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HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
Copyright, 1900, Hamilton W. Mabie. All rights reserved.

Part X.-Histories

T

The Historical Plays

HE period of Shakespeare's apprenticeship ended about 1596; the succeeding four or five years show him in full possession of his art and his material, though the deeper phases of experience were still before him and the full maturity of his genius was to be coincident with the searching of his spirit in the period of the Tragedies. The last half-decade of the sixteenth century were golden years in the life of the rising dramatist. He had made his place in the world; he had learned his craft; he had come to clear self-consciousness; the intoxication of the possession of the poetic imagination and the gift of poetic expression was upon him; he had immense zest in life, and life was at full-tide in his veins and in the world about him. The Queen was at the height of her splendid career; the country had grown into clear perception of its vital force and the possible greatness of its fortunes; English energy and courage were preparing the new soil of the new world for the seeds of a greater England at the ends of the earth; London was full of brilliant and powerful personalities, touched with the vital im pulse of the age, and alive in emotion, imagination, and will. It was a time of great works of art and of action; in the two worlds of thought and of affairs the tide of creative energy was at the flood.

The genius of Spenser bore its ripest

and

Comedies

fruit in "Colin Clout," the "Epithalamium," and the concluding books of the "Faerie Queene." Sidney's noble "Apologie for Poesie," which was in the key not only of the occupations and resources of his mind but of his life, appeared in 1595, and a group of Bacon's earlier essays in 1597. Chapman's "Homer" and Fairfax's "Tasso" enriched the English language with two masterpieces of translation. Hooker and Hakluyt were writing and publishing. Among the playwrights are to be found the great names of Dekker, Jonson, Middleton, Heywood, Marston, and Chapman. The men who had possession of the stage when the poet came up from Stratford-Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lodge, Nash, Kyd, and Lylyhad been succeeded by Shakespeare's generation. That he should have detached himself from this great group and made a distinct impression on his contemporaries is not the least among the many evidences of his extraordinary power. English literature was in one of its noblest periods, and Shakespeare shared an impulse which, like a great tide, carried men of every kind of power to the furthest limits of their possible achievement.

At no period of his life was Shakespeare more keenly observant, more intellectually alert, more inventive, more joyous in spirit, more spontaneous and poetic. He had solved the problem of his relation to his time by discovering his gift, acquiring his tools, and discerning his opportunity; he

had ease of mind and openness of imagination. He gave himself up to the joy of life, and lived in its full tide with immense delight. He was not only in the world. but of it. Even in this eager and golden period so meditative a mind could not escape those previsions of tragedy and fate which are never far off; and sorrow did not pass by the household at Stratford, for in August, 1596, according to the parish record, Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, was buried. In this year" King John" was written, and it has been surmised that in the pathetic and beautiful character of Arthur, which is essentially unhistoric the poet was portraying his own son, and in the touching lament of Constance giving voice to his own sorrow. This loss, which must have been poignant, was apparently the only shadow on these prosperous years when the poet was in his earliest prime.

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History and comedy absorbed the imagination and divided the creative energy of Shakespeare from 1596 to 1600. Of the ten plays founded on English history, "King John" serves as a prelude, with Richard II.," the two parts of "Henry IV.," "Henry V.," the three parts of "Henry VI.," and " Richard III.,” as a chronicle play on a great scale; while "Henry VIII." may be taken as an epilogue. The plays were not, however, written in historical sequence, nor did Shakespeare have any intention at the start of making a connected treatment of a stirring and dramatic period in English history. He found the old plays dealing with Henry VI. ready to his hand, as has been noted, and used them as material, touching "Henry VI." very lightly and probably only in the way of adaptation and revision, and the interpolation of a few characteristic scenes and passages. "Richard III." came a little later in time, and is so evidently modeled after Marlowe that its Shakespearean authorship has been questioned by very competent critics. It is full of echoes and reminiscences of Marlowe's manner; it is tempestuous, turbulent, and violent; it is history dramatized rather than a true historical drama; but the figure of Richard, which dominates the play and charges it with vitality, is as clearly realized and as superbly drawn as any character in the whole range of the plays. The lack of

artistic coherence in the play is due to the inharmonious elements in it—the attempt to combine the method of Marlowe and the spirit of Shakespeare. The framework of the play was conventional even in Shakespeare's time; the manner is so lyrical that it is a tragic poem rather than a dramatic tragedy; nevertheless, Richard is drawn with a hand so firm, a realism so modern, that a play of very inferior construction becomes immensely effective for stage purposes, and has been almost continuously popular from its first representation. Shakespeare followed Holinshed and Marlowe in writing "Richard III. ;" but he put into the play that element of ethical purpose which stamps all his work and separates it in fundamental conception from the work of Marlowe.

The parallelisms between "Richard II." and Marlowe's "Edward II." are so obvious that it is impossible to escape the inference that Shakespeare was still under the spell of the tremendous personality of the author of "Tamburlaine;" but there are signs of liberation. There is a change of subject from the fortunes of the House of York to those of the House of Lancaster; blank verse, to which Marlowe rigidly adhered, gives place to frequent use of rhyme; and the atmosphere in which the action takes place is softened and clarified. The weak king's eloquence often betrays Shakespeare's inimitable touch, and the superb eulogy on England spoken by John of Gaunt is a perfect example of Shakespeare's use of the grand manner. Still following Holinshed, and under the influence of Marlowe, the dramatist was swiftly working out his artistic emancipation.

To this period belongs "King John," which was probably completed about 1595, and which was a recast of the older play of "The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England," published in 1591. The conventional construction was not greatly modified by Shakespeare, but the play marks the transition from the chronicle play to the true drama; in which incidents and characters are selected for their dramatic significance, a dramatic motive introduced, dramatic movement traced, and a climax reached. The older playwrights, dealing with the events of a whole reign, would have given the play an epical or narrative quality; Shakespeare

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opened the way for that blending of comedy with tragedy and history which is one of the marks, not only of his maturity. but of his greatness. The play has no hero, and is not free from the faults of the long line of dramas from which it descended and to which it belongs, but Shakespeare's creative energy is distinctly at work in it.

The growth of the poet's mind and art was rapid, and, in its large lines, is readily followed; but it was a vital, not a logical, development, and it was not, therefore, entirely orderly and harmonious. In his later work he sometimes returned to his earlier manner; at his maturity he more than once took up existing material, and was content to retouch without reconstructing it. The plays vary greatly in quality and insight; it would not be easy to find in the work of any other poet of the first rank more marked inequalities. Many of the sonnets touch the very limits of perfection; others are halting, artificial, full of the conceits and forced imagery of the day. The early historical plays are often panoramic rather than dramatic;

"Henry IV.," on the other hand, is sustained throughout its wide range of interest and action by the full force of Shakespeare's genius. This inequality in the plays, the irregularities of growth which often present themselves, and the occasional reversions to the conventional construction which Shakespeare inherited from his predecessors or to his own earlier manner, humanize the poet, bring his work well within the range of the literary evolution of his time, and, while leaving the miracle of his genius unexplained, make his career and his achievement intelligible and explicable.

The brilliant years between 1596 and 1600 or 1601 were divided between history and comedy; between the splendid show and pageant of society as illustrated in the story of the English kings, and the variety, the humor, the inconsistency of men, as these qualities are brought out in social life. The "Taming of the Shrew," and the "Merchant of Venice," in which the genius of the dramatist shines in full splendor, probably antedated by a few months the writing of the two parts of "Henry IV." and of "Henry V.," but

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these plays are so nearly contemporaneous that their exact order of production is unimportant. The historical plays may be grouped together for convenience, keeping in mind the fact that the dramatist was apparently finding relief from dealing with great matters of state and great historical personages by turning from time to time to comedy, and perhaps by writing comedy simultaneously with history.

The first part of "Henry IV." was written not later than 1597; the second part followed it after an interval of not more than two years. The sources of the play are to be found in Holinshed and an earlier chronicle play of little merit but marked popularity, "The Famous Victories of Henry V." The play follows history with deviations, the most important being the bold stroke of making the Prince and Hotspur of the same age; in the earlier drama the hints of the rich humor, the inimitable comic action of Shakespeare's work, are also found. But that which came into the hands of the dramatist as crude ore left it pure gold, stamped with ineffaceable images. In the use of this raw mate

rial, Shakespeare came to his own and made it his own by virtue of searching insight into its ethical significance and complete mastery of its artistic resources. Other plays show the poet in higher moods, but none discloses so completely the full range of his power; construction, characterization, pathos, humor, wit, dramatic energy, and the magical Shakespearean touch are found. in "Henry IV." in free and harmonious unity of dramatic form. In no other play is there greater ease in dealing with apparently discordant elements; nor is there elsewhere a firmer grasp of circumstances, events, and persons in dramatic sequence and action. The play has a noble breadth of interest and action, a freedom of movement and vitality of characterization, which give it the first place among the historical dramas.

The humor of Falstaff and the greed and vulgarity of his ragged, disreputable but immortal followers reinforce the dignity of the play, which is sustained. throughout at a great height. Nothing which is human escapes the clear, piercing, kindly gaze of this young master of

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