If to lay hold of Michael Angelo and to strive with him be the most strenuous feat achievable by the critical imagination in the world of plastic art, to deal with Shakspere requires more endurance, a firmer nerve, and a finer cunning. The great ideal. artist, a Milton, a Michael Angelo, a Dante, betrays himself in spite of the haughtiest reserve. But Shakspere, if an idealist, was also above all else a realist in art, and lurks almost impregnably behind his work. "The secrets of nature have not more gift in taciturnity." * And yet some few of the secrets of nature can be wrested from her. But Shakespere possessed that most baffling of self-defences-humour. Just when we have laid hold of him, he eludes us, and we hear only distant ironical laughter. What is to be done? How shall a dramatist-a dramatist possessed of humour-be cheated of his privacy? How shall his reserve be overmastered? How shall we interrogate him? Is there any magic word which will compel him to disguise, and declare himself in his true shape? If we could watch his writings closely, and observe their growth, the laws of that referable to the nature of the put off growth would be man, and to the nature of his environment. And we might even be able to refer to one and the other of these two factors producing a common resultant, that which is specially due to each. Fortunately the succession of Shakspere's writings (although it is probable that neither external nor internal evidence will ever suffice to make the chronology certain and precise), is * Troilus and Cressida, Act iv., Scene 2. sufficiently ascertained to enable us to study the main features of the growth of Shakspere as an artist and as a man. We do not now place "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest" side by side as Shakspere's plays of fairyland. We know that a long interval of time lies between the two, and that if they resemble one another in superficial or accidental circumstances, they must differ to the whole extent of the difference between the youthful Shakspere, and the mature, experienced, fully-developed man. Much is due to the industry of Malone; much to the ingenuity and industry of recent Shakspere scholars who, in the changes which took place in the poet's manner of writing verse have found an index, trustworthy in the main, to the true chronology of the plays.* It will be well first to stand away from Shakspere, and to view him as one element in a world larger than himself. In order that an organism-plant or animal -should exist at all, there must be a certain correspondence between the organism and its environment. * Mr Spedding, in his article, "Who wrote Henry VIII?" (Gentleman's Magazine, August, 1850) first applied quantitative criticism of verse peculiarities to the study of Shakspere's writings. Mr Charles Bathurst, in "Remarks on the Differences of Shakespeare's Versification in different Periods of his Life" (London, 1857), called attention to the 1 change "from broken to interrupted verse " which took place as Shakspere advanced in his dramatic career; and observed also the increase in the use of double-endings in his later plays. Professor Craik, in his "English of Shakespere," and Professor J. K. Ingram, in a lecture upon Shakspere published in "Afternoon Lectures" (Bell and Daldy, 1863), again called attention to these peculiarities of versification as affording evidence for the ascertainment of the chronology of the plays. Finally, about the same time in England and in Germany, two investigators— Rev. F. G. Fleay and Professor Hertzberg-began to apply "quantitative criticism" of the characteristics of verse to the determination of the If it be found to thrive and flourish, we infer that such , correspondence is considerable. Now we know something of the Elizabethan period, and we know that Shakspere was a man who prospered in that period. In that special environment Shakspere throve: he put forth his blossoms and bore fruit. And in the smaller matter of material success he flourished also. In an Elizabethan atmosphere he reached his full stature, and became not only great and wise, but famous, rich, and happy. Can we discover any significance in these facts? We are told that Shakspere "was not of an age, but for all time." That assertion misleads us; and indeed in the same poem to the memory of his friend from which these words are taken, Ben Jonson apostrophises his great rival as "Soul of the Age." Soul of the Age." Shakspere was for all time by virtue of certain powers and perceptions, but he also belonged especially to an age, his own age, the age of Spenser, Raleigh, Jonson, Bacon, Burleigh, Hooker, a Protestant age, a monarchical age, an age eminently positive and practical. A man does not attain to the universal by abandoning the particular, nor dates of plays. The test on which Hertzberg chiefly relies is the feminine (double) ending; he gives the percentage of such endings in seventeen plays, and believes that the percentage indicates their chronological order. See the preface to Cymbeline in the German Shakespeare Society's edition of Tieck's and Schlegel's translation. Mr Fleay's results, independently ascertained, were published subsequently to Hertzberg's. See Trans. New Sh. Soc., and Macmillan's Magazine, Sept. 1874. In 1873 Mr Furnivall, in founding the New Shakspere Society, before he was aware that Mr Fleay's work was in progress,— insisted on the importance of metrical tests for determining the chronology, and gave the proportion of stopt to unstopt lines in three early and three late plays. The latest contribution to the subject is Professor Ingram's valuable paper read before the New Sh. Soc. on the "Weak-ending" Test. to the everlasting by an endeavour to overleap the limitations of time and place. The abiding reality exists not somewhere apart in the air, but under certain temporary and local forms of thought, feeling, and endeavour. We come most deeply into communion with the permanent facts and forces of human nature and human life, by accepting first of all this fact, that a definite point of observation and sympathy, not a vague nowhere, has been assigned to each of us. What is the ethical significance of that literary movement to which Shakspere belonged, and of which he was a part-the Elizabethan drama? The question seems at first improper. There is perhaps no body of literature which has less of an express tendency for the intellect than the drama of the age of Elizabeth. It is the outcome of a rich and manifold life; it is full of a sense of enjoyment, and overflowing with energy; but it is for the most part absolutely devoid of a conscious purpose. The chief play-wright of the movement declared that the end of playing, "both at the first and now, was and is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature." A mirror has no tendency. The questions we ask about it are, "Does this mirror reflect clearly and faithfully?" and "In what direction is it turned?' Capacity for perceiving, for enjoying, and for reproducing facts, and facts of as great variety as possible,—this was the qualification of a dramatist in the days of Elizabeth. The facts were those of human passion, and human activity. He needed not, as each of our poets at the present time needs, to have a doctrine, or a revelation, or an interpretation. The mere fact was enough without any theory about the fact; and this fact men saw more in its totality, more in the round, because they approached it in the spirit of frank enjoyment. It was not for them attenuated into an aspect, or relegated to a class. AX In the Renascence and Reformation period life had grown a real thing, this life on earth for three score years and ten. The terror and sadness of the Middle Ages, the abandonment of earthly joy, the wistfulness and pathos of spiritual desire, and on the other hand, the scepticism, irony, and sensuality under the ban were things which, as dominant forms of human life, had passed away. The highest mediaval spirits were those which had felt with most intensity that we are strangers and pilgrims here on earth, that we have no abiding place among human loves and human sorrows, that life is of little worth except with reference to infinite, invisible antecedents and issues in other worlds. With all his tender affinities to the brotherhood of elemental powers, and of animals, Saint Francis felt allied to these as brethren only because they had ceased to be rivals for his heart with the supreme lover, Jesus. The deepest religious voice of the Middle Ages couples in a single breath the words de imitatione Christi and de contemptu omnium vanitatum mundi. It is the ascetic quester, Galahad, with vision undimmed by any mist of earthly passion, who beholds the mystical Grail. Angelico paints paradise, and, because the earth can afford no equal beauty, then paradise again; below the glory of seraphim and cherubim appear the homely faces of priest and monk, transported into the pellucid |