CHAPTER I.

Simple construction-General recapitulation

"Othello" eminently a love-tragedy" Measure for Measure"-- its mythological meaning -Poetic insight.

THE reader to whom our last paragraph is intelligible will have no difficulty in realising to his own mind the gencrative processes, the method of working, by which the poet was enabled to arrive at his most artistic results. At the commencement of his career these processes were, of course, rather indicated than developed. There is little of ideality in his earliest works. He is yet dependent on his given materials and his acquired observation. Unconsciously, the ideal is working within him, and impelling him to accept his experiences as the symbols of his inner life, which he feels constantly struggling for utterance but he has not yet acquired full perception and control of it as an artist. Blindly yielding himself to elementary impulses, his chief care is to master the mechanism of dramatic production, to acquire the skill of the playwright, that he may secure to himself hereafter a perfect vehicle for the diviner utterances of poetic genius, when thoroughly developed and matured. For the present, in effecting this, he keeps close to precedent, and is not above employing the rhymed doggerel and other devices already in thea

trical use. Moreover, he is overborne by the influence of an education evidently to some degree classical, and otherwise walks in the trammels of studentship, which he cautiously retains, because though they shackle they protect. He has, however, already outgrown many prejudices, and become an adherent of the new learning, which he triumphantly contrasts with the ignorant "dulness" of a departing time, in which "plodders" in high places satisfied themselves with the dictates of established authority, and never ventured on free thought for themselves. He recognises, too, the influence of Love on human happiness, and discourages all asceticism as impediments to progress. Conceding to this influence, in the fulness of its power, the poet's mind becomes generative, and already produces a purely ideal drama, in which the characters are representative of the implied conceptions, and labour together in obedience to a common initiative, without the need even of a story to set them in motion. Delivered now from an anxious regard to the mechanism of his work, the poet's mind conceives freely, expatiates spontaneously, and the result is, that it creates an organism, in which the shape proceeds from an inner principle of growth, and not from the imposition of an external form. He is now in conscious exercise not only of thought, but of free will, and feels his personality rationally pronounced, both with a subjective and an objective reference, and out of these he is now able to display his powers in the formation of Character in which both shall be prominently exemplified. To secure the

Subjective and Objective Elements.

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latter element, he resorts to an old chronicle or an old play, that he may have foreign material to deal with, and thus gain an apparent actuality for his hero and the events of his history; and as to the former element, he looks inward into his own soul, and shows how lovely and amiable are its constituents, and with what forms of beauty it is filled. To the character of Hamlet, thus constituted, all the persons and incidents of the tragedy are subordinated in a manner already explained. And here let the words "of the tragedy" be well noted; for, be it remembered, Hamlet is the first tragedy composed by Shakspere.

In such composition, the poet evidently became aware of a new development, and was willing to give it further exercise. Hence, in a new play, constructed on the same principles, he portrayed a heroine similarly circumstanced, and, as a pendant to Hamlet, added Helena to his dramatic gallery, related to the Danish prince as well by points of contrast as of comparison.

And now having delivered his mind of the tasks implied in its latest unfolding, Shakspere turned his attention to a second tragedy, and again resorted to an old story and to a former poem, evidently for the same purpose that the objectivity of the work might be safely provided for, even at the moment of inception. The extent to which he is indebted to Brooke's production receives in this fact its justification; and the life and vigour which he communicated to the borrowed matter evidenced the vitality of the poet's

powers, and made it, in the highest sense, his own. And thus ended the poet's apprenticeship, and closed the first seven years of the life of the great dramatist.

In the second stage of his career, we find him still anxious to keep on the objective side of things, and to school his natural poetic tendency to prefer the subjective, as displayed in his lyrical and narrative poems, and such plays as were wholly invented by himself. We may recognise in this a conscious self-culture, an educational process, highly becoming in a philosophic mind, and testifying as much to the possession as to the love of wisdom. For the next seven years or more, he mainly devoted himself to the chronicles of his country, though at intervals recreating himself with exercises of fancy, thus culti vating the inner life, while thoroughly instructing his understanding in the relations of the outer by the study of history. Here, too, as in his romantic plays, he begins humbly, trying his powers first with already existing chronicle-plays, and treading with them closely in the footprints of the chronicler. From this preliminary labour he derived many hints, which he subsequently improved. These led him to consider the state of affairs as he found them in the reign of Henry VI., and to trace them back to their causes in the reigns of King John and Richard the Second. He then rushed on to consider their consequences in the history of Richard the Third; and afterwards filled-in the interval by writing the three most finished of his historical plays, the two parts of Henry IV. and Henry V. Here his art arrived at its culmina

Shakspere's Comedy tentative.

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tion; and, having secured his triumph on this ground, forthwith he turned "to fresh fields and pastures new."

But while thus cultivating the plains of memory, he did not neglect the more elevated regions of fancy. Memory and fancy, as we have already said, are allied so far as this-that fancy is only memory relieved from the order of time. In his earliest historic efforts, the poet's fancy, like that of his predecessors and contemporaries, asserted no exemption from this law. But he no sooner began to work for himself, than he largely availed himself of the liberty by nature belonging to the operations of fancy, and permitted the faculty to revel in the creation of new characters and events, and to make new dispositions of time and place whenever thereby the poetic purpose might be better served. These we find in the Taming of the Shrew, Midsummer-Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and in the comic portions of Henry IV. and Henry V.

And thus passed fifteen years of Shakspere's working life. For the next two or three years he devoted himself to comedy, and no doubt found in it great mental relaxation. Many of the characters in his comic pieces were pure creations of his own imagination, and very exquisite creations too. But they appear to have been comparatively tentative exercises, thrown out in the mind's sportive moods. The manly mind of the poet desired severer exertion. He had already, during the impulsive period of his development, excogitated two tragedies, in which he had