Chapter V: Act IV: , sc. ii. The fine lines

"O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day"--

and the pretty speech of Julia in Act II, sc. vii--

"I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,
And make a pastime of each weary step,
Till the last step have brought me to my love;
And there I'll rest, as, after much turmoil,
A blessed soul doth in Elysium"--

are memorable.

Man is so eager to know about Shakespeare that he is tempted to find personal confession in the plays. It is true that the art of a young man is too immature to be impersonal. In an achieved style we see the man; in all striving for style we see what hurts him. But in poetry, human experience is wrought to symbol, and symbol is many virtued, according to the imaginative energy that broods upon it. It is said that Shakespeare holds a mirror up to life. He who looks into a mirror closely generally sees nothing but himself.

_The Comedy of Errors._

_Written._ Before 1594.

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The plot was taken from the _Menaechmi_ of
Plautus. Whether Shakespeare read the play in Latin, or in a
translation, or heard it from a friend, or saw it acted, is not
known. All four are possible.

The sub-plot, in this case a duplication of the plot, was suggested
by a part of the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus.

The play is brought on to the plane of human feeling by the
character of AEgeon. This character was suggested by a story in _Gli
Suppositi_ (The Supposes) of Ariosto.

_The Fable._ Like all comedies of mistake, the _Comedy of Errors_
has an extremely complicated plot. The play consists of a number of
ingeniously contrived situations in which either the Antipholus
and the Dromio of Ephesus are mistaken for the Antipholus and
Dromio of Syracuse, or those of Syracuse are mistaken for those of
Ephesus. The comedy of mistake is touched with beauty by the
romantic addition of the restoration of old AEgeon to his long-lost
wife.

Poets are great or little according to the nobleness of their endeavour to build a mansion for the soul. Shakespeare, like other poets, grew by continual, very difficult mental labour, by the deliberate and prolonged exercise of every mental weapon, and by the resolve to do not "the nearest thing," precious to human sheep, but the difficult, new and noble thing, glimmering beyond his mind, and brought to glow there by toil. We do not know when the play was written, nor why it was written. If it were not written by special request, for reward, it must have been chosen either for the rest given by a subject external to the mind, or as a self-set exercise in the difficult mental labour of comic dramatic construction. Every playwright sees the comic opportunity of the _Menaechmi_ fable. A playwright not yet sure of his art sees and admires behind the comedy the firm, intricate mental outline that has kept the play alive for more than two thousand years.

The _Menaechmi_ of Plautus is a piece of very skilful theatrical craft. It is almost heartless. In bringing it out of the Satanic kingdom of comedy into the charities of a larger system Shakespeare shows for the first time a real largeness of dramatic instinct. In his handling of the tricky ingenious plot he achieves (what, perhaps, he wrote the play to get) a dexterous, certain play of mind. He strikes the ringing note, time after time. It cannot be said that the verse, or the sense of character, or the invention is better than in the other early plays. It is not. The play is on a lower plane than any of his other works. It is the only Shakespearean play without a deep philosophical idea. If it be not a special commission, or an exercise in art, it is perhaps another instance of the price great men pay for being happy. It is certainly the fruit of a happier mood than that which bore the other early plays. It is also the first play that shows a fine, sustained power of dramatic construction.

It is so well constructed (for the simple Elizabethan theatre and the bustle of the Elizabethan speech) that any unspoiled mind is held by it, when it is acted as Shakespeare meant it to be acted. The closeness and firmness of the dramatic texture is the work of an acutely clear mind driven at white heat and mercilessly judged at each step. Those who do not understand the nature of dramatic art should read the ninety odd verses in which AEgeon tells his story (in Act I, sc. i). They would do well to consider the power of mind that has told so much in so few words. They will find an instance of Shakespeare's happy use of stage trick, in the final scene, where, after the general recognition, Dromio of Syracuse again mistakes Antipholus of Ephesus for his master.

Rare poetical power is shown in the making of the play. Little beauty adorns the action. The speech of Adriana (in Act II, sc. ii) against the obsession of passion that leads to treachery in marriage, is passionate and profound. It is the most deeply felt speech in the early plays. Adriana's husband is frequenting another woman who, having the charm that so often goes with worthlessness, has a power of attracting that is sometimes refused to the noble. Adriana beseeches him not to break the tie that binds them. Two souls that have been each other's are not to be torn apart without death to one of them. With that sympathy for the suffering mind which gives Shakespeare all his power--

("My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits")

he gives to her speech an unendurable reality. Reality, however obtained, is the only cure for an obsession. As far as words can teach in such a case Adriana's words teach the reality of her husband's sin.

"How dearly it would touch thee to the quick,
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious,
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate!
Wouldst them not spit at me and spurn at me,
And hurl the name of husband in my face,
And tear the stain'd skin off my harlot brow,
And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring...?
My blood is mingled with the crime of lust:
For, if we two be one, and thou play false,
I do digest the poison of thy flesh."

There is no other poetry of this intensity in the play.

It is interesting to compare Shakespeare's mind with Plautus's in the description of Epidamnum. Plautus says--

"This is the home of the greatest lechers and drunkards.

"Very many tricksters and cheaters live in this city.

"Nowhere are wheedling whores more cunning at bilking people."

Shakespeare gives the horror a spiritual turn that adds much to the intensity of the farce.

"They say, this town is full of cozenage:
As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such like liberties of sin."

The play is amusing. The plot is intricate. The interest of the piece is in the plot. When a plot engrosses the vitality of a dramatist's mind, his character-drawing dies; so here. It is sufficient to say that the character of AEgeon is the best in the play

_Titus Andronicus._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ (?)

_Source of the Plot._ (?)

_The Fable._ Tamora, Queen of the Goths, whose firstborn son is
sacrificed by Titus Andronicus, determines to be revenged. She
succeeds in her determination. Titus and his daughter are
mutilated. Two of the Andronici, his sons, are beheaded.

Titus determines to be revenged. He bakes the heads of two of
Tamora's sons in a pasty, and serves them up for her to eat. He
then stabs her, after stabbing his daughter. He is himself stabbed
on the instant; but his surviving son stabs his murderer. Tamora's
paramour is then sentenced to be buried alive, and the survivors
(about half the original cast) move off (as they say) "to order
well the State."

This play shows an instinct for the stage and a knowledge of the theatre. It seems to have been a popular piece. A knowledge of the theatre will often make something foolish theatrically effective. So here.

The piece is nearly worthless. The turning of the tide of revenge, from Tamora against Andronicus, and then from Andronicus against Tamora, is the theme. It is a simple theme. Man cannot have simplicity without hard thought, and hard thought is never worthless, though it may be applied unworthily.

There can be no doubt that Shakespeare wrote a little of this tragedy; it is not known when; nor why. Poets do not sin against their art unless they are in desperate want. Shakespeare certainly never touched this job for love. There is only one brief trace of his great, rejoicing triumphant manner. It is possible that the play was brought to him by his theatre-manager, with some such words as these: "This piece is very bad, but it will succeed, and I mean to produce it, if I can start rehearsals at once. Will you revise it for me? Please do what you can with it, and write in lines and passages where you think it is wanting. And whatever happens please let me have it by Monday."

The only poetry in the play comes in the three lines--

"You sad-fac'd men, people and sons of Rome,
By uproar sever'd, like a flight of fowl
Scatter'd by winds and high tempestuous gusts."

_King Henry VI, Part I._

_Written._ 1589-91.

_Produced._ 1591.

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ Raphael Holinshed's _Chronicles_.

_The Fable._ The play begins shortly after the death of King Henry
V. Henry VI is too young to rule. There is a feud between
Gloucester, the Lord Protector, and Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of
Winchester. In France, where Talbot is besieging Orleans, the
English have had many losses. Joan of Arc begins her conquering
progress by causing Talbot to raise the siege.

A feud between the Duke of York (the white rose faction) and the
Earl of Somerset (the red rose faction) becomes acute, in spite of
King Henry's personal intercession. It intensifies the feud between
the Lord Protector and the Cardinal. In France, Talbot is killed in
battle. The English are beaten from their possessions. Joan of Arc
is taken, tried, and burned.

The menace of civil trouble hangs over King Henry's court. The feud
between the factions of the roses threatens to break into war. The
Earl of Suffolk (one of the red rose faction) schemes to marry King
Henry to Margaret of Anjou. It is made plain that he means to
become Margaret's lover so that he may rule England through her. A
disgraceful peace is concluded with France. The play ends with
Suffolk's departure to arrange the King's marriage with Margaret.

It is plain that this play is not the work of one mind. Part of it is the work of a man who saw a big tragic purpose in events. The rest is the work of at least two mechanical (sometimes muddy) minds, who neither criticised nor understood, but had some sense of the pageant. There are bright marks in the play where Shakespeare's mind touched it.

"Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought."

"If underneath the standard of the French
She carry armour."

"Now thou art come unto a feast of death."

"Thus, while the vulture of sedition
Feeds in the bosom of such great commanders,
Sleeping neglection doth betray to loss
The conquest of our scarce-cold conqueror,
That ever-living man of memory,
Henry the Fifth."

The work as a whole is one of the old formless chronicle plays, which inspired the remark that if an English dramatist were to make a play of St. George he would begin with the birth of the Dragon. In Act II Shakespeare's mind both directs and explains the welter. The scene in the Temple Gardens, where the men of the two factions pluck the red and white roses, is like music after discord. The play is lifted into poetry. The big tragic purpose broods; something fateful quickens. The next scene, where Mortimer dies in prison, is another instance of the power of great intellect to give life. The dying Mortimer is carried in, to show how the imminent tragedy has been for long years preparing, in countless passionate men, each of whom has shaped it, little by little, out of lust and hate, till the spiritual measure tips towards justice.

The only other scenes that bear marks of Shakespeare's mind are those in Act IV, in which Talbot meets his death. The verse of these scenes is often careless, but it has a bright variety, pleasant to the mind after the strutting verse (wearily reiterating one prosodic effect, like choppy water) of the other authors. Some people claim that Shakespeare wrote the whole of this play. The intellect changes much in life; but never in kind, only in degree. Shakespeare's mind could play with dirt and relish dirt, but it was never base and never blunt. The base mind is betrayed by its conceptions, not by its amusements. Shakespeare's mind could never, at any stage of his career, have sunk to conceive the disgusting scene in which Joan of Arc pleads. Nor could he at any time have planned a play in which the moral idea is a trapping to physical action.

_King Henry VI, Part II._

_Written._ 1591-2.

_Produced._ 1592.

_Published_, in the crude original form, 1593. When first
published, the play was called "The First part of the Contention
betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster." This
version seems to have been written by Greene and Peele. It contains
passages (improving additions) that resemble Shakespeare's work;
but the work is very crude. The version as a whole reads like a
long scenario.

After the first production of this version, Shakespeare and some
other writer, possibly Marlowe, revised, improved and enlarged it.
This revised version, the _Second Part of King Henry VI_, as we now
have it, was first published in the first folio in 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ Edward Hall's _Chronicle_.

_The Fable._ The play begins with the arrival of Margaret of Anjou
at the Court of King Henry VI. An altercation among the Lords in
scene i. explains the political situation to those who have not
seen the first part of the trilogy. The subject is the gradual
ascent to power of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. The play is
turbulent with passions. The subject is obscured and made grander
by the war of interests and lusts among the nobles of the Court.
The Queen's party, the Duke Humphrey's party, and Cardinal
Beaufort's party, make a welter of hate and greed, against which
the Duke of York's cool purpose stands out, as Augustus stands out
against the wreck of old Rome. The action is interrupted and
lightened by the cheat of Simpcox and by the rebellion of Jack
Cade. In modern theatres the passage of time is indicated by the
dropping of a curtain and by a few words printed on a programme.
The Elizabethan theatre had neither curtain nor programme. The
passage of time was suggested by some action on the stage as here.
The play advances the tragedy of the King by removing the figures
of Duke Humphrey, the Cardinal, and the Earl of Suffolk. It ends
with the first triumph of the white rose faction, under the Duke of
York, at the battle of St. Albans.

It is plain that Shakespeare worked upon the revision of this play with a big tragic conception. The first half of the piece is very fine. He makes the crude, muddy, silly welter of the Contention significant and complete. He reduces it to a simple, passionate order, deeply impressive. The poet who worked with him, worked in sympathy with his dramatic intention. If this poet were Marlowe, as some believe (and the clearness of the man's brain seems to point to this), it is another proof that the two great poets were friends during the last months of Marlowe's life. It is plain that something stopped the revision before it was finished. The latter half of the play is only half written. It has flesh and blood but no life. It reads like work that has been wrought to a pitch by two or three re-writings, and then left without the final writing that turns imagination into vision. It would be interesting to know why Shakespeare left the play in this state. Perhaps there was no time to make it perfect before the rehearsals began. Perhaps the murder of Marlowe upset the plans of the capitalist who was speculating in the play. If it had been finished in the spirit of the first two and a half acts it would have been one of the grandest of the historical plays.

The poetry of the two completed acts is often noble. The long speech of York, in Act I, coming, as it does, after a clash of minds turbid with passion, is most noble. It gives a terror to what follows. The calm mind makes no mistake. The judgment of a man without heart seems as infallible as fate, as beautiful, and as ghastly. All happens as he foresees. All the cruelty and bloodiness of the latter half of the play come from that man's beautifully clear, cool brain. He stands detached. One little glimmer of heart in him would alter everything. The glimmer never comes. Humphrey is poisoned, Suffolk is beheaded, the Cardinal dies. Cade, in that most awful scene of the mob in power, looks at two heads on pikes with the remark--

"Is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved
well when they were alive....

Now part them again."

These are some of the results of the working of a fine intellect in which--

"Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought,
And not a thought but thinks on dignity."

There is a terrible scene at the Cardinal's death-bed. The Cardinal is discovered in bed "raving and staring as if he were madde." He has poisoned his old enemy, the Duke Humphrey. Now he is dying; the murder is on his soul, and nothing has been gained by it. The path is made clearer for his enemies perhaps. That is the only result. Now he is dying, the waste of mind is at an end, and the figure of the victim is at the foot of the bed.

"Bring me unto my trial when you will.
Died he not in his bed? where should he die?
Can I make men live, whe'r they will or no?
O, torture me no more, I will confess.
Alive again? then show me where he is:
I'll give a thousand pound to look upon him.
He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them.
Comb down his hair: Look! look! it stands upright.
Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul.
Give me some drink."

Some people find humour in the Simpcox and Cade scenes. There is more sadness and horror of heart than humour. The minds of the two great poets were brooding together on life. They saw man working with intellect to bring ruin, and working without intellect to bring something beastlier than man should know. In its unfinished state the play is without the exaltation of great tragedy. It would be one of the hopeless plays, were it not for the passionate energy of mind with which the nobles alter life. There is little human feeling in the play. Warwick by Gloucester's corpse shows the sense of rectitude of a police inspector. At the death-bed of the Cardinal, he makes the remark of a fiend--

"See how the pangs of death do make him grin."

The one human, tender figure is that of the King, who betrays his friend, his only true friend--

"With sad unhelpful tears; and with dimm'd eyes
Looks after him, and cannot do him good."

This gentle, bewildered soul makes the only human remarks in the play. In Shakespeare's vision it is from such souls, planted, to their own misery, among spikes and thorns, that the flower of human goodness blossoms.

_King Henry VI, Part III._

_Written._ (?)

_Published_, in the crude original form, 1595. When first
published, the play was called "The True Tragedie of Richard Duke
of Yorke, and the Death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the
whole contention betweene the two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke."
This version seems to have been by Greene, Peele, Marlowe, or by
some combination among the three. There are some marks of
Shakespeare's hand upon it; but not many. Afterwards the piece was
revised and enlarged to its present form by some unknown hand.
Shakespeare added a few touches to this revision. It was printed in
the first folio as his original work.

_Source of the Plot._ Edward Hall's _Chronicle_. Raphael
Holinshed's _Chronicle_.

_The Fable._ The play describes the rise to power of Edward, Duke
of York, afterwards Edward IV. It carries on the story of the reign
of Henry VI from the time of his deposition by Richard, Duke of
York, to the time of his murder by Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
Various other tragedies are developed by the plot. Richard, Duke of
York, is defeated and put to death. The Earl of Warwick rises to
power, makes Edward, Duke of York, King, revolts from him, restores
Henry VI, is attacked, defeated, and killed in battle. Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, begins to cherish ambition, and sets bloodily
to work to gratify it. Edward, Duke of York, after one deposition,
due to his own treachery, obtains the supreme power, and rules as
King.

Shakespeare had little hand in this ruthless chronicle. The idea of the piece seems to be this, that--

"It is war's prize to take all vantages,"

that mercy has no place in war, that an act of mercy in war is more fatal than defeat, and that the parfit gentle knight, if he wish to prosper, must greet his father after battle with some such remark as--

"I cleft his beaver with a downright blow;
That this is true, father, behold his blood."

There are three scenes that rouse human emotion: that in Act I, sc. iv, where Margaret of Anjou taunts the captured York before putting him to death; that in Act II, sc. v, where King Henry wishes himself either dead, or called to some gentler trade than kingship; and that at the end, after the battle of Tewkesbury, where the Prince of Wales is murdered in his mother's presence. The second of these, the lamentation of King Henry, is an enlargement, done in leisure, from a suggestion in the early version. It is a very beautiful example of the quiet, limpid running rhetoric that marks Shakespeare's best moments in the days before he attained to power.

"So minutes, hours, days, moneths and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah, what a life were this. How sweet. How lovely.
Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich-embroidered canopy
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery."

_A Midsummer Night's Dream._

_Written._ 1595 (?)

_Published._ 1600.

_Source of the Plot._ The fantasy is of Shakespeare's making. Some
of it was perhaps current in popular belief. Names and lesser
incidents were suggested by various books. He took little bits from
various sources, added them to the vision, and turned upon the
whole the light of his mind. If any author laid under contribution
were to recognise his bantling, he could only cry to it, "Bless
thee, Bottom, thou art translated." Shakespeare did never this
particular kind of wrong but with just cause.

_The Fable._ Theseus, Duke of Athens, is about to marry Hippolyta.
Bottom, the weaver, and his friends, plan to play the tragedy of
Pyramus and Thisbe before the Duke after the wedding.

Hermia and Lysander, two lovers, whose match is opposed, plan to
escape from Athens to a state where they can marry.

Demetrius, in love with Hermia, is loved by Helena.

Oberon, King of the fairies, planning to punish his Queen Titania,
orders Puck to procure a juice that will make her dote upon the
next thing seen by her.

Helena pursues Demetrius into the wood of the fairies. Titania,
anointed with the juice, falls in love with Bottom. Lysander,
anointed with the juice, falls in love with Helena. The confusion
caused by these enchantments (accidentally) makes the main action
of the play. When the purpose of Oberon is satisfied, the
enchantments are removed. The cross purposes of the lovers cease.
Theseus causes Hermia to wed Lysander, and Helena to wed Demetrius.
Bottom and his company perform their tragedy, and all ends happily.

It is a strange and sad thing that the English poets have cared little for England; or, caring for England, have had little sense of the spirit of the English. Many of our poets have written botanical verses, and braggart verses, many more have described faithfully the appearance of parts of the land at different seasons. Only two or three show the mettle of their pasture in such a way that he who reads them can be sure that the indefinable soul of England has given their words something sacred and of the land.

Shakespeare attained to all the spiritual powers of the English. He made a map of the English character. We have not yet passed the frontiers of it. It is one of his humanities that the English country, which made him, always meant much to him, so that, now, wherever his works go, something of the soul of that country goes too, to comfort exiles over the sea. Man roams the world, wandering and working; but he is not enough removed from the beasts to escape the prick in the heart that turns the tired horse homeward, and sets the old fox padding through the woods to die near the earth where he was whelped. Shakespeare's heart always turned for quiet happiness to the country where he lived as a boy. In this play, he turned not to the squires and farm-folk, but to the country itself, and to those genii of the country, the fairies, believed in, and often seen by country people, and reverenced by them as the cause of mishaps. Imagination in a work of art is a transmuting of the known by understanding. For some reason, perhaps home-sickness, perhaps weariness of the city-jostle, that those who have lived the country life cannot call life, or it may be, perhaps, from an exultation in the bounty of the world to give pleasure to the mind, the country meant very much to Shakespeare in the months during which he wrote the last of the English plays. In writing this play, his imagination conceived Athens as an English town, possibly Stratford, or some other more pleasant place, with a wood, haunted by fairies, only a league away, where the mind could be happy listening to the voice of the beloved--

"More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear."

There was a memory of happiness about the wood. It was

"the wood, where often you and I
Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie,
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet."

In this wood, where Theseus goes a-hunting, Shakespeare, in his fantasy, allows the fairies to vex the life of mortals. For a little while he fancied, or tried to fancy, that those who are made mad and blind by the obsessions of passion are made so at the whim of powers outside life, and that the accidents of life, bad seasons, personal deformities, etc., are due to something unhappy in a capricious immortal world, careless of this world, but easily offended and appeased by mortal action.

All the earth of England is consecrated by the intense memories of the English. In this play Shakespeare set himself free to tell his love for the earth of England that had ministered to his mind with beauty through the years of youth. Walking in the Cotswold country, when

"russet-pated choughs, many in sort
Rising and cawing at the gun's report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,"

gives to the passenger a sense of the enduringness of the pageant upon which those seeing eyes looked more than three centuries ago.

_Romeo and Juliet._

_Written._ 1591-96.

_Published_, in a mutilated form, 1597.

_Source of the Plot._ The story existed in many forms, mostly
Italian. Shakespeare took it from Arthur Broke's metrical version
(_Romeus and Juliet_), and possibly consulted the prose version in
William Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_. The tale had been
dramatised and performed before Arthur Broke published his poem in
1562. The play (if it existed a generation later) may have helped
Shakespeare. It is now lost.

_The Fable._ The houses of Montague and Capulet are at feud in
Verona.

Romeo, of the house of Montague, falls in love with Juliet, of the
house of Capulet. She returns his love. A friar marries them.

In a street brawl, which Romeo does his best to stop, Mercutio,
Romeo's friend, is killed by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin. Carried away
by passion, Romeo kills Tybalt. He is banished from Verona.

The Capulets plan to marry Juliet to the Count Paris.

Juliet, in great distress, consults the Friar who married her to
Romeo. He gives her a potion to create an apparent death in her, to
the end that she may be buried in the family vault, taken thence
and restored to life by himself, and then conveyed to Romeo. He
writes to Romeo, telling him of the plan; but the letter
miscarries. Juliet takes the potion, and is laid in the tomb as
dead.

The Count Paris comes by night to the tomb, to mourn her there.
Romeo, who has heard only that his love is dead, also comes to the
tomb. The two lovers fight, and Romeo kills Paris. He then takes
poison and dies at Juliet's side.

The Friar enters to restore Juliet to life. Juliet awakens to find
her lover dead. The Friar, being alarmed, leaves the tomb. Juliet
stabs herself with Romeo's dagger and dies.

The feud of the Montagues and Capulets is brought to an end. The
leaders of the two houses are reconciled over the bodies of the
lovers.

This play is one of the early plays, written, perhaps, before Shakespeare was thirty years old. It was much revised during the next few years; but a good deal of the early work remains. Much of the early work is in rhymed couplets. Much is in picked prose full of quibbles and mistakings of the word. Another sign of early work is the mention of the dark lady, the Rosaline of the _Comedy of Errors_, here called by the same name, and described in similar terms: viz. a high forehead, a hard heart, a white face, big black eyes and red lips. Perhaps she appeared as one of the characters in the early drafts of the play. In the play as we have it she is only talked of as a love of Romeo's who is easily thrown aside when Juliet enters.

The play differs slightly from the other plays, which deal, as we have said, with the treacheries caused by obsessions. The subject of this play is not so much the treachery as the obsession that causes it. The obsession is the blind and raging one of sudden, gratified youthful love. That storm in the blood has never been so finely described. It takes sudden hold upon two young passionate natures, who have hardly met each other. It drives out instantly from Romeo a sentimental love that had made him mopish and wan. It brings to an end in two hearts, filial affection and that perhaps stronger thing, attachment to family. It makes the charming young man a frantic madman, careless of everything but his love. It makes the sweet-natured girl a deceitful, scheming liar, less frantic, but not less devoted than her lover. It results almost at once in five violent deaths, and a legacy of broken-heartedness not easily told. The only apparent good of the disease is that it destroys its victims swiftly. It may also be said of it that it teaches the old that there is something in life, some power not dreamed of in their philosophy.

Shakespeare saw the working of the fever. He also saw behind it the working of fate to avenge an obsession that had blinded the eyes of men too long. The feud of the two houses had long vexed Verona. The blood of those killed in the feud was crying out for the folly to stop, so that life might be lived. What business had sparks like Mercutio, and rebels like Tybalt, with Death? Both are life's bright fire: they ought to live. Fate seemed to plot to end the folly by letting Romeo fall in love with Juliet. Let the two houses be united by marriage, as at the end of _Richard III_. But love is a storm, sudden love a madness, and the fire of youth a disturber of the balances. Hate and hot blood put an end to all chance of marriage. There is nothing left but the desperate way, which is yet the wise way, recommended by the one wise man in the cast. With a little patience, this way would lead the couple to happiness. Impatience, the fever in the blood that began these coils, makes the way lead them to death. Accident, or rather the possession by others of that prudence wanting in himself, keeps Romeo from the knowledge of the friar's plans. A too hasty servant tells him that Juliet is dead. He too hastily believes the news. He takes horse at once in a state of frenzy, hardly heeding what his man says. He comes to the tomb in Verona, and finds there a lover as desperate as himself. They fight there, madly. The less mad of the two is killed, the more frantic (Romeo) kills himself. The friar, coming to this death-scene, comes a moment too late. Juliet wakes from her trance a moment too late. Theirs are the only delays in this drama of fever, in which everybody hurries so that he stumbles. Their delays are atoned for an instant later, his, by his too great haste to be gone, she by her thirst for death. The men of the watch come too late to save her. The parents learn too late that they have been blind. They have to clasp hands over dead bodies, that have missed of life through their hurry to seize it.

The play tells the story of a feud greater than that of the Verona houses. There is always feud where there is not understanding. There is eternal feud between those two camps of misunderstanding, age and youth. This play, written by a young man, shows the feud from the point of view of youth. The play of King Lear shows it from the point of view of age. This play of youth is as lovely and as feverish as love itself. Youth is bright and beautiful, like the animals. Age is too tired to care for brightness, too cold to care for beauty. The bright, beautiful creatures dash themselves to pieces against the bars of age's forging, against law, custom, duty, and those inventions of cold blood which youth thinks cold and age knows to be wise.

Man cannot quote a minute from some hour of passion when the moon shone and many nightingales were singing. He can hold out some flower that blossomed then, saying, "this scent will tell you." The beauty of this play is of that kind. The lines--

"Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black"--

and the most exquisite, unmatchable lines--

"Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there"--

show with what a tender beauty the great mind feels when touched.

The Nurse gives an animal comedy to some of the scenes. She is a tragical figure. She is the person to whom Juliet has to turn for help at dangerous moments. There are few things sadder than the sight of the fine soul turning to the vulgar soul in moments of need. One of the few things sadder is the sight of wisdom failing to stop tragedy, as it fails here, through hotness of the blood and unhappy chance. Some have felt that the spark, Mercutio, is drawn from Shakespeare's self. Every character in the play is drawn from Shakespeare's self. Shakespeare found Goneril and Juliet in his mind, just as he found Mercutio and Friar Laurence. If he may be identified with any of his characters, it must be with those whose wisdom is like the many-coloured wisdom that gives the plays their unity. He is in calm, wise, gentle people who speak largely, from a vision detached from the world, as Friar Laurence speaks--

"For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
And vice sometimes by action dignified."

_King John._

_Written._ (?)

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ Shakespeare's tragedy is founded on a play
called _The Troublesome Raigne of King John_ (author not known),
which was printed (after stage performance) in 1591. Some people
think that Shakespeare wrote _The Troublesome Raigne_. There are
some glimmerings of his mind here and there in it; but not many.
Whether he wrote it or not he certainly made free use of it in
writing _King John_. He took from it with a bold hand, whenever he
wished to spare himself mechanical labour. His other sources were
the historians, Raphael Holinshed, Edward Hall, and Fabian.

_The Fable._ King John has made himself King of England. Prince
Arthur, who claims to be the rightful king (he is the son of King
John's elder brother), causes the French King to support his claim.
King John declares war against the French King.

After some fighting in France the two kings patch up a peace.
Arthur's claim is set aside. King John's niece is to marry the
French King's son.

At this point the Pope's legate causes the French King to break off
the negotiations. The war begins again. King John captures Prince
Arthur, and gives order that secretly he be put to death. England
is in a disturbed condition. The French resolve to attempt the
conquest of England.

The report that Arthur has been murdered by the King's order sets
England in turmoil. The French land in Kent. The lords find
Arthur's dead body outside Northampton castle. They are convinced
that King John has caused him to be murdered.

King John finds that he cannot fight longer. He makes his
submission to the Pope's legate, trusting that the legate may make
the French King come to terms. The French King cannot be moved to
peace. John summons up his forces, and gives successful battle to
him. The English lords, who have allied themselves to the French
King, break off and make their submission to King John. Without
their help, the army is too weak. The French invasion comes to
nothing. The Pope's legate makes peace. King John dies of poison
given to him by a monk.

Like the best Shakespearean tragedies, _King John_ is an intellectual form in which a number of people with obsessions illustrate the idea of treachery. The illustrations are very various. Perhaps the most interesting of them are those subtle ones that illustrate treachery to type, or want of conformity to a standard imagined or established.

In the historical plays, Shakespeare's mind broods on the idea that our tragical kings failed because they did not conform to a type lower than themselves. Henry V conforms to type. He has the qualities that impress the bourgeoisie. He is a success. Henry VI does not conform to type. He has the qualities of the Christian mystic. He is stabbed in the Tower. Edward IV conforms to type. He has the qualities that impress the rabble. He is a success. Richard II does not conform to type. He is a man of ideas. He is done to death at Pomfret. King John does not conform to type. His intellect is bigger than his capacity for affairs. He is poisoned by a monk at Swinstead.

King John presents that most subtle of all the images of treachery, a man who cannot conform to the standard of his own ideas. He fails as a king because his intellect prompts him to attempt what is really beyond the powers of his nature to perform. By his side, with an irony that is seldom praised, Shakespeare places the figure of the Bastard, the man who ought to have been king, the man fitted by nature to rule the English, the man without intellect but with a rough capacity, the man whom we meet again, as a successful king, in the play of _Henry V_.

King John is placed throughout the play in treacherous relations with life. He is a traitor to his brother's son, to his own ideas, to the English idea, and to his oath of kingship. He has a bigger intellect than any one about him. His brain is full of gusts and flaws that blow him beyond his age, and then let him sink below it. Persistence in any one course of treachery would give him the greatness of all well-defined things. He remains a chaos shooting out occasional fire.

The play opens with a scene that displays some of the human results of treachery. John's mother, Elinor, has been treacherous to one of her sons. John has usurped his brother's right, and, in following his own counsel, has been treacherous to his mother. These acts of treachery have betrayed England into a bloody and unjust war. The picture is turned suddenly. Another of the results of human treachery appears in the person of the Bastard, whose mother confesses that she was seduced by the "long and vehement suit" of Coeur de Lion. The Bastard's half-brother, another domestic traitor, does not scruple to accuse his mother of adultery in the hope that, by doing so, he may obtain the Bastard's heritage.

The same breaking of faith for advantage gives points to the second act, where the French and English Kings turn from their pledged intention to effect a base alliance. They arrange to marry the Dauphin to Elinor's niece, Blanch of Castile. In the third act, before the fury of the constant has died down upon this treachery, the French King adds another falseness. He breaks away from the newly-made alliance at the bidding of the Pope's legate. The newly-married Dauphin treacherously breaks with his wife's party. In the welter of war that follows, the constant, human and beautiful figures come to heartbreak and death. The common people of England begin to betray their genius for obedience by preparing to rise against the man in power.

The fourth act begins with the famous scene in which Hubert fails to blind Prince Arthur. Even in the act of mercy he is treacherous. He breaks faith with King John, to whom he has vowed to kill the Prince. Later in the act, King John, thinking that the murder has been done, breaks faith with Hubert, by driving him from his presence. In the last act, the English nobles, who have been treacherous to John, betray their new master, the French King. King John is a broken man, unable to make head against misfortune. He betrays his great kingly idea, that the Pope shall not rule here, by begging the Legate to make peace. At this point death sets a term to treachery. A monk treacherously poisons John at a moment when his affairs look brighter. The play ends with the Bastard's well-known brag about England--

"Naught shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true."

This thought is one among many thoughts taken by Shakespeare from the play of _The Troublesome Raigne_, and taken by the author of that play direct from Holinshed's _Chronicles_.

Comedy deals with character and accident; tragedy with passionate moods of the soul in conflict with fate. In this play, as in nearly all poetical plays, the characters that are most minutely articulated are those commoner, more earthy characters, perceived by the daily mind, not uplifted, by brooding, into the rare state of passionate intellectual vision. These characters are triumphant creations; but they come from the commoner qualities in Shakespeare's mind. He did them easily, with his daily nature. What he did on his knees, with contest and bloody sweat, are his great things. The great scheme of the play is the great achievement, not the buxom boor who flouts the Duke of Austria, and takes the national view of his mother's dishonour.

Shakespeare, like other sensitive, intelligent men, saw that our distinctive products, the characters that we set most store by, are very strange. That beautiful kindness, high courage, and devoted service should go so often with real animal boorishness and the incapacity to see more than one thing at a time (mistaken for stupidity by stupid people) puzzled him, as it puzzles the un-English mind to-day. A reader feels that in the figure of the Bastard he set down what he found most significant in the common English character. With the exceptions of Sir Toby Belch and Justice Shallow, the Bastard is the most English figure in the plays. He is the Englishman neither at his best nor at his worst, but at his commonest. The Englishman was never so seen before, nor since. An entirely honest, robust, hearty person, contemptuous of the weak, glad to be a king's bastard, making friends with women (his own mother one of them) with a trusty, good-humoured frankness, fond of fighting, extremely able when told what to do, fond of plain measures--the plainer the better, an honest servant, easily impressed by intellect when found in high place on his own side, but utterly incapable of perceiving intellect in a foreigner, fond of those sorts of humour which generally lead to blows, extremely just, very kind when not fighting, fond of the words "fair play," and nobly and exquisitely moved to deep, true poetical feeling by a cruel act done to something helpless and little. The completeness of the portrait is best seen in the suggestion of the man's wisdom in affairs. The Bastard is trying to find out whether Hubert killed Arthur, whose little body lies close beside them. He says that he suspects Hubert "very grievously." Hubert protests. The Bastard tests the protest with one sentence: "Go bear him in thine arms." He utters the commonplace lines--

"I am amaz'd, methinks, and lose my way
Among the thorns and dangers of the world"--

while he watches Hubert's face. Hubert stands the test (the emotional test that none but an Englishman would apply), he picks up the body. Instantly the Bastard is touched to a tenderness that lifts Hubert to a spiritual comradeship with him--

"How easy dost thou take all England up."

This tragedy of the death of a child causes nearly all that is nobly poetical in the play.

All the passionately-felt scenes are about Arthur or his mother. Some have thought that Shakespeare wrote the play in 1596, shortly after the death of his little son Hamnet, aged eleven. The supposition accuses Shakespeare of a want of heart, of a want of imagination, or of both wants together. He wrote like every other writer, from his sense of what was fitting in an imagined situation. It was no more necessary for him to delay the writing of Prince Arthur till his son had died than it was for Dickens to wait till he had killed a real Little Dorrit by slow poison.

There is a great change in the manner of the poetical passages. The poetry of the _Henry VI_ plays is mostly in bright, sweetly running groups of rhetorical lines. In _King John_ it is either built up elaborately into an effect of harmony several lines long, or it is put into a single line or couplet.

The rhetoric is compressed--

"That shakes the rotten carcase of old Death,"

and

"O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty,"

and

"Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time."

The finest poetry is intensely compressed--

"I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,
For grief is proud,"

and

"I have heard you say,
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven.
If that be true, I shall see my boy again,"

and

"When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him."

The characters in this truly noble play daunt the reader with a sense of their creator's power. It is difficult to know intimately any human soul, even with love as a lamp. Shakespeare's mind goes nobly into these souls, bearing his great light. It is very wonderful that the mind who saw man clearest should see him with such exaltation.

_King Richard II._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1597.

_Source of the Plot._ The lives of King Richard II and King Henry
IV in Raphael Holinshed's _Chronicles_.

_The Fable._ I. The Duke of Gloucester, uncle of King Richard, has
died under suspicious circumstances at Calais, after an accusation
of treachery. Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, the King's
cousin, accuses Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, of treachery to
the King and of the murder of the Duke of Gloucester. The King
appoints a day on which the two disputants may try their cause by
combat. On their arrival at the lists he banishes them both,
Bolingbroke for six years, Mowbray for ever. After they have gone
to fulfil their sentence, the King plans to subdue the rebels in
Ireland. He prays that the death of his uncle, John of Gaunt, the
wisest man about him, may occur, so that he may take his money to
equip soldiers.

II. Gaunt dies. Richard seizes his estate (lawfully the property of
Bolingbroke) and proceeds upon his Irish war. Bolingbroke lands
from exile to claim his father's estate and title. Richard's Welsh
forces grow weary of waiting for their king. They disband
themselves.

III. Bolingbroke's party prospers. Richard is taken and deposed.

IV. Bolingbroke makes himself king.

V. Richard, after sorrowing alone, and inspiring a hopeless attempt
at restoration, is killed, desperately fighting, at Pomfret.

Treachery in some form is at the root of all Shakespearean tragedy. In this play it takes many forms, among which two are principal, the treachery of a king to his duty as a king, and the treachery of a subject to his duty as a subject. As usual in Shakespearean tragedy, the play is filled full by the abundant mind of the author with illustrations of his idea. The apricocks at Langley are like King Richard, the sprays of the trees like Bolingbroke, the weeds like the King's friends. Everybody in the play (even the horse in the last act) is in passionate relation to the central idea.

King Richard is of a type very interesting to Shakespeare. He is wilful, complex, passionate, with a beauty almost childish and a love of pleasure that makes him greedy of all gay, light, glittering things. He loves the music that does not trouble with passion and the thought not touched with the world. He loves that kind of false, delicate beauty which is made in societies where life is too easy. There is much that is beautiful in him. He has all the charm of those whom the world calls the worthless. His love is a woman, as beautiful and unreal as himself. He fails because, like other rare things, he is not common. The world cares little for the rare and the interesting. The world calls for the rough and common virtue that guides a plough in a furrow, and sergeantly chaffs by the camp fires. The soul that suffers more than other souls is little regarded here. The tragedy of the sensitive soul, always acute, becomes terrible when that soul is made king here by one of the accidents of life. As a king, Richard neglects his duties with that kind of wilfulness which the world never fails to punish. The wilfulness takes the form of a shutting of the eyes to all that is truly kingly. He rebukes devotion to duty by banishing Bolingbroke, who tries to rid him of a traitor. He rebukes old age and wisdom in the truly great person of old John of Gaunt. Worst, and most unkingly of all, he is incapable of seeing and rewarding the large generosity of mind that makes sacrifices for an idea. Richard, who likes beautiful things, cannot see the beauty of old, rough, dying Gaunt, who condemns his own son to exile rather than betray his idea of justice. Bolingbroke, who cares intensely for nothing but justice (and could not give even that caring a name, if questioned), is deeply and nobly generous to York, who would condemn his own son, and to the Bishop of Carlisle, who would die rather than not speak his mind. Men who sacrifice themselves are a king's only props. Richard allies himself with men who prefer to sacrifice the country.

It is a proof of the greatness of Shakespeare's vision, that Richard is presented to us both as the traitor and the betrayed. He is the anointed king false to his coronation oaths; he is the anointed king deposed by traitors. He is not fitted for kingship, but life has made him a king. Life, quite as much as temperament, is to blame for his tragedy. When life and temperament have thrust him from kingship, this wilful, passionate man, so greedy and heady in his hurry to be unjust, is unlike the monster that office made him. He is no monster then, but a man, not even a man like ourselves, but a man of singular delicacy of mind, sensitive, strangely winning, who wrings our hearts with pity by his sense of his tragedy--

"And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disorder'd string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke."

Part of his tragedy is due to his being too late. Had he landed from Ireland one day earlier he would have found a force of Welshmen ready to fight for him. At the end of the play he discovers, too late, that he is weary of patience. He strikes out like a man, when he has no longer a friend to strike with him. He is killed by a man who finds, too late, that the murder was not Bolingbroke's intention.

As in all the tragedies, there is much noble poetry. John of Gaunt's speech about England is often quoted. Shakespeare's mind is our triumph, not a dozen lines of rhetoric. Less well known are the couplets--

"My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
And blindfold death not let me see my son."

and

" ... let him not come there,
To seek out sorrow that dwells everywhere."

Those scenes in the last acts which display the mind of the deposed king are all exquisite, though their beauty is not obvious to the many. There is a kind of intensity of the soul, so intense that it is obscure to the many till it is interpreted. Writers of plays know well how tamely words intensely felt may read. They know, too, how like fire upon many souls those words will be when the voice and the action give them their interpretation. _Richard II_, like other plays of spiritual tragedy, needs interpretation. When he wrote it, Shakespeare had not wholly the power that afterwards he achieved, of himself interpreting his vision by many-coloured images. It is not one of the beloved plays.

Bolingbroke has been praised as a manly Englishman, who is not "weak" like Richard, but "strong" and a man of deeds. In Act IV he shows his English kindness of mind and love of justice by a temperate wisdom in the trying of a cause and by saying that he will call back from exile his old enemy Norfolk. The Bishop of Carlisle tells him that that cannot be. Norfolk having worn himself out in the wars in Palestine has retired himself to Italy, and there, at Venice, given

"His body to that pleasant country's earth,
And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long."

It is instructive to note how Bolingbroke takes the news--

_Bol._ Why, bishop, is Norfolk dead?

_Carl._ As surely as I live, my lord.

_Bol._ Sweet peace conduct his sweet soul to the bosom
Of good old Abraham. Lords appellants,
Your differences, etc.

The feeling that the poet's mind saw the clash as the clash between the common and the uncommon man is strengthened by the Queen's speech to Richard as he is led to prison--

"thou most beauteous inn,
Why should hard-favour'd grief be lodged in thee,
When triumph is become an alehouse guest?"

_King Richard III._

_Written._ 1594 (?)

_Published._ 1597.

_Source of the Plot._ The play is founded on the lives of Edward
IV, Edward V, and Richard III, as given (on the authorities of
Edward Hall and Sir Thomas More) in Holinshed's _Chronicles_.
Shakespeare may have seen a worthless play (_The True Tragedy of
Richard III_) which was published in 1594, by an unknown author.

_The Fable._ Act I. The play begins in the last days of King Edward
IV, when the King's two brothers, Clarence and Gloucester, are
debating who shall succeed to the throne when the King dies. In the
first scene Clarence is led to the Tower under suspicion of
plotting to succeed. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the cause of the
committal, pretends to grieve for him, but hastens to compass his
death. In the next scene Richard woos the Lady Anne (widow of the
dead son of Henry VI, and daughter of the Earl of Warwick), who is
likely to be useful to him for the moment as an ally (she being of
the house of Lancaster). The third scene displays the passionate
quarrelling of the Court factions. The Queen, her brothers and
Richard's party, are cursed by Margaret of Anjou. In the fourth
scene Clarence is murdered in the Tower.

Act II. King Edward IV dies, having patched up a seeming truce
between the factions. His son is to succeed him. Before this can
happen, Richard strikes down the leaders of the Queen's party, and
lays a deep scheme to secure the crown for himself.

Act III. There is a deeply tragical scene in which the unsuspecting
Hastings, who is faithful to Edward's memory, is hurried out of
life. Afterwards, through the management of Buckingham, Richard is
proclaimed King.

Act IV. Richard makes himself sure by casting off Buckingham and
causing the murder of Edward's sons in the Tower. He plots to marry
Edward's daughter. But by this time the land is in upheaval against
him. Buckingham and Richmond lead forces against him.