PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

IN the present edition I have made such corrections as appeared needful, and have brought my statements on some doubtful points into harmony with the latest results of Shaksperian scholarship.

I wish to insist upon the statement made on p. 278 that "Julius Cæsar" lies in point of time beside "Hamlet.” Both are tragedies of thought rather than of passion; both present in their chief characters, the spectacle of noble natures which fail through some weakness or deficiency rather than through crime; upon Brutus as upon Hamlet a burden is laid which he is not able to bear; neither Brutus nor Hamlet is fitted for action, yet both are called to act in dangerous and difficult affairs. "Julius Cæsar" was probably complete before "Hamlet" assumed its latest form, perhaps before "Hamlet" was written. Still,-giving the reader a caution as I did in the case of "The Tempest -I am not unwilling to speak of "Hamlet" as the second of Shakspere's tragedies. "Hamlet" seems to have its roots so deep in Shakspere's nature, it was so much a subject of special predilection, it is so closely connected with older dramatic work. We acquire the same feeling b

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with reference to " Hamlet ".which we have for Goethe's "Faust"-that it has to do with almost the whole of the deeper part of the poet's life up to the date of its

creation.

After Shakspere had written these two tragedies, or while he was writing them, he continued to write comedy. But the genial spirit of comedy was deserting him. "Twelfth Night" resumes all the admirable humorous. characteristics of the group of comedies which it completes. Then the change comes; "All's Well that Ends Well" is grave and earnest; "Measure for Measure" is dark and bitter. In the first edition of this work I did not venture to attempt an interpretation of "Troilus and Cressida." I now believe this strange and difficult play was a last attempt to continue comedy made when Shakspere had ceased to be able to smile genially, and when he must be either ironical, or else take a deep, passionate and tragical view of life.

I have elsewhere written as follows:

"Troilus and Cressida appeared in two quarto editions in the year 1609; in the title page of the earlier of the two it is stated to have been acted at the Globe; the later contains a singular preface in which the play is spoken of as 'never stal'd with the stage, never clapper-claw'd with the palmes of the vulgar,' and as having been published against the will of the grand possessors.' Perhaps the play was printed at first for the use of the theatre, and with the intention of being published after being represented, and that the printers, against the known wish of the proprietors of Shakspere's manuscript, anticipated the first representation and issued the Quarto with the attractive announcement that it was an absolute novelty. The editors of the Folio, after having decided that Troilus and Cressida should follow Romeo and Juliet among the Tragedies, changed their minds, apparently uncertain how the play

should be classed, and placed it between the Histories and Tragedies; this led to the cancelling of a leaf, and the filling up of a blank space left by the alteration, with the. Prologue to Troilus and Cressida a prologue which is believed by several critics not to have come from Shakspere's hand.

"There is extreme uncertainty with respect to the date of the play. Dekker and Chettle were engaged in 1599 upon a play on this subject, and from an entry in the Stationers' Register on 7th Feb. 1602-3 it appears that a Troilus and Cressida had been acted by Shakspere's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Servants. Was this Shakspere's play? We are thrown back upon internal evidence to decide the question, and the internal evidence is itself of a conflicting kind, and has led to opposite conclusions. The massive worldly wisdom of Ulysses argues it is supposed in favour of a late date, and the general tone of the play has been compared with that of Timon of Athens. The fact that it does not contain a single weak-ending and only six light-endings is however almost decisive evidence against our placing it after either Timon or Macbeth, and the other metrical characteristics are considered, by Hertzberg, the most careful student of this class of evidence in the case of the present play, to point to a date about 1603. Other authorities place it as late as 1608 or 1609; while a third theory (that of Verplanck and Grant White) attempts to solve the difficulties by supposing that it was first written in 1603 and revised and enlarged shortly before the publication of the quarto. Parts of the play-notably the last battle of Hector-appear not to be by Shakspere. The interpretation of the play itself is as difficult as the ascertainment of the external facts of its history. With what intention, and in what spirit did Shakspere write this strange comedy? All the Greek heroes who fought against Troy are pitilessly exposed to ridicule ; Helen and Cressida are light, sensual and heartless, for whose sake it seems infatuated folly to strike a blow; Troilus is an enthusiastic young fool; and even Hector, though valiant and generous, spends his life in a cause which he knows to be unprofitable if not evil. All this is seen and said by Thersites, whose mind is made up of the scum of the foulness of human life. But can Shakspere's view of things have been the same as that of Thersites ?

"The central theme, the young love and faith of Troilus given to One who was false and fickle, and his discovery of his error, lends its colour to the whole play. It is the comedy of disillusion. And as Troilus passed through the illusion of his first love for

woman, so by middle life the world itself often appears like one that has not kept her promises, and who is a poor deceiver. We come to see the seamy side of life; and from this mood of disillusion it is a deliverance to pass on even to a dark and tragic view of life, to which beauty and virtue reappear even though human weakness or human vice may do them bitter wrong. Now such a mood of contemptuous depreciation of life may have come over Shakspere, and spoilt him, at that time, for a writer of comedy. But for Isabella we should find the coming on of this mood in Measure for Measure; there is perhaps a touch of it in Hamlet. At this time Troilus and Cressida may have been written, and then Shakspere rousing himself to a deeper inquest into things may have passed on to his great series of tragedies.

"Let us call this then the comedy of disillusion, and certainly wherever we place it we must notice a striking resemblance in its spirit and structure to Timon of Athens. Timon has a lax benevolence and shallow trust in the goodness of men; he is undeceived and bitterly turns away from the whole human race in a rage of disappointment. In the same play Alcibiades is in like manner wronged by the world; but he takes his injuries firmly like a man of action and experience and sets about the subduing of his base antagonists. Apemantus again is the dog-like reviler of men, knowing their baseness and base himself. Here, Troilus, the noble green-goose, goes through his youthful agony of ascertaining the unworthiness of her to whom he had given his faith and hope; but he is made of a stronger and more energetic fibre than Timon, and he comes out of his trial a man, no longer a boy, somewhat harder perhaps than before, but strung up for sustained and determined action. He is completely delivered from Cressida and from Pandar, and by Hector's death supplied with a motive for the utmost exertion of his heroic powers. Ulysses, the antithesis of Troilus,—is the much-experienced man of the world, possessed of its highest and broadest wisdom, which yet always remains worldly wisdom and never rises into the spiritual contemplation of a Prospero. He sees all the unworthiness of human life, but will use it for high worldly ends; the spirit of irreverence and insubordination in the camp he would restrain by the politic machinery of what he calls 'degree '-I. i. 75-136. Cressida he reads at a glance, seeing to the bottom of her sensual shallow nature, and he assists at the disillusioning of the young Prince, whose nobleness is apparent to him from the first. Thersites also sees through the illusions of the world, but his very incapacity to