best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparel, etc., and then when he came to practise making him believe they took him to be mad." This charming comedy, so characteristic of Shakespeare's genius at play, was probably acted by the Lord Chamberlain's servants, the company with which Shakespeare was associated, before the Court in the old palace at Whitehall during the same season.

The ultimate source of the play was probably Bandello's "Novelle," though the Italian plays to which Manningham refers (there were several plays with the title Inganni) may have furnished incidents; but Malvolio, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Maria, and, above all, Viola, as they live in the comedy are Shakespearean to the heart. The framework of the play is essentially serious, a beautiful vein of poetic feeling runs through it, and, intermingled with these, the most unforced and uproarious fun. In inventiveness in the comic type and in freedom in handling it, as well as in grouping of diverse materials and fusing them into a harmonious and captivating whole, this comedy was never surpassed by the dramatist. He parted with the muse of comedy at the very moment when he had mastered the art of touching the weaknesses, follies, and minor sins of men with a touch which was keen with the wisdom of a great knowledge of the world, and gentle with the kindness of one who loved his kind for what they had lost rather than for what they had won.

CHAPTER XII

THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY

WITH the advent of the seventeenth century, Shakespeare entered the greatest period of his life as an artist the period of the Tragedies. During eight

eventful years he was brooding over the deepest problems of human experience, and facing, with searching and unfaltering gaze, the darkest aspects of life. That this absorption in themes which bore their fruit in the Tragedies was due primarily to a prolonged crisis in his own spiritual life is rendered practically certain by the persistence of the sombre mood, by the poet's evident sensitiveness to and dependence upon conditions and experience, and by a series of facts of tragical import in the lives of some of his friends. His development in thought and art was so evidently one of definite progression, of the deepening of feeling and broadening of vision through the unfolding of his nature, that it is impossible to dissociate the marked change of mood which came over him about 1600 from events which touched and searched his own spirit.

Until about 1595 Shakespeare had been serving his apprenticeship by doing work which was to a considerable extent imitative, and to a larger extent experimental; he had tried his hand at several kinds of

writing, and had revealed unusual power of observation, astonishing dexterity of mind, and signal skill in making the traditional characters of the drama live before the eyes and in the imagination of the theatregoers who made up his earliest constituency. From about 1594 to 1600 he had grown into harmonious and vital relations with his age, he had disclosed poetic genius of a very high order, and he had gone far in his education as a dramatist. He had written the Sonnets, and he had created Portia, Beatrice, Rosalind, Juliet, Romeo, Mercutio, Benedict, Henry V., Falstaff, Shylock, Hotspur, and Dogberry. If he had died in 1600, his place would have been secure. His reputation was firmly established, and he had won the hearts of his contemporaries by the charm of his nature no less than by the fascination of his genius.

His serenity, poise, and sweetness are evidenced not only by his work but by the representations of his face which remain. Of these the bust in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church at Stratford, made by Gerard Jonson, a native of Amsterdam, and a stonemason of Southwark in the poet's time, and the Droeshout portrait, which appeared on the title-page of the First Folio edition of the poet's works, issued in 1623, were accepted by his friends and contemporaries, and must present at least a general resemblance to the poet's features. They are so crude in execution that they cannot do justice to the finer lines of structure or to the delicacy of colouring of Shakespeare's face and head, but they make the type sufficiently clear. They represent a face of singular harmony and regularity of

feature, crowned by a noble and finely proportioned head. The eyes were hazel in colour, the hair auburn ; the expression, deeply meditative and kindly, was that of a man of thoughtful temper, genial nature, and thorough self-control. In figure Shakespeare was of medium stature and compactly built.

It is significant that, after the first outburst of jealousy of the young dramatist's growing popularity in Greene's "A Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance," the expressions of Shakespeare's contemporaries indicate unusual warmth of personal regard, culminating in a magnificent eulogy from his greatest rival, and one who had reason to fear him most.

That he was of a social disposition, and met men easily and on pleasant terms, is evident from the extraordinary range of his knowledge of men and manners in the taverns of his time—those predecessors of the modern club. That he enjoyed the society of men of his own craft is evident both from his own disposition and from the fact that he stood so distinctly outside the literary and theatrical quarrels of his time. The tradition which associates him with the Mermaid Tavern which stood in Bread Street, not far from Milton's birthplace, is entirely credible. There he would have found many of the most brilliant men of his time. Beaumont's well-known description inclines one to believe that under no roof in England has better talk been heard:

What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid? heard words that have been

So nimble and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.

The age was eminently social in instinct and habit; society, in the modern sense of the word, was taking shape; and men found great attraction in the easy intercourse and frank speech of tavern meetings. Writing much later, but undoubtedly reporting the impression of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Thomas Fuller says, in his "Worthies": "Which two I beheld like a Spanish great gallion and an English man-ofwar: Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher up in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shake-spear, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention."

At the end of the sixteenth century Shakespeare was on the flood-tide of a prosperous life; at the very beginning of the seventeenth century a deep and significant change came over his spirit. In external affairs his fortunes rose steadily until his death; but in his spiritual life momentous experiences changed for a time the current of his thought, and clouded the serene skies in the light of which nature had been so radiant and life so absorbingly interesting to him. While it is highly improbable that the Sonnets record in chronological order two deep and searching emotional experiences, the autobiographic note in them is