As You Like It.—Of this most idyllic of all Shakespeare's comedies, the Forest of Arden is not merely the setting; it is the central force of the play, the power which brings laughter out of tears and harmony out of discord. It reminds us of Sherwood forest, the home of Robin Hood and his merry men; but it is more than this. Not only does it harbor beasts and trees never found on English soil, but its shadowy {168} glades foster a life so free from care and trouble that it becomes to us a symbol of Nature's healing, sweetening influence. Here an exiled Duke and his faithful followers have found a refuge where, free from the envy and bickerings of court, they "fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the Golden Age." To them comes the youth Orlando, fleeing from the treachery of a wicked elder brother and from the malice of the usurping Duke. To them comes Rosalind, daughter of the exiled Duke, who has lived at the usurper's court, but has, in her turn, been exiled, and who brings with her Celia, the usurper's daughter, and Touchstone, the lovable court fool. And through these newcomers the Duke and his friends are brought into contact with a shepherd and shepherdess as unreal and as charming as those of Dresden china, and with other country folk who smack more strongly of the soil. In the forest, Rosalind, who has for safety's sake assumed man's attire, again meets Orlando, and the love between them, born of their first meeting at court, becomes stronger and truer amid scenes of delicate comedy and merry laughter. Once in Arden, Orlando ceases to brood morosely over the wrongs done him; Rosalind's wit becomes sweeter while losing none of its keenness; and Touchstone feels himself no longer a plaything, but a man. So we are not surprised when Oliver, the wicked brother, lost in the forest and rescued from mortal danger by the lad he has always sought to injure, awakens to his better self; nor when the usurping Duke, leading an armed expedition against the man he has deposed, is converted at the forest's edge by an old hermit, abandons the throne to {169} its rightful occupant, and enters upon the religious life. Thus the old Duke comes into his own again, wiser and better than before; and if, among the many marriages which fill the last act with the chiming of marriage bells, there are some which seem little likely to bring lasting happiness, the magic of the woods does much to dissipate our doubts. Only Jaques, the melancholy philosopher, fails to share in the general rejoicing and the glad return. He has been too hardened by the pursuit of his own pleasure and is too shut in by his delightfully cynical philosophy to feel quickly the forest's touch. Yet not even his brilliant perversities can sadden the joyous atmosphere; it is only made the more enjoyable by force of contrast. Since Jaques wishes no joy for himself, we wish none for him, and with little regret we leave him as he has lived, a lonely, fascinating figure.

Date.—Like Much Ado, As You Like It is not mentioned by Meres, and was entered in the Stationers' Register on August 4, 1600. Some critics have placed this play before Much Ado, but, although there is little evidence on either side, the style and tone of the play incline us to place it after, dating it 1599-1600.

Source.—As You Like It is a dramatization of Lodge's pastoral novel entitled Rosalynde, which was founded in its turn on the Tale of Gamelyn, incorrectly ascribed to Chaucer. Shakespeare condensed his original to great advantage, leaving out many episodes and so changing others as to give the subject a new and higher unity. The atmosphere of the forest is all of his creation, as are many of the characters, including Jaques and Touchstone.

Twelfth Night, or What You Will.—In Twelfth Night romance and comedy are less perfectly fused than in {170} the comedy which preceded it. Here there are two distinct groups of characters, on the one hand riotous old Sir Toby and his crew leading the Puritanical steward Malvolio into the trap baited by his own egotism; on the other, the dreaming Duke, in love with love rather than with the beautiful Olivia whom he woos in vain, and ardently loved by Viola, whose gentle nature is in touching contrast with the doublet and hose which misfortune has compelled her to assume. There is, however, no lack of dramatic unity. In Olivia the two groups meet, for Toby is Olivia's uncle, Malvolio her steward, the Duke her lover, Viola—later happily supplanted by her twin brother Sebastian—the one she loves. Thus the romantic and comic forces act and react upon each other. Yet this play, by reason of its setting, the court of Illyria, was bound to lack the magical atmosphere of the forest, which inspired kindly humor in the serious and gentle seriousness in the merry. If Peste is as witty as Touchstone, he is less of a man; if Viola is more appealing than Rosalind, she has a less sparkling humor. Here the love story is more passionate, the fun more uproarious. Toby is not Falstaff; he is overcome by wine and difficulties as that amazing knight never was; but it is a sad soul which does not roar with Toby in his revels; shout with laughter over the duel which he arranges between the shrinking Viola and the foolish, vain Sir Andrew; and shake in sympathy with his glee over Malvolio's plight when that unlucky man is beguiled into thinking Olivia loves him, and into appearing before her cross-gartered and wreathed in the smiles {171} which accord so ill with his sour visage. All the more affecting in contrast to this boisterous merriment is the frail figure of Viola, who knows so well "what love women to men may owe." Amid the perfume of flowers and the sob of violins the Duke learns to love this seeming boy better than he knows, and easily forgets the romantic melancholy which was never much more than an agreeable pose.

Date.—In the diary of John Manningham for February 2, 1602, is a record of a performance of Twelfth Night in the Middle Temple. The absence of the name from Meres's list again limits the date at the other end. The internal evidence, aside from that of style and meter, is negligible, while the latter confirms the usually accepted date of 1601.

Source.—The principal source of the plot was probably Apolonius and Silla, a story by Barnabe Riche, apparently an adaptation of Belleforest's translation of the twenty-eighth novel of Bandello. There was also an Italian play, Gl' Ingannati, acted in Latin translation at Cambridge in 1590 and 1598, which has a similar plot. A German play on the same subject, apparently closely connected with Riche, has given rise to the hypothesis that a lost English play preceded Twelfth Night; but this is only conjectural, and there is some evidence that Shakespeare was familiar with Riche's story. If this be the original, Shakespeare improved on it as much as he did on Rosalynde, condensing the beginning, knitting together the loose strands at the end, and introducing the whole of the underplot with its rich variety of characters. The only hint for this known is a slight suggestion for Malvolio's madness found in another story of Riche's volume.



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CHAPTER XII

THE PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD—TRAGEDY

The Second and Third periods slightly overlap; for Julius Caesar, the first play of the later group, was probably written before Twelfth Night and As You Like It. But the change in the character of the plays in these two periods is sharp and decisive, like the change from day to night. Shakespeare has studied the sunlight of human cheerfulness and found it a most interesting problem; now in the mysterious starlight and shadow of human suffering he finds a problem more interesting still.

The three comedies of this period, partly on account of their bitter and sarcastic tone, are not widely read nor usually very much admired; but the great tragedies are the poet's finest work and scarcely equaled in the history of the world.

Troilus and Cressida.—Here the story centers around the siege of ancient Troy by the Greeks. Its hero, Troilus, is a young son of Priam, high-spirited and enthusiastic, who is in love with Cressida, daughter of a Trojan priest. Pandarus, Cressida's uncle, acts as go-between for the lovers. Just as the suit of Troilus is crowned with success, Cressida, from motives of policy, is forced to join her father Calchas, who is in the camp of the besieging Greeks. Here her fickle and sensuous nature reveals itself rapidly. She yields to {173} the love of the Greek commander Diomed and promises to become his mistress. Troilus learns of this, consigns her to oblivion, and attempts, but unsuccessfully, to take revenge on Diomed.

While this love story is progressing, meetings are going on between the Greek and Trojan warriors; a vivid picture is given of conditions in the Greek camp during the truce, and particularly of the insolent pride of Achilles. The story ends with the resumption of hostilities, the slaying of Hector by Achilles, and the resolution of Troilus to revenge his brother's death.

It is very difficult to understand what Shakespeare meant by this play. If it is a tragedy, why do the hero and heroine meet with no special disaster at the end, and why do we feel so little sympathy for the misfortunes of any one in the play? If it is a comedy, why is its sarcastic mirth made more bitter than tears, and why does it end with the death of its noblest minor character and with the violation of all poetic justice? From beginning to end it is the story of disillusion, for it sorts all humanity into two great classes, fools who are cheated and knaves who cheat. Some people think that Shakespeare wrote it in a gloomy, pessimistic mood, with the sardonic laughter of a disappointed, world-wearied man. Others, on rather doubtful grounds, believe it a covert satire on some of Shakespeare's fellow dramatists.

Authorship.—It is generally agreed that a small part of this play is by another author. The Prologue and most of the Fifth Act are usually considered non-Shakespearean. They differ from the rest of the play in many details of vocabulary, meter, and style.

{174}

Date.—Troilus and Cressida must have been written before 1603, for in the spring of that year an entry in regard to it was made in the Stationers' Register. It must have been written after 1601, for it alludes (Prologue, ll. 23-25) to the Prologue of Jonson's Poetaster, a play published in that year. Hence the date of composition would fall during or slightly before 1602. The First Quarto was not published until 1609.

Sources.—The main source of this drama was the narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde by Chaucer. Contrary to his custom, Shakespeare has degraded the characters of his original, instead of ennobling them. The camp scenes are adapted from Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye; and the challenge of Hector was taken from some translation of Homer, probably that by Chapman. An earlier lost play on this subject by Dekker and Chettle is mentioned in contemporary reference. We do not know whether Shakespeare drew anything from it or not. Scattered hints were probably taken from other sources, as the story of Troy was very popular in the Middle Ages.

All's Well That Ends Well.—When a beautiful and noble-minded young woman falls in love with a contemptible scoundrel, forgives his rebuffs, compromises her own dignity to win his affection, and finally persuades him to let her throw herself away on him,—is the result a romance or a tragedy? This is a nice question; and by the answer to it we must determine whether All's Well That Ends Well is a romantic comedy like Twelfth Night or a satirical comedy bitter as tragedy, like Troilus and Cressida.

Helena, a poor orphan girl, has been brought up by the kindly old Countess of Rousillon, and cherishes a deep affection for the Countess's son Bertram, though he neither suspects it nor returns it. She saves the life of the French king, and he in gratitude allows her {175} to choose her husband from among the noblest young lords of France. Her choice falls on Bertram. Being too politic to offend the king, he reluctantly marries her, but forsakes her on their wedding day to go to the wars. At parting he tells her that he will never accept her as a wife until she can show him his ring on her finger and has a child by him. By disguising herself as a young woman whom Bertram is attempting to seduce, Helena subsequently fulfills the terms of his hard condition. Later, before the king of France she reminds him of his promise, shows his ring in her possession, and states that she is with child by him. The count, outwitted, and in fear of the king's wrath, repentantly accepts her as his wife; and at the end Helena is expected to live happily forever after.

Disagreeable as the plot is when told in outline, it is redeemed in the actual play by the beautiful character given to the heroine. But this, while it vastly tones down the disgusting side of the story, only increases the bitter pathos which is latent there. The more lovely and admirable Helena is, the more she is unfitted for the unworthy part which she is forced to act and the man with whom she is doomed to end her days. A modern thinker could easily read into this "comedy" the world-old bitterness of pearls before swine.

Date.—No quarto of this comedy exists, nor is there any mention of such a play as All's Well That Ends Well before the publication of the First Folio in 1623. A play of Shakespeare's called Love's Labour's Won is mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598; and many think that this was the present comedy under another name. However, the meter, style, and mood of most of the play seem to indicate a later date. The {176} most common theory is that a first version was written before 1598, and that this was rewritten in the early part of the author's third period. This would put the date of the play in its present form somewhere around 1602.

Sources.—The story is taken from Boccaccio's Decameron (ninth novel of the third day). It was translated into English by Painter in his Palace of Pleasure, where our author probably read it. Shakespeare has added the Countess, Parolles, and one or two minor characters. The conception of the heroine has been greatly ennobled. It is a question whether the bitter tone of the play is due to the dramatist's intention or is the unforeseen result of reducing Boccaccio's improbable story to a living possibility.

Measure for Measure.—When Hamlet told his guilty mother that he would set her up a glass where she might see the inmost part of her, he was doing for his mother what Shakespeare in Measure for Measure is doing for the lust-spotted world. The play is a trenchant satire on the evils of society. Such realistic pictures of the things that are, but should not be, have always jarred on our aesthetic sense from Aristophanes to Zola, and Measure for Measure is one of the most disagreeable of Shakespeare's plays. But no one can deny its power.

Here, as in All's Well That Ends Well, we have one beautiful character, that of Isabella, like a light shining in corruption. Here, too, the wronged Mariana, in order to win back the faithless Angelo, is forced to resort to the same device to which Helena had to stoop. But this play is darker and more savage than its predecessor. Angelo, as a governor, sentencing men to death for the very sin which he as a private man is trying to commit, is contemptible on a huger {177} and more devilish scale than Bertram. Lucio, if not more base than Parolles, is at least more malignant. And Claudio, attempting to save his life by his sister's shame, is an incarnation of the healthy animal joy of life almost wholly divested of the ideals of manhood. In a way, the play ends happily; but it is about as cheerful as the red gleam of sunset which shoots athwart a retreating thunderstorm.

Date.—The play was first published in the Folio of 1623. It is generally believed, however, that it was written about 1603. In the first place, the verse tests and general character of the play seem to fit that date; secondly, there are two passages, I, i, 68-73 and II, iv, 27-30, which are usually interpreted as allusions to the attitude of James I toward the people after he came to the throne in 1603; and, thirdly, there are many turns of phrase which remind one of Hamlet and which seem to indicate that the two plays were written near together. Barksted's Myrrha (1607) contains a passage apparently borrowed from this comedy, which helps in determining the latest possible date of composition.

Sources.—Shakespeare borrowed his material from a writer named George Whetstone, who in 1578 printed a play, Promos and Cassandra, containing most of the story of Measure for Measure. In 1582 the same author published a prose version of the story in his Heptameron of Civil Discourses. Whetstone in turn borrowed his material, which came originally from the Hecatommithi of Giraldi Cinthio. Shakespeare ennobled the underlying thought as far as he could, and added the character of Mariana.

Julius Caesar.—The interest in Julius Caesar does not focus on any one person as completely as in the other great tragedies. Like the chronicle plays which had preceded it, it gives rather a grand panorama of history than the fate of any particular hero. This {178} explains its title. It is not the story of Julius Caesar the man, but of that great political upheaval of which Caesar was cause and center. That upheaval begins with his attempt at despotism and the crown; it reaches its climax in his death, which disturbs the political equilibrium of the whole nation; and at last subsides with the decline and downfall of Caesar's enemies. Shakespeare has departed from history in drawing the character of the great conqueror, making it more weak, vain, and pompous than that of the real man. Yet even in the play "the mightiest Julius" is an impressive figure. Alive, he

"doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus";

and his influence, like an unseen force, shapes the fates of the living after he himself is dead.

In so far as the tragedy has any individual hero, that hero is Brutus rather than Caesar himself. Brutus is a man of noble character, but deficient in practical judgment and knowledge of men. With the best of motives he allows Cassius to hoodwink him and draw him into the conspiracy against Caesar. Through the same short-sighted generosity he allows his enemy Antony to address the crowd after Caesar's death, with the result that Antony rouses the people against him and drives him and his fellow conspirators out of Rome. Then when he and Cassius gather an army in Asia to fight with Antony, we find him too impractically scrupulous to raise money by the usual means; and for that reason short of cash and drawn into a quarrel with his brother general. His subsequent {179} death at Philippi is the logical outcome of his own nature, too good for so evil an age, too short-sighted for so critical a position.

Most of the old Roman heroes inspire respect rather than love; and something of their stern impressiveness lingers in the atmosphere of this Roman play. Here and there it has very touching scenes, such as that between Brutus and his page (IV, iii); but in the main it is great, not through its power to elicit sympathetic tears, but through its dignity and grandeur. It is one of the stateliest of tragedies, lofty in language, majestic in movement, logical and cogent in thought. We can never mourn for Brutus and Portia as we do for Romeo and Juliet, or for Lear and Cordelia; but we feel that we have breathed in their company an air which is keen and bracing, and have caught a glimpse of

"The grandeur that was Rome."

Date.—We have no printed copy of Julius Caesar earlier than that of the First Folio. Since it was not mentioned by Meres in 1598 and was alluded to in 1601 in John Weever's Mirrour of Martyrs, it probably appeared between those two dates. Weever says in his dedication that his work "some two years ago was made fit for the print." This apparently means that he wrote the allusion to Julius Caesar in 1599 and that consequently the play had been produced by then. There is a possible reference to it in Ben Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour, which came out in 1599. Metrical tests and the general character of the play agree with these conclusions. Hence we can put the date between 1599-1601, with a preference for the former year.

Sources.—Shakespeare drew his material from North's Plutarch, using the lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. He has {180} enlarged the parts of Casca and Lepidus, and made Brutus much nobler than in the original. This last change was a dramatic necessity in order to give the play a hero with whom we could sympathize.

Hamlet.—On the surface the story of Hamlet is a comparatively simple one. The young prince is heart-broken over the recent death of his father, and his mother's scandalously hasty marriage to Hamlet's uncle, the usurping sovereign. In this mood he is brought face to face with his father's spirit, told that his uncle was his father's murderer, and given as a sacred duty the task of revenging the crime. To this object he sacrifices all other aims in life—pleasure, ambition, and love. But this savage task is the last one on earth for which his fine-grained nature was fitted. He wastes his energy in feverish efforts which fail to accomplish his purpose, just as many a man wavers helplessly in trying to do something for which nature never intended him. Partly to deceive his enemies, partly to provide a freer expression for his pent-up emotions than the normal conditions of life would justify, he acts the role of one who is mentally deranged. Finally, more by chance than any plan of his own, he achieves his revenge on the king, but not until he himself is mortally wounded. His story is the tragedy of a sensitive, refined, imaginative nature which is required to perform a brutal task in a brutal world.

But around this story as a framework Shakespeare has woven such a wealth of poetry and philosophy that the play has been called the "tragedy of thought." It is in Hamlet's brain that the great action of the drama {181} takes place; the other characters are mere accessories and foils. Here we are brought face to face with the fear and mystery of the future life and the deepest problems of this. It is hardly true to say that Hamlet himself is a philosopher. He gives some very wise advice to the players; but in the main he is grappling problems without solving them, peering into the dark, but bringing from it no definite addition to our knowledge. He represents rather the eternal questioning of the human heart when face to face with the great mysteries of existence; and perhaps this accounts largely for the wide and lasting popularity of the play. Side by side with this deep-souled, earnest man, moving in the shadow of the unseen, with his terrible duties and haunting fears, Shakespeare has placed in intentional mockery the old dotard Polonius, the incarnation of shallow worldly wisdom.

No other play of Shakespeare's has called forth such a mass of comment as this or so many varied interpretations. Neither has any other roused a deeper interest in its readers. The spell which it casts over old and young alike is due partly to the character of the young prince himself, partly to the suggestive mystery with which it invests all problems of life and sorrow.

Date.—'A booke called the Revenge of Hamlett' was entered in the Stationers' Register July, 1602. Consequently, Shakespeare's Preliminary version, as represented by the First Quarto, though not printed until 1603, must have been written in or before the spring months of 1602; the second version 1603-1604.

Sources.—The plot came originally from the Historia Danica, a history of Denmark in Latin, written in the twelfth century {182} by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish scholar. About 1570 the story was retold in French in Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques. Besides his debt to Belleforest, it seems almost certain that Shakespeare drew from an earlier English tragedy of Hamlet by another man. This earlier play is lost; but Nash, a contemporary writer, alludes to it as early as 1589, and Henslowe's Diary records its performance in 1494. Somewhat before 1590, an early dramatist, Thomas Kyd, had written a play called The Spanish Tragedy, which, though far inferior to Shakespeare's Hamlet, resembled it in many ways. This likeness has caused scholars to suspect that Kyd wrote the early Hamlet; and their suspicions are strengthened by an ambiguous and apparently punning allusion to AEsop's Kidde in the passage by Nash mentioned above. A crude and brutal German play on the subject has been discovered, which is believed by many to be a translation of Kyd's original tragedy. If this is true, it shows how enormously Shakespeare improved on his source.

Editions.—A very badly garbled and crude form of this play was printed in 1603, and is known as the First Quarto. A much better one, which contained most of the tragedy as we read it, appeared in 1604, and is called the Second Quarto. Several other quartos followed, for the play was exceedingly popular. The Folio omits certain passages found in the Second Quarto, and introduces certain new ones. Both the new passages and the omitted ones are included in modern editions; so that, as has often been said, our modern Hamlet is longer than any Hamlet which Shakespeare left us. The First Quarto is generally regarded as a pirated copy of Shakespeare's scenario, or first rough draft, of the play.

Othello.—This play has often been called the tragedy of jealousy, but that is a misleading statement. Othello, as Coleridge pointed out, is not a constitutionally jealous man, such as Leontes in The Winter's Tale. His distrust of his wife is the natural suspicion of a man lost amid new and inexplicable surroundings. {183} Women are proverbially suspicious in business, not because nature made them so, but because, as they are in utter ignorance of standards by which to judge, they feel their helplessness in the face of deceit. Othello feels the same helplessness. Trained up in wars from his cradle, he could tell a true soldier from a traitor at a glance, with the calm confidence of a veteran; but women and their motives are to him an uncharted sea. Suddenly a beautiful young heiress falls in love with him, and leaves home and friends to marry him. He stands on the threshold of a new realm, happy but bewildered. Then comes Iago, his trusted subordinate, —who, as Othello knows, possesses that knowledge of women and of civilian life which he himself lacks,—and whispers in his ear that his bride is false to him; that under this fair veneer lurks the eternal feminine as they had seen it in the common creatures of the camp; that she has fooled her husband as these women have so often fooled his soldiers; and that the rough-and-ready justice of the camp should be her reward. Had Othello any knowledge or experience in such matters to fall back on, he might anchor to that, and become definitely either the trusting husband or the Spartan judge. But as it is, he is whirled back and forth in a maelstrom of agonized doubt, until compass, bearings, and wisdom lost, he ends all in universal shipwreck.

The character of Iago is one of the subtlest studies of intelligent depravity ever created by man. Ostensibly his motive is revenge; but in reality his wickedness seems due rather to a perverted mental activity, unbalanced by heart or conscience. As Napoleon enjoyed manoeuvring armies or Lasker studying chess, so {184} Iago enjoys the sense of his own mental power in handling his human pawns, in feeling himself master of the situation. If he ever had natural affections, they have been atrophied in the pursuit of this devilish game.

With Desdemona the feminine element, which had been negligible in Julius Caesar and thrown into the background in Hamlet, becomes a prominent feature, and remains so through the later tragedies. There is a pathetic contrast between the beautiful character of Desdemona and her undeserved fate, just as there is between the real nobility of Othello and the mad act by which he ruins his own happiness. For that reason this is perhaps the most touching of all Shakespeare's tragedies.

Date.—The play was certainly published after 1601, for it contains several allusions to Holland's translation of the Latin author Pliny, which appeared in that year. Malone, one of the early editors of Shakespeare, says that Othello was acted at Hallowmas, 1604. We not know on what evidence he based this assertion; but since the metrical tests all point to the same date, his statement is generally accepted. The First Quarto did not appear until 1622, six years after Shakespeare died and one year before the appearance of the First Folio. This was the only play published in quarto between Shakespeare's death and 1623. There are frequent oaths in the Quarto which have been very much modified in the Folio, and this strengthens our belief that the manuscript from which the Quarto was printed was written about 1604, for shortly after that date an act was passed against the use of profanity in plays.

Sources.—The plot was taken from Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi (seventh novel of the third decade). A French translation of the Italian was made in 1583-1584, and this Shakespeare may have used. We know of no English translation until {185} years after Shakespeare died. Many details are changed in the play, and the whole story is raised to a far nobler plane. In the original the heroine is beaten to death with a stocking filled with sand; Othello is tortured, but refuses to confess, and later is murdered by his wife's revengeful kinsmen. This crude, bloody, and long-drawn-out story is in striking contrast with the masterly ending of the tragedy.

King Lear.—As Romeo and Juliet shows the tragedy of youth, so Lear shows the tragedy of old age. King Lear has probably been a good and able man in his day; but now time has impaired his judgment, and he is made to suffer fearfully for those errors for which nature, and not he, is to blame. Duped by the hypocritical smoothness of his two elder daughters, he gives them all his lands and power; while his youngest daughter Cordelia, who truly loves him, is turned away because she is too honest to humor an old man's whim. The result is what might have been expected. Lear has put himself absolutely into the power of his two older daughters, who are the very incarnation of heartlessness and ingratitude. By their inhuman treatment he is driven out into the night and storm, exposing his white head to a tempest so fierce that even the wild beasts refuse to face it. As a result of exposure and mental suffering, his mind becomes unhinged. At last his daughter Cordelia finds him, gives him refuge, and nurses him back to reason and hope. But this momentary gleam of light only makes darker by contrast the end which closely follows, where Cordelia is killed by treachery and Lear dies broken-hearted.

The fate of Lear finds a parallel in that of {186} Gloucester in the underplot. Like his king, this nobleman has proved an unwise father, favoring the treacherous child and disowning the true. He also is made to pay a fearful penalty for his mistakes, ending in his death. But he is represented as more justly punished, less excusable through the weaknesses of age; and for this reason his grief appeals to us as an intensifying reflection of Lear's misery rather than as a rival for that in our sympathy. The character of Edmund shows some likeness to that of Richard III; and a comparison of the two will show how Shakespeare has developed in the interval. Both are stern, able, and heartless; but Edmund unites to these more complex feelings known only to the close student of life. Weakness and passion mingle in his love; superstition and some faint, abortive motion of conscience unite to torment him when dying.

There is a strangely lyric element about this great tragedy, an element of heart-broken emotion hovering on the edge of passionate song. It is like a great chorus in which the victims of treachery and ingratitude blend their denouncing cries. The tremulous voice of Lear rises terrible above all the others; and to his helpless curses the plaintive satire of the fool answers like a mocking echo in halls of former enjoyment. Thunder and lightning are the fearful accompaniment of the song; and like faint antiphonal responses from the underplot come the voices of the wronged Edgar and the outraged Gloucester.

Date.—The date of King Lear lies between 1603 and 1606. In 1603 appeared a book (Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures) from which Shakespeare afterward drew {187} the names of the devils in the pretended ravings of Edgar, together with similar details. In 1606, as we know from an entry in the Stationers' Register, the play was performed at Whitehall at Christmas. A late edition of the old King Leir (not Shakespeare's) was entered on the Register May 8, 1605; and it is very plausible that Shakespeare's tragedy was then having a successful run and that the old play was revived to take advantage of an occasion when its story was popular. Hence the date usually given for the composition of King Lear is 1604-5. A quarto, with a poor text, and carelessly printed, appeared in 1608; another, (bearing the assumed date of 1608) in 1619. The First Folio text is much the best. Three hundred lines lacking in it are made up for by a hundred lines absent from the quartos.

Sources.—The story of Lear in some form or another had appeared in many writers before Shakespeare. The sources from which he drew chiefly were probably the early accounts by Geoffrey of Moumouth, a composite poem called The Mirrour for Magistrates, Holinshed's Chronicles, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and lastly an old play of King Leir, supposed to be the one acted in 1594. This old play ended happily; Shakespeare first introduced the tragic ending. He also invented Lear's madness, the banishment and disguise of Kent, and the characters of Burgundy and the fool. The underplot he drew from the story of the blind king of Paphlagonia in Arcadia, a long, rambling novel of adventure by Sir Philip Sidney.

Macbeth.—Macbeth, one of the great Scottish nobles of early times, is led, partly by his own ambition, partly by the instigation of evil supernatural powers, to murder King Duncan and usurp his place on the throne of Scotland. In this bloody task he is aided and encouraged by his wife, a woman of powerful character, whose conscience is temporarily smothered by her frantic desire to advance her husband's career. We are forced to sympathize with this guilty pair, wicked as they {188} are, because we are made to feel that they are not naturally criminals, that they are swept into crime by the misdirection of energies which, if directed along happier lines, might have been praiseworthy. Macbeth, vigorous and imaginative, has a poet's or conqueror's yearning toward a larger fullness of life, experience, joy. It is the woeful misdirection of this splendid energy through unlawful channels which makes him a murderer, not the callous, animal indifference of the born criminal. Similarly, his wife is a woman of great executive ability, reaching out instinctively for a field large enough in which to make that ability gain its maximum of accomplishment. Nature meant her for a queen; and it is the instinctive effort to find her natural sphere of action,—an effort common to all humanity—which blinds her conscience at the fatal moment. Once entered on their career of evil, they find no chance for turning back. Suspicions are aroused, and Macbeth feels himself forced to guard himself from the effects of the first. The ghosts of his victims haunt his guilty conscience; his wife dies heart-broken with remorse which comes too late; and he himself is killed in battle by his own rebellious countrymen.

Between the characters of Macbeth and his wife the dramatist has drawn a subtle but vital distinction. Macbeth is an unprincipled but imaginative man, with a strong tincture of reverence and awe. Hitherto he has been restrained in the straight path of an upright life by his respect for conventions. When once that barrier is broken down, he has no purely moral check in his own nature to replace it, and rushes like a flood, with ever growing impetus, from, crime to crime. His {189} wife, on the other hand, has a conscience; and conscience, unlike awe for conventions, can be temporarily suppressed, but not destroyed. It reawakes when the first great crime is over, drives the unhappy queen from her sleepless couch night after night, and hounds her at last to death.

This is the shortest of all Shakespeare's plays in actual number of lines; and no other work of his reveals such condensation and lightning-like rapidity of movement. It is the tragedy of eager ambition, which allows a man no respite after the first fatal mistake, but hurries him on irresistibly through crime after crime to the final disaster. Over all, like a dark cloud above a landscape, hovers the presence of the supernatural beings who are training on the sinful but unfortunate monarch to his ruin.

Authorship.—The speeches of Hecate and the dialogue connected with them in III, v and IV, i, 39-47 are suspected by many to be the work of Thomas Middleton, a well-known contemporary playwright. They are unquestionably inferior to most of the play. Messrs. Clark and Wright have assigned several other passages to Middleton; but these are now generally regarded as Shakespeare's, and some of them are considered as by no means below his usual high level.

Date.—We find no copy of Macbeth earlier than the First Folio. It was certainly written before 1610, however; for Dr. Simon Forman saw it acted that year and records the fact in his Booke of Plaies. The allusion to "two-fold balls and treble sceptres" (IV, i, 121) shows that the play was written after 1603 when James I became king of both Scotland and England. So does the allusion to the habit of touching for the king's evil (IV, iii, 140-159),—a custom which James revived. The reference to an equivocator in the porter's soliloquy (II, iii) may allude to Henry Garnet, who was tried in 1606 for complicity in the {190} famous Gunpowder Plot, and who is said to have upheld the doctrine of equivocation. The date of composition is usually placed 1605-6.

Sources.—The plot is borrowed from Holinshed's Historie of Scotland. Most of the material is taken from the part relating to the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth; but other incidents, such as the drugging of the grooms, are from the murder of Duncan's ancestor Duffe, which is described in another part of Holinshed.

Antony and Cleopatra.—There is no other passion in mankind which makes such fools of wise men, such weaklings of brave ones, as that of sinful love. For this very reason it is the most tragic of all human passions; and from this comes the dramatic power of Antony and Cleopatra. The ruin of a contemptible man is never impressive; but the ruin of an imposing character like Antony's through the one weak spot in his powerful nature has all the somber impressiveness of a burning city or some other great disaster.

Like Julius Caesar, this play is founded on Roman history. It begins in Egypt with a picture of Antony fascinated by the Egyptian queen. The urgent needs of the divided Roman world call him away to Italy. Here, once free of Cleopatra's presence, he becomes his old self, a reveler, yet diplomatic and self-seeking. From motives of policy he marries Octavia, sister of Octavius Caesar, and for a brief space seems assured of a brilliant future. But the old spell draws him back. He returns to Cleopatra, and Octavius in revenge for Octavia's wrongs makes war upon him. Cleopatra proves still Antony's evil genius. Her seduction has already drawn him into war; now her cowardice in the crisis of the battle decides the war {191} against him. From that point the fate of both is one headlong rush to inevitable ruin.

In the character of Cleopatra, Shakespeare has made a wonderful study of the fascination which beauty and charm exert, even when coupled with moral worthlessness. We do not love her, we do not pity her when she dies; but we feel that in spite of her idle love of power and pleasure, she has given life a richer meaning. We are fascinated by her as by some beautiful poison plant, the sight of which causes an aesthetic thrill, its touch, disease and death.

Powerful as is this play, and in many ways tragic, it by no means stirs our sympathies as do Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello. Sin for Antony and Cleopatra is not at all the unmixed cup of woe which it proves for Macbeth and his lady. Here at the end the lovers pay the price of lust and folly; but before paying that price, they have had its adequate equivalent in the voluptuous joy of life. Moreover, death loses half its terrors for Antony through the very military vigor of his character; and for Cleopatra, because of the cunning which renders it painless. What impresses us most is not the pathos of their fate, but rather the sublime folly with which, deliberately and open-eyed, they barter a world for the intoxicating joy of passion. Impulsive as children, powerful as demigods, they made nations their toys, and life and death a game. Prudence could not rob them of that heritage of delight which they considered their natural birthright, nor death, when it came, undo what they had already enjoyed. Folly on so superhuman a scale becomes, in the highest sense of the word, dramatic.

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Date.—In May, 1608, there was entered in the Stationers' Register 'A Book called Antony and Cleopatra'; and this was probably the play under discussion. The internal evidence agrees with this; hence the date is usually set at 1607-8. In spite of the above entry, the book does not appear to have been printed at that time; and the first copy which has come down to us is that in the 1623 Folio.

Sources.—Shakespeare's one source appears to have been the Life of Marcus Antonius in North's Plutarch; and he followed that very closely. The chief changes in the play consist in the omission of certain events which would have clogged the dramatic action.

Coriolanus.—Here follows the tragedy of overweening pride. The trouble with Coriolanus is not ambition, as is the case with Macbeth. He cares little for crowns, office, or any outward honor. Self-centered, self-sufficient, contemptuous of all mankind outside of his own immediate circle of friends, he dies at last because he refuses to recognize those ties of sympathy which should bind all men and all classes of men together. He leads his countrymen to battle, and shows great courage at the siege of Corioli. On his return he becomes a candidate for consul. But to win this office, he must conciliate the common people whom he holds in contempt; and instead of conciliating them, he so exasperates them by his overbearing scorn that he is driven out of Rome. With the savage vindictiveness characteristic of insulted pride, he joins the enemies of his country, brings Rome to the edge of ruin, and spares her at last only at the entreaties of his mother. Then he returns to Corioli to be killed there by treachery.

Men like Coriolanus are not lovable, either in real life or fiction; but, despite his faults, he commands {193} our admiration in his success, and our sympathy in his death. We must remember that ancient Rome had never heard our new doctrine of the freedom and equality of man; that the common people, as drawn by Shakespeare, were objects of contempt and just cause for exasperation. Again, we must remember that if Coriolanus had a high opinion of himself, he also labored hard to deserve it. He was full of the French spirit of noblesse oblige. Cruel, arrogant, harsh, he might be; but he was never cowardly, underhanded, or mean. He was a man whose ideals were better than his judgment, and whose prejudiced view of life made his character seem much worse than it was. The lives of such men are usually tragic.

Date.—The play was not printed until the appearance of the First Folio, and external evidence as to its date is almost worthless. On the strength of internal evidence, meter, style, etc., which mark it unquestionably as a late play, it is usually assigned to 1609.

Sources.—Shakespeare's source was Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus (North's translation). As in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, he followed Plutarch closely.

Timon of Athens.—As Coriolanus was the tragedy of a man who is too self-centered, so Timon is the tragedy of a man who is not self-centered enough. His good and bad traits alike, generosity and extravagance, friendship and vanity, combine to make him live and breathe in the attitude of other men toward him. From this comes his unbounded prodigality by which in a few years he squanders an enormous fortune in giving pleasure to his friends. From this lack of self-poise, too, comes the tremendous reaction later, {194} when he learns that his imagined world of love and friendship and popular applause was a mirage of the desert, and finds himself poverty-stricken and alone, the dupe of sharpers, the laughing-stock of fools.

Yet in spite of his lack of balance, he is full of noble qualities. Apemantus has the very thing which he lacks, yet Apemantus is contemptible beside him. The churlish philosopher is like some dingy little scow, which rides out the tempest because the small cargo which it has is all in its hold; Timon is like some splendid, but top-heavy, battleship, which turns turtle in the storm through lack of ballast. There is something lionlike and magnificent, despite its unreason, in the way he accepts the inevitable, and later, after the discovery of the gold, spurns away both the chance of wealth and the human jackals whom it attracts. The same lordly scorn persists after him in the epitaph which he leaves behind:—

"Here lie I, Timon; who alive all living men did hate. Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass, and stay not here thy gait."

Yet this very epitaph of the dead misanthrope shows the same lack of self-sufficiency which characterized the living Timon. He despises the opinion of men, but he must let them know that he despises it. Coriolanus would have laughed at them from Elysium and scorned to write any epitaph.

No other Shakespearean play, with the exception of Troilus and Cressida, shows the human race in a light so contemptible as this. Aside from Timon and his faithful steward, there is not one person in the play {195} who seems to have a single redeeming trait. All of the others are selfish, and most of them are treacherous and cowardly.

Authorship.—It is generally believed that some parts of the play are not by Shakespeare, although opinion is still somewhat divided as to what is and is not his. The scenes and parts of scenes in which Apemantus and some of the minor characters appear are most strongly suspected.

Date.—This play was not printed until the publication of the First Folio, and the only evidence which we have for its date is in the meter and style and in the fact that some of the speeches show a strong resemblance to certain ones in King Lear. The date most generally approved is 1607-8.

Sources.—The direct source was probably a short account of Timon in Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius. The same story also appears in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, where Shakespeare may have read it. Both of these accounts, however, contain but a small part of the material found in the play. Certain details missing in them, such as the discovery of the gold, etc., are found in Timon or the Misanthrope, a dialogue by Lucian, one of the later of the ancient Greek writers. As far as we know, Lucian had not been translated into English at this time; but there were copies of his works in Latin, French, and Italian. We cannot say whether Shakespeare had read them or not. In 1842 a play on Timon was printed from an old manuscript which is supposed to have been written about 1000. This contains a banquet scene, a faithful steward, and the finding of the gold. This has the appearance of an academic play rather than one meant for the public theaters, so it is probable that Shakespeare never heard of it; but it is barely possible that he knew it and used it as a source.

The most helpful book yet written on the period is: Shakespearean Tragedy, by A. C. Bradley (London, Macmillan, 1910 (1st ed. 1904)).



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CHAPTER XIII

THE PLAYS OF THE FOURTH PERIOD—ROMANTIC TRAGI-COMEDY

No less clear than the interest in tragic themes which attracted the London audiences for the half-a-dozen years following 1600, is the shifting of popular approval towards a new form of drama about 1608. This was the romantic tragi-comedy, a type of drama which puts a theme of sentimental interest into events and situations that come close to the tragic. Shakespeare's plays of this type are often called romances, since they tell a story of the same type found in romantic novels of the time. His plays contain rather less of the tragic, and more of fanciful and playful humor than do the plays of the other famous masters in this type, Beaumont and Fletcher; his characters are rather more lifelike and appealing.

While the tragi-comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, which were written from 1609 to 1611, have been shown to have influenced Shakespeare in his romances, yet in several ways they are very different. The work of Beaumont and Fletcher tells of court intrigue and exaggerated passions of hatred, envy, and lust; Shakespeare's plays tell of out-of-door adventures, and the restoration and reconciliation of families and friends parted by misfortune. Fletcher contrives {197} well-constructed plots, depending, indeed, rather too much on incident and situation for effect; Shakespeare chooses for his plots stories which possess only slight unity of theme, and depends upon character and atmosphere for his appeal. Thus the romances of Shakespeare stand out as a strongly marked part of his work, different in treatment from the plays of his rivals which perhaps suggested his use of this form. Here, as everywhere, Shakespeare exhibits complete mastery of the form in which he works.

In addition to the romances of this period, Shakespeare had some share in the undramatic and belated chronicle play, The Life of Henry the Eighth, most of which is assigned to John Fletcher. In looseness of construction, in the emphasis on character in distress, and in the introduction of a masque, as well as in other ways, this play resembles the tragi-comedies of the period rather than any earlier chronicle. Thus the term "romantic tragi-comedy" may be properly used to describe all the work of the Fourth Period.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, was probably the earliest, as it is certainly the weakest, of the dramatic romances. But the story was one of the most popular in all fiction, and Pericles was, no doubt, in its time what its first title-page claimed for it, a 'much-admired play.' Its hero is a wandering knight of chivalry, buffeted by storm and misfortune from one shore to another. The five acts which tell his adventures are like five islands, widely separated, and washed by great surges of good and ill luck. The significance of his daughter's name, Marina, is intensified for us when we realize that in this play the sea is not only her birthplace, but is the {198} symbol throughout of Fortune and Romance. From the polluted coast of Antioch, where Pericles reads the vile King his riddle and escapes, past Tarsus, where he assists Creon, the governor of a helpless city, to Pentapolis, where, shipwrecked and a stranger, he wins the tournament and the hand of the Princess Thaisa, the waves of chance carry the Prince. They overwhelm him in the great storm which robs him of his wife, and gives him his little Marina; but they bear the unconscious Thaisa safely to land, and in after years their wild riders, the pirates, save Marina from death at the hands of Creon, and bring her to Mitylene. Here, upon his storm-bound ship, the mourning Pericles recovers his daughter; and at Ephesus, near by, the waves give back his wife, through the kind influence of Diana, their goddess. We are never far from the sound of the shore, and the lines of the play we best recall are those that tell of "humming water" and "the rapture of the sea."

Pericles in its original scheme was a play of adventure rather than a dramatic romance. The first two acts, in which Shakespeare could have had no hand, are disjointed and ineffective. To help out the stage action, Shakespeare's collaborator introduced John Gower, the mediaeval poet, as a "Prologue," to the acts. He was supplemented, when his affectedly antique diction failed him, by dumb show, the last straw clutched at by the desperate playwright. But at the beginning of Act III the master's music swells out with no uncertain note, and we are lifted into the upper regions of true dramatic poetry as Pericles speaks to the storm at sea:—

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"Thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou that hast Upon the winds command, bind them in brass, Having call'd them from the deep! ... The seaman's whistle Is as a whisper in the ears of death, Unheard."

In the shipwreck which follows, some phrases of which anticipate the similar scene in The Tempest; in the character of Marina, girlish and fair as Perdita; in the grave physician Cerimon, whose arts are scarcely less potent than Prospero's; in the grieving Pericles, who, like remorse-stricken Leontes, recovers first his daughter, then his wife, we see the first sketches of the most interesting elements in the dramatic romances which are to follow. Throughout all this Shakespeare is manifest; and even in those scenes which depict Marina's misery in Mytilene and subsequent rescue, there is little more than the revolting nature of the scenes to bid us reject them as spurious, while Marina's speeches in them are certainly true to the Shakespearean conception of her character.

Authorship and Date.—The play was entered to Edward Blount in the Stationers' Register, May 20, 1608. It was probably written but little before. Quartos appeared in 1609, 1611, 1619, 1630, and 1635. It was not included among Shakespeare's works until the Third Folio (1664). The publishers of the First Folio may have left it out on the ground that it was spurious, or because of some difficulty in securing the printing rights. The former of these hypotheses is generally favored, since, as we have said, a study of the play reveals the apparent work of another author, particularly in Acts I and II, and the earlier speech of Gower, the Chorus in the play. In 1608 a novel was {200} published, called "The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Being the true History of the Play of Pericles, as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient poet John Gower." The author was George Wilkins, a playwright of some ability. He is generally accepted as Shakespeare's collaborator. The claims of William Rowley for a share in the scenes of low life have little foundation.

Source.—Shakespeare used Gower's Confessio Amantis, and the version in Laurence Twine's Pattern of Painful Adventures, 1606. The tale is also in the Gesta Romanorum.

Cymbeline.—"A father cruel, and a step-dame false, A foolish suitor to a wedded lady, That hath her husband banish'd."

Thus Imogen, the heroine of the play, and the daughter of Cymbeline, king of Britain, describes her own condition at the beginning of the story. The theme of the long and complicated tale that follows is her fidelity under this affliction. Neither her father's anger, nor the stealthy deception of the false stepmother, nor the base lust of her brutish half-brother Cloten, nor the seductive tongue of the villainous Italian Iachimo, her husband's friend; nor even the knowledge of her own husband's sudden suspicion of her, and his instructions to have her slain, shake in the least degree her true affection. Such constancy cannot fail of its reward, and in the end Imogen wins back both father and husband.

In such a story, where virtue's self is made to shine, other characters must of necessity suffer. Posthumus, Imogen's husband, appears weak and impulsive, foolish in making his wife's constancy a matter for wagers, and absurdly quick to believe the worst of her. His weakness is, however, in part atoned for by his gallant fight in defense of his native Britain, and by his {201} outburst of genuine shame and remorse when perception of his unjust treatment of Imogen comes to him. Cymbeline, the aged king, has all the irascibility of Lear, with none of his tenderness. The wicked Queen and her son are purely wicked. Only the faithful servant, Pisanio, a minor figure, has our sympathy in this court group.

But in the exiled noble Belarius, and the two sons of Cymbeline whom he has stolen in infancy and brought up with him in a wild life in the mountains, single-hearted nobility rules. When Imogen, disguised as a page, in her flight from the court to Posthumus comes upon them, there is the instant sympathy of noble minds, and there is a brief respite from her misfortunes. They rid her of the troublesome Cloten, and their victory over Rome brings to book the intriguing Iachimo and accomplishes her final recovery of love and honor. A reading of the play leaves as the brightest picture upon the memory their joy at meeting Imogen, and their grief when the potion she drinks robs them of her. In them we find expressed that noble simplicity which romanticists have always associated with true children of nature.

To Imogen, who has a far longer part to play than any other of Shakespeare's heroines, the poet has also given a completer characterization, in which every charm of the highest type of woman is delineated. The one trait which a too censorious audience might criticize, that meekness in unbearable affliction which makes Chaucer's patient Griselda almost incomprehensible to modern readers, is in Imogen completely redeemed by her resolution in the face of danger, and by a certain {202} imperiousness which well becomes the daughter of a king.

Authorship.—Some later hand probably made up the vision of Posthumus (V, iv, 30-90), where a series of irregular stanzas of inferior poetical merit are inserted to form "an apparition."

Date.—Simon Forman, the writer of a diary, who died in 1611, describes the performance of Cymbeline at which he was present. The entry occurs between those telling of Macbeth (April 20, 1610) and The Winter's Tale (May 15, 1611). The tests of verse assign it also to this period. The first print was that of the First Folio, 1623.

Source.—From Holinshed Shakespeare learned the only actual historical fact in the play, that one Cunobelinus was an ancient king of Britain. Cymbeline's two sons are likewise from Holinshed, as is the rout of an army by a countryman and his two sons; but the two stories are separate. The ninth novel of the second day of the Decameron of Boccaccio tells a story much resembling the part of the play which concerns Posthumus. The play called The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune (1589) contains certain characters not unlike Imogen, Posthumus, Belarius, and Cloten. Fidelia, Imogen's name in disguise, is the heroine's name. But direct borrowing cannot be proved.

The Winter's Tale.—Nowhere is Shakespeare more lavish of his powers of characterization and of poetic treatment of life than in this play. He found for his plot a popular romance of the time, in which a true queen, wrongly accused of infidelity with her husband's friend, dies of grief at the death of her son, while her infant daughter, abandoned to the seas in a boat, grows up among shepherds to marry the son of the king of whom her father had been jealous. Disregarding the essentially undramatic nature of the story, as well as its improbabilities, he achieved a signal {203} triumph of his art in the creation of his two heroines, and in his conception of the pastoral scenes, so fresh, joyous, and absolutely free from the artificiality of convention.

In the deeply wronged queen he drew the supreme portrait of woman's fortitude. Hermione is brave, not by nature, but inspired by high resolve for her honor and for her children. Nobly indignant at the slanders uttered against her, her wifely love forgives the slanderer in pity for the blindness of unreason which has caused his action. Shakespeare's dramatic instinct made him alter Hermione's death in the earlier story to life in secret, with poetic justice in store. Artificial as the long period of waiting seems, before the final reconciliation takes place, it is forgotten in the magnificent appeal of the mother's love when the lost daughter kneels in joy before her.

In Perdita, Shakespeare, with incredible skill, depicted the true daughter of such a mother. Although her nature at first seems all innocence, beauty, youth, and joy, yet when trial comes to her in the knowledge that she, a shepherdess, has loved a king's son, and that his father has discovered it, her courage rises with the danger, and her words echo her mother's resolution:—

"I think affliction may subdue the cheek, But not take in the mind."

In the pastoral scenes, the poet gives us an English sheepshearing, with its merrymaking, a pair of honest English country fellows in the old shepherd and his son, the Clown, and the greatest of all beloved vagabonds {204} in the rogue Autolycus, whose vices, like Falstaff's, are more lovable than other people's virtues. Fortune, which will not suffer him to be honest, makes his thieveries, in her extremity of whim, to be but benefits for others.

Of the other characters, Prince Florizel, Perdita's lover, is that rarest of all dramatic heroes, a young prince with real nobility of soul. Lord Camillo and Lady Paulina are well-drawn types of loyalty and devotion. Leontes alone, the jealous husband, is unreasoning in the violence of his jealousy. As the study of a mind overborne by an obsession, it is a strong yet repulsive picture.

Date.—Simon Forman narrates in his diary how he saw the play at the Globe Theater, May 16, 1611. It was probably written about this time. Jonson's Masque of Oberon, produced January 1, 1611, contains an antimasque of satyrs which may bear some relation to the similar dance in IV, iv, 331 ff. The First Folio contains the earliest print of the play.

Source.—The romance, to which reference has been made above, as the source of The Winter's Tale, was Robert Greene's Pandosto: The Triumph of Time, sometimes called by its later title, The History of Dorastus and Fawnia. Fourteen editions followed one another from its appearance in 1588. Greene made the jealous Pandosto king in Bohemia, and Egistus (Polixenes in the play) king of Sicily. In The Winter's Tale two kingdoms are interchanged. Nevertheless the "seacoast of Bohemia," so often ridiculed as Shakespeare's stage direction, is found in Greene's story. Three alterations by Shakespeare are of vital importance in improving the plot: the slandered queen is kept alive, instead of dying in grief for her son's death, to be restored again in the famous but theatrical statue scene; Autolycus is created and is given, with Camillo, an important share in the restoration of Perdita; and the complications of {205} Dorastus's (Florizel's) destiny as the prospective husband of a princess of Denmark, and Pandosto's (Leontes's) falling in love with his own daughter and his suicide on learning of her true birth, are wisely omitted. The characters of Paulina, the Clown, and some minor persons are Shakespeare's own invention.

According to Professor Neilson, Autolycus and his song in IV iii, 1 ff., may have been partly based on the character of Tom Beggar in Robert Wilson's Three Ladies of London (1584).

The Tempest, probably the last complete drama from Shakespeare's pen, differs from the other "romances" in possessing a singular unity. It comes, indeed closer than any play, save the Comedy of Errors, to fulfilling the demands of unity of action, time, and place. This may be due to the fact that the poet is here making up his own plot, not, as in other cases, dramatizing a novel of extended adventure.

The central theme of The Tempest is, like that of the other romances, restoration of those exiled and reconciliation of those at enmity; but the treatment of the story could not be more different. Where the chance of fortune has hitherto brought about the happy ending, here magic and the supernatural in control of man are the means employed. Those who had plotted or connived at the expulsion of Prospero, Duke of Milan, and his being set adrift in an open boat, with his infant daughter and his books for company, are wrecked through his art upon the island of which he has become the master. Ariel, the spirit who serves Prospero, a mysterious, ever changing form, now fire, now a Nymph, now an invisible musician, now a Harpy, striking guilt into the conscience (and yet apparently not interested in either vice or virtue, but {206} longing only for free idleness), guides all to Prospero's cave, and receives freedom for his toil. His spirit pervades every scene, whether we view the king's son Ferdinand loving innocent Miranda, or the silent king mourning his son's loss, or the guilty conspirators plotting the king's death, or the drunken steward and jester plotting with the servant monster Caliban the overthrow of Prospero. All of them are led, by the wisdom of Prospero acting through Ariel, away from their own wrong impulses, and into reconcilement and peace. How much of The Tempest Shakespeare meant as a symbol can never be told; but here, perhaps, as much as anywhere the temptation to read the philosophy of the poet into the story of the dramatist comes strongly upon the reader.

There are two speeches of Prospero, in particular, where the reader is inclined to believe he is listening to Shakespeare's own voice. In one, Prospero puts a sudden end to his pageant of the spirits, and compares life itself to the transitory play. In the other, Prospero bids farewell to his magic art. These are often interpreted as Shakespeare's own farewell to the stage and to his art,—with what justification every reader must decide for himself.

In this last play there is, it should be said, not the slightest hint of a weakening of the poetic or the dramatic faculty. The falling in love of Miranda, the wonderful and wondering child of purity and nature; the tempting of Sebastian by the crafty Antonio; and the creation of Caliban, half-man, half-devil, with his elemental knowledge of nature, and his dull cunning, and his stunted faculties,—all these are the work of {207} a genius still in the full pride of power. Shakespeare's dramatic work ends suddenly, "like a bright exhalation in the evening."

Date.—Edmund Malone's word, unsupported by other evidence, puts the play as already in existence in the autumn of 1611. The play certainly is later than the wreck of Somers's ship, in 1609. It was acted during the marriage festivities of the Princess Elizabeth in 1613, when other plays were revived.

Sources.—Two accounts by Sylvester Jourdan and William Strachey told, soon after the event, of the casting away upon the Bermuda Islands of a ship belonging to the Virginia expedition of Somers in 1609. From these Shakespeare drew for many details. His island, however, is clearly not Bermuda, nor, indeed, any known land. Other details have been traced from various sources. Ariel is a name of a spirit in mediaeval literature of cabalistic secrets. Montaigne's Essays, translated by Florio (1603), furnished the hint of Gonzalo's imaginary commonwealth (II, i, 147 ff.). Setebos has been found as a devil-god of the Patagonians in Eden's History of Travaile (1577). The rest of the story, which is nine-tenths of the whole, is probably Shakespeare's own, though the central theme of an exiled prince, whose daughter marries his enemy, who has an attendant spirit, and who through magic compels the captive prince to carry logs, may come from some old folk tale; since a German play, Die Schoene Sidea, by Jakob Ayrer of Nuremberg (died 1605), possesses all these details. The relations, if any, between the two plays are remote.

The Life of Henry the Eighth, the last of the historical plays, in date of composition as in the history it pictures, suffers from the very fact that it boasts in its second title, All is True. The play might have been built around any one of the half-dozen persons which in turn claim our chief interest,—Buckingham, Queen Katherine, Anne Bullen; the King, Wolsey, or {208} Cranmer; but fidelity to history, while it did not hinder some slight alteration of incident and time, required that each of these should in turn be distinguished, if a complete picture of the times of Henry VIII were to be given. The result was a complete abandonment of anything like unity of theme.

It is, of course, a disappointment to one who has just read I Henry IV. On the other hand, this play may be regarded as a kind of pageant, as the word is used nowadays in England and America. It presents, in the manner of a modern pageant, a series of brilliant scenes telling of Buckingham's fall, of Wolsey's triumph and ruin, of Katherine's trial and death, of Anne Bullen's coronation, and of Cranmer's advancement, joined together by the well-drawn character of the King, powerful, masterful, selfish, and vindictive, but not without a suggestion of better qualities. The gayety of the Masque, in the first act, where King Henry first meets Anne Bullen, is also in perfect harmony with the modern pageant, which always employs music and dancing as aids to the picture.

In Queen Katherine we have a suffering and wronged woman, gifted with queenly grace and dignity, and with strong sympathies and a keen sense of justice. From her first entrance, when she ventures, Esther-like, into the presence of the king to intercede for an oppressed people, through all her vain struggle against the King's wayward inclination and the Cardinal's wiles, up to the very moment when she is stricken with mortal illness, she holds our sympathy. If in her great trial scene she is weaker and more impulsive than Hermione in hers, yet the circumstances are {209} different; she is not keyed up to so high an endeavor as that lady, nor in so much danger for herself or her children.

Authorship.—Differences in style and meter, and the fragmentary quality of the whole play have long confirmed the theory that Shakespeare in Henry VIII engaged in a very loose sort of collaboration. Only the Buckingham scene (I, i,), the scenes of Katherine's entrance and trial (I, ii, II, iv), a brief scene of Anne Bullen (II, iii), and the first half of the scene in which Wolsey's schemes are exposed and Henry alienated from him (III, i, 1-203) are confidently ascribed to Shakespeare. The rest of the play fits best the style and metrical habit of John Fletcher, at this time one of the most popular dramatists of London.

Date.—The Globe Theater was burned on June 29, 1613, when a play called Henry VIII or All is True was being performed. So far as stylistic tests can decide, this was not long after the composition of the play. Sir Henry Wotton, the antiquarian, writing from hearsay knowledge, says that the play being acted at the time of the fire was "a new play called All is True." Shakespeare's scenes in this drama may thus have been his last dramatic work. A praise of King James in the last scene was probably written not later than the rest of the play, and thus insures a date later than 1603. The earliest print of the play was the First Folio, 1623.

Source.—Holinshed was the chief source. Halle furnished certain details. Foxe's Book of Martyrs tells the Cranmer story.



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CHAPTER XIV

FAMOUS MISTAKES AND DELUSIONS ABOUT SHAKESPEARE

The mystery which enwraps so much of Shakespeare's life, combined with the interest which naturally centers around a great genius, is ideally calculated to stimulate human imagination to fantastic guess-work. It is probably for this reason that a number of famous delusions about Shakespeare have at different times arisen. Some of these are of sufficient importance to deserve attention. Three widely different types of mistakes can be observed.

The Shakespeare Apocrypha.—The most excusable of these delusions was the belief that Shakespeare wrote a large number of plays which are now known to be the work of other men. Some of these plays were printed, either during the poet's life or after his death, with "William Shakespeare" or "W. S." on the title-page. It is now practically certain that the full name was a printer's forgery, and that the letters W. S. were either designed to deceive or else the initials of some contemporary dramatist (such as Wentworth Smith, for example). Six of these spurious dramas were included in the Third Folio of Shakespeare's complete works. Since this came out forty years after the First Folio, when men who had known Shakespeare personally {211} were dead, we certainly cannot believe that its editor had better information than those of the First Folio, who were the poet's personal friends, and who did not include these plays. The spurious dramas printed in the Third Folio were: The London Prodigal, The History of the Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell, The History of Sir John Oldcastle, The Puritan Widow, Yorkshire Tragedy, and The Tragedy of Locrine.

Among the other plays imputed to Shakespeare at various times are: Fair Em, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, Arden of Feversham, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Edward Third, and Sir Thomas More. Some good critics, chiefly literary men, not scholars, still believe that Shakespeare wrote parts of the last three; but it is practically certain that he had nothing to do with the others, and his part in all these disputed plays is extremely doubtful.

Shakespearean Forgeries.—Men who assigned the above spurious plays to Shakespeare made an honest error of judgment, but other men have committed deliberate forgeries in regard to him. At the end of the eighteenth century, W. H. Ireland forged papers which he attempted to impose on the public as recently discovered Mss. of the 'Swan of Avon.' One of these finds, a play called Vortigern, was actually acted by a prominent company. But the unShakespearean character of these 'great discoveries' was soon perceived, and Ireland at length confessed.

Another famous fraud of a wholly different kind was that of J. P. Collier. The great services which this man has rendered to the world of scholarship make {212} all men reluctant to pass too severe censure on his conduct; but it is only fair that the public should be warned against deception. He pretended to have found a folio copy of the plays corrected and revised on the margin in the handwriting of a contemporary of Shakespeare. Some of these revisions were actual improvements on the carelessly printed text; but it is now known that they were forgeries. Similar changes were made by him in other important documents, and were for some time accepted as genuine.

The Bacon Controversy.—During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the contention was started that Shakespeare was merely an obscure actor who never wrote a line, and that the Shakespearean plays were actually written by his great contemporary, Francis Bacon, who was pleased to let these products of his own genius appear under the name of another man. This delusion is usually considered as beginning with an article by Miss Delia Bacon in Putnam's Monthly (January, 1856), although the idea had been twice suggested during the eight years preceding.

The Baconian arguments fall into four groups. First, they argue that there is no proof to establish the identity of Shakespeare, the actor, with the author of the plays. This is untrue. We have more than one reference by his contemporaries, identifying the actor with the poet, some so strong that the Baconians themselves can explain them away only by assuming that the writer is speaking in irony or that he willfully deceives the public. By assumptions like that, any one could prove anything.

The second point of the Baconians is that a man of {213} Shakespeare's limited education could not have written plays replete with so many kinds of learning. This argument is weak at both ends. It assumes as true that Shakespeare had a limited education and that his plays are full of knowledge learned from books rather than from life. The first of these points rests on vague tradition only, and the second is still a debatable question. But even if we admit these two points, what then? Shakespeare was twenty-nine years old and had probably lived in London for five or six years when the first book from his hand appeared in its present form. Any man capable of writing Hamlet could educate himself during several years in the heart of a great city.

Thirdly, a certain lady found in Bacon's writings a large number of expressions which seemed to her to resemble similar phrases in Shakespeare. Except to the mind of an ardent Baconian many of these show no likeness whatever. Most of those which do show any likeness were proverbial or stock expressions which can be found in other writers.

Lastly, various Baconians have repeatedly asserted that they had found in the First Folio acrostic signatures of Bacon's name; that one could spell Bacon or Francis Bacon by picking out letters in the text according to certain rules. But unfortunately either these acrostics do not work out, or else the rules are so loose that similar acrostics can be found anywhere, in modern books or pamphlets, and even on the gravestones of our ancestors. Many of the more intelligent Baconians themselves have no faith in this last form of evidence.

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On the other hand, there are certain very weighty objections to Bacon as author of the plays. In the first place, it is a miracle that one man should produce either the works of Bacon or Shakespeare alone; it is a miracle past all belief that the same man in one lifetime should have written both. In the second place, the little verse which Bacon is known to have written shows clearly how limited he was as a poet, no matter how great in other directions. Moreover, his prose, though splendid in its kind, is wholly unlike the prose of Shakespeare. Finally, Bacon's contemptuous attitude toward woman and marriage was diametrically opposed to that found in Shakespeare. To imagine that the same man wrote both sets of writings is to assume that he was one man one day and another the next.

The advocates of this strange theory vary greatly in fairmindedness and ability, and it is not just to judge them all by the mad extremes of some; but, nevertheless, their writings, taken as a whole, form one of the strangest medleys of garbled facts and fallacious reasoning which has ever imposed on an honest and intelligent but uninformed public.

On the Shakespeare Apocrypha, see C. F. Tucker Brooke's edition of fourteen spurious plays, under this title, Oxford, University Press, 1908. On the forgeries and other questions, Appendix I of Mr. Lee's Life is the readiest place of reference.



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INDEX

Aaron, 141. Abraham and Isaac, 25. Adoration of the Wise Men, 25. AEschylus, 20 AEsop, 182. Albright, V. E., 44, 50. All is True, 207, 209. Alleyn, E., 48, 49. Allott, R., 124. All's Well that Ends Well, 110, 121, 174-176. Amphitruo, 110, 148. Amyot, J., 108. Anders, H. R. D., 112. Angelo, 176. Antonio, 160. Antonius, Life of M., 192, 195. Antony, 178. Antony and Cleopatra, 47, 75, 83, 102, 109, 121, 190-192, 193. Apemantus, 194. Apocrypha, Shakespeare, 120, 210. Apollonius and Silla, 171. Arcadia, 111, 187. Arden of Feversham, 211. Aren en Titus, 142. Ariel, 206. Ariosto, 167. Aristophanes, 20. Aristotle, 30. Arthur, Prince, 137. Ashbies, 4, 16. Aspley, W. A., 121, 124. As You Like It, 102, 110, 121, 167-169, 172. Ayrer, J., 207.

Bacon controversy, 212-214. Baker, G. P., 104. Bale, J., 138. Bandello, 109, 110, 144, 167, 171. Bankside, 37. Barksted, 76, 177. Barnard, Lady, 19. Bear-rings as stages, 37. Beatrice, 166. Beaumont, F., 57, 196. Belleforest, 171, 182. Bellott, Stephen, 13, 14. Benedick, 166. Benedicke and Betteris, 167. Bermuda, 207. Bertram, 174, 175. Besant, Sir W., 59. Blackfriars Theater, 14, 45-46, 49, 57, 58. Blount, E., 121-123, 199. Boccaccio, G., 110, 176, 202. Boisteau, 144. Bolingbroke, 138. Book of Martyrs, 207. Booke of Plaies, 189. Boswell, J., 129. Boy-actors, 49. Bradley, A. C., 195. Brodmeier, 50. Brome play, 25. Brooke, A., 145. Brooke, C. F. T., 214. Brutus, 178, 179. Buckingham, 207. Building of the Arke, 25. Bullen (Boleyn), Anne, 207. Burbage, James, 37. Burbage, R., 12, 14, 17, 19, 37, 38, 45, 48, 49. Busby, J., 118. Butler, N., 120.

Caesar, Life of J., 193; see also Julius. Caliban, 206. Camden, R., 11. Capell, E., 129. Cassius, 178. Caxton, W., 174. Chamberlain's Company, see Lord. Chambers, E. K., 34. Character-study, 90. Charlecote, 7. Chaucer, G., 67, 109, 151, 152, 174, 201. Chester Plays, 24, 25. Chettle, H., 9, 12, 174. Chetwind, P., 125. Children of Paul's, 46. Children of the Chapel, 46. Children's companies, 48. Chronicle of Holinshed, 107-108, 187. See also Holinshed. Church, Origin of drama in, 20-23 Cinthio, G., 109, 177, 184. Citizens of London, 55. City of London, 53. Clark, A., 4 n. Clark and Wright, 129, 189. Classical drama, 29-31. Claudio, 165, 177. Cloten, 200. Cock-pit, 46. Colin Clout, etc., 10. Collier, J. P., 112, 211. Comedy of Errors, 10, 77, 83, 110, 121, 147-148. Condell, Henry, 12, 19, 122. Confessio Amantis, 109, 200. Constance, 137. Contention, First, 111, 134, 135. Contention, Second, 111, 134, 135. See Richard, True Tragedy of. Contention, Whole, 111, 120, 134. Cordelia, 185. Coriolanus, 109, 121, 192-193. Coryat, T., 39. Cotes, R., 124. Cotes, T., 124. Cranmer, 208. Creizenach, 34, 50. Cromwell, Thos., Lord, 125, 211. Curtain Theater, 37. Cycles of miracle plays, 24. Cymbeline, 41, 71, 83, 103, 108, 112, 121, 200-202.

Danter, J., 118. Dates of plays, 83. Davies, Archdeacon, 7. De Clerico et Puella, 28. Decameron, 110, 176, 202. Deer-stealing, tradition of, 7. Dekker, T., 174. Delius, N., 129. Deluge, The, 25. Desdemona, 184. Diana Enamorada, 110, 149, 151. Dogberry, 54, 166. Dorastus and Fawnia, 204. Dowden, E., 84. Drama before Shakespeare, 20. Dramatic technique, 94-100. Drayton, M., 11. Droeshout, M., 18. Dromio, 147. Dux Moraud, 28.

Easter drama, 22. Eden, 207. Editing, Problems of, 126-127. Edmund, 186. Edward II, 32, 140. Edward III, 211. Edward IV, 134. Ely Palace portrait, 18. End-stopped lines, 79-80. Endymion, 33. Essex, Earl of, 78, 159. Euphues, 33, 140. Euripides, 20. Everyman, 26, 34. Every Man in his Humour, 12. Every Man out of his Humour, 158, 179. External evidence, 75-77.

Faerie Queene, 152, 187. Fair Em, 211. Falstaff, Sir John, 7, 156-159, 164. Faulconbridge, 137. Faustus, 32. Felix and Philiomena, 149. Female parts, 48. Feminine endings, 80. Field, Henry, 16. Field, Richard, 113. Fiorentino, G., 110, 161. First Folio, 11, 30, 75, 114, 119, 120-124, 136, 137, etc. Fisher, T., 120. Fleay, F. L., 50, 84. Fletcher, J., 2, 196, 197, 209. Florio, G., 207. Flower portrait, 18. Fluellen, 158. Folios, Second, Third, and Fourth, 124-125. Forgeries, Shakespeare, 211. Forman, Dr. S., 189, 202, 204. Fortune Theater, 38-40. Four periods, 101-104. Foxe, R., 209. Fuller, H. De W., 142. Fuller, T., 56. Furness, H. H., 127, 130.

Gamelyn, Tale of, 169. Gammer Gurton's Needle, 29. Garnett, H., 189. Gascoigne, G., 163. Geoffrey of Monmouth, 187. German and Dutch plays like Shakespeare's, 112. Gesta Romanorum, 200. Glendower, 155. Globe Theater, 1, 38, 39, 57, 58. Gloucester, 186. Gorboduc, 29. Gosson, S., 161. Gower, J., 109, 200. Greek drama, 30. Greene, R., 8, 9, 110, 115, 134, 135, 204. Greene, T., 17, 31. Grey, W., 50, 120. Groatsworth of Witte, etc., 9. Gunpowder Plot, 190.

Hal, Prince, 155. Hall, Dr. J., 17. Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., 19, 129. Hamlet, 12, 32, 33, 34, 41, 83, 93-94, 100, 102, 111, 112, 116, 117, 119, 121, 128, 142, 177, 180-182. Hanmer, T., 128. Harsnett, 186. Hart, Joan, 19. Hathaway, Anne, 5, 6. Hawkins, A., 124. Hazlitt, W. C., 112. Heccatommithi, Gli, 109, 179, 184. Hector, 173. Hegge plays, 24. Helena, 174. Heminge or Hemings, J., 12, 19, 122. Henley Street House, 19. I Henry IV, 6, 10, 33, 41, 83, 99, 101, 111, 117, 119, 121, 154-157, 164, 165, 208. II Henry IV, 121, 126, 157-158. Henry V, 78, 83, 101, 111, 117, 119, 120, 158-159, 165. Henry V, Famous Victories of, 111. I Henry VI, 111, 133-134. II Henry VI, 111, 117, 134-135. III Henry VI, 8, 83, 98, 121, 134-135. Henry VIII, 34, 84, 103, 112, 121, 197, 207-209. Henslowe, P., 37, 45, 48. Henslowe's Diary, 50, 182. Heptameron of Civil Discourses, 177. Hermia, 150. Hermione, 203. Hero, 166. Herod, 24. Heywood, J., 28. Histoires Tragiques, 182. Historia Danica, 181. Histories, 97-98. Holinshed, 107-108, 134, 136, 140, 156, 159, 180, 190, 202, 209. Holland (author), 184. Horace, 11. Hotspur, 155. Hubert, 137. Humphrey of Gloucester, 134. Hunsdon, Lord, 48, 144.

Iachimo, 202. Iago, 183. Iambic pentameter, 61. Imogen, 200-202. Ingannati, Gl', 171. Ingram, 81 n. Inn-yards as theaters, 35. Interludes, 27-29, 48. Internal evidence, 77-82. Ireland, W. H., 211. Isabella, 176. Italian novelle, 109-110. Italy, Influence of, on masque, 34.

Jaggard, I., 121, 124. Jaggard, W., 70, 113, 120-121, 124. James I, 48, 209. Jaques, 169. Jessica, 160. Jew of Malta, 132. Joan of Arc, 133. John of Gaunt, 138, 140. John, Troublesome Reigne of, 111, 137-138. Johnson, A., 120. Johnson, S., 129. Jonson, Ben, 11, 12, 31, 34, 50, 56, 158, 174, 179, 204. Jourdan, S., 207. Julia, 149. Julius Caesar, 44, 83, 100, 102, 109, 121, 122, 126, 172, 177-180, 184, 190, 193.

Katherine, 162, 208. Kemp, W., 12. Kind-Harts Dreame, 9. King Johan, 27, 138. King John, 11, 77, 83, 111, 135, 136-138. King Lear, 77, 83, 100, 102, 108, 117, 126, 185-187, 195. King Leir, etc., 111, 187. Knight's Tale, 151. Kyd, T., 31, 32, 142, 182.

Lady Macbeth, 188. Lambert, D., 84. Lee, S., 19, 72, 214. Legend of Good Women, 152. Leontes, 199, 204. Leopold Shakespeare, 129. Locrine, Tragedy of, 125, 211. Lodge, T., 31, 111, 135, 169. London, 51-59. London Prodigal, A., 125, 211. Lord Admiral's Men, 45, 48. Lord Chamberlain's Company, 12, 48. Lounsbury, T. R., 130. Love's Labour's Lost, 10, 33, 77, 83, 91, 95, 99, 101, 106, 117, 121, 132, 145-146. Love's Labour's Wonne, 10, 77, 175. Lover's Complaint, A, 70. Lucian, 195. Lucrece, Rape of, 10, 62-63, 67, 113. Lucy, Sir T., 7. Ludus Coventriae, see Hegge. Luigi da Porto, 144. Lydgate, J., 33. Lyly, J., 32, 132, 135, 145-146. Lysander, 150.

Macbeth, 41, 44, 83, 92, 100, 102, 103, 108, 121, 187-190, 191, 202. Malone, E., 129, 184, 207. Malvolio, 170. Manly, J. M., 34. Manningham, J., diary, 76, 171. Marina, 197, 198. Marlowe, C., 2, 31-32, 132, 135, 136, 140, 153, 163. Masculine endings, 80. Masque, 33. Masque of Oberon, 204. Mass, Drama at, 21. Measure for Measure, 76, 83, 109, 112, 121, 176-177. Meighen, 124. Menaechmi, 110. Menander, 20. Mennes, Sir J., 3. Merchant of Venice, 10, 42, 44, 77, 83, 96, 97, 101, 110, 112, 117, 120, 132, 133, 159-161. Mercutio, 144. Meres, F., 10, 67 n., 76-77, 137, 142, 149, 151, 156, 161, 167, 169, 171, 175, 179. Merry Devil of Edmonton, 211. Merry Wives of Windsor, 110, 117, 118, 120, 124, 163-165. Meter, 86-87. Middle Temple, 171. Middleton, T., 189. Midsummer Night's Dream, 10, 77, 83, 117, 120, 132, 133, 149-151. Milton, J., 64, 65. Miracle plays, 23. Miranda, 206. Mirrour for Magistrates, 187. Mirrour of Martyrs, 179. Montaigne, Essays of, 207. Montemayor, J. de, 149. Moralities, 26-27. More, Sir T., 136. See under Sir. Mountjoy, C., 13-14. Mountjoy, Mary, 13. Much Ado About Nothing, 71, 83, 101, 110, 121, 165-167, 169. Myrrha, 177.

Nash, T., 8, 31, 135, 182. Nashe, T., 19. Neilson, W. A., 129, 135, 205. New Place, 16, 17. News out of Purgatorie, 165. Nice Wanton, 27. North, Sir T., 108, 158, 179, 192, 193.

Oberon, 149. Octavia, 190. Oldcastle, Sir John, 120, 125, 211. Olivia, 170. Orator, The, 161. Order of the plays, 83. Ordish, T. F., 59. Orlando, 168. Orlando Furioso, 167. Othello, 100, 101, 109, 117, 124, 182-185, 191. Ovid, 61, 152.

Pageants, 25. Painter, W., 110, 148, 176, 195. Palace of Pleasure, 110, 195. See Painter. Palladis Tamia, 10, 77. Pandarus, 172. Pandosto, 110, 204. Passionate Pilgrim, 70, 71, 113. Patterne of Painful Adventures, 200. Pavier, T., 120-121, 124. Pavy, S., 50. Pecorone, Il, 110. Peele, G., 8, 31, 135. Pembroke, Earl of, 67. Perdita, 199, 203. Pericles, 103, 109, 117, 119, 120, 128, 129, 197-200. Petrarch, 64. Petruchio, 162. Phoenix and the Turtle, The, 70. Pistol, 158, 159. Plautus, 10, 11, 29, 110, 148. Pliny, 184. Plots, 106. Plutarch's Lives, 108-109, 179, 192, 193, 195. Poetaster, 174. Pollard, A. W., 120. Polonius, 181. Pope, A., 127, 128. Popish Impostures, Declaration of, 186. Portia, 160, 179. Posthumus, 200. Printing, Conditions of, 114-116. Private theaters, 45. Promos and Cassandra, 112, 177. Prospero, 199, 206. Proteus, 149. Puck (Robin Goodfellow), 149. Puritaine, The, 125, 211. Puritan Widow, v.s. Puritans, 15. Pyramus and Thisbe, 150, 152.

Quartos, 114. Quiney, T., 17.

Ralph Roister Doister, 29. Rare Triumphs, etc., 202. Reformation, 52. Renaissance, 21, 29. Reynolds, G. F., 50. Richard, Duke of York, True Tragedy of, 134. Same as II Contention, q.v. Richard II, 10, 77, 83, 117, 119, 121, 137, 138-140, 154. Richard III, 10, 32, 77, 83, 91, 92, 98-99, 101, 111, 117, 119, 121, 133, 135-136, 137. Richardus Tertius, 136. Richard III, True Tragedy of, 111, 136. Riche, B., 171. Rime, 81-82, 87-88. Roberts, J., 120. Robertson, W., 142. Robin Hood, 28, 167. Rome, 21. Romeo and Giulietta, 144. Romeo and Juliet, 11, 41, 42, 71, 77, 83, 90, 101, 112, 116, 117-119, 121, 122, 131, 132, 143-145, 150, 185. Romeus and Juliet, 145. Roofs on theaters, 46. Rosalind, 166. Rosalynde, 110, 169, 171. Rose Theater, 37, 135. Rowe, N., 7, 127. Rowley, W., 200. Run on lines, 79 ff. Rutland, Earl of, 17.

St. Paul's, 13, 56. Salisbury Court, 46. Saxo Grammaticus, 182. Schelling, F. E., 34, 50, 135. School of Abuse, 161. Second Shepherd's Play, 25. Sejanus, 12. Seneca, 10, 20, 29, 30. Sequence, see Sonnet. Sequence of plays, 83. Shakespeare Allusion Book, 11 n. Shakespeare, Hamnet, 5, 6, 17. Shakespeare, John, 3, 4, 6, 16, 17. Shakespeare, Judith, 5, 17, 18, 19. Shakespeare, Richard, 4. Shakespeare, Susanna, 5, 17, 19. Shakespeare, William, our knowledge of his life, 1; birth, 2; education, 4; marriage, 5; deer-stealing, 7; life in London, 8-16; return to Stratford, 16; death, 17; portraits, tomb, will, 18; descendants, 19; allusions to, 8-17; as an actor, 12; residence with Mountjoy, 13; income, 15; grant of arms to, 16; compared with Jonson, 56; and passim. Shakespearean Tragedy, 195. Shallow, 7, 158. Shottery, 6. Shylock, 92-93, 159, 160. Sidea, Die Schoene, 207. Sidney, Sir P., 111, 115, 187. Silvayn, A., 161. Silver Street, 13. Silvia, 149. Sims, V., 119. Sir Andrew, 170. Sly, 162. Smethwick, I., 121-124. Somers, Sir G., 78. Sonnets, 63-70, 113. Sophocles, 20. Southampton, Earl of, 10, 67-68. Spanish Tragedy, 32, 182. Spenser, E., 10, 187. Stage, The, 40-45. Stage costumes and settings, 42-44. Stage, Effect of, on drama, 46. Stationers' Register, 75, 114-115, 118, etc. Steevens, G., 129. Stephenson, H. T., 59. Strachey, W., 207. Strange, Lord, 48, 135. Straparola, 110. Stratford, 2. Supposes, 163. Surrey, Earl of, 65. Swan Theater, 37.

Talbot, 133. Tamburlaine, 32, 136. Taming of a Shrew, 112, 121, 163. Taming of the Shrew, 83, 111, 161-163. Tamora, 141. Tarlton, 165. Taste, growth of, 89-90. Taverns, 56-57. Tempest, The, 34, 41, 71, 78, 81, 84, 87, 103, 121, 136, 205-207. Terence, 29. Thaisa, 198. Thames, 54. Theater, The, 37. Theaters, 35 ff., 57-59. Theobald, L., 128. Thomas More, Sir, 211. Thorpe, T., 113. Three Ladies of London, 205. Timon (by Lucian), 195. Timon of Athens, 109, 112, 121, 122, 193-195. Titania, 149. Tito Andronico, 142. Tittus and Vespacia, 142. Titus Andronicus, 11, 32, 77, 83, 117, 119, 123, 132, 141-143. Touchstone, 166. Towneley plays, 24, 25. Travaile, History of, 207. Tredici Piacevole Notte, 110. Troilus and Cressida, 117, 122, 172-174, 195. Troilus and Criseyde, 109, 174. Troye, Recuyell of, 174. Twelfth Night, 6, 76, 83, 101, 110, 112, 121, 169-171, 172, 174. Twine, L., 200. Two Gentlemen of Verona, 10, 71, 77, 83, 96, 101, 110, 112, 121, 148-149. Two Noble Kinsmen, 211. Tyrwhitt, 129.

Udall, N., 29. Unities, Three dramatic, 30 n.

Valentine, 149. Venus and Adonis, 10, 16, 61, 63, 67, 113. Viola, 170. Vortigern, 211.

Wagner (Death of Siegfried), 23. Wakefield, see Towneley. Wallace, Prof. C. W., 13, 14, 19. Warburton, 128. Weak endings, 81. Weever, J., 11, 179. Westminster, 54. Whetstone, G., 112, 177. White, R. G., 129. Wilkins, G., 200. Wilson, R., 205. Winter's Tale, The, 34, 80, 83, 103, 110, 112, 121, 202-205. Wolsey, 208. Worcester, 155. Wotton, Sir H., 209. Wyatt, Sir T., 65.

Yonge, B., 149. York and Lancaster, 134. York plays, 24. Yorkshire Tragedy, A, 120, 125, 211.



Printed in the United States of America.

THE END