Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth, Thine, by thy beauty being false to me." Again, in Sonnet CX, we find an allusion to the distasteful nature of the actor's profession which seems to ring sincere. Thus in a few cases Shakespeare may be giving us glimpses into his real heart; but in general the sentiments expressed in his sonnets could be explained as due to the literary conventions of this time. Other Poems. The two narrative poems and the sonnets make up most of Shakespeare's nondramatic poetry. A word may be added about some other scattered bits of verse which are connected with his name. In 1599 an unscrupulous publisher, named William Jaggard, brought out a book of miscellaneous poems by various authors, called The Passionate Pilgrim. Since Shakespeare was a popular writer, his name was sure to increase the sale of any book; so Jaggard, with an advertising instinct worthy of a later age, coolly printed the whole thing as the work of Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, only a few short pieces were by him; and were probably stolen from some private manuscript. In 1601 a poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle, was also printed as his in an appendix to a longer poem by another man. We cannot trust the printer when he signs it with Shakespeare's name, and we have no other evidence about its authorship; but the majority of scholars believe it to be genuine. Another poem, A Lover's Complaint, which was printed in the same volume with the sonnets in 1609, is of distinctly less merit and probably spurious. Lastly, the short poems incorporated in the plays deserve brief notice. In a way they are part of the plots in which they are embedded; but they may also be considered as separate lyrics. Several sonnets and verses in stanza form occur in Romeo and Juliet and in the early comedies. Three of these were printed as separate poems in The Passionate Pilgrim. Far more important than the above, however, are the songs which are scattered through all the plays early and late. Their merit is of a supreme quality; some of the most famous musical composers, inspired by his works, have graced them with admirable music. One of the most attractive features in his lyrics is their spontaneous ease of expression. They seem to lilt into music of their own accord, as naturally as birds sing. The best of these are found in the comedies of the Second Period and in the romantic plays of the Fourth. "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more " in Much Ado About Nothing; "Blow, blow, thou winter wind" in As You Like it; "Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings" in Cymbeline; and "Full fathom five thy father lies" in The Tempest, these and others like them show that the author, though primarily a dramatist, could be among the greatest of song writers when he tried. The following lines taken from the little-read play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, may serve to illustrate the perfection of the Shakespearean lyric. SONG Who is Sylvia? what is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be. Is she kind as she is fair ? For beauty lives with kindness: To help him of his blindness, Then to Sylvia let us sing, Upon the dull earth dwelling; Such are Shakespeare's nondramatic writings. Two narrative poems with the faults of youth but with many redeeming virtues; one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, very unequal in merit but touching at their best the high-water mark of English verse; a few stray fragments of disputed authorship and doubtful value; and finally a handful of scattered songs, short, but almost perfect of their kind, this is what we have outside of the plays. Neither in quantity nor quality can this work compare with the poetic value of the great dramas; but had it been written by any other man, we should have thought it wonderful enough. On the sonnets, the appendix to Mr. Sidney Lee's book, A Life of William Shakespeare, 1909, is particularly valuable. CHAPTER VI THE SEQUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS THE most profitable method of studying any writer is to take up his works in the order in which they were written. More and more this method is being adopted toward all authors, ancient and modern, Virgil or Milton, Dante or Tennyson. We are thus enabled to trace the gradual growth of the poet's mind from one production to another, his constant increase in skill, in judgment, in knowledge of mankind. The great characteristic of the genius is, not simply that he knows more than other men at first, but that he has in him such vast possibilities of growth, of improving with time, and learning by his own mistakes. Consequently, it is very important to know that a certain play or poem is faulty because it was its author's first crude attempt; that a second is better because it was written five years later in the light of added experience; and that a third is better still because it came ten years after the second, at the climax of the writer's powers. Besides showing the author's growth, this method also shows his relation to the great literary movements of his time. As fashions in dress and sports keep shifting, fashions in literature are changing just as constantly, and the dominant type may alter two or three times during one man's life. If an author changes to meet these demands, it is important to know that one of his plays was merry comedy because written at a time when merry comedies filled all the playhouses; and that another is sober tragedy because composed while most of the theaters were acting and demanding sober tragedy. Now Shakespeare not only improved a great deal while composing his plays, but also conformed, to some extent at least, to the different tastes of his audience at different periods of his life. Hence, a knowledge of the order in which his plays were written is very valuable, and should form the first step in a careful study of his writings. Unfortunately, when we attempt to arrange Shakespeare's plays in chronological order, we encounter many practical difficulties in finding just what this order is. We know that Tennyson developed a great deal as a poet between the ages of eighteen and thirtythree; and we can show this by pointing to four successive volumes of his poems, published respectively at the ages of eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-three, and thirty-three, and each rising in merit above the one before it. We know definitely in what order these volumes come, for we find on the title-page of each the date when it was printed. But scarcely half of Shakespeare's plays were printed in this way during his life. The others, some twenty in all, are found only in one big folio volume which gives no hint of their proper order or year of composition, and which bears on its title-page the date of the printing, 1623, seven years after Shakespeare died. Many plays, too, published |