The Beginnings. Just how Shakespeare began to write is not clear. He seems to have found employment at the theater; he became an actor and later owned shares in a company organized to produce plays; we know that he soon became prosperous. One of the tasks assigned young actors was to revise old plays, or adapt manuscripts of new ones, for the use of the company. Philip Henslowe, the Frohman or Belasco of his time, employed a number of young writers in this way, and in his Diary, a queerly spelled but very valuable book which he kept for many years, he entered payments made for revising or touching up plays. We know that Shakespeare did such work. For example, the three parts of Henry VI, a rambling and incoherent chronicle history play, contain passages written by him.

Early Comedies. Shakespeare's first comedies belong to this same period, 15901592. They were experiments in various types of comedy that had been developed by his predecessors. The first, Love's Labor's Lost, shows the influence of Lyly in its witty dialogue, slightness of story, and attention to style. One of the characters remarks about a feast of languages at which someone had stolen the scraps. The delight in mere language poetical expressions, puns, "taffeta-phrases, silken terms," and the like-takes the place of story. In The Comedy of Errors we find abundance of plot, for the story deals with the misadventures of two pairs of twins. It is boisterous farce, with no love element, and in structure and character is an imitation of the old Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence. The third of these early comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, is quite different. Here the influence of Greene and Peele is uppermost. There is plenty of story; a double love romance runs through it; the story is serious, almost tragic in spots. The "two gentlemen" are friends, but one deserts his own lady-love to court the betrothed of the other. In his infatuation he plots against his friend, has him banished, and the friend becomes leader of a band of outlaws. In thus treating a sensational love romance as the basis of his comedy, relying on minor characters for

the farce and boisterous humor, Shakespeare laid the foundations for those greater plays that were to make him the supreme writer of romantic comedy.

Early Tragedy. About 1593 Shakespeare turned to a new type of historical drama, which sought unity through presenting that part of the story of one of the English kings which dealt with his closing years and death, or which confined its plot to the story of the king without regard to other events in his reign. Richard II is in reality a tragedy of the downfall of the king; it seeks to arouse the pity of the spectators for the misfortunes of the hero. It is therefore quite different from the later historical plays, such as Henry IV and Henry V, which abound in comedy and are dramatized historical romances. Another early play with tragic tendency is King John, which does not mention Magna Charta but does emphasize the troubles of the king with his nobles, and culminates in the king's death. Even more strongly unified is the play of Richard III, which shows how the Duke of Gloucester rose to power through the murder of all who stood in his way; how he became king for a time, until at length his violence rebounded upon his own head and he was slain at Bosworth Field. Richard II suggests the later tragedy of Lear, while Richard III is very similar to Macbeth.

Very different from these plays is the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, written about 1594. This is a dramatization of one of the most famous stories of the time. Scenes from this story were found in tapestries; it was told in prose by Italian and French writers; an English poem written shortly before Shakespeare's time corresponds closely in incidents and characters to the tragedy that still holds high place on the stage. The play tells the story of a pair of "star-crossed lovers" who belong to families at feud with each other. They meet by chance and fall in love, though they know their union to be almost hopeless. Romeo is put in a position where he cannot avoid a duel with a kinsman of Juliet; as a result of this duel he is banished, and Juliet is ordered by her parents to marry a man whom she hates. To escape, she seeks the help of a priest

who is skilled in the use of herbs. A potion is prepared which will produce a trance resembling death. Romeo is to be summoned to rescue her, but the fates again intervene, and death comes upon the lovers in the tomb of the Capulets. This brief outline shows how closely knit are the incidents of the plot. Each act of the drama advances irresistibly to the tragic end. Momentary relief is supplied by the humor of Mercutio, Romeo's friend, and by Juliet's nurse, but the chief emphasis rests always on the foreshadowed doom of the lovers. It is a tragedy of fate, made sad by the deaths of these two innocent

ones.

THE MATURITY OF SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS

We come now to the story of Shakespeare's triumph in the three fields of drama that he had made his own. The plays of this period extend from A Midsummer Night's Dream to Macbeth, from 1594 to 1606. The first six years of the period are distinguished chiefly for the series of great comedies and histories; the last six for the writing of the greatest tragedies in English literature.

Historical Romance. From his treatment of the tragic aspects of the lives of English kings, illustrated by Richard III, King John, and Richard II, Shakespeare turned to more romantic themes. The three plays which deal with Henry V as

prince and king (First and Second Henry IV and Henry V) were written 1597-1599. In them we have the story of Prince Hal's youth, his association with Falstaff, the rivalry of Hotspur, and his change to severer things when the responsibilities of government were laid upon him. The three plays abound in comedy. They also present an incomparable gallery of portraits: the immortal Falstaff; racial types like Fluellen the doughty Welshman, and the portraits of the French nobles; soldiers of fortune like Pistol; London types like Mistress Quickly, Nym, and Bardolph; to say nothing of prelates, foolish country magistrates, rebellious nobles, and the fiery and ambitious Hotspur. Not until the time of Scott was history again to be made alive in this fashion. History as a record of dynasties, wars, and constitutional changes gives way to a panorama of scenes filled with color and romance and with the crowds of men and women who make up a nation but do not appear in the dry chronicles of reigns and administrations. Most of all, Shakespeare presented in Hal an Englishman whom his countrymen recognized as one of themselves. His appeal to the crowd was very different from that of the earlier Shakespearean kings. The new English nation was being interpreted to itself in plays that owed much of their vitality to the vigorous life of the time.

Romantic Comedy. The three great plays in which the story of Henry V is told have important relations to Shakespeare's comedy. His first comedies had been but slightly connected with actual life. In the plays in which Falstaff, Pistol, and Fluellen appeared, however, we see how Shakespeare had caught the knack of giving reality to the romantic past by means of persons and episodes not usually accounted a part of sober history. This knack he transferred to his writing of comedies, so that no matter how wildly romantic the main plot of plays like

As You Like It and Twelfth Night may be, we feel that the persons who move through the scenes are very real.

During the first part of this wonderful period, Shakespeare wrote six comedies of high rank. The first of these, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1594), is an amazing example of skill in plot construction. There are three groups of characters: the Athenian lovers, the fairies drawn from English folklore, and the "mechanicals," who are English village types. The serious love plot is not stressed, but is purposely shadowy and fairy-like. The story of The story of Titania and Oberon blends with the main plot so perfectly that we forget that they belong to the "little people" well known to folk superstition. These stories are still more closely united through Bottom and his fellow laborers, with their ridiculous version of the good old tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. The story of the rehearsal and the play itself, which did not please the sophisticated great lady but which Theseus regarded with favor-"The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them"-show how the poet, "of imagination all compact," can blend into one harmony the most unlikely materials. The Athenian lovers resemble the fairylike knights and damsels of Spenser's Faerie Queene; Titania and Oberon and their attendants are the "little people" themselves; while Bottom and the mechanicals are like mischievous and blundering gnomes. Thus the play achieves unity despite the great differences that separate one group of characters from another, because it is, indeed, a fairy play, fit for the madness of Midsummer Night.

In The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew, written between 1595 and 1597, Shakespeare proved even more clearly his mastery of the art of creating real people as the persons of his play. Both are supposed to be Italian in setting and character, like so many other of

Shakespeare's plays, but this is only a device, due partly to his sources and partly to the great interest of the time in everything Italian. The Merchant of Venice suggests Marlowe's Jew of Malta except that there is a charming love story and that the end is not tragic. The Taming of the Shrew, which resembles the old Latin comedies and his own early Comedy of Errors, abounds in farce and boisterous mirth.

We reach the climax of Shakespearean comedy in Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, all written in the period 1599-1601. The three plays are very similar in general plan. A love story, which in each case has elements that seem to promise a tragic outcome, is the basis of the plot. In Much Ado, Benedick and Beatrice are led to fall in love with each other through a practical joke, while Hero, in love with Claudio, is for a time separated from him by a false charge, and is supposed to die of grief. In the end everything is cleared up and there is a double marriage. In Twelfth Night, the heroine, Viola, is shipwrecked. Disguised as a page she enters the service of the romantic Orsino, who fancies that he loves the beautiful Olivia. Olivia scorns the suit, but falls in love with the page. The situation becomes very complex until Orsino finds out that his page is really a charming girl, with whom he promptly falls in love, while Viola's twin brother is

just in time to supply Olivia with a husband and prepare us for a double wedding. In As You Like It, the banished Rosalind, accompanied by her friend Celia, disguises herself as a shepherd and takes up her abode in the forest of Arden. Orlando, also banished, in love with Rosalind, goes to Arden, meets the young shepherd, and tells of the pangs of love. In the end the disguise is thrown off and the lovers are united. A lover is found for Celia, too, and a double wedding is again in sight.

But besides these adventurous and often very serious stories, there is an abundance of purely comic interest. The melancholy Jaques, the delightful clown Touchstone, the blundering village officers like Dogberry and Verges, supply us with mirth without end, while scenes in which Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and the precise Malvolio appear afford the same rich merriment that we enjoyed in the story of Prince Hal and his friends. Shakespeare's comedy is both romantic. and realistic. It abounds in story and in the succession of thrilling events that were found in the old romances, but the people who take part in these events are real. In the romances, we are told, and may believe if we like, that the lady was beautiful and witty, and that the knight performed deeds of prodigious valor, but in Shakespeare's dramatized romance we are made, through abundant evidence, to know the brightness and edge of Rosalind's wit and Viola's demure but very competent personality.

SHAKESPEARE AS A TRAGIC DRAMATIST

Julius Caesar. As we have seen, the years from 1594 to 1601 were distinguished chiefly by Shakespeare's work in history and comedy. Only one tragedy, Julius Caesar, appeared during this time, and it belongs to the same year as Henry V (1599). This tragedy was historical, but in it Shakespeare departed from his English themes to dramatize one of the most thrilling periods in Roman history. His source was Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, one of the most famous of the great Elizabethan translations from other literatures, and in it he found not

only the bare chronicle of events but also interpretations of character. This analysis of the motives of conduct he carried over into his play with the result that we are even more interested in the characters of Caesar, Antony, Brutus, and Cassius than in their story. The events are only the means by which the real drama, a drama that takes place in the souls of the persons of the play, is represented to the spectator.

We now approach the group of tragedies in which Shakespeare displayed his marvelous powers to the utmost. Hamlet was written about 1602, Othello in 1604, King Lear in 1605, and Macbeth in 1606.

Hamlet. Few if any persons who have really lived have been the subject of so many books and essays as Shakespeare's imaginary Prince of Denmark. If we add to this great amount of criticism and analysis the interest inspired in thousands of audiences through the three hundred years of the play's stage history, we realize that no king, no military genius, no statesman, has ever interested so many people as this creation of Shakespeare's genius.

Hamlet's story was not original with Shakespeare. In sagas and chronicles it was well known, and at least one play had been written on the subject. In its bare outline the plot is improbable and sensational enough. A king has died suddenly and his queen has married a brother who has succeeded to the throne. From college in Germany the king's son has returned, suspicious of his mother and uncle and indignant that his father seems so soon forgotten. The ghost of the father appears and commands Hamlet to slay the new king, branded as the murderer. Hamlet delays, apparently to get proof. By the device of a play in which a king is murdered by his brother, the necessary proof is secured. But Hamlet still delays, feigning insanity. By chance he kills a fussy old counselor who gets in his way, is banished to England, kills his companions who plot to murder him, and returns to Denmark to find that the girl he had loved has committed suicide. He is challenged to a duel by her brother, who is the son of the counselor slain by Hamlet. In this duel, the king and the brother plan Hamlet's death by means of a poisoned drink and a

poisoned sword. As a result of this plot, the queen, the king, the brother, and Hamlet himself, die.

We have here a tragedy of revenge in which the action is set in motion by the appearance of a ghost. The Elizabethans found no difficulty in believing in the reality of the ghost, nor do we, for the time of the play. But what is harder to understand is why Hamlet delayed so long, thus getting himself entangled in a set of circumstances which worked his ruin. It is this problem that makes the story of Hamlet fascinating, not the ghost, or the sensational murders strewn through its five acts. Hamlet says,

The time is out of joint; O curséd spite, That ever I was born to set it right.

We are interested not merely in a story of a king murdered and the necessity that the son should avenge his father's death, but in the suggestion of all the perplexities that may confront an individual or a generation; the sense that life is not simple

but complex; that action, though necessary, may be difficult. Shakespeare plays upon the emotions, the fears and hopes of humanity, as a master-organist upon his instrument. The play is filled with pregnant sentences, words and phrases that light up dim places of the mind. An illuminating incident is told of Emerson, to the effect that once he looked forward to seeing a great production of this play. At last the night came. Emerson knew the text of the play, of course; he had read it many times. When at last the splendid performance was over, friends roused him as from a trance, to find that Hamlet's words to the ghost, spoken near the beginning of the play, about the "thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls," had set him thinking about the mystery of life and death so that he had seen nothing, and heard nothing, of the play.

Othello. In Hamlet Shakespeare had been dealing with what was, or seemed to be, history. The first printed edition of the play gave as its title "The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke." In Othello he turned once more to the Italian prose tale, such as he had used in Romeo and Juliet. Both these plays, being founded on short stories, are more compact than the histories. They have little of the surrounding detail that Shakespeare had used in his stories of the English kings to give life and color. Furthermore, they deal not with kings and princes, but with private citizens. Othello also lacks the rich philosophy that we have found to be a chief source of interest in Hamlet. It has no extraneous material; it approaches Greek tragedy in the stern simplicity of its struc

ture.

Nevertheless, Othello resembles the other great tragedies in that its chief interest is in character, not in mere sensational incident. The story is brutal. Othello, a Moor in command of the Venetian forces, is led by Iago, a minor officer in his service, to believe that his wife, Desdemona, is unfaithful. Driven to distraction, he murders her, and, on learning his mistake, kills himself. It is such a story as a modern newspaper might play up in all its sensational and sordid details. But Shakespeare, as was his custom in dealing