"Henry V."

have commented. The Sonnets, so long neglected, have in our own day called forth more criticism and speculation than any other of Shakespeare's works, except Hamlet. The comments of Professor Dowden, Mr. George Wyndham, and Mr. Thomas Tyler are most valuable, though we cannot subscribe to the last-named writer's views on the minor detail of Mistress Fitton.

The purchase of New Place, the outward and visible sign of Shakespeare's victory over the world, aptly ushers in the most sunny and genial, though not the most marvellous epoch of his dramatic production. The First Part of Henry IV., licensed for the press in February 1598, must have been written and acted in 1597. The Second Part and The Merry Wives of Windsor, satellite of the historical dramas, cannot have been long delayed. There are perhaps none

of his productions in which Shakespeare is so thoroughly at home, and from which so lively an impression may be derived; not, indeed, of the man in his profounder moods, but of the man as he appeared to his fellows. If critics are right, as no doubt they are, in recognising in Hamlet and Troilus the influence of a period of gloom and sadness, the creation of Falstaff must denote one of genial jollity, such as might well be induced by the victory in the battle of life signalised by his installation in his native town. In full keeping with this feeling is the fact that the second part contains many local allusions, including a reference to a peculiar agricultural custom in the Cotswolds, alone sufficient to prove that the play was written by one.

Mrs. Woffington as Mrs. Ford in "The acquainted with the locality. The serious portion of the plot is but moderately interesting, but it is handled with an easy power which would excite still more admiration if it were not so completely overtopped by the humour of Falstaff. There seems no doubt that Falstaff was originally called Oldcastle, from which it has been absurdly argued that Shakespeare intended to attack the Reformation. If he had had any such design he would have made Falstaff a Puritan.

Henry V. is in some respects a more extraordinary production than Henry IV., for it shows what Shakespeare could make of a subject so undramatic that it might well have been deemed intractable. The date and purpose of the play are proclaimed by itself in the speech of the Chorus celebrating Essex's expedition to Ireland in the early part of 1599. It must be regarded, like King John, as a dramatic improvisation designed to animate and guide public feeling. King John has a highly dramatic subject, Henry V. is better adapted for epic. Its tone, therefore, is lofty and epical, befitting the grandeur of the momentous, if undramatic, action, and it is sown

Poetical and
Romantic
Comedy

with passages of majestic eloquence and brilliant poetry, while the comic.
personages, our old acquaintances, retain their original humour. The dissolute
Prince Hal has become the ideal of a warrior king, and, designedly or unde-
signedly, affords no inapt symbol of Shakespeare's own transformation from
the youth "given to all
unluckiness" into the first
burgess of his native place
and the first author of his
age.

Shortly after the broad humour of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare passes to a totally different type of comedy, the poetical and romantic. Perhaps no department of his work was so absolutely congenial to him, for none so entirely reconciled the graver and the lighter qualities of his mind. In beginning his career as a dramatist, he had turned to it as it were by instinct, for one of his earliest works, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, is an example of it, and one of extraordinary merit considering He now, in the

his age.

prime of his strength, produces three masterpieces, Much Ado about Nothing

Richard Tarleton, a comedy actor of Elizabeth's time

From an old print

(1598 or 1599), As You Like It (1599 or 1600), and Twelfth Night (1600). Of these, Much Ado about Nothing is the least delightful, shadowed by the villainy of Don John and the unchivalrous behaviour of Claudio; but Benedick, Beatrice, and Dogberry make amends. As You Like It is the most thoroughly delightful play that Shakespeare ever wrote, and Rosalind perhaps deserves the palm among all his female creations. The Forest of Arden is as purely an ideal world as that of the Midsummer Night's Dream or The Tempest, and owes nothing of its ideality to the supernatural. It is perhaps the most remarkable instance that poetry affords of an ideal creation out of purely human elements. If Twelfth Night is less enchanting, it is merely because the Illyrian city cannot have the romantic charm of the forest, nor can Viola reproduce the unique flavour of Rosalind, nor can she have a foil

Shakespeare

the century

in Celia. But if less exceptional, the character is not less exquisite, and touches the feelings more deeply; the subordinate personages are even more humorous; and the action is balanced with the nicest skill on the limits between gay and grave. It is remarkable that among the materials for his plot Shakespeare takes up the Spanish romance from which he had derived The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and uses the part which he had then rejected. The cheerful character of Shakespeare's dramatic work towards the close at the close of of the century was promoted not merely by his restitution to Stratford, but by the general prosperity of his affairs. In 1599 the brothers Burbage built the Globe Theatre in Bankside, and allotted shares in the receipts to some of the more distinguished performers, among whom Shakespeare is mentioned. The amount he would probably receive, including his salary as actor, has been estimated at £500 in the money of the period, out of which he would have to contribute his share towards the expenses of the theatre. Remuneration for his dramatic writings and extra emoluments from performances at Court and at private mansions would increase his income, which may be fairly estimated at £600 a year. His was one of the natures with which prosperity agrees, and we may see thankfulness and satisfaction reflected in his work. This complacency, nevertheless, was mainly the creation of outward circumstances. It was not yet based upon philosophy allied to experience, and resulting in that large, liberal, tolerant view of life of which his latest writings show him in possession. Ere this could be his, he had yet, to all appearance, to traverse a tempestuous inward crisis. Meanwhile the century, for him, closed in peace.

CHAPTER VI

SHAKESPEARE—(continued)

If the sixteenth century had closed brightly for Shakespeare, the seventeenth Shakespeare began in cloud and storm. His own position may not have been affected, of seventeenth at beginning but he must have suffered deeply with his patron and his friend. We have century seen him celebrating Essex's Irish expedition in Henry V., and promising that the hero should return, "bearing rebellion broached upon his sword." Things had turned out far otherwise. Falling from one disaster to another, Essex, in February 1601, was goaded into the mad attempt at revolution which brought him to the scaffold, and his ally Southampton, Shakespeare's friend and Mæcenas, to the Tower. In the same month, Pembroke, the subject, as we have contended, of Shakespeare's Sonnets, incurred, like Raleigh before him, the Queen's displeasure by an intrigue with a maid of honour. He was imprisoned and banished the Court. It has already been remarked that the month of his imprisonment corresponds with the month of April during which Shakespeare laments his severance from his friend. We are nevertheless not disposed to connect the circumstances, as Shakespeare seems to write as one who has himself been absent in the country. The date of the absence may with probability be conjectured from the first four lines of Sonnet XCVIII. :

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.

Saturn may be merely a poetical synonym for Time; but if, as is more probable, the planet Saturn is denoted, he certainly is not introduced at random. Mr. George Wyndham has most ingeniously surmised a reference to the peculiar brilliancy of Saturn when in opposition to the sun, and thus at his greatest possible distance. The sun in April is in Aries and Taurus, and to be in opposition to him Saturn must be in Libra or Scorpio, as actually was the case at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. This acute observation may be reinforced by another derived from the kindred study of astrology. Libra is astrologically the exaltation of Saturn, one of the signs in which he is supposed to be most potent. He may therefore with great propriety be said to "laugh and leap" in it. He was in Libra and opposed to the sun in the April of 1599 and 1600. The latter date would agree best with the general chronological scheme of the Sonnets.

It is an interesting speculation whether the conspiracy of Essex contributed to direct Shakespeare's attention to the conspiracy of Brutus as the subject of his next play. There can be little doubt that Julius Cæsar appeared in 1601, for it is alluded to in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, published in that year, and it seems out of keeping with the plays of 1599-1600. Professor

Dowden has pointed out its intellectual affinity to Hamlet, a drama of the succeeding year. In resorting to Plutarch for a subject, Shakespeare was merely repeating the procedure with the English chroniclers which had answered so well in his English historical plays, but he had now to deal with material already sifted by a masterly hand. It was not the especial business of the English chroniclers to record noble actions: they relate the history of the times with fidelity, and take things noble or ignoble as they come.