diff options
Diffstat (limited to '27264-8.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 27264-8.txt | 6778 |
1 files changed, 6778 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/27264-8.txt b/27264-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f42e880 --- /dev/null +++ b/27264-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6778 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Shakespeare, by John Masefield + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: William Shakespeare + +Author: John Masefield + +Release Date: November 15, 2008 [EBook #27264] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE *** + + + + +Produced by David Clarke, Carla Foust and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +Transcriber's note + + +Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. Obvious +printer errors have been corrected, and are listed at the end. + +For the chapter heading, "The Second Part of King Henry IV", the Table +of Contents lists it as "King Henry IV, Part II"; this was not changed. +In addition other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's +spelling has been maintained. + + + + + HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY + OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE + + BY JOHN MASEFIELD + + LONDON + + WILLIAMS & NORGATE + + HENRY HOLT & Co., NEW YORK + CANADA: WM. BRIGGS, TORONTO + INDIA: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD. + + + + + UNIVERSITY + + LIBRARY + + OF + + MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + + _Editors:_ + + HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. + + PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.LITT., + LL.D., F.B.A. + + PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. + + PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. + (Columbia University, U.S.A.) + + + NEW YORK + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + + + WILLIAM + SHAKESPEARE + + BY + + JOHN MASEFIELD + +AUTHOR OF "THE TRAGEDY OF POMPEY THE GREAT," "MULTITUDE AND SOLITUDE," +"LOST ENDEAVOUR," "CAPTAIN MARGARET," "THE TRAGEDY OF NAN," ETC. + + NEW AND REVISED EDITION + + LONDON + + WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + + + + + CONTENTS + + + CHAP. PAGE + + I THE LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 9 + + II THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRES 18 + + III THE PLAYS 23 + + Love's Labour's Lost 24 + + The Two Gentlemen of Verona 34 + + The Comedy of Errors 43 + + Titus Andronicus 49 + + King Henry VI, Part I 51 + + " " " " II 54 + + " " " " III 60 + + A Midsummer Night's Dream 63 + + Romeo and Juliet 67 + + King John 75 + + King Richard II 86 + + King Richard III 93 + + The Merchant of Venice 102 + + The Taming of the Shrew 105 + + King Henry IV, Part I 109 + + " " " " II 114 + + King Henry V 120 + + The Merry Wives of Windsor 123 + + As You Like It 128 + + Much Ado About Nothing 133 + + Twelfth Night 138 + + All's Well that Ends Well 144 + + Julius Cęsar 149 + + Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 157 + + Troilus and Cressida 168 + + Measure for Measure 174 + + Othello, the Moor of Venice 180 + + King Lear 186 + + Macbeth 195 + + Antony and Cleopatra 202 + + Coriolanus 208 + + Timon of Athens 214 + + Pericles, Prince of Tyre 218 + + Cymbeline 223 + + The Winter's Tale 226 + + The Tempest 231 + + King Henry VIII 235 + + WORK ATTRIBUTED TO SHAKESPEARE 238 + + THE POEMS: + + Venus and Adonis 241 + + The Rape of Lucrece 242 + + The Passionate Pilgrim 244 + + The Sonnets 244 + + The Phoenix and the Turtle 249 + + AUTHOR'S NOTE 250 + + INDEX 253 + + + + +WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE + + +Stratford-on-Avon is cleaner, better paved, and perhaps more populous +than it was in Shakespeare's time. Several streets of mean red-brick +houses have been built during the last half century. Hotels, tea rooms, +refreshment rooms, and the shops where the tripper may buy things to +remind him that he has been where greatness lived, give the place an air +at once prosperous and parasitic. The town contains a few comely old +buildings. The Shakespeare house, a detached double dwelling, once the +home of the poet's father, stands on the north side of Henley Street. A +room on the first floor, at the western end, is shown to visitors as the +room in which the poet was born. There is not the slightest evidence to +show that he was born there. One scanty scrap of fact exists to suggest +that he was born at the eastern end. The two dwellings have now been +converted into one, which serves as a museum. New Place, the house where +Shakespeare died, was pulled down in the middle of the eighteenth +century. For one museum the less let us be duly thankful. + +The church in which Shakespeare, his wife, and little son are buried +stands near the river. It is a beautiful building of a type common in +the Cotswold country. It is rather larger and rather more profusely +carved than most. Damp, or some mildness in the stone, has given much of +the ornament a weathered look. Shakespeare is buried seventeen feet down +near the north wall of the chancel. His wife is buried in another grave +a few feet from him. + +The country about Stratford is uninteresting, pretty, and well watered. +A few miles away the Cotswold hills rise. They have a bold beauty, very +pleasant after the flatness of the plain. The wolds towards Stratford +grow many oaks and beeches. Farther east, they are wilder and barer. +Little brooks spring up among the hills. The nooks and valleys are +planted with orchards. Old, grey Cotswold farmhouses, and little, grey, +lovely Cotswold villages show that in Shakespeare's time the country was +prosperous and alive. It was sheep country then. The wolds were sheep +walks. Life took thought for Shakespeare. She bred him, mind and bone, +in a two-fold district of hill and valley, where country life was at its +best and the beauty of England at its bravest. Afterwards she placed him +where there was the most and the best life of his time. Work so calm as +his can only have come from a happy nature, happily fated. Life made a +golden day for her golden soul. The English blessed by that soul have +raised no theatre for the playing of the soul's thanksgiving. + +Legends about Shakespeare began to spring up in Stratford as soon as +there was a demand for them. Legends are a stupid man's excuse for his +want of understanding. They are not evidence. Setting aside the legends, +the lies, the surmises and the imputations, several uninteresting things +are certainly known about him. + +We know that he was the first son and third child of John Shakespeare, a +country trader settled at Stratford, and of Mary his wife; that he was +baptised on the 26th April, 1564; and that in 1582 he got with child a +woman named Anne or Agnes Hathaway, eight years older than himself. Her +relatives saw to it that he married her. A daughter (Susanna) was born +to him in May 1583, less than six months after the marriage. In January +1585 twins were born to him, a son (Hamnet, who died in 1596) and a +daughter (Judith). + +At this point he disappears. Legend, written down from a hundred to a +hundred and sixty years after the event, says that he was driven out of +the county for poaching, that he was a country school-master, that he +made a "very bitter" ballad upon a landlord, that he tramped to London, +that he held horses outside the theatre doors, and that at last he was +received into a theatrical company "in a very mean rank." This is all +legend, not evidence. That he was a lawyer's clerk, a soldier in the Low +Countries, a seaman, or a printer, as some have written books to attempt +to show, is not evidence, nor legend, but wild surmise. It might be +urged, with as great likelihood, that he became a king, an ancient +Roman, a tapster or a brothel keeper. + +It is fairly certain that the company which first received him was the +Earl of Leicester's company, then performing at The Theatre in +Shoreditch. The company changed its patron and its theatre several +times, but Shakespeare, having been admitted to it, stayed with it +throughout his theatrical career. He acted with it at The Theatre, at +the Rose and Globe Theatres, at the Court, at the Inns of Court, and +possibly on many stages in the provinces. For many years he professed +the quality of actor. Legend says that he acted well in what are called +"character parts." Soon after his entrance into the profession he began +to show a talent for improving the plays of others. + +Nothing interesting is known of his subsequent life, except that he +wrote great poetry and made money by it. It is plain that he was a +shrewd, careful, and capable man of affairs, and that he cared, as all +wise men care, for rank and an honourable state. He strove with a noble +industry to obtain these and succeeded. He prospered, he bought New +Place at Stratford, he invested in land, in theatre shares and in +houses. During the last few years of his life he retired to New Place, +where he led the life of a country gentleman. He died there on the 23rd +April, 1616, aged fifty-two years. The cause of his death is not known. +His wife and daughters survived him. + +Little is known of his human relationships. He is described as "gentle." +Had he been not gentle we should know more of him. Ben Jonson "loved +the man," and says that "he was, indeed, honest and of an open and free +nature." John Webster speaks of his "right happy and copious industry." +An actor who wrote more than thirty plays during twenty years of +rehearsing, acting, and theatre management, can have had little time for +mixing with the world. + +That we know little of his human relationships is one of the blessed +facts about him. That we conjecture much is the penalty a nation pays +for failing to know her genius when he appears. + +Three portraits--a bust, an engraving, and a painting--have some claim +to be considered as genuine portraits of Shakespeare. The first of these +is the coloured half-length bust on the chancel wall in Stratford +Church. This was made by one Gerard Janssen, a stonemason of some +repute. It was placed in the church within seven years of the poet's +death. It is a crude work of art; but it shows plainly that the artist +had before him (in vision or in the flesh) a man of unusual vivacity of +mind. The face is that of an aloof and sunny spirit, full of energy and +effectiveness. Another portrait is that engraved for the title page of +the first folio, published in 1623. The engraving is by Martin +Droeshout, who was fifteen years old when Shakespeare died, and +(perhaps) about twenty-two when he made the engraving. It is a crude +work of art, but it shows plainly that the artist had before him the +representation of an unusual man. + +It is possible that the representation from which he engraved his plate +was a painting on panel, now at Stratford. This painting (discovered in +1840) is now called "the Droeshout portrait." It is supposed to +represent the Shakespeare of the year 1609. In the absence of proof, all +that can be said of it is that it is certainly a work of the early +seventeenth century, and that it looks as though it were the original of +the engraving. No other "portrait of Shakespeare" has any claim to be +considered as even a doubtful likeness. + +There are, unfortunately, many graven images of Shakespeare. They are +perhaps passable portraits of the languid, half-witted, hydrocephalic +creatures who made them. As representations of a bustling, brilliant, +profound, vivacious being, alive to the finger tips, and quick with an +energy never since granted to man, they are as false as water. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRES + + +The Elizabethan theatres were square, circular, or octagonal structures, +built of wood, lath and plaster, on stone or brick foundations. They +stood about forty or forty-five feet high. They were built with three +storeys, tiers, or galleries of seats which ran round three sides of the +stage and part of the fourth. On the fourth side, at the back of the +stage, was a tiring house in which the actors robed. The upper storeys +of the tiring house could be used in the action, for a balcony, the +upper storeys of a house, etc., according to the needs of the scene. It +is possible, but not certain, that the tiring house itself was used in +some plays to represent an inner chamber. The three storeys of seats +were divided by partitions into "gentlemen's roomes" and "Twoe pennie +roomes." The top storey was roofed in, either with thatch or tiles. The +stage was roofed over in the same way. The space or yard between the +stage and the galleries which surrounded it, was open to the sky. It +contained no seats, but it held many spectators who stood. "Standing +room" cost a penny. Those who stood could press right up to the stage, +which was a platform four or five feet high projecting well out from the +back of the house "to the middle of the yarde." It was possible to see +the actors "in the round," instead of, as at present, like people in a +picture. The audience got their emotions from the thing done and the +thing said; not, as with us, from the situation. It was the custom of +gallant gentlemen to hire stools placed on the stage itself. They sat +and took tobacco there during the performance. Rank had then a greater +privilege of impertinence than it has to-day. The performances took +place by daylight. They were announced by the blowing of a trumpet. +During a performance, a banner was hung from the theatre roof. The plays +were played straight through, without waits. The only waits necessary in +a theatre are (_a_) those which rest the actors and (_b_) those which +give variety to the moods of the spectators. The double construction of +Shakespeare's plays provided a sub-plot which held or amused the +audience while the actors of the main plot rested. It is possible, but +not certain, that the scenes were played on alternate halves of the +stage, and that when one half of the stage was being cleared of its +properties, or fitted with them, the play continued on the other half. +It is not possible to speak of the general quality of the acting. +Acting, like other dependent art, can only be good when it has good art +to interpret. The acting was probably as good and as bad as the plays. +Careful and impressive speaking and thoughtful, restrained gesture were +qualities which Shakespeare and Ben Jonson praised. It is likely that +the acting of the time was much quicker than modern acting. The plays +were played very swiftly, without hesitation or dawdling over +"business." + +There was little or no scenery to most plays. The properties, _i.e._ +chairs, beds, etc., were simple and few. The play was the thing. The aim +of the play was to give not a picture of life, but a glorified vision of +life. The object was not realism but illusion. The costumes were of +great splendour. In some productions (as in _Henry VIII_) they were of +an excessive splendour. Music and singing added much to the beauty of +many scenes. + +Women were not then allowed upon the stage. Women's parts were played by +boys. Some have thought that this must have taken from the excellence of +the performances. It is highly likely that it added much to it. Nearly +all boys can act extremely well. Very few men and women can. + +The playing of women's parts by boys may have limited Shakespeare's art. +His women are kept within the range of thought and emotion likely to be +understood by boys. This may account for their wholesome, animal +robustness. There is no trace of the modern heroine, the common woman +overstrained, or the idle woman in her megrims, in any Shakespearean +play. The people of the plays are alive and hearty. They lead a vigorous +life and go to bed tired. They never forget that they are animals. They +never let any one else forget that they are also divine. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE PLAYS + + +Three plays belong to Shakespeare's first period of original creative +writing. It is fair to suppose that the least dramatically sound of the +three was the one first written. We therefore take _Love's Labour's +Lost_ as his first play. It is commonly said by critics that _Love's +Labour's Lost_ is "the work of a young man." It might more justly be +said of it that it is the work of a new kind of young man. The young man +knows all the trick of the theatre and uses it, as a master always uses +technique, for the statement of something new to the human soul. The +play no longer speaks to the human soul; for though it is the work of a +master, it is the work of a master not yet alive to the depths and still +doubtful among the temptations to which intellect is subject. It is one +of those works of art which remind us of Blake's saying, that "the best +water is the newest." When it came out, with all the glitter of newness +on it, the mind of man was flattered by a new possession. To us, the +persons of the play are not much more than Time's toys, who never really +lived, but only glittered a little. + + +_Love's Labour's Lost._ + + _Written._ Between 1589 and 1592. + + _Published_, after correction and augmentation, from a badly + corrected copy, 1598. + + _Source of the Plot._ It is thought that Shakespeare created the + plot. The names of some of the characters were taken from people + then living. The incident in Act V, scene ii (the entrance of the + King of Navarre and his men, in Russian habits), was perhaps + suggested by the visit of some Russians to Queen Elizabeth in 1584. + + _The Fable._ The King of Navarre and his three courtiers, Biron, + Dumaine and Longaville, have sworn to study for three years under + the usual collegiate conditions of watching, fasting, and keeping + from the sight and speech of women. They are forced to break this + vow. The Princess of France comes with her Court to discuss State + affairs. + + At the discussion, the King falls in love with the Princess, his + three courtiers fall in love with the ladies of her train. + + The lovers send vows of love to their ladies. They plot to visit + them in disguises of masks and Russian clothes. The ladies, hearing + of this plot in time, mask themselves. The men fail to recognise + them. Each disguised lover makes love-vows to the wrong woman. + + The ladies twit the men with a double perjury: that they have + broken their vow to study, and their love vows. + + The play is kept within the bounds of fantastic comedy by the + members of the sub-plot, who intrude with their fun whenever the + action tends to become real. They intrude here, to impersonate the + Nine Worthies before the two Courts. The farce of their performance + is heightened by ragging from the courtiers. When it is at its + height, two of the members of the sub-plot begin to quarrel. One + blow would ruin the play by making it real. At the crisis the + violence is avoided; the reality is brought unexpectedly, by + beauty. A messenger enters to tell the Princess that her father is + dead. + + The ladies bid the men test their love by waiting for twelve + months. The trifling of the earlier acts is shown at its moral + value against a background of tragic happening. Accomplishments are + compared with life. + + The members of the sub-plot enter. They end the play with the + singing of a lyric. + +The play gives the reader the uncanny feeling that something real inside +the piece is trying to get out of the fantasy. The lip-love rattles like +a skeleton's bones. The love of Biron for Rosaline is real passion. The +conflict throughout is the conflict of the unreal with the real. + +The play seems to have been written in a literary or sentimental mood, +and revised in a real mood. There is little in the early version that is +not fantastic. The situation is fantastic, the people are fantastic, the +language is fantastic with all a brilliant young master's delight in the +play and glitter of cunning writing. The later version was written +during the passionate years of Shakespeare's growth, after something had +altered the world to him. The two versions are carelessly stuck +together, with the effect of a rose-bush growing out of bones. + +The Biron scenes, as we have them, seem to be the fruit of the mood that +caused the sonnets. We do not know what caused that mood. The sonnets, +like the plays, are as likely to be symbol as confession. The sonnets +suggest that he loved an unworthy woman who robbed him of a beloved +friend. _Love's Labour's Lost_ and several other early plays suggest +that he knew too well how love for the unworthy woman smirches honour, +wakens, but holds captive, the reason, and wastes the spiritual gift in +the praise of a form of death. + +The dramatic method is dual. He presents in the plot something eternal +in human life, and in the sub-plot something temporal in human fashion. +In the plot of this play, his intention seems to have been this--to show +intellect turned from a high resolve, from a consecration to mental +labour, by the coming of women, who represent, perhaps, untutored, +natural intelligence. Later in the play the high resolve of intellect is +betrayed again, indirectly by women; but more by the sexual emotions +which distort the vision till even the falsest, loosest woman appears +beautiful and "celestial," and worth the sacrifice of intellect. The end +of the play is not so much an end as a clearing of the road of life. + +It often happens that the setting down of a doubt in careful words +resolves it. This play seems to free Shakespeare's mind from doubts as +to the right use and preparation of intellect. He presents with extreme +care the different types of literary intellect: the man who shuts +himself up to study, the man who sparkles in society, the man whom books +have made stupid and the man whom style has made mad. + +The play is full of the problem of what to do with the mind. Shall it be +filled with study, or spent in society, or burnt in a passion, or +tortured by strivings for style, or left as it is? Intellect is a +problem to itself. Something of the problem seems (it would be wrong to +be more certain) to have made this play not quite impersonal, as good +art should be. + +The problems are settled wisely, though not without a feeling of +sacrifice. The beauty and the worth of learning are baits by which many +intellects are lured from wisdom. The knowledge that life is the book to +study, life at its liveliest, in the wits of women + + "Keen + Above the sense of sense," + +and that style is a poor thing beside the "honest plain words" which +pierce, only comes with a sense of loss. Youth desires all the powers. A +man with great gifts desires all the mental gifts. Youth with nothing +but great gifts is never sure that the gifts will be sufficient. When +this play was written, the stage was supplied with plays by men of +trained intellects, who set more store upon the training than upon the +intellect itself. The society of well-taught men, who know and quote and +criticise, always makes the untaught uncertain and ill at ease. +Shakespeare seems to have risen from the writing of this play, certain +that poetry is not given to the trained mind, nor to the untrained mind, +but to the quick and noble nature, earnest with the passion which stands +the touchstone of death. "Subtlety," so Cromwell wrote, "may deceive +you, integrity never will." The mind is her own armour. She will not +fail for the want of a little learning or a little grace. + +In the sub-plot, among much low comedy, this truth is emphasised by the +triumph of Costard, a natural mind, in an encounter with Armado, an +artificial mind. At the end of the play the "learned men" are made to +compile a dialogue "in praise of the owl and the cuckoo." The dialogue +is of a kind not usual among learned men, but the choice of the birds is +significant. The last speech of the play: "The words of Mercury are +harsh after the songs of Apollo," seems to refer to Marlowe, as though +Shakespeare found it hard to justify an art so unlike his master's. +Marlowe climbs the peaks in the sun, his bow never off his shoulders. I +walk the roads of the earth among men. + +There is little character drawing in the piece. The Princess is a +gracious figure; but hardly real to us till the last scene of the play, +when she speaks wisely. Biron is more of a person. He presents his point +of view in a moment of pleasant poetry-- + + "For where is any author in the world, + Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?" + +He shows a prejudice against Boyet, the courtier in attendance on the +Princess. This prejudice is expressed bitterly-- + + "This is the flower that smiles on every one," + +with the bitterness usual in Shakespeare when treating of the flunkey +mind. The ladies of the Princess's train all talk exactly alike, with +sharp feminine wit, infinitely swift in thrust. None of them has +personality; but Rosaline is described for us, body and disposition. The +members of the sub-plot are mental fashions well observed. Costard alone +has life. Shakespeare came from the country. In the country a thinking +man is reminded daily of the shrewdness of unspoiled minds. Armado, +Costard's opponent, lives for us by one phrase-- + + "The sweet war-man is dead and rotten: sweet chucks, beat not the + bones of the buried: when he breathed, he was a man." + +It is interesting to see Shakespeare's mind trying for vividness. In his +maturity he had supremely the power of giving life. In this early play +one can see his first conscious literary efforts towards the obtaining +of the power. Longaville (in Act II, sc. i) makes the scene alive by the +question-- + + "I beseech you a word. What is she in the white?" + +(Who is the woman in the white dress?) The simple but telling means of +giving reality is repeated a few lines later in Biron's question-- + + "What's her name in the cap?" + +In Act V, sc. ii, the vividness is given in a strangely pathetic +passage, that haunts, after the play is laid down. Two of the ladies are +talking of Cupid-- + + _Rosaline._ You'll ne'er be friends with him: he killed your + sister. + + _Katharine._ He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy; + And so she died: had she been light, like you, + Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, + She might have been a granddam ere she died. + +The power of giving life in a line is seen in the remark of Dumaine (Act +IV, sc. iii)-- + + "To look like her, are chimney-sweepers black." + +The play is full of experiments. Some of it is written in a loose, +swinging couplet, some in quatrains, some in blank verse, some in the +choice, picked prose made the fashion by Lyly. It contains more lyrics +than any other Shakespearean play. One of the lyrics, a sonnet in +Alexandrines, is the fruit of a real human passion. The lyric at the end +of the play is the loveliest thing ever said about England. If this play +and most of the other plays were modern works, the Censor would not +allow them to be performed publicly. The men and women converse with a +frankness and suggestiveness not now usual, except among the young. +Shakespeare is blamed for not conforming to standards unknown to his +generation. + +He is blamed for not being delicate-minded like the great Greek tragic +poets. The Greek tragic poets wrote about the heroic life of legend. +Shakespeare wrote about life. A man who writes about life must accept +life for what it is, as largely an animal thing. Those who pretend that +life is only lived in boudoirs, are in peril, and the world is in peril +through them. + + +_The Two Gentlemen of Verona._ + + _Written._ Before 1592. + + _Published_, in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The story of a woman who follows her lover in + the disguise of a page-boy, hears him serenade another woman, and + acts as a go-between in his suit to this other woman, is to be + found in the second book of _La Diana Enamorada_, a pastoral + romance, in prose, freely sprinkled with lyrics, by Jorge de + Montemayor, a Portuguese who wrote in Spanish about the middle of + the sixteenth century. De Montemayor's story is not complicated by + a Valentine. He calls the girl Felismena, her lover Felix, and the + second woman Celia. His tale ends with Celia dying for love of the + supposed page-boy. + + A play based on this story was acted in England in 1584. It is now + lost. The gist of the story was published in lame English verses, + by Barnabe Googe, in 1563. + + _The Fable._ Valentine and Proteus, the two gentlemen, are friends. + Valentine is about to travel. Proteus, in love with Julia, will not + go with him. Antonio, Proteus' father, sends Proteus after + Valentine. Julia resolves to follow him in boy's clothes. Valentine + at Milan falls in love with the Duke's daughter, Silvia, whom the + Duke plans to marry to one Thurio. Proteus, arriving at Milan, also + falls in love with Silvia. He becomes jealous of Valentine. + + Valentine tells him that he has planned to escape with Silvia that + night. Proteus betrays this plot to the Duke. The Duke banishes + Valentine and sends Proteus to Silvia to press the suit of Thurio. + + Valentine joins a gang of outlaws. + + Proteus woos Silvia for himself, and is rejected by her. + + Julia, who has come in boy's dress from Verona to look for Proteus, + finds him still unsuccessfully courting Silvia. She enters his + service as a page. He sends her on a message to Silvia. + + On her way to deliver the message, Julia meets Silvia flying from + home in search of Valentine. + + In her search for Valentine, Silvia is caught by the gang of + outlaws. + + Proteus rescues her, and threatens to resume his suit with + violence. + + Valentine, entering, stops this. + + Proteus sues for pardon to Valentine and Julia. He is received to + mercy. The Duke after dismissing Thurio, pardons Valentine, and + grants him Silvia's hand in marriage. + +_Love's Labour's Lost_ is fantasy. The _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ deals +with real human relationships. It is a better play than the fantasy, +though the fantasy has moments of better poetry. It carries on one of +the problems raised in _Love's Labour's Lost_. It is the work of a +troubled mind. It comes from the mood in which the sonnets were written. + +Twice in _Love's Labour's Lost_ the act of oath-breaking, of being +forsworn, is important to the play's structure. Though the vows broken +in that play are fantastic, the characters feel real dishonour at the +breaking of them. The play shows that though the idea of vow-breaking +was in Shakespeare's mind, he had not then the power, or the human +experience, or the mental peace, to grapple with it fairly, or see it +truly. The idea, that the person for whom the vows are broken brings +with her the punishment of the sin of vow-breaking, haunts the mind of +Biron (in Act IV, sc. iii)-- + + "Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn: + And justice always whirls in equal measure: + Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn." + +In the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, this idea, the idea that treachery +caused by some obsession is at the root of most tragedy, was treated by +him at length, perhaps for the first time. + +That it haunted him then, and remained all through his life as the +pole-star of dramatic action is evident to all who read his works as +poetry should be read. It is the law of his imagination. + +Passion, not weakness of will, but strength of will blinded, is the +commonest cause of treachery among us. The great poets have agreed that +anything that distorts the mental vision, anything thought of too much, +is a danger to us. Passion that with the glimmer of a new drunkenness +blinds the mature to the life and death memories of marriage, and kills +in the immature the memory of love, friendship, and past benefits, is a +form of destruction. In its action as a destroyer, it is the subject of +Shakespeare's greatest plays. In the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ he is +interested less in the destruction than in the moral blindness that +leads to it. + +Shakespeare's method is simple. He shows us two charming young men +becoming morally blind with passion, in a company not so blinded. The +only other "inconstant" person in the play (Sir Thurio) is inconstant +from that water-like quality in the mind that floods with the full moon, +and ebbs like a neap soon after. Even the members of the sub-plot, the +two servants, are constant, the one to his master, who beats him, the +other to the dog that gets him beaten. A lesser mind would sit in +judgment in such a play. The task of genius is not to sit in judgment. + + "Our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together." + +Shakespeare neither praises nor blames. His task is to see justly. It is +we who conclude that treachery looks ugly beside its opposite. + +Of the fine scenes in the play, sc. iv in Act II, where Valentine and +Sir Thurio walk with Silvia, with whom they are both in love, is the +liveliest. The two men bicker across the lady, as though the next word +would bring blows. The demure pleasure of Silvia in being quarrelled +for, is indicated most masterly in less than thirty words. Act III, sc. +i, where the Duke discovers Valentine's plot to escape with Silvia, is a +passage of noble dramatic power, doubly interesting because it shows the +justice of Shakespeare's vision. Valentine, the constant friend and +lover, is exposed in an act of treachery to his benefactor. The scenes +in which the disguised Julia witnesses her lover's falseness, and the +scene in which the play is brought to an end, are deeply and nobly +affecting. Theatre managers play Shakespeare as though he were an old +fashion of the mind instead of the seer of the eternal in life. They +should play this play as a vision of something that is eternally +treacherous, bringing misery to the faithful, the noble, and the +feeling. One of the noblest things in the play is the forgiveness at the +end. Passion has taken Proteus into strange byways of treachery. He has +been false to Julia, to Valentine, to the Duke, to Thurio, one falseness +leading to another, till he is in a wood of the soul, tangled in sin. It +only wants that he be false to Silvia, too. Passion makes his eyes a +little blinder for an instant. He adds that treachery to the others. +Power to see clearly is the only cure for passion. Discovery gives that +power. Valentine's words-- + + "Who should be trusted now, when one's right hand + Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus, + I am sorry I must never trust thee more, + But count the world a stranger for thy sake. + The private wound is deepest...." + +followed so soon by Julia's words-- + + "Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths, + And entertained them deeply in her heart: + How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root.... + It is the lesser blot, modesty finds, + Women to change their shapes, than men their minds"-- + +rouse Proteus to the confounding instant of self-recognition. His answer +is like a voice from one of the later plays. It is in Shakespeare's +grand manner. It does not read like a piece of revision done in the +poet's maturity; but as though Shakespeare suddenly found his utterance +in a moment of vision-- + + "Than men their minds! 'tis true. O heaven! Were man + But constant, he were perfect: that one error + Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins: + Inconstancy falls off, ere it begins." + +A word of excuse would brand him as base. He is ashamed and guilty; but +not base. He cannot say more than that he is sorry, and this only to +Valentine. Valentine accepts sorrow with the utterance of one of the +religious ideas which seem to have been constantly in Shakespeare's +mind. + + "By penitence the Eternal's wrath's appeased." + +His conduct towards Proteus after this forgiveness is so wise with +delicate tact that the reader is reminded of Shelley's treatment of +Hogg, in a similar case. + +The suggestion of the character of Silvia has an austere beauty. The two +gentlemen are limited by the play's needs. The figure of Valentine is +the more complete of the two. He is an interesting study of one of those +grave young men who, when tested by life, show themselves wise beyond +their years. Among the minor characters, that of Eglamour, an image of +constancy to a dead woman, is the most beautiful. He is one of the +strange, many-sorrowed souls, vowed to an idea, to whom Shakespeare's +characters so often turn when the world bears hard. The low comedy of +Launce could hardly be lower; but his phrase "the other squirrel" (in +Act IV, sc. iv) is a good stroke. The great mind is full of vitality on +all the planes. + +There is little superb verse in the play. The lyric, "Who is Silvia?" +shows a marvellous lyrical art, working without emotion to imitate an +effect of music. The proverb, "make a virtue of necessity," occurs in +Act IV, sc. ii. The fine lines-- + + "O, how this spring of love resembleth + The uncertain glory of an April day"-- + +and the pretty speech of Julia in Act II, sc. vii-- + + "I'll be as patient as a gentle stream, + And make a pastime of each weary step, + Till the last step have brought me to my love; + And there I'll rest, as, after much turmoil, + A blessed soul doth in Elysium"-- + +are memorable. + +Man is so eager to know about Shakespeare that he is tempted to find +personal confession in the plays. It is true that the art of a young man +is too immature to be impersonal. In an achieved style we see the man; +in all striving for style we see what hurts him. But in poetry, human +experience is wrought to symbol, and symbol is many virtued, according +to the imaginative energy that broods upon it. It is said that +Shakespeare holds a mirror up to life. He who looks into a mirror +closely generally sees nothing but himself. + + +_The Comedy of Errors._ + + _Written._ Before 1594. + + _Published_, in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The plot was taken from the _Menęchmi_ of + Plautus. Whether Shakespeare read the play in Latin, or in a + translation, or heard it from a friend, or saw it acted, is not + known. All four are possible. + + The sub-plot, in this case a duplication of the plot, was suggested + by a part of the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus. + + The play is brought on to the plane of human feeling by the + character of Ęgeon. This character was suggested by a story in _Gli + Suppositi_ (The Supposes) of Ariosto. + + _The Fable._ Like all comedies of mistake, the _Comedy of Errors_ + has an extremely complicated plot. The play consists of a number of + ingeniously contrived situations in which either the Antipholus + and the Dromio of Ephesus are mistaken for the Antipholus and + Dromio of Syracuse, or those of Syracuse are mistaken for those of + Ephesus. The comedy of mistake is touched with beauty by the + romantic addition of the restoration of old Ęgeon to his long-lost + wife. + +Poets are great or little according to the nobleness of their endeavour +to build a mansion for the soul. Shakespeare, like other poets, grew by +continual, very difficult mental labour, by the deliberate and prolonged +exercise of every mental weapon, and by the resolve to do not "the +nearest thing," precious to human sheep, but the difficult, new and +noble thing, glimmering beyond his mind, and brought to glow there by +toil. We do not know when the play was written, nor why it was written. +If it were not written by special request, for reward, it must have been +chosen either for the rest given by a subject external to the mind, or +as a self-set exercise in the difficult mental labour of comic dramatic +construction. Every playwright sees the comic opportunity of the +_Menęchmi_ fable. A playwright not yet sure of his art sees and admires +behind the comedy the firm, intricate mental outline that has kept the +play alive for more than two thousand years. + +The _Menęchmi_ of Plautus is a piece of very skilful theatrical craft. +It is almost heartless. In bringing it out of the Satanic kingdom of +comedy into the charities of a larger system Shakespeare shows for the +first time a real largeness of dramatic instinct. In his handling of the +tricky ingenious plot he achieves (what, perhaps, he wrote the play to +get) a dexterous, certain play of mind. He strikes the ringing note, +time after time. It cannot be said that the verse, or the sense of +character, or the invention is better than in the other early plays. It +is not. The play is on a lower plane than any of his other works. It is +the only Shakespearean play without a deep philosophical idea. If it be +not a special commission, or an exercise in art, it is perhaps another +instance of the price great men pay for being happy. It is certainly the +fruit of a happier mood than that which bore the other early plays. It +is also the first play that shows a fine, sustained power of dramatic +construction. + +It is so well constructed (for the simple Elizabethan theatre and the +bustle of the Elizabethan speech) that any unspoiled mind is held by it, +when it is acted as Shakespeare meant it to be acted. The closeness and +firmness of the dramatic texture is the work of an acutely clear mind +driven at white heat and mercilessly judged at each step. Those who do +not understand the nature of dramatic art should read the ninety odd +verses in which Ęgeon tells his story (in Act I, sc. i). They would do +well to consider the power of mind that has told so much in so few +words. They will find an instance of Shakespeare's happy use of stage +trick, in the final scene, where, after the general recognition, Dromio +of Syracuse again mistakes Antipholus of Ephesus for his master. + +Rare poetical power is shown in the making of the play. Little beauty +adorns the action. The speech of Adriana (in Act II, sc. ii) against the +obsession of passion that leads to treachery in marriage, is passionate +and profound. It is the most deeply felt speech in the early plays. +Adriana's husband is frequenting another woman who, having the charm +that so often goes with worthlessness, has a power of attracting that is +sometimes refused to the noble. Adriana beseeches him not to break the +tie that binds them. Two souls that have been each other's are not to be +torn apart without death to one of them. With that sympathy for the +suffering mind which gives Shakespeare all his power-- + + ("My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits") + +he gives to her speech an unendurable reality. Reality, however +obtained, is the only cure for an obsession. As far as words can teach +in such a case Adriana's words teach the reality of her husband's sin. + + "How dearly it would touch thee to the quick, + Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious, + And that this body, consecrate to thee, + By ruffian lust should be contaminate! + Wouldst them not spit at me and spurn at me, + And hurl the name of husband in my face, + And tear the stain'd skin off my harlot brow, + And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring...? + My blood is mingled with the crime of lust: + For, if we two be one, and thou play false, + I do digest the poison of thy flesh." + +There is no other poetry of this intensity in the play. + +It is interesting to compare Shakespeare's mind with Plautus's in the +description of Epidamnum. Plautus says-- + + "This is the home of the greatest lechers and drunkards. + + "Very many tricksters and cheaters live in this city. + + "Nowhere are wheedling whores more cunning at bilking people." + +Shakespeare gives the horror a spiritual turn that adds much to the +intensity of the farce. + + "They say, this town is full of cozenage: + As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye, + Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind, + Soul-killing witches that deform the body, + Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, + And many such like liberties of sin." + +The play is amusing. The plot is intricate. The interest of the piece is +in the plot. When a plot engrosses the vitality of a dramatist's mind, +his character-drawing dies; so here. It is sufficient to say that the +character of Ęgeon is the best in the play + + +_Titus Andronicus._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published._ (?) + + _Source of the Plot._ (?) + + _The Fable._ Tamora, Queen of the Goths, whose firstborn son is + sacrificed by Titus Andronicus, determines to be revenged. She + succeeds in her determination. Titus and his daughter are + mutilated. Two of the Andronici, his sons, are beheaded. + + Titus determines to be revenged. He bakes the heads of two of + Tamora's sons in a pasty, and serves them up for her to eat. He + then stabs her, after stabbing his daughter. He is himself stabbed + on the instant; but his surviving son stabs his murderer. Tamora's + paramour is then sentenced to be buried alive, and the survivors + (about half the original cast) move off (as they say) "to order + well the State." + +This play shows an instinct for the stage and a knowledge of the +theatre. It seems to have been a popular piece. A knowledge of the +theatre will often make something foolish theatrically effective. So +here. + +The piece is nearly worthless. The turning of the tide of revenge, from +Tamora against Andronicus, and then from Andronicus against Tamora, is +the theme. It is a simple theme. Man cannot have simplicity without hard +thought, and hard thought is never worthless, though it may be applied +unworthily. + +There can be no doubt that Shakespeare wrote a little of this tragedy; +it is not known when; nor why. Poets do not sin against their art unless +they are in desperate want. Shakespeare certainly never touched this job +for love. There is only one brief trace of his great, rejoicing +triumphant manner. It is possible that the play was brought to him by +his theatre-manager, with some such words as these: "This piece is very +bad, but it will succeed, and I mean to produce it, if I can start +rehearsals at once. Will you revise it for me? Please do what you can +with it, and write in lines and passages where you think it is wanting. +And whatever happens please let me have it by Monday." + +The only poetry in the play comes in the three lines-- + + "You sad-fac'd men, people and sons of Rome, + By uproar sever'd, like a flight of fowl + Scatter'd by winds and high tempestuous gusts." + + +_King Henry VI, Part I._ + + _Written._ 1589-91. + + _Produced._ 1591. + + _Published_, in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ Raphael Holinshed's _Chronicles_. + + _The Fable._ The play begins shortly after the death of King Henry + V. Henry VI is too young to rule. There is a feud between + Gloucester, the Lord Protector, and Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of + Winchester. In France, where Talbot is besieging Orleans, the + English have had many losses. Joan of Arc begins her conquering + progress by causing Talbot to raise the siege. + + A feud between the Duke of York (the white rose faction) and the + Earl of Somerset (the red rose faction) becomes acute, in spite of + King Henry's personal intercession. It intensifies the feud between + the Lord Protector and the Cardinal. In France, Talbot is killed in + battle. The English are beaten from their possessions. Joan of Arc + is taken, tried, and burned. + + The menace of civil trouble hangs over King Henry's court. The feud + between the factions of the roses threatens to break into war. The + Earl of Suffolk (one of the red rose faction) schemes to marry King + Henry to Margaret of Anjou. It is made plain that he means to + become Margaret's lover so that he may rule England through her. A + disgraceful peace is concluded with France. The play ends with + Suffolk's departure to arrange the King's marriage with Margaret. + +It is plain that this play is not the work of one mind. Part of it is +the work of a man who saw a big tragic purpose in events. The rest is +the work of at least two mechanical (sometimes muddy) minds, who neither +criticised nor understood, but had some sense of the pageant. There are +bright marks in the play where Shakespeare's mind touched it. + + "Glory is like a circle in the water, + Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, + Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought." + + "If underneath the standard of the French + She carry armour." + + "Now thou art come unto a feast of death." + + "Thus, while the vulture of sedition + Feeds in the bosom of such great commanders, + Sleeping neglection doth betray to loss + The conquest of our scarce-cold conqueror, + That ever-living man of memory, + Henry the Fifth." + +The work as a whole is one of the old formless chronicle plays, which +inspired the remark that if an English dramatist were to make a play of +St. George he would begin with the birth of the Dragon. In Act II +Shakespeare's mind both directs and explains the welter. The scene in +the Temple Gardens, where the men of the two factions pluck the red and +white roses, is like music after discord. The play is lifted into +poetry. The big tragic purpose broods; something fateful quickens. The +next scene, where Mortimer dies in prison, is another instance of the +power of great intellect to give life. The dying Mortimer is carried in, +to show how the imminent tragedy has been for long years preparing, in +countless passionate men, each of whom has shaped it, little by little, +out of lust and hate, till the spiritual measure tips towards justice. + +The only other scenes that bear marks of Shakespeare's mind are those +in Act IV, in which Talbot meets his death. The verse of these scenes is +often careless, but it has a bright variety, pleasant to the mind after +the strutting verse (wearily reiterating one prosodic effect, like +choppy water) of the other authors. Some people claim that Shakespeare +wrote the whole of this play. The intellect changes much in life; but +never in kind, only in degree. Shakespeare's mind could play with dirt +and relish dirt, but it was never base and never blunt. The base mind is +betrayed by its conceptions, not by its amusements. Shakespeare's mind +could never, at any stage of his career, have sunk to conceive the +disgusting scene in which Joan of Arc pleads. Nor could he at any time +have planned a play in which the moral idea is a trapping to physical +action. + + +_King Henry VI, Part II._ + + _Written._ 1591-2. + + _Produced._ 1592. + + _Published_, in the crude original form, 1593. When first + published, the play was called "The First part of the Contention + betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster." This + version seems to have been written by Greene and Peele. It contains + passages (improving additions) that resemble Shakespeare's work; + but the work is very crude. The version as a whole reads like a + long scenario. + + After the first production of this version, Shakespeare and some + other writer, possibly Marlowe, revised, improved and enlarged it. + This revised version, the _Second Part of King Henry VI_, as we now + have it, was first published in the first folio in 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ Edward Hall's _Chronicle_. + + _The Fable._ The play begins with the arrival of Margaret of Anjou + at the Court of King Henry VI. An altercation among the Lords in + scene i. explains the political situation to those who have not + seen the first part of the trilogy. The subject is the gradual + ascent to power of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. The play is + turbulent with passions. The subject is obscured and made grander + by the war of interests and lusts among the nobles of the Court. + The Queen's party, the Duke Humphrey's party, and Cardinal + Beaufort's party, make a welter of hate and greed, against which + the Duke of York's cool purpose stands out, as Augustus stands out + against the wreck of old Rome. The action is interrupted and + lightened by the cheat of Simpcox and by the rebellion of Jack + Cade. In modern theatres the passage of time is indicated by the + dropping of a curtain and by a few words printed on a programme. + The Elizabethan theatre had neither curtain nor programme. The + passage of time was suggested by some action on the stage as here. + The play advances the tragedy of the King by removing the figures + of Duke Humphrey, the Cardinal, and the Earl of Suffolk. It ends + with the first triumph of the white rose faction, under the Duke of + York, at the battle of St. Albans. + +It is plain that Shakespeare worked upon the revision of this play with +a big tragic conception. The first half of the piece is very fine. He +makes the crude, muddy, silly welter of the Contention significant and +complete. He reduces it to a simple, passionate order, deeply +impressive. The poet who worked with him, worked in sympathy with his +dramatic intention. If this poet were Marlowe, as some believe (and the +clearness of the man's brain seems to point to this), it is another +proof that the two great poets were friends during the last months of +Marlowe's life. It is plain that something stopped the revision before +it was finished. The latter half of the play is only half written. It +has flesh and blood but no life. It reads like work that has been +wrought to a pitch by two or three re-writings, and then left without +the final writing that turns imagination into vision. It would be +interesting to know why Shakespeare left the play in this state. Perhaps +there was no time to make it perfect before the rehearsals began. +Perhaps the murder of Marlowe upset the plans of the capitalist who was +speculating in the play. If it had been finished in the spirit of the +first two and a half acts it would have been one of the grandest of the +historical plays. + +The poetry of the two completed acts is often noble. The long speech of +York, in Act I, coming, as it does, after a clash of minds turbid with +passion, is most noble. It gives a terror to what follows. The calm mind +makes no mistake. The judgment of a man without heart seems as +infallible as fate, as beautiful, and as ghastly. All happens as he +foresees. All the cruelty and bloodiness of the latter half of the play +come from that man's beautifully clear, cool brain. He stands detached. +One little glimmer of heart in him would alter everything. The glimmer +never comes. Humphrey is poisoned, Suffolk is beheaded, the Cardinal +dies. Cade, in that most awful scene of the mob in power, looks at two +heads on pikes with the remark-- + + "Is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved + well when they were alive.... + + Now part them again." + +These are some of the results of the working of a fine intellect in +which-- + + "Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought, + And not a thought but thinks on dignity." + +There is a terrible scene at the Cardinal's death-bed. The Cardinal is +discovered in bed "raving and staring as if he were madde." He has +poisoned his old enemy, the Duke Humphrey. Now he is dying; the murder +is on his soul, and nothing has been gained by it. The path is made +clearer for his enemies perhaps. That is the only result. Now he is +dying, the waste of mind is at an end, and the figure of the victim is +at the foot of the bed. + + "Bring me unto my trial when you will. + Died he not in his bed? where should he die? + Can I make men live, whe'r they will or no? + O, torture me no more, I will confess. + Alive again? then show me where he is: + I'll give a thousand pound to look upon him. + He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them. + Comb down his hair: Look! look! it stands upright. + Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul. + Give me some drink." + +Some people find humour in the Simpcox and Cade scenes. There is more +sadness and horror of heart than humour. The minds of the two great +poets were brooding together on life. They saw man working with +intellect to bring ruin, and working without intellect to bring +something beastlier than man should know. In its unfinished state the +play is without the exaltation of great tragedy. It would be one of the +hopeless plays, were it not for the passionate energy of mind with which +the nobles alter life. There is little human feeling in the play. +Warwick by Gloucester's corpse shows the sense of rectitude of a police +inspector. At the death-bed of the Cardinal, he makes the remark of a +fiend-- + + "See how the pangs of death do make him grin." + +The one human, tender figure is that of the King, who betrays his +friend, his only true friend-- + + "With sad unhelpful tears; and with dimm'd eyes + Looks after him, and cannot do him good." + +This gentle, bewildered soul makes the only human remarks in the play. +In Shakespeare's vision it is from such souls, planted, to their own +misery, among spikes and thorns, that the flower of human goodness +blossoms. + + +_King Henry VI, Part III._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published_, in the crude original form, 1595. When first + published, the play was called "The True Tragedie of Richard Duke + of Yorke, and the Death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the + whole contention betweene the two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke." + This version seems to have been by Greene, Peele, Marlowe, or by + some combination among the three. There are some marks of + Shakespeare's hand upon it; but not many. Afterwards the piece was + revised and enlarged to its present form by some unknown hand. + Shakespeare added a few touches to this revision. It was printed in + the first folio as his original work. + + _Source of the Plot._ Edward Hall's _Chronicle_. Raphael + Holinshed's _Chronicle_. + + _The Fable._ The play describes the rise to power of Edward, Duke + of York, afterwards Edward IV. It carries on the story of the reign + of Henry VI from the time of his deposition by Richard, Duke of + York, to the time of his murder by Richard, Duke of Gloucester. + Various other tragedies are developed by the plot. Richard, Duke of + York, is defeated and put to death. The Earl of Warwick rises to + power, makes Edward, Duke of York, King, revolts from him, restores + Henry VI, is attacked, defeated, and killed in battle. Richard, + Duke of Gloucester, begins to cherish ambition, and sets bloodily + to work to gratify it. Edward, Duke of York, after one deposition, + due to his own treachery, obtains the supreme power, and rules as + King. + +Shakespeare had little hand in this ruthless chronicle. The idea of the +piece seems to be this, that-- + + "It is war's prize to take all vantages," + +that mercy has no place in war, that an act of mercy in war is more +fatal than defeat, and that the parfit gentle knight, if he wish to +prosper, must greet his father after battle with some such remark as-- + + "I cleft his beaver with a downright blow; + That this is true, father, behold his blood." + +There are three scenes that rouse human emotion: that in Act I, sc. iv, +where Margaret of Anjou taunts the captured York before putting him to +death; that in Act II, sc. v, where King Henry wishes himself either +dead, or called to some gentler trade than kingship; and that at the +end, after the battle of Tewkesbury, where the Prince of Wales is +murdered in his mother's presence. The second of these, the lamentation +of King Henry, is an enlargement, done in leisure, from a suggestion in +the early version. It is a very beautiful example of the quiet, limpid +running rhetoric that marks Shakespeare's best moments in the days +before he attained to power. + + "So minutes, hours, days, moneths and years, + Pass'd over to the end they were created, + Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. + Ah, what a life were this. How sweet. How lovely. + Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade + To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, + Than doth a rich-embroidered canopy + To kings that fear their subjects' treachery." + + +_A Midsummer Night's Dream._ + + _Written._ 1595 (?) + + _Published._ 1600. + + _Source of the Plot._ The fantasy is of Shakespeare's making. Some + of it was perhaps current in popular belief. Names and lesser + incidents were suggested by various books. He took little bits from + various sources, added them to the vision, and turned upon the + whole the light of his mind. If any author laid under contribution + were to recognise his bantling, he could only cry to it, "Bless + thee, Bottom, thou art translated." Shakespeare did never this + particular kind of wrong but with just cause. + + _The Fable._ Theseus, Duke of Athens, is about to marry Hippolyta. + Bottom, the weaver, and his friends, plan to play the tragedy of + Pyramus and Thisbe before the Duke after the wedding. + + Hermia and Lysander, two lovers, whose match is opposed, plan to + escape from Athens to a state where they can marry. + + Demetrius, in love with Hermia, is loved by Helena. + + Oberon, King of the fairies, planning to punish his Queen Titania, + orders Puck to procure a juice that will make her dote upon the + next thing seen by her. + + Helena pursues Demetrius into the wood of the fairies. Titania, + anointed with the juice, falls in love with Bottom. Lysander, + anointed with the juice, falls in love with Helena. The confusion + caused by these enchantments (accidentally) makes the main action + of the play. When the purpose of Oberon is satisfied, the + enchantments are removed. The cross purposes of the lovers cease. + Theseus causes Hermia to wed Lysander, and Helena to wed Demetrius. + Bottom and his company perform their tragedy, and all ends happily. + +It is a strange and sad thing that the English poets have cared little +for England; or, caring for England, have had little sense of the spirit +of the English. Many of our poets have written botanical verses, and +braggart verses, many more have described faithfully the appearance of +parts of the land at different seasons. Only two or three show the +mettle of their pasture in such a way that he who reads them can be sure +that the indefinable soul of England has given their words something +sacred and of the land. + +Shakespeare attained to all the spiritual powers of the English. He made +a map of the English character. We have not yet passed the frontiers of +it. It is one of his humanities that the English country, which made +him, always meant much to him, so that, now, wherever his works go, +something of the soul of that country goes too, to comfort exiles over +the sea. Man roams the world, wandering and working; but he is not +enough removed from the beasts to escape the prick in the heart that +turns the tired horse homeward, and sets the old fox padding through the +woods to die near the earth where he was whelped. Shakespeare's heart +always turned for quiet happiness to the country where he lived as a +boy. In this play, he turned not to the squires and farm-folk, but to +the country itself, and to those genii of the country, the fairies, +believed in, and often seen by country people, and reverenced by them as +the cause of mishaps. Imagination in a work of art is a transmuting of +the known by understanding. For some reason, perhaps home-sickness, +perhaps weariness of the city-jostle, that those who have lived the +country life cannot call life, or it may be, perhaps, from an exultation +in the bounty of the world to give pleasure to the mind, the country +meant very much to Shakespeare in the months during which he wrote the +last of the English plays. In writing this play, his imagination +conceived Athens as an English town, possibly Stratford, or some other +more pleasant place, with a wood, haunted by fairies, only a league +away, where the mind could be happy listening to the voice of the +beloved-- + + "More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, + When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear." + +There was a memory of happiness about the wood. It was + + "the wood, where often you and I + Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie, + Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet." + +In this wood, where Theseus goes a-hunting, Shakespeare, in his fantasy, +allows the fairies to vex the life of mortals. For a little while he +fancied, or tried to fancy, that those who are made mad and blind by the +obsessions of passion are made so at the whim of powers outside life, +and that the accidents of life, bad seasons, personal deformities, etc., +are due to something unhappy in a capricious immortal world, careless of +this world, but easily offended and appeased by mortal action. + +All the earth of England is consecrated by the intense memories of the +English. In this play Shakespeare set himself free to tell his love for +the earth of England that had ministered to his mind with beauty through +the years of youth. Walking in the Cotswold country, when + + "russet-pated choughs, many in sort + Rising and cawing at the gun's report, + Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky," + +gives to the passenger a sense of the enduringness of the pageant upon +which those seeing eyes looked more than three centuries ago. + + +_Romeo and Juliet._ + + _Written._ 1591-96. + + _Published_, in a mutilated form, 1597. + + _Source of the Plot._ The story existed in many forms, mostly + Italian. Shakespeare took it from Arthur Broke's metrical version + (_Romeus and Juliet_), and possibly consulted the prose version in + William Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_. The tale had been + dramatised and performed before Arthur Broke published his poem in + 1562. The play (if it existed a generation later) may have helped + Shakespeare. It is now lost. + + _The Fable._ The houses of Montague and Capulet are at feud in + Verona. + + Romeo, of the house of Montague, falls in love with Juliet, of the + house of Capulet. She returns his love. A friar marries them. + + In a street brawl, which Romeo does his best to stop, Mercutio, + Romeo's friend, is killed by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin. Carried away + by passion, Romeo kills Tybalt. He is banished from Verona. + + The Capulets plan to marry Juliet to the Count Paris. + + Juliet, in great distress, consults the Friar who married her to + Romeo. He gives her a potion to create an apparent death in her, to + the end that she may be buried in the family vault, taken thence + and restored to life by himself, and then conveyed to Romeo. He + writes to Romeo, telling him of the plan; but the letter + miscarries. Juliet takes the potion, and is laid in the tomb as + dead. + + The Count Paris comes by night to the tomb, to mourn her there. + Romeo, who has heard only that his love is dead, also comes to the + tomb. The two lovers fight, and Romeo kills Paris. He then takes + poison and dies at Juliet's side. + + The Friar enters to restore Juliet to life. Juliet awakens to find + her lover dead. The Friar, being alarmed, leaves the tomb. Juliet + stabs herself with Romeo's dagger and dies. + + The feud of the Montagues and Capulets is brought to an end. The + leaders of the two houses are reconciled over the bodies of the + lovers. + +This play is one of the early plays, written, perhaps, before +Shakespeare was thirty years old. It was much revised during the next +few years; but a good deal of the early work remains. Much of the early +work is in rhymed couplets. Much is in picked prose full of quibbles and +mistakings of the word. Another sign of early work is the mention of +the dark lady, the Rosaline of the _Comedy of Errors_, here called by +the same name, and described in similar terms: viz. a high forehead, a +hard heart, a white face, big black eyes and red lips. Perhaps she +appeared as one of the characters in the early drafts of the play. In +the play as we have it she is only talked of as a love of Romeo's who is +easily thrown aside when Juliet enters. + +The play differs slightly from the other plays, which deal, as we have +said, with the treacheries caused by obsessions. The subject of this +play is not so much the treachery as the obsession that causes it. The +obsession is the blind and raging one of sudden, gratified youthful +love. That storm in the blood has never been so finely described. It +takes sudden hold upon two young passionate natures, who have hardly met +each other. It drives out instantly from Romeo a sentimental love that +had made him mopish and wan. It brings to an end in two hearts, filial +affection and that perhaps stronger thing, attachment to family. It +makes the charming young man a frantic madman, careless of everything +but his love. It makes the sweet-natured girl a deceitful, scheming +liar, less frantic, but not less devoted than her lover. It +results almost at once in five violent deaths, and a legacy of +broken-heartedness not easily told. The only apparent good of the +disease is that it destroys its victims swiftly. It may also be said of +it that it teaches the old that there is something in life, some power +not dreamed of in their philosophy. + +Shakespeare saw the working of the fever. He also saw behind it the +working of fate to avenge an obsession that had blinded the eyes of men +too long. The feud of the two houses had long vexed Verona. The blood of +those killed in the feud was crying out for the folly to stop, so that +life might be lived. What business had sparks like Mercutio, and rebels +like Tybalt, with Death? Both are life's bright fire: they ought to +live. Fate seemed to plot to end the folly by letting Romeo fall in love +with Juliet. Let the two houses be united by marriage, as at the end of +_Richard III_. But love is a storm, sudden love a madness, and the fire +of youth a disturber of the balances. Hate and hot blood put an end to +all chance of marriage. There is nothing left but the desperate way, +which is yet the wise way, recommended by the one wise man in the cast. +With a little patience, this way would lead the couple to happiness. +Impatience, the fever in the blood that began these coils, makes the way +lead them to death. Accident, or rather the possession by others of that +prudence wanting in himself, keeps Romeo from the knowledge of the +friar's plans. A too hasty servant tells him that Juliet is dead. He too +hastily believes the news. He takes horse at once in a state of frenzy, +hardly heeding what his man says. He comes to the tomb in Verona, and +finds there a lover as desperate as himself. They fight there, madly. +The less mad of the two is killed, the more frantic (Romeo) kills +himself. The friar, coming to this death-scene, comes a moment too late. +Juliet wakes from her trance a moment too late. Theirs are the only +delays in this drama of fever, in which everybody hurries so that he +stumbles. Their delays are atoned for an instant later, his, by his too +great haste to be gone, she by her thirst for death. The men of the +watch come too late to save her. The parents learn too late that they +have been blind. They have to clasp hands over dead bodies, that have +missed of life through their hurry to seize it. + +The play tells the story of a feud greater than that of the Verona +houses. There is always feud where there is not understanding. There is +eternal feud between those two camps of misunderstanding, age and youth. +This play, written by a young man, shows the feud from the point of view +of youth. The play of King Lear shows it from the point of view of age. +This play of youth is as lovely and as feverish as love itself. Youth is +bright and beautiful, like the animals. Age is too tired to care for +brightness, too cold to care for beauty. The bright, beautiful +creatures dash themselves to pieces against the bars of age's forging, +against law, custom, duty, and those inventions of cold blood which +youth thinks cold and age knows to be wise. + +Man cannot quote a minute from some hour of passion when the moon shone +and many nightingales were singing. He can hold out some flower that +blossomed then, saying, "this scent will tell you." The beauty of this +play is of that kind. The lines-- + + "Come, civil night, + Thou sober-suited matron, all in black"-- + +and the most exquisite, unmatchable lines-- + + "Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, + Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: + Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet + Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, + And death's pale flag is not advancčd there"-- + +show with what a tender beauty the great mind feels when touched. + +The Nurse gives an animal comedy to some of the scenes. She is a +tragical figure. She is the person to whom Juliet has to turn for help +at dangerous moments. There are few things sadder than the sight of the +fine soul turning to the vulgar soul in moments of need. One of the few +things sadder is the sight of wisdom failing to stop tragedy, as it +fails here, through hotness of the blood and unhappy chance. Some have +felt that the spark, Mercutio, is drawn from Shakespeare's self. Every +character in the play is drawn from Shakespeare's self. Shakespeare +found Goneril and Juliet in his mind, just as he found Mercutio and +Friar Laurence. If he may be identified with any of his characters, it +must be with those whose wisdom is like the many-coloured wisdom that +gives the plays their unity. He is in calm, wise, gentle people who +speak largely, from a vision detached from the world, as Friar Laurence +speaks-- + + "For nought so vile that on the earth doth live + But to the earth some special good doth give; + Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use, + Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: + Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, + And vice sometimes by action dignified." + + +_King John._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published_, in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ Shakespeare's tragedy is founded on a play + called _The Troublesome Raigne of King John_ (author not known), + which was printed (after stage performance) in 1591. Some people + think that Shakespeare wrote _The Troublesome Raigne_. There are + some glimmerings of his mind here and there in it; but not many. + Whether he wrote it or not he certainly made free use of it in + writing _King John_. He took from it with a bold hand, whenever he + wished to spare himself mechanical labour. His other sources were + the historians, Raphael Holinshed, Edward Hall, and Fabian. + + _The Fable._ King John has made himself King of England. Prince + Arthur, who claims to be the rightful king (he is the son of King + John's elder brother), causes the French King to support his claim. + King John declares war against the French King. + + After some fighting in France the two kings patch up a peace. + Arthur's claim is set aside. King John's niece is to marry the + French King's son. + + At this point the Pope's legate causes the French King to break off + the negotiations. The war begins again. King John captures Prince + Arthur, and gives order that secretly he be put to death. England + is in a disturbed condition. The French resolve to attempt the + conquest of England. + + The report that Arthur has been murdered by the King's order sets + England in turmoil. The French land in Kent. The lords find + Arthur's dead body outside Northampton castle. They are convinced + that King John has caused him to be murdered. + + King John finds that he cannot fight longer. He makes his + submission to the Pope's legate, trusting that the legate may make + the French King come to terms. The French King cannot be moved to + peace. John summons up his forces, and gives successful battle to + him. The English lords, who have allied themselves to the French + King, break off and make their submission to King John. Without + their help, the army is too weak. The French invasion comes to + nothing. The Pope's legate makes peace. King John dies of poison + given to him by a monk. + +Like the best Shakespearean tragedies, _King John_ is an intellectual +form in which a number of people with obsessions illustrate the idea of +treachery. The illustrations are very various. Perhaps the most +interesting of them are those subtle ones that illustrate treachery to +type, or want of conformity to a standard imagined or established. + +In the historical plays, Shakespeare's mind broods on the idea that our +tragical kings failed because they did not conform to a type lower than +themselves. Henry V conforms to type. He has the qualities that impress +the bourgeoisie. He is a success. Henry VI does not conform to type. He +has the qualities of the Christian mystic. He is stabbed in the Tower. +Edward IV conforms to type. He has the qualities that impress the +rabble. He is a success. Richard II does not conform to type. He is a +man of ideas. He is done to death at Pomfret. King John does not conform +to type. His intellect is bigger than his capacity for affairs. He is +poisoned by a monk at Swinstead. + +King John presents that most subtle of all the images of treachery, a +man who cannot conform to the standard of his own ideas. He fails as a +king because his intellect prompts him to attempt what is really beyond +the powers of his nature to perform. By his side, with an irony that is +seldom praised, Shakespeare places the figure of the Bastard, the man +who ought to have been king, the man fitted by nature to rule the +English, the man without intellect but with a rough capacity, the man +whom we meet again, as a successful king, in the play of _Henry V_. + +King John is placed throughout the play in treacherous relations with +life. He is a traitor to his brother's son, to his own ideas, to the +English idea, and to his oath of kingship. He has a bigger intellect +than any one about him. His brain is full of gusts and flaws that blow +him beyond his age, and then let him sink below it. Persistence in any +one course of treachery would give him the greatness of all well-defined +things. He remains a chaos shooting out occasional fire. + +The play opens with a scene that displays some of the human results of +treachery. John's mother, Elinor, has been treacherous to one of her +sons. John has usurped his brother's right, and, in following his own +counsel, has been treacherous to his mother. These acts of treachery +have betrayed England into a bloody and unjust war. The picture is +turned suddenly. Another of the results of human treachery appears in +the person of the Bastard, whose mother confesses that she was seduced +by the "long and vehement suit" of Coeur de Lion. The Bastard's +half-brother, another domestic traitor, does not scruple to accuse his +mother of adultery in the hope that, by doing so, he may obtain the +Bastard's heritage. + +The same breaking of faith for advantage gives points to the second act, +where the French and English Kings turn from their pledged intention to +effect a base alliance. They arrange to marry the Dauphin to Elinor's +niece, Blanch of Castile. In the third act, before the fury of the +constant has died down upon this treachery, the French King adds another +falseness. He breaks away from the newly-made alliance at the bidding of +the Pope's legate. The newly-married Dauphin treacherously breaks with +his wife's party. In the welter of war that follows, the constant, human +and beautiful figures come to heartbreak and death. The common people of +England begin to betray their genius for obedience by preparing to rise +against the man in power. + +The fourth act begins with the famous scene in which Hubert fails to +blind Prince Arthur. Even in the act of mercy he is treacherous. He +breaks faith with King John, to whom he has vowed to kill the Prince. +Later in the act, King John, thinking that the murder has been done, +breaks faith with Hubert, by driving him from his presence. In the last +act, the English nobles, who have been treacherous to John, betray their +new master, the French King. King John is a broken man, unable to make +head against misfortune. He betrays his great kingly idea, that the Pope +shall not rule here, by begging the Legate to make peace. At this point +death sets a term to treachery. A monk treacherously poisons John at a +moment when his affairs look brighter. The play ends with the Bastard's +well-known brag about England-- + + "Naught shall make us rue + If England to itself do rest but true." + +This thought is one among many thoughts taken by Shakespeare from the +play of _The Troublesome Raigne_, and taken by the author of that play +direct from Holinshed's _Chronicles_. + +Comedy deals with character and accident; tragedy with passionate moods +of the soul in conflict with fate. In this play, as in nearly all +poetical plays, the characters that are most minutely articulated are +those commoner, more earthy characters, perceived by the daily mind, not +uplifted, by brooding, into the rare state of passionate intellectual +vision. These characters are triumphant creations; but they come from +the commoner qualities in Shakespeare's mind. He did them easily, with +his daily nature. What he did on his knees, with contest and bloody +sweat, are his great things. The great scheme of the play is the great +achievement, not the buxom boor who flouts the Duke of Austria, and +takes the national view of his mother's dishonour. + +Shakespeare, like other sensitive, intelligent men, saw that our +distinctive products, the characters that we set most store by, are very +strange. That beautiful kindness, high courage, and devoted service +should go so often with real animal boorishness and the incapacity to +see more than one thing at a time (mistaken for stupidity by stupid +people) puzzled him, as it puzzles the un-English mind to-day. A reader +feels that in the figure of the Bastard he set down what he found most +significant in the common English character. With the exceptions of Sir +Toby Belch and Justice Shallow, the Bastard is the most English figure +in the plays. He is the Englishman neither at his best nor at his worst, +but at his commonest. The Englishman was never so seen before, nor +since. An entirely honest, robust, hearty person, contemptuous of the +weak, glad to be a king's bastard, making friends with women (his own +mother one of them) with a trusty, good-humoured frankness, fond of +fighting, extremely able when told what to do, fond of plain +measures--the plainer the better, an honest servant, easily impressed by +intellect when found in high place on his own side, but utterly +incapable of perceiving intellect in a foreigner, fond of those sorts of +humour which generally lead to blows, extremely just, very kind when +not fighting, fond of the words "fair play," and nobly and exquisitely +moved to deep, true poetical feeling by a cruel act done to something +helpless and little. The completeness of the portrait is best seen in +the suggestion of the man's wisdom in affairs. The Bastard is trying to +find out whether Hubert killed Arthur, whose little body lies close +beside them. He says that he suspects Hubert "very grievously." Hubert +protests. The Bastard tests the protest with one sentence: "Go bear him +in thine arms." He utters the commonplace lines-- + + "I am amaz'd, methinks, and lose my way + Among the thorns and dangers of the world"-- + +while he watches Hubert's face. Hubert stands the test (the emotional +test that none but an Englishman would apply), he picks up the body. +Instantly the Bastard is touched to a tenderness that lifts Hubert to a +spiritual comradeship with him-- + + "How easy dost thou take all England up." + +This tragedy of the death of a child causes nearly all that is nobly +poetical in the play. + +All the passionately-felt scenes are about Arthur or his mother. Some +have thought that Shakespeare wrote the play in 1596, shortly after the +death of his little son Hamnet, aged eleven. The supposition accuses +Shakespeare of a want of heart, of a want of imagination, or of both +wants together. He wrote like every other writer, from his sense of what +was fitting in an imagined situation. It was no more necessary for him +to delay the writing of Prince Arthur till his son had died than it was +for Dickens to wait till he had killed a real Little Dorrit by slow +poison. + +There is a great change in the manner of the poetical passages. The +poetry of the _Henry VI_ plays is mostly in bright, sweetly running +groups of rhetorical lines. In _King John_ it is either built up +elaborately into an effect of harmony several lines long, or it is put +into a single line or couplet. + +The rhetoric is compressed-- + + "That shakes the rotten carcase of old Death," + +and + + "O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty," + +and + + "Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time." + +The finest poetry is intensely compressed-- + + "I will instruct my sorrows to be proud, + For grief is proud," + +and + + "I have heard you say, + That we shall see and know our friends in heaven. + If that be true, I shall see my boy again," + +and + + "When I shall meet him in the court of heaven + I shall not know him." + +The characters in this truly noble play daunt the reader with a sense of +their creator's power. It is difficult to know intimately any human +soul, even with love as a lamp. Shakespeare's mind goes nobly into these +souls, bearing his great light. It is very wonderful that the mind who +saw man clearest should see him with such exaltation. + + +_King Richard II._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published._ 1597. + + _Source of the Plot._ The lives of King Richard II and King Henry + IV in Raphael Holinshed's _Chronicles_. + + _The Fable._ I. The Duke of Gloucester, uncle of King Richard, has + died under suspicious circumstances at Calais, after an accusation + of treachery. Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, the King's + cousin, accuses Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, of treachery to + the King and of the murder of the Duke of Gloucester. The King + appoints a day on which the two disputants may try their cause by + combat. On their arrival at the lists he banishes them both, + Bolingbroke for six years, Mowbray for ever. After they have gone + to fulfil their sentence, the King plans to subdue the rebels in + Ireland. He prays that the death of his uncle, John of Gaunt, the + wisest man about him, may occur, so that he may take his money to + equip soldiers. + + II. Gaunt dies. Richard seizes his estate (lawfully the property of + Bolingbroke) and proceeds upon his Irish war. Bolingbroke lands + from exile to claim his father's estate and title. Richard's Welsh + forces grow weary of waiting for their king. They disband + themselves. + + III. Bolingbroke's party prospers. Richard is taken and deposed. + + IV. Bolingbroke makes himself king. + + V. Richard, after sorrowing alone, and inspiring a hopeless attempt + at restoration, is killed, desperately fighting, at Pomfret. + +Treachery in some form is at the root of all Shakespearean tragedy. In +this play it takes many forms, among which two are principal, the +treachery of a king to his duty as a king, and the treachery of a +subject to his duty as a subject. As usual in Shakespearean tragedy, the +play is filled full by the abundant mind of the author with +illustrations of his idea. The apricocks at Langley are like King +Richard, the sprays of the trees like Bolingbroke, the weeds like the +King's friends. Everybody in the play (even the horse in the last act) +is in passionate relation to the central idea. + +King Richard is of a type very interesting to Shakespeare. He is wilful, +complex, passionate, with a beauty almost childish and a love of +pleasure that makes him greedy of all gay, light, glittering things. He +loves the music that does not trouble with passion and the thought not +touched with the world. He loves that kind of false, delicate beauty +which is made in societies where life is too easy. There is much that is +beautiful in him. He has all the charm of those whom the world calls the +worthless. His love is a woman, as beautiful and unreal as himself. He +fails because, like other rare things, he is not common. The world cares +little for the rare and the interesting. The world calls for the rough +and common virtue that guides a plough in a furrow, and sergeantly +chaffs by the camp fires. The soul that suffers more than other souls is +little regarded here. The tragedy of the sensitive soul, always acute, +becomes terrible when that soul is made king here by one of the +accidents of life. As a king, Richard neglects his duties with that kind +of wilfulness which the world never fails to punish. The wilfulness +takes the form of a shutting of the eyes to all that is truly kingly. He +rebukes devotion to duty by banishing Bolingbroke, who tries to rid him +of a traitor. He rebukes old age and wisdom in the truly great person +of old John of Gaunt. Worst, and most unkingly of all, he is incapable +of seeing and rewarding the large generosity of mind that makes +sacrifices for an idea. Richard, who likes beautiful things, cannot see +the beauty of old, rough, dying Gaunt, who condemns his own son to exile +rather than betray his idea of justice. Bolingbroke, who cares intensely +for nothing but justice (and could not give even that caring a name, if +questioned), is deeply and nobly generous to York, who would condemn his +own son, and to the Bishop of Carlisle, who would die rather than not +speak his mind. Men who sacrifice themselves are a king's only props. +Richard allies himself with men who prefer to sacrifice the country. + +It is a proof of the greatness of Shakespeare's vision, that Richard is +presented to us both as the traitor and the betrayed. He is the anointed +king false to his coronation oaths; he is the anointed king deposed by +traitors. He is not fitted for kingship, but life has made him a king. +Life, quite as much as temperament, is to blame for his tragedy. When +life and temperament have thrust him from kingship, this wilful, +passionate man, so greedy and heady in his hurry to be unjust, is unlike +the monster that office made him. He is no monster then, but a man, not +even a man like ourselves, but a man of singular delicacy of mind, +sensitive, strangely winning, who wrings our hearts with pity by his +sense of his tragedy-- + + "And here have I the daintiness of ear + To check time broke in a disorder'd string; + But for the concord of my state and time + Had not an ear to hear my true time broke." + +Part of his tragedy is due to his being too late. Had he landed from +Ireland one day earlier he would have found a force of Welshmen ready to +fight for him. At the end of the play he discovers, too late, that he is +weary of patience. He strikes out like a man, when he has no longer a +friend to strike with him. He is killed by a man who finds, too late, +that the murder was not Bolingbroke's intention. + +As in all the tragedies, there is much noble poetry. John of Gaunt's +speech about England is often quoted. Shakespeare's mind is our triumph, +not a dozen lines of rhetoric. Less well known are the couplets-- + + "My inch of taper will be burnt and done, + And blindfold death not let me see my son." + +and + + " ... let him not come there, + To seek out sorrow that dwells everywhere." + +Those scenes in the last acts which display the mind of the deposed king +are all exquisite, though their beauty is not obvious to the many. There +is a kind of intensity of the soul, so intense that it is obscure to the +many till it is interpreted. Writers of plays know well how tamely words +intensely felt may read. They know, too, how like fire upon many souls +those words will be when the voice and the action give them their +interpretation. _Richard II_, like other plays of spiritual tragedy, +needs interpretation. When he wrote it, Shakespeare had not wholly the +power that afterwards he achieved, of himself interpreting his vision +by many-coloured images. It is not one of the beloved plays. + +Bolingbroke has been praised as a manly Englishman, who is not "weak" +like Richard, but "strong" and a man of deeds. In Act IV he shows his +English kindness of mind and love of justice by a temperate wisdom in +the trying of a cause and by saying that he will call back from exile +his old enemy Norfolk. The Bishop of Carlisle tells him that that cannot +be. Norfolk having worn himself out in the wars in Palestine has retired +himself to Italy, and there, at Venice, given + + "His body to that pleasant country's earth, + And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, + Under whose colours he had fought so long." + +It is instructive to note how Bolingbroke takes the news-- + + _Bol._ Why, bishop, is Norfolk dead? + + _Carl._ As surely as I live, my lord. + + _Bol._ Sweet peace conduct his sweet soul to the bosom + Of good old Abraham. Lords appellants, + Your differences, etc. + +The feeling that the poet's mind saw the clash as the clash between the +common and the uncommon man is strengthened by the Queen's speech to +Richard as he is led to prison-- + + "thou most beauteous inn, + Why should hard-favour'd grief be lodged in thee, + When triumph is become an alehouse guest?" + + +_King Richard III._ + + _Written._ 1594 (?) + + _Published._ 1597. + + _Source of the Plot._ The play is founded on the lives of Edward + IV, Edward V, and Richard III, as given (on the authorities of + Edward Hall and Sir Thomas More) in Holinshed's _Chronicles_. + Shakespeare may have seen a worthless play (_The True Tragedy of + Richard III_) which was published in 1594, by an unknown author. + + _The Fable._ Act I. The play begins in the last days of King Edward + IV, when the King's two brothers, Clarence and Gloucester, are + debating who shall succeed to the throne when the King dies. In the + first scene Clarence is led to the Tower under suspicion of + plotting to succeed. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the cause of the + committal, pretends to grieve for him, but hastens to compass his + death. In the next scene Richard woos the Lady Anne (widow of the + dead son of Henry VI, and daughter of the Earl of Warwick), who is + likely to be useful to him for the moment as an ally (she being of + the house of Lancaster). The third scene displays the passionate + quarrelling of the Court factions. The Queen, her brothers and + Richard's party, are cursed by Margaret of Anjou. In the fourth + scene Clarence is murdered in the Tower. + + Act II. King Edward IV dies, having patched up a seeming truce + between the factions. His son is to succeed him. Before this can + happen, Richard strikes down the leaders of the Queen's party, and + lays a deep scheme to secure the crown for himself. + + Act III. There is a deeply tragical scene in which the unsuspecting + Hastings, who is faithful to Edward's memory, is hurried out of + life. Afterwards, through the management of Buckingham, Richard is + proclaimed King. + + Act IV. Richard makes himself sure by casting off Buckingham and + causing the murder of Edward's sons in the Tower. He plots to marry + Edward's daughter. But by this time the land is in upheaval against + him. Buckingham and Richmond lead forces against him. + + Act V. Buckingham is taken and put to death; but Richmond's forces + gather head. Richard leads his army to oppose them. The armies + front each other at Bosworth Field near Leicester. The night before + the battle the ghosts of the many slain during the progress of the + Wars of the Roses menace Richard and promise victory to Richmond. + In the battle that follows Richard is slain. Richmond takes oath to + end the Wars of the Roses by marrying Edward's daughter, so that + the two royal houses may at last be joined. + +_Richard III_ is the last of the great historical plays about the Wars +of the Roses. The subject of the wars had occupied Shakespeare's mind +for many months. He had traced them from their beginning in the long ago +to their end among the dead at Bosworth. All that bloodiness of misery +was due to a forgotten marriage and the chance that Edward III had seven +sons, the eldest of whom died before his father. In this great tragic +vision Shakespeare saw the wheel come full circle, with that giving of +justice which life renders at last, though it may be to the dead, or the +mad, or the broken. + +Largely, this play deals with the coming of that justice. Much that is +most wonderful in the play comes from the faith that blood cruelly or +unjustly spilt cries from the ground, and that the human soul, wrought +to an ecstasy, has power, as the blood has power, to draw God's hand +upon the guilty. But Shakespeare's mind was also occupied with the +knowledge that self-confident intellect is terrible and tragical. One of +the truths of the play is the very sad one that being certain is in +itself a kind of sin, sure to be avenged by life. The obsession of +self-confidence betrays person after person, to misery or death. All +the heads that lift themselves proudly go bloody to the dust or bow in +anguish. Only one man moves by other light than his own. He is the only +one who achieves quiet triumph. Nothing in the play is more impressive +than the speech in which the intellect that has ended the bloodshed +prays humbly that God may bless and help England with peace. + +It was said of Napoleon that he was as great as a man can be without +virtue. The intellect of Richard III is like that of Napoleon. It is +restless, swift, and sure of its power. It is sure, too, that the world +stays as it is from something stupid in the milky human feelings. +Richard is a "bloody dog" let loose in a sheep-fold. It is a part of the +tragedy that he is nobler than the sheep that he destroys. His is the +one great intellect in the play. Intellect is always rare. In kings it +is very rare. When a great intellect is made bitter by being cased in +deformity one has the tragedy of intellect turned upon itself. Had +Richard been born without his deformed shoulder he could have known +human sympathy, and human intercourse. Without human intercourse he goes +gloating, clutching himself, biting his lip, muttering at the twist in +his shadow. This warped, starved mind knows himself stronger than the +minds near him. It is tragical to be deformed, it is tragical to have an +intellect too great for people to understand. But the deformed and +bitter intellect would suffer tragedy indeed if he, the one constant +Yorkist, were to be ruled by a gentle, half-witted Lancastrian saint +like Henry VI, or by Clarence the perjurer, or by the upstart Woodville, +a commoner made noble because his sister took the King's fancy, or by +the Queen herself, the housewife who caused great Warwick's death, or by +one of her sons, who are pert to the man who had spilt his blood to make +their father king. The snarling intellect bites rather than suffer that. +It is very terrible, but how if he had not bitten? The vision of all +this bloodiness is less terrible than that vision of the sheep +triumphing, so dear to us moderns-- + + "Strength by limping sway disabled, + And art made tongue-tied by authority, + And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill." + +As in all Shakespeare's greater plays, a justice brings evil upon the +vow breaker. Curses called down in the solemn moment come home to roost +when the solemnity is forgotten or thrust aside. Clarence, who broke his +oath to the House of Lancaster, is done to death by his brother. Anne, +cursing the killer of her husband, curses the woman who shall marry him, +is, herself, that woman, and dies wretchedly. Grey, Rivers, Dorset, +Buckingham and Hastings make oaths of amity, call down curses on him +that breaks them, themselves break them, and die wretchedly. Richard, +too wise to make oaths, too strong to curse, dies, as his mother +foretells, "by God's just ordinance," when the measure of the blood of +his victims becomes too great, and when his victims' curses, after +wandering from heart to heart, get them into human bodies and walk the +world, executing justice. + +All through the play there are warnings against human certainty. Of all +the dangerous pronouncements of man that to the fountain, "Fountain, of +thy water I will never drink," is one of the most dangerous. There are +terrible examples of certainty betrayed. Richard is certain as only fine +intellect can be that he will triumph. It is a part of his tragedy that +it is not intellect that triumphs in this world, but a stupid, though a +righteous something, incapable of understanding intellect. Rivers and +Grey are certain that Richard is friendly to them. They are hurried to +Pomfret and put to death. Hastings "Knows his state secure," and "goes +triumphant." He is rushed out of life at a moment's notice, one hour a +lord, giving his opinion at a council, the next a corpse in its grave. +Buckingham thinks himself secure. A moment's nicety of conscience sends +him flying to death. The little Princes lay down to sleep-- + + "girdling one another + Within their innocent alabaster arms. + Their lips were four red roses on a stalk + Which in their summer beauty kissed each other"-- + +when their waking time came they were stamped down under the stones at +the stair foot. + +The poetry of this play is that of great and high spiritual invention. +There is much that stays in the mind as exquisitely said and beautifully +felt. But the wonder of the work is in the greatness of the conception. +That is truly great, both as poetry and as drama. The big and burning +imaginings do not please, they haunt. + +The dream of Clarence, the wooing of the Lady Anne, the scene in +Baynard's Castle, and the ghost scene in the tents at Bosworth, have +been praised and re-praised. They are in Shakespeare's normal mood, +neither greater nor less than twenty other scenes in the mature plays. +The really grand scene of the calling down of the curses (Act I, sc. +iii), when the man's mind, after brooding on this event for months, sees +it all, for a glowing hour, as the just God sees it, is the wonderful +achievement. Think of this scene, and think of the scenes played nightly +now in the English theatres, and ask whether all is well with the +nation's soul. + +There are many superb Shakespearean openings. No poet in history opens a +play with a more magnificent certainty. The opening of this play-- + + "Now is the winter of our discontent + Made glorious summer by this sun of York," + +is one of the most splendid of all. There is no need to pick out +fragments from the rest of the play, but the march of the line-- + + "Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current"-- + +the lines-- + + "then came wandering by + A shadow like an angel, with bright hair + Dabbled in blood; and he squeaked out aloud, + 'Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, + That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury'"-- + +the exquisitely tender lines-- + + "And there the little souls of Edward's children + Whisper the spirits"-- + +and the orders of Richard in the last act, for white Surrey to be +saddled, ink and paper to be brought, and a bowl of wine to be filled, +show that the poet's great confident manner was formed, on all the four +sides of its perfection. The years only brought it to a deeper glow. + + +_The Merchant of Venice._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published._ 1600. + + _Source of the Plot._ The ancient story of the merciless Jew is + told in the _Gesta Romanorum_, and re-told, with delicate grace, by + Giovanni Fiorentino, a fourteenth-century Italian writer, in his + _Il Pecorone_ (the simpleton), a collection of novels, or, as we + should call them, short stories. The story of the three caskets is + also told in the _Gesta Romanorum_. Other incidents in the play are + taken from other sources, possibly from other plays. It is thought + by some that the character of Shylock was suggested by the case of + the Spanish Jew, Lopez, who was hanged, perhaps unjustly, for + plotting to poison Queen Elizabeth, in 1594. The main source of the + dramatic fable is Fiorentino's story. + + _The Fable._ Portia, the lady of Belmont, has three caskets, one of + gold, one of silver, one of lead. She is vowed to marry the man + who, on viewing the caskets, guesses which of them contains her + portrait. Various attempting suitors fail to guess rightly. + + Bassanio, eager to try the hazard, obtains money from his friend + Antonio, to equip him. Antonio borrows the money from the Jew, + Shylock, on condition that, should he fail to repay the debt by a + fixed day, a pound of his flesh shall be forfeit to the Jew. + + Bassanio guesses rightly and weds Portia. + + Antonio fails to repay the debt, and is lodged in prison. Bassanio + hears of his friend's disaster. Portia bids him fly to Antonio with + money enough to pay the debt threefold. Shylock refuses the offer. + He clamours for his pound of flesh. The case comes to trial. + + At the hearing of the case in the Duke's court, Portia, disguised + as a judge, gives sentence, that Shylock may have his pound of + flesh; but that if he shed Christian blood in the taking of it, his + life will be forfeit. Shylock is confounded further by a charge of + endangering a Christian's life. He is fined and humbled. Portia, + still in disguise, asks as her fee a ring that she has given to + Bassanio. Bassanio, hesitating, at last gives the ring, and returns + home without it. Portia's pretended indignation at the loss of the + ring ends the last act with comedy. + +The play resolves itself into a simple form. It illustrates the clash +between the emotional and the intellectual characters, the man of heart +and the man of brain. The man of heart, Antonio, is obsessed by a +tenderness for his friend. The man of brain is obsessed by a lust to +uphold intellect in a thoughtless world that makes intellect bitter in +every age. Shylock is a man of intellect, born into a despised race. It +is his tragedy that the generous Gentiles about him can be generous to +everything except to intellect and Jewish blood. Intellect and Jewish +blood are too proud to attempt to understand the Gentiles who cannot +understand. + +Shylock is a proud man. The Gentiles, who are neither proud nor +intellectual, spit upon him and flout him. One of them beguiles his +daughter and teaches her to rob him. Another of them signs a mad bond to +help an extravagant friend to live in idleness. Bitter, lonely brooding +upon these things strengthen the Jew's obsession, till the words, "I can +cut out the heart of my enemy," become the message of his entire nature. +Half the evils in life come from the partial vision of people in states +of obsession. Shylock's obsession grows till he is in the Duke's court, +whetting his knife upon his shoe, before what Pistol calls "incision." + +Portia has been much praised during two centuries of criticism. She is +one of the smiling things created in the large and gentle mood that +moved Shakespeare to comedy. The scene in the fifth act, where the two +women, coming home from Venice by night, see the candle burning in the +hall, as they draw near, is full of a naturalness that makes beauty +quick in the heart. Shakespeare enjoyed the writing of this play. The +construction of the last two acts shows that his great happy mind was at +its happiest in the saving of these creatures of the sun from something +real. + + +_The Taming of the Shrew._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published._ 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The induction and that part of the play which + treats of Petruchio and Katharina is based upon a play, published + in 1594, under the title _The Taming of A Shrew_, author not known. + The other part is based on _The Supposes_ of George Gascoigne, a + comedy adapted from Ariosto's _I Suppositi_. + + _The Fable._ Christopher Sly, a tinker lying drunk by a tavern, is + found by a lord, who causes him to be put to bed and treated, on + waking, as a nobleman newly cured of madness. Part of the treatment + is the performance of this play before him. + + The play has two plots. In one of them, Petruchio woos and tames + the shrew Katharina; in the other, Katharina's sister Bianca is + wooed by lovers in disguise. The two plots have little connection + with each other. That which relates to Petruchio and Katharina is + certainly by Shakespeare. The other seems to be by a dull man who + did not know his craft as a dramatist. + +In the Induction, and in the speech of Biondello (in Act III) +Shakespeare enters a mood of memory of the country. In the song at the +end of _Love's Labour's Lost_ he showed a matchless sense of country +life. That sense, at once robust and sweet, now gives life to a few +scenes in the plays. These scenes are mostly in prose; but they have the +rightness of poetry. In writing them, he wrought with his daily nature, +from something intimately known, or inbred in him, during childhood. Man +can only write happily from a perfect understanding. All men can +describe with point and colour what they knew as children. These country +scenes in Shakespeare are happier than anything else in the plays +because they come, not from anything read or heard, but from the large, +genial nature made by years of life among the farms and sheep-walks at +the western end of the Cotswolds. + + _Sly._ Y' are a baggage: the Slys are no rogues; look in the + chronicles; we came in with Richard Conqueror. Therefore _paucas + pallabris_; let the world slide: _Sessa!_ + + _Hostess._ You will not pay for the glasses you have burst? + + _Sly._ No, not a denier. Go by, Jeronimy: go to thy cold bed, and + warm thee. + +In the third act, Biondello's description of the appearance of +Petruchio's horse has the abundance of the great mind. + + " ... possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; + troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of + wind-galls, sped with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of + the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, + swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten; near legged before and + with a half-cheeked bit and a headstall of sheep's leather." + +It is something no longer possible in a city theatre. Neither the +dramatist nor the audience of to-day knows a horse as the Elizabethan +had to know him. The speech sets one wondering at the art of the unknown +Elizabethan actor who first spoke hurriedly this speech of strange words +full of sibilants. + +Shakespeare's share in the play (the scenes in which the shrew and her +tamer appear) is farce with ironic philosophical intention. He indicates +the tragedy that occurs when a manly spirit is born into a woman's body. +Katharina is vexed and plagued by forced submission to a father who +cannot see her merit, and by jealousy of a gentle, useless sister. She, +who is entirely honest, sees the brainless Bianca, whom no amount of +schooling will make even passably honest, preferred before her. Lastly, +she is humbled into the state of submissive wifely falsehood by a boor +who cares only for his own will, her flesh, and her money. In a page and +a half of melancholy claptrap broken Katharina endeavours to persuade us +that + + "Such duty as the subject owes the prince, + Even such a woman oweth to her husband." + +Perhaps it is the way of the world. Women betray womanhood as much by +mildness as by wiles. Meanwhile, what duty does a man owe to a fine, +free, fearless spirit dragged down to his by commercial bargain with a +father who is also a fool? + + +_King Henry IV, Part I._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published._ 1598. + + _Source of the Plot._ Most of the comic scenes are the fruit of + Shakespeare's invention. A very popular play, _The Famous Victories + of Henry V_, by an unknown hand, gave him the suggestion for an + effective comic scene. In the historical scenes he follows closely + the _Chronicles_ of Holinshed. + + _The Fable._ The play treats of the rising of Henry Hotspur, Lord + Percy, against Henry IV of England, and of the turning of the mind + of Henry, Prince of Wales, from low things to things more worthy + his birth. It ends with the killing of Hotspur, by the Prince of + Wales, on the battlefield at Shrewsbury. Hotspur is an uncommon + man, whose uncommonness is unsupported by his father at a critical + moment. Henry, Prince of Wales, is a common man, whose commonness + props his father, and helps him to conquer. The play is about a son + too brilliant to be understood, and a son too common to understand. + +The play treats of a period some four years after the killing of King +Richard II. It opens at a time when the oaths of Henry Bolingbroke, to +do justice, have been broken on all sides, lest the injustice of his +assumption of kingship should be recognised and punished by those over +whom he usurps power. The King is no longer the just, rather kind, man +of affairs who takes power in the earlier, much finer play. He is a +swollen, soured, bullying man, with all the ingratitude of a king and +all the baseness of one who knows his cause to be wrong. Opposed to him +is a passionate, quick-tempered man, ready to speak his mind, on the +instant, to any whom he believes to be unjust or false. + +This quick-tempered man, Lord Percy, has done the King a signal service. +Instead of asking for reward he tries to persuade the King to be just to +a man who has suffered wounds and defeat for him. The King calls him a +liar for his pains. + +Percy, stung to the quick, rebels. Others rebel with him, among them +some who are too wise to be profitable on a council of war. War does not +call for wisdom, but for swiftness in striking. Percy, who is framed +for swiftness in striking, loses half of his slender chance because his +friends are too wise to advise desperate measures. Nevertheless, his +troops shake the King's troops. The desperate battle of Shrewsbury is +very nearly a triumph for him. Then the Prince meets him and kills him. +He learns too late that a passionate longing to right the wrong goes +down before the rough and stupid something that makes up the bulk of the +world. He learns that + + "Thought's the slave of life, and life, time's fool; + And time, that takes survey of all the world, + Must have a stop"-- + +and dies. The man who kills him says a few trite lines over his body, +and leaves the stage talking of Falstaff's bowels. + +Prince Henry, afterwards Henry V, has been famous for many years as +"Shakespeare's only hero." Shakespeare was too wise to count any man a +hero. The ways of fate moved him to vision, not heroism. If we can be +sure of anything in that great, simple, gentle, elusive brain, we can be +sure that it was quickened by the thought of the sun shining on the just +and on the unjust, and shining none the less golden though the soul like +clay triumph over the soul like flame. Prince Henry is not a hero, he is +not a thinker, he is not even a friend; he is a common man whose +incapacity for feeling enables him to change his habits whenever +interest bids him. Throughout the first acts he is careless and callous +though he is breaking his father's heart and endangering his father's +throne. He chooses to live in society as common as himself. He talks +continually of guts as though a belly were a kind of wit. Even in the +society of his choice his attitude is remote and cold-blooded. There is +no good-fellowship in him, no sincerity, no whole-heartedness. He makes +a mock of the drawer who gives him his whole little pennyworth of sugar. +His jokes upon Falstaff are so little good-natured that he stands upon +his princehood whenever the old man would retort upon him. He impresses +one as quite common, quite selfish, quite without feeling. When he +learns that his behaviour may have lost him his prospective crown he +passes a sponge over his past, and fights like a wild cat for the right +of not having to work for a living. + +There is little great poetry in the play. The magnificent image-- + + "Baited like eagles having lately bathed"-- + +the speech of Worcester (in Act V, sc. i) when he comes with a trumpet +to speak with the King, and the call of Hotspur to set on battle-- + + "Sound all the lofty instruments of war, + And by that music let us all embrace"-- + +are all noble. + +To many, the play is remarkable because it introduces Sir John Falstaff, +the most notable figure in English comedy. Falstaff is that deeply +interesting thing, a man who is base because he is wise. Our justest, +wisest brain dwelt upon Falstaff longer than upon any other character +because he is the world and the flesh, able to endure while Hotspur +flames to his death, and the enemies of the devil are betrayed that the +devil may have power to betray others. + + +_The Second Part of King Henry IV._ + + _Written._ 1597 (?) + + _Published._ 1600. + + _Source of the Plot._ The play of _The Famous Victories of Henry + V_. Holinshed's _Chronicles_. + + _The Fable._ Northumberland and the other conspirators against the + King learn that Hotspur, their associate, whom they failed to + support, has been defeated and killed. The King's forces are now + free to act against themselves. Northumberland retires to Scotland. + The others under a divided command, make head against the King's + troops under John of Lancaster. They are betrayed, taken and put to + death. Northumberland, venturing out from Scotland, is defeated. + King Henry's position is assured. + + His safety comes too late to be pleasant to him. He is dying, and + the conduct of his son gives him anxiety. He sees no chance of + permanent peace. He counsels his son to begin a war abroad, to + distract the attention of his subjects. Having done this, he dies. + + Prince Henry begins his reign as Henry V by casting off all his old + associates. + +The second part of the play of _King Henry IV_ is Shakespeare's ending +of the tragedy of _Richard II_. The deposition of Richard was an act of +violence, unjust, as violence must be, and offensive, as injustice is, +to the power behind life. The blood of the dead king, and of all those +killed in fighting for him, calls upon that power, and asks justice of +it. Slowly, in many secret ways, the tide sets against the slayer, till +he is a worn, old, heart-broken, haunted man, dying with the knowledge +that all the bloodshed has been useless, because the power so hardly won +will be tossed away by his successor, the youth with "a weak mind and an +able body," the "good, shallow young fellow," who "would have made a +good pantler," who comes in noisily to his father's death-bed with news +of the beastliest of all the treacheries of the reign. Just as the play +of _Richard III_ completes the action of the Wars of the Roses, this +play completes the action of the killing of the Duke of Gloucester at +Calais. The wheel comes full circle, crushing many that looked to be +brought high, making friends enemies and enemies friends. Life was +never so brooded on since man learned to think, as in this cycle of +tragedies. In this fragment of the whole we are shown the two classes in +human life, the people of instinct and the people of intellect, being +preyed on by two men, one of them greedy for present ease, the other for +temporal power. Both men obtain their will. Those who give up everything +for one thing often obtain that thing. But it is a law of life that +nothing must be paid for with too great a share of the imaginative +energy. All excess of the kind is unjust, as violence must be, and +offensive, as injustice is, to the power behind life. King Henry IV +fails in the hour of his triumph from his manifold failures in life +during the struggle for triumph. Falstaff fails in the same way. The +prize of life falls to the careless and callous man who has struggled +only in two minutes of his life, once, when he played a practical joke +upon some thieves, and a second time when he killed Hotspur, the +brilliant intellect, the "miracle of men." + +Many scenes in this play are great. Shakespeare's instinctive power was +as large and as happy as his intellectual power. In this play he +indulged it to the full. The Falstaff scenes are all wonderful. That in +which the drunken Pistol is driven downstairs is the finest tavern scene +ever written. Those placed in Gloucestershire are the perfect poetry of +English country life. The talk of old dead Double, who could clap "i' +the clout at twelvescore," and is now dead, as we shall all be soon; the +casting back of memory to Jane Nightwork, still alive, though she +belongs to a time fifty-five years past, when a man, now old, heard the +chimes at midnight; the order to sow the headland, Cotswold fashion, +with red Lammas wheat; the kindness and charm of the country servants, +so beautiful after the drunken townsmen, are like the English country +speaking. The earth of England is a good earth and bears good fruit, +even the apple of man. These scenes are like an apple-loft in some old +barn, where the apples of last year lie sweet in the straw. + +All of those scenes seem to have been written easily, out of the fulness +of an instinctive power. In the other scenes Shakespeare wrote with +intense mental effort after brooding intensely on human destiny-- + + "how chances mock, + And changes fill the cup of alteration + With divers liquors," + +and on the truth that-- + + "There is a history in all men's lives, + Figuring the nature of the times deceased; + The which observed, a man may prophesy, + With a near aim, of the main chance of things + As not yet come to life." + +There are two scenes of deep tragedy in the play, both awful. +Shakespeare never wrote anything more terrible. They are the scene in +the fourth act, where John of Lancaster tricks and betrays the rebels, +and the scene at the end where the young King cuts his old friends, with +a word to the Lord Justice to have them into banishment. The words of +Scripture, "Put not your trust in princes," must have rung in +Shakespeare's head as he wrote these scenes. + +Richard II flung down his warder at Coventry rather than let his friend +venture in battle for him. From that act of mercy came his loss of the +crown, his death, Mowbray's death, Hotspur's death, the murder of the +leaders at Gaultree and the countless killings up and down England. At +the end of this play the slaughter stops for a while so that a callous +young animal may bring his country into a foreign war to divert men's +minds from injustice at home. + +At the end of the play there is an epilogue in prose, touching for this +reason, that it is one of the few personal addresses that Shakespeare +has left to us. In the plays the characters speak with a detachment +never relaxed. They belong to the kingdom of vision, not to the mind +through which they came. In this epilogue Shakespeare speaks for all +time directly to his hearers, whoever they may be. + +Who are his hearers? Not the English. + +Our prophet is not honoured here. This series of historical plays is one +of the most marvellous things ever done by man. The plays of which it is +composed have not been played in London, in their great processional +pageant of tragedy, within the memory of man. + + +_King Henry V._ + + _Written._ 1598 (?) + + _Published_, imperfectly, 1600; as we now have it, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The play of _The Famous Victories of Henry + V_. Holinshed's _Chronicles_. (Possibly) an earlier play, now lost. + + _The Fable._ The play describes the determination of Henry V to + fight with France, his progress in France, the battle of Agincourt, + the articles of peace between the French and English, and the + courtship of the King with Katharine, daughter of the French King. + It is a chronicle of the coming, seeing, and conquering of the + "fellow" "whose face was not worth sun-burning." + +The play bears every mark of having been hastily written. Though it +belongs to the great period of Shakespeare's creative life, it contains +little either of clash of character, or of that much tamer thing, +comparison of character. It is a chronicle or procession, eked out with +soldiers' squabbles. It seems to have been written to fill a gap in the +series of the historical plays. Perhaps the management of the Globe +Theatre, where the play was performed, wished to play the series +through, from _Richard II_ to _Richard III_, and persuaded Shakespeare +to write this play to link _Henry IV_ to _Henry VI_. The lines of the +epilogue show that Shakespeare meant the play to give an image of +worldly success between the images of failure in the other plays. + +The play ought to be seen and judged as a part of the magnificent tragic +series. Detached from its place, as it has been, it loses all its value. +It is not greatly poetical in itself. It is popular. It is about a +popular hero who is as common as those who love him. But in its place it +is tremendous. Henry V is the one commonplace man in the eight plays. He +alone enjoys success and worldly happiness. He enters Shakespeare's +vision to reap what his broken-hearted father sowed. He passes out of +Shakespeare's vision to beget the son who dies broken-hearted after +bringing all to waste again. + + "Hear him but reason in divinity," + +cries the admiring archbishop. Yet this searcher of the spirit woos his +bride like a butcher, and jokes among his men like a groom. He has the +knack of life that fits human beings for whatever is animal in human +affairs. + +His best friend, Scroop, plots to kill him, but is detected and put to +death. Henry accuses Scroop of cruelty and ingratitude. He forgets those +friends whom his own cruelty has betrayed to death and dishonour. +Falstaff dies broken-hearted. Bardolph, whose faithfulness redeems his +sins, is hanged. Pistol becomes a cutpurse. They were the prince's +associates a few months before. He puts them from his life with as +little feeling as he shows at Agincourt, when he orders all the +prisoners to be killed. + +He has a liking for knocks. Courage tempered by stupidity (as in the +persons of Fluellen, etc.) is what he loves in a man. He, himself, has +plenty of his favourite quality. His love of plainness and bluntness +makes him condemn sentiment in his one profound speech-- + + "All other devils that suggest by treasons + Do botch and bungle up damnation + With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch'd + From glistering semblances of piety." + +The scenes between Nym and Pistol, and the account of Falstaff's death, +are the last of the great English scenes. This (or the next) was +Shakespeare's last English play, for Lear and Cymbeline are British, not +English. When he laid down his pen after writing the epilogue to this +play he had done more than any English writer to make England sacred in +the imaginations of her sons. + + +_The Merry Wives of Windsor._ + + _Written._ 1599 (?) + + _Published_, in a mutilated form, 1602; in a complete form, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ A tale in Straparola's _Notti_ (iv. 4). + Tarleton's _News out of Purgatorie_. Giovanni Florentino's _Il + Pecorone_. Kinde Kit of Kingston's _Westward for Smelts_. + + _The Fable._ Falstaff makes love to Mistress Ford, the wife of a + Windsor man. Mistress Ford, despising Falstaff, plots with her + friend, Mrs. Page, to make him a mock. News of Falstaff's passion + is brought to Ford, who, needlessly jealous, resolves to search the + house for him. + + Falstaff woos Mrs. Ford. She holds him in play till she hears that + her husband is coming. Falstaff, alarmed at his approach, bundles + into a clothes basket, is carried past the unsuspecting husband, + and soused in the river. + + He is gulled into the belief that Mrs. Ford expects him again. He + goes, is nearly caught by Ford, but escapes, disguised as an old + woman, at the cost of a cudgelling. + + Still believing in Mrs. Ford's love for him, he keeps a third + assignation, this time in Windsor Forest, in the disguise of Herne + the hunter. On this occasion he is pinched and scorched by little + children disguised as fairies. He learns that Mrs. Ford has tricked + him, is mocked by all, and then forgiven. + + The play is eked out by other actions. Chief of these is the wooing + of Anne Page, Mrs. Page's daughter, by three men--a foreigner, Dr. + Caius; an idiot, Master Slender; and the man of her heart, Fenton. + There are also scenes between Falstaff, Nym, Bardolph and Pistol, + and between Dr. Caius, Sir Hugh Evans, Shallow, Slender, the Host + and Mrs. Quickly. + +An old tradition says that this play was written in a fortnight by +command of Queen Elizabeth. There can be no doubt (_a_) that it was +written hurriedly, (_b_) that it nicely suited the Tudor sense of +humour. It is the least interesting of the genuine plays. It is almost +wholly the work of the abundant instinctive self working in the high +spirits that so often come with the excitement of hurry. None of the +characters has time for thought. The play is full of external energy. +The people bustle and hurry with all their animal natures. + +It is the only Shakespearean play which treats exclusively of English +country society. As a picture of that society it is true and telling. +Country society alters very little. It is the enduring stem on which the +cities graft fashions. It is given to few to see English country society +so much excited as it is in this play, but drama deals with excessive +life. Shakespeare's people are always intensely excited or interested or +passionate. Each play tells of the great moments in half-a-dozen lives. +The method of this play is the same, though the lives chosen are lower +and the interests stupider. Falstaff is interested in cuckoldry, Mrs. +Ford in mockery, Ford, Evans and Caius in jealousy and rivalry, Bardolph +is going to be a tapster, the others are plying their suits. Even in +this his most trivial play, Shakespeare's idea that punishment follows +oath-breaking is expressed (whimsically enough) by Falstaff-- + + "I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero." + +His other idea, that obsession is a danger to life, is expressed later +in the words-- + + "See now, how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ill + employment." + +There is little poetry in the play. The most poetical passage is the +account of Herne the hunter-- + + "There is an old tale goes, that Herne the Hunter, + Some time a keeper here in Windsor Forest, + Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight, + Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns; + And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle; + And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain + In a most hideous and dreadful manner." + +Modern poets would describe Herne's dress and appearance. The creative +poet describes his actions. + +It is possible that when this play was written Shakespeare had thoughts +of consecrating himself to the writing of purely English plays. There +are signs that he had reached a point of achievement that is always a +critical point to imaginative men. He had reached the point at which the +personality is exhausted. He had worked out his natural instincts, the +life known to him, his predilections, his reading. He had found a +channel in which his thoughts could express themselves. Writing was no +longer so pleasant to him as it had been. He had done an incredible +amount of work in a few years. The personality was worn to a husk. It +may be that a very little would have kept him on this side of the line, +writing imitations of what he had already done. He was at the critical +moment which separates the contemplative from the visionary, the good +from the excellent, the great from the supreme. All writers, according +to their power, come to this point. Very few have the fortune to get +beyond it. Shakespeare's mind stood still for a moment, in this play and +in the play that followed, before it went on triumphant to the supreme +plays. + + +_As You Like It._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published._ 1600 (?) + + _Source of the Plot._ Thomas Lodge's novel of _Rosalynde_, Euphues' + _Golden Legacie_ (published in 1590) supply the fable. The tale is + that tale of Gamelyn, wrongly attributed to Chaucer. The _Practise_ + (Saviolo's "Practise") of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian master of + arms, gave hints for Touchstone's account of the lie. The rest of + the play seems to have been the fruit of Shakespeare's invention. + + _The Fable._ Orlando, basely used by his elder brother Oliver, + leaves home, annoys the usurping Duke Frederick, and is advised to + leave the country. + + Rosalind, child of the rightful Duke, and Celia, the child of Duke + Frederick, fly from home together in search of the rightful Duke, + who has taken to the wild wood. Rosalind, dressed as a man, gives + out that Celia is her sister. They set up as shepherds in Arden. + + Orlando joins the rightful Duke in Arden. He is in love with + Rosalind. He meets her in the forest, but does not recognise her in + her disguise. Oliver, cast out by Frederick, comes to Arden, is + reconciled to Orlando, and falls in love with Celia. There are a + few passages of the comedy of mistake, due to Rosalind's disguise. + In the end, the rightful Duke and Oliver are restored to their + possessions. Orlando marries Rosalind; the minor characters are + married as their hearts desire, and all ends happily. + +The play treats of the gifts of Nature and the ways of Fortune. Orlando, +given little, is brought to much. Rosalind and Celia, born to much, are +brought to little. The Duke, born to all things, is brought to nothing. +The usurping Duke, born to nothing, climbs to much, desires all, and at +last renounces all. Oliver, born to much, aims at a little more, loses +all, and at last regains all. Touchstone, the worldly wise, marries a +fool. Audrey, born a clown, marries a courtier. Phebe, scorning a man, +falls in love with a woman. + +Jaques, the only wise one, is the only one not moved by Fortune. Life +does not interest him; his interest is in his thoughts about life. His +vision of life feasts him whatever life does. Passages in the second +act, in the subtle seventh scene, corrupt in a most important line, show +that in the character of Jaques Shakespeare was expounding a philosophy +of art. The philosophy may not have been that by which he, himself, +wrought; but it is one set down by him with an extreme subtlety of care, +and opposed, as all opinions advanced in drama must be, by an extreme +earnestness of opposition. + +The wisest of Shakespeare's characters are often detached from the +action of the play in which they appear. Jaques holds aloof from the +action of this play, though he is perhaps the best-known character in +the cast. His thought is the thought of all wise men, that wisdom, being +always a little beyond the world, has no worldly machinery by which it +can express itself. In this world the place of chorus, interpreter or +commentator is not given to the wise man, but to the fool who has +degraded the office to a profession. Jaques, the wise man, finds the +place occupied by one whose comment is platitude. Wisdom has no place in +the social scheme. The fool, he finds, has both office and uniform. + +Seeing this, Jaques wishes, as all wise men wish, not to be counted +wise but to have as great liberty as the fool to express his thought-- + + "weed your better judgments + Of all opinion that grows rank in them + That I am wise. I must have liberty + Withal, as large a charter as the wind, + To blow on whom I please; for so fools have. + + ... give me leave + To speak my mind, and I will through and through + Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, + If they will patiently receive my medicine." + +He is answered that, having learned of the world's evil by libidinous +living, he can only do evil by exposing his knowledge. He replies, +finely expressing Shakespeare's invariable artistic practice, that his +aim will be at sin, not at particular sinners. + +In the middle of his speech Orlando enters, raging for food. It is +interesting to see how closely Shakespeare follows Jaques' mind in the +presence of the fierce animal want of hunger. He is too much interested +to be of help. The Duke ministers to Orlando. Jaques wants to know "of +what kind this cock should come of." He speaks banteringly, the Duke +speaks kindly. The impression given is that Jaques is heartless. The +Duke's thought is "here is one even more wretched than ourselves." +Jaques' thought, always more for humanity than for the individual, is a +profound vision of the world. + +The play is a little picture of the world. The contemplative man who is +not of the world, is yet a part of the picture. We are shown a company +of delightful people, just escaped from disaster, smilingly taking the +biggest of hazards. The wise man, dismissing them to their fates with +all the authority of wisdom, gives up his share in the game to listen to +a man who has given up his share of the world. Renunciation of the world +is attractive to all upon whom the world presses very heavily, or very +lightly. + +Rosalind and Phebe are of the two kinds of woman who come much into +Shakespeare's early and middle plays. Rosalind, like Portia, is a +golden woman, a daughter of the sun, smiling-natured, but limited. +Phebe, like Rosalind, is black-haired, black-eyed, black-eyebrowed, with +the dead-white face that so often goes with cruelty. Shortly after this +play was written he began to create types less external and less +limited. + + +_Much Ado about Nothing._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published._ 1600. + + _Source of the Plot._ The greater part of the fable seems to have + been invented by Shakespeare. The Hero and Claudio story is found + in the twenty-second novel of Bandello, and in at least three other + books (one of them Spenser's _Faerie Queene_). It was also known to + the Elizabethans in a play now lost. + + _The Fable._ Benedick, a lord of Padua, pledges himself to + bachelorhood. Beatrice, a disdainful lady, is scornful of men. + + Claudio plans to marry Hero. + + Don John, enemy of Claudio, plans to thwart the marriage by letting + it appear that Hero is unchaste. + + Don Pedro and Claudio make Benedick believe that Beatrice is dying + of love for him. + + Ursula and Hero make Beatrice believe that Benedick is dying of + love for her. + + The disdainful couple make friends. Don John thwarts the marriage + of Claudio by his tale of Hero's unchastity. Claudio casts off Hero + at the altar. Hero swoons, and is conveyed away as dead. Beatrice + and Benedick are brought into close alliance by their upholding of + Hero's cause. + + Proof is obtained that Hero has been falsely accused. She is + recovered from her swoon. Claudio marries her. Benedick and + Beatrice plight troth. + +In this play Shakespeare writes of the power of report, of the thing +overheard, to alter human destiny. Antonio's man, listening behind a +hedge, overhears Don Pedro telling Claudio that he will woo Hero. The +report of his eavesdropping conveys no notion of the truth, and leads, +no doubt, to a bitter moment for Hero. Borachio, hiding behind the +arras, overhears the truth of the matter. The report of his +eavesdropping leads to the casting off of Hero at the altar. Don John +and Borachio vow to Claudio that they overheard Don Pedro making love to +Hero. The report gives Claudio a bitter moment. Benedick, reporting to +the same tune, intensifies his misery. + +Benedick, overhearing the report of Beatrice's love for him, changes his +mind about marriage. Beatrice, hearing of Benedick's love for her, +changes her mind about men. Claudio, hearing Don John's report of Hero, +changes his mind about his love. The watch, overhearing Borachio's +report of his villainy, are able to change the tragedy to comedy. +Leonato, hearing Claudio's report of Hero, is ready to cast off his +child. Report is shown to be stronger than any human affection and any +acquired quality, except the love of one unmarried woman for another, +and that strongest of all earthly things, the fool in authority. The +wisdom of Shakespeare is greater and more various than the brains of +little men can imagine. It is one of the tragical things, that this +great man, who interpreted the ways of fate in glorious, many-coloured +vision, should be set aside in our theatres for the mockers and the +accusers, whose vision scatters dust upon the brain and sand upon the +empty heart. + +Though the play is not one of the most passionate of the plays, it +belongs to Shakespeare's greatest creative period. It is full of great +and wonderful things. The character-drawing is so abundant and precise +that those who know how hard it is to convey the illusion of character +can only bow down, thankful that such work may be, but ashamed that it +no longer is. Every person in the play is passionately alive about +something. The energy of the creative mood in Shakespeare filled all +these images with a vitality that interests and compels. The wit and +point of the dialogue-- + + _Don Pedro._ I think this is your daughter. + + _Leonato._ Her mother hath many times told me so. + + _Benedick._ Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her? + + _Leonato._ Signior Benedick, no; for then you were a child; + +or (as in the later passage)-- + + _Beatrice._ I may sit in a corner and cry heigh ho for a husband. + + _Don Pedro._ Lady Beatrice, I will get you one. + + _Beatrice._ I would rather have one of your father's getting. Hath + your Grace ne'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent + husbands, if a maid could come by them. + + _Don Pedro._ Will you have me, lady? + + _Beatrice._ No, my lord, unless I might have another for working + days: your Grace is too costly to wear every day-- + +is plain to all; but it is given to few to see with what admirable, +close, constructive art this dialogue is written for the theatre. Of +poetry, of understanding passionately put, there is comparatively +little. The one great poetical scene is that at the opening of the fifth +act. The worst lines of this scene have become proverbial; the best are + + "'tis all men's office to speak patience + To those that wring under the load of sorrow, + But no man's virtue nor sufficiency, + To be so moral when he shall endure + The like himself." + +There is little in the play written thus, but there are many scenes +throbbingly alive. The scene in the church shows what power to +understand the awakened imagination has. The scene is a quivering eight +minutes in as many lives. Shakespeare passes from thrilling soul to +thrilling soul with a touch as delicate as it is certain. + +Shakespeare's fun is liberally given in the comic scenes. In the last +act there is a beautiful example of the effect of lyric to heighten a +solemn occasion. + + +_Twelfth Night._ + + _Written._ 1600 (?) + + _Published_, in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The story of Orsino, Viola, Olivia and + Sebastian is to be found in the "Historie of Apolonius and Silla" + as told by Barnabe Riche in the book _Riche his Farewell to + Militarie Profession_. Riche took the tale from Bandello's Italian, + or from de Belleforest's French translation from it. Three + sixteenth-century Italian plays are based on this fable. All of + these sources may have been known to Shakespeare. + + The sub-plot, and the characters contained in it, seem to be + original creations. + + _The Fable._ Viola, who thinks that she has lost her brother + Sebastian by shipwreck, disguises herself as a boy, and calls + herself Cesario. She takes service with the Duke Orsino, who is in + love with the lady Olivia. She carries love messages from the Duke + to Olivia. + + Olivia, who is in mourning for her brother, refuses the Duke's + suit, but falls in love with Cesario. + + In her house is Malvolio, the steward, who reproves her uncle, Sir + Toby Belch, for rioting at night with trivial companions. The + trivial companions forge a letter, which causes Malvolio to think + that his mistress is in love with him. The thought makes his + behaviour so strange that he is locked up as a madman. + + Sir Toby Belch finds further solace for life in making his gull, + Sir Andrew, challenge Cesario to a duel. The duel is made dangerous + by the sudden appearance of Sebastian, who is mistaken for Cesario. + He beats Sir Andrew and Sir Toby, and encounters the lady Olivia. + Olivia woos him as she has wooed Cesario, but with better fortune. + + They are married. The Duke marries Viola. Malvolio is released from + prison. Sir Toby marries Maria, Olivia's waiting-woman. Sir Andrew + is driven out like a plucked pigeon. Malvolio, unappeased by his + release, vows to be revenged for the mock put upon him. + +This is the happiest and one of the loveliest of all the Shakespearean +plays. It is the best English comedy. The great mind that mixed a +tragedy of intellect with a tragedy of stupidity, here mixes mirth with +romantic beauty. The play is so mixed with beauty that one can see it +played night after night, week after week, without weariness, even in a +London theatre. + +The play presents images of self-deception, or delusional +sentimentality, by means of a romantic fable and a vigorous fable. It +shows us three souls suffering from the kind of sickly vanity that feeds +on day-dreams. Orsino is in an unreal mood of emotion. Love is an +active passion. Orsino is in the clutch of its dangerous passive enemy +called sentimentality. He lolls upon a couch to music when he ought to +be carrying her glove to battle. Olivia is in an unreal mood of mourning +for her brother. Grief is a destroying passion. Olivia makes it a form +of self-indulgence, or one sweet the more to attract flies to her. +Malvolio is in an unreal mood of self-importance. Long posing at the +head of ceremony has given him the faith that ceremony, of which he is +the head, is the whole of life. This faith deludes him into a life of +day-dreams, common enough among inactive clever people, but dangerous to +the indulger, as all things are that distort the mental vision. At the +point at which the play begins the day-dream has brought him to the +pitch of blindness necessary for effective impact on the wall. + +The only cure for the sickly in the mind is reality. Something real has +to be felt or experienced. Life that is over-delicate and remote +through something unbalanced in the mind is not life but decay. The +knife, the bludgeon, the practical joke, and the many-weaponed figure of +Sorrow are life's remedies for those who fail to live. We are the +earth's children; we have no business in limbo. Living in limbo is like +living in the smoke from a crater: highly picturesque, but too near +death for safety. + +Orsino is cured of sentiment by the sight of Sebastian making love like +a man. He rouses to do the like by Viola. Olivia is piqued out of +sentiment by coming to know some one who despises her. She falls in love +with that person. Malvolio is mocked out of sentiment by the knowledge +that other minds have seen his mind. He has not the happiness to be +rewarded with love at the end of the play; but he has the alternative of +hate, which is as active a passion and as real. All three are roused to +activity by the coming of something real into their lives; and all +three, in coming to the active state, cease to be interesting and +beautiful and pathetic. + +Shakespeare's abundant power created beings who look before and after, +even while they keep vigorous a passionate present. It is difficult to +praise that power. Even those who know how difficult art is find it hard +to praise perfect art. Art is not to be praised or blamed, but +understood. This play will stand as an example of perfect art till a +greater than Shakespeare set a better example further on. It is + + "All beauty and without a spot." + +The scene of the roisterers, rousing the night-owl in a catch, rouses +the heart, as all real creation does, with the thought that life is too +wonderful to end. The next, most lovely scene, where the Duke and Viola +talk of love that keeps life from ending, and so often brings life down +into the dust, assures the heart that even if life ends for us it will +go on in others. + + "the song we had last night. + Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain; + The spinsters and the knitters in the sun + And the free maids that weave their thread with bones + Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth, + And dallies with the innocence of love, + Like the old age." + +In his best plays Shakespeare used a double construction to express by +turn the twofold energy of man, the energy of the animal and of the +spirit. The mind that brooded sadly in + + "For women are as roses, whose fair flower + Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour," + +and in + + "She never told her love, + But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, + Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought," + +belonged to earth, and got a gladness from earth. Within two minutes of +the talk of the woman who died of love he showed Contemplation making a +rare turkey-cock of the one wise man in his play. + + +_All's Well that Ends Well._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published._ 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The story of Helena's love for Bertram is + found in the _Decamerone_ of Boccaccio (giorn. 3, nov. 9). + Shakespeare may have read it in the _Palace of Pleasure_. + + _The Fable._ Helena, orphan daughter of a physician, has been + brought up, as a dependant, in the house of the Countess of + Rousillon. She falls in love with Bertram, the son of the Countess + and the King's ward. + + Bertram goes to the French Court, on his way to the wars. He finds + the King dangerously ill. Helena, hearing of the King's illness, + comes to the Court as a physician. She offers to cure the King with + one of her father's remedies, on condition that, when cured, he + will give her in marriage the man of her choice. The King accepts + these conditions; she cures him; she chooses for her husband + Bertram. + + Bertram, the King's ward, has to do the King's bidding. He + grudgingly accepts her; they are married. He leaves her, and goes + to the wars in the service of the Duke of Florence, designing to + see her no more. Helena withdraws from the Countess's house, and + comes to Florence disguised. + + Bertram woos Diana, a maid of Florence. Helena impersonates her, + receives her unsuspecting husband at night, takes from him a ring, + and gives, in exchange, a ring given to her by the King of France. + At the end of the war, Bertram, hearing that Helena is dead, + returns to France, wearing the ring. The King sees it and + challenges it. Bertram can give no just account of how he got it. + Helena, quick with child by him, confronts him, with the ring that + he left with her at Florence. Diana, the Florentine maid, gives + evidence that Helena impersonated her on the night of Bertram's + visit at Florence. Bertram accepts Helena as his wife, and the play + ends happily. + +This play (whenever written) was extensively revised during the ruthless +mood that gave birth to _Measure for Measure_. The alterations were made +in a mood so much deeper than the mood of its first composition that +they make the play uneven. Something, perhaps some trick of health, that +made the mind clearer than the imagination, gave to Shakespeare for a +short time another (and pitiless) view of human obsessions. + +It was a part of his belief that treachery is generally caused by +blindness, blindness generally by some obsession of passion. In this +play he treats of the removal of an obsession by making plain to the +obsessed, by pitiless judicial logic, the ugliness of the treachery it +causes. + +Bertram is a young man fresh from home. He does not want to marry. He is +eager to see the world and to win honour. He has been accustomed to look +down on Helena as a poor dependant. He does not like her, and he does +not like being ordered. He is suddenly ordered to marry her. He has been +trapped by a woman's underhand trick. He sees himself brought into +bondage with all the plumes of his youth clipped close. There is no way +of escape; he has to marry her; but the King's order cannot quench his +rage against the woman who has so snared him. His rage burns inward into +a brooding, rankling ill-humour that becomes an obsession. It is one of +the tragedies of life that an evil obsession blinds the judgment on more +sides than one. The obsessed are always without criticism. A way of +destruction may be as narrow as a way of virtue; but all the other ways +of destruction run into it. Bertram in blinkers to the good in Helena is +blind to the faults in himself and in Parolles his friend. Wilfully, as +the sullen do, he thinks himself justified in doing evil because evil +has been done to him. Hot blood is running in him. Temptation, never far +from youth, is always near the unbalanced. He takes an unworthy +confidant, as the obsessed do, and goes in over the ears. His sin is +the giving of salutation to sportive blood, it is love, it is "natural +rebellion," it is young man's pastime. But looked at coldly and +judicially, with the nature of the confidant laid bare, and the lies of +the sinner made plain, it is an ugly thing. Passion is sweet enough to +seem truth, the only truth. Let the eyes be opened a little, and it will +blast the heart with horror. What man thought true is then seen to be +this, this thing, this devil of falseness who gives man this kind of +friend, makes him tell this kind of lie, and brands him with this kind +of shame. + +Shakespeare is just to Bertram. The treachery of a woman is often the +cause of a man's treachery to womanhood. Helena's obsession of love +makes her blind to the results of her actions. She twice puts the man +whom she loves into an intolerable position, which nothing but a king +can end. The fantasy is not made so real that we can believe in the +possibility of happiness between two so married. Helena has been praised +as one of the noblest of Shakespeare's women. Shakespeare saw her more +clearly than any man who has ever lived. He saw her as a woman who +practises a borrowed art, not for art's sake, nor for charity, but, +woman fashion, for a selfish end. He saw her put a man into a position +of ignominy quite unbearable, and then plot with other women to keep him +in that position. Lastly, he saw her beloved all the time by the +conventionally minded of both sexes. + +The play is full of effective theatrical situations. It contains much +fine poetry. Besides the poetry there are startling moments of insight-- + + "My mother told me just how he would woo + As if she sat in's heart...." + + "Now, God delay our rebellion! as we are ourselves, + What things are we! Merely our own traitors." + + "I would gladly have him see his company anatomised, + That he might take a measure of his own judgments." + + "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together." + + "Our rash faults + Make trivial price of serious things we have, + Not knowing them until we know their grave: + Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust, + Destroy our friends and after weep their dust." + + +_Julius Cęsar._ + + _Written._ 1601 (?) + + _Produced._ (?) + + _Published_, in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The Lives of Antonius, Brutus and Julius + Cęsar in Sir Thomas North's _Plutarch_. + + A tragedy of Julius Cęsar, now lost, was performed by Shakespeare's + company in 1594. Shakespeare must have known this play. + + _The Fable._ Cassius, fearing that Julius Cęsar is about to + extinguish all trace of Republican rule in Rome, persuades Brutus + and others to plot a change. They decide to murder Cęsar. + + On the morning chosen for the murder, Cęsar is warned by many omens + not to stir abroad. He is persuaded to ignore the omens. He goes to + the Senate House, and is there killed. Mark Antony, his friend, + obtains leave from the murderers to make a public oration over the + corpse. + + In his speech he so inflames the populace against the murderers + that they are compelled to leave Rome. + + Joining himself to Octavius, he takes the field against Brutus and + Cassius, and helps to defeat them at Philippi. + + Cassius is killed by his servant when he sees that all is lost. + Brutus, seeing the battle go against him, kills himself. + +The modern play climbs to its culmination by a series of interruptions +or crises. The modern playwright tries to end his acts at an arresting +or splendid moment, artfully delayed, and carefully prepared. He tries +to end his play by a gradual knitting together of all the energies of +his characters into a situation, happier or more haunting, than any that +has preceded it in the course of the action. The art by which this is +done, when it is done, is called dramatic construction. There are many +kind of dramatic construction. Each age tends to form a new one. Each +writer uses many. In art a subject can only be expressed in the form +most fitting to it. In the art of the theatre a mistake in the choice of +the form, or in the right handling of it when chosen leads infallibly to +the irritation of the audience and the failure of the play. When a play +is badly constructed the actors cannot so interpret the author's emotion +that it will dominate the collective emotion in the audience. + +It is often said, by those who ought to know better (it was said to +Racine by Frenchmen), that dramatic construction cannot matter, if the +passion or spirit with which the author writes, be abundant and sincere. +The powder in a cartridge may be abundant and the bullet at the end may +be sincerely meant, yet neither will do execution till they are put +properly into the proper weapon, rightly aimed, and judgingly fired. So +with passion in the arts. Without art, inspiration is breath and a +feeding of the wind. In the theatre, inspiration without art is as a +sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal. + +It is sometimes maintained in print, by those saddened or maddened by +bad modern performances of the plays, that Shakespeare "could not +construct," that he is constantly "rambling," "chaotic," or +"intolerable," and that he is only played to-day because of his +"poetry." Those who maintain these things forget that an Elizabethan +play was constructed for a theatre much unlike the modern theatre, and +performed in a manner suited to that theatre, but less well suited to +the theatre of our times. Shakespeare's plays were constructed closely +and carefully to be effective on the Elizabethan stage. On that stage +they were highly and nobly effective. On the modern stage, produced in +the modern manner, they are less effective. There are many reasons why +they should be less effective on the modern stage. During the last +thirty years there has been a tendency towards naturalism in the +theatre. Modern audiences have learned not to care for poetry on the +stage unless it is made "natural" by realistic scenery. Modern audiences +are accustomed to the modern forms of dramatic construction, which are +unlike the Elizabethan forms. They know that modern playwrights put a +strong scene at the end of an act and a great scene at the end of the +play. They have learned to expect a play to be arranged in that manner, +and to count as ill constructed the play not so arranged. As it is +frequently said that the last acts of _Julius Cęsar_ make anti-climax +and spoil the play, it is necessary to consider Shakespeare's +constructive practice in this and in some other plays. + +The Greek tragic poets ended the action of their plays in the modern +manner, at the great scene, but, unlike us, they delayed the departure +of the audience for some minutes more, generally by a chorus of men and +women who expounded the moral value of the action in noble verse. The +audience came away calmed. If a Greek had constructed _Julius Cęsar_, he +would have ended the action at the murder. A chorus of senators would +then have chanted something noble about the results of pride, the vanity +of human glory, and the strangeness of the ways of the gods. A modern +writer would have caused the curtain to fall at the murder, for to-day, +when the brains are out the play dies and there an end. Shakespeare +carries on his play for two acts after Cęsar is dead. In _Macbeth_ he +constructs the last half of his play in much the same manner. + +In both plays he is considering the conception, the doing, and the +results of a violent act. In both plays this act is the murder of the +head of a State. In neither case is he deeply interested in the victim. +Duncan, in _Macbeth_, is a generous gentleman; Cęsar, in this play, is a +touchy man of affairs whose head is turned. Shakespeare's imagination +broods on the fact that the killers were deluded into murder, Macbeth by +an envious wife and the belief that Fate meant him to be king, Brutus by +an envious friend and the belief that he was saving Rome. In both cases +the killers show base personal ingratitude and treachery. In both plays, +an avenging justice makes even the scales. The mind of the poet follows +them from the moment when the guilty thought is prompted, through the +agony and exultation of dreadful acts, to the unhappiness that dogs the +treacherous, till Fate's just sword falls in vengeance. His imagination +is most keenly stirred just as ours is, by the great event, the murder +of the victim: but his subject is not the murder, nor yet the tragical +end of a ruler. His subject in both plays is the working of Fate who +prompts to murder, uses the murderer, and then destroys him. We are +interested in crisis and in topic. The Elizabethans, with a wider +vision, could not detach an act from its place in the pageant of +history. In a modern play the heroine is put into an unpleasant +position, or an evil is exposed, or our faults are made visible and +laughable. The point of view is that of the sympathiser, reformer, and +moralist looking on from the window near by. The field of vision is +restricted and the object brought near. In this great play, as in +_Macbeth_, Shakespeare strove to present a violent act and its +consequences from the point of view of a great just spirit outside life. + +The play is generally considered to be the earliest of the supreme +plays. Little more can be said of it at this time than that it is +supreme. There is a majesty in the conception that makes it like +gathering and breaking storm. The cause of the murder is a great +personal treachery inspired by an unselfish idea. Though it seems +inevitable, it is a very little thing that makes it possible. Both +Cęsar's murder and Brutus' downfall are almost prevented. A hand +stretches out to save both of them. A little domestic treachery inspired +by a selfish idea puts aside the interposing hand in both instances. +Cęsar will not listen to his wife because he is sure of himself. Brutus +will not answer his wife for the same reason. They go on to the +magnificent hour which makes the one fine soul in the play a haunted and +unhappy soul till he snatches at Death at Philippi. + +The verse is calm, like the noble art that shapes the scenes. It is full +of majesty. Lines occur in which single unusual words are charged with +an incalculable power of meaning. + + "Against the Capitol I met a lion, + Who glazed upon me and went surly by." + + "It is the bright day that brings forth the adder." + +Shakespeare's intensest and most solemn thought, the Law that directed +the creation of some of his greatest work, is spoken by Brutus-- + + "Between the acting of a dreadful thing + And the first motion, all the interim is + Like a phantasma or a hideous dream: + The Genius and the mortal instruments + Are then in council, and the state of man, + Like to a little kingdom, suffers then + The nature of an insurrection." + + +_Hamlet, Prince of Denmark._ + + _Written._ 1601-2. + + _Published_, in an imperfect form, 1603; more perfectly, 1604. + + _Source of the Plot._ A play upon the subject of Hamlet, now lost, + seems to have been popular in London during the last decades of the + sixteenth century. Some think that it was an early work of + Shakespeare's. No evidence supports this theory. He probably knew + the play, and may have acted in it. + + The story is told by Saxo Grammaticus in his _Historia Danica_. + Francis de Belleforest printed a version of it in his _Histoires + Tragiques_. An English translation from de Belleforest, called the + _Hystorie of Hamblet_, was published (or perhaps reprinted) in + London in 1608. Shakespeare seems to have known both de Belleforest + and the _Hystorie_. + + _The Fable._ Claudius, brother to the King of Denmark, conniving + with Gertrude the Queen, poisons his brother, and seizes the + throne. Soon afterwards he marries Gertrude. At this point the play + begins. + + Hamlet, son of the murdered king, sick at heart at his mother's + hasty re-marriage, and troubled by his love for Ophelia, returns to + Denmark. The ghost of his father reveals the manner of the murder + to him, and makes him swear to be revenged. The revelation so + affects him that the murderers begin to fear him. He cannot bring + himself to kill Claudius. In a play he shows them that he knows + their guilt. + + While speaking with his mother, he discovers and kills a spy hidden + behind the arras. The spy is Polonius, father of Laertes and of + Ophelia. + + Claudius causes Hamlet to sail for England, on the pretext that the + killing of Polonius has brought him into danger with the populace. + He plans that Hamlet shall be killed on his arrival. Hamlet + discovers the treacherous purpose and returns unhurt to Denmark. + + During Hamlet's absence at sea, Laertes learns how Polonius was + killed and swears to be revenged on Hamlet. Hamlet's return gives + him his opportunity. + + Claudius suggests that the revenge be taken at a fencing-bout. + Laertes shall fence with Hamlet, using a poisoned foil. If this + fails, Hamlet shall be given poisoned wine. + + In a scuffle during the fencing-bout the fencers change foils. + Gertrude, by mistake, drinks the poisoned wine and dies. Laertes, + hurt by the poisoned foil, dies. Hamlet, also hurt by the poisoned + foil, kills Claudius and dies too. + +_Hamlet_ is the most baffling of the great plays. It is the tragedy of a +man and an action continually baffled by wisdom. The man is too wise. +The dual action, pressing in both cases to complete an event, cannot get +past his wisdom into the world. The action in one case is a bad one. It +is simply murder. In the other, and more important case, it is, +according to our scheme, also a bad one. It is revenge, or, at best, the +taking of blood for blood. In the Shakespearean scheme it is not +revenge, it is justice, and therefore neither good nor bad but +necessary. The situation which causes the tragedy is one very common in +Shakespeare's system. Life has been wrenched from her course. Wrenching +is necessary to bring her back to her course or to keep her where she +is. Hamlet is a man who understands too humanly to wish to wrench either +this way or that, and too shrewdly to be himself wrenched by grosser +instruments of Fate. + +The action consists in the baffling of action. Mostly, it consists in +the baffling of life's effort to get back to her course. All through the +play there is the uneasiness of something trying to get done, something +from outside life trying to get into life, but baffled always because +the instrument chosen is, himself, a little outside life, as the wise +must be. This baffling of the purpose of the dead leads to a baffling +of the living, and, at last, to something like an arrest of life, a +deadlock, in which each act, however violent, makes the obscuring of +life's purpose greater. + +The powers outside life send a poor ghost to Hamlet to prompt him to an +act of justice. After baffled hours, often interrupted by cock-crow, he +gives his message. Hamlet is charged with the double task of executing +judgment and showing mercy. It is a charge given to many people +(generally common people) in the system of the plays. It is given to two +other men in this play. It is nothing more than the fulfilling of the +kingly office, so bloodily seized by Claudius before the opening of the +play. At this point, it may be well to consider the society in which the +kingly office is to be exercised. + +The society is created with Shakespeare's fullest power. It is not an +image of the world in little, like the world of the late historical +plays. It is an image of the world as intellect is made to feel it. It +is a society governed by the enemies of intellect, by the sensual and +the worldly, by deadly sinners and the philosophers of bread and cheese. +The King is a drunken, incestuous murderer, who fears intellect. The +Queen is a false woman, who cannot understand intellect. Polonius is a +counsellor who suspects intellect. Ophelia is a doll without intellect. +Laertes is a boor who destroys intellect. The courtiers are parasites +who flourish on the decay of intellect. Fortinbras, bright and noble, +marching to the drum to win a dunghill, gives a colour to the folly. The +only friends of the wise man are Horatio, the schoolfellow, and the +leader of a cry of players. + +The task set by the dead is a simple one. All tasks are simple to the +simple-minded. To the delicate and complex mind so much of life is bound +up with every act that any violent act involves not only a large +personal sacrifice of ideal, but a tearing-up by the roots of half the +order of the world. Wisdom is founded upon justice; but justice, to the +wise man, is more a scrupulous quality in the mind than the doing of +expedient acts upon sinners. Hamlet is neither "weak" nor +"unpractical," as so many call him. What he hesitates to do may be +necessary, or even just, as the world goes, but it is a defilement of +personal ideals, difficult for a wise mind to justify. It is so great a +defilement, and a world so composed is so great a defilement, that death +seems preferable to action and existence alike. + +The play at this point presents a double image of action baffled by +wisdom. Hamlet baffles the dealing of the justice of Fate, and also the +death plotted for him by his uncle. His weapon, in both cases, is his +justice, his precise scrupulousness of mind, the niceness of mental +balance which gives to all that he says the double-edge of wisdom. It is +the faculty, translated into the finer terms of thought, which the ghost +seeks to make real with bloodshed. Justice, in her grosser as in her +finer form, is concerned with the finding of the truth. The first half +of the play, though it exposes and develops the fable, is a dual image +of a search for truth, of a seeking for a certainty that would justify +a violent act. The King is probing Hamlet's mind with gross human +probes, to find out if he is mad. Hamlet is searching the King's mind +with the finest of intellectual probes, to find out if he is guilty. The +probe used by him, the fragment of a play within a play, is the work of +a man with a knowledge of the impotence of intellect-- + + "Our wills and fates do so contrary run + That our devices still are overthrown"-- + +and a faith in the omnipotence of intellect-- + + "Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own." + +To this man, five minutes after the lines have exposed the guilty man, +comes a chance to kill his uncle. Hamlet "might do it pat" while he is +at prayers. The knowledge that the sword will not reach the real man, +since damnation comes from within, not from without, arrests his hand. +Fate offers an instant for the doing of her purpose. Hamlet puts the +instant by, with his baffling slowness, made up of mercy and wisdom. +Fate, or the something outside life which demands the King's blood, so +that life may go back to her channel, is foiled. The action cannot bring +itself to be. A wise human purpose is, for the moment, stronger than the +eternal purpose of Nature, the roughly just. + +It is a part of this play's ironic teaching that life must not be +baffled; but that, when she has been wrenched from her course, she must +either be wrenched back to it or kept violently in the channel to which +she has been forced. + +In _Macbeth_, a not dissimilar play, the life violently altered is kept +in the strange channel by a succession of violent acts. In _Hamlet_, +when Hamlet's merciful wisdom has decided that the life violently +altered shall not be wrenched back, his destroying wisdom decides that +she shall not be kept in the strange channel. The King, just in his way, +seeks to find out if Hamlet be sane. If Hamlet be sane, he must die. His +death will secure the King's position. By his death life will be kept +in the strange channel. Polonius, the King's agent, learns that Hamlet +is sane and something more. Fate demands violence this way if she may +not have it in the other. She offers an instant for the doing of her +purpose. Hamlet puts the instant by with his baffling swiftness, which +strikes on the instant, when the Queen's honour and his own life depend +on it. The first bout in this play of the baffling of action falls to +Hamlet. The second bout, in which the King's purpose is again baffled, +by the sending of the two courtiers to their death in England, also +falls to Hamlet. The bloody purpose from outside life and the bloody +purpose from within life are both baffled and kept from being by the two +extremes so perfectly balanced in the wise nature. + +Extremes in the Shakespearean system are tragical things. In +Shakespeare, the pathway of excess leads, not as with Blake, to the +palace of wisdom, but to destruction. The two extremes in Hamlet, of +slowness and swiftness, set up in life the counter forces which destroy +extremes, so that life, the common thing, may continue to be common. The +mercy of Hamlet leaves the King free to plot his death. The swiftness of +Hamlet gives to the King a hand and sword to work his will. + +In other plays, the working of extremes to the punishment dealt by life +to all excess is simple and direct. In this play, nothing is simple and +direct. Fate's direct workings are baffled by a mind too complex to be +active on the common planes. The baffling of Fate's purpose leads to a +condition in life like the "slack water" between tides. Laertes, when +his father is killed, raises the town and comes raving to the presence +to stab the killer. He is baffled by the King's wisdom. Ophelia, +"incapable of her own distress," goes mad and drowns herself. The play +seems to hesitate and stand still while the energies spilled in the +baffling of Fate work and simmer and grow strong, till they combine with +Fate in the preparation of an end that shall not be baffled. Even so, +"the end men looked for cometh not." The end comes to both actions at +once in the squalor of a chance-medley. Fate has her will at last. Life, +who was so long baffled, only hesitated. She destroys the man who +wrenched her from her course, and the man who would neither wrench her +back nor let her stay, and the women who loved these men, and the men +who loved them. Revenge and chance together restore life to her course, +by a destruction of the lives too beastly, and of the lives too hasty, +and of the lives too foolish, and of the life too wise, to be all +together on earth at the same time. + +It is difficult to praise the poetry of _Hamlet_. Nearly all the play is +as familiar by often quotation as the New Testament. The great, wise, +and wonderful beauty of the play is a part of the English mind for ever. +It is difficult to live for a day anywhere in England (except in a +theatre) without hearing or reading a part of _Hamlet_. Lines that are +little quoted are the lines to quote here-- + + "this fell sergeant, death, + Is strict in his arrest." + + "O proud death! + What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, + That thou so many princes, at a shot, + So bloodily hast struck?" + +The last speech, great as the speech at the end of Timon, and noble, +like that, with a music beyond the art of voices, is constructed on a +similar metrical basis. + + "Let four captains + Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage; + For he was likely, had he been put on, + To have proved most royally: and, for his passage, + The soldier's music and the rites of war + Speak loudly for him. + Take up the bodies: such a sight as this + Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. + Go, bid the soldiers shoot." + + +_Troilus and Cressida._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Produced._ After publication. + + _Published._ 1609. + + _Source of the Plot._ Geoffrey Chaucer's poem of _Troilus and + Creseide_. John Lydgate's _Troy Boke_. William Caxton's translation + of the French book of the _Recuyels of Troy_. George Chapman's + translation of Homer's _Iliad_. + + Among many other possible sources may be mentioned a now lost play + of _Troilus and Cressida_ (produced in 1599) by the poets Thomas + Dekker and Henry Chettle. + + _The Fable._ The scene is Troy. Cressida is a Trojan woman, whose + father, Calchas, has gone over to the Greeks. She is beloved by the + youth Troilus. Her uncle, Pandarus, seeks to bring her to accept + Troilus. Hector, brother to Troilus, challenges a Greek champion to + single combat. + + In the Greek camp there is much disaffection. Achilles, the chief + Greek champion, conceiving himself wronged, makes a mock of the + other leaders. To teach him his place the leaders plan that Ajax + shall be chosen in his stead to take up Hector's challenge. + + Pandarus succeeds in bringing Cressida to love Troilus. + + Calchas, in the Greek camp, sends to Troy for Cressida. She is + delivered over to the Greeks. Forgetting Troilus, she entangles one + of the Greeks with her wiles. + + Ajax takes up Hector's challenge. They fight a friendly bout and + then go to feast, where the moody Achilles insults Hector. + + The next day, Hector and Troilus come to the field, the one to + avenge Achilles' insults, the other to kill the man who has won + Cressida. Hector is cruelly and cowardly killed by Achilles. + Troilus is left unhurt, cursing. + +_Troilus and Cressida_ is the dialogue scenario of a play that was never +finished. It seems to have been written before 1603, then laid aside, +incomplete, until the mood that inspired it had died. Conflicting +evidence makes it doubtful whether it was acted during Shakespeare's +life. It was published, under mysterious circumstances, a year or two +before he retired to Stratford. + +Two or three scenes are finished. The rest is indicated in the crudest +dialogue, written so hastily that it is often undramatic and nearly +always without wit or beauty. The finished scenes are among the grandest +ever conceived by Shakespeare, but the grandeur is that of thought, not +of action. They make it plain to us why the play was never completed. +The subject is this: a light woman throwing over a boy. The setting, the +Trojan war: a light woman overthrowing a city, is so much bigger than +the subject that it overshadows it. Another subject arises in the +circumstance of the Trojan war. Achilles, the man of action, without +honour or imagination, sulks. The wise man, Ulysses, suggests that he be +brought from his sulks by mockery. The result of this wise counsel is +that Hector, the one bright and noble soul in the play, is killed +cruelly and sullenly, by the boor thus mocked. + +The two subjects and the setting are not and cannot be brought into +unity. Shakespeare's mind wandered from his real subject to brood upon +the obsession of Helen that betrayed Troy to the fire, and upon the +tragical working of wisdom that brought about an end so foul. Other, and +bigger, subjects for plays tempted him from the work. He put it aside +before it was half alive. As it stands, it has neither life nor meaning. +It oppresses the mind into making gloomy interpretation. Tragedy in its +imperfect form cannot but be gloomy. It is nothing but the record of a +fatal event. But Shakespearean tragedy is tragedy in its perfect form. +It is an exultation of the soul over the husks of life and the winds +that blow them. This play, had it ever been finished, would have been +like the other tragedies of the great years. That it is not finished is +our misfortune. + +The finished scenes are full of wisdom-- + + "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, + Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, + A great-sized monster of ingratitude: + Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd + As fast as they are made, forgot as soon + As done: perseverance, dear my lord, + Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang + Quite out of fashion." + + "O, let not virtue seek + Remuneration for the thing it was." + + "Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves." + + "And sometimes we are devils to ourselves." + +Some have thought that this play was written by Shakespeare to ridicule +the two poets, Ben Jonson (in the person of Ajax) and John Marston (in +the person of Thersites). Those two poets were engaged, with others, in +the years 1601-2, in what is called the War of the Theatres, that is, +they wrote plays to criticise and mock each other. These plays are often +scurrilous and seldom amusing. During the course of the war the two +chief combatants came to blows. + +It is sad that Shakespeare should be credited with the paltriness of +lesser men. His view of his task is expressed in _Timon of Athens_ with +the perfect golden clearness of supreme power-- + + "my free drift + Halts not particularly, but moves itself + In a wide sea of wax: no levell'd malice + Infects one comma in the course I hold; + But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on, + Leaving no tract behind." + +He held that view throughout his creative life, as a great poet must. At +the time during which this play was written his thought was more rigidly +kept to the just survey of life than at any other period. Creative art +has been so long inglorious that the practice and ideas of supreme poets +have become incomprehensible to the many. This play is a great hint of +something never, now, to be made clear. Those who count it a mark of +Shakespeare's littleness expose their own. + + +_Measure for Measure._ + + _Written._ 1603-4 (?) + + _Produced._ (?) + + _Published._ 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The story is founded on an event that is said + to have taken place in Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare + took it from a collection of novels, the _Hecatomithi_, by Giraldi + Cinthio; from the play, _The rare Historie of Promos and + Cassandra_, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone, + and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his book _The + Heptameron of Civil Discourses_. + + _The Fable._ The Duke of Vienna, going on a secret mission, leaves + his power in the hands of Angelo, a man of strict life. + + Angelo enforces old laws against incontinence. He arrests Claudio + and sentences him to be beheaded. Claudio's sister, Isabella, + pleads with Angelo for her brother's life. Being moved to lust, + Angelo tempts Isabella. He offers to spare Claudio if she will + submit to him. Claudio begs her to save him thus. She refuses. + + The Duke returns to Vienna disguised, hears Isabella's story, and + resolves to entrap Angelo. He causes her to make an appointment to + that end. He causes Mariana, a maid who has been jilted by Angelo, + to personate Isabella, and keep the appointment. Mariana does so. + + He contrives to check Angelo's treachery, that would have caused + Claudio's death in spite of the submission. + + Lastly he reveals himself, exposes Angelo's sin, compels him to + marry Mariana, pardons Claudio, and makes Isabella his Duchess. + +This play is now seldom performed. It is one of the greatest works of +the greatest English mind. It deals justly with the case of the man who +sets up a lifeless sentimentality as a defence against a living natural +impulse. The spirit of Angelo has avenged itself on Shakespeare by +becoming the guardian spirit of the British theatre. + +In this play Shakespeare seems to have brooded on the fact that the +common prudential virtues are sometimes due, not to virtue, but to some +starvation of the nature. Chastity may proceed from a meanness in the +mind, from coldness of the emotions, or from cowardice, at least as +often as from manly and cleanly thinking. Two kinds of chastity are set +at clash here. The one springs from a fire in the personality that +causes Isabella to think death better than contamination, and gives her +that whiteness of generosity which fills nunneries with living +sacrifice; the other comes from the niggardliness that makes Angelo jilt +Mariana rather than take her without a dower. Both are obsessions; both +exalt a part of life above life itself. Like other obsessions, they +come to grief in the presence of something real. + +These two characters make the action. The play is concerned with the +difficulty of doing justice in a world of animals swayed by rumour. The +subject is one that occupied Shakespeare's mind throughout his creative +life. Wisdom begins in justice. But how can man be just, without the +understanding of God? Who is so faultless that he can sit in judgment on +another? Who so wise that he can see into the heart, weigh the act with +the temptation and strike the balance? + +Sexual sin is the least of the sins in Dante. It is allied to love. It +is an image of regeneration. No sin is so common, none is more glibly +blamed. It is so easy to cry "treacherous," "base," and "immoral." But +who, while the heart beats, can call himself safe from the temptation to +this sin? It is mixed up with every generosity. It is a flood in the +heart and a blinding wave over the eyes. It is the thorn in the side +under the cloak of the beauty of youth. In Shakespeare's vision it is a +natural force, incident to youth, as April is incident to the year. The +young men live as though life were oil, and youth a bonfire to be burnt. +Life is always wasteful. Youth is life's test for manhood. The clown +finds in the prison a great company of the tested and rejected, calling +through the bars for alms. In spite of all this choice, another victim +is picked by tragical chance. Lucio, a butterfly of the brothel, a +dirtier soul than Claudio, is spared. Claudio is taken and condemned. +The beautiful, vain, high-blooded youth, so quick with life and glad of +the sun, is to lie in earth, at the bidding of one less full of April. + +Angelo, the man whose want of sympathy condemns Claudio, is in the state +of security that precedes so much Shakespearean tragedy. He has received +the name of being more than human because (unlike his admirers) he has +not shown himself to be considerably less. He has come through youth +unsinged. He has not been betrayed by his "gross body's treason." Both +he and those about him think that he is proof against temptation to +sexual sin. Suddenly his security is swept away. He is betrayed by the +subtler temptation that would mean nothing to a grosser man. He is moved +by the sight of the beauty of a distressed woman's mind. The sight means +nothing to Claudio, and less than nothing to Lucio. The happy animal +nature of youthful man has a way of avoiding distressed women. The +cleverer man, who has shut himself up in the half life of sentiment, +cannot so escape. He is attacked suddenly by the unknown imprisoned side +of him as well as by temptation. He falls, and, like all who fall, he +falls not to one sin, but to a degradation of the entire man. The sins +come linked. "Treason and murder ever kept together." When he is once +involved with lust, treachery and murder follow. He is swiftly so +stained that when the wise Duke shows him as he is, he shrinks from the +picture, with a cry that he may be put out of the way by some swift +merciful death so that the horror of the knowledge of himself may end, +too. + +The play is a marvellous piece of unflinching thought. Like all the +greatest of the plays, it is so full of illustration of the main idea +that it gives an illusion of an infinity like that of life. It is +constructed closely and subtly for the stage. It is more full of the +ingenuities of play-writing than any of the plays. The verse and the +prose have that smoothness of happy ease which makes one think of +Shakespeare not as a poet writing, but as a sun shining. + + " ... It deserves with characters of brass + A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time." + +The thought of the play is penetrating rather than impassioned. The +poetry follows the thought. There are cold lines like Death laying a +hand on the blood. The faultless lyric, "Take, O take those lips away" +occurs. Some say Fletcher wrote it, some Bacon. "Love talks with better +knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love." The music of the great +manner rings-- + + "Merciful Heaven! + Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt + Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, + Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man, + Drest in a little brief authority, + Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd, + His glassy essence, like an angry ape, + Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, + As make the angels weep." + +The prose accompaniment to what is unrestrained in youth provides a +cruel comedy. + + +_Othello, the Moor of Venice._ + + _Written._ 1604 (?) + + _Published_, in quarto, and in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The tale appears in _The Hecatomithi_ of + G. B. Giraldi Cinthio. Shakespeare follows Cinthio in the main; but a + few details suggest that he knew the story in an ampler version. + + _The Fable._ Iago, ensign to Othello, the Moor of Venice, is + jealous of Cassio, his lieutenant. He plots to oust Cassio from the + lieutenancy. + + Othello marries Desdemona, and sails with her to the wars in + Cyprus. Iago resolves to make use of Desdemona to cause Cassio's + downfall. + + He procures Cassio's discharge from the lieutenancy by involving + him in a drunken brawl. Cassio beseeches Desdemona to intercede + with Othello for him. Iago hints to Othello that she has good + reason to wish Cassio to be restored. He suggests that Cassio is + her lover. Partly by fortune, partly by craft, he succeeds in + establishing in Othello's mind the conviction that Desdemona is + guilty. + + Othello smothers Desdemona, learns, too late, that he has been + deceived, and kills himself. Cassio's character is cleared. Iago is + led away to torture. + +A man's greatest works differ from his lesser works in degree, not in +kind. They may be more perfect, but they express similar ideas. "A man +grows, he does not become a different man." In this play of _Othello_ +the ideas are those that inspire nearly all the plays, that life seeks +to preserve a balance, and that obsessions, which upset the balance, +betray life to evil. + +These ideas are in the earliest work of all, in _Venus and Adonis_. In +_Othello_ they are expressed with the variety and power of the great +period. The obsession chosen for illustration is that of jealous +suspicion. It is displayed at work in a mean mind and in a generous +mind. The varying quality of its working makes the action of the play. + +As in _The Merchant of Venice_, the chief character is a man of +intellect who has been warped out of humanity by the world's injustice. +Iago is a man of fine natural intellect who has not been trained in the +personal qualities that bring preferment. An educated man is advanced +above him, as in life it happens. He broods over the injustice and +schemes to be revenged. A groundless suspicion that the Moor has wronged +him further, determines him to be revenged upon his employer as well as +upon his supplanter. A weak intellect who comes to him for help serves +him as a tool. He begins to persuade his employer that the supplanter +and the newly-married wife are lovers. + +He succeeds in this, through his natural adroitness, the working of +chance, and the generosity of Othello, who has too much passion to be +anything but blind under passionate influence like love or jealousy. The +mean man's want of emotion keeps always the conduct of the vengeance +precise and clear. Cassio is disgraced. Roderigo, having been fooled to +the top of his bent, is killed. Desdemona is smothered. Othello is +ruined. + +That working of an invisible judge, which we call Chance, "life's +justicer," lays the villainy bare at the instant of its perfection. +Emilia, Iago's wife, a common nature, with no more intelligence than a +want of illusion, enters a moment too late to stay the slaughter, but +too soon for Iago's purpose. She is the one person in the play certain +to be loyal to Desdemona. She is the one person in the play who, judging +from her feelings, will judge rightly. The finest part of the play is +that scene in which her passionate instinct sees through the web woven +about Othello by an intellect that has put aside all that is passionate +and instinctive. + +The influence and importance of the little thing in the great event is +marked in this scene as in half-a-dozen other scenes in the greater +tragedies. We are all or may at any time become immensely important to +the play of the world. Had Emilia come a minute sooner or a minute +later the end of the play would have been very different. Desdemona +would have lived to repent her marriage at leisure, or she would have +gone to her grave branded. + +Shakespeare brooded much upon all the tragedies of intellect. In this +play, as in _Richard III_ and _The Merchant of Venice_, he brooded upon +the power of a warped intellect to destroy generous life. When he +created Iago he wrote in a cooler spirit than when he created the +earlier characters. Iago is therefore much more perfectly a living being +but much less passionately alive than the soul burnt out at Bosworth, or +the soul flouted in the Duke's Court. He is drawn with a sharp and wiry +line. Like all sinister men, he tells nothing of himself. We see only +his intellect. What he is in himself is as mysterious as life. Life is +clear, up to a point, but beyond that point it is always baffling. +Shakespeare's task was to look at life clearly. Looking at it clearly he +was as baffled by what he saw, as we, who only see by his aid. He found +in Iago an image like life itself, a power and an activity, prompted by +something secret and silent. + +Much ink has been wasted about the "duration of time" in this play. The +action of the play is one. It matters not if the time be divided into +ten or fifty. In London and the University towns where writing is mostly +practised, the play is seldom played. It is almost never played as +Shakespeare meant it to be played. Those who write about it write after +reading it. This is a reading age. Shakespeare's was an active age. That +those who care most for his tragedies should be ignorant of the laws +under which he worked is our misfortune and our fault and our disgrace. + +The point is not insisted on; but some passages in the play suggest that +when Shakespeare began to write it he was minded to make the action the +falling of a judgment upon Desdemona for her treachery to her father. +The treachery caused the old man's death. The too passionate and hasty +things always bring death in these plays. Violent delights have violent +ends and bring violent ends to others. + +The poetry of _Othello_ is nearly as well known as that of _Hamlet_. +Many quotations from the play have passed into the speech of the people. +A play of intrigue does not give the fullest opportunity for great +poetry; but supreme things are spoken throughout the action. Othello's +cry-- + + "It is the very error of the moon. + She comes more near the earth than she was wont + And drives men mad," + +is one of the most perfect of all the perfect things in the tragedies. + + +_King Lear._ + + _Written._ 1605-6. + + _Published._ 1608. + + _Source of the Plot._ The story of Lear is told in Holinshed's + _Chronicles_, in a play by an unknown hand, _The True Chronicle + History of King Leir_, and in a few stanzas of the tenth canto of + the second Book of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_. + + The character of Gloucester seems to have been suggested by the + character of a blind king in Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_. + + _The Fable._ King Lear, in his old age, determines to give up his + kingdom to his three daughters. Before he does so, he tries to + assure himself of their love for him. The two elder women, Goneril + and Regan, vow that they love him intensely; the youngest, + Cordelia, can only tell him that she cares for him as a daughter + should. He curses and casts off Cordelia, who is taken to wife by + the King of France. + + Gloucester, deceived by his bastard Edmund, casts off Edgar his + son. + + King Lear, thwarted and flouted by Goneril and Regan, goes mad, and + wanders away with his Fool. Gloucester, trying to comfort him + against the wishes of Goneril and Regan, is betrayed by his bastard + Edmund, and blinded. He wanders away with Edgar, who has disguised + himself as a madman. + + Regan's husband is killed. Seeking to take Edmund in his stead, she + rouses the jealousy of Goneril, who has already made advances to + him. + + Cordelia lands with French troops to repossess Lear of his kingdom. + She finds Lear, and comforts him. In an engagement with the + sisters' armies, she and Lear are captured. + + Edmund's baseness is exposed. He is attainted and struck down. + Goneril poisons Regan, and kills herself. Edmund, before he dies, + reveals that he has given order for Lear and Cordelia to be killed. + His news comes too late to save Cordelia. She is brought in dead. + Lear dies over her body. + + Albany, Goneril's husband, Kent, Lear's faithful servant, and + Edgar, Edmund's slayer, are left to set the kingdom in order. + +The play of _King Lear_ is based upon a fable and a fairy story. It +illustrates the most terrible forms of treachery, that of child against +father, and father against child. It is the most affecting and the +grandest of the plays. + +The evil which makes the action springs from two sources, both fatal. +One is the blindness or fatuity in Lear, which makes him give away his +strength and cast out Cordelia. The other, equally deadly, but more +cruel in its results, springs from an unrepented treachery, done long +before by Gloucester, when he broke his marriage vows to beget Edmund. +Memory of the sweetness of that treachery gives to Gloucester a +blindness to the boy's nature, just as a sweetness, or ease, in the +treachery of giving up the cares of kingship (against oath and the +kingdom's good) helps to blind Lear to the natures of his daughters. + +The blindness in the one case is sentimental, in the other wilful. Being +established, fate makes use of it. One of the chief lessons of the plays +is that man is only safe when his mind is perfectly just and calm. Any +injustice, trouble or hunger in the mind delivers man to powers who +restore calmness and justice by means violent or gentle according to the +strength of the disturbing obsession. This play begins at the moment +when an established blindness in two men is about to become an +instrument of fate for the violent opening of their eyes. The blindness +in both cases is against the course of nature. It is unnatural that Lear +should give his kingship to women, and that he should curse his youngest +child. It is unnatural that Gloucester should make much of a bastard son +whom he has hardly seen for nine years. It is deeply unnatural that both +Lear and Gloucester should believe evil suddenly of the youngest, best +beloved, and most faithful spirits in the play. As the blindness that +causes the injustice is great and unnatural, so the working of fate to +purge the eyes and restore the balance is violent and unnatural. Every +person important to the action is thrust into an unnatural way of life. +Goneril and Regan rule their father, commit the most ghastly and beastly +cruelty, lust after the same man, and die unnaturally (having betrayed +each other), the one by her sister's hand, the other by her own. Lear is +driven mad. The King of France is forced to war with his wife's sisters. +Edmund betrays his half-brother to ruin and his father to blindness. +Cornwall is stabbed by his servant. Edgar kills his half-brother. +Gloucester, thrust out blind, dies when he finds that his wronged son +loves him. Cordelia, fighting against her own blood, is betrayed to +death by one who claims to love her sisters. The honest mild man, +Albany, and the honest blunt man, Kent, survive the general ruin. Had +Kent been a little milder and Albany a little blunter in the first act, +before the fates were given strength, the ruin would not have been. All +the unnatural treacherous evil comes to pass, because for a few fatal +moments they were true to their natures. + +The play is an excessive image of all that was most constant in +Shakespeare's mind. Being an excessive image, it contains matter nowhere +else given. It is all schemed and controlled with a power that he shows +in no other play, not even in _Macbeth_ and _Hamlet_. The ideas of the +play occur in many of the plays. Many images, such as the blasted oak, +water in fury, servants insolent and servile, old honest men and young +girls faithful to death, occur in other plays. That which each play +added to the thought of the world is expressed in the single figure of +someone caught in a net. Macbeth is a ruthless man so caught. Hamlet is +a wise man so caught. Othello is a passionate and Antony a glorious man +so caught. All are caught and all are powerless, and all are superb +tragic inventions. King Lear is a grander, ironic invention, who hurts +far more than any of these because he is a horribly strong man who is +powerless. He is so strong that he cannot die. He is so strong that he +nearly breaks the net, before the folds kill him. + +No image in the world is so fierce with imaginative energy. The stormy +soul runs out storming in a night of the soul as mad as the elements. +With him goes the invention of the Fool, the horribly faithful fool, +like conscience or worldly wisdom, to flick him mad with ironic comment +and bitter song. + +The verse is as great as the invention. It rises and falls with the +passion like music with singing. All the scale of Shakespeare's art is +used; the terrible spiritual manner of + + "You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, + Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts," + +as well as the instinctive manner of a prose coloured to the height with +all the traditions of country life. + +Dramatic genius has the power of understanding half-a-dozen lives at +once in tense, swiftly changing situations. This power is shown at its +best in the last act of this play. One of the most wonderful and least +praised of the inventions in the last scene is that of the dying Edmund. +He has been treacherous to nearly every person in the play. His last +treachery, indirectly the cause of his ruin, is still in act, the +killing of Cordelia and the king. He has been stricken down. "The wheel +has come full circle." He has learned too late that + + "The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices + Make instruments to plague us." + +He can hardly hope to live for more than a few minutes. The death of his +last two victims cannot benefit him. A word from him would save them. No +one else can save them. Yet at the last minute, his one little glimmer +of faithfulness keeps the word unspoken. He is silent for Goneril's +sake. If he ever cared for any one in the world, except himself, he may +have cared a little for Goneril. He thinks of her now. She has gone from +him. But she is on his side, and he trusts to her, and acts for her. He +waits for some word or token from her. He waits to see her save him or +avenge him. The death of Lear will benefit her. It will be to her +something saved from the general wreck, something to the good, in the +losing bout. An impulse stirs him to speak, but he puts it by. He keeps +silent about Lear, till one comes saying that Goneril has killed +herself. Still he does not speak. The news pricks the vanity in him. He +strokes his plumes with a tender thought for the brightness of the life +that made two princesses die for love of him. When he speaks of Lear, it +is too late, the little, little instant which alters destiny has passed. +Cordelia is dead. No mist stains the stone. She will come no more-- + + "Never, never, never, never, never." + +The heart-breaking scene at the end has been blamed as "too painful for +tragedy." Shakespeare's opinion of what is tragic is worth that of all +his critics together. He gave to every soul in this play an excessive +and terrible vitality. On the excessive terrible soul of Lear he poured +such misery that the cracking of the great heart is a thing of joy, a +relief so fierce that the audience should go out in exultation singing-- + + "O, our lives' sweetness! + That we the pain of death would hourly die + Rather than die at once!" + +Tragedy is a looking at fate for a lesson in deportment on life's +scaffold. If we find the lesson painful, how shall we face the event? + + +_Macbeth._ + + _Written._ 1605-6 (?) + + _Published_, in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ Raphael Holinshed tells the story of Macbeth + at length in his _Chronicle of Scottish History_. He indicates the + character of Lady Macbeth in one line. + + When Shakespeare wrote the play, London was full of Scotchmen, + brought thither by the accession of James I. Little details of the + play may have been gathered in conversation. + + _The Fable._ Macbeth, advised by witches that he is to be a king, + is persuaded by his wife to kill his sovereign (King Duncan) and + seize the crown. King Duncan, coming to Macbeth's castle for a + night, is there killed by Macbeth and his lady. Duncan's sons fly + to England. Macbeth causes himself to be proclaimed king. + + Being king, he tries to assure himself of power by destroying the + house of Banquo, of whom the witches prophesied that he should be + the father of a line of kings. Banquo is killed; but his son + escapes. + + The witches warn Macbeth to beware of Macduff. + + Macduff escapes to England, but his wife and children are killed by + Macbeth's order. + + Macduff persuades Duncan's son, Malcolm, to attempt the recovery of + the Scottish crown. + + Malcolm and Macduff make the attempt. They attack Macbeth and kill + him. + +Macbeth is one of the seven supreme Shakespearean plays. In the order +of composition it is either the fourth or the fifth of the seven. In +point of merit it is neither greater nor less than the other six. It is +different from them, in that it belongs more wholly to the kingdom of +vision. + +Like most Shakespearean tragedy, Macbeth is the tragedy of a man +betrayed by an obsession. Cęsar is betrayed by an obsession of the +desire of glory, Antony by passion, Tarquin by lust, Wolsey by worldly +greed, Coriolanus and Timon by their nobleness, Angelo by his +righteousness, Hamlet by his wisdom. All fail through having some hunger +or quality in excess. Macbeth fails because he interprets with his +worldly mind things spiritually suggested to him. God sends on many men +"strong delusion, that they shall believe a lie." Othello is one such. +Many things betray men. One strong means of delusion is the half-true, +half-wise, half-spiritual thing, so much harder to kill than the lie +direct. The sentimental treacherous things, like women who betray by +arousing pity, are the dangerous things because their attack is made in +the guise of great things. Tears look like grief, sentiment looks like +love; love feels like nobility; spiritualism seems like revelation. + +Among these things few are stronger than the words spoken in unworldly +states, in trance, in ecstasy, by oracles and diviners, by soothsayers, +by the wholly excited people who are also half sane, by whoever obtains +a half knowledge of the spirit by destruction of intellectual process. + + "to win us to our harm, + The instruments of darkness tell us truths, + Win us with honest trifles, to betray's + In deepest consequence." + +Coming weary and excited from battle, on a day so strange that it adds +to the strangeness of his mood, Macbeth hears the hags hail him with +prophecy. The promise rankles in him. The seed scattered in us by the +beings outside life comes to good or evil according to the sun in us. +Macbeth, looking on the letter of the prophecy, thinks only of the +letter of its fulfilment, till it becomes an obsession with him. +Partial fulfilment of the prophecy convinces him that all will be +fulfilled. The belief that the veil over the future has been lifted for +him gives him the recklessness of one bound in the knots of fate. So +often, the thought that the soul is in a trap, playing out something +planned of old, makes man take the frantic way, when the smallest belief +in life would lead to peace. This thought passes through his mind. Then +fear that it is all a contriving of the devils makes him put it manfully +from his mind. The talk about the Cawdor whose place he holds is a +thrust to him. That Cawdor was a traitor who has been put to death for +treachery. The king had an "absolute trust" in him; but there is no +judging by appearances. This glimpse of the ugliness of treachery makes +Macbeth for an instant free of all temptation to it. Then a word stabs +him again to the knowledge that if he take no step the king's young son +will be king after Duncan. Why should the boy rule? From this point he +goes forward, full of all the devils of indecision, but inclining +towards righteousness, till his wife, girding and railing at him with +definite aim while all his powers are in mutiny, drives him to the act +of murder. + +The story of the double treachery of the killing of a king, who is also +a guest, is so written that we do not feel horror so much as an +unbearable pity for Macbeth's mind. The horror is felt later, when it is +made plain that the treachery does not end with that old man on the bed, +but proceeds in a spreading growth of murder till the man who fought so +knightly at Fife is the haunted awful figure who goes ghastly, killing +men, women and little children, till Scotland is like a grave. At the +end, the "worthy gentleman," "noble Macbeth," having fallen from depth +to depth of degradation, is old, hag-haunted, sick at heart, and weary. +He has no friends. He knows himself silently cursed by every one in his +kingdom. His queen is haunted. There is a curse upon the pair of them. +The birds of murder have come to roost. All that supports him is his +trust in his reading of the words of the hags. He knows himself secure. + + "And you all know security + Is mortal's chiefest enemy," + +He has supped full with horrors. His bloody base mind is all a blur with +gore. But he is resolute in evil still. At the end he sees too late that +he has been tricked by-- + + "the equivocation of the fiend + That lies like truth." + +His queen has killed herself. All the welter of murder has been useless. +All that he has done is to damn his soul through the centuries during +which the line of Banquo will reign. He dies with a courage that is half +fury against the fate that has tricked him. + +No play contains greater poetry. There is nothing more intense. The mind +of the man was in the kingdom of vision, hearing a new speech and seeing +what worldly beings do not see, the rush of the powers, and the fury of +elemental passions. No play is so full of an unspeakable splendour of +vision-- + + "his virtues + Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued." + + "And pity, like a naked new-born babe, + Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsed + Upon the sightless couriers of the air." + + "Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say, + Lamentings heard i' the air, strange screams of death, + And prophesying with accents terrible." + + "In the great hand of God I stand." + + "A falcon towering in her pride of place + Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and killed. + And Duncan's horses--a thing most strange and certain-- + Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, + Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, + Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make + War with mankind. + 'Tis said they eat each other." + + "the time has been + That, when the brains were out, the man would die." + +All the splendours and powers of this great play have been praised and +re-praised. Noble inventions, like the knocking on the door and the +mutterings of the hags, have thrilled thousands. One, not less noble, is +less noticed. It is in Act IV, sc. i, Macbeth has just questioned the +hags for the last time. He calls in Lennox, with the words-- + + "I did hear + The galloping of horse: who was't came by?" + +It was the galloping of messengers with the news that Macduff, who is to +be the cause of his ruin, has fled to England. An echo of the galloping +stays in the brain, as though the hoofs of some horse rode the night, +carrying away Macbeth's luck for ever. + + +_Antony and Cleopatra._ + + _Written._ 1607-8 (?) + + _Published_, in the folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The life of Antonius in Sir Thomas North's + translation of Plutarch's _Lives_. + + _The Fable._ Antony, entangled by the wiles of Cleopatra, shakes + himself free so that he may attend to the conduct of the world. He + makes a pact with the young Cęsar, by marrying Cęsar's sister + Octavia. Soon afterwards, being tempted from his wife by Cleopatra, + he falls into wars with Cęsar. Being unhappy in his fortune and + deserted by his friends, he kills himself. Cleopatra having lost + her lover, and fearing to be led in triumph by Cęsar, also kills + herself. + +In this most noble play, Shakespeare applies to a great subject his +constant idea, that tragedy springs from the treachery caused by some +obsession. + + "Strange it is + That nature must compel us to lament + Our most persisted deeds." + +It cannot be said that the play is greater than the other plays of this +period. It can be said that it is on a greater scale than any other +play. The scene is the Roman world. The men engaged are struggling for +the control of all the power of the world. The private action is played +out before a grand public setting. The wisdom and the beauty of the +poetry answer the greatness of the subject. + +Shakespeare's later tragedies, _King Lear_, _Coriolanus_, _Othello_, and +this play differ from some of the early tragedies in that the subject is +not the man of intellect, hounded down by the man of affairs, as in +_Richard II_, _Richard III_, and _Henry IV_, but the man of large and +generous nature hounded down by the man of intellect. In all four plays +the destruction of the principal character is brought about partly by a +blindness in a noble nature, but very largely by a cool, resolute, +astute soul who can and does take advantage of the blindness. Edmund, +the tribunes, Iago, and (in this play) Octavius Cęsar are such souls. +All of them profit by the soul they help to destroy. They leave upon the +mind the impression that they have a tact for the gaining of profit from +human frailty. All of them show the basest ingratitude under a +colourable cloak of human excuse. + +The obsession of lust is illustrated in half-a-dozen of Shakespeare's +plays; but in none of them so fully as here. The results of that +obsession in treachery and tragedy brim the great play. Antony is +drunken to destruction with a woman like a raging thirst. A fine stroke +in the creation of the play sweeps him clear of her and offers him a +way of life. He uses the moment to get so far from her that his return +to her is a deed of triple treachery to his wife, to Cęsar, and to his +country. His intoxication with the woman degrades him to the condition +of blindness in which the woman-drunken staggers. It is a part of all +drunkenness that the drunkard thinks himself a king, though he looks and +is a sot. Shakespeare's marvellous illustration of this blindness (in +the third act) is seldom praised as it should be. Antony, crushingly +defeated, owing to the treachery of all debauched natures, calls upon +Octavius to meet him in single combat. + + "men's judgments are + A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward + Do draw the inward quality after them, + To suffer all alike." + + "when we in our viciousness grow hard, + O misery on't--the wise gods seel our eyes; + In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us + Adore our errors; laugh at's while we strut + To our confusion." + +The cruel bungling suicide which leaves him lingering in dishonour is +one of the saddest things in the plays. This was Antony who ruled once, +this mutterer dying, whom no one loves enough to kill. Once before, in +Shakespeare's vision, he came near death, in the proud scene in the +senate house, before Cęsar's murderers. He was very great and noble +then. Now + + "The star is fall'n + And time is at his period." + + "The god Hercules, whom Antony loved," + +has moved away with his hautboys and all comes to dust again. + +The minds of most writers would have been exhausted after the creation +of four such acts. The splendour of Shakespeare's intellectual energy +makes the last act as bright a torch of beauty as the others. The cry-- + + "We'll bury him; and then, what's brave, what's noble, + Let's do it after the high Roman fashion, + And make Death proud to take us ... + .... we have no friend + But resolution and the briefest end," + +begins a song of the welcoming of death, unlike anything in the plays. +Shakespeare seldom allows a woman a great, tragical scene. Cleopatra is +the only Shakespearean woman who dies heroically upon the stage. Her +death scene is not the greatest, nor the most terrible, but it is the +most beautiful scene in all the tragedies. The words-- + + "Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, + And we are for the dark," + +and those most marvellous words, written at one golden time, in a gush +of the spirit, when the man must have been trembling-- + + "O eastern star! + Peace, peace! + Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, + That sucks the nurse asleep?" + +are among the most beautiful things ever written by man. + + +_Coriolanus._ + + _Written._ 1608 (?) + + _Published._ 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The life of Coriolanus in Sir Thomas North's + translation of Plutarch's _Lives_. + + _The Fable._ Marcius, a noble Roman, of an excessive pride, + bitterly opposes the rabble. + + In the war against the Volscians he bears himself so nobly that he + wins the title of Coriolanus. On his return from the wars he seeks + the Consulship, woos the voices of the multitude, is accepted, and + then cast by them. For his angry comment on their behaviour the + tribunes contrive his banishment from the city. + + Being banished, he makes league with the Volscians. He takes + command in the Volscian army and invades Roman territory. + + Coming as a conqueror to the walls of Rome, his mother and wife + persuade him to spare the city. He causes the Volscians to make + peace. The Volscians return home dissatisfied. + + On his return to the Volscian territory Coriolanus is impeached as + a traitor, and stabbed to death by conspirators. + +Shakespeare's tragical characters are all destroyed by the excess of +some trait in them, whether good or ill matters nothing. Nature cares +for type, not for the excessive. Sooner or later she checks the +excessive so that the type may be maintained. She is stronger than the +excessive, though she may be baser. To Nature, progress, though it be +infinitesimal, must be a progress of the whole mass, not a sudden +darting out of one quality or one member. + +Timon of Athens is betrayed by an excessive generosity. Coriolanus is +betrayed by an excessive contempt for the multitude. He is one born into +a high tradition of life. He has the courage, the skill in arms, and the +talent for affairs that come with high birth in the manly races. He has +also the faith in tradition that makes an unlettered upper class narrow +and obstructionist. Like the rich in France before the Revolution, he +despises the poor. He denies them the right to complain of their hunger. +Rather than grant them that right, or the means of urging redress, he +would take a short way with them, as was practised here, at Manchester +and elsewhere. + + "Would the nobility lay aside their ruth, + And let me use my sword, I'ld make a quarry + With thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as high + As I could pick my lance." + +Like all conservative, aristocratic men, he sees in the first granting +of political power to the people the beginning of revolution. + + "It will in time + Win power upon and throw forth greater themes + For insurrection's arguing." + +He regards the people as a necessary, evil-smelling, many-headed beast, +good enough, under the leadership of men like himself, to make inferior +troops to be spent as the State pleases. It is possible that Napoleon +and Bismarck looked upon the mob with similar scorn. The ideas are those +of an absolute monarch or super-man. The country squire holds those +ideas, though want of power and want of intellect combine to keep him +from applying them. The sincerity of the ideas is tested from time to +time, in free countries, by general elections. + +Much of the pride of Coriolanus springs from a sense of his superiority +to others in the gifts of fortune. Much of it comes from the knowledge +that he is superior in himself. Leading, as becomes his birth, in the +war against the Volscians he shows himself so much superior to others +that the campaign is his triumph. He is "the man" whom Napoleon counted +"everything in war." The knowledge of his merit is so bright within +himself that he is unable to see that it is less bright in others. He is +willing to become the head of the State if the post may be given to him +as a right due to merit, not as a favour begged. He has no lust for +power. But knowing himself to be the best man in Rome, he thinks that +his merit is sufficiently great to excuse him from the indignity of +sueing for it. The laws of free countries prescribe that he who wishes +to be elected must appeal to the electors whether he love them or loathe +them. Instead of appealing to them, Coriolanus insults them with such +arrogance that they drive him from the city. + +He fails as a traitor, because he is too noble to be fiercely +revengeful. A lesser man, a Richard III, or an Iago, would have exacted +a bloody toll from Rome. Coriolanus cannot bring himself to be stern, in +the presence of his old mother and his wife. Something generous and +truly aristocratic in him makes him a second time a traitor, this time +to his hosts the Volscians. He spares Rome by the sacrifice of those who +have given him a shelter and a welcome. Treachery (even from a noble +motive) is never forgiven in these plays. It is always avenged, seldom +mercifully. The Volscians avenge themselves on Coriolanus by an act of +treachery that brings the noble heart under the foot of the traitor. + +_Coriolanus_ is one of the greatest of Shakespeare's creations. Much of +the glory of the creation is due to Plutarch. There can be no great art +without great fable. Great art can only exist where great men brood +intensely on something upon which all men brood a little. Without a +popular body of fable there can be no unselfish art in any country. +Shakespeare's art was selfish till he turned to the great tales in the +four most popular books of his time, Holinshed, North's Plutarch, +Cinthio, and De Belleforest. Since the newspaper became powerful, topic +has supplanted fable, and subject comes to the artist untrimmed and +unlit by the vitality of many minds. In reading _Coriolanus_ and the +other plays of the great period a man feels that Shakespeare fed his +fire with all that was passionate in the thought about him. He appears +to be his age focussed. The great man now stands outside his age, like +Timon. + +_Coriolanus_ is a play of the clash of the aristocratic temper with the +world. It contains most of the few speeches in Shakespeare which ring +with what seems like a personal bitterness. Hatred of the flunkey mind, +and of the servile, insolent mob mind, "false as water," appears in +half-a-dozen passages. Some of these passages are ironic inventions, not +prompted by Plutarch. The great mind, brooding on the many forms of +treachery, found nothing more treacherous than the mob, and nothing more +dog-like, for good or evil, than the servant. + +Greatness is sometimes shown in very little things. Few things in +Shakespeare show better the fulness of his happy power than the +following-- + + (_Corioli. Enter certain Romans with spoils._) + + _1st Roman._ This will I carry to Rome. + + _2nd Roman._ And I this. + + _3rd Roman._ A murrain on't. I took this for silver. + + +_Timon of Athens._ + + _Written._ 1606-8 (?) + + _Published._ 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ William Paynter's _Palace of Pleasure_. + Plutarch's _Life of Antonius_. Lucian's _Dialogue_. + + _The Fable._ Timon of Athens, a wealthy, over-generous man, gives + to his friends so lavishly that he ruins himself. He finds none + grateful for his bounty. In his ruin all his friends desert him. + None of them will lend to him or help him. He falls into a loathing + of the world and retires to die alone. Alcibiades of Athens, + finding a like ingratitude in the State, openly makes war upon it, + reduces it to his own terms, and rules it. He finds Timon dead. + +_Timon of Athens_ is a play of mixed authorship. Shakespeare's share in +it is large and unmistakable; but much of it was written by an unknown +poet of whom we can decipher this, that he was a man of genius, a +skilled writer for the stage, and of a marked personality. It cannot +now be known how the collaboration was arranged. Either the unknown +collaborated with Shakespeare, or the unknown wrote the play and +Shakespeare revised it. + +Ingratitude is one of the commonest forms of treachery. It is the form +that leads most quickly to the putting back of the world, because it +destroys generosity of mind. It creates in man the bitter and +destructive quality of misanthropy, or a destroying passion of revenge. +In this play the two authors show the different ways in which the human +mind may be turned to those bitter passions. + +Apemantus is currish, because others are not. He has wit without +charity. Alcibiades makes war on his city because others have not the +rough-and-ready large practical justice of men used to knocks. He has a +large good humour without idealism. Timon, the great-natured, truly +generous man, whose mind is as beneficial as the sun, cannot be currish, +nor stoop to the baseness of revenge. Finding men base, he removes +himself from them, and ministers with bitter contempt to the baseness +that infects them. The flaming out of his anger against whatever is +parasitic in life makes the action of the last two acts. The exhibition +of the baseness of parasites and of the wrath of a noble mind +embittered, is contrived, varied and heightened with intense dramatic +energy. The character of Flavius, Timon's steward, his only friend, +shows again, as in so many of the plays, Shakespeare's deep sense of the +noble generosity in faithful service. + +Some think the play gloomy, others that it is autobiography. +Shakespeare's completed work is never gloomy. A great mind working with +such a glory of energy cannot be gloomy. This generation is gloomy and +unimaginative in its conception of art. Shakespeare, reading the story +of Timon, saw in him an image of tragic destiny that would flood the +heart of even an ingrate with pity. Great poets have something more +difficult and more noble to do than to pin their hearts on their +sleeves for daws to peck at. Shakespeare wrought the figure of Timon +with as grave justice as he wrought Alcibiades. He wrought both from +something feeling within himself, as he wrought Cleopatra, and Macbeth, +and Sir Toby Belch. They are as much autobiographical, and as little, as +the hundred other passionate moods that built up the system of his soul. + +The poetry of the play is that of the great late manner-- + + "will these moss'd trees, + That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels, + And skip when thou point'st out?" + + "Come not to me again: but say to Athens, + Timon hath made his everlasting mansion + Upon the beached verge of the salt flood: + Who, once a day with his embossed froth + The turbulent surge shall cover." + +The final speech, spoken by Alcibiades after he has read the epitaph, +with which Timon goes down to death, like some hurt thing shrinking even +from the thought of passers, is one of the most lovely examples of the +power and variety of blank verse as a form of dramatic speech. + + _Alcib._ (reading) _Pass by and curse thy fill; but pass, and + stay not here thy gait._ + + These well express in thee thy latter spirits: + Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs, + Scorned'st our brain's flow and those our droplets which + From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit + Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye + On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead + Is noble Timon: of whose memory + Hereafter more. Bring me into your city, + And I will use the olive with my sword, + Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each + Prescribe to other as each other's leech. + Let our drums strike. + + +_Pericles, Prince of Tyre._ + + _Written._ 1607-8 (?) + + _Published._ 1608. + + _Source of the Plot._ The plot is taken from an English prose + version of a Latin translation of a fifth century Greek romance. + This version was published by Lawrence Twine, in the year 1576, + under the name of _The Patterne of Paynfull Adventures_ (etc., + etc.). It was reprinted in 1607. An adaptation from the Latin story + was made by John Gower for the eighth book of his _Confessio + Amantis_. This adaptation was known to the authors of the play. + + _The Fable._ Act I. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, comes to Antioch to + guess a riddle propounded by the King. If he guess rightly, he will + be rewarded by the hand of the Princess in marriage. If he guess + wrongly, he will be put to death. The riddle teaches him that the + Princess is living incestuously with her father. He flies from + Antioch to Tyre, and there takes ship to avoid the King's + vengeance. Coming to Tarsus he relieves a famine by gifts of corn. + + Act II. He is wrecked near Pentapolis, recovers his armour, goes + jousting at the King's court, wins the King's daughter Thaisa, and + marries her. + + Act III. While bound for Tyre, Thaisa gives birth to a daughter, + dies, and is thrown overboard. The body drifts ashore at Ephesus, + and is restored to life by a physician. Thaisa, thinking Pericles + dead, becomes a votaress at Diana's temple. Pericles leaves Marina, + the newly born babe, in the care of the King and Queen of Tarsus. + He then returns to Tyre. + + Act IV. The years pass. Marina grows up to such beauty and charm + that she passes the Queen of Tarsus' own daughter. The Queen, + deeply jealous for her own child, hires a murderer to kill Marina. + Pirates surprise him in the act and carry off Marina to a brothel + in Mitylene, from which she escapes. She becomes a singer and + musician. + + Act V. Pericles, wandering, by sea, to Mitylene, in great + melancholy for the loss of wife and child, hears Marina sing. He + learns that she is his daughter. The goddess Diana bids him go to + her temple at Ephesus. He goes, and finds Thaisa. The play ends + happily with the reuniting of the family. + +The acts are opened by rhyming prologues designed to be spoken by John +Gower. The prologues to each of the three first acts are followed by +Dumb Shows, an invention of the theatre to explain those things not +easily to be shown in action. The prologues, the invention of the dumb +shows, and the first two acts, are not by Shakespeare. They are like the +poetical work of George Wilkins, who published a prose romance of _The +Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre_ in the year 1608, +probably after the play had been produced. + +The construction of the last three acts makes it likely that the play +(in its original state) was by the constructor of the first two acts. It +is not known how it came to pass that Shakespeare took the play in hand. +From the comparative feebleness of his work upon it, it may be judged +that it was not a labour of love. The impression given is that nothing +in the piece is wrought with more than the mechanical power of the great +mind, that Shakespeare was not deeply interested in the play, but that +he re-wrote the last three acts so that his company might play the piece +and make money by it. The play has often succeeded on the stage, and the +knowledge that it would succeed may have weighed with the manager of a +theatre on which many depended for bread. + +There is little that is precious in the play. The scenes in the brothel +at Mitylene (in Act IV) have power. Many find their unpleasantness an +excuse for saying that Shakespeare never wrote them. They are certainly +by Shakespeare. Cant would always persuade itself that the power to see +clearly ought not to be turned upon evil. Those who can read-- + + _Bawd._ ... they are so pitifully sodden. + + _Pandar._ ... The poor Transylvanian is dead, that lay with the + little baggage. + + _Boult._ Ay ... she made him roast-meat for worms-- + +with disgust at Shakespeare's foulness, yet without horror of heart that +the evil still goes on among human beings, must be strangely made. These +scenes, the very vigorous sea scenes, including the account of the storm +at sea, put into the mouth of Marina-- + + "My father, as nurse said, did never fear, + But cried 'Good seamen!' to the sailors, galling + His kingly hands, haling ropes; + And, clasping to the mast, endured a sea + That almost burst the deck.... + Never was waves nor wind more violent: + And from the ladder-tackle washes off + A canvas-climber. 'Ha,' says one, 'wilt out?' + And with a dropping industry they skip + From stem to stern; the boatswain whistles, and + The master calls and trebles their confusion"-- + +and the scene in which Cerimon, the man withdrawn from the world to +study the bettering of man, revives the body of Thaisa, are the most +lovely things in the play. + + +_Cymbeline._ + + _Written._ (?) + + _Published_, in the folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ Holinshed's _Chronicles_ tell of Cymbeline + and the Roman invasion. A story in Boccaccio's _Decameron_ (giorn. + 2, nov. ix) retold in English in Kinde Kit's _Westward for Smelts_, + and popular in many forms and many literatures, tells of the woman + falsely accused of adultery. + + _The Fable._ Cymbeline, King of Britain, has lost his two sons. His + only remaining child, a daughter named Imogen, is married to + Posthumus. His second wife, a cruel and scheming woman, plots to + destroy Posthumus so that her son, the boorish Cloten, may marry + Imogen. + + Posthumus in Rome wagers with Iachimo that Imogen is of an + incomparable chastity. Iachimo comes to England, and by a trick + obtains evidence that convinces Posthumus that Imogen is unchaste. + Imogen, cast off by her husband, comes to the mountains where + Belarius rears Cymbeline's two lost sons. Cloten, pursuing her, is + killed by one of the sons. + + The Romans land to exact tribute. The valour of Belarius and the + two boys obtains a British victory. The Romans are vanquished. + Cymbeline's queen kills herself. Posthumus is taught that Iachimo + deceived him. Imogen is restored to him. The lost sons are restored + to Cymbeline. Prophecy is fulfilled and pardon given. All ends + happily. + +It seems possible that Cymbeline was begun as a tragedy during the great +mood of tragical creation, then laid aside unfinished, from some +failure in the vision, or change in the creative mood, and brought to an +end later in a new spirit, perhaps in another place, in the country, +away from the life which makes writing alive. It is the least perfect of +the later plays. The least soft of Shakespeare's critics calls it +"unresisting imbecility." It is perhaps the first composed of the +romantic plays with which Shakespeare ended his life's work. + +Though the writing is so careless and the construction so loose that no +one can think of it as a finished play, it has dramatic scenes, one +faultless lyric, and many marks of beauty. It deals with the +Shakespearean subject of craft working upon a want of faith for personal +ends, and being defeated, when almost successful, by something simple +and instinctive in human nature. It is thus not unlike _Othello_; but in +_Othello_ the subject is simple, and the treatment purely tragic. In +_Cymbeline_ the subject is only partly extricated, and the treatment is +coloured with romance, with that strange, touching, very Shakespearean +romance, of the thing long lost beautifully recovered before the end, +so that the last years of the chief man in the play may be happy and +complete. The end of life would be as happy as the beginning if the dead +might be given back to us. Shakespeare had lost a child. + +There can be no doubt that when the play was first conceived, the craft +of the queen, working upon the insufficient faith of Cymbeline, was +designed to be as important to the action as the craft of Iachimo +working upon the insufficient faith of Posthumus. This was never wrought +out. The play advances and halts. As in all unfinished works of art one +sees in it something fine trying to get free but failing. + +The lyric "Fear no more the heat o' the sun" is the most lovely thing in +the play. The most powerful moment is that which exposes the poisoning +of a generous mind by false report. Posthumus believes Iachimo's lie and +breaks out railing against women. + + "For there's no motion + That tends to vice in man but I affirm + It is the woman's part." + +Noble instants are marked in the lines-- + + "Be not, as in our fangled world, a garment + Nobler than that it covers," + +and in the symbol of the eagle-- + + "the Roman eagle, + From south to west on wing soaring aloft, + Lessen'd herself and in the beams o' the sun + So vanished." + + +_The Winter's Tale._ + + _Written._ 1610-11. + + _Published_, in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ The story appears in Robert Greene's romance + of _Pandosto_. Shakespeare greatly improves the fable by completing + it. Greene ends it. Greene makes the story an accident with an + unhappy end. Shakespeare makes it a vision of the working of fate + with the tools of human passion. + + _The Fable._ Leontes, King of Sicilia, suspecting that his wife + Hermione is guilty of adultery with Polixenes, King of Bohemia, + tries her on that count. He causes her daughter to be carried to a + desert place and there exposed. + + The oracle of Apollo declares to him that Hermione is innocent, + that he himself is a jealous tyrant, and that he will die without + an heir should he fail to recover the daughter lost. The truth of + the oracle is confirmed by the (apparent) death of Hermione and the + real death of Mamillius, his son. Repenting bitterly of his + obsession of jealousy he goes into mourning. + + The little daughter is found by country people who nourish and + cherish her. She grows up to beautiful and gracious girlhood. + Florizel, the son of Polixenes, falls in love with her, and seeks + to marry her without his father's knowledge. Being discovered by + Polixenes, he flies with her to the sea. Taking ship, the couple + come to Leontes' court, where it is proved that the girl is the + lost princess. She is married to Florizel. Leontes is reconciled to + Polixenes. Hermione completes the general happiness by rejoining + the husband who has so long mourned her. + +Dr. Simon Forman, the first critic of this play, made note to "remember" +two things in it, "how he sent to the orakell of Appollo," and "also the +rog that cam in all tottered like Coll Pipci." He drew from it this +moral lesson, that one should "Beware of trustinge feined beggars or +fawninge fellouse." + +The moral lesson is still of value to the world, and it is most +certainly one which Shakespeare strove to impress. Shakespeare's mind +was always brooding on the working of fate. He was always watching the +results of some obsession upon an individual and the people connected +with him. He saw that a blindness falling upon a person suddenly, for no +apparent reason, except that something strikes the something not quite +sound in the nature, has the power to alter life violently. It was his +belief that life must not be altered violently. Life is a thing of +infinitely gradual growth, that would perfect itself if the blindness +could be kept away. Any deceiving thing, like a passion or a feigned +beggar, is a cause of the putting back of life, indefinitely. + +In this play, he followed his usual practice, of showing the results of +a human blindness upon human destiny. The greater plays are studies of +treachery and self-betrayal. This play is a study of deceit and +self-deception. Leontes is deceived by his obsession, Polixenes by his +son, the country man by Autolycus, life, throughout, by art. In the last +great scene, life is mistaken for art. In the first great scene a true +friendship is mistaken for a false love. + +It may be called the gentlest of Shakespeare's plays. It is done with a +tenderer hand than the other works. The name, _A Winter's Tale_, is +taken from a scene in the second act. Hermione sits down with her son, +by the winter fire, to listen to his story. It is the last time she ever +sees her son. He has hardly opened his lips when Leontes enters to +accuse her of adultery. She is hurried off to prison, and Mamillius dies +before the oracle's message comes to clear her. The sudden shocks and +interruptions of life, which play so big a part in the action of these +late romances, have full power here. The winter's tale is interrupted. +The rest of the play results from the interruption. Much of it is very +beautiful. To us, the wonderful thing is the strangeness of the +tenderness which makes some scenes in the fifth act so passionate with +grief for old injustice done to the dead. The cry of Leontes remembering +the wronged dead woman's eyes-- + + "Stars, stars, + And all eyes else dead coals," + +is haunting and heart-breaking. All his longing of remorse gives to the +last great scene, before the supposed statue, an intensity of beauty +hardly endurable. + +The passion of remorse is a romantic, not a tragic passion. It is the +mood which follows the tragic mood. Shakespeare's creative life is like +a Shakespearean play. It ends with an easing of the strain and a making +of peace. + +It is said that an old horse near to death turns towards the pastures +where he was foaled. It is true of human beings. Man wanders home to the +fields which bred him. A part of the romance of this poem is the turning +back of the poet's mind to the Cotswold country, of which he sang so +magically, in his first play, sixteen or eighteen years before. There +are fine scenes of shepherds at home, among the sheep bells and clean +wind. There is a very lovely talk of flowers-- + + "daffodils, + That come before the swallow dares, and take + The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, + But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes + Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, + That die unmarried, ere they can behold + Bright Phoebus in his strength." + +To Shakespeare, the magically happy man, the going back to them must +have been a time for thanksgiving. But to the supremely happy man all +times are times of thanksgiving, deep, tranquil and abundant, for the +delight, the majesty and the beauty of the fulness of the rolling world. + + +_The Tempest._ + + _Written._ 1610-11. + + _Published_, in the folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ It is likely that many sources contributed to + the making of this plot. If Shakespeare took the fable from a + single source, that source is not now known. He may have taken + suggestions for it from the following books:-- + + 1st. From a little collection of novels by Antonio de Eslava, a + Spanish writer, whose book, _Noches de Invierno_, was published in + Barcelona in 1609. Three tales in this collection seem to have + given hints for the play. The fourth chapter, about "The Art Magic + of King Dardano," helped him more than the others. Whether the + title of the book suggested the title of _A Winter's Tale_ is not + known. + + 2nd. From a German play, _Die schöne Sidea_, by a Nuremberg + dramatist, named Jacob Ayrer. + + 3rd. From the tracts relating to the discovery of the Bermuda + Islands in 1609. Of the known tracts, _A Discovery of the Bermuda + Islands_, by Sylvester Jourdain, gave Shakespeare the most hints. + + Several other books may have suggested lines and passages. + + _The Fable._ Prospero, Duke of Milan, having been driven from his + dukedom by Antonio his brother, flies to sea with his daughter + Miranda, lands on an island, and there lives, served by two + creatures, one an airy spirit, the other a loutish monster. + + By art magic, he brings to the island his usurping brother and the + king and heir of Naples. Miranda falls in love with the heir of + Naples. Prospero dismisses his spirits, reconciles himself with his + brother, and plans to sail at once for Milan. + +In this play, as in the two other original romantic plays, Shakespeare +follows the workings of a treacherous act from its performance to the +repentance of the sinner and the granting of the victim's forgiveness. +In the great plays the victim dies and the sinner does not repent. +Presently the wheel comes full circle, and a justice from outside life +smites him dead. In these plays the betrayed live to forgive the +traitors-- + + "Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick, + Yet, with my nobler reason, 'gainst my fury + Do I take part. The rarer action is + In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, + The sole drift of my purpose doth extend + Not a frown further." + +In this play, as in the other two and in _Pericles_, much is made of the +chances and accidents of life, and of the sudden changes of worldly +circumstance due to them. In this play, for the first and last time, +Shakespeare treats of the power of the resolved imagination to command +the brutish, the base, the noble and the spiritual for wise human ends. + +It is easy to interpret the play as allegory. Youth in this country has +reason to regard allegory as a clumsy man's way of introducing Sunday on +a weekday. It is so seldom successful that it may be called the literary +method of creative minds below the first rank. Shakespeare's method was +never allegorical. The _Tempest_ is perhaps no more allegorical than +any other good romance. But the thought of it is so clear that the first +impression given is that it is thin. It is the study of a man of +intellect, who has been forced from power by a treacherous brother. +Living alone with his bright, unspoiled daughter, he attains, by +intellectual labour, to a power over destiny. Like the wise man of the +proverb, he learns to master his stars. He uses this power nobly to put +an end to ancient hatred and old injustice. + +The minor vision of the play is a study, often very amusing, but deeply +earnest, of the coming of the fifth part civilised to the mostly brutal. +In Shakespeare's time, men like the quite thoughtless and callous +Stephano and Trinculo, the "sea-dogs" who manned our ships, and of whom +Raleigh wrote that it was an offence to God to minister oaths to the +generality of them, were "spreading civilisation" in various parts of +the world. Shakespeare, looking at them gravely, saw them to be, +perhaps, more dangerous to the needs of life, to wisdom, and to unlit +animal strength than the base Sebastian and the treacherous Antonio. + +The exquisite lyrics, and the masque of the goddesses, show that the +taste of the audience of 1610-11 needed to be tickled. Times had changed +since the lion-like and ramping days, eighteen years before, when +"Jeronimy" was a new word, and Tamora a serious invention. The man who +had changed the times was thinking, like Prospero, that he had "got his +dukedom," and that now, having "pardoned the deceiver," he might go to +Stratford to enjoy it. + + +_King Henry VIII_, or _All is True_. + + _Written._ 1611-13 (?) + + _Produced._ (?) + + _Published_, in the first folio, 1623. + + _Source of the Plot._ Holinshed's _Chronicles_. Hall's + _Chronicles_. Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_. + + _The Fable._ Act I. Two of the scenes in this act are by + Shakespeare. In the first, Cardinal Wolsey contrives the attainting + of his enemy, the Duke of Buckingham. In the other he procures to + bring Queen Katharine into disfavour. + + Act II. In this act, Buckingham is beheaded, the King shows favour + to Anne Bullen, and Queen Katharine is brought to trial. It is hard + to believe that Shakespeare wrote any part of this act. He is often + credited with the third scene, apparently on the ground that though + it is bad it is still too good to be by Bacon. + + Act III. In this act, the King shows Wolsey that he has discovered + his plottings. About half of the second scene (all the masculine + part of it) is by Shakespeare. The rest (very beautiful) is by + Fletcher. + + Act IV. Anne Bullen is crowned. Wolsey dies. Queen Katharine dies. + None of this act is by Shakespeare. + + Act V. Cranmer escapes from his enemies in time to be godfather at + the christening of Anne Bullen's daughter Elizabeth. If any of this + act be by Shakespeare it can only be the first scene. + +Little of this play is by Shakespeare. The greater part of it is by John +Fletcher. Some scenes bear the marks of a third hand, like that of +Philip Massinger. The play reads as though the two lesser poets had +worked from a scenario of Shakespeare's less complete than the draft of +_Troilus and Cressida_. It is certain that they received no hint of the +lines on which Shakespeare meant to proceed after the end of Act III. +Not knowing what to do, they patched up a piece without any central +tragical idea, and hid their want of thought with much effective +theatrical invention, pageants, a trial, a coronation, a christening, +etc., and with bright, facile, vinous dialogue, of the kind that will +hold an uncritical audience. The play, when done, was mounted with +extreme splendour at the Globe Theatre. Wadding from the cannons +discharged in the first act set fire to the theatre, and burned it to +the ground, June 29, 1613. + +Shakespeare's dramatic intention is indicated in the scenes written by +him. Knowing his practice, and having before us Holinshed, his +authority, it is easy to sketch out the kind of play that he would have +written by himself. Wolsey, eaten up by his obsession for worldly power, +betraying Buckingham to his fall, breaking the power of the Queen, and +ruling England, would have filled the first two acts. The third act +would have told (much more subtly than Fletcher has told) of his +downfall. Fletcher attributes the downfall to the chance discovery of +his attempt to thwart the king's marriage with Anne Bullen. That +discovery would have been put to full dramatic use by Shakespeare; but +it would have been represented as something working from beyond the +grave, the result of many unjust acts that have cried to God for justice +till God hears. The last acts would have exposed other sides of Wolsey's +character. The play would have been a fuller, nobler work than _Richard +II_, and of an ampler canvas than _Timon_. Shakespeare's share in the +play as we have it is all noble work. Wolsey, Katharine and the King are +drawn with the great, sharp, ample line of a master. The difference +between genius and supreme genius is shown very clearly in the first +act, where a great work, greatly begun, with the masterly power of +exposition that makes Shakespeare's first acts like daybreaks, is ended +by another spirit, without vision, but with a tremendous sense of Vanity +Fair. + + +WORK ATTRIBUTED TO SHAKESPEARE + +A play called _Cardenno_, or _Cardenna_, was acted at Court by +Shakespeare's company in 1613. It is thought that this play was the +_History of Cardenio_, described as "by Fletcher and Shakespeare," which +was licensed for publication in 1653 but never published. The play is +now lost. It was attributed to Fletcher and Shakespeare on very poor +authority. + +_Arden of Feversham_ is a domestic tragedy founded on a story told by +Holinshed. It was published anonymously in 1592. It is held by some to +be an early work of Shakespeare's, on the ground that no other known +poet, then living, could have written it. It is a strong play, but it is +the work of a joyless mind. It bears no single trace of Shakespeare's +mind. It could not have been written by him at any stage in his career. + +_Edward III_ is an historical chronicle play by at least two unknown +hands. It was published anonymously in 1596. Some think that part of Act +I and the whole of Act II (dealing with the King's obsession of passion +for the Countess of Salisbury) were by Shakespeare, on the grounds that +the writing is too good to be by anybody else then living, and that the +unknown author makes use of a line and a phrase which occur in the +genuine sonnets of Shakespeare. The scenes attributed to Shakespeare +contain several beautiful lines in something of the Shakespearean +manner. The construction of the scenes, and their relation to the rest +of the play is un-Shakespearean. It is unlikely that Shakespeare wrote +them. + +_The Spanish Tragedy_, a play by Thomas Kyd, published in 1592 and +reprinted with many additions ten years later, contains in the additions +several magnificent scenes of the passion of grief raised to madness. +Some think that Ben Jonson wrote these scenes; others, that they are too +good to be by any one but Shakespeare. They are not like Shakespeare's +work. + +_The Two Noble Kinsmen_, a romantic tragedy on the subject of Chaucer's +_Knight's Tale_, was first published in 1634. It was described on the +title-page as the joint work of Fletcher and Shakespeare. Shakespeare's +hand is plainly marked upon the play; but it seems likely that most of +the scenes usually credited to him are by Massinger. Few can have ears +dull enough to credit Shakespeare with all the scenes that are plainly +not by Fletcher. + +About a dozen other plays and parts of plays have been attributed to +Shakespeare, either by lying publishers, anxious to make money, or by +foolish critics eager to make a noise. "Evil men understand not +judgment: and he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent." +There is not a glimmer of evidence in any line or scene to show that +Shakespeare had a hand in any of them. + + +THE POEMS + +_Venus and Adonis._--This poem was published in 1593 with a dedication +to the Earl of Southampton, then a youth. In the dedication Shakespeare +speaks of the poem as "the first heire of my invention," from which +some conclude that it was the first poem ever made public by him. + +Though it may be his earliest poem, the thought expressed by it is the +thought expressed in the greatest of the plays, that evil comes of +obsession. + +Venus, a lustful woman, pursuing her opposite, a chaste youth, comes to +misery. Adonis, a chaste youth, fleeing from her, comes to death. + +The poem is beautiful and wild blooded. It is fierce with the excelling +animal zest of something young and untainted. + + "The sun ariseth in his majesty + Who doth the world so gloriously behold, + That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold." + +It is full of the images of delicate quick-blooded things going swiftly +and lustily from the boiling of the April in them. + + * * * * * + +_The Rape of Lucrece._--This poem was published in 1594, with a +dedication to the Earl of Southampton. Like so many of the works of +Shakespeare, it describes at length the prompting, acting, and results +of a treachery inspired by an obsession. Tarquin, hearing of Lucrece's +chastity, longs to attempt her. Coming stealthily to her home, in her +lord's absence, he foully ravishes her. She kills herself and he is +banished from Rome. The subject is not unlike that of _Venus and +Adonis_, with the sexes reversed. In both poems the subject is sexual +obsession and its results. + +_Lucrece_ is a wiser and a finer poem than _Venus and Adonis_. It is +constructed with the art of a man familiar with the theatre. The +delaying of the great moments so as to heighten the expectation, is +contrived with rapturous energy. The poem is heaped and overflowing with +the abundance of imaginative power. The wealth of the young man's mind +is poured out like life in June. + +It is strange that both Lucrece and Hamlet, in their moments of +distraction, turn to the image of Troy blazing with the punishment of +treachery. + +_The Passionate Pilgrim._--This little collection of poems was published +in 1599, under Shakespeare's name, by William Jaggard, a dishonest +bookseller. It contains poems by Richard Barnfield, Bartholomew Griffin, +Christopher Marlowe, and one or more unknown hands. It also contains two +genuine Shakespearean sonnets, three more from the text of _Love's +Labour's Lost_, and three (less certainly his) on the subject of _Venus +and Adonis_, which have the ring of his freshest youthful manner. +Whether any others in the collection be by Shakespeare can only be a +matter of opinion. The nineteenth poem has a smack of his mind about it. +If it be by him it must be his earliest extant work. + + * * * * * + +_The Sonnets._--_Written_ between 1592 and 1609. _Published_ +(piratically) 1609. + +These personal poems have puzzled many readers. Many writers have tried +to interpret them. Although their first editor tells us that they are +"serene, cleare, and elegantlie plaine (with) no intricate and cloudie +stuffe to trouble and perplex the intellect," much good and bad brain +work has been spent on them. Some have held that they are poetical +exercises. Others find that they are confessions. Others wrest from dark +lines dark meanings, till they have laid bare a story from them. Others +interpret spiritually. Others find evidence in them that Shakespeare was +guilty of an abnormal form of passion. The facts about them may be +stated-- + + 1. They are personal poems. Some of them are of great beauty; + others are unsuccessful. + + 2. They were written in many moods. Some were written in a mood of + the intensest tranquil ecstasy, others in a fit of earthly passion, + others in a trivial mood. + + 3. They were written to more than one person. Many were written to + an attractive, handsome, young, unmarried man, Shakespeare's dear + friend. Men with imagination enjoy sweeter and closer friendships + than the many know. The many, mulish as ever, therefore imagine + evil. + + 4. Some of the sonnets were written to a woman, of the kind + described in two or three of the plays, viz. a black-haired, + black-eyed, white-faced, witty wanton, false to her marriage vows + and the cause of similar falseness in Shakespeare himself, and in + his friend. + + 5. Many of them show that Shakespeare, loving this woman, against + his better nature, was wilfully betrayed by her to all the devils + of jealousy, craving and self-loathing, which follow the banner of + lechery. Among the objects of the jealousy another poet figured. + +No one knows who the friend, the lady and the rival poet were. The +discovery of letters and manuscripts may some day remove the mystery. +"Against that time, if ever that time come," men of intellect would do +well to accept the sonnets as beautiful poems, and try to write as good +ones to their wives. + +Beautiful as many of the sonnets are, they are less wonderful +achievements and less important to the soul of man than the plays. Few +people thought much of them until the degradation of the English theatre +had hidden from English minds the greater glory of the creative system. +That they are now widely read while the plays are seldom acted, is +another proof that this age cares more for what was perishing and +personal in Shakespeare than for that which went winging on, in the +great light, surveying the eternal in man. + +What Shakespeare thought of his perishing self is expressed in the +noblest of the sonnets. Two syllables are missing from the second line. + + "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, + ( ) these rebel powers that thee array, + Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, + Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? + Why so large cost, having so short a lease, + Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? + Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, + Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? + Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, + And let that pine to aggravate thy store; + Buy terms divine with selling hours of dross; + Within be fed, without be rich no more: + So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, + And Death once dead, there's no more dying then." + +The sonnets were piratically published in a quarto volume in 1609. At +the end of the volume a narrative poem was printed, under the name _A +Lover's Complaint_. It tells in the first person the story of a girl who +has been seduced by a plausible villain. It is a work of Shakespeare's +youth, fresh and felicitous as youth's work often is, and very nearly +as empty. + + * * * * * + +_The Phoenix and The Turtle._--This strange, very beautiful poem was +published in 1601 in an appendix to Robert Chester's _Love's Martyr, or +Rosalin's Complaint_, to which several famous poets contributed. In dark +and noble verse it describes a spiritual marriage, suddenly ended by +death. It is too strange to be the fruit of a human sorrow. It is the +work of a great mind trying to express in unusual symbols a thought too +subtle and too intense to be expressed in any other way. Spiritual +ecstasy is the only key to work of this kind. To the reader without that +key it can only be so many strange words set in a noble rhythm for no +apparent cause. + +Poetry moves in many ways. It may glorify and make spiritual some action +of man, or it may give to thoughts such life as thoughts can have, an +intenser and stranger life than man knows, with forms that are not +human and a speech unintelligible to normal human moods. This poem gives +to a flock of thoughts about the passing of truth and beauty the mystery +and vitality of birds, who come from a far country, to fill the mind +with their crying. + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +Shakespeare's plays were printed carelessly, often from imperfect, torn, +ill-written or stolen copies. When printed, they were seldom corrected. +When reprinted, the original errors were often made much worse. Thus, +"he met the night-mare," or "a met the night-mare," in the original +manuscript, was printed "a nellthu night more," and reprinted "anelthu +night Moore." Those who lightly read the modern editions seldom know +that years of mental toil went to the preparation of the texts so easily +read to-day. + +Many English minds have paid tribute to Shakespeare. Few of them deserve +more praise than the Cambridge Editors, whose six years of labour +cleared the text of countless errors and corruptions. The correction of +a corrupt text by collation and conjecture, is one of the most difficult +and least amusing tasks that a fine mind can have. The Cambridge +_Shakespeare_, the work of William George Clark and Dr. William Aldis +Wright, gives a text not likely to be improved until the poet's +corrected manuscripts are found. + +The _Life of William Shakespeare_ has been ably written by Dr. Sidney +Lee, whose judgment equals his learning. + +Some of the dramatic methods of Shakespeare have been nobly studied by +Dr. A. C. Bradley in his _Shakespearean Tragedy_. + +To these books and to the Shakespearean Essays in Mr. W. B. Yeats's +_Ideas of Good and Evil_, I am deeply indebted, as all modern students +of Shakespeare must be. + +Our knowledge of Shakespeare is imperfect. It can only be increased by +minute and patient study, by the rejection of surmise about him, and by +the constant public playing of his plays, in the Shakespearean manner, +by actors who will neither mutilate nor distort what the great mind +strove to make just. + + + + +INDEX OF CHARACTERS + + +Achilles, 169, 170 + +Adonis, 241, 242 + +Adriana, 46, 47 + +Ęgeon, 44, 46, 49 + +Aguecheek, Sir Andrew, 139 + +Ajax, 169, 172 + +Albany, Duke of, 187, 190 + +Alcibiades, 214, 215, 217, 218 + +Angelo, 174, 175, 177, 196 + +Anne Bullen, 236, 237 + +Anne, Lady, 93, 100 + +Antipholus of Ephesus, 44, 46 + +Antipholus of Syracuse, 44 + +Antonio (_Merchant of Venice_), 103 + +Antonio (_Tempest_), 232, 235 + +Antonio (_Two Gentlemen of Verona_), 34 + +Apemantus, 215 + +Armado, 30, 31 + +Arthur, Prince, 75, 80, 83, 84 + +Audrey, 129 + +Austria, Lymoges, Duke of, 81 + +Autolycus, 228 + + +Banquo, 195, 200 + +Bardolph, 122, 124, 125 + +Bassanio, 103 + +Beatrice, 133, 134, 136, 137 + +Beaufort, Cardinal, 51, 55, 57, 58, 59 + +Belarius, 223 + +Belch, Sir Toby, 82, 138, 139, 217 + +Benedick, 133, 134, 136 + +Bertram, 144, 145, 146 + +Bianca, 105, 108 + +Biondello, 107 + +Biron, 24, 25, 32, 36 + +Blanch of Spain, 75, 79 + +Borachio, 134, 135 + +Bottom, 63 + +Boyet, 30 + +Brutus, 149, 150, 154, 156 + +Buckingham, Duke of (_Richard III_), 94, 98, 99 + +Buckingham, Duke of (_Henry VIII_), 235, 237 + + +Cade, Jack, 55, 57 + +Caius, Dr., 124, 125 + +Calchas, 169 + +Carlisle, Bishop of, 89, 92 + +Cassio, 180, 181, 183 + +Cassius, 149 + +Cawdor, 198 + +Celia, 128, 129 + +Cerimon, 222 + +Clarence, George, Duke of, 93, 94, 98, 100 + +Claudio (_Measure for Measure_), 174, 177, 178 + +Claudio (_Much Ado_), 133, 134, 135 + +Claudius (_Hamlet_), 157, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166 + +Cleopatra, 202, 203, 207, 217 + +Cloten, 223 + +Cordelia, 187, 188, 190, 192 + +Coriolanus, 196, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212 + +Cornwall, Duke of, 190 + +Costard, 30, 31 + +Cranmer, 236 + +Cressida, 169 + +Cymbeline, 223, 225 + + +Demetrius, 63 + +Desdemona, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185 + +Diana (_All's Well_), 144 + +Diana (_Pericles_), 219, 220 + +Don John, 133, 134, 135 + +Don Pedro, 133, 134, 136 + +Dorset, Marquess of, 98 + +Dromio of Ephesus, 44 + +Dromio of Syracuse, 44, 46 + +Dumaine, 24, 32 + +Duncan, King, 154, 195, 198, 201 + + +Edgar, 187, 190 + +Edmund, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 204 + +Edward III, 239 + +Edward IV, 93, 94 + +Edward, Prince of Wales (_Henry VI_), 62 + +Edward, Prince of Wales (_Richard III_), 99 + +Eglamour, 41 + +Elinor, Queen, 78 + +Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV, 94 + +Elizabeth, Princess, 236 + +Emilia, 183, 184 + +Evans, Sir Hugh, 124, 125 + + +Falstaff, Sir John, 112, 113, 116, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126 + +Flavius, 216 + +Florizel, 227 + +Fluellen, 123 + +Fool (_Lear_), 192 + +Ford, Mistress, 124, 125 + +Fortinbras, 161 + +Frederick, Duke, 128, 129, 132 + +Friar Laurence, 68, 71, 74 + + +Gertrude, Queen, 157, 158, 161, 165 + +Ghost (_Hamlet_), 158 + +Gloucester, Earl of, 187, 188, 189, 190 + +Gloucester, Humphrey, Duke of, 51, 55, 57, 58, 59 + +Gloucester, Richard, Duke of, (_Henry VI_), 61 + +Gloucester, Richard, Duke of, (_Richard III_), 93, 115 + +Goneril, 187, 189, 193 + +Grey, Lord, 98, 99 + + +Hamlet, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 191, 196, 243 + +Hastings, Lord, 99 + +Hector, 169, 170 + +Helen, 171 + +Helena (_Midsummer Night's Dream_), 63 + +Helena (_All's Well_), 144, 145, 147 + +Henry IV, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116 + +Henry V, 120, 121 + +Henry VI, 51, 52, 60, 61, 62 + +Henry VIII, 235, 236, 237, 238 + +Henry, Prince of Wales, 109, 111, 112, 114, 118 + +Henry Bolingbroke, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92 + +Hermia, 63 + +Hermione, 226, 227, 229 + +Hero, 133, 134, 135 + +Hippolyta, 63 + +Hotspur, Henry Percy, surnamed, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 119 + +Hubert de Burgh, 80, 83 + + +Iachimo, 223, 225 + +Iago, 181, 182, 181, 185, 204, 211 + +Imogen, 223 + +Isabella, 174, 175 + + +Jaques, 129, 131, 132 + +Joan of Arc, 51, 54 + +John, King of England, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80 + +John of Gaunt, 86, 89, 91 + +John of Lancaster, 114, 118 + +Julia, 34, 35, 39, 40, 42 + +Juliet, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 + +Julius Cęsar, 149, 153, 154, 156, 196 + + +Katharina, 106, 108 + +Katharine, 32 + +Katharine of France, 120 + +Katharine, Queen, 235, 236, 237, 238 + +Kent, 187, 190 + + +Laertes, 158, 161 + +Launce, 42 + +Lear, King, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 194 + +Lennox, 202 + +Leonato, 135, 136 + +Leontes, King of Sicilia, 226, 227, 228, 229 + +Lewis the Dauphin, 75, 79 + +Longaville, 24, 32 + +Lucio, 177,178 + +Lucrece, 243 + +Lysander, 63 + + +Macbeth, 191, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 217 + +Macbeth, Lady, 195, 199, 200 + +Macduff, 195, 202 + +Malcolm, 195 + +Malvolio, 138, 139, 140, 141 + +Mamillius, 227, 229 + +Marcius, 208 + +Margaret of Anjou, 52, 55, 62, 94 + +Maria, 139 + +Mariana, 174, 175 + +Marina, 219, 220, 222 + +Mark Antony, 149, 191, 196, 202, 204, 206 + +Mercutio, 68, 70 + +Milan, Duke of, 34, 35, 38, 39 + +Miranda, 232 + +Mortimer, 53 + + +Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray, Duke of, 86, 119 + +Northumberland, Henry Percy, Earl of, 114 + +Nurse to Juliet, 74 + +Nym, 123, 124 + + +Oberon, 63 + +Octavia, 202 + +Octavius Cęsar, 149, 202, 203, 205 + +Olivia, 138, 140, 141 + +Oliver, 128, 129 + +Ophelia, 157, 158, 166 + +Orlando, 128, 129, 131 + +Orsino, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142 + +Othello, 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 191, 196 + + +Page, Anne, 124 + +Page, Mistress, 124 + +Pandarus, 169 + +Pandulph, Cardinal, 75 + +Paris, 68 + +Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 213, 219, 220 + +Petruchio, 105, 107 + +Phebe, 129, 132, 133 + +Philip the Bastard, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83 + +Philip of France, 75, 80 + +Pistol, 117, 122, 123, 124 + +Polixenes, King of Bohemia, 226, 227, 228 + +Polonius, 158, 161 + +Portia, 102, 103, 104, 132 + +Posthumus, 223, 225 + +Prospero, Duke of Milan, 232, 235 + +Proteus, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41 + +Puck, 63 + +Pyramus, 63 + + +Queen (_Cymbeline_), 223, 225 + +Quickly, Mrs., 124 + + +Regan, 187, 189 + +Richard II, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 115, 119 + +Richard III, 93, 94, 96, 98, 99, 102, 211 + +Richard, Duke of York, 99 + +Rivers, Earl, 98, 99 + +Roderigo, 183 + +Romeo, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 + +Rosalind, 128, 129, 132 + +Rosaline, 25, 31, 32, 69, 133 + + +Salisbury, Countess of, 239 + +Scroop, Lord, 122 + +Sebastian (_Tempest_), 235 + +Sebastian (_Twelfth Night_), 138 + +Shallow, Justice, 82, 124 + +Shylock, 103, 104 + +Silvia, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41 + +Simpcox, 65, 59 + +Slender, Master, 124 + +Sly, Christopher, 105, 107 + +Somerset, Earl of, 51 + +Stephano, 234 + +Suffolk, Earl of, 52, 55, 57 + + +Talbot, 51, 54 + +Tamora, 49, 50 + +Tarquin, 196, 243 + +Thaisa, 219, 220, 222 + +Thersites, 172 + +Theseus, 63, 66 + +Thisbe, 63 + +Thurio, 34, 35, 37, 38 + +Timon of Athens, 196, 209, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218 + +Titania, 63 + +Titus Andronicus, 49, 50 + +Touchstone, 129 + +Trinculo, 234 + +Troilus, 169 + +Tybalt, 68, 70 + + +Ulysses, 170 + +Ursula, 133 + + +Valentine, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41 + +Venus, 241, 242 + +Vienna, Duke of, 174, 178 + +Viola, 138, 139, 141, 142 + + +Warwick, Earl of, 59, 61 + +Wolsey, Cardinal, 196, 235, 236, 237, 238 + + +York, Edmund of Langley, Duke of, 89, 92 + +York, Edward, Duke of, 61 + +York, Richard, Duke of, 51, 55, 57, 62 + + +_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._ + + + * * * * * + + +Home University +Library +of Modern +Knowledge + +_A Comprehensive Series of New +and Specially Written Books_ + +EDITORS: + +PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A. +HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. +PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. +PROF. WM. T. BREWSTER, M.A. + + * * * * * + +The Home University Library + +"Is without the slightest doubt the pioneer in supplying serious +literature for a large section of the public who are interested in +the liberal education of the State."--_The Daily Mail._ + +"The fact is," says the _Pall Mall Gazette_, "that this remarkable +library helps to realise one of those functions of a true +University which English Universities have culpably neglected. + ... This Library makes a most effective and useful beginning +in the popularisation of knowledge.... The scope of the series +is as wisely outlined as its methods are effective and praiseworthy." + +"The Home University Library places within the reach of +every man, woman, or child with a shilling to spend fruitfully, +the products of the best brains of to-day in all departments of +modern knowledge."--_Morning Leader._ + +"Each volume represents a three-hours' traffic with the talking-power +of a good brain, operating with the ease and interesting +freedom of a specialist dealing with his own subject.... A series +which promises to perform a real social service."--_The Times._ + +"We can think of no series now being issued which better +deserves support."--_The Observer._ + +"Certainly no publishing enterprise of our time is more +remarkable or better deserving of success."--_Manchester +Guardian._ + +"Here is the world's learning in little, and none too poor to +give it house-room!"--_Daily Telegraph._ + +1/- net 256 Pages 2/6 net +in cloth in leather + + + + +_History and Geography_ + + +3. _THE FRENCH REVOLUTION_ + +By HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A. (With Maps.) "It is coloured with all the +militancy of the author's temperament."--_Daily News._ + +4. _HISTORY OF WAR AND PEACE_ + +By G. H. PERRIS. The Rt. Hon. JAMES BRYCE writes: "I have read it with +much interest and pleasure, admiring the skill with which you have +managed to compress so many facts and views into so small a volume." + +8. _POLAR EXPLORATION_ + +By Dr W. S. BRUCE, F.R.S.E., Leader of the "Scotia" Expedition. (With +Maps.) "A very freshly written and interesting narrative."--_The Times._ +"A fascinating book."--_Portsmouth Times._ + +12. _THE OPENING-UP OF AFRICA_ + +By Sir H. H. JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., D.Sc, F.Z.S. (With Maps.) "The +Home University Library is much enriched by this excellent +work."--_Daily Mail._ + +13. _MEDIĘVAL EUROPE_ + +By H. W. C. DAVIS, M.A. (With Maps.) "A good specimen of the work of the +modern historian,"--_Christian World._ "One more illustration of the +fact that it takes a complete master of the subject to write briefly +upon it."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +14. _THE PAPACY & MODERN TIMES_ (1303-1870) + +By WILLIAM BARRY, D.D. "Dr Barry has a wide range of knowledge and an +artist's power of selection."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +23. _HISTORY OF OUR TIME_, 1885-1911 + +By G. P. GOOCH, M.A. "Mr Gooch contrives to breathe vitality into his +story, and to give us the flesh as well as the bones of recent +happenings."--_Observer._ + +25. _THE CIVILISATION OF CHINA_ + +By H. A. GILES, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the University of +Cambridge. "In all the mass of facts, Professor Giles never becomes +dull. He is always ready with a ghost story or a street adventure for +the reader's recreation."--_Spectator._ + +29. _THE DAWN OF HISTORY_ + +By J. L. MYRES, M.A., F.S.A., Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, +Oxford. "There is not a page in it that is not suggestive."--_Manchester +Guardian._ + +33. _THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND_: + +_A Study in Political Evolution._ + +By Prof. A. F. POLLARD, M.A. With a Chronological Table. "A vivid study +of tendencies, not a solid mass of facts.... It is a most stimulating, +energetic, and suggestive piece of work."--_Daily News._ "It +takes its place at once among the authoritative works on English +history."--_Observer._ "It is marked by the wealth of detail, the sanity +of outlook, the severe impartiality which we always find in Prof. +Pollard's writings."--_London Teacher._ + +34. _CANADA_ + +By A. G. BRADLEY. "Who knows Canada better than Mr A. G. +Bradley?"--_Daily Chronicle._ "The volume makes an immediate appeal to +the man who wants to know something vivid and true about +Canada."--_Canadian Gazette._ "As interesting and as absorbing as a good +novel."--_Canadian Mail._ + +37. _PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA_ + +By Sir T. W. HOLDERNESS, K.C.S.I., Secretary of the Revenue, Statistics, +and Commerce Department of the India Office. "Just the book which +newspaper readers require to-day, and a marvel of comprehensiveness in +bringing all the factors of a great subject into view within a limited +space."--_Pall Mall Gazette._ + +42. _ROME_ + +By W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A. "A masterly sketch of Roman character and of +what it did for the world."--_The Spectator._ "It has all the lucidity +and charm of presentation we expect from this writer."--_Manchester +Guardian._ + +48. _THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR_ + +By F. L. PAXSON, Professor of American History, Wisconsin University. +(With Maps.) + + +IN PREPARATION + +_ANCIENT GREECE._ By Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A. + +_ANCIENT EGYPT._ By Dr F. L. GRIFFITH, M.A., F.R.S. + +_A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE._ By HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. + +_THE REFORMATION._ By Principal LINDSAY, LL.D. + +_A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA._ By Prof. MILYOUKOV. + +_MODERN TURKEY._ By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A. + +_FRANCE OF TO-DAY._ By ALBERT THOMAS. + +_HISTORY OF SCOTLAND._ By R. S. RAIT, M.A. + +_SOUTH AMERICA._ By Prof. W. R. SHEPHERD. + +_MASTER MARINERS._ By J. R. SPEARS. + +_NAPOLEON._ By HERBERT FISHER, M.A. + + + + +_Literature and Art_ + + +2. _SHAKESPEARE_ + +By JOHN MASEFIELD. "The book is a joy. We have had half-a-dozen more +learned books on Shakespeare in the last few years, but not one so +wise."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +27. _ENGLISH LITERATURE: MODERN_ + +By G. H. MAIR, M.A. "Altogether a fresh and individual +book."--_Observer._ + +35. _LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE_ + +By G. L. STRACHEY. "Short handbooks on great subjects are among the most +difficult tasks that a man of letters can undertake, and Mr Strachey is +to be congratulated on his courage and success. It is difficult to +imagine how a better account of French Literature could be given in two +hundred and fifty small pages than he has given here."--_The Times._ + +39. _ARCHITECTURE_ + +By Prof. W. R. LETHABY. (Over forty Illustrations.) "Popular guide-books +to architecture are, as a rule, not worth much. This volume is a welcome +exception."--_Building News._ "Delightfully bright reading."--_Christian +World._ + +43. _ENGLISH LITERATURE: MEDIĘVAL._ + +By Prof. W. P. KER, M.A. + +45. _THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_ + +By L. PEARSALL SMITH, M.A. + + +IN PREPARATION + +_ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL._ By Miss JANE HARRISON, LL.D., D.Litt. + +_THE RENAISSANCE._ By Mrs R. A. TAYLOR. + +_ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAISSANCE._ By ROGER E. FRY, M.A. + +_ENGLISH COMPOSITION._ By Prof. WM. T. BREWSTER. + +_GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA._ By Prof. W. P. TRENT and Prof. J. ERSKINE. + +_GREAT WRITERS OF RUSSIA._ By C. T. HAGBERG WRIGHT, LL.D. + +_THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY._ By Prof. J. G. ROBERTSON, M.A., Ph.D. + + + + +_Science_ + + +7. _MODERN GEOGRAPHY_ + +By Dr MARION NEWBIGIN. (Illustrated.) "Geography, again: what a dull, +tedious study that was wont to be!... But Miss Marion Newbigin invests +its dry bones with the flesh and blood of romantic interest, taking +stock of geography as a fairy-book of science."--_Daily Telegraph._ + +9. _THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS_ + +By Dr D. H. SCOTT, M.A., F.R.S., late Hon. Keeper of the Jodrell +Laboratory, Kew. (Fully illustrated.) "The information which the book +provides is as trustworthy as first-hand knowledge can make it.... Dr +Scott's candid and familiar style makes the difficult subject both +fascinating and easy."--_Gardeners' Chronicle._ + +17. _HEALTH AND DISEASE_ + +By W. LESLIE MACKENZIE, M.D., Local Government Board, Edinburgh. "The +science of public health administration has had no abler or more +attractive exponent than Dr Mackenzie. He adds to a thorough grasp of +the problems an illuminating style, and an arresting manner of treating +a subject often dull and sometimes unsavoury."--_Economist._ + +18. _INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS_ + +By A. N. WHITHEAD, Sc.D., F.R.S. (With Diagrams.) "Mr Whitehead has +discharged with conspicuous success the task he is so exceptionally +qualified to undertake. For he is one of our great authorities upon the +foundations of the science, and has the breadth of view which is so +requisite in presenting to the reader its aims. His exposition is clear +and striking."--_Westminster Gazette._ + +19. _THE ANIMAL WORLD_ + +By Professor F. W. GAMBLE, D.Sc., F.R.S. With Introduction by Sir Oliver +Lodge. (Many Illustrations.) "A delightful and instructive epitome of +animal (and vegetable) life.... A most fascinating and suggestive +survey."--_Morning Post._ + +20. _EVOLUTION_ + +By Professor J. ARTHUR THOMSON and Professor PATRICK GEDDES. "A +many-coloured and romantic panorama, opening up, like no other book we +know, a rational vision of world-development."--_Belfast News-Letter._ + +22. _CRIME AND INSANITY_ + +By Dr C. A. MERCIER, F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S., Author of "Text-Book of +Insanity," etc. "Furnishes much valuable information from one occupying +the highest position among medico-legal psychologists."--_Asylum News._ + +28. _PSYCHICAL RESEARCH_ + +By Sir W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S., Professor of Physics, Royal College of +Science, Dublin, 1873-1910. "As a former President of the Psychical +Research Society, he is familiar with all the developments of this most +fascinating branch of science, and thus what he has to say on +thought-reading, hypnotism, telepathy, crystal-vision, spiritualism, +divinings, and so on, will be read with avidity."--_Dundee Courier._ + +31. _ASTRONOMY_ + +By A. R. HINKS, M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge Observatory, "Original +in thought, eclectic in substance, and critical in treatment.... No +better little book is available."--_School World._ + +32. _INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE_ + +By J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., Regius Professor of Natural History, +Aberdeen University. "For those who have not yet become possessed of the +Library, this would form an appropriate introduction. Professor +Thomson's delightful literary style is well known; and here he +discourses freshly and easily on the methods of science and its +relations with philosophy, art, religion, and practical +life."--_Aberdeen Journal._ + +36. _CLIMATE AND WEATHER_ + +By H. N. DICKSON, D.Sc. Oxon., M.A., F.R.S.E., President of the Royal +Meteorological Society; Professor of Geography in University College, +Reading. (With Diagrams.) "The author has succeeded in presenting in a +very lucid and agreeable manner the causes of the movement of the +atmosphere and of the more stable winds. The information throughout +appears to be reliable, and is certainly conveyed in an attractive +form."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +41. _ANTHROPOLOGY_ + +By R. R. MARETT, M.A., Reader in Social Anthropology in Oxford +University. "An absolutely perfect handbook, so clear that a child could +understand it, so fascinating and human that it beats fiction 'to a +frazzle.'"--_Morning Leader._ + +44. _THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY_ + +By Prof. J. G. MCKENDRICK, M.D. + +46. _MATTER AND ENERGY_ + +By F. SODDY, M.A., F.R.S. + +49. _PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR_ + +By Prof. W. MCDOUGALL, F.R.S., M.B. + + +IN PREPARATION + +_ELECTRICITY._ By Dr GISBERT KAPP. + +_CHEMISTRY._ By Prof. R. MELDOLA, F.R.S. + +_THE MAKING OF THE EARTH._ By Prof. T. W. GREGORY, F.R.S. + +_THE MINERAL WORLD._ By Sir T. H. HOLLAND, K.C.I.E., D.Sc. + +_THE HUMAN BODY._ By Dr A. KEITH, M.D., F.R.C.S. + +_PLANT LIFE._ By Prof. J. B. FARMER, F.R.S. + + + + +_Philosophy and Religion_ + + +15. _MOHAMMEDANISM_ + +By Prof. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A., D.Litt. "This generous shilling's +worth of wisdom.... A delicate, humorous, and most responsible tractate +by an illuminative professor."--_Daily Mail._ + +40. _THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY_ + +By the Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. "A book that the 'man in the +street' will recognise at once to be a boon.... Consistently lucid and +non-technical throughout."--_Christian World._ + +47. _BUDDHISM_ + +By Mrs RHYS DAVIDS, M.A. + +50. _NONCONFORMITY: ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS_ + +By Principal W. B. SELBIE, M.A. + + +IN PREPARATION + +_THE OLD TESTAMENT._ By Prof. GEORGE MOORE, D.D., LL.D. + +_BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS._ By R. H. CHARLES, D.D. + +_THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT._ By Prof. B. W. BACON, Litt.D., D.D. + +_COMPARATIVE RELIGION._ By Prof. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.Litt. + +_A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT._ By Prof. J. B. BURY, LL.D. + +_ETHICS._ By G. E. MOORE. + +_MISSIONS._ By Mrs CREIGHTON. + + + + +_Social Science_ + + +1. _PARLIAMENT_ + +Its History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir COURTENAY P. ILBERT, +K.C.B., K.C.S.I., Clerk of the House of Commons. "The best book on the +history and practice of the House of Commons since Bagehot's +'Constitution.'"--_Yorkshire Post._ + +5. _THE STOCK EXCHANGE_ + +By F. W. HIRST, Editor of "The Economist." "A little treatise which to +an unfinancial mind must be a revelation.... The book is as clear, +vigorous, and sane as Bagehot's 'Lombard Street,' than which there is no +higher compliment."--_Morning Leader._ + +6. _IRISH NATIONALITY_ + +By Mrs J. R. GREEN. "As glowing as it is learned. No book could +be more timely."--_Daily News._ "A powerful study.... A +magnificent demonstration of the deserved vitality of the Gaelic +spirit."--_Freeman's Journal._ + +10. _THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT_ + +By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, M.P. "Admirably adapted for the purpose of +exposition."--_The Times._ "Mr MacDonald is a very lucid exponent.... +The volume will be of great use in dispelling illusions about the +tendencies of Socialism in this country."--_The Nation._ + +11. _CONSERVATISM_ + +By Lord HUGH CECIL, M.A., M.P. + +16. _THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH_ + +By J. A. HOBSON, M.A. "Mr J. A. Hobson holds an unique position among +living economists.... The text-book produced is altogether admirable. +Original, reasonable, and illuminating."--_The Nation._ + +21. _LIBERALISM_ + +By L. T. HOBHOUSE, M.A., Professor of Sociology in the University of +London. "A book of rare quality.... We have nothing but praise for the +rapid and masterly summaries of the arguments from first principles +which form a large part of this book."--_Westminster Gazette._ + +24. _THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY_ + +By D. H. MACGREGOR, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in the +University of Leeds. "A volume so dispassionate in terms may be +read with profit by all interested in the present state of +unrest."--_Aberdeen Journal._ + +26. _AGRICULTURE_ + +By Prof. W. SOMERVILLE, F.L.S. + +30. _ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW_ + +By W. M. GELDART, M.A., B.C.L., Vinerian Professor of English Law at +Oxford. "Contains a very clear account of the elementary principles +underlying the rules of English law; and we can recommend it to all who +wish to become acquainted with these elementary principles with a +minimum of trouble."--_Scots Law Times._ + +38. _THE SCHOOL_ + +_An Introduction to the Study of Education._ + +By J. J. FINDLAY, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Education in Manchester +University. "An amazingly comprehensive volume.... It is a remarkable +performance, distinguished in its crisp, striking phraseology as well as +its inclusiveness of subject-matter."--_Morning Post._ + + +IN PREPARATION + +_THE EVOLUTION OF CITIES._ By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES. + +_ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY._ By Prof. S. J. CHAPMAN. + +_COMMONSENSE IN LAW._ By Prof. P. VINOGRADOFF, D.C.L. + +_THE CIVIL SERVICE._ By GRAHAM WALLAS, M.A. + +_MISSIONS._ By Mrs CREIGHTON. + +_PRACTICAL IDEALISM._ By MAURICE HEWLETT. + +_NEWSPAPERS._ By G. B. DIBBLEE. + +_ENGLISH VILLAGE LIFE._ By E. N. BENNETT, M.A. + + +London: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + +_And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls._ + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's note + + +Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. Obvious +printer errors have been corrected, and are listed below. + +For the chapter heading, "The Second Part of King Henry IV", the Table +of Contents lists it as "King Henry IV, Part II"; this was not changed. +In addition other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's +spelling has been maintained. + +Page 36: "obession is at the root" changed to "obsession is at the +root". + +Page 94: "great historical play" changed to "great historical plays". + +Page 253: "Aegon" changed to "Ęgeon". + +Page 256: Index entry for page 133 of "Rosaline" was moved to +"Rosalind". + +Page 256: Index entry for page 92 of "York, Edmund of Langley, Duke" was +removed. + +Page 262: "Py Prof. R. Medola" changed to "By Prof. R. Medola". + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of William Shakespeare, by John Masefield + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE *** + +***** This file should be named 27264-8.txt or 27264-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/2/6/27264/ + +Produced by David Clarke, Carla Foust and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |