Whether with or without reason, it has long been regarded as wonderful fact so little is definitely known concerning life of Shakespeare, prodigy described in words of Carlyle as the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in way of literature. In spite of mass of detail which has been brought together by laborious investigation extending over two hundred years -an amount of circumstantial evidence which far exceeds accessible in case of any other contemporary professional writer --only few scattered rays of light have been shed upon personality and conduct of man who not of an age, for all time! will is in our hands, writes historian Ward, but there is little or nothing to be read out of it which reveals to us even slightest comer of his life or character.2 After all voluminous results of nineteenth-century research have been carefully and discriminatingly sifted, we find ourselves no nearer to mystery of man Shakespeare than were our eighteenth-century ancestors. Nothing of essential importance has been added to story of his life as briefly summarized by antiquarian Steevens, more than century ago. All, said he, that is known with any degree of certainty concerning Shakespeare is-that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, married and had children there; went to London, where he commenced actor and wrote poems and plays; returned to Stratford, made his will, died and was buried. The Danish scholar, Brandes, who begins his entertaining and erratic Critical Study with admission a biography of Shakespeare is difficult, not impossible,3 repeats facts which his predecessors ' Sidney Lee, Shakespeare's Life and Work. 2 A. W. Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature. s Georg Brandes, William Shakespeare: A Critical Study. 717