The men of his own time do not seem to have recognised his greatness; and Ben Jonson, the court poet, whose blank-verse Shakspeare was content to commit to memory and recite as an actor, stood higher in popular estimation.

We only know that he was a successful theatrical manager, and that in the prime of life he retired to his native place, where he died, and had the honours of a village funeral.

The greater part of the biography which has been constructed respecting him has been the result, not of contemporary observation or of record, but of inference.

The best inner biography of the man is to be found in his sonnets.
Men do not always take an accurate measure of their contemporaries.

The statesman, the general, the monarch of to-day fills all eyes and ears, though to the next generation he may be as if he had never been.