character and destiny; he sees so broadly and deeply that nothing repels him which has any touch of reality or soundness in it. In his hands, and pre-eminently in this play, the drama broadens to compass the full range of humor and character and experience; and the tragic and humorous are blended, as in life, without incongruity or violation of the essential unities of human action and knowledge. Henry IV. and Hotspur are not blurred in outline, nor is the significance of their struggle obscured by the roisterers and thieves who are at the heels of Falstaff. The heroic note of the old ideals of chivalry is sounded as distinctly as if the broad, rollicking humor of Falstaff had no existence. Falstaff is one of the most marvelous of Shakespeare's creations; a gross braggart, without conscience, and as simply and naturally unmoral as if there were no morals, Shakespeare has drawn him with such matchless vitality that, although the stage is crowded with great figures, he holds it as if it were his own. Sir John Oldcastle, whose character undoubtedly gave Shakespeare a rough sketch of Falstaff, and whose name was originally used by Shakespeare, appears in the earlier play which the poet had before him; in deference to the objections of the descendants of Sir John, the name was changed in the printed play, and became Falstaff, but there is

reason to believe that the earlier name was retained in the acting play. There was ground for the objection to its use, for Sir John Oldcastle was a Lollard and a martyr.

Shakespeare created a kind of English Bacchus at a time when every kind of fruit or grain that could be made into a beverage was drunk in vast quantities; and sack, which was Falstaff's native element, was both strong and sweet. Falstaff is saved by his humor and his genius; he lies, steals, boasts, and takes to his legs in time of peril with such superb consistency and in such unfailing good spirits that we are captivated by his vitality. It would be as absurd to apply ethical standards to him as to Silenus or Bacchus; he is a creature of the elemental forces; a personification of the vitality which is in bread and wine; a satyr become human, but moving buoyantly and joyfully in an unmoral world. And yet the touch of the ethical law is on him; he is not a corrupter by intention, and he is without malice, but as old age brings its searching revelation of essential characteristics, his humor broadens into coarseness, his buoyant animalism degenerates into lust; and he is saved from contempt at the end by one of those exquisite touches with which, when it is at its worst, the great-hearted poet loves to soften and humanize degeneration.

"Henry IV." is notable not only for the range and variety of types presented, but also for the freedom of manner which the poet permits himself. About half the first part is written in prose. Shakespeare was not alone among his contemporaries in breaking with the earlier tradition which imposed verse as the only form upon the drama; Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher used both prose and verse in the same drama; but Shakespeare alone showed equal mastery over both forms. His prose is as characteristic and as perfect as his verse; he turns indifferently from one to the other and is at ease with either. He makes the transition in many places for the sake of securing variety and heightening certain effects which he wishes to produce, as he often introduces humorous passages into the most tragic episodes.

Mr. Sill makes the interesting suggestion that, verse being the natural form of expression for emotion, Shakespeare instinctively turned to prose when he was presenting ideas detached from emotion, when he wished to be logical rather than moving, and practical or jocular rather than philosophical or serious; and, verse being essentially based on order and regularity, the poet turned to prose whenever he wished to give expression to frenzy or madness. There would have been essential incongruity in putting blank verse into the mouths of clowns, fools, drunkards, and madmen. These suggestions are of special interest when they are applied to" Hamlet."

In "Henry IV.," as in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "The Taming of the Shrew," the references to Warwickshire are unmistakable; the dramatist was still too near his youth to have forgotten persons and localities known in his boyhood.

"Henry V.," drawn from the same sources, is a continuation of " Henry IV.," and presents in the splendid maturity of

the king one of Shakespeare's great men of action; a type in which his own time was rich, and in the delineation of which, being himself a man of reflection and expression, the poet found infinite satisfaction. In this play the events of a reign are grouped for dramatic effectiveness, and war is dramatized on a great scale. The material is essentially epical, but the treatment is so vigorous that the play, while not dramatic in the deepest sense, has the dignity and interest of a drama. The introduction of the Chorus, in which the dramatist speaks in person, shows how deeply he had meditated on his art, and how deliberately he had rejected the conventional unities of time, place, and action for the sake of the higher and more inclusive unity of vital experience. No other play so nobly expresses the deepening of the national consciousness at the end of the sixteenth century, and the rising tide of national feeling. The play is a great national epic; and the secret of the expansion and authority of

the English race is to be found in it. It was presented in the last year of the century, and probably in the Globe Theater, then recently opened.

'King Henry VIII." was written at least ten years later, and is distinctly inferior to the historical plays of the decade which closed with the production of "Henry V.," and is generally regarded as a piece of composite work, Fletcher probably completing that which Shakespeare had planned, but of which he had written only the first two acts.

The historical plays belong, as a whole, to Shakespeare's earliest period of productiveness; they keep the record of his apprenticeship; they find their place in the first stage of his development. This was due only in a subordinate way to accident; there was reason for it in the psychology of his art. The material for these plays was ready to his hand in the earlier chronicle plays in the libraries of the theaters, and in the records of Holinshed and Hall; and there was ample stimulus for their production in their popularity. But other and deeper sources of attraction are not far to seek. These plays mark the transition from the epic to the drama; from the story of events and persons as shaped by fate to the story of events and persons as they disclose the fashioning of character by action and the reaction of character on events, knitting men and actions together in a logical sequence and a dramatic order. The historical plays find their logical place in the order of development between the old plays dealing with historical subjects and the masterpieces of Shakespeare and his contemporaries; and in the unfolding of Shakespeare's art they hold the same middle place. These plays preserve the characteristics of the older plays and predict the fully developed drama; they do not reveal the full play of the poet's genius nor the perfect maturity of his art, although the plays which deal with Henry IV. and Henry V. reveal the full range of his interests and his gifts.

In these plays the young poet put himself in deepest touch with the life of his race, and, in bringing to clear consciousness the race spirit, brought out with the utmost distinctness the racial qualities of his own genius. He is pre-eminently the English poet, not only by virtue of his

supremacy as an artist, but by virtue of the qualities of his mind; and these qualities were developed and thrown into striking relief by the historical plays. His greatest work was in other fields, but through no other work has he impressed himself so deeply on the imagination of the men of his own race. He vitalized a great section of English history, and has made it live before the eyes of nine generations; he set the figures of great Englishmen on so splendid a stage that they personify finally and for all time the characteristics of the English race; he so exalted liberty as represented by the English temper and institutions that, more than any statesman, he has made patriotism the deepest passion in the hearts of Englishmen. No other poet has stood so close to the English people or affected them so deeply; and from the days when the earliest popular applause welcomed "Henry VI." on the stage of The Theater, The Rose, and The Globe to these later times when Irving's Wolsey crowds the stalls of the Lyceum, Shakespeare has been the foremost teacher of English history. There are many who, if they were as frank as Chatham, would confess that they learned their history chiefly from him.

In these plays, moreover, the young poet trained himself to be a dramatist by dealing with men under historical conditions; with men in action. The essence of the drama as distinguished from other literary forms is action, and in the historical plays action is thrown into the most striking relief; sometimes at the sacrifice of the complete development of the actors. Before taking up the profoundest problems of individual destiny or entering into the world of pure ideality, Shakespeare studied well the world of actuality. On a narrower stage, but in a higher light, he dealt with the relation of the individual to the political order, and showed on a great scale the development of character in relation to practical ends. The depths of his spiritual insight and the heights of his art are to be found in the Tragedies; but the breadth, comprehensiveness, and full human sympathy of his genius are to be found in the historical plays; and in these plays, at the very beginning of his career, appeared that marvelous sanity which kept him poised in essential harmony between the divergent activities and aspects of life, gave him

great responsibilities laid upon them. The trappings of royalty heighten the criminality of John and Richard III.; the eloquent sentimentality of Richard II. and the ineffective saintliness of Henry VI. are thrown into high relief by the background of royal position; the well-conceived and resolute policy of Henry IV. and the noble energy and decision of Henry V.-Shakespeare's typical king and the personification of the heroic, virile, executive qualities of the English nature-take on epical proportions from the vantage-ground of the throne.

The contrast between the man and the king sometimes deepens into tragedy when the desires and passions of the man are brought into collision with the duties of the king; for the king is always conceived as the incarnation of the State, the personification of society. His deed reacts, not only upon himself, but upon the community of which he is the head, and whose fortunes are inextricably bound up with his fortunes. In the plays dealing with historical subjects Shakespeare exhibits the divine order as that order is

embodied in the State, and the tragedies which occupy the great stage of public life arise from the collision of the individual with the State, of the family with the State, and of the Church with the State. The political insight and wisdom shown in this comprehensive ethical grasp of the relation of the individual to society in institutional life are quite beyond the achievements of any statesman in the range of English history; for statecraft is everywhere, in the exposition of the dramatist, the application of universal principles of right and wise living to the affairs of State. Thus, on the great stage of history, Shakespeare, in the spirit of the poet and in the manner of the dramatist, dramatized the spirit of man working out its destiny under historic conditions.

The Comedies

During these prosperous five or six years Shakespeare's hand turned readily from history to comedy and from comedy to history; the exact order in which the plays of the period were written is unimportant so long as we are able