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make it probable that 1599 was the date of its production. A pirated imperfect quarto appeared in the following year. In this play Shakspere bade farewell in trumpet tones to the history of England. It was a fitting climax to the great series of works which told of the sorrow and the glory of his country, embodying as it did the purest patriotism of the days of Elizabeth. With Agincourt and a King Henry V. we can rest content, assured that all greatness and good are possible for a loyal people; we care no longer to search the dim reports

Of old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.

And as the noblest glories of England are presented in this play, so it presents Shakspere's ideal of active, practical, heroic manhood. If Hamlet exhibits the dangers and weakness of the contemplative nature, and Prospero, its calm and its conquest, Henry exhibits the utmost greatness which the active nature can attain. He is not an astute politician like his father having put everything upon a sound substantial basis he need not strain anxious eyes of foresight, to discern and provide for contingencies arising out of doubtful deeds; for all that naturally comes within its range he has an unerring eye. A devotion to great objects outside of self fills him with a force of glorious enthusiasm. Hence his religious spirit and his humility or modesty-he feels that the strength he wields comes not from any clever disposition of forces due to his own prudence, but streams into him and through him from his people, his country, his cause, his God. He can be terrible to traitors, and his sternness is without a touch of personal revenge. In the midst of danger he can feel so free from petty heart-eating cares as to enjoy a piece of honest, soldierly mirth. His wooing is as plain, frank, and true as are his acts of piety. He unites around himself in loyal service the jarring nationalities

of his father's time-Englishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen, Irishmen, all are at Henry's side at Agincourt. Having presented his ideal of English kinghood, Shakspere could turn aside from history. In this play no character except Henry greatly interested Shakspere, unless it be the Welsh Fluellen, whom he loves (as Scott loved the Baron of Bradwardine) for his real simplicity underlying his apparatus of learning, and his touching faith in the theory of warfare.

17. The Taming of the Shrew is first found in the folio, 1623, but it is in some way closely connected with a play published in 1594, and bearing the almost identical title, The Taming of a Shrew. We cannot

accept Pope's opinion that both plays are by Shakspere, nor agree with another critic who ingeniously maintained that the earlier printed play was the later written, being suggested by Shakspere's comedy of the Shrew. The play in the folio is certainly an enlargement and alteration of The Taming of a Shrew, and it only remains to ask, was Shakspere the sole reviser and adapter, or did his task consist of adding and altering certain scenes, so as to render yet more amusing and successful an enlarged version of the play of 1594, already made by some unknown hand? This last seems upon the whole the opinion best supported by the internal evidence. In The Taming of the Shrew we may distinguish three parts: (1) The humorous Induction, in which Sly, the drunken tinker, is the chief person; (2) A comedy of character, the Shrew and her tamer, Petruchio, being the hero and heroine; (3) A comedy of intrigue-the story of Bianca and her rival lovers. Now the old play of A Shrew contains, in a rude form, the scenes of the Induction, and the chief scenes in which Petruchio and Katharina (named by the original writer Ferando and Kate) appear; but nothing in this old play corresponds with the intrigues of Bianca's disguised lovers. It is, however, in the scenes concerned with these intrigues that Shakspere's hand is least ap

parent. It may be said that Shakspere's genius goes in and out with the person of Katharina. We would therefore conjecturally assign the intrigue-comedy,— which is founded upon Gascoigne's Supposes, a translation of Ariosto's Gli Suppositi-to the adapter of the old play, reserving for Shakspere a title to those scenes in the main enlarged from the play of A Shrew-in which Katharina, Petruchio, and Grumio are speakers. Turning this statement into figures, we find that Shakspere's part of The Taming of the Shrew is comprised in the following portions: Induction; Act II. Sc. i. L. 169-326; Act III. Sc. ii. L. 1-125, and 151-241; Act IV. Sc. i.; Act IV. Sc. iii.; Act IV, Sc. v.; Act V. Sc. ii. L. 1-180. Such a division, it must be borne in mind, is no more than a conjecture, but it seems to be suggested and fairly indicated by the style of the several parts of the comedy.

However this may be, it is clear that Shakspere cared little for the other characters in comparison with Sly, Katharina, and Petruchio. Sly is of the family of Sancho Panza, gross and materialistic in his tastes and habits, but withal so good-humoured and self-contented that we would fain leave him unvexed by higher ideas or aspirations; all the pains taken to delude him into the notion that he is a lord will not make him essentially other than "old Sly's son, of Burton Heath,” who has run up so long a score with the fat ale-wife of Wincot. The Katharina and Petruchio scenes border upon the farcical, but Shakspere's interest in the characters of the Shrew and her tamer keep these scenes from passing into downright farce. Katharina with all her indulged wilfulness and violence of temper has no evil in her; in her home-enclosure she seems a formidable creature; but when caught away by the tempest of Petruchio's masculine force, the comparative weakness of her sex shows itself; she, who has strength of her own, and has ascertained its limits, can recognise superior strength, and once subdued she is the least rebellious of subjects. Petruchio acts his

assumed part "with complete presence of mind, with untired animal spirits, and without a particle of illhumour from beginning to end." The play is full of energy and bustling movement.

Widely separated dates have been assigned for The Taming of the Shrew, from 1594 to 1606. The best portions are in the manner of Shakspere's comedies of the second period; and attributing the Bianca intriguecomedy to a writer intermediate between the author of the play of A Shrew and Shakspere, there is no difficulty in supposing that the Shakspere scenes were written about 1597. The same spirit in which The Merry Wives of Windsor was created was here employed by Shakspere to furnish his theatrical company with this enlarged version of a popular comedy.

It should be noted that the comedy of The Shrew is a play within a play, and there is no provision, such as is found in the older Shrew, for disposing of Sly at the end of the fifth act. The jest of bewildering a poor man into the idea that he is rich and great is found in the Arabian Nights; such a jest is attributed to Philip the Good of Burgundy, and the story is given in a collection of Tales compiled by R. Edwards, and printed in 1570. Fletcher wrote a humorous continuation of Shakspere's play, entitled The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed, in which Petruchio reappears.

18. The Merry Wives of Windsor is an offshoot from the comedy of King Henry IV., while King Henry V. is the direct continuation of the history. Dennis, in 1702, reports a tradition that this play was written in fourteen days, by order of the Queen; and Rowe adds: "she was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff, in the two parts of Henry IV., that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love." This may have been the cause. why Shakspere does not fulfil the promise made in the Epilogue of Henry IV., that Falstaff should reappear with Henry V. in France; but, indeed, among the

great deeds of the victor of Agincourt there would be small room for a Falstaff. The choice of Windsor as the scene, and the compliments to the owner of Windsor Castle, and to the wearers of the Order of the Garter, suggest that the play was meant especially for the ears of Elizabeth and her courtiers. An early sketch of The Merry Wives was published in quarto, 1602; some touches in the play, as given in the folio, were evidently made after the accession of James I. (1603); the word "council" is altered to "king" (Act I. Sc. i. L. 113); "these knights will hack," exclaims Mrs. Page (Act II. Sc. i. L. 52), and the allusion to James's too liberal creation of knights in 1604 was probably appreciated. Some critics have held that the first sketch of The Merry Wives was written as early as 1592. A German duke is spoken of by Bardolph as about to visit Windsor, and his gentlemen ride off with mine host of the Garter's horses unpaid for. In the early sketch (Act IV. Sc. v. of the revised play), instead of "cousingermans," where Evans puns upon the words cozen and German, occurs the strange cosen garmombles." Now, Count Frederick of Mömpelgard had visited England and accompanied the Queen to Windsor, Aug. 1592; and in the passport which he received for his journey back to the Continent, we read that he shall be furnished with post-horses, and shall pay nothing for the same. Next year the Count became Duke of Wirtemberg, and in 1595 he craved that, in accordance with a promise given, Elizabeth would confer upon him the Order of the Garter, which Elizabeth, on various pretexts, declined. "Garmombles" obviously reverses the true name "Mömpelgard;" but the inference that the date of the play is 1592, because it refers to the visit of the Germans, is unwarrantable, for such an event would be remembered, and the more so because of the Duke's subsequent unavailing attempt to obtain the honour of the Garter.

If we try to make out exact relations between the characters of The Merry Wives and the same characters

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