" Lord Clarendon was
at the pains of securing a portrait of Shakespeare to hang in his
house in St James's. Similarly, the proudest and probably the richest
nobleman in political circles at the end of the seventeenth century,
the Duke of Somerset, was often heard to speak of his "pleasure in
that Greatness of Thought, those natural Images, those Passions finely
touch'd, and that beautiful Expression which is everywhere to be met
with in Shakespear."
VIII
It was to this Duke of Somerset that Rowe appropriately dedicated the
first full and formal biography of the poet. That work was designed as
a preface to the first critical edition of Shakespeare's plays, which
Rowe published in 1709. "Though the works of Mr Shakespear may seem to
many not to want a comment," Rowe wrote modestly enough, "yet I fancy
some little account of the man himself may not be thought improper to
go along with them." Rowe did his work quite as well as the
rudimentary state of the biographic art of his day allowed. He was
under the complacent impression that his supply of information
satisfied all reasonable curiosity. He had placed himself in the hands
of Betterton, an investigator at first hand.
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