Shakspere, Personal Recollections

The author offers a highly personal, anecdotal memoir of William Shakespeare, blending childhood and schooling recollections, accounts of provincial life and farming, and descriptions of his move to and career in London, the theatrical world, and encounters with patrons and courtly society. Each chapter treats the origins, composition, and performance context of major plays — Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet — alongside reflections on Elizabethan culture, tavern and stage routine, and the poet's final years in Stratford, with facsimile letters and poems included. The tone mixes affectionate admiration, literary commentary, and idiosyncratic authorial digressions.