LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE

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in danger of going stage-mad, and Shakespeare appeared to put method into the madness.

Beginning, undoubtedly, as an actor of small parts, he soon learned the tricks of the stage and the humors of his audience. His first Actor and dramatic work was to revise old plays, giving them some Playwright new twist or setting to please the fickle public. Then he worked with other playwrights, with Lyly and Peele perhaps, and the horrors of his Titus Andronicus are sufficient evidence of his collaboration with Mar

lowe. Finally he walked alone, having learned his steps, and Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream announced that a great poet and dramatist had suddenly appeared in England.

This experimental period of Shakespeare's life Period of in London Gloom was apparently a time of health, of joyousness, of enthusiasm which comes with the successful use of one's powers. It was followed by a period of gloom and sorrow, to which something of bitterness was added. What

occasioned the change is again a matter of speculation. The first conjecture is that Shakespeare was a man to whom the low ideals of the Elizabethan stage were intolerable, and this opinion is strengthened after reading certain of Shakespeare's sonnets, which reflect a loathing for the theaters and the mannerless crowds that filled them. Another conjectural cause of his gloom was the fate of certain noblemen with whom he was apparently on terms of friendship, to whom he dedicated his poems, and from whom he received substantial gifts of money. Of these powerful friends, the Earl of Essex was beheaded for treason, Pembroke was banished, and Southampton

had gone to that grave of so many high hopes, the Tower of London. Shakespeare may have shared the sorrow of these men, as once he had shared their joy, and there are critics who assume that he was personally implicated in the crazy attempt of Essex at rebellion.

Whatever the cause of his grief, Shakespeare shows in his works that he no longer looks on the world with the clear eyes of youth. The great tragedies of this period, Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello and Cæsar, all portray man not as a being of purpose and high destiny, but as the sport of chance, the helpless victim who cries out, as in Henry IV, for a sight of the Book of Fate, wherein is shown how chances mock,

Stratford

And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,

The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,

Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.

For such a terrible mood London offered no remedy. For a time Shakespeare seems to have gloried in the city; then he wearied of it, Return to grew disgusted with the stage, and finally, after some twenty-four years (cir. 1587-1611), sold his interest in the theaters, shook the dust of London from his feet, and followed his heart back to Stratford. There he adopted the ways of a country gentleman, and there peace and serenity returned to him. He wrote comparatively little after his retirement; but the few plays of this last period, such as Cymbeline, Winter's Tale and The Tempest, are the mellowest of all his works.

the Man

After a brief period of leisure, Shakespeare died at his prime in 1616, and was buried in the parish church of Stratford. Of his great Shakespeare works, now the admiration of the world, he thought so little that he never collected or printed them. From these works many attempts are made to determine the poet's character, beliefs, philosophy, a difficult matter, since the works portray many types of character and philosophy equally well. The testimony of a few contemporaries is more to the point, and from these we hear that our poet was very good company," ""of such civil demeanor," " of such happy industry," "of such excellent fancy and brave notions," that he won in a somewhat brutal age the characteristic title of "the gentle Shakespeare."

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TYPES OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

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The Dramas of Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's day playwrights were producing various types of drama: the chronicle play, representing the glories of English history; the domestic drama, portraying homely scenes and common people; the court comedy (called also Lylian comedy, after the dramatist who developed it), abounding in wit and repartee for the delight of the upper classes; the melodrama, made up of sensational elements thrown together without much plot; the tragedy of blood, centering in one character who struggles amidst woes and

horrors; romantic comedy and romantic tragedy, in which men and women were more or less idealized, and in which the elements of love, poetry, romance, youthful imagination and enthusiasm predominated.

It is interesting to note that Shakespeare essayed all these types - the chronicle play in Henry IV, the domestic drama in Merry Wives, the court comedy in Love's Labor's Lost, the melodrama in Richard III, the tragedy of blood in King Lear, romantic tragedy in Romeo and Juliet, romantic comedy in As You Like It-and that in each he showed such a mastery as to raise him far above all his contemporaries.

In his experimental period of work (cir. 1590-1595) Shakespeare began by revising old plays in conjunction with other actors. Henry VI is supposed to be an example of

Early
Dramas

such tinkering work. The first part of this play (performed by Shakespeare's company in 1592) was in all probability an older work made over by Shakespeare and some unknown dramatist. From the fact that Joan of Arc appears in the play in two entirely different characters, and is even made

THE MAIN ROOM, ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE

to do battle at Rouen several years after her death, it is almost certain that Henry VI in its present form was composed at different times and by different authors.

Love's Labor's Lost is an example of the poet's first independent work. In this play such characters as Holofernes the schoolmaster, Costard the clown and Adriano the fantastic Spaniard are all plainly of the "stock" variety; various rimes and meters are used experimentally; blank verse is not mastered; and some of the songs, such as "On a Day," are more or less artificial. Other plays of this early experimental

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period are Two Gentlemen of Verona and Richard III, the latter of which shows the influence and, possibly, the collaboration of Marlowe.

Second Period

In the second period (cir. 1595-1600) Shakespeare constructed his plots with better skill, showed a greater mastery of blank verse, created some original characters, and especially did he give free rein to his romantic imagination. All doubt and experiment vanished in the confident enthusiasm of this period, as if Shakespeare felt within himself the coming of the sunrise in Romeo and Juliet:

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

Though some of his later plays are more carefully finished, in none of them are we so completely under the sway of poetry and romance as in these early works, written when Shakespeare first felt the thrill of mastery in his art.

In Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, the practical affairs of life seem to smother its poetic dreams; but note how the dream abides with us after the play is over. The spell of the enchanted forest is broken when the crowd invades its solitude; the witchery of moonlight fades into the light of common day; and then comes Theseus with his dogs to drive not the foxes but the fairies out of the landscape. As Chesterton points out, this masterful man, who has seen no fairies, proceeds to arrange matters in a practical way, with a wedding, a feast and a pantomime, as if these were the chief things of life. So, he thinks, the drama is ended; but after he and his noisy followers have departed to slumber, lo! enter once more Puck, Oberon, Titania and the whole train of fairies, to repeople the ancient world and dance to the music of Mendelssohn:

Hand in hand, with fairy grace,

While we sing, and bless this place.

So in The Merchant of Venice with its tragic figure of Shylock, who is hurried off the stage to make place for a final scene of