Queen Elizabeth; Edward the First, an historical play; The Old Wives' Tale, acted by "the Queen's Majesty's Players;" The Tragedy of Absalom; The Love of King David and Fair Bethsaba; The Battle of Alcazar, &c. His Scriptural drama of David and Bethsaba is considered his best. His Works have been edited in 3 vols. 8vo., with a Life, by Alexander Dyce.

HENRY CHETTLE was a dramatist contemporary with Shakespeare, and is chiefly known for the reference which some of his writings make to Shakespeare. Chettle wrote a very large number of plays, few of which have come down to us.

THOMAS KYD was another of the immediate predecessors of Shakespeare.

Kyd was the author of three plays, Cornelia, The First Part of Jeronimo, and The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again. This last seems to have been popular in its day, as it appeared in several editions, two of which were enlarged by Ben Jonson. It was much ridiculed by Shakespeare.

ROBERT ARMYN, one of the company of actors connected with Shakespeare, was the author of several pieces of some note: Nest of Ninnies, 1608; Italian Taylor and his Boy, 1609; and perhaps The Valiant Welshman, 1615.

Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, is, by the common consent of mankind, the greatest dramatist, and in the opinion. of a large and growing number of critics, the greatest writer, that the world has ever produced. His writings created an era in literature, and constitute of themselves a special and most important study.

NOTE. It would not be possible, in a general course of literature, such as the present, to attempt anything like a complete expression of Shakespeare's character and genius. Such an attempt is the less necessary, as special essays on the subject are abundant, and accessible to every reader. All that is deemed necessary, therefore, is to give a brief outline of what he was, and what he has done.

His Life. Our knowledge of the life of Shakespeare is very imperfect, consisting of meagre and unsatisfactory outlines. Of his habits of life, his method of composition, we know absolutely nothing. Unlike Goethe, Dante, Molière, and Cervantes, Shakespeare has left no record of himself whereby we may watch his intellectual development. All that we can say of him, on acceptable external evidence, is that he came of a good family in Stratford-upon-Avon, that his father was a

butcher or a glover, and that his mother, Mary Arden, was slightly connected with the gentry. The poet received a school or academy education, and probably nothing more. In 1586, or 1587, he removed to London, being probably thrown upon his own resources by his father's failure in business. He had previously married Anne Hathaway, a woman several years his senior. She seems to have played absolutely no part in determining the poet's life and genius. After establishing himself in London some have supposed as a lawyer's clerk - he took up play-writing and acting as a profession, soon gained an interest in the Blackfriars Theatre, acquired the friendship and patronage of the Earl of Southampton, and retired to Stratford a wealthy man, for the last few years of his life. Such is the substance of all that we know about the life of England's greatest poet.

Date of his Works. -There is some dispute as to which of his plays first appeared, and when it appeared. Probably it was the second part of Henry VI., about 1592. The last was The Tempest, in 1611. Besides his plays, we have his Sonnets, his Venus and Adonis, Rape of Lucrece, The Lover's Complaint, and Passionate Pilgrim. The Sonnets appeared in 1609, the others about ten years before. The dates of all his dramas are more or less uncertain; equally uncertain is the authorship of Titus Andronicus and of Pericles. The better opinion seems to be that they were only touched up in passages by Shakespeare. The other doubtful plays, such as Sir John Oldcastle, Locrine, A Yorkshire Tragedy, &c., are now generally rejected. Excluding Titus Andronicus and Pericles, then, we have left thirty-five plays, divided into Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories.

Editions and Translations. The first collective edition of the plays appeared in 1623, and generally passes by the name of the “folio of 1623." The countless subsequent editions are based upon this folio. During the dramatist's life many spurious editions of separate plays appeared. As there was no copyright law at that time, the author's only way of protecting himself was to retain his works in manuscript. These surreptitious editions of the plays are supposed to have been made chiefly from hearing and seeing them acted.

Shakespeare's dramas have been translated, wholly or in part, into every language of Europe, and into Bengalee, Hindostanee, and many other Asiatic tongues.

Commentary and Criticism. The volumes of commentary and criticism that have been heaped upon the poet constitute of themselves a large and ever-growing library. The scholars and critics of the last

three centuries, in every land and tongue of Europe, have exercised their wits in the real or supposed elucidation of the great master. Yet, after all, the English dramatist remains almost as grave a mystery as the Greek Homer, and, like Homer, he is his own best commentator. The obvious defect in all Shakespeare-criticism is that it is more or less one-sided. Each reviewer sees and grasps only so much as his own mind will let him, whereas the original, to use Coleridge's wellknown epithet, is myriad-minded.

Method of Study Recommended. - - The best, perhaps the only good method for the beginner to approach Shakespeare, is to discard rigorously all notes, essays, and commentaries, and, taking a handy edition in legible type, to read through play after play as rapidly as possible. It will be well for him, if circumstances and his temperament will permit him, to finish the thirty-five plays in as many consecutive secular days. Of course, in following such a plan, he will overlook many of the subtler beauties in thought and diction and many real difficulties. But he will be more than compensated by gaining a general idea of the poet's wonderful versatility and range of thought, such as can be obtained in no other way. A literary excursion of this kind will resemble a trip across the American continent by rail in seven days. The traveller sees nothing very near at hand, and remembers nothing very distinctly. But he gains an impression, vague but ineffaceable, of magnitude and diversity. The majority of Shakespeare-readers labor under this difficulty, that they know the poet only in part. They judge him by a few of his leading plays, such as Hamlet, Othello, The Tempest, or The Merchant of Venice, and know of King John, Richard II., and the Henrys, only by reputation or by stock quotations.

Study of Particular Plays. After the reader has familiarized himself with Shakespeare in outline, he can then take up single plays and subject them to minute analysis. The historical plays should be read in chronological order, for, although not written in that order, the subjects grow naturally one out of the other. Hamlet is undoubtedly Shakespeare's masterpiece, Othello is his most finished piece, and Twelfth Night or As You Like It is the most genial. But the two parts of Henry IV. and the play of Henry V. form a trilogy that reveals the poet in his greatest vigor and flexibility.

Autobiographical Character. We have no external evidence whatever as to the principles which guided Shakespeare in the composition of his plays. But the three last named suggest at least very strongly that Prince Hal comes nearer to the poet's beau-ideal than

any other of his creations, and that the body of non-historical incident is derived from his own life-experience. Yet in these, as in all the other plays, Shakespeare sinks himself completely in his creations. We cannot point to any one character or to any one action and say, That is Shakespeare. While reading these plays we never think of the artist. It is only when we reflect upon them that we are seized with the yearning to know more about their wonderful author.

The Three Great Masters. There are three men in the annals of poetry who may be said to have created, or rather fixed, not merely the literature but also the language of their several countries. These three are Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, and of the three the last is not the least. The epic unity of Homer was subsequently broken up into dialectic variations; much of Dante has become obsolete; but the forms and expressions of Shakespeare remain in almost perfect integrity. The language of the dramatist has passed so thoroughly into the minds and mouths of his countrymen that the latter constantly forget whence they obtained it. One of the chief pleasures in reading Shakespeare is the incessant stumbling upon phrases and sayings that everybody uses, such as "food for gunpowder," "cudgeling one's wits," "the wish was father to the thought," etc.

His Plots. The plot of the Shakespearian drama is by no means perfect, and the unravelling is at times wholly conventional. No unprejudiced mind can study Measure for Measure, for instance, and claim that the ending is in accordance with the merits of the characters. Almost as much may be said of As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice. Again, the action is not always justified. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet, we are not informed why the heroine is obliged to resort to the artifice of a sham death instead of simply escaping from the city.

Characterization.

- Whatever faults an eager criticism may detect in these plays, the characters themselves will ever remain as embodiments of the most wonderful poetic imagination. What a flood of association rises at the mere mention of such names as Hamlet, Othello, Prince Hal, Hotspur, Falstaff, Bottom, Titania, Oberon, Ariel, Miranda, Imogen, Rosalind, Portia ! what a glamour of fancy in The Midsummer's Night's Dream! what a depth of woe in Hamlet or Othello!

His Style. In the background of all lies the poet's wonderful style, his way of looking at things and expressing himself. There is no other style that in the least resembles it. Its peculiarity does not consist so

much in an exact use or arrangement of words-although no writer ever used or arranged words more scrupulously—as in a peculiarly Shakespearian turn of phrase and thought. Thus hundreds of writers before and after Shakespeare have expressed, in as many different ways, the general idea that kings, as makers of laws, are exempt from a too scrupulous observance of them; but it may well be doubted whether any other than Shakespeare would ever have thought of saying that "nice customs curt'sy to great kings." The more we ponder this simple phrase, the more we will realize its wonderful expressiveness, which no amount of rhetorical analysis can fully account for. There are thousands upon thousands of such passages scattered through these dramas with lavish hand.

Minor Poems. The minor poems of Shakespeare are the work of his immaturity, and therefore cannot fairly be compared with the plays. They are the beautiful products of a fiery but as yet untrained imagination, and their peculiarly erotic character unfits them for general reading. The Sonnets are spoiled, for our complete enjoyment, at least, by the atmosphere of mystery that hangs over them. A sonnet is a peculiarly personal poem, and unless we know, not only by whom, but for whom, and under what circumstances, it was written, we cannot fairly appreciate it. The Shakespearian sonnets are wonderful in their imagery and their general conception. But their origin is involved in obscurity, and the allusions of many of them are inexplicable. It may be said of them, as a whole, that they are rather perplexing than satisfactory. There are single sonnets, however, which may be read with the greatest pleasure, and which fill the mind with a feeling of mingled wonder and awe, like that inspired by the greatest of the dramas.

Ben Jonson.

Ben Jonson, 1573-1637, was one of the greatest of the English dramatists, second to Shakespeare only, of whom he was a contemporary and a rival.

Early Life. Jonson was the son of a Protestant clergyman, who died a month before Ben was born. The current tradition is that the mother was married again, the stepfather being a bricklayer, and Ben himself is said to have worked in making or laying brick. The story, however, is of doubtful authority. He was for a time a pupil of the famous Camden, at the Westminster school, and entered the University, though his stay there was less than a month. He turned soldier,