Merchant of Venice. - Repositories

Xxii
INTRODUCTION
11. ROMANCES.
Pericles (1608).
Cymbeline (1609).
Tempest (1610).
Winter's Tale (161J-11).
12. FRAGMENTS.
Two Noble Kinsmen (1612).
Henry VIII. (1612-13).
Retirement to Stratford, and Death. — When John
Shakespeare chose his son William as the boy of all
his family best adapted to a business life, and took
him from school to apprentice him to a trade, he
proved that his own judgment was sound. The man
who had entered London in 1585 not only rose to fame
as an author in less than fifteen years, but in that
same time acquired for himself a respectable fortune,
and purchased a handsome estate in Stratford. After
1598 the poet is known in the village records as
"William Shakespere' of Stratford-on-Avon, in the
county of Warwick, gentleman." One bitter sorrow
had come to him amidst all the success of these years,
for in 1596 he lost his little boy, Hamnet. This
loss must have been a heavy blow to him, but he kept
on working in London, and it is very doubtful if he
spent much of his time away from the city during the
next fifteen years. In 1601 his father died. In 1607