III
SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION[9]
[Footnote 9: This paper was first printed in _The Nineteenth Century
and After_, February 1902.]
I
Biographers did not lie in wait for men of eminence on their
death-beds in Shakespeare's epoch. To the advantage of literature, and
to the less than might be anticipated disadvantage of history (for
your death-bed biographer, writing under kinsfolk's tear-laden eyes,
must needs be smoother-tongued than truthful), the place of the modern
memoir-writer was filled in Shakespeare's day by friendly poets, who
were usually alert to pay fit homage in elegiac verse to a dead hero's
achievements. In that regard, Shakespeare's poetic friends showed at
his death exceptional energy. During his lifetime men of letters had
bestowed on his "reigning wit," on his kingly supremacy of genius,
most generous stores of eulogy. Within two years of the end a
sonneteer had justly deplored that something of Shakespeare's own
power, to which he deprecated pretension, was needful to those who
should praise him aright. But when Shakespeare lay dead in the spring
of 1616, when, as one of his admirers technically phrased it, he had
withdrawn from the stage of the world to the "tiring-house" or
dressing-room of the grave, the flood of panegyrical lamentation was
not checked by the sense of literary inferiority which in all
sincerity oppressed the spirits of surviving companions.
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