Shakspere's life is a beneficial harmony between will and deed; no
attempt to draw down Heaven to Earth, or to raise up Earth to Heaven.
His are rather the ways and manners peculiar to a people which likes
to adapt itself to given circumstances, to make use of the existing
practical good, in order to produce from it that which is better.

It is an ascertained fact that Shakspere, who had received some training
at school--but no University education--began, at the age of twenty-four,
to arrange the pieces of other writers, to make modest additions to
them; in short, to render them fit and proper for stage purposes. This
may have been one of the causes why Greene dubbed him a 'Johannes
Fac-totum.' Others, too, have accused him, during his lifetime, of
'application' (plagiarism), because he took his subjects mostly from
other authors. Among those who so charged him, were, as we shall show,
more especially Ben Jonson and Marston.

Shakspere never allowed himself to be induced by these reproaches to
change his mode of working. Down to his death it remained the same.
Is his merit, on that account, a lesser one? Certainly not: in the
Poetical Art, in the Realm of Feeling and Thought, there are no
regular boundary-stones. No author has the right to say: 'Thou must
not step into the circle drawn by me; thou hast to do thy work wholly
outside of it!'

An author who so expresses an idea, or so describes a situation as to
fix it most powerfully in men's imagination, is to be looked upon as
the true owner or creator of the image: to him belongs the crown.
The Greeks reckoned it to be the highest merit of the masters of
their plastic art when they retained the great traits with which their