Chapter 6

"You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,"

as well as the instinctive manner of a prose coloured to the height with all the traditions of country life.

Dramatic genius has the power of understanding half-a-dozen lives at once in tense, swiftly changing situations. This power is shown at its best in the last act of this play. One of the most wonderful and least praised of the inventions in the last scene is that of the dying Edmund. He has been treacherous to nearly every person in the play. His last treachery, indirectly the cause of his ruin, is still in act, the killing of Cordelia and the king.He has been stricken down. "The wheel has come full circle." He has learned too late that

"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vicesMake instruments to plague us."

He can hardly hope to live for more than a few minutes. The death of his last two victims cannot benefit him. A word from him would save them. No one else can save them. Yet at the last minute, his one little glimmer of faithfulness keeps the word unspoken. He is silent for Goneril's sake. If he ever cared for any one in the world, except himself, he may have cared a little for Goneril. He thinks of her now. She has gone from him. But she is on his side, and he trusts to her, and acts for her. He waits for some word or token from her. He waits to see her save him or avenge him. The death of Lear will benefit her. It will be to her something saved from the general wreck, something to the good, in the losing bout. An impulse stirs him to speak, but he puts it by. He keeps silent about Lear, till one comes saying that Gonerilhas killed herself. Still he does not speak. The news pricks the vanity in him. He strokes his plumes with a tender thought for the brightness of the life that made two princesses die for love of him. When he speaks of Lear, it is too late, the little, little instant which alters destiny has passed. Cordelia is dead. No mist stains the stone. She will come no more—

"Never, never, never, never, never."

The heart-breaking scene at the end has been blamed as "too painful for tragedy." Shakespeare's opinion of what is tragic is worth that of all his critics together. He gave to every soul in this play an excessive and terrible vitality. On the excessive terrible soul of Lear he poured such misery that the cracking of the great heart is a thing of joy, a relief so fierce that the audience should go out in exultation singing—

"O, our lives' sweetness!That we the pain of death would hourly dieRather than die at once!"

Tragedy is a looking at fate for a lesson in deportment on life's scaffold. If we find the lesson painful, how shall we face the event?

Macbeth.

Written.1605-6 (?)Published, in the first folio, 1623.Source of the Plot.Raphael Holinshed tells the story of Macbeth at length in hisChronicle of Scottish History. He indicates the character of Lady Macbeth in one line.When Shakespeare wrote the play, London was full of Scotchmen, brought thither by the accession of James I. Little details of the play may have been gathered in conversation.The Fable.Macbeth, advised by witches that he is to be a king, is persuaded by his wife to kill his sovereign (King Duncan) and seize the crown. King Duncan, coming to Macbeth's castle for a night, is there killed by Macbeth and his lady. Duncan's sons fly to England. Macbeth causes himself to be proclaimed king.Being king, he tries to assure himself of power by destroying the house of Banquo, of whom the witches prophesied that he should be the father of a line of kings. Banquo is killed; but his son escapes.The witches warn Macbeth to beware of Macduff.Macduff escapes to England, but his wife and children are killed by Macbeth's order.Macduff persuades Duncan's son, Malcolm, to attempt the recovery of the Scottish crown.Malcolm and Macduff make the attempt. They attack Macbeth and kill him.

Written.1605-6 (?)

Published, in the first folio, 1623.

Source of the Plot.Raphael Holinshed tells the story of Macbeth at length in hisChronicle of Scottish History. He indicates the character of Lady Macbeth in one line.

When Shakespeare wrote the play, London was full of Scotchmen, brought thither by the accession of James I. Little details of the play may have been gathered in conversation.

The Fable.Macbeth, advised by witches that he is to be a king, is persuaded by his wife to kill his sovereign (King Duncan) and seize the crown. King Duncan, coming to Macbeth's castle for a night, is there killed by Macbeth and his lady. Duncan's sons fly to England. Macbeth causes himself to be proclaimed king.

Being king, he tries to assure himself of power by destroying the house of Banquo, of whom the witches prophesied that he should be the father of a line of kings. Banquo is killed; but his son escapes.

The witches warn Macbeth to beware of Macduff.

Macduff escapes to England, but his wife and children are killed by Macbeth's order.

Macduff persuades Duncan's son, Malcolm, to attempt the recovery of the Scottish crown.

Malcolm and Macduff make the attempt. They attack Macbeth and kill him.

Macbeth is one of the seven supreme Shakespearean plays. In the order of composition it is either the fourth or the fifth of the seven. In point of merit it is neither greater nor less than the other six. It is different from them, in that it belongs more wholly to the kingdom of vision.

Like most Shakespearean tragedy, Macbeth is the tragedy of a man betrayed by an obsession. Cæsar is betrayed by an obsession of the desire of glory, Antony by passion, Tarquin by lust, Wolsey by worldly greed, Coriolanus and Timon by their nobleness, Angelo by his righteousness, Hamlet by his wisdom. All fail through having some hunger or quality in excess. Macbeth fails because he interprets with his worldly mind things spiritually suggested to him. God sends on many men "strong delusion, that they shall believe a lie." Othello is one such. Many things betray men. One strong means of delusion is the half-true, half-wise, half-spiritual thing, so much harder to kill than the lie direct. The sentimental treacherous things, like women who betray by arousing pity, arethe dangerous things because their attack is made in the guise of great things. Tears look like grief, sentiment looks like love; love feels like nobility; spiritualism seems like revelation.

Among these things few are stronger than the words spoken in unworldly states, in trance, in ecstasy, by oracles and diviners, by soothsayers, by the wholly excited people who are also half sane, by whoever obtains a half knowledge of the spirit by destruction of intellectual process.

"to win us to our harm,The instruments of darkness tell us truths,Win us with honest trifles, to betray'sIn deepest consequence."

Coming weary and excited from battle, on a day so strange that it adds to the strangeness of his mood, Macbeth hears the hags hail him with prophecy. The promise rankles in him. The seed scattered in us by the beings outside life comes to good or evil according to the sun in us. Macbeth, looking on the letter of the prophecy, thinks only of the letter of its fulfilment, till it becomes an obsession withhim. Partial fulfilment of the prophecy convinces him that all will be fulfilled. The belief that the veil over the future has been lifted for him gives him the recklessness of one bound in the knots of fate. So often, the thought that the soul is in a trap, playing out something planned of old, makes man take the frantic way, when the smallest belief in life would lead to peace. This thought passes through his mind. Then fear that it is all a contriving of the devils makes him put it manfully from his mind. The talk about the Cawdor whose place he holds is a thrust to him. That Cawdor was a traitor who has been put to death for treachery. The king had an "absolute trust" in him; but there is no judging by appearances. This glimpse of the ugliness of treachery makes Macbeth for an instant free of all temptation to it. Then a word stabs him again to the knowledge that if he take no step the king's young son will be king after Duncan. Why should the boy rule? From this point he goes forward, full of all the devils of indecision, but inclining towardsrighteousness, till his wife, girding and railing at him with definite aim while all his powers are in mutiny, drives him to the act of murder.

The story of the double treachery of the killing of a king, who is also a guest, is so written that we do not feel horror so much as an unbearable pity for Macbeth's mind. The horror is felt later, when it is made plain that the treachery does not end with that old man on the bed, but proceeds in a spreading growth of murder till the man who fought so knightly at Fife is the haunted awful figure who goes ghastly, killing men, women and little children, till Scotland is like a grave. At the end, the "worthy gentleman," "noble Macbeth," having fallen from depth to depth of degradation, is old, hag-haunted, sick at heart, and weary. He has no friends. He knows himself silently cursed by every one in his kingdom. His queen is haunted. There is a curse upon the pair of them. The birds of murder have come to roost. All that supports him is his trust in his reading of the words of the hags. He knows himself secure.

"And you all know securityIs mortal's chiefest enemy,"

He has supped full with horrors. His bloody base mind is all a blur with gore. But he is resolute in evil still. At the end he sees too late that he has been tricked by—

"the equivocation of the fiendThat lies like truth."

His queen has killed herself. All the welter of murder has been useless. All that he has done is to damn his soul through the centuries during which the line of Banquo will reign. He dies with a courage that is half fury against the fate that has tricked him.

No play contains greater poetry. There is nothing more intense. The mind of the man was in the kingdom of vision, hearing a new speech and seeing what worldly beings do not see, the rush of the powers, and the fury of elemental passions. No play is so full of an unspeakable splendour of vision—

"his virtuesWill plead like angels trumpet-tongued.""And pity, like a naked new-born babe,Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsedUpon the sightless couriers of the air.""Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,Lamentings heard i' the air, strange screams of death,And prophesying with accents terrible.""In the great hand of God I stand.""A falcon towering in her pride of placeWas by a mousing owl hawk'd at and killed.And Duncan's horses—a thing most strange and certain—Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would makeWar with mankind.'Tis said they eat each other.""the time has beenThat, when the brains were out, the man would die."

"his virtuesWill plead like angels trumpet-tongued."

"And pity, like a naked new-born babe,Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsedUpon the sightless couriers of the air."

"Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,Lamentings heard i' the air, strange screams of death,And prophesying with accents terrible."

"In the great hand of God I stand."

"A falcon towering in her pride of placeWas by a mousing owl hawk'd at and killed.And Duncan's horses—a thing most strange and certain—Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would makeWar with mankind.'Tis said they eat each other."

"the time has beenThat, when the brains were out, the man would die."

All the splendours and powers of this great play have been praised and re-praised. Noble inventions, like the knocking on the door and the mutterings of the hags, have thrilled thousands. One, not less noble, is less noticed. It is in Act IV, sc. i, Macbeth has just questioned the hags for the last time. He calls in Lennox, with the words—

"I did hearThe galloping of horse: who was't came by?"

It was the galloping of messengers with the news that Macduff, who is to be the cause of his ruin, has fled to England. An echo of the galloping stays in the brain, as though the hoofs of some horse rode the night, carrying away Macbeth's luck for ever.

Antony and Cleopatra.

Written.1607-8 (?)Published, in the folio, 1623.Source of the Plot.The life of Antonius in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch'sLives.The Fable.Antony, entangled by the wiles of Cleopatra, shakes himself free so that he may attend to the conduct of the world. He makes a pact with the young Cæsar, by marrying Cæsar's sister Octavia. Soon afterwards, being tempted from his wife by Cleopatra, he falls intowars with Cæsar. Being unhappy in his fortune and deserted by his friends, he kills himself. Cleopatra having lost her lover, and fearing to be led in triumph by Cæsar, also kills herself.

Written.1607-8 (?)

Published, in the folio, 1623.

Source of the Plot.The life of Antonius in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch'sLives.

The Fable.Antony, entangled by the wiles of Cleopatra, shakes himself free so that he may attend to the conduct of the world. He makes a pact with the young Cæsar, by marrying Cæsar's sister Octavia. Soon afterwards, being tempted from his wife by Cleopatra, he falls intowars with Cæsar. Being unhappy in his fortune and deserted by his friends, he kills himself. Cleopatra having lost her lover, and fearing to be led in triumph by Cæsar, also kills herself.

In this most noble play, Shakespeare applies to a great subject his constant idea, that tragedy springs from the treachery caused by some obsession.

"Strange it isThat nature must compel us to lamentOur most persisted deeds."

It cannot be said that the play is greater than the other plays of this period. It can be said that it is on a greater scale than any other play. The scene is the Roman world. The men engaged are struggling for the control of all the power of the world. The private action is played out before a grand public setting. The wisdom and the beauty of the poetry answer the greatness of the subject.

Shakespeare's later tragedies,King Lear,Coriolanus,Othello, and this play differ from some of the early tragedies in that the subject is not the man of intellect, hounded down bythe man of affairs, as inRichard II,Richard III, andHenry IV, but the man of large and generous nature hounded down by the man of intellect. In all four plays the destruction of the principal character is brought about partly by a blindness in a noble nature, but very largely by a cool, resolute, astute soul who can and does take advantage of the blindness. Edmund, the tribunes, Iago, and (in this play) Octavius Cæsar are such souls. All of them profit by the soul they help to destroy. They leave upon the mind the impression that they have a tact for the gaining of profit from human frailty. All of them show the basest ingratitude under a colourable cloak of human excuse.

The obsession of lust is illustrated in half-a-dozen of Shakespeare's plays; but in none of them so fully as here. The results of that obsession in treachery and tragedy brim the great play. Antony is drunken to destruction with a woman like a raging thirst. A fine stroke in the creation of the play sweeps him clear of her and offers hima way of life. He uses the moment to get so far from her that his return to her is a deed of triple treachery to his wife, to Cæsar, and to his country. His intoxication with the woman degrades him to the condition of blindness in which the woman-drunken staggers. It is a part of all drunkenness that the drunkard thinks himself a king, though he looks and is a sot. Shakespeare's marvellous illustration of this blindness (in the third act) is seldom praised as it should be. Antony, crushingly defeated, owing to the treachery of all debauched natures, calls upon Octavius to meet him in single combat.

"men's judgments areA parcel of their fortunes, and things outwardDo draw the inward quality after them,To suffer all alike.""when we in our viciousness grow hard,O misery on't—the wise gods seel our eyes;In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make usAdore our errors; laugh at's while we strutTo our confusion."

"men's judgments areA parcel of their fortunes, and things outwardDo draw the inward quality after them,To suffer all alike."

"when we in our viciousness grow hard,O misery on't—the wise gods seel our eyes;In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make usAdore our errors; laugh at's while we strutTo our confusion."

The cruel bungling suicide which leaves him lingering in dishonour is one of the saddest things in the plays. This was Antony who ruled once, this mutterer dying, whom no one loves enough to kill. Once before, in Shakespeare's vision, he came near death, in the proud scene in the senate house, before Cæsar's murderers. He was very great and noble then. Now

"The star is fall'nAnd time is at his period.""The god Hercules, whom Antony loved,"

"The star is fall'nAnd time is at his period."

"The god Hercules, whom Antony loved,"

has moved away with his hautboys and all comes to dust again.

The minds of most writers would have been exhausted after the creation of four such acts. The splendour of Shakespeare's intellectual energy makes the last act as bright a torch of beauty as the others. The cry—

"We'll bury him; and then, what's brave, what's noble,Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,And make Death proud to take us ....... we have no friendBut resolution and the briefest end,"

begins a song of the welcoming of death, unlike anything in the plays. Shakespeare seldom allows a woman a great, tragical scene. Cleopatra is the only Shakespearean woman who dies heroically upon the stage. Her death scene is not the greatest, nor the most terrible, but it is the most beautiful scene in all the tragedies. The words—

"Finish, good lady; the bright day is done,And we are for the dark,"

and those most marvellous words, written at one golden time, in a gush of the spirit, when the man must have been trembling—

"O eastern star!Peace, peace!Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,That sucks the nurse asleep?"

are among the most beautiful things ever written by man.

Coriolanus.

Written.1608 (?)Published.1623.Source of the Plot.The life of Coriolanus in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch'sLives.The Fable.Marcius, a noble Roman, of an excessive pride, bitterly opposes the rabble.In the war against the Volscians he bears himself so nobly that he wins the title of Coriolanus. On his return from the wars he seeks the Consulship, woos the voices of the multitude, is accepted, and then cast by them. For his angry comment on their behaviour the tribunes contrive his banishment from the city.Being banished, he makes league with the Volscians. He takes command in the Volscian army and invades Roman territory.Coming as a conqueror to the walls of Rome, his mother and wife persuade him to spare the city. He causes the Volscians to make peace. The Volscians return home dissatisfied.On his return to the Volscian territory Coriolanus is impeached as a traitor, and stabbed to death by conspirators.

Written.1608 (?)

Published.1623.

Source of the Plot.The life of Coriolanus in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch'sLives.

The Fable.Marcius, a noble Roman, of an excessive pride, bitterly opposes the rabble.

In the war against the Volscians he bears himself so nobly that he wins the title of Coriolanus. On his return from the wars he seeks the Consulship, woos the voices of the multitude, is accepted, and then cast by them. For his angry comment on their behaviour the tribunes contrive his banishment from the city.

Being banished, he makes league with the Volscians. He takes command in the Volscian army and invades Roman territory.

Coming as a conqueror to the walls of Rome, his mother and wife persuade him to spare the city. He causes the Volscians to make peace. The Volscians return home dissatisfied.

On his return to the Volscian territory Coriolanus is impeached as a traitor, and stabbed to death by conspirators.

Shakespeare's tragical characters are all destroyed by the excess of some trait in them, whether good or ill matters nothing. Nature cares for type, not for the excessive. Sooner or later she checks the excessive so that the type may be maintained. She is stronger than the excessive, though she may be baser. To Nature, progress, though itbe infinitesimal, must be a progress of the whole mass, not a sudden darting out of one quality or one member.

Timon of Athens is betrayed by an excessive generosity. Coriolanus is betrayed by an excessive contempt for the multitude. He is one born into a high tradition of life. He has the courage, the skill in arms, and the talent for affairs that come with high birth in the manly races. He has also the faith in tradition that makes an unlettered upper class narrow and obstructionist. Like the rich in France before the Revolution, he despises the poor. He denies them the right to complain of their hunger. Rather than grant them that right, or the means of urging redress, he would take a short way with them, as was practised here, at Manchester and elsewhere.

"Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,And let me use my sword, I'ld make a quarryWith thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as highAs I could pick my lance."

Like all conservative, aristocratic men, he sees in the first granting of political power to the people the beginning of revolution.

"It will in timeWin power upon and throw forth greater themesFor insurrection's arguing."

He regards the people as a necessary, evil-smelling, many-headed beast, good enough, under the leadership of men like himself, to make inferior troops to be spent as the State pleases. It is possible that Napoleon and Bismarck looked upon the mob with similar scorn. The ideas are those of an absolute monarch or super-man. The country squire holds those ideas, though want of power and want of intellect combine to keep him from applying them. The sincerity of the ideas is tested from time to time, in free countries, by general elections.

Much of the pride of Coriolanus springs from a sense of his superiority to others in the gifts of fortune. Much of it comes from the knowledge that he is superior in himself.Leading, as becomes his birth, in the war against the Volscians he shows himself so much superior to others that the campaign is his triumph. He is "the man" whom Napoleon counted "everything in war." The knowledge of his merit is so bright within himself that he is unable to see that it is less bright in others. He is willing to become the head of the State if the post may be given to him as a right due to merit, not as a favour begged. He has no lust for power. But knowing himself to be the best man in Rome, he thinks that his merit is sufficiently great to excuse him from the indignity of sueing for it. The laws of free countries prescribe that he who wishes to be elected must appeal to the electors whether he love them or loathe them. Instead of appealing to them, Coriolanus insults them with such arrogance that they drive him from the city.

He fails as a traitor, because he is too noble to be fiercely revengeful. A lesser man, a Richard III, or an Iago, would have exacteda bloody toll from Rome. Coriolanus cannot bring himself to be stern, in the presence of his old mother and his wife. Something generous and truly aristocratic in him makes him a second time a traitor, this time to his hosts the Volscians. He spares Rome by the sacrifice of those who have given him a shelter and a welcome. Treachery (even from a noble motive) is never forgiven in these plays. It is always avenged, seldom mercifully. The Volscians avenge themselves on Coriolanus by an act of treachery that brings the noble heart under the foot of the traitor.

Coriolanusis one of the greatest of Shakespeare's creations. Much of the glory of the creation is due to Plutarch. There can be no great art without great fable. Great art can only exist where great men brood intensely on something upon which all men brood a little. Without a popular body of fable there can be no unselfish art in any country. Shakespeare's art was selfish till he turned to the great tales in the four most popular books of his time, Holinshed, North'sPlutarch, Cinthio, and De Belleforest. Since the newspaper became powerful, topic has supplanted fable, and subject comes to the artist untrimmed and unlit by the vitality of many minds. In readingCoriolanusand the other plays of the great period a man feels that Shakespeare fed his fire with all that was passionate in the thought about him. He appears to be his age focussed. The great man now stands outside his age, like Timon.

Coriolanusis a play of the clash of the aristocratic temper with the world. It contains most of the few speeches in Shakespeare which ring with what seems like a personal bitterness. Hatred of the flunkey mind, and of the servile, insolent mob mind, "false as water," appears in half-a-dozen passages. Some of these passages are ironic inventions, not prompted by Plutarch. The great mind, brooding on the many forms of treachery, found nothing more treacherous than the mob, and nothing more dog-like, for good or evil, than the servant.

Greatness is sometimes shown in very littlethings. Few things in Shakespeare show better the fulness of his happy power than the following—

(Corioli. Enter certain Romans with spoils.)1st Roman.This will I carry to Rome.2nd Roman.And I this.3rd Roman.A murrain on't. I took this for silver.

Timon of Athens.

Written.1606-8 (?)Published. 1623.Source of the Plot.William Paynter'sPalace of Pleasure. Plutarch'sLife of Antonius. Lucian'sDialogue.The Fable.Timon of Athens, a wealthy, over-generous man, gives to his friends so lavishly that he ruins himself. He finds none grateful for his bounty. In his ruin all his friends desert him. None of them will lend to him or help him. He falls into a loathing of the world and retires to die alone. Alcibiades of Athens, finding a like ingratitude in the State, openly makes war upon it, reduces it to his own terms, and rules it. He finds Timon dead.

Written.1606-8 (?)

Published. 1623.

Source of the Plot.William Paynter'sPalace of Pleasure. Plutarch'sLife of Antonius. Lucian'sDialogue.

The Fable.Timon of Athens, a wealthy, over-generous man, gives to his friends so lavishly that he ruins himself. He finds none grateful for his bounty. In his ruin all his friends desert him. None of them will lend to him or help him. He falls into a loathing of the world and retires to die alone. Alcibiades of Athens, finding a like ingratitude in the State, openly makes war upon it, reduces it to his own terms, and rules it. He finds Timon dead.

Timon of Athensis a play of mixed authorship. Shakespeare's share in it is large and unmistakable; but much of it was written by an unknown poet of whom we can decipher this, that he was a man of genius, a skilled writer for the stage, and of a markedpersonality. It cannot now be known how the collaboration was arranged. Either the unknown collaborated with Shakespeare, or the unknown wrote the play and Shakespeare revised it.

Ingratitude is one of the commonest forms of treachery. It is the form that leads most quickly to the putting back of the world, because it destroys generosity of mind. It creates in man the bitter and destructive quality of misanthropy, or a destroying passion of revenge. In this play the two authors show the different ways in which the human mind may be turned to those bitter passions.

Apemantus is currish, because others are not. He has wit without charity. Alcibiades makes war on his city because others have not the rough-and-ready large practical justice of men used to knocks. He has a large good humour without idealism. Timon, the great-natured, truly generous man, whose mind is as beneficial as the sun, cannot be currish, nor stoop to the baseness of revenge. Findingmen base, he removes himself from them, and ministers with bitter contempt to the baseness that infects them. The flaming out of his anger against whatever is parasitic in life makes the action of the last two acts. The exhibition of the baseness of parasites and of the wrath of a noble mind embittered, is contrived, varied and heightened with intense dramatic energy. The character of Flavius, Timon's steward, his only friend, shows again, as in so many of the plays, Shakespeare's deep sense of the noble generosity in faithful service.

Some think the play gloomy, others that it is autobiography. Shakespeare's completed work is never gloomy. A great mind working with such a glory of energy cannot be gloomy. This generation is gloomy and unimaginative in its conception of art. Shakespeare, reading the story of Timon, saw in him an image of tragic destiny that would flood the heart of even an ingrate with pity. Great poets have something more difficult and more noble to do than to pin their heartson their sleeves for daws to peck at. Shakespeare wrought the figure of Timon with as grave justice as he wrought Alcibiades. He wrought both from something feeling within himself, as he wrought Cleopatra, and Macbeth, and Sir Toby Belch. They are as much autobiographical, and as little, as the hundred other passionate moods that built up the system of his soul.

The poetry of the play is that of the great late manner—

"will these moss'd trees,That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels,And skip when thou point'st out?"

"Come not to me again: but say to Athens,Timon hath made his everlasting mansionUpon the beached verge of the salt flood:Who, once a day with his embossed frothThe turbulent surge shall cover."

The final speech, spoken by Alcibiades after he has read the epitaph, with which Timon goes down to death, like some hurt thing shrinking even from the thought ofpassers, is one of the most lovely examples of the power and variety of blank verse as a form of dramatic speech.

Alcib.(reading)Pass by and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy gait.

These well express in thee thy latter spirits:Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs,Scorned'st our brain's flow and those our droplets whichFrom niggard nature fall, yet rich conceitTaught thee to make vast Neptune weep for ayeOn thy low grave, on faults forgiven. DeadIs noble Timon: of whose memoryHereafter more. Bring me into your city,And I will use the olive with my sword,Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make eachPrescribe to other as each other's leech.Let our drums strike.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

Written.1607-8 (?)Published.1608.Source of the Plot.The plot is taken from an Englishprose version of a Latin translation of a fifth century Greek romance. This version was published by Lawrence Twine, in the year 1576, under the name ofThe Patterne of Paynfull Adventures(etc., etc.). It was reprinted in 1607. An adaptation from the Latin story was made by John Gower for the eighth book of hisConfessio Amantis. This adaptation was known to the authors of the play.The Fable.Act I. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, comes to Antioch to guess a riddle propounded by the King. If he guess rightly, he will be rewarded by the hand of the Princess in marriage. If he guess wrongly, he will be put to death. The riddle teaches him that the Princess is living incestuously with her father. He flies from Antioch to Tyre, and there takes ship to avoid the King's vengeance. Coming to Tarsus he relieves a famine by gifts of corn.Act II. He is wrecked near Pentapolis, recovers his armour, goes jousting at the King's court, wins the King's daughter Thaisa, and marries her.Act III. While bound for Tyre, Thaisa gives birth to a daughter, dies, and is thrown overboard. The body drifts ashore at Ephesus, and is restored to life by a physician. Thaisa, thinking Pericles dead, becomes a votaress at Diana's temple. Pericles leaves Marina, the newly born babe, in the care of the King and Queen of Tarsus. He then returns to Tyre.Act IV. The years pass. Marina grows up to such beauty and charm that she passes the Queen of Tarsus' own daughter. The Queen, deeply jealous for her own child, hires a murderer to kill Marina. Pirates surprise him in the act and carry off Marina to a brothel in Mitylene, from which she escapes. She becomes a singer and musician.Act V. Pericles, wandering, by sea, to Mitylene, in greatmelancholy for the loss of wife and child, hears Marina sing. He learns that she is his daughter. The goddess Diana bids him go to her temple at Ephesus. He goes, and finds Thaisa. The play ends happily with the reuniting of the family.

Written.1607-8 (?)

Published.1608.

Source of the Plot.The plot is taken from an Englishprose version of a Latin translation of a fifth century Greek romance. This version was published by Lawrence Twine, in the year 1576, under the name ofThe Patterne of Paynfull Adventures(etc., etc.). It was reprinted in 1607. An adaptation from the Latin story was made by John Gower for the eighth book of hisConfessio Amantis. This adaptation was known to the authors of the play.

The Fable.Act I. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, comes to Antioch to guess a riddle propounded by the King. If he guess rightly, he will be rewarded by the hand of the Princess in marriage. If he guess wrongly, he will be put to death. The riddle teaches him that the Princess is living incestuously with her father. He flies from Antioch to Tyre, and there takes ship to avoid the King's vengeance. Coming to Tarsus he relieves a famine by gifts of corn.

Act II. He is wrecked near Pentapolis, recovers his armour, goes jousting at the King's court, wins the King's daughter Thaisa, and marries her.

Act III. While bound for Tyre, Thaisa gives birth to a daughter, dies, and is thrown overboard. The body drifts ashore at Ephesus, and is restored to life by a physician. Thaisa, thinking Pericles dead, becomes a votaress at Diana's temple. Pericles leaves Marina, the newly born babe, in the care of the King and Queen of Tarsus. He then returns to Tyre.

Act IV. The years pass. Marina grows up to such beauty and charm that she passes the Queen of Tarsus' own daughter. The Queen, deeply jealous for her own child, hires a murderer to kill Marina. Pirates surprise him in the act and carry off Marina to a brothel in Mitylene, from which she escapes. She becomes a singer and musician.

Act V. Pericles, wandering, by sea, to Mitylene, in greatmelancholy for the loss of wife and child, hears Marina sing. He learns that she is his daughter. The goddess Diana bids him go to her temple at Ephesus. He goes, and finds Thaisa. The play ends happily with the reuniting of the family.

The acts are opened by rhyming prologues designed to be spoken by John Gower. The prologues to each of the three first acts are followed by Dumb Shows, an invention of the theatre to explain those things not easily to be shown in action. The prologues, the invention of the dumb shows, and the first two acts, are not by Shakespeare. They are like the poetical work of George Wilkins, who published a prose romance ofThe Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyrein the year 1608, probably after the play had been produced.

The construction of the last three acts makes it likely that the play (in its original state) was by the constructor of the first two acts. It is not known how it came to pass that Shakespeare took the play in hand. From the comparative feebleness of his work upon it, it may be judged that it was not alabour of love. The impression given is that nothing in the piece is wrought with more than the mechanical power of the great mind, that Shakespeare was not deeply interested in the play, but that he re-wrote the last three acts so that his company might play the piece and make money by it. The play has often succeeded on the stage, and the knowledge that it would succeed may have weighed with the manager of a theatre on which many depended for bread.

There is little that is precious in the play. The scenes in the brothel at Mitylene (in Act IV) have power. Many find their unpleasantness an excuse for saying that Shakespeare never wrote them. They are certainly by Shakespeare. Cant would always persuade itself that the power to see clearly ought not to be turned upon evil. Those who can read—

Bawd.... they are so pitifully sodden.Pandar.... The poor Transylvanian is dead, that lay with the little baggage.Boult.Ay ... she made him roast-meat for worms—

Bawd.... they are so pitifully sodden.

Pandar.... The poor Transylvanian is dead, that lay with the little baggage.

Boult.Ay ... she made him roast-meat for worms—

with disgust at Shakespeare's foulness, yet without horror of heart that the evil still goes on among human beings, must be strangely made. These scenes, the very vigorous sea scenes, including the account of the storm at sea, put into the mouth of Marina—

"My father, as nurse said, did never fear,But cried 'Good seamen!' to the sailors, gallingHis kingly hands, haling ropes;And, clasping to the mast, endured a seaThat almost burst the deck....Never was waves nor wind more violent:And from the ladder-tackle washes offA canvas-climber. 'Ha,' says one, 'wilt out?'And with a dropping industry they skipFrom stem to stern; the boatswain whistles, andThe master calls and trebles their confusion"—

and the scene in which Cerimon, the man withdrawn from the world to study the bettering of man, revives the body of Thaisa, are the most lovely things in the play.

Cymbeline.

Written.(?)Published, in the folio, 1623.Source of the Plot.Holinshed'sChroniclestell of Cymbeline and the Roman invasion. A story in Boccaccio'sDecameron(giorn. 2, nov. ix) retold in English in Kinde Kit'sWestward for Smelts, and popular in many forms and many literatures, tells of the woman falsely accused of adultery.The Fable.Cymbeline, King of Britain, has lost his two sons. His only remaining child, a daughter named Imogen, is married to Posthumus. His second wife, a cruel and scheming woman, plots to destroy Posthumus so that her son, the boorish Cloten, may marry Imogen.Posthumus in Rome wagers with Iachimo that Imogen is of an incomparable chastity. Iachimo comes to England, and by a trick obtains evidence that convinces Posthumus that Imogen is unchaste. Imogen, cast off by her husband, comes to the mountains where Belarius rears Cymbeline's two lost sons. Cloten, pursuing her, is killed by one of the sons.The Romans land to exact tribute. The valour of Belarius and the two boys obtains a British victory. The Romans are vanquished. Cymbeline's queen kills herself. Posthumus is taught that Iachimo deceived him. Imogen is restored to him. The lost sons are restored to Cymbeline. Prophecy is fulfilled and pardon given. All ends happily.

Written.(?)

Published, in the folio, 1623.

Source of the Plot.Holinshed'sChroniclestell of Cymbeline and the Roman invasion. A story in Boccaccio'sDecameron(giorn. 2, nov. ix) retold in English in Kinde Kit'sWestward for Smelts, and popular in many forms and many literatures, tells of the woman falsely accused of adultery.

The Fable.Cymbeline, King of Britain, has lost his two sons. His only remaining child, a daughter named Imogen, is married to Posthumus. His second wife, a cruel and scheming woman, plots to destroy Posthumus so that her son, the boorish Cloten, may marry Imogen.

Posthumus in Rome wagers with Iachimo that Imogen is of an incomparable chastity. Iachimo comes to England, and by a trick obtains evidence that convinces Posthumus that Imogen is unchaste. Imogen, cast off by her husband, comes to the mountains where Belarius rears Cymbeline's two lost sons. Cloten, pursuing her, is killed by one of the sons.

The Romans land to exact tribute. The valour of Belarius and the two boys obtains a British victory. The Romans are vanquished. Cymbeline's queen kills herself. Posthumus is taught that Iachimo deceived him. Imogen is restored to him. The lost sons are restored to Cymbeline. Prophecy is fulfilled and pardon given. All ends happily.

It seems possible that Cymbeline was begun as a tragedy during the great mood of tragical creation, then laid aside unfinished, fromsome failure in the vision, or change in the creative mood, and brought to an end later in a new spirit, perhaps in another place, in the country, away from the life which makes writing alive. It is the least perfect of the later plays. The least soft of Shakespeare's critics calls it "unresisting imbecility." It is perhaps the first composed of the romantic plays with which Shakespeare ended his life's work.

Though the writing is so careless and the construction so loose that no one can think of it as a finished play, it has dramatic scenes, one faultless lyric, and many marks of beauty. It deals with the Shakespearean subject of craft working upon a want of faith for personal ends, and being defeated, when almost successful, by something simple and instinctive in human nature. It is thus not unlikeOthello; but inOthellothe subject is simple, and the treatment purely tragic. InCymbelinethe subject is only partly extricated, and the treatment is coloured with romance, with that strange, touching, very Shakespearean romance,of the thing long lost beautifully recovered before the end, so that the last years of the chief man in the play may be happy and complete. The end of life would be as happy as the beginning if the dead might be given back to us. Shakespeare had lost a child.

There can be no doubt that when the play was first conceived, the craft of the queen, working upon the insufficient faith of Cymbeline, was designed to be as important to the action as the craft of Iachimo working upon the insufficient faith of Posthumus. This was never wrought out. The play advances and halts. As in all unfinished works of art one sees in it something fine trying to get free but failing.

The lyric "Fear no more the heat o' the sun" is the most lovely thing in the play. The most powerful moment is that which exposes the poisoning of a generous mind by false report. Posthumus believes Iachimo's lie and breaks out railing against women.

"For there's no motionThat tends to vice in man but I affirmIt is the woman's part."

Noble instants are marked in the lines—

"Be not, as in our fangled world, a garmentNobler than that it covers,"

and in the symbol of the eagle—

"the Roman eagle,From south to west on wing soaring aloft,Lessen'd herself and in the beams o' the sunSo vanished."

The Winter's Tale.

Written.1610-11.Published, in the first folio, 1623.Source of the Plot.The story appears in Robert Greene's romance ofPandosto. Shakespeare greatly improves the fable by completing it. Greene ends it. Greene makes the story an accident with an unhappy end. Shakespeare makes it a vision of the working of fate with the tools of human passion.The Fable.Leontes, King of Sicilia, suspecting that his wife Hermione is guilty of adultery with Polixenes, King of Bohemia, tries her on that count. He causes her daughter to be carried to a desert place and there exposed.The oracle of Apollo declares to him that Hermione is innocent, that he himself is a jealous tyrant, and that hewill die without an heir should he fail to recover the daughter lost. The truth of the oracle is confirmed by the (apparent) death of Hermione and the real death of Mamillius, his son. Repenting bitterly of his obsession of jealousy he goes into mourning.The little daughter is found by country people who nourish and cherish her. She grows up to beautiful and gracious girlhood. Florizel, the son of Polixenes, falls in love with her, and seeks to marry her without his father's knowledge. Being discovered by Polixenes, he flies with her to the sea. Taking ship, the couple come to Leontes' court, where it is proved that the girl is the lost princess. She is married to Florizel. Leontes is reconciled to Polixenes. Hermione completes the general happiness by rejoining the husband who has so long mourned her.

Written.1610-11.

Published, in the first folio, 1623.

Source of the Plot.The story appears in Robert Greene's romance ofPandosto. Shakespeare greatly improves the fable by completing it. Greene ends it. Greene makes the story an accident with an unhappy end. Shakespeare makes it a vision of the working of fate with the tools of human passion.

The Fable.Leontes, King of Sicilia, suspecting that his wife Hermione is guilty of adultery with Polixenes, King of Bohemia, tries her on that count. He causes her daughter to be carried to a desert place and there exposed.

The oracle of Apollo declares to him that Hermione is innocent, that he himself is a jealous tyrant, and that hewill die without an heir should he fail to recover the daughter lost. The truth of the oracle is confirmed by the (apparent) death of Hermione and the real death of Mamillius, his son. Repenting bitterly of his obsession of jealousy he goes into mourning.

The little daughter is found by country people who nourish and cherish her. She grows up to beautiful and gracious girlhood. Florizel, the son of Polixenes, falls in love with her, and seeks to marry her without his father's knowledge. Being discovered by Polixenes, he flies with her to the sea. Taking ship, the couple come to Leontes' court, where it is proved that the girl is the lost princess. She is married to Florizel. Leontes is reconciled to Polixenes. Hermione completes the general happiness by rejoining the husband who has so long mourned her.

Dr. Simon Forman, the first critic of this play, made note to "remember" two things in it, "how he sent to the orakell of Appollo," and "also the rog that cam in all tottered like Coll Pipci." He drew from it this moral lesson, that one should "Beware of trustinge feined beggars or fawninge fellouse."

The moral lesson is still of value to the world, and it is most certainly one which Shakespeare strove to impress. Shakespeare's mind was always brooding on the working of fate. He was always watching the results of some obsession upon an individual and the people connected with him. He saw that a blindness falling upon a person suddenly, for no apparent reason, except that something strikes the something not quite sound in the nature, has the power to alter life violently. It was his belief that life must not be altered violently. Life is a thing of infinitely gradual growth, that would perfect itself if the blindness could be kept away. Any deceiving thing, like a passion or a feigned beggar, is a cause of the putting back of life, indefinitely.

In this play, he followed his usual practice, of showing the results of a human blindness upon human destiny. The greater plays are studies of treachery and self-betrayal. This play is a study of deceit and self-deception. Leontes is deceived by his obsession, Polixenes by his son, the country man by Autolycus, life, throughout, by art. In the last great scene, life is mistaken for art. In the first great scene a true friendship is mistaken for a false love.

It may be called the gentlest of Shakespeare's plays. It is done with a tenderer hand thanthe other works. The name,A Winter's Tale, is taken from a scene in the second act. Hermione sits down with her son, by the winter fire, to listen to his story. It is the last time she ever sees her son. He has hardly opened his lips when Leontes enters to accuse her of adultery. She is hurried off to prison, and Mamillius dies before the oracle's message comes to clear her. The sudden shocks and interruptions of life, which play so big a part in the action of these late romances, have full power here. The winter's tale is interrupted. The rest of the play results from the interruption. Much of it is very beautiful. To us, the wonderful thing is the strangeness of the tenderness which makes some scenes in the fifth act so passionate with grief for old injustice done to the dead. The cry of Leontes remembering the wronged dead woman's eyes—

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