rious nights and days, have sunk, and perhaps shall sink, no deeper. In one passage a profoundness of expert learning, in another, a density of technical ignorance; in one (for example) a formula for the circulation of the blood, and in another a man killed by the infusion of poison poured into his ear, and a tetter covering his body as the accompaniment of death: an impossibility which finds no excuse in physiological science. But — while the paradox in the case of legal matter remains unatoned for- as regards the physician's art it is immensely compensated for. Everywhere quackery was the order of the Elizabethan day, and everywhere it is mercilessly satirized, and the apothecaries, mountebanks, jugglers and "water doctors" held up to the ridicule of the audience. It is hard for us to imagine a day when people were advised to wash their faces only once a week, and to wipe them only on scarlet cloth in order to keep healthy; when pills made from the ground-up skull of a man who had been hung on a gibbet, a draught of spring water that had stood in the skull of a murdered man, the powder of a mummy, the blood of "dragons," the entrails of wild animals, were prescribed for certain disorders; when tumors were ordered stroked with the hand of a dead man; when, to cure a child of the rickets, it was passed head downward between the sections. of a young tree split open for the purpose, and then tied together again (the child's recovery to parallel that of the knitting together and healing of the tree); when love philters were prescribed 1 Among the scores of these books I mention only the latest: "Medical Thoughts of Shakespeare." B. Rush Field, Easton. 1885. and sold everywhere, and when the king "touched" for scrofula. And yet it was in these days, and such as these, when every quack had his bagful of charms and philters for mental disorders, that Macbeth's physician is made to decline to prescribe for a mind diseased. "Therein the patient must minister to himself," says the good doctor. "More needs he the divine than the physician; good God, forgive us all!" And Lear's physician, instead of hanging a witch's tooth or a toad's wizen around the neck of the poor old king, as we might have expected, prescribes only rest and perfect quiet. That the purpose was to ridicule the charlatans is, I think, inferable from the fact-except only in the case of Cerimon and as above-that the passages evincing profound learning as to medicine or surgery are put into the mouths of laymen, never into the mouths of the professionals. Who can wonder that, brought up here as by a term and fine, our vision met and baffled midway by this majestic mountain of Shakespeare, some of us should give vent to our pent-up longings in theories and "crazes"! Is not the solution of the mystery, after all, to be found in dramatic necessity? Portia's law is bad, because bad law is more dramatic than good law. Had her decision been sound in equity, Antonio and Bassanio would have been worsted and Shylock have departed with his pound of flesh, while the audience remained behind to tear down the theater and break the actors' heads. Is it not that Shakespeare, whatever he was, was no esthete, no self-singer, no egoist or retailer of his own moods and humors, but rather the dramatist, not only of his own day but of his own far-off future? He framed his Hamlet not only for Burbadge, but for Garrick, for Kean, for Booth, for Irving, for Wilson Barrett. He created Macbeth's queen, Imogen, Desdemona, Rosalind, not only for the boys who simpered and smirked in women's parts, but for Siddons, Cushman, Nielson, Faucit, Anderson. Read him as we will,- with any theory, hobby, crotchet, with any conception of Hamlet or Iago the tragedian may prefer,- Shakespeare is still Shakespeare, and dominates the stage. Find in the plays whatever we will,-law, medicine, the Aristotelian or Baconian philosophies (nay, even the cipher which Mr. Donnelly believes to lurk there), mimic their diction, sift their prosodies as we may, we can neither replace nor destroy their dramatic fiber and purity. Says Charles Reade: "The Irelands palmed upon literary critics a manuscript play by Shakespeare; it was read, discussed an antiquarian or so said No! most of the critics said Yes! and fell on their knees before the manuscript. It was put on the stage: coal-heavers and apprentices set literary criticisms right in ten minutes. Why? The stuffed fish thrown down on a bank might pass for a live fish; but put it in the water. No! The stage is Shakespeare's home. Yet this Shakespeare found in his day actors who, though since eclipsed, could speak his greatest lines up to his intention and more to his mind than he could himself; this is proved by his taking the second-rate parts in his own plays: the only manager in creation that ever did this or ever will.” VII The Growth and Uicissitudes of a HEN we read a poem by Tennyson, Coleridge, or Longfellow in a peculiar or unusual metre,-in hexameter or anaposts, we assume that the metre happened to be the poet's choice. It simply never occurs to us to speculate or to devise learned treatises concerning the poet's reason for preferring that particular form of verse to another when composing that particular poem. But with Shakespeare all this is changed. It seems we are to assign his different prosodiacal forms to different historical or calendar periods of his life not only, but to write his biography from these variations. Possibly we are to imagine William Shakespeare himself never sitting down to prepare a drama for his boards without consulting his almanac, in order to ascertain the metre in which it was proper for him to write it. Certainly it would perplex an average intellect to conceive a conclusion how ever hermetic, oracular, far fetched, overstrained or finical as to poor Shakespeare's habits, methods, motives, models, experiences and duties of composition, which has not been formulated by the esthetic, inductive and creative critics, though doubtless the womb of time is yet full of them. At a late meeting of the New Shakespeare Society of London, I understand that penetrative body to have ascertained definitely that Mr. Shakespeare wrote "The Tempest," to "illustrate Enchantment as an engine of Personal Providence." Pending the necessary, and no doubt imminent, work in twenty-five volumes octavo which shall elucidate this discovery, I am disposed to admit it to the chronological catalogue; for doubtless Mr. Shakespeare will be found to have been investigating "personal providences" at that period of his management of the Globe Theater. But I cannot forbear remarking that all this sort of absolute certainty is far less amazing than amusing when we remember that William Shakespeare himself not only never saw the 1623 text of his own plays, but (according to Heminges and Condell) never authorized the quarto texts upon which it was founded. That Heminges and Condell should impeach their own record by the statement that all their own predecessor "copy" was stolen and surreptitious, might indeed add the weight of what lawyers call a "declaration against interest" to their statement, were it not that there is much corroborative evidence to the same effect, though it is hard to believe that if these quartos were stolen at all, William Shakespeare did not himself wink at the theft. Shakespeare might well have |