penitence rather than to bring them to punishment. He has learned that "the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance." In these plays there are two sets of dramatis persona: the great sufferers, aged and experienced Pericles, Prospero, Hermione, afterwards Queen Katherine; and the young and beautiful children in the brightness of the morning of life — Miranda, Perdita, Arviragus, and Guiderius; and Shakespeare seems to render homage to both to the great sufferers for their virtue, and patience, and sorrow; to the young men and maidens for their beauty and their joy. There is a romantic element about these plays. In all there is the same romantic incident of lost children recovered by those to whom they are dear the daughters of Pericles and Leontes, the sons of Cymbeline and Alonso. In all there is a beautiful romantic background of sea or mountain. The dramas have a grave beauty, a sweet serenity, which seem to render the name comedies" inappropriate; we may smile tenderly, but we never laugh loudly, as we read them. Let us, then, name this group, consisting of four plays, (xi.) “Romances." 66 In There only remain the two (xii.) fragments of Henry VIII. and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The same spirit appears in these as in the Romances. each of these plays the work of Shakespeare is united with that of Fletcher. The following table presents the series of groups in chronological order, as they have been here made out; the plays in each group are arranged in what is supposed to be the true order of succession; and the date of each play (ascertained or conjectured) is affixed. I. PRE-SHAKESPEARIAN GROUP. (Touched by Shakespeare.) Titus Andronicus (1588-90). 1 Henry VI. (1590-91). 2. EARLY COMEDIES. Love's Labor's Lost (1590). Two Gentlemen of Verona (1592–93). 3. MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE GROUP. EARLY HISTORY. 2 & 3 Henry VI. (1591–92). Richard III. (1593). 4. EARLY TRAGEDY. 5. MIDDLE HISTORY 6. MIDDLE COMEDY. 7. LATER HISTORY. History and Comedy united. 1 & 2 Henry IV. (1597–98). Henry V. (1599). 8. LATER COMEDY. (a) Rough and boisterous Comedy. Taming of the Shrew (? 1597). Merry Wives (? 1598). (b) Foyous, refined, romantic. Much Ado about Nothing (1598). Romeo and Juliet (? two dates, 1591, As You Like It (1599). 1596-97). Twelfth Night (1600-1601). Troilus and Cressida (? 1603; revised Tempest (1610). The student will observe in this arrangement, early, middle, and later Comedy; early, middle, and later History; and early, middle, and later Tragedy. Not only is it well to view the entire body of Shakespeare's plays in the order of their chronological succession, but also to trace in chronological order the three separate lines of Comedy, History, and Tragedy. The group named Romances connect themselves, of course, with the Comedies; but there is a grave element in them which is connected with the Tragedies which preceded them. It has been noticed that the Romances have in common the incidents of reunions, reconciliations, and the recovery of lost children. Shakespeare, though so remarkable for his power of creating character, is not distinguished among dramatists by his power of inventing incident. Having found a situation which interested his imagination, or was successful on the stage, he introduced it again and again, with variations. Thus, in the Early Comedies, mistakes of identity, disguises, errors, and bewilderments, in various forms, recur as a source of merriment and material for adventure. In the Later Comedies, again, it is quite remarkable how Shakespeare (generally in the portions of these plays which are due to his own invention) repeats, with variations, the incident of a trick or fraud practised upon one who is a selflover, and its consequences, grave or gay. Thus Falstaff is fatuous enough to believe that two English matrons are dying of love for him, and is made the victim of their merry tricks. Malvolio is made an ass of by the mischievous Maria taking advantage of his solemn self-esteem; Beatrice and Benedick are cunningly entrapped, through their good-natured vanity, into love for which they had been already predisposed; the boastful Parolles is deceived, flouted, and disgraced by his fellow-soldiers; and (Shakespeare's mood growing earnest, and his thoughts being set upon deep questions of character) Angelo, the self-deceiver, by the craft of the Duke, is discovered painfully to the eyes of others and to his own heart. Returning now from our more detailed classification, let us glance once more at the four periods into which we divided Shakespeare's career of authorship. The first, which I named In the workshop, was the period during which Shakespeare was learning his trade as a dramatic craftsman. Starting at the age of twenty-four or twenty-six, he made rapid progress, and cannot but have been aware of this. The works of Shakespeare's youth — experiments in various directions - are all marked by the presence of vivacity, cleverness, delight in beauty, and a quick enjoyment of existence. If an industrious apprentice, he was also a gay and courageous one. As yet, however, he wrote with small experience of human life; the early plays are slight or fanciful, rather than real and massive. But now Shakespeare's imagination began to lay hold of real life; he came to understand the world and the men in it; his plays begin to deal in an original and powerful way with the matter of history. "The compression of the large and rough matter of history into dramatic form demanded vigorous exercise of the plastic energy of the imagination; and the circumstance that he was dealing with reality and positive facts of the world, must have served to make clear to Shakespeare that there was sterner stuff of poetry, material more precious — even for purposes of art-in actual life, than could be found in the conceits, and prettinesses, and affectations which at times led him astray in his earlier writings." During this period Shakespeare's work grows strong and robust. It was the time when he was making rapid advance in worldly prosperity, and accumulating the fortune on which he meant to retire as a country gentleman. I name the second period therefore In the world. Before it closed Shakespeare had known sorrow: his son was dead; his father died probably soon after Shakespeare had written his Twelfth Night; his friend of the Sonnets had done him wrong. Whatever the cause may have been, the fact seems certain that the poet now ceased to care for tales of mirth and love, for the stir and movement of history, for the pomp of war; he needed to sound, with his imagination, the depths of the human heart; to inquire into the darkest and saddest parts of human life; to study the great mystery of evil. The belief in human virtue, indeed, never deserts him in Lear there is a Cordelia; in Macbeth a Banquo; even Troilus will be the better, not the worse, for his disenchantment with Cressida ; and it is because Timon would fain love that he is driven to hate. Still, during this period, Shakespeare's genius left the bright surface of the world, and was at work in the very heart and centre of things. I have named it Out of the depths. The tragic gloom and suffering were not, however, to last forever. The dark cloud lightens and rolls away, and the sky appears purer and tenderer than ever. The impression left upon the reader by Shakespeare's last plays is that, whatever his trials and sorrows and errors may have been, he had come forth from them wise, large-hearted, calm-souled. He seems to have learned the secret of life, and while taking his share in it, to be yet disengaged from it; he looks down upon life, its joys, its griefs, its errors, with a grave tenderness, which is almost pity. The spirit of these last plays is that of serenity which results from fortitude, and the recognition of human frailty; all of them express a deep sense of the need of repentance and the duty of forgiveness. And they all show a delight in youth and the loveliness of youthful joy, such as one feels who looks on these things without possessing or any longer desiring to possess them. Shakespeare in this period is most like his own Prospero. In these "Romances," and in the "Fragments," a supernatural element is present; man does not strive with circumstance and with his own passions in darkness; the gods preside over our human lives and fortunes, they communicate with us by vision, by oracles, through the elemental powers of nature. Shakespeare's faith seems to have been that there is something without and around our human lives, of which we know little, yet which we know to be beneficent and divine. And it will be felt that the name which I have given to this last period Shakespeare having ascended out of the turmoil and trouble of action, out of the darkness and tragic mystery, the places haunted by terror and crime, and by love contending with these, to a pure and serene elevation - it will be felt that the name, On the heights, is neither inappropriate nor fanciful. SHAKESPEARE FROM HIS BIRTH TO THE PRESENT TIME. BY PROFESSOR EDWARD DOWDEN. DURING Shakespeare's life he was upon the whole the most steadily popular playwright of his time; but for awhile the slighter sentiment and the novel plots of Beaumont and Fletcher may have proved more attractive with the public. Ben Jonson, who survived Shakespeare for many years, gathered about him a school of younger writers, and though never a great favorite with the people, was looked up to as a master by those who cared more for vigōrous thought and a scholarly style than for human passion and imaginative truth. The publication, however, of two folio editions of Shakespeare's plays within nine years of each other, proves the interest still taken in his writings; and prefixed to the second folio is an enthusiastic tribute from a young poet, whose homage was alone worth that of a multitude - the first published verses of John Milton. We know also that one whom Milton did not honorCharles I. agreed with Milton in honoring Shakespeare, and that his plays. were frequently represented at St. James's and Whitehall. The civil wars and the victory of Puritanism were, of course, unfavorable to the culture of dramatic poetry. In 1642 the theatres were closed, and they remained so until the latter end of the year 1659. During Charles II.'s reign there were two currents of feeling with reference to Shakespeare and the Elizabethan drama; it was impossible to deny the power and attraction of the works of the greatest English dramatic poet, but French tastes had begun to prevail, and much in Shakespeare appeared antiquated, rude, inartistic, almost barbarous. Davenant, who was not unwilling to be supposed a natural son of Shakespeare, revived the great tragedies and some of the comedies and histories; Killigrew's new theatre opened with Henry IV.; the wonderful actor Betterton appeared as Hamlet in the first play of Shakespeare represented after the Restoration, and (actresses now taking the female parts) Mrs. Betterton played with her husband. For her Ophelia hints were received from Davenant, drawn from his memory of the boy-Ophelias of an earlier time; but her most celebrated Shakespearian character was Lady Macbeth. There is abundant evidence of Shakespeare's popularity after the Restoration; it now, however, began to be thought needful to reform Shakespeare to suit the taste of a refined and ingenious public. The attractions of spectacle and music were added to those of dramatic poetry. Dryden and Davenant altered The Tempest into The Enchanted Island, with song and show, with new xxxiii |