Chapter VI: Act V: Buckingham is taken and put to death; but Richmond's forces (1)

gather head. Richard leads his army to oppose them. The armies
front each other at Bosworth Field near Leicester. The night before
the battle the ghosts of the many slain during the progress of the
Wars of the Roses menace Richard and promise victory to Richmond.
In the battle that follows Richard is slain. Richmond takes oath to
end the Wars of the Roses by marrying Edward's daughter, so that
the two royal houses may at last be joined.

_Richard III_ is the last of the great historical plays about the Wars of the Roses. The subject of the wars had occupied Shakespeare's mind for many months. He had traced them from their beginning in the long ago to their end among the dead at Bosworth. All that bloodiness of misery was due to a forgotten marriage and the chance that Edward III had seven sons, the eldest of whom died before his father. In this great tragic vision Shakespeare saw the wheel come full circle, with that giving of justice which life renders at last, though it may be to the dead, or the mad, or the broken.

Largely, this play deals with the coming of that justice. Much that is most wonderful in the play comes from the faith that blood cruelly or unjustly spilt cries from the ground, and that the human soul, wrought to an ecstasy, has power, as the blood has power, to draw God's hand upon the guilty. But Shakespeare's mind was also occupied with the knowledge that self-confident intellect is terrible and tragical. One of the truths of the play is the very sad one that being certain is in itself a kind of sin, sure to be avenged by life. The obsession of self-confidence betrays person after person, to misery or death. All the heads that lift themselves proudly go bloody to the dust or bow in anguish. Only one man moves by other light than his own. He is the only one who achieves quiet triumph. Nothing in the play is more impressive than the speech in which the intellect that has ended the bloodshed prays humbly that God may bless and help England with peace.

It was said of Napoleon that he was as great as a man can be without virtue. The intellect of Richard III is like that of Napoleon. It is restless, swift, and sure of its power. It is sure, too, that the world stays as it is from something stupid in the milky human feelings. Richard is a "bloody dog" let loose in a sheep-fold. It is a part of the tragedy that he is nobler than the sheep that he destroys. His is the one great intellect in the play. Intellect is always rare. In kings it is very rare. When a great intellect is made bitter by being cased in deformity one has the tragedy of intellect turned upon itself. Had Richard been born without his deformed shoulder he could have known human sympathy, and human intercourse. Without human intercourse he goes gloating, clutching himself, biting his lip, muttering at the twist in his shadow. This warped, starved mind knows himself stronger than the minds near him. It is tragical to be deformed, it is tragical to have an intellect too great for people to understand. But the deformed and bitter intellect would suffer tragedy indeed if he, the one constant Yorkist, were to be ruled by a gentle, half-witted Lancastrian saint like Henry VI, or by Clarence the perjurer, or by the upstart Woodville, a commoner made noble because his sister took the King's fancy, or by the Queen herself, the housewife who caused great Warwick's death, or by one of her sons, who are pert to the man who had spilt his blood to make their father king. The snarling intellect bites rather than suffer that. It is very terrible, but how if he had not bitten? The vision of all this bloodiness is less terrible than that vision of the sheep triumphing, so dear to us moderns--

"Strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill."

As in all Shakespeare's greater plays, a justice brings evil upon the vow breaker. Curses called down in the solemn moment come home to roost when the solemnity is forgotten or thrust aside. Clarence, who broke his oath to the House of Lancaster, is done to death by his brother. Anne, cursing the killer of her husband, curses the woman who shall marry him, is, herself, that woman, and dies wretchedly. Grey, Rivers, Dorset, Buckingham and Hastings make oaths of amity, call down curses on him that breaks them, themselves break them, and die wretchedly. Richard, too wise to make oaths, too strong to curse, dies, as his mother foretells, "by God's just ordinance," when the measure of the blood of his victims becomes too great, and when his victims' curses, after wandering from heart to heart, get them into human bodies and walk the world, executing justice.

All through the play there are warnings against human certainty. Of all the dangerous pronouncements of man that to the fountain, "Fountain, of thy water I will never drink," is one of the most dangerous. There are terrible examples of certainty betrayed. Richard is certain as only fine intellect can be that he will triumph. It is a part of his tragedy that it is not intellect that triumphs in this world, but a stupid, though a righteous something, incapable of understanding intellect. Rivers and Grey are certain that Richard is friendly to them. They are hurried to Pomfret and put to death. Hastings "Knows his state secure," and "goes triumphant." He is rushed out of life at a moment's notice, one hour a lord, giving his opinion at a council, the next a corpse in its grave. Buckingham thinks himself secure. A moment's nicety of conscience sends him flying to death. The little Princes lay down to sleep--

"girdling one another
Within their innocent alabaster arms.
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk
Which in their summer beauty kissed each other"--

when their waking time came they were stamped down under the stones at the stair foot.

The poetry of this play is that of great and high spiritual invention. There is much that stays in the mind as exquisitely said and beautifully felt. But the wonder of the work is in the greatness of the conception. That is truly great, both as poetry and as drama. The big and burning imaginings do not please, they haunt.

The dream of Clarence, the wooing of the Lady Anne, the scene in Baynard's Castle, and the ghost scene in the tents at Bosworth, have been praised and re-praised. They are in Shakespeare's normal mood, neither greater nor less than twenty other scenes in the mature plays. The really grand scene of the calling down of the curses (Act I, sc. iii), when the man's mind, after brooding on this event for months, sees it all, for a glowing hour, as the just God sees it, is the wonderful achievement. Think of this scene, and think of the scenes played nightly now in the English theatres, and ask whether all is well with the nation's soul.

There are many superb Shakespearean openings. No poet in history opens a play with a more magnificent certainty. The opening of this play--

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York,"

is one of the most splendid of all. There is no need to pick out fragments from the rest of the play, but the march of the line--

"Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current"--

the lines--

"then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he squeaked out aloud,
'Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury'"--

the exquisitely tender lines--

"And there the little souls of Edward's children
Whisper the spirits"--

and the orders of Richard in the last act, for white Surrey to be saddled, ink and paper to be brought, and a bowl of wine to be filled, show that the poet's great confident manner was formed, on all the four sides of its perfection. The years only brought it to a deeper glow.

_The Merchant of Venice._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600.

_Source of the Plot._ The ancient story of the merciless Jew is
told in the _Gesta Romanorum_, and re-told, with delicate grace, by
Giovanni Fiorentino, a fourteenth-century Italian writer, in his
_Il Pecorone_ (the simpleton), a collection of novels, or, as we
should call them, short stories. The story of the three caskets is
also told in the _Gesta Romanorum_. Other incidents in the play are
taken from other sources, possibly from other plays. It is thought
by some that the character of Shylock was suggested by the case of
the Spanish Jew, Lopez, who was hanged, perhaps unjustly, for
plotting to poison Queen Elizabeth, in 1594. The main source of the
dramatic fable is Fiorentino's story.

_The Fable._ Portia, the lady of Belmont, has three caskets, one of
gold, one of silver, one of lead. She is vowed to marry the man
who, on viewing the caskets, guesses which of them contains her
portrait. Various attempting suitors fail to guess rightly.

Bassanio, eager to try the hazard, obtains money from his friend
Antonio, to equip him. Antonio borrows the money from the Jew,
Shylock, on condition that, should he fail to repay the debt by a
fixed day, a pound of his flesh shall be forfeit to the Jew.

Bassanio guesses rightly and weds Portia.

Antonio fails to repay the debt, and is lodged in prison. Bassanio
hears of his friend's disaster. Portia bids him fly to Antonio with
money enough to pay the debt threefold. Shylock refuses the offer.
He clamours for his pound of flesh. The case comes to trial.

At the hearing of the case in the Duke's court, Portia, disguised
as a judge, gives sentence, that Shylock may have his pound of
flesh; but that if he shed Christian blood in the taking of it, his
life will be forfeit. Shylock is confounded further by a charge of
endangering a Christian's life. He is fined and humbled. Portia,
still in disguise, asks as her fee a ring that she has given to
Bassanio. Bassanio, hesitating, at last gives the ring, and returns
home without it. Portia's pretended indignation at the loss of the
ring ends the last act with comedy.

The play resolves itself into a simple form. It illustrates the clash between the emotional and the intellectual characters, the man of heart and the man of brain. The man of heart, Antonio, is obsessed by a tenderness for his friend. The man of brain is obsessed by a lust to uphold intellect in a thoughtless world that makes intellect bitter in every age. Shylock is a man of intellect, born into a despised race. It is his tragedy that the generous Gentiles about him can be generous to everything except to intellect and Jewish blood. Intellect and Jewish blood are too proud to attempt to understand the Gentiles who cannot understand.

Shylock is a proud man. The Gentiles, who are neither proud nor intellectual, spit upon him and flout him. One of them beguiles his daughter and teaches her to rob him. Another of them signs a mad bond to help an extravagant friend to live in idleness. Bitter, lonely brooding upon these things strengthen the Jew's obsession, till the words, "I can cut out the heart of my enemy," become the message of his entire nature. Half the evils in life come from the partial vision of people in states of obsession. Shylock's obsession grows till he is in the Duke's court, whetting his knife upon his shoe, before what Pistol calls "incision."

Portia has been much praised during two centuries of criticism. She is one of the smiling things created in the large and gentle mood that moved Shakespeare to comedy. The scene in the fifth act, where the two women, coming home from Venice by night, see the candle burning in the hall, as they draw near, is full of a naturalness that makes beauty quick in the heart. Shakespeare enjoyed the writing of this play. The construction of the last two acts shows that his great happy mind was at its happiest in the saving of these creatures of the sun from something real.

_The Taming of the Shrew._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The induction and that part of the play which
treats of Petruchio and Katharina is based upon a play, published
in 1594, under the title _The Taming of A Shrew_, author not known.
The other part is based on _The Supposes_ of George Gascoigne, a
comedy adapted from Ariosto's _I Suppositi_.

_The Fable._ Christopher Sly, a tinker lying drunk by a tavern, is
found by a lord, who causes him to be put to bed and treated, on
waking, as a nobleman newly cured of madness. Part of the treatment
is the performance of this play before him.

The play has two plots. In one of them, Petruchio woos and tames
the shrew Katharina; in the other, Katharina's sister Bianca is
wooed by lovers in disguise. The two plots have little connection
with each other. That which relates to Petruchio and Katharina is
certainly by Shakespeare. The other seems to be by a dull man who
did not know his craft as a dramatist.

In the Induction, and in the speech of Biondello (in Act III) Shakespeare enters a mood of memory of the country. In the song at the end of _Love's Labour's Lost_ he showed a matchless sense of country life. That sense, at once robust and sweet, now gives life to a few scenes in the plays. These scenes are mostly in prose; but they have the rightness of poetry. In writing them, he wrought with his daily nature, from something intimately known, or inbred in him, during childhood. Man can only write happily from a perfect understanding. All men can describe with point and colour what they knew as children. These country scenes in Shakespeare are happier than anything else in the plays because they come, not from anything read or heard, but from the large, genial nature made by years of life among the farms and sheep-walks at the western end of the Cotswolds.

_Sly._ Y' are a baggage: the Slys are no rogues; look in the
chronicles; we came in with Richard Conqueror. Therefore _paucas
pallabris_; let the world slide: _Sessa!_

_Hostess._ You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?

_Sly._ No, not a denier. Go by, Jeronimy: go to thy cold bed, and
warm thee.

In the third act, Biondello's description of the appearance of Petruchio's horse has the abundance of the great mind.

" ... possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine;
troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of
wind-galls, sped with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of
the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots,
swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten; near legged before and
with a half-cheeked bit and a headstall of sheep's leather."

It is something no longer possible in a city theatre. Neither the dramatist nor the audience of to-day knows a horse as the Elizabethan had to know him. The speech sets one wondering at the art of the unknown Elizabethan actor who first spoke hurriedly this speech of strange words full of sibilants.

Shakespeare's share in the play (the scenes in which the shrew and her tamer appear) is farce with ironic philosophical intention. He indicates the tragedy that occurs when a manly spirit is born into a woman's body. Katharina is vexed and plagued by forced submission to a father who cannot see her merit, and by jealousy of a gentle, useless sister. She, who is entirely honest, sees the brainless Bianca, whom no amount of schooling will make even passably honest, preferred before her. Lastly, she is humbled into the state of submissive wifely falsehood by a boor who cares only for his own will, her flesh, and her money. In a page and a half of melancholy claptrap broken Katharina endeavours to persuade us that

"Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband."

Perhaps it is the way of the world. Women betray womanhood as much by mildness as by wiles. Meanwhile, what duty does a man owe to a fine, free, fearless spirit dragged down to his by commercial bargain with a father who is also a fool?

_King Henry IV, Part I._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1598.

_Source of the Plot._ Most of the comic scenes are the fruit of
Shakespeare's invention. A very popular play, _The Famous Victories
of Henry V_, by an unknown hand, gave him the suggestion for an
effective comic scene. In the historical scenes he follows closely
the _Chronicles_ of Holinshed.

_The Fable._ The play treats of the rising of Henry Hotspur, Lord
Percy, against Henry IV of England, and of the turning of the mind
of Henry, Prince of Wales, from low things to things more worthy
his birth. It ends with the killing of Hotspur, by the Prince of
Wales, on the battlefield at Shrewsbury. Hotspur is an uncommon
man, whose uncommonness is unsupported by his father at a critical
moment. Henry, Prince of Wales, is a common man, whose commonness
props his father, and helps him to conquer. The play is about a son
too brilliant to be understood, and a son too common to understand.

The play treats of a period some four years after the killing of King Richard II. It opens at a time when the oaths of Henry Bolingbroke, to do justice, have been broken on all sides, lest the injustice of his assumption of kingship should be recognised and punished by those over whom he usurps power. The King is no longer the just, rather kind, man of affairs who takes power in the earlier, much finer play. He is a swollen, soured, bullying man, with all the ingratitude of a king and all the baseness of one who knows his cause to be wrong. Opposed to him is a passionate, quick-tempered man, ready to speak his mind, on the instant, to any whom he believes to be unjust or false.

This quick-tempered man, Lord Percy, has done the King a signal service. Instead of asking for reward he tries to persuade the King to be just to a man who has suffered wounds and defeat for him. The King calls him a liar for his pains.

Percy, stung to the quick, rebels. Others rebel with him, among them some who are too wise to be profitable on a council of war. War does not call for wisdom, but for swiftness in striking. Percy, who is framed for swiftness in striking, loses half of his slender chance because his friends are too wise to advise desperate measures. Nevertheless, his troops shake the King's troops. The desperate battle of Shrewsbury is very nearly a triumph for him. Then the Prince meets him and kills him. He learns too late that a passionate longing to right the wrong goes down before the rough and stupid something that makes up the bulk of the world. He learns that

"Thought's the slave of life, and life, time's fool;
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop"--

and dies. The man who kills him says a few trite lines over his body, and leaves the stage talking of Falstaff's bowels.

Prince Henry, afterwards Henry V, has been famous for many years as "Shakespeare's only hero." Shakespeare was too wise to count any man a hero. The ways of fate moved him to vision, not heroism. If we can be sure of anything in that great, simple, gentle, elusive brain, we can be sure that it was quickened by the thought of the sun shining on the just and on the unjust, and shining none the less golden though the soul like clay triumph over the soul like flame. Prince Henry is not a hero, he is not a thinker, he is not even a friend; he is a common man whose incapacity for feeling enables him to change his habits whenever interest bids him. Throughout the first acts he is careless and callous though he is breaking his father's heart and endangering his father's throne. He chooses to live in society as common as himself. He talks continually of guts as though a belly were a kind of wit. Even in the society of his choice his attitude is remote and cold-blooded. There is no good-fellowship in him, no sincerity, no whole-heartedness. He makes a mock of the drawer who gives him his whole little pennyworth of sugar. His jokes upon Falstaff are so little good-natured that he stands upon his princehood whenever the old man would retort upon him. He impresses one as quite common, quite selfish, quite without feeling. When he learns that his behaviour may have lost him his prospective crown he passes a sponge over his past, and fights like a wild cat for the right of not having to work for a living.

There is little great poetry in the play. The magnificent image--

"Baited like eagles having lately bathed"--

the speech of Worcester (in Act V, sc. i) when he comes with a trumpet to speak with the King, and the call of Hotspur to set on battle--

"Sound all the lofty instruments of war,
And by that music let us all embrace"--

are all noble.

To many, the play is remarkable because it introduces Sir John Falstaff, the most notable figure in English comedy. Falstaff is that deeply interesting thing, a man who is base because he is wise. Our justest, wisest brain dwelt upon Falstaff longer than upon any other character because he is the world and the flesh, able to endure while Hotspur flames to his death, and the enemies of the devil are betrayed that the devil may have power to betray others.

_The Second Part of King Henry IV._

_Written._ 1597 (?)

_Published._ 1600.

_Source of the Plot._ The play of _The Famous Victories of Henry
V_. Holinshed's _Chronicles_.

_The Fable._ Northumberland and the other conspirators against the
King learn that Hotspur, their associate, whom they failed to
support, has been defeated and killed. The King's forces are now
free to act against themselves. Northumberland retires to Scotland.
The others under a divided command, make head against the King's
troops under John of Lancaster. They are betrayed, taken and put to
death. Northumberland, venturing out from Scotland, is defeated.
King Henry's position is assured.

His safety comes too late to be pleasant to him. He is dying, and
the conduct of his son gives him anxiety. He sees no chance of
permanent peace. He counsels his son to begin a war abroad, to
distract the attention of his subjects. Having done this, he dies.

Prince Henry begins his reign as Henry V by casting off all his old
associates.

The second part of the play of _King Henry IV_ is Shakespeare's ending of the tragedy of _Richard II_. The deposition of Richard was an act of violence, unjust, as violence must be, and offensive, as injustice is, to the power behind life. The blood of the dead king, and of all those killed in fighting for him, calls upon that power, and asks justice of it. Slowly, in many secret ways, the tide sets against the slayer, till he is a worn, old, heart-broken, haunted man, dying with the knowledge that all the bloodshed has been useless, because the power so hardly won will be tossed away by his successor, the youth with "a weak mind and an able body," the "good, shallow young fellow," who "would have made a good pantler," who comes in noisily to his father's death-bed with news of the beastliest of all the treacheries of the reign. Just as the play of _Richard III_ completes the action of the Wars of the Roses, this play completes the action of the killing of the Duke of Gloucester at Calais. The wheel comes full circle, crushing many that looked to be brought high, making friends enemies and enemies friends. Life was never so brooded on since man learned to think, as in this cycle of tragedies. In this fragment of the whole we are shown the two classes in human life, the people of instinct and the people of intellect, being preyed on by two men, one of them greedy for present ease, the other for temporal power. Both men obtain their will. Those who give up everything for one thing often obtain that thing. But it is a law of life that nothing must be paid for with too great a share of the imaginative energy. All excess of the kind is unjust, as violence must be, and offensive, as injustice is, to the power behind life. King Henry IV fails in the hour of his triumph from his manifold failures in life during the struggle for triumph. Falstaff fails in the same way. The prize of life falls to the careless and callous man who has struggled only in two minutes of his life, once, when he played a practical joke upon some thieves, and a second time when he killed Hotspur, the brilliant intellect, the "miracle of men."

Many scenes in this play are great. Shakespeare's instinctive power was as large and as happy as his intellectual power. In this play he indulged it to the full. The Falstaff scenes are all wonderful. That in which the drunken Pistol is driven downstairs is the finest tavern scene ever written. Those placed in Gloucestershire are the perfect poetry of English country life. The talk of old dead Double, who could clap "i' the clout at twelvescore," and is now dead, as we shall all be soon; the casting back of memory to Jane Nightwork, still alive, though she belongs to a time fifty-five years past, when a man, now old, heard the chimes at midnight; the order to sow the headland, Cotswold fashion, with red Lammas wheat; the kindness and charm of the country servants, so beautiful after the drunken townsmen, are like the English country speaking. The earth of England is a good earth and bears good fruit, even the apple of man. These scenes are like an apple-loft in some old barn, where the apples of last year lie sweet in the straw.

All of those scenes seem to have been written easily, out of the fulness of an instinctive power. In the other scenes Shakespeare wrote with intense mental effort after brooding intensely on human destiny--

"how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors,"

and on the truth that--

"There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As not yet come to life."

There are two scenes of deep tragedy in the play, both awful. Shakespeare never wrote anything more terrible. They are the scene in the fourth act, where John of Lancaster tricks and betrays the rebels, and the scene at the end where the young King cuts his old friends, with a word to the Lord Justice to have them into banishment. The words of Scripture, "Put not your trust in princes," must have rung in Shakespeare's head as he wrote these scenes.

Richard II flung down his warder at Coventry rather than let his friend venture in battle for him. From that act of mercy came his loss of the crown, his death, Mowbray's death, Hotspur's death, the murder of the leaders at Gaultree and the countless killings up and down England. At the end of this play the slaughter stops for a while so that a callous young animal may bring his country into a foreign war to divert men's minds from injustice at home.

At the end of the play there is an epilogue in prose, touching for this reason, that it is one of the few personal addresses that Shakespeare has left to us. In the plays the characters speak with a detachment never relaxed. They belong to the kingdom of vision, not to the mind through which they came. In this epilogue Shakespeare speaks for all time directly to his hearers, whoever they may be.

Who are his hearers? Not the English.

Our prophet is not honoured here. This series of historical plays is one of the most marvellous things ever done by man. The plays of which it is composed have not been played in London, in their great processional pageant of tragedy, within the memory of man.

_King Henry V._

_Written._ 1598 (?)

_Published_, imperfectly, 1600; as we now have it, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The play of _The Famous Victories of Henry
V_. Holinshed's _Chronicles_. (Possibly) an earlier play, now lost.

_The Fable._ The play describes the determination of Henry V to
fight with France, his progress in France, the battle of Agincourt,
the articles of peace between the French and English, and the
courtship of the King with Katharine, daughter of the French King.
It is a chronicle of the coming, seeing, and conquering of the
"fellow" "whose face was not worth sun-burning."

The play bears every mark of having been hastily written. Though it belongs to the great period of Shakespeare's creative life, it contains little either of clash of character, or of that much tamer thing, comparison of character. It is a chronicle or procession, eked out with soldiers' squabbles. It seems to have been written to fill a gap in the series of the historical plays. Perhaps the management of the Globe Theatre, where the play was performed, wished to play the series through, from _Richard II_ to _Richard III_, and persuaded Shakespeare to write this play to link _Henry IV_ to _Henry VI_. The lines of the epilogue show that Shakespeare meant the play to give an image of worldly success between the images of failure in the other plays.

The play ought to be seen and judged as a part of the magnificent tragic series. Detached from its place, as it has been, it loses all its value. It is not greatly poetical in itself. It is popular. It is about a popular hero who is as common as those who love him. But in its place it is tremendous. Henry V is the one commonplace man in the eight plays. He alone enjoys success and worldly happiness. He enters Shakespeare's vision to reap what his broken-hearted father sowed. He passes out of Shakespeare's vision to beget the son who dies broken-hearted after bringing all to waste again.

"Hear him but reason in divinity,"

cries the admiring archbishop. Yet this searcher of the spirit woos his bride like a butcher, and jokes among his men like a groom. He has the knack of life that fits human beings for whatever is animal in human affairs.

His best friend, Scroop, plots to kill him, but is detected and put to death. Henry accuses Scroop of cruelty and ingratitude. He forgets those friends whom his own cruelty has betrayed to death and dishonour. Falstaff dies broken-hearted. Bardolph, whose faithfulness redeems his sins, is hanged. Pistol becomes a cutpurse. They were the prince's associates a few months before. He puts them from his life with as little feeling as he shows at Agincourt, when he orders all the prisoners to be killed.

He has a liking for knocks. Courage tempered by stupidity (as in the persons of Fluellen, etc.) is what he loves in a man. He, himself, has plenty of his favourite quality. His love of plainness and bluntness makes him condemn sentiment in his one profound speech--

"All other devils that suggest by treasons
Do botch and bungle up damnation
With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch'd
From glistering semblances of piety."

The scenes between Nym and Pistol, and the account of Falstaff's death, are the last of the great English scenes. This (or the next) was Shakespeare's last English play, for Lear and Cymbeline are British, not English. When he laid down his pen after writing the epilogue to this play he had done more than any English writer to make England sacred in the imaginations of her sons.

_The Merry Wives of Windsor._

_Written._ 1599 (?)

_Published_, in a mutilated form, 1602; in a complete form, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ A tale in Straparola's _Notti_ (iv. 4).
Tarleton's _News out of Purgatorie_. Giovanni Florentino's _Il
Pecorone_. Kinde Kit of Kingston's _Westward for Smelts_.

_The Fable._ Falstaff makes love to Mistress Ford, the wife of a
Windsor man. Mistress Ford, despising Falstaff, plots with her
friend, Mrs. Page, to make him a mock. News of Falstaff's passion
is brought to Ford, who, needlessly jealous, resolves to search the
house for him.

Falstaff woos Mrs. Ford. She holds him in play till she hears that
her husband is coming. Falstaff, alarmed at his approach, bundles
into a clothes basket, is carried past the unsuspecting husband,
and soused in the river.

He is gulled into the belief that Mrs. Ford expects him again. He
goes, is nearly caught by Ford, but escapes, disguised as an old
woman, at the cost of a cudgelling.

Still believing in Mrs. Ford's love for him, he keeps a third
assignation, this time in Windsor Forest, in the disguise of Herne
the hunter. On this occasion he is pinched and scorched by little
children disguised as fairies. He learns that Mrs. Ford has tricked
him, is mocked by all, and then forgiven.

The play is eked out by other actions. Chief of these is the wooing
of Anne Page, Mrs. Page's daughter, by three men--a foreigner, Dr.
Caius; an idiot, Master Slender; and the man of her heart, Fenton.
There are also scenes between Falstaff, Nym, Bardolph and Pistol,
and between Dr. Caius, Sir Hugh Evans, Shallow, Slender, the Host
and Mrs. Quickly.

An old tradition says that this play was written in a fortnight by command of Queen Elizabeth. There can be no doubt (_a_) that it was written hurriedly, (_b_) that it nicely suited the Tudor sense of humour. It is the least interesting of the genuine plays. It is almost wholly the work of the abundant instinctive self working in the high spirits that so often come with the excitement of hurry. None of the characters has time for thought. The play is full of external energy. The people bustle and hurry with all their animal natures.

It is the only Shakespearean play which treats exclusively of English country society. As a picture of that society it is true and telling. Country society alters very little. It is the enduring stem on which the cities graft fashions. It is given to few to see English country society so much excited as it is in this play, but drama deals with excessive life. Shakespeare's people are always intensely excited or interested or passionate. Each play tells of the great moments in half-a-dozen lives. The method of this play is the same, though the lives chosen are lower and the interests stupider. Falstaff is interested in cuckoldry, Mrs. Ford in mockery, Ford, Evans and Caius in jealousy and rivalry, Bardolph is going to be a tapster, the others are plying their suits. Even in this his most trivial play, Shakespeare's idea that punishment follows oath-breaking is expressed (whimsically enough) by Falstaff--

"I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero."

His other idea, that obsession is a danger to life, is expressed later in the words--

"See now, how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ill
employment."

There is little poetry in the play. The most poetical passage is the account of Herne the hunter--

"There is an old tale goes, that Herne the Hunter,
Some time a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle;
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner."

Modern poets would describe Herne's dress and appearance. The creative poet describes his actions.

It is possible that when this play was written Shakespeare had thoughts of consecrating himself to the writing of purely English plays. There are signs that he had reached a point of achievement that is always a critical point to imaginative men. He had reached the point at which the personality is exhausted. He had worked out his natural instincts, the life known to him, his predilections, his reading. He had found a channel in which his thoughts could express themselves. Writing was no longer so pleasant to him as it had been. He had done an incredible amount of work in a few years. The personality was worn to a husk. It may be that a very little would have kept him on this side of the line, writing imitations of what he had already done. He was at the critical moment which separates the contemplative from the visionary, the good from the excellent, the great from the supreme. All writers, according to their power, come to this point. Very few have the fortune to get beyond it. Shakespeare's mind stood still for a moment, in this play and in the play that followed, before it went on triumphant to the supreme plays.

_As You Like It._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600 (?)

_Source of the Plot._ Thomas Lodge's novel of _Rosalynde_, Euphues'
_Golden Legacie_ (published in 1590) supply the fable. The tale is
that tale of Gamelyn, wrongly attributed to Chaucer. The _Practise_
(Saviolo's "Practise") of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian master of
arms, gave hints for Touchstone's account of the lie. The rest of
the play seems to have been the fruit of Shakespeare's invention.

_The Fable._ Orlando, basely used by his elder brother Oliver,
leaves home, annoys the usurping Duke Frederick, and is advised to
leave the country.

Rosalind, child of the rightful Duke, and Celia, the child of Duke
Frederick, fly from home together in search of the rightful Duke,
who has taken to the wild wood. Rosalind, dressed as a man, gives
out that Celia is her sister. They set up as shepherds in Arden.

Orlando joins the rightful Duke in Arden. He is in love with
Rosalind. He meets her in the forest, but does not recognise her in
her disguise. Oliver, cast out by Frederick, comes to Arden, is
reconciled to Orlando, and falls in love with Celia. There are a
few passages of the comedy of mistake, due to Rosalind's disguise.
In the end, the rightful Duke and Oliver are restored to their
possessions. Orlando marries Rosalind; the minor characters are
married as their hearts desire, and all ends happily.

The play treats of the gifts of Nature and the ways of Fortune. Orlando, given little, is brought to much. Rosalind and Celia, born to much, are brought to little. The Duke, born to all things, is brought to nothing. The usurping Duke, born to nothing, climbs to much, desires all, and at last renounces all. Oliver, born to much, aims at a little more, loses all, and at last regains all. Touchstone, the worldly wise, marries a fool. Audrey, born a clown, marries a courtier. Phebe, scorning a man, falls in love with a woman.

Jaques, the only wise one, is the only one not moved by Fortune. Life does not interest him; his interest is in his thoughts about life. His vision of life feasts him whatever life does. Passages in the second act, in the subtle seventh scene, corrupt in a most important line, show that in the character of Jaques Shakespeare was expounding a philosophy of art. The philosophy may not have been that by which he, himself, wrought; but it is one set down by him with an extreme subtlety of care, and opposed, as all opinions advanced in drama must be, by an extreme earnestness of opposition.

The wisest of Shakespeare's characters are often detached from the action of the play in which they appear. Jaques holds aloof from the action of this play, though he is perhaps the best-known character in the cast. His thought is the thought of all wise men, that wisdom, being always a little beyond the world, has no worldly machinery by which it can express itself. In this world the place of chorus, interpreter or commentator is not given to the wise man, but to the fool who has degraded the office to a profession. Jaques, the wise man, finds the place occupied by one whose comment is platitude. Wisdom has no place in the social scheme. The fool, he finds, has both office and uniform.

Seeing this, Jaques wishes, as all wise men wish, not to be counted wise but to have as great liberty as the fool to express his thought--

"weed your better judgments
Of all opinion that grows rank in them
That I am wise. I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please; for so fools have.

... give me leave
To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine."

He is answered that, having learned of the world's evil by libidinous living, he can only do evil by exposing his knowledge. He replies, finely expressing Shakespeare's invariable artistic practice, that his aim will be at sin, not at particular sinners.

In the middle of his speech Orlando enters, raging for food. It is interesting to see how closely Shakespeare follows Jaques' mind in the presence of the fierce animal want of hunger. He is too much interested to be of help. The Duke ministers to Orlando. Jaques wants to know "of what kind this cock should come of." He speaks banteringly, the Duke speaks kindly. The impression given is that Jaques is heartless. The Duke's thought is "here is one even more wretched than ourselves." Jaques' thought, always more for humanity than for the individual, is a profound vision of the world.

The play is a little picture of the world. The contemplative man who is not of the world, is yet a part of the picture. We are shown a company of delightful people, just escaped from disaster, smilingly taking the biggest of hazards. The wise man, dismissing them to their fates with all the authority of wisdom, gives up his share in the game to listen to a man who has given up his share of the world. Renunciation of the world is attractive to all upon whom the world presses very heavily, or very lightly.

Rosalind and Phebe are of the two kinds of woman who come much into Shakespeare's early and middle plays. Rosalind, like Portia, is a golden woman, a daughter of the sun, smiling-natured, but limited. Phebe, like Rosalind, is black-haired, black-eyed, black-eyebrowed, with the dead-white face that so often goes with cruelty. Shortly after this play was written he began to create types less external and less limited.

_Much Ado about Nothing._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600.

_Source of the Plot._ The greater part of the fable seems to have
been invented by Shakespeare. The Hero and Claudio story is found
in the twenty-second novel of Bandello, and in at least three other
books (one of them Spenser's _Faerie Queene_). It was also known to
the Elizabethans in a play now lost.

_The Fable._ Benedick, a lord of Padua, pledges himself to
bachelorhood. Beatrice, a disdainful lady, is scornful of men.

Claudio plans to marry Hero.

Don John, enemy of Claudio, plans to thwart the marriage by letting
it appear that Hero is unchaste.

Don Pedro and Claudio make Benedick believe that Beatrice is dying
of love for him.

Ursula and Hero make Beatrice believe that Benedick is dying of
love for her.

The disdainful couple make friends. Don John thwarts the marriage
of Claudio by his tale of Hero's unchastity. Claudio casts off Hero
at the altar. Hero swoons, and is conveyed away as dead. Beatrice
and Benedick are brought into close alliance by their upholding of
Hero's cause.

Proof is obtained that Hero has been falsely accused. She is
recovered from her swoon. Claudio marries her. Benedick and
Beatrice plight troth.

In this play Shakespeare writes of the power of report, of the thing overheard, to alter human destiny. Antonio's man, listening behind a hedge, overhears Don Pedro telling Claudio that he will woo Hero. The report of his eavesdropping conveys no notion of the truth, and leads, no doubt, to a bitter moment for Hero. Borachio, hiding behind the arras, overhears the truth of the matter. The report of his eavesdropping leads to the casting off of Hero at the altar. Don John and Borachio vow to Claudio that they overheard Don Pedro making love to Hero. The report gives Claudio a bitter moment. Benedick, reporting to the same tune, intensifies his misery.

Benedick, overhearing the report of Beatrice's love for him, changes his mind about marriage. Beatrice, hearing of Benedick's love for her, changes her mind about men. Claudio, hearing Don John's report of Hero, changes his mind about his love. The watch, overhearing Borachio's report of his villainy, are able to change the tragedy to comedy. Leonato, hearing Claudio's report of Hero, is ready to cast off his child. Report is shown to be stronger than any human affection and any acquired quality, except the love of one unmarried woman for another, and that strongest of all earthly things, the fool in authority. The wisdom of Shakespeare is greater and more various than the brains of little men can imagine. It is one of the tragical things, that this great man, who interpreted the ways of fate in glorious, many-coloured vision, should be set aside in our theatres for the mockers and the accusers, whose vision scatters dust upon the brain and sand upon the empty heart.

Though the play is not one of the most passionate of the plays, it belongs to Shakespeare's greatest creative period. It is full of great and wonderful things. The character-drawing is so abundant and precise that those who know how hard it is to convey the illusion of character can only bow down, thankful that such work may be, but ashamed that it no longer is. Every person in the play is passionately alive about something. The energy of the creative mood in Shakespeare filled all these images with a vitality that interests and compels. The wit and point of the dialogue--

_Don Pedro._ I think this is your daughter.

_Leonato._ Her mother hath many times told me so.

_Benedick._ Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?

_Leonato._ Signior Benedick, no; for then you were a child;

or (as in the later passage)--

_Beatrice._ I may sit in a corner and cry heigh ho for a husband.

_Don Pedro._ Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

_Beatrice._ I would rather have one of your father's getting. Hath
your Grace ne'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent
husbands, if a maid could come by them.

_Don Pedro._ Will you have me, lady?

_Beatrice._ No, my lord, unless I might have another for working
days: your Grace is too costly to wear every day--

is plain to all; but it is given to few to see with what admirable, close, constructive art this dialogue is written for the theatre. Of poetry, of understanding passionately put, there is comparatively little. The one great poetical scene is that at the opening of the fifth act. The worst lines of this scene have become proverbial; the best are

"'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency,
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself."

There is little in the play written thus, but there are many scenes throbbingly alive. The scene in the church shows what power to understand the awakened imagination has. The scene is a quivering eight minutes in as many lives. Shakespeare passes from thrilling soul to thrilling soul with a touch as delicate as it is certain.

Shakespeare's fun is liberally given in the comic scenes. In the last act there is a beautiful example of the effect of lyric to heighten a solemn occasion.

_Twelfth Night._

_Written._ 1600 (?)

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The story of Orsino, Viola, Olivia and
Sebastian is to be found in the "Historie of Apolonius and Silla"
as told by Barnabe Riche in the book _Riche his Farewell to
Militarie Profession_. Riche took the tale from Bandello's Italian,
or from de Belleforest's French translation from it. Three
sixteenth-century Italian plays are based on this fable. All of
these sources may have been known to Shakespeare.

The sub-plot, and the characters contained in it, seem to be
original creations.

_The Fable._ Viola, who thinks that she has lost her brother
Sebastian by shipwreck, disguises herself as a boy, and calls
herself Cesario. She takes service with the Duke Orsino, who is in
love with the lady Olivia. She carries love messages from the Duke
to Olivia.

Olivia, who is in mourning for her brother, refuses the Duke's
suit, but falls in love with Cesario.

In her house is Malvolio, the steward, who reproves her uncle, Sir
Toby Belch, for rioting at night with trivial companions. The
trivial companions forge a letter, which causes Malvolio to think
that his mistress is in love with him. The thought makes his
behaviour so strange that he is locked up as a madman.

Sir Toby Belch finds further solace for life in making his gull,
Sir Andrew, challenge Cesario to a duel. The duel is made dangerous
by the sudden appearance of Sebastian, who is mistaken for Cesario.
He beats Sir Andrew and Sir Toby, and encounters the lady Olivia.
Olivia woos him as she has wooed Cesario, but with better fortune.

They are married. The Duke marries Viola. Malvolio is released from
prison. Sir Toby marries Maria, Olivia's waiting-woman. Sir Andrew
is driven out like a plucked pigeon. Malvolio, unappeased by his
release, vows to be revenged for the mock put upon him.

This is the happiest and one of the loveliest of all the Shakespearean plays. It is the best English comedy. The great mind that mixed a tragedy of intellect with a tragedy of stupidity, here mixes mirth with romantic beauty. The play is so mixed with beauty that one can see it played night after night, week after week, without weariness, even in a London theatre.

The play presents images of self-deception, or delusional sentimentality, by means of a romantic fable and a vigorous fable. It shows us three souls suffering from the kind of sickly vanity that feeds on day-dreams. Orsino is in an unreal mood of emotion. Love is an active passion. Orsino is in the clutch of its dangerous passive enemy called sentimentality. He lolls upon a couch to music when he ought to be carrying her glove to battle. Olivia is in an unreal mood of mourning for her brother. Grief is a destroying passion. Olivia makes it a form of self-indulgence, or one sweet the more to attract flies to her. Malvolio is in an unreal mood of self-importance. Long posing at the head of ceremony has given him the faith that ceremony, of which he is the head, is the whole of life. This faith deludes him into a life of day-dreams, common enough among inactive clever people, but dangerous to the indulger, as all things are that distort the mental vision. At the point at which the play begins the day-dream has brought him to the pitch of blindness necessary for effective impact on the wall.

The only cure for the sickly in the mind is reality. Something real has to be felt or experienced. Life that is over-delicate and remote through something unbalanced in the mind is not life but decay. The knife, the bludgeon, the practical joke, and the many-weaponed figure of Sorrow are life's remedies for those who fail to live. We are the earth's children; we have no business in limbo. Living in limbo is like living in the smoke from a crater: highly picturesque, but too near death for safety.

Orsino is cured of sentiment by the sight of Sebastian making love like a man. He rouses to do the like by Viola. Olivia is piqued out of sentiment by coming to know some one who despises her. She falls in love with that person. Malvolio is mocked out of sentiment by the knowledge that other minds have seen his mind. He has not the happiness to be rewarded with love at the end of the play; but he has the alternative of hate, which is as active a passion and as real. All three are roused to activity by the coming of something real into their lives; and all three, in coming to the active state, cease to be interesting and beautiful and pathetic.