peters, 2 Luters, 2 Harpers, 2 Singers, 1 Rebeck-player, 6 Sackbuts [the sackbut was a wind instrument with a slide, the progenitor of the modern trombone], 8 "Vyalls," 1 Bagpipe, 9" Minstrilles," 3 Dromslades, 2 Flute-players, 2 Players on the Virginals.

Three other sorts of dances I cannot omit to mention, though in the briefest way. These were the Coranto, or current-traverse, which seems to have been an Italian form of country-dance, somewhat like what we call the reel, where two lines are formed and dancers advance from the ends to meet and execute various figures in the middle; the Paspy (i.e., passepied, or pass-foot) or Passamezzo, which seems to have been a sort of rapid minuet; and the Morris-dance, which is commonly (though, I think, on doubtful grounds) supposed to be Moorish-dance, and to have been brought from Spain. Laneham, a writer who gives us some minute descriptions of matters in the personal household of Queen Elizabeth, writing in 1590, mentions a "lively Moris-dauns according to the auncient manner; six dauncers, Mawd-Marion and the fool." It seems from other authorities that the Morris-dancers followed a leader, guiding their movements by his, somewhat as in the modern german.

In my first lecture on this subject I gave you several citations from Shakspere's plays to show how he not only loved music with sincere passion, but how often he wrote passages which indicate gleams of insight into its mysteries. I cannot better close this account of music in Shakspere's time than by reading a sonnet in which he sends a keen shaft of inquiry into a mysterious matter lying deep in music as in all art. You remember Jessica's saying, which I read: "I am never merry when I hear sweet music."

This sonnet advances a little farther and moots the question, Why is it, if music makes us sad, that we culti

vate it? Perhaps it has occurred to all of you to ask yourselves why you should go eagerly to see a tragedy on the stage which harrows up your feelings, in apparent opposition to those first principles of ordinary existence which lead us to avoid-instead of seeking that which gives us pain. Shakspere, as I said, moots this subtle question in the first part of the sonnet; but he then leaves it, and proceeds to make an argument out of musical concords to induce his young friend to leave his single state and, as it were, make himself a chord, instead of a single tone, by marrying. The first phrase, " Music to hear," is an apostrophe to his friend equivalent to "O thou whose voice is music to hear."

VIII

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly?
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tunéd sounds,

By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling Sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee," thou single wilt prove none."

From

And now let us ascend, in conclusion, to a more general view which goes to the root of the whole matter. the music of Shakspere's time let us pass to the music of Shakspere's life.

Consider for a moment the singular fact that the prin

ciple upon which all music depends is the principle of opposition, of antagonism. The least glance at the physical basis of sound will recall this clearly to your minds. Here is a stretched string. As stretched, it is exerting a force in this direction. If I pull it aside, disturb it, cross it, as it were, and trouble it, with a force acting athwart its own direction, it then, and then only, gives forth its proper tone, makes its rightful music. This principle is general throughout the physics of tone. The vibration which produces a musical sound is always set up by two forces, the one acting athwart the other.

Now it is not difficult to carry this idea over from the physical into the moral world. If it is a fancy, it is certainly not an unprofitable one, that a harmonious life, like a musical tone, comes out of opposition. Between each man, and the world about him, there is a never-ceasing antagonism. It is an antagonism which results from the very constitution of things. Just so far as I am I, and you are you, so far must we differ; the mysterious course of nature, which so often says No to our Yes, with its death and its pain and its other mysterious phenomena - this joins with the force of each individual to oppose the force of each other individual. Everywhere there is antagonism, opposition, thwarting. No person who listens at this moment need go out of his own experience for a single day to find it.

Well, then, the problem of life may be said to be to control these moral vibrations which are set up by our troubles and crosses into those ordered beats which give the musical tone, rather than those confused and irregular pulses which result in mere unmusical noise. One man's life is like the mere creaking of a wheel, the binding of a saw, the griding of bough against bough,— mere unorganised noise, while another man's is like that clear and

perfect tone of music which results from regular vibrations produced by two steady forces upon a proper material.

Now I find it delightful to think that our dear Master Shakspere was one of the musical tones, and that he wrested this music out of the most fearful antagonisms. The loving study of Shakspere during the last twenty years has developed what seems to me the certainty that about midway of his career some terrible cloud came over his life which for a time darkened his existence with the very blackness of despair. If we divide his career into three periods, we find that to his first period belong Love's Labour's Lost, Midsummer Night's Dream, and all the comedies; here, however, in the second period, about 16011602 and on, we find him writing those murky and bitter tragedies of Hamlet, of Lear, of Macbeth, of Timon. His antagonism has come, and has plucked him rudely out of his position.

But at last marvellously he conquers it, and orders it to sweet music. Here in the third period we find him writing Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Tempest, Henry VIII - plays all breathing of reunion after absence, of reconciliation, of forgiveness of injuries, of heavenly grace. So he draws his oppositions to harmony; so he converts his antagonisms into ravishing sounds.

Permit me to hope, therefore, that when life shall come to you, as the tutor of Katharina came to her, and shall hand you your lute with frets on it, you will not cry with the Shrew," Frets, call you them? I'll fume with them," but will look upon the frets as simply the conditions of harmony, and will govern your troubles to music.

CHAPTER XV

THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME-I

N carrying out the programme laid down at the beginning, I come in the present lecture to discuss the Domestic Life of Shakspere's Time. It is my wish to make the treatment of this subject centre directly upon Shakspere himself. I desire to present not only the domestic life of his time, but that part of it which went on about the low-ceilinged and largeraftered house in Henley Street, Stratford, where Shakspere was born, or in the quiet Warwickshire fields and pleasant lanes betwixt Shakspere's home and Anne Hathaway's cottage a mile distant, or in the statelier rooms and park-grounds of Sir Thomas Lucy at Charlecote near by, or in the magnificent castle of Kenilworth, which was only a few miles distant and in which Leicester gave such royal entertainment to Queen Elizabeth in the summer of 1575. All these places connect themselves with the personal history of William Shakspere; and I shall endeavour to bring them before you, during my two lectures, in some such familiar way as will add to those features of Shakspere's personality which we have hitherto been endeavouring to piece out