Chapter 4

"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 canbe 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 manwould 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 thanupon 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 ofThe Famous Victories of Henry V. Holinshed'sChronicles.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.

Written.1597 (?)

Published.1600.

Source of the Plot.The play ofThe Famous Victories of Henry V. Holinshed'sChronicles.

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 ofKing Henry IVis Shakespeare's ending of thetragedy ofRichard 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 ofRichard IIIcompletes 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 neverso 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 alterationWith 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 thingsAs 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 inprinces," 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 ofThe Famous Victories of Henry V. Holinshed'sChronicles. (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."

Written.1598 (?)

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

Source of the Plot.The play ofThe Famous Victories of Henry V. Holinshed'sChronicles. (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, fromRichard IItoRichard III, and persuaded Shakespeare to write this play to linkHenry IVtoHenry 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 visionto 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 ofFluellen, 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 treasonsDo botch and bungle up damnationWith patches, colours, and with forms being fetch'dFrom 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'sNotti(iv. 4). Tarleton'sNews out of Purgatorie. Giovanni Florentino'sIl Pecorone. Kinde Kit of Kingston'sWestward 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.

Written.1599 (?)

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

Source of the Plot.A tale in Straparola'sNotti(iv. 4). Tarleton'sNews out of Purgatorie. Giovanni Florentino'sIl Pecorone. Kinde Kit of Kingston'sWestward 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, theothers 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 chainIn 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 ofRosalynde, Euphues'Golden Legacie(published in 1590) supply the fable. The tale is that tale of Gamelyn, wrongly attributed to Chaucer. ThePractise(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 theend, 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.

Written.(?)

Published.1600 (?)

Source of the Plot.Thomas Lodge's novel ofRosalynde, Euphues'Golden Legacie(published in 1590) supply the fable. The tale is that tale of Gamelyn, wrongly attributed to Chaucer. ThePractise(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 theend, 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 menwish, not to be counted wise but to have as great liberty as the fool to express his thought—

"weed your better judgmentsOf all opinion that grows rank in themThat I am wise. I must have libertyWithal, as large a charter as the wind,To blow on whom I please; for so fools have.... give me leaveTo speak my mind, and I will through and throughCleanse the foul body of the infected world,If they will patiently receive my medicine."

"weed your better judgmentsOf all opinion that grows rank in themThat I am wise. I must have libertyWithal, as large a charter as the wind,To blow on whom I please; for so fools have.

... give me leaveTo speak my mind, and I will through and throughCleanse 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 beof 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'sFaerie 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 arebrought 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.

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'sFaerie 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 arebrought 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 aboutmen. 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 thatthose 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;

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—

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 patienceTo those that wring under the load of sorrow,But no man's virtue nor sufficiency,To be so moral when he shall endureThe 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 thrillingsoul 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 bookRiche 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 lovewith 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.

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 bookRiche 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 lovewith 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 andremote 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.

Shakespeare's abundant power created beings who look before and after, even while they keep vigorous a passionate present. It is difficult to praise that power. Even those who know how difficult art is find it hard to praise perfect art. Art is not to be praised or blamed, but understood. This play will stand as an example of perfect art till a greater than Shakespeare set a better example further on. It is

"All beauty and without a spot."

The scene of the roisterers, rousing the night-owl in a catch, rouses the heart, as all real creation does, with the thought that life is too wonderful to end. The next, most lovely scene, where the Duke and Viola talk of love that keeps life from ending, and so often brings life down into the dust, assures the heart that even if life ends for us it will go on in others.

"the song we had last night.Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;The spinsters and the knitters in the sunAnd the free maids that weave their thread with bonesDo use to chant it: it is silly sooth,And dallies with the innocence of love,Like the old age."

In his best plays Shakespeare used a double construction to express by turn the twofold energy of man, the energy of the animal and of the spirit. The mind that brooded sadly in

"For women are as roses, whose fair flowerBeing once display'd, doth fall that very hour,"

and in

"She never told her love,But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,"

belonged to earth, and got a gladness from earth. Within two minutes of the talk of the woman who died of love he showed Contemplation making a rare turkey-cock of the one wise man in his play.

All's Well that Ends Well.

Written.(?)Published.1623.Source of the Plot.The story of Helena's love for Bertram is found in theDecameroneof Boccaccio (giorn. 3, nov. 9). Shakespeare may have read it in thePalace of Pleasure.The Fable.Helena, orphan daughter of a physician, has been brought up, as a dependant, in the house of the Countess of Rousillon. She falls in love with Bertram, the son of the Countess and the King's ward.Bertram goes to the French Court, on his way to the wars. He finds the King dangerously ill. Helena, hearing of the King's illness, comes to the Court as a physician. She offers to cure the King with one of her father's remedies, on condition that, when cured, he will give her in marriage the man of her choice. The King accepts these conditions; she cures him; she chooses for her husband Bertram.Bertram, the King's ward, has to do the King's bidding. He grudgingly accepts her; they are married. He leaves her, and goes to the wars in the service of the Duke of Florence, designing to see her no more. Helena withdraws from the Countess's house, and comes to Florence disguised.Bertram woos Diana, a maid of Florence. Helena impersonates her, receives her unsuspecting husband at night, takes from him a ring, and gives, in exchange, a ring given to her by the King of France. At the end of the war, Bertram, hearing that Helena is dead, returns to France, wearing the ring. The King sees it and challenges it. Bertram can give no just account of how he got it. Helena, quick with child by him, confronts him, with the ring that he left with her at Florence. Diana, the Florentinemaid, gives evidence that Helena impersonated her on the night of Bertram's visit at Florence. Bertram accepts Helena as his wife, and the play ends happily.

Written.(?)

Published.1623.

Source of the Plot.The story of Helena's love for Bertram is found in theDecameroneof Boccaccio (giorn. 3, nov. 9). Shakespeare may have read it in thePalace of Pleasure.

The Fable.Helena, orphan daughter of a physician, has been brought up, as a dependant, in the house of the Countess of Rousillon. She falls in love with Bertram, the son of the Countess and the King's ward.

Bertram goes to the French Court, on his way to the wars. He finds the King dangerously ill. Helena, hearing of the King's illness, comes to the Court as a physician. She offers to cure the King with one of her father's remedies, on condition that, when cured, he will give her in marriage the man of her choice. The King accepts these conditions; she cures him; she chooses for her husband Bertram.

Bertram, the King's ward, has to do the King's bidding. He grudgingly accepts her; they are married. He leaves her, and goes to the wars in the service of the Duke of Florence, designing to see her no more. Helena withdraws from the Countess's house, and comes to Florence disguised.

Bertram woos Diana, a maid of Florence. Helena impersonates her, receives her unsuspecting husband at night, takes from him a ring, and gives, in exchange, a ring given to her by the King of France. At the end of the war, Bertram, hearing that Helena is dead, returns to France, wearing the ring. The King sees it and challenges it. Bertram can give no just account of how he got it. Helena, quick with child by him, confronts him, with the ring that he left with her at Florence. Diana, the Florentinemaid, gives evidence that Helena impersonated her on the night of Bertram's visit at Florence. Bertram accepts Helena as his wife, and the play ends happily.

This play (whenever written) was extensively revised during the ruthless mood that gave birth toMeasure for Measure. The alterations were made in a mood so much deeper than the mood of its first composition that they make the play uneven. Something, perhaps some trick of health, that made the mind clearer than the imagination, gave to Shakespeare for a short time another (and pitiless) view of human obsessions.

It was a part of his belief that treachery is generally caused by blindness, blindness generally by some obsession of passion. In this play he treats of the removal of an obsession by making plain to the obsessed, by pitiless judicial logic, the ugliness of the treachery it causes.

Bertram is a young man fresh from home. He does not want to marry. He is eager to see the world and to win honour. He has been accustomed to look down on Helena as a poordependant. He does not like her, and he does not like being ordered. He is suddenly ordered to marry her. He has been trapped by a woman's underhand trick. He sees himself brought into bondage with all the plumes of his youth clipped close. There is no way of escape; he has to marry her; but the King's order cannot quench his rage against the woman who has so snared him. His rage burns inward into a brooding, rankling ill-humour that becomes an obsession. It is one of the tragedies of life that an evil obsession blinds the judgment on more sides than one. The obsessed are always without criticism. A way of destruction may be as narrow as a way of virtue; but all the other ways of destruction run into it. Bertram in blinkers to the good in Helena is blind to the faults in himself and in Parolles his friend. Wilfully, as the sullen do, he thinks himself justified in doing evil because evil has been done to him. Hot blood is running in him. Temptation, never far from youth, is always near the unbalanced. He takes an unworthy confidant,as the obsessed do, and goes in over the ears. His sin is the giving of salutation to sportive blood, it is love, it is "natural rebellion," it is young man's pastime. But looked at coldly and judicially, with the nature of the confidant laid bare, and the lies of the sinner made plain, it is an ugly thing. Passion is sweet enough to seem truth, the only truth. Let the eyes be opened a little, and it will blast the heart with horror. What man thought true is then seen to be this, this thing, this devil of falseness who gives man this kind of friend, makes him tell this kind of lie, and brands him with this kind of shame.

Shakespeare is just to Bertram. The treachery of a woman is often the cause of a man's treachery to womanhood. Helena's obsession of love makes her blind to the results of her actions. She twice puts the man whom she loves into an intolerable position, which nothing but a king can end. The fantasy is not made so real that we can believe in the possibility of happiness between two so married. Helena has been praised as one of the noblestof Shakespeare's women. Shakespeare saw her more clearly than any man who has ever lived. He saw her as a woman who practises a borrowed art, not for art's sake, nor for charity, but, woman fashion, for a selfish end. He saw her put a man into a position of ignominy quite unbearable, and then plot with other women to keep him in that position. Lastly, he saw her beloved all the time by the conventionally minded of both sexes.

The play is full of effective theatrical situations. It contains much fine poetry. Besides the poetry there are startling moments of insight—

"My mother told me just how he would wooAs if she sat in's heart....""Now, God delay our rebellion! as we are ourselves,What things are we! Merely our own traitors.""I would gladly have him see his company anatomised,That he might take a measure of his own judgments."

"My mother told me just how he would wooAs if she sat in's heart...."

"Now, God delay our rebellion! as we are ourselves,What things are we! Merely our own traitors."

"I would gladly have him see his company anatomised,That he might take a measure of his own judgments."

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