lines. The scene is the broad Rhineplain, and the time the poet's own. This poem, considered the finest specimen of Goethe's narrative verse, was published in 1797, during the period of the author's inspiring friendship with Schiller. The sweet bucolic narrative describes how the host of the Golden Lion and his "sensible wife » have sent their stalwart and dutiful son, Hermann, to minister to the wants of a band of exiles, who are journeying from their homes, burned by the ravages of war. Among the exiles Hermann meets, and immediately loves, Dorothea. How this buxom Teutonic maiden of excellent good sense is wooed and won, taking a daughter's sophical digressions, which now seem tedious and foreign to the action, were then greatly admired. Ben Jonson, in his poem prefixed to Mabbe's translation, describes the hero as "The Spanish Proteus . . formed with the world's wit." Though inferior to Mendoza's 'Lazarillo in grace and vivacity, this romance enables us to get a clear idea of certain aspects of society in the Spain and Italy of the sixteenth century, notwithstanding the exaggeration and excess of color in its descriptions. The French translation by Le Sage omits the digressions and philosophical reflections of the original, to which it is far superior. place in the cheerful hostelry, is told Bible in Spain, The, by George Bor with charming simplicity. The poem is instinct with the breath of mystic scenes, and the characters are as minutely drawn as in the great national epics. G uzman de Alfarache, by Mateo Ale man. This romance, dealing with the lives and adventures of picaros or rogues, contains more varied and highly colored pictures of thieves, beggars, and outlaws than any other work in this peculiar department of Spanish literature. It is divided into two parts, of which the first was published in 1599, the second in 1605. Guzman relates his own life from his birth up to the moment when his crimes consign him to the galleys. When a mere boy, he runs away from his mother after his father's death; goes to Madrid, where he is by turns scullion, cook, and errand boy; escapes to Toledo with some money intrusted to him, and sets up as a fine gentleman. After wasting all his money in profligacy he enlists, is sent to Italy, and quickly becomes the associate of cutpurses and vagabonds of every description. He is a versatile rascal, and feels equally at home among beggars and in the palace of a Roman cardinal, who takes an interest in him and makes him his page. But his natural depravity does not allow him to hold this position long; and he returns to Spain, where he eventually becomes a lackey in the French ambassador's household. The adventures row, was published in 1843. It is an account of the author's five-years' residence in Spain as an agent of the English Bible Society. In the preface he thus explains his book: "Many things, it is true, will be found in the following volumes, which have little connection with religion or religious enterprise; I offer, however, no apology for introducing them. I was, as I may say, from first to last adrift in Spain, the land of old renown, the land of wonder and mystery, with better opportunities of becoming acquainted with its strange secrets and peculiarities than perhaps ever yet were afforded to any individual, certainly to a foreigner; and if in many instances I have introduced scenes and characters perhaps unprecedented in a work of this description, I have only to observe that during my sojourn in Spain I was so unavoidably mixed up with such, that I could scarcely have given a faithful narrative of what befell me had I not brought them forward in the manner I have done.» "The Bible in Spain' is therefore a fascinating story of adventure and picturesque life in a land where, to the writer at least, the unusual predominates. As a reviewer wrote of the book at the time of its publication, We are frequently reminded of Gil Blas in the narratives of this pious, single-hearted man.' Borrow's work is unique in the annals of missionary literature. he meets with there form the closing Shakespeare's Plays. LOVE'S LA BOUR'S LOST is Shakespeare's first dramatic production, written about 1588 or '89, and has all the marks of immature style; yet its repartees and witticisms give it a sprightly cast, and its constant good-humor and good-nature make it readable. The plot, as far as is known, is Shakespeare's own. There is an air of unreality about it, as if all the characters had eaten of the insane root, or were at least light-headed with champagne. Incessant are their quick venues of wit,-"snip, snap, quick, and home.» In a nutshell, the play is a satire of utopias, of all thwarting of natural instincts. Ferdinand, King of Navarre, and his three associate lords, Biron, Dumain, and Longaville, have taken oath to form themselves into a kind of monastic academy for study. They swear to fast, to eat but one meal a day, and for three years not to look on the face of woman; all of which "is flat treason against the kingly state of youth." But, alas! the King had forgotten that he was about to see the Princess of France and three of her ladies, come on a matter of State business. However, he will not admit them into his palace, but has pavilions pitched in the park. At the first glance all four men fall violently in love, each with one of the ladies,-the king with the princess, Biron with Rosaline, etc. Cupid has thumped them all "with his bird-bolt under the left pap." They write sentimental verses, and while reading them aloud in the park, all find each other out, each assuming a stern severity with the perjured ones until he himself is detected. One of the humorous characters is Don Adriano de Armado, "who draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." In him, and in the preposterous pedant Holofernes, and the curate Sir Nathaniel, the poet satirizes the euphuistic affectations of the time,— the taffeta phrases, three-piled hyperboles, and foreign language scraps, ever on the tongues of these fashionable dudes. The "pathetical nit," Moth, is Armado's page, a keen-witted rogueling. Dull is a constable of "twice-sodden simplicity," and Costard the witty clown. Rosaline is the Beatrice of the comedy, brilliant and caustic in her wit. Boyet is an old courtier who serves as a kind of usher or male lady's-maid to the princess and her retinue. The loves of the noblesse are parodied in those of Costard and of the country wench Jaquenetta. The gentlemen devise, to entertain the ladies, a Muscovite masque and a play by the clown and pedants. The ladies get wind of the masque, and, being masked themselves, guy the Muscovites who go off "all drybeaten with pure scoff"; Rosaline suggests that maybe they are sea-sick with coming from Muscovy. The burlesque play tallies that in Midsummer Night's Dream, the great folk making satirical remarks on the clown's performances. Costard is cast for Pompey the Huge, and it transpires that the Don has no shirt on when he challenges Costard to a duel. While the fun is at its height comes word that sobers all: the princess's father is dead. As a test of their love the princess and Rosaline impose a year's severe penance on their lovers, and if their love proves true, promise to have them; and so do the other ladies promise to their wooers. Thus love's labor is, for the present, lost. The comedy ends with two fine lyrics,- the cuckoo song (Spring'), and the whit, tu-whoo' song of the owl (Winter'). Tu Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, one of Shakespeare's earliest and least attractive comedies, for the plot of which he was slightly indebted to Bandello, to Sidney's 'Arcadia,' and to Montemayor's 'Diana Enamorada.' The scene is laid alternately in Verona and in Milan. The noble Valentine of Verona remarks to his friend Proteus that "home-keeping youths have ever homely wits"; hence he will travel to Milan, with his servant Speed. Proteus, a mean-souled, treacherous, fickle young sprig, is in love with Julia, or thinks he is. His servant's name is Launce, a droll fellow who is as rich in humor as Launcelot Gobbo of the 'Merchant of Venice.' Julia is the heroine of the piece; a pretty, faithful girl. Proteus soon posts after Valentine to Milan, and at once forgets Julia and falls "over boots in love" with Silvia. Julia also goes to Milan, disguised as a boy, and takes service with Proteus. The latter treacherously betrayed Valentine's plan of elopement with Silvia to the duke her father, who met Valentine, pulled the rope ladder from under his cloak, and then banished him. As in the play of 'As You Like It,' all the parties finally meet in the forest, where Valentine has been chosen leader by a band of respectable outlaws. Julia confesses her identity; Valentine, with a maudlin, milk-sop charity, not only forgives Proteus (whom he has just overheard avowing to Silvia that he will outrage her if he cannot get her love), but, on Proteus repenting, actually offers to give up Silvia to him. But Julia swoons, and Proteus's love for her returns. A double marriage ends this huddled-up finale. Launce affines with Touchstone, Grumio, Autolycus, and the Dromios. He is irresistibly funny in the enumeration of his milkmaid's "points," and in the scenes with his dog Crab. This cruel-hearted cur, when all at home were weeping over Launce's departure, and the very cat was wringing her hands, shed not a tear; and when, in Madam Silvia's dining-room, he stole a chicken-leg from the trencher and misbehaved in an unmentionable manner, Launce manfully took a whipping for him. Nay, he stood on the pillory for geese he had killed, and stood in the stocks for puddings he had stolen. Crab enjoys the honor of being the only dog that sat to Shakespeare for his portrait, although others are mentioned in his works. THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, by its irresistibly laughable plot (and it is all plot), is perennially popular. It is the shortest of the plays, and one of the very earliest written. The main story is from the Menæchmi' of Plautus. The Syracusans and the men of Ephesus have mutually decreed death to a citizen of one city caught in the other, unless he can pay a heavy ransom. Ægeon of Syracuse is doomed to death by the Duke of Ephesus. He tells the duke his story,-how at Epidamnum many years ago his wife had borne male twins, and at the same hour a meaner woman near by had also twin boys; how he had bought and brought up the latter; and how he and his wife had become separated by shipwreck, she with one of each pair of twins and he with one of each; and how five years ago his boy and servant had set out in search of their twin brothers, and he himself was now searching them and his wife. Of these twins, one Antipholus and one Dromio live in Ephesus as master and servant respectively, the former being married to Adriana, whose sister Luciana dwells with her. By chance the Syracusan Antipholus and and his Dromio are at this time in Ephesus. The mother Emilia is abbess of a priory in the town. Through a labyrinth of errors they all finally discover each other. Antipholus of Syracuse sends his Dromio to the inn with a bag of gold, and presently meets Dromio of Ephesus, who mistaking him, urges him to come at once to dinner: his wife and sister are waiting. In no mood for joking, he beats his supposed servant. The other Dromio also gets a beating for denying that he had just talked about dinner and wife. In the mean time, Adriana and her sister meet the Syracusans on the street, and amaze them by their reproaches. As in a dream the men follow them home, and Dromio of Syracuse is bid keep the door. Now comes home the rightful owner with guests, and knocks in vain for admittance. So he goes off in a rage to an inn to dine. At his home the coil thickens. There Antipholus of Syracuse makes love to Luciana, and down-stairs the amazed Dromio of Syracuse flies from the greasy kitchen wench who claims him as her own. Master and man finally resolve to set sail at once from this place of enchantment. After a great many more laughable puzzles and contretemps, comes Adriana, with a conjurer- Doctor Pinch-and others, who bind her husband and servant as madmen and send them away. Presently enter the bewildered Syracusans with drawn swords, and away flies Adriana, crying, "They are loose again!» The Syracusans take refuge in the abbey. Along comes the duke leading Ægeon to execution. Meantime the real husband and slave have really broken loose, bound Doctor Pinch, singed off his beard, and nicked his hair with scissors. At last both pairs of twins meet face to face, and Ægeon and Emilia solve all puzzles. ROMEO AND JULIET was first published in 1597. The plot was taken from a poem by Arthur Brooke, and from the prose story in Paynter's Palace of Pleasure.> The comical underplot of the servants of Capulet vs. those of Montagu; the fatal duels, the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt; the ball where Romeo, a Montagu, falls in love with Juliet; the impassioned lovescenes in the orchard; the encounter of the Nurse and Peter with the mocking gallants; the meetings at Friar Laurence's cell, and the marriage of Juliet there; Romeo's banishment; the attempt to force Juliet to marry the County Paris; the Friar's device of the sleepingpotion; the night scene at the tomb, Romeo first unwillingly killing Paris and then taking poison; the waking of Juliet, who stabs herself by her husband's body; the reconciliation of the rival families,— such are the incidents in this old Italian story, which has touched the hearts of men now for six hundred years. It is the drama of youth, "the first bewildered stammering interview of the heart," with the delicious passion, pure as dew, of first love, but love thwarted by fate and death. Sampson bites his thumb at a Montagu; Tybalt and Mercutio fall. Friar John is delayed; Romeo and Juliet die. Such is the irony of destiny. The mediæval manners at once fierce and polished,- Benvenuto limns them. We are in the warm south: the dense gray dew on leaf and grass at morn, the cicada's song, the nightingale, the half-closed flower-cups, the drifting perfume of the orange blossom, stars burning dilated in the blue vault. Then the deep melancholy of the story. And yet there is a kind of triumph in the death of the lovers: for in four or five days they had lived an eternity; death made them immortal. On fire, both, with impatience, in vain the Friar warns them that violent delights have violent ends. Blinded by love, they only half note the prescience of their own souls. 'Twas written in the stars that Romeo was to be unlucky: at the supper he makes a mortal enemy; his interference in a duel gets Mercutio killed; his overhaste to poison himself leads on to Juliet's death. As for the garrulous old Nurse, foul-mouthed and tantalizing, she is too close to nature not to be a portrait from life; her advice to "marry Paris" reveals the full depth of her banality. Old Capulet is an Italian Squire Western, a chough of lands and houses, who treats this exquisite daughter just as the Squire treats Sophia. Mercutio is everybody's favorite: the gallant loyal gentleman, of infinite teeming fancy, in all his raillery not an unkind word, brave as a lion, tender-hearted as a girl, his quips and sparkles of wit ceasing not even when his eyes are glazing in death. HENRY VI., PARTS i., ii., iii. Of the eight closely linked Shakespeare historical plays, these three are the last but one. The eight cover nearly all of the fifteenth century in this order: 'Richard II.'; 'Henry IV.,' Parts i. and ii.; Henry V.; Henry VI.' (three parts); and Richard III.-Henry IV. grasped the crown from Richard II.. the rightful owner, and became the founder of the house of Lancaster. About 1455 began the Wars of the Roses. (The Lancastrians wore as a badge the white rose, the Yorkists the red; Shakespeare gives the origin of the custom in Henry VI., Part i., Act ii., Scene 4, adherents of each party chancing in the Temple Garden, London, to pluck each a rose of this color or that as symbol of his adherency.) In 1485 the Lancastrian Henry VII., the conqueror of Richard III., ended these disastrous wars, and reconciled the rival houses by marriage with Elizabeth of York. The three parts of 'Henry VI.,' like 'Richard II.,' present a picture of a king too weak-willed to properly defend the dignity of the throne. They are reeking with blood and echoing with the clash of arms. They are sensationally and bombastically written, and such parts of them as are by Shakespeare are known to be his earliest work. In Part i. the scene lies chiefly in France, where the brave Talbot and Exeter and the savage York and Warwick are fighting the French. Joan of Arc is here represented by the poet (who only followed English chronicle and tradition) as a charlatan, a witch, and a strumpet. The picture is an absurd caricature of the truth. In Part ii., the leading character is Margaret, whom the Duke of Suffolk has brought over from France and married to the weak and nerveless poltroon King Henry VI., but is himself her guilty lover. He and Buckingham and Margaret conspire successfully against the life of the Protector, Duke Humphrey, and Suffolk is killed during the rebellion of Jack Cade,—an uprising of the people which the play merely burlesques. Part iii. is taken up with the horrible murders done by fiendish Gloster (afterward Richard III.), the defeat and imprisonment of Henry VI. and his assassination in prison by Gloster, and the seating of Gloster's brother Edward (IV.) on the throne. The brothers, including Clarence, stab Queen Margaret's son and imprison her. She appears again as a subordinate character in 'Richard III.' In 1476 she renounced her claim to the throne and returned to the Continent. RICHARD III., the last of a closely linked group of historical tragedies. (See 'Henry VI.') Still a popular play on the boards; Edwin Booth as Richard will long be remembered. As the drama opens, Clarence. the brother of Richard (or Gloster as he is called) is being led away to the Tower, where, through Gloster's intrigues, he is soon murdered on a royal warrant. The dream of Clarence is a famous passage,- how he thought Richard drowned him at sea; and in hell the shade of Prince Edward, whom he himself had helped to assassinate at Tewkesbury, wandered by, its bright hair dabbled in blood, and crying: * Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence." Gloster also imprisons the son of Carence, and meanly matches Clarence's daughter. The Prince Edward mentioned was son of the gentle Henry VI., whom Richard stabbed in the Tower. This hunch-backed devil next had the effrontery to woo to wife Anne, widow of the Edward he had slain. She had not a moment's happiness with him, and deserved none. He soon killed her, and announced his intention of seeking the hand of Elizabeth, his niece, after having hired one Tyrrel to murder her brothers, the tender young princes, sons of Edward IV., in the Tower. Tyrrel employed two hardened villains to smother these pretty boys; and even the murderers wept as they told how they lay asleep, "girdling one another within their innocent alabaster arms," a prayerbook on their pillow, and their red lips almost touching. The savage boar also stained himself with the blood of Lord Hastings, of the brother and son of Edward IV.'s widow, and of Buckingham, who, almost as remorseless as himself, had helped him to the crown, but fell from him when he asked him to murder the young princes. At length at Bosworth Field the monster met his match in the person of Richmond, afterward Henry VII. On the night before the battle, the poet represents each leader as visited by dreams,- Richmond seeing pass before him the ghosts of all whom Richard has murdered, who encourage him and bid him be conqueror on the morrow; and Richard seeing the same ghosts pass menacingly by him, bidding him despair and promising to sit heavy on his soul on the day of battle. awakes, cold drops of sweat standing on his brow: the lights burn blue in his He The story o Richard III. reads more like that of an Oriental or African despot than that of an English monarch. TITUS ANDRONICUS.-A most repulsive drama of bloodshed and unnatural crimes, not written by Shakespeare, but probably touched up for the stage by him when a young man. It is included in the original Folio Edition of 1623. No one who has once supped on its horrors will care to read it again. Here is a specimen of them: Titus Andronicus, a Roman noble, in revenge for the ravishing of his daughter Lavinia and the cutting off of her hands and tongue, cuts the throats of the two ravishers, while his daughter holds between the stumps of her arms a basin to catch the blood. The father then makes a paste of the ground bones and blood of the slain men, and in that paste bakes their two heads, and serving them up at a feast, causes their mother to eat of the dish. Iago seems a gentleman beside the hellish Moor, Aaron, of this bloodsoaked tragedy. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE is a drama of Shakespeare's middle period (1594). The story of the bond and that of the caskets are both found in the old Gesta Romanorum, but the poet used especially Fiorentino's 'Il Pecorone' (Milan, 1558). An atmosphere of high breeding and noble manners enwraps this most popular of Shakespeare's plays. The merchant Antonio is the ideal friend, his magnificent generosity a foil against which Shylock's avarice glows with a more baleful lustre. Shylock has long hated him, both for personal insults and for lending money gratis. Now, some twenty and odd miles away, at Belmont, lives Portia, with her golden hair and golden ducats; and Bassanio asks his friend Antonio for a loan, that he may go that way a-wooing. Antonio seeks the money of Shylock, who bethinks him now of a possible revenge. He offers three thousand ducats gratis for three months, if Antonio will seal to a merry bond pledging that if he shall fail his |