It is possible that when this play was written Shakespeare had thoughts

of consecrating himself to the writing of purely English plays. There

are signs that he had reached a point of achievement that is always a

critical point to imaginative men. He had reached the point at which the

personality is exhausted. He had worked out his natural instincts, the

life known to him, his predilections, his reading. He had found a

channel in which his thoughts could express themselves. Writing was no

longer so pleasant to him as it had been. He had done an incredible

amount of work in a few years. The personality was worn to a husk. It

may be that a very little would have kept him on this side of the line,

writing imitations of what he had already done. He was at the critical

moment which separates the contemplative from the visionary, the good

from the excellent, the great from the supreme. All writers, according

to their power, come to this point. Very few have the fortune to get

beyond it. Shakespeare's mind stood still for a moment, in this play and

in the play that followed, before it went on triumphant to the supreme

plays.

_As You Like It._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600 (?)

_Source of the Plot._ Thomas Lodge's novel of _Rosalynde_, Euphues'

_Golden Legacie_ (published in 1590) supply the fable. The tale is

that tale of Gamelyn, wrongly attributed to Chaucer. The _Practise_

(Saviolo's "Practise") of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian master of

arms, gave hints for Touchstone's account of the lie. The rest of

the play seems to have been the fruit of Shakespeare's invention.

_The Fable._ Orlando, basely used by his elder brother Oliver,

leaves home, annoys the usurping Duke Frederick, and is advised to

leave the country.

Rosalind, child of the rightful Duke, and Celia, the child of Duke

Frederick, fly from home together in search of the rightful Duke,

who has taken to the wild wood. Rosalind, dressed as a man, gives

out that Celia is her sister. They set up as shepherds in Arden.

Orlando joins the rightful Duke in Arden. He is in love with

Rosalind. He meets her in the forest, but does not recognise her in

her disguise. Oliver, cast out by Frederick, comes to Arden, is

reconciled to Orlando, and falls in love with Celia. There are a

few passages of the comedy of mistake, due to Rosalind's disguise.

In the end, the rightful Duke and Oliver are restored to their

possessions. Orlando marries Rosalind; the minor characters are

married as their hearts desire, and all ends happily.

The play treats of the gifts of Nature and the ways of Fortune. Orlando,

given little, is brought to much. Rosalind and Celia, born to much, are

brought to little. The Duke, born to all things, is brought to nothing.

The usurping Duke, born to nothing, climbs to much, desires all, and at

last renounces all. Oliver, born to much, aims at a little more, loses

all, and at last regains all. Touchstone, the worldly wise, marries a

fool. Audrey, born a clown, marries a courtier. Phebe, scorning a man,

falls in love with a woman.

Jaques, the only wise one, is the only one not moved by Fortune. Life

does not interest him; his interest is in his thoughts about life. His

vision of life feasts him whatever life does. Passages in the second

act, in the subtle seventh scene, corrupt in a most important line, show

that in the character of Jaques Shakespeare was expounding a philosophy

of art. The philosophy may not have been that by which he, himself,

wrought; but it is one set down by him with an extreme subtlety of care,

and opposed, as all opinions advanced in drama must be, by an extreme

earnestness of opposition.

The wisest of Shakespeare's characters are often detached from the

action of the play in which they appear. Jaques holds aloof from the

action of this play, though he is perhaps the best-known character in

the cast. His thought is the thought of all wise men, that wisdom, being

always a little beyond the world, has no worldly machinery by which it

can express itself. In this world the place of chorus, interpreter or

commentator is not given to the wise man, but to the fool who has

degraded the office to a profession. Jaques, the wise man, finds the

place occupied by one whose comment is platitude. Wisdom has no place in

the social scheme. The fool, he finds, has both office and uniform.

Seeing this, Jaques wishes, as all wise men wish, not to be counted

wise but to have as great liberty as the fool to express his thought--

"weed your better judgments

Of all opinion that grows rank in them

That I am wise. I must have liberty

Withal, as large a charter as the wind,

To blow on whom I please; for so fools have.

... give me leave

To speak my mind, and I will through and through

Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,

If they will patiently receive my medicine."

He is answered that, having learned of the world's evil by libidinous

living, he can only do evil by exposing his knowledge. He replies,

finely expressing Shakespeare's invariable artistic practice, that his

aim will be at sin, not at particular sinners.

In the middle of his speech Orlando enters, raging for food. It is

interesting to see how closely Shakespeare follows Jaques' mind in the

presence of the fierce animal want of hunger. He is too much interested

to be of help. The Duke ministers to Orlando. Jaques wants to know "of

what kind this cock should come of." He speaks banteringly, the Duke

speaks kindly. The impression given is that Jaques is heartless. The

Duke's thought is "here is one even more wretched than ourselves."

Jaques' thought, always more for humanity than for the individual, is a

profound vision of the world.

The play is a little picture of the world. The contemplative man who is

not of the world, is yet a part of the picture. We are shown a company

of delightful people, just escaped from disaster, smilingly taking the

biggest of hazards. The wise man, dismissing them to their fates with

all the authority of wisdom, gives up his share in the game to listen to

a man who has given up his share of the world. Renunciation of the world

is attractive to all upon whom the world presses very heavily, or very

lightly.

Rosalind and Phebe are of the two kinds of woman who come much into

Shakespeare's early and middle plays. Rosalind, like Portia, is a

golden woman, a daughter of the sun, smiling-natured, but limited.

Phebe, like Rosalind, is black-haired, black-eyed, black-eyebrowed, with

the dead-white face that so often goes with cruelty. Shortly after this

play was written he began to create types less external and less

limited.

_Much Ado about Nothing._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600.

_Source of the Plot._ The greater part of the fable seems to have

been invented by Shakespeare. The Hero and Claudio story is found

in the twenty-second novel of Bandello, and in at least three other

books (one of them Spenser's _Faerie Queene_). It was also known to

the Elizabethans in a play now lost.

_The Fable._ Benedick, a lord of Padua, pledges himself to

bachelorhood. Beatrice, a disdainful lady, is scornful of men.

Claudio plans to marry Hero.

Don John, enemy of Claudio, plans to thwart the marriage by letting

it appear that Hero is unchaste.

Don Pedro and Claudio make Benedick believe that Beatrice is dying

of love for him.

Ursula and Hero make Beatrice believe that Benedick is dying of

love for her.

The disdainful couple make friends. Don John thwarts the marriage

of Claudio by his tale of Hero's unchastity. Claudio casts off Hero

at the altar. Hero swoons, and is conveyed away as dead. Beatrice

and Benedick are brought into close alliance by their upholding of

Hero's cause.

Proof is obtained that Hero has been falsely accused. She is

recovered from her swoon. Claudio marries her. Benedick and

Beatrice plight troth.

In this play Shakespeare writes of the power of report, of the thing

overheard, to alter human destiny. Antonio's man, listening behind a

hedge, overhears Don Pedro telling Claudio that he will woo Hero. The

report of his eavesdropping conveys no notion of the truth, and leads,

no doubt, to a bitter moment for Hero. Borachio, hiding behind the

arras, overhears the truth of the matter. The report of his

eavesdropping leads to the casting off of Hero at the altar. Don John

and Borachio vow to Claudio that they overheard Don Pedro making love to

Hero. The report gives Claudio a bitter moment. Benedick, reporting to

the same tune, intensifies his misery.

Benedick, overhearing the report of Beatrice's love for him, changes his

mind about marriage. Beatrice, hearing of Benedick's love for her,

changes her mind about men. Claudio, hearing Don John's report of Hero,

changes his mind about his love. The watch, overhearing Borachio's

report of his villainy, are able to change the tragedy to comedy.

Leonato, hearing Claudio's report of Hero, is ready to cast off his

child. Report is shown to be stronger than any human affection and any

acquired quality, except the love of one unmarried woman for another,

and that strongest of all earthly things, the fool in authority. The

wisdom of Shakespeare is greater and more various than the brains of

little men can imagine. It is one of the tragical things, that this

great man, who interpreted the ways of fate in glorious, many-coloured

vision, should be set aside in our theatres for the mockers and the

accusers, whose vision scatters dust upon the brain and sand upon the

empty heart.

Though the play is not one of the most passionate of the plays, it

belongs to Shakespeare's greatest creative period. It is full of great

and wonderful things. The character-drawing is so abundant and precise

that those who know how hard it is to convey the illusion of character

can only bow down, thankful that such work may be, but ashamed that it

no longer is. Every person in the play is passionately alive about

something. The energy of the creative mood in Shakespeare filled all

these images with a vitality that interests and compels. The wit and

point of the dialogue--

_Don Pedro._ I think this is your daughter.

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

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

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

or (as in the later passage)--

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

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

_Beatrice._ I would rather have one of your father's getting. Hath

your Grace ne'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent

husbands, if a maid could come by them.

_Don Pedro._ Will you have me, lady?

_Beatrice._ No, my lord, unless I might have another for working

days: your Grace is too costly to wear every day--

is plain to all; but it is given to few to see with what admirable,

close, constructive art this dialogue is written for the theatre. Of

poetry, of understanding passionately put, there is comparatively

little. The one great poetical scene is that at the opening of the fifth

act. The worst lines of this scene have become proverbial; the best are

"'tis all men's office to speak patience

To those that wring under the load of sorrow,

But no man's virtue nor sufficiency,

To be so moral when he shall endure

The like himself."

There is little in the play written thus, but there are many scenes

throbbingly alive. The scene in the church shows what power to

understand the awakened imagination has. The scene is a quivering eight

minutes in as many lives. Shakespeare passes from thrilling soul to

thrilling soul with a touch as delicate as it is certain.

Shakespeare's fun is liberally given in the comic scenes. In the last

act there is a beautiful example of the effect of lyric to heighten a

solemn occasion.

_Twelfth Night._

_Written._ 1600 (?)

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The story of Orsino, Viola, Olivia and

Sebastian is to be found in the "Historie of Apolonius and Silla"

as told by Barnabe Riche in the book _Riche his Farewell to

Militarie Profession_. Riche took the tale from Bandello's Italian,

or from de Belleforest's French translation from it. Three

sixteenth-century Italian plays are based on this fable. All of

these sources may have been known to Shakespeare.

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

original creations.

_The Fable._ Viola, who thinks that she has lost her brother

Sebastian by shipwreck, disguises herself as a boy, and calls

herself Cesario. She takes service with the Duke Orsino, who is in

love with the lady Olivia. She carries love messages from the Duke

to Olivia.

Olivia, who is in mourning for her brother, refuses the Duke's

suit, but falls in love with Cesario.

In her house is Malvolio, the steward, who reproves her uncle, Sir

Toby Belch, for rioting at night with trivial companions. The

trivial companions forge a letter, which causes Malvolio to think

that his mistress is in love with him. The thought makes his

behaviour so strange that he is locked up as a madman.

Sir Toby Belch finds further solace for life in making his gull,

Sir Andrew, challenge Cesario to a duel. The duel is made dangerous

by the sudden appearance of Sebastian, who is mistaken for Cesario.

He beats Sir Andrew and Sir Toby, and encounters the lady Olivia.

Olivia woos him as she has wooed Cesario, but with better fortune.

They are married. The Duke marries Viola. Malvolio is released from

prison. Sir Toby marries Maria, Olivia's waiting-woman. Sir Andrew

is driven out like a plucked pigeon. Malvolio, unappeased by his

release, vows to be revenged for the mock put upon him.

This is the happiest and one of the loveliest of all the Shakespearean

plays. It is the best English comedy. The great mind that mixed a

tragedy of intellect with a tragedy of stupidity, here mixes mirth with

romantic beauty. The play is so mixed with beauty that one can see it

played night after night, week after week, without weariness, even in a

London theatre.

The play presents images of self-deception, or delusional

sentimentality, by means of a romantic fable and a vigorous fable. It

shows us three souls suffering from the kind of sickly vanity that feeds

on day-dreams. Orsino is in an unreal mood of emotion. Love is an

active passion. Orsino is in the clutch of its dangerous passive enemy

called sentimentality. He lolls upon a couch to music when he ought to

be carrying her glove to battle. Olivia is in an unreal mood of mourning

for her brother. Grief is a destroying passion. Olivia makes it a form

of self-indulgence, or one sweet the more to attract flies to her.

Malvolio is in an unreal mood of self-importance. Long posing at the

head of ceremony has given him the faith that ceremony, of which he is

the head, is the whole of life. This faith deludes him into a life of

day-dreams, common enough among inactive clever people, but dangerous to

the indulger, as all things are that distort the mental vision. At the

point at which the play begins the day-dream has brought him to the

pitch of blindness necessary for effective impact on the wall.

The only cure for the sickly in the mind is reality. Something real has

to be felt or experienced. Life that is over-delicate and remote

through something unbalanced in the mind is not life but decay. The

knife, the bludgeon, the practical joke, and the many-weaponed figure of

Sorrow are life's remedies for those who fail to live. We are the

earth's children; we have no business in limbo. Living in limbo is like

living in the smoke from a crater: highly picturesque, but too near

death for safety.

Orsino is cured of sentiment by the sight of Sebastian making love like

a man. He rouses to do the like by Viola. Olivia is piqued out of

sentiment by coming to know some one who despises her. She falls in love

with that person. Malvolio is mocked out of sentiment by the knowledge

that other minds have seen his mind. He has not the happiness to be

rewarded with love at the end of the play; but he has the alternative of

hate, which is as active a passion and as real. All three are roused to

activity by the coming of something real into their lives; and all

three, in coming to the active state, cease to be interesting and

beautiful and pathetic.

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 sun

And the free maids that weave their thread with bones

Do 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 flower

Being 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 the _Decamerone_ of Boccaccio (giorn. 3, nov. 9).

Shakespeare may have read it in the _Palace 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 Florentine maid, 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 to _Measure 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 poor dependant. 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 noblest of 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 woo

As 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."

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together."

"Our rash faults

Make trivial price of serious things we have,

Not knowing them until we know their grave:

Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,

Destroy our friends and after weep their dust."

_Julius Caesar._

_Written._ 1601 (?)

_Produced._ (?)

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The Lives of Antonius, Brutus and Julius

Caesar in Sir Thomas North's _Plutarch_.

A tragedy of Julius Caesar, now lost, was performed by Shakespeare's

company in 1594. Shakespeare must have known this play.

_The Fable._ Cassius, fearing that Julius Caesar is about to

extinguish all trace of Republican rule in Rome, persuades Brutus

and others to plot a change. They decide to murder Caesar.

On the morning chosen for the murder, Caesar is warned by many omens

not to stir abroad. He is persuaded to ignore the omens. He goes to

the Senate House, and is there killed. Mark Antony, his friend,

obtains leave from the murderers to make a public oration over the

corpse.

In his speech he so inflames the populace against the murderers

that they are compelled to leave Rome.

Joining himself to Octavius, he takes the field against Brutus and

Cassius, and helps to defeat them at Philippi.

Cassius is killed by his servant when he sees that all is lost.

Brutus, seeing the battle go against him, kills himself.

The modern play climbs to its culmination by a series of interruptions

or crises. The modern playwright tries to end his acts at an arresting

or splendid moment, artfully delayed, and carefully prepared. He tries

to end his play by a gradual knitting together of all the energies of

his characters into a situation, happier or more haunting, than any that

has preceded it in the course of the action. The art by which this is

done, when it is done, is called dramatic construction. There are many

kind of dramatic construction. Each age tends to form a new one. Each

writer uses many. In art a subject can only be expressed in the form

most fitting to it. In the art of the theatre a mistake in the choice of

the form, or in the right handling of it when chosen leads infallibly to

the irritation of the audience and the failure of the play. When a play

is badly constructed the actors cannot so interpret the author's emotion

that it will dominate the collective emotion in the audience.

It is often said, by those who ought to know better (it was said to

Racine by Frenchmen), that dramatic construction cannot matter, if the

passion or spirit with which the author writes, be abundant and sincere.

The powder in a cartridge may be abundant and the bullet at the end may

be sincerely meant, yet neither will do execution till they are put

properly into the proper weapon, rightly aimed, and judgingly fired. So

with passion in the arts. Without art, inspiration is breath and a

feeding of the wind. In the theatre, inspiration without art is as a

sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal.

It is sometimes maintained in print, by those saddened or maddened by

bad modern performances of the plays, that Shakespeare "could not

construct," that he is constantly "rambling," "chaotic," or

"intolerable," and that he is only played to-day because of his

"poetry." Those who maintain these things forget that an Elizabethan

play was constructed for a theatre much unlike the modern theatre, and

performed in a manner suited to that theatre, but less well suited to

the theatre of our times. Shakespeare's plays were constructed closely

and carefully to be effective on the Elizabethan stage. On that stage

they were highly and nobly effective. On the modern stage, produced in

the modern manner, they are less effective. There are many reasons why

they should be less effective on the modern stage. During the last

thirty years there has been a tendency towards naturalism in the

theatre. Modern audiences have learned not to care for poetry on the

stage unless it is made "natural" by realistic scenery. Modern audiences

are accustomed to the modern forms of dramatic construction, which are

unlike the Elizabethan forms. They know that modern playwrights put a

strong scene at the end of an act and a great scene at the end of the

play. They have learned to expect a play to be arranged in that manner,

and to count as ill constructed the play not so arranged. As it is

frequently said that the last acts of _Julius Caesar_ make anti-climax

and spoil the play, it is necessary to consider Shakespeare's

constructive practice in this and in some other plays.

The Greek tragic poets ended the action of their plays in the modern

manner, at the great scene, but, unlike us, they delayed the departure

of the audience for some minutes more, generally by a chorus of men and

women who expounded the moral value of the action in noble verse. The

audience came away calmed. If a Greek had constructed _Julius Caesar_, he

would have ended the action at the murder. A chorus of senators would

then have chanted something noble about the results of pride, the vanity

of human glory, and the strangeness of the ways of the gods. A modern

writer would have caused the curtain to fall at the murder, for to-day,

when the brains are out the play dies and there an end. Shakespeare

carries on his play for two acts after Caesar is dead. In _Macbeth_ he

constructs the last half of his play in much the same manner.

In both plays he is considering the conception, the doing, and the

results of a violent act. In both plays this act is the murder of the

head of a State. In neither case is he deeply interested in the victim.

Duncan, in _Macbeth_, is a generous gentleman; Caesar, in this play, is a

touchy man of affairs whose head is turned. Shakespeare's imagination

broods on the fact that the killers were deluded into murder, Macbeth by

an envious wife and the belief that Fate meant him to be king, Brutus by

an envious friend and the belief that he was saving Rome. In both cases

the killers show base personal ingratitude and treachery. In both plays,

an avenging justice makes even the scales. The mind of the poet follows

them from the moment when the guilty thought is prompted, through the

agony and exultation of dreadful acts, to the unhappiness that dogs the

treacherous, till Fate's just sword falls in vengeance. His imagination

is most keenly stirred just as ours is, by the great event, the murder

of the victim: but his subject is not the murder, nor yet the tragical

end of a ruler. His subject in both plays is the working of Fate who

prompts to murder, uses the murderer, and then destroys him. We are

interested in crisis and in topic. The Elizabethans, with a wider

vision, could not detach an act from its place in the pageant of

history. In a modern play the heroine is put into an unpleasant

position, or an evil is exposed, or our faults are made visible and

laughable. The point of view is that of the sympathiser, reformer, and

moralist looking on from the window near by. The field of vision is

restricted and the object brought near. In this great play, as in

_Macbeth_, Shakespeare strove to present a violent act and its

consequences from the point of view of a great just spirit outside life.

The play is generally considered to be the earliest of the supreme

plays. Little more can be said of it at this time than that it is

supreme. There is a majesty in the conception that makes it like

gathering and breaking storm. The cause of the murder is a great

personal treachery inspired by an unselfish idea. Though it seems

inevitable, it is a very little thing that makes it possible. Both

Caesar's murder and Brutus' downfall are almost prevented. A hand

stretches out to save both of them. A little domestic treachery inspired

by a selfish idea puts aside the interposing hand in both instances.

Caesar will not listen to his wife because he is sure of himself. Brutus

will not answer his wife for the same reason. They go on to the

magnificent hour which makes the one fine soul in the play a haunted and

unhappy soul till he snatches at Death at Philippi.

The verse is calm, like the noble art that shapes the scenes. It is full

of majesty. Lines occur in which single unusual words are charged with

an incalculable power of meaning.

"Against the Capitol I met a lion,

Who glazed upon me and went surly by."

"It is the bright day that brings forth the adder."

Shakespeare's intensest and most solemn thought, the Law that directed

the creation of some of his greatest work, is spoken by Brutus--

"Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma or a hideous dream:

The Genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council, and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection."

_Hamlet, Prince of Denmark._

_Written._ 1601-2.

_Published_, in an imperfect form, 1603; more perfectly, 1604.

_Source of the Plot._ A play upon the subject of Hamlet, now lost,

seems to have been popular in London during the last decades of the

sixteenth century. Some think that it was an early work of

Shakespeare's. No evidence supports this theory. He probably knew

the play, and may have acted in it.

The story is told by Saxo Grammaticus in his _Historia Danica_.

Francis de Belleforest printed a version of it in his _Histoires

Tragiques_. An English translation from de Belleforest, called the

_Hystorie of Hamblet_, was published (or perhaps reprinted) in

London in 1608. Shakespeare seems to have known both de Belleforest

and the _Hystorie_.

_The Fable._ Claudius, brother to the King of Denmark, conniving

with Gertrude the Queen, poisons his brother, and seizes the

throne. Soon afterwards he marries Gertrude. At this point the play

begins.

Hamlet, son of the murdered king, sick at heart at his mother's

hasty re-marriage, and troubled by his love for Ophelia, returns to

Denmark. The ghost of his father reveals the manner of the murder

to him, and makes him swear to be revenged. The revelation so

affects him that the murderers begin to fear him. He cannot bring

himself to kill Claudius. In a play he shows them that he knows

their guilt.

While speaking with his mother, he discovers and kills a spy hidden

behind the arras. The spy is Polonius, father of Laertes and of

Ophelia.

Claudius causes Hamlet to sail for England, on the pretext that the

killing of Polonius has brought him into danger with the populace.

He plans that Hamlet shall be killed on his arrival. Hamlet

discovers the treacherous purpose and returns unhurt to Denmark.

During Hamlet's absence at sea, Laertes learns how Polonius was

killed and swears to be revenged on Hamlet. Hamlet's return gives

him his opportunity.

Claudius suggests that the revenge be taken at a fencing-bout.

Laertes shall fence with Hamlet, using a poisoned foil. If this

fails, Hamlet shall be given poisoned wine.

In a scuffle during the fencing-bout the fencers change foils.

Gertrude, by mistake, drinks the poisoned wine and dies. Laertes,

hurt by the poisoned foil, dies. Hamlet, also hurt by the poisoned

foil, kills Claudius and dies too.

_Hamlet_ is the most baffling of the great plays. It is the tragedy of a

man and an action continually baffled by wisdom. The man is too wise.

The dual action, pressing in both cases to complete an event, cannot get

past his wisdom into the world. The action in one case is a bad one. It

is simply murder. In the other, and more important case, it is,

according to our scheme, also a bad one. It is revenge, or, at best, the

taking of blood for blood. In the Shakespearean scheme it is not

revenge, it is justice, and therefore neither good nor bad but

necessary. The situation which causes the tragedy is one very common in

Shakespeare's system. Life has been wrenched from her course. Wrenching

is necessary to bring her back to her course or to keep her where she

is. Hamlet is a man who understands too humanly to wish to wrench either

this way or that, and too shrewdly to be himself wrenched by grosser

instruments of Fate.

The action consists in the baffling of action. Mostly, it consists in

the baffling of life's effort to get back to her course. All through the

play there is the uneasiness of something trying to get done, something

from outside life trying to get into life, but baffled always because

the instrument chosen is, himself, a little outside life, as the wise

must be. This baffling of the purpose of the dead leads to a baffling

of the living, and, at last, to something like an arrest of life, a

deadlock, in which each act, however violent, makes the obscuring of

life's purpose greater.

The powers outside life send a poor ghost to Hamlet to prompt him to an

act of justice. After baffled hours, often interrupted by cock-crow, he

gives his message. Hamlet is charged with the double task of executing

judgment and showing mercy. It is a charge given to many people

(generally common people) in the system of the plays. It is given to two

other men in this play. It is nothing more than the fulfilling of the

kingly office, so bloodily seized by Claudius before the opening of the

play. At this point, it may be well to consider the society in which the

kingly office is to be exercised.

The society is created with Shakespeare's fullest power. It is not an

image of the world in little, like the world of the late historical

plays. It is an image of the world as intellect is made to feel it. It

is a society governed by the enemies of intellect, by the sensual and

the worldly, by deadly sinners and the philosophers of bread and cheese.

The King is a drunken, incestuous murderer, who fears intellect. The

Queen is a false woman, who cannot understand intellect. Polonius is a

counsellor who suspects intellect. Ophelia is a doll without intellect.

Laertes is a boor who destroys intellect. The courtiers are parasites

who flourish on the decay of intellect. Fortinbras, bright and noble,

marching to the drum to win a dunghill, gives a colour to the folly. The

only friends of the wise man are Horatio, the schoolfellow, and the

leader of a cry of players.

The task set by the dead is a simple one. All tasks are simple to the

simple-minded. To the delicate and complex mind so much of life is bound

up with every act that any violent act involves not only a large

personal sacrifice of ideal, but a tearing-up by the roots of half the

order of the world. Wisdom is founded upon justice; but justice, to the

wise man, is more a scrupulous quality in the mind than the doing of

expedient acts upon sinners. Hamlet is neither "weak" nor

"unpractical," as so many call him. What he hesitates to do may be

necessary, or even just, as the world goes, but it is a defilement of

personal ideals, difficult for a wise mind to justify. It is so great a

defilement, and a world so composed is so great a defilement, that death

seems preferable to action and existence alike.

The play at this point presents a double image of action baffled by

wisdom. Hamlet baffles the dealing of the justice of Fate, and also the

death plotted for him by his uncle. His weapon, in both cases, is his

justice, his precise scrupulousness of mind, the niceness of mental

balance which gives to all that he says the double-edge of wisdom. It is

the faculty, translated into the finer terms of thought, which the ghost

seeks to make real with bloodshed. Justice, in her grosser as in her

finer form, is concerned with the finding of the truth. The first half

of the play, though it exposes and develops the fable, is a dual image

of a search for truth, of a seeking for a certainty that would justify

a violent act. The King is probing Hamlet's mind with gross human

probes, to find out if he is mad. Hamlet is searching the King's mind

with the finest of intellectual probes, to find out if he is guilty. The

probe used by him, the fragment of a play within a play, is the work of

a man with a knowledge of the impotence of intellect--

"Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown"--

and a faith in the omnipotence of intellect--

"Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own."

To this man, five minutes after the lines have exposed the guilty man,

comes a chance to kill his uncle. Hamlet "might do it pat" while he is

at prayers. The knowledge that the sword will not reach the real man,

since damnation comes from within, not from without, arrests his hand.

Fate offers an instant for the doing of her purpose. Hamlet puts the

instant by, with his baffling slowness, made up of mercy and wisdom.

Fate, or the something outside life which demands the King's blood, so

that life may go back to her channel, is foiled. The action cannot bring

itself to be. A wise human purpose is, for the moment, stronger than the

eternal purpose of Nature, the roughly just.

It is a part of this play's ironic teaching that life must not be

baffled; but that, when she has been wrenched from her course, she must

either be wrenched back to it or kept violently in the channel to which

she has been forced.

In _Macbeth_, a not dissimilar play, the life violently altered is kept

in the strange channel by a succession of violent acts. In _Hamlet_,

when Hamlet's merciful wisdom has decided that the life violently

altered shall not be wrenched back, his destroying wisdom decides that

she shall not be kept in the strange channel. The King, just in his way,

seeks to find out if Hamlet be sane. If Hamlet be sane, he must die. His

death will secure the King's position. By his death life will be kept

in the strange channel. Polonius, the King's agent, learns that Hamlet

is sane and something more. Fate demands violence this way if she may

not have it in the other. She offers an instant for the doing of her

purpose. Hamlet puts the instant by with his baffling swiftness, which

strikes on the instant, when the Queen's honour and his own life depend

on it. The first bout in this play of the baffling of action falls to

Hamlet. The second bout, in which the King's purpose is again baffled,

by the sending of the two courtiers to their death in England, also

falls to Hamlet. The bloody purpose from outside life and the bloody

purpose from within life are both baffled and kept from being by the two

extremes so perfectly balanced in the wise nature.

Extremes in the Shakespearean system are tragical things. In

Shakespeare, the pathway of excess leads, not as with Blake, to the

palace of wisdom, but to destruction. The two extremes in Hamlet, of

slowness and swiftness, set up in life the counter forces which destroy

extremes, so that life, the common thing, may continue to be common. The

mercy of Hamlet leaves the King free to plot his death. The swiftness of

Hamlet gives to the King a hand and sword to work his will.

In other plays, the working of extremes to the punishment dealt by life

to all excess is simple and direct. In this play, nothing is simple and

direct. Fate's direct workings are baffled by a mind too complex to be

active on the common planes. The baffling of Fate's purpose leads to a

condition in life like the "slack water" between tides. Laertes, when

his father is killed, raises the town and comes raving to the presence

to stab the killer. He is baffled by the King's wisdom. Ophelia,

"incapable of her own distress," goes mad and drowns herself. The play

seems to hesitate and stand still while the energies spilled in the

baffling of Fate work and simmer and grow strong, till they combine with

Fate in the preparation of an end that shall not be baffled. Even so,

"the end men looked for cometh not." The end comes to both actions at

once in the squalor of a chance-medley. Fate has her will at last. Life,

who was so long baffled, only hesitated. She destroys the man who

wrenched her from her course, and the man who would neither wrench her

back nor let her stay, and the women who loved these men, and the men

who loved them. Revenge and chance together restore life to her course,

by a destruction of the lives too beastly, and of the lives too hasty,

and of the lives too foolish, and of the life too wise, to be all

together on earth at the same time.

It is difficult to praise the poetry of _Hamlet_. Nearly all the play is

as familiar by often quotation as the New Testament. The great, wise,

and wonderful beauty of the play is a part of the English mind for ever.

It is difficult to live for a day anywhere in England (except in a

theatre) without hearing or reading a part of _Hamlet_. Lines that are

little quoted are the lines to quote here--

"this fell sergeant, death,

Is strict in his arrest."

"O proud death!

What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,

That thou so many princes, at a shot,

So bloodily hast struck?"

The last speech, great as the speech at the end of Timon, and noble,

like that, with a music beyond the art of voices, is constructed on a

similar metrical basis.

"Let four captains

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;

For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,

The soldier's music and the rites of war

Speak loudly for him.

Take up the bodies: such a sight as this

Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

Go, bid the soldiers shoot."

_Troilus and Cressida._

_Written._ (?)

_Produced._ After publication.

_Published._ 1609.

_Source of the Plot._ Geoffrey Chaucer's poem of _Troilus and

Creseide_. John Lydgate's _Troy Boke_. William Caxton's translation

of the French book of the _Recuyels of Troy_. George Chapman's

translation of Homer's _Iliad_.

Among many other possible sources may be mentioned a now lost play

of _Troilus and Cressida_ (produced in 1599) by the poets Thomas

Dekker and Henry Chettle.

_The Fable._ The scene is Troy. Cressida is a Trojan woman, whose

father, Calchas, has gone over to the Greeks. She is beloved by the

youth Troilus. Her uncle, Pandarus, seeks to bring her to accept

Troilus. Hector, brother to Troilus, challenges a Greek champion to

single combat.

In the Greek camp there is much disaffection. Achilles, the chief

Greek champion, conceiving himself wronged, makes a mock of the

other leaders. To teach him his place the leaders plan that Ajax

shall be chosen in his stead to take up Hector's challenge.

Pandarus succeeds in bringing Cressida to love Troilus.

Calchas, in the Greek camp, sends to Troy for Cressida. She is

delivered over to the Greeks. Forgetting Troilus, she entangles one

of the Greeks with her wiles.

Ajax takes up Hector's challenge. They fight a friendly bout and

then go to feast, where the moody Achilles insults Hector.

The next day, Hector and Troilus come to the field, the one to

avenge Achilles' insults, the other to kill the man who has won

Cressida. Hector is cruelly and cowardly killed by Achilles.

Troilus is left unhurt, cursing.

_Troilus and Cressida_ is the dialogue scenario of a play that was never

finished. It seems to have been written before 1603, then laid aside,

incomplete, until the mood that inspired it had died. Conflicting

evidence makes it doubtful whether it was acted during Shakespeare's

life. It was published, under mysterious circumstances, a year or two

before he retired to Stratford.

Two or three scenes are finished. The rest is indicated in the crudest

dialogue, written so hastily that it is often undramatic and nearly

always without wit or beauty. The finished scenes are among the grandest

ever conceived by Shakespeare, but the grandeur is that of thought, not

of action. They make it plain to us why the play was never completed.

The subject is this: a light woman throwing over a boy. The setting, the

Trojan war: a light woman overthrowing a city, is so much bigger than

the subject that it overshadows it. Another subject arises in the

circumstance of the Trojan war. Achilles, the man of action, without

honour or imagination, sulks. The wise man, Ulysses, suggests that he be

brought from his sulks by mockery. The result of this wise counsel is

that Hector, the one bright and noble soul in the play, is killed

cruelly and sullenly, by the boor thus mocked.

The two subjects and the setting are not and cannot be brought into

unity. Shakespeare's mind wandered from his real subject to brood upon

the obsession of Helen that betrayed Troy to the fire, and upon the

tragical working of wisdom that brought about an end so foul. Other, and

bigger, subjects for plays tempted him from the work. He put it aside

before it was half alive. As it stands, it has neither life nor meaning.

It oppresses the mind into making gloomy interpretation. Tragedy in its

imperfect form cannot but be gloomy. It is nothing but the record of a

fatal event. But Shakespearean tragedy is tragedy in its perfect form.

It is an exultation of the soul over the husks of life and the winds

that blow them. This play, had it ever been finished, would have been

like the other tragedies of the great years. That it is not finished is

our misfortune.

The finished scenes are full of wisdom--

"Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitude:

Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done: perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion."

"O, let not virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was."

"Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves."

"And sometimes we are devils to ourselves."

Some have thought that this play was written by Shakespeare to ridicule

the two poets, Ben Jonson (in the person of Ajax) and John Marston (in

the person of Thersites). Those two poets were engaged, with others, in

the years 1601-2, in what is called the War of the Theatres, that is,

they wrote plays to criticise and mock each other. These plays are often

scurrilous and seldom amusing. During the course of the war the two

chief combatants came to blows.

It is sad that Shakespeare should be credited with the paltriness of

lesser men. His view of his task is expressed in _Timon of Athens_ with

the perfect golden clearness of supreme power--

"my free drift

Halts not particularly, but moves itself

In a wide sea of wax: no levell'd malice

Infects one comma in the course I hold;

But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,

Leaving no tract behind."

He held that view throughout his creative life, as a great poet must. At

the time during which this play was written his thought was more rigidly

kept to the just survey of life than at any other period. Creative art

has been so long inglorious that the practice and ideas of supreme poets

have become incomprehensible to the many. This play is a great hint of

something never, now, to be made clear. Those who count it a mark of

Shakespeare's littleness expose their own.

_Measure for Measure._

_Written._ 1603-4 (?)

_Produced._ (?)

_Published._ 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The story is founded on an event that is said

to have taken place in Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare

took it from a collection of novels, the _Hecatomithi_, by Giraldi

Cinthio; from the play, _The rare Historie of Promos and

Cassandra_, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone,

and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his book _The

Heptameron of Civil Discourses_.

_The Fable._ The Duke of Vienna, going on a secret mission, leaves

his power in the hands of Angelo, a man of strict life.

Angelo enforces old laws against incontinence. He arrests Claudio

and sentences him to be beheaded. Claudio's sister, Isabella,

pleads with Angelo for her brother's life. Being moved to lust,

Angelo tempts Isabella. He offers to spare Claudio if she will

submit to him. Claudio begs her to save him thus. She refuses.

The Duke returns to Vienna disguised, hears Isabella's story, and

resolves to entrap Angelo. He causes her to make an appointment to

that end. He causes Mariana, a maid who has been jilted by Angelo,

to personate Isabella, and keep the appointment. Mariana does so.

He contrives to check Angelo's treachery, that would have caused

Claudio's death in spite of the submission.

Lastly he reveals himself, exposes Angelo's sin, compels him to

marry Mariana, pardons Claudio, and makes Isabella his Duchess.

This play is now seldom performed. It is one of the greatest works of

the greatest English mind. It deals justly with the case of the man who

sets up a lifeless sentimentality as a defence against a living natural

impulse. The spirit of Angelo has avenged itself on Shakespeare by

becoming the guardian spirit of the British theatre.

In this play Shakespeare seems to have brooded on the fact that the

common prudential virtues are sometimes due, not to virtue, but to some

starvation of the nature. Chastity may proceed from a meanness in the

mind, from coldness of the emotions, or from cowardice, at least as

often as from manly and cleanly thinking. Two kinds of chastity are set

at clash here. The one springs from a fire in the personality that

causes Isabella to think death better than contamination, and gives her

that whiteness of generosity which fills nunneries with living

sacrifice; the other comes from the niggardliness that makes Angelo jilt

Mariana rather than take her without a dower. Both are obsessions; both

exalt a part of life above life itself. Like other obsessions, they

come to grief in the presence of something real.

These two characters make the action. The play is concerned with the

difficulty of doing justice in a world of animals swayed by rumour. The

subject is one that occupied Shakespeare's mind throughout his creative

life. Wisdom begins in justice. But how can man be just, without the

understanding of God? Who is so faultless that he can sit in judgment on

another? Who so wise that he can see into the heart, weigh the act with

the temptation and strike the balance?

Sexual sin is the least of the sins in Dante. It is allied to love. It

is an image of regeneration. No sin is so common, none is more glibly

blamed. It is so easy to cry "treacherous," "base," and "immoral." But

who, while the heart beats, can call himself safe from the temptation to

this sin? It is mixed up with every generosity. It is a flood in the

heart and a blinding wave over the eyes. It is the thorn in the side

under the cloak of the beauty of youth. In Shakespeare's vision it is a

natural force, incident to youth, as April is incident to the year. The

young men live as though life were oil, and youth a bonfire to be burnt.

Life is always wasteful. Youth is life's test for manhood. The clown

finds in the prison a great company of the tested and rejected, calling

through the bars for alms. In spite of all this choice, another victim

is picked by tragical chance. Lucio, a butterfly of the brothel, a

dirtier soul than Claudio, is spared. Claudio is taken and condemned.

The beautiful, vain, high-blooded youth, so quick with life and glad of

the sun, is to lie in earth, at the bidding of one less full of April.

Angelo, the man whose want of sympathy condemns Claudio, is in the state

of security that precedes so much Shakespearean tragedy. He has received

the name of being more than human because (unlike his admirers) he has

not shown himself to be considerably less. He has come through youth

unsinged. He has not been betrayed by his "gross body's treason." Both

he and those about him think that he is proof against temptation to

sexual sin. Suddenly his security is swept away. He is betrayed by the

subtler temptation that would mean nothing to a grosser man. He is moved

by the sight of the beauty of a distressed woman's mind. The sight means

nothing to Claudio, and less than nothing to Lucio. The happy animal

nature of youthful man has a way of avoiding distressed women. The

cleverer man, who has shut himself up in the half life of sentiment,

cannot so escape. He is attacked suddenly by the unknown imprisoned side

of him as well as by temptation. He falls, and, like all who fall, he

falls not to one sin, but to a degradation of the entire man. The sins

come linked. "Treason and murder ever kept together." When he is once

involved with lust, treachery and murder follow. He is swiftly so

stained that when the wise Duke shows him as he is, he shrinks from the

picture, with a cry that he may be put out of the way by some swift

merciful death so that the horror of the knowledge of himself may end,

too.

The play is a marvellous piece of unflinching thought. Like all the

greatest of the plays, it is so full of illustration of the main idea

that it gives an illusion of an infinity like that of life. It is

constructed closely and subtly for the stage. It is more full of the

ingenuities of play-writing than any of the plays. The verse and the

prose have that smoothness of happy ease which makes one think of

Shakespeare not as a poet writing, but as a sun shining.

" ... It deserves with characters of brass

A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time."

The thought of the play is penetrating rather than impassioned. The

poetry follows the thought. There are cold lines like Death laying a

hand on the blood. The faultless lyric, "Take, O take those lips away"

occurs. Some say Fletcher wrote it, some Bacon. "Love talks with better

knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love." The music of the great

manner rings--

"Merciful Heaven!

Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,

Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,

As make the angels weep."

The prose accompaniment to what is unrestrained in youth provides a

cruel comedy.

_Othello, the Moor of Venice._

_Written._ 1604 (?)

_Published_, in quarto, and in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The tale appears in _The Hecatomithi_ of

G. B. Giraldi Cinthio. Shakespeare follows Cinthio in the main; but a

few details suggest that he knew the story in an ampler version.

_The Fable._ Iago, ensign to Othello, the Moor of Venice, is

jealous of Cassio, his lieutenant. He plots to oust Cassio from the

lieutenancy.

Othello marries Desdemona, and sails with her to the wars in

Cyprus. Iago resolves to make use of Desdemona to cause Cassio's

downfall.

He procures Cassio's discharge from the lieutenancy by involving

him in a drunken brawl. Cassio beseeches Desdemona to intercede

with Othello for him. Iago hints to Othello that she has good

reason to wish Cassio to be restored. He suggests that Cassio is

her lover. Partly by fortune, partly by craft, he succeeds in

establishing in Othello's mind the conviction that Desdemona is

guilty.

Othello smothers Desdemona, learns, too late, that he has been

deceived, and kills himself. Cassio's character is cleared. Iago is

led away to torture.

A man's greatest works differ from his lesser works in degree, not in

kind. They may be more perfect, but they express similar ideas. "A man

grows, he does not become a different man." In this play of _Othello_

the ideas are those that inspire nearly all the plays, that life seeks

to preserve a balance, and that obsessions, which upset the balance,

betray life to evil.

These ideas are in the earliest work of all, in _Venus and Adonis_. In

_Othello_ they are expressed with the variety and power of the great

period. The obsession chosen for illustration is that of jealous

suspicion. It is displayed at work in a mean mind and in a generous

mind. The varying quality of its working makes the action of the play.

As in _The Merchant of Venice_, the chief character is a man of

intellect who has been warped out of humanity by the world's injustice.

Iago is a man of fine natural intellect who has not been trained in the

personal qualities that bring preferment. An educated man is advanced

above him, as in life it happens. He broods over the injustice and

schemes to be revenged. A groundless suspicion that the Moor has wronged

him further, determines him to be revenged upon his employer as well as

upon his supplanter. A weak intellect who comes to him for help serves

him as a tool. He begins to persuade his employer that the supplanter

and the newly-married wife are lovers.

He succeeds in this, through his natural adroitness, the working of

chance, and the generosity of Othello, who has too much passion to be

anything but blind under passionate influence like love or jealousy. The

mean man's want of emotion keeps always the conduct of the vengeance

precise and clear. Cassio is disgraced. Roderigo, having been fooled to

the top of his bent, is killed. Desdemona is smothered. Othello is

ruined.

That working of an invisible judge, which we call Chance, "life's

justicer," lays the villainy bare at the instant of its perfection.

Emilia, Iago's wife, a common nature, with no more intelligence than a

want of illusion, enters a moment too late to stay the slaughter, but

too soon for Iago's purpose. She is the one person in the play certain

to be loyal to Desdemona. She is the one person in the play who, judging

from her feelings, will judge rightly. The finest part of the play is

that scene in which her passionate instinct sees through the web woven

about Othello by an intellect that has put aside all that is passionate

and instinctive.

The influence and importance of the little thing in the great event is

marked in this scene as in half-a-dozen other scenes in the greater

tragedies. We are all or may at any time become immensely important to

the play of the world. Had Emilia come a minute sooner or a minute

later the end of the play would have been very different. Desdemona

would have lived to repent her marriage at leisure, or she would have

gone to her grave branded.

Shakespeare brooded much upon all the tragedies of intellect. In this

play, as in _Richard III_ and _The Merchant of Venice_, he brooded upon

the power of a warped intellect to destroy generous life. When he

created Iago he wrote in a cooler spirit than when he created the

earlier characters. Iago is therefore much more perfectly a living being

but much less passionately alive than the soul burnt out at Bosworth, or

the soul flouted in the Duke's Court. He is drawn with a sharp and wiry

line. Like all sinister men, he tells nothing of himself. We see only

his intellect. What he is in himself is as mysterious as life. Life is

clear, up to a point, but beyond that point it is always baffling.

Shakespeare's task was to look at life clearly. Looking at it clearly he

was as baffled by what he saw, as we, who only see by his aid. He found

in Iago an image like life itself, a power and an activity, prompted by

something secret and silent.

Much ink has been wasted about the "duration of time" in this play. The

action of the play is one. It matters not if the time be divided into

ten or fifty. In London and the University towns where writing is mostly

practised, the play is seldom played. It is almost never played as

Shakespeare meant it to be played. Those who write about it write after

reading it. This is a reading age. Shakespeare's was an active age. That

those who care most for his tragedies should be ignorant of the laws

under which he worked is our misfortune and our fault and our disgrace.

The point is not insisted on; but some passages in the play suggest that

when Shakespeare began to write it he was minded to make the action the

falling of a judgment upon Desdemona for her treachery to her father.

The treachery caused the old man's death. The too passionate and hasty

things always bring death in these plays. Violent delights have violent

ends and bring violent ends to others.

The poetry of _Othello_ is nearly as well known as that of _Hamlet_.

Many quotations from the play have passed into the speech of the people.

A play of intrigue does not give the fullest opportunity for great

poetry; but supreme things are spoken throughout the action. Othello's

cry--

"It is the very error of the moon.

She comes more near the earth than she was wont

And drives men mad,"

is one of the most perfect of all the perfect things in the tragedies.

_King Lear._

_Written._ 1605-6.

_Published._ 1608.

_Source of the Plot._ The story of Lear is told in Holinshed's

_Chronicles_, in a play by an unknown hand, _The True Chronicle

History of King Leir_, and in a few stanzas of the tenth canto of

the second Book of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_.

The character of Gloucester seems to have been suggested by the

character of a blind king in Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_.

_The Fable._ King Lear, in his old age, determines to give up his

kingdom to his three daughters. Before he does so, he tries to

assure himself of their love for him. The two elder women, Goneril

and Regan, vow that they love him intensely; the youngest,

Cordelia, can only tell him that she cares for him as a daughter

should. He curses and casts off Cordelia, who is taken to wife by

the King of France.

Gloucester, deceived by his bastard Edmund, casts off Edgar his

son.

King Lear, thwarted and flouted by Goneril and Regan, goes mad, and

wanders away with his Fool. Gloucester, trying to comfort him

against the wishes of Goneril and Regan, is betrayed by his bastard

Edmund, and blinded. He wanders away with Edgar, who has disguised

himself as a madman.

Regan's husband is killed. Seeking to take Edmund in his stead, she

rouses the jealousy of Goneril, who has already made advances to

him.

Cordelia lands with French troops to repossess Lear of his kingdom.

She finds Lear, and comforts him. In an engagement with the

sisters' armies, she and Lear are captured.

Edmund's baseness is exposed. He is attainted and struck down.

Goneril poisons Regan, and kills herself. Edmund, before he dies,

reveals that he has given order for Lear and Cordelia to be killed.

His news comes too late to save Cordelia. She is brought in dead.

Lear dies over her body.

Albany, Goneril's husband, Kent, Lear's faithful servant, and

Edgar, Edmund's slayer, are left to set the kingdom in order.

The play of _King Lear_ is based upon a fable and a fairy story. It

illustrates the most terrible forms of treachery, that of child against

father, and father against child. It is the most affecting and the

grandest of the plays.

The evil which makes the action springs from two sources, both fatal.

One is the blindness or fatuity in Lear, which makes him give away his

strength and cast out Cordelia. The other, equally deadly, but more

cruel in its results, springs from an unrepented treachery, done long

before by Gloucester, when he broke his marriage vows to beget Edmund.

Memory of the sweetness of that treachery gives to Gloucester a

blindness to the boy's nature, just as a sweetness, or ease, in the

treachery of giving up the cares of kingship (against oath and the

kingdom's good) helps to blind Lear to the natures of his daughters.

The blindness in the one case is sentimental, in the other wilful. Being

established, fate makes use of it. One of the chief lessons of the plays

is that man is only safe when his mind is perfectly just and calm. Any

injustice, trouble or hunger in the mind delivers man to powers who

restore calmness and justice by means violent or gentle according to the

strength of the disturbing obsession. This play begins at the moment

when an established blindness in two men is about to become an

instrument of fate for the violent opening of their eyes. The blindness

in both cases is against the course of nature. It is unnatural that Lear

should give his kingship to women, and that he should curse his youngest

child. It is unnatural that Gloucester should make much of a bastard son

whom he has hardly seen for nine years. It is deeply unnatural that both

Lear and Gloucester should believe evil suddenly of the youngest, best

beloved, and most faithful spirits in the play. As the blindness that

causes the injustice is great and unnatural, so the working of fate to

purge the eyes and restore the balance is violent and unnatural. Every

person important to the action is thrust into an unnatural way of life.

Goneril and Regan rule their father, commit the most ghastly and beastly

cruelty, lust after the same man, and die unnaturally (having betrayed

each other), the one by her sister's hand, the other by her own. Lear is

driven mad. The King of France is forced to war with his wife's sisters.

Edmund betrays his half-brother to ruin and his father to blindness.

Cornwall is stabbed by his servant. Edgar kills his half-brother.

Gloucester, thrust out blind, dies when he finds that his wronged son

loves him. Cordelia, fighting against her own blood, is betrayed to

death by one who claims to love her sisters. The honest mild man,

Albany, and the honest blunt man, Kent, survive the general ruin. Had

Kent been a little milder and Albany a little blunter in the first act,

before the fates were given strength, the ruin would not have been. All

the unnatural treacherous evil comes to pass, because for a few fatal

moments they were true to their natures.

The play is an excessive image of all that was most constant in

Shakespeare's mind. Being an excessive image, it contains matter nowhere

else given. It is all schemed and controlled with a power that he shows

in no other play, not even in _Macbeth_ and _Hamlet_. The ideas of the

play occur in many of the plays. Many images, such as the blasted oak,

water in fury, servants insolent and servile, old honest men and young

girls faithful to death, occur in other plays. That which each play

added to the thought of the world is expressed in the single figure of

someone caught in a net. Macbeth is a ruthless man so caught. Hamlet is

a wise man so caught. Othello is a passionate and Antony a glorious man

so caught. All are caught and all are powerless, and all are superb

tragic inventions. King Lear is a grander, ironic invention, who hurts

far more than any of these because he is a horribly strong man who is

powerless. He is so strong that he cannot die. He is so strong that he

nearly breaks the net, before the folds kill him.

No image in the world is so fierce with imaginative energy. The stormy

soul runs out storming in a night of the soul as mad as the elements.

With him goes the invention of the Fool, the horribly faithful fool,

like conscience or worldly wisdom, to flick him mad with ironic comment

and bitter song.

The verse is as great as the invention. It rises and falls with the

passion like music with singing. All the scale of Shakespeare's art is

used; the terrible spiritual manner of

"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 vices

Make 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 Goneril has 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 die

Rather 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 his _Chronicle 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. Caesar 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, are the 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's

In 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 with him.

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

towards righteousness, 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 security

Is 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 fiend

That 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 virtues

Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued."

"And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsed

Upon 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 place

Was 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 make

War with mankind.

'Tis said they eat each other."

"the time has been

That, 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 hear

The 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's _Lives_.

_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 Caesar, by marrying Caesar's sister

Octavia. Soon afterwards, being tempted from his wife by Cleopatra,

he falls into wars with Caesar. 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 Caesar, 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 is

That nature must compel us to lament

Our 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 by the man of affairs, as in

_Richard II_, _Richard III_, and _Henry 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 Caesar 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 him a

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 Caesar, 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 are

A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward

Do 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 us

Adore our errors; laugh at's while we strut

To 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 Caesar's murderers. He was very great and noble

then. Now

"The star is fall'n

And 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 friend

But 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's _Lives_.

_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 it be

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 quarry

With thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as high

As 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 time

Win power upon and throw forth greater themes

For 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 exacted

a 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.

_Coriolanus_ is 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's Plutarch,

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 reading _Coriolanus_ and 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.

_Coriolanus_ is 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 little things. 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's _Palace of Pleasure_.

Plutarch's _Life of Antonius_. Lucian's _Dialogue_.