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THE 
 READING OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
THE READING OF 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MASON HOPPIN 
 
 PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF THE HISTORY 
 OF ART IN YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 fciterjrtbe pre#, Camfcribge 
 1906 
 
COPYRIGHT 1906 BY JAMES MASON HOPP1N 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published April, iqob 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LIFE AND LEARNING 4 
 
 STYLE . 18 
 
 NATURE AND ART 22 
 
 MORALITY 26 
 
 HISTORICAL PLAYS 39 
 
 COMEDIES 73 
 
 GREEK PLAYS 108 
 
 ROMAN TRAGEDIES 130 
 
 ITALIAN PLAYS . 157 
 
 SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS 179 
 
THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ALMOST every English-speaking man with liter- 
 ary tastes has had, at some time in his life, a bout 
 with Shakespeare, since this dramatist represents 
 the highest object of his literary curiosity, and it 
 may also be affirmed that one who possesses any 
 virility of mind is made stronger by the study of 
 Shakespeare ; our strenuous chief magistrate, it is 
 said, is fond of Shakespeare, and reads him for 
 refreshment while stretched before the fire in his 
 Montana log cabin. The subject itself of Shake- 
 speare aids us in our reading by its very magni- 
 tude. 
 
 Nature has produced three poets who stand like 
 mountain peaks higher than the rest Homer, 
 Dante, and Shakespeare. Homer delineated the 
 " throned gods" of Olympus, and gave expression 
 to the splendid Hellenic race ; Dante, leaving the 
 
2 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 miserable strifes of Italian factions, tracked the 
 soul's flight into spiritual realms, following the 
 leadings of Celestial Love ; while Shakespeare 
 interpreted to us our common humanity, and was 
 the poet of universal humanity ; which of these 
 three poets is to be considered the greatest, de- 
 pends upon our nationality, trend of studies, and 
 sympathetic tastes. 
 
 The following brief talk on Shakespeare makes 
 no pretense to add anything new to such a vast 
 theme, and it originated in this wise : I spent the 
 summer of 1903 in the country a dreadfully rainy 
 summer and for recreation and instruction, I 
 took up the reading of Shakespeare's plays ; and 
 although I had been, all my life, more or less a 
 reader of Shakespeare in a cursory way, I con- 
 tinued this reading in a more regular manner, 
 though at intervals, until the present time, giving 
 myself to it, and enjoying the beauties of his work 
 from a purely literary point of view, not dwelling 
 too critically on them. In this year, 1903, and the 
 succeeding years I went through, more or less care- 
 fully, thirty-six plays, accompanying, it is true, 
 
THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 3 
 
 the delightful task by reading Professor I^ouns- 
 bury's volumes on "Shakespeare as a Dramatic 
 Artist," and "Shakespeare and Voltaire;" but 
 leaving aside Dr. Furness's clean sweeping " Vari- 
 orum Shakespeare" and other critical and philo- 
 logic authors, truly rejoicing that I was born to 
 speak English and could read Shakespeare in his 
 own tongue. I did this, I may repeat, not only for 
 instruction but for enjoyment. In a true work of 
 art, be it literary or otherwise, there is always the 
 element of joy it gives delight because it aims for 
 perfection ; this is the meaning of aesthetics, which 
 is pleasure derived from the contemplation of 
 beauty in nature and art. A work of art may 
 have in it the element of the useful and practical, 
 but it also from its beauty awakes joy. Take any 
 of the arts Architecture, for example, on a Col- 
 lege campus : while there should be as much of the 
 ample space, air, and light of nature as possible, 
 and the grounds should be laid out with simple 
 taste, the buildings themselves should be of noble 
 form drawn from sound classic principles and of 
 essentially academic character, telling what they 
 
4 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 are and the reason of them, so that the student who 
 daily passes to and fro is unconsciously touched by 
 their fitness and beauty and his mind is moved to 
 finer issues ; this is, imperceptibly, an education, 
 not only material but spiritual. These buildings 
 should not be merely for the inhabitation of a 
 flitting crowd of young men or for the reception of 
 books, needful as these are, but the edifices them- 
 selves should raise and cultivate the mind of many 
 generations by their true and artistic qualities. 
 Architecture, a manly art requiring accurate 
 thought, should be studied in connection with his- 
 tory, as one of the regular courses in a university 
 education. 
 
 LIFE AND LEARNING. 
 
 The first glimpse I ever caught of the living 
 Shakespeare, his actual personality, was of course 
 at Stratford-on-Avon, and there, above all, at the 
 old Edwardian Grammar School, where he learned 
 "small Latin and less Greek." I will speak of 
 the school more particularly soon. 
 
UFE AND LEARNING. 
 
 5 
 
 Stratford-on-Avon was the place in the whole 
 world for Shakespeare to be born. It is situated 
 in a midland county in the heart of "merrie Eng- 
 land," where its quiet rural profile is reflected in 
 the stream of " the softly flowing Avon," in which 
 the tall osiers and brilliant wild flowers fringe its 
 banks ; though not so sad as poor Ophelia's crown 
 of rosemary and rue. The bright green meadows, 
 and the silly sheep browsing on them, the elegant 
 but small spire of Stratford church in which the 
 poet was buried, the gently swelling green hills 
 around, and the low, ancient, cross-timbered 
 houses make even now a picture of the olden 
 time, and in its almost unchanged character seem- 
 ing to promise, at least, that the memory of the 
 poet of nature would be sacredly kept till ' ' all the 
 breathers in the world were dead." 
 
 The antique grammar school, dating from 1482, 
 with rugged stone gables, stands at the turn of 
 "Scholar's Lane," and not far from the church. 
 Its courtyard in the rear of the building is the 
 same as when the young Shakespeare played in it 
 at marbles and leap-frog. 
 
6 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 I procured a key from the teacher living not 
 many houses off, and entered the upper room, 
 where three boys sat at their desks apparently 
 intent on their lessons, having been kept in after 
 school for misdemeanors. They were curly pated, 
 sturdy little fellows, entirely equal to the occasion, 
 and I have no doubt that they regarded the inci- 
 dent as an opportune diversion from their enforced 
 task. I seated myself in the teacher's chair and 
 questioned them about their studies ; among other 
 things, one of the boys informed me gratuitously 
 that sometimes they were feruled it may be when, 
 in the language of Shakespeare's time, they had 
 ' ' profited nothing in their books and failed in 
 their accidence." From some occult reason, I 
 know not exactly what, I seemed to find here the 
 real Shakespeare, full of life (albeit the boy, or 
 youth) more than at Henley street where he was 
 born, or in Shottery Cottage where he wooed 
 Anne Hathaway ; for here he started on that 
 intellectual career which left behind him a ray of 
 ever-expanding light. 
 
 The school-room is long and low, the ribbed 
 
AND LEARNING. 7 
 
 beams above are massive and black with age, the 
 light coming through small window openings. 
 The desks are of oak, fearfully hacked, the boys 
 having wreaked their revenge on them for their 
 tasks and whippings. The oldest boy of the three 
 was a handsome little fellow, and he showed me 
 some writing-books of school exercises, and gave 
 me two or three of the condemned ones in the con- 
 flagration basket, and told me with a grin, when I 
 asked him if his name were " Will Shakespeare," 
 that there was a boy in town whose name was 
 "Willie Shakespeare. 1 ' 
 
 On my leaving, the boys said they would give 
 back the key to the master, and I let them have it ; 
 but going down stairs it occurred to me that I 
 ought not to deliver up the key of the fortress to 
 the prisoners, who might use it for their escape ; 
 and so, though I hated to do it, I went back and 
 took the key away from them, for they were smil- 
 ing and gentlemanly rogues, and (though this may 
 have been but a surmise) they nearly tricked me 
 in regard to the key would the boy Shakespeare 
 have been more successful ? 
 
8 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 In regard to the controverted question of Shake- 
 speare's learning, his education, whatever it was, 
 was commenced at this school. Latin, or " Latin- 
 ity," as it was named, was the main part of the 
 education of this period, and how much of it and 
 of other learning Shakespeare there acquired (for 
 he must have remained at school until he was six- 
 teen or seventeen years old, and such a marvel - 
 ously keen youth could have learned a great deal 
 in that time) we can hardly know. His school 
 knowledge embraced the " humanities," as they 
 were called, that is, Latin and Greek, using the 
 crabbed compendiums then in vogue, like the Sen- 
 tentia pueriles, and he read portions of Virgil, Ovid, 
 Plutarch, and other classic authors, learning also 
 to speak Latin after a fashion ; then he left the 
 Stratford school and joined the Earl of Leicester's 
 company of ' ' Morality players, ' ' who performed 
 in Stratford, going with them to London. In 
 London, from small beginnings, he gradually rose, 
 and at that period of his life he is known to have 
 been an omnivorous reader of books, a meddler in 
 all knowledge, which he had to be, because when 
 
UFE AND LEARNING. 9 
 
 he became a manager this implied also a purveyor 
 and provider, a writer of fresh plays, in order 
 to meet the demands of the English stage at a 
 time of mental ferment and growth, " the spa- 
 cious times of Great Elizabeth " a drama in 
 itself. It was a period of discovery, when a new 
 world was opening and new lands were found. 
 He read the voyages of Sir Walter Raleigh, Drake, 
 Hawkins, the Gilberts, and other sea-captains, 
 stimulating the wildest fancies. He also read his- 
 tories of European lands, from Scandinavia to 
 Italy ; stories of old Rome, before Niebuhr had 
 swept them away ; traditions of his own country 
 and its stirring civil wars and French wars ; in 
 fact everything came to his net. His knowledge 
 of affairs and familiarity with law terms came from 
 his helping his father and being himself frequently 
 in the courts; and above all, he had the art of 
 gaining friends among the educated classes, not 
 only among literary men, dramatists, and poets, but 
 accomplished noblemen of high culture. There 
 was in especial one friend, Florio, the emi- 
 nent Latin, Greek, Italian, and French scholar, 
 
10 THK READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 translator of "Montaigne's Essays," and student 
 of Magdalen College, Oxford, a man of great 
 industry and learning ; and it is said, though this 
 has been disputed, that there exists a work of 
 Florio's with Shakespeare's autograph ; at least 
 there are allusions in his plays to this scholar, 
 which show his familiarity with Florio, so that he 
 did not have to go to Lord Bacon for his learning, 
 since he had those whom he could more easily con- 
 sult, who could direct his reading and fill his 
 readily assimilating mind with literary allusions 
 and lore, while his genius appropriated all accessi- 
 ble wisdom. There is no fear that Lord Bacon's 
 cryptogram will ever be found in Shakespeare's 
 tomb. 
 
 As to Shakespeare's more intimate knowledge of 
 nature and human life, leaving out of the question 
 his poetic genius, he had the advantage, when at 
 home in Stratford, of living amid natural scenes 
 and in the immediate neighborhood of Arden 
 Forest, in which his youthful poaching pranks led 
 him to an early acquaintance with the intricacies 
 of the forest and the law. 
 
AND LEARNING. u 
 
 He was married and was a father before his 
 majority. His wife, Anne Hathaway, was seven 
 or eight years older than himself, and they were 
 early betrothed, which in those days constituted a 
 legal, but irregular marriage ; while his wife must 
 have had some power, good or otherwise, upon 
 him, yet a far finer and profounder feminine influ- 
 ence was that which his mother, Mary Arden, 
 exerted on him. 
 
 There is a tradition, not authenticated, that after 
 Shakespeare's death Anne Hathaway married a 
 second time. Mary Arden, though now fallen to 
 a yeomanry life, might be termed a gentlewoman 
 of old family, whose impress is seen in his poetry. 
 From his mother he inherited his love of flowers, 
 birds, animals, and trees, and of the solitudes 
 and beauties of nature, and he must have felt 
 that he had some rights in Arden Forest and its 
 deer, since it once belonged (as well as an exten- 
 sive territory in Warwickshire) to his mother's 
 family, giving their name to this whole region, 
 especially to the wood itself, where, wandering 
 and musing, he laid the forms and surroundings 
 of many plays. 
 
12 THE; READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 He drew, too, his gentle spirit from his mother. 
 "Gentle and honest," Ben Jonson called him, 
 and his contemporaries speak of his gentle breed- 
 ing, upright character, and refined tastes, and he 
 gave proof of this in the select company he kept. 
 It has indeed been affirmed that Shakespeare was 
 an aristocrat, but if this were true, it might be 
 said that it was born in him and was no affecta- 
 tion. He had the English love of lords and kings, 
 and he walked among them like a king to the 
 manner born, and could also scathe them for their 
 pride and oppression with terrible words. He was 
 nature's nobleman, and was too big a man to be 
 an exclusive aristocrat. Ben Jonson once again 
 wrote of him, " I loved the man, and do honor to 
 his memory this side of idolatry. He was indeed 
 most honest, and of an open and free nature, had 
 an excellent phantasy, brave notions and gentle 
 expressions." Ben Jonson's relations to Shake- 
 speare throw strong light on the character of both. 
 They were nearly contemporaries, Shakespeare 
 being some eight or nine years older. They com- 
 menced their careers as writers for the stage at 
 
UFE AND LEARNING. 13 
 
 about the same time. Shakespeare probably came 
 to London in 1585, going through the different 
 grades of stage service, while Jonson began his 
 work for the stage in London some six years 
 later, in his learned and famous dramas pursuing 
 the ancient Greek forms ; while Shakespeare still 
 remained a free lover of nature. 
 
 Jonson, though critical of his own methods, 
 looked upon Shakespeare as his superior. The 
 judgment pronounced by John Addington Symonds, 
 that Jonson bore no jealousy towards Shakespeare, 
 cannot be gainsaid. Jonson' s line, 
 
 "Shine forth, thou star of poets," 
 
 sounded the keynote of his real feeling for Shake- 
 speare. This * ' sweetness and light, ' ' a phrase 
 which seems to have been invented to describe 
 Shakespeare, came, we cannot but think, from his 
 mother, Mary Arden ; and yet his father, John 
 Shakespeare, who by writers in the next centuries 
 of bitter controversy about Shakespeare's dramatic 
 art was called a "butcher" and other terms 
 meant to be lowering, was a man of no mean stock 
 
14 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 or reputation. He married one of old family, by 
 name and race, at least, a lady, though living now 
 in yeomanry degree ; was himself high bailiff of 
 Stratford, and his ancestry dated back to Saxon 
 times. His forefathers doubtless fought at Bos- 
 worth Field near by Stratford, and in the Wars of 
 the Roses. The martial name of Shakespeare 
 was probably won in this way, so that his coat of 
 arms bearing a slanting spear was no misnomer ; 
 Shakespeare himself was tenacious of this coat of 
 arms, and took pains to have it certified in the 
 Herald's College. 
 
 When he returned from Ixmdon, to live some 
 twenty years in Stratford-on- Avon , owing to his 
 thrifty habits and honesty he not only helped his 
 father in money difficulties, but he had amassed 
 considerable wealth and built the " New House," 
 so-called, where he entertained many of the lead- 
 ing dramatists and poets of the day, also men of 
 courtly rank. This constant reference to His hon- 
 esty is enough to quash any charge of forgery or 
 double dealing in respect to his plays, a charge 
 never mentioned or dreamed of in his lifetime or 
 
UFE AND LEARNING. 15 
 
 the centuries immediately after. " Honest and 
 gentle ' ' indeed ! Shakespeare was what his friends 
 claimed, and what even his rivals and enemies did 
 not gainsay. But as to his being an aristocrat, it 
 should be remembered that he was no mere aristo- 
 crat. He rose above caste into a wider world of 
 humanity. He merited the name of democrat in 
 the nobler sense of that word. He loved the peo- 
 ple and his humble neighbors, and knew and 
 entered into their moods and merry-makings. He 
 was of the same independent spirit with them, and 
 in his youth even defied the lord of the manor. 
 Voltaire, in a green fit of poisoned envy, called 
 Shakespeare " a village buffoon who had not writ- 
 ten two decent lines," but Voltaire was forced 
 humbly to recede from these words, though he 
 hated Shakespeare because he upset his own 
 precious classic ideas of the drama. 
 
 The life of Shakespeare from 1564 to 1616, com- 
 prising fifty-two years, runs for some thirty years 
 parallel to the reign of Elizabeth, one of the most 
 memorable epochs of English history; and his death 
 removed from the quiet community of Warwick- 
 
1 6 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 shire its greatest figure. He was buried in Strat- 
 ford church in the mid-place of honor of the chan- 
 cel, under a handsome monument, on which a brass 
 tablet is placed inscribed with the doggerel verse 
 of blessing and cursing which I for one do not 
 believe Shakespeare wrote, but that it was the 
 work of some simple-minded sexton or official, for 
 the reason that it was then the custom to remove 
 the remains of the dead from tombs in order to 
 make room for other bodies. Here was set up on 
 the wall a wooden and woodeny bust, which has 
 almost lost what value it had by being renovated 
 and repainted, and the original color of the hair 
 and eyes has disappeared. 
 
 Shakespeare's business, if it may be so called, 
 was simply that of a writer of plays for the Globe 
 and Blackfriars theaters, of which he was an actor 
 and partial owner ; and it was a life-work of the 
 vastness of which he was probably unconscious in 
 regard to its influence on the public mind, renew- 
 ing English historic patriotism, raising literature, 
 cleansing the stage of many of its worst faults, 
 reaching the government itself in its truer ideals 
 
UFE AND LEARNING. 17 
 
 of thought and policy. From a low place he 
 mounted to a high one in the estimation of the 
 times, and was honored as a friend of the people 
 and of the loftiest in the land. 
 
 Shakespeare's life proved, if nothing else, his 
 own modesty, since so few facts of his life are left 
 us. He did not talk of himself, apparently, even 
 to his best friends, but he made the world and 
 humanity the confidant of his thoughts. If he 
 were an ambitious man he did not show it, for 
 he seemed careless of his literary works and of 
 future fame ; he did not think of filling the world 
 with his renown, but his pipe was cut from the 
 reeds of the gentle Avon. His friend and fellow 
 actor, Richard Burbage, spoke freely of his London 
 career ; and we know from incidental remarks that 
 there is as true a certification of his personality as 
 that of Ben Jonson. There was no mystery. He 
 walked and talked among the dramatists of his 
 day as the chief of them. He contested the prize 
 of wit with Ben Jonson at the " Mermaid Tavern ;" 
 with Edmund Spenser, he flattered Queen Eliza- 
 beth, yet Shakespeare did so with a less artificial 
 
1 8 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 and more spontaneous grace ; both were men above 
 the herd of sycophantic writers, men who could 
 bestow immortality on monarchs. 
 
 STYLE. 
 
 No one better exemplified the truth of the old 
 French adage ' ' The style is the man ' ' than did 
 Shakespeare. His genius made his style what it 
 was. He was the poet (the maker) of his own 
 style. 
 
 I will not, at present, enlarge on the great 
 theme of Shakespeare's imagination, which peopled 
 earth and sky, and was so illuminating an ele- 
 ment of his style that it made it "of imagination 
 all compact," and gave him the power to see 
 things that did not visibly exist as if they were 
 real, enabling him to walk the Roman forum like 
 one who lived in ancient Rome, and to see the 
 bottom of the ocean as by a flash-light, revealing 
 its hidden treasures, sunken wrecks, and. ghastly 
 sights. 
 
 Freshly reading Shakespeare's plays, I have been 
 struck with what has been called his ' ' matchless 
 
STYI<E. 1 9 
 
 use of words. ' ' In the development of the English 
 language from Chaucer's time to the present, 
 although the number of words has increased from 
 the increase of learning and the introduction 
 of foreign terms, it reached its highest point of 
 strength and richness in King James's version of 
 the Bible and in Shakespeare's dramas ; for noth- 
 ing before or since has overtopped this culmina- 
 tion of the English tongue, the strength of which 
 comes in a great degree from the use of the Saxon, 
 which, in Shakespeare, amounts to sixty per cent, 
 and forms the substratum of his style ; the English 
 Bible has about the same. Milton has less than 
 three per cent. Shakespeare's language is ribbed 
 with Saxon granite. No words, for an example, 
 can be briefer or weightier than the sentence from 
 "Macbeth:" 
 
 "Sagg with doubt, or shake with fear." 
 
 Shakespeare has, notwithstanding, a restricted 
 vocabulary, not exceeding fifteen thousand words. 
 "His affluence of language," according to Mr. 
 Marsh, "arises from the variety and combination 
 
2O THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 rather than the numerical abundance of words. 
 He gave, more than any one, the English character 
 to our language, but could also employ words of 
 classical elevation to lend gravity, elegance, and 
 majesty to the style, whether in the form of pre- 
 cise expression, or that of the highest soar of the 
 imagination. There is a spiritual quality in his 
 English expression of the history and spirit of the 
 race, in which in all its earthliness the spiritual 
 has predominated, and which has been handed 
 down from northern conquerors, and that is the 
 secret of Shakespeare's power, clothing the mys- 
 terious sympathies of the soul in living words." 
 For myself, I believe that even so great a genius 
 as Shakespeare could not have written one of his 
 plays in French or Italian. It must be confessed 
 that Shakespeare's grammar, at times, differs from 
 Lindley Murray's, so that one can believe the 
 assertion of Richard Grant White that English 
 is a " grammarless tongue." The loose relation 
 of words in Shakespeare's sentences, the non- 
 agreement of singulars and plurals, the separa- 
 tion of object and subject, would be looked upon 
 
STYLE. 21 
 
 now as faults, but his meaning is clearly con- 
 veyed except when, from its depths, we learn the 
 thought with difficulty ; so clear, indeed, is the 
 sense, that prose and poetry are harmonized, easily 
 tripping from the tongue, and minor grammatical 
 inconsistencies are not considered. The meaning 
 is of more importance than the style the life than 
 the form. It is, however, to be said that, to most 
 persons, the practical use of reading Shakespeare 
 is his English. A great many people have been 
 inclined to regard Addison as the standard of 
 style, but it would be far better to make Shake- 
 speare our master and teacher in the use of the 
 English language. A word more might be added 
 here ; while Shakespeare's relation to his native 
 tongue was all powerful, his influence on the lan- 
 guages of other races and nations was important. 
 He was the maker of English in its present form, as 
 Dante was of Italian and Luther of German ; he 
 used English with such freedom, force, and absolute 
 simplicity of nature that he went to the root of the 
 English language, the erd-form, as a German philos- 
 opher would call it, so that his works and poetry 
 
22 THE HEADING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 become a basis and nucleus, producing a constantly 
 increasing form of assimilation and unification in 
 all families of languages springing from the same 
 stock. The influence of literature itself is a 
 mighty one ; it is silent, invisible, and pervasive. 
 England's great writers and masters, especially of 
 the earlier stronger period, constitute an ever- 
 growing influence of character and brotherhood 
 between England and America that is stronger 
 than commerce or treaty. 
 
 NATURE AND ART. 
 
 In the deeper question of nature and art in 
 Shakespeare's style, it might be said by way of 
 prefatory remark that Shakespeare was the origi- 
 nator of the Romantic School. He was the creator 
 of this school in literature, not only in England 
 but in all Europe. Goethe is his child as well as 
 Victor Hugo. He was not trained in the classical 
 school of dramatic art, but he wrought directly 
 from nature without art ; yet it is absurd to say 
 that Shakespeare was not an artist, for he makes* 
 
NATURE AND ART. 23 
 
 use of the terms "art" and "nature" with so keen a 
 discrimination, that while distinguishing them, he 
 saw their intimate relations and common source, 
 even as he says in a passage of " Winter's Tale," 
 
 ' ' This is an art 
 
 Which does mend nature, change it rather ; but 
 The art itself is nature." 
 
 Nature does not work without art, and the great 
 artist is he who perceives and interprets the secret 
 of nature and can ' ' mend ' ' nature. While we do 
 not detect Shakespeare's art, it is so real that, like 
 nature itself, it is ever fresh and new. His works 
 might have been written yesterday. They do not 
 grow obsolete, so that we are ever moved by their 
 power. In reading Shakespeare's works we won- 
 der at their modernness. The language is plastic in 
 his hand, and he moulds it at his will. He is its 
 master and it does not master him. It does not 
 grow archaic like the language of Ben Jonson, or 
 Beaumont, or Sir Philip Sidney, or Edmund Spen- 
 ser, since he employed not the language of book 
 but the language of everyday life ; and sometimes 
 it is even slang. In " King John" a person talks 
 
24 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 of ' bounce ' just as it is now applied to a pushing 
 act or man ; in " Pericles " ' dad ' or ' old dad ' is 
 talked of as an irreverent boy nowadays might 
 apply it to his father ; and in " Troilus and Cres- 
 sida " the word ' rich ' is employed as we say jok- 
 ingly ' that is rich.' Shakespeare did not speak 
 of aesthetics, because this word was not then 
 invented, but for what is fit he makes use of the 
 Latin word ' incarnadine ' with magnificent effect 
 in " Macbeth." He keeps in touch with the peo- 
 ple and with nature, so that, as he walked in the 
 noisy Strand of London, he felt the quiet of Arden 
 Wood, and pictured in his mind its shadowy 
 depths. His business was, as has been said, writ- 
 ing plays for the London stage, and so to address 
 the people that they understood him and roared 
 with laughter at his jokes. His puns were execra- 
 ble, and we believe in the saying that a poor pun is 
 as good as a good one if it only makes people 
 laugh, and that was his object "to split the ears 
 of the groundlings;" but this senseless play on 
 words vanishes when he is seriously bent, and his 
 wit, which is the product of thought, shines, as it 
 
NATURE AND ART. 25 
 
 does, for example, in the scene of Hamlet with the 
 actors, which is as pure subjective analysis as 
 anything in " Quintilian's Institutes." 
 
 Shakespeare's art, vilified during the two suc- 
 ceeding centuries in the battle of critics, is now 
 regarded as the highest. He broke the bonds 
 of classic art, but it is especially because he did 
 not observe the "unities," and for this cause he 
 was set down to be without art, and no true drama- 
 tist. -5schylus and Sophocles he did not regard, 
 but, great poets as they were, why should they 
 give rules to a greater poet ? 
 
 I have been impressed with Shakespeare's unity 
 of aim, a unity springing not from outward form 
 but from inner purpose. No matter what his- 
 torians have to say about "Richard III." it is 
 Shakespeare's " Richard III." for all time, and he 
 teaches what he means to teach. Everything 
 bends to his object, no matter what stands in the 
 way. In " Julius Caesar " the character of Caesar 
 is interpreted by the poet, who is evidently more 
 interested in Brutus than in Caesar, and the hero 
 of the play is Brutus and not Caesar. The lesson 
 
26 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 is the adamantine patriotic conscience of Brutus, 
 and not the imperial will of Caesar. Compared 
 with such inner unity of purpose and design, the 
 outer unities of mere time, place, and circumstance, 
 so carefully observed by Racine and Voltaire, are 
 small things. In "Antony and Cleopatra," a 
 scene laid in Alexandria is followed in the next 
 act by a scene laid in Rome ; but what matter, if 
 Shakespeare has taught his lesson of a world's 
 empire lost through illicit love? He has put a 
 new stamp on the coin. He develops a conception 
 in the play which gives it an original value that 
 makes it differ from the work of any other drama- 
 tist, and this is art that outdoes nature. 
 
 MORAUTY. 
 
 The morality of Shakespeare cannot be reduced 
 to a philosophical system either of ethics or psy- 
 chology, for it was dynamic and spontaneous ; for, 
 to illustrate this in pure art, Pheidias did not work 
 on ethical lines or rules when he made the statue 
 of ' ' Olympian Zeus ' ' representing the supreme 
 ruler in Hellenic mythology, nor did Michael 
 
MORALITY. 27 
 
 Angelo when he carved the " Moses" embodying 
 his conception of moral law, but these geniuses 
 wrought from a deeper insight and instinctive 
 sense of the true as Shakespeare did. His humor 
 also sprang warm from his heart, and because it 
 had to do with man it was moral. Of such genial 
 humor old Thomas Fuller said, ' ' it hath no teeth 
 or nails to tear or devour thy brother." It was a 
 quick sense of the ludicrous kept in bounds by a 
 loving heart that went out to all humanity, not 
 censorious or mean, but helpful to enable man to 
 bear the ills of life, an inestimable quality that car- 
 ries one over the hard places more easily, like a 
 wagon with good springs, and following the Greek 
 law of "moderation" moderation in judgment 
 and act ; and if a man has no touch of this humor 
 we might say of him, " Let me fall into the hand 
 of God and not into the hand of man." 
 
 In regard to Shakespeare's morality in the ordi- 
 nary sense of the term, he was not untrue to 
 the principle of right. He was too great not to 
 recognize this universal law of righteousness, and 
 in his plays he almost vehemently upholds virtue. 
 
28 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 In Stratford, after his youthful days (if the story 
 of deer stalking has any truth), his character and 
 reputation were good. He undoubtedly felt the 
 moral influence of the beginnings of the Reforma- 
 tion in England, and contrary to the narrow judg- 
 ment of Carlyle in this instance, he was more of a 
 Protestant than a Catholic. The historical plays 
 of "King John" and "Richard III." are full of 
 the newly awakened spirit of resistance to Papal 
 authority, policy, and doctrine. "The Reforma- 
 tion," says the author of "English Past and 
 Present," "was commencing to throw off the ever- 
 lasting pupilage in which Rome would have held 
 the nations, an assertion that they had come of 
 age, and that not through the church but directly 
 through Christ, they would address themselves to 
 God." Shakespeare's allusions to Christ, which 
 are not few, are always tender and devout, and 
 his citations manifest his familiarity with the 
 Bible, in whose heights and depths his soul had 
 sympathy. Goethe says of him, "You would 
 think while reading his plays that you stood 
 before the enclosed awful books of fate, while the 
 
MORALITY. 29 
 
 wind of most impassioned life was howling through 
 the leaves, tossing them freely to and fro." 
 
 Shakespeare, in his most furious moods, will be 
 found maintaining the moral law implanted in the 
 mind ; he makes wicked men wear the mask of 
 virtue and do homage to their own nature, being 
 created in God's image. 
 
 " There is no vice so simple but assumes 
 Some mark of virtue on his outward parts." 
 
 Shakespeare knew what sin and its consequences 
 were. Ulrici, the German critic, says, "It is a 
 wonder that a man who possessed such depths of 
 passion and knowledge of sin could have so 
 controlled his life that he seems to have been, 
 after his youthful period, respected and beloved." 
 Ulrici adds support to what has been said respect- 
 ing Shakespeare's idea of God and man, and that 
 he was decidedly Protestant. 
 
 In Shakespeare's development of character in a 
 play which brings on the stage all vile plots and 
 actions, the honesty of his mind appears, although 
 Shakespeare is without doubt open to the charge 
 
30 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 of coarse language, such as now could not be 
 tolerated. He does not, however, deal in innuendo, 
 and he makes his lewd characters plainly what 
 they are in a way that befits them, bringing them 
 into derision and contempt. It was a coarse age. 
 Queen Elizabeth sometimes swore like a trooper ; 
 but this fact of its being a rough and gross age 
 does not excuse him, and yet no one but an essen- 
 tially clean-minded man could have drawn female 
 characters like Cordelia, Ophelia, Miranda, Desde- 
 mona, and the daughter of King Cymbeline, in 
 whom a singular purity shines, clothing them in 
 angelic garments ; while on the other hand, Cleo- 
 patra, serpent of the Nile in subtle grace, and 
 immeasurably the superior of the others in intel- 
 lect, shows a luxurious spirit that could wantonly 
 destroy Antony, "third pillar of Rome," while 
 waiting for other Caesars to ruin. Vice gains 
 nothing by Cleopatra's allurements, but her sen- 
 suality is stripped bare, and no one but Shake- 
 speare could have made her at once so lovely and 
 so vile. 
 
 Yet Shakespeare does not exhaust a character, 
 
MORAUTY. 31 
 
 nor does he assume the part of omniscience. He 
 sometimes goes contrary to our natural expecta- 
 tion or to our views, as man judges fragmentarily 
 and short-sightedly. Shakespeare judges more as 
 the Bible does, which book he studied, and which 
 is the true transcript of human nature, because 
 man's spirit is a great deep, a blending of good 
 and evil, of wisdom and folly, strength and weak- 
 ness, swayed now by this motive and now by that ; 
 capable of vast effort, but perishing before the 
 moth ; a creature of heaven and earth, higher than 
 the angels and sometimes lower than the brutes, a 
 being of passions and affections as well as of 
 rational judgments, and as diversified and unac- 
 countable as the nature he lives in. In a word, 
 morality is at the foundation of Shakespeare's 
 greatness as a dramatic author. It is the quality 
 which discerns the true in things and is at the 
 same time genial and just, springing from the 
 heart ; as Goethe says in Faust, 
 
 "Gefiihlistalles." 
 There is one fact about Shakespeare's morality 
 
32 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 which should not be forgotten, and that is, in the 
 period of dramatic art which followed Shakespeare, 
 or the age of the Charleses, of Dryden, Congreve, 
 and Wycherley, the drama allied itself to the profli- 
 gacy of the times, to the forces of temptation and 
 evil, while Shakespeare's plays did not do so. He 
 was not a seducer to vice, and his corruption, if it 
 might be so called, does not corrupt. It did not 
 stick and smutch, and we pass over the ribald 
 speeches of ' ' the fat knight ' ' and do not remem- 
 ber them, since they are the reflections of a gross 
 time rather than emanations of his mind. Often 
 he suddenly rises from earth and its baseness, and 
 in a moment we are lifted into the clear empyrean 
 of most delicate poetry, like Ariel's song, heard 
 above the cries of drunken seamen, and touched 
 by rainbow tints and the breath of flowers. Even 
 the bestial Caliban, when freedom comes to him, 
 grows poetic and sings of the deep secrets of nature 
 that he has learned from his witchdam Sycorax. 
 Shakespeare says : 
 
 " A golden mind 
 Stoops not to shows of dross." 
 
MORALITY. 33 
 
 Shakespeare is now not so much played as he is 
 read, and this shows progress in the appreciation 
 of his literary genius, but he surely should be read 
 with a broad and generous mind, for he believed 
 in the greatness of man's spirit, and that every 
 human being is based on the moral law in the con- 
 stitution of his nature, so that ' ' the whole is mir- 
 rored in the individual." 
 
 The chief object of this little book is intended 
 to be my own impressions, especially of Shake- 
 speare's plays, one and several, and in these intro- 
 ductory remarks thus far, I will allude to but one 
 play, as it has a bearing on what has been already 
 said in regard to the moral aim of Shakespeare 
 OTHELLO, THE MOOE OF VENICE. This play 
 has a deep moral ; it is drawn from a story found 
 in an Italian novel of the same title, by one 
 Giraldi Cinthio, it being Shakespeare's lordly way 
 of seizing on the stories and plots of other authors 
 and making them new, no matter how often these 
 had been used by dramatists, as, for illustration, 
 there were three Parthenons on the Acropolis 
 before the Parthenon of Iktinos was reared out of 
 3 
 
34 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 their ruins. Othello is not the central figure. He 
 is a Saracen soldier, and should be represented 
 with the finely-cut features, manly figure, tall, 
 powerful form of that Arab race, specimens of 
 which are now to be seen in Arabia and Egypt, 
 who with resistless force conquered Northern Africa 
 and the southern provinces of Spain, rising superior 
 to their Christian neighbors in the arts of civiliza- 
 tion, but enervated by centuries of peace were 
 driven out of Spain. Othello was a brave soldier, 
 laconic and proud, but capable of true affection. 
 He was absorbed in his love of Desdemona, and 
 talked to her freely of his stirring and perilous 
 life. It is not, however, Othello who forms the 
 central character of this play, since amid all the 
 splendid and changing scenes of this drama there 
 is one other figure on whom the mind of the reader 
 becomes fixed. He is not only everywhere, but 
 his personality is the occasion and cause of the 
 action of others. He grows terribly fascinating. 
 His presence, imperturbable, sometimes smiling, 
 polite in his address, looks out from every scene, 
 whether at Venice or Cyprus, in the council hall, 
 
MORALITY. 35 
 
 the midnight revel, the chamber of love, and 
 the chamber of death. lago pulls the string 
 that moves each tongue and arm. He points 
 Roderigo's sword at his friend's breast ; he 
 prompts the intemperate fury of Cassio ; he brings 
 tears into the undimmed eyes of Desdemona; he 
 unsettles the steady mind of Othello, and "the 
 tragic loading of the bed" is his work. He is a 
 man without humanity, a polished intellect with- 
 out a ray of intellectual elevation. When Richard 
 III. cries out on Bosworth Field, 
 
 " A thousand hearts are great within my bosom," 
 
 we almost forget the tyrant and murderer, and 
 wish him a soldier's grave; when the usurping 
 king of Denmark soliloquizes pathetically about 
 his crime and kneels to ask heaven's forgiveness, 
 we yield him a kind of pity and feel that though 
 a deep offender he has some feeling ; but lago has 
 no such "compunctious visitings," and he scoffs 
 at the present and the future. While he does not 
 profess to be an atheist, for the reason that that 
 would be a blunder to his exquisite sense of evil, 
 
36 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 he undermines God's throne by making everything 
 honest, pure, lovely, and of good report, the object 
 of his wicked wit. He has been compared to the 
 Mephistopheles of Goethe, but the incomparable 
 superiority of Shakespeare is seen in his discard- 
 ing the supernatural ; for while Mephistopheles 
 amuses by his preternatural tricks, and we marvel 
 at his cleverness, we tremble at lago, and draw a 
 long breath when he is put out of the "world. 
 
 The seeming want of motive in lago has been 
 observed, which Coleridge has called his ' ' motive- 
 less malignity." A hint or so that lago himself 
 lets drop regarding disappointed ambition and an 
 undefined suspicion of his wife's honesty are the 
 only intangible causes to account for his conduct. 
 He did not set motive squarely over against action, 
 as is done in psychology or mechanics, but in this 
 way Shakespeare shows his profound knowledge of 
 human nature, which is too obscure to be analyzed 
 in a court of law or confined to a system of philoso- 
 phy. It was enough for a nature like lago's to 
 have a nobler nature like Othello's before him to 
 rouse " the cruel devil of his will." 
 
MORALITY. 37 
 
 The two moral features of lago's character, as I 
 read them, are entire selfishness and constitutional 
 hypocrisy. In a conversation with Roderigo, to 
 whom in his contempt he was not afraid to expose 
 himself somewhat, he says : 
 
 " Were I the Moor I would not be lago : 
 In following him, I follow but myself." 
 
 While outwardly subservient to others, he serves 
 no one but himself. In his advice to Roderigo, he 
 remarks : 
 
 " I have looked upon the world for four times seven years; 
 and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, 
 I never found a man that knew how to love himself. ' ' 
 
 His hypocrisy is the only thing he does naturally, 
 and he blurts out : 
 
 " I am not what I am." 
 
 He sneeringly says : 
 
 "Though I do hate him as I do hell pains, 
 Yet for necessity of present life, 
 I must show out a flag and sign of love, 
 Which is indeed but sign." 
 
 He is hail-fellow with the youthful drunkard Cas- 
 
38 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 sio, and yet with entire grace he plays the saint, 
 and tells Othello : 
 
 "I lack iniquity sometimes to do me service." 
 
 Othello calls him to the last "honest lago " and 
 "my just friend." 
 
 The chief intellectual characteristic of lago is 
 his insight, or his analytic perception of character, 
 penetrating to the concealed causes of men's 
 actions. He discovers human weaknesses, and 
 takes advantage of this discovery by adapting 
 himself to the disposition of every person with 
 whom he has to deal and plying him with baits 
 that may prove successful to his overthrow. 
 
 He turns to account the smallest circumstances, 
 finding that men are ill-balanced, and moved not 
 by earthquakes, but shadows and sunshine ; by 
 never neglecting these small things, and in the cau- 
 tious way in which he uses them to plant sus- 
 picion in the mind of Othello the mysterious 
 tone, the abstracted repetition, the obscure mean- 
 ing, the indefinite hint he winds up the agonized 
 curiosity of the man to a pitch of excitement in 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 39 
 
 which calm judgment is confused ; in such methods 
 are seen his consummate knowledge of human life ; 
 and, indeed, lago's practical philosophy would, in 
 a good man, be worthy of imitation, but he has no 
 corresponding faith to save and to sanctify his 
 human will ; he entirely ignores the divine will 
 and love, and regards himself as maker of himself : 
 " T is in ourselves that we are thus and thus." 
 
 He brings every thought and passion under the 
 control of an iron determination, and, assaulting 
 the most divine of human qualities, he exclaims : 
 
 "It is merely ^ a lust of the blood, and a permission of 
 the will." 
 
 This, in fact r is the secret of lago's control over 
 other minds, to lead them at his pleasure, and 
 none can doubt that the character of this consum- 
 mate villain is a tremendous sermon of the fearful 
 capacities for evil in a human soul that throws off 
 a higher rule over its actions. 
 
 HISTORICAL PLAYS. 
 
 Goethe, though a great poet, showed neverthe- 
 less his personal and national limitations, as, for 
 
40 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 example, in his Italian and classical dramas there 
 is a Teutonic subjectivity of thought which makes 
 his characters talk and act like Germans ; in a 
 similar manner Homer himself describes Greeks, 
 the Greek type of race, fierce, sensuous, eloquent, 
 loving beauty, art, and song. On the other hand, 
 Shakespeare's personages are not English solely, 
 but are beings who might have lived in any period 
 or land, and, in this respect, he passed beyond the 
 limitations of race and nation, reaching the deeper 
 elements of common humanity, depicting living 
 men as they are in childhood, youth, or old age, 
 the high and low, the good and bad. They are 
 real men and women, whose various costumes and 
 speech still cover a nature with common wants 
 and passions, happy or sorrowful, loving or hating, 
 base or pure ; yet while dealing thus with life 
 whereyer found, it is evident that Shakespeare 
 loves England. As most of what are called 
 Shakespeare's Historical Plays are laid in England 
 and belong originally to the more youthful period 
 of authorship, I will speak first of these, although 
 some of them may not be wholly Shakespeare's in 
 
HISTORICAL, PI^AYS. 41 
 
 their plot. Of the first two plays, "KING JOHN" 
 and "RICHARD H," I will say but a few words ; 
 but what were the history of England without 
 Shakespeare's plays to give the color, form, and 
 pressure of those earlier times? Other modern 
 histories of England are more like academic essays 
 after the style of Thucydides and Sallust, with the 
 author's own philosophic generalizations. I would 
 except the great history of Gibbon, flowing like a 
 majestic river through a thousand years, bearing 
 on its tide all characters and events, great and 
 small ; but medieval England, with its gorgeous 
 pageants, the "Field of the Cloth of Gold," its 
 chivalry and fightings, its fierce ' ' Wars of the 
 Roses" that drenched England with blood, and 
 stubborn British valor on the fields of France this 
 England was illuminated by the vivid light of 
 Shakespeare's genius. 
 
 Great personages walked over the scene as if 
 alive. These plays were not political essays on the 
 government of the times, as the marvelous pen of 
 Lord Bacon might have written, though they give 
 penetrating glimpses into England's political his- 
 
42 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 tory. The reader becomes one in time with these 
 scenes, and is an absorbed looker-on. 
 
 KING JOHN. 
 
 The first of the historical plays in point of time 
 is ' ' King John. ' ' This play with that of ' ' Richard 
 II." is of less importance than the rest. "King 
 John" was an earlier work, recast in 1591 and com- 
 pleted in 1595. This king himself, as is known, 
 was a weak and treacherous tyrant. He was no 
 hero, and there was no trace in him of the great- 
 ness of the Norman line, except, perhaps, his 
 physical beauty, at least if he is truly repre- 
 sented in the bronze monument in Gloucester 
 Cathedral. 
 
 The inimitable pathos of the conversation 
 between the "little Prince" Arthur and Hubert, 
 the dreadful display of red-hot irons to burn out 
 the eyes, the boyish pleadings from the heart, are 
 fitted to totally overcome Hubert's stern resolve. 
 What could be more winningly touching than the 
 words of Arthur ? The dialogue, so simple in lan- 
 guage and of almost childlike tenderness, yet so 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 43 
 
 wonderfully qualified to move the most iron will ! 
 This scene is as fine as anything in the great poet's 
 own works : 
 
 Arthur "Good morrow, Hubert." 
 
 Hubert " Good morrow, little prince." 
 
 Arthur "As little prince, having so great a title to be 
 more prince, as may be. You are sad." 
 
 Hubert " Indeed, I have been merrier." 
 
 Arthur " Mercy on me ! 
 Methinks nobody should be sad but I : 
 Yet, I remember, when I was in France, 
 Young gentlemen would be as sad as night, 
 Only from wantonness. By my Christendom, 
 So I were out of prison and kept sheep, 
 I should be as merry as the day is long ; 
 And so I would be here, but that I doubt 
 My uncle practises more harm to me : 
 He is afraid of me and I of him : 
 Is it my fault that I was Geffrey's son ? 
 No, indeed, is't not ; and I would to heaven 
 I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert." 
 
 Hubert [Aside} " If I talk to him, with his innocent prate 
 He will awake my mercy which lies dead : 
 Therefore I will be sudden and dispatch." 
 
 Arthur * ' Are you sick, Hubert ? you look pale to-day : 
 In sooth, I would you were a little sick, 
 
44 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 That I might sit all night and watch with you : 
 I warrant I love you more than you do me." 
 
 Hubert [Aside] "His words do take possession of my 
 
 bosom. 
 
 Read here, young Arthur. [Showing a paper] 
 [Aside"] How now, foolish rheum ! 
 Turning dispiteous torture out of door ! 
 I must be brief, lest resolution drop 
 Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears. 
 Can you not read it ? is it not fair writ ? " 
 
 Arthur "Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect : 
 Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes ? '* 
 
 Hubert " Young boy, I must." 
 
 Arthur ' ' And will you ? " 
 
 Hubert " And I will." 
 
 Arthur" Have you the heart ? When your head did 
 
 but ache, 
 
 I knit my handkerchief about your brows, 
 The best I had, a princess wrought it me, 
 And I did never ask it you again : 
 And with my hand at midnight held your head, 
 And, like the watchful minutes to the hour, 
 Still and anon cheer 'd up the heavy time, 
 Saying, ' What lack you ?' and ' Where lies your grief?' 
 Or, What good love may I perform for you ?' 
 Many a poor man's son would have lain still 
 And ne'er have spoke a loving word to you ; 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 45 
 
 But you at your sick service had a prince, 
 
 Nay, but you may think my love was crafty love, 
 
 And call it cunning : do, and if you will : 
 
 If heaven be pleased that you must use me ill, 
 
 Why then you must. Will you put out mine eyes ? 
 
 These eyes that never did nor never shall 
 
 So much as frown on you." 
 
 Hubert " I have sworn to do it ; 
 And with hot irons must I burn them out." 
 
 Arthur " Ah, none but in this iron age would do it 1 
 The iron of itself, though heat red-hot 
 Approaching near these eyes, would drink my tears 
 And quench his fiery indignation 
 Even in the matter of mine innocence, 
 Nay, after that, consume away in rust, 
 But for containing fire to harm mine eye. 
 Are you more stubborn hard than hammer'd iron ? 
 An if an angel should have come to me 
 And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes, 
 I would not have believed him, no tongue but Hubert's." 
 
 Hubert " Come forth." 
 
 {Re-enter attendants with cord, irons, etc.} 
 " Do as I bid you do. ' ' 
 
 Arthur" O, save me, Hubert, save me ! my eyes are out 
 Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men." 
 
 Hubert. "Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here." 
 
 [Stamps. 
 
46 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 i 
 Arthur. 11 Alas, what need you be so boisterous rough? 
 
 I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still. 
 
 For heaven's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound ! 
 
 Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away, 
 
 And I will sit as quiet as a lamb ; 
 
 I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word, 
 
 Nor look upon the iron angerly ; 
 
 Thrust but these men away, and I'll forgive you, 
 
 Whatever torment you do put me to. M 
 
 Hubert " Go, stand within ; let me alone with him.' 
 
 ist Attend. "\ am best pleased to be from such a deed.*' 
 
 [Exeunt Attendants.] 
 
 Arthur " Alas, I then have chid away my friend ! 
 He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart : 
 Let him come back, that his compassion may 
 Give life to yours." 
 
 Hubert " Come, boy, prepare yourself." 
 
 Arthur "Is there no remedy ? " 
 
 Hubert "None, but to lose your eyes." 
 
 Arthur "O heaven, that there were but a mote in 
 
 yours, 
 
 A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair, 
 Any annoyance in that precious sense! 
 Then, feeling what small things are boisterous there, 
 Your vile intent must needs seem horrible." 
 
 Hubert' 1 Is this your promise ? go to, hold your tongue. " 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 47 
 
 Arthur" Hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues 
 Must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes : 
 Let me not hold my tongue, let me not, Hubert ; 
 Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue, 
 So may I keep mine eyes. O, spare mine eyes ! 
 Though to no use but still to look on you ! 
 Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold 
 And would not harm me." 
 
 Hubert I can heat it, boy." 
 
 Arthur "No, in good sooth ; the fire is dead with grief, 
 Being create for comfort, to be used 
 In undeserved extremes : See else yourself ; 
 There is no malice in this burning coal ; 
 The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out 
 And strew'd repentant ashes on his head." 
 
 Hubert " But with my breath I can revive it, boy." 
 
 Arthur " An if you do, you will but make it blush 
 And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert : 
 Nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes ; 
 And like a dog that is compel!' d to fight, 
 Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on. 
 All things that you should use to do me wrong 
 Deny their office : only you do lack 
 That mercy which fierce fire and iron extends, 
 Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses." 
 
 Hubert" Well, see to live ; I will not touch thine eye 
 
48 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 For all the treasure that thy uncle owes : 
 Yet am I sworn and I did purpose, boy, 
 With this same iron to burn them out." 
 
 Arthur "O.now you look like Hubert ! all this while 
 You were disguised." 
 
 Hubert " Peace ; no more. Adieu. 
 Your uncle must not know but you are dead ; 
 I'll fill these dogged spies with false reports : 
 And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure, 
 That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world, 
 Will not offend thee." 
 
 Arthur" O heaven ! I thank you, Hubert." 
 
 Hubert " Silence ; no more : go closely in with me : 
 Much danger do I undergo for thee." 
 
 [Exeunt. 
 
 ZING RICHARD II 
 
 This play has been held to be, as a general rule, 
 tame and dull, but for myself I find something 
 interesting in the dignity of King Richard II. at 
 his dethronement, when he is awaiting a cruel 
 death by the hands of assassins. Feudal England 
 was then more under the rule of the fierce nobles 
 than of the king or the people, as was also the 
 case in France at that period. 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 49 
 
 All the early editions of this play ascribe it to 
 Shakespeare's authorship of about the date of 1593, 
 receiving new additions later from his pen, perhaps 
 for political reasons, after the death of Elizabeth. 
 The king's meditations in the dungeon of Pomfret, 
 on thoughts and music and other things some- 
 times loftier, are interesting, such as 
 
 "Mount, mount, my soul ! thy seat is up on high ; 
 Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die," 
 
 the blood of the Plantagenet showing itself in this 
 faineant king 
 
 44 As full of valour, as of royal blood." 
 
 At the fight between Bolingbroke and Norfolk, 
 which was to have come off but was stopped by 
 King Richard, the speeches are long-winded and 
 repetitiously boastful, like Homer's heroes before 
 their fights. 
 
 The proud Bolingbroke 's demeanor when he 
 returns from exile, in England, is to be contrasted 
 with his smooth-tongued, popular addresses to the 
 " common people." He saw a source of power in 
 the democracy, as he did more and more after- 
 wards when he became King Henry IV. 
 4 
 
50 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 The arch conspirators, York, Northumberland, 
 and Harry Percy, the last "but tender, raw, and 
 young," here first appear in their ckaracteristic 
 speeches. Notice the common expressions even 
 now in use, such as the familiar phrase of sixes 
 and sevens : 
 
 " Everything is left at six and seven," 
 
 and also of the contemptuous phrase of a " row of 
 pins." Phrases in Shakespeare's plays, I would 
 again remark, are often repeated, showing the 
 hand of the same master, as in the phrase, 
 " I have a thousand spirits in one breast." 
 
 The good Bishop Carlisle prophesies the bloody 
 ' ' Wars of the Roses " which would spring up after 
 the death of Richard II. 
 
 Bolingbroke alludes to his son, afterwards Henry 
 V., while looking for him in London taverns, as 
 " a lawless youth." 
 
 The wonderful description of England by ' ' Old 
 John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster," cannot 
 be passed over : 
 
 " This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 51 
 
 This other Eden, demi-paradise ; 
 
 This fortress built by Nature for herself 
 
 Against infection and the hand of war ; 
 
 This happy breed of men, this little world, 
 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
 
 Which serves it in the office of a wall, 
 
 Or as a moat defensive of a house, 
 
 Against the envy of less happier lands ; 
 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 
 
 This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, 
 
 Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth, 
 
 Renowned for their deeds as far from home, 
 
 For Christian service and true chivalry, 
 
 As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry 
 Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son ; 
 This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, 
 Dear for her reputation through the world, 
 Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it, 
 Like to a tenement or pelting farm : 
 England, bound in with the triumphant sea, 
 Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege 
 Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, 
 With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds : 
 That England, that was wont to conquer others, 
 Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. 
 Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life, 
 How happy then were my ensuing death !" 
 
52 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 KING RICHARD IH 
 
 The play of "Richard III." follows Hollinshed 
 pretty closely. Richard III. clove his way to the 
 throne by his strong mind and iron mace, beating 
 down all before it. He was powerful, but piti- 
 lessly ambitious. Marlowe had also before this 
 written a play on Richard III. He was a drama- 
 tist of great vigor, but another had arisen to take his 
 sceptre, and after Shakespeare's play of " Richard 
 III." he grew discouraged and nearly came to an 
 end as a dramatic writer and poet. 
 
 An old chronicler says that Richard III. "was 
 no euill captain in war," but Shakespeare gives 
 him besides strong intellectual qualities and a 
 subtle wit, as is exhibited in the scene with the 
 Princess Anne. 
 
 He had a moral nature, but his devouring ambi- 
 tion swallowed it up. 
 
 The scene in the midnight tent before the battle 
 brings out the dread action of Conscience and the 
 fearful revenge of a vigorous but abused nature ; 
 but his warlike spirit was unconquered to the last. 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 53 
 
 Richard III. is one of those characters, trans- 
 formed by Shakespeare's genius from a mere 
 fighter to a thinking man, whose wicked ambitions 
 knew no bounds. 
 
 KING HENRY IV. 
 
 The first part of this play of " Henry IV." was 
 entered on the Stationers' Register under date of 
 1 597-8. Many quartos were issued between 1597- 
 1639. The title of the play in the folio is, " The 
 first part of Henry the Fourth, with the Life and 
 Death of Henry, surnamed Hotspur." The second 
 part was first published in quarto in 1600, calling 
 it, " The second part of Henry the Fourth con- 
 tinuing to his death and coronation of Henry the 
 Fifth, with the humours of Sir John Falstaffe and 
 swaggering Pistol." Ben Jonson makes this allu- 
 sion in " Every Man out of his Humour" with the 
 words, " You may in time make lean Macilente as 
 fat as Sir John Falstaff." 
 
 The play of "Henry IV.," who earlier was 
 simply Bolingbroke, bears the same formally 
 dramatic relationship to "Richard II.," "King 
 
54 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 John," and " Richard III.," as " The Merchant of 
 Venice " does to earlier comedies, such as " Love's 
 Labour's Lost," "Comedy of Errors," and some 
 other plays. The second part of "Henry IV." 
 was certainly written in 1598-99. The play was 
 derived from Hall's and Hollinshed's Chronicles, 
 and from an old play acted before 1588. 
 
 Shakespeare changed historical facts in the case 
 of Hotspur and the Prince, making them exact 
 contemporaries fighting on Shrewsbury field, which 
 could not have occurred. "Henry IV.," in two 
 parts, is by far the most important of these his- 
 torical plays. This monarch was one of England's 
 great kings. His life was a life of constant con- 
 flict with the formidable powers of York, Northum- 
 berland, and Scotland. Scotland had proved her- 
 self in warlike qualities superior to England, but 
 not so in the reign of Henry IV. , who was a fight- 
 ing king. He was brave, and sometimes cruel, 
 with murder stains on his hands while he was yet 
 Bolingbroke. He was wise but crafty, yet while 
 battling for the maintenance of his own throne, he 
 was at the same time not unmindful of the rights and 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 55 
 
 liberties of the English people. Shakespeare repre- 
 sents him as a broad-minded monarch and patriotic 
 in his political character ; he was even religious, as 
 piety went in those days. 
 
 In the very beginning of the play the king says : 
 
 1 ' Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross 
 We are impressed and engaged to fight, 
 Forthwith a power of English shall we levy ; 
 Whose arms were moulded in their mothers' womb 
 To chase these pagans in those holy fields 
 Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet 
 Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd 
 For our advantage on the bitter cross." 
 
 He had an eye to England's welfare, not so 
 much expressed in the technical terms of political 
 administration as in potential speeches and acts. 
 
 Henry IV. died in 1413, and the tradition that he 
 died in the Jerusalem Chamber may have been used 
 by Shakespeare for dramatic effect, as well as the 
 temporary removal of the crown by the prince and 
 his father's solemn admonition. 
 
 The character of Hotspur, the English Achilles, 
 hard and implacable, forms a brilliant episode in 
 
56 THE READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 this play. Hotspur's life is in the flash-light of 
 swords. His contempt of bedizened aristocracy is 
 shown in his description of the frivolous nobleman 
 who meets him to deliver a message on the field of 
 battle, commencing with : 
 
 " But I remember, when the fight was done." 
 
 His other blunt, soldierly speeches are of a similar 
 kind: 
 
 "To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd moon." 
 
 "Tell truth, and shame the devil." 
 
 His wife whom he loved was second to the love of 
 arms. The oestrus of battle was in him. 
 
 Hotspur "How now, Kate! I must leave you within 
 these two hours." 
 
 Lady Percy" O my good lord, why are you thus alone ?" 
 " Tell me, sweet lord, what is 't that takes from thee " 
 " Thy golden sleep?" 
 " In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd, 
 
 And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars ; 
 
 Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed ; 
 
 Cry ' Courage ! to the field ! ' And thou hast talk'd 
 
 Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, 
 
 Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, 
 
 Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, 
 
HISTORIC AL PLAYS. 57 
 
 Of prisoners' ransom, and of soldiers slain, 
 
 And all the currents of a heady fight. 
 
 Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war 
 
 And thus hath so bestirr'd thee in thy sleep, 
 
 That beads of sweat hath stood upon thy brow, 
 
 Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream ; 
 
 And in thy face strange motions hath appear'd, 
 
 Such as we see when men restrain their breath 
 
 On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these ? 
 
 Some heavy business hath my lord in hand, 
 
 And I must know it, else he loves me not." 
 
 Hotspur "What, ho!" 
 
 Lady Percy "In faith, I'll break thy little finger, Harry, 
 
 An if thou wilt not tell me all things true." 
 
 Hotspur" God's me, my horse ! " 
 
 It is a great leap in one play from Hotspur to 
 Falstaff. This light and shade give, however, an 
 opportunity for the practice of chiaroscuro, as in 
 Rembrandt's pictures, and also as it sometimes 
 occurs in nature and the mind, though it requires 
 a consummate artist to make use of this bold con- 
 trast in literature ; a large part of the historic play 
 of " Henry IV." is taken up with the "humours of 
 Falstaff." The name, Sir John Falstaff, was evi- 
 dently drawn from Sir John Falstoffe, who was a 
 
58 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 real character, a Lollard, and a man of honorable 
 reputation, though a rebel and executed in the 
 wars of the times. 
 
 Shakespeare did not mean to defame or drag 
 down the name of " Oldcastle," another name of 
 this same character, to whom he alludes in the 
 Prologue ; but he probably took the name at ran- 
 dom, as a well-known one, yet it is unfortunate 
 that by this name he seemed to cast a slur upon a 
 worthy personage. 
 
 Shakespeare was the exact contemporary of Cer- 
 vantes, and the suspicion is aroused that as Cer- 
 vantes delineates with such exquisite humor the 
 demented but noble, melancholy-visaged Spanish 
 knight, Don Quixote, in order to satirize the deca- 
 dence of Spanish chivalry, so Shakespeare might 
 have drawn the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, to 
 throw contempt on some of the growing falsities 
 and vulgarities of English chivalry and knight- 
 hood ; in all probability this is not true, for both 
 authors were too original to take one character 
 from the other. 
 
 Falstaff is an immoral, lying old rascal, but has 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 59 
 
 no end of wit. The scene of his representation of 
 the king, with his cushion for a crown and his 
 dagger for a sceptre, who delivers a grave repri- 
 mand to the prince, instances his rapid seizure of 
 the situation. His comments on his wondrously 
 spectral squad of conscripts, such as " Mouldy, 
 Cobweb, Shadow, Wart, Feeble, and Bullcalf," are 
 philosophical : 
 
 Falstaff' ' Good enough to toss ; food for powder, food 
 for powder ; they'll fill a pit as well as better." 
 
 Falstaff"Go thy ways, old Jack ; die when thou wilt, if 
 manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the 
 earth, then am I a shotten herring. There lives not three 
 good men unhanged in England ; and one of them is fat, 
 and grows old : God help the while ! a bad world, I say. 
 I would I were a weaver ; I could sing psalms or anything. 
 A plague of all cowards, I say still.' 
 
 Falstaff" But to say I know more harm in him than in 
 myself, were to say more than I know. That he is old, the 
 more the pity, his white hairs do witness it ; but that he is, 
 saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that I utterly deny. 
 If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked ! if to be 
 old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know 
 is damned : if to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean 
 kine are to be loved. No, my good lord ; banish Peto, 
 
60 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 banish Bardolph, banish Poins : but for sweet Jack Falstaff, 
 kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, 
 and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack 
 Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry's company, banish not 
 him thy Harry's company : banish plump Jack, and banish 
 all the world." 
 
 How rapidly the men in buckram suits grew in 
 number : 
 Falstaff" Two rogues in buckram suits." 
 
 " Four rogues in buckram let drive at me." 
 
 Falstaff will last as long as Hamlet, and is immortal. 
 This foul-mouthed, wicked old rogue is the 
 exponent or expression of the material nature, 
 with the infusion of a keen intellectual element 
 turned to baseness. Its humor saves it from 
 obscenity that corrupts. Its good-natured coarse- 
 ness doubtless appealed to the gross English palate 
 of the age. In Falstaff the English mind saw its 
 own abominations, and the electric lightning of his 
 wit seemed to cleanse the foul marsh, and to make 
 it a subject for ridicule and contempt. 
 
 Speaking to the prince's very face, he says : 
 " It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage 
 is caught, as men take diseases, one of another ; therefore, 
 let men take heed of their company." 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 6l 
 
 The famous line descriptive of the death of Fal- 
 staff " a' babbled of green fields," does not seem 
 to me to exhibit a poetic thought, but rather a flit- 
 ting reminiscence of England's green meadows and 
 of a country inn, with unlimited " sack." 
 
 MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 
 
 This roistering play was, according to an unau- 
 thenticated tradition, written in 1602 at the com- 
 mand of Queen Elizabeth, who required Shake- 
 speare to write a play of Sir John Falstaff in love. 
 It was finished in two weeks, and composed after 
 " Henry V.," but in point of successive time comes 
 between the plays of "Henry IV." and "Henry 
 V.," and one of the characters is supposed to be 
 identical with Sir Thomas Lucy of the deer-poach- 
 ing affair. The real Thomas Lucy died in 1600. 
 The scene is laid partly in Windsor Forest, but is 
 more like Arden Wood, which touches dear War- 
 wickshire scenery, and runs through so many of 
 Shakespeare's plays. 
 
 Herne's oak, around which the midnight revels 
 ran, existed until modern times. 
 
62 THE; READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Shallow says, reminding us of Sir Thomas I,ucy : 
 
 "You have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke 
 open my lodge." 
 
 Slender" If I be drunk, I'll be drunk with those that 
 have a fear of God, and not with drunken knaves." 
 
 Pistol" ' Convey, the wise call it. ' Steal !' foh ! a fico 
 for the phrase." 
 
 Pistol "Why, then the world's mine oyster, 
 Which I with sword will open." 
 
 Sweet Anne Page is a pretty and simple maiden, 
 and Shallow's lackadaisical nature is suddenly 
 immersed in a sort of scared love. The whole is 
 a rtide and boorish, but picturesque, old English 
 village scene. 
 
 "The Merry Wives" are merry wives indeed, 
 and they cunningly plot against the old knight to 
 lure him on to utter overthrow, with a mirth- 
 loving looseness of behavior. Falstaff himself 
 walks in this play in his most glorious pomp of 
 libertine excess. In his words with Pistol and his 
 talks with the disreputable woman who keeps the 
 inn, and in other scenes, he is the same scurrilous, 
 wicked old man, presuming somewhat on his 
 knighthood, but low to the depths in character. 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 63 
 
 The examination of the boy in his ' ' accidence ' ' 
 has some allusion to Shakespeare's school-boy days 
 at Stratford. The ribald knight gets fairly pun- 
 ished at Herne's oak. The play must have been 
 an uproarious one, and set the queen, her grave 
 counsellors, the nobility, and the common peo- 
 ple into fits of laughter. 
 
 The scene may even now be imagined by one 
 walking at moonlight in the glades and amid the 
 oaks of Windsor Park. * 
 
 KINO HENRY V. 
 
 The play of "Henry V." was probably first 
 brought out in 1599, and written in that golden 
 period of the poet's life. It was contemporary 
 with the "Merry Wives of Windsor." 
 
 There is no positive historical confirmation of 
 the lawless character of the "mad-cap prince" 
 before his own coronation, but there may have 
 been a tradition of this in the old chronicles, some 
 of the wild pranks of youth, which Shakespeare 
 seized upon for the dramatic effect. 
 
64 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Henry V. has come down to us in history as 
 a noble prince. Even before he came to the throne 
 he assisted his father in war and government, and 
 gave promise of being himself the great monarch 
 that he afterwards became. He represented the 
 best qualities of British chivalry and heroic valor. 
 
 He who has not read Shakespeare's play of 
 1 ' Henry V. ' ' has lost the most dazzling page of 
 England's medieval period ; when great personages 
 walked over the scene clad in gleaming steel ; when 
 her arms beat down into absolute submission the 
 French monarchy and annexed the fields of sunny 
 France. 
 
 Henry V. was a brave and sagacious king, but as 
 a Roman Catholic ruler he was sometimes cruel in 
 persecution. He finally quelled all revolutionary 
 efforts at home, even the fierce attacks of Scotland, 
 as Henry V. himself said : 
 
 " For you shall read that my great-grandfather, 
 Never went with his forces into France, 
 But that the Scot on his unfurnish'd kingdom 
 Came pouring, like the tide into a breach." 
 
 He sailed for France with banners flying over a 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 65 
 
 small but invincible host. Canterbury said of the 
 army : 
 
 "Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights, 
 Six thousand and two hundred good esquires." 
 
 The central point of the whole play is the battle 
 of Agincourt, which took place after hard toil and 
 fighting in France. Just before the battle took 
 place, the constable of France described the British 
 half-starved forces in these words : 
 
 41 Do but behold yon poor and starved band, 
 And your fair show shall suck away their souls, 
 Leaving them but the shales and husks of men. 
 There is not work enough for all our hands ; 
 Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins 
 To give each naked curtle-axe a stain, 
 That our French gallants shall to-day draw out, 
 And sheathe for lack of sport." 
 
 The deepest portions in the play consist of 
 Henry V.'s utterances and soliloquies the night 
 before the battle, showing a burdened but indomi- 
 table spirit. He says to Gloucester : 
 
 " Gloucester, 'tis true that we are in great danger ; 
 The greater therefore should our courage be." 
 5 
 
66 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "God Almighty! 
 
 There is some soul of goodness in things evil, 
 Would men observingly distil it out." 
 
 "'Tis good for men to love their present pains 
 Upon example ; so the spirit is eased : 
 And when the mind is quicken 'd, out of doubt, 
 The organs, though defunct and dead before, 
 Break up their drowsy grave and newly move, 
 With casted slough and fresh legerity." 
 
 He walked unrecognized through his camp and 
 talked with his soldiers in words that show his 
 humanity. One of the soldiers says to him while 
 he was unknown : 
 
 Bates " He hath not told his thought to the king ? " 
 King Henry " No ; nor it is not meet he should. For, 
 though I speak it to you, I think the king is but a man as I 
 am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me ; the element 
 shows to him as it doth to me ; all his senses have but human 
 conditions : his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he 
 appears but a man ; and though his affections are higher 
 mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with 
 the like wing." 
 
 He soliloquizes : 
 
 King " Not all these, laid in bed majestical, 
 Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 67 
 
 Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind 
 
 Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread.'* 
 
 ' ' And, but for ceremony, such a wretch 
 Winding up day with toil, and nights with sleep, 
 Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king." 
 
 " O God of battles ! steel my soldiers' hearts ; 
 Possess them not with fear ; take from them now 
 The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers 
 Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord." 
 
 "More will I do; 
 
 Though all that I can do is nothing worth, 
 Since that my penitence comes after all, 
 Imploring pardon." 
 
 41 This day is call'd the feast of Crispian : 
 He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, 
 Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, 
 And rouse him at the name ef Crispian." 
 " Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, 
 And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.' " 
 
 This is a speech of the heroic English epic, 
 and shows the poet's own manliness. The glitter- 
 ing ranks of France fell before the long ash-tree 
 bows of England. Crcy and Agincourt gave Brit- 
 ish valor the domination in France, down even to 
 the battle of Waterloo. 
 
68 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 King Henry's gay and half French talk with 
 Katharine lights up the grim features of war, and 
 makes the play end in jocund peace, when all diffi- 
 culties are dispelled and all foes overcome, and 
 Henry returns with his French bride to the shores 
 of merrie England. 
 
 HE1TKY VI 
 
 The authorship of the play of " Henry VI." in 
 three parts, or the most of it, has been so fully and 
 even fiercely discussed that the part Shakespeare 
 played in it still remains greatly in doubt, but this 
 critical discussion is not my present aim. It has 
 been thoroughly done by other earlier and modern 
 writers, and still is a central pivot of stormy con- 
 troversy and is well worth our study ; whether he 
 composed the whole of it or composed no part of it, 
 but merely arranged it for the Globe Theatre, is a 
 difficult question. He doubtless had in some way 
 a hand in it, but the plot and composition look 
 more to Marlowe's or Greene's authorship. The 
 entire reversals of historic fact and the shocking 
 ill-treatment, for example, of the lofty and. mystic 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 69 
 
 character of Joan of Arc, would seem to be entirely 
 opposed to the spirit of the truthful and ' ' gentle 
 Will, ' ' but it is possible that in his youthful eager- 
 ness to push on the success of the Globe Theatre, 
 he yielded to the pressure of the royal and courtly 
 party and the stern censorship of the stage at that 
 period. It may be he could not well face the 
 clamorous position of the British public in the 
 matter of English courage in France ; at any rate, 
 the whole is beneath the standard of the other his- 
 torical plays. 
 
 It is without loftiness, and is painful and sad. 
 
 King Henry VI., only child of Henry V., was a 
 gentle and pure-minded man, but no hero. He 
 was never quite a king, and in his long regency he 
 was the prey of furious factions. His armies in 
 France gradually lost all that Henry V. had won, 
 and his own death gave immediate rise to the 
 sanguinary "Wars of the Roses." There would 
 seem to be a few touches of Shakespearean power 
 in this drama. The whole death scene of Cardinal 
 Beaufort is striking : 
 
70 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Henry VI" How fares my lord ? speak, Beaufort, to 
 thy sovereign." 
 
 Cardinal -"If thou be'st death, I'll give thee Eng- 
 land's treasure, 
 
 Enough to purchase such another island, 
 So thou wilt let me live, and feel no pain.'* 
 
 Henry VI " Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, 
 Where death's approach is seen so terrible ! " 
 
 Cardinal ' ' Bring me unto my trial when you will. 
 Died he not in his bed ? where should he die ? 
 Can I make men live, whether they will or no ? 
 O, torture me no more ! I will confess. 
 Alive again ? then show me where he is : 
 I'll give a thousand pounds to look upon him. 
 He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them. 
 Comb down his hair ; look, look ! it stands upright, 
 Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul. 
 Give me some drink ; and bid the apothecary 
 Bring the strong poison that I bought of him." 
 
 " thou eternal mover of the heavens, 
 with a gentle eye upon this wretch ! 
 O, beat away the busy meddling fiend 
 That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul, 
 And from his bosom purge this black despair ! " 
 
 Warwick" See, how the pangs of death do make 
 him grin ! " 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 71 
 
 Salisbury "Disturb him not; let him pass peace- 
 ably." 
 
 King " Peace to his soul, if God's good pleasure be 1 
 Lord cardinal, if thou think'st on heaven's bliss, 
 Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope. 
 He dies, and makes no sign. O God, forgive him ! " 
 
 HENRY 
 
 This is a rich, spectacular drama, written near 
 the end of the poet's life, and portraying the 
 decline of British chivalry of the more showy and 
 less warlike period, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 
 and also of the decline of the ' ' pride, pomp and 
 circumstance of glorious war. ' ' 
 
 There are two theories in regard to the date of 
 this play ; one is, that it was composed in the time 
 of Queen Elizabeth to defend the character of her 
 mother, Anne Boleyn, and another, that it was 
 brought out in the reign of James I. and founded 
 on a previous drama. 
 
 The proud figure of Cardinal Wolsey and his 
 solemn words of repentance for his sin of serving 
 
72 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 two masters God and the world, God and the 
 king still powerfully reverberate in men's deepest 
 consciousness. 
 
 These historical plays, written from a heart full 
 of the patriotism of a truly British soul, were evi- 
 dently thrown off originally in his youthful days 
 for the stage, and had their plot, it may be, in some 
 instances from previous plays, but in them all 
 there are traces of Shakespeare's revision and 
 inimitable genius. These touches or marks of 
 Shakespearean genius are plainly discernible wher- 
 ever they occur, and I have sometimes exemplified 
 this to myself by a homely illustration, which 
 would apply both to Shakespeare and Homer. 
 
 The explorer in the dark forest of mid- Africa 
 comes across a spring of pure water, which wild 
 beasts visit at night to quench their thirst. All 
 kinds, small and great, come ; on the sandy marge 
 of the spring or pond are innumerable tracks 
 of these nightly visitants, but across them all are 
 great prints, effacing the smaller ones, which are 
 the marks of the lion alone, unmistakable and awe- 
 inspiring. 
 
COMEDIES. 73 
 
 COMEDIES. 
 CYMBELINE. 
 
 Comedy is usually a play where the ludicrous or, 
 better, the humorous element is prominently set 
 forth in opposition to tragedy, which stirs deeper 
 emotions ; but in the older classic and Italian use 
 of the word, as in Dante's " Divina Commedia," it 
 is applied to the Middle Style, admitting, indeed, 
 the elegant and poetic, but running usually in the 
 common form of dialogue, both high and low. 
 
 The play I now take up, " Cymbeline," is an 
 instance of this. It is neither comedy nor tragedy, 
 but may be classed under the form of comedy 
 according to the definition of this term which has 
 just been given. 
 
 It is laid on British soil in an ancient period, 
 whether real or fictitious, and like " King I^ear," 
 " Macbeth," and all Shakespeare's dramas, wher- 
 ever their scene is laid, has, as I have said, a 
 smack of Warwickshire and Arden Forest ; yet in 
 spite of this, there is no merely local type of char- 
 acter exclusively evolved, either Greek or Roman, 
 
74 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Italian, French, or English, but a pure humanity as 
 the basis of all. There is, however, in some of the 
 poet's dramas, as in one character, at least, in this 
 play of " Cymbeline," a certain prof ound subjectiv- 
 ity of thought. 
 
 This play, which has been sometimes supposed 
 to belong to a more youthful stage of Shakespeare's 
 works, is, by more thoughtful critics, assigned to the 
 period of his later dramas, such as ' ' Hamlet ' ' and 
 "Othello." Its style is too serious for my defini- 
 tion of comedy, and though it does not exhibit traces 
 of exalted poetry, it is clear and simple in its prose. 
 
 It reminds one both of barbarism and civiliza- 
 tion, and if its figures are dressed in British tunics 
 or Roman brazen armor, this is of little consequence. 
 
 None of Shakespeare's women, or those of any 
 other dramatist, equal Imogen's feminine perfec- 
 tion of womanly purity that springs from the cen- 
 tral principle of feminine nature. It is genuine 
 and unconscious one lustrous immaculate pearl. 
 It is the essence of love, natural, gentle, patient, 
 enduring, thinking no evil. 
 
 Imogen forgives her most treacherous enemies, 
 
COMEDIES. 75 
 
 and seems to harbor no revenge, is ready to obey 
 her husband's letter that she be killed, is true to 
 his love, is unchanging in her patience, unswerv- 
 ing in her affection. This is the deep lesson of the 
 drama. 
 
 Imogen's character needs no ornament ; it is 
 born of perfect love innate, spiritual, and divine. 
 No female personage of Shakespeare's plays sinks 
 more quietly, more indelibly into the mind of the 
 reader. 
 
 It is strange that few plays contain more Homeric 
 and classical allusions fitly applied than ' ' Cymbe- 
 line." 
 
 Shakespeare must have read the Iliad, it may 
 be of Chapman's translation, aided by what of the 
 Greek language he knew. Shakespeare was an 
 educated man. He had the culture that was com- 
 prehended in his age. If modern science had then 
 existed he would have delighted in its wonderful 
 progress, as his marvelous guesses in respect to the 
 circulation of the blood, the electric currents in the 
 atmosphere, and the law of evolution in " The Tem- 
 pest " show. Sir Thomas Brown's observations on 
 
76 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the dew-claws of dogs and the left-footedness of 
 parrots betoken original scientific observation, but 
 Shakespeare, as one who reached the inner spirit 
 beneath the fact, thus linking nature with the 
 human soul, and saw the divine beauty of the 
 starry firmament the prophet poet was the 
 greater genius ; but I believe his calm reason look- 
 ing before and after would have led him in the 
 advancement of science to something like conser- 
 vatism. 
 
 Another striking figure in " Cymbeline," that 
 forms a strong contrast to Imogen, is the Queen, 
 who is a British Medea of masculine barbarity as 
 well as intelligence. She supplements her weaker 
 husband. Her description of England, though not 
 exactly scientific, is wonderfully true : 
 
 Queen " Remember, sir, my liege, 
 The kings your ancestors, together with 
 The natural bravery of your isle, which stands 
 As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in 
 With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, 
 With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats, 
 But suck them up to the topmast. A kind of conquest 
 Caesar made here ; but made not here his brag 
 
COMEDIES. 77 
 
 Of ' came, and saw, and overcame : ' with shame 
 The first that ever touch' d him he was carried 
 From our coast, twice beaten ; and his shipping 
 Poor ignorant baubles ! on our terrible seas, 
 Like egg-shells moved upon their surges, crack'd 
 As easily 'gainst our rocks." 
 
 It is strange that in such an oppressive drama, 
 dragging the mind downward by its expectant ill, 
 there could have sprung up the most beautiful 
 golden lyric that exists ; most musical, singing 
 itself, thus beginning : 
 
 " Hark, hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings, 
 
 And Phoebus 'gins arise, 
 His steeds to water at those springs 
 On chalked flowers that lies." 
 
 This lovely expression of " chaliced flowers " is 
 one of the many illustrations that showed Shake- 
 speare' s genuine love of flowers. He observes their 
 peculiarities of form and color, symbolic meaning, 
 and poetic expression. I would not, for one, have 
 the Shakespearean garden changed into a botanic 
 hortus siccus, invaluable as it is to the advance- 
 ment of scientific knowledge. For in turning over 
 
78 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 those withered leaves, I would not forget that this 
 dried flower, for example, may have nodded in 
 its beautiful blue color from the icy summit of an 
 Alpine cliff, or that this one grew in a savage 
 western wilderness and formed its only ornament, 
 or that this dead lily rested in life on the broad 
 waters of the Amazon, or that this, the desert ere- 
 mite, too small even for fragrance, has cheered the 
 heart of the weary traveller over the burning sands 
 of Arabia, saying to him, "up heart, there is still 
 hope for thee ! " So nature seemed to open its 
 secrets to the poet. Nature is beautiful in its 
 own forms, and organic nature runs in curvilinear, 
 not straight, lines ; ever aspiring, like the vine, to 
 climb in spirals higher and higher into the free air. 
 This seemed to be Shakespeare's view of it in the 
 life of flowers. 
 
 The two speakers who open the first act of the 
 play talk naturally, explaining the circumstances 
 of the drama. There is rarely a coarse phrase. 
 The I,atin pun on muliernesir the end is, to say 
 the least, amusingly elaborate. 
 
COMEDIES. 79 
 
 AS YOU LIKE IT 
 
 This is a rich comedy in the best sense of the 
 word, full of genial humor, sparkling wit, and 
 pleasing nature. The scene of this glorious open- 
 air play is, to be sure, placed in Bordeaux and the 
 Forest of Ardennes in France, but is really laid 
 in English Warwickshire, and in close touch with 
 Sherwood Forest and the ballad poetry. 
 
 In this very play it is said : 
 
 "They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a 
 many merry men with him ; and there they live like the old 
 Robin Hood of England : they say many young men flock 
 to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did 
 in the golden world." 
 
 Shakespeare loved his native land, and built up 
 his visionary on the real. We are, in the play, in 
 a great shadowy forest, with oaks here and there, 
 sunny green spots, and a group of foresters in 
 Lincoln green, with long yew bows, spears, and 
 bugles, such as the outlaws of English legend bore. 
 
 Orlando, banished, had gone to them, who 
 though exiled, was a brave man, capable of love. 
 He shows his courage in slaying the lioness that 
 
80 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "with udders all drawn dry, 
 
 Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch, 
 When that the sleeping man should stir ; for 'tis 
 The royal disposition of that beast 
 To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead." 
 
 Orlando sends his bloody handkerchief to Rosa- 
 lind. The plot is a story illustrating three degrees 
 of love, a charming comedy, perhaps more popu- 
 larly read than any other, in which Shakespeare 
 recalls his romantic youth of careless pleasure 
 mingled with some serious thoughts of misspent 
 time that awake upbraidings of conscience. He 
 speaks in the words of the whilom courtier, " the 
 melancholy Jaques." 
 
 Jaques is not a bitter satirist of life, and his 
 reflections are softened by the solitude of nature 
 and the pensive reflections of an amiable humor. 
 There is a laugh at the bottom of his contempt and 
 a charity for human faults. The wounded stag 
 gives him his allegory, in which pathos is mixed 
 with scorn, pity for the poor animal, and contempt 
 for the shams of life. The philosophic mind in the 
 poet is awakened, and the thoughts of an earnest 
 
COMEDIES. 8 1 
 
 spirit well up from deeper springs. The world 
 shut out, conscience speaks in the calmer eventime. 
 
 Jaques is called a ''fool," as well as Touch- 
 stone ; the folly consists in carrying the contem- 
 plative spirit beyond its bounds, and becoming 
 critic instead of actor, throwing up the fight ; but 
 Jaques is at heart good and kindly, whom life has 
 somewhat saddened and disgusted. It has been 
 said truly that the only blot in this delightful 
 comedy is in betrothing Celia to Oliver instead of 
 to Jaques. 
 
 Rosalind is the sparkling gem, the heroine, 
 though the question is not settled which of the two 
 maids is the taller. Rosalind has a witty mind, 
 and remains arch and tricksome to the last, even 
 in the epilogue. She is a bit mannish, like a lively 
 boy playing both sexes, delightful to the end as 
 a beauteous woodlawn sprite. 
 
 It is life under the greenwood tree. Shake- 
 speare enters the region of romance, takes down 
 the bars, and lets us into the broad fields of the 
 imagination, where we rejoice to wander released 
 
 from all care and restlessness. 
 6 
 
82 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 The style is easy and that of the common life, 
 not of the inflated romance taken from Spain and 
 France of that day. Shakespeare, as mentioned, 
 was the contemporary of Cervantes, and both of 
 them as reformers returned to their country's 
 idiomatic speech. 
 
 Homely words, as in these examples : 
 
 "Let the world slide." 
 
 " He drew a dial from his poke," 
 
 the old Norman French for pocket. 
 
 The pun where "goats" and "Goths" are 
 interchanged is likewise an illustration of this ordi- 
 nary speech. The man who said he liked Shake- 
 speare because he was so full of quotations might 
 find much in "As You Like It" to confirm his 
 opinion, as in the words : 
 
 " All the world's a stage, 
 And all the men and women merely players." 
 
 " Whoever loves that loved not at first sight." 
 14 Sweet are the uses of adversity." 
 
 ' ' Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones and good in everything." 
 
COMEDIES. 83 
 
 Gay, bright, and changing, it is Shakespeare's 
 thoughts out of the fullness of youth, and of his 
 growing philosophy. The times are mirrored in 
 his play, when the poet talks of " South Sea bub- 
 ble," and the common contrast of forces, organic 
 and inorganic, when he speaks of ' ' breaking his 
 shins against it." 
 
 A noble contrast is drawn between Fortune and 
 Nature, the former giving only "the world's 
 gifts," the other showing us the eternal lineaments 
 of the permanent and divine. 
 
 Swearing by his honor who had no Fortune, 
 reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments 
 of Nature. 
 
 No more healthful and happy counsel for a tem- 
 perate life, packed in a few words, could have been 
 devised than the speech of old Adam : 
 
 " Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty ; 
 For in my youth I never did apply 
 Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood, 
 Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo 
 The means of weakness and debility ; 
 Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, 
 Frosty, but kindly." 
 
84 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 
 This play appeared in the first folio edition of 
 Shakespeare's works, and was written probably 
 about 1574. It was undoubtedly adapted from 
 Marlowe, but what was Shakespeare's bears his 
 own stamp. 
 
 A beautiful young woman with a vixenish tem- 
 per, whose 
 
 " tongue will tell the anger of [her] heart, 
 Or else [her] heart concealing it will break," 
 
 and a lover and husband determined to have his 
 way, no matter how rough-shod, and we have the 
 plot. A big man with a hunter's whip snapping, 
 and louder language, is not the modern means of 
 settling love disputes, or of bringing about har- 
 mony in marital relations, though it may have 
 better suited Shakespeare's times. 
 
 "The Inception," so called, was possibly taken 
 from the story in "Arabian Nights" of "Abu- 
 Hassan, the wag, in the Caliph's palace," and 
 the play is one within a play, a device used more 
 than once by the dramatist. 
 
COMEDIES. 85 
 
 The comedy begins when Katharine enters 
 on the scene. She makes matters lively ; she 
 treats her gentle sister like a slave, but the 
 "shrew" meets a rock. The masculine will 
 conquers even by brutal impertinence and affected 
 cruelty, while the better element is radical and 
 really prevails. 
 
 The scriptural precept that the wife should obey 
 her husband is acknowledged and confirmed in 
 Kate's speech at the end : 
 
 " A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, 
 Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty ; 
 And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty 
 Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it. 
 Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, 
 Thy head, thy sovereign ; one that cares for thee, 
 And for thy maintenance commits his body 
 To painful labour both by sea and land, 
 To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, 
 Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe ; 
 And craves no other tribute at thy hands 
 But love, fair looks and true obedience." 
 
 It is to be supposed that some unconscious sense 
 of love is awakened in both. But praise for thy 
 sweet humility, brave Kate ! 
 
86 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 The lofty spiritual height of St. Paul's doctrine 
 concerning the marriage state and its unity, its 
 likeness to heavenly things, was not reached. 
 
 The true equality of the sexes and the freedom 
 of woman are not realized in this conception ; but 
 the rough lesson taught is not a bad one, even in 
 this present time of so many mercenary marriages 
 and shameful divorces. 
 
 Petruchio and Katharine are strong Shakespear- 
 ean characters that will live. They are Shake- 
 speare at play, the lion free in his gamboling. 
 Petruchio is a masculine figure, strong and rude, 
 but loves his wife while abusing her. He meets 
 fire with fire ; " kills her in her own humour. ' ' He 
 woos her in his love speeches shown in his outra- 
 geous behavior. He denies her reason. He makes 
 her to say the sun is the moon and the moon 
 the sun, as he lists. This is abominable, but it 
 effects his purpose ; drastic, but Kate was made 
 over as Lucretia Borgia was made over, by a good 
 marriage. 
 
 Something in the rugged strength of Petruchio 
 is said to have aroused the playwright Greene's 
 
COMEDIES. 87 
 
 jealous spite, as if Shakespeare had robbed him or 
 overtopped his own play, and gave rise to his 
 pamphlet, and scornful saying that "he thought 
 himself the only Shakescene in the country." 
 
 The play is pure comedy, and the scene is laid 
 in Padua, Italy. Many things might lead us to 
 believe the tradition that Shakespeare once visited 
 the land of 
 
 " fruitful Lombardy 
 The pleasant garden of great Italy ; " 
 
 and 
 
 "fair Padua, nursery of arts." 
 
 Perhaps he stood inside the many-domed church 
 of San Giustiniani, and looked at Giotto's frescoes 
 in the Arena Chapel. He describes Italian cos- 
 tume, especially women's dresses, with minuteness, 
 and makes use of Latin words and Italian expres- 
 sions such as the people used, so that it would seem 
 as if these came by personal observation. 
 
 It is curious to see brought out a custom in the 
 legal profession that continues, if I mistake not, to 
 this day : 
 
 " And do as adversaries do in law, 
 Strive mightly, but eat and drink as friends." 
 
88 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 
 
 This play, though called a comedy, leaves out 
 the comic element and is of sterner ethical fibre, 
 entering more deeply into humanity. 
 
 Its central figure is Angelo, whom the Duke of 
 Vienna, in his absence for a considerable period, 
 makes his deputy, endowing him with absolute 
 authority, having apparently the most unbounded 
 confidence in the man : 
 
 Duke of Vienna " Angelo, 
 
 There is a kind of character in thy life, 
 That to th' observer doth thy history 
 Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings 
 Are not thine own so proper, as to waste 
 Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. 
 Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, 
 Not light them for ourselves ; for if our virtues 
 Did not go forth of us, 'twere airalike 
 As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd 
 But to fine issues ; nor Nature never lends 
 The smallest scruple of her excellence, 
 But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines 
 Herself the glory of a creditor, 
 Both thanks and use." 
 
COMEDIES. 89 
 
 Angelo is a "public creature." He is a born 
 ruler ; he has a talent for the administration of 
 public affairs ; he is "a man of law. ' ' His ' ' solid 
 will" is the great governing wheel that turns the 
 machinery of state. He* is a man of precedents, of 
 outward form but not of inward spirit, and the 
 conception of justice as one form of love the 
 love of others, when applied to the regulation of 
 men in groups and companies for their common 
 good and happiness, and the spiritual law of right- 
 eousness to guide one's own conduct, were outside 
 his thinking. He is a cold and unrelenting ruler ; 
 he applies the law mercilessly to all but himself ; 
 he condemns in others, sins of which he is guilty. 
 He is hypocritical and base as well as cruel ; on 
 the outside awe-inspiring, he is like a tall pine of 
 the Apennines, buttressed by the slow forces of time 
 and opposing winds, but rotten at the core and 
 ready to fall with a crash. 
 
 Isabella, who is a lofty type of the Shakespearean 
 woman, sees through Angelo, and is bold enough 
 to charge him with crime : 
 
90 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Isabella "'Tis not impossible 
 But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground, 
 May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute 
 As Angelo ; even so may Angelo, 
 In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms, 
 Be an arch-villain ; believe it, royal prince : 
 If he be less, he's nothing ; but he's more." 
 
 Yet it is this Isabella who at the last asks for 
 his life, and with a touch of angelic mercy says to 
 the Duke : 
 
 ' Most bounteous sir, 
 
 Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd, 
 As if my brother lived : I partly think 
 A due sincerity govern'd his deeds, 
 Till he did look on me : since it is so, 
 Let him not die." 
 
 Angelo is reprieved with the rest. He, the 
 chief offender, escapes, but he shows no repent- 
 ance ; to the last is unmoved. He is remarried 
 to Mariana, his long betrothed and wronged wife. 
 This has been thought to be the one blot upon 
 a strong play ; but Shakespeare cannot be lightly 
 amended. He makes his lesson of charity's victory 
 complete. The sinner is in the hand of God to 
 
COMEDIES. 91 
 
 repent or suffer. God will rule over him in the 
 infinite spaces of eternity. 
 
 The Duke of Vienna plays an important part in 
 his disguise as an observer of character, and in his 
 easy nature it is not unlikely that Shakespeare 
 may have shadowed forth the character of that 
 Solomon, James I., and the happy-go-lucky, disor- 
 derly condition of public affairs in the government 
 of England. 
 
 Claudio, the condemned man, though amiable, 
 is not so strong as his sister Isabella. He fears 
 death : 
 
 "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
 To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; 
 This sensible warm motion to become 
 A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
 To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
 In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice ; 
 To be imprison 'd in the viewless winds, 
 And blown with restless violence round about 
 The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 
 Of those that lawless and incertain thought 
 Imagine howling : 'tis too horrible ! 
 The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
 
92 THE READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death." 
 
 There is a slight reminder in these words both of 
 Homer and of Dante, though Shakespeare needed 
 not to go to either for inspiration. 
 
 Those who are accnstomed in their daily talk 
 to use the devil's name needlessly, whatever this 
 spirit of evil may be, have no support in Shake- 
 speare, and find themselves rebuked in the Duke's 
 words : 
 
 11 Respect to your great place ! and let the devil 
 Be sometime honour'd for his burning throne ! " 
 
 COMEDY OF EBRORS. 
 
 The present comedy is upon a somewhat lower 
 plane, and turns upon the simple fact of a strong 
 physical resemblance between two actors in the 
 comedy, leading to confused and amusing scenes, 
 some of them quite serious, as brawls, rages, accu- 
 sations of dishonesty, estranging of husband and 
 wife, and imprisonments. 
 
 It is entertaining, and if acted skillfully might 
 be greatly so. 
 
COMEDIES. 93 
 
 The art shown is to keep the actors apart, so 
 that their identity may remain doubtful, and this 
 of course limits the time and makes the play com- 
 paratively short. There is no poetic elevation, but 
 the humor of Shakespeare shines out at times 
 unmistakably. 
 
 Of all places, that- Ephesus should be chosen for 
 such juggling and pranks ! Poor Antipholus of 
 Ephesus is the hardest used, he comes near to 
 losing his reputation and liberty. Perhaps the 
 play would not be considered very ludicrous now, 
 but doubtless was so in its day. Parts of the play 
 run easily from prose into rhyme. America and 
 the Indies are treated as being about identical. 
 Shrewd phrases, now familiar, are spoken : 
 
 1 ' Marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat 
 with the devil." 
 
 So close is the resemblance that at the denouement 
 
 the Duke says : 
 
 " Stay, stand apart ; I know not which is which." 
 
 " One of these men is Genius to the other." 
 
 11 Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother : " 
 
94 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 incredible, but supposedly plausible. The play is 
 genuine comedy, and stage action is brought about 
 smoothly without overdrawn demonstration. 
 
 The plot is taken from Plautus ("Mercator "), 
 the Shakespeare of Latin comedy. 
 
 One would have thought that twins separated by 
 accident and brought up in cities so distant from 
 each other would lose, when men, their physical 
 resemblance to each other, and more and more 
 lessen the confusion of personal identity ; but the 
 plot was good enough for the poet to use in a 
 jocose and offhand way. 
 
 TWELFTH MIGHT. 
 
 Here is a play fitted to be acted during Twelfth 
 Night's season of festivities. With "All's Well 
 that Ends Well," it is printed in the folio edition 
 of 1623. They are about the last of Shakespeare's 
 comedies. In ' ' Twelfth Night ' ' are some allusions 
 that may serve to mark the date, as, for instance, 
 there is one sentence which is clearly written in 
 defence of Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 
 "The Romance literature of Europe was a com- 
 
COMEDIES. 95 
 
 mon property, from which Elizabethan writers of 
 every grade drew material for their own perform- 
 ances, using them with all possible variety of adap- 
 tation. 
 
 ' ' Italy was the fountain head of these fictions ; 
 although they might have traveled thither from the 
 East, and gradually assumed European shapes and 
 character." 
 
 The scheme of this play comes from this source, 
 or from one of those medieval fictions from which 
 English playwrights freely drew. The real comedy 
 and poetry, however, were Shakespeare's, and his 
 thought and style refine the original play. 
 
 The scene was laid in Illyria and the sea coast 
 near it. Orsino, duke of the country, whose deep- 
 phrased love is fixed upon Olivia, thus speaks : 
 "If music be the food of love, play on ; 
 
 Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, 
 
 The appetite may sicken, and so die. 
 
 That strain again ! it had a dying fall : 
 
 O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound, 
 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 
 Stealing and giving odour ! Enough ; no more : 
 
 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. 
 
96 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 O spirit of love, how quick and fresh thou art I 
 That, notwithstanding thy capacity 
 Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, 
 Of what validity and pitch soe'er, 
 But falls into abatement and low price, 
 Even in a minute ! so full of shapes is fancy, 
 That it alone is high fantastical." 
 
 Viola, a king's daughter, shipwrecked on the 
 coast of Illyria, mourns the probable destruction of 
 her brother, but is assured by the captain that he 
 saw him lashed to a spar and safely riding the 
 waves. Viola, brought up as a simple shepherdess, 
 becomes a servant of Orsino, Duke of Illyria, and 
 serves him as a page disguised in masculine attire ; 
 she falls ardently in love with him, but is sent as a 
 messenger to Olivia, whom the Duke loves, and 
 who lives in solitariness for her brother's death. 
 
 Sir Toby, uncle to Olivia, here introduced, 
 seems more like a rough English squire than an 
 eastern European. He cries : 
 
 "And so be these boots too : and they be not, 
 let them hang themselves in their own straps." 
 
 "He is drunk nightly " with Sir Andrew Ague- 
 cheek, who also resembles an occidental character, 
 
COMEDIES. 97 
 
 who capers about, and is " a great eater of beef" 
 that "does harm to his wits" doubtless very 
 comic to the audience of that period. 
 
 The Clown, too, makes good sport and sings 
 ' ' mellifluous songs. ' ' 
 
 Sir Toby's use of "sack" seems to link the 
 play with " Merry Wives of Windsor." 
 
 Malvolio, a vain fool, with his "yellow cross-gar- 
 tered leggins, ' ' is one of Shakespeare's characters 
 that lives. He says of Viola, disguised as a man : 
 
 ' ' Not yet old enough for a man. nor young enough for a 
 boy ; as a squash is before tis a peascod, or a codling when 
 'tis almost an apple : 'tis with him in standing water, between 
 boy and man. He is very well-favoured and he speaks very 
 shrewishly ; one would think his mother's milk were scarce 
 out of him.' 
 
 Malvolio is a prosaic, orderly coxcomb, a kind of 
 steward of Olivia's household, who aspires egre- 
 giously even to Olivia. 
 
 Maria, the maid, hits off thus Malvolio's char- 
 acter : 
 
 Sometimes he is a sort of puritan, ' ' or anything constantly 
 but a time-pleaser ; an affectioned ass, that cons state with- 
 out book and utters it by great swarths : the best persuaded 
 7 
 
98 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that 
 it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him ; 
 and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause 
 to work." 
 
 "I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love; 
 wherein, by the colour of his beard, the shape of his leg, the 
 manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and 
 complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. 
 I can write very like my lady your niece : on a forgotten 
 matter we can hardly make distinction of our hands." 
 
 All this she skillfully does, and Malvolio becomes 
 a more self-bespangled ass than ever. His self- 
 complacency, thinking no one sees or hears, is 
 hugely comic, and he minces along most ludicrously. 
 
 In the letter, which Maria feigns as coming 
 from Lady Olivia, occur the familiar words : 
 
 "But be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, 
 some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust 
 upon 'em.' 
 
 Malvolio comes in smirkingly, 
 
 'his face into more lines than is in the new map with 
 the augmentation of the Indies," 
 
 a contemporaneous fact that had just occurred. 
 
COMEDIES. 99 
 
 Maria speaks of this latter as if it were in the 
 author's thought to further its success. 
 
 Viola, with woman's wit and subtle ingenuity, 
 displaces the image of Olivia from the Duke's 
 mind and fastens his love at last upon herself. In 
 her arguments she uses the well-known words : 
 
 14 She never told her love, 
 But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud 
 Feed on her damask cheek : she pined in thought ; 
 And with a green and yellow melancholy 
 She sat like patience on a monument, 
 Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed ? ' 
 
 In this amusing comedy, the plot of the whole is 
 this : Malvolio is badly punished for his vanity, 
 but his penance is short, being not at heart a bad 
 fellow. Viola, by her wit and genuine love for the 
 Duke, takes the place of Olivia in his affections, 
 Olivia becoming the wife of Sebastian, the brother of 
 Viola, saved from perishing in the sea ; so all ends 
 well. 
 
 The comedy is a bright one, worth reading on 
 rainy days and fair days, though the Clown sings 
 
 at last : 
 
 " For the rain it raineth every day. ' 
 
100 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. 
 
 Shakespeare ' ' held the many-coloured mirror up 
 to nature," and this comedy is another phase of 
 Love, but it is begun in affectation. The very 
 scene of it is in an artificial court and French park, 
 not in a free wild wood : 
 
 "Our court shall be a little Academe, 
 Still and contemplative in living art." 
 
 This was one of the nineteen plays published 
 during Shakespeare's life, and although it has 
 been charged by critics, and not unjustly, as bear- 
 ing the marks of juvenility, itis_siotably amusing, 
 admirable reading for dull weather, and it con- 
 tains some passages worthy of the poet. 
 
 The freakish young King of Navarre conceives 
 the plan to bind himself and three of his courtiers 
 by a solemn oath to confine themselves for a space 
 of three years to the pursuits of philosophy and 
 other high studies, during which period they should 
 abjure all society of men and women, eat but one 
 meal a day, fast entirely one day in the week, and 
 sleep but three hours at night. 
 
 ''The mind shall banquet, though the body pine." 
 
COMEDIES. 10 1 
 
 These hard conditions are broken in upon by 
 the unlooked-for coming of the King of France's 
 daughter and three of her ladies on a political 
 embassy, who, by their beauty and wit, scatter to 
 the winds the King of Navarre's fine scheme of 
 study, and nature resumes her sway. 
 
 In the discussions of Navarre with his com- 
 panions, and those of the French ladies, the chief 
 speaker, himself inly hostile to the King's plan, is 
 the young Biron, who has a mocking spirit, though 
 he sometimes rises into higher thoughts with a 
 touch of "painted rhetoric," as thus when he 
 pleads the cause of Love : 
 
 " Love," "lives not alone immured in the brain ; 
 
 But, with the motion of all elements, 
 
 Courses as swift as thought in every power, 
 
 And gives to every power a double power, 
 
 Above their functions and their offices. 
 
 It adds a precious seeing to the eye ; 
 
 A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind ; 
 
 A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound," 
 ' For valour, is not Love a Hercules, 
 
 Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ? 
 
 Subtle as Sphinx ; as sweet and musical 
 
 As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair ; " 
 
102 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves, 
 Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths. 
 It is religion to be thus forsworn, 
 For charity itself fulfils the law." 
 
 Biron says vehemently : 
 " Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, 
 That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks." 
 
 He gives a sling at study : 
 
 " Small have continual plodders ever won, 
 Save base authority from others' books." 
 
 The introduction into the play of a fantastic 
 Spanish knight, named Don Adriano de Armado, 
 exhibits Shakespeare's command, when he chose to 
 exercise it, of the language of pedantry, ' ' taf- 
 feta phrases," as the custom was in Queen Eliza- 
 beth's age, and even in the writings of Sir Philip 
 Sidney, to toss these ' ' silken terms " as a bull 
 tosses red rags. Shakespeare could play at that 
 with boys' delight. This phraseology served as a 
 foil to his plain speech. Hyperbolic phrases of 
 pseudo-learning, long rustling words which travel 
 on many feet and are tricked off with false colors 
 of rhetoric, were an object of his lively wit. Lan- 
 
COMEDIES. 103 
 
 guage to him was simply an instrument to thought 
 and of secondary value. His influence on English 
 literature will be ever most powerful. 
 
 To read Shakespeare would seem to be the duty 
 of our public men. When the teacher of right 
 goes out to instruct and guide men, let him lock 
 up his study and his books in it, deny and sacrifice 
 his ambition to be regarded as a deep thinker, 
 a great scholar, and speak in the plain language 
 of ordinary men, without coarseness, but from a 
 simple, true heart. The lawyer should throw off 
 his professional robes and drive for the right, 
 content to lose causes, if may be, though in the 
 end he will grow in power and popularity, and 
 would build up the foundations of law and good 
 government ; statesmen, political orators, preach- 
 ers, lecturers, essayists, journalists, authors, even 
 poets, should speak only what they know and feel 
 from the bases of fact and nature, with Shake- 
 speare's real knowledge ; and though they might 
 not become Shakespeares, they would come nearer 
 to him in the plain path he led and nearer to truth 
 and sources of power. 
 
104 THS READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 This play, which is elegant, like the finer ambi- 
 tious language of a young man, is nevertheless 
 not without a sprinkling of the commonest words 
 and phrases, such as "loggerhead," "work-a-day 
 world, ' ' and there is one passage from which Gold- 
 smith might have caught the idea of the familiar 
 phrase, ' ' Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be 
 wise," which in Shakespeare is thus expressed : 
 
 " Were my lord so, his ignorance were wise, 
 Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance." 
 
 In the contest of the sexes, the women won a 
 complete victory, and the king and his courtiers 
 are assigned for a year before the renewal of agree- 
 able relations, to perform useful tasks of life. 
 Biron in especial, who is not bad at heart, to 
 chasten his mocking spirit, is required to superin- 
 tend a hospital for the sick. 
 
 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 
 
 The title of the play has been much commented 
 upon and it has been supposed that its early title 
 was " Love's Labour's Won," and that it was the 
 counterpart of " Love's Labour's Lost," for which 
 
COMEDIES. 
 
 105 
 
 there is the shadow of a reason ; yet the title 
 " All's Well that Ends Well " fits it equally, and 
 in the last words spoken this title is almost given 
 word for word. In the play itself the labor of 
 love is truly great and difficult, but the end hap- 
 pily attained. 
 
 The heroine of the play is a rare type of woman 
 in Shakespeare's multifarious characterizations ; 
 she unites in herself some contrary elements, the 
 greatest of which are love and ambition. Helena 
 is the true heroine with 
 
 "youth, beauty, wisdom, courage." 
 
 Her will is bold it might indeed be thought at 
 times, hard, calculating, and unfeminine ; she is 
 the daughter of a great physician and wise man, 
 but has set her heart on one higher in rank, 
 Bertram, Count of Rousillon ; here the selfish is 
 planted in the unselfish, and the explanation is left 
 to the thoughtful mind of the reader. Helena's 
 life is a constant struggle between honest affection 
 and strong ambition, and the wonderful force of the 
 character is shown in really attaining the object of 
 
106 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 both these desires and reconciling them. Some of 
 her words at times in this mental contest are diffi- 
 cult to understand from their depth, while others 
 are more simple and pathetic. She says : 
 
 ' Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, 
 Which we ascribe to heaven : the fated sky 
 Gives us free scope ; only doth backward pull 
 Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. 
 What power is it which mounts my love so high ; 
 That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye ? 
 The mightiest space in fortune nature brings 
 To join like likes." 
 
 She is thoughtfully philosophic, reasons subjec- 
 tively of things, and maintains the inward conflict 
 on a calm and level line of reason by an intense 
 will; sometimes she is more simple and natural. 
 She says : 
 
 " My friends were poor but honest ; so's my love : 
 Be not offended ; for it hurts not him 
 That he is loved of me : I follow him not 
 By any token of presumptuous suit ; 
 Nor would I have him till I do deserve him." 
 
 *' There's something in 't 
 More than my father's skill, which was the great'sl 
 
COMEDIES. 107 
 
 Of his profession, that his good receipt 
 Shall for my legacy be sanctified 
 By the luckiest stars in heaven." 
 
 She confesses her secret to the Countess, Bertram's 
 mother, and wins her love, and she also obtains 
 the firm favor of the King of France by curing 
 him with her father's prescriptions ; at length by 
 parental and royal command she is married to Ber- 
 tram. He, feeling that he has been forced into 
 this marriage and that she is of lower rank, departs 
 that same day for Italy, where he is afterwards 
 followed by Helena under disguise as a pilgrim ; 
 and in the wars of the Duke of Florence he gains 
 military renown. 
 
 The three older characters, Lafeu, Parolles, " a 
 very tainted fellow and full of wickedness," and 
 the Clown, who like nearly all of Shakespeare's 
 clowns conceals under his fool's-cap much practical 
 wisdom and likewise makes nonsense of words, such 
 as : 
 
 '* To say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing and to 
 have nothing, is to be a great part of your title ; which is 
 within a very little of nothing," 
 
108 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 these make up the few ludicrous features of a 
 strong comedy. Bajazet is true history. 
 The play is like the First Lord's words : 
 
 'The web of our life is of a mingled yam, good and ill 
 together : our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped 
 them not ; and our crimes would despair, if they were not 
 cherished by our virtues." 
 
 I leave the end of this vigorous drama to the 
 reader. It is approached by ' ' the inaudible and 
 noiseless foot of time," but it is drawn out, some 
 might possibly say, to an almost painful expec- 
 tancy, yet it is hard to amend Shakespeare. 
 Helena and Bertram are reunited in happy mar- 
 riage bonds. 
 
 King " All yet seems well ; and if the end so meet, 
 The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet." 
 
 GREEK PLAYS. 
 
 This title of Greek plays, as well as the titles 
 that follow of Roman Tragedies and Italian plays, 
 have no real significance, but are here used by me 
 only for convenience in classification, since the 
 plays are not strictly classical. 
 
GREEK PLAYS. 109 
 
 TROILTTS AND CRESSIDA. 
 
 This drama pursues closely the story of the Iliad 
 and it constitutes a fable for critics. It is a com- 
 plex work and is of lower tone and style than 
 Shakespeare's other plays. I do not think that 
 Shakespeare, consciously or unconsciously, set him- 
 self to rival Homer on the same field but from 
 Chapman's Homer or Florio's translations or his 
 own knowledge of Greek, he was acquainted with 
 Homer's Iliad and in this play of "Troilus and 
 Cressida," if he indeed had a hand in it, he freely 
 introduces the Homeric characters of Hector, 
 Paris, Helen, ^neas, as well as on the Greek 
 side Nestor, Agamemnon, Achilles, Menelaus, 
 Patroclus, Diomedes, and Thersites. 
 
 Thersites is made to say of himself, 
 " I am a rascal ;" 
 
 he is witty but hardly with the wit and point of 
 Shakespeare's other characters of the same stamp. 
 Achilles, instead of eating out his soul in 
 Homeric anger, is humorous, lying in his tent in 
 inactivity, jerking out his blunt invectives against 
 Agamemnon and the war. 
 
110 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Ulysses is the "foxy Ulysses." Ajax is made 
 a dancing bear. Agamemnon has an imperious 
 strut, but now and then says a strong thing, as : 
 
 " He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his own glass, 
 his own trumpet, his own chronicle ; and whatever praises 
 itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise." 
 
 On the Trojan side Hector almost alone sustains 
 his Homeric dignity and nobility. Homer puts 
 into the mouth of Hector the noble reply to 
 Polydamas in the battle with the Greeks : 
 
 " The best of omens is our country's cause." 
 (eis (Ho>vo9 opioTos, d pv via a Trepl Tras pi;?.) 
 
 Shakespeare makes Hector say to Cassandra who 
 urges him not to go into the fight : 
 
 " The end crowns all, 
 And that old common arbitrator, Time, 
 Will one day end it." 
 
 "Life every man holds dear ; but the dear man 
 Holds honour far more precious-dear than life.'* 
 
 Shakespeare's Helen does not talk like the high- 
 born dame, and Cassandra, instead of being the 
 awful and fiery prophetess, is but a " demented 
 superstitious girl." 
 
GREEK PLAYS. Ill 
 
 The play is given in the folio edition of 1609 
 with other Shakespearean plays, but was doubtless 
 made up for the stage from an earlier composition. 
 If Shakespeare wrote it or fitted it for stage per- 
 formance, it was the work of youth and, though 
 following in a measure the story of the Iliad, seems 
 to me almost like a piece of boyish fun, making 
 sport of the personages of that epic. 
 
 The love of Troilus and Cressida, the hero and 
 heroine, if they may so be called, is on a low level, 
 especially Cressida' s, who ends as a wanton in the 
 Greek camp, but who, nevertheless, is made to 
 speak words of love. The biggest and wickedest 
 rascal of all is the oily-tongued wicked old uncle 
 of Cressida, Pandarus, his ribald song of "Ha, 
 Ha, Ha!" is not equal to Shakespeare's other 
 songs. Yet in this whole uncanny farrago of evil 
 lawlessness there is now and then what may be 
 well regarded as flashes of Shakespeare's power, 
 as in the sweet familiar line : 
 
 "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." 
 
 This play comes actually in the authorized order 
 of Shakespeare's plays after "Pericles" and 
 
112 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "Timon of Athens;" it is neither comedy nor 
 tragedy, but a historic refauch of an immortal 
 story, yet Shakespeare in this play was in a cycle 
 of comedy. It never rises to the usual easy 
 flowing inspiration of the poet, but is labored and 
 dry. Even fierce Achilles, when at last aroused to 
 arms, gives mean orders to his myrmidons and 
 slays Hector when he is sitting unarmed. 
 
 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 This drama, as well as that of " Pericles, Prince 
 of Tyre," has Greece and the Orient for back- 
 ground, and, as has been already said, they are 
 classic in name only. 
 
 The story of " Timon " is found in Plutarch. 
 Timon is the millionaire of Athens; as another 
 actor in the play says of him : 
 
 " If I want gold, steal but a beggar's dog 
 And give it Timon, why, the dog coins gold." 
 
 Timon was naturally a loving, generous man, who 
 trusted his friends with unbounded confidence ; he 
 entrusts the disposition of his enormous wealth to 
 his treasurer Flavius ; he says to him : 
 
GREEK PLAYS. 113 
 
 " To think I shall lack friends ? Secure thy heart ; 
 If I would broach the vessels of my love, 
 And try the argument of hearts by borrowing, 
 Men and men's fortunes could I frankly use." 
 
 " And in some sort these wants of mine are crown'd, 
 That I account them blessings ; for by these 
 Shall I try friends ; you shall perceive how you 
 Mistake my fortunes ; I am wealthy in my friends. ' ' 
 
 So he lavishes his gold upon his friends and all 
 who servilely court him. He feasts his clients in a 
 princely manner, buys their pictures or poems, 
 whether good or bad, he makes them large loans, 
 he pours his wealth into their extended hands ; 
 but he is no Carnegie, to do real good to men with 
 his riches ; he seeks only his and their vain gratifi- 
 cation. 
 
 He finds them false to their promises, dishonest 
 sycophants, and his kindness changes to hate. He 
 seeks a solitary place by the seashore. He had 
 done with man. He utters truths pressed out of 
 his burning heart against human selfishness and 
 dishonesty. It is odd to see Shakespeare in the 
 r61e of pessimist, and it somehow does not seem to 
 8 
 
114 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 sit well on him ; yet as the interpreter of humanity 
 he regards the bad as well as the good. 
 
 The lesson of " Timon of Athens" is money. 
 Money, like life, beauty, and power, is a gift ; it is 
 not a toy to be thrown about as Timon did for his 
 own pleasure or that of his friends. It is the 
 "love of money," not money itself, which Scrip- 
 ture calls the root of all evil and which is noxious 
 and destructive ; this wholesome admonition was 
 never more needed than at the present ; the gospel 
 of money is preached from one end of the land to 
 the other ; it enters into all. Godliness is gain. 
 Public institutions are run on the narrow gauge 
 of trade. Political systems and economists base 
 their final arguments on financial prosperity. Life 
 itself is reckoned to a nicety solely in its money 
 relations. There are some fathers who send their 
 sons to the university, not to discipline and broaden 
 their minds in studies which require mental con- 
 centration, but to make them sharper for a busi- 
 ness life so as to be foremost in the race for gain. 
 It would be easy for the student, thus intel- 
 lectually equipped, when he leaves college and 
 
GREEK PLAYS. 115 
 
 enters the professional school or business life, to 
 master the practical, to conquer the difficulties, 
 and learn the methods of business, citizenship, and 
 politics ; college is the place for thorough study, 
 to lay deep the foundation principles of truth. In 
 literary studies it is better to obtain a genuine 
 knowledge of one great subject or author, such as 
 Plato or Aristotle, than all the minor classics or 
 the Greek logomachies of the Byzantine period, 
 with the exception, perhaps, of Chrysostom and 
 Origen. It is better to sit under the shadow of 
 the great oak of Dante than to wander aimlessly 
 through the decayed luxuriant garden of Italian 
 letters. It is better to know Shakespeare than a 
 hundred English authors and poets. This may be 
 combined in the university course with the pur- 
 suit of the noble advancement of modern scientific 
 thought. But a long leap has been made from 
 money to education, and above all from poor disil- 
 lusioned Timon of Athens, in whose eyes the yel- 
 low glare of gold has become sickening and deadly. 
 Money is the moral of the play. Some doubtless 
 have felt the force of Charles Lamb's rather 
 strongly expressed words : 
 
Il6 THE READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 
 
 "O money, money, how blindly thou hast been 
 worshipped, and how stupidly abused ! Thou art 
 health and liberty and strength ; and he that has 
 thee may rustle his pockets at the foul fiend." 
 
 Money is good if gotten in clean ways. This 
 brighter side of money ought by no means to be 
 lost sight of ; magnificent examples are found, and 
 
 none more than in our own country, of some rich 
 
 t 
 
 men who use their wealth or portions of it for the 
 promotion of civilization, so that these democratic 
 wealthy men cast kings and nobles behind their 
 backs, in making themselves benefactors of their 
 race. 
 
 Timon did not understand this, he retired from 
 the society of men. 
 
 Alcibiades was his friend, who when a youth 
 was a disciple of Socrates, but afterwards turned 
 out to be a libertine and traitor to his country. 
 Alcibiades, with his train of courtesans, comes also 
 to Timon to solicit gold, and Timon flings his gold 
 with curses at their heads. He retreats to the sea- 
 shore, lives in a cave, and digs his grave by the 
 sea, so that its waves would roll over his bones and 
 
GREEK PLAYS. 117 
 
 dispose of them at last in its hidden depths, as if 
 he would carry his hatred of man into^ the eternal 
 abyss. 
 
 Timon "Come not to me again : but say to Athens, 
 Timon hath made his everlasting mansion 
 Upon the beached verge of the salt flood ; 
 Who once a day with his embossed froth 
 The turbulent surge shall cover." 
 
 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 
 This delightful comedy is likewise laid in Greece, 
 but is of an airy, playful tone. The bars are let 
 down and the mind enters the enchanted fields of 
 the imagination, where love undergoes strange 
 changes, mingling human with fairy folk that sport 
 in the moonbeams, and whose light footprints 
 leave little green circles in the grass : 
 
 " To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind," 
 
 and vanish at the coming of the dawn. If much 
 of the play be made of moonbeams, they 
 "are of imagination all compact." 
 
 It is a court drama played before Queen Eliza- 
 beth in all her pomp, and probably at the marriage 
 
Il8 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 of some high personages, so that it seems to be com- 
 posed with peculiar care and elegance, with a flat- 
 tery at once delicate and loftily poetic, as in the 
 words of Oberon to Puck : 
 
 " That very time I saw, but thou couldst not, 
 Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
 Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took 
 At a fair vestal throned by the west, 
 And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
 As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : 
 But I might see Cupid's fiery shaft 
 Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, 
 And the imperial votaress passed on, 
 In maiden meditation, fancy-free. 
 Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell : 
 It fell upon a little western flower, 
 Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, 
 And maidens call it love-in-idleness. 
 Fetch me that flower ; the herb I shew'd thee once : 
 The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid 
 Will make a man or woman madly dote 
 Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
 Fetch me this herb ; and be thou here again 
 Ere the leviathan can swim a league." 
 
 The play blends mature thought with youthful 
 
GREEK PLAYS. 119 
 
 fire as in "Love's Labour's Lost," written in the 
 last years of the sixteenth century, and abounds in 
 classic allusions. 
 
 The scene is in Athens in the legendary time of 
 Theseus, and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, 
 whose figures and costumes are like those carved 
 on the friezes of the temple of Theseus and the 
 Parthenon, so that there is a touch of the Greek 
 heroic, as when Theseus says to his queen Hip- 
 polyta : 
 
 11 1 woo'd thee with my sword." 
 
 Love plays its part on the stage, a triple or four- 
 fold actor ; and the scene is Shakespeare's favorite 
 one of a vista in a forest. 
 
 The author, as we have seen, made much use 
 of Plutarch's histories. The language of this play, 
 however, is pure English, and both its poetry and 
 prose flow like music. 
 
 The fairy folk are a Shakespearean creation and 
 like no other in English or German. They are 
 superior fairies. They are made of air and moon- 
 beams, yet endowed with a bright intelligence. 
 They love and hate, they have control over certain 
 
120 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 natural forces, they ply between nature and human- 
 ity. 
 
 Obcron' But we are spirits of another sort : 
 I with the morning's love have oft made sport ; 
 And, like a forester, the groves may tread, 
 Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, 
 Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, 
 Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams." 
 
 Oberon, king of the fairies, can endure something 
 of the daylight and rejoices in nature's beauties. 
 He is a pure emanation from nature, yet with a 
 superior touch, gifted with a playful and sometimes 
 mischievous humor, though on the whole not 
 unfriendly to man. 
 
 The fairies are the ' ' scene-shifters ' ' in dreams 
 and ply between nature and humanity. Puck, the 
 business sprite, who boasts of putting " a girdle 
 round the earth in forty minutes," much prefers 
 to sport with the birds and butterflies or to nestle 
 in a bed of violets ; yet he causes immense trouble 
 to human pairs who are wandering bewildered in 
 the vast forest. 
 
 The fairies change the affections of the lovers to 
 
GREEK PI<AYS. 121 
 
 their opposites, so that the sweet-hearted Hermia 
 compares sudden transformations to the direst 
 things. 
 
 Ly sander prophesies beforehand sorrow and woe, 
 and says : 
 
 " War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, 
 Making it momentary as a sound, 
 Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ; 
 Brief as the lightning in the collied night, 
 That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, 
 And ere a man hath power to say ' Behold ' ! 
 The jaws of darkness do devour it up." 
 
 44 Ay me ! for aught that I could ever read, 
 Could ever hear by tale or history, 
 The course of true love never did run smooth." 
 
 But all comes out happily and the tricksy fairies 
 sing the marriage song. 
 
 During the nuptial festivities of Theseus and Hip- 
 polyta and the other pairs of lovers, there is intro- 
 duced a comic by-play gotten up by peasants, of 
 " Pyramus and Thisbe," which, if it accomplishes 
 nothing more, brings to notice "bully Bottom" 
 with his supreme confidence in himself, as the 
 asinine-headed sweetheart of Titania, ordering about 
 
122 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the little fays, Peas-blossom, Cobweb, Mustard- 
 seed, and is also ready to act Lion, Wall, or Mor- 
 tar ; he speaks his opinion to Theseus in the 
 Ercles vein, a rude clod, but, touched by Shake- 
 speare's genius, as individual and immortal as the 
 most important characters. Shakespeare's close 
 observation of nature and life is seen in such pas- 
 sages, where in Titania's language he describes 
 with realistic minuteness " the dreadful English 
 winter " that the poet himself had witnessed : 
 
 " Contagious fogs ; which, falling in the land, 
 Have every pelting river made so proud, 
 That they have overborne their continents : 
 The OT hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, 
 The ploughman lost his sweat ; and the green corn 
 Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard : 
 The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 
 And crows are fatted with the murrion flock ; 
 The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud ; 
 And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, 
 For lack of tread, are undistinguishable ; 
 The human mortals want their winter here ; 
 No night is now with hymn or carol blest : 
 Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, 
 Pale in her anger, washes all the air, 
 
GREEK PLAYS. 123 
 
 That rheumatic diseases do abound : 
 And thorough this distemperature we see 
 The seasons alter : hoary-headed frosts 
 Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose ; 
 And on old Hiems' chin, and icy crown 
 An ordorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 
 Is, as in mockery, set." 
 
 Shakespeare's facts, as before said, give him a 
 base for his poetry, and the ideal builds itself on 
 the actual. In the play of "The Tempest," for 
 example, how bare and grim the realism of the 
 passage, 
 
 " They hurried us aboard a bark," 
 A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigg'd 
 Nor tackle, sail, nor mast ; the very rats 
 Instinctively have quit it." 
 
 Little escapes the poet's eye. He writes just 
 what he sees and feels. He makes Theseus in this 
 play good-naturedly excuse the slips of memory 
 in the boorish minds of the actors, by referring to 
 the stage-fright of ' ' great clerks ' ' or learned men 
 who addressed him, suggested, perhaps, to the poet 
 by his recollections of Burleigh, or even, it may be, 
 of the wonderfully wise Lord Bacon : 
 
124 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 1 ' Where I have seen them shiver and look pale, 
 Make periods in the midst of sentences, 
 Throttle their practised accent in their fears, 
 And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off." 
 
 We may possibly be reminded of a fine line in 
 Keble's hymns, when we read poor distracted 
 Helena's words : 
 
 "It is not night when I do see your face." 
 
 As noticed in other plays, "A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream" is pervaded by the scent of wild 
 flowers, as in Oberon's speech to Puck : 
 
 " I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, 
 Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows ; 
 Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine," 
 "There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,' 
 Lull'd in these flowers." 
 
 To hear this sportive play on the German stage, 
 accompanied by Mendelssohn's fairy-music, is some- 
 thing not to be forgotten. 
 
 THE WIKTEE'S TALE. 
 
 This seems to be one of the latest of Shake- 
 speare's dramas, dating about the year 1611. It 
 
GREEK PLAYS. 125 
 
 consists apparently of two plays. It is pure romance, 
 audaciously breaking all bounds of time, place, and 
 circumstance ; it is full of errors of fad, as in 
 the well-known illustration of identifying Bohemia, 
 which has no coast line, with Sicily, which has one ; 
 it mixes up ancient and modern things, introduc- 
 ing then as living the Italian Renaissance painter, 
 Giulio Romano, and has a burial conducted after a 
 Christian form. It mixes up classical demi-gods, 
 such as Hercules and Theseus, with Christian 
 saints. 
 
 Its style is finished, but somewhat studied and 
 involved, yet it has a great charm. Its morality is 
 pure and lofty, and its end is joyous and serene ; as 
 I have quoted already from this play in relation to 
 Shakespeare's conception of Nature and Art, I will 
 not dwell upon this theme. 
 
 It was written to be acted before the Court of 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 There could be no more enjoyable reading, about 
 the fireside of a stormy winter's night, when tem- 
 pestuous blasts of wind and snow dash against the 
 windows, than this tale, which is purely of the 
 
126 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 imagination and belongs to the Shakespearean 
 beginning of the English romantic school of litera- 
 ture. * 
 
 The play was published in the first folio of 
 Shakespeare's works and it has been called the last 
 of his comedies, but was written in the fullness of 
 his strength. The story seems to have sprung 
 from a mass of fables and ' ' extant stories ' ' in the 
 Elizabethan times, with which the people amused 
 their leisure hours ; but what Shakespeare touched 
 carried with it something real and vital. It is also 
 of the "Middle Style" or a mingling of higher 
 drama with common life and the language of the 
 people. 
 
 " The Winter's Tale" is in one sense comedy, 
 dealing with human woes and joys. It is pure 
 fiction, but in regard to the Bohemian sea-coast, 
 Greene, a geographer contemporary with Shake- 
 speare, affirms the same fact on his map. This 
 may show how little the country of Bohemia was 
 known of in England at that time, though it 
 appears incredible from the fact that but a century 
 and a half before, John Huss, the Bohemian re- 
 
GREEK PLAYS. 127 
 
 former, was burned, and Shakespeare may have 
 alluded to this in the line : 
 
 It is an heretic that makes the fire." 
 
 But is not another explanation admissible, that, 
 in the freedom of poetic license, Shakespeare, to 
 add romance to his tale, takes the name of Bohemia, 
 as good as any other strange land, to be that of a 
 distant and almost unknown country ? 
 
 What mattered it to the poet what name of 
 country he employed ? 
 
 Imogen in " Cymbeline " was the typical daugh- 
 ter, so Hermione was the typical wife. Hermione 
 is the central character of " The Winter's Tale," 
 her constancy, patience, unfailing love, and stead- 
 fast faith, burning unquenchably bright in the 
 most trying conditions. 
 
 King I^eontes was a jealous tyrant, who wrongs 
 his wife, but in his youth he loved her. The 
 words of Polixenes, King of Bohemia, which he 
 applied to Leontes, might be the origin of the 
 words which has been bestowed on Shelley of an 
 "eternal child:" 
 
128 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Polixenes ' ' We were, fair queen, 
 Two lads that thought there was no more behind, 
 But such a day to-morrow as to-day, 
 And to be boy eternal." 
 
 The Chorus, Time, sweeps away the lapse of 
 years and with his scythe cuts the drama into two 
 parts, and in the second introduces Perdita, who 
 from a babe in the wilderness, exposed to death, 
 grows up 
 
 " A Shepherd's daughter " 
 
 in her blooming womanhood in Bohemia, and her 
 maidenly words are characteristically simple, pure, 
 and wise. 
 
 The play is brought back again to comedy by 
 the rogue Autolycus, who changes his clothes, 
 but not his vagabondish character ; he sings : 
 
 *' Jog on jog on the foot-path way, 
 
 And merrily hent the stile-a : 
 A merry heart goes all the day, 
 Your sad tires in a mile-a." 
 
 There is no more beautiful scene than Hermione's 
 awakening, when the sculptor's marble melts into 
 life, and the power of art is seen to be triumphant. 
 
GREEK PLAYS. 
 
 I2 9 
 
 PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE. 
 
 The play of "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," may be 
 symbolized as a white lily, growing in the black 
 mud of a swamp. 
 
 The pure spirit of the heroine, who is perhaps its 
 principal character, saves the drama from corrup- 
 tion and exhales the sweetness of innocence. 
 
 The drama is undoubtedly Shakespeare's in point 
 and passages, but not probably in its whole web 
 and woof. The time of its authorship is judged to 
 be 1609. 
 
 It also contravenes all classical rules ; the reader 
 is whisked from Antioch to Tyre, then to Ephesus, 
 Tarsus, and Mitylene, as by magic bounds. The 
 s.tyle is an even steady pace, though it passes 
 through deep valleys of shame and humiliation. 
 Yet its end is happy and its moral tone, on the 
 whole, rises about its foul corruption. 
 
 It is Greek in one respect, it has a Chorus ; oddly 
 enough it is English in the fact that the Chorus is 
 none other than " ancient Gower." 
 
 " To sing a song that old was sung, 
 From ashes ancient Gower is come." 
 9 
 
130 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 
 
 ANDRONICUS. 
 
 This is the poorest of what I have denominated 
 the Roman tragedies, but I will mention it first. 
 In this play we reach the most disputable of 
 Shakespeare's dramas. 
 
 If Shakespeare indeed composed it, his part was 
 like a graft on a crabbed tree, or it may be he 
 wrote it originally in his youthful days to make 
 his audience sup full on horrors, as was the fashion 
 of the times. His own genius was so strong that 
 he comprehended all the elements and human con- 
 ditions of passions. 
 
 He who could stand in sunshine on the clear 
 mountain summit commercing with the skies could 
 descend into the poisonous valley where loathsome 
 things grow and move. 
 
 In this play the scene is laid in Rome, with the 
 forum in the background, yet there is nothing of 
 antique Roman nobleness, but a most degenerate 
 baseness of the decline of the empire. The charac- 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 131 
 
 ters are not even historic, nor are they grand. 
 The emperor, Saturninus, is weak; the empress, 
 Tamora, is a foul fiend. 
 
 Titus Andronicus boasts of his warlike achieve- 
 ments, but shows no vigor in an emergency. 
 The younger men are lewd fellows ; poor Lavinia 
 with her bleeding stumps of arms somehow is not 
 pathetic. The dusky Aaron is a devil incarnate ; 
 only Lucius Andronicus shows manliness, and 
 proves that Shakespeare was a democrat in the 
 true sense of that word, recognizing the rights and 
 freedom of the people. 
 
 The play is barbarous, bloody, and disgusting. 
 Were it not for some delicate similes of flowers, 
 birds, and nature, in which the poet is seen, it 
 would be a wide waste of terrible crime. 
 
 The author speaks of ' ' popish tricks ' ' and 
 "God and St. Stephen " in these old Roman days, 
 yet his knowledge discriminating between the 
 Greek and Roman gods and his frequent allusions 
 to Ovid's metamorphoses, and quotations from 
 Virgil and Horace, show a familiarity with these 
 Latin authors. 
 
132 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 The recurrence of Shakespearean phrases is to 
 be observed, as in the words : 
 
 " She is a woman, therefore may be wooed, 
 She is a woman, therefore may be won," 
 
 which brings to mind the wooing scene in Richard 
 III. 
 
 I have come myself to believe in the Shake- 
 spearean authorship of this play, as bearing inter- 
 nal and external proof of this. 
 
 It has as good a claim as any in this respect. 
 It appeared in the quarto of 1600 under the title 
 1 ' The Lamentable Roman Tragedy of Titus 
 Andronicus. ' ' In London it was printed for Edward 
 White in company with other undoubted Shake- 
 spearean dramas, but it was evidently written in no 
 high mood of thought. 
 
 CORIOLAOTS. 
 
 We come in this play to the genuine Roman of 
 the olden time, hard and grand, where Shake- 
 speare's genius seems to find a more sympathetic 
 and firm ground ; but Shakespeare, as has been 
 more than once said, was at home in humanity, 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 133 
 
 and created new and lasting types. His clown is 
 always a ' ' clown/ ' his hero, ' ' a hero ; " the fighter 
 is set before us in Roman form both legendary 
 and historic. Coriolanus was a precursor of that 
 inflexible valor which led* Rome to the conquest of 
 the world. 
 
 The little town, Roma, seated on her seven hills, 
 often assailed and sometimes captured, was never 
 annihilated, and itself finally overcame the fierce 
 Volsci and Etruscans represented in the play, and 
 became the ruling power of Italy and of the world. 
 It was of the period when a Roman demos had 
 begun to make its appearance, and the majestic 
 shadow also of the Roman mother is seen. 
 
 Coriolanus may never have done the marvelous 
 warlike deeds, except in imagination, but the 
 lesson of the tragedy is Pride, a passion working 
 in a brave and haughty nature, invading and over- 
 throwing its noble qualities, creating that unfor- 
 giving spirit which brought about a tragic end. 
 
 The play probably belongs to the beginning of 
 the 1 7th century, and the later period of Shake- 
 speare's life. It would seem to have been thrown 
 
134 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 off rapidly, inspired by the story in "Plutarch's 
 Histories," but putting new life into prosaic details. 
 Coriolanus is a Roman Achilles, a great figure, 
 but without the beauty of the Greek. The only 
 soft spot in his hard nature is his love for his 
 mother, Volumnia, by whose entreaties and those 
 of his wife, Virgilia, he magnanimously, in the first 
 instance, spares Rome ; yet he is no politician 
 stooping to little things, but strives to ingratiate 
 himself with the people, to unify them under his 
 leadership. He, like Achilles, seems to do the 
 fighting, and to make the whole host of his ene- 
 mies flee before him. He defends his patrician 
 views with rough and haughty force, but in the 
 political field he fails to attain popularity, as is 
 readily seen in his address to the people : 
 
 Coriolanus "The people are abused ; set on. 
 
 This paltering 
 
 Becomes not Rome ; nor has Coriolanus 
 Deserved this so dishonour'd rub, laid falsely 
 I' the plain way of his merit." 
 
 "Tell me of corn ! 
 
 This was my speech, and I will speak 't again " 
 " Now, as I live, I will. My nobler friends, 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 135 
 
 I crave their pardons : 
 
 For the mutable, rank-scented many, let them 
 Regard me as I do not flatter, and 
 Therein behold themselves : I say again, 
 In soothing them, we flourish 'gainst our senate 
 The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, [ter'd, 
 
 Which we ourselves have plough'd for, sow'd and seat- 
 By mingling them with us, the honour'd number ; 
 Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that 
 Which they have given to beggars. 
 
 "How! no more! 
 As for my country I have shed my blood," 
 
 " By Jove, 'twould be my mind ! " 
 
 " Be not as common fools : " 
 1 They chose their magistrate ; 
 And such a one as he, who puts his ' shall,' 
 His popular ' shall,' against a graver bench 
 Than ever frown'd in Greece. By Jove himself, 
 It makes the consuls base ! " 
 
 The pathetic point of the drama is where Corio- 
 lanus stands a suppliant in the market place before 
 the altar of the Volsci, at Corioli, not in the brag- 
 gadocio style, when he proclaims himself : 
 
 11 My name is Caius Marcius," 
 'My surname, Coriolanus ; " 
 
136 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 grim words to his hearers, but not boastful. Yet 
 he breaks out once in a flame, when the Volscian 
 General, Aufidius, who hates him for his superior- 
 ity in warlike fame, called him a boy : 
 
 " Cut me to pieces, Volsces ; men and lads, 
 Stain all your edges on me. ' Boy ! ' false hound ! 
 If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there, 
 That, like an eagle in a dove-cote, I 
 Flutter'd your Volscians in Corioli ; 
 Alone I did it ' Boy ! * " 
 
 Old Aufidius, his chief foe, again says of him : 
 "Thy country's strength and weakness." 
 
 Weakness, indeed, because selfish. 
 
 Coriolanus fell under many blows. The sacred 
 Alban Mount and the sunny hilltops still are 
 there under the clear blue sky of Italy, where 
 Corioli and the ancient Latin cities stood ; but the 
 worshipers and fighters who regarded Rome as 
 their mightiest foe are now but silent shadows. 
 
 JULIUS CJESAB. 
 
 We have at last reached historic ground, but as 
 has been already suggested, Shakespeare, for his 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 137 
 
 own purposes, sometimes swerves from history, 
 though sti^l true to life, and in this noble tragedy 
 Brutus is evidently his hero. In such a stern, 
 pure character and lover of his country as Brutus 
 was, his killing of Caesar was an act of savage 
 grandeur and untaught paganism he drew from 
 deep instincts of native self-sacrifice wholly un- 
 trained by the higher law of Christianity. It is 
 strange after so long a time of the teaching of 
 Christianity, when almost the whole world has 
 been reached by its mild divine truths, that even 
 in Christian nations the pagan belief of Brutus 
 should be re-erected into a kind of religion ; what 
 is violent cannot last. It seems sometimes as if 
 permanent peace made progress by occasional re- 
 trogression ; in zigzags, not in straight lines, that 
 history repeats itself, and that even in Christian 
 lands pagan ideas should be revived as if there had 
 been no advance in civilization. Caesar's greatness 
 is recognized in this and other plays his vast 
 organizing ability and warlike, conquering energy 
 but in a spiritual sense he is not the adorable, 
 nor is he Shakespeare's own highest conception of 
 
138 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 greatness. He has been held to be the greatest 
 man the world has ever seen in force of mind and 
 will, perhaps so yet in the highest traits of moral 
 character, like Napoleon, who comes nearest to 
 him, he fails. He is the embodiment of power, 
 which men worship. It is true, if he had lived 
 longer he might have done even more as a con- 
 structor of a broad system of government, a law- 
 giver, a patron of letters, a political builder of 
 empire, which would have become world-wide, as 
 the world then was. To the last he was an ambi- 
 tious man, working for self and power, the origina- 
 tor of Caesarism, whose portentous shadow has 
 since then overspread the world and entered every 
 system political, moral, and even religious. It 
 was a kingdom of force opposed to that of right- 
 eousness. Caesar was a subject worthy of Shake- 
 speare's genius ; he took hold of it in a simple, 
 natural way. He is not taken off his feet by the 
 greatness of his subject, nor does he create a demi- 
 god. 
 
 Caesar crushed the factions of Sulla, Caius 
 Marius, and the worthier contention of Pompey, 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 139 
 
 and gathered the reins of power into his own hand. 
 He looked to the rulership of all hence, the 
 Roman empire he drove over freedom and the 
 popular rights. There was a call for the con- 
 spiracy of Brutus in the fact of Caesar's ambition. 
 Brutus saw in it that which menaced liberty, 
 crushing the republic. Doubtless Caesar's views 
 were broad, and his system of government won- 
 derfully calculated for the conquest and unification 
 of the nations ; himself, in one sense, was the begin- 
 ning of Roman civilization in law, political science, 
 art, and letters. 
 
 The excuse for absolutism in the conception of 
 a more orderly form of government was proved in 
 the line of most of his successors to be unjust and 
 detestable Caesarism means war, righteousness 
 means peace. Shakespeare seemed to have had a 
 deep conception of this. In his poetic eye he saw 
 a day in old Rome, the capitol, the senate, the 
 forum, the splendid Julian Basilica, filled with 
 officers and clients, the narrow streets tramped by 
 many feet, and the market places also filled with 
 crowds discussing political affairs, and the great 
 
140 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 turn in the tide of them. He saw, too, the scene 
 of Brutus and Mark Antony's speeches over the 
 dead body of Caesar, now so familiarly declaimed 
 by schoolboys, but is this an argument against 
 them ? What other speeches of ancient or modern 
 times are like these for boys to declaim? They 
 are models of forcible address, surpassing the 
 speeches of Cicero, and the ages have caught 
 them up. 
 
 Shakespeare does not entirely follow Plutarch's 
 life of Csesar ; he had his own interpretation of the 
 characters of Caesar and Brutus ; he came into the 
 wide field of true dramatic motive. These persons 
 become men instead of the forms and opinions of 
 historians and essayists. Evidently the life of 
 Caesar made a deep impression on Shakespeare, as 
 is instanced in other plays, calling him, for ex- 
 ample in "Hamlet," "Mighty Csesar," yet he 
 makes Brutus, who truly loved Caesar, say : 
 " Caesar was ambitious." 
 
 Brutus was afraid of Caesar's ambition. He knew 
 Caesar's power and feared for freedom. The scene 
 of the conspirators' plot in Brutus' s house, with 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 141 
 
 closed doors, and shadows, and the critical discus- 
 sion of the characters of those to be chosen or 
 omitted, is deeply impressive. The speeches of 
 Brutus, Mark Antony, and Cassius, after the mur- 
 der in the forum, marvelously differentiated, are 
 characteristic. We might imagine Brutus ascend- 
 ing the rostrum in simple dignity, wrapped in his 
 toga, and without a gesture. He is laconic, frank, 
 and stately, but with loftier ideas than the rest 
 the highest pagan, though not Christian, ideas. 
 
 Brutus " If there be any in this assembly, any dear 
 friend of Caesar's, to him I say that Brutus' love to Caesar 
 was no less than his. If then that friend demand why 
 Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer : not that I 
 loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you 
 rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar 
 were dead, to live all freemen ? As Caesar loved me, I weep 
 for him ; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it ; as he was 
 valiant, I honour him ; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. 
 There is tears for his love ; joy for his fortune ; honour for 
 his valour ; and death for his ambition. Who is here so 
 base that would be a bondman ? If any, speak ; for him 
 have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a 
 Roman ? If any, speak ; for him have I offended. Who is 
 
142 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 here so vile that will not love his country ? If any, speak ; 
 for him have I offended ? I pause for a reply." 
 
 Cassius' speech is plausible and political, seeking 
 to lower the estimation of "the great Caesar," but 
 Mark Antony's reveals the highest art of elo- 
 quence. He leads his audience along on one way, 
 winningly pathetic and masterful. Then he turns 
 with the fury of hot passion, carrying all like a 
 lava stream before him. From thinly concealed 
 sarcasm he suddenly shows his deeper design to 
 stir the people to rise in rebellion : 
 
 Antony "But yesterday the word of Caesar might 
 Have stood against the world : now lies he the r e, 
 And none so poor to do him reverence. 
 
 masters, if I were disposed to stir 
 Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, 
 
 1 should do Brutus wrong and Cassius wrong, 
 Who, you all know, are honourable men : 
 
 I will not do them wrong ; I rather choose 
 To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, 
 Than I will wrong such honourable men." 
 " I am no orator, as Brutus is ; 
 But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, 
 That love my friend ; and that they know full well 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 143 
 
 That gave me public leave to speak of him : 
 
 For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, 
 
 Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, 
 
 To stir men's blood : I only speak right on ; 
 
 I tell you that which you yourselves do know ; [mouths, 
 
 Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor dumb 
 
 And bid them speak for me : for were I Brutus, 
 
 And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony 
 
 Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue 
 
 In every wound of Caesar's, that should move 
 
 The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny." 
 
 The weird death of Brutus at Philippi ends the 
 tragedy : 
 
 " For Brutus only overcame himself." 
 
 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 
 
 "Antony and Cleopatra" is great because the 
 characters are great. It is a magnificent drama, 
 and the consistency of the character of Antony 
 throughout these, the last Roman plays ' ' Julius 
 Caesar" and " Antony and Cleopatra, " is marvel- 
 ous in the qualities of Antony, the most brilliant 
 of the triumvirate of Rome. The same moving 
 orator, the victorious general at Philippi, the hus- 
 
144 TH E READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 band of Octavia, threw away all for his love of 
 Cleopatra, but with the exception of his infatuated 
 words of passion, he still is noble and magnani- 
 mous. 
 
 Antony cast aside duty and power for pleasure, 
 and did it deliberately ; but he fell on his sword, 
 Roman-like, at the last. He walks the scene 
 right royally ; he was strong, but not so strong in 
 wicked will as Cleopatra. She was a flower of 
 wondrous beauty sprung from the slime of the 
 Nile, entrancing and mysterious. Antony's love 
 for her was the rift in the towering cliff that finally 
 brought it to ruins. Antony was the same man 
 who made the fiery speech over Caesar's dead 
 body, rousing the Roman people, turning the 
 tide against the revolutionists, and really setting 
 forth the first conception of the Roman empire. 
 Antony knows himself with utmost perspicacity, 
 and confesses his moral weakness. He also has 
 imagination that sees beneath the surface of things 
 to the true motives of actions. 
 
 The style of the play is simple and vigorous ; it 
 seems to have mingled the Saxon naturalness and 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 145 
 
 the I^atin terseness of expression. In all this, 
 Shakespeare's poetic genius vitalizes the common- 
 place. Such sentences as these are illustrative of 
 the style of this martial play, as far as it has to do 
 with the Roman soldier and politician. 
 Antony speaks of Octavius : 
 
 " He shall to Parthia. Be it art or hap, 
 He hath spoken true ; the very dice obey him, 
 And in our sports my better cunning faints 
 Under his chance ; if we draw lots, he speeds ; 
 His cocks do win the battle still of mine 
 When it is all to naught, and his quails ever 
 Beat mine, in hoofed at odds, I will to Egypt : 
 And though I make this marriage for my peace, 
 I' the east my pleasure lies." 
 
 Antony, a keen observer, mixes scientific fact 
 with poetry : 
 
 ^4&wy "Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o' 
 
 the Nile 
 
 By certain scales i' the pyramid ; they know, 
 By the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth 
 Or foison follow : the higher Nilus swells, 
 The more it promises : as it ebbs, the seedsman 
 Upon the slime and ooze scatters the grain, 
 
 And shortly comes to harvest." 
 10 
 
146 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Antony's character is set forth by Agrippa when 
 in Rome, and by a rude Roman soldier : 
 
 Agrippa " Tis a noble Lepidus," 
 
 Enobarbvs " A very fine one : O, how he loves Caesar ! " 
 
 Agr. " Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony ! " 
 
 Eno. " Caesar? why, he's the Jupiter of men." 
 
 Agr." What's Antony ? the god of Jupiter." 
 
 Eno. " Spake you of Caesar ? How ! the nonpareil ! " 
 
 Agr. O, Antony ! O thou Arabian bird ! " 
 
 Eno. "Would you praise Caesar, say 'Caesar;' go no 
 
 further." 
 Agr." Indeed, he plied them both with excellent 
 
 praises." 
 Agrippa "Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark 
 
 Antony :" 
 Enobarbus "But he loves Caesar best; yet he loves 
 
 Antony : 
 
 Ho ! hearts, tongues, figures, scribes, bards, poets, cannot 
 Think, speak, cast, write, sing, number ho ! 
 His love to Antony. But as for Caesar, 
 Kneel down, kneel down, and wonder." 
 
 Antony refers, lover-like, to Cleopatra : 
 
 " The April's in her eyes : it is love's spring, 
 And these the showers to bring it on. Be cheerful." 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 147 
 
 Agrippa brings his testimony as to Antony's 
 emotional nature : 
 
 Agr. (aside to Eno.) "Why, Enobarbus, 
 When Antony found Julius Caesar dead, 
 He cried almost to roaring ; and he wept 
 When at Philippi he found Brutus slain." 
 
 Caesar himself says to Antony : 
 
 ' ' Adieu ; be happy ! 
 
 Lepidus Let all the number of the stars give light 
 To thy fair way ! " 
 
 Ccesar " You praise yourself 
 
 By laying defects of judgment to me ; but 
 You patched up your excuses." 
 
 But how simple, graceful, and fitting are these 
 words : 
 
 Agr. " To hold you in perpetual amity, 
 To make you brothers and to knit your hearts 
 With an unslipping knot, take Antony 
 Octavia to his wife ; whose beauty claims 
 No worse a husband than the best of men ; 
 Whose virtues and whose general graces speak 
 That which none else can utter. By this marriage 
 All little jealousies which now seem great, 
 And all great fears which now impart their dangers, 
 Would then be nothing : truths would be tales, 
 
148 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Where now half tales be truths : her love to both 
 Would each to other and all loves to both 
 Draw after her." 
 
 The author breaks through the course of this 
 martial play in a picture of inimitable beauty and 
 effulgence, in which the galley bearing Cleopatra 
 burns on the mirroring bosom of the Orontes : 
 
 Eno." I will tell you. 
 
 The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, 
 Burn'd on the water ; the poop was beaten gold ; 
 Purple the sails, and so perfumed that [silver, 
 
 The winds were lovesick with them ; the oars were 
 Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke and made 
 The water which they beat to follow faster, 
 As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, 
 It beggar'd all description : she did lie 
 In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue, 
 O'er-picturing that Venus where we see 
 The fancy outwork nature : on each side her 
 Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, 
 With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem 
 To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, 
 And what they undid did." 
 
 The description of this beautiful sorceress min- 
 gles the intellectual element with the material. 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 149 
 
 In the following passages there is a simple but 
 perfectly expressed, though subtle, thought : 
 
 Menas " I think the policy of that purpose made 
 more in the marriage than the love of the parties." 
 
 Eno. "I see men's judgments are 
 A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward 
 Do draw the inward quality after them, 
 To suffer all alike." 
 
 But the poet represents Antony as a hero ; 
 invincible by land, yet not so strong at sea ; this 
 failure Caesar took advantage of. Enobarbus says 
 to Antony : 
 
 Eno." Most worthy, sir, you therein throw away 
 The absolute soldiership you have by land, 
 Distract your army, which doth most consist 
 Of war-marked footmen, leave unexecuted 
 Your own renowned knowledge, quite forego 
 The way which promises assurance, and 
 Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard, 
 From firm security." 
 Antony" How now, worthy soldier ? " 
 Soldier" O noble emperor, do not fight by sea : 
 Trust not to rotten planks. Do you misdoubt 
 This sword and these my wounds ? Let the Egyptians 
 And the Phoenicians go a-ducking : we 
 
150 THE READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Have used to conquer, standing on the earth 
 And fighting foot to foot." 
 
 Eno. " Antony only, that would make his will 
 Lord of his reason. What though you fled 
 From that great face of war, whose several ranges 
 Frighted each other, why should he follow ? 
 The itch of his affection should not then 
 Have nick'd his captainship : at such a point, 
 When half to half the world opposed, he being 
 The mered question ; 'twas a shame no less 
 Than was his loss, to course your flying flags 
 And leave his navy gazing." 
 
 As before indicated, the unity of Antony's char- 
 acter is surprisingly kept throughout from begin- 
 ning to end Shakespeare has the same conception 
 of it. He makes its subjective features immortal, 
 torus et teres. 
 
 Plutarch's rough sketch of Antony has been 
 filled out and transformed by the dramatist, mak- 
 ing a complex character, kept down by an enslave- 
 ment to his lower nature that forbids its rising to a 
 lofty height except at intervals. 
 
 There is the warrior in gleaming arms, driving 
 back, single handed, the advancing enemy, and 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 151 
 
 there is the weak Antony, captured by a woman's 
 wiles. Nevertheless, Shakespeare has lifted him 
 above ordinary men, as a leader, one of the bril- 
 liant heroes of the world, but powerless through 
 unworthy passion. 
 
 Cleopatra is set before us as a queenly spirit ; 
 she does love Antony as much as such a hard, sel- 
 fish nature could love anything out of itself. Some 
 of her haughty words are : 
 
 Cleopatra "These hands do lack nobility, that 
 
 they strike 
 
 A meaner than myself ; since I myself 
 Have given myself the cause." 
 
 11 Most kind messenger, 
 Say to great Caesar this : in deputation 
 I kiss his conquering hand ; tell him, I'm prompt 
 To lay my crown at's feet, and there to kneel : 
 Tell him, from his all-obeying breath I hear 
 The doom of Egypt." 
 
 1 ' Noblest of men, woo't die ? 
 Hast thou no care of me ? shall I abide 
 In this dull world, which in thy absence is 
 No better than a sty ? O, see, my women, 
 The crown of the earth doth melt. My Lord ! 
 
152 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 O, wither'd is the garland of the war, 
 The soldier's pole is fall'n : young boys and girls 
 Are level now with men ; the odds is gone, 
 And there is nothing left remarkable 
 Beneath the visiting moon." 
 
 " No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded 
 By such poor passion as the maid that milks 
 And does the meanest chares. It were for me 
 To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods, 
 To tell them that this world did equal theirs 
 All's but naught ;" 
 
 " Patience is sottish, and impatience does 
 Become a dog that's mad : then is it sin 
 To rush into the secret house of death, 
 Ere death dare come to us ? How do you, women ? 
 What, what ! good cheer ! Why, how now, Charmain ! 
 My noble girls ! Ah, women, women, look, 
 Our lamp is spent, it's out ! Good sirs, take heart ; 
 We'll bury him ; and then, what's brave, what's noble, 
 Let's do it after the high Roman fashion, 
 And make death proud to take us. Come, away : 
 This case of that huge spirit now is cold : 
 Ah, women, women ! Come : we have no friend 
 But resolution and the briefest end." 
 
 "Where art thou, death? 
 Come hither, come ! come, come, and take a queen 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 153 
 
 With many babes and beggars ! " 
 " Sir, I will eat no meat, I'll not drink, sir ; 
 If idle talk will once be necessary, 
 I'll not sleep neither : this mortal house I'll nun, 
 Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I 
 Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court, 
 Nor once be chastised with the sober eye 
 Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up, 
 And show me to the shouting varletry 
 Of censuring Rome ? Rather a ditch in Egypt 
 Be gentle grave unto me ! rather on Nile's mud 
 Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies 
 Blow me into abhorring ! rather make 
 My country's high pyramids my gibbet, 
 And hang me up in chains." 
 " But when he meant to quail and shake the orb ; 
 
 He was as rattling thunder." 
 " Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits 
 Through the ashes of my chance : wert thou a man, 
 Thou wouldst have mercy on me." 
 
 Then comes Antony, convulsed by the false 
 report of Cleopatra's death which she had sent. 
 He says to Eros : 
 
 Antony "Since Cleopatra died 
 
 I have lived in such dishonour that the gods 
 
154 THB READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Detest my baseness. I, that with my sword 
 
 Quarter'd the world, and o'er green Neptune's back 
 
 With ships made cities, condemn myself to lack 
 
 The courage of a woman ; less noble minded 
 
 Than she which by her death our Caesar tells 
 
 I am conqueror of myself. ' Thou are sworn, Eros,' 
 
 That, when the exigent should come which now 
 
 Is come indeed when I should see behind me 
 
 The inevitable prosecution of 
 
 Disgrace and horror, that, on my command, 
 
 Thou then would'st kill me : do't ; the time is come. 
 
 Thou strik'st not me, 'tis Caesar thou defeat'st 
 
 Put colour in thy cheek." 
 
 Eros " My dear master, 
 
 My captain, and my emperor, let me say, 
 Before I strike this bloody stroke, farewell ! " 
 ' Why, there then ; thus I do escape the sorrow 
 
 Of Antony's death." 
 
 (kills himself) 
 
 (Antony falls on his sword) 
 Antony " Peace ! 
 
 Not Caesar's valour hath o'erthrown Antony, 
 But Antony's hath triumph 'd on itself." 
 
 " The miserable change now at my end 
 Lament nor sorrow at ; but please your thoughts 
 In feeding them with those my former fortunes, 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDIES. 155 
 
 Wherein I lived, the greatest prince of the world, 
 The noblest, and do now not basely die, 
 Nor cowardly put off my helmet to 
 My countrymen, a Roman by a Roman 
 Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going ; 
 I can no more." 
 
 Then Caesar, entering the room, says : 
 
 Ccssar " O, Antony ! 
 
 I have follow'd thee to this. But we do lance 
 Diseases in our bodies : I must perforce 
 Have shown to thee such a declining day, 
 Or look'd on thine ; we could not stall together 
 In the whole world : but yet let me lament, 
 With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts, 
 That thou, my brother, my competitor 
 In top of all design, my mate in empire, 
 Friend and companion in the front of war, 
 The arm of mine own body and the heart 
 Where mine his thoughts did kindle, that our stars 
 Unreconcilable should divide 
 Our equalness to this. Hear me, good friends." 
 
 Cleopatra is a wonder of wonders she is Greek, 
 not Egyptian. Her portrait on the walls of the 
 Temple of Denderah show an Egyptian artist's 
 
156 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 attempt to depict Greek beauty under an Egyptian 
 type, but not very successfully. Shakespeare, it 
 is likely, never had seen a woman just like her in 
 all points, and no one else has before or since, but 
 he made up her varied traits into a whole from 
 imagination. There are words in this play which 
 I could quote, but which, I would almost say, I 
 dare not, for it is Shakespeare alone who could use 
 them. His powerful genius is like a winged Mer- 
 cury that flies lightly over the abyss. Cleopatra's 
 beauty, strength of will, and surpassingly bright 
 intelligence make her the romantic and even his- 
 toric symbol to the world of a temptress to evil. 
 Shakespeare has mainly created this. She destroys 
 whatever stands in her ruthless and ruinous path. 
 She exults in her wicked conquest of a noble char- 
 acter. 
 
 Her own imaginary sepulchre on the banks of 
 the Nile, to herself and Antony, grand and gor- 
 geous, casts its shadow with the pyramids and the 
 Sphinx on the river where the white sails appear 
 and disappear like spectres. 
 
 "Antony, Antony, Antony," 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. 157 
 
 was not a cry of affection which lasts after death, 
 but the loss of an earthly lover. 
 
 She was Egypt's proud queen still, and killed 
 herself, not from love to share death with Antony, 
 but because she would not suffer herself to be 
 made a Roman spectacle in Caesar's triumph. 
 
 ITALIAN PLAYS. 
 
 TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 
 
 The scene of the "Two Gentlemen of Verona " 
 is laid for the most part in Verona with its ancient 
 amphitheatre, its bridges, and the stately palace of 
 Can Grande Scala, above all its memories of Dante 
 and those illustrious exiles who sought here a 
 home. 
 
 It is an Italian love story, and Valentine talks 
 with the free vigor of a young man, gay measure 
 and the caprices of the master passion, in which 
 woman plays a gentle and refined part. The old 
 Elizabethan drama, like the plays of ^Sschylus 
 and Sophocles, needs the stage to set it off, and 
 living persons to carry out its action. The Eliza- 
 
158 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 bethan drama is at the present day displaced by 
 the novel, but whether the novel teaches us man- 
 ners and morals, and influences these as strongly 
 as the drama, is a question. Certainly the descrip- 
 tion of nature in the novel is often artificial, con- 
 ventional, and empty, compared with the lively 
 dialogue of real persons, the nimble wit, and the 
 rounded action awakening poetic emotion. This 
 is hardly made up by the critical analysis of char- 
 acter in the novel. Assuredly nothing in succeed- 
 ing fictitious literature has left such a vivid 
 impression of personality as Rosalind, Portia, Fal- 
 staff, and Hamlet in the Shakespearean drama. 
 They live and will ever live ; on the stage or in the 
 closet they are equally vivid. 
 
 In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" the dia- 
 logue is graceful, easy and natural, with wonder- 
 ful rhythm and poetic smoothness. Valentine 
 says : 
 
 " Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits." 
 
 Julia, beloved of Proteus, enters into an encounter 
 with her smart- witted waiting woman, Lucetta, 
 and says : 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. 159 
 
 Julia ' ' Your reason ? ' ' 
 
 Lucetta " I have no other but a woman's reason ; 
 
 I think him so, because I think him so." 
 
 Proteus is the more romantic and ardent of the 
 two, and Valentine the more worldly, though a 
 little more inclined to coarseness ; but there is a 
 good deal in the play that makes it a drama of 
 friendship. Shakespeare's own youth and friend- 
 ship may be interwoven in it, though in modern 
 fiction the author might draw his facts from the 
 stock exchange. 
 
 Romance retires with shy step ; the past has van- 
 ished ; the actor is the newspaper chronicler, not 
 the poet. But time changes, the age has grown 
 scientific and prosaic, actual fact and the primitive 
 emotions in poetry have vanished, and even Tenny- 
 son cannot bring them back. 
 
 The two gentlemen of Verona talk to each other 
 in an easy, natural way. Valentine tries to per- 
 suade his friend to travel and see the world. 
 They were true friends ; they confided their deep- 
 est secrets to one another ; they aided each other's 
 schemes in peace or war. They overlooked petty 
 
160 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 differences of opinion ; but Proteus was the more 
 ardent lover and had the most difficult road to 
 travel to escape on account of the temper and rank 
 of the Duke of Milan, Silvia's father. 
 
 Proteus felt more keenly the changes and disap- 
 pointments of love's contest. He says, fiery and 
 poetic: 
 
 " O, how this spring of love resembleth 
 The uncertain glory of an April day, 
 Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, 
 And by and by a cloud takes all away." 
 
 In contrast to this flight, Speed, Valentine's 
 man, says : 
 
 "Though the chameleon Love can feed on the air, I am 
 one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have 
 it." 
 
 Launce, a shy dog, makes pure comedy : 
 
 "I think Crab my dog be the sourest-natured dog that 
 lives : my mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister 
 crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and 
 all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel - 
 hearted cur shed one tear : he is a stone, a very pebble 
 stone, and has no more oitv in him than a doe." 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. l6l 
 
 Speed, the true wag, describing his master Val- 
 entine's signs of love, says : 
 
 Valentine " Why, how know you that I am in love ? " 
 Speed "Marry, by these special marks : first, you have 
 learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a mal- 
 content ; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast ; to 
 walk alone, like one that had the pestilence ; to sigh, like 
 a school-boy that had lost his A B C ; to weep, like a young 
 wench that had buried her grandam ; to fast, like one that 
 takes diet ; to watch, like one that fears robbing ; to speak 
 puling, like a beggar at Hallowmass. You were wont, when 
 you laughed, to crow like a cock ; when you walked, to 
 walk like one of the lions ; when you fasted, it was pres- 
 ently after dinner ; when you looked sadly, it was for want 
 of money : and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, 
 that, when I look on you, I can hardly think you my 
 master. " 
 
 But after all, the love of Valentine was more 
 true than that of Proteus, and he perhaps the 
 nobler gentleman. Carried away by the new 
 passion for Silvia, Proteus, like his name, changes 
 his love, while Julia remains loyal to him and 
 speaks a soul full of poetic calm : 
 
 Julia " The current that with gentle murmur glides, 
 
 Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage ; 
 ii 
 
1 62 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 But when his fair course is not hindered, 
 
 He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones, 
 
 Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
 
 He overtakcth in his pilgrimage ; 
 
 And so by many winding nooks he strays. 
 
 With willing sport, to the wide ocean." 
 
 Silvia, whom Valentine loves, is the Duke of 
 Milan's daughter. Valentine is banished and 
 goes through many troubles and perils, in which 
 outlaws mingle on the border-land forest of Man- 
 tua an Italian plot of masks, disguises, escapes, 
 and intrigues in a forest reminding one of Arden 
 Wood, in which a comparison is made with Robin 
 Hood's outlaws ; and Friar Lauena, who meets 
 Silvia, is like the priest who in Arden Forest, 
 tradition says, married or betrothed Shakespeare 
 to Anne Hathaway. 
 
 At length the denouement takes place when 
 Proteus comes near and appears to Silvia, who is 
 attended by Valentine. Julia is present in boys' 
 clothes as page to Proteus. The disgrace of Pro- 
 teus and his repentance are rather too artificial to 
 seem genuine, but Valentine takes him to his 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. 163 
 
 friendship again, pronouncing these solemn words : 
 " Who by repentance is not satisfied 
 Is nor of heaven nor earth ; for these are pleas'd, 
 By penitence th' Eternal's wrath's appeas'd." 
 
 The one who neglects to read " The Two Gen- 
 tlemen of Verona ' ' passes by a play which is full 
 of music and harmony, with melodious flow, simple 
 and natural in style, and with but a few coarse 
 blots. It is a song from beginning to end, like the 
 brief poem, 
 
 "Silvia, and where is Silvia?" 
 
 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 
 
 This play is really two plays in one. Its plan 
 probably follows that of the original story which 
 suggested it. It wants unity, but Shakespeare's 
 hand is everywhere in it. It would seem as if he 
 himself must have been one of the "strangers in 
 Venice " who stood in the motley mart and mused 
 on the Rialto. There were two quarto editions 
 published in 1600 ; it is said by critics that the 
 earliest positive allusion to the play was in 1596, a 
 prolific period of Shakespeare's literary life. The 
 
1 64 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 play or plot is doubtless from some original story. 
 The shining point of the play is the figure of 
 Portia. She seems a creation that would unite the 
 seriousness and dignity of the English with the 
 bright intelligence and high spirit of the American 
 maiden. Her famous sentence regarding the pound 
 of flesh, which saves the life of Antonio, would 
 not be regarded as legal authority or strong 
 enough to "hold water " in modern jurisprudence, 
 but rather as an ingenious device to satisfy the 
 conditions of the play. 
 
 Shy lock the Jew, whose moving forces of action 
 are avarice and revenge, is still a man, and his 
 speech in court in defence of his humanity has a 
 dynamic force and will always have its influence 
 to mitigate the injustice of the world towards this 
 long-enduring race. It is pleasant to think that 
 our own country, America, is the only one of pro- 
 fessed Christian nations that has not legally 
 oppressed the Jew, and that they have in this 
 land with other American citizens perfect freedom 
 to think, speak, and act, to display their law- 
 abiding character, rare talent for trade, often their 
 
ITALIAN PIAYS. 165 
 
 haute finance, and their love of the musical art. 
 Their civic and religious freedom is here perfectly 
 secured, and they may, possibly hereafter, form, 
 without going back to Palestine flying "on the 
 shoulders of the Philistines," a conservative and 
 orderly element in our western political life. 
 
 The elopement of Shylock's daughter Jessica, 
 carrying with her her father's ducats and jewels, 
 throws an almost gay and amusing light on the 
 fierce and lurid personality of Shylock. I,ove is 
 truly the subtle thief that melts the flinty heart 
 and conquers all. 
 
 Books might be and have been written on this 
 drama. It belongs to Shakespeare's great plays, 
 though not the greatest. The characters of Portia 
 and Shylock, one a type of justice mingled with 
 mercy and the other of race mingled with revenge , 
 will live as long as the English language. 
 
 Antonio, the merchant prince, ready to share his 
 wealth with his friends, patient under adversity 
 and brave to face the most deadly peril, but proud 
 and contemptuous to the Jew, standing as he does 
 in Shylock's way by aiding those who had been 
 
1 66 THE READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 crushed by Shylock's methods, paying their for- 
 feitures and bonds which had been imposed upon 
 them, is a pleasing personage, a modest figure in 
 whom all our sympathies combine. 
 
 The mart of Venice and the Rialto did not form 
 the only scene of action in this complex play, but 
 the great house at Belmont, of which Portia was 
 mistress, also witnessed the beginning and ending 
 of the drama. 
 
 Bassanio " In Belmont is a lady richly left ; 
 And she is fair, and, fairer than that word, 
 Of wondrous virtues : sometimes from her eyes 
 I did receive fair speechless messages : 
 Her name is Portia ; nothing undervalued 
 To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia : 
 Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth ; 
 For the four winds blow in from every coast 
 Renowned suitors : and her sunny locks 
 Hang on her temples like a golden fleece ; 
 Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strand, 
 And many Jasons come in quest of her." 
 
 The young nobleman lover says this to his 
 wealthy friend. His rivals are rich and powerful. 
 Portia and her maid Nerissa discuss these suitors 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. 167 
 
 at Belmont, but it is early seen where Portia's 
 preference lies, notwithstanding her dead father's 
 stern requisition regarding the three caskets. Bas- 
 sanio, "the soldier and the scholar," has caught 
 both her fancy and reason. In this love story the 
 caskets play a part, and manifest the poet's view of 
 the momentous character of Choice. What infinite 
 events truly hang on this word, which means the 
 will, the heart, the deepest spirit of man taking 
 its final action. 
 
 The beginning or weaving of this love story into 
 the darker tragedy of the Bond, so wide apart, 
 shows the power of only the greatest dramatist. 
 Yet they at length glide together like the head 
 waters of the divided Rhine. 
 
 Before the final trial another lesser love story is 
 wrought out that of Lorenzo and Jessica. Jessica 
 is a beautiful Jewess, loyally loving, but still racial 
 in her fondness for gold, yet her love leads her to 
 be a true woman and give up all. 
 
 Lorenzo is full of romantic passion rising into 
 the loftiest poetry. He says to Jessica : 
 
168 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! 
 Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 
 Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night 
 Become the touches of sweet harmony. 
 Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold : 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou behoid'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins ; 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it" 
 
 This takes all of earthliness out of passion, and 
 makes it ethereal and heavenly, higher than nature. 
 The plot of this drama may have arisen from 
 the ballad in "Percy's Reliques," or far more 
 likely from a story in the Italian " The Gesta 
 Romanorum" but in Shy lock it is refined by 
 Shakespeare's genius above the common concep- 
 tion of the Jew, when he was treated like a dog 
 and held to be as having no rights. Shakespeare 
 may have known of the place of the Jew in medie- 
 val history, but his just and gentle nature revolted 
 at this although he knew the race stamp was so 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. 169 
 
 deep as to be almost ineffaceable. Still the Jew 
 represented the idea of religion. He is chosen to 
 maintain the fundamental truth of monotheism. 
 The invention of the " pound of flesh" is found 
 mainly in the old stories, and has no place in 
 legalized justice, but as has already been said, it 
 is pure fiction that served the author's purpose in 
 his drama. 
 
 The scenery of Venice, its canals, the Rialto and 
 the Ducal Palace stand before us in their strong 
 and mystical colors. The very costumes of Shake- 
 speare's day in Venice, the gold and silver robes 
 of the Doges, the embroidered dresses of the 
 knights and officials wrapped in the spoils of the 
 luxurious East, the marine coloring, and the very 
 atmosphere of Venice seem to have been caught. 
 
 The medieval scorn and contempt of the Jew 
 continued to be held in Shakespeare's day, so 
 that Shylock's speech is a proof of the poet's liber- 
 alism and humanity. Shylock for the moment 
 rose above even his avarice and revenge, asserting 
 the essential brotherhood of the human race. The 
 trial scene is solemn and powerful ; life and death 
 
1 70 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 are in its issues. The address of Shylock pours 
 like a lava stream from his burning soul, fierce 
 and terse, in which the woes and revenges of a 
 thousand years are condensed. Sir Henry Irving, 
 great artistic genius as he was, was not quite able 
 to express the full force of the language. The 
 whetting of the knife is not all. Irving' s ren- 
 dering, according to my recollection, was studied, 
 but failed in intellectual vital energy. 
 
 Shylock "To bait fish withal : if it will feed nothing else, 
 it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hin- 
 dered me half a million ; laughed at my losses, mocked at 
 my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled 
 my friends, heated mine enemies ; and what 's his reason ? 
 I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands, 
 organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with 
 the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the 
 same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and 
 cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is ? 
 If you prick us, do we not bleed ? if you tickle us, do we not 
 laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? and if you wrong us, 
 shall we not revenge ? if we are like you in the rest, we will 
 resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is 
 his humility ? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. 171 
 
 should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, 
 revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute ; and it 
 shall go hard but I will better the instruction." 
 
 His raucous voice is heard through the silent court 
 
 room : 
 
 "I'll have my bond." 
 
 Then Portia's exquisite apostrophe to mercy, run- 
 ning like a silver strain of music through the 
 angry tempest of the play, incomparable, rises into 
 the loftiest spheres of the heavenly and divine : 
 
 Portia "The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 
 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath : it is twice blest ; 
 It blesseth him that gives and him that takes : 
 'Tis- mightiest in the mightiest : it becomes 
 The throned monarch better than his crown ; 
 His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 
 The attribute to awe and majesty, 
 Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; 
 But mercy is above this sceptred sway ; 
 It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 
 It is an attribute to God himself ; 
 And earthly power doth then show likest God's 
 When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
 Though justice be thy plea, consider this, 
 
172 THE READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 That, in the course of justice, none of us 
 
 Should see salvation : we do pray for mercy ; 
 
 And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
 
 The deeds of mercy. I have spoken thus much 
 
 to mitigate the justice of thy plea ; 
 
 Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice 
 
 Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there." 
 
 ROMEO AND JULIET 
 
 In Verona once more lies the scene of one of 
 Shakespeare's greatest plays. John Ruskin said 
 he could not make Venice to be Italy, that it was 
 Italy and Venice, but this could never be said of 
 Verona, "fair Verona," with its view of the Alps 
 and encircling hills and its Roman Amphitheatre. 
 Its local atmosphere is pure Italian. 
 
 The independent rulers of the great Italian 
 cities, such as Florence, Milan, Pisa, Genoa, and 
 Verona, founded those aristocratic governments 
 that, as earlier in Athens, prepared the Italian race 
 for a future, more popular rule. Classes, castes, 
 armed retainers, mobs, fierce quarrels, and the all 
 overcoming love, which did away with these Hues 
 of separation, existed, making it not impossible 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. 173 
 
 that two such great houses as those of Montague 
 and Capulet should find their ardent affiliations, as 
 well as fierce antagonisms. 
 
 This play of " Romeo and Juliet" is the very 
 efflorescence, the bright flower of Shakespeare's 
 dramas of romantic love, which absorbs all else ; 
 breaking bonds and limits, changing life, sudden, 
 brief and sweet, but with a tragic ending. It is a 
 flood of accidents and surprises. The play has the 
 intrigue, the masked figures of Italian romance, 
 the fire, the brief joy, and often death of young 
 love. We search in vain for the tomb of Romeo 
 and Juliet, but what matters if Achilles and Helen 
 never lived, or Troy was never besieged, the poet 
 has made them real. 
 
 Romeo, the young Montague, is the hero of the 
 play and no weakling. He is of manly presence, 
 strong in love, fiery in action, his imagination 
 kindled into poetic glow by the master passion ; 
 "good," too, as acknowledged by Capulet, head 
 of the hostile faction ; and yet Romeo is not the 
 only individuality, but there is Mercutio, one of 
 Shakespeare's inimitable creations, and who though 
 
174 TH * READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 occupying but a brief space on the stage, seems to 
 me more as Shakespeare was himself when unbent 
 and free, full of finest humor and subtle wit. 
 He could be gay and he could be stern, as when 
 Mercutio describes Queen Mab as the ruler of 
 dreams : 
 
 " O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with yon. 
 She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes 
 In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 
 On the fore-finger of an alderman, 
 Drawn with a team of little atomies 
 Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep : 
 Her waggon-spokes made of long spinner's legs ; 
 The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers ; 
 Her traces, of the smallest spider's web ; 
 Her collars, of the moonshine's watery beams ; 
 Her whip, of cricket's bone ; the lash, of film ; 
 Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat," 
 
 " Her chariot is an empty hazel nut, 
 Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, 
 Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers. 
 And in this state she gallops night by night 
 Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love ; 
 O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight ; 
 O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees ; 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. 175 
 
 O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, 
 Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, 
 Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are ; 
 Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, 
 And then dreams he of smelling out a suit ; 
 And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail 
 Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep, 
 Then dreams he of another benefice ; 
 Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, 
 And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, 
 Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, 
 Of healths five fathom deep ; and then anon 
 Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, 
 And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two, 
 And sleeps again." 
 
 " King Cophetua loved a beggar maid." 
 
 At the masked ball, Capulet says to another old 
 
 noble : 
 
 " For you and I are past our dancing days." 
 
 Verona brags of Romeo to be a virtuous and well- 
 governed youth. At the ball in Capulet's house 
 Romeo first sees Juliet. In Capulet's orchard 
 Romeo says : 
 
 " I fear, too early : for my mind misgives 
 Some consequences, yet hanging in the stars, 
 
1 76 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 
 
 With this night's revels, and expire the term 
 
 Of a despised life closed in my breast, 
 
 By some vile forfeit of untimely death." 
 
 In Juliet's garden Romeo speaks : 
 
 44 But soft ! what light through yonder window breaks? 
 
 It is the east, and Juliet is the sun ! 
 
 Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon," 
 
 44 It is my lady ; O, it is my love ! " 
 
 This is poetry which blinds the sense of right 
 and overleaps all bounds. Juliet's wayward prat- 
 tlings, she not knowing she is overheard, are natu- 
 ral and almost childlike : 
 
 * 4 O, Romeo, Romeo ! wherefore art thou Romeo? 
 
 Deny thy father and refuse thy name ; 
 
 O, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, 
 
 And I'll no longer be a Capulet." 
 
 41 Tis but thy name that is my enemy." 
 
 Mercutio dies to shield his friend Romeo, and 
 Romeo avenges his death on Tybalt. The tragedy 
 deepens and draws towards its end. In their 
 interview in the good Friar Laurence's cell, Romeo 
 and Juliet are wed with the friar's solemn parting 
 words. 
 
ITALIAN PLAYS. 177 
 
 Romeo is exiled, and on his sudden return to 
 Verona comes the parting dialogue between the 
 lovers : 
 
 Juliet "Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day : 
 It was the nightingale, and not the lark, 
 That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear ; 
 Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate-tree : 
 Believe me, love, it was the nightingale." 
 
 Romeo "It was the lark, the herald of the morn, 
 
 No nightingale : look, love, what envious streaks 
 
 t 
 
 Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east : 
 Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops : 
 I must be gone and live, or stay and die." 
 
 Juliet "Yond light is not day-light, I know it, I : 
 It is some meteor that the sun exhales, 
 To be to thee this night a torch-bearer, 
 And light thee on thy way to Mantua : 
 Therefore stay yet ; thou need'st not to be gone." 
 
 Romeo" Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death ; 
 I am content, so thou wilt have it so. 
 I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye, 
 'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow ; 
 Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat 
 The vaulty heaven so high above our heads : 
 
 12 
 
178 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 I have more care to stay than will to go : 
 Come, death, and welcome ! Juliet wills it so. 
 How is't, my soul? let's talk : it is not day." 
 
 Juliet" It is, it is ; hie hence, be gone, away ! 
 It is the lark that sings so out of tune, 
 Straining harsh discords and unpl easing sharps. 
 Some say the lark makes sweet division ; 
 This doth not so, for she divideth us : 
 Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes ; 
 O, now I would they had changed voices too ! 
 Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray, 
 Hunting thee hence with hunts-up to the day. 
 O, now be gone : more light and light it grows." 
 
 Romeo" More light and light : more dark and dark 
 our woes." 
 
 The return of Romeo, the fatal mistake, the find- 
 ing of Juliet, supposed by him to be dead, but 
 lying in a trance at the Capulet tomb in the 
 churchyard ; Romeo's piercing and mad words 
 addressed to Death, and his death and that of 
 Juliet end this pathetic tragedy. 
 
 Romeo " O, my love ! my wife ! 
 
 Death, that hath sucked the honey of the breath, 
 Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty ; 
 Thou art not conquer'd ; beauty's ensign yet 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. 179 
 
 Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced there." 
 " Here's to my love ! O true apothecary ! 
 Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die." 
 
 It is now needful for me regretfully to say that, 
 as is the case sometimes with age, and in my case 
 of an age extending far beyond the allotted period 
 of three score and ten, that my eyesight has so 
 failed that it is impossible for me to read a word, 
 and this perhaps may go to excuse errors. I had 
 naturally reserved for the last a more critical and 
 extended treatment of a few of Shakespeare's 
 greatest plays, and of Shakespeare himself as a 
 dramatic author ; but I am now obliged to give up 
 the plan and only speak briefly of some great 
 plays that remain. 
 
 SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. 
 
 THE TEMPEST. 
 
 Prospero's Island still firmly stands, while the 
 lost Atlantis has vanished. The majestic figur.e 
 of Prospero differs entirely from the other persons 
 
1 80 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 of the play, and there may be a shadow of a reason 
 held by some, that in his soliloquy it is Shake- 
 speare himself who speaks, as prophetic of his end. 
 This I think is groundless ; the words belong con- 
 sistently to the character of the magician Prospero, 
 who says : 
 
 " Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves ; 
 And ye that on the sands with print less foot 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
 When he comes back ; you demi-puppets that 
 By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, 
 Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you whose pastime 
 Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice 
 To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid 
 Weak masters though ye be I have bedimm'd 
 The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, 
 And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault 
 Set roaring war ; to the dread rattling thunder 
 Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 
 With his own bolt ; the strong-based promontory 
 Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up 
 The pine and cedar ; graves at my command 
 Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth 
 By my so potent art. But this rough magic 
 I here abjure ; and, when I have required 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. l8l 
 
 Some heavenly music, which even now I do, 
 To work mine end upon their senses, that 
 This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, 
 Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, 
 And deeper than did ever plummet sound 
 I'll drown my book." 
 
 The island with its valleys and promontories is 
 of the imagination built on clouds, tempest, and 
 sunshine ; here Romance rides upon the wings of 
 the poetic fancy. The exquisite song of Ariel is 
 made of sun and air, and the sprite swings lightly 
 as he sings from the petal of a delicate flower a 
 song of obedience to a higher power ; but at the 
 same time with a breath and aspiration after free- 
 dom : 
 
 11 Where the bee sucks, there suck I : 
 
 In a cowslip's bell I lie ; 
 
 There I couch when owls do cry, 
 
 On the bat's back I do fly 
 
 After summer merrily. 
 
 Merrily, merrily, shall I live now 
 
 Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." 
 
 The beastly monster, Caliban, has in him a 
 touch of humanity that also seeks for freedom 
 
1 82 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 while he snarls and creeps on the earth under 
 "his burden of wood." His knowledge of some 
 of the subtle laws of nature makes him at times a 
 philosopher, even a poet. His poetry is "of the 
 earth earthy," and never soars above material 
 nature. Prospero lighted in him an intellectual 
 spark. 
 
 Caliban " This island's mine, by Sycoraz my mother, 
 Which thou takest from me. When thou earnest first, 
 Thou strokcdst me, and madest much of me: wouldstgiveme 
 Water with berries in't ; and teach me how 
 To name the bigger light, and how the less, 
 That burn by day and night : and then I loved thee, 
 And show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle, 
 The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile : 
 Cursed be I that did so ! All the charms 
 Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you ! 
 For I am all the subjects that you have, 
 Which first was mine own king : and here you sty me 
 In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me 
 The rest o' th' island." 
 
 " You taught me language ; and my profit on"c 
 Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you 
 For learning me your language ! " 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. 183 
 
 "No, pray thee. 
 
 (Aside) I must obey : his art is of such power 
 It would control my dam's god, Setebos, 
 And make a vassal of him. ' ' 
 
 When the drunken sailors, Stephano and Trin- 
 culo, reeled on the scene, Caliban says to Trin- 
 culo : 
 
 11 Hast thou not dropp'd from heaven ? " 
 
 " I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island ; 
 And I will kiss thy foot : I prithee, be my god." 
 
 1 I'll kiss thy foot ; I'll swear myself the subject." 
 
 "I'll show thee the best springs : I'll pluck thee berries ; 
 I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. 
 A plague upon the tyrant that I serve." 
 
 " Be not af eared ; the isle is full of noises, 
 Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. 
 Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments 
 Will hum about mine ears ; and sometime voices, 
 That, if I then had waked after long sleep, 
 Will make me sleep again : and then, in dreaming, 
 The clouds methought would open, and show riches 
 Ready to drop upon me ; that, when I waked, 
 I cried to dream again." 
 
 Caliban, though a creature of the imagination, 
 
1 84 THE READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 is worth study by the scientist as Shakespeare's 
 conception of the connecting link between beast 
 and man ; in this case at their worst. 
 
 At last compelled to recognize Prospero's power 
 and virtue, Caliban says : 
 
 " Ay, that I will : and Til be wise hereafter 
 And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass 
 Was I, to take this drunkard for a god, 
 And worship this dull fool." 
 
 The only real humanities in the play are 
 Miranda and Ferdinand. They love each other 
 with a sweet and natural affection, although dis- 
 ciplined by the heavy burdens put upon them. 
 Miranda is a lovely child of nature, and one of 
 Shakespeare's purely feminine creations. When 
 Miranda asks Ferdinand who he is, Ferdinand, 
 thinking his father had perished in the shipwreck, 
 says with aristocratic spirit : 
 
 41 1 am Naples." 
 
 The play ends in joy and happiness, the tempestu- 
 ous clouds clear away, and the island that never 
 existed, but will immortally live, comes forth once 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PI<AYS. 185 
 
 more in its beauty under a serenely blue Italian 
 sky. 
 
 MACBETH. 
 
 Macbeth' s character is not to be judged rashly, 
 for it is a mixed character. He was not a thorough- 
 going ruffian or tyrant ; his moral nature was not 
 constitutionally bad, nay, in some things human 
 and good. He was met by a most violent tempta- 
 tion presented to his ambitious nature, to be great, 
 to be a king. He shrank at first from this temp- 
 tation, but was overcome chiefly by the will of his 
 wife, who towered above him in her own wicked 
 ambition. 
 
 The date of the play of " Macbeth " was ascribed 
 by Malone to 1606, but the proof of this is unsatis- 
 factory. It undoubtedly belonged to the last ten 
 years of Shakespeare's life, between the dates of 
 1 ' Julius Caesar ' ' and ' ' Hamlet. ' ' There is strong 
 proof that it was written after the conjunction of 
 England and Scotland, under the reign of James I. 
 
 The scene is laid in that picturesque and rugged 
 land of mountains and vales, deep lakes, and 
 unconquerable men, made familiar in the pages of 
 
1 86 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Walter Scott, who drew his inspiration from the 
 grander genius of Shakespeare. 
 
 The story of " Macbeth " is found in the older 
 chronicles, whose truth or fiction it is now hard to 
 discover, but there may have been some ground 
 for the tradition in the ancient history of Scotland ; 
 at all events, it suits those stormy skies and wilder 
 times. The opening scene of the witches on the 
 " blasted heath, " 
 
 " Hovering through the fog and filthy air," 
 
 seems to signify the first false promises of unhal- 
 lowed ambition to the soul of Macbeth, paltering 
 with the spirits of evil. Their three words, weird, 
 bold, and broken : 
 
 " Hail to thee, thane of Glamis ? " 
 
 " Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor ! " 
 
 " All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter ! " 
 
 These words seem to rise like the barren scenery 
 around, cliff above cliff into the sky, and are lost. 
 They are indeed portentous dreams : 
 
 "The earth hath bubbles as the water has, 
 And these are of them." 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. 187 
 
 Yet these " instruments of darkness" speak some 
 truths in the perilous story. We go on : 
 
 "Time and the hour runs through the roughest day." 
 
 Macbeth attains the first two titles, but the last 
 involves his own choice and criminal destruc- 
 tion : 
 
 "Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin : 
 and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death." 
 
 Cawdor's death is marked in memorable words 
 by Malcolm, who says to the King, his father : 
 
 Malcolm "But I have spoke 
 With one that saw him die : who did report 
 That very frankly he confess'd his treasons, 
 Implored your highness' pardon and set forth 
 A deep repentance : nothing in his life 
 Became him like the leaving it ; he died 
 As one that had been studied in his death, 
 To throw away the dearest thing he owed, 
 As 'twere a careless trifle." 
 
 Macbeth speaks loyally when he meets the king, 
 and it is difficult to see that he is not for the 
 moment sincere. 
 
1 88 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Lady Macbeth receives her husband's letter tell- 
 ing of the witches' prophecy of Macbeth being made 
 king. Reading that letter, she* exclaims : 
 "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shall be 
 What thou art promised : yet do I fear thy nature : 
 It is too fall o* the milk of human kindness 
 To catch the nearest way : thou wouldst be great ; 
 Art not without ambition, but without 
 The illness should attend it ; what thou wouldst highly 
 That wouldst thou holily : wouldst not play false 
 And yet wouldst wrongly win ; thou'dst have, great 
 
 Glamis, 
 
 That which cries, ' Thus thou must do, if thou have it 
 And that which rather thou dost fear to do 
 Than wishes! should be undone.' Hie thee hither, 
 That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, 
 And chastise with the valour of my tongue 
 All that impedes thee from the golden round, 
 Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
 To have thee crown'd withal." 
 
 This curious use of the word ' ' metaphysical ' ' as 
 applied here to the spiritual foes that impede Mac- 
 beth' s grasp of the "golden round," looks as if 
 Lady Macbeth were genuinely Scotch in her phil- 
 osophy. 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. 189 
 
 The approach of Duncan to the castle of Inver- 
 ness is of exquisite realness, Nature above and 
 around shining in the crystal morning light. Dun- 
 can speaks : 
 
 "This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses." 
 
 Banquo ' ' This guest of summer, 
 
 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
 By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath 
 Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, 
 Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
 Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : 
 Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed 
 The air is delicate." 
 
 The sparkling brightness of the morning air, 
 the medieval castle with its arched, carved door- 
 way and lofty towers, the peace of all things indi- 
 cate little of the somber terrors that wait within 
 the walls. Lady Macbeth 's smooth and courtly 
 welcome all bespeaks peace, and Macbeth, coming 
 home to Inverness, says to his wife, who urges 
 him to the deed, in low tones, and half to him- 
 self: 
 
190 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well 
 It were done quickly : if the assassination 
 Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, 
 With his surcease, success ; that but this blow 
 Might be the be-all and the end-all here, 
 But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 
 We'ld jump the life to come." 
 
 " This even-handed justice 
 
 Commends the ingredients of our poison 'd chalice 
 To our own lips." 
 
 "Besides, this Duncan 
 Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking-off." 
 
 Lady Macbeth still plies him, appealing to his 
 courage as a man. 
 
 Macbeth "We will proceed no further in this 
 He hath honour'd me of late ; " [business : 
 
 Lady Macbeth " Art thou afeard 
 
 To be the same in thine own act and valour 
 As thou art in desire ? Wouldst thou have that 
 Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, 
 And live a coward in thine own esteem, 
 Letting ' I dare not ' wait upon ' I would ? ' " 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. 191 
 
 Macbeth ' ' Prithee, peace : 
 
 I dare do all that may become a man ; 
 Who dares do more is none." 
 
 Lady Macbeth ' ' What beast was't, then, 
 
 That made you break this enterprise to me ? 
 When you durst do it, then you were a man ; 
 And, to be more than what you were, you would 
 Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place 
 Did then adhere, and yet you would make both : 
 They have made themselves, and that their fitness now 
 Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know 
 How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me : 
 I would, while it was smiling in my face, 
 Have pluck'd my nipple from its boneless gums, 
 And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you 
 Have done to this." 
 
 In another scene Macbeth, alone, apostrophizes 
 the airy dagger : 
 
 " Is this a dagger which I see before me, 
 The handle toward my hand ? Come, let me clutch 
 
 thee. 
 
 I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. 
 Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 
 To feeling as to sight ? or art thou but 
 A dagger of the mind, a false creation, 
 
192 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? 
 
 I see thee yet, in form as palpable 
 
 As this which now I draw. 
 
 Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going ; 
 
 And such an instrument I was to use. 
 
 Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses 
 
 Or else worth all the rest : I see thee still ; 
 
 And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, 
 
 Which was not so before. There's ho such thing : 
 
 It is the bloody business which informs 
 
 Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half -world 
 
 Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse 
 
 The curtained sleep." 
 
 The motives of the horrid deed to be done work 
 fast, like poison, and reason is thrown to the 
 winds. The crafty preparation for the murder, 
 the drugged grooms, the watch slain, the deep 
 gloom lighted only by a feeble lamp ; the silence 
 so great that the softest footstep can be heard in 
 the long corridor, the screech of the midnight 
 owl after the deed was done, the whispered talk 
 between Macbeth and his wife in which he already 
 shrinks from his dreadful deed, and the voice that 
 cried : 
 
SOME; LAST GREAT PLAYS. 193 
 
 " Sleep no more ! 
 Macbeth does murder sleep," 
 
 The innocent sleep, 
 
 " Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
 The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast," 
 
 smearing of the sleepy grooms with blood ; these 
 only can be told by Shakespeare. 
 
 Macbeth' s description of the murdered king, 
 half true, half false, follows : 
 
 Macbeth ' ' Here lay Duncan, 
 
 His silver skin laced with his golden blood, 
 And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature 
 For ruin's wasteful entrance." 
 
 A cunning, devilish policy lays the crime on 
 Duncan's sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, who have 
 fled. The plot thickens, and murderous peril 
 threatens Banquo and Fleance. Then comes the 
 gloomy banquet scene in the hall, where Macbeth 
 sees the procession of ghostly visions, that raise 
 him to his feet staring, which only can be dis- 
 13 
 
194 TH E READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 pelled by Lady Macbeth' s overmastering will. 
 The ghost of Banquo coming, Macbeth exclaims : 
 
 " Thou canst not say I did it : never shake 
 Thy gory locks at me." 
 
 The supper ends in terror and confusion. 
 
 Hecate, in a thunder storm on the heath, inter- 
 feres with the witches' plan, and speaks : 
 " Upon the corner of the moon 
 
 There hangs a vaporous drop profound ; 
 
 I'll catch it ere it come to ground : 
 
 And that distill'd by magic sleights 
 
 Shall raise such artificial sprites 
 
 As by the strength of their illusion 
 
 Shall draw him on to his confusion." 
 
 Again the witches meet around the boiling 
 cauldron and sing their weird song : 
 " Double, double toil and trouble ; 
 Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." 
 
 The supernatural breaks into the steady whirl of 
 nature's laws of retribution. Macbeth, coming 
 into their circle in a storm, demands : 
 
 11 Though you untie the winds and let them fight 
 Against the churches : though the yesty waves 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. 195 
 
 Confound and swallow navigation up : 
 
 Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down ; 
 
 Though castles topple on their warders' heads : 
 
 Though palaces and pyramids do slope 
 
 Their heads to their foundations : though the treasure 
 
 Of nature's germens tumble all together, 
 
 Even till destruction sicken : answer me 
 
 To what I ask you." 
 
 Tremendous storms like this one rage about 
 Scotland and England's rocky coast. I have seen, 
 without the aid of the supernatural, such a storm 
 rage around the southern end of England. The 
 scene of the apparitions ends with the last false 
 prophecy : 
 
 Sec. App." Macbeth ! Macbeth ! Macbeth ! " 
 Third ^//."Macbeth shall never vanquished be 
 
 Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill [until 
 
 Shall come against him," 
 
 and the witches themselves 
 
 "Come like shadows, so depart." 
 
 The terrible exhibition of his feigned inward self 
 by Malcolm, the heir, to Macduff, is a powerful 
 Shakespearean touch : 
 
196 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Malcolm "But I have none: the king-becoming 
 graces, 
 
 As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, 
 
 Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, 
 
 Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude, 
 
 I have no relish of them, but abound 
 
 In the division of each several crime, 
 
 Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should 
 
 Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, 
 
 Uproar the universal peace, confound 
 
 All unity on earth." 
 Macduff"0 Scotland, Scotland ! " 
 Malcolm " If such a one be fit to govern, speak : 
 
 I am as I have spoken." 
 
 In showing the poet's deeper insight of the human 
 soul, by a truer impulse Malcolm takes back these 
 false self-accusations and is himself again. 
 
 Then comes the scene in Dunsinane Castle, when 
 Lady Macbeth's imperious will breaks down at last 
 under the terrors of conscience. 
 
 Lady Macbeth in her sleep walking, witnessed by the Doc- 
 tor and her nurse : 
 
 Doctor "Look, how she rubs her hands." 
 
 Gentlewoman "It is an accustomed action with her, to 
 seem thus washing her hands : I have known her continue 
 in this a quarter of an hour." 
 
SOME I<AST GREAT PI.AYS. 197 
 
 Lady M." Yet here's a spot." 
 
 Doctor " Hark ! she speaks : I will set down what comes 
 from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly." 
 
 Lady M. "Out, damned spot! out, I say! One: two: 
 why, then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, 
 fie ! a soldier, and af card ? What need we fear who knows 
 it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who 
 would have thought the old man to have had so much blood 
 in him?" 
 
 Doctor" Do you mark that ? ' ' 
 
 Lady M. "The thane of Fife had a wife : where is she 
 now? What, will these hands ne'er be clean ? No more o' 
 that, my lord, no more o' that : you mar all with this start- 
 ing." 
 
 Doctor " Go to, go to : you have known what you should 
 not." 
 
 Gentlewoman "She has spoken what she should not, I 
 am sure of that : heaven knows what she has known." 
 
 Lady ^."Here's the smell of the blood still : all the 
 perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, 
 oh, oh ! " 
 
 Doctor " What a sigh is there! the heart is sorely 
 charged." 
 
 Gentlewoman" I would not have such a heart in my 
 bosom for the dignity of the whole body." 
 
 Doctor "This disease is beyond my practice : yet I have 
 
198 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 known those which have walked in their sleep who have 
 died holily in their beds." 
 
 Lady M. "Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; 
 look not so pale : I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried ; he 
 cannot come out on's grave." 
 
 Doctor" Even sx>." 
 
 Lady M. "To bed, to bed ; there's knocking at the gate ; 
 come, come, come, come, give me your hand : what's done 
 cannot be undone : to bed, to bed, to bed.*' 
 
 Doctor" Will she go now to bed ? " 
 
 Gentlewoman" Directly." 
 
 Doctor" Foul whisperings are abroad : unnatural 
 
 deeds 
 
 Do breed unnatural troubles : infected minds 
 To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets : 
 More needs she the divine than the physician. 
 God, God forgive us all ! Look after her : 
 Remove from her the means of all annoyance, 
 And still keep eyes upon her. So, good night : 
 My mind she has mated and amazed my sight : 
 I think, but dare not speak." 
 
 Gentlewoman "Good, night, good doctor." 
 
 To delay now no longer the end, Macbeth, the 
 warlike king, issues from his castle ; his fears have 
 vanished, his soldier's courage has returned to 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PI.AYS. 199 
 
 him ; he rushes fearlessly into the fight with Mac- 
 duff and is slain. Justice triumphs. 
 
 The drama deals with deep things of the soul : 
 Temptation, Sin, and Death. Its lesson is the 
 yielding of the spirit to the temptation to be great, 
 to an unhallowed ambition that passes the bounds 
 of that natural ambition implanted in the mind to 
 stimulate it to do and be good. 
 
 The play is better suited, I think, for the silent 
 room of the reader than for the stage. The reader 
 closes his book with the words : 
 
 Macbeth^" Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
 To the last syllable of recorded time." 
 
 One then appreciates with solemn awe what an 
 old and true critic calls 
 
 " The pleasing terrors of Tragedy/ 1 
 
 KING LEAR. 
 
 This play is pure paganism. It deals with ele- 
 mental powers and reminds the reader of those 
 gigantic forms that loom up in the pages o 
 lus, pagan throughout. 
 
200 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 The grand old king, made mad by the unloving 
 and treacherous conduct of his daughters, goes 
 forth into the fierce storm. He and the human 
 forms accompanying him seem strange and antique, 
 and even in the scene of the last words and hours 
 of King Lear, the faithful and lovely Cordelia 
 shows a touch of hardness in her nature, like a 
 beautiful Greek sculpture. But the scene is laid 
 on British soil, and the path traversed during the 
 howling tempest by Lear and his group of follow- 
 ers was familiar to Shakespeare, as it is now to 
 those of us who have walked over chalky Dover 
 cliff, and looked off towards France on the waters 
 of the English Channel. Gloucester says in his 
 talk with Edgar : 
 
 " There is a cliff whose high and bending head 
 Looks fearfully in the confined deep : 
 Bring me but to the very brim of it, 
 And I'll repair the misery thou does bear 
 With something rich about me : from that place 
 I shall no leading need." 
 
 Edgar "Come on, sir; here's the place : 
 stand still. How fearful 
 
SOME LAST GRKAT PLAYS. 2OI 
 
 And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eye so low ! 
 The crows and choughs that wing the midway air 
 Show scarce so gross as beetles : half way down 
 Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade ! 
 Methinks he seems no bigger than his head : 
 The fishermen that walk upon the beach 
 Appear like mice ; and yond tall anchoring bark 
 Diminish 'd to her cock ; her cock, a buoy 
 Almost too small for sight : the murmuring surge 
 That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes 
 Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, 
 Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight 
 Topple down headlong.'' 
 
 Shakespeare in this great play seems to free 
 himself from all the forms that had gone before in 
 literature and from all traditions of Christian 
 drama, and to fling himself freely into the wild 
 play of nature's forces and passions. 
 
 .There followed after Lear the singular company 
 of the sturdy English Kent, who said : 
 
 " Be Kent unmannerly, when Lear is mad ; " 
 
 the blind Earl of Gloucester, the loving, faith- 
 ful Edgar, the smooth-faced bastard Edmund, the 
 Fool shivering in his rags, a motley group of good 
 
202 THE READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 and bad, high and low, fortuitously brought 
 together to breast the storm. 
 
 There is a sense of wild power when the poet 
 "revelled in his strength," the more so, perhaps, 
 of any of his dramas. 
 
 Lear asks his daughter : 
 
 "Which of you shall we aay doth love us most ? " 
 
 The speeches of Goneril and Regan, the two 
 elder sisters, are crammed with protestations of 
 false affection, so full indeed that Cordelia says, 
 aside: 
 
 " What shall Cordelia do ? Love, and be silent" 
 
 "Then poor Cordelia ! 
 And yet not so, since I am sure my love's 
 More ponderous than my tongue." 
 
 Lear turns to Cordelia, who has yet said noth- 
 ing. He asks : 
 
 Lear" Nothing ! " 
 
 Again, 
 Lear" Nothing will come of nothing : speak again." 
 
 Cordelia answers : 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PI.AYS. 203 
 
 ' ' Good, my lord, 
 
 You have begot me, bred me, loved me : I 
 Return these duties back as are right fit, 
 Obey you, love you, and most honour you. 
 Why have my sisters husbands, if they say 
 They love you all ? Haply, when I shall wed, 
 That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry 
 Half my love with him, half my care and duty : 
 Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters, 
 To love my father all." 
 
 He casts himself with the treacherous sisters. 
 
 The old fiery-hearted king, who lived now solely 
 in and for the affection of his children, was not 
 satisfied with this reticent truthfulness of Cordelia. 
 It might indeed awake a subtle discussion in the 
 euphemistic style of noble Sir Philip Sidney, 
 whether love should be expressed or hidden. The 
 love itself is infinitely better than its expression ; 
 the love of parent and child, husband and wife, 
 friend and neighbor which last term embraces 
 the whole brotherhood of man, whether good or 
 bad, worthy or unworthy, Christian or heathen, if 
 expressed only in general phrases, without real 
 kindness, or an energetic disposition to do good, 
 
204 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 would be sheer hypocrisy. If the expression of 
 love were relegated entirely to the future life and 
 to the intercourse of spiritual beings, this world 
 would be left desolate and become a cold and bar- 
 ren place, and the scientific prophecy of the com- 
 ing reign of the earth's final refrigeration would 
 have already commenced. 
 
 In ' King Lear ' ' there is an expression of Shake- 
 speare' s mightiest strength, and the play is a block 
 cut out of rock, hard and jagged, without any 
 softening feature of art or Christianity. The 
 author casts away all classic rules and precedence, 
 and speaks as though inspired by his own bold 
 original genius. 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 Going from the rugged Lear, in his concentrated 
 storm of passion, to the polished Hamlet, repre- 
 senting the sphere of universal ideas, it is indeed a 
 tame word to say that the Prince of Denmark is a 
 gentleman ; but this term I would use in its true 
 sense. 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. 205 
 
 Hamlet is a cultivated man. He is inclined to 
 meditative thought ; he loves to look into his own 
 mind, and to analyze the springs and motives of 
 character in other minds ; he would wish to pene- 
 trate human life in all its bearings ; he belongs, in 
 a ruder age, to the modern school of thought and 
 universal philosophy. He is quiet, and grows 
 stout, and has a streak of indolence, but this is 
 combined with other qualities unknown to him- 
 self; with a kind heart, with genial wit, with a 
 power of friendship and love, with energies for 
 practical activity when aroused ; these are manifest 
 in his talk with his student friend Horatio, and his 
 keen address to the players, showing his thought- 
 ful knowledge of the principles of art. 
 
 In his witty speech to the old courtier Polonius, 
 leading him whithersoever he wills, and in his 
 kindly words, though with a touch of cynicism, 
 addressed to the skull of Yorick : 
 
 Hamlet "O heavens ! die two months ago, and not for- 
 gotten yet ? Then there's hope a great man's memory may 
 outlive his life half a year : but, by'r lady, he must build 
 
206 THE READING OF SHAKBSPEAKE. 
 
 churches then ; or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with 
 the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, 'For, O, for O, the 
 hobby-horse is forgot.' " 
 
 These more energetic qualities unconsciously, per- 
 haps, are surprisingly developed when awaked to 
 vigorous action by the appearance of his father's 
 ghost, and the enormous burden of responsibility 
 suddenly laid upon him to revenge his father's 
 murder and set to rights the rotten state of Den- 
 mark. He starts up, unites in himself all other 
 characters, interests, and events, and walks the 
 scene in the terrible step and form of avenger. 
 His madness is assumed as a shield for his deeper, 
 craftier plan. In his interview with Ophelia, one 
 reads between the lines his love, and Ophelia's last 
 moments lend infinite pathos to the drama. 
 
 Her mind breaks down, but its sweetness is not 
 lost. Her gift of flowers, so thoughtful and fitted 
 to every one to whom she gives them, touches the 
 most stoic heart. 
 
 The snatches of her strange, loose song show the 
 strain of the disordered fancies in a pure and inno- 
 cent nature ; her interview and clinging love for 
 
SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS. 207 
 
 Hamlet, and her maidenly tribute to him when 
 her true heart speaks out, are exquisitely fitting : 
 Ophelia "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 
 The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword : 
 The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 
 The glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
 The observed of all observers, quite, quite down ! 
 And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, 
 That suck'd the honey of his music vows, 
 Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
 Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ; 
 That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth 
 Blasted with ecstacy : O, woe is me, 
 To have seen what I have seen, see what I see ! " 
 
 Hamlet's burning words to his mother, coming 
 straight from a hot heart that had been cheated in 
 its natural and deepest affections, show the most 
 painful moment of the tremendous trial through 
 which he is now passing. 
 
 The craftily arranged play within a play, the 
 slaying of the king, the death of his mother, the 
 exchange of the poisoned rapier in his duel with 
 Laertes, in the explosion of that world of wicked- 
 ness and deceit in which his own life was lost, are 
 a fitting end to this immortal tragedy. 
 
208 THE READING OP SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 I have heard the greatest actor of Germany, 
 Emil Devrient, personate this character, but I am 
 still of the opinion that Hamlet is better suited for 
 the silent room of the reader than for the stage. 
 It is above all the scholar's play. The oftener it 
 is read the more it will awake earnest thought on 
 human life, both present and the future. 
 
 Shakespeare, as I have just said, speaks in this 
 play of Hamlet to the mind of the student and 
 thoughtful educated man. 
 
 Shakespeare's many portraits, whether authentic 
 or unauthentic, form an argument by themselves of 
 his greatness. 
 
 I cannot give the copy of a photograph picked 
 up in Stratford-on-Avon, nor do I know who was 
 the artist of the original picture. It is evidently 
 modern and too smooth and idealized, lacking even 
 the life-like robustness of the Stratford bust, but it 
 belongs like other portraits to the highest historic 
 type of humanity an imperial face, serenely 
 strong, betokening a harmony of nature which 
 
SOME; I,AST GREAT PI<AYS. 209 
 
 combines gentleness and power. It impressed me 
 as a face that comprehends the traits of other por- 
 traits, showing in its imagined results the thought- 
 ful and true conception of a courtly man of the 
 highest education and culture. 
 
 Shakespeare was by no means a perfect man. 
 He had his faults, arising partly, doubtless, from 
 the rude British coarseness of the period, and from 
 his own exuberant vitality. While his head was 
 in the clouds, his feet walked on the solid earth, 
 and were sometimes, it may be, in the mud and 
 mire. When he returned to Stratford in the later 
 years of his life, he showed a shrewd Anglo-Saxon 
 instinct towards the amassing of property, which 
 would not now be regarded as an unreasonable 
 trait. But it should not be forgotten by the ear- 
 nest reader of Shakespeare, that when his plays are 
 considered, there is to be observed a decided pro- 
 gress in his maturer nature; an elevation of 
 thought, growing more purely intellectual and 
 philosophic, not less genial, but more refined in his 
 
210 THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 loving and sweet-hearted humor, loftier in his 
 spirit and imagination, more free from the merely 
 earthly and sensuous, more broad in his love of 
 universal humanity and of man's brotherhood, 
 more powerful in his expression of the deep things 
 of life, death, and eternity, more firm in his belief 
 in the principles of right, justice, and truth, and 
 of that higher divine order which enters into, 
 shapes, and directs all. 
 
OVERDUE- 
 
 MART" 1944 
 
 II ' 
 
id 114, 
 
 M188565 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY