Shakspeare has so powerfully expressed in the language of his own Cleopatra:

"The quick comedians

Extemporally will stage us: Antony

Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness."

Surely the power of ideal creation has never undergone a severer ordeal. Shakspeare's triumph over this great practical difficulty is the more surprising as there is perhaps no class of his personages -more varied, more profound, and more exquisitely delicate than his female characters.

In the expression of strong emotion, as well as in the delineation of character, Shakspeare is superior to all other dramatists, superior to all other poets. He never finds it necessary, in order to produce the effect he desires, to have recourse in the one case to violent or declamatory rhetoric, or in the other to unusual or abnormal combinations of qualities. In him we meet with no sentimental assassins, no moral monsters,

"Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes."

Without overstepping the ordinary limits of human experience, he is always able to interest or to instruct us with the exhibition of general passions and feelings, manifesting themselves in the way we generally see them in the world. He is like the great painter of antiquity, who produced his ever-varying effects by the aid of four simple colours. In the expression, too, he uniformly draws, at least in his finest passages, his illustrations from the most simple and familiar objects, from the most ordinary scenes of life. When a great occasion presents itself, he ever shows himself equal to that cccasion. There are, indeed, in his works many passages where he has allowed his taste for intellectual subtleties to get the better of his judgment, and where his passion for playing upon words-a passion which was the literary vice of his day, and the effects of which are traceable in the writings of Bacon as well as in his-is permitted to cool the enthusiasm excited by the situation or the feelings of the speaker. But this indulgence in conceits generally disappears in the great culminating moments of intense passion : and while we are speaking of this defect with due critical severity, we must not forget that there are occasions when the intensest moral agitation is not incompatible with a morbid and feverish activity of the intellect, and that the most violent emotion sometimes finds a vent in the intellectual contortions of a conceit. Part of the difficulty of the language of Shakspeare arises from the enormously developed intellectual and imaginative faculty in the poet, leading him to make metaphor of the boldest kind the ordinary

tissue of his style. The thoughts rose so fast under his pen, and successively generate others with such a portentous rapidity, that the reader requires almost as great an intellectual vivacity as the poet, in order to trace the leading idea through the labyrinth of subordinate illustration. In all figurative writing the metaphor, the image, is an ornament, something extraneous to the thought it is intended to illustrate, and may be detached from it, leaving the fundamental idea intact: in Shakspeare the metaphor is the very fabric of the thought itself and entirely inseparable from it. His diction may be compared to some elaborate monument of the finest Gothic architecture, in which the superficial glance loses itself in an inextricable maze of sculptural detail and fantastically fretted ornamentation, but where a close examination shows that every pinnacle, every buttress, every moulding is an essential member of the construction. There is assuredly no poet, ancient or modern, from whose writings may be extracted such a number of profound and yet practical observations applicable to the common affairs and interests of life; observations expressed with the simplicity of a casual remark, yet pregnant with the condensed wisdom of philosophy; exhibiting more than the acuteness of De Rochefoucauld, without his cynical contempt for humanity, and more than the practical good sense of Molière, with a far wider and more universal applicability. In the picturing of abnormal and supernatural states of existence, as in the delineation of every phase of mental derangement, or the sentiments and actions of fantastic and supernatural beings, Shakspeare exhibits the same coherency and consistency in the midst of what at first sight appears altogether to transcend ordinary experience. Every grade of folly, from the verge of idiotcy to the most fantastic eccentricity, every shade of moral perturbation, from the jealous fury of Othello to the frenzy of Lear, or the not less touching madness of Ophelia, is represented in his plays with a fidelity so complete that the most experienced physiologists have affirmed that such intellectual disturbances may be studied in his pages with as much profit as among the actual patients of a madhouse.

§ 12. The non-dramatic works of Shakspeare consist of two narrative poems, written in stanzas, entitled Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece, the volume of beautiful sonnets whose signification has excited so much controversy, and a few lyrics, some of which appear to have but indifferent claims to be attributed to the great poet. Venus and Adonis exhibits the flush and voluptuous glow of a fervent imagination, united with the laboured superintendence of form and expression natural to a young and careful artist. The story is the common mythological episode of the loves of Venus and the hunter. In the rich and somewhat sensual lovescenes in this poem, in the studious painting from external nature,

and in the delicious but somewhat effeminate melody of the verse, we see all the marks of youth, but it is the youth of a Shakspeare. The Rape of Lucrece is a poem which exhibits increased power of dealing with human passion; but still the passion is rather studied, analyzed and laid bare, than represented with dramatic force and directness. The Sonnets of Shakspeare possess a peculiar interest, not only from their intrinsic beauty, but from the circumstance of their containing confessions of the personal feelings of their author, confessions which point to some deep wrongs in love and friendship suffered by the poet. They were first printed in 1609, but were probably written several years earlier. They are 154 in number, and some are evidently addressed to some high-born youth, while others are intended for a woman of stained character. The poet bitterly complains of the treachery of his friend, and the infidelity of the woman whom he loved, while he speaks both of the one and of the other in the most ardent language of passionate, yet melancholy, devotion. Thoughout the whole of these exquisite but painful compositions there runs a deep undercurrent of sorrow, selfdiscontent, and wounded affection, which bears every mark of being the expression of a real sentiment. Nevertheless, it must be stated that accomplished students have endeavoured to explain away the autobiographical significance of the Sonnets, upon the theory that they were written on wholly imaginary themes, or in the character and to serve the occasion of some of the poet's patrons. The volume was dedicated, on its first appearance, by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, to "Mr. W. H.," who is described as the "only begetter" of the sonnets; some critics have supposed that this mysterious "Mr. W. H." was no other than William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, one of Shakspeare's most powerful friends, while others identify the unknown begetter with the Earl of Southampton. The whole production is shrouded in mystery; and we must content ourselves with admiring the deep tenderness, the melancholy grace, the play of poetical fancy, and the weight of moral reflection which may be found in these poems, without endeavouring to solve the enigma,-unquestionably a painful and personal one,-involved in the circumstances under which they were composed.

BOOKS USEFUL IN THE STUDY OF SHAKSPEARE.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS.

?

§ 3. His

§ 1. BEN JONSON. His life. § 2. His tragedies and comedies. masques and other works. § 4. BEAUMONT and FLETCHER. § 5. MASSINGER. § 6. FORD. § 7. WEBSTER. § 8. CHAPMAN, DEKKAR, MIDDLETON, MARSTON, and other minor Dramatists. § 2. SHIRLEY. § 10. Remarks on the Elizabethan drama.

§ 1. THE age of Elizabeth and James I. produced a galaxy of great dramatic poets, the like of whom, whether we regard the nature or the degree of excellence exhibited in their works, the world has never seen. In the general style of their writings, they bear a strong family resemblance to Shakspeare; and indeed many of the peculiar merits of their great prototype may be found scattered among his various contemporaries, and in some instances carried to a height little inferior to that found in his writings. Thus intensity of pathos hardly less touching than that of Shakspeare may be found in the dramas of Ford, gallant animation and dignity in the dialogues of Beaumont and Fletcher, deep tragic emotion in the sombre scenes of Webster, noble moral elevation in the graceful plays of Massinger; but in Shakspeare, and in Shakspeare alone, do we see the consummate union of all the most opposite qualities of the poet, the observer, and the philosopher.

The name which stands next to that of Shakspeare in the list of these illustrious dramatists is that of BEN JONSON (1573-1637), a vigorous and solid genius, built high with learning and knowledge of life, and whose numerous works, dramatic as well as other, possess an imposing and somewhat monumental weight. He was born in 1573, and was consequently nine years younger than Shakspeare. His career was full of strange vicissitudes. Though compelled by a stepfather to follow the humble trade of a bricklayer, he succeeded in gratifying an intense thirst for learning. The statement that he passed some time, with the assistance of a patron, at the University of Cambridge, is discredited by his own silence. At all events he studied with a diligence that certainly rendered him one of the most learned men of his age—an age fertile in learned men. He is known to have served some time as a soldier in the Low Countries, and to have distinguished himself by his courage in the field; but his theatrical career seems to have begun when he was about 20 years of age, when we find him attached as an actor to one of the