In all the work of Shakespeare there is nothing more like himself than those quiet words of parting"Be cheerful, sir; our revels now are ended." Yet they are not ended; and the generations who have come after him, and have read his book, and have loved him with an inalterable personal affection, must each, as they pass the way that he went, pay him their tribute of praise., His living brood have survived him, to be the companions and friends of men and women as yet unborn. His monument is still a feasting presence, full of light. When he was alive he may sometimes have smiled to think that the phantoms dancing in his brain were as real to him as the sights and sounds of the outer world. The population of that delicate shadowland seemed to have but a frail hold on existence. The one was taken, and the other left; this character served for a play, that phrase or sentence fitted a speech; the others died in their cradles, or lived a moment upon the air, and were dissolved. Those that found acceptance were made over to the tender mercies of the players, for a week's entertainment of the populace. But now three centuries have passed since King Lear was written; and we begin to rub our eyes, and wonder. Change places, and, handy-dandy, which is the ghost, which is the man?" Is the real man to be 66 sought in that fragmentary story of Stratford and London, which, do what we will to revive it, has long ago grown faint as the memory of a last year's carouse? That short and troubled time of his passage, during which he was hurried onward at an ever-increasing pace, blown upon by hopes and fears, cast down and uplifted, has gone like a dream, and has taken him bodily along with it. But his work remains. He wove upon the roaring loom of Time the garment that we see him by; and the earth at Stratford closed over the broken shuttle. INDEX A Account of the Life &c. of Antony and Cleopatra, 95, Apollonius and Silla (Barnabe Arcadia (Sidney), 87. As You Like It, 46; basis of, Aubrey, 55, 58, 64, 77. Bandello, 215. B Beeston, William, 58. Betterton, 57, 156. Books, List of, in a private Brandes, Dr., 48. Burbage, Richard (acted chief C Canning, a story of, 49. Chapman, George, 244. Cymbeline, 62, 74, 97, 169, D Davenant, Sir William, 58. Description of England (Har- Devil on the Highway to Heaven, The, 138. Hamlet, 9, 23, 36, 76, 103, 113, Heminge, John, 30, 79, 143, Henry IV., 63, 87, 184-5, 193, Henry V., 49, 74, 91, 193, Henry VI., 62; parodied, Henry VIII., 74, 130. Plays (Shake- speare's), 238, 240; dra- King Lear, 17, 26, 36, 70, 78, L Lamb, Charles, 98, 213. Lives of the Noble Grecians taverns in, 10, 69. M Macbeth, 5, 23, 32, 74, 78, 89, 91, 92, 101, 135, 163, 166, Marlowe, 86, 105-6, 111-12, of, 59; 74, 209; Falstaff in, Montgomery, Philip, Earl of, Moral of Man's Wit, The, 138. |