Frederick Warde

“ If we could have looked, therefore, through the diamond-paned windows of the old gabled house in Henley street, Stratford, on some summer evening, after the shadows, had fallen we might have seen a little fellow attired for bed, kneeling at the feet of his gentle mother, with his hands uplifted, repeating after her, with his infant lips, the Lord's Prayer, and imbibing the first knowledge of the divine principles of the Christian faith, which he so frequently and beautifully expresses throughout his plays. ”

“ There is not a single chord in the whole gamut of human passion that he has not touched, delicately, yet firmly, from the ambition of a monarch to the first faint flush of love in a young maid's heart. ”

“ There is no record of Shakespeare's progress or conduct while at school, but from the subsequent genius he displayed it is but reasonable to suppose that he was an apt scholar. Seven years under the direction of an able tutor, at an age (seven to fourteen) when the youthful mind is most capable of receiving and retaining impressions would form the foundation of a pretty substantial education and probably a very sound one for the period in which he lived. ”

“ A PREVAILING misconception of the social condition of the parents of William Shakespeare, the influences of his childhood, his opportunities of education, his youthful environmnt and the surroundings of his manhood are, in a great measure, responsible for the doubts that are so frequently expressed of the possibility of such a man having the ability or knowledge to conceive, develop, and write the plays and poems ascribed to his name. ”

“ In "Julius Caesar" and other classic works he follows Plutarch closely, in some instances almost verbatim; while in his historical dramas he has — with the poet's license — used Holinshed almost exclusively. There is nothing, in my mind, in Shakespeare's use of the old stories, plays and poems in "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," or his combination of them in "The Merchant of Venice" or "King Lear," etc., that is inconsistent with the suggestions I have made. Institutional education up to a certain point develops the mind; beyond that it contracts it. ”