It is quite impossible that it could have been the work of a youthful poet; and no theory of development could account for such a work and Othello, for instance, being the production of the same artist in his maturity. It could not have been the production of the same mind at the same period of life which produced the Two Gentlemen of Verona. The struggling mechanical structure of this play and of its versification alike stands in contrast with the practised stage-arrangement and resonant rhythm of the tragedy of Titus. Smooth as the lines are in The Tuo Gentlemen, one sees plainly enough that the writer is learning how to write verse, and only making a trial of his skill, both as to the treatment of the story and the management of the dialogue. We see in it no predilection for the tragedy of horror, but rather for the drama of elegance in which the finer feelings and the softer manners are represented. And there can be no doubt that the tone of the latter is much more characteristic of "the gentle Shakspere" than the violent and vehement action and declamation of the former. Shakspere, indeed, was a long while before he undertook to wrestle with such strong passions, incidents, and characters; and underwent, as we shall find, a peculiar process of education, before he aimed at any such result, which was first attained in his tragedy of Richard the Third. He had no ambition in his earlier efforts to compete with Marlowe, as is evident from his sonnets and poems, and does not seem ever to have experienced that tumult of mind in which originated Die Räuber of Schiller. Com

mencing as a poet, with imitations of Italian models, he sought from the first to support his poetry with an inner meaning, and to work it out from a central idea, to which he made his story subservient; but, in its expression, he had to struggle with the form, both as to diction and structure, in which at the beginning we detect, as might have been expected, a degree of crudity, followed by more and more freedom, and at last a fullness and a ripeness testifying to the completed process. By attending to this internal evidence we can, with tolerable moral certainty, mark the order of succession in his various compositions, in harmony with the progress of his mind, and his development as a working artist,-in other words, a Dramatic Poet.

Even as early as Hamlet we find, indeed, the poet remonstrating against that Herodian style in which Marlowe delighted; and that even in a play which, according to reasonable supposition, was partly founded on a work of Kyd's. We may therefore perceive that Shakspere had a natural Taste as well as a natural Genius, and was more likely to follow in the vein of Spenser, Surrey, and Wyatt, than in that of the bombast playwrights. He brought from the romantic realms of Italian poesy a more delicate fancy, and introduced it into the rougher and exclusively popular kingdom of the drama. His feelings were always of a rare subtlety, and altogether alien from that gross and hard consistence which in the pre-Shaksperian drama is put forward as the conventional substitute for natural emotion.

The reference to Gower in Pericles would of itself, in my opinion, lead us to suspect an elder author. There was, indeed, a play under the same title, older than that which has been ascribed to Shakspere, and which is supposed to have been acted some years before the commencement of the seventeenth century. The hero was originally named Apollonius; and in 1510 Wynkyn de Worde printed a romance entitled Kynge Appolyn of Tyre, and which was translated from the French by Robert Copland. French version was probably founded on the narrative in the Gesta Romanorum, printed late in the fifteenth century; but the original story appears to have been in Greek, and to have been thence translated into Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and English. Latin versions of it, as early as the tenth century, exist.

The

The tragedy of Pericles was first acted early in the year 1608 with great success, at which time it is supposed that Shakspere inserted his improvements. The "ancient Gower" had already been introduced by Shakspere's predecessor. Gower had made the whole story part of his Confessio Amantis,-a work which has not yet received the praise to which it is entitled. As a drama, the tragedy of Pericles proclaims itself to be the production of a neophyte in the art, and of such neophyte at a period when the art itself was in its infancy. The style is evidently that of a young poet, wherein every object is sought to be rendered poetical by giving to it a personality. The neuter

False Style of "Pericles.”

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pronoun seldom occurs, the masculine and the feminine constantly, e. g.

"For death remembered should be like a mirror,

Who tells us life's but breath; to trust it error."

Here the mirror is personified, and life and death not. Again:

"You're a fair viol, and your sense the strings,

Who, fingered to make man his lawful music,

Would draw heaven down, and all the gods to hearken."

Now, do we find any such expedient for the false elevation of style in Shakspere's Sonnets, or Poems, or The Two Gentlemen of Verona? They are all singularly free from the artifice, reserving the practice for the grand objects of nature; such as sun, or moon, or earth, or ocean, relative to which such impersonations are quite common. The diction of The Two Gentlemen is remarkably plain and natural, seldom rising to metaphor, and, except in the doggerel passages, never indulging in the tricks and vain ambitions of the metre-monger. Shakspere's art, like the song of the lark, commences at a low level, and only gradually attains the highest elevations, and then only when the purpose justifies the aim. Ultimately, we find the poet, on fitting occasions, revelling in all the resources of the conscious artist; but in these earliest trials of his muse, he is modest in the use of his means, and has to wait for their augmentation, as they may disclose themselves to him in the course of practice, before he can display his riches-much thereof as yet hidden from himself.

It will be wise, therefore, in us to regard these

two doubtful plays as exhibiting the pre-Shaksperian drama, rather than that of which our poet was the creator. We may thus see the conditions of the poetic circumstances out of which Shakspere had to evolve his own personality, and the individuality of his works. The examination leads to a judgment in

favour of the poet's taste. A great critic has told us that Shakespere's judgment was equal to his genius; but here we discern that his natural taste was also with him a "divine instinct"* capable of distinguishing between the false and the true. Great, then, is the error of those commentators who foolishly think that there was any period in Shakspere's manhood when he was likely to fall in with the errors of a previous school. It was, in fact, his very appearance that dispelled those errors and inaugurated the new era, the completest specimens of which were to be exhibited in his own compositions.

Thus, then, are dispelled for ever those hypotheses concerning Shakspere's earliest compositions which, we now sec, from the first indicated the direction that he would ultimately take. With these, too, should vanish those absurd traditions which ascribe to the poet certain disgraceful incidents and foibles, which have no authority elsewhere. Such traits belong not to the poet of the plays and poems, but to the poet of vulgar opinion, of profane appreciation, of that outside talk which delights in scandal, and in

• "Divine instinct" is a phrase occurring in Richard III.; but the poet borrowed it from Holinshed.