (w
Shakespeare) that Southampton gave Shakespeare a thousand pounds “to enable him to go through with a purchase which he’heard he
specified, and there is no known purchase by Shakespeare which can have cost anything like the sum named. The mention of Southam
which a biographer has to handle, that of the Sonnets. But this will be more conveniently taken up at a later point, and it is only neces
earliest of the sonnets belong to the period now under discussion. There is a surmise, which is not in itself other than plausible, and w
of ingenious argument, that Shakespeare’s enforced leisure enabled him to make of 1593 a Wanderjahr, and in particular that the trace
the local colouring of Lucrece as compared with Venus and Adonis, and in that of the group of plays which may be dated in or about
preceded. It must, however, be borne in mind that, while Shakespeare may perfectly well, at this or at some earlier time, have voyaged
apologetic reference in Chettle’s Kind-hart’s Dream (December 1592) refers to Shakespeare. to Italy, and possibly Denmark and even
upon, and that inference from internal evidence is a dangerous guide when a writer of so assimilative a temperament as that of Shakes

From the reopening of the theatres in the summer of 1594 onwards Shakespeare’s status is in many ways clearer. He had certainly bec
company by the following winter, when his name appears for the first and only time in the treasurer Chamberof the chamber’s accoun
performances at court; and there is every reason to suppose that he continued to act with and write for the same associates to the close
briefly told. At the death of the lord chamberlain on the 22nd of July 1596, it passed under the protection of his successor, George, 2n
Chamberlain’s men” when he was appointed to that office on. the 17th of March 1597. James I. on his accession took this company u
during the remainder of Shakespeare’s connexion with the stage they were “the King’s men.” The records of performances at court sh
companies, their nearest rivals being the company known during the reign of Elizabeth as “the Admiral’s,” and afterwards as “Prince
1603 they appear to have played almost continuously in London, as the only provincial performances by them which are upon record
theatres were for a short time closed owing to the interference of some of the players in politics. They travelled again during 1603 wh
portions of the summers or autumns of most years thereafter. In 1594 they were playing at Newington Butts, and probably also at the
It is natural to suppose that in. later years they used the Theatre in Shoreditch, since this was the property of James Burbage, the fathe
Theatre was pulled down in 1598, and, after a short interval during which the company may have played at the Curtain, also in Shored
rehoused them in the Globe on Bankside, built in part out of the materials of the Theatre. Here the profits of the enterprise were divide
and the owners of the building as “housekeepers,” and shares in the “house” were held in joint tenancy by Shakespeare and some of h
became available for the company in. the “private” or winter house of the Black Friars. This was also the property of the Burbages, bu
players. A somewhat similar arrangement as to profits was made.

Shakespeare is reported by Aubrey to have been a good actor, but Adam in As You Like It, and the Ghost in Hamlet indicate the type
he was the mainstay of the company for at least some fifteen years, during which Ben Jonson, Dekker, Beaumont and Fletcher, and T
average he must have written for them about two plays a year, although his rapidity of production seems to have been greatest during
doubt a good deal of rewriting of his own earlier work, and also perhaps, at the beginning, of that of others. Occasionally he may have
end of his career, with Fletcher.

In a worldly sense he clearly flourished, and about 1596, if not earlier, he was able to resume relations as a moneyed man with Stratfo
he had visited the town in the interval, or whether he had brought his wife and family to London. His son Hamnet died and was buried
Shakespeare’s affairs had remained unprosperous. He incurred fresh debt, partly through becoming surety for his brother Henry; and
dwelling at or near Stratford-on-Avon,with a note by the commissioners that in his case the cause was believed to be the fear of proce
explanation, or to seek a religious motive in John Shakespeare’s abstinence from church. William Shakespeare’s purse must have mad
debt ceased, and in 1597 a fresh action was brought in Chancery for the recovery of Asbies from the Lamberts. Like the last, it seems
to secure the dignity of the family by an application in the course of 1596 to the heralds for the confirmation of a coat of arms said to
was bailiff of Stratford. The bearings were or on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, the crest a falcon his wings displayed argent su
Non sanz droict. The grant was duly made, and in 1599 there was a further application for leave to impale the arms of Arden, in right
Arden arms by the Shakespeares can be traced. In 1597 Shakespeare made an important purchase for £60 of the house and gardens of
largest houses in Stratford, and its acquisition an obvious triumph for the ex-poacher. Presumably John Shakespeare ended his days in
merry-cheekt old man “ always ready to crack a jest with his son. He died in 1601, and his wife in 1608, and the Henley Street houses
annual visits to Stratford, and there is evidence that he kept in touch with the life of the place. The correspondence of his neighbours,
for a loan to Richard Quiney upon a visit to London, and a discussion of possible investments for him in the neighbourhood of Stratfo
copyhold cottage in Chapel Lane, perhaps for the use of his gardener. In the same year he invested £320 In the purchase of an estate c
Stratford, together with a farm-house, garden and orchard, 20 acres of pasture and common rights; and in 1605 he spent another £440
tithes in Stratford parish, which brought in an income of about £60 a year.

Meanwhile London remained his headquarters. Here Malone thought that he had evidence, now lost, of his residence in Southwark as
payments of subsidy were due from him tions. for 1597 and 1598 in the parish of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and that an arrear was ultim
no doubt migrated from Bishopsgate when the Globe upon Bankside was opened by the Chamberlain’s men. There is evidence that in
house of Christopher Mountjoy, a tire-maker of French extraction, at the corner of Silver Street and Monkwell Street in Cripplegate. A
refers to Shakespeare (which is not quite certain), is of value as throwing light not only upon his abode, but upon his personality. Aub
the actor, and through him from John Lacy, an actor of the king’s company. It is as follows: “The more to be admired q~uod} he was
not be debauched, & if invited to court, he was in paine.” Against this testimony to the correctness of Shakespeare’s morals are to be
up by a Middle Temple student in 1602 and a Restoration scandal which made him the father by the hostess of the Crown Inn at Oxfo
William D~venant, who was born in February 1606. His credit at court is implied by Ben Jonson’s references to his flights “ that so d
courtesies which passed between him and Elizabeth while he was playing a kingly part in her presence, of the origin of The Merry W
and of an autograph letter written to honour him by King James. It was noticed with some surprise by Henry Chettle that his “honied
of the queen. Southampton’s patronage may have introduced him to the brilliant circle that gathered round the earl of Essex, but there
held personally responsible for the performance of Richard II. at the command of some of the followers of Essex as a prelude to the d
First Folio speak also of favours received by the author in his lifetime from William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, ‘and his brother Philip

He appears to have been on cordial terms with his fellows of the stage. One of them, Augustine Phillips, left him a small legacy in 16
compliment to Richard Burbage, and to John Heminge and Henry Condeli, who afterwards edited his plays. His relations with Ben Jo
to the world as a playwright, have been much canvassed. Jests are preserved which, even if apocryphal, indicate considerable intimac
occasional passages of arms. The anonymous author of The Return from Parnassus (2nd part; 1602), for example, makes Kempe, the
Jonson, in return for his attack on some of his rivals in The Poetaster.i It has been conjectured that this purge was the description of A
Jonson, on the other hand, who was criticism incarnate, did not spare Shakespeare either in his prologues or in his private conversatio
Shakspeer wanted arte.” But the verses which he contributed to the First Folio are generous enough to make all amends, and in his Di
while regretting Shakespeare’s excessive facility and the fact that he often “fell into those things, could not escape laughter,” he decla
free nature,” and says that, for his own part, “I lov’d the man and do honour his memory (on this side idolatry) as much as any.” Acco
Rev. John Ward (who became vicar of Stratford in 1662), Jonson and Michael Drayton, himself a Warwickshire poet, had been drink
which he died; and Thomas Fuller (1608—1661), whose Worthies was published in 1662, gives an imaginative description of the wit
two mighty contemporaries.
Of Shakespeare’s literary reputation during his lifetime there is ample evidence. He is probably neither the “ Willy “ of Spenser’s Tea
Cohn Clout’s Come Home Again. But from the porarj’ time of the publication of Venus and Adonis and i~~put~~ Lucrece honorific a
and often to himself by name, come thick and fast from writers of every kind and degree. Perhaps the most interesting of these from t
the Palladis Tamia, a kind of literary handbook published by Francis Meres in 1598; for Meres not only extols him as “the most excel
stage,” and one of” the most passionate among us to bewaile and bemoane the perplexities of Love,” but also takes the trouble to give
as a starting-point for all modern, attempts at a chronological arrangement of his work. It is moreover from Meres that we first hear of
Two of these sonnets were printed in 1599. I Kempe (speaking to Burbage), “Few of the university pen plays well. They smell too mu
Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here’s our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jo
brought up Horace giving the Poets a pill, but our ‘fellow Shakespeare bath given him a purge that made him beray his credit.” in a vo
Pilgrim. This was ascribed upon the title-page to Shakespeare, but probably, so far as most of its contents were concerned, without jus
remained unpublished until 1609.

About 1610 Shakespeare seems to have left London, and entered upon the definite occupation of his house at New Place, Stratford. H
friendly if satiricaJ terms with the richest of his neighbours, the Combes, and interested in local affairs, such as a bill for the improvem
enclosure of the open fields at Welcombe in 1614, which might affect his income or his comfort. He had his garden with its mulberry
His brothers Gilbert and Richard were still alive; the latter died in 1613. His sister Joan had married William Hart, a hatter, and in 161
Street. Of his daughters, the eldest, Susanna, had married in 1607 John Hall (d. 1635), a physician of some reputation. They dwelt in S
Lady Barnard (1608—1670). The younger, Judith, married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, also of Stratford, two months before her father
have been written, but it is reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare’s connexion with the King’s company ended when the Globe was
the 29th of June I6 13. Certainly his retirement did not imply an absolute break with London life. in 1613 he devised an impresa, or em
in the tilt on Accession day by the earl of Rutland, who had been one of the old circle of Southampton and Essex. In the same year he
Blackfriars, near the Wardrobe. This was conveyed to trustees, apparently in order to bar the right which his widow would otherwise
Shakespeare in a lawsuit for the surrender of the title-deeds. Richard Davies, a Gloucestershire clergyman of the end of the i7th centu
statement deserves more attention than it has received from biographers. There is indeed little to corroborate it; for an alleged” spiritu
origin, and Davies’s own words suggest a late conversion rather than an hereditary faith. On the other hand, there is little to refute it b
corporation for drink given in 1614 to “a preacher at the Newe Place.”

Shakespeare made his will on the 25th of March 1616, apparently in some haste, as the executed deed is a draft with many erasures an
daughter Judith Quiney and his sister Joan Hart, and remembrances to friends both in Warwickshire and in London; but the real estate
entail which points to a desire on the part of the testator to found a family. Shakespeare’s wife, for whom other provision must have b
which the “second best bed with the furniture” was bequeathed to her. Much nonsense has been written about this, but it seems quite n
which would go with the house. The estate was after all not a large one. Aubrey’s estimate of its annual value as £200 or £300 a year
statement that Shakespeare spent £1000 a year must surely be an exaggeration. The sum-total of his known investments amounts to £9
income must have reached £600 a year; but it may be doubted whether this also is not a considerable overestimate. It must be rememb
century is generally regarded as having been about eight times its present value. Shakespeare’s interest in the “ houses “of the Globe a

A month after his will was signed, on the 23rd of April 1616, Shakespeare died, and as a tithe-owner was buried in the chancel of the
covers the grave has been assigned by local tradition to his own pen. A more elaborate monument, with a bust by the sculptor Gerard
wall. D th Anne Shakespeare followed her husband on the 6th of August 1623. The family was never founded. Shakespeare’s grand-d
marriages, the first with Thomas Nash of Stratford, the second with John, afterwards Sir John, Barnard of Abington. Manor, Northant
whom had died unmarried by 1639. There were, therefore, no direct descendants of Shakespeare in existence after Lady Barnard’s de
however still be traced in 1864. On Lady Barnard’s death the Henley Street houses passed to the Harts, in’ whose family they remaine
were bought for the public. They are now held with Anne Hathaway’s Cottage at Shottery as the Birthplace Trust. Lady Barnard had
property was sold under the terms of her will, and New Place passed, first to the Cloptons who rebuilt it, and then to the Rev. Francis
forms a public recreation-ground, and hard by is a memorial building with a theatre in which performances of Shakespeare’s plays are
Birthplace contain museums, in which books, documents and portraits of Shakespearian interest, together with relics of greater or less

No letter or other writing in Shakespeare’s hand can be proved to exist, with the exception of three signatures upon his will, one upon
he was remotely concerned, and two upon deeds (March io and II, 1613) ~fl connexion with the purchase of his Blackfriars house. A
the British Museum, a copy of the Aldine edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1502) in the Bodleian, and a copy of the 1612 edition of
of the Noble Grecians and Romaines in. the Greenock Library, have all been put forward with some plausibility as bearing his autogra
marginal note by him. A passage in the manuscript of the play of Sir Thomas More has been ascribed to him (vide infra), and, if the p
records that he was “a handsome, well-shap’t man,” and the lameness attributed to him by some writers has its origin only in a too lite
disabilities in the Sonnets.

A collection. of Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies was printed at the press of William and Isaac Jaggard,
This volume is known as the First Folio. It has “a” dedications to the earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, and to “the great Variety o
Shakespeare’s “fellows” at the Globe, John Heminge and Henry Condell, and commendatory verses by Ben Jonson, Hugh Holland, L
Droeshout engraving forms part of the title-page. The contents include, with the exception of Pericles, all of the thirtyseven plays now
works. Of these eighteen were here published for the first time. The other eighteen bad already appeared in one or more separate editi

The following list gives the date of the First Quarto of each such play, and also that of any later Quarto which differs materially from

The Quarto Editions.

Titus Andronicus (1594). A Midsummer Night’s Dream

2 Henry VI. (1594). (1600).
3 Henry VI. (1595). The Merchant of Venice (1600).
Richard II. (1597, ,6o8). Much Ado About Nothing (1600).
Richard III. (15~7). The Merry Wives of Windsor
Romeo and Juliet (,5~7, 1599). (1602).
Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598). Hamlet (4603, 1604).
I Henry IV. (1598). King Lear (1608).
2 Henry IV. ~16oo). Troilus and Cressida (1609).
Henry V. (1600). Othello (1622).

Entries in the Register of copyrights kept by the Company of Stationers indicate that editions of As You Like II and Anthony awl Cle
and 1608 respectively.

The Quartos differ very much in character. Some of them contain texts which are practically identical with those of the First Folio; ot
some revision, either by rewriting or by shortening for stage purposes, took place. Amongst the latter are 2, 3 Henry VI., Richard III.,
Hamlet and King Lear. Many scholars doubt whether the Quarto versions of 2, 3 Henry VI., which appeared under the titles of The Fi
Houses of York and Lancaster and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, are Shakespeare’s work at all. It seems clear that the
England (1591) and Tile Taming of A Shrew (1594),although treated forcopyright purposes as identical with the plays of King John a
upon them, are not his. The First Quartos of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V., The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Hamlet seem to be main
upon versions largely made up out of shorthand notes taken at the theatre by the agents of a piratical bookseller. A similar desire to ex
reputation probably led to the appearance of his name or initials upon the title-pages of Locr-ine (15~5), Sir John Oldcastle (1600), Th
(1605), The Puritan (1607), A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608), and Pericles (I 609). It is not likely that, with the exception of the last three
some of which were not even produced by his company. They were not included in the First Folio of 1623, nor in a reprint of it in 163
appended to the second issue (1664) of the Third Folio (1663), and to the Fourth Folio of 1685. Shakespeare is named as joint author
Noble Kinsmen (1634), and with William Rowley on that of The Birth of Merlin (1662); there is no reason for rejecting the former as
the Stationers’ Register assign to him Cardenio (with Fletcher), Henry I. and Henry II. (both with Robert Davenport), King Stephen, D
these plays is now extant. Modern conjecture has attempted to trace his hand in other plays, of which Arden of Feversham (1592), Ed
Devil of Edmonton (1608) are the most important; it is quite possible that he may have had a share in Edward III. A play on Sir Thom
manuscript, contains a number of passages, interpolated in various handwritings, to meet requirements of the censor; and there are tho
Shakespeare. Unfortunately the First Folio does not give the’ dates at which the plays contained i,n it were written or produced; and th
of the Dates, main preoccupations of more than a century of Shakespearian scholarship, since the pioneer essay of Edmund Malone in
Plays of Shakespeare were Written (1778). The investigation is not a mere piece of barren antiquarianism, for on it depends the possib
greatest poet, not as if it were an articulated whole like a philosophical system, but in its true aspect as the reflex of a vital and constan
afforded by the dates of the Quartos and the entries in the Stationers’ Register which refer to them, and by the list of plays already in e
in his Palladis Tamia of that year, and which, while not necessarily exhaustive of Shakespeare’s pre-1598 writing, includes The Two
Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV., King John, Titus
mysterious Love’s Labour’s Won, which has been conjecturally identified with several plays, but most plausibly with The Taming of
evidence, drawn partly from definite notices in other writings or in diaries, letters, account-books, and similar records, partly from allu
plays themselves, partly from parallels of thought and expression. between each play and those near to it in point of time, and partly f
metrical tests, which depend upon an. analysis of Shakespeare’s varying feeling for rhythm at different stages of his career. The total
logical sense an hypothesis which serves to colligate the facts and is consistent with itself and with the known events of Shakespeare’

The following table, which is an attempt to arrange the original dates of production of the plays without regard to possible revisions, m
results of recent scholarship. It is framed on the ~assumption that, as indeed John Ward tells us was the case, Shakespeare ordinarily w
neither the order in which the plays are given nor the distribution of them over the years lays claim to more than approximate accurac
Chronology of the Plays.

1591. 1600.
(I, 2) The Contention of York and (21) The Merry Wives of Windsor. Lancaster (2, 3 Henry VI). (22) As You Like It.
1592. 160!. (3) 1 Henry VI. (23) Hamlet. (The theatres were closed for riot (24) Twelfth Night. and plague from June to the end

1602.
of December.) (25) Troilus and Cressida.

1593.
(26) All’s Well that Ends Well. (~) Richard III. (5) Edward III. (part only). 1603. (6) The Comedy of Errors. (The theatres were close
in March, and plague from the beginning of remained closed for plague February to the end of December.) throughout the year.)

1594. 1604.
(7) Titus Andronicus. (27) Measure for Measure. (The theatres were closed for (28) Othello. plague during February and 1605. March
King Lear. (g) Love’s Labour’s Lost. 1606. (1 o) Romeo and Juliet. (31) Anthony and Cleopatra. ‘595. (32) Coriolanus. (ii) A Midsum
(un (12) The Two Gentlemen of Verona. finished). (13) King John. 1608.

1596.
(14) Richard II. (~~) Pericles (part only). (15) The Merchant of Venice. 1609.

1597.
(35) Cymbeline. (The theatres were closed for 1610. misdemeanour froth the end of (36) The Winter’s Tale. July to October.)

1611.
(16) I Henry IV. (37) The Tempest.

1598. 1612.
(17) 2 Henry IV. . - (18) Much Ado About Nothing.

1613. 1599.
(38) The Two Noble Kinsmen (io) Henry V. (part only)., (20) Julius Caesar. (ag) Henry VIII. (part only). A more detailed account of
figures here prefixed correspond to those in the table above. 1, 2. The relation of The Contention of York and 1~ancaster to 2, 3 Henr
for either or both works have long been subjects of Composicontroversy. The extremes of critical opinion are to be found in a theory
Henry VI. and The Contention as a shortened and piratical version of the original plays, and in a theory which regards The Contention
and possibly Peele, and a, 3 Henry VI. as a revision of The Contention written, also in collaboration, by Marlowe and Shakespeare. A
possible to doubt that the differences between them are to be explained by revision rather than by piracy; but the question of authorsh
Shakescene “ passage of his Groats-worth of Wit (1592), of a line which occurs both in The Contention and in 3 Henry VI., while it c
plays, is evidence neither for nor against the participation of other men, and no sufficient criterion exists for distinguishing between S
collaborators on grounds of style. But there is nothing inconsistent between the reviser’s work in 2, 3 Henry VI. and on the one hand R
The Contention, which the reviser follows and elaborates scene by scene. It is difficult to assign to any one except Shakespeare the hu
of which is in The Contention as well as in Henry VI. Views which exclude Shakespeare altogether may be left out of account. Hen-r
inclusion in the First Folio is an almost certain ground for assigning to him some share, if only as reviser, in the completed work.

3. A very similar problem is afforded by 1 Henry VI., and here also it is natural, in the absence of tangible evidence to the contrary, to
the play as it stands. It is quite possible that it also may be a revised version, although in this case no earlier version exists; and if so th
Temple Gardens scene (ii. 4), which are distinguished by certain qualities of style from the rest of the play, may date from the period
representation of Talbot on the stage in his Pierce Penilesse, his Supplication to the Divell (1592), and it is probable that I Henry VI. i
in Henslowe’s Diary to have been acted as a new play by Lord Strange’s men, probably at the Rose, on the 3rd of March 1592. If so,
Contention were originally written at some date before the beginning of Henslowe’s record in the previous February, and were revise
latter end of 1592.

4. The series as revised can only be intended to lead directly up to Richard III., and this relationship, together with its style as compar
1594, suggest the short winter season of 159 2—1593 as the most likely time for the production of Richard III. There is a difficulty in
plays acted by Lord Strange’s men during that season. But it may quite well have been produced by the only other company which ap
Lord Pembroke’s. The mere fact that Shakespeare wrote a play, or more than one play, for Lord Strange’s men during 1592—1594 do
company during the same period; and indeed there is plenty of room for guess-work as to the relations between Strange’s and Pembro
before 1592, and many difficulties would be solved by the assumption that they originated out of a division of Strange’s, whose numb
may have been too much inflated to enable them to undertake as a whole the summer tour of that year. If so, Pembroke’s probably too
Contention, or at least the True Tragedy, -was published as performed by them, and completed it with Richard III. on their return to L
this theory in connexion with the discussion of Titus A ndroni.cus and The Taming of the Shrew. The principal historical source for H
Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1542), and for Richard III., -as for all Shakespeare’s later historical plays, the seco
Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (i5l’~i). An earlier play, The True Tragedy of Richard the Third (i5~4), seems to have co

5. Many scholars think that at any rate the greater part of the first two acts of Edward III., containing the story of Edward’s wooing of
if so, it is to about the time of Richard III. that the style of his contribution seems to belong. The play was entered in the Stationer~’ R
scenes are based on the 46th Novel in William Paynter’s Palace of Pleasure (1566). The line, “ Lilies that fester smell far worse than w
sonnet.

6. To the winter season of 1592—1593 may also be assigned with fair probability Shakespeare’s first experimental comedy, The Com
time for Pembroke’s and for another company is not regarded as beyond the bounds of conjecture, it becomes tempting to identify thi
by Strange’s men, for Henslowe as a new play on January 5, 1593. The play contains a reference to the wars of succession in France w
plot is taken from the Menaethmi, and to a smaller extent from the Amphitruo of Plautus. William Warner’s translation of the Menaec
10, 1594. A performance of The Comedy of Errors by “a company of base and common fellows” (including Shakespeare?) is recorde
Inn hail on December 28, 1594.

7. Titus Andronicus is another play in which many scholars have refused to see the hand of Shakespeare, but the double testimony of
makes it unreasonable to deny him some part in it. This may, however, only have been the part of a reviser, working, like the reviser o
structure of a crude tragedy of the school of Kyd. In fact a stage tradition is reported by Edward Ravenscroft, a late 17th-century adap
more than give a few “ master-touches” to the work of a “private author.” The play was entered in the Stationers’ Register on Februar
a title-page setting out that it had been acted by the companies of Lords Derby (i.e. Strange, who had succeeded to his father’s title on
natural to take this list as indicating the order in which the three companies named had to do with it, but it is probable that only Sussex
records the production by this company of Titus and A ndronicus as a new play on January 23, 1594, only a few days before the theat
Henslowe’s financial arrangements with the company a rewritten play may have been classed as new. Two years earlier he had appen
Vespacia, produced by Strange’s men on April II, I592. At first sight the title suggests a piece founded on the lives of the emperor Tit
with an early version of Titus Andronicus is justified by the existence of a rough German adaptation, which follows the general outlin
sons of Titus is named Vespasian instead of Lucius. The ultimate source of the plot is unknown. It cannot be traced in any of the Byza
still playing Titus in January 1593, and it was probably not transferred to Pembroke’s until the companies were driven from London b
from a letter of Henslowe’s to have been ruined by August, and it is to be suspected that Sussex’s, who appeared in London for the fir
stock of plays and transferred these to the Chamberlain’s men, when the companies were again reconstituted in the summer of 1594. T
Andronicus by Shakespeare may have been accomplished in the interval between these two transactions. The Chamberlain’s men wer
of Pembroke’s men probably included, as well as Titus and Vespas’ian, both Henry VI. and Richard III., which also thus passed to the

8. In the same way was probably also acquired an old play of The Taming of A Shrew. This, which can be traced back as far as 1589,
1594. In June of that year it was being acted by the Chamberlain’s, but more probably in the revised version by Shakespeare, which b
Shrew. This is a much more free adaptation of its original than had been attempted in the case of Henry VI., and the Warwicksbire all
have doubted whether Shakespeare was the sole author of The Shrew, and others have assigned him a share in A Shrew, but neither th
origins of the play, which is to be classed as a farce rather than a comedy, are to be found ultimately in widely distributed folk-tales, a
(1509) as translated in George Gascoigne’s The Supposes (1566). It may have been Shakespeare’s first task for the newly established
old farce. Thenceforward there is no reason to think that he ever wrote for any other company.

9. Love’s Labour’s Lost has often been regarded as the first of Shakespeare’s plays, and has sometimes been placed as early as 1589.
writing before 1592 or thereabouts. The characters of Love’s Labour’s Lost are evidently suggested by Henry of Navarre, his followe
leader, the duc de Maine. These personages would have been familiar at any time from 1585 onwards. The absence of the play from t
impossible that it should have preceded the formation of the Chamberlain’s company, but certainly renders this less likely; and its lyri
the series of plays that began in the autumn of 1594. No entry of the play is found in the Stationers’Register, and it is quite possible th
the first edition. The title-page professes to give the play as it was” corrected and augmented” for the Christmas either of 1597 or of 1
literary source is known for its incidents.

10. Romeo and Juliet, which was published in 159l’ as played by Lord Hunsdon’s men, was probably produced somewhat before A M
have suggested the parody of the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude. An attempt to date it in 1591 is hardly justified by the Nurse’s referen
fact that there was a real earthquake in London in i 580. The text seems to have been partly revised before the issue of the Second Qu
subject, but the immediate source ‘used by Shakespeare was Arthur Brooke’s narrative poem Romeus and Juliet (1562).

11. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its masque-like scenes of fairydom and the epithalamium at its close, has all the air of having
courtly wedding; and the compliment paid by Oberon to the “fair vestal throned by the west” makes it probable that it was a wedding
occasions have been suggested. The wedding of Mary countess of Southampton with Sir Thomas Heneage on the 2nd of May 1594 w
widowed countess hardly answers to the “little western flower “ of the allegory, and there are allusions to events later in 1594 and in p
which indicate a somewhat later date. The wedding of William Stanley, earl of Derby, brother of the lord Strange for whose players S
daughter of the earl of Oxford, which took place at Greenwich on the 26th of January 1595, perhaps fits the conditions best. It has bee
“certain stars shot madly from their spheres” in the Kenilworth fireworks of 1575, but if he had any such entertainment in mind it is m
Elizabeth by the earl of Hertford at Elvetham in 1591. There appears to be no special source for the play beyond Chaucer’s Knight’s T
Europe.

12. No very definite evidence exists for the date of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, other than the mention of it in Palladis Tamia. It i
romantic comedy than The Merchant of Venice, with which it has other affinities in its Italian colouring and its use of the inter-relatio
therefore be roughly assigned to the neighbourhood of 1595. The plot is drawn from various examples of contemporary fiction, espec
Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana (1559). A play of Felix and Philiomena had already been given at court in 1585.

13. King John is another play for which ‘595 seems a likely date, partly on. account of its style, and partly from the improbability of a
history being interpolated in the middle’ either of the Yorkist or of the Lancastrian series. It would seem that Shakespeare had before
Troublesome Reign of King John. This was published in i~91, and again, with “W. Sh.” on the title-page, in 1611. For copyright purp
revision of The Troublesome Reign, and in fact the succession of incidents in. the two plays is much the same. Shakespeare’s dialogu
predecessor.

14. Richard II. can be dated with some accuracy by a comparison of the two editions of Samuel Daniel’

narrative poem on The Civil Wars Between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York, both of which bear the date of I595 an

d were therefore issued between March 25, 1595 and March 24, 1596 of the modern reckoning. The second of these editions, but not
From the first two quartos of Richard II., published in. 1597 and 1598, the deposition scene was omitted, although it was clearly part
leaves an obvious mutilation in the text. There is some reason to suppose that this was due to a popular tendency to draw seditious par
one of the charges against the earl of Essex and his fellow-conspirators in the ,abortive êmeute of February I60I, that they had procure
to stimulate their followers. As the actors were the Lord Chamberlain’s men, this play can hardly have been any other than Shakespea
after Elizabeth’s death, in the Third Quarto of 1608.

15. The Merchant of Venice, certainly earlier than July 22, 1598, on which date it was entered in the Stationers’ Register, and possibl
Roderigo Lopez, (who was executed in June 1594, shows a considerable advance in comic and melodramatic power over any~ of the
scholars to about 1596. The various stories of which its plot is compounded are based upon common themes of folk-tales and Italian n
before him a play called The Jew, of which there are traces as early as 1579, and in which motives illustrating “the greedinesse of wor
appear to have been already combined. Something may also be owing to Marlowe’s play of The Jew of Malta.

16, 17. The existence of Richard II. is assumed throughout in Henry IV., which probably therefore followed it after no long interval. T
until 1600, but both parts must have been in existence before the entry of the first part in the Stationers’ Register on February 25th 15
a speech-prefix of the second part, which was not entered in the Register until August 23rd I600, betrays that it was written when the
Richard James, in his dedication. to The Legend of Sir John Oldcastle about 1625, and Rowe in 1709 both bear witness to the substitu
ascribes to the intervention of Elizabeth, and James to that of some descendants of Oldcastle, one of whom was probably Lord Cobha
acknowledgment of the wrong done to the famous Lollard martyr in the epilogue to 2 Henry IV. itself. Probably Shakespeare found O
him, in an old play called The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, which had been acted by Tarlton and the Queen’s men at least as
printed in. 1598. Falstaff himself is a somewhat libelous presentment of the 15th century leader, ~r John Fastolf, who had already figu
titled descendants alive in 1598.

18. An entry in the Stationers’ Register during 1600 shows that Much Ado About Nothing was in existence, although its publication w
regarded as the earliest play not included in Meres’s list. In. 1613 it was revived before James I. under the alternative title of Benedick
been taken from a constable at Grendon in Buckinghamshire. There is no very definite literary source for the play, although some of i
Furioso and Bandello’s novelle, and attempts have been made to establish relationships between it and two early German plays, Jacob
Ladiszlaus of Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick.
19. The completion. of the Lancastrian series of histories by Henry V. can be safely placed in or about 1599, since there is an allusion
Ireland of the earl of Essex,who crossed on March 27 and returned on September 28, 1599. The First Quarto, which was first “stayed”
in. 1600, is a piratical text, and does not include the choruses. A geniune and perhaps slightly revised version was first published in th

20. That Julius Caesar also belongs to 1599 is shown, not only by its links with Henry V. but also by an allusion to it in John Weever’
before its publication in 1601, and by a notice of a performance on September 2Ist,1599 by Thomas Platter of Basel in an account of a
Roman plays, and, like those that followed, was based upon. Plutarch’s Lives as translated from the French of Jacques Amyot and pub
Shakespeare’s first tragedy since Romeo and Juliet.

21. It is reported by John Dennis, in the preface to The Comical Gallant (1702), that The Merry Wives of Windsor was written at the
Falstaff in love, and was finished by Shakespeare in the space of a fortnight. A date at the end of 1599 or the beginning of 1600, short
plays, would be the most natural one for this enterprise, and with such a date the evidence of style agrees. The play was entered in the
First Q uarto of the same year appears to contain an earlier version of the text than that of the First Folio. Among the passages omitted
the duke of Wurttemberg and count of Mompelgard, whose attempts to secure the Garter had brought him into notice. The Windsor se
pro’duced at a Garter feast, and perhaps with the assistance of the children of Windsor Chapel in the fairy parts. The plot has its analo
English adaptations of these.

22. As You Like It was one of the plays “stayed” from publication in 1600, and cannot therefore be later than that year. Some trifling
1599. The plot is based upon Thomas Lodge’s romance of Rosalynde (1590), and this in part upon the pseudo-Chaucerian Tale of Ga

23. A play of Hamlet was performed, probably by the Chamberlain’s men, for Henslowe at Newington Butts on the oth of June 1594.
and it seems to have been in existence in some shape as early as I 589. It was doubtless on the basis of this that Shakespeare construct
Hamlet may perhaps be traceable in. the German play of Der bestrafte Brudermord. There is an allusion. in Hamlet to the rivalry betw
by boy actors, which points to a date during the vogue of the children of the Chapel, whose performance began late in 1600, and anoth
innovation,” by which the Essex rising of February 1601 may be meant. The play was entered in the Stationers’ Register on July 26, 1
Second Quarto in 1604. These editions contain texts whose differences from each other and from that of the First Folio are so conside
made for the fact that the First Quarto is probably a piratical venture, that t’he play underwent an exceptional amount of rewriting at S
Quarto indicates that the earliest version was acted in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and elsewhere, as well as in London.
Scandinavian legends preserved in the H-istoria Danica of Saxo Grammaticus, and transmitted to Shakespeare or his predecessor thro
Belleforest (see HAMLET).

24. Twelfth Night may be fairly placed in. 1601-1602, since it quotes part of a song included in Robert Jones’s First Book of Songs an
Manningham to have been seen by him at a feast in the Middle Temple hall on February 2nd, 1602. The principal source of the plot w
Silla” in his Farewell to Military Profession (1581).

25. Few of the plays present so many difficulties as Troilus and Cressida, and it cannot be said that its literary history has as yet been
acted by my Lord Chamberlens men” was entered in the Stationers’ Register on February 7th, 1603, with a note that “sufficient autho
before he printed it. This can hardly be any other than Shakespeare’s play; but it must have been. “ stayed, “ for the First Quarto did n
that year a fresh entry had been made in the Register by another publisher. The text of the Quarto differs in certain respects from that
of different copies of the original manuscript might explain. Two alternative title-pages are found in copies of the Quarto. On one, pro
printed “as it was acted by the Kings Majesties seruants at the Globe “; from the other th€se words are omitted, and a preface is appen
play had made difficulties about its publication, and describes it as “never staled with the stage.” Attempts have been made, mainly on
Shakespeare’s in the closing scenes and in the prologue, and even to assign widely different dates to various parts of what is ascribed
bear out these theories, and the style of the whole must be regarded as quite consistent with a date in 1601 or 1602. The more probabl
description of Ajax and his humours in the second scene of the first act is Shakespeare’s “purge” to Jonson in reply to the Poetaster (1
Return from Parnassus, a Cambridge play acted probably at the Christmas of 1602—1603 (rather than, as is usually asserted, 1601—1
Cressida may have been played, like Hamlet, by the Chamberlain’s men at Cambridge, but may never have been taken to London, and
only difficulty of a date in 1602 ~5 that a parody of a play on Troilus and Cressida is introduced into Histriomcfstix (c. 1599), and tha
Henslowe had produced another play on the subject, by Dekker and Chettle, ill 1599, and probably, therefore, no allusion to Shakespe
Cressida was taken by Shakespeare from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troyc, and Chapman

26. It is almost wholly on grounds of style that All’s Well that Ends Well is placed by most critics in or about 1602, and, as in the cas
though with little justification, that parts of the play are of considerably earlier date, and perhaps represent the Love’s Labour’s Won r
Boccaccio’s Decameron through the medium of William Paynter’s Palace of Pleasure (1566).

27. Measure for Measure is believed to have been played at court on the 26th of December 1604. The evidence for this is to be found,
records now lost, and partly in a forged document, which may, however, rest upon genuine information, placed amongst the account-b
the play was probably produced when the theatres were reopened after the plague in 1604. The plot is taken from a story already used
and Cassandra (1578) and in his prose Heptame’ron of Civil Discourses (1582), and borrowed by him from Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatom

28. A performance at court of Othello on November 1, 1604, is noted in the same records as those quoted with regard to Measure for
to the same year. An alleged performance at Harefield in 1602 certainly rests upon a forgery. The play was revived in 1610 and seen b
April 30 of that year. It was entered in the Stationers’ Register on October 6, 1621, and a First Quarto was published in. 1622. The tex
Folio, and omits a good many lines found therein and almost certainly belonging to the play as first written. It also contains some prof
Folio, and thereby points to a date for the original production earlier than the Act to Restrain Abuses of Players passed in the spring o
comes from the Hecatommithi (1566) of Giraldi Cinthio.

29. Macbeth cannot, in view of its obvious allusions to James I., be of earlier date than 1603. The style and some trifling allusions poi
thememay have been given by Matthew Gwynne’s entertainment of the Tres Sib yllae, with which James was welcomed to Oxford on
and Simon Forman saw it at the Globe on April 20. The only extant text, that of the First Folio, bears traces of shortening, and has bee
the witches by a second hand, probably that of Thomas Middleton. But the extent of Middleton’s contribution has been exaggerated; i
lines in act. iv. sc. I. A ballad of Macdobetli was entered in the Stationers’ Register on August 27, 1596, but is not known. It is not lik
history other than that included in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicle; he may have gathered witchlore from Reginald Scot’s Discoverie o
Demonologie (1599).

30. The entry of King Lear in the Stationers’ Register on November 26, 16o7, records the performance of the play at court on Decemb
of production, and this is confirmed by the publication in 5605 of the older play, The True Chronicle History of King Leir, which Sha
Lear were published in 1608, and contain a text rather longer, but in other respects less accurate, than that of the First Folio. The mate
which found their way into history through Geoffrey of Monmouth. It was accessible to Shakespeare in Holinshed and in Spenser’s F

31. It is not quite clear whether Antony and Cleopatra was the play of that name entered in the Stationers’ Register on May 20, 1608,
in the Register before the issue of the First Folio.’ Apart from this entry, there is little external evidence to fix the date of the play, but
manner, and may very well belong to 1606.

32. In the case of Coriolanus the external evidence available is even scantier, and all that can be said is that its closest affinities are to
directly followed or preceded in order of composition. Both plays, like Julius Caesar, are based upon the Lives of Plutarch, as English

33. There is no external evidence as to the date of Timon of Athens, but it may safely be grouped on the strength of its internal charac
clear gulf between it and those that follow. It may be placed provisionally in 1607. The critical problems which it presents have never
incoherencies of its action and inequalities of its style have prevented modern scholars from accepting it as a finished production of S
sometimes regarded as an incomplete draft for an intended play; sometimes as a Shakespearian. fragment worked over by a second ha
Folio; sometimes, but not very plausibly, as an old play by an inferior writer which Shakespeare had partly remodelled. It does not see
play of Timon which remained in manuscript until1842. The sources are to be found, partly in Plutarch’s Life of Marcus Antonius, pa
and partly in William Paynter’s Palace of Pleasure (1566).

34. Similar difficulties, equally unsolved, cling about Pericles. It was entered in the Stationers’ Register on May 20, 1608, and publish
acted by the King’s men at the Globe. The title-page bears Shakespeare’s name, but the play was not included’in the First Folio, and w
the Third Folio, iii company with others which, although they also had been printed under his name or initials in quarto form, are cert
The Painful Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre. This claims to be the history of the play as it was presented by the King’s players,
as “a poore infant of my braine.” The production of the play is therefore to be put in 1608 or a little earlier. It can hardly be doubted o
of the verse-scenes in the last three acts, with the exception of the doggerel choruses. It is probable, although it has been doubted, that
acts. To the first two acts he can. at most only have contributed a touch or two. It seems reasonable to suppose that the nonShakespear
dramatic work was produced about 1607. The prose story quotes a line or two from Shakespeare’s contribution, and it follows that thi
resemblances of the style to that of Shakespeare’s latest plays make it impossible to place it much earlier. But whether Shakespeare an
partially rewrote Wilkins, or Wilkins completed Shakespeare, must be regarded as yet undetermined. Unless there was an earlier Shak
“ Shakespeare’s own Muse her Pericles’ first bore “ must be held to be an error. The story is an ancient one which exists in many vers
hero is Apollonius of Tyre. The play is directly based upon a version in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, and theuse of Gower as a “prese
Laurence Twine’s Patterne of Painefull Adventures (c. 1576), of which a new edition appeared in 1607, may also have been consulted

35. Cymbeline shows a further development than Pericles in the direction of Shakespeare’s final style, and can hardly have come earl
Forman, who died in September 1611, and describes in the same book other plays seen by him in 1610 and 1611. But these were not-
be assigned
conjecturally to 1609. The mask-like dream in act v. sc. 4 must be an interpolation by another hand. This play also is based upon a wi
Boccaccio’s Decameron (day 2, novel 9), and possibly also in an English book of tales called Westward for Smelts. The historical par

38. The Winter’s Tale was seen by Forman on May 15, 1611, and as it clearly belongs to the latest group of plays it may well enough
document amongst the Revels Accounts, which is forged, but may rest on some authentic basis, gives November 5, 1611 as the date o
have been licensed by Sir George Buck, who began to license plays in 1607. The plot is from Robert Greene’s Pandosto, the Triumph

37. The wedding-mask in act iv. of The Tempest has suggested the possibility that it may have been composed to celebrate the marria
elector palatine, on February 14, 1613. But Malone appears to have had evidence, now lost, that the play was performed at court as ea
Revels Accounts gives the precise date of November I, 1611. Sylvester Jourdan’s A Discovery of the Bermudas, containing an accoun
was published about October r6io, and this or some other contemporary narrative of Virginian colonization probably furnished the hin

38. The tale of Shakespeare’s independent dramas is now complete, but an analysis of the Two Noble Kinsmen leaves no reason to do
the First Quarto of 1634 to Shakespeare and John Fletcher. This appears to have been a case of ordinary collaboration. There is suffic
writers to render the division of the play between them a matter of some difficulty; but the parts that may probably be assigned to Sha
Fletcher’s morris-dance in act iii. sc. 5 is borrowed from that in Beaumont’s Mask of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, given on Febr
1613. It is based on Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale.

39. It may now be accepted as a settled result of scholarship that Henry VIII. is also the result of collaboration, and that one of the col
doubt that the other was Shakespeare, although attempts have been made to substitute Philip Massinger. The inclusion, however, of th
conclusive against this theory. There is some ground for suspicion that the collaborators may have had an earlier work of Shakespeare
to the” history” type of play which Shakespeare had long abandoned. His share appears to consist of act i. scc. 1, 2~ act ii. scc. 3, 4; a
probably produced in 1613, and originally bore the alternative title of All is True. It was being performed in the Globe on June 29, 16
burnt. The principal source was Holinshed, but Hall’s Union of Lancaster and York, Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of the Church, and
Me, You Know Me (1605), appear also to have contributed.

Shakespeare’s non-dramatic writings are not numerous. The narrative poem of Venus and Adonis was entered in the Stationers’ Regis
from 1593 to 1636, are’ known. The Rape of Lucrece was, entered in the Register on May 9, 1594, and the six extant editions range fr
dedicatory epistle from the author to Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. The subjects, taken respectively from the Metamorp/io
Renaissance literature. It was once supposed that Shakespeare came from Stratford—on-Avon with Venus and Adonis in his pocket; b
to the comparative leisure afforded to playwrights and actors by the plague-period of 1592—1594. In 1599 the stationer William Jagg
which he called The Passionate Pilgrim, and placed Shakespeare’s name on the title-page. Only two of the pieces included herein are
quite possibly be his, the authority of the volume is destroyed by the fact that some of its contents are without doubt the work of Marl
Bartholomew Griffin. In 1601 Shakespeare contributed The Phoenix and the Turtle, an elegy on an unknown pair of wedded lovers, to
Complaint, which was collected and mainly written by Robert Chester. The interest of all these poems sinks into insignificance beside
entered in the Register on May 20, 1609, by the stationer Thomas Thorpe, and published by him under the title S/sake- ~mS speares S
Sonne~. year. In addition to a hundred and fifty-four sonnets, the volume contains the elegiac poem, probably dating from the Venus
1640 the Sonnets, together with other poems from The Passionate Pilgrim and elsewhere, many of them not Shakespeare’s, were repu
Shakespeare, Gent. Here the sonnets are arranged in an altogether different order from that of 1609 and are declared by the publisher
then living avouched.” No Shakespearian controversy has received so much attention, especially during recent years, as that which co
history of the Sonnets. This is intelligible enough, since upon the issues raised depends the question whether these poems do or do no
personality which otherwise is at the most only imperfectly revealed through the plays. On the whole, the balance of authority is now
considerable measure autobiographical. This view has undergone the fires of much destructive argument. The authenticity of the orde
doubted; and their subject-matter has been variously explained as being of the nature of a philosophical allegory, of an effort of the dr
forms of the Petrarchan convention. This last theory has been recently and strenuouslymaintained, and may be regarded as the only on
autobiographical interpretation. But it rests upon the false psychological assumption, which is disproved by the whole history of poetr
of conventions is inconsistent with the expression of unfeigned emotions; and it is hardly to be set against the direct conviction which
of the strength and sincerity of the spiritual experience out of which they were wrought. This conviction makes due allowance for the
poetic composition; and it certainly does not carry with it a belief that all the external events which underlie the emotional developme
reconstruction. But it does accept the sonnets as an actual record of a part of Shakespeare’s life during the years in which they were w
drama which played itself out for once, not in his imagination but in his actual conduct in the world of men and women.

There is no advantage to be gained by rearranging the order of the 1609 volume, even if there were any basis other than that of individ
are obviously linked to those which follow or precede them; and altogether a few may conceivably be misplaced, the order as a whole
continuity, which is the only possible test that can be applied. The last two sonnets, however, are merely alternative versions of a Gree
are more probably parallel than successive. The shorter of these two series (cxxvii.clii.) appears to be the record of the poet’s relations
and mourning eyes.

In the earlier sonnets he undertakes the half-playful defence of black beauty against the blonde Elizabethan ideal; but the greater num
deep consciousness of the bitterness of lustful passion and of the slavery of the soul to the body. The woman is a wanton. She has bro
is forsworn in loving her; and she is doubly forsworn. in proving faithless to him with other men. His reason condemns her, but his he
particular offence is that she, “a woman coloured ill, “ has cast her snares not only upon him, but upon his friend, “a man right fair,” w
double, in love and friendship. The longer series (i.-cxxvi.) is written to a man, appears to extend over a considerable period of time, a
addressed is younger than Shakespeare, and of higher rank. He is lovely, and the son of a lovely mother, and has hair like the auburn b
groups, which are rarely separated by any sharp lines of demarcation. Perhaps the first group (i.-xvii.) is the most distinct of all. These
Shakespeare to his friend to marry and beget children. The friend is now on the top of happy hours, and should make haste, before the
descendants against devouring time. In the next group (xviii.-xxv.) a much more personal note is struck, and the writer assumes the at
devoted to eternizing the beauty and the honour of his patron, and of the friend whose absorbing affection is always on the point of as
that of love. The consciousness of advancing years and that of a fortune which bars the triumph of public honour alike fin.d their cons
xxxii.) follows, in which the thought of friendship comes to remedy the daily labour of travel and the sorrows of a life that is “in disgr
melancholy broodings over the past. Then (xxxiii.-xlii.) comes an estrangement. The friend has committed a sensual fault, which is at
wooed by a woman loved by the poet, who deeply resents the treachery, but in the en.d forgives it, and bids the friend take all his love
freely given him. It is difficult to escape the suggestion that this episode of the conflict between love and friendship is the same as tha
Another journey (xliii. -lii.) is again filled with thoughts of the friend, and its record is followed by a group of sonnets (liii.-lv.) in whi
this will find in the poet’s verse are especially dwelt upon. Once more there is a parting (lvi.-lxi.) and the poet waits as patiently as ma
looks to his verse to give the friend immortality. He is tired of the world, but his friend redeems it (lxvi.-lxviii.). Then rumours of som
and he falls (lxxi.-lxxiv.) into gloomy thoughts of coming death. The friend, however, is still (lxxv.-lxxvii.) his argument; and he is pe
poet, who claims to be taught by spirits to write “above a mortal pitch,” and with “the proud full sail of his great verse” has already w
is another estrangement (lxxxvii.xc.), and the poet, already crossed with the spite of fortune, is ready not only to acquiesce in the loss
friend returns to him, but the relation is still clouded by doubts of his fidelity (xci.-xciii.) and by public rumours of his wantonness (xc
xcix.) in summer and spring. Then comes an apparent interval, after which a love already three years old is renewed (c.-civ.), with eve
to offer apologies (cix.cxii.) for offences against friendship and for some brand upon his name apparently due to the conditions of his
renews his protestations of the imperishability of love (cxiv.-cxvi.) and of his own unworthiness (cxvii.-cxxi.), for which his only exc
the friend has suffered as Shakespeare suffered, he has “passed a hell of time.” The series closes with a group (cxxii.-cxxv.) in which
sonnet form, warns the “lovely boy” that in the end nature must render up her treasure. Such an analysis can give no adequate idea of
universal poetry is built up on a basis of intimate self-revelation. The human document is so legible, and at the same time so incomple
which have been made to throw further light upon it by tracing the identities of those other personalities, the man and the woman, thro
so fiery an ordeal of soul, and even to the borders of self-abasement. It must be added that the search has, as a rule, been conducted w
started from the terms of a somewhat mysterious dedication prefixed by the publisher Thomas Thorpe to the volume of 1609. This run
insuing sonnets Mr W. H. all happinesse and that eternitie promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in se
that the inspirer or “begetter” of the sonnets bore the initials W. H.; ~ and contemporary history has accordingly been ran.- w. ii.” sack
might conceivably fit the conditions of the problem which the sonnets present. It is perhaps a want of historical perspective which has
names belonging to the highest ranks of the Elizabethan nobility, those of Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, and William Herb
connect Shakespeare with both of these. To Southampton he dedicated Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece in 1594,
£1000 from the earl is recorded by Rowe. His acquaintance with Pembroke can only be inferred from the statement of Heminge and C
plays, that Pembroke and his brother Montgomery had “prosequuted both them and their Authour living, with so much favour.” The p
mothers, their amours and the attempts of their families to persuade them to marry, their relations to poets and actors, and all other po
with the indications of the sonnets, have been canvassed with great spirit and some erudition, but with no very conclusive result. It is
W. H., whereas Southampton’s can only be turned into W. H. by a process of metathesis; and his champions have certainly been. mor
dark woman, a certain Mary Fitton, who was a mistress of Pembroke’s,. and was in consequence dismissed in disgrace from her post
balance of evidence is in favour of her having been blonde, and not “black.” Moreover, a careful investigation of the sonnets, as regar
it almost impossible on chronological grounds that Pembroke can have been their subject. He was born on the 9th of April 1580, and
was born on the 6th of October 1573. The earliest sonnets postulate a marriageable youth, certainly not younger than eighteen, an age
arid Pembroke in the spring of 1598. The writing of the sonnets may have extended over several years, but it is impossible to doubt th
than to the years 1598—I 603 that they belong. There is not, indeed, much external evidence available. Francis Meres in hisPalladis T
sonnets among his private friends,”1 but this allusion might come as well at
“The sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honeytongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his su
beginning as at the end of the series; and the fact that two, not of the latest, sonnets are in The Passionate Pilgrim of 1599 is equally in
in the sonnets themselves, which might at first sight seem useful, is in the following lines (cvii.) :— “The mortal moon bath her eclips
presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace proclaims olives of endless age.” This has been variously interpreted
of James in 1603, to the relief caused by the death of Philip II. of Spain in 1598, and to the illness of Elizabeth and threatened Spanish
Elizabeth, but although “eclipse” may well mean “ death,” it is not quite so clear that “ endure an eclipse “ can mean “ die.”

Nor do the allusions to the rival poet help much. “The proud full sail of his great verse “ would fit, on critical grounds, with Speriser,
Drayton; and the “affable familiar ghost,” from whom the rival is said to obtain assistance by night, might conceivably be an echo of
inscribed a poem to Southampton in 1603, but with this exception none of the poets named are known to have written either for South
H. W., during any year which can possibly be covered by the sonnets. Two very minor poets, Barnabe Barnes and Gervase Markham,
1595 respectively, and Thomas Nash composed improper verses for his delectation.

But even if external guidance fails, the internal evidence for 1593—1598 as approximately the sonnet period in Shakespeare’s life is v
by two German scholars, Hermann Isaac (now Conrad) in the Shakes peare-Jcthrbuch for 1884, and Gregor Sarrazin in William Shak
Meisterwerkstatt (1906). Isaac’s work, in particular, has hardly received enough attention even from recent English scholars, probably
sonnets in Bodenstedt’s order instead of Shakespeare’s, and of beginning his whole chronology several years too early in order to gra
of Essex. This, however, does not affect the main force of an argument by which the affinities of the great bulk of the sonnets are sho
parallelisms of expression, and parallelisms of theme, to be far more close with the poems and with the range of plays from Love’s La
later section of Shakespeare’s work. This dating has the further advantage of putting Shakespeare’s sonnets in the full tide of Elizabet
publication of Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella in 1591 and Daniel’s Delia and Constable’s Diana in 1592, rather than during years f or w
ceased to be modish. It is to the three volumes named that the influence upon Shakespeare of his predecessors can most clearly be trac
model for Drayton, whose sonnets to Idea were published in a series of volumes in 1594, 1599, 1602, 1605 and 1619. It does not of co
—1598 \V. H. is to be identified with Southampton. On general grounds he is likely, even if above Shakespeare’s own rank, to have b
some young gentleman, for example, of such a family as the Sidneys, or as the Walsinghams of Chislehurst.

It is possible that there is an allusion to Shakespeare’s romance in a poem called “ Willobie his Avisa,” published in ‘594 as from the
Knoyle in Wiltshire. In this Willoughby is introduced as taking counsel when in love with “ his familiar friend W. S. who not long be
was now newly recovered of the like infection.” But there is nothing outside the poem to connect Shakespeare with a family of Willou
Various other identifications of W. H. have been suggested, which rarely rest upon anything except a similarity of initials. There is lit
Lee, that W. H. was not the friend of the sonnets at all, but a certain William Hall, who was himself a printer, and might, it is conjectu
Thorpe. It is, of course, just possible that the “ begetter “ of the title-page might mean, not the “inspirer,” but the “procurer for the pre
shipwrecked on the obvious identity of the person to whom Thorpe “ wishes” eternity with the person to whom the poet “promised” t
must still be regarded as an unsolved problem; the most that can be said is that their subject may just possibly be Southampton, and ca

In order to obtain a glimmering of the man that was Shakespeare, it is necessary to consult all the records and to read the evidence of
simple facts of his external career and in The man and the that of the sudden vision of his passionate and dis- artist. satisfied soul pres
one of these sources of information it is easy to build up a consistent and wholly false conception of a Shakespeare; of a Shakespeare
the artistic Bohemianism of the London taverns; of a sleek, bourgeois Shakespeare to whom his art was no more than a ready way to a
his native town; of a great objective artist whose personal life was passed in detached contemplation of the puppets of his imagination
being more vivid, and the disadvantage of being less real, than the somewhat elusive and enigmatic Shakespeare who glances at us fo
behind that, of his diverse masks. It is necessary also to lay aside Shakespeareolatry, the spirit that could wish with Hallam that Shake
to accept Titus Andronicus on the ground that “the play declares as plainly as play can speak, ‘I am not Shakespeare’s; my repulsive s
were his.’ “ The literary historian has no greater enemy than the sentimentalist. In Shakespeare we have to do with one who is neither
artist. He was for all time, no doubt; but also very much of an age, the age of the later Renaissance, with its instinct for impetuous life
for literature. When Ben Jonson said that Shakespeare lacked art,” and when Milton wrote of his “native wood-notes wild,” they judg
and incoherent ; it belongs to the adolescence of literature, to a period before the instrument had been sharpened and polished, and ma
and of tears. Obviously nobody has such power over our laughter and our tears as Shakespeare. But it is the power of temperament ra
capricious and unsystematic artist, with a perfect dramatic instinct for the exposition of the ideas, the characters, the situations, which
disregard for the laws of dramatic psychology which require the patient pruning and subordination of all material that does not make f
imperfect fusing of the literary ore, is essentially characteristic of the Renaissance, as compared with ages in which the creative impul
concentration of the means upon the end. There is nearly always unity of purpose in a Shakespearian play, but it often requires an inte
unity of effect. The issues are obscured by a careless generosity which would extend to art the boundless freedom of life itself. Hence
such curious incongruity with the utmost reaches of which the dramatic spirit is capable; the conventional and melodramatic endings,
the emotional confusions of tragicomedy, the complications of plot and subplot, the marring of the give-and-take of dialogue by super
bombast lightly thrown in to suit the taste of the groundlings, all the flecks that to an instructed modern criticism are on.ly too apparen
from this that the most fruitful way of approaching Shakespeare is by an analysis of his work rather as a process than as a completed w
comprehensiveness, a capacity for growth and assimilation, which leaves no aspect of life unexplored, and allows of no finality in the
sufficient explanation and justification of the pains taken to determine the chronological order of his plays, that the secret of his geniu
the study of its development can he be known. He was nearly thirty when, so far as we can tell, his career as a dramatist began; and al
unaccounted-for years since his marriage, passed no one knows where, and filled no one knows with what experience, but assuredly i
experience kindling to his intellect and formative of his character. To the woodcraft and the familiarity with country sights and sound
which mingle so oddly in his plays with a purely imaginary and euphuistic natural history, and to the book-learning of a provincial gr
also of a provincial schoolmaster, he had somehow added, as he continued to add throughout his life, that curious store of acquaintanc
which has so often perplexed and so often misled his commentators. It was the same faculty of acquisition that gave him his enormou
that of any other English writer.

His first group of plays is largely made up of adaptations and revisions of existing work, or at the best of essays in the conventions of
popularity. In the Yorkist trilogy he takes up the burden of the chronicle play, in The Comedy of Errors that of the classical school dra
Andronicus that of the crude revenge tragedy of Kyd, and in Richard III. that of the Nemesis motive and the exaltation of the Machiav
But in Richard III. be begins to come to his own with the subtle study of the actor’s temperament which betrays the working of a prof
profession. The style of the earliest plays is essentially rhetorical; the blank verse is stiff and little varied in rhythm; and the periods ar
punctuated with devices of iterations, plays upon words, and other methods of securing emphasis, that derive from the bad tradition o
to rant and force the note in order to hold the attention of a dull-witted audience. During the plague-vacations of 1592 to 1594, Shakes
of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece; and the influence of this exercise, and possibly also of Italian travel, is apparent in the next group
warm southern colouring, their wealth of decorative imagery, and their elaborate and not rarely frigid conceits. Rhymed couplets mak
a medium of dramatic dialogue. It is a period of experiment, in farce with The Taming of the Shrew, in satirical comedy with Love’s
Midsummer Night’s Dream, in lyrical tragedy with Romeo and Juliet, in lyrical history with Richard II., and finally in romantic tragic
with the masterpiece of this singular genre, The l~ferchant of Venice. It is also the period of the sonnets, which have their echoes both
the black-browed Rosaline of Love’s Labour’s Lost, and in the issue between friendship and love which is variously set in The Two G
Venice. But in the latter play the sentiment is already one of retrospection; the tempest of spirit has given way to the tender melancho
witness, not only to the personal upheaval of passion, but also to some despondency at the spite of fate and the disgrace of the actor’s
the sunshine of growing popularity, of financial success, and of the possibly long-delayed return to Stratford. Certainly the series of p
hearted plays, less occupied with profound or vexatious searchings of spirit than with the delightful externalities of things. The histori
study of the conditions of kingship, carrying on the political speculations begun in Richard II. and culminating in the brilliant picture
Meanwhile Shakespeare develops the astonishing faculty of humorous delineation of which he had given foretastes in Jack Cade, in B
creation of Falstaff in front of his vivid pictures of contemporary England; and passes through the half-comedy, half melodrama, of M
Merry Wives of Windsor, and to his two perfectly sunny comedies the sylvan comedy of As You Like It and the urban comedy of Tw

Then there comes a change of mood, already heralded by Julius Caesar, which stands beside Henry V. as a reminder that efficiency ha
of political idealism in Brutus is followed by the tragedy of intellectual idealism in Hamlet; and this in its turn by the three bitter and c
Well, in which the creator of Portia, Beatrice, Rosalind and Viola drags the honourof womanhood in the dust—Troilus and Cressida,
confounded in the portraits of a wanton and a poltroon—and Measure for Measure, in which the searchlight of irony is thrown upon t
this new perturbation in the soul of Shakespeare it is perhaps idle to speculate. The evidence of his profound disillusion and discourag
the tide of his pessimistic thought advances, swelling through the pathetic tragedy of Othello to the cosmic tragedies of Macbeth and K
man alone, but of the heavens by whom man was made. Meanwhile Shakespeare’s style undergoes changes no less notable than those
characteristic of the histories and comedies of his middle period give way to a more troubled beauty, and the phrasing and rhythln ofte
thoughts were hurrying faster than speech can give them utterance. The period closes with Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, in w
honour of man are once more stripped bare to display the skeletons of lust and egoism, and in the latter of which signs of exhaustion a
in which the dramatist whips himself to an almost incoherent expression of a general loathing and detestation of humanity. Then the s
unfinished, and the next play, Pericles, is in an entirely different vein, ~nd is apparently finished but not begun. At this point only in t
is a complete breach of continuity. One can. only conjecture the occurrence of some spiritual crisis, an illness perhaps, or some proces
conversion, which left him a new man, with the fever of pessimism behind him, and at peace once more with Heaven and the world.

The final group of plays, the Shakespearian part of Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, all belong to the class of w
dreams, in which all troubles and sorrows are ultimately resolved into fortunate endings, and which stand therefore as so many symbo
dispositions of an ordering Providence. In harmony with this change of temper the style has likewise undergone another change, and t
Antony and Cleopatra have given way to relaxed cadences and easy and unaccentuated rhythms. It is possible that these plays, Shakes
of his contributions to Fletcher’s Henry VIII. and The Two Noble Kinsmen, were written in retirement at Stratford. At any rate the ca
with no regret that in the last pages of The Tempest the weary magician drowns his book, and buries his staff certain fathoms deep in
 Shakespeare
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O. Henry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Oh Henry!.

William Sydney Porter

"O. Henry"

Born William Sidney Porter

September 11, 1862

Greensboro, North Carolina

Died June 5, 1910 (aged 47)

 New York City, New York

Pen name O. Henry, Olivier Henry, Oliver Henry[1]

Occupation Writer

Nationality American

O. Henry was the pseudonym of the American writer William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5,
1910). O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist
endings.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Life

○ 1.1 Early

life

○ 1.2 Move

to Texas

○ 1.3 Fligh

t and

return

○ 1.4 Later

life

• 2 Stories

• 3 Pen name

• 4 Legacy

• 5 See also

• 6 Notes

• 7 Further reading

• 8 External links

[edit]Life
[edit]Early life
William Sidney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. His middle name at
birth was Sidney; he changed the spelling to Sydney in 1898. His parents were Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter
(1825–1888), a physician, and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter (1833–1865). They were married April 20,
1858. When William was three, his mother died from tuberculosis, and he and his father moved into the home
of his maternal grandmother. As a child, Porter was always reading, everything from classics to dime novels;
his favorite works were Lane's translation of One Thousand and One Nights, and Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy.[2]

Porter graduated from his aunt Evelina Maria Porter's elementary school in 1876. He then enrolled at the
Lindsey Street High School. His aunt continued to tutor him until he was fifteen. In 1879, he started working in
his uncle's drugstore and in 1881, at the age of nineteen, he was licensed as a pharmacist. At the drugstore, he
also showed off his natural artistic talents by sketching the townsfolk.

[edit]Move to Texas

Porter in Austin as a young man

Porter traveled with Dr. James K. Hall to Texas in March 1882, hoping that a change of air would help alleviate
a persistent cough he had developed. He took up residence on the sheep ranch of Richard Hall, James' son,
in La Salle County and helped out as a shepherd, ranch hand, cook and baby-sitter. While on the ranch, he
learned bits of Spanish and German from the mix of immigrant ranch hands. He also spent time reading classic
literature. Porter's health did improve and he traveled with Richard to Austin in 1884, where he decided to
remain and was welcomed into the home of the Harrells, who were friends of Richard's. Porter took a number
of different jobs over the next several years, first as pharmacist then as adraftsman, bank teller and journalist.
He also began writing as a sideline.
Porter led an active social life in Austin, including membership in singing and drama groups. Porter was a good
singer and musician. He played both the guitar and mandolin. He became a member of the "Hill CityQuartet," a
group of young men who sang at gatherings and serenaded young women of the town. Porter met and
began courting Athol Estes, then seventeen years old and from a wealthy family. Her mother objected to the
match because Athol was ill, suffering from tuberculosis. On July 1, 1887, Porter eloped with Athol to the home
of Reverend R. K. Smoot, where they were married.

Porter family in early 1890s — Athol, daughter Margaret, William

The couple continued to participate in musical and theater groups, and Athol encouraged her husband to
pursue his writing. Athol gave birth to a son in 1888, who died hours after birth, and then a daughter, Margaret
Worth Porter, in September 1889. Porter's friend Richard Hall became Texas Land Commissioner and offered
Porter a job. Porter started as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office (GLO) in 1887 at a salary of $100
a month, drawing maps from surveys and field notes. The salary was enough to support his family, but he
continued his contributions to magazines and newspapers.
Porter as a clerk at the First National Bank, Austin

In the GLO building, he began developing characters and plots for such stories as "Georgia's Ruling" (1900),
and "Buried Treasure" (1908). The castle-like building he worked in was even woven into some of his tales
such as "Bexar Scrip No. 2692" (1894). His job at the GLO was a political appointment by Hall. Hall ran for
governor in the election of 1890 but lost. Porter resigned in early 1891 when the new governor was sworn in.
The same year, Porter began working at the First National Bank of Austin as a teller and bookkeeper at the
same salary he had made at the GLO. The bank was operated informally and Porter had trouble keeping track
of his books. In 1894, he was accused by the bank of embezzlement and lost his job but was not indicted. He
now worked full time on his humorous weekly called The Rolling Stone, which he started while working at the
bank.The Rolling Stone featured satire on life, people and politics and included Porter's short stories and
sketches. Although eventually reaching a top circulation of 1500, The Rolling Stone failed in April 1895,
perhaps because of Porter's poking fun at powerful people. Porter also may have ceased publication as the
paper never provided the money he needed to support his family. By then, his writing and drawings caught the
attention of the editor at the Houston Post.

Porter and his family moved to Houston in 1895, where he started writing for the Post. His salary was only $25
a month, but it rose steadily as his popularity increased. Porter gathered ideas for his column by hanging out in
hotel lobbies and observing and talking to people there. This was a technique he used throughout his writing
career. While he was in Houston, the First National Bank of Austin was audited and the federal auditors found
several discrepancies. They managed to get a federal indictment against Porter. Porter was subsequently
arrested on charges of embezzlement, charges which he denied, in connection with his employment at the
bank.

[edit]Flight and return

Porter in his 30s

Porter's father-in-law posted bail to keep Porter out of jail, but the day before Porter was due to stand trial on
July 7, 1896, he fled, first to New Orleans and later to Honduras. While holed up in aTrujillo hotel for several
months, he wrote Cabbages and Kings, in which he coined the term "banana republic" to describe the country,
subsequently used to describe almost any small, unstable tropical nation in Latin America.[3] Porter had sent
Athol and Margaret back to Austin to live with Athol's parents. Unfortunately, Athol became too ill to meet
Porter in Honduras as Porter had planned. When he learned that his wife was dying, Porter returned to Austin
in February 1897 and surrendered to the court, pending an appeal. Once again, Porter's father-in-law posted
bail so Porter could stay with Athol and Margaret.

Athol Estes Porter died on July 25, 1897, from tuberculosis (then known as consumption). Porter, having little
to say in his own defense, was found guilty of embezzlement in February 1898, sentenced to five years jail, and
imprisoned on March 25, 1898, as federal prisoner 30664 at theOhio Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. While in
prison, Porter, as a licensed pharmacist, worked in the prison hospital as the night druggist. Porter was given
his own room in the hospital wing, and there is no record that he actually spent time in the cell block of the
prison. He had fourteen stories published under various pseudonyms while he was in prison, but was becoming
best known as "O. Henry", a pseudonym that first appeared over the story "Whistling Dick's Christmas
Stocking" in the December 1899 issue of McClure's Magazine. A friend of his in New Orleans would forward his
stories to publishers, so they had no idea the writer was imprisoned. Porter was released on July 24, 1901, for
good behavior after serving three years. Porter reunited with his daughter Margaret, now age 11, in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, where Athol's parents had moved after Porter's conviction. Margaret was never told that her
father had been in prison—just that he had been away on business.

[edit]Later life
Porter's most prolific writing period started in 1902, when he moved to New York City to be near his publishers.
While there, he wrote 381 short stories. He wrote a story a week for over a year for the New York World
Sunday Magazine. His wit, characterization and plot twists were adored by his readers, but often panned by
critics. Porter married again in 1907, to childhood sweetheart Sarah (Sallie) Lindsey Coleman, whom he met
again after revisiting his native state of North Carolina. However, despite the success of his short stories being
published in magazines and collections (or perhaps because of the attendant pressure that success brought),
Porter drank heavily.

His health began to deteriorate in 1908, which affected his writing. Sarah left him in 1909, and Porter died on
June 5, 1910, of cirrhosis of the liver, complications of diabetes and an enlarged heart. After funeral services in
New York City, he was buried in the Riverside Cemetery inAsheville, North Carolina. His daughter, Margaret
Worth Porter, died in 1927 and was buried with her father.

[edit]Stories

Portrait of Porter from frontispiece in his collection of short stories Waifs and Strays
O. Henry's stories are famous for their surprise endings, to the point that such an ending is often referred to as
an "O. Henry ending." He was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. Both authors wrote twist
endings, but O. Henry stories were much more playful. His stories are also well known for witty narration. Most
of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early years of the 20th century. Many take place in New York
City and deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses.

Fundamentally a product of his time, O. Henry's work provides one of the best examples of catching the entire
flavor of an age written in the English language. Whether roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of
the "gentle grafter," or investigating the tensions of class and wealth in turn-of-the-century New York, O. Henry
had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and
grace of language. Some of his best and least-known work resides in the collection Cabbages and Kings, a
series of stories which each explore some individual aspect of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American
town while each advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another in a complex
structure which slowly explicates its own background even as it painstakingly erects a town which is one of the
most detailed literary creations of the period.

Cabbages and Kings was his first collection of stories, followed by The Four Million. The second collection
opens with a reference to Ward McAllister's "assertion that there were only 'Four Hundred' people in New York
City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen—thecensus taker—and his larger estimate of
human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the 'Four Million.'" To O.
Henry, everyone in New York counted. He had an obvious affection for the city, which he called "Bagdad-on-
the-Subway,"[4] and many of his stories are set there—but others are set in small towns and in other cities.

Among his most famous stories are:

 "The Gift of the Magi" about a young couple who are short of money but
desperately want to buy each other Christmas gifts. Unbeknownst to Jim,
Della sells her most valuable possession, her beautiful hair, in order to buy a
platinum fob chain for Jim's watch; while unbeknownst to Della, Jim sells his
own most valuable possession, his watch, to buy jeweled combs for Della's
hair. The essential premise of this story has been copied, re-worked,
parodied, and otherwise re-told countless times in the century since it was
written.

 "The Ransom of Red Chief", in which two men kidnap a boy of ten. The boy
turns out to be so bratty and obnoxious that the desperate men ultimately pay
the boy's father $250 to take him back.

 "The Cop and the Anthem" about a New York City hobo named Soapy, who
sets out to get arrested so he can avoid sleeping in the cold winter as a guest
 of the city jail. Despite efforts at petty theft, vandalism, disorderly conduct, and
"mashing" with a young prostitute, Soapy fails to draw the attention of the
police. Disconsolate, he pauses in front of a church, where an organ anthem
inspires him to clean up his life — and is ironically charged for loitering and
sentenced to three months in prison.

 "A Retrieved Reformation", which tells the tale of safecracker Jimmy

Valentine, recently freed from prison. He goes to a town bank to case it before
he robs it. As he walks to the door, he catches the eye of the banker's
beautiful daughter. They immediately fall in love and Valentine decides to give
up his criminal career. He moves into the town, taking up the identity of Ralph
Spencer, a shoemaker. Just as he is about to leave to deliver his specialized
tools to an old associate, a lawman who recognizes him arrives at the bank.
Jimmy and his fiancée and her family are at the bank, inspecting a new safe,
when a child accidentally gets locked inside the airtight vault. Knowing it will
seal his fate, Valentine opens the safe to rescue the child. However, much to
Valentine's surprise, the lawman denies recognizing him and lets him go.
[edit]Pen name

Porter gave various explanations for the origin of his pen name.[5] In 1909 he gave an interview to The New
York Times, in which he gave an account of it:

It was during these New Orleans days that I adopted my pen name of O. Henry. I said to a friend: "I'm going to
send out some stuff. I don't know if it amounts to much, so I want to get a literary alias. Help me pick out a good
one." He suggested that we get a newspaper and pick a name from the first list of notables that we found in it.
In the society columns we found the account of a fashionable ball. "Here we have our notables," said he. We
looked down the list and my eye lighted on the name Henry, "That'll do for a last name," said I. "Now for a first
name. I want something short. None of your three-syllable names for me." "Why don’t you use a plain initial
letter, then?" asked my friend. "Good," said I, "O is about the easiest letter written, and O it is."

A newspaper once wrote and asked me what the O stands for. I replied, "O stands for Olivier the French for
Oliver." And several of my stories accordingly appeared in that paper under the name Olivier Henry.[6]

Writer and scholar Guy Davenport offers another explanation: "[T]he pseudonym that he began to write under
in prison is constructed from the first two letters of Ohio and the second and last two of penitentiary." (bold
added)[5]

[edit]Legacy
The O. Henry Award is a prestigious annual prize named after Porter and given to outstanding short stories.
Several schools around the country bear Porter's pseudonym.

In 1952, a film featuring five stories, called O. Henry's Full House, was made. The episode garnering the most
critical acclaim[citation needed]was "The Cop and the Anthem" starring Charles Laughton and Marilyn Monroe. The
other stories are "The Clarion Call", "The Last Leaf", "The Ransom of Red Chief" (starring Fred
Allen and Oscar Levant), and "The Gift of the Magi".

The O. Henry House and O. Henry Hall, both in Austin, Texas, are named for him. O. Henry Hall, now owned
by the University of Texas, previously served as the federal courthouse in which O. Henry was convicted of
embezzlement.

Porter also has an Elementary school named for him in Greensboro, North Carolina. William Sydney Porter
Elementary School located at 1632 Ball street, Greensboro, North Carolina.[7] The O. Henry Hotel also located
in Greensboro, North Carolina is named for Porter.

[edit]See also
 Flash fiction
[edit]Notes

1. ^ "The Marquis and Miss Sally", Everybody's Magazine, vol 8, issue 6, June
1903, appeared under the byline "Oliver Henry"

2. ^ "Henry, O.". Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). 1922.

3. ^ Malcolm D. MacLean, "O. Henry in Honduras," American Literary Realism,

1870-1910 1/3 (1968): 36-46.

4. ^ Henry, O. "A Madison Square Arabian Night," from The Trimmed

Lamp: "Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward me in little

old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three times with my forehead

and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. I claim descent from the late

Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand out vocal harmony for his pre-

digested wheaterina and spoopju." The Trimmed Lamp, Project Gutenberg

text

5. ^ a b Guy Davenport, The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature

and Art, Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996

6. ^ "'O. Henry' on Himself, Life, and Other Things", New York Times, Apr. 4,
1909, p. SM9.
 7. ^ Arnett, Ethel Stephens (1973). For Whom Our Public Schools Were
Named, Greensboro, North Carolina. Piedmont Press. pp. 245.

[edit]Further reading
 Smith, C. Alphonso (November 1916). "The Strange Case Of Sydney Porter And

"O. Henry"". The World's Work: A History of Our Time XXXIII: 54–64. Retrieved

2009-08-04.

[edit]External links

Wikiquote has a collection of

quotations related to: O.
Henry

Wikisource has original

works written by or about: O.
Henry

Wikimedia Commons has

media related to: O. Henry

 Works by O. Henry at Project Gutenberg

 O. Henry Museum

 Biography and stories

 Wall Street Journal on O. Henry

 O. Henry at the Internet Movie Database

 O. Henry at Find a Grave

Categories: American short story writers | Deaths from cirrhosis | Writers from North Carolina | People from
Greensboro, North Carolina |Prison writings | 1862 births | 1910 deaths | Alcohol-related deaths in New
York | American pharmacists | Pseudonyms

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Biography of William Wordsworth

Wordsworth, born in his beloved Lake District, was the son of an attorney. He
went to school first at Penrith and then at Hawkshead Grammar school before
studying, from 1787, at St John's College, Cambridge - all of which periods
were later to be described vividly in The Prelude. In 1790 he went with friends
on a walking tour to France, the Alps and Italy, before arriving in France where
Wordsworth was to spend the next year.

Whilst in France he fell in love twice over: once with a young French woman,
Annette Vallon, who subsequently bore him a daughter, and then, once more,
with the French Revolution. Returning to England he wrote, and left unpublished, his Letter to the
Bishop of Llandaff - a tract in support of the French Revolutionary cause. In 1795, after receiving
a legacy, Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy first in Dorset and then at Alfoxden, Dorset,
close to Coleridge.

In these years he wrote many of his greatest poems and also travelled with Coleridge and
Dorothy, in the winter of 1798-79, to Germany. Two years later the second and enlarged edition
of the Lyrical Ballads appeared in 1801, just one year before Wordsworth married Mary
Hutchinson. This was followed, in 1807, by the publication of Poems in Two Volumes, which
included the poems 'Resolution and Independence' and 'Intimations of Immortality
fromRecollections of Early Childhood'.

During this period he also made new friendships with Walter Scott, Sir G. Beaumont and De
 Quincy, wrote such poems as 'Elegaic Stanzas suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle' (1807), and
fathered five children. He received a civil list pension in 1842 and was made poet-laureate just
one year later.

Today Wordsworth's poetry remains widely read. Its almost universal appeal is perhaps best
explained by Wordsworth's own words on the role, for him, of poetry; what he called "the most
philosophical of all writing" whose object is "truth...carried alive into the heart by passion".

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Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Brief Biography

Glenn Everett, Associate Professor of English, University of Tennessee at Martin

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Alfred Tennyson —> Works —> Theme and Subject —> Image, Symbol, and Motif]
 Alfred Tennyson was born August 6th, 1809, at Somersby,
Lincolnshire, fourth of twelve children of George and Elizabeth
(Fytche) Tennyson. The poet's grandfather had violated tradition by
making his younger son, Charles, his heir, and arranging for the
poet's father to enter the ministry. (See the Tennyson Family Tree.)
The contrast of his own family's relatively straitened circumstances
to the great wealth of his aunt Elizabeth Russell and uncle Charles
Tennyson (who lived in castles!) made Tennyson feel particularly
impoverished and led him to worry about money all his life.

He also had a lifelong fear of mental illness, for several men

in his family had a mild form of epilepsy, which was then thought a
shameful disease. His father and brother Arthur made their cases
worse by excessive drinking. His brother Edward had to be confined
in a mental institution after 1833, and he himself spent a few weeks
under doctors' care in 1843. In the late twenties hisfather's physical
and mental condition worsened, and he became paranoid, abusive,
and violent.

In 1827 Tennyson escaped the troubled atmosphere of his home when he followed his two older brothers
to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his tutor was William Whewell — see nineteenth-century philosophy.
Because they had published Poems by Two Brothers in 1827 and each won university prizes for poetry (Alfred
winning the Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1828 for ÒTimbuctooÓ) the Tennyson brothers became well known at
Cambridge. In 1829 The Apostles, an undergraduate club, whose members remained Tennyson's friends all his
life, invited him to join. The group, which met to discuss major philosophical and other issues, included Arthur
Henry Hallam, James Spedding, Edward Lushington (who later married Cecilia Tennyson), and Richard
Monckton Milnes — all eventually famous men who merited entries in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Arthur Hallam's was the most important of these friendships. Hallam, another precociously brilliant
Victorian young man like Robert Browning, John Stuart Mill, and Matthew Arnold, was uniformly recognized
by his contemporaries (including William Gladstone, his best friend at Eton) as having unusual promise. He
and Tennyson knew each other only four years, but their intense friendship had major influence on the poet.
On a visit to Somersby, Hallam met and later became engaged to Emily Tennyson, and the two friends looked
forward to a life-long companionship. Hallam's death from illness in 1833 (he was only 22) shocked Tennyson
profoundly, and his grief lead to most of his best poetry, including In Memoriam , "The Passing of
Arthur", "Ulysses," and "Tithonus."

Since Tennyson was always sensitive to criticism, the mixed reception of his 1832 Poems hurt him
greatly. Critics in those days delighted in the harshness of their reviews: the Quarterly Review was known as
the "Hang, draw, and quarterly." John Wilson Croker's harsh criticisms of some of the poems in our anthology
kept Tennyson from publishing again for another nine years.

Late in the 1830s Tennyson grew concerned about his mental health and visited a sanitarium run by Dr.
Matthew Allen, with whom he later invested his inheritance (his grandfather had died in 1835) and some of his
family's money. When Dr. Allen's scheme for mass-producing wood carvings using steam power went
bankrupt, Tennyson, who did not have enough money to marry, ended his engagement to Emily Sellwood,
whom he had met at his brother Charles's wedding to her sister Louisa.

The success of his 1842 Poems made Tennyson a popular poet, and in 1845 he received a Civil List
(government) pension of £200 a year, which helped relieve his financial difficulties; the success of "The
Princess" and In Memoriamand his appointment in 1850 as Poet Laureate finally established him as the most
popular poet of the Victorian era.

By now Tennyson, only 41, had written some of his greatest poetry, but he continued to write and to
gain in popularity. In 1853, as the Tennysons were moving into their new house on the Isle of Wight, Prince
Albert dropped in unannounced. His admiration for Tennyson's poetry helped solidify his position as the
national poet, and Tennyson returned the favor by dedicating The Idylls of the King to his memory. Queen
Victoria later summoned him to court several times, and at her insistence he accepted his title, having declined
it when offered by both Disraeli and Gladstone.

Tennyson suffered from extreme short-sightedness — without a monocle he could not even see to eat —
which gave him considerable difficulty writing and reading, and this disability in part accounts for his manner
of creating poetry: Tennyson composed much of his poetry in his head, occasionally working on individual
poems for many years. During his undergraduate days at Cambridge he often did not bother to write down his
compositions, although the Apostles continually prodded him to do so. (We owe the first version of "The
Lotos-Eaters" to Arthur Hallam, who transcribed it while Tennyson declaimed it at a meeting of the Apostles.)

Long-lived like most of his family (no matter how unhealthy they seemed to be) Alfred, Lord Tennyson
died on October 6, 1892, at the age of 83.

Last modified 30 November 2004