Where did Shakespeare obtain his marvelous knowledge of life and people? The answer evidently is, from life itself and from people themselves. He studied people and understood them. His own heart and nature taught him wonderful knowledge. From older people, he heard stories of the Wars of the Roses. These stories undoubtedly gave him his knowledge of warfare, soldiers, battles and politics. He read such books as Holinshed's _Chronicles_, North's translation of Plutarch's _Lives_ and translations of the choicest Italian novels of the time. He probably had read Chaucer. He was familiar with all the writings, plays, poems, and pamphlets of his contemporaries. The time when Shakespeare lived was one of the greatest ages in the history of the world. He himself makes any age in which he lived a {45} great age; but there were living at that time many other great writers, although not as great as Shakespeare. He therefore must have read much. He almost certainly was one of the people who, as we say, can take the whole heart out of a book at a single reading. It would be foolish to say that it is easy to read all Shakespeare's plays. Comparatively few people, old or young, can understand them altogether. But to read those plays that one can understand is a very great adventure. We find in them, even if we do not comprehend everything, so much that is worth while, great life, beauty, sweetness, courtesy, benignity, generosity and honour. There were customs in Shakespeare's day, points of view, judgments and prejudices, which the world has outgrown. We have much to learn still, but the world to-day is a better place than it was in the sixteenth century. We find some things in Shakespeare's plays that grate on us harshly, such as the feeling towards Shylock, the Jew, in _The Merchant of Venice_. Shakespeare's greatest gift to us is that he makes us feel and know how wonderful life is. He puts before us in his plays the whole world, and we can look at it and see how beautiful it is. He shows us men and women, and although he wrote long ago people who read his plays to-day find his men and women so interesting that we think ourselves very fortunate if we can see a great actor play Hamlet or a great actress show us the way in which charming Rosalind may have walked and spoken in the forest of Arden. No {46} other writer has ever been able to create such women characters as Shakespeare. The best and soundest knowledge of Shakespeare comes slowly. It is good to read such speeches in his plays as Brutus' speech in _Julius Caesar_, Act iv, scene iii, beginning at the words, "There is a tide in the affairs of men". When we have learned that speech, we may turn to other words, such as these in _King Henry V_: There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out. Remember King Henry's saying; it contains truth which is serviceable to us all.