called Shakespeare Apocrypha. Pericles, in the composition of which Shakespeare probably had some part after the second act, might be placed at the end of the third period; and Henry VIII, in which he seems to have collaborated with John Fletcher, might be placed in the fourth period.

30. Plays of First Period.—The first period of Shakespeare's dramatic development was essentially one of apprenticeship and imitation. The young artist was improving himself in versification and studying the efforts of his contemporaries to the end that he might be more skilful in his own technique. Lyly, Greene, Kyd, and Marlowe were all powerful in their influence; and while the period placed most emphasis on comedy it also made a strong beginning in tragedy and history.

Thoroughly typical is Love's Labour's Lost (1591). This play makes unusual use of rhyme, a mark of the dramatist's earlier years, and is dominated throughout by the euphuistic style. The rather artificial plot of a king and three of his lords who forswear the company of ladies for three years in order to devote themselves to study and who are interrupted by a princess and her ladies who come on an embassy, serves only as the basis of unlimited wit and repartee. Among the lords Biron, a prototype of Jaques in As You Like It, is outstanding; while Armado, his foil, is a forerunner of Malvolio in Twelfth Night. A Spanish braggart slightly reminiscent of Ralph Roister Doister, he has also an experience like that of Malvolio when entanglement in a device of letters leads to his ultimate discomfiture.

The Comedy of Errors (1591) depends for its merit primarily upon its rapid action and its use of mistaken

identity. The plot was taken primarily from the Menaechmi of Plautus, with some suggestions from the Amphitruo; and the play, dealing with the story of two twin sons and their servants, the famous Dromios, while it makes much use of word-play and doggerel, is in some ways so excellent as to lead some scholars to doubt that it should be placed among the dramatist's earliest efforts. "Three things are especially noteworthy in Shakespeare's adaptation: the far greater complication in story than in the Latin originals; the skill with which the story is adapted to the tastes of the immediate public; and the ingenuity combined with sureness with which Shakespeare handles his many threads of plot." 2

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1592) is in every way one of the most interesting of Shakespeare's plays for the student of dramatic workmanship. In no other are the mistakes of the young artist more apparent; in no other is his meritorious striving more manifest. The play deals in highly artificial fashion with the love affairs of four characters-Valentine, Proteus, Silvia, and Julia— and contains several situations or incidents that within a few years became conventional on the Elizabethan stage. Some of these Shakespeare himself later used to better advantage, such as the turning of a plot on the device of a ladder of cords or the giving up of a betrothal ring, a discussion of different suitors by two ladies, a young woman's following the object of her love disguised as a page, and this same young woman's being sent as a messenger to the newer love of her lord. The production shows a lack of dramatic proportion, the first two acts moving with unusual slowness, and the characterization, * Baker: The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist, 135.

strong at times, is rather uneven. On the other hand, the excessive euphuism sometimes gives way to superb and genuine poetry; Launce is an impressive experiment in low comedy; and the highly romantic and lyric note that is frequently struck gives good promise of greater things

to come.

The three plays of Henry VI are concerned with the historical events of the close of the Hundred Years' War and of the Wars of the Roses. The first play deals primarily with Joan of Arc and Talbot, the English commander; the second with the murder of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, by Suffolk, the subequent overthrow of Suffolk himself, the insurrection led by Jack Cade, and the battle of St. Alban's; and the third with the further course of the Wars of the Roses, from the death of Richard of York to the elevation as king of his son, Edward IV. These plays, based naturally on Holinshed and written to some extent at least in collaboration, have offered to scholars one of the most baffling problems in the history of literature. It seems safe to say, however, that with the first one, which gives a strange and coarse portrayal of Joan of Arc, Shakespeare had very little to do; that he probably wrote a considerable part of the second, in which the characteristics of his genius are frequently manifest; and that he had much to do with the third, which reveals throughout the hand of a painstaking workman.

Titus Andronicus (1592) is a "tragedy of blood," written for a public that had recently been thrilled by The Spanish Tragedy and The Jew of Malta and that desired more entertainment of the same sort, or plays even more sensational and revengeful. Doubt has more than once been cast on Shakespeare's authorship of this production,

but it seems quite certainly his and nothing more than an early and hasty performance in the "blood-and-thunder " type of tragedy which later received such superb culmination in Hamlet. The spring of the action is the struggle between Titus Andronicus, the Roman conqueror of the Goths, and Tamora, the captive queen, the villain being 'Aaron, a Moor, the lover of Tamora. There is killing right and left; and Lavinia, the daughter of Titus, at one time appears with her hands cut off and her tongue cut out. The first act has some elements of strength and we come more than once upon the Shakespearean accent, as in the eulogy of Titus at the tomb of the Andronici: "In peace and honor rest you here, my sons!" As the play progresses, however, it becomes more and more melodramatic in its seeking for violent and sensational effects.

Richard III (1593), based upon Holinshed, is possibly also indebted to the earlier and anonymous The True Tragedy of Richard the Third, and to the influence of Marlowe. The play is unusually interesting as representing Shakespeare's study of the bases of appeal to an Elizabethan audience. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who killed his two nephews and committed other crimes to gain his crown, was an excellent combination of hero and villain; and the play in its highly rhetorical quality (as in Richard's soliloquy, "Now is the winter of our discontent," Clarence's dream, the orations of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and of Richard to their troops, and Richard's call, "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!") was a strong forerunner of Henry V and Julius Caesar. Early poetic and euphuistic effects are to be seen in the word-play in the dialogues of Richard with Anne and Elizabeth, while the ghosts of those whom Richard

had killed and who rise to haunt him precede something similar but even more finely done in Julius Caesar. The firm handling of the difficult fourth act moreover shows increasing mastery of technique. Richard III is eminently a work of a young artist, but on every page it bears the mark of Shakespeare, and it is only by reason of merit that after more than three hundred years it still remains one of the dramatist's most popular productions.

King John (1593) is especially interesting as affording ground for a study of the drama as an aristocratic form of literature different from such a democratic form as the novel. The play owed much to The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England (§ 17), and, nowhere mentions Magna Carta, the great monument of the reign to freedom and democracy. The Elizabethan age with its emphasis on nationality glorified the hero, and either a good or a bad man might succeed on the stage if he was strong in quality. Shakespeare accordingly found excellent subjects in such men as Henry V and Richard III, but in John he had a weak subject and one with which under the circumstances he could not possibly succeed so well. Constance, the mother of Arthur, and the patriotic Faulconbridge are strong characterizations, however; and the dialogue at the beginning of Act IV, in which Arthur pleads to Hubert de Burgh, is one of the most pathetic and powerful in the national literature.

Richard II (1594), while not quite so rhetorical as Richard III and hence not so unusually popular, is frequently more delicately poetic and especially shows advance in the subtle art of characterization. This is best seen in the interpretation of Richard himself. His "love of the spectacular and his enjoyment of his own emotions