52. Fourth Period.—The tragic gloom and suffering were not, however, to last for ever. The dark cloud lightens and rolls away, and the sky appears purer and tenderer than ever. The impression left upon the reader by Shakspere's last plays is that, whatever his trials and sorrows and errors may have been, he had come forth from them wise, large-hearted, calm-souled. He seems to have learned the secret of life, and while taking his share in it, to be yet disengaged from it; he looks down upon life, its joys, its griefs, its errors, with a grave tenderness, which is almost pity. The spirit of these last plays is that of serenity which results from fortitude, and the recognition of human frailty; all of them express a deep sense of the need of repentance and the duty of forgiveness. And they all show a delight in youth and the loveliness of youthful joy, such as one feels who looks on these things without possessing or any longer desiring to possess them. Shakspere in this period is most like his own Prospero. In these "Romances," and in the "Fragments," a supernatural element is present; man does not strive with circumstance and with his own passions in darkness; the gods preside over our human lives and fortunes, they communicate with us by vision, by oracles, through the elemental powers of nature. Shakspere's faith seems to have been that there is something without and around our human lives, of which we know little, yet which we know to be beneficent and divine. And it will be felt that the name which I have given to this last periodShakspere having ascended out of the turmoil and trouble of action, out of the darkness and tragic mystery, the places haunted by terror and crime, and by love contending with these, to a pure and serene elevation --it will be felt that the name, On the heights, is neither inappropriate nor fanciful.

CHAPTER VI.

INTRODUCTIONS TO THE PLAYS AND POEMS.

1. Titus Andronicus (pronounced by the writer of the play Andron'-i-cus).-The importance of this tragedy lies in the fact that, if Shakspere wrote it, we find him as a young man carried away by the influence of a Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) movement similar to that which urged Schiller to write his Robbers. Titus Andronicus belongs essentially to the pre-Shaksperian group of bloody tragedies, of which Kyd's Spanish Tragedy is the most conspicuous example. If it is of Shaksperian authorship it may be viewed as representing the years of crude and violent youth before he had found his true self; his second tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, as representing the years of transition; and Hamlet, the period of maturity and adult power.

The external evidence with reference to the authorship of Titus is the following: (1) It is mentioned by Meres (1598) among other undoubted plays of Shakspere. (2) It is printed in the First Folio. (3) Ravenscroft, who altered the play in 1687, declares that he had been told "by some anciently conversant with the stage that it was not his [Shakspere's]," but that he only gave some master-touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters." The great majority of English critics either altogether reject the play, upon the ground that in style and subject it is unlike any other work of our dramatist, or accept as true the tradition of Ravenscroft, that it was touched by Shakspere, and no more. "Shakspere's tragedy is never bloodily sensual; . . . this play is a perfect slaughterhouse, and the blood makes appeal to all the senses. It reeks blood, it smells of blood, we almost

feel that we have handled blood-it is so gross." To attempt to point out certain passages as written by Shakspere would be unsafe, for we know little of what the distinguishing features of Shakspere's style were when he began to write for the stage; but no lines in the play have more of a Shaksperian ring than the following (Act IV. Sc. iv. L. 81-86):

King, be thy thoughts imperious, like thy name.
Is the sun dimm'd that gnats do fly in it?

The eagle suffers little birds to sing,

And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wings
He can at pleasure stint their melody.

A play, Titus and Vespasian (mentioned by Henslowe as tittus and vespacia "), was acted in 1592, and though itself lost, a translation into German, acted early in the 17th century by English comedians in Germany, remains in existence. It is not the play attributed to Shakspere. Henslowe also mentions a Titus and Andronicus as a new play, acted January 23, 1594 it is doubtful whether this was the Shaksperian play. If it be, and it was then written, the tragedy is certainly not by Shakspere. It is impossible to believe that in 1594, when Shakspere had written his Venus and Adonis and his Lucrece, he could have dealt so coarsely with details of outrage and unnatural cruelty as does the author of this tragedy. Ben Jonson, in the introduction to Bartholomew Fair (1614), speaks of Titus Andronicus, with Jeronimo, as belonging to "twenty-five or thirty years" previously: this would carry back the date of the play (if it be of this Titus Andronicus that Jonson speaks) to 1589, or earlier. That it was a play of that period, and was touched by Shakspere, we may accept as the opinion best supported by internal evidence and by the weight of critical authority.

2. King Henry VI., Part I., is almost certainly an old play, by one or more authors, which, as we find

コ it in the First Folio, had received touches from the hand of Shakspere. In Henslowe's diary a Henry VI. is said to have been acted March 3, 1591-92. It was extremely popular. Nash in his Pierce Pennilesse (1592) alludes to the triumph on the stage of "brave Talbot" over the French. But we have no reason for believing that the play which we possess was that mentioned by Henslowe or that alluded to by Nash. Greene had, perhaps, a chief hand in this play, and he may have been assisted by Peele and Marlowe. There is a general agreement among critics in attributing to Shakspere the scene (Act II. Sc. iv.) in which the white and red roses are plucked as emblems of the rival parties in the state; perhaps the scene of the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk (Act V. Sc. iii. L. 45 and onwards) if not written by Shakspere was touched by him. The general spirit of the drama belongs to an older school than the Shaksperian, and it is a happiness not to have to ascribe to our greatest poet the crude and hateful handling of the character of Joan of Arc, excused though to some extent it may be by the concurrence of view in our old English chronicles.

3. Love's Labour's Lost, as far as we know, is wholly of Shakspere's own invention; no source of the plot has been discovered. The play is precisely such an one as a clever young man might imagine, who had come lately from the country-with its "daisies pied and violets blue," its " merry larks," its maidens who "bleach their summer smocks," its pompous parish schoolmaster, and its dull constable (a great public official in his own eyes)-to the town, where he was surrounded by more brilliant unrealities, and affectations of dress, of manner, of language, and of ideas. Love's Labour's Lost is a dramatic plea on behalf of nature and of common sense against all that is unreal and affected. It maintains, in a gay and witty fashion, the superiority of life, as a means of education, over books; the superiority of the large world into which

we are born over any little world we can construct for ourselves, and into which we may hedge ourselves by rule; and, while maintaining this, it also asserts that we must not educate ourselves only by what is mirthful and pleasant in the world, but must recognise its sorrow, and that we cannot be rightly glad without being grave and earnest. The King of Navarre, and three of his lords-one of whom, Berowne, sees through the seeming splendour of the king's design to its real folly-resolve to turn their court into a "little Academe," to seclude themselves from all that is common and unideal, to devote themselves for three years to study, fasting much, sleeping little, and forswearing the company of ladies: in a word, they aspire to establish a little monastery of culture. The scheme, which looked so graceful while it went no farther than words, breaks down lamentably when they would make it real. The king is obliged, by reasons of state, to receive the Princess of France and her three ladies; the vowed scholars-all four of them-fall over head and ears in love, and an amusing scene of discovery and confession takes place, in which each in turn betrays his secret, and is convicted before his equally guilty fellows, until at last Berowne-who unites good sense with genius-comes forward to charge with error their original vows of seclusion, and to justify their present apostasy. There is much merry mocking of the lovers by the French girls, and in bright play with the weapons of words Rosaline is a match for Berowne. When the mirth is at its highest come tidings that the father of the princess is dead. The comedy will not end with weddings; love's labour is lost; the king is dismissed to a twelvemonth's absence and testing of his love; and Berowne, the mocker, in the same interval before marriage, must make his jests, if he can, for sick folk in an hospital, and so learn the graver side of life. Thus, with its apparent lightness, there is a serious spirit underlying the play, but the surface is all jest, and stir, and sparkle. It is a comedy of dialogue