66 viction that it produces is generally internal too, and cannot be imparted to other minds. Yet where that conviction is strong, it may be stated without offence. The long and infinitely laborious investigation that has been given, for more than a century now, to the chronology of Shakespeare's plays has at least established this conclusion, that plays produced about the same time frequently echo one another in device, in imagery, in metre, in turn of phrase; and that such echoes between plays lying far apart in time are both thin and rare. If Troilus and Cressida " be read by one who listens for these echoes, it will be found that large parts of the drama display Shakespeare's earlier manner; and, in particular, that most of the scenes belonging to the lovestory are haunted by reminiscences of the Comedies and "Romeo and Juliet." It is difficult to give instances without doing injustice to the argument, for the likeness is recognisable not so much in any startling coincidence as in a thousand turns of phrase and tricks of manner. The conceits of Shakespeare's earlier manner abound; for instance: "I have (as when the sun doth light a storm) "Helen must needs be fair, When with your blood you daily paint her thus." (I. i.) The use of rhyming couplets and the clink of wordplay are frequent throughout these scenes; as here: "That she was never yet that ever knew or here : Love got so sweet as when desire did sue:" (I. ii.) "O virtuous fight, When right with right wars who shall be most right!” (III.ii.) This repetition of a word is habitual in Shakespeare's earlier plays, even to the peril of sense, as where Biron, in "Love's Labour's Lost," delivers himself thus: "Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile." Again, the figures of speech and the dramatic devices which are employed in these same scenes find their parallel nowhere but in the Comedies. When Troilus exclaims (I. i.) — "Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne's love, we are reminded of Belmont and the wooing of Portia. When Pandarus says (I. ii.), "I think his smiling becomes him better than any man in all Phrygia," we think of Sir Andrew Ague-cheek. When he further remarks of Troilus, "He will weep you an 't were a man born in April," we think of Bottom the Weaver. The dramatic situations of the Comedies are here repeated. When Æneas comes as ambassador to the Grecian camp (I. iii.) the ironical conversation that he holds with Agamemnon is curiously reminiscent of the first interview between Viola and Olivia in "Twelfth Night." By as strange a juxtaposition the mocking speech of Ulysses in praise of Ajax (II. iii.) — "Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure; recalls Katharine's dutiful praise of old Vincentio in "The Taming of the Shrew." But the nearest affinity is with "Romeo and Juliet." Troilus, languishing for love of his lady (I. i.), speaks of "her hand, in whose comparison all whites are ink," just as Romeo speaks of "the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand." "O Cressida," he says again (IV. ii.), "but that the busy day, Waked by the lark, hath roused the ribald crows, Cressida's casuistical wit concerning the giving and taking of kisses (IV. v.) recalls the first conversation of Rómeo with Juliet. Pandarus, who is very unlike the genial elderly philosopher and man of the world described by Chaucer, is very like Juliet's Nurse. He has the same large volubility and irrelevance of speech. His phrases are sometimes almost identical with hers. "O admirable man!" he says, praising Troilus to Cressida. "Paris? Paris is dirt to him" (I. ii.). "O, he's a lovely gentleman," says the Nurse of another Paris, "Romeo's a dishclout to him ;" and she goes on, like Pandarus, to compare the subject of her discourse to an eagle. "A goodly medicine for mine aching bones!" says Pandarus (V. xi.) at the close of the play. "Is this the poultice for my aching bones?" says the Nurse. But these are trifles. No one, in whose ears the cadences of "Romeo and Juliet" are still ringing, can listen to the speech of Pandarus without innumerable reminiscences, now of the Nurse, now of Friar Laurence. On the whole, the character of Pandarus is less adequately conceived and less firmly drawn than that of the Nurse. 66 Nevertheless, it cannot be allowed for an instant that the play, as a whole, is one of Shakespeare's early plays. There are in it echoes also of the great tragedies. One passage- Thersites' description of Ajax (III. iii.), “ He is grown a very land fish, languageless, a monster" has often been pointed to as the germ of the conception of Caliban. Thersites' abuse of Patroclus (V. i.) “Thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's purse, thou! Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such water-flies; "- recalls Kent's rich vein of invective in "King Lear" and Hamlet's contempt for young Osric. There are other reminders of "Hamlet," - as where Troilus, asked by Pandarus what he is reading, replies (V. iii.), Words, words, mere words "; or where, after witnessing the perfidy of Cressida, he stands transfixed to the spot, and argues with Ulysses after the very manner of the Danish prince (V. ii.). "What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers?" asks Ulysses, who has not followed the quick train of thought in Troilus; and he is 66 answered with all the abrupt irony of Hamlet, “Nothing at all, unless that this were she." There are many near resemblances to "King Lear," some to "Macbeth, and, most telling of all, there is evidence in the play of Shakespeare's reading of Plutarch. In some of the scenes in the Grecian camp there is the condensed, highly figured rhetoric and the packed wealth of thought that distinguish Shakespeare's later manner. So that in this play work that bears all the marks of youth alternates with work that is indisputably mature. The loose structure of the play makes it easy to believe that it does in fact combine the work of two periods, and that when he wrote it Shakespeare used up parts of an earlier play of his own, which he had discontinued and laid aside. We pass here into the region of speculation ; and with good excuse. There is no explanation of "Troilus and Cressida " that holds the field; no satisfactory account of its place in the file of Shakespeare's works. In the absence of any plausible demonstration of what was, it is legitimate to set forth what may have been. If Shakespeare, during the early years of his dramatic activity, was seeking for a love-story whereon to found a play, the best-known and most obvious of lovestories was the story of "Troilus and Cressida." During the whole of the sixteenth century it enjoyed a popularity which threatened sometimes to cast even the "Canterbury Tales" into the shade. In the reign of Henry VIII. it was the favourite reading of the younger sort of courtier. Sir Thomas Elyot's dialogue called "Pasquil the Playne" (1533) introduces Gnatho, the flatterer, who |