VERSIFICATION.

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the humorous prose spoken as a rule (though not exclusively) by personages of higher rank and superior importance-the prose of high comedy, as I may venture to call it. Suggested in form by the dialogues of Lyly, these Shakspercan conversations-of which the wit-combats in Much Ado about Nothing furnish the most signal example—are far from being essentially euphuistic; and in no branch of dramatic writing was the advance made by Shakspere more remarkable, while none of his Elisabethan contemporaries approached him in the combination of elegance, lightness, and point which he here displayed. With all his powers of observation and wit, Ben Jonson laboured in vain to attain to an equal success; Beaumont and Fletcher have been judged to have 'copied more faithfully than Shakspere the language of the Court and the Mall,' but were it so, they copied far inferior models',-as, again, the comic dramatists of the Restoration copied models inferior even to theirs. But it is not a comparison which is in question here. What I wish to indicate is that the prose form of English high comedy has its first model in Shakspere.

cation.

His versification, and the results which in this respect His versifihe achieved for our dramatic literature, have been made the subject of far more extensive comment. Here it will suffice to say that the progress which he helped to effect was not, so far as we can judge, essentially determined by himself. Nor was it entirely a progress to superior excellence of form, while it signally tended in the direction of freedom. In the earlier plays-notably in Love's Labour's Lost-Shakspere's art as a versifier is still far from self-possessed; in the latest-such as the Roman plays-the laws of metre are in some points relaxed with lordly licence. But while Shakspere thus at first falls short of, and then passes beyond, the norm observed in the plays of his middle period, such as Twelfth

1 Donne, Essays on the Drama, p. 60, where it is happily said that Mr. Hallam's suggestion that Beaumont and Fletcher represent the phase and manners of the more polished circles more truly than their great contemporary may be granted when the Don Johns, Don Felixes, and Rutilios of those dramatists shall be shown to have excelled in conversation Orlando in Ardennes, Benedick at Messina, and Cassio in Cyprus.'

The con

struction of his plays.

Night and As You Like It, the general currents of
change observable in his versification are those common
to the whole Elisabethan drama. The tradition of ac-
commodating versification to syntax-stopping the line
with the sentence or the clause-he derived from the
example of Marlowe; but Marlowe himself in his later
dramas, like Shakspere in his, abandoned a rigid adherence
to it. The use of rhyme was likewise being narrowed when
Shakspere began to write; but the strong lyrical element
in his poetic individuality caused him as it were to exhibit
a lingering affection towards it, especially in plays with a
decidedly lyrical element in their conception, such as Romeo
and Juliet. On the other hand, in the adoption of the use
of feminine endings he followed the current of popular
taste, though he never gave way to it to the same extent
as Fletcher; so that grave doubts have arisen as to the
entirety of Shakspere's authorship of the play in which this
tendency is most conspicuously followed (Henry VIII).
That, notwithstanding all this, Shakspere's verse remains
unrivalled, is due to the spontaneous flow of his poetic
creativity. He could not, like Jonson, have written his
verses first in prose; for with him, unless all appearances
deceive, there was no interval between the conception of a
thought and its production in its appropriate poetic form.
This is illustrated by the exquisite appropriateness of the
lyrics introduced by him into his dramas, which reproduce
in their very form the tone of a situation; but it characterises
his versification as a whole. He cannot be said to have
discovered, but he exemplified, with a fulness unequalled if
not unapproached, the pliancy of the chosen metre of the
English drama,-the marble flowed under his hands.

The construction of Shakspere's plays has not always
been regarded by critics as their greatest strength; yet it
is undoubtedly in this that he has exerted the most lasting
influence upon the English drama, as well as upon the
modern drama of the Germanic nations in general'. It
must not be forgotten that the conditions under which he

1 See G. Freytag, Die Technik des Dramas, p. 157 seqq.

CONSTRUCTION.

constructed his plays were still the same as those I have already adverted to in considering the characteristics common to the works of his immediate predecessors 1. In the first place, the great and irresistible demand on the part of the public was for incident-a demand which of itself necessitated a method of construction different from that of the Greek drama. To no other reason is to be ascribed the circumstance that Shakspere so constantly combined two actions in the course of a single play; and it is instructive to observe the progress which he made in the method of combination. In his adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew (Prelude and Interlude apart) the two actions have no organic connexion. In The Merchant of Venice they are soon combined with admirable skill; but it is a misguided ingenuity which finds any psychological connexion between them. But how deftly are the complicated threads of the plot of Twelfth Night woven together; and how perfectly constructed is the action of The Tempest!

The same demand however led to another danger, which was perhaps heightened in the case of Shakspere's very greatest efforts by that intensity of characterisation in which, taking all in all, we have to recognise the greatest of his dramatic qualities. The action depends in its interest to such a degree upon the hero, and the interest in the hero is raised to such a height by the time that the climax of the drama is reached, that in order to satisfy the demand for incident between climax and catastrophe, it becomes necessary to introduce characters and scenes which often weaken the effect of the concluding parts of the drama. No instance is more illustrative of this than Hamlet, where I have often experienced the fall of interest in the concluding part of the piece; but the remark applies also to King Lear, to Coriolanus, and to other plays".

Many details of Shaksperean construction are purely owing to the external conditions of his stage, and need not

1 Ante, p. 261.

2 Cf. Freytag, p. 161; but the criticism is one of the truth of which I have frequently convinced myself. The example of Henry V might be added-but the conditions of a history are obviously peculiar.

507

• Aids to construction' employed by him:

Chorus.

be dwelt upon, in particular as it is these which a skilful theatrical management may legitimately modify. But if in construction his plays be compared with those of his predecessors-with Marlowe's for instance, or Peele's-the immense advance made by Shakspere will be apparent. The best-constructed of Marlowe's dramas is more episodical in arrangement than the earliest of Shakspere's histories to which we can with certainty ascribe a virtually independent origin. Indeed, Richard III is a model of dramatic construction in the sustained power of its successive parts, and in its symmetry as a whole.

In connexion with this subject, it seems worth while to point out how the use which Shakspere made of what may be called aids to construction constituted another striking advance upon the practice of his predecessors'. Several of these expedients were derived from the Classical drama, where they had been invented to meet a very different necessity, and accordingly filled a far more important place. Such were those of prologue and epilogue, in which may be included the introduction of prologising and epilogising ghosts, and that of the Chorus. An invention of the modern stage was the explanatory dumb-show. Shakspere, as is known, did not wholly eschew the use of these expedients, but where he employed them it was usually with a felicity unknown to any of his predecessors. The result was that their use as mere perfunctory expedients was by his influence either rendered obsolete, or became a sign of weakness rather than strength in those who resorted to them.

2

Of a Chorus the chief instance in Shakspere (leaving Pericles aside as probably not designed by him) is that in Henry V; but apart from the fact that this play is a history, and therefore lends itself to the introduction of a narrative element, the dramatist was specially anxious to efface by this expedient the difference between the grandeur of the events represented and the scale of their representation.

1 See on this subject F. Lüders, Prolog und Epilog bei Shakespeare, in Jahrbuch, vol. v (1870).

2 Hamlet accordingly ridicules a prologue which merely asks the good-will of the spectators.

'AIDS TO CONSTRUCTION.'

Never have greater force and splendour of language been employed with a more direct purpose or a more consummate effectiveness. The appearance of Time in The Winter's Tale is called for by the special necessity of helping the audience over a wide interval of both time and place. The introduction of Rumour in the Second Part of Henry IV might perhaps have been more easily dispensed with.

509

and Epi

The prologues and epilogues proper generally vary accord- Prologues ing to the character of the plays which they introduce or logues. conclude. So Romeo and Juliet is introduced by a sonnet, Troilus and Cressida by a Prologue 'arm'd'.' The epilogue to As You Like It and the 'jig' concluding Twelfth Night likewise felicitously attach themselves to the plays which they conclude. In a few of Shakspere's other plays indeed the epilogues are mere expansions of the invitation 'Plaudite2; but in the great majority of his later works Shakspere has avoided this species of appeal to the good-will of the public (or, as it became in Ben Jonson's hands, to the judgment of the discerning few). The solitary instance of a prologue which amounts to an exposition of both situation and character is to be found in Richard III, where it admirably corresponds to the design of the play.

show.

It is unnecessary to add that the use of the dumb-show The dumbwas never resorted to by Shakspere (the exception in Hamlet is of course no exception proper); and that where he introduces the supernatural agency of ghosts, they appear as factors in the action itself, not as spirits who have returned to earth to speak a prologue.

The insertion of interludes merely designed for the Interludes entertainment of the spectators, and unconnected with the and masks. action of the play, was rarely resorted to by Shakspere. In his carly romantic comedies indeed-in Love's Labour's

1 This may have been suggested by the armed' Prologue to Jonson's Poetaster (1601); though of course the significance is there a very different one. Jonson had taken the notion from the Epilogus to his adversary Marston's Antonio and Mellida.

The Prologue to Henry VIII (which has been thought not to be by Shakspere) certainly partakes of the character of a manager's address to a public of which he feels uncertain.