ling one song, growing together like a double cherry," etc. "The wail of Constance for the loss of her boy could only have been written by one whose feelings had been lacerated by the loss of a beloved child," cries Mr. Dowden. "Some sacred voice whispers to him [Shakespeare] that the privilege of immortality was annexed to every line he wrote." "I now believe that this strange and difficult play ['Troilus and Cressida '] was written when Shakespeare had ceased to smile genially, and when he must be either ironical or take a deep, passionate, and tragical view of life," etc., etc. Mr. Ward assures us of William Shakespeare's diffident and shrinking nature (proved from a passage in the plays); and we could easily cull volumes of this mental biography from the esthetic works of enthusiasts like the abovenamed gentlemen. But the above will suffice. It seems hardly necessary to submit that unless that word possess a meaning unknown outside of the New Shakespeare Society, this is hardly "evidence" to an exact mind. Nor, in the present case, admitting it to be "evidence," would it hardly prove an exclusive Stratfordian authorship. For there is certainly the same internal evidence that William Shakespeare was born in Epidamnium or Rome or Troy as that he was born in Stratford. There is certainly much more in the plays about Italy, Rome, and Greece than about England. For one comedy whose scene is Warwickshire there are twelve whose action is outside of England. And certainly no more familiarity is shown with Warwickshire customs than with those of Venice, or Scotland, or the Roman Forum, or the ways of the Cypriotes. And, again, there is precisely the same evidence that Shakespeare had murdered his wife like Othello, and his rival like Macbeth, and had been driven from home by his daughters like Lear, as that he had "buried a beloved child," like Queen Constance, or experienced intimations of immortality, or was of the "diffident and retir ing" disposition asserted by Mr. Ward. No man, as a matter of fact, ever led a jollier life than William Shakespeare. The records, at least, of his jokes and his gallantries survive him, and he died in a frolic. The late Mr. Bardell was knocked on the head with a pint-pot in a cellar. But Sergeant Buzfuz preferred to throw the glamour of pathos over his end by describing it as "gliding imperceptibly from the world and seeking elsewhere that tranquillity which a custom-house can never afford." I am afraid the most that can be said for Mr. Furnivall, Mr. Dowden and Mr. Ward is that they are no whit behind the eloquent sergeant in gush over their hero. But perhaps Mr. Furnivall is striving to elude these entanglements of "internal evidence" when he exclaims: "I wrote the introduction to the Venus and Adonis,' and thought I had really persuaded myself that it really was Shakespeare's first work. But on turning to 'Love's Labour's Lost' and the 'Comedy of Errors' after it, the absurdity was too apparent." Or again (forgetting that "Titus Andronicus" was, as a spectacle, much more to the taste of Elizabethan mixed audiences than the bloodless dialectics of Hamlet and Brutus): "Titus Andronicus' I do not consider.... The play declares, as plainly as play can speak, 'I am not Shakespeare's; my repulsive subject, my blood and horrors, are not and never were his.'" And yet, had Mr. Furnivall considered it, he would have found it packed with passages describable only as Shakespearean! apostrophe to Tamora topping all rivals, "As when the golden sun salutes the morn, The (A passage which smacks of Marlowe, indeed, but which it is mere pedantry to assume as his, as if a Shakespeare could not have written it.) Such lines as those wherein Titus lays his dead to rest : "Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells, Here grow no damned drugs: here are no storms, "She is a woman, therefore may be wooed; Surely these ought not to be below the notice of an esthete! And not only this, but a careful study of "Titus Andronicus" (and it is yet to come) might throw a much-to-be-desired light upon the Shakespearean theater, the stage business and properties, the action and mise en scene employed. The text calls for the following programme: Act I., Scene 2. Alarbus's limbs are lopped and his entrails feed the sacrificing fire. Act I., Scene 2. Titus kills Martius, his own son. Act II., Scene 3. Bassianus is stabbed and killed in the forest. Lavinia, his bride, ravished. Act II., Scene 4. Martius and Quintus are made to fall into a deep pit containing the body of Bassianus. Act II., Scene 5. Lavinia's hands cut off and her tongue cut out. Act III., Scene 1. Titus's hand cut off. Two heads and a hand presented to Titus. Act IV., Scene 2. Act IV., Scene 3. Act IV., Scene 4. Nurse stabbed and killed. Titus gone mad. Clown hanged. Act V., Scene 2. Chiron's throat cut by Titus. Demetrius's throat cut by Titus. Their bones ground to powder, mixed with their blood, which Lavinia catches in a basin, and a paste made from the compound is cooked into a pie. Act V., Scene 3. Lavinia killed by her father. Tamora eats the pie made out of her own sons' heads mixed with blood. Lucius kills Saturninus. Aaron is set breast-deep in earth and famished to death. And this not "to be related by the graphic tongue of some actor," but openly-in parcel at least — performed. Now, what the world would like to know is, How was this sort of thing managed on the Shakespearean boards? We cannot lavish overmuch gratitude upon gentlemen who count syllables and twitter of stopped endings for us. But one who will so substantially contribute to the history of scenic art as to tell us something of this certainly would not miss the gratitude of his countrymen! But, bad as this is, when our esthete does really consent to "consider" a play, he makes a mess of it. He counts all the "run-on lines," the "stopped" and "unstopped" endings, the "central pauses," and the rest of them-and then tells us exactly in what year this or that comedy or tragedy was written! Doubtless in his first youth young Shakespeare wrote less maturely than in his manhood. Doubtless, habitude and practice brought refinement and celerity. But the remarkable thing about it all is, that-after all the esthetic chronologies are completed - we know no more or less about it than before. Either the esthetes are entirely lost in this numerical fog of their own raising and wander aimlessly about therein, or else, by wonderful good fortune, they find their way back again, and prance triumphantly, with all their colors flying and amid tumultuous cheers, up to the very point from which they started—namely, that they are sure they don't know, and were confident of it all along. And when they do affect a demonstration, the results are marvelous. When a lad, Shakespeare created "Romeo and Juliet," with a maturity of experience and a mastery of passion past the power of all but himself; and, moreover, displayed it in a setting of stage business that today, and for our modern theaters, needs no overhauling. But in his mature manhood he had forgotten passion and stage business alike, produced ragged and uneven affairs like "Pericles," which few except scholars care to read, and which no modern manager could mount on his boards if he would! And then, having chronolized the plays, this amusing person steps up and settles for us these unspeakable sonnets! "About the sonnets" he (Mr. Furnivall) proceeds: "in addition to Nos. 8, 11, 16, 18, 20, and 21, I suppose that 10, 13, and 15 are not his either. About No. 19 I doubt. That 'to sin and never for to saint,' |