plaint" was probably an early experiment in an imitative mood.

Robert Chester's "Love's Martyr; or, Rosalin's Complaint," published in 1601, contained, according to the preface, "diverse poetical essays on . . . the Turtle and Phoenix, done by the best and chiefest of our modern writers." Shakespeare's contribution to this collection of verse was "The Phoenix and the Turtle," the most enigmatical of his works. This poem of thirteen stanzas of four lines each, concluding with a Threnos in five stanzas of three lines each, is a poetical requiem for the Phoenix and the Turtle, whose love" was married chastity." Among the contributors to the collection were Shakespeare's great contemporaries, Jonson, Chapman, Marston; but neither the purpose nor the occasion of the publication has yet been discovered, nor has any light been shed from any quarter on the allegory whose meaning Shakespeare seems to have hidden from posterity in this baffling poem. Emerson suggested that a prize be offered for an essay which "should explain, by a historical research into the poetic myths and tendencies of the age in which it was written, the frame and allusions of the poem ; " but although much research has been devoted to this object and many metaphysical, political, ecclesiastical, and historical interpretations have been suggested, "The Phoenix and the Turtle" remains an unsolved enigma.

In 1599 William Jaggard, who, like Thorpe, laid hands upon any unpublished writing which had secured popularity and promised success to a ven

turesome publisher, issued a small anthology of contemporary verse under the title of "The Passionate Pilgrim. By W. Shakespeare." The first two selections were Sonnets by Shakespeare hitherto unpublished, and there were three poems taken from "Love's Labour's Lost," which appeared in 1591. The collection was reprinted in 1671 with the addition of two poems by Thomas Heywood. Shakespeare appears to have borne the affront in silence, but Heywood protested, in a dedicatory epistle which appeared in that year, against the injury done him, and declared that Shakespeare was much offended "with Mr. Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name." This protest was not without effect, for a new title-page was issued from which Shakespeare's name was omitted. Of the twenty-one pieces which make up "The Passionate Pilgrim," only five can be ascribed to Shakespeare. The collection was a miscellany, a rag-picker's bag of stolen goods," put together without authority from the poets whose work was stolen, and the use of Shakespeare's name is one evidence of its weight with readers.

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CHAPTER X

THE HISTORICAL PLAYS

THE period of Shakespeare's apprenticeship ended about 1596; the succeeding four or five years show him in full possession of his art and his material, though the deeper phases of experience were still before him and the full maturity of his genius was to be coincident with the searching of his spirit in the period of the Tragedies. The last half-decade of the sixteenth century were golden years in the life of the rising dramatist. He had made his place in the world; he had learned his craft; he had come to clear selfconsciousness; the intoxication of the possession of the poetic imagination and the gift of poetic expression was upon him; he had immense zest in life, and life was at full-tide in his veins and in the world about him. The Queen was at the height of her splendid career; the country had grown into clear perception of its vital force and the possible greatness of its fortunes; English energy and courage were preparing the new soil of the new world for the seeds of a greater England at the ends of the earth; London was full of brilliant and powerful personalities, touched with the vital impulse of the age, and alive in emotion, imagination, and will. It was a time of great works of art and of

action; in the two worlds of thought and of affairs the tide of creative energy was at the flood.

The genius of Spenser bore its ripest fruit in "Colin Clout," the "Epithalamium," and the concluding books of the "Faerie Queene." Sidney's noble

Apologie for Poesie," which was in the key not only of the occupations and resources of his mind but of his life, appeared in 1595, and a group of Bacon's earlier essays in 1597. Chapman's "Homer" and Fairfax's "Tasso" enriched the English language with two masterpieces of translation. Hooker and Hak

huyt were writing and publishing. Among the playwrights are to be found the great names of Dekker, Jonson, Middleton, Heywood, Marston, and Chapman. The men who had possession of the stage when the poet came up from Stratford- Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lodge, Nash, Kyd, and Lyly—had been succeeded by Shakespeare's generation. That he should have detached himself from this great group and made a distinct impression on his contemporaries is not the least among the many evidences of his extraordinary power. English literature was in one of its noblest periods, and Shakespeare shared an impulse which, like a great tide, carried men of every kind of power to the furthest limits of their possible achievement.

At no period of his life was Shakespeare more keenly observant, more intellectually alert, more inventive, more joyous in spirit, more spontaneous and poetic. He had solved the problem of his relation to his time by discovering his gift, acquiring his tools, and discerning his opportunity; he had ease of mind and open

ness of imagination. He gave himself up to the joy of life, and lived in its full tide with immense delight. He was not only in the world but of it. Even in this eager and golden period so meditative a mind could not escape those previsions of tragedy and fate which are never far off; and sorrow did not pass by the household at Stratford, for in August, 1596, according to the parish record, Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, was buried. In this year "King John" was written, and it has been surmised that in the pathetic and beautiful character of Arthur, which is essentially unhistoric, the poet was portraying his own son, and in the touching lament of Constance giving voice to his own sorrow. This loss, which must have been poignant, was apparently the only shadow on these prosperous years when the poet was in his earliest prime.

History and comedy absorbed the imagination and divided the creative energy of Shakespeare from 1596 to 1600. Of the ten plays founded on English history, "King John" serves as a prelude, with "Richard II.," the two parts of " Henry IV.," "Henry V.," the three parts of "Henry VI.," and "Richard III." as a chronicle play on a great scale; while "Henry VIII." may be taken as an epilogue. The plays were not, however, written in historical sequence, nor did Shakespeare have any intention at the start of making a connected treatment of a stirring and dramatic period in English history. He found the old plays dealing with Henry VI. ready to his hand, as has been noted, and used them as material, touching "Henry VI." very lightly and probably only in the way of adaptation and