Dear Me,

   Ok. so another adventure with Shakespeare.  God, I'm going to start getting desperate about intros...blah.

Cheers

Shakespeare: A Biography

by

Peter Ackroyd

Part Three

Chapter 23:  Sir I Shall Study Deserving

On his first arrival in London, how did he appear to his contemporaries?  The young Shakespeare was eager for new experience in all its forms.  His aspiring spirit might there find its true settings.  He also wished to test himself in the house of thought and drama.

We can see Shakespeare's intense and overwhelming energy.  It manifested itself in all stages of his career, his youth must have been irrepressible.  He is the poet of speed and agility.  His characters are not from a study or library but of a busy and active world.  He was known for his quick wit.  He was seen his peers as "handsome and well shap't man."

No remarkable young man or woman is  was not entirely lacking energy, there are some stopped by self-consciousness or embarrassment.    There are also references in his dramas to stage-fright.

Everyone noted his sweetness and courtesy.   He was called civil, generous and most often, gentle. Gentility implies instinctive courtesy towards those towards inferior rank, pleasing modesty towards his peers and proper respect towards his superiors.

He did not stand out as a man of eccentric character, and it seems that his contemporaries sensed a deep equality with him.  He effortlessly entered the sphere of their interests and activities.  He was infinitely good-natured.  The apparent ordinariness of extraordinary people is one of the great taboos of biographical writing.

That is perhaps why his friends came away from Shakespeare's company with no overwhelming sense  of his personality.   Much speculations has been devoted to his "feminine" characteristics and in particular to his compassion and sensitivity.    He could see every side of an argument and that he could have had a sympathy so fine that no belief could injure it.

But, when he left the company of others, what then?  In remarkable people there is always an inward power  propelling them forward.  Shakespeare was very determined,  You don't write thirty-six plays in less than twenty-five years without being driven.  He was ready to compete with his more educated contemporaries.  He was a man who had left behind his wife and children, his plays with images of loss, exile and self-division.  He had a desire to act, even at the cost of his reputation as a poet.

Yet he was also exceeding practical.  He could not otherwise have written, acted in, and helped to direct dramas that appealed to all people.  Shakespeare was skillful, not to say hardheaded, in money matters.  He acquired a reputation among his friends and acquaintances a money lender.  He bought up property and tithes and by the time of his death, he had become a very rich man.