Chapter Shadwell to Shalott of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Shakespeare’s Children. One son, Hamnet, who died in his twelfth year (1585–1596). Two daughters, who survived him, Susanna, and Judith twinborn with Hamnet. Both his daughters married and had children, but the lines died out.

N. B.—Voltaire says of Shakespeare: “Rimer had very good reason to say that Shakespeare n’etait q’un vilain singe.” Voltaire, in 1765, said, “Shakespeare is a savage with some imagination, whose plays can please only in London and Canada.” In 1735 he wrote to M. de Cideville, “Shakespeare is the Corneille of London, but everywhere else he is a great fool (grand fou d’ailleur).”

The Shakespeare du Boulevard, Guilbert de Pixérécourt (1773–1844).

The Shakespeare of Divines, Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667).

His [Taylor’s] devotional writings only want what they cannot be said to need, the name and the metrical arrangement, to make them poetry.—Heber.

Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.—Emerson.

The Shakespeare of Eloquence. The comte de Mirabeau was so called by Barnave (1749–1791).

The Shakespeare of Germany, Augustus Frederick Ferdinand von Kotzebue (1761–1819). G. F. W. Crossman is so called also (1746–1796).

The Shakespeare of Prose Fiction. Richardson the novelist is so called by DIsraeli (1689–1761).

Shallow, a weak-minded country justice, cousin to Slender. He is a great braggart, and especially fond of boasting of the mad pranks of his younger days. It is said that justice Shallow is a satirical portrait of sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, who prosecuted Shakespeare for deer-stalking.—Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor (1596); and 2 Henry IV. (1598).

As wise as a justice of the quorum and custalorum in Shallow’s time.—Macaulay.

Shallum, lord of a manor consisting of a long chain of rocks and mountains called Tirzah. Shallum was “of gentle disposition, and beloved both by God and man.” He was the lover of Hilpa, a Chinese antediluvian princess, one of the 150 daughters of Zilpah, of the race of Cohu or Cain.—Addison: Spectator, viii. 584-5 (1712).

Shalott (The lady of), a poem by Tennyson, in four parts. Pt. i. tells us that the lady passed her life in the island of Shalott in great seclusion, and was known only by the peasantry. Pt. ii. tells us that she was weaving a magic web, and that a curse would fall on her if she looked down the river. Pt. iii. describes how sir Lancelot rode to Camelot in all his bravery; and the lady gazed at him as he rode along. Pt. iv. tells us that the lady floated down the river in a boat called The Lady of Shalott, and died heart- broken on the way. Sir Lancelot came to gaze on the dead body, and exclaimed, “She has a lovely face, and may God have mercy on her!” This ballad was afterwards expanded into the Idyll called “Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat” (q.v.), the beautiful incident of Elaine and the barge being taken from the History of Prince Arthur, by sir T. Malory—

“While my body is whole, let this letter be put into my right hand, and my hand bound fast with the letter until I be cold, and let me be put in a fair bed with all the richest clothes that I have about me, and so let my bed and all my rich clothes be laid with me in a chariot to the next place whereas the Thames is, and there let me be put in a barge, and but one man with me, such as ye trust to steer me thither, and that my barge be covered with black samite over and over.”…So when she was dead, the corpse and the bed and all was led the next way unto the Thames, and there a man and the corpse and all were put in a barge on the Thames, and so the man steered the barge to Westminster, and there he rowed a great while to and fro, or any man espied.—Pt. iii. 123.