Influence of
Marlowe

With a thrifty instinct Shakespeare seized upon prevailing fads and tendencies to gain quick success. The tragedy of horrors of the Kyd-Marlowe type was exceedingly popular, so he wrote the repulsive Titus Andronicus, which contains only occasional passages that are worthy even of his unripe genius. But the play, bad as it is, was an immense success. Marlowe's influence is also apparent in Richard III, a "one man" drama of the Tamburlaine type. Richard's turbulent passion, gigantic and brutal energy, and impious defiance of all moral restraints are traits of the superhuman hero like Tamburlaine. Henry VI and King John are specimens of Shakespeare's handiwork in recasting old plays. The Merchant of Venice is filled with the spirit of the Renaissance, Italian culture, love of beauty, music, and classic allusion. Portia moralizes like a Florentine Renaissance philosopher, and Lorenzo rhapsodizes upon the harmony of the spheres "quiring to the youngeyed cherubins." In beauty of style, especially in Portia's plea for mercy and in the idyllic scene of the fifth act, the play surpassed all dramatic writing that had preceded it.

Influence of the

The finest achievement of this early period, perhaps, is Romeo and Juliet, his first tragedy, which "as a tragic poem on the theme of love has no rival in any literature." In this play Shakespeare wrote with a spontaneous creative Romeo and ecstasy. The characters here become real human

Juliet

beings, existing for themselves and not simply for the plot. The interest is no longer concentrated upon one or two characters, but is distributed among several. And through the play flows a stream of beautiful poetry, always at spring flood of passionate fervor. Aged reason is silent, precipitate youth reigns. Even old Capulet and Montague draw swords as hotly as young Tybalt. It is such a play, seemingly, as only inspired youth could have written.

To this first period belong Shakespeare's youthful poems, the only productions which he addressed directly to the read

ing public; for, so far as is known, not a single play was ever published under his direction. Venus and Adonis and Lucrece are amatory poems of a type then popular, exEarly Poems pressing a poetic temperament that is acutely responsive to every appeal of sensuous beauty. They are excessive in "glittering conceit and high-wrought fantasy." The poems brought to the poet immediate fame, and he became the "honey-tongued Shakespeare" and the "mellifluous Shakespeare" with the "honey-flowing vaine."

The Sonnets were published in 1609, probably without the author's consent. For ten years or more they had been circulating in manuscript, a fashion of publication borrowed from

Sonnets

France and Italy, and due partly, no doubt, to the personal note that characterizes the sonnet.

This series of one hundred and fifty-four connets celebrates a passionate devotion to two persons, a young man, presumably Shakespeare's friend and patron, the Earl of Southampton, and a mysterious "dark lady" whom the poet rebukes for her proud disdain and unfaithfulness. Whether the poet is writing in the spirit of conventional sonneteering of the time, or whether he is "unlocking his heart," is one of the most baffling problems of literary criticism, and it is still unsolved. The intense passion and vehement expression seem consistent only with autobiographic revelation; on the other hand, the frequent use of the prevailing affectations of the fashionable sonneteers seems to indicate that Shakespeare was only contributing the last refinements to an elegant pastime. "Many reach levels of lyric melody and meditative energy," says Sidney Lee, "that are hardly to be matched elsewhere in poetry. The best examples are charged with the mellowed sweetness of rhythm and meter, the depth of thought and feeling, the vividness of imagery and the stimulating fervor of expression which are the finest proofs of poetic power. On the other hand, many sink almost into inanity beneath the burden of quibbles and conceits.'

The second dramatic period is that of the great comedies,

the period of Shakespeare's joyousness, when the happy aspects of life seemed to engage his mind exclusively. In the wonderful troupe of comic characters created at this time stands Falstaff,

Second
Dramatic
Period

the supreme comic figure of literature. Midsummer Night's Dream was a surprising display of adventuresome originality. Fairy mythology had long been common property of poets and people, but no such use of it had ever been made. Here was a new Puck and a new Titania. The multiplicity of strange follies, the mad confusion and hilarious mockery of love-making, proving Bottom's saying that "reason and love keep little company together," are sources of entrancing delight. It is "Shakespeare at lyric play with human life.”

The perfection of pure comedy was reached in that incomparable trio, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, or What You Will, "the three central stars in the crown of Shakespeare's comic muse." The very titles sug

The Three Great

Comedies

gest complete abandonment to mirth and wild frolic. What a company of stage favorites, immortal in their charm as youth itself, Beatrice and Benedict, Rosalind and Orlando, Viola, Olivia, Touchstone, Malvolio, and Sir Toby! What flashing wit, superb humor, piquant mischief, rippling merriment, and tumultuous fun! The stars were auspicious when these people were born to the stage.

If choice must be made, As You Like It claims preeminence. This play represents the perfected type of romantic comedy. "No other comedy," says Stopford Brooke, "has the same equality of poetry, the same continuity of lovely emotion, of delightful charm, and of finished execution." The As You plot is from Lodge's Rosalynde, but to Lodge's story Shakespeare added the characters Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey. The substance is spun out of the inexhaustible theme of love, and here it is love in Protean form, -love of high-born hero and heroine, of clown and country

Like It

wench, love of friend for friend, of servant for master and mistress. And it is love jubilant and triumphant, troubled by no shadow of gloom. The love-play between Orlando and Rosalind is the sprightliest conversation conceivable. Love kindles their intellects to the finest fire of speech.

As love is the dominant theme, so beauty is the pervasive quality of the play, beauty of thought, of sentiment, and of scene. Rosalind's presence would be a purifying influence anywhere. Sage thought exudes from the crabbed Jaques like medicinal gums from the rough-barked trees, and Touchstone is the wisest fool ever born. The pastoral setting of the play gives added beauty to every feature. The Forest of Arden is enchanted ground, and yet it is the Warwickshire woodland of the poet's boyhood, where nature first taught him to "warble his native woodnotes wild."

The Third
Period

Twelfth Night has been called Shakespeare's "farewell to mirth." He had now reached the third stage of his dramatic development, the period of the great tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear, "the four wheels of his chariot." There is a theory that at this time some great personal sorrow came upon the poet, to transform his thoughts so completely. Perhaps, however, it was only the culmination of his thinking upon the mystery of human suffering. Indeed, we may note "the first breathing of tragic feeling even in the gayest of the early comedies, increasing in volume and intensity until the storm rises and blows all laughter out of his plays, except the laughter of the fool." He now grappled with the problems of evil, pain, and death, penetrated to the depths of sin and black despair, and laid bare the deepest secrets of the soul.

Each play unfolds the destructive force of some typical evil in human nature, ambition in Macbeth, pride in Coriolanus, jealousy in Othello. Julius Cæsar and Hamlet are tragedies of thought; Brutus and Hamlet are philosophic idealists, whose fine natures are in painful discord with the world of vulgar