Classicly

Shakespeare, William, A Life of, by Sidney Lee (1898). The motto of this book would appear to be that which was said (by one of them) to have animated the contributors to the English Dictionary of National Biography: “no flowers, by request.”

The purpose of the writer has been to provide a book which “shall supply within a brief compass an exhaustive and well-arranged statement of the facts of Shakespeare’s career, achievement, and reputation, that shall reduce conjecture to the smallest dimensions consistent with coherence, and shall give verifiable references to all the original sources of information.” By common consent he has abundantly succeeded in this aim.