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 literature primers. 
 
 Edited by John Richard Green, M.A. 
 
 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD DOWDEN, LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, 
 AUTHOR OF "SHAKSPERE, HIS MIND AND ART J A CRITICAL STUDY." 
 
 <N£W- EDITION. 
 
 ionium : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 UNnBERSITY of CALIFORNIA 
 
 [The Right of Translation and Reproductive is Reserved.] 
 
 r i \ LOS ANGELES* 
 
 \ 1> \) -lllfiRARY
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5 
 
 13 
 30 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 shakspere's life 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EARLY EDITIONS OF SHAKSPERE'S WRITINGS 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EVIDENCE OF THE CHRONOLOGY OF SHAKSPERE'S 
 WRITINGS . . . . ... . . .32 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PERIODS OF SHAKSPERE'S CAREER : GROUPS AND DATES 
 OF PLAYS 47 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 INTRODUCTIONS TO THE PLAYS AND POEMS. 
 
 Titus Andronicus 
 
 King Henry VI. Part I. 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost . . . 
 
 The Comedy of Errors 
 
 The Two Gentlemen of Verona . 
 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream . 
 
 King Henry VI. Parts II. & III. 
 
 King Richard III. . 
 
 Venus and Adonis 
 
 Lucrece 
 
 Romeo and Juliet 
 
 Kmg Ricr-ard II. 
 
 Kn.g John . c . 
 
 The Merchant of Venice . 
 
 King Henry IV. Parts 1, .& II 
 
 Kin,, Hen.-y V. . 
 
 r I he Taming of the Shrew . 
 
 The Merry Wives of Windsor . 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing 
 
 As You Like It . 
 
 The Passionate Pilgrim 
 
 PAGE 
 
 62 
 
 63 
 65 
 68 
 70 
 74 
 73 
 80 
 
 87 
 
 oO 
 OI 
 
 gr- 
 og 
 
 101 
 
 103 
 
 106 
 
 108 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Phoenix and the Turtle . in 
 
 The Sonnets 
 
 . 112 
 
 Twelfth Night . 
 
 . 114 
 
 Julius Caesar . . 
 
 . 117 
 
 Hamlet 
 
 . 119 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well 
 
 • 123 
 
 Measure for Measure 
 
 . 125 
 
 Troilus and Cressida . 
 
 . 127 
 
 Othello 
 
 • J3 1 
 
 King Lear . 
 
 • i33 
 
 Macbeth 
 
 . 136 
 
 Antony and Cieopat-'a 
 
 • i39 
 
 Coiiolanus .' 
 
 . 140 
 
 Timon of Athens 
 
 . 142 
 
 Peiicies 
 
 • i4t 
 
 Cyrabeline . 
 
 . 146 
 
 The Tempest 
 
 . 148 
 
 The Winter's Tale 
 
 • 151 
 
 King Henry VIII. . 
 
 • 153 
 
 Doubtful Plays . 
 
 . 156 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SHAKSPERE FROM l6l6 TO 1S77 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 BOOKS USEFUL TO STUDENTS OF SHAKSPERE 
 
 . 158 
 
 166 
 
 N.D. — The references to Act, Scene, and Line, throughout, are to 
 
 The Globe Shakespeare.
 
 LITERATURE PRIMERS. 
 
 "PR" 
 
 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. 
 
 i. England in Shakspere's Youth.— In the 
 
 closing years of the sixteenth century the life 
 of England ran high. The revival of learning had 
 enriched the national mind with a store of new 
 ideas and images ; the reformation of religion had 
 been accomplished, and its fruits were now secure ; 
 three conspiracies against the Queen's life had re- 
 cently been foiled, and her rival, the Queen of Scots, 
 had perished on the scaffold; the huge attempt of 
 Spain against the independence of England had been 
 defeated by the gallantry of English seamen, aided 
 by the winds of heaven. English adventurers were 
 exploring untravelled lands and distant oceans ; 
 English citizens were growing in wealth and im- 
 portance ; the farmers made the soil give up twice 
 its former yield ; the nobility, however fierce their 
 private feuds and rivalries might be, gathered around 
 the Queen as their centre. It was felt that England 
 was a power in the continent of Europe. Men were 
 in a temper to think human life, with its action 
 and its passions, a very important and interesting- 
 thing. They did not turn away from this world, and
 
 6 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 despise it in comparison with a heavenly country, as 
 did many of the finest souls in the Middle Ages ; 
 they did not, like the writers of the age of Queen 
 Anne, cafe only for "the town:" it was man they 
 cared for, and the whole of manhood — its good and 
 evil, its greatness and grotesqueness, its laughter and 
 its tears. 
 
 When men cared thus about human life, their 
 imagination craved living pictures and visions of it. 
 They liked to represent to themselves men and 
 women in all passionate and mirthful aspects and 
 circumstances of life. Sculpture, which the Greeks 
 so loved, would not have satisfied them, for it is too 
 simple and too calm ; music would not have been 
 sufficient, for it is too purely an expression of feelings, 
 and says too little about actions and events. The 
 art which suited the temper of their imagination 
 was the drama. In the drama they saw men and 
 women, alive, in action, in suffering, changing for 
 ever from mood to mood, from attitude to attitude ; 
 they saw these nien and women solitary, conversing 
 with their own hearts — in pairs and in groups, acting 
 one upon another ; in multitudes, swayed hither and 
 thither by their leaders. 
 
 2. Pre-Shaksperian Drama. — The drama had 
 been at first connected with the Church. It repre- 
 sented, both to instruct and to amuse the people, 
 events of sacred history and of the lives of saints, 
 or threw into the form of a play some moral allegory, 
 enlivened by grotesque incidents. Out of this rude 
 early drama had grown, by the time that Shakspere 
 began to write, three or four divergent branches. 
 
 (a) Allegorical plays— fashionable at Court— were still 
 written ; but the allegories instead of treating a theme 
 from Christian morals were in general founded upon 
 classical mythology, and were often meant as elaborate 
 compliments to the Queen or some great nobles. 
 
 (b) There were tragedies, and in some of these ele- 
 ments of real tragic grandeur existed ; but they were
 
 I.] THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. 7 
 
 marred by much crudeness and extravagance, by a 
 revelling in coarse horrors of mere violence and blood, 
 (t) There were comedies, at times not without a por- 
 tion of true grace and beauty, but often degenerating 
 into vulgar buffoonery and the antics of a clown. 
 (d) There were historical plays, in which some of 
 the patriotic feeling of Englishmen, and their interest 
 in our national annals, embodied themselves ; but 
 these too often spread out into a series of loosely 
 connected scenes ; they lacked unity of subject and 
 coherence of form. Some of Shakspcre's predecessors, 
 or fellow-playwrights, who made their mark earlier 
 than he, had given each some gift of his own to 
 the drama, and helped to bring it forward to the 
 point at which Shakspere took it up ; but none of 
 them was able to raise tragedy, comedy, and history 
 out of their crudities and puerilities into truly great 
 and noble forms of art. John Ly ly had shown how 
 a bright and lively dialogue can be written in prose. 
 George Peek had produced dramatic verse of a sweet 
 but monotonous melody. A romantic spirit was intro- 
 duced into English comedy by Robert Greene; over 
 his poetry breathes the fresh air of English meadows ; 
 his style is more free, more bright, light, and natural 
 than that of any preceding dramatic poet. Above all, 
 much was due to Christopher Mar/owe. His genius 
 was essentially of "a tragic cast; from his veins the 
 life-blood of passion had flowed into the drama of 
 England, and forthwith it lost its timidity, and was 
 conscious of strange new force and fire ; in his tra- 
 gedies was first heard upon a public stage that measure, 
 which is the express voice in our poetry of dramatic 
 feeling — blank verse. (See Mr. Brooke's Primer : 
 English Literature, pp. 74-82.) 
 
 3. Theatres and Actors, — The companies of 
 actors sought protection and patronage from the 
 Queen, or from some great noble, and accordingly 
 styled themselves by such names as " the Queen's 
 servants," " the Earl of Leicester's servants," " the
 
 8 SBAKSPERE, [chap. 
 
 Lord Chamberlain's servants." When a command 
 was given they played at Court for a circle of 
 aristocratic spectators. More frequently they played 
 before a mixed audience of high and low in some 
 inn-yard, or in one of the London theatres. Of 
 these the first was built by James Burbage (father 
 of the great actor Richard Burbage, who took the 
 chief part in several of Shakspere's plays), in the year 
 1576. It was erected "in the fields," in the parish of 
 Shoreditch, and was named " The Theatre." Almost 
 at the same time, and in the same locality, rose a 
 second theatre, known as " The Curtain," from the 
 name of the piece of ground upon which it stood. 
 While the Queen, the Court, and the pleasure-loving 
 part of the populace favoured and supported the 
 stage, it was looked on with hostility by devout Puri- 
 tans, and by the civic authorities, the Lord Mayor 
 and Corporation of London. The gathering of 
 crowds led to occasional brawls, in which the London 
 apprentices did not fail to display their prowess. 
 Public morality, it was said, suffered through temp- 
 tations offered by the place and the occasion. In 
 times of plague, stricken persons and persons who had 
 but partially recovered, carried infection with them 
 to the theatres, and so spread the sickness. When 
 moved thereto, the players dared to satirise eminent 
 living persons upon the stage. On Sundays folk were 
 enticed away from the congregation of saints to the 
 devil's congregation at the playhouse. So argued the 
 city authorities, and with them some sober-minded 
 .men and women of the Puritan way of thinking. As 
 a consequence the players were glad to erect their 
 theatres in some easily accessible place just beyond 
 the boundary of the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. To 
 the theatre "in the fields" the common people could 
 easily walk ; gentlefolk could ride, and have their 
 horses held by some theatrical underling at the door 
 while the performance was taking place. To the 
 theatres erected at a later time on the Bankside,
 
 I.] THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. 9 
 
 Southwark, gentlemen would go in one of the boats 
 plied by the Thames watermen ; the rest would choose 
 the more circuitous route by London Bridge. 
 
 4. Performance of a Play. — Within the theatre 
 a miscellaneous crowd assembled. Most commonly 
 the performance began at three o'clock and lasted 
 from two to three hours. In the public theatres the 
 centre of the building was open to the sky and 
 without seats, only the stage and the gallery being 
 roofed, and admission to the open space, or "yard," 
 cost from one penny or twopence to sixpence, while as 
 much as a shilling, two shillings, or half-a-crown was 
 given to obtain a place in the best parts of the house. 
 The private theatres were fully roofed, and during a 
 performance the interior was lit with torches. Upon 
 the rush-strewn stage sat young gallants, who drank 
 and smoked and joked while they waited for the ap- 
 pearance of the black-robed Prologue. Below, appren- 
 tices, tradesmen, sailors, and low women crushed and 
 swayed, cracked nuts, and fought for bitten apples. 
 If ladies appeared in the " rooms," or boxes, it was 
 considered correct that they should conceal their faces 
 behind masks. In due time a flourish of trumpets 
 announced that the play was to begin, and a flag was 
 hung out from the top of the building. Upon the 
 trumpet's third sounding the prologue was delivered, 
 the curtain divided and drew back, and the actors 
 were discovered. They appeared in costumes which 
 were often costly, but which made slight pretension to 
 historical propriety. Of movable scenery there was 
 none. The stage was hung with arras, and overhead 
 a blue canopy represented " the heavens." Some- 
 times when a tragedy was to be enacted the stage- 
 hangings were black. At the back of the stage was a 
 Jjalcony which served for many purposes — "it was 
 inner room, upper room, window, balcony, battlements, 
 hill-side, Mount Olympus, any place in fact which was 
 supposed to be separated from and above the scene of 
 the main action." Here Juliet appeared to Romeo, 
 
 A3
 
 io SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 and probably here the play-king and play-queen in 
 Hamlet enacted their parts. A change of scene was 
 indicated by some suggestive piece of stage furniture 
 —a bed to signify a bed-chamber ; a table with pens 
 upon it to signify a counting-house ; or, more simply, 
 a board bearing in large letters the name of the place 
 intended was brought upon the stage. Accordingly, 
 the dramatist might change the scene as often as he 
 pleased, or indulge in magnificent description, without 
 fear that a lessee would offer as an objection the ex- 
 pense of providing suitable scenery. While the play 
 was going forward the clown would amuse the audience 
 with extempore joking, not set down by the poet. 
 Shakspere disliked this traditional mode of providing 
 sport for the occupants of the yard or pit — the "ground- 
 lings," as they were called — and his Hamlet, when de- 
 livering his advice to the players, warns them against 
 such an abuse in their performance of the tragedy 
 which he commands them to present. (Act III. Sc. ii. 
 L. 42.) Between the acts there was dancing and singing, 
 and at the end of the play the clown put the audience 
 into good humour before they separated with a jig, 
 that is, a farcical song accompanied by dancing and 
 the music of his pipe or tabor. (See Twelfth Night, 
 end.) Sometimes a short epilogue was delivered. 
 (As You Like It, and Tempest, end.) Finally the 
 actors knelt and offered up a prayer for the Queen. 
 It is important to note that the female parts were 
 played by boys or young men. The parts of Desde- 
 mona and Imogen, of Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth 
 could not be entrusted to a great actress, as they have 
 been since the Restoration, but were left to the mercy 
 of some youth with unbroken voice. (See A?itony and 
 Cleopatra, Act V. Sc. ii. L. 220 ; Hamlet, Act II. Sc. ii. 
 L. 444 ; As You Like It, Epilogue.) A further refine- 
 ment of art was demanded from these young actors 
 when they were required to represent a girl who has 
 assumed the disguise of male attire, as happens with 
 Shakspere's Viola, with Jessica and Portia, with Rosa-
 
 I.] THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. u 
 
 lind, with Imogen ; it was necessary that they should 
 at once pretend to be and avoid becoming that which 
 they actually were. 
 
 5. Writers of Plays sometimes Actors.— In 
 several instances, though not in all, the writers of 
 plays were also actors. Thus they studied their public 
 from the boards, acquired an instinctive feeling for 
 what would hit the general taste, and for what would 
 only perplex or offend, and gained a mastery over 
 the secrets of stage effect. Certain qualities, it was 
 found, were indispensable in a play which was in- 
 tended to give immediate pleasure ; and, on the other 
 hand, many particulars which would have seemed to 
 a writer in his closet of essential importance, were 
 found to be matters of indifference in an acting play 
 that aimed at success rather than scholarly or artistic 
 exactitude. Attaining what was all-important, the 
 poet was careless about much beside, and in some 
 cases Shakspere does not scruple to use devices for 
 producing a kind of stage-perspective of time and 
 space which, if examined without reference to the 
 purposes of stage effect, seem mere blunders, just as 
 in some great painting a needful piece of colour, if not 
 looked at from the right point of view, may appear an 
 unintelligible blot. The movement and spectacle 
 upon the stage is never despised by Shakspere. Even 
 in Hamlet, which has rightly been named a " tragedy 
 of thought," what an impressive series of appeals to 
 the senses is made from first to last — the starlit night 
 upon the platform at Elsinore, haunted by a majestic 
 spirit from the grave, succeeded by the brilliancy of 
 the Danish Court surrounding the sad, black-robed 
 figure of Prince Hamlet, and so on, past that scene in 
 which the crazed Ophelia appears singing her snatches 
 of song and bestowing her flowers, to the close, where 
 the murderers and the murdered man alike fall in 
 death, and the " quarry cries on havock." 
 
 6. Plays considered as Property. — The writer 
 of a play usually sold it to the theatre, but sometimes
 
 12 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 to a kind of broker who stood between players and 
 authors, buying from the one, and selling, so as him- 
 self to profit by the transaction, to the other. Such 
 was Philip Henslowe, a dyer, pawnbroker, theatrical 
 lessee and speculator, who during the years of Shak- 
 spere's authorship had many dramatic poets in his 
 pay. His diary still exists, and from it we learn that 
 the highest price given by him for a play before the 
 year 1600 was jQ2> ; the lowest sum is £4 ; while for an 
 embroidered velvet cloak no less than ^16 is given, 
 and £4 14s. for a pair of hose. After 1600 the price 
 of a play rose to ^"20 if the dramatist was one of 
 repute. Not infrequently the plays, for which such 
 moderate prices were given, had been the work of 
 two or more hands, a sudden demand for a new 
 play inducing the company to set several authors 
 to work, in order that time might be gained. Or the 
 double authorship was the result of a more lasting 
 alliance between two writers of kindred or comple- 
 mentary genius, who found that they could be helpful 
 to one another in this way. Or, again, it arose from 
 a later poet going over the work of some earlier 
 dramatist and recasting his play, or adding to it cer- 
 tain scenes which might serve to give it the charm 
 of at least partial novelty. The theatrical company 
 having bought the manuscript of a play were naturally 
 desirous to keep it for their own uses upon the stage, 
 and were unwilling that it should pass into the hands 
 of a bookseller, and be published. But the lovers of 
 the drama liked to be able to buy and read a popular 
 play ; and accordingly piratical publishers tried in 
 some dishonest way to come at the manuscript. When 
 that was impossible they sent reporters to the play- 
 house, who copied down the words as they fell from 
 the actors' lips, but sometimes so imperfectly that gaps 
 in the reporters' copies had to be supplied by some 
 mercenary scribbler, who generally succeeded in spoil- 
 ing not only the sound but the sense of such passages 
 as he attempted to handle. Such an imperfect report
 
 II.] THE LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 13 
 
 of Hamlet, in an earlier form of the play than that 
 which it finally assumed, we possess, with passages 
 stupidly inserted by an unknown hand, or reproduced 
 from an imperfect recollection of what Shakspere had 
 written. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 7. Stratford. Birth of Shakspere. — War- 
 wickshire has been named by Shakspere's con- 
 temporary and fellow-poet, Michael Drayton, " the 
 heart of England." The country around Stratford 
 presents the perfection of quiet English scenery ; it is 
 remarkable for its wealth of lovely wild-flowers, for its 
 deep meadows on each side of the tranquil Avon, and 
 for its rich, sweet woodlands. The town itself, in 
 Shakspere's time, numbered about 1400 inhabitants ; 
 a town of scattered timber houses, possessing two 
 chief buildings — the stately church by the river-side, 
 and the Guildhall, where companies of players would 
 at times perform, when the corporation secured their 
 services. Flood and fire were the chief dangers of the 
 town. The quiet river often rose angrily in autumn, 
 and left disease behind it. The plague, in its course, 
 did not turn aside from Stratford. Here, and probably 
 in a low-ceiled room of a house in Henley Street, 
 William Shakspere was born, in April, 1564. Upon 
 what day we cannot be certain ; but upon the 26th he 
 was baptised ; and there is a tradition that the day of 
 his death was the anniversary of his birthday. Allow- 
 ing for the difference between old style and new, 
 April 23rd corresponds with our 3rd of May, or, 
 allowing for the accumulated error in the new style, 
 with our May 5th. 
 
 8. Shakspere's Parentage. — John Shakspere, 
 father of the future dramatist, was a prosperous
 
 14 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 burgess of Stratford. He made and sold gloves, 
 farmed land, and though he knew not how to write 
 his name, became an important public person of the 
 town, tasting ale for his fellow-burgesses, keeping 
 the Queen's peace, imposing fines upon offenders, 
 rising in course of time to the honourable posts of 
 chamberlain, alderman, and high bailiff. He married, 
 in 1557, Mary Arden, daughter of his landlord, who 
 had died about a year before, leaving Mary a consider- 
 able piece of landed property in possession (including 
 a farm at Ashbies), and one much more valuable in 
 reversion. The Aniens were Warwickshire gentry since 
 before the Conquest, and two of the family had held 
 places of distinction in the household of Henry VII. 
 The first child and the second of John and Mary Shak- 
 spere were girls, who died while infants; the third — ■ 
 their first-born son — was to live, in spite of the plague 
 which desolated Stratford during the year of his birth, 
 and was to write the plays and poems that we know. 
 Other children followed : a daughter, who survived 
 William Shakspere, and is remembered in his will ; 
 another daughter, who died early ; and three sons — 
 Gilbert, who is said to have lived until the Restoration, 
 and to have talked as an old man of his great brother's 
 impersonation of Adam in As You Like It (but this is 
 doubtful) ; Richard ; and Edmund, who became an 
 actor, and died in London in the year 1607. 
 
 9. Schooling and Recreations. — To the Free 
 Grammar School of Stratford William Shakspere was 
 sent, we may be sure, to learn what neither his 
 father nor his mother could teach. There he was 
 taught not only English, but some Latin, and perhaps 
 a little Greek. The amount of Shakspere's classi- 
 cal learning has been described by his more scholarly 
 fellow-playwright, Ben Jonson, as " small Latin and 
 less Greek ; " and it is certain that, in using Greek 
 and Latin authors for the purposes of his plays, he 
 went to translations rather than to the originals. But 
 that he had got by heart his Lily's Latin Grammar,
 
 II.] THE LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 15 
 
 and was acquainted with the rudiments of that lan- 
 guage is almost certain ; and it has been noticed that 
 he uses several English words — as, for example, the 
 continents of rivers for containing banks, quantity for 
 value, and others — in senses which would not occur 
 to one who was absolutely ignorant of Latin. After- 
 wards — perhaps during his London life — Shakspere 
 seems to have learned something of French, and 
 possibly also of Italian. 
 
 In the first year in which Shakspere could have been 
 admitted to the Free Grammar School, his father 
 became chief alderman of Stratford. The corpora- 
 tion seem to have welcomed the players who occa- 
 sionally visited the town. Now and again sums of 
 money are paid by the chamberlain to " the Earl 
 of Leicester's players," " my Lord of Warwick's 
 players," and "the Earl of Worcester's players." 
 The boy, his father's eldest son, may have been 
 taken to see the entertainments in the Guildhall. 
 Coventry is not very far distant from Stratford ; and it 
 is not impossible that Shakspere, as a boy or youth, 
 may have watched the guilds set up the pageants in 
 the streets of that ancient city at the festival of Corpus 
 Christi ; may have observed Herod with his painted 
 mask and violent bearing (Hamlet, Act III. Sc. ii. 
 L. 16), and the "black souls" — the souls of the 
 damned — in their garb of black and yellow stripes, to 
 whom, in Henry V. (Act II. Sc. iii. L. 42-44), the flea 
 upon Bardolph's fiery nose is compared. In the sum- 
 mer of 1575 Queen Elizabeth made her famous visit 
 to Kenilworth, and was entertained by Leicester with 
 splendid and varied ceremonies and spectacles. From 
 Stratford it is only a few hours' walk to Kenilworth ; 
 Shakspere's father might ride across with the boy 
 before him. And a celebrated passage in A Mid- 
 summer NigJifs Dream (Act II. Sc. i. L. 148-168), 
 where Oberon describes to Puck some marvels he had 
 seen, so accurately depicts some of the Kenilworth 
 shows on this occasion that we can well believe that
 
 1 6 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 Shakspere here does not invent, but rather recalls 
 what his eyes had actually looked on. (See p. 74.) 
 
 10. His Father's Decline in Fortune.— Until 
 about Shakspere's thirteenth or fourteenth year, his 
 father seems to have been a prosperous man. But 
 from 1578 onwards for a number of years, the for- 
 tunes of John Shakspere declined. To raise money 
 he mortgages the farm at Ashbies ; he is not required 
 to pay the weekly levy for relief of the poor ; borough 
 taxes levied upon him in 1579 are entered as "unpaid 
 and unaccounted for ; " he is in debt to one Roger 
 Sadler ; he sells his wife's share, and soon afterwards 
 her reversionary interest in the Snitterfield property. 
 Six years later we find his case grown worse : upon a 
 distraint issued against him — a writ to seize his goods 
 for debt — the return is made that John Shakspere has 
 nothing in which he is able to be distrained ; he is 
 deprived of his alderman's office on the ground that 
 he " doth not come to the hall, nor hath not done of 
 long time." Is he afraid of arrest ? In the follow- 
 ing year, 1587, it would seem that he actually was 
 arrested, for we find him suing out a writ of habeas 
 corpus. So late as 1592, when a commission was ap- 
 pointed to inquire into the conformity of the Warwick- 
 shire people to the established religion, John Shak- 
 spere's failure to appear monthly at church is set 
 down as caused by the fear of " processe for debt." 
 Still he seems to have clung to some fragments of his 
 property, and to have retained some of the old esteem 
 of his fellow-citizens. At this period his son was 
 beginning to be known as a successful dramatist ; and 
 it is almost certain that, owing to William Shakspere's 
 energy and affection, the old man was restored to a 
 position of comfort, which he enjoyed until his death 
 in 1601. 
 
 In consequence of his father's difficulties, it is likely 
 that William Shakspere was withdrawn from school, 
 and either assisted John Shakspere in his trade, or was 
 set to earn a living in some way for himself. What
 
 Ii.] THE LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 17 
 
 his precise employment was, in the interval between 
 leaving school and leaving Stratford, is a question 
 which affords room for much guessing, but one which 
 cannot be answered with certainty. One tradition 
 says that he was " bound apprentice to a butcher ; " 
 another, that he was " a schoolmaster in the country;" 
 while certain supposed references to him by the 
 dramatist Nash, together with the number and ac- 
 curacy of the legal allusions in his writings, have led 
 many persons to believe that he was for a time at work 
 in an attorney's office. But it is doubtful whether Nash's 
 description of " a sort of shifting companions that run 
 through every art and thrive by none," who " leave 
 the trade of Novermt [that is the legal profession], 
 whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the 
 endeavours of art " — it is doubtful whether these words 
 of Nash have any reference to Shakspere ; and, in the 
 course of his father's many law-suits, a clever youth 
 could hardly have failed to gain some acquaintance 
 with legal terms and procedures. 
 
 11. Shakspere's Marriage. — What we know 
 for certain is that in his nineteenth year Shakspere 
 was making grave engagements and accepting serious 
 duties. In November, 1582, the Bishop of Wop 
 cester granted a licence for the marriage of William 
 Shakspere and Anne Hathaway upon once asking of 
 the banns. Their first child, Susanna, was baptised 
 May 26th, 1583. Anne was the daughter of Richard 
 Hathaway, a substantial yeoman, living at Shottery, 
 a beautiful hamlet hardly one mile distant from 
 Stratford. She was eight years older than her boy 
 husband. The friends of the bride (her father had 
 been five months dead) seem to have desired the 
 marriage, and perhaps urged it on, that Anne's child 
 might be born in lawful wedlock. Whether it proved a 
 happy marriage or the reverse — so little do we know of 
 Shakspere's life — remains a matter of mere conjecture. 
 For four or five years he resided in Stratford, and in 
 1585 became the father of twins, Hamnet and Judith,
 
 SffAHSl i. [cj I ' . . 
 
 named after his friends Hamnet Sadler and his wife. 
 Most probably during the poet's London life Anne 
 with his children stayed in Stratford. It was in Strat- 
 ford, in 1596, that Hamnet, his only son, was buried. 
 But though Shakspere chose to leave his wife and 
 children in the country, while he himself was toiling 
 in the great city, a tradition records that he paid a 
 yearly visit to his home ; there is no doubt that he 
 toiled with the purpose of returning — as he actually 
 did — to his native town, there, with his wife and 
 daughters about him, to spend the later years of his 
 life. In Shakspere's will the only mention of his wife 
 occurs in an interlineation, by which is bequeathed to 
 her " my second best bed with the furniture ; " she 
 was, however, legally provided for, having as widow 
 the right of dower in Shakspere's freehold property. 
 The bequest of a bed was surely not meant as a part- 
 ing insult from her husband ; we must rather under- 
 stand it as meant to gratify some womanly attachment 
 to a piece of household goods, founded, it may be, on 
 old and tender associations. From the poet's writings 
 no certain inference can be drawn with regard to his 
 marriage. In A Midsummer Nighfs Dream (Act I. 
 Sc. i. L. 137) mention is made of love " misgraffed in 
 respect of years," as a cause of trouble in love's 
 course ; and in Twelfth Night (Act II. Sc. iv. L. 30- 
 40) may be found a much more noteworthy passage, 
 in which the Duke speaks to Viola about the risk a 
 woman older than her husband runs of losing his 
 affection. Such evidence as Shakspere's Sonnets 
 afford points in the same direction. On the other 
 hand, there is no bitterness, open or covert, against 
 women in general, or any particular type or class of 
 women in Shakspere's writings. Even the shrewish 
 women of some of his early plays, introduced for comic 
 purposes, are at heart loving and loyal, like Adriana 
 of The Comedy of Errors ; or only outrageously 
 spoilt children, but not incapable of being reclaimed, 
 like Katharina in lite Taming of the Shrew. It is
 
 ii.] rm 
 
 observable, however, that ali through his plays Shak- 
 spere shows a peculiar comprehension of the situation 
 of a woman who, throwing aside conventional but not 
 real modesty, ventures upon certain greater or less 
 advances towards the man she loves. From Juliet to 
 Miranda, a series of Shaksperian heroines could be 
 named, who share, as it were, in their own wooing, 
 without once forfeiting their ardent purity of soul. 
 Upon the whole it seems probable that, while the 
 union of Shakspere and his wife was not one of the 
 rare, flawless, married unions, yet it was founded at 
 first upon strong mutual attraction ; and that, if a 
 period of estrangement, slight or serious, intervened, 
 there was found on both sides substantial worth 
 enough to make it natural that their lives should 
 come really together again, and that it should be 
 indeed good for each to accept things as they were. 
 
 12. Deer - Stealing. Leaves Stratford. — 
 The immediate cause of Sbakspere's departure from 
 Stratford is thus told circumstantially by Rowe, his 
 first biographer : " He had, by a misfortune common 
 enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company ; and, 
 amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of 
 deer-stealing, engaged him, more than once, in robbing 
 a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlcote, 
 near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that 
 gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely ; and 
 in order to revenge the ill-usage, he made a ballad 
 upon him. And though this, probably the first, essay 
 of his poetry be lost, yet it is said to have been so very 
 bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him, 
 to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business 
 and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter 
 himself in London." Some of the details of this story 
 are undoubtedly incorrect, but there is good reason to 
 believe that a foundation of truth underlies the tra- 
 dition. Sir T. Lucy was an important person in the 
 neighbourhood — a member of Parliament, one of the 
 Puritan party (with which our dramatist can never
 
 20 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 have been in sympathy), and about the time of this 
 alleged deer-stealing frolic, was concerned in framing 
 a bill in Parliament for the preservation of game. 
 Although he did not possess what is properly a park 
 at Charlcote, he had deer; Shakspere and his com- 
 panions may have had a struggle with Sir T. Lucy's 
 men. A verse of the ballad ascribed to the young 
 poacher has been traditionally handed down, and in 
 it the writer puns upon the name Lucy — " O lowsie 
 Lucy " — in a way sufficiently insulting. It is note- 
 worthy that in the first scene of The Merry Wives of 
 Windsor, Justice Shallow is introduced as highly in- 
 censed against Sir John Falstaff, who has beaten his 
 men, killed his deer, and broke open his lodge ; the 
 Shallows, like Shakspere's old antagonist, have " luces" 
 in their coat-of-arms, and the Welsh parson admirably 
 misunderstands the word — " the dozen white louses 
 do become an old coat well." It can hardly be 
 doubted that when this scene was written, Shakspere 
 had some grudge against the Lucy family, and in 
 making them ridiculous before the Queen he may 
 have had an amused sense that he was now obtaining 
 a success for his boyish lampoon, little dreamed of 
 when it was originally put into circulation among the 
 good folk of Stratford. 
 
 13. Early Years in London. Greene's Allu- 
 sion. — From the baptism of his twins, in February, 
 1584-85, we hear nothing of Shakspere (except the 
 mention of his name in an action in the Queen's Bench, 
 brought by his father against John Lambert, who now 
 held the Ashbies property), until he is spoken of in 1592 
 as a successful actor and author. The "Queen's Players" 
 came to Stratford in 1587. Then perhaps it was that 
 Shakspere decided to leave his native town, and seek 
 his fortune in the world of London. A story, alleged 
 to have come from Sir W. Davenant, that Shakspere's 
 first employment in connection with the theatre, was 
 that of holding the horses of those who came to the 
 play, we may dismiss as probably mythical. It has
 
 II.] THE LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 21 
 
 been maintained that a passage in Spenser's Tears of 
 the Muses (1590-91), where the Muse of Comedy 
 laments that 
 
 Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late, 
 
 refers to some temporary cessation of Shakspere from 
 dramatic authorship ; but the probability is that some- 
 one else is meant, perhaps John Lyly, perhaps the 
 comic actor, Tarleton, who had but lately died when 
 Spenser wrote the poem. The first certain reference 
 to Shakspere which has been discovered is that of the 
 dramatist Robert Greene in his Greenes Groatsworth 
 of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance, a pamphlet 
 written by its unhappy author upon his deathbed, and 
 published immediately after Greene's death by his 
 executor, Henry Chettle. Here the dying playwright, 
 addressing three of his fellow-authors, who have been 
 identified with Marlowe, Peele, and Nash (or Lodge), 
 warns them against putting any trust in players : " Yes, 
 trust them not : for there is an upstart Crow, beautified 
 with our feathers, that with his tygers heart wrapt in 
 a players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast 
 out a blanke verse as the best of you : and being an 
 absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the 
 onely Shake-scene in a country." We have evidence 
 here that before Greene's death the players had been 
 turning from him to a rival poet who was also an actor, 
 who could write a swelling blank verse like Marlowe, 
 who turned his hand to everything, and made himself 
 useful in many ways to his company. Him Greene 
 hated, and he hoped that Marlowe and Nash might 
 hate him also. The words " beautified with our 
 feathers," probably mean no more than pranking him- 
 self as an actor in the fine speeches of our plays, but 
 the words "tygers heart wrapped in a players hide" 
 parody a line — 
 
 Oh tygers heart wrapt in a woman's hide — 
 which occurs in the True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of
 
 22 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 York, and is also found in the Third Part of Henry VI., 
 
 this last being a recast, with additions and omissions, 
 
 of the True Tragedie. It has been suggested that in 
 
 quoting this line Greene reminds his friends that 
 
 Shakspere, in the Third Part of Henry FT"., had stolen 
 
 from an earlier play of which Greene himself, or Mar- 
 
 • lowe, or both together were authors, and that therefore 
 
 e for them a peculiar ground of resentment against 
 
 g Shakspere existed. 
 
 14. Chettle's Reference to Shakspere. — Some 
 three months later, in December, 1592, a pamphlet by 
 Henry Chettle appeared, entitled Kind-Harts Dream. 
 It seems that Marlowe and Shakspere took offence 
 at passages in Greenes Groatsworth referring to 
 them. Chettle declares that as for one of them 
 (Marlowe), while he reverences his learning he has 
 nothing to answer for, and cares not ever to make his 
 acquaintance. To Shakspere he offers a liberal apology. 
 " The other [Shakspere] whome at that time I did 
 
 not so much spare as since I wish I had 
 
 I am as sory as if the originall fault had beene my 
 fault, because my selfe have seene his demeanor no 
 lcsse civill, than he exelent in the qualitie he professes; 
 besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightnes 
 of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious 
 grace in writting, that aprooves his art." The word 
 " quality," it should be noted, was used in Shakspere's 
 time with special reference to the actor's profession ; 
 so that we here possess testimony to Shakspere's worth 
 as a man, to his excellence in his profession, and to 
 the friends and fame he had already acquired as a 
 writer.* If the poet whom Spenser speaks of in his 
 Colin Cloufs Come Home Again, under the name of 
 Aetion be Shakspere — and though Colin Clout was not 
 published until 1594, there are reasons for thinking 
 that it may have been written as early as 1591- — it is 
 interesting to see the " upstart crow " of the envious 
 
 * " Facetious," in the quotation from Chettle, means felicitous, 
 or happy.
 
 ii.] THE LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 23 
 
 Greene recognised, by one so much greater than 
 Greene, as a young eagle in boldness and strength of 
 flight (Aetion= AenW from derds, an eagle). 
 
 And there though last not least is Aetion ; 
 
 A gentler shepherd may no where be found ; 
 Whose muse, full of high thought's invention, 
 
 Doth like himself heroically sound. 
 
 " Like himself," that is, like his name Shakespeare ; 
 but the reference may be to Drayton, who had written 
 under the heroic name of Rowland. 
 
 15. Southampton and Shakspere. — To the 
 young Earl of Southampton, nine years junior to 
 himself — probably one of those persons of worship 
 who had come forward to vindicate Shakspere from 
 Greene's aspersions — the poet dedicated, in 1593, 
 Venus and Adonis, " the first heire of my invention." 
 It proved a distinguished literary success, and in the 
 following year, 1594, the Lucrece appeared, with a 
 dedication to the same noble person, written, not in 
 terms of timid appeal, like the earlier dedication, 
 but in words of strong and confident affection. 
 " What I have done is yours ; what I have to do is 
 yours ; being part of all I have, devoted yours." The 
 Earl, a generous and high-spirited youth, like those 
 young men who make bright the early comedies of 
 Shakspere, had no doubt warmly recognised Shak- 
 spere's genius. There is a story, professing to have 
 come from Davenant, which represents Southampton 
 as having at one time given to Shakspere ;£iooo to 
 go through with a purchase he had a mind to. This 
 is doubtless an exaggeration ; but that Southampton 
 was at this time a warm and generous friend we may 
 not doubt, and Shakspere, the scapegrace of his native 
 town, scoffed at by Greene, one of the despised players, 
 bound to a way of life utterly distasteful to him, re- 
 sponded warmly, and gave up his heart in unrestrained 
 delight, to one who seemed so noble and so liberal 
 of love.
 
 24 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 i 6. Growing Prosperity.— Ben Jonson, in his 
 
 lines to the memory of Shakspere, addressing him as 
 " Sweet swan of Avon," speaks of 
 
 Those flights upon the banks of Thames 
 That so did take Eliza and our James ! 
 
 The first mention we possess of Shakspere by name, 
 after his arrival in London, occurs in the accounts 
 of the Treasurer of the Chamber, from which we learn 
 that he appeared twice with Burbage, as a member 
 of the Lord Chamberlain's company, before Queen 
 Elizabeth, in Christmas time, 1593. He was now 
 rapidly producing his historical plays and earlier 
 comedies, and was gathering that wealth which he 
 meant should release him from the servitude of _ his 
 profession. He had planned to return in due time 
 to Stratford, and to live there as a gentleman. In 
 1596 John Shakspere applied for a grant of coat- 
 armour, and in the following year the grant was made 
 by the Garter King-of-Arms. But if Shakspere hoped 
 to found a family that hope received a blow, and the 
 father's heart was wounded by the death, in 1596, 
 of Hamnet, his only son. Still, however, he pursues 
 his plan, and looks forward to Stratford as his home. 
 An attempt was made at this time by John Shakspere 
 and his wife to recover the ancestral fields of Ashbies, 
 probably without success. In the same year, 1597, 
 William Shakspere bought, for £60, New Place, a 
 goodly dwelling in his native town. His interest in 
 his country home and his influence in London are re- 
 cognised in a letter of 1598, still existing, from Master 
 Abraham Sturley to Richard Quiney (father of Shak- 
 spere's future son-in-law). Quiney was in London, 
 soliciting Lord Burleigh for certain favours to be 
 conferred on the town of Stratford ; Sturley supposes 
 that by the friends Mr. Shakspere can make their 
 mark may be hit. Later in the year was written by 
 Quiney the only letter addressed to our great poet 
 which remains to us ; its purport is the practical one
 
 ii.] THE LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 25 
 
 of begging a loan of ^"30 ; we may surmise that 
 Shakspere acceded to his friend's request. He has 
 property in both Stratford and London ; in the former 
 we find him a considerable holder of corn and malt ; 
 in the latter he is assessed on property in the parish 
 of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, ^5 13^. 4^. 
 
 17. Growing Fame. Meres. — But we have 
 not yet exhausted the information which this year 
 1598 yields. Now it is that Ben Jonson's first 
 comedy, Every Man in his Humour, makes its ap- 
 pearance. There is a tradition that the play was 
 brought before the public through the good offices 
 of Shakspere ; it is certain that he acted in the 
 play, taking, probably, the part of Knowell. Now, 
 also (1598), most remarkable testimony to the high 
 position occupied by Shakspere as a dramatist and as 
 a narrative and lyrical poet is given in the Palladis 
 Tamia, Wit's Treasury, by Francis Meres, Master 
 of Arts. The passage in which Meres enumerates 
 twelve of Shakspere's plays is of the utmost im- 
 portance in guiding us towards a true chronology 
 of his works, and will afterwards be quoted at length ; 
 it must also be observed that Meres makes mention of 
 Shakspere's "sugred sonnets among his private friends." 
 The earliest editions of plays by Shakspere belong 
 to this period. In 1597 were printed Richard II, 
 Richard III, and Romeo and Juliet. Others speedily 
 followed. It is clear that in several instances the 
 copies were obtained surreptitiously, and to gain a 
 sale for plays by other authors unscrupulous printers 
 now placed the popular name of Shakspere upon the 
 title page. In 1599 a volume of poems, entitled The 
 Passionate Pilgrim, was published, and its authorship 
 ascribed to Shakspere : Jaggard, the publisher, had 
 got hold of a few short pieces of Shakspere's, and 
 added to these liberally from other quarters. We 
 know, on the testimony of Heywood, that Shakspere, 
 upon occasion of a subsequent edition containing 
 poems falsely ascribed to him, was seriously offended.
 
 ±6 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 i 8. Practical Energy. — In 1601 died at Strat- 
 ford John Shakspere. Still his son worked on to win 
 for himself independence and a home. Hamlet is 
 entered in Stationers' register, 1602, and in the same 
 year the creator of Hamlet, a shareholder in the Globe 
 Theatre since 1599, was living in no dream-world, but 
 was taking practical possession of this solid earth 
 — purchasing in May, for ^320, one hundred and 
 seven acres in the parish of Old Stratford, his brother 
 Gilbert receiving the conveyance for him — and later 
 in the year (the author of Hamlet being now "William 
 Shakspere, Gentleman ") a second and smaller pro- 
 perty. His largest purchase was that of the un- 
 expired term of a lease of the tithes of Stratford, 
 Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe ; this he 
 acquired in July, 1605, for the sum of £<\4°- A 
 .year previously, when perhaps he was writing his 
 King Lear, his care for practical affairs appears by his 
 bringing an action, in the court of Stratford, against 
 one Philip Rogers, for £1 15J. iod., being the price 
 of malt sold and delivered to him at different times. 
 Shakspere seems to have found it possible to carry on 
 actively and at the same time his life in the ideal, and 
 his life in the material world. 
 
 19. Family Joys and Sorrows. — But although 
 now styled " gentleman, of Stratford-on-Avon," he 
 had not yet left London nor abandoned his pro- 
 fession. Elizabeth died in 1603 ; it was noticed at 
 the time (by C/iettle, who refers to his great con- 
 temporary under the title of "silver-tongued Melicert") 
 that Shakspere lamented the Queen in no ode or 
 elegy. In May arrived at London her successor, 
 James I., and within a few days after his arrival a 
 warrant was issued licensing the theatrical company 
 to which Shakspere belonged ; his name appears 
 second in the list of players contained in the warrant. 
 Ben Jonson's Sejanus was first acted in the same year, 
 1603, and the name of Shakspere occupies a place in 
 the list of actors. We know that Burbage on pur-
 
 II.] THE LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 27 
 
 chasing the lease of Blackfriars (1603) placed players 
 there among whom was Shakspere ; at what time he 
 ceased to appear upon the stage we cannot say. Nor 
 do we know when, precisely, he returned to Stratford. 
 In 1607 happiness and sorrow came to him : on June 
 5, his eldest and favourite daughter, Susanna, aged 
 twenty-four, was married to Mr. John Hall, a practising 
 physician of considerable repute ; then, doubtless, 
 the poet was with his daughter on her wedding-day. 
 On the last day of the year his youngest brother, 
 Edmund, was buried in the church of St. Saviour's, 
 Southwark. Edmund, was a player attracted, perhaps, 
 to London by his brother's success ; his age was 
 twenty-seven. William Shakspere did not apparently 
 despise the ceremonial part of life, for we find that on 
 this occasion twenty shillings were paid for " a fore- 
 noon knell of the great bell." Again, within a few 
 months, death visited his household ; in September, 
 1608, Mary Shakspere, who had lived to see her son 
 so famous and wealthy, followed her husband to the 
 grave. It is not improbable that Shakspere may have 
 been present at her deathbed, for a month later he was 
 at Stratford, and stood sponsor for William Walker, 
 who is remembered in his will. His mother had not 
 died without having held in her arms a grandchild 
 of her son. On February 21, 1607-8 was baptised 
 a daughter of John and Susanna Hall, whom they 
 named Elizabeth ; she was their only child, and the 
 only one of his grandchildren whom Shakspere lived 
 to see. 
 
 20. Return to Stratford.— Between the years 
 1 6 10 and 16 12 we have reason to suppose that 
 Shakspere returned for good to his Stratford home. 
 The change was great from the streets of London, 
 the noisy theatres, the brilliant wit-combats at the 
 Mermaid tavern, to the peaceful retreat, the wife 
 whom he had loved as a boy — now grown elderly 
 — his children and their little girl, by this time 
 running about and talking, and, encircling these, the
 
 28 SHAKSPERE. [CHAP. 
 
 quiet fields and hills and brimming river. Still he 
 retained an interest in London. The Globe Theatre 
 was perhaps yielding him some of the profits upon 
 which he lived, and in March, 1613, he bought a 
 house near Blackfriars Theatre, and leased it to a 
 tenant for ten years. The death of Richard Shakspere 
 in 16 1 2 left him brotherless, unless Gilbert still sur- 
 vived. In the following year, 16 13, the Globe Theatre 
 was destroyed by fire, and probably manuscripts of 
 Shakspere's plays perished on that occasion. Fire 
 again may have alarmed, if it did not injure, Shak- 
 spere in 1 6 14, for in that year a great conflagration 
 took place at Stratford, fifty-four houses being burnt 
 down. At the same time a project was put forward 
 for the enclosing of some common lands near Stratford. 
 It touched Shakspere's interests and would have been 
 an injury to the poor : Shakspere resisted the scheme, 
 declaring that " he was not able to bear the enclosing 
 of Welcombe." We must not fail to notice one entry 
 of the year 16 14 in the Stratford Chamberlain's 
 accounts : " Item : For one quart of sack, and one 
 quart of clarett wine, given to a preacher at the Newe 
 Place, xxd." Stratford had been growing puritanical 
 since the time when Shakspere was a boy, and the 
 players so often visited the town ; at last the players 
 were even paid not to perform. Mrs. Hall and her 
 husband did not forfeit the poet's regard because 
 they were somewhat puritanically inclined. Perhaps 
 Shakspere's wife had sought in religion a satisfaction 
 which her marriage had not afforded. We can 
 imagine the great interpreter of life listening with a 
 grave smile to the whole truth as proclaimed by the 
 preacher, and recognising as a pleasant foible the 
 preacher's interest in claret and sherry sack. 
 
 21. Death. — On February 10th, 1616, Shakspere's 
 younger daughter, Judith, now aged 31, was married 
 to Thomas Quincy, a vintner of Stratford, whose father 
 — a friend of the poet — had been high bailiff of the 
 town. On the 25th of the next month he executed
 
 II.] THE LIFE OF SHAKSPERE. 29 
 
 his will, which in January had been drawn, and in 
 another month the world had lost Shakspere. He 
 died April 23rd, 16 16. Ward, the Vicar of Stratford, 
 noted some fifty years later, " Shakespeare, Drayton, 
 and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and, it seems, 
 drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there 
 contracted." Whether this be history or myth we 
 cannot assert. In his will, while the main bulk of his 
 property is left to Susanna Hall and her husband, 
 his daughter Judith, his sister Joan, his godson, his 
 Stratford friends, and some of his fellow-players are 
 carefully remembered. Some months after the poet's 
 death a son was born to Judith Quiney, whom she 
 named Shakspere ; but he died in his infancy, and 
 neither of her other sons survived to middle life. 
 The last living descendant of Shakspere was his grand- 
 daughter, Elizabeth Hall, who married a Mr. Nash, and, 
 as his wife, entertained for three weeks, at New Place, 
 Queen Henrietta Maria ; and upon his decease married 
 Mr. John Barnard, knighted by Charles II. in 166 1. 
 
 22. Portraits. — Shakspere was buried in the 
 parish church at Stratford. Within a few years after 
 his death a bust of the poet was erected in the 
 church. The face was probably modelled from a 
 cast taken after death. It was originally coloured, 
 and has been correctly re-coloured — the eyes hazel, 
 the hair and beard auburn. This and the portrait 
 engraved by Droeshout, which is prefixed to the 
 First Folio, 1623, are the only certain likenesses of 
 Shakspere which remain to us. But that known as 
 the Chandos portrait, though differing in some im- 
 portant particulars from the other portraits, has by 
 many persons been considered genuine ; and there 
 exists a death-mask — named, from a supposed former 
 owner, the Kesselstadt death-mask — which bears the 
 date 16 16, and which may be the -original cast from 
 the dead poet's face. It exhibits a head of remark- 
 able proportions, and a face of great power and refine- 
 ment. The grave in the parish church at Stratford is
 
 3 o SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 covered by a flat stone, bearing an. inscription attri- 
 buted to Shakspere himself. 
 
 Good frend, for Jesus sake forbeare 
 To digg the dust enclosed heare : 
 Bleste be the man that spares thes stones, 
 And curst be he that moves my bones, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EARLY EDITIONS OF SHAKSPERE's WRITINGS. 
 
 23. Folios. — The first collected edition of Shale- 
 spere's plays was the "Folio of 1623," set forth by his 
 " friends " and " fellows " John Heminge and Henry 
 Condell. It contains all the dramatic works usually 
 found in modern editions (e.g. The Globe Shakespeare) 
 except Pericles. The First Folio is dedicated to the 
 Earls of Pembroke and of Montgomery. The editors 
 speak depreciatingly of earlier "stolne and surreptitious 
 copies ; " and the sentence, " we have scarse received 
 from him a blot in his papers," is meant to imply 
 that they followed Shakspere's manuscript. Several of 
 the plays in the Folio are however, in fact, printed 
 from earlier quartos ; while, in other cases, the quartos 
 give a text superior to that of the Folio. Still the First 
 Folio is of inestimable value, being, in some instances, 
 more correct than the quartos, and containing eighteen 
 plays of which no quarto editions exist. 
 
 " The Second Folio," 1632, is a reprint of the first, 
 conjecturally emended to some extent, the emenda- 
 tions being more often wrong than right. 
 
 " The Third Folio," 1663 and 1664; the issue of 
 1664 contains seven additional plays, viz, Pericles, 
 Prince of Tyre ; The London Prodigal ; the History of 
 the Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell; The 
 History of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham ; 
 The Puritan Widow; A Yorkshire Tragedy; and The 
 Tragedy of Locrine. Except apart of Pericles, it is almost 
 certain that none of these plays are by Shakspere. 
 
 " The Fourth Folio " was printed in 1685.
 
 n,] FARLY EDITIONS OF HIS WRITINGS. 31 
 
 24. Quartos. — But during Shakspere's lifetime, and 
 throughout a large part of the 17th century, single plays 
 of Shakspere appeared in quarto form ; some, no doubt, 
 printed from Shakspere's manuscripts. The following 
 table sets forth the most important facts about the 
 quartos, the dates of the first editions (omitting all sub- 
 sequent to 1630), &c. It will be seen that the largest 
 number of quartos appeared in 1600; after that year 
 measures must have been taken to prevent publication, 
 nearly all the quartos of later date being such stolen or 
 surreptitious copies as the editors of the First Folio 
 condemn. Shakspere's name first appears on a quarto 
 play, in 1598 (on Love's Labour's Lost), and after that 
 date it is seldom absent from a title-page. In the fol- 
 lowing table * Q 1 means that the play was printed in 
 the First Folio from the first Quarto edition ; * Q 2, 
 from the second Quarto, and so on. 
 
 1593. Venus and Adonis (before the end of 1630 eleven quarto 
 
 editions had appeared). 
 
 1594. (?) An edition of 1'ilus Andronicus, not now extant. 
 ,, Lucrece (before the end of 1624, six quartos). 
 
 1597. Romeo and Juliet (imperfect, pirated copy). 
 ,, Richard II. (before the end of 161 5, four quartos). ■* Q 5. 
 ,, Richard III. (before the end of 1629, seven quartos, see 
 p. 80). 
 
 1595. I Henry IV. (before the end of 1622, six quartos). * Q 5. 
 ,, Love's Labour's Lost (with Shakspere's name for the first 
 
 time on a play). * Q I. 
 
 1599. Passionate Pilgrim (third edition in 1612 ; but only two 
 
 now extant). 
 ,, Romeo and Juliet (perfect, republished in 1609; and 
 again, undated). * Q 3. 
 
 1600. 2 Henry IV. 
 
 ,, Llidsummer Night's Dream (two quartos in 1600, pub- 
 lished (1) by Fishers (2) by Roberts). * Q 2. 
 
 ,, Merchant of Venice (two quartos in 1G00 (1) Roberts 
 (2) Heyes). * Q 2. 
 
 ,, Much Ado about A r o thing. * Q I. 
 
 ,, Titus Andronicus (again in 161 1). * Q 2. 
 
 ,, Henry V. (imperfect, pirated copy ; before end of 1608 
 three quartos of imperfect Henry V. ). 
 [Shakspere's name on all those of 1600, except Titus 
 Andronicus and Henry V.~\
 
 32 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 1602. Merry Wives of Windsor (imperfect report of early form 
 
 of the play; second quarto, 1619; with Shakspere's 
 name). 
 
 1603. Hamlet (imperfect report of first form of the play ; with 
 
 Shakspere's name). 
 
 1604. Hamlet (later form ; before the end of 1611, three quarto 
 
 editions ; with Shakspere's name). 
 
 1608. Lear (two quartos in 1608, surreptitious (?) ; with Shak- 
 
 spere's name). 
 
 1609. Sonnets. 
 
 ,, Troilus and Cressida (two quartos in 1609, see p. 127 ; 
 
 with Shakspere's name). 
 ,, Pericles (before the end of 1630, five quartos ; with 
 
 Shakspere's name). 
 1622. Othello (second quarto, with alterations and corrections, 
 
 in 1630). 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EVIDENCE OF THE CHRONOLOGY OF SHAKSPERE'S 
 WRITINGS. 
 
 25. Chronological Method. — The most fruitful 
 method of studying the works of Shakspere is that 
 which views them in the chronological order of 
 their production. We thus learn something about 
 their origin, their connection one with another, and 
 their relation to the mind of their creator, as 
 that mind passed from its early promise to its rich 
 maturity and fulfilment. If we knew nothing about 
 their date, we might well wonder how the same 
 man could be the author of Love's Labour's Lost and 
 of King Lear. Viewed in the chronological order we 
 perceive that the one was the work of Shakspere's 
 clever 'prentice hand, the other the outcome of his 
 manhood with its sorrow and experience ; and we can 
 trace some portions at least of the path of transition 
 from the earlier play to the later. 
 
 26. Evidence of Chronology. — The evidence 
 which helps to ascertain the chronology of Shak-
 
 iv.] C1IR0X0L0GY OF HIS WRITINGS. 33' 
 
 spere's writings is of various kinds : I. 'Wholly external. 
 II. Partly external and partly internal. III. Wholly 
 internal. 
 
 I. Wholly External, (1) The publication of the 
 poems and plays, and entries (either prior to or on 
 publication) in the registers of the Stationers' Com- 
 pany. The play or poem may, of course, have been 
 written long before it was published or entered on the 
 Stationers' register ; and on the other hand, entries in 
 the register were sometimes made while a book was in 
 contemplation or in hand, and before it was actually 
 written. Setting aside the poems, Venus and Adonis 
 (entered 1592), and lucrece (1594), the earliest entry 
 Upon the register of an undoubted play by Shakspere 
 is that of King Richard II (August 29, 1597). The 
 last plays to appear in a quarto edition during the 
 poet's lifetime — I mean in a first quarto edition — ■ 
 were Troilus and Crcssida and Pericles (1609). 
 
 (2) Mention of Shakspere's writings in contemporary 
 books or documents of ascertained date. Thus Man- 
 ningham, a student of the Middle Temple, notes in 
 his Diary, Feb. 2, 1601-2, "At our feast wee had 
 a play called Twelve Night, or What You Will; " and 
 he goes on to describe Shakspere's comedy. In 
 another Diary, that of Dr. Simon Fortnan, we find 
 that, on April 20, 16 10, he saw, for the first time, 
 Macbeth, of the plot of which he makes a careful 
 summary; again, on May 15, 161 1, he saw at the 
 Globe, The Winter's Tale, and again is at pains to 
 set down the outlines of the story. The burning of 
 the Globe Theatre, in June, 16 13, during a perform- 
 ance of King Henry VIII, is recorded by three 
 witnesses. But to this class of evidence no single 
 contribution is of equal importance with that of the 
 list of plays given by Meres, in his Talladis Tamia, 
 Wits Treasury, 1598: "As Plautus and Seneca are 
 accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among 
 the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the 
 most excellent in both kinds for the stage : for Comedy, 
 
 B
 
 34 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love 
 labors lost, his Love labours wonne, his Midsummers 
 night dreame, and his Merchant of Venice ; for Tragedy, 
 his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, Ring 
 fohn, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet." 
 It will be noticed that Meres mentions six plays of 
 each kind, preserving a balanced symmetry which 
 he affects. Possibly he made omissions, possibly he 
 pressed into his list the doubtful Titus, with the object 
 of equalising the number of tragedies and comedies 
 named by him. The Love's Labour's Won of Meres's 
 list is generally believed to have been an earlier form 
 of All's Well that Ends Well ; but some critics have 
 attempted to identify it with The Taming of the Shrew, 
 some with Much Ado. 
 
 (3) Without express mention of a play of Shakspere, 
 it may be clearly alluded to, or a quotation be made 
 from it, or some passage may be imitated by a con- 
 temporary poet in a work the date of which is known. 
 In some cases it is naturally difficult to decide whether 
 Shakspere be the original owner of the thought or ex- 
 pression, or whether he himself be not the borrower ; 
 and there is the danger to be guarded against of 
 imagining a connection between two passages which 
 are really independent. It should be remembered 
 also • that, in the Elizabethan period, writings had 
 often extensive circulation in manuscript before 
 they were published. Guarding against these risks 
 of error, this class of evidence is, however, of con- 
 siderable importance. When, in Ben Jonson's Every 
 Man Out of His Humour, 1599, we find mention of 
 " Justice Silence," we cannot doubt that the second 
 part of Shakspere's Henry LV. had been already upon 
 the stage. In Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, 1601, 
 occur the lines : 
 
 The many-headed multitude were drawne 
 By Brutus' speech, that Caesar was ambitious ; 
 When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne 
 His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious ?
 
 IV.] CHRONOLOGY OF HIS WRITINGS. 35 
 
 We know of nothing which can have suggested these 
 lines to Weever, except Shakspere's Julius Casar; in 
 Plutarch no such scene exists. Some of the evidence 
 under this head, although derived from sources out- 
 side the works of Shakspere, yet implies an acquaint- 
 ance with passages in those works, and therefore may 
 be considered as having a doubtful claim to the title, 
 " Evidence wholly external." 
 
 (4) Some information with respect to dates may be 
 gleaned from the facts that certain companies repre- 
 sented a play, or that it was produced at a certain 
 theatre. Thus the statement on the title-page of the 
 quarto of Romeo and Juliet, 1597, that it was acted by 
 " Lord Hunsdon his servants," proves that perform- 
 ances of that play took place between July 22, 1596, 
 and April 1597 (seep. 83). The mention by Marston 
 of "curtain plaudities" in connection with the same 
 play would have served (had not other positive 
 evidence been forthcoming) to afford a presumption 
 that it was produced at the Curtain Theatre, before 
 1599, when the Globe was built; for, had the Globe 
 existed when Romeo and Juliet first appeared, at the 
 Globe it would probably have been performed. 
 
 Such is the evidence for determining the chronology 
 of Shakspere's plays derived from sources lying outside 
 the text of the plays themselves. The evidence in which 
 external and internal elements are united is of two kinds. 
 
 27. II. Evidence partly external partly in- 
 ternal. — (1) Allusions in the plays to historical events 
 whose date is known. 
 
 Thus, in The Comedy of Errors, there is a punning 
 allusion (see p. 67) to the civil war in France, which 
 terminated with the submission of Henri IV. to the 
 Catholic Church ; the allusion would have had little 
 point if the civil war were not in actual progress. 
 Again, in the chorus prefixed to the last act of 
 Henry V., we read the words : 
 
 Were now the general of our gracious empress, 
 (As in good time he may) from Ireland coming, 
 Bringing rebellion broached on his sword. 
 
 B 2
 
 36 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 The reference is to the Earl of Essex, who went to 
 Ireland in April, 1599, and returned in the following 
 September. If the choruses were written for the first 
 performance of the play this fixes its date. (See also 
 " the earthquake," Romeo and Juliet, p. 83, and the 
 " German Duke," Merry Wives of Windsor, p. 104.) 
 
 (2) If there be found in a play of Shakspere a 
 quotation from, or allusion to, or matter derived from 
 a book of known date by some other writer, we infer 
 that Shakspere's play was later in date than the book 
 of which use was made by him. In As You Like It 
 we have the couplet (Act III. Sc. v. L. 82-83) : 
 
 Dead shepherd ! now I find thy saw of might — 
 " Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight?" 
 
 The second line is from Marlowe's Hero and Lcander, 
 published 1598. Again, in King Lear the names of 
 fiends and other portions of the mad speeches put 
 into Edgar's mouth, were derived from Harsnet's 
 Declaration 0/ egregious Popish Impostures, 1603. Once 
 more, the description byGonzalo, in The Tempest, of an 
 imaginary commonwealth (Act II. Sc. i. L. 147-156) is 
 taken from Montaigne's Essays (Book I. Chap. 30. Of 
 the Caniballes), translated in 1603, by Florio ; of which 
 translation a copy exists in the British Museum, having 
 the name of Shakspere written in it. The circulation 
 of Elizabethan literature in manuscript should here 
 again be borne in mind as a caution ; and it is obvious 
 that while this class of evidence may furnish us with 
 an upward limit, previous to which we cannot place 
 Shakspere's play, it tells us nothing with respect to 
 the downward limit, nor can, by itself, fix the date at 
 which any play was written. 
 
 We come now to evidence 
 
 28. III. Wholly Internal. — And here the great 
 mass of evidence is of a kind which cannot be pre- 
 cisely stated, or definitely weighed and measured ; 
 and yet it is not the less real and weighty. As
 
 IV.] CHRONOLOGY OF HIS WRITINGS. 37 
 
 we do not need a thermometer to inform us of 
 decided changes of temperature in the atmosphere, 
 so we need'no scientific test to make us aware that, 
 in passing from Love's Labour's Lost to Hamlet, and 
 from Hamlet to The Tempest, we pass from youth 
 to manhood, and again from a manhood of trial and 
 sorrow to the riper manhood of attainment and of 
 calm. Our general impression results from many- 
 particulars. We are sensible of a change (a) In the 
 style and diction. In the earliest plays the language 
 is sometimes as it were a dress put upon the thought 
 — a dress ornamented with superfluous care ; the idea 
 is at times hardly sufficient to fill out the language in 
 which it is put; in the middle plays {Julius Ccesar 
 serves as an example) there seems a perfect balance 
 and equality between the thought and its expression. 
 In the latest plays this balance is disturbed by the 
 preponderance or excess of the ideas over the means 
 of giving them utterance. The sentences are close- 
 packed ; there are " rapid and abrupt turnings of 
 thought, so quick that language can hardly follow 
 fast enough ; impatient activity of intellect and fancy, 
 which, having once disclosed an idea, cannot wait to 
 work it orderly out;" "the language is sometimes 
 alive with imagery." (Contrast Two Gentlemen oj 
 Verona, Act II. Sc. vii. L. 24-38, and its one sweet 
 long-drawn-out image, with such a passage as Antony 
 and Cleopatra, Act V. Sc. ii. L. 82-92.) Under this 
 head of style may be noticed Shakspere's early conceits, 
 puns, frequent classical allusions, occasional over- 
 wrought rhetoric (especially in the historical plays), 
 all of which gradually disappear or subside. But these 
 changes really belong to (b) The growth of Shakspere's 
 taste and judgment. The Duchess of York, in 
 Richard LI. (Act V. Sc. iii.), pleads with the king for 
 her son's pardon : 
 
 f 
 No word like pardon for kings' mouths so meet. 
 
 * 1 5 II 1 3
 
 38 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 Her husband exclaims : 
 
 Speak it in French, king : say pardonnez moy. 
 
 This execrable line could not possibly have been 
 written in a play of Shakspere's maturity, (c) In 
 the structure of the play and grouping of characters 
 there is, in some of the early plays, a tendency to 
 formal symmetry, an artificial setting of character 
 over against character, and group against group : 
 Antipholus and Dromio against Antipholus and 
 Uromio ; Proteus and Launce against Valentine and 
 Speed ; the King of Navarre and his three fellow- 
 students against the Princess of France and her three 
 ladies. Afterwards the outline of the play is drawn 
 with a freer because a firmer hand, (d) The cha- 
 racterisation changes. At first there are bright and 
 clever sketches of character ; sometimes a want of 
 delicacy in the conception of female character ; some- 
 times character is subordinate to incident (as in the 
 Errors), or to dialogue (as in Love's Labour's Lost). 
 By degrees the characterisation becomes profound 
 and refined. Instead of a Valentine or Demetrius 
 we have a Hamlet or an Othello ; instead of a Rosaline, 
 with her bold repartee,, we have an Imogen or a Desde- 
 mona. (e) The entire reflective power deepens ; the 
 poet's knowledge of life becomes wider and more 
 varied ; his feeling with respect to life, more grave 
 and earnest, for a season, indeed, full of pain and 
 sorrow ; at the last, gravely tender, earnest, calm, and 
 harmonious. (/) The imagination, which at first 
 worked intermittently, leaving, even in the tragedy 
 of Romeo and Juliet, spaces for the fancy to practise 
 its slight devices in, becomes passionately energetic, 
 of daring and all-comprehensive power, as in King 
 Lear, or lofty and sustained, with noble ideality, as 
 in The Tempest. (g) The sympathy with human 
 passion and the power of conceiving and dramatically 
 rendering it in its most massive and most intense
 
 iv.] CHRONOLOGY OF HIS WRITINGS. 39 
 
 forms increases. (//) As a result of all this the humour 
 of the dramatist, which was at first comparatively 
 superficial— an enjoyment of amusing absurdity, with 
 pleasure in the keen play of wit — becomes full of 
 grave significance, and works in conjunction with his 
 (/) Deepening pathos. It is the transition from 
 Launce and Speed to the sorrowful-eyed Fool of 
 Lear. (J) Finally, in moral reach, in true justice, 
 in charity, in self-control, in all that indicates forti- 
 tude of will, the writings of the mature Shakspere 
 excel, in an extraordinary degree, those of his younger 
 self. 
 
 29. Verse Tests. — But these are things that can- 
 not be precisely weighed and measured, although they 
 can be clearly felt. There is, however, one kind of in- 
 ternal evidence respecting the chronology of the plays 
 which admits of exact scientific estimation. This 
 evidence is found in the several changes which the 
 verse of Shakspere underwent during his entire dramatic 
 career. 
 
 (1) End-stopt and Run-on Verse. — Of these 
 changes, that which is most comprehensive and 
 regularly continuous is the transition from unbroken 
 to interrupted verse. At first Shakspere has his 
 breaks and pauses at the end of the line — the verse 
 is " end-stopt ; " gradually he more and more found 
 pleasure in carrying on the sense from one line 
 to another without a pause at the end of the line — 
 the verse is " run on," and the breaks and pauses 
 occur with great frequency in some part of the line 
 other than the end. Contrast the following passages, 
 the first from an early play, The Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona, the other from a late play, The TemJ>est. 
 
 At Pentecost, 
 When all our pageants of delight were play'd, 
 Our youth got me to play the woman's part, 
 And I was trimmed in Madam Julia's gown,
 
 40 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 Which served me as fit, by all men's judgments, 
 As if the garment had been made for me, 
 Therefore I know she is about my height. 
 And at that time I made her weep agood, 
 For I did play a lamentable part. 
 
 (Act IV. Sc. iv. L. 163-171.) 
 
 Admired Miranda ! 
 Indeed the top of admiration ! worth 
 What's dearest to the world ! Full many a lady 
 I have eyed with best regard, and many a time 
 The 'harmony of their tongues hath into bondage 
 Brought my too diligent ear : for several virtues 
 Have I liked several women ; never any 
 With so full soul, but some defect in her 
 Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed 
 And put it to the foil. 
 
 (Act III. Sc. i. L. 37-46.) 
 
 That these typical passages really illustrate a great 
 general 'change in the structure of Shakspere's verse 
 appears from the following table, giving " the pro- 
 portion of run-on lines to end-pause ones in three of 
 the earliest and three of the latest plays of Shakspere." 
 
 EARLIEST PLAYS. 
 
 Proportion of unstopt lines 
 to end-stopt ones. 
 Love's Labour's Lost . . . . I in 18*14 
 The Comedy of Errors . . . 1 ,, 107 
 
 The Two Gentlemen of Verona . . 1 ,, 10*0 
 
 LATEST PLAYS. ' 
 
 Proportion of unstopt lines 
 to end-stopt ones. 
 
 The Tempest 1 in 3-02 
 
 Cymbeline . . . . . I ,, 2*52 
 
 The Winter's Tale 1 ,, 2*12 
 
 (F. J. FURNIVALL.) 
 
 ■• The great superiority of the broken structure is 
 plain, especially for the purposes of dramatic poetry ; 
 it conduces in a marked degree to variety, vivacity, 
 and the natural ease of dialogue ; " in the end-stopt
 
 iv.] CHRONOLOGY OF HIS WRITINGS. 41 
 
 style there is, moreover, a frequent temptation to 
 " bumbast out " the blank verse with unnecessary 
 adjectives. 
 
 t 30. (2) Weak endings. — Closely related to the 
 change which has now been described, is that which 
 consists in the appearance in Shakspere's verse of weak 
 monosyllabic endings. Two degrees of the weak ending- 
 have been distinguished : " On the words which be- 
 long to the one of these groups the voice can to a 
 small extent dwell;" the others so precipitate the 
 reader forward that " we are forced to run them, in 
 pronunciation no less than in sense, into the closest 
 connection with the opening words of the succeeding 
 line." The former have been named " light endings," 
 the latter " weak endings." To the former class belong 
 am, are, be, can, could ; the auxiliaries do, does, has, had; 
 I, they, thou, and others : these may be found as 
 terminal words in the blank verse of Milton and of 
 Wordsworth. The latter — the weak endings — are 
 more fugitive and evanescent in character, includ- 
 ing such words as and, for, from, if, in, of, or. Now 
 weak endings hardly appear in Shakspere's early or 
 middle plays. The Errors and The Two Gentlemen 
 of Verona do not contain a single light or weak end- 
 ing ; Midsummer Night's Dream contains one weak 
 ending ; there is one light ending in 2 Henry IV. ; 
 two light endings in Henry V. Nor do they come 
 in by slow degrees at a later period ; " the poet seems 
 to have thrown himself at once into this new structure 
 of verse." In Macbeth light endings appear for the 
 first time in considerable numbers ; weak endings in 
 considerable numbers for the first time in Antony and 
 Cleopatra. This test serves perfectly to pick out the 
 plays which form the group belonging to Shakspere's 
 last period of dramatic authorship ; and within that 
 period it probably serves to indicate nearly the precise 
 order in which the plays were written. The following 
 table presents the facts with reference to this metrical 
 
 B 3
 
 42 
 
 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 [chap. 
 
 peculiarity, from its first appearance in any important 
 degree (in Macbeth) until it reaches its maximum in 
 the last plays of Shakspere : 
 
 
 
 
 
 <— . 
 
 ^ . 
 
 U- •• 
 
 
 ■U 
 
 ■& • 
 
 — fcfl 
 
 £ Ml 
 
 (A P> 
 
 iSJ3 
 
 > Q. 
 
 So.S 
 
 bi) 
 
 
 
 Name of Play. 
 
 i~ C 
 
 
 i~ C 
 O— < 
 
 c 5 
 
 QJ 
 
 OJ .; 
 
 c 
 
 
 . c 
 
 O V 
 
 6 C 
 
 
 Perc 
 light 
 
 Perc 
 wea' 
 
 P4.a 
 
 
 21 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 ? 
 
 III2 
 
 I"26 
 
 ? 
 
 ? 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra 
 
 71 
 
 28 
 
 2803 
 
 2'53 
 
 I'OO 
 
 3'53 
 
 Coriolanus .... 
 
 60 
 
 44 
 
 2563 
 
 2-34 
 
 171 
 
 4'°5 
 
 Pericles (Sh's. part) . 
 
 20 
 
 10 
 
 719 
 
 278 
 
 1 '39 
 
 4-i7 
 
 
 42 
 
 25 
 
 I460 
 
 2-88 
 
 171 
 
 4'59 
 
 Cymbeline .... 
 
 7« 
 
 52 
 
 2692 
 
 2 '90 
 
 1 '93 
 
 4 '83 
 
 Winter's Tale . . . 
 
 57 
 
 43 
 
 1825 
 
 3-12 
 
 2-36 
 
 5'4« 
 
 Two Noble Kinsmen 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (non-Fletcherian part) 
 
 50 
 
 34 
 
 1373 
 
 3 "63 
 
 2-47 
 
 6-io 
 
 Henry VIII. (Sh's. part) 
 
 45 
 
 37 
 
 1 146 
 
 3*93 
 
 3*23 
 
 7-16 
 
 (J. K. Ingram.) 
 
 It should be noted that commonly a pause occurs 
 before the weak final monosyllable, after which the 
 verse, as it were, leaps forward. This structure, as 
 has been 
 bounding 
 
 said, gives 
 life which 
 
 to the verse something 
 
 showing in the manner of his 
 
 Ulysses describes 
 
 of the 
 Diomed 
 
 as 
 
 gait 
 
 He rises on the toe ; that spirit of his 
 In aspiration lifts him from the earth. 
 
 It conduces to liveliness and variety, and so is hardly 
 appropriate to tragedy of the deeper sort ; but it is 
 admirably adapted to the romantic drama of Shak- 
 spere's latest stage, and here alone it appears in a con- 
 spicuous degree. [See Prof. Ingram's paper on " The 
 Weak endings of Shakspere," Transactions of New 
 Shak. Soc. 1874.]
 
 IV.] CHRONOLOGY OF HIS WRITINGS. 43 
 
 31. (3) Double (or feminine) endings. — The 
 
 next of the indications of date afforded by peculiarities of 
 metre will be found in the rarer or more frequent occur- 
 rence of the dissyllabic, or double ending. Stating the 
 fact broadly (for there may be some exceptional plays) 
 if double endings are rare, we may infer that the play 
 is of early date ; if they are numerous, that the play is 
 one of Shakspere's middle or later period. Take, 
 again, two typical passages by way of illustration : 
 
 A league from Epidamnum had we sail'd 
 Before the always wind-obeying deep 
 Gave any tragic instance of our harm : 
 But longer did we not retain much hope ; 
 For what obscured light the heavens did grant 
 Did but convey unto our fearful minds 
 A doubtful warrant of immediate death. 
 
 {Comedy of Errors, Act I. Sc. i. L. 63-69.) 
 
 The entire speech of vEgeon, from which this extract 
 is made, consisting of over seventy lines, contains only 
 one certain double ending, line 46. (In lines 52 and 
 83, "the other" perhaps = th'other.) 
 
 I boarded the king's ship ; now on the beak, 
 Now in the waist, the deck, in every cab | in 
 I flamed amazement : sometimes I'lcl divide 
 And burn in many places ; on the top | mast, 
 The yards and bowsprit would I flame distinct [ ly, 
 Then meet and join. Jove's lightnings the precurs | ors 
 O' the dreadful thunderclap more momenta | y 
 And sight out-running were not ; the fire and cracks 
 Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Nep | tunc 
 Seem to besiege and make his bold waves rrem | ble. 
 
 {The Tempest, Act I. Sc. ii. L. 196-205.) 
 
 Here, again, progress towards dramatic freedom, 
 and a gain of ease and variety, are evident. The 
 slight stress which comes upon the tenth syllable of a 
 blank verse can thus be modified by a kind of grace- 
 note which succeeds it. The following figures give 
 the percentage of double endings in sixteen of Shak- 
 spere's plays :
 
 44 
 
 Sl-IAKSPERE. 
 
 [CHA 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost 
 
 • 4 
 
 Titus Andronicus .... 
 
 • 5 
 
 King John ..... 
 
 . 6 
 
 Richard II 
 
 n-39 
 
 Comedy of Errors .... 
 
 . 12 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona 
 
 i5 
 
 Merchant of Venice .... 
 
 IS 
 
 Taming of the Shrew 
 
 16 
 
 Richard III 
 
 18 
 
 As You Like It ... . 
 
 18 
 
 Troilus and Cressida 
 
 20 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well 
 
 21 
 
 Othello 
 
 26 
 
 Winter's Tale ..... 
 
 31-09 
 
 Cymbeline ..... 
 
 32 
 
 Tempest 
 
 
 (Hertzeerg.) 
 
 32. (4) Rhyme, — Another metrical test of the early 
 or late place of a play is that founded on the frequent 
 or rare occurrence of rhyme. In Shakspere's early- 
 comedies there is a very large proportion of rhymed 
 verse. Thus, in Love's Labour's Lost there are about 
 two rhymed lines to every one line of blank verse. 
 In The Comedy of Errors there are 380 rhymed lines 
 to 1 1 50 unrhymed (Fleay). In .Shakspere's latest 
 plays there is little or no rhyme. In The Tempest two 
 rhymed lines occur ; in The Winter's Tale not one. 
 These are striking facts, but it must not be hastily 
 inferred that the rhyme test will determine the order 
 of the intermediate plays as well as it serves to indi- 
 cate the extreme groups. A difference between this 
 metrical characteristic and those previously noticed 
 must be borne in mind, namely, that although a poet 
 may unconsciously set down a double ending or a 
 weak ending, or run on a line into that which follows 
 (this unconscious action serving as an index to the 
 general growth of his artistic powers), he cannot rhyme 
 unconsciously. And we can perceive that Shakspere 
 deliberately employs rhyme for certain definite pur- 
 poses. It would be an error to conclude that A Mid- 
 summer Ntghfs Dream preceded The Comedy of
 
 iv.] CHRONOLOGY OF HIS WRITINGS. 45 
 
 E/ivs because it contains a larger proportion of 
 rhyming lines, until we had first decided whether 
 special incentives to rhyme did not exist in the case 
 of that comedy of Fairyland ; and when we meet such 
 a series of ten lines all rhyming together, as that 
 put into Titania's mouth (Act III. Sc. i. L. 168-177), 
 we see that rhyme here is treated with the design of 
 producing special effects. When it is argued that 
 Richard II. must be later in date than Richard III, 
 because it contains a far larger proportion of rhymed 
 lines, we should consider whether a special reason for 
 the great predominance of blank verse did not exist 
 in the case of Richard III. It was written in con- 
 tinuation of Henry VI, and more than any other 
 play of Shakspere under the influence of the great 
 master of blank verse, Marlowe. In Richard II. 
 Shakspere is far more independent of external in- 
 fluence, and he may have been pleased to return to 
 his early manner of rhymed dialogue after a grand 
 experiment in the severer manner of his contemporary. 
 In so late a play as Othello we see how Shakspere \ 
 introduces rhyme to fulfil a special purpose when he 
 sees fit. Thus in Act I. Sc. iii. L. 201-219, to Bra- 
 bantio, who has lost his daughter, the Duke offers the 
 cold comfort of sententious moralising, comfort 
 wrapped up in little epigrams, each of these epigrams 
 being a rhymed couplet ; and Brabantio replies ironi- 
 cally in the same manner. (See also in the same play, 
 Act II. Sc. i. L. 141-169.) Again, in Troilus and 
 Cressida, Act IV. Sc. v. L. 28-52, where the Greeks 
 kiss Cressida, there is a flippancy in the speeches 
 which they would lose if turned from rhyme into blank 
 verse. Ulysses' vigorous reprobation of Cressida's 
 conduct, which follows, brings the rhymed passages 
 to a close. Again, the half-play, whole-earnest 
 choosing of a husband by Helena in All's Well that 
 Ends Well, Act II. Sc. iii., naturally falls into rhyme. 
 In the same play rhyme is often employed as a vehicle 
 for generalising reflections. We are also bound to
 
 46 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 consider, in using the rhyme test, not only the numerical 
 proportions of the rhymed and blank verse parts of a 
 play, but the quality, the literary merit of the parts. 
 As Shakspere advanced in mastery of blank verse, it 
 would be natural that his greatest scenes should more 
 and more fall into that form. At an earlier time we 
 might expect to find the happiest expression of his 
 genius in the rhymed scenes. Statistics with reference 
 to Shakspere's use of rhyme, and other metrical pecu- 
 liarities are given in Mr. Fleay's Shakespearian Manual, 
 pp. 135, 136. These require verification or correction 
 by a second worker, but are doubtless a valuable 
 approximation to the truth. It must be observed 
 that the ratio of rhyme lines to blank-verse lines fails 
 to indicate the true chronological order of the plays • 
 if, however, those scenes in which no rhyme occurs 
 be set aside, results approaching nearer to what are 
 probably the facts can be obtained ; but for this 
 method of using the rhyme test no sufficient reason 
 has been assigned. 
 
 33. Doggerel, &c— Doggerel verse, sonnets, and 
 quatrains are not found in plays of late origin. 
 
 Two other tests have been suggested and de- 
 scribed — the " pause test," by Mr. Spedding (New 
 .Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1874, p. 26), the 
 " speech-ending test," by Professor Ingram ; but they 
 remain to be worked out in detail. The pause test 
 would consist of an analysis of the entire structure of 
 Shakspere's versification at different periods with re- 
 ference to the _ distribution of pauses. The speech- 
 ending test would be founded upon an estimate of the 
 proportion of speeches in each play winch end with a 
 complete or with a broken line. The broken speech- 
 ending is that preferred in the later plays ; the speeches 
 in early plays generally end with a complete line.
 
 vA CAREER, AND DATES OF PLAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PERIODS OF SHAKSPERE'S CAREER. GROUPS AND 
 DATES OF PLAYS. 
 
 34. Four Periods. — By means of such evidence 
 as has been described in the last chapter we are 
 enabled to determine the precise dates of some of 
 Shakspere's works, in the case of others we can at 
 least approximate to the dates ; only in a few cases 
 are we left to conjecture where, within a range of at 
 most some five or seven years, a drama should be 
 placed. Thus, if there is uncertainty here and there 
 in an attempt to assign dates to each particular 
 play, there is little or no uncertainty in naming 
 groups of plays in chronological order, leaving un- 
 determined the order of the plays within those 
 groups. 
 
 Shakspere's entire career of authorship extends over 
 twenty years and upwards, beginning about 1588 or 
 1590, ending about 1612 : ten years and upwards lie 
 in the 16th century, ten years and upwards in the 
 17th. Now the division of the centuries marks roughly 
 a division in the career of Shakspere. About 1601 
 his genius began to seek new ways ; the histories and 
 joyous comedies ceased to be created, and the great 
 series of tragedies was commenced. But each of 
 the decades, which together make up the years of 
 Shakspere's authorship, is itself clearly divisible into 
 two shorter periods : first, from about 1590 to 1595-96, 
 years of dramatic apprenticeship and experiment ; 
 secondly, from about 1595-96 to about 1600-1601, the 
 period of the English historical plays and the mirthful 
 and joyous comedies ; thirdly, from 1601 to about 
 1608, the period of grave or bitter comedies and of 
 the great tragedies; last, from about 1608 to 161 1 or
 
 4*5 " SHAKSPERE. [cHAr. 
 
 1613, the period of the romantic plays, which are at 
 once grave and glad, serene and beautiful poems, like 
 The Tempest and The Winter's Tale. These four 
 periods may be designated with reference to the class of 
 works written in each, or with reference to the subjects 
 of those works, or with reference to the kind of versi- 
 fication which was characteristic of each period, or 
 with reference to Shakspere's supposed condition and 
 state of mind in each. I think the reader will re- 
 member the following names of the four periods, 
 which may seem fanciful, yet which perhaps convey 
 as much true information as any others : I will call the 
 first period, " Jn the workshop ; " the second, " In the 
 world ; " the third, " Out of the depths ; " the fourth, 
 "On the heights." The significance of these names 
 will appear as we proceed. 
 
 35. Groups of Plays. Pre-Shaksperian 
 Group. — Now let us go farther, and try to make out 
 groups of Shakspere's plays in chronological order. 
 Shakspere began his apprenticeship by re-handling plays 
 which were not his. Of such work we have examples in 
 Titus Andronicus and the First Part of Henry VI., 
 plays of blood, bombast, and fire, pre-Shaksperian in 
 spirit, but showing touches of that hand which even 
 in its apprentice years was capable of master touches. 
 These two plays we name (i.) the " pre-Shaksperian 
 group." 
 
 36. Early Comedy. — Next, the young dramatist 
 went to work on his own account, and began to experi- 
 ment in different kinds of comedy. Love's Labour's 
 Lost is full of a young man's thought, wit, and satire, 
 a comedy of oddities, of dialogue carefully elaborated 
 and pointed (as dialogue in a first original work would 
 be), and underlying this a young man's theory with 
 reference to culture and education ; The Comedy of 
 Errors is a comedy of incident, almost a farce ; The 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona is a first and somewhat slight 
 experiment in the same kind of love-comedy of which 
 Shakspere afterwards created so many delightful
 
 v.] CAREER, AND DATES OF PLAYS. 40 
 
 examples ; A Midsummer Nights Dream is bright 
 with the poetry of a young man's fancy : in Theseus 
 there is a fine sketch of heroic character, and in 
 Bottom and his companions we find Shakspere's 
 richest humorous work of this period. Whether The 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona or A Midsummer Nights 
 Dream was written first cannot be decided. This 
 group of four plays we name (ii.) "Early Comedy." 
 
 37. Early History. Poems. — While engaged 
 upon this group Shakspere's powers as a rising 
 playwright must have been recognised ; before he 
 had completed it Venus and Adonis was published. 
 When Chettle wrote in 1592, Shakspere had already 
 gained the patronage of powerful friends. It is 
 probable that while engaged on his early comedies, 
 Shakspere (continuing to re-handle dramas for the 
 stage) set about the revision of the old historical 
 plays, The Contention and The True Tragedy, and was 
 assisted by Marlowe, one of the original authors of 
 the old plays. Thus came the Second and Third 
 Parts of Henry VI. to be written, and the character 
 of Richard in those plays was recognised by Shakspere 
 as so admirable a creation for dramatic purposes, that 
 he proceeded to a new play, of which he was sole 
 author, in which Richard should be the principal, one 
 might almost say the only actor. Richard III. was a 
 character so essentially Marlowesque, and Shakspere 
 had been so lately working in conjunction with that 
 great poet, that he carried on the Marlowesque spirit 
 from Henry VI. into his own play. This group of three 
 plays we name (iii.) " Early History," and must add a 
 second title, " the Marlowe-Shakspere group," finding 
 in the Second and Third Tarts of Henry VI. Marlowe's 
 presence, and in Richard III. (almost more dominant 
 than his presence) Marlowe's influence. To this period 
 belongs the Lucrcce. 
 
 38. Early Tragedy. — From an early date Shak- 
 rnere seems to have designed a tragedy ; not 
 one of the bloody school of the pre-Shaksperians,
 
 SO SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 not one like The Jew of Malta or The Spanish 
 Tragedy, but in which sorrow and beauty should 
 blend and become one. Romeo and Juliet may 
 have been begun or written in a first form at 
 the same time as some of the early comedies. I 
 do not think it received its final form until about 
 1596, but fragments of an earlier date remain in the 
 play. This, if we set aside Titus Andronicus, was 
 Shakspere's first tragedy. It is, in its beauty, its 
 passion, and its defects, characteristically a young 
 man's achievement, the lyrical tragedy of youth, of 
 love, and of death : it stands by itself, and we name 
 it (iv.) " Early Tragedy." 
 
 39. Middle History. — After the Marlowesque 
 Richard III., which completes the series of four 
 historical plays concerned with the fortunes of the 
 house of York, Shakspere turned to the closely- 
 connected subject of the fortunes of the house of 
 Lancaster, and began a new series of historical plays 
 with Richard II. He was determined now to try 
 his own dramatic methods and manner in history, 
 and so there is much rhyme in Richard II. But 
 the play is of a more complex structure than 
 Richard III, and the characterisation is more subtle 
 and more varied. To the same period belongs KiwJ 
 John. The advantage taken of a humorous element, 
 appearing here in the person of Faulconbridge, gives 
 us a foretaste of the blending of comedy with his- 
 tory, which was afterwards brought to perfection in 
 Henry IV. We name this group of two plays (v.) 
 " Middle History." 
 
 40. Middle Comedy. — To about the same date 
 as King John belongs The Merchant of Venice. It 
 stands midway between the early and the later 
 comedies, and partakes of the characteristics of 
 both groups. (See p. 91.) We name it (vi.) " Middle 
 Comedy." 
 
 41. Later History. — Having treated history and 
 comedy separately, the next step was to unite them.
 
 v.] CAREER, AND DATES OF PLAYS. 51 
 
 Henry IV, Parts I. and II, are the comedy of 
 Falstaff as much as they are the history of the 
 troublesome times of the king. The Merry Wives 
 of Windsor may have been sketched at an earlier 
 date ; it is not impossible that it assumed its present 
 form at a later date ; but upon the whole the evi- 
 dence inclines us to place it here, Shakspere hastily 
 dashing off the prose play to comply with a com- 
 mand of the Queen, who desired to see Falstaff in 
 love. (See p. 103.) The date of The Taming of the 
 Shrew is also uncertain, some critics placing it as 
 late as 1602-1603 or later (which seems incredible), 
 some as early as 1594. In its rough and boisterous 
 mirth it has affinities with The Merry Wives, and 
 perhaps lies close to it in the chronological order. 
 Certainty upon this point is fortunately not of great 
 importance, for only a portion of The Taming of the 
 Shrew is by Shakspere, and that portion, though full 
 of vigour and high spirits, is as much a farce as a 
 comedy. In the series of histories Henry V. follows 
 close upon Henry IV, Part II. In it Shakspere 
 pictured his ideal king, and bade farewell, in trumpet 
 notes, to English history. For convenience here, 
 where so little disturbance of the chronological order 
 is caused, it is well to connect The Merry Wives and 
 The Shrew with the comedies which follow, and to 
 bring'together the Second and Third Parts Henry IV. 
 and Henry V, which group we name (vii.) "Later 
 History." 
 
 42. Later Comedy. — A series of comedies follows, 
 and as the series was started before the histories had 
 come to an end, so its later plays overlap the sub- 
 sequent tragedies. It might indeed be desirable to 
 make the fact prominent, by placing the last three 
 comedies in a group by themselves, later than f alius 
 Casar and Hamlet. If, however, the student will bear 
 in mind that this group runs on and overlaps the 
 tragedies, something will be gained, from a logical 
 point of view, by keeping the comedies together, and
 
 52 SIIAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 allowing Julius Ccesar and Hamlet to stand near the 
 great tragedies of later date, with which they may be 
 compared and contrasted. 
 
 (a) The earliest of these comedies are, then, TJieShreiu 
 and The Merry Wives, somewhat rough and boisterous 
 plays, written with high spirit, entirely free from the 
 presence of pain or sorrow. But such rough humour 
 was not after Shakspere's own heart at this time. The 
 Merry Wives was a task imposed upon him, which he 
 executed with a hearty energy ; but still it was not a 
 work of his own choice. The Shrew also was but 
 half his own, for he was forced to preserve the tone 
 of the farce -like piece upon which he worked. But in 
 the plays which immediately follow, the true Shak- 
 speriah comedy reaches its utmost beauty and per- 
 fection, if) In Muck Ado about Nothing, the high spirits 
 which had given life to The Shrew and The Merry 
 Wives still play their part, in a more excellent way, 
 in the creation of the brilliant pair, Beatrice and 
 Benedick. Everything grows finer, more harmonious, 
 more sweetly tempered in the pastoral comedy, As 
 You Like It. But the discontent of a superficial critic 
 of life, breathing through the glades of Arden, the 
 melancholy of Jaques, is like the first touch of autumn 
 wind upon the leaves, which to our sense may have 
 a pleasant poignancy, yet which foretells the approach 
 of the sad and barren days. In Twelfth Night this 
 passes away ; and, upon the whole, if there be any 
 presence of sadness in these beautiful and happy plays, 
 it is a musical sadness which is resolved into a fuller 
 harmony of joy. Twelfth Night brings us to the 
 opening of the 17th century, and nowShakspere began 
 his great series of tragedies with Julius Ccesar. Con- 
 tinuing, however, to trace the comedies, we next come 
 to three which present a striking contrast to those 
 which have just been named, (e) Alt's Welt that Ends 
 Well closes happily, as the title implies, but it is not 
 a bright and sunny play ; it is earnest, and serious in 
 parts, and the strong-willed heroine, who feels the
 
 v.] CAREER, AND DATES OF PLAYS. 53 
 
 earnestness of life and love, though she is noble, has 
 not the romantic charm, of a Viola or a Rosalind. In 
 Measure for Measure a dark and evil world is pictured, 
 and out of this emerge the strength and purity of 
 Isabella, one of Shakspere's highest conceptions of 
 female character, but, like Helena, deficient in charm. 
 It is as if Shakspere at this time were writing comedy 
 when he ought to have been engaged on tragedy, and 
 creating characters in heroic mould which in comedy 
 hardly find their fitting places. Deep thoughts on life 
 and death in Measure for Measure remind us of Hamlet, 
 and the sin, the soul-searching of Angelo, his abase- 
 ment and discovery of guilt we scrutinise with a painful 
 interest. I would place Troilus and Cress/da here, 
 and in it we reach a still greater distance from the 
 spirit of true comedy. It is the comedy of disillusion. 
 The young enthusiasm of Troilus is miserably dis- 
 enchanted. Ulysses has come to accept all the base- 
 ness of life as part of the nature of things, and as 
 material to be turned to account by worldly wisdom. 
 Thersites spews over everything that we had deemed 
 high and sacred, his foul, yet not all unwarrantable 
 insults. Cressida is a shallow-hearted wanton. Having 
 reached this point, Shakspere could not but cease for 
 a time to write comedy. 
 
 This series of eight plays we group together, and 
 name them (viii.) " Later Comedy." But the entire 
 series of eight divides itself into three smaller groups : 
 the first — two plays of rough and boisterous mirth; the 
 second — three comedies almost purely joyous, romantic 
 and refined ; the third — three comedies, one earnest, 
 another dark and severe, the last, bitter and ironical. 
 
 43. Middle Tragedy. — Shakspere's first tragedy 
 was a lyrical tragedy of youth, of love, and of death. 
 When, after completing his series of historical plays 
 and his joyous comedies, Shakspere again turned to 
 tragic themes, he wrote as a man of mature powers, 
 and as a thinker. In his histories he had been 
 dealing with the real world, the world of action. In
 
 54 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 his two tragedies, Julius Ccesar and Hamlet, he 
 studies the failure in practical affairs of two men, 
 Brutus and Hamlet, who are called to the perform- 
 ance of great actions, but who are disqualified, the 
 one for acting wisely, the other for acting ener- 
 getically. Hamlet and Brutus fail, yet we honour 
 them ; they fall as martyrs or victims to duties im- 
 posed upon them as it were by fate, and which 
 become burdens too heavy for them to bear. These 
 two tragedies are tragedies of reflection ; Shakspere 
 is not yet caught up in the passionate wind of his 
 own imagination. Everything is thought out and 
 wrought out deliberately in these two plays. We 
 name this group (ix.) " Middle Tragedy." 
 
 44. Later Tragedy. — The tragedies of passion 
 follow. Error and misfortune, or, at worst, weakness 
 or indiscretion, had ruined the lives of Brutus and 
 Hamlet. They had not wronged their own souls 
 by crime. But now passion and crime form the sub- 
 jects of tragedy, instead of error or the cruelty of 
 fate. The bonds of life are broken : in Ot/iel/o, the 
 bonds which unite husband and wife ; in Lear, the 
 bonds which unite parent and child ; in Macbeth, the 
 bonds of kinship and of the loyalty of the subject; 
 Antony, through voluptuous self-indulgence, dissolves 
 the bonds which bind him to his country, and ceases 
 to be a Roman ; Coriolanus, through passionate 
 haughtiness, also turns away from Rome, and even 
 tries to crush the loyalties and affections which make 
 him man — tries to lift himself into a proud isolation ; 
 lastly, Timon actually severs himself, not from his 
 country merely, but from humanity itself. He is 
 " misanthropos, and hates mankind." But he is not 
 formed for misanthropy, and is slain by his unnatural 
 hatred. This group of plays we name (x.) " Later 
 Tragedy." 
 
 45. Romances. — The transition from these to 
 Shakspere's last plays is most remarkable. From the 
 tragic passion which reached its climax in Timon of
 
 V,] CAREER, AND DATES OF PLAYS. 55 
 
 Athens, we suddenly pass to beauty and serenity ; from 
 the plays concerned with the violent breaking of human 
 bonds, to a group of plays which are all concerned with 
 the knitting together of human bonds, the reunion of 
 parted kindred, the forgiveness of enemies, the atone- 
 ment for wrong — not by death but by repentance — the 
 reconciliation of husband with wife, of child with 
 father, of friend with friend. Pericles is a sketch in 
 which only a part of the subject of these last plays is 
 clearly conceived ; it is in some respects like a slighter 
 and earlier Tempest, in which Lord Cerimon is the 
 Prospero. It also contains hints afterwards worked 
 out in The Winter's Tale ; the reunion of the Prince 
 of Tyre and his lost Thaisa is a kind of anticipation 
 of the re-discovery by Leontes of his wife whom he 
 had so long believed to be dead. Posthumus's 
 jealousy, his perception of his error, his sorrow, and 
 his pardon, may be contrasted with the similar series 
 of incidents in The Winter's Tale, and the ex- 
 quisitely impulsive and generous Imogen may be set 
 over against the grave, statue-like Hermione, whose 
 forgiveness follows the long years of suffering, endured 
 with noble fortitude. Prospero is also wronged ; his 
 enemies are in his power ; but he has employed his 
 supernatural ministers to lead them to penitence rather 
 than to bring them to punishment. He has learned 
 that " the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance." 
 In these plays there are two sets of dramatis 
 personal : the great sufferers, aged and experienced — 
 Pericles, Prospero, Hermione, afterwards Queen 
 Katherine ; and the young and beautiful children in 
 the brightness of the morning of life — Miranda, 
 Perdita, Arviragus, and Guiderius ; and Shakspere 
 seems to render homage to both : to the great sufferers 
 for their virtue, and patience, and sorrow; to the 
 young men and maidens for their beauty and their joy. 
 There is a romantic element about these plays. In 
 all there is the same romantic incident of lost children 
 recovered by those to whom they are dear — the
 
 56 
 
 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 |CHAP. 
 
 daughters of Pericles and Leontes, the sons of 
 Cymbeline and Alonso. In all there is a beautiful 
 romantic background of sea or mountain. The dramas 
 have a grave beauty, a sweet serenity, which seem to 
 render the name " comedies " inappropriate ; we may 
 smile tenderly, but we never laugh loudly, as we read 
 them. Let us, then, name this group, consisting of 
 four plays, (xi.) Romances. 
 
 46. Fragments. — There only remain the two 
 (xii.) fragments of Henry VIII. and The Two Noble 
 Kinsmen. The same spirit appears in these as in the 
 Romances. In each of these plays the work of 
 Shakspere is united with that of Fletcher. 
 
 47. Summary. — The following table presents the 
 series of groups in chronological order, as they have 
 been here made out ; the plays in each group are 
 arranged in what is supposed to be the true order of 
 succession ; and the date of each play (ascertained 
 or conjectured) is affixed. 
 
 I. PRE-SHAKSPERIAN GROUP. 
 
 ( Touched by Shakspere. ) 
 
 Titus Andronjciis (1588-90). 
 i Henry VI. (1590-91). 
 
 2. EARLY COMEDIES. 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost (1590). 
 Comedy of Errors (1591 ). 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona 
 
 (I592-93)- 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream 
 
 (1593-94)- 
 
 3. MARLOWE-SHAKSPERE 
 GROUP. 
 
 EARLY HISTORY. 
 
 2 & 3 Henry VI. (1591-92). 
 Richard III. (1593). 
 
 4. EARLY TRAGEDY. 
 Romeo and Juliet (? two dates, 
 
 1591, 1596-97). 
 
 5. MIDDLE HISTORY. 
 
 Richard II. (1594). 
 King John (1595). 
 
 6. MIDDLE COMEDY. 
 Merchant of Venice (1596). 
 
 7. LATER HISTORY. 
 
 History and Comedy united. 
 
 I & 2 Henry IV. (1597-98). 
 Henry V. (1599). 
 
 8. LATER COMEDY. 
 
 (a) Rough and boisterous Comedy. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew (? 1597). 
 Merry Wives (? 1598).
 
 v.] 
 
 CAREER, AND DATES OF PLAYS. 
 
 57 
 
 (i>) yoyoits, refined, romantic. 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing 
 
 (IS98). 
 As You Like It (1599). 
 Twelfth Night (1600-1601). 
 
 (c) Serious, dark, ironical. 
 
 All's Well (? 1601-1602). 
 Measure for Measure (1603). 
 Troilus and Cressida (? 1603 ; 
 revised 1607 ?). 
 
 9. MIDDLE TRAGEDY. 
 
 Julius Crcsar (1601). 
 Hamlet (1602). 
 
 IO. LATER TRAGEDY. 
 
 Othello (1604). 
 Lear (1605). 
 Macbeth (1606). 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra (1607). 
 Coriolanus (1608). 
 Timon (1607- 1608). 
 
 II. ROMANCES. 
 
 Pericles (1608). 
 Cymbeline (1609). 
 Tempest (1610). 
 Winter's Tale (1610-u). 
 
 12. FRAGMENTS. 
 
 Two Noble Kinsmen (1612). 
 Henry VIII. (1612-13). 
 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 Venus and Adonis (? 1592). 
 Lucrece (iS93"94-) 
 Sonnets (? 1595-1605). 
 
 48. Plots of Comedies. — The student will ob- 
 serve in this arrangement, early, middle, and later 
 Comedy ; early, middle, and later History ; and early, 
 middle, and later Tragedy. Not only is it well to 
 view the entire body of Shakspere's plays in the 
 order of their chronological succession, but also to 
 trace in 'chronological order the three separate lines 
 of Comedy, History, and Tragedy. The group named 
 Romances connect themselves, of course, with the 
 Comedies ; but there is a grave element in them 
 which is connected with the Tragedies which pre- 
 ceded them. It has been noticed that the Romances 
 have in common the incidents of reunions, reconcilia- 
 tions, and the recovery of lost children. Shakspere, 
 though so remarkable for his power of creating 
 character, is not distinguished among dramatists by 
 his power of inventing incident. I-Iaving found a 
 situation which interested his imagination, or was 
 successful on the stage, he introduced it again and
 
 58 SHAKSPERE. [chaP. 
 
 again, with variations. Thus, in the Early Comedies, 
 mistakes of identity, disguises, errors, and bewilder- 
 ments, in various forms, recur as a source of merri- 
 ment and material for adventure. In the Later 
 Comedies, again, it is quite remarkable how Shakspere 
 (generally in the portions of these plays which are 
 due to his own invention) repeats, with variations, the 
 incident of a trick or fraud practised upon one who is 
 a self-lover, and its consequences, grave or gay. Thus 
 Falstaff is fatuous enough to believe that two English 
 matrons are dying of love for him, and is made the 
 victim of their merry tricks. Malvolio is made an ass 
 of by the mischievous Maria taking advantage of his 
 solemn self-esteem ; Beatrice and Benedick are cun- 
 ningly entrapped, through their good-natured vanity, 
 into love for which they had been already predisposed ; 
 the boastful Parolles is deceived, flouted, and dis- 
 graced by his fellow-soldiers ; and (Shakspere's mood 
 growing earnest, and his thoughts being set upon deep 
 questions of character) Angelo, the self-deceiver, by 
 the craft of the Duke, is discovered painfully to the 
 eyes of others and to his own heart. 
 
 49. First Period. — Returning now from our 
 more detailed classification, let us glance once again 
 at the four periods into which we divided Shakspere's 
 career of authorship. The first, which I named In 
 the workshop, was the period during which Shakspere 
 was learning his trade as a dramatic craftsman. 
 Starting at the age of twenty-four or twenty-six, he 
 made rapid progress, and cannot but have been 
 aware of this. The works of Shakspere's youth — 
 experiments in various directions — are all marked by 
 the presence of vivacity, cleverness, delight in beauty, 
 and a quick enjoyment of existence. If an in- 
 dustrious apprentice, he was also a gay and courageous 
 one. 
 
 ^ 50. Second Period. — As yet, however, he wrote 
 with small experience of human life ; the early plays are 
 slight or fanciful^ rather than real and massive. But now
 
 v.] CAREER, AND DATES OF PLAYS. 59 
 
 Shakspere's imagination began to lay hold of real life ; 
 he came to understand the world and the men in it ; 
 his plays begin to deal in an original and powerful 
 way with the matter of history. " The compression of 
 the large and rough matter of history into dramatic 
 form demanded vigorous exercise of the plastic energy 
 of the imagination ; and the circumstance that he was 
 dealing with reality and positive facts of the world, 
 must have served to make clear to Shakspere that 
 there was sterner stuff of poetry, material more precious 
 • — even for purposes of art — -in actual life, than could 
 be found in the conceits, and prettinesses, and affecta- 
 tions which at times led him astray in his earlier 
 writings." During this period Shakspere's work grows 
 strong and robust. It was the time when he was 
 making rapid advance in worldly prosperity, and 
 accumulating the fortune on which he meant to 
 retire as a country gentleman. I name the second 
 period therefore In the zuorld. 
 
 51. Third Period. — Before it closed Shakspere 
 had known sorrow : his son was dead ; his father 
 died probably soon after Shakspere had written his 
 Twelfth Night ; his friend of the Sonnets had done 
 him wrong. Whatever the cause may have been, 
 the fact seems certain that the poet now ceased 
 to care for tales of mirth and love, for the stir 
 and movement of history, for the pomp of war ; he 
 needed to sound, with his imagination, the depths 
 of the human heart ; to inquire into the darkest 
 and saddest parts of human life ; to study the great 
 mystery of evil. The belief in human virtue, indeed, 
 never deserts him : in Lear there is a Cordelia ; in 
 Macbeth a Banquo ; even Troilus will be the better, 
 not the worse, for his disenchantment with Cressida ; 
 and it is because Timon would fain love that he is 
 driven to hate. Still, during this period, Shakspere's 
 genius left the bright surface of the world, and was at 
 work in the very heart and centre of things. I have 
 named it Out of the depths.
 
 6o SIIAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 52. Fourth Period. — The tragic gloom and suffer- 
 ing were not, however, to last for ever. The dark 
 cloud lightens and rolls away, and the sky appears 
 purer and tenderer than ever. The impression left 
 upon the reader by Shakspere's last plays is that, 
 whatever his trials and sorrows and errors may have 
 been, he had come forth from them wise, large-hearted, 
 calm-souled. He seems to have learned the secret of 
 life, and while taking his share in it, to be yet dis- 
 engaged from it ; he looks down upon life, its joys, its 
 griefs, its errors, with a grave tenderness, which is 
 almost pity. The spirit of these last plays is that of 
 serenity which results from fortitude, and the recogni- 
 tion of human frailty ; all of them express a deep 
 sense of the need of repentance and the duty of forgive- 
 ness. And they all show a delight in youth and the 
 loveliness of youthful joy, such as one feels who looks 
 on these things without possessing or any longer desir- 
 ing to possess them. Shakspere in this period is most 
 like his own Prospero. In these " Romances," and 
 in the " Fragments," a supernatural element is pre- 
 sent ; man does not strive with circumstance and 
 with his own passions in darkness ; the gods preside 
 over our human lives and fortunes, they communicate 
 with us by vision, by oracles, through the elemental 
 powers of nature. Shakspere's faith seems to have 
 been that there is something without and around our 
 human lives, of which we know little, yet which we 
 know to be beneficent and divine. And it will be felt 
 that the name which I have given to this last period — 
 Shakspere having ascended out of the turmoil and 
 trouble of action, out of the darkness and tragic mystery, 
 the places haunted by terror and crime, and by love 
 contending with these, to a pure and serene elevation 
 — it will be felt that the name, On the heights, is 
 neither inappropriate nor fanciful.
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 61 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 INTRODUCTIONS TO THE PLAYS AND POEMS. 
 
 i. Titus Andronicus (pronounced by the writer 
 of the play Andron'-i-cus). — The importance of this 
 tragedy lies in the fact that, if Shakspere wrote it, we 
 find him as a young man carried away by the influence 
 of a Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) movement 
 similar to that which urged Schiller to write his 
 Robbers. Titus Andronicus belongs essentially to the 
 pre-Shaksperian group of bloody tragedies, of which 
 Kyd's Spanish Tragedy is the most conspicuous 
 example. If it is of Shaksperian authorship it may be 
 viewed as representing the years of crude and violent 
 youth before he had found his true self; his second 
 tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, as representing the years 
 of transition ; and Hamlet, the period of maturity and 
 adult power. 
 
 The external evidence with reference to the author- 
 ship of Titus is the following : (i) It is mentioned by 
 Meres (1598) among other undoubted plays of Shak- 
 spere. (2) It is printed in the First Folio. (3) Ravens- 
 croft, who altered the play in 1687, declares that he 
 had been told " by some anciently conversant with 
 the stage that it was not his [Shakspere's]," but that 
 he only gave " some master-touches to one or two of 
 the principal parts or characters." The great majority 
 of English critics either altogether reject the play, upon 
 the ground that in style and subject it is unlike any 
 other work of our dramatist, or accept as true the 
 tradition of Ravenscroft, that it was touched by Shak- 
 spere, and no more. " Shakspere's tragedy is never 
 bloodily sensual ; . . . this play is a perfect slaughter- 
 house, and the blood makes appeal to all the senses. 
 
 ... It reeks blood, it smells of blood, we almost
 
 62 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 feel that we have handled blood — it is so gross." To 
 attempt to point out certain passages as written by 
 Shakspere would be unsafe, for we know little of what 
 the distinguishing features of Shakspere's style were 
 when he began to write for the stage ; but no lines in 
 the play have more of a Shaksperian ring than the 
 following (Act IV. Sc. iv. L. 81-S6) : 
 
 King, be thy thoughts imperious, like thy name. 
 Is the sun dimm'd that gnats do fly in it ? 
 The eagle suffers little birds to sing, 
 And is not careful what they mean thereby, 
 Knowing that with the shadow of his wings 
 He can at pleasure stint their melody. 
 
 A play, Titus and Vespasian (mentioned by Hens- 
 lowe as " tittus and vespacia "), was acted in 1592, and 
 though itself lost, a translation into German, acted 
 early in the 17th century by English comedians in 
 Germany, remains in existence. It is not the play 
 attributed to Shakspere. Henslowe also mentions a 
 Titus and Andronicus as a new play, acted January 23, 
 1594 : it is doubtful whether this was the Shak- 
 sperian play. If it be, and it was then written, the 
 tragedy is certainly not by Shakspere. It is impos- 
 sible to believe that in 1594, when Shakspere had 
 written his Venus and Adonis and his Lucrece, he could 
 have dealt so coarsely with details of outrage and un- 
 natural cruelty as does the author of this tragedy. 
 Ben Jonson, in the introduction to Bartholomew Fair 
 (16 1 4), speaks of Titus Andronicus, with Jeronimo, as 
 belonging to " -twenty-five or thirty years " previously : 
 this would carry back the date of the play (if it be 
 of this Titus Andronicus that Jonson speaks) to 1589, 
 or earlier. That it was a play of that period, and was 
 touched by Shakspere, we may accept as the opinion 
 best supported by internal evidence and by the weight 
 of critical authority. 
 
 2. King Henry VI., Part I., is almost certainly 
 an old play, by one or more authors, which, as we find
 
 n.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 63 
 
 it in tbC First Folio, had received touches from the 
 hand of Shakspere. In Henslowe's diary a Henry VI. 
 is said to have been acted March 3, 1591-92. It 
 was extremely popular. Nash in his Pierce Pennilesse 
 (1592) alludes to the triumph on the stage of "brave 
 Talbot " over the French. But we have no reason for 
 believing that the play which we possess was that 
 mentioned by Henslowe or that alluded to by Nash. 
 Greene had, perhaps, a chief hand in this play, and he 
 may have been assisted by Peele and Marlowe. There 
 is a general agreement among critics in attributing 
 to Shakspere the scene (Act II. Sc. iv.) in which the 
 white and red roses are plucked as emblems of the 
 rival parties in the state ; perhaps the scene of the 
 wooing of Margaret by Suffolk (Act V. Sc. iii. L. 45 
 and onwards) if not written by Shakspere was touched 
 by him. The general spirit of the drama belongs to 
 an older school than the Shaksperian, and it is a 
 happiness not to have to ascribe to our greatest poet 
 the crude and hateful handling of the character of 
 Joan of Arc, excused though to some extent it may 
 be by the concurrence of view in our old English 
 chronicles. 
 
 3. Love's Labour's Lost, as far as we know, is 
 wholly of Shakspere's own invention; no source of the 
 plot has been discovered. The play is precisely such 
 an one as a clever young man might imagine, who had 
 come lately from the country — with its " daisies pied 
 and violets blue," its " merry larks," its maidens who 
 " bleach their summer smocks," its pompous parish 
 schoolmaster, and its dull constable (a great public 
 official in his own eyes) — to the town, where he was 
 surrounded by more brilliant unrealities, and affecta- 
 tions of dress, of manner, of language, and of ideas. 
 Love's Labour's Lost is a dramatic plea on behalf of 
 nature and of common sense against all that is unreal 
 and affected. It maintains, in a gay and witty fashion, 
 the superiority of life, as a means of education, over 
 books ; the superiority of the large world into which
 
 64 SHAKSPERE. [CHAP. 
 
 we are born over any little world we can construct for 
 ourselves, and into which we may hedge ourselves by 
 rule ; and, while maintaining this, it also asserts that 
 we must not educate ourselves only by what is mirthful 
 and pleasant in the world, but must recognise its 
 sorrow, and that we cannot be rightly glad without 
 being grave and earnest. The King of Navarre, and 
 three of his lords — one of whom, Berowne, sees through 
 the seeming splendour of the king's design to its 
 real folly — resolve to turn their court into a " little 
 Academe," to seclude themselves from all that is 
 common and unideal, to devote themselves for three 
 years to study, fasting much, sleeping little, and for- 
 swearing the company of ladies : in a word, they aspire 
 to establish a little monastery of culture. The scheme, 
 which looked so graceful while it went no farther than 
 words, breaks down lamentably when they would make 
 it real. The king is obliged, by reasons of state, to 
 receive the Princess of France and her three ladies ; 
 the vowed scholars — all four of them— fall over head 
 and ears in love, and an amusing scene of discovery 
 and confession takes place, in which each in turn 
 betrays his secret, and is convicted before his equally 
 guilty fellows, until at last Berowne — who unites good 
 sense with genius — comes forward to charge with error 
 their original vows of seclusion, and to justify their 
 present apostasy. There is much merry mocking of 
 the lovers by the French girls, and in bright play with 
 the weapons of words Rosaline is a match for Berowne. 
 When the mirth is at its highest come tidings that the 
 father of the princess is dead. The comedy will not 
 end with weddings ; love's labour is lost ; the king is 
 dismissed to a twelvemonth's absence and testing of 
 his love ; and Berowne, the mocker, in the same in- 
 terval before marriage, must make his jests, if he can, 
 for sick folk in an hospital, and so learn the graver side 
 of life. Thus, with its apparent lightness, there is a 
 serious spirit underlying the play, but the surface is all 
 iest, and stir, and sparkle. It is a comedy of dialogue
 
 VI.] HIS PLA VS AND POEMS. 65 
 
 rather than of incident, and in the persons of Don 
 Adriano de Armado, a fantastical Spaniard, of Sir 
 Nathaniel the curate, and of Holofernes the school- 
 master, are caricatured various Elizabethan absurdities 
 of speech, pseudo-refinement, and pseudo-learning. 
 The braggart soldier and the pedant are characters 
 well known in Italian comedy, and perhaps it was 
 from that quarter that the hint came to Shakspere, 
 which stirred his imagination to create these ridiculous 
 figures. Holofernes, some persons have supposed to 
 be a satirical sketch of an individual — John Florio, 
 author of an Italian dictionary; but Shakspere did 
 not in any ascertained instances satirise individual 
 persons, and there is little evidence in this case to 
 warrant the supposition. The fifth act winds up with 
 a pair of songs in the most genuine country style, 
 rustic yet graceful, such songs as the milkmaids of 
 Isaac Walton might sing. After the daintinesses, and 
 pomposities, and affectations, come these fresh rural 
 ditties. The play contains nothing which serves to 
 ascertain its precise date, but it certainly belongs to 
 Shakspere's earliest dramatic period. The first quarto 
 was printed in 1598 (probably in the spring of the 
 year 1598-99) "as it was presented before her High- 
 ness [Queen Elizabeth] this last Christmas [probably 
 the Christmas of 1598], Newly corrected and aug- 
 mented." Two traces of the alterations from the 
 original play may still be observed. In ActV. Sc. ii., 
 the lines 827-832 ought not to appear, being almost 
 certainly the fragment of the play in its first form, 
 which was afterwards worked out in the lines 833-879. 
 Similarly in Berowne's great speech, Act IV. Sc. hi., 
 the lines 296-317 contain passages which are repeated 
 or altered in the lines which follow, 318-354, and 
 obviously some of the lines of the original version 
 have here been retained through a mistake. 
 
 4. The Comedy of Errors is Shakspere's one far- 
 cical play. Its sources of laughter lie almost wholly in 
 the situations and incidents, hardly at all in the charac- 
 
 c
 
 66 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 ters. The spectator of the play is called on to accept 
 much that is improbable and all but impossible, not as 
 in A Midsummer Night 's Dream, for the sake of freer 
 play of imagination, and because the world pictured 
 by the poet is a fairy-world of romantic beauty and 
 grotesqueness, but for the sake of mere fun and 
 laughter-stirring surprises. So cleverly, however, are 
 the incidents and persons entangled and disentangled, 
 so rapidly does surprise follow surprise, that we are 
 given no time to raise difficulties and offer objections. 
 The subject of the comedy is the same as that of the 
 Menccchmi of Plautus — mistakes of identity arising from 
 the likeness of twin-born children. How Shakspere 
 made acquaintance with Plautus we are not certain ; 
 possibly through William Warner's translation of the 
 Mencechmi, seen in manuscript before its publication 
 m 1 595 ; more probably through an earlier play, not 
 now extant, perhaps that one which was acted in 1576 
 at Hampton Court, under the name of The Historic 
 of Error. The hint for Act III. Sc. i., where An- 
 tipholus of Ephesus is shut out from his own house 
 while his brother and wife are at dinner within, seems 
 to have been taken from the Amphitruo of Plautus, 
 where Jupiter, the supposed Amphitruo, takes posses- 
 sion of the house of the real Amphitruo, and beguiles 
 its mistress. To the twins of the Menccchmi are added, 
 by Shakspere, their servants, a second pair of brothers, 
 the twins Dromio. This does not make the im- 
 probability of the whole seem greater, but rather the 
 reverse ; for the fun is doubled, and where so much is 
 incredible we are carried away and have no wish but 
 to yield ourselves up to belief in the incredible for 
 the time being, so as to enter thoroughly into the jest. 
 Shakspere added other characters — the Duke Solinus 
 (when he can he always introduces a duke), ^Egeon, 
 Balthazar, Angelo, the Abbess, and Luciana, and he 
 alters the character of the married brother, Antipholus, 
 from the repulsive Mensechmus of Plautus, with whom 
 we can have little sympathy, into a person who at least
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 67 
 
 is not base and vicious. The scene he transfers from 
 Epidamnum to Ephesus, that city which had an evil 
 repute for its roguery, licentiousness, and magical 
 practices, a city in which such errors might be sup- 
 posed to be the result of sorcery and witchcraft. (See 
 Act I. Sc. ii. L. 97-102.) To Shakspere belongs 
 wholly the serious background, from which the farcical 
 incidents stand out in relief — the story of the Syracusan 
 merchant who almost forfeits his life in the search for 
 his lost children, and finally recovers both the lost ones 
 and his own liberty. There is a fine passage, full of 
 pathos, and almost in Shakspere's later dramatic man- 
 ner, where the old man, a prisoner before the duke, 
 finds that his son does not recognise his face, nor re- 
 member his voice (Act V. Sc. i. L. 295-322); but 
 such passages, in which character or human passion 
 rather than incident chiefly interests us, are rare. As 
 the twins Antipholus are indistinguishable in person 
 and costume, so there is little or no attempt made to 
 discriminate their characters ; the Dromios are only 
 a pair of jesters, alike and equally serviceable for 
 receiving hard knocks and returning witty answers. 
 But Adriana, the jealous wife, has some individuality ; 
 she is more than an excuse for ridiculous accidents ; 
 Shakspere takes some interest in doing her dramatic 
 justice; her shrewish temper is that of a woman who 
 loves her husband, and who would persecute him into 
 loving only her. The date of the play cannot be 
 exactly determined, but it is certainly one of the very 
 earliest plays. " In what part of her body stands .... 
 France?" asks Antipholus of Syracuse, questioning 
 Dromio about the kitchen-wench, who is so large 
 and round that she has been compared to a globe ; 
 and -Dromio answers : " In her forehead, armed and 
 reverted, making war against her heir.'" (Act III. Sc. ii. 
 L. 125-27.) France was in a state of civil war, 
 fighting for and against her heir, Henri IV., from 
 August, 1589, until shortly before his coronation, 
 in February, 1594. In 1591 Henri received the 
 
 c 2
 
 68 SIIAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 assistance of troops from England, commanded by 
 the Earl of Essex. 
 
 5. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, though in 
 parts slightly worked out, exhibits an advance on the 
 preceding comedies. The Errors was a clever tangle 
 of diverting incidents, with a few passages of lyric 
 beauty, and one of almost tragic pathos ; Love's 
 Labour's Lost was a play of glittering and elaborate 
 dialogue. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona Shak- 
 spere struck into a new path, which he was to pursue 
 with admirable results ; it is his earliest comedy in 
 which a romantic love-story is told in dramatic form- 
 Here first Shakspere records the tender and passionate 
 history of a woman's heart, and the adventures to 
 which love may prompt her. Julia (who is like a 
 crayon sketch of Juliet, conceived in a way suitable 
 to comedy instead of tragedy) is the first of that 
 charming group of children of Shakspere's imagi- 
 nation which includes Viola, Portia, Rosalind, and 
 Imogen — women who assume, under some constraint 
 of fortune, the disguise of male attire, and who, while 
 submitting to their transformation, forfeit none of the 
 grace, the modesty, the sensitive delicacy, or the 
 pretty wilfulness of their sex. Launce, accompanied 
 by his immortal dog, leads the train of Shakspere's 
 humorous clowns : his rich, grotesque humanity is 
 " worth all the bright, fantastic interludes of Boyet 
 and Adriano, Costard and Holofernes," worth all the 
 " dancing doggerel or broad-witted prose of either 
 Dromio." The play contains a number of sketches, 
 from which Shakspere afterwards worked out finished 
 pictures. (See p. 91, Merchant of Venice.) The charac- 
 ters are clearly conceived, and contrasted with almost 
 too obvious a design : the faithful Valentine is set 
 over against the faithless Proteus ; the bright and 
 clever Silvia is set over against the tender and ardent 
 Julia ; the clown Speed, notable as a verbal wit and 
 quibbler, is set over against the humorous Launce.
 
 VI.] HIS PI AYS AND POEMS. 69 
 
 The general theme of the play we may define as love 
 and friendship, with their mutual relations. The 
 denouement in Act V., if written by Shakspere in the 
 form we now have it, is a very crude piece of work. 
 Proteus' sudden repentance, Valentine's sudden aban- 
 donment to him of Silvia, under an impulse of extra- 
 vagant friendship (" all that was mine in Silvia I give 
 thee ;" Act V. Sc. iv. L. 83), and Silvia's silence and 
 passiveness whilst disposed of from lover to lover, 
 are, even for the fifth act of a comedy, strangely 
 unreal and ill-contrived. Can it be that this fifth 
 act has reached us in an imperfect form, and that 
 some speeches between Silvia and Valentine have 
 dropped out? The date of the play cannot be 
 definitely fixed ; but its place among the comedies 
 is probably after Love's Labour's Lost, and before 
 A Midsummer Nights Dream. The language and 
 verse are characterised by an even sweetness ; rhymed 
 lines and doggerel verses are lessening in number ; 
 the blank verse is written with careful regularity. It 
 is as if Shakspere were giving up his early licences 
 of versification, were aiming at a more refined style 
 (which occasionally became a little tame), but being 
 still a novice in the art of writing blank verse, were 
 timid, and failed to write it with the freedom and 
 " happy valiancy " which distinguish his later manner. 
 The story of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is identical 
 in many particulars with The Story of the Shepherdess 
 Felismcna, in the Spanish pastoral romance, Diana, 
 by George of Montemayor ; but though manuscript 
 translations of the Diana existed at an earlier date, 
 no translation was published before that of Yonge, 
 in 159S. The story had probably been dramatised 
 before Shakspere's play, for we read in the accounts 
 of the revels of The History of Felix and Philomaia, 
 acted before her Highness in 1584. Valentine's con- 
 senting to become captain of the robbers has been 
 compared with a somewhat similar incident in Sidney's
 
 70 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 Arcadia, but the coincidences are slight, and it may- 
 be doubted that Shakspere had here any thought of 
 the Arcadia. 
 
 6. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a strange 
 and beautiful web, woven delicately by a youthful 
 poet's fancy. What is perhaps most remarkable about 
 the play is the harmonious blending in it of widely 
 different elements. It is as if threads of silken splen- 
 dour were run together in its texture with a yarn of 
 hempen homespun, and both these with lines of dewy 
 gossamer and filaments drawn from the moonbeams. 
 In North's Plutarch, or in Chaucer's Knighfs Tale, 
 Shakspere may have found the figures of Theseus and 
 his Amazonian bride ; from Chaucer also ( Wife of 
 Bath's Tale), may have come- the figure of the elf- 
 queen (though not her name, Titania), and the story 
 of Pyramus and Thisbe (see Chaucer's Legend of Good 
 Women) ; this last, however, was perhaps taken from 
 Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Oberon, 
 the fairy-king, had recently appeared in Greene's play 
 77/i? Scottish History of James IV; Puck, under his 
 name of Robin Goodfellow, was a roguish sprite, well 
 known in English fairy-lore. Finally, in Montemayor's 
 Diana, which Shakspere had made acquaintance with 
 before The Two Gentlemen of Verona was written, 
 occur some incidents which may have suggested the 
 magic effects of the flower-juice laid upon the sleeping 
 lovers' lids. Taking a little from this quarter and a 
 little from that, Shakspere created out of such slight 
 materials his marvellous Dream. The marriage of 
 Duke Theseus and Hippolyta — who are classical in 
 name only, being in reality romantic mediaeval figures 
 — surrounds the whole, as it were, with a magnificent 
 frame. Theseus is Shakspere's early ideal of a heroic 
 warrior and man of action. His life is one of splendid 
 achievement and of joy ; his love is a kind of happy 
 victory, his marriage a triumph. From early morning, 
 when his hounds — themselves heroic creatures — fill 
 the valley with their " musical confusion," until mid-
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 71 
 
 night, when the Athenian clowns end their " very 
 tragical mirth," with a Bergomask dance, Theseus 
 displays his joyous energy and the graciousness of 
 power. In contrast with him and his warrior bride, 
 the figures of the young lovers look slight and grace- 
 ful, and their love-perplexities and errors are seen to 
 be among the minor and remediable afflictions of the 
 world. Shakspere was not interested in making much 
 distinction of character between Demetrius and 
 Lysander, they are little more than a first lover and 
 a second lover. Nor is Helena distinguishable from 
 Hermia by much else than that in person she is the 
 taller of the two and the gentler in disposition. Where 
 there are so many contrasts, the play can admit, and 
 perhaps needs, some uniformities. The mirth of the 
 lovers' part of A Midsummer Night's Dream turns 
 chiefly upon incidents, and therefore, as with the 
 brothers Antipholus in The Comedy of Errors, dif- 
 ferences of character are not made prominent. Here, 
 as in the Errors, there are entanglements and cross- 
 purposes. The one play has indeed been named 
 "the mistakes of a day," and the other "the mistakes 
 of a night : " but the difference lies deeper than such 
 names intimate ; for in the Errors the confusion is 
 external to the mind, here it is internal ; in the Errors 
 the feelings of the actors remain constant, but the 
 persons towards whom they are directed take the place, 
 unobserved, one of another ; here the persons remain 
 constant, but their feelings of love, indifference, or 
 dislike are at the mercy of mischief-making accident. 
 It may be noticed that in The Comedy of Errors there 
 is a passage (Act II. Sc. ii. L. 190-204) which looks 
 as if when Shakspere wrote it he were already thinking 
 of his fairy-world in A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, of 
 the pranks of Robin Goodfellow, and of Bottom's 
 transformation to an ass. 
 
 As the two extremes of exquisite delicacy, of dainty 
 elegance, and, on the other hand, of thick-witted 
 grossness and clumsiness, stand the fairy tribe and the
 
 y 2 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 group of Athenian handicraftsmen. T4ie world of the 
 poet's dream includes the two — a Titania, and a 
 Bottom the weaver— and can bring them into gro- 
 tesque conjunction. No such fairy poetry existed 
 anywhere in English literature before Shakspere. The 
 tiny elves, to whom a cowslip is tall, for whom the 
 third part of a minute is an important _ division of 
 time, have a miniature perfection which is charming. 
 They delight in all beautiful and dainty things, and 
 war with things that creep and things that fly, if they 
 be uncomely ; their lives are gay with fine frolic and 
 delicate revelry. Puck, the jester of Fairyland, stands 
 apart from the rest, the recognisable " lob of spirits," 
 a rough, " fawn-faced, shock-pated little fellow, a very 
 Shetlander among the gossamer-winged, dainty-limbed 
 shapes around him." 
 
 The rehearsing of their play and its performance be- 
 fore the Duke affords a happy occasion for grouping 
 together the carpenter, the tinker, the bellows-mender, 
 and their fellows who have turned actors for the nonce. 
 Bottom, in his broad-blown self-importance, his all 
 but impenetrable self-satisfaction, stands a head and 
 shoulders higher in absurdity than any other comic 
 personage in Shakspere's early plays. He is the ad- 
 mitted king of his company, the cock of his walk — 
 and he has a consciousness that his gifts are more 
 than equal to his opportunities. When the ass's head 
 is on his shoulders it seems hardly a disguise, so natu- 
 rally does the human-asinine seem to come to Bottom ; 
 he might have been for twelve months Titania's long- 
 eared love, so easily do his new honours sit upon him ; 
 nor is he more embarrassed in offering to Duke 
 Theseus his explanations of the play. This comedy 
 of the Athenian handicraftsmen, it should be noted, 
 is an indirect answer to any objections which might be 
 brought against Shakspere's attempt to represent the 
 fairy-world, and the world of classical romance, which 
 could be so ill set visibly before the spectators of an 
 Elizabethan theatre. In Pyramus and Thisbc, an
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 73 
 
 actual man with a lantern stands for the moon ; 
 another represents Wall with plaster on his fingers. 
 Bottom and his crew assume that the spectators of 
 a drama have no imaginations ; Shakspere in his fairy 
 Dream assumes that they can imagine as poetically 
 real anything beautiful or grotesque which the poet 
 suggests to them. 
 
 It has been conjectured that A Midsummer Nighfs 
 Dream was written to grace the wedding of some 
 noble person — Southampton, who was married in 
 1598, or Essex, who was married in 1590. But these 
 dates are, the one too late, the other too early. The 
 lines (Act V. Sc. i. L. 52-53) 
 
 The thrice three Muses mourning for the death 
 Of Learning, late deceased in beggary, 
 
 have been thought to refer to Robert Greene's miser- 
 able death (1592); it is much more likely, if they 
 contain an allusion to anything contemporary, that the 
 reference is to Spenser's poem The Tears of the Muses 
 (1591). A passage (Act II. Sc. i. L. 88-118) in 
 which Titania describes the recent ill seasons, wintry 
 summers, flood and fog, would very aptly correspond 
 with the disastrous years 1593 and 1594. Perhaps we 
 may incline towards 1594 as the date of the play. It 
 contains a large proportion of rhyming lines ; but the 
 character of the play naturally calls for this. Such a 
 succession of rhymes repeating a single sound, as occur 
 in Act III. Sc. i. L. 168-177, and Act IV. Sc. i. 
 L. 90-97, evidently are introduced with a special pur- 
 pose. The play has the gaiety, the fancifulness, and 
 the want of either deep thought or passion which we 
 might expect in an early drama. 
 
 It was probably acted before Elizabeth. The praise 
 of "single blessedness" (Act I. Sc. i. L. 74-78) may 
 have been designed to please the ears of the maiden 
 queen ; and Oberon's vision (Act II. Sc. i. L. 148-168) 
 contains a splendid piece of poetical homage to her. 
 The "fair vestal throned by the west," is certainly 
 
 ^3
 
 74 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 Elizabeth. It was supposed by Warburton that by 
 " the mermaid on a dolphin's back " was meant Mary 
 Queen of Scots (the dauphin's wife), and by the 
 " stars," the English nobles who fell in her quarrel. 
 It has been shown, however, that a mermaid on a 
 dolphin's back, and shooting fires, actually formed part 
 of the Kenilworth festivities with which Leicester 
 entertained Elizabeth, when aiming at his mistress' 
 hand, and which Shakspere as a boy may have wit- 
 nessed. Elizabeth escaped heart-whole, but Lettice, 
 wife of the Earl of Essex, was at that time falsely 
 loved by Leicester, and she it has been suggested — 
 perhaps over-ingeniously — may be " the little western 
 flower." 
 
 The action of the play is comprised within three 
 days, ending at twelve o'clock on the night of May- 
 day. The notes of time given in the opening lines 
 of the play are inconsistent with this statement, but 
 the inconsistency is Shakspere's own. 
 
 Two quarto editions, of which the second was pro- 
 bably pirated, were issued in the year 1600. 
 
 7. King Henry VI., Parts II. and III., are re- 
 casts of two older plays — The First Part of the Con- 
 tention, &c. (published 1594), and The True Tragedie of 
 Richard Duke of Yorke, &c. (published 1595). About 
 3241 lines of these old plays reappear either in the same 
 or in an altered form in 2 and 3 Henry VI., what remains, 
 nearly one-half of the Henry VI. (2736 lines) being 
 altogether new. No question in Shakspere scholarship 
 is more perplexing and difficult than that of the author 
 ship of these four connected historical dramas. 
 
 It is impossible here to enter into this discussion, 
 but the chief rival theories must be briefly stated : 
 
 (1) Shakspere was author of the four plays : the 
 
 opinion of Knight, and almost certainly erro- 
 neous. 
 
 (2) Greene and Peele were the authors of the old 
 
 plays ; Shakspere the reviser, retaining portions
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 75 
 
 of his predecessor's work, altering portions, and 
 adding passages of his own. — (Malone.) 
 
 (3) Marlowe, Greene, Shakspere (and perhaps 
 
 Peele), were the authors of the old plays; 
 Shakspere alone the reviser, and the portions 
 common to the old plays, and 2 and 3 Henry 
 VI were Shakspere's contributions to the 
 original dramas, which he now reclaimed for 
 his own use. — (R. Grant White.) 
 
 (4) Marlowe and Greene (and possibly Peele) the 
 
 authors of the old plays ; Shakspere and Mar- 
 lowe the revisers, working as collaborateurs. — 
 (Miss Jane Lee.) 
 
 The third and fourth of these theories may be said 
 to have driven the first and second off the field ; and 
 it will be seen that the two questions in dispute are 
 the following : Had Shakspere a hand in the old 
 plays? and, Had Marlowe a hand not only in the 
 old plays, but also as reviser in the new ? 
 
 Marlowe's hand is certainly visible in both the old 
 plays and in some of the passages which appear for 
 the first time in Henry VI. (see, for a striking example, 
 2 Henry VI, Act IV. Sc. i. L.1-1 1). Shakspere and the 
 " Dead Shepherd " whom he alludes to in As You like 
 It, were then fellow-workers, and if rivals, their rivalry 
 was noble. But in truth, at this time Marlowe, by 
 virtue of his prestige, and because he had found his 
 proper genius while Shakspere was still feeling after 
 his true direction, would be the superior, and the 
 degree of independence of spirit shown in Shakspere's 
 work, although he is under the influence of Marlowe, 
 is interesting and remarkable. It is not easy to attri- 
 bute the humorous Jack Cade scenes in The First Part 
 of the Contention to any other writer than Shakspere ; 
 if he be excluded from a share in that play, they must 
 be ascribed to Greene. "Speaking broadly," writes 
 Miss Lee, " in The Contention and True Tragedie the 
 characters of King Henry VI., Cardinal Beaufort, York"
 
 76 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 [but maiiy of York's speeches, she adds, must have been 
 written by Greene], "Suffolk, the two Cliffords" [and 
 Richard] " are drawn by Marlowe ; but I say this with 
 the' reservation, that in certain scenes written by Greene 
 the parts of these characters were written by Greene 
 also. . . . Turning next from Marlowe's characters to 
 the characters of Greene — Duke Humphrey I believe 
 to be in a measure his, and also the Duchess Eleanor, 
 Clarence, Edward IV., . . . Elizabeth, ... Sir John 
 Hume " [and Jack Cade]. 
 
 The following provisional division of work is made by the 
 same critic. S. and M. stand for Shakspere and Marlowe, the 
 revisers ; M. G. and P. (in italics) stand for Marlowe, Greene, 
 and Peele, the supposed authors of The Contention and True 
 Tragedie. The table shows in detail how the revision was 
 effected. Thus "Act I. Sc. i. S., M. and G." means that in 
 this scene Shakspere was revising the work of Marlowe and 
 Greene; "Act IV. Sc. x. S. and M., G." means that here 
 Shakspere and Marlowe were revising the work of Greene. 
 
 Henry VI. Part //.—Act I. Sc. i. S., M. and G. ; Sc. ii. S., 
 G. ; Sc. iii. S., G. and M. ; Sc. iv. S., G. Act II. Sc. i. S., G. ; 
 Sc. ii. S., M. and(?) G. ; Sc. iii. S. and (?) M., G. Sc. iv. S., 
 G. Act III. Sc. i. S. and (?) M., M. and G. ; Sc. ii. S. and M., 
 M. and G. ; Sc. iii. S., M. Act. IV. Sc. i. M., G. ; Sc. ii., iii., 
 iv. S., G. ; Sc. v. unrevised, G. ; Sc. vi., vii., viii., ix. S., G. ; 
 Sc. x. S. and M., G. Act V. Sc. i. M. and S., M. and (?) G. ; 
 Sc. ii. M. and S., G. and M. ; Sc. iii. S., G. and 1,1. 
 
 Henry VI. Part III.— Act I. Sc. i. S., M. ; Sc. ii. M., M. ; 
 Sc. iii. unrevised, M. ; Sc. iv. S., M. and (?) G. Act II. Sc. i. 
 M. and (?) S., M. and (?) G. ; Sc. ii. (?) M., M. G. and (?) P. ; 
 Sc. iii. S. and M., M. ; Sc. iv. M., G. ; Sc. v. S. and (?) M., 
 G. ; Sc. vi. M., M. and G. Act III. Sc. i. S., G. ; Sc. ii. S., 
 G. and (?) M. ; Sc. iii. (?) M., G. and (?) P. Act IV. Sc. i. S., 
 G. ; Sc. ii. M., M. ; Sc. iii. S., M. ; Sc. iv. S., G. ; Sc. v. S. 
 (?) G. ; Sc. vi., vii. S., G. ; Sc. viii. S., (?) Act v. Sc. i. M. 
 G. and (?) P. ; Sc. ii. S., M. and G. ; Sc. iii. M., G. ; Sc. iv. 
 S., G. and (?) P. ; Sc. v., vi. S., HI. ; Sc. vii. unrevised, G. 
 
 " The Third Pari of Henry VI. underwent a much 
 less thorough revision than the second. Out of 3075 
 lines in Part II. there are 17 15 new lines, some 840 
 altered lines (many but very slightly altered), and some 
 520 old lines. In Part III., out of 2902 lines, there 
 are about 1021 new lines, about 871 altered lines, and 
 about 1010 old lines. Hence it is that in Part III.
 
 Vi.) HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 77 
 
 there are fewer resemblances of thought and verbal 
 expression to Shakspere's undoubted writings than in 
 Part II."— {Miss Lee.) 
 
 In connection with this subject the passage in 
 Greenes Groatsicorth of Wit (see p. 21) should be 
 'remembered, in which he speaks with virulent hatred 
 of Shakspere, and tries to incite Marlowe to a like 
 hatred, parodying in the same passage a line which 
 appears in the True Tragedie, and which is transferred 
 from it to 3 Henry VI. 
 
 Shakspere could perhaps have had, as a young 
 writer, no better training for the work of dramatist 
 than the going over, with such a master as Marlowe, 
 the work of Marlowe himself and of other distinguished 
 dramatists. It is evident that already in variety of 
 imagination and sound judgment Shakspere is superior 
 to his great contemporary. From working on these 
 plays Shakspere got the motive and impulse to carry 
 on the story in his own wonderful Richard III., and 
 was thus engaged in a dramatic study of English 
 history which he pursued until at length his latest 
 historical play (except Henry VIII) met his earliest 
 work, and the heroic ruler, Henry V., expressing 
 Shakspere's adult patriotism and political feeling, stood 
 hard by his earliest English king, Henry VI., the 
 weak and unhappy child of that heroic monarch. 
 
 Three subjects in the main make up the Second 
 Part of Henry VI. : the quarrels of the nobles, leading 
 to the fall and murder of the king's uncle Gloster ; the 
 unrighteous passion of the Queen — the terrible Margaret 
 of Anjou and her lover, Suffolk, with Suffolk's murder 
 by pirates ; and last, the unsuccessful insurrection of 
 Cade. There is noble material for tragic poetry here, 
 and it is treated in some portions in a masterly way. 
 The Third Part deals with the varying fortunes of the 
 civil war. The chief personal force upon the side of 
 Lancaster resides in Queen Margaret ; the great Duke 
 of York dies ; but his place is filled by the portentous 
 figure of Richard, so terrible by his energy, his dis-
 
 7 8 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 regard of moral restraint, and his remorseless hatred 
 of those who are opposed to him. Henry is the 
 feeblest of Shakspere's English kings : possessed of that 
 negative kind of saintliness which shuns evil, but 
 shunning courageous effort also, he becomes the cause 
 or occasion of almost as much evil as if he were 
 actively a criminal. 
 
 When the revision of the old plays was made we 
 cannot be certain, perhaps a short time before Mar- 
 lowe's death, in 1593, perhaps at a date previous to 
 Greene's sneering allusion to Shakspere in the Groats- 
 worth of Wit, 1592. 
 
 [See on this play Malone's essay, Variorum Shak- 
 spere, 1 82 1, vol. xviii. ; Knight's essay in his Pictorial 
 Shakspere j Mr. R. Grant White's essay in his edition 
 of Shakespeare, vol. vii. j and that of Miss Lee in the 
 Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1876.] 
 
 8. King Richard III., because, among other 
 alleged reasons, it exhibits so much smaller a propor- 
 tion of rhyme than King Richard II, is held by some 
 critics to be the later of the two in the chronological 
 order; but here Shakspere was working, though not 
 in the presence, yet under the influence and in the 
 manner of the great master of dramatic blank verse, 
 Marlowe. Richard III. carries on with the highest 
 energy, and we may suppose, after brief delay on 
 Shakspere's part, the subject of the fortunes of the 
 house of York from the point where it was dropped in 
 3 Henry VI. It would hardly be possible that Shak- 
 spere should subsequently continue to write in a manner 
 so Marlowesque as that of Richard III. ; he was not 
 yet in comedy or tragedy delivered from rhyme, 
 What more natural than that he should pass in 
 Richard II. to a manner, perhaps inferior in some 
 respects, but more his own, more varied, more subtle, 
 and marked by finer, if less forcible characterisation ? 
 King Richard III. can hardly be later in date than 1593. 
 
 Shakspere was indebted little, if at all, to the old 
 play The True Tragedie of Richard III, and certainly
 
 VI. 1 HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 79 
 
 not at ail to Dr. Legge's Latin play upon the same sub- 
 ject. A highly popular subject with Elizabethan 
 audiences -this was — the fall of the Yorkist usurper, 
 and the accession of the first Tudor king as champion 
 of justice. Shakspere's play was printed in quarto in 
 seven editions between 1597 and 1630. His mate- 
 rials the dramatist found in Holinshed and Hall. 
 Holinshed's account gives two views of Richard's 
 character ; one, in the portion of history previous to 
 the death of Edward IV., in which Richard is painted 
 in colours not so deeply, so diabolically black; and 
 the second, in which he appears as he does in Shak- 
 spere's play. This second and darker representation 
 of Richard was derived by Holinshed from Sir T. 
 More's History of Edward V. and Richard III., and 
 More had himself probably derived it from Cardinal 
 Morton, chancellor of Henry VII. and the enemy of 
 Richard. 
 
 The entire play may be said to be the exhibition of 
 the one central character of Richard ; all subordinate 
 persons are created that he may wreak his will upon 
 them. This is quite in the manner of Marlowe. Like 
 Marlowe also is the fierce energy of the central cha- 
 racter, untempered by moral restraints, the heaping up 
 of violent deeds, the absence of all reserve or mystery 
 in the characterisation, the broad and bold touches, 
 the demoniac force and intensity of the whole. There 
 is something sublime and terrible in so great and fierce 
 a human energy as that of Richard, concentrated 
 within one withered and distorted body. This is the 
 evil offspring and flower of the long and cruel civil 
 wars — this distorted creature, a hater and scorner of 
 man, an absolute cynic, loveless and alone, disregard- 
 ing all human bonds and human affections, yet full of 
 intellect, of fire, of power. The figure of Queen 
 Margaret, prophesying destruction to her adversaries, 
 and bitterly rejoicing in the fulfilment of her pro- 
 phecies, is introduced without historical warrant, but in 
 a manner most impressive. The accumulated crimes
 
 8o SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 of civil war are at last atoned for, and the evil which 
 culminates in Richard falls with Richard from its 
 bad eminence. The loveless solitude, haunted by 
 terrible visions of his victims, on the night before his 
 last battle, almost overmasters his resolution ; but the 
 stir and movement of the morning reanimates him, and 
 he dies in a paroxysm of the rage of battle. Richmond 
 conquers as the representative of the cause of God. 
 
 The Folio (1623) text of this play differs in many 
 small points, and in some important particulars, from 
 that of the Quartos which all follow the first Quarto, 
 1597. Whether the Folio gives the text as corrected 
 by Shakspere himself, or as altered by an inferior 
 hand from a copy previously corrected and augmented 
 by Shakspere, is a question in dispute. (See Nezu 
 Shakspere Society 's Transactions, 1875-76.) 
 
 9. Venus and Adonis was entered in the Stationers' 
 Company register on April 18, 1593, and was published 
 the same year. The poem at once became popular, 
 and before the close of 1602 it had been reprinted 
 no fewer than six times. "As the soule of Euphorbus," 
 wrote Meres in his Wits Treasury (1598), "was 
 thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule 
 of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shake- 
 speare ; witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his 
 sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c." Ovid 
 had told the story of the love of Venus for Adonis, 
 and the death of the beautiful hunter by a wild boar's 
 tusk : the coldness of Adonis, his boyish disdain of 
 love, was an invention of later times ; and it is in this 
 later form that Shakspere imagines the subject. The 
 Metamorphoses of Ovid had been translated into 
 English verse by Arthur Golding (1567), and Shak- 
 spere, if not now, was certainly at a later date 
 acquainted with this translation. A speech of Pro- 
 spero in The Tempest (Act V. Sc. i.), beginning — 
 
 Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, 
 is suggested by a passage of Golding's Ovid; but
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 81 
 
 Shakspere's treatment of the subject of the Venus and 
 Adonis has less in common with Ovid than with a 
 short poem by a contemporary writer of sonnets and 
 lyrical poems, Henry Constable, which appeared in a 
 collection of verse published in 1600, under the name 
 of England's Helicon. It is uncertain which of the 
 two poems, Constable's or Shakspere's, was the earlier 
 written. 
 
 When Venus and Adonis appeared Shakspere was 
 twenty-nine years of age ; the Earl of Southampton, 
 to whom it was dedicated, was not yet twenty. In 
 the dedication the poet speaks of these " unpolisht 
 lines - " as "the first heire of my invention." Did 
 Shakspere mean by this that Venus and Adonis was 
 written before any of his plays, or before any plays 
 that were strictly original — his own "invention?" or 
 does he, setting plays altogether apart, which were 
 not looked upon as literature, in a high sense of the 
 word, call it his first poem because he had written 
 no earlier narrative or lyrical verse ? We cannot be 
 sure. It is possible, but not likely, that he may 
 have written this poem before he left Stratford, and 
 have brought it up with him to London. More pro- 
 bably it was written in London, and perhaps not long 
 before its publication. The year 1593, in which the 
 poem appeared, was a year of plague; the London 
 theatres were closed : it may be that Shakspere, idle 
 in London, or having returned for a while to Stratford, 
 then wrote the poem. Whenever written, it was elabo-' 
 rated with peculiar care. The subject of the poem is 
 sensual, but with Shakspere it becomes rather a study 
 or analysis of passion and the objects of passion, than 
 in itself passionate. Without being dramatic, the 
 poem contains the materials for dramatic poetry, set 
 forth at large. The descriptions of English landscape 
 and country life are numerous, and give a spirit _ of 
 breezy life and health to portions of the poem which 
 could ill afford to lose anything that is fresh and 
 nealthful.
 
 82 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 io. Lucrece was entered in the Stationers' register 
 May 9, 1594, and was published the same year. Like 
 the Venus and Adonis, it is dedicated to the Earl of 
 Southampton, having been perhaps the " graver labour" 
 promised in the dedication of the Venus and Adonis. 
 The two poems resemble one another in several 
 respects, especially in the detailed descriptive style, 
 which draws out at length the particulars of a scene, 
 an incident, or an emotion. The poem of later date, 
 however, exhibits far less immaturity than does the 
 " first heire " of Shakspere's invention. Part of this 
 may be due to the fact that the subject is deeper and 
 more passionate : instead of the enamoured Venus 
 we have here the pure and noble Lucretia; instead 
 of the boy Adonis, the powerful figure of the evil 
 Tarquin. The versification is freer and bolder ; in 
 the Venus and Adonis the stanza was one of six lines, 
 consisting of a rhymed quatrain followed by a couplet ; 
 here a fifth line is introduced between the quatrain 
 and couplet, rhyming with lines two and four. This 
 structure tends to encourage more variety in the arrange- 
 ment of pauses, and may perhaps, in some degree, 
 explain the fact that run-on lines are much more 
 frequent in the Lucrece than in the Venus and Adonis. 
 The proportion of the run-on lines in the Lucrece is 1 in 
 io - 8i,in Venus and Adonis 1 in 25' 40. (Furnivall.) 
 The Lucrece was a poem highly admired by Shakspere's 
 contemporaries, and was several times republished, 
 though less often than the Venus. The story of 
 Lucretia is told by Livy and Ovid, and was versified 
 by Gower, and again related in Paynter's Palace of 
 Pleasure, 1567. 
 
 11. Romeo and Juliet. — The story of the unhappy 
 lovers of Verona, as a supposed historical occurrence, 
 is referred to the year 1303 ; but no account of it 
 exists of an earlier date than that of Luigi da Porto, 
 about 1530. A tale in some respects similar is set forth 
 in the Ephesiaca of Xenophon of Ephesus, a mediaeval 
 Greek romance writer ; and one essentially the same,
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 83 
 
 narrating the adventures of Mariotto and Gianozza of 
 Siena, is found in a collection of tales by Masuccio of 
 Salerno, 1476 ; but Da Porto first names Romeo and 
 Giulietta, and makes them children of the rival 
 Veronese houses. The story quickly acquired an 
 European celebrity. Altering the name and some par- 
 ticulars, Adrian Sevin relates it (about 1542) for his 
 French patroness ; Gherardo Boldiero turns it into 
 verse for his readers at Venice. Bandello, partly re- 
 casting the narrative, recounts it once more in his Italian 
 collection of novels, 1554; and five years later Pierre 
 Boisteau, probably assisted by Belleforest, translates 
 Bandello's Italian into French, and again recasts the 
 story (1559). In three years more it touches English 
 soil. Arthur Brooke in 1562 produced his long 
 metrical version, founded upon Boisteau's novel, and 
 a prose translation of Boisteau's Hisioire de Deux 
 Amans, appeared in Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, 1567. 
 We have here reached Shakspere's sources : Paynter 
 he probably consulted; in nearly all essentials he 
 follows the Pomeus and Juliet of Brooke. It must be 
 noted, however, that Brooke speaks of having seen 
 " the same argument lately set forth on stage " — 
 probably the English stage ; it is therefore possible 
 that Shakspere may have had before him an old 
 English tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, of which no frag- 
 ment remains with us. Resemblances between passages 
 of Shakspere's tragedy and passages of Groto's Italian 
 tragedy of Hadriana are probably due to accident. 
 
 The precise date of Shakspere's play is uncertain. 
 In 1597 it was published in quarto, "as it hath been 
 often (with great applause) plaid publiquely by the 
 right Honourable the L [ord] of Hunsdon his servants." 
 Now the Lord Ghamberlain, Henry Lord Hunsdon, 
 died July 22, 1596; his son, George Lord Hunsdon, 
 was appointed Chamberlain in April, 1597. Before 
 July, 1596, or after April, 1597, the theatrical com- 
 pany would have been styled by the more honourable 
 designation, "the Lord Chamberlain's servants;" but
 
 84 SIIAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 during the interval they would be described as on the 
 title-page of the quarto. The Nurse's mention of the 
 earthquake (Act I. Sc. iii. L. 23), " Tis since the earth- 
 quake now eleven years," has been referred to as 
 giving the date, 1591, a memorable earthquake, felt in 
 London, having occurred eleven years previously, in 
 1580 ; but, while professing an infallibly accurate recol- 
 lection, the garrulous old woman blunders sadly about 
 her dates, so that even if an actual English earthquake 
 were alluded to, the point of the jest may have been 
 in the inaccuracy of' the reference. Several lines in 
 Romeo's speech in presence of Juliet in the tomb 
 (Act V. Sc. iii. L. 74-120) seem written with a haunt- 
 ing recollection of passages in Daniel',s Complainte of 
 Rosamunde (1592). The internal evidence favours the 
 opinion that this tragedy was an early work of the 
 poet, and that it was subsequently revised and en- 
 larged. There is much rhyme, and much of this is in 
 the form of alternate rhyme ; the forced playing upon 
 words, and the overstrained conceits (see, for example, 
 Act I. Sc. iii. 81-92) point to an early date. If, how- 
 ever, rhymed verse be present in large quantity, the 
 quality of the scenes chiefly written in blank verse is 
 far higher than that of the rhyming passages. We may 
 perhaps accept the opinion that Romeo and Juliet was 
 begun, and in part written, as early as 1591, and that 
 it assumed its final form about 1597. The first 
 quarto, already mentioned (1597), is a pirated edition, 
 " made up partly from copies of portions of the 
 original play, partly from recollection and from notes 
 taken during the performance." The second quarto, 
 1599, is described on the title-page as "newly-corrected, 
 augmented, and amended." This perhaps exaggerates 
 the fact ; but here we obtain a true representation of 
 the play, and comparing this with the earlier text, it 
 appears that the play " underwent revision, received 
 some slight augmentation, and in some few places 
 must have been entirely rewritten." 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, apart from its intrinsic beauty,
 
 vij HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 85 
 
 is of deep interest when viewed as Shakspere's first 
 tragedy, and as a work which probably occupied his 
 thoughts, from time to time, during a series of years. 
 It is a young man's tragedy, in which Youth and Love 
 are brought face to face with Hatred and Death. 
 There are some lines in A Midsummer Night's Dream 
 in which the poet compares " the course of true love " 
 to that of lightning in midnight. 
 
 And ere a man hath power to say, Behold, 
 The jaws of darkness do devour it up : 
 So quick bright things come to confusion. 
 
 It is thus that love is conceived in Romeo and Juliet 
 — it is sudden, it is intensely bright for a moment, and 
 then it is swallowed up in darkness. The action is 
 accelerated by Shakspere to the utmost, the four or 
 five months of Brooke's poem being reduced to as 
 many days. On Sunday the lovers meet, next day 
 they are made one in marriage, on Tuesday morning 
 at dawn they part, and they are finally reunited in the 
 tomb on the night of Thursday. Shakspere does not 
 close the tragedy with Juliet's death : as he has shown 
 in the first scene the hatred of the houses through 
 the comic quarrel of the servants, thereby introducing 
 the causes which produce the tragic issue, so in the 
 last scene he shows us the houses sorrowfully recon- 
 ciled over the dead bodies of a son and a daughter. 
 
 Romeo's nature is prone to enthusiastic feeling, and, 
 as it were, vaguely trembling in the direction of love 
 before he sees Juliet ; to meet her gives form and 
 fixity to his vague emotion. Shakspere, following 
 Brooke's poem, has introduced Romeo as yielding 
 himself to a fanciful, boy's love of the disdainful 
 beauty, Rosaline ; and some of the love-conceits and 
 love-hyperbole of the first act are intended as the 
 conventional amorous dialect of the period. To 
 Juliet — a girl of fourteen — love comes as a thing 
 previously unknown ; it is at once terrible and blissful 
 (see Act II. Sc. ii. L. 1 16-120); she rises, through love, 
 and sorrow, and trial, from a child into a heroic woman.
 
 86 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 After Shakspere has exalted their enthusiastic joy and 
 rapture to the highest point, he suddenly casts it down. 
 Romeo is at first completely unmanned ; but Juliet 
 exhibits a noble fortitude and self-command. The 
 scene of the parting of husband and wife at dawn is a 
 fitting pendant to the scene in the moonlit garden, 
 where the confession of their love is made ; the one 
 scene wrought out of divinely-mingled love and joy, 
 the other of divinely-mingled love and sorrow. When 
 Romeo leaves his young wife, the marriage with Paris 
 is pressed upon her by the hot-tempered old Capulet, 
 by her mother, and by her gross-hearted Nurse. Juliet 
 is henceforth in a solitude almost as deep as that of 
 her tomb. The circumstance of bringing Paris across 
 Romeo in the churchyard, with his death before the 
 tomb, is of Shakspere's invention. Paris comes strewing 
 flowers for the lost Juliet — Romeo comes to find her 
 and to die. Paris scatters his blossoms with one of 
 those graceful love-speeches, in the form of a rhymed 
 sextet, which flowed from Romeo's lips in Act I. — 
 Romeo's speech is in earnest and plain blank verse, 
 for he has now dropped all unrealities and pretti- 
 nesses. In Luigi da Porto, in Bandello, and in a 
 modern version of Shakspere's play by Garrick, Juliet 
 awakes from her sleep while Romeo still lives ; Shak- 
 spere's treatment of this scene as to this particular 
 is the same as that of Brooke and Paynter. 
 
 Mercutio and the Nurse are almost creations of 
 Shakspere. Brooke had described Mercutio as "a 
 lion among maidens," and speaks of his " ice-cold 
 hand ; " but it was the dramatist who drew at full- 
 length the figure of this brilliant being, who though 
 with wit running beyond what is becoming, and effer- 
 vescent animal spirits, yet acts as a guardian of 
 Romeo, and is always a gallant gentleman. He dies 
 forcing a jest through his bodily anguish, but he dies 
 on Romeo's behalf: the scene darkens as his figure 
 disappears. The Nurse is a coarse, kindly, garrulous, 
 consequential old body, with vulgar feelings, and a
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 87 
 
 vulgarised air of rank ; she is on terms of long- 
 standing familiarity with her master, her mistress, and 
 Juliet, and takes all manner of liberties with them ; 
 but love has made Juliet a woman, and independent 
 of her old foster-mother. Friar Laurence, gathering 
 his simples and moralising to himself, is a centre of 
 tranquillity in the midst of turmoil and passion ; but 
 it may be doubted that his counsels of moderation, 
 and amiable scheming to reconcile the houses through 
 Romeo's marriage with Juliet, contain more real wis- 
 dom than do the passionate dictates of the lovers' 
 hearts. 
 
 The scene is essentially Italian : the burning noons 
 of July in the Italian city inflame the blood of the 
 street quarrelers ; the voluptuous moonlit nights are 
 only like a softer day. And the characters are Italian, 
 with their lyrical ardour, their southern impetuosity of 
 passion, and the southern forms and colour of their 
 speech. 
 
 12. King Richard II. appeared in quarto, 1597. 
 In 1608 a third edition was published "With new 
 additions of the Parliament Scene and the deposing of 
 King Richard," that is to say, with the added lines 
 154-318 in Act IV. Sc. i. It i? probable that 
 these lines were written as part of the original piay, 
 but relating as they did to the deposition of a king, 
 had been omitted for fear of giving offence at a time 
 when the Pope and Catholic princes were exhorting 
 her subjects to dethrone Elizabeth. Line 321 — 
 
 A woeful pageant have we here beheld — 
 
 which is found in the first quarto, seems to refer 
 to the deposition. A play upon this subject was 
 actually used for a political purpose in the year 
 1 60 1, having been played on the afternoon before 
 the revolt of Essex, by order of Sir Gilly Merrick, an 
 adherent of the Earl. That this was Shakspere's play 
 is very unlikely. Another Richard II. was seen at 
 the Globe Theatre, 161 1, by Dr. Simon Forman, but
 
 88 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 neither was it — as Forman's description of it makes 
 evident—the play of Shakspere. The date of Richard 
 II. is not ascertained, but it has been assigned, with an 
 appearance of probability, to the year 1593 or 1594. 
 Whether it preceded or followed Richard III is a 
 question in dispute. It is the inferior scenes in this 
 play which contain most rhymed verse ; the drama- 
 tist exhibits, as in Romeo and Juliet, mastery over 
 blank verse, but is not yet free from the ten- 
 dency to fall back into rhyme. Upon the whole, 
 Richard II. bears closer affinity to King John than to 
 any other of Shakspere's plays. Marlowe's genius, 
 however, still exercises an influence over Shakspere, 
 the Edward II. of the earlier poet haunting Shak- 
 spere's imagination while he was fashioning his 
 Richard II. 
 
 Having in Richard III. (if, as I believe, it preceded 
 the present play) brought the civil wars of England 
 to an issue and an end, Shakspere turned back to 
 the reign of the earlier Richard, whose deposition led 
 the way to the disputed succession and the conflicts of 
 half a century later. The interest of the play centres 
 in two connected things — the personal contrast be- 
 tween the falling and the rising kings, and the 
 political action of each ; the misgovernment of the 
 one inviting and almost justifying the usurpation of 
 the other. At the outset, Shakspere fixes the attention 
 upon the murder of the King's uncle, the Duke _ of 
 Gloucester, who was said by Mowbray to have died 
 in his custody at Calais, but who was not unreasonably 
 believed to have been put to death by Richard's order. 
 Bolingbroke in striking at Mowbray was striking at 
 Richard, and a dark deed of violence is brought into 
 notice as the starting-point of the events which led to 
 Richard's fall. But he has not only done violence to 
 one of his own house, he has wronged the people of 
 England. His upstart favourites, his blank charters, 
 hislfarming of the realm, are so many blows pointed 
 at the life of his country, and, as has been observed,
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 89 
 
 the national aspect of the quarrel is brought forward 
 by Hereford's proud assertion of his nationality, and 
 by Gaunt's- magnificent eulogy of England. But 
 Shakspere- — although no zealot on behalf of the divine 
 right of kings — does not applaud usurpation as the 
 means of destroying a tyranny ; from the Bishop of 
 Carlisle's lips proceeds a prophecy of the future 
 horrors of civil war which must ensue from the 
 violent dethronement of the king. 
 
 Richard, although possessed of a certain regal 
 charm, and power of attaching tender natures to him- 
 self, is deficient in all that is sterling and real in 
 manhood. He is self-indulgent, has much superficial 
 sensitiveness, loves to contemplate, in a romantic way, 
 whatever is pathetic or passionate in life, possesses 
 a kind of rhetorical imagination, and has abundant 
 command of delicate and gleaming words. His will 
 is nerveless, he is incapable of consistency of feeling, 
 incapable of strenuous action. Bolingbroke, on the 
 other hand, who pushes Richard from the throne, is a 
 man framed for such material success as waits on 
 personal ambition. He is not, like his son Henry V., 
 filled with high enthusiasm and sacred force derived 
 from the powers of heaven and of earth. All Boling- 
 broke's strength and craft are his own. His is a 
 resolute gaze which sees his object far off, and he has 
 persistency and energy of will to carry him forward 
 without faltering. He is not cruel, but shrinks from 
 no deed that is needful to his purpose because the 
 deed is cruel. His faculties are strong and well-knit. 
 There is no finer contrast in Shakspere's historical 
 plays than that between the figures of the formidable 
 king of deeds, and the romantic king of hectic 
 feelings and brilliant words. 
 
 Coincidences have been pointed out between 
 Richard II and Daniel's Civil Wars, 2nd edition, 
 1595 : if either borrowed from the other, the borrower 
 was probably Daniel. 
 
 13. King John departs farther from the facts of
 
 9 o SHAKSPERE. fcHAP. 
 
 history than any other of Shakspere's historical plays. 
 He here follows for the most part not Holinshed, but an 
 old play in two parts, which appeared in 1591, entitled 
 The Troublesome Raignc of King John of England. He 
 follows it, however, not in the close way in which he 
 had previously worked when writing 2 and 3 Henry VI ; 
 the main incidents are the same, but Shakspere elevates 
 and almost recreates the characters ; for the most elo- 
 quent and poetical passages no original is to be found 
 in the old play. The character of the king grows 
 more darkly treacherous in Shakspere's hands : barely 
 a hint of the earlier author suggested the scene, so 
 powerful and so subtle, in which John insinuates to 
 Hubert his murderous desires; the boyish innocence 
 of Arthur, and the pathos of his life, become real and 
 living as they are dealt with by the imagination of 
 Shakspere ; Constance is no longer a fierce and am- 
 bitious virago, but a passionate sorrowing mother; 
 Faulconbridge is ennobled by a manly tenderness 
 and a purer patriotism. Shakspere depicts, with true 
 English spirit, the ambition, the political greed, the 
 faithlessness, the sophistry of the court of Rome; 
 but he wholly omits a ribald scene of the old play, 
 in which the licentiousness of monasteries is exposed 
 to ridicule. 
 
 As to the date of King John, all we can assert with 
 confidence is that it lies somewhere between the 
 early histories Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III, with 
 Richard III, and the group of later historiss, the 
 trilogy consisting of 1 and 2 Henry IV. and Henry V. 
 Thus in the historical series it is brought close to 
 Richard II. Neither play contains prose, but the 
 treatment of Faulconbridge's part shows more approach 
 to the alliance of a humorous or comic element with 
 history (which becomes complete in Henry IV.) than 
 does anything in the play of Richard II King John 
 and Richard II have the common characteristic of 
 containing very inferior dramatic work side by side 
 with work of a high and difficult kind. The chief
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 91 
 
 point of difference with respect to form is that 
 Richard II. contains a much larger proportion of 
 rhymed verse, and on the whole we shall perhaps not 
 err in regarding Richard II. as the earlier of the two. 
 
 Magna Charta, and the struggle of the nobles in 
 England for their rights and those of the people, 
 do not attract Shakspere away from what is more 
 susceptible of dramatic treatment — the deeds and the 
 passions of individual actors in history. A mother's 
 grief for her lost boy seems to him a more poetical 
 theme than regulations respecting aids and scutages. 
 It is the shame and weakness of the reign of the royal 
 malefactor, John — himself represented as a weak and 
 dastardly usurper — rather than what makes it politically 
 illustrious, on which Shakspere dwells. A strong breath 
 of patriotism, nevertheless, breathes through the play, 
 and this fills and buoys up, amid all disasters, the 
 spirit of Cceur de Lion's bastard son. The play con- 
 tains three large and splendidly-drawn figures : the 
 king, basest of all kings of England in Shakspere's 
 eyes, no strong malefactor, like Richard III, but 
 capable of all treason, and of every degrading sub- 
 mission ; Constance, who is the embodiment of a 
 mother's violent passions of love and grief, yet weak 
 with the weakness of her sex ; and Faulconbridge, the 
 typical Englishman, with his courage, his tenderness, 
 his frankness, his contempt for unreality and affec- 
 tation, his national pride. Among these and the 
 other forces of the play, Arthur moves with a pathetic 
 beauty, gentleness, and innocence, as a lamb among 
 wolves and lions. 
 
 14. The Merchant of Venice we place by itself, 
 midway between the group of Shakspere's early come- 
 dies and that more brilliant group of comedies which 
 clusters about the year 1600. With the early comedies it 
 is allied by the frequent rhymes, the occasional doggerel 
 verse, and the numerous classical allusions. Launcelot 
 and Nerissa resemble Launce and Lucetta of The Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona ; and the scene (Act I. Sc. ii) in
 
 92 • SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 which the waiting-maid names in succession Portia's 
 lovers, for her mistress to pass her lively criticism upon 
 them, is almost a reproduction of the scene (Act I. 
 Sc. ii.) of The Two Gentlemen, where Julia and Lucetta 
 hold a similar dialogue. It may be noted, however, 
 that while the earlier treatment of this incident is in 
 verse, for the most part rhymed, the later is in prose ; 
 the parts assigned to maid and mistress are transposed 
 ■ — in the earlier play it is the maid who is the critic ; 
 and while Lucetta dismisses the lovers with a brief 
 comment on the personality of each, Portia makes 
 each lover the occasion for a vivacious piece of satire 
 on the peculiarities of the nation to which he belongs. 
 Thus Shakspere could work out his ideas a second 
 time without precisely repeating himself. With the 
 later group of comedies The Merchant of Venice stands 
 connected by its centring the interest of the drama in 
 the development of character, and by the variety, 
 depth, and beauty of the characterisation. No person 
 depicted in any preceding comedy can compare in 
 vigour of drawing and depth of colour with Shylock ; 
 and Portia is the first of Shakspere's women who 
 unites in beautiful proportion, intellectual power, high 
 and refined, with unrestrained ardour of the heart. 
 
 The story of the caskets and the story of the pound 
 of flesh had been told separately many times and in 
 various countries. The former is first found in the 
 mediaeval Greek romance of Barlaam and Josaphat, 
 by Joannes Damascenus (about a.d. 800) ; in another 
 form it is told by the English poet Gower, and 
 the Italian novelist Poccaccio. Put points of resem- 
 blance are most striking between Shakspere's version 
 of the casket incident and that given in the collection 
 of stories so popular in the Middle Ages, the Gesta 
 Romanorum. The incident of the pound of flesh 
 also appears in the Gesta ; it is found in a long 
 religious poem,- written in the Northumbrian dialect 
 about the end of the thirteenth century, the Cursor 
 Mundij in an old ballad "showing the crueltie of
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 93 
 
 Gernutus a Jew," and elsewhere; there are Persian 
 and Egyptian versions of the tale, which itself perhaps 
 originally came from the East. The form in which 
 we have it in Shakspere is most closely connected with 
 the version found in a collection of tales, // Pecorone, 
 written by Ser Giovanni, a notary of Florence, about 
 a.d. 1378. Here, and only here, the incident of the 
 ring, which forms the subject of the fifth act of The 
 Merchant of Venice, is given ; and here the name 
 Belmont appears. It is probable, however, that 
 Shakspere to become acquainted with these stories had 
 not to go to // Pecorone and the Gcsta Romanorum. 
 Stephen Gosson writing in 1579, in his ScJwok of Abuse, 
 about plays which were " tollerable at sometime," 
 mentions "the Jew . . . showne at the Bull . . . re- 
 presenting the greedinesse of worldly chusers and 
 bloody mindes of usurers." The greediness of worldly 
 choosers seems to point to the casket incident, and 
 the bloody minds of usurers to that of the pound of 
 flesh; we therefore infer that a pre-Shaksperian play 
 existed which combined these two incidents. And it is 
 highly probable that Shakspere's task in the case of The 
 Merchant of Venice, as afterwards in that of King Lear, 
 consisted in creating from old and worthless dramatic 
 material found among the crude productions of the 
 early English theatre, those forms of beauty and of 
 majesty with which we are familiar. 
 
 Although the play is named after the merchant, 
 Antonio, he is not the chief dramatic person ; he 
 forms, however, a centre around which the other 
 characters are grouped : Bassanio, his friend; Shylock, 
 his enemy and would-be murderer ; Portia, his saviour. 
 Antonio's part is rather a passive than an active one ; 
 he is to be an object of contention and a prize ; much 
 is to be done against him and on his behalf, but not 
 so much is to be done by him; and therefore, although 
 his character is very firmly conceived and clearly in- 
 dicated, his part is subdued and kept low, lest it might 
 interfere with the exhibition of the two chief forces of
 
 94 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 the play — the cruel masculine force of Shylock, which 
 holds the merchant in its relentless, vice-like grip ; 
 and the feminine force of Portia, which is as bright as 
 the sunlight, and as beneficent. Yet Shakspere is 
 careful to interest us in Antonio, and to show us that 
 he was worth every exertion to save. He is 
 
 The kindest man, 
 The best conditional and unwearied spirit 
 In doing courtesies, and one in whom 
 The ancient Roman honour more appears 
 Than any that draws breath in Italy. 
 
 When Antonio first appears he is oppressed with 
 a sadness which he will not name to his mirthful com- 
 panions. It is the sadness of having to render up his 
 friend Bassanio to one who must henceforth take the 
 chief place in his heart. As soon as he is left alone with 
 his kinsman, around whom his tenderest affection has 
 entwined itself, the merchant questions him about the 
 lady ; and Bassanio, who has known Portia already and 
 loves her, fearing to pain his friend, dwells little on his 
 love and much on the motives of prudence which 
 make his marriage with a rich heiress desirable, until at 
 the last his enthusiasm about the beauty and goodness 
 of Portia cannot be contained. When Bassanio is 
 setting forth for Belmont, and his friend must remain 
 without him, Antonio wrings his hand and his eyes 
 are filled with tears. It is the same Portia who had 
 seemed to deprive him of friendship who afterwards 
 gives him back not only friendship but life itself; and 
 at Belmont, in the last act, the lovers and their friend 
 are united in a common joy. Portia has heard her 
 husband say that he would sacrifice " his life itself, his 
 wife, and all the world," to save Antonio; and at 
 Antonio's request he has parted with Portia's ring; 
 but her playful reproaches express no jealous fear — 
 nay, rather conceal her real joy to find the man she 
 loves loyal to the man who had so truly loved him. 
 The subject of friendship and love, and their mutual 
 relations, which Shakspere had treated in The Twe
 
 \ .j HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 95 
 
 Gentlemen of Verona, reappears, treated in a far deeper 
 and more refined manner in the present play. 
 
 The distinction of Portia among the women of Shak- 
 
 spere is the union in her nature of high intellectual 
 
 powers and decision of will with a heart full of ardour 
 
 and of susceptibility to romantic feelings. She has 
 
 herself never known trouble or sorrow, but prosperity 
 
 has left her generous and quick in sympathy. Her 
 
 noble use of wealth and joyous life, surrounded with 
 
 flowers and fountains and marble statues and music, 
 
 stands in contrast over against the hard, sad, and 
 
 contracted life of Shylock, one of a persecuted tribe, 
 
 absorbed in one or two narrowing and intense passions 
 
 — the love of the money-bags he clutches and yet fails 
 
 to keep, and his hatred of the man who had scorned 
 
 his tribe, insulted his creed, and diminished his gains. 
 
 Yet Shylock is not like Marlowe's Jew, Barabas, a 
 
 preternatural monster. Wolf-like as his revenge shows 
 
 him, we pity his joyless, solitary life ; and when, ringed 
 
 round in the trial scene with hostile force, he stands 
 
 firm upon his foothold of the law, there is something 
 
 sublime in his tenacity of passion and resolve. But 
 
 we feel that it is right that this evil strength should be 
 
 utterly crushed and quelled, and when Shylock leaves 
 
 the court a broken man, we know it is needful that 
 
 this should be so. 
 
 The choosing of the caskets shows us Portia, who 
 will strictly interpret the law of Venice for Shylock 
 and Antonio, loyally abiding by the provisions which 
 her father has laid down in her own case. And 
 Bassanio is ennobled in our eyes by his choice ; for 
 the gold, silver, and lead of the caskets, with their 
 several inscriptions, are a test of true lovers. Bassanio 
 does not come as a needy adventurer to choose the 
 golden casket, or to "gain," or "get" anything, but in 
 the true spirit of self-abandoning love " to give," not 
 to get, " and hazard all he hath ; " and having dared to 
 give all he gains all. (See the inscriptions on the 
 caskets.)
 
 9& SHAKSPERE. [CHAP. 
 
 The lyrical boy-and-girl love of Lorenzo and 
 Jessica brings out by contrast the grave and glad 
 earnestness of Portia's love and Bassanio's. Jessica 
 has not a thought of loyalty to her father — nor is it to 
 be expected. The lyrical passages between Lorenzo 
 and Jessica in the moonlit garden (Act V. Sc. i.) end- 
 ing with the praise of music, contrast with Portia's 
 generalising reflections (the wake of thought still 
 undulating after her great intellectual effort at the trial), 
 suggested by the light seen and music heard as she 
 approaches her house, and by her failing to receive 
 any pleasure from the music which Lorenzo has so 
 eloquently praised. 
 
 The comedy must end mirthfully. After the real 
 struggle and the strain of interest respecting Antonio's 
 fate, we pass on to the playful differences about the 
 rings ; from the court of justice at Venice we are 
 carried to the luminous night in the gardens of Bel- 
 mont. Even Antonio's ships must not be lost ; a 
 moment of happiness after trouble cannot be too 
 perfect. 
 
 The date of the play is uncertain. In Philip 
 Henslowe's Diary mention is made, under the date 
 August 25, 1594, of the " Venesyon comedy;" this 
 may have been Shakspere's play, but more probably 
 it was not. The Merchant of Venice is mentioned by 
 Meres, 1598, and it was entered at Stationers' Hall in 
 the same year, though not printed until 1 600. Perhaps 
 1596 is as likely a date as we can fix upon. The 
 precise year matters little if it be remembered that the 
 play occupies an intermediate place between the early 
 and the middle group of comedies. 
 
 15. King Henry IV., Parts I. and II., may be 
 considered as one play in ten acts. It is probable that 
 Shakspere went on with little delay, or none, from the 
 first part to its continuation in the second. Both were 
 written before the entry of the first in the Stationers' 
 register, Feb. 25, 1597-98; for the entry shows that 
 the name of the fat knight, who originally appeared
 
 VL] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 97 
 
 ill both parts under the name of Oldcastle, had been 
 already altered to Falstaff. Meres makes mention of 
 Henry IV. ; and Ben Jonson, in Every Man out of His 
 Humour (1599), alludes to Justice Silence, one of the 
 characters of the Second Part of Shakspere's play. 
 The materials upon which Shakspere worked in 
 Henry IV, Parts I. and //, and Henry V, were ob- 
 tained from Holinshed, and from an old play, full of 
 vulgar mirth, and acted before 15 88, The Famous 
 Victories of Henry V. A Sir John Oldcastle appears 
 in this play as one of the Prince's wild companions. 
 That Shakspere adopted the name is evident from 
 allusions of subsequent writers, from the circumstance 
 that in the quarto of 1600 the name Old is left by 
 mistake prefixed to a speech of Falstaff, and from 
 Henry's punning name for the fat knight (Part I. Act I. 
 Sc.ii. L. 48), "my old lad of the castle." Falstaff, more 1 
 over, is said to have been " page to Thomas Mowbray, 
 Duke of Norfolk" (Part II. Act III. Sc. ii. L. 28), which 
 the historical Oldcastle was in point of fact. This his- 
 torical Oldcastle is better known as Lord Cobham, the 
 Lollard martyr. Shakspere changed the name because 
 he did not wish wantonly to offend the Protestant 
 party, nor gratify the Roman Catholics (see Epilogue 
 to Part II.). A Sir John Fastolfe had figured in the 
 French wars of Henry VI. 's reign, and was introduced 
 as playing a cowardly part in 1 Henry VI. That he 
 also was a Lollard appears not to have been suspected, 
 but a tradition may have lingered of his connection 
 with a certain Boar's Head Tavern, of which Fastolfe 
 was actually owner. By a slight modification of the 
 name this Fastolfe of history became the more illus- 
 trious Falstaff of the dramatist's invention. 
 
 Both parts of Henry IV. consist of a comedy 
 and a history fused together. The hero of the 
 one is the royal Bolingbroke, the hero of the 
 other is Falstaff, while Prince Henry passes to and 
 fro between the history and the comedy, serving 
 as the bond which unites the two. Both first and 
 
 D
 
 9 8 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 second parts, but especially the first part, were written 
 with the utmost spirit and energy. Henry IV. is 
 the same Bolingbroke who had been so greatly con- 
 ceived in King Richard II. ; only he is no longer in 
 the full force of his manhood. He is worn by care 
 and toil, harassed by the troubles of the unquiet times, 
 yet still resolved to hold firmly what he has forcibly 
 attained. He has tried flattery with his turbulent 
 nobles, and he has tried to overawe them ; but still 
 they are not made loyal subjects. Scotland, Wales, 
 the lords of the North, are in arms against him. 
 There is a pathetic power in the figure of this weary 
 ambitious man, who can take no rest until the rest of 
 death comes to him. 
 
 Hotspur, who to bring him into contrast with the 
 Prince, is made much younger than the Harry Percy 
 of history, is as ardent in the pursuit of glory as the 
 Prince seems to be indifferent to it. To his hot 
 temper, and quick sense of personal honour, small 
 matters are great ; he does not see things in their true 
 proportions ; he lacks self-control, he has no easiness 
 of nature. Yet he is gallant, chivalrous, not devoid of 
 generosity nor of quick affections, though never in a 
 high sense disinterested. The Prince, whom Shak- 
 spere admires and loves more than any other person 
 in English history, afterwards to become Shakspere's 
 ideal king of England, cares little for mere reputation. 
 He does not think much of himself, and of his own 
 honour ; and while there is nothing to do, and his 
 great father holds all power in his own right hand, 
 Prince Hal escapes from the cold proprieties of the 
 court to the boisterous life and mirth of the tavern. 
 Pie is, however, only waiting for a call to action, and 
 Shakspere declares that from the first he was conscious 
 of his great destiny, and while seeming to scatter his 
 force in frivolity, was holding his true self, well 
 guarded, in reserve. May there not have been a 
 young fellow remembered by Shakspere, who went by 
 night on deer-stealing frolics near Strafford, who yet
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 99 
 
 kept from waste and ruin a true self, with which his 
 comrades had small acquaintance, and who now 
 helped Shakspere to understand the nature of the 
 wild Prince and his scapegrace adventures ? 
 
 Falstaff is everything in little, or rather everything 
 in much ; for, is he not a tun of flesh ? English 
 literature knows no humorous creation to set beside 
 Falstaff; and to find his equal — yet his opposite — we 
 must turn to the gaunt figure of the romantic knight 
 of La Mancha, in whose person Cervantes smiled 
 away pathetically the chivalry of the Middle Ages 
 from out our modern world. Falstaff exercises upon 
 the reader of these plays much the same fasci- 
 nation which he exercised upon the Prince. We 
 know him to be a gross-bodied, self-indulgent old 
 sinner, devoid of moral sense and of self-respect, and 
 yet we cannot part with him. We cannot live in this 
 mixed world without humour, and Falstaff is humour 
 maintaining its mastery against all antagonisms. When 
 worsted in an encounter, then he shows himself most 
 victorious ; when escape seems least possible, then by 
 his sleight he is in a moment most at large. We admit, 
 however, the necessity of his utter banishment from 
 Henry, when Henry enters upon the grave responsi- 
 bilities of kingship. Still we have a tender thought 
 for Sir John in his exile from London taverns. And 
 at the last, when he fumbles with the sheets, and 
 plays with flowers, when "a' went away, an it had been 
 any christom child," we bid him adieu with a tear that 
 does not forbid a smile. 
 
 The historical period represented by i Henry IV 
 dates from the battle of Holmedon Hill, Sept. 14, 
 1402, to the battle of Shrewsbury, July 21, 1403. 
 2 Henry IV. continues the history to the king's death 
 and the accession of Henry V., 1413. 
 
 16. King Henry V. is net mentioned by Meres, 
 and the reference in the chorus of Act V. to Essex in 
 Ireland (see p. 35), and in the Prologue to " this 
 wooden O," i.e. the Globe Theatre, built in 1599, 
 
 d 2
 
 ioo SIIAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 make it probable that 1599 was the date of its pro- 
 duction. A pirated imperfect quarto appeared in the 
 following year. In this play Shakspere bade farewell 
 in trumpet tones to the history of England. It was a 
 fitting climax to the great series of works which told of 
 the sorrow and the glory of his country, embodying as 
 it did the purest patriotism of the days of Elizabeth. 
 With Agincourt and a King Henry V. we can rest 
 content, assured that all greatness and good are possible 
 for a loyal people ; we care no longer to search the 
 dim reports 
 
 Of old, unhappy, far-off things, 
 And battles long ago. 
 
 And as the noblest glories of England are presented 
 in this play, so it presents Shakspere's ideal of active, 
 practical, heroic manhood. If Hamlet exhibits the 
 dangers and weakness of the 'Contemplative nature, 
 and Prospero, its calm and its conquest, Henry 
 exhibits the utmost greatness which the active nature 
 can attain. He is not an astute politician like his 
 father : having put everything upon a sound sub- 
 stantial basis he need not strain anxious eyes of fore- 
 sight, to discern and provide for contingencies arising 
 out of doubtful deeds ; for all that naturally comes 
 within its range he has an unerring eye. A devotion 
 to great objects outside of self fills him with a force 
 of glorious enthusiasm. Hence his religious spirit 
 and his humility or modesty — he feels that the 
 strength he wields comes not from any clever disposi- 
 tion of forces due to his own prudence, but streams 
 into him and through him from his people, his 
 country, his cause, his God. He can be terrible to 
 traitors, and his sternness is without a touch of per- 
 sonal revenge. In the midst of danger he can feel so 
 free from petty heart-eating cares as to enjoy a piece 
 of honest, soldierly mirth. His wooing is as plain, 
 frank, and true as are his acts of piety. He unites 
 around himself in loyal service the jarring nationalities
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. ioi 
 
 of his father's time — Englishmen, Scotchmen, Welsh- 
 men, Irishmen, all are at Henry's side at Agincourt. 
 Having presented his ideal of English kinghood, 
 Shakspere could turn aside from history. In this play 
 no character except Henry greatly interested Shak- 
 spere, unless it be the Welsh Fluellen, whom he loves 
 (as Scott loved the Baron of Bradwardine) for his 
 real simplicity underlying his apparatus of learning, 
 and his touching faith in the theory of warfare. 
 
 17. The Taming of the Shrew is first found in 
 the folio, 1623, but it is in some way closely connected 
 with a play published in 1594, and bearing the almost 
 identical title, The Taming of a Shrew. We cannot 
 accept Pope's opinion that both plays are by Shak- 
 spere, nor agree with another critic who ingeniously 
 maintained that the earlier printed play was the later 
 written, being suggested by Shakspere's comedy of 
 the Shrew. The play in the folio is certainly an 
 enlargement and alteration of The Taming of a Shrew, 
 and it only remains to ask, was Shakspere the sole 
 reviser and adapter, or did his task consist of adding 
 and altering certain scenes, so as to render yet more 
 amusing aad successful an enlarged version of the 
 play of 1594, already made by some unknown hand? 
 This last seems upon the whole the opinion best sup- 
 ported the internal evidence. In The Taming of 
 the Shrew we may distinguish three parts : (1) The 
 humorous Induction, in which Sly, the drunken 
 tinker, is the chief person ; (2) A comedy of character, 
 the Shrew and her tamer, Petruchio, being the hero 
 and heroine ; (3) A comedy of intrigue — the story of 
 Bianca and her rival lovers. Now the old play of 
 A Shrew contains, in a rude form, the scenes of the 
 Induction, and the chief scenes in which Petruchio 
 and Katharina (named by the original writer Ferando 
 and Kate) appear ; but nothing in this old play 
 corresponds with the intrigues of Bianca's disguised 
 lovers. It is, however, in the scenes concerned with 
 these intrigues that Shakspere's hand is least ap-
 
 102 SHAKSPERE. [CHAP. 
 
 parent. It may be said that Shakspere's genius goes 
 in and out with the person of Katharina. We would 
 therefore conjecturally assign the intrigue-comedy, — 
 which is founded upon Gascoigne's Supposes, a trans- 
 lation of Ariosto's Gli Suppositi — to the adapter of the 
 old play, reserving for Shakspere a title to those 
 scenes — in the main enlarged from the play of A 
 Shrew — in which Katharina, Petruchio, and Grumio 
 are speakers. Turning this statement into figures, we 
 find that Shakspere's part of The Taming of the Shrew 
 is comprised in the following portions : Induction ; 
 Act II. Sc. i. L. 169-326; Act III. Sc. ii. L. 1-125, 
 and 151-241 ; Act IV. Sc. i.; Act IV. Sc. iii.; Act IV. 
 Sc. v. ; Act V. Sc. ii. L. 1-180. Such a division, it 
 must be borne in mind, is no more than a conjecture, 
 but it seems to be suggested and fairly indicated by 
 the style of the several parts of the comedy. 
 
 However this may be, it is clear that Shakspere 
 cared little for the other characters in comparison with 
 Sly, Katharina, and Petruchio. Sly is of the family of 
 Sancho Panza, gross and materialistic in his tastes and 
 habits, but withal so good-humoured and self-contented 
 that we would fain leave him unvexed by higher ideas 
 or aspirations ; all the pains taken to delude him into 
 the notion that he is a lord will not make him essen- 
 tially other than "old Sly's son, of Burton Heath," 
 who has run up so long a score with the fat ale-Avife of 
 Wincot. The Katharina and Petruchio scenes border 
 upon the farcical, but Shakspere's interest in the 
 characters of the Shrew and her tamer keep these 
 scenes from passing into downright farce. Katharina 
 with all her indulged wilfulness and violence of temper 
 has no evil in her ; in her home-enclosure she seems 
 a formidable creature ; but when caught away by the 
 tempest of Petruchio's masculine force, the compara- 
 tive weakness of her sex shows itself; she, who has 
 strength of her own, and has ascertained its limits, 
 can recognise superior strength, and once subdued she 
 is the least rebellious of subjects. Petruchio acts his
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 103 
 
 assumed part " with complete presence of mind, with 
 untired animal spirits, and without a particle of ill- 
 humour from beginning to end." The play is full of 
 energy and bustling movement. 
 
 Widely separated dates have been assigned for The 
 Taming of the Shrew, from 159410 1606. The best 
 portions are in the manner of Shakspere's comedies of 
 the second period ; and attributing the Bianca intrigue- 
 comedy to a writer intermediate between the author of 
 the play of A Shrew and Shakspere, there is no diffi- 
 culty in supposing that the Shakspere scenes were 
 written about 1597. The same spirit in which The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor was created was here em- 
 ployed by Shakspere to furnish his theatrical company 
 larged version of a popular comedy. 
 I be noted that the comedy of The Shreto is 
 a play within a play, and there is no provision, such 
 as is found in the older Shrew, for disposing of Sly at 
 f the fifth act. The jest of bewildering a 
 poor man into the idea that he is rich and great is 
 e Arabian Nights ; such a jest is attributed 
 to Philip the Good of Burgundy, and the story is given 
 in a collection of Tales compiled by R. Edwards, and 
 printed in 1570. Fletcher wrote a humorous con- 
 tinuation ( ' Shakspere's play, entitled The Woman's 
 Prizi Tamer Tamed, in which Petruchio re- 
 
 appears. 
 
 18. The Merry Wives of Windsor is an offshoot 
 from thecomedyof KingHenry I V., while King Henry V. 
 is the direct continuation of the history. Dennis, in 
 1702, reports a tradition that this play was written in 
 fourteen days, by order of the Queen ; and Rowe adds : 
 " she was so well pleased with that admirable character 
 of Falstaff, in the two parts of Henry IV., that she 
 commanded him to continue it for one play more, and 
 to show him in love." This may have been the cause 
 why Shakspere does not fulfil the promise made in the 
 Epilogue of Henry IV, that Falstaff should reappear 
 with Henry V. in France ; but, indeed, among the
 
 104 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 great deeds of the victor of Agincourt there would be 
 small room for a Falstaff. The choice of Windsor as 
 the scene, and the compliments to the owner of 
 Windsor Castle, and to the wearers of the Order of the 
 Garter, suggest that the play was meant especially for 
 the ears of Elizabeth and her courtiers. An early 
 sketch of The Merry Wives was published in quarto, 
 1602 ; some touches in the play, as given in the folio, 
 were evidently made after the accession of James I. 
 (1603); the word "council" is altered to "king" (Act I. 
 Sc. i. L. 113); "these knights will hack," exclaims Mrs. 
 Page (Act II. Sc. i. L. 5 2), and the allusion to James's too 
 liberal creation of knights in 1604 was probably appreci- 
 ated. Some critics have held that the first sketch of The 
 Merry Wives was written as early as 1592. A German 
 duke is spoken of by Bardolph as about to visit 
 Windsor, and his gentlemen ride off with mine host of 
 the Garter's horses unpaid for. In the early sketch 
 (Act IV. Sc. v. of the revised play), instead of " cousin- 
 germans," where Evans puns upon the words cozen and 
 German, occurs the strange " cosen garmombles." 
 Now, Count Frederick of Mompelgard had visited 
 England and accompanied the Queen to Windsor, 
 Aug. 1592 ; and in the passport which he received for 
 his journey back to the Continent, we read that he 
 shall be furnished with post-horses, and shall pay 
 nothing for the same. Next year the Count became 
 Duke of Wirtemberg, and in 1595 he craved that, in 
 accordance with a promise given, Elizabeth would 
 confer upon him the Order of the Garter, which Eliza- 
 beth, on various pretexts, declined. " Garmombles" ob- 
 viously reverses the true name " Mompelgard;" but the 
 inference that the date of the play is 1592, because it 
 refers to the visit of the Germans, is unwarrantable, for 
 such an event would be remembered, and the more so 
 because of the Duke's subsequent unavailing attempt 
 to obtain the honour of the Garter. 
 
 If we try to make out exact relations between the 
 characters of The Merry Wives and the same characters
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 105 
 
 as they appear in the historical plays, we shall fail. 
 The comedy has a certain independence of the his- 
 tories, and cannot be pieced on to them in any way : 
 the persons are the same and not the same. Mrs. 
 Quickly, servant of Dr. Caius, has a different history 
 from the Mrs. Quickly of the Boar's Head Tavern. 
 At what period in Falstaff's career he pursued the 
 Windsor wives we cannot make out for certain. Nor 
 is he conceived in quite the same manner as the 
 Falstaff of Henry IV. Here the knight is fatuous, 
 his genius deserts him ; the never-defeated hangs 
 his head before two country dames ; the buck- 
 basket, the drench of Thames water, the blows of 
 Ford's cudgel, are reprisals too coarse upon the most 
 inimitable of jesters. Yet the play is indeed a merry 
 one, with yell-contrived incidents and abundance of 
 plain broad mirth. A country air breathes over the 
 —for which the Gloucestershire scenes of 2 Henry 
 '. had prepared us. "The outdoor character that 
 pervades The Merry Wives and As You Like It gives 
 D them th ir tone of buoyancy and enjoyment, their 
 true holiday feeling." Nowhere else has Shakspere 
 represented English middle-class life in the country, 
 and he has here done it with a vigorous, healthy 
 pleasure. It is not, however, a poetical play, 
 unless comely English maidenhood, in the person of 
 pretty Anne Page, lend it something of poetry. There 
 is a propriety in the fact that this comedy is written 
 almost altogether in prose. The blunders of the 
 French doctor and of the Welsh parson in speaking 
 English are rather an elementary form of fun, such as 
 may suit a somewhat rustic subject ; but Sir Hugh 
 Evans, apart from his blunders, is good company. 
 The merry wives themselves are a delightful pair, with 
 " their sly laughing looks, their apple-red cheeks, their 
 brows the lines whereon look more like the work of 
 mirth than years." And Slender, most brainless of 
 youths, most incapable of lovers, is dear for sake of 
 the laugh at him which pretty Anne Page must have 
 
 » 3
 
 io6 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 when alone. Altogether, if we can -accept Falstaffs 
 discomfitures, it is a sunny play to laugh at if not to 
 love. 
 
 The following sources have been pointed out as 
 exhibiting some points of resemblance to the incidents 
 of The Merry Wives, and as possibly supplying hints 
 to Shakspere : Two tales from Lc tredici piacevoli 
 notte, by Straparola, and the altered version of one 
 of these to be found in Tarlton's Newes out of Pur- 
 gatorie (1590); the tale of Bucciolo and Pietro Paulo 
 from the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino ; finally, 
 The Fishwife's Tale of Brainford, from Westward for 
 Smelts. 
 
 19. Much Ado about Nothing was entered on 
 the Stationers' register, August 23, 1600, and a well- 
 printed quarto edition appeared in the same year. 
 The play is not mentioned by Meres, 1598, and we 
 may assume that it was written at some time in the 
 interval between 1598 and 1600. For the graver 
 portion of the play — the Claudio and Hero story — 
 Shakspere had an original, perhaps Belleforest's 
 translation in his Histoires Tragiques of Bandello's 
 22nd Novella. The story of Ariodante and Genevra 
 in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (canto v.) is sub- 
 stantially the same. This episode had been trans- 
 lated twice into English before Harington's complete 
 translation of the Orlando Furioso appeared in 1591 j 
 and it had formed the subject of a play acted before 
 the Queen 1582-83; the story was also told, in a 
 somewhat altered form, by Spenser, Faerie Queene, ii. 4. 
 No original has been found for the merrier portion of 
 the play, and Benedick and Beatrice were probably 
 creations of Shakspere. It has indeed been pointed 
 out that at about the same date the German dramatist 
 Jacob Ayrer, in his comedy of The Beautiful Plurnia'a, 
 connected the story from Bandello with a comic 
 underplot; but the resemblances between Ayrer's 
 comic underplot and Shakspere's loves of Beatrice and 
 Benedick are probably accidental.
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 107 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing was popular on the stage 
 in Shakspere's day, and has sustained its reputation. 
 Its variety, ranging from almost burlesque to almost 
 tragedy, and from the euphuistic speech of courtiers 
 to the blundering verbosity of clowns, has contributed 
 to the success of the play. The chief persons, Hero 
 and Claudio, Beatrice and Benedick, are contrasted 
 pairs. Hero's character is kept subdued and quiet in 
 tone, to throw out the force and colour of the character 
 of Beatrice \ she is gentle, affectionate, tender, and if 
 playful, playful in a gentle way. If our interest in Hero 
 were made very strong, the pain of her unmerited 
 shame and suffering would be too keen. And Claudio 
 is far from being a lover like Romeo ; his wooing 
 is done by proxy, and he does not sink under the 
 anguish of Hero's disgrace and supposed death. Don 
 John, the villain of the piece, is a melancholy egoist, who 
 looks sourly on all the world, and has a special grudge 
 against his brother's young favourite Claudio. The 
 chief force of Shakspere in the play comes out in the 
 characters of Benedick and Beatrice. They have not 
 a touch of misanthropy, nor of sentimentality, but 
 are thoroughly healthy and hearty human creatures; at 
 first a lit! 2 too much self-pleased, but framed by-and-by 
 to be entirely pleased with one another. The thoughts 
 of each from the first are preoccupied with the other, 
 but neither will put self-esteem to the hazard of a 
 rebuke by making the first advances in love ; it only 
 needs, however, that this danger should be removed 
 for the pair to admit the fact that nature has made 
 them over against one another — as their significant 
 names suggest — for man and wife. The flouting of 
 Benedick by Beatrice reminds us of scenes between 
 an earlier pair of lovers, Rosaline and Berowne, in 
 Loves Labour's Lost. The trick which is played upon 
 the lovers to bring them together is one of those 
 frauds practised upon self-love which appear in several 
 of the comedies of this period. But neither is an 
 egoist except in a superficial way. Beatrice is filled
 
 io8 SITAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 with generous indignation against the wrongers of her 
 cousin, and she inspires Benedick to become (not 
 without a touch of humorous self-consciousness) cham- 
 pion of the cause. Dogberry and Verges, as well as 
 Beatrice and Benedick, are creations of Shakspere. 
 The blundering watchmen of the time are a source of 
 fun with several Elizabethan playwrights; but Dog- 
 berry and goodman Verges are the princes of blunder- 
 ing and incapable officials. It is a charming incon- 
 gruity to find, while Leonato rages and Benedick offers 
 his challenge, that the solemn ass Dogberry is the one 
 to unravel the tangled threads of their fate. Friar 
 Francis is a near spiritual kinsman of Friar Laurence 
 in Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 20. As You Like It was entered on the Stationers' 
 register together with Henry V., Muck Ado about 
 Nothing, and Jonson's Every Alan in His Humour, 
 " to be staied," i.e. not printed ; the date is August 4, 
 but the year is not mentioned. The previous entry is 
 dated May 27, 1600, and as the other plays were 
 printed in 1600 and 1601, we infer that the August 
 was that of the year 1600. The comedy is not men- 
 tioned by Meres. A line, " Who ever loved that loved 
 not at first sight?" is quoted (Act III. Sc. v. L. 82) 
 from Marlowe's Hero and Leander, which was pub- 
 lished in 1598. We may set down the following year, 
 1599, as the probable date of the creation of this 
 charming comedy. 
 
 The story is taken from Thomas Lodge's prose tale, 
 Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie, first printed in 
 1590, and a passage in Lodge's dedication probably 
 suggested to Shakspere the name of his play. Lodge, 
 who wrote this tale on his voyage to the Canaries, 
 founded it in part on the Cook's Tale of Gamelyn, 
 wrongly ascribed to Chaucer, and inserted in some 
 editions as one of the Canterbury Tales. In parts of 
 his work the dramatist follows the story-teller closely, 
 but there are some important differences. The heroic 
 names Orlando, Oliver, and Sir Rowland are due to
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 109 
 
 Shakspere. It was a thought of Shakspere to make 
 the rightful. and the usurping dukes, as in The Tempest, 
 brothers. In Lodge's novel the girl-friends pass in 
 the forest for lady and page, in Shakspere, for brother 
 and sister. Shakspere omits the incident of Aliena's 
 rescue from robbers by her future husband ; love at 
 first sight Was natural in Arden, but a band of robbers 
 would have marred the tranquillity of the scene. To 
 Shakspere we owe the creation of the characters of 
 Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey. 
 
 Written perhaps immediately after Henry V., the 
 play presents a striking contrast with that high-pitched 
 historical drama. It is as if Shakspere's imagination 
 craved repose and refreshment after the life of courts 
 and camp . We are still on French soil, but instead 
 of the sound of the shock of battle at Agincourt, we 
 hear the waving forest boughs, and the forest-streams 
 of Arden, where " they fleet the time carelessly, as 
 they did in the Golden World." There is an open-air 
 feeling about this play, as there is about Tlie Merry 
 Wives of Windsor ; but in The Merry Wives all the 
 surroundings are English and real, here they belong to 
 a land of romance. For the Renaissance, that age of 
 /ast energy, national enterprise, religious strife, and 
 court intrigue, pastoral or idyllic poetry possessed a 
 peculiar charm ; the quiet and innocence of a poetical 
 Arcadia was a solace to a life of highly-wrought ambi- 
 tion and aspiration. 
 
 " Sweet are the uses of adversity," moralises the 
 banished Duke, and external, material adversity has 
 come to him, to Rosalind, and to Orlando ; but if 
 fortune is harsh, nature— both external nature and 
 human character — is sound and sweet, and of real 
 suffering there is none in the play. All that is evil 
 remains in the society which the denizens of the forest 
 have left behind ; and both seriously, in the characters 
 of the usurping Duke and Oliver, and playfully, through 
 Touchstone's mockery of court follies, a criticism on 
 what is evil and artificial in society is suggested in
 
 no SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 contrast with the woodland life : yet Shakspere never 
 falls into the conventional pastoral manner. Orlando 
 is an ideal of youthful strength, beauty, and noble 
 innocence of heart ; and Rosalind's bright, tender 
 womanhood seems but to grow more exquisitely 
 feminine in the male attire which she has assumed in 
 self-defence. Her feelings are almost as quick and 
 fine as those of Imogen (she has not, like Imogen, 
 known fear and sorrow), and she uses her wit and 
 bright play of intellect as a protection against her own 
 eager and vivid emotions. Possessed of a delighted 
 consciousness of power to confer happiness, she can 
 dally with disguises, and make what is most serious to 
 her at the same time possess the charm of an exquisite 
 frolic. 
 
 The melancholy Jaques is charged by the Duke 
 with having been a libertine ; he has certainly tasted 
 all manner of experiences, but not very earnestly 
 pursued either good or evil. He is a sentimentalist, 
 and in some degree a superficial cynic. Yet the Duke 
 loves his company, and at the last can ill part with 
 him, when to try one newer experience Jaques u'il 1 
 join the Duke's brother, who has put on a religious 
 life. Jaques is not a bad-hearted egoist, like Don 
 John, but he is a perfectly idle seeker for new sensa- 
 tions and an observer of his own feelings ; he is 
 weary of all that he has found, and especially professes 
 to despise the artificial society, which yet he never 
 really escapes from, as the others do. His wisdom is 
 half foolery, as Touchstone's foolery is half wisdom. 
 Touchstone is the daintiest fool of the comedies, and 
 when we compare him with the clowns of The Comedy 
 of Errors or The Ttao Gentlemen of Verona, we perceive 
 how Shakspere's humour has grown in refinement. 
 
 21. The Passionate Pilgrim was published by 
 William Jaggard, in 1599. It was a piratical book- 
 seller's venture, and although the popular name of Shak- 
 spere was put upon the title-page the little volume really 
 consisted of a collection from several authors. Men-
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. Ill 
 
 tion has already been made of the fact that Shakspere, 
 as Heywood tells us, was much offended when Jaggard, 
 in 1612, republished the volume, with added poems of 
 Heywood, and with Shakspere's name upon the title- 
 page : a cancel of the title-page thereupon was made, 
 and one printed without any author's name. After 
 the fifteenth poem of the original collection occurs a 
 second title — Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music. 
 The following table shows, as far as has been ascer- 
 tained, how the volume was made up (the references 
 are to the Globe Shakspere') : 
 
 I. II. Shakspere's Sonnets, 138 and 144 (with various read- 
 ings, those of the Sonnets the true or the later read- 
 ings). 
 
 III. Longaville's sonnet to Maria in Lovers Labour's Lost 
 
 (Act IV. Sc. iii. L. 60-73). 
 
 IV. (?) Shakspere's (on the subject of Venus and Adonis). 
 V. From Love's Labour's Lost (Act IV. Sc. ii. L. 109- 
 
 122). 
 (?) Shakspere's (on the subject of Venus and Adonis). 
 VII. (?) Shakspere's. 
 
 viii. Probably by Richard Barnfield, in whose Poems in 
 Divers Humors, 1598, it had first appeared. 
 IX. (?) Shakspere's (on the subject of Venus and Adonis). 
 X. Probably not Shakspere's. 
 
 XI. Probably by Bartholomew Griffin, in whose Fidessa 
 more Chaste than Kinde, 1596, it had appeared with 
 various readings (on the subject of 'Venus and Adonis). 
 XII. Perhaps Shakspere's. 
 XIII. Probably by the same writer as X. 
 XIV. Probably not Shakspere's. 
 XV. Probably not Shakspere's. 
 XVI. Certainly not Shakspere's. 
 xvil. Dumain's poem to Kate in Love's Labour's Lost 
 
 (Act IV. Sc. iii. L. 101-120). 
 XVlii. From Weelkes's Madrigals, 1597. 
 xix. (?) Possibly Shakspere's. 
 
 XX. By Marlowe (given here imperfectly), Love's Anszuer 
 (also defective here) is attributed to Sir W. Ralegh. 
 XXI. By Richard Barnfield, from his Poems in Divers 
 Humors, 1598. 
 
 22. The Phoenix and the Turtle was printed 
 as one of the additional poems to Chester's Love's
 
 112 SHAKSPERE. [CHAP. 
 
 Martyr, or Rosaliiis Complaint, 1 60 1, with Shakspere's 
 name appended. The occasion and subject of this 
 allegorical poem are lost in obscurity. 
 
 23. The Sonnets of Shakspere suggest, perhaps, 
 the most difficult questions in Shaksperian criticism. 
 In 1609 appeared these poems in a quarto (published 
 almost certainly without the author's sanction), which 
 also contained A Lover's Complaint. The publisher, 
 Thomas Thorpe, dedicated them " To the onlie be- 
 getter of these ^ensuing sonnets, Mr. W. H." Does 
 " begetter " mean the person who inspired them and 
 so brought them into existence, or only the obtainer 
 of the Sonnets for Thorpe ? Probably the former. 
 And who is Mr. W. H. ? It is clear from sonnet 135 
 that the christian-name of Shakspere's friend to whom 
 the first 126 sonnets were addressed was William. But 
 what William ? There is not even an approach to cer- 
 tainty in any answer offered to this question. Some 
 have supposed that W. H. is a blind to conceal and 
 yet express the initials H. W., i.e. Henry Wriothesley, 
 Earl of Southampton, Shakspere's patror Others 
 hold that William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (to 
 whom, together with his brother, the first : 
 dedicated), is here addressed. 
 
 When were the Sonnets written ? We know that 
 Meres in 1598 spoke of Shakspere's "sugred sonnets 
 among his private friends," and that in 1599 two (138 
 and 144) were printed in The Passionate Pilgrim. 
 Some, if we were to judge by their style, seem to 
 belong to the time when Romeo and Juliet was 
 written. Others — as, for example, 66-74 — echo the 
 sadder tone which is heard in Hamlet and Measure for 
 Measure. The . writing of the Sonnets certainly ex- 
 tended over a considerable period of time, at least 
 three years (see 104), and perhaps a longer period. 
 They all lie, I believe, somewhere between 1595 and 
 1605. 
 
 The Sonnets consist of two series, the first from 1 to 
 126 (The Envoy, 126, consisting of twelve lines in
 
 vr.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 113 
 
 couplets), addressed to a young man ; the other, 127- 
 154, addressed to or referring to a woman. But 
 both series allude to events which connect the two 
 persons with one another and with Shakspere. The 
 young friend, whom Shakspere loved with a fond 
 idolatry, was beautiful, clever, rich in the gifts of 
 fortune, of high rank. The woman was of stained 
 character, false to her husband, the reverse of beautiful, 
 dark-eyed, pale-faced, a musician, possessed of a 
 strange power of attraction. To her fascination Shak- 
 spere yielded himself, and in his absence she laid her 
 snares for Shakspere's friend and won him. Hence a 
 coldness, estrangement, and, for some time, a complete 
 severance between Shakspere and his friend, after a 
 time followed by acknowledgment of faults on both 
 sides, and a complete reconciliation. 
 
 So the Sonnets must be interpreted if we accept the 
 natural sense they seem to bear. But several persons 
 have held that they are either altogether of an ideal 
 nature or allegorical, or were written in part by Shakspere 
 not for himself but for the use of others. The natural 
 sense, however, is, I am convinced, the true one. 
 
 The Sonnets from 1 to 126 form, allowing for a few 
 possible breaks, a continuous series. In the early 
 Sonnets the poet urges his friend to marry, that, his 
 /iving in his children, he may conquer 
 Time and Decay. But if he refuses this, then Verse 
 ■ — the ^-iry of Shakspere — must make war upon 
 Time, and confer immortality upon his friend's loveli- 
 ness (15-19).* Many of the poems are written in 
 absence (26, 27, 28, &c). All Shakspere's griefs and 
 losses are made good to him by joy in his friend 
 (29-31). The wrong done by " Will " to Shakspere is 
 then spoken of (33), for which some " salve " is offered 
 (34) ; the salve is worthless, but Shakspere will try to 
 forgive. We trace the gradual growth of distrust on 
 
 * The figures are meant not to mark divisions or groups of 
 sennets, but to illustrate by striking passages the brief analysis of 
 the Sonnets.
 
 114 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 each side (58), until a melancholy settles down upon the 
 heart of Shakspere (66). Still he loves his friend, and 
 tries to think him pure and true. Then a new trouble 
 arises : his friend is favouring a rival poet of great 
 learning and skill (76-86). This rival poet has, with 
 some show of evidence, been conjectured to be George 
 Chapman, the translator of Homer. Shakspere bids 
 his friend " Farewell " (87) ; let him hate Shakspere if 
 he will. He ceases to address poems to him ; but 
 after an interval of silence begins once more to sing 
 (100, 101, 102, &c). He sees his friend again and 
 finds him still beautiful. There is a reconciliation 
 (104, 105, 107). Explanations and confessions are 
 made. Love is restored, stronger than ever (119), for 
 now it has passed through trial and sorrow; it is 
 founded not on interested motives (124), nor, as 
 formerly, on the attraction of youth and beauty, but 
 is inward of the heart (125). And thus, gravely and 
 happily, the Sonnets to his friend conclude. 
 
 The reader who chooses to investigate the second 
 series of Sonnets — those to Shakspere's dark mistress — 
 will meet with little difficulty in understanding them. 
 Perhaps 153, 154, which seem to be two experiments in 
 verse on the same subject, ought to be placed apart 
 from the rest. 
 
 Having introduced the Sonnets here, as the appear- 
 ance of two of the series in The Passionate Pilgrim 
 suggested, we now return to the comedies ; and the 
 Sonnets may be considered to have been viewed from 
 a mid-point in the period of their composition, from 
 which their retrospective and prospective significance 
 may become apparent. 
 
 24. Twelfth Night, we learn from Manningham's 
 Diary, was acted at the Middle Temple, February 2, 
 1601-1602. Steevens supposed that " the new map, with 
 the augmentation of the Indies," spoken of by Maria 
 (Act III. Sc. ii. L. 86), had reference to the map in 
 Linschoten's Voyages, 1598. The date of the play is 
 probably 1 600-1 601.
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 115 
 
 Manningham writes of the play : " Much like The 
 Comedy of Errors or Menechml in Plautus, but most 
 like and n'eere to that in Italian called Ingannl." 
 There are two Italian plays of an earlier date than 
 Twelfth Night, entitled GP I/igannl {The Cheats), 
 containing incidents in some degree resembling those 
 of Shakspere's comedy, and in that by Gonzaga, the 
 sister who assumes male attire, producing thereby con- 
 fusion of identity with her brother, is named Cesare 
 (Shakspere's Cesario). But a third Italian play, 
 Gl' f/igannaii, presents a still closer resemblance to 
 Twelfth Night, and in its poetical induction, // 
 Sacrlficlo, occurs the name Malevolti (Malvolio). The 
 story is told in Bandello's novel (ii. 36), and was 
 translated by Belleforest into French, in Histoires 
 Traglqitcs. Whether Shakspere consulted any Italian 
 source or not, he had doubtless before him the version 
 of the story (from Cinthio's Hecatomithl) by Barnabe 
 Rich — the Historie of Apolonius and Sllla in Rlche His 
 Farewell to Alllitarie Profession (1581) — and this, in 
 the main, he followed. The characters of Malvolio, 
 Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Fabian, the 
 clown Feste, and Maria, with the part they play in 
 the comedy, are creations of Shakspere. 
 
 No comedy of Shakspere's unites such abounding 
 mirth and fine satire, with the charm of a poetical 
 romance. It is the summing up of the several ad- 
 mirable qualities which appear in the joyous comedies, 
 of which it forms the last. An edge is put on 
 the roystering humour of Sir Toby by the sharp 
 waiting-maid wit of Maria, which saves it from 
 becoming an aimless rollicking. Sir Andrew is a 
 Slender groAvn adult in brainlessness, and who has 
 forgotten that he is not as richly endowed by nature 
 as by fortune ; and yet he is visited by a glimmering 
 suspicion that others may think he is an ass, which 
 obliges him to air his incapacity and give it im- 
 portance. Festc, the clown, is less quaint than 
 Touchstone, but more versatile, less a contemplative
 
 Il6 SHAKSPERE. [CHAP. 
 
 fool, and more actively a lover of jest and waggery. 
 Among this abandoned crew of topers and drolls 
 stalks the solemn "yellow-legged stork" Malvolio. 
 His sense of self-importance has diffused itself over 
 all the details of life, so that the whole of human 
 existence, as he would have it, must become as 
 pompous and as exemplaryas the manners of my lady's 
 steward. The cruelty of his deception and disillusion 
 is in proportion to the greatness of his distempered 
 self-esteem. 
 
 The Duke Orsino is infected with the lover's melan- 
 choly, which is fantastical and nice. He nurses his 
 love and dallies with it, and tries to yield up all his 
 consciousness to it, as to a delicious sensation ; and 
 therefore his love is not quite earnest or deep ; it 
 is like the colour in an opal ; and the loss of Olivia 
 is but the loss of a fair vision, which is replaced by 
 one as fair and more real. Olivia has not the love- 
 languor of the Duke, but her resolved sorrow for her 
 lost brother, so soon forgotten in a stronger feeling, 
 shows a little of the same unreality of self-conscious 
 emotion which we perceive in the Duke's love ; she 
 is of a nature harmonious and refined, but is too 
 much a child of wealth and ease to win away our 
 chief interest from the heroine of the play. Viola is 
 like a heightened portrait of the Julia of The Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona, enriched with lovely colour and 
 placed among more poetical surroundings. She has 
 not the pretty sauciness of Rosalind in her disguise, 
 but owns a heart as tender, sweet-natured, and sound- 
 natured as even Rosalind's. The mirth of the play 
 belongs to other actors than Viola; her occasional 
 playfulness falls back into her deep tenderness and 
 is lost in it. 
 
 It has been suggested (see Hunter : New Illus- 
 trations of Shakespeare, vol. i. p. 380) that Shakspere 
 ridicules, in the scene between the clown, as Sir 
 Topas, and Malvolio, the exorcisms by Puritan 
 ministers, in the case of a family named Starchy
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 117 
 
 (1596-99), and that the difficult word Strachy (Act II. 
 Sc. v. L. 45) was a hint to the audience to expect 
 subsequent allusion to the Starchy affair. But all this 
 is highly doubtful. 
 
 25. JuliliS Csesar was produced as early as 1601 ; 
 so we infer from the passage quoted p. 34, from Weever's 
 Mirror of Martyrs. In Drayton's Barons' War, 1603, 
 occurs a passage which closely resembles some lines 
 of the speech of Antony over Brutus' body (last 
 scene of the play). The style of the versification, 
 the diction, the characterisation, all bear out the 
 opinion that 1600 or 1601 is the date of Julius 
 Ccesar. The historical materials of the play were 
 found by the dramatist in the lives of Csesar, of 
 Brutus, and of Antony, as given in North's translation 
 of Plutarch. Hints for the speeches of Brutus and 
 Antony seem to have been obtained from Appian's 
 Civil Wars, B. II. ch. 137-147, translated into 
 English in 1578. 
 
 Everything is wrought out in the play with great 
 care and completeness ; it is well planned and well 
 proportioned ; there is no tempestuousness of passion, 
 and no. artistic mystery. The style is full, but not 
 overburdened with thought or imagery ; this is one 
 of the most perfect of Shakspere's plays; greater 
 tragedies are less perfect, perhaps for the very reason 
 that they try to grasp greater, more terrible, or more 
 piteous themes. 
 
 In King Henry V. Shakspere had represented a 
 great and heroic man of action. In the serious plays, 
 which come next in chronological order, Julius Ccesar 
 and Hamlet, the poet represents two men who were 
 forced to act — to act in public affairs, and affairs of 
 life and death — yet who were singularly disqualified 
 for playing the part of men of action. Hamlet can- 
 not act because his moral energy is sapped by a kind 
 of scepticism and sterile despair about life, because 
 his own ideas are more to him than deeds, because 
 his will is diseased. Brutus does act, but he acts
 
 nS SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 as an idealist and theoriser might, with no eye for 
 the actual bearing of facts, and no sense of the true 
 importance of persons. Intellectual doctrines and 
 moral ideals rule the life of Brutus ; and his life is 
 most noble, high, and stainless, but his public action 
 is a series of practical mistakes. Yet even while he 
 errs we admire him, for all his errors are those of a 
 pure and lofty spirit. He fails to see how full of 
 power Antony is, because Antony loves pleasure, and 
 is not a Stoic, like himself; he addresses calm argu- 
 ments to the excited Roman mob; he spares the life 
 of Antony and allows him to address the people ; 
 he advises ill in military matters. All the practical 
 gifts, insight and tact, which Brutus lacks, are pos- 
 sessed by Cassius ; but of Brutus's moral purity, 
 veneration of ideals, disinterestedness, and freedom 
 from unworthy personal motive, Cassius possesses little. 
 And the moral power of Brutus has in it something 
 magisterial, which enables it to oversway the practical 
 judgment of Cassius. In his wife — Cato's daughter, 
 Portia — Brutus has found one who is equal to and 
 worthy of himself. Shakspere has shown her as per- 
 fectly a woman — sensitive, finely-tempered, tender — 
 yet a woman who by her devotion to moral ideals 
 might stand beside such a father and such a husband. 
 And Brutus, with all his Stoicism, is gentle and tender : 
 he can strike down Caesar if Caesar be a tyrant, but 
 he cannot roughly rouse a sleeping boy (Act IV. 
 Sc. iii. L. 270). Antony is a man of genius, with many- 
 splendid and some generous qualities, but self- 
 indulgent, pleasure-loving, and a daring adventurer, 
 rather than a great leader of the State. 
 
 The character of Caesar is conceived in a curious 
 and almost irritating manner. Shakspere (as passages 
 in other plays show) was certainly not ignorant of the 
 greatness of one of the world's greatest men. But 
 here it is his weaknesses that are insisted on. He 
 is failing in body and mind, influenced by supersti- 
 tion, yields to flattery, thinks of himself as almost
 
 vi. 1 HIS PI AYS AND POEMS. 119 
 
 superhuman, has lost some of his insight into cha- 
 racter, and his sureness and swiftness of action. Yet 
 the play is rightly named Julius Ccesar. His bodily 
 presence is weak, but his spirit rules throughout the 
 play, and rises after his death in all its might, towering 
 over the little band of conspirators, who at length 
 fall before the spirit of Caesar as it ranges for revenge. 
 26. Hamlet represents the mid period of the growth 
 of Shakspere's genius, when comedy and history ceased 
 to be adequate for the expression of his deeper 
 thoughts and sadder feelings about life, and when he 
 was entering upon his great series of tragic writings. In 
 July, 1602, the printer Roberts entered in the Sta- 
 tioners' register, "The Revenge of Hamlett, Prince 
 of Denmark, as y' latelie was acted by the Lord 
 Chamberlain his servantes," and in the next year the 
 play was printed. The true relation of this first 
 quarto of Hamlet to the second quarto, published in 
 1604 — "newly imprinted, and enlarged to almost as 
 much againe as it was " — is a matter in dispute. It is 
 believed by some critics that the quarto of 1603 is 
 merely an imperfect report of the play as we find it in 
 the edition of the year after ; but there are some 
 material differences which cannot thus be explained. 
 In the earlier quarto, instead of Polonius and Reynaldo, 
 we find the names Corambis and Montano ; the order 
 of certain scenes varies from that of the later quarto ; 
 " the madness of Hamlet is much more pronounced, 
 and the Queen's innocence of her husband's murder 
 much more explicitly stated." We are forced to 
 believe either that the earlier quarto contains portions 
 of an old play by some other writer than Shakspere — 
 an opinion adopted on apparently insufficient grounds 
 by some recent editors — or that it represents im- 
 perfectly Shakspere's first draught of the play, and 
 that the difference between it and the second quarto 
 is due to Shakspere's revision of his own work. 
 This last opinion seems to be the true one, but the 
 value of any comparison between the two quartos,
 
 120 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 with a view to understand Shakspere's manner of 
 rehandiing his work, is greatly diminished by the fact 
 that numerous gaps of the imperfect report given 
 in the earlier quarto seem to have been filled in 
 by a stupid stage hack. That an old play on the 
 subject of Hamlet existed there can be no doubt ; it is 
 referred to in 1589 (perhaps in 1587) by Nash, in 
 his Epistle prefixed to Greene's Menap/wn, and again 
 in 1596, by Lodge (I Fit's Miserie and the World 's 
 Madnesse), where he alludes to " the visard of the 
 Ghost which cried so miserably at the Theator, 
 like an oister wife, ' Hamlet, reuenge.' " A German 
 play on the subject of Hamlet exists, which is sup- 
 posed to have been acted by English players in 
 Germany in 1603 ; the name Corambus appears in it ; 
 and it is possible that portions of the old pre- 
 Shaksperian drama are contained in the German 
 Hamlet. The old play may have been one of the 
 bloody tragedies of revenge among which we find 
 Titus Andronicus and The Spanish Tragedy, and it 
 would be characteristic of Shakspere that he should 
 refine the motives and spirit of the drama, so as to 
 make the duty of vengeance laid upon Hamlet a 
 painful burden which he is hardly able to support. 
 
 One additional point must be noted with reference 
 to the date of the play. In Act II. Sc. ii. L. 346, 
 Rosencrantz explains that the tragedians of the city are 
 compelled to travel on account of an " inhibition " 
 which is caused by " the late innovation." What does 
 this mean ? Does it allude to the Order in Council of 
 June, 1600, limiting the number of playhouses about 
 London to two, an order not carried out until the duty 
 of enforcing it was urged upon the justices of Middle- 
 sex and Surrey, December 31, 1601 ? Or shall we 
 understand " the innovation " as referring to the 
 licence given January 1 603-1 604, to the children of the 
 Queen's Revels to play at the Blackfriars Theatre — a 
 building belonging to the company of which Shakspere 
 was a member ? The licence to the children (of whom
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 121 
 
 Rosencrantz speaks depreciatingly) would act as an 
 inhibition to the company of adult actors whose place 
 they occupied. 
 
 Beside the old play of Hamlet, Shakspere had 
 probably before him the prose Hystorie of Hamblet 
 (though no edition exists earlier than 160S), translated 
 from Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques. The story 
 had been told some hundreds of years previously, in 
 the Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus (ab. 
 1 180-1208). The Hamlet of the Hystorie, after a 
 fierce revenge, becomes King of Denmark, marries 
 two wives, and finally dies in battle. 
 
 No play of Shakspere's has had a higher power of 
 interesting spectators and readers, and none has given 
 rise to a greater variety of conflicting interpretations. 
 It has been rightly named a tragedy of thought, 
 and in this respect, as well as others, takes its place 
 beside Julius Ccesar. Neither Brutus nor Hamlet is 
 the victim of an overmastering passion as are the chief 
 persons of the later tragedies — e.g. Othello, Macbeth, 
 Coriolanus. The burden of a terrible duty is laid 
 upon each of them, and neither is fitted for bearing 
 such a burden. Brutus is disqualified for action by 
 his moral idealism, his student-like habits, his capacity 
 for dealing with abstractions rather than with men 
 and things. Hamlet is disqualified for action by his 
 excess of the reflective tendency, and by his unstable 
 will, which alternates between complete inactivity and 
 fits of excited energy. Naturally sensitive, he re- 
 ceives a painful shock from the hasty second marriage 
 of his mother ; already the springs of faith and joy 
 in his nature are embittered ; then follows the terrible 
 discovery of his father's murder, with the injunction 
 laid upon him to revenge the crime ; upon this again 
 follow the repulses which he receives from Ophelia. 
 A deep melancholy lays hold of his spirit, and all of 
 life grows dark and sad to his vision. Although 
 hating his father's murderer, he has little heart to push 
 on his revenge. He is aware that he is suspected
 
 122 SHAKSPERE. [CHAP. 
 
 and surrounded by spies. Partly to baffle them, partly 
 to create a veil behind which to seclude his true self, 
 partly because his whole moral nature is indeed deeply 
 disordered, he assumes the part of one whose wits 
 have gone astray. Except for one loyal friend, he is 
 alone among enemies or supposed traitors. Ophelia 
 he regards as no more loyal or honest to him than his 
 mother had been to her dead husband. The ascer- 
 tainment of Claudius's guilt by means of the play still 
 leaves him incapable of the last decisive act of 
 vengeance. Not so, however, with the king, who now 
 recognising his foe in Hamlet, does not delay to 
 despatch him to a bloody death in England. But 
 there is in Hamlet a terrible power of sudden and 
 desperate action. From the melancholy which broods 
 over him after the burial of Ophelia he rouses himself 
 to the play of swords with Laertes, and at the last, 
 with strength which leaps up before its final extinction, 
 he accomplishes the punishment of the malefactor. 
 
 Horatio, with his fortitude, his self-possession, his 
 strong equanimity, is a contrast to the Prince. And 
 Laertes, who takes violent measures at the shortest 
 notice to revenge his father's murder, is in another 
 way a contrast ; but Laertes is the young gallant of the 
 period, and his capacity for action arises in part from 
 the absence of those moral checks of which Hamlet is 
 sensible. Polonius is owner of the shallow wisdom of 
 this world, and exhibits this grotesquely while now on 
 the brink of dotage ; he sees, but cannot see through 
 Hamlet's ironical mockery of him. Ophelia is tender, 
 sensitive, affectionate, but the reverse of heroic ; she 
 fails Hamlet in his need, and then in her turn be- 
 coming the sufferer, gives way under the pressure of 
 her afflictions. We do not honour, we commiserate 
 her. 
 
 The play is hardly consistent with respect to Hamlet's 
 age. In Act V. Sc. i. L. 155-191, it is stated that he is 
 thirty years old, while in the first Act he is spoken of as 
 still quite youthful ; yet only a few months, at most, can
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 123 
 
 have elapsed in the interval of time between the begin- 
 ning and the end of the action. His profoundly re- 
 flective soliloquies point to an age certainly past early 
 youth. 
 
 27. All's Well that Ends Well.— Among the 
 plays of Shakspere mentioned by Meres in his Palladis 
 Tamia (1598) occurs the name of Love's Labour's Won. 
 This has been identified by some critics with The 
 Taming of the Shrcrc, by some with Much Ado 
 about Nothing. But the weight of authority inclines 
 to the opinion that under this title Meres spoke 
 of the play known to us as A IPs Well that Ends 
 Well. It seems not improbable that All's Well, as we 
 possess it in the first folio — and no earlier edition 
 exists — is a rehandling, very thoroughly carried out, of 
 an earlier version of the comedy. Coleridge believed 
 that two styles were discernible in it ; there is certainly 
 a larger proportion of rhyming lines in All's Well than 
 in any other play completed after the year 1600 ; and 
 the following rhyming passages have been pointed out 
 as fragments retained from the earlier version : Act I. 
 Sc. i. L. -531-244; Act I. Sc. iii.-L. 134-142; Act II. 
 Sc. i. L. 133-213; Act II. Sc. iii, L. 78-111 and 
 132-151 ; Act III. Sc. iv. L. 4-17; Act IV. Sc. iii. 
 L. 252-260; Act V. Sc. iii. L. 61-72 and 325-340. 
 It is, however, far from certain that any portion of 
 the play is of early origin, and assigning conjecturally 
 the date about 1602 as that of the completion of the 
 whole, we may view it as belonging to the later group 
 of the second cycle of Shakspere's comedies, not so 
 early, therefore, as Twelfth Night or As You Like Lf, 
 and certainly earlier than Measure for Measure. 
 
 The story of Helena and Bertram was found by 
 Shakspere in Paynter's Palace of Pleasure (1566), 
 Paynter having translated it from the Decameron of 
 Boccaccio (Novel 9. Third day). Shakspeie added the 
 characters of the Countess, Lafeu, Parolles, and the 
 Clown. What interested the poet's imagination in 
 Boccaccio's story was evidently the position and person
 
 124 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 of the heroine. In Boccaccio, Giletta, the physician's 
 daughter, is inferior in rank to the young Count, 
 Beltramo, but she is rich. Shakspere's Helena is of 
 humbler birth than his Bertram, and she is also poor. 
 Yet poor, and comparatively low-born, she aspires to 
 be the young Count's wife, she pursues him to Paris, 
 and wins him against his will. To show Helena thus 
 reversing in a measure the ordinary relations of man 
 and woman, and yet to show her neither self-seeking 
 nor unwomanly, was the task which the dramatist 
 attempted. On the one hand he insists much on 
 Bertram's youth, and gives him the faults and vices of 
 youth, making the reader or spectator of the play feel 
 that his hero has great need of such a finely-tempered, 
 right-willed and loyal nature to stand by his side as 
 that of Helena. On the other hand he shows us 
 Helena's enthusiastic attachment to Bertram, her fears 
 and cares on his behalf, her adhesion to him rather 
 than to herself, when her husband seems to set their 
 interests in opposition to one another, until we come 
 to feel that tire imperious need which makes Helena 
 overstep social conventions is the need of perfect 
 service to the man she loves. When she chooses him 
 her words are : 
 
 I dare not say I take you, but I give 
 Me and my service ever while I live 
 Into your guiding power. 
 
 Bertram's beauty and courage must bear part of the 
 blame of Helena's loving him better than he de- 
 serves. With the youthful desire for independence which 
 makes him break away from her, she can intelligently 
 sympathise. In the last Act she appears — when he 
 has entangled himself in falsehood and shame — to 
 save him, and rescue him from his baser self. We 
 feel that when he has at last really found Helena, he 
 is safe, and all ends well. Parolles, the incarnation of 
 bragging meanness, is the counterfoil of Helena — she, 
 the doer of virtuous deeds; he, the utterer of vain and
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 125 
 
 swelling words ; she, all brave womanliness ; he, too 
 cowardly for manhood. To be delivered from the 
 false friend to whom he adheres, and to be brought 
 into union with the true wife whom he rejects — this is 
 what Bertram needs. Parolles has been compared to 
 Falstaff, but they ought rather to be contrasted ; for 
 Sir John is a man of genius, with real wit and power 
 of fascination, and no ridicule can destroy him, but 
 the exposure of Parolles makes him dwindle into his 
 native pitifulness. The Countess is a charming crea- 
 tion of Shakspere ; in no play, unless it be some of 
 his latest romantic dramas, is old age made more 
 beautiful and dignified. 
 
 The heroine who is the centre of All's Well that 
 Ends Well, it will be seen, is singularly clear in judg- 
 ment and strong in will. If the play was completed 
 about the same time that Hamlet reached its final 
 form, the writer could hardly fail to be sensible of the 
 contrast between the hero of his tragedy, so unfitted 
 for action, so irresolute of purpose, and the heroine of 
 his comedy, who always sees the right thing to do, and 
 who always does it, however dangerous, doubtful, or 
 difficult it may be. 
 
 28. Measure for Measure is one of the darkest 
 and most painful of the comedies of Shakspere, but its 
 darkness is lit by the central figure of Isabella, with 
 her white passion of purity and of indignation against 
 sin. " The wit seems to foam and sparkle up from 
 
 a fountain of bitterness the humour is 
 
 made pungent with sarcasm." This play deals with 
 deep things of our humanity — with righteousness and 
 charity, with self-deceit, and moral weakness and 
 strength, even with life and death themselves. All 
 that is soft, melodious, romantic has disappeared from 
 the style ; it shows a fearless vigour, penetrating 
 imagination, and much intellectual force and boldness. 
 The date of the play is uncertain. Two passages 
 (Act I. Sc. i. L. 68-73, an d Act II. Sc. iv. L. 24-29) 
 have been conjectured to contain " a courtly apology
 
 126 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 for King James I.'s stately and ungracious demeanour 
 on his entry into England;" and possibly the revival 
 in 1604 of a statute, which punished with death any 
 divorced person who married again while his or her 
 former husband or wife was living, may have added 
 point to one chief incident in the play. 
 
 Shakspere took the story from Whetstone's play 
 Promos and Cassandra (1578), and the prose telling 
 of the tale by the same author in his Heptameron oj 
 Civil Discourses (1582). Whetstone's original was a 
 story in the Hecatomithi, of Giraldi Cinthio. Shak- 
 spere alters some of the incidents, making the Duke 
 present in disguise throughout, preserving the honour 
 of the heroine, and introducing the character of 
 Mariana to take her wifely place by Angelo as a 
 substitute for Isabella, as in All's Well that Ends 
 Well Helena took the place of the widow's daughter, 
 Diana. 
 
 This play, like The Merchant of Venice, is remark- 
 able for its great pleading scenes ; and to Portia's 
 ardour and intellectual force Isabella adds a noble 
 severity of character, a devotion to an ideal of recti- 
 tude and purity, and a religious enthusiasm. In 
 Vienna, " where corruption boils and bubbles," appears 
 this figure of virginal strength and uprightness; at 
 the last she is to preside over the sinful city, and 
 perhaps to save it : 
 
 Spirits are not finely touched 
 
 But to fine issues. (Act I. Sc. i. L. 37-38.) 
 
 She is almost " a thing ensky'd and sainted," yet 
 she returns from the cloister to the world, there to fill 
 her place as wife and Duchess. Angelo, at the outset, 
 though he must be conscious of the wrong he has 
 done to his betrothed, is more self-deceived than a 
 deceiver. He does not know his own heart, and is 
 severe against others in his imagined superiority to 
 every possible temptation. A terrible abyss is opened 
 to him in the evil passion of his own nature. The
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 127 
 
 unmasking of the self-deceiver here is not, as in the 
 happy comedies, a piece of the mirth of the play ; 
 it is painful and stern. The Duke acts throughout 
 as a kind of overruling providence ; he has the wisdom 
 of the serpent, which he uses for good ends, and he 
 looks through life with a steady gaze, which results 
 in a justice and even tenderness (although tender- 
 ness united with severity) towards others. Claudio is 
 made chiefly to be saved by his sister, but he has a 
 grace of youth, and a clinging enjoyment of life and 
 love, which interest us in him sufficiently for pity, if 
 not for admiration. The minor persons possess each 
 his characteristic feature, but are less important in- 
 dividually than as representatives of the wide-spread 
 social corruption and degradation which surround the 
 chief characters, and form the soil on which they 
 move and the air they breathe. " We never through- 
 out the play get into the free open joyous atmosphere, 
 so invigorating in other works of Shakspere ; the op- 
 pressive gloom of the prison, the foul breath of the 
 house of shame, are only exchanged for the chilly 
 damp of conventual walls, or the oppressive retire- 
 ment of the monastery." In a happier world we might 
 turn away from Isabella, but here she is light, strength, 
 and salvation. 
 
 29. Troilus and Cressida appeared in two quarto 
 editions in the year 1.609 > on tne title-page of the 
 earlier of the two it is stated to have been acted at the 
 Globe ; the later contains a singular preface in which 
 the play is spoken of as " never stal'd with the stage, 
 never clapper-claw'd with the palmes of the vulgar," 
 and as having been published against the will of " the 
 grand possessors." Perhaps the play was printed at 
 lirst for the use of the theatre, and with the inten- 
 tion of being published after having been represented, 
 and that the printers, against the known wish of the 
 proprietors of Shakspere's manuscript, anticipated the 
 first representation and issued the quarto, with the 
 attractive announcement that it was an absolute
 
 128 SHAKSPERE. [chAp. 
 
 novelty. The editors of the folio, after having decided 
 that Troilus and Cressida should follow Romeo and 
 Juliet among the tragedies, changed their minds, 
 apparently uncertain how the play should be classed, 
 and placed it between the Histories and Tragedies; 
 this led to the cancelling of a leaf, and the filling 
 up of a blank space left by the alteration, with the 
 Prologue to Troilus and Cressida — a prologue which 
 is believed by several critics not to have come from 
 Shakspere's hand. 
 
 There is extreme uncertainty with respect to the 
 date of the play. Dekker and Chettle were engaged 
 in 1599 upon a play on this subject, and, from an 
 entry in the Stationers' register, February 7, 1602- 
 1603, it appears that a Troilus and Cressida had been 
 acted by Shakspere's company, the Lord Cham- 
 berlain's Servants. Was this Shakspere's play? We 
 are thrown back upon internal evidence to decide 
 this question, and the internal evidence is itself of 
 a conflicting kind, and has led to opposite conclu- 
 sions. The massive worldly wisdom of Ulysses argues, 
 it is supposed, in favour of a late date, and the general 
 tone of the play has been compared with that of 
 Tinwn of Athens. The fact that it does not contain 
 a single weak ending, and only six light endings, is, 
 however, almost decisive evidence against our placing 
 it after either Tinwn or Macbeth ; and the other 
 metrical characteristics are considered, by the most 
 careful student of this class of evidence in the case 
 of the present play (Hertzberg), to point to a date about 
 1603. Other authorities place it as late as 1608 or 
 1 609 ; while a third theory (that of Verplanck and Grant 
 White) attempts to solve the difficulties by supposing 
 that it was first written in 1603, and revised and en- 
 larged shortly before the publication of the quarto. 
 Parts of the play — notably the last battle of Hector 
 ■ — appear not to be by Shakspere. The interpretation 
 of the play itself is as difficult as the ascertainment 
 of the external facts of its history. With what in- 
 tention, and in what spirit did Shakspere write this
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND FUKMS. 129 
 
 strange comedy ? All the Greek heroes who fought 
 against Troy are pitilessly exposed to ridicule ; Helen 
 and Cressida are light, sensual, and heartless, for 
 whose sake it seems infatuated folly to strike a blow : 
 Troilus is an enthusiastic young fool ; and even 
 Hector, though valiant and generous, spends his life 
 in a cause which he knows to be unprofitable, if not 
 evil. All this is seen and said by Thersites, whose 
 mind is made up of the scum of the foulness of 
 human life. But can Shakspere's view of things have 
 been the same as that of Thersites ? 
 
 The central theme, the young love and faith of 
 Troilus given to one who was false and fickle, and his 
 discovery of his error, lends its colour to the whole 
 play. It is the comedy of disillusion. And as Troilus 
 passed through the illusion of his first love for woman, 
 so by middle life the world itself often appears like 
 one that has not kept her promises, and who is a poor 
 deceiver. We come to see the seamy side of life ; 
 and from this mood of disillusion it is a deliverance 
 to pass on even to a dark and tragic view of life, to 
 which beauty and virtue reappear, even though human 
 weakness or human vice may do them bitter wrong. 
 Now such a mood of contemptuous depreciation of 
 life may have come over Shakspere, and spoilt him, 
 at that time, for a writer of comedy. But for Isabella 
 we should find the coming on of this mood in 
 Measure for Measure ; there is perhaps a touch of it 
 in Hamlet. At this time Troilus and Cressida may 
 have been written, and soon afterwards Shakspere, 
 rousing himself to a deeper inquest into things, may 
 have passed on to his great series of tragedies. 
 
 Let us call this, then, the comedy of disillusion, anc 
 certainly, wherever we place it, we must notice a 
 striking resemblance in its spirit and structure to 
 Timon'of Athens. Timon has a lax benevolence and 
 shallow trust in the goodness of men ; he is undeceived, 
 and bitterly turns away from the whole human race, 
 in a rage of disappointment. In the same play, 
 Alcibiades is, in like manner, wronged by the world ; 
 
 E
 
 130 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 but he takes his injuries firmly, like a man of action 
 and experience, and sets about the subduing of his 
 base antagonists. Apemantus, again, is the dog-like 
 reviler of men, knowing their baseness and base him- 
 self. Here, Troilus, the noble green-goose, goes 
 through his youthful agony of ascertaining the un- 
 worthiness of her to whom he had given his faith 
 and hope ; but he is made of a stronger and more 
 energetic fibre than Timon, and comes out of his 
 trial a man, no longer a boy; somewhat harder, 
 perhaps, than before, but strung-up for sustained and 
 determined action. He is completely delivered from 
 Cressida and from Pandar, and by Hector's death 
 supplied with a motive for the utmost exertion of his 
 heroic powers. Ulysses, the antithesis of Troilus, is 
 the much-experienced man of the world, possessed 
 of its highest and broadest wisdom, which yet always 
 remains worldly wisdom, and never rises into the 
 spiritual contemplation of a Prospero. He sees all 
 the unworthiness of human life, but will use it for 
 high worldly ends ; the spirit of irreverence and in- 
 subordination in the camp he would restrain by the 
 politic machinery of what he calls " degree " (Act I. 
 Sc. iii. L. 75-136). Cressida he reads at a glance, 
 seeing to the bottom of her sensual shallow nature, 
 and he assists at the disillusioning of the young prince, 
 whose nobleness is apparent to him from the first. 
 Thersites also sees through the illusions of the world, 
 but his very incapacity to have ever been deceived is 
 a sign of the ignoble nature of the wretch. He feeds 
 and grows strong upon garbage; physical nastiness 
 Ic ind moral sores are the luxuries of his imagination. 
 \\The other characters — the brute warrior, Ajax; the 
 ♦ insolent self-worshipper, Achilles ; Hector, heroic but 
 too careless how and when he expends his heroic 
 strength — are of minor importance. As the blindness 
 of youthful love is shown in Troilus, so old age, in 
 its least venerable form, given up to a gratification of 
 sensuality by proxy, is exposed to derision in Pandar. 
 The materials for Troilus and Cressida were found by
 
 tri.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 131 
 
 Shakspere in Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide, Caxton's 
 translation from the French, Rccuyles, or Destruction 
 of T?-oy, perhaps, also, Lydgate's Troye Boke. Thersites 
 he probably found in book ii. of Chapman's Homer. 
 Shakspere's conception of Cressida and of Pandar 
 differs widely from Chaucer's : in Shakspere's hands, 
 in accordance with the general design of the drama, 
 Cressida and her uncle grow base and contemptible. 
 Some critics have supposed that the love-story was 
 written at a much earlier date than the part which 
 treats of Ulysses ; but we have seen that the contrasted 
 characters of Troilus and Ulysses are both essential 
 parts of the conception of the drama, and were created 
 as counterparts. 
 
 30. Othello is the only play which appeared in 
 quarto (1622) in the interval between Shakspere's 
 death and the publication of the first folio. We have no 
 means, except by internal evidence, of ascertaining the 
 date at which the play was written. Upon the strength 
 of a supposed allusion to the armorial bearings of the 
 new order of Baronets, instituted in 161 1 — 
 
 The hearts of old gave hands, 
 But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts. 
 
 (Act III. Sc. iv. L. 46-47.)— 
 
 the play has been referred to a year not earlier than 
 161 1. But the metrical tests confirm the impression 
 produced by the general character and spirit of the 
 tragedy, that it cannot belong to the same period as 
 The Tempest, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale. It 
 evidently is one of the group of tragedies of passion 
 which includes Macbeth and Lear. The year 1604 has 
 been accepted by several critics as a not improbable 
 date for Othello. 
 
 The original of the story is found in Cinthio's 
 Tfecatomithi, but it has been in a marvellous manner 
 elevated and re-created by Shakspere. The incident 
 of an intended attack on Cyprus by the Turks may 
 have been suggested by the historical fact that such 
 an attack was actually made in the year 1570. 
 
 e 2
 
 I3 2 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 Coleridge has justly said that the agonised doubt 
 which lays hold of the Moor is not the jealousy of a 
 man of naturally jealous temper, and he contrasts 
 Othello with Leontes in The Winter's Tale, and 
 Leonatus in Cymbeline. A mean watchfulness or pry- 
 ing suspicion is the last thing that Othello could be 
 guilty of. He is of a free and noble nature, naturally 
 trustful, with a kind of grand innocence, _ retaining 
 some of his barbaric simpleness of soul in midst of the 
 subtle and astute politicians of Venice. He is great 
 in simple heroic action, but unversed in the complex 
 affairs of life, and a stranger to the malignant deceits 
 of the debased Italian character. Nothing is more 
 chivalrous, more romantic, than the love of Othello 
 and Desdemona. The beautiful Italian girl is fasci- 
 nated by the regal strength and grandeur, and tender 
 protectiveness of the Moor. He is charmed, by the 
 sweetness, the sympathy, the gentle disposition, the 
 gracious womanliness of Desdemona. But neither 
 quite rightly knows the other ; there is none of that 
 perfect equality and perfect knowledge between them 
 which unites so flawlessly Brutus and Portia. 
 
 Desdemona and Othello are parted on their voyage 
 to Cyprus, and at meeting their happiness touches 
 a height which is almost too rare and exquisite. 
 From that moment of rapture and reunion to the 
 moment when Othello slays himself by the body of his 
 murdered wife, there is an unalleviated intensity of 
 tragic pain. Othello cannot hate Desdemona ; his 
 misery is that he must love her although he strives to 
 hate, and must slay her, although he would die that 
 she might be pure and live. There is no character in 
 Shakspere's plays so full of serpentine power and 
 serpentine poison as lago. The Iachimo of Cymbe- 
 line is a faint sketch in water-colours of the absolute 
 villain lago. He is envious of Cassio, and suspects 
 that the Moor may have wronged his honour; 
 but his malignancy is out of all proportion to even its 
 alleged motives. Cassio, notwithstanding his moral 
 weaknesses, is a chivalrous nature, possessed by
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 133 
 
 enthusiastic admiration of his great general and the 
 beautiful lady who is his wife. But Iago can see 
 neither human virtue nor greatness. All things to him 
 are common and unclean, and he is content that they 
 should be so. He is not the sly, sneaking, and too 
 manifest villain of some of the actors of his part. He 
 is " honest Iago," and passes for a rough yet shrewd 
 critic of life, who is himself frank and candid. To 
 ensnare the nobly guileless Othello was, therefore, 
 no impossible task. Shakspere does not allow Iago to 
 triumph ; his end is wretched as his life had been. 
 And Othello, restored to love through such tragic 
 calamity, dies once more reunited to his wife, and 
 loyal, in spite of all his wrongs, to the city of his 
 adoption. It is he who has sinned, and not she who 
 was dearer to him than himself, and of his own 
 wrongs and griefs he can make a sudden end. 
 
 Emilia may be compared with Paulina of The 
 Winter's Tale. 
 
 31. King Lear, among the tragedies of passion, is 
 the one in which passions assume the largest propor- 
 tions, act upon the widest theatre, and attain their 
 absolute extremes. The story of Lear and his daughters 
 was found by Shakspere in Holinshed, and he may have 
 taken a few hints from an old play, The True Chronicle 
 History of King Leir, &c. In both Holinshed's 
 version and that of the True Chronicle) the army of 
 Lear and his French allies is victorious ; Lear is rein- 
 stated in his kingdom; but Holinshed relates how, 
 after Lear's death, her sisters' sons warred against 
 Cordelia, and took her prisoner, when "being a 
 woman of a manly courage and despairing to recover 
 liberty," she slew herself. The story is also told by 
 Higgins in The Mirror for Magistrates ; by Spenser 
 {Fairie Queene, II. x. 27-32), from whom Shakspere 
 adopted the form of the name " Cordelia ;" and in a 
 ballad (printed in Percy's Reliques) probably later in 
 dote than Shakspere's play. With the story of Lear 
 Shakspere connects that of Gloucester and his two 
 sons. An episode in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia sup-
 
 i34 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 plied characters and incidents for this portion of the 
 play, Sidney's blind king of Paphlagonia correspond- 
 ing to the Gloucester of Shakspere. But here, too, 
 the story had in the dramatist's original a happy 
 ending : the Paphlagonian king is restored to his 
 throne, and the brothers are reconciled. • 
 
 The date of Shakspere's play is probably 1605 or 
 1606. It was entered on the Stationers' register, 
 Nov. 26, 1607, and the entry states that it had been 
 acted " upon St. Stephan's day at Christmas last," i.e. 
 Dec. 26, 1606. The play was printed in quarto in 
 1608. "An upward limit of date is supplied by the 
 publication of Harsnet's Declaration of Popish Im- 
 postures, 1603, to which Shakspere was indebted for 
 the names of many of the devils in Edgar's speeches." 
 It has been suggested that Gloucester's mention of 
 " late eclipses in the sun and moon " (Act I. Sc. ii. 
 L. 112) refers to the great eclipse of the sun, October, 
 1605, preceded within a month by an eclipse of the 
 moon, and that the words which follow shortly after 
 the mention of eclipses, " machinations, hollowness, 
 treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us dis- 
 quietly to our graves," had special point if delivered 
 on the stage while the Gunpowder Plot of Nov. 5, 
 1605, was fresh in men's minds. 
 
 Shakspere cares little to give the opening incidents 
 of his play a look of prosaic, historical probability. 
 The spectator or reader is asked, as it were, to grant 
 the dramatist certain data, and then to observe what 
 the imagination can make of them. Good and evil 
 in this play are clearly severed from one another — 
 (more so than in Macbeth or in Othello) — and at the 
 last, goodness, if we judge merely by external for- 
 tune, would seem to be, if not defeated, at least 
 not triumphant. Shakspere has dared, while pay- 
 ing little regard to mere historical verisimilitude, to 
 represent the most solemn and awful mysteries of life 
 as they actually are, without attempting to offer a 
 ready-made explanation of them. Cordelia dies 
 strangled in prison ; yet we know that her devotion of
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 135 
 
 love was not misspent. Lear expires in an agony of 
 grief; but he has been delivered from his pride and 
 passionate wilfulness : he has found that instead of 
 being a master, at whose nod all things must bow, he 
 is weak and helpless, a sport even of the wind and the 
 rain ; his ignorance of true love, and pleasure in false 
 professions of love, have given place to an agonised 
 clinging to the love which is real, deep, and tranquil 
 because of its fulness. Lear is the greatest sufferer in 
 Shakspere's plays ; though so old, he has strength 
 which makes him a subject for prolonged and vast 
 agony ; and patience is unknown to him. The 
 elements seem to have conspired against him with his 
 unnatural daughters ; the upheaval of the moral world, 
 and the rage of tempest in the air seem to be parts of 
 the same gigantic convulsion. In the midst of this 
 tempest wanders unhoused the white-haired Lear; 
 while his fool — most pathetic of all the minor cha- 
 racters of Shakspere — jests half-wildly, halfcoherently, 
 half-bitterly, half-tenderly, and always with a sad re- 
 membrance of the happier past. The poor boy's 
 heart has been sore ever since his " young mistress 
 went to France." 
 
 If Cordelia is pure love, tender and faithful, and 
 Kent is unmingled loyalty, the monsters Goneril and 
 Regan are gorgons rather than women, such as Shak- 
 spere has nowhere else conceived. The aspect of 
 Goneril can almost turn to stone ; in Regan's tongue 
 there is a viperous hiss. Goneril is the more formid- 
 able, because the more incapable of any hatred which 
 is not solid and four-square. Regan acts under her 
 sister's influence, but has an eager venomousness of 
 her own. The story of Gloucester enlarges the basis 
 of the tragedy. Lear's affliction is no mere private 
 incident ; there is a breaking of the bonds of nature 
 and society all around us. But Gloucester is suffering 
 for a former sin of self-indulgence, Lear is " more 
 sinned against than sinning." Yet Gloucester is 
 granted a death which is half joyful. His affliction 
 serves as a measure of the huger affliction of the king.
 
 136 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 Edgar and Edmund are a contrasted pair — both are 
 men of penetration, energy, and skill, one on the side 
 of evil, the other on the side of good. Edgar's virtue 
 is active, enduring, and full of device ; he rises at last 
 to be the justiciary who brings his evil brother sternly 
 to punishment. Everywhere throughout the play 
 Shakspere's imaginative daring impresses us. Nothing 
 in poetry is bolder or more wonderful than the scene 
 on the night of the tempest in the hovel where the 
 king, whose intellect has now given way, is in company 
 with Edgar, assuming madness, the Fool, with his 
 forced pathetic mirth, and Kent. 
 
 The text of the quarto differs considerably from 
 that of the folio ; but the opinion that the later text — 
 that of the folio — exhibits a revision of his own work 
 by Shakspere is not supported by sufficient evidence. 
 "The folio was printed from an independent manu- 
 script, and its text is on the whole much superior to 
 that of the quartos. Each, however, supplies passages 
 which are wanting in the other." Scene iii. of Act IV. 
 is not found in the folio. 
 
 32. Macbeth was seen acted at the Globe by Dr. 
 Forman — who gives a detailed sketch of the play — 
 on April 20, 1610. But the characteristics of versifica- 
 tion forbid us to place it after Pericles and Antony and 
 Cleopatra, or very near The Tempest. Light endings 
 begin to appear in considerable number in Macbeth 
 (twenty-one is the precise number), but of weak 
 endings it contains only two. Upon the whole, the 
 internal evidence supports the opinion of Malone, 
 that the play was written about 1606. The words in 
 Macbeth's vision of the kings (Act IV. Sc. i. L. 120)/ 
 
 Some I see 
 That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry, 
 
 refer to the union of the two kingdoms under James I. 
 James had revived the practice of touching for the 
 king's evil, described Act IV. Sc. iii. L. 140-159. 
 " Here's a farmer that hang'd himself on the ex- 
 pectation of plenty" (Act II. Sc. iii. L. 5) may have
 
 vi. ] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 137 
 
 reference to the unusually low price of wheat in the 
 summer and autumn of 1606. "Here's an equivo- 
 cator that could swear in both scales against either 
 scale ; who committed treason enough for God's sake; 
 yet could not equivocate to heaven" (Act II. Sc. iii. 
 L. 9) has been supposed to allude to the doctrine of 
 equivocation, avowed by Henry Garnet, Superior of the 
 order of Jesuits in England, on his trial for the Gun- 
 powder Treason, March 28, 1606, and to his perjury 
 on that occasion. In 161 1 the ghost of Banquo was 
 jestingly alluded to in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight 
 of the Burning Pestle. 
 
 The materials for his play Shakspere found in 
 Holinshed's Chronicle, connecting the portion which 
 treats of Duncan and Macbeth with Holinshed's 
 account of the murder of King Duffe by Donwald. 
 The appearance of Banquo's ghost and the sleep- 
 walking of Lady Macbeth appear to be inventions of 
 the dramatist. 
 
 Thomas Middleton's play of The Witch, discovered 
 in MS. in 1779, contains many points of resemblance 
 to Macbeth. The Cambridge editors, Messrs. Clark 
 and Wright, are of opinion that Macbeth was inter- 
 polated with passages by a second author — not im- 
 probably by Middleton — after Shakspere's death, or 
 after he had ceased to be connected with the theatre ; 
 the interpolator expanded the parts assigned to the 
 weird sisters and introduced a new character, Hecate. 
 The following passages are pointed out as the supposed 
 interpolations: Act I. Sc. ii., iii. L. 1-37; Act II. 
 Sc. i. L. 61, iii. (Porter's part) Act III. Sc. v. ; Act IV. 
 Sc. i. L. 39-47 and 125-132, iii. L. 140-159; Act V. 
 (?) ii., v. L. 47-50, viii. L. 32-33 ("Before my body I 
 throw my warlike shield") and 35-75. This theory 
 of interpolation must be considered as in a high 
 degree doubtful, and in particular the Porter's part 
 shows the hand of Shakspere. As to Middleton's 
 The Witch, it was probably of later date than Shak- 
 spere's play. 
 
 While in Romeo and Juliet and in Hamlet we feel 
 
 e 3
 
 138 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 that Shakspere now began and now left off, and refined 
 upon or brooded over his thoughts, Macbeth seems as 
 if struck out at a heat, and imagined from first to last 
 with unabated fervour. It is like a sketch by a great 
 master in which everything is executed with rapidity 
 and power, and a subtlety of workmanship which has 
 become instinctive. The theme of the drama is the 
 gradual ruin through yielding to evil within and evil 
 without, of a man, who though from the first tainted 
 by base and ambitious thoughts, yet possessed elements 
 in his nature of possible honour and loyalty. The con- 
 trast between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, united by 
 their affections, their fortunes, and their crime, is made 
 to illustrate and light up the character of each. Macbeth 
 has physical courage, but moral weakness, and is sub- 
 ject to excited imaginative fears. His faint and inter- 
 mittent loyalty embarrasses him — he would have the 
 gains of crime without its pains. But when once his 
 hands are dyed in blood, he hardly cares to withdraw 
 them, and the same fears which had tended to hold 
 him back from murder, now urge him on to double 
 and treble murders, until slaughter, almost reckless, 
 becomes the habit of his reign. At last the gallant 
 soldier of the opening of the play fights for his life 
 with a wild and brute-like force. His whole existence 
 has become joyless and loveless, and yet he clings to 
 existence. Lady Macbeth is of a finer and more 
 delicate nature. Having fixed her eye upon an end — 
 the attainment for her husband of Duncan's crown — 
 she accepts the inevitable means ; she nerves herself 
 for the terrible night's work by artificial stimulants ; 
 yet she cannot strike the sleeping king who resembles 
 her father. Having sustained her weaker husband, 
 her own strength gives way; and in sleep, when her 
 will cannot control her thoughts, she is piteously 
 afflicted by the memory of one stain of blood upon 
 her little hand. At last her thread of life snaps sud- 
 denly. Macbeth, whose affection for her was real, has 
 sunk too far into the apathy of joyless crime to feel 
 deeply her loss. Banquo, the loyal soldier, praying
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 139 
 
 for restraint of evil thoughts which enter his mind 
 as they had entered that of Macbeth, but which work 
 no evil there, is set over against Macbeth, as virtue is 
 set over against disloyalty. The witches are the super- 
 natural beings of terror, in harmony with Shakspere's 
 tragic period, as the fairies of the Midsummer Night's 
 Dream are the supernatural beings of his days of 
 fancy and frolic, and as Ariel is the supernatural 
 genius of his latest period. There is at once a 
 grossness, a horrible reality about the witches, and a 
 mystery and grandeur of evil influence. 
 
 33. Antony and Cleopatra, though by the person 
 of Antony it connects itself with Julius Cccsar, is a 
 striking contrast to that play in subject and in style, 
 and is separated from it in the chronological order by 
 a wide interval. In May of the year 1608, Blount (after- 
 wards one of the publishers of the First Folio) entered 
 in the Stationers' register A Book called Antony and 
 Cleopatra. This was, not improbably, Shakspere's 
 tragedy. The source of the play is the life of Antonius 
 in North's Plutarch. Shakspere had found in Plutarch 
 his Brutus almost ready made to his hand ; he deemed 
 it necessary to transform and transfigure the Antony 
 of history, stained as he is by crimes not only of 
 voluptuousness but of cruelty. " Of all Shakspere's 
 historical plays," wrote Coleridge, " Antony and Cleo- 
 patra is by far the most wonderful," and he calls 
 attention to what he terms its " happy valiancy " of 
 style. Shakspere, indeed, nowhere seems a greatef 
 master of a great dramatic theme. The moral ideals, 
 the doctrines, the stoical habits and stoical philosophy 
 of Brutus and Portia, are as remote as possible from 
 the sensuous splendours of the life in Egypt, from 
 Antony's careless magnificence of strength, and the 
 beauty, the arts, and endless variety of Cleopatra. 
 Yet, though the tragedy has all the glow and colour of 
 oriental magnificence, it remains true at heart to the 
 moral laws which govern human life. The worship of 
 pleasure by the Egyptian Queen and her paramour 
 is, after all, a failure, even from the first. There is no
 
 l4 6 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 true confidence, no steadfast strength of love possible 
 between Antony and his " serpent of old Nile.'' Each 
 inspires the other with a mastering spirit^of fascination, 
 but Antony knows not the moment when Cleopatra may 
 be faithless to him, and Cleopatra weaves her endless 
 snares to retain her power over Antony. The great 
 Roman soldier gradually loses his energy, his judg- 
 ment, and even his joy in life ; at last, the despair of 
 spent forces settles down upon him, and it is only out 
 of despair that he snatches strength enough to fight 
 fiercely when driven to bay. He is the ruin of Cleo- 
 patra's magic. Upon Cleopatra herself the genius 
 of Shakspere has been lavished. She is the most 
 wonderful of his creations of women, formed of the 
 greatest number of elements — apparently conflict- 
 ing elements, yet united by the mystery of life. 
 " To heap up together all that is most unsubstan- 
 tial, frivolous, vain, contemptible, and variable, till 
 the worthlessness be lost in the magnitude, and a 
 sense of the sublime spring from the very elements 
 of littleness : to do this belonged only to Shakspere, 
 that worker of miracles." While creating, with so 
 much imaginative ardour, his Cleopatra, Shakspere 
 yet stands away from her, and, in a manner, criticises 
 her. Enobarbus, who sees through every wile and 
 guile of the Queen, is, as it were, a chorus to the play, 
 a looker-on at the game ; he stands clear of the golden 
 haze which makes up the atmosphere around Cleo- 
 patra ; and yet he is not a mere critic or commentator 
 (Shakspere never permitting the presence of a person 
 in his drama who is not a true portion of it). Enobarbus 
 himself is under the influence of the charm of Antony, 
 and slays himself because he has wronged his master. 
 The figures of Antony and the Queen are ennobled 
 and elevated by the strong power of attraction, even 
 of devotion, which they exert over those about them 
 — Antony over Enobarbus, Cleopatra over her atten- 
 dants, Charmian and Iras. 
 
 34. Coriolanus was written about 1608, as appears 
 from the metrical characteristics. The light-ending
 
 vi. J HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 141 
 
 test puts it next after Antony and Cleopatra, and it 
 is probable' that such is its actual place in the chro- 
 nological order. Shakspere in his North's Plutarch 
 found another subject for tragedy. Having rendered 
 into art the history of the ruin of a noble nature 
 through voluptuous self-indulgence, he went on 
 to represent the ruin of a noble nature through 
 haughtiness and pride. From Egypt, with its 
 splendours, its glow, its revels, its moral licence, we 
 pass back to austere republican Rome. The majestic 
 figure of Volumnia is Shakspere's ideal of the Roman 
 matron. The gentle Virgilia is the most dutiful and 
 tenderly loyal of wives, and her friend Valeria — (how 
 remote from the free-tongued girls of Cleopatra) — is 
 
 The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle 
 That's curdied by the frost from purest snow 
 And hangs on Dian's temple. 
 
 But, although free from voluptuousness, the con- 
 dition of Rome is not strong and sound. There is 
 political division between the patricians and plebeians. 
 Shakspere regards the people as an overgrown child 
 with good and kindly instincts ; owning a basis of 
 untutored common-sense, but capable of being led 
 astray by its leaders; possessed of little judgment and 
 no reasoning powers, and without capacity for self- 
 restraint. It is not for the people that Shakspere in 
 this play reserves his scorn, but for their tribunes, the 
 demagogues, who mislead and pervert them — a pair of 
 political foxes. Although nobler types of individual 
 character are to be found among the patricians than 
 the plebeians, the dramatist is not blind to the patri- 
 cian vices, and indeed the whole tragedy turns upon 
 the existence and the influence of these. Coriolanus 
 is by nature of a kindly and generous disposition, but 
 he inherits the aristocratical tradition, and his kind- 
 liness strictly limits itself to the circle which includes 
 those of his own rank and class. For his mother he 
 has a veneration approaching to worship ; he is con- 
 tent to be a subordinate under Cominius ; for the
 
 142 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 old Menenius he has an almost filial regard ; but the 
 people are " slaves," " curs," '•'minnows." His haughti- 
 ness becomes towering, because his personal pride, 
 which in itself is great, is built up over a solid and high- 
 reared pride of class. When he is banished his bitter- 
 ness arises not only from his sense of the contemptible 
 nature of the adversaries to whom he is forced to 
 yield, but from the additional sense that he has been 
 deserted by his own class, " the dastard nobles." He 
 would henceforward, if possible, be himself alone, 
 standing 
 
 As if a man were author of himself 
 
 And knew no other kin. 
 
 And it is in this spirit oi revolt against the bonds of 
 society and of nature that he advances against his 
 native city. But his haughtiness cannot really place 
 him above nature. In the presence of his wife, his 
 boy, and his mother, the strong man gives way, and is 
 restored once more to human love. And so his fate 
 comes upon him. To the last something of his pride 
 remains, and the immediate occasion of his death is 
 an outbreak of that sudden passion, springing from 
 his self-esteem, which had already often and grievously 
 wronged him. 
 
 Menenius Agrippa is like an earlier Gonzalo of The 
 Tempest, an incarnation of humorous common-sense ; 
 he has for Coriolanus a fatherly care, regards him 
 with a fatherly admiration, and would if possible save 
 him from himself. 
 
 35. Timon of Athens is, beyond reasonable 
 doubt, only in part the work of Shakspere. Whether 
 Shakspere worked upon materials furnished by an 
 older play, or whether he left his play a fragment to 
 be completed by another hand, is uncertain : the 
 former supposition is perhaps the correct one, and 
 the older writer may possibly have been George 
 Wilkins. There is a substantial agreement among 
 the best critics as to what portions of the play are 
 Shakspere's and what are not. The following may bo
 
 vi.] HIS PI AYS AND POEMS. 143 
 
 be distinguished, with some confidence, as the non- 
 Shaksperian parts : Act I. Sc. i. L. 189-240, 258-273 
 (or ? from entrance of Apemantus to end of scene), 
 ii. (certainly); Act II. Sc. ii. L. 45-124; all Act III., 
 except Sc. vi. L. 98-115; Act IV. Sc. ii. L. 30-50, 
 (?) iii. L. 292-362, 399-413^ 454-543 > Act V. (?) Sc. i. 
 L. i.— 59, ii., iii. 
 
 There is no external evidence which helps to deter- 
 mine the date at which Shakspere wrote his part of 
 the play ; but it was probably later than Macbeth and 
 earlier than Pericles. The year 1607 is a date which 
 cannot be far astray. 
 
 The sources from which Shakspere derived an ac- 
 quaintance with the story of Ti 711011 were Pay liter's 
 Palace of Pleasure, a passage in Plutarch's Life of 
 Mark Antony, and, in particular, a dialogue of Lucian. 
 But if Shakspere worked upon an older play, it may 
 have been through it that he obtained the materials 
 which appear to come from Lucian. Another play on 
 the subject of Timon existed in 1600, which has been 
 edited by Dyce. It was, in the opinion of Dyce, intended 
 for an academic audience, and there is no evidence suf- 
 ficient to prove that it had been seen by Shakspere. 
 
 Although only a fragment, Shakspere's part of the 
 play is written with the highest dramatic energy. 
 Nothing is more intense than the conception and ren- 
 dering of Timon's feelings when he turns in hatred 
 from the evil world. The rich Lord Timon has lived 
 in a rose-coloured mist of pleasant delusions. The 
 conferring of favours has been with him a mode of 
 kindly self-indulgence, and he has assumed that every- 
 one is as liberal-hearted and of as easy generosity as 
 he is himself. Out of his pleasant dream he wakes 
 to find the baseness, the selfishness, and ingratitude of 
 the world. And he passes violently over from his 
 former lax philanthropy to a fierce hatred of mankind. 
 The practical Alcibiades sets at once about righting 
 the wrongs which he has suffered. But Timon can 
 only rage and then die. His rage implies the elements 
 of a possible nobleness in him ; he cannot acclimatise
 
 144 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 himself, as Alcibiades can, to the harsh and polluted 
 air of the world ; yet the rage also proceeds from a 
 weakness of nature. The dog-like Apemantus accepts, 
 well-contented, the evil which Alcibiades would 
 punish, and from which Timon flies. He barks and 
 snarls, but does not really suffer. The play is a 
 painful one, unrelieved by the presence of beauty or 
 human worth, except such worth as Timon's steward 
 possesses, and this his master blinded by his fierce 
 misanthropy, has no eyes to see. 
 
 36. Pericles is the first of the group of plays which 
 I have named Romances. Shakspere's portion of the 
 play has something of the slightness of a preliminary 
 sketch. The first two acts are evidently by another 
 writer than Shakspere, and probably the scenes in 
 Act IV. (Sc. ii., v., and vi.), so revolting to our moral 
 feeling, are also to be assigned away from him. What 
 remains (Acts III., IV., V., omitting the scenes just 
 mentioned), is the pure and charming romance of 
 Marina the sea-born child of Pericles, her loss, and 
 the recovery of both child and mother by the afflicted 
 Prince. Whether Shakspere worked upon the founda- 
 tion of an earlier play, or whether the non-Shaksperian 
 parts of Pericles were additions made to what he had 
 written, we cannot say with certainty. It is supposed 
 by some critics that three hands can be distinguished : 
 that of a general reviser who wrote the first two acts 
 and Gower's choruses — possibly the dramatist George 
 Wilkins ; that of a second writer who contributed the 
 offensive scenes of Act IV. ; and, thirdly, the hand of 
 Shakspere. Pericles was entered in the Stationers' 
 register, 1608, by the bookseller Blount, and was pub- 
 lished with a very ill-arranged text the next year (1609) 
 by another bookseller, who had, it is believed, surrep- 
 titiously obtained his copy. It was not included 
 among the plays given in the first or second folios, but 
 appeared, with six added plays, in the third folio, 
 1664- The story upon which Pericles is founded is 
 that given in Laurence Twine's Patterne of Painfull 
 Adventures (1607) — itself a reprint of an early printed
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 145 
 
 version from the French ; given also in Gower's Con- 
 fessio Amantis, and originally written about the fifth or 
 sixth century of our era, in Greek. In all these earlier 
 forms of the tale the name of the prince or king of 
 Tyre is Apollonius, not Pericles. Both Twine and 
 Gower appear to have been made use of by the writers 
 of Pericles, and the debt to Gower is acknowledged by 
 his introduction as the " presenter " of the play. It 
 should be noted that in 1608, probably immediately 
 after the production of the play, appeared a novel by 
 George Wilkins, The Painfull Adventures of Pericles, 
 Prince of Tyre, which once more tells the story in 
 prose, the version in this instance being in great 
 measure .founded upon the play, of which Wilkins him- 
 self is conjectured to have been one of the authors. 
 
 The drama as a whole is singularly undramatic. 
 It entirely lacks unity of action, and the prominent 
 figures of the opening scenes quickly drop out of the 
 play. A main part of the story is briefly told in rhymed 
 verse by the presenter, Gower, or is set forth in dumb 
 show. But Shakspere's portion is one and indivisible. 
 It opens on shipboard with a tempest, and in Shak- 
 spere's later play of storm and wreck he has not 
 attempted to rival the earlier treatment of the subject. 
 " No poetry of shipwreck and the sea," a living poet 
 writes, " has ever equalled the great scene of Pericles ; 
 no such note of music was ever struck out of the clash 
 and contention of tempestuous elements." Milton, when 
 writing Lycidas, the elegy upon his drowned friend, 
 remembered this scene, and one line in particular — 
 
 And humming water shall o'envhelm thy corpse. 
 
 To this rage of stot-m succeeds the hush of Cerimon's 
 studious chamber, in which the wife of Pericles, tossed 
 ashore by the waves, wakens wonderingly from her 
 trance to the sound of melancholy music. Cerimon, 
 who is master of the secrets of nature, who is liberal 
 in his " learned charity," who held it ever 
 
 Virtue and cunning were endowments greater 
 Than nobleness am! riches,
 
 145 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 is like a first study for Prospero. In the fifth act 
 Marina, so named from her birth at sea, has grown to 
 the age of fourteen years, and is, as it were, a sister of 
 Miranda and Perdita (note in each case the signifi- 
 cant name). She, like Perdita, is a child lost by her 
 parents, and, like Perdita, we see her flower-like with 
 her flowers — only these flowers of Marina are not for 
 a merrymaking, but a grave. The melancholy of 
 Pericles is a clear-obscure of sadness, not a gloom of 
 cloudy remorse like that of Leontes. His meeting 
 with his lost Marina is like an anticipation of the 
 scene in which Cymbeline recovers his sons and 
 daughter ; but the scene in Pericles is filled with a 
 rarer, keener passion of joy. And again, the mar- 
 vellous meeting between Leontes and Hermione is 
 anticipated by the union of Pericles and his Thaisa. 
 Thus Pericles containing the motives of much that 
 was worked out more fully in later dramas, may be 
 said to bear to the Romances somewhat of the same 
 relation which The Two Gentlemeji of Verona bears to 
 the comedies of love which succeeded it in Shak- 
 spere's second dramatic period. 
 
 37. Cymbeline interweaves with a fragment of 
 British history taken from Holinshed, a story from 
 Boccaccio's Decameron (9th Novel of 2nd Day), the 
 Genevra of the Italian novel corresponding to Shak- 
 spere's Imogen. The story is told in a tract called 
 Westward for Smelts, 1620 (stated by Steevens and 
 Malone to have been published as early as 1603); 
 but Shakspere appears in some way, directly or in- 
 directly, to have made acquaintance with it as given 
 by Boccaccio. It is a singular circumstance that in 
 the 1600 quarto edition of Much Ado about Nothing, 
 the opening stage direction runs : " Enter Leonato 
 [and] Innogen his wife;" but no speech is assigned 
 in the comedy to Innogen, nor does her name re- 
 appear. Here Imogen is wife to Leonatus Posthumus. 
 The names of the two princes Shakspere found, as 
 well as the king's name, in Holinshed ; but the inci- 
 dents of their having been stolen, and their life
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS, 147 
 
 among the mountains of Wales, appear to have been 
 invented by the dramatist. 
 
 Dr. Forman records in his MS. Booke of Plates and 
 Notes thereof, that he saw Cymbeline acted ; but he 
 gives no date. His book, however, belongs to the 
 years 1610-1611, and the metrical and other internal 
 evidence point to that time as about the period 
 when the drama must have been written. It is 
 loosely constructed, and some passages possess little 
 dramatic intensity. Several critics have questioned 
 whether the vision of Posthumus (Act V. Sc. iv.) is of 
 Shakspere's authorship, and it is certainly poorly con- 
 ceived and written. Nevertheless, the play is one of 
 singular charm, and contains in Imogen one of the 
 loveliest of Shakspere's creations of female character. 
 
 " Posthumus and Imogen " would be a fitter name 
 for the play than Cymbeline. The weak king, 
 governed by his strong-minded, ambitious wife, has 
 but a small share in the action ; it is designed that 
 the heroine shall have no true father, no friend or pro- 
 tector for a time, except her faithful servant, Pisanio. 
 His children — royal in nature — inherit none of the 
 king's weakness. The Queen transmits to her son 
 only her evil disposition, with none of her force of 
 intellect. Cloten is the aristocr, t fool, thick-witted, 
 violent, with the coarse conceit of a high-born boor. 
 Imogen has the incredible bad taste to prefer to him 
 "a poor and worthy gentleman," endowed with 
 beautiful gifts of nature, and possessed of all the 
 culture of his time. But Posthumus, with his plain 
 British understanding, parted from his wife, is no match 
 for the craft and cunning of Italy. His faith in 
 Imogen is of a half-romantic kind, unconfirmed by 
 calm and deep acquaintance with her heart : that faith 
 is not subtly poisoned, like the love of Othello, but sud- 
 denly, in one brief and desperate encounter, over- 
 thrown. His jealousy is not heroic, like Othello's ; it 
 shows something of grossness, unworthy of his truer 
 self. In due time penitential sorrow does its work, his 
 nobler nature reasserts itself, and in the final reunion
 
 ; 4 8 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 of parent and lost children, the erring husband is also 
 restored to the quick-beating, joyous heart of his wife. 
 Except grandeur and majesty, which were reserved 
 for Hermione and Queen Katherine, everything that 
 can make a woman lovely is given by the poet to 
 Imogen : quick and exquisite feelings, brightness of 
 intellect, delicate imagination, energy to hate evil, and 
 to right what is wrong, scorn for what is mean or 
 rude, culture, dainty womanly accomplishments, the 
 gift of song, a capacity for exquisite happiness, and no 
 less sensitiveness to the sharpness of sorrow, a power 
 of quick recovery from disaster when the warmth of 
 love breathes upon her once more, beauty of a type 
 which is noble and refined. And her lost brothers 
 are gallant youths, bred happily far from the court, in 
 wilds where their generous instincts and love of free- 
 dom and activity find innocent if insufficient modes 
 of gratification. As in all the works of this period, an 
 open-air feeling pervades a great part of the drama ; 
 nature, itself joyous and free, ministers to what is 
 beautiful, simple, or heroic in man, while yet by Shak- 
 spere nature alone is never anywhere conceived as 
 sufficient to satisfy the heart or the imagination of a 
 human being. With reconciliation and reunion this, 
 like the other Romances, closes. Even Iachimo — 
 a kind of less absolutely evil Iago, suitable to comedy 
 instead of tragedy — must repent and be forgiven. 
 
 38. The Tempest was probably written late in 
 the year 1610. A few months previously had appeared 
 an account of the wreck of Sir George Somers' ship in 
 a tempest off the Bermudas, entitled A Discovery of 
 the Bermudas, otherwise called the He of JDivels, &>c, 
 written by Silvester Jourdan. Shakspere (Act I. Sc. 
 ii. L. 229) makes mention of "the still-vexed Ber- 
 moothes." Several points of resemblance render it 
 probable that Shakspere in writing the play had Jcur- 
 dan's tract before him. (See preface to Clarendon 
 Press edition of The Tempest, pp. 6, 7.) Add to this, 
 that in following Greene's Pandoslo, as Shakspere does 
 in his Wintc/s Tale (acted 161 1), the dramatist turns
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. /149 
 
 aside from it in one important particular — Perdita is 
 not cast adrift at sea in a rudderless boat. Why? 
 Probably because Shakspere had already made use of 
 this incident in The Tempest. In the Induction to 
 Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, 16 14, there is what seems 
 an allusion to Shakspere's Caliban of The Tempest: 
 " If there be never a Servant-monster i' the Fayre who 
 can helpe it, he sayes ; nor a nest of Antiques ? He 
 is loth to make Nature afraid in his Playes, like those 
 that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries." 
 The upward limit of date is fixed by a passage (Act 
 II. Sc. i. L. 147-157) in which Gonzalo describes his 
 imaginary commonwealth, borrowed from Florio's 
 translation of Montaigne's Essays, published 1603. 
 The striking resemblance of Shakspere's lines begin- 
 ning "The cloud-capt towers" (Act IV. Sc. i. L. 152) 
 to a passage in the Earl of Stirling's Tragedie of 
 Darius (Edinburgh 1603, London 1604) should also 
 be noted. 
 
 Beyond the suggestions obtained from Jourdan's 
 tract no source of the story of the play can be pointed 
 out. Mention was made by the poet Collins of a tale 
 called Aurelio and Isabella containing the same inci- 
 dents, but Collins was in this point mistaken ; he may, 
 however, have seen some other Italian story which re- 
 sembled The Tempest. The name Setebos (Sycorax's 
 god, Act I. Sc. ii. L. 373), and perhaps other names 
 of persons, Shakspere found in Eden's History of 
 Travaile, 1577. In the absence of evidence as to 
 a source of the play, the most interesting and im- 
 portant fact in connection with the subject is that 
 the German dramatist Jacob Ayrer, who died in 
 1605, was author of a play, Die schone Sidea, the 
 plot of which has so much in common with the 
 plot of The Tempest that it has been supposed that 
 they must have had the same original (see Clarendon 
 Press edition of The Tempest, preface, p. 13). In 
 both appear a magician, his only daughter, and an 
 attendant spirit ; in both, the son of his enemy 
 becomes the magician's prisoner, his sword being ren- '
 
 150 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 dered powerless by magic, and he is made the bearer 
 of logs for his mistress ; in both the story ends with 
 reconciliation and the happiness of the lovers. English 
 actors were in Ayrer's town, Niirnberg, in 1604 and 
 1606 ; in 16 13, English actors performed in German 
 a Sedea. Possibly Shakspere, through some company 
 acting in Germany, may have received an account of 
 Ayrer's play. 
 
 The Tempest, although far from lacking dramatic or 
 human interest, has something in its spirit of the 
 nature of a clear and solemn vision. It expresses 
 Shakspere's highest and serenest view of life, Pros- 
 pero, the great enchanter, is altogether the opposite of 
 the vulgar magician. With command over the ele- 
 mental powers, which study has brought to him, he 
 possesses moral grandeur, and a command over himself, 
 in spite of occasional fits of involuntary abstraction 
 and of intellectual impatience ; he looks down on life, 
 and sees through it, yet will not refuse to take his 
 part in it. In Shakspere's early play of supernatural 
 agencies — A Midsummer Nights Dream — the "human 
 mortals" were made the sport of the frolic-loving 
 elves ; here the supernatural powers attend on and 
 obey their ruler, man. It has been suggested that 
 Prospero, the great enchanter, is Shakspere himself, 
 and that when he breaks his staff, drowns his book, 
 and dismisses his airy spirits, going back to the duties 
 of his dukedom, Shakspere was thinking of his own 
 resigning of his powers of imaginative enchantment, 
 his parting from the theatre, where his attendant 
 spirits had played their parts, and his return to Strat- 
 ford. 
 
 The persons in this play, while remaining real and 
 living, are conceived in a more abstract way, more as 
 types than those in any other work of Shakspere. 
 Prospero is the highest wisdom and moral attainment ; 
 Gonzalo is humorous common-sense incarnate d ; all 
 thnt- io meanest and tnosi diisyit able appears in the 
 wretched conspirators ; Miranda, whose name seems 
 to suggest wonder, is almost an elemental being,
 
 VI.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 151 
 
 framed in the purest and simplest type of woman- 
 hood, yet made substantial by contrast with Ariel, who 
 is an unbodied joy, too much a creature of light and 
 air to know human affection or human sorrow; Caliban 
 — the name formed from cannibal (?) — stands at the 
 other extreme, with all the elements in him — appetites, 
 intellect, even imagination — out of which man emerges 
 into early civilisation, but with a moral nature that is 
 still gross and malignant. Over all presides Prospero 
 like a providence. Ajid^thespjrit of reconciliation, 
 of forgiveness, harrrfoliisiii^~tn^e~cb"ntentio ns""of men, 
 appears jn 'l'/ie' Tempest in" tliS "Saihenoble" manner 
 TriafTt "appears 'In l ine rtMter^T'l&le* Vymbeline, and 
 Henry VIII. (See Mr. Brooke's Primer : English 
 Literature, ]>p. 86, 87.) 
 
 Shakspere seems in this play, among other things, 
 . consider the questipn : What is true freedom ? 
 Ariel, incapable of human bonds, pants for liberty; 
 Caliban sings his drunken song of freedom, and con- 
 es to throw off the yoke of Prospero's rule ; but 
 Ferdinand, the lover, finds true freedom in service 
 to her he loves ; and Prospero, resigning hisi magic 
 powers, finds it in the law of human duty. v ^* 
 
 The conception of Caliban, it may be noted, had 
 occurred to Shakspere when he wrote Troilus and 
 Cressida (Act III. Sc. hi. L. 264). The action of The 
 Tempest is comprised within three hours. 
 
 39. The Winter's Tale was seen at the Globe on 
 May 15, 161 1, by Dr. Forman, and is described in 
 his MS. Booke of Plaies and Notes thereof. The versi- 
 fication is that of Shakspere's latest group of plays ; 
 no five-measure lines are rhymed ; run-on lines and 
 double endings are numerous. The tone and feeling 
 of The Winter's Tale place it in the same period with 
 The Tempest and Cymbeline ; its breezy air is surely 
 that which blew over Warwickshire fields upon Shak- 
 spere now returned to Stratford ; its country lads and 
 lasses, and their junketings, are those with which the 
 poet had in a happy spirit renewed his acquaintance. 
 It is perhaps the last complete play that Shakspere wrote.
 
 152 SHAKSPERE. [CHAP. 
 
 Like the romantic pastoral of Shakspere's mid-period 
 of authorship, As You Like It, this comedy is founded 
 upon the tale of an early contemporary of the poet — 
 upon Greene's Pandosto, or, as it was afterwards named, 
 Dorastus and Fawnia, first published in 1588. The 
 idea of introducing Time as a chorus comes from 
 Greene, and all the principal characters, except 
 Paulina and the incomparable rogue Autolycus. As 
 if to prove his right to deal as he pleased with the 
 dramatic unity of time, Shakspere includes all the 
 incidents of The Tempest within the period of three 
 hours, while the spectator of The Winter's Tale sees 
 Perdita first as a babe, and afterwards as a maiden of 
 sixteen about to become a wife. In Greene's tale, 
 Bellaria, whom Shakspere has named Hermione, dies 
 upon hearing of the loss of her son ; in Shakspere's 
 play she lives to be reunited to her repentant 
 husband. 
 
 After his manner, Shakspere drives forward to what 
 chiefly interests him in the subject. The jealousy of 
 Leontes is not a detailed dramatic study like the love 
 and jealousy of Othello. It is a gross madness which 
 mounts to the brain, and turns Leontes' whole nature 
 into unreasoning passion. The character of the noble 
 sufferer Hermione is that with which the dramatist is 
 above all concerned — this first ; and, secondly, the 
 grace, beauty, and girlish happiness of Perdita ; while 
 of the subordinate persons of the dfama, Shakspere 
 delights chiefly in his own creation, Autolycus, the 
 most charming of rogues and rovers. Hermione may 
 be placed side by side with the Queen Katharine of 
 Henry VIII., which play belongs to this period. 
 Both are noble sufferers, who by the dignity and purity 
 of their natures transcend all feeling of vulgar resent- 
 ment. Deep and even quick feeling never renders 
 Hermione incapable of an admirable justice, nor 
 deprives her of a true sense of pity for him who so 
 gravely wrongs both her and himself. The meeting of 
 kindred, with forgiveness and reconciliation, if these are 
 called for by past offences, forms the common ending
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 153 
 
 of the last plays of Shakspere. The return to life of 
 the lost Hermione is, as it were, set visibly before our 
 eyes ; we assist at the reanimating of one who had 
 become a monumental memory ; for her recovered 
 daughter she has words of tenderness ; her husband 
 she embraces in silence, and we know that the for- 
 giveness is without reserve. 
 
 Perdita belongs to the group of exquisite youthful 
 figures set over against those of their graver and 
 sadder elders in the plays of this period. She is one 
 of the same company with Miranda and Marina, and 
 the youthful sons of Cymbeline. The shepherdess- 
 princess, " queen of curds and cream," is less a vision 
 than Miranda, the child of wonder, but more perhaps 
 a creature of this earth. There is nothing lovelier or 
 more innocently joyous in poetry than Perdita at the 
 rustic merry-making, sharing her flowers with old and 
 young. And in Florizel she has found a lover, full of 
 the innocence and chivalry of unstained early man- 
 hood. 
 
 Autolycus stands by himself among the creations of 
 the dramatist. The art of thieving as practised by 
 Him is no crime, but the gift of some knavish god. 
 He does not trample on the laws of morality, but 
 dances or leaps over them with so nimble a foot that 
 we forbear to stay him. In the sad world which con- 
 tains a Leontes and can lose a Mamillius, so light- 
 hearted a wanderer must be pardoned even if he be 
 light-fingered, and sometimes mistakes for his own 
 the sheet bleaching on the hedge, which happens to 
 be ours. The name Autolycus Shakspere probably 
 found in Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. 
 
 40. King Henry VIII., as we learn from Sir 
 Henry Wotton and from T. Lorking, was being enacted 
 as a new play at the Globe Theatre, under the name 
 All is True, in June, 1613, when some burning paper 
 shot off from a cannon set fire to the thatch and 
 occasioned the destruction of the building. It has 
 been shown conclusively by Mr. Spedding ( Gentlemen 's 
 Magazine, Aug., 1850, reprinted in New Shakspere
 
 154 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 Society's Transactions, 1874) that the play is in part 
 from Shakspere's hand, in part from Fletcher's. A 
 German critic (Hertzberg) has described Henry VIII. 
 as " a chronicle-history with three and a half catas- 
 trophes, varied by a marriage and a coronation pageant, 
 ending abruptly with the baptism of a child." It is 
 indeed incoherent in structure. After all our sym- 
 pathies have been engaged upon the side of the 
 wronged Queen Katharine, we are called upon to 
 rejoice in the marriage triumph of her rival, Anne 
 Bullen. " The greater part of the fifth act, in which 
 the interest ought to be gathering to a head, is occupied 
 with matters in which we have not been prepared to 
 take any interest by what went before, and on which 
 no interest is reflected by what comes after." But 
 viewed from another side, that of its metrical work- 
 manship, the play is equally deficient in unity, and 
 indeed betrays unmistakably the presence of two 
 writers. Fletcher's verse had certain strongly-marked 
 characteristics, one of which is the very frequent oc- 
 currence of double endings. A portion of Henry VIII. 
 is written in the verse of Fletcher, and a portion as 
 certainly in Shakspere's verse. Going over the play, 
 scene by scene, Mr. Spedding arrived at the following 
 result : 
 
 Shakspere's part : Act I. Sc. i., ii. ; Act II. Sc. hi., iv. ; 
 Act III. Sc. ii. (to exit of the king), Act V. Sc. i. 
 The rest of the play is by Fletcher. 
 
 In Shakspere's part the proportion of double 
 endings is 1 to 3 ; in Fletcher's, 1 to 17 (Spedding) ; 
 in Shakspere's part the proportion of unstopt lines is 
 1 to 2-03; in Fletcher's, 1 to 379 (Furnival) ; in 
 Shakspere's part there are 45 light endings and 37 
 weak endings ; in Fletcher's, 7 light endings and 1 
 weak ending (Ingram) ; in Shakspere's part there are 
 six rhymes, ah accidental; in Fletcher's, ten rhymes 
 (Fleay). 
 
 Upon what plan were the joint labours of Shak- 
 spere and Fletcher conducted ? The following is Mr. 
 Spedding's conjecture : " It was not unusual in those
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 155 
 
 days, when a play was wanted in a hurry, to set two or 
 three, or even four hands, at work upon it ; and the 
 occasion of the Princess Elizabeth's marriage (Feb- 
 ruary, 1 61 2-16 13) may very likely have suggested the 
 production of a play representing the marriage of 
 Henry VIII. and Anne Bullen I should con- 
 jecture that Shakspere had conceived the idea of a 
 great historical drama on the subject of Henry VIII., 
 which would have included the divorce of Katharine, 
 the fall of Wolsey, the rise of Cranmer, the coronation 
 of Anne Bullen, and the final separation of the English 
 from the Romish Church, which being the one great 
 historical event of the reign, would naturally be 
 chosen as the focus of poetic interest ; that he had 
 proceeded in the execution of this idea as far, perhaps, 
 
 as the third act when finding that his fellows 
 
 of the Globe were in distress for a new play to honour 
 the marriage of the Lady Elizabeth with, he thought 
 that his half-finished work might help them, and ac- 
 cordingly handed them his manuscript to make what 
 they could of it ; that they put it into the hands of 
 Fletcher (already in high repute as a popular and 
 expeditious playwright), who, finding the original 
 design not very suitable to the occasion, and utterly 
 beyond his capacity, expanded the three acts into five, 
 by interspersing scenes of show and magnificence, and 
 passages of description and long poetical conversations, 
 in which his strength lay .... and so turned out a 
 splendid ' historical masque or show-play,' which was, 
 no doubt, very popular then, as it has been ever since." 
 There are three great figures in the play clearly and 
 strongly conceived by Shakspere : The King, Queen 
 Katharine, and Cardinal Wolsey. The Queen is one 
 of the noble, long-enduring sufferers, just-minded, 
 disinterested, truly charitable, who give their moral 
 gravity and grandeur to Shakspere's last plays. She 
 has clear-sighted penetration to see through the Car- 
 dinal's cunning practice, and a lofty indignation against 
 what is base, but no unworthy personal resentment. 
 Henry, if we judge him sternly, is cruel and self-
 
 156 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 indulgent ; but Shakspere will hardly allow us to judge 
 Henry sternly. He is a lordly figure, with a full, 
 abounding strength of nature, a self-confidence, an 
 ease and mastery of life, a power of effortless sway, 
 and seems born to pass on in triumph over those who 
 have fallen and are afflicted. Wolsey is drawn with 
 superb power : ambition, fraud, vindictiveness, have 
 made him their own, yet cannot quite ruin a nature 
 possessed of noble qualities. It is hard at first to 
 refuse to Shakspere the authorship of Wolsey's famous 
 soliloquy in which he bids his greatness farewell 
 (Act III. Sc. ii. L. 350-372), but it is certainly 
 Fletcher's, and when one has perceived this, one per- 
 ceives also that it was an error ever to suppose it 
 written in Shakspere's manner. The scene in which 
 the vision appears to the dying Queen is also Fletcher's, 
 and in his highest style. We can see from the play 
 that if Shakspere had returned at the age of fifty to 
 the historical drama, the works written then would 
 have been greater in moral grandeur than those written 
 from his thirtieth to his thirty-fifth years. 
 
 Henry VIII., as the verse tests show, was probably 
 written after Winter's Tale, 161 1, and it must of 
 course have been written before June 16 13. The 
 name All is True, under which it was acted in that 
 year, is referred to in the prologue to the play. 
 Of doubtful plays two may be noticed : 
 41. Doubtful Plays.— (i.) The Ttvo Noble Kinsmen 
 was printed in quarto, 1634, on the title-page of which 
 edition the play is stated to have been written by " the 
 admirable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and 
 Mr. William Shakspeare." One feels upon reading it 
 that there are certainly two authors. Fletcher's hand 
 is present beyond any doubt ; and if the second writer 
 were not Shakspere, we have to ask wonderingly : Who 
 could he have been ? Who could have written in a 
 manner which is so like the manner of Cymbeline, 
 except the author of Cymbeli//e? A division of the 
 play between the two writers was made by Mr. Hick- 
 son, chiefly upon grounds furnished by the differences
 
 vi.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 157 
 
 01 style. The following portions were assigned by him 
 to Shakspere : Act I., except parts of Sc. ii., which 
 was either written by Shakspere and Fletcher in con- 
 junction, or by Fletcher, and revised by Shakspere ; 
 Act II. Sc. i. ; Act III. Sc. i., ii. • Act IV. Sc. iii. ; 
 Act V. (except Sc. ii). This division was subse- 
 quently confirmed by Mr. Fleay's application of the 
 double-ending test, by Mr. Furnivall's application of 
 the stopped-line test, and by Professor Ingram's appli- 
 cation of the weak-ending test. It must be noted, 
 however, that while the evidence of the presence of 
 two hands in the play is convincing, the most com- 
 petent critics hesitate to make the assertion that 
 either of the writers was Shakspere. The following 
 figures exhibit the results of the verse test : Light 
 endings, Shakspere's part, 1 in 21 ; Fletcher's, 1 in 
 445 ; weak endings, Shakspere's part, 1 in 32, Flet- 
 cher's, 1 in 1426. Unstopped lines, Shakspere's part, 
 1 in 2'i ; Fletcher's, 1 in 5 "26. Double endings, 
 Shakspere's part, 1 in 3 "4 ; Fletcher's, 1 in 1 "9. In 
 the main the division made by Professor Spalding in 
 his Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of Two Noble 
 Kinsmen (reprinted by the New Shakspere Society, 
 1876), and by Mr. Littledale in his admirable edition 
 of the play (New Shakspere Society, 1876) agrees 
 with that of Mr. Hickson. 
 
 The Shakspere portions of the play will repay a 
 careful study. The characterisation may be faint, but 
 there are animated pieces of dialogue, magnificent 
 single speeches, and remarkable Shaksperian turns of 
 expression and imagery. The story is derived from 
 Chaucer's Knightes Tale. The underplot of Fletcher, 
 made up of indecency and of trash in about equal 
 proportions, is but slightly connected with the nobler 
 portion of the drama. Shakspere's portion was 
 probably written before his latest fragment — that of 
 Henry VIII. He was at this time abandoning dra- 
 matic authorship, and seems to have been willing 
 that Fletcher should be the heir to his genius. 
 
 (ii.) Edxvard III. — It has been held by some critics
 
 IS 8 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 that, in this play, the episode of King Edward's 
 attempt upon the honour of the Countess of Salis- 
 bury — nobly repulsed by her — is by Shakspere, i.e. 
 from the entrance of the King, Act I. Sc. ii. to end of 
 Act II. The play was entered in the Stationers' 
 register, Dec. i, 1595, and was published in the follow- 
 ing year. If, therefore, any portion was from Shakspere's 
 hand, it is of early date. The question of Shak- 
 spere's authorship of the episode must be said to 
 remain up to the present in doubt. Edward III. is 
 reprinted in the Tauchnitz edition of Doubtful Plays 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 (iii.) Other plays which have been ascribed to 
 Shakspere are Fair Emm, George-a-Green, The Merry 
 Devil of Edmonton, Arden of Fever sham, Mucedorus, 
 The Birth of Merlin, ' Larum for London, Warning for 
 Fair Women. Add the list from the Third Folio 
 (p. 30). If any one of these has any claim to be 
 considered, even in part, Shakspere's, it is the York- 
 shire Tragedy. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SHAKSPERE FROM 1616 TO 1S77. 
 
 i. 16x6 to 1642. — During Shakspere's life he was 
 upon the whole the most steadily popular playwright 
 of his time ; but for awhile the slighter sentiment and 
 the novel plots of Beaumont and Fletcher may have 
 proved more attractive with the public. Ben Jonson, 
 who survived Shakspere for many years, gathered 
 about him a school of younger writers, and though 
 never a great favourite with the people, was looked up 
 to as a master by those who cared more for vigorous 
 thought and a scholarly style than for human passion 
 and imaginative truth. The publication, however, of 
 two folio editions of Shakspere's plays within nine 
 years of each other, proves the interest still taken in
 
 vn.] HIS PLAYS AND POEMS. 159 
 
 his writings ; and prefixed to the second folio is an 
 enthusiastic tribute from a young poet, whose homage 
 was alone worth that of a multitude— the first published 
 verses of John Milton. We know also that one whom 
 Milton did not honour — Charles I. — agreed with 
 Milton in honouring Shakspere, and that his plays were 
 frequently represented at St. James's and Whitehall. 
 
 2. The Restoration Period. — The civil wars 
 and the victory of Puritanism were, of course, un- 
 favourable to the culture of dramatic poetry. In 
 1642 the theatres were closed, and they remained 
 so (excepting some irregular performances) until the 
 latter end of the year 1659. During Charles II.'s 
 reign there were two currents of feeling with reference 
 to Shakspere and the Elizabethan drama ; it was im- 
 possible to deny the power and attraction of the works 
 of the greatest English dramatic poet, but French 
 tastes had begun to prevail, and much in Shakspere 
 appeared antiquated, rude, inartistic, almost barbarous. 
 Davenant, who was not unwilling to be supposed a 
 natural son of Shakspere, revived the great tragedies 
 and some of the comedies and histories ; Killi°rew's 
 new theatre opened with Henry IV.; the wonderful 
 actor Betterton appeared as Hamlet in the first play 
 of Shakspere represented after the Restoration, and 
 (actresses now taking the female parts) Mrs. Betterton 
 played with her husband. For her Ophelia hints 
 were received from Davenant, drawn from his memory 
 of the boy-Ophelias of an earlier time ; but her most 
 celebrated Shaksperian character was Lady Macbeth. 
 There is abundant evidence of Shakspere's popularity 
 after the Restoration ; it now, however, began to be 
 thought needful to reform Shakspere to suit the taste 
 of a refined and ingenious public. The attractions of 
 spectacle and music were added to those of dramatic 
 poetry. Dryden and Davenant altered The Tempest 
 into The Enchanted Island, with song and show, with 
 new characters ridiculously out of keeping with the 
 original play, and the added zest of indecency. The 
 method of improving Shakspere to please the town
 
 l6o SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 continued to be applied to his plays with remorseless 
 zeal during a long period of time. Songs were added 
 to Macbeth ; Much Ado about Nothing and Measure 
 for Measure were mingled, and out of the mingled 
 material was produced Davenant's Law against Lovers. 
 Dennis metamorphosed The Merry Wives into 
 The Comical Gallant ; Durfey altered Cymbeline ; 
 Richard LL. became The Sicilian Usurper ; Tate im- 
 proved upon King Lear by introducing love-passages 
 between Edgar and Cordelia, and giving the play 
 a happy ending ; Lord Lansdowne made a comic 
 personage of Shylock; Colley Cibber rehandled 
 Richard II L., and introduced some of the rants and 
 time-honoured hits which have been repeated on 
 the stage until our own day. Dryden (to return 
 to Restoration times) both praises and depreciates 
 Shakspere, but as he grew older his admiration for 
 Shakspere increased ; the dramatic work of his own, 
 which Dryden most highly valued, All for Love, is 
 written in professed imitation of " the divine Shak- 
 spere;" and his prose prefaces, which are often critical 
 essays, contain some admirable remarks upon the 
 genius of his great predecessor. Some of Mr. Pepys's 
 theatrical notes in his Diary, refer to plays of Shak- 
 spere, which he deals with in a most amusing spirit 
 of superiority: "September 29, 1662. To the 
 Kings Theatre, where we saw Midsummer JVight's 
 Dream, which I had never seen before, nor shall ever 
 again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that 
 ever I saw in my life." 
 
 3. Shakspere Scholarship, 1700-1750. — In 
 1709 appeared the first critical edition of Shakspere's 
 plays, that by Nicholas Rowe ; he did something 
 towards ascertaining the facts of Shakspere's life, and 
 corrected a large number of the grosser errors of the 
 folios. Rowe was succeeded as an editor by Pope in 
 1725 ; his six quarto volumes are more admirable from 
 a bibliographical than from a literary point of view ; 
 his admiration of Shakspere was real, but his sympathy 
 was imperfect ; his emendations are in the spirit of
 
 VII.] FROM 1616 TO 1877. 161 
 
 eighteenth century literature, not in the Elizabethan 
 spirit. Theobald, the first hero of Pope's Dunciad, 
 " piddling Tibbald ! " is infinitely a better editor than 
 Pope ; if he amended the text often arbitrarily, on 
 the other hand he first collated in anything like a 
 scholarly manner the early copies of the plays. To 
 his ingenuity as an emendator we owe the celebrated 
 " 'a babbled of green fields," in the passage which 
 tells of Falstaff's death. The merit of Theobald's 
 edition, 1733, was recognised, and it sold largely. 
 Hanmer's edition, remarkable like Pope's for its ex- 
 ternal splendour, followed in 1744, and three years 
 later appeared that of Warburton. Warburton was 
 learned, but arrogant, and treats Shakspere with the 
 contemptuousness a harsh schoolmaster might exhibit 
 toward a naughty urchin. 
 
 4. Garrick. — Such were the editions of the first 
 half of the last century. The second half was a period 
 of laborious scholarship and of industrious research 
 after everything which could throw light on Shakspere's 
 life or illustrate his writings. Between the two periods 
 rose suddenly to eminence the great actor David 
 Garrick. The immediate successors of Betterton were 
 Booth, famous for his Othello, his rival Wilks, who 
 played Hamlet, and Cibber, who appeared as his own 
 Richard III., as Iago, and as Cardinal Wolsey. On 
 October 19, 1 741, at the theatre in Goodman's Fields, 
 a young actor played for the first time Richard III. 
 In a few weeks Garrick had become famous. The 
 following year in Ireland, the hot summer and the young 
 actor between them, produced what was named " The 
 Garrick Fever." " That young man," said Pope, 
 " never had his equal as an actor, and will never have 
 a rival." In September, 1769, he assisted at a jubilee 
 held in honour of Shakspere at Stratford-on-Avon. 
 The Garrick fever had resulted in a Shakspere fever. 
 Yet Garrick, it must be confessed, took unwarrantable 
 liberties with the language and the plots of the plays, 
 himself confessing that his adaptation of Hamlet was 
 " the most impudent thing he ever did." 
 
 F
 
 1 62 SHAKSPERE. [chap. 
 
 5. Shakspere Scholarship, 1750-1800.— The 
 
 editions of the second half of the eighteenth century, 
 begin with that of Dr. Johnson, 1765. Johnson saw 
 some of the substantial excellencies of Shakspere, but 
 his strong common sense was of a prosaic kind, and 
 he often takes Shakspere to task for offences which 
 only touch such prosaic common sense. As a moralist 
 he was especially shocked at Shakspere's not rewarding 
 virtue and punishing vice in the persons of his dramas 
 with an orthodox regularity. Capell's edition in 1768, 
 his " Notes and Various Readings," and his " School 
 of Shakspere," were the labours of love of a very 
 learned man, who obscured his merits by a strange 
 and contorted style of writing. The work of Johnson 
 was united with that of Steevens, five years later; 
 Steevens was acute, witty, and sometimes brilliant, but 
 conceited, utterly devoid of reverence for Shakspere, 
 and without a true feeling for poetry. His adversary, 
 Malone, was duller, but more industrious, more honest, 
 and less vain. Steevens published a reprint of the 
 quartos (1766), and Six Old Plays the originals on 
 which Shakspere founded some of his dramas, in 1779. 
 Malone's first edition appeared in 1790 ; it contained 
 his own notes with those of his predecessors; and in 
 1803, 1813, and 1821, followed Variorum Editions, 
 the last of these, called BosiveWs Malone, being the 
 most complete. Malone, unfortunately, had a very 
 imperfect ear for verse. 
 
 6. Ireland. — -Volumes of notes and criticism, of 
 which perhaps the best known is Farmer's Essay 
 on the Learning of Shakspere, became numerous in 
 the second half of the eighteenth century. In the 
 last decade of that century Shakspere scholars were 
 startled by the announcement of the discovery of 
 Shakspere autographs, letters, conundrums, confes- 
 sion of faith, and what not, of inestimable literary 
 value ; finally, a drama by Shakspere — Vortigem 
 — was forthcoming, and was brought upon the stage by 
 Kemble. The discoverer was a young man named 
 W. H. Ireland, whose father, Samuel Ireland, was 
 deceived, not himself a deceiver. Many people be-
 
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