SHAKESPEARE 



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Mr W. H. was Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South- 

 ampton (the initials reversed), and again that he 

 was William Herbert, the young Earl of Pembroke, 

 who was certainly a patron of Shakespeare. An 

 ingenious argument has been set forth by Mr 

 T. Tyler to prove that the woman of the Sonnets 

 was Mary Fitton, a mistress of William Herbert. 

 But it is questionable whether the portraits of Mary 

 Fitton and of Pembroke agree with the indications 

 afforded in the Sonnets. In truth the persons have 

 not yet been identified ; no conjecture has any but 

 the most insecure support ; and it is not likely 

 that the facts so long hidden will ever be revealed. 



In his earliest plays Shakespeare tried his hand, 

 as an apprentice in the craft, in many and various 

 directions. In the English historical plays and the 

 joyous comedy he exhibits his mastery of the 

 broad field of human life. But as yet he had not 

 searched the profonnder mysteries of our being, 

 nor handled the deeper and darker passions of 

 humanity. About the opening of the 17th century, 

 as we have noticed, a change takes place in the 

 spirit of his creations. He still writes comedy, 

 but the gaiety of the earlier comedies is gone. 

 Airs Well that Ends Well (c. 1601-2) is least 

 happy in its mirthful scenes ; it is at its l>est 

 where the strong-willed heroine Helena appears, 

 whose task is to seek after and save the unworthy 

 youth to whom she has given her heart. Some 

 critics have supposed that the play as we have 

 it is Shakespeare s rehandling of an earlier version 

 from his own pen originally entitled Love's Labour's 

 Won a play of that name being included in Meres's 

 list of the year 1598. But this theory is incapable 

 of verification. The story came to Shakespeare 

 from Boccaccio through Paynter's Palace of 

 Pleasure. Measure for Measure (c. 1603) hardly 

 deserves the name of comedy ; it is a searching of 

 the mystery of self-deceit in the heart of a man, 

 and the exhibition of an ideal of virginal chastity 

 and strength in the person of the heroine, Isabella. 

 The city life represented in the play is base and 

 foul ; the prison-scenes are ennobled by profound 

 imaginative speculations upon life and death. It 

 ia the darkest of the comedies of Shakespeare. 

 The subject had previously been handled dramati- 

 cally in Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra (1578), 

 and the same author had told the tale in prose in 

 his Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582). Perhaps 

 it is to this date (1603) that Troilus and Cressida 

 belongs, but the chronology as well as the purport 

 of the play is perplexing. It has been suggested 

 that different portions of the comedy were written 

 at different dates ; but here again we are in the 

 region of conjecture. Certain . passages, as, for 

 example, Hector's last battle, are probably by 

 another hand than Shakespeare's. The sources of 

 the play are Chaucer's poem on the same subject, 

 Caxton's translation from the French Recuyles, or 

 Destruction of Troy, and Chapman's Homer. Some 

 have even fancied that Shakespeare's design was 

 to turn into ridicule the classical heroes of Chap- 

 man, the supposed rival poet of the Sonnets. But 

 there is nowhere a nobler representative of worldly 

 wisdom, in a high sense of the word, than Shake- 

 speare's Ulysses. It may be called the comedy of 

 ili-iillusion a kind of foil to Romeo and Juliet. 

 The callow passion of the youthful hero is basely 

 deceived by Cressida, a born light-o'-love ; but in 

 the end Troilus masters his boyish despair, and 

 grows firm-set in his vigorous manhood. The 

 contrast between worldly wisdom and adolescent 

 enthusiasm is perhaps the most striking thing in 

 the play. 



Before he ceased for a time to write comedy 

 Shakespeare had probably begun that great series 

 of tragedies which occupied him during the opening 

 years of the 17th century. Julius Ccesar (1601) and 



Hamlet (1602) are tragedies in which reflection, 

 as a motive-power, holds its own with emotion ; 

 in the later tragedies the chief characters are 

 whirled away by passion ; here they are misled by 

 thought. In North's translation of Plutarch's 

 Lives Shakespeare found admirable material for 

 his Roman plays, and he used it as a true creative 

 poet, and not as a mere antiquary. The Brutus of 

 Julius Ccesar is an idealist deal'ing with practical 

 affairs, constantly in error, yet honoured by us be- 

 cause his errors are those which only a man of noble 

 nature could commit. Caesar is represented in his 

 decline, with many infirmities, but his presence 

 and power are predominant through the tragedy 

 in the impersonal form of Cjesarism, which sways 

 the spirits of men and compels the catastrophe. 

 Hamlet is perhaps founded on an older play, wnich 

 certainly existed, and produced a great impression 

 on the stage about 1588-89. Shakespeare doubt- 

 less read the storv, originally derived from Saxo 

 Grammaticus, in the English prose of the Hmtorie 

 of Hamlet translated from the French of Belleforest. 

 He represents, as Goethe has put it, ' the effects of 

 a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the per- 

 formance of it.' Hamlet is summoned to avenge 

 his father's murder, but habits of speculation, an 

 excitable emotional temperament, ana an untrained 

 will disqualify him for acting the part of a, 

 justiciary. He accomplishes his purpose at last, 

 but as it were by chance-medley. 



And now tragedy succeeded tragedy, each of 

 surpassing greatness, and all the depths were 

 sounded. Othello (c. 1604), founded on a tale given 

 in Cinthio's Hecatommithi, exhibits a free and noble 

 nature taken in the toils of jealousy, and perishing 

 in the struggle for deliverance. The betrayer, 

 lago, is the nearest approach, to an incarnation of 

 absolute evil to be found in Shakespeare's plays. 

 King Lear (1605) derived some of its substance 

 from an old play on the same subject as well 

 as from Holinshed's Chronicle ; the episode of 

 Gloucester and his sons is adapted from Sidney's 

 Arcadia. The tragedy is the most stupendous 

 in our literature ; the bonds of natural affection, 

 of loyalty, of the amity of nations, almost of the 

 laws of nature, are broken or convulsed ; but 

 justice asserts itself in the close, and if Cordelia 

 dies, she dies a martyr of redeeming love. Macbeth, 

 (c. 1606) is the tragedy of criminal ambition. The 

 source is once again Holinshed. A theory of 

 Messrs Clark and Wright that the play, as we 

 have it, is disfigured by the interpolations of 

 another dramatist ]>erhaps Middleton must he 

 regarded as of doubtful worth. The tragedy is 

 distinguished by the unpausing rapidity of its 

 action. In Antony and Cleopatra (1607) Shake- 

 speare returns to Roman history, but here Roman 

 manhood is sapped by the sensual witchery of the 

 East. The most marvellous of Shakespeare's 

 creations of female character is surely Cleopatra- 

 Antony's 'serpent of old Nilus.' Such materials 

 for the play as were not supplied by the poet's 

 creative imagination he obtained from Plutarch's 

 life of Antony in North's translation. From Plu- 

 tarch also came the material for Coriolanus (c. 1608). 

 The poet passes from Rome of the empire to the 

 earlier Rome of the consuls, and from the history 

 of a great nature ruined by voluptuous relaxation 

 of its powers to that of a great nature ruined 

 by self-centred pride. As the Roman wife was 

 shown in the Portia of Julius Cttsar, so here is 

 presented the Roman mother in the majestic figure 

 of Volumnia. The series of great tragedies closes 

 perhaps with Timon of Athens (c. 1607-8), but the 

 play is only in part by Shakespeare. It describes 

 the total eclipse of faith, hope, charity in the un- 

 disciplined spirit of Timon, who passes from an 

 easy, indulgent optimism to a wild misanthropy. 



