THE PLAYS OF THE FIRST PERIOD--IMITATION AND EXPERIMENT
1587 (?)-1594
The first period of Shakespeare's work carries him from the youthful
efforts at dramatic construction to such mastery of dramatic technique
and of original portrayal of life as raise him, when aided by his
supreme poetic art, above all other living dramatists. It was chiefly
a period in which the young poet, full of ambition, curious of his own
talents, and eager for success, was feeling his way among the different
types of drama which he saw reaching success on the London stage.
The longest period of experiment was in the writing of chronicle
histories. The experience acquired in these six plays, all derived in
some measure from earlier work by others, made Shakespeare a master of
this type. Next in importance was comedy, chiefly romantic with four
plays of widely different aim and merit. These two types are brought
to the highest development in the dramatist's second period. Tragedy
was to wait for a fuller and riper experience. What the complete
earlier version of _Romeo and Juliet_ was like, we have only a faint
idea; it was obviously, while {132} intensely appealing, the work of a
young and immature poet. _Titus Andronicus_ led nowhere in development.
Christopher Marlowe remained Shakespeare's master in the drama
throughout the chronicle plays of the period. John Lyly's court
comedies contained most of the types of character which are to be found
in _Love's Labour's Lost_. Throughout the period Shakespeare grows in
mastery of plot and of his dramatic verse; but his chief growth is away
from this imitation of others into his own creative portraiture of
character. The growth from the bluff soldier, Talbot, in _Henry VI_ to
the weak but appealing Richard II is no less marked than is that from
the fantastic Armado in _Love's Labour's Lost_ to the unconsciously
ridiculous Bottom.
Shakespeare's greatest achievements in this period, aside from _Romeo
and Juliet_ in the unknown first draft, are the characters of Richard
II and Richard III, the former a portrait of vanity and vacillation
mingled with more agreeable traits, lovable gentleness and traces at
least of kingliness, the latter a Titanic figure possessed by an
overmastering passion.
It is impossible to draw a satisfactory line of division between the
experimental period of Shakespeare's work and the period of comedy
which follows. Two plays, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The
Merchant of Venice_, lie really between the two. The chief arguments
for an early grouping seem to be that the former is in some measure an
artificial court comedy, and is full of riming speech and end-stopped
lines; the latter derives some help from Marlowe's treatment of _The
Jew of Malta_. But, on the other hand, the {133} mastery of original
characterization in such groups as the delicate fairies of the _Dream_,
or those who gather at the trial of _The Merchant_, might justify their
position in the second period rather than in the first. On the whole,
it is perhaps wisest to let metrical differences govern, and so to put
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, at the end of Imitation and Experiment;
while _The Merchant of Venice_ may safely usher in the great period of
comedy.
The three plays known as _The Three Parts of Henry VI_, together with
_Richard the Third_, constitute the history of the Wars of the Roses,
in which the House of York fought the House of Lancaster through the
best part of the fifteenth century, and lost the fight and the English
crown in 1485, a hundred years before Shakespeare came to London.
Although these plays have but slight appeal to us as readers, they must
have been highly popular among Elizabethan playgoers.
+The First Part of Henry the Sixth+ deals chiefly with the wars of
England and France which center about the figures of Talbot, the
English commander, and Joan of Arc, called Joan la Pucelle (the
maiden). The former is a hero of battle, who dies fighting for
England. The latter is painted according to the traditional English
view, which lasted long after Shakespeare's time, as a wicked and
impure woman, in league with devils, who fight for her against the
righteous power of England. We are glad to think that while the Talbot
scenes are probably Shakespeare's, the portrait of La Pucelle is not
from his hand, as we shall see. The deaths of these protagonists
prepares the way for the peace which Suffolk concludes, and the
marriage {134} which he arranges between Margaret of Anjou and King
Henry.
+The Second Part of Henry the Sixth+ concerns the outbreak of strife
between York and Lancaster, but chiefly the overthrow of the uncle of
the king, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, as Protector of the Realm, and
the destruction of his opponent, the Duke of Suffolk, in his turn. The
play ends with the first battle of St. Albans (1455), resulting in the
complete triumph of Duke Richard of York, in open rebellion against
King Henry.
+The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth+ tells of the further wars of
York and Lancaster, in the course of which Richard of York is murdered,
and his sons, Edward and Richard, keep up the struggle, while Warwick,
styled the "Kingmaker," transfers his power to Lancaster. In the end
York is triumphant; and while Henry VI and his son are murdered, and
Warwick slain in battle at Barnet, Edward is crowned as Edward IV, and
Richard becomes the Duke of Gloucester.
+Authorship+.--The Three Parts of _Henry the Sixth_ were first printed
in the First Folio, 1623. Two earlier plays, _The First Part of the
Contention between the two Noble Houses of York and Lancaster_
(sometimes called _1 Contention_), and _The True Tragedy of Richard,
Duke of York... with the whole Contention between the two Houses of
Lancaster and York_ (2 _Contention_), appeared in quarto in 1594 and
1595 respectively. These are to be regarded as earlier versions of
_II_ and _III Henry VI_.[1] For the _First Part of Henry VI_ no
dramatic source exists. The ultimate source is, of course, Holinshed's
_Chronicles_.
The authorship of these plays is not ascribed to any dramatist, until
1623, although, as we have seen,[2] Robert Greene accuses {135}
Shakespeare of authorship in a stolen play, by applying to him a line
from _III Henry VI_ which had appeared earlier in 2 _Contention_.
Internal study of the three plays, however, has reduced the problem to
about this state:--
_The First Part of Henry VI_ is thought to have been written by Greene,
with George Peele and Marlowe to help. To this Shakespeare was allowed
to add a few scenes on a later revival of the play. Some critics give
to him the Talbot scenes and the quarrel in the Temple; but Professor
Neilson warns us that the grounds for this and other assignments of
authorship in the play "are in the highest degree precarious."
The two _Contentions_ are thought to have been chiefly the work of
Marlowe, with Greene to help him. Others are suggested as assistants,
such as Lodge, Peele, and Shakespeare. In the revival of the two
_Contentions_, Shakespeare's work amounted to a close revision, though
the older material remained in larger part, both in text and plot. In
this revision, Marlowe is thought to have aided, and Greene's bitter
attack on Shakespeare may have been caused by the fact that Shakespeare
had so supplanted him as collaborator with Marlowe, then the greatest
dramatist of England. It hardly seems likely that this attack would
have been made if Shakespeare had had any share in the first versions,
_The Contentions_.
+Date+.--_The First Part of Henry VI_ is thought to have been the play
at the Rose Theatre on March 3, 1591-1692, by Lord Strange's company,
since a reference by Nash about this time refers to Talbot as a stage
figure. The _Second and Third Parts_ have no evidence other than that
of style, but are usually assigned to the period 1590-1592.
+Richard the Third+ is best treated at this point, although in the date
of composition _King John_ may intervene between it and _III Henry VI_.
It is the tale of a tyrant, who, by murdering everybody who stands in
his way, including his two nephews, his brother, and his friend, wins
the crown of England, only to be swept by {136} irresistible popular
wrath into ruin and death on Bosworth Field. This tyrant is scarcely
human, but rather the impersonation of a great passion of ambition.
In this respect, as well as in lack of humor, lack of development of
character, and in other ways less easy to grasp, Shakespeare is here
distinctly imitative of Marlowe's method in plays like _Tamburlaine_.
+Date+.--_Richard the Third_ was very popular among Elizabethans, for
quartos appeared in 1597, 1598 (then first ascribed to Shakespeare),
1602, 1605, 1612, 1629, 1622, and 1634. The First Folio version is
quite different in detail from the Quarto, and is thought to have been
a good copy of an acting version. The date of writing can hardly be
later than 1598.
+Source+.--An anonymous play called _The True Tragedie of Richard III_
had appeared before Shakespeare's; just when is uncertain. A still
earlier play, a tragedy in Latin called _Richardus Tertius_, also told
the story. Shakespeare's chief source was, however, Holinshed's
_Chronicles_, which learned the tradition of Richard's wickedness from
a life of that king written in Henry VII's time, and ascribed to Sir
Thomas More. In the _Chronicles_ was but a bare outline of the
character which the dramatist so powerfully developed.
+King John+, so far as its central theme may be said to exist, portrays
the ineffectual struggles of a crafty and unscrupulous coward to stick
to England's slippery throne. At first King John is successful.
Bribed with the rich dowry of Blanch, niece of England, as a bride for
his son the Dauphin, King Philip of France ceases his war upon England
in behalf of Prince Arthur, John's nephew and rival. When the Church
turns against John for his refusal to obey the Pope, and France and
Austria continue the war, John is victorious, and captures Prince
Arthur. At this point begins his {137} downfall. His cruel treatment
of the young prince, while not actually ending in the murder he had
planned, drives the boy to attempted escape and to death. The nobles
rise and welcome the Dauphin, whose invasion of England proves
fruitless, it is true, but the victory is not won by John, and the king
dies ignobly at Swinstead Abbey.
Two characters rise above the rest in this drama of unworthy
schemes,--Constance, the passionately devoted mother of Prince Arthur,
who fights for her son with almost tigress-like ferocity, and
Faulconbridge, the loyal lieutenant of King John, cynical and fond of
bragging, but brave and patriotic, and gifted with a saving grace of
rough humor, much needed in the sordid atmosphere he breathes. One
single scene contains a note of pathos otherwise foreign to the
play,--that in which John's emissary Hubert begins his cruel task of
blinding poor Prince Arthur, but yields to pity and forbears.
+Date+.--_The Troublesome Raigne_ was published in 1591, and probably
written about that time. Shakespeare's play did not appear in print
until the First Folio, 1623. Meres mentions it, however, in 1598, and
internal evidence of meter and style, as well as of dramatic structure,
puts the play between _Richard III_ and _Richard II_, or at any rate
close to them. The three plays have been arranged in every order by
critics of authority. Perhaps 1592-1593 is a safe date.
+Source+.--The only source was the two parts of _The Troublesome Raigne
of John, King of England_, a play which appeared anonymously in quarto
in 1591. Shakespeare compressed the two parts into one, gaining
obvious advantages thereby, but losing also some incidents without
which the later play is unmotivated. The hatred felt by Faulconbridge
for Austria was due in the earlier version to the legendary belief that
{138} Richard Coeur-de-Lion, his father, met death at Austria's hands.
No reference to this is made by Shakespeare, but the hatred remains as
a motive. In the opening scene between the Bastard and his mother,
Shakespeare's condensation has injured the story somewhat. But most of
his changes are improvements. He cut out the pandering to religious
prejudice which in the earlier play made John a Protestant hero to suit
Elizabethan opinion. He improved the exits and entrances, divided the
scenes in more effective ways, and built up the element of comic relief
in Faulconbridge's red-blooded humor.
The numerous alterations from historical fact, such as the youth of
Arthur, the widowhood of Constance, the character of Faulconbridge, are
all from the earlier version, as is the suppression of the baron's wars
and Magna Charta. Shakespeare added practically nothing to the action
in his source.
A still earlier play, _Kynge Johan_ by Bishop John Bale (c. 1650), had
nothing to do with later versions.
+Richard the Second+, unlike _Richard the Third_, is not simply the
story of one man. While Richard III is on the stage during more than
two-thirds of the latter play, Richard II appears during almost exactly
half of the action. Richard III dominates his play throughout; Richard
II in only two or three scenes. Richard's two uncles, John of Gaunt
and the Duke of York, and his two cousins, Hereford (Bolingbroke, later
Henry IV) and Aumerle, claim almost as much of our attention as does
the central figure of the play, the light, vain, and thoughtless king.
And yet with all this improvement in the adjustment of the leading role
to the whole picture, Shakespeare drew a far more real and complete
character in Richard II than any he had yet portrayed in historical
drama. It is a character seen in many lights. At first we are
disappointed with Richard's love of the {139} spectacular when he
allows Bolingbroke's challenge to Mowbray to go as far as the actual
sounding of the trumpets in the lists before he casts down his warder
and decrees the banishment of both. A little later we see with disgust
his greedy thoughtlessness, when he insults the last hour of John of
Gaunt by his importunate visit, and without a word of regret lays hold
of his dead uncle's property to help on his own Irish wars. Nor does
our respect for him rise at all when in the critical moment, upon the
return of Bolingbroke to England, Richard's weak will vacillates
between action and unmanly lament, and all the while his vanity
delights to paint his misery in full-mouth'd rhetoric. Vanity is again
the note of his abdication, when he calls for a mirror in which to
behold the face that has borne such sorrow as his, and then in a fit of
almost childish rage dashes the glass upon the ground. His whole life,
like that one act, has been impulsive and futile.
But now that misfortune and degradation have come upon King Richard,
Shakespeare compels us to turn from disgust to pity, and finally almost
to admiration. We realize that after all Richard is a king, and that
his wretched state demands compassion. Moreover, a nobler side of
Richard's character is portrayed. His deeply touching farewell to his
loving Queen, as he goes to his solitary confinement, though tinged
with almost unmanly meekness of spirit, is yet poignant with true
grief. And the last scene of all, in which he dies, vainly yet bravely
resisting his murderers, is a gallant end to a life so full of
indecision.
{140}
In strong contrast with this weak and still absorbing figure are the
two high-minded and patriotic uncles of King Richard, and the masterful
though unscrupulous Henry. The famous prophetic speech of dying John
of Gaunt is committed to memory by every English schoolboy, as the
expression of the highest patriotism in the noblest poetry. And just
as our attitude towards Richard changes from contempt to pity and even
admiration, so our admiration for Henry, the man of action and, as he
calls himself, "the true-borne Englishman," turns into indignation at
his usurpation of the throne and his connivance, to use no stronger
term, at the murder of his sovereign. Throughout the play, however,
Shakespeare makes us feel that the national cause demands Henry's
triumph.
+Date+.--Marlowe's _Edward II_ is usually dated 1593; and Shakespeare's
_Richard II_ is dated the year following, in order to accommodate facts
to theory. The frequency of rime points to an earlier date, the
absence of prose to a later date. Our only certain date is 1597, when
a quarto appeared. Others followed in 1598, 1608, and 1615.
A play "of the deposing of Richard II" was performed by wish of the
Earl of Essex in London streets in 1601, on the eve of his attempted
revolt against the queen. If this was our play, then Essex failed as
signally in understanding the real theme of the play as he did in
interpreting the attitude of Englishmen toward him. Both the one and
the other condemned usurpation in the strongest terms.
+Source+.--Holinshed's _Chronicles_ furnished Shakespeare with but the
bare historical outline. It is usual to suggest that Marlowe's
portrayal of a similarly weak figure with a similarly tragic end
suggested Shakespeare's play; and this may be, though there is nothing
to indicate direct influence.
{141}
+Titus Andronicus+ has a plot so revolting to modern readers that many
critics like to follow the seventeenth-century tradition, which tells,
according to a writer who wanted to justify his own tinkering, that
Shakespeare added "some master-touches to one or two of the principal
characters," and nothing more. But unfortunately not only the
phraseology and the meter, but the more important external evidences
point to Shakespeare, and, however we might wish it, we cannot find
grounds to dismiss the theory that Shakespeare was at least responsible
for the rewriting of an older play.
No play better deserves the type name of 'tragedy of blood.' The
crimes which disfigure its scenes seem to us unnecessarily wanton.
Briefly, the struggle is between Titus, conqueror of the Goths, and
Tamora, their captive queen, who marries the Roman emperor, and who
would revenge Titus's sacrifice of her son to the shades of his own
slain sons. From the first five minutes, during which a noble Goth is
hacked to pieces--off stage, mercifully--to the last minute of carnage,
when the entire company go hands all round in murder, fifteen persons
are slain, and other crimes no less horrible perpetrated. Every one at
some time gets his revenge; and the play is entirely made up of
plotting, killing, gloating, and counterplotting. The inhumanly brutal
Aaron, the blackamoor lover of Tamora, is arch villain in all this; but
the ungovernable passions of Titus render him scarcely more attractive.
The pity of it is that the young Shakespeare apparently wasted upon
this slaughtering much genuine {142} poetic art, and no little
elaboration of plot. But he was writing what the public of that day
enjoyed. Developed by such real artists as Kyd, the tragedy of blood,
like the modern "thriller," had about 1590 an enormous success. It is
well for us to remember, too, that out of one of these tragedies of
revenge and blood sprang the great tragedy of _Hamlet_.
+Date+.--The most recent authorities put the play as written not long
before the publication of the First Quarto, 1594. The Stationers'
Register records it on February 6, 1593-4. Second and Third Quartos
followed in 1600 and 1611. None of these ascribe the play to
Shakespeare. It is, however, included in the First Folio.
+Authorship and Source+.--Richard Henslowe, the manager, recorded in
his Diary, April 11, 1591, the performance of a new play _Tittus and
Vespacia_. In a German version, _Tito Andronico_, printed in a
collection of 1620, Lucius is called Vespasian; and thus we have a
slight ground for belief that the entry of Henslowe refers to an early
play about our Titus. A Dutch version, _Aran en Titus_, appeared in
1641. This appears to have been based on another relation of the
story, earlier and cruder than Shakespeare's. The Shakespearean
version probably came from these two earlier plays, with considerable
additions in plot.
The two latest students of the play, Dr. Fuller and Mr. Robertson,
differ as far as they well can on the question of authorship. The
former believes Shakespeare wrote every line of the present play; the
latter that he wrote none of it, and that Greene and Peele had their
full share. Kyd and Marlowe are assigned as authors by others. One
fact stands clear, that in the face of the evidence of the First Folio
and of Meres, no conclusive internal evidence has disposed of the
theory of Shakespearean authorship. The play was enormously popular,
if we may judge by contemporary references to it, and a mistake in
attribution by Meres would therefore have been the more {143}
remarkable. Incredible, too, as it may seem, the earlier versions must
have been more revolting than Shakespeare's; so that there is really a
lift into higher drama.
+Romeo and Juliet+ stands out from the other great tragedies of
Shakespeare, not only in point of time, but in its central theme. It
deals with the power of nature in awaking youth to full manhood and
womanhood through the sudden coming of pure and supreme love; with the
danger which always attends the precipitate call of this awakening; and
with the sudden storm which overcasts the brilliant day of passion.
The enmity of the rival houses of Montague and Capulet, to which Romeo
and Juliet belong, is but a concrete form of this danger that ever
waits when nature prompts. Romeo's fancied love for another disappears
like a drop of water on a stone in the sun, when his glance meets
Juliet's at the Capulet's ball. Love takes equally sudden hold of her.
Worldly and religious caution seek to stem the flood of passion, or at
least to direct it. The lovers are married at Friar Laurence's cell;
but in the sudden whirl of events that follow the friar's amiable
schemes, one slight error on his part wastes all that glorious passion
and youth have won. It was not his fault, after all; such is the
eternal tragedy when Youth meets Love, and Nature leads them
unrestrained to peril.
In perfection of dramatic technique parts of this play rank with the
very best of Shakespeare's work. When to this is added the
extraordinary beauty and fire of the poetry, and the brilliancy of
color and stage picture afforded by the setting in old Verona, it is no
wonder that to-day no mouthing of the words, no {144} tawdriness of
setting, and no wretchedness of acting can hinder the supreme appeal of
this play to audiences all over the world. The chief characters are
well contrasted by the dramatist. Romeo, affecting sadness, but in
reality merry by nature, becomes grave when the realization of love
comes upon him. Juliet, when love comes, rises gladly to meet its full
claim. She is the one who plans and dares, and Romeo the one who
listens. Contrasted with Romeo is his friend, Mercutio, gay and
daring, loving and light-hearted; contrasted with Juliet is her old
nurse, devoted, like the family cat, but unscrupulous, vain, and
worldly,--a great comic figure.
+Date+.--There is throughout the play, but chiefly in the rimed
passages in the earlier parts, a great deal of verbal conceit and
playing upon words, which mark immaturity. The use of sonnets in two
places, and the abundance of rime, point also to early work; but the
dramatic technique and the development of character equal the work of
later periods.
The First Quarto is a garbled copy taken down in the theater. It was
printed in 1597. Its title claims that "it hath been often (with great
applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon
his servants." The company in which Shakespeare acted was so called
from July, 1596, to April, 1597. The Second Quarto, "newly corrected,
augmented, and amended," appeared in 1599, and is the basis of all
later texts. Three others followed--1609, one undated, and 1637.
It is generally held that Shakespeare wrote much, perhaps all, of the
play in the early nineties, and that he revised it for production about
1597. The play is therefore a stepping-stone between the first and
second periods of his work.
+Source+.--The development of the story has been traced from Luigi da
Porto's history of _Romeo and Giulietta_ (pr. 1530 at Venice) through
Bandello, Boisteau, and Painter's _Palace of {145} Pleasure_, to Arthur
Brooke's poem _Romeus and Juliet_ (1562), and to a lost English play
which Brooke says in his address "To the Reader" he had seen on the
stage, but is now known only through a Dutch play of 1630 based upon it.
The part in which Shakespeare altered the action most notably is the
first scene, one of the most masterly expositions of a dramatic
situation ever written. The nurse is borrowed from Brooke, the death
of Mercutio from the old play. The whole is, however, completely
transfused by the welding fire of genius.
+Love's Labour's Lost+.--Obviously imitative of the comedies of John
Lyly, _Love's Labour's Lost_ is a light, pleasant court comedy, with
but a slight thread of plot. The king of Navarre and three of his
nobles forswear for three years the society of ladies in order to
pursue study. This plan is interrupted by the Princess of France, who
with three ladies comes on an embassy to Navarre. The inevitable
happens; the gentlemen fall in love with the ladies, and, after
ineffectual struggles to keep their oaths, give up the pursuit of
learning for that of love. This runs on merrily enough in courtly
fashion till the announcement of the death of the king of France ends
the embassy, and the lovers are put on a year's probation of constancy.
In the subplot, or minor story, the play is notable for the burlesquing
of two types of character--a pompous pedantic schoolmaster, and a
braggart who always speaks in high-flown metaphor. These two, happily
contrasted with a country curate, a court page, and a country clown
with his lass, make much good sport.
It is often said, but as we believe without sufficient proof, that the
wit combats of the lords and ladies, {146} and the artificial speech of
the sonneteering courtiers, were also introduced for burlesque. These
elements appear, however, in other plays than this, with no intention
of burlesque; and it seems probable that Shakespeare greatly enjoyed
this display of his power as a master in the prevailing fashion of
courtly repartee. In this fashion, as well as in the handling of the
low-comedy figures, and in other ways, Shakespeare followed in the
steps of John Lyly, the author of the novel _Euphues_ and of the seven
court comedies written in the decade before _Love's Labour's Lost_.
Shakespeare's play, however, far surpasses those which it imitated.
+Date+.--The date of _Love's Labour's Lost_ is entirely a matter of
conjecture. It may well have been the very earliest of Shakespeare's
comedies. Most scholars agree that the characteristics of style to
which we have referred, together with the great use of rime (see p. 81)
and the immaturity of the play as a whole, must indicate a very early
date, and therefore put the play not later than 1591.
A quarto was published in 1598, "newly corrected and augmented by W.
Shakespere." The corrections, from certain mistakes of the printer,
appear to be in the speeches of the wittiest of the lords and ladies,
Biron and Rosaline. The play next appeared in the Folio.
+Source+.--No direct source has been discovered. In 1586, Catherine
de' Medici, accompanied by her ladies, visited the court of Henry of
Navarre, and attempted to settle the disputes between that prince and
her son, Henry III. Other hints may also have come from French
history. The masque of Muscovites may have been based on the joke
played on a Russian ambassador in York Gardens in 1582, when the
ambassador was hoping to get a lady of Elizabeth's court as a wife for
the Czar. A mocking presentation of this lady was made with much
ceremony.
{147}
+The Comedy of Errors+.--Mistaken identity (which the Elizabethans
called "Error") is nearly always amusing, whether on the stage or in
actual life. _The Comedy of Errors_ is a play in which this situation
is developed to the extreme of improbability; but we lose sight of this
in the roaring fun which results. Nowadays we should call a play of
this type a farce, since most of the fun comes in this way from
situations which are improbable, and since the play depends on these
for success rather than on characterization or dialogue.
A merchant of Syracuse has had twin sons, and bought twin servants for
them. His wife with one twin son and his twin slave has been lost by
shipwreck and has come to live in Ephesus. The other son and slave,
when grown, have started out to find their brothers, and the father,
some years later, starts out to find him. They come to Ephesus, and an
amusing series of errors at once begins. The wife takes the wrong twin
for her husband, the master beats the wrong slave, the wrong son
disowns his father, the twin at Ephesus is arrested instead of his
brother, and the twin slave Dromio of Syracuse is claimed as a husband
by a black kitchen girl of Ephesus. The situation gets more and more
mixed, until at last the real identity of the strangers from Syracuse
is established, and all ends happily.
+Date+.--There is much wordplay of a rather cheap kind, much doggerel,
and much jingling rime in this play. All these things point to early
work. A reference (III, ii, 125-127) to France "making war against her
heir" admits the play to the period 1585-1594, when Henry of Navarre
was received as king {148} of France. The play was probably written
not later than 1591. The play was first printed in the First Folio.
+Source+.--Shakespeare borrowed most of his plot from the _Menaechmi_
of Plautus. Shakespeare added to Plautus's story the second twin-slave
and the parents, together with the girl whom the elder twin meets and
loves in Syracuse. This elaboration of the plot adds much to the
attractiveness of the whole story. From the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus,
Shakespeare derived the doubling of slaves, and the scene in which the
younger twin and his slave are shut out of their own home.
+The Two Gentlemen of Verona+ is the first of the series of
Shakespeare's romantic comedies. Our interest in this play turns upon
the purely romantic characters; two friends, one true, the other
recreant; the true friend exiled to an outlaw's life in a forest, the
false in favor at court; two loving girls, one fair and radiant, the
other dark and slighted, and following her lover in boy's dress; two
clowns, Speed and Lance, one a mere word tosser, the other of rare
humor. The plot is of slighter importance; a discovered elopement, and
a maiden rescued from rude, uncivil hands, are the only incidents of
account. All ends happily as in romance, and the recreant friend is
forgiven.
_The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ was an experiment along certain
directions which were later to repay the dramatist most richly. Here
first an exquisite lyric interprets the romantic note in the play; here
first the production of a troth-plight ring confounds the faithless
lover, and here we first meet one of the charming group of loving
ladies in disguise.
But as a whole the play is disappointing. The plot is too fantastic;
Proteus too much of a cad; Julia, though brave and modest, is yet too
faithful; Valentine {149} too easy a friend. The illusion of romance
throws a transitory glamour over the scene, but, save in the
development of character, the play seems immature, when compared with
the greater comedies that followed it.
+Date+.--The first mention of the play is by Meres (1598); the first
print that in the First Folio (1623). The presence of alternate riming
sonnets and doggerel rime on the one hand, and of a number of double
endings on the other, render 1592 a reasonable date. In its
development of character it marks a great advance over the other two
comedies of this period.
+Source+.--The chief source was a story of a shepherdess, an episode in
the Spanish novel, _Diana Enamorada_, by Jorge de Montemayor (1592).
Shakespeare probably read it in an English translation by B. Yonge,
which had been in Ms. about ten years. This story gives Julia's part
of the play, but contains no Valentine. The Silvia of the story,
Celia, falls in love instead with the disguised Felismena, and when
rejected kills herself. Whether it was Shakespeare who felt the need
of a Valentine to support the tale, or whether this was done in the
lost play of _Felix and Philiomena_, acted in 1584, cannot be told.
The Valentine element may have been borrowed from another play, of
which a German version exists (1620).
+Midsummer Night's Dream+ is Shakespeare's experiment in the fairy
play. Four lovers, two young Athenians of high birth and their
sweethearts, are almost inextricably tangled by careless Robin
Goodfellow, who has dropped the juice of love-in-idleness upon the eyes
of the wrong lovers. King Oberon tricks his capricious and resentful
little queen, by the aid of the same juice, into the absurdest
infatuation for a clownish weaver, who has come out with his mates to
rehearse a play to celebrate Theseus's wedding, but has fallen asleep
and {150} wakened to find an ass's head planted upon him. All comes
right, as it ever must in fairyland; the true lovers are reunited; the
faithful unloved lady gets her faithless lover; Titania repents and is
forgiven; and Theseus's wedding is graced by the "mirthfullest tragedy
that ever was seen."
We have in _Midsummer Night's Dream_ three distinct groups of
characters--the lovers, the city clowns rehearsing for the play, and
the fairies. These three diverse groups are combined in the most
skillful way by an intricate interweaving of plot and by the final
appearance of all three groups at the wedding festivities of the Duke
of Athens and his Amazon bride Hypolita. The characterization, light
but delicate throughout, the mastery of the intricate story, the
perfection of the comic parts, and the unsurpassed lyrical power of the
poetry, are all the evidence we need that Shakespeare is now his own
master in the drama, and can pass on to the supreme heights of his art.
He has learned his trade for good and all.
It is not a bad way of placing the last of the comedies in the first
period of Shakespeare's production, to say that it is the counterpart
in comedy of _Romeo and Juliet_. Like Romeo, Lysander has made love to
Hermia, has sung at her window by moonlight, and has won her heart,
while her father has promised her hand to another. Like the lovers in
the tragedy, Lysander and Hermia plan flight, and an error in this plan
would have been as fatal as it was in Romeo and Juliet, but for the
kind interposition of the fairies. Again, the "tedious brief scene" of
Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the rustics at the close of the play,
is {151} nothing but a delightful parody on the very theme of Romeo and
Juliet, even to the mistaken death, and the suicide of the heroine upon
realization of the truth. At the end of the parody, as if in mockery
of the Capulets and Montagues, Bottom starts up to tell us that "the
wall is down that parted their fathers." Finally, the whole fairy
story is the creation of Shakespeare in a Mercutio mood.
In the diversity of its metrical form, _Midsummer Night's Dream_ is
also the counterpart of _Romeo and Juliet_. The abundance of rimed
couplet, combined wherever there is intensity of feeling with a perfect
form of blank verse, is reminiscent of the earlier play. Passages of
equally splendid poetic power meet us all through, while at the same
time we feel the very charm of youthful fervor in expression that the
tragedy displayed.
+Date+.--There is nothing certain to guide us in assigning a date to
the play, except the mention of it in Meres's list, in 1598. The
absence of a uniform structure of verse, the large proportion of rime
(partly due, of course, to the nature of the play), the unequal measure
of characterization, and the number of passages of purely lyric beauty
argue an earlier date than students who notice only the skillful plot
structure are willing to assign. Perhaps 1593-5 would indicate this
variation in authorities. Some evidence, of the slightest kind, is
advanced for 1594. A quarto was printed in 1600, another with the
spurious date 1600, really in 1619.
+Source+.--The plot of the lovers has no known direct source. The
_Diana Enamorada_ has a love potion with an effect similar to that of
Oberon's. The wedding of Theseus and the Amazon queen is the opening
theme of Chaucer's _Knight's Tale_, and some minor details may also
have been borrowed from that story. No doubt, Shakespeare had also
read for details North's {152} account of Theseus in his translation of
Plutarch. Pyramus and Thisbe came originally from Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_, which had been translated into English before this
time. Chaucer tells the same story in his _Legend of Good Women_.
The fairies are almost entirely Shakespeare's creation. Titania was
one of Ovid's names for Diana; Oberon was a common name for the fairy
king, both in the _Faerie Queene_ and elsewhere. Robin Goodfellow was
a favorite character among the common folks. But fairies, as we all
know them, are like the Twins in _Through the Looking-glass_, things of
the fancy of one man, and that man Shakespeare.
There is the atmosphere of a wedding about the whole play, and this
fact has led most scholars to think that the play was written for some
particular wedding,--just whose has never been settled. The flattery
of the virgin Queen (II, i, 157 f.) and other references to purity
might show that Queen Elizabeth was one of the wedding guests.
[1] Schelling, _Elizabethan Drama_ I, 264.
[2] See p. 8.
{153}