TO A.D. 1591.] but first answer me to this question, how many days have we to fast still? Sec. Search. Five days. Adam. Five days! a long time: then I must be hanged? First Search. Ay, marry, must thou. Adam. I am your man, I am for you, sir, for I had rather be hanged than abide so long a fast. What, five days! Come, I'll untruss. Is your halter, and the gallows, the ladder, and all such furniture in readiness? First Search. I warrant thee, shalt want none of these. First Search. Ay, marry. Adam. And for eating of meat. Then, friends, know ye by these presents, I will eat up all my meat, and drink up all my drink, for it shall never be said, I was hanged with an empty stomach. First Search. Come away, knave: wilt thou stand feeding now! Adam. If you be so hasty, hang yourself an hour, while I come to you; for surely I will eat up my meat. Sec. Search. Come, let's draw him away perforce. Adam. You say there are five days yet to fast; these are your words? See. Search. Ay, sir. Adam. I am for you: come, let's away, and yet let me be [Exeunt. put in the Chronicles. Enter JONAS, RASNI with his Kings and Lords, ALVIDA Jonas. Come, careful king, cast off thy mournful weeds, Erm. Lewis I bad with awful bent of eye, Bet on the Send Jhorah, God of hosts, profane devise of man. The chi lane that whilom led awry F D Or as the kids that feed on Sephor plains, So be the seed and offspring of your loins! 155 Enter the Usurer, THRASYBULUS, and ALCON. I here restore into these poor men's hands Thras. And what through want from others I purloin'd, To be restor'd to such as owe the same. Jonas. A virtuous deed, pleasing to God and man. Rasni. Such be the fruits of Nineveh's repent; For who shall fault therein shall suffer death: You islanders, on whom the milder air O proud adulterous glory of the wh Thy neighbours burn, yet dot then bar to br The larum ringe, yet wegen DER WIEL London, awake, for fear the Lord is tr I vt a Looking from the pa Of tum, oh turn, with waging the look And think the mom en vinna od may buse the part in tree ▼uá k Peers O Lenser Thy egter fun That the saT SAGE TO ; at The Like 2 And as the popular plays of its time, and the Court entertainment by Thomas Nash, "Summer's Last Will and Testament," presented at a nobleman's house in Croydon before Queen Elizabeth in the year 1592. Both Nash and Lyly were among the players who, in 1589, joined in a war of pamphlets with the Puritan authors of the Martin Marprelate tracts. While the art of the English dramatist was being formed, in the years between 1586 and 1593, there was, in the plays written, a reflection of the patriotic and religious feeling of the people, rich and poor, who flocked to see them. There was also a wide variety in choice of subjects. Intrigues of love were by no means, as they afterwards became, the theme of almost every story told upon the stage. The established dramatists during these years were strictly Elizabethan writers. The chief of them-Peele, Greene, and Marlowe-did not survive Elizabeth. Greene died poor and distressed in 1592, Marlowe was killed in a tavern brawl in 1593, and Peele was spoken of as miserably dead in 1598. Lodge lived into the next reign, but not as a playwright: he became Doctor of Physic, and, as a Roman Catholic, had a good practice among men of his own religion. Shakespeare had been about seven years in London when the death of Marlowe, following closely on the death of Greene, left him easy possession of the first place among dramatists. During the seven years which may be considered his time of apprenticeship, for study of life in the resorts of men and of the way to place its problems on the stage, Shakespeare had made himself generally useful at the theatre as actor, as adapter of old plays to secure for them a second lease of popularity, and now and then as original writer. In 1589, when his age was a little more than twenty-five, and he had been about three years in London, Shakespeare was one of sixteen actors who had shares in the Blackfriars Theatre. In 1592, when Robert Greene died on the 3rd of September, he left behind him at the end of a posthumous prose book, called "A Groat'sworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance," an address "To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays," in which there was this reference to Shakespeare:"There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide" (parody of a line in the Third Part of Henry VI., Act I., scene 4, "O tiger's heart, wrapt in a woman's hide "), "supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." This indicates in Greene, who was dying painfully, impatience of the rising credit of Shakespeare. With his family to keep, his father in 1592 still very poor and walking in fear of arrests, Shakespeare was, no doubt, in those years a Johannes Factotum-Jack of all Trades-at the Blackfriars Theatre, ready to apply his genius to any honest opportunity of earning. Of his work on the work of others, the three parts of Henry VI. are examples. Probably he had written before 1593 no other original plays than the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "Love's Labour's Lost;" the "Comedy of Errors," also belonging to that "the earlier time, was formed from a version of the "Menæchmi" of Plautus. Before 1593 no play of Shakespeare's was printed. In that year, indeed, he first appeared in print by publishing his early poem, "Venus and Adonis," which he described as first heir of mine invention." It is noticeable, however, that the jealousy of Greene, when sick of body as of mind, produced the only harsh words known to have been ever spoken of Shakespeare. The book in which they occurred was printed after Greene's death by his fellow-dramatist, Henry Chettle, who took, in the next book of his own, Kindhart's Dream," published in 1593, the earliest opportunity of publicly expressing his regret that he had not suppressed the unjust censure of Shakespeare. "That I did not," he said, "I am sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art." 66 FROM THE DEATH OF MARLOWE TO THE DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.-A.D. 1593 TO A.D. 1603. THOMAS LODGE had already left the stage; and George Peele is not known to have written more than one or two plays after the early deaths of Greene and Marlowe. A new generation was not yet ready to take their places. During the six years following the death of Greene, Shakespeare attained an absolute supremacy. In 1598 Francis Meres published a Euphuistic book called "Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury," designed to show the young how parallels were to be found for English poets among the Greeks and Latins. Thus the book spoke of Shakespeare: "As the soul of Euphorbus was 6 thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis,' his Lucrece,' his sugared Sonnets among his private friends, &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness his 'Gentlemen of Verona,' his 'Errors,' his 'Love's Labour's Lost,' his 'Love's Labour's Won,' his Midsummer Night's Dream,' and his Merchant of Venice;' for tragedy, his Richard II., Richard III.,' Henry IV.,' 'King John,' Titus Andronicus,' and his Romeo and Juliet.' As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus' tongue if they would speak Latin, so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase, if they would speak English." To the evidence here given as to the plays which Shakespeare had written in the year 1598, may be added the facts that "Titus Andronicus"-a play from another hand, originally called "Titus and Vespasian," only retouched by Shakespeare-and the "Second Part of Henry IV." were printed in 1594, the "Third Part of Henry VI." in 1595; the only work of his that was wholly original and printed by that date being the two poems, "Venus and Adonis" in 1593, and "Lucrece" in 1594. But in 1597, the year before Meres published his record of the estimation in which Shakespeare was then held, there was sign of his popularity in the publishing, by three different booksellers, of three of the plays in Meres's list "Romeo and Juliet," "Richard II.," and "Richard III." In 1598 Love's Labour's Lost" and Part I. of "Henry IV." were printed. The other plays printed from that date to the end of Elizabeth's reign, and therefore to be taken with any others in the list of Francis Meres as beyond doubt Elizabethan, were in 1599 none; in 1600, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "The Merchant of Venice," "Henry V.," and "Much Ado about Nothing;" in 1601, none; in 1602, "The Merry Wives of Windsor;" and in 1603, "Hamlet." In In Shakespeare's private life there is evidence that he made wise use of the six years of rapid advance in prosperity from 1592 to 1598, that is to say, from theaf Greene's grumble over the beginnings of She's success to the date of Meres's testimay full accomplishment. The success of the Le Chamberlain's Company, to which Shakespear in 1 must have been due chiefly to his rand and wonderful development of power. 194 they had built and opened a new theatre of thear the Globe, on Bankside. This was round, to the sky, except the thatching over of the 843.22. for use in summer; the smaller house at has afrun which was covered in, being retained fe water winter theatre. Before building the Ekfriars Company had used the Curtain Theatre In 1922 Shakespeare's father at Stratford Tu mine in an official list of recusants, as one of rawn for not coming to church was far of prov for debt. In 1596 Shakespeare was az 1 See the woodcut on page 104. taking out a grant of arms for his father. It was in that year, when his age was about thirty-two, that he lost his only son Hamnet, who died at the age of twelve. In the next year, 1597, Shakespeare was helping his father and mother to recover his mother's acres at Ashbies, which they had lost by foreclosure of the mortgage on them, and it was then that he bought the house in Stratford where he meant to spend his latter years in full enjoyment of home with his wife and daughters. New Place, which had been built by Sir Hugh Clopton in Henry VII.'s reign, was the best house in the best street of his native town, and was bought by Shakespeare in the year before Meres chronicled his successes on the stage. Before looking to Shakespeare's mind we may say of his body that bad art has succeeded only in giving us a confused impression of his face. The portrait engraved by Martin Droeshuyt before the first folio of his plays published in 1623, seven years after his death a portrait which is praised as a faithful likeness by Ben Jonson-and the bust which in 1623 had already been set up in Stratford Church, are certainly attempts made by two people to represent, one by painting and the other by sculpture, what they saw when they looked at him. In what is called the Chandos portrait, which is traced back through a line of owners to Sir William Dayal, there may be a picture of Shakespeare taken at earlier date in his life than that whuh ... the Droeshuyt portrait or the bust represents. It has been given in another volume of this Library.1 Wherever in England there are fifty books in a house, it is to be hoped that Shakespeare's plays make one of them. They are so familiar, that mere reproduction of one in this volume would serve no good purpose. But familiar as they are-familiar to many as the sunshine they owe their power and their beauty to a union of hidden forces that no eye finds at a glance. The labourer who sits in the sun by the stone seat before his door, enjoys the splendour of noon and pomp of the sunset, knowing nothing of the mysteries of light. Like sunshine and the pleasant air of heaven, stories as Shakespeare tells them come home to us all-delight alike the simple and the subcle. It nevis no philosophy to find enjoyment in sent, form, and colour of the rose; but shall we say, therefore, it is but a rose, and there is little reason for its harmonies Many who find enjoyment in that chief product of nature—a work of the highest bare, nevertheless, apt to slight all ¦ search besow the surface for the reasons of its charm. But Shakespeare, supreme among artists, if he wrote vità me, wrote also with patient thought and care, of which the traces became more and more manifest as he rose to complete mastery. From the level indiated by the distrations we have given of the plays Som vhid be brew his early stage experience, Shakegeure malady raised the drama to the highest point a lus reached, is likely to reach, in the literature f the weld He had all the earnestness of his time; De Souzit as every reat English poet has sought, to - inicio and sexe" but so to teach that those who ål sur la gel del foi in him a genial compaone, dot a pedcar pinlis; the wisest, indeed, of monde, but no schoolmaster. Shakespeare's first Peg zamenean, vien a play was to be written, was that a Modi ya mteresting sury. Long before Shake-, Eno, Angite melty works that the story is the The Greek word drama There is clear evidence in his plays, not only that Shakespeare knew this and chose his stories accordingly, but also that, when he had chosen a story, he distinctly asked himself which of these great elementary truths was chief in it; and then deliberately with a design of which the evidences become unquestionable when they are found-so planned and wrote as to make that truth everywhere the felt but unseen soul of his story, giving the charm of a true spiritual unity to all its movements. Shakespeare was deeply religious; but in religion, as in everything else, his genius used the accidents as accidents, and laid foundations for his structures of life only in essentials. The religion of his plays may almost be summed up in the words-Love God; love your neighbour; do your work. In one form or another, he constructs his plots with an underthought that in the fulfilment of these three duties lies the solving of all problems that can vex the heart of man. It is his fidelity throughout to these first principles that has caused the volume of Shakespeare's plays to be called a Lay Bible by many who are, nevertheless, ready to think that it is so by chance, or as the unstudied effect of a series of pictures of life given by a dramatist who was himself gentle of nature. But let us look at his manner of work. In what is, perhaps, his earliest original play, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," there is not yet that very close relation of all details to the central thought of the story which is found in later plays. But there is a clear beginning of the Shakespearean method of work. In subsequent plays-" As You Like It," "Merchant of Venice," "Romeo and Juliet ”—Shakespeare again and again chose the story of a discord, that he might show how the faise note is turned into the true. In "The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” there are two friends, Valentine and Proteus, of whom Valentine is true, but Proteus variable as his name implies-false to his friend, false to his mistress. It is Proteus who brings the discord into life, and he is made to move through the story, not among those who return evil for evil, but in a little world of people who, by continually striking the true note, bring him into tune. When he has heaped wrong upon wrong, stricken by conscience he repents : Proteus. My shame and guli coni, zzi me.— I tender't here; I b) as truly sår Tolestune. Then I am paid. And once again I do recurve them homest Who by repentanY SET SLÅd Is nor of heaven, por arth, for these are pleas'd. In the later plays there is the same teaching, It is aways Skespeare's view of with more a life that we are to everence evi with good. The dramatist is by zavar-22 de take refuge in mere bufootery—a tewen gole lai. For since a story of kuf eavy Enlve some diffealty, some protiem of ik, that can be solved only by applying to it some principles of human conduct, this ethical element becomes inseparable from a book of plays. The ethics may, indeed, be bad; but such as they are, there they must be. A dissolute man may write plays for a dissolute audience, present only such problems as interest himself and the spectators of his work, and solve them according to the principles of life which he and they apply to incidents of their own daily experience. But by Shakespeare all that was purest in the religious spirit of his time was received into a genial and sympathetic nature; he saw life with clear eyes, knowing its shows from its realities, and his views of it are helpful to us all. In Love's Labour's Lost," another of Shakespeare's earliest plays, there is a poet's kindly jest on Euphuism; but Euphuism is taken playfully as sign of that state of the business of life in which there is, according to the proverb of the sheep-shearers, great cry and little wool. It is a dainty straining after words that have no works to match them, as life may be spent rather on an empty liking to seem witty, than in a full labour to be wise. Such speaking and such living lie outside the honest course of nature, in which words tell deeds, and every life has its own work to do. In that sense Shakespeare, keeping within bounds of the lightest comedy, plays with the idlers in "Love's Labour's Lost." The King of Navarre has engaged three of his lords (Biron, Longaville, and Dumaine) to share with him three years of idleness in the name of study. Men of an age when they have work to do in the world, they are to withdraw from it all for three years of idle contemplation, during which they shall direct their lives against the course of nature, and keep statutes that include a forswearing for three years of the society of women. His Majesty greets his friends and companions beforehand as - brave conquerors! for so you are, That war against your own affections, And the huge army of the world's desires. One of the lords, Biron, has a quick wit and a ready tongue. While he agrees to share the King's three years of idle study, he asks, "What is the end of study let me know?" and, on the exclamation against "vain delight," exclaims Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain To seek the light of truth; while truth the while Light seeking light, doth light of light beguile. Which is Euphuistic way of saying that a man who can give light to help his fellows, and uses it all in the search after more light for himself alone, does practically snuff his candle out. The end of study is that we may know how to do our work. When we are young we learn what afterwards we need to know if we would do our duty in the world. But when the time of doing comes, it must not be all spent in continued preparation for the deeds that When Don Adrian wishes to think he leans on the intellect of his very small boy Moth; and when the more absurd people of the play, absurd still in the same direction, present a spectacle of the Nine Worthies, it is little Moth who takes the part of Hercules, while Don Adrian, with the stately outside, having fallen into quarrel and being invited to fight in his shirt, is brought to confession that "the naked truth of it is, I have no shirt; I go woolward for penance." In words, in clothes, in actions, there is constant suggestion of a disproportion between show and substance. The Princess of France and her ladies, come upon a question of title to Aquitaine, wait for the sending of a piece of evidence, arā so give time for idleness to let in love. The King Navarre and his gentlemen spend many fav words upon their passion, and offer love in out shows, coming to them as Boyet, one of the Fa lords, warns the Princess, |