though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered." This applies, or should apply, not only to clowning and gagging, but also and as truly to unnecessary outbursts of poetry. Not that anyone could wish that Shakespeare had been able to restrain himself, but he is the less great for not being able to smother his muse of fire when, as a dramatist, he should have done so.

Later in this scene, Hamlet says of the "mouse-trap play, "Marry, how? Tropically?" I do not want to pose as a commentator; but may this not be " topically "? I do not remember, though, if topical were used in the modern sense in Elizabethan days.*

What is the finest speech in the play? Both dramatically and poetically is it not the King's speech, Oh, my offence is rank"? It is all splendid, but especially these lines:

But, oh, what form of prayer

Can serve my turn? "Forgive me my foul murder?"
That cannot be, since I am still possess'd
Of these effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of the world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above;
There, is no shuffling; there, the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compell'd
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults
To give in evidence.

But here are some small shot:

In Act I., Scene 1, Horatio speaks of Fortinbras's "unimprovéd mettle"; should not this be "unproved"?

In Act II., Scene 2, Hamlet says of the King:

I'll tent him to the quick; if he but blench.

Surely tent "does not mean 'probe," as Dowden says it does, but is a reference to the tenter hooks used for straining cloth. shown, by the way, in Aggas's map of London.

These are

The words italicised are those which should be emphasised by the actor.

Is not the plot of the play well summed up by Fortinbras's lines in the second scene of the last Act? so shall you hear

Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,

Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause.

Yet we must thank heaven that Shakespeare was more of a poet than a dramatist.

FRO

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SUMMIT (II)

ROM "Hamlet" to "Measure for Measure" is indeed a deep drop. This play, as far as is

known, did not appear before it was printed in the first Folio in 1623. Dowden dubs it " one of the darkest and most painful comedies of Shakespeare," but speaks with something akin to rapture of the character of the heroine.

Though there were other "sources," Shakespeare's work is based as to its action on a previous play, his chief alteration being that Isabella retains her virtue, which makes the character more seemly, but also less convincing. If the play were not Shakespeare, and did not contain some of his fine poetry, it would have long ago gone to limbo. The prosy Duke, who cannot rule his land, and goes masquerading, is dreadfully uninteresting. The plot throughout is stagey and unconvincing. Surely this play was a pot-boiler; Shakespeare cannot have felt inspired to write it up, he must have been moved by purely commercial exigencies. It is all the more forced coming as it does in company with Hamlet and Othello." But we must not be sure that he did not delight in it, for he also wrote All's Well" and "Troilus and Cressida." It was a crude, outspoken age, often dirty apparently for mere love of dirt, and Shakespeare was of his own age as well as for all time. The large amount of prose in it seems to indicate that the theme of this play did not appeal to the poet.

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"Troilus and Cressida," written exactly when we do not know, is another puzzle to the lovers of the poet Shakespeare, being very dull stuff. Perhaps another pot-boiler. It is to me thoroughly un-Shakespearean, almost more so than anything else credited to him. But the editors of the Folio considered that it was his work. If it be so, it helps us to an understanding of the poet's self by showing that, when he was dealing with a theme with which and with personages with whom he could not have had any sympathy, he could be as dull as the worst of his contemporaries.

"Othello is a horse of another colour.

The plot

is based upon a story by Cinthio, which Shakespeare may have read in the original Italian, or in an MS. translation. He reshaped the plot in many ways, and his is the credit of developing the dry-bone characters into living beings. Iago is far the most interesting person in the play. In the novel, his motive is that he was "desperately enamoured" of Desdemona. In "Othello," Act I., Scene I, Iago says that his hate of Othello has arisen from the commander's neglect of the ensign's plea to be made lieutenant. If this were all, then Iago would be a monster, not a man. But in Act II., Scene 1, he gives an additional motive for his actions:

For that I do suspect the lusty Moor.

Hath leaped into my seat.

It seems that once again the dramatist has not bothered to work out his details.

In Act II., Scene 2, a herald makes an announcement almost immaterial to the conduct of the plot. This is one of many similar redundant small scenes in which Shakespeare indulges.*

Perhaps the most pathetic touch in the play is when Desdemona, speaking of Othello's anger with her, says:-Those that do teach young babes

Do it with gentle means and easy tasks:

He might have chid me so; for, in good faith,
I am a child to chiding.

Therein is shown the keynote of her tragedy; a child caught in the whirlpool of a relentless, irresistible fate. The tragic upshot is inevitable.

The pathos is almost cruel in the scene between Desdemona and Emilia, Scene 3, Act IV., until, to my mind, it is soiled and spoiled by the waiting-women's discussion on cuckoldry, and by Desdemona's last two lines, which are a mere stage "tag":—

Good night, good night; heaven me such usage send,

Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend.

For the seeker after Shakespeare's self, the chief value of "Othello" lies in the masterfulness of the poetry and in the character-drawing of Desdemona and of Iago, the former perhaps his most loveable woman and the latter his most complex villain. The structure of the play shows that Shakespeare had gained by experience; except in "Macbeth he never put his materials together more skilfully. Simply as a story the play goes with a swing.*

Next in the trio of grand tragedies comes "King Lear," with its wildly improbable plot and its too often crude character-drawing. It is a chronicle history muddled up with drama and poetry.

'King Lear" was first printed in 1608 in Quarto. The title-page is lengthy but interesting: "Mr. William Shak-spear: His True Chronicle History of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters. With

* In Act I., scene 3, Iago says to Roderigo: "Provide thy money;" should not this read "thee?"

For an Italian lady Desdemona uses strangely British talk when, in Act II., scene 1, she says:

These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i' the alehouse.

And Iago uses the phrase to "chronicle small beer."