Chapter IV · : THE AGE OF ELIZABETH, 1558-1603 (continued 2)

The First Folio edition of Shakespeare's works was published in 1623, seven years after his death, by two of his friends, John Heming and Henry Condell. In their dedication of the plays they say:—

"We have but collected them and done an office to the dead … without ambition either of self profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare, by humble offer of his plays."

If Shakespeare had not possessed the art of making friends, we might to-day be without such plays as Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Macbeth. These were printed for the first time in the 1623 Folio.

Amount and Classification of his Work.—The First Folio edition contained thirty-five plays, containing 100,120 lines. The Globe edition, one of the best modern texts of Shakespeare, has thirty-seven plays. Even if we give him no credit for the unknown dramas which he assisted in fashioning, and if we further deduct all doubtful plays from this number, the amount of dramatic work of which he is certainly the author is only less astonishing than its excellence. His non-dramatic poetry, comprising Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, 154 Sonnets, and some other short pieces, amounts to more than half as many lines as Milton's Paradise Lost.

Mere genius without wonderful self-control and a well-ordered use of time would not have enabled Shakespeare to leave such a legacy to the world. The pressure for fresh plays to meet exigencies is sufficient to explain why he did not always do his best work, even if we suppose that his health was never "out of joint."

The First Folio gives the current contemporary classification of the plays into "Comedies," "Histories," and "Tragedies." We indicate the following as some of the best in each class:—

Comedies: A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest.

Histories: Richard III., Henry IV., Henry V., Julius Caesar.

Tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet.

Four Periods of his Life.—We may make another classification from a different point of view, according to the period of his development at the time of writing special plays. In order to study his growth and changing ideals, it will assist us to divide his work into four periods.

(1) There was the sanguine period, showing the exuberance of youthful love and imagination. Among the plays that are typical of these years are The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Richard II., and Richard III. These were probably all composed before 1595.

(2) The second period, from 1595 to 1601, shows progress in dramatic art. There is less exaggeration, more real power, and a deeper insight into human nature. There appears in his philosophy a vein of sadness, such as we find in the sayings of Jaques in As You Like It, and more appreciation of the growth of character, typified by his treatment of Orlando and Adam in the same play. Among the plays of this period are The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV., Henry V., and As You Like It.

(3) We may characterize the third period, from 1601 to 1608, as one in which he felt that the time was out of joint, that life was a fitful fever. His father died in 1601, after great disappointments. His best friends suffered what he calls, in Hamlet, "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." In 1601 Elizabeth executed the Earl of Essex for treason, and on the same charge threw the Earl of Southampton into the Tower. Even Shakespeare himself may have been suspected. The great plays of this period are tragedies, among which we may instance Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear.

(4) The plays of his fourth period, 1608-1613, are remarkable for calm strength and sweetness. The fierceness of Othello and Macbeth is left behind. In 1608 Shakespeare's mother died. Her death and the vivid recollection of her kindness and love may have been strong factors in causing him to look on life with kindlier eyes. The greatest plays of this period are Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest.

While the dates of the composition of these plays are not exactly known, the foregoing classification is probably approximately correct. It should be followed in studying the development and the changing phases of Shakespeare's mind. (See table, pp. 188 and 189.)

Development as a Dramatist.—It is possible to study some of Shakespeare's plays with increased interest, if we note the reasons for assigning them to certain periods of his life. We conclude that Love's Labor's Lost, for instance, is an early play, because of its form,—excess of rime, small proportion of blank verse, lack of mastery of poetic expression,—and also because it suffers from the puns, conceits, and overdrawn wit and imagery of his early work. Almost one half of the 2789 lines of Love's Labor's Lost rime, while there are only 579 lines of blank verse. Of the 2064 lines in The Tempest, one of the last of his plays, 1458 are in blank verse. The plays of his first period show less freedom in the use of verse. He dislikes to let his meaning run over into the next line without a pause, and he hesitates to introduce those extra syllables which give such wonderful variety to his later work. As he grows older, he also uses more prose. Romeo and Juliet has 405 lines of prose in a total of 3052 lines, while Hamlet, a tragedy of 3931 lines, has 1208 lines of prose.

His treatment of his characters is even a more significant index to his growth than the form of his dramas. In the earlier plays, his men and women are more engaged with external forces than with internal struggles. In as excellent an early tragedy as Romeo and Juliet, the hero fights more with outside obstacles than with himself. In the great later tragedies, the internal conflict is more emphasized, as in the cases of Hamlet and Macbeth. "See thou character" became in an increasing degree Shakespeare's watchword. He grew to care less for mere incident, for plots based on mistaken identity, as in The Comedy of Errors; but he became more and more interested in the delineation of character, in showing the effect of evil on Macbeth and his wife, of jealousy on Othello, of indecision on Hamlet, as well as in exploring the ineffectual attempts of many of his characters to escape the consequences of their acts.

Sources of his Plots.—We should have had fewer plays from Shakespeare, if he had been compelled to take the time to invent new plots. The sources of the plots of his plays may usually be found in some old chronicle, novel, biography, or older play. Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, published when Shakespeare was fourteen years old, gives the stories of Lear, Cymbeline, Macbeth, and of all the English kings who are the heroes of the historical plays. As Holinshed is very dry reading, if Shakespeare had followed him closely, for instance, in King Lear, the play would have lost its most impressive parts. There is not in Holinshed even a suggestion of the Falstaff of Henry IV., that veritable "comic Hamlet," who holds a unique place among the humorous characters of the world.

North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, published when Shakespeare was fifteen years old, became his textbook of ancient history and furnished him the raw material for plays like Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.

TABLE OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS[23]

Play Total Prose Blank Penta- Rimes, Songs Publ- Supp- of meter Short ished osed Lines Rimes Lines Date

I.—PLAYS OF FIRST (RIMING) PERIOD

Love's Labor's 2789 1086 579 1028 54 32 1598 1588-9 Lost Comedy of 1778 240 1150 380 —- —- 1623 1589-91 Errors [24] Midsummer 2174 441 878 731 138 63 1600 1590-1 Night's Dream Two Gentlemen 2294 409 1510 116 —- 15 1623 1590-2 of Verona Romeo and 3052 405 2111 486 —- —- 1597 1591-3 Juliet Richard II. 2756 —- 2107 537 —- —- 1597 ? 1593 Richard III. 3619 55? 3374 170 —- —- 1597 ? 1594-5

II.—HISTORIES AND COMEDIES OF SECOND PERIOD

King John 2570 —- 2403 150 —- —- 1623 1594-5 Merchant of 2660 673 1896 93 34 9 1600[24]? 1595-6 Venice 1 Henry IV. 3176 1464 1622 84 —- —- 1598 1596-7[25] 2 Henry IV. 3446 1860 1417 74 7 15 1600 1598-9 Henry V. 3380 1531 1678 101 2 8 1600 1599[25] Merry Wives 3018 2703 227 69 —- 19 1602 1599 Much Ado, &c. 2826 2106 643 40 18 16 1600 1599-1600 As You Like It 2857 1681 925 71 130 97 1623 1599-1600[25] Twelfth Night 2690 1741 763 120 —- 60 1623 1601[25] All's Well 2966 1453 1234 280 2 12 1623 1601-2 (Love's Labor's Won, 1590)

III.—TRAGEDIES AND COMEDY OF THIRD PERIOD

Julius Caesar 2478 165 2241 34 —- —- 1623 1601[3] Hamlet 3931 1208 2490 81 —- 60 1603[24]1602-3[25] Measure for 2821 1134 1574 73 22 6 1623 ? 1603 Measure Othello 3316 541 2672 86 —- 25 1622 ? 1604 Macbeth 2108 158 1588 118 129 —- 1623 1605-6[25] King Lear 3334 903 2238 74 —- 83 1608[24]1605-6[25] Antony and 3063 255 2761 42 —- 6 1623 1606-7 Cleopatra Coriolanus 3410 829 2521 42 —- —- 1623 ? 1607-8

IV.—PLAYS OF FOURTH PERIOD

Tempest 2064 458 1458 2 —- 96 1623 1609-10 Cymbeline 3339 638 2585 107 —- 32 1623 1609-10 Winter's Tale 3075 844 1825 —- —- 57 1623 ? 1611

V.—DOUBTFUL PLAYS

Titus 2523 43 2338 144 —- —- 1594 1588-90 Andronicus 1 Henry VI. 2677 —- 2379 314 —- —- 1623 1592-4 2 Henry VI. 3162 448 2562 122 —- —- 1623 1592-4 3 Henry VI. 2904 —- 2749 155 —- —- 1623 1592-4 Contention 1952 381 1571 44 —- —- 1594 1586-8 True Tragedy 2101 —- 2035 66 —- —- 1595 1586-8

VI.—PLAYS IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS NOT SOLE AUTHOR

Taming of the 2649 516 1971 169 15 —- 1623 1596-7 Shrew Troilus and 3496 1186 2025 196 —- 16 1609 1603 Cressida Timon of 2373 596 1560 184 18 —- 1623 1607-8 Athens Pericles 2389 418 1436 225 89 —- 1609[23]1608-9[24] Henry VIII. 2822 67? 2613 16 —- 12 1623 1610-12[24]

Poems published.—Venus and Adonis, 1593; Lucrece, 1594; Passionate Pilgrim, 1599; Phoenix and Turtle in Chester's Loves Martyr, 1601; Sonnets, 1609, with A Lover's Complaint.

Shakespeare recognized the greatness of North's Plutarch and paid it the compliment of following its thought more closely than that of any other of his sources.

Shakespeare found suggestions for As You Like It in Thomas Lodge's contemporary novel Rosalynde, but Touchstone and Adam are original creations.

Our astonishment is often increased to find that the merest hint led to an imperishable creation, such as the character of Lady Macbeth, the reference to whom in Holinshed is confined to these twenty-eight words, "…specially his wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing, as she that was very ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to bear the name of a queen." His plays are almost as different from the old chronicles or tales as the rose from the soil which nourished it.

[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE—THE D'AVENANT BUST. Discovered in 1845 on site of Duke's Theater.]

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

Sympathy.—-His most pronounced characteristic is the broadest sympathy ever shown by an author. He seems to have been able to sympathize with every kind of human soul in every emergency. He plays with the simple rustics in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The portrait of the serving man Adam, in As You Like It, is as kindly and as discriminating as that of king or nobleman. Though he is the scholar and philosopher in Hamlet, he can afterward roam the country with the tramp Autolycus in The Winter's Tale. Women have marveled at the ease with which his sympathy crosses the barriers of sex, at his portraits of Portia, Rosalind, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, Miranda, Cleopatra, and Cordelia. Great actresses have testified to their amazement at his discovery of feminine secrets which they had thought no man could ever divine.

[Illustration: HENRY IRVING AS HAMLET.]

Universality.—Shakespeare's sympathy might have been broad enough to include all the people of his own time and their peculiar interests, but might have lacked the power to project itself into the universal heart of humanity. Sometimes a writer voices the ideals and aspirations of his own day so effectively that he is called the spokesman of his age, but he makes slight appeal to future generations. Shakespeare was the spokesman of his own time, but he had the genius also to speak to all ages. He loved to present the eternal truths of the human heart and to invest them with such a touch of nature as to reveal the kinship of the entire world.

His contemporary, the dramatist, Ben Jonson, had the penetration to say of Shakespeare:—

"He was not of an age but for all time."

He meant that Shakespeare does not exhibit some popular conceit, folly, or phase of thought, which is merely the fashion of the hour and for which succeeding generations would care nothing; but that he voices those truths which appeal to the people of all ages. The grief of Lear over the dead Cordelia, the ambition of Lady Macbeth, the loves of Rosalind and Juliet, the questionings of Hamlet, interest us as much today as they did the Elizabethans. Fashions in literature may come and go, but Shakespeare's work remains.

[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY AS LADY MACBETH. From the painting by Sargent.]

Humor.—Shakespeare had the most comprehensive sense of humor of any of the world's great writers,—a humor that was closely related to his sympathy. It has been said that he saved his tragedies from the fatal disease of absurdity, by inoculating them with his comic virus, and that his sense of humor kept him from ever becoming shrill. This faculty enabled him to detect incongruity, to keep from overstressing a situation, to enter into the personality of others, to recover quickly from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," and in one of his last plays, The Tempest, to welcome the "brave young world" as if he would like to play the game of life again. It was largely because of his humor that the tragedies and pain of life did not sour and subdue Shakespeare.

He soon wearies of a vacant laugh. He has only one strictly farcical play, The Comedy of Errors. There are few intellects keen enough to extract all the humor from Shakespeare. For literal minds the full comprehension of even a slight display of his humor, such as the following dialogue affords, is better exercise than the solution of an algebraic problem. Dogberry, a constable in Much Ado About Nothing, thus instructs the Watch:—

"Dogberry. You shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand in the prince's name.

"Watch. How if a' will not stand?

"Dogberry. Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go, and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave."

Of all Shakespeare's qualities, his humor is the hardest to describe because of its protean forms. Falstaff is his greatest humorous creation. So resourceful is he that even defeat enables him to rise like Antaeus after a fall. His humor is almost a philosophy of existence for those who love to use wit and ingenuity in trying to evade the laws of sober, orderly living. Perhaps it was for this very reason that Shakespeare consented to send so early to "Arthur's bosom"[26] a character who had not a little of the complexity of Hamlet.

[Illustration: FALSTAFF AND HIS PAGE. From a drawing by B. Westmacott.]

Much of Shakespeare's humor is delicately suffused through his plays. Many of them either ripple with the laughter of his characters or are lighted with their smiles. We may pass pleasant hours in the company of his joyous creations, such as Rosalind in As You Like It, or Portia in The Merchant of Venice, or Puck as the spokesman for A Midsummer Night's Dream, who good naturedly exclaims:—

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

or Viola and her companions in Twelfth Night, or Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing, or Ariel in The Tempest playing pranks on the bewildered mariners and singing of the joys of life which come as a reward for service:—

"Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."

Shakespeare is also the one English author who is equally successful in depicting the highest type of both comedy and tragedy. He has the power to describe even a deathbed scene so as to invest it with both humor and pathos. Dame Quickly's lines in Henry V., on the death of Falstaff, show this capacity.

The next greatest English writer is lacking in this sense of humor. John Milton could write the tragedies of a Paradise Lost and a Samson Agonistes, but he could not give us the humor of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Comedy of Errors, or As You Like It. We have seen that the next greatest dramatic genius, Marlowe, has little sense of humor. Mrs. Browning correctly describes the plays of Shakespeare as filled—

"With tears and laughters for all time."

Moral Ideals.—To show the moral consequences of acts was the work which most appealed to him. Banquo voiced the comprehensiveness of moral law when he said, "In the great hand of God I stand." There is here great divergence between the views of Shakespeare and of Bacon. Dowden says:—

"While Bacon's sense of the presence of physical law in the universe was for his time extraordinarily developed, he seems practically to have acted upon the theory that the moral laws of the world are not inexorable, but rather by tactics and dexterity may be cleverly evaded. Their supremacy was acknowledged by Shakespeare in the minutest as well as in the greatest concerns of human life."

By employing "tactics" in sending Hamlet on a voyage to England, the king hoped to avoid the consequences of his crime. Macbeth in vain tried every stratagem to "trammel up the consequence." Goneril and Regan drive their white-haired father out into the storm; but even in King Lear, where the forces of evil seem to run riot, let us note the result:—

"Throughout that stupendous Third Act the good are seen growing better through suffering, and the bad worse through success. The warm castle is a room in hell, the storm-swept heath a sanctuary… The only real thing in the world is the soul with its courage, patience, devotion. And nothing outward can touch that."[27]

Shakespeare makes no pessimists. He shows how misfortune crowns life with new moral glory. We rise from the gloom of King Lear, feeling that we would rather be like Cordelia than like either of her sisters or any other selfish character who apparently triumphs until life's close. And yet Cordelia lost everything, her portion of her father's kingdom and her own life. When we realize that Shakespeare found one hundred and ten lines in King Lear sufficient not only to confer immortality on Cordelia, but also to make us all eager to pay homage to her, in spite of the fact that the ordinary standard of the world has not ceased to declare such a life a failure, we may the better understand that his greatest power consisted in revealing the moral victories possible for this rough-hewn human life.

Shakespeare made a mistake about the seacoast of Bohemia and the location of Milan with reference to the sea, but he was always sure of the relative position of right and wrong and of the ultimate failure of evil. In his greatest plays, for instance, in Macbeth, he sought to impress the incalculable danger of meddling with evil, the impossibility of forecasting the tragedy that might thereby result, the certainty that retribution would follow, either here or beyond "this bank and shoal of time."

Mastery of his Mother Tongue.—His wealth of expression is another striking characteristic. In a poem on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson wrote:—

"Thou had'st small Latin and less Greek."

Shakespeare is, however, the mightiest master of the English tongue. He uses 15,000 different words, while the second greatest writer in our language employs only 7000. A great novelist like Thackeray has a vocabulary of about 5000 words, while many uneducated laborers do not use over 600 words. The combinations that Shakespeare has made with these 15,000 words are far more striking than their mere number.

Variety of Style.—The style of Milton, Addison, Dr. Johnson, and Macaulay has some definite peculiarities, which can easily be classified. Shakespeare, on the contrary, in holding the mirror up to nature, has different styles for his sailors, soldiers, courtiers, kings, and shepherds,—for Juliet, the lover; for Mistress Quickly, the alewife; for Hamlet, the philosopher; and for Bottom, the weaver. To employ so many styles requires genius of a peculiar kind. In the case of most of us, our style would soon betray our individuality. When Dr. Samuel Johnson tried to write a drama, he made all his little fishes talk like whales, as Goldsmith wittily remarked.

In the same play Shakespeare's style varies from the dainty lyric touch of Ariel's song about the cowslip's bell and the blossoming bough, to a style unsurpassed for grandeur:—

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind."

In the same passage his note immediately changes to the soft vox humana of—

"We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."

His Influence on Thought.—With the exception of the Scriptures, Shakespeare's dramas have surpassed all other works in molding modern English thought. If a person should master Shakespeare and the Bible, he would find most that is greatest in human thought, outside of the realm of science.

Even when we do not read him, we cannot escape the influence of others who have been swayed by him. For generations, certain modes of thought have crystallized about his phrases. We may instance such expressions as these: "Brevity is the soul of wit." "What's in a name?" "The wish was father to the thought." "The time is out of joint." "There's the rub." "There's a divinity that shapes our ends." "Comparisons are odorous." It would, perhaps, not be too much to say that the play of Hamlet has affected the thought of the majority of the English-speaking race. His grip on Anglo-Saxon thought has been increasing for more than three hundred years.

Shakespeare's influence on the thought of any individual has only two circumscribing factors,—the extent of Shakespearean study and the capacity of interpreting the facts of life. No intelligent person can study Shakespeare without becoming a deeper and more varied thinker, without securing a broader comprehension of human existence,—its struggles, failures, and successes. If we have before viewed humanity through a glass darkly, Shakespeare will gradually lead us where we can see face to face the beauty and the grandeur of the mystery of existence. His most valuable influence often consists in rendering his students sympathetic and in making them feel a sense of kinship with life. Shakespeare's readers more quickly realize that human nature shows the shaping touch of divinity. They have the rare joy of discovering the world anew and of exclaiming with Miranda:—

"How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!"[28]

When we have really become acquainted with Shakespeare, our lives will be less prosaic and restricted. After intimate companionship with him, there will be, in the words of Ariel, hardly any common thing in life—

"But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange."[29]

BEN JONSON, 1573?-1637

[Illustration: BEN JONSON. From the portrait by Gerard Honthorst, National Portrait Gallery.]

Life.—About nine years after the birth of Shakespeare his greatest successor in the English drama was born in London. Jonson outlived Shakespeare twenty-one years and helped to usher in the decline of the drama.

Ben Jonson, the son of a clergyman and the stepson of a master bricklayer, received a good education at Westminster School. Unlike Shakespeare, Jonson learned much Latin and Greek. In one respect Jonson's training was unfortunate for a poet. He was taught to write prose exercises first and then to turn them into poetry. In this way he acquired the habit of trying to express unpoetical ideas in verse. Art could change the prose into metrical riming lines, but art could not breathe into them the living soul of poetry. In after times Jonson said that Shakespeare lacked art, but Jonson recognized that the author of Hamlet had the magic touch of nature. Jonson's pen rarely felt her all-embracing touch.

If Jonson served an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, as his enemies afterward said, he did not continue long at such work. He crossed the Channel and enlisted for a brief time as a soldier in the Netherlands. He soon returned to London and became a writer for the theater, and thenceforth lived the life of an author and a student. He loved to study and translate the classics. In fact, what a novice might think original in Jonson's plays was often borrowed from the classics. Of his relations to the classical writers, Dryden says, "You track him everywhere in their snow." Jonson was known as the most learned poet of the age, because, if his plays demanded any special knowledge, no subject was too hard, dry, or remote from common life for him to attempt to master it. He knew the boundaries of Bohemia, and he took pleasure in saying to a friend: "Shakespeare in a play brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near, by some hundred miles."

Jonson's personal characteristics partly explain why he placed himself in opposition to the spirit of the age. He was extremely combative. It was almost a necessity for him to quarrel with some person or with some opinion. He killed two men in duels, and he would probably have been hanged, if he had not pleaded benefit of clergy. For the greater part of his life, he was often occupied with pen and ink quarrels.

When James I. ascended the throne in 1603, Jonson soon became a royal favorite. He was often employed to write masques, a peculiar species of drama which called for magnificent scenery and dress, and gave the nobility the opportunity of acting the part of some distinguished or supernatural character. Such work brought Jonson into intimate association with the leading men of the day.

It is pleasant to think that he was a friend of Shakespeare. Jonson's pithy volume of prose, known as Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, contains his famous criticism on Shakespeare, noteworthy because it shows how a great contemporary regarded him, "I loved the man and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any." Few English writers have received from a great rival author such convincing testimony in regard to lovable personality.

[Illustration: BEN JONSON'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

In 1616, the year in which Shakespeare died, Jonson was made poet laureate. When he died in 1637, he was buried in an upright position in Westminster Abbey. A plain stone with the unique inscription, "O Rare Ben Jonson," marks his grave.

Plays.—Ben Jonson's comedies are his best dramatic work. From all his plays we may select three that will best repay reading: Volpone, The Alchemist, and The Silent Woman. Volpone is the story of an old, childless, Venetian nobleman whose ruling passion is avarice. Everything else in the play is made tributary to this passion. The first three lines in the first act strike the keynote of the entire play. Volpone says:—

"Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!— Open the shrine, that I may see my saint. Hail the world's soul and mine!"

The Alchemist makes a strong presentation of certain forms of credulity in human nature and of the special tricks which the alchemists and impostors of that day adopted. One character wants to buy the secret of the helpful influence of the stars; another parts with his wealth to learn the alchemist's secret of turning everything into gold and jewels. The way in which these characters are deceived is very amusing. A study of this play adds to our knowledge of a certain phase of the times. In point of artistic construction of plot, The Alchemist is nowhere excelled in the English drama; but the intrusion of Jonson's learning often makes the play tedious reading, as when he introduces the technical terms of the so-called science of alchemy to show that he has studied it thoroughly. One character speaks to the alchemist of—

"Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit,"

and another asks:—

"Can you sublime and dulcify? calcine? Know you the sapor pontic? sapor stiptic, Or what is homogene, or heterogene?"

Lines like the following show that Jonson's acute mind had grasped something of the principle of evolution:—

"…'twere absurd To think that nature in the earth bred gold Perfect in the instant: something went before. There must be remote matter."

The Silent Woman is in lighter vein than either of the plays just mentioned. The leading character is called Morose, and his special whim or "humor" is a horror of noise. His home is on a street "so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches nor carts, nor any of these common noises." He has mattresses on the stairs, and he dismisses the footman for wearing squeaking shoes. For a long time Morose does not marry, fearing the noise of a wife's tongue. Finally he commissions his nephew to find him a silent woman for a wife, and the author uses to good advantage the opportunity for comic situations which this turn in the action affords. Dryden preferred The Silent Woman to any of the other plays.

Besides the plays mentioned in this section, Jonson wrote during his long life many other comedies and masques as well as some tragedies.

Marks of Decline.—A study of the decline of the drama, as shown in Jonson's plays, will give us a better appreciation of the genius of Shakespeare. We may change Jonson's line so that it will state one reason for his not maintaining Shakespearean excellence:—

"He was not for all time, but of an age."

His first play, Every Man in his Humor, paints, not the universal emotions of men, but some special humor. He thus defines the sense in which he uses humor:—

"As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a Humor."

Unlike Shakespeare, Jonson gives a distorted or incomplete picture of life. In Volpone everything is subsidiary to the humor of avarice, which receives unnatural emphasis. In The Alchemist there is little to relieve the picture of credibility and hypocrisy, while The Silent Woman has for its leading character a man whose principal "humor" or aim in life is to avoid noise.

No drama which fails to paint the nobler side of womanhood can be called complete. In Jonson's plays we do not find a single woman worthy to come near the Shakespearean characters, Cordelia, Imogen, and Desdemona. His limitations are nowhere more marked than in his inability to portray a noble woman.

Another reason why he fails to present life completely is shown in these lines, in which he defines his mission:—

"My strict hand Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls As lick up every idle vanity."

Since the world needs building up rather than tearing down, a remedy for an ailment rather than fault-finding, the greatest of men cannot be mere satirists. Shakespeare displays some fellow feeling for the object of his satire, but Jonson's satire is cold and devoid of sympathy.

Jonson deliberately took his stand in opposition to the romantic spirit of the age. Marlowe and Shakespeare had disregarded the classical unities and had developed the drama on romantic lines. Jonson resolved to follow classical traditions and to adhere to unity of time and place in the construction of his plots. The action in the play of The Silent Woman, for instance, occupies only twelve hours.

General Characteristics.—Jonson's plays show the touch of a conscientious artist with great intellectual ability. His vast erudition is constantly apparent. He is the satiric historian of his time, and he exhibits the follies and the humors of the age under a powerful lens. He is also the author of dainty lyrics, and forcible prose criticism.

Among the shortcomings of his plays, we may specially note lack of feeling and of universality. He fails to comprehend the nature of woman. He is not a sympathetic observer of manifold life, but presents only what is perceived through the frosted glass of intellect. His art is self-conscious. He defiantly opposed the romantic spirit of the age and weakened the drama by making it bear the burden of the classical unities.

MINOR DRAMATISTS

Beaumont and Fletcher.—Next to Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, the two most influential dramatists were Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625). They are usually mentioned together because they collaborated in writing plays. Fletcher had the great advantage of working with Shakespeare in producing Henry VIII. Beaumont died nine years before Fletcher, and it is doubtful whether he collaborated with Fletcher in more than fifteen of the fifty plays published under their joint names.

Two of their greatest plays, Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy, are probably their joint production. The Faithful Shepherdess and Bonduca are among the best of about eighteen plays supposed to have been written by Fletcher alone. After Beaumont's death, Fletcher sometimes collaborated with other dramatists.

[Illustration: FRANCIS BEAUMONT.]

Almost all the so-called Beaumont and Fletcher plays are well constructed. These dramatists also have, in common with the majority of their associates, the ability to produce occasional passages of exquisite poetry. A character in Philaster speaks of death in lines that suggest Hamlet:—

"'Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep, A quiet resting from all jealousy; A thing we all pursue; I know besides It is but giving over of a game That must be lost."

Beaumont and Fletcher's work is noteworthy for its pictures of contemporary life and manners, for wealth of incident, rapidity of movement, and variety of characters.

Not long after the beginning of the seventeenth century there was a change in the taste of the patrons of the theater. Shakespeare declined in popularity. The playwrights tried to solve the problem of interesting audiences that wished only to be entertained. This attempt led to a change in dramatic methods.

Changed Moral Ideals.—Under Elizabeth's successors the Puritan spirit increased and the most religious part of the community seldom attended the theater. The later dramatists pay little attention to the moral development of character and its self-revelation through action. They often merely describe character and paint it from the outside. We have seen that Shakespeare's great plays are almost a demonstration in moral geometry, but Beaumont and Fletcher are not much concerned over the moral consequences of an action. The gravest charge against them is that they "unknit the sequence of moral cause and effect." After reading such plays, we do not rise with the feeling that there is a divinity that shapes our ends.

[Illustration: JOHN FLETCHER.]

Coleridge says, "Shakespeare never renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest, or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher." Much of the work of their contemporary dramatists is marred by such blemishes. Unpleasant as are numbers of these plays, they are less insidious than many which have appeared on the stage in modern times.

Love of Surprises.—The dramatists racked their inventive powers to introduce surprises to interest the audience. Here was a marked departure from Shakespeare's later method. He plans Macbeth so as to have his audience forecast the logical result. Consequences of the most tremendous import, beside which Beaumont and Fletcher's surprises seem trivial, follow naturally from Macbeth's actions. In his greatest plays, Shakespeare, unlike the later dramatists, never relies on illogical surprises to sustain the interest. The witch queen in one of the plays of Thomas Middleton (1570-1627) suddenly exclaims:—

"…fetch three ounces of the red-haired girl I kill'd last midnight."

Shakespeare's witches suggest only enough of the weird and the horrible to transfix the attention and make the beholder realize the force of the temptation that assails Macbeth. Charles Lamb truly observes that Middleton's witches "can harm the body," but Shakespeare's "have power over the soul."

Middleton could, however, write a passage like the following, which probably suggested to Milton one of the finest lines in Lycidas:—

"Upon those lips, the sweet fresh buds of youth, The holy dew of prayer lies, like pearl Dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn Upon a bashful rose."

Large Number of Playwrights.—Beaumont and Fletcher were only two of a large number of dramatists who were born in the age of Elizabeth, and who, with few exceptions, lived into the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Their work was the result of earlier Elizabethan impulses, and it is rightly considered a part of the great dramatic movement of the Elizabethan age. The popularity of the drama continued to attract many authors who in a different age might have produced other forms of literature.

George Chapman (1559?-1634), who is best known for his fine translation of Homer's Iliad, turned dramatist in middle life, but found it difficult to enter into the feelings of characters unlike himself. His best two plays, Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, are tragedies founded on French history. Thomas Middleton, gifted in dramatic technique and dialogue and noted for his comedy of domestic manners, was the author of Michaelmas Term, A Trick to Catch the Old One, The Changeling (in collaboration with William Rowley, 1585?-1640?). John Marston (1576?-1634) wrote Antonio and Mellida, a blood and thunder tragedy, and collaborated with Jonson and Chapman to produce Eastward Hoe, an excellent comic picture of contemporary life. The Shoemaker's Holiday of Thomas Dekker (1570?-1640) is also a good comedy of London life and manners. Philip Massinger (1584-1640), a later collaborator with Fletcher, wrote A New Way to Pay Old Debts, a play very popular in after times. Thomas Heywood (1572?-1650), one of the most prolific dramatists, claimed to have had "either an entire hand or at the least a main finger," in two hundred and twenty plays. His best work is A Woman Killed with Kindness, a domestic drama that appealed to the middle classes.

A Tragic Group.—Three dramatists: John Webster (1602-1624), Cyril Tourneur (1575?-1626), and John Ford (1586-1640?), had a love for the most somber tragedy. In tragic power, Webster approaches nearest to Shakespeare. Webster's greatest play, The Duchess of Malfi (acted in 1616), and The White Devil, which ranks second, show the working of a master hand, but Webster's genius comes to a focus only in depicting the horrible. He loves such gloomy metaphors as the following:—

"You speak as if a man Should know what fowl is coffined in a baked meat Afore you cut it open."

Tourneur's The Atheist's Tragedy is in Webster's vein, but far inferior to The Duchess of Malfi.

Ford's The Broken Heart is a strong, but unpleasant, tragedy. He is so fascinated with the horrible that he introduces it even when it is not the logical outcome of a situation. His best but least characteristic play is Perkin Warbeck, which is worthy of ranking second only to Shakespeare's historical plays.

End of the Elizabethan Drama.—James Shirley (1596-1666), "the last of the Elizabethans," endeavored to the best of his ability to continue the work of the earlier dramatists. The Traitor and The Cardinal are two of the best of his many productions. He was hard at work writing new plays in 1642, when the Puritans closed the theaters. He was thus forced to abandon the profession that he enjoyed and compelled to teach in order to earn a livelihood.

The drama has never since regained its Elizabethan ascendancy. The coarse plays of the Restoration (1660) flourished for a while, but the treatment of the later drama forms but a minor part of the history of the best English literature. Few plays produced during the next two hundred years are much read or acted to-day. She Stoops to Conquer (1773), by Oliver Goldsmith, and The Rivals (1775) and The School for Scandal (1777), by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, are the chief exceptions before 1890.

SUMMARY

The Elizabethan age was a period of expansion in knowledge, commerce, religious freedom, and human opportunities. The defeat of the Armada freed England from fear of Spanish domination and made her mistress of the sea.

England was vivified by the combined influence of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Knowledge was expanding in every direction and promising to crown human effort with universal mastery. The greater feeling of individuality was partly due to the Reformation, which emphasized the direct responsibility of each individual for all acts affecting the welfare of his soul.

Elizabethans were noted for their resourcefulness, their initiative, their craving for new experiences, and their desire to realize the utmost out of life. As they cared little for ideas that could not be translated into action, they were particularly interested in the drama.

Although the prose covers a wide field, it is far inferior to the poetry. Lyly's Euphues suffers from overwrought conceits and forced antitheses, but it influenced writers to pay more attention to the manner in which thought was expressed. The flowery prose of Sidney's Arcadia presents a pastoral world of romance. His Apologie for Poetrie is a meritorious piece of early criticism. While Hooker indicates advance in solidity of matter and dignity of style, yet a comparison of his heavy religious prose with the prayer of the king in Hamlet or with Portia's words about mercy in The Merchant of Venice will show the vast superiority of the poetry in dealing with spiritual ideas. Bacon's Essays, celebrated for pithy condensation of striking thoughts, is the only prose work that has stood the test of time well enough to claim many readers to-day.

Poetry, both lyric and dramatic, is the crowning glory of the Elizabethan age. The lyric verse is remarkable for its wide range and for beauty of form and sentiment. The lyrics include love sonnets, pastorals, and miscellaneous verse. Shakespeare's Sonnets and the songs in his dramas are the best in this field, but many poets wrote exquisite artistic lyrics.

Edmund Spenser is the only great poet who was not also a dramatist. His Faerie Queene fashions an ideal world dominated by a love of beauty and high endeavor.

The greatest literary successes of the age were won in writing plays for the stage. In England the drama had for centuries slowly developed through Miracle plays, Moralities, and Interludes to the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. These three are the greatest Elizabethan dramatists, but they are only the central figures of a group.

The English drama in the hands of Sackville imitated Seneca and followed the rules of the classic stage. Marlowe and Shakespeare threw off the restraints of the classical unities; and the romantic drama, rejoicing in its freedom, speedily told the story of all life.

The innyards were used for the public presentation of plays before the erection of theaters in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The theaters were a great educational force in Shakespeare's time. They not only furnished amusement, but they also took the place of periodicals, lectures, and books. The actors, coming into close contact with their audience and unable to rely on elaborate scenery as an offset to poor acting, were equal to the task of so presenting Shakespeare's great plays as to make them popular.

Shakespeare's plays, the greatest ever written, reveal wonderful sympathy, universality, humor, delineation of character, high moral ideals, mastery of expression, and strength, beauty, and variety of poetic form.

Great as is Ben Jonson, he hampered himself by observing the classical unities and by stressing accidental qualities. He lacks Shakespeare's universality, broad sympathy, and emotional appeal.

Other minor dramatists, like Beaumont and Fletcher show further decline, because they constructed their plays more from the outside, showed less development of character in strict accordance with moral law, and relied more for effect on sensational scenes. The drama has never since taken up the wand that dropped from Shakespeare's hands.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

HISTORICAL

In addition to the chapters on the time in the histories of Gardiner, Green, Lingard, Walker, and Traill, see Stephenson's The Elizabethan People, Creighton's Queen Elizabeth, Wilson's Life in Shakespeare's England, Stephenson's Shakespeare's London, Warner's English History in Shakespeare's plays.

LITERARY

General and Non-Dramatic

The Cambridge History of English Literature, Vols. IV., V., and VI.

Courthope's A History of English Poetry, Vol. II.

Schelling's English Literature during the Lifetime of Shakespeare.

Seecombe and Allen's The Age of Shakespeare, 2 vols.

Saintsbury's A History of Elizabethan Literature.

Dictionary of National Biography for lives of Lyly, Sidney, Hooker.

Bacon, Spenser, and the minor dramatists.

Walton's Life of Hooker.

Church's Life of Bacon. (E.M.L.)

Church's Life of Spenser. (E.M.L.)

Mackail's The Springs of Helicon (Spenser).

Dowden's Transcripts and Studies (Spenser).

Lowell's Among My Books (Spenser).

Erskine's The Elizabethan Lyric.

The Drama[30]

Schelling's Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642, 2 vols. Ward's A History of English Dramatic Literature, 3 vols.

Brooke's The Tudor Drama.

Chambers's The Mediaeval Stage.

Allbright's The Shakespearean Stage.

Lawrence's Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies.

Smith's York Plays (Clarendon Press).

Symonds's Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama.

Bates's The English Religious Drama.

Manly's Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama.

Wallace's The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare.

Ingram's Christopher Marlowe and his Associates.

Dowden's Transcripts and Studies (Marlowe).

Symonds's Ben Jonson.

Swinburne's A Study of Ben Jonson.

Shakespeare

Lee's A Life of William Shakespeare.

Furnivall and Munro's Shakespeare: Life and Work.

Harris's The Man Shakespeare and his Tragic Life Story.

Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare.

Raleigh's Shakespeare.(E.M.L.)

Baker's The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist.

MacCracken, Pierce, and Durham's An Introduction to Shakespeare.

Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy (excellent).

Bradley's Oxford Lectures on Poetry.

Dowden's Shakespeare, His Mind and Art.

Coleridge's Lectures on Shakespeare (pp. 21-58 of Beers's Selections from the Prose writings of Coleridge).

Lowell's Shakespeare Once More, in Among My Books.

Wallace's Shakespeare, the Globe, and Blackfriars.

How Shakespeare's Senses were Trained, Chap. X. in Halleck's Education of the Central Nervous System.

Rolfe's Shakespeare the Boy.

Boswell-Stone's Shakespeare's Holinshed.

Brooke's Shakespeare's Plutarch, 2 vols.

Madden's The Diary of Master William Silence: A Study of Shakespeare and of Elizabethan Sport.

Winter's Shakespeare on the Stage.

SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Elizabethan Prose.—Good selections from Ascham, Hakluyt, Raleigh, Holinshed, Stow, Camden, North, Sidney, Foxe, Hooker, Lyly, Greene, Lodge, and Nashe are given in Craik, I.[31] Chambers, I. and Manly, II. also give a number of selections. Deloney's The Gentle Craft may be found in the Clarendon Press edition of his Works. For Bacon, see Craik, II.

These selections will give the student a broader grasp of the Elizabethan age. The style and subject matter of Lyly's Euphues, Sidney's Arcadia, Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and Bacon's Essays should be specially noted. Which one of these authors exerted the strongest influence on his own age? Which one makes the strongest appeal to modern times? In what respects does the style of any Elizabethan prose writer show an improvement over that of Mandeville and Malory?

Lyrics.—For specimens of love sonnets, read Nos. 18, 33, 73, 104, 111, and 116 of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Compare them with any of Sidney's Spenser's sonnets. Other love lyrics which should be read are Spenser's Prothalamion, Lodge's Love in My Bosom Like a Bee and Ben Jonson's To Celia. Among pastoral lyrics, read from Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar for August, 1579, Perigo and Willie's duet, beginning:—

"It fell upon a holy eve,"

and Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. The best pastoral lyrics from the modern point of view are Shakespeare's two songs: "Under the Greenwood Tree" (As you like it) and "When Icicles Hang by the Wall" (Love's Labor's Lost). The best miscellaneous lyrics are the songs in Shakespeare's Cymbeline, The Tempest, and As You Like It. Drayton's Ballad of Agincourt and Sonnet 61 are his best lyrical verse. Read Ben Jonson's An Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy and, from his Pindaric Ode, the stanza beginning:—

"It is not growing like a tree."

From John Donne, read either The Funeral, The Canonization, or The Dream.

Good selections from all varieties of Elizabethan lyrics may be found in Bronson, II., Ward. I., Oxford, Century, Manly, I. Nearly all the lyrics referred to in this list, including the best songs from the dramatists, are given in Schelling's Elizabethan Lyrics (327 pp., 75 cents). This work, together with Erskine's The Elizabethan Lyric and Reed's English Lyrical Poetry from its Origins to the Present Time, will serve for a more exhaustive study of this fascinating subject.

From your reading, select from each class the lyric that pleases you most, and give reasons for your choice. Which lyric seems the most spontaneous? the most artistic? the most inspired? the most modern? the most quaint? the most and the least instinct with feeling?

Edmund Spenser.—The Faerie Queene, Book I., Canto I., should be read. Maynard's English Classic Series, No. 27 (12 cents) contains the first two cantos and the Prothalamion. Kitchin's edition of Book I. (Clarendon Press. 60 cents) is an excellent volume. The Globe edition furnishes a good complete text of Spenser's work. Ample selections are given in Bronson, II., Ward, I., and briefer ones in Manly, I., and Century.

THE DRAMA

The Best Volumes of Selections.—The least expensive volume to cover nearly the entire field with brief selections is Vol. II. of The Oxford Treasury of English Literature, entitled Growth of the Drama (Clarendon Press, 412 pp., 90 cents). Pollard's English Miracle Plays, Moralities, and Interludes (Clarendon Press, 250 pp., $1.90) is the best single volume of selections from this branch of the drama. Everyman and Other Miracle Plays (Everyman's Library, 35 cents) is a good inexpensive volume. Manly's' Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama (three volumes, $1.25 each) covers this field more fully. Morley's English Plays (published as Vol. III. of Cassell's Library of English Literature, at eleven and one half shillings) contains good selections from nearly all the plays mentioned below, except those by Shakespeare and Jonson. Williams's Specimens of the Elizabethan Drama, from Lyly to Shirley, 1580-1642 (Clarendon Press, 576 pp., $1.90) is excellent for a comprehensive survey of the field covered. Lamb's Specimens of English Poets Who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare (Bohn's Library, 552 pp.) contains a large number of good selections.

Miracle Plays.—Read the Chester Play of Noah's Flood, Pollard,[32] 8-20, and the Towneley Play of the Shepherds, Pollard, 31-43; Manly's Specimens, I, 94-119; Morley's English Plays, 12-18. These two plays best show the germs of English comedy.

Moralities.—The best Morality is that known as Everyman, Pollard, 76-96; also in Everyman's Library. If Everyman is not accessible, Hycke-Scorner may be substituted, Morley; 12-18; Manly's Specimens, I., 386-420.

Court Plays, Early Comedies, and Gorboduc.—The best Interlude is The Four P's. Adequate selections are given in Morley, 18-20, and in Symonds's Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama, 188-201. Pollard and Manly give several good selections from other Interludes.

Ralph Royster Doyster may be found in Arber's Reprints; in Morley's English Plays, pp. 22-46; in Manly's Specimens, II., 5-92; in Oxford Treasury, II., 161-174, and in Temple Dramatists (35 cents).

Gorboduc is given in Oxford Treasury, II. pp., 40-54 (selections); Morley's English Plays, pp. 51-64; and, under the title of Ferrex and Porrex, in Dodsley's Old Plays.

What were some of the purposes for which Interludes were written? How did they aid in the development of the drama?

In what different forms are The Four-P's, Ralph Royster Doyster, and Gorboduc written? Why would Shakespeare's plays have been impossible if the evolution of the drama had stopped with Gorboduc?

Pre-Shakespearean Dramatists.—Selections from Lyly, Peele, Green, Lodge, Nashe, and Kyd may be found in Williams's Specimens. Morley and Oxford Treasury also contain a number of selections. Peele's The Arraignment of Paris and Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy are in Temple Dramatists. Greene's best plays are in Mermaid Series.

What are the merits of Lyly's dialogue and comedy? What might Shakespeare have learned from Lyly, Peele, Greene, and Kyd? In what different form did these dramatists write? What progress do they show?

Marlowe.—Read Dr. Faustus, in Masterpieces of the English Drama (American Book Company) or in Everyman's Library. This play may also be found in Morley's English Plays, pp. 116-128, or in Morley's Universal Library. Selections from various plays of Marlowe may be found in Oxford Treasury, 61-85, 330-356; and in Williams's Specimens, 25-34.

Does Dr. Faustus observe the classical unities? In what way does it show the spirit of the Elizabethan age? Was the poetic form of the play the regular vehicle of dramatic expression? In what does the greatness of the play consist? What are its defects? Why do young people sometimes think Marlowe the greatest of all the Elizabethan dramatists?

Shakespeare.—The student should read in sequence one or more of the plays in each of Shakespeare's four periods of development (pp. 185, 188), such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet, for the first period; As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice, for the second; Hamlet and King Lear or Macbeth or Julius Caesar, for the third; and The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, for the fourth.

Among the many good annotated editions of separate plays are the Clarke and Wright, Rolfe, Hudson, Arden, Temple, and Tudor editions. Furness's Variorum Shakespeare is the best for exhaustive study. The best portable single volume edition is Craig's Oxford Shakespeare, India paper, 1350 pages.

The student cannot do better than follow the advice of Dr. Johnson: "Let him who is unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators… Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness and read the commentators."

Shakespeare's three greatest tragedies, Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, should be read several times. After becoming familiar with the story, the student should next determine the general aim of the play and analyze the personality and philosophy of each of the leading characters.

After reading some of all classes of Shakespeare's plays, point out his (a) breadth of sympathy, (b) humor, (c) moral ideals, (d) mastery of English and variety of style, and (e) universality. What idea of his personality can you form from his plays? If you have read them in sequence, point out some of the characteristics of each of his four periods. Why is Shakespeare often called a great dramatic artist? How did his audience and manner of presentation of his plays modify his treatment of a dramatic theme?

Ben Jonson and Minor Dramatists.—The best plays of Ben Jonson, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Massinger, Webster, and Tourneur may be found in Masterpieces of the English Drama edited by Schellinq (American Book Company). Selections from all the minor dramatists mentioned may be found in Williams's Specimens. The teacher will need to exercise care in assigning readings. Most of the minor dramatists are better suited to advanced students.

Read Jonson's The Alchemist or the selection in Williams's Specimens. A sufficient selection from Philaster may be found in Vol. II. of The Oxford Treasury, in Morley, and in Williams's Specimens.

What points of difference between Shakespeare and Jonson do you notice? What is his object in The Alchemist? Why is its plot called unusually fine? Wherein does Jonson show a decline in the drama?

Who were Beaumont and Fletcher? What movement in the drama do they illustrate? What are the characteristics of some other minor dramatists? What are the chief reasons why the minor dramatists fail to equal Shakespeare? When and why did this period of the drama close?