LII All these the daughters of old Nereus were, Which have the sea in charge to them assigned, To rule his tides, and surges to uprear, To bring forth storms, or fast them to upbind, And sailors save from wrecks of wrathful wind. And yet, besides, three thousand more there were Of th' Ocean's seed, but Jove's and Phoebus' kind; The which in floods and fountains do appear, And all mankind do nourish with their waters clear. LIII The which, more eath it were for mortal wight Were present at this great solemnity : And there, amongst the rest, the mother was Which, for my Muse herself now tired has, (IV. 11.) SHAKESPEARE, PRINCIPAL WORKS: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, 1593-4, displaying the poetic fire and vigour which might be expected from their author, but too voluptuously coloured by the unrestrained imagination of the poet to be generally acceptable in an age whose standard of literary propriety differs so greatly from that in which they were produced.-Dramas, comprising tragedies, comedies, and historical plays. Their chronology has been the subject of much elaborate but vain enquiry and dispute: almost the only evidence being derivable from hints occurring in the dramas themselves, and those, for the most part, of an extremely vague kind. A thoroughly reliable chronology, if such could possibly be ascertained, would undoubtedly be of the highest nterest, as tracing with certainty the gradual development of the genius of Shakespeare. Malone, one of the best of his numerous critics, constructed a table of dates which, however, he wisely confessed to be in great measure hypothetical. The Second Part of King Henry VI., which may with some probability be put down to the year 1590, appears to have been one of the first of his undoubted productions. In general all that can be asserted with confidence is that Shakespeare continued writing almost to the period of his death: and that the Roman plays were among his latest works. It is scarcely necessary to enumerate his principal performances, which may be classed perhaps in the following order of merit or interest: Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Henry IV., The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, King Richard III., King John, King Henry VI., The Tempest, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, Julius Cæsar.—The Sonnets, composed at different periods before 1598 and first printed in 1609. In the high-flown language of the day they express an extravagant affection for the object of his worship, who was of the male sex-whoever he may have been. Hallam is tempted to wish, and probably most of the admirers of Shakespeare's genius are also tempted to wish, that the Sonnets had never been written, to detract in any degree from our would-be entire esteem for the personal character of the 'gentle Shakespeare.' In the Tears of the Muses, in which each of those inspiring divinities is made to lament over the supposed decay of the cultivation of her particular province, Spenser thus unmistakeably alludes to the rising star: 'All these, and all that else the Comic Stage With seasoned wit and goodly pleasaunce graced, Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced: And those sweet wits, which wont the like to frame, And he the man whom Nature self had made Implying, of course, not his natural but his literary death; which seems to point to an interval, for whatever reason, in his intellectual activity, and also to the already appearance of some or other of his comedies. The Tears of the Muses was published in the year 1591. In Colin Clout's Come Home Again, 1595, in celebrating his illustrious brother-poets, Spenser, while excusably reserving his highest mead of praise for his noble and gentle patron, Sir Philip Sidney, whom he immortalises under the name of Astrophel, did not omit to commemorate (as is with the highest degree of probability conjectured) the then almost fully expanded genius of the poet destined to eclipse himself as well as all others in fame : 'And there, though last not least, is Aëtion; To attempt to point out again, however briefly, the peculiar merits of those dramatic productions which are placed, by universal consent, at the very head of all poetry, would be a work of supererogation. The reason of so exalted a position is sufficiently indicated in the just eulogy of his brother-dramatist, Jonson: Dryden's concise criticism is perhaps, as far as it goes, the best ever written. He was the man,' says he, who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him; and he drew them not laboriously but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it—you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature: he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike: were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him. No man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets: : "Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi." It is not so pleasant to admit the faults as it is the excellencies of Shakespeare. Yet only blind affection' or 'silliest ignorance' will deny that there is much we ought to wish he had not written. Much paltry quibbling and small wit, besides a not infrequent style of bombast and obscurity. To the absurd praises of certain silly critics of the time given to him for his real or reputed neglect in correcting his writings, Jonson, whose genuine and philosophical admiration of his friend is quoted in its place, was accustomed to reply 'would that he had blotted a thousand' lines. Such undistinguishing and unthinking laudation in other matters, besides Shakespearian worship, is the silliest ignorance':— 'Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right: The truth, but gropes and urges all by chance.' Some of the most beautiful of his gems lie embedded, as it were, in ore of a certain richness indeed but of comparatively little worth. Of all his works, Hamlet is generally and justly considered the master-piece. In the way of episode, the scene in the 'grave-yard' for truth to nature and fine philosophic reflection is scarcely paralleled, of its kind, in all literature. Next to Hamlet, for beauty and pathos Romeo and Juliet may perhaps claim with reason the greatest admiration. To hint at all the other magnificent creations occupying the first rank amongst his thirty-four dramas would be a work of supererogation. Of his minor dramas, although it is not altogether his own, and is believed to be one of his earliest, for pathos and interest of situation Pericles, we venture to think, is not the least interesting and charming. The first complete collection of the Plays appeared in the year 1623, in one folio volume. D I. THE WORLD A STAGE. (Jaques loq.) ALL the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts As You Like It, ii. 7 |