Shakespeare's Sonnets. 81 Athens." This seems to have been a gloomy period in Shakespeare's life; disgust with his profession and other troubles led him to look on the dark side of things; "the burden and the mystery" of this unintelligible world weighed heavily on him; and, perplexed by the enigmas of fate, he found relief for his overburdened soul, as so many great artists have done, by shadowing forth in the creatures of his imagination his own doubts and difficulties. After the tempest came calm and sunshine. In the plays belonging to what is called Shakespeare's fourth period we find a sweet grave tenderness: the blessings of forgiveness and domestic love are set forth himself escaped from turmoil and sorrow, the dramatist looks with lenient eye upon the frailty of mankind, regarding with fond sympathy their errors and shortcomings, their struggles and trials. To this period, extending from 1609 to about 1613, belong "Pericles" (only in part Shakespeare's), the "Tempest," "Cymbeline," the "Winter's Tale," and "Henry VIII.," part of which is thought to have been written by Fletcher. We have left unnoticed the work which, from a biographical point of view, is by far the most interesting that Shakespeare ever wrote the Sonnets. They were not published till 1609, but were probably written between 1595 and 1605. Round perhaps no book do so many literary problems centre. Almost every one who has written about Shakespeare has had some new theory regarding them. The first difficulty meets us before we begin their perusal. By Thomas Thorpe, the publisher, they were thus dedicated: "To the onlie begetter of these insuing Sonnets, Mr. W. H., all happiness, and that Eternitie promised by our ever-living poet, wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth, T. T. [Thomas Thorpe]." Now who was this Mr. W. H.? Many have been the conjectures as to this, and very likely none of them are correct, but the most probable one is that "Mr. W. H." signifies William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Many little facts, not very striking individually, but tolerably convincing collectively, point to this conclusion. When we look at the Sonnets themselves, we find that they fall into two divisions; the first, from 1 to 126, addressed to a man; the other, 127-154, to a woman, and indicating apparently that Shakespeare had unwisely loved and had been betrayed in his love by the friend to whom the first series of sonnets is addressed. Other divisions of the Sonnets have been suggested, but they do not seem to have any great claims to consideration. Mr. Fleay, strangely enough, supposes that the latter division of the Sonnets was addressed by Shakespeare to his wife. Professor Minto is inclined to think that they are a tour de force, written to show Shakespeare's contempt for the exaggerated tone adopted by the sonnet-writers of the period-an interpretation which many who admire Shakespeare would gladly accept, but which almost certainly is not correct. Of another difficulty in the Sonnets Professor Minto was the first to suggest what is now generally accepted as the true solution. In Sonnets 76-86 we find the poet complaining that his friend favours a rival writer. In Sonnet 86 he speaks of— -"the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all too precious you ;" of "his spirit, by spirits taught to write above a mortal pitch," of his "compeers by night" that gave him aid, and of "that affable familiar ghost which nightly gulls him with intelligence." The rival thus spoken of was formerly supposed to be Marlowe, but there are good reasons for believing that he cannot have been meant. All who have read any of George Chapman's translation of the "Iliad" will admit that "the proud full sail of his great verse" applies admirably to its sonorous Alexandrines; and there are other indications, such as that Chapman "advanced fervent claims to supernatural inspiration" ("by spirits taught to write"), which lead to the conclusion that he was the rival poet indicated. We know little of the tenor of Shakespeare's life while he went on producing his wonderful series of dramas. He became a partner in the profits of the Globe Theatre in 1599, and, before and after that event, worldly prosperity shone on him, as, in spite of all that is said about the caprice of fate, it generally Death of Shakespeare. 83 does upon those who work diligently and are ready to take at the flood the tide that leads on to fortune. In 1596 John Shakespeare, doubtless at his son's instigation, applied at the Heralds' College for a grant of arms. In 1597 Shakespeare bought for £60 a fine house, New Place, in Stratford. In 1602 he purchased for £320 a hundred and seven acres in the parish of Old Stratford. In the same year he bought a second and smaller property. In 1605 he bought a thirty-one years' remainder of a lease of tithes in Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Wilcombe for £440. Many other particulars indicative of his increasing wealth have been exhumed from old documents. Unlike most poets, Shakespeare seems to have attended to the maxim about taking care of the pence. No doubt his father's difficulties made him more careful about financial matters than he might otherwise have been. It is evident that he had a sharp eye for business. In 1604 he brought an action at Stratford for £1, 155. 10d., and in 1609 he strenuously pursued for a debt of £6 and 24s. costs a certain John Addenbrooke. These are curious facts, well worth pondering by those who think that men of genius are generally fools as regards money matters. 66 About 1612 Shakespeare returned to his native town, a prosperous gentleman." Rowe's account of the last years of his life may be accepted as substantially correct. "The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of good sense wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. He had the good fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasions, and in that to his wish; and is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford. His pleasurable wit and good nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship, of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood." His hopes of founding a family, if he ever entertained such, had fallen to the ground by the death of his only son, Hamnet, in 1596. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. Two days later his remains were deposited in the chancel of Stratford Church, where his grave is marked by a flat stone, bearing the famous inscription "Good frend, for Jesus sake forbeare And curst be he y' moves my bones." In spite of numerous temptations to the contrary, the adjura- · tion of the epitaph has proved effectual: no sacrilegious hand has interfered with Shakespeare's "honoured dust.” Though his life in London was a successful one, we know from the Sonnets that Shakespeare often felt bitterly regarding his position as an actor. In Sonnet 110 he says— "Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Probably his desire to acquire the means of escaping from what he regarded as an irksome servitude, and to obtain "independence, that first of earthly blessings," gave many a fresh spur to his exertions to acquire a competence. Those who reproach Scott for "selling his brains for money," for writing hastily in order to amass a fortune, often forget that Shakespeare is liable to a precisely similar reproach, if reproach it be, which we do not think it is. In not a few respects indeed a curious parallel might be drawn between Scott and Shakespeare. Both cared little for fame: Shakespeare allowed some of his best plays to appear in pirated editions, regardless what might be their eventual fate. Both were men of genial, kindly disposition, conscious of their own great powers, we cannot doubt, but perhaps because of that very consciousness wisely tolerant of others, and totally free from arrogance or contempt. Both were men of great prudence, with a large fund of common sense, which would have made them prosperous and respected though they had not been. men of genius. Immeasurably superior though Shakespeare is to Scott in genius and width of range, there are many points of resemblance between them in their mode of literary workmanship. Both possessed the power of depicting all classes of society with equal sympathy and equal discernment; both The Elizabethan Dramatists. 85 were equally great in describing the tragic and the comic aspects of life ; both, amidst higher qualities, are full of maxims on conduct and character showing great natural shrewdness developed by wide experience of men and affairs. It is impossible for us to enter upon any minute account of Shakespeare's plays, or to discuss the order of their appearance, the sources from which their plots are drawn, &c. To do so would require a volume, not a few pages. Neither do we propose to attempt any estimate of his genius. So much. has been written on this topic, that he would be a bold writer who should attempt to say anything new regarding it. We therefore content ourselves by quoting Dryden's eulogy, one of the finest, and one of the most discerning. It appeared in his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy:"-" To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily: when he describes anything, you more than see it you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious degenerating into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him." Among people who know them only by report, there is an impression that Shakespeare's contemporaries were just inferior copies of the myriad-minded dramatist; that in their works we can trace the same characteristics as we find in his. Of course it is true that they are inferior; indeed it is a case of "Eclipse first and the rest nowhere;" for great as many of the Elizabethan dramatists were, none of them approached Shakespeare's surpassing greatness. But the difference between Shakespeare and the other dramatists is not merely one of degree, it is one of kind. There is a delicacy and grace, |