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English Keadings

GENERAL EDITOR

WILBUR LUCIUS CROSS

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN YALE UNIVERSITY

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SHAKESPEARE'S

HAMLET

EDITED BY

JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

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INTRODUCTION

I

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORKS

WILLIAM SHakespeare was baptized at Stratford-onAvon on April 26, 1564, so that the date of his birth is probably April 22 or 23. He was the son of John Shakespeare, who had left his father's farm at Snitterfield about thirteen years before, and had come to Stratford, where he engaged in business (especially in the sale of agricultural produce), and became one of the prominent citizens of the town, holding office in the borough more than once. He married, in 1557, Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy farmer of excellent family, whose home was at Wilmcote, near Stratford. The dramatist, accordingly, came of good English stock.

Shakespeare grew up in the little town of Stratford, in one of the most beautiful districts of England. He received his education in the Stratford grammar school, where he got the "small Latin and less Greek" with which Ben Jonson credited him. But his training, at least in Latin, was doubtless pretty thorough, and Jonson's statement must be interpreted in the light of his own very unusual scholarship. Shakespeare, nevertheless, was

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