Shakespeare had
almost certainly met Marlowe very early in his career, for he worked
with him in the "Third Part of Henry VI.," and his "Richard III." is a
conscious imitation of Marlowe, and Marlowe was dissipated enough and
wild enough to have shown him the wildest side of life in London in the
'80's. It was the very best thing that could have happened to delicate
Shakespeare, to come poor and unknown to London, and be soused in common
rowdy life like this against his will by sheer necessity; for if left to
his own devices he would probably have grown up a bookish poet--a second
Coleridge. Fate takes care of her favourites.
It was all in his favour that he should have been forced at first to win
his spurs as an actor. He must have been too intelligent, one would
think, ever to have brought it far as a mummer; he looked upon the
half-art of acting with disdain and disgust, as he tells us in the
sonnets, and if in Hamlet he condescends to give advice to actors, it is
to admonish them not to outrage the decencies of nature by tearing a
passion to tatters.
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