Nor shall I e'er believe or think thee dead (Though miss'd) until our bankrout stage be sped Or till I hear a scene more nobly take Than when thy half-sword parleying Romans spake." 66 The "half-sword parleying Romans" alludes, there can be little doubt, to the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius; and this is evidence that the play was performed before the publication of Digges's verses. We believe that it was performed during Shakspere's lifetime. Malone says, "It appears by the papers of the late Mr. George Vertue, that a play called 'Cæsar's Tragedy' was acted at Court before the 10th of April, in the year 1613." We agree with Malone that this was probably Shakspere's "Julius Cæsar." That noble tragedy is in every respect an acting play. It is not too long for representation; it has no scenes in which the poet seems to have abandoned himself to the inspiration of his subject, postponing the work of curtailment till the necessities of the stage should demand it. Not so was "Coriolanus ;" not so especially was Antony and Cleopatra." They each contain more lines than any other of Shakspere's plays; they are each nearly a third longer than "Julius Cæsar." It is our belief that they were not acted in Shakspere's lifetime; and that his fellows, the editors of the folio in 1623, had the honesty to publish them from the posthumous manuscripts, uncurtailed. In their existing state they are not only too long for representation, but they exhibit evidence of that exuberance which characterises the original execution of a great work of art, when the artist, throwing all his vigour into the conception, leaves for a future period the rejection or compression of passages, however splendid they may be, which impede the progress of the action, and destroy that proportion which must never be sacrificed even to individual beauty. We know that this was the principle upon which Shakspere worked in the correction of his greatest efforts—his "Hamlet," his "Lear," his "Othello." We believe that "Coriolanus" and "Antony and Cleopatra" have come down to us uncorrected; that they were posthumous works; that the intellect which could not remain inactive conceived a mighty plan, of which these glorious performances were the commencement; that Shakspere, calmly meditating upon the grandeur of the Roman story, seeing how fitted it was, not only for the display of character and passion, but for profound manifestations of the aspects of social life, ever changing and ever the same, had conceived the sublime project of doing for Rome what he had done for England. He has exhibited to us the republic in her youthfulness, and her decrepitude; her struggle against the sovereignty of one; the great contest for a principle terminating in ruin; an empire established by cunning and proscription. There were, behind, the great annals of Imperial Rome; a story perhaps unequalled for the purposes of the philosophical dramatist, but one which the greatest who had ever attempted to connect the actions and motives of public men and popular bodies with lofty poetry, not didactic but "ample and true with life," was not permitted to touch. The marvellous accuracy, the real substantial learning, of the three Roman plays of Shakspere, present the most complete evidence to our minds that they were the result of a profound study of the whole range of Roman history, including the nicer details of Roman manners, not in those days to be acquired in a compendious form, but to be brought out by diligent reading alone. It is pleasant to believe that the last years of Shakspere's life were those of an earnest student. We confidently ask if the belief be not a reasonable one? THE happy quiet of Shakspere's retreat was not wholly undisturbed by calamity, domestic and public. His brother Richard, who was ten years his junior, was buried at Stratford on the 4th of February, 1613. Of his father's family his sister Joan, who had married Mr. William Hart of Stratford, was probably the only other left. There is no record of the death of his brother Gilbert, but as he is not mentioned in the will of William, in all likelihood he died before him. Oldys, in his manu script notes upon Langbaine, has a story of "one of Shakspeare's younger brothers, who lived to a good old age, even some years, as I compute, after the restoration of King Charles II." Gilbert was born in 1566; so that if he had lived some years after the restoration of Charles II., it is not surprising that "his memory was weakened," as Oldys reports, and that he could give "the most noted actors" but "little satisfaction in their endeavours to learn something from him of his brother." The story of Oldys is clearly apocryphal, as far as regards any brother of Shakspere's. They were a short-lived race. His sister, indeed, survived him thirty years. The family at New Place, at this period, would be composed therefore of his wife only, and his unmarried daughter Judith; unless his eldest daughter and his son-in-law formed a part of the same household, with their only child Elizabeth, who was born in 1608. The public calamity to which we have alluded was a great fire, which broke out at Stratford on the 9th of July, 1614; and "within the space of two hours consumed and burnt fifty and four dwelling-houses, many of them being very fair houses, besides barns, stables, and other houses of office, together with great store of corn, hay, straw, wood, and timber therein, amounting to the value of eight hundred pounds and upwards: the force of which fire was so great (the wind setting full upon the town), that it dispersed into so many places thereof, whereby the whole town was in very great danger to have been utterly consumed."* That Shakspere assisted with all the energy of his character in alleviating the miseries of this calamity, and in the restoration of his town, we cannot doubt. In the same year we find him taking some interest in the project of an inclosure of the common-fields of Stratford. The inclosure would probably have improved his property, and especially have increased the value of the tithes, of the moiety of which he held a lease. The Corporation of Stratford were opposed to the inclosure. They held that it would be injurious to the poorer inhabitants, who were then deeply suffering from the desolation of the fire; and they appear to have been solicitous that Shakspere should take the same view of the matter as themselves. His friend William Combe, then high sheriff of the county, was a principal person engaged in forwarding the inclosure. The Corporation sent their common clerk, Thomas Greene, to London, to oppose the project; and a memorandum in his hand-writing, which still remains, exhibits the business-like manner in which Shakspere informed himself of the details of the plan. The first memorandum is dated the 17th of November, 1614, and is as follows: "My Cosen Shakspeare comyng yesterday to town, I went to see how he did. He told me that they assured him they ment to inclose no further than to Gospel Bush, and so upp straight (leaving out pt. of the Dyngles to the field) to the gate in Clopton hedg, and take in Salisbury's peece; and that they mean in Aprill to svey. the land and then to gyve satisfaccion, and not before: and he and Mr. Hall say they think yr. will be nothyng done at all." Mr. Greene appears to have returned to Stratford in about a fortnight after the date of this memorandum, and Shakspere seems to have remained in London; for according to a second memorandum, which is damaged and partly illegible, an official letter was written to Shakspere by the Corporation, accompanied by a private letter from Mr. Greene, moving him to exert his influence against this plan of the inclosure: "23 Dec. A. Hall, Lres. wrytten, one to Mr. Manyring—another to Mr. Shakspeare, with almost all the company's hands to eyther. I also wrytte myself to my Csn. Shakspear, the coppyes of all then also a note of the inconvenyences wold . by the inclosure." Arthur Mannering, to whom one of these letters was written by the Corporation, was officially connected with the Lord Chancellor, and then residing at his house; our * Brief granted for the relief of the inhabitants, on the 11th of May, 1615, quoted from Wheler's History of Stratford," p. 15. and from the letter to him, which has been preserved, "it appears that he was apprised of the injury to be expected from the intended inclosure; reminded of the damage that Stratford, then lying in the ashes of desolation,' had sustained from recent fires; and entreated to forbear the inclosure."* The letter to Shakspere has not been discovered. The fact of its having been written leaves no doubt of the importance which was attached to his opinion by his neighbours. Truly, in his later years he had John Combe, the old companion of Shakspere, died at the very hour that the great fire was raging at Stratford. According to the inscription on his monument he died on the 10th of July, 1614. Upon his tomb is a fine recumbent figure, executed by the same sculptor who, a few years later, set up in the same Chancel a monument to one who, "when that stone is rent," shall still be "fresh to all ages." Shakspere was at this period fifty years old. He was in all probability healthful and vigorous. His life was a pure and simple one; and its chances of endurance were the greater, that high intellectual occupation, not forced upon him by necessity, varied the even course of his tranquil existence. His retrospections of the past would, we believe, be eminently happy. His high talents had been employed not only profitably to himself, but for the advantage of his fellow-creatures. He had begun life obscurely, the member of a profession which was scarcely more than tolerated. He had found the stage brutal and licentious. There were worse faults belonging to the early drama than its ignorant coarseness. It was adapted only for a rude audience in its strong excitement and its low ribaldry. He saw that the drama was to be made a great teacher. He saw that the highest things in the region of poetry were akin to the natural feelings in the commonest natures. *Wheler's "Guide to Stratford." He would make the noblest dramatic creations the most popular. He knew that the wit that was unintelligible to the multitude was not true wit,—that the passion which did not move them to tears or anger was not real passion. He had raised a despised branch of literature into the highest art. He must have felt that he had produced works which could never die. It was not the applause of princes, or even the breath of admiring crowds, that told him this. He would look upon his own great creations as works of art, no matter by whom produced, to be compared with the performances of other men,—-to be measured by that high ideal standard which was a better test than any such comparisons. Shakspere could not have mistaken his own intellectual position; for if ever there was a mind entirely free from that self-consciousness which substitutes individual feelings for general truths, it was Shakspere's mind. To one who is perfectly familiar with his works, they come more and more to appear as emanations of the pure intellect, totally disconnected from the personal relations of the being which has produced them. Whatever might have been the worldly trials of such a mind, it had within itself the power of rising superior to every calamity. Although the career of Shakspere was prosperous, he may have felt "the proud man's contumely," if not "the oppressor's wrong." If we are to trust his Sonnets, he did feel these things. But he dwelt habitually in a region above these clouds of common life. He suffered family bereavements; yet he chronicled not his sorrows with that false sentimentality which calls upon the world to see how graceful it is to weep. In his impersonations of feeling he has looked at death under every aspect with which the human mind views the last great change. To the thoughtless and selfish Claudio, "The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ach, penury, and imprisonment To what we fear of death." To the philosophical Duke life is a thing "That none but fools would keep." To Hamlet, whose conscience [consciousness]" puzzles the will," "The dread of something after death" "makes cowards of us all." To Prospero the whole world is as perishable as the life of man : "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, Shakspere, when he speaks in a tone approaching to that of personal feeling, looks upon death with the common eye of humanity: |